The fight with the raptors was surprisingly short. Zhang nearly got an ear bitten off. And Kojak just about lost a finger. Georgia lost most of her hair, and the Rockbell kids came close to becoming an only child in their own respect several times. However, none of those could beat what happened to Ed.
"Um, Ed, don't move." Zhang held a hand out in front of him, slowly backing away. Edward stood stock still, hearing the sound of heavy breathing behind him. He and the Xingese ambassador had escaped from the main flock by hiding in an alleyway, but it seemed that one of the raptors had sniffed them out. Edward didn't turn around, but it was hard not to. The thing was literally breathing down his neck by now, the condensation trickling down his back in a thick, viscous goo that mingled with his own sweat. Even in the shadow of the alley, it was hot as high noon.
Zhang was glad that Ed couldn't see what was behind him. If he had, he probably would've bolted then and there. The dark-haired man sucked in a big breath, trying to keep from gagging. The creature, which was nearly seven feet tall on all fours, was scaly and smelled like rotted meat. In fact, rotted meat didn't cover it. A more accurate description is 'rotted meat that's been left to sit for a few days inside of a cesspool and then left to dry in the hot sun.' It was, indeed, that disgusting.
The creature itself had wings like a bat. It crawled around on them like an extra pair of arms. It was mottled black and brown, while its underside was a strange shade of gray-blue. The face of the creature was flat with long teeth that were sharp, but not pointed. They fit together like a horse's teeth, and its eyes were beady and clouded. It's nose consisted of two holes in its face, and it was bald as a baby. The head was nearly humanoid in its construction, but all similarity to humans ended there.
The raptor sniffed Edward several more times. It made a clicking noise in the back of its throat as it inspected this new specimen. In its slow, hunger-craven mind, it thought about how strange this thing was. It looked like the things it ate off the desert floor, the thing with two legs and high -pitched voices. However, like its young, it had a pair of wings on its back.
Now, raptors have the worst sight imaginable. They regularly smash into buildings because they had no idea it was there in the first place. They have a habit of mistaking things for something completely different. There was one amusing story that Nirvana recounted only in bar rooms about how one raptor had protected a flight orientation ball for several days because it thought it was an egg. She should recount, however, that raptors don't even lay eggs, so why it was guarding the thing was beyond her comprehension.
Edward made a small sound in the back of his throat as he was nudged forward by the raptor. Zhang had already taken refuge behind a large, metal container roughly shaped like a box (which he'd soon realize was a dumpster), and was giving Ed a, hopefully reassuring, thumbs up. Ed's eye twitched, and it seemed like an eternity had passed. There was another set of tension filled minutes before-
SLURP.
Ed nearly screamed as he was licked from head to toe. Saliva dripped off of his fingers and down his back. The smell was bad enough that bile rose in his throat, but it took everything he had not to throw up. The raptor made a strange cooing noise, and it rubbed its head against Ed's side affectionately. Edward gulped as it licked him again, and he hissed, "Zhang, what is it doing?" The raptor paid no attention as it continued mothering the short, blonde alchemist.
Zhang almost burst out into hysterical laughter. He covered his mouth and nose with his shirt, snickering. He finally got the guts to say, "I think… I think it thinks that you're her baby!" Ed's eye twitched a few more times before he shouted, "WHAT?" This time, the raptor circled Ed and licked him straight up the front. His face was slathered in saliva and bits of the raptor's earlier snack. Edward didn't breathe for fear he'd choke on the spit. He wiped off his face and tried to think of what to do next.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of a gun being cocked. Even after 200 some years, the sound of a gun hadn't changed all that much. Edward's head whipped down the alleyway to see Georgia standing with a large, strange looking rifle in her hands. She was aiming it dead center at the creature behind him. She muttered, "Don't. Move. A muscle." Ed felt all his muscles tightened as he tried not to get in the way of her shot. Zhang was scrambling towards her while the raptor was still being distracted by her 'baby.'
However, before Georgia could squeeze off a shot, the raptor seemed to sense their presence. Her head snapped towards them, and she let out a loud screech. Edward winced at the sound, covering his ears as he heard several windows shatter. Large shards rained down, but he was protected by the bulk of the raptor. Georgia and Zhang, however, didn't get so lucky.
This was how Georgia lost most of her hair. The entire six months it took her to grow it back, she blamed Ed.
Zhang was a bit luckier in the beauty department, scoring only a small scratch which turned into a scar. Even now, he continues to tell girls that he battled a murder of raptors single handedly, and that was his reward for all his hard efforts. Needless to say, not many people believed him. Especially the girls' boyfriends.
Ed found himself up in the air, high above the streets. His wings were being held by the raptor, who was flying away as fast as her own wings would take her. Edward squirmed and wiggled as much as he could, but the wings refused to come free out of the raptor's grasp. Briefly, he saw Kojak and Nirvana running from three more of the ugly creatures, as well as the Rockbell twins defending themselves with a long length of airtech wire. They passed by all too quickly and never spared a glance to the alchemist in the raptor's claws.
Edward looked ahead, and he saw a building. The raptor was coming perilously close to the lip of the top, and Ed suddenly got an idea. If he timed it right, he'd probably break a finger and maybe a leg. If he got it wrong, he'd end up a little grease stain on the ground. He sincerely hoped that he got it right, because if he got it wrong he wasn't sure he'd black out before hitting the pavement.
