FMA:Big Bang - Stormy May Day 1/2
Title: Stormy May Day
Author: catystorm
Betas: moumusu & starving4scotch
Artist: Poi/poilass
Genre: Fusion AU
Rating: R
Pairing/Characters: Hints of both Roy/Ed and Al/Mei.
Warnings: AU, mashup of both anime/manga canon; violence; Ed's rather extensive and occasionally offensive vocabulary.
Summary: Roy goes missing, Ed is captured and Al saves them both. (With maybe a little help from Winry and Mei.) Supernatural/Fullmetal Alchemist fusion!fic.
Stormy May Day
Ed kicked over a few crumbled bricks and listened to them scatter on the concrete floor. The slaughterhouse was still standing, but barely - the doors closed off with police tape, construction equipment parked at the ready outside. Soon this place would be razed to the ground, to make way for another strip mall, or maybe an office building.
The wide beam of the flashlight caught overturned and rusted-through tables among other miscellaneous debris. Chains hung from the high ceiling, with a few lethal-looking hooks well out of reach. Anything useful had long since been removed from the abandoned slaughterhouse, although right inside the door there were some nests of belongings that were the evidence of squatters past. The walls were covered with gang tags, graffiti and, as they advanced toward the rear of the building, various occult symbols. Al was on his left somewhere, flashlight sweeping over the spray-painted symbols.
There was a slight toppling of debris to his right and Ed pivoted on one foot, both flashlight and gun held at the ready. The beam caught the tail of a rat as it disappeared into a crack in the wall, and Ed scoffed.
"Man, some of these sigils are pretty heavy stuff," Al called out, loud enough to carry but not enough to be heard outside. "Someone was dabbling in some very black magic."
"High school kids," Ed said, using his flashlight beam as a pointer. "Probably got them off the internet, look. That one's drawn upside-down. And that one's just flat out wrong."
"Yeah," Al said, stepping around a pile of rocks and roofing. "They're seriously lucky they didn't get in over their heads."
"I almost wish they had, then at least we would have heard about this shit sooner." Ed's flashlight caught the corner of the back room of the slaughterhouse. "Ah, here we go; the last resting place of one Barry Buckley."
The entire back portion of the room had been some kind of office, and it had been bricked off. Twice, the brothers realized as their flashlights skimmed over the hastily-done work. The outer wall was crumbling, but the second wall showed through it, intact. No graffiti adorned these walls; the miscreants who were brave enough to enter the decrepit slaughterhouse didn't have the courage to approach the makeshift tomb. "The outer wall is newer," Al said, rubbing his fingers over the old brick. "Look, the styles of brick are completely different." He stooped down, sliding the duffel full of their equipment off his shoulders.
"Someone was afraid he'd get out," Ed said.
"I can't believe that his body is still in there, and has been since the fifties."
"It's all local legend, but the newspapers from that year corroborate it," Ed pointed out. "Buckley was hated by a lot of prominent people in the community for a lot of things, and while the missing girls could never be traced back to him everyone knew it was him. So when he just up and vanished and the slaughterhouse burned, no one looked too closely at the wreckage."
"Then McElroy bought the land the slaughterhouse was on, and it hasn't been touched until now." Al nodded his head. "When McElroy died and the city took the land, that's the first time anyone actually bothered to look at this safety hazard."
Ed set up the flashlights so they could see what they were doing without having to hold them. "There were rumors Buckley practiced the dark arts, and the fact that the bodies of four of the girls were never recovered..."
"Well, the man DID run a slaughterhouse, Ed," Al pointed out dryly.
"Mm, long pig."
"Or he fed their bodies to the pigs he slaughtered." Al stood up. "Hogs will eat anything."
"Dude, don't make me think about bacon like that," Ed said mournfully. "That's not fair."
"Well, anyway. The one body they recovered in the fifties was missing half her internal organs. That could point to black magic, you're right. It's the same thing that happened to the Menandez girl."
"And Sally King," Ed's expression was grim. "And the same thing could happen to anyone else if we don't french-fry this motherfucker tonight." Ed thumbed the safety on his gun and tucked it into the back of his jeans, before taking the mallet that Al had in his hand. Al put his hand on the brick, measuring it up. Ed waited patiently while Al calculated, then the brothers exchanged a glance. Wordlessly, they both swung their mallets at the bricked-up wall.
With both of them working at it, the old brick and mortar didn't stand much of a chance. It crumbled quickly, first as parts of bricks broke off and then, as Al got a hole first, he shoved the mallet head in and pulled, pulling full bricks out with it. It was heavy and dirty work, and as they broke through the second wall of brick a blast of putrid air escape the makeshift tomb.
Al turned his head, covering his nose with the back of his hand and coughing at the stench. "That can't be normal." Ed pulled the collar of his tee shirt up over his nose and pulled and pushed bricks free around the hole. He peered into the darkness, but even using the flashlight he couldn't determine much about the unopened tomb.
Then a shadow moved across the flashlight's beam. "Hey."
"What is it?" Al had picked his mallet up in both hands, sweat streaking through the dirt on his face.
"Something moved in there," Ed said, still trying to make things out in the darkness.
"It was probably some paper or something that the difference in air pressure moved," Al said. Ed gave Al a disbelieving look, and Al shrugged. "What? We both know it's probably Buckley's ghost that's waiting in there to dismember us himself."
"In that case," Ed said. "You keep hammering, I'll cover you."
"Oh no, we're not playing that game again. You always make me do the heavy lifting, how about you keep hitting that brick wall with a mallet and I cover YOU?"
"What's the matter, Al, you scared of the great big mean ghosty-wosty?"
Al stared at Ed and Ed gave Al a big shit-eating grin. "I hate you so much. I'm going to remind you you said that the next time something scares the piss outta you."
"What's gonna scare me?"
Al hoisted the mallet over one shoulder. "You don't want me to answer that." And without another word Al began to strike the wall below the hole, hoping to destroy the stability of the brick. This worked, and quickly ... the mortar job on the interior wall was not as professional as the one on the outside. The repeated strikes broke the wall down until there was an opening large enough for Ed to squeeze through. Al dropped his mallet to the ground heavily, panting with exertion.
Ed leaned in the hole, both gun and flashlight at the ready. "Phew," he snorted. "It's pretty ripe in here for a guy who's been dead sixty years." The flashlight beam played over an overturned, destroyed desk and shelving, long since broken. He saw a hand curled into a withered claw, sticking up into the air behind the broken desk. "Found him."
"Good, let's get this over with."
Ed took a careful step into the sealed room - and stepped into something that squished. He looked down and lifted his boot carefully. "Al, I think I just stepped on a pancreas."
"-what?"
"Ugh, it's squishy." Ed complained, taking another careful step into the room. He shined his flashlight back the way he'd come and really wished he hadn't. "Oh, god."
Al leaned into the room, head brushing the top of crumbling brick. Ed's flashlight beam was still illuminating the floor in front of the hole they had made. There were several small piles of putrefying organs, and one squished pile where Ed had just tread. "That explains the smell."
"Fuck." Ed pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and nose for a moment, closing his eyes. It was one thing to deal with dead bodies; Ed did it all the time, in various states of decay. It had honestly never occurred to him to even be bothered by handling the dead, but these piles of organs were just... inhuman.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine." Ed opened his eyes and forced himself to focus, tucking his gun back into his jeans so he could take the bag of salt from Al. They had a job to do, after all.
Buckley's mummified corpse lay where he had died, on his side. Rigor mortis had curled the body into a somewhat fetal position, with one hand above the desk where Ed had seen it. Ed resisted the urge to kick the body, in part because he wasn't sure what that would do to the corpse and really, he just wanted to burn it. He dumped out the bag of salt over the body, and for good measure the area around where the body rested. "I'm gonna need kerosene too," Ed called back at Al. "This is one dry mummy." He turned, his flashlight tracing over the inside wall. The walls bore the gory indicators of Buckley's final hours. Fingernail scraping, bloody handprints, lines written in verse. Ed's eyes flicked over them, recognizing the passages from Revelations. As he finished reading the line, he came to a symbol drawn in Buckley's own blood.
Ed ran his flashlight over the symbol again, he'd seen it before. This exact one, in fact. "Al, there's an ouroboros on the wall in here."
