damned_institute | Nightshift 24: Second M Block, Near the bathrooms and exit

"You never were a physical threat to me." The homunculus growled, digging his knee into Kimbley's leg and pressing his weight onto it to keep the bomber pinned down. "It's your goddamn big mouth that got me into this mess."

Of course, at the mention of his current situation, something occurred to Greed that his anger had kept hidden from him: The mess he was in now was a new one, a worse one, a wholly different one than he'd been in before.

And he wasn't the only one caught in it.

Something else occurred to Greed as his eyes shot back to the alchemist's, and it was that he was playing right into Kimbley's tattooed hands.

His eyes narrowed.

"It means you aren't worth shit as an asset, either."

Suppressing a growl as yet another pain made itself known to him (this time in his leg), Kimbley clenched his jaw and ignored the various complaints his body was providing him with. Just pain, nothing important. Nothing vital had been punctured yet.

"If you think so," he hissed, fingers curling and uncurling against his palms. "But you seem to forget that I was a soldier as much as I was an alchemist. I could still blow you into a million, bloody pieces and leave you a smear on the floor ... it'd just take a little more work." He let his grimace jerk sharply into a smirk, albeit a pained one. "I didn't always have the tattoos."

"Don't give me that crap," Greed spat, digging his claws further into Kimbley's arm as if to emphasize his distaste. "You have the tattoos now and they don't work, so how the hell is any other alchemy gonna be different?"

The homunculus may not have cared much for the hag or the teachings she'd forced upon the creatures she'd birthed, but he'd remembered enough about alchemy to know when he was being fed bullshit and when he wasn't. (Of coure, given Dante's tendencies towards lies herself, he could never be completely sure what had been real and what hadn't, but goddammit if he was going to give Kimbley the benefit of the doubt.)

"Did I say anything about alchemy?" Kimbley asked, raising an eyebrow. "I started out with raw materials when I was six. There are other ways to make explosives than through the way you were created."

It was true, too - the first time he'd successfully made a bomb, it was from raw materials. And the explosion had nearly killed him, but that just meant he'd been completely successful. As long as you had a container, the right chemicals (most of which were easily found in a semi-domestic setting like this), and in some cases a lighter, you could turn someone into a screaming pile of flame and flesh. No alchemy necessary.

... sure, he hadn't actually used the homemade method in a long time (going on ... holy shit, almost twenty years?), but he could remember the basic principles, the easier explosives, and the resulting compounds that gave off the most dangerous blasts. And that was all that mattered, really.

The arrogant expression on the bastard's face was almost enough to renew Greed's desire for the bomber's immediate death. However, even through the condescending tone of the words, there was some truth in them, enough to make the homunculus reflect on his sad lack of subordinates as of late.

There was Mustang, of course, but he wasn't too willing to be an apprentice... yet. There was that long-haired guy--Vincent--and Schuldig, too, but... hell, Schuldig was almost as bad as Kimbley.

Beggars couldn't be choosers, but then again, beggars didn't have to be stupid either. (And besides, Greed would die before he called himself one of those.)

"Yeah, so maybe you're useful." Greed smirked. "Doesn't mean a damn thing if you're a rat."

Still, the temptation was there, and stronger than Greed wanted to admit. Back home, sure, he'd tear the man limb from limb without a second thought, but that was because back home he'd actually be able to.

There was blood dripping down his arm at this point. It was pooling on the floor under him and staining the sleeve of his shirt. Normally, he wouldn't have cared - blood was blood, it was red, it meant everybody was going to die the same way regardless of who or what they were - but he knew that if he lost too much of it (and the fact that Greed had five carbon-edged claws digging into him at the moment), he'd start losing coherency. And damn it all, but he wasn't going to let that happen.

"So what if I'm a rat?" Kimbley let himself smirk again, wider than before now that the pain was fading out of his immediate attention. "You knew I what I was when you found me, and you still trusted me enough to show me exactly where your skull was. Doesn't make much in the way of an argument for you."

