A/N: After years of false starts and one-shots, I've finally started the sequel to Life Lessons. While it'll be some time before it's complete, I have the first chapter finished and would love, love, LOVE feedback on it. It's been years since I began this fanfic journey, and the SE fandom has shrunken to the point that I'm not sure I should even bother continuing. If there's interest, I'll definitely keep on going! This story is currently rated T for swearing, but the rating will definitely be going up to M (because what's life without smut and violence?)

Unfortunately for newcomers, I've added quite a bit to this storyline in a bunch of one-shots which may be necessary to read in order to have a full understanding of what the hell is going on. For those who want the condensed version:

- Kid and Maka have a soul bond

- This bond, combined with the team's chain resonance has the power to create a massive explosion

- Kid has given Maka his mother's ring. Details about the ring and Maka acquisition of it can be found in a two-shot entitled "Fall Is Here". A photograph of a similar ring is available in the version of that story posted on Archive of Our Own.

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Building a bomb was hard work.

And frustrating. And hot. Hot enough to make Maka wonder if having part of a Reaper's soul was worth the increased power it brought to their team. After they'd flattened a good chunk of the Death Room with their first attempt at a chain resonance, Lord Death had been forced to banish Maka's group practices to the desert beyond the city limits. If one of his private dimensions couldn't contain their havoc, Death City wouldn't stand a chance. Maka had successfully learned to control the new, more powerful chain resonance and put her team back into the DWMA's service, but trying to focus its explosive potential had, so far, eluded her.

They'd been developing and refining the new technique for months, working fruitlessly in the punishing heat, and Maka was beginning to think that a precise, controlled detonation was wishful thinking on Lord Death's part. The misery she'd been inflicting on her team weighed on her, but she resolutely pushed ahead. Lord Death was anxious for the weapon she was trying to create, and she was fiercely determined to make it happen. And it just might this time. She was holding their course, the resonance chain was strong, and the energy build was the biggest they'd managed yet. A little more velocity and they'd hit their target.

"I need a little more speed, Black Star," she said, preparing to rebalance everything to accept it.

This is it, she thought, it's finally going to work!

Her moment of triumph was short-lived. Black Star amped up so fiercely that Soul had a hard time keeping pace. His fingers were a blur on the piano in the Black Blood Room as he pushed himself, teetering on the fine line between manipulating its power and drowning in its madness. Maka knew her partner was the on the brink of the latter and hit him with her Grigori wavelength. It stabilized him but took her attention away from the group.

"I said a little, Black Star!" she screamed, as the chain resonance wobbled, "You're going too fast! We can't keep up!"

"There's no such thing as too fast," he retorted, "What's the matter, too tiny to run with the big dog?"

Tsubaki tried to talk him down, but Black Star was feeling a need for speed, and nothing was going to stop him. Kid wanted to lend Maka some support, but his job was to build and contain their destructive potential, and she wouldn't be pleased if he neglected his work for her. He focused on his link with Liz and Patty instead, knowing that the current run wasn't going to last too much longer. He had to be ready and not let her down.

Sure enough, the group link began to crack, and the ground shifted beneath the feet of the dancers in the black blood room.

Tension, anger, and fear fought for dominance in Maka's voice, "It's slipping. Fuck, I'm going to lose it. Kid, go now! Go...GO!"

If he didn't release the force he'd built up, they could all very well be blown to kingdom come.

"Not stable enough, Kid!" Liz yelled, "Maka you've got to keep it steady for a minute!"

"I'm trying!"

She concentrated fiercely on the crumbling links and the world steadied. Only for a moment, but a moment was all Kid and his weapons needed. He twirled Maka to one side of the grand piano, while Liz and Patty closed in on the other.

"Locked on, Kid!" Patty shrieked, "Gotta a lot of noise, but our resonance factor's looking good!"

Kid took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, "Count it down, Liz."

Soul hit a crashing C chord, and Liz chimed in right on cue.

"Three…"

A jarring E minor

"Two…"

A massive G.

"One!"

Kid caught Liz and Patty's hands with perfect timing, and Maka launched herself at Soul, covering his fingers with her own. She clung to Soul, both of them bowing under the weight of their concentration as she helped him hit the keys for all they were worth. Together Maka and Soul were almost unstoppable, but in this case almost wasn't enough.

