A/N: In this chapter italics in quotes means Xingese is being spoken.

I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or Darker than BLACK


He ran and ran and ran—the others gave him looks and he was vaguely aware that his eyes were bulging excitedly and he was gasping for breath but it didn't matter, it didn't matter, didn't they see? He had finally figured it out! That puzzle that he had been pondering over for years, solving it piece by hard-earned piece—he had just discovered the information that would connect it all.

He skidded round the corner, his heart beating uncomfortably fast—he would need to remember to talk to his doctor, that medication really didn't work to his satisfaction—and pushed past a couple of students of his.

"Did you get something, Doc?" his flippant, newly appointed assistant—the old one had just been stabbed by the Black Reaper only hours ago—yelled after him with an understanding grin on his face. Or perhaps it was condescension. No matter, he was happy enough to skip all the way down the hall to report his new findings!

He crowed back jubilantly at his assistant, "Yes, yes!" and scampered off before he could see his assistant's reaction. He reached the door and pounded excitedly on it, protocol be damned, not today, not the day of his triumph.

"…Who is it?" the familiar voice asked in a manner that was meant to be chilling. He leaned back, trying to catch his breath.

"D-Doctor Schroeder," he gasped in reply, a huge smile still on his face. He straightened up and waved his hands around excitedly. "I've got it! I've got it! I know—the Dolls are changing—I know why!" He took a deep breath and tried to speak more clearly through his excitement and repeated, "I know why the Dolls are changing!" He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet as he said it.

There was silence for a moment. "Come in." The doors opened and he hurried inside. It wasn't the most inviting place: pipes wove in and out of the floor haphazardly and the chimeras patrolling around the room would snap if you got too close. But it was clean and dry, so Dr. Schroeder wasn't deterred in the least. He had been in this very room many times before.

He walked in front of the speaker. It was him, the perpetrator of this whole plan. Bearded, blond, and appearing to be at least in his late fifties, he was a man—no, not a man, more than a man—that exuded power as he looked down on the scientist from his chair in the center of the room. "Speak."

Dr. Schroeder took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "As you well know, ever since the discovery of the changes in Doll subject number twenty-four after the Ishbalan conflict, we have been trying to ascertain the cause. And as I'm sure you know, there was a conflict involving the aforementioned Doll earlier." He took another big breath and hurriedly continued. "Based on what I have just observed, I believe I know why the Dolls have been changing."

The bearded figure watched him in an almost uninterested manner. And Dr. Schroeder would have been almost offended, if not for the slightest spark of intrigue he saw in the timeless face in front of him. "Go on."

"We had always thought that a Doll's specter was simply a fragment of their soul that had been given form. Dolls could see and hear through their specters; thus, our assumption that specters were souls was reinforced when we learned that the armored Elric brother, who exists as a mere soul, is able to hear, see and speak himself with no physical means to do so…" The scientist paused. "But that assumption was not only wrong, it was misleading.

"We normal humans, who have not seen the Gate, cannot see the Doll's specters. Therefore, we worked under the incorrect postulation that souls were only something one could see after seeing the Truth, only something that was visible to human sacrifices, Homunculi, Contractors, and Dolls. But before the Elrics escaped, Pride was given the task of looking discretely inside Alphonse Elric's armor to see if they could see anything akin to a specter. There was nothing, as far as he could see. Just an empty armor. Consequently, specters are not the same as a pure soul. They are something else entirely."

The bearded figure watched him agelessly, patiently.

"Before the last of the Contractors killed himself under the influence of the Doll, he yelled, 'Her specter is humanoid!' All previous reports by the Contractors have informed us that specters have a blob-like form. Now we have a case of an anthropomorphic specter, which just happens to belong to the only Doll subject who has been noted to experience changes in behavior to such a magnitude. I believe this specter transformation…was actually a result of the specter growing stronger, allowing it to resume its true form." The scientist paused. "From here on out, this is going to be mostly speculation, but nonetheless it is speculation that I am certain is true."

The figure he was talking to nodded slowly.

