Reisverfahren [Cantarella║ Ryees]

[Ryees]

Ashemore, Nimue | Fontine, Altimeda

• Positive traits: Tenacious — Empathetic — Warm — Passionate — Optimistic
  Negative traits: Naive — Emotional — Rash — Obstinate — Pedantic
  
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• Content 2
• Positive traits: Educated — Adventurous — Compassionate — Perceptive — Wise
  Negative traits: Cynical — Impulsive — Audacious — Verbose — Flippant
  
  Gallery

  

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The sun had broken early over Creta's horizons and cast a warm glow over the hills, a glow that would quickly be overshadowed by encroaching clouds and drizzling rains for the foreseeable days. It was slated to be a lazy day, away from the sticky heat and squelchy ground, and even the ever-ongoing border war seemed to be taking the day off to stay inside where it was cool.

The same could be said for the neatly-squared outpost barely fifty miles out from the edge of the border conflict. Four empty blocks in the middle of a small town had been repurposed into a sprawling research space, square cement buildings erected in grid-like fashion with a center space designated for large-scale alchemical trials. Trials that had started quite large, but had grown away from that grandiose scale, now, as the teams within came closer and closer to perfecting their craft.

Doctor Philipp Reis was a name that was becoming more and more commonplace in Creta's border wars. He had established one of the first clinics designated specifically as a war-time medical bay, offering treatment and care for soldiers who came away from the Amestris-Creta conflict with wounds that took them out of the fight. He had been a brilliant doctor even in his early days, making a name for himself as a surgeon and as a philanthropist, but the last year of his life had been one of great import. Now dubbed simply, "The Reis Method," a new mechanism by which alchemy could be used to heal the body had been under research for many years by Reis and his ever-diligent researchers. But some months ago, they had found their Eureka.

The exact details of the practice were only kept under wraps for the time it took to perfect them. As a scientist and a doctor, Reis had been adamant that the practice be shared with the world, avenues opened to treat those with otherwise-mortal wounds and perpetuate life in ways that had never before been though possible.

The announcement had been a disaster.

Almost immediately, opponents to the practice rose to vocal prominence, the State in particular making a statement that the Reis Method of alchemy was not a sanctioned practice and that its use within Amestran borders was outlawed until further research had been completed. With Reis' lab outside of the Amestran border, there was little they could do to actually stop the scientist from furthering his research, but the announcement that the world's superpower was vocally and obstinately against their practice had dampened many spirits on the project. Their research team of several hundred had dwindled to barely the first hundred as those who would not or could not risk their lives and livelihoods in defiance of the State left the project for the safety of a return to their mundane lives.​

 

Reis pulled his glasses away and dropped them on the table, scrubbing his palms over his eyes and cheeks and giving his head a vigorous shake. His desk sat in the corner of their most-often-used lab, a large square room with two long work benches dominating its center and all manner of alchemical supplies scattered around the counters that bordered the room. Behind him, the half-dozen colleagues he called his best were working as diligently as ever, but his mind had wandered, as it did often. It wandered north, to the border, where his rise to fame and infamy had only served to redouble the hostilities of the border war, adding another briquette to the fire in the form of medical heresy.

His ears popped, and he worked his jaw, squinting up at the ceiling in irritation at the heavens bestowing the pressure front of sticky rain upon them. He had not noticed the pressure building—and bent his head curiously when they popped again. He had definitely not felt the pressure that time. And his team was glancing around as well, as if they had also somehow felt—

More pops. Louder. And too rapid to be in his head.

Charlotte, a tiny blonde sprite of a girl with glasses that nearly eclipsed her eyebrows, had squeaked quietly at the sounds. "Is that... gunfire?"

Reis' blood ran cold, and by the looks on the faces of those around him, theirs had too. His eyes scanned them, landing on Nimue's just as the lights blacked out with a shuddering crack. With their equipment powered down, the hum of the lights silence, and their collective breath caught in their throats, the sound of gunfire was unmistakable in its cadence and rhythm. And its volume, as it grew noticeably closer.

"Doors. Doors, doors!" Reis was out of his seat, pointing to Marcus and Elena, who were arm's reach from the only door that led into the lab. Marcus had frozen, but Elena darted to the door, shoving it shut but halting the last inch, easing it closed with the knob turned and releasing it silently into place. The lab doors did not have locks, and while Reis thought about shoving his chair under the door, that would only serve as indication that someone was in the room if the door was tested. "Hide," he barked, and on command, Elena and Marcus darted from the door to join Nimue behind the lab counters.​

Reis stepped up to the door, carefully opening it and poking just his eyes and nose into the hallway. It was empty, for the time being. With a breath, he shot a glance back to his team. "Stay here. Do not leave this lab." Elena shot a panicked hand out to him, but he had already disappeared into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him.

Minutes passed in a silence that was only punctuated by gunfire. It was that sound growing closer every passing moment that had Elena and Marcus fidgeting, leaning up against the wall next to the door. "We... should run. Should we? Do we run?" Elenta's voice trembled. "What do we do? Are they here for us? Or for Doctor Reis?"

Marcus shook his head too violently. "He told us to stay here. You heard how adamant he sounded. We stay."

"Stay there, and don't move," Nimue said coolly. Her calm seemed to comfort Elena, but the look Marcus shot her was loathing. "I need to get to Reis, and quickly. I don't know what's going on out there, but I have a feeling they're coming for him." Nimue's eyes had darted to the door as soon as the lights flickered out. Narrowing in the darkness, she had been about to make a beeline for the generators to restart the power when the sharp staccato of gunfire had pierced the air. Freezing in place, one pale hand extended, Nimue thought quickly. She needed to get to the Professor.

"But what if they—" As if to prove her point, the sound of pounding footsteps began to echo down the hallways outside the door. There were three sets of distinct steps, and then four more, the latter four being all heavy boots and thundering steps. The door to the lab burst open, nearly flattening Elena against the wall, and her scream was involuntary. Three men from the base hauled themselves into the darkened lab; they barely made it three steps before a burst of gunfire from the hallway ripped through them, their screams lasting barely a breath before they were silenced.

Four men slunk into the room, moving like soliders, weapons tight against their shoulders and snappy in the way they scanned the room. The light from the hallway cast shadows over Nimue, but Elena was right in the light. They did not shoot her, though, as they had their colleagues.

"This is Hook 1 to Fisherman. Found one of Reis' staff in lab 3." His hand touched his ear to call through his radio, but his weapon never left Elena. Thg other three men had slipped into the room, fanning out with precision and grace, searching, but the shadowy corner where Nimue stood, behind the door they had entered through, offered her a moment of respite.

The soldier barked at Elena. "Up. Up." The horrified blonde shakily got to her feet, holding her stomach to fight back the urge to vomit. "Where's the rest of your team?"

It had taken phenomenal restraint from Nimue not to cry out when the men's lives were extinguished mere meters away from her. Clapping a hand over her mouth, she stopped in her tracks and looked on in mute horror at the spreading pools of blood quickly congealing on the previously pristine laboratory floor.

There was no time to mourn them, nor was there time to waste. Nimue, seeing keenly that there was but one escape, had two options: to await capture, or to run for it. She could only hope that the invaders would treat her colleagues well, as Nimue was not keen on giving away her position before she could even reach Professor Reis. Calming her breathing to a steady, deep rhythm and quelling the fear that seized her gut, Nimue carefully edged out from beneath the desk next to the door, sliding in a squatting position and rounding the corner to escape the research lab and breaking into a sprint down the corridor and toward Professor Reis' as soon as she was out of eyeshot.

It was the scale of the attack that Nimue was alerted to as she moved through the base. The four men that had gunned down her colleagues were not alone by any stretch of the imagination. Carefully cutting around corners and ducking into empty labs had led her towards the center of the base, and on her way there she had caught sight of no less than thirty unique soldiers, all dressed in riot gear and dark-visored helmets and sporting military-grade rifles. Whatever the organization was behind this attack, it was not a small one... but it was not the State. The soldiers' weapons, while powerful and expensive, were not standard-issue by any means, their slight variance and states of wear suggesting that they were acquired, not manufactured, by the faction. And with no insignias—or, in some cases, scratched-out insignias—adorning their armor, any affiliation was impossible to decipher.​

As she skid around the corner to Lab 1, Nimue halted, skidding on the linoleum at the sight of her superior, captured and looking up at her. Reis was not in the lab; instead, he was sitting outside the door on his knees, hands cuffed and held up behind his head. At least a dozen armed men stood around him, one with his finger pressed to his ear and speaking in a low voice.

