105 - Blood and Stone
NOTE: While not out of line for the story or the series, the following chapter is a bit more graphic than usual. Discretion is advised.
Swallowed by the thick darkness in the bowels of the mountain, Wrath became a far easier target for Izumi to maneuver around than Dante. Her ears became her eyes and she let the creature's bare AutoMail leg give away every mechanical step he made.
The clear clank of a metallic foot threw Izumi into motion. Diving past Wrath's open right side as he charged, she tangled her fingers in his mess of black hair and yanked the homunculus off his feet. A stride and a half later, she heard his yelp that popped off the walls when his back hit the ground.
The creature made a hell of a racket getting back to his feet, but before the sound of AutoMail became solid footfalls in pursuit, Izumi clapped her hands. Throwing them to the dirt floor, Izumi allowed her transmutation to spark brilliantly and caught a shrouded glimpse of the hollowed, emotionless look Dante dressed herself in behind the feral homunculus.
The transmutation executed and a dirt wall rose up to plug the tunnel; a momentary means to slow her pursuers.
Back on her toes again, Izumi raced through the vein of the mountain to the growing echo of Wrath's fists smashing through the earth. She needed a way out and she needed one fast, but the tunnel only led her straight, venturing neither upwards or downwards, curving left nor right, which forced Izumi to try and calculate the scale of mountain rock rising above her the deeper she went.
A handclap that was not her own burst with light. Not needing to look back, Izumi watched Dante's show of prowess as the light clawed through the walls. The transmutation raced past her without interference and continued travelling down the lengths of the corridor, far into the distance, until the darkness swallowed the last remnants of the power.
"There are no exits, Izumi," her words chilled the smooth tunnel sides.
Clapping her hands, Izumi spun on the tip of a toe and punched the palms of her hands to the wall. She snapped her head back to watch multiple columns of rock begin shooting out from the wall behind her, jettisoning out horizontally and indiscriminately, anywhere from forehead to shin level. The obstacle course gave Izumi a far more accurate audio cue for Wrath's location as she raced ahead.
Dante rose again to give Izumi a reason to hold her breath. Her tiny handclap popped without light - emphatically cracking in the darkness protecting it.
A cascading echo of crumbling earth rose like an avalanche behind Izumi, gaining faster than her legs could take her. The normal steady strides she made began to lose footing as surging waves of unsettled earth rolled through the tunnel floor. Staggering and stumbling forwards, fighting to remain balanced, Izumi's eyes lit in the darkness when her foot landed firmly on the crest of a wave. Jumping up, she clapped her hands and slammed them into the low-hanging ceiling above their heads.
Allowing the transmutation light to shine, Izumi caught a glimpse of the rock and dirt overhead that began to crumble down around the creatures gaining on her. The unsteady ground at her feet settled as the earth overhead fell apart, but the reprieve only lasted until Izumi regained steady footing.
Dante's shrouded handclap cut through the sound of crumbling rock.
Izumi was blown off her feet by an eruption of wind Dante churned through the old mining corridor.
As free and weightless as everything the wind collected, Izumi tumbled in the uncontrolled maelstrom amidst the dirt, rock, and debris of the overhead collapse she'd instigated. Dante hadn't bothered to spare Wrath from the bedlam, and when the sound of his shrill voice and clanking AutoMail reached her, one of Izumi's hands caught the homunculus as she skirted along the ground. Locking her grip in his hair and securing his single free arm behind his body, Izumi stabilized herself on her knees, compacted her body behind him, and used the immortal creature to shield herself from Dante's onslaught.
Fermenting her hold as she rode out the storm, Izumi grimaced with each heavy impact she felt Wrath take, holding him steady as the pounding storm eroded his resilience. By the time the dust settled and the silent tide rolled back in, the only reason the homunculus remained upright was because Izumi held him there.
Quietly catching her breath in the blind tunnel, Izumi took the grip she had on his hair, slipped it gingerly under his chin, wrapped her other arm around his side, and carefully lay Wrath down on the cool, littered floor.
Cautiously standing up, grimacing at the cuts and gashes she'd taken, Izumi knew full well Wrath would bounce back sooner than she'd like. She slowly started stepping away. Backing up nearly twenty paces, unable to keep her escape silent in the tunnel smothered in debris, it became frighteningly clear that running was no longer a safe option.
Izumi put her hands back together, focussed on controlling her transmutation to not give off any light, and she placed her hands on the ground again. Another earthly barrier was erected to separate herself from Dante and Wrath.
Backing up another fifteen strides, Izumi built another - this one thicker.
Twenty strides further, yet another. Thicker.
If Wrath tried to smash through it before Dante made her way deeper down the tunnel, Izumi would at least be able to feel it. If Dante wanted to blow it away before getting to it, at least the wind had put sufficient distance between them.
A few minutes of time appeared in Izumi's possession - what was the best way to get out? In a confined space like this, she was at a massive disadvantage.
Izumi didn't have the energy to kick herself; the first thing she should have done when she realized Dante didn't have Ed was find a way to get the hell out of there. The fact this little nightmare had turned up in the tunnels in the first place was curious and confusing enough that she needed to investigate, but if the rescue mission was only for Al and Brigitte, that changed everything. Most critically, it allowed Dante to maneuver freely and eliminate people who had the ability to get between her and wherever Ed had ended up.
Where the hell was Ed if Dante didn't have him!?
Izumi reexamined her teacher's wording. She believed Ed was still with them? Did Aisa not realize… had that godawful disguise Armstrong coerced Ed into actually worked? Was he here and they didn't know? No, Dante would have recognized him… it was Aisa who had never met him before. What did that imply?
Izumi didn't have the luxury of time to entertain so many questions. Nor could she afford to entertain Dante in a confined space like this with Wrath at her side.
She clapped her hands.
Hopping up onto her toes, Izumi jumped and smacked her hands off of the dirt overhead and created a cavity with a narrow entrance.
Clapping her hands once more, she knelt down and touched the ground at her feet.
