The Tales and Tails of Elric

Chapter 21

Left Behind

Alphonse struggled with his arms that were bound to his sides. There was nothing there to hold them down but they were stuck to him, magnetized. He pulled and pulled at them, laying helplessly on the floor of Rita's kitchen even now as the intruders were long gone. They were chasing his brother, who on his command flew out of the front door and into the night. Fuery had forgotten to lock the door behind him after he entered the house. Now his brother was out there all alone, or worse, with the scientists. Alphonse growled to himself as he gave another huge tug on his arms. They lazily moved an inch before snapping back to his sides. He gave a cry in anguish.

"A-Alphonse, c-can y-you st-st-stand?" Riza's weak stuttering voice cam out from across the room. Alphonse turned his head to see her and the small Sergeant laying helplessly on the floor. From the amount of electricity that were shot in them, Alphonse could have only guessed that their muscles were completely void of energy now, though he saw that they were both struggling to stand. They had managed only to fire two shots, one bullet each, out of their guns before they fell to the floor. One managed to hit the wall before it died while another flew into a china cabinet and break several dishes.

"I-I think so," he mumbled as he brought tried to maneuver his weight around to get his feet underneath him. At least they still worked. Two people had shot at him and Alphonse had tried to block them by holding up his hands but he should have known to just try and dodge. When an electric current runs through metal, it magnetizes and his arms were locked to his own metal body.

"Th-there sh-should be a p-pen i-in the k-k-kitchen dra-awer. T-transm-mute somethi-ing," she ordered him. Alphonse shakily forced his legs to stand, trying his best to keep his balance. He stumbled once before making his way over to one of the kitchen drawers. Since his hands were at least made out of leather, he could move them just not the wrists. It was a bit awkward but he opened the drawer carefully to find an arrangement of silverware. Wrong drawer. He cursed slightly and Fuery gave him the best surprised look he could manage at that moment.

"I-I thought E-E-Ed w-was th-the foul m-m-mouth," the kid muttered.

"My brother is being chased, I was targetted, and we are completely helpless to fix the situation. I think I can curse if I want to," Alphonse scolded unhappily as he pulled the next drawer open. When the scientists stormed the house and subdued them, they completely ignored the military officers while in a struggling attempt they tried to carry him away. They wanted to take him and Alphonse was terrified to say the least. He fought the best he could with no balance and no hands making it impossible for the scientists to even move him. They luckily gave up but they no sooner dropped him then they were heading towards the door for his brother. Alphonse was in no mood to keep his vocabulary controlled especially now that the drawer he opened proved only to have oven mitts piled in it. "Mrs. Hawkeye for fucks sake, where are your pens!" Alphonse cried.

"C-Calm down. T-t-two to the left," she softly said. Alphonse saw her attempt to get up, but she only managed to prop herself up on her arms. He suddenly felt a bit bad for yelling since as he was practically useless to go help his brother, she and Kain were even more so. With a quick apology, he rushed over to the drawer and opened it with a flick of the hand. There were about ten pens in there he picked up the closest one and began to carefully etch a circle on the side of his thigh, the only place his hand would reach. Alchemic energy zapped around and the metal that made his arms soon lost their magnetic power and fell limp from his sides. He tossed the pen grumpily to the side and quickly hauled Riza and Kain into the closest kitchen chairs he could find. Fuery didn't even look like he could hold himself up. His spectacles were skewed on his head and Alphonse hastily straightened them for him before quickly rushing towards the door.

"Wh-where are you going?" Kain asked, his voice quivering in fright.

"I need to find brother. They are after him! He's out there alone!"

"Th-they already h-have him, Alphonse," Riza told him. The armour froze in midstep as he heard those words stumble out of Mrs. Hawkeye's mouth. He turned around to see her slumped over the table, too tired to even keep herself sitted straight.

"No, they don't. I will find him and bring him home! How can you say that? We need to make sure! He's a fast runner, he can fight! He-" Alphonse scolded the woman but stopped suddenly. The men had stormed through the back door. If they truely knew that Edward was there, they would have known that he would have tried to bolt. Those scientists would have been prepared. Alphonse choked as his armour started to tremble and creak. "Th-they had s-someone outside d-didn't they? W-waiting f-for him. H-how did you-"

"I-I didn't until th-they broke i-in. Bl-black Hayate d-didn't b-bark," she said. They had let Black Hayate outside into the yard to take care of some of its business. It was still just a little puppy but it's voice carried. The dog would have alerted the entire neighborhood if there were any intruders. Alphonse staggered over to the kitchen window and peered out into the fenced half of the front yard. The limp figure of Black Hayate laid on the lush green grass unmoving. Alphonse yelped in a small panick as he quickly barged out the back door. He raced down the steps and across the lawn to where the small fragile creature was laying. He was expecting blood, a bullet wound, but the only thing he saw on the dog's undamaged body was a small orange dart. Alphonse reached down and plucked it out of its fur. Black Hayate's chest rose and fell in a drug induced sleep. Alphonse bundled it up in his arms before quickly carrying it back into the house.

