Dissection SOS
Chapter 10: A Scalpel and A Tranquilizer Gun
The kids were waiting in the lobby, chatting as their curfew came around, Stein saw through the glass automatic door. He surreptitiously checked his watch. 10:30 the digital display read. He scowled, already dreading what he knew was coming.
"Cheer up, Stein," Marie said from behind, "They'll only tease a bit,"
"Maybe," he growled, "but they won't forget it anytime soon, and if it's not direct teasing, it's snickering, and whispering behind their hands," Stein grumbled.
"Let's just get it over with," she said, nudging him towards the door, "I'm hungry," he rolled his eyes. Yes, her hunger, and lack of eating had caused the scene earlier. The things he'd said in the heat of the moment felt like an open wound that refused to close, debilitating and wonderful at the same time. He wanted to hide those feelings, protect his vulnerability, but all he'd said still rang true within him.
"Fine," he grumbled, pulling his hand out of Marie's to hopefully reduce the teasing. No such luck. When they walked in, the seven teenagers turned and all immediately started laughing.
Even Stein's glasses-glare couldn't shut them up. Patty even gasped out between raucous laughs, "My, my, you two really did have fun, didn't you? To be that disheveled…"
"They seemed to have enjoyed the beauty of the nature around here too. I mean, there are perfectly good beds in the hotel, but I suppose a bed of mossy grass would be something someone who loves experiments would try," Liz commented, eyes glinting with mischief.
"Looks like those experiments were pretty intense, too!" Blackstar yelled, blue in the face from laughing.
"I hate teenagers," Stein muttered before trooping off to his room, not deigning to respond to his pupils' antics.
When he woke up the next morning, he groaned. His entire body was covered in bruises, and his attitude felt just as bad. He threw on his usual clothes and packed his suitcase. He couldn't seem to fit it all in perfectly. It just seemed nothing he did felt right. He hated this agitated feeling. He kept packing and repacking until a knock sounded at his door, and Marie entered.
She raised an eyebrow at his foul expression. "Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" she asked gently.
"I didn't really sleep that much, the bruises kept me awake," Stein said, uncharacteristically eager to complain. She winced.
"Sorry," she whispered. Her eyes found the floor, and she bit her lip. Stein frowned, not understanding. But it only took a second for his brain to supply the logical answer. She must be feeling guilty for the cliff incident.
Stein felt his mood lighten a bit. He didn't want her to feel bad about it, but it made him feel better that she cared enough to feel sorry. Which was, of course, illogical. He sighed. She was becoming a constant source of illogical things for him. He might have to do some research to find out just what was going on and why.
He stood up, "I didn't mean like that. It's just that I feel like crap right now. I dislike the chaos of traveling, and I just can't get my suitcase to pack right," he also felt uncomfortable sharing his feelings like that, but he had remembered to be more delicate with her.
She smiled and walked over to him. "The curse of perfectionism," she joked. Stein just stared flatly at her. He didn't find that particularly funny. She shrugged and looked down at the neat and orderly suitcase. Her mouth twitched as she tried not to laugh. His eyes caught there and held as she spoke, "What's wrong with it?"
"It's just not right! I fit everything in, arranging each item alphabetically!" Stein scowled, annoyed at not being able to figure out was wrong with his packing.
Marie raised an eyebrow, cocked her head, and considered his suitcase. Then she turned her head and looked at his lab coat. He felt her eyes sweep him up and down, and he shifted his weight uncomfortably. A corner of her mouth turned up. Stein's breath left his body.
He gasped when she slid her hand into his empty lab coat pocket. "Thought so," she murmured, and Stein's eyes about popped from his head.
"Marie?" he rasped. She bent down and grabbed a box from the 's' section of the suitcase. she grinned up at him. It did funny things to his empty stomach.
"Tsk, tsk, you're thinking naughty thoughts, aren't you?" She chastised him, seeming more amused than angry, "I think I've found the problem," she opened the box, and took out a scalpel.