The mention of his skull and the betrayal it had entailed jolted Greed's priorities back into their proper order.

The homunculus' sharp teeth clenched together as his eyes narrowed. He tightened his grip and shifted his weight, keeping one knee on Kimbley's thighs as he slammed the other one down on his left arm.

No matter what Kimbley could offer him now, he'd screwed him over and left him to die, sold him out for some cheap thrills. Greed didn't want him as an ally. He wanted him to fucking pay.

Greed took his blackened hand from Kimbley's neck and grasped the bomber's wrist with it instead. He took his other hand and pulled it from the wounds on Kimbley's arm, blood spilling as malice took hold of Greed's shadowed countenance.

"You really like your hands, don't you?"

Fuck!

Kimbley's arm throbbed to life as Greed slammed one knee down onto it, effectively pinning it against any and all attempts to free it (and maybe breaking it, he wasn't sure). He was swept with a minor wave of relief when those claws left his throat, and again (only with a slight pain) when they slipped off of his injured arm. (Great. Now they were bleeding more.)

But all his pain, all his irritation, all his smug arrogance vanished in the face of Greed's newfound grip and that single, innocuous question. His smirk fell and against his will, Kimbley knew (just knew) that his face had turned to an expression of half-panic, half-anger. And just a little bit of point-blank terror.

"Don't even try it," he snarled, immediately attempting to wrench his arm free and when that failed, clenching his hand into a fist. "I swear it, if you so much as touch them, I'll wrench out your eyes in your sleep."

He didn't doubt that Greed would do it. The homunculus shouldn't doubt that Kimbley wouldn't follow through with his own threat, either.

Greed wasn't really a sadist. He wasn't really maladjusted either, or a psycho, or irrationally whiny and evil like the rest of his brethren tended to be.

He did take what he wanted, though, regardless of the consequences for himself or other people. He liked his plots to end up being easy enough on everyone, but civility wasn't something too high on his list of priorities. At the end of the day, sure, Greed would beat up a couple of kids for his own benefit because Greed didn't let anything stand between him and what he wanted.

And yet, some pompous bastard had.

"You don't fuck me over, Kimbley." Greed smirked with the kind of half-sane glint that came to his eyes when he indulged too fully in his sin. "You just don't."

Without much pause or ceremony, he slammed Kimbley's wrist into the floor and used his free claws to pry the man's fingers out of the fist he'd made. Greed then pushed the fingers down, he grinned, and with the claws that had been on the bomber's wrist, he raked through the flesh of one tattooed palm.

Greed wasn't really a sadist, but then again, most people weren't Kimbley.

Kimbley was fighting the whole time - struggling to wrench himself out from under Greed, or at least get his hands somewhere inaccessible - but when it came down to it, when Greed actually got his wrist flat and his fingers away from his palm and dragged his claws across the thirteen-year-old tattoo there, his entire body came to an agonizing halt.

It wasn't the pain that bothered him, because there were much more painful things in the world than having your hand cut up. And he'd experienced plenty of them. No, it had nothing to do with the cuts and the blood and the future thoughts of infections or amputations. It was that his hand - one of his two greatest weapons, the creations he'd spent nearly his entire life perfecting - was completely and absolutely ruined. Half of the best, most dangerous weapon in all Amestris and it was destroyed.

A strangled almost-scream of rage struggled to free itself from his throat, but even in the throes of agonized rage, Kimbley still had his pride.

"I'll kill you!" he snarled, his voice cracking and his eyes wild with wrath. In one movement, he bucked, whipping his bloody right arm up and letting his hand smash into the side of Greed's face. His nails scrabbled for half a second before finding purchase and digging into the skin on the edge of Greed's cheekbone and tearing - or at least, trying to. Kimbley was completely lost to his hatred; he only wanted to see Greed pay for this.

