Chapter 10: The Smoking Gun

I could not count anymore. No more numbers could stick in my head, no more information that I could cram, no more exact measurements that I could involuntarily calculate. The school clock began to tick slower as I sit, staring at a blank test in front of me, nervously tapping my pencil against the mahogany desktop. "Time's almost up!" Miss Marie tells the class. My hands refuse to write anything. "Five more minutes!" I close my eyes to concentrate on something else, something that was considerably much more important that school itself. "Time's up! Hand in your tests!"

"Maka," someone taps my tense shoulder gently. "Are you…okay?" I turn my head and see Tsubaki's concerned ocean-eyed gaze on me.

I offer her a weak smile and try to hide my headache. "I'm fine, thank you."

I pass up my completely blank test and excuse myself to the bathroom, to the quiet stalls and shiny white tiles and porcelain sinks to get some peace of mind. I only hear my footsteps squeaking furiously against the smooth school hallways, then I slam into the girls' bathroom. All the numbers from over the years are seemingly flooding back to me, clogging up my brain and blocking everything else. I couldn't figure out what was happening until I realized that everything – all the information and numbers and facts – were not coming from my memories at all, but from the case itself. Running the sink water, I take a handful and splash it on my face, feeling the cold run down my flushed cheeks to my chin.

I peer into the mirror, staring at my own strange reflection and lost in my thoughts, until I hear the door swing open. I turn and see a worried Tsubaki come to my aid. "What's going on, Maka? You haven't been yourself lately, and it's really worrying."

"Oh," I put on a false smile again. "It's nothing. Really, I just think I might be sick, that's all." She walks towards me, her concerned expression still not wavering at my excuse.

"Is there something you want to talk about?" A soothing hand meets my shoulder.

I sigh and twiddle with my glasses. "It's complicated," I say.

"I'll listen."

I gather over my thoughts for a moment, contemplating on whether I should tell her, whether I could trust her with a secret as gargantuan as mine: that I was housing a wanted criminal and trying to help him prove he's not guilty. Any person would look at me like I'm crazy. But there was no one else around, and I had known her for years. So I caved into my emotions and told her.

"I have...problem." A change of heart happens before the words can slip out of my mouth.

"What is it about?"

"I have a school project...and I'm trying to do some research but I'm stuck on something. Hypothetically speaking, if I were solving a crime and I have a gun's serial number, what kind of information could it possibly get me?"

"Well, you could find its owner using an online database," she says and my brains starts to reel once again, running over the prison folder info in little flashes of pictures. "But why would you ask such a question?"

"I, uh, it's just that I have a school project and I'm pretending to solve a case."

"That sounds...nice," I can barely hear her words over my own thoughts as she rambles on about her own classes and projects. I almost feel guilty for not listening to her when she had chosen to offer to listen to me. "...and then I handed it in, right before it was due!" I only hear her last words.

"It's owner..." I mutter and I finally have an idea. "That's it, Tsubaki! I've solved it!" I scream, thanking her as I run out of the bathroom and out the school straight home, determination flaring up inside me.

I dash into the living room, calling his name and flinging my messy backpack onto the couch. Strangely, I am greeted by only silence. "Soul?" I investigate around the house and make my way into my room cautiously. But nothing could prepare me for the sight that I would see upon entering.

"Maka..." he murmurs weakly, his body sprawled out on my bedroom floor, his arms extended as if he was clawing his way across the carpet from the closet and leaving a streak of red in his path. His own blood.

A gasp escapes my mouth and I run to him, dropping down on my knees and next to his fallen body with horror in my eyes. "What happened?! Who did this?! Soul! Wake up! Please!" I cry, my panicked eyes examining pants caked with dried blood.

