104 - Dante's Labyrinth

Dante flew into the stairwell and used her legs, not yet affected by the rot, to launch herself up through the floors. Stair after stair she further abandoned the ridiculous political strife and all the nonsense that came with managing ambitious fools.

Hakuro interfering while Mustang was dawdling was a boggling event, but without a way to communicate with Central, the details she wanted were either vague or unavailable. Something wasn't sitting right. Dante had never been one to doubt her own gut feeling and when the quakes began - at such an opportune time - everything in motion became too convenient. There was something linking everything somewhere, though she couldn't say where, and the government upheaval was trying to be a noisy distraction.

A distraction from what? Well, that answer lay upstairs.

Dante left the room of quibbling old men after the fourth quake rumbled through - they could bemoan their fate amongst themselves. It wasn't as though any of them had ever been in control of their fate in the first place.

Throwing open the doors to the fourth floor, Dante surged through the empty halls, her bow-tied hair trailing in her wake as she stretched her limbs and ran. The ruffles of her childish white dress danced around her knees as she flew and the entire ensemble swirled around her body when she came to a stop. The ocean blue of Nina's eyes captured the reflection of transmutation energy when Dante clapped her hands.

A vacant space was transmuted into the wall.

The self-designated overseer of a nation, who'd controlled its people as she desired to sustain her longevity, glared into the dishevelled remains of an empty cavity in her commandeered Xenotime castle. Mankind was becoming a little too disobedient…

The room trembled weakly as a faint quake disturbed the silence, barely strong enough to affect the wave of the curtains drifting in the evening breeze.

Slowly entering, Dante stepped through the floor cluttered with her table dressings. She kicked aside a fallen cup, listening to it crack apart as it tinkered along the floor. She walked through the shards, grinding them to dust under her toes, and approached the base of a hastily constructed monument to youthful ingenuity. Staring up, she absorbed the details of a crude escape ladder reaching to a hole ripped out of the wall. Dante's eyes fell down to her feet and she looked at the bent metallic grate discarded on the floor.

Aisa's feet echoed faintly when passed through the forged entry.

Dante corralled her discontent and held her voice numbingly calm, "What a precocious pair of children we have running amok."

"You'd like me to search for them?"

"Aisa," Dante held the situation on pause, weighing a multitude of options. Their guests had turned an otherwise simple situation into something that needed further thought and strategy; she looked at the woman coldly from the corner of her eye, "Has the Philosopher's Stone finished crystalizing?"

Aisa shook her head, "No."

Dante clenched her hands, "Very well."

Another earthly rumble disturbed the room. A scowl twisted Dante's nose, muddled her brow, narrowed her eyes, and pinched her lips - someone was signalling her guests. The rescue party was early it seemed and the government baboons were plugging up the main floor in an uproar. What a nuisance everything had become.

Swiftly turning to face Aisa, Dante moved to reestablish control, "Lock all the exits, seal the stairwells, bind Brigitte and break Alphonse's ankles when you find them, then load them in the van. We're leaving. Please dispose of anyone who interferes."

"Yes Miss," Aisa nodded and quickly took her leave.

The building trembled once more, subsiding as quickly as it arrived.

Dante's fingers danced around her sides while she glowered at the torn escape route, "I will address whoever's trying to get our attention."

She left the room and stormed down the hall. Dante marched a jagged path through the building, sharply turning down every other hall, and approached the central stairwell. She clapped her hands and dismissed the door before arriving. Ignoring the steps leading down in favour of a path going up, she firmly gripped the rungs of a wooden ladder nailed to the wall and climbed.

Dante easily threw open the hatch to the roof.

The wind rolling off the mountains caught her pigtails sucked them out ahead of her. Nina's hair blew wildly around her ears and shoulders as she emerged atop the building and the ruffles of her dress thrashed around madly at her arms and knees. The chilled mountain wind forced the fabric of her dress to cling to her body while she marched across the top of the building beneath a ceiling of stars. At the front ledge of the roof Dante stopped and stood tall on the highest man-made perch in eastern Amestris, looking down at humanity occupying the Xenotime valley below.

She watched, waited, and listened for them.

There was never any smoke to see. No gathering of lights ever happened. The wilderness slumbered and the town glowed like it always did, despite the obvious disruption. There were no collections of humanity in any unusual spots to lead her towards a single source for the tremors.

Drawing her tiny arms up and folding her arms across her chest, Dante stood in the face of a low lying moon, looked down, and continued patiently waiting.

Eventually, the earth shook once more.

Narrowing her eyes, Dante scanned the town and the wilderness - there was no visual source beyond a few unsettled birds. But the rumble was clear, she could hear it rise up and feel it fade away, and the sound of the night way up on high settled back in briefly before another quake quickly disturbed everything again.

There was nothing to see.

If nothing could be seen above ground, then the source obviously had to be below.

Dante nearly laughed, not only were the rescuers early, they were in her underground channels. If someone had entered them and started causing a disturbance, then they understood one of the fates she'd established for the town. If they were hell bent on crippling the transmutation's purpose, any amount of damage would render it inoperative and significant damage would be an absolute nuisance to fix.

What an unfortunate predicament humanity was encroaching on - there was too much knowledge in common hands. They were starting to figure details out.

