Seven Deadly Sins

~Greed~

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"You gonna let us in or what?"

Professor Stein raised an eyebrow at the snark in the young boys tone, and stepped aside soundly. He widened the door for the obviously exhausted pair, watching as Soul dragged and dropped his partner on the couch in his living room.

Soul's eyes shifted around the room, still slightly discomforted by all the lab equipment and unusually stitched furniture that's been continuously opened and sewn back together. He let Maka slump out of his arms, her limbs hanging off the sofa sloppily.

"It's late." Stein stated, not necessarily as a complaint, but rather as a question for why these children were out getting busted up and half naked at four in the morning.

Soul sighed loudly and fell into the armchair next to his meister, sending a glower to the man, "Sorry to disrupt your beauty sleep."

Stein closed the door and approached Maka. He noted the obvious signs of her condition, her limbs were limp and eyes rolled heavily to the back of her head. He picked up her arm and let it fall.

Stein noticed the gash on the side of her forehead then, and picked out the strands of her bangs from the drying blood. "What happened here?"

Soul watched the two tiredly. "My bike crashed. By the way, you got any medicine?" he got up to head towards the bathroom, "Or an X-Ray machine?"

Soul was half joking on that last part, but with the location of the first aid kit in the bathroom and an actual X-Ray scanner next to the fridge, he trudged his way in and out of the stitched rooms.

Soul came back with the kit and settled next to Maka on the floor, popping open the case.

Stein stood to the side and let the young boy take care of his meister, gently patting the blood off of her forehead and bandaging it up with a simple bandaid. It seemed her wounds were healing quite remarkably.

"She needs to stay here tonight." Soul stated, without an inch of wiggle room in his tone. He looked up to his professor as he finished taking care of Maka. "I don't trust her alone anymore. She's dangerous."

Stein was truly intrigued by the situation that popped up at his house, and despite the many questions that he had about what was happening, he still found his eyes drooping from having to awaken at such a late hour. He already was typically a night owl, staying up to the late ends of the night to work on experiments and such for both himself and Lord Death. It was quite exhausting.

These kids look like their night was a little more rough, though.

"I have a spare bedroom." he suggested.

"No," Soul grimaced as he stood up, clutching his chest, "Something more secure. She's gone mad, I think. Just something to keep her in place until the morning."

That word sparked something in Stein. He found it concerning, unusually concerning almost, not by the fact that it was the simple word that stirred something within him, but that the mere presence of a soul overcome with madness didn't do the same affect. He out of all people should have noticed if the soul was as overtaken with madness as Soul said.

This situation truly had him on his toes. He felt that gnawing sensation of exhaustion slowly fade away as curiosity filled its place. He itched to know more.

"I have a room," he repeated, as he picked Maka up from the couch.

Soul followed warily behind the scientist and came to saw the 'room' his professor had in mind. He stopped at the foot of the doorway, discomforted, but not surprised.

A giant cage filled the space of the barren bedroom, metal bars surrounding the walls that looked years older than the man himself. Scratch marks from claws led a very distinct pathway to the door of the cage, and upon further inspection from the weapon, the same creature that made those marks probably also made the bite indents on the steel bars.

Stein placed Maka on the floor of the cage gently and closed the door with a small squeak. He cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses, casually.

He noticed Soul staring at the confinement blankly.

"I had to test an experiment once. It's alright, it's dead." he explained, with his hands on his hip.

Soul watched as Stein dismissed himself and left the room soundly, and looked back to Maka. He rolled his eyes and exited himself, whispering a variety of comments to himself.

He found Stein sauntering down the hallway, "So what do you think's happening?"

The professor didn't even look back as he went into his bedroom. "I don't know. Let me think on it, you can give me more details in the morning."

Soul scoffed as the door shut in his face. He wondered furiously why everyone was doing that to him.

Only a few short hours later, Soul found himself shocked awake from his slumber on the couch. He was overcome with dizziness and an awful ache in his side as a familiar voice echoed throughout the home. He felt a whoosh of air rush by him.

