Thanks for the kind reviews so far!
This chapter is rambling, and kind of explicit. I was sort of amped up on coffee when I wrote it. Be warned, I guess
Sure enough, time takes them to next week.
Along the way somewhere, Soul and Maka are assigned to comb the outskirts of the city streets to search out and defeat a one-star-kishin.
Not that kishin soul actually possessed the star-ratings of the academy. He just meant that it was a one-star mission, easy enough for any grunt to execute.
They walk side by side, barely speaking to each other whole journey. He misses traveling to exotic places to fight advanced kishin and witches, and finds his mood characteristically low as they skirt through alleyways, inwardly bemoaning his existence and presumably the academy's too.
Maka's demeanor is stubborn and still- the only exception prominent in her fidgeting, nervous, shaking hands. This isn't a trait which escapes Soul, but he thinks better of bringing it up.
The first half of mission is always characterized by a period of investigative work; soul perception- whatever you wanted to call it. Basically, finding the damn kishin. It's not exactly difficult, especially with the easy ones. They tend to wreak havoc wherever they go, and new kishin generally had zero ability to disguise their own soul wavelength. Maka's vague detection leads the two of them to some back-streets. They're only a few blocks from the Patchwork lab, to Soul's incredible disgust.
"Ugh, as if we weren't getting enough of Dr Stein already." He scoffs, looking around him at their surroundings. He gets the distinct sense that they aren't in the most illustrious part of town, judging from the lack of people-traffic and boarded up windows. Then again, living near an opportunistic surgeon with a dangerous history didn't scream primo real-estate.
They sniff through the miserable place for a few minutes, Maka's soul perception on high guard. He trudges along, hands in his pockets, behind her. In his head, he kills time entertaining himself by imagining what Maka would look like as a dog. He sees her as a loyal English setter, sniffing out every potential smell or threat and reporting diligently back to her master, like a good little submissive pet.
The irony isn't lost on him.
Her soul perception is overridden; made arbitrary when obvious visual senses appear: namely, a glowing, green figure emerging from the cobblestones a few metres ahead.
That's a neat trick.
His hand still lurking lazily in his pocket, he transforms dutifully into her outstretched, gloved palms. She takes a second to get used to his weight and then, when the ghost-like thing in front of them takes on a tangible, physical form- they attack.
Soul feels himself flung around for a couple of seconds, effectively slicing the kishin in several equal parts; no Resonance required. It's about an easy job as he expected, and doesn't require him to be overly participatory.
It doesn't occur to either of them that it might have been a little too easy.
He doesn't transform back straight away, after all, there's some sick part of him locked away which misses and relishes the feeling of being in battle like this. That part of him basks in the feeling of being in her hands for a few more seconds than totally necessary.
While still transformed, he feels dimly in the darkness for her wavelength. He's never been a diligent soul perceiver, but he's always been able to feel hers.
There's something off about it; distant and confused.
And then: it's not. Suddenly, and without warning, her wavelength shoots waves upon waves of readiness; alertness; even fear.
"Soul, there's something else here." She grits her teeth and adopts a battle stance; feet apart. "Something bad."
That's the first time she's really spoken to him this whole god-forsaken evening.
In the murky backdrop of this anonymous stretch of residential road, he begins to feel it too. Some sort of lurking, malevolent silhouette. It's creeping around, if not exactly hiding from the two of them. He's on guard in milliseconds, despite remaining completely unsure of what type of entity he's even supposed to be guarding from.
She doesn't say anything else but makes an order, spoken passionately from her soul bond. She pushes her wavelength into his, begging, pleading non-verbally for him to just this one time, Resonate with her. He feels the familiar of tug of her soul at his, but he resists.
When he doesn't give in, she tries verbal communication.
"Soul." She addresses him. "I'm getting really shady vibes from this… thing." She articulates, her soul perception repeatedly throwing up images of twisted, sociopathic souls dancing in the shadows. Or is that just her anxiety doing the visualizing? "Please, just this once."
He hesitates.
"Maka, I can't." he says, guilt spreading up from his feet right to the tips of his fingers and threatening to envelop him completely. He tries his very best to ignore the sound of faint cackling emanating from deep within his spirit.
Maka grips him tighter as the thing senses them back, intrigue and amusement evident in its wavelength. The shadowy, disseminate figure reaches into the darkness towards them with a long and black sword unbidden in its unhinged hand, which heads straight for her.
She blocks with ease in a fraction of a second, using him in front of her face.
"Soul," she begs again, verbally, but he can't. He can't let himself.
He can't do that to her. He doesn't know what he's capable of doing.
