G()D €AT€R

…contamination…

|||| 8 ||||

The child thudded to the ground, and no one picked it up again. The child wailed, yet no one was there to hear it. The child sat up and tried to see where it was, but there was no moon to illuminate the dark of night. The woods were silent. This was a nowhere place.

The child's mother had long since left, sole parting gift a disgusted spit at the ground.

There were no beasts. No birds so far, although they would come to scavenge soon.

No one.

Nothing.

Nowhere.

When there was no answer, the child became soundless as well.

|||| 8 ||||

Day came, the sun swinging back and forth in an attempt to wake itself up, the forest canopy filling with an ugly dawn chorus of caws and screeches. It was not the clamouring of famished crows and ravens that woke the child. It was the scratching talons, the questing nudges, the pecking beaks.

The child had collapsed soon after its abandonment; too young to walk far, seek food or find shelter.

The carrion birds shuffled forwards, advancing in clumps that by turn egged each other on and fought to get there first. One in particular swaggered forwards, using its greater weight to push its rivals aside. It jabbed at the child several times with a sharp, pointed bill.

Finding a little leftover strength, its victim moaned and rolled away.

Startled, the black-feathered flock danced away. At a short distance they flapped half-spread wings in warning gestures, complaining in loud voices. The large raven tried to assert itself once again by bullying its nearest companions. One dared to retaliate and the bigger raven was knocked away effortlessly.

After a few more failed attempts the raven hopped away from the group. Fluffing up its plumage, it crouched down and began to cheep uncertainly.

What was wrong? It wondered with the primitive thoughts of a bird.

Why was its strength suddenly gone?

|||| 8 ||||

There was a meister dashing down the narrow streets of an old town somewhere in Germany. There had been an unexpected kishin attack. The meister was completely alone. Yet it wasn't fear that radiated from this human, but annoyance. And not any old just-starting-to-get-a-bit-irritated annoyance, oh no – the meister was absolutely fuming with imminent-Maka-Chop rage.

Not to mention it was raining so hard it felt like the clouds had discovered machine guns.

"Where are you, Soul?!" growled Maka, charging round yet another corner. She needed a high vantage point to scout from, because in this maze even Soul Perception wasn't making much headway. How unbelievable that they'd been split up by some low-level evil human, when the most basic principle of being a technician was to never get separated from your weapon!

With her normal eyesight she caught a familiar glimpse of white up ahead. Relieved, she gave chase.

|||| 8 ||||

Soul shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his head back coolly. "So you're saying this kishin is force-feeding others innocent human souls?"

"It's a dark evangelist!" screeched his informant. "It wants to make us all evil and twisted!"

"Dude, lay off the beer," muttered the Weapon; flapping a hand at the alcohol-laden breath that swamped him every time the man spoke.

"Three of my friends I've seen turned!" yelled the drunk, shoving three fingers into Soul's face. "Three! One minute they're normal, next they're stood there chowing down souls! It's not right!"

The boy sighed and straightened out of his habitual slouch. "Mah…don't worry, I'll take care of it for you." He pointed a thumb at himself. "Because that's the cool thing to do."

He looked out of the pub door at the hideous weather. He hunched down again.

Sometimes you have to suffer for awesomeness, he told himself. With another sigh, he ventured out into the downpour.

And where the hell is Maka anyway?

|||| 8 ||||

He found her in an alleyway. Well that wasn't a surprise. This whole town was nothing but alleyways. She was standing with her back to him, ankle-deep in a puddle (with her boots that was no problem, but his trainers were soaked), and she was looking at something in her hand. Whatever it was, it cast a soft blue glow on her face that glittered off the raindrops in her hair.

"Oi, Maka..." called Soul, expecting her to turn around and punch him into next week for not staying by her side at all times.

She didn't move. Whatever the radiant thing was, it had her entranced.

He drew closer until he could see her face and what she was cradling in her palms. It was a soul. A pure one.

"Another victim, huh," guessed Soul; he reached out to pat her back. Sometimes she'd get all dejected like this, if she thought they hadn't made it to the kishin in time. "You shouldn't get too upset - this kishin isn't even on the mission board yet. We're here early."

Before his hand could reach her, she moved.

Maka's eyes grew huge and empty, pitch black.

