"If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."
-Buffet
"M-Medusa-sama!" Ah, that was Crona. Finally.
Turning, Medusa looked away from the printouts spread out before her. Priceless information, all of it. With the data she'd gleaned from one simple long-distance resonance, endless possibilities had been laid out before her. An army. A puppet army. Beautiful.
And to thank for it all was one simple girl.
"I see you've brought our guest, good child. Though, I do hope you kept her from learning the way here." Medusa's tone was light as she stepped towards her demon sword, but beneath the easy tenor was a sharp warning. It simply wouldn't do to have any slips in security.
Ragnarok gave a thumbs up, grin wider than his actual head. "Bitch was too out of it to notice anything. I think she's high."
Maka, who was currently chewing on Crona's hair, giggled at that. And Medusa couldn't help but smile because this timing was just right; this state that the blonde meister had thrown herself into was just too perfect. Half slumped over Crona, the Shibusen student was really only held up by Ragnarok's tail around her waist and the grip her teeth had on Crona's hair. Such a quaint picture of madness.
The witch leaned forward to inspect her subject's glassy green eyes. Pinprick sized pupils, a noticeable widening of the iris, the blackened blood vessels, a general twitchiness of the whole area; the black blood certainly did appear to have taken a stronger hold.
Save for the distinct green color, Maka's eyes could have easily been Crona's own.
"She's trying to eat me." The pinkette supplied quietly, wincing as Maka bit down harder. "And, um, it hurts a bit." The last statement might have had something to do with the blood that was now dripping down onto Crona's collar. Maybe. Possibly.
"Head wounds always bleed profusely." Medusa waved off the concern with a flop of her hand, still inspecting blonde meister. Even with her teeth clamped around Crona's skull, the blonde was still giggling at some unheard joke, and the volume of drool was simply disgusting.
"B-b-but I don't know what to do about that!"
Rolling her eyes, Medusa pinched a point on the back of Maka's neck, causing the blonde's jaw to go slack and her eyes to droop. Beneath her, Crona noticeably sighed in relief.
"Thank you, Medusa-sama."
The witch didn't respond for a moment, instead grasping Maka by the chin, turning her head this way and that. Finally she let go of the face, stepping back to take in the entire meister. "What brought this on? Your original report wasn't clear."
"Bitch tried to kill herself I swear. Jumped over the edge of the ship screaming and crying and shit." Ragnarok was poking at Maka's cheek as he spoke, hoping for a reaction, but received nothing but a continued blank stare.
"So we pulled her back up and she moped and cried some more, and then she randomly started eating Crona. She just giggled the whole ride back."
"Hmm." Medusa observed noncommittally, circling around the cluster of bodies.
"So, yeah. Here we are. Brought her back here like you said, 'cuz that shinigami kid saw her with us. Dunno if he's actually dead or not." Maka's giggles increased in intensity at the words, and Medusa was beginning to wonder if the girl could still remember how to speak.
It wouldn't be the oddest side effect of the black blood that the witch had observed.
"Her reaction is interesting." It was doubtful that either Crona or Ragnarok would make heads or tails of her observations, but speaking aloud helped her thought process greatly. "Exactly what I would expect if we'd melted down her weapon and replaced her blood. But somehow, she must be using her own weapon blood." Crona seemed to be attempting to follow the words, if only for politeness. Ragnarok was falling asleep.
"Every time she invokes her weapon form, her soul has unconsciously been trying to resonate with her partner's, despite the difference. It's not used to acting on its own. And so has her partner received the black blood, bit by bit. The presence is minimal, but the psychological effects have been interesting to observe."
This, of course, led to the question of what a normal range resonance would entail, at this stage.
"Put her with our other guest. I want to see if the close proximity will trigger a reaction in him as well."
Today was turning out to be so productive.
Disgusting.
Frowning, Kid shrugged off his jacket. The thing was littered with rips and tears, and worse of all, there was no pattern to the damage. No hidden symmetry, no dots that he could connect between the holes that would suddenly make it all the more bearable. Was it so much to ask? All he wanted was a simple pattern to fix his mind on.
"No luck, we can't find her anywhere." Liz called as she reappeared from the deck below. Patti was a few steps behind curiously examining the destruction that had nearly cracked the ship in two.
Sighing, Kid folded his jacket, placing it over an arm. He had others like it at home. "Any signs of a struggle?"
"Uh, seriously? We practically destroyed the boat. It'd be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Maybe she went willingly, maybe she didn't, but either way, Maka's gone." Needle in a haystack indeed. They were lucky the ship was still floating with the way it'd been treated.
"I've contacted Shibusen, someone from one of the Europe branches will be arriving shortly." Leaning back against a railing, Kid fought against the sleep that beckoned. He'd let his injuries knock him out later, maybe when the doctors started stitching him back up.
"Yeah, you're not looking too good. Whatever that thing was, it had you pinned as a chew toy."
"The demon sword." Kid muttered, eyes drawn skyward. "They're a pre-kishin. They've fed on innocent souls. I could feel it in that attack. When a person consumes so many souls like that, it's impossible to keep hold over all of them."
Liz opened her mouth as if to say something, then must have decided against it and closed it just as quickly. But it wasn't hard to figure out what she'd wanted to put into words. They were partners after all.
Was Maka a pre-kishin now?
A moment of tense silence followed.
...And then Patti picked up the half of the Dutchman's severed head. "BWARGHHH! I'M THE FLYING DUTCHYMAN!" Said flying 'dutchyman' had fingers for tentacles and sounded suspiciously like one half of the Thompson sisters.
