They arrive at the Bureau and Maka is immediately rolled away to parts unknown. Her screeches echo through the hall as the space between them grows.
He's pretty sure he hears his name garbled among her screams.
Soul tries to sit at his desk, fill out his paperwork, complete his fieldwork assignment, but glinting scales and soft, green eyes distract him so much that he ends up sketching her on the corner of his report.
He's not sure how he's going to explain that one without wanting to set himself on fire.
Soul crumples his report into a ball and chucks it at the wastebasket on his way out of the door. He stalks the hallways, peeking into every cracked door he can. He becomes aware of three new office romances before he finally gets to a secluded lab at the end of a dim hallway.
He only went that way because Ox's office was on the opposite end of the building, and Soul knows the idiot thinks he is smarter than Soul.
Soul does a 180 and steps in a broom closet as the lab door swings open, a flustered Ox drying his bald scalp with a towel slips out. Soul leaves the door cracked as he listens.
"She won't talk to us, she won't eat; this is the third suit she's ruined this week. I told Kid we needed a smaller tank," Ox grumbled into a wireless headset.
Ox pauses and puts the mouthpiece closer to his lips as he shouts, "I'm not asking Evans for help. This is my lab. My project. I'll take care of the mermaid. Any discoveries are going to be mine and mine alone." Ox stalks down the hallway, steam practically rising from his ears.
Ox doesn't look back to see that the lab door remained unlocked.
Soul slipped in and entered Ox's lock combo.
O-X-R-O-X.
The steel lock slide into place, locking Soul inside.
He turns to take in the lab, hoping that wherever Maka was kept wasn't hidden somewhere else, because Ox wasn't the type to leave the lab for very long, unless it was to harass Kim, the head of Magical Practices and Research.
He doesn't have to look far.
The tank is about as wide as his entire apartment, and taller than he is by a couple of feet. It touches the lab walls at each end, the only space left over saved for a small, square table covered in notes, a laptop, and a small tray of raw fish. There's a ladder in the middle of the floor, which appears to have caused a large dent in the wall opposite of the tank.
She's swims slowly, but her long tail's powerful strokes sending her from one end of the tank to the other in a couple of seconds.
Soul watches her until her she swims too far, her face lost and dreamy, and bonks her head on the tank glass. The air rushes out of her mouth in a stream of bubbles as she clutches her head, squinting through the bleak of what looks like a pretty gnarly headache.
He barks out a laugh and Maka swims blindly to the opposite end of the tank, as far as she can away from Soul.
"Hey," he says, tapping on the glass. Maka winces, but opens her eyes and smiles, swimming to the top of the tank.
"Hello." Her voice is cheery, but scratchy from under use. "Don't tap on the glass."
He looks up at her and awkwardly withdraws his hand from the tank's surface. "So the rumor is true?"
She scrunches her nose and it's the most adorable thing Soul has ever seen. "What rumor?"
"Tapping on the glass bothers fish."
Maka sputters indignantly, and splashes water at him. "I'm not a fish!"
Soul scrambles to cover his hair, and she laughs at his squirming. She dives back down in her tank, taking a couple of turns and glancing back at him. For the first time, he notices that she's not wearing a shirt, or a seashell bra. She's not wearing anything at all. He sees her skin, and he sees her scales; they're iridescent in the harshly lit lab, fluctuating between pink and blue and green.
Soul licks his lips and tastes salt.
He looks around for a moment, because staring is considered rude in most cultures, probably even in mermaid ones. His eyes stop at the ladder strewn across the lab, oddly bend and missing a rung. Soul grabs it and balances it precariously against the tank, climbing it carefully until he can see over the lip of the tank.
Maka swims up to him, surfacing. She perches her elbows on the tank beside him, smiling. Soul tries to smiles back but falters when the ladder wobbles under his weight. She giggles and grabs the top rung before he topples over and he can finally smile at her, albeit gratefully.
He steadies himself for a moment before asking, "Did Ox try to talk to you or something?"
