Amestris:Chapter 1: The Glorious Alchemist.
 

Aberash, The city of light. A bustling mountain town north of Central, Aberash is large enough to have a healthy market and business environment, but small and secluded enough to foster a sense of community. In Aberash everybody knows everybody(or is somehow connected)

Everybody, that is ,except Faustino. A few years ago, the strange, distant alchemist moved into Aberash. Selecting the old, decrepit mansion on the hill overlooking the town, he fixed it up overnight and spent most of his time working alone in his laboratory. Faustino only seemed to visit the town to pick up supplies. Faustino was always, curt and seemingly cold to the town people, and they left him to his solitary lifestyle.

Over the past few months, people had been dissapearing, strange things happened to visitors coming in, and townspeople vanished into the ground. Finally a bright and red shining light came forth from the mansion. A massive wall sprung up around the entire town and hundreds of strange beasts and creatures poured forth.

Quickly Aberash was overthrown. Faustino proclaimed to the entire world that he was Aberash's new ruler. Oddly enough, his personality seemed to transform along with the town. He outwardly seemed genial and kind. Speaking in glorious fashion about the shining future of Aberash. But the town folks saw only the iron fist with which he ruled, and the fear they felt. Something has to be done....

It's a hot day in Aberash, Two wolfish guards stand outside the main gates of the city. A large horse drawn carriage slowly drives up the dirt road, Driven by a muscular man with a crew cut, and a state Alchemist uniform with a sleeveless jacket.
It stops in front of the gates and a thin, young, bookish looking Ishballan with a charming smile, clad in the uniform of the state steps out, followed by three military and state alchemist operatives. The Ishballan steps calmly up to the Guards. He smoothly pulls out a white envelope with the seal of the Fuhrer on it. "Hello, My Name is Aali I'm an official state ambassador of Amestris, I'm here to speak with your leader." The guards snort, sniff the envelope, open it and read the letter as the driver steps down and positions himself near Aali, just between him and the gaurds.
" These Men and Women are official representatives of our state. They have been instructed to be as cooperative as possible. Written below are the names of all the members of the party..
Aali abdul: Diplomat.
Zuo Kechi: Body Guard
Benjamin Harmons: Escort
Alanna Lyon: Record keeper, zmediator.
Rayleen Kesterlane: Assistant.
I pray that this reaches you in good spirits. please offer them no obstruction on their journey of peace."
Fuhrer Empress Jennifer
The guard holdnig the letter sneers and looks at the group. He turns to his partner and mutters "These must be them." He turns to the assembled group. "Yeah fine, go on, and don't-"he says with an added growl"- cause any trouble". He opens the gate. The group piles back into the carriage and drives through. In the carriage Rayleen grumbles" Assistant?" Aali raises a sliencing hand' Now hush that, you know good and well we could'nt justify having such a heavy security detail. It's always bad to show up to your host's dinner table with a loaded gun in you hand. Speaking of dinner, you should be grateful, our original plan was to list you as our cook."__________________________________________________ _________
A Strong Ishballan woman skulks like a weak mouse in the alleyways of Aberash. Hiding in the darkness, she pulls out a slip of paper and reads it carefully, muttering" Hmm, I suppose it would be best if I took this route. There does'nt seem to be a lot of trafic in this area. Okay, I'll find this Faustino character, and well have a nice chat about what he's doing."
she stands up and begins her trip.
__________________________________________________ _________
Two men walk quickly down the main street. One, bespectacled with long hair is lead by a more casual taller young man. Marius looks up to Maiko and cooly asks. "What do you know about your employer?is there anything you can tell me about Faustino's work?" Maiko looks down at Marius lazily. "Dude, the only thing I know is that he pays me. a lot. And that he wants to talk to you. now let's go, before he gets mad."
Just above their heads, a dark form flitted from rooftop to rooftop, folowing their path with unerring precision.
__________________________________________________ _________
Cereous had a hard time getting in town, but he finally made it, he could'nt be more shocked by what he saw, chimeras, and shells of all kinds roamed the streets. More than that, many of them seemed to police the town, others appeared to be there just to menace innocent townsfolk. As he sat at the small bar he had decided to rest in and think, a gang of chimeras wearing the same police uniform came in, lead by a large shell in a full metal armor suit. His armor had been painted over to fit the police motif. The chimeras ordered drinks while the Shell sat in a booth. All was quiet, when one of the larger, reptilian chimeras let out a shriek. "EEEYAHHH! YOU BITCH YOU STEPPED ON MY TAIL!" the scaly creature grabbed a bar patron by her neck, and threw her against the wall. "Now what should I do with you?" The creature got an evil look in it's eye and turned around to a young man running towards him. "Or maybe I'll punish your boyfriend here instead." The chimera dropped the girl and threw out it's leg, tripping the man, and grabbed him by his hair. "ooh, this is gonna be sooo, fun."
__________________________________________________ ________
Issac and Adam had been in town for a while. while they had been assigned together, they had'nt been ordered to like it. nor had they been odered to stay sober, currently they were staring angrily at each other in a bar over several empty glasses when a group of police monsters came in and caused a ruckus.
Isaac glowered at Adam, "Maybe you should do something"
Adam harumphed "why me?"
Isaac sneered and said "Because theyr'e your people right? maybe you can talk some sense into them, you better hurry, you know bar brawls inevitably involve everyone present."
Adam scowled "My people? what's that supposed to mean?
Isaac " Artificial people, not unlike yourself, I know quite a good deal about your kind, and the basic principles are all the same, go, fix this, before someone gets hurt."
Adam's eye began to twitch "why you-"
__________________________________________________ _______

