This is a very small portion of my fic for @soulmakazine2018! 

If you’re interested in viewing the rest, as well as a whole slew of stories and artworks from other contributors, you can preorder your copy here. 

(PS, I hear there’s still a small handful of collector’s bundles left, with a lot of custom swag from fandom artists, so don’t wait too long if you’re holding out for the bundle!)

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Time Is Carving You, Grasshopper

1.1_maka

The head of the payroll department gives her an apathetic kind of shrug. He says, “I don’t have anything else to say, Miss Albarn. There just aren’t enough missions to go around.”

Which is an obvious-enough statement, seeing as the head of payroll is Death City’s former poster child, Kilik Rung. “Geeze, don’t call me that, it’s awkward,” Maka says, slumping into the generic, padded office chair on the other side of the desk.

“Thank god,” Kilik replies, taking off his glasses and tossing them a little recklessly on his mousepad. “I don’t know, man. Most of the shit we get are all rated point-five star or lower, so missions are basically reserved for the students. They need the practice.”

“So the overqualified meisters need to get day jobs, is what you’re saying.”

“I mean, if we wanna be able to pay our electric bills, yeah.”

Half the reason she came here in the first place was to greedily absorb Shibusen’s frosty air conditioning; she and Soul had set the thermostat at home to Barely Tolerable levels to offset the exorbitant bill they got last month. She’s not looking forward to going home with this pathetic paycheck. “Don’t suppose your department is hiring more war heroes?”

Wearing a sympathetic grimace, he says, “Not all heroes wear trenchcoats, Maks.” Kilik throws his arms behind his head and cracks stiff shoulders contained in a too-restrictive dress shirt. “Sometimes they wear Deathbucks aprons.”

She groans. “Fine.” She’s a trained warrior with a spine of steel, so she straightens her back with it and declares, “How hard can being a civilian be, anyway? I’ll be a three-star in no time.”

Kilik opens his mouth to say something, but seems to change his mind on the contents after a wonderfully air-conditioned silence. “Sure. Close enough. By the way, you’ll have to file your own taxes now.”

“My… my what?”

1.2_soul

It’s not like it’s his first time working for Shibusen without Maka coming with him, but the experience is still somewhat discordant in the same way knowing nothing is in the fridge but being unable to keep from checking it, as if the thing he needs will suddenly appear like a Schrödinger’s supper. Which is what he does on the drive to the airport, waiting through security, bouncing his leg the entire five-hour flight to Virginia, and throughout the bulk of Kid’s lecture at the Joint Forces College: he waits and absently checks the mental fridge for Maka, remembers the fridge is empty, and then forgets and checks again roughly three minutes later.

As the auditorium empties and Death gathers his notecards to tuck them securely in his still-very-Hot-Topic blazer, Soul meanders to one side of the podium, itching to escape his dress shoes. “I don’t get why I even had to show up for this,” he says, keenly aware of how he’s likely the youngest person in the building.

“It would be like a human president traveling without bodyguards,” says Kid, briefly summoning a weird, death-god plume of flame in his hands because it’s easier than carrying around a bottle of hand sanitizer in his jacket.

Soul sighs evenly through his nose and checks the mental fridge the second he forgets not to check it. Shoves his hands in his pockets and tries not to yell anything Black*Star would consider yelling on a stage in a very echo-friendly auditorium. “But like, you’re a god – you’re the last person who needs bodyguards,” he says.

“That… may be mostly true.” Death makes a gesture to Patti, who stands off-stage and casually salutes in response before trotting off to retrieve the rental car. “But normal people typically do not have much experience with shinigami. Which I’m content with, as it is a sign they are living relatively peaceful lives. Either way, I find it is important to keep up certain appearances.”

“It seems like this gig is nothing but keeping appearances,” says Soul.

Kid nods. With a wry little smile, he replies, “And you still have a lot more training to do, before Spirit retires.”

Soul tilts his head up to the hot stage lights and whines. He’s not cut out for this.

1.3_maka

Apart from the outstanding task regarding Crona and Ragnarok gift wrapped in black blood high overhead, in the years following the battle on the moon, the to-do list of Shibusen has become a bit sparse. The world seems to be, for the lack of a better term, at ‘peace.’ Pre-kishin cases still crop up now and then, which Spartoi are far too seasoned to take on in lieu of younger meisters and weapons, and so the saviors of the world have since been twiddling their thumbs, not knowing what to do with themselves.

All except a few lucky bastards, that is, such as Kim Diehl, who now acts as a liaison between Death City and the realm of witches. She and Jacqueline often whisk off to diplomatic meetings and fancy-pants banquets, eating great food and being actually useful to the world–

The washing machine sings the song of its people, jolting Maka out of her jealousy to inform her for fifteen-seconds-too-long that the clothes are finished. She noisily slides off her perch on the dryer – because that’s all it’s good for now, being a sweaty seat – and shoves the laundry hamper on the floor closer to the washing machine with a foot. Sets herself to the task of yanking the damp, somewhat uncomfortably warm mass of clothes into the basket, deadlifts this over her head because she needs to feel like she’s defeating something, and high-steps to the balcony to hang up the clothes despite having a perfectly functioning dryer, because, again, the electric bill.

Anyway, fancy-pants banquets are something her partner has also been attending, as of late, and she’s reminded of this fact by finding one of his dress socks but not the other one despite a frustrating hunt through the basket. Maka eventually clips it up on the line to dry with all the other singles. This is the most exciting case she’s had in the past three months: Socks Missing In Action. But seeing as she is not a three-star laundry meister, she’s been stumped for weeks.

