Author's Note: Thanks for the responses, I really appreciate it! Summer-Anime-Writer: I actually really like that idea! Your idea actually helped me to expand on how I want Soul to really find out Maka is Emerald eventually. Since Maka was interrupted midway in her confession to Soul, he will have to find out her secret another way now.
Chapter 22: Missing by Sunset
Maka's eyes widened as she saw Travis at the door. 'Why is he here? Does he want me to spread what I know about him to the school?'
Travis only grinned and was about to walk in, when Soul suddenly blocked his entrance.
"I'm not letting you get anywhere near Maka again." Soul stated coldly.
Travis arched an eyebrow, but continued to smile. "What's wrong with me checking up on Maka?"
Soul scoffed. "Don't act innocent. For all I know, you could be the reason she's sick in the first place!"
Travis frowned and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'He actually isn't too far off from the truth.'
"Well I actually just wanted to tell both you and Maka something, but if you're just going to start accusing me of crimes I didn't commit…" Travis stated with a sigh as he turned around to walk away.
"What's so important that you have to say to us anyways?" Maka snapped, finally speaking up as she got out of bed.
Travis smirked and turned back around. "Is your boyfriend here going to step aside?" Travis asked, pointing to Soul who was still restricting his access to the room.
Maka just sighed and rubbed her head in irration. "Soul let him in, I'm sure he's not going to leave until we hear what he has to say anyways."
Soul grumbled under his breath and stepped aside. "You have 5 minutes to talk."
Travis nodded his head in agreement and sat down in the bed opposite of Maka's.
"I know why Maka's sick. Have you been getting headaches or feeling dizzy lately?" Travis asked calmly.
Maka's eyes widened as she looked towards Soul; he appeared to be just as surprised as she was.
"I'm guessing by the expressions on your faces I'm right huh?" Travis stated with a laugh.
"How did you know all that?" Soul questioned, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
"I overheard some girls in the NOT class talking about it. They are actually pretty big fangirls of yours. I believe they might have poisoned Maka out of jealously in order to try and get with you." Travis stated.
Maka frowned, still wary of anything Travis had to say. "And you're telling us this why?"
Travis smirked and hopped off the bed. "Well it gets tiring having to hear them constantly whine and fight over Soul every day. I already know they have hurt Maka emotionally in the past, so them hurting her physically isn't too farfetched."
Soul frowned and turned his attention back to Maka. "What is he talking about?"
"Um I'll explain that later. The main question I have to ask is how did they even poison me?" Maka asked.
Travis shrugged. "I'm not too sure. It's possible they could have slipped something into a drink or something you ate when you weren't looking."
Travis cracked his knuckles and walked back out the door again. "Well I just wanted to warn you about them; I know Soul has a lot of fans, but these girls are not your normal type of fangirls." He finished with a chuckle as he finally walked away. 'Telling them a few lies and the truth will at least hopefully throw them off tracking me for a bit.'
Soul sighed and turned back around to face Maka. "Which girls is he talking about?"
Maka pouted and avoided Soul's glaring, until he forced her to look at him.
"Maka stop trying to not look at me! Tell me which girls he was talking about!" Soul snapped, as he pinched Maka's cheeks.
Maka huffed and slapped Soul's hands away. "I don't even know all of their names!"
Soul growled and rolled his eyes. "Well then just tell me the names of the ones that have been bothering you then!"
Maka frowned and leaned back against the bed. "What will you do to them if I tell you?"
"Make sure they never mess with you again of course." Soul replied back, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.
Maka sighed and crossed her arms. "I can handle them on my own without your help."
Soul groaned and resisted the urge to curse. "There you go again Maka. I don't understand why you won't just let me help you. Did I say something to you that caused you to start blocking me out all of a sudden?"
Maka shook her head. "No Soul, you haven't done anything wrong. I already told you, I just want to handle some things on my own." 'I can't let Soul get involved in Travis's plans or let him know how much Rachel and her friends truly bother me.'
Soul grumbled something under his breath, before pulling Maka into a hug.
"Maka I know you are a strong and independent person, but you don't have to handle all of your issues alone. You helped me get through my own personal issues, so why won't you let me help you get through yours?"
Maka opened her mouth to respond, but couldn't find the words to say anything back.
'I'm afraid of what you're going to say if I tell you Soul. After keeping so many secrets from you, I'm not sure how you will react to the truth…'
Maka sighed and embraced him back.
"Hey Soul?" Maka mumbled against his shoulder.
"Yeah, what is it?" Soul asked.
Maka moved back so she could properly look at Soul's face. "I still needed to tell you that I'm-"Maka was suddenly interrupted once again. This time it was by a loud coughing coming from the door.
Maka frowned and almost slammed her fist against Soul's chest. 'Damn it now whose interrupting me?!' Maka thought in frustration, as she turned towards the owner of the voice.
