Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ A Chimera's Tale ❯ Behind Inhuman Eyes ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or any of the characters.

 

 

 

1

~*~

 

“Talk, damn you!” Edward Elric cried as he glared at Roy Mustang, the raven haired man simply stared before pushing the folder towards Ed. The boy grabbed the folder and looked at it, his hands clenching, slightly tearing the folder but not the report inside. His gold eyes burned as he read and then reread the assignment. “I've already done this.”

 

“This one is different. This is one he gave to the military. No one found a purpose for it besides going nuts. It's smart, very smart. Smart enough to get out of its cage and cause trouble no matter what kind of lock is used,” Roy said and the boy stiffened again. The Fire Alchemist did not miss the whispered name.

 

“Nina,” false hope was not flattering on Fullmetal, but it was cruel not to give him something.

 

“At first we thought it was the prototype that Tucker used before his…first talking chimera, but now, I suspect it might have the capability to speak given the fact it is the only remaining Tucker Chimera as well as the fact it has escaped over three hundred times since it was brought to the military lab. It can't be trained so they've allowed us to take it off their hands. I'm putting it in yours, Fullmeta.,” Roy looked at the boy and he glared at Roy, it was wrong for him to do this to Ed, he knew it, but that creature could hold the secrets to what happened to Nina, both of them were thinking it.

 

“Fine, but it better not bite or throw anything at me,” Ed stated and Roy smirked.

 

“Far from it, from the reports it's very well behaved and actually enjoys human contacts. Behind the ears makes it purr,” Roy stated and they looked at the medical file. It was eerily similar to the Nina-Alexander, larger, six teats displaying gender, large cat like shape to the body, tail, and face, those strange eyes that were neither human nor animal, a mane of dark brown hair, again bringing up a similarity to the Nina-Alexander, and front paws that were so similar to hands, but still so alien.

 

“I'll see if it'll talk to me,” Ed sighed. “Al's probably the better choice.” With that the young alchemist left and Roy watched him, nodding before returning to his paperwork.

 

~*~

 

The lab was where he looked at Tucker's stuff before, however the empty cage was not something he wanted to see. There was a screeching noise in the back, beneath the desk that Al had worked at. Ed wished his brother were there at the moment, a suit of armor was a lot harder to destroy that a body mostly flesh.

 

“Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,” Ed cooed as he closed the door and there were two dots of green underneath the desk, like any animal's eyes when reflecting light. Slowly the creature emerged from the darkness, the claws that graced its back and hand-like front paws. The large head made Ed think of a lion or tiger. It was a big creature, longer than a man in length, the merging of a human and a large feline could have resulted in this creature, just as the merging of a girl and a dog created the Nina-Alexander.

 

The eyes though, Ed actually gasped when he saw the creature's eyes, large pools of blue-green with a slit of black. There was a soul behind those eyes, an intelligent soul that was studying Ed with the same concentration that Ed himself was studying the creature. This was not the Nina-Alexander, this creature was more beautiful, more natural in its unnatural form, it was a Chimera of the first order, a creature that was made perfectly from two individual creatures.

 

“Nice Kitty, don't maul me now,” Ed said with a smile as the large creature approached him, the clicking of the razor sharp rear talons making him sweat before the creature squatted in front of him. For such a strange creature to assume that stance brought something to Ed's attention. The hip bones were not feline, they were wider, outward rolling. It was more of a human pelvis, no way was it ape, this creature had to be another Human Transmutation.

 

“Who were you?” he asked as the creature stared at him, its mouth, lined by black lips seemed to reside in a natural smirk. As the elder Elric stared at the creature of Tucker's monstrous creation, he felt as if it was laughing at him.

 

`I have a secret,' its face stated as it looked at him and he reached out, stroking the soft mane beneath a large tiger like ear. Slowly a strange purr escaped the creature, its eyes closed, hiding that mysterious intelligence from Ed's curious mind.

 

~*~

 

“So what should we do about the cage, Big Brother, she seems able to open it,” Al stated as he petted the creature that was perched on his desk, seeming attracted to the oversized desk that was provided for the armor encased soul.

 

“I'm thinking I'll just transfigure the cage so there is no door, see how she handles that,” Ed stated as he looked through the notes on the creature. All were the same. Highly intelligent, barely reactive, and never in her cage when crews came in the next morning, all that and the mysterious disappearance of objects while the creature was in State Military Labs.

 

Ed watched his brother scratch the large creature behind the ears, she was purring but that purr, it was almost as if a person was trying to purr, so close to an actual feline but something just wasn't right.

 

Large eyes watched him, the unnatural Chimera light glowing within the creature's skull as Al's fingers gently stroked her mane. Those eyes seemed to stare into his soul, as if sensing his crimes against alchemy. Ed itched his automail arm out of nervousness and the creature yawned, exposing teeth that were a mix of carnivore and herbivore. It was too familiar to the Nina-Alexander.

