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Death the Kid has been sucked into a book, and we’re having a party. I’d say I don’t get it, but hey, it’s Liz and Patty. They have all their own rules. The rest of us shouldn’t even try to understand.
At first, they didn’t seem that worried about Kid, and that seemed odd to me. Then one day they started asking Maka about books. By the end of the week they were locked down in research-land, and basically impossible to live with. They’ve been like that ever since.
If I were a guessing man, I’d say this “party” is in reaction to the big showdown that happened when Shinigami-sama tried to tell Liz and Patty they weren’t allowed to go after Kid.
Yeah right, Shinigami-sama.
When you ask Liz how she came to be a weapon, she says she got high and tried to mug a shinigami, and if Kid’s around, she elbows him and laughs. If anything, Patty’s even less impressed by authority. The odds that the two of them were going to take well to being ordered not to save their technician…well, there were no odds, and Shinigami-sama should have known that.
The showdown went on when he gave in to them on that point, then brought up this crazy Children’s Crusade idea of his. I guess we’re all members. Sweet. He suggested we should all go after Medusa and see if she knew anything about where Noah was.
Liz and Patty didn’t like that. Black Star didn’t like it, Maka didn’t like it, I sure as hell didn’t like it.
Item number 352 on the list of, like, 10,000 things I’m never going to tell Maka (or, obviously, anyone else) is this: the reason I hate Medusa so much is that I get where she’s coming from, and it freaks me out.
I mean, I’ve spent a fair bit of time wanting to blow up the whole world and watch it go batshit and laugh while it does. I’m thinking the only other person who feels that way is Medusa. And maybe Dr. Stein.
There’s something sexy about insanity. I told Maka before, but it’s not the kind of thing she’s built to understand. The one time she really lost it, she thought it was embarrassing. So she’s got good, pure, Chrona-related reasons for hating Medusa.
It’s lucky we’re not too similar. The only reason I haven’t gone all Medusa myself is that I have people to protect. They keep me grounded, yeah? But sometimes it just feels like they’re holding me back. Which is scary as fuck.
Medusa’s a constant reminder of how bad I could get if I let myself. It’s uncomfortable.
So I don’t like that the witch is still alive, and I really don’t like that she’s randomly possessed her sister; that’s sick. There may not even be a level of dislike to cover the fact that Shinigami-sama wants us to chat with her.
I’m starting to wonder about Shinigami-sama. Just a little, you know. You have to trust people or you lose it, I get that. All the same, he starts to pull something weird with Maka, and we are gone.
We’d only have to wait it out until Kid takes over. I do trust Kid. We could hang out with my family in the meantime; Maka’s never even met them. I could make it sound like meeting my family was the only reason we ran away from Shibusen. Although if we’d have to wait on Kid another eight hundred years or something, that plan would have to get scrapped.
It’s kind of a moot point at the moment, anyway.
Kid’s not being around has messed with the dynamic way more than I thought it would. He’s a recent addition, right? But we don’t work without him anymore. Just like that, bam. Walks in the first day and Black Star and I try to kick his ass, not even a year later, we’re tearing apart the wide world looking to save him. I guess you call that charisma.
Liz hasn’t looked up from her latest book on freaky books since we came in. She’s shouting stuff out to Patty, who’s on the mirror with Shinigami-sama bitching him out for not getting Kid back fast enough. I don’t think Patty’s noticed, but she’s also organizing the side table next to her so it’s symmetrical. This is basically all they’ve been doing for the past three days, and clearly a party isn’t going to stop them.
Hell, this isn’t a party. It’s a war council.
“Forget Medusa! Leave it to me! I’ll take that Noah bastard down,” Black Star announces, typical Black Star. All confidence, no forethought.
“You gotta find him first, Black Star,” I tell him. Not because I think that’ll slow him down for a second, but just because someone has to. ‘Grown up,’ my ass.
The thing with Black Star is, he throws himself headfirst into brick walls every day, like that’s gonna bring them down. And since he really believes he can take down brick walls with just his head—hey, sometimes he can. That keeps him convinced it’s possible, so it’s a whole vicious cycle.
People’ve been saying this stuff about how Black Star’s getting dark and scary, but that’s not how it is. He’s just found a bigger wall to chuck himself at. It’s cute, I guess. Tsubaki thinks so, anyway, and she’s the one who counts.
“So what?” he says. “Shinigami-sama’ll find him, and then I’ll take him down! We don’t need a freaking witch to help.”
Tsubaki gives him a significant look.
“Except Kim,” he says hastily. Tsubaki has him surprisingly well trained. “She rocks! Not as much as I do, obviously, but she rocks!”
Kim rolls her eyes. “Kid’ll still be stuck in a book, Black Star,” she sighs.
“Maka’ll get him out of the book. What else is a bookworm for?”
“Hey!” Maka says. And here I thought she wasn’t paying attention. It’s funny how she takes the bookworm stuff so hard. You’d think she’d be proud of it; her and Ox and their supergeniusness.
“That’s a good point,” Liz cuts in before Maka can go on. And I thought she wasn’t paying attention either. This is the annoying thing about girls. Right when you think you’re safe, turns out they’re hanging on your every word. (And then when you think they’re listening, turns out they’ve been ignoring you for the last ten minutes.)
“Here, Maka,” Liz says, passing over one of her books. “I got this one from Medusa’s place. It’s about Eibon.”
“You got this book from Medusa’s house?” Maka asks, wide-eyed. “How? It’s half blown up. And they’re guarding it around the clock!”
“I WILL FUCK YOU UP, BUDDY!” Patty snarls from the mirror, making all of us including Shinigami-sama jump. Shinigami-sama is apparently going to let the book theft pass without comment.
“…I see,” Maka says. She opens the book without saying anything else. She doesn’t know it, but sometimes she’s the coolest, and she doesn’t even try.
Me, I have to try. When you’re as shaky on sanity as I am, you’d better be cool to make up for it, or you can just lay down and die of worthless.
Speaking of which, it’s probably time to make myself useful. I wander over to Patty and listen to the neverending mirror conversation, even though I could recite it myself by now. It’s like this:
Patty: Where’s Kid?
Shinigami: Sid’s team is looking for him right now. As soon as we find him, I’ll tell you.
Patty: Then what?
Shinigami: Then we’ll send in the Shibu-Kids Squad!
Patty: Why can’t the Kid Squad help look?
Shinigami: Sid, unlike the rest of you, has a lot of experience finding people. It wouldn’t make sense to scatter teams everywhere when we might need them together at any moment. You and Liz are doing everything you can, Patty. My son is very lucky to have you.
Patty: The hell he is. We let him get sucked into a book.
Shinigami: You couldn’t have stopped it.
Patty: Couldn’t you have?
Shinigami: No. You know I can’t leave Shibusen.
Patty: I feel like you should be doing more. Why aren’t you worried?
Shinigami: I’m very worried. But I’m doing all I can.
Patty: Why haven’t you found him yet?
Shinigami: Sid’s team is looking for him right now…
And round and round it goes. Every time it starts to annoy me, I have to remind myself that I’d be at least this weird if it were Maka.
Be willing to die for your technician, that’s what they teach you. But Kid threw Liz and Patty away to keep them safe. It must be killing them. I know it would me.
“Where’s Sid-sensei now, Shinigami-sama?” I ask.
Shinigami-sama and Patty both stare at me. I broke the loop, and they don’t know how to act about it. It’s kind of funny.
“He hasn’t reported in today,” Shinigami-sama says finally. “Yesterday he was in China. Today he was planning to follow some rumors about Noah to the West.”
