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sabraeal · 2 years ago

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Remedial Lessons

[Read on AO3]

Written for @kaedix‘s birthday! Kimber has a gift for picking niche AUs, and this one she gave me a little unexpected challenge along with it: writing Obi as the meister and Shirayuki as his weapon. Not my natural inclination on a Soul Eater AU...but then it worked out SO much better than it could have the other way.

Blue flame licks up her fingers, pinched like a clothespin right on the tip of its comet tail. It struggles, a squiggling pendulum attempting one last heave toward freedom, but it’s no use; the thing might be all fire, but it’ll never burn that kid’s small hands.

“All right.” A real flame might dance that close to her sigh, like a birthday candle thinking about if it’d give up its wish, but this one doesn’t even flicker. Obi’ll never get used to that, no matter how many of these souls he sees. “Down the hatch, I guess.”

The kid’s jaw opens-- practically unhinges, really, like something you’d see on National Geographic, or maybe something drawn by Junji Ito-- and she wraps her mouth around it whole, slurping the thing up easy as soba. It’s weird to see, honestly; kid’s usually got silverware and napkin perfectly applied to every meal, as neat an eater as she is a note-taker, so when blue wisps out from the side of her mouth, caught by her tongue--

Ah, well, it does something for him. A little. Not because he’s got a thing about food or whatever; he doesn’t just watch videos of cute girls eating like that stupid monkey does, it’s just...her. He’s got a thing for her and, yeah, it’s starting to get real inconvenient. “Do those taste good?”

Shirayuki blinks up at him, everything about her completely normal in size, and swallows. “Excuse me?”

“The soul things.” He waves his fingers, trying to make them flicker the same way as her last meal. “I always thought they’d be spicy or something. Burn on the way down. But you can’t even handle a Red Hot Cheeto, so...”

Her mouth pulls thin. “That’s because they’re unpleasant. The, um, cheetos, I mean. Not the souls. Those are--” her head tilts, eyes drifting up like they might find the answer somewhere past her eyebrows-- “sweet. Or, well, not really. I’m not sure they really have a taste, but it’s like...eating your favorite meal until you’re full. Satisfying, I guess.”

“Oh.” He clears his throat, one hand creeping up to his shoulder just so he’ll have something to do. “Sounds...nice.”

“Mostly.” She grimaces. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the way they...squiggle when they go down.”

Obi’s eaten something like that; last time Zen took him overseas he’d paid a handful of yen to some guy with a bucket to try a tiny octopus on a stick. Its little suckers clung to his throat as he swallowed it down, and well--

Probably not the time to tell her he’d thought it was fun. “We should get headed back,” he says instead. “What was that? Eighty-eight? Ninety-one? Shidan’s gonna have something to say about it.”

Shirayuki hums, that face of her taking a worried bent. “I’m sure...”

“Ninety-seven.” There’s a pen between the professor’s fingers, the kind that usually has a little boat or a ski-lift inside, moving to and fro. This one’s got a small soul, traveling down the length of it to Death and his scythe before scurrying back across. “You’re at ninety-seven souls, Shirayuki.”

The guilty twist of her mouth says the kid knew the count too. Better than he did at least. “You’ve given us some very good opportunities over the last year.”

It’s a diplomatic answer, and by the way Shidan slumps behind his desk, it’s not the one he wants to hear. “Garak wanted you back at Shibusen at ninety. If you were so close, you should have said--”

“I don’t want to go yet.” It’s just like her to let the truth fly right out, landing with all the subtlety of a bomb. One that catches her in its blast by the way she pinks up, just a few shades lighter than her hair. “I mean, we’re not done here. We’ve only just scratched the surface of what the Olin Maris is, let alone what it means for our system of weapon classification, or whether there’s other mythic weapons we haven’t even considered because--”

“Shirayuki.” Obi’d thought Shidan was a bit of a scrub when they first met him, a scraggly excuse for a professor with even scragglier facial hair, but nothing makes a guy grim up faster than having a team of kids thrust upon him and told to keep them alive. Especially when one of those kids is Shirayuki. “I appreciate that this project has...meaning for you. I do. But I also know that if you guys fumble your last soul on my watch, Garak will wring my neck and serve me for dinner.”

