This chapter is specially dedicated to Super Goat Grl! Get better soon!!
SCARE TACTICS
Part Two
A half an hour later found the man they called the Doppelganger adding the finishing touches to his latest creation, another life-sized replica of his captive. He had to be honest with himself, he thought as he busily braided the dummy's hair. Of all of the people he'd ever replicated, he liked the kid the most. He had spunk. Beyond that, though, copying the kid's form was really a pursuit in art. He was…well, in a word…perfect. He was just the right size that multiple dummies could be made, and there was a grace and style to his frame that a lot of the previous people he'd recreated didn't possess.
Yes, perfect, like a perfect little doll that he could manipulate for his own uses.
There was no lust for his captive to be found in the Doppelganger. He didn't think of him that way—didn't, really, think of anyone that way. People were just like the dolls he created: lifeless, soulless, completely devoid of any sense of purpose or thoughts outside of the collective consciousness of their groups. He'd never found much use for companionship, but he could appreciate good art just like any other normal human, and there were some people in this world who were good art. Tying off the braid, he put his hands on his hips and gave a satisfied nod, eyeing the details on his newest doll appreciatively, and then he laid it off to the side for later. He then got up off the stairs and moved up them, heading back to the bathroom where he'd left the kid.
The Dublith Living Complex was an abandoned hotel project located on the edge of Dublith. The city had given up on the ten story building years ago when they'd gone temporarily bankrupt trying to cover up a political scandal. Even when they'd finally had the funds, they'd never decided whether or not to finish the complex, and so it had sat to this day. The Doppelganger couldn't remember exactly what the scandal had been about, but it didn't matter. Either way, this building was the perfect hideout for him. It had electricity and running water, plus access to a lot of the major roadways leading out of Dublith, making a clean getaway possible. There wasn't a whole lot of traffic around the area, too, making this a perfect location to hide a captive. Speaking of which, he mused, leaning in the bathroom doorway. The kid had blacked out again, head tilted to the left, his blonde hair forming a silky curtain across his cheek. The Doppelganger moved further into the room, taking a seat on the lid of the toilet off to the side to better study the kid.
There was a pretty nasty bruise on the right side of his neck where the Doppelganger had injected the sleeping drugs. That was their signature; they always reacted that way. Normally, however, the bruise wasn't quite that big, and the people didn't sleep for quite so long, but, as he had told the kid earlier, the dosage had been meant for an adult male, not a kid, and not for someone so little. The Doppelganger shrugged. Oh well. Better luck next time. At least the kid wouldn't be getting out of hand anytime soon. The man studied the mechanical arm and leg thoughtfully for a moment. Poetry in motion, he mused. The kid was perfect, and, at the same time, imperfect. There was something symbolic about that, as if this kid were physically representing the whole human race. They tried to appear perfect when, in actuality, they weren't. No one was. The only places the Doppelganger had ever found perfection in were his dolls. They didn't betray him. They didn't presume to be better than they were. They didn't try to leave him, or make him do ridiculous things just to determine if he was worth spending time on. The Doppelganger's expression hardened as he stared at the boy. He might look like a perfect little doll, but he wasn't. He never would be. He would, however, help the Doppelganger get his revenge.
His black handled switchblade was in his hand before he even registered flicking it out. It took everything within him not to plunge the blade into that defenseless heart, though he wanted to so badly, it burned. What did this kid have that he didn't? The man pulled the worn, silver pocket-watch out of his other pocket, holding it in his hand and studying it for a long, long moment. State Alchemist, huh? Famous for being the youngest to ever pass the exam? The man glared at the watch. What was it that people called this kid? "Hero of the people"? The Doppelganger snorted, looking up. Some hero. More like a weak, helpless brat. The kid didn't deserve the title of hero. He'd become a dog of the military, and they didn't care about people at all.
But, beyond that…this was her student. Her only student. He'd only gotten as far as he had because he'd learned from her. The Doppelganger loomed over the boy. If he'd solved that stupid "one is all, all is one" riddle, he might have been her only student instead of this little brat. His grip on the switchblade tightened. He'd deserved it much more than this little snot-nosed bastard did. The position as her apprentice, the position of State Alchemist, Hero of the People, all of those titles…they should have been his, not some baby-faced juvenile's in need of a haircut who probably couldn't even grow a whole beard.
