CENTRAL
On paper, it had been shut down years ago. On paper, it didn’t exist anymore. On paper, no one was employed here, and nothing was accomplished. These were the halls of the lost and dead, where the forgotten rotted, and sanity fled.
Things were always so neat and tidy on paper. Real life, well… That was a different matter.
“Eh? Who’s there?” The voice echoed out of the skull-like mask, as the armored figure spun around. He wore a mix of fur and metal, and his mitten-like gauntlets gripped a pair of meat cleavers. He didn’t have a name anymore, just a number, but he still thought of himself as Barry.
And once again in his hollow life, he was happy. Someone snuck in! Oooh, someone’s inside the fence. I get them now, that’s the rule! This’ll be perfect, I’ll take my time. Tongue first though, so they can’t scream so loud…
He crept through the darkness, his metal feet oddly silent against the cobblestones, and looked around. Where… There!
And as he spun around and lifted his knives, two flickers of darkness leaped out at him, heading straight toward his eyesockets… and stopping. He tilted his head, and the lines followed him… and looking down them, he saw that they were elongated fingers, leading back to a solid black glove, up a shapely arm, and a slinky dress covering two lovely plump-
“Ah, it’s you.” He groaned, and put the cleavers down. This one would kill him in a heartbeat, if he was stupid. She pulled her fingers back in, and they shrunk and warped as they returned to normal size.
“Hello, shell. Is the General in?”
“Yeah. I can send word ahead if-“
“No need.” She murmured. Behind her, from the direction of the fence, there was a THUMP. Barry looked over to see the short fat one, and… Someone riding him? Yes, that was right… It was a brownish woman in an ill-fitting dress, giggling as the one called Gluttony hauled her piggyback up to stand beside Lust.
“Huh. We don’t get many female prisoners this way. This one a special delivery?” Lust shook her head.
“You’re not here to ask questions, shell. Just open the door.”
Barry shrugged. “Right, right.”
He moved to the wall, and his hands found the switch. Closing it, a section of the wall slid aside, revealing empty corridor yawning into the depths of the structure. “There,” he grumbled.
“Good. Keep silent about this, and we may bring you a present next time.” The three of them vanished into the depths of Laboratory Number Five, as the wall ground shut behind them.
Leaving Barry the Chopper alone by the wall, dreaming once more of getting his cleavers into some proper, tender meat…
“A homunculus, you say?” His voice rasped, as he looked over the short, brown woman. She was still and huddled in the corner, staring at the tubes that adorned this room. Each tube held a child-sized motionless creature, each appearing like a small, girl-child with animalistic features. Each had heavy, unstaring eyes. Each was unmoving, save for an occasional breath that sent bubbles through the fluid surrounding them.
Gluttony stared at the girls too. Drooling.
“I’m… Not entirely certain. That’s why I need you to check her over, and give me a full report. She may be human, I can’t say. In any case, she is not to be harmed, Mister Tucker.”
“That will restrict some of the tests I can do with her.” Rasped Shou Tucker, as he considered Lust with his upside-down face.
He was an alchemist specializing in chimera, who had ventured too far into forbidden territory in order to find forbidden knowledge. In his efforts to restore his dead daughter, his failures had shaped his body into a furred, misshapen mockery. His torso and arms were inhuman, and his face stared down at the world behind him, twisted up and around until he was staring at everything upside-down and backwards.
He didn’t mind so much. Eating and drinking was a chore, but he got by. And one day his work would pay off, and he would be able to hold HER again, hear her bubbling laugh, and watch as she ran and played. Nina…
But, first things first. “Hh. Well, I can try to fit her into the schedule. Is this a priority issue?”
“The highest. Also, it’s confidential. You’ll say nothing of her or any findings related to her to anyone but me. Do you understand, Mr. Tucker?”
His eyes glittered behind his spectacles.
“I understand.”
“Good. Now, do you know where General Grand is, right now?”
Shou flipped through his notes, keeping his hands busy while he thought. “Hm. At this hour, he would probably be finishing up the latest transfer of the test subjects.”
“Prisoners, you mean.” Her smile grew a tiny bit.
Shou frowned. “Well, yes. Still, it sounds better when you consider them as subjects. They’re giving their wicked lives for the betterment of the entire nation-“
“Spare me. Come, Gluttony.”
Lust made her way to the door, and stopped. Something was holding her back.
She looked down, at the brown hand clutching her skirt. “Ah-huh! Uh! Ghuh…” Pet moaned, rocking back and forth, and looking up at Lust.
Lust blinked, and she was looking into his eyes as they looked down at her full of tears and she tried to tell him not to be sad, just to go on living and it was okay for they would be united under Ishbala’s grace once the wheel turned-
NO!
She forced the memory away, using every ounce of willpower she had. She panted slightly, staring down at “Pet”, and struggling to keep her composure.