She scarcely had time to speak up, to question the situation, when she felt cold steel press to her back. Her immediate response was to put her hands on her head. She did not whirl around to question whoever it was that dared to hold a gun to her; she merely let out a mousy squeak of noise and glanced as far as she could behind her without turning her head. The sound of her approach had led the men surrounding Reis to look up at her, but it was not them that moved. The barrel of a rifle punched into her shoulder blades as three men emerged from the lab behind her, ushering her towards Reis and the captive lab teams.

"Nimue, are—augh!" A knee impacted the back of Reis' head as he spoke, an order of quiet slithering out of the soldier whose limb had impacted the doctor's skull. Reis gave Nimue an apologetic, pleading look as she was plopped on her knees next to him.

Up and down the hallways, signs of carnage showed. Blood on the floors, the walls, and the insurgents' armor suggested untold amounts of death at their hands. Reis' own coat, usually ruffled and unkempt but pristinely white and clean, was spattered with dots of red, and the look in his eyes spoke of just how close he had been to the source of that blood.

A handful of minutes later, more footsteps came from the direction Nimue had approached from, and Elena appeared around the corner. Her face was streaked with tears, but it was the absolute mess of blood sprayed up her coat that begged the attention. Reis met her face, and mouthed, "Marcus?" Her shoulders buckled, silent sobs racking her shoulders. Reis' lips pressed to a thin line.

 

Only eight white-and-red-coated scientists remained as the armored men dragged them to their feet. At gunpoint, they were ushered out of the lab buildings and towards a waiting transport, two heavy-canvassed troop carriers that waited on the edge of the base. Breaking out into the bleak, damp daylight still strained the eyes, and the soft but harsh light of day showed a number of corpses spread out over the grounds.

"They just opened fire..." Reis' voice whispered out from somewhere deep in his throat. "They didn't even try to..." His face dropped, eyes flat, and he watched his feet for the rest of the walk towards the truck. Rough hands shoved them up the folding steps to the back of the bed, and they were seated on the benches mounted in the walls, strapped down with harnesses that secured with keyed locks. When the doors were slammed shut behind them, they were alone with no one but their colleagues. A red light mounted in the ceiling was the only light by which they could see the fear and despondency on their friends' faces.

The air was thick with dread as the transport motored away from the research base, the smell of ash and sulfur and blood heavy in their nostrils. It was some minutes before anyone spoke, and it was Doctor Reis who broke the silence. "Are you all okay?" he asked, his normally chipper voice barely a hoarse whisper. "Are you hurt?"

Nimue gave a tremulous nod. She swallowed thickly, eyes nervously darting about in the dark. She knew she couldn't ask all the questions she wanted to ask, instead opting for a quiet, meek, "I'm alright. Did they harm you, Professor?"'

Reis' head shook in the dim light. "I'm okay. I heard one of them say that some of us were not to be harmed under any circumstance." He worked his jaw where a knee had caught it. "Only mostly, I guess."

"But why? Why us?" Elena's voice was a squeak in her throat, but she eked out her question determinedly. "And why only the eight of us?"

That thin, grim line pressed back into Reis' face. "It must have to do with our research. You seven were my closest assistants, you know the most about the Method."

Elena asked, "But how did they know who we were?" with a furrowed brow, eyes averting to the floor.

"I don't know. There were so many of them, they have to be a part of something, they have to have an information network of some kind, intel from somewhere." The doctor's head dropped back against the wall of the carrier, staring at the dim red disc that fancied itself a proper light source. "And who knows where they're taking us now."

Nimue fixed Professor Reis with an incredulous stare. While she couldn't speak for his conclusion for the reason why the seven of the lab assistants had been spared, she could cry foul on how the Professor had been manhandled. Still, a bruised jaw was better than the alternative. Thinking hard for a moment, Nimue pondered their circumstances and what had led up to it. "Who was it that bankrolled our research? That could be our answer right there. Clearly, someone couldn't keep their mouth shut about it."

"Donors, mostly," Reis chimed back, eyes scanning the ceiling aimlessly. "By the time we'd set up the base proper, we'd done so much work for the backline medics that the city power was provided to us for free and the townspeople helped with most of the construction. Only a few thousand cens were given with any names attached, mostly from people in Amestra who believed in the cause but didn't like how the State was pressuring us."

Nimue mulled it over, idly chewing at her lip. "It wouldn't surprise me if there was some shady business going on, even if our intentions were for the best." She tapped a finger on her upper arm. "Someone that our captors opposed, perhaps, or they wanted the research for themselves. Outside of that? I'm drawing a blank." Nimue sighed.

A sound from outside stopped their conversation. Another engine from another vehicle, higher-pitched and moving very fast towards them. Brows furrowed and glances were spared, but it was the hail of gunfire that made their eyes all go wide. Reis, though, looked puzzled, more than anything, scrunching his face and looking around as if the interior walls of the truck would offer some answer.

"Why are so many people shooting at us today!?" Elena screamed, ducking her head into her lap and holding her hands over her ears.

"And why are other people shooting at these people?" Reis added onto her question, leaning forward against his harness to stare at the back of the truck.

Another burst of gunfire rippled out around them, and then they were being thrown around as their truck swerved out of control. Their speed decreased, and after a teetering, spinning slide, the truck halted. Sounds of fighting came from outside, shouts and shots in equal measure.

But within the cabin, something else had made itself known. A thin line of quicksilver had snaked through the thin gap in the back door, tracing down the center of the floor. From that center line, eight branches protruded, snaking towards each of the bound captives.

"What the fuck is that thing!?" Marcus shouted, flailing his feet at the mercurial thread that was snaking towards him on the floor. As his foot impacted it, the telltale blue arcs of alchemical energy sparked over its surface, reforming the mercury before his foot had even come away from the floor.

"That's alchemy," Reis called, staring at the silver as it inched its way towards his feet.

That silver liquid slunk over to Nimue, spiraling up her calf and thigh, the electric tingle of a very mild current of energy running though its quicksilver form. It wound up her hips, then reared back, its head shifting and wriggling to form the spoke of what looked to be a key. In perfect unison, as if all heads of one mercurial hydra, those tendrils dove into the locks of their harnesses, twisting and thrashing about until the shoulder belts that held them fast snapped open. As soon as that click came, the liquid metal zipped back, reforming its central line and snaking out of the cabin.

The last sound they heard from within was the lock on the outside of the door snapping open, and with it came a crack of murky daylight as the door cracked open.

 

[Cantarella]

Nimue Ashemore had fancied herself a simple sort.

She had wanted for very little. Coveted even less. She lived within very spartan means on a meager alchemical researcher's salary, and it suited her just fine. She didn't have much of a life outside of her work, and that, too, satisfied her. Dedicating herself to an impossible cause seemed to sate her family's urgency to get her married off before she was "too old" by their standards. Among her peers, she was likely among the most dedicated to the cause in the group, just after Reis himself. Although she was no great talent in the field of offensive alchemy, she was a brilliant practitioner of the Reis Method. Nimue chalked it up to a passion for what she did, but there was more to alchemy than passion. It came out of technical know-how, a form of genius.

All of that was for nothing once the guns started firing that sticky morning. Although Nimue handled it fairly well, with a level head and the sort of logic that could be expected of her occupation, she was not prepared to be a hero. It was enough that the eight of them, including the professor, were spared and crammed into the back of the van, headed off to a destination unknown. Nimue ought to have been grateful to have been spared, but where did that leave her? To bear witness to the violence that had extinguished so many lives? To mourn the people she had taken her meals with, researched with, long into the night and when the sun rose to its apex over Creta?