"Something has always been nagging at the back of my mind since the very first Doll experiment. Why did they pay so much for their power? They lost everything that most humans would hold dear to them, something that was certainly worth a very high price, for what appeared to be a rather useless ability—to send their specters through a certain medium to spy on others. But what if their payment was so high because their core ability is in actuality something completely different than we first concluded?" Dr. Schroeder straightened up. "From what I just witnessed—a Doll's specter taking a humanoid form and ordering the suicide of only Contractors, the only people in the vicinity that have seen the Gate—I can conclude that the specter is in fact, even if it's a mere shadow of it… the Doll's Truth." Dr. Schroeder paused for dramatic effect, although the bearded figure seemed vaguely unimpressed.

"This makes sense," Dr. Schroeder insisted hurriedly, seemingly worried by his audience's lack or response. "Because people who have seen the Gate seem to have a stronger connection with it than most other humans. The only possible conclusion is that that Doll has at least a limited amount of control over the Gate, enough to influence the actions of others whose very beings are tightly interwoven with the Gate. It also makes sense if you consider the surprisingly gradual changes the Doll has been undergoing lately in contrast to one sudden trip to the Gate that would have allowed her to regain their free will. She must have steadily gained control over her power using her control over the Gate, and now can even command Contractors' deaths!"

"Your logic is flawed," the bearded man spoke up suddenly in his booming voice. The scientist shrank back slightly. "The Doll may have indeed once had a degree of control over the Gate. It may even be true that Doll's in general have a degree of control over the Gate. But for the Doll in question, I doubt that is true any longer." He paused, and the Dr. Schroeder blinked. "It would seem that now it is the Truth that is now gaining control over her."

"Hmm…" the scientist murmured, not deterred in the least by the man's blatant denial of his theory. "Yes, yes. That could be. Especially considering the changes the Doll has been experiencing … perhaps that was the price of her changing in the first place. The freedom to make decisions in exchange for losing control of oneself to the Truth. How ironic."

"So the Truth is becoming manifested in this world in the form of the Doll's specter," the bearded figure mused. "That could be useful." He looked to Dr. Schroeder, who had a delighted look on his face and was murmuring feverishly to himself. The bearded figure observed him with a bored sort of curiosity on his face for a moment. "You, human. Why do you try to betray your race? Why do you conduct experiments on your own kind?"

The researcher looked startled for a moment before he scratched at his frizzy hair. "Hmm…a very good question indeed." He considered the question for a moment. "I am sure that the research I conduct, concerning lives as it is, would certainly not be considered ethical by the general public." He shrugged. "But most of the subjects were orphans or children that wouldn't have been able to survive in this kind of world anyway. I suppose you could even say we saved them."

"Many were intentionally orphaned by actions of the Homunculi," the bearded figure stated bluntly and without remorse.

The scientist grinned ruefully back at him. "Ah, you're right, you're right. And I know that, but I still can't regret it. I have never once questioned my actions, you see. And especially not the Philosopher stone project, probably because..." He scratched his chin, thinking thoughtfully. "Because maybe the only way humans can be saved from killing each other is if they're forced into a tiny stone…" He held up his hand, pretending to hold up a Philosopher's stone. "And are forced to coexist, unable to fight." His grin suddenly widened. "Or perhaps, and more likely, I just want to learn everything there is to learn and know everything I possibly can!"

The bearded figure with the appearance of a man glanced upwards. "Truly…humanity is beyond salvation then…" Somewhere above, unseen, the moon glowed, a pale imitation of the sun. But soon, that imitation would block the rays of the real source of light, and the country would be thrown into darkness.

Still…something was off. Everything had seemed normal until a couple of minutes before the scientist had barged into his quarters, but then… something was different. The air or the atmosphere, the feeling of the humans walking above him…something was off that he couldn't quite place. He dismissed the scientist from the room, still looking up, when a possibility hit him. But…it couldn't be…

He nonetheless transmuted a small hole in the ceiling above him, and sure enough, the moon wasn't where it was supposed to be for a midsummer's night. His eyes narrowed and a slight trickle of unease flowed through him for the first time in decades.

"Amber!"


