Author's Note: I'm kind of sad and regretful that I left Mei Chang out… Ah well, it's probably too late at this point ^^'''
Chapter 31: Shifting Situations
None of them remembered where they came from.
They knew not their parents' faces nor names, nor their own names… The infants were most likely sold or abandoned before they were ever given any name to speak of. The only true fact they knew growing up was that one of them would become Führer.
"Who will be the one to rule this country?" the men in white coats asked the children every day. "Will it be you? Or perhaps you?"
"Führer Candidates." That became the name of each child in the laboratory. Though they were raised together, they were not raised as brothers or comrades. Every one of them kept to himself. Any adult they interacted with was another scientist working for the military.
All of these Führer Candidates were gathered together and given specialized education. They received instruction in everything from international relations to hand-to-hand combat to military tactics and leadership skills to floral pattern embroidery. They endured the harshest physical training, pushing themselves past their limits every day to the point of collapse, never questioning why. When one of them accidentally killed another during weapons training, he was horrified."Don't worry about him," they told him. "He was just a pawn in your way." Soon they all ceased to care about anything but the main objective; become the most skilled Führer they could be.
Then that day came. They reached the age at which their physical and mental powers were at their prime, and the routine was broken, the training done. The scientists led them, one by one, into a room. Every young man who entered did not return.
The last candidate walked inside that unmarked white door and they instructed him to lie down on a gurney. As they strapped him in, he caught a glimpse of an open door across from him- bodies of his fellow candidates piled like bloody rags on the floor- and let out a small gasp. The scientist nearest the door closed it shut.
A middle-aged blond, bearded man he had never seen before hovered over him, his long hair gently brushing his face. "Are you my Spoiler?" he asked with a menacing smile upon his face. Before the young man could register what was happening, the gold-toothed scientist injected him with a bright red liquid.
Pain could not describe it. The substance violently tore through his veins, repeatedly destroying and reconstructing his body, battling his very soul for control. He tossed and turned, his left eye bursting from the energy.
As his body gradually stopped moving, the scientists gathered closer to see if the experiment had worked.
"Dammit, not again."
"I was sure it would work this time."
"Throw his body in the room with the rest of them."
"It's over. He was our last guy."
"Maybe we should have had more than three guys."
"Twenty years of hard work down the drain."
"You are all idiots and I cannot believe I hired you. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to go around the shady parts of town asking to 'buy babies'? They don't just grow on trees, you know!"
"We know that, we went to college."
"Oh, to hell with it. Let's just use one of the interns."
Bradley watched the top of the sun disappear below the horizon.
"I never did finish my internship at the lab, nor my Master's in Xingese Philosophy," he said. "But you see, Colonel, I gained so much more. I gained unimaginable power. Whether by a soul that had been sacrificed for the Internet, or by my own, I became a new species of human."
He turned away from the window to find the Colonel's chair empty. "Hm?" Bradley then saw him at the office door, picking at the lock with a bent paperclip.
"What are you doing?"
"I… uh… was cleaning out this keyhole."
"I don't think you fully understand your situation, Colonel."
"Okay you were boring me and I wanted to get a hot chocolate. I did it earlier while you were telling me your life story and I drank it all and wanted more but I seemed to have locked myself in. Happy?"
"You have to jiggle it a little."
"Like this?"
"No, turn it the other way-"
"That's what I've been doing-"
"And then sort of pull it up towards you-"
"Got it!" He left.
"This is the last of the pieces I can find."
The gargantuan cat that was Spam placed another stone slab on the concrete island on which Ed and Ling stood.
"That should do it," said Ed. He stepped back and turned to each of the broken stone pieces placed along the edge of their makeshift floor. Together, they unmistakably formed a transmutation circle.
"All of these are part of the Xerxes ruins?" asked Ling.
"I had seen this circle in a destroyed temple there," replied Ed. "And on the floor of the 5th Laboratory." He took a closer look at one of them, hardly aware that Ling was even there. "The sun stands for the soul, and the moon symbolizes energy… stone means body… yes this whole mural… it's a transmutation circle."
"What's your plan then?"
"My theory is that if I transmute myself, we can make the gate open."
"I found another one."
"Huh?"
The cat dropped yet another huge chunk of wall in front of the boys.
Ling frowned at it. "Is that the Wall Maria emblem?"
