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Soul Eater: The Frog Dissection Lab

-- This is a horror fic with some gore present. Maybe a bit more than some.
For the purposes of more extensive understanding, this fiction more closely follows the anime than the manga. The manga rocks, you should read it. But read this first. --

The hall was long, dusty, and dimly lit, despite being near a swamp. It wasn’t conducive to amphibians, but quite comfortable for reptiles. Eruka bit her lip irritably. That was the point of course. What did it matter what she suffered so long as Medusa got what she wanted?
Eruka smacked a wall sconce petulantly from the wall and continued her mumbling.
“Stupid desert, ribbit,” she kicked the sconce ahead of her like an empty pop can. “Stupid underground tunnels, ribbit,” she snarled, kicking the sconce again and putting a noticeable dent in it. “Stupid Medusa!” she gave the sconce one vicious kick and sent it crashing down the tunnel. She breathed hard for a moment or two, and then sighed. “Ribbit,” she concluded.
Another mission, another removed snake. Eruka wondered vaguely how many snakes she had still inside her. The reason the wondering was vague was because she’d trodden this particular mental trail so many times before that she knew the conclusion before she’d hashed out all the possibilities. It was like taking a train ride to a place one had been to one hundred times before; the enthusiasm just isn’t there anymore, but the shock can sometimes still sting. As the grim conclusion weighted down on her, her mind cast back into the melancholia of her mood, and plucked out a memory. Mizune floating in the alley on a dark night. The snakes. The contortions. The blood.
“You’re next.”
Eruka jumped. Spinning around, she skidded on the dusty floor and toppled over. From the flagstones she stared hard down the tunnel from the direction she had been coming. She blinked a few times, listening intently. She scowled.
“Stupid imagination,” she muttered, pulling herself up on the wall. “It’s just the Kishin’s madness making me jumpy,” she assured herself.
This was true, at least to some extent. Ever since the Kishin had been released, by her no less, she had felt the ever growing waves of madness driving across the land, feeding the insatiable appetites of the masses suppressed hysterias, building up in all a deep and growing sense of fear, of a desire to break rules, to shrug off the tentative protection of the order and security imposed by Lord Death.
Eruka felt it too, perhaps more, given what she was. It worried her if she were honest with herself. Her situation was as follows:

Medusa had her over a barrel, a barrel full to the brim with snakes ready to tear her apart and eat her alive. As such, she had been forced to go along with Medusa’s unorthodox plans, otherwise she’d end up just like Mizune. Now that the Kishin was free and under the care of Arachne, and Stein was in Medusa’s clutches, things had never seemed more perplexing or ominous to Eruka. Especially since Medusa had called her back from her spy mission in Arachnophobia, Arachne’s extensive organisation that even now was making plans to move against the Death Weapon-Meister Academy.
All-in-all, she had a bad feeling about the way events were going. She didn’t care about those involved, but her intuition told her that it was going to somehow involve her, eventually. Frankly she could live without it.

Deep in the bowels of Medusa’s hideout, Eruka emerged into the central chamber, a psychedelic arrangement of walls, platforms, pillars, and stairs like a 3D labyrinth, except that it had innumerable vector arrows running over every surface. On a cube platform at the centre, a viewing globe in front of her and a giggling Professor Stein behind her, sat Medusa on a luxurious purple and orange rug.
Eruka pursed her lips as she looked down upon the small, deceptively innocent figure of the child, the black spots either side of her mouth stretching slightly with the tension. She didn’t say anything at first, not having any real desire to talk to Medusa, but thought that it’d be best to just get it over with.
“Hey,” she called out, “What did you call me back for?”
Disconcertingly, it wasn’t Medusa who responded. Rather like a zombie rising from its grave, his arms limply at his sides, Stein raised himself up and leaned forward. Eruka shivered slightly, feeling a deep unease. As she looked at him, her sight seemed to blur red for a moment. He almost looked like-

AHHHHHHH!!

“What’s the matter, Eruka Frog?” the child asked from under its hood. “You look pale.”
Eruka hadn’t fallen over that time. Her legs shook as the memory receded, the Kishin’s face so close to hers as it screamed in apparent terror at the sight of her. She looked back at the child, and was faintly disgusted to see the look of cruel amusement on its face. She had nothing against cruel amusement in general, but cruel amusement at her own expense was where she drew the line. She forced her expression into one of cold indifference, which clashed magnificently with the expression on her orange hat.
“Free and the Mizune’s are still at Baba Yaga Castle,” Eruka said, trying to sound annoyed. “Did you need me for something? Ribbit.”
“Of course,” the child said, in the tone of a concerned kindergartner nurse. “As per our deal, you’ll want one of my snakes removed, I dare say.” Eruka nodded, not without suspicion. The child beckoned with a small hand. “Well come here then,” she said in a more natural tone. Eruka made her way over, hopping like the frog she was from platform to platform. On the penultimate one she stopped. Stein had not moved since raising himself from his laying down position, and his radiation green eyes were lacking exact focus, but Eruka somehow knew that his attention was fixed upon her.
“I can’t reach you from there,” the child said, bluntly. Eruka shifted forward a little, her eyes flicking to Stein. She had an unnerving feeling he was going to do something, like a tiger in a cage might lash out as soon as someone got too close to the bars. She hesitated a few times, springing on the spot a little, and then jumped onto the very edge of the cuboid. Stein didn’t move. She could smell the stale scent of cigarettes, malodorous and sharp, coming from him. The child also didn’t move, apparently fixated on the viewing globe.
“Well?” Eruka said, in a shaky attempt to sound commanding. From the angle she had seen the child before, its face had been more or less obscured, but from where she stood, she could clearly see the smile twisting its mouth. Eruka looked into the globe. She knew that the globe often showed what the snakes saw, the snakes currently residing in her own body. What the globe showed was an inside view of Baba Yaga Castle, a grand hall with a number of robed and masked people, and one small, moustachioed man in a top hat and suit speaking deferentially to a tall, dark lady. Eruka supposed that Free or the other Mizune sisters must be watching. She hoped they weren’t in the same position that she was.
“Must I tell you to do every little thing?” the child said, turning its head. Its sharp yellow eyes, so very much like a snake’s, fixed upon Eruka’s own. It was disconcerting how well the parallel of predator and prey was mirrored between the two, even with Medusa in the child’s body. Eruka’s own eyes warbled slightly, like a marsh toad’s as it gazed up at the viper about to snap it up. She gave an involuntary gulp, again rather like a frog’s.
“R-Ribbit...” she managed, kneeling down. Like a striking cobra, the child’s arm shot forward, plunging into Eruka’s mouth. Eruka jerked, feeling her tongue crushed down as the thin arm worked its way like a mouse through a rubber tube down her throat.
What was she doing!? This wasn’t the same. The usual course was that Medusa simply summoned the snake forth. Eruka tried to pull away, panic consuming her as a pair of strong hands grasped her shoulders.
“Don’t panic now,” said a soothing voice behind her. The hands forced her down so that she was on all fours. Medusa’s smile was unnaturally wide, her eyes reduced to near slits as the child’s arm worked its way up to the elbow. Eruka choked, her spindly body jerked and spasmed, tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks as she tried in vain to breathe. “It’ll all be over soon,” Stein went on, the silky tone in his voice sending an icy tremor up Eruka’s spine.
“Hmm,” Medusa tilted her head to one side. “It’s lucky my arm is so small, isn’t it?” Eruka could only utter a strangled whimper. One of her hands was reflexively clutching at her throat, feeling her trachea being crushed under the pressure. Darkness and tiny lights began fighting for possession of her vision as the horrible sight of Medusa’s manic grin began to fade. Her brain began to feel fuzzy, and she was sure she was going to black out, until she felt the child’s arm pull back. The child inspected its arm, looking loftily disdainful at the slime covering it, and then bent the index finger in a beckoning gesture. Eruka was too busy choking to take any of this in, until she felt a second something writhing its way up her oesophagus. Like an eel emerging from a small sea cave, a long, black-scaled snake slithered from her mouth. With a perfunctory hand gesture, the child summoned the snake to its arm, where the serpent seemed to flatten into two dimensions. Within seconds it was a simple tattoo, trailing its way passed the child’s sleeve and out of sight. Stein let go of Eruka’s shoulders, letting her collapse, choking and wretching. As the wooziness began to leave her head, she felt a wave of nausea overcome her. Stein, apparently sensing this, seized the back of her collar and directed her over the edge of the cube.
“What... *gulp* what did you...?” Eruka gagged in a strangled voice, once her wretching fit had left her. The child didn’t look at her, but was again engrossed in the viewing globe.
“Tell me, Eruka,” Medusa said. “Tell me about the Kishin.”
“W... what...?”
“The Kishin,” Medusa said, slowly. “What was it like? What did he do?” Eruka’s breath was painful. Her insides felt like something had been trying to tear them out of her via the near viable exit. Her voice was pained and constricted.
“He... *gasp* he screamed... he screamed at... ribbit. Me.”
“He was frightened of you?” Medusa asked, curiously.
“I guess...” Eruka felt her throat, tentatively. “Why did you... couldn’t you have just summoned it...?”
“Stop your whining,” Medusa snapped, suddenly sounding annoyed. “Then our next experiment can begin, Stein.” Eruka blinked at this, not liking the renewed intrigue of her tone, and then heard the rather chilling sound of Stein chuckling behind her.
“Experiment?” Eruka parroted.
“You should probably stay as still as possible,” Medusa said. The way in which she said it was so causal, that at first Eruka didn’t register the meaning of the words. When she did, she frowned slightly.
“W-What?” she gasped.
“Well, if I have my snakes rip you apart, then Professor Stein will not have anything to dissect, will he?” Medusa said, holding up both arms as though pointing out something that should be obvious. Eruka caught her breath, leaning away and nearly falling off the edge of the platform.
“D-Dissect? What are you talking about?” The child stood up, not looking at Eruka.
“You should be happy; you’ve given us a wonderful opportunity, Eruka,” the child looked around, smiling with false benevolence at the silver-haired witch. “The Kishin’s madness developed from his irrepressible fear, and you frightened him,” she clasped her hands together, her grin widening to display rows of sharp teeth. “Did you think he did nothing to you? This is good news for you. You’ve gained importance.” Eruka wasn’t quite listening. All she knew was the malicious smile stretching the child’s twisted face.
“B-But I did everything you t-told me to!” she rasped, her weakened voice multiple octaves higher than usual. “You can’t do this!” the child looked directly at her then. The face was twisted into a look of amused incredulity, but the eyes glittered with the sheer hilarity she evidently felt at this desperate statement.
“Can’t I?” she asked loudly, her mouth appearing too wide for a normal human. She gave a loud and disconcerting laugh, throwing her head back as though in a sudden transport of hilarity. She’d never seen Medusa lose control like that. Eruka felt her skin crawl, and nearly leapt out of it as a firm hand grasped her shoulder.
“No need to worry,” Stein said, his voice calmly serene as Eruka felt the cigarette smoke curl around her in wisps like a choking fog. “I have my biology book to hand, just in case I make a mistake.”
Eruka pulled away from him and spun around, her eyes widening in horror as she saw Stein’s raised arm. The dim light glinted on the sheen of his glasses, and the blade of the scalpel he held aloft. Eruka screamed and lurched backwards as the scalpel slashed downwards in a diagonal curve. Several glimmering strands of silver hair floated serenely down passed Stein’s face as he leaned forward from the momentum of the swing. His grin was easily as wide as Medusa’s, but the eyes were, if anything, even more frightening.
“I’ve dissected a lot of frogs before,” he said, maniacally. “I assure you that I’m very accurate by now!” he swung forward with the heavy book he held in his other arm, and Eruka ducked just in time to avoid it and the vector arrows slicing from above.
“Ribbit!” with a desperate croak, she leapt into the air. A popping noise, and a small green frog was leaping across the platforms, heading for the nearest tunnel.
“Where are you going?” Medusa called after her. Eruka leapt again, emitting a high-pitched croak as several vectors crashed into the ground where she’d been moments before. She landed splay-legged on the ground, but quickly picked herself up again and scrambled for the tunnel as a scalpel embedded itself in the floor two inches to her left.
Medusa watched with faint amusement as the frog vanished into the darkness. She pulled a small log book from her coat, and pointed at the first page so that writing began to magically appear on the paper.
“Let the experiment begin.”

