.

CHAPTER 7:

IN THE NAME OF UPHOLDING JUSTICE

.

"I should have tried harder to stop him."

"Even when you close your eyes, there's a whole world out there… outside of ourselves and our dreams."

"I'm sure, whatever happens, you'll find your way out. You've got strong legs. You'll get up and use them, won't you, Edward?"

"Ed! Get up, Ed! Get up, Ed, and move forward!"

Ed didn't waste a single instant letting himself feel what he'd done, just now or when his soul had been at the Gate, or think about any of it, this time.

Al was closer to Winry, and even if Ed's fighting style was similar to the Edward's of this Amestris; there would almost certainly be enough differences between his fighting style, and the native Ed's, that Winry should be more familiar with Al's than with his, from all the times that she'd likely watched this Al and this Ed spar before they'd left Resembool; and perhaps afterwards, on this side of the Gate, if they hadn't stayed away for around three years in this Amestris.

So Ed didn't even need to choose whether to shield her, or Rose and the cafeteria owner.

Hoping that this Amestris' Ed wasn't so selfish that he'd be upset that Ed was trusting this Amestris' Al to fend for himself, and this Al to protect this world's Winry; and focusing on protecting and defending Rose, the cafeteria owner, and the people of Reole rather than them; Ed raced quickly around Rose to position himself between Envy, Rose, and the cafeteria owner.

That Envy had been able to destroy an entire small village, or town, or city, caused Edward's insides to twist with more terror than it would have under regular circumstances.

During their battle in the cathedral perhaps yesterday by now, in accordance with the time of his Amestris, and at the Southern Command Center when Envy had pretended to be Bradley, the Homunculus of Ed's half brother had proven himself, by an incredible amount, the most physically agile and dexterous and powerful and strong Homunculus of all of the Homunculi who sought humanity.

And after what he'd just learned about Hakuro, Reole, and High Command, he knew better than to believe that the place Marcoh had concealed himself on this world was as small as the rural farming village where he'd hidden himself in his own.

Ed had no guarantee that the community Envy had been capable of sacking, and slaughtering most, or everyone, within, hadn't been a lot larger in this Amestris than on his own.

And still didn't know for certain how Dad's Homunculus had been able to perform alchemy on this side of the Gate, so for all he knew, Envy could, as well.

Nor did that even get into how Ed had no idea, yet, how to transmute on this world without the piece of Dad's Philosopher's Stone that powered life energized transmutations causing a partial rebound that ruined the transmutation.

And Ed now had evidence that Al was, at least partially, right.

Throwing himself from one battle into another into a third one between more than one Homunculus and a brilliant alchemist close to the Stone, and passing through the Gate five times within the space of twenty-four hours, had taken a major toll on him.

Edward was in no condition whatsoever to fight the most lethal; as well as, by an incomprehensible amount, the most hateful; Homunculus of all of Dante's Homunculi in this condition.

But he pushed the surge of terror and horror that he couldn't protect this Al, Winry, Rose, café owner, and the rest of the people and residences and other structures of this Reole, as far away as he could.

However talented and skilled and powerful and strong and dexterous and agile and hateful and vicious and savage and merciless and ruthless Envy was, he was still just one Homunculus.

Ed could defeat him.

He pushed aside the question about whether he'd be able to murder a Homunculus of not his mother, but his half brother, as firmly as he could perceive of doing.

He'd worry about that if Envy didn't retreat once he was almost out of red stones that could prevent him from staying dead.

Ed didn't let even a minutely infinitesimal, gossamer string minuscule shard of his former anger and fury for the cafeteria owner into his voice as he addressed both him and Rose.

"I'm very sorry for all the trouble that I just caused you, and for dragging you into this mess of mine," he said.

"I'll likely be here for at least a while, so, if you're willing to accept my offer, I'll work as a volunteer at your restaurant in whatever capacity that you want me to, free of any charge, money or otherwise; for as many days as you want me to to repay you for the inconveniences I've already caused you and still am, and any other further inconveniences or troubles that I cause you, such as damage that your café and stock, or other buildings and houses here, undergo if I can't keep Envy here from causing you.