She lifted the soul to her lips and opened her mouth wider than was humanly possible, popping the former person in. Its light shone through her teeth, making her weird smile glow.

"Oh," she said around the mouthful, frowning slightly. "It doesn't taste of anything."

She gulped, closing her darkened eyes in pleasure. The luminance was gone now; he could barely see her in the night and the rainfall.

"Mmmm, but it does feel nice."

Soul was gobsmacked. "M-M-Maka..." he croaked, grabbing her shoulders and spinning her round so she'd look at him. "Shit, you're kidding me Maka...you've got to be kidding me." He was too scared to act cool right now. He shook her until her head rattled. "What are you thinking? You can't eat souls, Maka! You'll become a kishin! Are you crazy??!"

The girl covered her mouth with a gloved hand in an 'oops' gesture, giggling madly as if the black blood had infected her once again.

"Hehehehehehee - hahaha! Hahahahaha! What? Whaaat? I'm already a kishin!" she crowed.

"No way..." gasped Soul. How could this have happened? The drunken guy had been right!

"Yes way," sniggered the Maka kishin, pulling away from him and crawling up the nearest wall. She sat swinging her legs on the guttering, as the rain rushed past her trying to loosen her grip on the slate tiles. "Ne, I won't have to be afraid of anything anymore...if I eat enough souls, they'll keep me company!"

Soul felt his heart break. "What happened to courage?!" he roared. "You're Maka Albarn! You're supposed to face your fears, not hide behind other people's ghosts!"

"Maka Albarn?" asked the demon with great amusement, "I'm not Maka Albarn..."

Depressed, he tried to kick the ground but just sent a wave of water splashing everywhere. This couldn't be happening. Maka was meant to turn him into a Deathscythe – how could he possibly let her go? He couldn't stand here and just watch her warp into an egg of the demon god!

Not Maka Albarn?

"Not anymore, huh?" whispered Soul in a sorrowful voice.

"Hmm, no..." replied the not-Maka, sniffing in a snooty manner and turning its face away. It seemed to suddenly realise how precarious its seat was. "Ne, it's high up here. What if I fell, and left Maka Albarn all broken on the ground? What if no one wanted me after that, and I was all alone?" The kishin began climbing higher up the roof. Soul cringed as the boots skidded on the slick surface, and his former friend windmilled her arms to keep steady.

"I don't want to be all alone, and broken, and scared...I'll have to eat more souls," she mused, thinking out loud. "They only fill me up for a few minutes but I'm sure they'll make it better. I'm sure one day I'll eat a soul that knows what I should do." The jet eyes turned sly, the grin wicked. "Aah, my tummy's rumbling already."

"MAKA!" screamed Soul suddenly as she got further away. "I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE SOMEWHERE!" A hopeful thought struck him. "How could you become a kishin anyway, with an anti-demon wavelength??"

"Ehh, it does hurt a bit;" said Maka without the slightest care in the world.

Soul gritted his teeth, face grim. Sooner or later he was going to have to admit that Maka had been contaminated by Asura's insanity that still poisoned the world. He would have to accept all the consequences that came with such a tragedy. The loss of his meister and their shared mission. The loss of his ambitions to become a Deathscythe, because he knew no one could wield him the way she did. Most importantly the loss of his best friend to a fear and cowardice that wasn't hers and didn't suit her at all!

After all they'd fought to achieve together, for her to fall the one time he wasn't looking just wasn't fair. If only he'd been where he was meant to be: at her side, in her hands, her sword and shield.

Well. Seeing as he was the one to blame for this travesty called kishin Maka, he'd be the one to fix it.

"Maka," sobbed Soul wretchedly, as if he couldn't say her name enough times. "I'm going to eat your soul now." It was the very least he could do. Of all the things he could have done to prevent this happening, this was the absolute worst, last and least he could do to fix the situation.

He was unable to see Maka's face, and did not witness the worried frown that crossed it. That wasn't the reaction the girl's friend was supposed to have. He was meant to be too despairing to hurt her.

"I know a meister would never want to become a kishin. So I won't allow it to happen. I'll kill you, Maka, before I let you turn into a freaking monster. You were forced to eat pure souls. You've been driven mad! The person you really are is lost to the world now." He was fighting to convince himself it was the right thing to do. "So I…I…will…kill you." He slumped down onto the sodden cobblestones, watching Maka's slim form be swallowed into darkness and driving rain. He was trembling with regret and rage.