"What?" Al carefully squeezed through the hole, pulling some brick down as he did so. He had brought his flashlight and the kerosene, and he stepped around the piles of harvested organs and stood next to Ed, his flashlight on the ouroboros. "Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadems. Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and swept them down to earth."
"Revelations."
"Chapter and verse," Al murmured. "Comes up a lot these days, doesn't it?"
"This ouroboros is the same as the one we saw in Devil's Nest, isn't it? The same as that demon's tattoo." Ed touched the wall carefully, as if the dried blood the symbol was drawn in would come off on his hand. "A single winged snake."
"It's got to mean something."
"Of course it means something." Ed flashed the beam on the writing on the wall. "I mean, ouroboros. Symbol of rebirth. The eternal cycle."
Al shot Ed a look, and Ed got defensive. "What?"
"Nothing," Al said. "The single serpent version is usually the guardian of the Tree of Life, and the gatekeeper of immortality. But there are so many different versions of an ouroboros, why is this one here and why is it the same as the one in Nevada?"
"It's the same as the one in Dad's journal, too," Ed said.
"Never minding the fact that Buckley died fifty years before any of this other shit started getting kicked up."
"You think maybe Mustang knows something?" Ed asked thoughtfully. "I mean, he did start acting really weird when we were trying to exorcise that demon."
Al nodded. "We'll talk to him. There's no such thing as coincidences in this line of work. Let's take care of Buckley and then we can pop the lid off this can of worms." They both turned from the wall and then Al said, rather calmly, "so, where'd he go?"
"Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me," Ed pulled the gun out of his jeans, thumbing the safety off at the same time. Al was still holding the kerosene can. "He's dead, ghosts don't usually interfere with their mortal remains-"
"Apparently Buckley can," Al said. "That's a new one on me."
"I would say that maybe his body wasn't here to begin with, but it didn't react to the salt." Ed had his gun up and was covering the room one-handed. "Hey, if Buckley's been bricked up in this room since the fifties, how'd he get the victims' viscera in here?"
"Good point," Al said, kicking the desk. The broken piece of furniture shifted, and broken floorboards gave him his answer. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me-"
"Al!" Ed had half-turned and Buckley erupted from the broken shelving beside Al. Al had the foresight to have already unscrewed the cap on the kerosene can and flung the open can in Buckley's face, splattering the ghoul with the accelerant.
Buckley moved fast, whipping a hand out to knock Al's arms aside and lunging forward to bite. Al ducked, whipping the kerosene can forward as a weapon. It caught Buckley in the side of the head, tearing off a chunk of leathery skin and knocking his jawbone completely off.
"Fucking zombie," Ed shouted. He had a bead on Buckley, but Al was in the way. "Al, move your ass!"
Buckley had Al's arm in a pinched grip, skin flapping loose around where the jaw was barely held together. Al bashed Buckley's face in with the can, kicking at the creature and throwing himself backwards, boots sliding on the papers and rotting viscera on the floor. With Al ducking and scrambling away Ed had a clear shot and took it.
The blessed bullet managed to catch Buckley in the sternum, the force of which knocked the writhing creature off its feet. Al whipped out his lighter and locked it on, flinging it at Buckley.
The flame caught a bit of kerosene-soaked skin and set it alight. Ed grabbed Al's arm and hauled him to his feet and they scrambled out through the hole in the wall. Buckley let off an unholy wail. His dried skin was going up like paper.
"What the hell is he?" Ed asked as they stood at the opening, both guns trained on the burning creature lest it try to escape. "That's no fucking zombie, zombies aren't usually bags of bones in a jerky exterior."
"I don't know," Al responded. Most of Buckley's skin and muscle had burned away and bones were falling off at random, smoldering as they hit the floor. "Failed immortality, maybe?"
"Serves the bastard right, after what he did to those girls."
Filthy, oily smoke was beginning to boil out of the hole as the fire spread to flammable papers and furniture.
"He's gone for sure this time, let's get out of here."
Ed and Al packed up their equipment and made a quick escape out the way they had come in, as the fire spread out of the shattered tomb and caught onto the debris left on the floor, wiping out all traces of their presence.
*
Two days later, the Elric brothers had put a state between them and the Buckley case. After they had stopped to ensure that there were going to be no more victims, they packed their few belongings into the trunk of the car and booked it before the cops got it in their heads to run the plates on the Impala.
They were stopped now, at a small tourist-trap town right off the interstate. It was the sort of stop where blending in was effortless. Ed had chosen well.
Neither of them had ever encountered a creature quite like Barry Buckley before, and the ouroboros angle clearly had left an itch that Ed couldn't quite scratch. Al had pulled their father's journal out and flipped to the page, but there was no indication of what the ouroboros was meant to be; it was just a sketch in the middle of the page. The information surrounding it was a mundane case, standard issue vengeful spirit, a regular salt-and-burn.
"A bar in Nevada," Al said. "A slaughterhouse in Missouri." He tapped the journal. "And here, in dad's notes."
"It means something," Ed said, pushing a fry around in the sea of ketchup on his plate. "It's got to. There are fifteen thousand different variations of the ouroboros, so why this particular design? Single serpent, with two wings."
"Surrounding a dual-color hexagram." Al drummed his fingers on the open journal as he thought. "Seal of Solomon, probably. Think it has anything to do with the Theosophical Society?"
"Oh Christ, I hope not."
"You talked to Mustang?" Al tucked the journal away in his satchel for safe-keeping. Ed stuck a fry into his mouth.
"Nope, just got his voicemail when I tried. His house phone doesn't have an answering machine, I let it ring like fifteen times." Ed bit his bottom lip and glanced off, and Al could see he was worried. "What about Bobby?"
"Said the same thing he did the last time I called him about this," Al said. "That he hadn't magically come up with the answer in the last twenty four hours, to keep my shirt on and he'd call us if he found anything worthwhile." Ed had put his chin in his hand and was staring out the dreary gray window. "You want to drive out to Mustang's?" Al asked. "He could be on a hunt, but it couldn't hurt to check."
"Yeah," Ed murmured. "I mean, with the Buckley case cleared up we've got nothing on our plate." He glanced at his brother, eyebrow quirked. "Unless you know something I don't."
Al frowned at Ed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing."
"Did we ever tell Cas our new cell phone numbers?"
"Nope. He's got Bobby's, I think. He'll find us if he needs us." Ed scooted out of the booth. "Let's get going, then. It's a long way to Mustang's from here."
*
It was long past dusk by the time they pulled up in front of Roy Mustang's suburban home. Roy lived in the middle of a subdivision falling to pot; once it had been a nice upper-middle class neighborhood but now the houses were falling into disrepair; appliances were displayed on the lawn, along with other assorted bric-a-brac. It wasn't the best of neighborhoods anymore, but everyone left each other well enough alone and there was enough space between the houses that there was some illusion of privacy.
There were no lights on in Mustang's house. That wasn't entirely odd, but it was alarm bell number one. Ed cut the engine and they both looked up the front walk. "That can't be a good sign," Ed sighed. [I want the lights to be on and for Roy to be puttering around inside X|)
"He could be on a hunt," Al reminded Ed. He glanced over at his brother, but Ed had twisted around, fetching his gun from the duffel behind the driver's seat. "Ed?"
"Stay here." Ed got out of the car, adjusting his jacket habitually as he strode up the walk. He kept his eyes open for signs of trouble, but there was no one outside, and no movement that he could see in the deepest shadows. The house itself was dark, no hint of light came through any of the drawn blinds, and as Ed approached the door he didn't hesitate to pull his gun. He heard a car door slam behind him, Al had seen him pull his weapon and was providing backup.
The heavy front door had been kicked in, but closed again, as well it could be. The wood around the knob was splintered and broken. The door was damaged enough that it hadn't been locked again. Ed nudged the door open and it swung inwards. "Roy?" Ed called, and a beam of light flickered on over his shoulder - Al had grabbed the flashlight from the glove box.
"Doesn't look like your usual break-in," Al swept the beam over the living room and hall. The room was intact, the TV and few electronics Roy kept were still sitting in the same place they were last time they visited. The books even were untouched. "I don't like this."
"You and me both." Ed move down the hallway carefully. Something had caught his eye. "Roy?"
As he approached the bedroom, the cat shot out of the room and under Ed's feet, disappearing into the kitchen. "Dammit!"
