The Waters of Lethe
disclaimer: I don't own FMA, I just like to play around in its world and torture Ed for awhile
AUTHOR'S NOTE: One month has passed since the Thule Society invaded the alchemic world and the invaders have advanced from their base of Lior to occupy the nearest towns. Their next targets are New Optain and East City.
Warnings:violence, death and bad language, maybe sex
Beta: Took-baggins
70. We Have Met The Enemy... (Wir haben die Enemy...)
Lieutenant-Colonel Riza Hawkeye blew a soft sigh before she raised the binoculars up to her eyes and sighted in on the town of New Optain five miles distant. It came in all blurry and her fingers reached over to adjust the focus wheel until it sprang into a sharp definition. Streams of the citys former residents flowed like rivers of humanity from several exits, driving cars and trucks, riding on horseback or in carts, and even walking. The arms of everyone except the very young and the very old were full of their most precious possessions bundled into suitcases or cloth bags, Behind them, the suburbs on the other side of New Optain, closer to Lior were already on fire, great columns of black smoke reaching into the clear blue sky.
The occasional explosion could be heard as bits of buildings flew high into the air, and then seconds later was felt as a shock wave of sound; each one startling the streams of refugees, the somewhat neat lines wavering in brief bursts of absolute panic before people resumed their west ward or southward flights. The first few groups who were lucky enough to own cars and even lucker to have enough gas to run them rumbled by the forward lines of the Armed Forces of Amestris. Said automobile occupants looked out the windows at Riza and her unit with faces alternately frightened, resigned, defiant or angry.
Riza was standing on the fender of a military truck, her midsection pressed against its still-warm engine and elbows propped up on the hood to support the binoculars. So far, the enemy was still advancing through the northeastern suburbs of New Optain, they hadn't met any resistance so she didn't understand why they insisted on blowing up people's homes, unless it was to sow so much panic, people would be afraid to fight back. Which wasn't a good idea if the intelligence reports from the varied reconnasance teams were accurate. Best to leave any resisting to the military who were trained and equipped to do so.
It was her job to keep the invaders from coming any closer to East City, although right now she was mostly working on gathering and collating the reams of information coming in about them. Riza sighed again and put the binoculars down, letting the heavy instrument dangle from a thin leather strap which cut into the back of her sweaty neck. It was almost like Ishbal, except this time the Amestrians were on the defensive.
"Lieutenant-Colonel, Ma'am!" She turned sharply to see Captain Kain Feury judder to a stop a foot away and snap an impressive salute, his eyes wide and excited behind his large glasses. Only one or two things would get Feury's attention like that - either he'd managed to find the radio frequency the invaders were using, or one of the recon officers was back with some hot poop - important news in military jargon.
"Who is it, Kain?" Riza was long past the days of bringing military spit 'n polish with her into the field, she saved that for Central Headquarters. But she returned Kain's salute sharply.
"Major Smiley is back from his recon in Lior, Ma'am and he's waiting in your tent to be debriefed."
"At ease, Kain. I'll be right there." She jumped down off the truck fender and started for her tent, but stopped when Kain held out a canteen to her with a solemn half bow.
"You look thirsty, Ma'am." He pushed the canteen closer and Riza took it with a smile and a soft 'thank you' because she really was thirsty, her mouth felt lined with cotton all the way down to her stomach. She wished she could take the canteen and just dump it over her head because the heat, so close to the Great Eastern Desert just sucked all the moisture right out of her skin. But Riza resisted the urge and instead took a long pull of water after removing the canteens stopper, paused to take a breath, then another long pull.
She handed the nearly empty canteen back to Feury. "Thanks Captain, but I have one favor to ask." After Kain's eyebrows shot up in an endearing 'ANYTHING!' move, she continued "Stop calling me Ma'am, just 'Hawkeye' is fine, ok?"
"OK, Riza, um - Ma'am, - um-er, that is..." Feury's face turned brick red as he saluted once, paused, and saluted again before he passed the canteen to his right hand and saluted again with his left hand. "Un - Hawkeye, I mean."
