Strangled at Birth: The Epiphany of Pride

Author's note: I do not own any intellectual properties portrayed within this story. All this is done as a non-profit venture.

This story is another installation of my Strangled at Birth series. It is a fusion of Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 and FMA: Brotherhood. this story features highly graphic subject matter, so turn back now if that's not your thing. Inspiration was taken from both Fritz Lang's Metropolis and my mother's own experiences growing up in a dictatorship.

with that in mind enjoy ;)

The man known as Fuhrer Fritz Bradley of Amestris was in fact no man at all. Sure he had a penis and a pair of testicles but since he was a homunculus and not a human being; he could not rightly call himself a man. Unlike the other homunculi created by the cold hearted and sociopathic woman Dante, this had never bothered him; if a human was determined by their ability to produce viable sperm and die a slow death after their reproductive potential was exhausted then we wasn't exactly missing much.

In Pride's own mind, a human was the sum total of their physical appearance. Hence he, being handsome and beautiful, was more human than human. Likewise Lust should not have gotten so butthurt about her homunculus body being like Alfonse Elric's armour; she was sexy, so what else did she need?

Lust was missing for some reason, though he was more worried about little Wrath being absent. To clarify little Wrath, Pride-Bradley meant Izumi Curtis's aborted fetus spliced with Edward Elric's arms; not his angsty asshole of a Bradley-doppelganger from another universe.

Yet both Wrath and Lust would have to take a backseat compared to what had gone down with his master Dante this very evening.

Pride bowed before his master, unmoving as a statue while Dante hacked and coughed. The centuries old immortal shook, convulsed and hacked thick, yellow phlegm into a simple tin bucket. Though he wanted to, Pride new better than to hold Dante or comfort her. The emotionally dead woman would interpret that as an attack rather than any kind of personal tenderness; especially when her eyes weren't on the person touching her. So he left her to her devices.

Dante threw her head back to wetly gasp for air; as if her airways were clogged with mud. Most of her lower jaw was missing, and the two stumps of her jawbone glistened with saliva and some fluids that weren't supposed to exist in the human body. Staples and sutures held her torso together from where she'd been sliced nearly into pieces; nasty looking brown colored ooze wept from the wounds.

Shaking and quaking, Dante vomited up her own tongue into the bucket. Trembling like a leaf, the centuries old alchemist dragged a rolling tray of mechanical components towards her. With a clap of hands, alchemic energy flowed through the tray and its components and they began to reconfigure and alter; an act which not only required precise knowledge of chemistry and the periodic table but also of machinery and biology.

Some sense of muscular control returning to her, Dante lifted up a muzzle like contraption and began to fasten it over her gory mouth-hole. Pride felt his boner wilt at the gruesome injury being covered up; but he couldn't deny the beauty of Dante's self-inflicted muzzle. Brass pipes were configured on the front in such a way that they looked like shiny, yellow horse teeth.

Hands steadied, Dante grabbed a backpack set of bellows with build in air filters. Throwing it around her, Dante nearly burst the staples and sutures as well as flashed the scarred, withered remains of her breasts. At least she hadn't lost feeling in her nipples.

With the backpack in place, she took the breathing tubes dangling off of it like tentacles and she thrust them between her ribs.

There was a sickening pop-hiss as breathing needles punctured lungs and then just like that, Dante's laboured wheezing breaths stopped. On her back, the bellows filled and emptied in time with the death alchemist's lungs and all trembling stopped.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Dante grabbed a silk bathrobe and threw it over her disgusting nakedness; much to Pride's sexual frustration.

At last Dante spoke, aided by a mechanical voice box from out of Winry Rockabell's fever dreams. "The alternate universe Selim-Pride attempted to kill me today." She said plainly, tonelessly. "And just as I had perfected the soul transference process of the philosopher's stone." Still no emotion. One of her eyes began to wander from the other, so she jammed two fingers into her eye socket and manually twisted it into place.

She went on. "Thus far our interaction with the so called Brotherhood-Universe has amused me, but our response to this attack must be predictable and consistent." She took a deep breath and shifted the horse-tooth mask so that it didn't hurt her saliva gland so much. "I've built a device designed to erase philosopher's stones from existence. Take it and kill this homunculus that looks like your adopted son. Then kill the self-aware philosopher's stone called Father." She was starting to get bored now. "Commit any rapes, tortures and other crimes that you deem fit, slave. Just make sure that everyone is dead at the end of the day, the details are up to you."

Pride grinned with excitement, "It will be glorious, my master."

Dante narrowed her eyes, "I don't give your wife's big, fat horse's ass on toast; Pride. Don't fuck this up." Groaning, she leaned back and opened up her bathrobe. Lewdly, she began to scratch at the fork of her legs; her pussy the only part of her that wasn't hideously mutilated and scarred. "After what I've been through I need an orgasm," she promptly kicked over the bucket of puke, slime, tongue and Christ knows what else over. "Go eat my medical waste, slave."