Nimue cast her eyes from each face to the next, clustered together in the back of that van, the disc overhead casting a bloody light over the contours of each terrified face. She took in each and every detail to the point of memorizing each curve and line, for it was possible that none of them would survive the day, let alone the evening. That was the reality, the human cost, of conflict, and despite never having wielded a gun herself, Nimue knew well what the human cost of such knowledge entailed. It was through her work tending to the fallen of the Amestris-Creta border conflict that Reis had found her in the first place. She, too, had bloodied her hands countless times binding the manifold lacerations of the wounded, had broken the news to the families of those she could not save before she had been gifted with the technical knowledge of the Method and its miracles.

After that? There had been far fewer deaths. Nimue and the team she worked with, with renewed vigor and efficacy, became sainted in their own right. Seen as angels of the battlefield, in their bloodied smocks and uniforms and gore from fingertip to elbow. While the sight might have been a terrifying one to some, to the wounded of the border war, there was no more hopeful a sight.

Nimue had hoped that in continuing to bring what she knew to the world, she would be embraced as she had by those soldiers. But instead, she was met at every turn with scorn. Derision, even. "This could fall into the wrong hands" this, "this is too powerful" that. The world had largely done away with the use of Philosopher's Stones; the population's alchemists had found out where they had come from, how they were made, and had collectively decided that no transmutation was worth that terrible cost. That sometimes, dead was better left dead, and that some things were ordained to end the way they did. And the Reis Method defied that.

Or so they had said.

Nimue had justified it saying that the material costs were still there. The price was paid. It was simply aiding the body in what it already wanted to do. Homeostasis was paramount to the human body. It would do anything to maintain it. The Method simply helped it to continue. No one was being brought back from the dead. There was nothing taboo about restoration and regeneration. If someone was a goner, they'd go, and there was nothing that Nimue or even Professor Reis could do about it. If a soldier was carted in with a bullet in his brain, no one was restoring what had been lost. It was gone, and as a former medical professional, Nimue knew better than most when to call it and when to leave the next steps to the coroner.

Death was like an old friend. Ever-present in her field, a presence Nimue was all too familiar with. She knew the signs, she'd seen them time and again, but as a Method alchemist, she'd learned how to keep it at bay.

But as she sat in the back of that convoy, she began to question her role in things. No, she didn't have regrets-- what she had done was for the best, and she would defend that to the death, but if the Method fell into the wrong hands-

Before she could finish the thought, the wheels under her skidded, and she would have collided with the hard wall of the truck bed if not for the straps holding her fast. She exhaled a sigh of relief when the truck didn't topple onto its side or flip over. A light, bright as starlight, pale as the moon, snaked into the truck bed, slithering across the floor and finding its place wrapped around her boot, inching up to her thigh and even around her hips.

Nimue immediately and intensely blushed. She knew alchemy when she saw it, and knew the mote of quicksilver belonged to someone. The thought of it scandalized her, but even still, chances were, someone did not know quite how risqué they were being. Before she could allow herself to be too flustered at being manhandled by mercury, the locks snapped, and all eight of the researchers were freed.

Nimue wasted no time in wriggling free of her bonds. She was halfway to the door when it cracked open, and light spilled into the compartment. Whoever was prying it open would be met face-to-face with two scorching violet eyes set in a moon-pale face.

 

[Ryees]

 

Watching the base from the top of a building across the street had been like pulling teeth with tweezers. Barrackos had been strict in his orders to let it happen, that it would be, somehow, easier to right the wrongs from the attack once the caravan was on the road, but Altimeda was less convinced. Letting someone take a bullet who wasn't supposed to would mean the end of the whole thing.

Reis had a good thing going here, and they all knew it as Altimeda and his three companions watched the trucks pull into the base and spill out men that opened fire into the civilian populace. Altimeda had long ago come to terms with the idea of acceptable losses, but there was no version of this scene that did not make his stomach churn. And beside him, the three sets of eyes that stared along with him reflected that sentiment.

"Y'sure Barrackos was righ' abou' this?" asked the diminutive woman to his side. Barely five feet tall even in her heeled boots and with a lithe frame to match her height, her shoulder-length brown hair was nested up underneath the headgear she wore. Perched atop the forehead of the Clockwork Alchemist, Beillahn Ymmillianna Rorotorinne, sat a set of clockwork goggles, etched in their entirety in alchemical markings and small circles. Despite her size, she wore a fitted set of full plate mail, articulated at the joints with gears and springs and looking bizarrely light on her for how heavy it should have been.

"Lost trust in our grand tactician, have we?" Nitani Mel'Feiyu's voice was a satisfyingly ringing baritone, and came from more than a foot higher than Beillahn, rumbling out from underneath startlingly green eyes and a tired face that had seen too many smiles. The Twilight Gap Alchemist was dressed in the same drab as the other men, a version of the State's military uniform but colored down to match the semi-desert environment and help camouflage them. He sported no grand clockwork armor like Beillahn, his kit noticeably more lean. An ornate sword hung comfortably on his belt, devoid of a sheath, with a blue-glowing circle in the center of its blade ornament that attached to a matching silver-embossed buckle on his belt. A open-banded silver ring encircled his left finger, a fox head that tapered down and around his finger to an engraved tail. The tip of that tail contained a dark gemstone that looked deeper than it had any right to, as if the cosmos themselves were buried within the stone. "Barrackos was a military dog for a long time, remember; he knows his stuff."

Roki Kyrus flexed his fists, curling and uncurling his fingers around the two sets of circle-engraved iron knuckles encircling each of his hands. The reddened tint to his brown eyes was just as hollow as his friends, even set into his young, just-twenty face. "Knows it or not, this is awful." The Steel Flame Alchemist's voice was just as young as his face, but his words rang with a firm jading that suggested he was not new to the field.

"An' I ain' watchin' it no more," Beillahn spat, turning away from the building and walking to the roof access hut to slump against the wall. "Tell me when we're leavin'," she grumbled with a finality, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes.

Altimeda's lips pressed to a thin line, knowing that he couldn't join her despite wanting to get his eyes off the carnage. He brought the telescope back up to his eyes, following the attackers as they made their way into the compound. There were minutes of stillness outside, after the gunfire stopped. The silence stretched ominously. It meant that whoever was supposed to be dead had been put down, and now only their high-value-targets remained. Altimeda had been scouting the camp for some days before the attack on the note from their intelligence crews. In a base of some hundred scientists, with only one small group on the target list... that was a lot of bodies.

Minutes later, the doors were thrown open again. The prestigious Dr. Philipp Reis led the pack, hands cuffed behind his back, and a group of seven of his lab assistants followed, white coats stained in red and eyes clearly dim with fear even from the distance of the rooftop. They were herded into a troop transport, and the engines fired up.

"They're out."

---

Roki pushed the pedal down farther, pushing the nimble, gunmetal-painted truck towards its maximum speed. "T-minus sixty," he called out as the caravan came into view ahead of them. "Lahny you sure this thing is gonna do what you want?" he questioned, giving a dubious glance down at the steering wheel. "You're usually the one to drive."

"She'll be fine, jus' push us up pas' Reis' truck in the middle an' I'll do th'rest," she answered, hand waving his concerns and only making him more concerned. "Once the caravan stops, y'can get out an' start punchin', yeah?"

Altimeda grinned, unbuckling his belt and popping up the interior lock on the front passenger door, mirroring Beillahn and Nitani in the back seats. "He is very good and punching," he chriped in affirmation, and the humor in his voice seemed to diffuse Roki's anxiety. But then Altimeda's smile slipped, his face steeling. "Review." Beillahn and Nitani's faces snapped forward, locked in and focusing. "Beillahn disables the target vehicle. I spring the captives. Nitani you're on visual dispersion, giving us cover of night. Once the scientists are free, Roki pulls the car up, and we disable the rest of the guards. From there we take one of the other trucks and go."

"Locked in," Nitani, Roki, and Beillahn all called back in perfect, practiced unison.

Altimeda nodded, the caravan now only a few moments ahead of them. He and Nitani racked the compact submachine guns slung over their shoulders. The collective breath in the cabin drew, and released.

