The Shambala Chronicle
I'm ba-ACK!
Ladies and gentlemen, I present the long-awaited sequel to Full Metal Journal.
Now, as most of you know, I wrote the first one without having seen most episodes in the anime. As I finished the story up, I finally got to see most of them, including the ones with Maes Hughes. Now, I write the sequel without having seen the movie.
As I always say, irony sucks.
Now, if you haven't read Full Metal Journal, I suggest you read that one first. Or, you can just read this chapter, as I'm using it to briefly summarize what happened last story.
Of course, I start each chapter saying I don't own FullMetal Alchemist, or Conquerors of Shambala, or Ed Elric, or Al Elric, or Roy Mustang or Riza Hawkeye or… I think you get the picture.
So, without further ado, here you go. To the old hands, especially Alchemy202 (I hope), welcome back.
And to new readers:
Welcome to my world:
Entry 1:
I don't really know what it was that got me writing in a journal again. Maybe it was all my pent-up frustration and anger towards the past that got me to spill out my life on paper, just to get it out. Maybe it was that my brother Jeffrey gave me this for my 20th birthday several months back and he's been bugging me to write in it. Or… maybe I just needed to feel like I was back there… with all of them with me, on one of those nice summer days we liked to enjoy.
Or I could've just been bored.
Well, whatever it was, I'm writing now. And I guess the most natural place to start would be that…
I was a soldier.
Back when I was eighteen, I, idiot that I was- and am-, volunteered to join the Grand Central Army. I was there for almost nine months. During that time, I saw two skirmishes- one minor but deadly, the other I had the good fortune to be on the outskirts of. During that time, me and my comrades faced all sorts of deadly enemies- including those of the higher-ups that commanded us.
I was in 3rd Platoon, under the command of 2nd Lieutenant Jean Havoc. Our overall command varied. I guess you could say our true commander was Colonel (later promoted to Brigadier General) Roy Mustang, an old-time veteran State Alchemist and a man all of us knew we could trust with our lives.
Then there was his opposite- Lieutenant Colonel (later promoted to Colonel) Frank Archer. He was an Investigations officer turned war-nut, and it seemed his only main concern was with getting a medal. None of us were too fond of him during our time with him, but we coped.
The coolest officer we had was Lieutenant Colonel (later promoted to Brigadier General) Maes Hughes- a good man. True, he only dealt with crime scenes and stuff, but he was funny and deadly loyal to his wife, Gracia.
But… he died. A week after a fierce battle that all of us knew as "the Battle of the 5th Laboratory", he was killed doing some police work that turned deadly. That's why they promoted him- out of honor. To this day, I still haven't forgotten.
He left behind a daughter too- Elyica. He loved her more than anything, and it showed in the fact that he was always showing off about twenty reels of pictures to anyone or anything that wasn't inanimate. She's… six now, yeah, that sounds right.
Anyhoo, with that aside, now I'll go in chronological order.
When I joined up, I was placed in the 2nd Squad, originally under the command of Sergeant Angelo Fish- another old-timer. When I joined up, there were ten in the squad and they immediately- with maybe one or two exceptions- accepted me as one of their own.
For about two or three months, we were in the stage of completely uneventful occurrences. During this time, I established my reputation as a bit of a troublemaker. One event that sticks out in my mind was the time we had to clean out then Lt. Col. Hughes' file room and I prank called him home so the rest of us could throw a party. Was pretty fun until I got caught and was forced to do a large report on artificially created human beings called "homunculi."
But more on those later.
While nothing happened to us, over Eastward there was trouble in the form of an Ishbalan killer named simply "Scar." To go into the whole history would take too much time, and I wouldn't know where to begin, so I'll just write this: There was a war in Ishbal, more like a massacre, the city was destroyed, about 90 percent of the population was killed. Scar thought he could make up for this by killing off our State Alchemists, who were the main cause of the extermination. His last major kill was Brigadier General Basque Gran, the Fuhrer's- our overall division commander- deputy commander and the proclaimed "Iron-Blood Alchemist". After that, Scar kinda disappeared for a while, but we would meet up with him again eventually.
We in Central had absolutely no care for that- life went on peacefully. Pranks pulled, storied told, and I celebrated my 19th birthday. And, as we progressed, I became fond of the guys I was with and we formed a bond- one that was stronger than friendship, stronger even than family. We knew the others better than we knew ourselves.
And then came Lab 5. God damn it, that was a rough night for me. Pardon my French. One of our State Alchemists went in there, though it was off-limits, to look something up. It was supposed to only take a few minutes, an hour at most.
Instead, it turned into an entire eight-hour ordeal reducing my company to about a platoon and a half's worth of men. Six men from my squad were wounded- squad leader Fish, machine gunner Jack "Schmitty" Smith (who would eventually come back, just to get wounded again), Paul "Gemini" Gunner, a little guy that loved automail; Evan "Boozer" Toydarian, a 300-pound veteran that got his nickname from the amount of booze he drank; and best friends/practical jokers Harry Blake and Aaron Waverly, who were from my hometown. They were all evacuated out of there and I never heard what had become of any of them.
With them gone, our squad was reduced to me and four others- five, after a replacement was shipped in to make even numbers. After that fiasco, we thought we could just go back to normal.
How wrong we were.
Hughes was killed, not long after that. Shot by homunculi, those things I had looked up. After that, nothing really went back to normal.
We spent a lot of time after that with our ears open, seeing if we could hear anything unusual that we could possibly use to expose the murderers. We heard things, but not what we had expected. Just that someone from our higher ups may have been involved. We wanted to know the truth.