“So when he reports in, you’re sending in the Children’s Crusade.”
It’s hard for a skull mask to look disapproving, but Shinigami-sama’s had a lot of practice at it, what with, you know, Maka’s dad. “Shibu-Kids Squad, Soul,” he says.
“Okay.” Whatever. “So on that team, it’s gonna be Liz and Patty for sure. And Black Star and Tsubaki, because you can’t stop them.”
“You got that right,” Black Star says. “I will not be denied my stage!”
Shinigami-sama tips his head in a rueful sort of way.
“Me and Soul,” Maka puts in. “You’ll need someone with good soul perception. Kim and Jackie, for injuries. And then for adults, Sid-sensei; he’s a good fighter, and he’ll already be there. And Nygus-sensei.”
A little pause, while everybody shuffles through the options.
“That’s it, then,” I say. “Unless you want that far-seeing lady or the monkey in on it, or you’ve got a Noah expert hiding up your sleeve.”
“It’s a shame we don’t have Marie and Dr. Stein,” Tsubaki says quietly.
Shinigami-sama doesn’t say anything. There’s been one loud silence about Marie and Dr. Stein ever since they disappeared. I try not to be suspicious, since that wakes up my little demon guy, but it can be pretty hard.
It’s funny that Tsubaki was the one to bring it up. She can be so diplomatic when she wants. And then there are those other times.
Sid-sensei breaks into the Dr. Stein-quiet. He says, “I found him.”
* * *
There were really only two noteworthy things about that rescue mission.
One: We got him back, and he’s as okay as he ever is.
Two: Nobody made me play the piano.
Other than that, it was the same old story as ever, right down to the learning nothing useful and letting the bad guy get away.
Jerusalem. Liz and Patty insisted that was good, because Kid likes the desert. I didn’t see where it made any difference; Kid was locked in a book and not really in a position to enjoy it. Didn’t say that. Getting shot by Patty is not the way I picture myself dying.
Speaking of dying in stupid ways, Black Star just about got killed hurling himself headlong at Noah. Sure, he survived it. This time. But I gotta say, I’m not sure what he’s aiming for. In life, I mean. I want to get strong too, but I don’t want to kill myself while I’m at it. That would kind of defeat the purpose. It’s like, what, he wants to reach his peak at seventeen or something? Black Star, man, you reach your peak at seventeen, and you got nowhere to go but down. And probably you’re gonna have a long time to get there.
But whatever. He can’t be told.
Me and Maka, we don’t usually go for the glory, though sometimes we get tossed in that direction. Like with Arachne. Which isn’t to say we don’t do our share of really dumb things under our own steam, because we do. Note this sexy scar of mine.
Damn, that’s the problem with scars. You get ‘em, and then people want to hear the amazing story. But the story is almost always gonna start, “Well, this one time I was incredibly stupid…”
Our job for this mission was to sneak the book away, and Black Star’s job was to be a distraction. Say one thing for Black Star, say he’s really good at being distracting. Our job was a cakewalk. Hell, I was mostly decorative. Only time I came in handy was when Noah got away. He got away in the direction of Maka, and I had to block some weird knife thing he threw at her. He didn’t seem to be putting much heart behind it, though, because once I blocked it, he didn’t try anything else. Just left. Nobody saw that coming, so we failed epically at stopping him.
Black Star was pissed, obviously. Oh for the glory of yesteryear, oh that every opponent could be as worthy as Mifune. Me, I was happy it went so smooth. Not that I’ll share that thought with Black Star.
(On a sidenote, I got this to say about Mifune: I don’t ever want Black Star fighting anybody like that again. Why? Because Shibusen will end up overrun with defenseless orphans, that’s why. And if Angela kicks me in the shin one more time, I’m gonna kick her ass, I don’t care what Maka says about cruelty to children.)
Shinigami-sama gave Sid-sensei instructions on prying stuff out of the book. They pulled Kid out right there in the middle of the desert. He seemed basically okay, or at least he did until Black Star attacked him out of random enthusiasm, Liz and Patty jumped in to beat up Black Star, and chaos ensued.
While that was going on, Sid-sensei pulled out a kid who looked like he was part snake, a rock that looked an awful lot like the world’s biggest diamond, and I swear to God a unicorn. At that point, he said, “I think we’d better finish emptying this book at Shibusen.”
I’m all about letting the crazy be somebody else’s problem. We got Kid back, and that was all I was signed up for. Magic books, that’s above and beyond.
* * *
Liz and Patty instantly went back to normal the day we got Kid back. Liz is boy-crazy again, and more worried about painting her nails than studying. Patty giggles all the time, and is just as friendly as she can be with everybody.
Kid’ll never know what they were like without him. He’ll never know how destroyed they were when he was gone. Even if we told him, he wouldn’t understand it.
I don’t know if Maka’s learning anything from this, or if she thinks this is something that’s only true of Kid and his weapons. Maybe she thinks her weapon’s a different story. Me, I think all us weapons are pretty much the same.
Anyway, Liz and Patty are back to normal, but that’s more than you can say for Kid. I guess he was in that book for weeks with nothing to distract him from symmetry. If he was passing strange before, then he’s downright bizarre now.
Liz and Patty don’t care. They will in a couple of days, though. And a week or two after that, it’ll be driving them batshit. Should be fun to watch.
Sometimes I wonder why Kid hasn’t lost it completely. Maybe insanity doesn’t work on shinigami, because it seems like if it did, Kid should have gone down about ten seconds after Stein.
Then again, maybe it does work on shinigami, and Kid’s still standing because of Liz and Patty. God knows I’d be twitching and grinning and playing the end of the world if it weren’t for Maka.
But it’s good to have Kid back. I’m letting him worry about keeping his dad in line, so all I have to worry about is Maka. And myself, which is turning out to be more of a worry than it usually is.
I’ve been randomly tired ever since we got back. I don’t get tired for no reason. Even when I’m sick, I just crash completely for a day, then I’m back on my feet and fine. But I’m not sick this time. And the more I sleep, the more tired I get. I don’t like it, and Maka’s going nuts over it.
“You’re sick,” she says. “Stop denying it.”
“I’m not sick,” I tell her for at least the fiftieth time. “I feel fine. I’m fine! Maybe I haven’t been sleeping enough or something.”
“Ever since we came back from Jerusalem, you’ve been sleeping an hour longer than you usually do every night,” she says in the voice of extreme fierceness. “And you’re still exhausted every day.”
…She times how long I sleep? How long has that been going on?
“Maybe I just got worn out in Jerusalem.” Leaving aside the subject of people who time how long other people are sleeping.
“Maybe you’re in denial,” she snaps.
“Maka, I’m fine!”
She crosses her arms. It means she’s tired of arguing for now, but she’s not happy. “I’ll cook dinner tonight,” she says. “So you have to rest.”
Great, she thinks I’m dying. “I can cook dinner.”
“Oh, I know. You can cook dinner, you can dance the tango, you can take care of the Kishin all by yourself. You and Black Star, you two can do anything. But I want to cook dinner, and I want you to rest. Do it for me.”
I am not like Black Star.
…Okay, I’m a little like Black Star. But it’s a matter of degree.
“If that’s what you want,” I sigh. I don’t tell her she’s just like Ox, because that would be a rubber-glue kind of argument. But it’s a near thing.
* * *
The tired problem keeps getting worse. That bites for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that no sooner do I figure out how to hide it than it gets harder to hide.
Maka’s wise to me anyway. One more off-schedule nap, and she’ll haul me to the infirmary whether I like it or not.
