[IC] Soul Eater: AID in the Witch Wars

[NuttsnBolts]

The faint footsteps could be heard echoing throughout the Death Room as a cloaked woman walked beneath the eternal pathway of Torii gates. Each gate was lined with a silver guillotine blade that looked menacing enough to drop onto any innocent passers-by. Fortunately for the woman they were more of an ornament than an actual device of murder, according to the one who had the name of 'Death' that is.

"Ergh..." Anubis groaned lightly as she approached the mirrored wall and stepped through, back into the the academy, "It's not my fault the Kishin decided to wake up and destroy the world with madness, and now I've got all this work to deal with!" As she walked she peered down at her hands, her paw looking hands, and within them was a large envelope with a whole pile of documentation and work that AID had to deal with. Anubis fully understood why her department was given the increased workload, after all most of the higher lever Meisters and EAT students had been involved with the Kishin incident and many of them were still recovering. Even Death looked worse for wear with half his mask still missing and a weaken state that meant he had to rely others for much of his work.

Anubis kept walking throughout the school, passing many of the students and getting some of the weirdest looks possible. Some of them could sense her Soul and felt a different aura about it while others couldn't help but notice the animal like features that she dressed herself with. Whatever the reason they seemed to avoid her slightly and cleared pathways before her, giving her the slight thrill of feeling like royalty.

In the end she arrived at her meeting room and opened the door to see several others sitting down, talking amongst themselves. A few new faces and a few that she recognised from her previous jobs, but all people that were dedicated to the cause of protecting humanity at whatever cost possible. Taking a quick count to make sure everyone was there she followed up by turning the latch on the door and pulling a side table over next to it. On top of the table sat a radio to which she promptly turned it on and tuned it to a suitable radio station that played her favourite classical music. A few hundred years and I still love the sound of the old tunes. The music wasn't really there for her entertainment, it was mostly to make it difficult for people to eavesdrop from outside the room. Anubis turned towards the group and opened up with her prep talk.

"Good morning all. Turns out that the next few weeks are going to be fairly full on for our group," She lifted up the envelope, showing the thickness that it held, "Now we are pretty fortunate to have a couple of new members, thanks to Death's approval, and I've already gone through the formalities with them about how AID operates, the secrecy that we must keep, and the work that we do." Anubis pulled open the envelope and laid the contents on the table, shifting her hands around so she could slide them into a large fan for everyone to look at. "So when you guys are ready, just pick out the contract that you want and we'll get get things under way."

[AirBender]

Abel sat leaned forward at the table in the meeting room. One arm rested flat on said table, the other he was using to rest his chin in. A smirk painted his lips as he very obviously stared at the two new girls in the room. Unfortunately, for him at least, they were underage. Which meant he could look all he wanted, but touching wasn't allowed. Even he had his boundaries. They were just much harder to reach than that of a normal person. Either that or, he was much more in touch with his perverted side that other people were. He could never tell. One day somebody would ignore his advances, then the next they'd be making advances on him.

The clinking of chains could be heard as Abel shifted positions. As usual he had his chain whips wrapped around his arms, with the darts at the end safely in their place so nobody got hurt. Though most people would dislike constantly having chains on them, he had learned to like it. It was constant comfort in a world that was ever changing. And he liked it in more ways than one, if his provocative shirt had anything to say about the matter. "She's late..." He muttered mostly to himself. Their esteemed leader seemed to be taking more time that she thought. But there was nothing that could be done about it, but wait.

Finally she appeared and as usual, turned on some music. As she did, Abel leaned back in his chair, and crossed one leg over the other. Listening as she explained to them that the next few weeks were going to be busy. Then she laid down the missions. Abel leaned in once again to get a closer look, chains clacking against the table once more. Abel caught a glimpse of the words on the paper from underneath his glasses, and frowned at the squiggles. Deep blue eyes swept across the missions as he looked for one that suited him. He spotted several with the title Witch hunt, and picked one at random.

Abel didn't care what type of Witch he got to hunt down, as long as it was something he needed to kill and not bring back alive. He wasn't very good at that. Of course he had picked out the most annoying one. "Ooh, this Witch specializes in poisons." He said, getting the feeling that everybody was happy that he had gotten this one. It wasn't exactly a secret that he wasn't well liked because of his provocative personality. If he got poisoned and died, he didn't have anybody who would miss him. In fact, if he wasn't a human with a Strong Soul, he probably wouldn't have been asked to join AID.

