Told you guys I'd have another chapter soon! Hope it's long enough this time, I myself don't like short chapters when reading a story. And a little bit of forewarning - I call Resembool/Rizembul/Risenbool by the name Reisenburgh in this story. It's hard for me to call it anything else, so just understand what I mean with its different spelling.
Disclaimer: I hate these things. They detract from the story. Just forget about the fourth wall being broken while I go on about not owning FMA and read the story, mmkay?
Chapter One
2 years later—
When Phoenix walked through the city, she saw death. She was amazed at just how much death was in the city limits, and how the people around her didn't seem to care. Did they honestly not notice all the death swirling through the air around them, or did they just not care? Phoenix didn't know how they could do either one, considering how she felt as if she were suffocating within the city. But maybe they did notice it, and had been noticing for a long time, but just felt as if fighting it was pointless.
Phoenix had never seen a fight against death to be pointless, unless it was time for someone to die. But senseless death, murder, suicide, those were all things she saw reason to fight against. And those were all the forms of death that stunk up this city.
She had come to this city mostly because it was where the train had ended. She hadn't been expecting a city that stank of death and despair to anyone who entered it. And she definitely hadn't expected that it would be such a big city when she had first gotten off. But after wandering out of the train station, she had met a city where the streets throbbed and swam with people, and the noise of people talking was almost too much to bear. She hadn't ever even been in a city this large before. It was bewildering, and she had gotten lost within the first ten minutes. The noise, the sight, the stink of death in the air all swirled together in some sort of twisted symphony, and she found her insides writing in pain. She didn't understand how anyone could bear to live in a place like this.
She had a hard time concentrating on anything around her other than the death in the air, but all the same, it was hard for her not to notice a small bookshop on her right as she walked. She decided that spending some time in the shop to collect her thoughts wouldn't hurt anything. Bookshops were always safe, and warm, and willing to accept a visitor. She ducked in the shop without a glance backwards.
Her eyes swam with spots when she first entered the shop, still adjusting to the cozy lighting that was so different from the blinding snow outside. But it was still a welcome relief to be in the quiet shop, among old friends that smelt of paper, dust, and a touch of dreams. The shop had a typical "cozy" vibe to it, a was customary for most bookstores. Phoenix could see past that. It was a bookshop with good books. Books that told adventures of knights and heroes, books where the good guy always won, and where a person could escape from the harsh reality that waited outside, even if only for a few minutes. She sighed and relaxed. In here it didn't feel like death. No matter how old and dusty books got, they always felt like friends to her. She placed her hand against the bookshelf and let her fingers trail along the spines as she walked, little travelers wandering though a land of fantasy.
Her fingers caught on a particularly large tome about the history of Amestris, so much so that the book nearly slipped of the shelf. She managed to catch it with both hands, though the book fell open in the process, and nearly knocked her backwards on top of that. Out of curiosity, Phoenix looked down at the page it had managed to open to.
It was an entry about some guy named Edward Elric, that same guy she had been hearing so many people babble about since she had first come to Amestris. She still wasn't really sure what it was that this guy was so well known for, just that everybody thought he was amazing for some reason. She tried her best to skim over the page, though the words were tiny and gave her a headache. Apparently he was some sort of genius alchemist, though she was having trouble getting much more information that that. She flipped to the next page.
The next page was on a completely different subject. She frowned in frustration and flipped back to the Edward Elric page. If this guy was so important, why did he only have one page? He was practically a footnote in the huge book. Phoenix assumed that there had to be more mention of him later in the book, and started flipping through pages, looking to see any mention of his name.
She was in the middle of flipping through the section on the Ishvallan War (a much bigger section that Edward Elric, she noted, and he hadn't played any part in it) when she heard some screams from outside. She looked up from the book for a minute, then went back to her skimming with a shake of her head. She didn't want to get involved in some petty squabble. Probably some stupid idiots fighting over a girl and trying to prove who was the brawnier man, anyway. Not really something that was her place to interfere.