The deed was done, and through the bomber's desperate struggling and yelling, Greed felt a hell of a lot better than he had before. The smug satisfaction in the face of Kimbley's helplessness was short-lived, however, as the alchemist managed to wrench his injured arm from Greed's grasp.

Greed's eyes widened, still not used to only having the strength of a human, and though he tried to dodge Kimbley's attack, he could only move so far while still keeping the rest of the bomber pinned down on the floor. It was with a snarl that he endured the nails digging into his skin, and in a split second, he too had sustained damage, the blood from Kimbley's palm mixing with the red streaks that now ran down the homunculus' face.

Not much damage, but for a homunculus, even a small wound was a big one.

Greed's clawed hand pushed down on Kimbley's chest as the other shot out to grab Kimbley's arm. The homunculus looked bestial as he sneered with sharp teeth against the pain in his cheek, and though he was wary of the alchemist finding out that he didn't have the healing capabilities he'd once taken for granted, he wasn't afraid yet.

"Kill me how?" He grinned. "Scratch me to death?"

[from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/123193.html).]

Bradley didn't long wonder if he'd meet any of the other "patients" tonight. In fact, he'd barely had time to decide just what was wrong with his physical condition before he became intimately aware of the struggle going on at the end of the hallway. One voice and face he recognized, and the other . . .

He was just a pace or two away from the violent scuffle, but his hands were folded behind him with the utmost calm as he observed. It was almost disconcerting that he could not exactly predict the swift bursts of movement between the two, but appearance was everything, and he stood his ground.

Their exchanged taunts happened to be somewhat ironic to him. He remembered the brief and informal report given concerning the lieutenant colonel's death, and he remembered learning of the prodigal sin's escape and eventual demise.

Was that why they were here, Bradley included? Was this the irrational consequence Dante refused to accept? Surely homunculi didn't end up with humans in the end . . .

"What a strange reunion this is turning out to be," he said, the salutation easy but firm. They'd hear him and they'd listen. He never spoke with any other intention. His expression, however, remained passive, even as his uncovered eye took in the homunculus' appearance. He knew this one had been the unforgivable rebel, but he felt no personal reaction one way or the other. The persistent wound on his face, though, did interest him.

"I hope you don't mind my interruption."

"I'll rip every part of your body into pieces!" snarled Kimbley, still too caught up in the throes of rage to realize that in his current state, that probably wouldn't be possible. (He was strong, yes, but not strong enough to rip off someone's arm.) He continued struggling and trying to tear apart whatever part of Greed he could get hold of - which was quickly put to a pause when his arm was caught and his body was slammed back into the cold, hard, and now very bloody floor.

He was about to try and wrench his other pinned arm free, the one that had sustained no damage, when a semi-familiar voice cut into his rage-fogged mind. Still with a snarl on his face, Kimbley looked around wildly, trying to see who it was. When his eyes landed on the nearby figure, it took him a few moments for the recognition to set in.

The Fuhrer.

He was here?

Although the development made Kimbley actually pause for a good few seconds, he wasn't about to let anyone's intrusion - whether it was the Fuhrer himself, Mustang, or any other worthless piece of trash that walked by - stop him from getting revenge on Greed. His hand was ruined, damn it, and he wasn't about to let that get away unpunished.

Greed was doing a good job keeping Kimbley at bay where he could, but that was before a calm and commanding voice broke through fight and caused them both to search for its source.

Greed's violet eyes darted away from the bomber, though his grip remained strong. The hall was dark and though the homunculus could make out the third man's figure and the vague lines of his face, he didn't recognize him as someone he knew particularly well, at least not in this light.

"I'm busy," Greed growled, and though the nonchalance with which the newcomer had spoken was unsettling, it wasn't enough to distract him from the situation at hand. Kimbley struggling underneath him was getting old and tiring as was, and with grit teeth, the homunculus brought his fist back and slammed it into the alchemist's jaw.

