A/N: Last chapter! Thanks for reading!
Soul shoves Maka behind him and does a quick sweep of the crowd. "What does he look like?"
"He's tall and always had a stupid hat on. He looks like the devil and is one-"
"Be more specific," he says between gritted teeth. His hands feels around his back for his gun and growls when he remembers that he hasn't held a gun in weeks.
"Let's go," Soul says, and seizes her hand to drag her through the crowd, quickly weaving and ducking through the people.
They follow the black hat across town, staying on the periphery. With each step, Maka's grip in his hand gets tighter and tighter, and Soul squeezes right back. He sneaks a glance back at her when they duck behind a bus stop bench. Her hair sticks to her forehead in thin, sweaty strands. She breathes evenly, used to swimming distances, but can't help the rosy flush that sweeps across her nose and cheeks.
It's an extremely inappropriate thought this time, but she's unbearably cute, even when she looks like she's about to murder her former captor.
"There he is," Maka hisses, shaking Soul excitedly. "He's going in there-."
It's an old building, like the one Maka was found in, with mouldering brick and layers of spray painted grafitti.
She starts moving towards the building, but Soul holds her back.
"We have to go to my apartment," he says, tugging her away from the building.
"He's going to get away," she protests.
"We won't be able to do anything about him anyway," Soul replies gruffly. "We know where he lives, or at the very least we've got one of his hideouts."
Maka relents, but Soul can feel the anger and frustration coming off of her.
"No cuffs, no gun, no taser," he reminds her. "I just hope Wes hasn't cleared my stuff out..."
They grab a cab and head towards his place, further inland than Maka's ever been. She's restless in the backseat, squirming more and more as the beach disappears in the rearview mirror.
Maka slumps in the backseat when they arrive, her legs curled up on the seat and her head on her knees. Soul scoops her out of the cab and settles her down on her feet while he pays the fee with the money he fishes out of her pocket. He has to drag her up the stairs, all three flights, to the door of his apartment. He doesn't have the key, but he long mastered breaking into places he's not supposed to be.
Soul has to pick up Maka again, and he carries her over the threshold as a groom would carry a bride (he tries-and fails- not to blush at the thought, and wonders how mermaids marry, if they do, or whether it's like a penguin thing- permanent but unsaid). As he passes them, Soul notes that his things are mostly untouched. The floor is clear of clothing, but there are piles stacked haphazardly on the couch, and sheets of music all over the top of the piano crammed into the corner of the tiny apartment. Soul by passes all of it, pausing briefly in the kitchen to pick up a can of salt from the kitchen, and heads towards the bathroom. Maka, barely conscious, struggles weakly, her muttering growing louder and more desperate as Soul turns on the water in the tub of his bathroom.
"No, no, no-" Maka shakes her head violently. She clings to him, her nails digging into his skin.
Soul sets her on the edge of the tub, and hold her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at his face. "Maka, it's me-It's Soul." He places a hand on the top of her head and kisses her forehead. "You can get out whenever you want."
Her eyes focus on his, and she nods, but her grip on him stays tight. Soul helps her get in when the tub is filled to the brim, and pours out all of the salt left in the can.
"He's local," Soul remarks as he checks the cartridge on his gun. "Where we found you and where he is now are only a few miles apart. He might have a third or even a fourth place. Let's just hope he stays put until we get there." He's blabbering and he knows it, but he's actively trying to hide his shaking hands so a little word vomit is going to happen.
Maka quietly dries her hair with a spare towel, pensive. She's more alert after her saltwater bath, but she's moving slower than usual.
"We go in there," Soul continues, tucking a few more rounds into his jacket pocket. "And we arrest him."
"Where's mine?" Maka asks, gesturing towards Soul's hands.
"Are you a qualified agent? Do you have a gun licence?"
"How am I supposed to protect myself?" Maka asks indignantly.
Soul gapes at her. "You're not coming."
"Of course I'm coming," Maka snaps.
"You can barely move," Soul says, and quickly stashes his gun in the waistband of his pants, out of sight.
"I have to, Soul," Maka says, glaring at him. "He took me from my home. Me and who knows how many others? I can stop him, finally stop him for good." She stands, knees wobbling for a moment and then standing firm. "I will protect my people. You can help me, but you will not stop me."
Maka glares at him, daring him to argue with her.
"Fine," Soul relents.
"And I want one of those." Maka adds hastily, waves her pant towards Soul's pants.
"Don't push it," he grumbles. "You can have the stun gun." Soul tosses it to Maka and she flips the switch, eyes alight in the blue electric crackle of the charge.
"Sweet," she breathes. "I want that, too." She points to the wall, where Soul's old hockey stick hangs on the wall.