"You okay?" Al called.
"Just the cat," Ed said. "Startled me." He peered into the bedroom. Still no sign of Roy, and no reaction to their arrival in the tiny home. Ed's stomach was sinking toward his feet, they'd lost so many friends recently that he couldn't bear it if they lost anyone else-
Al came up behind Ed, turning on the overhead light and Ed's stomach completed its plummet.
Roy was absent from the room, but his presence sure wasn't. There was a dark-colored stain on the carpet near the bed, and several splatters on the bedspread itself. Ed froze in the doorway, but Al crossed the threshold into the room past his brother. "It doesn't look like any cops have been through here," Al said, all-business. He dropped to one knee beside the dried stain on the carpet. "There was a fight."
"No shit, Sherlock," Ed had regained his voice and moved into the room too. He looked at the splatters on the bedspread.
"Roy wouldn't go down without a fight," Al said. "Something came to get him, this was an abduction."
"How do you figure?" Ed was glancing around the room for more evidence.
"If they came to kill him, why take the body?"
"Plenty of reasons. To hide the evidence of the crime, for one thing."
"Take the body and leave the bloodstains." Al shook his head. "This is why you would suck at being a serial killer, Ed."
"Well excuse me for not being psychopathic enough to worry about how to hide a body after we've killed it."
"After WE'VE killed it?"
"Well, yeah. If there were any mass-murdering going on, you'd be a part of it too."
"I... actually can't argue that." Al shook his head, then pointed his flashlight at Ed. "Hey, take a look at that."
Ed turned to where Al was indicating. There, right at eye-level, was an ouroboros, drawn in dried blood. Ed stared at it for a moment, unwilling to believe it, then he hit the doorframe as hard as he could with the back of his fist. "Fucking HELL!"
Al stood up. "Ed-"
"We are going to find this fucking thing and kill it, do you hear me?"
"Ed!"
"Don't even fucking try to tell me this is a coincidence, because we both fucking know it's not."
"Ed, we have to try to figure out-"
Ed didn't wait for Al to even finish the sentence; he stormed off down the hall. Al took a deep breath, held it, and then followed his brother. Ed had already slammed out the busted front door and was standing out on the front walk. He was breathing hard, his breath making tiny frozen puffs in the light spilling from the open door.
Al stood there silently until Ed turned to look at him. "Brother," Al said quietly.
Ed's eyes were hard. "Get on the phone," he said gruffly, trying to hide the hitch in his voice. "Everyone we know, everyone we've talked to in the last six months. Something's out there and we're not going to be caught looking."
"And what are you going to do while I'm playing phone-alert-system?"
"I'm gonna find Mustang."
*
They set up shop in Mustang's house. Ed devised a temporary fix for the door, so that it could at least lock again while Al unloaded in the kitchen. He had conscientiously shut the door to Mustang's bedroom, it wasn't going to do Ed any good to stare at a dried stain the carpet, and then dug around until he found the cat food.
"Can't believe Roy has a cat named Ed, that's the best thing I've ever heard."
"It's not Mustang's cat, it's Cas's."
"...CAS named the cat?"
"Shut the fuck up, I don't even want to hear it."
Al spread out on the kitchen table, his laptop open and pulling a list of contacts he kept on the hard-drive. The life of a cell-phone once it crossed his hands was fairly limited, so Al had learned from tough experience it was best to keep his contacts in a spreadsheet.
Ed rang Roy's cell phone again, and it wasn't in the house. It rang before going to voicemail, so it hadn't been turned off. Ed couldn't decide whether or not that was a good thing. Roy's car wasn't down the driveway, either. Whatever had come into his house and attacked him not only took Roy but took his car, too. He started going through files, busting the lock on Roy's filing cabinet until he found his bill information and called his cell provider. He verified the information and double-checked that the cell's GPS information was up-to-date, before getting off the land line with a satisfied noise.
"I find it disturbing how you can rattle off Mustang's information like that," Al told Ed. "Any luck?"
"Maybe. I need your laptop for a few minutes."
Al immediately saved everything he had open, knowing how his brother was with electronics, before handing the computer over. Ed didn't waste any time, following the instructions he got from the cell phone provider and getting all the info he needed off the website. "Mustang's GPS is still active," Ed said, tearing a sheet of paper out of Al's notebook without asking and writing the coordinates down.
"You want backup?"
Ed stood up and grabbed his coat from off the back of the chair, yanking it on. "No," Ed said.
"I'm coming with you anyway."
"No, you're not."
"Yes, I am. You're gonna need me." Al started to pull on his own coat.
"No, what I NEED you to do is stay here and make sure that no one else gets a visit from Mister Ouroboros," Ed pointed at the spreadsheet. "Look, I won't get into anything, I'll call you if I need backup."
"Yeah," Al said, as Ed turned and let himself out, the front door banging shut behind him. "I bet you will." The Impala sputtered to life outside and, after a moment's indecision Al pressed an auto-dial number and willed for it to connect. "Hey," he said. "Look, I've got a favor I need to call in..."
*
It was well past three in the morning, but that didn't bother Ed. Adrenaline kept him running for days at a time, and this was more important than sleep anyhow. The GPS had located Roy's phone, only a few miles from the house. That was probably really bad news, and Ed didn't need Al with him for this.
To his complete lack of surprise, the GPS coordinates led him out of town and toward the country, where the sprawling woods that surrounded the area began. Ed could feel his throat constricting as he thought through all the possibilities, none of them good. Leaving his car parked on the side of the road, Ed began to trek into the woods on foot, flashlight and gun both held securely.
After several long minutes of crashing blindly through the woods, Ed broke through the underbrush onto a slightly-overgrown dirt road. It felt more like a tunnel than a road, the trees were knit together overhead, and branches and shrubs leaned out toward the center. Ed must not have driven far enough forward; he should have seen the turn-off for this back road. Ed's flashlight reflected off of metal, and Ed saw that down the dirt road was Mustang's Torino.
"Dammit," Ed said out loud as he approached the vehicle. He thumbed the safety of his gun off and kept his steps measured and even. Ed was prepared for the worst when he shined his flashlight into the interior of the vehicle. It was completely empty. Ed frowned and leaned forward, letting the flashlight sweep over the dirty back windows. He tried the driver's side door and was surprised to find it unlocked, so he leaned in and flashed the beam of light all around. According to the GPS coordinates, Roy's phone was probably with the car.
He didn't see it fallen to the floorboards, so that left the trunk. That is, of course, if the phone was with the car and not still on Roy's body, lying out in the woods somewhere. Ed shoved that thought out of his head and began to worry about how to pop the trunk, when he noticed the keys still dangling from the ignition. Ed pulled them out thoughtfully, that was particularly odd. Why would the keys be left there? But then again, if the person dumped the body, why leave the car, too?
Flashlight in his teeth, Ed unlocked the trunk one-handed, gun at the ready.
Roy was in the trunk.
Ed swallowed hard, flashlight trained on Roy's body. He was bound with duct tape, and he was twisted at a bit of an angle. When the beam of light swept over his face, his eyelid twitched. "Roy?" Ed put his hand on Roy's exposed neck carefully. His pulse was weak, but he was alive. Ed didn't have any time to waste.
He carefully pulled the tape off of Roy's mouth. Roy groaned in pain, Ed took more skin with him than he had intended. "Roy, you with me?" Ed had put down the gun in the trunk and pulled out his pocket knife. He was using the small blade to saw at the tape tying Roy's wrists together.
"Ed?" Roy's voice was cracked, raw with pain.
"Yeah, it's me." Ed ripped at some of the tape still stuck to Roy's clothes. "You know, if you wanted some attention there were easier ways to go about it-"
Roy was coming around more. "Ed? Shit, shit you can't BE here, Ed-"
"Well, I'm here whether you like it or not," Ed had freed Roy's wrists entirely and now moved on to his ankles.
"No, Ed, you don't- it's a trap, Ed-"
Ed jerked his head up, looked at Roy and then turned. He had dropped his guard, worried more about Roy than the woods closing in around him. He glanced around in the darkness, scanning for a threat but nothing seemed to be moving. The sinking feeling had returned, and Ed faced Roy again, staring carefully at him. Roy was rubbing his wrists and smiling, unpleasantly. "I forgot to mention," Roy said, in distinctly not-Roy's voice. "I'm the trap."