It took only a few hops for Eruka to realise the comparative benefits of her human form. With a pop and a puff of smoke, she reappeared atop her faithful giant-tadpole familiar.
“We need to get out of here!” she cried, as Tadpole Jackson zoomed off down the tunnel. “Try to get us as far away from here as possible. Maybe...” Eruka bit her lip. “She said she wouldn’t use her snakes to kill me,” she muttered, feeling the chill run down her spine again. Only so the freaky doctor guy could kill me instead. What did I do to deserve this? What am I going-
Her internal mono-worry-logue was interrupted by a barbaric sound. Echoing down the hall was something that sounded like a thousand marching feet all trampling through the tunnel, but the strange thing was that it was coming from ahead.
“Gero!” Jackson exclaimed. Eruka squeaked, not unlike a Mizune, flying off the top of Jackson’s slippery back and hitting the wall as the giant tadpole performed the mid-air equivalent of skidding to an abrupt halt. “Gero-gero?” Jackson warbled tentatively. Eruka picked herself up with a number of Ooh’s and Aah’s.
“What- ... Where did this wall come from?” For the first time, she felt the floor shaking, and the sound like a thousand people all running at once echoed down the tunnel again. “What’s going on!?”
As she looked around in panic, more pieces of the walls began to move, and the culprit was revealed. As one enormous block shifted awkwardly but stoically sideways to cut off one tunnel and open up another, Eruka spotted a black arrow on the floor beneath it.
“A vector plate!” Eruka gasped.
“Gero!” Jackson blurted in alarm. As all the walls ceased moving, several tunnel entrances were open where previously there was one. Eruka had no idea which way to go! What was more, a new sound resounded sinisterly from the direction she had come from. She and Jackson looked back into the shadows, trying to discern the source of the noise. It was a grinding, rolling sort of noise, a noise rather like someone pushing a trolley across a rough-stone floor. Rough-stone floor: Check. Trolley...? Eruka squinted, and saw a glint of something. Her heart skipped a beat as from the dark and into the light of a nearby wall sconce came the stitched lab coat of Dr. Stein, zooming backwards towards her on a wheeled chair.
Where the hell did he get a wheeled chair? Eruka found herself wondering in panic.
“I have you now!” Stein called over his shoulder, his playful tone trembling with an insane vitality. Eruka let out a scream, just as Stein’s chair hit a dented wall sconce lying on the floor, and he fell spectacularly to sprawl on the floor, four limbs akimbo, the chair landing heavily on top of him.
Eruka was too shocked at this bizarre turn of events to immediately realise what had happened. Then a spine-chilling sound permeated the silence.

Click-click-click! Click-click-click! Click-click-click!

“No, that can’t be right,” Stein muttered to himself on the floor, turning the enormous bolt in the side of his head. “No... no... hmm.”
Pressed against the wall, Eruka sidestepped to the nearest tunnel, and slipped into it, her terrified eyes fixed on Stein’s glinting glasses. Jackson hovered discreetly after her, as discreetly as a giant tadpole can. When they could no longer hear the ‘click-click-click’ of Stein’s head-screw, they took off again.
“Damn you Medusa!” Eruka sobbed. “How can she do this to me after everything I’ve done for her?”
“Gero, gero-gero!”
“I know. I just want to go home!” Eruka wailed. She was somewhat heartened that the walls were not changing anymore, but the impending doom riding behind her on four wheels made her tremble as she heard the skating sound get closer and closer. She blinked as her eyes became suddenly itchy.
“Ah, what the-“ she rubbed vigorously, and then felt her insides tingle. Three eyes, three vertical eyes was staring wildly in front of her, peering around in seemingly random triangulation. She coughed suddenly and wetly into her hand. She felt something warm seep intot he grooves of her palm. Something sticky.
“Gero!”
“Huh!?” For the second time, Eruka found herself toppling from her faithful familiar. She hit the floor, and tumbled over a precipice. With the desperation born of self-preservation, she made a grab for the side and held on, one handed.
“Tadpole Jackson!” she called, desperately. No answer came. Thanking whatever god it was that was out there for how thin she was, Eruka pulled herself up with trembling arms, and clawed herself away from the edge. Breathing heavily, she caught her breath, only to choke in horror as she comprehended her surroundings.
“Welcome back,” said a chilling calm voice. Eruka whimpered, looking slowly around on the floor to see the child with Medusa’s face. From her left shoulder grew the black tattoo of a snake, twisting out to the head, where a slimy black tail wriggled from between its fangs. A tail Eruka recognised. In an amongst the stormy terror floating around her mind, a thunderbolt of rage cut through and built in her a charge of strength, cutting off some of the fear and filling the space with a sense of reckless anger
“Jackson!” Eruka shrieked. “Let him go!” Leaping to her feet, the witch spread out her hands, radiating a purple force. As the tip of the tail vanished into the snake’s mouth, Eruka began to chant.
“Tadpole bombs?” Medusa asked, as a number of the small black spheres popped into life. “You honestly think I can’t counter a few explosions?”
“Maybe a few,” Eruka snarled. “But how about a lot of them?” raising both hands up, the energy pulsed violently, and the air suddenly seemed to be swarming. Medusa’s smile disappeared. She looked faintly annoyed. Eruka felt the corners of her mouth pull back in a manic smile as she leapt backwards, and gave an impertinent salute before falling to a lower platform.

KABOOM!

The sound of multiple tiny explosions erupting into a single large one had always been one of Eruka’s favourite sounds, and it was with eagerness that she pulled her head up and over the ledge to see the result. The stone floor and walls had taken a beating. Dust clouds began settling, and with them sank Eruka’s grin. The dust directly in front of her was doing something odd. As it fell, it curved towards her, as though it were sliding over a large, glass dome of some sort. As the dust cleared, her mouth sagged in horror.
“No...” she squeaked, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
“Looks like I made it just in time,” said Stein, in his disturbingly calm tone of voice. He sat on his chair, Medusa next to him, a large, oddly shaped mass surrounding the two of them. As Eruka watched, mouth agape and heart plummeting, the creature collapsed like jelly from a mould. “One more moment, and you would have exploded without my experimental ectoplasm to keep you cozy,” he said, his voice rising somewhat hysterically, as though he found the thought funny.
“Oh Stein,” Medusa said, her eyes on Eruka. “You know I’m not such a dainty lady.” A vector surged upwards, then stabbed down. Eruka didn’t even move. Shock rooted her to the spot, and it took her a few moments to register the tip of the arrow hovering ominously an inch from her eye.
“Please...” she sobbed. “I don’t want to die.”
Medusa regarded her impassively. If anything she looked faintly disappointed. And then she sighed.
“Looks like this experiment is going nowhere, Stein,” she sighed, folding her arms. “I leave it in your hands.”
“I’ll find a way to make it work,” Stein grinned, flexing his hand.
Eruka couldn’t feel her legs. She was dimly aware that her knees were aching, and that she was looking up at Stein as he approached.
“The fear seems to have taken hold well enough,” Stein said, musingly, standing over her like death himself. “Perhaps it was too overwhelming to trigger the expected results.” He pulled another scalpel from his coat, examining it in the light with professional interest. “I’d like to think that you’re going to stay put like that throughout the procedure,” he said. Before Eruka could so much as whimper, his free hand shot out and seized her by the neck. She didn’t respond at first. As the iron grip constricted around her larynx, an image so vivid in her mind blocked out her vision. She saw Asura, his scarf strangling her, his disgusting mouth wide, wide. His teeth clamping down upon her face. She screamed.
“What!?”
The next thing that Eruka could comprehend was that she was lying on the ground. Raising her head, she saw Jackson soaring over her. There was a thud, a crash, and a high-pitched, insane giggling. Jackson swooped around, his sharp teeth bared as he flew over Medusa, and into the nearest tunnel. Medusa scowled, the residual surprise in her expression giving way to profound annoyance. The large snake on her arm slithered it way free of her tattoo, hissing at the giant tadpole.
“Destroy it,” Medusa said, coldly. The snake took off down the tunnel, knocking several stones off the tunnel’s lip in its haste. “Glitches in my experiments are dealt with swiftly, Eru-“ she stopped on an uncertain catch in her throat. Having turned to face Eruka, Medusa was met by the sight of three small, froggish faces. “Oh, you filthy-“
Eruka didn’t stop to watch the explosion this time, did not see Medusa’s small, child-body hit the wall and slump to the floor, and paid no attention to Stein’s hysterical laughing as he lay flat on his back, his glasses askew. She just ran. Ran to the next tunnel, and hoped that Medusa would be out of it long enough not to change the maze on her again, the echoing sound of Stein’s laughter like the echoing roar of a tidal wave at her back.
After several minutes, some of the adrenaline began to wear off, and Eruka felt the aches and pains in her legs. The fear drove her on, but it was a suicidal desperation. A sharp twang in her knee, and she felt herself lurch involuntarily to the side and land hard on the floor. Gasping for air, she punched the floor and cursed as the pain shot up her leg.
“Damn it... damn it!” she tried to push herself up, trying vainly to gulp with her dry throat. “I’m not dying here. I’m a witch; I’m better than this. I don’t deserve to die on a f#@%ing dissection table!” She furiously wiped away the tears stinging her eyes, and pushed herself up on the wall. Tentatively, she put a little weight on the leg with the painful knee, and was initially encouraged that it didn’t hurt, until she took a second step and it collapsed under her. Leaning her weight against the wall again, she winced as she bore the pain as best she could.
“Eruka?” the witch jumped at the sound of the voice, looking up and down the tunnel.
“W-Who’s there?” she squeaked, involuntarily. Immediately she wished she’d had better control of her own voice box. If it was Medusa or Stein impersonating a familiar voice, she just gave away that she was still here.
“Eruka, what’re you doing there?” the voice came again. The voice came from the way she was going. Encouraging, but Eruka wasn’t convinced. Surreptitiously, she fingered a tadpole bomb in the palm of her hand.
“Free?” she said, tentatively. Out of the shadows stepped a large man, short brown hair drawn back over his pointed ears, and his prisoner’s garb tied around his waist. His chiselled face etched in shadows cast by the wall sconces was arranged into a look of concern. “It’s you! It really is you!” This seemed to confuse the werewolf more so than he already was.
“Uh... yeah. Was I meant to be someone else?” he asked, frowning slightly.
“You have to help me!” Eruka cried, trying to reach out for him. “Medusa, she’s trying to kill me!” Free’s eyebrows shot up. Hurrying over he knelt down so they were on a level.
“Why? What did you do?”
“Nothing!” Eruka sobbed. “When we freed the Kishin, they think he did something to me. They want to cut me up and find out! He’s going to slice me open and pull out my guts and he’s going to laugh and laugh and laugh-“ this explanation, beginning hysterically enough, but had been rising in volume and terror, and was abruptly cut off as Free pulled her up by the arms. Putting both hands on her shoulders, he gave her a quick shake.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he said, firmly. He waited for Eruka to gulp herself into silence. “Come on, if she’s after you, you need to get out of here and get some help.”
“Help? W-Who would help? Medusa’s snakes could rip me apart any time.”
“I don’t know who. Maybe the other witches, or the DWMA...” he said, thoughtfully.
“The other witches would kill me for what I’ve done,” she mumbled tremulously. “And Medusa wouldn’t let me get within a mile of Death city.”
“So you’d rather wait here?” Eruka looked at Free directly in the eye. “I’m immortal. I don’t deal well with self-pity. If you want to stay here and die, then be my guest. I’ll live forever.” He kept Eruka speared on his gaze. Her own eyes shook slightly in their sockets. By-and-by, she closed her mouth, and gulped to relieve the dryness. Raising both hands, she smacked both cheeks sharply.
“Sorry about that,” she said, shakily, but firmly. “Let’s go.” Free smiled, and gestured for her to lead on. After a couple of steps, Eruka bit her lip. “Thanks Free, I... I needed that. I’ve been so shaky, it-“
“Don’t worry about it,” Free said, waving a hand. “I’m the immortal werewolf. No one messes with me.”
Eruka found herself smiling at this. Clumsy, loud, and faintly narcissistic as he was, Free did have his good points. As she tried to focus on her leg so that it wouldn’t collapse again, it twisted as before and she fell over.
“You’ve hurt your leg,” Free pointed out.
“Yeah, I sort of noticed,” Eruka winced.
“Here, let me put a splint on it. Else we’ll get nowhere.” He reached for the nearest wall sconce and pulled its wooden bracket off the wall. Snapping the longer part off, he tore off some of his prison garb and began tying it to her leg. Eruka leant against the wall, trying not to move as he worked, her mind drifting slightly. As she watched, a thought occurred to her.
“Hey, Free?”
“Mm?”
“Where’re the Mizune’s?”
“At Baba Yaga Castle, spying on Arachne.”
“Oh. That was our job,” Eruka recalled. “But why did you come back and they didn’t?” Free finished tying the splint, and continued to stare at it as though in deep contemplation. “Free?” Eruka asked. Free raised his hand, and casually as you please, placed it gently over Eruka’s mouth. Then he raised his head. Eruka screamed. Or tried to scream.
“The experiment isn’t over yet,” sneered Medusa’s face as it forced its way over Free’s. The hand pressed hard, crushing the back of Eruka’s skull into the wall She pulled at it, but Free’s muscular arms wouldn’t so much as budge. “Let’s take a look in here, shall we?” Medusa said, raising Free’s other hand. Slowly, and with deliberate pressure, the outstretched fingers pressed into Eruka’s stomach.
“Mno!” Eruka screamed through the hand. Stop! Please, it hurts! The fingers dug, pressing deeper and deeper, until the thread and flesh gave way. Eruka shrieked, her lungs feeling like they might tear.
“I thought you wanted the snakes out,” Medusa’s face said, with mock concern. As Eruka stared through tearful eyes at the hateful face, a second one pressed its way out, shoving Medusa’s to one side so that each pressed towards the centre from either side. Glasses grew over the radiation green eyes as the mouth split into an insane smile.
“Let’s see what we have in here,” Stein cackled. Eruka tried to scream, but coughed herself into a fit as the hand rummaged its way around inside her. “It’s so neat and orderly in here,” Stein said.
“It’ll make the autopsy simple, Stein,” Medusa concurred, viciously. Eruka’s heart threw itself against her ribs as she felt something warm and wet run down her chin and neck.