Her lips moved, as she mouthed silent words, then gently, so gently, a gloved hand came down to rest on Pet’s head.
“I’ll be back for you. We’ll see each other again. Don’t worry.”
Maybe it was the tone, or maybe by some miracle she understood the words. Pet let go of Lust’s dress, and followed by Gluttony, Lust made her way out the door.
Shou blinked, and returned to his work. For a second there, just a few seconds, Lust’s face had lost its usual sneer. For a few seconds, there was nothing but sorrow on her face. And… love? Must have been a trick of the light. He decided.
A few steps took him to “Pet”, as she lay on the floor, looking glumly at the closed door.
“No matter then. Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
And as he picked her up from the floor, the madwoman started to wail.
Outside, in the corridor, Lust walked slowly, her heels clicking on the metal floor. What just happened there? I haven’t had that vivid a memory in… Was she the trigger?
There was a burning sensation in her eyes, and carefully, she put her gloved hand up to them. She lifted the hand away, and looked at them in the dim light.
Nothing. Not tears then, of course not.
Only humans cry, after all. Not living dolls. Not poorly-made copies.
But the words kept echoing through her mind, even as her feet found the way to General Basque Grand. And she knew that she’d said them once before. Once, when she had a soul. “I’ll be back for you. We’ll see each other again. Don’t worry.”
CENTRAL: The Next Morning
“Thank you, General Grand. You are dismissed.”
General Basque Grand, the Ironblood alchemist, saluted his leader and shut the door as he left.
King Bradley sat back in his chair, and rubbed his chin as he thought the situation over. Finally, he pushed the call button, and his secretary’s voice answered. “Juliet, do I have any appointments in the next half-hour?”
“No sir.”
“Good. Come in here a minute, would you?”
He pulled the curtains shut, as “Juliet Davis” made her way into the comfy, oak-panelled office. Turning around, his smile had gone, and Pride considered Sloth once more.
“She’s made her next move. General Grand was just in here, requesting confirmation on an order. Apparently, he’s to turn over the bulk of the red stone stores to “My Agent”.
“Also known as Lust.”
Sloth’s eyes narrowed. “Why would Dante want that many from us? We just sent her half of all we had earlier in the week…”
Pride noticed the “Us”, but didn’t let his smile show on his face.
“Why, it might have something to do with this telegram that I received back from Dublith this morning.”
He handed it to Sloth, who read it over, scowling. “Telegram undeliverable stop. Mrs. Dante’s mansion destroyed by inexplicable cataclysm four nights ago stop. No survivors found stop.”
She let it drop back to the table. “What does this mean?”
“It means that Lust was the last one of us to see Dante, before this “Mysterious Cataclysm.” And she came back from Dublith after the Cataclysm hit. There’s no way she would have missed something like this. It begs the question, then…”
“…Why didn’t she mention this to us? And what happened to Dante?” Finished Sloth.
“And what possible reason would she have not to tell us if something HAD happened…”
“…Unless she’s the one who caused it to happen.” Sloth finished again.
“And now she’s delivering orders that we’re not to speak of to each other. I wonder… Have you seen Envy since Lust arrived?”
“No, I haven’t.” Sloth was finishing the equation, and not liking what it added up to. “And now she wants a large amount of flawed stones. Our stones.”
Pride stood in the shadows, the light cascading down his craggy face as he looked out the window. “There’s only one explanation.”
“She’s pulled a coup.” Sloth finished.
The two were silent for a second, considering the implications.
“What WERE your orders?” Asked Pride.
“To meet her at the train station, in about a week, and to say nothing of them to anyone else. What were yours?”
“A notice that she’d be running some errands around Laboratory number Five, and to ensure cooperation of all personnel there with her requests, no matter how strange they sounded. And to speak of them to no one else.”
Sloth sighed. “What a pain. I wonder what she thinks she can accomplish.”
“She could accomplish nothing by this. At least, she couldn’t with Dante alive.”
Sloth’s eyes went wide. “You don’t think…”
“I do. In fact, the only reason it hasn’t worked, is that she didn’t know about the phone. I’m glad that I made that suggestion to Dante last month…”
“But… How… How will we ever become human, if she’s killed Dante? What will we do? What was she thinking?”
Pride shook his head. “She’s always been a spider, with her long fingers in countless webs. She probably has an alchemist lined up, or she’s found an alternate method. She knows something… And she found a way to get the drop on Dante. We’ll have to approach this carefully.”
Sloth nodded. “What do you suggest?”
“Oh, I suggest nothing. I’ve already given the orders, and set things in motion. She’ll be back in a week to pick up the red stones, after all.”
Pride smiled, and slipped back into his chair. “The first rule of war. If you know where your enemy will be, your attack cannot fail…”