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CHAPTER 7:
THEIR RESPECTIVE DREAMS
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Lan Fan continued leaning against the wall outside of Imperial Princess May Chang's room, the light of the near end of dusk shining through the windows of the hallway in the hospital, cradling her still aching left shoulder.
It was still throbbing with horrific silvery shrieking ropes and sheets and pulses and throbs of anguish after how terribly she'd strained it yesterday when keeping the Young Lord from falling into the moat around Central Command.
For all the good it had done him.
He'd had a Stone inside himself then and could repair his wounds, no matter how bad they were, unlike Wrath.
And he knew how to swim.
He wouldn't have been in that much trouble if he'd fallen into the moat with Wrath.
And if he had, maybe then he would have been the one to finish Wrath off, and not May, and imperiled the standing that they'd gain in the Xingese imperial court when they returned to Xing, and revealed that she and the Young Lord had let a belligerent warmonger, who was a potential threat to Xing, escape from revolutionaries who they'd been assisting in removing him from power.
And they were forced to confess to the Emperor's ambassadors to the Yao clan that she had just cut off a single one of her arms to enable the Young Lord to escape from him because she'd dragged him down protecting her and thus obliterated his ability to fulfill every single last single solitary one of his dreams and promises to Fu, the Yao clan, his imperial father, the rest of the people of Xing, and her when he very likely might have been able to fatally strike down Wrath himself then, even with Gluttony backing Wrath up.
While May Chang, Princess of the Chang clan, had cut off both of her two arms to fatally defeat Wrath, and remove the potential threat that his belligerence, as well as that of his Homunculi family and the other core members of the former Amestrian government, posed to Xing.
That they still had a Stone meant nothing now.
May would now gain the throne.
The Young Lord's dreams had all been destroyed, Grandfather had died protecting the Young Lord when Lan Fan hadn't been at his side to do so right in front of Lan Fan's eyes as she arrived before and above the confrontation, around five hundred thousand members of the Yao clan were going to fall into destitution, and the Young Lord wasn't going to be able to bring about the future for Xing that he wanted to see it grasp and create a happier, more prosperous Xing.
And it was all Lan Fan's fault.
Even if she tried to kill May once again and succeeded, most or all of the revolutionaries knew what May had done by now.
Whether Lan Fan cut May down while she was crippled and vulnerable made no difference.
She herself wouldn't attain the throne, but word must have already begun to spread.
So the Yao Clan wouldn't, and everything that they'd struggled so long and through so many terribly painful hardships for would come to fully nothing.
Yet even now, the evening of the day after she'd erased everything that the Young Lord had fought for endlessly and forever beyond all hope of recovery, she couldn't think of a good way to die serving him.
Lan Fan wasn't leaning against the wall outside of the future Empress May Chang's hospital room trying to think of a way to successfully kill her this time.
She was trying to think of a way to surrender the struggle for the throne to her effectively enough to convince her to protect at least a minority of the Young Lord's, and Grandfather's, dreams when she told the imperial ambassadors to the Chang clan what she'd done, and not throw the Yao clan into destitution then, as well.
The door opened, and the newly promoted Colonel Hawkeye stepped out, followed by Colonel Mustang, then Major General Armstrong, and lastly, Doctor Knocs, who Colonel Mustang had specifically phoned after the battle was over because he knew that he'd want to treat May once more, and that doing so might further restore his confidence in his abilities as a doctor.
Doctor Knocs didn't know how much of an idiot he was.
As remorseless and ruthless and inconsiderate and degrading to the dead as it was to mistreat dead corpses, those people had already been dead.
He'd had no reason at all, whatsoever, in any fashion, form, way, or shape to lose confidence in his abilities as a doctor because he'd ruined people who were already dead.
He wasn't a quack because he'd experimented on corpses without them first donating their bodies for that experimentation.
He was a quack because he'd given up on treating the living for no reason other than that.
Doctors gave medical treatment to, not the dead, but the living.
As one of her last acts before she died, Lan Fan would see Knocs' family returned to him, if she needed to stride to wherever his wife and son lived and threaten them into returning to him at knife point.
She understood that Knocs was more involved in their separation than they were, because he'd pushed them away due to his idiotic clueless guilt.
