Deadwood was aptly named, Stein thought when they finally stop the car. After only one particularly annoying incident at a gas station where the dermatologically-challenged teen working the cash register spent a few too many moments drooling over Marie's breasts, which resulted in the destruction of said cash register and cashier both, they had finally made it.

When he stepped out of the car, his ass felt numb. He grumbled, slamming the door. He was almost surprised when the machine didn't fall to scrap metal at the action, and instead began to make his way around, down the dusty streets.

Deadwood was having a dry season, he remembered. No rain in months, which wasn't very good for the tiny population that resided there. Speaking of, Marie came in close to his side, her good eye flicking around. It was a wonder why the community hadn't all fled, but they must have been some stubborn people.

It was all too dark, too. There wasn't enough electricity to power any street lights.

No street lights to power, either, which explained why the singular apartment complex was lit up like a lighthouse, the two of them making quick ground towards it. Death told them that the man he managed to get in contact with had specifically requested they meet with him before they barreled into any fighting.

Stein found it all rather archaic.

"Wow, when they said ghost-town, they really meant it," Marie muttered, making twice as many strides as Stein to keep up with his long legs.

"Yes. It's easy to hide out here as well."

"From the general population, maybe. But from you?"

Stein didn't react. He didn't want to tell her that the Kishin as well as the Kishin egg's wavelength was bearing down on him oppressively, that he wanted to claw at his throat.

There were eyes on the walls. Hell, there were eyes on the deathdamned dust trail, and Stein purposefully placed his next step so it covered the iris. Marie moved closer to him, prepared to transform at any moment.

She didn't have any need to do so while they walked. She felt the prickle of the Kishin egg's influence, but Stein knew it was far enough away not to cause them any harm. Despite how loud and noisy their piece-of-trash vehicle was, they had the element of surprise. Marie blinked when they reached the apartment complex.

"Should we just... knock?" she asked, eyeing the door and moving her hand up, but Stein reached out, gently encircling her slim wrist and bringing it back down to her side. When she looked at him, he pointed his chin over to the window where the curtains were still rustling.

They weren't very stealthy people, that was for certain. But after a moment, the door opened a crack and a nervous voice called out to them.

"Are y-y-you... from the a-a-a-academ-m-my?"

Marie blinked. The man was giving Crona a run for their money.

"We are. Weapon Meister Doctor Franken Stein and Death Scythe Marie Mjolnir of the Death Weapon Meister Academy" Marie replied, making her voice soft and soothing. Stein had a bad habit of making others... nervous, so she usually did most of the talking: a fact that he didn't mind, though he was getting irritated with how slow the interaction was going. Marie glanced up at him, her eye narrowed in concern.

She was hoping his blood-lust wasn't going to be so bad so soon.

The door opened only a millimeter more and the man's nervous face peeked out at them. "You never know when it's-"

Stein merely threw his leg out, forcing the man back so he could enter the building. Marie shook her head. At least she knew Stein wasn't a vampire, what with his lack of qualms about barging through.

A plethora of monsters he may believe himself to be, but not that one at least. Regardless, she followed after her Meister, flashing the shocked man a gentle smile.

She wished she could tell him that Stein wasn't always like that. As it were, she was actually thankful for the familiarity of his behavior. She would have really been shocked if he waited around: politeness would have been a poor sign on how stable he was.

She had hope. When they stepped past the small hallway into the lobby, Stein looked around and spotted the multiple people with impromptu weapons in their hands or by their sides. He knew it would be hopeless if any of them, even if all of them fought the Kishin egg at once. The population was small enough that only one final slaughter would end their numbers.

Marie cleared her throat, coming in front of Stein when she noticed how angry the group had gotten.

"I'm sorry for that-"

"Lord Death has insisted I meet with Nathan Shultz," Stein said over her, cutting her off. He was starting to feel strange, as though tipsy. He wanted to step outside again, half for a smoke and half to see where the Kishin egg was.

It felt like it was coming in closer, though it was certainly still far enough away not to warrant any immediate concern. He thinks. Everything felt hazy. They'd have to make it fast.

