Those Who Challenge the Sun
(A "Fullmetal Alchemist" Fanfic)
By Unleashed Battlecry
Chapter One:
Sacrifice and the Principle of Equivalent Exchange
A suit of large blue armor stood against the wall. The armor could cover any man's whole body, but the man needed to be tall enough to fit inside the suit. The armor appears to weigh about one and a half-hundred pounds, and is standing upright, staring in silence at the two young brothers who were drawing on the floor with chalk.
There was a chemistry set as well, placed on a wooden table. The set has quarter-full glasses, mostly with bluish or greenish-colored liquids. The table stood a safe distance away from the drawings the children were creating.
The children were using a thin rod that was about an arm's length long, which held the chalk carefully inside a small metal piecing at the end.
The older brother lifted the rod up a bit so that it wasn't drawing anymore, but that there was still a short length between it and the floor. He quickly inspected the creation on the floor.
"That aught to do it." The older brother spoke softly so that it was barely a whisper. He turned his head to look at his younger sibling. "You ready?"
The younger brother slowly nodded his head once, indicating that he was indeed ready. The older brother seemed more confident in the drawing, but it was only natural, due to the fact that he was the one to draw it himself.
The older brother turned his head back toward the image on the floor. He knew his brother was frightened. "Don't be scared, Al," comforted the eldest, "everything's perfect."
Outside of the small house on the hill, a teardrop from the sky gently touched ground, creating a small dark dot on the dirt road. Another tear fell, then another, and another. Quickly, it began to rain. The pitter-patter sound of the rain hitting ground was much nicer than the sounds of the storm that was about to hit.
The large green tree on the house's grounds was swaying in the harsh winds, causing a few leaves to break apart from the branches. The white fence nearby looked as if it was melting, but it was just the sky's water trickling down the sides.
The ground suddenly became soaked, and the rain only became worse within the minute's pass. Rain dripped from the triangular roof onto the small building's windows, then dropping softly towards the grass beneath.
Back inside, the eleven-year-old brother, Edward Elric, looked back at his ten-year-old sibling, making sure they were both ready. "Let's go for it!" whispered Edward. He knew there wasn't anyone else around besides the two of them, but the only was to contain his excitement was to whisper, barely even making a sound.
He waited for Alphonse's nod to start. Slowly but surely, he nodded once, showing that no matter how scared he was at what consequences may come, he was ready.
Edward pressed his hands softly on the ground, by the edge of the large circle. Alphonse soon followed. Ed nodded to Al to show that they needed to press harder together at that moment.
Just then, a yellow glow began to show from the markings, lines, and circles. These drawings would normally be gibberish to most people, but to them it seemed to make perfect sense. There were a few scribbles inside the circles, which made it look like a ritual of some sort with which they wrote foreign words, rather than chanting them.
The palms of the young children's hands ignored any feeling or heat the glow might have given them. Even the sparks that followed the glows did not bother the hands of the brothers. But the room noticeably became a blur once a small whirlwind began in the center of the drawn image.
Lightning silently crashed diagonally from the whirlwind, crackling in the air. The only thing that reached the two boys' ears was the sound of the rushing wind. Even for that they were not paying any attention.
More lightning struck as the wind current circled, becoming larger and more powerful as it progressed. Soon, the wind engulfed even the boys, pushing against them. But they persisted, and remained exactly where they were, hands planted.
All of this was the work of Alchemy, the science of understanding the structure of matter, breaking it down, then reconstructing it as something else. It can even make gold from lead. But Alchemy is a science, so it must follow the natural laws. To create, something of equal value must be lost. This is the Principle of Equivalent Exchange.
But these two brothers ignored this law. All they had made was the Transmutation Circle, nothing more, nothing less. They did not give up something in exchange. Therefore, something must be taken.
In an instant, everything went wrong. One moment, the resurrection was perfectly fine. In the next, the yellow glow turned to a dark purple, and the wind became much stronger than it was supposed to be.
The Elric brothers knew something had happened, so they panicked. Edward was the first to leave his position. He picked up his hands to look around to see what was happening. That night, they learned the value of some things can't be measured on a simple scale.
Out on the farm, the screams struck like lightning. The closest neighbors, the Rockbells, rushed outside. "That was Ed!" cried the young girl. She started to run toward to house, but stopped herself as she noticed her grandmother, Pinako, was worried as well. "Wait Winry…" the grandmother requested. Out in the distance, the young girl spotted a shadowy figure, cloaked in darkness.
Inside of the Elric's house, Ed was crouched over, crying out in pain. "No…!" Blue strokes of lightning crackled like a snapping twig off of a tree. In the smoke of the room, Edward managed to crawl over to where his brother sat moments ago. His clothes remained, scattered close by. But the body was nowhere to be found.
"Al, no!" Ed let out a small moan of pain as he spoke. "Stay with me!"
The smoke soon revealed the damage it had done to Edward. The left side of his shorts was stained with crimson blood. Just a little lower, and the bloody mess could be seen. Edward had lost his leg, from right above his knee, all the way down.
"Dammit!" he grunted. He was kneeling on the floor now, and the pain would not end. "This wasn't supposed to…" Ed let out a long wail of horror and hurt. "Wha… What have I done!?" Ed lowered his head, continuing to moan because of the infliction of pain he had earned.
He looked up as more smoke began to clear, revealing a raised woman's arm. The arm looked as if it was trying to fall, but on it own, it kept itself alive.
"…Mom?" whispered Edward. He crawled closer to the arm, but as the rest of the smoke left, he witnessed something that he never hoped to see. "No!" It was a monster. It was the results of the resurrection of his mother. Organs were visible, and the face was a horrible sight to see. Fangs emerged from the open mouth, and the creature spit out blood. The monster seemed to want to breathe, but as Ed could well see, it had no lungs. It was mostly a pile of bones, but the bloody heart and stomach were moving and pumping as much as it could, keeping the result alive for just a few more moments.
Edward let out one final long howl of pain and terror before he fell to the floor and passed out.
End of Chapter One
Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist our any of its characters, locations, logos, or concepts. I only own copies of all 13 DVDs, as well as both editions of the movie. (Damn stright!) I am taking no credit for what has occurred so far, and I am not earning any money through this.
Author's Note: I know I stated that I will be posting two of these, but since the Foreword was mostly just an Author's Note, I skipped the one for the beginning of this chapter. Anywho, this is my description of how the beginning of Episode 1 went, and I hope you liked it. Not much has happened since I started the Foreword, so there's not much to mention here. I will state again: This story will branch off into something new! I know everything is the same so far, and it will be for about two or three more chapters, but it is going to get interesting, trust me! I also hope you like my descriptions (especially the gruesome ones:P), but I hope you will stick to this story long enough to see how much better it will get. Anyway, that's it for now except: R&R! Thanks, bye!