Pride's face just burst with the biggest shit eating grin, "I love you, master." And just a good little cock-slave began to degrade and debase himself for his master's sexual satisfaction.

He'd picked up Dante's device after she'd beaten and humiliated him, abusing him verbally and physically before pinching a loaf in his mouth. It had all been very lovely and it only affirmed the love that Pride felt for the borderline psychopathic woman. He had no idea why Greed had ever left her.

But there were some matters that came even before his master's dictates. Gently, fatherly Pride woke up his son Selim. The true Selim, not that bastard creation by that pile of shit called Father. "Son, wake up." He murmured gently.

Slowly at first, Selim stirred and then bleary eyes took him back to the land of the waking. "Father," she whispered, "What time is it?"

Pride smiled with true fatherly pride, "Son, I just wanted you to know that I love you. I'm going on a secret mission."

Selim sat up in bed, eyes and face full of worry. "Will you be alright?" The boy looked like he was about to cry. It honestly tore at Pride's heart and he was glad for the lack of tear glands.

"Of course I'll be alright, son; nobody's tougher than your dad," he gave his son a reassuring laugh. Selim's distress was appeased but not fully gone. "I just wanted to let you know son that I love you and I just want you to be the best at whatever you decide to do. Never let anybody tell you what to do. And the only way to get good at anything from scrubbing toilets to performing alchemy is mindless, endless repetition and practice. When you've done it so many times that your hands are bleeding and you're too tired to sweat, then you'll have learned it." He nodded, cursing himself for giving his son an afterschool sermon instead of something from the heart. "I love you boy."

And with that, father and son hugged. It was these moments when he kicked himself for parenting wrong that Pride felt truly human.

And it was when he was on the hunt that Pride felt truly alive. He ran through the wilderness of Northern Amestris close to the border of Drachma; evading armoured kataphraktoi units as well as faster, more mobile Russ warbands or the hordes of feral chimera that infested the woods, rivers and streams of the north.

Pride shoved a load of red stones into his mouth, the souls encased within fueling his power. This was what he lived for; the grand challenge. He never did anything small. Fuck cracking a walnut with a sledge hammer, he cracked that stupid nut with high powered rifle shot.

Finally, Pride reached it, the Northern Warp gate which the Drachman Orthodox church had long ago declared Thanasimos, or deadly. A thing of crude stone and strange sigils, built by a race of wizards long dead; wizards, not true alchemists. What they wrought all those eons ago still functioned and only the truly insane sought to access the gate.

Pride ran at the gate full tilt, leaping while clenching the amulet Dante had given him; trusting his master's works to send him to the right world. He found it exhilarating as the gate tore apart his very being down to the subatomic level and beamed him to an alternate universe that existed trillions of light years away yet right next door forty five years from now and last Wednesday.

Pride came crashing to the ground after his trip through reality and unreality. Instantly, all of his senses began to scan the environment. Smell, hearing and regular sight as well as the ultimate eye took in a treasure trove of data which could prove useful.

The Fuhrer homunculus took to the shadows like a Xingese assassin. The ultimate eye revealed everything from the emotional and physical states of humans on the streets, the exact chemical composition of pollution from downwind factories and the back of his head. Around various locations in the city, Pride could make out scores of Amesterian soldiers from this dimension . . . setting up high explosives?

Pride stopped to watch the soldiers on his grand tour of Central City. Massive quantities of low tech but powerful explosive substance were being set up in the Central City Library, the red light district downtown, the banks in the financial district and the theater houses. While he kept an eye out for Selim-Pride, Bradley couldn't help but wonder why Father or Wrath Bradley would want to demolish sections of their city; particularly sections that would disrupt the grand alchemic seal.

Moving like a leaf on the wind, Pride ghosted his way through Central City. It took some time, but eventually his ultimate eye detected a chemical signature from expensive, high end soap. Pride followed that chemical trail for as long as he could. He knew from prior research that this particular whale oil soap was favoured by the higher ups in this Amestris; so he had to narrow down the search. He followed the chemical trail which was untainted by the various oils and aromas of the human body. Refining the search further, he began to follow the ionization of air that was one of the telltale signs of either an electric dynamo or a homunculus's nervous system. That took him to Selim-Pride.

Bradley-Pride watched from among the roofs as below him inside an old and unsafe factory, Selim-Pride marched with a group of Amesterian soldiers and . . . something else. It was dressed in an Amesterian uniform but there was no heartbeat or biological processes like a human being or even a chimera should have. The unknown creature's body wasn't quiet; there were alchemical processes going on that he'd never seen before. The information the ultimate eye gave him was useless without a second of the species to study. He wouldn't know how the thing was created or what powered it; all the eye told him was that the unbeating heart was the nexus of alchemic activity.