He undid the straps holding the wings to his body, and he flew out of the raptor's grasp. He flew high up over the lip of the building…and realized too late that he hadn't thought about what would happen if he did it too early.
He blacked out.
"Edward!"
"Ed!"
"Hey, Shortstuff, where are you?"
"Edward!"
Several of the kidnap party wandered around, shouting out Edward's name. Zhang wrung his hands, and Guun clapped him on the back solidly. Georgia sighed and said, "He can't have gone far." She ran her hand through her now-mangled and blood spattered hair, and she looked around while shading her eyes from the sun. Kojak frowned as he stared at the sky.
"The little dude had wings on him, didn't he? Maybe he flew off," he guessed.
"In that case, you'll need another flyer to look for him," Alice suggested, holding up the pair of wings she'd been in charge of after confiscating them from Nirvana. Said alphysicist was walking around as well, though she didn't shout or yell for their missing comrade. Kojak and Georgia looked at each other, and they wordlessly agreed. They had to find Edward before sun down, dead or alive. Once the sun set, the air would become cold and night creatures would emerge. Edward's body would be gone if he was dead, and he'd freeze to death if he wasn't. The sun wasn't anywhere near that point yet, but it could take them days to go through the entire city. The ruins were a scary place at night, besides. No one wanted to be out and about around then.
The only person who knew the Ruined City better than anyone under the ground was currently a dangerous fugitive that they'd just managed to catch. As against letting her go as she was, Georgia knew that Nirvana would keep Edward alive out of a sense of honor if not just to bug the poor guy. Kojak turned to Nirvana, who was smirking. She held out her shackled hands, and Kojak gave her a trying look. Nirvana just answered back with a silent, smug expression.
Kojak sighed and said, "I expect you to be back by eight. If not, then I'm going to look for you." As he said this, he unlocked the malleable metal off of her hands, and they fell like a leaden, liquid weight off her hands. She rubbed them before looking up at Kojak and smirked.
"How, exactly, are you going to find me? Satellites are about to go offline in about ten minutes. I'm not an idiot. They don't have night vision up there, you know, and dark falls pretty fast around six," she said, backing away from Kojak. He only gave her a mysterious little smile, and suddenly he whipped out a small, derringer gun. Nirvana's eyes widened as he shot her point blank in the chest. The bullet was actually not a bullet, of course. It had been a sticky, adhesive with small tracker polymers that could be traced wirelessly from any Commie with the needed program. Even so, the force from the poly-patch coming out of a gun at 320 feet per second is still pretty hard.
Nirvana, who'd been knocked flat to the ground, leapt up in a feat that only an enraged teenaged girl could perform , and shouted angrily, "What the hell was that?" Kojak blew on the barrel of his gun, an old signature move from the early 1900s that he'd seen in vids. He smiled at Nirvana, looking at her from out of the corner of his eye. He put the gun back into his holster, never letting his gaze wander from Nirvana.
The others just watched as he said, "Nothing. Go do your thing, babe. Remember, eight o' clock, young lady." She grumbled something as she left, which earned her a swift zap to the butt with an electric slug. She yelped as she held on to her nether regions, looking at the small, starburst shaped soot mark. She lifted her middle finger at Kojak, but he merely guffawed as she limped towards Willow and snappily took her wings.
Zhang muttered to Richie, "Remind me never to make your big black friend mad. He draws a gun faster than I can eat a bowl of noodles." Guun leaned over Richie's shoulder to add, "And Zhang eats noodles like his life depends on it." He straightened back up behind Richie, and the younger boy gulped. Quite frankly, the larger man scared him just a little. He was too quiet for a guy his size. Zhang looked out of the corner of his eye to Guun and winked with a wicked smile. He loved it when he played the old 'soft foot' trick on foreigners.
Nirvana strapped the newer pair of wings onto her back with easy adjustments, and she looked at Willow as she stared at the workings of the wings. Nirvana shucked the wings on to her shoulders a bit higher, and she asked harshly, "What?" Willow looked up as if jolted out of a reverie, and she immediately pointed to the wings.
"Once you come back, can I take a look?" Alice seemed to magically materialize, causing Nirvana to jump a good couple inches as she gushed, "Me too, me too! I wanna try them out!" She was suddenly dragged backwards by a rather annoyed Imal.
"Over my dead body," he muttered calmly, Alice hanging from his fist. She crossed her arms huffily and retorted, "That can easily be arranged." Georgia, who'd been a few feet away, rolled her eyes and ordered, "Just go already. We don't have all day." Nirvana snapped a quick salute, a cocky look on her face. Georgia gave a smirk of her own, thinking that it was about time she got a bit of respect, but right before Nirvana took off in a flurry of polycarbon plastic sheet and metal, she gave her the finger with a good sticking out of the tongue to boot. Georgia's smirk fell as she angrily yelled, "HEY, BOLTBRAIN-"
Already, it was too late. Nirvana was high in the sky, her boots and the circles etched into the rubber fading as she glided off into the sky over the ruined skeletons of skyscrapers.
The desolate rooftop was buffeted by the wind, a low moaning reverberating through the entire city as the winds passed through the shells of giants. High above the ground, the rooftop was covered in rubble, and underneath lie concrete. It was understandable that Ed had blacked out the minute he'd dropped nearly fifteen feet on top of it. Said alchemist was currently taking a snooze on the roof, the day's sun already turning his skin a cooked-looking red. He twitched an eyelid, the moaning of the buildings soon being joined by one of his own. He was covered in rubble, dried saliva, and the remnants of things he'd rather not think about.
