Chapter twenty-six

"PEEK-A-BOO, YOU BASTARDS!" Ed shouted, running inside the station, having just avoided Dad gripping his right wrist and holding him back as he ran ran through the double doors. "I'M BACK FROM THE DEAD SO I CAN KICK YOUR RACIST ASS!" Ed spread his arms wide, looking around the building. "COME ON NOW, FREEMAN! LET ME BEAT YOU FACE TO FACE!"

Ed was pretty sure that the only reason he wasn't being shot at was that these people honestly didn't know whether they should kill him or capture him.

"How the hell are you still alive?!" Ed heard a voice say to his right from inside the ticket box. It didn't belong to Freeman, however.

"Come out, you guys, and I'll tell you!" Ed jumped away right before the shot came from the opening in the window.

And so Ed gave a nice little display of jumping and twirling in the air as the stupid jerk emptied his gun. "You're gonna have to do better than that! Come on, Freeman! You know you wanna talk to me!"

Ed knew that Dad would have to keep back in order not to expose the fact that Ed had backup.

The familiar voice from Ed's nightmares came from behind a stone pillar a little to his left. "Well, well, you brat, you're harder to kill than I thought. Congratulations on that. So what's your plan? I'm guessing that you have backup? Or are you a diversion? Are your comrades going to smuggle Isaacs aboard the train while you distract us?"

"I'm just here to get back at you for the pain that you put my family through!"

The man laughed his wheezy, disgusting laugh. "Yeah, I really had fun with that."

Ed moved to kick that bastard in the nuts, but the man laughed again. "I really wouldn't do that if I were you. Look up."

Ed stood still as his eyes fell upon a man holding an unconscious Hawkeye appeared on the balcony. She had blood running down the right side of her head and a gun pressed to her temple. Ed felt anger surge through his body at the same time as his stomach clenched. "YOU BASTARDS! LET HER GO!"

Freeman laughed again. "We thought that maybe Mustang would come and he goes nowhere without that woman of his, so we figured we should have a couple of people looking out for snipers. You, however, were a surprise. Put down your weapons or she's dead."

Ed growled as he laid his gun and sword down on the ground. It still wasn't time for Dad to come in, especially when they had a hostage. He had undoubtedly heard them speaking and Ed could practically hear his teeth grinding because they had taken Hawkeye.

"Good boy." Freeman suddenly threw him a pair of handcuffs from behind his hiding place. Ed caught them in his hands. "Turn your back to me and cuff your hands behind your back so I can see it."

Ed growled again. Dad was going to burn these bastards alive.

Ed did as he was told and heard footsteps approach behind him. This really was going badly for them right now. He could still beat him to a pulp, but there was no way he could risk it when they had Hawkeye. Next second Ed had an arm tighten around his throat and a knife pressed against his side. "You know, Edward, I'm going to enjoy cutting you up myself to make sure that you stay dead this time," Freeman said into his ear, pressing the tip of the blade against his side just enough to break the skin. The man smelled strongly of cigars.

Ed felt his anger boiling. "Fine, you got me, now let her go!"

"You know, Edward, I think I will. It's much more fun when the hostage is awake after all." The man once again uttered his wheezy laugh. "Hey, Peters! Leave her up there, we don't need her anymore now that we've got this one!"

"How did you take her out anyway?" Ed asked. He had one tiny advantage in this situation, and that was that Freeman seemed to want to torture him slowly, so he wasn't at risk of dying any time soon at least.

"Well, sending three strong soldiers to take care of one small woman really seemed to do the trick."

"You bastards! I swear I'm gonna kick your ass for this!"

"Ah! There it is, that delicious rage of yours! You know, I was actually a bit sad that you were dead, you're too much fun to play with. People usually just beg for mercy."

"Yeah, well, you won't get any of that from me!"

The knife slashed across his chest, making him grunt before it was once again pressed against his side. "That's just what I want to hear. Now how about we get Mustang and the others inside here?"

Ed felt blood trickling from the cut on his chest. It stung quite a bit. Dad was gonna be pissed off for sure when he saw it. Freeman pushed Ed to move back towards the entrance and Ed reluctantly began moving his legs. Ed looked about him, Freeman's pals were getting out from their hiding places. Ed counted fourteen of them, which meant that with Freeman, they made a total of fifteen. It didn't mean that someone wasn't hiding somewhere, but at least Ed now knew where most of them were.

"Come on, kid, call for that General of yours," Freeman said, pressing the knife further into his side, making Ed bite his lip. When Ed didn't do as he was told, however, Freeman decided to make another cut on his stomach this time. Ed hissed with the wave of pain that came with it. "Screw you," Ed said through gritted teeth.

