All right most of my stuff is basically Greed asking Ling about his life and Xing, so I decided to do the reverse and have Ling find out about Greed. Don't hate me if it totally sucks.
Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or any of its characters
The memories had been flashing on and off ever since Greed had killed Bido, none of them where enough to put together a decent idea of Greed's former life but one thing was for sure:
"They seem like a pretty shifty crowd to me" said Ling.
"Shut up." Answered Greed
"No, seriously, how many piercings did that one guy have?"
"How should I know?"
"Well they where your 'possessions' weren't they?"
"So, that doesn't mean I went and checked how many piercings each of them had."
"What about the lady with the tattoo on her eye"
"Oh come on, you have to admit it looks cool"
"Seriously, how did you end up with those people?"
Greed couldn't stop Ling from seeing his memories as they flashed by, just as Ling couldn't stop Greed from seeing his thoughts, but like Ling, Greed could see his own thoughts more clearly than his partner who shared his body. And since there was time to kill, Greed couldn't really see the harm in telling the kid how he found the Devils Nest.
I wandered down the streets of Central, wondering what I should do. I had just left West City after life had gotten boring there and was really wondering what the hell I was doing in Central as I had already spent seventy-nine of my two-hundred years there, when I heard a string of curses from a nearby bakery as something knocked into me, I caught a glimpse of girl with short blond hair, a tattoo around one eye and wearing what seemed to be a prison uniform before she sped away, a loaf of bread in her hand.
"Hey what are you doing?" I said as she disappeared in a blur. As expected the owner of the bakery came out and asked which direction the little rat went. Now since it's my policy never to lie I truthfully told him I didn't know where she went and even went so far as to pay him for the stolen bread.
For some reason I decided to track the chick down, somebody with that speed and possible talent shouldn't settle with stealing from some third-rate shop in the slums of central. I had spent seventy-nine years in this city and I knew the slums pretty well. After some prodding and threatening of the slum residents I heard that she had taken refuge in an abandoned warehouse, I opened the door which stood on rusty hinges and stepped in when:
"What do you want" said a hissing voice as a blade was pressed to my throat.
"Just wanted to see who you where." I said
"Sorry, but I can't afford to let anyone to find me" she said as the blade slid across my throat.
Tan skin quickly turned black as the carbon atoms in my body gathered and hardened, the blade of the knife broke from the friction it faced as carbon shield formed.
"Sorry kid, but it's going to take a lot more than that to kill me."
"How's this then!" she yelled as she pulled a gun out of her pocket and aimed for my head.
The bullet was faster than the knife and thus hit before my armor could come up, not that it made much of a difference, the brain, skeletal, and skin cells regenerated within thirty seconds, a sight that made the girl stop firing the gun for a second before she grabbed my arm, twisted it and pinned me to the ground.
"What are you, another experiment?!" she yelled.
"What are you talking about?" I yelled back my arm was starting to hurt and my annoyance was reaching a breaking point.
"I'll ask you one last time, who are you?"
"Call me Greed, toots." Pain shot up my arm as it was twisted farther back.
"First rule: don't call me toots; second, I want the truth."
"Don't worry its one of my rules never to lie."
"Good, then tell me, are you one of the experiments from the lab"
"No, I what you call a homunculus."
"And that's what exactly"
"according to my 'siblings', it means I'm supposed to serve our creator, but I got sick of that crap and split from them about a hundred years ago."
My arm twisted farther back.
"I said tell the truth,"
"Hey I know I'm still young and handsome, but I'm a little over two-hundred years old" A few more inches and my arm might snap "come on, you just shot me point-blank, so maybe I'm not normal ever think of that?
The pressure on my arm lifted as the girl asked "so what are you?"
"A homunculus, an artificial human."
"Not much different from myself then."
"And you are?"
"Martel, A chimera."
"Nice, what combo"
"Uh, most people would freak out at 'chimera"
"When you've seen as much as I have, you stop believing anything's impossible and just learn to take everything as it is and try to work it to your advantage."
"That's a pretty warped sense of ethics"
"Eh, look it at it however you want, it doesn't really matter to me, so what's with the outfit, escaped convict or something."
"Heh, even if I was, the treatment couldn't get any worse."
"So, what's your story?"
"It's pretty simple, during my last year in the military academy I was sent to the Aerugo borderline for one of their skirmishes, stepped on a landmine and was pronounced dead."
"I take it that's not all that happened."
"Yep, next thing I know I'm in a cell with half of my body replaced with a snakes, around me are the other "lucky ones", the ones who didn't die and the ones who wish to be dead."
"Sounds heavy, so there are other survivors."
"Yeah, but only I managed to escape, I guess being part snake has its advantages, but I feel like dirt just leaving them there."
"Well then let's go."
"Huh?"
"Well come on, you want to get them out right."
"Yeah but, the place it guarded twenty-four seven, it was pretty much impossible to get out and you think you can just prance in and get a half-dozen people out?"
"A half-dozen? Well that's not much, but then again that may just make things a little easier. So where is this 'impenetrable fortress'?"
She hesitated for a second before saying "lab. #2, with guards at every door window and at every cell. The only possible way out for me was a ventilation tunnel about fifteen inches in diameter."
"Sounds complicated, this may take my greater planning skills…"
"THIS IS YOUR USE OF GREATER PLANNING SKILLS" shouted Martel as sirens rang at all passing corners, running behind her where her fellow chimeras and behind them where no less than seventy guards.
"JUST SHUT UP AND KEEP RUNNING" I yelled back. In all honesty this plan went way better in my mind, we would sneak in quietly, knock out any guard we encountered and get the chimera out. In reality we ran into a couple of guards and couldn't stop them all before one of them rang the alarm. After that we kind of split up while Martel tried to hold off the remaining guards and I tried to break her friends out, not a good idea. The chimera, which I regard as potential henchmen, weren't really to trustful of the person breaking the lock on their cell, but then again I was in full carbon armor, so I guess they didn't notice my good looks, I was stuck there getting grossed out by some lizard guy until Martel finally got there and managed to stop wasting time and run like hell.
"COME ON, THIS WAY!" I yelled as we turned into an alley, somehow we made it back to the warehouse intact.
"You idiot, they're going to be searching for us now, it's only a matter of time before they find us!" one of the chimera said, the dog one I think.
"Then I guess we need to get out of Central then." I said fixing up my jacket.
" We have no-where to go, we're all officially dead on paper."
"I know a place down south, somewhere called Dublith, there's not much military activity there, and we can hang there while I figure this out." I said thinking of the deserted bar I stumbled across fifty years earlier.
"Hey Martel" one of the chimeras said "who is this guy?"
"I'm not sure but I think we can trust him,"
"Weird, but it seems like they were good people."
"Yeah it's like you said 'the soul's family'."
"So, they where more than just possessions"
"No, they where possessions, that's why they mattered,"
"What are you going to do now?"
"I'm going to kill they man who took those possessions, and make sure he never takes anything from me again."
Below them stood fuhrer Bradley as he entered the battle.
Sorry if that last bit didn't make sense,(it like right before chapter 98)
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