Chapter 21
A Nazi soldier milled around the Venice airport with a slowly-dwindling stack of pamphlets in hand. Each person he passed was roughly handed a pamphlet and anyone who protested subsequently received a cold stare, causing many of the recipients to gulp a little and look down at the piece of folded paper in their hands and see a picture of a young man with fair hair and serious eyes staring back at them and the name Edward Elric written beneath it. Below that was a stern order written in German, English, and Italian: If you see this man, contact us immediately. Many native Italians walked away from the Nazi hoping to never have the misfortune to see the young man, because they knew that anyone being sought by the Nazis was a marked man.
Unseen by the Nazi soldier, a tall man of impressive height and build wearing purposefully nondescript clothes tossed the pamphlet into the trash, heading in the opposite direction. He came up beside a small old man reading a local newspaper and took his elbow, guiding him in the direction of their flight terminal. The old man stumbled a little and leaned heavily against the taller man, but no one gave them a second glance as they passed through the crowds.
"Goddamn, you're really blind, old man," Edward muttered, mouth twisting into a little smirk a second later at the irony of his statement.
He was dressed as an old man, after all, complete with a short gray wig and Hohenheim's glasses, which were messing with his depth perception. He tripped slightly on one of the stairs and almost went down, but Hohenheim's strong grip kept him from an ugly meeting with the ground below. He cursed again under his breath.
"Well, would you rather we try walking out of here as ourselves?" asked Hohenheim, who donned a brown hat and tan trenchcoat. "I'm sure it would be quite a show we'd make trying to get out of here."
"Shut up and keep walking or I'll smack you with my cane," Edward croaked in his best old man voice. Hohenheim grinned wryly.
"Look at you. Prepared for retirement already."
Edward glared as best he could without going cross-eyed through the glasses. He hefted the cane in his hand and shook it in a brandishing way.
"I think this will look good in your head. Wanna see if I'm right?"
"No, thank you," his father said cheerfully.
"What did you get us?" Edward said, changing topics quite suddenly. He was peering at the tickets in Hohenheim's free hand. The older Elric shrugged.
"I don't know. I just took the first thing they offered that could get us close to, if not all the way into, Iskenderun."
Edward stopped short, causing Hohenheim to stop.
"What is it?"
Edward just pointed wordlessly and Hohenheim looked.
"Ah," the elder Elric said when he noticed the blimp waiting patiently for them.
A few minutes later, they were on board the blimp and took a seat at a secluded table in a corner of the main room where the shadows were a little darker. Edward hopped into the chair in the corner and opened his newspaper. Hohenheim sat down with a little more grace and looked around the room for a moment, taking note of all the opulently decorated people surrounding them at the other tables. No one noticed the two Elrics perched in the corner.
"So?" the elder Elric asked. Edward looked over at him curiously.
"We made it," the older man finished.
"Hmph," said Edward and he turned to the next page of his paper before leaning towards Hohenheim.
"When we're airborne and heading out of this damn city, then I'll get excited," he said, and promptly went back to trying to decipher the Italian-written newspaper around his father's glasses.
Hohenheim chuckled and just glanced out the window, noticing the Nazi soldier approaching almost too late. Edward didn't notice as he tensed and peered down at the man who waved at one of the workers on the blimp, commanding them not to shut the door just yet with the wave of his hands. When the man had boarded and was out of sight, Hohenheim looked around desperately, trying to scrape together some kind of plan. A waiter came over just then and placed some creamers in a bowl onto the table between the Elrics. As he moved away, Hohenheim got up and followed him, putting an arm around the man and muttering to him quietly as they vanished together into one of the back rooms.
Meanwhile, the Nazi soldier who had boarded was moving around through the passengers, shoving the pamphlet with Edward's picture on it into their faces and giving them a sternly questioning look. Many people shook their heads. They hadn't seen the young man. He moved on to the next table and repeated the process until he wound up by the corner where Edward sat unawares. The soldier took one look at the "old man" squinting vainly at the newspaper and approached, hooking a finger over the top of the newspaper and pulling it down to reveal himself. Edward squinted at the finger holding his newspaper, and then blinked up owlishly through his father's glasses at the man standing before him. The Nazi soldier smirked.