"However we disagree, this is fully my responsibility, and mine alone.

"So, feel free to exact whatever price for the problems that I'm now causing you, that I have caused you, and any that I end up causing in the future, from me, however you want to; as long as it doesn't involve trying to hurt anyone else, or me."

"The cafeteria owner did still have his own reasons for getting involved, and he hasn't even been hurt due to your mistake, and he might not end up supposedly involved in your mess any more than just ending up in danger!" Lin shouted from Edward's left, and Edward risked a glance back to see that he, and a mostly white and red and black masked figure in black robes who must be Foo, were now standing between Envy and the rest of the square.

A different scimitar that must be one that Lin preferred to wield was in a neutral ready stance in one of his hands, and Foo was holding a katana in a position midway between defense and assault himself.

Edward suppressed the urge to cringe at the undercurrent of personal understanding and empathy and sympathy in Lin's voice, and the possibility that it raised that Lan Fan had lost her arm because of this world's Al and this world's Ed.

But this wasn't the time to argue that it didn't make a difference whether people were dragged into their messes because they wanted to be dragged into it, or not.

Lan Fan was nowhere in sight, and if Lin was as competent as he'd thus far given Edward every reason to believe that he was; Lan Fan was in position somewhere nearby out of sight, to try to get Marcoh out of Envy's vicinity the first chance that she had to do it.

Edward would be certain to give her that chance.

He pushed away a surge of self hatred and guilt at what this Marcoh would think of Ed once he knew what Ed had abandoned the Marcoh of his Amestris to.

"Water under the counter," the cafeteria owner replied, his tone a mixture of contained understanding and sympathy; but Ed couldn't tell how much of it was due to the blind faith in this world's Al and this world's Edward that he wasn't moving forward that much from, yet, if he would at all.

Edward could believe that this Reole's Rose might very well fully move forward in time; because she'd gone through what the Rose of Lior and three out of the four other Eds, and two out of the three other Als, who Edward had met, had.

The rest of the people of Reole were a different matter.

"Whatever cowardly way you intend to hide behind other people's faces this time, you can't trick hundreds or thousands of people in an entire town into lowering their guard long enough for you to prevent most of them from escaping," Edward informed Envy.

"It doesn't matter what theatrics you have up your sleeve this time, you're still just one person.

"Even if you do hurt anyone here, or wreck this place, most people are still going to run, and the more time that you spend hunting one or more of them down, the more time that other people will have to escape into the surrounding countryside and hide.

"Given that you're even more of a third-rate poser than Cornello was, and that you must know what looks like, I'm sure that your strategy is to change your form into his,"

Rose went entirely stiff, and her lips thinned together tightly.

The cafeteria owner jolted violently, and then he started shuddering and shaking and trembling in pale fury.

"Use a radio to deliver a provocative sermon to the people here, to thus stir them up against you and incite them to launch mob attacks against you so you can ambush them in large groups.

"But the people aren't going to fall into that trap.

"It shouldn't give you any advantage to know that this Amestris has been through the same thing that Dante put our Amestris through since Bradley became the Fϋhrer for the last few decades.

"They're far too war weary, and the military here let the people of Reole riot, rather than suppress it.

"The mistakes that they made to fight for what they call justice are too fresh, and painful, in their minds.

"As angry and vengeful as they are, you have no means of playing them against you.

"You're just letting your own hatred cloud your judgment this time, as you did in Laboratory Five when you tried to beat me up so badly that Dante might not have been able to use me.

"So if you want to waste your own cheap brand of many faced mob injustice with futile blathering and barking, go ahead and provide me, and the rest of us here, with as many laughs that you want as the clown at a festival, not the Priest at a divine jubilee, who you are."

Envy smirked with smug victory, in the way that he was wont to when he knew something that Edward didn't, and as much as Ed knew not to let this Envy, imperceptibly and conceivably more than anyone, get to him; after he'd just put this Rose and the owner of this café, and the people and homes and livelihoods of Reole, in as much danger as they'd been in Lior, even after what that very danger had just reminded him happened if he didn't move forward, new terror and horror and uncertainty flowed like acidic poison throughout all of his external and internal soul and mind and body and heart and identity.

