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*Trigger Warning*
Violence

Since Alphonse was no longer a demon, his newfound powers took him by surprise when he sent a blast of energy toward Silas and knocked him off his feet. His unfamiliarity with them brought him and Cassandra a disadvantage they couldn’t risk having. One wrong move could cost them everything.

“You do what you do best,” Alphonse ordered her. “Protect your body.”

“But—”

“Don’t you dare disobey me in a time like this. I’m telling you now to protect yourself. This is the best we can do. We have to keep our strengths.”

Cassandra took a deep breath and hugged him from the side. “Don’t die.”

“You especially don’t die,” Alphonse said, hugging her back quickly. “Now, go.”

She disappeared elsewhere in her own body. Alphonse knew she’d be able to protect herself now that he could distract Silas. He turned his attention to the demon. Alphonse couldn’t let him cause any damage in Cassandra’s corpus callosum while they fought. It was all too risky.

“Can’t wait to go back home and tell everyone I executed you. At the very least you’ll have put up a fight,” Silas said once he got to his feet. He raised his sword. Of all the times for Alphonse to not have a weapon, it had to be now. There couldn’t be a worse time. At least the claws he used to have were efficient. Now, he just had this new energy that he didn’t know how to properly use.

“Don’t be so damn sure,” Alphonse said. His deeper power surged through his body and surrounded him like a shield and an electric threat in his hands. They lunged at each other, Silas a dark blur, and Alphonse a bright white blur. Their energies collided, and Alphonse blocked Silas’s sword while throwing forceful blows toward Silas.

This power reminded him of Cassandra’s energy when they first met. He remembered when he held her wrist and a surge of energy pushed him back like an explosion. A human being capable of fighting back against his possession powers stunned him, almost kept him frozen from the shock. She’d been able to thwart his efforts every single time.

Fighting Silas felt like that, although now, Alphonse wasn’t the enemy this time.

The darkness coating her flesh eased away, returning to normal. The creeping vines Alphonse had cut away evaporated.

As Alphonse used another blast on Silas, he smiled. Cassandra was successfully taking care of the remnants of Silas’s possession. But it only pushed Silas to persevere.

“You don’t even know what you’re doing,” Silas said as he coughed out black blood after one of the blows Alphonse gave him. “Throwing me around, punching me… do you really think that’s going to kill me? Come on.”

“Not in here,” Alphonse said, smiling. “I wouldn’t kill a demon inside her body. Not until you’re out.”

Silas’s smile faded. Without warning, the corpus callosum shook as Cassandra’s body lurched, and they passed through her mind, falling farther down with every shake until they crashed into soggy, burning liquid. Alphonse cried out in pain before swimming up to take a breath, only to notice he and Silas were amongst the contents of Cassandra’s stomach.

“How the hell—” Silas began but stopped when her stomach heaved until she vomited its contents.

Alphonse’s and Silas’s corporeal forms were forced out with the rest of Cassandra’s undigested food. When Alphonse stood safely in the room again, he almost shrieked when he backed into the body of her mother. Almost. Silas growled deeply in anger but looked down at Cassandra, who seemed to still be unconscious despite throwing them up.

“Enough of this,” he seethed, lifting his sword and bringing it down to her.

“No!” Alphonse yelled, speeding to grab his sword arm, but it didn’t matter.

Cassandra’s hand lifted, palm up, just as the word swung down onto it. She used her hand’s pressure on the blade to push herself away, rolling to the other side of the room and away from his sword. Alphonse and Silas gaped at her as she carefully stood up and looked at her bleeding palm.

“Are you fucking crazy!” Alphonse shouted, strangling the wrist of Silas’s sword hand until it was severed from his arm. The hand fell pitifully to the floor with the fingers still curled around the sword’s hilt as Silas roared in agonizing pain and fury. He stumbled back and held his wrist stump gingerly.

Alphonse grabbed Silas’s twitching hand and uncurled its fingers from around the hilt of the sword to use it instead. He tossed the hand to the ground and laughed. He held the mighty sword by its hilt, straight up, grinning at the weapon. “This sword’s really something, huh?” he said, earning a growl from Silas. “It would suck if someone were to just…” his voice trailed off and his lightning-like power burst through him and destroyed the sword effortlessly.

“What did you do?” Silas yelled, staring at his useless, destroyed sword. Alphonse wasn’t looking at him, though. He looked at Cassandra, who stood with him, and offered her his hand.

“I’m so proud of you,” Alphonse said.

“Thank you. Let’s end this,” she said, and he squeezed her hand.

Silas lunged toward them in a fury, but together they sent a bright beam of light at him. It shot through Silas’s chest and out his back, only to ricochet back through his head and shoot through his arms. Every time it hit the wall, the beam returned to his body, burning him bit by bit.

Silas shuddered, screaming before exploding into ash.

The beam dimmed and disappeared. Alphonse let out a deep sigh, though he didn’t enjoy the victory for too long. Cassandra slumped against his side and he caught her quickly in his arms. “Cass? Cass—hey, come on. Hey.” He lowered himself to the floor, resting her head on his lap. “Hey, wake up, we did it. Don’t faint.”

Her eyes were shut, though Alphonse could feel she was well and alive. He sighed in relief and picked her up. Cassandra surely used every bit of her strength for this. She needed rest.

Alphonse took her to her room and carefully laid her on her bed. He frowned at the sight of her clothes, drenched in her mother’s blood. “Forgive me,” he whispered, taking her clothes off carefully and pulling new, clean ones on.

When he was certain she’d be comfortable, he disappeared from the spot to retrieve Antonio. At the illusioned stadium, the young boy was asleep on the stands, the game well and done by now. Alphonse smiled sadly and scooped Antonio in his arms, too.

Antonio stirred in his arms when Alphonse popped back into the house but kept his eyes closed. Alphonse tucked the boy into bed as well, brushing the boy’s hair back and smiling warmly at his peaceful, sleepy expression.

The blood in their mother’s room wasn’t difficult to clean up. Silas’s ashes, too, were simple to discard. What wasn’t easy was the mother’s body. If it were up to him, he’d burn her. She treated her children terribly and hurt Cassandra just as much.

He at the very least tied up the body in the sheets of the bed, the head along with it. The stench was horrific, and he tossed the body outside the window. Sure, it wasn’t nice, but he didn’t want the kids waking up to the odor of rigor mortis.

Was it suspicious? Alphonse frowned, looking out the window. Humans did talk about these things, though burning a body inside was as potentially problematic as it was burning it outside. He set the body on fire, and when the familiar stench of burning flesh rose up to his nose, Alphonse panicked and snapped his fingers. The body disappeared into oblivion. Now, not only was the evidence of murder gone, but the kids no longer had any chance of seeing their beheaded mother’s body.

With a deep sigh, he walked out of the room. Alphonse grabbed two glasses of water and put them on the nightstands for both Cassandra and Antonio. The night was still young. He nestled himself on the couch, wrapped in his new wings, as well as a blanket.

With their mother gone, Cassandra and Antonio had no parents. But Alphonse had long promised himself he’d protect these kids. He would guard them always. After all the trouble he caused just because he sought to possess Cassandra, it was not only the least he could do but something he deeply wanted to do.