Perhaps it was time to stop playing the cat and mouse game. The situation called for Dante to firmly reign in her control over what mankind understood, or thought it understood, and close a few eyes that had opened too far.

Turning away from scenes of nothing, the raging wind helped carry Dante away from her perch and she walked back to the rooftop hatch.

A dark room echoed unforgivingly at the impact of a metal grate crashing to the floor, the absence of light amplifying the egregious sound. Both Alphonse and Brigitte hid from the colossal clatter but, once it was clear no one was coming to investigate, Al took the lead and squeezed his way out of the ventilation system. He landed in some kind of cluttered storage closet. While Brigitte worked her way out, the light peeking in around the seams of a door drew Al to the opposing wall and he swept his shoulder around. His arm caught a light switch and he flipped it on.

A tired bulb flickered and struggled to gain strength, but it was enough for the two of them to see where they'd landed: a cramped closet filled with a hodgepodge of things. Bags of soil, dirty pots, rickety buckets, frayed brooms, and rusted gardening hand tools of all sorts were both neatly shelved and haphazardly dumped in the room. Tarnished lab coats and crusty overalls were piled high at the opposite wall, along with worn boots, well used gloves, old masks, and a myriad of tools lining a number of shelves. A few chipped shovels and mining axes accented the corners of this space of uncared for things.

Brigitte began rummaging around in the shelves and Al stared in awe at a mountain of stuff that he wasn't sure would do them any good. It wasn't like he could hold anything.

But, Brigitte could. She dug out a pair of decently-sharpened gardening shears and spun around triumphantly, " Al!"

Al took one look at the sharp object and responded with a wary eye.

Unfazed by the lack of enthusiasm, she grinned and snipped the air a few times.

Al added confusion to his concerns.

Reaching out, Brigitte started to mock-snip a seam through the centre of his metal box.

"OH," Al's voice accidentally cracked with delight. Eagerly he offered the metal box around his hands and Brigitte gave the contraption a thorough eyeing, trying to figure out how to use the shears to pry it off. Together they moved down to their knees and elbows and Al stretched his arms out, putting the metal cage on the floor for stability.

Jamming anything sharp into the wrist holes wasn't an option, so Brigitte threw the shears open as wide as they would go, placed the blade against the edge of the box, and tried sawing. Both children squirmed and shivered at the shrill, screeching sound of metal grinding on metal.

Searching for another option that didn't make their hair stand on end, Brigitte fished through the messy shelves of tools and Al's expression widened when she pulled out a rubber mallet. Clamping the shears shut, she steadied the pointed end over the centre of the metal box. Before Al could act on any of his concerns, Brigitte raised her arm above her head and smacked the mallet down on the butt end of the shears' handle.

They both cringed at the sharp, piercing sound that happened as the shears skated around wildly on the top of the box. Brigitte was too stubborn to be easily dissuaded; she reaffirmed her grip and returned the pointed end to the centre of the box. She raised her mallet arm once more and wholloped the end of the handles cleanly.

A muted clank tingled in their ears. Much more pleasant than all the other sounds produced so far, the noise collected both sets of delighted eyes to examine a clear, pointed dent in the top of the metal box.

Settling the sharp end of the shears into the divot and gripping the handle of the mallet firmly, Brigitte and Al both held their breaths while the hammer smashed down twice more. Pulling the shears away, they took a moment to silently marvel at the hole Brigitte had begun punching in the top.

Getting up on her knees, she gripped the ends of the shears' handles with both hands and tried to use her body weight to wedge them in deeper. She heaved what strength she had into her shoulders and upper body, trying to wiggle around to widen the hole. Brigitte eventually sat back to examine her progress.

It was a punched and mangled hole that was barely a finger's width in size, but the dent forced into the metal from all the weight and abuse was deepening. Al could actually touch the inside if he stretched his index fingers. Unfortunately, there was an inescapable problem making itself clear to him.

Sitting back on his knees and bringing his prison up to eye level, Al's shoulders sagged, "This is going to take forever."

Holding up her shears once more, Al deflated Brigitte's enthusiasm with the shake of his head.

The earth trembled, startling the pair in the closet. By this point it was clear the tremors weren't a natural phenomena and Al had every reason to believe that someone was trying to make their presence known. He was quietly confident that a rescue party was preparing to swoop in.

But, a rescue party would only be effective if they could find someone to save. Already down on his knees, Al put his cheek to the floor. Peering out from beneath the door, he eyed the hallway beyond, watching and waiting and counting how many sets of feet wandered by. It was a relieving sight to watch only a single person pass.

Not wanting to stay in the building any longer than they had to, the young Elric got to his feet, "Brigitte…"

"Hm?"

Al motioned to the door and nudged the knob with his elbow.

Brigitte's expression held a number of questions she couldn't put to voice and twisted uneasily instead.

Al offered a single word he was sure she understood, "Go."

Eyeing the door cautiously, then placing her concerned gaze on her company, Brigitte's attention abruptly broke from Al. Quickly turning away, she started looking around the storage room once again.

His posture sagging, Al elbowed the doorknob, "Please, we need to go."

Clearly ignoring him, Brigitte's distraction brought her to a corner and she pulled out a rusted mining axe by its handle. She assessed it under the flickering light like some well-to-do inspector and, with a nod of approval, the axe was firmly taken in her hand.

