Seeking the Incomplete

By Marz

The Best Defense is a Good Explosion

Summer stared at the wooden beams, watching spiders crawl across them, building homes inside the Hughes' home. She'd felt the creature come to the front door an hour ago, and her body had tensed, but Hughes had spun a story and the thing left. It was probably the one called Envy, but she wasn't sure. She tried to focus her senses, to pick up the "otherness" that drew her attention to the shapeshifter in the first place. She reached back into her mind, searching for the cultured voice that sometimes hovered there with helpful information.

If you would please pay attention to the exercise…it is of paramount importance that you hone your slayer skills…this is more important than nail polish and…and frilly dresses…

She remembered that dress, white with an empire waist and the sheer sleeves. Every one said she looked great in it: her mother; the computer woman; the pale, dark-haired man; even the clawed, bat-like creature that had killed her.

Summer growled and pressed her hands to her eyes, pushing fashion aside. It couldn't have killed her. She was alive. The shapeshifter couldn't even have been the same kind of creature, since it had died when she impaled it on a broken table. Something about that was important, though.

they will invariably return to their nest…

She frowned at the spiders above her. Envy had been headed for Central Headquarters, and that was where the strange woman in the green dress and the Fuhrer's secretary hung out as well. That couldn't be it, though. She'd been all over Headquarters, especially since she started "borrowing" medical supplies. They were probably just meeting people there, she concluded. And who in the military did she know of that dealt with those kinds of things?

Her mind went whirling back to the day she'd met Hughes, and the night the military had tried to have her disappeared. She remembered that heavily guarded building by the prison. She remembered the goon who ran it.

General Gran…

She nodded to herself. That's where she was going tonight. After all, she hadn't tried fire yet.

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A floor below, Edward Elric was staring up as well, though there were fewer spiders in his field of vision. He wanted to storm downstairs and demand answers, but he could barely raise his hand to push his hair out of his eyes, much less work his way across the room, through the hall, down the steps…

Even planning to move was making him tired. It didn't take much energy to think, though, and his brain just wouldn't be quiet. Al and Hughes were covering for something Summer had done. That much he was certain of. Now all he had to do was figure out what that had to do with undead cannibalistic creatures, plagues, and of course, Alchemy.

He hadn't been able to get all the information he wanted out of Al, but he had enough to be seriously worried. It all led back to Summer--annoying, cheerful, unstoppable Summer. Ed supposed he had come to respect her, and not just because she stuck with the ailing Hughes and himself despite the risk of infection. Her opinion of Mustang seemed spot-on as well. Respect and trust were not the same thing, though, especially where Al was concerned.

Ever since his little brother had fixed that typewriter for her at Central, she'd had Al wrapped around her little finger. Ed didn't mind that Al had made a friend, especially one who treated him like a human and didn't seem to pressure him about his armor, but maybe that was because she was something even stranger herself. Shou Tucker hadn't questioned Al. He had been friendly…and he was one of the sickest freaks to ever walk the planet.

Ed tried to change the subject in his mind, but it kept wandering back to the blood-spattered floor in Tucker's basement and the mutated corpse in the alley a few blocks away. He'd trusted Tucker, and it had cost a little girl her life. He couldn't afford to trust Summer, not when she had so many secrets. He was going to have to dig up everything he could find on her…as soon as he could move without her help.

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Five hours later…

Summer had washed the last of the blood out of her hair, fumbled into some of Gracia's old clothes, and was making dinner when the firebug showed up. She heard him walking up the steps. She recognized his tread now. She tried not to growl. She'd just convinced Hughes to go back to bed, but she knew they'd want to chat. She stirred the chicken soup again. Hughes had promised not to say anything to Mustang about her, and she knew that was cracking up the trust between the two men. She felt bad breaking up old friends. She wished Hughes had friends who weren't pyromaniac creeps.

"I'd trust him with my life," Hughes had said about the Colonel, "But I don't know if I'd trust him with yours."

She opened the front door before he could knock and did her best to suppress her scowl.

"Hughes is upstairs," she said, turning her back and walking toward the kitchen.

She was slightly annoyed when, instead of going to the second floor, he followed her.

"Where are Al and Elicia?" he asked.

"They're dropping off canned food at a couple of houses on the next block," Summer said. "I'll be heading out when they get back."

