Chapter Text
Chapter I: Little Epiphanies
It was to his great satisfaction that Black Star was not alone in the belief that any sort of English course offered by the DWMA was complete and utter bullshit.
The Academy supplied only the best education geared towards the hectic lives of meisters and weapons, presenting classes on the history of souls, views into the usage of weapons in medieval times, and a wide variety of physical training to prepare them for missions. They could learn anything from Stealth Tactics 101 to Learning The Weak Point Of Your Opponent In Seven Seconds.
As their headmaster often said, the DWMA was not a typical school, and the students thrived on the oddities. However, although a school for training minds and bodies for the ever present threat of kishin, it was also just that: A school. And in school, the students were expected to also learn the more mundane subjects one may expect in everyday curriculum, such as mathematics or biology.
And, most unfortunately, literature.
The assassin, with a somewhat unsettling ferocity, loathed their English course. Bless her heart, Miss Marie attempted to make things interesting for the class, but half the time, she couldn't even seem to grasp the themes of their literature. Worse, she'd resonate too much with a particular story and go off about her lacking love life, failed romances, and the tricky ways of cheating men.
If Black Star didn't know any better, he suspected Maka enjoyed these particular rants, but that was beside the point. Marie's role as a tutor left the students awkwardly consoling their teacher and frantically attempting to change the subject. The alternative was Professor Stein as a substitute, and he often began the class with a blunt summary of what they would be reading, complete with an entire explanation of the ending, thus spoiling the experience. (Not that Black Star cared, of course.) He would then have them begin the first chapter, calling on Ox to start them off, and they'd be doomed to the boy's monotone droning for the next thirty minutes. It was during this time, their patchwork professor would doze off, feet kicked up on the desk, book draped across his face.
Usually, Black Star could also get away with a quick catnap during these classes. It was only Tsubaki who'd gently wake him, all sweet smiles and "Black Star, this may be on a test."
And how would this test affect his awesome skills as a ninja? Huh? Did his further advancement of Speed Star rely on whether or not he knew the underlying message of A Midsummer Night's Dream? Or would he be a better fighter if he knew why that one dude—or maybe it had been a separate dude?—in Romeo and Juliet had to die? Hell, he still didn't know what a lord wanted with a bunch of flies, but if he was being honest, the assassin couldn't care less.
Literature was, to be as blunt and ineloquent as Professor Stein, pretty dumb. This was Black Star's stance on the matter, his little hill he'd defend until he was blue in the face.
Soul once asked the assassin if his blatant hatred of the course was due to the fact he couldn't read very well. The assassin promptly told the scythe to 'shut his goddamn pie-hole, nosy bastard' and glared fiercely. After a brief silence, Black Star immediately apologized and the two hugged it out, much to the bewilderment of Kim Diehl who witnessed the entire ordeal with a raised eyebrow.
No, it wasn't because he 'couldn't read very well.' He could read just fine, his brain just had a problem meeting new words, especially those really big, confusing ones. Oh! Or the ones with an 'f' sound where there was clearly a 'ph', it just didn't make any sense to him.
It was a dumb class, simple as that. Fictional heroes and their quests or ridiculous love lives. Ugh. The popular love conquering all trope. It was in everything they'd been reading lately, and the poetry—
Oh. Oh, God he would soon surpass, why did the world have poetry? Why did the world need to create a rhyme to waste the assassin's precious time? Shit. Damn. That was just horrible. The whimsical lines of poetry had wormed into his brain like a parasite; Black Star was sure he would go insane.
Each breakdown of every line left the assassin wishing to be elsewhere. On a mission, training in the mountains… Hell, even stuck in Maka's apartment listening to her ramble on about some dumb history involving witches was better than this nonsense. At least he could possibly use that knowledge to have the upper hand on their enemies one day, but this… This waste of time on limericks and similes and the dreaded haiku was enough to send the assassin over the edge.
How could this be helpful in any way? At what point in his life would he be called upon to actually give a damn about some nonsensical writing?
"Black Star, what do you think the writer was trying to say with the fourth line?"
Marie's voice pulled him from his internal rant, and the assassin blinked dubiously, staring down at their teacher with wide eyes. He then felt the heavy stares of his classmates and softly cursed under his breath. Well, shit. Marie had spent the first twenty minutes of their class lamenting a failed dinner date from the night prior, and no one had the heart to disrupt her 'calming poetry time' any further.
And so, Black Star would pretend to give a damn.
