Disclaimer: I do not own! Nope...
As always, thanks to the effervescent (and ever patient!) Southpaw for her beta work. Massive thanks to everyone who's continued reading and commenting, honestly muchly muchly appreciated.
Thanks also to Fudfoodle and hand-made-city: links to there amazing artwork on my profile.
An added merci! to Megami Ze who has listened to me moan, gnash my teeth and grumble throughout the writing of these last few chapters. If you have a chance, check out this writer.
I did say at the beginning of the last chapter that it was Part Uno of a two parter. Turns out due to the size of Ch 21, it has now been split in two, This Side of the Grave Part I and Part II. Both published tonight.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then let's begin...
Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.
History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
From The Cure at Troy – Seamus Heaney
Hawkeye breathed deeply, steeling herself for what she was about to do. Seeing a slim Xingese woman stalk the outside of a tired looking warehouse with gun raised, the Lieutenant had no doubt about her intentions. Every bullet in that woman's gun was there for one reason only: to kill her Colonel. Even so, Hawkeye needed that breath in order to finally pull the trigger. In an earlier exchange she had fired without a thought, the adrenalin of a gun battle pushing her on, but shooting someone unaware of their predicament was totally different. It recalled, with a tightening of her chest, her days sniping in Ishbal.
She levelled her weapon, noted the steady look in the assassin's eyes and squeezed the trigger. The shot was perfect, catching the woman straight on the temple. The gunner would surely have died with the thought of killing fixed in her head, and there was a sad circularity to the act that stuck to Hawkeye's thoughts. There was no discretion or mercy for the hunter or the hunted, they were all subject to the same end.
As the Lieutenant drew back from her corner, her radio sprang to life. The signal was ravaged with interference and she had to search a little before a voice could be heard.
"Lieutenant!"
"Edward? Edward, have you found h-" She stopped herself, schooling her thoughts to order. "Are you okay?" Hawkeye could scarcely believe how timorous her voice sounded.
"Yes. No... I – Lieutenant, he-" The radio crackled and sputtered but there was something else, a rumbling in the background. "The welder's shop, Lieutenant. Next to the AVA building. Third warehouse. Transmutation... signal... out..."
Transmutation, her mind jolted.
Hawkeye was already running as she shouted into the radio. "Stay safe, Edward. I'm on my way."
Though to what, she was terrified to imagine.
Ed struggled to his feet, the radio rendered to little more than a squealing box in his hand. He couldn't be certain that Hawkeye got his message but trying the radio again was futile – it was totally defunct in the maelstrom of the transmutation. He could only hope: a small candle lit against the darkness of their fears.
As he stood gasping, clutching his automail arm for some small comfort, he watched the terrifying transmutation with awed, horrified stillness. The whole circle had been enveloped in a cloud of dark, roiling smoke where thrilling bursts of St Elmo's fire caught and exploded. The sound rumbled out across the dusty floor, the vibrations causing the metal fixings to shift and rattle throughout the whole warehouse. Somewhere at the back of the shop, a girder came loose and crashed to the floor. It took some effort not to step forward towards the swirling cloud as the gathering wind tugged at Ed's hair and jacket. The sensation was uncannily similar to that of standing ankle deep in the ocean as the sand shifted underfoot with the steady power of the waves. If Ed was this unsettled from a distance, he could only guess what it was like in the centre of the array. Neither the Colonel nor his adversaries were visible in the chaos but in Ed's mind, the last sight of Mustang lingered on.
If the Colonel activated the same array that had been branded onto his shoulder, then there was almost no telling what the outcome would be. With not three, but four souls encompassed in the transmutation it would tax even the greatest alchemist to leave the reaction unscathed. At best, the four souls would somehow be accommodated in the three bodies, and at worst... Ed struggled to envision the possibilities. An array designed to work with two bodies would very likely compoundits materials into two bodies, regardless of the number of organisms it started with. If that was the case, then the products would be unimaginable horrors. The Colonel's only advantage was that it was he who operated the array and not the strange, raving man. Mustang said he was a brilliant alchemist, now it was really time to prove it. The feat was the scientific equivalent of tight rope walking blindfolded.
