Sneaking across town and breaking into her own home wearing nothing but a leather coat had never been part of the plan, yet here she was. After squeezing through the tiny window and trekking barefoot across Death City during evening rush hour with a grumpy demon and realising she didn't have her keys- 'they were in my pocket, Soul! My pocket that is part of my clothes that we had to leave behind just so you could avoid Stein'- she was standing approximately four stories below the balcony of her father's apartment. According to him, the glass door hadn't opened since before he moved there. The lack of adorable balcony plants made it easy to pick out.

Soul stood guard as she sized up the drain pipe. It would hold. Probably. She was pretty tiny. She gave it an experimental shake. It rattled unreassuringly.

She tightened the belt of the coat with resolve.

"Stay here. Yell if anyone comes. I'll buzz you in. Do not look up,"

He grinned at that and she smacked him.

"Ow!"

"Sorry. I don't always know my own strength," she smiled, sheepishly.

She made quick work of the wall, before leaping across two balconies to end up on her own. She grasped the door's handle and turned it. She could hear the rusted mechanisms snapping inside the handle, and it came off in her hand. She groaned, and attempted to shimmy the door open. It wriggled a bit, and she could see flakes of rust and paint coming free.

But as she found she didn't have the patience, she smashed the glass. It broke easily under the duress of Slayer strength and it was a simple matter to knock a hole big enough for her and avoid standing on the shards in her bare feet. She waved down at Soul to go to the door before she buzzed him in.

She answered the door while still wearing his jacket.

"Come on in,"

"I'm not a vampire. I can enter dwelling places without any difficulty,"

"Suit yourself," She went to get changed, and Soul followed her, picking up knickknacks and inspecting them as he went. Maka's room was neat, but she didn't seem to have any personal effects. There were no photos of her friends or family, either the old ones or the new. The book shelf was full to bursting, though.

Maka threw the doors of her wardrobe open with a bang, and Soul whirled to inspect the source of the noise. Her clothes were divided neatly in half, lots of sweaters and pastel colours to the left, bright reds, blacks and leather jackets to the right. Along the bottom were five pairs of heavy, steel toed boots, and behind them, dusty, unpacked boxes.

She stripped herself of the coat, looking down at the line of stitching stretched from shoulder to hip, and the various other places she needed to be held together.

"Do you think it'll scar?"

Soul wasn't expecting that. He'd seen the scars across her back, the ones marring her legs and her arms and the tiny adorable one on her lip and the worrisome bite scars on her neck. Not every sharp toothed demon was as careful giving hickies as he was. He didn't think she'd care about scars anymore, seeing as she had so many, a silvery lattice across her pale skin. Could she even remember how she got them?

But he wasn't going to lie.

"Yeah. That's going to leave a bitch of a scar,"

"Oh. I wouldn't mind," she lied "Only they can be hard to explain to people who don't know without someone calling the police,"

"You look beautiful," he said, calculatedly off-handed, "You know that, right?"

"You're only saying that cause I'm naked," she replied matter-of-factly, stepping into a pair of underwear patterned with tiny sheep.

"Especially 'cause you're naked,"

"Well, too bad," she said, pulling a sports bra over her head. "Hand me some socks, they live in the second drawer,"

She pulled a tank top on over the bra and shimmied into a skirt before sitting on her bed to pull on the socks Soul handed her.

"Can you grab me some shoes? And a jacket?"

He tossed her a jacket, the one she'd been wearing when he met her, if he had to guess, and held some boots in her direction. She shoved her feet into them, started lacing one, and kicked him as gently as she could in the shoulder. He sighed, and started tying the laces of the boot she was waving in his direction.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Soul asked as Maka jumped up, and grabbed one of the many crucifixes she kept by her beside.

"Something is going on," Maka weighed a few weapons from the chest at the end of her bed in her hands in turn, before slipping a knife in her boot and slinging a crossbow across her back.

"Something like a surprise party or?" Soul asked hopefully.

