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When day fades away into night, and the dark clouds above spill their polluted tears over Death City, Maka finds herself marveling at the neon soaking the streets she’s called home the past twenty years.
She stands on a balcony far below the city’s skyline—where the wealthy reside and drink to their empire’s health—but high enough to have a bird’s eye view on the city’s underbelly—where the real people live, underneath all the lights and the noise. As always, the ground-level streets are buzzing with activity; full of nocturnal travelers, street vendors, children playing past curfew, and holos running the same ads repeatedly, advertising the next “big thing” in bodily enhancements.
A holo speaks seductively over a loudspeaker: “Why feel trapped inside a body that doesn’t serve you, when you can have so much more. Upgrade today!”
Maka leans forward against the railing, pursing her lips. Even if her own body isn’t upgrade-free, she knows better than to fall for such two-faced rhetoric. Hers aren’t a selfish indulgence. They keep her alive, combat-ready. And they’re certainly not a product of corporate greed, either. More like, she inwardly cringes, a mad scientist’s side project.
From the corner of her eye, she watches young fleshies—or, as BlackStar calls them, upgrade virgins —line up to gawk at storefronts, drooling over upgrades they’ll work the rest of their lives trying to afford. Gorgon Industries’ upgrades. The flashy kind that promise things like unlimited net access, good looks, new skills, super strength, a higher IQ, a sharper memory, a breath of immortality. Anything you want if your pockets are deep enough. Biosuperiority, it advertises. As if being remotely human is the problem.
Her lips dip into a frown.
The phrase "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" has really lost its edge in a world so adamant about running away from its problems. People rely so heavily on tech these days, it’s a wonder how civilization survived before upgrade manufacturers like Gorgon Industries arrived on the scene with Arachne Gorgon leading the charge; her silver-tongue promising a better, more advanced future by merging humankind with technology.
“Don’t trust the Gorgons, no matter what people say,” a voice whispers in her head, oddly familiar, but she can’t place it. Its message, though, lights a fire in her blood.
She curls her gloved fingers into a fist. Maka Albarn, codename freelancer Angel of Death , with one hell of a chip on her shoulder, would rather die than feed into that corporate she-devil’s inflated ego and biosuperior bullshit—
“You’re monologuing again.” His deep, lightly scolding voice is enough to pull her out of her thoughts with a jolt. He joins her by the railing, quirking a pale brow at her surprised look. “You do this all the time. Seriously. Getting stuck in your head like that is so uncool.”
She pouts, drawing her hood closer to her rose-tinted cheeks. “I was not.”
“We’re resonating, Maka.” He taps the small, round device on his temple—the tether that binds them—tucked underneath his messy white hair. The blue light at its center blinks to a steady rhythm that she can only assume her own device is mimicking. “So, ‘tie your own bootstraps’ or whatever. You always piss and moan when you think I’m not on task. What happened to practicing what you preach?”
Her partner is well-versed in the ways of pushing her buttons, but eavesdropping on her thoughts while her guard is down? Low blow.
She shoots him a pointed look and he just gives her a lopsided smile in return, teasing. He can only make out some words and phrases here and there through their resLink, but still—that’s reserved for battle when she doesn’t have time to talk things out with him. It’s not for making fun of your partner.
“You’re such an ass, Soul.”
He shrugs—in typical I’m too cool for this fashion—and pulls his obnoxious aviator-style goggles over his eyes to scan the crowded streets below. The lenses surf the net and grant his sight one hell of an upgrade, much like Stein’s custom cornea implants do for her, but with less finesse, in her opinion. His is outdated tech with a choppy interface. Hasn’t been seen on the market in years. And despite having the same implants as her, Soul insists on using the goggles because they look “cool”. Image over functionality. Textbook Soul.
In Maka’s eyes, the goggles look ridiculous, but she humors him and all his quirks because this boy is her best friend, the unspoken keeper of her heart, and he nearly died for her six months ago.
