~Chapter 4

Roy and Ed followed behind Rosa, who is carrying a basket full of her blood red roses on top of her red hair. The two men squinted to see her because they were heading down the road towards the brightly smiling, morning sun, Extra tents and tables were being set up to start the "rare" market. It's only so rare because they always have to move around so much so often. The Ishalites had a weekly market outside of their own stores before the war started. The reason why they were doing this, Rosa told them, that they have been settled here for a little over a month and it seems safe enough to try to bring back an old tradition.

She set the basket down on a near by table after swerving through the tiny crowd that was slowly collecting people. She began to talk with the woman behind the table, her only friend.

Roy and Ed stand behind her, waiting for the terrible day, the day where they had to be together, to be over. They really didn't feel like talking to each other, but there was nothing else to do while they wait for Rosa to finish her trade.

"What are Al and Armstong supposed to do again?" Ed yawns with a wide stretch, attempting to hit Mustang in the face. He was really asking himself to start a conversation with himself. The last thing he wanted was one of Mustang's stupid remarks that he makes constently.

Roy smacks Ed's hand out of his face, turning very annoyed, "We told you about a hundred times already," he replies, "is this too much work for a little boy like you, Fullmetal one?"

Ed's eyes stir with war, he snaps at Roy, "Who are you calling chibi! You're just freakishly tall! Plus, I'm not a frickin' kid!" He smacks Roy across the face, leaving a bright hand mark on his cheek. The places where his joints connect on his auto-mail were visible on the mark

"Fullmetal! I wouldn't've cared if it was your regular hand, but not the auto-mail. Please, not the auto-mail!" He slapped Edward in the back very hard. He sounded hollow.

~THE SITUATION~

A slap feast begun between the two immature boys.

Rosa noticed and glared at them.

They stopped, but she kept staring them down.

They were now embarrassed

And turned into small, innocent looking toddlers.

Rosa turned back to apologize for them and continue her conversation. She takes a new basket that is filled to the top with vegetables.

Roy slapped Ed with his glove to make a cartoon-like sound effect. Roy thought he got the last word into this pointless fight and smiled proudly as Ed rubbed the fading pain on his face.

Rosa sighed as she took the last move, "Men, they never grow any older then a toddler."

The two shrunk into ants. Neither of them wanted to embarrass themselves in front of her, but for different reason.

Her friend nods in agreement, "They never change.

Rosa slides the baskets full of food off the table and into her arms.

Ed popped back up to normal size, confident and ready to live. He took the basket from Rosa in a gentle-manner, "Let me take that for you." He headed back to the tent.

"Oh, thank you," she said as she rushed to catch up with him.

Roy followed to be just a couple of steps behind her. The street was much more crowded than before, so he had to meander in and out of people to be able to move forward.

His eyes caught sight of a mysterious woman. No, not the "mysterious" you might think Roy would be thinking of. She wasn't an Ishbalite, more than anything, the opposite of one. She was wearing an evening gown that was draped with a burlap hoodie. It was a strange outfit for an Ishbalite, or even anyone. Her skin was pasty and her eyes were covered by the shadows of the hood.

A child came running up to her; wearing the same jacket. His long, black hair popped out of the front and his shorts and shirt were a second skin and black. He wore no shoes and one of his arms and legs were tan while the other limps were the same, ghost-like white of his face.

Roy tapped Rosa on the shoulder to get her attention, "Didn't you mention earlier that you needed to know everyone in the village?"

"Of course I do," she said, "I am the leader's daughter, no matter how many times my people say they hate me. Why do you ask?"

Roy pointed the two foreigners out.

The woman was entering a near by tent while the boy tugged on her dress, "Mommy, why can't I come in with you?"

She pried his fingers apart so he would let go of her dress, "I already told you, Wrath. This is adult work."

"I'm adult enough!" He pouts.

"No, you're still a child. Now go play with some other kids."

"Won't they ask who I am?"

"That's not important." She is eaten by the tent and the boy is left clueless on what to do. For some reason, he didn't want to give up his identity.

Rosa glances at the boy with the confused countenance. She looks back up at Roy, "No, I don't know those people." She walks over to the boy and squats to be eye level with hi.

Roy holds out a hand to stop her and stutters because the words collided in his throat before they even had a chance to come out. Roy had an idea that Wrath was a Homonculus.

Wrath looks at her, his eyes not covered in shadows. The pupils dilated slowly to eat up the color of his iris. He leans to the side to see Roy. To him, he was a threat, a man in a military suit out to kill him and steal what him and the others were looking for to return them back to humans.

Rosa turns his attention back to her.

Mustang sprints off into the large crowd of Ishbalites.

Rosa was a distraction for him, that's a good thing. But Roy had to find Ed because, even though he doubted it, he may need a back-up during the killing of the homonculus. He knew that he was one; the black second-skin, they all have that. And the cord-like object that runs down his paler leg, that was another hint towards him not being a human. The bad thing was that Rosa could be in danger being around him. She could get hurt and he would be hated even more for not preforming the task of protecting them, even though she wasn't really "one of them." The system there was a little complex and he didn't fully understand quite yet.

Roy finally reached the tent. Of course, he was impressed with himself; not even breaking a sweat, sprinting out in the desert and whatnot.

Mr. Star eyed him. He could sense something wrong.

~A CONVERSATION~

"Have you seen Fullmetal?"

"The blond, little girl with the braided pony-tail?"

"Yeah, sure. Have you seen him-err-her?"

"I think so."

"Oi," Ed pops out from underneath a cloth that separates the tent in half to be two rooms. He didn't hear anything that the colonel and the leader of the Ishbalites just said. He was all smiley and cheerfully. He saw the worried expression on Roy's face, "What's wrong with you, hot-shot?"