"Come on you smug bastard." Ed whispered, readying himself for the smoke to clear and reveal its grim possibilities.
It was a memory. Of that much he was certain.
A verdant brae shouldered a delicately gurgling stream, all kissed by the dulling hues of a setting sun. Resting there, back propped on the gnarled wood of a hawthorn tree, was Riza Hawkeye. With her short blonde hair and cropped trousers she looked every inch a figure from one of the faded pastoral paintings that adorned the walls of her home.
He remembered this day very well. It was the day before he left for Central, and the army.
"I thought we might eat together. Your father went into the village a little while ago. He shouldn't be too long but it might be nice to sit awhile – just us." He said softly.
She didn't turn around, but her snow white hand moved to brush her fringe from her eyes.
"He won't be back tonight." She returned in little more than a whisper. "He doesn't want to see you go. Neither of us do."
Mustang walked towards her, kicking dark clumps of moss loose as he went. When he reached her, she continued to stare forward across the little brook and far out to where the fields met the golden horizon. He laughed and nudged her with his foot.
"Move over will you?"
She blinked once or twice before coughing and making a space for him to lean against the low bent tree with her.
"You can't stay." She said, the hint of a question to her tone.
He sighed noisily through his nose. "No."
"And I can't follow."
He looked down to see her small hands joined together, knuckles white.
"No." Then again. "No..."
Through a glance, he saw her swallow thickly.
"I don't like that very much at all, Mr Mustang."
Taking a moment to consider, he reached his arm out and pulled her towards him, relishing her smallness against him.
"You insist on calling me that, even now." He chuckled, resting a cheek against her soft hair.
"It helps keep me distant."
He faced her, hurt colouring his features. "From what?"
She looked back at him, incredulity clear in her amber eyes. "From moments like this."
He didn't have much to say to that but then neither did she, and so they continued to sit together until the fields disappeared under the cloak of darkness and the stars lit above them. There was no great epiphany, no sounding of trumpets, but rather like the memory of a once forgotten tune, that evening Roy Mustang realised there was only one star in his firmament and would be forever.
His eyes snapped open.
Around him, he saw the slanted, thickly gullied rooves of low Xingese buildings. Unsure of whether the sight was a memory or a dream, he walked up to the nearest window to get a look at himself, surprised to see that he was not a child but an adult. If he was an adult in Xing, then what he was seeing was evidently a dream.
His attention was caught by the softest sound of singing from further up the dusty street. Moving forward, he followed the voice with a hypnotic sort of remoteness from himself. The further he walked, the more he realised that there was something he should be attending to. Think as he might though, he couldn't remember what that was. A hiss assaulted his hearing and he spun round to discern where it had come from, but the street was empty. He pushed on cautiously.
The singing led him down a messy, rubbish strewn alleyway. He had to duck out of the way as waste water was thrown out a window in front of him. Racing to the open window, he was confused to see the room vacant. In this personless world, he seemed entirely alone except for that voice.
Finally, he reached a tiny building where the owner of the voice must have been situated. He was about to duck his head in when another hiss sounded, this one loud enough to have come from right at his shoulder. He turned again and saw nothing.
"Who's there?" He asked, or tried to at least, but when he spoke, the words that came out were totally different from those he intended. He was speaking Xingese as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Answer me." He said again, stepping away from the house and back into the street. The singing rose in volume, its melody becoming even more beautiful, more tragic.
He looked further down the alley and seeing nothing, turned to glance in the direction from which he came. He jumped at the apparition facing him. Silhouetted against the orange of the sky was a willowy figure dressed in robes. Mustang started forward, sure footed and aggressive.
"Who are you?" He asked.
