THE SCROLL OF DEADALUS

DISCLAIMER - I don\'t own the FMA guys I\'m just borrowing them for a while!
THIS DISCLAIMER APPLIES TO THE ENTIRE STORY - ALL CHAPTERS!!!!!
(So now the owners of this site should be okay with letting me keep this fic up here!!)
Warning - this is a WAR story so there will be descriptions of acts of violence (shootings, stuff blowing up, etc.)
If this Website had a category for this I would have used it =^_^=
This story has multiple chapters and is a STORY with some \"naughty bits\" that are part of it.
Hope you enjoy my very first attempt to write Yaoi!
This story is dedicated to KYATTO who is a HUGE fan of Fullmetal Alchemist and LOVES Edward (especially naked!).
Thanks for reading!
Rein
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The Scroll of Deadalus

“When I asked for a more interesting assignment, this was not what I had in mind!” Edward Elric groused as he ran dodging bullets closely followed by his brother Alphonse. The shots pinged off his Auto-mail and Edward was thankful all the fire was coming from the right so he could use his mechanical arm as a shield.
Alphonse didn’t have any problems deflecting bullets. The suit of armor that was his body did an excellent job of deflecting gunfire. He would be a little dented but it wasn’t anything major. They would just buff out the dings later.

Edward found the remains of a blasted out building and both brothers ducked behind what was left of a brick wall. Their unit had been called in to suppress the rebels that had taken control of Pallet Town, a small community on the fringes of the Kingdom. It was a mining town with nothing special to recommend it. Its only value was the mine that contained rich veins of iron ore, a valuable commodity to the military since it was the raw materials for their machines of war.

Edward popped the empty clip from his pistol and slapped in a fresh one. He chambered a round saying, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

“You’re not old,” his brother contradicted in his usual gentle tone.

“Chronologically no, but this State Army shit is making me live my life in dog years.”

“I wonder what happened to the Colonel and the others,” Alphonse wondered as he dared to peek around the wall.

“They’re out there,” Edward reassured him. “If I had a radio I could find them.”

“They never gave us one.”

“They probably figured we could make one using Alchemy.”

“Well…we could if we had the right materials,” Alphonse said.

Edward looked down at the spent clip lying in the dirt near his feet. “Well, that’s a start. We just need to scrounge up a few more things, like some copper wire and glass to form the tubes.”

“So you know the equivalent exchanges to build a radio from scratch Ed?”

“You’re talking to the guy who knows the equivalent exchanges needed to build a person,” Edward stated irritated by the question. “ I know the ingredients to make a fucking radio!”

“Okay,” Alphonse responded in a small voice.

Edward sighed. “Sorry, Al, I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that the asshole responsible for us being here-I can’t rip a new one! We could have retaken this town days ago if it wasn’t for the “no alchemy” orders. This house-to-house warfare sucks. I could have dropped these punks in an afternoon if I was allowed to use my real skills.”

“Those were the orders from Central,” Alphonse said. “I guess they didn’t want the town destroyed. After all, Ed, you can be a one-man wrecking machine when you use your full power.”

“Actually I prefer to look at myself as a one person Urban Renewal Plan.” Edward responded with a hint of pride in his voice. “And this fucking hole could use some serious renovations!”

Alphonse sighed and again dared to see if anyone was coming. The surrounding area looked deserted but he knew it really wasn’t. There were armed men holed up in the shot out buildings that surrounded them and that these men were just waiting to pick off anyone foolish enough to venture out into the open. The only reason they weren’t dead was because they weren’t completely flesh and blood. Edward’s Auto-mail arm and leg offered him protection and Alphonse was completely encased in a solid steel suit of armor. However, they still had to be careful, since Edward was still more flesh than machine and a well-placed shot could kill him.

“We can’t stay here Al,” Edward said. “We’ll make use of the cover we have on this side of the street and see if we can assemble the parts to create a radio.”

Alphonse nodded in agreement and the two brothers ventured out being careful to make use of partial walls and mounds of rubble to cover their movements down the street. A few stray shots whizzed past but they were both able to easily dodge them. As they picked their way along, the two brothers kept an eye out for scraps of copper, glass and metal bits. By the time they reached the end of the main street where the library was, they had picked up enough fragments to meet the equivalent exchange requirements.