The memory still stings. She visibly winces, tucking the hood closer to her face, praying Soul doesn’t see. The last thing she needs is for him to pry at her thoughts. If he catches wind of her thinking about that day, he’ll give her the pity-induced stare paired with the I made a choice, it’s not your fault speech. The one that makes her want to puke. Though judging by the way his tongue sticks out at the corner of his mouth in intense focus, Maka is in the clear. She sighs, relieved.
Time supposedly heals all wounds, but not this one. Not that one, she thinks sadly, side-eyeing her partner. She imagines the scar cleaving his chest in two just underneath the fabric of his shirt. Tearing him apart right in front of her, soaking her hands in red, in him.
Her breath hitches in her throat.
It was a miracle that Stein was able to piece him back together again. Though, his cigarette-tinged words as she stood over Soul’s bed as he laid there, unconscious, aren’t lost on her.
“Next time he might not be so lucky.”
Except there won’t be a next time because Soul will never get hurt like that again. Not if she has anything to say about it.
“Got him.”
She tilts her head at him, glad for the interruption this time. “You’re sure it’s him?”
“Yeah,” he says, pushing the goggles back into his hairline. “My sight’s not superhuman like yours, but the signature reading is undeniable. It’s like a virus, y’know?” She does. Corrupted tech emits a distorted signal. His goggles and her implants have been specially modified to track it. “But honestly, this guy is all over the place. You’d have to be blind not to notice him.”
“He’s gone feral.”
Soul hums in agreement.
If there’s one thing she’s learned over the years, it’s that upgrades are god-sent until they’re not. Upgrading too much, past the legal limit, is like reaching the point of no return, losing everything that once made you who you are. You lose touch with your humanity. Corrupt, power-hungry, and dangerously unhinged with no soul to guide you—a Kishin.
And above all else, you are put on the Angel of Death’s list to be reaped.
She jumps on top of the railing, careful not to lose her balance. The toes of her combat boots skirt the edge.
“Maka?” His voice sounds pinched with concern. If she stays eerily silent like this for too long, he might grow suspicious and take a peek through their link.
She holds out her hand. “You ready to kick some Kishin ass, Soul Eater?”
For a split second, he looks taken aback by her words. Then, with a quick shake of his head and a small chuckle, he shoots her a grin. “Always.”
On cue, he transforms from man to scythe, flashing in sequences of code beyond her understanding before turning solid, heavy, until they’re synced up and he’s light enough to twirl between her fingers. His blade is polished, sharp. The base color is a blood red that glows faintly, with blue circuits and speckled code rippling across its face. Hiding underneath its sparkling data freckles and red shine, there’s a filmy black serrated shadow along the curve; like shark teeth, he joked. A living, breathing, bioengineered cybernetic weapon.
She brings the blade closer to her face, matching his grin. “Time to go to work.”
Maka teeters on the edge and lets herself fall into the neon-painted night.
Lucky for Maka, a fierce-looking woman holding a scythe as tall as her, sharp enough to cut through flesh and bone, is an effective way to open up a path through the crowd.
People shriek in surprise and jump out of her way, wide-eyed. Some even whisper her codename under their breath once they recognize Soul’s scythe. The fleshies she saw earlier holler and pump their fists, because whether she likes it or not, her reputation as the freelancer Angel of Death is supposedly legendary. Reaping lost souls is her specialty, and she is nothing if not a perfectionist. She’s on record for never missing her mark.
Except one. The Kishin who gave Soul his scar.
“Kill the girl.”
“I… I don’t know how to deal with that.”
She nearly wipes out trying to avoid some street merchant and his cart full of knock-off implants—adrenaline amplifiers, half-assed cornea implants, hearing aids, contraceptives, libido lifts. Soul’s blade takes a nosedive, clattering hard against the pavement. She can already hear his whining about her dropping him so carelessly. Except, she doesn’t care, can’t care because she isn’t here, there, wherever. She is sling-shotting between the past and the present.