He squints his eyes and prepares for… for what, exactly, he's not sure. There's no way he's going to resonate at a high enough frequency with his Meister to beat this shadow, whatever it was.
She throws a few more errant blocks at the figure casting shadows over their souls, but they're both hit with the realization that it's just playing with them with these silly, childish attacks.
She gasps, feeling it alongside him.
The real weapon he's inflicting is his insidious, dangerous wavelength of madness casting all around them. What more is, it's intensifying.
He's sensed Soul's weakness. is amplified; distorted; abused.
He gets the distinct feeling that whatever they're fighting is playing with them.
"If we can just Resonate for a second, we can do this," she tries to reach him once again, never giving up. "What does he want?" she whispers to herself. She can't get a proper grip with her perception, but common sense alone is enough to realize that this isn't a one-star kishin they're dealing with. "Please, you have to try."
He squints his eyes and lets her use him again to block the next few attacks. Gripping his sanity right now is akin to squeezing a wet bar of soap with two greased-up hands, but he's trying his best to keep a tighter lid on his senses as the familiar madness wavelength threatens to uproot him from the baseline.
The attacks from the crazed black sword increase in frequency, as do their blocks.
Maka blocks too slow on one side, and her punishment is a hard blow to the shoulder which causes her to yelp out in pain. She reduces herself to squatting on the ground, seeking immediate shelter behind a happenstance parked car which was unfortunate enough to get embroiled in this mess.
"Maka!" He growls, the sound of her in pain a quiet anchor to his tether on reality.
She's hurt.
Let go, Soul. Let her resonate.
His heart leaps in terror as the croaking, velvety tones of his own inner demon fill his mind.
You know I can't.
Then you'll both die.
The ogre taunts him at the same time that her weak soul wavelength does, wastefully seeking Resonance once again, prodding and poking at him desperately.
"Soul," she gasps for a third time, her gray sweater betraying rapidly expanding bloodstains.
He's not sure how much more of this he can take.
She's panting and hurt. She's just defending, and they need a counter-strike. She can't summon the attacks strong enough, not without his input.
And then, without warning, whirling flames of darkness take over his vision.
The scratchy sound of a gramophone pipes up with that familiarly haunting blues record. He recognizes his unusual surroundings as the eerie setting of the Black Room.
Why am I here?
You tell me. The ogre he shares his mind with snarls in response, its figure taking up most of his line of immediate sight. He's bigger than ever before; definitely bigger than Soul remembers. His red mouth outstretches in a demonic, unhinged type of grin as Soul's veins burn with blood as black as soot.
Looks like you're going to resonate, like it or not. The demon emits a low chuckle before asking his next question:
Are you ready for this?
The ogre's mocking voice within the confines of his soul blends with a female voice in a most disturbing manner. His head whips round and his stomach does an unsettling jolt.
Maka's here.
"Soul, Resonate with me now." She says pointedly, wasting no time. "We'll be okay." She reassures him, her underlying desperation betraying her real feelings. "This thing is going to kill the both of us."
He closes his eyes, realizing that she and the ogre are in fact correct. In the Black Room, they face each other, Maka's hand on his face and wide, comforting eyes signaling her silent reassurance that they would be fine, that she wouldn't be hurt, that they could trust each other.
He stares back, each of his emotions amped up to eleven. The pressure, the madness.
I need to do this, now.
You need to do this, now.
The ogre inside him repeats his sentence exactly back to him.
He feels it, the exact second when he loses all form of control over himself. Of course, the madness wavelength envelopes him before he gets a chance to make his decision. It doesn't matter, though, because the two moves are identical.
He finally does it, opens the floodgates to let her in.
Outwardly, his form smashes forcefully in rapid succession to witch-hunter, to genie-hunter, to kishin-hunter.
Inwardly, Maka's body slumps against the piano in quiet relief and elation that they really managed it; they finally did it.
"Thank Death, Soul." She says surely, a tidal wave of premature relief flooding her voice. "We can do this, now." Her confidence is cut off by Soul's monochrome and suddenly much more disparate presence lurking near her. "Soul...?" she murmurs in bewilderment. A few steps close the distance between them and his cold arms wrap around her waist and draw her in; his vacant stare turning into something sinister. "What are you doing?"
He tilts his head forward with a ominous smile playing on his lips. And then:
His mouth is on hers; kissing her, hard, before she can fully register what's happening.
Everything seems to happen at once. Their soul resonance goes manic. His white blade whips through the silhouette in front of them with impressive speed. Devastatingly powerful attacks slice cleanly through their enemy repeatedly, but they don't meet resistance. It's almost as if this thing's entire body is just a dense cloud of gaseous matter, the way it breaks and reforms beneath his scythe blade.