"You're as ignorant as you always are, pipsqueak," Envy commented with condescending, smug triumph.

"Marcoh refused to tell me what he knows about how the skin sacks of Homunculi here are trying to draw closer to the Stone, but from what little I looked into on my own in the national records in the court martial office, the poser at the head of their bad science had the brains to condition Amestris' people to support the farce that is a supposed just war from early after its founding.

"The Homunculi had the sense to foment uprisings and invasions against Amestris all throughout it and near its borders for a lot longer than a few decades.

"So when people rose up against their Amestrian oppressors or invaders and killed a lot of Amestrians to avenge the deaths and the torment inflicted on them, and then the vengeful Amestrians declared war on their attackers out of the hypocritical delusion that killing, or hurting, someone because you, or someone else, was killed or hurt, actually makes war moral; the earlier Amestrian governments, even without the Homunculi in a position to influence them, declared war after war against their enemies in the name of the same demented justice that had spurred the people who the Homunculi had incited to rise up against them.

"From almost the very inception of Amestris, the Homunculi were conditioning the people of Amestris to believe in what they call justice, and for Bradley, and for a need for a second Stone."

Edward didn't even waste time suppressing the sheer, shifting violent heaving of his stomach at the horror and terror and despair and nightmare and self hatred of what he now knew that he very well might have done to most of the people of Reole, if not all of them but Rose, and maybe even her.

He clapped his hands, moved one over his automail arm, and just extended a thin protrusion with a point at the end, so when the currents of light blue extended the unwieldy spear too far, it at least wasn't anything fancy.

Envy, however, just smirked and flipped to the side into a series of cartwheels, landing to the right of a familiar radio on top of the overhang over the café.

"Don't listen to him, no matter what he says!" Winry shouted to Rose and the cafeteria owner.

Edward couldn't tell whether or not it was all of the blood everywhere on and within his body, or existence and reality, within him and outside him, that had become a vacuum transparent of anynothing and everytime; at how there was incomprehensibly unfathomably more fury for how it was now clear that Winry knew that Scar had murdered her parents, and even measureless hatred; in the voice of this Winry, than there had been in Winry's, when she'd talked about Mustang murdering hers.

But, as he had no guarantee that he'd be able to direct a transmutation against Envy, he leapt up after Envy, waiting to see how Envy tried to counter it before making an endeavor to reach his position and keep him from talking to the people of Reole as Cornello and using their own hate of Cornello to draw them into one or more traps.

"I understand how you feel, but you have people who you know who are waiting for you to return to them with hands that give them succor, not death; and alive, and not hurt!"

Edward felt slightly lighter at the knowledge that this Winry believed in that much.

But he couldn't see Rose's, or the owner of the café's, expressions from this position, so he had no idea if Winry had reached them, even a little.

Envy sneered and lashed out with his closest leg to kick Ed away, and he brought his auotmail arm against it, letting it collide with it and smash deeply into it, and then he pushed off of it to throw himself through the air onto the balcony.

Envy's right arm then shifted in white light into the light green shades of the tail of what must be a giant serpent, wound around Ed before he could land at Envy's side, and yanked him back to hold him against the wall.

At the same time, blue coursed around him, and a military radio pushed slightly forward out of the side of his right chest as the rest of his body morphed in white into the familiar shape of Cornello in his robes of a false prophet of Leto.

"Ed!" Al shouted.

Winry's face was now ghostly and skeletal transparent herself, both at the danger that the Edward who she knew was now in, and at the danger that he was now in.

Rose's face became expressionless, and pale, as she moved to run most likely a good distance from the confrontation, but Edward felt slightly lighter to see that there was no anger present on it.

Ed could hear the owner of the cafeteria, however, snarl with vicious and savage anger and hate beneath the overhang before he ran out from beneath it towards what was most likely a good distance himself.

Wonderful.

However he was doing it without a true Stone, Envy could transmute without moving, and without, as Wrath had, needing human limbs to be in contact with what he was transmuting.