"Finally going home?" Mustang asked.

"Yeah, sure," Summer said, as she started stirring the soup again.

"And where is home, exactly?" Mustang pressed, leaning on the counter next to the stove.

The blue flames in the burners seemed to lean towards him.

"Why?" she asked. "Are you planning to visit?"

"No," he said. "I was just going through your file at Central, and that particular bit of information seems to have been omitted. If somebody in personnel were to notice that, it could get you into a lot of trouble."

The wooden spoon cracked apart in her hand. A splinter stabbed into her palm and blood spurted into the burner, hissing into foul steam in the next instant. Summer felt something rising up in her, something that usually stayed quiet in the presence of humans.

"Are you going to cause me trouble, firebug?" she asked, letting that something leak into her voice.

Mustang was still looking at her hand. She felt the splinter pop out as the wound healed. The color had gone out of his face and the flames in the burner were spiking erratically. She wondered if he recognized her voice yet. Hughes would be really upset if they got in a fight and burned down his house. Her plans to go hunting weren't changing, but her plans to return were. She was considering knocking him out when she felt them, two of them this time.

"Get the door, firebug," she said.

Mustang finally managed to meet her eyes. Sweat was running down his temple. He flinched when the knock suddenly sounded. Summer turned off the burner.

"You didn't see me here," she said. "Go answer the door."

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Mustang wasn't sure what was happening, or why he was obeying the pushy girl. He was, however, very sure how he felt, and he hadn't felt that way since he'd walked into a field during the Ishbalan campaign and the soldier marching thirty feet behind him had set off a mine. The tread of boots was suddenly silenced by an almost inaudible click.

The knock came a third time, and he wondered what the hell Maes had brought into his house. He opened the door. It took all the self-control he had not to gawk as Fuhrer Bradley walked right in, and turned sharply in the front hall, as if he were on the parade ground.

"Hello, Colonel Mustang," said the leader of their country. "I didn't expect to see you here."

Mustang got his brain functioning enough to salute. "Sir?"

"Oh, it's not a bad thing, Colonel," the Fuhrer said cheerfully. "Friends are what help keep us human, after all. You and Lt. Colonel Hughes have been friends since Ishbal, haven't you?"

"Yes, Sir," he said, as carefully as he could.

The Fuhrer strolled further into the house. Mustang swallowed as his mind got up to speed.

"I should warn you, Sir," Mustang said, "that several people in this household have contracted the plague, and you may be at risk."

"No need to worry about me," the Fuhrer said. "I think I had whatever this is as a boy."

The Fuhrer was smiling faintly as he looked at the photographs hung on the walls of the Hughes home, his uncovered eye drifting from one picture of Elicia to the next.

"What do you need, Sir?" Mustang asked. "Lt. Colonel Hughes is upstairs resting at the moment."

"I'm here to see the Fullmetal Alchemist, actually," the Fuhrer said. "There is a rumor going around that he broke the quarantine."

With that, the Fuhrer turned and walked toward the kitchen, as if he had been there before. Mustang was a little surprised to find Summer was gone. He hadn't heard the back door open, and she couldn't have come through the hall without him noticing. The only sign of her presence was the soup, still steaming on the stove. The broken spoon had vanished with her.

"Making dinner?" the Fuhrer asked.

"Yes, Sir," Mustang said.

"That isn't much food for…how many people?" the Fuhrer asked.

"It's only for Hughes, his wife, and Edward Elric, Sir," Mustang said. "Alphonse Elric and the Hughes' child are staying with one of the neighbors at the moment."

"So it's only the five of us here?" the Fuhrer asked, sounding amused.

"Yes, Sir," Mustang said.

The Fuhrer turned to look at him, and Mustang saw in his single uncovered eye the same predatory thing that had risen up in Summer a few minutes earlier. He was still waiting to hear the click. He wondered why he was covering for her as well. The Fuhrer's hand shot forward and Mustang jumped a little. The man had only picked up the pot of soup.

"Well, then, let's visit Fullmetal, shall we?"

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Summer stood stock still, balanced with one leg in her patched suit and the other on the edge of a piano bench they'd brought into the attic a few months ago. She'd felt two of them coming up the walk. She was sure of that. But only one set of footsteps entered the house. Her ears strained, trying to get her mysterious sixth sense in line with the other five. She turned slightly and tilted her head. The other one wasn't waiting on the porch, that was for damn sure. She could feel it getting closer, but all she could hear was the sound of melting snow dribbling through the gutters and off of the roof.