Despite the rapidly piling cold cases, Soul seems to have an unnaturally large collection of business attire, socks included, though he insists all well-dressed persons should at least have two dozen pairs and she’s the weird one for thinking otherwise.

Maka may not know what the closets of normal people actually contain other than, perhaps, a lack of decent trench coats, but she has a suspicion they are not as ridiculous as the wardrobes of former rich-boys.

The Death City sun is excessive and patronizing this time of year, shining down with ruthless superiority as the asphalt bubbles and boils in the streets below. Maka sweats and touches damp clothes with sweaty hands and it all feels like sweat, hanging sweat up to sweat in the air so she can fold the sweat later and put them into sweaty dresser drawers. Black*Star has always threatened to punch the sun in the face, and it’d sure be nice if he’d actually get off his levitating ass to do it.

Not having a steady job makes her grumpy. The aircon set to two degrees short of Satan’s armpit makes her grumpy. And Soul Evans is somewhere on a frosty airplane eating complimentary biscotti cookies or whatever those things are, because he’s The Last Deathscythe and he gets to meet presidents and whoever. Even though she’s the one who helped him become a deathscythe. Even though they had defeated Arachne, aka: the Heretic Witch, aka: Like A Nine Hundred Or Something Year Old Disaster, and Maka and Soul had kicked her bulbous ass together, just like everything else.

For a sweat-ridden five seconds, Maka considers drop-kicking the remainder of the laundry off the balcony so it would stick to the melting tar like some kind of rebellious, domestic graffiti. She really needs to get a job, even if only for the pleasure of using the damned dryer, if not for the sake of her sanity.

Kilik had suggested talking to the Death formerly known as Kid to see where she could best apply her particular “skill set” in her job hunt, but Death is also on the aforementioned air-conditioned plane with her weapon, probably nestled comfortably in those round first-class pods and being served warm, damp towels which are warm and damp on purpose, because the concept of sweat somehow turns in on itself and becomes some kind of luxury when you’re an important adult and have a steady job.

The fact that Kid fills the role of Soul’s meister for such tasks makes her very, very grumpy.

Being a meister is the one thing she’s good at, and yet she’s here, writing imaginary case files on missing dress socks. She tries to not let her frustration become resentment, because none of this is an actual problem, is it? Compared to the things they had all fought through and survived, how petty would she have to be to complain about the peace they had created?

So she sucks it in and stuffs it all down, down, into the cold case mysteries of her heart; she has some normal-job hunting to do.

||

2.1_soul

If there’s not a war, there isn’t exactly a need for a weapon like him. Kid keeping him around is like bringing a steak knife to a froyo bar – a couple of hired bodyguards would be more than enough.

But being The Last Deathscythe gives him a free pass to stay employed, no matter how overpowered he is for the job, and that means being able to keep the lights on at home. He knows Kid is grooming him to take over as Death Scythe in Spirit’s place, and keeps telling him that the real training will come, once he gets all the formalities and high-profile social events under his belt.

Which is what a lot of it feels like: below-the-belt groveling and ass-kissing for people who have no clue what Shibusen really is. But, much like his own existence, if there’s not a war, there’s little need for Shibusen, either. Kid is very thorough in keeping up with other world powers and staying in their good graces, because the moment someone thinks what Death does is unnecessary or out of line, it won’t be long before the whole system is targeted, defunded, and wiped off the earth, even if Kid’s role as a shinigami is as integral to humanity as clouds are to rain.

It’s frustrating. To top it off, having a real-world application for the ballroom dancing lessons Mom and Dad had him take as a kid makes it that much worse. He was never great at it, which gets under his skin because he can pick up an instrument and figure it out after a little practice, yet dancing had never clicked like that. But he can admit to himself that what really bothers him about it is that he’s only felt comfortable dancing with Maka, in his soul, in a room which no longer exists. It had faded away, like the war, like the path he’d chosen.

The choices he has to make now are a lot simpler. Like choosing not to roll his eyes at important ambassadors, or choosing not to fly Maka out to Vegas on his next trip so they can hang out for more than half an hour because he’s lonely. Maybe this is what adulthood is, to choose the sensible options. He can appreciate that life is not as nerve-wracking as needing to make split-second, life-or-death decisions had been, so he wonders why he feels more stressed out now than he ever had being Maka’s weapon.

Maybe with real, physical training, he can work out enough of his frustrations to put up with the social aspects of the job. At least, this is what he thinks, until Spirit Albarn waves him down before Soul’s even made it out of the Death Room after the end of a long video-slash-mirror conference.

Maka’s old man hasn’t been hostile since the onset of peacetime, but Soul’s not about to claim he and the present Death Scythe are buddy-buddy. Apart from weapon manifestations, the only common ground he and Spirit share is the fact they would both drop literally anything if Maka asked. In short: they’re voluntary idiots.

Spirit says, “I hear you’re eager for training,” leaning against the wall in the usual suit, and he would almost look cool if he didn’t have such a blatantly smug look on his face.

However, he’s not wrong, and that alone is irritating enough to sneer. “God. Are you my instructor?”

“Who else would do it?”

Preferably any other teacher on earth.

{ Want to read the rest? Find it in a copy of the SoMa Zine! You can preorder it here.

Once the zine has been published and people receive their copies, the rest of Grasshopper will be posted on AO3 and FFn, but you’ll have to wait for a few months! 

┐(´∇｀)┌

much love to my whole horde of betas, @chaoticlivi, and the other zine contributors!}