Notes: I enjoyed writing this chapter; I also took a while to do it :p I was inspired mostly by Phantom ~Requiem of the Phantom~ when I was doing the training scenes, but I'm pretty sure this isn't a ripoff of that show or anything. I'm trying my best to be original here. I'll assure you that the story's gonna pick up after another chapter or so, so please do stay tuned. Thanks for being so patient, everyone, and a special thanks to BlackLioness, XxForest-DragonxX and theflamefangirl for reviewing :) you guys (and gals) really made my day!

Aaanyways, here's the chapter (finally). So enjoy.

Chapter Two: Training Days

When Roy opened his eyes he found himself lying in a hard cot of some sort. He groaned and turned to his side; his entire body ached like shit. He attempted to sit up, and managed to do so with nothing more than a small gasp. He looked down at himself. Whoever locked him up here sure didn't give a damn about his well-being. They hadn't even given him proper bandages, clothes, or anything to clean up with, for the matter. And he was an incredible mess. He was covered in bruises, cuts and blood – mostly his enemies'. It made him feel sick. It made him recall the hellhole that was Ishval…

…it seemed as though they'd just thrown him into this cot and left him here….

"Jeez…" Roy winced. "Bastards…" he muttered, twisting around to see his aching shoulder. A strange, humourless grin pulling at the corner of his lips, he stared at the caked blood that was there for a few seconds. Then, he put his face in his hands and squeezed his eyes shut. This is a dream, this is all a dream…

Quit telling yourself that. It's idiotic. Roy was angry at himself for acting like such a weakling. He kept on telling himself to get a grip, to think of a way to escape… To outwit his captors… His normally quick brain refused to work properly. He couldn't think; he realized that he was floundering in plain fear, confusion and despair. All the awful events of the last time he was awake came back to him, making his heart beat fast again. His head pounded. Massaging his temples with his fingertips, he furrowed his brow and tried to formulate some kind of plan. Any plan. He could come up with nothing, because he had nothing. His uniform's jacket was long gone, which meant he no longer had access to the useful things he kept in his breast pocket… He felt his pants for any kind of tool, anything – his fingers met cold metal. His brief hope was extinguished when he pulled out his State Alchemist watch. He wondered how it had ended back up in his pocket when he distinctly remembered using it against a knife – its chain was broken, and when Roy opened it, he saw that there was a long crack running down its face. It still ticked.

As he was staring at it, remembering life when he'd actually known some things that were going on around him, he heard a knocking on the metal door of his tiny room.

For a moment Mustang wondered whether he should go open it or not. Not feeling like getting up to open the door for someone who had him imprisoned without explanation, he decided not to. As he had expected, the person came in anyways.

Roy narrowed his eyes. It was the white-masked man again. What was his name? Right. Snake. He snorted inwardly. What was this place, some kind of costume party? What was with all those stupid masks and animal names?

"Good afternoon, Mr. Mustang," Snake said in what Mustang supposed was a cheery tone. "How are you feeling?"

"Like hell," Roy spat. He had no intention of talking with this bastard. But of course, like everything that had happened in the last few hours or days, nothing seemed to go his way. It was then Mustang saw that Snake was carrying something. He merely glanced at it, not really interested. But when he realized that it was some kind of edible object his stomach began to growl. When was the last time he'd eaten? He was so hungry he felt sick.

Almost mockingly, as if hearing Mustang's guts, Snake said, "I brought you a meal."

Wordlessly Roy accepted the small tray of food, ignoring his pride for the time being. Everything on the plate was bland and almost tasteless – he could barely tell whether it was meat, fish or something else – nevertheless, he wolfed it all down like a starving animal. A cup of water was presented to him by Snake after he'd finished; he took it and drowned it all in one go.

Mustang felt good for about two minutes.

He should have known that it was a foolish thing to do, to stuff his face with food on a completely empty stomach. He was such an idiot. The food threatened to come back up; he did everything he could to hold it all in. He wasn't going to vomit in front of Snake. He wanted to keep the little pride he had left.