Behind them, the man who answered the door delicately stepped forward. "I-I'm N-N-Nathan."

Stein didn't turn entirely, feeling a little too dizzy to do so, but he did move his head. "And why did you want to meet with us?"

Marie put a hand on his forearm, probably as a silent chide about how rude he was being, but she brought the clarity.

Why did he want to meet with them? Wouldn't he want them to get to work immediately? The haze in his head cleared further when he reached up and cranked his bolt back. When he got a good look at the man, he noticed the lack of shaking. Why no adrenaline spike in a situation where he stuttered so profusely?

"W-we all th-th-thought it best to tell a-about our m-m-m-m-medic."

"We won't need to know about that," Marie assured. Most of Stein's bag, which they'd left in the car, had been medical supplies for almost every emergency under the sun. And she had more faith in him than anyone else when it came to medicine. No average doctor brings a man back from the dead.

"N-no... I think y-y-y-you will," Nathan said, his body seeming to distort.

Stein blinked behind his glasses, his lungs compressing in his body as he breathed out and focused his soul perception ability. When he settled his gaze on Nathan, he couldn't detect anything. At all.

In fact, the only souls in the lower floor of the apartment complex were his and Marie's: every other living creature in the entire town was trapped on the third floor and higher.

He understood. Nathan wanted to stall them.

Marie caught on as well and she activated her transformation, her handle coming into direct contact with Stein's palm as their resonance sung between them.

'What's going on, Stein?' she asked from her weapon form, keeping her wavelength dialed up as high as it could go. 'Is he-'

'No,' Stein answered, their mental link making it so that the sound of his voice bounced around through the entirety of her, enveloping every sense she had. 'He has no soul.'

'No soul?' Marie gasped. 'He's a decoy!' she yelled out and the two of them watched as Nathan melted down to the floor in a beige, yellowing, shapeless blob. The people around them, the ones who seemed as though they were ready to fight, the ones Stein pitied, too fell to dunes.

Dunes.

His eyes widened immediately and he turned on his heel and ran outside. He hadn't been paying enough attention and the demon soul was coming closer. The curse that flowed from his mouth was jagged when he swallowed down the fact that they hadn't ever had the element of surprise. It was all a trap.

And a good one. He had been so distracted that he didn't notice that damn Kishin egg was pressing close to them. That the people in the apartment weren't stubborn but hostages.

His soul perception felt the egg's wavelength everywhere and Marie crackled with how intense he was focusing. She steadied their resonance, reaching out with her healing wavelength and pressing it against his soul. It was jittering, shaking like a bottle ready to uncork at any moment.

He hated to be surprised, but they just didn't expect for the chuckling to sound so close.

Stein leapt up, barely avoiding the sand that started to snake over his shoes. Marie blinked inside her weapon form, confused. Stein cursed aloud.

"Sand..." he said, his eyes narrowing as the sand he had previously been standing in shifted around, swirling together until a stretched out humanoid appeared. This time, the soul was there, right in the thing's chest. That wasn't good. Stein's Wavelength Attacks depended so heavily upon electricity, and that was Marie's specialty, too.

Sand was going to ruin their dynamic entirely.

"Ah, good to see you!" the Kishin egg said. The voice was deep, and when he opened his mouth, it was a swirl of red and black leading nowhere and everywhere at once. "Long time no see, Doctor. Though, not really, eh? Two weeks is hardly anything!"

Stein brought Marie up and settled into a defensive stance, not reacting when the Kishin egg giggled.

"That little hammer isn't going to do much," he taunted. Marie growled from her weapon form, annoyed at being put down so quickly simply based on size, but grew surprised when the Kishin egg simply smiled. "Electricity, yes? Oh! Don't look so... shocked, ahaha! You dream of her often enough, Doctor."

Stein's eyes widened as he connected the dots and he bent backward to dodge a wave of sand that came for his face. Marie heard the whisper in every nerve of her body.

'Sandman,' Stein thought, shifting around. 'Marie, we need Izuna-'

But the sand grasped hold of his ankles and disrupted all of his balance. He grunted when it upset his foothold and then the Sandman was upon him, the Kishin egg's body connecting with his own, sending him flat out flying against the brick of the apartment complex. The thing shook with the force of it and the blow it caused to the back of his head was harsh enough that he let go of Marie and she went tumbling, her form scraping the wall as she skittered away from him.