Lin and Foo, moving in tandem with more coordination than Ed had seen anyone cooperate with anyone else in his life, shifted to the sides and then vaulted into jumps at Envy; Foo leaping to the wall behind Envy and past the café opening ending to his left to actually use his inertia to run up it, while Lin jumped to grab ahold of the overhang below and between Envy's feet and flip himself upwards to unleash a spinning overhead slice down at Envy's head.

Envy altered his free hand into a familiar rock hard stalagmite and parried the strike, and then curved his stomach backwards out of a diagonal upwards cut from Foo after he sprang off of the wall to deliver it.

It was Foo, however, rather than Lin, who continued the motion of his katana by jumping up over Lin and slicing cleanly through the tail around Ed, letting it fall free.

At the same time, Lin fisted his off hand and stabbed it at the radio with the most speed Ed had seen him move yet, attempting to crush it.

Ed flipped backwards himself to land on the roof proper.

But Envy must have actually let Foo cut him free in order to lure Lin into overextending himself, because he then reacted even faster than Lin to ram one knee up into his midsection and send him flying to the side into Foo, and throw them both to the cobblestones of the square below.

"Vile and irredeemable sinners of Reole, it is I, Father Cornello; standing atop the café where your beloved Rose works as a waitress before I depart Reole for good, in order to deliver you one last sermon condemning you all to eternal torment for your blasphemy against Leto!" Envy yelled in a resounding roar into the radio.

Edward lost the ability to breathe.

Rose had been skidding to a halt, but she then turned to sprint towards the gathering crowd farther away in the square who was now running or walking in the direction of the open air café, doubtlessly to warn them about what was actually going on and ask or request them to warn the other people of Reole.

However, a number of people were already disappearing into the streets and reconstructing structures themselves, almost certainly to spread the word that Father Cornello had supposedly had the nerve to show his face once again, and to ask or request them to turn on their radios to hear whatever he dared to say to them now.

The café owner snarled and ran into the superstructure of one of the buildings after a few of these people, but Edward knew that the situation had just become indescribably imperceptibly more dangerous to Rose, the café owner, and the people of Reole now.

Envy's tail was now growing back.

"I moved Marcoh into a store room in the back, though he's asleep, so I'll watch Miss Rockbell!" a female, masked voice sounded from out of sight over the roof, clearly Lan Fan.

"You can focus on cutting the Homunculus' vocal cords!"

"He's not the Envy we've met!" Al cried back, a mixture of horror and terror and self hatred and anguish pulling him in countless directions in his voice.

"Lin, Foo, I have a better chance at defeating this Homunculus because I can transmute!

"Can one of you please take Winry to safety!?"

Too many different forms of agony and self hatred and guilt and terror and horror passed over Winry's visage, but before she could move, Envy morphed and altered and grew and elongated into a gigantic, long serpentine form with a wedged head leading to Cornello's face centered above two dragon jaws with long, wickedly sharp and huge teeth; the radio protruding from the wedge to the right of Envy's face, and his tail now entirely regenerated.

This must be the serpent who Dad's Homunculus had been referring to.

Envy whipped his head at Al and Winry, but he picked her up in both arms and sprang away from Envy to turn and open his armor with one arm so she could twist inside.

Then he closed it and turned to assume a defensive position.

Ed suppressed the urge to take the time to clench his teeth still another time.

So much for that option.

Lin and Foo now moved to position themselves between Al and Winry, and the rest of the square, and began to circle Envy, looking for openings as they searched for a way to attack him that might not very likely just end up in causing themselves to be terribly wounded, or dying; and that might be effective.

Ed stayed on the roof, close to the nearest curving coil of Envy's serpentine form, unmoving, and considering and seeking openings, from close by.

"The divine mandates of the benevolent Leto are inescapable and absolute, and Leto is the Sun that cleanses all black shadows and reveals every sin before His purity!" Cornello's mouth yelled.

"And He is as perfect as He is unblemished yellow and sacrosanct white, so His pristine and righteous justice is therefore incontrovertible and unchangeable by temperance, and will allow for no defilement at all; and thusly and thereby Leto will therefore never pardon a single sin, no matter how mild!"

