Post by silverviper2134 on Jul 27, 2009 6:58:14 GMT -6
Warning: Some material may be inappropriate for younger readers. Viewer discretion is advised.
Summary: A revamped version of my old story, “Nameless”. We all know Marta dies by King Bradley’s hands shortly after revealing he was Pride. But, what if someone else died along with her? Someone nobody knew existed until after their death?
Note: The timeline is stretched out from the anime, making the time between certain events much longer than in the actual show.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: 7 years ago. Place: Fifth Laboratory Medical Research Bay))
Cowards couldn’t even do this to her with taking great measures to protect their own hides.
Not only had she been sedated moments before being brought into the room with the bright lights and “doctors” but they also kept her arms restrained, pinned down with five pounds weights at different sections.
There was some pain in the limbs, of course, but that was nothing compared to the pain in her stomach. That was the reason she was in here to begin with; that morning she had been awakened by horrible stomach pains and a widening puddle of blood. She had just lain on the floor for nearly an hour before one of the “doctors” came in to check on the experiments.
And twenty minutes later, here she was, lying on a cold metal table, unable to do anything but watch as the men in white coats poked and prodded her, put their fingers wherever they desired.
If not for the sedatives and weights keeping her from attacking, those men would be dead, no doubt about it.
She could feel her fingers twitch as one of the bastards held up a small cup filled to the brim with fresh blood. The cup was made of clear plastic, allowing her to see the blood and anything else it contained. This included a very small, almost undetectable mass floating at the top.
She knew what it was; she’d been in this situation a number of times in the past six years.
Still, making her watch and listen to their spiel while she lay on the table unable to do anything to them....
“Miscarriage” she could hear one of them tell the others as she walked over to a nearby sink. “It seems the female chimera’s body is incapable of supporting a fetus for more than twelve weeks”.
The bastard turned on the faucet, washing the blood-filled cup out. He poured the contents of the cup down the drain, scouring it afterwards to remove any evidence that anything had been inside.
Once that was over, the bastards wasted no time in throwing her back into the cage with her comrades.
A few of them asked how she was feeling, but the sedatives were still in effect, making it impossible to answer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Marta….how are you feeling”?
That was the first thing she heard once the sedatives wore off an hour later.
The snake-chimera sighed and shook her head. “I’m fine, Dorochette” she told her friend, not even trying to look at him as she responded.
She could hear his footsteps as he walked away. She was left alone with her thoughts, and maybe that was for the best.
In all honesty, she had been lying when she’d said she was fine; she just didn’t want Dorochette to worry about her.
In reality, she really didn’t feel anything at all.
After so many miscarriages (she’d lost count after twelve), she had just completely gone numb to it.
Though, she could still feel enough to be pissed at the alchemists. She had known they were assholes, but this made her despise them even more.
As soon as she had recovered from the transmutation that turned her into a chimera, the bastards decided to perform another experiment on her, a medical one. Somehow, they had gotten her pregnant without ever telling her who the father was supposed to be. Probably didn’t even know themselves.
At the time, she didn’t really care---she was just happy to be having a baby. It was something to make her feel….normal, like her body was still functioning the way it was before being combined with a serpent.
But a few weeks later, she woke up in the middle of the night, bleeding heavily. The “doctors” said she had miscarried, simply disposing of the embryo’s remains once they gave the diagnostics.
And, for a couple months, they left her alone, unless they were testing her.
Then, they drugged her and put her in the same position as eight weeks before. And so it went for the next few years----the bastards would somehow get a baby inside her, she would miscarry, and they would wait a couple months before repeating the process all over again.
This one was the latest and hopefully the last. When the doctors had told her she was pregnant again, she didn’t really care---it’d be over within a month; none of the others had lasted more than eight weeks.
When she reached the ninth week of the pregnancy, she couldn’t help but allow herself to hope a little. Maybe this one would actually be viable, make it to full term. Now, that hope was completely gone. And to be honest, she wasn’t too upset about it.
Better to just accept the fact that what the “scientists” had done to her had caused her body to ignore something it was supposed to do. A baby just wasn’t something she’d ever have.