Both Soul and Maka looked over towards the door and broke apart when they saw it was Stein and Spirit.
~X~
"Hey I said watch over Maka, not try to rape her you brat!" Spirit yelled out, as he tried to attack Soul only to get a Maka-chop in the process.
"He was just giving me a hug Papa! Stop jumping to conclusions!" Maka snapped, feeling her cheeks redden at his accusation.
"Well you seem to be a lot livelier than how you were earlier." Stein mentioned.
"That's because I feel better now. In fact I feel well enough to leave now." Maka replied back.
Stein just shook his head. "Nygus informed me that you were running a fever and that she wanted me to look over and discuss your lab results with you."
Maka huffed and laid back into the bed. "And how long do you think all that will take?"
Stein glanced over at the clock; it was currently half past 1 now. "Well I do have a quick meeting I have to go to at 2, but I should be back by 2:15."
Maka sighed and looked away. "What am I going to do to past the time?"
Spirit suddenly spoke up again. "Don't worry Maka! Papa will stay here with you to keep you company!"
Maka chose to ignore her dad and focused back on Soul. "How much longer can you stay here?"
Soul sighed and shook his head. "I can't really stay much longer now that I think about it; I was supposed to meet with Kid for afternoon training an hour ago."
"What? Why are you just now telling me this?!" Maka snapped.
Soul shrugged. "I wanted to make sure you were okay first."
Soul got up and moved the chair he was sitting in back to its original place. "I'll see you when you I get home Maka." Soul stated with a smirk as gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
Maka blushed and pushed him back slightly. "Stop it! What are you trying to do, piss off my papa even more?!"
Soul smirked and nodded his head before finally leaving the room.
"Who the hell does he think he is just touching my precious daughter like that?! I need to discuss his behavior with Kid!" Spirit yelled out, as he gave chase after Soul.
Stein watched them leave before standing up and closing the door behind them.
"You certainly have some odd friends and family." Stein mused aloud.
Maka only snorted. "Like your one to talk."
Stein laughed at that and walked to the back room to retrieve Maka's lab results.
"Well at least Soul is gone now. I wasn't sure you were going to be honest with any questions I had for you if he was still in the room." Stein stated, once he returned to the room.
Maka sighed and sunk slowly into the bed. "I'm trying not to lie to Soul anymore; in fact I was going to tell him the truth just now if people would have stopped interrupting me.
Stein looked confused at this. "Who else came to the room besides Spirit and me?"
"Travis. He came here warning Soul and I about how Soul's fangirls might have poisoned me." Maka stated.
"Hmm well that sounds a bit weird to me. Do you think he might be trying to frame them?" Stein asked.
Maka shrugged, not too sure herself. "I mean he could be, but honestly he did have a point. Soul's fangirls don't like me, though I don't think they are smart or crazy enough to try to take me out with poison."
Stein twiddled his thumbs and continued to think of other options. "So what do they do to you then?"
Maka frowned, she really didn't want to talk about it with Professor Stein of all people, but it didn't seem like she really had a choice.
"Well in the past they liked to put hateful messages in my locker. At first I really didn't know who was doing it, so I mainly just threw away the letters. Eventually though, their leader Rachel I guess confronted me and revealed her and her friends were the ones who made the letters." Maka explained.
"What exactly were those letters about?" Stein asked.
Maka sighed and looked down. "Mostly just saying things like how I was a terrible meister and that I should stop hanging around Soul so much because he was a death scythe now. Those letters hurt, but the most painful ones were when they would bring up and make fun of my friends or family." Maka finished with a huff.
"By the way, don't you have to go to that meeting?" Maka stated, as she looked back at the clock. It was already 1:50 pm now.
Stein stared at her blankly before remembering what she was talking about.
"Oh that? I didn't really have a meeting to go to. I was just hoping that by mentioning the time, Soul would remember that he himself needed to be somewhere and would leave the room."
Maka frowned. "And what if that plan didn't work?"
Stein shrugged. "Then I guess Soul would know the truth about everything right now."
Maka nodded her head wistfully. "I really screwed myself over by doing this. All of my problems came out of me wanting to keep Emerald a secret because I was too embarrassed to admit the truth to my friends and family. Now it's possible this toxin I have in me could spread to other people if I'm not careful enough."
"Well let's not think on the worst case scenario just yet. It's possible that what you have isn't contagious and that I could develop an antidote to rectify it." Stein stated, as he gazed back over Maka's labs.
"What do my test results say anyways?" Maka asked, trying to take a glimpse at the papers.
"Well you have an elevated white blood cell count, all your other labs are within normal limits, but I don't know what this one organism is that comes up in your blood when I looked at it under the microscope.
"It must be the toxin that was slipped to me." Maka assumed.