"MAKAA!"

Soul whipped all around him in a stupor of sleep, "…Spirit?"

The room was empty to Soul, the front door wide open and a loud sobbing down the hallway. Maka's dad appeared as the cries of sorrow got louder, sniveling pathetically as he returned to the one person he knew would have an explanation for the disappearance of his daughter.

It was Stein, but Soul was the next best thing.

"You!" he growled, fuming in the archway. He glared furiously at the death weapon sprawled on the couch. "I always knew you were no good!"

"Huh?" Soul drawled. He was dragged to his feet by his shirt then and slammed against the wall, disgusted by the snot and tears covering the face a few centimeters away from his own. "The hell you doin' old man!"

"What happened to my Maka!" he demanded, shaking the boy furiously, "Why is she in a cage! She's not some animal you asshole!"

Soul grew heated now, gritting his teeth at the incessant jerking, "I know that! You don't think I know that?! Get off me, you're gross!"

Soul pressed his palm to the man's face and shoved, but the sobbing father refused to even budge.

Professor Stein, now awake from all the endless screaming stalked into his living room. He had a tick in his forehead, where a mighty big headache was living also. He sighed at the man assaulting the young boy and rolled his eyes.

"And why the hell is she shirtless! If I found out you did anything to my baby or even looked at her I'll kill you myself!" Spirit bared his teeth. Soul glowered at the man in annoyance, still trying to squirm out of his place.

"There ain't nothin' to look at anyways, get off!" Soul hissed, "She took it off herself, I didn't do nothin'!"

Spirit slammed the short boy against the wall again, "Maka's not some easy fling, you lie! Especially with a loser like you!"

Soul was about to roll his eyes into the back of his head. He tightened his jaw in hopes he could himself back from smacking some sense into the grown man, but as he felt that restraint slipping, he turned to the only other man who could do something.

"Stein! You wanna get this psycho off me?" he managed, hands still crawled around his neck. They tightened harder at that comment.

Stein watched the two in a mundane silence, his hand busily digging in his coat pocket and his lips shut. He flicked open his cigarette case and lit one, taking a long drag before he even spared the two a word.

He knew as soon as he opened his eyes that morning that it would be a 'full pack' kind of day.

Exhaling, he sighed. "Spirit, let the boy go. He saved her life last night, if you couldn't tell."

Spirit whipped back to his old meister, "He did?"

Soul gazed at Stein with the same expression, wondering the same thing with just as much confusion.

"His bike crashed," Stein explained, slumping down into his armchair. "That gash on her head was deeper than expected, she'd probably have bled out if he didn't bring her here."

Soul couldn't tell whether he was lying to save him or not, but as he felt the clamp on his neck loosen, he found he didn't care that much. Spirit let Soul drop to the floor and they both came over to the scientist.

"She's okay then?" Spirit asked, wiping his tears away. Soul peeked over his shoulder, awaiting an answer also.

"Yeah she's fine," he droned, rubbing circles in his temple, "I stitched her up last night."

Soul tried to recall when the man ever did that, and he felt anxious when he couldn't remember that moment, "When?"

Stein blew out a puff of smoke, "After you went to sleep. I was going to wait to examine her in the morning but I got a little excited, I couldn't help myself."

Spirit was on top of him before he could even bat an eyelash, shaking his body back and forth wildly, "WHAT DID YOU DO TO—"

A crash thudded through the room, Spirit Albarn now beneath an overturned sofa.

"I didn't operate on her, now shut up and calm down." Stein hissed, lowering his foot from the empty air above him. It was way too early for all that yelling.

Soul sat down on the couch beside his professor and waited impatiently for him to dismiss Spirit. "So what did you find? She seemed–"

"What were those marks? On her neck?" Stein interrupted. Soul let his words die out, stunned at the sudden question.

"What?"

"The bite marks. On her neck." Stein elaborated, slowly. "You two were on a mission recently right?"