She rested it on her leg as she closed and replaced the box. Then she grabbed the scalpel and slid it in his pocket. Oh, that did feel better. He was surprised. His body still hurt, but his mood had improved drastically. He chose not to contemplate what that indicated about his sanity, that he needed a scalpel in his pocket to be tolerable around people.
His mind now at ease, he was free to be amazed that Marie had so easily found and solved the problem. He looked down at her hand as it withdrew from his pocket, and saw a strip of white cloth wrapped around her wrist. It looked almost like a bandage.
Curious, he gently grabbed her wrist and pushed her sleeve up past her elbow. Sure enough, there was a bandage wrapped around her right forearm. The part against the underside of her arm was tinged pink. His throat felt too tight. "What happened," Stein asked, his voice flat as he did his best to block out the worry and anger flooding his system. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"I did mention it," she muttered, her eyes avoiding his.
"When?" he demanded.
"The fight with the dragon. You know, the chip in my handle," she said quietly. He remembered now, and kicked himself for not checking up with her about it.
"Let me see." It wasn't a request. Usually, he cared little about bloody wounds. He'd done far worse to thousands of people and creatures, and had healed the like on the DWMA students. All he'd ever really felt about it was the same sort of incessant fascination to know exactly how and why the body worked as it did, and see it for himself. So why was the sight of the bloody bandage whipping up a storm inside him?
He gently unpeeled the bandage from her arm, uncovering a gash the size of a pencil. "How did I not notice this yesterday?" he thought aloud.
"You were busy scheming for the kids. Don't beat yourself up about it. I've had far worse," Marie said, shrugging. He knew now that she could tell how much it was affecting him, and she was trying to brush her injury off, to save him the worry. He wasn't going to just let it drop, though.
"I know you have, but those wounds were never even close to being my fault," Stein said when a thought occurred to him. "You went surfing yesterday. You had your wound in the salt water," he was surprised. He'd done experiments before that involved cuts of his own being dipped in salt water. Obviously, it hurt. But she'd never complained. Of course, he knew she was tough enough to handle it. His respect for her pain tolerance, and the will it took to maintain such tolerance, rose.
Still, he didn't want her to have to need great pain tolerance. She chose her profession, Stein reminded himself. Yet he couldn't entirely quash the protective inclinations he'd felt last night as they resurged.
His hand holding her arm held the cut up to the light. He inspected it. Pus lined the incision. The cut was deep, but diagonal, the flesh torn along her skin, rather than into the muscle in her arm. That was a blessing. That would have been far harder to fix.
Pink, enflamed skin rose in an irritated ridge around the wound, and Stein gently ran a finger down the edge of the inflammation. Marie grimaced and shivered a little and asked him tentatively, "Well?"
Stein's mind was absorbed in the wound, his mind calculating and inspecting. "It doesn't appear to be infected. The salt water seems to have cleaned it well," he continued with a list of instructions as to how she should care for it, to ensure it didn't become infected. She nodded and didn't interrupt, though he knew she'd heard all he told her a million times before.
He bent down to get the supplies he needed, and quickly applied a salve to a bandage. His hand slid down her arm to cup her elbow as he placed the new bandage on her arm. His fingers slid gently over her soft skin as he wrapped the bandage around her arm. He secured it with a piece of medical tape.
Focused on his task, he didn't notice the goose bumps on her arms until he began to pull away, finished tending to the wound. His head tilted. He didn't think it was cold in here. "Do you need a jacket?" he asked her.
It was her turn to look confused. "I don't think covering up the bandage is really necessary, Stein. The airport security is looking for terrorists, not people who have cuts," Marie rolled her eyes.
"That's not what I meant, though you can be as violent as a terrorist when you want to be. I meant the goose bumps on your arm," Stein said, giving in to the irresistible urge to run his fingers over said goose bumps.
Her cheeks pinked at his words, and turned red when his fingers trailed over her arm again. "I'm sure you know all about goose bumps, how they form, and what causes them," she commented drily, slowly slipping her arm out of his hold.
