A/N: I'm ashardoffreedom, better known as Shard of Freedom, and this is my new fanfic. Since I already have a couple of stories going, I wasn't going to post this story until way later, but I just got a sudden plot bunny chewing at my ear and wrote, well, about fourteen chapters of this. For those of you who are following Shadow Reign (my LoZ story), it's not going to be abandoned and the next update should be up in a few days. By the way, for this fanfic, I'm going to try to update within a week of each update, but I'm going to make sure that I have enough chapters on the back burner so that there's no month long waits in between updates.

Summary: DWMA and the Star Clan face off- but it's not the clean-cut massacre that it's supposed to be. Now raging into a long-fought war, with the witches playing both sides, students are trained for war. In the middle of it all is a girl who may be the key to ending it all and a boy who's no longer sure which side he's on. EPIC.

This idea came to me a while back, when I realized that there aren't really any good action Soul Eater fanfiction. Naturally, I had to contribute. I worked out all of the major details last week, writing them on the back of receipts at my work. So, I hope that you enjoy this fanfic, because I'm really proud of it!

Anyway, I don't own Soul Eater and this disclaimer goes for all continuing chapters.

As for any "canon" issues, I will mention that I have read the manga and have only watched like, half of the anime. So I'm going off of the manga's version of things.

By the way, all of my titles are "tracks" like the ones on a CD. So it'll be a bit different, especially when I do flashbacks.

Read, Review and Enjoy!

~Shard of Freedom

Track 1: Bring Down the Stars

(Play)

Death hung in the air.

Sid leaned against the tree. His headband was tried close around his forehead and his deadlocks were slicked back. His tan skin was covered in form-fitting black attire, and he seemed to fade into the darkness around him. Sheathed in his holster, Nygus was already in weapon form, ready for any attack.

But in this battle, Sid was an observer, a watchdog carefully listening at his perch. By the orders of Death, he wasn't to get involved in this battle. It wasn't his place.

Over his com-link, voices crackled.

"Red 4 in position . . . no sign of change . . . enemy out of sight . . ."

"Red 12 reporting . . . nothing's here . . . an abandoned camp . . . Be careful! They're coming!"

"Red 7 and Red 15 have engaged the enemy! Red 13 is heading to provide backup!"

Sounds of a fight, of metal scrapping against metal and of blades sinking into flesh filled the connection. Sighing, Sid removed his hand from the connection. He could only hope that the battle turned out well for their side. But against their opponents, there was little hope. It was a recon team. They weren't made for battle.

Suddenly, the com-link crackled once more.

A smooth, soft voice entered.

"Gold reporting in. I've been sent as backup."

Sid placed a hand to the small device. "Find the position of Red 7. They have engaged the enemy there. Be careful out there. We don't need any more losses. Report to me when you get there."

"Of course, sir. Gold out."

As Gold's voice left the com-link, others, from the unnamed soldiers that Sid had been sent to watch over entered once more.

"Red 7, 13 and 14 have died. Red 3 and 6 have engaged the enemy in battle!"

"Holy shit! It's White Star! Get out! Get out!"

"Unknown entity entering the battlefield!"

"It's a friendly, it's a friendly! Sir, Gold has entered into combat!"

"3 and 4 have died!"

Out of the jumbled mess of messages received over the connection, only one stood out to him strongly. Sid's blood ran could when he placed his hand to the com-link quickly.

"Red 12, confirm. Is it really White Star?"

"Affirmative, sir. Our team's dropping like flies."

Sending the message out to all of the operatives in the field, Sid quickly spoke again.

"All of you, get out! Now! This isn't the right battle! Retreat!"

The com-link crackled.

"This is Gold. Would you like me to leave with the others?"

"For Death's sake, Kid, get out of there! You're good, but not that good!"

There was a moment of pause and heavy breathing before a response was given. "I have engaged White Star in battle! Getting out isn't an option for me!"

