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[[ Yep. Library. This is stupidly longer and horribler than it needs to be. ;x; ]]

Stein stood there idly in the library just as he had been - book in hand, attention centered on his student. After all, he was chatting with Maka. It's not like he could go off running from a conversation like that. Though, he had noticed the younger Scythe's Meister attention switch to the clock on the wall for a few moments. And ... it really wasn't that hard to figure out why. She was just impatient.

Most kids would be if they were left hanging in a library for hell knows how long. And especially if they took the trouble of organizing things like ... oh, say snacks for example. Plus, it's a library, even a book worm like Maka could get bored there waiting for some one's fashionably-late appearance.

... So, he decided to switch his own attention to something else. Specifically, one of the books he had tucked under his arm. For a moment, his fingers drummed on the surface of the piece of information. All book covers were hard in a sense, so they would naturally make a tapping sound when they had something being rapidly pressed against them in a rythm due to ... well, idly thinking.

Not that he was thinking. He was simply letting his mind wander for a small intersection of time - dwelling on certain questions that popped up. For example, where Aksel had been. It seemed like the new student was certainly taking his time, that was for one thing. Hopefully for the young Albarn, she wasn't been stood up by her, 'study-buddy'.

His attention flickered by to the book. He ... frankly hadn't gotten the chance to skim through it. He knew what the book was about, of course, but skimming never hurt any one. It was just a way to see what the main concept broke down into, disregarding tables of contents.

But, he couldn't. Not when he heard the sound vibrations of a chair sliding out from its place on the ground. Stein's attention snapped back to his student, discarding the previous thoughts of his non-fiction literature. He'd have all the time later to read it, of course. All night, actually. Unless, of course, Marie started nagging at him again, insiting that he needed sleep. As always.

Fixating his thoughts by pushing non-important ones to the back of his mind for later, he arched an eyebrow, listening to what Maka had to said immediately after she stood from the table. He sort of paused on what she was asking him. It wasn't a question that could really be labeled as, 'weird'. Like it honestly could be - maybe a bit unexpected, but not too bluntly odd. Maybe someone could even call it amusing, if their humor struck that way.

Well, he knew right - obvious signs showed that she had been growing weary of waiting for Aksel. As most people would. Not that they could be blamed. Briefly, he waved his hand in a dismissing manner for her apology - it was polite of her, though. After that he broke away from letting his mind wrap around her words, deciding to do what she had asked him - using his Soul Perception to see if Aksel-- or, anyone - were here yet. Like he was a GPS for tracking kids down. Slowly, he blinked. The world around him engulfed into sheer darkness - there was no more room around him.

There weren't any people.

There was complete nothingness around him - save for the souls he could sense with his keen ability.

He only sensed his own, a few late-night staff member's, and Maka's souls. No one else's - not even Aksel's. Where was he? Blinking again, he lifted a hand to sluggishly push up his glasses, so that they wouldn't slide down the bridge of his nose. That was always annoying, of course, "No," He stated flatly, "I don't." He took a brief moment to let his vision glance at the wall on the clock, "You shouldn't stay here too long, it's getting pretty late, and a Meister does need rest." He sounded like the biggest hypocrite in the world after saying that, of course. Not like Maka knew.

At first,  Aksel's pained gaze alone beheld a single concerned hand, but for every inch the bone-white glove frantically reached towards him, ill-imagined illusions, interlocking images, curved their visages like spindly insect-legs further across his sight. Doubled over in dizzying excruciation, vermilion liquid burst from his throat in a splattering, half-choked cough, rasping in a double-tone with the maddeningly beating buzzing of a throng of ferociously frantic insect wings. Barely a whisper, his twitching grime-soaked lips helplessly eked out a single phrase, and his breath tainted the air with decay's decadent stench. “Save...me.”

From the perspective of one without soul perception, veins bulged fat with crimson plasma; like wriggling worms burrowing within their bleached surfaces, splitting his irises while visibly pulsing with a failing but frantic heartbeat. Slowly, Aksel's view of the world slipped down between the cobblestone's many cracks with his shoulders tilting earthwards, and was consumed cruelly in a swelling surge of flies freeing themselves from the ground to devour him whole; but only he saw this last vision. And they saw nothing thereafter. An untrained gaze merely witnessed the sickly trembling boy's body bust under whatever weight it bore- one hand weakly latched against the cold stone wall next to him, dragged down across the bricks' seems, tearing his fingernails. Subtly, however, his skin writhed and wormed with a swarm of small moving bumps skittering soundlessly underneath his skin, before swiftly sinking into sinew and flesh. From his mauled digits, an ill-yellow maggot wriggled and squirmed halfway out of his bloodless veins, writhing mid-air. Drying, the veins entangled in his eyes drained, blackened- leaving but a network of black breaks in their place. Something newly born viewed Maka with empty, cracked eyes.

Blurred blue light that once burned within his chest, flowing peacefully with calm cyan shades of luminescent energy and emotion,wrenched apart bite by bite. Miniscule bits flaked, torn ravenously, eroding to lifelessness before Maka's eyes much like a bloated corpse left to rot disintegrates piece by shred into the gaping gullets of craven scavengers. Speck and bit disappeared as if consumed in rapaciously gnashing maws in a vivid frenzy of gluttony. He was dead before he hit the ground. Except he did not hit the ground at all.

With strained creaks of body and bone, “Aksel” halted his drop in stride with a single outstretched foot placed before him, and momentum bent his back at an unnaturally acute angle to leave his chest parallel with the ground. Accompanied by a sound not unlike overgrown nails dragged down a chalkboard, bulging bumps stretched his clothing along every bent disk of his spinal cord until bare bone burst forth from under it, leaving his spine halfway expelled- dried veins and deadened muscle still latched tightly onto every ridged point along the snake-like structure- a road of macabre, skewering spikes stretched to the very nape of his neck. Spiderwebs of cracks spread from the tips of his fingers through the stone that barely bore their pressure as fleshed fingers shred meat and muscle to leave only protruding joint-less bones morbidly melted into cruelly curved talons. Retracted from the stone wall, that left arm dangled; blurring between violently thrashing and statue-like stillness every other moment until its motions were broken into boneless and liquid spasms. Viciously the body fluidly lurched out in luridly flowing with its intent meant to be bent into violent hell-sent hunger; joints jumbling into a coiled confusing pattern of maddening motions like that of a blood-gorged horse fly, with the only truly discernible motion being the shattered and torn talon-studded arm arcing in a whipping motion, an aggressively animalistic lash from predator to prey.