Heinrich felt lost, the only real way to find out anything about Faustino was to talk to him, and the only way to get close enough to him invloved a variety of things he did'nt know anything about, stealth, espionage, social interaction. currently he sat alone on a bench with Gad standing stoickly holding his equipment. He hated this, the strong pull so very powerful, but there wasnothing he could do.
__________________________________________________ _________
Rufus had just finished up another street show in the park. And judging by the sound of his hat as he picked it off the pavement, he had made some good(or just noisy) money. He decided to find a place to sit down and come up with his plans for fiding and questioning Faustino. He sat down on a park bench, right behind him was Heinrich, he could hear him mumbling. "The pull, must find it, the stone, my soul, so strong."

"Those guys were assholes", Ben claimed taking his seat in the carriage once more. The ride had become uncomfortably silent. He was the only normal guy there, the rest were alchemists. Why couldn't I have gotten a normal group to travel with? Ben sighed in disgust. "This Faustino guy sounds like a big dick. Comes into town and takes over the place. Has anyone ever heard of subtlety around here?"

This was something Maiko could enjoy. The amount of money that Faustino was paying him allowed the mercenary to live a very comfortable life. “I haven't had this much cash since I lived at home. Hell this is more then I have ever had in my life,” spoke the man as he twirled a gold coin between his automail fingers. Giving it a flick, the coin spun in the air and he caught it and placed it back in his pouch. He looked upwards and saw the time. It read 3:05 in the afternoon. The young man leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment. He heard a distant sound and snapped his head towards the direction of the noise. He stood straight and casually walked towards the sound. Maiko took a quick look around but saw nothing..

“Must have been my imagination,” he said as he leaned back lazily outside the door to his bosses office.

Cerous sat there in amazement of this place. People (things?) like him everywhere. Of course he definitely did not like they way most of them behaved, in fact, it got him quite irritable. But maybe Aberash wouldn't be so bad...

"EEEYAHHH! YOU BITCH YOU STEPPED ON MY TAIL!"

This quickly rose him from his thoughts and as he watched the rest pan out he only had one thing on his mind; "Oh dammit. It's going to be one of those days".

Still, if nothing was done this was almost certainly going to become a brawl, though if something was done it'd probably only affect when said brawl begins.

He got up, put his hand gently on the reptile's shoulder, and said "C'mon now, I'm sure it was an accident, let's just all apologise and we can get back to whatever we were doing"

Cerous knew this would, most likely, do aboslutely nothing to diffuse the situation. But, the chimera's attention was now on him rather than the other guy, and he really thought he could take a hit better.

Alanna Lyon settled back into her seat on the carriage and pulled out some papers from her pocket. She had been asked to take detailed notes regarding their trip into Aberash. Most likely to be filed away, never seen by human eyes again once all of this blows over... She thought to herself, sighing once more.