Roki punched the accelerator, and the engine growled as the truck jumped forward. He cut around the back of the caravan, darting past the last of the three trucks and pulling up alongside the second. The moment his front wheels aligned with the transport, the other three members threw their doors open. Attached to the joints on each sides of their ankles, a set of clockwork wheels had been fused to their boots. As the trio launched from the truck and those wheels touched the ground, they sparked with energy and started spinning, gyroscopically stabilizing their rider even at highway speed. Altimeda and Nitani skated alongside the truck, but Beillahn angled towards it, the open palm of her gauntleted hand extended towards the truck.

The moment she contacted it, her glove flashed a green-metallic glow, and a reaction sped along the truck towards the engine compartment. All the gears within the truck flattened, their teeth dulling to flat nubs, and the truck immediately began to slow. The truck in trail had to swerve not to impact the back, and at the speed they were traveling, did not fully stabilize, toppling onto its side and careening off at an odd angle, tumbling the entire way. The truck ahead began to slow in time, the latches on its back door clicking as the occupants began to unlock it from the inside.

Nitani sprayed a line of bullets at the seam in the door to dissuade whomever was activating that mechanism from being anywhere near it, buying them another handful of moments for the middle transport to finally come to a stop. Beillahn circled back to them, and all three made their way to the rear of the truck, the wheels on their feet snapping up to their knees in a ready position as they hopped forward. Nitani reached into his pouch, pulling a tiny glass bottle from within containing a hand-mixed ink. He uncapped the silver lid of the bottle and dolloped a drop into his palm, then pressed the underside of the lid into his skin, stamping the alchemical circle engraved underneath into the back of his hand. When he charged the circle, the smear of ink on his palm grew to a fist-sized cloud of black, then expanded outwards, forming a globe of inky darkness that obscured them from the outside.

Altimeda had already skipped over to the door, leaning one knee on the step as he pulled up his sleeve. A wrist bandolier of metal vials was slung about his wrist, and he uncapped one of them to allow the jittery silverine liquid metal from inside drip onto the edge of the door mechanism. Like Nitani, the cap to his vial also had a circle engraved into it, but he instead held his with his middle and ring fingers pressing it into his palm as he pointed his index and little fingers to flank the puddle. The circle charged, and he felt that phantom limb manifest in his mind. He closed his eyes, snaking the line forward into the cabin, feeling the stirring of the air. Left, right, forward. Left, right, forward. He repeated the branch four times, finding limbs and seats to crawl up, sniffing around for the latches he knew were there. And when he found them, he dove the head of the mercurial fingers into the locks, violently jittering them around and bursting the mechanisms from inside.

"Free," he barked. Somewhere during his closed-eyed ritual, Roki had appeared alongside them, bouncing on his heels and loosening up his arms. "Are we ready?"

Beillahn nodded, hearing the footsteps approaching from the front truck. "Le's ge'em outta here."

Altimeda hopped up onto the ledge, heaving on the latch to free the locks. He pulled open the door, letting the dim, passthrough sunlight that barely made it through Nitani's sphere of night land on a startlingly, distractingly pretty face with a pair of violet eyes that froze him in place under their lavendrite gaze.

"What? What's wrong?" Roki, watching Altimeda, had note of panic in his voice as he watched his friend freeze in place, trying to peer around Altimeda to see in through the crack in the door.

It was long moment before Altimeda replied, but once he shook his head out, he called back, "Nothing, they're all here, they're okay," over his shoulder. He met those eyes again, purple greeting teal in the failing light. "You're okay," he repeated, this time to her, and softer than before, "but we don't have time. Keep your heads down." He addressed the final note to the whole cabin, his eyes lingering for a long moment on Reis before he stepped back and hopped down from the truck. "Open it up," he commanded to Nitani, who nodded.

With another stamp, Nitani recharged his circle. The ink globe shuddered, rippling along its surface as it expanded to encompass the whole truck. The sound of panic from outside the dome grew, nervous steps shuffling backwards away from the eldritch bubble. As it moved, Beillahn had replaced Altimeda on the truck's back step, but then hopped up, catching herself on the top of the truck and deftly pulling herself atop. As she disappeared atop the vehicle, the sounds of a circle activating echoed from above, and the truck groaned as pieces of it were stripped away in payment.

Altimeda held up a hand to stop the scientists from exiting the truck for the moment, and now touched both of his ears with his palms, calling out, "Cover up," in an urgent whisper. Then his head snapped to Nitani. "Drop it."

Nitani, oddly, grinned in a knowing, satisfied way as he let the alchemy fade from his hands.

"You rang, gentlemen!?" Beillahn bellowed from above. She sat in the seat of a small-sized, double-barreled, mounted chaingun, her seat enshrouded by a seamless metal pod. There was barely time for the eighteen men below to even raise their weapons before she dragged on the triggers. The barrels spun, and a half-second later, a haze of projectiles rent into the crowd of gathered terrorists. The chains were attached from the guns directly to the fuselage of the truck, eating away at the metal bit by bit with every round and cannibalizing the truck.

"Go!" Altimeda shouted, and he, Roki, and Nitani ripped from behind the truck, the wheels at their knees snapping back to their ankles when they hopped forward.

With their gazes trained on Beillahn's turret atop the truck, the first of the soldiers barely registered Roki and Altimeda upon them. Roki's fists flashed as they impacted, pulling the body heat and blood from within their victim to push gouts of liquid-heated semi-molten gelled fire out of his dusters with every punch. Four blows later, and two men were dead, holes burned through their chests and neck.

Altimeda slipped forward with a sheen of mercury trailing behind his hands, two beads following his fingers and circling around the back of the first soldier's head. When he twitched his fingers, those beads rocketed back to rejoin the homogenous body, bursting through the skull of the man on their way. As the man behind him moved to lower his weapon, Altimeda thrust his palm forward, a thumbs-sized bead of mercury balling and yo-yoing forward. Its outward path ripped through the man's shoulder, and its inward path his chest, dropping him to the dirt like a sack of bleeding grain.

Nitani's sword had jumped to his hand, and as he moved towards the two men he had targeted, they spun to face their assailant—and turned away from him, opening fire into the distance. Ink stained the back of their heads, thrown forward as Nitani had approached, and it was a trivial affair to tear his sword through their backs as they took aim at a phantom attacker that never existed.

The final dozen men lay nearly in pieces surrounding the truck, bodies eviscerated by hundreds of holes. Beillahn touched the pod that encircled her gunner seat, opening the metal to free her from within. She gave it a fond look, riddled with dents from gunfire, and patted it approvingly before she hopped down from the truck, the joints of her armor's knees easily cushioning her fall. The four raiders regrouped, moving around the back of the truck, Altimeda stepping forward to address the group that did not, yet, know that they were his captives.​

 

[Cantarella]

The eyes that had held Altimeda's were made all the more intense by the bloody light of the truck's interior. That light streaked across the lavender expanse of her irises like a bloody comet over the face of the moon, and the brilliant golden light of the space beyond those doors spilled onto her face, highlighting every contour, every hill and valley. Crossing the crinkled bridge of her nose, her furrowed brow, to the valleys of her shadowed eye sockets with that violet fire burning within.

Nimue was more than a little miffed by this whole ordeal. She was incensed. Practically incandescent. The curl of her lip and the way her hands coiled into a nautilus of fist would have given it away if her sour expression failed at conveying it. Even if the former battle medic didn't say a word, it was plain enough to see.

She was angry, and rightly so. She had been so close to a breakthrough on the Reis method, definitely something to write home to her indifferent parents about. Instead, she had been wrested from her work, dragged across the laboratory, her associates and peers murdered in cold blood, stuffed into a truck, and now even more men lie dead at her feet and she was unable to save them, even if she wanted to rescue the people who were responsible for all of this disruption.

And now, she had seen the face of-- ostensibly-- the person whose alchemy had tickled up her thigh and freed her of her bonds. Although he lowered his voice to a gentle timbre, it was evident that it did little to assuage Nimue's anger. It was she who marched forward ahead of her companions, ahead of Professor Reis, even, ready to give the group of raiders a piece of her mind. Her booted foot found the edge of the door of the closed truck, and she kicked it roughly the rest of the way open and marched right on out into the daylight beyond, leaving her companions forgotten in her wake.