“Hey there,” Stein said. But it wasn’t the Stein on Free’s face that spoke. Eruka blinked, and suddenly found that she wasn’t pinned to the wall by her face. Her own hand was pressing hard into her throat, choking her, and her other hand was grasping its wrist as though to pull it away. Free was nowhere to be seen. The moment she realised this she pulled the hand away with a gasp and coughed her way back to normal breathing. Wiping at her mouth, she found no blood, but several trickles of saliva.
“That seemed like a nice dream you were having.” The brief relaxation she’d been experiencing froze over like a Russian tundra. Looking up, and slightly to the left, she breathed in a strong smell of cigarettes. “Want to talk about it?” Stein asked, leaning on the back of his chair.
Eruka couldn’t even feel afraid anymore. It had become redundant by this point. She just looked up at him, feeling a vague sense of self pity.
“R-Ribbit. Why won’t you leave me alone?” she asked, piteously. Stein tilted his head to one side, and then the other.
“Because I need to know,” he said, simply. “Because I want to know, and because if I don’t,” he whispered, leaning in closer so that Eruka could see the small twitches and shakings of his face that his wide grin was evoking. She could have counted the individual strands of grey hair hanging over his eyes. He raised a hand as though to block his voice from invisible listeners. “If I don’t,” he hissed, conspiratorially, “I’ll go mad.” Eruka felt tears running down the paths on her cheeks as Stein began to giggle into his hand. He chuckled. The chuckle grew louder. It soon became a laugh, a full-blown fit of euphoric hysteria. “Don’t you feel it?” he cried, throwing his arms into the air. “You must feel it. The madness! The ever reaching, never ceasing, completely unfeeling insanity washing over you. Reaching its twisted little claws into your brain and never letting go!”
“Stop it,” Eruka sobbed. “Stop it.”
“Dragging you down, down, down!” he laughed again, spinning on his chair like a primary school kid on a sugar-trip. “Spiralling down and down. Tell me you feel it! Give me some data. Tell me what it feels like.”
“Shut up,” Eruka moaned, putting her hands over her ears. “Stop it, just stop talking!”
“You have to feel it! You must!” he stood up from his chair, sending it spinning back into the wall. Picking her up by the shoulders he pressed her to the wall and glared into her eyes as glittering trails ran down her face and she began to wail in misery. “Tell me it’s like a swarm of bees devouring every memory!” he shouted over her. “Tell me it’s a storm sweeping away your sensibilities. Tell me you know it! Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me-!”
“Shut your mouth!”
Eruka stood on her own legs, though they shook beneath her. The raised hand stung with the impact, and the face it struck looked unphased. Stein looked back at her, the manic smile gone, and a cold glint in his eyes over the red patch on his cheek.
“I see,” he said in a disturbing return to his casual tone of voice. He readjusted his glasses, pulled out a cigarette, and placing it in his mouth, lit it. “You saw things, right?” Eruka looked at him, terrified. “Visions. Things that weren’t there? Like when you went to free the Kishin. His wavelength made you hallucinate, didn’t it?” He stared at her implacably, the cigarette smouldering as smoke leaked from between his teeth. Eruka knew what it was to be a fish impaled upon a pike, fixed on his unblinking stare. She had no idea how much time passed, and was not consciously aware of what she did next. She nodded once. Stein blinked, and then smiled cheerfully.
“That’s what I thought,” he said in a friendly tone. He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and held it in his left hand whilst he exhaled. “That’s phase one of the experiment complete.” He threw the cigarette butt to the ground. Without meaning to, Eruka’s eyes followed it. And in that instant, in that one moment of brief distraction, Stein moved. His hand pressed hard into Eruka’s stomach, but she did not react. Her head resting on his shoulder, she felt the terrible surge of force erupt across her body as the Soul Menace blasted from his hand with a sound like an exploding pack of cement, and was dimly aware that her vision was becoming progressively darker. The funny thing about the whole situation, or so it seemed to her, was that she didn’t care very much about it anymore. The last intrigue in her mind was curiosity for the trickling feeling running down her chin. Looking down at the back of Stein’s coat, she looked through fading eyes at a stain there.
“Hey,” she whispered. “My blood is... is black...”

“Leave me alone,”
“Aww, come on, now,”
“No.”
“Just say it.”
“No.”
“Say i-i-i-t”
“Man, you’re annoying. Ribbit.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot, ya’know?”
“... ‘S-Sup...?”
“There ya go!”
Eruka sat, trying not to look at the mirror. Death looked out at her, his feelings on the situation obscured by the mask he wore.
“Suuuup!” Lord Death said, pointing two finger guns at her. Eruka looked at him, one eye obscured by a hand. “What’s with the long face, there?”
“You think I don’t know what this is?” Eruka asked, her quite, angry tone mingled with sorrow.
“Ehhh?” Lord Death said, tilting to one side in the mirror. Eruka didn’t answer, and after a while, Lord Death took it upon himself to carry on the conversation. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “You’re not in the real world. If that’s what you were thinking.”
“Do you take anything seriously?” Eruka asked, irritably. Lord Death’s whimsical tone was beginning to get to her.
“Sirius-ly?” Lord Death asked, holding up Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Eruka glared at him, feeling a tick going in her temple. Lord Death sighed.
“Just as Asura is the source of all madness in the world, I am the source of sanity. I am the order in every mind, keeping alive that which unites us all, that which allows us to build, to know, and to create.”
“I’m about to die,” Eruka stated, bluntly. “Please spare me this dire, philosophical lecture.”
“I suppose I could,” Lord Death said, idly. “Seen as how you already know it, huh?”
“Of course I do,” Eruka said. She looked out over the ‘Death Room’. She had never seen it before herself, but had heard of it. She supposed what Lord Death said was true if it existed within her own mind. As it was, everything but the dais had been swallowed by some sort of living red shadow made up of the vertical staring eyes. Eruka watched it nibble its way closer with an impassive glance.
“I don’t care,” she said, monotonously.
“Huuuh?” Lord Death said, tilting the other way.
“The madness,” she specified, gesturing at the shadows. “Let it come.” She bit her lip. “Maybe... maybe it won’t hurt if I was mad.”
Lord Death watched the witch for a moment.
“Hey now,” he said, raising a finger. “No need to cry now. What good has madness ever done anyone? Why do you think the real me made the DWMA in the first place?”
“To get rid of people like me,” Eruka snapped, glaring at the reaper through teary eyes.
“Mmm,” Lord Death mused. “To stop you, sure. But I have nothing against witches on principle, you know. Just the ones that blow stuff up and kill people, you know?”
There was a long pause.
“Will it hurt?” she asked, fretfully.
“That’s not something I can answer,” Lord Death said, somewhat more seriously. “You’re not a particularly nasty witch, in my long years of knowing witches. I would wish a kind death on anyone.”
“You’re not much help, you know that?” Eruka croaked, irritably.
“I do know one thing though,” Lord Death continued, soberly. “When I sealed the Kishin, I chose not to act as he did but for my own cause. I gave humans the chance to choose their own paths. I know it doesn’t seem like much of a choice, but if you come to it, I hope you pick the one that you could otherwise have lived with.”

The Death room vanished, to be slowly replaced by the solidifying nausea induced by the real world. The first thing she became aware of was the physical impression that some sort of large proboscidean, possibly one with depression and an eating disorder, had sat down upon her stomach, and had only recently and very clumsily stood up again once it noticed it had sat upon something living.
“We waited for you,” said a voice directly in front of her. It was by this that Eruka was first given to understand that she was lying down. “And all you can think to say is ‘Uuuuuhwaaaaah?’. That not very polite.”
“You did overdo the ‘anaesthetic’ a little, Stein,” Medusa’s voice said. “Anyway. Now the next step may begin.”
“Hurrah, hurray,” Stein said, distractedly. With a perfunctory kick, he sent himself zooming backwards on his chair. Eruka turned her head a little to the side and watched him out of blurry eyes. The room was well lit, had sheet metal on every wall, and every surface bore stitches, vector arrows, and an assortment of tables filled with various laboratory equipment. Flutterings of panic began to rise within her, like a sleeping creature stirring in the pits of her stomach. There came a ‘clunk!’, and then a crash. With her rapidly defining vision, she saw the cause of the noise was Stein falling backwards off his chair again. He hastily jumped to his feet as though nothing untoward had happened, and pressed a hand to one of two buttons on a box on the wall. A whirring sound, a grinding, and the surface Eruka was on began to move. Becoming suddenly aware of a pressure on her wrists and legs, Eruka’s already speeding heart began to max itself out. She pulled at either wrist. The sure feeling of constraints tightly bound assured her that there would be no escaping.
As was to be expected, fear surged within her, a little less ardently than previously, but nonetheless still quite shockingly. For a brief moment it gave her strength, a sense of purpose. She looked feverishly around the room looking for means of escape, or some way of incapacitating her captors. But the adrenaline died quickly. There was no means of escape. There were also no avenues of escape. No windows, and curiously no doors. The constraints that held her down by the wrists, ankles, and around her torso, all hummed with anti-magical auras, and revealed to her that her dress was missing. Both Stein and Medusa were present, and when one looked away, the other maintained the watch. She saw in Medusa’s face that she knew Eruka could see the conclusion forming in her mind.
The fear drained from her heart and dissipated from her mind, sinking down into her stomach where it amassed and made her feel nauseas.
“Why so unhappy, Eruka?” Medusa asked in that falsely friendly tone she liked to adopt. “I’d watch how much you cry in one day, it can cause some health problems.”
Eruka didn’t reply. She didn’t have the drive to respond. She didn’t have the drive to readjust herself in her restraints to be tolerably more comfortable. She was barely aware of her glazed vision, of the warm trails running down her face. She was remembering Lord Death, remembering in her own mind the mirror that contained his dark yet ridiculous appearance. He’d been nothing like she’d always imagined him to be, yet she somehow knew it to be an accurate representation. If there had been one thing that seeing him had done, one thing that realising what he was within her, within everyone, it was to drive home something that had gnawed at her all this time. She realised now that it had been there before seeing him, before waking up from her hallucination to resignedly sob in the face of Stein, before even beginning to run for her life. From the very moment that Medusa had effectively announced that she had no further use for her, Eruka had known, deep down, that there was no hope. Only now after fear had become mundane, spurred on by the madness of Asura, did it sink in. There was no hope. She was going to die. And there was nothing that she could do to stop it.
“Not in the mood for jokes?” Medusa asked, concernedly. “That’s fine. I never was very good at telling jokes. Stein, if you’re quite done showing your chair who’s dominant in your relationship...”
“Free...” Eruka breathed.
“Free?” Medusa raised an eyebrow. “I assume you mean the clumsy werewolf. Yes, I’ll have to come up with a story for him,” she said, speculatively. Eruka wasn’t listening. Wandering, her mind focused myopically upon old memories. Happy times. As though her mind were determined to preserve them before the end. She remembered Free’s first fight with Maka Albarn. How he’d accidentally stabbed himself with the icicle. She found herself smiling a little. She imagined she could almost see him in front of her, smiling a little self-consciously at her. Of course it wasn’t Free she was seeing. It was Stein. And those weren’t his werewolf claws shining, but a black marker pen. If she had been in her right mind, she might have wondered about the pen’s purpose. But now it was too late. Medusa folded her arms, watching with professional interest as the surgery began.

