Title: Balance of Power ~ Chapter Eighteen
"I'm the Girl Your Mother Warned You About"
Arc One: Chapter Eighteen
"Great," Hughes mumbled as he opened the door. "Reilly sends me, Mister Disgustingly Normal, into a den of freaks. Way to blend in."
June 2, 2006 - 8:02pm
It had been a week since Hughes told Reilly he was moving in. A week since Ed had been attacked by the shadows. He'd stayed at her place every night since then, but he hadn't actually moved out of his small efficiency apartment until tonight.
It wasn't that he had much to pack. Maes Hughes had spent the past few years living like a monk. He'd never made the tiny apartment a home, never put any pictures up on the stark-white walls, never added any personal touches, had barely enough utensils to eat take-out. The microwave and the television were the only things that were used on a regular basis. In fact, the stove looked exactly as it did when he moved in. He'd lived for the past almost-four years as though the arrangement was temporary, and he'd finally decided it was time to let go of that notion.
Since he'd been pronounced dead, he'd dreamed of Gracia and Elysia at least twice a week, often three or four times. Always, they were vital, and alive, and behind a heavy, inches-thick door that towered so high the top was obscured by mist. In the featureless plane that was the land of dreams, he could see through that terribly solid door. He could see them; his girls, his light, his life. He could see them so clearly it hurt his eyes, his heart… his soul.
At first, the door was his ally. It was protection. It kept his girls safe from the horrors he was being forced to deal with. He could turn the knob at any time and join them on the other side of that door, but he didn't dare. Not at the time.
As horrible as he thought the cancer was within the military, as a ghost he found out it was even worse. Those in command at the Northern Front weren't just his friends. They were his country's only hope. And they'd been sent there to die. They were the last roadblock to some New World Order being planned by the top brass. Hughes had no idea exactly what the actual plan was; his sources of information became thin almost as soon as he was well enough to leave the hospital and things moved very quickly after that.
It was a possibility that what the brass had planned would cut out the cancer, and set Amestris back on the right course. A possibility, but not a probability.
Hughes wasn't a gambling man. He preferred to put his money on a sure thing. His friends that had been shunted to the front line in another senseless war were that sure thing, and they were about to be eliminated.
The last bit of information Major Armstrong was able to get to him before he was deployed was sketchy at best. But Hughes figured out where in the puzzle the one piece fit. He had to stop it before it was too late.
The country to the north was alchemy-poor but mineral-rich, especially in the rare-earths. They had never been a threat before. In fact they had a decent trade-agreement with Amestris, but they also had physicists and their technological development was moving forward.
The gossips and rumor-mills of Central City whispered about the possibility of a devastating bomb developed by the North. When Hughes dug a little deeper, he discovered that they were nowhere near that point.
The plan was to have his friends die in battle along with thousands of other innocent soldiers and civilians. The top brass were going to stack the deck and make sure of it.
Hughes was almost too late when he caught up with Bond.
The alchemist-assassin had set the timer on a device that would wipe out the entire regiment in an enormous alchemic reaction without focus, but hadn't yet sent it off to the target. All Hughes had to do was prevent Bond from sending the device to the targets until it exploded. Their location was far enough away that the only damage would be to the landscape. The only casualties would be himself and the assassin. Hughes was already dead, though. Dying again wouldn't make a difference in the lives of his friends and family. But they would be able to finish what they had started. The cost was reasonable.
Maes Hughes wasn't an alchemist and he only had a vague understanding of it. He knew nothing of The Gate. Even after three years, seven months, two weeks, four days, and an odd number of hours, minutes and seconds on the other side of it, he still had no understanding of exactly what happened, or how he ended up where he did. All he could remember was the timer on the bomb reaching the end and then he was in some farmer's field in Northern Oklahoma.
He still dreamed of his girls on the other side of that door, but now the door was locked and barred. It was no longer his ally, but his enemy.
The dream shifted only slightly over the years. At first he would spend the entire time he was in the land of dreams screaming and banging on the door until his throat was raw and his hands bled. Then he would plead with the door to open. He offered to give his life for real if the door would only let him through, let him touch his girls just once more. Often, in frustration, he would dream of hurling knives at the door, or finding other ways to destroy it. Always, the door remained unscathed.
As he moved through this strange new world, a ghost once more, lying—about himself, about his family—he'd dream that he spoke to Gracia and Elysia through the door. He'd break down and cry and beg their forgiveness for hurting them so deeply. Always, they remained silent. He could only hope that they heard him and forgave him, but he wouldn't blame them if they never did.
Over the past year, he no longer fought the door, no longer tried to open it. He'd finally come to understand that this would never work. All he could do was wait. He couldn't open the door. He didn't have the ability. If the door ever opened again, it would be by its own choice.
He resigned himself to just standing in front of it when he was there and just observing his girls. Wondering about them. Had Gracia moved on? How was Elysia doing in school? The tears still came in the dreams, but they'd dried up long ago when he was awake. They were gone, out of his reach. All he had left was this time, while he slept.
Then Ed came to him in that featureless plane, entreaty in his gold eyes. "We're all a part of whatever world we're in. We don't have a choice but to interact with it," he said in a voice that had matured.
"You can't go back." Ed grasped his shoulder and pointed behind him. When Hughes turned, he saw another door that stood wide open. "You can only go forward."
Hughes had never seen that door before. Had it always been there? He walked up to it and looked through. Beyond was life. And there were people there. Old friends, Ed and Al. New friends, Ducky, Tom, the people he worked with at the studio… and Reilly. They called to him and waved him over. They invited him to join them, but a feeling of fear settled deep in the pit of his stomach and he couldn't cross the threshold.
He saw Ed and Al hanging off of each other's shoulders, shining brightly and happy. The brothers, united and whole, called to him the loudest, but it was Reilly who was nearest. She was quiet and waiting patiently for him. He watched her turn to the brothers with a brilliant smile, then she took one more glance back and walked away. She didn't leave; she put herself in the background.
Life was through that door and it terrified him more than anything he had ever experienced.
If I go through that door, will my girls be forever out of my reach? he wondered.
He felt the firm grip on his shoulder return and Ed was beside him once more. "They're already out of your reach, Hughes. They have been since you crossed The Gate."
He jerked around again and felt himself quail. Gracia and Elysia… his girls, his life, they were fading, becoming shrouded in a mist. "No!" he cried, and stumbled to the door. "No! Come back! Please…" he banged on the door in desperation, but he knew it was fruitless. He sagged to his knees and let his forehead fall against the unyielding barrier. "Please," he sobbed. "Don't let me lose this. It's all I have left of them."
He felt Ed next to him once more. He didn't want to look at him. He couldn't bear it.
"You won't lose them," the young man said softly. He felt a hand rest over his heaving chest. "They're here. They'll never completely fade."
Over the next two weeks, when he dreamed of that door, it grew further and further away, but Gracia and Elysia remained as they were, mist-shrouded, but there. The open door was always right within reach, but he couldn't cross the threshold.
When Ed appeared next to him again, Hughes asked him why he couldn't cross.