The figure laughed. "Come here boy. You are tired. You are tired child and in need of sleep. Come here."
Mustang continued in his march.
The singing stopped.
"Zai Sheng." A girl's voice called from back at the house.
He stopped suddenly.
"Zai Sheng." She called again softly.
Despite his years of not remembering, he knew on hearing those words that she was calling out his name, the feeling as instinctive and complete as total submersion. The sensation of being known washed over him, stealing his breath and quickening his heart.
He turned back towards the house.
"I – my name."
"Never mind that. Come here. Let me look at you. Let me look upon you once more, Roy Mustang."
Mustang took one step, then another, unsteadily making his way back to the house and the voice of the girl. He had only made it half way when his arm was grabbed from behind. Spinning out of the grip, he was faced with the figure from before. An old gentleman with long white hair and clouded, unreadable eyes stood regarding him coolly, his robes hanging heavily about him and unsettling the dust at his feet.
"You're Po-Yang."
The figure smiled. "I was Po-Yang."
Mustang stepped backwards, shocked to see strange movements underneath the bared skin of the man's arms and face, the motion like creatures worming their way through his veins.
"You've come to claim me."
"I have. You're soul is being torn from your body as we speak. You have lost child."
The movements underneath the man's flesh became more frantic. Some parts of his skin broke open where the shifting was too violent.
"What's happening to you? Your skin-"
"Zai Sheng! Come in." The girl's voice cut through the air, sharper now.
Mustang looked back over his shoulder at the small, tin roofed house.
"Don't!" Po-Yang said. "Don't go to her. She is wretched."
"Who...?" Mustang started, his question trailing off to silence as he walked towards the house.
His arm was grabbed again, and turning to face Po-Yang this time, he yelped in shock at how much the man had changed in those few seconds. Something was swelling up from beneath his robes causing the fabric to stretch and ripple. Large lumps were pushing out from the space between his neck and shoulders as the man's skin continued to crawl with whatever dark creatures resided underneath.
"You are ruining everything." The elder man hissed as the skin on the back of his hand broke revealing a dark, writhing mass underneath. "Get out of the way, Mustang."
Mustang continued to watch the creature struggle for freedom, suppressing a gag as a dark head revealed itself. A pink tongue shot into the dusty air.
"Serpent." Mustang whispered. He met Po-Yang's dull, bitter eyes. "Ruining what? Ruining what, Po-Yang? For what is this worth?"
"The harvest." Po-Yang grinned knowingly, his open mouth allowing another small snake to squirm free of him. It grew in size as it started its crawl towards Mustang.
"My darling!" The girl's voice came again, terrified and urgent.
Mustang looked back, wanting to retreat but fearful to turn his back on the transforming figure of Po-Yang. By now, the lumps had grown even greater in size and were taxing the limits of his clothing.
"What harvest? What are you talking about?" The Colonel asked, staggering away from the approaching serpent, now at least two feet in length.
"Of alchemy. Of everything. I am reaping what I sowed Mustang. Alchemy is everywhere now. It all belongs to me, yours and that little blond's. I will have it all."
As the ancient alchemist spoke, his voice became more and more distorted by his twisting features. The skin of his entire face was now boiling with movement beneath it. First his forehead cracked, a legion of tiny snakes tumbling to the dirt floor, then his neck, then with a sickening crack, his head collapsed in on itself. His body shook, flinging the creatures all around it, some landing on Mustang's arms, chest and shoulders. There they bit and writhed frantically, trying to break through his uniform and gain access to his skin. Drawing his hand into his sleeve, he batted them away, yelling and throwing himself one way then the other. When he was clear of them, he looked up to see that the man's face was no more. In its place was the head of a serpent as black as night. Flanking it, like a monster of myth were two more half formed snake's heads. Six red eyes stared at him, hatred radiating from them like steam from a hot road after a rain shower. The middle head hissed, showing the pale pink of it's massive, vicious maw.