Bradley cocked his head slightly to the side, non-plussed. He should have expected that reaction from another homunculus, though Bradley hadn't sensed any recognition from him. That too was expected.

He had hoped for better from Kimbley, though. And if he hoped to get anything more out of him, he would have to do something before Greed maimed him beyond usefulness. Bradley was still acutely aware of his weakness, but that Kimbley was still breathing at all after that punch told him Greed was no better off.

With surprise as his only real advantage, he grabbed the back of Greed's collar and yanked him backward enough to step between them, where he bent to haul the human to his feet by the collar.

Bradley was accustomed to reducing his actions to human standards, but he was by no means pleased that this appeared to be his limit as well.

Regardless, he had their attention, and if he kept it, it would have to be the power of his command alone that did it.

"On your feet, soldier," he scolded kindly, keeping the lieutenant colonel upright between his fist and the wall, his smooth voice at odds with his force. "I'll forgive you for your lack of respect if you'll forgive me for your wrongful imprisonment."

He'd released Greed by this time, preferring not to reveal his weakness by being forced to do it. He trusted, however, that his sheer bulk would be enough to remain where he was for the moment. He glanced easily between them despite the tension. His smile remained.

"You two should be more friendly, considering you have that in common, Greed."

The punch came hard, and Kimbley's entire head rang with the blow. Pain exploded in his mouth along with blood, flooding it with the taste of iron and copper. Greed's fists were already stronger than any normal human's; coated with a thick, black layer of solidified carbon, they were deadly. He supposed it was fortunate that this place had sapped the homunculus' strength.

Regardless, Kimbley was completely dazed and almost on the brink of unconsciousness due to that hit. He wasn't quite there when the Fuhrer abruptly yanked Greed off of him and hauled him upright, pinning him against the wall with one fist and keeping Greed at bay. It was with unfocused eyes that he looked up at his former highest-commanding officer and smirked, blood trailing down his chin and staining his teeth faintly pink.

"I don't forgive," he muttered, trying to regain his footing as the pain throbbed in the back of his head. Focus. Either get back your control or die at the hands of a homunculus in front of the Fuhrer. That would just be embarassing.

Greed was taken aback literally and figuratively as he felt a strong hand grip the collar of his embarrassing grey uniform and haul not only him but his quarry upwards.

No surprise that it was the same weirdo as before, and now that he was closer, Greed found that the man looked familiar, eerily so, though he was sure he'd never met him before.

Wait, the eyepatch--Greed's eyes widened, then narrowed at the man's revealing that he knew his identity, and more, his sad history. It didn't take long for the homunculus to put one and two and three together--newspaper clippings and spying revelations, as well as Dante's murmurs of future plans while he'd been in the hag's employ--and he finally gave a crooked grin as he realized just who--and what--this man was.

"I'm not friendly with traitors," Greed spat through a wide sneer, "or with that bitch's dogs."

Bradley had never had the pleasure of meeting the Shield's fist, but he could easily imagine the damage it could do, and Kimbley must have been impressively determined not to lose consciousness. Still, he wasn't exactly firm on his feet, and Bradley continued to hold him up by the collar. Despite the soldier's obvious lack of loyalty, he would be valuable to Bradley, provided Bradley could gain some collateral for dealing with him. He preferred not to allow his extermination just yet.

He'd need collateral for Greed as well. His intelligence and tendency towards independence could be to Bradley's benefit or detriment: it was better that Greed recognize him on both counts, but not if he distributed such information indiscriminately.

Still propping the unsteady alchemist against the wall, Bradley turned more towards the homunculus behind him, a smile of reassurance in place. "If you do know me, you'll understand I have to be the diplomat. I have no quarrel with you, personally."

His smile altered, almost hidden by the mustache.

"You see, I am friendly with traitors, Greed." Bitch's dogs or not, Greed turned his back on them.

Nightshift 24: Second M Block, Near the bathrooms and exit

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