Summary: Upon finding the diary of the legendary Phoenix Alchemist, Edward is thrown into a plot long since launched into motion by the fabled war hero...
Timeline: Sometime before Hughes is dead.
Warnings: oocness, grammar/structure/spelling mistakes, spoilers?
1908 February 17th I think... Tuesday, I'm not sure
On a train, don't know how long I've been sleeping and don't really care.
Me and a couple of other alchemists are being shipped to end this seven year war. Mom's on the other side giving me a look, she says it's not manly to keep things like diaries. Women...Which reminds me, how come there aren't many sexy woman alchemists? Ones that are not your moms and all that? A glare this time, geeze am I that easy to read or something? Checking my arm, will write more later.
-Ryan
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The familiar words of complaints lulled Ed into sleep. Under the moonless night he slept, his fair features still illuminated in the florescent bulb of the night stand. Al came in later to turn off the light and tuck Ed in.
"Silly brother."
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Ed stretched and yawned as they boarded the train towards Dublith. The Hughes family, Armstrong and others waved farewell as the train began to hiss, the wheels rolling towards their destination leagues ahead.
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Paper drops from his hands, one name rings through out his skull as it frightfully chases away the tiredness from his eyes.
'Juliet Douglass'
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The man knows too much. Those who knew too much had to be silenced. They had been given orders, the brunette with slitted purple eyes picked up the phone. The fuhrer is looking out the window. There is a car outside.
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I don't know what date it is anymore. No one keeps track of time, the desert is an ageless place under the sky. There is nothing out here. Water is scarce, precious, they tell us it's actually the monsoon season. Only an hour to collect the precious liquid before we're let loose like hounds across the sand. We kill, we annihilate, the dead don't bury each other, but they do in this place. Rain and then the bell. Time to make fire.
-Ryan
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Alsphonse spies the journal while Edward sleeps. When the elder blonde awakes, the suit of armor confronts him about it. The elder Elric explains that he didn't want to raise anyone's hopes, but he can see, anyone could see the hope flaring in the gold irises.
Winry snores softly in sleep
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Hughes is called to the central building where the fuhrer's secretary Juliet Douglass greets him, granting allowances for him to visit the infamous traitor, the Crystal Alchemist.
Along the way Maes starts a frank conversation with the brunette about the Ishival Massacre. How a a single bullet from a soldier's gun started a revolution. How for seven long years they had killed and had been killed for that child, the bullet, the gun.
How in records she died two years before the war.
She leads him to a door but he does not open it, he faces her fully.
"Who are you?"
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He frantically climbs up the stairs, a certain blonde would kill him for this but there was too much at stake. He rubs his shoulder and hides behind a wall when a light hearted footsteps of an androgynous teenager twists and contorts in those of Second Lieutenant Maria Ross.
Homunculus are real
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The door opens, it's a small wonder it hasn't been torn off it's hinges. Only years of training helps him get out of a way unscathed.
"How do you do? Or should I say goodbye instead?"
Gracia,
Elysia...
Roy...
No goodbyes, not yet...!
His shoulder has three bloody gouges on it. A buxom woman stand before him staring at him with her cat like eyes. Her unusually long nails are covered in blood, his blood. They are outstretched and are aiming for his heart. His heart slams radically between his ribs.
"Shit!"
His wrists snap and a throwing knife buries itself in her head.
Gunshots from behind him, the tall woman slumps on the wall. Juliet Douglass moves sideways as Maria Ross bears the smoking barrel on her just before following her wounded superior.
"That's my line..."
The taller woman's hands rise up to pluck the knife from her brow. She licks away the squirt of blood that comes out along with the blade.
"Not bad..."
The shorter woman stares expectantly at her.
There is an explosion, the world goes up in flames.
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Sometime, some day
Kimbley tells me to get my head out of my ass and start working. He tells me that the war isn't going to end itself. Funny thought, coming from him... he says he likes the sound of things going 'boom' aside from him, it looks like I'm the only one who specializes in pyrokinetic powers and combustion. He asked how I made fire with water, I told him that I was a phoenix.
He laughed
-Ryan
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Night falls. The indigo blanket cocoons everything. Through the dark, everything blends together into one whole being before scattering. All is one and one is all. Alsphonse stares outside at the passing hills of black.
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They make their way to an empty phone booth. It is deserted, no one will be hurt, no one will see anything. He would be the single sacrifice of this night. Second Lieutenant Maria Ross clicks off the safety.
"We should get to a safer place."
A knife is at her neck.
Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes shakes as the blade bites the pale skin and makes it bleed.
"Who are you?"
"Who...? I'm Second Lieutenant Maria Ross."
"No you're not, Second Lieutenant Ross has a birthmark under her left eye."
The fake Ross looks baffled for a moment. She shrugs before touching her upper left cheek. She pulls the finger away in a flash of alchemic light revealing a mole where there had been a layer of clean skin.
"Ah... How careless of me. Is..."
The knife sinks and is pulled away. The fake Ross' neck artery has been severed. She drops like a bag of stone, twitching as the blood drains out of her vein.
"I can't die here."
The gold eyed man turns towards the phone booth, unaware that his favorite hobby has become the death of him. A photo slips out his pocket. It's a lovely one, not like the usual ones of Elysia that you can stack together and make a movie clip of it when you skim through them fast. It was a family picture.
The fallen figure's hand twitches.
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Mom got injured, she's being sent back. She tells me to be strong and try to keep my head above the water. She made Crystal promise that he would take care of me. She gave me one last alchemic boost as a gift, she wishes me well. She said she would pray for the war to end.
So far I've been lucky, I haven't lost anyone yet. How long this freak streak of fortune go on? Strongarm looks like he can't hold on much longer, Crimson's... Crimson, Flame almost died, I can tell Crystal's being depressed, IronBlood's loosing it, and so many others indulging in this fanatic mass eradication.
We were called into end this war,
We will end it.
-Ryan
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Maes turns around to face his wife. An impostor with blue lightning still lancing across her alchemitised form. Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes' face collapses in a moment of grief. A moment enough for the fake Gracia to smile at him like the real one. Only this smile opens slyly to reveal a mouth full of fangs.
"Nice effects aren't they Lieutenant Colonel Hughes?"
The throwing knife is balanced on his middle finger still precariously hidden beneath the wrist cuffs of his uniform.
"You're not going to stab your wife are you?"
His mind screams that she's a fake, it's not Gracia,
Not Gracia
His heart stops him
His heart would be the death of him.
Flames erupt, blowing the not Gracia clear away from him. She screams in agony as her skin pops, scabbing and re-scabbing over the extensive burns. A rough hand grabs his wrist and drags him out of there.
Roy...