She stuffed her other foot into her costume and pulled it up. It would be bad to get caught here in her Demon guise, but it would be a hundred times worse to be caught here as Summer, especially since her fake paperwork in some file in Central had her picture on it. She wondered if they could sense her the way she could sense them. Silently she pulled the notebook, which held her attempts to organize her life, from beneath the pile of blankets that had served as her bed for the past six months. She shoved it into her waistband, and then rolled up the blankets, and stuffed them into a box. Her spare uniforms she stuffed into a pillowcase along with her shoes. She tucked it under her arm. In thirty seconds, only a slight gap in the dust on the floor showed that she'd ever been there.

The sound of running water was louder now and she reached up, pulling herself silently between the beams that supported the roof. She could no longer see from her hiding place, but the sound of water pouring through the attic vent was clear enough. There was a slosh and a splash, and in her mind, Summer pictured something coalescing and solidifying, and then there was the tap of high-heeled shoes on the wooden attic floor.

A woman walked into Summer's field of view. The woman looked left and right, but her bowed head never came up enough to see the occupants of the ceiling, neither Summer nor the spiders. Instead, the woman walked to the piano bench and sat primly down, focusing on the ladder, and the attic's trap door. Even in the dark Summer recognized the Fuhrer's secretary. Apparently she'd come up here in case someone fled to the attic.

Summer heard the firebug talking to the Fuhrer in the kitchen, and then on the steps. She heard them walk to Ed's room and then the Hughes'. She grinned slightly as the creature conducted its search of the house. She could hear Mustang's rather strained heart beating as he followed the creature around. It was louder than her own. Summer's eyes went back to the water woman. The drooping secretary was still watching the trap door. It apparently hadn't occurred to her to look up.

They can't sense me, she thought. They're stronger and harder to kill, but they can't sense me.

She glared down at the secretary, so blithely occupying what used to be her space.

And I look better in heels, too.

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Ed woke and saw Fuhrer President Bradley standing in the doorway of his room, but he didn't really know what to do about it. He blinked a few times, but that didn't solve anything. Finally he raised his hand in a shaky salute, while attempting to sit up. He did not successfully accomplish either, but his flailing did prompt the man in the doorway to move. That probably meant he wasn't a hallucination.

"You've put yourself in grave danger by breaking the quarantine, and worse still, you've disobeyed a direct order."

The Fuhrer stood over him as he spoke and Colonel Mustang stepped into the room behind him. Mustang looked unusually ruffled. Ed's head was still swimming, but some fever-sharpened part of his mind told him to keep all of his attitude to himself.

"Yes, Sir," Ed said, as meekly as he could.

"Normally, you could be court-martialed for this, and execution would not be out of the question," the Fuhrer continued. "But I think you've learned your lesson," he said in a suddenly cheerful tone. "You wouldn't even think of disobeying orders again, would you, Fullmetal?"

"No, Sir."

"Fantastic! Well, I've probably left Central unsupervised for long enough!" the Fuhrer said. "As soon as Fullmetal is well enough to travel, you will escort him back to Eastern Headquarters. I trust you'll be able to come up with a suitable reprimand for your subordinate by then."

"Yes, Sir," Mustang said.

Ed watched them march back out.

"Where's Al?" Ed called, as Mustang passed through the doorway.

"He's giving out food down the block," Mustang said.

"Where's Su-"

"Elicia is with him," Mustang said before Ed could get out the other girl's name.

Mustang flashed him a tense look, which vanished as the Fuhrer turned to look back at them. Ed nodded and lay back, and Mustang pulled the door closed behind him. Ed saw a bowl of soup on the bed side table, and wondered how the hell it had gotten there.

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"Well that was…something else," Hughes said as he peered out the window.

Hughes watched the Fuhrer walk down the block away from his house. The Fuhrer had stopped by his bedroom for a brief chat before Mustang had escorted him back to the door. He'd received a warning to keep an eye out for the Scrap Demon in the area, and another piercing stare. Mustang slowly came back up the stairs to discuss the visitation with Maes.

