Hey guuuuuys! Long time no see! Well, no read. Just a little FYI for you all, school started back three weeks ago (part of the delay of chapter 3, plus writers block and having my laptop shipped awaaaaay) so chapters will most likely come once a month. You might get two a month if your lucky!
I don't really have much to say except have fun with the looong chapter (about 11 pages on Google docs). I sat on it for so long under writer's block and then BOOM finished in 4 hours -_-
Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST/BROTHERHOOD OR ANY CANNON CHARACTERS! I do own Kylie, Carter, Aria, Castile, and Madilyn.
One last little FYI: my youtube account, MissLoveProtector, has a trailer video for this fanfic, it's called "Titanium, a Fullmetal Alchemist Fanfic," so if you wanna look that up be my guest. I might link it on my profile later. Also, there are two pages on facebook. I WILL link those in the next few days. Just in case you wanna stay updated!
Enjoy!
Titanium
Chapter 3
When I came to, I was a little groggy and confused to start with. I was certain that I should have been dead. That was my first thought. Why am I still alive? I couldn't quite remember exactly why I would have been dead, but my mind just registered the fact that I was supposed to be dead. My chest felt heavy, and it was hard to breathe, but at least I was breathing. My mind was reeling as recent events started coming back, and I was fighting to tell fiction from reality.
I knew who I was. Kylie Marie Williams. I knew how old I was. 15. I knew my date of birth. October 6th. But I wasn't sure exactly where I was. I didn't know how I got there. I didn't know why my lungs were burning. And I couldn't remember what happened to me.
The fact that I was on a mission came back to me relatively quickly, but the mission itself just seemed to escape my grasp. I did, however, remember who my companions were. So when I opened my eyes and saw three people around me, none of which fit the descriptions of my teammates, my mind went into panic mode.
The one closest to me, who looked much too small to be a threat, put a hand on my arm as she spoke, "Please, don't be worried. There's no one here to harm you right now."
Even though her statement was made to calm me, I couldn't help but focus on the fact that it ended with 'right now' meaning there might be in the future. I didn't answer her, just observing my surroundings and the people in them. I seemed to be in a compartment of sorts, a square room made of dirt perhaps. It wasn't very large, but it fit the four of us with a little room to spare. There was what looked like iron bars blocking the entrance, and beyond them was a path of dirt that I couldn't see too far into.
I turned my attention to the little girl beside me, who couldn't have been more than ten. She had strawberry blond hair that had been placed into two braids, though strands of hair had been flung loose, and her bangs were messily pushed away from her forehead. Despite the fact that we were no way in a safe place, a soft smile remained intact on her face. Her eyes were a dark shade of green, but my mind could have made them seem darker due to the forest green sweater she was wearing. I could only barely see the baby blue shorts she had on since she was sitting on her knees.
Wincing, I pushed myself up enough so that my elbows were supporting the weight of my upper body. "Where are we?" I asked, closing my eyes to try to subdue the headache forming above the bridge of my nose.
"In the tunnels below Creta's central military building," the little girl replied.
I managed a smile and opened my eyes, inclining my head towards the girl. "I don't suppose you know how I got here?"
She shook her head slowly and her smile fell. "The guards brought you to this cell because you weren't breathing. I told them that even I couldn't do anything if you were dead. But . . . your heart was still beating. Very faintly I might add, but it was beating," she said.
All of a sudden, an image appeared in my head. I saw people, groups of people, and they looked ghostly, thin, with lifeless eyes. I felt my airway start to constrict again and slowed my breathing down, counting to ten. The muscles in my throat loosened up, and I almost fell onto my back into relief.
"Right," I said, "Those guards were taking me somewhere."
"I was curious about that," said a voice coming from the other end of the compartment, "You're an Amestrian, aren't you?"
I looked towards the voice, positive that it belonged to a male, but he sat in a corner where the light from the hall couldn't reach him, and I couldn't see his face. "By that, I assume you're a Creta citizen?" I asked, narrowing my eyes as if that might help me make out the person speaking to me.