That was a new one to Ed.

What in the cosmos?

The concept that a God or Goddess saw every single sin, no matter how small, caused someone to be worthy of condemnation, caused that God or Goddess to be a polar opposite of purity and love, and benevolence and perfection.

"With all of this as all that is of all, and as Leto is He and all that is of all; you have committed unforgivable and irreconcilable blasphemy against Him by rejecting the magnanimity that He graced me to bestow upon you low, deprived, hopelessly forsaken sinners groveling and thrashing in the muck and mud of your depravity and despair whilst enslaved to your base and incessant savage and heretical heathen barbarism!

"For all of this, you are condemned to the most painful deaths imaginable, the utter and whole ruination of all your long striven for efforts to rebuild Reole after you rejected Him in His love and splendor, as excruciating and righteous tortures to bring you to the point of those deaths, and the worst and most plentiful eternal and everlasting torments in the afterlife afterwards!

"He has spoken, and so it shall be!

"And so I shall now see that His infallible and unchangeable commands are carried out in accordance to His will, and that they will not be turned aside by the most minute compromise accepting the palest blemish, or the most minuscule allowance for faltering in His untarnished and wholesome holies of holy and most pure intentions!"

Ed waited for Envy to swing out his tail in the direction of a nearby fully repaired, or never damaged, building that looked as though it was a shop.

But before it could connect, Edward started violently as a grenade, thrown by Lan Fan with unexpectedly precise timing, given how fast Envy could move, arced through the air to strike the tail near the building and detonate in a cacophony of fire and smoke.

Envy's tail must have been incredibly well muscled, however, because while the grenade knocked its arc off and it just shredded part of the wall of the business and two of its windows, and it didn't extend into the entire building and rip it to pieces, not much of its shaded green flesh was torn off of it as far back as the grenade hit it.

Then Lin was in front of Envy's head, slicing at his eyes in an even more exceptional sequence of deft strokes that altered between curves and angles at unpredictable rates from directions that Envy couldn't anticipate while avoiding falling into even one pattern, and that didn't just slice at Envy with this quick dexterity and unpredictability, Lin kept altering its timing in response to how Envy blinked to further throw off his visual reflexes.

At the same time, Foo cut the radio into two pieces, though they remained part of Envy's skin, and started slicing at Envy's mouth and teeth.

But that Envy hadn't tried to defend the radio told Ed that he believed that he'd already provoked the people of Reole enough to draw them into whatever trap, or traps, he had in mind.

That Envy hadn't yet performed another motionless transmutation told Ed that his red stones must be paying a price for him doing so, but he doubted that this would last long, so he started scraping the tip of his automail spear against Envy's nearby scales with different degrees of harshness and lightness, hoping to further distract Envy.

So Envy's scales cascaded with light blue and shifted around the tip of Ed's automail spear to drag it into them, and then extended a whip of liquid metal out of his maw in further coursing blue to lash repeatedly at Lin and Foo and drive them back.

Then he coiled up his tail and braced it.

The black robed and primarily red and white and black masked figure who Edward knew must be Lan Fan, now in clear view and keeping her empty left sleeve and the vulnerable, just recently partially healed stump of her shoulder beneath it away from Envy, circled cautiously to position herself to throw more grenades if Envy struck at another structure.

"Give it up, won't you, pipsqueak?" Envy's draconian mouth sneered in a reverberating roar, ignoring how unbalanced it sounded because Foo had at last cut off one of Envy's teeth.

"I saw your sorry attempt at artwork in Lior, and for whatever vainglorious reason, the pipsqueak from here appears to have been content to let his vastly larger joke of one to remain intact, and leaning on its side in Leto's cathedral."

For the first time, Edward truly registered a gigantic, tall stone statue of Leto's, similar to the one that he'd transmuted to intimidate Cornello and force him to finish exposing himself, towering upwards through the roof of the wrecked cathedral a minority of blocks nearby and leaning somewhat inwards as it rose up.

"But, you see, our father was called Hohenheim of Light for a reason."

Al inhaled and jolted violently.

Ed heard Winry gasp in just as much horror and empathetic understanding, and terror and sympathy, inside Al's armor.