It registered a second later that he was holding the blade of his knife against the kid's exposed throat, and he recoiled. He couldn't kill the kid. He still needed him. He closed his eyes and took a deep steadying breath, and then he opened his eyes and replaced the now closed switchblade back into one pocket while he put the pocket-watch in the other. He couldn't waste anymore time. His plans were in motion, and he couldn't afford to slip up now. That in mind, he moved out of the room and walked back downstairs to finish setting up for her arrival.
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"Teacher?"
Izumi looked up from her book and met Alphonse's gaze.
"Yes, Alphonse?" she asked, closing the book and setting it to the side. For a moment, Alphonse fidgeted, trying to decide on his best course of action before summoning his courage and stepping into the room.
"Teacher, you said you could guess why the Doppelganger kidnapped Ed. Could…could you tell me?"
She studied him silently for a long moment, and he inwardly writhed under her gaze.
"I'm worried about him," he said. "That's…that's why I want to know."
Izumi smiled warmly up at the boy.
"You're good to him," she said, and then she sighed, gesturing to the chair across from her and folding her hands in her lap. Alphonse lowered his metal girth as quietly as possible and sat at attention, ready to read every emotion line, every expression, and ready to interpret every inflection and tone.
"I knew the Doppelganger before he became the Doppelganger," she began. "He was a young, mousy man who was looking for an alchemy teacher. He told me that he wanted to learn from the best, and had heard that I was the one to go to."
She smirked.
"Much as I had with you and Edward, I gave him a…preliminary test to decide whether he was worth teaching or not. I left him in the middle of the Great Desert to the East for one month and told him if he couldn't figure out what 'one is all, all is one' meant, I wasn't going to teach him."
Alphonse nodded knowingly, having experienced something similar with his brother before they'd begun their apprenticeship.
"What happened?" he asked her when she didn't continue. Izumi looked down at her hands.
"When I returned in a month, he was alive, but he couldn't tell me the meaning of the riddle. I knew that I couldn't teach him, and told him so, sending him back on his way."
"How did he react to that?"
Alphonse could well guess, considering that they were talking about the man who had kidnapped his brother, but he asked anyway. Izumi shrugged.
"Much as you would expect. He was belligerent and angry, demanding a better explanation. I finally told him that I wasn't going to teach him because I refused to give such an unstable person a weapon with which to hurt others. The last I heard of him, he had found another teacher a couple of towns over."
Izumi propped her elbow on the arm of her chair and placed her chin in her hand. Her face was strained with concern.
"I'm disturbed that he's held on to his grudge this long, and I'm upset that he would choose to act on it by using Ed against me."
She stared steadily at Alphonse, expression determined.
"I promise you that I will get Edward back, Alphonse. And I will make the Doppelganger pay for doing this."
Alphonse nodded, and then looked down for a second before looking back up at her.
"Teacher…I noticed that you won't call him by his real name. Is it because you don't want me to find him?"
Izumi snorted.
"No…it's because he's not the person he once was. He's become something else more sinister and twisted…he doesn't deserve to be called by his old name."
Alphonse stared at her for a long moment, digesting that silently, and his concern for his brother's safety only grew.
"Teacher…there's something else I want to ask you. I know you will say no to it, but I'm going to ask you anyway."
She stared hard at him.
"What is it?"
"Teacher, let me go with you."
"No."
"Teacher—"
"No, Alphonse. You're staying here."
"But I don't have to."
She looked at him inquiringly.
"He didn't say that you had to go to the complex alone. He only told you to go there. So, please, let me go, too! You might need my help, Teacher, and Ed is my brother."
Izumi teetered on that for a long moment before Sig stomped into the room.
"Let him come along, Izumi. I'm going, so he may as well come, too."
"No, Sig, you're staying here, too."
"The hell I am. Izumi, you know what happens if you strain yourself. You're going to need all the help you can get."
"Yeah," Al backed up.
Izumi looked between the two for a moment, eyeing the uncompromising stances to their bodies. Finally, she sighed.
"Fine. You both can come. But," she said, pointing warningly at Alphonse, "you'd better not do anything stupid or rash, you hear? We can't afford any screw ups!"
"Yes, ma'am!" he replied happily, nodding and holding his fists up in a gesture of determined exuberance. "I won't let you down!"
"You'd better not!!"
We're coming, Ed, she thought to herself. Just hang on a little bit longer.
