The See-All Alchemist lands into darkness with a painful thud. She hears voices immediately, and she feels multiple qi energies of people she's come to know right next to her. But her body seizes up when she locks onto the aura of the true enemy, Father. She knows it's him without even turning around to see him; the energy coming off of him is massive, making the homunculus next to him seem like nothing. She believes it's Pride, but she's not sure; it's too dark to see.
Iris feels Edward crouch down next to her and she fumbles around in the darkness for his face until she can take it between her hands once he's close enough. "Edward," she breathes quietly in relief. "Are you okay? Where are we? Did they hurt you?"
He gently pulls her hands away from his cheeks. "Slow down. I'm fine, for now. My guess is that we're at this Father's lair. He already has Hohenheim, and he gathered Teacher and Al with me. But..." Ed takes a once-over at her physical state before asking, "Why did they bring you here?"
She covers her face with her palms in some sort of attempt to comfort herself. Hesitantly she tells him, "It was the Truth."
He sucks in a breath. "What did you say?" He grabs her wrists to move her hands from her face, but she turns her head away with shame. "What did it take from you? Your arms and legs and everything... You look just fine. Just a few battle scars. So what did it take?"
Iris finally raises her hands up in front of her face, but she doesn't see them open and close from a flat hand to a fist. Nor does she see Edward… or the room, or anything. Nothing at all.
Her voice trembles. "How do you know what I look like? I-It's dark."
At those words, the Fullmetal Alchemist stifles a gasp of disbelief. He grabs her by the shoulders. His right hand is cold and hard but his left is hot and sweating.
"Look at me, Iris. Please, tell me what you see."
With his flesh hand, he grabs her chin carefully to align their eyes, but she gives no response. Her eyes don't focus on his, or on anything. They're clouded; that nighttime black shade he's come to love to gaze into has been transformed into a sorrowful, muted and defeated grey.
He swallows hard with a tight jaw. Iris grabs his forearm tightly.
"What's going on, Ed?" she pleads, panic quickly spreading into her voice. "What are you seeing that I'm not?"
From across the room, a boyish laugh erupts from a monster's mouth. Pride smiles devilishly. "How ironic," he scoffs. The alchemist whips his head around to snarl at the child. "She's lost her sight, hasn't she?"
"You need to perform human transmutation to see the Truth," Ed pieced together himself. He slowly turns to look back at Iris. "You didn't do it," he wants to believe, but with her shamed disposition, he can't help but demand an answer from her. "Did you?"
"I didn't want to do it, I promise!" she pleaded to him, gripping onto his red coat. Her voice breaks as she says, "I'm sorry. I had no choice." Tears welled up in her empty eyes.
"She's correct. It wasn't her." Pride interjects before Edward can heavily scold her. A sick sense of achievement lies in his voice. "We had to force her to open the portal."
"The Truth can be so cruel," Father finally speaks. His many eyes blink uncoordinatedly. "The two brothers who wished for their mother's warmth were robbed from feeling at all, simply replaced with prosthetic limbs and no body. The woman who sought to bring her only child back to life was given a body that can no longer bear one. And finally, now, the girl whose power relied on her eyesight had that very thing stripped away from her. That is the price of the Truth when you foolishly attempt to become a god."
Ed's pent up frustration gets the best of him as he screams, "Bullshit!" An automail fist of fury is balled up at his side as helplessness seeps into his veins, but he refuses to let it seize him. They did this to her, and he would see for himself that they would pay. Anything for her.
"She didn't deserve this! It wasn't her own volition, it was yours! You've made her pay your price, and now her eyesight is gone! I don't accept this Truth. There is no equivalent exchange involved."
He quickly transmutes a blade onto his automail arm with a flash of blue light.
"You'll pay for her loss," he promises, taking a few steps forward. Father raises his arms up to accept the challenge but is interrupted by a crashing noise from above. Moments later, an area of pipes burst from the ceiling and Mei falls feet first into the room. Pieces of pipes drop from above as well, and Izumi has to move Iris away so she doesn't get hurt by the debris.
"Mei?" She recognizes the qi, and her ears prick up at her tiny footsteps. Her voice is a dead giveaway to her, though, for once she enters the situation, the Xingese girl has her focus set on Alphonse, who is in the corner of the room. He's still unconscious, and already Mei is looking to wake him up.
"What's happened here?" she cries, shaking the suit of armor.
"He hasn't woken up since we've been brought here," Ed explains. Even without the worrisome look on his face, Iris can tell by his disheartened voice that it's truly bothering him.
Mei works to wake him up, but there's no response from him.
"This won't do," Father tuts. "All five of my precious sacrifices need to be present." A smile spread across his pitch black face. "It seems I'll have to snap the boy out of it." Tendrils emerge from his back and slowly creep towards them, but then Alphonse awakes with a gasp as if he had been physically pulled back into reality. Everyone gathers around him and he opens his eyes up to see them hovering around him, all except Iris, who he immediately notices that she's isolated, looking genuinely lost and terrified.
He sits up, his armor creaking as he brings himself upright. He turns to his brother who has a grim face.
"What's happened?" the boy asks his older sibling as if all that had occurred could be explained so easily and with no pain. They both knew this wasn't the case.
Edward grits his teeth. "They've gathered us all so they can sacrifice us. But I reject it. I am rejecting this fate, destiny, or whatever the hell it might be." He turns then, his eyes locking onto the two powerful beings. He declares to them, "Your success in bringing us all together means nothing! We aren't yours to manipulate, and we won't surrender!"
