Disclaimer in previous chapters. Please see Author's Notes at the end.
- x -
Ed followed the boy's gaze to the horizon, noting a slight haze to the air that hadn't been there before. Just like his transmutations had stirred up the dry earth, so was the approaching army.
The Cretians had arrived.
Well, that certainly accelerated the timeline a little. "Do you have any chalk?"
Franklin glanced back at him, a particularly bitter look on his face. "Are you going to slice off my pants if I do?"
He let it go. "Fix the car and head back into town. Tell the command there to prepare for the Cretians." He fished his pocketwatch out of his pocket, unclipping it from around his belt. "If you get caught, give them this, and tell them you're operating under my orders."
Franklin stared at it flatly without accepting it. "You're the same rank as I am."
Edward Elric reminded himself that Mustang wouldn't roll his eyes or slap the kid, he would be unflappable and unbothered. Think like a bastard. "You can turn yourself in if you'd prefer."
"I'd prefer to transmute the army-"
And that downhill slope, so good for hiding the array in the grass, wasn't doing them any favors. Edward knew they'd already been spotted. Though frankly his car was more to blame for that than they were. And that had sort of been the point. "Unless you can transmute the entire group from here, I think that's off the table now. For once in your life, do as you're told."
Sorn glared at him a moment more before stalking back toward the car, and Edward Elric tucked his pocketwatch back into his pocket as he listened to the telltale scribble – light and confident – on the hood of the car. He knew that Sorn could be constructing the same weapon he'd attempted earlier, something to kill him with, but he was also pretty sure the kid knew his plan had been at least postponed. Even if they used alchemy to draw the human transmutation array, the light of the reaction would be a dead giveaway that the field was a land mine just waiting to be tripped.
"You can't hold them back by yourself."
There was a flash of light, and Ed turned back to see the car was fully restored – or at least it appeared it was. It didn't mean that the headlights weren't suddenly going to come flying at him like rockets, but at least it didn't have teeth. "Worried? I thought there weren't any consequences."
The kid gave him a scathing look. "I'll prove you wrong."
"I look forward to it." He turned his back on the young man, watching the number of tanks increase as the armors cleared the ridge. Over a dozen, and of course now that they'd been spotted the advance guard would have to either capture or kill them to ensure they couldn't warn West City. They could lead them on a chase to the next hill, but to be honest they were already in range of the armors. The time to get Sorn out of there was closing fast.
"Go."
He turned and glared at the kid over his shoulder until Franklin walked over to the driver's seat. He hesitated, again as if he wanted to say something, then he just shook his head and climbed in. The engine turned over smoothly- of course, it had been transmuted by the Mechanical Alchemist, it probably worked better than it had originally – and he watched the boy pull away. As soon as he was a safe distance he floored it, and the tires kicked up grass and dust as he took off.
There was enough in the tank to get him back to civilization, if he didn't detour. He'd get to a phone, make an anonymous call, and then they'd have to track his ass down all over again, just to make sure he didn't decide to transmute an Amestrian town instead, now that his first plan was foiled.
Speaking of foiling . . .
Ed turned back, counting the armors and waiting calmly until they were half the distance to him. The men on foot hadn't shouted out to him yet, but they were hurrying, and he was rather surprise they hadn't taken a shot.
Once they were inside his range, he clapped his hands together, taking a deep breath and minding the ache that was already present from the fight with Sorn. The first transmutation, he'd managed to limit the scope. The second had just been flat, hard transmuting, and it had been huge. Franklin was quite powerful. There hadn't been an amplifier in that pouch of coins, though that didn't mean he didn't still have one on him. Probably should have asked him for it, actually. Oh well.
Edward erected the standard four foot defending wall of stone across most of the hill, and as before, the first breath after was fine. The second came with a twinge that radiated deeply through his lungs, though not as bad as he'd feared. He was still able to stand up straight, and the faint dizziness could have actually been from the concussion.
Would have helped if he'd bothered to get some sleep last night, instead of driving.
Now that they knew they were dealing with an alchemist, he let them get a little closer, constructing a much smaller and thicker stand to remain behind as the armors caught up with the foot soldiers. He saw the puff of smoke before he heard the sound of the round being fired, and he watched it carefully as it fell – about twenty feet short. They were on the top of the hill, so they had the advantage of range but the disadvantage of having to figure it out.
Either way, it was close enough. And they'd fired the first shot, so they couldn't claim he'd attacked them. He knew he was close to the Cretian border, and the last thing he wanted was them to complain to Mustang that they were attacked on a routine patrol by one of his State Alchemists. He clapped his hands again, feeling the dirt and bedrock rising up beneath him. Luckily for him there was all this grass. It could be made into all sorts of useful things, and not just bread.
Gunpowder, for example.
His cannon, of which he was immensely proud, hadn't really been used in battle since he was thirteen or so, fighting the Flame Alchemist himself. Still, it seemed somehow fitting, and besides, overkill was exactly what he was shooting for. Sorn was right. Even if he could hold off the advance force, which was really only about a hundred men, he had no hope of holding off the entire army.
The best he could do was scare them and delay them a little. Take care of this group, then get the hell out and hope Franklin actually did what he told him. If nothing else it bought Mustang more time to get West fortified.
"Four!" he bellowed, just to be an ass, and let the stone cannon shudder under him as the reaction completed. A perfectly spherical ball of stone landed a bit further than he expected, just a few feet to the left of an armor. It split apart like a watermelon, splattering its seed of stone barbs in all directions. It was a bit too far out to see, but it did appear that some of them had hit targets.
Targets being people, of course. Stone barbs could do no damage to armors.