Stein nodded his head in agreement. "It probably is, since we don't want your symptoms to get any worse, I'm going to prescribe you a low dose mix of antibiotics and antivenin which will hopefully counteract the problems."
Stein wrote down the prescription and handed it to her.
"What if this doesn't help? I mean you said that even you didn't know what type of organism this was flowing through my blood." Maka asked, as she read over the prescription.
"Well in the meantime, I'll study it under the microscope and try to develop an antidote. I'm pretty sure those medicines at the least will help to stop the organism from spreading to other parts of your body and relieve some of the pain you've been having." Stein replied back.
Maka sighed and nodded her head in understanding. "Okay then. I guess I can bear the headaches for just a little bit longer."
Stein nodded and smiled a bit. "It would also be helpful if you stopped putting yourself into stressful situations, but I'm sure you already knew that."
Maka huffed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah I know; I put myself in this mess and I'll get myself out of it."
~X~
Rachel frowned as she scouted the classroom for Travis.
'Damn it! Don't tell me he's skipping class again? Where the hell is he?' Rachel thought in annoyance, as she stared over at the usual area of where Travis liked to sit at.
'That's it; I'm tired of him avoiding me. With every passing day, Soul and Maka are getting closer to each other. He might have told me to leave him alone, but I won't take no for an answer this time!' Rachel thought with pout, as she tried to focus back on Sid's lesson again.
Once class was over, Rachel met up with her friends outside the classroom door.
"So where do you guys want to hang out after school today?" Ashley asked.
"I want to go to Deathbucks; I heard they added this new smoothie to the menu!" Kate stated.
"Ooh that sounds good. We haven't been there in a while anyways." Megan stated in agreement.
"You guys go on ahead. I need to pick up a book from the library before I leave." Rachel lied.
Ashley arched an eyebrow at her. "We can just wait for you outside. It's not like getting a book will take that long."
Rachel internally cursed, but continued to keep up with her lie. "Well I don't exactly know where the book is at. It might take me longer than I think."
Ashley sighed and let out a scoff. "Whatever, I don't want to be at the school any longer than I have to be. Just meet us at Deathbucks; we'll be sitting at our usual spot if it isn't taken."
Rachel nodded her head and watched as her friends left down the hallway.
'Thank goodness they didn't ask me anymore questions. It's hard coming up with lies right on the spot!' Rachel thought with a sigh of relief.
Rachel walked inside the library and checked all around the tables and sitting areas for any sign of Travis to no avail.
"Okay so you weren't in the library and you weren't in class either. Guess I should try and see if he's at the boy's dorms then." Rachel muttered under her breath.
The walk to the boy's dorms in the midst of the afternoon heat left Rachel even more aggravated and pissed.
'Great, now I'm all sweaty and gross. Ugh he better be somewhere inside this building.' Rachel thought with a growl, as she stepped inside the main foyer of the boy's apartments.
"Hello miss, how can I help you?" A man asked from behind the desk.
"Yeah I'm looking for a guy named Travis Hutchinson. Do you know if he stays here?" Rachel asked tiredly.
"Hmm well if he attends the DWMA he could possibly be here. Let me just check the system to see if he lives in this building or any of the neighboring ones." The man stated nicely, as he typed a few things into the computer nearby.
After typing for a few minutes, the man spoke up again.
"I'm sorry; nobody by the name lives in any of DWMA's boy's dorms. It's possible I suppose he lives on his own."
"Great, are you trying to tell me I wasted my time coming here?!" Rachel snapped out with a hiss.
The man shrugged. "Well you can't say I didn't at least try to look him up."
"Travis lives on the other side of town; he never lived in the boy's dorms." Another guy stated, walking up to the two of them.
'You have got to be kidding me; I have to walk to the other end of the city now!' Rachel thought, nearly screaming out a cuss.
"How do you even know that?" Rachel asked the other guy, since apparently the guy behind the desk was going to be no help to her.
"I've seen him head into to this old looking apartment building when I was doing some grocery shopping in the past. I think this was the address of the place, but I'm not sure. I know at least it was close by the Death City Mall." The guy stated, as he wrote the address down on a slip of paper and handed it to Rachel.
"Finally I get some good help around here! Unlike that guy over there who can't even do his job right!" Rachel stated snottily, before exiting out of the dorms.
The guy behind the desk scoffed at Rachel's statement. "It's not my damn fault that I didn't know who she was talking about!"
The other guy just shook his head. "Don't mind her, she acts like a bitch to basically everyone except her friends and when she's talking about Soul Eater. She must be crazy though to want to find where Travis lives though. We both have him in Sid's class and I think he is a bit on the creepy side."
~X~
By the time Rachel reached the address the guy was talking about, it was starting to get late.
"Damn, it must be at least 4 or 5 pm by now, the sun is starting to even set!" Rachel hissed to herself as she walked inside the building.
