Authers note: the scene decends onto a bedroom with light seeping In though a gap in the curtains, coffee mugs lay on a clustered desk under which is a tower computer case containing a quad core cpu and an nvidia gt 440 series graphics processing unit, suddenly the computer switches on and a strawberry blond haired figure that was laying in the bed opens one eye "its been a looong time, how have you been?"
"insert disclaimer from the last few chapters here"
Chapter four: in which Ed goes into the forest
Edward ran as fast as he could ignoring the voice of twilight yelling behind him and was soon surrounded in the green florescent trees just ending there cycle of photosynthesis due to the setting sun stopping the chlorophyll in the leaves from reacting with the uv rays from the sun which if this was the case and they were still reacting would have created starch and also made oxygen as a by-product, but Edward had little time to think of such long winded and currently pointless thoughts despite this act of photosynthesis being the very thing that helped keep every oxygen breathing creature in this world alive, for his brother had been captured as well as that yellow winged horse that was with him..what was her name...oh yeah fluttershy that was it.
After Edward almost got spotted by a manticore that was eating what Ed saw to be a mutilated bunny, he decided to slow down and follow the footprints more carefully,
after a while of walking he noticed how weird it felt to walk in his new horse body, before he was just using his front limbs to push himself across the bed and force himself into a somewhat comfortable sitting position and even then it felt weird with the lack of fingers and toes.
As he was walking the cold grass tickled at his hooves creating an odd sensation, more so on his bandaged front left hoof as he dragged it along the ground with each step and his automale leg tingling slightly due to the cold.
After thinking about how weird his body felt Eds thoughts drifted to Al and how he was coping with his new body, with all the changes that had happened to him since that day he must be pretty shook up considering his soul was transferred to a suit of armour he wasn't able to eat or sleep or feel anything for years and now that he had a body again it was in the form of a horse, then again it couldn't be all bad for him could it? he could eat and sleep again and al always liked animals, plus he had wings so that was a bonus.
Eds thoughts were suddenly interrupted when he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him "come out I know your there" Edward said calmly before the head of twilight popped out of a bush followed by the rest of her body, she turned to Edward and said "why did you run off like that? I could have got my friends to help you" Ed turned around and slowly started walking with twilight following "i don't work well with large groups of people I'm not familiar with" he said as they continued walking the pearly moonlight shining against their coats, twilight looked at him with a slightly angry but sad expression "you don't have to do everything alone you know" she said,
"i know that, I just need to be able to trust whoever is helping me" he replied as the trees began spacing out slowly as they walked, "do you trust me?" twilight asks and gets a slight smirk from Edward in return "they took your friend too didn't they? So it looks like we'll have to" he replied as they entered a clearing.
The clearing was eerily devoid of life with the only sound being the wind blowing through the trees,
the burning smell was at its peak and the ground was covered in ash "what happened here? Theres way too much ash for just a camp fire and its spread all over" twilight said as she looked at the ash covered ground, Edward lifted his hoof up and inspected the ash that had collected on his hoof noticing glistening specks scattered about the ash "diamond..but why? There needs to be pressure for carbon to atomize this way naturally.." Edward wondered out loud "what are you talking about?" twilight asked and Edward turned to look at her before replying "carbon is what diamonds are made from, if you burn something under intense pressure and in the right way the carbon atoms kind of stack onto each other so they can't move easily, that's why diamonds are so hard" he anwered before frowning and looking at the ground "but this doesn't make sense there's not nearly enough heat or pressure created in a camp fire for that kind of reaction" he looked up to see a confused looking twilight "carbon? You mean this black ash is an element?" she asked before looking at him with suspicion "hay how do you even know about chemical elements anyway? They were only discovered around 4 years ago and are still a very advanced science subject even in canterlot!"