"Where is he?" Ed asked, palming the army knife.
"Oh, he's not dead," The thing that wore Roy's face stood up, out of the trunk. "At least, not yet. Not until I've had my fun with him."
Ed scoffed, keeping the creature fully in front of him as it leisurely circled the clearing, stretching its arms over its head. "What do you want with him, or me, for that matter?"
"Oh, make no mistake," the creature scratched the side of Roy's face. "I want nothing to do with you, but Father said to keep the meat alive to use as bait, for you."
"Christos," Ed said without hesitation.
The thing wearing Roy's face actually laughed. "I'm not a demon, stupid meat." Then, as Ed watched, Roy's features seemed to melt from it, its frame shifted and in a heartbeat Ed was looking at a mirror image of himself. Ed took a step backwards out of surprise and then it rushed him.
The creature was faster than Ed expected. It ducked under his thrown punch effortlessly and caught him in what he thought was his protected midsection. All the air went out of his lungs as it hit him in his solar plexus and Ed staggered. The thing shoved him back toward the Torino. Ed had doubled over and a sharp uppercut left him dazed. He staggered back and slipped down to one knee, then the thing wearing his face grabbed his head by his hair and slammed his temple into the side of the car.
Ed saw stars. It yanked him upright by his hair and Ed really didn't know how his scalp was still attached to his head. "I don't know what Father wants with you," he hissed. "But who am I to argue?"
The slamming of the car's trunk over his head was the last thing Ed remembered.
*
"Great," Al said out loud as Ed's phone kicked over to voicemail. He hit the release button on his cell phone and put it down on the table. The cat jumped up on the table then, purring, and walked right in front of Al, knocking at his arm with his head. Al gave the cat half-hearted scritches as he rested his chin in his hand and thought hard.
Dawn was creeping along outside the kitchen window, the horizon a pale washed out color with clouds steeped deepest red. Red sky at morning; always a wonderful sign.
It was quite possible that Ed was frustrated, in the middle of something or just didn't want to answer his phone. However, Occam's razor was a constant in their lives, and that told Al that his brother was more than likely in it up to his ears this time. Ed was the best of the two of them at getting in over his head, always had been. Al leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling and tried to put his brother's thought processes together.
They were usually smarter than to separate out like this, Mustang had struck a nerve somewhere. Al had his suspicions as to where but he still couldn't quite wrap his mind around that idea. Ed used to only get this reckless when something was going on with Al, so he knew whatever it was, it was major.
And this whole ouroboros thing. It was tickling at Al's mind, like he knew something and forgot about it. "Ouroboros," Al muttered out loud. "Transformation, continuity. Cycle of life." The symbol followed blood and death. Both Ed and Al weren't naive enough to believe in rebirth, their own experiences notwithstanding. So who, or what, was leaving the ouroboros as a calling card?
The demon they had fought in Nevada, that had to have something to do with this. He did not give his name, something particularly strange, most demons were all about the Elrics knowing EXACTLY who they were fucking with. He had a tattoo of the ouroboros on his hand. Al tapped a pen on his chin. They'd taken care of him, there hadn't been enough left to worry about once they'd flushed the nest out and laid down devil's traps. So it wasn't that particular demon come back to enact his vengeance.
Al's cell phone rang just then and startled him. He glanced at the display a moment before flipping the phone open. Looked like his backup plan was going to be arriving a lot earlier than he had originally anticipated.
*
Ed was dragged half-conscious out of the back of a different car than he was dumped into. He was cognizant enough to realize that he was yanked out of the back seat, so where ever the switch off happened, someone left Mustang's car behind.
Not only had he been moved from the trunk of a vehicle to the back seat of one, he'd been frisked. His gun, his phone, all of it was gone. His hands were tied behind his back with duct tape, but his feet were free. If he had been with it enough he would have kicked the man who pulled him out of the car, but he was trying his hardest not to throw up, never mind plot an escape.
Ed didn't have the same internal clock that Al did, he couldn't figure out how long he'd been out. There were no windows to give him any idea of where he was, never mind what time of day it could be. As his thoughts became clearer, Ed realized that he probably had been drugged, on top of having the shit beaten out of him.
Wonderful.
Al was never going to let him live this one down.
The guy who pulled him out of the car was the same one who had worn both his and Mustang's face. His voice was the same, at least, so if he was wearing someone else's face Ed didn't know it. He was practically dragging Ed down a long hallway with low lighting. "You do know that dreads on white guys isn't exactly the in thing right now, right?"
The man slammed him into the nearest wall, which only served to discombobulate Ed further. "If Father didn't need you intact, I'd just rip that insolent tongue out of your head."
"Oooo," Ed gritted, his head throbbing. "Big man, throwing me around like that. Bet all the ladies just love you."
Ed got slammed into another wall for his troubles. He laughed painfully, and then they were through the doors at the end of the hallway and into some kind of receiving room.
It reminded Ed of a cave, the ceilings high and the lights dim. The room was sparse, and there were several other people present. They had to be just like the one that was half-marching, half-dragging Ed along. They mostly looked human, although one was grossly bloated. "What is this, the Munster family reunion?"
"Shut the HELL up!" his captor snapped, and this time threw Ed forward. With his hands tied behind him Ed had no balance and broke his fall with his face. He groaned against the concrete, tasting blood.
"Envy, be polite," a voice rumbled from the darkness at the far end of the room. "After all, he is our honored guest."
Ed bit a laugh into the concrete, rolling painfully into a sitting position. "You might want to fire your hospitality department," he said, spitting some blood. "I think they missed the memo."
One of the others, a woman, approached him. Ed watched her carefully, she was all curves and oozed femme fatale from every pore. She sidled around him and cut his bindings. Ed rubbed his wrists and watched her carefully as she balled the duct tape. There was nowhere for her to stash a knife, and she didn't appear to be carrying one.
"Better?"
Ed got to his feet carefully. "Are you that Father guy that jackoff kept referring to? Because there are better ways of getting in touch with people to talk, you know." Ed pressed a hand to the side of his head carefully and was gratified it didn't come back bloody. "Where's my friend? Where's Roy Mustang? And what is up with that fucking ouroboros I'm seeing everywhere, I'm guessing that's you guys given that chick has it tattooed on her chest. What do you want with me, what the fuck are you?"
"So many questions." The voice from the other end of the room chuckled, but it lacked warmth. Ed stayed on his toes as he heard the other person shuffle toward the light, but Ed was not expecting what he saw when the light struck the man's features.
Ed's throat was already raw, there was no way- "Dad?" The image of his father was somber, and the eyes were empty, dead- "You're not my father."
"Am I not?"
Ed's hands curled into fists at his side, the rage building in his chest. "Who the fuck are you to wear his face like that, this is some kind of sick fucking joke-"
One of the other people there, an older-looking man with graying temples had appeared with a chair, sliding it behind the man so callously wearing Ed's father's face. He arranged himself and sat in the chair, folding his arms in his lap and crossing his legs. "I don't suppose you've ever wondered why you don't share the same name as your father."
"What the hell is this?"
"Answer the question, Edward."
Ed glanced around the room, the sullenness burning deep at the commanding tone this man had. The one that this man had addressed as Envy stood by the door, and the woman who had freed him was only a few feet away. He was weaponless but if he didn't hit something soon he felt like he was going to explode. Instead, Ed gritted his teeth and stared at the man defiantly. "I don't need to wonder, I know," he spat instead. "My brother and I don't share the same name as him because our parents were never married."
"Hm," the man said, fingers tapping the side of his face thoughtfully. It almost seemed like he didn't expect Ed to know that. "But the reason your father didn't marry your mother," he said reflectively.
"Who the hell are you?"
"The reason your father never married your mother was not because he didn't love her," the man said. "But because he wanted to protect her, and, by proxy, you."
"Fat lot of good that did against the demons," Envy snorted from behind Ed.
"Yes, it is quite unfortunate that your brother was tainted," the man said. "But, alas, if we could bend time the demons would never have made it to your neighborhood, never mind into your home."
"Who are you people," Ed asked, his voice shaking. "Who the fuck ARE you?"
"Why, Edward," the man said serenely, spreading his hands to indicate the room. "We're your family."