“I think the first one should go here,” Stein said, thoughtfully, drawing a line with the marker pen. “Yeees,” he said, approvingly. “The book wouldn’t lie to me,” he cooed, tapping the open biology textbook lovingly.
Eruka’s glazed look turned quickly into a sharp eyed contortion of previously unimagined pain. The first incision was slow, beyond painful. Stein’s crooked grin only cracked a little wider as the blade followed the second line down. Eruka’s scream echoed through the enclosed room, something Medusa seemed to have noticed too late. She inserted a finger into her right ear and rotated it, looking faintly pained.
“No anaesthetic,” Stein shrugged. “Sorry,” he concluded, not sounding sorry at all. “Now let’s see...” he flipped a page. Flipped it back. Flipped it again, and back again. Eruka breathed very shallow breaths, her stockings staining red.
“Do get on with it, my dear Stein,” Medusa said, casually. “I’d like to conduct my part in the experiment sometime soon.”
“Keep your bloomers on,” Stein snickered. Medusa narrowed her eyes, but flushed a little and pulled down the bottom of her hooded coat a little more.
“Now, we simply...” he drew the blade sideways across the horizontal line. He faintly admired Eruka’s initial endurance, but the ragged scream only served to further crack his already fractured smile. “And now we take the bits out,” he sang, gaily. With a snap, he pulled on some blue rubber gloves. Tongue between his teeth, he fingered the incision, and then plunged his hand into it up to the wrist. Eruka’s reactionary cry of agony was choked mid-cry by a tremendous amount of blood erupting from her mouth.
“Hmm...” Stein hummed methodically, wiping the flecks from his glasses with a handkerchief. “It should be here somewhere.”
“Please!” Eruka blurted. Stein cut her off by cunningly and with gentle application of his free hand, holding her mouth closed.
“Shh, shh, don’t worry so much,” he said, soothingly. “No need to panic. You can trust me, I’m a doctor.” He let out a sudden burst of insane cackling. The hand feeling its way through her vitals clenched and pulled.
Medusa watched the scene with an air of indifference, but in truth, she was beginning to think that the experiment would fail at this rate. Stein was eliciting the fear required, she was sure of it, but his current state of insanity meant he was being too heavy-handed. She didn’t know what vital organ it was he seemed to be trying to rip from its position, but Eruka seemed on the edge of fainting, and the amount of blood she was losing couldn’t be helping.
“Alright, Stein,” she said in a placating tone. “My turn now.” Stein’s smile froze.
“It’s not been that long yet,” he said, quietly, one hand still on Eruka’s mouth.
“You can have another turn later,” Medusa said. “I promise.” Stein seemed to consider. By-and-by, he pulled his hand out, drawing a muffled shriek from Eruka, and pulled off his gloves. Sitting heavily in his chair, he lit a cigarette, pushed himself back to the wall again, and pressed the second button on the wall box.
Eruka was too insensitive to anything but her overwhelming sense of torment to care that she was now horizontal, and it was only when she noticed the small form of the child standing over her that her eyes seemed to remember that they served the function of sight. Medusa’s yellow eyes gazed down coldly from her silhouette, a hard black shape against the white lights on the ceiling. The figure raised a hand, its small fingers bent as though holding an invisible cup. Then they clenched. Eruka’s back arched as much as it could underneath the restraint. Her mouth opened as though to let out a terrible exclamation, but she was choking too much to say anything.
“I’ll get out every last one,” Medusa said, idly. “Just like you wanted.” As she spoke, a snake’s head emerged from the abdominal wound, undulating its way out and up Medusa’s leg. And then a second appeared, then a third, five, ten snakes all slithering as though from a nest. Eruka found her voice at last, strangled and high pitched.
“Please stop! I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry for what I did, please! It hurts!”
“I imagine it does,” Medusa commented.
“Why are you doing this to me?” Eruka moaned.
“I explained why.” Four vectors reared up behind the child, and then surged downwards. “Hmph,” Medusa frowned, ignoring Eruka’s renewed screeches as the vectors tore the incisions apart. “Oh my dear Stein, you really did make a mess here,” she said, inspecting the sight before her. The liver looked entirely the worse for wear, and the intestines looked a mite crumpled. “Do I have to give you a tracheotomy, Eruka?” Medusa considered the choking witch, who upon vomiting up a substantial amount of blood again was coughing raggedly to one side. It really was very interesting to watch the insides contract and expand with each cough.
“Perhaps you just need something to talk about,” Medusa suggested, stepping over and to her right side, where she knelt down and considered the quivering organs more minutely. “What do you think? Do you really need this?” she asked, poking experimentally at the darkly coloured liver. “No, no I don’t think that you’ll be needing that any time soon, really.”
“D-Damn...” Medusa smiled.
“Sorry? I didn’t catch that,” she said, companionably.
“I... I hate y-you...” Eruka gagged.
“Well that is encouraging.” She could see that Eruka didn’t understand. The little of her face not contorted in agony showed blank confusion. “Oh yes, and now with the Kishin’s influence and your position, the experiment can come to its fruition.” She stood, and with a careful lifting of her leg, plunged her foot down into the open cavity. The colour in Eruka’s eyes near instantly shrank out of sight.
“You should really just accept the madness, you know,” Stein said, drifting by the table on his chair. “It makes everything so...” he paused, his smile wavering, as though he were unsure what exactly he was saying.
“Accept it Eruka,” Medusa pressed, twisting her foot sideways. “The pain might even go away. Accept the madness and let the real testing begin.” Eruka stared with wide, darkened eyes up, understanding blossoming in her shattered mind.
“You’re doing... to make me...”
“Yes,” Medusa smirked. Her methodology was working, she could see. Despite what she was and her inclinations, Medusa had never before been driven to actually torture anyone before. Even Crona hadn’t been subjected to something like this. “Now come, let it overflow. Just let it all out.”
“You... you did this... to me.” Medusa frowned. Was the frog becoming more audible?
“Wait, what’s-“ she stared at Eruka’s face, which was contorting into a look of burning fury. But that wasn’t the strange aspect of it. The blood seeping from her mouth. Was it just darkening? No, no this was beyond dark, this was-
“Black blood,” Medusa frowned slightly. How has it manifested so quickly?
“You... *kaff* you’ve... killed me...” Eruka said, somewhat hysterically. Without warning, her right hand broke its restraint. Without hesitation it surged forward and seized Medusa by the throat. Medusa frowned again, as though still puzzled.
“It must be feeding upon the changeable nature of your witch’s soul” she said, as though to herself.
“You sick, manipulating little...” Eruka managed, he voice twisting with rage and loosening sanity. Medusa was pleased in the main. She looked forward to finding out whether it was merely her witch’s soul, or if it was the Kishin’s wavelength doing this to her that had brought about this rapid advance of madness. The results seemed to be quite promising. She would have to find a better way of introducing her black-blood injection system though. She didn’t think forcibly shoving it down the patient’s throat would work with everyone. It might elicit some biased test results, and she couldn’t have that.
“Then you have embraced it,” Stein said, eagerly, breaking in on Medusa’s musings. From his position on the chair, he’d made no move to stop Eruka, but merely leaned forward, absently turning the screw in his head. Eruka’s grip solidified.

Click-click-click. Click-click-click. Click-click-click.

Eruka knew enough about the black blood to know what it meant, and what it could do. Almost immediately her bleeding ceased, stifled by the hardening effects of the black blood. But she felt weak, and the strengthening properties of the blood could not make up for the fact that she had lost so much of her own blood already. Her grip slackened.
“Just give into the madness,” Medusa said, smiling that viper’s smile. “Come on, Eruka. It’s the only chance you have to live.”

I know it doesn’t seem like much of a choice, but if you come to it, I hope you pick the one that you could otherwise have lived with

There was utter silence for a few moments, all except for the clicking of Stein’s head-tweaking. Medusa stared, unblinkingly at Eruka, expectation building up like flood water on an embankment. Eruka’s expression had gone blank; she said nothing at all.
And then, slowly, as though being dredged up from some dark and endless pit, there came the tinkling, spine-tingling sound of someone starting to laugh. A laugh uttered by someone who one might suspect to be not all there. Medusa’s smile widened as she felt Eruka’s hand shaking, and saw beneath the straight fringe of her hair that her teeth were parted into the kind of laughing smile akin to maniacs and demented clowns. The laugh itself was prolonged and slightly strained, as though being forced out by some terrible and reluctant joy.
“Excellent, Eruka,” Medusa said, kindly. “Now-“
“Go die in a hole, you snake,” Eruka said, monotonously. This abrupt change from seemingly mad laughter to uncharacteristic seriousness gave Medusa some pause. “It might surprise you to know that even I have some standards.” There was a short pause.
“Frankly yes, that does surprise me,” Medusa said, coolly. “I was always took you for a cowering wretch concerned only for your own skin.”
“To be honest, so did I,” Eruka said, calmly. She lifted her head slightly to look Medusa in the eye. “I’m not brave, I’m not a fighter, I’m not even a powerful witch,” she smirked. “But like any good witch, I know the deliciousness of spite.”
“And what could you possibly mean by that?” Medusa asked, a flicker of anger in her voice giving away that she knew exactly what Eruka meant.
“I mean that in the end, I finally beat you,” she said, her voice beginning to choke over again. “I made a choice that... *kaff* that in the end, I... I could have... lived with.” Medusa narrowed her eyes as the witch coughed up a large amount of distinctly red blood and fell back upon the table. She watched impassively as the black circles on either side of the mouth curved upwards in a mocking smile, and the light leaving her dark eyes.
Bye, Mizune’s... see you later, Free... or maybe not, you clumsy immortal. Eruka’s hand fell to the table with a mundane finality, and she moved no more.

Medusa stood, glaring down at the frozen smile, feeling what she could only describe as annoyance. To call it anger, no matter how much it burned, would be to admit that Eruka really had won. She jumped off the table, resisting the urge to dice the miserable corpse to ribbons with her vectors, and looked over at Stein. He’d been remaining quite still, smoking a cigarette, looking almost like his sane self. One the snake heads on her coat reached out to a nearby table, and tossed over a box to Stein, who caught it with a perfunctory catch of the hand.
“Do what you want,” Medusa said, darkly, heading for a clear section of wall. Stein considered the box a moment as Medusa walked through the wall as though it wasn’t there.
“Enough scalpels here for an entire autopsy,” he said, vaguely, zooming on his chair to the table. Tripping on a cable, he hoisted his chair upright and sat back down on it. “Did I ever tell you I really like dissecting things?” he asked the body, idly. “I’m really quite good at it, you know?”

“Another failed experiment,” Medusa muttered, her face black with rage. “I must make a note of her apparent ability to suppress the black blood,” she thought, pulling out her log book. She considered this, and a little of her irritation died away.
“Progress marches on regardless,” she smiled. “Some of the best discoveries are found by accident.”

