(1)
Soul took a running leap through the window of the ridiculous pumpkin house, fueled by a mixture of teenage invincibility, annoyance with his meister's affinity for plans, and a desire to just become a freakin' Death Scythe already – because how cool would that be? His arrival was heralded by shattering glass (an appropriately badass soundtrack, he thought to himself), and the witch looked up in surprise. From her bathtub. Fuck. His eyes widened in surprise and panic, brain struggling to process the fact that he was hurtling, arm transformed, directly at a –
"NAKED LADYYYYYYYY!"
His headlong tumble was halted abruptly by something soft, and warm, and… wet?
"What are you doing down there, little boy?" asked a curious voice, and Soul's brain kicked in long enough to inform him that yes, his face was currently squished down in the witch's cleavage, and yes, she was asking him why he was down there, and yes, these were BOOBS –
Cue gushing fountain of blood from his nose, an irate meister, and a few new plans.
(2)
Soul lay sprawled out on their kitchen floor, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and some rapidly disappearing ice cubes. The cool tiles were a balm for the Nevada summer heat, the alleviation usually brought by their apartment's air conditioning conspicuously absent due to Blair neglecting the bill. AGAIN. Even Maka, who had grown up in the constricting heat, was having a tough time of it this summer – there had been a record heat wave this year, and Soul was seriously considering transforming permanently into his weapon form and submerging himself in a fountain or something to cool off properly. Unfortunately, that was not an option – he was stuck with sprawling out in a sweaty mess beneath the sluggish fan, praying that the A/C issue would be resolved before he died of heatstroke. Maka was reading on the couch, slightly less miserable than he was, and deeply absorbed into her book. He wondered if she was reading about something cold.
"At least it's dry," he mumbled, the slight sound enough to rouse Maka from her book trance. She peered into the kitchen at him almost owlishly, senses clearly dulled by the heat just as much as his were.
"Ehh?"
"It's dry heat. Not humid," he clarified, giving up on the ice cubes as a lost cause and sitting up to face her. "Even if it's not as hot out, it automatically becomes 300 percent more miserable if it's humid. I grew up on the East Coast, Maka, I know these things." He flapped his hands vaguely, partially to demonstrate his complete and total knowledge of humid summers and partly to try and encourage some air circulation to the limbs.
She closed her book. "I do too, Soul. Well, a little bit," she amended. "Remember that mission we took to hunt down the kishin in… where was it, Florida?"
"The one with the alligator slime monster?" He shuddered. "Death, don't even remind me of that one."
"In midsummer?"
He groaned. Thinking about the absolutely miserable climate during that mission was NOT helping him to avoid heatstroke.
"With all the – hey, Soul, are you bleeding?"
The note of slight panic in her voice set off all of his internal alarms. Registering her words, he did a cursory body check – nothing was hurting outside the headache brought on by the heat.
"I don't know, am I?"
"Yeah, from your nose. You didn't notice?"
His hand darted up to check, and sure enough there were streaks of carmine across his index finger when he pulled it away. As soon as he'd cleaned off the blood it had started to ooze forth again. Staring blankly at his stained finger, he let out the one word his beleaguered and half-boiled brain could come up with.
"SHIT."
(3)
Soul groaned, a headache of absolutely ridiculous proportions pounding through his skull. He hadn't had a mission last night, he knew that much, and Maka hadn't chopped him hard enough to warrant this level of pain in at least two months. What the hell had happened?
"Good, you're awake."
His meister's voice sent a sharp pulse of agony through his head and he groaned again, rubbing at the crusted blood beneath his nose. Wait… blood?
"… the hell?" he murmured, feeling the red-brown substance flake off of his skin.
"Black*Star spiked the punch last night, or don't you remember?" Hearing the barely-contained fury in her voice, Soul looked up to find Maka with arms crossed and lips pressed together in a thin line of irritation.
Ah. That would explain it.
Kid had hosted a graduation party for them all (at the urging of the Thompsons), and he'd asked Soul and Maka to bring the punch. Which meant Maka, mostly, since Soul couldn't do much in the kitchen to save his life – and because Maka had developed a punch recipe that was scientifically proven to be the nectar of the gods. All of them. Including Black*Star, whose only philosophy regarding the drink was that if it was that good straight, it would be even better with the addition of alcohol. After he'd said as much to Maka at its first party debut, she'd guarded the punch at every subsequent party with a level of vigilance that would have impressed Batman.
Soul rubbed his temples in a valiant attempt to reduce the pain of his headache to a dull roar, mentally cursing his friend. While he was definitely in favor of booze at a party (come on, he was a teenage boy – it was practically criminal not to be), he would DEFINITELY prefer that it not be so well-hidden. Especially when he used the excuse of 'going to get punch' for psyching himself up to ask Maka to dance, damn it! After six or seven (very) large cups of punch spiked with some ungodly amount of whatever it was that Black*Star had used, Soul's memory went AWOL.
He groaned again. "Everything after my fifth cup is a very noisy fuzz. Care to full me in?"
Maka's lips pursed as she thought through a logical summary of the evening's activities. "Well, first you got really talkative. You're a very chatty drunk, Soul, has anyone told you that?"
