Light, cold yet singed stone, the noises of a city, cars in the distance. I stood up, looking around to see where we'd landed, where Envy was. Our temporary alliance wasn't going to hold up now that we were free from Gluttony's stomach.
"Ling, you there?" I asked as the glare of the sun blinded me while I was adapting to the light.
No answer, not even a pained groan.
Metal hand above my eyes to shield me from the sun, I looked around to see neither Ling nor Envy's massive form. Instead, there was just a city, and the sound of gulls screaming in the distance, marked by a great amount of cars. Gulls, that meant the ocean, which meant…
Wherever I was, it wasn't in Amestris, which was land-locked. Aerugo perhaps? That would be problematic, given my status as a State Alchemist. Weren't we at war with Aruego? Or was there an armistice I'd forgotten about?
I took a closer look at the city, trying to place it. Around me were brick buildings, several floors tall, with large windows that only sometimes held glass, and were more often than not boarded up. Cracks went through the brickwork, and large metal containers filled with trash were scattered around.
In a circle around me, the ground was scorched, presumably from my arrival, though a nearby dumpster was connected to the scorchmarks, and smoke was still coming from its mangled wreck. I'd been lucky I hadn't landed there. On the sides of the street, there were tall metal lighting poles, electrical rather than based on oil or torches. The street, or rather the alleyway, I'd landed in was largely empty, though in the distance I could see…
No, those couldn't be automobiles, right? They were moving far too fast, and they didn't look like anything like the models I recognized. Too sleek, with far too little noise for their velocity.
"Ling! Can you hear me!" I yelled out to no avail, walking through the area. In the distance, a handful of shabbily dressed people scurried away into one of the abandoned buildings.
There was paint on some of the walls, I noticed. Quickly drawn and of varying quality, it looked Xing-ese in nature, though the architecture didn't fit with their style. Further off, I could see what looked like smoke, and intermittent noises.
Reminded by the people in the distance, I looked at my own clothes. A makeshift splint for my arm, a torn up shirt still half-wet from the blood-like fluids of the world inside Gluttony's stomach, and a set of trousers that was much the same.
If I was going to figure out where the hell I'd landed, how to get back home, and how to bring my brother's body back, I'd have to figure out a way to blend in, and find a place to stay for now. ***
I clapped my hands together, my arms forming a circle as my mind provided the necessary detail for the alchemical circle, then placed them on the wall. At once, the stone restructured itself, half-crumbled bricks suddenly providing a smooth and solid surface. Another transmutation, and a pile of wood transformed into a simple but stable ladder, that allowed me to reach the entirety of the wall. Useful, because I couldn't quite reach all the way up the side of the large warehouse, due to its height. Then, I took out the cans of paint that a few teenagers had dropped upon spotting my metal limbs, and wrote down what I knew of this place. The first and most important point, I painted at the top, in large wall-filling letters.
'I am far away from Amestris.'
That much was clear from my Alchemy. In order to gather the energy required for a transmutation, Alchemy tapped the tectonic plates beneath the Alchemist, and the energy patterns I could sense here were completely different from those found in the different regions of Amestris. All in all, Truth really had it out for me, though it was still to be seen if this city was the fire to Gluttony's frying pan.
Below that, I wrote information of lesser importance, in an effort to neatly condense my discoveries so far.
'The locals speak Amestrian, though the accent is strange, and the writing is different.' 'There are different racial groups living in the city, some conflict between them exists.'
'The city, Brockton Bay, has a population of at least a hundred-thousand.'
'The city is part of a larger nation called by different names, some of them acronyms.'
'There is a large amount of poverty in the city.'
'There is a strong military presence in the city.'
'The technology is, on average, more advanced than that of Amestris.'
And then, last but most definitely not least, I added the final sentence.
'Someone, or something, is setting off strange explosions throughout the city.'
I stepped back, looking at what I had. Not much, but a good beginning for half a day's work. It would help if I could find a library, or the local equivalent, but without understanding anything about the culture, it was difficult to know what would draw undue attention to me, and I didn't want to get into a fight with half the city by accident.