It’s not that I’m so opposed to going to the infirmary, it’s just…I don’t know. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’d get there and Nygus-sensei would be like, “What’s wrong with you?” and I’d have to say, “Nothing, actually.” And then Maka would hit me with a book just on general principles.
Better to avoid the whole thing, right?
I’ve taken to walking around the school during lunch while I eat. That’s a tactic. It keeps me from falling asleep into my food, which would upset Maka. Besides, it would be completely uncool.
Walking used to be a good tactic. It’s starting to fall apart now, though, because I don’t have enough energy to walk all lunch. Is that sad or is it sad? I have to take breaks. Like an old man. I should just get a cane and some birdseed and call it a life.
I walk past Harvar sitting in…they call it a park, but it’s not a park. Parks have growing things in them. A dead park, that’s what it is, but it looks like a good place to take an old man break before afternoon classes and training. (Yeah, I can hardly walk around the grounds. You can just imagine what fun training has been.) The dead park looks good partly because Harvar won’t ask me what’s wrong with me (he doesn’t care), and partly because I just can’t stand up anymore.
Maka’s got to be right, after all. I don’t feel it much, but I’m definitely sick. The great would-be Death Scythe, felled by a cold. Lame.
“How’s Ox?” I ask, because conversation keeps me awake, and Ox is the only subject Harvar’s willing to talk about for any length of time.
“Besotted,” he says.
“Wasn’t he always?”
“Now that he’s got a prayer of reciprocation, it’s reached new and more obnoxious heights.” He says this without changing expression or looking my way. What he’s looking at is a dead tree across from us, slightly to the left. If you followed his line of sight far enough, you’d eventually hit Ox. Harvar’s always done that, ever since he and Ox teamed up. Maybe before.
It’s creepy. And what’s creepier is that it doesn’t seem to bother Ox at all.
“Sorry about that,” I say. No point in commenting on the tree-staring. Commenting on anything Harvar does is a no-go.
“I’ve been prepared to cope with it,” he says, and gives me a five-second glance. “But I don’t think you are.”
What’s that supposed to mean? “Maka’s not besotted.”
“Not yet.”
“Actually, that’s not true. Maka’s besotted with books.”
“So is Ox, but he’s also besotted with Kim. And women multitask better than men do.”
“It hasn’t come up.”
“It will. Maka’s growing up. Hadn’t you noticed?”
“Look.” This conversation is surreal. “Why are you even interested in my love life?”
Harvar has the evilest smile I’ve ever seen, and considering I’ve seen Medusa’s, that’s saying something. “I didn’t know we were discussing your love life,” he says.
Ouch. “Fine. Why are we discussing love lives at all?”
“You asked.”
“Not exactly.”
“He who strikes first strikes last, Soul Eater.”
“The hell he does. Kim didn’t strike first. Kim didn’t strike at all.”
“No, Kim definitely struck. It just wasn’t entirely deliberate.” He stands up and puts his hands in his pockets. “I was the one who didn’t strike at all.” And off he goes, taking his freaky love-and-war metaphors with him.
…And whoa. Does Ox know about this?
No, probably not. That would be the ‘not striking at all’ thing, wouldn’t it? So why would Harvar tell me? Was that, like, ‘learn from my mistakes, young one’? What the hell, Harvar?
Fuck, I’m too tired for this.
* * *
The next thing I know, Maka’s shaking me awake and looking terrified and angry, because she hardly ever does one without the other.
“What happened?” I mumble.
“What happened?” Gah, I hate it when she’s shrieky. “You fell asleep in the middle of the day, Soul! And, yes, you do take naps at weird times and completely rudely in the middle of class, but—you never miss training!”
I missed training?
“What time is it?” I ask. I see why she has the horrified face. I probably have the horrified face, too, now.
“It’s 4 o’clock, Soul.” Oh shit, she looks like she’s gonna cry. “I had no idea where you were. Harvar finally told me you might be here—but he left you here hours ago!”
“Harvar is so weird, Maka,” I tell her. I don’t know why I feel like I have to tell her right now when she’s worried about my missing training, but it seems really important that I should. Only now she looks more worried than ever.
“I missed training,” I go on. You know, Harvar, training, it all makes sense. “Shit, I’m really sick, huh?”
She’s got her hand on my forehead now, and I lean into it a bit without thinking. No idea why a hand on the forehead should be so comforting. It’s not like it’s actually gonna help anything.
“You don’t feel like you have much of a fever,” she says. “You don’t look sick. But, Soul, you’re acting really weird.”
“It’s not an act.” I am really weird.
“Weird even for you.”
Oh.
“I’m taking you to the infirmary.”
“You said I don’t have a fever, so it can’t be that bad.” Manly man, yeah. This comes of spending too much time with Black Star. Further to which, I try to stand up, and wow, that’s a mistake.
“Soul!”
Oh, hell, I just swooned into Maka’s arms because I caught a cold. How utterly uncool.
Luckily I’m not conscious long enough to worry about it much.
* * *
I’m not sure where I am, but it feels like I’ve been here for a while. A long time, maybe.
What am I doing? Am I waiting for someone? Wes?
…No. Wes hasn’t picked me up from school in…years? Because I’m not Soul Evans anymore.
That’s right. Soul Eater, that’s who I am.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” says the little demon guy. “But I don’t mind telling you I’m really fucking sick of it.”
Oh yeah, the little demon guy. He’s been here for a while, too. Maybe the whole time.
“Yes. The whole time. Trust me, the whole boring, insufferable time.”
No, wait. Not the whole time. Not back when I was at home. With Wes…
“Look, kid, I have never hated anyone as much as I hate your brother and I’ve never even met the guy. Think about someone else. I don’t care who right now, really. Honestly. Anyone.”
Huh. Guess I’ve been thinking about Wes a lot. Figures, if I’m sitting here doing nothing. I guess he’s my favorite person. Him and Maka.
Oh yeah. Maka.
“I lied. Anyone except her.”
Apparently I’ve been thinking about Maka a lot, too. But I’ll go with it, because things are getting clearer the longer I think about her. I know this room, for one thing. This is the room in my soul where the little demon guy tries to turn me into a megalomaniac.
“It’s backfired. I see the error of my ways now.”
Don’t know what I’m doing here randomly sitting on the floor by the piano, though. And if I have to be here for no reason for who knows how long, do I really have to be stuck with the little demon guy?
“Thanks so much. Because, you know, this is really my idea of a good time. Stuck here watching you go crazy the boring way. If you’d just taken my help back then, you’d still be insane, but at least I wouldn’t be bored.”
We all got troubles. Look at me, I got a demon in my head telling me I’m crazy. And boring.
“Look, Soul, I don’t think it’s too late.” He leans forward. I’d say he looks shady and wild-eyed, but hey, he always looks like that. “If you’ll let me help you, I think we can still pull you out of this.”
Bullshit. He just wants to see the fireworks. And Maka would yell at me if I did that.
“You don’t need her,” he says in what he probably thinks is a tempting whisper. It’s weird how sometimes he completely gets me, and other times he couldn’t be more off if he tried. I need Maka like I need air.
“She’s a burden, she’s holding you back,” he says. “You’ve thought it yourself before now.”
I can’t be held responsible for all the crazy shit I think. And what does a guy have to do to get a half hour of time alone in his own head, huh? Is that so much to ask?
“Don’t blame me,” he says. I never know how to act when he gets sulky. “If there was any earthly way for me to get away from you and your boring crazy, believe me, I would have long before now.”
So harsh, demon guy.
