A man around five feet seven inches was running through a crowd, a package secured beneath his armpits, the sun beating down his face. He was drowning in sweat and frantically looking around. 'Where is he?!' the man thought as he took a right unto to the main road, carriages and rudimentary cars served to avoid the man.
"Could you stop running now." A thin, gravely voice uttered.
The man wildly swung his head wildly, trying to ascertain the voice's origin point. Eventually he saw a male police officer, approximately five feet and five inches tall, his face was square and rigid, akin to a mountain. He wore a brown trench coat and a flat cap. the man ran until he fell at the officer's feet.
"What's wrong son?" The officer asked in a coarse, deep voice kneeling and putting his hand on the man's shoulder.
The man coughed and wheezed before uttering between breaths, "Someone is trying to kill me!"
"Do you know this person?!" The officer said scanning the area as various people passed by discussing in hushed voices the current scene. The man shook his head in response, wiping the sweat off his face. "Alright, I'll take you to the station so you can file a formal report." The officer said standing to his feet, taking his pistol out of it's holster.
"Go to the station! How the hell will that help!"
"It's far safer than being out here with you life at risk! The if you file a report we can do our jobs!"
"The hell do you mean do your job! Your job right now is to keep me safe dammit!" The man said raising his arms above his head as he stood to his feet.
"Only criminals fear going to the station son." The officer said which immediately silenced the man.
"Let's go son."
The man quietly stood to his feet and entered the carriage, taking note of the extremely tall black haired man that drove the cabin. The officer whispered something in the man's ear before entering the cabin and removing his hat, revealing short, almost buzz-cut hair. The man sat opposite the officer and a short black haired woman who was looking out the window. He clutched the package in his hand, as the police man intently observed him. 'Alright going to the station wasn't a part of the plan. But these documents will definitely get me promoted.' The man thought clutching the package even tighter.
"Hey son." The police officer said, breaking the man out of his thoughts. Once he realized he had his attention he continued."
"Do you know how many bones are in the human body?" The man looked up in confusion and thought for a while.
"A few hundred I guess." He replied hesitantly, causing the officer to laugh.
"Not bad, your pretty smart fella. The actual answer is two o' six. Well I've got another question for you."
"What?"
"Ain't it pretty dumb to rob an alchemist, especially folks in the Milita? Their a crazy bunch." The man immediately froze and began sweating upon hearing this.
"I-I don't know what you're talking about."
"No point hiding it now, especially since you robbed me." The officer's voice suddenly became thin and gravely. "And I'm the craziest alchemist there is!"
The man attempted the move towards one of the cabin doors but stopped upon feeling a shiver down his spine. He turned and noticed the deep brown, almost black, eyes of the woman staring directly at him.
"Move and you die, pequeño ladrón." she said with a blank expression.
"Woah! calm down Dela. We don't want him to soil himself, I'm renting this carriage." Dela merely returned to looking out the window in response.
"Oi Johan! how close are we?"
"About fifteen minutes away Siegfried." The carriage driver said; Siegfried smiled before touching his face. Immediately his face began to shift an contort into a slimmer, triangular shape, his lips and eyes grew thinner and his nose became sharper.
"Remember me?"
"H-how?" the man asked visibly shaking.
"My alchemy allows me to manipulate the size and shape of bones in living creatures' bodies, including my own. But it's only really effective on faces, otherwise the results are pretty lacking. So to further disguise myself," Siegfried then took off his trench coat and immediately his body became slimmer, and long brown hair streamed down his face, "so I turned my trench coat into an alchemic tool."
"You talk too much." Dela said stopping Siegfried before he could continue speaking.
"Kill joy." he said pouting.
"Anyway, when you robbed me you've been under the effects of coat. Actually that's a lie, you've been under the effects of my coat for three weeks now."
"What that can't be true! I-I only met you a few minutes ago!" The man shouted standing to feet. Immediately his left arm was detached from his body, as Dela held a long curved dagger, drenched in blood. The man looked down and began to clutch his arm and scream as blood gushed out.