Brigitte fermented her scowl, " Something for self-defence."

Al raised a single eyebrow, still a little lost.

The storage room door opened easily. Smooth hinges released the children into the hallway without a creak, squeak, or any other sound. Alphonse and Brigitte cautiously peered up and down the brightly-lit hall, their eyes bouncing around a quiet, empty corridor.

There wasn't a whole lot for either of them to take note of. Rooms with closed doors were the most obvious thing, though one a fair bit down the way was open, but the entire hall was nothing more than a long, narrow, windowless stretch of research labs, capped at both ends by adjoining halls.

Standing free in an unnotable, unknown hallway on the fourth floor of the laboratory that confined them, Al picked a direction and they scampered away.

Dante tapped her bedroom door shut when she settled into the room and her despondent gaze wandered the childish décor. Just like sugar and spice, all her things were nice. Ruffles, bows, dresses, pretty dolls, toy animals, books... it would have been the perfect childhood to know nothing but this. What little she remembered of her own had diminished to nothing more than some disjointed memories of illness and famine. The impression left behind by her childhood clung to the fringes of her memories, never completely fading away; it wasn't happy.

Alchemy made her happy when she'd learnt it. The Philosopher's Stone made her happy when she had it. She'd created many happy childhoods for humanity with both.

Before she and Hohenheim had risen hundreds of years ago, the country and its people and its lands were desolate things. That man, Edward's father, had the gall to leave her before she'd had a chance to entrench herself - to fully realize how to protect mankind from its own inherent faults. The country was shaped the way it was because she was the gardener who controlled where the seeds had been laid. Alchemy rose at the forefront because she allowed it - encouraged it - to flourish over centuries. Medicine thrived because it became a passion of Dante's in her youth; plague existed in the history books because she'd made it so with the Red Stones.

These little nuisances running amok had no idea how the red water experiments she'd been conducting over the last three centuries had helped further society. It was all for their own good. And every time the country went to war over for some petty reason or another, Dante widened the gap between her knowledge and what remained for mankind.

War allowed Dante to remove from society all the written words she wanted under her control, no, under her guard.

Strife allowed Dante to remove from society all the people who'd encroached too far onto the truth founding the lies of their lives.

Stepping up to her polished oak dressing table, she sat down on the cushioned stool, looked at herself in the circular mirror, and tidied her bangs with a comb.

Adjusting the bows at the ends of her hair that had been tossed about in the wind, Dante straightened herself out in the mirror and pulled open the thin drawer at the front of the table. In the middle of a mix of hair ties, pins, bows, and a variety of childish accessories, she pulled out a black jewel box and sat it down at the centre of the table.

Flipping the latch, she opened the case, bringing to light her glistening blood-red pendant bound to a thin gold chain. Nestled in a soft cotton bed, a glossy gleam hugged the rich crimson stone and let Dante see her reflection as clearly as the mirror she ignored.

Scooping up the chain, her tiny fingers unlatched the clasp and she gently pulled the necklace out. Holding her chin high, Dante clipped it back together behind her neck and settled the nearly weightless pendant down below her collar bones. She had to remind herself that it was actually much less than it appeared; her body was so small that the final token of her previous Philosopher's Stone appeared larger than it really was.

Once endowed with the lives of so many more, this final remnant of an old stone was only large enough for one purpose - obtaining the contents of Edward's mind.

Tucking the prized possession away into the protective high collar of her frilly white dress, Dante clicked the box shut and slipped it back into the drawer again.

Her pigtails flaring out as she swung out of her seat, Dante left the room.

Weaving her way through the third floor hallways buzzing with nervous people, she slipped into the central stairwell and ventured down to the main floor. Emerging into a bustle of people, Dante breezed through the unsettled occupants wandering the halls of the laboratory. The vocal murmur they gave her ears was that the government officials were deciding if an evacuation was an appropriate response to the tremors, but they seemed indecisive. Dante was more than happy to let the lot of them bumble about in disarray.

Near the back of the building nestled in the mountainside, Dante arrived at a grand set of double doors and promptly clapped her hands. Putting a palm down on one of the handles, she transmuted the lock and let herself into a generously wide research room sunken in darkness. She shut the door and transmuted the handles away.

Dante crossed through the room, forgoing the lights in favour of the moonlight filtering in through uncovered windows at the room's far side, and she passed table after table decorated with jars, flasks, vials, papers upon papers, and all manner of colourful chemical equipment. Slipping away into an alcove at the corner of the room, she flipped on an overhead light and opened an equipment locker. Scanning its contents, Dante picked out an air mask small enough to fit her, tucked it under her arm, and continued on.

An unlocked door at the back wall offered unhindered entry to a secondary room she slipped into. Marching through a cluttered testing lab and nearly completely sunken in darkness, Dante grabbed a wheeled cart of flasks and pushed it away. The cart clattered along the floor as Dante stepped up to an undecorated wall. Her ensuing handclap cracked the darkness.

A hole ripped into the wall, then deeper to the bed of rock beyond it, and light filled her eyes.