Selim-Pride gave a smirk as two of the soldiers took General Raven and tossed him into an industrial incinerator. This was a particularly nice model because there was a grill with just enough room to see a human face on the door. The two soldiers threw their bodies into it and slammed the heavy door of the incinerator. Next to pride, the pale Major stood even vigilant.

"You can't do this!" Raven shrieked as he pounded on the incinerator door, "I have Father's blessings!"

"And I have father's orders," Pride spoke down to the lowly maggot, "And those orders say you threaten everything we have worked for. Father is reorganizing and only the best will see the Promised day."

"But I've done everything you asked! Everything!" the man pleaded through tears, even as the pale Major was fumbling with the incinerator's ignition system.

"There lays the crux of the problem," Pride's voice turned eerie and flanged as his shadow arms began to spread across the room. "You only did what we asked. You never once volunteered to give more or to do better and you never sought to sacrifice yourself for our greater glory. You only cared about what we could do for you. There's no room for you in our better world."

With that, the ignition system kicked in and Raven screamed as blue hot fire engulfed his body. It only took five seconds for the fire to rip the oxygen from his lungs, but he lived much longer than that.

Pride's smile turned into a scowl and his shadow appendages writhed and twisted with energy and malice. "What are you animals standing around for? We've nearly a dozen more targets to purge before morning."

The troop of soldiers never did get to finish those targets as a pair of hands smashed through the wooden floor and dragged a very unlucky corporal down to the floor below. The squad of soldiers cursed and shouted in surprise; Selim-Pride was unresponsive and the Pale Major took up a hand gun and stepped between Pride and the floor.

The band of soldiers began to sweat and pray as they heard the screams of their stolen comrade for a split second before a massive geyser of bloody slurry came shooting through the hole; Bradley-Pride having chopped up the soldier into something the consistency of ketchup.

Panicking, the nearest soldiers blinked human paste from their eyes and began unloading their machineguns down below in the hopes of hitting the enemy. They hadn't even emptied their magazines when Bradley-Pride exploded through a window in the factory with both swords drawn; having run all the way from the story below to the rooftop of the neighbouring building.

The Amesterian soldiers stood as much chance against Bradley-Pride as fruit stands against a blender. It wasn't the kind of brutal hack job that his "brother" Wrath-Bradley would have pulled; Bradley-Pride sliced through joints, cut arteries, nerves, disconnected veins and opened up every section of each soldier's digestive system. It was the rapid cutting of a master sushi chef.

Selim-Pride watched with detachment, not even using his shadow arms and appendages to attack Bradley-Pride. The teeth and smiles of the shadows gnashed with more repressed energy.

In fewer seconds than could be counted on one hand, the only living beings in the room were the two Prides and the pale Major. The young man, seemingly too young for a Major's rank fired a shot at Bradley-Pride. An angle change of the sword deflected the bullet back at the Major and hit him in the eye; yet he did not fall. He fired his gun again, this time missing for lack of depth perception; having just lost an eye.

In response, Pride threw his sword through the Major's heart. The impact lifted the young Major off his feet and blew him twelve feet back. So great was the impact that the sword sunk into a concrete support pillar; the Major pinned like a bug.

The wounded Major gasped and spat out blood, but wasn't dead despite his injuries. Pride saw through his ultimate eye that he'd disrupted the alchemic processes of this unknown creature but hadn't done so fatally. Already regeneration was kicking in and in some ways it was homunculus like, but in some ways it wasn't. One thing that Bradley-Pride did notice was that the subject's body was using blood to fuel the regeneration. Interesting.

The Major grabbed the sword with his bare hands, shredding the skin of his palms; but the pain seemed to have no bearing on him. His mouth opened and opened more, and more, and more and more until it seemed he could eat a human head in two bites. Twin fangs erupted from behind the canine teeth and his remaining eye glowed red. The eye had had been pulped by a gunshot was half regenerated now and looked like a red and milky white infected blister.

With all his inhuman strength, the Major ripped the sword from his body. From out of his jacket he withdrew a can of red spray paint and began to fire it all over his mouth until he had a nice crimson grill.

Bradley-Pride didn't need the ultimate eye to smell the stench of old, preservative rich blood mixed heavily into the spray paint along with anti-coagulants strong enough to bleed a human to death with just a single drop.

Roaring like a lion, the Major drew the not-so-ceremonial sword at his side and threw himself at Bradley-Pride.

The swordsman homunculus smirked at the charging monster with the fangs of a deep sea fish, one stroke and the head was off. Comically, the momentum of the charging major caused it to slam into the incinerator that held General Raven's remains. It bounced off without any sound of breaking bones before crumbling into dust.

Bradley never got the chance to take his eyes off the dead monstrosity before he saw the shadow arms of pride attack. Contemptuously, he allowed the arms to chop off his head and slice it into a thousand pieces. Bradley lunged forward at Selim-Pride, drawing a spare sword from his back and relying on his spinal ganglia and the balance organs in his knees for direction. Even with no head he could still kill.

