Salutations, fine readers! I won't be able to update next Tuesday, so I'm posting an early update now. Thanks for sticking with Tianxian and I to chapter three. A more in depth author note at the bottom...Enjoy! :)
Just Another Playing Piece
Chapter Three:
"Damsel in the Desert"
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe out, in…?
Breathe in, out…?
Oh, just suck in as much air as you can. Preferably before you pass out.
Chanting the simple command was all Tianxian could do to keep the panic that had gripped her at bay. While the dark eyes had slid closed moments after opening and consequently released her from the spell that they had entranced her with, the uneasiness had yet to leave. His mere presence sent a chill of anxiety crawling down her spine.
The consort only realized she was gawking when she heard the grumpier of her two companions remark, "He's out cold, huh?"
"Looks that way." Alphonse replied, setting the ragged-looking boy to the lay down face first in the dirt road.
Clearly unimpressed, Edward gave a surly command to his younger brother, "Looks like another damn foreigner. Take him back to where you found him."
"But, brother that's—"
"It would be my pleasure!" Tianxian shot between the brothers, the skirt of her crimson cheongsam jacket flowing behind her from the quick movement.
She gripped the incapacitated stranger under the pits of his arms, and hoisted him up with a tenacious strength that contradicted her slight figure. With a great heave, the girl set him flying head over heels into an awaiting pile of garbage that lined the dark alleyway. Satisfied, she wiped her hands together and triumphantly placed them upon her small hips.
Problem solved.
"I said put him back, not kill him!" Edward howled over Tianxian's shoulder.
The girl in question shrugged, "Honestly, I did us all a favor. You should be kissing my feet in thanks."
"How can the two of you be so heartless?" Alphonse cried as he rushed to aid the fallen boy. He lifted the boy so that the white soles of his black cloth shoes met the ground. His attempt at trying the balance the boy was futile as he was plainly not mentally aware enough to stand.
The smallest of the group frowned, and pulled Tianxian forward by her wrist to survey the damage, "Al, stop that—"
"Unhand me, you hea—"
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!
The Elric brothers jumped with a start as a deafening gurgle filled the alleyway. In their surprise, Tianxian managed to snatch her wrist back seemingly unphased by the eardrum-shattering noise.
"What was that sound, Brother?" The armored boy asked as his voice rose in alarm.
The blond alchemist shifted to a defensive stance, his eyes cautiously examining the area for a threat, "I don't know. Do you think it could be one of the homunculi nearby?"
It then became very clear to Tianxian that her original assumption had not been wrong. The Amestrian common people were incredibly dimwitted.
"For being the so-called 'Hero of the People', the both of you are exceptionally dense." The concubine scoffed as she strode forward to casually reach her hand into Edward's pants pocket and begin digging around.
"HEEEEEEY! What do you think you're doing?! GET OUT OF THERE!" Edward responded with a flush that covered his entire body as he yanked the nonplussed girl's hand away.
"Ow! Oh, do not flatter yourself. As if I would lower myself to doing inappropriate things to a low-brow gutter rat as yourself." She admonished with a furrowed brow while tenderly rubbing her smarting hand. "I was attempting to procure money from you."
A gruff mutter. "Oh, so I'm still good enough to steal from though, huh? What an honor."
"He is hungry."
"Huh?" Edward uncrossed his arms to look at his female companion quizzically.
"That obnoxious noise. It was his stomach growling." Tianxian disdainfully gestured at their fourth unconscious member, "He is hungry. The money is for food."
"Not two minutes ago you were content with leaving him in the garbage, and now you want to feed him with my money!?"
"As long as your brother is intent on helping that worthless piece of refuse, it appears we shall not be leaving from this spot. There will be worse consequences than an empty wallet if we are found with him in the current state he is in." A frustrated sigh passed through her pursed lips.
Still skeptical, Edward eyed the foreign girl suspiciously. However, as her navy eyes board into his, he found that he could trust her judgment this time around. Since they had met, the alchemist had taken every word the girl ostentatiously exclaimed with a grain of salt. This time, though, her shield of arrogance had been lowered just enough to reveal the truth.
She was genuinely apprehensive about something.
"Tch. Fine, but I'm not paying."
Alphonse gave a breathy laugh, swinging the stranger up into his arms, "So, what's for lunch?"
"Tianxian, what are you doing?"