'Franken!' she called, struggling to keep hold of their resonance as he blacked out momentarily.

He forced the pain aside and scrambled away from where he'd been thrown, reaching for Marie. They had no hope if he utilised Soul Menace: it wouldn't do anything. This was a battle where they could depend upon nothing but sheer physical strength.

He must have been concussed. Everything in his head was rattled around and he just wasn't fast enough without Marie there to amplify him. The sand came back up and clamped right over his face.

It broke his glasses, first, the force of it before he felt it in his eyes, and the extent of the Kishin egg's influence seeped into him: he knew what was happening. His body was shutting down immediately when the sand shuddered over his gray-green orbs, sliding over every exposed crevice. He slumped down against the wall, trying to keep conscious.

Failing.

The Sandman grinned as he stepped forward to Stein. "Now then, perhaps a quick nap!" he hollered.

Marie screeched instinctively. It took her a second to bring herself back into her human form but when she did she didn't spare a moment, rushing to her Meister. Her feet pounded over the dust trail, kicking up dirt around her with how fast she ran in front of Stein. Her untransformed palm crackled with electricity when she slammed it onto the kishin egg's right ribcage, her other hand a hammer swinging around to catch him on the opposite side.

He slid back from her, evading as his body turned into sand and laughter seeming to spike out of every grain. At the very least, what was on Stein's face fell away, slithering back to the Kishin egg, though Stein was unconscious. She ran forward to the dune that was collecting, ready to hammer the thing to finer dust but she felt some of it worm into her shoes.

"Shit!" Marie called out, kicking off against the ground so she could avoid the pooling at her feet. The laughter rung higher.

"Ah, how cute! Two souls for the price of one. And here I thought I was only getting Nutso over there. Currently, it looks like you're out of luck. This is a suicide mission for you, hammer. Your electricity is useless here."

Marie stepped closer to her now spasming Meister. Stein collected himself into a bundle down on the floor, into the corner. She'd seen him like this too many times.

Dreams. Nightmares, really. There was nothing she could do to wake him, either. They were still resonating, though it was weak and unstable, but she couldn't reach him unless she had time. And there was no way she could pick him up and get him to the car without the Kishin egg following and slaughtering her retreating form. And beyond that, she couldn't drive off if they reached the car to get them to a safe enough space where she could coax him out of it. Her lack of depth perception mixed in with such darkness and the lack of population: they'd both be dead in an accident and it would all have been for nothing.

Marie took a sharp breath in through her nose. She couldn't pull him out of the nightmares fast enough, but she could at least prevent him from getting any worse. She didn't know if increased exposure to the sand meant a longer sleep, but she wasn't going to take the chance. He was getting out of this mess, she promised herself; she'd get him out. Keeping her eye sharp, she took the risk to change out of her partial transformation in order to rip a piece of her shorts off. They hadn't been expecting sand.

Even to breathe, the very air was the enemy. The ground beneath her feet. She pushed her leg against Stein, calling his name.

He didn't acknowledge her, and the Sandman was beginning to collect himself back into a tangible form, likely toying with her.

Fine. She could use that. Underestimation was the fastest way she could nail a physical attack straight to his face until it shattered everything in his grimy body. She crouched down, more than ready to turn on a dime and transform, but instead jerked Stein's head up. Her hands were glowing but it wasn't reaching him, so she had to do what she could.

Swiftly she pressed the fabric against his lips and he thrashed in his sleep, but Marie held firm. If any more sand came at his mouth or nose, he wouldn't have the chance to defend himself. He'd drown in it, lungs filling and body failing and and and-

'Franken, Franken, the air is poison,' she told him through their mental link, the desperate edge of her words seeming to stop his frantic mobility, though she knew it was just one nightmare phasing into another. She'd seen it before. But she needed to hope that there was something rational there.

Something she could still touch that he would feel echo through him.

She tied the fabric as firmly as possible over his mouth and nose, scared that the time she just used was useless. When she stood up, she saw the creature looking at her in amusement.