The little girl beside me nodded her head, a faint smile returning to her face. "You're the second Amestrian that's been sent to us since we were brought down here," she said, folding her hands into her lap.
I observed her face and scooted back so my back was pressed against the wall, and I finished sitting up so the pressure wasn't constantly on my elbows. "About that. You mentioned that even you," I pointed to the girl, "couldn't bring back someone who was dead. What does that mean?"
She clicked her tongue and then pursed her lips, as if she were considering her words. "I'm a Medical Alchemist," she said. "A fairly well-known one in Creta."
"But, you're like, ten," I said, trying my best not to sound offensive.
"Eleven," she corrected, inching closer to me. "Anyway, your airway had closed off. By the looks of it, you were only about two minutes without air, and while your heart should have been beating rapidly to make up for the lack of oxygen, it slowed down instead."
On instinct, I put my hand up to my chest and rubbed the spot where my heart was. "Yeah," I said, "it's always doing something irregular." I didn't particularly like it when people took notice of my heart's activity, and this was no exception.
"Well if you know it acts up, then you should go to a doctor," said the boy, who stood and walked over to us. "If you don't stop being careless, you'll get yourself killed. Today for example."
"Who are you anyway?" I asked as he sat down beside the girl.
He raised his brow at me and shrugged his shoulders. "Castile. And this is my little sister, Aria," he said, pointing a finger towards the girl.
Castile had green eyes a lot like his sister, though his looked much lighter, and his bangs nearly covered his left eye completely. His hair was quite a bit darker than hers, closer to auburn, and it barely reached passed his shoulders. He too wore his own sweater, but it wasn't green like Aria's. His sweater was red with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and a pair of black pants that had been rolled up to his knees.
"Well Castile, how exactly is your sister such a well-known Medical Alchemist? And what are you even doing down here?" I asked, crossing my arms.
"You're living on borrowed breath here, Sweetheart. You sure you wanna waste it on things that really don't concern you?" he asked, leaning forward a bit and smirking at me.
That struck a chord with me and I felt my eye twitch. I really didn't like it when people told me things weren't my business. "Actually, it is of my concern," I told him, "Any information regarding any or all inhabitants of these cells could be important and crucial to my mission."
"Mission? And what exactly would your mission be?" he asked.
Everything came back at me so fast; I had to grip the sides of my head with both hands, muttering words that I couldn't even comprehend. After a minute, I let out a long held in breath and glared at Castile, sighing in annoyance. "My mission. . ." I stopped, choosing my words very carefully, "is to get my soldiers out of here."
That seemed to take him by surprise, and he took a minute or two to figure out his words. "You mean, you're not here to figure out what General Will's plan is? You're not here to save all these people?"
I was taken back a bit myself, but I didn't let my face show it. "These people aren't my responsibility," I said, and the image from before flashed in my mind.
He looked down and scoffed, shaking his head. "I told you Aria," he said, "If our own country isn't going to save us, the neighboring one won't either."
"You listen here!" I shouted, "Don't go disrespecting my country. We don't have Intel into yours, so we don't know what's going on. I'm here because several of our soldiers have gone missing and we believe Creta is behind the disappearances," I couldn't believe I was giving out information so easily to these people, but my gut told me hiding it would only cause more problems.
"You young people get really worked up over such trivial things," a new voice came that matched the timing of a rustle from the right side of the cell, making me avert my eyes from the annoying teen before me. "No matter what the girl's motives were for coming here, she's here now. So stop arguing over the whys and start focusing on the how we're going to handle the situation."
"Great," I muttered, "Who are you?" suddenly, I was at a loss for energy.
"I happen to be Madilyn, a former Alchemist and head of the Creta Elemental Alchemy research facility," she said, pushing back her long, gray hair out of her matching stormy gray eyes. "And that little girl," she pointed to Aria, "is an Alchemy prodigy when it comes to the medical section."