A jagged chunk of rock cracked around her body and the surface Izumi knelt on carried her up to the cavity on a pillar. Crouching low, she slowed the transmutation to a stop once she was tucked away inside. Crawling into the carved rock pocket she could hardly sit up in, one more hand clap dismissed the pillar back down to the floor and sealed her in the earth.
Rolling onto her back, Izumi took a few moments to steady her breathing. She'd spent far more energy than her body was regularly comfortable with and she wasn't done yet. Intent on getting out before either Dante exercised her authority again or the oxygen ran out, one last lengthy transmutation remained.
Locking her focus forwards, towards the sky she intended to see again, Izumi clapped her hands and slammed them down on the mountain above her. The rock at her hands crumbled, streamed down the sides of her cocoon, and flooded in beneath her. The constant flow of rock around her body began buoying the Elric's teacher up through the mountain.
Mustang's free left hand held Al by the front of his shirt to steady him, "Is your leg okay?"
"I think it's just twisted a bit," Al took a deep breath, "give me a minute."
His gun pointed forwards, Mustang didn't have the time available that the boy in his custody needed, "Where's your brother?"
"Not here."
That wasn't an answer Mustang was expecting. His eye narrowed, "Exactly how not here?"
Al tightened his position against the officer's side and kept his voice low, "Aisa didn't know who he was."
Mustang's voice withdrew as quietly as he could, "Mrs. Curtis told me that she had taken both of you."
"Yeah, she did," Al nodded and glanced over his shoulder, before he whispered, "but Lt. Colonel Armstrong had him disguised and she dumped him in the streets when she couldn't identify him. He's still in Central City."
It took a lot of effort on Mustang's part to not smirk at the development, "Your brother had better have parked his ass there or I'll kill him."
Al gave a disparaging laugh, "I'm going to kick his butt first, so hold that thought."
Mustang's brow rose at a statement he was going to demand information on later. Putting his hand down on the young Elric's shoulder, he gave it a firm pat and ushered him securely away to Hawkeye.
Moving Al safely into the hall towards Brigitte, with a gun in one hand and Brigitte's axe in the other, Hawkeye stepped up to Mustang's side.
"Get the kids out of here," he ordered.
"What are you going to do?" she exchanged the gun in his hand with a fully loaded one of her own.
"I'm going to drain Dante's power supply," the officer's good eye darkened, his focus locked on what loitered in the hall, "I need you to move those two to safety. Get Al's hands free, we're going to need them."
Hawkeye's eye jumped from the inhuman woman straightening herself out at the end of the hall to the man who stood in the way, "If you're not out by the time I'm done that, I'm coming back."
Now Mustang smirked, "I'll hold you to that."
Holding his head high, weapon poised, and solitary eye cast forwards, Mustang briefly glanced to his hip when Hawkeye latched Brigitte's axe into one of the loops of his workman's overalls before she vanished from his periphery. Squarely placed in the centre of the hallway, Mustang returned his attention to the vile existence pinned at the end of the hall as she finally turned her attention onto him.
"You can't arbitrarily heal yourself, correct?" he asked hotly, "that's a homunculus trick, which you are not."
Aisa stared back at him, "Shouldn't you be in Central City?"
Mustang lifted his chin a little higher, "So, the holes will continue to leak until you're patched or run out. Red water contains no coagulants, as far as I understand."
Her voice rose, "Shouldn't you be in Central?"
"I certainly should," he decided to acknowledge the question, "but, it seems every way I turn lately I'm denied a number of things that I'd prefer and now I'm here."
Aisa rolled her shoulders and perfected her posture, "I don't believe we've ever been formally introduced, Brigadier General Mustang."
"We have not," Mustang launched his voice and listened to it echo weakly back at him, "but I don't require an introduction from you. While everyone in Dante and Sabastian Mitchell's acquaintance addresses you Aisa, I know you were born Gillian Atropos."
Aisa raised an eyebrow at the address, "That information is useless. Are you expecting an accommodation for your pedestrian detective work?"
Mustang nodded, "That would be nice for a change."
The callous chill in her voice iced the hall, "Gillian is dead."
"Yes, she is," Mustang flashed his left gloved hand in the air, "and what's left of her has been embalmed with red water and you are now kept alive by an alchemical procedure I don't want to comprehend."
"As it stands, it is beyond your comprehension," Aisa offered dryly.
His brow growing heavy, Mustang wasn't interested in the verbal diversion of what he did and did not know about the lengths Dante had gone to defy understanding, "Suffice it to say, once the red water in you is used up you will cease to exist."
Frowning at the man parading his prowess around in front of her, Aisa calmly raised a warning, "As I warned Izumi the first time we met: if you snap your fingers, Flame Alchemist, and the results will be far beyond what you intend."
"Yes, I understand you took her on quite the ride. However, I believe our relationship will be different," Mustang's expression grew heavy from a dark memory, "I have experience with the red water's material application on my alchemy, and taking into consideration what you are and how much we're dealing with, it'll be interesting to see just how brilliantly a catalyst like yourself will affect things."
Aisa remained stoic in the depths of the hall, "We teach children not to play with fire for a reason."
A scoff burst from his lips, "You don't have the right to speak of nurturing children," the thumb of his left hand dug into the bed at the tip of his middle finger, "did your child even have a name before you allowed Dante to defile her?"
"Her name has always been Diana," the response was robotic - cold, emotionless, without care, "she was born to be fused with a child extracted from the Gate, an experimental alchemical procedure which was successfully executed at her birth."
It was absolutely flooring how this woman had taken those words and put them together to form such an ugly statement, and further astounding that she gave them a voice. The officer struggled to control the volume of his disgust and his words boomed in the hall, "Children are not born to be experimented on. There is no justification of any kind for perverting the life of a living, breathing infant."
Aisa stared back at the man locked in his stance, blocking her path. She cast her eyes over her shoulder to the window, as if she were offering a passing thought to escaping through it, before returning her attention dead ahead again. Compassion long drained from her face, humanity well past expired, she looked at him squarely in his single, dark eye and responded.