Description
Soul Eater: The Frog Dissection Lab

-- This is a horror fic with some gore present. Maybe a bit more than some.
For the purposes of more extensive understanding, this fiction more closely follows the anime than the manga. The manga rocks, you should read it. But read this first. --

The hall was long, dusty, and dimly lit, despite being near a swamp. It wasn’t conducive to amphibians, but quite comfortable for reptiles. Eruka bit her lip irritably. That was the point of course. What did it matter what she suffered so long as Medusa got what she wanted?
Eruka smacked a wall sconce petulantly from the wall and continued her mumbling.
“Stupid desert, ribbit,” she kicked the sconce ahead of her like an empty pop can. “Stupid underground tunnels, ribbit,” she snarled, kicking the sconce again and putting a noticeable dent in it. “Stupid Medusa!” she gave the sconce one vicious kick and sent it crashing down the tunnel. She breathed hard for a moment or two, and then sighed. “Ribbit,” she concluded.
Another mission, another removed snake. Eruka wondered vaguely how many snakes she had still inside her. The reason the wondering was vague was because she’d trodden this particular mental trail so many times before that she knew the conclusion before she’d hashed out all the possibilities. It was like taking a train ride to a place one had been to one hundred times before; the enthusiasm just isn’t there anymore, but the shock can sometimes still sting. As the grim conclusion weighted down on her, her mind cast back into the melancholia of her mood, and plucked out a memory. Mizune floating in the alley on a dark night. The snakes. The contortions. The blood.
“You’re next.”
Eruka jumped. Spinning around, she skidded on the dusty floor and toppled over. From the flagstones she stared hard down the tunnel from the direction she had been coming. She blinked a few times, listening intently. She scowled.
“Stupid imagination,” she muttered, pulling herself up on the wall. “It’s just the Kishin’s madness making me jumpy,” she assured herself.
This was true, at least to some extent. Ever since the Kishin had been released, by her no less, she had felt the ever growing waves of madness driving across the land, feeding the insatiable appetites of the masses suppressed hysterias, building up in all a deep and growing sense of fear, of a desire to break rules, to shrug off the tentative protection of the order and security imposed by Lord Death.
Eruka felt it too, perhaps more, given what she was. It worried her if she were honest with herself. Her situation was as follows:

Medusa had her over a barrel, a barrel full to the brim with snakes ready to tear her apart and eat her alive. As such, she had been forced to go along with Medusa’s unorthodox plans, otherwise she’d end up just like Mizune. Now that the Kishin was free and under the care of Arachne, and Stein was in Medusa’s clutches, things had never seemed more perplexing or ominous to Eruka. Especially since Medusa had called her back from her spy mission in Arachnophobia, Arachne’s extensive organisation that even now was making plans to move against the Death Weapon-Meister Academy.
All-in-all, she had a bad feeling about the way events were going. She didn’t care about those involved, but her intuition told her that it was going to somehow involve her, eventually. Frankly she could live without it.

Deep in the bowels of Medusa’s hideout, Eruka emerged into the central chamber, a psychedelic arrangement of walls, platforms, pillars, and stairs like a 3D labyrinth, except that it had innumerable vector arrows running over every surface. On a cube platform at the centre, a viewing globe in front of her and a giggling Professor Stein behind her, sat Medusa on a luxurious purple and orange rug.
Eruka pursed her lips as she looked down upon the small, deceptively innocent figure of the child, the black spots either side of her mouth stretching slightly with the tension. She didn’t say anything at first, not having any real desire to talk to Medusa, but thought that it’d be best to just get it over with.
“Hey,” she called out, “What did you call me back for?”
Disconcertingly, it wasn’t Medusa who responded. Rather like a zombie rising from its grave, his arms limply at his sides, Stein raised himself up and leaned forward. Eruka shivered slightly, feeling a deep unease. As she looked at him, her sight seemed to blur red for a moment. He almost looked like-

AHHHHHHH!!

“What’s the matter, Eruka Frog?” the child asked from under its hood. “You look pale.”
Eruka hadn’t fallen over that time. Her legs shook as the memory receded, the Kishin’s face so close to hers as it screamed in apparent terror at the sight of her. She looked back at the child, and was faintly disgusted to see the look of cruel amusement on its face. She had nothing against cruel amusement in general, but cruel amusement at her own expense was where she drew the line. She forced her expression into one of cold indifference, which clashed magnificently with the expression on her orange hat.
“Free and the Mizune’s are still at Baba Yaga Castle,” Eruka said, trying to sound annoyed. “Did you need me for something? Ribbit.”
“Of course,” the child said, in the tone of a concerned kindergartner nurse. “As per our deal, you’ll want one of my snakes removed, I dare say.” Eruka nodded, not without suspicion. The child beckoned with a small hand. “Well come here then,” she said in a more natural tone. Eruka made her way over, hopping like the frog she was from platform to platform. On the penultimate one she stopped. Stein had not moved since raising himself from his laying down position, and his radiation green eyes were lacking exact focus, but Eruka somehow knew that his attention was fixed upon her.
“I can’t reach you from there,” the child said, bluntly. Eruka shifted forward a little, her eyes flicking to Stein. She had an unnerving feeling he was going to do something, like a tiger in a cage might lash out as soon as someone got too close to the bars. She hesitated a few times, springing on the spot a little, and then jumped onto the very edge of the cuboid. Stein didn’t move. She could smell the stale scent of cigarettes, malodorous and sharp, coming from him. The child also didn’t move, apparently fixated on the viewing globe.
“Well?” Eruka said, in a shaky attempt to sound commanding. From the angle she had seen the child before, its face had been more or less obscured, but from where she stood, she could clearly see the smile twisting its mouth. Eruka looked into the globe. She knew that the globe often showed what the snakes saw, the snakes currently residing in her own body. What the globe showed was an inside view of Baba Yaga Castle, a grand hall with a number of robed and masked people, and one small, moustachioed man in a top hat and suit speaking deferentially to a tall, dark lady. Eruka supposed that Free or the other Mizune sisters must be watching. She hoped they weren’t in the same position that she was.
“Must I tell you to do every little thing?” the child said, turning its head. Its sharp yellow eyes, so very much like a snake’s, fixed upon Eruka’s own. It was disconcerting how well the parallel of predator and prey was mirrored between the two, even with Medusa in the child’s body. Eruka’s own eyes warbled slightly, like a marsh toad’s as it gazed up at the viper about to snap it up. She gave an involuntary gulp, again rather like a frog’s.
“R-Ribbit...” she managed, kneeling down. Like a striking cobra, the child’s arm shot forward, plunging into Eruka’s mouth. Eruka jerked, feeling her tongue crushed down as the thin arm worked its way like a mouse through a rubber tube down her throat.
What was she doing!? This wasn’t the same. The usual course was that Medusa simply summoned the snake forth. Eruka tried to pull away, panic consuming her as a pair of strong hands grasped her shoulders.
“Don’t panic now,” said a soothing voice behind her. The hands forced her down so that she was on all fours. Medusa’s smile was unnaturally wide, her eyes reduced to near slits as the child’s arm worked its way up to the elbow. Eruka choked, her spindly body jerked and spasmed, tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks as she tried in vain to breathe. “It’ll all be over soon,” Stein went on, the silky tone in his voice sending an icy tremor up Eruka’s spine.
“Hmm,” Medusa tilted her head to one side. “It’s lucky my arm is so small, isn’t it?” Eruka could only utter a strangled whimper. One of her hands was reflexively clutching at her throat, feeling her trachea being crushed under the pressure. Darkness and tiny lights began fighting for possession of her vision as the horrible sight of Medusa’s manic grin began to fade. Her brain began to feel fuzzy, and she was sure she was going to black out, until she felt the child’s arm pull back. The child inspected its arm, looking loftily disdainful at the slime covering it, and then bent the index finger in a beckoning gesture. Eruka was too busy choking to take any of this in, until she felt a second something writhing its way up her oesophagus. Like an eel emerging from a small sea cave, a long, black-scaled snake slithered from her mouth. With a perfunctory hand gesture, the child summoned the snake to its arm, where the serpent seemed to flatten into two dimensions. Within seconds it was a simple tattoo, trailing its way passed the child’s sleeve and out of sight. Stein let go of Eruka’s shoulders, letting her collapse, choking and wretching. As the wooziness began to leave her head, she felt a wave of nausea overcome her. Stein, apparently sensing this, seized the back of her collar and directed her over the edge of the cube.
“What... *gulp* what did you...?” Eruka gagged in a strangled voice, once her wretching fit had left her. The child didn’t look at her, but was again engrossed in the viewing globe.
“Tell me, Eruka,” Medusa said. “Tell me about the Kishin.”
“W... what...?”
“The Kishin,” Medusa said, slowly. “What was it like? What did he do?” Eruka’s breath was painful. Her insides felt like something had been trying to tear them out of her via the near viable exit. Her voice was pained and constricted.
“He... *gasp* he screamed... he screamed at... ribbit. Me.”
“He was frightened of you?” Medusa asked, curiously.
“I guess...” Eruka felt her throat, tentatively. “Why did you... couldn’t you have just summoned it...?”
“Stop your whining,” Medusa snapped, suddenly sounding annoyed. “Then our next experiment can begin, Stein.” Eruka blinked at this, not liking the renewed intrigue of her tone, and then heard the rather chilling sound of Stein chuckling behind her.
“Experiment?” Eruka parroted.
“You should probably stay as still as possible,” Medusa said. The way in which she said it was so causal, that at first Eruka didn’t register the meaning of the words. When she did, she frowned slightly.
“W-What?” she gasped.
“Well, if I have my snakes rip you apart, then Professor Stein will not have anything to dissect, will he?” Medusa said, holding up both arms as though pointing out something that should be obvious. Eruka caught her breath, leaning away and nearly falling off the edge of the platform.
“D-Dissect? What are you talking about?” The child stood up, not looking at Eruka.
“You should be happy; you’ve given us a wonderful opportunity, Eruka,” the child looked around, smiling with false benevolence at the silver-haired witch. “The Kishin’s madness developed from his irrepressible fear, and you frightened him,” she clasped her hands together, her grin widening to display rows of sharp teeth. “Did you think he did nothing to you? This is good news for you. You’ve gained importance.” Eruka wasn’t quite listening. All she knew was the malicious smile stretching the child’s twisted face.
“B-But I did everything you t-told me to!” she rasped, her weakened voice multiple octaves higher than usual. “You can’t do this!” the child looked directly at her then. The face was twisted into a look of amused incredulity, but the eyes glittered with the sheer hilarity she evidently felt at this desperate statement.
“Can’t I?” she asked loudly, her mouth appearing too wide for a normal human. She gave a loud and disconcerting laugh, throwing her head back as though in a sudden transport of hilarity. She’d never seen Medusa lose control like that. Eruka felt her skin crawl, and nearly leapt out of it as a firm hand grasped her shoulder.
“No need to worry,” Stein said, his voice calmly serene as Eruka felt the cigarette smoke curl around her in wisps like a choking fog. “I have my biology book to hand, just in case I make a mistake.”
Eruka pulled away from him and spun around, her eyes widening in horror as she saw Stein’s raised arm. The dim light glinted on the sheen of his glasses, and the blade of the scalpel he held aloft. Eruka screamed and lurched backwards as the scalpel slashed downwards in a diagonal curve. Several glimmering strands of silver hair floated serenely down passed Stein’s face as he leaned forward from the momentum of the swing. His grin was easily as wide as Medusa’s, but the eyes were, if anything, even more frightening.
“I’ve dissected a lot of frogs before,” he said, maniacally. “I assure you that I’m very accurate by now!” he swung forward with the heavy book he held in his other arm, and Eruka ducked just in time to avoid it and the vector arrows slicing from above.
“Ribbit!” with a desperate croak, she leapt into the air. A popping noise, and a small green frog was leaping across the platforms, heading for the nearest tunnel.
“Where are you going?” Medusa called after her. Eruka leapt again, emitting a high-pitched croak as several vectors crashed into the ground where she’d been moments before. She landed splay-legged on the ground, but quickly picked herself up again and scrambled for the tunnel as a scalpel embedded itself in the floor two inches to her left.
Medusa watched with faint amusement as the frog vanished into the darkness. She pulled a small log book from her coat, and pointed at the first page so that writing began to magically appear on the paper.
“Let the experiment begin.”