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When Edward woke up again, he felt much more awake and alert than he had before. He looked around again, really taking in the details. The chains binding him to the tub had been attached to the handrails with alchemy, making them impossible to break off, though he couldn't resist trying. He pulled hard with his left hand, straining as far as he could go, testing the strength of the metal. The chain held. He tried the same thing with his right hand, and actually pulled a little harder, his automail usually strong enough to do the job. That chain held, too. He studied the links on the chain binding his right hand, hoping that maybe if he pulled long enough and hard enough, he could bend one of the links open and slide some of the chain free. Apparently his captor had had enough foresight to transmute seamless links, because there were no weaknesses to be found and exploit. Edward sighed. Well, damn, he was really caught this time, wasn't he? Though the tone of his thoughts was casual and lighthearted, there was an uncomfortable feeling squirming around in his gut that wouldn't go away not matter how much he tried to ignore it. The fact that he was securely bound up in a place he didn't recognize with a man he didn't know who was clearly unstable wasn't something he could easily swallow. He'd been robbed of his number one weapon, his alchemy, and no matter how far out he held his hands, there was still about two feet of space between them, making transmuting something impossible. There wasn't even something sharp nearby that he could use to scratch out a circle and bust free.
Yup, he thought leaning back and wincing, he wasn't going to get out of this one anytime soon. Of course, he didn't really understand the man's motives for kidnapping him in the first place; he said he was using Edward to get back at Izumi, but…why? What had she done to drive him to this point? And why take the petty route by attacking Edward first, rather than just heading straight for Izumi herself? If there was one thing Edward didn't understand, it was the way that criminals thought. He dabbled on the darker sides of the law sometimes himself, but he would never ever understand why people like his captor had to make a big production out of things. Moving past the bigger picture, Edward started wondering about the motivation for removing his clothes. Why chain him up in a bathtub in only his boxers? If the man's reason for kidnapping him hadn't made any sense, than this choice was really obscure. Where were his clothes? His semi-naked state really bugged Edward more than he cared to admit. It made him feel too vulnerable and too open to danger, and he didn't like that feeling at all. It also made him realize that all the time he'd been unconscious he'd been at the man's complete mercy and that really unsettled him. If there was one thing that Edward hated, it was feeling helpless, and at that moment, lying in the bathtub with no feasible escape routes opening up to him, he was feeling extremely defenseless. That thought in mind, he resumed his efforts to get out of his chains, twisting them around and pulling, hoping to expose some weakness somewhere, but the longer he kept at it, the more invincible his bindings seemed.
Suddenly, his captor returned, one hand holding a glass full of some sort of dark amber liquid, the other hand tucked away into a pocket. He sipped on his drink for a moment as he stood thoughtfully in the doorway.
"Well, well, look who's up," he said jovially, coming forward and plunking himself down on the toilet beside Edward.
"How're we doin'?" he asked, tone conversational, but Edward eyed him warily, not trusting him for an instant.
"Fine," he muttered a moment later, making no more moves to attempt to break free of his bindings. He knew from prior experience that the slightest of triggers could set the man off, and he had no desire to find out what anymore of those triggers might be. Again, he found the entire situation to be unsettling.
"That's good."
The man sipped a little more of his drink and nodded.
"It's almost showtime," he said leadingly.
"Uh-huh."
"Yup. But, don't worry; your part's not that big. You don't even have any lines!"
The man guffawed at his own humor, slapping his leg and laughing outright for a few moments. Yet, there was no mirth in his empty, indigo eyes, and Edward inwardly shivered.
"Um, if you don't mind me asking," he began tentatively.
"Of course not! Ask away!"
Edward leaned a little more towards his left away from the man, trying to get out of his range.
"Why exactly am I here again?"
He found his own nervousness to be strangely out of character for him, but he deigned to err on the side of caution for now.
"Didn't I tell you already? It's to help me get back at that woman you call 'Teacher'."
"I see," he answered, trying to keep the man talking. "What is it that you want to get back at her for?"
The man's expression darkened dangerously with a suddenness that was truly frightening.
"She forced me to perform a ridiculous action so that she could measure my worth."
The man snorted.
"As if a person's worth were quantifiable."
Edward noted with growing alarm that the man's speech patterns changed dramatically when he was in his more dangerous mood. They were more formal, more controlled. The fifteen year old shifted slightly more to his left, trying to make himself as small as possible and not draw any unnecessary attention. It didn't work, because the man's eyes snapped over to stare directly at him.
"You understand. You know. I'm sure she did the same to you when you signed up to be her student."
Edward didn't say anything, just stared at the man with an expression akin to that of a scared rabbit's. The man rose to his feet to tower over the youth.