Mei joins his determined grit, standing up and stepping closer into the fight she knows is about to commence. Her headstrong personality drives her fear to the back of her head as she demands of herself to get what she came for in the first place.
"Immortality is within my reach now! Envy told me you've obtained the secret, and it's for my country! So hand it over!"
The tiny girl jumps into a battle stance, but the two brothers are quick to reprimand her with basic logic.
"You won't fight alone," Al states, coming up next to her.
"Not if we have anything to do about it," Ed finishes.
Iris stands up as well, albeit unsteady on her feet for the first time. She walks over to them through their qi and voices, despite scolds from them all that she should stay back.
"He's weak," she offers, ignoring them. "Pride. He's deteriorating. I can tell." Now unable to physically see, her qi readings were even stronger than before. She was quick to notice that Selim's qi was dying down slowly.
Ed looks back at Selim, and flakes of faux skin fall off of the boy's cheek. With a frustrated expression, he quickly covers the emptiness with his hand.
"And using me was their last choice," See-All continues, "That doctor... he told me I had... 'almost outsmarted them'. They thought I had an original gateway of Truth, but really it was Edward's I saw with my powers. They didn't factor that into their master plan, so they had to think of a quick plan to get me to open the gate for myself. It must've cost them something, too."
"It's cost them a massive amount of Pride's qi," Mei supplies, now realizing it for herself when she hones in on the small homunculus. "Distract him, then, so he doesn't get in my way!"
She advances towards the black monster in the center of the room before Ed or Al could hold her back. She creates a transmutation circle and activates it to fire projectiles against the immortal being. The two brothers follow suit with their alchemy, Father not having disabled it just yet.
Iris motions to transmute too, but Izumi holds her back.
"Your transmutations won't be accurate," she scolds, holding her by the wrists. "It's uncontrollable without your sight."
"I won't be a liability!" Iris yells at her, taking back her arms from the woman's grasp. She composes herself. "I can fight," she assures. From her pocket, she reveals a glinting red stone. Iridian's stone. "I have the Philosopher's Stone."
Izumi watches the young girl's concentrated face as she mentally recalls who out of the seven homunculi are still alive.
'Greed, Pride, Wrath...'
"Wrath!" she shouts in realization. "His Ultimate Eye!"
"What are you talking about?" Izumi questions.
Iris holds out the stone in her palm. "This stone is powered by the combined souls from each of the homunculi," she explains rapidly. "There's still a few of them left. As long as their stone remains intact, so does this one. Which means I obtain all of their powers! Or that's my theory anyway.
"The one who was possessed by this stone had each ability the homunculi have, as long as they were alive. That must mean this stone has the power of the Fuhrer's Ultimate Eye, I can have some sort of precognition, as long as I wield it."
The older woman's protective instincts are blaring at her to not let this child go into the battle with such a disadvantage. But the pleading in Iris's face to help her friends save the world pulls at her heartstrings in a way that can't be denied.
"Please, Miss Izumi, trust me."
With determination, she approves simply.
"Don't hesitate any longer, then."
Iris clenches the stone in a fist, summoning its power for a greater good. She can hear the souls cry inside her head, and she raises her hand to her mouth to whisper a genuine apology to them all.
From under her, blue sparks come alive and she builds a platform to fly off of. With the power of the Ultimate Eye, she sees Pride in a slideshow sequence, seconds of black between frames of his movements.
"From your left!" she shouts to Al for a warning, and he dodges a narrow blade of darkness from Pride that tried to impale his armored head.
Iris goes in front of Ed to block a few attacks from Pride's shadow. The frustration is apparent on the child's face when he watches all his attacks become unsuccessful.
"Watch yourself," she tells Ed, out of breath. She smiles at him, and his mouth is agape with astonishment. She knows he's going to ask how, so she flashes the stone so he can see it.
"No more surprises," she says cheekily.
He opens his mouth to respond, but her attention is quickly averted when she hears Mei give out a cry of pain from the other side of the field.
Iris runs over quickly, stumbling over a few pipes but making her way to her friend nonetheless. She's laying on her side, her eyes fluttering in an attempt to fight off the pain.
She turns her on her side to face her. The alchemist can't see her face, but she feels the blood running down Mei's temple, thick and wet.
Mei groans in pain. Iris holds her upright, unsure of what to do to help. The stone glints in her hand. She exhales a breath and looks to her friend's pained face.
She brings the stone in her fist in front of her mouth and whispers, "Tortured souls, please lend me your strength, knowing I could never possibly repay your lives. I ask your permission to be used for good, not evil."
After a moment, it illuminates in her palm, and slowly Mei's injuries close. With her jacket, she wipes away some of the blood on her face. Her eyes flutter open and she looks into Iris's grey eyes. She helps her get back up on her feet, asking if she has any more injuries she can heal with the stone.
"What happened to you, Iris?" she asks, but the alchemist tightens her jaw and turns her head away.
"There's no time to explain. Are you gonna be okay?"
Mei nods. "Yes, but-"
"Then keep fighting."
Iris can feel the hot sparks from the shadows being deflected off of Ed's automail. She runs to help him, but suddenly she feels herself being grabbed and pulled up into the air. She shouts for help immediately, but the others yell out too, having been captured as well. Father's gooey extensions of himself held up all of the sacrifices as he claimed that this pointless fighting was going on for too long.
"I grow tired of your humanistic persistence."
"What's happening?!" Iris cries, flailing against the restraint that kept her immobile.
"This life form of a planet," Father begins, his voice rising for his announcement. "It's all mine, now!" He raises up his hands and smiles. "Open this planet's gateway, so I may unlock its power! Obey me, my five sacrifices!"
