Funny thing about fire alchemy, Greed thought as the shockwave of the blast Mustang unleashed at him threw him a couple of feet back mid-pounce and thus allowed the flames to close over his carbon armor.
The guy wasn't pouring the fire out of his fingertips or something stupid like that. No, Mustang was actually transmuting the air, rearranging the hydrogen molecules and using the spark his gloves produced when he snapped his fingers to get an ignition going. It was not that different than what Ed had described to him about Kimblee's explosions on their way to Kanama.
Greed had barely listened to the kid back then, but a few things had stuck. And when you had been alive for more than two hundred years and had spent almost half of it doing the bidding of someone like the old man, you kind of picked up this and that along the way. Sure, Homunculi couldn't do alchemy, and Greed had always considered their ilk to be just a bunch of pompous assholes, but that didn't mean that he was entirely ignorant.
He crouched on one knee as the fire roared around him, planting his feet firmly on the floor and trusting in the Ultimate Shield to give him the time to wait it out. The glow of the flames was so bright that it was threatening to blind him and he lifted his armored arms in front of his face to block it out.
He heard the air behind him ringing with energy as someone – Ed, he realized a second later – triggered a transmutation and a loud rumble thundered across the Laboratory as a wall suddenly cut Greed off from the rest of the group.
Smart, Greed decided, not begrudging the kid's move.
He had gotten to know the Fullmetal Alchemist a lot better in the days they spent together before the Promised Day. Sure, he was impulsive, short-tempered and a little too idealistic.
But he was also the smartest boy Greed had ever seen. Smarter, in fact, than most grown men Greed had ever known.
Ever since Lust died, he knew that the old man had something in mind about Mustang. Greed didn't know who the rest of the human sacrifices were, but he had been perfectly aware that the Elrics and the Flame Alchemist were considered invaluable resources for the Promised Day – Pride had specifically forbidden him and Envy to kill them at one point, he remembered with some amusement. And he had made sure to share all that with Ed when they stayed in Resembool.
The kid had finally added two and two together. With the eclipse looming in ever closer, his actions had allowed Greed to take out one of the vital components of Father's plan. He wondered briefly if Ed himself had done it consciously, or had he told himself he was protecting the rest of the group from Mustang's flames because, holy shit, the guy was out of control.
But hey, as long as it put Envy out of Mustang's immediate attention, Greed didn't really care.
The fire was all around him, infernal waves of intense, blazing heat washing over him again and again, sucking the air out of the room and billowing so loud that it made Greed's head hurt. The Ultimate Shield endured the onslaught, but Greed was beginning to feel his skin throbbing beneath the cover of his armor.
When the flames burnt themselves out Greed immediately jumped up, using all his superhuman power. He vaguely realized that the sight of him must have been quite the fright, lunging out of the cloud of black smoke with claws outstretched, his armor so heated that it was glowing like molten metal.
Hawkeye must have thought so too because her brown eyes widened and her reflexes kicked up before Mustang could snap his fingers again and she opened fire on him, once, twice.
Her pitiful bullets bounced off the Ultimate Shield and then Greed was upon them.
"GET BACK!" Mustang frantically shouted at her and instinctively raised one arm to protect her and himself from the sudden attack.
Greed's glowing, clawed hand closed around the black-haired alchemist's forearm. He screamed in pain and Greed could smell the stench of burnt cloth and human skin. Wisps of smoke curled up from the place where he held his grip.
"Gotcha," Greed flashed him a fanged grin and who knew, maybe he imagined it, but he could even hear the flesh of the guy sizzling under the touch of his heated hand.
What he definitely heard was a pair of fingers snapping and before he knew it a powerful blast of fire struck him right in the face.
The flames were so potent that Greed's neck bent back almost to the point of breaking, leaving him blinded and dazed. And they didn't let go. The fire washed over him again and again, each second straining the Ultimate Shield more and more, the carbon layer beginning to twist under the fiery assault. Greed's head felt like it was about to burst from the pressure and he staggered back.
And then, finally, he began feeling pain.
Mustang was intending to roast his brain through the Ultimate Shield, to use his own nearly-indestructible armor to literally cook him from within.
Greed couldn't stop himself from crying out and when he opened his mouth the flames wormed their way in.
That was when the real pain began.
He didn't know when he came to it and found himself on his knees, smoke rising up from his smoldering body. It mustn't have been long, as his Stone was still repairing the scorched insides of his throat and the blistered skin on his face, red lighting crackling around his head. Greed looked up at Mustang. The guy's face was pale and sweaty, blood dripping from the charred wound Greed had made when he grabbed at him.
"Hughes uncovered your plan," Mustang narrowed his eyes, visibly fighting the pain of his injury as he grit his teeth. "And you removed him. You made Gracia a widow. You took Elicia's father away from her. For what? So you can plunge this country into mayhem?"
"That's rich," Greed rasped and spat blood at the Flame Alchemist's boots, the Ultimate Shield slithering up his head once more. He groaned in pain when he willed his legs to move and he stood up shakily. "Don't you know all about following orders, huh? Weren't you one of the dogs of the military who turned Ishval into a blood-soaked wasteland?" Greed laughed in his face. "Wonder why we didn't hear you barking so angrily then? Then again," he winked at Mustang, hamming it up and reveling in the lie he had to keep spewing to keep his Envy safe, "the Ishvalans at least had the courage to fight. Your pal went down like a chump, sniveling about his family until the end."