Rose, who was now standing a lot closer and arguing with two large, muscular adult males carrying crowbars, one whose expression was anguished and uncertain, the other whose visage was terrified and furious, jolted violently and her indecipherable words stopped for a few seconds before resuming.

"He can transmute photons of light into solid substances.

"As I said, the Sun God, Leto, is immovable and unchangeable, and unswayable and uncompromising in the purity of his resplendent love.

"Did you know that alchemic doctors under the direct command of the Homunculi delivered large quantities of biochemical poisons to Cornello to be spread in an undisclosed location in the cellar of a cathedral, ones that can corrode the flesh off humans and almost always irreversibly fatally infect them within seconds; automail generates far more wavelengths of radiation from bioelectricity than I need to exchange for the radio waves of radiation that I'm certain that the vengeful townsfolk have generated all over Reole by now to begin discusing over the radio how to set a vigilante mob upon me in the name of justice; and the way that the statue is leaning has told me all that I need to know about the arrangement of this cathedral compared to Lior's, and thus the most likely location of the poisons?"

Al fell to his knees, shaking and trembling and shuddering so violently that his helmet actually did shift its position a very small amount.

Winry inhaled in breathless, depthless and towering horror and terror that defied all registering and thought and feeling and understanding.

Ed pushed a mouth moving without sound and unseeing, gaping eyes, his own horror and terror and self hatred and guilt and agony and despair about even this away. And he slammed his left hand against the pole of the spear, decomposing it in blue so forcefully that its fragments erupted into his skin and he needed to turn his face to keep them from slicing into his eyes.

Al clapped his own hands, knelt, and slapped them to the cobblestones to send blue crackling up to Rose and the two other townsfolk and erect a circular pillar with a dome roof over them, with rock vents angling downward and outwards for them to breathe through, but through little liquid would drain.

Lin, Foo, and Lan Fan sprinted in the direction of the overhang.

But then light blue energies cascaded in wave after wave from Envy outwards throughout the air in all directions, and several seconds later, a volcano of red much paler than crimson water detonated out from beneath the shingles of the chapel roof to fountain outwards and downwards over as far as what Ed could see of the structures extending around him, a small number fully intact but most nothing more than frames of stone and wood and bars and open to the sky for the liquid to fall on the people standing or sitting on them, or inside them.

The bright crimson also fell onto the countless people in the intersections and streets among the businesses and homes.

Everything inside Ed's stomach erupted violently into his closed mouth, as a soundless shifting mouth and unaware craters of eyes blinded his sight, at the knowledge that, because the majority of the surrounding homes and businesses were just partially intact and open to the air; by telling Envy about Dad and London on the other side of the Gate, and by ceasing to move forward for but less than an hour, Envy had just murdered the majority of the hundreds or thousands of survivors of the people of Reole through torturing them to a horrific excruciating death by the kind of inhumane chemical weapon that almost all of the most belligerent nations who Ed knew about on his side of the Gate saw as too barbaric to wield against their enemies in a war.

He could hear innumerable cries starting to rise or shift into shrieks and screams of continuing, desperate agony transcending all encompassment.

He barely remembered to clap his hands and shift the stump of the spear into a thin pole, bending in a number of places, that led up to a mostly upright metal umbrella that ended much thicker on his left side than his right.

Then he jumped over Envy and he ignored how the bones and flesh of his right ankle protested and he ignored the cacophony of shrieks and yells closing around him to asphyxiate him and contort him into erased shreds to barrel with everything blinding gouging scouring washing clear and crystalline acute transparently clean at the pillar Al had shielded Rose inside.

The light red pouring around him meant nothing therenot, or nothim, at all now.

For he knew with total certainty who Envy's next, and worst, target was going to be.

"Let me out!" Winry screamed inside Al, pounding at the inside of his armor.

"I might be able to treat at least a few of them, and keep them alive, at least for the time being!"

But Al didn't open his chest plate in Edward's peripheral vision.