"But don't worry, Maka. The real you is still in there somewhere. After…after I've swallowed your soul…" Soul levered his heavy, unwilling body back onto its feet, but his gaze became locked on the ground, albino rat-tails of hair plastered against his forehead and hiding his eyes.

"When I hunt down and destroy the kishin bastard that did this to you," vowed the Weapon, voice a hard, torn snarl; "I swear we will still be fighting together, Maka!"

"Uh-huh..." said the kishin absently, tottering away over the rooftops in the hammering wind and rain.

When Soul finally looked up, his eyes were set in burning determination.

"Goodbye, Maka."

He kicked up off the ground, leaping into the air and transforming into a scythe with a wickedly sharp red blade in a whirling flash of light.

Skilled hands caught him, continuing the spin until he slammed to a sudden halt in attack position.

"Cool speech, Soul."

...

"...huh?"

"What?"

"...Maka?"

"Yeah?"

"Why aren't you a kishin?!"

Maka stared down at her Weapon. She gave an arch smile. "Well you know, Soul, some of us can see souls. And those of us that can see souls can tell who a person really is. Those special, intelligent, gifted people with the ability to see souls can actually tell the difference between their own meister - and a mimicking kishin. You see?"

He wanted to scream, "You're not evil, that's fantastic!" But people might get the wrong idea if he was too enthusiastic, (also considering that he was pretty thrown by this turn of events, along with the waste of a heartbreaking monologue), so he settled for grumbling: "Shit, I got tricked. That's lame."

His technician's fists clenched tighter and tighter. "And you know, if some baka Weapons didn't go skipping off alone on little holidays, the whole problem might not have existed at all." Her voice was sweet. Too sweet. She was going to slaughter him as soon as this battle was over, that much was clear.

…Maybe it would be safer to stay in scythe form for the next week…

"Eheh…my bad. But that mimic kishin is kinda getting away so we should-"

"Who's in charge here?" snapped Maka, using Soul to pole-vault herself onto a rooftop and taking off after their target.

Soul sighed for the third time in the last half-hour. "…whatever…O Maka-sama…"

"Tchah!" replied his partner scornfully. But as she chased down her doppelganger, she was smiling widely.

|||| 8 ||||

"So how are we gonna kill this evil guy?" asked Soul as they pelted over the rooftops. Maka was employing her soul vision in order to track their prey, and took a few moments to answer.

"Considering that it's a kishin that relies mainly on camouflage and disguising its true nature to survive, I'd guess that it's pretty weak." As her eyesight faded back to the physical, she discovered that the heavy clouds had shifted a little and the moon was now peeking through the gaps. She'd always wondered why its yellow face cast silver light, reminded as the crowded buildings glimmered before her.

"So charge in, chop it to pieces, munch, go home?" The eyeball on the head of the zigzagged blade rolled in her direction.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Nice. And because it's tipping it down there's no danger of the locals getting in the way."

"What was that, Soul," jibed Maka with a small chuckle; "a strategy?"

She felt him smile viciously through their spiritual connection. "Oh, I have a strategy all right. That kishin really pissed me off; making me think it was you. And this drunk guy I met told me it's already killed at least three people, four with the soul it ate in front of me."

"A drunk? You sure he didn't just have triple-vision?"

The Weapon laughed, but stopped abruptly at her next words.

"Wait, you let it eat a soul when you were standing right there?!"

"Uh, anyway, what say we blast it up with the soul resonance and kill the bastard in one shot?"

Maka's grip tightened on the steel shaft of her scythe as she once again used it as leverage to vault between two roofs.

" Soul, I like the way you think. Overkill it is."

Up ahead the kishin they'd been steadily gaining on took a flying leap off a chimney stack and hit the drowned pavement of the town square in an explosion of water. It was surprisingly large, as if the town planners had wanted to make up for the cramped architecture everywhere else.

Maka took a deep breath and began to channel her soul wavelength into her partner. Soul swallowed it and amplified it, adding his own, before he pushed the pulse back into her. The cycle continued, power mounting higher and higher and faster and faster with every step the meister took along the final roof, tiles splintering under the pressure.

She launched herself off the edge, raised the scythe above her head and somersaulted forwards, screaming –

"DEMON HUNTER!!!"