*
Part 2
Author: catystorm
Betas: moumusu & starving4scotch
Artist: Poi/poilass
Genre: Fusion AU
Rating: R
Pairing/Characters: Hints of both Roy/Ed and Al/Mei.
Warnings: AU, mashup of both anime/manga canon; violence; Ed's rather extensive and occasionally offensive vocabulary.
Summary: Roy goes missing, Ed is captured and Al saves them both. (With maybe a little help from Winry and Mei.) Supernatural/Fullmetal Alchemist fusion!fic.
Stormy May Day
Ed kicked over a few crumbled bricks and listened to them scatter on the concrete floor. The slaughterhouse was still standing, but barely - the doors closed off with police tape, construction equipment parked at the ready outside. Soon this place would be razed to the ground, to make way for another strip mall, or maybe an office building.
The wide beam of the flashlight caught overturned and rusted-through tables among other miscellaneous debris. Chains hung from the high ceiling, with a few lethal-looking hooks well out of reach. Anything useful had long since been removed from the abandoned slaughterhouse, although right inside the door there were some nests of belongings that were the evidence of squatters past. The walls were covered with gang tags, graffiti and, as they advanced toward the rear of the building, various occult symbols. Al was on his left somewhere, flashlight sweeping over the spray-painted symbols.
There was a slight toppling of debris to his right and Ed pivoted on one foot, both flashlight and gun held at the ready. The beam caught the tail of a rat as it disappeared into a crack in the wall, and Ed scoffed.
"Man, some of these sigils are pretty heavy stuff," Al called out, loud enough to carry but not enough to be heard outside. "Someone was dabbling in some very black magic."
"High school kids," Ed said, using his flashlight beam as a pointer. "Probably got them off the internet, look. That one's drawn upside-down. And that one's just flat out wrong."
"Yeah," Al said, stepping around a pile of rocks and roofing. "They're seriously lucky they didn't get in over their heads."
"I almost wish they had, then at least we would have heard about this shit sooner." Ed's flashlight caught the corner of the back room of the slaughterhouse. "Ah, here we go; the last resting place of one Barry Buckley."
The entire back portion of the room had been some kind of office, and it had been bricked off. Twice, the brothers realized as their flashlights skimmed over the hastily-done work. The outer wall was crumbling, but the second wall showed through it, intact. No graffiti adorned these walls; the miscreants who were brave enough to enter the decrepit slaughterhouse didn't have the courage to approach the makeshift tomb. "The outer wall is newer," Al said, rubbing his fingers over the old brick. "Look, the styles of brick are completely different." He stooped down, sliding the duffel full of their equipment off his shoulders.
"Someone was afraid he'd get out," Ed said.
"I can't believe that his body is still in there, and has been since the fifties."
"It's all local legend, but the newspapers from that year corroborate it," Ed pointed out. "Buckley was hated by a lot of prominent people in the community for a lot of things, and while the missing girls could never be traced back to him everyone knew it was him. So when he just up and vanished and the slaughterhouse burned, no one looked too closely at the wreckage."
"Then McElroy bought the land the slaughterhouse was on, and it hasn't been touched until now." Al nodded his head. "When McElroy died and the city took the land, that's the first time anyone actually bothered to look at this safety hazard."
Ed set up the flashlights so they could see what they were doing without having to hold them. "There were rumors Buckley practiced the dark arts, and the fact that the bodies of four of the girls were never recovered..."
"Well, the man DID run a slaughterhouse, Ed," Al pointed out dryly.
"Mm, long pig."
"Or he fed their bodies to the pigs he slaughtered." Al stood up. "Hogs will eat anything."
"Dude, don't make me think about bacon like that," Ed said mournfully. "That's not fair."
"Well, anyway. The one body they recovered in the fifties was missing half her internal organs. That could point to black magic, you're right. It's the same thing that happened to the Menandez girl."
"And Sally King," Ed's expression was grim. "And the same thing could happen to anyone else if we don't french-fry this motherfucker tonight." Ed thumbed the safety on his gun and tucked it into the back of his jeans, before taking the mallet that Al had in his hand. Al put his hand on the brick, measuring it up. Ed waited patiently while Al calculated, then the brothers exchanged a glance. Wordlessly, they both swung their mallets at the bricked-up wall.
With both of them working at it, the old brick and mortar didn't stand much of a chance. It crumbled quickly, first as parts of bricks broke off and then, as Al got a hole first, he shoved the mallet head in and pulled, pulling full bricks out with it. It was heavy and dirty work, and as they broke through the second wall of brick a blast of putrid air escape the makeshift tomb.
Al turned his head, covering his nose with the back of his hand and coughing at the stench. "That can't be normal." Ed pulled the collar of his tee shirt up over his nose and pulled and pushed bricks free around the hole. He peered into the darkness, but even using the flashlight he couldn't determine much about the unopened tomb.
Then a shadow moved across the flashlight's beam. "Hey."
"What is it?" Al had picked his mallet up in both hands, sweat streaking through the dirt on his face.
"Something moved in there," Ed said, still trying to make things out in the darkness.
"It was probably some paper or something that the difference in air pressure moved," Al said. Ed gave Al a disbelieving look, and Al shrugged. "What? We both know it's probably Buckley's ghost that's waiting in there to dismember us himself."
"In that case," Ed said. "You keep hammering, I'll cover you."
"Oh no, we're not playing that game again. You always make me do the heavy lifting, how about you keep hitting that brick wall with a mallet and I cover YOU?"
"What's the matter, Al, you scared of the great big mean ghosty-wosty?"
Al stared at Ed and Ed gave Al a big shit-eating grin. "I hate you so much. I'm going to remind you you said that the next time something scares the piss outta you."
"What's gonna scare me?"
Al hoisted the mallet over one shoulder. "You don't want me to answer that." And without another word Al began to strike the wall below the hole, hoping to destroy the stability of the brick. This worked, and quickly ... the mortar job on the interior wall was not as professional as the one on the outside. The repeated strikes broke the wall down until there was an opening large enough for Ed to squeeze through. Al dropped his mallet to the ground heavily, panting with exertion.
Ed leaned in the hole, both gun and flashlight at the ready. "Phew," he snorted. "It's pretty ripe in here for a guy who's been dead sixty years." The flashlight beam played over an overturned, destroyed desk and shelving, long since broken. He saw a hand curled into a withered claw, sticking up into the air behind the broken desk. "Found him."
"Good, let's get this over with."
Ed took a careful step into the sealed room - and stepped into something that squished. He looked down and lifted his boot carefully. "Al, I think I just stepped on a pancreas."
"-what?"
"Ugh, it's squishy." Ed complained, taking another careful step into the room. He shined his flashlight back the way he'd come and really wished he hadn't. "Oh, god."
Al leaned into the room, head brushing the top of crumbling brick. Ed's flashlight beam was still illuminating the floor in front of the hole they had made. There were several small piles of putrefying organs, and one squished pile where Ed had just tread. "That explains the smell."
"Fuck." Ed pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and nose for a moment, closing his eyes. It was one thing to deal with dead bodies; Ed did it all the time, in various states of decay. It had honestly never occurred to him to even be bothered by handling the dead, but these piles of organs were just... inhuman.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine." Ed opened his eyes and forced himself to focus, tucking his gun back into his jeans so he could take the bag of salt from Al. They had a job to do, after all.
Buckley's mummified corpse lay where he had died, on his side. Rigor mortis had curled the body into a somewhat fetal position, with one hand above the desk where Ed had seen it. Ed resisted the urge to kick the body, in part because he wasn't sure what that would do to the corpse and really, he just wanted to burn it. He dumped out the bag of salt over the body, and for good measure the area around where the body rested. "I'm gonna need kerosene too," Ed called back at Al. "This is one dry mummy." He turned, his flashlight tracing over the inside wall. The walls bore the gory indicators of Buckley's final hours. Fingernail scraping, bloody handprints, lines written in verse. Ed's eyes flicked over them, recognizing the passages from Revelations. As he finished reading the line, he came to a symbol drawn in Buckley's own blood.
Ed ran his flashlight over the symbol again, he'd seen it before. This exact one, in fact. "Al, there's an ouroboros on the wall in here."