"No no no, we're not getting into that." Ed waved his hand. "Throw it away."
"Fine." Spam tossed the piece aside.
"I'll open the gate," continued Ed. "If Fat-Ass is a fake Gate of Truth, we should be able to get out of here through the real one. We'll take turns entering it once it's opened."
"And what happens if you fail?"
"Well… I survived the brutal amputations of the first two times I've done this."
Ling and Spam gave each other worried looks.
"Now I just need a sacrifice. Could you spare a few of those animals, Spam?"
"How cruel!" gasped Ling.
"We need payment to cross the gate. And as I've told you earlier, I don't have any coins."
"It's fine, I don't care. It's less mouths to feed."
"But but but-"
"Stop it."
The cat vomited a bunch of slimy normal-sized cats at the center of the circle.
"This is why I hate cats."
"I feel I should inform you that this is not normal cat behavior," said Ling.
"Tell that to my hotel pillow." Ed gazed at the center, mentally going over the process, and took a deep breath. "If something happens to me," he said, "just tell Al I'm on vacation, okay?"
"Uh… okay."
Ed clapped his hands and, his heart filled with both dread and anticipation, touched the ground.
Immediately, the familiar light and energy unraveled all around them. Long, black shadows of hands squiggled out of the light in the center, where a large purple eye appeared. Incomprehensible voices whispered all around them.
"Ling! Jump in!"
"Do I… do I hold my breath or what?" He put his foot near the center of the circle to test it, and it dissolved. "You know what I don't think it matters." And the rest of him went.
"You next!"
The cat put a paw inside and started disintegrating as well. "I'd better not turn inside-out when I come out the other end!"
"You already do that on your own, so what difference does it make?"
"Oh right."
And the cat disappeared too, piece by piece.
"Here goes nothing!" Ed closed his eyes and pretended he was going down a water slide.
"-OW!" Ed's body slammed against the floor and the floating doors slammed shut behind him.
"I swear those things threw me on my broken arm on purpose." He stood up and rubbed his head. "What am I even doing here… and why are there two gates…?"
As he composed himself, he thought he heard someone else breathing. His heart stopped, almost afraid to turn his head and look at what was in front of the other set of doors.
"Could it be…?"
He turned around.
"No way…" He got up and walked towards the other sickly-looking blond, mesmerized by what he saw.
"My god," he stopped to have a good look. "This is the best damn funhouse mirror I've ever seen in my life." He waved his unbroken automail arm, and was disappointed when the figure in front of him did not do the same. "Darn. It must be broken."
Without warning, the doors behind him burst open with the shadow hands. "Hey wha-!" They grabbed Ed and started dragging him back inside.
"Edward…" said Alphonse's body, its voice cracking from lack of use. "Tell him… Tell my soul I'm waiting for him."
"He's moved on!" shouted Ed back at the body through the closing doors.
On the other side, Al could not believe his empty eyeholes. There stood his father, but he was not quite his father – his hair and beard were an untrimmed mess, and he seemed to be wearing a very old-fashioned white robe.
"… Father? Is that you?"
Father regarded Al with a frown.
"Take off that armor, young man. You are scratching my concrete floor."
But it turned out Father's concrete floor was in for another surprise, as Fat-Ass suddenly exploded all over it.
His middle tore open like a garbage bag that was stuffed far past its capacity. He doubled over in pain, the blood spurting out the middle where the violet eye rolled about uncontrollably.
"GUAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH-!"
In a violent sea of guts, ribs, blood, cats, and Slim-Fast, out poured Ed, Ling, and the giant cat.
"Ugh, are you on one of those cleansing diets again, Fat-Ass?" asked Father.
"Niisan?" Al walked up to the pile of cats and pulled his brother out by the leg. "There you are! What are all these cats? Can we keep them?"
"No!" rasped Ed, coughing out slime and fur.
"You are all making a mess," said Father, distraught.
"Wha… who are you?" Ed dropped down from Al's grasp and squinted at the familiar blond man in the white robes. "Hohenheim?"
"Hmmm… you two must be the Elric brothers."
"No… you're not him."
"Are you mistaking me for someone else? I suppose I have one of those faces."
"You really don't."
"I would offer you tea, but I'm afraid I boiled the last of it to poison a few enemies of the state."
