Chapter One: Finding Alphonse
No one knows what happened to Alphonse Elric the night they stormed Central City and the Alchemists fell. Some say he was killed with the rest of them, and others say he simply fled, tired of fighting. Either way, all that's known for sure is that the Alchemists haven't seen him, and he hasn't spoken out or acted in years. Its a shame, the world could really use the Armoured Alchemist right now.
Lan Fan walked through the ruins of the Pinako Automail workshop. The grass and weeds had long grown into the cracks of the floorboards, and it would be easier to detail what was left recognizable of the house than what wasn't. There were other ruins in the area, leftover from a bombing that occurred on the outskirts of town back during the Ishvalan Civil War. But these ruins were newer, more recent, and the damage not as massive as a bombing. Most of the roof had been completely destroyed, but most of the walls still stood, and most of the cracking and crumbling was from time's toll, not from a bomb blast. There was Alchemy used here, and Alkahestry as well, Lan Fan could feel it in the pulse of the earth, see it in the cracked stone spikes and drills that littered the earth and the Alkahestric Kunai that lay discarded and rusted. But despite the carnage, the broken floorboards and the slight reddish tint in some panels of hardwood and patches of dirt that indicated spilled bloods, there was no evidence of bodies.
The fight had not been recent, Lan Fan placed it at around four years ago. The bullet casings and broken armour left behind were rusted, and there were no curious bystanders, indicating that this site was old news. Lan Fan looked all around the building, but she knew it was in vain. She would find no clues here, and was no further towards accomplishing the goal in the note that had made her leave the Emperor's side. She would have rather stayed by his side, but Ling had insisted that she was the only one he trusted to handle it, and that he had other guards. Either way, Lan Fan was committed to returning to her liege's side as fast as possible. But the instructions inside the note "Find Alphonse, and tell him Edward's Gate has finally been opened in Briggs" were cryptic, and only the first two words made any sense to her. She leaned against one of the few intact walls remaining, and took off her mask. She clenched her fist as she remembered her initial protests to what she thought was a wild goose chase, and the conversation that had finally persuaded her to go.
"With all due respect, Emperor, Alphonse has not been heard or seen of in the past five years, ever since the coup." Lan Fan protested to Emperor Ling. "It could just be a wild goose chase, or, more likely, a trap to lure you into a vulnerable position."
Emperor Ling's eyebrows rose "How would this lure me into a vulnerable position? I would go find Alphonse myself, but this Emperor business keeps me from doing anything fun." He frowned, then lightened up. "At least I can eat as much food as I want now, without asking others to pay for me! The Elric brothers paid for every single one of my meals when I was in Amestris, and were part of the main reason I obtained all this."
He encompassed the Imperial throne room in one gesture. "If I recall, they helped you defeat those Homunculi, and were a key factor in stopping that madman." Lan Fan nodded, recalling the Elric brother's assistance in making Ling emperor those twenty years ago.
Ling continued "That's why I'm entrusting the task of finding Alphonse to you. My most capable and trustworthy guard."
Lan Fan blushed slightly, as she always did when the Emperor paid her such compliments, but it was hidden behind her mask and her voice was steady as she bowed and said "If it is your wish, I will find Alphonse and deliver him to Briggs, Emperor. "
Emperor Ling smiled "Im sure it will be an easy task for someone as skilled as yourself." In that smile, Lan Fan almost found herself believing that finding a man that hadn't been seen for fifteen years would be, as Ling said, easy.
Now, two months since she had departed from Xing, she was no closer to locating the Armoured Alchemist than she had been when she left. She had seen various wanted posters for him, with the current Fuhrer offering huge sums of money for his capture, but those posters were torn and faded, and when she asked around, it seems it has been years since anyone had tried to obtain that bounty. She moved from city to city, town to town, from Central City to Reole, and finally here to Resembool, but all she found were remnants of battles that Alphonse might have participated in. She was scouring the country of Amestris for anyone who might know where Alphonse might be, but all seemed to have disappeared. The Curtis , the Hughes, and now the Rockbells, all had vanished, just as Alphonse himself had. Neighbours to the Curtis and Hughes family suggested they moved to Briggs, and it appeared the Rockbells had no neighbours.