"Detonate!" Kid yelled, but it was too late. The resonance link shattered and the immense store of energy surged forward, uncontrolled. He threw up a shield of Reaper magic to funnel it away toward the desert, but it was quickly apparent that it wasn't going to go far enough. They were still well within the blast zone.

"No, no NO!" Maka's panicked scream echoed through the fragments of her once-perfect construct.

Pushing the ability harder than she ever had before, she tapped into the bit of Kid's power lodged inside her and used it to expand her Grigori soul. Poorly controlled bits of black lightning zipped over her winged blue aura, which she wrapped around her friends with only a second to spare before impact. She prayed it was enough to keep them all alive.

The explosion was incredible. Ten miles away, the residents of Death City saw a drawn-out flash of purple light. It was followed by an aftershock that rattled buildings on their foundations as a cloudy pillar of sizzling, madness-fueled Reaper energy shot into the sky. The ShakeAlert team at the Nevada Seismological Laboratory thought they'd picked up a major earthquake, NORAD went into high alert status, and US Homeland Security nearly wet their collective pants.

After what seemed like an eternity, the smoke cleared, the dust settled, and Maka's protective barrier fizzled away. The teenagers lying in the sand finally dared to open their eyes, pleasantly surprised that they still had eyes left to open.

"Is everyone okay?" Tsubaki asked anxiously, carefully lifting herself off of Black Star's back. He popped up like an exuberant cork and ran to the edge of the crater they'd blasted into the sandy earth.

"Look at the size of that fucking hole!" he cried, shooting an exultant fist into the sky.

"We were almost buried in it thanks to you!" Liz grabbed Patty and prevented her from joining him on the precipice.

Maka was on her hands and knees, head hanging low over the burning hot sand. "Issnot his fault," she slurred, "I asked him for more speed."

"Not all of it at once!" Liz snapped. The only thing keeping her from pushing Black Star into the hole was the knowledge that she'd need a crane to get him out again.

"Are you okay?" Soul asked Maka, sounding as worried as Kid felt. All of them were tired and exhausted, but Maka had driven herself to the breaking point more than once during these training sessions, and this was their most spectacular failure yet. They hurried over and carefully lifted her to her feet. In what had become rote practice, Soul looked Maka over for physical damage while Kid gauged her wavelength's condition.

Defeat made Maka snappish. "Will you both stop fussing? I swear you're like a couple of old ladies. I'm fine. I'd be better if we could do this."

Soul caught Kid's eye, and the Reaper gave him the almost imperceptible signal they'd worked out for deciding when to call it a day.
"We'll get it eventually," Soul told his partner.

"Just not today." her boyfriend added. He was worried - she'd dampered their personal bond; a sure sign that she didn't want him to worry about her. Which meant there was something to be worried about. He nodded at Tsubaki, who sent A-OK and Returning to Base signals to the military medical team Sid had assigned to watch over them from the safety of a purpose-built bunker on the City-side edge of their makeshift practice field.

"I don't want anyone quitting on account of me!" Maka insisted, stepping away from them and only staggering a little, "I can go again."

She ignored the flair of anxiety that shot across Kid's wavelength and prepared to argue that she was capable of another run. Patty interrupted her by bursting into tears.

"I don't want to do it again!" the younger Thompson sister wailed, "I'm tired, and I'm hot, and I want to go home. I'm going to burn up and die in this fucking desert! I hate it! I hate it!"

She kicked the sand viciously, and everyone but Liz took a wary step back. When Patty hit her limit, anybody was fair game. Liz tried to put an arm around her sister but got batted away with a shriek.

"Don't touch me; you're just going to make me hotter!"

"I don't think you or Patty should push yourselves anymore, Maka," Tsubaki said gently, "And it's not just you guys. I'm tired too, and I could use a bath like you wouldn't believe!"

Liz rolled her eyes at Maka, "You getting the idea that you're not putting any of us out by stopping for the day? We're never going to get this if we all die of heat stroke. Besides, I have tickets to see Esperanza Spaulding tonight, and I'm going even if I have to show up with sand in my hair and no makeup on!"

With Liz, dedication could go no further. Most of the team had no idea what she was talking about, but Soul perked up immediately at the jazz singer's name.

