Worlds Collide

A/N:xXxHyuugaNejixXx, Sorry, didn't realize that. I had friends read that review tho, and it confused all of us. yummietummy, I guess you're going to have to read and see. MustangsHavoc, glad you felt it was a good send-off for Wrath. And yeah, I get dreams where the fanfic crosses over, too. Amethyst-eyed Koneko, glad you enjoyed this send-off. Later, we see a little more of the Gate's reasoning later. Kat Loussier, glad you've enjoyed For Her. For Him. and hope I hear from you more. I love long reviews. And Raine, I have to say, I have never heard of Raine Sage, so that's just happy coincidence.

Chapter 57

Mysterious Girls

Nicholas sat up in bed with a start. He’d felt the Gate, certain it was opening, but felt something new and different. He heard movement down the hall, the murmured voices of his fathers. Climbing out of bed, still clad in only his gray pajama bottoms, he walked down the hall, checking to see if Aideen had felt it, the way he had and, it seemed, their dad had. He opened the door to the still purple room, finding his sister’s bed was empty.

“Dad! Papa!” he shouted at the top of his lungs as he ran to their door, pounding on it. He knew better than to open it, even though he suspected his fathers wouldn’t be in the mood to do anything that would scar him for life if he walked in on it. “Dad, Papa, wake up! Aideen’s gone again.”

The door opened, his papa’s sleep dazed face poking through the crack. “What?”

“The escape artist has done it again,” Nicholas answered. “She’s snuck out.”

“She does this often?” Hohenheim asked, having apparently been woken up by Nicholas’s yelling.

“Afraid so,” Nicholas’s older father answered.

“Okay, I’m dressed,” his dad’s voice said from inside the bedroom, making Nicholas cringe for a second desperate not to go back to that night years ago when he'd walked in on the two of them.

“I’m guessing you felt the Gate, too?” his papa asked, opening the door to show that he was dressed in most of his uniform.

“Dad sensed it too?”

There was a nod. “And now your sister’s out there.” There was a tone in that low voice that told Nicholas that his papa might be sick if he had to think about it.

“Nicholas, you need to stay here,” his dad said as he came bursting through the door, clad in his own uniform. “I wouldn’t ask this normally, but please check your sister’s room. We need to find out where she might have gone.”

He nodded in response and watched as his fathers moved down the hall at a pace that even Nicholas might have struggled to keep up with. He didn’t like the idea of having to stay here, wanting to be out looking for his sister alongside his parents, but he didn’t see much choice. He tried to remain calm, knowing that his grandfather’s eyes were watching him carefully.

He didn’t really understand why, but he felt under particular scrutiny when around the elder man. Once again feeling Hohenheim watching him, Nicholas moved to the purple and white bedroom, moving immediately to the floor beside the bed. “If you want to help,” he said, “go through her desk.”

“Do you do this often?”

“No. But, with the attack, and Dante, I’d have done it if my parents hadn’t asked.”

Hohenheim only nodded as he sat at the white desk, looking through the drawers full of experimental transmutations.

“She’s very talented.”

“Don’t I know it,” Nicholas huffed as he lifted the bedskirt and shifted around a few alchemy textbooks, pulling them out, flipping through their pages, desperate to find something that made his staying at the house feel useful somehow. But, these books hadn’t changed since he’d looked through them when his twin had been reading them. He saw the guitar that Fletcher had purchased for his sister in the east. It was dusty from disuse, save for a spot on the neck of the instrument, as though it was regularly grabbed and turned to reveal something behind it. Being thorough, Nicholas pulled the instrument completed from beneath Aideen’s bed.

“Does she play?”

“Not like she used to.”

There was only a faint nod from the older man as he began feeling beneath the desk. Beside him, Nicholas was laying on his stomach, reaching beneath the bed, pulling out a dark mahogany box. Retrieving it from its place at the corner, he maneuvered the box and himself until he was once again in a seated position, the box on his lap. “Are you looking for something?” Nicholas asked.