"Something more akin to Armageddon," she offered him a sword and sheath, which he shoved into his belt before shrugging into his coat.

"Damn," he said, "Guess we have to skip breakfa-dinner,"

"We can grab something on the way to the library,"

Azusa's keen eyes stared up at her. The rest of Azusa was nowhere to be seen."Come and find me, my love. Azusa simply can't wait to see you."

"What do you mean you don't know where she is?" Mr. L was paced, furiously cleaning and re leaning his glasses. It was irritating the others, but with Maka goodness knows where (and Tsubaki out of the running, though no one wanted to say it to his face that he was third in the leadership queue) he was in charge.

"We were kind of distracted by the fact that Tsubaki had just ripped her brother apart and seemed just a little bit traumatised by the whole ordeal," Kidd defended, looking up from his careful organisation of the library in a system that was most certainly not the Decimal one as Black Star loudly shushed him. Tsubaki was asleep, her head resting in his lap, eyes still puffy and red.

"She's probably with Soul," Liz shrugged, swiping at her nails with a cotton ball soaked in acetone.

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea. He can't be trusted. And do you have to do that here? It really reeks, Liz," he wasn't too happy with the volatile liquid's proximity to the literature either.

"Not normal, but he'd never hurt Maka," Liz replied, ignoring the second part of Mr. L's inquiry.

"Probably," Patti added, grabbing the nail polish remover and tipping it on a rag before scrubbing the gun part in her hand. She had taken over the centre table of the library with the vast collection of weaponry she and Liz had been keeping in the motel. How it had all been stashed in there was a mystery to them all.

"Yeah, he wouldn't hurt her intentionally- don't use that on the polymers, Patti," Liz said, barely looking up.

"'M not an idiot, sis," Patti rolled her eyes.

"I have a feeling his intentions aren't quite as pure as you seem to think," Mr. L said, frowning as Patti reassembled the gun parts she'd been working on, with a level of focus she never applied to anything that couldn't blow holes in someone.

"Sex? Is that what your worried about, Mr. L? All the kids are doing it these days,"

"Not this Kidd," Kidd flipped open the book in his hand and scanned the table of contents.

"Kidd, what the fuck? I was on a roll. And you just, cut right into it. Rude. Where was I? Maka's a big girl, she can operate a a condom," Liz selected a dark burgundy colour, from the vast collection of colours she'd brought from the motel "Does this colour say 'end of the world' to anyone else?"

"Actually, sis, Mistah L, Maka's on the pill. I'd go for a bluey-grey, Liz,"

Liz nodded, and plucked an appropriately gunmetal blue colour entitled 'Goodbye, Lover'.

"How do you know that?" Mr. L asked, weighing a handgun in his hand. Patti glared, and he put it down quickly.

"She likes to be regular," Patti shrugged. "And have safe sex, I guess,"

"Patti! What have I told you?" Liz snapped, shaking her hand to dry the first layer of colour.

Patti sighed, setting down the gun before saying, in a singsong voice: "Two forms of contraception, one for you and one for them!"

"Atta girl,"

Mr. L sighed and made eye contact with Kidd, who looked just as baffled.

"So, nobody knows where she is?" Black star asked quietly. And it was real people quiet, not Black Star quiet.

"I'm sure she'll turn up," Kidd said, sitting cross legged on the floor. "Hopefully, before the impending apocalypse,"

"I'm gong to do some research on this Asura fellow. See if he has any qualities besides been the harbinger to the end of the world, weaknesses, even,"

Black Star eased himself out from under Tsubaki's sleeping form. She shuffled sleepily, before settling back down

"I can help! I'm great at research," He boasted. "It's way cooler to read about the end of the world than the some dead presidents who sucked at their jobs,"

Her fault. It was her duty to keep them safe. She should've protected him. All her fault.

Seven hours. That's how long it took them to come across even a scrap of useful information. Actually, they found several scraps, but with occult research online and on paper, everything had to taken with a grain of salt, a wooden stake and a whole lot of caution.