Riza just patted his shoulder before she walked briskly to her tent, her hands reaching up to adjust the clip holding her hair up and off her neck. She was still at it when she ducked slightly to enter the tent to see a tall dark-haired man dressed in civilian clothes, hands clasped behind his back. He paced impatiently like a caged tiger, back and forth behind a low table upon which an olive drab rucksack rested. To his credit, he noticed Riza immediately and snapped promptly to attention, back straight, chin up and gave her a perfectly crisp salute.
"Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkeye! Major James Smiley reporting as ordered- SIR!" His perfect military stance faltered for just a moment as he added weakly, "Er, MA'AM!"
Riza fought back the urge to laugh and instead returned his salute, her features composed into the classic military issue poker facee. Only a slight twitch on one side of her mouth betrayed her amusement "At ease, Major. 'Sir' is fine"
"Thank you, sir." Major Smiley relaxed - only a little - to take his "at ease" stance, legs apart and hands behind his back.
Riza took the opportunity to sit down on a folding canvas chair and she gestured for the Major to do the same. He followed her suggestion with evident relief. He probably hadn't had a chance to truly relax since he'd begun this mission. "Report, Major!"
"SIR!" Smiley barked before he remembered he didn't have to and he softened his tone. "I entered Lior through one of the eastern tunnels at twenty-three hundred hours last Tueday night, reconnoitered the positions of the invaders, their weaponry and their troop strength for twelve days and left the city by a different tunnel at seventeen-hundred hours last evening. I rendezvoused with the Ishbalan Defense Force about eight kilometers outside the city of Lior and they helped me reach New Optain just prior to dawn via a circitous route to avoid invader patrols."
"So you got here not long before they did." Riza crossed her right leg over her left knee and relaxed further into the canvas sling back, but not too far. These chairs had an embarassing habit of falling backwards and tipping startled occupants on to the tent floor.
"It's kind of mortifying, really." Smiley grinned ruefully and rubbed the back of his head. "It was past curfew when I left Lior and I was wondering how it was I made my escape so easily. If I'd stayed a few hours more, I would have witnessed the invaders mustering to march upon New Optain!"
Riza waved a consoling hand, "Not to worry, you got the intel we needed and by the size of your rucksack, it seems there is a lot to see."
"Yes, sir!" Smiley unclasped the rucksack's main compartment. "The invaders seem to be a spick-and-span lot, but there are a few careless ones and I was able to get close to sensitive areas, or the Holy Mother had placed people in position to gather nuggets of information. Her most important placement is a boy she supplied to the invaders to take care of two high-level prisoners."
Smiley continued talking while he brought file after file out of the rucksack, Riza could see they were the buff colored folders the military used, with a stencil of the official state seal: figures of a miner and a farmer over a back ground of an alchemy array, the latter surmounted by the word "FORWARD". There were twelve of them, one for each day Smiley'd been there and Riza knew she'd be burning the midnight oil reading them and digesting the contents so she could brief the HQ brass who were either too impatient to read them, or not smart enough to interpret what they read. Possibly both. But then Smiley brought out another stack of folders, also buff colored, but decorated with a strange black cross. The words ACHTUNG!(Attention!) and RESERVAT(Classified) were stamped in thick red letters above and below the cross.
He smiled at Riza's confusion. "I said a few of the invaders were rather careless and the Holy Mother's people ah - 'liberated' a few files, or copied the ones they couldn't make off with. Don't worry about the language, a translation of each file was typed up and included." He finished emptying out the rucksacks main compartment and opened a smaller compartment which also bulged.
"Oh, and we can stop referring to them as 'invaders'. They call themselves 'Germans'. This will sound rather odd, but they apparently have come here from a parallel Earth on the other side of the Gate."
Riza was still digesting the news about the translations and this next revelation threw her for a loop. She wasn't an alchemist herself, but her father had been a noted practitioner of the art. Her early life was alchemy this, alchemy that, alchemy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He'd been very private about his own research, though and if he'd investigated the theory of parellel worlds, she didn't recall him talking about it. She would need to consult with the senior State Alchemists for more background on this after she returned to East City.