"Except that she turned me away. She told me that I didn't have what it takes to be her apprentice, and even went so far as to presume to tell me that I was too 'unstable' to learn alchemy."
The man leaned down towards Edward so fast, that the boy ducked his head to the one side and squeezed his eyes shut. When he realized that the man wasn't aiming to hit him, he opened his eyes and raised them to meet the other's.
"Well, I'll show her, won't I?" he continued, grabbing at the chain binding Edward's right wrist and shaking it.
"You could try for days and never break these," he said, and Edward silently agreed with that assessment.
"She'll learn what a mistake she made. And you are going to help me make the lesson more…poignant."
Edward felt his knees beginning to tremble.
"Are you going to kill me?" he couldn't help but ask. The man stared at him coldly.
"If I have to."
Edward shook his head in denial.
"This…this is crazy! Nothing good is going to come of this! You're not going to prove anything, other than the fact that her decision was well-founded!"
Edward realized a second too late that he should have kept that opinion to himself when he saw something dangerous flash through the man's eyes, and before he could react, the man backhanded him as hard as he could, causing Edward's head to snap to the side painfully. The man grabbed his chin in a bruising grip and forced his golden eyes to meet his. Edward stared at the man in quiet terror, his heart thumping wildly against his ribs.
"If I were you, I would keep any and all opinions to myself," he growled, voice rumbling threateningly like a brewing thunderstorm. For a long, long moment, he continued to hold Edward's gaze, letting the boy reading the promise of pain in his eyes before roughly shoving him down and standing up. He grabbed his glass and started out, stopping long enough to turn around and throw the glass with such tremendous force that it shattered into several pieces against the side of the bathtub. Edward flinched as glass flew up over the rim and into the tub with him, and then watched wordlessly as the man stormed out of the room.
For a moment, Edward didn't move, breath bated and heart pounding, but when the man didn't immediately return, he slowly relaxed, trying to dismiss the trembling in his knees. He stared at the glass resting on the right side rim of the tub for a moment, and then, as quietly and subtly as possible, he reached up and grabbed a fairly decent-sized piece. It had a long, sharp edge on it perfect for etching. He glanced at the door for a split second before turning the shard over in his hand and placing the tip against the leather of the clasp around his wrist. It was an awkward angle to draw at, but he still managed somehow, and managed, too, to lightly touch the tiny transmutation circle with one finger. The leather clasp split apart and he pulled his arm free. He then turned the shard back over and drew the same circle on the other clasp, touching it and pulling his left hand free. He set down the glass shard and rubbed his left wrist, trying to get some of the feeling back that he'd lost, and then he started to move, knowing that he couldn't waste time around here anymore. Quickly and silently, he lifted himself out of the tub and stretched his right leg as far out over the rim as he could go, avoiding the shattered glass on the floor and following swiftly with his left foot. He then moved as slowly and as silently as possible to the door, leaning against the wall and peering out into the hallway beyond.
When he didn't see anyone, he moved out, head moving in all directions, half walking, half running down the hallway towards the stairwell. When he opened the door and moved into stairwell, he almost tripped and fell over a life-sized mannequin laying there. For a moment, he froze, taking in the eerily familiar hairstyle and clothing, and he realized that he was staring face to face with a replica of himself. Of course, he was only figuratively staring it in the face, because the dummy didn't actually have a face, only a message.
You're getting warmer.
Edward reeled back in horror as he realized that this particular dummy was part of an Edward-shaped dummy trail laid out for Izumi.
"I've got to get out of here," he muttered, staring at the mannequin in disbelief as he moved past down the stairs. He didn't get very far when he saw a shadow moving out of the corner of his eye, and before he could turn to meet any oncoming attack, a hand clamped around his throat and slammed him full-force against the wall. Edward's eyes stared in horror at the switchblade held level with his face.
"You just couldn't behave, could you, kiddo?"
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Ed: Man! You think you're out, and then they pull ya back in!
Well, yeah…if you didn't get caught again, it would ruin the plot…
Ed: Plot? There's a plot to this story?
(glares at him) Hilarious.
Ed: I do have one thing to complain about.
When do you not have something to complain about?
Ed: (sidelong glare) Ha ha…but seriously, I think you're taking too many cheap shots at my dignity.
Dignity? What is this 'dignity' you speak of?
Ed: I'm serious!
…you would think after waking up in a bathtub in your undies you would realize that you haven't had any dignity since the start of this story…
Ed: …well that's a thought that's gonna fester…
Uh huh…
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