It took only a few hops for Eruka to realise the comparative benefits of her human form. With a pop and a puff of smoke, she reappeared atop her faithful giant-tadpole familiar.
“We need to get out of here!” she cried, as Tadpole Jackson zoomed off down the tunnel. “Try to get us as far away from here as possible. Maybe...” Eruka bit her lip. “She said she wouldn’t use her snakes to kill me,” she muttered, feeling the chill run down her spine again. Only so the freaky doctor guy could kill me instead. What did I do to deserve this? What am I going-
Her internal mono-worry-logue was interrupted by a barbaric sound. Echoing down the hall was something that sounded like a thousand marching feet all trampling through the tunnel, but the strange thing was that it was coming from ahead.
“Gero!” Jackson exclaimed. Eruka squeaked, not unlike a Mizune, flying off the top of Jackson’s slippery back and hitting the wall as the giant tadpole performed the mid-air equivalent of skidding to an abrupt halt. “Gero-gero?” Jackson warbled tentatively. Eruka picked herself up with a number of Ooh’s and Aah’s.
“What- ... Where did this wall come from?” For the first time, she felt the floor shaking, and the sound like a thousand people all running at once echoed down the tunnel again. “What’s going on!?”
As she looked around in panic, more pieces of the walls began to move, and the culprit was revealed. As one enormous block shifted awkwardly but stoically sideways to cut off one tunnel and open up another, Eruka spotted a black arrow on the floor beneath it.
“A vector plate!” Eruka gasped.
“Gero!” Jackson blurted in alarm. As all the walls ceased moving, several tunnel entrances were open where previously there was one. Eruka had no idea which way to go! What was more, a new sound resounded sinisterly from the direction she had come from. She and Jackson looked back into the shadows, trying to discern the source of the noise. It was a grinding, rolling sort of noise, a noise rather like someone pushing a trolley across a rough-stone floor. Rough-stone floor: Check. Trolley...? Eruka squinted, and saw a glint of something. Her heart skipped a beat as from the dark and into the light of a nearby wall sconce came the stitched lab coat of Dr. Stein, zooming backwards towards her on a wheeled chair.
Where the hell did he get a wheeled chair? Eruka found herself wondering in panic.
“I have you now!” Stein called over his shoulder, his playful tone trembling with an insane vitality. Eruka let out a scream, just as Stein’s chair hit a dented wall sconce lying on the floor, and he fell spectacularly to sprawl on the floor, four limbs akimbo, the chair landing heavily on top of him.
Eruka was too shocked at this bizarre turn of events to immediately realise what had happened. Then a spine-chilling sound permeated the silence.

Click-click-click! Click-click-click! Click-click-click!

“No, that can’t be right,” Stein muttered to himself on the floor, turning the enormous bolt in the side of his head. “No... no... hmm.”
Pressed against the wall, Eruka sidestepped to the nearest tunnel, and slipped into it, her terrified eyes fixed on Stein’s glinting glasses. Jackson hovered discreetly after her, as discreetly as a giant tadpole can. When they could no longer hear the ‘click-click-click’ of Stein’s head-screw, they took off again.
“Damn you Medusa!” Eruka sobbed. “How can she do this to me after everything I’ve done for her?”
“Gero, gero-gero!”
“I know. I just want to go home!” Eruka wailed. She was somewhat heartened that the walls were not changing anymore, but the impending doom riding behind her on four wheels made her tremble as she heard the skating sound get closer and closer. She blinked as her eyes became suddenly itchy.
“Ah, what the-“ she rubbed vigorously, and then felt her insides tingle. Three eyes, three vertical eyes was staring wildly in front of her, peering around in seemingly random triangulation. She coughed suddenly and wetly into her hand. She felt something warm seep intot he grooves of her palm. Something sticky.
“Gero!”
“Huh!?” For the second time, Eruka found herself toppling from her faithful familiar. She hit the floor, and tumbled over a precipice. With the desperation born of self-preservation, she made a grab for the side and held on, one handed.
“Tadpole Jackson!” she called, desperately. No answer came. Thanking whatever god it was that was out there for how thin she was, Eruka pulled herself up with trembling arms, and clawed herself away from the edge. Breathing heavily, she caught her breath, only to choke in horror as she comprehended her surroundings.
“Welcome back,” said a chilling calm voice. Eruka whimpered, looking slowly around on the floor to see the child with Medusa’s face. From her left shoulder grew the black tattoo of a snake, twisting out to the head, where a slimy black tail wriggled from between its fangs. A tail Eruka recognised. In an amongst the stormy terror floating around her mind, a thunderbolt of rage cut through and built in her a charge of strength, cutting off some of the fear and filling the space with a sense of reckless anger
“Jackson!” Eruka shrieked. “Let him go!” Leaping to her feet, the witch spread out her hands, radiating a purple force. As the tip of the tail vanished into the snake’s mouth, Eruka began to chant.
“Tadpole bombs?” Medusa asked, as a number of the small black spheres popped into life. “You honestly think I can’t counter a few explosions?”
“Maybe a few,” Eruka snarled. “But how about a lot of them?” raising both hands up, the energy pulsed violently, and the air suddenly seemed to be swarming. Medusa’s smile disappeared. She looked faintly annoyed. Eruka felt the corners of her mouth pull back in a manic smile as she leapt backwards, and gave an impertinent salute before falling to a lower platform.

KABOOM!

The sound of multiple tiny explosions erupting into a single large one had always been one of Eruka’s favourite sounds, and it was with eagerness that she pulled her head up and over the ledge to see the result. The stone floor and walls had taken a beating. Dust clouds began settling, and with them sank Eruka’s grin. The dust directly in front of her was doing something odd. As it fell, it curved towards her, as though it were sliding over a large, glass dome of some sort. As the dust cleared, her mouth sagged in horror.
“No...” she squeaked, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
“Looks like I made it just in time,” said Stein, in his disturbingly calm tone of voice. He sat on his chair, Medusa next to him, a large, oddly shaped mass surrounding the two of them. As Eruka watched, mouth agape and heart plummeting, the creature collapsed like jelly from a mould. “One more moment, and you would have exploded without my experimental ectoplasm to keep you cozy,” he said, his voice rising somewhat hysterically, as though he found the thought funny.
“Oh Stein,” Medusa said, her eyes on Eruka. “You know I’m not such a dainty lady.” A vector surged upwards, then stabbed down. Eruka didn’t even move. Shock rooted her to the spot, and it took her a few moments to register the tip of the arrow hovering ominously an inch from her eye.
“Please...” she sobbed. “I don’t want to die.”
Medusa regarded her impassively. If anything she looked faintly disappointed. And then she sighed.
“Looks like this experiment is going nowhere, Stein,” she sighed, folding her arms. “I leave it in your hands.”
“I’ll find a way to make it work,” Stein grinned, flexing his hand.
Eruka couldn’t feel her legs. She was dimly aware that her knees were aching, and that she was looking up at Stein as he approached.
“The fear seems to have taken hold well enough,” Stein said, musingly, standing over her like death himself. “Perhaps it was too overwhelming to trigger the expected results.” He pulled another scalpel from his coat, examining it in the light with professional interest. “I’d like to think that you’re going to stay put like that throughout the procedure,” he said. Before Eruka could so much as whimper, his free hand shot out and seized her by the neck. She didn’t respond at first. As the iron grip constricted around her larynx, an image so vivid in her mind blocked out her vision. She saw Asura, his scarf strangling her, his disgusting mouth wide, wide. His teeth clamping down upon her face. She screamed.
“What!?”
The next thing that Eruka could comprehend was that she was lying on the ground. Raising her head, she saw Jackson soaring over her. There was a thud, a crash, and a high-pitched, insane giggling. Jackson swooped around, his sharp teeth bared as he flew over Medusa, and into the nearest tunnel. Medusa scowled, the residual surprise in her expression giving way to profound annoyance. The large snake on her arm slithered it way free of her tattoo, hissing at the giant tadpole.
“Destroy it,” Medusa said, coldly. The snake took off down the tunnel, knocking several stones off the tunnel’s lip in its haste. “Glitches in my experiments are dealt with swiftly, Eru-“ she stopped on an uncertain catch in her throat. Having turned to face Eruka, Medusa was met by the sight of three small, froggish faces. “Oh, you filthy-“
Eruka didn’t stop to watch the explosion this time, did not see Medusa’s small, child-body hit the wall and slump to the floor, and paid no attention to Stein’s hysterical laughing as he lay flat on his back, his glasses askew. She just ran. Ran to the next tunnel, and hoped that Medusa would be out of it long enough not to change the maze on her again, the echoing sound of Stein’s laughter like the echoing roar of a tidal wave at her back.
After several minutes, some of the adrenaline began to wear off, and Eruka felt the aches and pains in her legs. The fear drove her on, but it was a suicidal desperation. A sharp twang in her knee, and she felt herself lurch involuntarily to the side and land hard on the floor. Gasping for air, she punched the floor and cursed as the pain shot up her leg.
“Damn it... damn it!” she tried to push herself up, trying vainly to gulp with her dry throat. “I’m not dying here. I’m a witch; I’m better than this. I don’t deserve to die on a f#@%ing dissection table!” She furiously wiped away the tears stinging her eyes, and pushed herself up on the wall. Tentatively, she put a little weight on the leg with the painful knee, and was initially encouraged that it didn’t hurt, until she took a second step and it collapsed under her. Leaning her weight against the wall again, she winced as she bore the pain as best she could.
“Eruka?” the witch jumped at the sound of the voice, looking up and down the tunnel.
“W-Who’s there?” she squeaked, involuntarily. Immediately she wished she’d had better control of her own voice box. If it was Medusa or Stein impersonating a familiar voice, she just gave away that she was still here.
“Eruka, what’re you doing there?” the voice came again. The voice came from the way she was going. Encouraging, but Eruka wasn’t convinced. Surreptitiously, she fingered a tadpole bomb in the palm of her hand.
“Free?” she said, tentatively. Out of the shadows stepped a large man, short brown hair drawn back over his pointed ears, and his prisoner’s garb tied around his waist. His chiselled face etched in shadows cast by the wall sconces was arranged into a look of concern. “It’s you! It really is you!” This seemed to confuse the werewolf more so than he already was.
“Uh... yeah. Was I meant to be someone else?” he asked, frowning slightly.
“You have to help me!” Eruka cried, trying to reach out for him. “Medusa, she’s trying to kill me!” Free’s eyebrows shot up. Hurrying over he knelt down so they were on a level.
“Why? What did you do?”
“Nothing!” Eruka sobbed. “When we freed the Kishin, they think he did something to me. They want to cut me up and find out! He’s going to slice me open and pull out my guts and he’s going to laugh and laugh and laugh-“ this explanation, beginning hysterically enough, but had been rising in volume and terror, and was abruptly cut off as Free pulled her up by the arms. Putting both hands on her shoulders, he gave her a quick shake.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he said, firmly. He waited for Eruka to gulp herself into silence. “Come on, if she’s after you, you need to get out of here and get some help.”
“Help? W-Who would help? Medusa’s snakes could rip me apart any time.”
“I don’t know who. Maybe the other witches, or the DWMA...” he said, thoughtfully.
“The other witches would kill me for what I’ve done,” she mumbled tremulously. “And Medusa wouldn’t let me get within a mile of Death city.”
“So you’d rather wait here?” Eruka looked at Free directly in the eye. “I’m immortal. I don’t deal well with self-pity. If you want to stay here and die, then be my guest. I’ll live forever.” He kept Eruka speared on his gaze. Her own eyes shook slightly in their sockets. By-and-by, she closed her mouth, and gulped to relieve the dryness. Raising both hands, she smacked both cheeks sharply.
“Sorry about that,” she said, shakily, but firmly. “Let’s go.” Free smiled, and gestured for her to lead on. After a couple of steps, Eruka bit her lip. “Thanks Free, I... I needed that. I’ve been so shaky, it-“
“Don’t worry about it,” Free said, waving a hand. “I’m the immortal werewolf. No one messes with me.”
Eruka found herself smiling at this. Clumsy, loud, and faintly narcissistic as he was, Free did have his good points. As she tried to focus on her leg so that it wouldn’t collapse again, it twisted as before and she fell over.
“You’ve hurt your leg,” Free pointed out.
“Yeah, I sort of noticed,” Eruka winced.
“Here, let me put a splint on it. Else we’ll get nowhere.” He reached for the nearest wall sconce and pulled its wooden bracket off the wall. Snapping the longer part off, he tore off some of his prison garb and began tying it to her leg. Eruka leant against the wall, trying not to move as he worked, her mind drifting slightly. As she watched, a thought occurred to her.
“Hey, Free?”
“Mm?”
“Where’re the Mizune’s?”
“At Baba Yaga Castle, spying on Arachne.”
“Oh. That was our job,” Eruka recalled. “But why did you come back and they didn’t?” Free finished tying the splint, and continued to stare at it as though in deep contemplation. “Free?” Eruka asked. Free raised his hand, and casually as you please, placed it gently over Eruka’s mouth. Then he raised his head. Eruka screamed. Or tried to scream.
“The experiment isn’t over yet,” sneered Medusa’s face as it forced its way over Free’s. The hand pressed hard, crushing the back of Eruka’s skull into the wall She pulled at it, but Free’s muscular arms wouldn’t so much as budge. “Let’s take a look in here, shall we?” Medusa said, raising Free’s other hand. Slowly, and with deliberate pressure, the outstretched fingers pressed into Eruka’s stomach.
“Mno!” Eruka screamed through the hand. Stop! Please, it hurts! The fingers dug, pressing deeper and deeper, until the thread and flesh gave way. Eruka shrieked, her lungs feeling like they might tear.
“I thought you wanted the snakes out,” Medusa’s face said, with mock concern. As Eruka stared through tearful eyes at the hateful face, a second one pressed its way out, shoving Medusa’s to one side so that each pressed towards the centre from either side. Glasses grew over the radiation green eyes as the mouth split into an insane smile.
“Let’s see what we have in here,” Stein cackled. Eruka tried to scream, but coughed herself into a fit as the hand rummaged its way around inside her. “It’s so neat and orderly in here,” Stein said.
“It’ll make the autopsy simple, Stein,” Medusa concurred, viciously. Eruka’s heart threw itself against her ribs as she felt something warm and wet run down her chin and neck.

