Spirit is still hungover when the call from Lord Death comes in. He makes a point of being sober and fully recovered whenever he has scheduled responsibilities as a Death Scythe, but he wasn't expecting to get summoned to the Death Room at ten in the morning on a Saturday, so when he shows up he is clutching a cup of horrible coffee and trying to look less like death-warmed-over than he feels.

"Hiya Death Scythe! How's it going?" Spirit is appreciative of Lord Death's careful and exclusive use of his title rather than his name, but just as the moment the ridiculously high register and volume of his voice are piercing in an especially agonizing way and he can't help but flinch.

"Hi," he manages. "What did you need me for?" Please don't say it's a fight, please don't say it's a fight, he chants in the back of his aching head.

"Nothing much!" chirps Lord Death. Spirit is halfway through his sigh of relief when he continues. "I needed to talk to you about Maka."

"What?" Spirit manages after he's finished choking on his exhale. "What's wrong with Maka? Is she alright? Where is she?"

"Calm down! She's just fine, probably still at her apartment right now." Lord Death's hands are palm-up, reaching out to hold Spirit in place if necessary. Spirit tries to breathe slowly, but he has watched Maka fight a few too many challenging assignments from a distance and it's difficult to calm the frantic pace of his heart. After it becomes clear that the weapon isn't going to go sprinting off in an ill-advised rescue attempt, Lord Death crosses his outsized white gloves in front of him.

"There's nothing wrong with Maka at all. What I wanted to talk to you about is her recent performance as a meister."

"What are you talking about?" Spirit's headache is getting worse, not aided by his brief foray into parental panic. "She's a great meister."

"She is. That's the problem." Lord Death sighs. "Would you like to sit?"

Spirit would. Sitting won't help his nausea but it will make it easier to have a conversation since he won't need to combat his dizziness. Maka doesn't have a monopoly on stubbornness, though, so he folds his arms and sets his jaw. "No. Thank you."

"Suit yourself." Lord Death does sit, folding over his cape as if he doesn't have feet. He might not. Even after years of Resonating Spirit's not entirely sure how much of a body Lord Death has, only that he comes back to his own disoriented and dizzy, struggling to remember how to walk and breathe and speak normally.

"Maka is a great meister," Lord Death finally says, after folding up until he's only as tall as Spirit's collarbone instead of looming feet over him. "She has a lot of potential, especially with her current weapon."

Spirit refrains from commenting on Soul Eater Evans and his obvious unsuitability for his daughter. She deserves someone talented and skilled and devoted to her, ideally another girl because Spirit knows better than anyone how partnerships turn into relationships and Maka deserves someone better than Soul. But Lord Death gets quiet and uncommunicative every time Spirit seethes himself into saying anything on the subject and he lacks the energy to have this well-worn argument today, so he keeps his mouth shut and tries to rub his forehead as unobtrusively as possible.

"The problem is that she's too cautious," Lord Death goes on. "She's been taking easy assignments for months, minor serial killers and the like, because she knows that she can beat them easily. She's been doing a great job but she's not improving and she's not reaching her full potential."

"You want to put her in danger instead?"

"No, of course not, but she's stalled right now." Lord Death looks down, and when he speaks there is a flicker of apology in his voice. "That's why I sent them out after Blair."

There is an embarrassingly long pause before Spirit's brain catches up to the implications of this. "Wait. You knew?"

"Yep."

"And you...you deliberately ruined their final soul collection?"

"Death Scythe." Spirit realizes that his voice is inching up the register into shrill, take a deep inhale, exhales deliberately slowly. It isn't until he has clenched his jaw shut that Lord Death continues. "They aren't ready. Think about where you were before Kami made you a death weapon. You had fought harder battles and had significantly more experience than Maka or Soul have collected so far. They nearly died fighting Blair, and she's not even a proper witch. Maka's not ready to be advanced past first-star status right now. They haven't even used Soul Resonance yet. Their current status speaks highly of Maka's determination and dedication to her goals, but she's just too young and too inexperienced right now."

Spirit wants to argue. He's not sure if he's more interested in protecting Maka from more difficult assignments or in defending her ability and skills, nevermind the inherent contradiction in those perspectives. But he can't get traction on any argument at all, and without the benefit of Maka's presence there's not enough motivation to push him into a pointless defense.

"What are you planning?" he says instead, because Lord Death always has some plan, even when it's entirely illogical.

"Ah. Well." Lord Death is looking at his hands and...twiddling his thumbs, apparently. Spirit didn't know that he could do that. "I'm going to give her an assignment she can't win."

There is a beat, long enough for the cold panic to flood all of Spirit's veins, and then he is on fire with the need to defend Maka. "What." There is no strain in his voice this time, just cold promise of fury if Lord Death doesn't offer a better explanation.

His current meister hears it, looks up, and then his hands are up at his sides as if Spirit is pointing a gun at him. "Not with an actual enemy! She'll be perfectly safe. I've already got co-conspirators to work with us on this, but she can't know that there's anything unusual about this assignment or it will be pointless."

Spirit shuts his eyes and presses his fingers against the bridge of his nose. It would be easier to follow this conversation if it were later in the day or he were less hungover or it were with someone other than the often-unintelligible Lord Death. His brain is fumbling with the pieces, trying to come up with a suitable alternative but skidding on exhaustion and dehydration and his rising headache. "What exactly do you have in mind?"

Lord Death folds his hands and Spirit knows right then that he's lost the fight, that now it's just a matter of working out the details. "I'll put her up against a three-star meister, Sid Barrett. He's volunteered to help out with this; zombification and a few rumors should do the trick. Maka and Black*Star can go out with Soul and Tsubaki and take him on; Black*Star's been nearly as troublesome as Maka, though his challenges are somewhat different. Did you know that he took out the Sword God in single combat the other day? He only won due to a transpositional trick and I doubt that will work again but under pressure he really rises to the challenge!"

Something about Spirit's expression brings Lord Death's rambling to a halt. He clears his throat and continues. "Sid should provide enough challenge to require some actual work from all four of them. If not, they can go after the 'mastermind' behind Sid's transformation." Lord Death's voice twinges in amusement at the cleverness of his own story. Spirit doesn't roll his eyes. Quite. "That will be more than enough to push them to their limits."

"How can you be so sure they'll lose?" Spirit asks. He's grasping at straws; he's seen Sid in combat, and even on his own the meister is a force to be reckoned with, but he wants to argue in spite of his physical discomfort.

"I'll send them after Stein."

The fight in Spirit's head dies entirely as all of his thoughts go utterly blank. "Oh."

"That should be more than sufficient, don't you think? I know you haven't fought together in some time, but you did have the first impression of him at the Academy. He should be more than capable of taking on two first-star meisters at once."

"Yes." Spirit's voice sounds distant to his ears as if he is hearing a recording of his own speech. "Definitely." It takes him a moment to clear his thoughts into a singular thought, another moment to clear his throat and verify that his voice is relatively normal. "He's back, then?"

"Yep. Called him back from Germany specially for this assignment."

"Ah." He turns before he's excused, heading down the red archway to the exit and letting his feet decide his route for him. Lord Death calls after him - "Death Scythe?" - but he keeps going, not sure if the flutter in his stomach is panic or excitement or a terrible combination of both, but very sure that sufficient sake will get him through this as it gets him through everything, now.