DISCLAIMER: Fullmetal is Arakawa's.
A/N: So... I realize that it's been about two months since the last update... sorry. I threw in a tiny dash of Lingfan as an apology.
A big huge thank you to my lovely friend roseblossomwarrior for beta-ing this chapter. I agonized over this one and I might not have finished it if it wasn't for her. (Go read her fics because they're great and she's great)
Just a warning, there are scenes in this chapter that get slightly graphic, violence-wise. If you're squeamish I would suggest taking care while reading this chapter.
"Split them up!"
Second Lieutenant Havoc's voice didn't hold nearly the command that his Colonel's did. His thoughts were half strung together and mixed with a sinking feeling about Mustang's predicament, making his words less than coherent, but all the same the team followed his orders to the letter. Fuery and Falman ceased fire on the body Barry chased, seeing the lack of effect the bullets had on his flesh. Breda, by far the strongest of the four, abandoned his cover - a large mahogany desk - and cut the Chopper off, aiming his weapon squarely at him. Barry swung blindly at him, mindless in his pursuit. Breda barely dodged the blow, jumping and rolling on the ground to avoid the wrong end of his butcher's knife. He was on his feet again in an instant, swearing loudly.
"Where the hell did the Colonel go? We could really use some flames right about now," he griped, raising his voice in order to be heard over the commotion. "This bastard's got a head thicker than concrete."
Havoc growled. "Get them outside!" he ordered. "And away from civilians! Let Barry take care of him for all I care, but I want them out of here!"
A chorus of sirs shot through the air. Jean grabbed at the closest man to him - which happened to be Falman- and yanked him towards him, his hand fisting around the collar of the Warrant Officer's uniform and nearly cutting his finger on the button pinned there.
"Falman! I need you to get those two out of here. Kill that thing if you can, but I want the building cleared!"
"Hav- sir, where are you going?" Falman asked, a look of near-panic on his face. Both men ducked and Havoc released his grip on Falman as another spray of bullets was released - probably by Fuery, who had a tendency to squeeze his eyes shut and commence rapid fire to protect his ass. "Who are you leaving in charge?"
Havoc spared a glance at Fuery, who'd managed to make the monster bleed, before facing him again. "You, Falman. I've got a bad feeling about the Colonel, so I'm going in after him."
The soldier's eyes widened at that. "You're-" he started, confused. "What about orders? You can't-"
"Yes, I can," Havoc shot back, sounding much more confident than he felt. He clapped him on the shoulder, flashing him a grim smile. "You can handle this, go."
The air was dank and grew colder the further Havoc moved down the staircase. His only guide was the splintery wooden handrail that ran alongside the wall; it was far too dark to make out even the step in front of him, let alone to search any light that would give away the entrance to the basement. The chill started to set into him, and even as he did his best to ignore it, two words reached him that froze him to the bone.
It wasn't even the words, though - it was the despair, the surrender that tinged the anger. To Havoc, the man who spoke them had always been a rock, solid and steady, fearless - a true king.
"You bitch."
The instant the basement was in view, Havoc fired.
Steadily, he emptied a round into the woman kneeling before Mustang, paying no mind to the horrified expression that warped his commander's face. The dark-haired body recoiled with each chunk of metal piercing her flesh, yet - he realized too late - his shots drew no blood. He paused, lowering his weapon half an inch. The woman was still for a long moment, her skin charred and smoking. Slowly her lips turned upwards into a daunting smile as she straightened, her eyes flashing dangerously.
"Havoc, hold your fire! That's an order!"
"What the hell is that thing, Colonel?" he called back, his eyes widening in panic as the woman rose to her feet, her fingers sharpening into sickeningly long blades.
"Excuse you," the woman hissed, her eyes narrowing. She held her hand out at an angle from her body, brandishing her nails. "Did your mother not teach you respect? I am not a thing, I am a woman. Although I am far superior to human women, it holds true nonetheless." As she spoke, she strode closer, causing Havoc's grip to tighten on his gun, ignoring the tremors running through his hands. "And I am to be feared more than any human man you have ever laid eyes on."
"She's a homun- Havoc!"
The Colonel's scream felt distant, muted. One moment the woman was glaring at him, her eyes swimming with bloodlust, and the next - his gun was on the floor, the world a red blur.
It took several moments before he recognized the scream as his own, and longer still before he registered the pain.
The chill of her nails seeped into him, the blades slicing through his entrails as she retracted them. He stumbled backwards, one hand unconsciously pressing onto the wound as he toppled to the ground. There was a moment of enhanced awareness - the warmth soaking his waist and fingers, the worn wood pressed to his cheek, the taste of ash in his mouth left from the forgotten cigarette left unfinished. And within moments, it all vanished, leaving Havoc dead to the world.