“Hey there,” Stein said. But it wasn’t the Stein on Free’s face that spoke. Eruka blinked, and suddenly found that she wasn’t pinned to the wall by her face. Her own hand was pressing hard into her throat, choking her, and her other hand was grasping its wrist as though to pull it away. Free was nowhere to be seen. The moment she realised this she pulled the hand away with a gasp and coughed her way back to normal breathing. Wiping at her mouth, she found no blood, but several trickles of saliva.
“That seemed like a nice dream you were having.” The brief relaxation she’d been experiencing froze over like a Russian tundra. Looking up, and slightly to the left, she breathed in a strong smell of cigarettes. “Want to talk about it?” Stein asked, leaning on the back of his chair.
Eruka couldn’t even feel afraid anymore. It had become redundant by this point. She just looked up at him, feeling a vague sense of self pity.
“R-Ribbit. Why won’t you leave me alone?” she asked, piteously. Stein tilted his head to one side, and then the other.
“Because I need to know,” he said, simply. “Because I want to know, and because if I don’t,” he whispered, leaning in closer so that Eruka could see the small twitches and shakings of his face that his wide grin was evoking. She could have counted the individual strands of grey hair hanging over his eyes. He raised a hand as though to block his voice from invisible listeners. “If I don’t,” he hissed, conspiratorially, “I’ll go mad.” Eruka felt tears running down the paths on her cheeks as Stein began to giggle into his hand. He chuckled. The chuckle grew louder. It soon became a laugh, a full-blown fit of euphoric hysteria. “Don’t you feel it?” he cried, throwing his arms into the air. “You must feel it. The madness! The ever reaching, never ceasing, completely unfeeling insanity washing over you. Reaching its twisted little claws into your brain and never letting go!”
“Stop it,” Eruka sobbed. “Stop it.”
“Dragging you down, down, down!” he laughed again, spinning on his chair like a primary school kid on a sugar-trip. “Spiralling down and down. Tell me you feel it! Give me some data. Tell me what it feels like.”
“Shut up,” Eruka moaned, putting her hands over her ears. “Stop it, just stop talking!”
“You have to feel it! You must!” he stood up from his chair, sending it spinning back into the wall. Picking her up by the shoulders he pressed her to the wall and glared into her eyes as glittering trails ran down her face and she began to wail in misery. “Tell me it’s like a swarm of bees devouring every memory!” he shouted over her. “Tell me it’s a storm sweeping away your sensibilities. Tell me you know it! Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me-!”
“Shut your mouth!”
Eruka stood on her own legs, though they shook beneath her. The raised hand stung with the impact, and the face it struck looked unphased. Stein looked back at her, the manic smile gone, and a cold glint in his eyes over the red patch on his cheek.
“I see,” he said in a disturbing return to his casual tone of voice. He readjusted his glasses, pulled out a cigarette, and placing it in his mouth, lit it. “You saw things, right?” Eruka looked at him, terrified. “Visions. Things that weren’t there? Like when you went to free the Kishin. His wavelength made you hallucinate, didn’t it?” He stared at her implacably, the cigarette smouldering as smoke leaked from between his teeth. Eruka knew what it was to be a fish impaled upon a pike, fixed on his unblinking stare. She had no idea how much time passed, and was not consciously aware of what she did next. She nodded once. Stein blinked, and then smiled cheerfully.
“That’s what I thought,” he said in a friendly tone. He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and held it in his left hand whilst he exhaled. “That’s phase one of the experiment complete.” He threw the cigarette butt to the ground. Without meaning to, Eruka’s eyes followed it. And in that instant, in that one moment of brief distraction, Stein moved. His hand pressed hard into Eruka’s stomach, but she did not react. Her head resting on his shoulder, she felt the terrible surge of force erupt across her body as the Soul Menace blasted from his hand with a sound like an exploding pack of cement, and was dimly aware that her vision was becoming progressively darker. The funny thing about the whole situation, or so it seemed to her, was that she didn’t care very much about it anymore. The last intrigue in her mind was curiosity for the trickling feeling running down her chin. Looking down at the back of Stein’s coat, she looked through fading eyes at a stain there.
“Hey,” she whispered. “My blood is... is black...”

“Leave me alone,”
“Aww, come on, now,”
“No.”
“Just say it.”
“No.”
“Say i-i-i-t”
“Man, you’re annoying. Ribbit.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot, ya’know?”
“... ‘S-Sup...?”
“There ya go!”
Eruka sat, trying not to look at the mirror. Death looked out at her, his feelings on the situation obscured by the mask he wore.
“Suuuup!” Lord Death said, pointing two finger guns at her. Eruka looked at him, one eye obscured by a hand. “What’s with the long face, there?”
“You think I don’t know what this is?” Eruka asked, her quite, angry tone mingled with sorrow.
“Ehhh?” Lord Death said, tilting to one side in the mirror. Eruka didn’t answer, and after a while, Lord Death took it upon himself to carry on the conversation. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “You’re not in the real world. If that’s what you were thinking.”
“Do you take anything seriously?” Eruka asked, irritably. Lord Death’s whimsical tone was beginning to get to her.
“Sirius-ly?” Lord Death asked, holding up Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Eruka glared at him, feeling a tick going in her temple. Lord Death sighed.
“Just as Asura is the source of all madness in the world, I am the source of sanity. I am the order in every mind, keeping alive that which unites us all, that which allows us to build, to know, and to create.”
“I’m about to die,” Eruka stated, bluntly. “Please spare me this dire, philosophical lecture.”
“I suppose I could,” Lord Death said, idly. “Seen as how you already know it, huh?”
“Of course I do,” Eruka said. She looked out over the ‘Death Room’. She had never seen it before herself, but had heard of it. She supposed what Lord Death said was true if it existed within her own mind. As it was, everything but the dais had been swallowed by some sort of living red shadow made up of the vertical staring eyes. Eruka watched it nibble its way closer with an impassive glance.
“I don’t care,” she said, monotonously.
“Huuuh?” Lord Death said, tilting the other way.
“The madness,” she specified, gesturing at the shadows. “Let it come.” She bit her lip. “Maybe... maybe it won’t hurt if I was mad.”
Lord Death watched the witch for a moment.
“Hey now,” he said, raising a finger. “No need to cry now. What good has madness ever done anyone? Why do you think the real me made the DWMA in the first place?”
“To get rid of people like me,” Eruka snapped, glaring at the reaper through teary eyes.
“Mmm,” Lord Death mused. “To stop you, sure. But I have nothing against witches on principle, you know. Just the ones that blow stuff up and kill people, you know?”
There was a long pause.
“Will it hurt?” she asked, fretfully.
“That’s not something I can answer,” Lord Death said, somewhat more seriously. “You’re not a particularly nasty witch, in my long years of knowing witches. I would wish a kind death on anyone.”
“You’re not much help, you know that?” Eruka croaked, irritably.
“I do know one thing though,” Lord Death continued, soberly. “When I sealed the Kishin, I chose not to act as he did but for my own cause. I gave humans the chance to choose their own paths. I know it doesn’t seem like much of a choice, but if you come to it, I hope you pick the one that you could otherwise have lived with.”

The Death room vanished, to be slowly replaced by the solidifying nausea induced by the real world. The first thing she became aware of was the physical impression that some sort of large proboscidean, possibly one with depression and an eating disorder, had sat down upon her stomach, and had only recently and very clumsily stood up again once it noticed it had sat upon something living.
“We waited for you,” said a voice directly in front of her. It was by this that Eruka was first given to understand that she was lying down. “And all you can think to say is ‘Uuuuuhwaaaaah?’. That not very polite.”
“You did overdo the ‘anaesthetic’ a little, Stein,” Medusa’s voice said. “Anyway. Now the next step may begin.”
“Hurrah, hurray,” Stein said, distractedly. With a perfunctory kick, he sent himself zooming backwards on his chair. Eruka turned her head a little to the side and watched him out of blurry eyes. The room was well lit, had sheet metal on every wall, and every surface bore stitches, vector arrows, and an assortment of tables filled with various laboratory equipment. Flutterings of panic began to rise within her, like a sleeping creature stirring in the pits of her stomach. There came a ‘clunk!’, and then a crash. With her rapidly defining vision, she saw the cause of the noise was Stein falling backwards off his chair again. He hastily jumped to his feet as though nothing untoward had happened, and pressed a hand to one of two buttons on a box on the wall. A whirring sound, a grinding, and the surface Eruka was on began to move. Becoming suddenly aware of a pressure on her wrists and legs, Eruka’s already speeding heart began to max itself out. She pulled at either wrist. The sure feeling of constraints tightly bound assured her that there would be no escaping.
As was to be expected, fear surged within her, a little less ardently than previously, but nonetheless still quite shockingly. For a brief moment it gave her strength, a sense of purpose. She looked feverishly around the room looking for means of escape, or some way of incapacitating her captors. But the adrenaline died quickly. There was no means of escape. There were also no avenues of escape. No windows, and curiously no doors. The constraints that held her down by the wrists, ankles, and around her torso, all hummed with anti-magical auras, and revealed to her that her dress was missing. Both Stein and Medusa were present, and when one looked away, the other maintained the watch. She saw in Medusa’s face that she knew Eruka could see the conclusion forming in her mind.
The fear drained from her heart and dissipated from her mind, sinking down into her stomach where it amassed and made her feel nauseas.
“Why so unhappy, Eruka?” Medusa asked in that falsely friendly tone she liked to adopt. “I’d watch how much you cry in one day, it can cause some health problems.”
Eruka didn’t reply. She didn’t have the drive to respond. She didn’t have the drive to readjust herself in her restraints to be tolerably more comfortable. She was barely aware of her glazed vision, of the warm trails running down her face. She was remembering Lord Death, remembering in her own mind the mirror that contained his dark yet ridiculous appearance. He’d been nothing like she’d always imagined him to be, yet she somehow knew it to be an accurate representation. If there had been one thing that seeing him had done, one thing that realising what he was within her, within everyone, it was to drive home something that had gnawed at her all this time. She realised now that it had been there before seeing him, before waking up from her hallucination to resignedly sob in the face of Stein, before even beginning to run for her life. From the very moment that Medusa had effectively announced that she had no further use for her, Eruka had known, deep down, that there was no hope. Only now after fear had become mundane, spurred on by the madness of Asura, did it sink in. There was no hope. She was going to die. And there was nothing that she could do to stop it.
“Not in the mood for jokes?” Medusa asked, concernedly. “That’s fine. I never was very good at telling jokes. Stein, if you’re quite done showing your chair who’s dominant in your relationship...”
“Free...” Eruka breathed.
“Free?” Medusa raised an eyebrow. “I assume you mean the clumsy werewolf. Yes, I’ll have to come up with a story for him,” she said, speculatively. Eruka wasn’t listening. Wandering, her mind focused myopically upon old memories. Happy times. As though her mind were determined to preserve them before the end. She remembered Free’s first fight with Maka Albarn. How he’d accidentally stabbed himself with the icicle. She found herself smiling a little. She imagined she could almost see him in front of her, smiling a little self-consciously at her. Of course it wasn’t Free she was seeing. It was Stein. And those weren’t his werewolf claws shining, but a black marker pen. If she had been in her right mind, she might have wondered about the pen’s purpose. But now it was too late. Medusa folded her arms, watching with professional interest as the surgery began.