Mustang was running before he even had time to shake the image of the creature from his mind. He bounded up the steps, his boots thudding hollowly on the frail wood, and ran into the tiny house. He skidded to a stop as the ceiling and furniture in the room shot upwards about him. He thought he was falling but never quite managed to hit the ground. It took him another moment's thought before he realised he had shrank.
Mustang held two tiny, dirty hands in front of him and turned them over curiously. He issued a neat, shallow gasp when he saw what was beyond them. Sitting on a stool was a slight girl, pretty and raven haired. She stared at him with black, shining eyes, holding his awed gaze as a knowing smile shaped her mouth. She held out her hands in invitation. She wasn't wretched at all; she was beautiful.
Mustang looked back towards the open space of the door.
"Zai Sheng. Come here." She said gently, leaving her place on the stool to kneel on the floor. She smiled warmly, her head cocked in obvious surprise at his reticence.
He scuffed his bare little feet on the floor, feeling tears well up in him. He sniffled and wiped clumsily at his nose.
"What's wrong? What happened son?"
Son.
His head shot up at the word. A girl who couldn't be more than twenty had called him son; it was strange but he knew it was the truth. She was his mother and this house was where it all began. He glanced over his shoulder again and uttered a nonsense noise of uncertainty. Then looking about him nervously, he wandered towards her on young, unsteady legs. As soon as he reached her, she scooped him up in her arms and spun once in a small circle before holding him tightly against her.
"Why are you crying?" She whispered against his hair.
"A snake." He whispered back, the scene feeling less like a dream and more like a memory. Where the line was, he couldn't be sure.
The girl tutted and stroked circles on his crown with her thumb. "Was it very big?"
Mustang nodded energetically, whining slightly as his emotions got the better of him.
"Was it scary?"
More nodding.
"It cannot harm you."
Mustang pulled back and looked at her incredulously.
She laughed and cuffed his cheek. "It cannot. You are my son, little Zai. I won't let it harm you."
She lowered him from her embrace, chuckling more when he drew his feet up and hovered above the floor, not ready to leave her.
"Zai Sheng..." She smiled. "Stand up Roy."
After a disconcerting moment of darkness, Mustang was standing in front of her in full uniform, a man once again. He towered over the delicate girl now, but still she looked at him with such compassion, pity almost, that he felt small nonetheless. She took his hand in hers and he noticed the bullet wound for the first time since arriving in the strange other-world.
"You're my mother." Mustang said gently, struck by her freckles, her black eyes and upturned lip. So much detail, so true and solid in front of him. "Are you real?"
She squeezed his hand and a bolt of pain shot up his arm.
"Hang on to yourself, Zai Sheng." She said as a breeze blew her hair about her in a soft, dark halo.
A tremor shook the building, causing dust and small stones to fall loose. The solitary window rattled in its fixing.
"I don't understand. What's happening? The serpent..."
The girl's expression darkened as she looked past him towards the door. Then raising herself on her toes, she touched the back of his neck and lowered his head towards her. A sad reminiscence painted her features and sighing warmly, she placed a tender kiss on his forehead before lowering herself back to her soles.
"So much taller than your mother." She said with mock annoyance. She turned her head and surveyed him. "I never wanted to leave you but-" she looked thoughtful and nodded resolutely, "I'm glad I did. You are a great man now, a leader of men. I am proud. I am very proud and I love you very much."
The house shook violently, almost as if it was struck from outside. The window shattered in its frame and a tired shelf fell from the wall with a loud clatter. A roaring wind had erupted around the house, tearing through the open space of the door and racing about the room. Mustang was finding it difficult to hear.
"I love you." She said again and drove her thumb into his open wound.
Mustang yelled out and tried to draw his hand away but it was no good, his mother held fast.
"Keep hold of yourself son. My son. I am so, so proud."
"You – you can't be. You don't understand. I've done such terrible, unforgivable things."