His head hadn't even reformed beyond a skinless skull when Pride's shadow arms attacked from every angle. It looked like they'd condensed around Bradley-Pride like a solid wall and there was no way out.

Selim-Pride's eyes narrowed for just one moment as he felt Pride's twin swords pierce him from behind. Like ripping paper apart, Bradley pulled his swords two different ways and tore Selim-Pride in half. He'd definitely have his work cut out for him today; Selim had nearly twice as many souls in his vessel as he'd the last time they'd met. It looked like Father wasn't above investing in the useless little skid mark.

The shadow arms caught Pride's two halves and threw them together, shadows obscuring the spot where the halves regenerated. Bradley-Pride cared nothing for this and attacked, blocking multiple strikes with his indestructible swords and ducking around all the rest. Today wasn't the day to prove his own indestructability; today was the day he'd tear off Selim-Pride's little boy ball sack and feed it to him.

"After I kill you," Bradley-Pride croaked hoarsely, "I'm going to skullfuck the bathrobe wearing horse's ass you call Father." Fifty shadow arms whizzed past his face, missing but still taking large chunks off that would have killed a human.

Rather than take the insult, Selim-Pride smiled back and blinked purple eyes. "So the slime comes crawling back. It's sad that you need to compare yourself to me to feel better; really sad."

Something about this line hit Bradley-Pride in a tender spot and he ground his sixteen teeth and twenty false teeth. Twisting and slashing he drove his twin swords each two hundred times into Selim's body; releasing spurts of blood and viscera that he had never before seen coming from Selim-Pride. Then again, he'd never actually wounded Selim-Pride before so maybe this was normal for him. "I'm not going to kill you, actually. I'll tie you up and charge Ishbalan refugees four cenz each to fuck you in the ass and mouth; three cenz on Sundays!" He hissed out as he chopped off Selim's limbs.

Thrusting a third extra sword into Selim's face, Bradley-Pride charged across the room and opened the incinerator door. Selim's limbs were reforming but there were no red parks; a fact that Bradley-Pride was too angry to notice.

Selim-Pride looked up only to have the inferior Pride grab him by the throat. With a pivot and a follow through, Bradley threw Selim into the incinerator and slammed the door shut; locking it. Inside the brightly lit environment of the incinerator there should have been no way for Selim-Pride to generate shadow arms. He'd simply burn until all his souls were used up and then his vessel would be nothing but ashes. All in all, it would be a nice and painful way to die.

Bradley-Pride straightened up and walked over to the viewing grill on the incinerator. He could already smell the delightful scent of burning flesh. Then without warning, Selim-Pride's skeletal, burnt hands grabbed the viewing grill and pulled up his small body. His face was burning off right in front of Bradley-Pride's eyes and he was screaming in agony; a voice that sounded exactly like a child's would.

It had no effect on Bradley-Pride, who just smiled and blew Selim-Pride a kiss before waving goodbye.

Selim screamed and screamed as his eyes melted like marshmallows and any human features burnt to ashes. And then . . . he began to laugh.

Hysterical, maniacal, uncontrolled laughter began to pour out of Selim-Pride as his body burnt to nothing.

Bradley-Pride took a step back. Selim-Pride never had much in the way of physical discipline or masochism; and all research and Intel suggested that Father's homunculi had far lower pain thresholds than those of Dante. Selim-Pride could physically survive the punishment of the incinerator but this behavior was totally out of left field.

Before Bradley-Pride could act, the bombs set up at the foundation of the factory had detonated and Bradley-Pride was in free fall. Tumbling through fire and debris, Pride fell through the factory and down into the basement level. There in the basement level of all things, was another warp gate; smaller than the one in Drachma's hinterlands and technological rather than mystical in nature. Pride fell through and the next step began.

Like a cat, Bradley landed on his feet and like a hunting feline took notice of his environment. It was a city; an underground city not unlike the one created by Dante's first philosopher's stone, but that was where the similarities ended.

The underground city of Dante was a museum piece; a large vanity bauble owned by a woman who was proud of her greed and avarice. This place was a modern, thriving metropolis. Boulevards and streets showed wear and tear from the constant passage of vehicles. Door hinges were wet with recently applied grease and the various shops lacked any kind of dust or cobwebs. So where were the people?

The city was completely silent, the only sound that Pride could make out were his own footsteps and the noise of his blades swishing as he walked. Bright lights and traffic controls were everywhere but none of it was bright enough to illuminate the cavern ceiling; which was held in place by steel support pillars as thick around as a house.

Pride scanned with all senses, not letting emotion or anger distract him from the data at hand. Going by shops and residences he saw evidence of earth moving machines, road building machinery and construction equipment larger and more technologically advanced than anything in either version of Amestris. His ultimate eye told him that the street lights were powered by alchemic energy of all things; from a philosopher's stone judging by the unique wavelengths of radiation that accompanied every single light he passed.