She just had to accept that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: Approximately 18 weeks ago. Place: The Devil’s Nest, Dublith))
She shivered slightly as he ran his hands down her back, claws skating over her skin.
Fingers replaced claws as a hand massaged her shoulders.
This wasn’t like anything she could remember experiencing before, and not only because her partner wasn’t human.
He nibbled on her earlobe with sharp teeth, almost purring into her ear. “Having fun?” he asked a bit of a chuckle at the end.
She turned her head in order to face him, a slight smirk starting to play on her lips. Rather than speak, she gave a slight hum as her response.
“Am I supposed to take that as a ‘no’?” he questioned her, kissing her throat, tongue running over the mark the Labs had left on her. “Well, we’re just going to have to remedy that, won’t we?”
She couldn’t keep herself from grinning somewhat as he once again started to run his hands down her back, pressing a little into her spine.
The corners of her mouth turned up a little more when he slid his left hand, his marked hand, under her shirt and up towards her chest, the other hand lifting the garment over the woman's head. Though, unlike her previous smile, this was more of a smirk, a bit of childish mocking.
Greed looked hurt for a moment, before returning her sarcastic grin with one of his own.
“Alright then, Marta” he said, a hint of a growl in his voice, “I’ll make a deal with you”. Leaning over, he kissed the pulse point in her throat before whispering in her eye. “I’ll give you everything tonight…but you have to do the same for me”.
She wasn’t exactly sure how to respond; none of the words in her mind seemed appropriate. But, her actions always spoke her mind better anyway. She extended her arm, wrapping it around his waist and pulling him down.
The homunculus smiled at this before continuing with his task.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: Approximately 10 weeks ago; Early morning. Place: Dublith Forest))
Never had she been so disappointed to see the sun.
Normally the sun rising was a shine that she was safe, free, out of the Labs.
But not this time. This time, the sun rising meant she was alone.
Her fellow chimeras had been slaughtered shortly before nightfall, and there was no sign of Greed.
The people she considered her family were gone, each and every one of them. The only one left was her.
As she walked away from Alphonse, she made a vow to herself. A vow that she would avenge her fallen comrades; that everyone who’d ever done them wrong would pay. The people dressed in black who had killed Law and Dorochette, those military dogs who had taken away their humanity and imprisoned them for years, and Kimblee---the rat who had betrayed them to their enemy.
It was a promise. A promise to herself. A promise to the other chimeras. And a promise to him.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: 4 days ago. Place: Approximately 50 miles east of Ishbal))
‘What the hell is wrong with me’ was all Marta could think as she once again deposited the half-digested contents of her stomach onto the dusty ground.
For nearly two and a half months she’d been like this: completely unable to keep more than half the stuff she ate down. Yet, strangely, she hadn’t lost much weight.
Actually, quite the opposite had happened. Some kind of mass had formed inside her stomach, causing her to actually gain some weight.
But, that wasn’t what concerned her. What made the snake-chimera worried was the fact that she was able to feel something moving within her stomach. That, coupled with the fact that she was always exhausted made her certain there was something really wrong with her, but what?
‘Haven’t seen anything like this since….’. She felt her stomach drop as the memory resurfaced.
Years ago, there had been a chimera...Shaun, Shane, she really couldn’t remember his name…who had died shortly before Greed had released them.
Of course, someone dying while in that hellhole wasn’t at all unusual; many of them couldn’t handle the experiments and died shortly after. What made this guy stick out in her mind wasn’t the fact that he had died, it was how he died.
According to Bido, who was being tested at the same time as the guy was being “disposed of”, there had been something inside his stomach. It had been some kind of long, stringy worm that had apparently been eating away at the poor bastard’s insides. Marta wouldn’t be too concerned about this if it weren’t for one thing: his symptoms back then had been the same as hers now.
“Damn it” she muttered as the intensity of her current situation began to sink in. So, apparently this…thing inside her would be the end of the snake-chimera.
No matter. As long as she lived long enough to exact her revenge, she’d be happy.
However, there was still one major problem. She had no idea of where to find those freaks dressed in black. The military and Kimblee would be easy to locate, but the people in black were another question.
