The Tattered Remains of Tortured Souls

[blissy]

A boy in his mid-teens, his appearance rather youthful even for his young age, strolled down the uniform streets of Central, soggy autumn leaves squelching underfoot. Darkness was beginning to inch its way in, draping the city in an increasingly dim light. Street lamps negated the dinginess of the mid-autumn evening, casting a warm, soft glow onto the sidewalks and roads.
White-gloved hands clutched a paper file, a few sheets of paper stuffed haphazardly inside. His shoulders were hunched, a long red coat pulled tight around himself as protection from the chilly wind nipping at his face and ears. The streets were eerily quiet, he noted; most people should have been commuting home from work at this hour, but it almost seemed like he was the only one out, save the odd car.

Before he could really begin to contemplate this, a voice broke the silence. A quiet, flat, rambling voice; he couldn’t even make out what it was saying. Yet it still seemed to echo around the deserted streets, sending a shiver up and down his spine. He turned his head, seeing a dark figure staggering in the shadows nearby. ‘Probably just drunk,’ he thought, rolling his eyes at his own paranoia.
He turned away, and no sooner had he done so he felt a sharp pain ripping at his head, closely followed by blood oozing down his face and the back of his neck, streaking his usually immaculate blonde hair crimson.
Golden eyes wide with shock, he span about face, swinging his right arm; the sleeve of his coat blew back in the wind, revealing an arm made of steel, which made contact with considerable force.
He had been expecting to do a fair amount of damage. Knock them out, at least. But he wasn’t expecting his fist to go through the mysterious figure’s head, showering him with shattered fragments of skull, blood and he didn’t care to think what else.
But the worst part of all this, was the scream. A horrible, mournful, soul-shattering sound that seemed to hang in the air long after the body fell limp on the ground.
And then the smell hit him. Akin to badly rotted meat, with a stench of sour milk, and his stomach gave an almighty lurch as he realised that the body on the ground was in an advanced state of decay. He stared in dumbfounded horror, stock-still except for the file falling from his left hand, papers spilling onto the street.

Still reeling from his gruesome encounter, he vaguely registered the familiar sound of a loud, echoing click, and suddenly, intense heat flared from his left, and he turned around, backing off at the sight of a huge fireball, and another soul-destroying scream as burning flesh joined the already putrid smell of its rotting counterpart. He covered his mouth with his hands, worried he was about to contribute to the grim scene with the contents of his stomach, and backed up against a wall, leaning against it in an attempt to gather his composure.
The charred remains of the second corpse sank to the tarmac road to reveal a man, in around his late twenties, one gloved hand raised in the air, clad in a blue and white uniform; the dress code of the country’s military. Dark eyes looked him over carefully from behind a windswept fringe; eyes the boy had never been so relieved to see.

Running a hand through his short black hair, Roy Mustang sighed. This had been quite possibly the longest two hours of his life, since these... things had started showing up and the soldiers from the City’s headquarters had been called upon to evacuate people from the streets. His heart skipped a beat when he recognised the blonde head and red coat, and he realised who he’d just assisted.
“Edward!“ The soldier jogged to the teenager‘s side, ignoring the remains spattering the sidewalk. He noted the blood on his head and his somewhat sickly complexion; but there was no time to worry about that now. “C’mon,“ he said, grabbing the teen’s arm and forcing him into a brisk walk. “We have to go.”

[Bird of Hermes]

"Brother!"

The sound of a voice came from the being that was running in hasty strides towards the alchemists. You would have thought the call had come from a young boy had your eyes not told you otherwise. The thing that had made the sounds surely didn't look the part. A suit of armor bounded over to the golden-eyed boy, the sound of metal against stone ringing as it went. This strange boy was Alphonse Elric and was the younger brother of the Fullmetal Alchemist.

"Colonel!"

A woman yelled out to her superior, her firearm already drawn. What sort of trouble was that man into now? He was such a fool, but a fool this country needed. The officer stopped as she reached the man whose fingers had sparked the blast that had alerted her to his pretense. The uniformed woman who saluted the colonel looking with amber eyes through blonde hawk's wing hair was Riza Hawkeye and she was a First Lieutenant under the Flame Alchemist.

[blissy]

On hearing the familiar, soft-toned voice calling out to him, Ed's heart jumped and he finally seemed to snap out of his stupor. "Al!" He yelled, tugging his arm from Mustang's grip and running to the armor boy; relief just wasn't enough to describe his feelings at discovering his younger brother unscathed, considering the circumstances.
He grinned up at Alphonse's ever stoic features, apparently unfazed by the blood obscuring most of the right side of his face, or the rather offputting-coloured stains that spattered his clothes in various shades of sickly green and brown. "Are you okay? I'm glad we found you, something really wierd's going on." He could still feel himself shaking; his head was still reeling, adenaline still pumping, shock still at the forefront of his mind, muddling his thinking. Making him act almost giddy. "Did you see any of those-" he stopped when he realised he'd been about to use the word 'zombies', and that Al would surely think he'd gone completely insane, and decided to re-word it. "Have you noticed anything... off?"

Roy returned the woman's salute. "Lieutenant," he said, with a nod, and lowered his hand. He looked over at Edward, noting his sudden turnaround from a deer frozen in headlights to a hyperactive child chasing a shiny object, and rolled his eyes, with a huff. " Ugh, what a pain in the ass..."
He turned back to Hawkeye, a serious expression crossing his face. "I'm glad I found you. We need to get to headquarters, now." He turned his attention to the Elrics, beginning to walk on. "Edward, Alphonse, come on!"
Ed gave a moment of defiant delay, but then realised he and Al didn't really have anywhere else to go in Central, and absolutely anything was better than being stuck out in the streets with those vile creatures roaming about. Even if it did mean obeying Mustang. "Hmph," he muttered, crossing his arms and walking after the colonel.

[Bird of Hermes]

Alphonse was relived to find Edward unharmed, unphased and in good spirits considering the circumstances. His brother always seemed to be oddly euphoric when fighting. It was a characteristic, like many, he didn't share with Ed. It was hard to find many things in common with the boys now since Al no longer had a human body to call his own.

"So we know nothing about these things?" Was it their enemy - the Ouroboros, the homunculi, Father?

Riza didn't have any more answers than the Elrics and Roy didn't appear to either. Had the two not been through some odd twists and turns these past few months, she would have wondered why the military was not acting in full force to repel these vile creatures. However, given the officer's current trust of the military, Hawkeye wasn't one to believe anything even if the higher-ups were to give them any information about these inhuman beings. It seems the monsters were due in Central and that was all she needed to know to draw her weapon. She wanted desperately to talk to the colonel, but she knew there was no time to lose in getting to headquarters.

Perhaps, there she could talk to him.

[Sponsored content]