"What do you that for?" Soul asks, bewildered.
"To hit him with," Maka says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"Fine, I guess, whatever. Let's just go get him."
His words sober Maka, and she nods, determination setting deep in the frown lines of her mouth.
The cab over to Maka's captor's place is silent and tense. Soul keeps checking the safety on his gun, trying to be subtle, because cabbies are not usually kind to people who bring concealed weapons into their cars.
Soul stops the cab a block away from the apartment. They tread quietly, with an occasional clunk, as Maka uses the hockey stick as a cane. The apartment complex itself isn't guarded, or difficult to get into. They walk in and Soul skims the names on the mailboxes, but Maka looks more carefully, touching each one gently.
"This one," she says, tapping one coated in stickers.
He doesn't ask how she knows, just holds her hand as she leads him up the stairs.
On the third floor, fourth door on the right, they stop. Soul cocks his head towards it questioningly and Maka nods, her face gray but determined. Soul backs up and prepares to charge at the door, but Maka stop him.
"Wait," she grabs his arm and forces him to look her in the eyes. They're bright with fear and desperation, like when first dumped her in the lab's tank. She seemed to small then, frail and fraying at the seams.
"I didn't think I would ever get out of there, of the t-tub," she says. "I thought I was going to die. But then you guys found me, you found me. I hadn't spoken in weeks, I didn't even know if I could speak but I saw you and I had to try. And- and you heard me and turned around and looked at me like I was somebody, not just something. I love you, Soul. So much, I love you."
Soul hooks his hand around her neck and pulls her in, kissing her hard. It's too short for either of them, but they stop after a moment and press their foreheads together. Then they let go, raising their weapons in unison before kicking the door in and storm forward.
The door swings open with a smack against the other wall, shaking the shelves crowded near it.
Whatever habit the guy developed before, it appears to have gotten worse.
Lining the shelves are jars and jars of small creatures. Fairies struggle inside jars, their tiny lights weak. Huge, hairy heads of manticores mounted on the walls still drip green blood down the walls. An entire unicorn that's been stuffed stands by the window, its neck stiff and unnatural, the horn broken off and missing. They nearly trip over the severed wings of what have been a pegasus, because they spot something much, much worse.
By the window across the room, shrunken and dried and hanging from the ceiling, are rows and rows of mermaid tails. The scales, their sheen long lost, flake off and gently fall to the floor.
"Bastard," Soul breathes.
Maka stumbles over to them, her face blank. She points to each one as she remembers their names. "Meme… Feather… Ugh, Kana," she groans.
"I had to move them," a deep voice from behind them says. "The light was damaging."
Soul turns quickly and points his gun towards the source. Maka's captor barely glances at them. Calm, he places on the coffee table and straightens. He's tall, with a black cap on his head and a heavy black jacket. Belts criss-cross his white shirt and sagging pants, more for decoration than for function.
Maka doesn't turn around. "Why?" she asks in barely a whisper, gently touching the decaying fins of a long passed mermaid.
"They are a part of my collection," he says simply.
"You're an asshole," Maka hisses, finally turning around.
"I'm Noah," he responds.
"Put your hands up," commands Soul, a little ticked that Noah hasn't even spared him one glance.
"You were an excellent addition," Noah continues, ignoring Soul. "I've had other mermaids, but none like you. You… sensed me before I even left the boat." He gazes at her, contemplatively. "I would have kept you whole."
Maka screeches and flips the switch of her Taser towards Noah, screeching louder when nothing happens.
"Maka-BACK," Soul barks. She rears back and Soul squeezes off two shots, shattering two pixie jars. The pixies zoom around Noah's head, pulling his hair and clawing at his eyeballs. Noah smacks them away and grabs a small handgun from the table and aims it at them.
"I won't hurt you," he says to Maka. "I need your for my collection. You, however," Noah points his gun directly at Soul's head. "You are not worth collecting."
Maka ducks under Soul and Noah's outstretched arms and wacks Noah's knees with the edge of the hockey stick. He falls to the floor with a grunt, gun aloft.
Maka rears back into Soul, grabs his arm and yanks his arm to point the gun to her temple.
Soul immediately pulls his finger off of the trigger and hisses, "Maka what the fu-"
"Trust me," she snaps back. She gives his hand a hard squeeze, which is less than reassuring over the hand that grips the gun.
"She belongs to me," Noah says, calm and quiet as death and it sends ice cold tendrils of fear up and down Soul's spine.
"He'll do it! He's crazy- He ran away with a stolen mermaid!" Maka warns. "And made out with her! A lot! And gave me a hickey!"
"What the hell, Maka?!" Soul says, bewildered.