"Aw, wittle hammew. How pwecious. I can just feel the sparks between you! How about a lullaby next?" the Sandman purred, remaining motionless.

Marie transformed her hand to a hammer, straightening her spine and swallowing her grimace. So this was why it had been so bad. The influence of something with a wavelength strongest in the dream world: no wonder Stein had been falling to pieces.

The Sandman faked a frown. "My, so serious," he said, and she watched as he let his hand fall to ruin once more before her, changing it into a cloud. "You need to... lightnin' up!"

Marie dodged the sand so it got as far away from Stein as it could. She dove down and to the right, away from the corner, and ran to the creature. She was useless at long range, and more so, her wavelength wouldn't do anything in this situation.

Marie had to utilise her name as the Pulverizer. But she had been given it for a reason.

She came in close, her body sliding up against the sand and she felt the granules on her skin, rubbing and chafing her raw. She wheeled her arm back and slammed it forward while she kicked up, catching him in two directions.

He turned himself to bits to dodge the kick she aimed to his chin, but the hit from her hammer that connected on his right side forced him to yowl and hiss in pain, a reaction that wasn't lost to her.

It was, however, somewhat covered up by her body sailing through the air, straight to the abandoned wood of whatever structure was next to the apartment complex. The dry crackling of the old material splintered around her as she shot through, and she caught the worst of it on her side.

She coughed, feeling the dust in her lungs, but clamped down firmly on her lips.

She didn't have the luxury of a mask. She took all her spare time on Stein. Her eye cut over to him, seeing his own still closed, though his body was wrapping around itself until he was in a fetal position. The makeshift cloth-cover hadn't slipped in his motions. Marie forced herself up though it felt as though she'd bruised every inch of her skin.

Instead, she pushed forward again. The Sandman was having a harder time collecting himself, and where she had hit him with her hammer seemed to have his body fused together. The indented mark of her lightning bolt insignia hinted that the sheer pressure bunched his side into one smooth mass, preventing him from turning it to sand.

At least she knew it was working.

He immediately shot backwards when he saw her gunning for him, and swirled the sand that was his hand around his head before directing it at her again.

She wasn't fast enough to dodge it this time, and it caught her against the neck and the chest, sweeping her down and to the ground. The blunt force trauma the blow caused to the back of her head swum her vision, but she had to move.

She had to move.

She rolled away just before the sand came to flatten her ribcage. It caught her against the arm, though, and rubbed the skin straight off. She found her footing, dancing aside as best she could.

The Kishin egg decided to adapt a sort of scraping and cutting motion for her, something she could evade more easily than large clouds. Stein used the same style with Spirit when they sparred: fast, deadly attacks.

When the sand made an arc to her neck, she ducked beneath it and kicked off as fast as she could. She hadn't tried using Izuna without a Meister for years, since she saw how bad it was when shared between two, but she knew she needed something.

There was only so much longer the Sandman would target her. He knew Stein was the most vulnerable one in the situation and the naivety that the egg's psychological hold on Stein would be enough wouldn't last much longer. Marie was the largest threat to him at the moment, so he wanted to eliminate her first, but the instant the monster threatened Stein physically, the fight would be lost to her.

She felt the hollow ache immediately when she cut off her resonance with him, as she always did. She just felt so whole when they were connected in that way, and she always placated herself with the fact that her wavelength calmed him as well, so it was mutual. But she knew her healing soul could do nothing for him, not even offer comfort: she was only resonating for her own sake. She wanted to know he was okay.

He wasn't.

She had to end it soon and she wasn't willing to force him into sharing the effects of her hyper-nerve technique when only she had to endure. Her transformed arm throbbed when she activated Izuna and the entirety of her body was being ripped to shreds, her muscles screeching at her to just end it.

She didn't have long, but now she had the advantage.

She was in front of the Sandman before he could even blink, her hammer shuddering into his left ribcage, leaving a matching mark to his right. Except when her demon steel touched him, it downright dented into his body, eviscerating everything in the mass of pressure she brought forth. He screamed, his arms coming up to her face and scratching her cheek raw, trying to tendril to her mouth. She held her breath as she smashed her hammer against his stomach, forcing that concave as well.