There had to be someone who could tell her where to find them….
“Brother…you numbskull”.
The snake-chimera’s thoughts were jarred away by the voice and the accompanying footsteps.
The voice was childish---a boy’s voice, and sounded like it was being echoed. The footsteps were loud and clunky, the sound of metal hitting dirt. Both sounds were very familiar to her.
She turned her head slightly to look behind her.
Sure enough, Alphonse Elric passed the alley she was standing in as soon as her head was turned.
Despite her current problem, Marta couldn’t help but smile.
Alphonse knew about the people in black, she reasoned. After all, he had mentioned them and their marks when taken hostage by Greed and the chimeras.
Without another thought, she stepped out of the dark alley and after the suit of armor, staying merely a foot or two away. Al didn’t even seem to notice anyone was following him until she knocked on his back.
“Brother, where did you go? I-“ Alphonse froze as he turned around to speak with who he assumed was his elder brother. “Marta!” he exclaimed with understandable surprise.
Smirking, Marta raised her hand in a type of greeting.
“Long time, no see”.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: 2 days ago, Night. Place: Desert, Approximately 5 miles east of Ishbal))
“So...you’re the one”
It wasn’t a question; She spoke it as fact.
Edward showed no remorse for what he had done.
He saw both her and Greed as criminals, that was his reasoning. Apparently Greed killed an old woman named Dante, and that was reason enough to kill him.
It didn’t bother her though. She knew that Greed had let himself die.
Noticing a snake slithering through the sand, she hacked her knife at the reptile, piercing it through the next. Alphonse had thought she was going to kill his brother before he saw it.
“If we were enemies” Marta began picking up the snake-tipped dagger, “You’d already be dead.”
The Elrics were oddly silent as she continued. At least they had some respect.
“Greed knew he’d be sealed again and he couldn’t take it. What is worse for the greedy then having nothing at all? I think he wanted you to end his life, and the pain. My enemies is this are the military elite who made us, those freaks dressed up in black, and the rat who betrayed us most of all-”.
She slashed her knife down, cutting the snake almost in half as she spat out his name.
As she finished, she sighed and threw the reptilian corpse to Ed, telling him to eat it because they were good for him.
“Really? Then why don’t you eat it?”
She joked that if she did, she’d be a cannibal. It was partly true, of course, but the main reason was because the simple idea of eating made her stomach churn.
Besides, eating anything could easily make the worm inside her stronger. That was the last thing she wanted right now.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: 4 hours ago. Place: Outside of Central Headquarters))
She’d barely been able to tell Alphonse what she had discovered.
The man…the monster in charge of the country was a Homunculus. There was no way she could have been mistaken. She had seen the Ouroborus tattoo on his eye, the one kept hidden beneath that black patch.
But she didn’t have the time to do anything other than reveal exactly what this man really was. A second after the words left her mouth, a cold blade pierced her chest.
When she saw the blood running smoothly from her wound, she couldn’t help but smile. In spite of the pain, she was actually happy.
She hadn’t been able to fulfill her promise. The military elite, those freaks in black, and worst of all, Kimblee, were all still alive.
But, she’d be with Greed and her comrades again. After more than two months of separation, they’d finally be reunited.
That was reason enough to be happy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: Present. Place: Outside of Central Headquarters))
Havoc covered the chimera’s body with the tarp, taking a brief glance at Alphonse as he did so. The child armor didn’t look back; his gaze was fixed to the ground. He must’ve been pretty close to the chimera. Not that they needed to see the kid looking down to tell he was upset at her death. After all, they had found the corpse inside of the armor.
Fuery got ready to stand, but rather than place his hand on solid concrete, he placed it in a small puddle of blood. His hand slid out from under him; he started falling face-first toward the hard ground. And he would’ve likely broken his nose if he didn’t place his hands down on the first solid surface he could reach. That surface was the chimera’s body; one of his hands landed directly on her stomach, which felt…strange.
“This is strange. Her stomach’s pretty hard” he commented, putting a bit of pressure on the small lump under the tarp.
