From her vantage point, she hears a child wailing for its mother. Her hear breaks at the sound of such a scared and lonely voice. Way up high in the bell tower of a church - a desecrated church - she hoists the butt of her rifle onto her shoulders and peers onto the scope, trying to look for the child. What she sees instead almost paralyzes her: A man, crawling towards the safe refuge of a large house. Her fingers tremble as she lays it on the trigger. The man almost makes it to safety, but instead Riza Hawkeye pulls the trigger. The man s head explodes, like a watermelon dashed into the hard, rocky ground. She pulls away from the bell tower s window and gags, unable to forget the man s head exploding like an overripe fruit.
She will never eat another watermelon in her life.
Behind her a large explosion rattles the entire city. A city plunged into the heart of Hell itself.
The Flame Alchemist stares blank-eyed at all the burned and dying bodies before him. That was when he, Roy Mustang, promised to himself that he would become Fuhrer; to put an end to all this senseless bloodshed, killing and pain. But for now, he could do nothing but follow commands. And that was to kill. He raises his hands smeared by the blood of a thousand and snaps his fingers. The conflagration before him takes yet another hundred lives.
The war rages - no, it is not a war; merely a slaughtering of the innocent and helpless who dared to oppose a country that invaded their own soil - people die by the thousands every day. They will live, these soldiers of war, but at what cost? They can never erase the horrors that they have seen and done. They can and never will forget the screams. Of pain, anger, loss, despair. Is that truly living?
Time heals all wounds they say, but what if the wounds are too deep in mind, body and spirit that even a hundred years could not heal?
Without knowing, this war has destroyed them, as it had a million others.
How much more of it can they take? They may not know it, but they are all broken inside.
Fin.