When he kicked her back, it was into the stone of the building Stein was against, and she caught herself before she barreled into him, her feet bouncing on the ground. She blinked sand from her singular eye and began to push off, but the Sandman ran toward her, both feet slamming into her stomach.

She coughed, hard, her lungs feeling as though they'd jammed to her throat. And the Kishin egg repeated the motion, hell in his eyes as his arms fell to granules. Marie howled, blood running down her chin and her insides feeling runny.

Marie couldn't quite evade when he brought his leg up to her shoulder, kicking against it. She felt it pop out of the socket, her hammer arm stuttering light before it changed back. The Sandman tipped his head back, laughing once more, thinking she was now defenseless.

"My, little hammer, you sure were a live wire-" he started to say, but Marie already transferred her partial form into the other hand. The electricity of her wavelength coursed through her very skeletal muscles when she brought her hammer against his face, forcing it inward.

The Kishin egg fell back in time for Marie to kick at his knees, finally getting his legs out from under him.

She peeled off from the wall, landing in an undignified heap and struggling to get upright even with support from the brickwork. The step she took forward was jittery and slow, and she didn't have any time.

She was out of time.

The Sandman was done with playing. She watched as the undone shards of his arms seemed to hum in the air when they made a beeline for Stein's form.

And she couldn't think. She rammed off from the wall, the bottom of her foot absolutely obliterating a chunk of it as well as the soles of her shoes, and careened forward so fast she felt the whiplash. When her hammer knocked at the kishin's chest, it forced his throat in as well, and sand went flying everywhere all at once.

It lined her mouth and filled her ears and nose, her eye almost rendered blind. He was trying to dig himself inside of her but she only opened her mouth wider to yell out a fierce, keening cry as she pummeled her hammer down and down. She was caught in a vortex, enduring the baleful tornado: a sandstorm personalised just for her.

She didn't know if the sand got to Franken, but she knew it was his name she wailed out, as though she were a banshee; some siren called onto the Earth to wake a man instead of drown him down. It was her cry, heard over the murderous wind, that forced the living souls in the apartment complex to peer out of their windows, watching the carnage, some of them too scared to move and others, seeing how hurt the two were, would be, rushing up medical supplies. A few of them started making their way down the infinite number of creaking stairs but hung back behind the corner or just before the door, terrified.

Most though, most merely watched as the ragged woman didn't stop her assault, even when everything inside of her fell to ribbons and flailed away. The only thing that mattered was the connection of her hammer to a dying body, the urge to destroy everything in her path.

When she felt his soul, his soul, tendril out to her once again, she latched onto it immediately because it showed her he was alive (all that mattered, all that mattered, her promise, he'd make it, he did he did he did) and Stein winced away from her. But she dug her metaphoric heels in and held tight to their resonance, and Izuna wept through her very being when she lifted her arm once more, mid-swing to crash upon the demon soul as if she'd come to deliver judgment.

And then everything stopped.

The breath she took hitched furiously in her trachea and she fell forward onto the ruined body of the Sandman just as it entirely fell to tatters, the sandstorm coming to a weak halt. The egg's soul released into the air, a swirling orb of red and black, a prize she couldn't claim as her body failed her.

"Marie!"

The fabric tasted awful on his tongue and he could hardly breathe. But something was pulling him from the muck, something was commanding him to get up. And the arms, the heinous weight that had been holding him under got lighter and lighter as the seconds ticked by.

When he cracked his eyes open, it was just in time to see the sand that was coming for him miss by barely a foot and fall to the ground, useless. Beyond it, in front of him, the Kishin egg's body went convex with how hard Marie slammed into his chest. It wasn't enough to kill him, but the creature was practically all flattened.

His shaking hands came up to what was around his face and he pulled the cloth off, recognising the pattern. He reached out to her with his soul without even thinking about it and she bit into him, all sharp edges and fury and hellfire.

Mindless, frazzled.

"Marie," he muttered out, his vocal chords refusing to work properly. And then the familiar shock of Izuna coursed through him, woke him and lit him up from the inside out.