He transmuted another ball from the material of the cannon itself, decreasing its size with every attack, and by the fourth he'd taken enough from the structure that he wasn't sure it was safe to use anymore. Not to mention he was running out of manganese and potassium, and the Cretians were getting a lot more accurate. He brought his hands together one more time, to sink it back into the ground, and while he still had the advantage of the height he looked back, just to make sure the yellow car was nowhere in sight.
Sure enough, it wasn't.
Almost a dozen Amestrian armors were, however.
They were moving over the ridge slowly enough to allow their ground troops to keep up. Only their ground troops were a single fifteen year old boy with bright red hair and a large nose. Not that that would be readily obvious to the Cretians - behind Sorn he could see a series of small, static box-like devices whose sole purpose in life appeared to be making dust clouds.
The Cretians couldn't see over the hill. They wouldn't know it was just a smokescreen.
Edward rode the stone cannon down to the ground, moving to the left about thirty feet and bringing his hands together again. This time he felt the ache more sharply but, almost like he was stretching a pulled muscle, it eased off after a moment.
Maybe the taking it slow had been doing more than he'd thought. Assuming Sorn's armors could actually fire, they had a chance.
Edward didn't ride to the top of this cannon - too risky. This one would probably get hit. He manned it from the ground, watching the enemy tanks carefully. The transmuted armors crept in comparison, though they had been sighted by the enemy and their advance had completely halted.
Then things got serious.
As one, the line of Amestrian armors fired, the force of it actually shoving each of them back quite a distance. One flipped onto its side completely, the wheels turning slowly despite the upset of attitude. Once on its side, Edward could see the interior. The outside was just a shell, made of -
Of grass fiber, transmuted into a fabric. Some of the cellulose had been altered to give it a glossy finish, like metal, and the wheels were being driven by what appeared to be a clockwork of gears roughly the size of his head.
Well, that explained where the car went.
The attack, however detrimental to the fleet, had been far more substantial than Edward's. His cannons were mostly for show and to cause injury. But just as he hadn't pulled his punches before, Franklin hadn't done it now. His toy armors were lobbing real explosives. And considering they were unmanned, they did a hell of a lot of damage.
Ed turned back to see the field. Four of the armors had been hit, though it was too early to determine if they had been taken out. Easily a quarter of the infantry was down. He'd probably taken down a quarter himself, but that left fully fifty men. Fifty men who were close enough to mount a charge.
The Cretian force answered with their own artillery barrage, and Ed ducked behind his cover, watching Franklin huddle under his overturned tank as the shells hit. All of them were in the right ballpark, he counted six explosions, and a deafening crash told him his cannon was down.
Well, if the car was well and truly gone, retreat was not an option. They couldn't beat the army to West on foot, they'd be cheerfully picked off by a sniper or four. Very briefly he considered trying to transmute some kind of airplane; still had more work to do in that arena, and there was no place high enough to launch a hand glider. Even if he transmuted one, they'd still probably get shot down.
Stay and fight it was.
Edward gritted his teeth, running the options again before coming to the same conclusion. So, stopping a charge. Unwanted, a portion of his mind he hadn't used in over a year suggested the top German strategies, which were gas and mines. Alternately, he could barb the top of the wall, then have spikes come up. As long as the spikes were relatively short, he'd damage their feet and nothing else.
Unless someone tripped and fell on their face, but then again, it was likely his cannons had already killed someone. If his hadn't, Franklin's sure had.
Damn that kid. At least he and Al hadn't started a war.
Ed poked his head around his shelter and got a brief lay of the land. The armors had encountered his defending wall and were in the process of trying to plow over it. The infantry had already cleared it and were incoming.
He clapped his hands, bringing them to the ground, and brought up stone spikes. It was less fatal than explosions. As he flinched back behind his cover at the result, he decided maybe the transmuting was affecting him. He felt like he was going to be sick.
Bullets were now ricocheting off his cover, and he watched in disbelief as Franklin hid behind one of his advancing tanks. A few had bought the farm but an amazing seven were still in motion. There was quite a cloud of dust behind them now, surely that would be enough to turn whoever had survived. Surely this first wave was going to pull back.
Franklin was obviously trying to get his attention, so he lifted his head and called down to the idiot. "Can they fire again?"
Franklin shook his head, creeping steadily along behind his toy armor. "That was all the oil you brought."
They could try to pull explosives from the soil, but it would be time-consuming. Better to transmute more cannons and just give them a little more power. Now that he could use the enemy's armors for metal, at least he could make the missiles strong enough to actually damage a tank.
"Can you transmute one of those tanks into some other kind of vehicle?"
"Not now," he called back, and gestured at the field. Edward dared to take another look.
The forward infantry had indeed decided to pull back, using the defending wall for protection as their armors continued to punch holes. They didn't advance past it, though; no need. They were getting reinforcements, after all. At least another three dozen tanks were on the horizon, and four platoons.
Too many to fight. They were lucky enough they'd gotten out unscathed from the first wave.
Time for Plan B. And he was sure Franklin was going to just love it.
"Get over here!" he bellowed, and brought his hands together, preparing for something he knew was pretty stupid. He reached deep into the earth for bedrock, erecting extremely thick walls in front of him running a twenty yard length. As soon as it was giving Franklin cover he abandoned his armor and headed over, and Edward completed the transmutation, giving them three more walls and a thick, arched ceiling. He constructed the skylights to be angled at ninety degrees, giving them diffuse light but no clear path into the structure that a missile could take advantage of.
Franklin was again trying to get his attention, but he ignored the kid, and when he was sure he'd gotten just about all the rock he could, he completed the reaction.