"Amber—what…?" Hei shouted but…she was gone. The cell was empty. Had she time traveled away? No, she couldn't have risked decreasing her age anymore could she? Unless… that was what she had wanted to do. "Amber…" he growled, slamming his fist against a bar. The scientist behind him jumped noticeably as the metallic clang echoed loudly down the corridor. The din of the other prisoners fell utterly silent. "What did you do?" he snarled to the empty air that had contained Amber only moments before. She had done something, something big enough that had required her to pay a price big enough that it would erase her existence entirely. Knowing Amber, it couldn't have been anything good.

"Uh—um…" the female scientist stuttered behind him. He turned around and glared at her; it was enough to quell her into silence. There was utter quiet in the corridor for one split second.

"BOOM!" Another explosion rocked the underground prison. The Elrics. That was right, that was what he had come for originally—he had lost himself enough to forget that. Focus on the mission. He could deal with the consequences of whatever Amber had done later. Pretend you're back in Ishbal. There's just the mission. He spared the empty cell one last look before throwing his wire back up into the ventilation shaft, and hauling himself up. As he took off again, he could hear the female scientist call after him: "Uh…um—Thank you!"

Thank you…? For what? Not killing her? He brushed it off and continued running towards the source of the last explosion. He had to focus—to not think about anything else—not Yin, not his sister, not Amber's disappearance, just the task at hand. Concentrate. Wipe everything else out. Like a Contractor.

Another explosion shook the entire air duct he was in. Dust fell from crevices to settle in patchy patterns over the floor. His head turned in the direction the sound had come from. It had been closeby… He sped down a different path from the one he had been about to choose, towards the growing commotion he could already hear. It wasn't long before he could hear voices.

"Dammit!" Ed. "Al, put me down! You need to use alchemy!"

"Ling, let's go! We need to get out of here!" Al. Another explosion rocked everything in the vicinity, and then the sound of falling rocks echoed from the nearby ventilation shaft.

They really had escaped from the scientists then? Well, at least they had made themselves easy to find.

He kicked out the ventilation shaft and dropped down from it in one swift motion—to find that he had landed on the sidewalk of a sewer, right in front of a charging Gluttony. The Homunculus stopped running in surprise, its mouth gaping slightly as his head tilted to the side as he observed Hei dumbly. Hei's hand promptly shot forward and electrocuted him.

"Gaaahh! Ow, ow, owie!" Gluttony screamed as he collapsed to the floor, muscles twitching of their own accord as the electric current pulsed through him. Hei leaped away, and, with a quick sweep of his eyes, saw the unmistakable form of Al through the dust and debris and backed over towards him. "Lust! It hurts! It really hurts!"

"You're going to attract a lot of attention," Hei quickly told Ed, whom he could now see lay bleeding from an arm wound as he lay on the ground to the side of the sewer, his alchemy restraint removed. Ed's eyes grew round. Al stood nearby, without his restraints as well, and a blonde girl hid behind him, barely visible. His eyes flicked back to Ed. "They'll be able to hear you halfway across the lab."

"Y-you escaped too?" Al stuttered as Ed still gaped up at him. The girl looked from one boy to the other, trying to gauge from their reactions if he was an enemy. He didn't bother to answer Al's question; it was obvious enough.

"Who else are you up against?" he questioned them sharply. He heard a sharp cry further down the sewer, but the debris still hadn't cleared from the explosions and he couldn't make out any clear human forms.

"Homunculi," Ed told him. Hei could barely hear what he was saying over the renewed sound of sword clashes down the corridor. "There're three or four of them. We have a couple more people on our side now though."

"Where are they?"

"They're fighting further down the sewer, I think…"

"Tch…" Hei bit out, cursing the unknown allies. He could have just gotten the Elrics out and electrocuted everything in the sewer… it seemed he would have to try to fight the Homunculi hand-to-hand.

A thin, long, and black cylindrical object shot out from the settling dust cloud, and Hei automatically moved out of the way. It hit the wall behind him, and vibrated ominously with a 'twang!' only inches away from his head. Lust's nails.

