The soldiers carefully made their way through the lab, searching for any remaining scientists, as well as any more of their unfortunate experiments.

"Y'know, I'm really glad efforts are being made to shut down these chimera labs," One man commented. A few others nodded in agreement.

"Definitely," replied another, "Do you remember what happened with that Tucker case?"

There were murmurs of affirmation throughout the group.

"Heard he used a human; a little girl..."

"I heard it was his own daughter."

"That's just sick."

They fell silent again not too long after; the only sounds remaining being the swish of their blue uniforms and the clomp of military boots.

"Hey!"

The soldiers turned and looked in the direction of their comrade who had spoken out. She was pointing at something on a wall.

"Look at this..."

A couple of the other soldiers made their way over curiously. One of them ran their hand over an odd looking patch of stone.

"Transmutation marks..." He murmured, "Someone call Mustang!"

The communications officer immediately radioed the other group in the building.

After a few seconds, a young voice answered, "Master Sergeant Kain Fuery speaking, what's your status?"

"We've found evidence of alchemy being used to seal off a room; thought the brigadier general would like to know."

There was a sound of confirmation and a moment of silence as Fuery relayed the message, "Understood; expect us there in a few minutes."

The officer confirmed the message and location before cutting the signal once again. The other soldiers continued searching the area for anything else out of place while they waited for the other group to meet up.

It didn't take long for the soldiers to meet up with the other group. Mustang wasted no time getting the information on their findings and inspecting the transmuted wall for himself.

The brigadier general hummed in thought and pressed a hand and an ear up against the wall. His eyes widened and he quickly stepped away.

"Get back!" He commanded.

The blue-clad soldiers scrambled back as Mustang clapped his hands and placed them on the wall. The wall sparked with alchemy and began to reshape into a haphazard doorway. Soldiers froze or stepped further back as horrible keening and shrieking could be heard, previously muffled by the stone wall. Mustang threw open the newly-transmuted door, and there was a collective feeling of unease throughout all of the soldiers.

The room was dark, but it was still easy to tell that it was positively stuffed with cages of various sizes. The air was rank with disease and death, as well as the sounds of creatures throwing themselves against bars or crying out to voice their pain. Once the room had been lit, it didn't take long to discover that most of the creatures were chimeras.

Mustang cursed as he noticed a small stove, likely there to warm the unwelcoming room, but the folders and papers haphazardly shoved into it were what he was concerned about. He attempted to pull a couple out, but they disintegrated at the slightest touch.

"They destroyed all of their research," he growled as a few of the soldiers looked through the cages.

Many of the chimeras were either dead, or close to it. The few that seemed relatively aware were such sad amalgamations of who-knows-what, that it was likely the most humane course of action would be to euthanize them.

One of Mustang's subordinates, Havoc, took a step further into the room, noticing something odd in the far corner. Something had been hastily covered with a sheet. It looked like it was probably just another cage containing a chimera, but why go through the effort of trying to hide it? Havoc frowned and pulled the sheet away. In the large cage lay what, upon first glance, looked to be a large dog with it's back towards him. Upon closer inspection, the ears were more like a rabbit's, and what the second lieutenant could see of the tail was far too long to be a dog's. The chimera was so still, Havoc assumed it to be dead until it heaved a weak sigh and turned it's head to look up at the human. Havoc's breath caught in his throat.

"...Boss?" He called weakly for his superior, "You... might wanna see this."

Mustang huffed a bit before heading over to his subordinate, still upset about the destroyed research papers, "What've you found, Havoc?"

The second lieutenant simply pointed at the chimera in front of him. Mustang nearly rolled his eyes, "Yes Havoc, this place is full of unsettling creatures-"

"Sir." Havoc interrupted impatiently, "Sir, just look at it."

Mustang blinked, a bit put off by his subordinate's behavior. He crouched down to better see what had Havoc so worked up.

"I don't see what-" the words died on his lips as the chimera turned from Havoc to focus on him. There were far too many beats of silence before he was able to speak again.

"No..." He turned to Hawkeye, who was standing close behind him.

"Hawkeye."

"Sir."

"You and Fuery... Get ahold of the Elrics."

Hawkeye blinked, but otherwise showed no outward surprise to the brigadier general's behavior, "Right away, sir," she replied, and gave a crisp salute before turning to find the young communications expert.

Mustang watched her go before sitting back and finding his attention pulled back to the chimera once again. It regarded him with dark eyes.

Dark eyes that were far too human.

Hello and welcome to my first fanfiction since… 2015? Anyways, yes, I am now addicted to FMA. It was beautiful and I laughed and cried and fell in love with (almost) every single character. I'm now working on getting the entire manga and making my way through FMA '03.

As for this fic… it's honestly mostly self-indulgent for me, but I hope you guys like it anyways. I've already finished the next chapter and I've started on the third. I have no idea how far I'm gonna go with this, but I'm honestly excited to see where this idea takes me.

Hope you guys like it,

JemWolf