One is All, All is One

[Chaosmax]

With no further talking the two then boarded the train and placed their bags on the shelves above them as they then took their seats.
“Well then let’s start the mission briefing” he then slid over a few papers with what they were to investigate and solve in Rush Valley “You see there have been a number of people gone missing there not only that but recently one of our teams that were passing by have gone M.I.A.”

Jack then scratched his head and sighed “this most likely will involve the ones who attacked during the summit so stay on your guard and we are to go with each other everywhere you got me? Also when we get there try not to draw too much attention to yourself and ask a few of the locals if they’ve seen anything or heard about what happened.”

“Any questions?”

 

[sora itchikara]

"No. But don't you think it's supicious for us to go around asking that? What if we end up asking an acomplice and we engage into an all out fight or chase. We have to think this one through."

I brush the hair out of my eyes and stare at his stern face.

"What? It was just a suggestion..."

 

[Scribbles]

The train rolled across the tracks. It was a civilian freight, women, children, and families spread heavy throughout. Piano-saturated tunes played through the machine’s intercom, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a couple twirling around their box. Meal carts were being wheeled down hallways, with tuxedo-clad waiters politely offering their parcels to the patrons. And there was always that one baby that cried incessantly during the whole trip.

Among all of this one red headed soldier slowly dozed off. He'd been this way since he was little, any vehicle, any distance, it knocked him out, like THAT. Chase was sitting next to Dorian, and across from Cura. As he lost consciousness, the soldier wobbled a bit, and finally dropped his head towards his left; on Mr. Gray’s shoulder.

The passengers, and the soldiers, were all oblivious to what was about to happen.

The Conductor’s Car

A portly man whistled a cheerful tune, which was quickly brought to a halt by a trio of tall shadows cast over him. The conductor froze, as he saw the men’s reflections cast in the metals around him. One man, in the center, was bare-chested, a large scar across his torso his skin was painted one half black, and one half white, amber tinted shades over his eyes, he sported a tall afro. One that man’s left, was a man with long, auburn hair, a mask on his face, and long, steel claw-like gauntlets. And on the right, the final intruder dressed rather normally compared to his comrades, wore a plain black business suit, white pale white skin, and messy black locks.

“Well, looks like you catch on quick,” Afro grinned wide, “Good. Aight, Vega, Skelter, watch the door. Hey, where’s your phone pal?” Shaking, the conductor pointed somewhere towards his left. The intruder bowed and waltzed towards that direction.

Back in the other cars…

“Hellooooo passengers!” A sickingly pleasant, raspy voiced man came over the intercom. Carmine yawned and stirred, hearing the uproar outside their box. “As you probably guessed, this is not your original conductor. But I promise you, I’m every bit as qualified as he is. I had a train set when I was little, heh!” Chase shot up.

“What the hell? Hijacking? This was not in the mission description!” He stomped his foot, “Leave it to the Colonel to make me work even harder when I’m away from him…” The green eyed man groaned.

“Anyway though. My job is to take you fine people, to a certain unknown facility where you’ll probably be sold for cheap labor, or something. I don’t know, somebody just wants people. Look, I’m just following orders here, don’t shoot the messenger, feel me? And don’t try and be a hero and stop me, I’ve got several boys hidden among you, and two bad alchemist motherfuckers ready to make your head explode. Conductor, out.”


“Ugh, we were just supposed to be to Aerugo. JUST Aerugo!” Chase smacked his forehead in frustration. “Fine. Boss, your orders?” The soldier asked, just a bit smartly.

 

[Lunarmaster54]

“As you probably guessed, this is not your original conductor. But I promise you, I’m every bit as qualified as he is. I had a train set when I was little, heh! Anyway though. My job is to take you fine people, to a certain unknown facility where you’ll probably be sold for cheap labor, or something. I don’t know, somebody just wants people. Look, I’m just following orders here, don’t shoot the messenger, feel me? And don’t try and be a hero and stop me, I’ve got several boys hidden among you, and two bad alchemist motherbonkers ready to make your head explode. Conductor, out.”

