Only a few moments later, Atlantis emerged from the facility, the doors sweeping open before her with a gentle nudge of psychic pressure. Stepping out into the open, she paused for only a moment to take a deep breath before finally allowing herself to relax, if only slightly.
And then she swept a brief glance over her surroundings to orient herself. The way out should be…
Ah. What an unexpected but curiously serendipitous treat.
She made no attempt this time to hide the all too vicious smirk that crept onto her features, as she plodded her way along, approaching the military man and his aide. They seemed oblivious to her presence, right up until the moment she spoke up.
“My, my...leaving so soon, are we?” she murmured. “Does this place no longer suit you, after the events of that little...war?”
There was a sharp hunch in Mustang’s shoulders as he paused mid-stride, turning to look back at the sudden interloper. “It’s not any personal issue on my part,” he said, with a casual shrug of his shoulders. “I just can’t afford to delay here any longer than strictly necessary, you know. Now that things are wrapped up. I have—”
“Yes, yes, you have real work to do,” the tactician said, with a disinterested wave of her hand. “Would you consider it ‘any longer than strictly necessary’ to humor me with a few words?”
The officer scowled visibly, but adjusted his stance to turn toward her in profile. He made a show of shifting his arm to produce a silver pocketwatch, clicking it open to check. “You’ve got one minute.”
“Ah, you career military types...always so strict with your schedules.” Atlantis sighed, with obviously faux sadness.
“Fifty-five seconds,” Mustang said flatly.
“Hmph...very well then. I’ll cut to the chase.” The amusement and pleasant edge to her tone vanished, as she stepped closer. “I found your participation in this event to be...unexpected. Your noted personal vendetta against the unmaking aside, you had little reason to be here. I am left to wonder just why, exactly, you were in attendance at all.” She lifted a hand, one finger raised, with a sharp click of her tongue. “That was not a question, or something you need respond to, my good little Lieutenant Colonel. I am sure you would simply have some measure of ‘I was just following orders’ as a reason. Even at your rank...you are still beholden to the whims of your superiors, after all.”
The expression on Roy Mustang’s face was, aside from growing slightly harder and more focused, unreadable to casual scrutiny. He was good at keeping a strong front, if nothing else. “Then what’s your point, exactly?” he finally asked, snapping his pocket watch shut again.
“My point, as you so boldly put it...is that I am left at something of a loss,” Altanis murmured. Her voice was soft and quiet now, as if simply speaking of something entirely casual and of little interest. “...as to why someone with such a violent hatred for the unmade would join this event, even under orders to do so, and yet…” She lifted a hand, lightly flexing and curling her fingers into a fist, then flicking them wide open again, with a little whispering rush of psychically-propelled wind. “...spend so little time actually fighting the unmade.”
This statement actually drew a reaction from Mustang, despite his best efforts. He visibly flinched, his expression going from hard and firm to steely and cold as ice. The hand holding his pocket watch trembled, and he shoved it back in his pocket almost by reflex. “I didn’t exactly have the luxury of freedom to act as I would have liked,” he snapped, voice low and quiet. “There were other factors outside of my control, and I had to ensure that as many people under my command and the civilians here were—”
“Were what, exactly?” the tactician cut in, with such a sudden sharpness and venom in her words that the Lieutenant Colonel recoiled slightly, almost as if slapped. “Why would you bother to care so much for the little pawns created for this game? Nothing that happened here will have any impact beyond the confines of that little comet it all took place on. All the people on it, whether they lived or died by the end, won’t matter one bit.” She leered down at the man, an oppressive and unsettling aura almost visibly bleeding off of her. “You felt it prudent and wise to prioritize the lives of puppets over the actual enemy.”
Mustang scowled, and held his ground in spite of the hairs on the back of his neck beginning to stand on end. “Even if that were true...it doesn’t make any difference. Regardless of how they came to be, or came to be here, or whatever fate they’re going to after Karl Jak’s event here is done, there were still people while we were in there together!” he snapped, his stoic and even tone finally beginning to crack.
“It isn’t a question of whether it is or is not true,” Altanis seethed. “If you even spare a single brain cell to consider how any of this could have happened. To have such freedom on every world in this ridiculous little bundle of space, to set up his recruitment and advertisement facilities. To be able to organize an event of such a wide and impossible scale as this, and to treat it like little more than a game.” She ground her teeth together. “This...Karl Jak...is either unfathomably rich and has connections beyond mortal ken to quantity, or he is an incalculably powerful beyond your little human mind’s ability to grasp.”
She took a moment to calm herself, with a deep breath, and slowly straightened up again. “Which option, Lieutenant Colonel Mustang, do you think is more likely?”
Mustang took a step back, his arms resting tensely at his sides as he stared evenly up at the centaur. “...be that as it may,” he finally said, his composure and even tone returning. “It doesn’t change anything. Saving lives is never the ‘wrong’ choice to make.”
“You have a heart far too soft for this sort of work,” Altanis sneered, shaking her head disbelievingly. “Or you are a complete fool. I cannot decide which.”
“If you’re quite done,” Mustang ground out, his expression turning hard and flinty again. “I think it’s time we parted ways.”
“Oh, no...not just yet.” The tactician forced a genuine smile at that statement. Somehow, that was far more unnerving to Mustang than anything before it. “There is another matter which I wish to discuss with you, before that. Specifically regarding your personal hatred of the unmaking.”
She crossed her arms, fixing the flame alchemist with a level, even stare. “Disregarding what happened here, and the losing hand you were dealt from the beginning...your personal abilities are without question very impressive.”
“You have a very strange way of handing out compliments,” Mustang said flatly. “What is it you want, exactly?”
“What I want,” she snapped, “is capable allies and assistance. I joined this event with the sole intent of observing the effects of the unmaking directly, and in large numbers. To slaughter and destroy as many of them as I could, and learn what I could. The results have been...” She twitched lightly, recalling the many injuries she had suffered in the name of her ‘research’, and the many aggravating sidetracks she had endured along the way. “...enlightening.”
Mustang’s brow furrowed deeply, and he was quiet for a long moment as he considered his next words. “So what is it that you’re proposing, then?” he finally asked. “‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’, or something to that effect?”
Altanis laughed. A horrible, bitter, and utterly mirthless sound. A thin trickle of cold sweat ran through the still stiff hairs on the back of Mustang’s neck.
“Are we enemies, Lieutenant Colonel?” she finally asked in response, her voice barely rising to a sickly-sweet whisper. There was an icy cold gleam in her eyes, and something between amusement and the voracious lust for blood normally only seen in wild beasts dancing on her face. “I would certainly hope not...that would be very unfortunate, for one of us.”
There was a long moment of uneasy silence between them, as they simply stared directly back at each other. Eventually, it was Mustang that finally broke the deadlock and silence.“Well, if it’s purely business that you’re after here...fine, then. Since we both seem to be ready to leave already, maybe we could put any further discussion off for a minute, and tend to it while we focus on getting out of here?” and he gestured toward the still waiting shuttle nearby. “Our destinations when we actually leave this comet will no doubt be different, but until then…”
“Very good, my little soldier-boy,” Altanis said, in that same bitterly cold, sickly-sweet whispering tone. A light wave of psychic force washed over him, ruffling his hair in the same way a parent might do to a rebellious child, as she proceeded past him.