She spoke with wonder, her eyes wide with excitement. "But you will do such brilliant things. You had to sin, Zai Sheng: it was your own sacrifice for daring to imagine a different future. Even in your darkest moments I have loved you, and so has she."
Her words were almost lost in the raging of the wind, and to his horror, Mustang saw that it was starting to find purchase on her. Her very essence was beginning to be blown free, tiny particles coming loose only to be caught up in the whirling air.
"No! Wait!" He cried out again as more pain raced into his hand and up his arm. What was she doing? "Wait!"
"You are loved. So proud..."
She was little more than a shadow now, a beautiful silhouette taken by the gale.
"This is good bye, Zai Sheng."
In seconds, she was no more and Mustang was alone again. A panel in the wall was torn loose and flung inwards, the space revealing an army of serpents writhing and seething on the outside of the house, a black sea of scales and flashing eyes. Another came loose with a wrenching squeal of stressed wood before it too snapped free. The house was being pulled apart: the tin roofing bent back and cast upwards into the burnt sky, the floor boards shuddering and collapsing about him.
It was a feeling he could only compare to travelling backwards on a train. He was dragged back by some unseen force, the pain in his hand almost unbearable now. As he left the bizarre, abandoned Xingese town, he was graced with one last image:
His mother, youthful and wild, standing in an open street while about her ankle was entwined a pitch black serpent. Her right foot, bare and pale, had crushed its head.
Ed transmuted his right arm into a sword as a figure emerged from the dwindling smoke. He swallowed and tossed his head, readying himself for whatever it was he would meet. His mouth fell open when he saw Mustang stumble forward untidily, gripping his right wrist and staring in amazement at his hand.
"Mustang!" Ed shouted, inching forward on his feet. He was still wary of the transmutation and of the possibility that it may not be Mustang at all.
The Colonel didn't appear to hear him but was still transfixed on his hand. Suddenly, a laugh broke from him: an incongruous, uncharacteristic sound in the massive warehouse.
"Hey Colonel." Ed groused, getting a little closer. "Hey you! Whoever you are!"
Now the Colonel looked up, still clasping his hand. He was smiling, actually smiling. There was no way Mustang was in there.
"Hurry up and talk already so I can make sure you're not Mustang and kick your ass."
"I'm me." The man said to no one in particular, his eyes searching and distant, like he had just woken up. He looked at his hand again. "I'm Mustang."
He held up his bloody palm as if it was evidence and made a confirming 'hmm' noise. Behind him, the swirling mists faltered and died down even more.
"She used my hand."
"Huh?" Ed uttered, lowering his weapon – just a little.
"The pain tethered me. She used my hand."
"Colonel?"
"You don't know how happy I am to see this on the end of my arm." Mustang said, gesturing to the mangled extremity.
Ed rolled his eyes. With that 'more than odd' comment, the soul inhabiting the body was almost definitely Mustang's. "Yeah, great. Now can you put that thing away; it's making me queasy."
Mustang grinned and hearing the cracking of the dying transmutation, turned to look at it. He continued to study the reaction as he backed towards Ed whose weapon was raised again warily at the approach.
Turning back, he met Ed's steady golden eyes before looking at the blade. He prodded its tip with the pad of his forefinger.
"You planning to use that on me, kid?" Mustang quipped, then clenched his bloody hand under his left arm to quell the throbbing.
"Wouldn't be the first time..." The teen groused.
Mustang's eyes darkened. "That reminds me..."
Ed looked up, lowering his arms to his side. "What?"
Mustang leant forward and pointed his finger in the younger man's face. "What the hell were you doing running towards the array like that!"
Ed balked, his face turning red and his temper flaring. "Me? What the hell were you doing activating an array that had you babbling like an idiot when it was etched into your damn shoulder!"