“Oh, look. Company. I hate to say it, but I’m actually glad to see her.”
Her?
Oh, it’s Maka. That’s good.
“What do you mean, ‘that’s good’!? I thought you wanted privacy in your head!”
Yeah, well, she’s welcome.
“Meaning after all I’ve done for you, I’m still not welcome? You ungrateful little brat.”
Man, the life of an uninvited guest sure is tough.
“And boring! Boring little brat!”
“Is he still here?” Maka’s staring at the demon guy and looking kinda disgusted.
Weird. Every other time she was in my head, she didn’t really comment on the demon guy. Well, every other time, we were in the middle of a battle, so she was distracted.
Wait.
“What are you doing in my head, Maka? We’re not fighting, are we?”
Now she looks like I hit her with a brick. What? What the hell’s going on?
“You don’t even know if we’re fighting, Soul,” she says, gently like she’s talking to someone sick or brain damaged. “Don’t you think that’s a bad sign?”
Well, when you put it like that, there are plenty of bad signs to go around. What are we doing? Apart from sitting in my head chilling with the demon guy, of course. I can’t remember.
Oh, that can’t be good.
“You’ve got a fever,” she says, coming to settle next to me. She’s wearing her scary black blood dress. She looks great in it. Too bad it means I’m, you know, losing it. And that I can’t think of a way to con her into wearing something like it in real life.
Nah. Then I really would have to beat the boys back with a stick, like Harvar said. Maybe I like it best that she doesn’t wear that dress much.
Fevered, yeah. I get that. That’s probably why my focus is for shit.
“If I’m fevered, what’re you doing in my head?” There. I didn’t say a thing about her dress. I’m proud of myself. “Isn’t it more normal to, like, feed people soup when they have fevers?”
“You’ve had a fever for a month, Soul,” she says.
A month. A month?
“So I’m sick and brain damaged,” I say. I’m trying not to be panicky. Panicky is not cool. And if I’m brain damaged, then I’m gonna need all the cool I can get.
“You are not brain damaged,” she huffs, crossing her arms.
“I’ve had a fever for a month, Maka!”
“Low fever.”
“So what? You have it long enough, you get brain damage, right?”
“Not necessarily.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Soul!”
Uh oh. She’s getting that look she gets right before she decks me with a book.
“Look, when you haven’t got that much brain to begin with, you wanna hold on to the little you’ve got!”
“Don’t try to act like you’re stupid!”
“It’s relative, isn’t it?”
“What in the hell,” hisses the demon, “are you two doing? I thought the girl would force you into sense, but I see I’m doomed to disappointment!”
Maka blinks at me. I blink at Maka. What the hell are we doing? We’re supposed to be talking about why she’s in my head. “Back to the point,” I say, pretending it’s her fault we’re babbling. “Why are you in my head, Maka?”
She looks irritated and confused. I guess I’m glad I’m not the only one around here who can’t focus. “To pull you out,” she says.
“You’re in my head to pull me out of my head? Cuz, no offense, but that doesn’t seem like a great idea.”
“To pull you out of the book, Soul!”
Book? The magic, cursed book that was totally not my problem anymore?
“I’m in the book? Since when?”
“You’re only sort of in the book. We think it’s trying to eat your soul.”
Oh, well, if that’s all it is.
“Noah threw something at you. Do you remember that?”
Now she mentions it. “I thought that was a knife or something.”
“Shinigami-sama thinks it was…like a hook.”
“That’s great, Maka.” I’m glad she came to tell me all this in the last moments before my soul gets eaten. Soul Eater’s soul gets eaten. Poetic, right? “Are you here to see me off?”
“No, idiot,” she snaps. “I said I was here to pull you out! How addled are you?”
Considering part of my brain is still stuck on her dress, I’d say pretty addled.
“Does this mean you have a plan?” I ask. It’s sort of hit or miss with her.
“Of course I have a plan!” she snaps. “You think I threw myself into your soul with no plan? Who am I, Black Star?”
“Don’t pick on Black Star.” It’s so easy, it’s not sporting. “What’s the plan?”
“Shinigami-sama and Sid-sensei are working on pulling you out. It’s your soul that’s trapped; it’s different from pulling out physical things. They’re still trying to figure out exactly how to do it. But they were afraid that if they let you go much longer, there wouldn’t be enough of your soul left to pull out. That’s why I’m here.”
I wait for it. But no. That’s all she’s gonna give me.
“Back up, why are you here? Because it still sounds like it’s for the final farewell.”
“I’m here to keep your soul from scattering,” she says impatiently, like any idiot should have been able to figure that out. What is it with smart people always being crap at explaining things?
“Is that what it’s doing?” the demon guy says. He sounds weirdly happy about it. “I take it back, brat. You’re not getting boring, you’re just falling apart. That’s a relief!”
“Thanks,” I tell him. “It’s good to know you’re concerned for my well-being.”
“I thought I’d infected a real dud,” he goes on, oblivious. “But I was right about you! I mean, if you completely dissolve, I’ll have to infect someone else, and that’ll be annoying. But at least I won’t have been wrong.”
Maka’s laughing. My partner and her weird sense of humor.
“Maka, I know you think you’re helping, but you’re not, really.”
“Nah, she is,” the demon says, squinting at me sidelong. “Now I know what to look for, I can see it, too. You’re fraying like a rotten shroud.”
Graphic imagery, that’s. Good.
“But it’s slowing down, now she’s here. You’d better take my help before you slip again, though, brat. This is no time to be too good for demons.”
“Yeah. Didn’t you just finish telling me how I’d go insane if I let you help?”
“Oh, that you remember!”
“Soul?” Maka asks in my least favorite voice. The one that means she’s scared and not even trying to hide it. “What…what’s going on?”
I look around. What’s going on is, the room is shifting. Maybe writhing is more the word. The walls are sliding and the floor is cracking, and everything but the piano looks like it’s going straight to hell.
“I guess I will have to find another host,” the demon guys sighs, like it’s a real hardship.
“You’re losing it even though I’m here?” Maka’s recovered: she just sounds pissed off, now. She’s ridiculously tough, my partner. “Is this because your soul was so strange to begin with?”
“It’s always been a little surreal around here,” I admit. “But usually we both know what’s going on anyway. This time neither of us knows what’s going on.”
“Isn’t harmony wonderful?” the demon asks sourly.
“Do you know why it’s happening?” If he’s so determined to sit there and bitch, he can just make himself useful.
He squints sideways at me, the walls, Maka. Gives a disgusted snort.
“You’re taking her down with you,” he says. “That’s what’s going on.”
“I’m what!?”
“I think the walls are warping because they’re reflecting her soul too. Could be.” Turn. Squint. “Gotta be. You’re not coming apart as fast as you were, but now you’re taking her down with you.”
Be willing to die for the technician, that’s what they teach you. Tear your technician’s soul to shreds is nowhere in the handbook. I suck at most of life, I get that. I gave up piano because I knew it was going nowhere, but this, I thought I could be good at this. I thought, hell, I was built for this. I thought I could, at the very least, not destroy Maka. That seems like a pretty achievable thing, right? Don’t rip your partner to pieces? Any idiot could do that, right? But not me, shit, I’m special.
“It’s speeding up,” I hear from someplace far away. Distorted, warped, underwater. Out. Of. Tune.
“Soul!”
Maka’s voice, that’s. I’m making her scream now. That’s perfect, fucking perfect. I swore I’d never hurt her. Why did she come to get me, why couldn’t she just let me die? Can’t she see this is the worst thing she could do to me, oh God what if she goes first, I’ll—
Ow.
