Dissection SOS

Chapter 4: The Nuisances Of Traveling

Stein guided the yawning teens through the airport, grumbling under his breath about how poorly teenagers and early mornings went together. Or really anything to do with teenagers. Stein hated the little brats more and more with every minute he spent with the loud assassin, the grumpy scythe, the half-asleep demon guns, and their respective irritating technicians.

It didn't even help his mood when Maka yawned, and said, "Oh, shut up, Soul. We'll be fighting things soon enough," the white haired boy grunted in response.

By the time everyone got through the airport security, Stein was ready to pull out a scalpel and teach them all a lesson. At least the airport security had backed off of him when he'd shown his Shibusen ID, and a personal pass from Shinigami-sama. Of course, that didn't stop them from putting him through all the various x-ray machines and running every sensor they had over him.

They weren't pleased when he explained the metal detector would go off regardless, because of his screw. They'd even told him they were suspicious that the screw might contain explosives. Though they had guessed correctly, given that the chemicals he stored in the screw could be used to make a hydrogen bomb, that didn't mean he was a terrorist. He just liked blowing things up. Really, what was their problem?

To make matters worse, Blackstar was laughing his head off. Loudly, of course. With a bleak humor edged with the desire to actually test it, Stein wondered what the young assassin would do without his vocal cords. The very least Stein could do for the world would be to stiffen Blackstar's vocal cords up a bit, to keep him closer to an acceptable decibel level. Or he could just take them out entirely, but where was the challenge in that?

Maka had her nose in a book, and a bored Soul had to drag her after the group, earning a Maka-chop. Their ensuing argument had Stein's hand twitching towards the scalpel-bearing pocket of his lab coat. Eventually, the arguing couple caught his glares and quieted down a bit. Finally, they reached the gate.

Liz and Patty couldn't make trouble because they were too busy helping Kid through an OCD breakdown. Really, if the young Shinigami was going to be symmetrical with his toilet paper, why not just leave it in squares, Stein wondered.

On their lay over, between flights, Stein just managed to catch Blackstar as he tried to beat a plane in an unannounced race. On the tarmac. To top it off, Kid recovered, and allowed Patty and Liz to buy sodas. Liz defied chemistry: carbonation isn't that gaseous! It alternately made Stein disgusted, or even more eager to dissect her. As for Patty, Stein had no idea so many things could be turned into giraffes so fast. Or get their necks snapped so quickly.

Dealing with unhappy passengers who'd had their suitcases mauled in Patty's giraffe craze, or Blackstar's displeasure at not being allowed to beat an airplane, (because the man who will surpass God can obviously run faster than a plane), or had popped ear drums from Liz's concussive belches, put Stein in a very bad mood.

Halfway through the long flight, he walked down the rows to check on his charges. He stayed on the other side of the plane (the opposite aisle) because this was the beginning of his experiments. He would observe how the pairs faired on the long flight, without them being any the wiser!

It was entirely on purpose that the three groups had been separated from the others, left to their own devices for a few hours on a plane. After all, how much trouble could they get into on a plane? That was exactly was Stein intended to test.

Patty was giggling and poking the sleeping man beside her, who by all rights should have bought two seats. Overflowing from your own seat seemed to be humiliating and uncomfortable, judging by the man's sleeping scowl. As Patty enjoyed trying to fit the unconscious person into their seat (or at least out of hers) Liz avidly played the games offered on the miniature game consul set up in the back of every seat. Kid, beside her, was playing the plane-wide competitive world trivia game (as opposed to Liz's shooting game, which Stein thought ironic, since Kid was the technician).

Writing this down, Stein craned his neck and saw, much to his displeasure, Kid was using the username 88refer88, the pseudonym of the only person that had been able to beat Stein in the game this entire trip. He'd thought 'refer' was the person trying to mean anyone could refer to them for information, because they knew so many facts, but now he realized it was a palindrome word as well: it was the same word spelled both forwards and backwards. In that way, it was sort of symmetrical, and pertained to the game. Besides, 88? He should have known…

Stein hadn't realized he was glaring at Kid with a lethal gleam in his eyes until he heard a frightened flight attendant whispering to the stewardess. He shot a glare their way and their eyes grew wide. They left him alone. Just as he turned back to Kid, still winning the game, a voice coming from right in front of him said, "Look, Mister!" He glanced down to see a tiny four-year-old girl holding a pocket mirror up to him.