Squinting into the entry of a mountain tunnel, Dante tossed her pigtails over her shoulders and stepped into the artificially lit corridor. Clapping her hands once again, she returned the wall to the way she'd found it, then transmuted the surrounding earth to fill in and seal her entry point.

Locking her arms behind her back, she walked to the clap of her footsteps connecting to the rock floor in total peace. The tunnel slowly widened into a generous thoroughfare deep into the Xenotime mountain and, long before the passageway ended, Dante turned her attention to a metal door on her left side. She let herself in.

A lengthy stretch of carefully molded stairs opened up for her to scamper down and she emerged into a cavern welcoming her at the base. In the poorly lit cocoon, several heavy, metallic doors with no handles were embedded in the rock faces on either side, but it was the centre most one that drew Dante to its threshold.

Slipping her air mask on and tightening it, Dante clapped her hands to create a latch and, as she cracked the door open, a red cloud bloomed at her feet. Wading into a cave emitting a deep red glow, the walls sparkled like they'd been showered in glitter and Dante casually strode through a thick haze suffocating the oxygen.

She invaded the deepest part of the hollowed earth.

"Enjoying yourself?"

Wrath blinked slowly and gave no response.

Drawing to a stop, Dante tilted her head and cast an emotionless gaze down at the docile homunculus.

Sprawled out on his back and nested in his own bed of untamed hair, Wrath's limbs lay lifeless around his body. His mouth hung open just far enough that the tips of his fangs glowed, his disinterested eyes swam around lazily and eventually floated into the back of his head. His chest swelled with every breath he took of the rolling red haze that flowed around his body.

"Time to get up, we have company to entertain," Dante reached down, grabbed Wrath by the front of his shirt, and hauled him upright.

Wrath's head rolled around atop his shoulders like his spine had liquified.

"Come along," Dante gave his face a few quick slaps to try and draw out his senses, but Wrath's mind insisted on drowning in the fog. Tangling her fingers into the knots in his hair, rather than work to get him mobile, Dante started dragging him towards the door, "A few minutes of fresh air and you'll start feeling right as rain."

The low-lying red haze bubbled around Wrath as Dante pulled him along like an oversized rag doll, his backside and AutoMail leg carving a trail in the dirt floor when he gave no effort to help himself along. The whites of Wrath's eyes glowed in the haze, entirely detached from his thoughts and completely unaware of anything going on around him.

Al watched and waited as Brigitte controlled the stairwell door; she closed it without making a sound. Together they stepped up to the edge of the wooden stairwell that wound its way to the main floor. It probably creaked. It probably made all the noises they didn't want to hear - it was wood after all. Behind a gulp of air for their nerves and an anxious pause on their toes, they took off and made the stairs complain.

Al flew down every third and fourth step as he ran, followed closely behind by Brigitte who relied on the handrail as she descended. Her bare feet clapped louder than the soles of his shoes. Soaring fast with gravity and momentum on their sides, and nearly dizzy from so many sharp turns, the base of the stairwell came clearly into view. Scrambling down to the ground floor, Al staggered to a stop and Brigitte launched herself past him, grabbing the doorknob.

It didn't budge.

" Wretched door, why is it locked!? " A question she wouldn't get an answer to.

The echo of their hurried footsteps settled and the fresh sound of Al's groan overtook it. Everything had been going so good up until now - they were so close.

Setting her axe down next to the door, Brigitte took the knob in both hands and stubbornly wrenched it around.

Turning his eyes over to the first flight of stairs, Al mulled their options, "We should try the second floor."

Brigitte responded to Al's unintelligible thought with a frustrated huff. Collecting her pickaxe in both hands, she brazenly stepped back from the door, " I'll break it open."

Al squeaked when he watched her raise the axe and rushed between Brigitte and the door, "No! Don't do that!"

Her hands strangling the handle of the axe as she struggled to hold the weight above her shoulders, Brigitte's eyes flipped between her readied weapon and Al. Visually confused about why he was stopping her, she gave the axe an encouraging shake.

Al shook his head, "No. No, no. We don't know who's on the other side."

Furrowing her brow, Brigitte waggled the axe up a little higher.

His expression pleading, Al shook his head with all the vigor he had.

Brigitte's brows weighed down over her eyes in confusion and disappointment while she lowered her weapon.

Al tossed his head towards the stairs and started to inch his way towards the bottom steps, "Go. Go."

Her brow twisting, she scowled at the locked door and begrudgingly followed Al back up the stairs.

Unlike the main floor, the door to the second floor was unlocked. But, much to Al's dismay, there were actually a few people on the second floor. Peering out into the hall, he tried to analyze their predicament a little further - could they trust these people? Al wasn't sure who, if anyone, was aware they were there, or if they could ask any of them for help. There was no way to know if any of them were directly involved with Dante or not.

On the other hand, considering Dante had him sequestered away in a part of the building where he couldn't hear anyone, or more likely that no one would hear him, the chances people knew who he was and that he was there were low.

But, what about Brigitte? How many people knew about her? And where were all the other stairwells that would take them down? Al hadn't exactly gotten familiar with the floorplan of the lab when he'd been here last.

Brigitte scared the daylights out of Al when she firmly grabbed him by the forearm and hauled him into the hallway before he could protest. With her axe secured in one hand and Al with his unexplainable metal box in her other, Brigitte put her chin up and brazenly marched barefoot straight down the centre of the hallway.