Then he took a breath, and waited.
And his chest ached.
Edward hesitated, taking another breath. His vision wasn't getting bad. His ears were ringing, but he'd just been shelled, and he had a concussion. When he straightened he found that the ground stayed beneath his feet instead of scooting out from under him.
It hurt no worse than the last one he'd performed, and this one had been huge. He'd just erected a fort, after all. Franklin was watching him closely, and Edward blinked, taking another breath disbelievingly. Still nothing.
Huh.
"Sit in that corner and don't move," he ordered, gesturing to the appropriate corner, and Franklin continued staring at him.
"You realize we're trapped now, right?"
He was still enamored with the realization that he wasn't lying on the ground in his death throes, and he didn't answer with the sarcasm Mustang might have. "We were trapped before. The only thing that's changed is that now we're going to let them kill us."
Franklin continued to stand where he was, and Edward gave up. Obviously the kid wasn't going to listen to a damn word he said. He strode back over to the west-facing wall, jumping a bit as a rattling crack ran through the fort, and he eyed the ceiling. This was going to be tricky, but it was probably going to work. With a clap he brought his hands back to the wall, using dirt from the ground beneath them to fashion smaller cannons. There was plenty of grass to be had, and shortly he had them firing. At least , he figured they were. All they could hear were low, loud thumps as each reaction went off. Ed used stone from the south-facing wall to reinforce the west face, and then he took his hands away.
The ache was really no worse. It was still present and it still hurt, but it hurt in almost a good way.
Almost like when his right shoulder had finally healed from Irving's attack, and he'd worked the stiffness out of it the first couple times.
In fact, the principle might be exactly the same.
He might have overextended his inner Gate, then let it heal, and it had 'stiffened up'. Now he was forcing it to channel reasonable amounts of energy again, and while he'd probably more than already overdone it, it wasn't like he had the means to overextend it to such an extreme again. Irving's amplifier had been completely destroyed.
"You have any Incomplete Stone on you?"
Sorn looked shocked, but he didn't glance up from the array he was scribbling on the wall. ". . . no. It's gone."
He almost asked what Sorn had used it on, but decided that could wait for now. After all, they'd have hours to talk about it later, if this worked "Your biological transmutation skills have improved. When'd you study up on it?"
The array, he could see, was to transmute the grass into gunpowder. Sorn was helping him. The kid finished it and touched it with a few fingertips, and the grass immediately next to him began to disappear into the ground. The fort was rocked by another heavy hit, and both of them glanced up at the ceiling again as some dust trickled down onto their heads.
"I'm already an expert in mechanical transmutation. There are only a few branches that interest me."
"Chimera research, for example?"
The kid glared at him out of the corner of his eye. "You saw the proof yourself, then, before you blew it up?"
Ah, so Franklin had been in Central long enough to hear about the tunnel to Lab Five being found. More explosions battered the stone fort, and Edward kept the cannons firing. He'd wait until they'd actually collapsed part of the structure before stopping the return fire.
"Proof of what?"
"Time travel," Franklin snapped. "Those were my test runs."
The kid was brilliant, but that was pushing it too far. Edward shook his head. "I'll agree they were someone's test runs," he growled. "Who were you working with? The same guy that gave you that human transmutation circle?"
Franklin stopped what he was doing without answering, having collected a rather large pile of gunpowder at his feet. He started drawing another array, and there was a resounding crack that Edward could find no visible evidence of.
Well, that wasn't good. Something had broken. He clapped his hands together, abandoning the interrogation for now, and analyzed the structure of the fort. The west face had cracked, and he transmuted it back together seamlessly, even wasting a little energy to make it flashy.
That would piss the Cretians right off.
"How long can you keep this up?"
Edward raised an eyebrow, taking a deep breath. "Why do you ask?"
"I think your plan of dying is stupid."
Well, it was, but it was going to work. They didn't have much choice. "You're not claustrophobic, are you?" Then again, if he'd done all that work in the tunnel, he couldn't be. Franklin confirmed by shaking his head with a confused look, then dawning comprehension.
"You're going to let them destroy the fort and assume they've killed us, and use the same tunneling technique you used to escape me to get us out."
Edward gave him an unimpressed look. "What else would we be doing?" Hadn't he just used the same strategy – successfully - against the kid less than half an hour ago?
Sorn didn't take the bait, instead finishing a rather complicated-looking array. "There's a far more efficient way to keep the cannons firing." Then he put his hand to the array, and blue light crackled across the front three faces of the fort. He transmuted for several seconds as his gunpowder pile diminished alarmingly, then he finished, and brushed off his hands. In the relative dim, Edward could still see that he looked a little pale.
Showoff.
He was strong, but he wasn't grown yet. Then again, even at thirteen, he'd pulled off some hellacious transmutations. That statue of Leto was a good example . . . Al with that tornado-
And Sorn had been transmuting as much as he was. Still, though, that warehouse trap had been huge. Clearly this wasn't the largest transmutation he'd ever performed. "Don't overdo it."
Sorn gave him a flat look. "I'm fine."
"You're deaf," Edward replied. "I told you to go to West City."
They both retreated from the walls as the cannons continued to thunk away regularly. The fort continued to shake and shudder with hits, and again, they heard the western wall crack.
"By the time I got there they'd have seen the army. Besides, they'll see the dust cloud we've stirred up."
"That's not the point." Edward prepared another transmutation and touched the south wall, using a small amount of it to repair the western face again.
"Yes, I realize you were giving me an out," Franklin finally grumbled. "But it wasn't necessary. You should have let me transmute the army. In fact, now that they're on top of us, we still can. They won't be able to clear the field in time."