This place was a puzzle and Pride didn't even begin to have all the pieces. This place was technologically advanced and from the look of it, they'd just recently discovered alchemy.

It was funny, Pride contemplated, that neither Father nor Dante had considered using a philosopher stone for something as mundane as powering a city.

As he walked, Pride's feet took him to what looked like a more economically upscale neighbourhood. Apartment buildings looked newer and made of higher quality materials. He couldn't read the language of the shop signs, but the price tags on the items in windows had more zeroes on it. So there were some similarities in the language; given time he could use his ultimate eye to fully translate the language; he'd probably need no more than half an hour.

Yet something bothered him, the city seemed to have been evacuated recently. In the closed shops garments had been left on the ground rather than hung up by helpful staff. In a restaurant, cups of once hot coffee sat cold. Experimentally, Pride drank down one such cup and winced.

Blood.

Old blood, kept on ice for ages before being poured into coffee for some reason. It occurred to him that the city had been full of creatures like the Major he killed; some kind of hemovore with an internal anatomy superficial similar to a homunculus. Though if that was the case, this stale, iced blood in the coffee would have been nutritionally poor fair; tasty like ice-cream and pretzels possibly but designed to fool a drinker into believing they were full.

As he walked, his training in languages was coming into play and worked complimentary to the ultimate eye to read the signs and old newspapers drifting around.

Grabbing one such drifting piece of paper Pride saw it was a poster whose date had no significance for him. "See . . . the special—sacred (?) Ancestor . . . harm the . . . creature?" More than the headlines what grabbed him was the illustration. It was a picture of Selim-Pride, drawn to resemble some kind of malicious imp while squaring off against him in the drawing was an imposing, gothic figure in red duster and comically large hat. The gothic figure was clearly inhuman, with overlong limbs and rows of sharp teeth but the illustrator had taken great pains to showcase him as noble as well as terrifying. He was probably some kind of national icon or folk hero to the denizens of this under-empire.

Bradley walked further down the streets, noticing the utter lack of urban planning. While high tech, most of the roads led into a twisted, tangled mess that must be a nightmare for any commuter. And he hadn't even seen a single bus stop or tramway anywhere.

Something stood out, something he'd never seen before. In an electronics shop before him was a row of television screens; a technology he'd never seen before. It was almost painful for him to stand in front of the dozen or so screens with his ultimate eye; he enjoyed the pain greatly and got a small erection from it.

Like a child he was mesmerized by the flashing patterns on the screens. Then before his eyes an animated commercial began to play.

A sickeningly saccharine advertising jingle began to play as the special/sacred ancestor began to dance seemingly towards the audience while pushing a shopping cart. The long black hair was fairly well animated and his features were clearly aquiline and noble without looking intimidating; though his limbs were far too long for human proportions and the skin was an unearthly white. While Pride admired the technical aspects of the commercial, something just didn't sit right with him. It felt like the animated version of this Sacred Ancestor character sat right in the middle of uncanny valley.

If he strained he could understand fully what the Sacred Ancestor figure was shilling for. "BUY TODAY! BUY LOTS! BUY ALWAYS! BUY NEW AND IMPROVED ALUCARD PRODUCTS! BUY NOW OR DIE!" Alucard's badly animated lips could barely keep up with the exuberant and extremely loud voice acting. The animated figure began to laugh psychotically as the scene changed.

Now animated Alucard was in an animated shopping mall with disgustingly kawaii and cheerful shoppers. "FOR THE LADY IN YOUR LIFE, BUY ALUCARD PRODUCTS! HATE THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR NEIGHBOUR? BUY ALUCARD PRODUCTS!"

Any further advertisement was cut short when Pride drove his sword through every single TV screen. Like a big part of him loved the technical aspects of this new technology, he hated the loud, cackling figure telling him to buy useless shit as if he had no brain of his own. The Fuhrer was no stranger to propaganda but this Alucard guy, whoever he was, had stooped to new lows Bradley could never have imagined. He might even torture people by making them watch Alucard advertisements over and over. The well painted red eyes in the cartoon certainly hadn't looked any less creepy for all the cheerful voice overs and happy music. In fact it made it worse.

Frowning, Pride continued his journey in the under-empire; looking for an enemy, a friend, or even just another living thing. It was starting to get to him.

His unspoken prayers were answered when his ultimate eye caught a whiff of Selim-Pride's whale oil soap. Bradley-Pride reacted like a starving dog with the scene of meat. In a flash he was gone.

Selim-Pride stood in a prominent square in the underground city, just at the foot of a massive copper statue of the sacred ancestor. Bradley-Pride landed right in front of him, body shaking with blind, psychotic anger. Smirking, Selim-Pride leaned a kneeling figure, bound with a burlap sack over his or her head.

"So" said Selim in that eerie voice, "you think you can just burn me and walk away?"