"You're not letting yourself."
He was nearly blinded by a golden light and thought at first it was coming from Ed. Then he felt heat on his left hand and brought it up to look. His wedding ring was the source of the heat and the light.
"You have to let go," Ed said, then he went through the door.
For the first time in years he cried while he was awake. The tears fell unnoticed at first as he stared down at the open wallet in his hand; at the dog-eared picture within that he'd kept on him since he'd 'died'. Then he downed the last of his sixth bottle of beer, stuck the fourth finger of his left hand all the way in his mouth and slicked it with his spit. It was salt-bitter from his tears, and he grimaced at the taste.
He tore at the ring, pulling at the one thing that held more meaning to him than his own life. It refused to come off easily, stopping at the knuckle. He twisted it back and forth as he forced it over the pinched flesh, not caring about the pain as it scraped his skin. Then it broke free and it nearly flew from his grasp. He clenched his hand around the ring desperately, his heart pounding at nearly losing something so dear, and held it close to his chest until his heart and breathing calmed.
Hughes read the engraving inside one last time; You are my heart and my life, eternal as a circle. He whispered, "I hope your lives are happy, Gracia… Elysia. I love you," as he dropped the ring into the plastic sleeve with the photograph of his wife and daughter. He couldn't bring himself to actually say 'good-bye'.
The wallet fell to the table as he covered his eyes with a left hand that now felt horribly naked and raw. Then the stillness of the small apartment was broken by his choking, ragged sobs.
He didn't know how much time had passed when he woke up. The apartment had grown darker and he no longer felt the buzz of the cheap beer. He felt groggy, puffy and queasy, but he also felt that the worst of the pain had finally ended. He was ready to move forward now.
He took a shower, then finished packing the last of his clothes. He dropped the key off with the landlady downstairs and told her that she was welcome to the stuff he left. He no longer had any use for it.
The sun had set and night was approaching when he tossed the bag into the back seat next to the gym-bag full of paintball equipment. He smiled a bit and hoped he'd have a chance to let Ed pay him back for his humiliating defeat in the near future.
It still hadn't reached full dark when Hughes slowed for the turn down Reilly's road, but it was dark enough that he could see the lights from emergency vehicles a mile down. His heart pounded, and he had to consciously keep from pressing down on the gas.
He was waved to a stop by a police officer a hundred yards from the drive and he rolled down his window. The young woman leaned in and said, "Sorry, sir, but we can't let you get any closer to the crime scene."
"C-crime scene?" Hughes said, and felt his stomach flip. "What happened?"
"That's being investigated right now. We don't know for certain, yet." Her expression became questioning, but not suspicious. "You family?"
Hughes swallowed and stared down the road at what was left of Reilly's house. What he could see of it between fire trucks and police vehicles looked like it had been completely destroyed. "Yes," he whispered. He faced the officer. "Yes," he repeated, louder. "Reilly was… is my… girlfriend." Well, it isn't entirely a lie. We are friends.
Hughes felt the bottom drop out of his world and his vision go black along the edges at the look of pain on the young cop's face. "OhdearGod," he choked. He stared wide-eyed at the remains of the house and just shook. "Please tell me they got away."
"I… I'm sorry," she whispered. When Hughes turned to her, he could see she was fighting to keep her professionalism. A rookie, the investigator and soldier in him couldn't help thinking. Even through his anxiety of not knowing for certain if Ed and Reilly had escaped, he couldn't stop that part of his mind from working. This is probably her first time to deliver bad news like this.
Very carefully struggling to keep the fear out of his voice, he asked, "Did you find their bodies?"
She swallowed and didn't answer. In the lengthening silence, Hughes caught sight of a flat-bed tow-truck pulling out of the drive, a smoking hulk of a sedan carried on its back. It can't be them. Please, if there is a God, don't let it be them.
He put the car in park, shut off the engine, and opened the door. The woman stepped back. "We haven't found any bodies in the house, but we found the car in the middle of the field," she said. "It looked like someone was chasing them." He barely listened as the tow-truck neared them. He stepped into the center of the road and waved for it to stop.
"I don't think you want to do that," the officer said. "There's not really anything left to identify until DNA tests and an autopsy can be run."
When the truck came to a stop, he said to the officer, "I need to see for myself. Please."
She thought about it, then nodded. To the driver, she said, "Let him look."
Hughes pulled himself up on the platform next to the car and lurched back at the stench of charred flash. He pulled his shirt up over his nose, and looked around the outside, delaying the inevitable –avoiding the gruesome sight within. He could feel the heat that still clung to the sedan and gave it a cautious tap. It had at least cooled enough to touch at this point.
The vehicle was unfamiliar, and unidentifiable as anything but a generic sedan. Government issue, Hughes thought. Feds. There wasn't any paint remaining, and the tires had melted into an amorphous mess. The glass was mostly gone and spiderwebbed where what little remained had fused into the frame. The hood, however, sent a thrill of fear through him. Burned mostly away and unidentifiable to anyone not knowing what they were looking at, was a partial hint of an array. One Hughes was vaguely familiar with.
This whole scenario is wrong, he thought. Ed would never go to these extremes, even if his life was in danger. He'd disable them, but leave anyone chasing them alive. He squinted and leaned closer. No. Not Ed. The pattern and symbols aren't right. The only other possibility could be…Hughes stopped. He didn't want to consider the other 'possibility' yet.
He steeled himself and reached for the door of the sedan. When he tried to pull it open, it wouldn't budge. A closer look in the fading light showed him that it was welded shut and the soot and shadows within wouldn't afford him a good look. He turned to the officer who was still on the ground. "Can I borrow the flashlight?"
She reluctantly tossed it up to him, but didn't try to dissuade him. Hughes took a deep breath and readied himself, then turned on the light and shined it into the warped, gaping hole that was once the windshield. What light penetrated the soot illuminated enough that he felt his gorge rise. The two bodies that had been immolated inside the car were still sitting upright, melted into the seat. Any actual identifying marks had been burned away; it was impossible to tell if the victims had been male, or female. Images of Ishbal came back to him in a rush, and he felt his knees begin to buckle.
There was something terrifyingly familiar about the condition of the sedan. He'd seen enough intelligence photos to know that Roy Mustang wasn't the only one who could do something like this. The scene smacked of Bond and Hughes had to acknowledge it. The array on the hood is his. For one very brief moment, he actually wished that Ed had been responsible for this destruction. The idea that Bond was on their asses terrified him and made the possibility of the charred forms inside being Reilly and Ed so much more real.
"Sir, are you alright?" the woman called up to him, pulling him back to the here-and-now. Instead of answering he forced himself to look again. His answer was there --even if he couldn't tell much-- and he was putting the pieces together. There was just one thing he had to make absolutely certain of.