Not wanting to cause a scene, Al followed alongside her anxiously, keeping his nervous wide eyes locked dead ahead. Of the few people they passed, he could only hope that nobody started to question what two strange kids were doing there at that time of day, why they were a mess, why they were covered in air vent dust, or what in the world this damaged box was that Al had pulled against his stomach.

Despite his concerns, the pair wandered the evening halls relatively unhindered.

Long stretches of hallways filled with doors ended up not producing a whole lot of people. Those that did turn up were completely wrapped up in talk about the tremors and evacuation buzz. Al idly hoped that some of them would actually evacuate so they could follow the crowd out.

Coming to a stop, Brigitte suddenly let go of his arm and brought Al back to the mission at hand - they stood beneath a stairwell sign. Al's first, second, and third questions all revolved around getting Brigitte to explain how she knew where this was. How come she seemed to know where to go? Al's next realization told him flatly that he'd have to wait for his brother to translate if he ever wanted to actually find out.

Brigitte opened the door to their next escape and Alphonse led the charge in.

The charge ended when Al nearly fell down the stairs. Reversing his steps faster than he'd made them, Al's heels skirted off the lips of the steps and gravity dropped him on his backside atop the second floor landing.

His golden eyes locked on Aisa paused in mid-motion at the stairwell's lower bend.

Aisa allowed her own surprise to reflect back in return.

One hand on the railing and the other decorated with keys dangling through her fingers, Aisa stared up at the silent, growing horror contorting two children's faces. The surprise visible in her reaction did not filter into her voice, "You managed to get yourselves all the way down here?"

Al nearly choked when his heart thundered into his throat. His legs frantically swam over the stairs, trying to get up, acutely aware he had no way to defend himself from her. Bumbling back up to his feet, the captured Elric backed up into Brigitte, the wheeze of her panicked breaths ringing in his ears until she scrambled back to the door.

Tucking the set of keys into her pocket, Aisa brought herself completely around the bend and locked her attention on the frantic pair fumbling through their actions.

The door opened and Brigitte's piercing scream released from her lungs. Her voice exploded through the reaches of the stairwell and flooded the second floor as she tore back into the depths of the building.

Practically falling out the door in his escape, Al's feet pounded on the hallway floor as he ran, caught in the flow of Brigitte's shrill voice ahead of him. Clenching his eyes as tight as his trapped fists, he put his head down and chased the screams through the building. His imagination flashing with visions of Aisa in pursuit, and amplified by the never ending soundtrack Brigitte produced, he ran through the maze of halls hardly able to hold his focus forwards, let alone look back. Taking his turns sharply and nearly stumbling off his feet for it, Al fled as fast as his legs would take him.

But… why hadn't Aisa caught up to him yet?

It was a rational question that interrupted the chaos boiling in his head. Without realizing how it had happened, Al lifted his eyes and a fog cleared from his thoughts.

Logically, she should have caught up to him moments after he'd started running. Even if he'd made it around his first corner, she could have just followed the sound…

The sound was gone. Wait, where was Brigitte?

Alphonse staggered to a stop and every worry his mind dredged up fed his horrified expression. He looked up and down the narrow, quiet hall containing no essence of life within the walls, waiting for the air to scream in fear again. There was no Aisa, no Brigitte, not anyone. The dread filling the younger Elric brother's eyes sagged down his face - the sound of Brigitte's fears were silent and Al's were screaming at him for losing her.

Staring down the length of a corridor filled with nothing but identical closed doors that stretched on forever, Al stood alone in the hall.

Dante clapped her hands and cleared another collapsed artery beneath Xenotime.

Someone was putting a good amount of effort into making an absolute mess of the underground system. From collapsed channels to reforged passage ways, for each thing Dante mended as she passed by, another destructive tremble arose in its wake. Undeterred by the ruins, Dante was actually learning a great deal about the alchemist crippling the earthbound transmutation circle.

Alphonse's rescue party was showing they were adept. The locations of underground collapses told her that the demise of one of her tertiary plans was being executed with knowledge of the system. How did they get maps? Dante didn't like how organised this seemed to be and it only served to reinforce her resolve to start reclaiming information.

It was a waste of time to restore what needed to be, attempting to do so would keep her occupied for far too long, so Dante instead studied the misdemeanours going on within the earth in an effort to identify a point to intercept her guests at.

She was starting to feel she was close.

Emerging in a connective artery, Dante held her lantern out and looked at the branching veins of the underground maze. The tiny oil-lit flame of the lantern danced with each quake that came and went, throwing her shadow merrily around the walls. Brushing away the sediment that dusted her hair, she passed effortlessly through the interchange and continued onwards through her labyrinth.

The swaying flame in her hand stretched long into the darkness and Dante implored the light to flow as far as it could reach. She made no attempt to conceal her approach down the corridor - in fact, she welcomed it. And, indeed, the bold strategy yielded results; she smiled when it became apparent that the quaking earth had fallen silent.

The outstretched arms of the flame's light breached the end of the tunnel long before she'd arrived. Her approach generously announced, Dante stepped out into a thinned connecting vein and she lifted her lantern high. She peered playfully up and down the intersecting tunnel, the lamplight swirling in her eyes, and she mockingly examined the two directions of this next path, teasing uncertainty about which way to go. Eventually, she turned left.