He was mesmerized by the soft skin on her arm. His fingers lingered. When her hand slid out of his, her fingers trailed over his palm, causing him to shiver. Goose bumps ran up his arms. Marie grinned at the irony. She pulled her hand out of his just before his hand clenched to hold hers.
He looked up to meet her gaze. Her eyes sparkled and she was smiling. He felt removed from himself, as the world took on a dream-like quality, a veil between the practical feelings of reality and the irrational storm of emotions this scene had created in him.
"Teasing goes both ways, Stein!" Marie joked, then hugged him quickly. "Thanks for the help,"
Just as Stein had recovered from his surprise at the hug, and moved his arms to put around her, she pulled back and walked out the door, waving her hand over shoulder. "We'll leave in half an hour. See you then. I'll get the kids up, packed, in a car and ready."
The snick of the door shutting brought him back to his senses. He repacked the healthcare items he'd used to bandage Marie's arm. When he finished, he flopped onto his bed and sighed. He had to get his mind refocused on the explainable, scientific experiments he could predict. If he didn't, the confused mess of feelings inside him would make him go mad long before the Kishin's wavelength did.
At the appointed time, Stein checked them all out of the hotel and walked outside with his suitcase. True to her promise, Marie had herded all the kids into the airport van, though the entire car was vibrating with Blackstar's shakes as he tried to contain the massive amount of energy in his body. Stein rolled his eyes and put his trunk in the back, before climbing into the passenger's seat. Marie didn't complain about sitting back with the kids, something he expected from her, but was grateful for nevertheless.
They got to the airport with two hours until their flight left. Everything was going right on schedule. Stein was satisfied his scheduling plans went as well as his experimental plans. Then, they entered the terminal and saw the line for the baggage check. Over two-hundred people stood in the two lines for their airline, Shinigami Air, all student groups who would have to wait for each other to get through, clogging up security too.
"No one has bags they absolutely have to check, do they?" Stein asked through gritted teeth.
Liz and Patty glanced at each other and looked to the floor, hands twisting guiltily. Blackstar shouted, "Hell yeah I do! The man who will surpass God will bring what he wants on a trip!"
"Shouldn't that be the opposite? Not cool," Soul muttered, reaching for one of Maka's duffels, but she gave him a glare. Stein shook his head. Soul might be good at the chivalrous stuff, but he had yet to learn when to let Maka be independent, Stein thought.
Stein was right. The student groups took hours to get through the baggage check and security. His DWMA teacher pass didn't give him any advantages here. Only Kid's Shinigami Passport allowed him to jump to the front of the line with Liz and Patty. No one wanted an impatient death god behind them.
The only reason Stein let them go was because Kid promised to make the plane wait. When they were about twenty people from the x-ray machines for the bags, airport attendants came and rushed their group through, claiming the plane needed to leave, but the young Shinigami would not leave without his "posse" to Stein's indignation. Every eyebrow in their group rose in accusation when they walked up to the gate to see Kid standing in the doorway of the airplane.
He grinned, "Hey, can't blame me for having a bit of fun, eh?" The students rolled their eyes and filed into the seats. Stein glared at him, and as he passed, Kid whispered, "Don't be too mad Stein, I also fixed up the seating to be a bit more… favorable to your interests," Stein frowned, but they did need to go, so he boarded without a word.
He slid into an aisle seat towards the back, on the left side of the plane. Marie followed him, and looked from her boarding pass to the numbers underneath the storage compartments. "Yeah, this is my seat," she murmured, swinging her large bag into the overhead compartment and sliding past him before he could stand up to let her in. Their knees banged and his foot accidentally caught hers.
She fell forward, her forehead banging against his, her hand catching her fall on his upper thigh. Her eyes widened, and he could hear her breath catch. Without comment, keeping a carefully emotionless face, Stein put his hands on her shoulders, and pushed her back into upright position, unhooked their feet, and gently pushed her to her seat. He could feel a small blush of his own matching the one gracing her cheeks.
She sat down in the seat beside him and opened the window. She rubbed her forehead, scowling. Then she sighed and took out a magazine to read. Stein read over her shoulder for all of one paragraph. If he read anymore, he would lose valuable brain cells. He pulled out a thick anatomy reference book, and settled into reading something far more interesting than what the latest dress fashions were. It was going to be a long flight.