"Sir?" Riza came back to the present to see Smiley holding out an oilskin wrapped packet to her. She shook her head to get her mind back on the here and now before she took the packet and untied the cord around it. "Photographs, ma'am-um-sir of the 'German's' positions and weaponry mostly, plus some of their key people, taken with my buttonhole camera."
He sounded rather pleased with himself and he should be because Smiley had done a very thorough job. All the photographs were clean and sharp and the weapons were taken from multiple angles to show approximate size. The strategy eggheads in Central would be over the moon with delight. Riza flipped over a few more photographs of random guns(she wouldn't mind owning one of those rifles) and tanks (twice as large as the militarys own) and came to the photograph of a woman. She wasn't bad looking, with short cut blonde hair and Riza guessed, blue eyes. But she was dressed in the most outlandish clothes, the black and white film muted the effect but they must be something to see in person.
It was a darkish color, doubled-breasted suit with shoulder pads of a size Riza had never seen before except on the vainest officers in the days of the old Amestrian Republic one hundred years ago. She'd seen the photographs on the walls of the academy and used to laugh at these long-dead soldiers, but now she was seeing such clothing excess in the present. It was decorated with pale buttons, probably gold-colored and piping of the same shade on the suit's high collar. Riza flipped the photograph over and neatly printed on the lower edge was a name: 'Dietlinde Eckart, leader of the Thule Society'.
"What is this 'Thule Society', Major?"
Smiley picked up on of the Amestrian folders, opened and scanned it before he answered, "This Thule Society is apparently a secret group within the German military who claim their aim is bringing back the 'wisdom of the ancients', um -" he turned a page. "One of my contacts says most of the Society members are also known as 'Nazis', who have this peculiar belief they are descendents of a so-called master race caled 'Aryans'."
Riza snorted derisively, flipped the photograph back and shifted it to the bottonm of the pile before she looked at the next photograph: 'Rudolph Hess'. She kept going. 'Dr. Josef Mengele', 'Hermann Goering', 'Josef Goebbels', 'Klaus Haushoffer'. 'Alfons Heidrech'. She stopped and studied this photograph more closely, Heidreich looked very young, almost like a teenager, with blond hair and obviously blue eyes. But he was the only person, exepting Haushoffer, not in a uniform of some sort. Instead he wore civilian clothes of dark pants and suspenders and light colored shirt. Plus, he was the only one who was handcuffed. She gave Smiley a questioning look.
The spy peered over his long nose at the photograph, "Ah, yes. He is one of the Germans, but not an invader. Mr. Heidreich is often referred to as The Rocketeer and seems to be the inventor of the rocket planes the Germans used to cross the portal. Not even the Holy Mother's spies were privy to the exact circumstances, but there was some sort of disagreement and he was brought here against his will. If we could get him out of Lior and interview him, I'm hoping he would spill some important information which will be to our advantage."
Riza nodded and put the Rocketeer's photograph to the bottom of the pile - and stopped - hand in the air and staring,suddenly unable to take a deep breath. That long blond hair in a pony tail, those eerie eyes like the purest gold, there was no mistaking who he was.
Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist.
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Smiley's voice came to Riza as if from far away. Sir? Sir?! SIR!!"
She returned to her surroundings with an unpleasant jolt because Major Smiley was shaking her shoulders, and none too gently either.
"Sir? Is something wrong?"
Riza flipped the photograph over so he could see the image. "Major, do you know who this man is?"
He shook his head and Riza smiled bitterly. People's memories were so short. "He is Edward Elric, also known as the Fullmetal. He disappeared about the same time Mustang's Rebellion broke out. Once things started to calm down, the Investigations Department scoured the length and breadth of Amestris, but no trace of him was ever found."
Smiley sucked in a quick breath of astonishment. "I am sorry sir, I did not recognize him, but I never knew him personally. I just saw him once or twice around Headquarters, although I heard him yelling often enough." He finished with a wry twitch of his lips. "As well as all the wild stories about his amazing feats of insubordination."