"Mommy keeps telling me that if you move your face like that, it'll stick that way forever! Smile!" the girl chirped happily, Stein's earlier angered expression going right over her head. Stein found the situation thoroughly disconcerting. It must have shown on his face, for the blond woman sitting next to the girl smiled knowingly at him.

He was surprised when he saw her. "Marie? It's been a while. Is this your daugh-"

"Oh, no, Stein. I'm just looking after her. My subordinate, the head of defense in Oceania, wanted her daughter to stay with her grandparents in the Bahamas until this mess with Azura has been cleared up," Marie explained gently, "Shinigami-sama had been wanting me to come by to pick up some plans and maps and such for Oceania and myself, so I figured I'd take little Talia here to her grandparents, after stopping by Death City," Talia ignored them, absorbed in a coloring book on her lap.

Stein blinked, disturbed by Marie's desire to help with a problem that didn't really seem to be her problem, and would certainly be more trouble for her than not. He'd never understood her, though they'd met occasionally over the years when she passed by Death City. Funny, usually she stopped by to chat at least. And give him coffee… Stein was pleased, maybe that meant he wouldn't have to put up with her long, worried discussions about others when all he wanted to do was go in the other room and dissect something, anymore.

He sighed, figuring it was time to get the polite necessities out of the way so he would get to study Blackstar before the optimal time Stein had calculated to study him was over. So trying to keep the boredom out of his voice, he asked Marie, "Don't you want your children out of it too?" and before he realize his mistake, Marie glared at him, angry.

She threw a pencil at his head, which he blocked only with his quick reflexes and the clipboard he was holding. The pencil quivered, parallel to the ground, stuck solidly in his clipboard. "I don't have-" she began angrily, but her voice broke and she finished sobbing, "Have any-y k-kids-s!" She sobbed, and Stein considered the woman.

He flipped to a blank page on his clipboard and began taking notes. Secretly, he was slightly glad she couldn't see the 'reacts violently to being asked about the well-being of children' and 'clearly overly hormonal' or 'stutters in response to emotional stimuli' he was writing down. Hmm, there could be any number of reasons for her to act this way. To test one theory, he began to ask her a question, "By any chance are you about to start your per-" but she shrieked "MARIE-CHOP" and slammed him on the head with the thick romance novel she'd been reading.

"I'll take that as a yes," he slurred, trying to recover from the magnificently hard blow.

"Hmph!" she crossed her arms and turned away from him. Stein smirked and walked off to go observe Blackstar.

The blue-haired idiot was trying to open the emergency exit from his seat two rows in front it. Tsubaki was ineffectively attempting to convince him to do something else. He wasn't interested in the games the plane had to offer. No, he was only interested in trying to stretch his arms far enough to depressurize the entire cabin, sucking everyone out into the sky over the middle of the sea, 10,000 feet below.

Once Stein had finished writing down his observations and made inferences as to the psychological processes behind Blackstar's actions, he considered intervening before Blackstar actually managed to kill everyone in here. Not that Blackstar realized that's what would happen. Stein knew the boy just saw the red letters warning people not to open it unless it was an emergency. Either it was an emergency to see instructions on how to open a door, and not being permitted to open it, or the assassin had very selective reading abilities.

Before Stein had to intervene, Blackstar's arms had reached the row before the emergency exit. Unfortunately for him, the well-endowed woman in the seat closest to the window was sleeping slouched against the wall of the plane. Predicting what was going to happen, Stein whipped out a video camera. This would be too fun not to watch over and over.

Utterly unaware, Blackstar continued his quest for the door. With a hoot of laughter, Stein wondered what he must have been thinking. As if the assassin could even come up with something remotely plausible. Then again, Blackstar was a teenage boy. There was a possibility he could guess correctly.

