CHAPTER 10

Kid inhaled, and assumed the best demeanor that he could. He practiced his lines again. "Hello, is Mr. Cruz home? Hello, I am Death the Kid. Hello, I am here to ask about a report from four years ago. Hello, is Mr. Cruz home?"

Kid climbed the stairs to the fifth floor of Diablo Dells in the West Village, then tracked the doors until he reached Apartment 504. He held out his fist, and lightly tapped on the door.

Then he remembered it was already about 3:00 AM already. He knocked harder.

"Quiet!" a curt whisper came behind the door. "We got kids!"

"Is Jeffrey Cruz there?"

The door opened a bit, the chain blocking any additional entrance. "Who asks?"

Kid had already removed his wallet to retrieve his identification. "Lord Death's son, Death the Kid. I was hoping to-"

"The one who adopted the Thompsons Sisters?!"

"Well, I wouldn't say adopt, but I-"
SLAM!

Kid was afraid of this. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Onto Plan B.

o-o-o

"Kami!" Soul exclaimed. Then he glanced at the rotten creatures now attracting flies in the dusty dirt under the smiling moon above. "Huh. Your taste in boyfriends has improved."

"Good to see you, too," she replied, slugging him playfully in the arm. "Ah, Pistol!" she said, gripping Liz in a bearhug. "Haven't seen you in a while!"

Liz frowned. She was still bitter towards Maka's mother, based on their first encounter: thanks to Kami's ability to hide her soul when undercover, Kid had mistaken the ability as soul protect, hence Kami, then a masked, undercover DWMA operative, as a witch. Even upon learning the truth months later upon proper introductions, Liz had never quite forgiven Kami for the injuries she dealt to her—or to her sister. And the current twisting of her innards by this Amazon's toned arms was not helping. "The feeling isn't mutual."

Kami blinked in honest surprise. "Really? You okay, dear?" She then glared at Soul. "Why are you dragging your friends along if they ain't feeling well, you cad?!"

Soul backed up. Damn if she wasn't his meister's mother, after all. "Liz is fine! Liz, tell her you're fine!"

How pathetic, Liz thought, rolling her eyes. "I'm fine." She knocked an offended Kami's hands away, as she marched towards the present Death Scythe. "It's just that something has been on my mind. Hmm, what was it," she began, leaning her arm against the top of Soul's head. Kami smirked, crossing her arms: this was going to get good.

"Oh yeah!" Liz remember, as she wrapped her hands around Soul's shirt. "You said there—were—no—mummies—here!" Liz screamed, shaking Soul with each pause for emphasis.

"That's stupid," Kami said, spying behind the barrier to better estimate the number of remaining cadavers. Eight, she thought—the curse of having the Mini Reaper's partner here. "Everyone knows about the famous Mummies of Guanajuato."

"Not Mr. Art Student here!"

Kami raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were a pianist."

"Off-topic," Soul said, tearing Liz's hands off his shirt. "And the nearest mummies are in Guanajuato, about four hours away, driving."

"Now you're a geographer?!"

"Shut up, Liz!" He turned back to Kami. "How do mummies get from one place to another?"

Kami thumbed behind her back. "They drove."

Soul looked around her, and was greeted with the site of a yellow Volkswagen Beetle crashed into the tunnel's wall, its hood crushed and its roof torn off.

"Huh," he said. "They made it a convertible."

Kami shrugged. "Only way to fit that many mummies into their clown car."

"So, is that where the tunnel hole came from?" Liz asked, despite herself, of Kami.

"Probably. The real kicker is that the guys I've been looking for since getting this assignment to Mexico City?"

"Yeah," Soul started, "Maka told me about them-"

"She's been," Kami paused, struggling to find the correct word, "snooping-No! Um, tracking me?"

"Actually, neither of us knew you had this assignment," Soul continued. "But Maka did see the reports of those three guys-um, Bradbury, Herzog, and El Santo, right?"

Kami raised an eyebrow on that last name, as she put her fist to her chin, tapping her machete on the tunnel floor as she meditated.

