Subtle Fire "He had the sense of standing on a precipice, looking down on something he didn't understand." Fullmetal Alchemist animeverse, Ed/Roy. 4300 words. NC-17/MA/Not Worksafe for sex. Spoilers through the end of the anime (but relatively mild spoilers), slightly AU setting. Beta'ed by anat_astarte; all remaining errors are my own. The concrete wall scratched at Ed's back through the material of his shirt as he counted the chimeras. One, two, three... five, seven... damn. Nine. He was getting used to fighting off monsters (and wasn't that a sad indictment of his life?), but nine chimeras was still going to be a lot for him. A least none of the research indicated that this particular fuckwit of an alchemist had used humans in his beasts. Probably for lack of ability rather than lack of desire, but still. At least this way, if he had to kill them to get out, he wouldn't wind up sick with guilt over it.... The group wasn't all the same species, and didn't have the intelligence for planning, but still it was obvious that one of them had made himself leader, probably through sheer physical strength, down here in the oubliette. It -- he? she? -- looked as though it had been made part bear and part snake, with a massive, scarred black-furred body giving way to a long slim scaly head, a long whip of a tail. The eyes that watched Ed were reptile-cold, the teeth in the beast's mouth needle fangs, but it also had paws as big as hams with blunt claws. Probably being clobbered by it would be like getting a punch in the mouth from Major Armstrong... no thank you. And that was assuming it wasn't venomous. The creature arched its long neck and tilted its head from one side to the other, hissing and tasting the air. The other chimeras stayed back, as though waiting for some sign from this mutant pack leader. A thrill of hope surged through Ed; if the thing waited long enough, he could get out of here and figure out what to do about nine deadly and highly illegal chimeras when they weren't eyeing him up like the only meal they'd had in a week. (Which was probably not far off from true. The Thorn Root Alchemist didn't seem the type to lavish tender loving care on his pet monsters...) Slow, achingly slow, so as not to startle the pack leader, Ed brought his palms together in front of him, his mind spinning the array he needed: altering the smooth cement wall of the oubliette into a series of stepping-stones so he could climb out. Slow enough to make him grind his teeth in frustration he pressed his palms to the wall to complete the array -- But the flash of blue-white light that accompanied alchemy made the pack leader rear up in terror and then lunge, and he had to duck sideways -- away from the wall -- to avoid being crushed. The bear-snake-thing's shoulder crushed the thin stone shell of his ladder. Damn! It reared its head back and struck. Ed rolled out of its way - and again - and again, and god, if he hadn't spent his adolescence sparring against someone with supernatural reflexes who felt no pain, he'd've been in deep shit -- No time for a complex transmutation, but he could press his palms together and feel the crackle of energy as his wrist extended into a blade over the back of his hand. The snake-bear lunged, and he waited until the last possible second before rolling sideways, so that he could come up fast and drive the point of his automail-blade into the base of the thing's long neck, severing trachea and arteries. One down. Eight to go. Why does this always happen to me? (Not that he had to think back very far for the answer to that one.) *** Four days earlier, pacing around the apartment, Ed had said, "It could be for... medical research. Or academic analysis. Or maybe he just wants a menagerie -- " Not because he was naive enough to disbelieve that yet another state alchemist had started research on illegal chimeras, but because he wanted, at least once, to find out that an alchemist wasn't secretly a nutjob with a god complex and too little empathy. Al had looked up, sadly, from the pile of papers scattered around the living room. (They didn't have a library or a study proper, but that didn't matter when the entire living room served as a study, when the whole floor served as a desk, hosting piles of books and notes, jars of pens.) "But then why the secrecy? Why ship the animals in on the black market for twice the price? If it was above-board research, he could just requisition the animals through the government." "You're right." Ed slammed his fist into his palm, the slight bruise-knuckle sting of flesh on steel grounding him. " -- What is it about chimeras? It's like every other damn alchemist wakes up one morning with the desire to make a rat-hyena-peacock hybrid. I don't get it. He wasn't even doing research on animals, he was a plant alchemist -- " "We should tell the Brigadier General," Al said. "He has the