Aria? This little girl was an Alchemy prodigy? In a way, I found that seriously hard to believe. However, by the way she talked about my heart, I couldn't completely ignore that she seemed to know what she was talking about. Though, something else came into my thought process. She said I was the second Amestrian to be brought to her. Why would they send anyone to this little girl?
I saw those soulless bodies once again in my mind and cringed. Those people would definitely need Aria's kind of help, but why would these soldiers give them that? If they were going to try saving them, then why would they put them in that condition to begin with?
"Uh oh. The wheels in that girl's head are rolling," Castile said, snapping me back to my current position.
"Kylie," I said, receiving a few confused glances. "My name is Kylie. Now you can stop calling me 'that girl'," I inclined my head towards Castile.
Castile's hands went up weakly in surrender before I continued. "Why would they send anyone here to Aria? What would be the purpose?"
"To save the strong people," Aria butted in just as I finished my sentence. "If the strong ones die, then they have no one left for their army."
Army? "What army?" I asked, tensing up a bit.
"General Will's army," Castile replied, leaning one knee up to rest his arm on. "General Will recently became head of the Creta military force, though most of us still address him as 'General'. No one on the outside has noticed, but he's planning something. We don't know what it is, but we've become a part of it."
I lifted my hand up to my forehead and rubbed my thumb and middle finger against my temples. "Why all these people though? And why let them get so . . . sick? I saw a pretty disturbing sight when they first brought me down here."
"So that's what it is," Castile said, much to my surprise, "You keep getting this look on your face like something's just terrified you. Now I have an idea for what it is," I ended up glaring at him, though I should have done so to myself, since I couldn't believe I had actually shown my horror externally.
"Can we focus on why they're letting these people get so sick and then send them to Aria to get better?" I asked, trying to shake off the image.
"They say they want strong soldiers, and they've only sent a handful to Aria for help," Castile put his chin in his palm. "I guess it seems kind of like a test. The weak die. The ones who are strong enough to last get medical help. From the only reliable source they have. Aria."
"How come you guys look like you're fairing okay?" I asked, folding my legs under me.
"Castile and I have only been here for about a week," Aria said, "Madilyn's only on her third day. We usually get water once a day and food every couple of days."
I put my hand to my chin in thought. If this 'General Will' needed strong soldiers, I didn't really see the point in this 'test'. Perhaps Castile's guess wasn't quite right, but something said he wasn't too far off base either. It made a bit of sense considering the type of people that we knew were down here. Military officials from Amestris. An Alchemy prodigy. The head of an Alchemy research facility. Though that left me with another question. Why was Castile here? He didn't seem like he had anything special to offer. Maybe he just got caught in the crossfire when they got Aria. Or maybe he just insisted on going with Aria. Who wouldn't follow and protect their little sister?
I felt something tap against my head and narrowed my eyes, looking up. "What was that for?" I asked.
Castile shrugged. "You were thinking too hard about something."
"Yeah," I muttered, but my mind was already busy roaming onto its next subject of interest. There was no way I could rescue some people and not the others. But the group back at West City wasn't prepared for a rescue of this magnitude. I had to let them know somehow.
I smacked my forehead against my palm, realizing just how stupid I was. I dug into the inside of my jacket, unzipping the hidden compartment and fishing my gloves out. I could see the little wires spiraling across the fingers, but the wires looked tangled together, in a way that didn't seem natural. I picked at them and decided that I didn't know enough about technology to decipher their working condition.
"I don't suppose any of you know anything about wires and electrical equipment?" I asked, setting the gloves down in front of me.
Castile picked them up and turned them over a time or two, moving the wires around with his fingers. "Depends," he said, "What is this?"
"It's a listening device," I replied, pushing some of my bangs behind my ears. "My teammates use it to hear what's going on here, so I can help them find a way in. To rescue our soldiers." I put my head in my hands. "We had no idea there were this many people down here."
A hand on my shoulder made me look over to the left, where Aria was smiling at me. "Don't worry, Kylie. Castile is very good with electrical devices."