The aforementioned concubine was standing in an automail shop on the opposite side of the street from the food stand the four had arrived at moments before. She had curled one of her arms up high enough to make the wide bell-shape of her sleeve appear empty, and was examining mechanical arms. The expression on her face seemed genuine enough, but the fact that her eyes stared dully passed the hanging limbs to an oil stain on the wall gave way to the fact that she was not truly interested in purchasing a new arm.
Without turning away from the prosthetics, "Is it not obvious? I am shopping."
"We all know you have two perfectly fine arms. Unless you're planning on buying me a gift, get out of there." Edward grumbled then pointed to the pile of goldenrod silk and pale cloth in his brother's arms with one of the fried chicken legs he had just purchased. "Besides, what the hell are we supposed to do with him?"
"I am busy. It seems you will have to take the wanderer to eat on your own."
"Oh no, you're not!" The State Alchemist, with the basket of friend chicken tucked under his arm, entered the shop to drag Tianxian out by the tail of her coat. "You and Al forced me into taking him. He is YOUR problem."
Tianxian struggled in vain to free her coat from the vicelike grip, "Unhand me, heathen alchemist! Just take a pheasant leg and wave it in front of his face. Unfortunately, that will have him awake in moments."
While the elder Elric and the aggrieved girl played a game of tug of war, Alphonse looked on between the two with a fair amount of exasperation. The pair was infinitely frustrating to be around with their unceasing squabbling, but that wasn't what had garnered his attention. Between her uncharacteristically nervous demeanor and the reluctance at which she addressed a way to aid the young man in his arms, Alphonse had noticed something peculiar—
"Tianxian, do you know this boy?"
The battle halted as the girl in question ceased in her flailing, "What would give you an inane idea such as that?"
The younger boy startled. The metal of his armor clanked with nervous twitches. Despite her somewhat doll-like appearance, Tianxian's lofty voice and shadowy eyes were unexpectedly intimidating.
"I, um, well, you see…he looks like he might be from Xing, too," Alphonse lifted up the young man who was still draped comatose across his arms, "Also, uh, you seem kind of anxious, and you talk as if you know him."
In contrast with her usual expressiveness, Tianxian had arranged her face to be carefully blank, "Is that so? How absurd."
"No, no." Edward interjected, crimson fabric still in hand, "I think Al is onto something here."
"Ridiculous."
Letting go of her attire and gripping the basket of chicken with both hands, the snarky young alchemist began circling Tianxian. A cheeky smirk inched up one side of his face. After all she had put him through, the taunt was too good to pass up.
"I don't know about that. I think you know him."
"Preposterous."
"Hey, Al?" Edward paused in his circling, to look inquiringly up at his brother. "Tianxian said that she came to Amestris because of marital complications, right?"
A metallic, "I think so."
Satisfied, he continued on in his assault as he picked up one of the chicken legs to point between the two foreigners, "Hmm, two foreigners suddenly show up here around the same time, and the runaway bride is pretty jumpy around the other one."
"What exactly are you insinuating, you boorish buffoon?" Navy eyes tightened into menacing slits.
Two golden eyebrows rose, "Oh, I think you know exactly what I'm saying."
"Hardly," Her upper lip curled in disgust as the chicken leg came dangerously close to smearing grease across her cheek before he swung back. Though, her eyes widened at the sudden movement taking place behind the pint-sized alchemist.
"Brother! Wait, he's—" Alphonse called admonishingly.
Ignoring the call, Edward went in for the kill, gesticulating wildly with the chicken leg without noticing that a large bite had been taken from it, "This guy must be your husba—"
"MOTHER!"
A yellow and white blur knocked Edward aside mid exclamation and barreled directly into Tianxian before she even had a chance to look properly horrified. The breath was knocked from her lungs as her back roughly made impact with the road below. A heavy, annoyingly familiar weight sat upon her chest as she gave her best attempt at sucking the escaped air back into her lungs.
Would meeting up with him always mean that she would have her breath stolen away?
"Oh, ho! To think we would meet again in a place like this, Mother! It must be fate."
Begrudgingly, Tianxian slid her eyes up to take in the face of the exuberant boy straddling her waist. Those forsaken eyes were thankfully closed and an ever present grin softened his angular features. He was close enough for the tips of his tousled black bangs to gently tickle her nose. It was a wonder he had managed to speak around the large chunk of chicken in his mouth.