[Gowi]

Nadia Ylwizaker yawned as she leaned in her chair in the designated meeting room, a bored expression across her face as she rocked back and forth to the rhythm of her boredom with her hands held back behind her head. Nadia’s eyes met that of Arisia Königin, her partner and friend, a sly smirk rising on Nadia’s face as if the mock Arisia’s discontent with Nadia’s childish impatience. As far as the red-haired meister was concerned, she didn’t see the problem with her way of waiting— everyone had their own way of biding their time in these boring occasions, she was sure that the likes of Black Star would agree with her; wherever her former classmate was these days. She shrugged off the thought for the moment as the doors swung open and AID’s de-facto leader walked in; though Nadia didn’t stop leaning back as Anubis began to speak. As a few moments passed, a group of contracts were pushed in front of everyone to which Nadia got up from her seat to see what kind of ‘special’ contracts were to be had. However, Nadia didn’t get the result she was expecting and thus raised a brow in confusion.

“That’s it?” She thought as she looked over the contracts . What was different to being back at the school or in a normal Meister contract relationship here? These contracts seemed pretty standard to her; not expert contracts at all. How was she supposed to remove people’s comparisons to her father if this was what she was going to do. Why did she even agree to a super secret organization in the first place? She must’ve been distracted by something to take her talent and put it forward for this of all things. Still, she had sworn to do her duty here at AID and she would; her personal opinion aside.

Her hand swiped one of the contracts as she found one in particular that interested her. A contract that was related to another one on the table, and one that suggested a pretty powerful and also obscure threat. She smirked as she shuffle the candied stick in her mouth.

“This could be fun.” She thought.

The contract reeked of a gothic horror novel— a trail of bodies with no answer for who or what had reeked havoc upon innocent people. No answers, no safety; all calling out for help in the silence of the night. Nadia wondered if it could’ve been the work of a monster or a witch, maybe even a monster-witch? That would’ve been something for sure. Nadia nearly giggled with anticipation as her imagination went to work suggesting the challenge of such a contract. Why was she criticizing the contracts in her thoughts a few moments ago again? This really was a perfect contract to showcase how amazing she was.

At least, that’s what she believed at the moment.

“This one isn’t boring.” She commented, motioning over to Arisia to come check out the piece of paper. “I want this one.”

“Then take it, Nadia.” Arisia commented in a bored, almost deadpan tone.

“I am! I-I’m just seeing if you disagree. I’m not asking for permission or anything!” Nadia scratched the back of her head in nervousness.

“Okay.” Arisia smirked at her friend’s behavior. Whilst she was the “weapon” in the pairing they had, Nadia had oftentimes leaned on her for clarity— at least when Nadia wasn’t letting her body do the thinking for her. Arisia was probably one of two people Nadia actually cared about when it came to other opinions; something Arisia really was thankful for even if she found it difficult to show it. Where Arisia had come from there wasn’t doing much of authentically caring about her opinions so the last few years had been a welcome change indeed.

“Right, anyway. Yeah, dead bodies. Cool.”

Arisia nodded as she looked to Anubis. “Apologies for my partner, we’ll be taking this one.”

[NuttsnBolts]

Anubis leaned her hip up against the table and placed one hand on the edge in order to hold her body steady, balancing in a way that looked as if she could fall any moment but to the keen eye they could see that her stance was rigid and sound. She watched as the first member came up to the desk and gazed through the paperwork. His name, Abel Ashira.

Abel was an unusual person when compared to the others in this small organisation. For starters he wasn't a Meister nor a demon weapon, and unlike Anubis he didn't have any special abilities, yet the pure strength of his soul was something that could be felt by those around him, along with his provocative nature and the torturous like vibe that expelled from his body. Anubis had learnt how to deal with him most of the time and generally avoided his perverted comments, focusing on only answering with the important details.

"Ooh, this Witch specialises in poisons," she heard him speak, noticing that he had gravitated to a contract that revolved around the idea of pain and suffering.

"I think you may like that one, Abel," she remarked, pulling the page from beneith his view to have a quick read. "Death was telling me about a poison based one in France, the City of Love." Turning her body round to face the man, she pulled out a stamp from the stationary drawer below the desk and thumped it in the bottom corner, giving it a bright red mark that showed the current date and who had received the contract. "Just sign in the red, as usual, and it's all yours," spinning the page around for confirmation from Abel.

Her attention was drawn away quickly from the sound of two young teenagers that was eager to seal their contract based on it's 'cool' factor. Anubis looked at Nadia and Arisia, seeing Arisia point to a page on the table. The job was a part of a two piece contract with another job. There was suspicion that the two incidents were connected somehow but without any further information it was difficult to tell if the source had happened to exaggerate the situation a bit.