He groaned as his crimson eyes shot open from the sound of his name. He muttered something about being shot by 'those damn cops.' I half-listen to his story and then I'm out the door, rummaging through our medicine cabinet for anything to stop the bleeding. "How could you have not noticed that you were shot until now?!" I ask as I gently turn his body upwards to face me. Looking for the open wound on his body, I spot a small, red hole small than my thumb all the way at the top of his pants near the upper-half of his leg. His hands were covered in the red liquid; he had been trying to stop the bleeding with his bare hands, but with no success.

"I think...while I was running I must've been shot by a stray bullet. But I was probably too tired to notice," he let out an idiotic weak chuckle.

My eyes scan his body up and down, finding that there were no other marks on him. "Thankfully the bleeding is not heavy, and it's only a flesh wound."

"Yeah, but it still hurts like hell." He tried to lift himself up and makes it to the edge of my bed, leaning his back wearily on the sheets. "Dammit."

My eyes are still trained on his bloody leg. "Soul, I really need to see the damage. It might be fatal. You might have to take off your pants for me to see it and fix it. I need to seal it up before you get an infection or worse... you bleed to death." With a small mutter of protest, he allows me to help him unbuckle his belt and pull down his tainted red pants, revealing my father's borrowed boxers underneath and the source of his injury: bullet hole in the top right side his leg, almost near his waist, no larger than the width of 1.3 centimeters, which, by the way, is very small. I try not to look, and turn my attention instead to a small gauze that I dip in rubbing alcohol. "This is gonna sting a little..." I murmur, approaching as he spots the gauze with his unsteady gaze on the little white cloth.

He squirms slightly. "Wait...Maka, before you do that...is it gonna - GAH!" I apply the gauze to the small hole, cleaning away any blood that was still seeping out. "OW!" He yelps, seemingly coming back from his tired state thanks to the pain.

"Sorry," I say while I dab it. "But I have to clean it or else!"

"Fuck, Maka," he hisses in agony, biting his lips to prevent a cry of pain from leaving his throat. "It fuckin' hurts!" He clenches the bed sheets tightly in his fists, squeezing for dear life as I continue to carefully rub away all of the blood.

"Sorry!" I say, wincing at his grunts. "Here, hold still." My careful and tender hands wrap the bandage around his leg, covering up the wound that was still slightly bleeding. I could feel his tensed up body begin to relax and he sighs and his shoulders drop and fists unclench their grip on my bloodstained sheets, then I wipe the dried blood down his leg.

"Ugh," he mutters, his eyes only half-open. "Damn...it hurts...aspirin, I need some aspirin or somethin'."

He guzzles the small pills down while I help him settle down on my bed. "Are you okay now?" I ask nervously.

"I'm fine now, thanks," he sighs, staring intensely at the bandaged leg. "It'll take more than any bullet to bring ol' Soul Eater down," his face contorts into his signature smirk, and I sigh with relief.

"That's good to hear," I chuckle. "But how did you not know you were shot until now? It's strange how you made it here so far when you had a hole in your leg."

He leans back on the pillow and thinks, his eyes closing as if he were digging in his mind to remember, but he only shrugs. "I dunno. When I woke up this morning I was bleeding a lot, and that's all I remember. I tried to make it to your phone to call your cell, but I was too tired to make it, and I just collapsed on the floor like that."

"How...strange. I mean, if anyone were shot they would feel pain immediately. But you..."

"Maybe I'm some sorta mutant alien."

"No! That's not what I'm thinking, but certainly it's weird," I say, my suspicions rising.

"Whatever, Maka. I wouldn't worry about it; my leg will heal soon enough, I guess."

"How can you be relaxed at a time like this?! You've got a bullet hole in your leg! You're lucky I even came home or else you'd be dead right now!" I say angrily.

"Worrying about it won't make it heal any faster. And why would you come home this early anyways?"

My gaze softens, and I realize that I had nearly forgotten what I had skipped my ever-so-important school for: to finally gain the piece of data that had been missing in my puzzle of murder; the gun's owner - just a simple name that could blow this case wide open. Why was it so important? When the gun was found, it was deemed as the murder weapon, however, no records were shown of the Evan's ever buying a gun and even Soul admitted that his family never had one. That brought up much suspicion in the investigators' case, but they never looked into it as it had seemed that Soul obviously committed the murders. But I was about to prove them wrong. "I came home to finally solve you case," I say firmly and proudly.