Ed sat up slowly, wincing as he felt pain lance through his back and legs. He grimaced as he rubbed his head. It seemed that goose eggs were becoming more and more common these days, because a massive one was making its way out of the side of his head. He'd bumped into the ground a bit harder than he'd wanted to. He patted himself down, finding that there were no broken bones, amazingly. He always had had a hard head, and now it was coming in handy. He flexed his automail leg and arm, surprised to find that they'd suffered nothing more than a few dents and some infiltration courtesy of the sand. He shook his hand out as if trying to get something off of it, and sand spilled out from the crevices. He winced as he muttered to himself, "Winry's gonna kill-" He stopped dead in his tracks as memories of the past few days cycled through his mind. In a sort of daze, he walked over to the edge of the building. The ruined city spanned miles upon miles. He could hardly see the end of it in any direction.
Winry was gone. The realization crept up on him. He'd been in a bit of a shock these past days, wandering around in a bit of a haze of immaturity and irritation, trying to run away from the shocking gravity of his situation. He'd never felt so helpless, staring out over what must've been, at one time, a city full of life. It was a dead fossil, now, nothing more than steel struts too stubborn to bend to the force of nature's will. He swallowed as he realized he was never going to see Al smile again, or to have another wrench thrown at his head by an angry Winry. Roy was never going to call him a shrimp, and he'd never tell Jean how he was going to die from those cancer sticks he always had in his mouth.
On that rooftop, he was suddenly wrapped in his thoughts of everyone he knew. How could it be that all those people, the very fabric of his life, were gone? It had boggled him to the point where he'd ignored the fact and kept himself in the denial that one day he'd wake up, and this would all be a bad dream. The pain in his back and legs were definitely real, however, and so was his stink. He sniffed experimentally at his arm, and he turned his face away with a disgusted grimace. He nearly gagged, and he knew that his hair was never going to be the same.
There was the sound of wings flapping, and Ed snapped out of his thoughts of all he'd lost to clap his hands and use the one thing still tying himself to the life he'd had. He transformed his automail into a blade, and looked around for the raptor that, no doubt, still thought he was her baby.
"Like hell, I'm your baby," he muttered as he watched the sky for a ghastly looking reptile falling from the sky. Instead, he caught sight of a pair of sand colored wings with black markings over them flash past overhead so fast he hadn't had time to figure out what it was. He looked around for it, but it had already flown between the buildings again. He frowned, his automail at the ready, when he heard something touch down on the roof. He picked up a piece of pipe he'd seen on the ground and changed it into a gaudy looking spear, chucking it at the noise.
Nirvana deftly bypassed it, though she earned a new rip in her wings in reward for her efforts. She drooped comically as she stared at the rip in her wings, and she moaned, "Awww, look what you did. You know how hard it is put this stuff back together? God, you people, always throwing stuff at me." She took out a Sharpie pen and drew a circle around it before there was a flash of light, and the hole was fixed. Ed blinked at the casual use of alchemy. She was the most accomplished he'd seen so far, though about three other alchemists underground were getting close to her level very quickly.
"All right, come here. I'm supposed to take you back to the PMS queen's guard dog before she decides to pop a vein and go homicidal," Nirvana said in a bored tone, leaning against a pole sticking out of the roof. Ed looked down, and he realized that even if he'd managed to stay up here, how was he supposed to get back to the ground? He was pretty sure he could've parachuted, if you'd given him enough materials, but Nirvana's plan didn't sound so bad.
"I'm guessing you're talking about Georgia," Ed said as he picked through the rubble of the rooftop. He was careful not to step on anything sharp, as his boots were already shredded to the point where he doubted even alchemy could fix them. Nirvana scoffed and said, "No dip." He gave Nirvana a strange look, obviously confused. Nirvana slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand and muttered, "Ah, right, slang's evolved… I was being sarcastic, Mr. 20th Century. Just… just get over here." Ed looked pretty irritated as he sighed. He had lost his flak jacket, and was only wearing his tank top and sand-colored pants. He felt oddly exposed out here on the roof. It seemed this was the highest one around in a twenty mile radius.
"Can you take us both down? I can get down myself," Edward told her, but she shook her head.
"Flying's safer. There are chimeras at ground level. Why do you think I tested this out on a rooftop instead of the ground?" She motioned for him to come over as she took the marker again. Ed sniffed the air, noticing a funny smell. He stared at the marker, and Nirvana caught his glance. She held it up to him and said, "Okay, Lesson One- never forget your Sharpie. It writes on virtually anything." She also took a whiff and said, "Lesson Two- don't sniff Sharpies. That's just asking to turn your brain into cottage cheese. Powerful stuff. Its crack for kids without the dough." She turned her back on Ed as she started to mark stuff out on the wings. He looked over her shoulder to see what she was doing, and Nirvana's nostrils flared as she caught his stench.
She made a disgusted sound, covering her nose with her shirt. She backed away from him, and Ed sweat dropped. She waved a hand in front of her face and gasped, "Bleeding hell, you stink. What did you do, take a bath in a cesspool? Simple truth, that's awful. Awww, how am I supposed to fly you? You're taking a shower first. I am not going to hang on to you for the next hour." Ed rolled his eyes and seethed, "It's not that bad!"
Nirvana scoffed in disbelief. "You could kill my granny with your stink. Hell, if you walk around down there, you might not have to worry about the chimeras. They'll run off with their tails between their legs once they get a whiff of you." Ed tried hard not to transmute her head into a watermelon. Albeit it was hard, he managed. It couldn't be that bad… could it?