Lan Fan sighed and looked at the setting sun. It appeared that she might have to go all the way to Briggs to find even a clue of where Alphonse was. She slipped her mask back on and started looking for a local Inn to spend the night before resuming her search, putting Briggs in her mind as a last resort. The place was a fortress, even more so now that it housed almost all the remaining Alchemists not indoctrinated by the new Amestris government, and Lan Fan might be mistaken as a Xingese assassin and killed before she could explain herself. There was still Rush Valley, Youswell and countless other towns the Elric brothers had visited on their adventure twelve years ago. An adventure that Lan Fan and Ling had been part of, along with her grandfather, and May Chang, and what an adventure that had been.
Lan Fan was so busy reminiscing about that past adventure, and wondering what had happened to May Chang, that she almost didn't notice that she was stepping into a transmutation circle until the reflection of the setting sun caught an object buried in the ground. An Alkahestry marker.
Lan Fan jumped back just in time, as smoking scythes of energy cut across where she was just standing. She grabs a grenade with her right hand and flicks a kunai out of her automail arm, holding it in an expert knife fighter's grip, while scanning the area for the assailant.
More glints in the dying light marked two more knives speeding towards her, and as she moved to dodge them, a sharp pain pierced her right thigh. Glancing down, she saw an arrow made entirely of stone buried into the ground, having passed clean through her leg, burrowing through the bone in the process. Trying to move her leg brought stabs of excruciating pain, but Lan Fan gritted her teeth and continued scanning the area for her assailants, and judging by the direction of the thrown knives... there!
Standing atop a tree, face hidden behind a mask, was a man unmistakably from Xing, readying more knives to throw at Lan Fan. Which meant... she turned her head to where the arrow flew from, and there, standing on the rooftop of a building about three-hundred meters away, a figure notched another arrow into a bow, the telltale sparks of alchemy still visible on the arrow's head.
An archer alchemist and a knife throwing Xingese assassin. What a combination, Lan Fan mused, as she dodged the next few knives and arrows thrown.
"So you're Emperor Yao's guard dog." The Xingese assassin sneered as he threw another five knives, forcing Lan Fan to throw herself to the side to avoid being caught within a Purification Circle formed by the dodged knives, and laughing as she turned her dodge into quick, tight roll to avoid the arrows shot by his companion. "I must say, I imagined it would be much harder to put you down. This is just a game of cat and mouse."
The pair seemed content to attack her from a distance, and with her leg injury from that first, unexpected arrow they figured she wouldn't be able to close the distance quickly enough, especially when they had Alchemy and Alkahestry on their side. But she was already a deadly warrior those twelve years ago, and that was when she had been fifteen. There were few in Xing that could match her speed, and she had several surprises up her sleeve. She just had to wait for the perfect time to use them.
"Why are you trying to kill me?" Lan Fan asked as she dodged yet more of the man's knives and the alchemists' arrows, making sure to avoid any places where the knives or arrows formed any thing that resembled a circle. "The Emperor stopped the inter-clan wars when he rose to power, and why are you working with an alchemist?"
"You think that all the enmity between clans would cease just because the Emperor said so?" The assassin asked incredulously. "You really are a stupid guard dog. Though I suppose, if the Emperor feeds you treats, you have no reason to complain, do you?" He laughed as he threw the next few knives. "The Yao Clan has done things to my family that we will never forget, royal decree or no, and while striking at the Emperor is a bit audacious, hitting at the guard dog seems like a good place to start"
Biting back her fury at the insults, Lan Fan continued to watch for an opening in either one of her assailants. "`So why not attack me, or any other member of my clan back in Xing? "`
"Because there, the Emperor`s law is absolute. But here, out in Amestris, his law is null and void. So when I heard that the job involved hunting you down, I immediately took it. Though, the other perks are nice as well. "
"What job would that be? " Lan Fan inquired, still studying her two assailants. The assassin was growing boastful, and that often led to a mistake in the near future, but the archer hadn't said a word, and an aura of cold efficiency radiated from the alchemic sparks that swirled at the tip of each arrow that was launched at her.
The assassin held up a finger and tsked "You've already been told more than enough. It`s time to end this cat and mouse game. " He stopped throwing knives for a moment to reach behind his back to grab something else, something he obviously thought would decisively end this fight.
With a blur of movement, Lan Fan attached the grenade she had been holding to a loop at the back of the kunai in her other hand, removed the pin and threw it at the assassin as he reached behind his back. The kunai flew straight and true, embedding itself into the man`s shoulder. Lan Fan saw the eyes of the man narrow in pain as he glanced at his shoulder, and then abruptly widen in fear as he saw the grenade attached to it.