That hauls the kid up short, all her passion careening into a pile-up. “Ah...”

Those big eyes roll his way, looking at him like he’s the one with all the experience of talking them into trouble and right back out again. “I dunno, kid. Master’s going to string me up too if we blow this smash and grab a second time.”

Her mouth bows into a frown cute enough to send a little thrill up his spine. “He doesn’t like it when you call him that.”

“And he can scold me about it straight to my face,” Obi says, grinning down into hers. “When we get shipped back to Death City.”

The determined jut of her jaw would like to argue, but before the kid can work herself up past, “No,” Shidan swings in with a weary, “You’re not ready to catch a witch soul.”

“That’s not true.” Shirayuki’s half out of her seat already, tiny hands braced on its arms, ready to spring. “Umihebi--”

“Umihebi is what you can expect from an experienced witch.” Shidan’s not the kind of guy who does resolution, let alone conflict, but he stands his ground, albeit with all the enthusiasm of a cliff face in a storm. “But not a powerful one. Garak hasn’t seen fit to furnish me with the details of that little excursion, but I doubt you’d manage much better if she took you on today.”

Technically, Obi agrees. Hell, that’s the meat of the argument he’d been trying to have only a few days ago, back when the kid had gone off and signed them up for this last glut of souls.

There’s going to be a witch to wipe the floor with us whether we get all our souls today or two years from now, he’d told her, flicking the end of her tiny ponytail. Not because it made his chest squeeze to see how long it had gotten since that raggedy boy cut, of course, but because it was there. No need to rush things. After all, who’s the meister here?

But he watches her face crinkle up, freckles disappearing into the peaks and valleys of her discontent, and-- and it’s stupid, but he can’t just stand around watching it happen.

“We’re stronger than we were then.” Big eyes turn toward him, shining and surprised and hopeful, and he can’t keep this up but he can’t look away either. “Better.”

It’s the truth, it is, but also: it’s a low bar to clear. He wasn’t a stranger to this whole weapon business, even wielded a few a time or two when the job called for it, but this kid was something else entirely. Not his style, for one, and for another, well--

Shirayuki wasn’t for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. He’d nearly passed out that first time she fell into his hands, and staring down Umihebi’s goon squad with her in them had his knees and heart weak.

“He’s right.” The kid quivers with conviction, the way dogs do at the end of their leash. “We’d hardly been partners more than a few weeks at that point, and now--”

“Right.” Shidan’s chair squeaks as he shifts, just as uncomfortable as its occupant. “But can you resonate?”

“ He’s right,” Ryuu says with his signature bluntness. “You can’t.”

“Well, sure. But...” It’s just like the Shirayuki to search for the silver lining in every cloud, but this one even makes her come back empty-handed. “Just because we haven’t managed it doesn’t mean we can’t be good collectors! I’m sure there’s plenty of weapons and meisters who can’t, they’re just--”

“Not Death Scythes?” Suzu offers.

“Thanks, Suzu,” Obi drawls. “Real helpful.”

“What? I’m not saying you’re not skilled.” Bony shoulders shrug, poking up through his jacket like a wire coat hanger. “Clearly you’re better than me and Yuzuri. But you can’t get into the upper ranks without having a Death Scythe, and you can’t get a Death Scythe without fighting a witch, and you can’t fight a witch without some serious firepower, and you can’t get serious firepower without--”

Obi waves his hand. “Soul Resonance, we get it. Trust me, we’ve gotten this talk before.”

“Then what’s the hold up?” Suzu finally looks up from his little science project, face all consternated, like it’s any of his business. “You guys are totally simpatico here. What’s going on in the field?”

Baggage, he doesn’t say, at the same time Ryuu observes, “I think it’s complicated.”

“Complicated?” It’s just his luck that Yuzuri’s halfway through sticking her neck in, drawn to gossip like a moth to a flame. If moths came naturally flame-retardant, that is. “Is there something going on between you two?”

