Seeking the Incomplete

By Marz

Chaos Passes

Gluttony sniffed at the door, drooling on the steps. Envy could hear frightened whispers from inside the house, and maybe even a baby whimpering. Envy grinned. This was certainly going to be messy.

He heard a thump from one of the upper floors of the house. After a moment of frowning, he left his crouched position on the fence to investigate. He hadn't really expected the Demon to be from such a high-class neighborhood. And the route she'd taken to this place had been anything but direct. Maybe this was just the first house that had opened the door to her. If there was somebody important there, their Master would be pissed. There was another thump and he leapt up, catching the sill on one of the second story windows.

The curtains were open just wide enough for him to see through. The Fullmetal pipsqueak, Lust's favorite new pawn, lay sprawled on the floor. His feet were tangled in sheets and he struggled weakly to rise. Envy watched him collapse in a fit of coughing. Not only was the little snot a few hundred miles away from where they thought he was, he'd also managed to catch a plague.

Envy bit back a growl, but he couldn't control his rage completely. The windowsill splintered beneath his fingers. He wondered for a moment if he'd be able to confine Gluttony to just the first floor, but it didn't seem likely. Once he got started, it was impossible for anyone but the Master or Lust to call him off. Of course, it was always difficult for Envy to call him off. He sighed and jumped down into the yard. He was really going to enjoy gutting that brat when they didn't need him anymore.

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Ed finally managed to roll over and started to crawl across the floor of the bedroom. He'd felt something was wrong, and it had jolted him from his fevered sleep, but the door seemed miles away, and the stairs beyond, further still. He didn't give up, though. He sank his fingers into the carpet and pulled himself forward. The bedroom door sprang open, nearly slamming into his face. Hughes dropped to a knee next to him. Ed saw he had his gun in one shaking hand. The Lt. Colonel was sick, but apparently was much closer to recovery than Ed. Even so, Ed didn't think the older man was in any condition to fight.

"Do you know what it is?" Hughes whispered.

"No," Ed said.

"Stay here," Hughes ordered.

Ed started to protest, despite the fact that "here" was about as far as he could get, anyway. Hughes pulled the door shut behind him. Ed gritted his teeth and tried to follow, but his legs wouldn't hold him, and his shaking, sweaty hand couldn't get a grip on the knob.

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"Want to eat," a strange voice muttered on the steps behind the house.

Elicia was crying, but Al didn't know what else to do. He opened the cabinet under the sink and stuffed the toddler in. She cried louder, and he knew the hiding place wouldn't do any good. He searched the cabinets around them, finding an old piece of taffy behind a can of peas. He shoved the sweet into the little girl's mouth and she bit down. She gurgled around it, but the taffy had glued her mouth mostly shut. He closed the cabinet doors and prayed she wouldn't choke.

Al shuddered as he listened. There was another voice in the yard now, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. The whiny voice by the door was clear enough, though.

"You said I could eat them!" it said.

Al looked at Summer, who had turned to watch the door, a strange grin on her face. She blinked rapidly as blood dribbled into her eye.

"We're going to fight," she said almost dreamily.

Al, shuddering, took up his basic guard stance. His hands wavered. Maybe I should try to reinforce the door with alchemy, instead, he thought. But some deep instinct told him it wouldn't help. Take Elicia and run, a little voice told him. But he couldn't do that, either, not with the Hughes' and his brother too weak to move upstairs and Summer obviously out of her mind. He looked at her again, but she didn't seem to notice his anxiety.

"Who's out there?" Al begged in a whisper. "What's out there?"

"They're dead, already," Summer said.

Al couldn't tell if she was boasting or if she was expecting walking corpses.

"I Want to Eat!" the whiny voice insisted.

Al tensed as the door creaked under the pressure of the huge hungry thing.

"WANNA EAT! WANNA EAT!" it shouted, pounding on the thin wood with each repetition.

