A/N: Hello dear readers!
We're into the double digits now! And on top of that, I like how this chapter turned out. Win-win.
Enjoy!
~InkRoze
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"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Jack peeked around Selim's shoulder and into the doorway of the train car. Only three gang members were left, the rest having disappeared to investigate a commotion. Jack guessed that Kate was the cause, or at least involved in it. Kate always manages to get into trouble if I'm gone for more than five minutes, she thought with a fond smile. Jack found her thoughts wandering from Kate to Selim. He didn't seem to have any weapons, but he had assured her earlier that he could handle himself. Did he have combat training? His build was wiry, but she had learned to never judge appearances, with Kate as her best friend. Selim turned to her with a smirk, as if sensing her thoughts, and tilted his head toward the men inside the car. Two were standing, cradling guns and conversing with the third, who was sitting quietly, patiently. He seemed to be in charge.
"Shall we go?" Selim mouthed. Jack just gave him a flat look, and shook her head. Before either of them could move, one of the members spotted them.
"Hey!" he yelled, bringing up his gun. Jack yanked out one of her pistols from its holster and fired twice. The gun flew from his hands and skittered into a corner, hit by both bullets. Jack cocked her gun again and aimed it at the man sitting down, the boss. Jack glanced at Selim. She had never handled a hijacking situation before, and really wasn't sure what she should see to next. The Bradley, on the other hand, seemed to know what he was doing. Selim wasn't looking her way, however, so she did what she thought best, and focused on her first priority: disarm the gang men.
"Drop your gun," she demanded, directing her gaze to the remaining gunman. He hesitated.
"Drop it!" Jack's tone left no room for argument, but still, the man didn't respond. Jack fired a warning shot at his feet. It left a hole in the train floor, only inches from his shoes. Instead of complying, he levelled his gun at Selim. Jack frowned. The fact that she was a teenage girl probably didn't help her case. The man wasn't taking her seriously, despite that she had a gun, and obviously knew how to use it.
What happened next came so quickly, Jack barely had time to react. Instinct took over, and adrenaline fuelled her actions.
The train door suddenly bent inward and slammed open, shattering the deathly silence in the car. A man in a purple bandana fell inside the cabin, and bounced off the first gang member. A figure hurtled through the crumpled doorway immediately after, and crashed into the second man, sending him stumbling forward.
A gunshot went off.
Glass shattered.
Next to Jack, Selim grunted in pain and flinched, curling into himself slightly. His hand went to his shoulder as the Bradley hissed in a shocked breath.
He'd been shot.
Jack, trained by her mother- as well as a dozen other officers- for situations like this, instinctively fired back. Her eyes hardened; a look that was common on her father's face.
Eliminate the threats first.
The Mustang didn't waste any bullets, and aimed to injure, but not kill. The first man went down, clutching at his thigh. The second man received a bullet through his shoulder, and one through his fingers, knocking the gun from his grip. Jack turned on the intruder from earlier, only to be met with a flash of white and copper brown.
Asher.
Jack finally regained enough of a grip on her surroundings to assess the situation. Asher lay on his back, stunned. He was sprawled across the floor, a small trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. Selim was kneeling, his face a lighter colour than usual. Blood leaked from underneath his pale fingers, and trailed down his arm. The contrast was striking. She couldn't properly judge the wound at a glance, thanks to his dark suit, which hid most of the blood. Shards of glass from the broken picture window behind Selim littered the floor.
The other two gang members were incapacitated by their injuries, and were too busy stifling screams and trying to hold in their blood to even bother with fighting back. Jack's appraisal of the train car was halted when she heard a quiet shuffle and the sound of something whistling toward her. She brought her gun up.
CLANG.
A knife met the barrel of her gun, the force behind the blow nearly causing her to drop it. Physical strength was not her area, it was Kate's, and her best friend was nowhere to be found. The Mustang's vision tunnelled.
It was only her, and the knife.
Everything else faded away.
Jack kicked at her attacker, but he twisted out of the way. Her strength was beginning to fail, and her opponent sensed it. The man adjusted his grip on the knife, and shoved her backwards, hard. Jack stumbled into the train wall, nearly tripping over Selim, stars flashing behind her eyes as her head cracked against the wood. Her pistol clattered to the floor. Jack barely had time to flinch out of the way as he lunged at her again. His knife hit the metal wall at an odd angle, and sliced a gash in the train car, all the way to the now broken picture window.
Shards of glass fell to the floor every time the train rumbled over a new section of track.