Again, Snake seemed to be reading all the thoughts that were running through Mustang's head. "The restroom is right behind you, if you wish to use it."

Roy glared up at him and spoke through clenched teeth. "I'm fine."

Snake shrugged. "If you say so." He turned, presumably to leave. "I'll come back for you in fifteen minutes. In the meantime, change and wash up," he motioned to the small bundle at the foot of the bed, "because I'll be taking you to your first training session."

Training session? Roy almost groaned aloud. He would have if he was back in his office at Central. "What?"

"We're going to have some fun, Mr. Mustang," Snake replied as he exited the room.

As soon as he left, Roy yanked open the washroom door, lunged for the toilet, despite the protests of his aching body, and threw up.

This is just getting better and better.

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Two hundred, two hundred and one, two hundred and two… As if to keep in rhythm with Mustang's counting, sweat steadily dripped down from his nose and to the floor. His black, sleeveless shirt and equally featureless dark pants were damp with precipitation. He found himself desperately wishing that he had automail arms like Edward Elric. Then his arms wouldn't be screaming at him like they were doing now, after doing what was supposed to be a measly two hundred push-ups. How many did he have left?

"Two hundred and ninety-seven to go." There was a voice behind him – it was apparently his supervisor, another man in another infuriating mask.

Mustang wanted to die. His arms were killing him.

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It had been a while since Roy had properly used firearms. He'd relied far too heavily on his spark cloth gloves for the longest time… They were making him shoot at a cardboard target shaped like the silhouette of a person. Bam. A hole was blown in its shoulder; that was pathetic, especially when his most trusted subordinate was probably the best sniper in Amestris. Bam. A large section of the throat splintered. Bam. Right in the middle of the face. Mustang felt that his heart was beating oddly fast as he reloaded his pistol at the command of another masked supervisor. Those shots ringing in his head were just like the ones from Ishval… he hated the sound of gunfire. He absolutely hated it. Yet he was being made to train with guns for a reason he didn't yet understand.

He no longer felt like thinking about anything. As he steadily emptied more and more rounds of ammo, it was as if the shots were the only sound in the world. The shots and the metallic clinks of the shells. Mustang found that his mind was completely empty, as empty as the shells that fell from his gun. Why were there no thoughts in his head, none at all? It should have frightened him, how his normally rather inquisitive and nimble mind wasn't demanding for him to figure things out. He was so tired, he no longer cared. After those endless amounts of push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, laps around the barren lot outside, and lengths in the pool, he was more exhausted than he'd ever been.

Mustang wasn't even wondering where he was any more. He didn't find the large facility he was locked up in intriguing at all; he no longer noticed that everyone he'd encountered were wearing masks – he didn't notice anything. He felt like a zombie, just being ordered around, being pushed to his physical limits by people he didn't even know. He followed their every command because he knew that if he did otherwise, they'd kill him immediately. They all had guns, knives and other weapons he didn't recognize at their belts – as if they were daring him to disobey. They had no need to do that. Roy didn't feel like rebelling like he would have if he was back in Central.

He just fired one round after another, as they'd told him to do. Bam. Bam. Bam.

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The next few days seemed to all blend together. They were just an endless string of a dozen different so-called exercises. With his silver watch, the only link he had with the outside world left, Roy was able to tell that they gave him five hours of sleep each day. They provided him with the same meal in the morning, afternoon and dinner – just enough to keep him going. They bombarded him with drills that sometimes pushed him to the brink of collapse. Of course, Mustang didn't dare give up. He hated being weak. And who knew what sort of punishment might be dealt to him? He didn't want to find out. He completed all his ordeals with no incident.

As the week – or was it weeks? – wore on Roy was able to feel the physical changes that had come over him. Most of the exercises that he remembered half-killed him in the beginning were now not difficult at all. Was it possible for him to get this much stronger so quickly? Perhaps it wasn't such an odd thing. At the rate they'd been working him, Mustang would have been only mildly surprised if he became as muscled as Alex Louis Armstrong in a month.