"I said no, you retarded sack of garbage!" the other voice hissed.

WHAM!

Al flinched at the sound of flesh striking flesh.

The blow was so hard the windows rattled and the thing on the back steps let out a dog-like whine. Al wondered why they were fighting, but he felt strangely grateful to the other thing in the yard. There was more low hissing, but Al couldn't make out the words. With a final whine, the shadow at the door vanished. Al expected to hear the back steps creak, or maybe the fence, but there was absolute silence. Al crept to the kitchen window, and found the yard empty. He didn't even see footprints.

"They've gone," Summer said, slumping in bizarre disappointment.

Al looked at the scrap of metal sticking out of the top of her head, and realized it was a bit of the sword he had made for her that morning.

"Do you want me to call an ambulance?" Al asked.

"No, why?" Summer asked.

"So you can go to a hospital!"

"Hospitals are bad," she said.

"But you've got…you've got a…" Al waved his hand over his helmet, trying to indicate the broken blade protruding from the top of Summer's skull.

Looking rather confused, she reached up and felt at it, and then gave the shard of steel an experimental tug. Her expression went slack for a moment, and her hand dropped limply to her side.

"Summer?" Al asked, hoping his miming hadn't just caused her to die.

"Hu?" she asked, "Who are you?"

"I'm Al," he said.

"And I'm…Summer…"she said.

"Yeah," Al agreed uncertainly.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"You've got a thing in your head," Al said. "I think it's messing up your memory."

"Pull it out," Summer said.

"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Al said. "It might make it worse."

"It's fine," she said.

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" Al said, trying to come up with a convincing sentence, but failing to find even words.

Al grabbed the metal and tugged. The sound the metal made as it slid free made him wish desperately that he had a stomach so he could barf. Summer fell forward, face down on the kitchen floor. Al rolled her over, relieved to see that she was still breathing, despite the horrific amount of blood spurting out the top of her head.

The kitchen door burst open and Hughes staggered in, a handgun leveled before him. He looked around the kitchen. Hughes looked blearily from the body on the floor to Al.

"uh….uh…." Al stuttered, trying to find words that would fix this.

"What happened?" Hughes asked.

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh," Al said again.

The cabinet under the sink burst open and Elicia stuck her head out, still chewing on taffy. Hughes jerked in surprise and nearly shot himself in the leg. The toddler looked from her father to the twitching girl bleeding on the floor, to Al. Her face took on a thoughtful expression, and after a few moments' contemplation, she started screaming.

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Ed was still on the floor when Al came to check on him, and the door once again came very close to rearranging his face. Al looked alright, though Ed thought he could see blood splattered on the upper part of Al's arms, but nowhere else, as if he had washed his hands but hadn't gone quite high enough. Summer was going to yell at him for that.

"What happened?" Ed asked. "What's…hack…going on? What…hack…hack…uggggggggh!"

Ed's questions petered out as he struggled to breathe. Al helped his wheezing brother get back into bed.

"Everything's fine," Al insisted.

Ed gave him a look that said "I don't believe you."

"Well, almost everything is fine," Al amended. "Some looters came over the back fence, and Summer… she… well… uh… she got hit in the head and it was pretty bad, but Mr. Hughes thinks she'll be ok."

Something was wrong with Al's story, but Ed couldn't figure out what.

"Are you calling a doctor?" Ed asked, surprising himself.

He didn't like Summer. She was annoying and bossy and called him "short stuff." But then again, she seemed to have the right idea about that bastard, Mustang.

"Mr. Hughes thinks she'll be ok," Al repeated.

Ed looked at his younger brother warily. "What's really going on?" he asked, feeling a twitch deep in his chest that told him another coughing fit was on the way.

"Mr. Hughes said not to say anything, because you might get worked up, so I'll tell you later," Al said.

Ed gritted his teeth, holding back a cough. "I'm already worked up, so just tell me! Hack!"