"Why am I here?"
The man's visible eye gleamed in the dim light of the cell, narrowing at her. He said nothing, merely holding his stance as guard at her door, right hand resting conspicuously on the hilt of his sword.
"Why am I here, Bradley?" Riza demanded, struggling to resist the urge to pull at the restraints on her wrists. She had no desire to chafe until she bled.
This time she managed to drag a response out of him. His lip curled beneath the well-groomed mustache, baring just a flash of his teeth. "Lieutenant Hawkeye, you will close your mouth if you know what's good for you," he snarled.
Riza barely held back a scream. Her hands clenched into fists around the thin bars that separated her from the throat she was beginning to want to slit. "Dammit, Bradley, why the hell am I here? What is going on?" she yelled, feeling her sanity derail with each word. She wasn't one to sit on her hands any more than the Colonel; she'd never felt so damn useless. She was Riza fucking Hawkeye, who saved the Flame Alchemist's ass on a daily basis, who trained her pets by shooting at them, who had been the only one to come anywhere near to killing the infamous serial killer known only as Scar. And all she had accomplished in the entirety of the last month was tighten the chokehold around Roy's neck.
She felt the trickle of warmth flowing down her neck before she even realized she had been cut. Bradley's sword was nothing but a blur in the dark, and it was sheathed again before the first drop of blood fell to her chest. She barely caught the hiss that sat on her lips, refusing to give him that satisfaction.
"Lieutenant," the Fuhrer growled, "I will not warn you again."
His eyes locked onto hers for a long moment before he began to draw away, boots clacking against the concrete.
Riza's mind was racing as she watched him head towards the exit; she couldn't afford to be useless anymore. They had moved her, which meant someone was threatening their plans - she could only hope it was the Colonel. If she only knew what the hell was going on, she could formulate some sort of strategy to aid him in whatever way she could
In a sudden moment of clarity, Lust's words came back to her, aiming her in what seemed a good direction.
If you're trying to get a monologue out of me about our plans to end the world, your efforts are wasted. You might want to try it on one of the men; they're much easier to coax into boastful diatribes.
"Why did you kill Brigadier General Hughes?" she asked. The words burned in her bleeding throat.
The man paused, his back ramrod straight, and cocked his head to the side, just enough to glance at her from the corner of his one eye. His voice betrayed none of the wrath he had displayed only moments before. "My dear Lieutenant, what makes you think I killed him? I was certain we had established that you did."
"Fuck you," she spat. "Why is Hughes dead?"
The Fuhrer closed his eyes, shaking his head just slightly. "Those who know too much don't last very long," he told her quietly, menacingly enough that she couldn't possibly misunderstand him. He had dropped the act, but she was now at higher risk because of it. "Maes Hughes became a problem, and so he was eliminated. Which is why I would advise you to watch your step, Lieutenant."
Riza gritted her teeth, frustrated with the way he had sidestepped her question. "You're hiding something, something important. Why else would you kill someone so high up - why else would you risk the scrutiny? Not very many people believe it, you know. That I, a soldier with a spotless-" she stuttered slightly over the word, forcing her mind out of the desert "-criminal record, killed one of my own brothers in arms. You could have at least picked a more plausible suspect."
His mask slipped for just the briefest moment, but Riza didn't miss the way his lip curled in anger. "The decision to frame you was not mine," he said in a low voice.
Bradley's slip of information - the involvement of a third party - piqued Riza's interest. "Who killed him, then? Was it- was it that woman? Lust?"
A small chuckle escaped him. "No. For all Lust's faults, she's not so much of an imbecile as to, how'd you put it? Frame such an implausible suspect."
"Then who was it?"
"That is none of your concern."
He left then, and Riza sighed, fingers digging into her palms. She hadn't gotten much out of him, but she knew something, at least. She would have to keep up her strength if she wanted to make any more progress.
Hawkeye glanced at the empty water glass in the corner of her cell and closed her eyes.
Several minutes had passed since anyone had exited the laboratory, at least from their vantage point. Edward and Alphonse had taken the exit opposite them, and so far they hadn't had the need to call for help. It had been a solid half an hour, and both Ling and Lan Fan had stayed crouched behind the bushes all the while.
Ling shivered. It was minute, stifled, but it was enough to alert the young woman beside him.
"Young lord, do you need my jacket?" she asked quietly, eyeing him anxiously.
He glanced sideways at her, shaking his head. "I'm all right," he told her, mentally cursing his slip. Tonight was about this Hawkeye lady, not him. A slight chill wasn't going to hurt him.
"Are you sure? It would be a pleasure to-"
He turned to face her full on, and gave her a small smile. "Really, Lan Fan, I'm fine. There's no need to worry about me."