Brad sighed, there goes his relaxation time. Sure he tried not to fall asleep unless absolutly nessicary but still...
What should they do...he closed his eyes. Thinking...
Big bad alchemists, two of them, probably guarding the inside of the conductor’s car
Henchmen mixed amongst the passengers....henchmen have guns...knives...
Should be impossible to tell who’s who without a way to distinguish one from the other....
Brad snapped his fingers "Got it"
He looked around at his team "This is the plan. Clearly we're gonna need to split up. I'm going to disarm the henchmen spread out along the train and then me and Frosty will make our way to the caboose to save the conductor..you know cuz we're alchemists and can deal with it easier than either of you could. Meanwhile Gray and Chase are to go through car by car and restrain and arrest the henchmen. It'll be clear who they are because they'll be flipping out and disarmed. You won’t have any trouble at all dealing with them because they’re just thugs"
He stood up and clapped his hands, turning around and placing them on his seat. There was a flash of blue alchemic light and the seat grew and transmuted itself into some stairs. Brad smirked and climbed up, clapping his hands again and making a trapdoor on the top of the train
"The perks of being in the first car behind the coal car...you guys won't be affected by my disarming" Brad added to the group before he opened the door and climbed out onto the roof.
"This train is moving faster than I thought!" he murmured as the wind whipped at his face. Eyes squinted Brad hopped across to the next car and clapped his hands again and placed them on the train itself, changing the structure of the metal and making it magnetic. With a smirk Brad heard the sounds of guns and knives slam against the top of the cars and stick there. Brad blinked as the train began to slow
'whoops'
He hadn’t thought about the wheels getting stuck to the tracks, therefore providing resistance and making the train itself harder to pull by the wheels that were NOT stuck to the tracks...but that was just a bonus.
With a shake of his head Brad returned to the area where his team was and hopped back down the stairs
"Enemies disarmed" said Brad, satisfied that his plan had worked and Frosty’s guns were still with their rightful owners and not stuck to a ceiling.
"Lets move out. Frosty, come with me to the roof so we can get to the caboose, we hafta be really fast about this” he said “Gray and Chase, deal with the other thugs. They’re unarmed so it shouldn’t take long”
He climbed back onto the roof and waited for Frosty to join him
“This is my plan” he said to her “Get to the caboose and break open the side window, reach in, grab the conductor and yank him out. That last transmutation I did made the window bigger than it originally was. As you can see and feel the train is moving slower so a drop won’t hurt him too badly. Anyways after you do that, hop back over to the other train, i’m going to separate the caboose and the rest of the train and then seal it so they can’t get out. After thats done i’m going to make a hole in the top and then drop a large gernade inside of the caboose where all the bad guys are before quickly sealing the hole back up” he grinned “problem solved”
He hopped over the car and clapped his hands, once again placing them on the train. Blue static streaked across the cars as Brad slowly pulled out a grapefruit sized sphere out of the ground. Transmutation done Brad tossed his new grenade up and down a few times.
“I used all of their guns and weapons to make this” he called over to Frosty “Its pretty formidable! Evil henchmen come REALLY well equipped nowadays” He shrugged
“Alright. Lead the way, i’ll be right behind you”

 

[Chaosmax]

“Look we don’t straight up tell them we’re state alchemists, if anything suggest we’re tourists looking to see what Rush Valley is like. Ask the people what goes on there and if anything weird or special has been happening lately, all the people who act suspicious we write their names and investigate them further on later”

He then looked out the window the sun was still in the sky from what it appeared it was just a bit past mid-day most likely 2 or 3 o’clock.

“Get some rest kid I’ll wake you when we get there, remember during the day we can be away from each other but not for long periods of time, during the night however we must remain near each other.”

____________


“Hey Sora its time to go kid” Jack said getting out of the train and grabbing his bag. Jack then whistled and smiled as he gazed upon the town it was busy as usual men were fighting and wrestling testing out their newfound automail.

Even the pets such as a women’s dog had a robust automail leg, this town never ceased to amaze him. He then looked back to Sora “Well you know the mission kid, meet me at the Briggans restaurant at around 6:45. You can go ahead and take your bags to the hotel I’ll start asking around.” and with that he was off.

 

[sora itchikara]

"Okay."

I yawn then head to the hotel.
I notice all of the automail users, then I feel a tug on my arm.
I turn to see some guys checking out my automail.

"U-Um... Excuse me do you mind?"

"Hey kid who does your automail?"

I yank my arm away to stop him from putting a screwdriver in it.

"I don't member their name. Now I'm in a hurry so leave me alone please."

I start to walk off until I realize they were following me telling others I had automail unlike theirs. I start to speed up and they repeat.
I then round a corner into an alley and use parkor to get onto the roof.
I look down at them wondering where I went.
I notice the hotel in the distantance and head towards it.
When I arrive I take my bag to the room and then head back out to start my investigation.

 

[IceBlueWings]

Cura was about to fall asleep, except the announcement made by the so called 'conductor' had her immediately awake, eyes open and alert. Brad hadn't wasted any time in getting things done, and she quirked an eyebrow at his plan.

While he went up to the roof, she wondered what he had in plan. The train suddenly moved slower, and she held on to the chairs to stop herself from falling. Once he came back down, she noticed how the enemies were no longer carrying their weapons. Instead, their weapons were stuck on the ceiling of the train.