she asked as she watched Ed retrieve a non ash covered stick from the edge of the clearing and draw a circle followed by another smaller circle inside the first and then one diagonal square followed by a straight square inside the first "where I come from elements and atoms are almost common knowledge, you could walk into a book store from almost any town and buy a periodic table of elements" Ed said before placing both hooves on the outside of the circle which then began to glow with a white light "this is a transmutation circle in case your wondering, right now I'm using it to check the composition of this ash" Edward said and twilight closed her mouth, after a few seconds Edward spoke again "lets see, there's carbon but no cellulose or lignin so it can't be wood that burned so then what did th-" Edward gasped and the light from the transmutation circle faded before he whispered in a fearful voice "iron." suddenly Ed started slamming on the ground with his good hoof scattering ash onto his chest and front legs "shit!shit!SHIT!" he yelled as he looked ahead with his eyes blazing in anger "hay calm down! What's so bad about iron?" twilight asked slightly worried "iron is one of the ingredients in blood, those sick freaks have been burning living creatures to try and turn the carbon in there bodies to diamond!" Edward explained his voice dripping with venom, twilight looked at him for a second, her pupils shrunk as a result of shock "no, no that can't be! Nothing could ever be so selfish enough to do-" she stopped speaking as she noticed an object under her front hoof, she lifted it to examine the object and gasped in horror, underneath her hoof was the charred but unmistakable form of a rabbits leg bone.
Twilight couldn't stop her self and soon the ground in front of her was covered in vomit, twilight kept vomiting till her stomach was empty before looking up with eyes full of tears "how? How the hay can we save them from something like that, something which does not see any value in anothers life except for there body?! Fluttershy and Al are gonna die and there's nothing I can do!, through her blurred vision she saw the red shape of Edward move towards the circle from earlier, there was a flash of light and then she felt a hoof wipe the tears from her checks "I know your upset by this but we need to keep moving, fluttershy and Al could be in trouble and need our help" Edward said to twilight as she slowly stopped crying "but how can we win? What could two ponies do against something that would burn us to ash if it had the chance?" she croaked and ed bent down so he was eye level with her "you've got four good legs, so get up and use them to do what you need to, if we let ourself s drown in self doubt then we will only ever wonder why we did nothing when there were ones who needed us" he said in a low but firm voice and twilight looked at the ground for a few moments before looking towards the footprints made from ash leading out of the clearing, blazing anger in her eyes "how dare they, HOW DARE THEY! If anything thinks it can break down MY library door and scatter MY books all over the floor then steal MY friends then they've got another thing coming! I'll show them what happens when they mess with the student OF THE PRINCESS!" she said as she stomped onwards following the footprints.
Edward followed slightly worriedly after seeing her with anger rivalling teachers and while he didn't show it he was terribly worried about Al.
Meanwhile about a kilometre away from Ed and Twilight in a clearing:
around four diamond dogs currently guarded a flimsy cage crudely constructed with vines and branches, inside the cage two pegasi where cuddled up together trying to keep warm in the cold and damp environment that was the forest, fluttershy was shaking and scared, when they where being taken to the cage fluttershy saw a pit surrounded by wooden spikes the bottom covered in some black substance, she didn't know why but when she was carried near it she got a feeling of fear, not just the normal fear when she saw something large or foreign to her, it was as if she was so scared she just wanted to give up all hope, she knew she had to be strong to comfort Al, he was so young and childlike in innocence when she looked after him while Ed was asleep and she never wanted to let someone like that feel what she felt when she looked at that pit.
After a while she felt a boiling feeling in her stomach, she recognized this feeling from a time before twilight and spike arrived in ponyville when she learned to be assertive, it felt great at first no one pushing her around but she got a little too into it and ended up being worse than the ponies that pushed her around to begin with, and when pinkie pie and rarity tried to stop her she couldn't believe it! Her friends wanted her to go back to being a push over, they didn't like it now that fluttershy could fight back, she remembered yelling at them telling quite bluntly that they would never amount to anything, she felt so bad about it that she locked her self in her home and refused to pay the fee for being taught how to be assertive because it didn't help her and only made things worse.