"Why'd you do that Dela? Now I need pay to have this place cleaned up." Siegfried sighed, as Dela wiped the man's blood off her dagger unto his clothes.
"I told him not to move but he still did, however you were talking to him so I kept him alive."
"Well he's in too much pain to listen now! 'Sigh' Welp, now I have to put him out his misery. Stop here Johan!" The carriage pulled to a sudden stop and Siegfried opened the door nearest to him. He picked the man up with one hand and threw him onto road, near a river. Siegfried then put back on his trench coat and then touched his face, changing it into a more square shape with various scars. He then stepped out of the carriage and looked directly at the man.
"You've done you job perfectly, don't be too upset." Siegfried said with a booming voice.
"You, You Bastard!!" the man on the ground screamed, trying to lunge at Siegfried who pulled out his pistol and shot him in the head. He fell to the ground limp as smoke exited the gun's barrel, Siegfried then kicked the man's body into river before re-entering the carriage as it rode off. A man emerged from the bushes with several picture films and a camera in his hands.
"I've got you now Captain Ulyseus."
As the carriage kept going, Siegfried reverted to his original form as he took off his trench coat. He sighed upon looking at the blood on the ground before pulling out a cigarette and a lighter and beginning to smoke.
"You never explained what your coat does." Johan uttered from the front.
"And why would I just out such details about my capabilities?"
"Because you like to hear yourself speak." Siegfried was about to respond before he stopped and began to think.
"Finnneeee."he said with a sigh, causing Dela to look at him with digust.
"The human brain is a really intricate machine and like other machines, if you know what to touch, you cause some weird things to happen. My trench coat is an alchemic tool called Loki.At will I can release a colourless and odorless gas that once inhaled affects the perception of the object Loki is currently covering."
"Isn't that just a better version of your ability then?" Johan asked causing Siegfried to scowl.
"Do you not know how alchemic tools work Johen?" he asked making several clucking sounds causing Dela to sigh. When Johan didn't respond, Siegfried turned around in surprise.
"Do you seriously not know how alchemic tools work?"
"This is the first time I'm hearing about them."
"How the hell did you become a captain. To put it simply alchemic tools allows you to use the alchemy embedded in the tool for a predetermined cost, a limited number of times and for a certain time."
"For example, I can use Loki eight times a day for a minute and a half and I don't feel like telling you the cost."
"You're annoying." Johan said as he cracked the carriages reigns, causing the horse to gallop faster. Siegfried who wasn't sitting propely hit the back of his head on the window behind him due to the inertia.
"Why thaaank yo-" before he could finish Dela suddenly grabbed Siegfried's hand, broke the window behind him and grabbed unto Johan's shirt, they then disappeared in an instant. As they disappeared the carriage and everything attached to it suddenly exploded. The three then reappeared a few feet away from the explosion.
"Ugh the hell was that." Johan held his head as it felt as though it would explode, Siegfried was far worse for wear as held was bent over vomiting. Dela scanned the area and quickly detached the two curved daggers from the back of her top. 'No one is nearby, so the enemy likely prefers to fight at range.' She then ran to the debris and examined it, noticing that what was once a carriage had become ash and the horse become and assortment of detached body parts, all burnt and charred. 'The explosion started from the carriage so the enemy is likely an external alchemist but what are they manipulating?' A pigeon suddenly began flying towards Dela, she noticed it expanding and her body swirling into itself, until she disappeared; the pigeon then exploded into a torrent of fire. Dela then reappeared between Johan and Siegfried, 'This is a tricky one.'
A man across the river and a cluster of trees looked through a pair of binoculars, directly at Dela, Johan and Siegfried. He was dressed in a completely white suit, his hair the same colour and styled in simple middle part with each clump of hair falling to its respective side of his head none passing his ears. He was six feet exactly and wore that badge with pride, his right hand was currently covered with a white glove and his left was uncovered.