"The people who came over the fence, into the yard…I don't think they…I don't think they were normal," Al said.

"What…hack…do you mean?!" Ed demanded, in a raspy voice.

"I don't think they were human," Al whispered.

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Summer opened her eyes and saw the beams supporting the roof of the Hughes' house above her. That wasn't so strange, really. This was the only place she slept, but she didn't feel like she had slept. It felt like something had exploded inside her head. She raised her hand and felt along her scalp. Her hair was wet and there was a bandage. She ran her hand over her face. She wasn't wearing her face paint, but she didn't remember taking it off. She looked over and saw Hughes was sitting a few feet away from her nest of blankets. His face was sallow and he was sweating.

"How did I end up here?" she asked, though she theorized based on his exhausted appearance, that he had carried her.

"You don't remember?" Hughes asked.

She looked at him for a bleary moment and then shook her head.

"What do you remember from last night?" Hughes asked.

Summer looked to the vent at the far end of the attic and saw daylight pouring in. Wasn't it just after sunset, though?

"Summer, what were you doing last night?" Hughes asked again, this time sounding angry.

Summer tried to remember, but the inside of her head was filled with bright flashes, rather than information. She decided to just start with the previous day and work from there.

"I brought food around to the Andrews house. I mopped the kitchen. I fixed dinner. I got Al to make a sword for me…" she trailed off.

That was probably where it started to go bad, she realized. Hughes was looking even more upset.

"Why did you need a sword?" he asked tiredly.

"I thought maybe if I could take off its head, it would stay dead. I remember that working…before…" she paused for a long moment. "It didn't work, though. It broke my sword, and then it's a blur."

She remembered now. She'd been fighting Envy, and apparently she'd lost. She touched the top of her head again. Her skull felt solid enough now, so she must have healed alright.

"Stay dead?" Hughes asked, interrupting her.

"Those creatures…the ones I told you about…" she started.

She remembered trying to explain to him a week ago about the shape-shifting creature, but he only looked confused.

"Tell me again," Hughes said finally.

"Well, I was trying to tell you a while ago, but you were kind of sick then," Summer added. "I found this creature trying to kill some people. I fought it, but I couldn't kill it. I've stabbed it, run it completely through every which way, and cut off its head, but it won't die. It just gets right back up again in a bunch of purple light. It had a tattoo like mine, but without the stuff around the outside, and the center is a little different. I know it from somewhere, or at least things like it. When you found me, I was so messed up I didn't want to tell you that I remembered things like that. I thought I was crazy, but now, I know they exist."

Hughes closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. She'd never seen him look so worried. She wondered if he had found her half-dead in an alley somewhere. It didn't seem too likely, since he didn't look like he'd make it more than a block from the house.

"What happened?" Summer asked.

"You had a piece of metal stuck in your head," Hughes said. "You made it back here on your own. You knocked on the door, still in your costume, and Al let you in. Something followed you here. Al says there were two of them. He couldn't see them, but they were arguing about something, about whether to attack or not."

Summer felt her heart stop. "I…I have to go," she said, getting up off the floor and staggering towards the ladder.

"Sit!" Hughes ordered.

"If they know I'm here, you're in danger!" she said.

"At this point, I don't think that will do any good," Hughes said. "They saw you come in here. They'll think there is a link whether or not you stay."

"I…I'm sorry…I…" she couldn't finish her sentence. She slumped back on the pile of blankets.

The only people who had really given her a chance in this strange place, and she'd brought this down on their heads. She needed to find a way to kill those things before they could get near Hughes and his family. She needed to do it now. She started to get up again, but Hughes froze her with a glare.

"Summer, promise me you won't go after these things again, at least for a while. They're stronger than you, and…please, just wait until we figure something out."

"But I have to! If they know I live here, if they know you know…they'll be back."

"Summer, something about the situation this morning made them leave," Hughes said. "If we can figure out what it was, maybe we can figure out how to get rid of them."