Riza smiled back as if basking in the memory of a small boy in a red coat shouting profanities at Mustang who would lean back,smiling in his chair at the storm of fury he'd just unleashed. Edward knew words no child his age should be exposed to, much less speak. She often wondered why Colonel Mustang never lost it and put the boy over his knee or washed his mouth out with soap.
"You knew him well, sir?"
"Yes, I did Major Smiley, and he was quite a brat."
"I'd always heard he was a wee little fellow, maybe that is why I didn't recognize him right off. He's grown a bit in six years."
Riza turned the photos face back and she scanned it closely. Edward vanished not long after his sixteenth birthday so he would be twenty-two now. He was definately longer in the legs and torso, his hair grown enough to be caught back in a ponytail that swept past his shoulders. But his face and eyes, his features once so alive looked strangely blank, like slates wiped clean. "What is wrong with him, Major? He looks like he's in a trance."
"He is the prisoner the Germans call 'The Puppet' because he is kept in that state by use of a drug code-named 'Puppetmaster'. See the boy next to him? He is Alphonse Rockbell, assigned by the Holy Mother to look after him."
Riza narrowed her eyes and studied the boy: long hair in a ponytail, but darker than Edward's, the eyes were also darker, but they, plus the nose and mouth were of such a similar shape she was surprised the Germans hadn't noticed the resemblence.
Rockbell my left eye!
He was Alphonse Elric, Edward's younger brother.
So that is what he really looked like and Riza thought Alphonse was a handsome boy. Edward often mentioned his promise to return Alphonse to his real body and he'd obviously kept that promise. Maybe that was the reason for his disappearance. In return for Alphonse's restoration, the Gate flung him into the other world.
She flipped the photograph back towards Major Smiley. "Do you know who this boy is?"
"All I know is what the Holy Mother called him, Alphonse Rockbell."
"She lied." He is Alphonse Elric, the Fullmetal's brother. If you saw Edward, you saw Alphonse right behind him, but he was in an eight foot tall suit of armor then."
"Aye," Smiley scratched his head, "I remember always wondering why he wore that armor, it was such a queer thing for a boy to do."
Riza knew she could never tell Smiley the truth, that Alphonse was just a soul bound to that armor. Because that would require her to spill the Elric's darkest secret, their attempt to perform one of two forbidden alchemy rituals: human transmutation. The ancient law mandating the death penalty for offenders was still on the books and this crime didn't have a staute of limitations.
"Alphonse had his - ah - habits, Major." The corners of Riza's lips curled when she said it and the Major looked confused as if not understanding what she meant.
But any further explantation would have to wait when the camp siren sounded so loudly both of them jumped and running footsteps were heard outside her tent. "Lieutenant-Colonel, Sir!"
"Enter!"
Captain Feury entered, saluted and snapped out his report. "Sir! The balloon watch has reported the approach of the invader's planes from the eastern flank! Sir!" He saluted again, and Riza returned it before she rapped out her ordes.
"Call battle alert, Feury! Make sure the howitzer crews are ready! Dismissed!" Feury saluted again before he spun on one heel and raced away. Riza quickly re-wrapped the stack of photographs in the oilskin and retied it while Smiley hastily shoved all the files back into the rucksack. The photos went back into their compartment which Smiley secured before he stood up, throwing the straps over one shoulder.
"Get back to Central as fast as you can with this, Major." She returned his salute before both left the tent, she turned left and he went right. The droning sound of the jet plane engines could be heard approaching fast, they must have looped around New Optain in an attempt to launch a surprise attack. Almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind, the howitzers opened up, shaking the ground as they roared defiance. The blasts were answered with a burst of machine gun fire from one plane that shredded the observation balloon into tattered grey cloth. The other sent small geysers of ground flying around the howitzers and Riza saw men fall.
OH! NO! Riza's first thoughts were for the two men in the balloon, who she was helpless to save. They tried to jump out with their parachutes, but the collapsing balloon came down too fast as the basket plunged earthwards. But at the same time, Riza saw light and heard a crackling sound just as the ground heaved up and re-formed into two gigantic hands with cupped palms facing upwards. They caught the falling basket and stopped its mad fall, then gently lowered it and the two men inside to the ground. Almost immediately after, another burst of alchemic light shot heavenwards and it caught the plane after it came around for a second sweep. Both of the craft's wings suddenly flew off in different directions and it plunged almost straight down. The crash shook the ground like an earthquake and a massive fireball erupted. Riza instinctively shielded her face from the blast of light and heat it released.