Confident strides drove her down the carved corridor without another sound intruding. Dante walked in the underground to the sound of her pristinely polished shoes clapping beneath her, uninterrupted by the shivering earth.

She carried herself right up to an unsurprising dead end manufactured with broken rock.

"I ought to put you over my knee and turn your ass red."

Dante's brow bounced at the sound of a familiar voice and she swung around, throwing her oil lantern light back into the dark tunnel as her pigtails flew around her shoulders, "I wasn't expecting you."

Izumi scowled, "Who were you expecting?"

"There was a State Alchemist who excelled at this sort of thing," she waved her hand around, "I thought since you figured out what this was, he would have been the one you'd assigned to the task. It only made sense."

"He's busy," Izumi replied bluntly.

Dante shrugged, "Regardless, I honestly thought you'd be up top putting all your energy into retrieving my guests. Who were you forced to leave that to - some military puppies?" she brought her free hand to her chest and placed her palm over the stone concealed beneath her dress, "Edward, perhaps?"

Izumi's gaze narrowed at the petite figure holding the shivering light.

The flame danced at Dante's command and she grinned, "I've been betting with myself whether or not you'd allow him to come rescue his little brother or if he'd simply give you no choice in the matter, considering what he's capable of."

"Ed… or myself aren't capable of a whole lot with Aisa up there. I'm assuming she's the babysitter," Izumi folded her arms tightly across her chest.

"Yes she is, very true," Dante nodded, "but I'd love it if he'd try and clap his hands next to her, though I'd prefer if he waits until after we've had a chance to chat."

Izumi stiffened her jaw, weighing her words as she proceeded, "I don't want to know what'll happen if Ed claps his hands at all and I won't allow you to get close enough to him to find out."

Throwing a childish laugh at someone who remained her ignorant pupil, Dante disregarded the fierce eyes trying to pin her in the corner, "Yes, I'm sure you'll try. But, Edward is his father's son and he will eventually come to me. And I will continue to give him reasons why he should."

Izumi scowled, "What Ed has learnt isn't some pinnacle of achievements. It's knowledge that we aren't meant to have."

"That knowledge was meant to be ours," Dante's childish tone crumbled out of her mouth and exposed a tone as rotten as her decaying body, "we were too infantile in our civilization's youth to realize their gifts or understand the magnitude of the relationship they were offering, and now we are shackled by the confines of our ignorant limitations."

"You can't know that," Izumi countered her teacher's claims, "there are reasons we don't have this knowledge - reasons greater than you."

"Is that what Ed has told you?" the tiny woman shook her head and tossed her braids over her shoulders, "tell me, does he still childishly adhere to his fallacies when it comes to all he's learnt? Or is it that the other world showed him enough to open his eyes and broaden his horizons?"

Izumi dropped her arms defiantly to her sides, "Whatever Ed believes is irrelevant, the knowledge he gained beyond the Gate is his to assess."

"Mentally… emotionally and psychologically, Edward has shown he is just like the rest of humanity and too immature to find appropriate applications for what he learns when the answers reside outside his desired beliefs," dangling the lantern in her fingers, Dante stepped away from the seal of fallen rock and encroached on her company, "I have the impartiality and willingness to show the other world what this world has the ability to achieve. When I reach them, I will learn everything we've been denied."

"And then what? You'll add more strings to all your puppets?" Izumi stood firmly in the way of her former teacher, "who are you to designate yourself as the one to pick and choose what we can and cannot know, or is it all just the excuse you've given yourself to justify reinforcing your soul so you can escape your own mortality."

"Mortality is a fact of the world," Dante said, "mankind has shown time and again it is too weak to handle the potential it possesses and constantly teeters on the brink of mass, uncontrollable slaughter by its own hands. Every second generation is the same; as the grandparents pass, the children know nothing of the hardships they endured for the luxuries they enjoy. But I have to continue to exist, so I can remind mankind of its fragility - to protect you all from yourselves. You live with the luxuries you have today because I've allowed them to flourish, because I ensure unrestrained ambition doesn't lead to the incalculable atrocities you're worried about."

"You aren't a god. Nothing gives you that right," Izumi's eyes darkened, "mankind is not so fragile that we need someone like you constantly culling the herd to keep us in our place while you soar beyond reach."

Tisking, Dante took one more gracious step forwards in the stale earthbound tunnel and lifted the lantern dangling in her fingers up high. Giving it a shake, the container sealing the oil flame rattled around like a broken metallic chime.

Her eyes flying wide, Izumi snapped her head over her shoulder. A cursed pair of purple eyes picked up the glow of the light and an incomplete body stalked into view. Clenching her teeth and throwing her shoulders back, Izumi watched the lantern reveal Wrath creeping up behind her in the underground tunnel, the clank of his metal leg deliberately growing louder.

The homunculus flashed the whites of his teeth in the flickering light.

"Izumi…"

Dante summoned her student's attention and let her watch the childish face she wore drain of its life, revealing the cold, dispassionate visage of an ancient creature long removed from humanity. She drew the lantern to her cheek and pursed her lips. Watching Izumi with eyes growing dull from the rot and age she battled, Dante turned the oil knob on the lantern and mockingly blew out the flame.