He swallowed and forced himself to really look at the bodies. He knew it would have been too much to hope they'd died easily before they had been burned and he was at least grateful that there wasn't anything remaining of their faces. He didn't think he could take it if he had to see the horror frozen there as they realized they were going to die in the worst possible way imaginable. And knowing that sadistic bastard, he probably made sure they died slowly. He shined the light down the torso of the driver and saw one hand fused to the wheel and the other grasping at the door handle. Or not? He aimed the beam over at the passenger, and saw that this one was hanging onto the door with both hands. Trying to escape. Both of them. They saw it coming, but their deaths were instant. Hughes rubbed his chin and furrowed his brow. If they died that quickly, then Bond was pissed. At this moment, he couldn't tell if that was good or bad. He shined the light down at the driver again, this time lower, then quickly turned it back to the passenger, again aiming the light low.
Four arms. Four legs. And Bond pissed off enough to flash-fry them.
This time his knees did give out and he sunk down to the platform.
It's not them. Thank God it's not them. They got away.
Hughes pulled into the muddy patch of space that passed as a parking lot for The Bohemian Coffee House and hit a water-filled pothole deep enough to jar his teeth. For what was possibly the hundredth time since he started to navigate the maze of one-way streets that made up the city's warehouse district, he'd cursed Reilly for her choice of contact spots. The place was next to impossible to find, unless you knew exactly what you were looking for and he'd missed it more than once. It didn't help that while the front of the building faced a main thoroughfare, all indications that this was a thriving business were around the back, only accessible down a dark, narrow street.
After he'd confirmed that the bodies in the sedan were not Ed and Reilly, Hughes had driven straight to Tulsa and checked into a cheap motel. Then he walked the two blocks to a nearby convenience store and made a call to a cellphone number Tom had given him that didn't belong to him, Ducky, nor Reilly. He left a short, cryptic message on the voice mail, then returned to the room to wait. The instructions were to meet up with his contact at midnight at the coffee house. With the round-about method of getting the message to Tom and Ducky that Reilly and Ed had run, Hughes could only hope that nothing got lost in translation. He knew it was going to be a long night and he should be conserving his energy, but with everything that was spinning around in his head, even a short nap would be elusive. All he could do, was lay on the bed, stare blindly at the ceiling, and try to sort everything out. There were so many questions that needed answered. The biggest being, how is Bond connected to Ed?
How would he have discovered that Ed was here, and how would he even know who he was? And what does he want with him? The most obvious answer to the last question was that the assassin thought Ed might get him back through the Gate. Unfortunately, that did nothing to shed any light on the rest of the puzzle. It was possible that Ed might know. But he wasn't going to find that out until he could catch up with them. Hughes was a patient man, but this night was eroding that patience quickly. He couldn't keep the thought that Bond was closing in on those two out of his head, and the only thing that stopped him from going out and searching the streets of Tulsa was the knowledge that it was very likely they weren't even in this city.
He shut off the ignition and looked at the old 2-story brick building that was attached to an empty, metal-sided warehouse. First impressions are not always right, he realized when he saw the fire escape balcony was freshly painted with window boxes and potted plants decorating it. The brick part of the building looked like it was well maintained and there was a large patio set up with tables that were already filled with customers, most of whom were a bit of a shock.
Black seemed to be the dominating color of choice for clothing here, along with chains, leather, and a few spiked collars. Hughes saw several kids milling around with hair in colors he'd only seen in fevered dreams.
"Great," he mumbled as he opened the door. "Reilly sends me, Mister Disgustingly Normal, into a den of freaks. Way to blend in."
He sighed, stepped out of the car, and nearly lost his balance when his foot went further down than he'd anticipated. The instant he caught himself, he felt the cold chill of muddy water soak through his shoe and pants-leg. He groaned down in disgust at the pot hole that nearly swallowed his car a moment ago and was now working on devouring him. "Well, this evening is starting out just great."
With acrobatic skill, he managed to get the other foot out of the car and on solid ground without soaking in it or falling face-first in the mud. Once both feet were on the same level he headed toward the coffee house, shaking his drenched foot at every other step. Then as soon as he reached the fence surrounding the patio, he felt a knot of anxiety tangle in his gut.
They were all. So. Damned. Young. Out of all the customers hanging out, behaving like they'd known each other since they were small, not a one could have possibly been much older than Ed. This whole set-up was beginning to look like the classic Very Bad Idea.
Reilly had insisted that this was a safe place for a contact meeting if something happened and she and Ed had to run. Hughes had no choice but to trust her on this. He considered himself lucky that no one actually paid any attention to him as he dodged and wove around kids with more metal on their clothes and faces than he had in his pocket.
Once inside, he had to squeeze through the press of bodies waiting in the narrow entry hall for the bathroom in order to get to the main room of the place. He received more than a few lecherous looks, from both women and men, and he was certain a few nudges and brushes were quite deliberate.
He was finally able to take a breath once past the hall and took a quick glance around. He wasn't certain how he'd recognize 'Kitten', but Reilly said he'd know her when he saw her. For some reason, that did nothing to ease his apprehension.
The place inside was hardly what he expected. It had a casual look, but not seedy. Almost like someone had turned their basement into a huge party room. There was an old upright piano with an acoustic guitar resting on top of it, couches scattered about, even a few old footstools. One section had been converted into a cyber café, with wrought-iron patio tables and chairs and there was a small stage in the center.
The place was buzzing with people wandering about talking to people they knew, hugging, or cuddling on the couch. Even a few people were sitting on the carpeted floor around an enormous coffee table that looked like it had been made from a single stump of an incredibly large tree. There were murals on the walls and ceiling, a few tables where people were playing chess, even a nook filled with books and a pair of comfortable old recliners.
This is not your typical trendy restaurant, he thought. There was a slight amount of relief when he spotted a few normal-looking and older people in the crowd. Maybe I won't stick out too badly, after all.
He found an empty table and settled in to wait. A young blonde man that looked like he could be blown away at the first stiff breeze approached him with a pad of paper in hand. Hughes was stunned at just how similar he looked to Ed in the fine-boned facial features and big, expressive eyes. But while Ed was short and wiry, this boy had a tall and willowy build.
"Hey, welcome to The Bohemian. What can I get you?"
Hughes's mind went completely blank. There was no menu, so he had no idea what was available. "What do you recommend?"
The boy shrugged and gave him a friendly grin –Dear God, are those… real fangs?!—and said, "Personally, I love the cinnamon raspberry vanilla cappuccino."
"Sounds good to me, I'll have that. What's good to eat?"
"First timer, huh?" The boy grinned wider and Hughes was absolutely certain those were fangs… and they didn't look fake. "If you're just wanting dessert," he said as he pointed back at the cash counter and the large pastry display case next to it. "The best are the cheesecake, the tiramisu, and the Boss made a kick-ass apple pie today."
Apple pie?! He was almost tempted, but the feeling of his heart lurching quickly made him change his mind. He didn't think he could eat anyone else's apple pie but Gracia's. He shook his head and said, "The cheesecake will be fine, thanks."
As the young man walked off to get his order, Hughes felt a pair of slender hands on his shoulders and before he had a chance to react, there was a gentle puff of hot breath then the tip of a tongue sliding up the shell of his ear. He involuntarily shivered and was stunned frozen for the merest instant. That was enough for him to find his lap and arms suddenly filled with a voluptuous young woman with bright lavender, shoulder-length hair, vivid gold cat-slit eyes, and a black satin corset that enhanced two of her most prominent features.