"My my, so that's where you ran off too, Mr. Black Reaper," Lust's familiar voice rang out from the sewer. He could hear something rise from the sewer water, and saw Gluttony standing up with a huge grin on his face to stand beside her.

"Lust, can I eat that man?" he asked her with a tilt of his head, the expectant smile undiminished by the raw red burns still visible on parts of his body that were slowly disappearing under sparks of light.

Lust gave Hei a wide, sultry smile. "Don't leave a single hair."


Lan Fan had never seen anything like it.

The man—or was it really a man?—whirled around in the air with a sword in a manner that was almost magnificent and slammed it down onto her grandfather's sword, raised just in time to protect his head from being split like a melon.

"Uhn!" he grunted from the effort of the impact, but the man that was not a man had already moved on, blocking her stab, and aiming one of her own at her prince. No! She swept down in a round kick to distract her prince's attacker, but he merely jumped towards the prince, adding momentum to his stab. Her prince parried the attack effortlessly.

"You are the Fuhrer, the ruler of this country, correct?" Ling asked him as he whipped his dao sword towards the man's head. Lan Fan's eyes widened beneath her mask, frantically trying to recall what she had memorized on the man's profile. This man? The Fuhrer?

"What of it?" the man answered uninterestedly as he simultaneously blocked her grandfather's and Ling's subsequent attacks in an air that was almost bored. "Are you upset that I am allowing human experimentation?" Ling glared at the Fuhrer.

Now! She rushed in to stab the Fuhrer's unprotected side in the opening her grandfather and Ling had made—he had his hands busy with her two comrades, he wouldn't be able to block—but he somehow managed in a flurry of swords to push her master and her grandfather away. And suddenly—she was face to face with the Fuhrer of this cruel land where alchemy was everything and human life was nothing, gritting her teeth with the effort of keeping back his sword with her knife.

"Lan Fan!" her prince rushed in, swinging his sword, and the Fuhrer swiveled out of the way, a whirlwind of blades and metal. Only her grandfather's intervention prevented her prince's head from falling off his shoulders and into the sewer; nonetheless, her prince fell backwards with a splash into the filth.

"I see…" the Fuhrer mused as he looked down on her prince, not seeming to struggle in the least as her grandfather rained blow after blow upon him. She hurried to help her grandfather—no one would look down on her prince, not while she lived! "So you are the type that would risk everything for those below you." Her prince picked himself up from the sewers and flung himself into the fight once more. "How foolish." Sparks danced in the air, metal shrieked in agony as the blades collided over and over again.

"Then what would you do?" Ling demanded breathlessly as he aimed a kick at the man's head. "Leave a subordinate to die?"

The Fuhrer dropped one of his swords and managed to capture her prince's foot in the same instant. He was trapped. Lan Fan's heart stopped. No! "Yes," the Fuhrer replied without hesitation, and the sword in his other hand flashed towards her prince—she could feel herself flying forward, she had to get there in time—she braced her kunai—but, somehow he had foreseen it and then there was the sound of tearing skin and muscles.

For a split second there was no pain.

And then there was.

Her mouth opened and closed as she tried not to scream, but a strangled sort of groan escaped her anyways. "Lan Fan!" she heard the prince shout, who had already gotten up during her only seconds-long engagement with the Fuhrer, heard her grandfather's enraged cry, and then clashes of swords as they both leaped to engage the enemy. Without her. She had failed.

She collapsed into the sewer filth, joining the other Amestrian boy who bled on the ground—the dust had cleared, she could see him now. His armored brother crouched over him, protecting him from the strange, fingernail-like projectiles that had just shot out from the female homunculus's hands.

"Hey…" she heard the boy, bone-pale from the blood lost from his wound, say. She groaned in response. "Hey, hang in there! Winry!"

"G-got it!" a voice responded. Someone splashed over to her through the sewage and carefully dragged her towards the sewer sidewalk. "There's nothing to clean it with!"

"Just stop the bleeding!" the boy yelled back. "We'll worry about infection later!" And after a tearing sound of fabric, she could feel something being wrapped around her arm. She gritted her teeth, and looked around wildly for something to distract her.