"Maka wanted to get assigned that mission." Soul looked to Liz, and seeing her realization, continued: "She had hoped for it so she could run into you."

"Hmm, interesting," Kami said.

Liz now felt her teeth grinding against each other. " 'Interesting'? That's what you have to say about your daughter wanting to see y-?!"

"Shh!" Kami cut her off. "Soul, I thought the third guy was called 'Santa.'"

Soul squinted at her and smirked. "That's dumb. What, you got Christmas on the brain that much that you misread the report?"

Kami cringed. "Looks like it, kid. Ug, I'm so stupid!" she said, smacking her forehead. "That explains why that third stooge was dressed like that!"

"Wait, what third stooge?" Liz then stiffened. "You mean there is a third mummy?!"

"No, Pistol, don't be silly!" Kami said, with maternal affection.

Then six blasts sounded off, rubble exploding out of the tunnel, thrusting the Volkswagen out of its resting place as it flipped upward. Kami did not move, as the car came within an inch of her head but made a perfect arch over her, only a bit of pebble and dust landing on her head and shoulders.

Too bad the car's interior-its roof having been torn off earlier-was now heading for Soul. His reaction time was too slow, but Liz, having dealt with a few car crashes and subway accidents before, wrapped her arms around him, and tackled him out of the way, as the vehicle slid across the tunnel and came to a stop when it reached the other side of the tunnel.

Liz breathed heavily, as she laid stomach down on the dusty floor, Soul assuming the same position but with his hands covering his head. "You okay?" she asked.

"Super," he replied. Then he jerked up. "Kami!"

"All fine here!" the meister shouted, waving her machete above her as she waved, blood still dripping onto the floor. Then she gestured with her thumb behind her: "Oh, and Liz? It wasn't three stooges."

Six silhouettes appeared behind her.

"I took down two out of the eight." She smiled, pleasantly. "Would you two be dears and help me slaughter the rest of these motherfuckers already?"

o-o-o

"Well, I'm finished!"

Patty stopped typing, the neon pink laptop set on the coffee table, as she raised her balled-up fists into the air. Tsubaki, sitting next to her on the couch in the living room, then saw Patty dramatically lift one index finger and send it crashing down onto the keyboard, as she pressed "Print" to send the story from her sister's laptop to the wireless printer in Kid's office.

Patty leapt from the couch. "I'll be right back, Tsu-and no peeking!"

Tsubaki laughed. "Okay, okay, I won't."

As Patty dashed up the stairs, Tsubaki's eyes followed here. When she was no longer in view, Tsubaki snatched up the laptop, and started reading. She skipped the first few pages-just exposition, establishing setting, trying to distinguish the leading men-to get to the juicy bits. Her head started to tilt, and then she mouthed, "Oh my God!" as she got to the good parts. How vivid the details, she thought. And-and how did Patty know just how to put such beauty into these words?

"What are you reading, Tsubaki?"

Upon hearing the voice over her shoulder, Tsubaki slammed the lid shut. Maka saw Tsubaki's eyes meet her own, her face red and her body sweating all over. "Nothing! I wasn't looking at anything!"

Maka blinked. "Whatever that nothing was, it seemed to affect you." She pressed a hand to her forehead. "You're heating up! What did you see?"

"N-nothing at all!" Tsubaki forced a smile. "I just, um, read something spicy!"

"Spicy?"

Tsubaki slapped her forehead over her word choice.

"Like a recipe?"

Tsubaki's eyes widened, as she glanced at her friend. Maka looked so innocent.

"You know, my mama-"

"I don't want to hear that!"

Maka blinked again. "As I was saying, when my mama really gets cooking, she adds a lot of spic-"

"La la la!" Tsubaki covered her ears and closed her eyes, yelling to block out the sound.

"I was just going to say my mama always added spice when she would make me waffles! Why do you think I put hot sauce into the gingerbread!"

Tsubaki risked opening her eyes at Maka.

"Jeez, what were you reading?"

"Smut!"