The connection between the two of them broke off, leaving Sid with nothing but static.

"Nygus?" Sid asked softly.

Her sweet voice echoed back to him. "Yeah, Sid?"

"I was never the sort of man who would leave a comrade to die." Sid drew Nygus out of her sheath, flipping the blade into a backhand. "It looks like we're going to have to disobey orders this time."

Sid could sense the smile in Nygus's voice as she responded.

"Of course."

UoUoUoUoUoU

The DWMA was an imposing building. Maka had heard stories about it before the war—when students came here to actually learn to become better meisters and weapons, instead of soldiers in the war. But now it was tall and intimidating, with two-star meisters and weapons no older than herself stalking the grounds, the black-and-gold badge on their arm the only way to tell them apart from the students.

Maka had wanted to come here since she was a little girl, and Mama had told her stories about how Papa had been turned into one of Death's weapons, a Death Scythe. She had wanted to be just like her mother when she was little.

Maka's goals had changed little from that time . . . but they had changed.

Outside the school very few people talked, all hurried to get out of the open. Even though it was highly improbable that there would be an attack on the DWMA, few liked to linger outside of the building. Maybe it was the frightening skull masks that lingered on the outside, like a harbinger of Death.

Maka tightened the ties on her ponytails and adjusted her plaid skirt before lifting her head high and walking past the guards on the way into the academy. She wouldn't let a little thing like nervousness get the best of her. She was going to be a powerful meister. This wouldn't stop her.

Maka took a deep breath and stepped inside of the building.

Unlike the outside of the school building, the inside was filled with both the warm, cozy smell of vanilla, but also of chatter. There were a lot of students milling around in the halls—it was orientation after all—but Maka slowly made her way through the crowd, trying to find the table where she would register and be assigned a weapon.

Maka's mother had once told her that, when she had attended DWMA, you would choose your own partners. However, that was deemed to be too trying, especially during the war. Now, they would just judge your wavelength and match you with a weapon that would be easiest to resonate with. That would be your partner. In two years—if you were good, maybe less—you would be sent out to the battlefield.

As Maka flitted through the hordes of people, she caught snippets of conversation.

"Did ya hear that Death's son got assigned a mission all by himself? Lucky bastard, I can't wait to get out there . . ."

"I don't know, the war's dangerous. And with the witches fighting as well . . ."

"People say that they saw White Star on the last mission. You know, the leader of the Star Clan?"

" . . . I'm not sure if I'll be a good weapon, I mean I'm pretty weak . . ."

"I've heard about this kid here. They say he haunts the halls like a ghost . . ."

Maka ignored them all as she headed to the registration table. It was manned by a strange looking man with a screw in his head and stitches across both his face and his lab coat. He had gray hair and glasses perched on his nose, but Maka didn't get the impression that he was old. In fact, he looked to be around her Papa's age.

"Name?" The man said tiredly.

"Maka Albarn," she stated directly.

The man looked up at her in surprise. "That means that you're Spirit-sempai's daughter, doesn't it?"

Maka blinked twice. "Spirit-sempai? You know my father?"

The man suddenly acquired a sadistic grin. "We've met." For some odd reason, he began laughing softly, and Maka had the strange urge to just turn around and leave the registration table behind, because he was seriously giving her the creeps.

As quickly as it came, the man calmed down and placed his arms on the back of the desk chair he was sitting in.

"Alright, Maka Albarn, let's see what we have here. Meister or weapon?"

"Meister."

"Unsurprising. Although you would make for an interesting test subject . . ."

"What was that?" Maka said coldly, cutting through the man's muttering.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. As a meister, do you have any specialties?" He asked carefully. Turning the screw in his head, he tilted his head sideways and looked at her curiously.

Maka flinched. Something felt abnormally wrong. "Scythes. Or any long-handled weapon."

"Intriguing. Take after your mother, do you?" the man said, his eyes hidden by the shine of his glasses.