"Would Alphonse have been able to succeed in bringing home his brother without her? In that light, Diana was a worthwhile scientific experiment that produced remarkable results, wouldn't you say?"
Mustang snapped his fingers.
Concealed from the moonlight by branches of pine that stretched to the stars, Izumi let her aching body have a moment to rest.
Carving her escape through thick dirt, solid rock, and robust roots, Izumi's transmutation had bubbled up in the middle of the foothill forests that filled the countryside of Xenotime. The rock fountain had spilled her into the woodlands, now the murmur of the quiet forest and cool evening grass was a welcomed respite.
The first thing she wanted to do was to let Mustang know Ed was out of the equation and Dante was freely roaming.
The first thing she had to do was make sure she could keep Dante occupied while Mustang dealt with the situation inside - her teacher and her sin had surfaced not long after she had.
Wrath remained the easier of the two to audibly track, but with the expanse of the outdoors, it became a double edged sword. On the one hand it allowed Izumi to monitor his location to avoid him, on the other Dante knew Wrath's noise would allow her to plot her own silent moves accordingly.
In the middle of a deadly game of hide and seek, an explosion brought Izumi's eyes up. Peering up the hill from her protective cover, a flaring orange light filtered through the forest for a few moments before it dimmed. Originating from what had to be the Xenotime lab, the event gave her some indication of her relation to everything else. But it also made her unease a little worse. What was going on in the lab to cause an explosion?
Even if she wanted to get up the mountain and investigate, Dante and Wrath were in the way. Izumi was going to have to let her concerns slide and focus on keeping the rest of the party outside.
Wrath's bare AutoMail foot clanked off a rock and the sound carried through the forest. Izumi cringed and ducked back down into the brush - he was being uncomfortably obedient with Dante.
"Izumi, I haven't had a chance to ask you…"
The tiny, maleficent voice calling out startled her student.
"…how have you been feeling lately?"
What an ugly question. Izumi scowled at the taunt; Dante had been responsible for her medicine for over a decade. She hated looking back at the time when this terror wore the face of that elder woman - the one who'd taught her everything she knew about alchemy. It was hard to accept that she had been manipulated by her every step of the way.
"Who have you been seeing for your medicine over the last year?"
Thinking of her was like imagining a different person who carried the same name. Despite how their relationship ended up, that Dante had been kind and understanding when Izumi had reached out to her for help after everything had happened. She'd confided in her teacher and then Dante, an incredible pharmacist, provided her with the medicine she'd used to maintain some resemblance of a normal life.
But, Dante had also turned her life on its head when she asked if Izumi had been given 'the handclap'. At the time, the old woman had lied and said it wasn't something she could do, but explained it was a privilege gifted to anyone who had seen the so-called 'Gate'. It did not feel like a gift, Izumi's wilting body was proof.
"Has anyone been able to offer you anything that comes close to what I always prepared for you?"
It was because of what she'd done that Dante explained how a homunculus was born: through failed human transmutations. Dante had said at one point she'd been 'thankful' that Izumi had returned the creature to the Gate. How hard must it have been for her true persona to withhold how angry she must have been that she hadn't been able to get her hands on that poor creature back then.
It wasn't long after that the two of them stopped seeing eye to eye.
"I'm assuming you've found nothing that compares my remedies."
Discarding her torn, knee-length white cover in favour of darker clothes underneath, Izumi kept low, ducked into the shield of forest brush, and moved away from the obscene chatter spinning her head. Her ears remained on high alert, listening for the brash noises of a wild homunculus tracking her from the trees and she settled low on her hands and knees, tucked away at the base of an ancient pine tree.
A childish clap of hands intruded into the night and Izumi sank lower to the ground. Dante wouldn't have clapped her hands so loud unless she wanted her to hear it, yet the subsequent transmutation was eerily quiet. What the hell was this woman up to?
Wanting to peek above the foliage to get a visual on Dante's ploy, Izumi remained low and listened, opting to not fall prey to growing curiosity. Keeping motionless in the quiet night, even Wrath had gone silent, and the only noise she could pick up was something that sounded like the wind rustling through the grass, weeds, and lower leaves. Izumi tested the air - it was still.
Tendrils of branches and vines began snaking past her and Izumi snapped her attention to her ankles.
The forest bed came alive and Izumi scrambled through the active plantlife, her sudden movements exposing her location. A shadow blocked what little moonlight filtered in and she threw her body out of the way as Wrath descended on her. The homunculus missed his strike when he crashed to the earth.
Rolling away at Wrath's open side and escaping the stretching tendrils Dante searched the forest floor with, Izumi hurried through the lower mountainside.
Another handclap sounded, deliberately emphatic and bright, bringing Izumi to a staggering stop as a wall of earth surged skyward beyond the tallest reaches of the forest, caging her within. It was an awesome, imposing structure and her face twisted with a frustrated scowl; neither end of the wall was visible - how far did this monstrosity stretch? Clapping her hands, Izumi threw them against the wall and forged a hole through.
Wrath soared in before she'd taken her first step forwards. Izumi dodged his physical attack, but rather than aiming to strike her, Wrath changed his boorish tactics and clumsily scrambled to latch on. First catching her leg as he caught her off guard, then lurching up to her waist, the homunculus tried to tie his legs around her knees. Sent staggering as she tried to fight free from his inhuman grasp, Wrath forcefully tore a scream from Izumi's lungs when he sunk his teeth into her hip.
Obscured by the furor, Dante brought the forest floor alive.
Izumi's pain vanished, supplemented by fear, her eyes flying wide in alarm as the earthy vines, young branches, and tendrils of roots decorating the forest floor began to entangle around her. Falling to her knees, she recognized that what Dante had done before was nothing compared to the hungry wilderness she controlled now. Frantically swimming around on top of the earth as the forest crawled up her legs and wound through her arms, Wrath detached from Izumi when the strong wooden bindings seized control of her movements. The living forest tendrils secured her limbs, wrapped around her body, and began dragging her up the mountain.