“Ah, no!” It’s unthinkable that there could be something, he knows, but it stings a little, how quick that scythe of his is to jump in. “It’s just-- there’s someone else who’s supposed to be my meister. But that’s...”

“Complicated,” Ryuu reminds them again.

She’s got the grace to flush. “There’s other duties he has to see to, important ones, and since I’m so new at this...”

“Oh.” Yuzuri snorts, unimpressed. “I see. The kind of guy who can only give you the time of day if you’re a Death Scythe.”

“No! Well, yes.” Her hands wave, as much of a jumble as this whole situation. “It’s not his fault. But Obi has experience with weapons, and he’s able to wield me, so we thought...”

One extremely judgemental eyebrow hikes up to Yuzuri’s hairline. “He might not be Mr. Right, but he’s Mr. Right Now?”

Hands clap to her cheeks, like it does anything to hide what’s going on underneath them. “Well, it sounds terrible when you put it like that! It’s not like-- we’re not-- plenty of weapons train with different meisters!”

“Right,” Suzu sniffs. “But they’re not making them do all the work.”

Obi holds up a hand. “It’d make more sense if you knew who it is. Trust me.”

That catches Yuzuri’s attention, quick. “Why? Is he important? Is it someone I’d know? You’d tell me if it was someone--”

“In any case,” Shirayuki says, pitching her voice to be heard over this mess. “Shidan told us there was someone who could help. A colleague of a colleague, I guess.”

Ryuu glances up. “Really? Who?”

“Some guy,” Obi grunts, right as the she replies, “Rata Forzeno.”

“Why is it that all these genius types always live out in the middle of nowhere?” His complaints mist into the air, blunted by the cold. “If they were so smart, wouldn’t they live somewhere with central heating? A grocery store within a twenty minute drive? Wifi?”

“Some people really enjoy their privacy,” the kid says, like that’s any sort of explanation at all for why they have to hike through this stupid forest.

“Most people just delete Twitter.” The snow’s high enough he’s got to lift his legs to clear the next step, and each time he puts his foot down, twigs crunch. Like a special surprise at the bottom of a shit sundae. “Wasn’t he supposed to be some important scholar? Don’t they all live in Death City, or something? Or at least keep a PO box?”

“He did once. Live in Death City, I mean.” Shirayuki grimaces as he helps her over a rocky outcropping hidden beneath the drifts. “There was some accident? Yuzuri didn’t know the details, but she thought it might have to do with some assistant of his.”

“Accident.” Just what he needs, another professor who thinks safety regulations are guidelines rather than prosecutable laws. “And this is the guy who’s gonna figure out what’s wrong with us.”

“There’s nothing wrong with us!” It’s cute how heated she gets, gripping him through their thick layers, all flushed. “Everyone has trouble resonating at some point!”

“Right, well, most of them are at Shibusen,” he grumbles, tugging her close enough to dodge the snow the tree beside them dumps. “And the ones that aren’t don’t go around collecting all those kishin souls, only to bungle the last one because of it.”

“We hadn’t been working together that long.” Her elbow pushes into his side, luring his gaze right down into the trap of her smile. “Did you tell Shidan we were stronger now? Better?”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t realize he was going to send us out to bumfuck to see some crazy hermit--”

“He’s not crazy.” It’s insane how calmly she can say that when her knees are soaked through with snow. He’s got to lift her up every other step to keep from losing her in it. If he thought she’d tolerate it, he would have called her weapon shape and carried her already. She’d be a hell of a lot lighter that way. “He’s just-- oof!”

It comes out of nowhere; one minute it’s snowy forest and then next the kid’s tripping over tumbled-down stone, a whole ruin jutting out of the snow like teeth in a kishin’s maw.

“Where did this all come from?” Shirayuki cranes her neck, like somehow an answer might pop out of the drifts if she looks hard enough. “A soul barrier, maybe? But to make this look like a forest instead of...?”

“Welp.” He pops the ‘p,’ plucking her attention away from the mystery. “I think we can say for sure that this guy is off his rocker.”

“Obi.”