But Grandfather and she had kept an eye on Knocs once they'd returned to Central, to see if he'd regained any confidence in himself now, and in the event that the Homunculi and the Amestrian government, or the Young Lord, tried to silence him through murder or abduction so that they'd be in a position to try to protect him.
She'd heard him talk on the phone to his son a few times about how his son wanted to be a doctor.
She'd heard his son say that he believed that what his father had done was as horrible as Knocs believed that it was, though he believed that Knocs was taking his sins too hard.
That meant that Knocs' wife might feel the same way.
Just thinking of it caused Lan Fan to want to throw up.
Knocs' family was abandoning Knocs and betraying his love and trust and faith and belief in them every second.
While the people of Archonkaw, the town where Marcoh had hid in plain sight, had accepted him when he'd hid in plain sight there near a major railway even though, from how he'd secluded himself from them, they must have known that he'd done something very bad that he felt very guilty about, because they'd seen that Marcoh was willing to try to repent for his sins by serving the people there as a true doctor.
Lan Fan was revolted with Knocs abandoning and betraying and forsaking and deserting his duties and responsibilities as a doctor merely because he'd hurt people who were already dead.
Marcoh hadn't let being a quack to the living keep him from refusing to almost fully give up, and even when he'd deserted the Amestrian military he'd continued to use his skills as a doctor to provide medical treatment to the livng.
But Knocs' son, and very likely his wife, were measurelessly indescribably incomprehensibly infinitely worse.
They'd abandoned and betrayed their father, and someone who they loved and were supposed to protect and cherish and care for, for sins that he'd barely committed.
They were the ones who Lan Fan wanted to cut down, though she knew better than to do so.
As well as, so infinitely that how endless it was couldn't even be defined by saying that it couldn't be defined, herself.
She'd have already done so, as soon as she'd learned what May had done, if she hadn't known that she at least needed to try to love and care for and protect and cherish the Young Lord one last time through her death; even though she was almost certain that that would turn out as pointless and worthless and meaningless and hopeless and as for nothing and as in vain and as useless and as futile, as every single other one of her efforts to do so since Grandfather had taught her her responsibility to serve him to the best of her ability when she'd still been beginning to learn how to walk, had been.
"You still haven't told me precisely how the awesome girl got herself hurt so badly this time," Knocs was saying to Colonel Mustang as they walked farther down the hall to Lan Fan's right.
Lan Fan wanted to know that herself.
"I get that she was desperate, but you haven't yet told me why."
"The late Bradley took her as a hostage to try to blackmail Van Hohenheim into taking his eclipse transmutation circle apart," Colonel Mustang replied.
What was Hohenheim's eclipse transmutation circle?
"Unknown to Wrath at the time, Hohenheim could have done by convincing the participants in it to not drive it on willingly, and Hohenheim knew this, and he might have chosen to do so to keep May alive if she hadn't given up her arms to kill Bradley."
Lan Fan clenched her teeth so tightly that she was certain that they would chip, and fisted both her automail hand and flesh hand so tightly that the nails of her flesh hand broke her right palm bloody, and doing so strained the insides of her automail and caused them to send new horrific pain shrieking through her shoulder and body.
Lan Fan closed her eyes and lost herself in the silvery sheets and ropes and throbs and pulses of agony with a blissful, euphoric smile.
That gave her an idea.
She couldn't commit suicide, but she could at least cut herself each day from now on because of what she'd done, and hadn't done.
Princess May had specifically protected someone when she'd killed Wrath?
"I'll go into detail about that later," Colonel Mustang continued.
"What you need to know for now is that that was the transmutation circle that undid the Amestrian Philosopher's Stone that you and most of the people of Amestris had been reconstructed as ingredients for."
Lan Fan and existence and reality and the memory of and certainty that there were concepts of them disappeared completely, if they'd once existed in the first place.
"Greed was there, as well, so she did it to protect Prince Ling and Greed."
Whatever they were, or whatever they and were and were were, they hadn't existed, whatever they and hadn't and existed were.
Lan Fan pushed away from the wall and turned to open the door to the future Empress May Chang's room and stride inside.