Bradley pride shifted into combat stance, "You should be begging me for mercy." He was about to strike when a feeling came over him. Bradley broke into a sweat and fell to his knees. He knew that horrible feeling, knew it could only be one thing.

There, hanging from around someone's neck was his skull; the last remnant of the man he'd once been before Dante twisted him into a monster.

Pride gasped as the skull held him into place, but under the pain, paralysis and helplessness he felt confusion. "W-w-w-wrath?" Bradley whispered. Definitely Wrath, Izumi Curtis's kid; and he'd grown. Little Wrath now looked to be a full grown man of twenty-odd years; half a head shorter than Bradley himself but highly muscular and no less wild looking.

The full grown Wrath smirked and rubbed his stubble, around his neck hung Pride's skull like a rapper's trophy bling. On each hand and on every finger and thumb were enormous gold rings with letters on them that spelt out "Wrath".

Smiling, Grown up Wrath sunk his gilded fingers into Bradley-Pride's chest and pulled apart the two halves like rusty saloon doors. Bradley couldn't even scream but the agony and humiliation was plain on his face.

Sinew ripped and muscle cracked and Grown Wrath ripped Bradley's chest in half and looked at Selim-Pride through the hole. "Peek-a-boo!" he shouted cheekily before tossing Bradley-Pride to the ground.

Weakly, Bradley-Pride tried to shove the ripped halves of his torso together, only to be distracted by heavy mechanical footsteps. His lips moved but no sound came out.

There was Lust and she was human now for some reason. That human form of Lust was encased in some kind of mechanical power suit; extremely well armoured and armed if his ultimate eye was to be believed. Lust looked coldly down on him, as he'd looked down on her since her very creation as a homunculus.

Though the skull stunted his regeneration, it didn't take it away entirely. His lungs healed enough to whisper out some words of defiance. "What's the matter, Selim," he taunted, looking at the duplicate of his beloved son. "Was Father not showing you enough love? Did you turn over to work for this Alucard character I keep reading about?"

Selim-Pride reacted in a way that Bradley-Pride did not expect.

Shock, hatred and confusion all passed over Selim-Pride's face. "Alucard?" he asked as if he'd not spoken the same language as Bradley. That's when he . . . when he laughed; a small, embarrassed little chuckle. "Never heard of that bastard."

Now it was Bradley-Pride's turn to be confused. Selim-Pride didn't have a sense of humor, and he didn't curse. Was this another alternate reality version of the Pride-subspecies of homunculi?

"Selim" turned over to the bound captive and spoke a little too cheerfully for his homunculus voice and too deep and creepy for his child voice. "And about you, mein herr, do you do about this, Alucard guy?"

The mask was torn away to reveal . . . Selim-Pride?

The impostor Pride ripped off the ball gag in Selim's mouth and smiled wider than humanly possible.

Selim-Pride gagged and spat before eyeing his captor coldly, "You will pay for your transgressions; Father will strike you down, monster."

But the doppelganger was having none of it. Smile warping into a wolfish scowl, he smashed Selim in the face as hard as he could. "DID I FUCKING PERMIT YOU TO SPEAK?!"He roared as blood poured down Selim's face. The impostor kept striking Selim, shattering his vessel and knocking him to the ground. "DID I!?"

The impostor kept striking Selim until the first homunculus was a bloody pulp on the ground and then he kept beating further. The clay vessel shattered and Bradley-Pride knew that he was dead; he'd failed his mission.

As shards of Selim-Pride's broken vessel scattered everywhere, the imposter dropped his disguise. Though he wore the outward form of Father's foremost enforcer, the facial expressions and unrestrained laughter was the stuff of nightmares.

On the ground, Bradley-Pride's hands clenched; fingernails digging grooves into the asphalt of the square. There was that laughter that he'd grown to hate after so little time, that splitting smile that he wanted nothing more than to smash.

The imposter's body language had him doubled nearly over and the grin was malice without motivation or thought; evil as a reflex rather than a cosmic alignment.

While the laughter went on and on, ringing in his ears and driving him insane, Bradley started to pull himself up, battling through the skull's influence. If this was to be his last day, the last thing he would do would be to blink.

Shadows twisted and warped, resembling Selim-Pride's own shadow appendages but taking on organic, fungal shapes. Teeth gnashed but instead of resembling smiles looked like viral protein spikes.

Pride stood up straight and met the face of the Sacred Ancestor. It was not a pretty sight; there was nothing noble or dignified about Alucard. Everything about him was a refutation of sanity, class and beauty.

Alucard looked down on pride, standing higher than all present.

"So it was you all along? You almost killed my master and sabotaged Father's master plan, and for what?"

Alucard laughed and held out both arms, red duster billowing. "Don't worry about that, you won't have to. Father's operation, Dante fiefdom, even the Kingdom you ruled is all mine now." The humanoid disease caught an eagle headed cane and his trademark big red hat. "Isn't that right, ladies?" he asked of Lust and Grown-Wrath.