 

“Do you think she feels pain like…” Al stopped his question before it finished, his fingers no longer moving as the creature stared at him. Ed wondered about that too.

 

“I can't say for sure, but I'm going to assume all of Shou Tucker's chimeras experience pain throughout their existence,” Ed stated. “If this one does, I'm going to guess it can handle the pain.” The creature yawned and slowly got up, ambling over to its cage to drink water before curling up and slowly closing its eyes. Ed closed the cage and placed his hands on it, watching the door seal to the cage. The creature stared at him again and somewhere in his heart, the Nina-Alexander asked them why they didn't come to play.

 

~*~

 

Roy Mustang was trying to find his mother's wedding picture, Hughes was starting up in the other room about how Roy looked like his dame to the point you only had to cut their hair to make them match. Roy was now out to prove his best friend wrong.

 

Of course a night of drinking and playing cards had dulled Roy's senses and caused a temporary memory loss of the information on the location of said picture. Instead he found a shoebox filled with pictures, it might at least have a picture of his mother in it somewhere.

 

“Did you find one, Roy?” Hughes asked and Roy shrugged and he turned the shoebox over and suddenly he didn't feel nearly drunk enough.

 

“Whoa, Cornel, I didn't know you were seriously dating anyone,” Havoc chuckled and the raven haired man didn't say anything. Shockingly it was Hughes that spoke up about the pictures of Roy and a lovely chestnut haired woman in bathing suits. She in his lap, feeding him, him obviously teasing her and making her blush.

 

“You don't recognize her do you, Havoc?” Hughes asked as he pushed his glasses up his nose, studying the younger man. Havoc stared at the picture, Roy wasn't sure how much was thought and how much was fighting through drunken stupor.

 

“Kinda…” Havoc muttered and Hughes looked at Roy, but the Fire Alchemist was staring at one where the girl was on his back, her head on his shoulder as they smiled at the camera, looking quite the dashing couple.

 

“Imagine all that hair in a tight bun, a white lab coat, and smudges all over her face,” Hughes prompted and Havoc's eyes widen.

 

“She vanished almost five years ago,” Roy stated as he stared at the picture. “She confessed her feelings to me the night she vanished…” Roy remembered the day these pictures had been taken, by his parents as the two families had gone to the beach on one of his first visits back after becoming a State Alchemist.

 

The sand had been warm, the water cold, the parents treating all their children as if they were little kids. Roy had been mad but she had ended that, playing pranks on him, transfiguring his trunks into a speedo, him returning the favor with a string bikini, she had jumped on his back when the picture was about to be taken, the feeling of her breasts against his back had been the first testament to her growth into womanhood in his absence, her talents with alchemy his realization that she was his equal, and her loving glances that made her more terrifying than any war.

 

“She did? You never told me that,” Hughes stated, giving Roy the old `you kept something from me, me, your best friend' pained look.

 

“I didn't want to get taken from her case, I thought if they knew about that, they would make me leave the team,” Roy stated as he moved some pictures to show her standing tall as he presented her watch, of course, the parents had made them pose when they came home together after she had made her State Alchemy exams. “I was stupid then…”

 

“As opposed to now?” Hughes asked with a chuckle and Roy gave him a look.

 

“I ran from commitment then, I still wonder, if I hadn't shoved her away…could I have stopped what happened?” Roy asked the picture. She was standing in front of him, face blank in mock seriousness as she looked at him. When he had handed her the watch back she had turned his underwear into some horrible invention called a thong, as soon as the picture was taken.

 

“You probably would've ended up the same as her,” Hughes stated.

 

“Wow, the Mother Alchemist, gone for five whole years, she saved my sister's life once,” Havoc whispered and the group looked at another picture, this one of her from a newspaper, she had figured out how to transfer a heart from one animal to another, making it possible to save thousands with the help of medical alchemists. She had created the longest lasting chimeras and was well on the way to creating a chimera able to understand human speech.

 

“She was something, wasn't she?” Roy stated and Hughes nodded.

 

“Tucker and she got along well,” Hughes stated and Roy glared at his long time friend. “What?”

 

“She was nothing like Tucker, she actually cared about the welfare of others, not her own selfish reasons,” Roy stated before getting up and walking away.

 

~*~

 

Ed yawned as he opened the door and gasped as he stared at the empty cage. The door that had been transmuted into the cage was open and there on top, smirking at him beneath her black mane, was the chimera.

 

“How the…” a note on the floor fluttered and Ed picked it up and read it, his heart suddenly felt as if it had been dunked in cold water.

 

`Why does it hurt?' was all that was written on the paper and Ed felt his breathing become shallow as the creature sat up.

 

“Did you write this?” he whispered and the chimera looked at him before curling up to sleep.