He retched much more of what was inside him into his mouth at the knowledge of what Envy had just done, and how he'd used something, very possibly a mistake, that the Ed who they knew, as well as the automail of the Ed who they knew, to do it; must be doing to this Resembool's Al, and this Resembool's Winry.

The next second, a flash bomb, thrown by either Foo or Lan Fan, detonated behind Ed, no doubt to blind Envy, and the light red stopped pouring, so Ed moved his hand over the pole of the umbrella and altered it in currents of white blue back into a long spear and whirled to face Envy.

Lin and Foo raced to his left and right, respectively, and Lan Fan raced slightly around the short pillar behind Lin, the more capable battler, and positioned herself partially beside him, and partially behind him.

But Envy just morphed the Cornello portion of his visage into Ed's own to alter his dazzled vision, and then sent currents of cascading light blue energies out of his underside over the cobblestones towards the pillar.

A voiceless and soundless opening and altering and closing mouth, and an empty ruined and barren wasteland of deathlessly absent eyes drowned out anywhen and anywhere.

He clapped his hands and knelt, but the rock in front of him morphed into five stone fingers with claws rather than nails, that passed between and around all of them to ram into the front of the pillar and smash through the stone with devastating swiftness.

The next instant, Envy's draconian maw, and Ed's face, morphed in blue white and white backwards into his serpentine neck and then, now with the human face Cornello's, back out of the front of the ring finger of the five claws to close its wedged maw around the body of Rose, in the midst of her desperate and futile jump backwards.

Al staggered back violently as though recoiling from a molten hot surface.

Winry must have known from what she was hearing, and how Al was acting about her, what had happened, for she inhaled another time, with such breathless horror that it was as though she was imbibing her lungs themselves.

Lin, Foo, and Lan Fan whirled, but Lin just clenched his teeth incredibly tightly and stayed where he was; knowing as much as the rest of them that if they made a single move towards Envy, Rose might die in a second.

Edward barely remembered to keep his mouth closed as even more of his stomach how could there be anything left within him inside him anywhere upon him anywhere around him anywhere about reality and the blink of eternity

entered it

a mouth was moving without voice

a mouth was crying out

eyes were seeing in horror and terror

eyes were seeing nothing and empty despairing oblivion

the human face above the dragon mouth morphed in new blinding all engulfing and drenching and consuming and drowning white back to Ed's

when Envy spoke, his voice was solely Ed's

"Regrettably, I don't know for certain that Homunculi can't reproduce with how energy ebbs and flows on this side of the Gate; so if I do to this Rose right in front of you what Hakuro's soldiers did to the one you know, she might end up with a silver lining, and we can't have that, can we?"

the eyes of the empty void

eyes vibrant with effervescence and vitality and hope and laughter

flew wide in horror and terror

a voiceless mouth

a speechless mouth

opened

"The petty joys of sadistic thugs are beneath me, anyway.

"So I have a far better idea.

"I know as much about what a body can take as any automail mechanic, so why don't I ensure that Rose is blessed with an even more wonderful miracle than the Izumi Curtis you know was, and never has a chance to even begin to bring a life into this existence and side of the Gate and reality and world?"

The next second, a small number of Envy's teeth closed over Rose's lower stomach, severing her body into two parts at her waist at the location of her womb and tearing it to shreds in geysers of sanguine and bone pieces and skin and insides and flesh

a mouth screamed silentlyasphyxiated

eyes were wide in emptyabsentagonyhopelesstransparentoblivionness

"And, while we're at it, what do you say that I ensure that she needs the automail real deal?

"And even if she can at least fully stand or sit, that she can't feel anything beneath her neck at all, or move anything below it; unless someone feels like reassembling the puzzle of her spine with your favorite catalyst of basic alchemy and Equivalently Exchanging one life for another?"