“Soul, this is no time to get hysterical!”
She slapped me. That’s new. Slapping, she’s not really the slapping kind. Maybe she couldn’t find a book? But in that case, she usually goes for punching.
I’m confused.
Wait. Where are we?
“Oh, bugger, not this again,” the demon guy sighs.
Oh, yeah. The demon guy. Has he been here all along?
“Kid, don’t you dare do this to me again. I swear, I swear if you think one thought about your brother, I will kill you myself, even if I do have to find another host afterward.”
“What’s going on?” Maka asks. See? Maka’s confused too, demon guy. I’m not the only one.
What’s Maka doing here anyway? This looks like the room in my soul. Yeah, there’s the piano. What…?
“He’s forgotten where he is. Again. You have no idea. He does this over and over and over—”
“Don’t you get hysterical, either,” Maka snaps impatiently, folding her arms. “I didn’t even know demons could get hysterical.”
“Look, lady, I’ve been driven to it. And the other bad news is, I’m pretty sure his cycle’s getting shorter. You get me? Soon he’ll be doing this every few minutes. That’s apart from the problem with the walls cracking and the floor shifting and everything else going to shit, of course.”
“So what do we do?” Maka asks.
I see what the demon guy means. Whatever the hell’s going on, this room looks like it’s coming to bits. But Maka’s on the case, right? I’m just the weapon; I’ll do what she tells me.
“That’s a blessed relief,” the demon guy snarls in my direction. “Seeing as she’s asking me what to do. Which boils down to all of us being screwed, is what!”
Whatever, demon guy. Have a little faith in my partner.
“This all happened because he got upset,” Maka cuts in. “You said it was slowing down. When did that happen?”
“When he was talking to you,” the demon guy muttered. “When you were laughing at his pain, mostly. Kid’s sick, you know?”
Maka smiles at me. It’s that fond smile. That fond smile that’s like a kick in the chest sometimes, but it’s a good kick in the chest. Or I’m a masochist. Something like that.
“I know,” she says.
“Hey, Maka.” If she’s gonna look at me like that, I feel like I can ask her questions. It’s only fair. “What slowed down?”
She tips her head and considers me. At a time like this, she is actually thinking about not telling me. Unbelievable. “Maka, I can take it, seriously. What slowed down?”
“Your soul is coming apart,” she says. And when she decides a guy can take it, she pulls no punches, huh? “It doesn’t come apart as quickly when you’re calm.”
“When you’re thinking about the girl,” the demon guy corrects with a sneer.
“Same thing, probably,” I tell him, then turn back to Maka in time to catch…was that actually a blush?
…Okay. Weird.
Anyway.
“So I should be calm, and I should be thinking about you,” I say, just to make sure I’ve got this straight. She nods.
Right. That means I should probably stop fixating on how good she looks in that dress, because it’s not a calming thought.
Calming. I can do calming. What makes me calm?
Piano makes me calm. Sometimes, when it isn’t making me crazy. I could play something calming, but…Maka. I could play something in G?
No. I know.
“I’m gonna teach you to play piano,” I tell Maka. “That ought to keep me calm and thinking about you. At least, calm until it hits me how bad you are.”
She doesn’t bite back. Not good. Maka always bites back. I thought it was a reflex. Does that mean she’s getting influenced by this? If she’s in my soul, and my soul’s coming apart, then—
“Soul,” she says, interrupting that really not-calming train of thought. “I don’t even know how to read music.”
“Won’t have to. I’ll just teach you a couple things by rote.”
She still looks dubious.
“What, you got something better to do?”
She shakes her head, comes over to the piano and sits. I sit next to her, close, try hard to think pure piano thoughts not related to how she’s soft and warm and wearing that dress. Focus, dammit. She molests you all the time when you’re a scythe, the hell is your problem now?
…Right, that was the wrong mental path to head down.
“G,” I tell her, and play it. “That’s you.”
She plays it back at me.
We go through scales first, obviously. And since we’re doing this for fun, and not because we’re gonna make a great pianist of her, I don’t torture her with them for hours. “Mary Had a Little Lamb” may not be the most exciting piece of music ever, but it’s definitely more exciting than scales.
I’m teaching her to play the piano that lives in my soul. I wonder if she’s stopped to think about what that means. God, I hope not.
But the demon’s sitting on the piano making fun of us, Maka’s laughing and screwing up epically, and I’m…
Having a lot of fun, actually.
We’re partway through a really misguided attempt at “Chopsticks” when the world turns upside down, and something yanks me backwards.
* * *
I open my eyes. No dark room, no piano, no demon. I check myself. No suit. I check Maka. Boring clothes, no dress. A shame.
…And I thought it was a shame she wasn’t wearing the black blood dress, so my brain isn’t totally back to normal. But I’m not stuck alone with the demon guy for all eternity, so it’s cool.
I push myself up on my elbows to see Maka better. She’s looking around like she doesn’t know quite where the hell we are, either, but then it hits her, and she turns to me and grins.
“Hah,” she says. “We rock!”
“We do rock,” I agree. Or she does, anyway. It’s nice that I actually remember what happened now. How does that work? Did they patch me up or something? Or did pulling my soul out of the book do that?
Well, whatever.
I’m not gonna be awake much longer, I can tell. Maka’s face is swimming in and out of focus. Maybe this time I won’t swoon my way into a cursed book, though.
“You’re a great piano teacher, Soul,” she says, looking basically delighted about everything. She’s cute when she gets like that. If I told her she was cute, she’d hit me with a book, though.
“Yeah, well. You’re hot in that dress.” And that’s all the awake I had in me. Clearly, because fainting in front of Maka is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done, I’m planning on making a habit of it.
* * *
“Maka, please. You need to stop panicking. He’s fine. Nygus-sensei says he’s just sleeping normally. Maka, you’ve been standing there all day, at least sit down.”
“Don’t worry, Tsubaki, I’m not panicking. I’m just checking up on him.”
“Checking up on what? He hasn’t done anything.”
“Well, what if he stops breathing?”
“Maka…”
Waking up in the infirmary to the sound of someone trying to stop Maka from freaking out. It’s a definite improvement on those times I screamed myself awake.
“Maka, don’t be stupid,” I say. Hah, I don’t even sound sick anymore. That’s what escaping from an evil book will do for you. Clear those minor ailments right up.
Or maybe that was the month I spent immobilized in bed. Shit, I bet I’m completely out of shape. Black Star’s gonna beat me into one giant bruise and call it physical therapy.
“Soul, do you know how long you’ve been asleep this time?”
She sounds pissed, so I’m gonna guess a while. I like how she acts like I do it on purpose.
“How long?” I open my eyes to get the full effect of the outrage.
“Three days!” she screams. Her face is all red, her eyes have huge dark circles under them, and her hair’s sticking every which way like she’s been trying to pull it out.
This was definitely worth waking up for.
“Compared to the month, I’m improving by leaps and bounds,” I tell her. Tsubaki smiles at me and wanders out the door. I know how she works. This means she’ll give us ten minutes alone, and then throw Black Star at us. Like a punishment.
Better make the most of the ten, then.
Maka’s still shouting, something about getting sucked into books like an idiot and scaring her half to death. I hold my hand out to her before she gets around to blaming herself for it. She always does, sooner or later.
The hand throws her off her stride, though. Knew it would.
She takes it, but she looks like she thinks I’m up to something. I kind of am. But since I’m pushing my luck, I might as well push it more. After all, I spent a month in a coma. I can put all kinds of weird behavior down to that. I pull her closer until she has to hop up on the bed or fall on top of me. I’d have been good either way, but she goes for the hopping on the bed option.