"What?" Al carefully squeezed through the hole, pulling some brick down as he did so. He had brought his flashlight and the kerosene, and he stepped around the piles of harvested organs and stood next to Ed, his flashlight on the ouroboros. "Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadems. Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and swept them down to earth."
"Revelations."
"Chapter and verse," Al murmured. "Comes up a lot these days, doesn't it?"
"This ouroboros is the same as the one we saw in Devil's Nest, isn't it? The same as that demon's tattoo." Ed touched the wall carefully, as if the dried blood the symbol was drawn in would come off on his hand. "A single winged snake."
"It's got to mean something."
"Of course it means something." Ed flashed the beam on the writing on the wall. "I mean, ouroboros. Symbol of rebirth. The eternal cycle."
Al shot Ed a look, and Ed got defensive. "What?"
"Nothing," Al said. "The single serpent version is usually the guardian of the Tree of Life, and the gatekeeper of immortality. But there are so many different versions of an ouroboros, why is this one here and why is it the same as the one in Nevada?"
"It's the same as the one in Dad's journal, too," Ed said.
"Never minding the fact that Buckley died fifty years before any of this other shit started getting kicked up."
"You think maybe Mustang knows something?" Ed asked thoughtfully. "I mean, he did start acting really weird when we were trying to exorcise that demon."
Al nodded. "We'll talk to him. There's no such thing as coincidences in this line of work. Let's take care of Buckley and then we can pop the lid off this can of worms." They both turned from the wall and then Al said, rather calmly, "so, where'd he go?"
"Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me," Ed pulled the gun out of his jeans, thumbing the safety off at the same time. Al was still holding the kerosene can. "He's dead, ghosts don't usually interfere with their mortal remains-"
"Apparently Buckley can," Al said. "That's a new one on me."
"I would say that maybe his body wasn't here to begin with, but it didn't react to the salt." Ed had his gun up and was covering the room one-handed. "Hey, if Buckley's been bricked up in this room since the fifties, how'd he get the victims' viscera in here?"
"Good point," Al said, kicking the desk. The broken piece of furniture shifted, and broken floorboards gave him his answer. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me-"
"Al!" Ed had half-turned and Buckley erupted from the broken shelving beside Al. Al had the foresight to have already unscrewed the cap on the kerosene can and flung the open can in Buckley's face, splattering the ghoul with the accelerant.
Buckley moved fast, whipping a hand out to knock Al's arms aside and lunging forward to bite. Al ducked, whipping the kerosene can forward as a weapon. It caught Buckley in the side of the head, tearing off a chunk of leathery skin and knocking his jawbone completely off.
"Fucking zombie," Ed shouted. He had a bead on Buckley, but Al was in the way. "Al, move your ass!"
Buckley had Al's arm in a pinched grip, skin flapping loose around where the jaw was barely held together. Al bashed Buckley's face in with the can, kicking at the creature and throwing himself backwards, boots sliding on the papers and rotting viscera on the floor. With Al ducking and scrambling away Ed had a clear shot and took it.
The blessed bullet managed to catch Buckley in the sternum, the force of which knocked the writhing creature off its feet. Al whipped out his lighter and locked it on, flinging it at Buckley.
The flame caught a bit of kerosene-soaked skin and set it alight. Ed grabbed Al's arm and hauled him to his feet and they scrambled out through the hole in the wall. Buckley let off an unholy wail. His dried skin was going up like paper.
"What the hell is he?" Ed asked as they stood at the opening, both guns trained on the burning creature lest it try to escape. "That's no fucking zombie, zombies aren't usually bags of bones in a jerky exterior."
"I don't know," Al responded. Most of Buckley's skin and muscle had burned away and bones were falling off at random, smoldering as they hit the floor. "Failed immortality, maybe?"
"Serves the bastard right, after what he did to those girls."
Filthy, oily smoke was beginning to boil out of the hole as the fire spread to flammable papers and furniture.
"He's gone for sure this time, let's get out of here."
Ed and Al packed up their equipment and made a quick escape out the way they had come in, as the fire spread out of the shattered tomb and caught onto the debris left on the floor, wiping out all traces of their presence.
*
Two days later, the Elric brothers had put a state between them and the Buckley case. After they had stopped to ensure that there were going to be no more victims, they packed their few belongings into the trunk of the car and booked it before the cops got it in their heads to run the plates on the Impala.
They were stopped now, at a small tourist-trap town right off the interstate. It was the sort of stop where blending in was effortless. Ed had chosen well.
Neither of them had ever encountered a creature quite like Barry Buckley before, and the ouroboros angle clearly had left an itch that Ed couldn't quite scratch. Al had pulled their father's journal out and flipped to the page, but there was no indication of what the ouroboros was meant to be; it was just a sketch in the middle of the page. The information surrounding it was a mundane case, standard issue vengeful spirit, a regular salt-and-burn.
"A bar in Nevada," Al said. "A slaughterhouse in Missouri." He tapped the journal. "And here, in dad's notes."
"It means something," Ed said, pushing a fry around in the sea of ketchup on his plate. "It's got to. There are fifteen thousand different variations of the ouroboros, so why this particular design? Single serpent, with two wings."
"Surrounding a dual-color hexagram." Al drummed his fingers on the open journal as he thought. "Seal of Solomon, probably. Think it has anything to do with the Theosophical Society?"
"Oh Christ, I hope not."
"You talked to Mustang?" Al tucked the journal away in his satchel for safe-keeping. Ed stuck a fry into his mouth.
"Nope, just got his voicemail when I tried. His house phone doesn't have an answering machine, I let it ring like fifteen times." Ed bit his bottom lip and glanced off, and Al could see he was worried. "What about Bobby?"
"Said the same thing he did the last time I called him about this," Al said. "That he hadn't magically come up with the answer in the last twenty four hours, to keep my shirt on and he'd call us if he found anything worthwhile." Ed had put his chin in his hand and was staring out the dreary gray window. "You want to drive out to Mustang's?" Al asked. "He could be on a hunt, but it couldn't hurt to check."
"Yeah," Ed murmured. "I mean, with the Buckley case cleared up we've got nothing on our plate." He glanced at his brother, eyebrow quirked. "Unless you know something I don't."
Al frowned at Ed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing."
"Did we ever tell Cas our new cell phone numbers?"
"Nope. He's got Bobby's, I think. He'll find us if he needs us." Ed scooted out of the booth. "Let's get going, then. It's a long way to Mustang's from here."
*
It was long past dusk by the time they pulled up in front of Roy Mustang's suburban home. Roy lived in the middle of a subdivision falling to pot; once it had been a nice upper-middle class neighborhood but now the houses were falling into disrepair; appliances were displayed on the lawn, along with other assorted bric-a-brac. It wasn't the best of neighborhoods anymore, but everyone left each other well enough alone and there was enough space between the houses that there was some illusion of privacy.
There were no lights on in Mustang's house. That wasn't entirely odd, but it was alarm bell number one. Ed cut the engine and they both looked up the front walk. "That can't be a good sign," Ed sighed. [I want the lights to be on and for Roy to be puttering around inside X|)
"He could be on a hunt," Al reminded Ed. He glanced over at his brother, but Ed had twisted around, fetching his gun from the duffel behind the driver's seat. "Ed?"
"Stay here." Ed got out of the car, adjusting his jacket habitually as he strode up the walk. He kept his eyes open for signs of trouble, but there was no one outside, and no movement that he could see in the deepest shadows. The house itself was dark, no hint of light came through any of the drawn blinds, and as Ed approached the door he didn't hesitate to pull his gun. He heard a car door slam behind him, Al had seen him pull his weapon and was providing backup.
The heavy front door had been kicked in, but closed again, as well it could be. The wood around the knob was splintered and broken. The door was damaged enough that it hadn't been locked again. Ed nudged the door open and it swung inwards. "Roy?" Ed called, and a beam of light flickered on over his shoulder - Al had grabbed the flashlight from the glove box.
"Doesn't look like your usual break-in," Al swept the beam over the living room and hall. The room was intact, the TV and few electronics Roy kept were still sitting in the same place they were last time they visited. The books even were untouched. "I don't like this."
"You and me both." Ed move down the hallway carefully. Something had caught his eye. "Roy?"
As he approached the bedroom, the cat shot out of the room and under Ed's feet, disappearing into the kitchen. "Dammit!"