She heard Knocs bite off a furious curse of irritation, anger, and frustration.
"Excuse me, Colonel," he said. "I need to talk to Lan Fan about something that we've discussed before."
Lan Fan ignored him, though she kept her guard up in the event that he tried to strike her once more.
He could think what he wanted.
She wasn't heading in here to assault May this time.
She was heading in here to cut her other arm, and then both of her legs, in front of May, and enjoy the pain of doing so as much as possible as she did it and afterwards, in an almost certainly futile effort to grovel before May and beg her not to hurt the Young Lord, the Yao clan, or the rest of Xing when she gained the throne that Lan Fan knew was now May's completely and totally and wholly and fully and absolutely and utterly and definitely and certainly and unconditionally beyond the barest faintest most tattered most microscopically thin flicker.
May was sitting up in bed, looking at Lan Fan, and she assumed a guard position.
Lan Fan ripped her mask off of her face as viciously and savagely as possible, and hurled it with as much unrestrained and undiluted potency and force and power and strength as she could call upon with her right hand into the far corner of the room to her left, farthest from her, while losing herself in the new silvery shrieking throbs and pulses and ropes and sheets of agony with a blissful, euphoric smile.
"You needn't worry, Your Imperial Majesty."
She sent her curved automail blade out of its sheath on the outside of her left automail arm.
"I'm not here to hurt you."
The click of a trigger being moved into ready position sounded from right behind Lan Fan's left shoulder, and she stiffened.
"Retract your sword, or I will shoot you in the back of your left shoulder," Colonel Hawkeye warned her in no uncertain terms from behind her.
Lan Fan clenched her teeth so tightly she didn't know why they didn't chip this time.
Of course it would be Hawkeye, and not Knocs, who tried to talk her out of what someone saw as doing something that he or she believed to be wrong this time.
She should have seen this coming, and not just anticipated Knocs following her.
She tuned in to the stream of chi, and felt no one else in the room; and now that she was paying attention, the air was shifting in such a way that she knew that Hawkeye had shut the door behind her, so that no one walked by and saw her gun aimed at Lan Fan and misunderstood what was going on.
In addition, Lan Fan could just feel someone else standing on the other side of the closed door, most likely Knocs further ensuring that no one saw them.
Of course.
What could Lan Fan have believed that she'd accomplish by trying to do this other than to abandon and betray and desert and leave and fail and hurt and stab in the back and shoot in the back the Young Lord and Grandfather once more?
Lan Fan barked a single, harsh, bitter, broken, chapped, cracked laugh.
"You're one to talk," she mocked the other woman, who was just as devoted to her superior as she was. "Look at what you did to Mustang by not shooting Walvan."
"All soldiers must learn to grow," Hawkeye responded, her tone masking whatever she was feeling. "We make mistakes, and we don't give up because of them, we move forward, and we try to do a better job protecting the people who we're sworn to in the future.
"The same matters are true for any people who fight to protect others in any way, ruler, superior officer, species, race, position, status, religion, ethnicity, nation, gender, name, belief, family member, romantic loved one, or friend.
"You should know that more than almost anyone by now."
Lan Fan laughed derisively.
"Spare me the flowery speech," she sneered with furious bitter self hatred and derision. "Amestrians don't know all the right answers any more than the Chang clan does."
"No single person knows all the right answers," Hawkeye responded, tone still a mask. "There's no one morality or Truth. War and other conflicts are just separate paths to the same destination of respective dreams and happinesses. Wars and conflicts are the true enemy, not one or another side in a war or another form of conflict."
"So what?" Lan Fan asked back. "Peace or war, difference or position, that doesn't change what I did to the Young Lord."
"Then change it," Hawkeye said. "Don't try to hurt yourself, now or at any other time."
May's eyes widened in shock and anguish and horror and terror that were among the very last matters that she should possibly be feeling.
"Don't look for a place to die serving him.
"Don't try to commit suicide.
"But even if you do try to pull any of those stunts, I won't let you be successful."
Lan Fan opened her mouth to tell Colonel Hawkeye to do her worst, but May spoke before she could.
"There's no need for that," May said quickly.
"I'm in a position to do so now, so I'm going to surrender the throne to Prince Ling under the condition that he provide support to the Chang clan."