They got through the flight and to the baggage check just fine. Everyone grabbed their bags, and Stein was on his way out the door when Blackstar yelled, "One of my bags is missing!" They all turned to look at the pile of suitcases surrounding Blackstar.
"Geez, you pack more than four girls combined…" Liz remarked.
"He has seven suitcases," Kid said, disgusted, "Let's go, Liz, Patty." He walked out with them and across the lot to the Shinigami-patterned car waiting for them.
Blackstar screamed after him, "The one I'm missing is the eigth, idiot! Besides, the man who will surpass God cannot travel without his entire collection of- MMPH!" Tsubaki's hand over his mouth completely covered whatever he'd been about to say.
Maka's eyebrows rose and Soul rolled his eyes. Marie looked curious, and Stein just wanted to report to Lord Death and get back to his house. Tsubaki improvised, "His entire collection of, uh, of books," the delicate way she referred to the reading materials told everyone present they were likely far shorter, almost entirely pictures, and the particular type of "reading" material typical for teenage boys and not suitable for public discussion. Stein snorted.
"You can do without those, Blackstar," Stein said.
"But it might take weeks, months, or even years to get my suitcase back!" the hormonal assassin protested.
"Shinigami forbid you not have your precious books. Whatever will you do?" Stein's sarcasm overcoming his failing patience.
Marie's mouth twitched. Her shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. Her eyes looked from Blackstar to Tsubaki and back again. "I'm sure he'll be able to find something to do," Marie whispered to Stein. He smirked and spun the screw in his head.
His patience level slightly restored with the joke, Stein let Maka and Soul to go out to his motorcycle to drive back home. "They may still be getting luggage off the plane. It was a very large plane," Tsubaki reassured Blackstar, finally letting him go.
His eyes sparked, "I thought of that!" he shouted and sprinted off towards the gate. Sure you did, Stein thought. It seemed traveling really brought out his sarcastic streak. Then he sensed the subtle pulse of the Kishin's madness wavelength, and wondered if that was what was causing his unusual behavior.
Tsubaki winced, "Sorry Professor Stein, I'll go get him," Stein groaned. The Kishin's madness wavelength was so much stronger here, and he wasn't in the mood to put up with these antics.
So he allowed himself an evil smirk. He angled his face so the light bounced off his glasses menacingly. "No need, Tsubaki," he said smoothly, his voice disturbingly pleasant. Marie shot him a look, sensing something was off. "There's a souvenir I bought that I'm dying to try out," and his evil grin began to show teeth as he whipped his hand out of his lab coat clutching a gun.
Jaws dropped everywhere. Anyone who hadn't been paying attention now was. The only sounds were the chugging and clunking of the conveyor belts full of bags. "Y-you snuck that through security?" Marie choked out.
He chose to take that as a rhetorical question, and took aim at the boy turning the far corner, the length of two football fields away. He predicted the path the boy would take through the dense crowd, and shot. Marie jumped in front of him, arms outstretched, and the bullet hit her in the shoulder. Her eyes immediately rolled up, into her head.
Stein's anger, at both himself and the woman collapsing in front of him, was suppressed by the concentration of his next shot. Of course, it hit true, and though the boy was little but a dot in Stein's vision, he saw him fall.
"Professor Stein!" Tsubaki yelled, the normally timid and polite girl's face had twisted with the fury that raised her voice. "What the Shinigami do you think you're doing?!"
"Calm down, Tsubaki. It was merely a long-range tranquilizer dart. I figured something like this might happen, so I ensured it was on my person should I need it. Go get your partner and go on home. Don't be late for my class tomorrow. Jet lag is no excuse," Stein said, his expression fading into its usual serious emotionlessness.