Alucard turned his Halloween lantern eyes back to Pride and spun his cane in a figure eight pattern while throwing his cap on. "By this time the people of Amestris will be finding your corpse. But don't feel left out, I also wanted you."

As he spoke, gigantic projection screens began to unfold all over the town; from buildings and stop lights it was all there. Then from hundreds of carefully concealed spots, cameras began projecting live footage of crowds of hundreds of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands of cheering spectators were watching Pride through hidden cameras and the image of those protesters was broadcasted for Pride to see. Light reflected off of the projection screens bathed Pride like the full moon's stare. His jaw dropped as aerial drones flew over and filmed him for a live pay-per-view show.

Music blasted over hidden loud speakers and suddenly Fuhrer King Fritz Bradley found himself at the center of the world. The entirety of the Under-Empire had paid out of their pitiful wages first to see Selim-Pride be defeated and humiliated and now they were paying twice as much to see the alternate Pride get the same.

Pride realized this wasn't a nightmare. This was a joke; and he was it.

Millions of screaming vampires shouted Alucard's name, screamed that they wanted to carry his babies or give him their children. They shouted prayers to them and how they loved him and that they hated Pride and wanted to see him ten million different punishments and humiliations. It was a level of power that even an autocrat like Bradley-Pride could only dream of.

Banners unfolded next to the projection screens of the next great fight. "One night only! Our mighty King, the Sacred Ancestor destroys the evil Homunculus Wrath!"

Pride seethed and began to foam at the mouth. Of all the assfucks that the vampires and their king could have given him, they'd gotten his name wrong either deliberately or accidently.

Grown up Wrath grinned and flexed blood splattered muscles for the crowds while Lust successfully managed to look dignified and regal.

Alucard meanwhile was bouncing on the balls of his feet and twirling his cane like a conductor's baton. He danced out of time with the music; instead preferring to march to the beat of his own drum.

Lyrics started to play over the music, which had started out operatic but was now turning heavy metal.

Don't be afraid!

Participate and

Just give me all your trust!

Your soul will be saved!

Alucard danced rather than walked or ran over to Pride and drew his white gloved hand behind his back. When he pulled his hand back out again, it was encased in a clawed mechanical gauntlet. His tongue lolling out with panting need or desire, Alucard thrust his mechanical gauntlet deep into Pride's chest; punching through to the other side of Pride's body.

This time Pride was able to scream with the help of his one intact lung, spewing out blood as he did. He looked into the eyes of his tormentor, willing himself not to blink.

"We are fighting a war!" Alucard shouted out at the top of his lungs, directing his speech at Pride as much as his own servants. "All resources are weapons to be wielded!"

The screaming of the crowds grew louder and the music's volume increased to ear bleeding levels.

Just honor me!

I'll set you free!

So get ready to join

The very last crusade!

"And I declare!" Alucard shouted louder still, bursting one of Pride's eardrums with his voice, "That the souls in this useless homunculus are now property of the Sacred Ancestor and the United Kingdom of the Vampires!"

The crowds reached the pinnacle of their cheering. Alucard's metal glove glowed white hot and cooked Pride's flesh from within.

With a rip and a tear, Alucard pulled his hand from Pride and held in his gauntlet a fully formed philosopher's stone.

From out of the darkness flew an armoured assault Helicopter bearing the royal seal of the Sacred Ancestor.

With undisguised ecstasy, Alucard tracked the incoming chopper before casting aside Pride like a piece of rubbish. "Hear that?" he howled over the music and the rapidly approaching chopper rotors. "That sounds like incoming victory!"

The music was reaching its crescendo and Alucard was now singing along with it.

"Just honor me!" he cried out gleefully, "I'll set you free!" he turned as though looking every one of his citizens in the eye. "Just give me all your trust and your souls will be saved!"

The chopper had set down now and the wind coming off the rotors threw Pride back as if the loss of souls had made him no heavier than a leaf.

Grown up Wrath and Lust were walking towards the chopper, flanking their new master and acting as his bodyguards.

Pride felt his wounds but also his feeling was returning as his skull was getting more and more distant from him.

Alucard, Lust and Grown up Wrath had all stepped onto the chopper and it was taking off, but the pilot was banking towards Pride. As it flew overhead, Alucard threw something at the humiliated homunculus. "HERE!" He screamed with spittle flying from his piranha mouth, "THIS IS FOR YOUR GENEROUS DONATION!"

Pride saw it, some kind of blinking, computerized grenade which was full of radioactive metal.

Gasping, something inside of Pride just snapped. It wasn't anger he was feeling, nor was it really any emotion he'd ever felt before. As he shot up, ignoring all pain and the loss of his souls, Pride screamed at the top of his lungs and began to run faster than he ever had before.