Whatever Mustang had been prepared for at the moment he snapped, he immediately realized he'd underestimated it.
Bolstered by more force than he'd intended, the explosion and flames blew out the exterior wall behind Aisa, destroyed the interior rooms lining the hall, and devoured the ceiling overhead. The surprising intensity of an explosion he'd tried to keep to a minimum launched Mustang off his feet and sent him crashing into the far wall of the main hall behind him.
Singed from head to toe, triggering alarms that began wailing all around him, the officer scrambled up to his knees. Without the time he needed to mentally adjust his transmutation, Mustang's right hand brandished his gun and he opened fire on the woman who burst out with phenomenal speed from the dispersing flames. Dodging out of her way when bullets did nothing to compromise her movements, Mustang watched Aisa plunge her fist into the wall behind him like it was water.
Bullets would only be as good as the surfaces they penetrated. Considering what had been done to her and how she wasn't reacting to being shot, Mustang had to conclude Aisa felt no pain. Knowing that she could use the red water to enhance her strength and speed, but without the regenerative abilities of a homunculus, anything that he damaged on her would require Dante to repair.
He also knew she was also Gillian Atropos, which was not useless information.
She was a scientist.
She wasn't an athlete and she wasn't a soldier.
Aisa existed as a protective container with heightened attributes, but had no more skillful coordination or practical combat knowledge than what she'd had when she'd been properly human.
His thoughts in order, the alchemist's arm shot out again. Swiftly adjusting the oxygen concentration of his transmutation, Mustang snapped using his weaker pinky finger to lessen the spark.
It wasn't as though Mustang was experimenting with a few solidified samples of red water - the make-up of Aisa's leaking system continued to add a phenomenal punch to his transmutations. He had never felt the explosion's force bounce back on him quite like this before. While he was able to maintain the transmutation on a relatively smaller scale, so he didn't kill himself, the force of the compact explosion and subsequent burst continued to be adversely enhanced by the red water's presence.
But, Mustang hadn't been sent flying onto his backside this time and he chalked that up to progress. His eye looked through the additional stretches of walls that had been blown through; the ceiling overhead had begun to crack while the flames hungrily latched onto the crumbling infrastructure that struggled to remain together.
Wiping his face with the back of his arm, Mustang glanced at the ignition glove on his left hand, growing uneasy with how the pads of the fingers had started to blacken from the intensity. He again tweaked how he would handle the oxygen concentration and straightened up.
Cautiously making his way out from a hallway slowly being eaten by his flames, the officer's good eye interrogated the mess and searched the thickening smoke and debris, trying to pinpoint which crumbling room Aisa had landed in. Despite how the woman concealed herself in the growing fire, it was clear that the red water continued to leak at a decent rate - Mustang cautiously eyed the plume of red-tinted smoke that began polluting the hall.
Hooking his shirt collar over his nose, the officer looked up to the burning ceiling panels overhead. Taking a few more cautious steps back, he brought his gun up, pointed it ahead, and waited as portions of the ceiling began to crumble away.
The expected overhead collapse flushed Aisa out and Mustang emptied his weapon into the cloud of reddened smoke that burst to life. Adding a few more holes for the toxic red water to leak out from, he dodged her rush once more and discarded the gun.
Reaching for the axe Hawkeye had latched onto his hip as he spun around, Mustang turned to find himself nose to nose with the scorched face of his inhuman adversary.
He threw his elbow into her eyes. Aisa lurched back in surprise and the officer did it once more, then swooped down low, ran his shoulder into her hips, and heaved Aisa over his back. Mustang rose up quickly, tossing her head over heels, and dumped Aisa onto her head on the floor behind him.
Spinning around on his toes, Mustang watched Aisa land in a heap. So long as she didn't get the opportunity to secure a firm hold on him, he could handle her physically. Shuffling back several strides, the officer punched out his left arm again and snapped his fingers.
Shielding himself and skidding back on his toes, Mustang looked out into the burning structure - at some point there was going to be enough red water fumes present in the air that he was going to lose his handle on the transmutation altogether, no matter how he adjusted things.
More foreboding than that - the thicker the air got with red water, the greater the danger the toxicity posed to him. His shirt came up over his nose again.
It had started becoming clear that Aisa's tactics revolved around surprising her opponent with a burst of speed, relying on the moment of surprise to give her an opening where she could use her basic enhanced strength to strike. Peering beyond his shoulders, Mustang weighed his options for what would be the best way to take the fight. He wanted to lure her to an external wall, drag her outside, and let her burn up without the threat of the roof falling in on them.
The smoldering cloud shrouding Aisa roared to life again and Mustang quickly swung out of her way. Snatching the stiff, crushing arm she'd reached for him with, Mustang used the limb like a propeller and spun Aisa around. With his opponent off balance, Mustang steadied her only long enough to chop his fist into her neck and knock the backs of her knees out. Her legs forcefully buckling, Aisa returned to the floor.
Distancing himself once more and bracing for the impact, Mustang snapped his fingers.
Nothing happened.
Flaring his hand open, Mustang looked at the fabric on the pads of his fingers and palm - blackened to a crisp.
Throwing his left arm out as Aisa came back to her feet, he held up his left hand and scratched his right fingers across the embroidered transmutation circle on the back of his ignition glove. There was more than one way to draw a spark out of ignition cloth.
As the circle glowed and flames escaped his grasp, Aisa disregarded caution and charged straight into the bursting fire, igniting a storm that swallowed her. Crashing into Mustang, she jarred his arms skyward, launching a canon of flame into the ceiling, and kept running through him.
With Aisa's shoulder buried in his chest, the officer was driven down the hall at an alarming speed and she crashed him into the wall at the end. Bouncing off the wall, Mustang fell to the ground gasping for air, winded from the impact.
