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Games without Frontiers
Chapter 21: One Maniac at a Time
Rating: M for Violence
Soundtrack: The Phoenix - Fall Out Boy
The warehouse district of Tin City was a dark and ugly maze, situated directly behind the main production plant. Under most circumstances there would be no cause for complaint; the area had not been built for esthetics, but for practicality. Each of the thirty or so buildings were placed so that they could fit in the smallest possible space. Again, fine, but not if you were busy moving around at night looking for one shadow among hundreds. Under the night sky, beginning to turn black as ink from sunset, it was almost impossible to tell one warehouse from the next. The only thing that kept Roy and Maes on track was the glow from the explosion's aftermath settling low in the sky, illuminating the area and casting wild shadows everywhere.
"You have to tell me what you know about his escape," Roy said, to keep his mind off of the fact that northeast was the direction Riza had taken across the rooftops.
"There is not much to tell." Maes shook his head, his eyes sweeping the area in front of them. "No one is even supposed to know he's escaped. At my level, I don't know where the bastard went, or who he's with. All we know is that he got his hands on two rather stupid guards and blasted his way out."
"Damn."
"They were new soldiers, and didn't understand the orders to stay out of his reach."
"And you didn't see fit to tell me about this?" Roy was mildly annoyed with his friend.
"The whole thing seemed a little too easy for me. I was going to do some more digging." Maes adjusted the cuffs on his jacket, ensuring that his knives were ready at hand.
Roy heard a light fluttering underneath the sound of the rain pattering around him. He looked up and just managed to pick out a shadow, moving across the roof above him. He squinted, sharpening his vision slightly, and caught a glint of blonde reflecting from the last bit of ambient light around them. Relief flooded him and he smiled. "Damn, she's good."
"You should know that better than anyone else."
"You're right. It really is a good thing she didn't have to blow my brains out in Ishbal."
Maes' stumbled slightly, and Roy could see the thunder-clapped look on Maes' face through the darkness. "What are you talking about?" his friend asked.
Roy winced at the memory, and looked over his shoulder. "Don't tell me you didn't know." He felt a bitter pain somewhere in his gut. "They didn't trust us – alchemists, I mean. They especially didn't trust me."
"But–,"
"Next to Marcoh, I was the most vocally opposed to what they had in mind. And fire is not something to mess around with."
"I knew that. I was there for that."
"Did you know that they – those in charge – didn't think I'd be able to do what they asked me to do? That I would balk at the last minute?" He remembered looking directly into Basque Grand's eyes and seeing the look of contempt and disgust slide out of the man into the space between them. Roy knew that Grand had been behind the plan for his assassination the whole time, and remembered the feeling of their eyes on him as he left for his assignment.
He stopped at the intersection between two alleys. There was another symbol, and his time, trails of soot and something else. "He's killed again," he whispered.
Maes looked at the area, knelt to the ground, touching the slick, congealed spot. Roy watched him shudder. "This man is beyond sick."
"He is. Always has been."
"We'll find him."
"Yes. We will."
The silence grew heavy between them, because they both knew what would happen when they found the Crimson Lotus Alchemist. Finally, Maes cleared his throat. "So...Ishbal..."
Roy tugged his collar around his ears. "I knew I wasn't the most popular of them, but I didn't know – for sure – that what the plan was if I balked and disobeyed their orders. If I didn't kill as commanded, I was to be eliminated." He laughed sourly. "It's actually ironic. They didn't mind losing the Flame Alchemist, because they felt they had another powerful firestarter." He grimaced. "They used to pit us against each other. I think it was fun for them to watch us spark off."
"Now, I remember that. If you two had become friends, Amestris wouldn't have needed any more alchemists."
Roy snorted bitterly. "Raze and Ruin, they called us. Anyway, if I wouldn't use my skills for the betterment of the state, they didn't want me around to use my skills at all." Roy finished.
"Damn! And they ordered her to…but...she was just a young girl!"
"Who could shoot the wings off a fly at 200 paces. They chose her because she was so low on the chain. Thought I wouldn't notice someone so far beneath me scurrying about." He looked up. "She waited on a roof top. Waited for me to fail. I saw her afterwards." He bit his lip when he remembered what he'd done in anger when he saw her crouched there.
"But...you didn't. Fail."
"No," Roy bit out. "I didn't fail."
"Do you think she would have?"
"Then?" He shrugged. "I still don't really know. Her father hated what I planned for my alchemy. Fire alchemy was never meant… for that. The first time I saw her after that, she was a Cadet. Not for long, though."
"She was promoted to Second Lieutenant rather quickly," Maes said thoughtfully, even as he bent to another trail of soot and debris.
"Yes. And the rest..." he looked up again. She was gone.
"I think I'll have to do some looking around about this," Maes murmured. "Can't have something as cliché as assassination ruining your plans."
Roy chuckled, determined to shatter then tension coiled in him. The thought of Crimson Lotus – he wouldn't even grace him with his name – was enough of a reminder of those times, but to remember what Riza had done, and what she hadn't, was too distracting. "Surprised you haven't, with all the plotting and planning you did. That reminds me... I do have an off-topic idea I want to shoot past you..."
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She took a moment to look around her. Set up like a maze, she could count at least twenty warehouses in close proximity. On the roof of what was probably a laundry – to judge from the chemical smells and smoke coming from the iron chimney – she found one of those symbols, painted on the edge of the roof in a dark, sticky substance. It was too dark to tell, but she shuddered as she expected it was blood. She touched it with her finger, put it to her tongue. The stinging, metallic tang told her. Fresh blood, not yet washed away by the rain. He was so close.