"You okay?" Al called.
"Just the cat," Ed said. "Startled me." He peered into the bedroom. Still no sign of Roy, and no reaction to their arrival in the tiny home. Ed's stomach was sinking toward his feet, they'd lost so many friends recently that he couldn't bear it if they lost anyone else-
Al came up behind Ed, turning on the overhead light and Ed's stomach completed its plummet.
Roy was absent from the room, but his presence sure wasn't. There was a dark-colored stain on the carpet near the bed, and several splatters on the bedspread itself. Ed froze in the doorway, but Al crossed the threshold into the room past his brother. "It doesn't look like any cops have been through here," Al said, all-business. He dropped to one knee beside the dried stain on the carpet. "There was a fight."
"No shit, Sherlock," Ed had regained his voice and moved into the room too. He looked at the splatters on the bedspread.
"Roy wouldn't go down without a fight," Al said. "Something came to get him, this was an abduction."
"How do you figure?" Ed was glancing around the room for more evidence.
"If they came to kill him, why take the body?"
"Plenty of reasons. To hide the evidence of the crime, for one thing."
"Take the body and leave the bloodstains." Al shook his head. "This is why you would suck at being a serial killer, Ed."
"Well excuse me for not being psychopathic enough to worry about how to hide a body after we've killed it."
"After WE'VE killed it?"
"Well, yeah. If there were any mass-murdering going on, you'd be a part of it too."
"I... actually can't argue that." Al shook his head, then pointed his flashlight at Ed. "Hey, take a look at that."
Ed turned to where Al was indicating. There, right at eye-level, was an ouroboros, drawn in dried blood. Ed stared at it for a moment, unwilling to believe it, then he hit the doorframe as hard as he could with the back of his fist. "Fucking HELL!"
Al stood up. "Ed-"
"We are going to find this fucking thing and kill it, do you hear me?"
"Ed!"
"Don't even fucking try to tell me this is a coincidence, because we both fucking know it's not."
"Ed, we have to try to figure out-"
Ed didn't wait for Al to even finish the sentence; he stormed off down the hall. Al took a deep breath, held it, and then followed his brother. Ed had already slammed out the busted front door and was standing out on the front walk. He was breathing hard, his breath making tiny frozen puffs in the light spilling from the open door.
Al stood there silently until Ed turned to look at him. "Brother," Al said quietly.
Ed's eyes were hard. "Get on the phone," he said gruffly, trying to hide the hitch in his voice. "Everyone we know, everyone we've talked to in the last six months. Something's out there and we're not going to be caught looking."
"And what are you going to do while I'm playing phone-alert-system?"
"I'm gonna find Mustang."
*
They set up shop in Mustang's house. Ed devised a temporary fix for the door, so that it could at least lock again while Al unloaded in the kitchen. He had conscientiously shut the door to Mustang's bedroom, it wasn't going to do Ed any good to stare at a dried stain the carpet, and then dug around until he found the cat food.
"Can't believe Roy has a cat named Ed, that's the best thing I've ever heard."
"It's not Mustang's cat, it's Cas's."
"...CAS named the cat?"
"Shut the fuck up, I don't even want to hear it."
Al spread out on the kitchen table, his laptop open and pulling a list of contacts he kept on the hard-drive. The life of a cell-phone once it crossed his hands was fairly limited, so Al had learned from tough experience it was best to keep his contacts in a spreadsheet.
Ed rang Roy's cell phone again, and it wasn't in the house. It rang before going to voicemail, so it hadn't been turned off. Ed couldn't decide whether or not that was a good thing. Roy's car wasn't down the driveway, either. Whatever had come into his house and attacked him not only took Roy but took his car, too. He started going through files, busting the lock on Roy's filing cabinet until he found his bill information and called his cell provider. He verified the information and double-checked that the cell's GPS information was up-to-date, before getting off the land line with a satisfied noise.
"I find it disturbing how you can rattle off Mustang's information like that," Al told Ed. "Any luck?"
"Maybe. I need your laptop for a few minutes."
Al immediately saved everything he had open, knowing how his brother was with electronics, before handing the computer over. Ed didn't waste any time, following the instructions he got from the cell phone provider and getting all the info he needed off the website. "Mustang's GPS is still active," Ed said, tearing a sheet of paper out of Al's notebook without asking and writing the coordinates down.
"You want backup?"
Ed stood up and grabbed his coat from off the back of the chair, yanking it on. "No," Ed said.
"I'm coming with you anyway."
"No, you're not."
"Yes, I am. You're gonna need me." Al started to pull on his own coat.
"No, what I NEED you to do is stay here and make sure that no one else gets a visit from Mister Ouroboros," Ed pointed at the spreadsheet. "Look, I won't get into anything, I'll call you if I need backup."
"Yeah," Al said, as Ed turned and let himself out, the front door banging shut behind him. "I bet you will." The Impala sputtered to life outside and, after a moment's indecision Al pressed an auto-dial number and willed for it to connect. "Hey," he said. "Look, I've got a favor I need to call in..."
*
It was well past three in the morning, but that didn't bother Ed. Adrenaline kept him running for days at a time, and this was more important than sleep anyhow. The GPS had located Roy's phone, only a few miles from the house. That was probably really bad news, and Ed didn't need Al with him for this.
To his complete lack of surprise, the GPS coordinates led him out of town and toward the country, where the sprawling woods that surrounded the area began. Ed could feel his throat constricting as he thought through all the possibilities, none of them good. Leaving his car parked on the side of the road, Ed began to trek into the woods on foot, flashlight and gun both held securely.
After several long minutes of crashing blindly through the woods, Ed broke through the underbrush onto a slightly-overgrown dirt road. It felt more like a tunnel than a road, the trees were knit together overhead, and branches and shrubs leaned out toward the center. Ed must not have driven far enough forward; he should have seen the turn-off for this back road. Ed's flashlight reflected off of metal, and Ed saw that down the dirt road was Mustang's Torino.
"Dammit," Ed said out loud as he approached the vehicle. He thumbed the safety of his gun off and kept his steps measured and even. Ed was prepared for the worst when he shined his flashlight into the interior of the vehicle. It was completely empty. Ed frowned and leaned forward, letting the flashlight sweep over the dirty back windows. He tried the driver's side door and was surprised to find it unlocked, so he leaned in and flashed the beam of light all around. According to the GPS coordinates, Roy's phone was probably with the car.
He didn't see it fallen to the floorboards, so that left the trunk. That is, of course, if the phone was with the car and not still on Roy's body, lying out in the woods somewhere. Ed shoved that thought out of his head and began to worry about how to pop the trunk, when he noticed the keys still dangling from the ignition. Ed pulled them out thoughtfully, that was particularly odd. Why would the keys be left there? But then again, if the person dumped the body, why leave the car, too?
Flashlight in his teeth, Ed unlocked the trunk one-handed, gun at the ready.
Roy was in the trunk.
Ed swallowed hard, flashlight trained on Roy's body. He was bound with duct tape, and he was twisted at a bit of an angle. When the beam of light swept over his face, his eyelid twitched. "Roy?" Ed put his hand on Roy's exposed neck carefully. His pulse was weak, but he was alive. Ed didn't have any time to waste.
He carefully pulled the tape off of Roy's mouth. Roy groaned in pain, Ed took more skin with him than he had intended. "Roy, you with me?" Ed had put down the gun in the trunk and pulled out his pocket knife. He was using the small blade to saw at the tape tying Roy's wrists together.
"Ed?" Roy's voice was cracked, raw with pain.
"Yeah, it's me." Ed ripped at some of the tape still stuck to Roy's clothes. "You know, if you wanted some attention there were easier ways to go about it-"
Roy was coming around more. "Ed? Shit, shit you can't BE here, Ed-"
"Well, I'm here whether you like it or not," Ed had freed Roy's wrists entirely and now moved on to his ankles.
"No, Ed, you don't- it's a trap, Ed-"
Ed jerked his head up, looked at Roy and then turned. He had dropped his guard, worried more about Roy than the woods closing in around him. He glanced around in the darkness, scanning for a threat but nothing seemed to be moving. The sinking feeling had returned, and Ed faced Roy again, staring carefully at him. Roy was rubbing his wrists and smiling, unpleasantly. "I forgot to mention," Roy said, in distinctly not-Roy's voice. "I'm the trap."