Tsubaki stopping singing, as her face collapsed upon seeing Patty return and hand a pile of papers to Maka. As the meister skimmed them, her eyes widened. "Smut?"

"What are you, an owl?"

"I-I don't follow, Patty," Maka stammered.

Patty cocked an eye at her, thumbing at her fellow partner as she explained: "I wrote Tsubaki some smut for Christmas! You know, since she is the biggest pervert out of all of us!"

Maka glanced at the two young women, one beaming with pride, the other curled into a ball and wishing she was dead.

"How is that an appropriate Christmas gift?" Maka asked, curious.

"I write smut every Christmas for her-it just seems appropriate! I write her some smut for Christmas, for her birthday, for Arbor Day-"

"Why Arbor Day?"

"When else is it appropriate to give someone wood?"

Maka stared. "I don't get it."

Patty patted her on the head. "Give it time-you will."

Maka raised an eyebrow, looking down at the collected papers in her hand. "I...am kind of happy I wasn't in the same chapters of Eibon with you two. Seriously, you still go on about that gender-bending stuff? Who is to say who is the most lustful of us, just based on who took the longest to turn back into a woman?"

"You're one to talk!" Tsubaki had her hands around Maka's arms as she shook her. "I heard you and Soul transformed almost instantly!"

"Well, I'm not one to brag," Maka said, rubbing the back of her head in mock humility. "Although I'm sure I transformed before Soul did."

"Maka, honey," Patty said, patting her back, "your innocence is admirable, but you are so missing out on life." She thrusted the smut into her hands. "Here, you need this more than Tsubaki."

Tsubaki's face continued to fall more and more. "B-b-but—that was for my eyes only!"

"What, it can be a gift for two people, right?"

"That's not the problem, Patty!" Tsubaki lectured here. "It is who you included in the story!"

"What? I kept it to two characters. It's like what Aristotle said: when you write porn, keep it to two-easier to follow."

"He said nothing of the sort!" Now Maka was lecturing her.

"And that's not the problem!" Tsubaki continued.

"Then what is?"

"You wrote smut fan fic about Black Star and Kid?"

Tsubaki froze at Maka's question-she was already skimming the pages. By this point, Tsubaki expected that her face was probably somewhere around her feet, as she yearned for some reaper to just kill her already. "Oh, God, why," she muttered.

Then Maka started reading aloud: "And then Black Star let his fingertips massage Kid's inner thighs, the young Grim Reaper having to cover his mouth to keep from moaning too loudly."

Tsubaki hid her increasingly reddening face in her hands. Patty was literally biting her fingernails in anticipation, waiting to see the reader's reaction. Maka lifted her head and titled it, her face inscrutable as her eyes studied Patty, as she struggled to gain how to best give her reaction. Tsubaki risked looking between her fingers.

Maka's smile widened, as she shut her eyes and said, "I really like it, Patty!"

"You do?!" both weapons cried, Maka thinking Tsubaki was moving forward a little too much.

"I do! The spelling is a bit off in places, but the sentence structure is varied, the descriptions are vivid, and I like how you characterize the protagonists!"

Both weapons blinked, before Patty, glowering, gripped Maka by her shoulders. "Of course you would read it like a lit professor—but the smut, Maka—how is the smut?!"

Maka still did not blush, although she was at a loss for words. "Well, um, I'm not sure I'm the best guide for this kind of thing—I just don't read much pornographic material, period."

"Liar!"

Now Maka blushed a bit.

"I mean, I may have found some…interesting material at some bookstores," she said, avoiding eye contact, "but really, I'm not familiar with the conventions expected." She glanced at some pages. "Although your descriptions of the poses are quite creative. How did you come up with them?"

Patty stared intently. Was she seriously asking how she conducted her research? What the hell kind of a reaction was that to her work of art?! She crossed her arms, pouting and turning away from Maka.

The meister looked back down at the pages in hand, as Patty seated herself cross-legged in front of the fire, leaning on her palm while furiously scratching her lower back.