“A false bottom,” the older man answered.

Nicholas made a noise of acknowledgement before opening the box, finding several pictures of the family, his mother, one of Phillip, a few of Aideen and Fletcher together, a few of Fletcher alone. There were some of the various friends and family that they were closest to, but beneath them was a red velvet bag, one he’d seen wrapped around bottles of expensive bottles of liquor. He set the photos aside and removed the bag, somewhere in the back of his mind, getting a sense of what the thing already held, and feeling as though the heavy item was resting inside his stomach.

He saw Hohenheim turn, observing him closely. He reached into the bag, feeling the cool metal and wood of the handle. That nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach grew as the revolver appeared from the bag in his hand. As carefully as one who’d been raised to understand his mother’s interests as well as his fathers’, Nicholas analyzed the weapon.

“Your mother was a marksman, was she not? Is that one of hers?”

“It’s only a thirteen-year-old model.” He popped out the chamber of the revolver, seeing the thing held six bullets, fully loaded. Analyzing the thing, he could see it hadn’t been fired, not recently, at least.

“You’re that familiar with them?”

“Dad and Papa thought it was best. Mother wasn’t interested in antiques or music or theater. She liked guns, so we learned about them.” He looked closer at the barrel of the thing, noticing a hint of red at the tip. It didn’t look like blood, because blood would have been dark had it been dried and would have appeared much more wet than this red substance if it had been. Nicholas put his finger to the red, smearing just a bit on his fingers and rubbing them together against his thumb. “It’s oily, tacky like grease paint or lipstick…”

At those words from his own mouth, Nicholas leapt from the floor and ran to the door. He thought of picking up a phone, but knew the phone lines were still out from the attack. Even if he grabbed hold of one of the guards stationed outside, he didn’t know if it would be enough. His sister could be out there doing something stupid, maybe trying to face Dante herself.

Because there was one fact that was blatantly obvious: Aideen didn’t care for her own life anymore and had tried to take it at least once with that revolver upstairs.

********

Frank stood inside of David Patterson’s bedroom, the place where the man had hanged himself from the rafter. There was something far too convenient about the fact that the man was now dead, just as were the Thules. If Frank were being perfectly honest with himself, he’d have said that someone had intended it to go that way, and really, he was surprised that Riza and Hohenheim had made it out alive.

Looking over what he—alone, apparently—felt was a crime scene, Frank did his best to find the evidence that his men obviously didn’t want to see. He felt absolutely certain that someone had killed this man, this waste of a uniform, but he knew no one else outside of those who knew Dante and her involvement in the Thules’ attack would ever have suspected the same.

As far as Frank could tell, there were seven other men who had taken over control in their unit or troop, some merely operating equipment they weren’t truly trained for or by commanding their fellow troops. All could have been perceived as heroes, save for the fact that the coincidence pointed to something more similar. These men, until the recent attack, showed no sign of moving through the ranks, let alone leadership material.

There was some murmuring down the hall outside of Patterson’s small apartment, then the noise of men moving and shifting in the narrow passage to the open door before a young sergeant appeared, looking rather exhausted by whatever journey he’d just made.

“Colonel Archer, sir!” he said.

“What is it, Sergeant?” he asked the young man.

“A young girl is asking for you and Brigadier General Fuery,” the man huffed. “She was wearing Major Curtis’s uniform coat.”

At first, all Frank could do was nod, forgetting the importance of the name Curtis. As his brain caught up with the sergeant’s words, Frank felt his chest tighten and his breathing quicken. “Wrath?” he asked. The man nodded.

“Continue this investigation,” Frank ordered to the troops in the room. “And if I find any of you have been lax, I will personally have you knocked down to private so fast you’ll get whiplash. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Yes, Sir,” his team answered in unison.

“Take me to the girl, sergeant,” he commanded.