There was a white board with everything they had learned about scrawled on it in dry-wipe marker. There was a dick scrawled in the corner in permanent marker, but hey, it was public school. Apart from the penis, the white board read something like;

'ASURA

Evil

End of the world

Son of death

Bringer of madness

Guardian of the Hellmouth(?)'

There was nothing about killing him, because presumably, he'd never before shown up on this mortal plane.

They were all exhausted, and books were heaped everywhere. Kidd was at the stage of researching where a book had to be retrieved if he wanted to research without compulsively organising the library in a way he found both aesthetically and academically pleasing.

Liz had deflected her attention to the Hellmouth, while Patti drew a giraffe on a sheet of paper she'd taken from the printer. Kidd held his hand out and Tsubaki passed him another book. Black Star was reading a big old tome and being strangely industrious, eager to prove that he was the best at researching. Mr. Lord was out in the hall, yelling down the phone to a cranky Council member. Admittedly, he'd disturbed the poor man's sleep in order to garner information.

He slammed the door when he came storming back in, grumpier then they'd ever seen him.

"Hey, I might have something here," Liz said, popping her gum loudly. " 'the mouth of hell lies at blah blah blah' but look, someone drew a little ring around the 'mouth of hell' part and drew a line out to the margin where they wrote in something that is either coordinates or a phone number,"

"Let me see!"

"Patti, calm down," Deaton said, making a vaguely placating gesture in her direction and lifting the book out of Liz's arms,"Does anyone have a smartphone?"

"Why?"

"Just because I'm a librarian, doesn't mean I don't understand the merits of Google," he retorted, "Do you have an iPhone or not?"

"Jeez, old man, calm down," Liz fished an iPhone with a cracked screen and an apparently inadequate cover out of her bra. "Hand me the book,"

Mr. L handed her back the book, and she frowned at the numbers, briefly.

"Is she really going to google it?"

"Hush, Black Star," Tsubaki chided, watching Liz carefully.

"And I suppose you have a better idea, do you?" Patti leapt to her favourite sibling's defense.

"You're only on her side because she's your sister!" Black Star insisted, folding his arms and leaning back on two legs of his chair to put his legs up on the table, boots landing right in the middle of a valuable 17th century text.

"Black Star! Take your feet off that book before I cut them off!" Mr. Lord threatened, brandishing a scimitar. Black Star removed his feet before Mr. Lord could.

"I'm on her side cuz she's smarter'n you!" Patti stuck out her tongue.

"That really isn't ladylike, Patti," Kidd said, without looking up, least he see the chaos he was sitting in.

"You're not ladylike!" She shot back, feeling very defensive all of a sudden.

"Everyone, shut up!" Liz snapped, before clearing her throat. "Siri, what is at thirty-six-point-one-eight-two-two degrees north one-hundred-fifteen-point-nine-nine-nine-two degrees west,"

"Why, you are Liz!" Siri answered brightly as the ground began to rumble unsettlingly.

"With all your friends dead, with all of them gone, all that sacrifice and it still wasn't enough, could never begin to hope to be enough to stop me, how could you, all on your own, with no Watcher and no mommy and no friends to hide behind, how could you possibly hope to be enough?" His face was twisted into a cheap, malevolent copy of the smirk she had loved.

The school was quiet, but the densely swirling matrix of cloud and the flashing lightening directly overhead did arouse some suspicion. Maka broke into a run, trying desperately not to spill the coffee she and Soul had picked up at Starbucks all over herself. Soul clutched the box of donuts to his chest and sprinted after her. It might be like that time Black Star had cast some kind of absurd spell by accident and everyone had swapped sexes.

So it might be nothing.

But it might also be something.

Which is why they were running like hell but not sacrificing the caffeine in order to get there with speed.

A janitor looked up as they rushed past, sighed and looked back down. He seemed to be ignoring, like the vast majority of the population of Death City, his own probable impending doom.