Edward found a mostly intact building and led the way in through the back door. He motioned to Alphonse to stay back while he quietly went ahead to check to see if anyone was in there. The back storeroom was devoid of people so he noiselessly moved forward to check in on the storefront itself. He edged the door to the main area open silently and looked in.

An insurgent had set up a sniper post by the large front bay window. Edward could see from how he had his rifle set up that he would be almost invisible from the street. Edward crept in his soft-soled boots making no sound as they moved across the wooden floor. The young alchemist was barely breathing as he moved in for his sneak attack. He was only a few feet away from the sniper when he saw Major Hawkeye and two of her men slowly venturing right into the line of fire.

Edward heard the rifle cock and that was his call to action. He didn’t have time to transmute his auto-mail arm into a blade so he used what he had and dropped the sniper with two well-placed bullets to the brain shot at point-blank range. The blood spray from the shots stained his pants and part of his sanguine colored coat.

“Fuck!” Edward spat as he kicked the dead insurgent. “You know how hard it is to get blood stains out of leather? And I liked these pants!”

Hawkeye and her men heard the gunfire coming from within the store and dashed over to investigate. They burst in pistols drawn and were surprised to find Edward standing over the body of the dead rebel.

“Where the hell have you been?” Hawkeye asked.

“Out there,” Edward responded motioning in the direction from which they came. “Al is with me. Where is the Colonel?”

“The library,” she told him. “He wants all of us to rendezvous there.”

Alphonse entered the room holding a small radio in his large metal fist. “I reached the Colonel Ed!” he announced. “He wants us to meet him in the library.”

Hawkeye raised an eyebrow at Alphonse. “Where did you get that?” she asked indicating the radio. It wasn’t at all like the ones she and her men had hooked to their belts.

“I made it,” Alphonse replied sounding a little bit proud of himself.

“Alchemy?” she ventured.

Edward nodded. “With the right ingredients you can make almost anything.”

A beat. “Let’s go,” she said. “We’ll be losing the light soon.”

Edward and Alphonse followed her and her men out. They moved swiftly and encountered little resistance as they made their way into the huge stone building. Edward was intrigued. Why did a two-bit place like Pallet Town have a library that was almost as huge as the one at Central? The non-Alchemy command was beginning to make sense. Trash the town and you risk losing the contents of what could be a source of information about the Philosopher’s Stone. Edward flipped the safety on his pistol and holstered it. He wasn’t going to need his gun for what he was about to do.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Hawkeye asked when she noticed Edward separating himself from the group.

“This is a library, Major. What do you think I’m going to do in here?”

“You can crawl through the stacks later. Right now the Colonel wanted all of us to report to him. That includes you.”

Edward shrugged. “Fine,” he grumbled and fell back into the ranks.

They found Colonel Roy Mustang and the surviving members of their company in a large open rotunda on the second floor. Everyone looked like they could use a serious wash and brush up, including the Colonel who looked like he took a few tumbles in the dirt. No one appeared to be seriously injured but he also noticed that there was only half as many people there as when they started this mission. None of the members of Roy Mustang’s close company were missing but they were down manpower.

The Colonel saw them approached and motioned them over. Hawkeye led the way and Edward and Alphonse hung back a bit taking in their surroundings. From what he had observed, Edward could understand why the library was chosen as a rallying point. It was in the center of town and had windows on all four sides of the building. Next to the church tower it was the tallest structure in Pallet Town. Edward wondered why the insurgents chose to leave the building alone but his question was answered the moment he looked up at the glass domed ceiling above them.

Etched in the glass was an alchemical circle. He nudged Alphonse and he, too, looked up at the circle above their heads.

“No wonder those religious freaks left this place alone,” Edward whispered. “They probably think this place is cursed or something.”

“Did you look at the circle?” Alphonse whispered back. “I mean, really look at it?”

“I’m trying not to Al,” Edward told him as he slowly made his way over to where his unit was positioned by the Colonel. “I’m just hoping he didn’t see it.”