resources to -- " "No." Ed crouched and riffled through another pile of papers. "No, see, he's bought another house -- I guarantee he knows someone's on to him, he'll destroy the evidence and get away free unless we do something now. Tonight. We don't have time for Mustang's bureaucracy." Also, unlike Mustang, they could operate freely with fewer political complications. As a child, he had been disdainful at best of Mustang's 'political complications;' as an adult, he understood them better, grudgingly accepted the necessity of delicate maneuvering for long-term goals -- but that didn't mean he had to like it. Or work that way himself. Al sighed, rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and then -- as Ed had known he would -- said, "I'm in. But where do we search? There's the lab, his townhouse, and the estate outside the city. It could be in any of those places." "Not the lab. That's too close to the government's eye." Ed resumed pacing, hands behind his back and mind whirling. "So either the townhouse or the estate. But if we search one first, he'll know we're onto him, and if we're wrong there's no way the evidence will still be there when we get to the other -- " "Split up?" "I don't see any way around it. You take the townhouse, I'll go to the estate, and whoever doesn't find anything will join the other." *** Just six left now, but apparently the big bear-snake-whatsit was alpha for strength, not smarts, because fucking hell, the remainder were the clever ones, hanging back to watch Ed?s moves and attacking as a pack in a more calculating manner. He'd lost half his left pantleg to a scorpion whip-tail, and it was just good luck that the extravagant barb on the end had clattered uselessly against steel rather than sinking into flesh. Now two badger-cats harried him from one side while a bizarre amalgam-creature that was part bird and part... something-or-other struck at him while he was distracted, and it was only by moving fast that he avoided being torn to bits between the three of them. But moving fast didn't give him much chance for long-term planning, let alone a way to get out of the situation -- fuck, fuck, fuck. He ducked-and-rolled under one of the cat-badgers, bringing his blade-arm up sharply as he rolled clear to hamstring it -- but it moved too fast, and he had to feint backwards and struggle not to stumble. C'mon, Al, where -- Flash of red-orange light; breath of charred air. His first thought was Oh fuck now what? but the next thing he smelled was the godawful stench of burning feathers and he turned in time to see the bird-thing writhe in flames and thought, Mustang -- The chimera backed away from the flame, which gave him enough time to spin on his heel and look around the -- ahh. At the top of the pit, white shirt and white gloves vivid in the ruddy firelight, the Brigadier General, as showy as he always was with glove raised and eye fixed hard and bright. He couldn't even spare the time to wonder why Mustang was here; he just shouted, "Transmute something so I can get out -- I can't -- " before the cat-badgers lost their fear and leapt, and he was too distracted to do it himself. Of course, Mustang had to draw the array by hand, which left him a good couple of minutes of trying not to get bitten in half. At the end of which -- -- stairs! A set of transmuted concrete stairs, and in that moment he could have kissed Roy (ooh, dangerous thought), whatever the fuck he was doing here. He leapt for the stairs, lunged up them, reached the top -- and then felt the hot fetid breath on the back of his thigh and whirled with "Damn it why couldn't you have made a ladder they couldn't climb ladders -- " as two of the chimeras scrambled up after him. The one at the fore gathered itself to leap, and he put up his right arm to block -- -- and then felt himself dragged off-balance as Mustang grabbed his shoulder and wrenched him back out of harm's way -- and the snarling chimera stumbled, deprived of its target, and then half-stepped and lunged again and caught Mustang hard in the leg. The noise Mustang made wasn't quite a scream, but it was a close cousin, grit-teethed and choked. Ed brought the blade edge of his arm down on the chimera's neck, hard, severing its spine at a blow, and then kicked up with an automail foot at the one just behind it, knocking it back into the pit, and said, "Snap, you idiot, snap, unless you want to fight the rest of them!" Mustang looked pale and greenish, but he raised his hand and snapped, and fire scythed down into the pit. "What the fuck were you -- " Ed began, assessing the bite on Roy's thigh. It was large, ragged, but not too deep -- didn't look like an artery had been hit -- but he still didn't like the look of it " -- and why the fuck are you even here -- " "I liked our odds better with backup," said...
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