He shook his head. She continued. "Then you went off and challenged Black*Star to a dance-off."
Judging by the way her lip curled with displeasure around the name of their blue-haired teammate, Soul knew that she would be Chopping him with vigor the next time they met. For the sake of his friend's skull, Soul made a mental note to make the next time a long while from now. He winced after hearing that he'd started a dance-off, of all things, but he'd definitely done more embarrassing things in public. Grabbing a half-empty water bottle from his bedside table, he took a large mouthful and swished it around, waiting to hear what other ridiculous things he'd done while shitfaced.
"Then Black*Star kissed me-"
Soul interrupted the rest of that sentence with what was possibly the biggest spit-take in recorded history. Eyes wide in shock, Soul wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "He- you- I- WHAT?"
Maka smiled a little at his reaction. "You reacted kinda the same way last night, albeit slightly less coherently. And it was only on the cheek," she reassured him.
He dragged a hand down his face, steeling himself for impending mortification. "Oh god, what did I do?"
She giggled. "You, um. You pulled him away from me, delivered some pretty garbled curses, and then punched him in the face."
"Oh Death, if you have any mercy, smite me now," he moaned to the heavens. Or to the Death Room. Or… wherever. "Still doesn't explain the nosebleed, though."
Maka made a face. "You guys started brawling. Eventually, Liz and Patti had to step in and break it up. Tsubaki and I got the two of you home before you could destroy anything."
"Ah."
That would definitely explain the nosebleed.
(+1)
Maka spun Soul's scythe form desperately, trying to block each of the numerous sparking legs of the kishin before it could shock her. The one they'd been sent to fight was a holy terror and no mistake – looking a bit like a centipede crossed with a spider and able to send out electric shocks strong enough to overload an entire power grid, it was deemed necessary to have Shibusen's top team take on the job after one of the rookie weapon/meister pairs had nearly been killed after encountering it. The hunt for the beast had been relatively simple – a creature of its distinctive attributes wasn't very hard to spot. It was fighting the damn thing, each leg a live wire, that was difficult. Even fighting to the considerable extend of their combined abilities, the thing was tough – especially since a single touch from the kishin's body in an unprotected place would more than likely spell the end for both of them. Soul winced as another jolt of electricity surged through his form, the durable demon steel not capable of dispersing the charge.
"They shoulda sent Ox and Harvar for this one. They're built to deal with this shit."
A pulse of amusement shot through their resonance link. "Yeah, but we were the only members of Spartoi available on such short notice."
"True. DUCK-!" He bit out the last word as Maka followed his instructions, performing a graceful roll beneath yet another of the kishin's flailing legs. Thank Death the thing wasn't smart enough to use its abilities to their best advantage, or it's entirely likely that they'd be in deeper shit than they already are. Normally it wouldn't be a problem – a quick Witch Hunter (or even a Genie Hunter, if the kishin was that strong) and they'd be done. But there were so many legs…
Until the legs stopped coming.
"Is it over?" Maka asked, breathing heavily. She didn't drop her guard, though – some kishin played dead, looking for a chance to strike when their opponent's vigilance waned.
Soul looked at the beast from the blade of the scythe, observing its twitching legs as they curled around its bulbous, bloated body. This thing is what happens when that bigass spider from Lord of the Rings fuses with a Pikachu, he thought distastefully, and then immediately cursed the mental image that sprung up for ruining two whole franchises in one. Way to go, brain. Resuming his watch of the creature, he tilted his head to the side. It might just be residual electricity or something, but the yellowish currents of electricity around the beast's coiled legs weren't dispersing. Instead, they were… synchronizing?
His first thought was What the fuck?
His second thought, followed by a horrified widening of the eyes, was Oh, SHIT –
He didn't have a third one. He simply reacted. Streaming out of weapon form to re-solidify several yards in front of his meister, he transformed his right arm up to the elbow into a blade and pointed it directly at the monster before Maka had a chance to react to his actions.
And that's when the electricity hit.
Soul screamed, long and raw like the sounds were clawing over each other to escape from his throat. Fighting every instinct he had that said to run away, keep yourself safe, get rid of the lightning rod attached to your body, he stood his ground. Because to run away from this was to let Maka get fried in his place. And that is unacceptable. The electricity ravaged through his body, first through his flesh before rebounding through the echo of demon steel that hid behind his bones, until Soul didn't know how long he'd been trapped in the current. Months, probably, but it could have been half a second as well. All that mattered was keeping Maka safe. He wondered, absently, whether Harvar has to deal with this every time he and Ox resonated, before strengthening his focus. Maka. He had to protect Maka...
And then everything was black.
Maka stood, frozen in shock, as her weapon's body hit the floor. A second passed. Then another.
"No," she whispered, small steps disjointed as she approached Soul's prone form. The stench of charred skin filled the air.
A tear slipped down her cheek as she collapsed to her knees, gathering his upper body into her arms. She rocked back and forth, ignoring the static shocks left over from the kishin's attack, and keened softly. As Soul's head rolled to the side, Maka could see a thin trickle of blood flowing from his nose. And she howled.