Despite the people around her, Maka felt the room go silent and the air grow cold. Logically, she knew that nothing had changed, that everything was the same as normal, but Maka couldn't help but freeze under the gaze of this bespectacled professor. Suddenly, that question had made Maka's blood run cold.

But then the world returned to normal as Maka took a deep, calming breath and tried to relax her erratic soul wavelength.

"Yes." She stated with a determined look in her green eyes. "I do take after my mother."

The man smiled. "Well, then. Welcome to the DWMA. Let's see if we can pair you with a weapon then."

Suddenly, the man began to roll away from the registration table on his desk chair, motioning for Maka to follow him while he shouted over his shoulder.

"Marie! Cover for me!"

"Gotcha!" A sweet female voice responded.

Maka followed slowly behind the man as he made his way through the halls. As they moved further along, the amount of people dwindled and dwindled until they were the only people in the hallways. The wheels on the desk chair echoed through the halls. Maybe it was just the way that Maka was, but she had a distinct feeling of foreboding as she glanced around her, ready for attack.

"Um . . ."

"Professor Stein," the man supplied. "I'm a teacher here at DWMA. I teach practically all subjects to advanced students, although my specialty is dissection."

"Where exactly are we going?"

Stein didn't respond for a moment before turning to Maka as his chair continued to roll down the hallways, Maka following closely behind.

Instead of answering her question, he said, "You can sense souls, can't you?"

"How did you know?"

"You flinched when I examined your soul earlier. Only a fellow high-level meister could do that. You don't seem to be the most physical fighter, and you don't have a strong enough soul to perform Soul Menace. However, your Soul Perception and Resonance capabilities seem quite strong. You would do well with a weapon that was molded to your strengths."

"So where are you taking me?" Maka said carefully, looking around at the hallowed halls of the DWMA carefully.

"To meet my assistant. He might be of some use to you."

Maka didn't know what else to say as she walked behind the strange professor. She had always considered herself easy to think on her feet, but this was completely out of her depth. Maka had come to the DWMA to receive a partner who would hopefully help her achieve her end goal. She prayed that that was still the case.

As they walked (or well, Maka walked. Stein rolled. Or some equivalent of that.), Maka couldn't help but noticing that the torches were fewer and fewer and the path kept getting darker and darker. It was the middle of the day, for Death's Sake! There was no need for her to be worried. She was with a professor and he wouldn't do anything to hurt her, right?

Right?

Suddenly she wasn't so sure of herself anymore.

Stein's rolling stopped in front of a door that looked . . . stitched together? Was that even the right words? On the right side of the . . . stitched-together door was a flickering light bulb that did not help relieve the nervous tremors from Maka's stomach. Why did she have a distinct feeling that something uncontrollable was lingering just beyond that door?

Footsteps echoed through the dead-end hallway. Maka gulped.

The door came crashing down, and suddenly a vision of a demon was in front of her.

"STEIN!"

The professor looked up at the monstrosity with a curious expression. He rubbed the back of his head and chuckled nervously for a moment. "Um . . . it was in the name of science?"

"THE NAME OF SCIENCE MY ASS! YOU PROMISED! YOU SWORE TO DEATH HIMSELF THAT YOU WOULD NOT, I REPEAT, NOT DO EXPERIMENTS ON ME! SO WHY DID I WAKE UP WITH THE TOES OF MY RIGHT AND LEFT FEET SWITCHED?"

Steign sighed. He glanced over at the wide-eyed young girl and sighed. "It was so much easier when it was your father, Maka-chan . . ." Stein said wistfully. He turned back to the imposing figure, whose rage had not lessened one bit.

"How about a deal? I'll put your toes back the way they were and you give me the tiniest sample of your blood?"

"NOT ON YOUR LIFE! I'D RATHER LET KID PLUCK MY EYEBROWS!"

Stein looked up curiously. "Well, if you're that unhappy, why don't you leave? I've got the perfect opportunity for you." Stein gestured to the girl behind him.

