In which everything goes wrong at once
They rounded the corner at an impressive turn of speed. Envy vaulted over the fence, driving the dog into a noisy frenzy and barrelled into the back room.
"What on earth?!" Agatha protested.
"They've found you." Envy replied flatly, already half way up the stairs.
He didn't stop to explain, or to listen to whatever it was she was shouting after him. He darted into the spare room. Pride glanced up from a scrawled array that seemed to turn into a stick figure half way down the page. His expression faded through happiness and confusion before Envy grabbed him.
"Brother?"
"No time for that," Envy snapped dragging him to his feet. "We're leaving."
"Leaving?…..But-but-"
"Or that, come on!" He tugged his younger brother out onto the landing towards the stairs.
"No! No-where…..Idon'twantto-"
Pride dug his heels in and proved to be infuriatingly difficult to move. Envy snarled and kicked him, but it only made his brother whine louder. The constant litany set Envy's teeth on edge. He whacked Pride again. It didn't help. It never did.
Usually he'd spit and curse, then give up and leave Pride alone until he was in the mood to cooperate again. But they needed to leave now. Apart from anything else one miraculous, ill conceived, badly executed rescue was enough for one century. So he picked Pride up and headed for the landing. If he was struggling Envy didn't notice.
They almost ran into Martha on the stairs and as a result almost fell down them.
"What are you-" She began.
"They tracked you back here." Envy interrupted, shoving past her. "We have to leave."
"And they are?" She demanded, entirely nonplussed.
"The goddamned military." Envy growled over his shoulder.
"Oh."
If he had taken the time to look over his shoulder he would have seen her turn very pale. But serious situations like this always distracted Envy from the simpler pleasures in life for a while. No red stones meant a lethal hit was lethal. After five hundred years Envy was rather in the habit of surviving.
Why break the habit of several lifetimes?
The car would have been the best way to run, but they'd be expecting that, they'd be prepared for that. How far was it to the nearest station? They shot out the back door.
He pelted through the garden, driving the dog into a second fit of excitement, cleared the fence and made it about twelve metres down the lane before his brain managed to process the image in front of him.
Oh hell……
He spun on the balls of his feet and sprinted back towards the house. The pair in the lane continued walking at a leisurely pace, there was no need to hurry. They had all the time in the world.
It just has to get worse-
Envy burst back into house, dropping Pride and darting into the sitting room.
"Where's Susie?"
"Packing," Agatha replied calmly. "I thought you'd left."
"Change of plan!" He yelled from halfway up the stairs.
He made it to the landing just as the white van roared into the drive and more than half a dozen soldiers streamed out. He was in her room when he heard the front door crash inwards. Any minute they'd come upstairs. And she wasn't there. Which meant….
Oh hell…
He rushed across to look out over the back garden. They were there, but he couldn't see her. She wasn't with them. Envy grimaced, he'd been through too much bloody trouble to let him have-the soldiers were coming upstairs.
He transformed instinctively, even though it hurt, and he probably shouldn't have so near the window where they would see the flash of alchemic light.
Two of the soldiers burst in to find a boy of about nine with messy black hair and big eyes. He looked terrified and was making all the right scared noises about them and his missing sister. But these men knew what they were looking for and they knew what it could do. The boy was hauled out at gun point and herded into the living room. Envy let them man handle him, wondering vaguely where he'd got this form from.
There were eight of them, two he instantly pegged as alchemists, and three of them might have been at the place they broke him out of. They had Agatha and Martha and by the sound of it they'd found Pride and he was still refusing to move. Where was-
The claws came from nowhere, slicing through the far wall like a razor blade on linen. About half a ton of rubble collapsed inwards throwing brick dust into the air. Everybody hit the floor.
Oh hell.
As serene as if she was walking into a ballroom the third Lust strode in through the gap she'd made in the wall.
-
She wasn't the prettiest; in Envy's humble opinion the second Lust had been the prettiest, not that it mattered when they were busy seeing how many pieces they could slice you into. The Aunts recovered quickly and alchemy lit up the room like lightening. As if on cue the military marksmen fumbled for pistols and gun retorts provided the thunder. Envy was not entirely sure whether they were shooting at Lust or the Aunts and strongly suspected that they weren't exactly discriminatory either way. Claws whipped through the room, catching people more by luck then design there was so much brick dust in the air. There was plenty of rubble lying about, he could have tried taking a few of them out in the cross fire. It wasn't as if anyone would notice the kid on the floor.
Yeah because what this room really NEEDS is more projectiles flying through the air.
He scrambled onto all fours and scrabbled across the rubble towards Pride, or at least the room he'd dropped Pride in. It was only a few yards, and it wasn't as though Envy hadn't clambered over rubble with bullets whizzing past his ears before. The practice had in fact become something of a habit over the centuries; there was definitely a knack to it. He made it in minutes and was soon searching the wreckage for signs of life….or at least its alchemic equivalent.
Also known as that stupid short retarded-is that a foot?
He shoved a chunk of plaster to one side sending up another cloud of dust. He wondered if homunculus could choke to death and decided it would be a stupid way to die. He tried to tug Pride out but apparently the idiot still wasn't moving. Envy gritted his teeth and crawled up beside his brother. For a long time Envy glared at him trying to ignore the bangs and crashes from across the newly open-plan room, Pride gazed back, half focused. Then he smiled.
"Brother."
"You still not moving you frickin retard?!" He hissed.
Pride slowly shook his head. "I-I-I wanttostayhere."
"They're shooting at us." Envy pointed out.
"Ummm actually I umm think-Ithinkyou'll find….they're ummm shooting at uh…."
"Nevermind. We're leaving-"
"Why?"
"Because he's here you stupid prick."
A rather blank frown. "Who?"
Envy valiantly repressed the urge to throttle his brother. "Hohenheim you retard."
"Oh……."
Brilliant just bloody-
"Have you seen Susie?" He asked, keeping the question direct and his voice clear, despite what it was doing to his blood pressure.
He'd expected stammering, or another blank stare. Pride's eyes flooded into focus.
"Fourteen to one outside, front drive."
Envy gaped. "What?"
"Odds of fourteen to one she-oursisterSusie-outside….on the front drive."
"How the hell did you work that out?"
But Pride had lapsed back into his own world of chance and floating brick dust and Envy didn't wait around for an answer.
-