True. "Last I checked, the speed of light hasn't changed in the last fifteen or so minutes."
"It doesn't matter-"
It was going to be a long day. "Also, the consequences of being wrong still make it not worth the risk."
Franklin scrubbed his face, then picked up a piece of chalk. "Do you mind?"
Edward kept an eye on the ceiling and didn't answer, and after a moment Sorn drew a relatively simple array on the wall – grass to paper. Even while being shelled by an army, he was going to demonstrate the math. He thought about telling the kid to save his strength, but if all went according to plan, he was going to be saving it just to sit in a cave for several hours, and it was better than arguing with him-
It suddenly occurred to Edward that the shelling seemed to be settling out. Their cannons were still firing away, apparently on some kind of chemical fuse, and Edward didn't really want to know how the kid was managing to still give them something to fire – probably transmuted nice assembly lines of cannonballs through the walls – but the enemy wasn't answering as frequently as they had been.
They were far too big an army to just run by and hope they didn't get hit. No, they'd have to destroy the fort before they could pass –
And they'd have to do it in a hurry, before the alchemists could repair the damage.
Time to hide.
Ed moved away from the walls, actually grabbing Franklin by the arm rather than telling him to come to him. Not like he'd listen anyway.
"Hey-!"
The armors had had more than enough time to figure out range. The noise was so loud Ed could literally feel each hit as if it had been a physical blow, and the amount of light in the one-room structure increased sharply as the front right half was completely destroyed.
Edward released Franklin only to bring his hands together, and suddenly they were both plummeting down a dirt shaft barely wide enough to accommodate them. He chanced a glance up even as he did it, recognizing that the large piece of stone gently rotating as it flew was going to be angled when it hit, it was narrow enough to follow and crush them and he was only working with dirt, not stone-
He immediately changed the angle on the shaft so that it turned into more of a slide than a straight plunge, but he literally couldn't move the dirt as fast as the rock was falling, and the deeper they went the harder it was to displace it. Even more unfortunately, the rock was angling to chase them, rather than getting caught.
Shit.
And then Franklin, shoulder glued to his own, clasped his hands in front of himself as if praying – and reached up for the ceiling fragment.
A flash of light mirrored his own, and in the next moment the huge stone slab was dust.
Edward angled the slide up sharply, slowing them down and getting them closer to the surface. They were probably twelve or so feet behind the fort, and sixteen feet deep or deeper. Since it was only dirt – he'd mined all the stone for the fort – he took extra time to reinforce the ceiling with multiple crossing arches and pillars. Once the reaction died, they were plunged into total darkness.
Phosphorus would just eat up their available oxygen. And he'd already mined all of that, too. Besides, they didn't need light. He knew what he'd seen.
He'd seen Franklin transmute without an array.
They remained silent, panting and listening to the slide collapse. The explosions were almost as loud down here as they'd been in the fort, and the ground shuddered as the second volley apparently took out the rest of the structure. After that, there were a few residual explosions, and then Edward felt comfortable enough to take his hands off the ground and shake the dirt out of the back of his shirt and collar.
"So," he said conversationally, "when'd you see the Gate?"
The dark didn't answer him, though he could clearly hear Franklin breathing, and after a moment the boy shifted, apparently finding a wall to lean against. Minutes passed, in which a few more shells came down, sounding farther away. Probably random fire into the grasslands on the off chance they'd bolted out a back door.
Edward sighed lightly, rubbing his right shoulder. He certainly wasn't cold anymore, but it hadn't appreciated his second fall in almost as many days. "How about you start from the beginning."
A hesitation. "Do I have a choice?"
Ed knew Mustang would never have answered that, so he remained silent.
Eventually the boy took a preparatory breath. "What do you want me to say?"
How hard was start at the beginning? He held his tongue, letting the kid squirm, and eventually Franklin spoke again.
"It's the same as what you and your brother did. I took an idea and ran with it. Avram – Blane, my teacher, he always wished he could go back and fix past mistakes. He wanted it more than anything." Oddly, the boy's snort sounded bitter. "We . . . had a disagreement, several years ago, and I decided to continue researching on my own. That's when I started looking into your notes, and figured out some of the algorithms."
Well, that was enlightening, at any rate. "And you wanted to give the Stone to him?"
"At first." The kid hesitated.
"Not now?"
"Now it's not relevant." It was soft. "I studied how Scar managed to do it, then the papers said there'd been an assassination attempt on one of the candidates – just before Mustang got elected. I guess you know the rest already."
Edward leaned his head back against a dirt wall, staring at a point of darkness in thought. The story on Blane could wait. "So you were responsible for all the attempts on Mustang but the first?"
Franklin fidgeted. "Not the first or second. It took me that long to figure out who was responsible. Then I . . ." There was a sound like he'd smacked or licked his lips. "I offered up my services as an informant. I had to give them something to make them work with me, so I told them enough to get them into buildings, enough to get them close."
Edward closed his eyes, though the view was the same. Shit. The kid was going to be shot if he was caught. There was no way Mustang could make this go away. "And so they trusted you."
The sound of fabric shifting. "When Parliament hosted talks with Drachma, that seemed as good a time as any. It's remarkably easy to push a country to war."
Deep breaths. The bastard wouldn't get angry at this point. "Who gave you the array?" He didn't specify which one and he didn't need to. Again, the boy hesitated.
"You saw it?"
Ed resumed staring at the darkness, hoping it would convey his displeasure at not being directly answered. "It isn't the one you used, is it. It . . . doesn't look like it would be efficient."