Kain looked like he was going to cry when he saw Black Hayate presumably dead in his arms. It was Kain who rescued the pup from a rainy day on the streets, and he was still obviously attached to it. Alphonse set it on the table between the two soldiers and Fuery squeaked slightly seeing Black Hayate.

"They used a tranquilizer," Alphonse reassured the young man, setting the dart on the table. Shakily, Riza picked it up to examine it. She looked tired beyond beleif but she was slowly getting her strength back.

"Th-they don't want to kill a-anyone. Th-That keeps the in-investigations d-down," she muttered as she let the dart drop to the table. "Fuery, call the Colonel."

"A-alphonse," Kain stuttered looking longingly at him. It took the suit of armour a few seconds to relize that the sergeant still couldn't stand yet and needed him to get the phone. He rushed over to the rotart and brought it over to him. with shaky hands the soldier dialed a number. After a few silent seconds he hung up the phone and dialed another number. "No one's picking up. M-maybe he's on his way home," he suggested. Riza bit her lip as she thought, emotion betraying her face. The Colonel needed to be warned but he was out of touch. The sooner they got to tracking where Edward was taken too, the easier it would be to find him but none of them were in the state to go out on a hunt. Alphonse wanted to barge out of that house right that instant and start beating the damn scientists who scared his brother, who hurt his brother, and took his brother away from him. There had to be some hope that he was still out there, but then Alphonse caught sight of Hayate sleeping on the table. He knew that he was captured. There were people waiting for him. But that just made him more angry. They tried to protect his brother, moving him away from the people who were watching the Colonel's house but he was still taken. How was he supposed to help his brother if he couldn't even protect him?

Kain dialed another number, Jean's, to see if he was home. He would go nuts if he heard that Edward was taken again but it would be a necessary pain because they would definitely need him. Alphonse wondered what Benjamin's reaction would be. He helped look after Edward quite often in his stay and even taught him to try and calm down during a panic attack. He doubted that he would be a very strong asset on a mission but he would definitely take Edward's kidnapping quite hard.

"Wait...," Alphonse muttered to himself. Kain was stopped in midsentence as he was now trying to calm the berserk Jean down. Alphonse gasped as the realisation suddenly hit him. "Benjamin's home! He should have picked up the phone!" he exclaimed.

"Maybe he's busy-"

"What would he be doing at this time of hour?" Alphonse scolded Kain. "We need to get over there! What if something happened?"

"Alphonse, do you know how t-to drive?" Riza asked him suddenly out of the blue. He shook his head. "You're going to learn."

...

Benjamin flinched as burning light filled his vision. He felt himself being dragged out of the closet by the chair he was tied to and roughly shaken. He groaned as his head spun and his muscles stung from being sore. He was sitting in that chair for who knew how long and all he wanted to do was to get some more sleep. A hand repetetively slapped his face just lightly so that he would arouse from the cloudy field he was in.

"Benjamin, Benjamin!" he heard the worried voice of Alphonse call to him. He opened his eyes to see the helmet staring back at him, emotionless as ever only to be betrayed by the quivering voice. His eyes widened as he gasped in sudden alert.

"Warff oy ey av ackig ip eferwhar!" he said, the gag in his mouth muffling everything. After a confused pause the boy reached behind him and untied the thing from his mouth. He coughed slightly as he tried to get the nasty feeling out of him and stretch his jaw muscles out. "They had tracking chips, everywhere. There was one in his coat-" he breathed as he clariffied.

"But you had Edward's coat-"

"They came in and took it," he replied, coughing again as his throat was dry. "They took his coat, and one man took one of Roy's uniforms I was washing. They stuffed me in the closet and left so I couldn't warn you-

"Warn us of what?" another voice asked. Benjamin leaned past the tall armor to see Kain Fuery slumped over one of his kitchen tables. He and Riza didn't look too well, almost as if they couldn't hold themselves up just like him. He groaned to himself and let out a little curse. If Alphonse could have showed emotion, he would have been utterly surprised. Benjamin hated to curse. He hated violence. He hated all of those things because they are what a perfect butler shouldn't be, but there are sometimes that normal vocabulary just couldn't work.

