FMA Fanfic: Unconditional – Four
Unconditional – Four.
by arcanewinter. PG13 1002 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Greed’s shield can only guard him against so much.
These characters do not belong to me. I do not profit from this.
Greed couldn’t help but feel some satisfaction in surprising her. It was time for Envy to test his honed skills against one of them–humans broke and fell too soon to try him–but she hadn’t expected Greed to volunteer, now had she?
He stopped in front of the other Sin and smirked.
Like he’d let anyone else touch him.
“Let’s go,” he said, shrugging out of the shirt and jacket he indulged himself with and letting his indestructible protection consume him. The tactless expression on Envy’s face reminded him that it wasn’t pretty, but it was damned effective. His solid fist in Envy’s chest sent him hurtling further than his fleshier form could allow.
“You’re supposed to fight back,” he growled, following him to the broken marble that marked his landing. Once there, he relaxed into readiness again.
Envy pushed himself up, unsteady for only a moment. His growl was far closer to whining. “I can’t fight a shield, moron. This isn’t going to work.”
“Get around it,” Greed pressed, ejecting Envy’s next attack as it rebounded, then again. The Sin flipped away from him with each failure, landing on his feet with practice. His grace seemed to grow with his frustration, but Greed wasn’t trying to beat him into the ground. “Change, you idiot!”
Envy stopped, his expression briefly divided by the trailing marks of Greed’s claws.
Greed glanced away while they healed.
By the time he looked back again, Envy had already lunged for him, striking him just under the chest with a blade where his arm had been. His force was enough to knock Greed backwards, but despite the audible sharpness of his weapon, it had no other effect than that. None of the weapons he could muster even scratched him.
“Find his weakness,” Dante advised, her presence slipping into Greed’s awareness again like a snake into water. He rolled his shoulders back and ignored her intrusion, sending Envy away from him with more force than before.
Envy picked himself up from the wall, brushing the debris from his shoulders with an expression only slightly more wounded than his body.
“I thought I was your weakness,” he pouted slyly as Greed came forward again.
“It’s for your own good,” Greed responded, hiding his indignation.
“Then I wonder if you would hit me as hard?”
Greed paused and smirked at the sultry transformation. Envy was better than he thought.
“No offense to Lust, but yeah, I could hit her as hard.”
Lust’s face frowned as Greed lunged forward, claws just barely missing the Sin as he flipped away, taking a new form as he did, a new tactic. Greed knew Envy’s abilities were a poor match for the Ultimate Shield, but even in failure, he was improving.
And so this continued. Greed knew Envy was attempting to find something, anything that would affect him past the hard shell of the shield, an identity that would reach through it and hold him just long enough to land a solid blow.
Greed smiled. This was all Envy could do, and yet he knew it too would fail. But it wouldn’t fail on their more mundane enemies, and that was the important lesson here.
Envy’s metamorphoses ran the gamut of the remaining five Sins, Greed included, then branched out to include Dante (as if Greed would attack her with less force) and the short-lived Hoenheim. Greed watched between each flurry of attacks as Envy focused his talent on every individual they had come into contact with during the last eight months, never stumbling on anyone Greed gave a damn about.
He laughed finally as Envy changed tactics, broadening his system.
“A doctor?”
At least he was back to his own face.
“Come on, you’ve got to be a pussy about somebody.”
“Try a priest, just for the hell of it.” Greed grinned at him, dodging the swipe of Envy’s blade.
“How about a nun,” Envy smirked, nearly catching Greed off-balance when he tried it.
Growling, Greed stumbled backwards. “You could at least try to look pretty.”
“Same to you, Prince Charming.”
Greed narrowed his eyes at the slight, but the parade of identities continued, none of them any harder to deflect or to dodge than the last. Of course none of them mattered, none of them spoke to his short history: the farmer, the foreigner, the scientist, the prisoner, the policeman, the soldier . . .
The soldier.
Greed’s heart thudded too hard in his chest just once before Envy’s blade ran up under it to stop it. Greed sneered from the pain, but more so from the defeat, his clawed hands gripping Envy’s forearm through the blue military jacket.
When Envy tugged his arm away, the blade sheathing into his human guise again, Greed’s momentary weakness dropped him to his knees in front of Envy’s boots, the rest of his shield melting away.
“Envy!” Dante interrupted, “That’s enough.”
Greed listened as Envy reverted to his usual attire. “Like I was gonna keep going.”
“You’ll have an easier time with mere humans,” she concluded. “Good work.”
The rest of them were leaving. Greed watched them go with a scowl, his hand rubbing his chest. It healed much faster than his pride, even if that wasn’t his particular vice.
He looked up only begrudgingly when Envy crouched in front of him.
“So why’d you do it?”
“Do what?” Greed rumbled. Why’d I drop my guard for no reason?
“You didn’t have to.” Envy looked away, elbows on his knees, indignant. “I woulda got there on my own if you’d let me.”
Greed studied him, eyes again narrowed, purple now rather than red. He soon snorted, pushing Envy off balance as he used him as support to stand again.
“So I felt sorry for your ass,” he answered. “I didn’t have all night.”
He grinned his antagonism over his shoulder as he sauntered in the direction the others had taken, palm still rubbing at his chest, unseen.