She'd been using it. All alone.

"No!" he yelled, scrambling up, trying to plead for Marie to release her hyper-nerve technique, to stop. She had won, the Kishin would be defeated regardless of whether she kept fighting or not, but her arm came up for another swing, the other hanging uselessly at her side and he watched her freeze.

It didn't happen in slow-motion.

In fact, it happened faster than he could have ever imagined it to. One second, Marie was brimstone and life, and the next she was heaving wetly, blood spattering out of her mouth, her body flailing forward and giving out, dealing the final, double-edged blow to the Sandman.

He screamed her name and it hurt his throat: it was so unfamiliar to have the panic well up so fast. His palms scraped and got caked in dust as he shoved himself up and forward, barreling to her body. He wished he had stayed awake: he didn't know what was going on, what blows she had been dealt, what to do.

"Marie!" he said, grasping her shoulders and forcing her to her side so she didn't choke on any vomit or blood that came leaking from her esophagus. He brought his fingers to her jugular, searching for her pulse.

The Kishin egg's soul was suspended beside them, as though mocking him when her heartbeat came back irregular, barely there.

Stopping.

There was no thought at that point. He was moving on the pure muscle memory of field training, turning her onto her back, ripping her heavy wool shirt open, and rubbing his palms together. His soul menace came itching down his arms before he brought both hands down on her chest, trying to shock her heart back to normal.

A regular defibrillator wouldn't do anything for Marie. Her whole body was both an insulator and a conductor. It took mass levels of power and he amplified his wavelength, repeating the motions. Her back arched, body pulling as though on a string up toward him before flopping down uselessly.

His head and chest and hands and feet and eyes throbbed. She was leaving him. His soul perception focused on her intently, seeing how she was rejecting it from her flesh.

Hadn't he wanted to know? Wasn't this what he brought upon himself? His fault, his fault. The whispers were everywhere.

Stein blinked rapidly, jolting his partner again, even as the former hostages rushed outside, all talking at once. He was getting desperate, and her wet rasping had stopped because she stopped breathing and dear Death, he didn't care what he had to do so long as she started breathing again. His hands came together, one atop the other, to pulse on her sternum, letting out short bursts of his wavelength every five beats. After thirty or so, he lifted her chin and pinched her nose, sealing her mouth off and forcing breath into her.

When he pulled away his efforts proved fruitless, and he hollered out for the people who had gathered around them: "Get my bag, in the car!" as he pressed down on her chest again, shocking and jostling her. "Marie!"

His eyes were crazed. He felt crazed. And three people almost ran over one another to rush for their vehicle. He wants the time back when he was complaining about how crappy it was. He wants her singing back.

Her soul was leaving her. She was getting cold.

But he refused. Helpless, desperate, he forced his soul over hers, covering and effectively trapping her. Her soul couldn't go anywhere.

Stein knew, were he anyone else, the power struggle would really be a fight with the Reaper. But he didn't care. He'd fight Lord Death too. He'd done it before.

He'd succeeded before. But that was when he still felt stable. That was when he could still be trusted to shave his own face without trying to commit accidental suicide and his eyes flared and he blinked back something he didn't ever want to acknowledge and Marie was dying, damnit, why was he having visions now of the eyes opening over her sternum? Bleeding red and oozing down the bare flesh of her breasts?

He gasped for air when he pulled away from her mouth and she didn't respond, still stagnant. "Where's the medic?" he asked, his head whirling around as a slight woman ran forward with his bag of supplies as well as Marie's bag in her hands.

"I'm here, I'm here!"

Stein was breathing harder and he bit and chewed the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper. He was still pumping down on Marie's sternum but nothing was working.

"Sir?"

"Administer CPR," he ordered, the madness creeping upon him. He jammed his fingernails into his wrist, biting them in until he found the rationality to snatch the Kishin egg's soul right out of the air. He ripped Marie's eyepatch off and opened her eyelid, feeding the soul into her empty socket. His soul opened around her own, filtering in the demon egg and coaxing her wavelength to swirl around though it was weak and barely existent. Stein struggled, lending her strength enough to consume the Sandman. He felt her soul flare.

