First off, I am so sorry for the late update guys. College is awesome but it is making me very busy. I'm really sad that I can't write as much as I used to be able to. I hope I can figure out some way that I can.

I have to thank cobaltelixir55 for part of her review referring to the "human transmutation." It helped inspire me to write a part of this chapter and explain some things.

Disclaimer: I do not own FMA.

Chapter 38

The team watched at the ambulance finally came and took both Roy and Riza with it. She had demanded to go with him, and something about Hawkeye was hard to refuse.

Only seconds after they had left, Armstrong made his way out to the floor along with the one called Greed, Al and Ed hurried back to where they had been watching, and the stands slowly began to calm. Everyone watched carefully as the two faced off just waiting for the signal for the fight to begin.

The moment the whistle was blown, they rushed at each other, ready to attack. What was strange was how Greed's body would almost turn to stone, or at least that was what it looked like, without him actually drawing a transmutation circle.

As Ed and Al watched the battle progress with the two constantly throwing punches at one another, Ed was confused by the alchemy Greed was performing. At first he had seen a red circle on the back of Greed's hands, and thought that it was a transmutation circle. As if he had tattooed a transmutation circle on himself just like Kimblee, but as the fight had continued, he had realized that it was the same tattoo that Lust had on her chest.

So if he wasn't using that for his transmutations, then how exactly was he doing them? And even if Ed ignored that, he also was confused by what he was doing being considered human transmutation. He might have just been making rock form over his skin, but then again, he had this feeling that wasn't what Greed was doing.

Thinking along those lines, Ed suddenly realized the same question could be asked about that Lust girl. She had made her fingers like bullets against Mustang, which seemed like a human transmutation as well, wasn't it? Then again it could be the dress that was changing not her fingers.

Something was different about these alchemists. Their alchemy wasn't normal. It almost seemed to break the rules, and that wasn't possible. The rules of alchemy couldn't be broken; humankind cannot gain anything without giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange.

What these students were doing now… it just didn't make sense.

All he did know for certain was that the winner of this match was only going to get a small win. It had been going on for so long that any chance of a large or even a medium win was impossible.

Finally the two alchemists came running at one another both ready to punch, but as their fists met, something no one had ever expected to happen occurred. Armstrong's brass knuckles shattered as his fist met up with Greed's rock hard fist.

For a moment it was as if time stood still as for once Armstrong seemed surprised and Greed smirked at his apparent advantage. Then before any other moves could be made, Greed grabbed the fist he had just collided with and tossed Armstrong over his head into the ground as if he was as light as a pillow.

Armstrong wasn't completely knocked out by the blow, but it would have taken him a little time to recover so it came as no surprised that the judge went ahead and ended the battle giving Greed a small win.

Since most of the audience was from their school, it groaned at the loss. Although the few fans from Ouroboros High School screamed with excitement over the win even if it had only been a small one.

The way it stood, the competition could go either way. One large win to one small win left a lot of opportunities open for each of the teams.

"Careful Al, these guys are weird," Ed warned his little brother as they helped Armstrong walk off the court. The big guy wasn't too damaged but still a little woozy from the match and had each of his arms around the brothers as they helped him to the place they watched the battles from.

Al smiled at his brother, trying to hide his worry, as he walked to the floor.

Up in the stands, Winry could feel Ella tense up beside her and she took a peek at her friend from the corner of her eye only to find that she was biting her lips hard and clasping her hands together so tightly that her knuckles were turning white.

It made sense though, during Armstrong's fight neither of them had worried too much about the man. He always just seemed to give off an incredible strength that said 'I can get hit and keep going.' The guy was solid, on the other hand, Al didn't have the same thing going for him.

Plus, Winry always thought of him like a little brother and Ella was his girlfriend, so it was to be expected that they were a bit more worried about him.

"Ella," Winry said snapping her fingers in front of the girl's face. She didn't like how stressed out and worried the girl seemed and wanted to try and stir her from her thoughts.

Ella immediately sat up straighter, eyes wide. "What?!" she said alarmed and worried.

