"Fallow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness."

- Allen Ginsberg

Chapter Nine:

Maddification

"A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body."

"Humankind cannot gain without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange."

As Maka was spinning downward, she was about to hit FullMetal but unfortunately, by a very narrow margin, she missed him, hitting the ground as a large amount of energy was released and hit the wall, breaking the entrance to the cathedral. She used Soul as a balance, for his blade was embedded into the marble flooring, she spun on her hands that were gripping the handle. As she tried to kick FullMetal whilst he, himself was trying to attack her, their attacks were caught by blue hands. Maka was pulled down, roughly, onto the floor as FullMetal was thrown into a wall.

When Maka looked up, she saw a familiar face, it was Sid. He had came up from underground and caught the attacks just in time. She was so relieved to see Sid was there. She looked over to where FullMetal was at. She watched as the Gold-Scythe slowly got up, when he looked over to Maka and Sid, he laughed maniacally.

"Well talk about a dead man walking!" FullMetal chuckled, "It seems fitting, considering your situation!" once again he summoned his blades as claws and grinned sadistically.

Sid pulled a knife out of it's sheath, and got into a battle stance. Maka knew that the Knife must've been Sid's Weapon partner: Mira Nygus, in weapon form. Before Sid or FullMetal could make a move, a large amount of energy was sent toward, FullMetal who responded by dodging and trying to attack Sid but was intervened by a large black blade... Maka recognized the blade, it was Spirit, her father, in Weapon form... and Stein was holding him.

"This is very unfortunate..." Stein said in his usual blunt tone.

Before FullMetal could respond, Stein put a hand to the boy's chest, and green lightning appeared and the young weapon was sent flying back, knocking him out and causing his blades to disappear. Sid and Nygus resonated their souls making the knife's blade look a lot like a headstone. Sid slammed the "headstone" into the ground causing a stone coffin to appear. Stein placed the Gold-Scythe into the coffin and closed it.

Sid's knife glowed and turned into a woman. The woman was almost completely covered in bandages, making her look like a mummy. She had dark skin, blue eyes, and her black hair were in dreadlocks, adding on to her "mummy" appearance. She wore a green military pants and as a top were several layers of bandages like the ones that were wrapped around her face but left the eyes open. That was Nygus' true form.

"Its hard to believe that a kid has such a horrible illness..." Nygus sighed.

Sid and Stein nodded in agreement. Maka got up as Soul transformed back into his human form. Spirit transformed into his human form, right when he landed on his feet, he immediately ran to Maka and hugged her, bawling.

"MAKA! I WAS SO WORRIED!" Spirit cried.

Maka pushed her father off of her, "I'm fine papa!" she said. "But can someone please tell me what's going on?"

"Yeah, I think we need some answers." Soul said in an upset tone.

"You'll get them soon, but first lets get back to the DWMA..." Stein said, "For now, all I can say is that... unfortunately... my theory is correct..."

When they all got back to the DWMA with the Keishin Egg souls in a bag, Sid and Nygus took FullMetal, who was still unconscious, to the infirmary, while Maka, Soul, Spirit and Stein went to the Death room. Death greeted them but his tone wasn't all that upbeat, Kidd, and Marie were there as well. Kidd also looked to be just as out of the loop as Maka and Soul were. There was a long silence in there but it was finally broken by Death.

"Listen, Maka, Soul, Kidd, I know the three of you want to know why FullMetal did what he did, and this is going to be very hard for you to understand so I want the three of you to listen to what Stein and I have to say, got it?"

At first Maka and Soul wanted to know how Kidd knew about the fight but they realized that Lord Death must've had him watch the fight through the Death Mirror. The three students nodded their head.

"FullMetal is going through something called 'Maddification'." Stein explained, "Maddification is a soul disease that has only happened once in Lord Death's lifetime. Maddification's symptoms are, coughing up blood; fainting spells in the real world when in the soul, the madness is pulling the non-dominant wavelength into the soul realm; there is also maniacal laughter fits, amnesia, bloodlust, sadistic and psychopathic tendencies, an abnormal wavelength, basically the kind that FullMetal has now, and lastly randomly being possessed by the madness wavelength, which is what happened during Maka and Soul's mission with FullMetal. There is no treatment yet, and if there isn't this means that if something isn't done soon, FullMetal will fall head first into the madness like the way he was before he was purified by the Mizunes, he'll go back to being a Keishin Egg."

The three students were taken aback. How come they only heard about this now? How did they not see the symptoms along time ago?