"Sorn, who gave it to you."
" . . . I can't tell you."
For a split second, he'd thought he was talking to an adult. Edward quashed his angry exhale and moderated it. "You can and you will. I've seen that array before. I want to know how you got it." From the same person who taught him biological transmutation, probably.
". . . I found it. I don't know who drew it, so I can't tell you."
"How convenient."
"It was with the notes on chimera construction. That site, where I found the Incomplete Stone . . . that was Laboratory Five, wasn't it."
Part of him wanted to be surprised, but he wasn't. "Tucker. God dammit." They hadn't had a chance to get rid of anything in the lab, it had been buried, he'd hoped for all time. So Sorn had been transmuting away and just happened to get a taste of the amplifier, so of course he'd investigated . . . "You get that out of our notes?"
More shifting. "I suspected," he finally admitted. "That's' why I requested that particular area. I had to fight for it, actually. No one wanted to put a child so close to the prison." His tone told Ed more than the words what he thought of that, and Edward pressed his lips together to prevent himself from responding in kind.
There was a reason for that, you idiot.
"Didn't you luck out."
"Someone less scientific would call that fate," Franklin pointed out, and Edward glared in his direction as hard as he could.
"If you've seen the Gate, you know better," he replied calmly, reminding Franklin that he hadn't forgotten. Not by a longshot.
Creating chimera wouldn't explain transmuting without an array. Even transmuting a Philosopher's Stone wouldn't. Al hadn't gone to the Gate even when he'd become the Stone. Then again, that had been passive on his part. He had been transformed but he had not worked the transmutation. Was it possible that Hohenheim had seen the Gate when he'd transmuted the first Philosopher's Stone? Or that Scar would have, had he survived?
Then again, Marcoh had made all that Incomplete Stone, and he'd never seen it.
"You didn't realize you could do that, did you." The moment Ed heard the muffled echo of his own words, he realized they made perfect sense. "You were using linear transmutations against me because you knew you didn't have time for mechanical ones." The columns of dirt, so unlike the reactions Franklin knew and loved. He'd tried one of his normal transmutations, the car, and had failed miserably because it simply took too long.
No, if he'd known he could transmute without arrays, he'd have done it during their fight. Which meant either the boy hadn't put two and two together, and putting him in the dim, enclosed area of the fort, asking all the right questions-
Or he'd seen the Gate very recently indeed, and hadn't had the opportunity to try it yet. "Or have you already transmuted a Philosopher's Stone?" After all, all it took were about forty prisoners and a few vats of Incomplete Stone. Technically all it took was one human-
"No." Franklin didn't quantify it.
"If not a Stone, then it was human transmutation." He let his voice be as cold as it wanted. "Did you use Fletcher Tringum as a test run?"
It seemed that Franklin was holding his breath, but Ed let the question hang heavy in the air, and he did nothing to give the boy an out. One of the pillars in the room creaked softly.
"I've never created a homunculus, if that's what you're asking," he finally said, almost matter-of-factly. "That's the result of bringing back the dead, right?"
"That's not what I asked."
"I don't care!" It was a shout, and it cracked at the end. "I'm not answering any more of your questions. You're the genius. Figure it out."
Ed clucked his tongue. "Touched a sore spot, have I?" His voice was the bastard's drawl, but his stomach was a cold lump. He'd been hoping so much for some shadowy person to be responsible for this, for the chimera, for Fletcher . . . but if Franklin really had found Shou Tucker's research, had transmuted the chimera, had even sent them through time, it would explain the rates of decay . . .
It would explain Fletcher's missing body and Mustang's warning. It would explain everything.
"I'm not wrong," Franklin shot back.
The pillar creaked again, and then Edward had the very distinct impression that something in the room moved. This was confirmed when the pillar hit the dirt floor with a single, heavy thud. Ed's eyes were drawn to it immediately, though he could see nothing, and he listened carefully before bringing his hands together again.
The pillar fell in one piece. It hadn't shattered or broken until it landed. The only thing that would make it fall was if the distance between the floor and the ceiling increased. That would only happen if weight was removed, and that would only happen if-
Blue light crackled around them, blinding, and Ed slammed his hands to the ground. "Sorn, stop!"
He took control of the pillars, lest they be buried alive, and he heard Franklin's surprised gasp. "-I didn't-"
Then they were blinded with light that was far too yellow and far too intense to be alchemic. He heard a clap, but he was already forcing unhappy eyes and an aching head to focus above them, almost twenty feet above them-
Rifle barrels. A lot of them.
"Don't!" he growled sharply, leaving his hands exactly where they were. While one of them obviously was, the rest of the Cretians weren't alchemists. They didn't have the time it took someone else to react and transmute. All they had was the time it took someone's finger to tighten.
He could transmute that fast, if he'd prepared. But he hadn't. And this was far too new to Franklin, he'd already proved that even his simple transmutations were too slow for combat.
"Hands in the air! Now!"
- x -
"You look disappointed, sir."
Alphonse Elric tried for a bright grin. He was probably almost loopy enough to pull it off. "No man I know would be disappointed to find you in their house. Or any house," he added, remembered at the last second that Russell's house wasn't his. "At ease."
The first lieutenant was not impressed - Denny Brosh probably came up with much nicer lines, Al chided himself mentally. In truth, he was disappointed to see her face, because it meant he had, quite unfortunately, been correct. She hadn't slept, and she was still hoping Russ was going to come home.
"Come in before you fall down, lieutenant colonel. Shouldn't you be in bed?"
"I could ask the same of you," Al replied, though he entered the house just the same. It looked pretty much as it had before Russ left - pictures of Fletcher all over the place. No wonder he'd had to leave. "Any sign of him?"