By the time they'd gotten back to the rest of the camp, the sun had gone down and the entire entourage was groaning as Ed's aroma wafted towards them on the desert breeze. Most of them had their hands over their noses, and even Kojak was trying to breath through his mouth instead of his nose.
"I didn't know raptor spit could smell so bad," Zhang laughed as he put a scarf over his mouth and nose. The Rockbell twins were wearing surgical masks over their face as Ed spazzed in a hissy fit over the fact that everyone kept commenting on his odor. Both of them snickered and Willow asked, "Raptor spit? How'd that happen?" Zhang smiled, a gleam in his eye as he said, "Well, you see-"
His would-be tall tale was cut short as a boot hit him square in the face. He went down like a sack of sand, and Guun merely watched and sighed. He would've thought the Yao would be better at blocking such an obvious projectile, but once he got a story going, he wouldn't notice anything else. He'd once told an entire folk tale about how he'd defeated a giant fatmouth trout upstream in the mountains while Guun took out nineteen separate enemies around him. The Mei could only shake his head.
Ed stormed towards the Octises and jumped into one of them, closing the shield and pouting. Georgia knocked on the shield with one knuckle as everyone went back to their respective vehicles. Kojak was taking Nirvana considering the fact that Nirvana didn't trust anyone else, and the fact that he'd already slapped the cuffs over her hands. Ed looked up and lifted an eyebrow. Finding the PA button after several minutes, he turned it on and asked gruffly, "What?" Georgia looked in just about worse shape than Ed. Her entire head was bandaged, and tufts of brown hair stuck out in random directions through the white gauze. She said, "Come on out for a minute. I don't want to have to get this thing cleaned out because it stinks so bad. It costs cash, you know." Ed banged his head into the steering gear, and he didn't even care as water squirted from the windshield and cleaned it or that the horn was beeping. This just wasn't his day.
"All right. I'm coming out," he muttered as he got rid of the windshield and climbed out. He stood there and asked, "Now what?"
Suddenly, he was sprayed head -to-toe with a strange foam, turning him into what was essentially a very large snowman of what looked like shaving cream. His eyes were the only thing visible as he narrowed them. The blob of shaving cream turned around to glare at Alice and Willow, who were holding a nozzle together that had come from the Rockbell's Octis. They both high-fived each other before Ed chased after them, bits of foam trailing off from him.
"GRAAAAAH! COME BACK HERE SO I CAN BURY YOU IN THE SAND!" The girls screamed as Ed came looking for vengeance, and Nirvana stared at them with an annoyed, blank look. She sighed and said, "What is that they sprayed, anyways?" Kojak chuckled as he started the Octis.
"It's a cleaning foam. It attracts sand and dirt, but also foreign molecules that have to do with smell. They remember smell just as well as your nose does, so it picks up whatever shouldn't be there. It's handy because it dissolves. Ed'll be wet, but he'll be clean. And Georgia won't have to worry about cleaning the stink out of her Octis." Nirvana rolled her eyes as she mumbled in a mockingly high-pitched, girly voice, "Heaven forbid Georgia lifting a finger to do anything." She gasped theatrically and said, "The poor dear!" She sniffed derisively, and Kojak only chuckled. That was his girl.
Ed looked out at the moon from his Octis. It seemed so much bigger in the desert, as if it had gotten closer. It's surface seemed so near. The sun had gone over the horizon in a beautiful collision of reds and pinks, orange shading what little cloud cover there had been. He'd never seen a sunset quite like that before. The others seemed just as entranced. Kojak only smiled while Nirvana smirked smugly. Alice was practically jumping out of her Octis, and Imal beheld it with a sense of reverence. Edward himself had climbed on top of his own vehicle and watched. They had stopped to admire the sight before heading on again.
Fierce winds had stopped them from going too far afterwards. A surprise gust of desert driven gales had floored the caravan, and Edward could hear it beginning to wane. Already, it was eight-thirty. They'd been gone for nearly half the day, and he wondered what it must be like for Imal, Alice, and the Twins. They'd never been above the ground, from what he'd heard. The twins acted like they knew what they were doing, but a couple of times he'd watched them argue over something before asking Kojak what to do. Kojak, as experienced as he was, never seemed to tire of the desert, though he was most definitely wary of it.
Suddenly, the sweeping winds that had scoured the desert plains stopped. It was so sudden, so abrupt, that Edward had thought that it was as if the wind had never been there. He frowned, and a voice came over the radio system.
"All right. You can all come out now. It's safe," Georgia's slightly tinny voice permitted before there was a click. Ed pressed a button on his dashboard, and the hood flew back. He looked out with awe. The desert dunes had climbed to epic heights, and the entire landscape had changed. His own Octis was half buried in sand, and he idly wondered how he was going to get it out when he heard a deep groan like some wild animal turning over in its sleep. He automatically turned to the sound, ready to clap his hands, but the only thing he saw were the twins' Octis hauling another buried vehicle out of the sand using a tow cable.
"You can actually pull these things out?" The other Octis pulled free, and Ed half-expected a resounding pop! to echo as the sand shifted over the hole it left behind. Zhang and Guun had squished into an Octis with Georgia, and they all clambered out. The twins' hood pulled back, and the two Rockbells chimed, "Yep! These things can pull anything!" There was the sound of an engine being gunned, and an Octis shot over a dune. It landed on the sand, spraying Edward with the small particles. Ed spluttered as he breathed in sand, and Kojak and Nirvana hopped out.
