A.C.: It's really odd knowing that I will finish this story... so soon... well not for a few chapters but still... eh :) my longest chapter yet
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?
The New Fullmetal Alchemist- Ahh thought I was writing better earlier -shrugs- anyways, I guess I wasn't as thorough as I was supposed to be.
Hydrogen's highly flammable. My theory is that Roy wouldn't be quite 'useless' in rain because rain is well... water (demonstrated in ch.39 of the manga?). Oxygen promotes combustion so...
The idea of fire rain would be quite deadly no?
As for the Elric brothers, I've noticed that Roy sends them out (if they're there) on numerous missions that end up as nothing. I think I was trying to get Ed to ask why Roy did just tell them about what he knew instead of letting them go on a wild goose hunt so to speak.
"They could have gone North..."
"...No..."
"They would have headed for their homes..."
The words wash over his head. Already he can feel the noose tighten around his sweaty neck, ready to choke him alive. It is a small miracle that he is still standing here, listening to the leaders of the country talk over his head. He briefly wishes that he could wipe his forehead, his throat is parched. He must act now.
"Sir, King Bradley sir."
The blinds open, the fuhrer stands malevolently looking back at him.
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Roy walks out of the room, proud as ever.
"General?"
Hawkeye quickly runs over to him with an inquiring gaze.
He makes a half-choking, half-shrugging noise at the back of his throat.
Hawkeye pulls out a light blue handkerchief from her pocket and tenderly wipes the sweat away from his face.
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He crushed his hand to his chest,
"I'm sorry mom"
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Years, decades, centuries had not changed who they were. Ironically, in this life time, they had retained their original forms... close copies anyways.
Dante gives out a false laughter as she demands to know the reason as to why he had left.
Hoenheim quietly explains they were not immortal, only assuming the illusion of one. How they would perish like many others before them. How, already their souls had begun to wear down, unable to sustain their host bodies.
He detects a desperate tone in her voice.
But that is before a familiar beauty glides down the stairs holding a squirming babe in her arms.
Tri...
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"Trisha, you are so beautiful..."
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The ivory face looks back down at him with her blue-violet eyes. Her entire form below her upper chest is a viscous liquid that wraps around him in transparent blue.
"Thank you, Hoenheim of light."
Dante walks towards them both, holding the dark haired baby in her hands.
"How low you have fallen, you're no longer a match for a homunculus."
The blond man's heart thuds,
Loudly.
Dante throws the child over their heads, activating the array on the crying boy's stomach.
He's at the gates, neither Dante nor the Trisha-look-alike by his side.
The door swings open to reveal thousands of eyes blinking hungrily at him.
"They'll be alright Trish." the shadows grab hold of him and pull him inside. "They're your boys after all..."
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Lust wearily opens her eyes as the swords skewering her arms and her ouroboros is removed in a lance of lightning, making her fall on her knees before their oppressor.
The dull ache in her chest is not a pain, only a scant memory of when she was alive.
"You will help Wrath to capture the Elrics."
Lust shudders inwardly.
Gluttony ambles to her side, whining piteously.
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A cigarette, despite the nurses dogged insistence that smoking is not allowed. A snap and the end of the cigarette curls up lightly, smoldering in fiery orange.
"No."
A slap to his head, courtesy of the supposed traitor.
"Idiot, listen!"
"General, you're just been called upon to fight at the Brigg Mountains concerning the numerous border skirmishes."
"Oh so the peace treaty failed?"
Sound of scratching,
"It is said that it never took place."
"Yeah, we had like what? A day of peace then everything went boom."
"You sound like Kimbley."
"Better Kimbley than that sicko Archer..."
"Could we please get back to the subject at hand?"
Silence,
"Kimbley would have been more useful, I mean Havoc disguised as me? Where did I go wrong?"
A great sigh from the only female of the lot.
"...So you would prefer to have a mad arsonist detonating everything on sight rather than a loyal soldier who actually follows orders and tries not to kill his fellow comrades?"
"At least Kimbley could pick up girls..."
"...!... I would be able too if you didn't stop stealing them!"
"Havoc! We're in a hospital!"
"So while we're signing all of us to the lunatic asylum on the other side of the city, Roy. Do you actually have a real, valid reason why you wouldn't want Havoc to take your place?"
The answer was prompt.
"Too dangerous, and he's too tall."
"Well I'm sure the legend of Flame and Phoenix has filtered down to overly glorified proportions..."
"Umm..."
"Exactly, they'll go in with all the pretense of finding some fire-breathing dragon only to find a blond who can't quit smoking? It wouldn't be a fight, it would be slaughter."
"...I'm so glad you have that much trust in my abilities on the field."
"General, to complete a goal, one must have to sacrifice a number of things."
"I don't want to sacrifice anything."
"Too bad."
Glasses pushed back up on the bridge of the nose.
"You don't have a choice."
"General," the meek voice of Fury, "Trust us."
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"I do."
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An unknown inn. Soldiers scramble below, Ed sighs a breath of relief.
Alphonse was gone, presumably, the letter. He clenches the piece of paper tightly in his hands in despair.
He closes his eyes then opens them.
Lust.
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"They're moving..."
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A woman sleeps fitfully on a train towards Amestris. It is a road many of her friends and family has taken before her. It is a dangerous road... Elysia is back with Roy's mother in Xing.
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In a whirlwind of events, he somehow manages not being run through by Lust's nails but at the same time saving her from a beating by Wrath who Lust kills in retaliation.
Precious drops of red spill from the child like sin's head. The locket containing the hair of who Lust was supposed to be lay forgotten on the ground. The night is young and yet Ed feels as if it had been eons since the sun had set over the unyielding horizon.
