Competition (Soul Eater Fanfic)

Trembling fingers

"Here ya go professor." Soul smacked the jugs of blood on Steins desk. They weren't quite dry either, so upon landing on the desk, blood splattered onto the nearest stack of paper.

Stein looked up at the exhausted boy. He was still breathing a little heavily, and his eyes said rest please! He looked down at the jugs of blood, and the blood on his papers. Then he looked back up at Soul. Upon further inspection, Soul appeared to be covered in blood. Some was dry but his face still had bleeding cuts, and his midsection was soaked with fresh blood. He even reeked of the metallic scent of blood. And his skin was very pale, and his vision was almost unfocused. He just stood there breathing heavily.

Stein realized Soul must have a large gash there. Yes, he could see the torn part on the left side of the shirt. That means he must've been poisoned. Souls face was simply unreadable, but it was clear he was more than spent.

Stein opened his mouth to tell Soul to go immediately to the infirmary, when Ms. Marie walked in.

"Stein, I saw a trail of bloody footsteps leading to your door! Are you-?" Marie stopped mid sentence when he caught sight of Soul. The red trail led straight to where he stood.

"Oh my! Soul, what happened? You need to go to the infirmary!" She walked over and grabbed Souls arm, and Soul was too exhausted to even resist. Not that he wanted to, he knew he needed band-aids for his cuts and definitely a shower for the blood. He allowed himself to be led out, since his vision was actually pretty clouded up and his head throbbed.

He was marched out the door by Marie, leaving Stein alone. He stared at the jugs of blood Soul had brought him. The crimson liquid was the key to this cure. He might as well start now, he wasn't doing anything important. It's not like grading tests was relevent whatsoever. Stein was confident he could cook up a concoction pretty quickly with some experiments. He wasn't squeamish working with blood at all, in fact, he rather liked it. He was quite comfortable with blood from many dissections, and some especially furious battles.

With that, he grabbed the jugs and headed out, to go to work in his home.

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Soul was almost too tired to take a shower. Nigus insisted he take one to get rid of all the blood so she could care for his wounds. She had looked awfully worried about his current state. Soul pretty much just felt numb and kept insisting that he was just tired, but her abnormally high level of concern made him accept her promise of a 5 minute shower, but she'd had to say it three times before he heard it clearly.

He sat under the spray of water, just hoping for the cure to be done overnight. If he knew anything about anti-venom, it's that it usually reversed the effects of the venom. So he hoped it wouldn't be too late for Maka. Blood ran from Soul to the drain. He stared at the fresh red blood swept away by the water. Why is it so red? Oh wow theres a lot too, Soul thought. Maka would probably tell him why. She realized things right away and knew how to answer anything he could ask her. Oh god... what state was Maka in right now?? How many days had Sid said she had left? Ugh. This skull-splitting headache was keeping him from thinking straight. He needed to get up and out, to go check on her.

When he tried to move at all, Soul realized he was in a great deal of pain. He realized he was numb because of the poison. His vision was clouded over and his head was pounding like a drum because of it too. He heard a ringing in his ears; that must've been why he couldn't hear very much of what Nigus said. He looked down at his hands, they were pale white and trembling slightly. He was suddenly aware of the struggle it had become to breathe. The blood running down the drain finally made more sense to him. He felt so weak. How had he even had the strength to get back to the DWMA?