At the other end of the train car, the door flew open again, this time revealing a very angry Kate Armstrong. She noticed two men on the floor, for all intents and purposes out of the fight, and clutching bullet wounds. Jack's been here, she thought with a sadistic grin. She frowned when she noticed Selim, and her frown deepened when she saw Jack struggling with Knox, unarmed. Kate began to run toward her friend, but one of the gang men she had written off grabbed her ankle. She tripped, and hissed as she hit the floor, simultaneously kicking out at what was impeding her movement. The man grunted in pain, but didn't let go. Kate yanked her leg toward her, ripping the limb out of his grasp, accidentally making a dent in the hard metal floor. She scrambled to her feet, and made sure the man was unconscious with a quick blow to the back of his neck.
Meanwhile, Jack ducked sideways, still flush up against the car wall, as the knife came down at her again and again. The Mustang dodged the knife, until he cornered her against a seat. He pulled back to stab her. She shut her eyes, knowing she had no chance to avoid it. She braced herself for the pain. It was nothing she hadn't handled before, but knowing what it felt like to be stabbed made it worse. She waited.
Nothing happened.
Jack blinked. The gang leader's arm was still in the air, but he was glaring murderously at the mocha-coloured hand crushing his wrist in a death grip. Her attacker began to pull back his free arm, aiming to punch the alchemist holding him captive.
Thwack!
The gang leader's head snapped to the side, his eyes wide with shock. Jack stared at Asher incredulously. Did he just… smack that guy across the face with a book? Sure enough, Asher was holding a worn black book in his free hand. A sliver alchemy array was embossed onto the cover. Jack averted her eyes to the gang man. She saw his muscles tense; his weight shift.
"Look out!" she called, but Asher wasn't fast enough. The gang leader punched him clean in the face, and tore his knife from Asher's grasp. Asher backed up a few steps, gripping his book more tightly. Selim, who had been nearly unnoticed the entire time, tensed from his place a few feet away from Asher. He was still holding his shoulder, blood now coating his hand, but he seemed unnaturally calm and unruffled, for just being shot. He exchanged glances with the alchemist, who turned his attention back on the gang leader.
"Knox, you have one heck of an arm," Asher stated, wiping the blood from his mouth with a knuckle. Before anyone could react, the alchemist flipped open his book to a seemingly random page, and in one fluid movement, touched his hand to the circle, and held the book out, facing Knox. The ink on the page lit up with an electric silver, and a sudden burst of blinding light raced toward the gang leader. Asher was so focused on his opponent, that he didn't even notice Jack's gasp of shock from behind him. The light hit Knox dead-on, blurring his outline. Knox screamed, and stumbled backward. Jack wrinkled her nose in mild horror. The smell of burning fabric was something she was used to, but the smell of burning flesh was not.
With a grunt, Selim stuck out his foot. Knox, still stumbling, tripped backward, and with a cry, fell out the train car's broken window.
There was silence.
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Jack Mustang wasn't by any means a timid girl. She wasn't squeamish around mutilated dead bodies, she wasn't averse to shooting people, if needed, and she definitely wasn't one to flee at the first sight of danger. Growing up in the military had taken care of all that. But when she was faced with alchemy, she just froze up. She could hardly breathe; she couldn't even think coherently. It terrified her, totally and completely. Selim noticed all the blood rush from her face, and wondered what could possibly be wrong with her.
She swayed a little...
Is she…? he thought, a little concerned.
… Swayed a little more...
She is. She's going to- Selim shot forward to catch her before she hit the ground, but halted in his movement when his shoulder protested. Instead, Kate noticed Jack's fall and beat him to her.
"Jack!" the Armstrong exclaimed, practically shoving Selim out of the way. Selim rolled his eyes, gritting his teeth as his wound throbbed. Kate gripped her best friend's shoulders, her visible blue eye worriedly searching Jack's face.
"I'm fine!" Jack protested, pushing Kate away and struggling to her feet, "I'm fine." Though Selim could tell she was most definitely not fine. Her quiet tone and nervous body language told him otherwise. She was terrified; but was it her brush with death? The gang man? Asher's unorthodox method of performing alchemy? It could be any of those things. Selim resolved to pay closer attention to his new associate in the future.
There was a slightly awkward silence before Jack turned to Selim.
"You were shot. May I see, please?" Selim raised an eyebrow, but sat on one of the wooden benches and shrugged off his suit jacket, wincing at the pain of moving his shoulder. Jack frowned in concern as she noted the amount of blood on his light purple dress shirt. His black suit jacket had hidden the crimson stain spreading across his shoulder. Jack pulled down the sleeve of his dress shirt, and, using the tear the bullet made in the fabric, examined his injury. It was gory, but just a graze. She sighed in relief, and held his suit jacket to the wound. His eyes narrowed at the pressure.