"Maka," Tsubaki started, placing a hand on her friend's shoulder, trying to stop from hyper-ventilating from her earlier panic attack, "I think what Patty was hoping to ear was, um, just how the, er, smuttiness of the story worked for you, not some philosophical treatment of the piece."

"Not exactly in my wheel-house," Maka replied. "How else am I to read the work?"

"Just read it a little more literally?" Tsubaki said with a shrug and nervous smile.

Maka stuck out her lower lip in concentration on what she had just said. " 'How else am I read'…" Then her smile returned, and her eyes brightened. "Just read it!" She locked Tsubaki in a bear hug. "Thanks."

A confused Tsubaki was lifted off the floor, then lowered down, before Maka took her by the hand and plopped her beside Patty in front of the fireplace. The bitter pistol now stuck out her lip. "What do you want, punk?"

Maka held up both hands, the story still in her right one. "Patty! Hang on! Let me try something!" Maka cleared her throat. "Um, where is the best place to start?"

"You can start by leaving," Patty said, turning at her waist to study any other corner of the room.

Maka grimaced. "Oh, forget it—the beginning of the story it is!" Maka again cleared her throat.

" 'Oh, Kid!'"

Patty turned back, eyes wide, while Tsubaki leapt a bit. Had Maka just read the first line to Patty's story with a dead-on Black Star impersonation?

" 'What is it now, Black Star?' the young black-haired boy replied."

And now perfectly impersonating Liz and Patty's meister?

" 'I just wanted to say hi and see how your day was going, buddy!'"

Patty and Tsubaki exchanged looks—either Maka had cracked, or they really had too much eggnog and cider already.

"Death the Kid, always so prim and proper, shut the book before him, and with his usual precision, backed up the seat and stood in one fluid motion. 'I am studying, as this is a library.' He looked down upon his shorter colleague. 'Really, I am quite preoccupied this evening, and your presence is delaying that progress.'

"The usually loud ninja, although not one to take no for an answer, surprised Kid, by backing down. 'Oh,' he said with demureness"—Maka paused, struggling to imagine how to perform any sense of humility as Black Star, especially when she had not anticipated Patty using an awkward noun like "demureness"—" 'I was hoping you could help me with those studies.'

"Kid's golden eyes dilated a bit: was it true, that now Black Star, of all people, wanted to spend time with him? Not his own buxom partner"—Maka glanced over at Tsubaki, and upon seeing her reaction gave a wicked smile—"or his own obviously gorgeous twin weapons, who were obviously the most awesomest of awesome people in the whole big wide world"—she glanced at Patty. Ah, now there was the tone of voice she expected from the now wide-smiling, bright-eyed young woman.

"Enough with the set-up!" Patty shouted, snatching the pages from Maka's hand. "Here!" she added, flipping further. "Page 4—that's when the juicy stuff happens!"

As Maka looked down at the page to skim for the major words, Tsubaki's felt her face heat up more, as the meister's mouth tilted downward precipitously. Oh no, Maka would not persist reading something like this.

But her friend surprised her. Maka composed her, and began:

" 'His fingers nimbly wrapped around his turgid member' "—she glanced at Patty—"Really? That does not sound very appealing word choice—"

"Keep reading!" both women shouted.

"Okay, okay! Ahem—'and began to stroke it with a touch that was so delicate, so precise, that Black Star felt his body yearning for something harsher.'"

Tsubaki gripped her knees to her more closely, as Maka began to read in Black Star's voice: " 'No, harder, you fool,' he said breathlessly," Maka even adding the loss of breath to her voice, almost rasping out the dialogue. " 'Wreck me, Kid—tear me apart!'" Again the reader glanced at the author, but thinking better of criticizing the piece, continued. Oh, now it was in Kid's voice: " 'Then beg—I want to hear you want it, you god.'"

Tsubaki and Patty sat, transfixed, the fire place flickering warm colors across their faces. Upon noticing the attention, Maka blushed.

"Maka!" Tsubaki interrupted. "How are you able to—to get those voices so accurately?"