Throwing him onto his back, Aisa used her strength to dig her knee into his chest as he struggled to breathe, pinned his right wrist to the floor, and ripped the glove off of his left hand.
Mustang looked up into the unnerving reincarnation of a woman repeatedly subjected to the scorching power of his flame, her crumbling state resembling scenes from his nightmares and brought to life. The officer struggled to rationalize how she could remain entirely unfazed by the state of her body or the flames eagerly devouring her hair.
Aisa continued to leak steady streams of red water from every point he'd managed to puncture her.
Mustang's left hand frantically fished around at his side when Aisa favoured taking a merciless grip on his face. The heel of her palm settling into the damaged eye socket and facial bones at his left side, Aisa forced Mustang to writhe beneath her while she twisted her hand into an old wound. She steadied her hand and hovered her thumb above his good eye.
"You do not need the other one."
Mustang slapped his hand down on a hastily drawn transmutation circle.
Made from Aisa's endless streams red water, he'd blindly drafted the simple transmutation circle on the floor boards. Mustang executed a bright transmutation powered by a thin amount of red water and drove a myriad of jagged fissures into the floor, causing the wood to crack like ice as it fanned out.
As Aisa startled and leaned back to take in the scale of what he had done, the entire hallway of the Xenotime laboratory's second floor shattered, crumbling down to the floor below.
Izumi didn't know how long she'd been dragged for or where she'd ended up when it all stopped. Laying face down in the soft dirt, struggling to breathe, she remained immobilized and imprisoned in a body wrap of vines, branches, and whatever foliage Dante had at her disposal. Her abdomen had begun screaming along the way and eventually stopped protesting after she'd completely discoloured the greenery where her head lay.
In hindsight, it made sense Dante would have an expert hand at transmuting plant life - medicine was founded in herbology. As a pharmacist, her knowledge of how to manipulate every last mineral in the roots and vines would be centuries old. The quiet revelation also explained the lure of Xenotime for Izumi as well, a remote location enraptured with botanical alchemy would not have escaped her interests. Surely there was some correlation between that and her choice to process red water here…
A solemn moment was taken to wonder what Dante had been putting in the medicine that helped keep her alive.
Behind the shaking draw of a breath, Izumi moved her head to expose one eye. Through the mud caked in her eyelashes she could see the lights of the laboratory beyond the trees. It wasn't that far off anymore. Despite the rustling of the forest and the faint wail of alarms, she swore her exposed ear was picking up the sound of voices in the distance.
Branches cracked under the weight of Wrath's AutoMail foot, the sound snapping loudly in Izumi's ear. His single good hand wrapped around the knot of her ponytail and he extracted Izumi from the forest floor. Hauling her up to her knees, Izumi lifted her eyes to Dante's petite figure standing firmly in front of her at eye level, her baby-faced expression smothered in disappointment.
Reaching into one of the lace pockets decorating her white dress, Dante pulled out a handkerchief and began wiping Izumi's muddied, bruised, and bloodied face, "I can give you something for the pain?"
"Fuck off," she spat.
"Now now," Dante wiped away the mess under Izumi's nose, "I thought we cleared that sort of crude language from-"
All three bodies startled when an explosion in the laboratory drew their attention.
Wrath inadvertently moved enough that Izumi could turn her head to see the glow burning brightly through the forest. Her eyes strayed, traipsing to the main road just beyond a thinning section of trees. With the light shining on their backs, she could see people move - see them run. A stream of people fled down the mountain.
Izumi buried her pupils in the corners of her eyes to watch Dante's expression sour at the sound of the building's alarm system now clearly reaching in their ears.
"Wrath…"
The obedient homunculus focussed and brought Izumi back to face their master once again.
Standing eye to eye with Izumi on her knees, Dante reached out with her handkerchief again to sweep away the mixture of dirt and blood drying on her cheek, "Looks like I have some business to attend to."
"You can't have Al," Izumi wheezed.
Her attention flickered up the mountainside to the unsettling scene beyond the trees. The tension in her expression lifted and Dante dismissively shrugged her statement off. She smiled, "There are only so many people available to watch over him, Izumi. Even if he escapes, I'll simply find an opportunity to take the younger brother again, or anyone or anything that matters to Ed until either I find him or he presents himself to me," her focus wandered with her thoughts, "it's been a few centuries, I'm sure Resembool is due for a wildfire about now. It's really up to him in the end how it plays out."
Her breaths seething as they pulled through her teeth, the astounding amount of casual dismissal in her grotesque intentions made Izumi want to voluntarily heave again, "Someone will stop you."
Winding her brow with mocking sorrow, Dante shook her head, "It's such a shame. I once honestly believed that our relationship could have been more than this."
An inexplicable rage charged through Izumi's chest, burning like the fire claiming the building behind her, "I'd rather have this, than have had anything to do with whatever you'd wanted from me."
Dante moved a few fallen locks of hair out of Izumi's face, tucking them behind her ears. She wrapped the handkerchief around her index finger and started to clean the mud out of her eyes as both Wrath and the vines held her steady.
"You had so much potential," she tossed her eyes up to the sin, "I keep forgetting how stupid humanity can be sometimes."
"YOU ARE HUMAN," unrestrained words charged from Izumi's mouth, "There is NOTHING about you that places you beyond the laws of nature or the limitations of alchemy. You are as much a part of the flow of life as I am. Even if you've perverted the rules to your liking, you cannot transcend it. You CANNOT change that you are human. WE ARE BOTH HUMAN."
"I am not," words spoken coldly, emotion rotted away. Dante drained the vibrancy from Nina's eyes to look down at humanity kneeling before her, "I discarded that weakness quite some time ago."
"What does discarding humanity make you, then?" her body stiffening inside the confining restraints already paralyzing her, Izumi clenched her teeth, "You can't be a god."
Dante rolled her eyes up to the stars, "My potential lies with knowledge from beyond the Gate," hints of a smile curled the corners of her lips. She looked back into the ferocious eyes trying to claw into her, "I will learn what that is from Edward."