"You don't need to tell me," Mustang said.

"Did he look in every room in my house?" Hughes asked.

"Just about," Mustang said. "He didn't go in the attic."

Hughes relaxed a little. "Where was Summer during all this?"

"She left," Mustang said. "Right when the Fuhrer got here, actually."

"Did she say where she was going?" Hughes asked.

"No," he said. "She just vanished. Literally."

Maes frowned, but didn't voice any of the concern that was flitting across his face.

"Maes, why won't you tell me what's going on?" Mustang demanded. "That girl is getting you into something I don't think you can dig yourself out of."

"I can handle it," Hughes said.

"The Fuhrer was just snooping around your house, Maes," Mustang said. "You remember what Bradley was like in the war, don't you? One moment he'd be talking to someone, the next their head is on the ground and he's polishing his sword. If he thinks you're up to something, he isn't going to just let you walk away."

"I don't expect he will," Hughes said after a moment. "But if you know…I don't think you'd survive the scrutiny. I hate to break it to you, Roy, but there are a lot of people out there who want you dead. What's going on here…I think they'd be happy to try to kill it along with you."

"They probably assume I already know," he said, frustrated. "They probably think you trust me."

Hughes didn't seem to have a response to this. Mustang sighed and got up. He was used to people turning on him. Promotions in the military were cutthroat, but through all of it, Maes had watched his back. He wondered how this had come between them, and his dislike of Summer seemed to slide up a notch closer to hate.

"Roy," Hughes said, just as his friend got to the door. "People don't stay dead like they used to."

Mustang turned to look at him, and he could tell from his face that it wasn't a joke, a hint, or a clue. Hughes had just told him the truth. His mind went to the Scrap Demon and the strange teenager fighting in the Central courtyard the night before, chopped, burned and crushed, and they just got right back up. Some people weren't staying dead, but he knew he and Maes weren't those kind of people.

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A suit of armor walked up the steps, with the little girl still balanced on his shoulder. He knocked on the door and a pale, dark-haired man with a cast on his arm opened it for him almost immediately.

Sloth shifted slightly in the rain gutters as the wind picked up. It wouldn't do for her to freeze in place and miss something. She'd been watching the Hughes' home for the last two hours. She was certain there was someone else inside, even though Bradley hadn't found even one physical trace of them. She'd come out of the attic and spoken to him briefly after he had left the house and gotten around the end of the block.

He'd seen lies in the faces of everyone in that household. He'd seen their nervous glances, as if they expected him to find someone in every room he glanced into. They gave everything away, except the person they were hiding. Bradley seemed to think it was because they weren't sure where they'd gone.

Between his eyes and Gluttony's sense of smell, it should have been a simple task to find the Scrap Demon, or the Slayer as she had introduced herself to Envy, but she vanished like a shadow whenever they thought they had her cornered. She was linked to Maes Hughes, though. Of that they were certain. All they really needed was patience.

There wasn't much these people could do at this stage of the plan, anyway. They were only human, after all.

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A mile away, perched on the roof of the Central prison, the Slayer smiled, and adjusted the dynamite in her backpack. She'd acquired it from Roger Blake, her favorite crime boss. She didn't even have to threaten him much to get it. She watched the building across from the prison. Two heavy military trucks had come and gone from that place in the last hour. Both had delivered nondescript crates. Summer shifted a little and stretched out her senses. She couldn't feel any of the creatures in the area, but something about the building wasn't right.

She'd seen the water creature leave the Hughes' attic and meet up with the Fuhrer. They were planning to watch the Hughes house until she showed up. They were going to regret that very soon.

A military car pulled up to the building across the street, and the gate was opened to admit them. From her vantage point she watched it pass through the courtyard and pull up to disgorge a huge, glaring man with iron gauntlets on his hands. General Gran marched into the building, and doors slammed behind him with a metallic clang.

As she leapt from the roof of the prison to the wall around the building, she heard a soldier complaining to his partner about having to guard the closed Lab 5 when all the pretty female research assistants worked at Lab 3. Summer smirked again, and wondered if they would be happy or sad when the building was gone.

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Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait. I have no excuse except laziness and writer's block. And…uh…alien abduction …sure…that happened. Please review! Only six people reviewed last chapter. It made me sad, and got me abducted by aliens.