But it was the army, and we were allowed maybe a week to try before it had to be business as usual. Hughes was replaced by Archer, who tried- and failed- to gain our respect. Many jokes were told about him, and many nicknames- amongst them being "Col. Looney-Tune"- surfaced. We hated him, and half the time I always had the impression he hated us.
And then- They came. The homunculi. And they attacked me. Three of them- A busty woman that took a bullet to the head and lived, a psychopathic shapeshifter, and a three thousand pound lard-ass that chased me halfway across the city. They were immortal, inhumane beings, killing anyone and everything just so they could acquire some mythical diamond. And those tattoos- the Ouroborus tattoo. The snake devouring its own tail- the cycle of life and death.
Somehow, I escaped from them, fighting my way through. Apparently, someone higher-up must've seen some significance to it. So it was a few days later that I was promoted to the rank of Sergeant by Archer. The 2nd Squad was now mine. The next two months brought about new routine- I now had to managed a squad of roughly eleven guys, twelve counting myself, at the same time as make daily reports and having to be in the same room as Archer for long periods of time.
Needless to say, life got a little hectic from time to time.
Finally, it came. Our first war. It was to take place in the desert town of Lior. Scar's doing. We transported there by train and waited it out. Nothing serious- no one (from my squad, anyway) got hurt.
But then we learned- Scar was trying to make a legendary and horrifying object called the Philosopher's Stone. Someone had it and all restrictions bound by laws and rules went right out the window. But there was a catch- it had to be made sacrificing human lives. By the truckload. And that's what we were for- we were ingredients. Cannon fodder. Guinea pigs. In short, we would be the Stone.
And the soldiers were- not us, because I downright refused. We paid a heavy price during the battle of Lior, amongst them Archer- the entire right half of his body was gone.
We returned to Central not long after that, but no time to rest. War in the North had us packing up and getting ready to go back out. This time, however, I did not go with them- I had another job.
We had heard reports that our Fuhrer was a homunculus, and, if proven true, we would have to take him out. Me, Mustang, and 1st Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, Mustang's aide, would sneak through the city and go to his mansion. The plan was that I'd wait while he and Hawkeye went for the Big Cheese. Hawkeye would distract the guards, and Mustang would get down and dirty with old man Bradley. When that was done, I'd drive through, pick them up, and we'd roll out. Easy-peasy.
It didn't work out that way.
While they were off playing hero, I ran into an Archer that had become so heavily modified with automail that he was now more machine than man, and a battle ensured. It was here that I was wounded- his mouth machine gun tore three bullets straight into my left leg. He took my car and I was forced to limp my way to the now burning Fuhrer's mansion. It was over when I got there- Mustang had won, but had his left eye shot out by Archer, who had used my handgun that he had stolen from me to do it before Hawkeye finished the robo-menace off.
I was then sent to Central Hospital for recuperation. The docs told me that my leg would be fine and, although it would be kind of a discomfort, I could keep it. And – and I still can't believe it, after all this time- he said I was going home.
But that isn't the end of the story. From here, it gets depressing.
While I was recovering, I got a visitor- Pete Regazzi, one of my squad mates and a very dear friend. He had been wounded slightly during the last days of the war in the North, but the real wounds he suffered were emotional ones. Ones he passed onto me.
My squad was pretty much decimated. Most of the new guys were OK, thankfully. However, one of my friends, Steve Owens- a tall thin man with glasses whom we all called "The Shadow"- went insane and blew his arms off with a hand grenade. He was evacuated to a hospital at Southern HQ, but as to if he lived or not, I just don't know.
But the real hard part was that three of my buddies, guys I had been through everything with, were dead. Corporal Manny Castillo, another old-timer and the assistant squad leader with wild red hair, was killed by a random sniper after a big battle. Dwight Perry, a buck-toothed relatively new guy with a nickname "Squeaker" that suit him, had his eyes blown out by shrapnel and then charged straight into an MG line of fire, which ripped him up.
And… my best friend Danny Jones- this black writer that we all called "Smokey"- was killed by a tank shell that completely decimated him. The only main piece left of him was his hat, which Regazzi gave to me before he left and which, in turn, I sent to his parents. His death was particularly difficult for me to accept; out of all of my squad mates, he was the one I stuck with the most. Without him, that entire experience would have been true hell.
…I still can't believe he's gone…
Finally, I was discharged from Central Hospital after a week of rest. I hopped the first train for home, and that was the last I ever saw of the city… or any of its people.
"Humankind cannot gain anything, without first giving something in return"…
It's been almost two years since I learned that.
……..
Oh, who am I, you ask? Duh, where are my manners?
I'm Scott Rodyle.
Formerly Sergeant Scott Rodyle.
But you can just call me Scotty.
I'm twenty years old, living in the little Eastern town known to all of you as Risembool and to me, home. I'm a runner by profession… and, as I've come to be known, a bit of a writer as well.
And I think that's the long and short of it for now.
For the record, I finished this chapter in October. But I wanted to keep true to my word on getting it out by January, as I wanted to finish the first in my New Organization series.
For another record, this chapter is longer than all the chapters in my first story. How d'ya like them apples?
Yeah, I know: Not much of an entry. Basically, I just used this chapter to summarize everything that happened last story. For any newcomers out there.
But here's something that didn't happen last story- a new feature to this story. It's called:
Chapter Summary!
Basically, now, at the end of each chapter, I write a brief description of what's gonna happen next chapter. So you all have something to look forward too.
So, here's next chapter:
Scotty tells about life after he returned home from the events in Central, how his days go, and how, for some, old wounds never truly fade.
Not much, I know, but there you have it.
Aaaah…. it feels really good to be doing this again.
Peace out… and review please!