"You have fast reactions child. However, you will inevitably die in a battle of distance." He said touching several pigeons in cages with his right hand, the palm drenched in sweat and on the back of his palm a black eight tattooed. He then put down the binoculars and opened the cages with his left hand, causing them to all fly out towards Dela's location. Dela saw the pigeons approaching and readied her daggers.
"Found you." She said running towards the river before leaping off the shore and looking slightly above one of the pigeons.
"Forty feet." she said before swirling into herself and disapparing, reappearing in the area she was looking. Just before her feet touched the bird she teleported, the bird exploding a few moments after. This patterned repeated until she landed on a tree branch.
"Very impressive young one." The old man said, his voice surrounding Dela.
"You made a mistake attacking us, because now I have a reason to kill you." she said crouching and taking a deep breath.
"Taking life is a burden child, until you understand that fact your blade will never reach me."
"I wonder if you say something different when you no longer have a head."
"No, you rushed towards me unprepared whilst not fully understanding my alchemy. If you did you wouldn't be standing on that tree." Dela immediately began to teleport as the tree expanded before it exploded violently. She reappeared on the ground and rolled before a shrub directly in front of her began to expand. 'Fast!' she thought blocking her face with the daggers and beginning to teleport. The shrub exploded as she was about to teleport blasting her a few feet backwards before she teleported away. She reappeared at the top of a tree taking deep breaths, sweating heavily.
"It seems the range of your teleportation is sixty feet with a one second delay between subsequent teleportations." Dela stood and began to stretch.
"I have a full understanding of you alchemy whilst you know nothing about me. Your death is the only natural result."
"Hablas demasiado. "
"What?"
"Oh, you can't speak Hispania that I'll say it in a way you can understand. You have no grasp of my alchemy in the slightest." she then removed to the two earrings she was wearing and attached them to the base of her daggers. The earrings were small, circular, golden bells the type you would see in an instrument connected to a golden wire.
"Did you here the bells ring?" she asked putting her hair into a ponytail.
"What bells?"
She chuckled and brought her dagger closer to her face, "You'll eat soon, Dracula."
"My alchemy allows me to manipulate the space that I and anything in contact with body resides in. The only caveat is that I need to know the layout of the space I want to occupy." She then threw one of her daggers among the trees and closed her eyes.
"Sixty feet? One second? Those are restrictions I place on my self for safety when I'm using sight as my primary medium of data collection." The dagger came into contact with the ground and a loud, 'Ring' filled the area. In that exact moment Dela teleported directly in front of the man the dagger in her left hand already halfway to his neck. The man's eyes were widened with surprise, 'Twenty five meters! I underestimated her.' he thought as time seemed to slow down for him as the blade drew closer to his neck. Right before he was decapitated Dela suddenly teleported sixty feet behind the old man.
"And who are you Intruso?" she said to the man who was in her prior location. He wore a full white suit with various medals and emblems, a flowing white cape draping down his shoulders; in his hand was a gold encrusted, basket-hilt broadsword, the blade a reflective gray and head blond hair in a man bun.
"Its time to leave." He said grabbing the old man's hand, the old man wiped the sweat off his face and turned to Dela.
"It's been fun child, you are far stronger than I imagined but we must bring this little play date to an end."
"And why would I let you leave?"
"If you intended to attack you would've already." Dela simply scowled and loosened the grip on her dagger.
"What's your name abuelo?" she asked the old man.
"Godfrey my dear, I'm number eight." he said revealing the eight on his hand. Suddenly the blond's cape split and turned into two large wings as they begun to ascend.
"He's a little quiet but I warn you he's far stronger than me. In fact he's number 1." Godfrey said before the two of them flew away at high speed. Dela then fell on her butt and began breathing heavily, she touched the back of her neck. She then looked at her hand and saw it stained red with blood. 'I barely sensed his presence.' She thought sighing, then picking up her dagger.
"I'm sorry Dracula, you'll feed next time."