"Guten tag," he said, then continued in German, "heading out of the city, are we, mein herr?"
Edward had no answer to give; he was still trying to make out the man's face within the fuzzy pink blob that he assumed was the man's head.
Hohenheim saved him. He came up behind the Nazi, dressed in the ill-fitting jacket of the waiter whom he'd felled with a well-placed punch and had stuffed into one of the bathroom stalls.
"Guten tag, mein herr," he said. "May I see your ticket?"
"Eh?" the Nazi said, not understanding English. He turned around to face Hohenheim, and his eyes widened, but before he could say a word, the eldest Elric clocked him in the jaw with his fist, knocking him back across the table. Edward stood up suddenly, just as surprised as the other patrons, who cried out in alarm. Evidently not hearing them, Hohenheim decked the man again when he tried to rise, then grabbed the man by the shirt front and threw him out the window of the blimp. He turned back around, wiping his hands together, and suddenly noticed all the horrified looks on the faces of the other passengers. He casually put a hand on his hip and threw his thumb in the direction the Nazi had gone.
"No ticket," he said in a very nonchalant tone.
He'd never seen so many people brandish tickets so quickly in his life.
Dinner had passed quietly, which was probably the quietest Edward had ever been at dinner before in his entire life. He had removed his old man disguise about an hour ago, the beginnings of a headache starting from wearing his father's glasses for too long. They had discussed strategy after landing in Iskenderun and what they were going to do about finding the uranium bomb, and when that was over, they'd just sat there in awkward silence, Hohenheim looking out the window and sipping his scotch while Edward sat staring blankly at the cup of coffee wrapped loosely in his hands. He fished for something to say, anything at all, but found himself at a loss for words. He could think of a few things he wanted to tell his father, but none of them were good, and his head hurt him too much to want to start an argument.
Finally, Hohenheim looked at him.
"So after we rescue Alphonse and get the uranium bomb back, what happens?"
Edward looked up at him, confused.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what happens? Do we get on a plane and fly back to New York and resume our lives as usual?"
Edward blinked, not understanding where his father was going with this line of questioning.
"I guess so, yeah," he answered.
A shadow crossed Hohenheim's face.
"I see," he said in mysterious tone. Edward just stared at him, but as he opened his mouth to reply, he suddenly realized something strange was going on. He stared at the shadows on the table cast from the late afternoon sun.
"Edward?" Hohenheim asked.
"Shit," Edward hissed, standing up. It was then that he noticed the suspicious looks of the other passengers. "Double shit."
"Edward? What's wrong?"
Edward gave his father a level stare.
"They're turning us around."
"They're what??" Hohenheim asked, getting to his feet.
"They're taking us back to Italy."
"I swear to God, Dad! I can't take you anywhere anymore!!"
"Hey! I thought that it would take them a lot longer to realize their radio was dead!"
"Hurry up!!"
Hohenheim followed his son down the metal gangplank running along the very bottom of the blimp. Edward seemed to know where he was going as he led them down a little farther to a small ladder extending down into open air. What lay at the bottom of the rungs was a small, two person plane. Edward was already in the cockpit setting the engine by the time Hohenheim clambered into the backseat. His father leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder, and Edward snapped a curious look back at him.
"I didn't know you knew how to fly a plane!!" the older Elric said. Edward made contact, and the propeller on the front of the plane started whirling into motion.
"Fly? Yes!" he said. "Land?"
He detached the plane from it's hooked by pulling a little release lever above his head.
"…more or less…"
Hohenheim smiled nervously.