She looked over at Benjamin Harmons, who had been complaining about this Faustino character, "Well, I wouldn't imagine that an individual who forcibly proclaimed himself the new ruler of this city to be a kind, compassionate person." She replied with a small smile, making a few marks on her report. Despite her annoyance with keeping notes, this mission promised to provide more action than any of her previous missions. Exactly what I signed up for.

"Which will make it all too easy to stick a short sword a long way down his throat," Rayleen Kesterlane said quietly, resting her left hand on her right and transmuting the hand and half of the forearm into a two foot sword. Then the sword became her normal automail limb again. "After we manage to somehow get free of the trap we're riding right into and then saving all the civilians."

Rayleen was also curious about Lord Faustino's motives behind the takeover, but figured she could read a report about it from the desk of Alanna. What was more important was how Faustino intended to off the diplomatic team. Poisoned food? Being fed to one of Faustie's mean ol' chimeras? Maybe just a classic ambush by thugs. Rayleen could hardly contain her excitement.

It's almost too easy to tell who strangers in a strange land are -- seeing all the people shy away from the military escort, afraid of Faustino's hard-handed rule should they even be caught near the group -- if Mataya hadn't had a knack for blending into the alleyways, she might've been given the same reaction as a 'deadly criminal' who hadn't killed anyone.

Disarming a few lechers gets you sentenced to death here...How ridiculous. Should this Faustino have nothing I need, quick retribution will be needed for this town.

Mataya swiftly ran through the alleys, peering through the passages to make sure the escort was still traceable. It's small...either the military doesn't care much about this, or they sent more than a few State Alchemists...either way, this is becoming far too easy.

Ben stared at the sword for a moment before going back to his own thoughts. "A trap eh? Hot dog!" He pulled out the glock that he had been issued, popped in a clip and pulled back the slide before placing it back. "I knew something was going to happen here, but hearing someone else think it besides me is all the more reassuring." Ben happily sat back, crossed his arms, and wore a big goofy grin across his face. "At least it won't be boring."

Aali raised both his hands and sighed "People, what did I just say?" we are not, I repeat, we are NOT going to be charging in there, weapons at the ready, nor are we going to be tipping aorund with our hands on our guns, waitng for the floor to fall out from under us.... at least we won't appear to be. It is very important that we appear calm, relaxed and trusting, be prepared, keep your guns loaded, but hidden. Do.Not.Appear. Nervous. Look, look out at these people, they're scared, not of us, but of what might happen if they interact with us, what Faustino might do. we must consider them, yes I am well aware that it's extremely ubnlikely that this can be handled diplomatically, but if we can reason with him until we get him where we want him, we can handle this without any unnecessary bloodshed. You know what happens if we fail? the state will send in the armies and destroy everything, all because you got trigger happy."
__________________________________________________ _______
Darkeye retreated back to the rooftops, Maiko had made it to his master's business office without incident, so far, Maiko had'nt given Darkeye any reason to make his presence known. He went on a patrol around the city, when he spied Mataya, he swooped down for further surveilance, he began tracking her...
__________________________________________________ _________
The reptilian Police chimera hissed "and just what are you going to to about it ugly? why I bet.-" he paused and sniffed the air around Cerous,"hmmm, something's not right Just what are you? huh? you one of us? is that what it is? okay then, maybe I wont hurt him, since you're family and all... wait.... why are'nt you in uniform?"

Zuo couldn't make out most of what was being said in the carriage, he didn't need to, from what little he could hear, he could fill in the blanks, they had traveled together far enough to discern what they were like. He almost smiled when he heard Alai's response, the kids were overeager for action, he'd seen others like them. He hoped they would make it out of here okay, realize that being behind a desk wasn't so bad, and that action was overrated.

He sighed keeping his eyes peered ahead, perhaps he had been doing this to long, if he was thinking like this. It didn't matter he focused on the task at hand, not the horses, driving the carriage was second nature by now. But he people here, anyone of them could spring a trap at a moments notice. There were too many battle ready chimeras and shells, in fact the ones who didn't look prepped for battle stood out more in his mind. He didn't let it show however, his scanning was discrete, his nervousness hidden, he wouldn't let his body language betray him, he'd been doing this for too long to make that mistake.