"Where is he?" Ed asked, palming the army knife.
"Oh, he's not dead," The thing that wore Roy's face stood up, out of the trunk. "At least, not yet. Not until I've had my fun with him."
Ed scoffed, keeping the creature fully in front of him as it leisurely circled the clearing, stretching its arms over its head. "What do you want with him, or me, for that matter?"
"Oh, make no mistake," the creature scratched the side of Roy's face. "I want nothing to do with you, but Father said to keep the meat alive to use as bait, for you."
"Christos," Ed said without hesitation.
The thing wearing Roy's face actually laughed. "I'm not a demon, stupid meat." Then, as Ed watched, Roy's features seemed to melt from it, its frame shifted and in a heartbeat Ed was looking at a mirror image of himself. Ed took a step backwards out of surprise and then it rushed him.
The creature was faster than Ed expected. It ducked under his thrown punch effortlessly and caught him in what he thought was his protected midsection. All the air went out of his lungs as it hit him in his solar plexus and Ed staggered. The thing shoved him back toward the Torino. Ed had doubled over and a sharp uppercut left him dazed. He staggered back and slipped down to one knee, then the thing wearing his face grabbed his head by his hair and slammed his temple into the side of the car.
Ed saw stars. It yanked him upright by his hair and Ed really didn't know how his scalp was still attached to his head. "I don't know what Father wants with you," he hissed. "But who am I to argue?"
The slamming of the car's trunk over his head was the last thing Ed remembered.
*
"Great," Al said out loud as Ed's phone kicked over to voicemail. He hit the release button on his cell phone and put it down on the table. The cat jumped up on the table then, purring, and walked right in front of Al, knocking at his arm with his head. Al gave the cat half-hearted scritches as he rested his chin in his hand and thought hard.
Dawn was creeping along outside the kitchen window, the horizon a pale washed out color with clouds steeped deepest red. Red sky at morning; always a wonderful sign.
It was quite possible that Ed was frustrated, in the middle of something or just didn't want to answer his phone. However, Occam's razor was a constant in their lives, and that told Al that his brother was more than likely in it up to his ears this time. Ed was the best of the two of them at getting in over his head, always had been. Al leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling and tried to put his brother's thought processes together.
They were usually smarter than to separate out like this, Mustang had struck a nerve somewhere. Al had his suspicions as to where but he still couldn't quite wrap his mind around that idea. Ed used to only get this reckless when something was going on with Al, so he knew whatever it was, it was major.
And this whole ouroboros thing. It was tickling at Al's mind, like he knew something and forgot about it. "Ouroboros," Al muttered out loud. "Transformation, continuity. Cycle of life." The symbol followed blood and death. Both Ed and Al weren't naive enough to believe in rebirth, their own experiences notwithstanding. So who, or what, was leaving the ouroboros as a calling card?
The demon they had fought in Nevada, that had to have something to do with this. He did not give his name, something particularly strange, most demons were all about the Elrics knowing EXACTLY who they were fucking with. He had a tattoo of the ouroboros on his hand. Al tapped a pen on his chin. They'd taken care of him, there hadn't been enough left to worry about once they'd flushed the nest out and laid down devil's traps. So it wasn't that particular demon come back to enact his vengeance.
Al's cell phone rang just then and startled him. He glanced at the display a moment before flipping the phone open. Looked like his backup plan was going to be arriving a lot earlier than he had originally anticipated.
*
Ed was dragged half-conscious out of the back of a different car than he was dumped into. He was cognizant enough to realize that he was yanked out of the back seat, so where ever the switch off happened, someone left Mustang's car behind.
Not only had he been moved from the trunk of a vehicle to the back seat of one, he'd been frisked. His gun, his phone, all of it was gone. His hands were tied behind his back with duct tape, but his feet were free. If he had been with it enough he would have kicked the man who pulled him out of the car, but he was trying his hardest not to throw up, never mind plot an escape.
Ed didn't have the same internal clock that Al did, he couldn't figure out how long he'd been out. There were no windows to give him any idea of where he was, never mind what time of day it could be. As his thoughts became clearer, Ed realized that he probably had been drugged, on top of having the shit beaten out of him.
Wonderful.
Al was never going to let him live this one down.
The guy who pulled him out of the car was the same one who had worn both his and Mustang's face. His voice was the same, at least, so if he was wearing someone else's face Ed didn't know it. He was practically dragging Ed down a long hallway with low lighting. "You do know that dreads on white guys isn't exactly the in thing right now, right?"
The man slammed him into the nearest wall, which only served to discombobulate Ed further. "If Father didn't need you intact, I'd just rip that insolent tongue out of your head."
"Oooo," Ed gritted, his head throbbing. "Big man, throwing me around like that. Bet all the ladies just love you."
Ed got slammed into another wall for his troubles. He laughed painfully, and then they were through the doors at the end of the hallway and into some kind of receiving room.
It reminded Ed of a cave, the ceilings high and the lights dim. The room was sparse, and there were several other people present. They had to be just like the one that was half-marching, half-dragging Ed along. They mostly looked human, although one was grossly bloated. "What is this, the Munster family reunion?"
"Shut the HELL up!" his captor snapped, and this time threw Ed forward. With his hands tied behind him Ed had no balance and broke his fall with his face. He groaned against the concrete, tasting blood.
"Envy, be polite," a voice rumbled from the darkness at the far end of the room. "After all, he is our honored guest."
Ed bit a laugh into the concrete, rolling painfully into a sitting position. "You might want to fire your hospitality department," he said, spitting some blood. "I think they missed the memo."
One of the others, a woman, approached him. Ed watched her carefully, she was all curves and oozed femme fatale from every pore. She sidled around him and cut his bindings. Ed rubbed his wrists and watched her carefully as she balled the duct tape. There was nowhere for her to stash a knife, and she didn't appear to be carrying one.
"Better?"
Ed got to his feet carefully. "Are you that Father guy that jackoff kept referring to? Because there are better ways of getting in touch with people to talk, you know." Ed pressed a hand to the side of his head carefully and was gratified it didn't come back bloody. "Where's my friend? Where's Roy Mustang? And what is up with that fucking ouroboros I'm seeing everywhere, I'm guessing that's you guys given that chick has it tattooed on her chest. What do you want with me, what the fuck are you?"
"So many questions." The voice from the other end of the room chuckled, but it lacked warmth. Ed stayed on his toes as he heard the other person shuffle toward the light, but Ed was not expecting what he saw when the light struck the man's features.
Ed's throat was already raw, there was no way- "Dad?" The image of his father was somber, and the eyes were empty, dead- "You're not my father."
"Am I not?"
Ed's hands curled into fists at his side, the rage building in his chest. "Who the fuck are you to wear his face like that, this is some kind of sick fucking joke-"
One of the other people there, an older-looking man with graying temples had appeared with a chair, sliding it behind the man so callously wearing Ed's father's face. He arranged himself and sat in the chair, folding his arms in his lap and crossing his legs. "I don't suppose you've ever wondered why you don't share the same name as your father."
"What the hell is this?"
"Answer the question, Edward."
Ed glanced around the room, the sullenness burning deep at the commanding tone this man had. The one that this man had addressed as Envy stood by the door, and the woman who had freed him was only a few feet away. He was weaponless but if he didn't hit something soon he felt like he was going to explode. Instead, Ed gritted his teeth and stared at the man defiantly. "I don't need to wonder, I know," he spat instead. "My brother and I don't share the same name as him because our parents were never married."
"Hm," the man said, fingers tapping the side of his face thoughtfully. It almost seemed like he didn't expect Ed to know that. "But the reason your father didn't marry your mother," he said reflectively.
"Who the hell are you?"
"The reason your father never married your mother was not because he didn't love her," the man said. "But because he wanted to protect her, and, by proxy, you."
"Fat lot of good that did against the demons," Envy snorted from behind Ed.
"Yes, it is quite unfortunate that your brother was tainted," the man said. "But, alas, if we could bend time the demons would never have made it to your neighborhood, never mind into your home."
"Who are you people," Ed asked, his voice shaking. "Who the fuck ARE you?"
"Why, Edward," the man said serenely, spreading his hands to indicate the room. "We're your family."
*
Part 2