Alphonse knew exactly whom his brother was referring to. Colonel Roy Mustang, the Flame Alchemist, was dangerous enough without the addition of an Elemental Enhancement Circle to fuel his fire. The two brothers tried to casually join their company but it was rather difficult to be subtle when you’re clad in a seven-foot tall suit of armor.

“Nice of you to join us,” Mustang commented to the brothers. “Where the hell were you?”

“If you bothered to issue us a radio we would have told you where we were!” Edward shot back. “It was just by luck we found Major Hawkeye!”

Mustang noticed the small radio Alphonse forged hanging off Edward’s belt and smirked slightly. “Maybe I didn’t give you a radio but you seemed to have managed to acquire one on your own.”

“I’m good at scrounging.”

Mustang took the radio off Edward’s belt and examined it. He could tell instantly it was made by alchemy and he remarked, “I thought I made it clear there was to be no alchemy performed on this mission.”

“Yeah, well, if you bothered to give me a fucking radio I wouldn’t have had to make one!” Edward snapped about to reach his limit break.

The Colonel’s expression became one of mild amusement. He seemed to be enjoying Edward’s anger. He handed back the radio saying, “Hang on to this, you may need it later.”

“Gee thanks,” Edward’s replied his voice dripping sarcasm.

Mustang ignored him and commanded, “Fan out. I want this building secure. Strong Arm, Alphonse, Fullmetal, you three with me. Let’s move!”

The regular army crew dispersed and headed off in all directions. Mustang led his team off to what looked like a conference room on the third floor of the building. As they passed under the etched dome Edward and Alphonse both made a concentrated effort to not look up. They were both not going to draw any attention to what they saw up on that dome. If Mustang found it, there wouldn’t be too much they could do about it. Edward could only hope by not drawing any attention to what he saw that he could delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

However, all thoughts of the dome left Edward’s brain the moment they entered the conference room. On the table before them was an open scroll that contained an alchemical circle the likes of which Edward had never seen before in his life. He thought the circle he had to cast for the human transmutation was complex but this thing made his circle look like a kindergarten lesson. The symbols were in languages that had been dead for centuries and the scroll itself wasn’t made of paper, it was skin.

Human skin.

Edward recoiled in horror. There was no way he was going near that.

Alphonse saw the look on Edward’s face and whispered, “Are you all right?”

“Al, we’re getting out of here,” Edward said backing away from the scroll towards the door. However his progress was stopped when he ran into Armstrong who was well over two heads taller and four wider than Edward.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he growled.

“Someplace that isn’t here,” was all Edward said as he deftly slipped past the large man and made for the door.

Mustang halted his progress by catching Edward by the back of his belt. “You are going nowhere, Mister Elric.”

The ice in Mustang’s tone made a chill go through him. The Colonel was not someone you wanted to get pissed off at you. And he was sounding very pissed off at that moment.

Edward dared to look over his shoulder at the Colonel giving the older man a wide sheepish grin and chuckled nervously, “Okay…I’ll stay.”

Mustang let his belt go and grabbed him hard by his arm – his human arm – and led him back over to the table. “Your job is to translate this into modern alchemical terms. Your brother can assist you. Next to our library at Central this place has the largest collection of Alchemy books in the world. Make use of them. But you do not leave this building without my authorization. Do you understand?”

Edward nodded mutely.

“Good, now get to work. I’ll be back later to check on your progress. Armstrong, make sure no one bothers these two, got it?”

The large Alchemist nodded in assent and the Colonel walked out of the room wearing a cold determined look on his face.

The moment he was gone Edward let out a sigh of relief.

Alphonse joined him by the scroll. The younger Elric examined the document and if it had been possible for a suit of silver armor to go white then Alphonse would have become a metal ghost. “He wants us to translate that?” he barely whispered.

“Yeah.” Edward responded trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

“That thing is written in blood. Human blood.”

“I know.”

“What are you two going on about?” Armstrong demanded.

“Nothing,” Edward responded quickly. “We just trying to decide where to begin is all. This circle is really complex. We’ve never attempted anything of this magnitude before.”

“Mustang thinks you two are a couple of geniuses. Let’s see if he’s right or just keeping you around because he likes how Fullmetal’s butt looks in tight leather pants.”
Edward glared at him. “Fuck you,” he spat as he headed for the door.
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to be continued....