********

Roy, along with several of the guards that normally covered him and his home, began scouring the western part of the city. He knew Ed was going East, and much as the fuhrer loathed the idea, Fletcher had gone to look south, upon Roy’s own orders. At the moment, a greater concentration of troops was at the point of the dirigible at the northern part of the city, and they had been notified of Aideen’s disappearance.

Roy’s instincts were telling him to find his daughter, hold her, kiss her, then smack her in Ed-like form. He was worried sick and he was furious that once again, she’d done something so reckless and dangerous. However, he also found himself a bit nauseous at the lingering anger at the back of his mind, one that had nothing to do with her making him fear for her safety. No, this irate feeling made him feel more ashamed than he had in a long while. He was angry that she’d run off again, almost demonstrating for all of his troops a complete lack of leadership on his part. It wasn’t often that the part of himself that had fought to rise through the ranks showed itself, but every time it did, particularly now, it made him hate himself all the more.

Pulling himself from his own thoughts with a self-chastising attitude, he focused again on the search. He had to find her. He could feel ashamed himself after he had Aideen in his arms again.

Still, he looked around for any sight of her. She’d taken the red coat, and really, that should have made things easier, but no one, not even those in the underground city have yet to see her.

“Papa…” a crackled voice, that of his son, came across the radio at his side. “Papa, Aideen…”

Roy frantically grabbed for the radio at his side, unlatching the strap and holding it to his mouth. “Nicholas? Have you found her? Did she come home?” Despite himself, Roy couldn’t manage to contain the hope in his voice.

“No… found… gun… using it… ill herself.”

“What, Nicholas?” Roy repeated, unable to hear his son clearly with the disturbance from the crashed planes and downed towers.

“Found… kill herself.”

And with that, the realization what his son was trying to tell him, struck so fast and so painfully that the radio slipped from Roy’s hands without a second thought, crashing to the ground.

********

Kain nodded to Riza as he left the car, telling her that she could trust the men he’d left to guard her. Apparently, the woman wasn’t much different from the one he’d know, in that she didn’t want to be far from the action. She felt, for whatever reason, that the closer she was, the better her chances that she would get to go back to her family. Her reason was that of a woman who wasn’t accustomed to staying behind, and Kain knew that, according to Frank, she’d been a spy, herself, during the “Great War” on earth, and that was how she’d met the Roy of that world.

Kain could see Frank a bit closer to the tent than he was, and he ran as quickly as he could to catch up. Frank must have heard him, though his pace didn’t slow, a hand merely reached out, waiting for Kain to be close enough to grasp it.

When he did, Kain allowed his husband to lead him into the tent where a fierce-looking little girl stood on top of a medical cot, somehow keeping her precarious balance, watching them closely.

“Frank Archer and Kain Fuery?” she asked.

They both nodded. Kain released his husband’s hand and went to the girl, watching as she flinched when he tried to touch her arm to get a closer look at the coat.

“Little one? Do you have a name?” Frank asked from behind Kain.

“Nina.” She shook her head. “Sloth. Don’t know.”

Kain turned his head to the side just enough to look at Frank out of the corner of his eye, seeing a faint nod of acknowledgement that what this girl just said could signal she was a homunculus.

“Why are you looking for us?”

“The man who gave me these,” She looked down at the clothes. “told me to.”

“And where is Wrath?” Kain asked, trying to remain calm.

“He said to tell Russell he was gone. He was at the Gate.” Her large violet eyes looked him over carefully, then glanced up at Frank, who had closed the distance and grabbed hold of the younger man’s shoulder in reassurance. She looked at the hand on Kain’s shoulder, brown eyebrows furrowing. Kain couldn’t help but notice those eyes, the same color as Wrath’s. Perhaps a consequence of being a homunculus?

Kain shook his head minutely, trying not to think of the girl as a homunculus before he knew for sure.

“Why did he send you to us?”