“I think the first one should go here,” Stein said, thoughtfully, drawing a line with the marker pen. “Yeees,” he said, approvingly. “The book wouldn’t lie to me,” he cooed, tapping the open biology textbook lovingly.
Eruka’s glazed look turned quickly into a sharp eyed contortion of previously unimagined pain. The first incision was slow, beyond painful. Stein’s crooked grin only cracked a little wider as the blade followed the second line down. Eruka’s scream echoed through the enclosed room, something Medusa seemed to have noticed too late. She inserted a finger into her right ear and rotated it, looking faintly pained.
“No anaesthetic,” Stein shrugged. “Sorry,” he concluded, not sounding sorry at all. “Now let’s see...” he flipped a page. Flipped it back. Flipped it again, and back again. Eruka breathed very shallow breaths, her stockings staining red.
“Do get on with it, my dear Stein,” Medusa said, casually. “I’d like to conduct my part in the experiment sometime soon.”
“Keep your bloomers on,” Stein snickered. Medusa narrowed her eyes, but flushed a little and pulled down the bottom of her hooded coat a little more.
“Now, we simply...” he drew the blade sideways across the horizontal line. He faintly admired Eruka’s initial endurance, but the ragged scream only served to further crack his already fractured smile. “And now we take the bits out,” he sang, gaily. With a snap, he pulled on some blue rubber gloves. Tongue between his teeth, he fingered the incision, and then plunged his hand into it up to the wrist. Eruka’s reactionary cry of agony was choked mid-cry by a tremendous amount of blood erupting from her mouth.
“Hmm...” Stein hummed methodically, wiping the flecks from his glasses with a handkerchief. “It should be here somewhere.”
“Please!” Eruka blurted. Stein cut her off by cunningly and with gentle application of his free hand, holding her mouth closed.
“Shh, shh, don’t worry so much,” he said, soothingly. “No need to panic. You can trust me, I’m a doctor.” He let out a sudden burst of insane cackling. The hand feeling its way through her vitals clenched and pulled.
Medusa watched the scene with an air of indifference, but in truth, she was beginning to think that the experiment would fail at this rate. Stein was eliciting the fear required, she was sure of it, but his current state of insanity meant he was being too heavy-handed. She didn’t know what vital organ it was he seemed to be trying to rip from its position, but Eruka seemed on the edge of fainting, and the amount of blood she was losing couldn’t be helping.
“Alright, Stein,” she said in a placating tone. “My turn now.” Stein’s smile froze.
“It’s not been that long yet,” he said, quietly, one hand still on Eruka’s mouth.
“You can have another turn later,” Medusa said. “I promise.” Stein seemed to consider. By-and-by, he pulled his hand out, drawing a muffled shriek from Eruka, and pulled off his gloves. Sitting heavily in his chair, he lit a cigarette, pushed himself back to the wall again, and pressed the second button on the wall box.
Eruka was too insensitive to anything but her overwhelming sense of torment to care that she was now horizontal, and it was only when she noticed the small form of the child standing over her that her eyes seemed to remember that they served the function of sight. Medusa’s yellow eyes gazed down coldly from her silhouette, a hard black shape against the white lights on the ceiling. The figure raised a hand, its small fingers bent as though holding an invisible cup. Then they clenched. Eruka’s back arched as much as it could underneath the restraint. Her mouth opened as though to let out a terrible exclamation, but she was choking too much to say anything.
“I’ll get out every last one,” Medusa said, idly. “Just like you wanted.” As she spoke, a snake’s head emerged from the abdominal wound, undulating its way out and up Medusa’s leg. And then a second appeared, then a third, five, ten snakes all slithering as though from a nest. Eruka found her voice at last, strangled and high pitched.
“Please stop! I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry for what I did, please! It hurts!”
“I imagine it does,” Medusa commented.
“Why are you doing this to me?” Eruka moaned.
“I explained why.” Four vectors reared up behind the child, and then surged downwards. “Hmph,” Medusa frowned, ignoring Eruka’s renewed screeches as the vectors tore the incisions apart. “Oh my dear Stein, you really did make a mess here,” she said, inspecting the sight before her. The liver looked entirely the worse for wear, and the intestines looked a mite crumpled. “Do I have to give you a tracheotomy, Eruka?” Medusa considered the choking witch, who upon vomiting up a substantial amount of blood again was coughing raggedly to one side. It really was very interesting to watch the insides contract and expand with each cough.
“Perhaps you just need something to talk about,” Medusa suggested, stepping over and to her right side, where she knelt down and considered the quivering organs more minutely. “What do you think? Do you really need this?” she asked, poking experimentally at the darkly coloured liver. “No, no I don’t think that you’ll be needing that any time soon, really.”
“D-Damn...” Medusa smiled.
“Sorry? I didn’t catch that,” she said, companionably.
“I... I hate y-you...” Eruka gagged.
“Well that is encouraging.” She could see that Eruka didn’t understand. The little of her face not contorted in agony showed blank confusion. “Oh yes, and now with the Kishin’s influence and your position, the experiment can come to its fruition.” She stood, and with a careful lifting of her leg, plunged her foot down into the open cavity. The colour in Eruka’s eyes near instantly shrank out of sight.
“You should really just accept the madness, you know,” Stein said, drifting by the table on his chair. “It makes everything so...” he paused, his smile wavering, as though he were unsure what exactly he was saying.
“Accept it Eruka,” Medusa pressed, twisting her foot sideways. “The pain might even go away. Accept the madness and let the real testing begin.” Eruka stared with wide, darkened eyes up, understanding blossoming in her shattered mind.
“You’re doing... to make me...”
“Yes,” Medusa smirked. Her methodology was working, she could see. Despite what she was and her inclinations, Medusa had never before been driven to actually torture anyone before. Even Crona hadn’t been subjected to something like this. “Now come, let it overflow. Just let it all out.”
“You... you did this... to me.” Medusa frowned. Was the frog becoming more audible?
“Wait, what’s-“ she stared at Eruka’s face, which was contorting into a look of burning fury. But that wasn’t the strange aspect of it. The blood seeping from her mouth. Was it just darkening? No, no this was beyond dark, this was-
“Black blood,” Medusa frowned slightly. How has it manifested so quickly?
“You... *kaff* you’ve... killed me...” Eruka said, somewhat hysterically. Without warning, her right hand broke its restraint. Without hesitation it surged forward and seized Medusa by the throat. Medusa frowned again, as though still puzzled.
“It must be feeding upon the changeable nature of your witch’s soul” she said, as though to herself.
“You sick, manipulating little...” Eruka managed, he voice twisting with rage and loosening sanity. Medusa was pleased in the main. She looked forward to finding out whether it was merely her witch’s soul, or if it was the Kishin’s wavelength doing this to her that had brought about this rapid advance of madness. The results seemed to be quite promising. She would have to find a better way of introducing her black-blood injection system though. She didn’t think forcibly shoving it down the patient’s throat would work with everyone. It might elicit some biased test results, and she couldn’t have that.
“Then you have embraced it,” Stein said, eagerly, breaking in on Medusa’s musings. From his position on the chair, he’d made no move to stop Eruka, but merely leaned forward, absently turning the screw in his head. Eruka’s grip solidified.

Click-click-click. Click-click-click. Click-click-click.

Eruka knew enough about the black blood to know what it meant, and what it could do. Almost immediately her bleeding ceased, stifled by the hardening effects of the black blood. But she felt weak, and the strengthening properties of the blood could not make up for the fact that she had lost so much of her own blood already. Her grip slackened.
“Just give into the madness,” Medusa said, smiling that viper’s smile. “Come on, Eruka. It’s the only chance you have to live.”

I know it doesn’t seem like much of a choice, but if you come to it, I hope you pick the one that you could otherwise have lived with

There was utter silence for a few moments, all except for the clicking of Stein’s head-tweaking. Medusa stared, unblinkingly at Eruka, expectation building up like flood water on an embankment. Eruka’s expression had gone blank; she said nothing at all.
And then, slowly, as though being dredged up from some dark and endless pit, there came the tinkling, spine-tingling sound of someone starting to laugh. A laugh uttered by someone who one might suspect to be not all there. Medusa’s smile widened as she felt Eruka’s hand shaking, and saw beneath the straight fringe of her hair that her teeth were parted into the kind of laughing smile akin to maniacs and demented clowns. The laugh itself was prolonged and slightly strained, as though being forced out by some terrible and reluctant joy.
“Excellent, Eruka,” Medusa said, kindly. “Now-“
“Go die in a hole, you snake,” Eruka said, monotonously. This abrupt change from seemingly mad laughter to uncharacteristic seriousness gave Medusa some pause. “It might surprise you to know that even I have some standards.” There was a short pause.
“Frankly yes, that does surprise me,” Medusa said, coolly. “I was always took you for a cowering wretch concerned only for your own skin.”
“To be honest, so did I,” Eruka said, calmly. She lifted her head slightly to look Medusa in the eye. “I’m not brave, I’m not a fighter, I’m not even a powerful witch,” she smirked. “But like any good witch, I know the deliciousness of spite.”
“And what could you possibly mean by that?” Medusa asked, a flicker of anger in her voice giving away that she knew exactly what Eruka meant.
“I mean that in the end, I finally beat you,” she said, her voice beginning to choke over again. “I made a choice that... *kaff* that in the end, I... I could have... lived with.” Medusa narrowed her eyes as the witch coughed up a large amount of distinctly red blood and fell back upon the table. She watched impassively as the black circles on either side of the mouth curved upwards in a mocking smile, and the light leaving her dark eyes.
Bye, Mizune’s... see you later, Free... or maybe not, you clumsy immortal. Eruka’s hand fell to the table with a mundane finality, and she moved no more.

Medusa stood, glaring down at the frozen smile, feeling what she could only describe as annoyance. To call it anger, no matter how much it burned, would be to admit that Eruka really had won. She jumped off the table, resisting the urge to dice the miserable corpse to ribbons with her vectors, and looked over at Stein. He’d been remaining quite still, smoking a cigarette, looking almost like his sane self. One the snake heads on her coat reached out to a nearby table, and tossed over a box to Stein, who caught it with a perfunctory catch of the hand.
“Do what you want,” Medusa said, darkly, heading for a clear section of wall. Stein considered the box a moment as Medusa walked through the wall as though it wasn’t there.
“Enough scalpels here for an entire autopsy,” he said, vaguely, zooming on his chair to the table. Tripping on a cable, he hoisted his chair upright and sat back down on it. “Did I ever tell you I really like dissecting things?” he asked the body, idly. “I’m really quite good at it, you know?”

“Another failed experiment,” Medusa muttered, her face black with rage. “I must make a note of her apparent ability to suppress the black blood,” she thought, pulling out her log book. She considered this, and a little of her irritation died away.
“Progress marches on regardless,” she smiled. “Some of the best discoveries are found by accident.”