Now that the demonic aura had died down, Maka could see that it was a man of about eighteen years with stark white hair and for a moment that made her think that he and Professor Stein were related. But other than that, they looked nothing alike. He had red eyes and a lazy expression, with a white lab coat over a blue t-shirt and jeans. His hair was held back with a black headband, which should have made him look girlish, but did nothing of the sort for him.

Maka gave the boy a small wave and a smile, determined not to be intimidated.

Soul gave her a once-over, looking at her long cape-jacket and short plaid skirt. Maka had her hair up in the girlish ponytails she had been found of as a child, but luckily she had come into her sorts when she was sixteen, and filled out a little bit, so she no longer looked like the washboard ten-year-old she had been thought of when she was thirteen. She had just hit her seventeenth year, she looked like a woman and she was damn proud of that.

"Okay, Stein, who's Pigtails over there?"

Maka crossed her arms. He was rude, definitely rude.

"Soul, this is Maka Albarn, a new meister here at DWMA. Maka, this is Soul "Eater" Evans, my lab assistant and a scythe weapon. You guys are going to be partners."

For a moment, Soul looked shocked and almost happy, but a dark shadow came over his face. He gave Stein a meaningful look and glanced over at Maka.

"Not on your life, Stein. I don't need a partner."

Stein pulled out a cigarette from his jacket pocket. "You don't have a choice in the matter, Soul. You're a scythe. Maka's a scythe meister. But of course, if you really wanted to stay as a lab assistant, I had some experiments that I wanted to try out . . ."

Suddenly, Soul had latched onto Maka's arm and pulled her out of the hallway with a hurried chant of "Hi, Maka, my name's Soul Eater and it looks like we'll partners from now on; how's the weather anyway?"

As Stein was left alone in the hallway, breathing out smoke as the light bulb flickered next to him. He took off his glasses slowly, watching the two of them as they left.

"Don't worry, Soul. You might have longer than you think."

UoUoUoUoUoU

In the beginning, there was no name for it.

Now, they called it the Star War.

DWMA could tell when the Star Clan began to walk the path of a Kishin. Sending out operatives, they planned the total annihilation of the devious clan. But it didn't work out like that. In a desperate attempt to continue their thirst for power, the Star Clan allied themselves with the witches, working towards the same goal of creating another Kishin.

It had been eighteen years since then.

The witches were now known as free agents, just as willing to play both sides to achieve whatever goal they wished. But many wished for the revival of madness, and flocked behind the Star Clan's banner.

It had turned into an all-out war. And it didn't look like it was going to come to a close any time soon.

DWMA was desperate to stop the formation of another Kishin. They recruited more weapons and more meisters, eventually accepting even regular soldiers into the ranks. The fights with the witches got more deadly and the war became even more widespread. The only sanctuary from the war seemed to be Death City, the sight of the headquarters of DWMA and a haven for those who wished the escape the hardships that the war had thrown at them.

The Star Clan lived to fight. When the DWMA decided to end their tribe, they fought back with a vengeance. In order to protect their pursuit of power, their alliance with the witches grew only stronger, causing more loss of life.

No one knew how the war was going to end.

Only that it would continue.

UoUoUoUoUoU

" . . . Kid, Kid! Can you hear me? Nygus and I are on our way!"

"Sid, we won't make in there in time!"

"Sid-sensei! Patty's injured bad! I . . . I can't fight with just Liz!"

"Come on, Kid! Now's not the time to be worried about symmetry!"

"It's not that! I don't think that I can beat him with just one weapon! It's not anywhere near my fighting style! . . . Stay back!"

Gunshots.

"Hang on, Kid, we're coming!"

Nothing but static.

"Kid! KID!"

More static.

"Sid, we have to hurry!"

A new voice came in over the intercom. One that Sid recognized very well.

"No need to worry. Black incoming."

The line went dead.