"How'd you score those?" the Junior Death Scythe's voice was a fifty-fifty split of admiration and jealousy, "I didn't even know she was coming to town!"

"She's not," Liz told him airily, "She's going to be at the Boom Boom Room in Seattle. 8 pm tonight. Do you wanna come with me? I can bring a guest."

"Hell, yeah!" Soul gave her a companionable high five. Then he told his partner in no uncertain terms that he was going home. Liz might be willing to show up looking less than perfect, but he was not. He was going to need at least twenty minutes for his hair mask alone.

"It's already four o'clock! How are you going to get to Seattle by eight?" concern for her friends' happiness and well-being was Tsubaki's default condition, even when she was sweaty and miserable and had a bra full of sand.

Liz jerked her chin in Kid's direction, "Friends in high places," she replied, grinning smugly. She knew Kid didn't like to mention his ability to open portals to anywhere in the world, and she was kind enough not to bring it up.

"Dad's sending you, not me," Kid replied, "I'm certainly not waiting around all night to bring you home!"

"Yeah, god forbid you should do anything nice! You're such an asshole." his sister retorted. So much for being kind. She gave him her nastiest look, tossed her sandy hair in his face and marched off toward the Academy van weaving its way toward them around the potholes left by previous explosions.

"I'm not an asshole!" Kid told the rest of the group plaintively.

"You keep telling yourself that!" Black Star patted Kid's shoulder in mock encouragement, "Maybe one day it will come true."

"I'm not!" Kid repeated, elbowing Black Star in the ribs, "We have a date!"

He waved a defensive hand between himself and Maka, who had finally gotten her breath back and was using it to apologetically encourage Patty to stop crying.

"Yeah, we do," she confirmed, smiling despite her obvious exhaustion. Kid offered her his arm, and she took it gratefully, knowing that the gesture combined gentlemanly manners with an offer to help her hide her wobbly knees. Maka deeply appreciated both. She tucked her hand into his elbow and in spite of the dirt and the heat, pressed her cheek against his sleeve.

"Where are you guys going?" Tsubaki tried not to sound jealous over the fact that Kid and Maka were probably off to do something profoundly romantic while she'd be accompanying Black Star, Kilik and Patty to a movie featuring car chases, explosions, and almost no plot at all.

"Oh, just for dinner and then for a drive out here." Maka knew what poor Tsubaki's evening looked like and didn't want to add insult to injury by elaborating on her plans

Soul wrinkled his nose, "Out here? Do you not get enough of this place already?"

"There's going to be a meteor shower tonight, and the desert is a great place to watch it!" Kid enthused.

Black Star looked disgusted, "Dude, you are so lame. You really driving out here to see stars falling and shit? You should come with us and see some real driving and explosions!"

They'd known each other all their lives, and Maka knew just how to get under Black Star's skin. Of course, the reverse was true, too, but right now it was her turn to be snarky. She put all the innocence she could muster into her voice when she asked if blasting Kid's car through the desert at a hundred and ten miles an hour in the dark didn't count as real driving. Black Star shot her a dirty look, thinking once again that it simply wasn't fair that Maka, and occasionally Liz, were the only people that Kid allowed to touch the Jaguar F-Type convertible his father had given him as a seventeenth birthday present.

"Still lame," he muttered sulkily as they climbed into the van for the return trip to Death City. The medical team had kept the air conditioning running, and it was blessedly chilly inside. Patty attacked a cooler full of water, pausing to take three huge gulps from one before passing bottles out to the others.

Maka briefly ran hers over her face and neck before she opened it, shivering in relief as the icy cold met her overheated skin. Droplets of condensation ran down her neck and elicited a little gasp of pleasure as they disappeared between her breasts. The performance left Kid's mouth feeling a little dry, and it had nothing to do with the hour he'd just spent in the desert.

"How soon can I pick you up tonight?" he asked, trying to sound casual.

She gave him a teasing, sidelong grin, knowing exactly what kind of reaction her calculated little routine had gotten her, "I have to go report to the Death Room as soon as we get back and let your dad know how we did."

"I have some work to do for him, but it shouldn't take very long. Can you be ready by six?"

The grin got even wider, "Sure, but the meteor shower won't start until eleven and dinner won't take us five hours."

Kid's voice was low and full of innuendo, "I'm sure we can find something to do."