Heavily drawing her breaths, Izumi searched the hollowed gazed of the tiny woman lurking in the shadow Izumi's body cast in the light of the burning laboratory behind her. She had no more of a soul left than any of her homunculus ever had.
"I hope you find nothing but hell through him."
Dante let the dirtied handkerchief slip off her fingers, discarding it into the grass. Drawing her hands up, she put the soft pads of her childish fingertips on Izumi's cheeks, "There is no heaven and there is no hell. There are no gods and there are no devils. Good and bad are subjective opinions."
Izumi curled her lips in disgust as Dante swept her fingers off her cheeks.
"The only certainties are life and death. A beginning and an end."
Between their locked gazes, Dante clapped her hands. Her palms separated, flaring the energy in spectacle and, without any sign of remorse or hint of hesitation, she reached in for Izumi's temples.
Refusing to flinch or look away, remaining defiantly steadfast at the merciless whims of someone who'd once been her mentor, Izumi watched Dante's right hand explode.
Izumi choked on her next breath when the circulating power of the transmutation splashed blood across her face.
Time inexplicably stopped and Izumi stood locked on her knees, staring wide-eyed into the astounded expression of an ancient alchemist frozen childishly in unspeakable shock. As if she could not understand what had happened, nor comprehend how much it hurt, Dante's pinpoint pupils fluttered around in their wide white oceans while she tried to process the image of her ravaged right hand frozen in mid-motion. The soft, round jaw Dante had taken visibly trembled at the sight of the bloodied, gaping space where the knuckles of her index and middle fingers had once been on a tiny, immature hand. Her ring finger barely hung on while it was tossed about in the cycling transmutation energy that had sprayed red all over her dress.
The second gunshot that decimated Dante's right hand rang in Izumi's ear when it flew by.
Mustang picked himself out of the rubble and had to check to make sure he had all his faculties in order. He'd been able to shove Aisa off before everything crumbled and at least try to brace himself for a fall, even if it had hurt like all hell coming down. He was beginning to suspect he might need his tailbone looked at to go along with all the ribs Aisa tried to crack. Externally, a few gashes, cuts, and bruises weren't anything to worry about. Nothing that was injured prevented him from being mobile, or at least adrenalin was making it so.
It was time to get out.
A new problem possibly more detrimental to his health than Aisa filled the air around the officer - Mustang stood the poisonous swell of burning debris, dust, and smoke, all tinted red by the toxic water fueling it. The air burned with every breath; the red water infused smoke had gotten into his lungs and was making him dizzy. For what little good it might do, Mustang pulled his shirt up over his nose again.
Thankfully, the crux of the hungry fire and thickest smoke still hung overhead in the exposed floor above, not yet completely crumbling down to hinder his escape. Accepting his choices were either get out or suffocate, whatever he'd done to Aisa by now was enough. If they were lucky, there wouldn't be enough material left to salvage and the completion of the Philosopher's Stone would be hampered, inhibited, or flawed. There was some margin of victory to be had.
But, where was she?
Finally able to unhook the axe from his side, Mustang used the tool to aide his climb through the debris and make his way out of the collapse. Latching it onto chunks of floor to clear them away and scrambling around other pockets that burned, the officer let his eye dart around and entertain any shifting debris, any dancing flame, or any blooming smoke cloud that could come back to life after Aisa was done playing possum.
Scaling a crumbled pile of smoldering floor, he didn't have to wait long - the debris beneath Mustang rocked and dumped him off his feet. Catching his balance, the officer's good eye caught enough movement from a smoldering shape in the corner of his eye that he was able to maneuver away from it.
Squaring himself and tensing his hands, Mustang sifted through his surroundings and cursed. Whatever was left of the horrific thing had driven him back into the collapse and smoke.
Positioning himself with his back to a wall and looking into the mess, Mustang weighed the option of backtracking and making his way out through the deeper halls, but he didn't like the length of the trek or how it positioned him so far from an exit.
The smoldering figure lunged past him again - slower and clunkier than she had been before and enveloped by a rancid odour - but still making no effort to engage, only directing his movement.
Casting his gaze skyward, the officer examined the flames devouring the edges of the gaping second floor. Mustang ground his teeth in frustration - he still had his right handed glove in his pocket, but if he snapped his fingers in a space with so much airborne volatility, he'd end up not just killing himself but blowing a crater in the slope of the mountain in the process. He needed a way to dilute the transmutation as much as possible if he was going to execute it.
Through the smoke, the haze, his coughs, and the swirling sensation starting to swim in his head, Mustang picked up a mangled chunk of ceiling with the sharp end of his axe and threw it at the dark, smoke shrouded figure blocking his path in frustration. It was practically laughable how little good it did him.
Aisa was going to win the fight through asphyxiation and Mustang struggled with his intoxicated thoughts, searching for his options.
Right, there was more in his pockets than just his right handed glove.
Mustang dug out a broken piece of the chalk he'd used in Dante's underground transmutation circle. Against a flat section of wall, the officer took a moment to mentally construct his transmutation and etched the circle into the wall. Swiping his hand over it, he quickly adjusted the surrounding air pressure with his transmutation, as Izumi had done with his flames in the cavern below, and actively manipulated the weight of his surrounding air molecules. He created a cool breeze to clear out the air.
Red water pollutants turned the transmuted breeze into a generous wind and, while the fresh air drawn in from the distant halls felt amazing, it fanned the excited flames above his head, stirred all the pollutants in the air, and made the smell radiating off Aisa more repugnant - it also lured her back to him. Mustang only managed a handful of modestly clean breaths before her charred figure lumbered in and smashed into the wall to end the transmutation.
But, while Aisa silenced the wind, she'd opened a window for him to get by.
Scaling a collapsed section of jagged floor and hurdling over crumbling piles of burning debris, without her to block the way, the officer burst into a portion of the building that remained solidly standing. He dug his toes into the tips of his boots and charged through the halls steeped in a muddy red fog. Racing down the vacated corridor, his strides stretched out long above manageable footing.