Undiluted, unrestrained, blinding, sheer hatred and fury and rage and anger and revulsion and repugnance and sickness and disgust surged through all of Lan Fan's nonexistent non real self and all of nonexistent unreal reality.
Now she was going to murder May at the first chance that she had the opportunity.
"Pot. Kettle. Black," she snarled with fully unrestrained vicious savagery at May.
"You have no justification to tell me not to do something that you believe is stupid when you're determined to abandon and betray and desert and leave your own clan."
Shao May appeared from between the covers and the lower bedsheet between May and Lan Fan and growled with her own unrestrained hate and fury at Lan Fan, but Lan Fan ignored it.
May went deathly white, and tears appeared in her eyes and spilled down her face.
"That's precisely why we know how you feel," Hawkeye said, her voice still hiding how she felt.
Lan Fan barked another single bitter, harsh laugh.
"You can't lead a nation with nothing more than feelings," Lan Fan responded.
"The Young Lord, Grandfather, and I learned that lesson the hard way.
"That's true," Hawkeye answered. "But we can at least understand our fellows, and the people who it's our responsibility to protect and guide, if we pay attention to how they feel, and how we do ourselves."
"That's ludicrously idealistic," Lan Fan responded. "A country isn't a playground. I'm not agreeing with Wrath and the former government, but if you don't embrace your own hardship in every potential way, you'll be no more able to protect the people who you're sworn to serve and advise than if you wage war and promote intolerance."
"That's one of the core problems with that mindset," Colonel Hawkeye responded.
"I didn't realize that until I learned twice that, if I make a choice similar to yours, I'd cause the Colonel himself more hardship."
"If that's so, why are you here, and not at Mustang's side trying to coordinate the search for Wrath's father before he depopulates any residential areas and not just the farms that he has so far, or ensuring that things in Central settle down; or, now that you two don't need to worry about your position under Mustang being seen as favoritism, out on a date with him?"
"I could ask you the same about Prince Ling, in all of those ways," Hawkeye said back, voice completely unaltered by the revelation that Lan Fan knew how she felt about Colonel Mustang.
Lan Fan responded in kind.
"Because I'm not the Young Lord's equal, or near equal, unlike you and Mustang."
The familiar self hatred and fury and guilt and agony and despair washed whatever was and wasn't her and existence and reality away.
"I'm not like you and the Colonel, or Havoc or Falman or Fuery or Breda.
"Even before you were promoted to Colonel, you were comrades in arms.
"I'm just the Young Lord's retainer and servant.
"I'll never be able to watch his back or side as the six of you are sworn to do for each other, and one another."
"You're wrong," Hawkeye continued to argue.
Lan Fan tried to cause her teeth to chip when she clenched them this time, even though she knew that she couldn't.
Would Hawkeye just shut up with her hypocritical flowery ideals already!?
"I don't love and protect and cherish and fight at the side of the Colonel because I was assigned to him as his subordinate officer.
"I fell in love with him when he learned alchemy under my late father, Berthold Hawkeye, and joined the military and remained with it specifically to watch his back and side."
Whatever was left, if anything, of Lan Fan and existence and reality and knowledge of them, or even if there were such things or memories of them, wholly faded right away.
"Then that's even more reason that you have no idea how I'm feeling right now," Lan Fan snarled with insides distorting and contorting and twisting and sickening despair and self hatred and guilt and fury and rage and anger and bitterness.
That meant that she'd abandoned and betrayed and deserted and left behind and let down and failed and stabbed in the back and shot in the back the Young Lord and Grandfather from the instant of her soul's inception, far less her birth.
She hadn't even had the opportunity to meet the Young Lord and choose to devote and commit herself to him unconditionally.
She'd been born sworn to do so.
"Now who believes that she has all the right answers?" Hawkeye spoke back.
"Stop repeatedly telling me that I don't understand you when you haven't even finished hearing me out."
"Then hurry up and end your oblivious flowery inspirational military speech to encourage your soldiers with an officer's trite rhetoric," Lan Fan rejoined. "It won't change a thing. Leadership and service and differences and equality and positions and feelings are all the same, whether we fight for others or for ourselves.