Castile gave a shy smile along with a light push to his sister's shoulder. "Not that good," he mumbled, farther inspecting the gloves. "But good enough to tell that the wires and the chip aren't connected correctly. The ends got tangled, causing some of the wires to disconnect from the chip and halting the signal they're supposed to emit."
Castile spent the next ten to twenty minutes, I would assume, fixing the gloves. By that point, I had become fairly restless and had reverted to walking absentmindedly back and forth inside of our cell. I was so lost in my own mind that I didn't even notice Castile calling out to me. It wasn't until Aria grabbed a hold of my leg and gave me a tug that I snapped out of it, falling to the ground.
"Sorry," I mumbled, "What is it?" I looked over at Castile who shook his head and put my glove back on the ground.
"There's no way for me to fix this. One of the wires twisted and snapped. I tried tying it back together, but that won't work, not if we want the signal to get out," he said, sighing in frustration.
"Shit," I whined, burying my head in my arms.
I heard the scuffle of someone's feet and two quiet voices that seemed to mingle together. I glanced up and saw that Aria was sitting in front of Madilyn, discussing something. Madilyn's eyes traveled over to me and I raised my brow. Propping myself up on my elbows, I asked, "What are you talking about?"
Aria turned to me and sat her hands on her lap, smiling sweetly. "I was just thinking; maybe if we could find a way out, we could go to your team personally and let them know about the people here. It's a lot more dangerous, and possibly slightly more complicated, but it's a much better idea than sitting here and waiting for the soldiers to come back. When they do, they'll take you away, Kylie, and then any chance we have of getting out of here will be gone."
"That still leaves us with the question of how do we get out?" I said.
"That's simple," Castile said, "We use alchemy."
For a second, I was confused, wondering how that would help. Then, I thought of all the ways basic alchemy would be useful in this kind of situation, but I wondered why they hadn't done it before.
"If simply using alchemy could get us out of here, how come you guys, or anyone else for that matter, hasn't done it?" I asked, shaking my head at them.
"They're usually too weak," Madilyn said, "Even when they first get here, there's a gas flowing through the vents that keeps your body from being able to perform alchemy. Since Aria here is such a good Medical Alchemist, she's able to keep her body from being poisoned by it."
"But if she can do that, why doesn't she just use alchemy herself to get you out?" the more I asked, the more confused I got.
Castile sighed, obviously aggravated. "Because! She's never studied alchemy before! Almost everything she knows about alchemy is medical. Plus, her transmutation circles never work out right."
"Well," I scratched my head, "Why don't you use your medical alchemy to clean Castile and Madilyn's systems and they can use alchemy to get out?" I asked Aria.
"Castile can't use alchemy," Aria replied, flustering her brother, "And Madilyn lost her ability to do it a long time ago. That's why she's the head of a research facility."
Frustration bubbled up inside of me. There was something I was missing.
"Then, please, tell me how alchemy can be the answer, since you've just proven why it isn't," I said through clenched teeth.
Castile crossed his arms and gave me a smug look. "We have you now."
I was completely stunned, flabbergasted. "Eh?" was all I managed to say.
Aria crawled up to my side, throwing her adoring eyes up at me. "You're an alchemist! And ever since you came in here, I've been keeping your body clean. It should be no problem for you!"
Oh, but there was a big problem. I was sent on a mission before I could have any real alchemy training. Given Cousin Roy probably assumed this would be more of a business meeting as opposed to a search and destroy mission (or search and rescue maybe). The rules of alchemy were simple, anyone could do them. What lies within the rules are what makes it complicated. To transmute, say the bars in front of our cell, I would need to know what the bars were made of, and the chemicals that made that up, so I could take it apart. However, that was where my problem lied. I didn't know what it was made of. Even if I did know, I had a slight problem with memorizing things like that.