For what seemed like hours, nobody moved.
Then Mustang knelt down next to the Master Sergeant, mimicking his actions and pressing on the chimera’s stomach. An eyebrow rose, as though the Colonel felt he knew something.
He glanced at Falman, ordering his elder subordinate to retrieve a knife.
Falman, of course, obeyed, though he did look rather confused. What could they need a knife for?
A short while later, Falman returned, a small knife in his hand. He handed it to his superior and, along with everyone else (save Alphonse who seemed to be in a short of shock) watched as he lowered the tarp so it was below the chimera’s waistline.
The Flame Alchemist then proceeded to lifting up her shirt, revealing a slightly larger bulge than first suspected, and made a large incision in her stomach.
There was a collective moan from Havoc, Fuery, and Falman as he reached into the opening he had created. It was replaced by stunned and somewhat mournful silence as he pulled something out.
“It’s a baby”
Alphonse lifted his head when he heard Fuery’s comment.
He glanced at Marta for a brief second before looking to see what Colonel Mustang was holding.
And he almost gasped; whatever he expected to see, this wasn’t it.
There was a baby in Mustang’s arms, but it didn’t look anything like the infants Al could remember seeing. It was very small, probably not even ten inches long. Its skin was disturbingly thin; he could see what appeared to be ribs through the skin. Despite the size, the baby did have a fair amount of dark hair on its head. It also had a thin layer of hair covering its arms, legs, and back, making it look something like a baby monkey. It just didn’t really look human.
That didn’t matter though; Alphonse still felt worse than before.
As if not being able to save Marta wasn’t bad enough. Now he’d failed to save not only the snake-chimera, but her unborn child, which hadn’t even had a chance to live.
He watched as Mustang disconnected the fetal corpse from Marta’s body; the raven-haired man also cut a small section of the tarp away, placing the baby inside before handing the bundle to Hawkeye.
The first lieutenant walked past Alphonse, ready to dispose of the child’s body, and the young man was able to see what the child was going to become. He only was able to get a quick glimpse, but he saw enough.
‘You were going to have a baby, Marta. A boy. But, not anymore, because of me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry’.
Summary: A revamped version of my old story, “Nameless”. We all know Marta dies by King Bradley’s hands shortly after revealing he was Pride. But, what if someone else died along with her? Someone nobody knew existed until after their death?
Note: The timeline is stretched out from the anime, making the time between certain events much longer than in the actual show.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: 7 years ago. Place: Fifth Laboratory Medical Research Bay))
Cowards couldn’t even do this to her with taking great measures to protect their own hides.
Not only had she been sedated moments before being brought into the room with the bright lights and “doctors” but they also kept her arms restrained, pinned down with five pounds weights at different sections.
There was some pain in the limbs, of course, but that was nothing compared to the pain in her stomach. That was the reason she was in here to begin with; that morning she had been awakened by horrible stomach pains and a widening puddle of blood. She had just lain on the floor for nearly an hour before one of the “doctors” came in to check on the experiments.
And twenty minutes later, here she was, lying on a cold metal table, unable to do anything but watch as the men in white coats poked and prodded her, put their fingers wherever they desired.
If not for the sedatives and weights keeping her from attacking, those men would be dead, no doubt about it.
She could feel her fingers twitch as one of the bastards held up a small cup filled to the brim with fresh blood. The cup was made of clear plastic, allowing her to see the blood and anything else it contained. This included a very small, almost undetectable mass floating at the top.
She knew what it was; she’d been in this situation a number of times in the past six years.
Still, making her watch and listen to their spiel while she lay on the table unable to do anything to them....
“Miscarriage” she could hear one of them tell the others as she walked over to a nearby sink. “It seems the female chimera’s body is incapable of supporting a fetus for more than twelve weeks”.
The bastard turned on the faucet, washing the blood-filled cup out. He poured the contents of the cup down the drain, scouring it afterwards to remove any evidence that anything had been inside.
Once that was over, the bastards wasted no time in throwing her back into the cage with her comrades.
A few of them asked how she was feeling, but the sedatives were still in effect, making it impossible to answer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Marta….how are you feeling”?