They burst into the library to find that all hell had broken loose. The floorboards had splintered outward, rippling away from a gaping hole where the central table used to reside. The table itself was on its side and Patti, Liz and Kidd were crouched behind it. Kidd was reloading a shotgun, as Patti waited for her chance and Liz was using her compact to spot for opportunities to shoot. Deaton, Black Star and Tsubaki were behind the counter. They were aiming crossbows over the edge. Black Star fired.

The bolt moved slowly through the air, as if it was treacle, before shattering against a final barrier.

In the centre of room, above the hole that led to somewhere Maka did not feel like even considering, hovered a man. Or a demon in the shape of a man. The very approximate shape of a man, wrapped in strips of skin that clung to his frame, outlining his protruding bone and lean, coiled musculature. His matted hair hung in a thick fringe over this forehead and three vertical eyes darted around, savouring the details of the library. He didn't appear to have either a nose or any injuries which was both discomfiting and discouraging.

His eyes landed on her and she felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on her. She was terrified, scared to move. She seized Soul with her free hand desperate to get away from the demons terrible, terrible gaze. She wanted to look away, break eye contact, but she found it impossible.

Then he demon looked away from her, and though still afraid, she was no longer paralysed by fear. Maka dived behind the counter and Soul elected to follow her excellent example.

"Starbucks?" She offered sheepishly. She glanced at Soul, he was breathing fast aswell, and his hands shook. He clenched them into fists, and Maka could see his too-dark veins. He she'd his coat, tucking it under the counter for safe keeping.

"Thank you," Deaton seized a cup, and Tsubaki and Black Star descended upon the caffeinated beverages with equal zeal. Soul took another, silently offering the box of slightly squashed donuts around.

"So, what's the stitch?" She asked, loading her crossbow quickly.

"Evil dude is tryna kill us something fierce, Kim," Soul said, have chugged his cup of joe in record time.

"Don't put on that ridiculous accent. And my name's not Kim," Maka said, puzzled.

"She's a cartoon character and she- nevermind," Soul sighed. "Who is that guy?"

"Asura, guardian of the door to hell,"

"He doesn't sound like a bad guy,"

"Well he's harbinger to the Apocalypse, so he can't be good news," Mr. L said, still searching through a book still, looking for answers.

"Has he done anything yet?" Maka asked. "Besides strike terror into our hearts?"

"Not as of yet,"

"But we're still trying to kill him?"

"Harbinger to Apocalypse, Maka," Soul reminded her.

"Have you found anything in that book yet, Mr L?" Tsubaki asked, peeking over the counter and ducking back quickly as Asura glanced in her direction.

"Apparently he's terrified of everything and can be defeated by pure courage,"

"Does pure courage take the form of a sword or something?" Black Star asked. "Or is it just my bare fists?"

"We're going to die, aren't we?"

"Probably eventually,"

"Now is not the time for sarcasm, Soul!" Maka snapped. "We're going to go over the to and spread out as fast as we can, come at him from different angles. He can't look everywhere at once right? Does Liz have her phone?"

"Yes, why?" Tsubaki answered.

"Kidd hates the convenience of modern day technology, and Patti never answers," Maka explained, patting her pockets to find that she didn't have her phone either,"Can I borrow someone's cell?"

Black Star handed over his phone, a Samsung that was sturdy, featureless and 'great'. Maka quickly dialled Liz's phone number, not bothering to check the contacts.

"What!?" Liz snapped down the phone. "I'm a little busy at the minute,"

"We're all going over and spreading out, he can't look at us all at the same time,"

"Sounds like a plan," Maka hung up, tossing the phone back to Black Star without so much as a 'thank you'. Manners had a tendency to fall by the wayside in the event of the Apocalypse.

She vaulted over the top of the counter without so much as a by-your-leave. She moved quickly, avoiding eye contact though she could feel his fleeting glance. Patti and Liz had moved away from the table, and she could here Soul and the others running behind her. Kidd was standing up behind the table, and a shotgun blast punched through the library. He was thrown backwards, landing on his ass, thoroughly unprepared for the recoil.