Maria Ross nodded, closing the front door regretfully. "His pills and wallet are gone. Happened sometime in the last six or so hours. I was giving descriptions of the guests back at HQ." She smiled, a little ruefully. "It's almost a shame Alex Armstrong is getting that promotion. I'm going to miss his artistic abilities that don't include removing his shirt."
Al grinned more sincerely - that was certainly true. "Just trying to get a list down, or do you think one of them might have something to do with him skipping town?"
The slim brunette shrugged, leaning against the back of a chair instead of sitting down. She almost looked like she wanted to start pacing, which was quite unlike her. It was also unlike her to be so informal. While she had called him by his rank, and he had told her to relax, she was not standing at parade rest. Whether she was tired enough to take him at his word or too preoccupied to remain her usual uptight self was hard to tell.
"I'm just covering all the bases," she replied, gesturing at the guest book. "Not everyone signed, and we were thinking he might have gone home with one of them just to . . . well, to get away."
Al wandered over to the coffee table, adjusting his sling. It looked as it usually did - the plate for Russ's keys, the spare cenz he fished out of his pocket at the same time. Al had left Russ's drugs in the upstairs bathroom, so apparently he'd had time to come in, grab the keys, his pills -
He'd only take the bottles if he meant not to come back.
"Was there anyone you didn't recognize?"
She sighed, a sound too deep for someone of her years. "Of course. I don't keep up with the alchemists like I once did, Alphonse." She, too, must know what the drugs being gone meant. "My orders were to prevent him from doing anything stupid, so I wasn't really paying attention to anyone else."
He nodded. It was a tall order indeed, considering how poorly Edward had done. He couldn't help but remember back to the mud on Russ's shoes. He'd gone for a walk that night, with an array on that paper, he was sure of it. Where would he have gone that would have been muddy that night? Where that was within walking distance?
"Did he take his car?"
She shook her head. "No. It's still here, in fact. I was hoping that meant he took his keys because he meant to come back." Her voice sounded strained, and he turned to give her a reassuring look.
"He's fine. I'm sure he just needed some time."
Maria gave him a brief smile, but it was as strained as her voice. "I know we didn't deserve a note, but I wish he left one just the same."
Al nodded, giving the room another once-over. Pills, keys, wallet. "He take his toothbrush?"
She shook her head. "Not any clothes, either, that I can tell."
"Well, maybe it means he doesn't plan to be gone long." Or at the very least it meant he was going somewhere that had a spare set of clothes and a new toothbrush. Al could understand very well why Russ wouldn't have come to them, but it still saddened him. "I assume you've already talked with everyone that spent a lot of time with him?"
She nodded. "All but three. That's who we were drawing up at HQ. One of them looked almost Ishbalan." That probably would have been Darr Swolls, the Quiet Alchemist. Which really didn't make a lot of sense, since he could count on fingers and toes the words the alchemist had told him outside of 'yes' and 'no'. "There was one pudgy guy that he went to talk to in his lab for quite a while. I remember thinking I was going to shoot him if he was talking to Russell about alchemy." Pudgy alchemists . . . none came to mind. Maybe Morris?
"Black guy?"
She shook her head. "No, it wasn't Morris. Him I know." She gave him a droll look. "He can't resist women in uniforms."
Al whistled through his teeth. "He should try that line on Hawkeye." After all, he was an alchemist. He could probably protect himself.
Maybe.
"Who was the third?"
"Really tall, thin guy with almost no hair. He was easily in his seventies, so I figured he was a friend of the family."
They had some older alchemists, but none that fit that description. "Anything about those two you can remember?"
Maria shook her head, and Al turned back to the table, pulling open the drawers aimlessly. They held no clues, just odds and ends, and he closed them again gently.
"The tall guy didn't have a certification," she noted after a moment. "No chain. The pudgy guy did, though."
Al nodded, chewing on that as he climbed the stairs to Russ's room. Pudgy certified guy . . . again, no one was coming to mind. Then again, just because someone had a pocketwatch chain didn't mean they were a certified alchemist. They were just too used to it being a part of military uniforms to ever think anything else.
Russ's room was pretty much a mess. His bedsheets were twisted and told of rest that hadn't been restful, and his dresser top was covered with papers that bore the beginnings of arrays, and an atrociously striped sock.
Something about it tugged his memory, and Al wandered over to it, noting the toe seemed full of something. He picked up the offending article, shaking it out, and a roll of paper bills tumbled onto the dresser top.
His stash. Al hadn't seen the sock since the last place the Tringums had lived, the one Irving brought down on top of them. How the hell had Russ managed to get it out of the wreckage-
Hell, it had his stash of petty cash. Russ was such a tightwad, and even if the research couldn't be saved, so long as something was salvageable-
Or maybe it had to do with why Russ was on Mustang's - and Hakuro's - list.
Curiously, Al carefully flattened the roll one-handed, counting the bills as he went. Four hundred and twenty cenz. Odd number, he would have expected an even five-
He also wouldn't have expected it to be left out unless Russ had been in a hurry. A hurry to grab his pain meds, his keys, and eighty cenz. It wasn't much, enough for a quick dinner out and a taxi, but not enough for a hotel. Barely enough to buy more than a train ticket. So he'd probably gone with someone, Maria had been right. Al contemplated that as he scanned the bedroom, then inspected the bathroom again.
It wasn't until he was on the way down the stairs that it started to click, and he was unsurprised to find Maria standing at the door, looking out.
"Lieutenant?"