“To tell you that Dante has Aideen,” she said, slowly, as though trying to make sure she got those names right. Kain looked back at Frank, who had already left the tent to call up all available troops. Honestly, Kain would have preferred their positions reversed, as he needed to remain calm around the girl, and he was nowhere near the skilled at keeping his worry from showing on his face.

“He told you that?”

“Mm-hmm,” she said, her finger pointing out and poking the rim of the glasses perched on Kain’s nose.

“And where did you come from?”

“The Gate.”

“What was the Gate like?”

“Big, lots of white everywhere. And that big guy.”

“And after the Gate?”

“There was a lady there, tried to put some… redstones, the big guy called them, in my mouth. But I got away.”

“Nina,” Kain said, preferring not to call the girl Sloth, “do you remember where the woman was?”

“It had light, but not a lot, I had to come up to the street where the other men in blue found me.”

“Were you in a city underground, with lots of buildings like this?”

She seemed to think for a moment. If she was a homunculus, then there was a strong possibility she didn’t have a concept of a city. “No. Lots of stone and tunnels.”

“Where did you come out?”

“Near a big wall. There were lots of guys in these,” she said, pulling at the uniform coat. “I think there was a building there, kind of big, but not huge.”

“The guards, did they have a gold patch on their arm?” Kain asked, hoping he was wrong.

“Yes,” she answered.

He smiled at her, trying to ignore the gnawing sensation in his gut. “I’ll be back in just a minute.” She nodded, sitting down on the cot. Kain stepped outside the canvas tent and grabbed Frank’s arm as he was conveying the message across the radio of Aideen’s capture. “Dante is underneath the fuhrer’s home. She’s made tunnels there.”

The icy blue eyes looked at him somberly, and the message was changed. They now knew where there enemy was after all this time. The problem was who their enemy might appear to be and the danger that Aideen might be in while within their clutches.

********

Dante didn’t have much choice now. She had planned for her attack to come at once, but it appeared it was going to have to come in waves, as the Thules were not yet making their attempt to break through. It pissed her off to no end that the homunculus had run off. Really, it appeared this one had been another Sloth, and if that was true, then it was a great loss. Though she hadn’t created the original Sloth, that thing had been very loyal to her.

There were far too many things that didn’t make sense with the new homunculus’s reaction, but much as the ancient alchemist wanted to analyze it, there just wasn’t time. She reached through the bars of the first chimera cage, rubbing the thing’s head, grateful for at more than just Tucker’s skill at making these things, but the fact that he had trained them to recognize her using that lifelike doll and a phonograph of her voice.

Oh yes, that was just lovely.

“My, my, being talkative.” Dante moved to the wall out of the road of the chimeras. “Feeling rebellious, Aideen?”

Fuck you.

“Do you kiss your fathers with that mouth?” Dante looked at the animals who knew, for once, that they were going to be released, free to roam and kill. “I wonder if any of my babies will manage to find them before they find us. I wouldn’t dare to hope that for your daddy. He’s too stubborn.” Dante clapped her hands and placed the right one on the wall, setting into motion the dissolution of the bars.

You can’t!

“Go from here!” Dante ordered the chimeras. “Run and feed to your dark little hearts’ content.”

No!

“Are you planning on stopping me? Because really, you’ve been successful thus far. All those entertaining attempts with the gun.”

Piss off

Dante smiled, watching as chimera after chimera ran, flew, leapt through the tunnels, easily making their way to the surface. “You seem to have inherited the brat’s vocabulary. Sorry if I’m not impressed.”

My parents will stop you, and if they don’t Nicholas will. He’s always been able to tell the difference between us.

“Yes, and look at all the good it did him,” Dante said as she clapped once again, sending up a signal to the sky above to notify the troops under her thumb that the time had come to attack. “Your parents put him in therapy and decided that they preferred my behavior to yours. Rather amusing, really, how much they prefer me to their own daughter. I’m sure even Phillip would argue the same thing since I put out.”