After all, they were alive, they were unharmed, and they would likely be too shell-shocked to demand answers. Unlike Nimue, who was a (relatively) calm port in a storm. Never mind the fact that a mote of mercury had slipped up her skirt and tickled its chilly way across her bare flesh, never mind that there were dead people lying everywhere, some even in her path, which she merely stepped over like any soldier in the trenches.

After all, Nimue wasn't the average lab assistant, no mere research alchemist. This was a woman who had seen the horrors of war, smelled it, touched it, reached inside its rent belly and pushed its entrails back up into the wound. She had sealed more wounds than she cared to remember, smelt and tasted tangy, smoky gunpowder, had the saltpeter and chlorine burn her eyes until they were watery and bloodshot and her lungs burned. But that was nothing compared to what she had witnessed her patients endure.

And what did that diminutive, teal-haired woman do but march straight up to the nearest living, breathing body, who happened to be Altimeda, even with his softened features and gentle voice, shove her pointer finger into their sternum, and bark out a tremulous, harsh "YOU! How dare you! You have some nerve, tearing me from my work, gunning down my coworkers, my peers, my mentors, and taking us here! To god knows where, when we were so close to having a breakthrough that could shape the very face of medical alchemy!" She swept her incensed lavender eyes across the field, blazing, furious eyes, lip pulled into a harsh snarl.

"Every one of you ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Gunning down all these people. I don't care if you, specifically, aren't the ones who kidnapped us in the first place. None of that matters. Now, you could do the right thing and let us go, handing me those keys so I can drive back to work. You could do that, do the civilized thing. But I don't expect you to. Now, unless you have some other, grander ideas in mind for us, I plan to be going. Otherwise, you'd better give me a damned good reason to cooperate with you lot."

 

[Ryees]

 

The unfolding scene had Beillahn and Nitani puckering their lips, biting back laughs not for Altimeda's sake, but for fear that making a sound would turn the barrels of this teal-haired spitfire to them. Roki's eyebrows looked to be trying to climb into his hairline, likely to hide.

Altimeda put his hand on top of the woman's, pointedly pressing downward to lower her hand from his chest. "Gonna be tough for you to go back to work," he said dryly, fixing her with a flat stare, "not much to work on back there but a field of bodies." He took a step away from her, crossing his arms over his chest. "Got a name, miss?"

"Nimue Ashemore." She replied, equally as flatly. "And who are you?"

"Altimeda," he replied, seemingly finished. "We do have some ideas in mind for you, actually," he added, his eyes moving in a circle to take in his companions." "Plan is to take you somewhere that's actually safe, for a while."

"I was safe where I was," Nimue stated bluntly. "But I see that is no longer the case. What's the plan, then? Where are we going?"

"Yeah, clearly." Roki's voice from behind her was as dismissive as it was derisive, but Altimeda held up a silencing hand to him, prompting Roki's mouth to pop closed.

"We're going back to our ops-base," he replied, jerking his head back towards the one functional transport truck, "we'll take one of their trucks."

Nimue's eyes narrowed at the jab, but just as soon as the voice had quipped, it was silenced. "Fine, but that doesn't answer my question. Are we passing country lines?"

Altimeda snorted a puff of air through his nose, nodding his head. "Oh yeah, we sure are. We're gonna end up in Amestris, and the sooner the better." He gestured to the truck. "If you and your team wanna hop in."

Nimue sighed. "Looks like I don't have much choice in the matter. Alright, let's go."

Altimeda bit back the No, you don't that had come to his lips, walking with Nimue and Dr. Reis and company to the back of the only transport truck that had been the least accosted by Beillahn's mechanical alchemy. He walked behind them, pondering the possible outcomes of the following hours. Beillahn and Roki were currently moving from corpse to corpse, scavenging ammunition and weapons and gear, making trips back to their chase truck. Nitani was taking notes in a small black pocket journal, taking stock of the number of bodies, important symbols, demographics, and any other relevant details he could find.​

It had not yet come up the exact nature of this "rescue" mission, and Altimeda was happy to leave it that way. The less they resisted early, the easier this would be, and the less obvious it would be that everyone in the team was expendable but Dr. Reis.

Walking up to the transport, Altimeda heaved open the doors to the truck, taking one step back and opening one arm inside. "Everybody in—ah... oh." He winced, looking inside the cabin. The farthest back seat contained a body, whose hand was still stuck on the locked buckle of his harness. It appeared the mechanism had jammed when they were all trying to file out, and the spray of bullets Altimeda had peppered the truck with had found contact. "Well..." He put a hand behind his head, biting the inside of his cheek. "We'll clean that seat out real quick."

Nimue took a sharp intake of breath through her nose. She was not immune to the horror of a bullet-mutilated body, not even after exposure after exposure over the years.
"Oh second thought..." she trailed off. "...I'll ride in the front."

Altimeda's head jerked over to her. "Ah, cabin's reserved, sorry. One of your boys can take that seat, won't be that bad."

Nimue looked to the spattered gore across the floor and walls of the inside of the truck blankly. Never mind that the now pulpy red mass had once been human, let alone one of her peers. Steel in her gaze, the diminutive teal-haired woman squared her shoulders. "No, I don't think I will." She stated coolly. "It's not sanitary, and my job requires I be as sterile as possible."

"Ah—" Altimeda's rebuttal caught in his throat, catching her eyes. Roki's composure finally failed behind him, and he let out a proper snort. "Not much doctoring to be doing where we're going," he asserted, crossing his arms. "You'll have a chance for a shower before you're needed again."

"Unless we get attacked on the road," Dr. Reis cut in, sounding unimpressed with the logic. Something in his voice was very flat, as if he believed pieces weren't aligning somewhere, but he didn't say anything to that effect. "We'll be fine in the back without her." His eyes sharpened, looking through Altimeda as much as at him. "You can explain your plans to her, and she can relay that to us." Reis looked to Nimue in askance query, his look as insistent as Altimeda had been.

Nimue abruptly turned her attention back to Roki, her poise never once faltering. Her lips began to form the query, a curt, "Beg pardon?" before the professor gave her a specific role to fulfill. Instead, Nimue looked at Dr. Reis from the corner of her eye and gave a sharp, dutiful nod. "Noted, Professor," she grunted.

With a defeated sigh, Altimeda waved a hand to the cabin. "Fine. No middle seat on these things so it's just you and I up there." He jerked a thumb inside, turning his attention back to Dr. Reis and the other gathered technicians. "Hop in, make yourself comfortable. Long ride ahead."

Altimeda stomped the heel of his boot twice in the dirt, and all three sets of his companions' eyes jumped to him on cue. "Review: I'll take the transport truck. Lahny drives our truck, and I want Nitani on the scope to ensure that if anyone is comin' up on us, we're not surprised by it. Roki, be ready to get on the gun."

Their nods and unison chants of, "Locked in!" saw the three of them move at once, stowing gear and hopping forward to snap their skates into place, rolling back towards the car. Altimeda watched them go, then turned his attention to Nimue with a jerk of his head towards the truck. "Shall we?"

---

The ride was, indeed, a long one. From the Cretan border, the Reis Labs were more than an hour if your vehicle was fast like the car, but the transport trucks had barely two thirds of the speed of a more nimble vehicle, making the miles stretch on and on monotonously. It was some half hour of awkward silence, Altimeda's elbow propped on the window's edge, before he finally peeked across the seats to the girl who had insisted she ride with him. At least he got stuck with the pretty one. "How'd you end up with Dr. Reis?" he asked, clearing his throat to break the silence like a pane of tempered glass. "What brought you all the way out here?"

 

[Cantarella]

For a long time, Nimue rode in silence, simply watching the landscape roll by. Rain continued to batter the windshield, a steady staccato of fat, heavy drops that exploded on contact with the glass, to be swiftly wiped away by the windshield wipers. The overcast sky cast the world in misty greyscale, monochrome greys and blacks. Not even the sepia and brown that the land usually was showed through now. The engine droned on as though is were beleaguered. Geriatric and groaning under the strain of its own weight, and Nimue wondered if the truck would make it to their destination without breaking down.

