Disclaimer: I do not own any of Full Metal Alchemist. I own Nirvana, Neko and their children.
Author's Note: Well… sorry it took so long for me to get this chapter out. I really didn't have much inspiration for this. This might go on hiatus. Depends really on what I can do with it. I'm starting my new story, a Greed/Kimblee one. So who knows…
Warnings: Nothing really this chapter…
LAST…
(((( Mercy and Diligence looked over the city of LaMorea, the younger one biting on her lip idly. "Diligence?" Mercy asked quietly. "I… I think he's here. My chest's been disturbed though… I can feel it."
Diligence was no longer listening as he looked down on a gnarled willow tree, a black haired woman curled up under it. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and rested one hand on Mercy's head.
"We'll find it, Mercy." ))))
NOW…
"JEAN!" Nirvana hollered as she ran through her house, picking up stray pieces of her uniform, throwing them on as she did so. The blonde rushed in after her, hopping on one foot as he held his belt between his teeth, trying to pull his boots on, but failing miserably.
"I'm here!" He mumbled around the leather, watching his way as Roy Mustang calmly walked in, looking at them with a raised brow. "Morning, Roy!"
Roy sighed and rubbed the bridge between his brows. "When are you ever going to decided to wake up earlier than ten minutes before you have to leave?"
Just as he said that, Neko rushed in, looking for her pants and boots. The children were sitting on the couch laughing at each other as their family relations tried—unsuccessfully—to get dressed.
"It's not our fault!" Nirvana complained. "I was out really late last night! When's our train to Lior, anyway?" She growled and then as soon as her boots were pulled on—successfully this time—she ran back into her room and grabbed her black duffel bag, giving Envy a kiss before running back into the living room.
She touched her lips, feeling something wrong, but shrugged it off and grabbed Neko's arm. "We hav'ta go!"
"Your train leaves in…" Roy looked at his watch. "Ten minutes!" The two girls shrieked and quickly said their goodbyes to their children.
"Be good for Daddy, Tessa!" Nirvana yelled over her shoulder and the three military officers ran out, leaving Roy to laugh at their behavior. "BYE! Take care of my house, Mustang!"
"Wire me information when you receive it!" He hollered back and closed the door.
Down the road, Neko was struggling helplessly with her bag as Jean and Nirvana ran towards the train, which was chooing it's 'soon-to-be-leave'. "Hurry! Damn! I am never having coffee before bed!" Jean groaned and they quickened their pace.
"HEY! Wait!" Nirvana called to the conductor as she finished doing her jacket up. The conductor laughed and Nirvana dimly recognized him from the conductor that had been in Aquroya a few years ago after she had first met Envy.
"Still late, Miss Seiga?" He called as the three officers ran up the ramp, panting slightly. "I would've thought you'd gotten an alarm clock by now!"
Nirvana laughed as she fell into a seat with Jean, Neko sitting across from them. "I-I'll try to keep that in mind." The conductor bowed and left as Nirvana sighed. "The rest of our team is going to meet us in Lior. One of them is already there… I think her names' something Shay…"
(((IN LIOR: LATER THAT DAY)))
Nyoko Shay stood by the train station tapping a booted foot against the ground impatiently. The train from LaMorea was late and she hated when things didn't go according to her schedule.
She lifted her head, brown eyes with pink streaks being revealed to the sunlight as her light auburn hair blew in the wind, her highlights standing out. She was dressed in the military pants, tucked into the boots but had foregone the annoying jacket to wear a black muscle shirt that highlighted her rather large bust.
She walked up to the unloading platform and watched for military blues. Three people walked out, one with fiery red hair, the other with blondish spiky hair and the last a woman with incredibly long black-ish blue hair.
"Hey!" Nyoko called, not remembering their names clearly. The black-haired one looked up and grinned walking towards her. Nirvana sat her duffel bag down and stuck her hand out.
"Nirvana Seiga."
"Nyoko Shay." Nirvana then turned to her two companions.
"This is Colonel Jean Havoc and Lieutenant Colonel Neko Kirishima." Nirvana then pulled off her military jacket, leaving her in a white tanktop, her automail scars shown to everybody. Havoc and Neko copied her move, the sun now at its peak, heat already picking up the giant dustbowl.
"Come this way. The Lieutenant is waiting for you." Nyoko leaned over to pick up their bags but Nirvana shook her head, picking them up too easily with her automail arm.
"Thanks, but I can carry them. Just lead us to where anyone is staying."
Neko looked around nervously. It was too quiet here. Even at the train station, where people are supposed to be, there were only a few people, most injured military men and women. In the distance, gunshots and screams could be heard, grating on her nerves.
She unconsciously stepped closer to her older sister, as Nirvana seemed to be immune to the sounds.
Havoc flicked his eyes to the run-down buildings, feelings familiar memories of the Ishbal Massacre surface. The buildings were splattered with blood like they had been back then and it didn't bode well with the fact that there wasn't a single body in sight.
"What happened to all of the bodies?" Havoc asked, startlingly the silence that had been around them. He saw Nyoko hesitate in her next step before continuing.
"They disappeared shortly after." She said, her voice tight. "That's why the military's sending you three in. They think that it's the homunculi."
Nirvana raised a brow. "But all of them are dead!" Except one, she added mentally.
Nyoko looked at the Brigadier General with interest. She knew something about the homunculi. Something that the military didn't know and Nyoko Shay was going to find out. "Okay, then what else is doing this?"