"Alright," she said.

"Now, I need to know everything you know," he said.

Summer noted his resolute stare, and for a moment she saw another person sitting there, an older man with a high forehead and a tweed jacket. She blinked the image away and saw Hughes again, watching her with eyes sharp enough to cut to the bone. None of her B.S. excuses would stand a chance.

"I've only seen one of them for certain…" Summer began.

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Hughes was exhausted. He'd only been up for three hours and he felt ready to sleep for a week, and he knew it wasn't just from the disease. Undead creatures stalking Central, and they knew where he lived. And to top it off, one of them might be the Fuhrer's secretary. According to Summer, that woman gave off the same "creepy vibe" the shape-shifter, Envy, did.

Knock! Knock!

Hughes jumped, grabbing up his gun. He stumbled up from the kitchen table, nearly shooting himself in the foot in the process. It took him a moment to realize the knocking was coming from the front door, not the back. He put the safety on and slid the gun into the waistband of his pajamas at the small of his back, making sure his shirt was hanging over it. Slowly, he shuffled through the living room to get the door.

Through the peephole he saw a tall man in a military uniform on the front porch. The man looked rather bored as he shifted from foot to foot in the cold. He had a black trenchcoat on, so Hughes couldn't see the rank insignia on his collar or chest. Carefully, Hughes opened the door.

"Can I help you with something?" Hughes asked.

"Morning, Sir," the soldier said. "We had some strange reports of a woman with a head wound running through the yards on this street. We think she may have been involved in an assault at Central Headquarters last night. Did you see anything, sir?"

Hughes blinked. The man before him didn't look like anything but a soldier. He didn't act like anything but a soldier, but something about him was making the skin on the back of Hughes' neck crawl.

"I didn't know," Hughes said, finally deciding on a half-truth.

"Sir?" the soldier asked, leaning in a little intently.

"Just after dawn, a woman knocked on the back door," Hughes began. "I wasn't up then, but one of the kids let her in and they came and woke me up. She was covered in blood. She said someone hit her on the head and took her purse. We tried to call an ambulance for her, but she refused. I was trying to bandage her up when somebody else knocked on the back door. She took off like a shot out the front of the house, and was gone before I could get up from my chair. I went to look out the back door, but there was nobody there, either. It was pretty strange, but with all that's been going on the last few months…I didn't bother calling it in. We never even got her name."

"And what did this woman look like, Sir?" the soldier asked.

Hughes wondered if they'd seen Al let her in, and wondered again if this guy was one of them.

"She was about five seven, maybe eight, with a dark complexion," Hughes said.

The soldier looked at him for a long moment, but didn't challenge the statement. "Was she wearing anything unusual, sir?"

"She had a dark jacket and skirt," Hughes said. "She was pretty dirty too, but I figured it was from when she was attacked. Do you need me to give a statement at Central?"

"No, thank you," the soldier said, reaching into his pocket. Hughes tensed, but the man only took out a business card. "If you see that woman again, please call this number immediately."

Hughes took the card nodding. "Will do."

He looked at the number. It was a legitimate military line. The soldier nodded and turned away. Hughes watched him walk away down the street. He didn't stop at any other houses on the street, and he hadn't written down Hughes' description or taken his name. Hughes found his hands were shaking slightly as he closed and locked the door.

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"The Fullmetal Alchemist is in Central," the secretary said as she laid a stack of papers on his desk.

"Strange that he hasn't checked in with us," Fuhrer Bradley said, as he looked over lists of personnel reported dead due to the plague. The alchemic research department had taken a disproportionate hit. He frowned, noticing several names were still missing.

"Apparently he has the plague, and is staying with Lt. Colonel Hughes from the Court Martial office," the secretary continued. "The Scrap Demon fled to his house after the incident last night."

Bradley looked up, mildly surprised.

"I think we'll have to pay the Lt. Colonel a visit," he said, smiling as he put on his sword belt.