The second plane zipped by overhead and she saw it make a wide, lazy turn in the air over New Optain. One of the howitzer crew could be heard shouting "Be ready! It's coming back!" The plane was impossibly fast and it dipped lower as it approached to camp, as if to start another strafing run and Riza ran for cover behind the truck she'd observed the town from only an hour before. But there were no bursts of machine gun fire this time,just a brief unearthly silence before the bomb it dropped exploded next to the howitzers. The truck bounced into the air and seemed to fly apart and Riza was sent flying, something - perhaps a piece of metal struck her head and she landed hard upon her left shoulder. Intense pain flooded her nervous system and she cried out once before she blacked out.
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The pain was still with Riza when she came to, her head felt like it was split open and she couldn't see after her eyelids fluttered open. "Unnhh!" Something was stinging and she closed them again, Even though she couldn't see, Riza could hear fire crackling, men shouting, the thump of boots on the ground and vehicle engines. She winced when she tried to take a deep breath.
"Don't move, sir, you've been badly hurt." Major Smiley's voice held an edge of concern. "We're evacuating you and the rest of the wounded back to East City."
"I thought I told you to go and get that intel to Central, Major." Riza tried to put some steel into her voice but the effort was too much and she nearly passed out again. She rested a bit and then gritted her teeth. "Major? Just how bad is 'badly hurt'?"
"You were struck on the head, just below the hair line by a piece of that truck. Fortunately, it didn't pierce that hard skull of yours, but you're bleeding quite a bit. That's why you can't see, there is blood in your eyes. A few of your riibs are either cracked or broken, you've probably got a concussion, plus it looks like your left shoulder is dislocated. If your Captain could hold you up into a sitting position, I could pop the joint right back in."
Riza started to nod until she thought better. "Let's do it."
Feury held her up and gave support from behind while Smiley first gave her a piece of cloth to bite down on, and then he put one hand on her loose shoulder joint. "On the count of three Captain," Riza braced herself. "One. Two. THREE!" Both men pushed with all their strength and Riza screamed into the cloth, but she felt the 'pop' of the joint going back into its socket before she went limp again.
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She woke up in a hospital bed the third time. Riza lay still and and let consciousness gradually flood back. The ward was so quiet compared to the hellish atmosphere of the camp had in the aftermath of the attack. The silence was shocking and almost hurt her ears. Any pain she might feel was just a dull ache in the background, Riza looked to her left and saw an intravenous tube stuck in her hand, morphine most likely to judge by how 'floaty' she felt. Rixa could also feel something was wrapped tightly around her head and her midsection, plus her right leg seemed to be restrained. She shifted the leg to the left and the pressure eased, then sheets rustled and the pressure returned. Riza moved the leg back an inch and she heard a soft growl in response.
She dared to raise her head and found herself looking at two deep brown eyes set in a furry black and white face. "Hayate!" The dog responded to his name by lolling his tongue out in a big canine smile. He shuffled forward closer to her face and whined before that tongue shot out and licked her chin. She pulled her right hand back and out from beneath the covers to stroke the soft fur between his ears. "Hayate" she said again, but more gently. The bed shook slightly as his tail thumped it.
"Hayate missed you so I brought him along from Central. Major Smiley helped me pull rank to get him past the nurses. Those military types are really strict about pets in the hospital y'know."
She never thought she'd hear that voice again and her breath caught after she looked right and saw blue uniform through a mist of tears prickling her eyes. Riza moved her right hand up to grasp the white - gloved hand when it began to brush those tears away.
"Sir."
Author's note: Major James Smiley's name is a cross between two of the best known literary spies: James Bond and George Smiley (Tinker,Tailor,Soldier,Spy, et al). If I had wanted to, I could have given him a couple middle names to possibly shoehorn in "Bulldog" Drummond and Folly of the Yard. (sorry,inside joke).