A/N: Once again, PLEASE REVIEW. Thank you!
Lucifer's Orchestra
Bioalchemy had never been Roy Mustang's strength but nevertheless he thought he knew enough to make it. His training in elemental alchemy as well as a safety necessity in his specialty gave him the ability to conjure up water relatively easily. His bioalchemy skills were enough to transmute a nutritious paste out of rock and sand. It tasted terrible and felt disgusting in his mouth, but it would keep him alive.
Despite his shortcomings, he was better-rounded than most alchemists, for example, Kimblee who never had enough motivation to learn anything beyond how to destroy things or Grand and Armstrong who only specialized in metal and stone. Thus he could travel pretty light.
In the end he took only his gloves, a piece of chalk, his uniform and a spare. He was playing with fire he knew, an expression that brought a smile to his lips, dry and cracked by the desert. However, he didn't really care anymore and part of him hoped he would forget how to transmute something he needed to survive and die in the desert.
The private who took him out into the desert was terrified of him, though he didn't know whether or not it was his rank, his reputation or his weird nocturnal habits of late. The rank and file had always been jumpy around the combat alchemists, not just for the rank of major but the tremendous destructive power that they could conjure up like magic. Of late some of the alchemists had also started to crack and two of them had lost it out on patrol.
One of them had turned his entire squad into stone statueswhose expressionsshowed their utter terror just before they died. The other had completely obliterated an Ishbal school, causing the children to slowly die as she transmuted air bubbles in their blood causing them horrid suffering.
The camp now had the mood of terror barely held in check and the straw tucked behind the private's ear that he would occasionally reach up and finger told Roy the man had likely drawn and lost and had this mission forced on him.
They drove out before dawn, trying to take as much advantage of the night's coolness as they could. Roy had gotten permission to conduct his research in a ridge of low rounded hills out in the midst of the desert. They had been mountains once, but over the years were ground down until they were low and smooth, just barely sticking up out sand.
"Come back for me in five days at this hill. The landscape may look a little different but I should be here. See ya later." Roy yelled at the man as he jogged for the cover of the hills from the sun. The private saluted with a trembling hand and turned the Jeep around to head back to camp. With a great effort, just before he raced off he stopped and called to Roy.
"Colonel Grand instructed me to warn you that he believes a band of Ishbalan rebels are using these mountains as a base. Although it's not a mission, be on your guard and if you make contact with them, you know what to do." Mustang nodded silently at the man who had just barely decided he wanted Roy to win over Ishbalans, turned his back and walked away.
Although he didn't owe it to the man, something in his terrified eyes had raised Roy's sympathy and he tried to wait until the man was safely away so that he didn't risk hurting him or destroying his nerves. However, much sooner than Roy had expected, he snapped and obliterated a stone façade in a gigantic explosion.
Roy's nocturnal rhythm worked to his advantage over the next several days as he spent the burning days in a cave in the rocks he had transmuted, mostly asleep with exhaustion. He'd transmuted the stone into a pool of water that allowed him to bathe each morning, allowing him to live even more comfortably than back in camp. He didn't keep any guard, he knew if they truly wanted to hurt him and were more than just the mere savages that Central painted them, the Ishbalans would let him live with what he had done.
At night he would climb the ridges and snap his fingers over and over, pouring out all of his frustration at the war, the generals, the orders, the Ishbalans, and most of all himself at the helpless stone. He sent great plumes of fire upwards scorching himself as they filled up the sky above him and launched cascading explosions that ran down the whole length of the spine of the ridge. Stone that had weathered sandstorms and burning days alternating with freezing nights hundreds of thousands of years was obliterated with the flick of blackened gloves.
Across the desert, soldiers and Ishbalans alike gathered each night to watch the display. The soldiers figured he was showing off or celebrating his victories. The smarter or higher-ranking ones outwardly praised his dedication at trying to make himself more deadly. The Ishbalans watched this man flouting their greatest taboo with such flamboyance, figuring he had been sent out there to frighten them into submission.
As each side watched the young man finally unveiled in his full power and terrible beauty they grew to hate him more. Few of them suspected he was trying in vain to destroy his demons.
Roy knew they would react that way but he didn't care. Those moments on the ridges when he was pouring his soul out in an orgy of destruction and his mind was occupied with trying not to kill himself was the closest he ever got to feeling normal again.
It truly was a thing of beauty as he waved his arms in graceful arcs, snapping his fingers at the apogee and throwing his arms out to their full length, with a quick graceful snap. Each new explosion outlined his silhouette in black against the flames as he went through these movements in total control and commanding deadly forces to do his bidding effortlessly. He truly looked like a maestro, conducting Lucifer's orchestra.
The predatory gleam in Colonel Grand's eye showed that he either suspected the real reason for Roy's "research leave" and wanted to expose him or he was giddy over the prospect of more efficiently murdering innocent Ishbalans with a deadlier Flame Major.
Mustang had been prepared for this. Over the years of playing around with his fire, he'd acquired a trick or two up his sleeve that he hadn't shown anyone. They were techniques he hadn't had the cruelty to try on an enemy even when his life was on the line; dirty underhanded methods like igniting the oxygen in an enemy's lungs or his development of transmutation circles that sacrificed accuracy for sheer destructive power, turning the entire area around him into a little piece of hell, a blazing inferno that sprayed death everywhere. Though he'd imagined these techniques someday saving his ass, he reflected as he got ready to demonstrate them, he'd never imagined it would be this way.
He'd feigned one transmutation getting out of control. It had destroyed several tents but "by sheer luck" hadn't injured anyone save for the ends of Grand's mustache. Roy thought that was a nice touch. He'd been scolded by Grand for trying such things before he could handle them and wasting his time. He walked away, outwardly ashamed, inwardly relieved.