As he fled, Pride saw swarms of vampires too poor to afford pay-per-view; miserable wretches in black pajamas and hats with serial numbers on them. They looked at him with dead eyed joy brought on by religion and patriotism beating their mind's eye until it swelled shut. "I want his eye!" one shouted. "I want his head!" Someone else screamed; all of them desperate for trophies and souvenirs to mark the grand occasion of their mighty and beloved King.

The lights on the nuclear device were blinking faster now and Pride made a split second decision. Ripping off the lid of a garbage disposal chute, he threw himself into the unknowable blackness just as the nuke went off and killed hundreds of Alucard's faithful vampires.

Epilogue

Pride had survived in the empire of the Sacred Ancestor for years. In all that time he hadn't even seen the lowest levels of the city. Right now he was in some sort of factory level where the workers seemed to be parts of the machines they worked. On soot stained and half-forgotten banner read, "Great is the world and its creator, the Sacred Ancestor. And Great is the Vampyr!"

Pride hid in a stinking garbage heap, evading armed patrols, secret police task forces and hungry vampires looking for an easy meal. But even with no souls in him, Pride was hardly an easy target.

He was nude and wore nothing but filth and dirt; all the better to hide his scent. As the patrol passed he swallowed the rat he'd been chewing; he'd been forced to rely on chemical energy like a human instead of alchemic energy like a proper homunculus.

He'd gone constantly deeper, almost four kilometers from the main square he'd been defeated at. Yet there was always a deeper level, like a reverse Tower of Babel descending into hell. Always deeper.

The ultimate eye scanned out and found what he'd been looking for almost ten years. The ultimate eye saw it when even the keenest senses of the vampires could not. A house, ancient and rotten; forgotten by the ages and even forgotten by Alucard himself. A place where the temperature was just a few degrees cooler than anywhere else and shadowed to minds as well as eyes.

He entered by the chimney, twisting in ways that would kill a human but he'd made it. The lone human occupant of the house looked nearly as bad as he did; malnourished, dark circles on his eyes like he hadn't slept since the day he was born. A wild tangle of hair could once have been any color.

But Pride didn't need the ultimate eye to recognize the shape of the jaw and nose or recognize Amesterian automail.

"Begone, phantom!" shouted the human, half insane. "If you had any respect you would kill yourself now!" The human spoke wildly, unaccustomed to talking to anyone but himself, "Begone, assassin!"

"Is that how you greet your only friend?" Pride inquired through a voice rusty from disuse. "I bring a gift, Rotwang the Inventor." In one scabrous, filthy hand was a device built to resemble a pocket watch. "Alucard may not be a philosopher's stone, but he is powered by souls same as I was. My master's machine won't work on him, but an equally skilled alchemist can tweak it to finally kill the vampire king."

Rotwang gnashed his teeth, "The loss of my hand wasn't enough, nor the loss of my wife! I care nothing for Alucard. I only wish to return home and finally make sure my two sons are alright!"

Pride smiled, teeth perfectly white against a face coated in years of filth, shit, chemical waste and much worse. "That's not how it works; the world is bigger than your family. But I can help you. I may not be able to perform alchemy, but I've learned secrets of vampire anatomy even you don't know. I know how to turn their soul-equivalents into useful energy in theory." He folded his bony arms across his chest, "Unlike you and unlike any human, I never forgot who I was or my mission. There are no human souls you can sacrifice to get back, but I can show you how to do it with vampire energy. Take my offer; it wasn't easy to find out all that I know."

Rotwang bowed his head, rough cloak draping around him like the wings of a bat. He was silent.

"People like us know the world is unfair," Pride continued, "And then there are people who aggressively try to make the world a worse place to live in; people like Alucard." He took a step towards the inventor. "You managed to make alchemy work in a world where it should not. The vampires think you're a myth like giant reptiles in the sewer. You've killed more vampires than Alucard's secret police; the only reason they haven't gone after you is because you kill the poor and the un-privileged. You are a legend; a monster to the monsters. But why stop there"

Pride put a hand on the brooding inventor, "Why settle for killing the weak and the slow when we take out the heart of the beast." He moved until he was almost touching noses with Rotwang, "You know this is the right thing, Rotwang the inventor." And he smirked, his first true smile in months, "Or should I say, Hohenheim of Light? You can derive alchemic energy from the tectonic plates but only my knowledge can make the sacrifice to open the gate of knowledge and worlds"

Rotwang, Hohenheim, whatever his name was trembled in Pride's presence. He'd all but forgotten his humanity and almost forgot his own identity. All that mattered now were his sons. Dante had sent him here and now only Dante's bastard creation could help him get back.

"I will help you," said Hohenheim.

Pride grinned, a fearsome visage to rival Alucard's, "I love it when a plan gets going."

It felt so wonderful to write this. I just threw all I had into this. If you have any constructive criticism for me, please let me know :)

Ta

Master of the Boot