Death seemingly knowing the questions that were going through the kids' minds began saying, "Let me tell you all about the first time Maddification appeared..." Lord Death took a deep breath and began the story. "There was once a Weapon by the name of Athena, she was one of the Eight Powerful Warriors. She and her Meister were very close and Athena was slowly falling for him. He knew about this and used it to his advantage when Asura had became a Keishin. The Meister thought that since Asura was so powerful, he could have Athena gain power the same way as Asura did to take him down. But what he didn't know was that he was being affected by the Keishin's madness. He convinced Athena to eat human souls. They began to get into many arguments due to their madness, and her argument would always show that she knew that I would eventually find out. One day, not wanting to eat human souls any longer, she killed her Meister and came to me and begged me to forgive her."

"She asked if there was a way to get the human souls out of her. I hadn't tried such a thing at the time, nor had I ever thought about it, no one had actually... I knew of a Meister with and Exorcism wavelength and I asked him if he would be willing to try to put that wavelength to good use! He agreed and attempted to try and purify Athena... but it ended up giving her amnesia... which then turned to Maddification... it was dormant for a long while - like the way it was with FullMetal - but then one day it showed its self. There were times where she'd just laugh her head off for no reason what-so-ever, and times where she'd seemingly faint when we're in the middle of something, like having a meeting, and times where she'd just end up coughing up so much blood that she'd faint from blood loss... but when it really showed itself, when Maddification truly showed its ugly head was when Athena's madness possessed her. She nearly killed the rest of the Eight Powerful Warriors, she even nearly killed Excalibur! When we were able to finally knock her out. We were all worried sick about her."

"When she woke up, she didn't remember attacking us at all. She then told us about what had been really going on with her fainting spells, which we ended up looking into her soul and seeing her strange wavelength, we called this disease Maddification. And not long after its dubbing, Athena fell into the madness and there was only one thing we could do for her at that time... We killed her... and hoped that nothing like that would ever happen like that again... After doing some research, we found that Athena had also been sensitive to the madness wavelength because she had been abused when she was just a child. Because of this, she was an easy first victim to the disease..."

There was a deep silence, the students were trying to process the information. Kidd finally spoke, "But father, how could've FullMetal gotten this disease? He was purified by witches wasn't he?"

"FOOL!" exclaimed a voice.

Everyone looked to see...none other than Excalibur in the room, making several people groan, those people being Kidd and Stein.

Excalibur was a strange, white, simplistic, anthropomorphic creature, whose diminished stature barely even equals to that of a small child. It's misshapen facial features comprises of bulbous eyes, a prominent upturned snout, which was practically a physical representation of his narcissistic attitude, while the remainder of his mall white body displayed slender limbs and feet that were akin to those of a rabbit. His attire consisted of a white top hat that strangely equals him in height, and a similarly colored shirt with a frilled ruff, worn under a white jacket... and strangely and annoyingly enough... the darn thing didn't wear pants... but it did have a cane that he was never seen without.

Excalibur had the cane pointed at Kidd's face. He put the cane back down as he said, "Even though that it is true that your dear friend was indeed purified and adopted by the Mizunes, it doesn't mean that they had enough power to completely purify him, which is how your friend and Athena wound up with Maddification! ALSO, Athena's madness was with her throughout a great deal of her life, which also means that your friend's lost back story must've been very tragic! Due to this he was bound to have madness and be sensitive to it regardless!" After a moment of silence passed, the creature turned to Lord Death, "I'm sorry to intrude in such a tragic time, I only came here to ask if we could have tea today."

"Its no biggie Excalibur." Lord Death said, "But you did come at a bad time, how about Tuesday instead?"

"That sounds good." Excalibur said, then walked off.

After a good minuet of pure silence, which was lightly broke by Kidd muttering "I still hate that thing..." under his breath.

Stein said, "As much as I hate to say it, Excalibur is right. Athena did have bad life before she joined the warriors, so if that's the case, FullMetal must've had something bad happen to him in his childhood... From what he told me today before you all went on that mission, he had been getting the same nightmare throughout the week and has been regaining some of his memories today, one of them he gained before talking to me, that memory involved someone he called 'Havoc' who looked to be in a blue military uniform..."

Spirit bit his lip as he said, "Which means he is somehow affiliated with a military..."

"So... What are you all going to do about this...?" Maka asked. Everyone turned their attention to her. "Are you... going to kill him?..."

"No, of course not!" Death said. "This is a different time, a different era! Not to mention we currently have Mabaa and the Mizunes on our side, we can now find a way to treat the Maddification, but we can't say how it'll turn out unless we try. So Maka, Kidd, I want the two of you to keep a constant eye on FullMetal's soul, this will help out a lot, especially if you keep a constant check on his wavelength to see if his original wavelength is becoming more dominant than his madness, got it?"

Maka and Kidd nodded.

Death lowered his head, "Now... to explain this to FullMetal, Mabaa and the Mizunes... I just hope that they take it better than I think they will..."