"Riza, give me your finger."
She held it out quietly, not even flinching when he drew the knife across her skin. He nodded, and she allowed the blood to drip onto the pile of elements.
"Blood of his blood," Roy murmured. "It should bring his soul back, right?"
She looked at him, eyes wide. "Why are you asking me?"
He shook his head. "No, yeah, yeah okay. Sorry."
They faced the transmutation circle and the ingredients. Roy took a deep, shuddering breath, and then placed his hands on the circle.
The reaction was instantaneous. Riza stepped back, awed by the size of it, but Roy leaned in, grinning eagerly.
"We're gonna do it," he cried. Riza smiled too, and crouched behind him.
But then the energy flying from the circle changed; it turned dark and began to whirl faster, tendrils reaching out dangerously.
"What's wrong?" Riza yelled. The whirling energy was generating a fearsome wind.
"I don't know!" Roy yelled back, panic creeping into his voice. "I don't know!"
One of the tendrils snapped out, and Roy recoiled from the circle. The tendril grabbed Riza instead. It pulled her in, where the center of the energy had condensed into something too bright to look at.
"Roy!" she shrieked. "Help me!"
He lunged for her, but the arm he reached for was grabbed by another dark strand. He kept reaching, but the darkness began dissolving her arm. Riza was screaming still, and he joined her when he saw that her entire body was disintegrating.
"Riza!"
"Help me!" She was crying now, straining against the energy pulling her back.
Roy threw out his other arm to catch her, but she was too far gone. Something appeared behind her – a dark, heavy shape that suddenly opened into a door. He pushed forward, but the massive energy from the rebound threw him back. There was a sudden excruciating pain in his left eye, and he fell to his knees with his hands clutching his face. The last thing he saw out of his one eye were her two eyes, locked onto his with such a desperate hope. The door closed.
"Bring her back!" Roy screamed. "Bring her back!"
He looked around frantically. They had decided to use her father's work room, thinking that maybe trying to bring him back in a place where he spent much of his life would aid them. The room was filled with books and half full vials of explosive compounds, but on one wall there was a line of experimental robots that Roy had never been allowed to touch.
He dragged himself to his feet, clutching his bleeding head, and staggered to the nearest of the machines. It was heavy, but he managed to pull it down and back to the edge of the circle.
"Bring her back," he whimpered through gritted teeth. He took a bloodstained finger and drew a sigil inside the robot's chest cavity. "Bring her back."
He pressed his hands on the robot desperately.
The reaction began, and Roy felt the energy clawing at him again. "Fine!" he cried. "I don't care, take it, take anything, but bring her back!"
A tendril snaked around his right arm, and Roy began to scream.
Riza woke up petrified. She had been next to Roy, but then she was pulled away- but now here she was. Roy was slumped across her, blood flowing out of him from far too many places and far too fast. She sat up – she felt terrible, all of her joints were stiff – and tried to collect Roy in her arms. One hand settled around his shoulder, but the other hand… The other hand was not a hand. It was a gun. Riza looked hard at her arm, and saw that it was metal. But she did not give it much thought, because over her not-arm, she saw the transmutation circle. There was something in the middle of it, but whatever it was, it was not her father.
"Riza," Roy breathed.
She tore her attention away from the abomination. "What happened?" she choked. "This isn't right."
"No," Roy groaned, clutching his bleeding shoulder. "The rebound took your body, and I tried- I tried to get it back, Riza, I'm so sorry, but I couldn't. I put your soul in one of the- the robots-"
"How?" she cried.
"Equivalent exchange," he gasped.
"Equivalent-," she began, but then she remembered that he had been reaching for her with that missing arm. "You idiot!"
"I'm sorry," he said again, forcing a weak smile. Riza was about to scold him again, but he convulsed and then fell limp.
"Roy!" she cried. He did not respond.
She slid her gun arm beneath Roy's legs as best she could and stood. She was off balance, and the heavy clanking of her movements was disorienting. When she was fully on both feet, she was much too tall. The thing in the circle was still there, and from her height it was much easier to see. She fled the workroom, stumbling up the stairs in her new body. She crashed through the unlocked doors, until she collapsed to her knees outside the house.
"Please help!" she cried into the night air. "Please, he's hurt and I don't know what to do!"
Against all odds, someone came. He was a young military officer with blonde hair and striking golden eyes, and he came running up the road too fast to have just been a passer-by.
"What's happened here?" he asked brusquely, but not unkindly.
"Please," Riza begged, "he's hurt, I don't know what went wrong, but he's going to die if you don't help him!"
"Is this your house?" he asked.
"Yes," Riza said impatiently. She was about to complain again that they needed to do something now when the officer took Roy from her arms.
"Come on then. We need to get out of this rain, and he needs a bed."
Riza stood – she was taller than the officer – and followed him inside. She couldn't help but glance anxiously at the half-open door to the basement workroom as she walked past, but the officer started talking again.
"Where's the nearest bedroom?"
Riza pointed up the center stairs. "It's on the left, um, the second door."
"Do you keep the bandages near there?"
"No," she said.
"Then go get some, as many as you can, and then get a basin of water and some towels," he ordered, already walking up the stairs.
Riza did not answer, but turned and started for the storage room and the medical supplies therein. She found her strides longer as she walked, and was momentarily baffled when she saw the room from her new height. Even so, she found a large basin for water, and loaded the bandages and towels into it. Having a task to do soothed her nerves, so even when she brought the bandages and towels into the bedroom and saw Roy covered in his own blood, she was reasonably calm. She took the basin and filled it with water, and wondered as she brought it back if the officer had wanted it warm.
When she arrived for the last time with the water, the officer nodded his thanks and motioned for her to put it next to him. She did, and then backed away to stand at the wall, where she had a better view of Roy.