I did stuff like that on purpose often enough.
Exhausted, I walked back to the middle of the old warehouse. I'd cleaned it up as much as I could with a few quick transmutations, but the electricity wasn't working anymore, so I'd have to make do with daylight, which meant I didn't have to feel bad for wasting time sleeping.
I checked the couch again. I'd repaired most of it, but it wasn't exactly a good bed. Well, I'd slept on worse, and it would be important to catch a good night's sleep.
The barking kept getting worse. More of it, louder, deeper, and more desperate. People screaming in fear, rather than the enthusiasm I'd heard before. Something was going on, and while my makeshift bed was very attractive, I couldn't just lie back and sleep when people were getting hurt.
Standing up, I looked back at the red couch, and almost immediately reached a decision. One quick transmutation later, I slipped my arms into the sleeves of my brand new cloak, walked up to an empty wall, created a door, and left the darkness of the building for the dimly lit streets.
I could hear the mayhem properly now, just three buildings over and across the street. A great amount of cars were parked in the street, and screaming people were fleeing out of the building, several of them nursing wounded limbs as they did so.
I waited, observing as the torrent of people came to an end, then snuck forward, keeping myself close to the wall and out of the light as I did so.
Edging closer to the building, the telltale stench of a mixture of blood and sweat reached my nose. Curious, a quick look through the window told me all I needed to know.
Dog-fighting. The sick and twisted practice of making animals fight each other for human entertainment.
The building was centered around a makeshift arena, made out of crates and wooden boards. Cages were scattered around the border of the arena, some filled with terrified dogs, others empty, the inhabitants now lying still on the floor of the building.
In the middle of the arena, a young woman was sitting next to a monstrous Chimera, the beast's tail curled around the girl like a dog trying to protect it's puppy.
How had the beast been made? Most larger Chimeras turned out incredibly violent, but someone had made this one to protect the girl like it was a pet. And what were the component parts? I was pretty sure there was some dog in there, purely from behavior, but what about the spikes? The exposed muscles? Were these simply local animals I was unfamiliar with?
I walked in through the door, careful not to make too much noise as I approached, but the girl and her Chimera looked up in my direction immediately.
"I told you, NO MORE! Get the fuck out you Nazi Midget!" the girl screamed, standing up, the beast growling, placing itself between him and it's mistress.
"Who the hell did you just call an insignificantly small speck of dust you dog-fighting wretch!" I yelled back, rolling up the sleeves of my shirt as I got ready for a fight.
That pissed her off. The girl stood back as she gave a quick sharp whistle to her dog, then spoke while pointing. "Brutus! Attack!"
The Chimera pounced, It's massive bulk launching itself towards me deceptively fast, but not fast enough. Bringing my hands together, then placing them on the ground, I restructured the architecture of the room, placing a large stone wall between me and the beast.
Except, instead of crashing into it like I'd expected, the chimera's reflexes allowed it to quickly turn, the claws audibly tearing into the concrete of the building's floor as it changed direction.
Taking advantage of the few moments the distraction had still given me, I transmuted a blade onto my right hand, ready to defend myself as the beast came pouncing around the corner.
"Let's dance," I taunted, shifting into a low stance as it came at me, it's eyes wary for another stone wall raising from the ground. This time however, I didn't create a barrier, instead punching forwards with my fist, straight into the maw of the beast.
It was obviously surprised to find someone actually attacking it head on, the sharpened end of my arm scratching at the inside of its jaw, while the metal plating of the AutoMail would protect me from it's tee -crack!-
I kicked off against the ground, ripping my arm out of the beast's maw as it started chewing on the metal plating. "The hell kind of hellbeast are ya! How the hell did you just bite through all that metal!"
The Chimera, noticing my retreat, chewed on the remains of my AutoMail's armor for a bit, then spat them out, slowly walking towards me.
"Atta girl," I spoke, flexing the fingers of my arm, making sure everything was still functional. The armor, I could replace myself. The internal mechanisms however… Winry would be pissed, if I ever managed to find my way back.