"Sorry, Ed. Didn't meant to splat you," he said with a chagrined chuckle. Nirvana scoffed. She sat in the sand, her hands on her knees as she looked at the twenty to thirty foot tall dunes that surrounded them. She whistled low as she looked up at the blackened sky. The stars were all out, and Ed looked up in awe.
"Would you stop fragging already? Help us set up camp!" Georgia shouted. Ed jerked out of his entranced sight, and he looked at her in confusion, but before he could ask, she was already walking off. He almost had question marks around his head. Nirvana rolled her eyes at him.
"Gods, you're a dinosaur... She means that you need to stop standing there and doing nothing. Fragging comes from the term defragmenting. You defrag a computer to make it go faster. She wants you to stop staring at every speck of dust there is, and get a move on," she said. Ed looked back at her, blinking several times before he cautiously said, "Thank you." The girl looked at him with a haughty expression before answering, "Don't mention it." She got up and started towards Georgia with jittered steps. As she passed by him, she muttered, "And I seriously mean don't mention it." Ed narrowed his eyes at the back of her head. He walked off as he watched her climb a dune. She sat there in the bright light of the moon as they set up camp, which consisted of folding sections of their Octises out to create beds and a covering of thin, light metal anchored into the ground with special weights and a tarpaulin-like material stretched over it.
Edward got settled into his own 'tent' of sorts, and he began to drift in his thoughts. He could hear the Twins giggling as they talked to each other incessantly, and Imal and Alice were strangely silent, though lights shown from their tent. There was a single lantern of ultra-phosphor in each of their tents. The phosphor inside of the lantern charged when exposed to the light of the bright, desert sun. It charged very quickly, and it was handy because anything with a light could charge it to full power within ten minutes. Georgia was already asleep, from the sound of her raucous snoring. Edward turned on his side, facing the opening of his tent. The moonlight was bright enough to seep underneath the taurpalin that was anchored to the sand, and he could see a shadow as something passed over the area. Slowly, the night animals made their dark noises to one another, jackals baying and insects clicking somewhere in the sand, far away...
Ed sat up in bed all of a sudden, and it became apparent to him that he'd dozed. He rubbed his eyes, realizing that some sand had caked over his eyes in the night. He poked his head out of the tent to find that the moon was low on the horizon, the tip barely brushing the sandy line where the earth curved away. He felt himself awed for a moment as he looked up at the myriad of stars. In Central, it was so bright the stars were blotted out. All you saw was a dark haze of orange-white mixed in with dark, dark gray. He felt as if he could touch the heavens and realign the stars, and somehow control his fate through their shapes and lines. A feeling of solemnity covered him as he listened to the desert. It was full of life, as barren as it seemed.
He heard the shift of sand, and he frowned as he turned towards the noise. It wasn't anywhere near him. Under the moon, all things were visible as if seen within daylight. Shadows were elongated, creating eerie shapes, and they seemed to move as Ed saw them out of the corner of his eye. He walked over the sand on unsteady, sleeping feet as he followed the sounds of swishing earth. It was a strange rhythm of movement, as if somewhere were-
Ed scrambled up over a dune and looked out. Underneath, in the shadow cast by the long eye of the moon, he could see that Nirvana was doing... well, something. She swept down with her fingers over the sand, and it moved with her, drawing a sort of cloak around her, but as soon as it reached three feet, it would fall. She stamped her foot in frustration, and he could hear her muttering curses under her breath as she did it again and again, each time her frustration hindering her cause as the sand fell at shorter and shorter intervals. Ed frowned as he stood up on the dune and watched with blatant curiosity. She was trying to do alchemy... but a very high level kind, something Edward could do with ease only because of practice and much thought on the matter.
Alchemy was not like alphysics- not in the least. Whereas the laws of physics were bended and molded to shape the weilder's wishes, alchemy must follow a set guideline that cannot go against the laws of matter. As much as a person would which to turn a silver dollar into a gold dollar, alchemy couldn't make it happen. If you wanted a diamond out of a lump of coal, that was easy enough. What Nirvana was trying to do was move the sand into a structure that would move as she bid it, using minute changes in the formula to cause it to seem like it was moving. However, Edward had found that this was much harder to do with a circle because of the constant change of the material you were working with versus whatever medium you were using at the time. Using his arms as a 'circle' made this type of alchemy much easier because the formula that was 'written' on his arms were really in his head, and they became easier to move and change as he wished.
Nirvana obviously didn't have this knowledge, and it made him smirk. He knew it was wrong to feel superior to her just because of a simple gap of knowledge (they're last real alchemist had been Alphonse, after all, nearly two hundred years ago), but this was the same girl who'd wrestled him to the ground, called him a bolthead, and plain out insulted his intelligence at every chance she got. A man would take what he could get.
"Having trouble?" he shouted. Nirvana froze in mid-stance, and she slowly turned around to look at Ed. In the shadow of the dune, he couldn't see her face, but he knew that there was probably an annoyed sneer on her face. The alphysicist cocked a hip and stood up straight. She shouted back, "Yeah. It's standing up on top of this dune." Ed's smirk fell, and he clambered down the dune in an ungainly fashion. He slid down finally after getting the hang of steering himself, and he reached Nirvana with a slip of sand. She raised an eyebrow at him as he dusted himself off. She cocked her head to the side and asked, "What? You're going to actually do something? As far as I can tell, you haven't done anything since Little Miss By-The-Book Georgia found you locked in a safe like a retard." Ed's eyes narrowed, and he suddenly clapped his hands.