Those voices throw off her entire rhythm, playing like a broken record inside her head, the needle skipping. One condescending, the other so small, belittled, but both originating from the same body. A body strong enough to paralyze her with fear and rip open Soul’s chest. And instead of killing her, they leave her there, swimming in her partner’s blood, sobbing for mercy.
So weak.
Maka finds her footing again, grabbing her scythe and darting away with nothing more than a skinned knee and a crotchety merchant yelling profanity at her back.
“Hey, are you good?”
She shakes the ghosts out of her head. “Fine. Which way?”
“If you say so.” His voice is metallic, staticky, and definitely unconvinced as it echoes through their resLink. “Make a left here!”
Her boots pivot hard on the cracked asphalt. She turns quickly down an alleyway and runs straight through an exotic dancer holo that winks at her horror and short-lived blindness. She yelps in surprise, blushing furiously—her face phased through the holo lady’s boobs! The holo giggles as she leans her weapon partner against a brick wall to rub the sting out of her eyes. When her sight comes back, the hardly dressed, well-endowed woman blows her a kiss.
“Gah, Soul!” she grits out, flustered. She picks him up and glares daggers at the hilt’s red eye. “You jerk.”
“What? How was I s’posed to know she was there?” His tone is defensive, accusing, and, dare she say, slightly amused.
“Goggles.”
“Oh.” While he chews on what to say next, Maka imagines his face: eyes avoiding her, mouth pinched in a grimace. His guilty face. “Well, the sight’s a little glitchy.”
Of course it is, because it’s old, she is ready to tell him.
“Spare me the lecture you’re obviously about to give me,” he says, cutting her off. She silently fumes. “We’ve got a job to do, yeah? Let’s stay focused.”
Maka sighs, still a little miffed. “You’re right.” Her eyes follow the length of the alleyway; it’s sparse, no foot traffic. “We’ll use my sight. There’s no crowd here.” Nobody can get in her way and offer themselves up as collateral damage. “I can focus on locating the Kishin’s signature and follow it at the same time.”
“Pfft, show off,” Soul replies, no ill feelings attached. He understands that her sight is better than his: even if he did decide to swap out his glitchy fashion statement for his implants, it still wouldn’t compare to hers.
Maka has a gift of sight that stretches beyond the scope of her implants. She sees or senses what others cannot. Personalities, intentions, fears, dreams. Stein speculates that she has a secret talent for reading souls, baffling her, while she jokingly calls it women's intuition. But in all seriousness, she can’t explain why her sight is so intense or even how it works. It just… is . Always has been, for as long as she can remember.
“I know you’ll keep it safe,” the voice from earlier whispers, echoes, and in her head Maka reaches out to find where it’s coming from, who it belongs to. As always, though, she comes up empty-handed.
“You’re zoning out again.”
“It’s called multitasking, Soul,” she bites out, trying to remember where she left off in their conversation. “Should try it some time.”
“Nah,” he says cheekily. “I’ll leave all the heavy lifting to you, Angel.”
She is not blushing. That nickname does not tug at her heartstrings. “Lazy.”
No verbal response. But she knows his answer. In that plane of existence where his consciousness exists out of sight, between cybernetic code and matter, he just shrugs nonchalantly at her.
Maka huffs and redirects her attention to her sight. Her eyes trail down the alley again, only they push far beyond the boundaries of average human visual perception. She keeps pushing, testing her limits. Tiny blue orbs manifest by the dozens, no, hundreds. Before the whole city can pile drive her mind into a coma, she adjusts her sight to focus solely on erratic, unhinged behavior, like what Soul observed earlier.
Almost there.
Her head is pounding now. Straining her sight like this can be draining, painful. Once her search radius hits about five miles, her vision begins to blur.
“Maka?” He sounds worried. “Stop trying to flex. You’re hurting yourself.”
A red orb catches her eye. “Found him!” She smiles triumphantly, wiping the sweat from her brow. “I’m locked on, and ready to track this bastard down.”