"At least I studied the bloody thing before rushing headfirst into it. It's exactly because of the array on my damn shoulder I was able to walk away from that in one piece!" Mustang lied, but Ed wasn't to know that.
Ed scoffed. "Sure it wasn't your giant ego that saved you?"
"Size matters, Fullmetal." Mustang smirked.
"Yeah, I saw it on the calling cards you left in all the phone booths around headquarters."
"Are you tall enough to reach those?"
"I'm tall enough to run you through and tell the others you didn't make it out of that thing with your own soul in ta-."
"My soul..." Mustang interrupted, his face changing from a mocking smirk to stone cold seriousness in a split second. Turning awkwardly, he looked back at the clearing mists. The gushing wind had died down to light breeze and the noise had all but fallen away. He touched lightly at his chest and his dark eyes found Ed's, dancing back and forth brightly as they registered the new lightness in him. If he was standing here in his own skin, absent of another, then that meant that Po-Yang, Mot and the larger woman had been subjected to the transmutation from which he was expelled. Looking at the back of his hand again, he couldn't help but wonder just what would have become of him if his mother, or something within himself acting as his mother, had failed to intervene. He knew that his enquiry would be answered with the clearing of the mist.
"Po-Yang... he's gone?" Ed asked, worry beginning to seep into him as the dissipating smoke started to reveal a solid shape.
"Yeah..." Mustang drawled out, absently rubbing at his wound. "But to where? Or what?"
Both alchemists stood and watched the room clear and both shirked abruptly as a harrowing scream tore out from the dark, undulating mass sprawled in the middle of the circle.
"Fullmetal... You didn't happen to bring a pair of my gloves with you did you?" Mustang asked, licking his lips and keeping his eyes fixed on the steaming lump before him. Something long and wiry broke free from it and swung madly in the air.
"No... didn't really have the time to-"
"Fancy transmuting something for me to, you know, hurt things with?"
Another rasping and many layered cry shattered the eerie stillness of the warehouse. Ed became acutely aware of Mustang panting heavily beside him. His eyes wandered upward to study the man. Something strange shifted in the Colonel's countenance; something anxious and very dark. It wasn't dissimilar to the face he wore when he flung the uniform at Ed, but it was more focussed now, more intent. Ed was glad he wasn't the recipient of that fathomless gaze. A bead of sweat ran along the man's brow and slid to catch in his dark lashes – he didn't blink.
"Eh..."
Mustang licked his lips again, and Ed noted how his muscles were trembling in waves across his pale skin.
"Maybe you should sit this one out, Col-"
Mustang quirked an eyebrow and tilted his head towards the young alchemist, eyes still glued to the circle. It was difficult to make out in the dim light of the warehouse, but it looked as though the mass was lumbering sideways in a struggle to stand. Ed's stomach dropped when he saw the flash of not two, but six red eyes breaking through the encroaching darkness. Just what exactly had Mustang created?
"Okay, okay..." Ed mumbled and trotted over to some rough iron fixings. Clapping his hands, he touched the dense metal and fashioned one into a near perfect replica of a military issue sword. "You know how to use one of these, Mustang?"
The Colonel didn't answer but simply held out his hand. Ed winced as he passed the heavy weight into Mustang's injured right hand before the man transferred it into his left.
"You have a plan, C-" Ed started but was cut off as the shape reared up, the faint light from the lofty windows finally revealing it to them.