"My suit is ruined," Selim muttered ruefully, "That was a Garifel brand, too." Jack realised that was the first thing she'd heard him say since he'd entered the train car.
"That's the least of your worries, I think," Jack said, smiling a bit. "It isn't serious- the bullet only grazed your shoulder. There's a lot of blood, but your wound isn't fatal. It should heal pretty quickly if you look after it. I have some first-aid back in our cabin… If I can get to it." Jack looked up at Asher expectantly, but before he could say anything, Kate spoke, turning her attention to the alchemist.
"Knox… the gang man? He's dead, right? Didja kill him before he fell off the train, or did the fall kill him?" Her question was direct, if not a little accusatory.
"He's most likely dead," Asher replied cautiously, "But the fall had to have killed him- the intensity of the light I hit him with wasn't anywhere near strong enough to kill him. I only stunned him, and burnt his clothes a little." Kate nodded, still frowning, before something occurred to her.
"So… your alchemy is based on light? I was right- you are useless!" Kate exclaimed, flicking a chunk of her blonde hair away from her face.
"Shut up, Armstrong," Asher retorted sourly for the second time that day, "I'm not useless. Would you quit saying that?"
"Nope. So how does your girly, sparkly light-magic work?" Kate asked in a bored tone. Jack grinned, despite her earlier terror, and a little colour returned to her pale cheeks. Kate was one to talk. She procured a sparkle from time to time, especially during her "generations" rant, and her father, one of the strongest men Jack knew, practically oozed sparkles.
Pink ones.
"It's not magic," Asher stated slowly, as if speaking to a small child, "It's science. If you're an Armstrong, you should know that. So I'll use the simplest terms possible. My alchemy is light-based, and can create light beams, which do damage depending on the level of intensity. Possible intensity ranges from just creating light to see, to full-blown disintegration." He paused for a second. "I vaporised metal, once, during a mission."
"Gosh, is that all you can do?" Kate asked sarcastically.
"Not really," Asher replied, smirking a little. Jack shook her head, and opened her mouth to speak; to change the subject; anything to get away from the topic of alchemy.
"You two- please," she admonished, "We're on a train in the middle of being hijacked, there's men after us, and Selim needs medical attention. I know we hardly know each other, but just for now, could we please get along? You can tear each others throats out later. Alright?" There were nods and an accepting silence for a bit, before Kate suddenly paled. Jack noticed, and frowned at her best friend.
"Kate? What is it?" Kate glanced at Jack sheepishly, and played with thread on her fingerless gloves.
"Kate?" Jack repeated.
"Jack… take a look at this guy's tattoo. On his neck." Kate pointed at the unconscious gang man. Jack cast a quick look at Kate, then bent down beside him, and pulled aside his shirt collar. Jack jerked back, as if burned.
"Kate Armstrong! Why didn't you tell me we were up against the Plague?" Jack nearly shrieked. Kate quickly backed up, waving her hands in protest.
"I just forgot, okay? Don't shoot me! It's not like it mattered, anyway, you would have found out sooner or later!"
"But… the Plague?" Jack choked.
"Plague?" Asher asked, confused. Selim spoke from his place on the wooden bench.
"The Plague is one of the most- if not the most- feared gangs in Central City-"
"In Amestris, Selim, in Amestris!" Jack corrected worriedly. Selim gave Jack an unimpressed look before continuing his explanation.
"They are also the biggest gang in Amestris. You are aware of the Mafia in Creta?"
"Unfortunately," Asher muttered.
"Yes, well, the Plague is Amestris's version of the organisation, though they are categorised by the military as a gang. They are often the financiers or the masterminds behind crimes in Central." Here, Jack spoke up again.
"They're split into five different factions, one for each city, with Central as its headquarters, and the most powerful. The members are ranked depending on how many diamonds their tattoo has. Like the pattern on the back of a rattlesnake. The highest level possible is nine diamonds." Jack glanced at the unconscious man. "He only has two diamonds. Small stuff." Asher looked thoughtful.
"That man, Knox, he had three diamonds. This kind of an operation is entrusted to only a third diamond?" he asked. Asher was incredibly curious. He had heard of the Plague, but had never had direct dealings with them. To his knowledge. He was slightly unnerved after hearing how large the organisation was. He figured he would have come across them at least once during his time as a state Alchemist.
"Each diamond is given either after five years of being a member, or after a particularly successful or important mission. Knox was probably after his fourth diamond."
"How do you even know all this?" Asher asked. Jack grinned.
"I'm the Furher's daugh-" There were shouts from behind them, cutting Jack off. All four teenagers turned.
More gang men.
Brilliant.
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