Any possible form of coherent thought flew off to parts unknown as he just stared at her seductive smile. She purred and fingered that one errant lock of hair he could never keep out of his face. It made him think how much she seemed like a large, fluffy cat…
His brows shot up. "Kitten?"
"You know, you're just as yummy as Pandora said you'd be," she said.
"Y-yummy?"
"Well, her words were more like, 'Cute, cuddly, and if you try to molest him, I'll tell Ducky you have the hots for him'."
He laughed. "That sounds more like something Reilly would say." He placed his hands on her waist and attempted to politely remove her from his lap, but she wasn't budging. "You… might want to get up now. I don't think this is what she intended when she asked you to get in contact with me."
She wriggled just the slightest bit and gave him a wicked grin as his breath hitched and his fingers clamped tightly on her waist. "Hmmm. You know, from where I'm sitting, I don't think that would be such a good idea." She leaned in close and spoke softly in his ear. "If I get up, everyone will know just how blessed you are."
His face went hot and tight and he groaned low, more from embarrassment than anything else. He closed his eyes a brief moment, got his scattered thoughts under control, then gave Kitten his most wicked grin. "I'll just have to take that risk, won't I?" he said mildly. "Now, if you don't get up, I'll tell Ducky you have the hots for him, myself."
She pouted and didn't move at first. Hughes suddenly forgot she was there, though, because his attention was drawn to someone at the register. The man had his back to him at first, but there was something about the stance that was far too familiar. There was no mistaking that ram-rod stiff posture, the bald head, or the overly superior tone of voice that drifted over the low murmuring of the crowd.
With an annoyed huff, Kitten started to rise but Hughes grabbed her hips and held her down. "On second thought…"
With a lusty purr she bent down and kissed him with a skill that took his breath away and wiped out any thought of protest. Almost by pure reflex alone, he responded to her playfully probing tongue; allowing her in and relishing in the sensuous glide along his own. All he could sense at that moment was heat and electricity that vibrated him down to his toes.
A low moan rumbled deep in his chest and his arms tightened around her; pulling her closer. Ooohfuuuuck.
Wait. No! Way wrong word, he thought, trying to get his whirling mind to slow down. He had to focus on something much more important.
Thinkunsexythoughtsthinkunsexythoughts… Last thing I need is to be seen by Bond…
…And that broke the hold she had on him.
He pulled away from her; panting and wild-eyed. She smiled, insufferably pleased with herself, but his eyes slid past her to see that Bond was still at the register. The man was beginning to fidget and Hughes sincerely hoped that whoever was waiting on him finished up with him soon. He didn't want to see what Bond would do in a fit of pique here. He'd seen it too often before and the end was never pretty. Reilly's house and the bar-b-qued sedan was proof that he hadn't mellowed with his exposure to this world.
The girl behind the counter stepped away from the register and Bond turned. Hughes yanked Kitten down and buried his face in her neck. She purred happily and ran her fingers through his hair. He nuzzled at her ear and watched the counter through her impossibly lavender hair. "Don't look," he whispered and wrapped his arms tighter around her to keep her from doing exactly that. "There's a man at the register that I want to avoid."
He felt her tense and her warm breath in his ear. "Someone after Pandora and the hottie?" she asked, all hint of seduction gone from her voice.
"Yeah. How do I get out of here without being seen by him?"
"Leave that to me. Just keep your nose buried in my neck for a moment."
"Just trust me." He did as she said and felt her shift in his lap as one arm left his shoulder. There was absolutely nothing seductive about the movement this time; it felt more like she was gesturing to someone behind him. Then she leaned back down and whispered, "And if you get an urge to nibble while you're there, I certainly would not complain."
"Ha-ha. No."
She actually giggled at that. "Can't blame a girl for trying."
Hughes kept his face buried in her neck, all the while watching Bond with one eye. He sensed another presence behind him and tensed. Kitten felt it and said in his ear, "Easy Lover, Gretchen is a friend of mine. Just play along."
Play along? Why does that scare the hell out of m-- He suddenly forgot how to breathe when he felt a soft, hot mouth on his neck that was most definitely not Kitten's and a hand snaking around from behind him and down the front of his shirt. His eyes went wide and he gulped. "Um… as flattering as this is, it really wasn't what I had in mind, ladies."
The hot mouth left his neck with a light nip and a low, lusty chuckle. There wasn't much relief however, because Gretchen's breath puffed on the damp flesh as Kitten whispered in her ear. Hughes couldn't hear what was being said, but it was brief and he felt the tickle of hair when Gretchen nodded.
Bond was growing more impatient as he waited at the counter. Hughes was grateful for the delay, but fearful of what would happen if it went on too long. He was also very grateful when he felt Gretchen stand and step back from him.
He thought he might actually be able to breathe now.
"Don't worry Honey," Gretchen said in a voice far deeper than he expected. "I'll tell Spike and then we'll get the distraction started."
Hughes then came to the stunned realization that the rather tall, raven-haired 'woman' who sauntered into his line of sight and toward the counter was no woman. This must have transmitted itself to Kitten, because she started to giggle. "Gretchen is a trans, Darling."
"T-trans?"
"Transsexual. She has one more surgery and then she'll be all woman."
He had no idea just how to respond to that. Especially since Gretchen had a damn fine pair of legs and one hell of an ass.
Instead he occupied himself and his overwhelmed brain with watching Bond and the show Gretchen was starting.
He could hear Bond's voice growing more impatient with the slow service and he tensed when he saw the man start to nervously fiddle with his wristwatch. There was something odd about the gesture and then Hughes realized with an icy certainty that the watch was most logical place to hide a personal array. If he gets serious with that thing, the game is up, he thought. I won't let him blow this place and all these kids up.
He caught sight of the willowy blonde waiter as he was coming around the counter with a tray. Gretchen moved in behind Bond and Hughes shifted in a vain attempt to keep the assassin in view. He caught a subtle gesture from the woman and a glance toward Bond by the waiter. Then the boy headed to his table, set the coffee and cheesecake down, scribbled something hastily on the ticket, and left without another word. All the time, Kitten was wrapped around him like a blanket, doing a damn fine job of acting like they were making out while keeping him shielded.
Hughes started to wonder just who some of these people really were. They were working together like they'd been a long-standing team with almost military precision. He stretched his arm out and grabbed the ticket. There was a note.
"What's it say?" Kitten asked.
"Sixty seconds."
"Damn, Spike's getting slow."
He never heard what she said, because he saw the blonde sneak back into the kitchen. A moment later there was a crashing sound from there and a screaming match started. What the hell?
The effect was instantaneous. The entire coffee house went quiet for the space of a heartbeat and then as a single entity, nearly everyone clamored up to the counter to see what was going on. It was simple and brilliant. Bond was effectively trapped by the press of curious onlookers and Gretchen had the perfect position with her height, to block Hughes's escape from the assassin's sight.