Winry gave her a soft smile trying to reassure her friend, "Everything is going to be fine,"

Ella's shoulders visibly relaxed at her friend's statement and she turned back to watch Al walking out as she spoke again. "I'm just worried about him, these guys that they are going up against aren't like all the others," she said ringing her hands slightly.

Not knowing what to say, Winry just nodded in agreement. She had noticed it too, while all the other teams they had gone up against seemed to have some self preservation, these guys from Ouroboros High School didn't seem to care if they or someone else was hurt at all. It was unnerving.

When the whistle was blown for the next match to start, Ella and Winry couldn't help but jump slightly in surprise as the whipped their heads back to Al and his competition, Sloth.

The girl looked almost too old to be in high school and one might have assumed by her long dress that she wouldn't move too quickly. But as Al attacked, relentlessly punching and kicking, she moved so quick and fluidly that it was impossible for him to get a single blow on her.

Al and Ed were both not happy about the direction that the battle was taking. While Al was breathing hard from constant attacks, Sloth hadn't even tried to attack and hadn't even broken a sweat. Things weren't looking too good.

Just like all the other battles, raw materials had been placed around the gym, and so Al quickly located a suite of armor and began to run towards it. For the first time, Sloth attacked Al. He felt himself suddenly unable to move and looking down he found that some sort of water ropes were wrapped around him. Following them with his eyes, he realized what exactly they were.

Somehow, Sloth, seemed to be transmuting her own body into water, and seemed to be able to control and stretch these appendages to do her bidding. Al couldn't believe what she was doing. He was pretty sure that this had to be against human transmutation rules. It didn't make sense, and he didn't have time to figure it out because of the battle.

On the side lines, the same thoughts were rushing though Ed's head, as he surveyed his brother being dragged back towards his enemy. He wanted to shout something to his brother, but for the life of him, couldn't think of anything that might help.

Ella, had grabbed Winry's arm the moment that Sloth's arms had stretched out and grabbed her boyfriend, and now was holding her breath as Al began to panic slightly. Winry had to remind both herself and Ella to breathe, or else they were going to pass out.

What can I do? What can I do? What can I do? ran over and over in Al's head as he slowly began to lose his progress towards one of the suits of armor in the room. He struggled as much as he could, but nothing seemed to make her loosen her grip on him, her arms just moved with his body.

In most instances he wouldn't have gotten so panicky, but after witnessing both Armstrong and Mustang's battles, he knew that this girl wasn't going to have any mercy on him and there was no telling what she might do. Slightly terrified of what was happening, Al began to grab at the water-like ropes and started to pull at them wishing that they would just dissolve or something.

Next thing he knew, a bright flash filled the gym followed by an awed silence. However, Al didn't seem to notice only concentrating on how constraints around him began to weaken to the point that he was able to rush right though them and away from Sloth. Looking back at his opponent, he found what everyone was dumbfounded by.

Something that he had done, had caused Sloth's arms to begin to glow a faint greenish color, and as it began to spread up her arms, she had in fact severed the affected part off and pulled away from Al as quickly as possible, while watching astonished as what had been her arms began to evaporate into the air.

Al noticed that thankfully, when she had pulled away from him and reverted back to her original form with no aqueous parts, she was whole still despite the loss of some of herself.

As he darted towards the closest suit of armor, it hit Al exactly what had just happened. He had finally managed to do a transmutation without a circle. When he hadn't been able to like his big brother after the car crash, they had started to think that maybe Al hadn't been close enough to death for him to be able to do such transmutations. But after what had just occurred, he knew now that he was capable of such alchemy, even if he didn't know how to control it… yet.

Now wasn't the time to think about different transmutations though. Now was the time to concentrate on the battle at hand, and think of a way to defeat this Sloth girl. However, things weren't looking too much in his favor. He couldn't evaporate her entire body, that was sure to be against the rules, and even if he was allowed to, he wasn't that sure that he could do another transmutation without a circle. After all, now he didn't have a clue how he had managed to do it, it had more just been instinct.

It was pretty obvious to him that there wasn't a way for him to knock the strange girl unconscious and that he was going to have to go with another method of defeating her. Capturing your opponent was no easy task though. He was going to have to think quickly and be creative with it.