The pinned consort planned to dish out the tongue lashing of the century, when the shrill, incredulous cry of the Elric brothers beat her to the point,
"DID YOU JUST SAY MOTHER?!"
After the rather peculiar introduction and the near ten minutes it took for Tianxian to extract the ebony-haired young man from clinging to her prone form, the odd group had relocated to a clustering of tables just outside of the food stand they had been loitering around. The brothers stared on in awe while the sole female of the quartet stood to the side with a face that said she would rather be anywhere else but there as the boy, who had yet to introduce himself, downed his fifth bowel of rice and his seventh basket of chicken. How was it possible to fit that much food into one person?
"All right, this guy just called you his mother. Fess up." Edward's demand was barely audible over the stranger's voracious eating.
"Ignore him. He is clearly delusional," was her flippant response.
"It's not like I can just drop the sub—"
"Well, well, I'm revived! You guys saved my life! Thanks, that was yummy!" The stranger seemed to have a special penchant for interrupting the blond alchemist whenever he came close to shattering the secrets surrounding Tianxian.
Edward's attention was quickly diverted from one foreigner to the other as he protested, "I never said anything about treating you…"
"Hahaha! Don't mind such a small thing!" The young man sitting opposite of them gave a boisterous, light-hearted laugh. "To be cared for in a foreign nation. I'm so thankful! To think I would awaken to a pair of generous Amestrians and the smiling face of Mother. Fate is so kind!"
"For the last time, you Yao Clan simpleton, in no way am I your mother! Do not lower me by falsely claiming that I have relation to you." The insult escaped through Tianxian's clenched teeth.
Edward frowned, "Are one of you going to explain this mother thing or…?"
This whole conversation was rapidly becoming derailed from its point. Taking into consideration the distractibility of the three increasingly loud teens, it was up to Alphonse to steer it back on track,
"Foreign? Are you from Xing as well?"
"Hm? Yes, I'm from Xing! I'm sure that you've heard all about our homeland from Tianxian." The response was cheery.
A look passed between the Elric brothers that clearly said all they knew about Xing was that the two odd people currently in their presence claimed to have traveled from there. For someone that talked so much, Tianxian was incredibly tightlipped on matters outside of repeatedly exclaiming her title and demanding to be taken places.
"Wasn't it a lot of trouble to cross the desert?" Alphonse questioned.
The foreign boy gave a firm nod, "Oh, that desert was hellish, but I was able to officially meet Tianxian for the first time, so it was worth the trip. She was quite the damsel."
"My romp through the desert was not exactly planned," Tianxian muttered in her defense.
The boys then merged into a lively discussion on the history of Xing and Amestris along with their resident alchehestry and alchemy. Tianxian eyed a trail of ants crawling alongside the table disinterestedly. She could care less about international politics unless they included her speaking to the Furher about her future.
It was terribly frustrating to be dependent upon the pace of the Elrics. If she had her way, they would have been in Central hours ago and she could have been basking in her newfound Amestrian citizenship, yet here she was, stuck in some rustbelt town being forced to entertain one of her countrymen with an endless supply of food.
Speaking of which, what was that insufferable prince doing here? Had he been following her? Or was this meeting just as much of a coincidence as their first when he had stumbled across her in the desert on the precipice of unconsciousness those few months ago?
Tianxian made a hasty scan of the nearby rooftops. Her haughty posture of crossed arms and a snooty sneer were purposely arranged to draw the attention away from the calculating look held in her shifting navy orbs. Not for the first time, she cursed her inability to read chi signatures. Unlike the true heads of the clans, she had never been properly taught to read the dragon's pulse, and was at a disadvantage when it came to sensing just about anything.
Now where are you hiding, you eerie specters? She wondered.
The Yao imp was difficult enough to handle, but what followed him was far more formidable. It was rare that he was found without three shadows, and it set her on edge to realize their exchange was most likely being watched by more than one pair of outside eyes. The slightest wrong move and she could have a trained kunai aimed at her throat.
No one had the ability to set her at unease like—
"Ling Yao! Nice to meet you!"
Tianxian was startled out of her reverie by the noisy exclamation. Ling and the Elric brothers were merrily shaking hands with one another, and she wondered what she could have missed to make the alchemist she had argued nonstop with for the past day look so welcoming.
"Well, then. What about that alchehestry? Could you tell me more about it?"