She saw a man, whose face she couldn't see, engaging both the female and the fat homunculi at once. Even the armored brother who had defeated her grandfather tried ineffectively to keep up with the stranger, but kept getting pushed back effortlessly by the homunculi. The man stabbed and sliced his enemies over and over again, dodging their continuous attacks without any major damage to himself, but they just kept on regenerating. Was there no limit to their healing ability? Her eyes swept back towards the armored brother, who was causing spikes to fly towards the female homunculus, piercing her skin, but the wounds regenerated instantaneously. And lastly…

"Master," Lan Fan gasped to herself, and she began to slowly sit up.

"Hey! No—wait! You're in no shape to—" Lan Fan stood up shakily, ignoring the protests. The half-done bandage dangled from her arm; blood and filth slowly dripped with a plop into the sewer. Her master and her grandfather were fighting for their lives; she had to get up. She had to be of use in any way she could. She took a shaky step forward.

"Ed, get them out of the water!" the man suddenly shouted, and she halted. She abruptly recognized that voice, that aura—this was the man from the shed earlier, the one who had the power to control electricity. Get out of the water. So that meant…

"Got it," Ed breathed from where he lay on the ground, and drew a transmutation circle using his own blood. Giant pillars of earth erupted from the ground, first knocking out the sewer roof, and a second round transported her allies out and above the sewer water, with the exception of the strange Xingese man and the boy trapped in the armor, who was still struggling with the female immortal. The fat man and the female were at the Xingese man's mercy in the putrid muck.

"Die," she could hear him command coldly from down in the sewers below. The screams of the fat man and the woman echoed up to where she lay with the girl beside her on a precarious column. But…where was the other man, the one with the swords?

"Young Master, leave now!" she heard her grandfather command, switching to Xingese for the first time. There was the familiar sound of the clash of metal, and she felt rather than saw that the man that had injured her was fighting with her grandfather atop one of the precarious columns that the Amestrian boy had conjured up. The prince's silhouette was doubled over on an adjacent column, but she couldn't see if he was seriously wounded. It was night in a dimly lit part of the city…had they really been in the tunnel that long?

"I won't leave you," the prince gasped, as if the air had been knocked out of him. He also was speaking in Xingese. "I won't!"

"You must! He is too strong, and if you are killed, our clan will perish. Go!" her grandfather shouted at the prince as he sliced at the Fuhrer, who dodged effortlessly. The prince froze, staring as her grandfather struggled. "Go! I will hold him off!"

Her prince straightened up, his back to her as he stood completely still for a second despite the continuing screams of the other two immortal beings below and the clash of swords as her grandfather barely held off his attacker. Lan Fan staggered a step forward, and a couple of rocks crumbled off the edge of her column. The blond girl who was also with her on the column and who had made the tourniquet on her arm quickly stood up and steadied her by grabbing her uninjured arm. Lan Fan ignored her. "Go, Master," she begged him hoarsely. "Go." Out of the corner of her eye she saw the blonde look concernedly at her, worried but successfully confused by their use of their native tongue. Hopefully the Fuhrer didn't understand Xingese either.

"But the Philosopher's Stone…"

"Fool!" her grandfather roared. He charged at the Fuhrer, who was watching him impassively as he effortlessly stopped all her grandfather's attacks. "You are why it's necessary!" he grunted as the Fuhrer lashed back. "You. Must. Live!"

"I won't leave!" her prince told him firmly, leaping towards the fight. "Without his subjects, a king is nothing!"

They were fighting. Lan Fan swayed, the graceful clash of swords becoming oddly out-of-focus, her vision starting to grey over. Not good. She was losing consciousness.

"Hey!" the girl beside her said worriedly, still holding tightly onto her arm. "Sit down before you fall!"

Abruptly, her grandfather kicked her prince out of the way, and he landed ungracefully on an adjacent pillar. Her grandfather was once more facing the Fuhrer alone. "If you won't run away to save your country, run to save Lan Fan." Ling stiffened.