With practiced ease, Edward guided the plane down and away from the blimp, swiftly leaving it behind. He'd spent a lot of time flying planes back when he'd studied rocketry with Dr. Oberth in Germany. For one reason, he thought that if he was going to fly a rocket into space, he should probably learn how to fly one on Earth first. For another…it was just a really fun thing to do. That first flight had been nothing short of terrifying, but once he got past the horrified moment of what the hell is holding this thing up, he'd found the whole experience exhilarating. He'd been flying planes ever since.
An alarmed shout from Hohenheim shook him out of his reverie and he glanced back over his shoulder to see two planes approaching behind him, one on the left and one on the right.
"Crap!" Edward yelled. "How much worse can this get?"
He regretted asking that when the plane on his left suddenly opened fired.
"Son of a--! Quit making me eat my words, Murphy!"
Edward looked at his father over his shoulder.
"Hang on, Dad!"
Hohenheim sank down into his seat and braced himself as Edward moved the plane into a series of evasive maneuvers. Hohenheim was impressed at his son's skill; he moved through the motions easily, without hesitation or fear. Clearly he'd done this a few times before.
The steady rattatattatatta of the machine guns of the planes behind them was cause for alarm, however. As magnificent as Edward's loops were, they were slowing them down severely, and as such, the planes pursuing them were able to get closer. Edward got a good look at them, and was unsurprised to find that they were Nazi fighter planes. He grimaced. There was no way for him to fight back, and he couldn't keep up his fancy flying nor run for it. But he could sure try. He returned to a normal flying position and increased his speed, trying to put more distance between him and his pursuers. It was to no avail. The Nazi pilots stayed on him, and Edward found himself spending more and more time swerving erratically through the sky.
An unlucky maneuver on his part ended up putting his tail right into the line of sight of the right hand plane. The Nazi pilot squeezed the trigger mounted on his joystick, sending a spray of bullets that chewed apart the tail fabric of the Elrics' plane. Edward let out a startled noise as the plane jerked and suddenly began to descend.
"Hang on, Dad!! I'm gonna have to land it!!" he yelled.
More of Hohenheim vanished beneath the lip of the plane.
Edward gritted his teeth and gripped the controls in a death grip, fighting to keep the little plane level with the ground and slow it down to a landing speed. He desperately looked for any flat surface, but all he saw where hills and mountains. Suddenly, they flew over a craggy line of rock and a wide, flat plain opened up.
"We're going down!!" Edward warned and aimed for the flattest part of the plain. He hit it with a stomach-dropping bump, and the little plane went bumping on down the line until it finally came to a stop mere inches from a cliff wall.
With a sigh of relief, Edward pried his hands away from the joystick. Hohenheim cautiously rose out of his seat and checked to make sure he was still in one piece.
"Nice landing," he said sardonically.
"Thanks," said Edward as he clambered out of the plane. He started to run away when he realized his father wasn't following because he was messing with something stashed down below his seat.
"Come on, Dad!! They're coming back!!" Edward said, gesturing in the directions of the Nazi planes, which were in fact turning around to make another sweep. Hohenheim came up with a strange looking metallic tube and smiled at his son.
"No worries," he said. Edward just raised a blonde eyebrow at him.
Without a word to his son, Hohenheim waltzed very casually over to another flat part of the terrain. He propped the metal tube up on a small tripod attached to its back end and then pointed it straight up at the sky.
"What are you doing?" Edward asked, not amused by being kept out of the loop.
Hohenheim didn't answer, just waiting patiently, staring at the approaching planes. When one finally flew close enough, he reached down and casually pulled the trigger on the ground-to-air grenade launcher. Edward's mouth dropped nearly to the ground as he watched one of the planes explode. The second plane veered off course and vanished quickly behind some clouds.
"Problem solved," Hohenheim said, packing up the grenade launcher and putting it back into the plane.
"Let's go."
He started away. Edward just stood gawking, looking at the inferno on the side of the mountain that used to be a plane, and then looked at his father's back. He shook himself, promptly chasing after the man.
"Dad!! Get back here!! Where the hell did you get that thing from?! Dad!! Quit walking away from me when I'm talking to you!! Tell me where you got that from!! Dad!!!"