She knew it was not her place to argue with him; she dipped her head, words of acquiescence on the tip of her tongue, when she froze. A rustling noise, faint though it was, came from behind her, about ten yards away.
Ling didn't miss the way she tensed. His eyes widened and searched her face. He knew better than to ask any questions, merely waiting for any signal. She was still for a long moment, dead silent.
Her fists collided with his shoulders with more impact than he'd have guessed possible; his head hit a branch as he fell. Grunting, he blinked, and saw that Lan Fan was on her feet, facing the dense forest with a knife in hand. He half expected her to shout at... whatever it was, but she remained silent, waiting for it to come to her.
And it did. A large, roundish creature swathed in black approached them, making no effort to tread lightly. With Lan Fan blocking a great deal of his view, Ling couldn't see its face. When it spoke, its voice reminded him of a small child.
"You smell tasty," it said simply. "I want to eat you."
Alarm bells went off in Ling's head at that, but he forced himself to remain quiet, knowing Lan Fan had shoved him down to keep him out of sight, to keep him safe.
If he hadn't known her for as long as he had - over a decade - he wouldn't have been able to detect the slight edge of fear in Lan Fan's voice. "What are you? And what do you want?"
The creature gave a small laugh. "To eat you," it repeated, a little louder. "Stupid girl."
There was a sickening slithering noise accompanied by a throaty growl, and before Ling knew what had happened, Lan Fan's body had been seized, pulled into a gaping hole in the middle of the monster's belly.
Ling was on his feet in an instant, self-preservation be damned. "Lan Fan!" he yelled, eyes wide with panic. He charged at the beast with his sword in hand, thoughts too scrambled to think of anything but revenge on what had taken - he refused to believe she'd been killed - Lan Fan.
The monster's tentacle-like limbs wrapped themselves around the prince's frame, and he found himself staring into a large eye with a red iris.
The last words he heard were, "You look tasty, too!"
Roy's brain felt like it was on fire.
"Havoc!" he screamed helplessly as he watched his comrade fall, eyes wide and pupils mere pinpricks. "Havoc, can you hear me? Answer me! Dammit, Lieutenant!"
Wherever Lust went, he didn't see. With the decision to spare her solidified in his mind, the homunculus was rapidly forgotten. Mustang fell to his knees beside Jean, forcing his gaze onto the source of the blood that pooled around him. His mind raced, falling back into the month he'd spent in research on burns and burn treatment for Hawkeye's sake, contemplating the idea of sealing the wound with his alchemy. It was risky; if the wound was his own, he would be able to gauge his progress and judge if he had gone too far or done something wrong. With Havoc unconscious, he could easily kill him rather than help him. He clenched his jaw, feeling a bead of sweat drip down his temple.
Not again. This can't be happening again.
Roy flexed his fingers in his gloves, pulled aside the cloth of Havoc's uniform, and snapped as gently as he could, only sealing the surface layer of skin. If Havoc made it to the hospital - when Havoc made it to the hospital - medical personnel could easily reopen the wound and perform surgery on his shredded innards. Roy could only hope his logic was sound enough to make up for his complete lack of medical knowledge.
As the wound seared shut, Roy shifted himself to hoist Havoc onto his back. A warm, wet spot between his shoulders made itself known, and he bit his tongue at the realization that it was the Lieutenant's blood.
With his grip tightened firmly around Havoc's ankles and wrists, the man slung over his shoulders, he stood, ignoring the way he trembled in his boots, and made for the staircase. He stubbed his feet several times due to his haste and the lack of lighting, but he maaged to reach the first floor without dropping his subordinate.
There were no signs of his team, or anyone else, in the building. Roy searched several abandoned offices before finding one with a phone. He growled under his breath as he spotted a coin slot, shifting Havoc to gain access to a pocket where he kept spare change for just such an occasion. The buttons slammed down under his gloved fingers and the moment the ringing on the other end of the line stopped, Roy barked out his status and location. He barely waited for an affirmative before hanging up.
"Hang in there, Havoc," he murmured, casting his eyes around the room. His next objective was to find a stretcher, or hell, even a desk long enough to lay a man down on. Jostling him with the movements he made just by walking around could exacerbate his injury, and the ast thing he wanted was for Jean to bleed out before the ambulance arrived.
He caught a break in his streak of bad luck; an unfolded stretcher was in the next room over, along with a first aid kit in a glass container on the wall. Quickly, he laid the man down and proceeded to do what he could to sterilize the burns, glancing anxiously at the clock all the while.
"Just hang on."
A/N: And so concludes chapter ten! Will Havoc survive? Where did Gluttony come from? Where did Lust go? Where did they come from, Cotton Eye Joe? Next time, on Dragon Ball Z.