Trying to lead his pursuers on a wild chase, was he? Riza smiled grimly and unclipped the holster on her left side. She drew her sidearm, as well acknowledging the warm comfort of the other two guns. She saw the fire burning ahead of her. It was a small building about ten buildings away from her. The rumble of the explosion still trembled under her boots, the afterglow still lit up the sky, settled low, illuminating everything around it.
A light murmuring drew her attention down for a split second. She saw two figures moving through the alleyway. They moved into a small patch of light and she identified them as the Colonel and Hughes. She watched them stop and examine a section of wall. Then watched as, still talking, they moved on.
She went toward the blast area. Her roof adjoined another on her right hand side; it wasn't much of jump and she made it without slipping. She was half grateful that he had let her go off on her own like this. Women had been giving birth since the beginning of time, and had done just as taxing work as her while they were doing it. Her other half did have misgivings, which she pushed away as soon as they cropped up. She didn't have time to wonder if she was doing a smart thing. They had to find this man, find out what he was doing and why.
And then, she knew, that the Colonel would have to destroy him. There was no way that Kimblee would be allowed to live, after the carnage he had wrought and the damage he had done. He'd attempted to pull the Colonel into his warped plot, and Mustang would not allow it. Anything that threatened his plan to the top would have to be eliminated, passively or aggressively. There was nothing about his ambition that was easy or alluring, and no doubt the Colonel half-dreaded his task. It had been a long time since the Colonel had killed; she knew what it would do to him. It would not be pretty.
The roof was being used for surplus storage, she noticed. As soon as she took her first step, her skin began to prickle. It was a familiar feeling. She could almost taste the danger and the presence sliding through the air around her. She examined her surroundings carefully, staying close to the edge so no one could come behind her, picking out every shadow, checking for movement, any kind of shift in the stillness.
There were oiled leather tarps carefully covering piles of wooden crates scattered over the roof, a good five piles in all. During daylight hours, it was probably a place for workers to take a quick break. At night, though, they became perfect cover if someone were to wish for a hiding place. Her eyes narrowed.
Pat-pat-pat-PAT-pat. The rain pattering on the tarps obscured her hearing slightly; still, when she concentrated she couldn't pick up any sounds out of the ordinary. She crept closer to the first pile, gun aimed and ready.
Nothing. Not even the scurry of rodents or scavenger birds looking for scraps. That in itself sent her instincts screeching. Creatures like them fled from humans, and she hadn't been on the roof long enough to send anything scurrying. She moved to the second pile, looking for anything, another symbol, a crate with any odd marking. Still nothing.
That feeling kept scratching at her. There was something here, or had been here, some piece of incriminating evidence; she knew it. She went toward the third pile. If there had been someone here, she would have picked them out by now. Now she was looking for something else, something, but she couldn't put her finger on what it should be.
She just knew that it was here. Hiding in plain sight, in a spot that most would have dismissed as too easy a target. No one would look in such an obvious place, would they?
She would.
The third pile was the smallest. Only three... no, four, crates, covered carelessly, near the eastern edge of the building. As she crept around it, she noticed that one of the crates was of a brighter shade than the others. It could have been a different type of wood, or it could have been placed there well after the others, but she closed in to take a closer look. She heard in the periphery the sound of glass shattering, possibly the windows of the bombed building finally giving in to the heat contained inside.
A wet darkness wrapped itself around her head quicker than she could process, stealing her breath, taking away her orientation. It was a hood, or a cloth bag, now being pulled tight around her neck. A nasty jerk of the rope, and she was yanked completely off of her feet. She hit the ground hard, her finger squeezing the trigger of the gun, releasing one round into the air. The report was louder than natural in the forced darkness. She groped at the closure around her neck with her hands, her legs kicking impotently. Then she was being dragged by the same rope, choking, gasping, and struggling like a hooded and jessed bird.
The constriction around her neck loosened as a steel grip closed around her wrist, and a boot landed on her shoulder. She cried out, muffled, as she felt the shoulder dislocate. She tried to reach her other hand for the gun at her back. Gravel bit into her pinned shoulder, and she could feel it dislocating more as she struggled.
Her assailant flipped her until she was on her stomach, pinning her arms back and tying them with the rope. Her chin bounced off of the ground and she saw stars. Her legs were pulled legs back and she wound up hog-tied, still struggling. She was rolled onto a side, then she was scraped further along, tasting blood in her mouth where she bit her tongue, feeling the roughness of the ground beneath her side. The way the rope was being held, she could tell, kept her in a neat prone package, head slightly lifted, constricting around her neck every time she tried to struggle.
She suddenly heard a voice, low and feral, like a wild cat licking across her nerves. "Show me how tough you are, little bird."
Finally, the dragging stopped, but only long enough for her to be jerked up and imprisoned by an arm around her middle like an iron bar. She struggled then when she felt the rope slack from around her neck. She tried to make it as hard as possible for him to hold onto her, hoping he would drop her so she could at least try to roll away.
It hadn't gained her freedom; it only made one arm tighten. Something hard contacted the back of her head, ratting her skull and causing a ringing in her ears like a temple bell. She gasped and shook her head. And a second grip, this time around her neck, constricted her airway once again. She gasped, panted, screamed inside her head. Air, she needed air. No, they needed air. Oh, God, they needed air, the two of them, and then it wasn't just the hand taking her oxygen it was fear choking her reminding her that she wasn't the only one being threatened on this rooftop.
"Don't be stupid, little bird," the voice growled in the vicinity of her ear. "I can finish this right here if you don't stop. Would you like that? Would you like me to do that?"
She struggled a few more seconds, until she let herself fall limp in her attacker's arms. He didn't release his grip until right before darkness began to claim her. Air rushed into her lungs, but it wasn't quite enough to keep her from tumbling into total blackness.