Patti shot quickly through the blast, and there was an explosion of black, tarry blood on the demons shoulder. He didn't move, but Patti dropped her gun and screamed as her arm snapped. Her right arm hanging uselessly, she scooped up the gun with her left and grit her teeth, aiming unsteadily towards Asura. Liz glanced over, concern flickering in her eyes, her expression becoming steely and determined. She shot two shots in quick succession, one making it through to pierce the demon's abdomen. Blood soaked into the fabrics and skin he had wrapped himself in.

Tsubaki was pushing through the invisible with shadows, the strain visible on her face. She forced a small gap and the shadows flowed through it, coiling around Asura, tightening and slicing and piercing his skin. The viscous black blood oozed through the shadows and feel down the inter-dimensional hellhole. An eager cacophony of howling rose in response to the spilled blood.

The demon tensed, and a ripple pulsed through the darkness, and Tsubaki was thrown back, smashing into the stacks and causing them to topple. Black Star sprinted towards her, abandoning his post, when she didn't rise. He stood over her, loosing cross bow bolts toward Asura.

Asura moved, fascinated by the shadows he now controlled, gingerly moving his hands to experiment with this new power. The darkness moved jerkily, less than eager to obey his unnatural command. His hands twisted and the shadows sped outward in a great wave of darkness, smashing into them all and throwing them back to hit the walls.

Soul stood in front of her, braced against the wave taking the brunt of the blow, uninjured by the wave, fists clenched. He drew the sword Maka had given him earlier. She struggled to her feet as he raised it, prepared to run towards the demon. Asura was calling his new toy back to him, but it moved sluggishly. Maka could see Tusbaki sitting up, supporting Black Star with one hand and holding her other out to slow the shadows, her face screwed up in concentration. Her hand was shaking slightly.

She couldn't delay him much longer. Maka saw her eyes becoming unfocused and she dived.

She shoved Soul out of the way and gasped as the darkness punched her like a great fist holding an even greater hammer. She coughed up a mouthful of blood, spitting it on the floor and scrubbing at her lips with the back of her hand.

Soul looked at her like he really hadn't been expecting that.

Maka looked back at him like he was a loveable idiot.

Then she stood up again on shaky legs, holding up a hand like she was asking the demon to 'wait just a second while I regain my composure' she gasped down great lungfuls of air ignoring several bruised and cracked ribs and the general achyness she was feeling. She stood up straight and looked at the demon.

And Asura looked at her.

She could feel him staring into her soul and she could feel herself searching for his and finding only a great and terrible abyss that stared right back at her and choked her with fear.

She couldn't move, she was going to die, there would be a new Slayer and she would be lost to history as the world was destroyed. And it would be her fault. The Slayer who couldn't save the world. She was going to die.

Did it hurt?

Would dying hurt?

She took a step towards Asura.

She didn't want to die.

She was afraid of dying.

She took another. He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes.

She was going to die.

"I don't want to die," she said. Horizontal slashes appeared on her arms and legs, leaking blood.

Did dying hurt?

Probably hurt more than this.

She could live with this pain, but not dying.

She started to run.

"I'm not going to die today," she said. "I'm too scared of dying,"

So she punched him in the face, she fist crunching against his nose space. He was shocked, angry, but confused.

She punched him again, and again.

"Maka!" Soul yelled, "Catch!"

She caught the sword, and swung hard.

Asura screamed, a pitiful, fearful noise. Maka didn't care, and his head tumbled down the hole from whence he had come. Unfortunately, it sealed itself before she could kick the rest of him down, and the demon's body fell to the floor, lifeless and headless.

"Because I have to be," she said, her shoulders straining with the effort of holding the parry. "I will always have to be enough."

Everyone was tired and sore and bruised and glowing. It hadn't occurred to them yet that they had a strange inhuman corpse to remove and a lot of amateur carpentry to look forward to to fixing. There was still proud surveillance of the destruction they'd caused in averting much more impressive destruction.