She turned quickly at her title, and he waved down any attempt at a salute. "The pudgy guy . . . did he seem a little backwater for a certified alchemist?"
She blinked slowly, her eyes wandering the room and her memory. " . . . yes. Now that you mention it, he did have that manner of speaking. Soothing, which is why I let them get away with holing up in the workroom . . . how did you know?"
"You're a genius." He would have hugged her if he had both arms free. Instead, he headed immediately for the door. "The trains, they're being rescheduled for the move to Drachma, right?"
He wasn't sure if Ross was in on that plan or not, considering how little time she'd spent in the office lately, and even if she was, she didn't bat an eye. "Yes. The papers will be screaming about it by morning-"
So there would be a hefty military presence. Russ would stand out like a sore thumb. If he hadn't been trying to slip away unnoticed, someone would have reported seeing him by now.
"Where are you going? Alphonse!"
He turned to glance over his good shoulder, wincing slightly more at the imagined shout it would have gotten out of Patterson more than because of actual pain. "Gotta catch a train," he called back.
A train to Jannai.
Avram Blane was a pudgy man from the country who had a silver pocketwatch chain without having a State title. There was no telling why he would have visited Russell, but every reason for Russ to follow him back to Jannai.
Since that was where Franklin would end up, if he succeeded in transmuting his Stone.
- x -
Even with his eyes closed, Russ couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. He knew why, but this time he didn't care enough to do anything about it.
The train was amazingly hypnotic, the repetitive clank of the ties beneath them, the rocking motion, and most of all, the relative safety of the cabin. There were only two passenger cars, everything else had been claimed by the State military, and that unrest had caused the civilian portion of the train to be nearly empty. Even knowing this train wasn't heading north, which he couldn't understand. Why move the troops anywhere but towards Drachma?
So he, Avram, and Lily pretty much had the nicest cabin on the train to themselves. None of the soldiers had come to bother them, and if Lily would quit staring at him, he could probably get some sleep.
The one inconvenience in all this was the amount of time they'd had to wait for the train to pull away from the station. That and the fact that with no passengers, there was no car coming down the aisle with lunch. Which they'd missed altogether on the platform, knowing moving around was just that much more likely to get him noticed.
It really was astonishing that no one had recognized him. Good, but a little alarming. Franklin could have easily still been in Central and been overlooked, if the soldiers were that preoccupied.
A stomach growled, though he wasn't sure whose until he heard a soft intake of air. "Oh, dear. Please excuse me."
He heard fabric shifting - probably Avram's hand on her knee. "I think we could all use a little something," he said a little more loudly, as though to make sure Russ woke. Not that he'd been sleeping, but he opened his eyes slowly to acknowledge that he'd heard. He was right; Avram was already getting to his feet.
"I'll go see if I can scrounge us up something."
Lily gave him a quick, grateful smile that faded the moment the cabin door had slid shut, and then she clasped her hands together and gave him a quick glance.
Against his better judgment, he sat up a little straighter. "Is something bothering you?" He hadn't seen her calm . . . well, ever. She was very thin and birdlike, which meant she was probably this nervous most of the time, but it was really starting to bug him.
She gave him a suddenly hopeful look, again, so different than her normal expression that it was almost blinding. "That's very kind of you to ask." She hesitated, then licked her lips. "You're a State Alchemist, aren't you?"
He blinked some of the weariness out of his eyes. "Yes ma'am." So that was what was bothering her. Avram had already warned him that she disliked talk of alchemy, having the small-town belief that it was borderline sacrilegious. Given that she was afraid of trains, he could believe it. She was old-fashioned indeed. Never spoke out of turn, always attentive to her husband. Then again, if she was this wound up all the time, she was lucky she had someone who would put up with her.
"Is that a problem?"
She shook her head quickly, stealing a glance at the pocket door of the cabin. There was a narrow, frosted glass window, and it showed that no one was looking in. "It's a godsend," she whispered. "Please, please help me. I'll do anything, please just get it off-"
She had extended her hands to him, clutching at his, and he glanced at them, expecting by her panicked pleading to find a spider or some other insect somewhere on her person. Instead, all he saw was a fine-boned, pale wrist, an intricate and lovely bracelet, and a cotton blouse.
Well, she probably didn't want him to take her shirt off. "I'm . . . what?"
She continued pleading with him, and Russell sat up, fully awake for what seemed like the first time since - He pushed the thought away, accepting the wrist that was being thrust at him and inspecting the bracelet more closely. The clear stones were connected with a fine tube of silver, and the entire thing positively glistened-
Liquid. They weren't stones, they were capsules of liquid.
"Hurry, he'll be back soon!" It was hushed and positively terrified. "He does something to it every few hours with alchemy, he'll do it again soon. Please!"
He stared at it another moment before he looked back up at her. She was doing her best not to shake, her breathing uneven but nothing even close to a tear in her eyes. What the hell . . .? "What do you mean, he does something to it? What is this?"
"He says if I run he'll kill them!" It was barely a breath. "I don't know how he'd know, but it must have something to do with this! Get it off, please get it off."
Russell watched her for a moment more, determining by the pulse pounding away beneath his fingers that she truly was as upset as she seemed. Then he looked at the bracelet more closely. There was no clasp, it appeared to be a bracelet that would just slip on and off, but as he tried to rotate it, she gasped with pain, and he saw the skin pull as if it was caught.
Easing a fingernail between her skin and the bracelet, he found that the silver tubing actually went beneath her skin, and there was no blood at the joint. Furthermore, it came back out of her skin about an inch down. It wasn't just that the end had stabbed her. It had been inserted on purpose.
