"Keep your head up," Teacher yelled at me. My hands were on my knees and I was breathing hard, looking up at her with a scowl. She was currently kicking my ass, with the excuse that it was training

"Why are we doing this again? I'm not learning anything!" I yelled back at her, my voice catching from the lack of oxygen in my lungs.

"Because to train the mind, you much train the body," she told me calmly, swinging her fist at my face, I dodged.

"This is point—" I was cut off by teacher's leg first connecting with my face, then her swinging around and crouching to thrust her other leg under my own, knocking me off balance. I was now lying on the ground, motionless, trying to catch my breath.

"Cam, you have to focus. Focus your mind on your body's movements, your surroundings and your opponent. Nothing else should matter when you are in a fight." She then stuck out her open hand, and I grabbed on to it and let her help me up.

It all started with my father dying and my mother being long gone. My mother was an alchemist, and from what I've heard, she was something called a state alchemist, working for the military now. I never really cared enough to pursue this rumor, for if she cared about me she never would have left in the first place. I was thinking about joining the military myself, until I heard her name from a passing pedestrian just months before. When my father died, I was going to try to use something called human transmutation. When I started asking around about it, I kept hearing of two young boys and what happened to them. That's how I heard of Izumi, she taught them everything they knew, and the older boy that I heard about was known as a legend, though known to be dead.

When I started searching for Izumi I heard all about her, how she was mean, but nice. And how she taught a state alchemist that turned out to be a hero of the people, and a legend to the state. I didn't think she could be all that tough, she was a woman none the less. I also heard that she was getting to be older, and had some kind of sickness, though I haven't seen any sign of either of these things. I still didn't know her well enough to ask her about it. The strange thing about it all was that she never spoke of any boys. She didn't speak about anyone; I felt that there was something that she was hiding.

When I asked her about human transmutation she nearly ripped my limbs off of me, I decided not to mention it ever again. The boy's story and her being their teacher did explain how it would be a touchy subject though.

When I finally did find her, I asked her to teach me. She told me no, again and again. I asked, again and again. Then one time she asked me about my parents, I told her I didn't have either one, that I was on my own. As I said this, her eyes grew sad, she smiled a sad smile at me and then sighed, accepting me as her student, and said that she was always too nice. This too I didn't ask about.

The first month of her 'training' though, personally I wouldn't call it that, it was more like prison, or torture. She ended up sticking me on some god forsaken island, and told me I wasn't allowed to use any alchemy, and that if I did, she would know and wouldn't teach me anything at the end of the month when she came to pick me up. And right before she left, she told me to think about a few things. The first being the meaning of, "One is all, and all is one". I had no idea what it meant, but I thought about how I had a whole month to think about it. And then the other was, what would I give up, to get something precious back? I knew the answer to this question, everything, but I didn't say anything. She left that night, and for that month I went through hell.

When she came to pick me up she asked me the questions again. And I told her, that I was just one small part of the world that even if I died the world would go on living as if nothing happened. And I would give up everything including my life to get what I wanted most.

I didn't tell her that what I wanted most was to bring my father back, have everything e back like the way it was, myself studying under his watchful eye. I wanted my mother to be a mother to me, and act like she cared that she birthed me. I didn't tell her any of this, but now, months later I wish that I had, because bringing it up again would be the hardest thing ever.

Something else I didn't tell her was that I needed her to train me so I could make things right again, get back what I lost, and what my father lost. Whether it be a stupid path to take, I was going to do both. I needed more materials than what I could put my hands on, I needed the central library, but that meant becoming part of the military, and she didn't approve of that. She said that military were dogs, that killed for no reason, and pissed on cue. But I needed to become one of those dogs to make things right again, even if that meant facing my mother.

Our relationship wasn't strong, and we weren't close. I stayed in a small room on the second floor of her house and meat shop. I ate dinner with her and her husband Sig, every night, though in silence. I'm not sure if it was just me being paranoid from all the stories or if it was really true, but I felt like they both had a wall up. Like they didn't want to get too close to me, as if they lost the people dearest to them more than once, and when I looked at them, I saw myself.