"Are you sure you two can handle this?" Anubis' comments weren't directly aimed at Nadia, even though it may have come across that way, but more at the size and difficulty that this job would possibly present. She pulled the stamp over and hovered it above the page, pausing for a moment before speaking her mind. "I want you to let me know if anything becomes too much for you to handle." Her stamp landed with a thud and left a red splat that only required the two's signature.

Something about that contract felt off to Anubis. The number of dead that had been recorded and the silence that the people had just didn't feel quite right, but this was AID and if they didn't deal with these incidents thoroughly, then who else was going to do it?

[Saitama]

A haze of smoke choked Lincoln as he stumbled over roots and through thick branches, hardly managing to keep his footing while he clinged from tree to tree through unfamiliar woods. With each step his foot sank into ankle-deep mud threatening to steal his prized rhino leather boots from him. Somewhere nearby the a volley of cannon fire shook the few remaining rust-colored leaves from their branches to the ground. Disoriented Lincoln continued to stumble forward, towards the sound of the cannons, unsure of what could be ahead. With the forest quiet after the cannon barrage a soft whimpering now caught his attention. Frantically he thrashed through the branches and brush towards the sounds of distress. Lincoln stumbled into a clearing where no leaved had fallen with a small figure sat in the center making muffled moaning sounds. The thing looked much like a child but with long dirtied hair which looked dark and stringy in the haze around them. The child itself was covered in a thick crust of something which appeared to be mud or blood or a mixture of both. It's shoulders shuddered slightly with every moan that escaped it, the hair of Lincoln's neck stood up as he approached it cautiously.

Lincoln crouched beside the child and placed his hand on its small back where he could feel the scrawny thing's spine and ribs poke through. "Hey" Lincoln started off trying to coax a reply from the child which only continued to whimper.

"What's your name? Can you tell me where we are?" he asked, trying once more to get a response while attempting to sound as soothing as possible.

The thing stopped making the low moaning sounds and looked up at Lincoln with a pair of clear blue eyes smiling slightly at him with tears in it's eyes. Another volley of cannon fire could be heard in the distance, Lincoln snapped his head around and saw the faint black outline of a shell flying through the sky and arcing towards his location. A moment later the world exploded around him in a blaze of fire and earth. The face of the child burned into his mind as he hurdled through the air. Landing hard on a tangle of roots, he felt a mass of soil rain down across his back, stuffing his face into the mud making it impossible to breathe. Lincoln freed himself from a prison of mud leaving him covered from head to toe in it, splashing through shallow puddles of muddy water he found the remnants of the child at the center of the crater made by the explosion. Clawing his way towards the shredded form before him, Lincoln could feel dread weigh down his gut, the next thing he recalled was the faint sound of a song far off in the distance. It was a song he had heard a few times before but lost the exact name of. Whatever it was, slowly it pulled him from his dream.

Blinking himself awake he sat up from the table, wiping some drool from his face before he noticed a puddle had collected on the table before him. Ignoring it he turned his attention towards Anubis and listened to her little spiel before she threw a stack of jobs on the table. Everyone began nabbing them up like fiends, Lincoln pictured their hands like vultures swooping in for their next meal. Lincoln grabbed one of the remaining contracts and began inspecting it. "Hmm.. The Sack Man?" he muttered to himself as he read. The paper spoke of multiple accounts of a strange looking male suspect carrying an unnaturally large sack over his shoulders. The last known location of the suspect was somewhere in South America, a village Lincoln was unfamiliar with. "A being seen world-wide carrying a large sack apparently stealing children?" He began pondering the contract before him while tapping his thumbnail against his lips. "Kinda cliche isn't it? How could one guy get all over the world in such a short amount of time though?" The thought of one being having the ability to be seen across such vast distances in such short amount of time bothered Lincoln. This was definitely a contract he could find himself enjoying.

Leaning back on two legs of his chair while he sucked in air through his teeth, Lincoln continued speculating as he looked around at his comrades. Beside him a weapon/meister duo were babbling about something. Further down Abel was mumbling off about poison-based witches to himself. Lincoln pictured him sprawled across a stone floor, his face blued as he gasped for life with the imaginary poison spreading through his blood. A smirk cracked across Lincoln's face which he tried to conceal, although Abel was a massive inconvenience at times Lincoln didn't actually want him gone. Just not anywhere in his vicinity ever.

Lincoln turned his attention back to Anubis. "Yo, I'll take this one. The uhh.." he paused as he looked down at the contract before him before continuing "The Sack Man."