The assassin looked down at the page, wordlessly scanned the text until reaching the fourth line, and squinted harshly.
'With a negligence so tranquil, the soul offers surrender to relish in vertigo.'
Oh, for the love of—The assassin wasn't even sure what half of those words meant!
Black Star stared blankly at the page, glanced up at Marie's expectant face, then back at the confusing string of words.
"It's a poem," the assassin began weakly, struggling to make sense of the line before him. "It uh… it's about a soul. Yeah, a soul and… there's some relish in there, too. Pretty sure that's the ground pickle stuff…? I'm right, aren't I Tsubaki? Yeah, so there's a soul and relish and… well, judging by the rest of the poem, it's looking good. Yeah, it's all looking good, tasting good… It's some good stuff, Miss Marie."
Okay, so that was his best attempt at giving a damn. Honestly, the assassin didn't think he did too bad.
Well… until Marie started sobbing, and Black Star found himself scoffing indignantly at the accusatory glares from a couple of classmates.
"What a load of crap," the blue-haired meister muttered, crossing his arms and slumping back in his seat. "Like anyone knows what the hell vertigo even means…"
—- —- —-
It took some time to get Marie calmed down after her outburst, the students offering much reassurance they enjoyed the poems, and 'not to worry, Black Star's just an idiot.' After composing herself, their teacher stated they could speculate the rest of the poem as homework, writing a brief, one page paper on their own thoughts and how they connected with it.
Black Star was very much put-off by this task, but figured he'd unearth the typical one-worded masterpiece like his report on Excalibur. He could come up with a single word that would amaze Miss Marie, surely. Of course he could, he was the greatest assassin that ever lived, he wouldn't be stumped by a single word.
"You haven't a clue what a single word meant in Raven Zann's poem, do you?"
That cool, collected tone could only belong to one person, and Black Star bristled in response at the inconvenient timing. He turned to address the student who'd fallen into step next to him as they exited the classroom, sneering at the smug face of Death the Kid.
"Didn't you hear me, Reaper Boy?" the assassin snorted, waving a dismissive hand. "Souls and relish and all that good stuff. It was a great poem, seriously, a real heart-wrencher, y'know?"
"You say that jokingly, but that's exactly what it's supposed to be," Kid responded. "I would think even with your clueless nature, you'd recognize the theme of it."
"Please, a great assassin like me doesn't need to get into the specifics of all that cheesy stuff from the movies. Why should I care about some guy's lovey-dovey word stuff, with all its 'quail-this' and 'vertigo-that.'
"Seriously, you remember the word vertigo but not tranquil? You're truly an idiot."
Black Star turned on the reaper, nostrils flaring as he snapped, "Oh, yeah? You think you're so smart, knowing a bunch of dumb words! You probably don't know what vertigo means, either!"
"It means a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, as if looking down from a great height, or caused by disease affecting the inner ear or the vestibular nerve. It is synonymous with dizziness or giddiness."
"Agh, damn it! I was saying that just because! I know you probably know what it means because it's you. Of course you do! I don't have to hear about all the cinnamons that go with it!"
"Synonyms."
"You are beyond annoying right now!"
By now, the rest of the students had placed space between themselves and the two meisters, wandering to their next class with only the passing, confused glance at the bickering. Among them, Tsubaki's head peered through the crowd, waving at her meister to join her. Beside her, Maka frowned disapprovingly at their lagging steps, calling out to them but Black Star couldn't hear.
The assassin released a low, frustrated sigh, willing himself to forget all the damn, confusing words and Kid's irritating smirk as the shinigami turned away from him. The headmaster's son would regret poking fun at Black Star's lack of understanding for complicated words. The other boy probably thought himself superior to the assassin, flaunting his knowledge in Black Star's face. Well, the assassin would show him, that was for sure. Why, he ought to show the damn reaper—
Black Star's mental curse faltered as a new sound broke through the footsteps and endless chatter of their surrounding classmates. It took him a moment to realize what it was, but if he wasn't mistaken…
Was he… laughing?
Black Star stared after the young god as he continued on towards their friends, straining his ears and frowning in speculation.
He was.
A short, little trill, but just foreign enough that it stopped the blue-haired meister from following right away. Instead, he blinked, somewhat bewildered as his brain arrived to a screeching halt for a seemingly unimportant thing.
An unimportant thing. Yeah. Exactly.
Black Star shook himself out of his reverie, and made to follow his friends, rolling little epiphanies around in his head.
The little epiphany of how odd it was.
How odd that he'd never heard Kid laugh before.