She shoots him a meaningful look, nodding subtly towards Noah, who was shaking with fury.
Right!
Noah hits them with a hard glare.
"You've damaged my possession?" he asks
"I've damaged your possession three times," gloats Soul, sliding his hand across Maka's waist. "Today."
"How dare you ruin what is mine," Noah growls. He stands and takes aim again. Maka bursts from Soul's grasp, dodging both their lines of fire. Soul fires off shot after shot, hitting and destroying as many item in the apartment as possible. Noah roars as as his manticore head bursts in a rain of fur and scales.
Noah stops short, pieces of glass and manticore gently cascading down onto his shoulders.
"My collection," he sighs.
Maka leaps over the shattered coffee table and shoves the end of her stun gun into Noah's back. He collapses, unconscious on the floor.
The pixies, a softly glowing one named Tsubaki and a bright one named Black Star, agree to wait for the Bureau to collect Noah, so they can be witnesses in his trial.
They hover around Noah, Black Star hissing and shouting at him, Tsubaki holding the pen she found menacingly in the air.
After Maka took down Noah, Soul calls up Liz and tells her what happened since he ran away with Maka, glossing over the specifics ("You're fucking the mermaid?" Liz exclaims. "How does that even work?"). Soul, after several minutes trying to get Liz to concentrate, asks her to come help unofficially arrest Noah.
She arrives and finds Noah handcuffed to the stuffed unicorn, and Soul and Maka chatting with the pixies they released.
Liz bounces happily around the apartment, taking more pictures of Soul and Maka than of the Noah or the evidence.
"Patty is going to flip when I tell her stodgy old Soul has a freaky, scaly girlfriend," she says gleefully, blinding them with the flash.
"I'm not freaky," Maka says defensively. "I'm a mermaid."
Liz's reply is interrupted by a rush of white and black shoving Maka aside and attaching itself to Soul, lifting him up off his feet.
"Little brother!"
"Hi, Wes," Soul says, awkwardly patting his brother on the back, his arms limited by the bear hug his brother tangled him in. Over his brother's shoulder, Soul hisses at Liz, "You brought Wes?"
Liz shrugs. "He was already with me."
Soul opens his mouth to ask but Wes drops him and whisks Maka up in a hug of her own.
"And you must be Maka," Wes says excitedly. "I read all about you."
Soul cocks his head.
Wes chuckles, setting Maka down. "After the stunt you pulled, you both have files two inches thick."
"I'm not sure I like the sound of that," Maka says nervously.
"Don't worry," Wes says reassuringly. "I'm going to arrange a plea deal. You did manage to arrest the world's biggest fairy-murdering asshole, that's worth at least five to ten years off of your sentence."
Soul shakes his head slowly. "Bro, no."
"Ox and his nerds are going to want to want to take your rectal temperature when they get here," Wes continues. "Ma's losing her shit, too. You're going to have to visit her, get her off my jock."
"Can't," Soul says gravely. "We have to go back." He reaches for Maka's hand.
She hesitates, glancing at his outstretched fingers. "Are you sure?"
Soul smiles, and Wes seems taken aback.
"'course I am," Soul says. To a still-shocked Wes he says, "I'm not calling Ma. We're getting out of here and going back home."
Home.
Wes glances back and forth between the two of them, his surprise wearing off and a giant grin spreading across his face.
"I suppose I can play the part of mourning older brother," Wes sighs exaggeratedly. "Tricked into arresting a criminal and left to collect evidence by myself."
"Hey," Liz says, offended. "I'm the para-forensic photographer. I'm actually doing my job right now." She snaps of few more pictures of Soul and Maka, to emphasize her point. Also blinding them slightly.
"Actually, Liz," Maka says timidly. "Could you do us a favor?"
Liz waves goodbye to them from her van, having unloaded all of the bags of evidence from Noah's apartment. Soul helps Maka open up each bag, gently removing each tail and laying them down in the water, watching them disintegrate in the sea foam. The mermaids are quiet in the water, the closest any of them have been to the city, completely still and watching Soul and Maka do their work. Once they lay the last, the smallest and oldest among those they had found, in the water the mermaids nod at them, their fins giving them a final wave goodbye before disappearing under the surface.
As Maka watches her- their- people swim home, she toes the sand absently. Soul watches her, her hair stirs in the light breeze. He reaches out, tucking her loose hair behind her ear, feeling please when her cheeks flush.
"And you, Soul?" Maka asks shyly.
He scoffs, taking her hand in his. "Do you even have to ask?"
The drop their clothes on the sandy shore, walking into the surf until they're waist-deep in water. They dive and their legs twist and twine into scales and fins. They swim deeper and deeper into the water, going home, together.