At least, that was the plan until she heard a gunshot ring out from outside. The loud sound made her drop her book, which only narrowly missed hitting her foot, and flipped open to the Edward Elric page again. Phoenix thought to herself that it was no wonder this city stunk so much with death if people were just randomly running around in the streets shooting one another. She hadn't seen that happen in any other city she had been in. Though the other cities hadn't been nearly so large. No to mention that she had no idea where she was in the city. Every city had a "bad" section, and she had always tried to stay out of them before today. But getting lost hadn't really been part of the plan, either.
Phoenix stood there quivering for a minute, locked in an inner battle. She knew that it wasn't her fault that the battle outside had started, and she was putting herself in danger if she got involved. But at the same time, she knew that someone out there could be dying, and she didn't want them to die just because she had refused to help. But she didn't want to die because she couldn't help herself. But she didn't want it to get worse just because she was being a lame little chicken.
In the end, her conscience won out, as was always the case, and as she had known she would end up doing. She went running from the bookstore and out in the street, leaving the book open on the floor to Edward Elric's entry. For all she had heard about Edward Elric, she still didn't know what he had done to get so famous, or even what the guy looked like.
The people outside were in pandemonium, but in the middle of everything was a man lying on his back, gasping for breath. His stomach was soaked and stained in red blood. Phoenix rushed towards the man.
"You're a real idiot, you know that?" she hissed as she rushed into a crouch beside him. "Though of course you are, you look like you're part of a gang. Only idiots join gangs."
While she talked, she bent over him and looked at his stomach. Thankfully, the bullet was close enough to the surface that she would be able to remove it. She grimaced at the thought. She wasn't real a big fan of getting up close and personal with blood. But, all the same, she reached out and pinched the bloody flesh. The man let out a yelp, but the bullet was poking out of the wound. Phoenix reached in and pulled it out. Her fingers were covered in his blood, but she decided it would probably be best to ignore that.
"You see this?" she said, shaking the bullet at the man. "Metal! That's why you're an idiot. I can only remove metal manually." He groaned at her. She wasn't really sure whether he was trying to argue with her, or tell her to just get on with whatever she was doing, or get on with letting him die. She rolled her eyes with a huff.
"Whatever, I'll fix you," she said, almost irritably. But, then again, she hadn't really wanted to get involved in the first place. She tossed the bullet to the side, and then clapped her hands together.
As she did, the teardrop shaped pendant around her neck started glowing in a bright electric blue. The man's face beneath her morphed into an expression of pure terror, but he was too wounded to move. And probably to shocked to make any sort of groaning noise like he had been doing before. Either way, Phoenix didn't notice him; her eyes were closed. She then put her hands to his wound, blood and all. Underneath her fingers, the skin started to stitch itself together, and the blood seemed to seep back into his skin. If it weren't for the hole in his shirt and the blood soaked into his clothes, it would have been easy to figure that he hadn't been shot at all.
When Phoenix pulled her hands away, the man scrambled to his feet and stepped a good yard and a half away from her. He had an expression on his face that seemed like a cross between horror and disgust.
"Get away from me, you... you... freak!" he spat. "Witch! Stay away!"
"Actually," Phoenix started, but before she could say more, he turned his back on her and ran into the panicked crowd. "Alchemist," she finished lamely. Phoenix huffed, and her bangs blew away from her face. "And you're welcome for saving your life!" she shouted after him as an afterthought.
"Ungrateful idiot," she muttered under her breath, sitting back on her heels.
She then heard the cocking of a gun against her head. She was able to duck only barely just in time. She did a somersault and ended up turned around to see a man pointed a gun at her. From the looks of it, he was from a rival gang of the man she had just saved. And he probably thought she was part of some gang other than his, and he therefore had to hurt her for helping the guy who was supposed to be dead. Gangs liked to be simple-minded like that sometimes. Phoenix wanted to roll her eyes, but decided it was more prudent to dart to her feet and slip into the crowd.
It wasn't the first time she'd ever had to deal with a life and death situation, thankfully, so she handled herself better than would normally be expected from someone her age. Especially considering how there was a man with a gun chasing her through a crowd that didn't have much more than two inches between everyone. She was hoping that the guy chasing her wasn't stupid enough to try and shoot her through the crowd, but she realized she was mistaken when she heard a gunshot and a cry of pain.