Nirvana had already jumped away from him, but a large column of moving sand shot up out of the ground. It writhed like a living thing, blotting out the moon as it morphed slowly into a dragon's head. Its bulbous eyes stared down at Nirvana and her awestruck expression as it opened its jaws, teeth like filed points seeming to glint. It froze in that position, a fearsome monument of sand. Edward stood behind it with a sullen look on his face. He suddenly patted it with his metal hand, and the dragon moved again into the ground like a serpent, its tail flashing as all of it went back to whence it came.
Edward dusted off his hands as he looked at the spot where his creation had disappeared. He gave Nirvana a hard look, her still slightly awed face fixated on him with emotions equal part envy, rage, and determination. He strode across the sand to her, and Nirvana backed up a few paces. Ed grabbed on of her wrists and yanked it up to her face. He asked, "How did you get out of your cuffs?" Nirvana seemed to regain some of her bluster, scoffing and asking, "You still call them cuffs? You really are a dinosaur." Ed rolled his eyes, and he shoved her hand towards her face. She resisted, but it succeeded in making her move backwards towards the wall of the dune.
"How did you get out of them? And why haven't you left?" These questions had run through his head immediately after seeing her playing with the sand. She looked off in a different direction, sullen. She finally muttered, "Kojak bribed me. Said if I stayed, I could have this late 20th century book on alphysics. Besides, I can get out of anything. It wasn't any use to put those retarded things on me." Suddenly, a rustle of sound caught their ears and they looked up at the top of the dune. A shadow was cast up above it, and they could see Alice's outline against the moonlight.
The teenager was wearing pajamas with ducks imprinted on them (it seemed that this particular fad never faded out...), and she stage-whispered, "What are you guy's doing? You almost woke up Georgia! Do you know how hard that i?" Nirvana rolled her eyes and whisper-shouted, "Shut up! You're the one who's going to wake up the entire camp with your messaging signals." Alice pouted exaggeratedly, and she stuck out her tongue. Edward rolled his eyes, and he said, "You would think that the two of you were related." Nirvana scoffed.
"As if." She jerked her wrist out of Ed's grasp as he let her go. She stumbled back a few paces, but righted herself with the balance of a person who was easy with the sand. Suddenly, a sound ripped through camp. It was high pitched and whining, skimming the air with electric-brush fine strokes of blaring sound. Ed looked around for the source of the noise, but Nirvana was already scaling the wall of sand, Alice gasping as she started to run back to the caravan. Edward, still perplexed and lost as to what that noise was, stood there for a moment before a hand nearly yanked him into the sand.
"Idiot! Hurry it up and get to your Octis before the freaking drones find you!" Nirvana hissed. Edward had no idea what was going on, but he'd followed their directions this long and lived. He guessed following this set wasn't going to kill him. They raced up the dunes to find that all of the Octises and their tents were folded up neatly as well as toned down to a rich tan color. Ed frowned as Nirvana drug him over to his own Octis, which was still unfolded with its tent and shield down. She pressed a button on the underside, and it suddenly sprang around to come together. As soon as it was back in its vehicular form, Nirvana shoved Edward into it, nearly slamming his head into the windshield.
"Hey-!" he protested, but Nirvana was already climbing into the thing with him. His particular model had been designed for one person of any size, and two people of a small size could probably fit in one if they really squished. Being two full grown teenagers, the both of them were particularly cramped. The shield snapped all the way back to cover the two of them, and Nirvana quickly reached over Ed to the dash, typing a quick succession of orders into the screen. The windshield very suddenly went dark, and the only light to be seen was the glow of the dashboard. Ed could hear Nirvana's labored breathing as well as his own. What was going on?
"What... the hell are drones?" Ed finally asked after several minutes of tense silence with the both of them jammed in the vehicle. Nirvana swallowed and answered, "Robots." Ed didn't look all that enlightened, so Nirvana elaborated a bit.
"They're autonomous machines with programs like Gram for a brain. They are given a single objective- to find and destroy Oasis. Of course, they never succeeded, but they're always on our guard. Whenever caravans like this go outside, they have to camo ourselves for a little while when those things go over. They have eyes better than a human, and they see way more than we do, right down to heat signature and false-color images. Countless Octises and people were lost when those damn things were invented," Nirvana said bitterly, looking up to where the sky would've been had they not been in their Octis.
Ed shifted in his seat so he was sitting with his back to the right side of the windshield. Nirvana was sitting farther back than he was, facing the opposite direction. She was facing him, her legs drawn up to her chest, and she looked strangely haunted in the green light of the dash's glow-in-the-dark panel. As time dragged on in silence, Ed studied the girl across from him with a critical eye. For a girl who'd been living in the desert, she didn't look very tan, but that may have been the effect of the lighting. Her hair was shorter than the last time he'd seen her nearly three days ago, and her eyes were directed towards her hands as she played with her shirt hem. Her clothes were torn and threadbare, though not overly so. He couldn't tell how thin she was, but he figured she was in good health if she still managed to crash him into that building.