"The Homonculus. One of them are here, I'm not too sure about the other one, You're my back-up." Roy runs over to Ed.

"Who ever said I was gonna be your back-up?" Ed retorted.

But it was too late. Roy had him thrown over his shoulder like the boy was a towel. Roy dashes down the street. He attempts a stop, but almost falls over.

Rosa and the boy were gone! I wish I could help, I really do. I know where they are. That boy, he's a viscous one.

There was a yell, it was the little boy, "You stupid bitch!" Roy ran towards the yelling to find Rosa and Wrath out on the horizon.

Mustang dropped Edward to the sand and ran to the scen.

Rosa, Roy's beautiful Rosa, was tied up in compacted sand. Her hands are tied together. Wrath's hands and legs were in the sand, so he must've used alchemy to do this. "I never had a mother," Rosa said to the boy, "and I could care less!" The area lights up bright green and the ground shakes. Wrath gets shot up into the air and entangle with roses, thorns rapidly sprouting up a growing large.

Roy snapped his fingers to grasp the roses with fire. They screamed in pain, as did the boy. He was thrashing his limbs at the stems to get himself free, only to cut himself several times and let the fire drink the blood.

Wrath uses alchemy to transform his hands into thorns. He cuts through the stems that instantly turn into ash.

Ed gets up from the ground to run over to Rosa to assist her escape. He mutated his auto-mail to be a sword and cut through the sand like warm butter.

Wrath's body hits the ground hard. He gets back up and slashes at Roy, who steps to the side just in time to dodge the boy's move. He caught his clothes on the thorny hand. Roy snapped his fingers while throwing his hand across his body, The flame just missed Wrath, but ran after him as the fire ate up the air around it and grew bigger, snapping its fiery fangs at him.

Ed clapped his hands and slammed them on the ground while he protected Rosa. He made a giant, sand wall to make sure the fire didn't hit Rosa or him. But it was perfect timing because it catapulted Wrath up into the air.

Roy's heart was rapidly beating and time slowed down. The rhythm of his heart slowly progressed down to normal as Wrath began his descend towards the ground.

~60 feet from the ground~

Roy snapped his fingers in the direction of Wrath once again. The sparks flew from his fingers and lashed out at the boy. One scorched his his cheek and the friction made the sparks burst into flames. They creeped up his black hair and onto his scalp.

~50 feet~

Ed clapped his hands together and placed them on the wall of sand in front of him. The wall gets sucked up into the ground like a noodle and spat back out again to throw Ed up into the air. He was just above Wrath's falling body. He does a round-house kick at his stomach. But Wrath manages to grab his foot to make a chimera of his shoe and his hand. But Ed does a back flip to slide his foot out of the shoe and push Wrath down faster, he made himself jump to a higher altitude.

~30 feet~

Ed nonchalantly grabs his auto-mail foot and pulls is towards him to complete the flip and positions himself just right for a landing. He watched Wrath look at him with desperate-feelings in his eyes.

~20 feet~

Rosa concentrated on the desert floor as it glowed bright green. Stems weaved in and out of each other to make a basket-like pattern. The thorns thrashed out, larger than they usually are. It was a patch of land frosted with sins.

~10 feet~

His body drifts closer, closer, closer to the ground. His puppy, black eyes stare at death below as her peers over his shoulder. A thorn beacons his heart towards it.

It pierced his back, just missing his spine. The weight of his body was being called to by gravity. It wanted him closer to it, it wanted him to comes towards the ground. It missed his bare feet on the desert floor.

~The last moments~

The thorn still stood as the tip emerged from the top of his chest, blood was being thrown-up. It oozed out of his chest like a flood, his clothes turned heavy with the weight of the blood being soaked up. He coughed up red gems and they hit the floor, only to melt into a puddle and disappear.

Roy walked closer cautiously, but bellicose. He set fire to the stems, catching them on fire like candle-wicks.

Wrath screamed in pain as his skin burned to charcoal. He thrashed his arms and legs, only resulting in more blood-loss. Ember's fluttered like butterflies around him. They landed and crawled on his face, some settled and buried themselves into his skin, some rested on the ground a disappeared to leave a black blotch on the sand.

Roy carelessly snapped his fingers again and walked away from the boiling blood of Wrath.

Ed followed him and left Rosa. She didn't move, she couldn't. It wasn't in her personality to leave a dead person or to walk away like no one was killed. They wanted to kill the helpless, little boy. But Rosa won't want to have a part of this if she had known that he was going to die.

"The poor boy," she said to herself, "it should've been me."

She sat there for hours. Morning dripped into the after-noon and the after-noon drained into the evening. She stared at the spot that possesses death. The flame had died down to a single, floating ember.

Roy came along to check on her and stepped on it with his black boot to extinguish the last flame; another thing killed.

Rosa didn't take her eyes off that spot though. She continued to mindlessly stare at the spot. She looked with silent tears rolling down her cheek and they mourned with Wrath's soul.

Mustang knew she wasn't going to move, he could've assumed she was thinking about suicide by this point. That's how he was when he killed his first person. I remember him telling me about it with the saddest eyes and pale skin. But now it was a prat of his job.

He sat next to her, his legs crossed as he lays down beside her. He looked up at the sky with his dark eyes. There were two clouds. One was big, clumsily stumbling towards the smaller one. It tried many times to hug the other gray, small cloud, but it couldn't bring itself to do it.

I lay next to Roy and watch the clouds with him.

He breathed out clouds as he waited for Rosa to speak or leave.