"This was a bad idea. I told you this was a bad idea! Now they have him! We should have just stayed here. Power in numbers. Roy wouldn't mind blowing down his own house with his alchemy. The kid would have been safe!" he stumbled, angered and fustrated words collided with each other as he forced them out. "they would have found him just like they did tonight but they wouldn't have been able to get him and now-"

"Benjamin please calm down!" Alphonse ordered him. "Just tell us what happened."

"That one guy is a dentist! Or he does it as a hobby or something. I heard him talk about it while I was on the floor. They zapped me with something and I couldn't move. He planted a chip in the coat. I found it before they broke into the house because they have terrible sewing skills, just terrible! They didn't even use the right thread or the right color, no wonder I found it. He planted a chip in Edward too. It must be in his mouth or something! They always knew where he was."

"Do you know where they went off to?"

"The lot of them left my kitchen in a mess with their dirty shoes and smashing about to go to the office and pick up the documents that you uncovered at the hospital! One of them bled all over my newly waxed tiles! Now untie me from this chair!" he commanded the boy who was so head deep in his story he forgot about releasing him from the binds. The armour quickly reached down and easily broke the clothes line that bound him and he stood up, giving his sore muscles a taunt. He winced but continued to stumble across the room back towards the pantry where he was tied up in for so long.

"One of them was injured when they broke into my house, was that you?" Riza asked, her voice stronger than she looked. Benjamin nodded his head as he grabbed a mop and a bucket from the pantry.

"I threw a kitchen knife. It wasn't deep. He was quickly patched up by one of the other people," he mumbled stiffly, not wanting to take any pride for hurting someone even in defense. He staggered over to the sink and set the bucket in it to fill it with water.

"Benjamin, a-are you really cleaning now?" Fuery asked him but he just turned around and glared rather angrilly at the young man.

"You deal with your problems and I'll deal with mine. I have a messed up floor to clean, several dishes to do including the damn knives, laundry to finish, a broken table to fix, and a broken door that still wasn't fixed because the repair man never came! I don't want Edward to come back to a filthy house!" he yelled at him. Kain seemed to pull back slightly as he was scolded like a child but he wasn't upset. "Its your job to bring him back, it is my job to prepare for his return." All three of the guests looked to each other in quite a shock but Benjamin was already forcing his way through mopping the floors. He needed to fix all of this, he needed to make it look like it never happened. The group started to take up hushed voices to each other, trying to figure out their next steps.

"Lieutenant Havoc is already on his way to Head Quarters to find the Colonel. I told him to call here when he got there," he heard Fuery say as he furiously scrubbed at a small stain of blood on his floor. "It might take a few minutes for him to get there but-"

Ring Ring Ring

...

"Jean?" Riza's voice came through the phone.

"Its... Its gone!"

"what is, Jean?"

"Ev-Everything! Everything is gone! th-the files, our research, th-the Colonel! They are all gone!" Havoc exclaimed into the phone, still trying to escape from his shock. The entire office was turned upside down. Papers were everywhere and the drawers were all overturned. The scientists or whoever they were stole everything. None of their evidence was left. What was worse though, there were scorch marks throughout the room. The Colonel had definitely been here when the intruders came in. That was the only reason why the man would have risked setting his office on fire. Black singes in the carpet led all the way from the far corner of the room towards his desk. Jean followed them, carrying the phone with him hoping that the cord was long enough.

"Jean, do you know where he went?" He shook his head pitifully as he examined one of the walls that had a transmutation circle on it.

"I-I don't know! There was a fight here, that's for sure. There's burns in the carpets, transmutation circles everywhere!" he cried spinning away from the wall. "He could be anywhere! A-and now- now they have the Chief!"

"Jean, we will find him-"

"I know but... can't the world give him a fucking break? H-he's just a kid," he mumbled as he bent down and examined a fold in the carpet where a scuffle must have broke out. "How is Alphonse doing? He must be terrified-"

"Rather angry actually. Protectiveness seems to run in the family."

"It has to with what they went through." Jean straightened up and started across the room again but suddenly stopped in his place. Something white caught his eye as it poked out from behind one of the filing cabinets that was set against the wall. It couldn't have been a file for it seemed to be a cloth of somesort. He slowly crept over to the cabinet and slid a hand into the crevice to pull the object out. As it came out Jean nearly felt a heart attack coming on. His voice was caught in his throught and his entire being seemed to freeze up tight. In his hand was the embrodiered glove of his commanding officer. It was singed slightly from its recent use but worse of all, it was discarded on the floor without the Colonel in sight.