"No kidding; isn't that what you've been trying to do for a few weeks now?" He asks dryly.

"I mean for real this time! Once we find the real owner of that gun we could figure out who framed you! Don't you find it strange that a gun that you never owned was used to kill your parents?"

"Well, apparently, no one else did. In fact, no one else gave a damn about whether or not it was me or not," he laughed sourly. "Because I looked guilty as hell, too. They didn't care."

"Surely someone could've tried to help you."

"Do you actually think that people cared about me? I was nothing to them, Maka!" He says, his voice starting to rise. "After my careless parents died and left their two kids behind, no one bothered to help us!"

"But what about Landau?"

He laughed again. "The doctor guy? All he did was hired an expensive lawyer who didn't do shit and left me out to dry!"

"But -"

"The world stopped listening to me; as long as I looked guilty and everything was pointed at me, no one cared!"

"But I care!" I finally blurt out, drawing back in surprise at my own words. "I care." I calm down my tone, a hot feeling beginning to creep up my face. "I really do," I repeat slowly.

He only offers me a strange look. "I never knew you were that serious when you said you'd help me," he says blankly, not knowing what to think.

"I told you I'd be able to solve any mystery," I offer a smile and his almost affectionate gaze meets mine.

"Hmph. It seems that you're smarter than I thought," he chuckled, wincing slightly as he laid back into the pillow. "Actually, when you first told me that you'd help me, I didn't believe you."

"Do you believe me now?" I ask, leaning towards him closer, determined to get a satisfying answer.

"The faster you solve this murder, the faster I'll believe you."

"Come on, Soul! It's nice to have to have some support here!"

"Aren't you supposed to be working or something?"

I sigh. "Just you wait; I'll find this guy for you. But, what will you do if we find out who he, or she, is? How are you going to go about arresting them?"

Soul paused to glance up at my ceiling. "Arrest them? I was thinking of much worse."

"You mean you're planning on killing the murderer?!"

"Who wouldn't want revenge on someone who shot their parents and purposefully framed them, Maka?"

"You'd be just like them! I'm not doing this so you could turn into an actual murderer! I did this so you could have some closure!"

"What would you do, then?" He asks, his tone rising again.

"Why don't we have them arrested instead?! It's a much better answer than violence!" Soul sighs and covers his eyes with his arm.

"And why shouldn't I want violence, Maka?! This person ruined my life, sent me off to jail, killed my parents, and destroyed my relationship with my brother and I! Why shouldn't I want revenge?!"

"Because you'd end up right like him!" I scream furiously at him. "If that's the case, and you think that way, then there's no way I'll help you find the real killer!"

"What's wrong with you! You were so willing to help me just moments ago!"

"All this time I've been trying to prevent you from becoming what you say that you're not! A cold blooded killer! I thought...I thought you were not like them!"

"I'm not them! I just want the same thing done to him as it was done to me! This is my closure! Revenge! And if you're not willing to help me, then maybe I should just leave!"

"Go ahead and leave! But you won't get far with that leg!" I storm out of my room, slamming the bathroom door behind me, tears pouring down my face and onto my sleeves that were constantly rubbing against my eyes. Feeling betrayed and angry, I slumped down to the floor with my back against the door and holding back sobs.

"Wait! Ma-Augh!" I hear a bang as I imagine him trying to get up off the bed to run after me, but his leg gives out and he falls to the ground. "Maka!"

But it was too late; the Soul Eater Evans that I had already come to know was gone now, replaced by a cold, empty killer who was filled with revenge.

A/N: I hope this is serious enough for now lol. Anyways, please leave a review! Feedback is an author's best friend, or so I hope!

SilverBunni712