Apparently not, because he then felt around, probably to try to understand what he was touching. The woman woke with a scream, not that Blackstar noticed. He was too puzzled. "Tsubaki, why are the seats behind us so much softer?" he asked loudly. She turned around to see what he meant, and shrieked as well. The ever-calm Tsubaki hauled off and slapped Blackstar with all her might.

Since he'd long since forgone his seatbelt, the boy flew into the side of the plane, breath and spit knocked out of him. He eyes were wide, staring at his livid partner. Stein was willing to bet he'd never seen his partner like this before. This time though, she had a right to be.

"You would dare to slap the man who will surpass God?!" Blackstar shouted, half angry, half confused.

"Well, when you go putting you hands on strangers' b-" Tsubaki screamed, then choked, seemingly unable to continue. Even Stein never would have guessed she could easily match her meister's volume when angry. He immediately began scribbling down facts, keeping the video camera trained on them, capturing the flight attendant trying to shush them.

Before the typically calm and self-conscious girl could work up the spunk to continue her rant, Blackstar howled, and finally drew his hand back to his lap. Tsubaki, Blackstar, Stein, and the video camera turned to see the woman holding a massive hammer, glaring daggers at the young assassin.

Stein couldn't stop laughing! Not when he saw the huge bruise on Blackstar's arm, quickly swelling up. Nor when he saw the dent in the side of the plane from the impact of the hammer on Blackstar's arm. Stein didn't stop laughing until the stewardess came up to him, telling him to control his charges, or else they'd all be thrown off the plane. Since being off the plane was apparently what the young boy was after. Well, one of the things it appeared he was after.

Still chuckling, Stein walked down the aisle, ignoring the nonplussed Blackstar. He could hear the boy ask Tsubaki, "Why would she hit me with a hammer? I didn't know the her stomach was against the wall!"

Tsubaki sweat dropped, and replied gently, as if to a three-year-old, "Oh, Blackstar, that, uh, wasn't her stomach…"

Stein doubted Blackstar would understand unless she spelled it out for him. That boy was no good at subtlety. Not with his actions, nor with his words. Stein felt sorry for the patient meister. She clearly cared for the dense idiot, who obviously didn't see it. Oh well, not his problem! He was going to the very back of the plane, where Maka and Soul were seated. And he had plans for them.

When he got within sight of them, he saw Maka was, surprise, surprise, reading! Soul looked thoroughly bored, and had his reaper-made skull-patterned headphones on. As Stein watched, Soul's eyes began to droop, and his mouth fell slightly open as he fell asleep. His head tilted away from the aisle, towards Maka. She didn't notice until some drool dripped on her beloved book.

"SOUL!" she whisper-shouted, not wanting to wake the entire plane -how embarrassing- so when he didn't respond, her book slammed into his head with her quiet but anger-filled cry of "MAKA-CHOP!"

Soul woke, clutching his head. The pair started their usual argument, but Soul blanched when Maka showed him the ruined page. At least Soul understood that much about his partner, Stein thought. Yet, they seemed to be simply friendly.

Nothing in either's demeanor gave away the feelings Stein had observed them each display for the other, on occasion, in class or battles. Soul and Maka settled their quarrel fairly quickly and went back to their respective entertainment. Stein sighed. These two weren't nearly as fun to observe as Blackstar and Tsubaki. Well, it'd be more interesting when they were fighting something, and creating the results he really needed. Or once he'd found a way to put some of his other plans for them in action!

For later testing as the control (closely related to his other plans for them), Stein chose an empty vial from his lab coat and strolled the rest of the way down the aisle to the toilets. Just before the reeking lavatories was a hallway, for the flight attendants to prepare drinks and such. Stein crossed this corridor and ended up right behind Maka and Soul, as planned when he bought their tickets. He uncorked his vial, quickly whipped it through the air between the two and corked it, disappearing down the hallway in under a second. He hoped the nearby lavatories wouldn't mess up his air sample. Stein made his way back to his seat to further analyze the data he'd collected. And this was only the beginning, Stein thought gleefully!