Maka started to rub the back of her neck. "After we got stuck in that soul-body mix-up last year," she began, referring to the problems they all faced upon breaking the Gorgon's Mirror, "imitating Black Star is almost second nature." She glanced back at the page, to avoid eye contact. "As for Kid, well," she assumed a stiffer posture, "if I extend the stick up my butt just enough, I can sound as perfect and precise as I need to."

Patty's giggles echoed throughout the empty mansion. She wrapped her arms around Maka, planting a wet kiss on her cheek. "Thank you for this Christmas gift, Li'l Sis!" she said. Having heard the affectionate nickname from her friend, Maka patted Patty's hand, returning her smile.

"Is that an invitation to keep reading?"

"Yes!" both women shouted, Tsubaki covering her mouth in embarrassment over her enthusiasm. "I mean," she said, "if you were willing to."

"I should defer to the artist on this one, on whether there is a better place to start."

Patty's mouth hung open at the compliment, then returned to its joyous smile. "Page 13—that's where it gets really hot! This part will really get your acting chops going!""

Maka flipped to the page. Upon skimming the imagery, for the first time in reading the pages, she found a description that made her blush. "Patty," she began, "I don't think that position is possible."

Patty raised an eyebrow, sighed, then patted Maka's head. "You have much learning, grasshopper." Then she gripped her arm. "Besides, anything is possible in fiction-now back to reading!"

Maka grimaced. "Oooo-kay," she said hesitantly before clearing her throat. "But do I have to read that many 'Oh, Black Star's'? It seems kind of excessive."

"No critiquing the artist! Now read, monkey!"

Maka sighed, sat up straighter, and prep herself for this dramatic role. " 'Oh, Black Star!'" she moaned.

Tsubaki looked away from her friend, studying the fire. As she struggled to associate Maka's voice as she performed as their friends-voices, mannerisms, all of it so well-two thoughts crept through her mind. First, Soul was lucky to have such a dedicated friend. Second, Soul was going to be so insulted in the future, should he ever learn just how good an actor she was.

o-o-o

Liz landed hard, her back crashing against the tunnel wall, knocking dust down onto her hat and jacket. Soul slid in front of her, having been repelled by a few of the mummies as he gave Kami a few seconds to clear the barrier and hide behind the Volkswagen. Once he kicked back one mummy-was he wearing eyeglasses?-he leapt back and dashed behind the car, too.

"Where's Liz?!" he shouted at Kami.

"Pistol! Move your ass already!"

Liz rubbed her head, struggling to stand up. As she lifted her head, she was greeted by a mummy.

"Hey, cutie," the mummy uttered, licking its chops.

Liz jabbed it in the face, knocking it back.

"Freak!" she shouted. Then she straightened up. "Wait-are you wearing a sequin cape?"

"It goes with my mask!" the mummy replied, adjusting his dislocated jaw.

"So much for having fashion sense," Liz chuckled despite herself. "I guess your taste in clothes is as dead as you are…"

She still stood, her eyes closed, a blank smile across her face.

"Will you excuse me a moment?" she said, before panic set back into her expression, as she dashed for the Volkswagen. "Soul, I'm going to freaking kill you!"

She dashed past the car, but Soul ducked out from behind it, taking her by the arm and pulling her back behind their makeshift barrier.

Kami was leaning against the car, holding the side of her torso.

"Hang back, Kami," Soul ordered her. We got this."

"Like hell you do," she shot back. Despite her pain, she still was able to smirk at Liz. "Pistol, you done flirting with your boyfriend?"

Liz dug her hands into the dust on the floor, struggling not to sucker punch her friend's mother.

"Kami, enough," Soul again ordered. "We need a plan."

The meister sighed. "I took care of two of those guys." She surveyed over the automotive barrier. "These guys are codenamed Bradbury, Herzog, and Santa-"

"El Santo."

"That's what I said, Soul!"

Liz smirked despite herself: Soul's conversations with her were about the same as those with Maka.

"These guys were Arachnophobia mooks. When the wicked witch was killed"-she paused, then got the dumbest grin Liz had ever seen as she continued in a higher pitch- "thanks to my darling Maka, of course!"