“Are you still being weird?” she asks, eyes flicking back and forth between mine. I bet she’s checking that my pupils are the same size. I smile at her.
“Maybe a little weird,” I admit. “Remember how Kid came out of the book like twice as obsessive as he went in?”
“I remember,” she says, quirking her eyebrows at me. “He’s more or less over it now.”
“Remember how he glommed onto Liz and Patty like a leech and drove them crazy?”
She smiles a little in spite of herself. “Yes. He hasn’t gotten over that.”
“I think it’s because, when you’re in the twilight zone like that, you’ve got nothing to do but think about what’s important to you. And how, once you get out of there, you’re never letting it out of your sight.”
“You think that, huh?”
“I think that,” I agree. “It’s what I did.” All that brooding in the dark with a demon for company, I had to think of something good. I decided to take Maka to visit my brother, for one thing. And for another…
I tug her down close. Close enough that she’s got to know what I’m after. Got to. Because there is no way she can make me say this out loud. We’re so close I can feel her smirking.
Oh, hell. She’s messing with me.
“Maka!”
She giggles, she actually giggles. But then she kisses me, so I’m willing to overlook it.
As advertised, kissing is good. Or maybe just kissing Maka is good. Like I’m allowed to forget all the crazy stuff in the background for a little while, and think about nothing but her.
It’s peaceful, that’s what it is. It’s a lot of other things, too, but mostly it’s peaceful.
Or at least it is until she pulls back, grins at me like a madwoman, and then leans forward again and bites the shit out of my neck.
“What the—ow!”
She’s laughing so hard now that she can’t sit up straight; she’s pitched over onto me. Which means she’s laughing directly into my ear. Which I could do without.
“Mine,” she gasps between laughing fits.
Okay, okay. So I knew about the cheating issues. I predicted jealous and crazy possessive, maybe even some stalking, and I was okay with all that. I did not predict biting.
Although…I probably should have. Thinking it over.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask her, and it would probably sound a lot angrier if I could keep myself from hugging her closer. But I can’t. Lame. “Couldn’t you leave a hickey like a normal jealous maniac?”
She just keeps laughing in my ear, intermittently gasping about morning breath and idiots who get sucked into books. But she’s holding onto me like she’s afraid I’ll get away.
I guess I can’t even hold the biting against her. Sure, she’s laughing—but I hear the hysteria in there. I’m a pro at hysteria, and I can tell that if she weren’t laughing, she’d be crying. I wonder how much sleep she’s gotten over the last three days. Hell, over the last month. I’m guessing not much.
Meanwhile, my neck hurts like a bitch. She bit me hard, what the hell?
Lucky for us, Death the Kid shows up before Black Star, because if it had been Black Star, the mockery would have been epic and undying. And it’s lucky Kid’s without Liz and Patty for once, because I don’t even want to think what they’d make of this.
Kid just frowns at us like it’s bothering him that we aren’t square in the middle of the bed, or whatever it is that bothers Kid.
It gets Maka to stop laughing, though. Mostly. She straightens up, still snickering a little, wipes her eyes, and grins at me. I guess we’re not gonna talk about this at all. It’s just going to be. I grin back at her. She really can be the coolest.
And she doesn’t know it, but there’s gonna be payback for the neck thing. Laugh it up while you can, Maka Albarn.
“I’d better go tell Nygus-sensei you’re up; she’ll want to check on you,” she says, still sounding giddy. She leans down (I brace myself) and kisses me on the forehead. Gently, even. And then she’s off.
Kid, though, is still standing next to the bed with his arms crossed, smirking at me.
“Liz will be pleased,” he says.
The idea of Liz caring about my personal life at all is beyond terrifying. Why are there so many nosy people around here?
“Really?” It seems like a safe response.
“Really,” he confirms. “She’s been giving nightly lectures on how perfect you and Maka are for each other ever since we transferred in.”
I can’t think of a thing to say to that, and I’m not going to try.
If Kid’s put off by the silent staring, he doesn’t show it. He just wanders closer than I’d strictly like him and eyeballs my neck.
Maybe it looks like a bruise. Maybe I can pass it off as something that happened when I fell out of bed.
“Your bite mark is asymmetrical.”
Maybe not.
“You’d better not be thinking of giving me a matching one on the other side,” I warn him.
“Of course not; my mouth is the wrong size,” he says, clearly insulted by the very idea. “I’ll have to leave it to Maka, won’t I?”
I’m still too tired to spaz out. I mean, it’s not surprising that he’d figure out it was Maka. Who the hell else would have bitten me?
I can’t believe she bit me.
“But for now, we’d better cover that up,” he says. “Otherwise everyone will know how perverse you are.”
“Hey, I’m not the perverse one!”
“Hm. I had thought better of Maka. To leave something uncompleted like this, with her high standard of perfection, it’s…it’s shocking.”
Hang on, he thinks it’s perverse because she only got me on one side?
…What am I thinking? Of course he does. He’s Death the Kid.
“Even Liz and Patty wouldn’t leave something as blatantly wrong as this.”
Uh. He doesn’t mean that the way it sounds, right? Though. It would explain all the collared shirts.
Gah.
“There,” he says, tying a perfect knot in the green scarf he found to put around my neck. He obviously didn’t trust me to do it myself. For sure, I’d have gotten the knot crooked. “Tell them you were cold. And tell Maka I’m shocked.”
He wanders out of the room and leaves me to my unsettling thoughts about Liz and Patty and symmetrical bite marks.
What is it with people lately? First Harvar telling me deep, dark secrets, and now this. Do I look like the kind of guy who wants to know this shit? I am not that guy.
Black Star takes this time to kick down the door. I’ve never been happier to see him; I am absolutely sure he’s not going to tell me about his secretly deep relationship with Tsubaki. I’m pretty sure I understand his relationship with Tsubaki better than he does, for one thing.
“Come on, Soul, get outta bed! You’ve gotta be all kinds of fat and lazy by now. We need to fix you up!” He cracks his knuckles.
Do I know Black Star, or do I know him? One. Giant. Bruise.
“If you think I’m training with you anytime this month, you’re out of your tiny mind,” I tell him. Bastard. I didn’t come beating the crap out of him when he was laid up, did I? No. I limited myself to mild shoving.
“Hey, if you want to be fat and lazy, that’s your business,” he says with a superior little smirk. “I’ll just let you rot there.”
“That’s not going to work,” I say.
“Okay! Okay. I’m just saying, you know, Maka’s gonna want to get out to the field as soon as possible, and if you’re still lazy-ass? I’m just saying, she might go off alone and get all messed up. You know what she’s like about duty and honor and whatever. But if you want to rest up more, I totally underst—”
“I hate you, Black Star. I hate you and I’ve always hated you,” I tell him, kicking back the covers and crawling out of bed. I’m ridiculously weak; I just about pitch into Black Star while I’m trying to stand up. He cackles at me.
Tsubaki is too well-mannered to actually laugh in my face, but I know she’s doing it on the inside.
Damn it. Stupidity shouldn’t be contagious; that doesn’t seem fair. Genius isn’t contagious, or I would have gotten it from Maka by now. The whole world is cockeyed.
* * *
Unsurprisingly, I’m back in the infirmary with about a hundred extra bruises less than half an hour later. I tried to snipe at Black Star about it, but he said, “What? You feel less worthless now, don’t you?”