"L-lieutenant...," he whimpered slightly, his voice betraying him.

"Jean?" he heard her reply questionably as a long silence spread through their conversation.

"The Colonel... The Colonel...," he stumbled not really knowing how to tell her, or even tell himself that the man was gone. "I found his gloves."

...

Benjamin, drove the three guests from the Colonel's house all the way to the office as the morning sun began to lick the horizon. It was late and none of them had a fun evening. The ride was silent and fast, no one wanting to talk in order to keep their minds focused at the topic at hand. Along with the elder Elric, the Colonel had gone missing. The man never left his ignition gloves anywhere without him. Benjamin even noted that right after the ishvalan war, the Colonel would occasionally take his gloves into the bathroom with him when he took a shower even if they would prove quite useless afterwards. It was something ingrained into the man ever since he got them. Having Jean find them discarded on the floor they all easily assumed the worse.

Benjamin had quickly apologised for what he said earlier in the house. He knew the panick of the attack was still overwhelming in his systems and the shock, he knew, would never fully go away. He was assaulted, something that never happened before and something he wished never to happen again. The thought that this all could have been prevented, the thought that they had just lost the very child that they were going to protect made him irrational and say things that he shouldn't have. For a while, he didn't want any part in the boy's rescue. He apologised for that too because for that instant his mind clicked to the distraction of cleaning, to preoccupy himself with something to get away from the reality of what happened. And in that time, he forgot the number one rule of being a butler was; his loyalty lies not to the house you serve, but to the people you serve under. Benjamin wasn't the kind of man to go running around on rescue missions. Though he was surely brave enough to, it was just something he couldn't do. He washed, he cleaned, and he worked for hospitality. If that would be beneficial in somesort of way, he would do it. However, Benjamin knew that no matter how scared he was or how useless he might be every little thing counts, as he told the younger Elric a few days ago. He needed to do his part even if he was terrified out of his life.

Finding the Colonel and the traumatised Elric was top priority for all of them. Seeing that Alphonse was underage and didn't have a liscense while Riza and Kain were incapable of drving safely, Benjamin took the wheel in order to make sure that they didn't get hurt in their own efforts to rescue their friends. As they arrived to the Base, Jean Havoc was outside quickly puffing down one of his cigarettes in an attempt to calm his nerves. The bud was all the way down to the nub and he still looked rather on edge. No one blamed him. They all quickly flooded the office and the man gave them a lay out of what happened, where he found the gloves, and everything he did from there on forth.

"I-I searched his desk but they were all scraps of doodles or useless papers. I-I was hoping he hid something or lost a few papers that could help but... they took it all," the man shuddered. Benjamin layed his hand on the man's shoulder to comfort him in some way.

"Did you check the filing cabinets?" Kain asked as he opened one of the drawers which seemed to be spring loaded with the man's unfiled paper work and there was quickly a mess of the floor. Benjamin knew it to be the same where ever the Colonel traveled.

"Yes, it took me forever to stuff those things back in but none of them were anything -" Jean started to complain however Alphonse's quiet voice interupted him. The young lad was sitting by the desk with one of the drawers drawn open. A few mis matched pieces of scrap paper were caught in his hands and he was looking at them curiously.

"Mr. Havoc, I think I found something!" Everyone sprinted over to the lad and looked over the boy's shoulder to see a list of women's telephone numbers and dates.

"Alphonse this is no time to be snooping around! This is a crisis, your brother-" the man started.

"No! These are coded!" Alphonse scolded him, cutting the man's aggravation short. "I don't know what they say, but they looked rushed at the end. He was probably trying to finish writing what he had while they stormed in," he said examining the papers.

"Where did you find them?" Hawkeye asked curiously, looking them over herself. Alphonse pointed down to the opened drawer.

"They were stuffed in here," he said. "I-I don't know how long it will take me to decode these things, he smeared some of the ink while writing, but I will do it. "

"This is the only thing we have Alphonse," Hawkeye told him. The boy glanced down at the paper as if the world rested on his shoulders, which to all of them, it did. Benjamin knew the kid was a genius, but he hoped that alone would be enough. He never knew that any one of the Colonel's papers could have been coded, he didn't even know how to tell. There was a light chuckle from the armour which made him all frown slightly.

"I-I hate how things just loop around like this. Just imagine, the thing I was doing with my brother right before he was taken was decoding Marcoh's notes. Now it looks like this would be the only thing to help him," the boy softly mumbled. "Let's hope it works."