There’s a sigh of relief over their link. “Sounds like a plan.” In her head, he’s giving her his signature grin. All sharp teeth and molten red eyes. Not to mention the dimples he swears he doesn’t have—
“Sweetie, what’s wrong? Don’t like what you see? I can be whatever you want~” the holo sing-songs next to her ear, its fluorescent hand lightly caressing her shoulder. Maka freezes at its false touch, how it lights a spark under her skin. No, no, no, no. She can feel it reformulating its shape to fit her darkest desires. Its pleasure programming is intuitive, invasive. It preys on any suggestive thoughts it can find: sexual preferences, turn-on's, hormones, all through touch. Even if you’ve never been into, well, sex —she cringes—it weasels its way in and finds an alternative. And boy, does it thrive on unrequited feelings.
The second Maka gets a glimpse of his smile over her shoulder, she shrieks and bolts down the alley like she has thrusters for feet.
She hears Soul chuckle heartily through their link, completely oblivious, calling her a prude. Is it really him, or the holo? Her mind is too scrambled, too violated to tell the difference. Her face burns crimson as his laugh chases her away.
Maka does eventually stop to catch her breath, figuring the holo has long since eaten her dust. The ghost of his smile is, well, just that: a ghost. It doesn’t mean anything. Her heart flutters in her chest. It doesn’t change anything.
Focus, Maka, focus.
Above her, neon lights shine through the downpour, reflecting wildly off the wet pavement, and illuminate her figure in reds, pinks, blues, greens, and purples. The colorful spectacle doesn’t quite fit her surroundings, though; it spotlights stacked, rusted-out housing units blossoming haphazardly out of a beaten dirt path—a poorer district, one overshadowed by, quite literally, the upper class’s vulgar materialism.
Gotta love capitalism, she thinks, scowling.
“I was just joking, y’know,” Soul says quietly, mistaking her silence for anger. “Sorry. Not cool.”
“It’s fine.” Is it? Because the way her gut twists at his blind apology tells a different story.
She inwardly groans. This is all her fault. Their partnership was born out of mutual respect, from a pact to hunt down Kishin before they could hurt innocent people, and somewhere along the way the lines between professional partnership and friendship and something more blurred on her end; on his end, too, but he stopped at best friend. It’s not his fault her heart aches for more.
“Is that your final answer?” The small twinge she feels through their link only states the obvious: her partner is growing irritated with her short, inherently false answers.
Maka decides to give in a smidge to appease him, but not with the whole truth. More like a believable lie. “The holo hit a little close to home. Reminded me too much of Papa.”
Their link stays eerily silent for what feels like an eternity. Sweat trickles down her brow. Her heart hammers in her chest. Does he know? Or did dropping her father’s philandering exploits into their conversation like an atomic bomb really work?
“Your old man is such a pain,” he finally says.
She nods numbly. It worked. She can live to fight another day.
“So,” he says, drawing out the ‘o’ to clear the air. His blatant dismissal of all things her father-related is oddly endearing. “Where are we, anyway? All this neon is giving me a headache.”
Maka blinks, slowly. Once. Twice. She chews thoughtfully on her bottom lip. How does one admit to their partner that, in her mad dash to avoid an awkward confrontation, she abandoned all sense of direction and followed her sight blindly?
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Hold on,” she mutters. Her implants glow faintly, tiny digital mechanisms adjusting her pupils to see past the flashing lights. “I’ll fix this.”
He groans. “Maka.”
She tries to drown out his whiny tone, catching only bits and pieces of his long list of complaints. Focus, focus. “How can someone so smart—” Her sight sifts through the area, tracking that dark, impulsive aura she felt earlier: the red orb. “—be so dumb.” Her eye twitches. Distracted, she sends a sharp ‘shut up’ through their link. He scoffs but obeys, frustratingly compliant.
And that’s when the red orb blinds her.
“Agh!” Maka falls to one knee, her weapon-free hand clutching her head.
“Maka!” His worry pulses through their link. “What was that? Are you okay? Answer me!”
“We’re not alone,” is all she says. But, to answer his question, her sight rebounded, painfully, because her target was a lot closer than she anticipated.