But Soul's soul isn't done, it wants more. This manifestation of him that he's not in control of, not quite the madness but not quite him either, wraps his arms round her further, kissing her passionately and desperately. She kisses him back compliantly, feeling the effect on their impressive resonance. It's only slightly dampened by her perception, which ever-vigilantly detects his soul dragging her further and further down into insanity.
He pauses and removes his lips from hers for a single second. She only takes one glance at his unhinged eyes before his manifestation pushes them against the hard, dark line of the grand piano which sits ambivalently in the middle of the cacophony. His head ducks downwards and his lips switch their effort to her neck, now.
Her form shudders against him shamelessly, their demon counter-attacks on the outside effortlessly controlled through their combined consciousness. It's almost as if their physical forms cease to exist, and there's just this.
The Black Room, and the swirling insanity around them.
Black-Room Maka and Black-Room Soul.
Except it can't be him, because when she emits the slightest ounce of hesitation, his scowling, unrecognizable red-eyed manifestation just kisses her harder, his tongue commanding her mouth. It's so devastatingly pleasurable for her that she feels herself bending against this mad iron will.
"Soul…" she manages between kisses and gropes, her heartbeat speeding and slowing in response to his moves as he presses up against her. His fingers deftly slide up her waist, pushing up the hem of her sweater in the quest to touch new, exotic lands of skin. She isn't quite sure what she's trying to articulate, whether it's pain or pleasure. The two mix in so seamlessly together for her in this room, where she barely remembers the attacks she's currently making on the shadowy demon external to their bond. The Resonance becomes too much for her to keep her grip on, and it's his doing. The madness has him, totally and completely, she's now all too aware of that.
She's struck by the terrifying thought that perhaps she's not totally in control of her actions, either, as her own fingers trace down his body. She finds herself unable to react to his fiery touch other than to press her body just as urgently against his, overtaken by the moment, by the insanity.
The Resonance threatens to become unhinged and remove her footing on reality too, that's how powerful it is. It slices through the air at such a ridiculous rate that her real, physical body screams out loud.
She wonders, between imminent distractions, how the thing could possibly still be alive.
It dawns on Maka with all her powers of soul perception, that despite this immense and novel level of power they're giving out, their mysterious adversary remains unphased and unharmed. In fact, the black sword which earlier was so eager to dish out attacks has completely vanished from view, and the thing several paces ahead of them is now standing still to watch them patiently and treacherously.
It's retreating.
She feels the silent force which is influencing him start to decrease; pull back.
"Soul!" she cries out, her soul finally able to send out a shockwave which reaches him.
Thankfully, the real, thinking Soul finally seems to hear this fear-tinged cry from wherever he's been locked up and becomes lucid once more. He takes one look at what his insane, madness-riddled body is doing to her.
Sheer terror flashes through his conscious eyes.
Fuck- what am I...?
He forces the brakes on their resonance, hard, his soul groaning and complaining in resistance but ignored by his will. Their resonance disappears in a heartbeat and the Black Room dissipates around the two of them, returning to the empty landscape of the anticlimactic street in a matter of milliseconds.
The clear air of sanity around them is jarring. He forces a transformation- which hurts him- resulting in him turning into his coughing and panting human self,; bruised and slumping onto a nearby trashcan, mind racing and yet exhausted at the same time.
They're alone.
Maka stares wide-eyed at the road ahead, pigtails slapping side to side in conjunction with her head, which is shaking in disbelief.
"I don't understand. Where did it go?" she says to herself, mind reeling. "I didn't feel it's wavelength disappear. Where's the soul gone?" she says again, baffled. She stares down at her hands which clench slowly into fists before her eyes. "Did you see where it went?" she asks her present company.
He doesn't reply to her, but there's an implied 'no'.
His mind instead races with other thoughts, perhaps less pressing but more immediate to him.
Where the hell had that come from?
He'd had no control over it. He barely even remembered it; just a hazy cloud of darkness while some other part of him had taken over.
She turns to stare at him, seemingly returning to the land of the living. Her expression is wary and fearful as if she's been slapped in the face, but she doesn't give anything away with her expression.
"Soul..." she says bluntly, not looking at him. "We should get back."
Stein wasted hours drilling into them the finer points of soul theory; battle practice; chain resonance. In not one single class did any of their teachers at any point explain what you were supposed to when do the madness took over, and when you inadvertently molested your partner inside your own soul.
No, there was no easy coming back from that.