Soul thought a moment, "Yeah, but that was from a while ago. Back in Loew. One of Arachne's foot soldiers got a clamp on her." He watched quietly as Stein brainstormed the newly found information. "You think that has something to do with what's happening?"

He hummed in agreement. Soul sighed loudly then, bringing a hand to press against his temple. He should've known that bite was the cause behind this, she had been acting too weird and out of place for it to be anything else. He felt a familiar sense of guilt as he wondered if all of this could've been prevented if he just brought her to the man earlier.

"You said she was dangerous." This brought Soul's eyes to his professors, "Last night. She needed to be confined, why is that?"

Soul slumped back in his seat, rubbing the back of his neck. "You know ever since that bite she's been completely off? First she starts getting all irritable, grumpy you know? And I figure maybe she's just having a bad week or somethin', but it kept getting worse. She got so angry over nothing, it was ridiculous. Then all the sudden I find her in my bed with her damn scythe to my neck, spouting nonsense–"

"Nonsense? What did she say?" Stein tested.

Soul shrugged. "Just…nothing that meant anything. It wasn't her, I swear. She was gone in the eyes. I got her off of me but she passed out, and that's when I brought her to you. But then she woke up and crashed my bike and…"

Stein rose an eyebrow at the hesitation in his voice. He stumbled over the next few words, him being the one spouting nonsense now and Stein could note ten different signs of embarrassment from his appearance alone.

"What did she do when she woke up?"

Soul could feel eyes on him. Stein's was rough enough on him, but the bright blue pair that was radiating a storm next to him on the couch was enough to keep him quiet. He glanced to Spirit, now listening very intently, and cleared his throat.

"She got all…touchy." he mumbled.

Soul hoped that would be enough for the scientist to work with, but the familiar words of, "Can you elaborate?" rang death bells in his head.

Really? He had to sit here and explain to his professor and Maka's father that she had been trying to get in his pants?

Soul glared at Stein and he simply gazed back, that flicker of amusement definitely not going unnoticed by the student.

"She was flirting with me," he bared his teeth, feeling a fume of anger pile up next to him.

"And she caused the crash this way?"

"Yes, like I said before, she was getting touchy and I lost my balance." he gritted. Stein hummed of interest. Spirit on the other hand was muttering various conspiracies on how that night really went.

"She was relentless, she just–she was–" Soul tried to think of a way not to make this sound as bad as it was.

"Would you say she was overcome with lust?" Stein questioned.

"Yes! That! That's it," Soul grinned to Spirit, who glared in reply.

The two in a stare off didn't notice the professor starting towards the bedroom until he was down the hallway. They both followed hot on his feet.

"I knew there was a reason I couldn't tell she was mad," he muttered, mostly to himself. He grinned and knocked open the door to the spare bedroom, revealing a very wide awake Maka. "She's notmad at all."

Grunts sounded throughout the barren room. Maka sat in her cage, hung more like, upside-down with her knees curled around the top bars. She was covered in sweat and sounded out of breath at each exhale as she curled her chest up to her knees, and slowly brought it back to hang upside down. The boys watched, their eyes following her movements as she worked out without missing a single beat.

"The hell you mean she's not mad?" Soul whispered, as if afraid to interrupt her.

Stein entered the room more, coming around to the side of her cage to observe her more closely, "Does this look like the actions of someone overcome with insanity? Even you must have noticed Soul, this wasn't like before when you two fought against Crona. This is different, much different."

Spirit sniveled out of the blue then, his face smushed up against the bars disgustingly, "Maka…it's daddy. Tell me what's wrong so I can–so I can–" the sobs spilled from his lips then, unable to get the rest of his sentence out without hiccuping. He slumped to his knees in a distressed heap.

Soul ignored the man and came up to Stein. "What the hell is this then, Stein?"