"Bastard," she muttered, glancing to see what had occurred from his gunshot. Thankfully, the person seemed to have only been shot in the arm. They would be able to recover from that without her intervention, but she knew that she would have to get out of the crowd if she wanted to avoid other people getting hurt needlessly. She glanced around and ended up darting into an alleyway on her left.
The alleyway was clear, but she didn't particularly like the idea of turning her back on the gunner to run. That seemed like it was just begging to get her shot in the back of the head. Instead, she turned around to face him, her fists raised in a defensive position.
When the man ran into the entrance of the alleyway to chase her, he laughed, obviously wondering how a couple fists were going to hold up against a gun. But Phoenix was ready. Before his finger even twitched on the trigger, she had clapped her hands together and formed a wall out of the ground. His bullet left a dent in it. Phoenix clapped her hands together again and jumped out in front of the wall.
As she held her hands out into the air, a single blue spark flew across her pendant, too small of a distraction for either her or the man from the gang to notice. Both he and her were too distracted with the huge bolt of lightning hit the ground next to the man, less that thee inches away from touching him. He yelped and fired his gun a second time on instinct.
Phoenix was only able to see his hair standing up on end for a split second before she felt her head jerk back with a shattering impact. If she had been able to see it any longer, she would have laughed at how ridiculous he looked. Then everything went black.
The next thing Phoenix knew was the taste of acidic metal in her mouth. She sat up with a groan and spat into her hand. A bullet landed in her palm along with a splatter of blood. She rolled her eyes in disgust and threw it to the side. More blood. It just wasn't her day. It seemed like it was her destiny to be constantly having to deal with blood when it made her sick just to look at it.
"I've got to work on my aim," she muttered, thinking back to the lightning bolt. It had been so close to him! If she hadn't had that extra three inches to the side, she would have gotten him, and not have the splitting headache that she did now. She pushed that thought out of her mind and then she looked down at her clothes. Her previously electric blue shirt was soaked in blood. She sighed irritably, pushed herself to her feet and clapped her hands together. A quick swipe and the shirt was back to being blue, thankfully. She smoothed her hair and got ready to go back into the crowd.
It was only then that she noticed a boy standing at the entrance to the alleyway, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. She opened her mouth in surprise, trying to come up with an excuse as to why she was standing there when she had been lying on the ground in a puddle of her own blood just moments before. But before she could even tell the boy to wait, he had run off into the crowd with a squeak, no doubt to go babbling to an adult.
Phoenix frowned and bit her lip. Sure, maybe the adults wouldn't believe him. Maybe they would. Or maybe they would just come to her for answers, and she sure didn't have any to give. It seemed it was time to go to another town. Again. She sure didn't want to be around when rumors of the immortal resurrecting girl spread around, and she sure didn't want to be questioned, and she definitely didn't want to end up put in jail, or worse, killed as some sort of test to see if she would live through it.
She pulled her hood up over her head, and with a quick glance around, had disappeared in the opposite way she had come.
Al sighed as he stared out the window of the train. Even when he had a normal body, there were far too many times where he wished he could just sleep, and no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't manage it. He was surprised how similar not having a body was to having a body sometimes. Even though he now had the ability to sleep, eat, and feel pain, so many times he found himself without the ability. Everybody else called it grief. He called it hell.
That was really what the past three years had been, trying to live without his brother around. It was all just one big waking hell. Winry tried to tell him how she understood, but he had snapped at her more than once over how no, she didn't, she just couldn't understand. She hadn't spent her life traveling around the country with Ed, doing everything with Ed, sharing every little happiness and sorrow with Ed. She hadn't even done that with her parents. She didn't know what it was like to lose someone who was so close to you that they hardly felt like a separate person.
And that was why Al was sitting on a train by himself, running from town to town, asking questions of random villagers about a girl wearing black and blue. She was his last hope, his only hope, and he had to somehow find her, even despite her annoying habit to constantly run from town to town.