“I appreciate how fair you’re being, kid, I really do, but normal people don’t just go around living in busted down temple stuff, throwing up barriers and--”

Snow splatters him, just the way solid things shouldn’t, cresting over him like a wave on a breakwater. It takes him a minute to blink, to clear the snow off his eyelashes enough to see a rock’s sitting between them, carving a crater out of the snow.

He leans closer, catching the way grooves are worn into it, images. No, not a rock. It’s a whole hunk of marble, with one sightless eye staring up at them, half a grimace stretched beneath it.

“Is that a statue?”

“No,” the kid murmurs, pale. “It’s a...a bas relief. That means they carved it straight into a block of stone, not--”

“Sure.” His lips are numb where he licks them. “But it got thrown at us, right?”

Her mouth rounds. “Ah--”

“You know.” A voice echoes through the ruins, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. “It’s not polite to wander into someone’s home and call them a crazy old hermit.”

Another hunk lands inches from Obi’s boots, and he stumbles back, hand outstretched. It’s enough to brush her, and that’s all the signal the kid needs, the metal heft of her shaft fitting into his hands like it was made for him. “You’re supposed to call ahead first, at least.”

“Call ahead?” Obi squawks, spinning Shirayuki to deflect the next chunk. “Like you get service out here?”

A man leaps down from a boulder-- no, another one of those frescoes or whatever, looking just as stressed as the face at their feet. It’s an older guy, slender enough that he shouldn’t be leaving the crater he does in that snow, a worn lab coat whipping around him.

“You’d be surprised.” Another hunk of marble breaks itself off; a screaming face, by the looks of it. “Now get off my ruin.”

Obi crouches, ready to deflect the next throw, but with a shout as sharp as her blade, the kid cries out, “Wait! Shidan sent us!”

“Shidan?” The man-- Forzeno blinks, not dropping the marble, but losing his menace. “Why would that idiot send you out here? Not on one of his hopeless quests, is he? That man is made for fool’s errands...”

“You used to be a teacher, didn’t you?” Shirayuki’s not a Death Scythe, not yet, so her transformation is all or nothing, scythe or girl, and for this, she finally decides on girl. “At Shibusen?”

“Yes.” The marble churns overhead as Rata adds, begrudgingly, “I had to be in order to use their facilities.”

“Right.” If Obi were her real meister, he’d be able to tell if that kid was really as confident as her words, but he can’t, so he’s stuck here, having to believe she can brazen it out, just like always. Just like she couldn’t with Umihebi. “Shiden told us that if we were looking to resonate, you were the one to ask.”

The jerk frowns. “That’s not under the purview of my research.”

“But you used to do it,” she presses. “Shidan said you used to be the best.”

“I was,” Rata agrees, like it’s fact. “But I wrote that paper.”

It’s too much. “Are you kidding me?” He can’t take these nerds and their stupid papers anymore. “We came all the way down here to talk to you, and you won’t even--?”

“Shidan told me that too,” the kid says, which is news to him. “You’re interested in mythic weapons now, aren’t you? In...Legendary Resonance?”

If anything, this makes the guy less comfortable. “Yes. Though I don’t see why he would waste his time telling that to a weapon that isn’t even--”

Shirayuki lets out a hiss through her teeth, loosening her jaw just enough to say, “My mother was Carnwennan.”

The marble drops. Just tips right over, inched from that guy’s heels. “Carnwennan? The dagger wielded by Arther himself? The sister to--?”

“Excalibur.” She grimaces. “Yes.”

He hesitates.

“Fine.” Forzeno turns his back to them, heading deeper into the ruins. “Come into my office.”

#obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #soul eater au #ans #it has been SO LONG since i watched the show or read the manga #but i did go back and watch like the first 12 eps for this #it worked out well since my husband actually got me the dvds for christmas #i kept going back and forth while planning #about whether i liked obi as the meister because his whole attitude is that he should be used as a tool #and then once i started writing in obi's POv it all came together PERFECTLY #and made the whole resonance issue come together perfectly #i had a few plans for after this point but i am keeping them in my back pocket #for when bingo inevitably wants to corner me with this AU #🤣

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