At the next sharply taken turn he'd make in his charge, a light-headed wave washed over Mustang's body, sweeping from the top of his head down to the base of his feet, and his legs felt like they'd liquified.
Skidding into the wall, the officer melted down to his hands and knees. He looked ahead through the stretch of hall and watched his vision surrender to the corruption of red water poisoning while his head drowned in a stew of airborne toxins.
Mustang struggled to breathe; all he did was cough until he saw stars.
He tried to think - tried to focus. Where was the exit? He had to be close to the exit.
Heavy footsteps dragged a foul smell made of burnt flesh and heated red water into the halls of the building. Invading the already offensive air of smoke and red water, a putrid odour flooded into Mustang's nostrils and nearly made him wretch. He needed a way to defend himself before he could even consider getting to the door and a solution from actions earlier surfaced in the poisonous stew.
Trying to focus his thoughts on a single task, Mustang's hands trembled while he clawed his right ignition glove out of his pocket. Fighting to put the watery, titled vision together clearly enough to secure his focus, he began dressing the pick end of the axe in the glove. Turning away from the danger he could smell and curling his body against the wall, Mustang allowed his body to go limp over his knees as he tore the pointed end of the axe through the fingers of his glove.
In the mangled orchestra of wailing alarms and the distant crackle of fire, he listened to Aisa's footsteps bring her to his side. He waited and listened to the uncomfortable sound of her ruined body move and lean in. He let her listen to his rasping breaths wheeze and gasp for clean air as she hovered.
Her hands were hot and crisp when they reached in from behind to take him by the throat. Her two-handed grip, as intense as his fire, quickly crushed down with nearly intolerable pressure - Mustang's body lurched and he came alive. He thrust the back of his shoulders into Aisa, drawing his body up high on his knees, and he startled her with his actions. Grabbing onto one of the wrists at his neck and seizing his staggered opponent, he used her as leverage to twist around on his knees. Mustang's right arm flew out as he turned, the head of the axe locked in his hand, and he plunged the pick end into the raw side of her abdomen.
The embroidered transmutation circle on the ignition glove lay beneath his fingers, drawn up the length of the pick until the fabric body hugged the iron snugly. The nail of his curled middle finger scratched across the cloth to draw a spark. Enhanced by the red water trove the axe had sunken into - the source that fed the product flowing through her veins - Mustang lit Aisa up from the inside.
The shrill, piercing, chilling scream that a wounded animal let out at the forceful dismantling of her own flesh thrashed through the Amestris forest. Dante's screams flew out of her lungs at a horrific pitch - voicing an indescribable pain, fueled by the offensive sight of her own mortal frailty.
Taking a staggering step back, she hunched forwards, burying herself in Izumi's protective shadow. Holding her arms out in front of her body, Dante locked her focus on the crumbling, leaking appendage, while the other fluttered around with uncertainty. Her mouth hung open as her lungs continually forced out her deafening cries, unable or unwilling to relinquish the surging transmutation current raging through her.
Izumi slowly leaned back into Wrath as he loosened his grip on her hair.
The unhinged look in Dante's childish eyes shivered madly as she began allowing the energy of her transmutation to course freely through her. Suddenly lurching, Dante dropped to her knees, slammed her good hand to the dirt, released the transmutation energy into the earth, and made the ground heave.
"SENSEI!"
The ties that bound her gave way and Izumi threw her head over her shoulder in alarm to a distant voice in the night as the forest floor beneath her surged. Like Dante had dropped a boulder into a pool of molten rock, Izumi and Wrath were sent tumbling through a shockwave of earth as it spread.
The roots that laid the foundation of centuries old pine filling the forest were ripped from their beds. Wildlife fled their homes as the earthbound wave rolled, tossing Izumi and Wrath into the deafening onslaught of trees cracking, crumbling, and collapsing down around them.
Released from both Dante and Wrath's hold, Izumi clapped her hands and slammed them to the active forest floor. She reached into the earth and conducted her transmutation through the soil, flooding the power into the disturbed roots of the collapsing trees. Transmuting the trunks and branches into harmless wood fibres for lengths around herself, the emancipated needles and leaves, pounds of dust, and everything else the forest held in its branches rained down around her.
In the storm's wake, Izumi picked her eyes up and looked ahead.
Emerging into the clearing she'd made, she watched a solidly built, golden-eyed boy run in. A fierce look she'd never seen this soft child wear before set the golden shine of his eyes on fire. He slammed his hands together and Izumi watched the small Elric tear his palms apart, flex his hands swelling with power, and he sucked the transmutation energy back inside his body when his fists clenched shut. Alphonse planted his bare foot in the clearing and powered his next step into the ground, blowing the transmutation energy into the shaken earth through his bare foot.
A rush of wind blew over Izumi's back as a column of rock fired out of the ground behind her. Looking up, she watched Wrath, who'd risen from the chaos behind her, get launched high into the sky - his screams drowned out by the torrential thunder brought on by forest continuing to collapse well beyond the clearing.
The homunculus vanished above the falling treetops and Izumi was left to stare into the glow of the rising moon. Outshining the stars to showcase all its textures, the moon took away her thoughts and left Izumi with nothing but an indescribable need to let her exhausted body melt into the ruined forest floor. It took every ounce of energy she had left to turn back around.
Dropping to his knees, Al threw his arms around her neck and squeezed tight.
"Gotcha."
Izumi gazed wordlessly out beyond Al's shoulder, slowly realizing Major Hawkeye and Brigitte had joined them in the transmuted clearing. Like her arms were suddenly weighed down by boulders, Izumi couldn't lift them to hug this boy back.
"You're okay?" she lifted her voice.
"Yeah."
"Your brother's not here?" Izumi asked hoarsely, growing numb as she eyed the hunting rifle in Hawkeye's hand.
"No," Al tightened his hold, "Aisa left him in Central."