For the moment, he decided that concentrating on one of his Armor fighters would have to do because he needed something to distract her while he thought. Once next to one of the armors, he quickly drew his signature transmutation circle with a small piece of chalk from his pocket.

None too soon, a liquid arm flung out making Al jump back and away from his now fully activated armor. While he began to dodge, his armor went on the offensive and began to punch back at Sloth, causing her to revert back to her liquid form constantly?

Al might have felt like he was actually doing some kind of damage to Sloth, but when she suddenly seeped into his armor he knew that he was in trouble. Suddenly, he found himself fighting against his own armor. This wasn't good.

Al nimbly jumped and dodged all of his assailant's attacks, but he knew that the longer this went on, the slower he was going to get and the chances of him being able to trap Sloth were going to get smaller and smaller.

If only there was some way to freeze time and just be able to think straight. Freeze… that was it. Without another moment's hesitation, Al changed his tactic of getting away from Sloth, to coming straight at her. Making a few rounds around the armor dodging most of her blows, he managed to draw a useable transmutation circle on the armor.

The moment it was complete, he activated it breathing heavily from the fight. The armor's movements immediately began to slow and eventually came to a complete stop as it begun to freeze over.

Within minutes, Al stepped back to admire his work. He smiled slightly as he turned to the audience looking for Ella, to give her a reassuring smile.

A few small gasps came from the crowd, but Al didn't notice, as he was too busy looking for his girlfriend. "AL LOOK OUT!!" a voice screamed from the stands that he would recognize anywhere.

It was unlike Ella to be shouting such things, so he took heed to her advice and ducked while whipping around knowing already to expect the worst.

However his expectations weren't as bad as what truly was happening. Somehow, Sloth had managed to heat back up her body and was able to move once again. But instead of just attacking Al like she had in the past, she had decided rather, just to take over Al. Therefore, she was drowning him.

He hadn't been able to get a good breath of air before his supply of oxygen had been cut off by his competitor. Try as he might, there was no way for him to simply swim out of her and get to air once again, so it was no wonder that his movements began to slow down as he started to lose consciousness. However, Sloth didn't show any signs of letting him go even if he passed out.

"STOP IT!!" Ella screamed from the stands as fresh tears began to stream down her face. She was being held back by Winry so that she couldn't run down the stands to Al. Not because Winry didn't want her to be with Al, but because she was afraid that Ella might be purposely hurt by Sloth out of spite.

Ella's scream seemed to wake up most of the people watching the match who had gone dumbstruck at the sight before them. Quickly a whistle was blown as a judge frantically ran to the floor along with a few refs demanding for Sloth to put down Mr. Elric at once.

For a split second, it almost seemed like she was going to tell him no and continue to kill Al, but then she shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly before pulling away from the boy letting him fall to the floor coughing and spluttering.

Completely annoyed, the judge announced though clenched, teeth Sloth's small win. The audience went up in a great roar filling the gym with a mixture of cheers and protests about what had just happened. However, the judge didn't seem to really care what the audience was saying and instead was walking with Sloth as she headed back to her seat, yelling at her about what she had just done and how it had not only been wrong as well as against the rules.

At the same time, Ella rushed along with Winry close behind, to where Ed was already sitting with Al who was still coughing up water in the middle of the gym floor.

The thing about Al being able to do transmutations without circles, I mentioned that back in Chapter 5 before, in case you were wondering, yeah it was a long time ago so just reminding you guys.

Announcements: I have started another fma mutichapter fic. "The White Soul Alchemist" I'm very excited about it and I hope you guys all read it. It is from Ella's point of view which could be interesting, and it's definitely EdxWinry and AlxElla. Well, I feel like I'm advertising here, but oh well because I am excited about it. Oh and updates for this are going to be few and far apart until Full Metal High School is completely done.

Also I made an EdxWinry Oneshot the other day (it's the reason why I was so late on this chapter, it got in my head and wouldn't leave me alone until I finished it) So if you like oneshots I would say you might want to check it out. It's called "Not You"

These are completely optional, I'm not going to force you to do anything because let's face it, it's not like I could. I hope you read my other stuff, but oh well if you don't. Anyway…

Keep writing!

FFG- Jo