Kitten sprung off his lap, grabbed his wrist and yanked him toward the front exit. "Wait, my car's out back," he protested.
"We'll get it later, c'mon."
They were halfway across the coffeehouse when he heard a bellowed, "HUGHES!"
Ohshit! he thought as he chanced a glance back over his shoulder.
Bond was roughly shoving people out of his way and doing his damndest to get out of the packed mob. Hughes only caught a glimpse of Gretchen latching onto the assassin and then being slung back into the pastry case next to the counter, shattering the glass front.
Kitten cried out and started for her friend, but this time it was Hughes doing the pulling. "No time Kitten. We've got to get out of here, now."
They hit the front door running, slamming it open so hard it dented the steel and rebounded back. As they reached the end of the sidewalk a thirty year-old metal monster screeched to a stop and the passenger door flew open. At the same moment, Hughes caught the bright yellow glow of alchemy from the corner of his eye. He yelled "Get down!" to the driver and threw Kitten to the ground, shielding her with his own body as the coffee house door exploded onto a million fragments.
As soon as the wind from the explosive concussion blew past, he looked up toward what remained of the doorway and saw Bond clasp the frame with one hand as the band around his wrist glowed. There was another bright yellow flash, as the frame morphed into something else altogether. He didn't hang around to find out what Bond was transmuting; he just pulled Kitten up, flung her into the car and dove in after her.
"Get to the hotel, Spike," Kitten said, as Hughes squirmed around to get upright. It was only as he did that he realized there was no more yellow glow and he looked back to see Bond just standing on the sidewalk lighting a cigarette.
"This isn't good," Hughes said when he couldn't see anything else in the man's hands. The bastard never wasted a transmutation. Then a cold chill trickled down his spine when he realized he didn't see anything back there.
He gulped, rolled down the window and stuck his head out. He looked back and down, where he was blind previously. "Oh HELL!" he said again when he finally spotted a clockwork 'spider' about the size of a German shepherd gaining on the sedan. "Floor it!"
"You got it," Spike said and Hughes heard the big eight-cylinder engine growl. He chanced a glance at the driver of the sedan. 'Spike', he discovered, was his willowy waiter and the boy had a ferocious grin that bared his fangs.
"How fast can you get?"
"On this road? Fifty, tops. Too many hills and curves."
Hughes leaned back out of the window and saw the spider closing the space between them. Fifty wasn't going to be fast enough. He knew Bond's clock-work bombs could reach that easily. "Too slow. That bomb'll catch us any second."
"Bomb?" Spike squeaked.
Kitten looked at Hughes, wide-eyed and pale and he was painfully reminded that distractions and pranks were one thing, but these kids were still kids and they were in serious danger. It wasn't fun anymore.
Kitten stammered then got herself back under control with a grim determination. She pointed out the left side of the car. "Highway."
Spike nodded, his face tight. A moment later, Hughes was thrown sideways when the boy made a sharp left turn and had to scramble to grab hold of the dash in front of him when the door flew open. Once he had himself righted he stretched to grab the handle and barely had time to jerk back when Spike sideswiped a telephone pole with the door, slamming it back shut. Then the boy overcorrected and slid the left side of the car along the retaining wall of the on-ramp, throwing sparks everywhere.
Hughes leaned back out of the window and saw the spider continue on its original heading. Then it spun and zeroed in on them. It launched itself for the sedan with more speed than before, leaping up onto the right side retaining wall and skittering after them. "Better give it more gas, Spike!" Hughes said.
The car sped faster up the ramp, but the spider doggedly kept closing the space between them. "Shit! Don't let it get ahead of us!"
"What is that thing?" Kitten asked.
"It's a robot. If it gets ahead of us there's no way we can get around it," Hughes said. "It'll attach itself to the car and explode."
No sooner were the words out of his mouth, when the spider poured on a burst of speed and leapt at the car. Kitten screamed when it hit the roof with a heavy metallic clank, but Spike just clenched his jaw and sped up. Hughes saw the spider careen off across the ramp, but he didn't delude himself with thinking they'd managed to get away. He needed something besides a throwing knife to deal with it.
"Spike, do you have a gun?"
"Damnit! Why do you old people always assume that someone with an alternative lifestyle is automatically a gang-banger?" Spike complained.
Hughes just looked at him.
The boy blushed furiously, then pointed. "Glove box."
Hughes opened the box and rifled around the pile of old parking tickets, ketchup packets and unidentifiable detritus. "I'm not finding it." He reached further back and his hand hit something hard and metallic. "There it is," he said as he pulled the gun out. He released the magazine to check the ammunition, saw it was fully loaded, then slapped it back in. It was a .22 --little more than a pea-shooter-- but it was the best he had at the moment.
The old car burst out onto the highway and swerved to avoid an oncoming semi at the merge-point, unbalancing Hughes once more. He was saved from falling into the door by Kitten's quick yank on his arm. He gave her a hasty thanks and looked back. Just as he feared, the spider was back on course and gaining on them. At least it's in the open now, he thought. It made keeping an eye on it easier; aiming at it would be a problem, though.
He made a quick assessment of the robot. Knowing Bond, there would be only the smallest of vulnerable places that a bullet might cause some damage. The case would be impervious, but the 'eyes' that surrounded that main body might not be. He briefly regretted never listening to Hawkeye's firm suggestions that he get more practice on the firing range. His aim with a gun was less than stellar and this wasn't paintball.
The 'eyes' that ringed the spider glowed a baleful yellow from the internal alchemic reaction and that was where Hughes intended to aim. He looked at the window. Getting through it was going to require more flexibility than he'd used in years and an awkward angle, but his aim would be steadier if he used both hands. No choice, he thought as he brought his long legs up and turned backwards in the seat.
"Keep your right side clear Spike!" Hughes said, as he maneuvered his shoulders through the open window. A semi laid on the horn as it roared past, making him instinctively flinch and duck. "Damnit!"
"Sorry," Spike said.
Once he made sure it was clear, he eased back out. The spider wasn't immediately visible and he leaned further out. At that moment, the bomb leapt onto the trunk, startling Hughes and causing him to fumble the gun. He quickly recovered and took aim.
The first shot skipped with a spark off the top of the robot and the machine's body flinched backwards as it hesitated in its climb forward. Hughes took the opportunity to squeeze off another round. This time he sent the bullet right into one of the glowing eyes. The spider reacted by spreading its legs out and flattening itself to the trunk of the car. Then it started to shake and bolts of yellow sparks flew out from it in all directions.
The entire metal body of the old car was suddenly electrified. Spike yelped and swerved when a shock zapped him, throwing Hughes hard into the door, causing him to drop the gun and nearly tumble out onto the pavement racing past below. Miraculously, the door didn't fly open this time.
He heard a pop and a hum over the wind and engine noise as he regained his balance, and saw that the spider had fused itself with the metal of the car. The eyes that ringed the body of the robot were opening and closing in rapid succession and the sequence was speeding up as he watched.