"It's an alternate form," he said, "Those foot soldiers that Arachne had, they were strengthened by Eibon's demons tools when she gathered them all. This is just a theory, but it's possible that whatever magic was left by Eibon in that Arachnid, could have transferred over into Maka when she was bitten."

Soul watched as Maka continued to ignore her father's protests and grunted with each crunch. "So what the hell does that mean?"

Stein grinned at Maka like the madman he was. "It means we've just made a very intriguing discovery, Soul Eater Evans."

Soul didn't like the way that man eyed Maka, but said nothing about it. Professor Stein was out the door again in a blink of his eye, and he followed suit out of dissatisfaction of his last answer. "What kind of discovery?"

"The Arachnids weren't human. They were Kishin eggs, corrupted souls already succumbed to madness; Maka isn't mad, at least not yet." he explained, in a flurry of his own thoughts. "Every person has some level of madness in their soul, usually just burrowed away, like in hibernation until something activates it, like the demon and black blood with you. Eibon's demon tools could be the spark in her insanity here, it's mixed with the madness inside her soul and created something entirely new!"

Stein cackled in pure astonishment and dropped into his rolling chair, spinning around happily, "It's amazing! That's what it is!"

"What is it?" Soul tested.

Stein stopped abruptly in his little spell of glee and gave a dark grin to the boy. "It's found something it knows inside her. Something familiar. All of the items Eibon has made were connected to each other, someway or another. Do you know what that means?"

Soul shook his head uselessly.

Stein shot off in his rolling chair and zoomed back down the hallway towards Maka's room. He skidded to a stop right in the door, gazing at her like she was something entirely new.

"It means it's reacting to the book," he uttered, gently, "The Seven Deadly Sins. I should've known sooner."

Soul came up beside him, dragging his feet in a dumbfounded slur. "You mean Eibon's book? The one we traveled in?"

"You all went into that book clean and came out with a piece of Eibon inside you. It's harmless, that is until too much magic is mixed with it, which is what happened to Maka. Right now, her entire body and mind is overtaken by Eibon's book. She's travelling through the book like she did last time, only in a more personal and intense sense."

"It took time to gradually settle in, but I believe that last little touchy feely stunt she pulled with you last night was just the beginning of it." he said.

"Lust?" questioned Soul.

Stein hummed. "Chapter one. Her soul is trying to exorcise Eibon's magic to cleanse itself, and this is the only way it knows how."

Soul glanced back to Maka now, her father still crumbled by the door to the cage and her torso still working those crunches. He stepped in then, feeling a bit better with a proper explanation of what was happening with his meister, but not by much. It was still a foreign concept, definitely an unusual one at that, and he didn't like it at all.

"Oi Maka," He said. He paused a minute, unsure of what kind of spell she might be experiencing now, and softened his voice. He supposed yelling some sense into her wouldn't do it's natural trick when she would get stubborn with him. "Can you hear me?"

Exhales of air still echoed through the room as she brought herself up and down, up and down again. Her eyes connected with his as she hung upside down at one point, before she broke the contact to curl herself back up.

"What are you doing?" He asked her.

She exhaled a few more times, and Soul was surprised enough to see her hesitate for a moment, and gradually stop. She removed her knees from the bars and hopped down to her feet, her body sleek in sweat and red to the sight. "It's not enough."

She had said that so softly, Soul nearly missed it. He stepped up to ask her to repeat, but he found he didn't have to as she did so anyways. Again and again, in such an pestered way that it angered her.

"Why can't I be like her?" she demanded to know, gripping at her drooping pigtails. She curled her hands around the bars, tightly, and bared her teeth, "It's never enough, never enough."

Maka was restless. She shifted on her feet like she hated staying in place and kept her eyes moving all around, never getting caught on one thing for too long. Finally she snapped and punched the metal bar with a frustrated growl.

"I need!–I need–" she didn't know how to finish it. She didn't know what she needed, she just needed it. All she could see when she closed her eyes was her, why?

"Who do you need to be like?" she heard suddenly. She turned and glanced to Soul on the other side of the cage.