That was the first thing she heard once the sedatives wore off an hour later.
The snake-chimera sighed and shook her head. “I’m fine, Dorochette” she told her friend, not even trying to look at him as she responded.
She could hear his footsteps as he walked away. She was left alone with her thoughts, and maybe that was for the best.
In all honesty, she had been lying when she’d said she was fine; she just didn’t want Dorochette to worry about her.
In reality, she really didn’t feel anything at all.
After so many miscarriages (she’d lost count after twelve), she had just completely gone numb to it.
Though, she could still feel enough to be pissed at the alchemists. She had known they were assholes, but this made her despise them even more.
As soon as she had recovered from the transmutation that turned her into a chimera, the bastards decided to perform another experiment on her, a medical one. Somehow, they had gotten her pregnant without ever telling her who the father was supposed to be. Probably didn’t even know themselves.
At the time, she didn’t really care---she was just happy to be having a baby. It was something to make her feel….normal, like her body was still functioning the way it was before being combined with a serpent.
But a few weeks later, she woke up in the middle of the night, bleeding heavily. The “doctors” said she had miscarried, simply disposing of the embryo’s remains once they gave the diagnostics.
And, for a couple months, they left her alone, unless they were testing her.
Then, they drugged her and put her in the same position as eight weeks before. And so it went for the next few years----the bastards would somehow get a baby inside her, she would miscarry, and they would wait a couple months before repeating the process all over again.
This one was the latest and hopefully the last. When the doctors had told her she was pregnant again, she didn’t really care---it’d be over within a month; none of the others had lasted more than eight weeks.
When she reached the ninth week of the pregnancy, she couldn’t help but allow herself to hope a little. Maybe this one would actually be viable, make it to full term. Now, that hope was completely gone. And to be honest, she wasn’t too upset about it.
Better to just accept the fact that what the “scientists” had done to her had caused her body to ignore something it was supposed to do. A baby just wasn’t something she’d ever have.
She just had to accept that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: Approximately 18 weeks ago. Place: The Devil’s Nest, Dublith))
She shivered slightly as he ran his hands down her back, claws skating over her skin.
Fingers replaced claws as a hand massaged her shoulders.
This wasn’t like anything she could remember experiencing before, and not only because her partner wasn’t human.
He nibbled on her earlobe with sharp teeth, almost purring into her ear. “Having fun?” he asked a bit of a chuckle at the end.
She turned her head in order to face him, a slight smirk starting to play on her lips. Rather than speak, she gave a slight hum as her response.
“Am I supposed to take that as a ‘no’?” he questioned her, kissing her throat, tongue running over the mark the Labs had left on her. “Well, we’re just going to have to remedy that, won’t we?”
She couldn’t keep herself from grinning somewhat as he once again started to run his hands down her back, pressing a little into her spine.
The corners of her mouth turned up a little more when he slid his left hand, his marked hand, under her shirt and up towards her chest, the other hand lifting the garment over the woman's head. Though, unlike her previous smile, this was more of a smirk, a bit of childish mocking.
Greed looked hurt for a moment, before returning her sarcastic grin with one of his own.
“Alright then, Marta” he said, a hint of a growl in his voice, “I’ll make a deal with you”. Leaning over, he kissed the pulse point in her throat before whispering in her eye. “I’ll give you everything tonight…but you have to do the same for me”.
She wasn’t exactly sure how to respond; none of the words in her mind seemed appropriate. But, her actions always spoke her mind better anyway. She extended her arm, wrapping it around his waist and pulling him down.
The homunculus smiled at this before continuing with his task.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: Approximately 10 weeks ago; Early morning. Place: Dublith Forest))
Never had she been so disappointed to see the sun.
Normally the sun rising was a shine that she was safe, free, out of the Labs.
But not this time. This time, the sun rising meant she was alone.
Her fellow chimeras had been slaughtered shortly before nightfall, and there was no sign of Greed.
The people she considered her family were gone, each and every one of them. The only one left was her.