His head begins to hurt.
The violet eyes gaze at him sadly.
He needs to find Al,
Again.
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"Why would you want to be human? You guys seem pretty fine being immortal and all."
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Everything is on fire, it is an art.
Every move, every spark, separates and divides each and every molecule from the other, one group creating the fire, others feeding it. Still others paint it, claiming his alchemy as original and his own.
A brand worthy of the title Phoenix.
His eyes sting in the heat, his flames are clean like his mother's. There is usually little to no smoke when the world burns, when the rain burns as it falls on the ground.
People go up in flames without knowing why, before having a chance to cry out.
It is an art of the finest caliber.
He cringes away whenever Kimbley presents him with a demonic grin, wondering how and why the war brought out the worst in everyone.
It is an art
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"It is a curse... being immortal. I would give it up... if only I didn't have to carry on this endless of charade of pretending to be something I am not. We are the failure of a human transmutation, we were originally intended to be whole human beings. Why else do you think we want to be human Edward Elric?"
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They ran down the streets, Ed's boots thudding against the pavement, Lust's high-heels clicking in a sharp contrast against it.
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"If I help you, will you turn me into a human?"
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"Yes."
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Al whimpers in pain as Shou Tucker shows him the alchemically created girl sitting limply in his arms. It's Nina, a little bigger, dead, but Nina. He shudders as the man... chimera talks in a sing-song voice to his daughter.
His mother steps out of the shadows. No, not his mother, Sloth who happens to wears the face of her.
She looks fondly at him, bearing a striking resemblance to his deceased mother.
"A pity... his will was not strong enough to bind the soul..."
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"So this is the blueprint of the fuhrer's home?"
The rolled up paper is right beside his hand where the aged architect had placed it.
"Yes, very odd isn't it? It has the most unusual basement..."
"Well," coughs Hughes, clearing his throat. "Thanks for your help." he pushes forward and envelope with good sized bills stuffed in. The other man balks at this but he doesn't miss the tint of greed in his dark eyes.
"No problem, say... you look familiar..."
Hughes flinches. He had taken a risk, even with a disguise on to go parading around in the military uniform. No doubt there are wanted posters out there warranting his whereabouts.
"I get that all the time," Maes replies smoothly, swiping the blueprint off the counter. "I think it's the uniforms that do it you know? Just yesterday, I had a woman jumping in my arms exclaiming how glad she was to see that I had come back from very important mission..." Maes twitched his eyebrows suggestively.
"Ah well then, I must be confusing you with someone else I know."
"Nice doing business with you."
Clinks of ice on the cup.
"Anytime."
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Fire flickers maddeningly, he lets go and it disappears without a trace.
He does this a couple more times, a trace of anxiety as he waits for Riza and Hughes.
His men had been sent to the border in his stead, injured Havoc and Fury posing as him and Riza, soon to turn the battle around against itself.
He experimentally snaps his fingers,
A tendril of flame blossoms over his nails, jumping over digits and eventually curling up in the air.
The lighter was his backup, but that didn't mean he had to like it.
Mentally he mulls over the different chain reactions that would create a combustion then gives it up.
If worst comes to worst, he could always try making it rain.
'A homunculus won't back away from flames boy... what's a little water going to do?'
He had seen the fuhrer's eyes, a long time ago... too long really, when King Bradley first got a hold of the military and ultimately the country of Amestris itself.
The lone turquoise eyes as it bore down on him when he produced progeny of flames that didn't just burn and blew things up into smithereens but rather moved like a living thing, a hunter, a chimera, a predator that hunted down its prey.
There was no fear, only...
What had he seen in them?
Hydrogen, Roy decides suddenly. Hydrogen made clear fire, Bradley might have seen most of the tricks he had up his sleeve but he had one more left that might just prove to be his greatest weapon against the dark haired sin.
Fire had condemned him, fire would be his salvation.
He would have to shed the name Flame,
And rise as a phoenix once more.
He clenches his fists, fully aware what is happening out there.
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"Who is the Phoenix?"
"What?"
Edward is caught off guard, they were running, then suddenly the buxom stopped.
"I heard her speak about him, Roy Mustang, he is the Flame is he not?"
Flame, the Colonel, no, Brigadier General had left for Central. He and Al had sneaked in to the South.
"Yeah, he used to be known as the Phoenix Alchemist before... the Ishival Massacre."
"Ishival..."
Lust tastes the exotic word on her tongue, licking her black lips. There's something sensual about the way she does it, it draws Ed to her like a moth to a forbidden flame.
He hates it,
He blushes and looks away.
"What about him?"
Ed mutters, kicking the small stone on the ground.
"They were talking about him."
Ed raises a brow and starts walking in the direction they had been running in.
"She has your... his journal. Edward..."
She purses her lips just as he turns back.
"Never mind."
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She twirls the necklace in her hand, the tiny speck of stone gleaming on the ring is threaded through. She can no longer make her former pupils do anything, but she can help them. And god help her she will help them.
To fix the wrong she had done by teaching them.
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Roy feels a sense of dejavu as Hughes encircles the area of the fuhrer's basement.
Their eyes meet,
Gold against silver.
For the country they had pledged their lives to.
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Edward looks at the writhing form in grief as he holds the array, the fragments of bone on one of the flaring lines.
Sloth turns transparent, her gloved hand trying to erase the thick lines of the sealing array.
Lust comments to the other female homunculus how the intricate designs had been carved deep by her claws as directed by Ed. The other sin twists and curls on to herself, trying to detach herself from the burning seal.
"Brother, what are you doing!"
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To right the wrong he had done.