Mustang wandered the fortress, metal boot casing marking off the paces with a frustrating clarity. They were at least about to be on the move again. The Babylonian forces had proven trustworthy enough that his men had not been ill-treated, if they could even be considered his responsibility anymore. All the same, the state alchemist was disinterested in remaining here for long, The fortress of Enkidu was relatively impressive compared to the tiny villages and army camps that he had been spending the last few weeks in. But he wasn't on this island to enjoy himself.
A twinge of pain shot up his leg. He really should be staying off it while he had the chance to. There would be marching coming soon, and quite a bit of it, if the King’s current directives were to be trusted. He should be taking this opportunity to rest his body for the trials ahead. He wasn’t such an idiot that he didn’t recognize that. But after a few hours spent in his ‘quarters’ he had come to a very clear conclusion. Right now, Mustang found that sitting idle was somehow more painful than continuing to walk on his shattered leg.
Gilgamesh’s approach was both exactly what he expected, and entirely different at the same time. His initial estimation of the man had not been wrong. He was arrogant to the extreme and seemed to treat the world as his by default until something moved to oppose that viewpoint. Yet he wasn’t exactly
bad at ruling either. He made sure his men were well accounted for and considered it a point of pride to have people who admired and followed him. An arrogant tactician, but tactical nonetheless. And he’d given the man control of his most experienced troops on the island. Mustang rubbed an irritated hand down his face. He needed something to direct his energy towards.
---
It was Lieutenant Violet who found him later on that day. The alchemist had appropriated an unused training yard as a makeshift shooting range. The dummies were probably intended for hand-to-hand practice, but Mustang had set up a sniper’s position and was laying prone with a bolt-action rifle, sighting down one of the straw mannequins from across the empty practice yard.
“Are you that bad at waiting, then?” She asked with a hint of a smirk, leaning inside the shadows of a nearby archway. Mustang didn’t respond at first, firing a shot that whizzed into the wall over the dummy’s shoulder.
“I can relax just fine, Lieutenant.” Mustang responded evenly. He seemed to find that response sufficient, continuing with his practice.
Violet rolled her eyes, watching as he ejected the cartridge, then reloaded it with a practiced hand. Mustang had clearly spent time doing this in the past, but his reflexes seemed off. The movements just a bit too severe, not fluid like they were if this had been second nature. Violet squinted at the target across the field. The dummies had been dressed in miniskirt armada coats, though she noted that the one Mustang had been sighting had it’s uniform folded and set in the dirt nearby. It also had only a few bullet holes relative to the number of marks in the wall behind it.
“Out of practice, are we?” The mercenary commented dryly, causing Mustang to twitch in irritation.
“Let’s just say it’s been some time since I’ve had to rely on one of these.” The alchemist muttered, re-sighting his target.
“Oh I’m sure. It’s a far cry from throwing around fire like you’re a damn flamethrower. Must seem beneath someone like you.”
Violet allowed a little bit of contempt seep into the end of that statement, their ranks had been heavily muddied by Mustang’s surrender, and neither of them had been called upon beyond cursory updates of the situation. This was the closest to an honest conversation as was likely to be possible here on an island full of death and betrayal.
“It’s not about the power, Lieutenant. “Mustang responded eventually, his earlier irritation quieted, “A bullet can end a man’s life just as easily as my alchemy. It carries the same weight.”
Violet watched him line up another shot, this one skimming the trunk of the dummy, probably enough to puncture a lung.
“For the time being, I cannot rely on my alchemy, so I need to make sure my skills are back to where they should be. I’ll use whatever weapons are available to me to stave off this threat, whatever means are necessary.” The alchemist seemed to be stating the mantra for himself more than anyone else.
“You know this is a game, right?” Violet sniffed. “Karl organized this situation from the very beginning. If this place was actually in any danger from the Unmaking then Karl would be the one who’d caused it to be that way.”
“I know.” Mustang responded, firing another shot into the shoulder of the dummy, “I'd not be taking part in this farce to begin with if the choice had been given to me. We're fighting the Unmaking for sport here, while it kills for real elsewhere barely checked. But that’s exactly why I can’t sit by and let It win. The unmaking threat is not something to be normalized or rationalized. This is a scale model of what’s happening in the crossroads right now. The Unmaking has destroyed an entire planet, Lieutenant! We seem far too relaxed about a threat like that, even as it knocks at our very doors for any sign of a weakness.”
Another shot pinged into the wall, and mustang grunted in dissatisfaction.
“On this island, we have been told the threat is manageable and balanced, but we don’t know that about the real menace that’s out there. If we can’t band together against a force we know we can beat…” He gave a bitter laugh, leaving the second half of the sentence unfinished.
“Maybe that’s exactly the problem, eh Lieutenant Colonel?” Violet shrugged, then wandered off with a casual pace. Mustang frowned, watching her leave with a troubled expression.
“We know that the threat is manageable, so it’s much easier to justify having a bit of an ego.”