"Oh Hell," Hughes said when realization hit him. "That arrogant bastard alchemized a failsafe."
"What the fuck, Mate?" Spike shouted, and Hughes winced when he realized he had spoken aloud.
"Pull over!" he yelled. "We're abandoning the car."
"We can't! We're elevated!" Spike called back.
Shit. Hughes saw that there was nowhere to pull over safely. Not without risking getting hit or going over the side. And not for at least a few miles. This part of the highway was running alongside the river.
He could see the lights reflecting off the river where the highway crossed up ahead and an idea hit him. He ducked back in and sat forward in the seat. "Speed up, Spike!"
Hughes pointed ahead. "I want you to aim the car right at the guard over the river. When I say, we're going to jump out just before the car goes over. Got it?"
He heard incoherent noises, but ignored them as he popped the latch on the door to get ready. It was dangerous as all hell and those kids could still end up dead, but it was better than waiting for the bomb to blow.
"Get ready!" He had to hand it to Spike. The kid had nerves. He kept the car barreling along the elevated highway with one hand on the wheel and the other on the door. As a gentle curve started, the car remained straight. "On my mark! Three… two… one…now!"
He pushed off with his feet and slammed his shoulder into the door. He only had enough time to see Kitten roll out of the passenger side before he slammed into the cement barrier and fought for breath and consciousness. He felt a sickening crunch-pop in his shoulder as he heard the screech of metal and the crumble of concrete being shattered at high-impact, and was suddenly struck with a very strong sense of nausea that he struggled to swallow down.
At that speed the car should have busted all the way through. Instead, it bounced back into the middle of the highway, where it was clipped by a semi and sent spinning.
Hughes saw disaster an instant before it struck.
Kitten was stunned and stumbling toward the highway instead of back to the guard. It put her right in the path of the spinning car and she was hit by the rear end, throwing her to the ground. The car came to a stop, but she was under the trunk. She shook her head and tried to crawl out. Hughes scrambled to his feet, his right arm hanging uselessly at his side, and lurched forward to go help her, but he saw the light from the internal spark of the bomb go out as the final hole slid closed.
He barely had the chance to yell to Spike and hit the ground himself when the car exploded in a huge fireball of flying glass and metal.
Author: maxxim_huzzah
*covers eyes*
OH NO. ;_________________________________________________________;
:: Thread :: Reply
What? Now you're complaining that we update too much? :þ
It was originally part of the previous chapter, but it would have been too long that way, so we split it.
Author: vampslayer04
*shrieks and covers eyes* Hughes! And Ed, and Reily, and, and...
YOu'd better update soon. *puppy-dog eyes*
Author: sannask
30 gallon tanks, 8 miles to the gallon. X D.
and general reaction at the end of this chapter: NOOOOO!!!!!!
Author: kawaiisporkmage
Cliffhanger, pun intended.
More soon?
Author: destervetha
*FLAILS*
that is all
Title: Comments, part 1
Midden, meet windmill; windmill, meet midden, as Terry Pratchett might say. And I thought things were only going to start spiraling out of control when the raid on the hospital got underway. I'm enjoying having my expectations confounded. Much commentary to follow:
He'd never made the tiny apartment a home, never put any pictures up on the stark-white walls, never added any personal touches, had barely enough utensils to eat take-out.
Parallelism fails in the final clause; possibly emend to: "never owned more utensils than he needed to eat take-out".
Since he'd been pronounced dead, he'd dreamed of Gracia and Elysia at least twice a week, often three or four times.
I'm going to have a moderate amount to say about Hughes's dreamwork. I'll start here by suggesting that in the next round of drafts, it's probably useful to go back and plant some of what you reveal here in previous chapters. It's in character that he should dream of his family, but like some of the other significant revelations about interior life, this one would gain in power by following on some dropped clues.
Always, they were vital, and alive, and behind a heavy, inches-thick door that towered so high the top was obscured by mist. In the featureless plane that was the land of dreams, he could see through that terribly solid door. He could see them; his girls, his light, his life. He could see them so clearly it hurt his eyes, his heart… his soul.
As a psychological point, I'm not sure I buy that Hughes would "always" dream of his family in this way. Recurrently, certainly. But I would expect that this recurrent dream would be interspersed, particularly before he crosses over, with more mundane stuff (of interacting with them, in the past or an imaginary present) and nightmares (of seeing them threatened or hurt or dead themselves). I'm inclined to suggest two things: first, that the "behind the door" image be more mundane before the crossover, at least acquiring the "featureless plain" only afterward (as if to suggest both that he's aware that he's further from home than ever now and that while he doesn't consciously remember the crossover, subconsciously he's still got information about it). That helps to set up the further mutation of the dream down the road.
Oh, and watch out for purple patches (like the final two sentences). This is melodramatic stuff by nature, so it wants a very light touch or else it's going to lose impact.
As horrible as he thought the cancer was within the military, as a ghost he found out it was even worse.
Tense consistency: "had thought".
His friends that had been shunted to the front line in another senseless war were that sure thing ...
Grammar hitch: "that" should be "who" when referring to people.
The country to the north was alchemy-poor but mineral-rich, especially in the rare-earths.
Is there a reason that this country isn't identified as "Drachma" (per the anime as well as the manga, IIRC)?
The gossips and rumor-mills of Central City whispered about the possibility of a devastating bomb developed by the North.
Redundancy: "gossips and rumor-mills". Delete one or differentiate further. In general, this section has a fair amount of excess verbiage in it, usually a phrase or two per sentence or a couple of excess modifiers; in the next draft, go looking for this and tighten things up so that the rhetoric has more snap.
The alchemist-assassin had set the timer on a device that would wipe out the entire regiment in an enormous alchemic reaction without focus ...
I'm not sure what the implication of "without focus" is. I'm inclined to suggest deleting it if its intent is merely to indicate that the reaction's destructive power is indiscriminate (that's already covered by the "wiping out the entire regiment" bit).
Continued ...
Continuing ...
Parallelism fails in first sentence; also, given his close friendship with Mustang and his general acuity, "vague understanding" seems excessive. Possible emendation: "Maes Hughes wasn't an alchemist and he had only a layman's understanding of the science." Tense consistency: "He had known nothing of The Gate" (because he's been hanging out with Ed and Reilly lately, so he's got to know something now). Repetition of "understanding".
He resigned himself to just standing in front of it when he was there and just observing his girls.
Repetition of "just".
Then Ed came to him in that featureless plane, entreaty in his gold eyes.