“You lying snake,” a gargled voice calls from above. She looks up and squints against the multicolored glare. A ghastly silhouette stands in front of a billboard screen, which plays a PSA on illegal upgrading, ironically enough. Where its chest is, the red orb floats idly, radiating waves of blood lust.
Maka jumps into a battle stance. Her fingers coil tightly around her scythe.
“Get ready,” Soul says. She nods. Then, the Kishin climbs down, unit by unit, and reveals itself.
What once was human is gone, deformed, looking almost bird-like: a short, chubby torso; stretched out, knobby limbs; and a pale mask with an opening for its sharp, crooked nose. Its skin is a dull grey, void of any flush or proof of life. It has steel claws for fingers. As it looks down at her, toes curling over a sputtering gutter, it licks its lips with a long, dexterous tongue.
“Snake!”
“Jack.” She uses his human name, the one written in her job contract, but doubts he recognizes it. “You’re charged with illegal upgrading, on ten counts.” That’s supposedly how many upgrades he went over the legal limit, but that number doesn’t seem to fit the creature looming over her. “You’re not human anymore. And as the Angel of Death, it’s my job to retire you before you hurt somebody.”
Jack growls, posing to strike. His tongue now hides behind serrated teeth.
“I don’t like this,” Soul chimes in through their link. “What kind of tech does that to a person?”
His upgrades have disfigured his body into something grotesque, inhuman. Illegal upgrading doesn’t normally cause this level of extreme transformation or insatiable blood lust, and the distorted signal she’s sensing from his tech is like nothing she’s ever felt before. At least, not from the average Kishin.
For years, Maka’s faced Kishin that’ve retained at least a trace of their human identity, whether in mind or in body. They’re monstrous, impulsive, and (in rare cases) even tactical, conniving, but their lust for something more, their overindulgence in upgrade technology—that is the source of their power, their madness. And even if they can get a grip on the humanity they’ve lost—try to blend in with society, so to speak—that craving for more will never leave them; it’ll always lead them astray, to the Angel of Death and other freelancers like her.
But Jack’s fall from grace is different than the average Kishin. The technology that ruined him carries a dangerous secret beyond that of illegal upgrading, and there have been others like him, too—harboring a secret in their makeup, their past selves erased in corruption, twisted and malformed.
A secret she’s been tracking for six months now.
“Give them back!” he cries. His mangled speech is hysterical. Strange, because a Kishin this far gone usually can’t express strong emotion like this, not unless a residual of his human consciousness still remains intact. Holding onto something. Which begs the question: what, or who could he be talking about?
Curiosity gets the better of her. “Give what back, Jack?”
“You said they’d come back, you promised!” He bangs a clawed fist in the beat of his words. “Alive, alive, alive!”
“Maka,” Soul warns.
She ignores him and searches her mind for Jack’s job contract for any relevant background information. Then, it hits her. “Are you talking about your wife and son?” They died in a hovercraft accident. Drunk driver. “Are they who you want?”
Jack doesn’t answer.
“Can you tell me who did this to you?” She really, really wants to know. Because whoever did this must have something to do with the Kishin who hurt Soul. The blood lust she feels, it is nearly the same. Just less fractured. “You can talk to me, Jack.”
“What the hell are you doing, Maka?”
She twists the proverbial knife in his chest. “If you tell me who’s responsible, I can help you see your family again.”
“Lying snake!”
His breakneck speed was not in his file. Honed talons tear into her shoulder, just a hair off from cutting her throat. She’d be dead if not for muscle memory guiding her to dodge at the last second.
“Maka!”
She clamps a hand on her shoulder, biting down a yelp. Blood leaks steadily through her fingers. It’s deep, but manageable. Nothing a fuse pen can’t fix. With a cordial squeeze— son of a bitch, that hurts —Maka turns to face her attacker, clutching her scythe in both hands. Jack stands opposite of her, deathly still, as if he didn’t just launch at her like a freakin’ torpedo.