Suddenly, Nirvana shifted to lean over Ed again, and he tried to avoid contact with her as she started to tap out something on the dashboard. He watched as the screen lit up, and a field of green and black appeared. A grid of color overlayed it before showing five red triangles moving over a group of five or six X's marked in blue. Her eyes were sharp as she widened the field of vision before doing something strange. She brought up the keyboard, and Ed watched as she typed furiously with lightning fast strokes of her fingers. He could smell her she was so close, and the strange scent of clean sand and human assailed him. He watched the screen as she typed line upon line of code over turned on the screen in a line of white letters.
"What are you doing?" he asked as he sat up straight to get a better look. It looked like complete gibberish to him, with strange characters almost every couple of words. It was built in strange style of line, ending in an abrupt sort of ordered chaos. Nirvana was so focused that she didn't answer him at first. As Edward stared at the words, he realized that some of them had the same words with indented phrases afterwards in a sort of list. She finally said, "I'm trying to hack one of the drones. They all have programs, and any program can be hacked to do anything you want. No one's broken through a drone's wormwall, though. I'm trying to get through it right now, but it's being a sucker to get out of. Ed, get me an Airwear, could you?" Ed, having no idea what anything was, gave Nirvana a helpless look. Hearing nothing but stunned silence, Nirvana figured Ed had had some sort of informational breakdown or something, and she decided to put this into simpler terms.
"Get the earpiece from under the dash. You can't miss it. It sticks out. It's near my left knee." Edward, for once understanding the brand of Amestrian she was speaking, felt underneath the dash for said earpiece, and brought up a slim piece of silver-black metal. It didn't look like much, and he wondered was he was supposed to do with it when Nirvana ordered, "Put it on my neck." Edward looked at her as if she'd grown a second head.
Nirvana, still furiously typing, grumbled, "If you stick it there, it'll stay. I promise. Now if you would put the damn thing on me, I'll explain everything after I get this drone." Edward stuck the thing to Nirvana's neck, and he asked, "Okay, start explaining. I'd like to know why I'm cramped up in this stupid thing with you in the first place." She rolled her eyes, never ceasing her typing. Updates in green intermittently interrupted the code of gibberish. Every now and again, a piece of red line would cross over, and Nirvana would suddenly get a little nervous.
"I'm trying to take control of this thing. I'm only the third best hacker around here. The first would be in the Octis about two doors down," she muttered before suddenly letting out a prolonged hum. The light on the small piece of metal glowed a light green before switching to a cool blue, and Ed had the urge to ask her what it was when she asked, "Hey, you reading me?"
The PA suddenly responded with Alice's voice, saying, "Yeah, I hear you. Speaker all right with you?" Ed realized that the little piece of metal was actually a sort of phone. He wanted to rip it off of Nirvana's neck and examine it, but he had the feeling she wouldn't take that too well. In fact, his very presence annoyed her, so what was the point? Nirvana answered, "Don't care. Which 'droid you attacking?"
"Number 55AFM."
"I'm on Number 56AFM. Get Imal on that other one, see if you can't-" Ed noticed that the screen was steadily filling up with red writing, and he said hesitantly, "Uh... hey, this thing doesn't look good." Ed tapped the screen, and Nirvana cursed vehemently.
"Ugh! Mean words, Nirvana, mean words."
"Shut up, Alice, and get rid of the trick on this stupid 'droid!" She tore off the little piece of metal, and Ed managed to take it before she could throw it on the floor and completely decimate it. Ed examined it thoroughly, wondering at it. It wasn't even a centimeter thick. He couldn't figure out how to make it stick to skin, either, and there didn't seem to be a speaker or anything on it. He frowned at it, and he clapped it between his hands. There was a short flash, and it came apart in his hands, and Ed smiled- well, that was, until it crumbled to dust in his fingers. His face turned white, and he glanced over at Nirvana with apprehension. If she found out that he broke this... He started to sweat bullets, and he shook a bit for a moment before the tapping on the screen ceased abruptly.
Ed looked back at Nirvana, who was looking to the sky as if waiting for something. Her face was tense and drawn, a strange pallor of green reflecting off of the screen. There was nothing but the sound of her breathing, and Ed finally asked, "What? What's going on?" Nirvana held up a finger, the one digit trembling slightly as both of them waited. Ed also looked up, though there was nothing but the darkened windscreen of the Octis.
"... Is there something-?" Ed's words were cut off as suddenly the entire vehicle flew sideways, and the two of them rattled in it like pebbles in a tin can. As the vehicle settled in the sand, Ed shouted, "What the hell was that!" So far twice today, he'd been thrown and knocked around, and this was just the final straw. Nirvana, however, didn't offer much by explanation, pounding on the 'open' button on the Octis' dashboard, and the two of them spilled out of the entire thing.
"Just run, all right? We have to-" Nirvana's words were drowned out as a deep thrum filled the air completely. The others were also running, but to where was anyone's guess. Edward looked around for the source of the sound, and he found them right above his head. There were strange, ovular machines in the air with small, stubby wings protruding from their sides.
"That... isn't good, is it?" Ed dove into the sand as the humming intensified, and suddenly a large hole appeared out of nowhere on the ground beside him. He shouted and flailed backwards. The hole was so neat and precise, it was as if some cookie-cutter had taken it out of the ground. Seeing Nirvana out of the corner of his eye, he ran after her, but the sound of the thrumming behind him made the back of his neck prickle with discernation.
Another hole appeared, and a scream erupted as Ed rolled forwards into the sand. He scrabbled away, and the drones continued to tail several moving figures in the sand. Ed looked up to see that a drone was hovering over him not twenty feet away, and he knew that he was in trouble. Whatever these things were, they meant business. Especially considering what they'd done to his foot.