Roy wasn't exactly sure exactly at what point his captors began to teach him how to fight – with his bare hands and feet, with knives, with strange, cable-like ropes, with clubs, with swords… They taught him to turn every part of him into a weapon, and they taught him how to use probably every kind of weapon that existed in the world. He learned how to destroy his enemies in the fastest way possible. He sparred with more masked people, which he now knew were other trainees. Mustang, as he was never a hand-to-hand combatant, often lost, which meant that he was beaten half to death by whatever weapon they happened to be using. This stung his pride more than anything. Lying there, bruised, half-conscious, trying to focus on his assailant's feet… No. He didn't like that at all. Roy wasn't exactly sure where all his energy came from, but he began to fight back with fury, wanting to knock down whoever stood in front of him. Surprisingly enough, gradually, over the course of several training sessions, he started to win. He noticed that his opponents got increasingly hard to fell, but some unknown force within him carried him through his battles. His supervisors taught him more and more useful tricks and techniques. It was strange indeed, considering that Roy had yet to know what he was fighting for, why he was fighting. It no longer mattered. Nothing really mattered, except for defeating the randomly placed, masked people that were presented to him. He'd stopped thinking a long while ago.

Today he was given a wooden stave to wield; the man in front of him was much larger than him, muscular and heavyset. As usual Ro y looked to his mask to identify the person. He'd learned over time that each trainee had a different mask; no two were the same. They were usually animal masks. This one was shaped like a lion or some other wild beast. It was someone he'd never fought before. A strange tingling ran through his body – anticipation and adrenaline.

"Two minutes." The supervisor's familiar monotone made Mustang spring into movement. Two minutes to make Lion-face fall. Two minutes… it should be more than enough.

The man was much faster than he looked. This, Roy had been expecting. He parried the first furious blow that landed, swept it aside, and swiftly swung his stave inwards, going for the man's gut. It struck home, and there was a choking sound from behind the expressionless mask. However lion-face managed to strike his weapon at Mustang's legs, catching him off balance and sweeping his feet out from under him; instead of falling, Roy lurched into a backflip, and using his free hand as a stabilizer, he landed back on both feet. The man was starting to come at him again, waving his stave. What an idiot. Without giving his opponent a single moment to regain the upper hand, he twisted around into a roundhouse kick, his stave serving as a pivot. His boot smashed into lion-face's masked head. There was a nasty cracking noise as the mask shattered at the impact, and the man fell backward, reeling from the blow. Using the momentum left over from his kick Mustang swung his stave once again, managing to hit the side of the man's head again before he hit the ground. Roy found his own new acrobatic abilities surprising at times.

He was watching his defeated opponent fly a few feet to one side from the sheer force of his beating when he heard a slow, deliberate clapping from behind him. He whirled around, stave at the ready, the sweat drenching his neck, ready to attack if provoked. His supervisor was gone. In his place was someone else. He immediately recognized Snake's white, featureless mask right away. What the hell was he doing here?

Mustang hadn't seen Snake for a long time. The white-masked, grey-eyed man hadn't shown up once in all of Roy's training sessions. Roy hadn't thought much about it – why should he? All that man had done was given him food on his first day. But he found it odd that he was seeing him again. He never saw the same supervisor twice. They didn't seem to give a damn about him and he didn't care about them, either…

"You've improved greatly, Mr. Mustang," Snake said. "I've been watching you."

"What are you doing here?" It felt odd to be speaking again after all those days of hard work in silence. His voice sounded hoarse, even to himself, from lack of use.

"Now, let's not be too rude, shall we." Snake came forward slowly, as if scrutinizing Mustang as he did so. "I think you're ready for your next stage in training."