They were all looking at me expectantly, and I felt my anxiety rising. Three pair of eyes stayed trained on me, only adding more to my stress. I quickly snatched up my gloves and put them on, tearing at the wires and tossing them to the ground. Standing in front of the bars, it felt like I was having a staring contest, though since the bars had no eyes, they would no doubt win. I felt a twitch coming on and cracked my knuckles, waiting for an idea to hit me.
A sudden rush of aggravation came over me, and I smacked my palms together. A tiny light emitted and I slammed by fists forward, seeming to touch nothing, and then landed a harsh kick to the bars. The two bars that my foot had come in contact with burst open, with the ones on either side bending towards the ones remaining. I stepped back and blinked with a questioning glance. I hadn't expected that to work. I was just venting.
"You did it!" Aria shouted, only to cover her mouth afterwards, realizing how loud she was. "Whoops. We need to be quiet; those guards could come around at anytime. Especially after the noise we were making."
I nodded and stepped through the bars, looking back to see Castile rubbing his hands against his arms. "Is it just me, or did it get really cold there for a second?" he asked.
I turned my back to him and giggled a bit. I forgot about that little side effect. I was just so used to the changing temperature that it didn't bother me much. Aria, Madilyn, and Castile followed me out, and we began guiding ourselves through a series of hallways. Whoever created the tunnels certainly must have loved mazes because that's what it felt like. It seemed like we were just traveling through some big maze. I was almost expecting to end up back at our cell. But we didn't.
"This plan sucks," Castile said as he decided to rest against the wall.
I put my forefinger to my temple and sighed. "I know, I know. What else can we do?" I asked.
After I asked, however, something hit me. I looked up above my head and saw one of the air ducts that were scattered around the tunnels. They weren't very big, maybe about three feet high and about two feet long. Any smaller and they probably wouldn't have worked so well with getting air this far underground.
"Aria," I called and she turned to me, "Do you think you could fit into that?" I pointed above my head.
She put her finger to her chin in thought and tilted her head. "I believe so," she answered. She may have been eleven, but she was definitely petite for her age.
"Those have to meet fresh air somewhere. If you keep traveling up it, you should reach the surface soon. I don't know where you'll turn up though." True, my plan was flawed. She'd have to find her way out of Creta and into West City on her own, and that could take quite some time.
"Wait, wait. No way," I looked over to see Castile shaking his head at me. "You're not sending my sister out alone. It'd be better if I go. I've been to that city before. What was it called? West City?"
I rubbed my eyes and held back another sigh. "Yes, Castile, West City," I said, "Maybe . . . maybe you and Aria can go. It'll be a lot easier for me and Madilyn to try and navigate our way through, maybe try to get a headcount of just how many people we have here. Plus, I wouldn't want anyone going on their own, now that you mention it."
That settled it. I hoisted Aria onto my shoulders and pushed her into the duct. Using my special alchemy, I gave her a slight road map of any twists she and Castile may come across. Castile was a little more reluctant to be lifted to the duct, but he wasn't tall enough to do it himself. With a huff, I put my hands together and then aimed them at him, and he was shoved up into the duct. From there, it was up to them to go find help.
Once they were gone and on their way, Madilyn and I continued going through, basically just looking into the cells and counting the bodies we could see. Some of them weren't alive. Some of them we couldn't tell. So we just counted them all.
I was feeling sick after what felt like twenty minutes and had to rest against the wall, sliding down onto my knees. For once, I felt like my breathing was fine. My heart was only racing because of the disturbing sight, but my lungs weren't dealing with it. That was a good sign.
"Are you alright, darling?" Madilyn asked, coming up to me and crouching down.
"Yes ma'am," I said, finally relaxing a bit.
"Well, that's good. It would be no fun putting two weaklings out of their misery," the voice speaking didn't belong to Madilyn, and I shot my head up, looking frantically around. To my right, about eight feet behind Madilyn, I could see a man, somewhere in his late twenties, with a fierce look in his eyes. His black hair was short, but his beard was long and twisted. A mischievous smile played on his face, and I was to my feet in an instant.