Here's where I put another lump of incense in the burner and begin chanting my favorite mantra, "Subtle." :-) As long as you're being symbolic, you might as well be as subtle as you can about it: why deprive the reader of the pleasure of working out for him/herself what you mean? I'm not asking for deliberate obscurity, but a light touch and a tight blend of language and imagery. When you go back to revise this, really bear down -- try to eliminate as much as you can and retain only the essentials. The less you need to explain Hughes's reactions, the better off you are -- the things he sees and does should make the emotional impact on their own as much as possible. It's the old show-don't-tell rule. Frex: the line "The brothers ... called to him the loudest, but ... Reilly ... was [the] nearest" (emended for rhetorical punch) tells us in the simplest of terms the difference in Hughes's unconscious attitude toward these characters. You don't then need to have Reilly wait or walk away so explicitly -- this dream is all about Hughes's reactions, not anyone else's, and her position is enough to remind us of everything that's passed between them so far. Subtle, y'see? :-)
Another good touch throughout here is to have Ed-in-the-dream say nothing that Ed-in-reality hasn't already said; that keeps the focus on Hughes and his reactions and also defends against the temptation to start explaining the dream. Or making the dream explain itself: I'd strongly advise deleting the "You won't lose them" line -- it's pushing toward being overly sentimental and solves both too much (this is the psychological move he'll eventually make, but it's too early in the process) and not enough (symbolic losses are represented as actual losses here, so the offer of a symbolic notion of recovery is as weak as it would be in real life -- I mean, I expect Hughes to round on Ed for saying something like that, despite its truth; almost any grieving person would).
The transition between the two explicitly described dreams is also weak; I want something here to situate these experiences in the narrative reality. If Hughes is doing subconscious work here, it's going to poke its head up in his daily life in subtle (ha!) ways. Bracket the inside-of-head stuff with outside-of-head mundanity -- you can use it for contrast or parallel it or both, but it'll help to anchor the emotional transition and also keep us aware of where we are in the chronology.
Now this dream is both too vague and too obvious. Vague, because there's very little specific imagery to ground the dialogue (okay, so what about the wedding ring? why heat and light? can you do more with the idea that there's a push-pull between its positive and negative associations for Hughes, maybe by developing some different images or effects?); obvious, because the dialogue Explains It All. Think further about this.
More thoughts about subtlety: this is such a powerful image sequence that I beg -- no, order! :-) -- you to delete every single emotional explanation in it (e.g. "the one thing that held more meaning to him than his own life"). We know this character; we know what it means to continue to wear a wedding ring even when a relationship's been terminally interrupted. Let him do his thing without explanations and we'll get it completely, and it will be the more effective for us providing our own commentary.
Then he downed the last of his sixth bottle of beer ...
Here's the back end of a setting with no front end. That doesn't work with pantomime horses and rarely works in storytelling. This second dream would also work better if we knew where Hughes was consciously when it started; why's he drinking himself drunk? That is, what happened before he decided to open the first bottle of beer: was he looking around and seeing how little he had to pack, maybe? Unable to sleep and courting unconsciousness with liquid sedative? Thinking about chapter fourteen and reflecting on his own situation again?
Sorry to whack so hard on this stuff, but it's important and I know y'all have the chops to pull it off properly.
Hughes felt the bottom drop out of his world and his vision go black along the edges at the look of pain on the young cop's face.
This would be a better transition if you flipped it: show the cop looking unhappy first and then have Hughes jump to his conclusion. You might also want to delete the "was" from Hughes's previous statement, as it seems to imply that he's thinking the worst already.
The woman stepped back. "We haven't found any bodies in the house, but we found the car in the middle of the field," she said. "It looked like someone was chasing them."
Possible technical hitch: if they're referring to the sedan, it should look as if it were chasing something else (i.e. the Hummer) which will have left traces of its passage onward (although maybe not enough to be readily trackable in the near term), right? Unless the Gate blowing up scrambled everything, in which case I might emend the chasing statement to something more like, "The ground's all torn up out there; we're not sure what happened."
[Hughes works it out]
This is a good sequence of clues and inferences; the final aha! nicely gets around the whole question of identifying the burned corpses. My only hesitation is over Hughes identifying the array as not Ed's by style -- you've established that he's not an alchemic adept and Ed was a clap-alchemy specialist for most of the time Hughes has known him. I do, however, buy completely that Hughes would be familiar with Bond's common alchemic usages on know-thine-enemy grounds (as well as Mustang's from long acquaintance).
For what was possibly the hundredth time since he started to navigate the maze of one-way streets that made up the city's warehouse district, he'd cursed Reilly for her choice of contact spots.
Tense consistency: "had started".
After he'd confirmed that the bodies in the sedan were not Ed and Reilly, Hughes had driven straight to Tulsa and checked into a cheap motel. He left a short, cryptic message on the voice mail, then returned to the room to wait. The instructions were to meet up with his contact at midnight at the coffee house.
It's unclear to me how he gets his instructions or even whether they were the result of his leaving the cryptic message. Clarify?
All he could do, was lay on the bed, stare blindly at the ceiling, and try to sort everything out. There were so many questions that needed answered. The biggest being, how is Bond connected to Ed?
Delete comma after "do". "Needed answered" I'm familiar with as a Briticism -- I'd expect "needed answering" or "needed answers" from someone who's normal speech rhythms are American. If this is an Oklahoma regionalism, however, ignore this comment. The transition between reported thought and direct speech in the final sentence is awkward; I'd change the period after "answered" to a comma, decapitalize "the" and make the whole thing reported thought: " ... the biggest being how Bond was connected to Ed."
Hmm. I realize Hughes is running on the dregs of adrenaline at this point, but surely he'd come up with something more pithy. (All right, yes, he's leaning over my shoulder again, and now he's suggesting other people's lines, too:
"Great, Reilly," he muttered under his breath. "You could have warned me to stop at a tattoo parlor first. How am I supposed to blend in at this freak show?"
The answer came immediately: C'mon, Maes -- it's not like you haven't had practice.
An brief chuckle escaped him; he could almost hear Ed protesting in the background that he was not a freak, dammit! Mood lightened, he opened the door and stepped out of the car ... )
He wasn't certain how he'd recognize 'Kitten', but Reilly said he'd know her when he saw her. For some reason, that did nothing to ease his apprehension.
And well it shouldn't. Ah, the return of Kitten -- I was wondering why, after all the work put into making her a substantial background character, she fell out of the narrative. Now she's back and that work pays off. Nice.
I enjoy the contrast between the fangs and the dessert menu, as well as the fact that Hughes carries on a normal waiter/patron conversation while boggling.
Apple pie?! He was almost tempted, but the feeling of his heart lurching quickly made him change his mind. He didn't think he could eat anyone else's apple pie but Gracia's.
I might just tone down that last sentence to "Apple pie had been one of Gracia's specialties" and leave the reader to make the inference.
As the young man walked off to get his order, Hughes felt a pair of slender hands on his shoulders ...
Oh, dear. This is an amusing encounter -- nice to see Kitten in action at last, after having all those second-hand reports earlier; also nice to see that Hughes isn't overmatched, even if he is tired. Well, mostly not overmatched.
His face went hot and tight and he groaned low, more from embarrassment than anything else.
Watch the low groaning; it's showing up enough to begin to qualify as an authorial tic. "Low" also gets repeated in some other contexts here.