"You are fragile."

The tunnel plunged into darkness.

Al was faced with accepting that he had no idea where he'd ended up in this laboratory maze. He couldn't even begin to figure out where Brigitte or Aisa might have gone. Every corner was blind and had to be approached with caution, every hall was long and had to be dashed through quickly. Nothing offered any glimpse or sound to shed light on either the woman he was running from or the girl he was running to. The end of another hall did nothing but inflate his growing frustration with the situation and his helplessness. It was beginning to feel like he was running out of corners to go around before he turned the one that walked him into Aisa. Then what would he do?

If he could get something like a pin or a nail or a screw to fall into the hole on the top of his box, Al could jingle it around inside and catch it in his fingers. The top of the box had collapsed enough thanks to Brigitte that he could touch it and, if he could scratch in a transmutation circle, he could transmute the whole damn contraption away. Why was everyone so tidy that nothing useful had been lost on the floor?

Ducking around another safe corner, Al shuffled to a stop when his ears picked up a curious sound coming from the hall he'd just cleared. Doors were opening? Peeking around the corner, Al watched curiously as a handful of Xenotime botanists working in the late hour came out of their labs.

"Listen up!"

Al ducked back behind the wall.

"They're leading us out through the central stairwell. Once we're outside everyone can head home. We'll reassess everything in the morning."

Murmurs of agreement bubbled in people's words and the gathering of a dozen or so men and women began walking away.

Al's eyes snapped to the part of the building he'd been about to advance on and then looked around to the parade of lab coats escaping. He could follow the evacuation out and get help!

His expression losing bits of the tension that had gripped him, Al waited for the last one to turn the corner and he trailed after them. Keeping a hallway length between himself and a chorus of people heading out, each hallway brought more bodies into the crowd; rooms emptied, laboratories cleared, and evening studies were ended. By the time they'd made their way around to the central stairwell, more than one hallway was bustling with people trying to feed into a single exit.

It was perfect, Al could hide in a sea of lab coats and slip out for help. In a gathering this size, he'd be dismissed as somebody's son. Knitting his brow with a helping of reinforced determination and a dash of rejuvenation, Al pulled his metal box against his stomach and scampered into the crowd.

Only shoulder and armpit height to most everyone, Al ducked down and excused himself as he nestled into the protective cover of taller adults. Shuffling along with the flow and trying to see past the shoulders and elbows around him, the pack of people tightened trying to hasten their way out. Lab coats and long jackets shielded the young Elric a little further while they all worked to squeeze into the lone exit.

"Single file, please."

All the hair on Al's body stood on end when he heard the voice.

"Don't shove into the stairwell."

Encased in a crowd of people, Al rose onto his toes and peered through a maze of heads. The sight made him blanche: Aisa stood at the side of the stairwell door and was coordinating everyone who passed through it. The heavy sag of his distraught expression returned as panic swelled; this wasn't an escape, this was a trap.

That made too much terrible sense. Aisa had the potential to move at speeds that could overtake Al or Brigitte if she'd chosen to. If she hadn't pursued them, what had she done? Alphonse hated the answer he came up with - she had keys in her hand in that stairwell... was she responsible for the locked stairwell door? Had she gone to lock the exits instead? It would explain why she was so confidently out in the open like this and not pursuing them - they had no other way out. The evacuation was an attempt to filter them out by emptying the floor through a single point. She'd either find them in the swell of people or be able to freely hunt them down when everything was empty afterward.

But, that also meant Aisa didn't have Brigitte. Brigitte had been ahead of Al… where did she go?

The crowd of people shoved Al closer to the door and the alarm ringing in his head directed him to turn around and get out. Ducking his head down, Al gingerly wormed his way around the hips of already frustrated people, trying desperately not to create any visible disturbances in the flow. When the packed gathering of white coats thinned enough, Al picked his eyes up, dug his toes in, and ran.

Bursting free, he ran through the end of the hall, shot around the first available turn, and fled. If Aisa didn't have Brigitte, and she wasn't able to escape the floor, then she was hiding and at this point that was pretty much all Al had left for options: hold on until help arrived.

At his next turn Al rushed to the closest door and locked his eyes on the knob. Clenching his jaw and firming his resolve, Al kicked his shoes and socks off. Balancing on one foot, Al gripped the doorknob with his toes and tried to turn it. The door was locked. Dashing across the hall, so was the next. Worry began to set back in as Al started realizing all of the door had been locked by the vacating staff.

Exposed in the hallway, his heart racing and his fraying nerves leaving him short of breath, Al picked up the pace again and ran to an adjoining hall. Hoping to find an open door Alphonse staggered to a stop when he found his reflection glowing back at him on the glass of an outside window instead.

Options that hadn't existed until this point all lit up.

Scrambling to the window, Al tried his best to look beyond the bright reflection of the indoors and survey the darkened landscape below. It looked like nothing but bushes. He could jump. Cuts and bruises from a jump like this weren't enough to worry about. He couldn't open the window, but the wretched metal box Dante cursed him with would definitely shatter it.