He leaned forward making the front two legs of the chair clack to the floor loudly before standing up and approaching Anubis, placing the contract before her to stamp. "As per usual, I won't be needing help." He joked as he handed the paper to her.

After a moment his typical grin faded and a more serious look stretched across his face, "By the way, how is Lord Death doing? I haven't seen him after the.. well you know. Is everything okay?" he asked, his voice laced with concern. Lincoln had always viewed Shinigami-sama as a grandfather figure, one who stood unopposed in power. Someone to look up to who could always be relied on. After the battle with the Kishin, Lincoln had heard Lord Death was severely weakened and was even almost defeated. The thought of Lord Death being gone filled Lincoln with fear, how would the world maintain any form of normalcy without him? He didn't think it would be possible.

[AirBender]

Blue eyes swept across Anubis' frame, as the woman chatted with him about the contract he had chosen. A million comments and images jumped into his mind, but for once he kept them to himself. Despite the fact that Anubis was a very attractive woman, she had earned Abel's respect in a way that very few people could. So he tried his best to keep the provocative attitude to a minimum when it came to her. "Well who better than the resident masochist to get the mission that will likely be painful?" He said, putting emphasis on the word masochist. For some reason, people seemed to think he was a sadist. That was not the case at all, he hated seeing other people in pain. He went out of his way to make sure people didn't have to feel pain. The few times he had ever paired up with people for missions, he had went out of his way to take a hit for them.

Abel took a pen off the desk and was just about to sign for the contract when someone else came over to the desk. Someone who was of age, and being a little too cocky. Abel would pair up with anyone who asked, this guy on the other hand went out of his way to make sure people didn't. A smirk danced across his lips as he set down the pen. While keeping the dart in it's pouch, Abel loosed a chain from around his arm. In one smooth move the end of the chain wrapped around Lincoln's upper body, and Abel moved in close, resting his head against the other male's shoulder. "Are you sure you don't need any help?" He said softly, speaking directly into the other male's ear. "I haven't signed my contract yet. Just say the word and I'll partner with you anytime."

Though the execution of it was provocative, the offer was genuine. Abel was more than willing to pair up with anyone for a mission. People just didn't usually accept his offers. Because all they saw was what he showed them, the perverted side. Though the chain was wrapped around Lincoln, it was loose enough that the male could have slipped out at anytime. There was plenty of things he could have done to the male while he was trapped, but he kept it relatively clean. He wasn't trying to make the male uncomfortable, or turn him on for that matter. He doubted the male would even need his help for the mission he had chosen. But that wasn't the point, the point was he was getting to cocky by completely refusing to accept any help. One day that would get him killed. Abel wanted to prevent that.

[NuttsnBolts]

Anubis rifled through the paperwork for those who had begun selected their jobs, although this process was quite boring at times it allowed her to keep tabs on what everyone was up to and what work was being focused on. She was about to both grab Abel's form and stamp Lincoln's when she noticed that Abel hadn't signed his name yet. Looking up at the man she could see him nestled around Lincoln body, wrapping the poor victim up with the chain that hung from his cuffs.

"So by saying 'you won't be needing help' are you referring to how you already have chosen someone to partner up with?" Anubis tried hard to play the serious look noticing full well that Lincoln's choice was pretty much being made for him by Abel. With a decent amount of effort she tried hard to keep that look, but slowly and surely enough the corners of her lips pinched back as she tried really hard not to smile.

Drawing her attention away from the hugging ritual that Abel often took part in, Anubis thumped a stamp on Lincoln's paperwork ready for him, and possibly his partner, to sign. She took an extra moment to pull out a pencil and signed Abel's name across the top of his original contract. "I can hold this one aside if you have a preference for it," she notified him, just in case he was a bit conflicted about the choice that he would possibly have to make.

"Oh, and Lincoln, going back on your previous question, Lord Death is stable but it will be a while before he makes a proper appearance," the sheer fact that she was referring to him as 'Lord' was something that she wasn't quite used to, but it was a bit of a given since she had known the Meister for several long decades. "The harsh reality is that when Death the Kid fought the Kishin he ended up connecting all three Lines of Sanzu during his final attack. Normally this would signal the change in Death Gods with Kid being the new Lord of Death and Death himself passing on, however we believe that because Kid wasn't fully aware of his actions the ritual wasn't fully completed which left Lord Death as this world's current God of Death." Anubis took a deep breath. Although she wasn't a Death God, the fragment that Lord Death had left inside her resonated during Kid's battle. If that was anything to go off, the energy released during that fight was beyond her imagination.

"When you guys are done, you're free to go. You know my number so any queries just give me a call."