Before I could react, however, I heard a strangled cry and looked towards Madilyn, only to find she was no longer there. A cracking sound came next and my eyes darted to my left, where Madilyn lay unconscious on the ground against the bars of one of the cells.
A million thoughts ran through my mind. That guy hadn't moved an inch, yet Madilyn had been thrown across the hallway. How was that even possible? No one moved that fast, and I wasn't about to take traveling at the speed of light a possibility. I studied him carefully, waiting for him to do something, which he never did. We just stood each other down.
Then, something came at me. I ducked and avoided it easily. But it was what it was that caused my mind to turn to water for a moment. There was no object around for him to throw. He had thrown the air at me. Looking at him, I spotted a transmutation circle beneath his feet.
"You're an Air Alchemist!" I shouted in disbelief.
Another gust of air came hurtling towards me and I clapped my own hands together, quickly gathering the air from my sides and focusing it forward, shoving it towards the mass coming towards me. Due to the impact of the air, both forces were neutralized, leaving only little pieces to go floating back in both directions.
"So are you, sweet cheeks," he replied.
My head became really dizzy after that. He was using Air Alchemy. How was that possibly? I knew it wasn't exclusive, but I also knew it wasn't very well known. Not the form I used anyway. So how . . . how did he know it? And how did he do it without touching his transmutation circle with his hand. When did he even have the time to get the transmutation circle without me noticing?
I put one hand to my head and held the other one out towards him, a gesture to keep him away. "I don't use mine to fight," I said, and forced myself into the karate stance that I'd learned from my brother.
Then, I was running towards him, being pushed back by the invisible force. I tried avoiding it several times, but he was too fast, sending another my way as soon as I finished off the one before. I grew tired quickly, and my head was still spinning. When I took a split second to grip my head, a shooting pain went through my stomach, and I fell to my knees. I clenched my hands around my torso, leaning my forehead against the cold ground.
I could feel him coming towards me, and I lifted my head up to get a general view of him. My eyesight was blurry, but I could make him out, about six feet away. I quickly slammed one hand against the space in front of me, clenching my fist for a brief second before opening it back up and pushing my hand out. A gust of air, not too much larger than my own fist shot forward, attacking the man's right knee. His balance became lost and he fell backwards, but I couldn't get up.
He did get up though, but he didn't come towards me. He actually took a few steps back. It was then that I felt myself being lifted up, but by whom I didn't know. I couldn't move, and my vision was hazy. I knew I was going to pass out any minute, or have a panic attack at least.
But I didn't get the chance. After only a minute (or at least, I think it was a minute) of being hoisted up in that position, I heard the sound of something breaking. I was dropped to the ground in an instant, and I saw the feet of my captors rushing towards a pile of brown smoke. I couldn't figure out if I should have been relieved or worried, but as soon as the first face from the crowd became visible, I felt myself relax, at least a little.
This time, when I found the breath I was taking wasn't going in, I merely closed my eyes and waited for the world to drift away. Yes, my body was panicking, but help was right in front of me. My mind didn't wait for the mental panic to set in, it just turned off, and like that I was out.
I woke up to a black ceiling and a very familiar smell. I crinkled my nose and lifted my arm to wipe at the crust in my eyes. The room was very dark, and I found an old, brown blanket on top of me. I lifted it slightly to sit up, but found that I was only in my underclothes and decided against it. My eyes then caught sight of a figure sitting beside me.
"Hey," I said, my voice cracking, "You two alright?"
The little girl nodded her head vigorously, though Castile only gave me a slight indication of his answer. "That's good," I tried smiling at them, but the pain in my chest stopped that immediately.
"What about you? Looks like you were banged up pretty bad?" Castile asked.
I shook my head slightly. "It's no big deal. This happens all the time." It wasn't a total lie. Chest pains and lung malfunctions were normal. Though, big, hairy, air alchemy guys beating the living pulp out of me was not so normal.
"I was afraid your body would react like that," Aria said, crossing her arms in a pout.
