Stein stood up and picked up the chair. Strangely, even when he fell he still made it look stylish. His eyes traveled to the right of the room, watching Ox Ford walk down the steps and come to his desk. Stein rolled the chair back to its proper spot and sat down in it again, sensing Ox's soul as well for the hell of it. It was intelligent, confident. A lot like Maka's. Apparantly he wasn't perturbed by the possible revelation of his teacher killing off the last bird in a species. Or maybe one of his students finally started to see through his jokes and tricks. Thankfully it was only the smartest person in the class who started to catch on, but still...
Damn.
"Anyone else done with their assignment yet? You can put it on my desk and give me something to do." Stein said with a bored expression, masking his disappointment. He tapped the desk with his hand a few times where Ox Ford laid down his assignment. Ox started to turn around and go back to his seat, but he noticed something about the bird and stopped instead, turning back to face Stein. He lifted and held his glasses higher up on his face with his thumb and forefinger while he peered down into the open cavity of the bird curiously.
"Professor, I've been meaning to ask you this for a while... what do you do with the bird and its organs after you dissect them? Surely you don't just throw away the dead carcasses."
A lopsided smirk tore across Stein's face, finding yet another golden opportunity to scare someone else. Ah, such a succulent, irresistable moment. He looked right at Ox with a crazed look in his eyes and leaned over the desk and the bird, his face pushing ominously close to Ox's.
"What else? I eat them. Sometimes I find it tastes better if I eat them entirely raw- blood, feathers and all."
If Stein's words and the way he kept slowly inching closer while he punctuated each of them were poisonous, Ox would have fallen ill and died on the spot. Sweat beaded on his face and slipped down his cheeks, sudden chills shivering down his back. He looked at the scientist in terror through his swirl-printed glasses, which hid his pupils that were growing larger in fright by the second. He fumbled a few times for words but found none, making random flustered sounds instead.
Stein kept hold of his demented expression while his soul secretly quivered in squeamish joy at how easily he broke the strongest student. Blue lines of anguish fell down Ox's face as he took a step back and turned around, heading back up the steps to his seat like a zombie, the utter humanity being squeezed out of him.
Ah, that's better.
No one remained that was in their right mind.
Perfect.
Stein did another quick once-over of the students, chuckling to himself when no one ventured away from their desks to get anywhere near this crazy guy, lest he bite their hands off or something equally traumatising. It was already bad enough with everyone being fifty feet away from him.
'Alright, that's enough fun for now. I don't want these kids to have premature heart attacks before they're twenty.' Stein looked at Kid, who seemed to be struggling with something, his gaze lowered and his shoulders raised in a guarded fashion as his body was tumultuously shaking, trembling; he was trying to block something out of his mind.
Stein frowned slightly and allowed a concerned look to cross his face as he lifted his hand up to turn the bolt in his head a few times. During the third turn, suddenly Kid looked up with eyes wide, right at Stein, as his eyes returned to normal, the purple rings erasing themselves from his presence. He had a shocked expression then and he touched his fingers to his face, cautiously prodding along the bottoms of his eyelids as he blinked in pain several times.
'Hmm. So the process is still uncomfortable for him. A new problem I need to iron out.'
After gazing at Kid for a few more seconds, Stein generally looked toward the center of the room, not really at anyone in particular. His normal, laid-back calmed voice returned, much to all the students' relief.
"Come on, it can't be that hard to remember a bird's anatomy after I've dissected twelve different birds this week."
A few students coughed and slowly, Maka and a few others walked over to his desk and put their papers on top of Ox Ford's.
Stein watched them all come and go, taking note that about eighty percent of the students got up to turn in their filled-in diagrams of the bird's insides. When they all returned to their desks and sat down again, Stein spoke once more. "All right. Class is over for the day. You're all dismissed."
-x-
"Seriously, Kid, you're going to fail this class if you don't start turning in your work."
Liz said to him, shaking him out of his thoughts. He looked at her, not noticing the towering origami giraffe that stood right in front of him on the desk as Patty got on top of it and started wrestling with it. Liz was blowing on her nails while she held a bottle of nail polish in her free hand.
"In case you have forgotten, I don't need to take this course since I'm already a full-fledged Reaper and know all of this stuff anyway, courtesy of my father, Lord Death."
Liz nodded in admitted defeat, knowing beforehand that her statement would probably have no lasting effect and softly blew on her nails again before holding them out to Kid.
"Hey, are my nails symmetrically painted this time?" Kid quickly looked up at her to make sure she wasn't making fun of him, then looked down at them, bright pink and SO girly. Pink. Pink. Kid gulped and fought against certain erotic memories and fantasies from resurfacing in his memory. He held his hands out and wrapped them around the underside of hers, bending her fingers down to get a closer look at them. After a few seconds his eyes lit up, seeming to have stars in them as he oggled his partner's handiwork.
"Perfect!"
He grabbed Liz's other hand after she sat down her nail polish on the desk and held them side-by-side to compare them. His ecstatic voice rang out once again.
"Perfectly symmetrical! I'm in awe of the pure, symmetrical beauty! What wonderful work, Liz!" An elated tear came to the corner of Kid's eye and he wiped it away with a blissful sigh. Ah, all was right with the world.
-x-
Someone stared at the back of Kid's head from across the room after he turned to talk to Liz. They had been watching him all morning, sometimes looking at Stein instead, connecting the dots together. They knew something was happening, and they were both involved with it somehow. They yearned to learn more about it, to see Kid's eyes closely, if anything. They wanted to know more about this mystery.