Russell blinked back up at her, taken aback. Something with alchemy - and the liquid capsules. Would the liquid then be injected into her, after a certain amount of time? Was that why he used alchemy on it every so often? If it was a poison, it would certainly work better than any manacle at keeping her a prisoner, but -
"Aren't you his wife?"
She sobbed, but again, no trace of tears. "There's no time, he'll be back any moment-"
"Who's going to be killed if you leave?"
"The town, the entire town!"
The door slid back, and she flinched as if he'd shocked her, instantly withdrawing her hands and schooling her features. She did it so well that even Russell doubted what he'd seen. She turned the motion into one made to stand and help her 'husband,' who had his hands full with sandwiches and bottles of juice. If he suspected anything he didn't show it, and Russ accepted a roast beef sandwich and a lemonade.
"We were in luck! They were still open to serve the military," Avram said cheerfully, handing Lily her own half-sandwich. He gave Russell anther look, this one more surprised. "Is everything all right?"
There was a tone underlying it that Russell knew well, and he nodded. "We had a visitor. He didn't recognize me," he added quietly. "Just a closer call than I would have liked."
Avram watched him for a moment, nodding in understanding. "I know this is a lot for you to take in, and a huge risk besides. Truly, I appreciate what you're doing."
Russell just nodded, unwrapping his sandwich and watching in amazement as Lily smiled and bobbed her head and reassured Avram that it was exactly what she wanted. Maybe she was crazy? But there was no doubt the bracelet had been implanted - possibly even transmuted - into her on purpose. Was it a pretty way to constantly dose her with something? Keep her under wraps? Was he transmuting more drugs into it, or was it as she said, to keep her in line?
What on earth for?
"I've been meaning to ask you," he said around a mouthful of roast beef that suddenly tasted like ash, "when did you get into Central? Was it yesterday morning, or the day before?
"The day before," Avram answered. "The newspaper was slipped under our hotel door, that was how I knew where the visitation would be. Though I'm terribly sorry that it happened the way it did-"
"But you knew you'd get my attention," Russ answered, taking a sip of lemonade. "So let's cut right to the chase. What do you want from me?" If he had to confront the guy, it would be better to do it when they stopped than on the train, but at the very least, if they did it on a train crawling with soldiers, he had a better chance of keeping a lid on this guy, particularly if he really was in a position to call whoever he'd called before, someone to act on his behalf.
In fact, that might have been exactly what that phone call had been about. Warning his partner that he was being delayed.
Possibly warning Franklin, for all he knew.
Avram gave him a calculating look, then smiled broadly. "I thought you two were getting along too well," he finally admitted. "Lily, dear, you should have waited. In another few days, you would have been free to go."
The woman had frozen where she sat, looking absolutely terrified, and Russell got the impression that she was not at all pleased with his strategy. Russ just took another bite of the sandwich. If Avram wanted to poison him, he could have done it at any time yesterday during dinner.
Blane kept smiling. "You're a genius, Mr. Tringum. Also a very powerful alchemist who specializes in healing alchemy. Another name for that would be biological transmutation, and since I think it's obvious by now that Frank's attempt is in peril, I did need an insurance policy."
Russell raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that what she's for?"
Blane laughed almost gleefully. "Well, yes, but not for this," he said dismissively. "Though you seem to care about her, so as usual, everything works in the end." He took a large swig of his lemonade. "She told you about the bracelet, I take it?"'
Lily still hadn't so much as twitched a muscle, and Russ tried to appear unconcerned. If Avram believed that he didn't really give a damn about her it might give him a slightly better negotiating position.
"I noticed it seems to have been transmuted into her wrist," he finally observed. "She's not to blame. Perhaps if you treated her better she wouldn't be so nervous."
"I treat her fine." It was dangerously soft. "We're trying for a child, did she tell you?"
Lily was staring at her lap, her lips white, and Russ realized it was a test to see if such a comment would anger him. And seeing as his sandwich was now crumpled, he'd given himself away. Avram smiled again.
"Very perceptive, boy, but then again, I expect you would have noticed sooner if not for the most unfortunate death of your brother. She is my insurance policy as much as you are, Mr. Tringum. You see, if Franklin fails to make me a Philosopher's Stone, I'll need another alchemist to transmute one for me. You seem to fit the bill. And if you're very, very good, I'll let you use the remainder to resurrect your brother."
Russ almost dropped the sandwich. "Are you out of your mind?"
Blane spread his hands helplessly. "I suppose that could be argued. For what it's worth, I recommend going along with me for the moment, however. The alternative is less pleasant."
Russell fought the urge to transmute Blane into the bench then and there. "Really."
Blane nodded, taking a bite of his sandwich. "You see, I'm the only alchemist in the world that knows exactly what that bracelet is for, and what it can do. Also, there's the townsfolk to consider."
Russell stared at the man, debating just how difficult it would be to get the bracelet off her without triggering or upsetting any balance in it, and Avram gestured with the sandwich. "They'll all die within two days of my incarceration," he explained. "And not even you could do anything about it. Not in time, anyway." He turned to Lily, patting her knee again.
"There are, what, two hundred people in Jannai, dear?"
- x -
Author's Notes: Action! Plot reveals all over the place! What more could you ask for:looks at reviews: Ah. Patterson. ) Unless I go into rambly!mode Mitai, that reveal should be next chapter. And then, all we'll have to do is tie up the clusterfuck that's just been created. After all, putting Ed in the middle of an enemy army is a great idea! Really!
As usual, posted without a beta, and I just found quite a collection of misused words. I apologize in advance! Please let me know what you see and where, and I'll be sure to clean it up once this monster is put to bed.