And he’s right, the jerk. I guess it was worth it. Even though Maka yelled at me for half an hour because I went off training with Black Star instead of waiting for Nygus-sensei to check me over. And then she said I had to stay in the infirmary one more night or she’d kill me herself.
It’s just as well. I wanted one more night in the infirmary anyway.
I’ve been waiting for the dead of night to do this. Not the kind of thing I want any witnesses for, which is another reason it’s better I’m not at home. I mean, what if he just kills me or something? I don’t want Maka seeing that.
42-42-564. Death and murder.
“Soul!” he says, voice surprised. “It’s awfully late, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you be resting?”
He sounds exactly like someone who cares. The question is, how put on is that?
“Sorry to bother you so late, Shinigami-sama,” I say. “I just had something to ask.”
“Ask away, ask away!”
“What’s your goal with all this? Shibusen, I mean. The Children's Crusade. Us.”
There’s nothing quite as awkward as sharing a long, ominous silence with a guy in a smiley death-head mask. In case you were wondering.
“Why do you ask?” This is not the friendly Shinigami voice at all.
I’m putting my cards on the table, though. If you don’t trust the guy you work for, you shouldn’t be working for him. I need to know if I should be working for this guy or not.
“I ask because you brought that book here, and I have to think you knew what would happen. Because the Kishin looks kind of like Kid’s older brother, and I gotta say that worries me. Because there’s only one book on Eibon in our whole huge library, even though he’s big news. It’s shady.”
Silence. Then he says again, “Why do you ask?”
What the hell, I told him the truth and he doesn’t like it? Too complicated for him or something?
“I ask because I don’t trust you to keep Maka safe,” I say. There. That’s practically words of one syllable. I dare him to have a problem with that.
“I’ll keep all the students safe,” he says. Pretty lousy answer.
“Make me believe you,” I tell him. “Preferably not by magically fucking with my head.”
The mask tips back and he starts to laugh. I’ve got this funny feeling he’s not taking me too seriously. People have been laughing at me ever since I came to; what’s that about?
“I’m not sure what you want me to tell you, Soul,” he says after a good long while, still chuckling. “What do you want from me? Proof?”
“What do people ever want from their God?” I ask. “I want to believe you have a plan. I want to believe it’s a good one, or at least one that won’t get everyone I love killed.”
“I’ll tell you everything once you’ve become my Death Scythe.”
“Pay attention to what’s going on around you, will you?” It’s got to be a bad idea to get impatient with a shinigami, but what the hell. I’ve done it before. “I’m never gonna be your Death Scythe. I’m owned. I might as well have Property of Maka Albarn tattooed on my neck.”
“I thought you did,” he says.
I clap my hand over the bite on reflex, then realize the bastard’s laughing at me. Again.
I start to get irritated, then remind myself (must have reminded myself a hundred times by now) that anybody’d have a weird sense of humor after being alive all those centuries. Alone.
So, fine. We’ll just start over. I got all night.
“Did you leave Kid in that book on purpose?”
“No.”
“Did you let me get sucked into that book on purpose?”
“I didn’t know it would be you.”
“You didn’t know it would be me, but you knew it would be someone?”
“I expected Noah to try to catch someone.”
“Uh huh.” More information than I thought I’d get from him, actually. “So what was the plan with that?”
“I needed to see if someone could break free of the book.”
I could ask him why, but…I don’t think I want to know. “And I didn’t get free.”
“No. But the damage to your soul was surprisingly minimal.”
“Surprisingly, huh?” That’s just great. “What would have happened if it had been surprisingly bad?”
“I would have pulled you out before it became irreparable.”
Great. So he knew how to pull me out all along. That’s not creepy at all. “So it was a big experiment. Were you worried?”
“Sick,” he says, and with all this conviction. Either he’s serious, or he’s a damn good actor. And if he’s that good an actor, I’d almost be willing to follow him just out of respect for that.
But not quite.
“You sent Maka in there after me. For your experiment.”
“Maka is more important to you than your own life, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re equally important.”
“Which is to say, neither one as important as your experiments.”
“Correct.”
…Whoa. Brutal honesty, who saw that coming? But it’s easier to trust than the Friendly Shinigami look.
So, okay. It wasn’t like he meant to let us die for the experiment, but he probably wouldn’t have cried any tears if we had. Then again, he’s meant to be saving the world, right? That’s bigger than us. I guess I like that he said as much.
Or did he say it like that because he knows I find people easier to believe when they’re telling me awful things? He’s been around a long time. Had a long time to figure out what people want to hear.
I could run myself in circles like this all night, couldn’t I?
Eight hundred years the guy’s spent on Shibusen, and it was a little paradise for us until the shit hit the fan. Sure, we went off into possible death every day, but we did that to ourselves, and we probably would have done it even if it hadn’t been for Shibusen. We’re all a little wild; look at Liz and Patty. Shinigami-sama did a pretty good job of training us not to get ourselves killed.
I’d still feel better if I knew what he’d gotten up to in the old days. If I knew what he was up to now. If I knew what the deal with the Kishin was.
You have to trust people sometimes. But you don’t have to trust them all that much. I’m glad we had this talk; it gets me back to Plan A, which was to hang around until he messed with Maka, and then run. It looks like he’s not after us in particular, and that’s good enough to be going on with.
“So you have a plan,” I say, just to review.
“I have a plan.”
“And you think it’s a good plan.”
“I think it’s the best plan possible under the circumstances.”
Huh. Ringing endorsement there. “And this plan, it’s not supposed to get Maka killed.”
“From now on, the plan should bring no additional risk to Maka.”
“Additional?” Should?
“Being a technician is a fairly high-risk profession, Soul.”
True.
“I guess that’ll have to do, then.” I stand up and put my hands in my pockets, and it’s only then that it hits me what I’ve done.
Holy shit, I grilled Shinigami-sama. Maybe I’m more insanity-infected than I realized.
“It’s been a few years since anyone asked me so many questions,” Shinigami-sama says. He’s back to sounding like he thinks it’s all fun and games, but that’s cool. In the scheme of things, I’m sure it is. For him.
“Yeah? Who did it last time?”
“Maka’s mother, in fact,” he says. “Interestingly enough, she was also concerned for Maka’s safety. Anyone would think I’d threatened the girl.”
The mirror clouds over, and it’s just a mirror again.
It’s not that he’s threatened her; it’s not even that I think he doesn’t care about her. It’s just that she’s going to be amazing, and that’ll attract attention. Bad attention. Anybody can see that. And it scares the hell out of the people who love her.
* * *
The downside to staying in the infirmary another night turns out to be that everybody and their brother wants to see if I’m really awake the next morning, and Maka’s not around to keep them away.
“Hey, Sid-sensei.” Sid-sensei is the tenth one since I woke up, and I don’t even want to think how many people were in here staring at me while I was asleep. “Thanks for pulling me out of the book.”
“I’d never leave a comrade in peril. That’s the kind of man I was!”
Good thing he doesn’t realize what Shinigami-sama was up to. He’d probably blow up Shibusen. That’s the kind of man he was.
“Nygus tells me your soul’s back to normal,” he says. “Or as normal as you get.”
“Thanks.” Everybody’s a comedian. “Why is that, anyway? It got fixed up when you pulled me out of the book?”
“Well, in part,” he says, going into teacher-mode. “The rest got fixed when you slept for three days, which is why you did it. But you were in surprisingly good shape even when we found you.” Yeah. I keep hearing that. “We expected much more decay. Maka must have helped you out more than we thought she could. You’ve got a pretty amazing technician, eh, Soul?”
Yes. I have.