Generally, Nimue could boast that her mind was always busy with something. Being unoccupied was a foreign concept to her, and she was not entirely sure if she liked it that her mind could wander, just watching the world go by, watching the streams the rain left on the windshield, each droplet devouring the next, growing larger and larger until they disappeared from view. It felt like a foreign idleness, and brought with it no small measure of guilt. Guilt that she was not actively improving the lot of mankind, guilt that she was not back at the lab. But she had to admit, the view was boring enough that her eyelids began to get heavy, and her head a little pendulous on her neck...

Her lashes began to just obscure her vision as they slipped closed when Altimeda spoke up. Lids snapping open, head jerking up, she would have shot him a dirty look if not for him appearing genuinely curious. Clearing her throat, Nimue sat up a little straighter and replied, her tone leaning neutral. Maybe a little bored, even.

"I was a combat medic before I was recruited by the professor." Nimue explained, her intense mauve eyes locking on to his face. "My career hasn't been a particularly long one, and it's been contained to the border war and the casualties there. Not that there's been any lack of casualties there. I've always had something to do."

Altimeda nodded, feeling her eyes on him but keeping his own on the road. "Lotta people like you out there—that've only known this war, this province, I mean. That fell right outta school and into this shit show. It's tough out there." He cast her a knowing, sympathetic glance across the cab. "Sorry for your friends. Losing people to an ambush is about the worst way to do it."

Nimue gave a noncommittal shrug. "Best way to learn is a trial by fire, and there's been no shortage of that in this war." She let out a long exhale, allowing her eyelids to fall closed again, listening to the sound of the rain. Now it was her turn to feel his eyes on her. His gaze was heavy, even with her eyes closed. "Listen, if I cried over every peer, every friend, I've lost... I'd never stop crying." It was surprisingly maudlin, coming from the little teal-haired spitfire. "I have an inkling it's much the same for you."

He nodded with that same quiet grim air, but there was something else in it by the very meaningful look he offered her. "Lost a lot, but less lately, since we stopped playing stupid bullshit military games and started using your guy's method."

That piqued Nimue's interest. With renewed vigor, she looked sidelong at Altimeda. "Not a State Alchemist, then? The lack of the uniform might've tipped me off to that, I admit, but you have the skill of one, that's for sure."

His head shook sharply. "God no. Never. Thought about it for a while, but can't really say that lapdog was ever high on my list of dream jobs. And I've been able to be plenty helpful to people without the uniform." There was a note of defensiveness in his voice that he pushed through. "You'll meet a good few of them, when we get in."

"Self-taught, then?" Nimue inquired. "I assume it was you who controlled that mote of mercury. Very stylish." There was no irony in her tone. It was genuine. But even still, there was some well-earned suspicion, a narrowing of her eyes. "What's the plan when we get to Amestris, anyway? I doubt you'll simply turn us loose once we cross the border."

Altimeda's head tilted back and forth. "Self-taught but with a lot of very good mentors," he corrected. "I got very lucky when it came to people who could show me the craft, and lucky along the way."

Her mention of Amestris earned a pointed look, and he shook his head affirmingly. "You'd be inclined to stay with us for some time," he told her, "not really the place to be wandering around as a group of Reis-method scientists without a team. And we don't know who all is looking for you yet—my bet is that whoever attacked your base is not the only interested party."

"Ah." Nimue interjected, a tad pointlessly. Her face fell. "I... had a feeling we would not be facing a warm homecoming upon arrival, but it sounds as though there are a lot of players on the other side who oppose us and what we do." She sucked on her teeth for awhile, silent, merely thinking. "As loath as I am to admit it, you might be right. As much as I value my freedom... staying close seems to be in my, and by extension, the rest of my team's, best interests."

Altimeda gave her an honest, if not a little wistful, smile, extending a hand across the seats to her in offer. "In that case: Altimeda Fontine. I'll introduce you to everyone else when we rest stop."

Nimue reached across the bench seats in return, without hesitation. A far cry from the temperamental harpy who had jabbed those same fingers into Altimeda's sternum not half a day before. "Nimue Ashemore. Well met, and I do apologize for that outburst earlier. It has been... a day, I must admit." Nimue said crisply, a little rushed. Maybe a little embarrassed about it. Not that many could blame her.

The convoy began slowing, and Nimue's fears of the truck breaking down came rushing back to her, and she craned her head out of the window to look ahead at the road, or rather, the dirt path the convoy had been following.

 

[Ryees]

 

The truck rolled to a groaning halt, its suspension wheezing under the weight of steel, bodies, and silence. Altimeda shifted into neutral with a muted sigh, his gaze following Nimue’s as she craned to peer out the window. Rain still patterned the windshield in crooked veins, but beyond the blur of water, the silhouette of canvas tents and oil lamps burned into view—low light, low profile. A field base, exactly as promised.

“Welcome to paradise,” he muttered, cutting the engine. The sudden absence of its drone left a strange pressure in the cab, like ears popping after a long descent. “Or, y’know, a glorified tarp city with good coffee and terrible acoustics.”

He shoved the door open, the hinge protesting with a creak before he hopped out into the mud. The rain had gone from steady to spiteful. He didn’t bother pulling up his collar until the chill had already found the back of his neck.

Around them, activity sparked to life. Nitani, Beillahn, and Roki were already dismounting the lead vehicle, exchanging quick salutes and louder greetings with the welcome crew. Someone rushed forward with a clipboard, another with a battered umbrella and a pack of cigarettes clutched in one hand. Dr. Reis was barely out of the truck bed before a woman in a red hood flagged him down and motioned him toward a mid-sized tent at the heart of the compound.

Altimeda’s eyes followed them—watched how swiftly the professor was absorbed into the encampment, shepherded like a VIP. The other scientists followed behind in his gravity.

But Nimue wasn’t given a second glance. Not a hand reached for her, not a name was called. No one came to collect.

They were already gone by the time he noticed, and after a small sigh, Altimeda rested his forearm against the open door of the truck and turned to her with a half-tilt of his head. “Looks like you’re still my plus-one,” he said, voice light, but without the sting of mockery. His hair had gone dark and stringy from the rain, silver glinting where mercury had splattered across his gloves earlier in the day. “Come on. I’ll get you dry, fed, and briefed. In that order.”

He offered his hand again—not like earlier, not diplomatic—but as a guide now. Not formal, just human.

Behind them, someone barked orders about supply logs and power rationing. The scent of boiled potatoes and scorched coffee filtered through the damp, chased by the scent of oil and wet canvas. “Camp’s not much to look at, but most of the people here owe their lives to someone who thought like you do,” Altimeda added, quieter. “That makes you more than welcome. Even if they don’t know it yet.”

He stepped back, letting her choose to follow at her own pace, but didn’t stray far. Not tonight. Not after everything.

He led her past the bustle and flickering lamplight, taking a side path worn muddy by boot traffic. The rain had softened to a mist by then, clinging to their clothes and turning their shadows faint and shivery beneath the lanterns. Altimeda walked without ceremony, boots thudding through the muck. No one stopped them. A few nods, no questions.

His tent sat tucked at the perimeter—large enough to suggest rank, yet isolated enough to hint he didn’t often invite company.

He pulled back the flap and ducked inside first, then turned and held it open for her. Warmth met them, dry and faintly metallic, with the lingering sharpness of cleaning solvent. Light came from a low-hanging bulb suspended over a makeshift desk, its wires fed through holes in the canvas.

It was spartan but lived-in: bedroll tossed but neatly made, a coat hanging from a nail, a battered trunk pushed to one corner. But most of the space was claimed by a waist-high metal table—easily the most expensive thing in the room.

Dozens of glass jars were arranged across it in quiet, glittering ranks. Some sealed tight, some open and half-full with a thin layer of foil over their tops bearing alchemical inscriptions. Mercury pooled within them like liquid mirrors, glinting in the low light. One container was shaped like a wine decanter; another looked suspiciously like a repurposed inkwell.

