Come on... Soul grumbled, drumming his fingers on the wooden library carrel. He looked at the clock - it was ten minutes until the end of lunch period. He was slouched in the chair accompanying desk number forty two. Unbeknownst to him, his right foot was bouncing his leg up and down rapidly, sending small seismic waves through the second floor of the library. Books populated the space stretching away from him in every dimension - up, down, side to side - an unfamiliar forest of pages, bindings, and covers. After a few circuits of the library perimeter, he'd decided to stay in one place and wait. Better odds than venturing into the maze...
"WhoEVER is VIBRATING the ENTIRE LIBRARY could you KNOCK IT OFF, for Shinigami's sake!" A harsh whisper pierced the silence a few rows in front of him.
Soul blinked, brought his renegade limb under control and stood up slowly. He'd been sure this was the right one...the one right next to the section on the History of Shibusen. He squinted at the label on the side of the stacks again - it read "History of Shisuben." Seriously? What the hell was Shisuben? Who was in charge naming crap around here...
He moved toward the carrel 3 rows up. The desk's built-in cubical wall screened its occupant from view, except for a pair of rugged, black boots and skinny white legs partially visible beneath.
As he drew up to the desk, he stood quietly for a moment, staring down.
Maka sat in the chair, hands folded in her lap, head bowed over a big, thick book. A big, thick, closed book. The book had nothing to recommend itself - no external writing, no pictures - just a small embossed leaf in the center. It looked like the kind that would probably smell extremely musty, and the burnt umber of its cover material screamed torturous boringness. As weird as she was about her books, Soul had never known Maka to attempt to interact with one in a closed state - unless it was embedding itself in his skull... this was unusual...
"Maka-" Soul said slowly, somewhat surprised that she hadn't noticed his presence as he loomed beside her.
"Go away, Soul, I'm studying." She said flatly, without looking up.
"Looks like it." Soul said, crossing his arms over the top of the cubicle and resting his chin on top.
Maka sighed, pushing her chair out from the desk. She picked up her bag and leaned the big book up on the carrel's shelf with a number of others. She let her mind focus on the way the books looked - spines of various colors paralleling each other with their special green carrel cards poking out from between the pages. Those cards meant she could check out as many books as she wanted, as long as she wanted, and leave them at her assigned carrel throughout the entire semester. She loved being a Senior. This place had become a haven of sorts for her...
"Don't bug me, Soul." She said. "We need to get to class."
She put the strap of her bag over her head, picked up her jacket from the back of the chair and started walking.
Soul growled, threw up his hands, and fell into step behind her. But not before taking a quick look at the book she'd been focused on. He flipped open the front cover. It was an old dictionary.
Come on, Maka...this is why people have smartphones...
As they passed through the library door and out into the hall, Soul reached out and hooked the strap of Maka's bag, interrupting her focused march toward the next class.
Maka spun around to tackle the problem. She had to readjust her eyes as a power bar was dangled in front of her face.
"Eat something, will ya?" Soul said.
"Ugh, where did you get that?" She asked.
"Blackstar. He keeps at least five on him at all times. "Tsubaki said you didn't come to lunch."
"Well, yeah, I had work to do." She said, smacking his hand away and continuing down the hall.
Soul followed, sneaking the admittedly unsavory snack into an outer pocket of her bag. Maybe she'd be hungry enough later to eat it out of desperation...
They'd reached the place where they needed to part ways - they had different classes this period.
"Hey Maka-" Soul started
"Don't wanna talk about it." She cut him off, turning to go.
Soul sighed. She had her own way of dealing with certain things. Or not dealing with them. There was definitely something unsettling about what had occurred that morning, but maybe taking a page out of her book made sense this time. He'd forget about it too.
Stein stared at the computer screen - an ancient green monochrome CRT, attached to a customized CPU with six state-of-the-art cores. He cranked the screw in his head a few rotations forward, a few more back, entered several keystrokes worth of data, and pushed away from the desk, rolling to the center of the room. He could feel the madness pounding in his ears - it had been close to the surface the last few months.
He folded his arms behind his head and began to spin the chair slowly. His eyes landed on the corner, where the last ceiling light in the row was sputtering above Marie's desk.
Marie had set up her own space in a corner of the office - her desk and the walls it stood in front of were covered with a shrine-like collection of items she referred to as "sentimental". Photographs and postcards and clippings from magazines. Taped to the wall were a few dozen magazine pages with tall skinny women in wedding dresses - styles she said she liked, a calendar with an image of two kittens in a pair of old boots open to March - the month she'd left on assignment, a photo with Marie, Spirit, Stein and Azusa as teenagers, and some other shots with people he didn't recognize.
On the desk sat a vase with eleven dried roses and a decorative picture frame with several different windows for photographs. The largest window held a photo with Marie and two women who looked very similar to her - one older, the other about the same age as Marie. The smaller windows held a black-and-white of a couple in 50's attire, and a recent photo of the same young-woman-who-was-not-Marie from the large photo together with a man - a baby in her arms. Along the bottom of the frame, in flowing, cursive script, the word "Family" was printed. Smaller words - "love", "warmth", "cherish", "forever" were scattered around the frame, some printed vertically.
Stein turned his head-screw as he pondered his Weapon's workspace. He was thinking about the feasibility of dissecting his own brain. It had been focusing on unusual things recently.
Maka was silent on the way home to the apartment.
Not that Soul could have heard anything - the bike was loud. She just...kind of felt silent. It seemed awkward...or something.
When they arrived, she hopped off and climbed the steps to the door. Soul caught up to her as she was digging for her keys in her bag.
He jingled his set in front of her, raising an eyebrow.
"Thanks, Soul." she said, giving a slight smile.
As they walked in, Maka threw her bag onto a chair and stretched. After a moment she headed to the kitchen and pulled some meat out of the fridge. She frowned and poked it with a knife.
"...still frozen..." she growled
"Let's order take-out." Soul said. "Mission tomorrow, remember?
She brightened.
"That sounds perfect."
She was mostly excited about the mission, Soul knew. It would be their first in nearly two months.
Later, as they downed chicken Lo Mein and egg rolls in front of the TV, the lingering strangeness of the morning seemed to dissipate - almost.
Soul looked at Maka out of the corner of his eye, sitting on the other end of the couch. She was zoned into the TV show, legs drawn up to her chest, munching on an egg roll she was holding with the fingertips of both hands like a koala with a handful of eucalyptus.
It was kind of adorable. But spacing out at a TV show wasn't usually her style-specially one about people driving large semi-trucks over the frozen tundra. Soul still felt a little unbalanced himself - images and feelings played lightly beneath his normal senses - like a waking dream. He had to concentrate a little to push them back. It almost had a tinge of madness to it...
He shook his head to clear it.
No big deal. He just needed to get this out of his system.
It would be good to fight tomorrow.
Thank you reviewers for your kind comments! -CF