His wavelength hissed audibly when he charged it.

"Clear!" he called, clapping his hands onto Marie's chest the instant the medic moved. Marie pulled upward to him again, the electrical burn on her chest in the shape of his massive, destructive, ruinous hands and he brought his fingers to her jugular, feeling her pulse and praying and pleading to Death until she coughed wetly. Her spittle was pink and it sprayed in the air and down her face. Pulmonary Edema, then. Acute. Or gastrointestinal bleeding? Both?

He looked at the medic, who had fished the manual oxygen pump out of his bag and set about putting it to Marie's face, pumping air in.

She'd be no help. She was clumsy. She was inexperienced.

He saw the creatures of his nightmares and his mind creep around him, their sharp nails throwing dirt around Marie, asking for her bones. They would get them, too, if he didn't concentrate. He inhaled sharply and yanked his bag toward him, and the medic watched in horror as he dug in, finding one of multiple scalpels and jammed it into his thigh.

The beasts withered aside and he looked to the medic, still pumping away, still keeping Marie alive. He felt at Marie's pulse. If she had internal hemorrhaging she'd bleed to death if he didn't do something.

"Nathan!"

The Kishin egg must have lured them with a real man, or else Death would have been able to notice the decoy. When he heard the whimper, his voice was sharp. "Call Death."

"S-sir-"

"Call Death and tell him I need a medical team."

"Sir-"

"Now, Shultz," Stein commanded. "She's going into surgery. Someone pump the oxygen."

And with that, he ripped open what was left of her shirt, not hesitating to cut through the front of her bra. Everyone scampered, someone with a strong stomach taking the manual pump. Stein took Marie's shirt and lifted her head up, setting the fabric underneath. Her hair billowed out, in a mockery of a halo.

The medic was horrified, starting to stutter. "I-I've never-"

"In the bag. There's bupivacaine."

"W-what-"

His voice was calm, deadly. Marie's soul was still alive, though dormant under his, and the scalpel was digging into his thigh and twisting, keeping the pain fresh and the madness flinching away. He threw his hands into the bag, finding the anesthetic and injecting Marie himself. He sounded all too bitter when he scoffed and got the tools he'd need for impromptu surgery. This first year med student, if that, was practically useless. "Do you have experience taking blood?"

"Yes-"

"Take it from me. She's going to need at least a pint. Maybe two."

"I can't take blood from you! You're going into surgery!"

Stein didn't bother with gloves. He couldn't. Once he opened Marie's torso up, he needed to give her heart small shocks to keep her body working. A piece of him wondered if all he was doing was mutilating her, if her death was imminent and he simply refused to succumb to the facts of the world. He was a man of fact, once. The unsanitary conditions alone could kill her and then it would be his fault his fault his fault-

-but the scalpel twisted in his thigh as he moved over Marie's body.

"Just rip the sleeve of my coat," he told her, not bothering with incision lines since he knew them by heart anyway. If she had gastrointestinal bleeding, he had to cull out the failing segment. He bit down, readying his scalpel. Nothing was sterile, nothing was proper. He didn't have any options.

"You're already bleeding! We're still outside-"

"She's going to die. Take the blood."

"What's her type? Maybe someone else?"

"She's a weapon. She'd reject any blood type that isn't from a weapon."

"But you're-"

"I'm compatible," he snapped. He didn't have the time to explain that his blood, turned black courtesy of the venom Medusa bit into him, could be transfused into anyone. He had no concerns about Marie inheriting madness from it since her wavelength would purify it naturally.

The medic looked conflicted, both her hands free since the random sap had taken over the manual pump, but her face shuttered to a close and she looked down at the woman who saved all of their lives. "I can set up the transfusion too."

Stein skid his scalpel into Marie's skin, the blood welling up, oozing. "She's probably going to go into hypovolemic shock, if she isn't there already." She. She, not Marie. Not Marie. Just a patient. One of many.

The needle slid into his vein on the first try and he steadied himself.

Just a patient with her soul under his.

All he had to do was keep her body alive. Dear Death, just this. Just this and he'd be fine.