By the time they go to the airport, Stein's good mood had long since spoiled. By the time they'd gotten out of the airport, Stein needed to dissect something. Luckily for him, the taxi driver had sensed the futility of protesting Stein bringing the platypus he'd found by the side of the road to the hotel. He left the kids to check themselves in, and after getting his own room key, he ran off to set up his portable, internationally approved, travel-sized lab-dissection-table.

Three hours later, he walked happily from his room, clumps of brown platypus fur sticking randomly to his lab coat. His blond hair was rumpled from the platypus' bid for escape. Stein was proud of being able to throw his scalpel hard enough to snap its neck without cutting into the supple skin.

In the lounge, he found Marie reclining on a sofa, reading a magazine and sipping a cup of tea. He scowled. "What're you doing here?" he asked gruffly.

She smiled, "Didn't Shinigami-sama tell you? We're going to be partners for the next few months, at least until this Azura business is cleared up," he frowned. Shinigami-sama hadn't told him anything like that!

"You must be mistaken. Besides, both of us can fight perfectly well alone. Neither of us needs a partner. Its stupid-" Stein began.

"Stein. With Arachnephobia and Azura, there's going to be plenty of very difficult missions that Shinigami-sama can't trust to anyone but the best. Take it as a compliment!" Stein snorted, some compliment he thought, "Besides, I can deal with the children when you don't want to," she played her trump card. Stein knew she knew how much he hated dealing with children, teenagers especially. Dirty trick though it was, he wouldn't look the gift horse in the mouth. If she wanted to deal with the grouchy, impudent kids, he wouldn't stop her.

"Hmp. Did you take, uh, Trish to her grandparents?" he asked, trying to make sure she wouldn't wiggle out of looking after the Shibusen kids.

She frowned, "Yes, Talia was happy to see her grandparents, and she'll be safe there," moving straight to the subject Stein hoped to avoid, she continued, "So, tomorrow is when they'll go fight the triplets?" Stein grunted affirmation. "Well, then I'll help supervise-" He hadn't thought her taking care of them might result in messing up his experiments; he had to think quickly.

Stein didn't want to alert her to his plans by a vehement reaction, but he had to try something, so he said, "We'll rotate between the three, taking turns with each battling group," then an idea occurred to him, and he added support to his argument, "That way, if two groups need help, we can help them, whereas if we go together, we'll only be able to help one at a time," her eyes narrowed briefly in suspicion, but she quickly shrugged it off, apparently acknowledging they wisdom of his logic.

Stein smiled, happy to have the disaster she could have wreaked on his data collection delayed, at least for the moment, until he heard her next words.

"And the day after that, we'll let them have a mini-vacation! They can go to the beach, swim, play sand volleyball, have fun…" she trailed off happily and sighed, longing for the beautiful Caribbean beaches.

Stein frowned. He wanted to get back to Death City to analyze his results as soon as possible. "Beaches can be so romantic," Marie swooned. Stein started, his brain going into planning overdrive as a wealth of ideas for certain, other aspects of his research popped into existence in his head. There were possibilities and possibilities for this trip. He planned to make full use of them.

"All right, we'll give them an extra day to enjoy the Bahamas," Stein said, "Let the kids know," and he turned abruptly, going back to his room to plan out his schemes, and much later, sleep.

This was originally going to be a short little transition chapter, but as I wrote it, more and more ideas just kept popping up! Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the many subtle and not-so-subtle jokes I tried to weave in!

Thanks to all my readers, followers, reviewers and favoriters!

Lialane Greast- Thanks! Stein's quite the character, isn't he? Whoever came up with him is awesome! Yeah, everything turned out ok!

Bloody Raptor- Saying that inspires me to write faster!

JoJo0515- Someone's highly complimentary of herself, but yeah, that was pretty smart! Oh, and if you keep that profile pic, I might just start calling you Merida! (Yes, I can hear you groan at that)

Ian-Was Blackstar obnoxious enough here ;) ? Making the jokes obvious takes all the fun out of it! Otherwise I would. Thanks for the critiques!