Fuck you. This time the voice was weaker in Dante’s head.

“No, I believe he fucked you,” Dante said with a mental smirk. “Tell me, when we traded off, was he as awkward and harsh as he’d been when I’d gotten him started? Because really, it seemed like it would get painful when he got into it. Am I right? I’m sure Fletcher would have known what he was doing, but he rejected you. Just like everyone does.”

Shut the hell up! Again, the voice was barely more than a whisper. Dante was once again regaining her control over this body. And then, the dwindling presence had faded into near nothingness.

********

Russell was once again underground, focusing at the moment on his shame for having broken down in front of his little brother. He was a grown man. He didn’t need to be sobbing into Fletcher’s arms like some child. Russell rubbed over his face, his fingers and thumb lingering over the goatee that he’d grown over the last few months. Shame was easy, anger worked fine too. Remorse would leave him absolutely useless, and he just couldn’t have that, not as long as there was even the slightest chance that Wrath might be out there somewhere, alive.

As he searched through rubble, trying to locate the blocks that had been erected against the Gate, Russell found himself standing stock still as he heard the sound of growling echo through the chamber of the underground city. A cold chill ran down his spine, sensing that the situation from three years ago was being repeated. The growls grew louder and he did his best to erect a fortress of some sort and pull out his gun.

As a major, he began barking orders to the other troops in a harsh whisper. For just a moment, the fact that he felt they needed protected, needed leadership, allowed him to think more clearly than he had since the first breach of the Gate. Though he wasn’t admittedly the most militaristic of the state alchemists, he felt for now that he needed to do this, to command as Wrath would have, protect as his lover had, and hope that at the very least somewhere out there, someone was doing the same for the younger man.

********

Really, there would have been few who could have kept up with the Fullmetal Alchemist on a good day, but running after Edward Elric, panicked and murderous father, was impossible, and Ed knew it. He’d lost his guards ages back, and he didn’t give a damn. He’d heard the message from Frank. They believed Dante had Aideen beneath the ground. Somewhere beneath his own damned house, his daughter was in danger.

It was possible that Dante had her already, possible that the bitch knew about the necklaces and had…

As he ran, Ed shook his head. There were dozens of things to think about and that was the last one he wanted on his mind. He preferred to think of the method by which he wanted to end Dante’s life.

Seeing red didn’t begin to describe it as he charged through the streets, prepared to destroy the bitch he should have finished off properly the first time around.

As he neared his house, he could hear the sounds of gunfire and pained roaring. There were shouts from humans, cries from something less than human. And so, Ed ran faster.

He watched as a chimera appeared from what appeared to be nothing more than a sewer, surfacing and laying eyes upon the small alchemist.

“You really don’t want to mess with me, you monster,” Ed muttered as he transformed his arm and attacked the thing, not even giving the meshed animal a chance to make the first move. Quickly and smoothly, he sliced through the mammal’s flesh, ignoring the blood that covered his arm from this move.

It fell limply to the ground, allowing Ed enough room to climb down into the sewer where it had come from.

He was prepared to attack another one, but found that many others were already attacking elsewhere. Whatever ones had intended to climb through at the sewage ditch had already made their escape it seemed. Chest heaving, Ed made his way through unknown tunnels, ones that looked as though they’d been created recently, all perfectly formed, all looking to be done with alchemy. It was dark, but with a faint glow from a nearby chamber keeping just the faintest glow within the tunnels.

Carefully and as quietly as he possibly could, Ed walked to the tunnel, wanting to rush in and attack, but not daring to for the sake of his little girl. When he saw the red coat, he nearly gasped, nearly rushed to her side. Instead, he watched as she turned, looking at him, and tears came to her eyes almost immediately. “Daddy! You’re here. Oh, damn, I thought…” She ran to him, wet trails now streaking her cheeks, and wrapped her arms tightly against him.