Backing up in the hall, Al took a few deep breaths to focus. This wasn't like every window he'd easily broken as a suit of armour - he was lighter and needed a direct hit at the centre of one of the panes. Leading with his arms, a corner of the box could take the initial contact and the rest of his body would disperse the cracked or broken glass. Once he was outside he could find someone to get his hands free and he could go back for Brigitte. Or he could find whoever had come to rescue them and let them know Brigitte was still hiding inside. One way or another, he'd get help.

Locking his focus, Al picked up his golden eyes, looked into his crystal clear reflection in the window, and watched Aisa step up behind him.

Al's legs drove him forwards before his mind finished processing the image.

Not more than a half dozen strides in, Aisa's hand caught the collar of his shirt and ripped the fleeing Elric off his feet.

His legs flying out from under him, Al crashed to the floor. Gasping for his next breath and throwing his eyes wide, he looked up to Aisa's body eclipsing the overhead lights. Her hand reached in and Alphonse shrieked - curling up and raising his sealed arms in defence, the inhuman woman's hand gripped the box, tucking a finger into the punched hole to secure her grip. Like she'd reached into his chest and crushed his lungs, Al's scream tried to shatter the glass as he watched Aisa crumple the centre portion of his metallic cage like it was cardboard.

Frantically trying to twist his hands out of the way as the box deformed under the monstrous grip, Al wrung every last ounce of air out of lungs. There was nothing else to do but scream. Even if he had his hands, he couldn't clap them around Aisa. Al could kick his legs, he could frantically flail, but he could do very little else - there was a crowd of people in this building stuck at the stairwell, someone had to be able to hear him.

Tightening her grip, Aisa hoisted the frantic Elric to his feet, "That's enough or I will quiet you."

"LET ME GO!" screams turned to words. Al planted his bare feet and tried to break free of a grip he didn't have the physical strength to overpower, "Let go of me, Aisa!"

Aisa immediately ended his physical struggles by hoisting him up off the ground.

Clenching his teeth as he dangled by his wrists, Al swung his legs up. Hooking his heel onto her shoulder, Al drew his other leg up and punched the bottom of his foot into her face. He kicked repeatedly, again and again, until Aisa's free arm managed to reach across and snag his dangerous ankle with a vicious grip.

Two gunshots overpowered the noise being twisted out of Al.

Aisa took a staggering step back and released her hold on his leg. Promptly accosted with three more shots, Aisa released him entirely and curled away from the assault, retreating towards the window. Alphonse crumpled to the floor, landing in a heap.

"The more holes I put in you, the sooner you'll 'bleed out', right?"

"Al, come over here!"

Grimacing as he gasped through repeated attempts to fill his chest with air again, Al lifted his eyes and stared at the brigadier general standing at the head of the hallway.

Mustang stood firmly; his gun drawn and pointed in his right hand, left gloved hand readied at his side. Feet planted, shoulders locked, arms readied, head held high - he carried himself just as poignantly in dusty, faded blue overalls as he did in the richer Amestris shades.

"ALPHONSE," the words boomed from his chest.

Pulling himself up to his elbows and knees, Al crawled, staggered, and eventually stumbled forwards as he got back to his feet. Dragging himself out of the hallways, Mustang's free left hand grabbed Al by the front of his shirt to steady him. Still struggling to catch his breath, he stared wordlessly at the red transmutation circle etched in the back of a familiar white glove. Movement in the corner of his eye brought Al's focus down the adjoining hall. There he found the other voice - Major Hawkeye's voice - standing out of Aisa's line of sight, Brigitte in hand.

The tension in Al's shoulders eased. He turned around at Mustang's side and looked at their reflections in the hallway window. He watched his shoulders rock while he heaved through his breaths, trying to steady his heartbeat. He looked at Mustang's expression and was sucked into the depths of a dark, unwavering, hardened look he wore - this wasn't a face he normally let people see.

His good eye met Al's in the reflection, "Are you okay?"

"I am," Al struggled to put his thoughts back in order, his attention drifting to the monster recomposing herself in the corner. Trying to swallow to ease his raw throat, Al let himself savour his next breath, "Thank you."

To Be Continued...

Author's Notes:

Happy October 3! Here's my favourite random FMA03/October 03 factoid:

FMA began airing on Saturday October 4, 2003, with it's final episode airing Saturday October 2, 2004. It covered 364 days. The missing 365th day to make a calendar year: October 3

My birthday was just before the final episode aired, so it'll always be my traumatic birthday finale LOL

This chapter and the next were supposed to be one chapter. I checked the word count at one point and it said 14K. That's too much, but rather than remove stuff (which buggered timing up) I cut it in half and fluffed the halves up instead. I guess we're going over 60 chapters now, welp. Stuff'll happen! Enjoy the ride! THANK YOU FOR READING.

Actually relevant to the chapter: Brigitte was allowed to freely wander the building in The Xenotime Gambit, so long as she didn't leave the property. She got familiar-ish with the layout then and was able to lead Al to another set of stairs.

Holy, this is my 10th chapter since I picked the story up again :')

This is a whole dang chapter without Ed LMAO. Have I ever done that? Guess we're making up for those two chapters without Al. Hope Ed enjoys everything he's cooking at Sheska's, I still need him

Next chapter is Oct 24 :)