Maka scowls and Soul tries not to be amused by her mercurial moods. "Yes," she says sullenly. "He kept asking me things, trying to feed me fish."
"Don't eat fish?"
She shakes her head, her nose reverted to that ridiculously cute wrinkle. He's close enough to touch her, and his hand moves from the top rung of the ladder to the edge of the tank but it's too late. She pushes herself off casually, floating a few feet towards the middle of the tank.
Soul tries again. "Do you like it here?"
She shrugs, mouth twisted into a pout. "It's not a tub." She dives down and takes a few turns, occasionally bumping into the walls of the tank. When she resurfaces, she grins and spits a stream of water at him.
He gets it.
It's not a bathtub, but it's not the ocean.
"I'll get you home," he swears.
Maka raises an eyebrow. "You will?"
"Yes," Soul says vehemently. "I promise; you'll be home by the end of the week. Whatever it takes."
She flashes him the biggest, most beautiful smile he has ever seen in his life as she quickly swims up to him. She lifts herself to meet his eyes, her hands on either side on his on the edge of the tank.
She brushes her nose against his; an innocent gesture of mermaid appreciation, his brain is sure, but his heart threatens to leap up his throat.
"Thank you," she whispers.
The door behind him creaks open and there's a shout but Soul can't hear it. Maka hisses and dives back into the water; the resulting slash hits him in the face, waking him up and soaking his clothes. Shaking his head to clear the fog, he lowers himself down the ladder, a screeching Ox waiting for him.
"You're contaminating the evidence," Ox shouts. "We don't even know if she has diseases humans can get, or if we have something that could kill her!"
"She shouldn't even be here," Soul snaps. "She belongs in the ocean.
Ox looks stricken for a second. "What did she say to you?" He asks, his eyebrows furrowed in worry.
Soul's taken aback. It's not like Ox to display any emotion towards another human being, other than contempt and occasionally nauseating romantic obsession when it came to Kim, the Head of Witchcraft Research. "Why?"
"She hasn't said a word," Ox says in a low voice. "I've been trying for days, weeks-"
"Ain't got the moves, huh?"
"Shut up," Ox hisses. Soul snorts but obliges, turning from Ox in favor of watching Maka do laps in her tank. She eyes Ox suspiciously, occasionally mouthing what looks like some vicious swear words in his direction.
Ox watches Maka, too, frustration etching lines between his eyebrows and around his mouth. "I need your help," he mutters.
Soul starts, and quickly tries to hide it by lacing both hands behind his head. "What was that?"
"I'm not getting anywhere with my research," Ox says. "She won't cooperate with me; but she seems to accept you, if not like you."
Soul hopes his hot face can be played off as sunburn, but it's the middle of winter and he's blushing like a preteen band geek getting ready to ask the cutest girl in middle school to the dance. He's not sure why he's so red, it might have something to do with Maka and how she's staring right back at him, smiling and hiding behind the fins of her tail.
"I need your help," Ox spits behind gritted teeth.
Soul stretches. "What's in it for me?" he asks, as if he hasn't already agreed to it 1000 times in his head.
"You can be third author for my paper on mermaid nutrition and health habits."
"Pass."
"Second author?" Ox wheedles.
"Hard pass."
"$50 per session," Ox snaps. "And I'll give you the key to the lab."
Key to the lab… He could stay with Maka after hours... plot their- her- escape….
"Fine, fine," Soul says offhandedly. "I'll do it. But you owe me."
Ox explodes into a rain of thanks and sniveling, so Soul quickly makes his exit, but not before saying good-bye to Maka. He scales the ladder again, and sticks his arms in the water, up to his elbows. He hardly expects her to grab both of his hands in hers and grinning at him and squeezing his hands from beneath the surface.
She's ethereal and oddly precious, her golden hair swirling around her, the sharpness in her eyes enhanced by the light bouncing off the small waves.
Soul was going to get her out of there.
Whatever it takes.