-x-
Students started to pour down the stairs in droves, relieved to finally hear Stein's announcement and they talked quietly amongst themselves as they left the room. Stein caught a few bits of their conversations as they walked by, noticing how they were comparing this incident to previous ones and that they thought this one was the scariest of them all. Stein smiled.
Liz looked down at the opened doorway and all the kids leaving, and stood up, putting her nail polish in her pocket.
"Oh, class is finally over. Hey, you two, Maka and Soul asked me earlier in the hallway before class if we wanted to hang out with them today. You want to come with me?" Liz grabbed her hat off the desk, putting it on while she nodded her head toward both Patty and Kid.
"Okayyy~!" Patty said enthusiastically, putting a fist in the air after she beat her giraffe sculpture to a pulp. Poor thing, even if it had no soul that could be hurt.
Kid thought about it for a moment, remembering that fateful day that had passed by so many moons ago...
Boobs.
Kid closed his eyes and almost facepalmed at the embarrassment.
The damn symmetrical beauty, he couldn't pry his eyes away from them. After that day he had the unofficial "Soul's pervert-buddy-in-training" sign slapped to his ass.
Courtesy of Maka.
Agh.
"You know Liz, I think I'll pass this time..." was what he was GOING to say, but a certain stitched man prevented a single word from actually leaving his lips.
"Kid, can you stay behind in the classroom for a moment? I want to speak to you about your grades in this class." Kid turned around in his seat and looked down at Stein, who was standing up near an end of his desk, holding the stack of student papers in his hands and trying to tap them together against the desk into a neat pile. A symmetrical stack. Kid almost smiled at that.
"Yes, Professor." Kid looked up at Liz and stood up, then turned around. "Sorry. Maybe some other time, after everyone forgets the last fiasco that occured while I was there. Namely Maka. But can you send them my regards? Thanks." Kid followed the flow of students down the stairs and stopped on the other side of Stein's desk. After Stein was done organizing the papers he made his way over to the Reaper, stopping in front of him after watching the rest of the students pour out of the classroom for a few seconds.
"Kid, I'm sure you know that it isn't really required of you to participate in this class, but I would appreciate it if you at least tried to learn something new while you're here. Surely you have some better way to occupy your time other than fretting over writing your name perfectly every day?"
Hearing this visibly bothered Kid. He held a closed hand up to his mouth, his thumb resting against his bottom lip while he sort of looked down and away in thought.
"But, my name is really important. If I can't even get that right, then I'm nothing, a no-good, filthy piece of Reaper-scum garbage..." Kid started ranting, his expression falling more and more as he lowered his head and body and nearly crawled down into a miserable ball on the floor at Stein's feet. But before Kid could entirely accomplish this feat, Stein grabbed one of his arms and pulled him back up, holding him in place.
"Soul Force," Stein murmured softly as he put his free palm against Kid's chest and a gold flash of energy pounded into his heart. Kid felt like he was struck by lightning as his soul was lobotomized, all previous thoughts about precision shocked out of his body. He groaned and slumped forward as he tried to get his bearings again. By now only a few students were still in the classroom and were making their way outside, while one of them turned their head to watch what was happening with visible interest.
Stein held Kid upright again with both hands until he felt him start to breathe again, raggedly as air rushed back into his lungs.
Pink hair moved across their face as they turned their head back around and left the room. Little did Kid or Stein know, that this person was watching them intently the whole class period. They seemed to know just a little too much about what was going on.
-x-
"Seriously, Kid... name one part of a bird's body that isn't located on the outside."
"The... gizz...ard..." Kid groaned, feeling a buzzing headache pulsing at his temples.
"Good. And that's located in the stomach, correct?"
The door to the classroom closed, courtesy of the last student leaving. They were finally alone in the room. Stein gave Kid no time to answer before changing the subject completely.
"Hey."
Stein put his hand below Kid's chin and lifted it up to look at him, immediately lowering his head to look at him closely.
"Do your eyes still hurt?" the man asked as he examined Kid's face from a few different angles.
"N-no... but my head hurts after what you just did to me..."
Kid witnessed then with surprise perhaps the first time he's ever heard the doctor admit an apology.
"Sorry." he said softly, then he did something even more unexpected.
Stein leaned down and kissed Kid.
A few seconds passed before Kid realized what was happening and he tilted his head away, breaking off their contact with a slight smacking sound. He squinted his eyes, almost shutting them completely as he fought against letting Stein's Soul Wavelength tune to the right frequency to be compatible with his. He struggled with it, his body twitching as Stein's wavelength tried to worm its way into Kid's personal barrier and sanctuary, corrupting Kid's white mansion with Stein's golden... love?
What?
Kid was caught entirely off guard, his senses being flooded with this unknown, foreign lake swallowing everything inside his heart. He was paralyzed by the warm feeling of it. Stein smiled down at him, knowing his opportunity had come.
He leaned his head down again and moved Kid's head to meet his in a deep, open-mouthed kiss this time. Suddenly Kid's eyes went wide and became pupil-less as he yelled into Stein's mouth, the blue flames from his soul reaching outside of his body and encircling around both him and Stein. Stein's gold wavelength pressed and rubbed against his between them until it finally broke through and they melded together, becoming one strengthened, larger entity as Stein's soul color turned to the same hue of blue to match his.
He was finally in.