He'd been lucky- they'd only managed to get his automail foot, not his regular one. Who knew what would've happened. Edward watched as the thing neared, and he tensed. That was it. No more playing the helpless little time traveler who had to be dragged like unwanted luggage. It was about time things changed. Determination set into his face as he looked up defiantly at the machine hovering overhead. It wanted to play patty-cake? Oh, they'd play patty-cake. Edward clapped his hands, and placed them on the sand.
Like a tidal wave, it loomed over the machine, and it seemed to suddenly dilate. The inside of it spiraled outwards to create a hole inside of the machine, and the sand engulfed it. A large hole appeared inside of the wave, but the sand continued to bowl over the machine as if it were a tsunami of water taking down a tree. Edward coughed as the sand settled, and he vehemently hoped that this had done the trick. It would've been awfully annoying otherwise.
He heard the low thrum again, and he was suddenly tackled as another hole appeared where he'd been standing. Zhang shouted at him, "What are you doing? Do it again, whatever it was!" Ed didn't need to be told twice, and yet another drone was buried in sand. He stood up, brushing himself off as the Xingese emissary looked around nervously. A whirring took over the air, and Zhang and Edward ducked as they were buffetted by a wild, rude wind. Beyond them, they could see specks in the distance rushing off to who knew where. They breathed hard before both collapsed into sitting positions on the dunes.
"Are you hurt?" Edward asked Zhang, looking around for the others. The other boy's hair was mussed, and a large gash on his forehead was all that denoted that anything at all had happened. Zhang shook his head and gasped for air. That had been the one of the most terrifying moments of his life... Zhang swallowed hard and looked behind him. Edward did the same, and he was amazed.
The sand was riddled with holes. Everywhere, holes drilled into the ground. The others were mere specks between the dunes as they came out of their hiding places. Ed started to get up, but his leg gave out as he yelled out in surprise. He looked down and saw that his metal foot was missing. He'd momentarily forgotten about it, and he wondered what, exactly, had happened to it. He stood back up, careful to lean on his remaining foot, and Zhang helped him with a shoulder under his arm. Kojak ran up to the two and said, "The 'droids that came after us are probably beaming our positions right now. We'll have to move, and soon. Neither of you are hurt too bad, right?" Both shook their heads, and Kojak sighed gratefully.
"Thank the Lord Almighty. We have some good news, at the least," Kojak said, relieved. He looked back, and his face tightened. Everyone was getting back into their Octises, and it was clear that they had plenty injured. Willow was crying out as her twin carried her to their Octis, her leg severed at the knee. Georgia was helping Guun back, as the Xingese man had twisted his ankle falling down a slope, though that fall had saved his life. Alice and Imal looked relatively all right, but they were banged up and bruised. Even in the pale light, Ed could see the blood that splattered the sand in blotches of black. Nirvana was walking across the sand with a fatigued walk, stumbling across the sand. She looked almost sickly in the light of the moon.
"What're our casualties?" Georgia asked as those that were able started righting their Octises. Ed helped with a rather large hand of sand here and there, and Kojak watched them carefully. Willow was being taken care of, and so was Guun. He said, "Ed lost his metal foot, and Willow's been hit. Guun has a twisted ankle, but you already know that. Zhang's got a gash that he'll probably break into a story somehow, and Richie's in shock for a while. He'll need counselling after this." Georgia's mouth twisted into a snarl as she looked at Nirvana. The girl was fixing Ed's Octis, which she would, no doubt, use as her own once they got going. Georgia spat out, "Your golden girl's obviously fine." Kojak's stare was blank as he silently looked at Georgia with a fixed gaze. The woman looked at him with equal resolve, and it was several moments before Kojak said, "She's been dodging them for a long time." Georgia scoffed.
The woman loaded up her gun's chamber with a number of shock cartridges as well as a few 'whammies.' Those were ultra-high frequency slugs that would resonate upon hitting a target and immediately incapacitate them. The science department had taken dozens upon dozens of trials with it because of problems with accidentally knocking out the sender as well as the receiver. Georgia, so far, was the only one who could use it considering her sharpshooting abilities. She shook her head and said, "She shouldn't be out here. She should be with us. I still don't know why you won't just let me zap her ass and stick her into one of the trunks." Kojak shot a dirty look at Georgia, and for once she shut her mouth for a few seconds and kept her thoughts to herself. Kojak turned back to look across the sand.
"You know why we can't do that. It nearly killed her to be in those hand cuffs. Even with full range of movement, she's antsy just being around us," Kojak said quietly under his breath. Georgia rolled her eyes.
"You baby her."
"She's tougher than you think."
"Hell, if she was, she'd just join us. That damn shorted head of hers."
Kojak sighed as he crossed his arms. He turned contemplative and looked away. Georgia cocked her head to the side in his direction with an expression that said, 'really? You're not serious.' Knowing she'd get nowhere, she put up her hands and shook her head.
"Whatever. I'm going to get my Octis before it gets buried. I'm getting nervous with Ed slinging all this sand around. Can't say he isn't a multi, though," she said as she walked back to her vehicle. Kojak watched her go before turning his head in Nirvana's direction. The girl was boarding the Octis with Ed, who was stumbling to keep up with her considering his lack of a foot. He yelled something at her, and they started to banter with one another before Nirvana stomped off towards him and drug him behind her. Kojak sighed.
He'd known this was going to be a long night.
