Descent

Chapter Nine

She huffed and puffed as she skipped steps to catch up to Hawkeye, who was now pausing at the building exit, waiting for her. She finally reached her and together they took off towards the Military Central Headquarters. Winry could hear screaming, and it chilled her to the bone when she realized that she could hear the pained screams of victims from inside the building mixed among that of the unharmed bystanders in shock. She hoped there were ambulances and medical kits already at the scene. She wanted to be able to help the hurt and injured once she got there. Auto-mail engineer aside, she was a skilled medical administrator, and was not knowledge-less in the medicinal field. One of the perks of being the only daughter of two legal doctors. Quickly, as she raced to the scene of the collapsed building, she ran her memory over everything she had ever learned about being a doctor, everything you had to do to heal a patient, to keep them from dying, every procedure and protocol necessary to keep the person you were taking care of alive.

Two more blocks to go until they reached their destination, and Winry could hear sirens in the far distance. Ambulances were on their way. She could also hear even more prominently the pained shrieks of hurt soldiers. Don't worry, I'll help you.

When they finally made it to H.Q, Winry had to take a moment to digest what she saw.

The entire fortress was nothing more than a great heap of rock and rumble, still falling in places. The high walls surrounding it had been reduced to a square of fallen rock, useless for defense and irreparable. The air was clouded with a thick fog of dust and ash, and one section of what used to be a marvelous structure was on fire, sending a sickening plume of black smoke into the air. She vaguely noticed people throwing buckets of water onto the fire, but their efforts were in vain. The fire was too big, and it was beginning to spread. But what made Winry most sick about the whole thing was the impossibly thick river of blood seeping from the remains of the building, staining the grey rock a deep, gut wrenching crimson. She couldn't see a single person alive under the rubble, and she knew the chances were less than slim of anyone being able to survive such a collision. But then she heard a scream the made her blood curdle. It was coming from the dense rock of the collapsed building, and, without a second thought, she ran to it.

When she located the source of the scream, she discovered it was a male soldier, and a great heap of rock was crushing his legs. He was covered in sweat, blood and dirt, from head to foot, and she could see that the rock had completely destroyed both of his legs and probably broken his pelvis. She knew she had to do something, but her mind went completely blank, and suddenly she couldn't remember what she ought to do in this situation. She knew she needed to get the rock off the man, but it was going to take a forklift to even come close to removing the great weight. "Hold on, sir!" She yelled over the noise. If only she could do alchemy, then she could lift the rock from underneath and throw it away, but she had never bothered to learn it, she had not the slightest clue how to do any of it. She was useless. "Someone help him!" She screamed. "Someone get rid of this rock! An alchemist! We need an alchemist!" And then she caught sight of Major Armstrong, who, to this day, still hadn't been promoted, running off to her right. "Major Armstrong!" She shrieked at the top of her lungs. He turned his head and caught sight of her, and altered his course so that he was heading toward her.

"Get the rock off of him!" She shouted over the chaos. He nodded and punched his fist into the ground, and suddenly a great many thin beams sprouted from the ground beneath and lifted all of the rubble from the man. He bit back a scream of pain and Winry got to work at once, ripping off her thin silk nightgown she had thrown over her pajamas and shredding it in two, using both halves of it's remains to tourniquet both of the man's thighs, where the rock had crushed his legs. Just by looking at the almost deflated forms of them, she knew automatically that they would need to be amputated. Another potential customer the inner engineer in her said, before she pushed it back into the depths of her brain to concentrate. She hoisted him from the ground and threw him over her remarkably strong shoulders, before turning back to the Major, who was standing there looking a tad bit bewildered as to what to do. "Major!" She yelled. "Go find other people who need your help! There are still people trapped under the rubble! Clear it off them!" She ordered him, even though she wasn't a military officer and she technically had no legal right to do so. He did what she said anyway though, immediately dashing off and instantly finding someone else to help alchemically.