"Looks like I'm going to have to do this myself," Freeman sighed. "Hey, Mustang! We've got the kid so I suggest that you and the other ones come out or he'll be in a world of pain!" he shouted, tightening his hold around Ed's neck, making breathing just a bit harder. "And take off those gloves of yours, they're pretty annoying."

Dad appeared through the glass door and Ed sighed. He'd kind of hoped that he'd have defied the orders and tried to find some other way to get Ed loose. This way they'd just take him and the others and try to silence them. Once Dad saw Ed's bleeding chest, a kind of hatred that Ed had only seen when he was killing Envy appeared in his eyes.

"Good, now put your hands above your head and remove your jacket, can't have you hiding any guns after all."

Dad removed the green jacket he was currently wearing, leaving him in jeans and a white t-shirt. He then put his hands on his head. Actually he didn't put them on his head, but clapped them together behind it instead, which was Ed's cue to slam his head backwards and hopefully break Freeman's nose. The man released his grip on Ed and Ed ran forward just as Dad transmuted four protective walls around the two of them. The bullets began slamming into the stone, causing them no damage whatsoever. This was the great part about Dad's clapping alchemy, people didn't know about it. He specialised in flame alchemy after all, and when he wore his gloves, he didn't need to clap to transmute.

There was some light inside their protective box, seeing as how they really didn't need a ceiling. Dad put his hands on Ed's shoulders, checking him for further injuries.

"I'm fine, it's only the cuts. Get my hands out of these instead."

Dad, however, used Ed's lack of arms to his advantage and lifted the front of his tank top to assess the cuts. Ed had blood that had run all the way down his front. "That bastard, I'm going to burn him for this!"

"They're not so bad. Now listen, Hawkeye's still up on the balcony, we need to get her safe. They knocked her unconscious by the looks of it."

Dad made another annoyed grunt and clapped his hands again, walking around to Edward's back and freed him from the handcuffs. He then dove for his jacket and brought out his ignition gloves. Ed picked up his sword which had just made it inside their box. "Okay, Ed, you go after Hawkeye while I get the others down here."

Suddenly a lot of new shooting sounds joined the others.

"That's the rest of them," Dad said. "Okay, Ed, I'll cover you over to the staircase, then you're on your own. Don't get hurt any more."

"Sure."

Then Dad snapped his fingers, making the wall in front of them practically explode. Ed ran towards the staircase, hearing Dad snap over and over again. Ed took the steps two at a time, coming upon another of these bastards getting ready to use Hawkeye as a hostage again. Ed kicked him in the back of the knees, making him fall forwards before slamming his fist into the back of the head. Ed left him there in the staircase and ran up the final steps. Hawkeye was lying slumped on the balcony, looking quite dead. panicking slightly, Ed ran over to her and knelt down beside her. He checked Hawkeye's pulse, finding it to be steady. The sounds of shots and explosions were dying down quite a bit already. Ed guessed that Dad had put quite a lot of them out of commission, especially seeing as how they had come out once Ed had been captured. Ed returned his focus back on Hawkeye and lifted her up on his shoulder and ran down the steps, only to meet Ezra halfway down. He was looking alarmed.

"I'll take her, you need to calm your father down."

Getting a bad feeling, Ed handed Hawkeye to him and ran back out to find Dad looking wildly about him, the rain of bullets now over. Angela and Greg were looking around, guns at the ready.

"Dad!" Ed shouted, running towards him, gripping his arms. "Come on, you need to calm down!"

"Freeman's still somewhere about here!" He growled desperately. "I'm not letting him get away just so that he can go after you boys!"

"I get that, but you're looking too much like you did with Envy! You promised me you'd keep yourself in check! That you'd never go off seeking revenge like that! Let the others take care of it!" Ed didn't want Dad to find Freeman judging by the way he was looking. He was breathing heavily, but Ed's words seemed to be getting some form of reaction from him. "Please, Dad!"

Dad gripped his arms back, looking at him, and his frantic eyes seemed to soften a bit. "Okay, son, let's get go– " he suddenly threw Ed sideways just before the sound of a gun going off broke the silence at the same time that Dad snapped his fingers.

Ed looked towards Freeman who was screaming as he fell to the ground, flames consuming him.

Then Ed heard a thump as Dad's knees hit the ground and Ed turned around to look at him, his eyes falling upon the red stain on the right side of Dad's stomach which was growing rapidly.