"Her." she whispered. "She's perfect. She's so strong and amazing, I need to be like her. I have to be like her."

Soul didn't think he knew of anyone Maka thought of so highly like that, until he heard a soft groan come from his feet. He looked down to Spirit, frowning to himself.

"Her mother." he clarified, "She's the only person she feels inadequate to be compared with. The only idol she ever had, even when I was right there by her side the whole time."

Soul rolled his eyes as tears pricked the man's eyes, "Right, because you're such a person to look up to."

But, her mother. That made a lot more sense to Soul. She wanted to be like her mother, she needed it. She craved it, like nothing she ever did was enough.

"It's greed." Soul heard behind him.

Professor Stein came rolling in and watched as Maka continued to work out now, practicing her punches and kicks in the free space of her cage.

"She doesn't feel satisfied with the power she has now, she wants more. More and more, it's the only thing it could be." he said.

Soul watched for a while longer as she ignored any more comments towards her, and kept at the vigorous routines. She practiced her scythe-work without a scythe, she didn't even care that she was thrown into an animal cage. She didn't care about any of her surroundings, and Soul could tell right then that that was going to be a problem later.

After a while of her non-responsiveness, Soul and Stein left her to herself, deciding she wasn't doing any harm, and dragged Spirit behind themselves.

"She's going full Black Star in there, isn't there anything we can do?" Soul asked, glancing behind him in concern.

Everyone made their way back into the living room, settling down on the couches and finally taking a breath.

"Not really." Stein answered, "This is her way of healing herself. She just needs time to purge the rest of Eibon's magic from her soul and she should go back to normal."

"So she'll be okay then?" Spirit asked hopefully, a glimmer in his eye.

Stein opened his mouth to reply, but Soul's disgruntled voice broke in, "Hold on, hold on. So you're telling me we're going to have to deal with her going through every sin? How long do these spells even last?"

Professor Stein shrugged, "It can vary. This is my first time, after all. And I told you, this is just my theory."

Soul resisted bashing his head into the wall. He slumped back into his seat instead of doing so and pressed a finger to his temple. "Well we can't keep her locked up in that cage forever. She's not an animal, we're gonna have to let her out. Isn't there a way to just snap her out of it? What if we convince her she's just as great as her mom or something?"

Stein sat up in his seat then, "No no no, that would be bad. Very bad."

Soul was tired of feeling surprised at this point, "Another theory?"

"Yes, which all happen to be accurate 99.7% of the time," he said, "If what I'm thinking is correct, then the only reason Maka is able to heal and cleanse her soul like she is, is because she's unsatisfied. The last thing we want to do is indulge her wants, any of them as she travels through the Sins. She'll just keep wanting more and more, that's the point of the Seven Deadly Sins to humans. She's hanging by a thread of being thrown into utter madness. She has to overcome these obstacles of corruption in her mind, soul, and body. The only thing we can control out here is her body, and even then we shouldn't interfere unless it's dire."

No one liked hearing this, but it was something they needed to hear. This was a mission Maka had to take on her own, and it frustrated Soul to no end that he couldn't do anything to help her. He hated all of this.

A cry of frustration echoed throughout Stein's home then. All eyes turned towards the hallways at Maka's scream, hearing more clanging and banging of her intense workouts. Dissatisfaction was always a pain, but this, to Maka, was something on an entirely different level.

Flashes of her failures whizzed by her eyes like a never ending clip of film. It infuriated her that her mother probably never lost so many pathetic times. She smashed her fist into the steel metal bar again, forcing her jaw to clench up. She hated that she felt the pain of that hit, the searing sting that locked her muscles in tremors.

Her fingers felt slimy as blood seeped through the cracks from her knuckles. Her hand trembled in a raging pain, and she hated it. It was never enough. She needed to be better, she needed more power.

She needed to be better. Better than Her.

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I will be forever bitter about the chapter hopping Soul and Maka did in Eibon's book. Sort of winged a few of these sins.

Review!