Four

"I understand you boys witnessed quite a show down there," Colonel Mustang said, stopping the Elrics in the room where the phones were.

     "What about it?" Edward asked almost tonelessly as he handed Alphonse his arm.

     "First of all, why did she rip off your AutoMail?" the colonel asked, a hint of amusement in his voice.

     "Because she was mad at me for 'yelling' at her last night," Edward replied, starting to get irritated. "Now, what about what happened down there? Has she never gotten hurt before?"

     "No," he replied.

     "Colonel, I didn't really understand what they were doing to her," Alphonse said. "What was the punishment?"

     The colonel hesitated before answering, seeming to try to choose his words carefully. "The punishment was....it's like this. She gets strapped to the wall with a special kind of material that's meant to surpress her--ah--abilities. It gets painful, and she's not a fan of pain.

     "She's also quite the dramatic," he continued, sighing. "She bled simply because she fought back against the surpression. She pushed her abilities to the limit trying to break free, and she started bleeding."

     "But--hold on!" Edward shouted, frustrated. "It all seemed to happen in like, half a second!"

     "That just shows how fast her reflexes are."

     "Why did her eye bleed?" Edward asked. "I also noticed that it glowed when she ripped my arm off."

     "For some reason, that the scientists just can't figure out, her source of power is focused in her left eye," the colonel said. "Even though we created her, we no almost nothing about her and what she is."

     "What do you mean what she is?!" Alphonse shouted defensively. "She's human! You people just completely changed her into a lab rat!"

     "We're done with this conversation, boys," Colonel Mustang said sternly. "I thought that if you saw her punishment, you'd be traumatized enough to stop asking questions and realize that it's got nothing to do with you. Forget all about her, alright?" He started to walk past them and head to his office, when he paused in the door and said, "Lucy is...okay now, right?"

     Edward looked at him a minute, and said, "Yeah, she was fine as soon as I gave her her rabbit."

     "Good." And then he was gone.

     After a few moments, Alphonse said, "Even if he says he's not really her father, I'm suspicious."

     "Same," Edward said. "but, never mind that now, I need to call Winry and see if she can come out here to fix my arm. I can't do my job without it."

     "She's going to kill you for breaking it again," Alphonse said, matter-of-factily.

     "I didn't break it!" Edward grumbled annoyed. "Lucy just yanked it out of it's socket."

     "Like Winry'll believe it," Alphonse said. "I'm pretty sure we can't tell her about Lucy. The colonel did say it was a top secret military experiment."

     Edward picked up the phone and froze before dialing the Rockbells' number. What was he going to tell Winry, if he couldn't tell her the truth? Either way, he was going to get nailed in the head with a wrench.

     He took a deep breath and then dialed the number. When Winry picked up, Edward tried to explain that his AutoMail got "pulled" out of it's socket, and Winry surprisingly didn't get mad. She got annoyed, but not mad.

     "It's a simple thing to fix yourself," she said. Then she poured into this dificult and detailed solution to putting Edward's arm back.

     "Y'know, Winry, I think you better come out here and fix it," Edward said finally, his head spinning from all of her instructions.

     "Ugh, fine," she said. "I'll be there by tomorrow afternoon."

     "Okay, see you then." Edward hung up the phone and then heard Alphonse say, "L-Lucy, what are you doing here?"

     Edward turned around quickly and saw the girl peeking around the corner, her rabbit tucked under her arm, and something in her hand.

     "You don't have to be shy," Edward said, trying to lure her out. "What's up?" She came around the corner, her bare feet silent against the cold tile floor.

     "I found these," Lucy said, holding out her hand. "Edward's." They were four big screws that Edward recognized from his AutoMail.

     "Where did you find these?" Edward asked, taking them from her. She brought her arm back and held her rabbit tightly, looking at the ground.

     "Found them in the hallway," she said. Edward figured she meant the hallway where she took Edward's arm out of it's mechanical socket.

     "You don't have to feel ashamed of what you did," Edward said. "I forgive you, it's okay."

     "Lucy, aren't you supposed to be in your room?" Alphonse asked. "You could get punished again if you don't go back."

     "I know," Lucy said, keeping her eyes glued to the ground. She then went back to the subject of Edward's arm: "Your arm is fake. It's not real."

     "We already discussed this, didn't we?" Edward asked, not wanting to get on the topic.

     "You don't want to talk about it," Lucy said. "Alphonse doesn't want to talk about it, either. I sense it."

     "You have some strong senses," Alphonse said, trying to get off the subject.

     "It's what they recently gave me," Lucy said quietly. "Every once in a while, I got into surgery, and they make something else wrong with me." Edward gasped, and Alphonse's armor seemed to stiffen.

     "I know I'm not normal," Lucy said. "I may not know everything about the outside world, outside this big building, but I know I'm not even close to a regular person. I'm far, far from it. I may as well not even be human."

     "Don't say that--" Alphonse started.

     "How many other people do you know who can break things with their mind?" she asked, staring straight at him. "Without even moving? I'm not normal...I'm not...!" Edward tensed, thinking she was going to throw another tantrum, but she instantly calmed down and looked at him with tired, dead eyes.

     "They send bad people to me if they are to be executed, or if they know too much," she continued. "I pull their limbs off and save their heads for last. Once their arms and legs are in piles, I rip their bodies in half, and then they get decapitated. That's how the scientists make me kill them."

     "The-The scientists make you do it?" Edward asked. She nodded, and Edward suddenly saw a very tired and sad girl standing before him.

     "I have to go," she said, turning around. "If mama or papa catch me up here, I'm going to get punished agian. I don't want to bleed again."

Reviews

[C.S. Posthumus]

Be careful of overusing adverbs... But otherwise I’m loving this story... I wonder what Lucy’s story really is. I’m eager to find out her past and her upbringing... I’d also enjoy reading about what’d it be like if she were exposed to modern things like TV... She seems so isolated.
Anyway, nice work... The characters are interesting.

[Emunah June.]

No more bleeding!! NO MOER BLEEDING!!

[Anonymous]

*sings the Lucy song*