"Oh," the explanation for how that happened would have to come later. Her shoulders sagging, Izumi was losing the strength she needed to hold herself up.
Putting her weapon aside, Hawkeye swooped in. Resting a hand on Al's shoulder, she slipped her other arm around Izumi's back, "We need to get you off this mountain as fast as possible."
"Dante's here," Izumi protested.
"I don't think she's here anymore," Al looked out into the unsettled forest.
Hawkeye knelt down and slipped her shoulder under Izumi's arm to bring her up, "Come on."
"HEY!"
Eyes lifted to the woods at a bellowing voice.
Rushing into the clearing, Falman emerged covered in dirt, axe in hand, and nearly out of breath, "What… what happened here? Where did that dirt wall come from?" his brow shot into his hair as he looked at Izumi, "are you okay!?"
"I'm alive," was the answer.
"Dante made the dirt wall I guess," Al looked at the barrier at the base of the mountain, "is it keeping everyone from getting down?"
"It was," Falman tossed his axe down into the layers of wooden dust, "the fire crews were trying to get up the mountain to deal with the building, but the wall came up. Firemen and a bunch of townsfolk have been working on digging a hole for people to escape through. They're still working on widening it, but no one's gotten up yet to address the fire."
Turning on his toes, Al rushed away before anyone could stop him, "I'll open the road for them!"
Izumi grit her teeth, "The whole mountain's going to burn down at this rate."
"Officer Falman," Hawkeye's voice hardened, "take Mrs. Curtis, Alphonse, and Brigitte down the mountain and find somewhere safe to secure them."
"Yes Ma'am," sliding into Izumi's opposite side, he took her from him.
"Most of the building's exits were locked," Hawkeye left the rifle for Falman and picked up the axe in exchange from the ground, "there are probably people trapped - I'll open as many doors as I can and make sure the brigadier general has gotten out."
Securing her hand weakly at Falman's back, Izumi scowled up to the burning building glowing through the trees and lighting the night, "Yeah, don't let that asshole kill himself out here."
Hawkeye secured the axe in one hand, took her handgun out of her pocket into the other, and stormed back up the hill.
Causing people to explode were the mantra's of others; Scar and Kimblee were the first to come to mind. Offensive people that Mustang had low opinions of.
He himself had done horrific things to innocent people in the Ishbalan war - with his gun and with his alchemy, but he found something inherently grotesque about applying the principles of alchemy to living flesh. It was a feeling that reasserted itself when he looked into human transmutation. He didn't want that mantra; there were other ways and other mantles to take up. But, he wasn't ignorant to how it was done.
In Scar's method, he only applied one of the three parts in the process required for alchemy to destroy a human body: deconstruction. It was a disgusting exhibition of one's ability to dismantle a person down to its core elements.
In Kimblee's method, he transmuted elements within the human body and created an explosive. Chemically ingenious, in practice it was well beyond cruel, and the lengths of which he enjoyed that cruelty, and found ways to showcase his cruelty, was abhorred.
In Mustang's method, he used the substituted life blood embalmed in a dead woman like it was kerosene and ignited her. He burned Aisa from the inside out and lit up all the parts of her body that the red water flowed through - including the womb nurturing Red Stones and the stomach needed to finish actualizing the remnants of the Philosopher's Stone.
What was left of Dante's flesh container had dampened the force of the modest explosion at least.
Mustang regained some illusion of his senses with his face on the floor in a pool of foul smelling liquid and he tried to push up to his elbows and knees. Two thoughts turned up as he tried: the building was on fire and he had to get out. Every move he made and each simple tilt of his head spun the worlds around him and the officer felt like he'd been dumped on his back. Concluding he was still on his stomach, Mustang's elbows quaked as he tried to pull himself up again.
Looking around in the haze of thickening smoke and warped visibility, something caught his eye. It was a strange sensation - despite all the distortion and overriding the noise in his head, this existed clearly. The draw of some primal force got his body to lurch forwards and, in a puddle of red water mess left behind by Aisa to pollute the floor, Mustang pulled himself over a tiny raw gem - so pure, so red - it wiped the lens of his messy vision.
Perfectly symmetrical, beautifully unscathed, bountifully coloured, and inexplicably alluring, Mustang picked up the final remnant of Alphonse's Philosopher's Stone that had begun to take shape inside Aisa.
Nestled neatly in the palm of his burnt right hand, it was about the size of the pad of his thumb and weighed practically nothing. How did it feel so enormous?
Somewhere in the back of his mind the two thoughts returned and Mustang screamed orders at himself to escape, he was just too caught off guard by the enchantment and fixated on it. The only new sense that came to him clearly was the recognition that everything had gone quiet. How could that be? Were his ears falling apart like everything seemed to be?
A hand reached in and it should have startled him, but his body didn't react. Fragments of clarity puzzled themselves together and Mustang realized that someone was touching his back. A shadow partially shielded the offensive light. He idly watched a familiar hand help him close his sore fingers around the Philosopher's Stone and tuck it away into his chest.
The urgency to escape the burning building had abandoned him.
Mustang couldn't quite say he was even aware it was falling apart.
But, he was aware of his own hand at his chest clutching the stone and aware of the shoulder that came in under his arm and the blonde hair that accompanied it and how that hair beautifully captured the glow of the dancing fireflies around them.
To Be Continued...
Author's Notes:
Al is my good son ;A;
And Riza's the stalwart hero :')
There's not a whole lot of science available about ignition cloth (since it doesn't actually exist lol). However ignition cloth is manufactured, Mustang chose to go with the flashiest looking way for him to do his transmutation with one hand, and I've tried to expand on the fabric's functionality a little :)
On my tumblr, there's some art for the prior chapter (handle - weatheringtea). Apparently I can only draw when I'm way too stressed about a bunch of irl things haha.
This chapter had been called Firestone since June. The final version deviated enough from the original take(s) that it didn't fit as well anymore. Blood and Stone relates better for both fights.
Nov 14 sounds like a good slot for the next chapter.