The pillar of fire that erupted beneath his feet engulfed his whole body with a deafening thunder. Mustang had somehow upped the heat of the transmutation and Greed felt as if he was boiling in magma. The pain hit him so hard that he fell on his hands and knees again, twitching and screaming as his own Ultimate Shield was turned against him, trapping him in a skin-tight cage of glowing-hot carbon. Was that how Lust had felt before he burned her to ash?
His Shield was keeping him alive – if agonizing – but even it couldn't last forever. Just maintaining it under the merciless assault of the inferno Mustang had unleashed was draining Greed's power badly.
The gloves. He had to get to the bastard's gloves. Or remove his hands altogether.
With a roar, Greed stood up once more, his armored body ablaze.
He made a step towards Mustang but he snapped his fingers again and this time the flames hit Greed like a hurricane. The shock wave threw him on his back and the fire covered him head to toe. And the Ultimate Shield finally gave out, the Philosopher's Stone inside Greed incapable to keep up with the never-ending destruction of his body.
"You dare speak of him like this?!" He didn't know how he was able to hear Mustang over his own screams until he realized that the fire had ravaged his face and throat, incinerating his vocal cords. "You dare throw the war you engineered in my face?! You want to see what I did in Ishval?" The Flame Alchemist sounded crazed with rage, consumed by the fires of his vengeance. "I'll show you exactly what my alchemy can do!"
The next wave of flames actually succeeded in killing Greed instead of simply torturing him. He woke up as his body regenerated itself, red light frantically sizzling around him. He tried to move, to stand up, but he wasn't quick enough.
Greed jumped away the moment he heard the snap of Mustang's fingers but the blast caught him all the same and he was again twisting and screaming on the floor of the Third Laboratory, smelling his own flesh getting roasted into charcoal.
"Colonel!" A woman's voice? Must have been Hawkeye, Greed's mind realized sluggishly as his injuries once again knitted themselves up. "Colonel, stop! Colonel! ROY!"
And, just like that, the fire disappeared.
Propping himself up on an elbow, Greed saw Mustang turning to his subordinate, who was gripping his outstretched arm, her grim face determined and her eyes wide with a silent plea.
Greed wasn't going to get a better chance.
He summoned all his strength, all his frantic despair, even all the pain.
And he lunged.
Only this time he wasn't going for Mustang.
Covering his body with the Ultimate Shield once again, Greed crashed into the soot-stained white wall of the Laboratory, going through bricks and mortar like a battering ram.
This fucker was far too dangerous. And this was not just about his precious Hughes. This was the fury of a man whose strings had been manipulated by monsters the whole time he had served the military. A man who had committed atrocities for nothing. For worse than nothing. And he finally knew it, he was finally able to lash out. Greed didn't think he even saw him for himself, at this moment to Mustang he was probably a way to finally strike against all those shadowy figures who had ruined him and his country.
He had to keep him as far away from Envy as he could.
Greed crashed his way back into the tunnels and ran, forcing his Ultimate Shield down in order to conserve as much of what was left of his Stone as possible. He heard Mustang howling in rage and when he looked back he saw fire erupting from the hole he had made with his body, bathing the dark walls of the sewers in orange glow. Heat poured out of the Laboratory, followed by the sound of frenzied footsteps.
Good.
Mustang was in pursuit.
Neither of them saw it coming when the shadows on the walls of the tunnel suddenly moved on their own accord and closed in around the fleeing Homunculus and the crazed State Alchemist, fanged maws materializing into the blackness and snarling hatefully as a thousand violet eyes pierced them under their gaze from every surface imaginable.
A big tendril made of swirling shadows plunged into Greed's belly and stuck out of his back, while multiple smaller claws dug into his arms and legs, pinning him in place. It wasn't terribly different than the trick Ed had tried to use on the one-eyed immortal monsters they had encountered on their way to the Third Laboratory.
And after Mustang's fire, it honestly didn't hurt that much.
The cold that followed Pride's presence was almost welcome, although it promised nothing good. Greed felt shadows twisting up his back and shoulders, holding even his head secure. He bared his teeth and groaned in pain as he forced his neck to move and turned to look back at Mustang.
He hadn't fared much better. Black webs of pulsating shadows had strung his arms up, immobilizing him and splintering to keep his fingers from making another one of his tiresome snaps. Half a step behind him Hawkeye had gotten caught in it too.
Well, well, what do we have here? Pride's immaterial's voice hummed at them. A traitor and the last human sacrifice. Father will be so pleased to see you both. It's time, now.
And then the shadows closed in on them until Greed saw nothing but blackness and felt only cold.
I wondered if it wouldn't be better to make the format of this chapter a little different, devoting half of it to Greed and another to Envy so we can see what they're up to while all of this goes down. Ultimately I decided against it, as it didn't sit right with me and the POV structure I like to implement in my stories.
So Envy will get a chapter of their own next time, just keep in mind that for a portion of it it will overlap time-wise with this one. The climax of FMA is a nightmare to write, btw. There's a thousand things happening at once and even though I have limited myself to only two POV characters and I can ignore everything I don't immediately need, I still need to not only remember how it ALL happened in the show but to also how it ALL plays down in this AU too even if we don't get to see it directly. Definitely gives me even more appreciation of the show, a climax like that is no joke to conceive.
Until next time, boys and girls!