Soul cleared his throat.

"What, you need a lozenge or something?" Kami's lower pitch resumed. Despite Soul's glare, she continued: "After Arachne fell, these three took up some extracurricular reading: they looked into resurrecting the lady."

Soul blinked. "Which means-"

"Yep. Why do you think I took this mission, kid?"

Liz looked back and forth. "So the three guys were after Soul, to reclaim Arachne's soul?"

"There are many still after her soul, Soul." Kami struggled to get over the wording confusion. "I keep tabs on the more interesting cases, as the other guys are just fools. But these three were something wild."

"Indeed, young lady!" A voice with a heavy German accent spoke up. The mummy in colonial Spanish armor stood away from the Volkswagen, yet shouted to the three huddled behind it. "But why use is it to take one puny Death Scythe's soul"-Soul grew a blade on his forearm at that remark- "unless we do a test case first?"

"Indeed, Herzog." The mummy with glasses now spoke. "Through meticulous analysis and thorough reading, we considered soul transference." The mummy revealed rotten teeth as it smiled. "Is that not how you lost track of the Witch Medusa?"

Soul bared his teeth. "Come over here and say that, you punk!"

"You did all you could, pal," Liz said, as she pulled him back from the barrier. "I don't want any more mummies near me, okay?!"

"Oh, such a pity," the glasses-wearing mummy responded. "El Santo, you frightened the dear miss."

"Sorry, Brad!" The mummy in the luchador mask and cape spoke up. "Just being friendly, is all."

"Well, it is to your credit then, my friend," Herzog continued. "For once Bradbury here uncovered the soul transference, it was you, El Santo, who provided us the opportunity we needed to access a set of corpse to make sure that the soul transference would be successful!"

Kami blinked. "My God...you idiots put your souls into mummies? Why?"

"To preserve our Lady Arachne!" the three sentient mummies spoke.

The remaining three mummies-evidently only the re-animated proto-souls of zombie science rather than full fledged soul transference-struggled to mutter a cry of "All hail Lady Arachne," yet the chant lacked much effectiveness, especially when one of the mummies' limbs crashed to the floor, another his lower jaw.

While Liz looked wide-eyed at the gory sight, Soul dropped his shoulders, and tilted his head at Kami. "These are the guys you could not take down? Really?"

Kami tightened her grip on a pocket-sized book of DWMA regulations that she had removed from her pants pocket, ready to knock her daughter's partner over the head with it. "This is intolerable," she muttered. She raised her voice at the mummies: "So you find the only mummies in Mexico-"
"In Guanajuato!" Herzog screamed. "How marvelously serendipitous!"

"Those people, killed by cholera, mummified, and you disturb their rest?" Kami tightened her fists. "You cannot let the dead rest? And now that you can move your souls wherever you want, you think you're taking this Death Scythe's witch's soul?"

Soul knitted his brow.

"Not a chance!" Kami shouted. "I'll be dead before I let you resurrect your idealized dead bitch of a witch!" She turned to the two weapons. "Liz, what weapons do you have?"

Liz, oddly motivated by Kami's tone, lifted her shirt up to show her holster. "Two Berettas, ammo along the belt."

"Won't give you much to hit the souls of these guys, but that'll be enough to slow them down. Stay back here and cover me, while I cut them down."

Soul chuckled, a flash of light escaping from his arm, replaced then with a blade along his forearm. "I think you mean when I cut them down."

"Soul, you're with me—transform."

"What?—No!"

"You run down here to help. What, you thought you were just going to sweep in and save me?"

"N-no!" Soul stammered. "But I can help! You and me, knocking them down—"

"No argument—I do better with a scythe. Now transform."

Soul glared. "I didn't think you were so hardheaded as to head solo into a mission. Wouldn't it be better to have two bodies taking down mummies? You didn't do very well when you were the only body standing."

Kami struggled to maintain her smirk against Soul's insults. "Six out of eight mummies, cake-walk, transform now," Kami said, counting off on her fingers for each of the three sentence fragments.

