BOOM!
The dusty stone arch collapsed, broken chunks the size of horses falling to the cobblestone floor of the narrow street below. Screams from the Ishvalans sang out- foolish they were, for staying clustered in such a tight group, allowing themselves to be driven like cattle in their fear by the smaller explosions to such a vulnerable position. Humans in distress became less like humans, Kimblee had observed, and more like dumb animals, incapable of the rational thought that might save them. Perhaps, if they had split off into the maze of high walls and narrow windows that made up the slums of the Ishvalan city, some more would have escaped...but it was too late for that now.
Kimblee approached those that had not been squashed by the falling arch, his military uniform unbuttoned at the collar but otherwise impeccable, unstained by sand or blood or sick, like some of the other soldiers. The Ishvalans screamed more when they saw him, their red eyes wide and bulging- he barely saw faces in that mass, but instead a collection of gaping mouths and sunken cheeks and dirty teeth. Their hands scrabbled at the displaced rock, no doubt breaking their own fingernails- were these ones all women? He hadn't noticed until now.
With another strike of his palms to the hard, dry ground the remainders were done away with; though for a second, before his hands touched the earth, he felt a little prickle in the back of his mind, an awareness of something else. There wasn't time for the feeling to mature into a thought before the world was shaking again, the shrieks changing in tone from fear to pain and then the choking gurgles of death, the music of crushed lungs and broken windpipes and shredded gut organs. The dust stirred up by the wind had a bit of a pink tinge to it, no doubt from all the blood.
As the air cleared Kimblee had a moment to enjoy his handiwork- but he had been thinking of something, hadn't he? What was it? There was a tab open in his head but he couldn't remember what it had been placed there for. Then, just before he was about to banish the thought, a flash of red lightning caught his eye, crackling as one of the corpses knit itself back together, crushed bones becoming whole again and ripped veins sewing themselves into life. When the act was finished the Ishvalan woman stood, her robe in disarray to reveal smooth brown skin, and luscious white hair that fell across her shoulders in waves. Kimblee raised an eyebrow at 'her', but he couldn't keep a little smile from his lips. The thing didn't look so much like the real Ishvalan women he had seen, with their stubby and boxlike figures, but rather more like a recoloured version of the devil with the serpent on her chest and the nails sharper than obsidian, the one he had met only once or twice. She was a seductive creature, but too tame, she paled in comparison...
"What are you doing here?" he called, and the woman pouted at him, posing like a child's idea of sexuality, thrusting out her ample breasts and curving back her hips to expose the plump flesh on her rear. It seemed almost like a joke- exaggerated and ineffective.
"I was waiting for you to notice me," she said petulantly, blinking red doe's eyes at him. Her voice was as silky as the feathers of a mourning dove. "You were so wrapped up in your work, you weren't paying attention at all."
Kimblee just shrugged in reply, turning his eyes back to the wreckage, drawn slightly by the sight of a dismembered arm lying away from the majority of the destruction, its original owner unclear.
"That's not a good look on you, you know," he added idly, and the woman hummed, saccharine and kittenish in the back of her throat.
"Then what would you prefer?"
Kimblee rolled his eyes at the display and scuffed his boot in the dust on the road- the only part of his uniform he couldn't help but sully.
"Our tastes are much the same, I think." he said, and from the corner of his vision he saw the red light sparkle to life again, flashing on the road and the remains of the arch, brighter and sweeter than blood.
When he looked back, his blue eyes met purple ones, and flawless white skin that shone like glass in the sun. Envy shook out the long green spikes of their hair, as though in shapeshifting it had been put out of place. They weren't pouting anymore, and they stood quite differently, leaning back against the wall of a building with their arms crossed over their flat chest.
"Much cuter," Kimblee said, and they laughed at him, their voice no longer the honeyed milk of the temptress, but hard and high and rough around the edges, like the grinding of a blade against a whetstone. Kimblee's spine prickled unwillingly at the sound.
"Most men wouldn't like this," they told him in that hot voice, gesturing with one hand down their body- short and stocky, with hard muscles in their arms and thighs and strong hands. A wide, youthful face, with eyes as sharp as razor blades. Unnatural and deathly colouration, the contrast too harsh, the stance of their legs unkind and standoffish. Both masculine and feminine, but neither female nor male.
"What's wrong with this?" he replied, mirroring their sweeping gesture with his own hand, and they smiled (genuinely, he thought), exposing sharp teeth with not enough gums. He was about to say something else- something silly, like and I'm not most men- when a call sounded from behind; Kimblee's squadron was catching up to him, their boots echoed against the abandoned cityscape, the click of their guns in their holsters and the shuffle of their uniforms unrefined, and brutishly loud. Kimblee turned to look and regretted it immediately- for the moment he did so the ozone hiss of a transmutation sounded again, and by the time he had whipped his head back Envy as he liked them best was gone, replaced by a slender black-furred cat that darted across the rubble and out of sight. He would have followed them then, if he could, and he resented the approaching soldiers deeply.
"Kimblee!" one of them called, and he turned again to offer that man a glare, the look no doubt strongly supported by the pile of corpses behind him. "We lost track of you. Who were you talking to?"
Kimblee sighed.