Oh. That was why. Though they had only been together for a short time, Tianxian could tell that the blond teen nearly salivated over anything that involved alchemy or its equivalents.
Just as she had expected him to do, Ling crossed his arms and with that unfading grin of his gave a resounding, "Nope. I'm not an alchehestrist…"
The Elrics appeared crushed over the fact, but before either had the chance to voice their dissidence, Ling continued,
"…but she is." In awe the Elrics followed the finger he had extended towards Tianxian.
They stared blankly at her for a moment as a smug little smirk decorated her face.
"You can perform alchehestry?!" Edward cried in vexation.
Her reply was clipped, "Why, of course. Would you like a demonstration?"
Without waiting for an answer, Tianxian confidently strode forward and splayed her fingers in front of Edward's face. He was confused at the gesture until he took notice of her fingernails. It was difficult to see over the deep red of her nail polish, but a small array was etched in black over each nail. He had never seen an alchemic circle drawn so small.
"Prepare to be struck by my shear power!" Tianxian called as blue sparks lit her fingertips.
The boys peered over eagerly as the blue sparks faded from her fingertips. Tianxian appeared to be rather proud of herself as she gauged the reaction of her small audience. However, a disgruntled glower was not the response she expected.
"All you did was change your nails from red to normal. Is that all you can do?"
Tianxian was affronted, "That was powerful alchehestry, heathen! I have no need of more complicated alterations."
"Yeah. Right." Edward deadpanned, turning back to Ling, "What are you here for if you're not an alchemist?!"
"Ummm, to look for something." Tianxian recognized when the prince's cheerful disposition switched from genuine to an act to cover his more subversive character, "Maybe you guys know about it. The Philosopher's Stone."
This was new. She had heard of the ever elusive Philosopher's Stone; its existence had a common place in Xingese bedtime stories. When she had run into him while wandering through the desert, Tianxian had known that Ling wasn't travelling to Amestris for a vacation abroad, but she couldn't have fathomed that he was on a hapless chase after a supposedly mythical rock.
"I want it really badly. Do you know about it?" Those accursed eyes slid open.
Interest waning, the Elrics stood to leave. As Ling prattled on about his desire to gain immortality, the brothers became more closed off and walked further away. Tianxian moved to follow their lead when dark cloth rushed passed on either side of her. Panic wormed its way into her gut. It was just as she feared; the formidable duo had finally made their appearance.
At the snap of their master, the pair wearing the traditional stealth combat garb of the Xingese Empire lurched from the shadows. In moments they had the armor brothers immobile. Tianxian was surprised, however, as her escorts managed to put up a formidable fight against the life-long trained guards.
"Wonderful to see that Lan Fan and Fu are as fit as ever…" Tianxian spoke to no one in particular.
"Oh my, there they go, all such hot heads." Ling gave a cheery chuckle, lifting one hand to his brow as he watched his guards and the Elrics rush off into the metal workings of the city.
Tianxian peered at the boy disdainfully as he added, "Old man! Bring another one of your tasty desserts. Just put it on the armor brothers' tab."
"You are positively rotten."
Ling regarded his fellow Xingese royal with a curious tilt of his head, "Hm? I am?"
"You are." Tianxian moved to slide into the seat across from him, ankles crossed and hands placed lightly upon the tabletop. "If you plan to take advantage of the Elrics' apparently infinite amount of funds, at least have the courtesy to offer a dessert to one of your father's former wives."
The seemingly impossible happened when the grin on Ling's face grew wider, and soft, breezy laughter filled the air. His dark eyes opened minutely, and without turning his gaze away, called,
"Hey, old man! Make that dessert a double!"
That's the conclusion to chapter three. Ling is finally conscious and Tianxian is infinitely snarky. This chapter felt off for me, but hopefully it came out well enough.
I appreciate all of you who viewed last chapter. A big thanks to trafalgars for following last chapter! Another big thanks to Logan jones for favoriting! A super special thanks to ArcaneAdagio for doing the big three: favoriting, following, AND reviewing! You are a delightful cupcake of pure wonder to me. Additonally, a super thanks to mun3litKnight, who came back with a second review for me, you wondrous lovely being. Thanks for sticking with this story, I truly appreciate all your support. All of you guys are truly the rock stars behind this chapter.
Please favorite, follow, and REVIEW! Let me know if you all would be interested in delving further into Ling and Tianxian's previous adventure in the desert? I'd love to hear suggestions from you all.