"Patti! Put that down! You'll-" He paused for a moment, caught in consideration. Liz knew she wouldn't like where this was going. She knew it.
"Or at least find the other half." Kid finally conceded.
They'd unhooked him.
They'd detached him from the drip in his arm and from the straps on the chair, and no one was telling him a damn thing. Or they were, and he couldn't hear them. Too busy feeling stuff, other stuff. Like the pounding in his ears and the desert in his throat and the blue-purple-yellow paintings on his wrists.
Damn his head hurt.
Oh, hey, was that the ceiling? Since when had he been looking up anyway? It was all grainy, and stuff. And leaky. And black. Kinda looked like clouds. Really messed up.
Argh.
Coherency would've been nice.
So busy was Soul, staring at the ceiling, that he almost missed the creak of the door. As it was, he didn't bother looking anyway. Maybe they'd given him food, maybe someone was coming in to hook him back up, maybe they had some new drug or potion or whatever to test out on him, who knew.
"M'tired." Honestly, he wasn't up for whatever shit this witch had planned for him now. Really.
Only a dull thump answered him. The door clattered close without so much as a word passing between Soul and…whoever that'd been, and he was totally cool with that. More sleeping time. Resting time.
And then the lump in the corner of the room giggled.
Soul knew that voice.
Turning his head to the side took far too much effort. It was all he could do to keep his face from smashing into the floor, but lo and behold, he managed it. Somehow. And thus was Soul rewarded for his effort.
For there, right across the room and half-slumped against the wall, was his meister. Her hair was a mess and her uniform looked worse for wear, but it was her all the same.
"Maka?" He breathed, still waiting for the part where this turned into a nightmare. The blonde giggled at his question, still slumped over. But maybe it wasn't a giggle. Maybe it was a sob? Crying? Was she crying?
Her head shifted, and Soul caught a glimpse of green eyes.
"Shit, it is you!" Lethargy all but forgotten, the weapon struggled to scramble onto his hands and knees. They were only a few meters apart on the hard ground, but it seemed to take so long to pull himself over to where Maka sat.
But she was here. Here, in this hellhole with him.
He wasn't sure if he was really all too happy about that.
"Hey, look at me! Maka!" Not quite there yet, but he grabbed at her coat, hoping to snap her out of whatever daze she was trapped in. No luck. Only that giggle remained; and it was getting creepier by the minute. When she began to twitch violently, the weapon knew something was wrong.
Panic was creeping up within him as Soul was finally able to gather the girl in his arms and still she remained limp as a rag doll. The bags under her eyes were none too comforting, and she seemed suspiciously lighter than when he'd seen her last.
Then again, Soul realized, he probably didn't look too great either.
"Jeeze, what'd they do to you?" He breathed, grabbing his meister by the shoulders as if to stop her twitching. Instead the blonde only cocked her head to the side, cracking vertebrae as it rotated an almost full ninety degrees to the right.
"Doooooooooooooooooo~?" She drew out, grin still grinning wider than should have been possible.
"Yeah, what'd they…" Too impatient to try explaining, Soul quickly ran his fingers over her scalp, feeling for any scabs or scars or open wounds that could've spoken of a recent head trauma. Blunt object, sharp point, he didn't care. All he wanted was an answer why his meister was suddenly swaying like a drunkard and twitching like a druggie.
As he continued his investigation, Maka's face was pushed up against his shoulder bit by bit. Soul was too busy panicking to notice the closeness, and the meister had other things on her mind.
Namely, I'm hungry.
And so she bit down.
Yelping in surprise, Soul pushed the blonde off of him out of reflex. She tumbled back without much resistance, still acting like she had wet noodles for bones. Where the hell had that come from! It'd more surprised him than hurt, but still!
"You pushed me." Maka stated slowly. It was the first sentence she'd spoken, the first coherent jumble of words that had left her mouth since she'd entered the room. He should've been glad that she could still speak, that they hadn't messed with her head so bad that she was mute or deaf or something.
But for some reason, Soul didn't feel any better.
"You were biting me!" His legs still felt too much like jelly to be stood on. Maka, however, seemed to have no qualms getting to her feet. She swayed dangerously a few times while doing so, but in all, was standing at the end of it.
"You pushed me." She accused again. Somehow, he'd missed the glassiness of her eyes before. They could've been filmed over and dead for the lack of life that was shining through.
And since when, Soul wondered, had that book been in her hand?
"Maka…" He cautioned, for some reason backing further up against the wall. A smile had worked itself back onto her face, and it was anything but comforting.
"You pushed me."
She raised the book.
Geeze, you know your fic has crossed the line into serious angst territory when you start considering Within Temptation lyrics for the opening quote. That angst is mostly why this took so long. That and Hetalia.
Anyway, thanks goes to StoppingMotors, Tikigod784, Hitoryan, Miss Chocolat and Nenena for the reviews on 10. Sorry again for the gap. End of year is a killer. (But hey! Summer is now upon us, and that means the sun and the beach and lacrosse and…oh…more non-fanfic stuff) Special thanks to Cheletiba, who rec'd this on TV tropes. Seriously, never thought that'd happen. I'm sorry if I didn't reply to anyone's review, super busy over here.
But hey, in the interim between updates, I got into uni. In the US. It's gonna be so weird living there O: Everything's kinda sorta really huge.
Till next.