“I’ll live,” she says, answering before he can ask. “Just a scratch.”
“You’re bleeding.” Thank you, captain obvious. “Shit. You just had to provoke him, didn’t you? You’re so stupid!”
“Not helping, Soul. Kind of in the middle of something here.”
When Jack charges again, Soul yells, “Dodge, Maka!”
But her opponent moves too fast for her to dodge, so she quickly settles on blocking incoming claws with her scythe’s steel handle instead. The harsh clang echoes up her arms, but she comes out of it mostly unscathed. Her shoulder groans, spitting blood, but she can deal. She isn’t weak. Maka grins, high on adrenaline. Using all her strength, she pushes back, shoving him away, giving her room to swing.
“All you do is lie! Lie, lie, lie!”
“Jack, who did this to you!” She can end this now. Her arms cut back, locked and loaded, ready to deliver a devastating blow.
“Die, snake!” Jack roars, raising his gangly arm over his head. He aims to slash her in half.
Maka sees her opening but hesitates. He knows. He can help her find the Kishin who haunts her dreams. His maker is their maker, the owner of the voices. If only she had more time to reach him. Maybe, if she—
Soul’s scream snaps her out of it. “Do it, Maka!”
The blood curdling fear of him swapping steel for flesh compels her to act. She swings his blade in a high arc that cuts cleanly through other flesh, bone, and metal in one fell swoop.
In a flash, she is watching Soul’s back, witnessing before—her partner’s chest on the chopping block, ready to be split in two. Then, it disappears, and it’s Jack’s chest eating her blade, not Soul. Never again Soul. Once that thought finally sinks in, Maka visibly relaxes.
“Your soul—” she yanks out the blade— “is mine, Jack. You’re officially retired.”
Jack collapses the second the tip of the blade is drawn from his chest, leaving a familiar, gaping wound behind. Maka stares blankly into its abyss.
With the threat neutralized, Soul flashes out of her grip in a trail of light. He materializes back into his body, all lean muscle, poor posture, and hands buried deep inside his jacket pockets.
His eyes immediately land on her shoulder, scrutinizing, as if it’s his duty to play weapon and part-time medic; he’d likely argue the latter is because she’s reckless and injury prone, all hero complex and no self-preservation. A scary combination, he says. She calls it doing her job.
He frowns at her cloak sleeve as it leaks droplets of red onto the dirt. Maka just shrugs at him, suppressing a wince. He facepalms. Through their link, she hears one delicately drawn-out word: idiot .
Jack’s death isn’t slow, but it doesn’t happen fast, either. He writhes around in a puddle of his own blood, cackling. High on death. Then, the dust settles, his breathing turns into wheezing, and that blood lust just evaporates into thin air. A streak of black stains the gore surrounding him before the rain washes it away. The red orb disappears.
“I just… wanted to…” are his last words to her. Not the name of the person who destroyed him, but half of a dying wish. His only wish. A glimpse of his humanity that refused to die.
As Soul unceremoniously pulls the ID chip out of his nape, Maka can’t help but give the poor guy a proper send-off.
“See my family again,” she finishes for him. A eulogy fit for a tormented soul who saw nothing but snakes and the ghosts of those he lost until the bitter end.
“You okay?” Soul asks, securing the chip in his jacket pocket.
No, her mind whispers, begging to spill the truth. To finally admit that this mission is more than just a job, and more than just a footnote in this Kishin “anomaly” she’s been obsessively tracking.
It’s about finding the Kishin that gave him his scar.
“I’m fine.”
Six months, and he’s followed her blindly, always assuming her motives cross with her inability to leave well enough alone—her hero complex, he'd say. If only he knew that she secretly carries a torch for vengeance, and another for redemption. Hardly hero-esque.
He hums, pretending like her answer holds any truth. “You’re not gonna believe this, but, uh… we—and when I say we, I mean you—forgot to pack the fuse pen.”
Her wry laugh is drowned out by the rain as it pours and splashes into puddles of neon.