Once inside, Rachel took a sweeping glance around. The building itself from the outside looked old and worn down with broken structures, but inside was even worse. The paint along the walls was a faded shade of blue that was peeling in certain edges. Across the ceiling and ground were cobwebs and dust. To top things off, Rachel even noted what smelt like the odor of burnt trash permeating the air.
'What the hell type of dump does Travis live at? He could at least find better living conditions than this if he wasn't going to choose to live in the boy's dorms.' Rachel thought in disgust, as she walked up to the front desk.
"Excuse me, but does someone by the name of Travis Hutchinson live here?" Rachel asked the attendant.
The lady looked Rachel up and down before letting out a sigh.
"Yeah he just came in. He lives on the 3rd floor, 1st door on your left." She stated with a scowl.
"Okay thank you." Rachel replied back and hurriedly went up the stairs.
Rachel cautiously knocked on Travis's door and let out a huff. 'This place is giving me the creeps. The sooner I get what I want from Travis, the sooner I can get the hell out of here.'
Travis opened the door and gave Rachel a confused look. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Never mind that, you know why I came here! I want you to work on making me another potion that can help me get closer to Soul again!" Rachel snapped out, as she pushed her way inside Travis's room.
Travis's eyes narrowed as he slammed the door closed behind him and clicked it into place.
"Rachel didn't I warn you already not to bother me about that topic again? The fact that you even went to all this trouble to find me makes it even worse." Travis stated with a sigh.
"Look, it can't be that hard to make another potion. It didn't take you that long to give it to me the first time." Rachel stated as he took a seat on the sofa.
Travis just gave her a cold smile. "Oh Rachel, what makes you think I give a damn if you end up with Soul or not? I don't need your help with that situation anymore and I don't take orders from you."
Rachel frowned under Travis's glare. "Didn't we originally agree though that you would help me get with Soul and that would help you get with Maka?"
Travis shrugged. "Plans can change and you know what? I'm tired of you bugging me about it so I'll just make things easier on the both of us by getting rid of you."
Rachel started to get a bit nervous now and scooted further away from Travis.
"What are you talking about?" Rachel managed to stutter out.
Travis only let out a snicker. "Oh what's the matter Rachel? Don't feel so high and mighty now when the tables turn on you huh?"
Travis turned his arm into a sickle and stepped closer towards Rachel. "Your soul may not be the one that I want, but it has been too long since I added another soul to my collection."
As Travis finished his statement, he immediately rushed towards Rachel and nearly slashed her, but she leapt out of the way.
"What the hell is wrong with you Travis? Have you gone crazy?!" Rachel cried out, running to try to open back up the door, only to find it jammed.
Travis watched her fiddle with the door handle for a minute, before letting out a bitter laugh. "Silly Rachel, didn't you know I never let any of my prey escape? You really shouldn't have come here making such demands, but it's too late now."
Travis came up behind her and promptly slammed her hard enough in the back to knock her out.
Travis grinned as he gazed over Rachel's unconscious body. "Don't worry Rachel I won't kill you yet. I usually like to mess around with my victims until I get bored and finally collect their soul."
~X~
"Let's see, so the instructions say to take 2 in the evening and 2 in the morning." Maka stated, as she finally left the Pharmacy.
"I hate having to take medicine for such an extended period of time, but nothing can be done about it." Maka grumbled under her breathe, as she walked home.
On the way home, Maka noticed Rachel's friends off in the distance looking anxious and scared.
"Try calling her number again Kate!" Ashley snapped out, as shook her shoulders.
"Damn it Ashley, I tried calling her number 5 times already and texting her!" Kate snapped back, pushing Ashley away.
"Where could she be? It's not like her to ignore our calls." Megan stated, concerned.
"Well she was acting kind of odd earlier, but that doesn't explain why she won't answer any of our messages now." Nancy said.
Maka sighed and tried to quickly walk past them without being noticed, but unfortunately Kate saw her.
"Hey wait a minute isn't that Maka? Hey hold up we need to talk to you; what did you do to Rachel?!" Kate yelled out in a rush.
Maka groaned under her breath and turned around. "I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen Rachel all day."
"Don't play dumb with us! I know we've all been kind of jerks to you in the past, but that doesn't mean you had to kidnap Rachel!" Ashley sneered out.
Maka rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure you guys heard that I was basically in the clinic all day sick right? So how could I have gotten to Rachel when I just got out of there like 30 minutes ago?"
Ashley and the others paused in their accusations and frowned. Kate sighed and was the first to speak up.
"Okay I guess you have a point there. I'm sorry we accused you so fast, but please help us. We haven't seen Rachel or been able to contact her since we left from school. All of us are worried that something bad has happened to her."
Author's Note: That's it for Chapter 22! Let me know what you think with a review, and as always thanks for reading!