There's a moment, after you save the world, where you forget how shit it actually is. You forget everything that sucks and just see how beautiful everything can be. It's those post Apocalypse aversion moments Maka-

"Maka, something's wrong with Soul,"

Her head turned away from her moment of proud self reflection of what it means to be the Slayer so fast she almost gave herself whiplash. "Soul?"

"It hurts," he ground out,"Hurts a lot,"

"He barely touched you!" Liz yelled- Patti hissed in pain as the movement jostled her broken arm, "Sorry! Sorry!"

"Not that kind of hurt," he looked at Maka significantly.

"Really, Soul? Now?" Maka pinched the bridge of her nose- a habit she'd picked up from Mr. L.

He screamed, and it was followed by a painful keening noise. He clutched his stomach, howling at the sharp pangs of insatiable hunger he found there.

His fangs burst through his gums, his nails becoming dark talons and he clawed at his arms and back, shredding his red shirt and the band T-shirt underneath it. Black blades, sharp curved knives pushed up through the wounds, and his eyes glowed a bright, blood red.

He whistled, a harsh collection of notes and scratched deep grooves into the wooden floor. His back arched and he howled, moving to stand. He was taller and broader and just bigger, his skin splitting and black blades bleeding out through the tears.

"Get back," she told the others. They backed away quickly and quietly as she fought to keep his attention on her. They were tired and she was using her leader voice.

Maka could feel the crumpled square of cloth in her pocket, and she twined her fingers around it, praying for strength as she faced Soul. He looked at her hungrily, a different kind of hungrily then he had before. His eyes held no recognition for her, only gleamed in reaction to her stepping closer tentatively. He was hungry, and Slayer soul had to be very filling indeed.

Maka signalled none too subtly to Tsubaki, who nodded like she got the message. Soul had his eyes on her still, looking straight through her 'mortal vessel' to her soul like Asura had. It was no less uncomfortable than before. She could feel his eyes burning into her soul without any trace of feeling beyond hunger.

Tsubaki stretched a shadow to him, wrapping it tightly around his arms to hold him as best she could without him noticing.

Maka made soothing noises, like a farrier with a spooked horse, moving towards him slowly. His eyes followed her intently, a string of drool hanging from his lethal looking teeth. Tsubaki was holding his arms behind his bad, but her face was strained with effort. She was already exhausted by the fight with Asura. He wasn't even fighting for his freedom, sitting almost docilely and waiting for her to come closer.

She held up the handkerchief.

"Do you remember this? From the first time we met?" She smiled at him. "You saved me,"

Not a flicker of recognition.

"You helped me clean up after, when I was covered in dust and ash. And then you told me to keep it, because you knew I would need it. And you didn't even ask for it back when I said you couldn't hang around me anymore, even though I was so cruel to you,''

He looked at her curiously, like she was some kind of insect to be inspected briefly, then squashed.

"And you still had my back and even when I was patrolling on my own and it was exhausting and dangerous I knew you still had my back even though you really weren't supposed to."

He took a step closer, breaking away from Tsubaki's hold.

"And you saved me again, and told me about your self and kept me safe,

"And again," she repeated, "and you gave me the strength to fight on, when I really, really didn't want to, and when I just wanted to give up and I still had it and I knew you had my back. You had my back, even when I didn't deserve and..."

"Calm down, Maka," Soul said, all normal sized and scrubbing the blood away from his mouth. " My heart was warmed, my soul made whole and I... C'mere," Noticing her expression, which could be described as one of relief and happiness, he held out his arms.

Maka hugged him, and he gingerly embraced her, aware of her .

"You've been carrying that this whole time? Did you even wash it?" Soul whispered.

"Don't tell others, but I never actually took it out of my pocket. I completely forgot it was even in there," Maka admitted.

"So you made up all that giving you strength crap?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny that, Soul," she buried her face in his chest.

Soul sighed and kissed the top of her head.