Standing at least eight feet in the air, it was truly a horror. Ed was right: Mustang having been one of the bodies to escape the transmutation with his soul in tact had left the array with little option but to make do with the remaining materials. Somehow, Mustang had managed to crush the two bodies and three souls together to form a monster fitting of his darkest imaginings. It swayed on two thin legs while two smaller, redundant limbs hung limply from its hip joints. A thin torso stretched up in a twisted collection of exposed ribs and bleeding organs to where the neck branched off to three heads, each a maddening blend of human and reptile. Oversized fangs broke the faces of the beast while thin, useless tongues lolled grotesquely from drooling mouths. Ed recognised the gleaming, smooth parts of the monster as being the calcified materials of the female alchemist's work. Those parts wanting of flesh were supplemented with stringy tendrils of smoke that billowed about the creature dramatically, the largest being a tail-like appendage that shot out and shone yellow-grey in the dim light. Recognising the vaguest resemblance of the two alchemists in the outermost heads, Ed supposed the middle head must be the altered visage of Wei Po-Yang. It was that soul's burnished red eyes that held the attention of the Flame Alchemist, and Ed understood immediately why the Colonel had fallen into his feral, obsessive silence.
It was akin to being faced with his own soul in the body of another. After years of housing the mysterious passenger, the Colonel was now faced with his own impossibility wrought into this terrifying creature of his clever, dangerous mind. Ed knew from experience that there was only one way the human mind could comprehend such a paradox: by killing the 'other'.
Clearly, the beast perceived the walking contradiction of Mustang at the very same moment, as the three gruesome faces twisted into angry messes of hanging flesh and protruding teeth. Two of the heads screeched while that on the left, seeming to be that of the slim male, shed thick bloody tears and whined pitifully.
"Mustang..." Ed said, scared to move in case he inspired action in the older man.
"Ed." Mustang replied curtly, weighing the sword in his left hand.
"You been keeping that thing inside you all this time, Colonel?"
"Guess so..."
"Wow." Ed deadpanned. "That uniform sure hides a lot."
The Colonel's trance broke and he turned his eyes to see Ed standing stiffly with his blade at the ready.
"You're telling me..." He turned back, took a breath and looked for the world like he was about to slump to sitting. Instead, he skipped forward and broke into a fierce sprint, sword stretched out to his side.
Ed swore and ran forward too, struggling to keep up with the Colonel despite his younger years and better health.
The creature, seeing their approach, yowled and lurched forward on its skinny legs, four pale arms flailing for balance.
"Zai Sheng!" The middle head rasped, its fiery eyes following the Colonel as he darted sideways.
"I need a run up, Fullmetal!" The Colonel shouted as he circled Po-Yang.
Ed nodded and dropped to his knees, clapping his hands as he fell and slamming them to the cold floor. Where the Colonel ran, a walkway raised out of the floor levelling him with the creature's torso, then its heads. The younger man cursed as the Colonel lost his footing and stumbled slightly on the high, thin wall. The raging beast swung wildly, tottering on its weak legs and following Mustang's path. As the female head snapped out with her long, gnarled fangs, the Colonel appeared to faint, falling sideways off the platform.
"No!" Ed shouted but then found he was smiling wildly with the questionable guts of the man.
What Ed had presumed to be a fatal error, was actually a strike at the monstrous triad. The Colonel had used the unmatchable force of gravity to slice his alchemised sword through the creature's neck. Having succeeded in catching only half of it, Mustang scrambled away as the neck gave some and the head fell sideways, a shower of black blood spraying with hisses from the gaping wound. Ed fought the urge to cover his ears at the creature's roaring as he darted forward to slot in with the Colonel's assault. Both alchemists slipped in the tar-like blood, Ed managing to clap again, transmuting a thick beam of rough hewn floor to slam into the monster, knocking it backwards off its frail legs and onto its rump.
The Colonel struggled to his feet, still slipping some and laughed at Ed's attack.
"So this is where all those masonry bills come from, huh?"
Ed huffed and moved over to help Mustang steady himself, still shocked by the wild look in his eyes. Ed wondered if there was more to Mustang's sharp breaths and dilated pupils. Perhaps the savageness was part soul-paradox and part morbid homecoming for a soldier who had lived through a horrendously violent conflict. Either way, it was something Ed never thought he would see, but there again, the week had been full of surprises. Nonetheless, he to admit it: there was something strangely exhilarating about fighting side by side with his commander.
"Shut up, bastard." He grumbled.