Envy's draconian maw repositioned itself around Rose to thrust two teeth through both of her shoulders, severing them cleanly in more erupting crimson.

then he altered his mouth further sliced one lightly and precisely into the back of her neck

a black hole without a singularity froze suspended in a soundless and voiceless scream

twin singularities empty of black holes gaped wide in frigid distillation

then light blue coursed over what was left of her torso and upper body, cauterizing her wounds and preventing Rose from bleeding to death

Envy opened his mouth to let Rose's ruined body fall to the cobblestones below, and then pallid deathly ghostly phantom phantasms of light blue white currents cascaded backwards along the ring finger, and Envy morphed in white back through it

and his serpentine dragon shape condensed into the humanoid form of the half brother who

had never even known had been alive and loved and lived at home with a hearth and laughed and smiled and cried and moaned

"Reole isn't much better off than the Lior you saw when you returned, so it's fine and dandy as it is."

a soundless singularity gaped

double empty oblivions yawned

"I'll leave the dear dullard Doc' of the departed, past and present, here to give you a firsthand eyewitness account of what I did to his city because you brought me here, as well; pipsqueak.

"Or, should I say, little brother.

"Toodles."

Envy turned to saunter with smugly confident and satisfied triumph towards the exit from the square leading to the train station; and the exit from a Reole whose people had become, and whose screams and cries and yells and shrieks were still anywhereverywhen becoming, in countlessly innumerable ways, victims of an unbounded and not unendingly worse slaughter than even what the people of Lior and Ishbal had been tortured through.

Lan Fan snarled with vicious, hatefully furious savageness and shifted to charge Envy.

"Did everything that just happened due to a desire for revenge and a belief in what people call justice teach you nothing!?" Lin shouted.

Lan Fan stopped moving.

"We have little chance of defeating him, and even if we can defeat him, we have a decent chance at saving at least a small amount of the people here!"

Then Envy was gone and Al raced up to him and ripped the chest plate of his armor off very quickly to throw it to the side.

Even now, while Winry's visage was set with violent shudders and trembles and shakes, Ed had at least not broken the promise between her, and this Resembool's Ed, and perhaps Al, as well.

But Ed didn't know, at all, why the faintest relief still flickered through him that blackness didn't engulf all of his perception before Winry's warm arms caught him from his left, and Al's cold arms caught him from his right.

.

BOOK ONE: THE CRIMSON WARS OF THE SANGUINE STONES

.

Fin

.

Begin

.

BOOK TWO: THE NORTHERN WALL OF BLOOD

.

"Why did you kill her!?"-Kira Yamato

"You can cry all you want, but it's too late, boy!"-Rau Le Creuset

"You're wrong!"-Kira Yamato

"Aiming GENESIS. Target: Earth, Atlantic Federation Capital, Washington."-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier

"Stop this! What exactly are you fighting for!? Why are you fighting!? Do you people really want to kill the Earth, and everyone on it!? But why!?"-Athrun Zala

"Because they fired the first shot!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier

"My brother was stationed on Boaz!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier

"D-mn!"-Athrun Zala

"This is our destiny! It's a path that you took knowing where it was headed all along!"-Rau Le Creuset

"Shut up!"-Kira Yamato

"People have faith in justice, and run from problems! They never learn, and never understand! This is what lies at the end of your path! There is no longer any way to stop it! And humans will become extinct! As they should be! As they deserve to be!"-Rau Le Creuset

"I won't allow it!"-Kira Yamato

"Fourth squad, send out your mobile suits!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier

"Miyakawa! Say something!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier

"Hurry!"-Cagalli Yula Athha

"What are you doing? Fire! It will all be over once we fire!"-Patrick Zala

"Mister Chairman! We have already won this battle. Sir, if we fire, we will kill half the life on Earth! We have already had enough sacrifices!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier

"Where's the Freedom?"-Murrue Ramius

"I don't know! The Eternal and the Kusanagi are missing!"-Miriallia Haw

"Kira!"-Sai Argyle

"Your logic is completely twisted!"-Kira Yamato

"That's how people think, Kira!"-Rau Le Creuset

"You're wrong! You will learn! People have hearts and dreams!"-Kira Yamato

"And who's going to accept your path!? Where's your proof!?"-Rau Le Creuset

"Mister Chairman!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier

"This is a world where people think with hearts and dreams of hatred! Where fingers pull triggers! Why have hearts!? And why dream!?"-Rau Le Creuset

GUNDAM SEED:

Final Phase: TO AN ENDLESS FUTURE