I ruffled her hair and smiled. "Yes, little miss all-knowing-doctor," I said, laughing, but I sobered up quickly. "Now that we've established that we're all alright . . . how's Madilyn?"
Aria's eyes grew wide at my question, gripping Castile's hand tightly. She looked so young, so innocent, so scared. And that scared me. Castile's face grew dark and he shook his head.
"She suffered quite a bit of injuries from that fight. When she woke up here, at the clinic, she had a heart attack." I knew what he was trying to say. Madilyn had died.
We got quiet after that and soon Castile and Aria left. They were replaced by two more faces, ones I had been dying to see all day. Or perhaps it had been more than a day. I wasn't sure anymore.
"Ed! Al!" I called to them happily, though quietly.
Ed sat down at the foot of my bed, leaving the chair for Al.
"Are you feeling better?" Al asked hopefully.
I smiled. "Yeah, a bit. What happened?" I asked, groaning as a pain came back into my stomach.
"Those two Creta kids found us. The small one was shouting about people in the tunnels, and well, we thought she was crazy at first," Ed said.
"But then the boy said something about you, Kylie! We had to believe them then." Al finished.
I laughed at their response, resulting in me clutching my stomach. Ed's smile at my response showed relief, but the one I was getting from Al just made him look plain happy.
"Stop smiling like that, Alphonse," I said, grinning from ear to ear.
Ed's smile fell and he raised his brow. "Kylie? Al's an empty suit of armor, remember? He can't actually smile."
"Brother's right," Al said, "How can you tell I'm smiling?"
By that statement, I knew I wasn't wrong; Al had been smiling. "I can just feel it," I muttered, a bit embarrassed to admit it. I'd had a few issues with 'feeling' things that weren't really physically visible, and I had been hoping it wouldn't be brought up in this case.
Both Ed and Al exchanged a puzzled look, but decided not to pursue the subject. They both stood up and said that I needed to rest and left me alone to my thoughts.
It was about an hour later when I got a call from Cousin Roy.
"Why didn't you tell me you had a heart condition?" he asked as soon as I picked up the earpiece to the phone.
"I'm sorry," I said into it, "it's not something I like to advertise."
He mumbled a few curses under his breath before relaying his next sentence. "That was careless of you, Kylie."
I nodded, and realizing he couldn't see it, responded with, "I know." We had a silent moment before I spoke again, "Do Ed and Al know? About my condition?"
"No. Not yet. I plan to bring it up to them once you are all-"
"Please don't!" I interjected, sitting up and causing my blanket to fall to my lap, making me shiver from the cold. "Roy, I know it's a big deal, and I know they need to know. But please, please don't tell them yet. I'm begging you."
He seemed to put a lot of thought into it, and after a minute I heard his sigh of defeat. "Fine. But if it gets in the way of anymore missions, or if it becomes a problem, they will be told immediately."
I agreed without argument.
"And Kylie," Roy said, the anger in his voice becoming relevant again, "The three of you are to report back to Central, in my office immediately after your departure from the hospital. I am taking you off the Creta case."
After that, he hung up, leaving me to sit there in shock. He was removing us from the case. But he was letting me stay on the team. I sighed with both relief and bitterness, pulling the blanket back up over my chest. I was glad to still have a chance at becoming a State Alchemist, but I was also disappointed and furious for being taken off the case. I needed to find out about the Air Alchemist.
At that moment, I knew what I really needed. I needed Madilyn's research.
I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! Reviews are welcome! Complaints (unless constructive) usually aren't, but I can't stop you. If you have any questions feel free to ask away!
Just a note, there is a lot more to the Air Alchemy than it seems right now. I get that it just seems like she's controlling it, but there's a lot more to it, and that will be explained later on, don't worry. And the whole 'Kylie can sense Al smiling' has a lot to do with the plot, so think about that. Maybe you wanna come up with some ideas on what you think is going on. Be my guest!
Thanks for reading, see you guys sometime in September!