The first time Franken Stein heard about Spirit Albarn, it was just after he had entered the academy, back when everyone was so focused on him being a child genius that they had yet to notice the inherent madness inside of him.
Spirit was a subject that came up regularly in the gossip: he was the weapon that still hadn't found a partner after having spent more than two years at the academy.
He probably wouldn't have given much attention to the subject if he hadn't overheard two teachers talking about said weapon, and proceeded to fill in the blanks to complete the picture: Spirit Albarn, it turned out, was an incredibly powerful young weapon born with the ability to control the wavelength of those around him. And meisters were a prideful bunch used to being in control, none of them wanted to pair up with a weapon capable of taking that power away.
But with the madness relentlessly whispering in the back of his mind, Stein needed his control to be taken away.
So he went to meet the older boy. He didn't introduce himself, he just stood there looking at the boy sitting under a tree, hunched over a book, his long red hair -the exact same color as fresh blood- hiding his eyes and most of his face. Then Spirit raised his head and Franken momentarily lost himself in those inquisitive turquoise eyes.
As the weapon studied him, he didn't stop at Stein's strangely colored hair, or his too big glasses and sickly pale skin, nor at his weird clothing. Instead, the redhead almost seemed to look right through him, head slightly tilted to the side, as if analyzing something only he could see.
Then he wordlessly held out his hand towards the smaller boy. Strangely, there was no hesitation when Stein took it, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, the voices went silent.