You've put the punctuation and grammar mistakes in here deliberately, haven't you, just to make me quote this passage. "Pure" and "alone" are redundant; delete one. Emend semi-colon after "tongue" to comma. Delete the "in" after "relishing". I'm not sure that the last sentence really communicates the sensation it describes effectively -- if nothing else, "vibrate" isn't commonly used as a transitive verb in non-technical contexts, AFAIK. "Electricity" is a bit of a cliche in these situations, too. You might think about this.
Wait. No! Way wrong word.
I'm inclined to delete the "Way" here as being a little too not-Hughes's-idiom.
She purred happily and ran her fingers through his hair. He nuzzled at her ear and watched the counter through her impossibly lavender hair.
Repetition of "hair". Also, decapitalize all the epithets in the dialogue that follows (e.g. "Honey" => "honey") -- by convention, if it's not an actual name or title, it's not capitalized.
They were working together like they'd been a long-standing team with almost military precision.
Redundancy of meaning in here; differentiate further or delete a concept.
He never heard what she said, because he saw the blonde sneak back into the kitchen. A moment later there was a crashing sound from there and a screaming match started.
It is a simple and brilliant diversion; crowds can be so predictable. Nice job.
Kitten sprung off his lap ...
Tense consistency: "sprang".
Continued and ending ...
Continuing and ending ...
[The escape]
May I compliment you, again, on the way in which no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy in this story? As I said last chapter, that really helps to keep us in suspense. Another lovely action sequence, sufficiently different from Reilly and Ed's car chase (in setting, threat, response and termination) to stand on its own. Good use of detail (the car just doesn't keep driving -- it encounters things, with and without extreme prejudice), dialogue and humor, right up to the end, when Hughes's worst fears about having kids involved are realized.
Kitten screamed when it hit the roof with a heavy metallic clank ... He reached further back and his hand hit something hard and metallic.
Repetition of "metallic".
The case would be impervious, but the 'eyes' that surrounded that main body might not be... The 'eyes' that ringed the spider glowed a baleful yellow from the internal alchemic reaction and that was where Hughes intended to aim.
Redundancy of information overpowers expression of detail in these two sentences; differentiate further to emphasize the latter.
He briefly regretted never listening to Hawkeye's firm suggestions that he get more practice on the firing range. His aim with a gun was less than stellar and this wasn't paintball.
I'd delete the final sentence here. It's clear that this is a tough shot and the circumstances are less than ideal; no need to diss Hughes's competence to make his possible failure believable. After all, he does make the shot.
He felt a sickening crunch-pop in his shoulder as he heard the screech of metal and the crumble of concrete being shattered at high-impact, and was suddenly struck with a very strong sense of nausea that he struggled to swallow down.
Good move. It's logical that nobody would walk away from this encounter unscathed unless s/he were extremely lucky; injuring Hughes also ensures that the character with the optimum combination of relative youth, covert ops experience and martial talent won't be at his best in what's to come. That keeps the playing field level.
I didn't see this coming -- my money for the first death was on someone else, but I was thinking too big and too far ahead. Again, the effort you put into making Kitten real pays off here -- her position in the story is marginal enough that there's room for more significant mortal encounters later, but she's sufficiently fleshed out for her demise to hurt. Nicely done.
We do get to breathe in the next chapter somewhere, don't we? she asks plaintively. And what in the world is Al up to right now? Poor kid's in information limbo while his would-be rescuers are being scattered all over the neighboring state. Oh, dear ...
Author: light_rises
You were right—I hate you guys now. T_____T
Ahem. All joking aside, I was quite happy with the Hughes-centricness of this chapter. Not to mention that his confrontation with Sidney didn't pan out even remotely as I'd expected—very intense, with a nice, duly suspenseful build-up from Hughes' first glimpse of Sidney to the pursuit's climax. And, of course, my favorite blend of drama, humor, and action is present and accounted for. Very nice—evil, ultimately, but nice. ;)
Now, for the more specific stuff:
I must agree that the dream sequences at the beginning did feel somewhat disorienting as to their context. Granted, one could argue that Hughes is drunk off his bum by the time he's removing his wedding ring, which would make his previous recollections (provided for our benefit—and I do commend you for offering more details regarding what led to Hughes' current situation without it feeling like an info dump) understandably disjointed. I don't think, however, that that was the intention here, so I'd either clarify the chronology of these dreams (as nebroadwe suggested) or go for the "Hughes isn't thinking straight anyway" approach. And I, too, would caution against the patches of borderline maudlin here and there, although that didn't bother me quite as much considering Hughes' nature in regards to his family, anyway. As is made obvious here, Hughes can't always separate straightforward logic—the fact that there's next to no chance of seeing his family again—from his more emotionally-based ideals, even if only in private. That's partly why I liked seeing Ed act as "the voice of reason" in his dreams, although I didn't completely believe that—even in Hughes' imagination—he would rebut Hughes' knee-jerk reactions quite that way under the circumstances (if Hughes wasn't afraid to be blunt with Ed in Chapter 14, then why shouldn't Ed return the favor in spades since Hughes is beating himself up by wallowing in That Which Cannot Be Changed? Dream!Ed does get straight to the point, but perhaps not forcefully enough.).
All that being said, though, I still rather enjoyed this first section. It was a nice change of pace and tone from the end of the previous chapter, and it helped give us something of a thoughtful breather between the last and the next action set. :)
Ah! And a few things I don't think have been caught yet:
Hughes pulled himself up on the platform next to the car and lurched back at the stench of charred flash.
I think you mean "flesh," here. ;)
Images of Ishbal came back to him in a rush, and he felt his knees begin to buckle.
…Now I'm not entirely sure about this (and since you're an even bigger Hughes fan than me, you'll probably want to take what I'm about to suggest with a grain of salt), but I've gotten the impression that Hughes only served in Ishbal in the manga. I can't dispute that claim from what I remember of the anime, and since we're going by anime!canon…well, unless he'd seen photos in the newspaper at the time, or had access to archived/classified photos once he'd entered the Investigations Department (my limited military knowledge fails me here…), I don't understand why Hughes would associate what he sees here at the crime scene with Ishbal in particular, if not just Mustang's work in general.
…And of course if my information is wrong, feel free to disregard this comment entirely. XD;;;
There was something odd about the gesture and then Hughes realized with an icy certainty that the watch was most logical place to hide a personal array.
Insert a "the" between "was" and "most," and you're set.
To wrap up: I loved the chase sequence, as well as the revelation that while it didn't end in total disaster for Hughes and co., it was still very, very bad (Kitten, we hardly knew ye—and just when I was starting to really like you… :( ). It's clear now that the scales are tipped in Sidney's favor—which should only make how our protagonists ultimately pull together all the more interesting. ;)
Nice work, and I eagerly await more!
Title: ausgezeichnet
Author: calzone
I've got nothing particularly constructive to say, but I must say that this fic is fan-freaking-tastic. That is all.
Title: It's just awesome to see!!!
Author: dragonnan
There are updates again, and that is fantastic!!! This is really a beautiful saga, and you guys are doing a wonderful thing here!
Author: azysapphy
*Spazfit*
Author: ceirwy
WOAH!! Oh hell no! That did not just happen! Hughes!
Bwahaha! Fantastic!