As she walked away from Alphonse, she made a vow to herself. A vow that she would avenge her fallen comrades; that everyone who’d ever done them wrong would pay. The people dressed in black who had killed Law and Dorochette, those military dogs who had taken away their humanity and imprisoned them for years, and Kimblee---the rat who had betrayed them to their enemy.
It was a promise. A promise to herself. A promise to the other chimeras. And a promise to him.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: 4 days ago. Place: Approximately 50 miles east of Ishbal))
‘What the hell is wrong with me’ was all Marta could think as she once again deposited the half-digested contents of her stomach onto the dusty ground.
For nearly two and a half months she’d been like this: completely unable to keep more than half the stuff she ate down. Yet, strangely, she hadn’t lost much weight.
Actually, quite the opposite had happened. Some kind of mass had formed inside her stomach, causing her to actually gain some weight.
But, that wasn’t what concerned her. What made the snake-chimera worried was the fact that she was able to feel something moving within her stomach. That, coupled with the fact that she was always exhausted made her certain there was something really wrong with her, but what?
‘Haven’t seen anything like this since….’. She felt her stomach drop as the memory resurfaced.
Years ago, there had been a chimera...Shaun, Shane, she really couldn’t remember his name…who had died shortly before Greed had released them.
Of course, someone dying while in that hellhole wasn’t at all unusual; many of them couldn’t handle the experiments and died shortly after. What made this guy stick out in her mind wasn’t the fact that he had died, it was how he died.
According to Bido, who was being tested at the same time as the guy was being “disposed of”, there had been something inside his stomach. It had been some kind of long, stringy worm that had apparently been eating away at the poor bastard’s insides. Marta wouldn’t be too concerned about this if it weren’t for one thing: his symptoms back then had been the same as hers now.
“Damn it” she muttered as the intensity of her current situation began to sink in. So, apparently this…thing inside her would be the end of the snake-chimera.
No matter. As long as she lived long enough to exact her revenge, she’d be happy.
However, there was still one major problem. She had no idea of where to find those freaks dressed in black. The military and Kimblee would be easy to locate, but the people in black were another question.
There had to be someone who could tell her where to find them….
“Brother…you numbskull”.
The snake-chimera’s thoughts were jarred away by the voice and the accompanying footsteps.
The voice was childish---a boy’s voice, and sounded like it was being echoed. The footsteps were loud and clunky, the sound of metal hitting dirt. Both sounds were very familiar to her.
She turned her head slightly to look behind her.
Sure enough, Alphonse Elric passed the alley she was standing in as soon as her head was turned.
Despite her current problem, Marta couldn’t help but smile.
Alphonse knew about the people in black, she reasoned. After all, he had mentioned them and their marks when taken hostage by Greed and the chimeras.
Without another thought, she stepped out of the dark alley and after the suit of armor, staying merely a foot or two away. Al didn’t even seem to notice anyone was following him until she knocked on his back.
“Brother, where did you go? I-“ Alphonse froze as he turned around to speak with who he assumed was his elder brother. “Marta!” he exclaimed with understandable surprise.
Smirking, Marta raised her hand in a type of greeting.
“Long time, no see”.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: 2 days ago, Night. Place: Desert, Approximately 5 miles east of Ishbal))
“So...you’re the one”
It wasn’t a question; She spoke it as fact.
Edward showed no remorse for what he had done.
He saw both her and Greed as criminals, that was his reasoning. Apparently Greed killed an old woman named Dante, and that was reason enough to kill him.
It didn’t bother her though. She knew that Greed had let himself die.
Noticing a snake slithering through the sand, she hacked her knife at the reptile, piercing it through the next. Alphonse had thought she was going to kill his brother before he saw it.
“If we were enemies” Marta began picking up the snake-tipped dagger, “You’d already be dead.”
The Elrics were oddly silent as she continued. At least they had some respect.
“Greed knew he’d be sealed again and he couldn’t take it. What is worse for the greedy then having nothing at all? I think he wanted you to end his life, and the pain. My enemies is this are the military elite who made us, those freaks dressed up in black, and the rat who betrayed us most of all-”.
She slashed her knife down, cutting the snake almost in half as she spat out his name.