"You're the one who wanted to come solo, and I'm here to do the job you couldn't do, and faster!" Soul glared at her. "I'm my own weapon on this one, and I'm getting you home!"

The three mummies looked at each other. "Um," El Santo started, "can we start fighting yet?"

"Shut up!" Soul and Kami shouted, the Arachnophobia trio backing up a bit at their cry.

Soul faced Kami again-could her glare intensify anymore? "First off," she began, "you are hardly your own weapon, rookie—not with your so-called success rate. Second, Black Op Mission: when a Death Scythe gets involved, the top meister wields them. And since Pistol over here is pretty much useless protecting her own meister, and is barely a two-star meister herself"—she ignored Liz's glare—"I'm in charge. Do I have to quote proper mission regulations to you?"

"No, I already have had that book drilled into me!"

CRACK!

"You walked into that one, Soul," Liz said, collecting the Death Scythe off the dusty floor, as Kami replaced her pocket regulation book into her shirt pocket.

"Death Scythe, transform."

"Fine," Soul said, still rubbing his head as he lit up and transformed into a beam of light that re-formed into his scythe form, now resting in Kami's hands. "But you need to get something straight, Kami," he added, as his reflection appeared in the scythe's blade. "I don't like being wielded by anyone else. I may be starved for souls, but I don't like consuming any other than the ones that my meister collects with me. I am doing so you can get home to your daughter already."

"And I appreciate it," Kami said with a smile, her eyes still hardened in preparation for the fight ahead. "Pistol, cover me!"

Liz steadied her firearm on top of the Volkswagen, as Kami leapt over the barrier, using the head of Soul's scythe to steady herself as she flipped through the tunnel's overhead space, landed with a wave of dust exploding out from her, and swung Soul through Bradbury's torso, disabling her third opponent. Herzog and El Santo recoiled.

Kami lifted her head, smirking, as she transferred her soul's wavelength into Soul's blade, ready to end this fight quickly.

Then she felt an arm wrap around her leg. She looked down, to see not only the upper portion of Bradbury was still alive-well, living dead-but so too the two other mummies from outside, who had crawled their way back into the tunnel.

"Did I forget to mention," Herzog began, "that our bodies will not simply dissolve upon your disabling of our corporeal forms?"

"No, I don't think you did," El Santo responded.

Kami's steely resolve belied the fear she felt creep into her. "Then what you are saying is that your skin and bones block any access from a weapon, even a Death Scythe, to reap your soul?"

"Get me closer, and I'm sure I could tear it out," Soul added.

"No, no," Herzog continued, sneering at his opponents: "We are like onto zombies, my friends. And if you cannot even reach the very soul, then how can you eat it?"

As the monster approached a Soul-wielding Kami, Liz, watched from afar, her pupils dilating. "They can't be killed," she whispered. She struggled to steady the aim on her weapon, as she pointed it at the mummy in the colonial armor, and fired.

o-o-o

WRITER'S NOTES: CHAPTER 10

Another chapter, another story I still haven't written: Maka's reference to the Gorgon's Mirror is something I have in mind for a little body-swapping narrative, sort of.

I'm ashamed of myself for writing smut—not so much for the actual presence of smut, but the poor quality and the trolling I did by just giving snippets. The benefit of having Patty writing that stuff is that, should my writing be awful at that portion, I can just blame her for it. I do not anticipate trying to write smut in the future.

Kami hits Soul with a book: I have this headcanon that both her and Spirit would use books to hit people. They picked up the trick from Lord Death's Reaper Chop. But then Sid also used a book against Maka in NOT—so I figure he probably picked it up from Spirit or Kami, as one of them probably was teaching at the DWMA and had Sid as a teaching assistant.

I stretched the truth quite a bit on the Mummies of Guanajuato, but they were the reason I named the Arachnophobia agents after three people who used those persons' remains in literature and film-Ray Bradbury, Werner Herzog, and El Santo-and that is a trio I never considered before. As well, since I named one guy after Herzog, I might as well have that guy go full-on Aguirre: The Wrath of God and don some colonial armor.