Blazing with neon, mottled blue-white light, Soul expanded into huge jagged arc, a scrawled black eye decorating the spiked axis of the blade. The shining wishbone silhouette was visible for only a second before it turned into a colossal halo, illuminating the entire plaza as Maka double-flipped in midair and smashed the scythe into the ground.

Cobbles, mud and earth rained down.

The kishin leaned against a wall three feet from the blast area and laughed mockingly. Then there was dead silence, broken only by the hiss of the rain.

"Soul…" said Maka quietly. "How on earth did you manage to…"

"Miss?" interjected the kishin, running a hand through its spiky white hair and flashing Soul's trademark grin.

"…Vow to kill me?" she completed, feeling distraught as her eyes welled with tears.

In her mind's eye the Weapon bit his lip and looked away.

"It was…painful," he admitted slowly. "Nearly impossible, but;" automatically he passed their still-resonating wavelength back to her – "but watching you deteriorate into a kishin was even worse…"

She sniffled. "Ne, Soul; you really are cool and brave, huh?" She closed her eyes and when they reopened, they were reacting to something other than light. She had to think quickly. Those who were slow on the battlefield rarely left it. "If I only watch its spiritual form, then its physical form won't matter," she said to herself, refilling with confidence.

"Awesome, now let's kill it;" cheered her partner.

Hefting the demon hunting scythe, Maka charged at the fake Soul Evans again. Its appearance shimmered and changed, right down to the core. The demon god's egg she'd been staring at transformed, leaving only a sickly red aura around its new form to suggest that it was not the person it appeared to be.

The girl faltered. She couldn't help it.

"How…Mama?!"

The kishin now flickered into Tsubaki and stood there just like she did, hands clasped behind her back with a shy smile. "The more you resonate the easier this is," explained her friend sweetly. "I can read souls better than Stein can, even the memories that mould them; and mimic them completely." The grey-haired scientist lifted an arm to twist the bolt screwed into his head. "With you it's perfect, because you see souls too and remember their shapes." Suddenly Kid was before her, adjusting his skull cufflinks and glaring at the sky as it threw asymmetrical rain at him to mark his jacket. "If I could eat an immortal soul," the yellow eyes slid round to meet her own; "I could become immortal too. Hmhmhm."

Soul tried to harden his heart the way he had before. "Don't break the resonance," he whispered to his trembling technician. He needed to do something, anything, to encourage her to fight. But he couldn't concentrate as all the people he knew best were paraded in front of him. He couldn't think. And she seemed to be paralysed.

"I am all the friends and family you don't have the nerve to kill," taunted their enemy, transforming again. Maka glared.

He choked.

The luminous blade had slashed right through his ribcage and shattered the wall behind, buzzing with a fresh flood of power.

"Baaa-ka…" chided Maka, rotating the scythe to inflict more damage. "What makes you think I couldn't hurt my Papa?"

Spirit stared at her in complete shock; face spattered with drops of blood the colour of his hair. "You…" It coughed up more blood, its false body dissolving, guts slopping out of the gaping wound.

"You…sadist…!"

Her father's figure melted away, leaving behind a pale white, featureless mannequin. The true form of the kishin. It flailed weakly, gasping – but seconds later even that was gone. Kishins rarely left any physical remains.

A twisted, undulating demon egg floated in the freezing cold air, burning with a baleful red light.

|||| 8 ||||

"Look, Stein-sensei;" said Maka, holding out the crimson soul in a jar. "This kishin was very unusual, so we thought you might like to study it." She was the very image of the perfect, enthusiastic student.

Behind her, Soul's fidgeting and complaining and occasional attempts to snatch the jar back indicated there'd been no 'we' about it. "You'd better give it back after," warned the teen in an ugly voice. "No way am I taking that much crap from a kishin and not eating him after! And don't break it. And don't change it so it does weird things to me when I eat it."

Stein's glasses flashed, and his office seemed to grow darker. "Are you threatening me?" he asked softly. The scythe flinched back, still remembering the whipping he got the first time he challenged Stein. The teacher turned away after one more pointed glare and examined the proffered soul.

"Hhh…it's older than I expected."

"It could disguise itself perfectly. Even down to the soul. That's why no one had caught it before us."

The scientist looked fairly interested.