"…"
"Here, why don't I heal your damaged arms instead?"
He touched Al's arm stump, and it regrew; he then touched Ed's broken arm and it too, snapped back into place.
"How did you do that?!"
"You two are precious pawns in my delicate plan, after all… I would not want any harm coming your way just yet."
"What are you?"
They turned to see Ling stepped back and holding up his sword, his face contorted in fear and confusion.
"How many people are inside you, monster?!"
Father turned to his feline son. "I can't remember, is he one of our sacrifices?"
"He's not even an alchemist."
"I see. Fat-Ass, get rid of him. He clashes with the décor."
"What décor?" Ed looked around at the grey, windowless wall and large metal pipes crisscrossing the high ceiling. "It looks like Garfiel's sex basement in here."
"Niisan how in god's name do you know that?"
"He lured me in there with promises of spare bolts for my automail the last time we were in Rush Valley and – never mind! We have more pressing issues to deal with!" He clapped his hands in preparation for an attack.
"I don't think so." Father's face looked darker than ever; he lifted his foot and stomped it moments before Ed's hands hit the floor.
"Huh?"
Ed tried and tried again, slapping his palms against the dusty floor, but he might as well have been a normal person.
"What's going on, Niisan?" For Al too experienced the same problem. "What do we do?"
"I guess we can't defend Ling anymore."
"What?!" Ling's sword arm went lax from sheer annoyance. "Don't you two know hand-to-hand combat? You're in the military!"
"Honestly, a situation like this has never come up before." Ed used alchemy for everything, after all. Just last week he transmuted his new leather boots out of a live cow because he was too lazy to try on the different sizes at the shoe maker's kiosk in the market. The farmer's daughter had found the remains.
"You fools!" Spam pressed a paw against each of the brothers, trapping them. "You humans have been using alchemy for centuries and you don't even understand what it is!"
"They told us alchemy is powered by a combination of tectonic plate movements and believing in ourselves."
"Did you go to public school or something?"
"Why do people keep asking me that?" Ed struggled against the paw but it would not even give. "This is surprisingly comfortable," he said, despite himself.
"Very well, I will get you out of there!" Ling made to rescue them, but Fat-Ass jumped on top of Ling to trap him as well. It was not as comfortable.
"You know what?" Father had his hand on his chin, thinking. "Let's not waste a resource. I've always wanted our family to start recycling." An eye emerged from a slit in his forehead, bleeding what appeared to be blood into Father's open palm.
"Niisan, I don't remember, do foreheads normally do that?"
"No, Al, they don't."
"I could use you," Father told Ling, the odd opening on his head sealing shut. "I just so happen to have an opening for The Situation."
"The what?"
"LING! NO!" Ed squirmed beneath his furry confinement. "THAT GUY WAS A TOTAL JERK!"
"What is he doing?!" shouted Ling.
"He's creating a Homunculus," said Spam.
"Does that mean-" Ling's eyes widened with realization and excitement. "You are giving me the Internet?! Just like that?"
"Yes, you will have the extraordinary power," said Father. "Provided you survive the minor side effects."
"What minor side effects?"
"Death."
"I am not afraid of death, monster!"
"And frequent urination."
"Wait, no, I changed my mind-!"
Ignoring Ling's pleas, Father poured the liquid into a cut on Ling's cheek.
The effect was immediate; he screamed louder than he had ever screamed in his life, the veins on his face popping out and ready to burst. The Elrics watched, helpless, as Ling convulsed and coughed out blood while alchemic energy cackled all around him.
"LING!"
"NO!"
Ling's figure still grasped his face when the spasms came to an agonizing halt, and the energy surrounding him dissipated. He gingerly stood up from the floor and swayed a bit, his eyes adjusting to the harsh lighting. He felt heavy, as though waking up from a long sleep.
"Heh … heheheh…" He just stood there, laughing to himself. "Ha… hahaha… HAHAHAHAHA!" Then he looked up, and the Elric brothers gasped; his once brown eyes turned violet and slitted, and his face went livid with a manic smile. He pulled a pair of sunglasses out of Ling's jacket, even though Ling didn't own a pair of sunglasses, and slid them on.
"Ling is gone, kid," said The Situation.
Author's Note: I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT BRINGING THE SITUATION BACK I MISSED HIM