He moved his other hand to try and pull the kunai out, but it was too late. The grenade exploded, sending shrapnel shredding throughout the would-be assassins` body killing him instantly, but Lan Fan was already moving towards the alchemist archer, when suddenly four more figures appeared in her peripheral vision.
"I told you we shouldn't have let that cocky arse from Xing handle it himself." One of the figures said as it unsheathed a large sword from a scabbard at his back.
"Well at least we convinced him that he should have the archer helping him out. " Another said as it jerked a thumb towards the alchemist archer, who was still firing arrows at Lan Fan, who was finding it harder and harder to dodge them with her wounded leg.
One of the other figures just grunted in agreement, then sent a mass of rock hurtling towards Lan Fan with a gesture of his hand and a punching motion. The last rays of the setting sun illuminated the transmutation arrays tattooed across his right forearm, along an array of symbols on both hands of another attacker. The other two seemed to be just regular assassins then. Three alchemists and two assassins on their side, a wounded leg on hers. This was not going to be an easy fight, but then again, service in the name of her lord wasn`t supposed to be easy.
With quick deft movements, she dodged the initial alchemy barrage and tossed in an assortment of grenades, both shrapnel and smoke, causing confusion amongst her opponents. A knife in the throat silenced one of the alchemists, but these were trained killers, and the other three recovered from the confusion, while the archer was too far away to be affected in the first place. Lan Fan gauged the distance, and knew that she couldn`t throw anything that far accurately, and the other three would prevent her from closing the gap.
Already the remaining Alchemist had grabbed fistfuls of dirt from the ground, and using the arrays on his palms, turned them into a pair of punch daggers and proceeded to lunge at Lan Fan, as his two other allies rushed at her, one with two swords and another sporting two pistols. With the bullets and arrows forcing Lan Fan into a retreat, she reached into her grenade pouch and found only one left, a flash grenade that produced an intense burst of light, temporarily blinding those closest to it. Shifting her grip on her dagger to turn aside the punch dagger`s lunge, she hurled the grenade full force at the gun-wielding assailant, and a bright flash erupted upon impact and causing assailant to claw at his eyes and scream, dropping both guns.
But Lan Fan herself was too close, and was also temporarily blinded by the grenade`s flash. Relying on her hearing, she threw four of her five remaining knives at the sound of the gunman screaming, and an abrupt end in the screaming told her that at least one had found the mark. But just as she was about to try and deal with the other two attackers before the light wore off, a piercing pain drilled through her right foot and she tripped to the ground. Another burst of pain hit her right arm and she found herself pinned to the ground, one arrow through her hand and another through her foot. Slowly, her sight returned, as did the sight of the other two assailants.
"Thanks for the assist Archer." The alchemist called to the silence figure on the rooftop before crouching down and putting his mouth uncomfortably close the Lan Fan`s ear. "That was a nice trick you pulled, and if Archer hadn't been there, you probably woulda gotten both of us. " He then drove his punch dagger into her shoulder, causing her to cry out in pain. "Too bad for you then isn't it. "
"What's the delay Feton? " the other attacker asked "Just kill her already, and we can resume our search for Alphonse, and finally finish that job. "
They were searching for Alphonse too! This was not good at all, Lan Fan thought. But here she was, pinned and defeated, and there wasn't a thing she could do. She had failed, but she wasn't going to go down without a fight. Her automail arm wasn't pinned down by an arrow, and the hidden blade that jutted out from the elbow was still sheathed. All she needed to do was to wait for Feton to get a little bit closer...
Feton sighed. "It looks like my friend wants me to finish you off quick. Its too bad... I wanted to play with you a little bit. " Now that he was close, Lan Fan could see the sadism in his eyes, the not too sane glint that came as he raised the punch dagger and poised it at her neck. "It's a shame that your quest to find your long lost friend will end in failure... "
"I wouldn't quite say that... " A voice said, and suddenly the other attacker was slammed into by several blocks of concrete and mortar, sending him flying into a nearby wall, which he hit with a sickening crack. Then, with an alchemic spark, a wall rose between the Archer and Lan Fan, protecting Lan Fan from any more arrows.
"What the... " Feton muttered as a new figure came into view, silhouetted by the last dying rays of the sun, and raised a hand in greeting.
"Alphonse Elric... " Lan Fan whispered
"Hello Lan Fan. I hear you've been looking for me? "