"That's…a dirty trick, Fuu." There was no response; her grandfather appeared to be concentrating solely on the fight now. The prince turned around and at the sight of her staring defiantly at him, she could see his expression turn anguished. He hesitated a moment more before he agreed in a constricted voice, "Alright. I'll…see you later, Fuu." He jumped forward, grabbed Lan Fan around the waist, hoisted her over his shoulder, and took off away from the fight.

"Hey!" the girl who had also been on her column protested in surprise. "Don't carry her like that when she's injured!"

"Ling?" yelled the short, injured Amestrian boy as Ling jumped from a column to a nearby roof. Lan Fan blinked as she dazedly realized they were in the middle of the moonlit Central City and there was a small crowd of people gaping up at them from the ground. Her prince ignored Ed and landed hard on the roof, tiles skittering down to the ground from the impact. Lan Fan gritted her teeth, silently cursing her grandfather's actions.

"Master," she gasped. "Stop this. Leave me behind! You must survive!"

"Not without saving at least one of you!" he snarled back at her. "I already left Fuu behind! Don't ask anything more of me!"

His head bowed, and Lan Fan sincerely hoped that he was too preoccupied with his guilt to notice as she saw her grandfather grab onto his opponent, activate several explosives, and yell, "Yes, my prince. I'll see you later…in the afterlife." Tears rolled down her face, unseen under the mask as seconds later the familiar sound of an explosion ended the life of her only remaining family.


"Damn paperwork," Mustang sighed to himself.

"Just be quiet and get it done, Colonel," Breda grumbled unenthusiastically in response.

"That's no way to speak to your superior officer," the Colonel replied just as dully. He groaned again and looked out the window. The street lights glow illuminated houses frosted by the recent cold snap. The weather shouldn't last much longer, he hoped. Not only was it annoying that it supposed to be spring already, but…he tore his eyes from the window. No use worrying about that brat; he was probably off gallivanting away someplace with his brother. Right. He leaned back in his chair, arms casually behind his head. "Don't tell me you actually like overtime."

Breda shot him a scathing look. The Colonel grinned.

"This is all your fault," Breda grumbled. "Why'd you have to go and catch that criminal anyways?"

"Maybe I wouldn't have if I had known that this would have come along with it," Mustang agreed with a sigh. It was quiet for a moment before he changed the subject. "Have you talked to Havoc recently?"

"Yeah, he's still up in arms over his girlfriend. He swears that she must've been kidnapped. He doesn't think there's any way that she would just disappear." Breda grimaced.

Mustang snorted. "Well, what does he think? She only visited him that one time—"

"And then you gave her a lecture and she never showed up again, sir," Breda reminded him.

"Ah. Right. He still doesn't know that, right?"

"I imagine so, sir. You're still alive, aren't you?"

"Um…" Warrant Officer Falman said quietly, looking up from his paperwork where he had been working diligently, ignoring their bickering. "How about Lieuten—"

"No changes," Mustang interrupted shortly.

"Oh." The silence stretched on awkwardly.

Colonel Mustang looked at his gloved hands before him. They were clenched, just like they had been at the military tribunal the day previously.

"Colonel Mustang, we thank you once again for your capture of the criminal Barry the Chopper. Rest assured he will not be allowed to stay alive for long. However…" He looked up warily. "You are to never mention the details of this incident to anyone. Barry the Chopper was a flesh-and-blood human who murdered countless people. He wore armor to protect himself, and that is all. You are to never reveal his true identity to anyone. Is that clear?"

He agreed quite graciously. "Yes sir." That was easy enough. And anyways, he had gained quite a bit from this criminal; they couldn't take back what the criminal had told him.

He unclenched his hands, before they became as cramped as they had that day. This case went far deeper than he had expected it to. Homunculi, philosopher's stone, corruption in the military…it was all very troubling. But there were greater worries in his mind that distracted him throughout the day. Havoc would be fine, or as fine as one could be with no legs…he had been on the mend for months. The Lieutenant…no one was sure about her yet. Her life was still balancing on a razor's edge.

But perhaps most worrisome… was the fact that his youngest subordinate had been missing since the previous summer.

Fullmetal…where the hell are you?