She wondered who she could be hating, maybe twilight? After all if she had been downstairs with her she would have been able to fight off the dimand dogs...no she couldn't pin this on twilight, this was her fault, she should have tried to fight and protect Alphonse but she was so scared and useless that she could only watch as they were both snatched up! And now they were stuck in a cage and she was still acting useless, and now she couldn't even put on a brave face for Alphonse! She was supposed to keep him comfortable and now look at him smiling away in terror, oh fluttershy why are you so..so...wait what?.
Alphonse was sitting there with a calm expression on his face, despite the danger they were in his eyes were full of optimism and fluttershy felt tears forming around her eyes, why couldn't she be brave for once? Why couldn't she be like rainbow dash and twilight?
"please don't cry" fluttershy looked up and saw Alphonse looking at her with concern in his eyes as fluttershys tears hit the floor of the cage "I envy you" she croaked "why can you be strong when I'm a nervous wreck? Why can't I be the brave one for once?!" she sobbed as she lay down flat on the floor of the cage.
"you don't have to be brave, to tell you the truth I'm terrified but that doesn't matter because I have someone I have someone to believe in who I know won't let me down" he said with a smile.
Fluttershy looked up with tears still in her eyes and sniffed "really?" she asked
"yeah, Ed may not think everything through sometimes but he has never let me down in all my life, when we were younger we where in an accident and I nearly died, but Ed risked his life to bring me back even when we both had nothing to return to, now I'm just glad I feel him every day and see that he is still alive and well" Alphonse explained, "but how do I do that? How can I be strong when I feel like such a coward?" she asked,
"well you said that you managed to stop that dragon from hurting your friends right?"
al asked "well yes but that was because my friends where in danger, and besides I don't really like it when that happens, its like somepony else is in my mind and I'm always afraid i'll hurt somepony else" she replied and al smiled "well there you go then, just believe in the fluttershy that your friends believed in when you stopped that dragon" he said, fluttershy looked at the ground for a while, her tears now gone completely, her face then turned to one of determination "your right" she said.
Meanwhile on another planet far far away but in the same time frame, around 10 am to be exact, a perfect time for coffee and toast..ok I'll stop talking now:
Roy mustang sat at his desk, munching on toast, his elbows resting on the desk and after swallowing he exhaled through his nose and then gave the desk a kick and then placed the the toast on the plate.
After a while he sighed "riza are you going to stand there all day or come in?" he asked followed by a yelp outside his office and the sound of the door opening, the sound of leather squeaking on the floor filled Roy's ears getting louder and louder before stopping "you wanted to speak with me sir?"
he heard a voice full of seriousness say, roy nodded "its about fullmetal and his brother. I think there still alive" he said and the sound of boots shuffling slightly filled the air "sir with all due rispect its been almost two days and nothing has appeared in the transmutation array, I miss them too but don't you think its possible that Ed couldn't find something to trade for Alphonse and ended up being killed by the rebound?" riza asked "thats exactly what I think is impossible riza" replied Roy.
"sir?" risa asked in a questioning manner "alchemy's law of equivalent exchange always applies, its the reason why you can't completely destroy something with alchemy, you can break it down into atoms of equal number to what you used as material but you can't make something completely dissapear, its the same with a failed human transmutation, you may not have a living human but something must happen to the base material, most often its a vessel unable to support life with the heart and lungs fused together, and sometimes the legs are formed, in very rare cases an actual vessel is created, which if kept under constant medical care can remain functioning but still will obviously lack a soul. After Eds transmutation there was nothing no atoms, no body, no Ed and Al being perfectly fine, absolutely NOTHING" he said before leaning back in his chair and placing his palm on his forehead "so if they can't be destroyed completely is it possible they were transported somewhere else?" riza asked "that's exactly what I think lieutenant, and I plan to find out where they are".
Authers notes: sorry for the ridiculus two mounth wait but I think I have an idea of what's actually going to happen and what the story will involve, also I got my maths test results back and I passed so yay for me no more triangulation sums, now if only I had some simple questions on hexadecimal because I actually understand that anyway I hope you guys are happy with this, d-4=9