Nirvana rubbed the back of her neck with her flesh hand, looking at Havoc. He shrugged in return and she sighed. "I don't know much about what's happening… but it might have to do with something we found the other day." When Nyoko opened her mouth to ask more, Nirvana shook her head. "That's all I can tell you."
Nyoko stopped in front of the abandoned warehouse their squad was housing and pulled open the door with a grunt, walking in inside and closing the door behind them. "Welcome to Lior." She said and started to feel her way in the dark. Nirvana sighed and looked at Neko who was pulling on her glove, lighting a fireball in her hand as she held it above their head, illuminating the corridor.
Nyoko looked up in surprise, her eyes reflecting the fire. "That's a handy trick." She commented, rubbing her own transmutation circles that covered half of her arms.
Nirvana studied them intently, trying to read what they were for. "What's your alchemy?" She asked, giving up with trying to bring back old alchemical texts.
Nyoko looked down at them as they neared a flickering fire in the back. "I'm the Tainted Leaf Alchemist. My alchemy absorbs any life around it and can turn the life into a carnivorous plant. Quite gross when I do it to a human." She shuddered and opened the door.
Neko put out her fire as three men and the Sergeant looked up. "Bri. General Seiga! I'm Sergeant Takanawa. This is 1st Lieutenant Ray Connell, 2nd Lieutenant Jason Peck and 2nd Lieutenant Jean-Claude Viper."
Viper stood up, long black hair pulled into a braid, bright golden eyes glinting maliciously. Nirvana cocked her head to the side as he bent over, kissing her hand. "Brigadier General." He said respectively and his voice grated over her nerves pleasingly.
Havoc frowned at them and protectively stepped subtly closer to his woman. Nirvana grinned to her sister as they sat down on the cots that had been scattered around the room. "2nd Lieutenant." She greeted back. "Do you happen to be related to a Zolof Kimblee?" She asked and watched as her sister chocked back a laugh.
Viper's eyes shot up as did the other men who didn't know her story with the feisty alchemist. "No, mam'n! I wouldn't dare be caught with even a string of DNA related to that… psycho!"
Nirvana snickered and stretched out on the cot. "That's good enough for me. So, Takanawa, what's our plan or what's to do?" The Sergeant blinked in surprise at the casual tone of the woman.
Neko curled up on the end of her sister's cot, looking like a… well neko as she snuggled into her legs.
"Uh…well… we were told until you got here to keep the civilians under control. They said you would know what we're looking for." Nirvana grumbled and rubbed her forehead. "You do know what we're looking for, don't you?"
She shook her head softly. "It's not one of the Seven Sins, I can tell you that. Because all of them are dead."
Havoc sat on the cot next to Nirvana's. "It could be one of the Seven Virtues. You know, Chastity, Abstinence, Charity, Mercy, Diligence, Liberality, and Patience?" He said and received confused looks, only getting a slight understanding from Neko and her sister. "They're the exact opposites of the original homunculi."
Nirvana yawned. Time to restart my annoying research on Homunculi's… and Human Transmutation…
As everyone settled down to bed and Viper blew out the candles that had been settled around the room with a gust of wind from his fan, Nirvana's emerald eye snapped open as her missing eye throbbed with power.
She turned her head to the wall that she was against and shivered, feeling a familiar evil presence. It was so similar to Envy's that it was creepy…. She sat up, resting her forehead against the wall, closing her eye as she let her missing eye try and see what she could not.
While away in hiding for five years after the final battle, she picked up various ways to sense peoples auras… the most common being that her missing eye could pick out from a black screen, colored mists that described people.
Envy's was the blood red of his Oruborus Tattoos as were all of the other homunculi and Jean's was a royal blue, the color of the military.
Right now, there were specks of blue, white; which represented civilians and two bright blue bursts of light that were swirling in the familiar fashion that Envy's did, just backwards.
She slid back onto her cot and linked her hands behind her head, closing her eyes calming her wild breath.
If there were Seven Virtues out there… all made from failed Human Transmutations… She shivered, not wanting to think about what it could mean.
She fell asleep, her eye twitching fitfully as she imagined what was the cause of all of this.
((( ATOP THE ABANDONED CHURCH OF CORNELLO )))
A woman sitting upon a rooftop looked around, honey brown eyes surveying her surroundings. Her long brown hair was half loose around her face as she turned her head to another man sitting next to her who was looking at his hands.
"What the hell?" He mumbled and looked up golden eyes blending with his wrapped up dark blue hair. The woman pulled up her shirt slightly, a backwards blue Oruborus on her stomach. "Mine's on my thigh…"
She stood up shakily, holding her head. "I'm Abstinence…" She said quietly, just realizing it as it came to her.
"Liberality." He said standing up, twin tattoos on the inside of his palms. "Where are we?" He asked, looking around.
"I don't know… everything's familiar…" Abstinence said and started to walk to the edge. A small cat was curled up on the sill and she leaned over, intending to scratch her ears. The cat looked up and shot away. She frowned and looked at her hands, which were a dark gray color, contrasting sharply with her pale skin.
Liberality walked to the edge and sat back down as a white haired child stood on the peak of the church looked down upon them with a satisfied smirk.
Patience spun away in a mist of blue air and Abstinence looked up for a moment, frowning.
In the deep cavern of the church, two chest; one a golden shimmer and the other a beautiful golden-brown, shook, sending out small waves to their owners, waiting for them to come and claim them.
GEEZE! I freaking got it out! Halluajah! I did it!