Mustang wiped the sword and cast a darkly humoured look at Ed. "It's good! I'm glad we're paying you for something. Ha!"
Ed didn't have a chance to process the oddly light remark as the monster recovered, dead head of Kamaka bumping upside down against the pink, fleshy scales of the neck. Po-Yang's eyes flared as they found the Colonel again. The monster, seeing the efficacy of Mustang's attack, lunged forward then allowed its legs to give out, gravity pulling it to the ground with dead speed. Ed threw himself to one side of the careening body while Mustang fell to the other. Using all four of its hands for leverage, the monster pushed itself up, saliva hanging in thick strings from its mouths.
"Zai Sheng Shi!" The middle head screamed in frustration, spit fluttering out with the force of its roar.
"Why does he keep saying that?" Ed panted.
"It's my name." Mustang answered gruffly, dodging the smoke-tail as it swiped with a 'whooshing' sound in his direction.
Ed stamped his foot. "What!" Huge, reptilian monsters notwithstanding he continued to be shocked by the odd smattering of facts issuing from the Colonel.
Mustang merely shrugged. His eyes shot open as he saw the tail rebound and whip round towards Ed.
"Down!" He cried.
Ed rolled sideways and was on his feet again in an instant. Racing under the creature as it padded about him awkwardly, he thrust upwards with his sword and cut a long, black trench in the bone-skin of one of the right arms.
Po-Yang and Mot wailed in unison and swung one way, then the other, trying to find purchase on the diminutive alchemist.
As Ed exited from under the rump, Mustang approached the creature from the front. His eyes locked onto Po-Yang's and he froze where he stood with chest heaving.
Ed cleaned off his blade a little, sure that the Colonel was continuing to fight. When he heard nothing but silence, he looked up from the bloodied mess of his blond hair to see what was keeping Mustang.
From behind the monster, Ed could see his commander standing stock still, an unfamiliar emotion on his face. It was something beyond hatred, beyond fear, beyond anxiety and pride, far far past anything Ed had ever seen. He was reminded of the old war horse the Rockbell's had been forced to put down when it broke its leg. There was a wild eyed raging there too as the horse kicked and whinnied, its foaming flanks shivering with its furious emotion.
Judging from the leaping of the muscles in the beast's back, it was experiencing the same sensations. Ed could only compare it to two strong magnets placed against each other by an unseen hand. But there weren't two... there were three: the other alchemist, Mot.
"Colonel!" Ed shouted, stumbling round the side of the beast, now as still as a statue.
Mustang didn't answer. He was standing absolutely immobile, his sword hand still outstretched. It could almost be a photograph, almost, but it wasn't. Eventually, as Ed knew there would be, there was movement. By then it was too late to break the Colonel's stupor.
Mot, still in control of himself, swung the tail round to snatch at the Colonel's ankle. Ed hurried forward in time to see Mustang yanked off his feet, iron sword rattling as it hit the ground, followed by the bright, punctuating crack of his head on the concrete.
Ed slid on the black blood as he made his way towards Mustang, but by then the trance – like the eye contact – had been broken.
Po-Yang's mouth flew open and he roared with delight as he fell forward onto his four arms to crouch with leering face and snapping teeth above Mustang. Ed, quick and clever, managed to get under the beast as it fell. With one knee resting gracelessly across the Colonel's chest, he punched his automail arm up where it punctured Mot's neck. Ed gagged and cursed as a thick torrent of blood spilled out over his head, coating both him and the Colonel. He felt Mustang shift beneath him, all three figures now sliding and moaning in the slick puddle of blood. Mot groaned and sputtered above them, his eyes looking very human all of a sudden, despite their frightening red hue.
Po-Yang stretched his neck far back, the boney white of it glistening frightfully and issued two sharp barks. His ruby eyes slid back to see Mustang, and then Ed. A grin shaped his reptilian maw.
"Mine."
Cheers!