"It was way better at reading and imitating wavelengths than you, sensei."

Aha. That made him put on his I-want-to-dissect-it face.

"Don't say that Maka! Now we won't get it back!" hissed Soul; tossing his hands into the air in defeat when she ignored him.

"…Thanks, you two…" Stein said vaguely, rigging the jar up to some ominous-looking machinery. "Piss off now, okay?"

The Weapon looked surprised at this blunt dismissal, but Maka grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the building. "Sure!" she chirped.

|||| 8 ||||

"Well I didn't want to be in the same room as him when he's in the mood to eviscerate things, did you?" Maka replied to Soul's complaints. "And I gave him the kishin in the first place because with that level of insight into a soul it could even be possible to bypass a witch's Soul Protect!" Her eyes sparkled at the prospect of new learning.

"Oh…" said her flatmate with dawning comprehension. "Well if the research is cool...and we get all the praise for killing the kishin…I guess I'll allow it."

"Great," smiled Maka.

Spirit suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor.

"Not great," she groaned, pulling the kind of face usually reserved only for Excalibur. Soul saw it and sniggered.

"Makaaaaaaaaa!" wailed her father melodramatically. "I heard about that terrible shape-shifting kishin! How did you defeat it? Do you need therapy and counselling now? Do you want Papa to be your shrink?!" He stopped weeping and beamed encouragingly, giving her two thumbs up. Evidently no one had told him the rest of the story in an attempt to not hurt his feelings.

"Ma na…" yawned Maka, who didn't really care about her father's feelings at all. "It turned into you and I stabbed it. It was easy."

He crumbled.

"Easy b-b-because you know Papa would give his all for you, right?"

"No. Easy because I don't mind stabbing you."

Spirit melted into a tiny puddle of woe. "Makaaaaaaaaa!" he bawled.

"That was kinda harsh," said Soul once they were out of earshot of Death Scythe. Maka folded her arms, huffed and started stamping along as if the ground was her father's face.

"Did your parents have such a bad divorce that you haven't seen your mother in months?!" Having the body and soul of her Mama dangled in front of her by a kishin of all things had effectively signed Spirit's death warrant for the next month.

"How would I know?" shrugged her friend. "I never see them anyway."

"…Don't you miss them?"

"Nah, they'd stick me in a suit, glue me to a piano stool until I practised every hour of the day and force me to stand up straight."

Maka eyed his hunchback posture. "Oh my, what a tragedy;" she said dryly.

|||| 8 ||||

At the edges of the desert that surrounded Shibusen, an enormous multitude of birds was amassing. The person attracting them was barely recognisable as such, and seemed to batter the birds away as much as call them near.

A crow landed on the stranger's head, scratching it up further and pecking at the few remaining strands of hair. The scavenger was smacked away.

Escaping, it barely flapped its wings ten times before they folded and it fell to the earth with a soft thud.

The crow did not move again.

|||| 8 ||||

Omake Eater

Quote: Good God the show is not called Maka Eater!! ~Pippin's Socks

Soul: *lunge* OMNOMNOM!

Maka: Ow! What was that for?!

Soul: …ah, sorry…thought you were a kishin…

Maka: MAKA CHOP!!!

Soul: *bleed*

|||| 8 ||||

Black Star: I, the great Black*Star, the man who has surpassed God, command to you obey me!

Stein: What do you want, exactly?

Black Star: You have to teach me how to improve my Soul Authority! So that I can, er, surpass God some more!

Stein: Alright…but you'll have to bring me a Pikachu.

Black Star: …why?

Stein: Well…I wasn't really using my Soul Wavelength when I electrocuted you. I actually spliced myself with a Pikachu to get epic lightning powers.

Black Star: But…I…wha…?

Stein: Great, I've scheduled your surgery for next week. See you then.

Black Star: AAAAHHHH!

~PikaStein!~

Author Notes:

I plotted all eleven chapters of this fanfiction after watching three episodes, some amvs and reading the wiki. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks to Pippin's Socks for forcing me to watch Soul Eater. XD

(Don't worry; I learnt more before writing it. Right now I'm halfway through the anime.)

This story is going to use a mix of anime and manga canon depending on which I know/like better. Asura is dead for my convenience so I guess it counts as post-anime.

Now go!

Review!!!