My fingers still moved independently though, so no need to worry about that while a massive Chimera the size of a car was coming at me.
I glanced to the side, the makeshift barrier I'd made there still in place. The beast was strong, but not strong enough to break through it without effort, or it would've gone through instead of around.
A quick duck to the ground, and the concrete rose in a large circle around the monster dog, enclosing it in a large earth dome.
The Chimera however, jumped over the rim of its impending prison, crashing into the roof to do so as I lept back to dodge the creature's body on it's way down.
This wasn't working. It was too agile, bulky and intelligent to properly trap. What else? Could I try-
A foot caught me in the side and I folded over, throwing myself to the ground in a roll in order to escape and recover. I brought my hands together in a quick gesture, then placed a palm on the ground as my roll came to a halt, quickly building up a field of concrete spikes around me, buying time to recover.
"Heh, see you've joined the fight yourself, I can respect that," I told her, standing up as I wiped the dust from my duster.
"Don't recognize you," she mumbled.
"The name's Edward," I replied, taking care not to give her anything more identifiable, while people wouldn't immediately recognize my first name, the 'Fullmetal Alchemist' of Amestria was far more identifiable.
She made a face, an expression I couldn't quite identify? Surprise? Something else?
We were separated by a field of spiky concrete, and the Chimera had decided to stop attacking, so I took the time to take a look around. The floor of the arena had been torn up by our fight, and the ceiling had some noticeable damage where the Chimera had thrown itself against it to escape my trap, but it looked like the building's structural integrity was still holding up.
"Rachel," she eventually replied.
"I gotta say, I didn't expect someone with the balls to actually fight herself to enjoy dogfighting."
The girl got visibly angry again, showing teeth as the dog growled, unable to come to terms with the vileness of her own behavior, making animals fight against each other for her own amusement, except…
"Drat… you were breaking up this place, weren't you?" I stated more than I asked.
She nodded.
"Ahhh. I see, sorry, my fault," I replied, completely embarrassed as I rubbed the back of my head.. I should've known that the girl with the giant dog-Chimera wouldn't be using it to fight against other dogs.
"So you're not a Nazi?" the girl asked, a hand-signal getting the dog to back off.
"Nazi?" I asked, hoping not to give myself away.
"Guys that did this," she replied, terse and to the point.
Right, so Nazis were a type of dogfighter? It wasn't a term I recognized, so something local then? As I thought about it, the Chimera's ears started perking up, and it's head looked around.
"More of these guys?" I asked, still happy about the large spikes separating the two of us.
"Protectorate, c'mon Brutus," she replied, as I started hearing a whining noise in the distance, rapidly coming closer. The girl turned away from me, grabbed the beast by a bone-ridge on its neck, and swung herself on top of it, quickly getting it to tear open the remaining cages of dogs on her way out.
"Something is wrong with that girl," I told myself as I followed her out of the building.
Protectorate sounded military, not the type of people I'd want to get involved with right now. I made my way back to my base, just a few buildings over, and used my ladder to climb up to the ceiling, creating a small peeping hole I could use to observe with my alchemy.
Two people arrived. One, a tall man in heavy armor that looked like a more advanced version of AutoMail covering his body, colored in blue and white. He carried a large Halberd, similarly styled to his armor. Besides him was a woman that reminded me of Lieutenant Hawkeye. Her hair was dark, and her face covered with a multicolored scarf, but she was wearing a uniform that was most definitely military in its styling, and she was carrying a rifle that, as I watched, she somehow transmuted into two separate pistols.
State Alchemists, or their local equivalent. Leaving had been the right thing to do, I couldn't afford to duke it out with two State Alchemists in my current state, especially not since these seemed to be the combat-capable types, rather than stuffy men in lab coats. However, their coming here and chasing off the girl with the Chimera, as well as their reaction to seeing the dogs inside of the building, told me that they weren't on either side of that conflict.
More data for the wall, though what I really needed was a map, or maybe some of the local money.