"Lets move out. Frosty, come with me to the roof so we can get to the caboose, we hafta be really fast about this”

She followed him up on the roof before nodding at Dorian Gray and Chase. Leader's orders are orders, she thought. She came up just behind him on the roof. As she listened to his plan, she nodded. "Yes sir," She moved forward. "Oh," She turned around. "I think the other two soldiers are as capable as we are in fighting these thugs." She said, referring to the statement he made earlier about them being alchemists and making it easier for them to handle the thugs. Yet she wondered whether the plan was really fine. The alchemists were among the civilians in the train, weren't they?

...Perhaps the Leader knew what he was doing.

She moved forward to the caboose, and just as Brad had said, she jumped into the side window, immediately snapping her fingers and sending a gust of cold wind at the thugs in there before they had a chance to do anything. The gust of wind cooled to ice, freezing them whole, their faces frozen in their gruff, grumpy state. She grabbed the conductor, a thin, frail looking man, and yanked him out before anything worse could happen to them.

Since the train was slow, like Brad said, the conductor didn't fall too hard out of the train. Cura swung back up on the roof, jumped over to the other train and gave Brad a signal that she was done. Or at least, she hoped things were fine this way.

 

[Lunarmaster54]

"Oh," Frosty turned around. "I think the other two soldiers are as capable as we are in fighting these thugs"
Brad nodded in agreement, before quickly elaborating. "I'm sure they can. I meant that when it comes to dealing with the two ALCHEMISTS who were with the thugs you and I would be more suited for the task. We'd all be on equal footing"
Frosty did her job just as he knew she would and hopped back to his side. Now Brad had a choice to make. Kill the leader and his alchemists or trap them? Brad could kinda tell that Frosty was unsure of his plan. In fact the others would be too if they knew about it. Perhaps it was best to simply alter the plan just a tad. Brad clapped his hands and placed them on his gernade, changing the contents inside some before clapping them again and disconnected the train from the caboose that the bad guys were in. Another clap and the earth rose up and held the car in place, trapping it and making sure that there would be no movement until the authorities got there. Brad leapt over onto the car and made a hole, dropping his doctored gernade inside before hopping back over to Frosty.
"I made it so the gernade would merely knock them out instead of killing them" Brad informed her "Plus they're pretty stuck there even without the gernade. Anyways once the proper people get there they'll be arrested and go to jail for a long long time. Lets check up on the others and see how they're dealing with the thugs. Besides, on the off chance that he pulled something sneaky since his little announcement we'd better all be together"

 

[Chaosmax]

Jack rubbed his neck as he paced himself back and forth, it could clearly be seen that he was becoming more and more impatient with the situation. Finally he just yelled out loud.

“Come on does it really take this long to look at an automail gear?!” There was a crowd in front on him blocking his path onward through the street for they surrounded a slightly muscular man with a few strands of hair on his chin, brown spiky hair and black eyes. His automail was on his arm and both his legs, they had blue trimming on them and a motor within it.

“OH would you like to see why?” The man questioned with a smirk as he pivoted on his right foot facing him, the crowd cleared out of the way and watched from the sidelines at the battle that was about to take place.

There’s definitely no getting out of this situation even if I try to leave they’ll just chase me down and force the fight, these bastards really want to see that automail in action.

“Hey guys why don’t you give the tourist a break eh? Find a state alchemist to tackle on or somebody challenging for that matter.”

The crowd and the automail man then agreed with the man and left Jack sighed as he swiped sweat off his forehead “Thanks I owe you-”

“Max”

“Thanks Max my name’s Jack” The two then shook hands and laughed about the altercation that almost took place “to be honest I didn’t want to mess up his gear.”

“Oh you think your that good? Then again you have to be skilled to be a state alchemist”

Jack’s smile then faded and his eyes narrowed as he analyzed Max “How’d you know?”

“Come on I knew it was just a matter of time till you guys came to investigate but no worries I won’t tell anyone.”

Jack then crossed his arms and leaned against the wall and Max took a seat at the bar near them.

“So do you know about anything that’s been happening?”

Max then took a sip of his drink and began to speak “A bit the most I know is that whoever this guy is, is attacking only at night and it that he favors tourists and any type of authority so you had best watch your back.”

“Its no problem I have a partner with me.”

“Well that’s good well I’m sorry but I have work to do”

That idiot he doesn’t even realize he just revealed himself to the enemy its quite funny how simple-minded humans can be.

“Oh its no problem you were a great asset to us thank you” Jack then shook his hand and the two parted ways.

Now then I need to find Sora and discuss how we’ll lure him out.

 

[sora itchikara]

I continued down the street looking for my partner. But with so many distractions I could hardly concentrate. After awhile I found myself looking in pubs and shops. I then notice a crowd of people arguing amongst each other. I couldn't help but take a look. When I tried to look over some of the heads I was stopped short for more people pushing to see what was taking place. I guess no one could really see me as how small I was compared to everyone else.

"How can I get in there?"