Altimeda shrugged off his coat, tossing it toward the trunk. “Not much, but it’s mine,” he said, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Most people here think I’m obsessive. Or a hoarder. But it’s a controlled system—each jar’s tuned for different conditions. Temperature, conductivity, resonance. They don’t just sit there.” He moved to the table, picking up a narrow vial with a slight rattle of glass. The mercury inside coiled in a lazy spiral, then shimmered and reformed into a perfect, quivering sphere, like a drop of polished silver. He gave her a sideways glance, somewhere between sheepish and proud.

“Mercury’s... temperamental. But it listens when you know how to ask.”

A pause hung in the air, filled only by the hum of the bulb overhead. He looked at her more directly now, expression softer than it had been at the convoy. “You can sit, by the way. Bed’s yours, if your legs are giving out. I’ve got a field chair around here somewhere, probably under a pile of bad decisions.”

He chuckled under his breath, then turned back to the table and flicked the sphere back into its jar. “Figured you might appreciate seeing where the mess starts. If you’re gonna be stuck here a while... I’d rather you not think I’m just some war-sick bastard hoarding metal and pretending it’s noble.”​

 

[Cantarella]

Nimue was, as ever, wholly unflappable.

While some would balk at the muddy cluster of tents, this was far from Nimue's first time in such an environment. She'd cut her teeth in field hospitals; this was practically a spa getaway by comparison.

Her pristine boots kicked up puddles of water, squelched through the muck, and if she cared at all about the state of her shoes, she didn't show it. After all, this sort of thing was her bread and butter, the bulk of her experience. She'd served in abject filth, knee-deep in unspeakable things, elbow deep in gore. She served in freezing cold, in scorching summer heat, and she did it all with grit and determination. A true angel of the battlefield.

So, this was the way of things, she thought as Altimeda extended his hand for her. It looked like they were stuck together for now, as though by fate. Or, perhaps divine providence.

She took his hand, carefully maneuvering through the slippery mud. Her shoes didn't have much tread; they were, admittedly, more form than function. She was a field researcher now, she could be afforded such a luxury as pretty shoes.

Which were now, sadly, ruined.

Together, hand in hand, they passed through the ranks of people like ghosts. No one paid her any heed, and she preferred it that way. She wasn't in the mood to be pestered with questions. She was tired, and sore, and wet, and frankly a little pissed off still that she was here and not at her own place, making dinner, unwinding, getting ready for bed. Maybe even relaxing in a hot bath with a book. Not trudging through mud in the rain to find refuge in some drafty tent for the night.

Nimue was the type of woman to wear her emotions on her sleeve, but not in a place like this. She compartmentalized it, appearing to the world as a stoic, even with things appearing dire for her and her companions. This was a practiced thing, of course. Nimue was a professional, after all. Even with her explosive temper.

The sight of the tent, undeniably his, was welcome. After a day of endless rain and hardship, it was the closest thing to home she was going to have for awhile. Her eyes adjusted to the synthetic light inside the tent, from overcast gloom to warm brightness as she ducked inside after Altimeda.

"Home sweet home, I guess." She sighed. Stepping inside, Nimue gratefully kicked off her shoes and, standing on one foot, began to peel off her sodden socks, careful not to plant a hand on anything to balance herself. She still felt a little awkward around the man in the tent with her, even with that soft expression on his face. Sitting down would have been weird, wouldn't it?

Thinking to at least soften that awkwardness, Nimue cleared her throat, following Altimeda's lead with the conversation about the jars of what she assumed were more mercury.
"Brave of you to have them open like this. A bit of foil wouldn't do much to protect you if it spilled." She offered, wringing out her socks and placing the sodden material in her mud-caked boots for tidiness' sake. It would have been unconscionable for her to simply string them up like her unmentionables to dry. This was a man's room, after all.

Thankful, however, for the offer to sit down, Nimue stripped off her spattered coat and had a seat wherever she could find it. She sank down with a beleaguered sigh. Although still young enough, she was sore from the rough ride in the car, she was grateful for a place to rest, even if it was on the lid of his wooden footlocker.

In a rare moment of weakness, Nimue looked over the spatters of red on the white canvas of her coat. Like poppies blooming in a field of snow. She wrung the fabric between her small, pale hands and carefully folded it up and held it in her lap. She looked, for once, like something other than a force of nature, a hurricane in a compact blue-haired body. She was small, pale, and lost.

Vulnerable.

 

[Ryees]

 

Altimeda watched her with the kind of silence that didn't demand attention, but offered it. She was different now than the woman who had jammed her fingers into his sternum earlier. She had the same edge, and same spine, but quieter now, are more human. Her coat, stained like a battlefield flag, was folded neatly in her lap, and for a half-second he saw the tired in her shoulders instead of the fire in her eyes, though he didn't comment on it.

Instead, he wandered back to the table, hand trailing across the steel, and reached for one of the jars, a short, thick one with beveled glass. He lifted it carefully, then flicked his wrist over the table in an almost theatrical arc. The jar flipped over, fully inverted. The mercury inside surged upward—downward—silver against the glass mouth… and stopped clean at the lip. No spill, no drip. It rippled like water slapping a window pane, then settled again, trembling but sealed.

"Foil wouldn't do a damn thing," he said at last, glancing over at her. "These are sealed through inscription, sigils charged into the mercury itself, not the jars. It forms a containment layer right at the edge of the lip. No heat, no pressure, no chemical disturbance moves it unless I tell it to." He turned the jar upright again with a soft thunk and placed it back in line with the others. "Course, if you broke the jar... yeah, then it gets interesting."

Altimeda pulled his gloves off after that, one finger at a time, folding them into the crook of his belt. Beneath, his fingertips gleamed faintly, nails flecked with silver that didn't belong there, a shimmer that didn't catch the light so much as resist it. He flexed his fingers like they ached, then rolled his shoulders and stepped back toward the trunk.

"Your coat's not the only thing that took a beating." He knelt down, popped the lid with a creak, and rummaged a moment before tugging free a folded cream-colored sheet. It was clean, crisp even. Military standard.

"Here..." He fed the sheet up through a horizontal support rod above, knotting it loosely at each apex until it hung like a makeshift curtain in the far corner. "It's not exactly a spa, but you've got privacy if you want to change. Clean clothes are easy—this camp has more mismatched laundry than it has ammunition, unless you just want to grab one of my shirts." He pinched at the dark cotton button-up under his jacket, adding, "Might hang a little but, but I'll get yours washed, or swapped for something that fits."

He didn't ask whether she was alright, and didn't press her for more, suspecting that she was not the type for sweet nothings and hand-holding. Instead, he gave her a quick, dry little half-smile and jerked his thumb toward the curtain. "Hot bath and book still out of reach, but this part at least, this I can offer." He let that linger in the air for a second. Then turned back to his table, fiddling absently with a capped stylus as though he wasn't listening for the sound of her rising... but he was.​

 

[Cantarella]

As Altimeda upended the jar, Nimue felt a surge of panic burn its way through her chest. She lunged forward... to do what, exactly? She wasn't entirely certain. If mercury was suddenly poured out, she knew at least she was in deep trouble. Maybe not so much Altimeda-- he seemed competent enough with the stuff-- but she was screwed. He was under no obligation to protect her from that silvery liquid death.

But seeing as the liquid stopped in place, she breathed a sigh of relief, her shoulders slumping back from where they'd been up near her ears.

Alchemy. Right, of course. Dumb of her to forget that very important detail. And just like an alchemist, he spared no detail in explaining the failsafe he'd put on the jars. Nimue found herself smiling in spite of her fatigue. It was a tired sort of smile, sardonic, but a smile all the same. At their core, alchemists were all like this. Herself included. In spite of everything, she saw a fleck of herself in him.