He had first heard about her from a traveler in Reisenburgh. He had thought when he had heard the man refer to the girl as "the Phoenix" that it was some sort of legend, or even just a true story that had been blown out of proportion. He certainly hadn't expected that it was her name. And he certainly hadn't expected it when he found out that the man she had healed had been dead only moments before.
The more Al had dug into the legend of the Phoenix, the more he had found that there were cases of the same thing happening in all sorts of different cities. Someone was always near the brink of death or already dead, and then the Phoenix would swoop in and save the person. He had no idea how she was doing it, or even why, but it gave him hope. If she knew something about saving dead people, maybe she could help him. He felt silly pursuing a mission that had bitten him in the butt when he was a child, but he didn't know how he couldn't try. He needed his brother.
Granted, he hadn't heard any cases of her bringing back someone who had been dead for three years, but maybe she knew something about alchemy that he didn't. Maybe she somehow knew how to get around the laws. Maybe she knew how to somehow avoid the Gate.
Al sunk his head a little. The more he let himself think on the idea, the more ridiculous it sounded. He couldn't even bear to think what Ed would say if he had heard about his precious baby brother trying to go on a quest to bring back someone who was dead. Al wanted to think that if he somehow did manage to bring Ed back, he would nothing but grateful and understanding towards Al, but all the same, Al was ready to put up with a bit of lecturing in order to get his brother back. Ed would eventually realize that Al had needed to do it.
Al didn't really know why this strange girl named Phoenix had even gone to a city like Central, but it was the train that she had been seen getting on when she had left. And none of the small towns in between had heard anything of her. Either she had gone into a town not wearing black and blue and introduced herself under a different name, or she was somewhere in Central. Al was really hoping that she was somewhere in Central, though he had no idea how he was ever going to find her in such a large city. Maybe it was time to finally call in to Mustang with a favor, though Al hated to do it.
"Now approaching Central Station," a voice called out over the intercom. Al sighed in relief. Whether he found her in this city or not, he had been riding trains for a week straight since the last town, and it would be a welcome relief to stretch his legs. For that matter, there would be phones in the station, maybe now would be a good time to call Winry...
Al frowned. Winry didn't really understand why he was going on this "goose chase" to try and bring Ed back, and he couldn't seem to find a way to make her understand. The phone calls between them were usually a little tense. If Al was to be honest, he was mostly calling for Granny's sake. Even if he was legally and adult and responsible for himself, Granny was still his guardian and deserved to know where he was, and how he was doing.
The train started slowing down, and Al stood up, stretching his arms and legs out. A week of sitting on wooden benches was not comfortable at all, and he was looking forward to sleeping in an actual bed for once.
When he climbed off of the train, the first thing he heard was the noise. He remembered that Central Station had always been big and crowded, but he had forgotten just how big and crowded that was. He winced and stepped into the crowd, trying to hurry along so as not to bother anyone.
And that was when he saw it. It was just a flash of blue and black, but he had spent so long searching for blue and black that he couldn't miss it. She was here? Right at the train station? It was almost as if she had been waiting here to greet him. Al laughed, a cross between disbelief and relief and chased after the blue he had seen. It took all his thinking power to remember to hold on to his suitcase.
He thought that when he caught up to her that he would be sorely disappointed, that it would have been some other woman with a blue shirt, or maybe a dog with a bright collar, or god knows what else, but it was really, honestly her. The right age height, age, and even the blond hair he had heard about. He wasn't quite sure what to do. Call out to her and let her know that he knew who he was, or try and introduce himself as if he didn't know anything?
Before he had more time to think on his choices, however, she stepped onto a train. Al glanced up. It was leaving in five minutes. He had no time to make a choice. He had to either follow her on the train or risk losing her yet again.
Al groaned and climbed onto the train. So much for sleeping on a bed that night.
For the record, while I can still remember it, thank you everyone for all the reviews. I didn't expect nearly that amount of response with my short little prologue and my little OC Phoenix. I hope you guys all like her, I'm trying hard not to make her powers too ludicrous while still not taking away so much power as to make me unable to do the plot I'm planning on. So, hopefully, it works.