Sid-sensei’s giving me a dubious look all of a sudden. Dubious looks don’t go well on zombie faces. I wish he’d stop.
“What’s with that scarf, Soul?” he asks. “It’s awful.”
Kid (first visitor of the morning) replaced my scarf. This one’s a nice, symmetrical plaid. I’m not in a position to argue about his taste.
“I don’t ask you about the tattoos, Sid-sensei, and you don’t ask me about the scarf. Fair enough?”
“My tattoos are awesome, kid.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“In what way are my tattoos not awesome?”
“‘Death,’” I tell him. “Really subtle. And what’s with the lines? You dropped death in a pond?”
“It’s not supposed to be subtle, idiot,” he snaps. He’s getting surprisingly worked up over this. “It’s supposed to be terrifying! The lines are death, spreading out and touching everything!”
“Alright, sure,” I agree. It’s too late to argue about it, anyway. Tattoos are pretty permanent even before you die.
He scowls. “Think sharpened teeth are subtle, do you?”
“I was born with them.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Grr.”
The door opens before this conversation can get any more stupid. Probably just as well.
It’s Maka’s dirty old dad. Seriously, Maka’s dad came to see me?
“Spirit!” Sid-sensei looks about as surprised as I feel. “You come to visit the kid?”
Maka’s dad smiles at him, but there’s something off about it. Not his usual skeezy smile; it’s sharper than that. Normally it’s hard to believe he and Maka are even related, but something about that smile…yeah, you can see he’s her dad.
It’s weird.
“Sid,” he says. “Yeah, I thought I’d check up on him. I’m winning my way to Maka’s heart by checking on her partner! It’s a brilliant plan!”
Sid-sensei gives him a pitying look. “Good luck with that,” he says. “And you, kid.” He glares at me. “Shape up.”
All because I don’t like his tattoos. Harsh.
Once he’s gone, Maka’s dad comes over and studies me. The goofy, talking-about-Maka look is gone, and he’s being serious. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him serious.
…Don’t think we’ve ever been alone together before. It’s making me nervous. Which is crazy, it’s crazy being nervous about Maka’s dad. Right?
“Soul Eater,” he says. “Shinigami-sama is irritated with you.”
Oh, shit.
“He doesn’t know that I know why, of course. But it’s hard to hide things from your weapon, shinigami or not. It’s much easier to hide things from your technician. But you know all about that, don’t you?”
This is creepy. It’s creepy, and I don’t like where it’s going. “There’s not much that I hide from Maka,” I say. Is he pissed that I was worried about her? What the hell, he’s her dad, isn’t he? He’s never shown signs of following the Medusa model of parenting before.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he says with a crazy-dad gleam in his eye. I kind of find the crazy-dad gleam comforting; at least it’s normal. “But that’s not my point. My point is that if there’s information I want from Shinigami-sama, it’s easy for me to get it. Whereas it’s hard for him to get anything from me.”
“Uh, okay.” I’m none the wiser.
He rolls his eyes. “I’m saying I’m very well-positioned to protect Maka from him, if that needs to be done,” he says. “Or to encourage him to protect Maka, if he doesn’t seem willing. My wife made sure I would be. Don’t worry so much, Soul Eater.”
I realize that the mouth-hanging-open look is not a cool one, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
Maka’s dad smirks at me. “You remind me of Stein, sometimes,” he says.
From anybody else, that’d be a deadly insult. Coming from him? I have no freaking idea what it’s supposed to mean. So it fits in nicely with the rest of the conversation.
“Oh, and if you hurt Maka, I’ll kill you.”
Oh good. Something I know how to respond to. “I thought that was a given.”
“Of course it is.” He beams at me. “And yet I never get tired of saying it.”
* * *
“Um.” Maka twists her hands in her skirt. “I’m. Sorry. That I. Uh.”
“Bit me?” I suggest. I’m just trying to be helpful; this might take all day otherwise.
She looks like she might keel over from embarrassment, and that skirt is never going to be the same.
“Bit you,” she whispers. “Oh, God.”
Man. I’d love to tease the hell out of her about it (because it hurt), but, damn. I gotta take pity on that face.
“S’okay, Maka.” I reach out and start untangling the fingers from the skirt. “Check it out, Kid gave me a scarf to hide it.”
“Kid knows?”
Hah, she has never sounded this mortified.
“Kid says he’s shocked you didn’t get both sides; how could you?”
She gives a little despairing wail and hides her face in her hands. I try to tug her hands down, but she’s determined.
“We’ll just tell him you were tired. You were completely loopy and out of it. Otherwise your mind would totally have been on symmetry, right?”
A choked giggle comes from behind the hands.
“C’mon, let’s get me out of here. I’m ready to go home. You can make it up to me if you keep Sid-sensei away.”
She peeks through her fingers. “What did you do to Sid-sensei?”
“I like how you assume it was something I did.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“Well. Yeah.”
“What happened, Soul?”
“Bite marks, Maka.”
The fingers close.
Okay. So, on the upside, that’s really effective for getting her to stop asking questions. On the downside, I’ll never see her face again.
“Maka, you gotta stop that. Nobody knows but Kid, and he has weird priorities.”
“You know,” she says.
“Yeah, and I already forgave you. Something about that one time a couple of days ago when you kept my soul from being eaten, I don’t know. And even if you hadn’t, hell. You kissed me. I’d put up with a lot for that.”
The hands drop.
“You weren’t just putting up with me kissing you?” she asks blankly.
And to think her dad is the biggest slut in Shibusen (barring Blaire). Like I say, it’s usually hard to believe they’re related. “Maka, I practically pulled you down on top of me.”
“Oh, yeah.” She sounds weirdly dazed. “Thought I’d dreamt that part.”
I close my eyes. My partner. So smart to be such an idiot.
“Soul.” I open my eyes just in time for her to kiss me again. And what was the point of that, because you just close your eyes again, right, with someone so close to your face, you…
Kissing. Possibly better than advertised.
She pulls back and tries to pretend she isn’t bright red. “There,” she says. “I definitely remember that one.”
“Good.” I clear my throat. “Wouldn’t want you confused. Can we check me out now?”
“No,” she says.
“No?”
“I have to tell you what I came here to tell you. You keep distracting me.”
Somehow, I don’t have it in me to feel bad about that.
“It’s about Angela.”
Angela, you’re such a mood-killer.
“She’s missing.”
I wait for her to say something else. Not sure what, just, you know. Anything would do. But no, that’s it. “You mean she’s not in her room?”
“She’s not in Shibusen. Kim is afraid Medusa abducted her.”
Oh, come on. Not again.
“I think she might just have run off. After all, we are the ones who killed Mifune. If she found out, she’d have no reason to trust us.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t trust us. That’s why nobody told her, unless Black Star—”
“He says he didn’t. Shinigami-sama wants us to look for her as soon as you’re up to it.”
“Why us?” Angela hates me. To say nothing of what I think of Angela.
“We’ll be joining Kim and Jackie. Everyone else is leaving tomorrow to look for Noah or Justin or the Kishin, and if you weren’t injured, we would be, too,” Maka says, all business.
“Justin?” I ask blankly.
“Justin turned out to be evil. You slept through a busy month,” Maka says, weirdly blasé. “We’re stretched thin. There’s no one else to look.”
Right. So in the last month, I almost got both our souls eaten, Justin turned evil, I pissed off Sid-sensei and Shinigami-sama, Maka’s dad scared the hell out of me, and we completely lost track of Angela. Whom we now have to find. This is not a stellar record.
“Let’s run away and join the circus,” I suggest.
“Soul!”
Right. It was worth a try.