Nimue watched with veiled mauve eyes as Altimeda swept across the room, knotting up a clean white sheet for the sake of Nimue's modesty. She set the stained coat aside, feigning disinterest in the same way that Altimeda did, but she knew he was no fool. This wasn't her first time roughing it in an encampment, but the difference was that it was never in front of a man. It was always the other field sisters. They had the same parts, so there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

This was different. It was improper to the extreme. But it wasn't for him to see the way her ears turned pink. Sniffing as she bent at the waist to rifle through Altimeda's chest for a shirt, she spoke matter-of-factly.

"Blood's not so hard to get out of clothing." She explained. "I've had lots of practice. I think I can save it." She waved a hand dismissively, as though this was a daily occurrence, as she pulled one of Altimeda's black shirts from the chest. Some sleeveless thing, obviously too big for her, but it would suffice. "Just get me some salt, cold water, and whip up some hydrogen peroxide for me and I can make it like new." She flashed her teeth, a string of pearls hung like a necklace in a moist pink mouth. Something between a grimace and a grin.

She closed the lid of the chest with a snap of wood and creak of hinge and stalked barefoot over to the curtain, disappearing inside of it. There was a series of rustling sounds and a jingling of metal and scrape of leather as she disrobed behind the partition.

"This'll do for tonight." She assured him, muffled behind the crisp fabric. The light cast her silhouette upon the curtain, bending this way and that to change out of her clothes.

 

[Ryees]

 

Altimeda didn’t flinch when she lunged, just let the jar hang in midair, silver tide frozen at the lip. It was only once her shoulders slumped and her breath slipped back into rhythm that he quirked a brow and said, entirely deadpan, “Relax: I haven’t poisoned a guest in days.” A moment passed, just long enough to let the words settle like mercury in a jar, and then a soft grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Weeks, if you don’t count accidental exposure.”

He turned away under the guise of organizing his workbench—sliding vials into rows, recorking a flask, needlessly aligning the stylus with a ruler he didn’t use—but his ear stayed tilted toward her, the way you might listen to a bird trying not to sing.

Her smile made him chuckle, low and short. “Yeah. We’re all the same breed. See a system, think we can fix it. Then we fix it again, better, until we break something. Obsession’s just love with a microscope, anyway.”

He kept his tone light, but his eyes drifted as she crossed to the trunk, watching her rummage with the same careful attention he gave to tuning sigils. She had a soldier’s practicality, and he admired that in no small way. A chemist’s memory, too, given the way she rattled off cleaning agents like ingredients in a battlefield recipe.

“Salt, cold water, hydrogen peroxide?” he echoed, ticking them off on his fingers. “All here. Might have to fight my camp medic for the last of the salt, but I’ve won that battle before.”

He let her take what she needed without comment. Watched her lift the black shirt, sleeveless and soft from wear, and nodded in approval as she claimed the curtain without needing permission.

And then she was gone, swallowed behind the draped sheet, and the lamp’s light traced her in outline: a curve of back, a dip of hip, the long pull of fabric over damp skin. He didn’t mean to watch, at first, but he settled into staring rather comfortably.

And for a long, silent moment, he just stood there, a man in a field tent with mercury on his fingers, watching a ghost become flesh behind a curtain. She shifted, and he turned away, too late to be innocent and too early to be caught.

“This’ll do for tonight,” she said from behind the fabric.

Altimeda cleared his throat gently. “Better than the truck,” he murmured, half to himself. “And less chance of someone bleeding out in your seat.” He pulled the stool toward the desk and sat, back angled toward the curtain but not far, close enough to hear but far enough not to crowd. “Let me know if you want the coat steamed. Or if you need me to actually leave the tent for a bit. I can hover just outside and pretend I’m not worried about someone putting a bullet through the canvas.”

He paused, leaned an elbow on the desk, and reached for a jar out of habit, one he didn’t open. “...You really don’t rattle easy,” he said at last. “Even now.”​

 

[Cantarella]

Mercury poisoning was no laughing matter, but here he was, jesting about it as though it were no more serious than spilled milk. She concluded that he must be absolutely mad. He may have looked put together enough, witty to be sure, but that didn't preclude insanity. Nimue wasn't sure how far she should trust Altimeda, despite the kindness he had shown her. And she had an inkling that the feeling might be mutual. Deserved enough, she reasoned. He didn't know her from Adam, and she was sure he was a madman. They were square.

His quip would have earned a slap if they had been less familiar. A shove if they were. But as it stood, she scoffed and rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't be so glib if I were you." She muttered with a frown. "I doubt you'd be the one having to chelate the mercury out of the poor son of a bitch who got poisoned in the first place."

That frown stuck, a remnant of where mirth had melted from seconds before. She had hoped they would have common ground as scientists, but he was too gung-ho with a potent neurotoxin for her comfort. Once she had the shirt in hand, she shook it out with a jerk of her wrists, the fabric making a sharp snapping sound as she shook any potential dirt or dust loose before she ducked behind the partition. She was already in dire need of a bath, she didn't want to add to the grit.

"Like I said," she reminded him as she pulled her belt free through the loops with a whir of leather on leather, "Lots of practice. If you can't get them for me, I'll just have to make them. Simple enough transmutation." She shrugged, the belt buckle jingling as she set it on a chair she dragged over to hold her discarded clothes. "Just gotta draw it out of some brackish water, or the ground if needs must."

Another chuckle, this time from beyond the gauzy veil of the sheet. "Wouldn't be the first time someone's bled out on me. Won't be the last time, either." She said matter-of-factly. Coldly, if one went so far. But it was just a fact of Nimue's profession. She made nothing of it as she shed the last of her layers of clothing and slipped the shirt on over her nakedness.

She stepped out from behind it, in a state of undress she never would have dared to have around a man she wasn't married to. Or at the very least, going steady. Although Nimue felt trepidation with the creamy curves of her legs exposed and showing far more cleavage than she ever did even alone and at her leisure, one never would have guessed by looking at her.

"Of course I don't. Why would I?" There was pride in the statement. Nimue was confident, assured in what she knew she was capable of. For what reason would she be afraid?

"In any case, I can steam it myself."

 

[Ryees]

 

Altimeda didn't say anything when she stepped out. He saw the length of leg, the sharp collarbone, the way the borrowed shirt hung like it was trying not to be caught staring, and chose, wisely, not to make it weird.

Instead, he gave a soft whistle under his breath as he rose. "Whew," he said, not quite looking at her. "Shirt survived. That's the real miracle."

And then, as if on cue, he crouched beside the bed and slid out a flat metal basin with the smoothness of a man who'd been waiting for the perfect moment to do it. The surface of it shimmered faintly, already etched with a transmutation circle that flickered with faint silver lines. "Now," he said, touching the rim, "You could handle this yourself, I'm sure. But allow me this minor flex."

At his touch, the circle flared, and the moisture in the air shifted, not violently, but powered along by subtle command. Threads of vapor curled inward, siphoning from canvas seams and grit-soaked mud alike. In moments, the basin filled with clean, clear water, perfectly still. The canvas floor around it stood in a consciously dry spot, and the rain-soaked look of Nimue's clothes had plumped up with some air-drying.

He sat back on his heels and gestured toward it like a showman. "Ta-da. No blood, no grit, no suspicious flecks. Good for coat-cleaning, wound-washing, or soul-searching, whatever you're in the mood for." He stood, dusting off his hands, and turned toward the back shelves like it was all routine. "And now since you asked..." he added, rummaging, "...because no battlefield laundry kit is complete without..." He pulled a slim black canteen from the shelf, turned it so the H₂O₂ label caught the light, and raised it like a toast. "...industrial-grade hydrogen peroxide. My favorite cologne." He placed it down beside the basin with exaggerated care, then stepped back, hands raised like he was leaving a sacred offering.

Altimeda retreated to the other side of the tent, loosening the damp overshirt from his frame and draping it across a chair back to dry. Beneath it, the black of his undershirt clung in the shoulders, marked with the shape of rain and movement. He rolled his neck with a soft groan and stretched his arms up, pulling the chair out from under the desk and falling into it sideways with one arm hanging over its back.

"You've got your water, your chemicals, your dignity; you're one pillow short of a hotel suite." And then, with mock gravity, flourished, "Which means, officially, I have done my duty as host."​