Despite the multitude of protests, Stein tied his and Marie's suitcases together and picked her up. It wasn't until he'd laid her in the passenger seat of his car and secured their luggage that he began to really realize what he'd done. He shook his head. That wavelength was affecting him far more than he'd predicted. Or maybe it was just the shock of going from an area with virtually none, to one with so much. Yes, that must be it. There was no other way his predictions could be so over-optimistic. Right?
Without delay, he drove to his house and unpacked his luggage with the quick ease of long practice. Then, he grabbed the still unconscious Marie and laid her on the bed in his guest bedroom. He wasn't surprised she was still out. He'd specialized those tranquilizer doses to knock out the fit, ever-hyper teenage Blackstar from a long distance, not Marie at close range. She'd be out for a while, and then give him hell for it when she woke.
He didn't particularly want to be here for that, though he was interested in what her reaction would be. So he installed a discreet camera and set it to record and transmit. He wasn't a pervert, just a scientist. He'd turn the camera off once he'd observed her reactions. However, for now, he had to go report to Shinigami-sama.
"Hello, hello, Stein!" said the jovial Shinigami, bouncing over to the travel-worn professor. He held out his hand, but Stein ignored it. Shrugging it off, Lord Death asked, "How did the mission go Stein? And the experiment?" Of course, Lord Death only knew about the big experiment, not the specific sub-experiments involving the kids' romantic lives.
"The experiments proceeded as well as could be expected, given the number of uncontrollable variables, and as for the mission, there were a few unexpected complications…" he remembered the triple pre-kishin and the fights they'd all had. Like his experiments, they all made up part of a bigger whole. Something indistinguishable clicked in the back of his mind. Something about that seemed important, but it wasn't quite surfacing. He stored the thought away for later.
"Everything ended up perfectly fine, however. I'll write up the formal reports and have them to you by the end of the week," Stein said briskly.
The shinigami nodded. "What about Marie? You met up with her, right?" Stein nodded silently, keeping his face blank, though a weird nervous sort of warmth swirled in his stomach.
"Where is she staying? There was a slight, ah, mishap shall we say, and she's unconscious, so I put her in my guest room," Stein didn't need to see the Shinigami's face to know his eyebrows rose.
"When we're finished here, I'll go take her wherever she needs to be," Stein said, his intonation requesting information.
Stein swore the Shinigami smiled mischievously behind his mask as he said happily, "No need, she'll be staying in your house!"
Stony silence met these words as shock shot electricity into Stein's body. He blinked. "What?" he asked, his voice the type of careful calm that boded ill for any who provided an unwelcome answer.
"You're friends, Stein, and she's stayed with you before when she was visiting," Shinigami-sama said lightly.
"When she was visiting," Stein emphasized. Besides, he thought, all those times, they hadn't just been on a trip that had made things… different.
His voice hardening slightly, Shinigami-sama said, "She's your partner, Stein," and Stein knew this was one argument he wouldn't win. Marie had been helpful in the fight on the trip, and it was customary for a weapon-meister pair to live together. Even the younger students followed the practice. He sighed, and accepted it. He bid the Shinigami farewell, and went home to see if his new roommate had woke up yet.
EVERYONE: Would you prefer shorter chapters and more updates, or chapters about this length, and infrequent updates? If I can figure out how, I'll set up a poll. For now, please either PM me, or put your opinion in your review. Enjoy.
Thank you for reading this story so far, through the long breaks between updates! I apologize. Really, I do. My Calculus 2 class sucks up time like a black hole. I won't have much free time this semester between that, and the switch to soccer season (longer practices and games).
It's been a while since I did these, so I figured I'd better catch up (if I forgot someone's I'm very sorry: it's entirely unintentional:
TwilightPrncss: Thank you SO much, your review literally had me jumping up and down in happiness, grinning so hard it hurt!
SortaPsychotic: Thanks! It's my goal for my readers to enjoy and anticipate my stories! It's incredibly gratifying to hear it!
Lialane Graest: Yeah, it took some research, but I want to make the stories as realistic to the anime/manga as the plotline will allow. How fast do you think I should create their romance? I won't write anything beyond kissing, so I was thinking slow… but what're your thoughts?
Ian: Stein will get crazier: I promise.