Roy almost snorted as he flung his stave down to the ground. "You mean I'm still not done? How long are you planning to keep me for? I'll have a lot of paperwork to do when I get back to work." He tried to ignore the awful ache in his heart when he said that. He missed Central and his ordinary life so bitterly that none of it felt real anymore, just like everything else that had melted away with this nameless facility and dozens of masks.

"Ah, don't worry, you're going to be leaving us soon."

"Soon?" Mustang's eyes narrowed. He didn't even want to ask when 'soon' was.

"Yes, but you'll be working for us – with us – all the same."

He hated Snake's calm, matter-of-fact tone. He hated everything about the bastard. He hated all this. He felt like beating the shit out of that stupid masked man. Through gritted teeth, he demanded, "What do you mean by that? I'm going to go home and I'm going to live like a normal person should! I have things left to do! Let me go! What the fuck do you want with me?"

"So many questions, Mr. Mustang. Please be patient. They'll all be answered in time." Snake seemed to check his watch. Did the people here even have such things? "Your day is over for today. Go back to your room and get some rest. You have a hard day ahead of you." Looking towards lion-face, he said, "We'll take care of the mess."

You gotta be kidding me. Every day's the same. What are you talking about?

Snake turned and walked off in his usual collected manner, leaving Roy, shaking with frustration, alone with his bloodied, unconscious opponent.

But why, oh why, couldn't he even think of rebelling?

He had no idea. But there was something, some unknown force that was holding him back from breaking out of this madhouse.

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As Roy was stripping off his filthy shirt and washing it in the sink of his room, he took a glance in the mirror. How long had it been since he'd looked at himself? Had his face changed at all? Mustang couldn't really tell. It was his own face, after all. But even he could see that he'd gained a considerable amount of muscle in the chest and arms. There was no doubting it. They'd been working him so hard…

His eyes followed his neckline down to his left shoulder. He'd done his best to look after the long gash cat-man's knife had torn down its length on his first day; but without proper medication and doctors, he had been unable to rid himself of the knotted scar tissue that had formed there. It was only one among the dozens of cuts and bruises he had acquired in this place. It made Mustang angry. He wished that his captors would at least get him a nurse (who didn't have to be young or pretty, of course…) to make sure he didn't suddenly fall apart. There had been times where he was sure that he would. The only thing provided for him here was food, clothes and a room. Nothing else. He needed to learn to survive pretty much on his own.

Meanwhile, not too far away, an unmasked Snake was speaking with a tall, dark man in what seemed like an empty conference room of some sort. Seated at the head of the table, the stranger was scarred and intimidating, with a large cigar between his teeth, of which one was gold. Strangely enough he was wearing a crisp suit of the highest quality. "How's Mustang coming along?" He had a rough voice.

"Very well, sir. As a matter of fact, he seems to be exceeding our previous candidate in every field so far. He is a truly excellent specimen." Was that a touch of pride in Snake's voice? His silver eyes gave nothing away.

"Good, good. How much longer will he take?"

"It's only been three and a half weeks, sir."

"I know that, you fool," the stranger snapped. "I'm asking you, how much longer will he take?"

"I estimate that he will be ready in a month or two's time." Snake seemed unfazed by the larger man's short temper. "He's a fast learner."

"I want you to do a good job with him, Anderson," the stranger exhaled a cloud of smoke.

"It's Snake, sir." Snake cut in with the smallest hint of annoyance in his tone.

The other man ignored him. "This time we'll succeed."

Sighing, Snake said, "Yes, sir. We'll be able to exploit Mustang's position in the Amestris military. It won't be difficult for a man like him."

"I'm entrusting you with our future, Anderson." The man's icy blue eyes bored into Snake.

"I understand, sir. This time we shall be the victors, and Amestris will be freed from its bonds."

The man just smirked and snorted. "Don't be overdramatic, Anderson. You're dismissed. Work with Mustang from tomorrow."

"Yes, sir." Snake bowed, and exited the room. "And I told you that it's Snake, not Anderson."

"Don't be an idiot. I know your name and I'll call you whatever I want."

TBC.

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