As she finished, she sighed and threw the reptilian corpse to Ed, telling him to eat it because they were good for him.
“Really? Then why don’t you eat it?”
She joked that if she did, she’d be a cannibal. It was partly true, of course, but the main reason was because the simple idea of eating made her stomach churn.
Besides, eating anything could easily make the worm inside her stronger. That was the last thing she wanted right now.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: 4 hours ago. Place: Outside of Central Headquarters))
She’d barely been able to tell Alphonse what she had discovered.
The man…the monster in charge of the country was a Homunculus. There was no way she could have been mistaken. She had seen the Ouroborus tattoo on his eye, the one kept hidden beneath that black patch.
But she didn’t have the time to do anything other than reveal exactly what this man really was. A second after the words left her mouth, a cold blade pierced her chest.
When she saw the blood running smoothly from her wound, she couldn’t help but smile. In spite of the pain, she was actually happy.
She hadn’t been able to fulfill her promise. The military elite, those freaks in black, and worst of all, Kimblee, were all still alive.
But, she’d be with Greed and her comrades again. After more than two months of separation, they’d finally be reunited.
That was reason enough to be happy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Date: Present. Place: Outside of Central Headquarters))
Havoc covered the chimera’s body with the tarp, taking a brief glance at Alphonse as he did so. The child armor didn’t look back; his gaze was fixed to the ground. He must’ve been pretty close to the chimera. Not that they needed to see the kid looking down to tell he was upset at her death. After all, they had found the corpse inside of the armor.
Fuery got ready to stand, but rather than place his hand on solid concrete, he placed it in a small puddle of blood. His hand slid out from under him; he started falling face-first toward the hard ground. And he would’ve likely broken his nose if he didn’t place his hands down on the first solid surface he could reach. That surface was the chimera’s body; one of his hands landed directly on her stomach, which felt…strange.
“This is strange. Her stomach’s pretty hard” he commented, putting a bit of pressure on the small lump under the tarp.
For what seemed like hours, nobody moved.
Then Mustang knelt down next to the Master Sergeant, mimicking his actions and pressing on the chimera’s stomach. An eyebrow rose, as though the Colonel felt he knew something.
He glanced at Falman, ordering his elder subordinate to retrieve a knife.
Falman, of course, obeyed, though he did look rather confused. What could they need a knife for?
A short while later, Falman returned, a small knife in his hand. He handed it to his superior and, along with everyone else (save Alphonse who seemed to be in a short of shock) watched as he lowered the tarp so it was below the chimera’s waistline.
The Flame Alchemist then proceeded to lifting up her shirt, revealing a slightly larger bulge than first suspected, and made a large incision in her stomach.
There was a collective moan from Havoc, Fuery, and Falman as he reached into the opening he had created. It was replaced by stunned and somewhat mournful silence as he pulled something out.
“It’s a baby”
Alphonse lifted his head when he heard Fuery’s comment.
He glanced at Marta for a brief second before looking to see what Colonel Mustang was holding.
And he almost gasped; whatever he expected to see, this wasn’t it.
There was a baby in Mustang’s arms, but it didn’t look anything like the infants Al could remember seeing. It was very small, probably not even ten inches long. Its skin was disturbingly thin; he could see what appeared to be ribs through the skin. Despite the size, the baby did have a fair amount of dark hair on its head. It also had a thin layer of hair covering its arms, legs, and back, making it look something like a baby monkey. It just didn’t really look human.
That didn’t matter though; Alphonse still felt worse than before.
As if not being able to save Marta wasn’t bad enough. Now he’d failed to save not only the snake-chimera, but her unborn child, which hadn’t even had a chance to live.
He watched as Mustang disconnected the fetal corpse from Marta’s body; the raven-haired man also cut a small section of the tarp away, placing the baby inside before handing the bundle to Hawkeye.
The first lieutenant walked past Alphonse, ready to dispose of the child’s body, and the young man was able to see what the child was going to become. He only was able to get a quick glimpse, but he saw enough.
‘You were going to have a baby, Marta. A boy. But, not anymore, because of me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry’.