"Tomb rocks of rejection and hardship that the rapids of the river of chi will just sweep up and smash and grind against each other and one another until they're powder or dust.
"The stones and flowers themselves aren't fools who don't know the truth.
"No matter how beautiful the flowers are that we buy or put in bouquets or give them to others or plant them, or how many times we buy them or give them to others or put them in bouquets or plant them, someone will always come along and incinerate them."
"Leadership and service, and differences and equality, can't change the world or a nation, and create a better tomorrow," Hawkeye agreed.
Lan Fan just let Hawkeye blather on.
"But shared dreams can.
"And, whatever our species, whatever our race, whatever our nationality, whatever our ethnicity, whatever our culture, whatever our civilization, whatever our political status, whatever our economic status, whatever our social status, whatever our learning, whatever our rank, whatever our position, whatever our gender, whatever our name, whatever our beliefs; whether we're politicians or officers, or soldiers or civilians, or leaders or servants, or teachers or students, or brothers or sisters, or parents or children, or significant others, or friends; we all share the same dream.
"A happy present and tomorrow.
"All that we need to do is recognize that there is no such thing as superiors or subordinates, or masters or servants, and that people are just people.
"Then our feelings can enable us to work together to continue or change the world, and realize a shared dream."
To Lan Fan's complete and total and full and whole and absolute and utter revulsion and disgust, uncertainty rose inside her.
But that still didn't change that she had abandoned and betrayed and left behind and shot in the back and stabbed in the back and deserted and run away from the Young Lord and Grandfather.
Broken, hopeless tears emerged in Lan Fan's eyes to fall down her face.
Lan Fan wasn't certain that Hawkeye was done yet, but she opened her mouth once more whether or not the older woman was.
"How can you say that when you just told me that you shot the Colonel in the back yourself twice?"
"Because there's a reason that soldiers and servants are promoted, and officers and rulers are demoted or removed from power," she answered.
"They learn to fulfill their responsibilities through making mistakes, and hardship, and then getting up on their feet and carrying the burden of the pain and death that they'd caused the people who they were supposed to cherish and keep safe on their back until it teaches them how to care for and protect the people who they love, and others.
"All comradeships are a learning process."
Lan Fan's existence and reality, and existence and reality, and the awareness and memory of what they were returned.
But that still didn't change what she'd done, and not done.
She suppressed the urge to emit a keening, wailing moan of hopeless despair and bitterness.
"What Prince Ling and your late Grandfather need you to do for them is not to embrace hardship for them as much as possible, but to endeavor to overcome it as much as possible, and keep standing up every time you fall until you learn how to care for them and keep them safe.
"I'm done now, and once more, I'm not saying that I have all of the answers.
"This is merely the reason that I am here.
"I'm telling you this because you've clearly lost faith in your own purpose for being.
"Do you understand what I'm talking about, now?"
Lan Fan did, but it didn't make one infinitesimal, minuscule, minute, microscopic, tiny, little, small, bit of a fractured fragment of a shattered piece of an amount of difference.
"Don't tell me to get back up on my legs, move forward, and use them," she partially snarled, partially spoke, partially moaned, partially wailed.
"That's nothing more a means of running away itself.
"What does any of this matter when reality is pain, and someone will just break down the cobblestones that we walk on as we stride our respective roads, or incinerate the flowers; no matter how many times that we put them together with alchemy, or give them to others or plant them?
"Even if you'd won yesterday, you know that that wouldn't have been the end of it.
"Remember Julia's people.
"Amestris actually did invade Milos to kick them out of Creta.
"They fought for a better, peaceful future then, and even that just caused pain.
"As you say, war and conflict and death and pain themselves are the enemies, not separate dreams for a happy present and tomorrow.
"People even wage war not to overthrow an exploitative government or their backers, but because they believe that it will promote peace and prosperity.
"Sooner or later, even if you demilitarize Amestris, some hypocritical politician, or alchemist backing him or her, will decide that Amestris can't be trusted because of its belligerent past, and invade it anyway to fight for the subjective peace and happiness that he or she believes that we need.
"Or another belligerent warmonger will invade this newly peaceful, tolerant nation.
"War and conflict and death and pain will never end.
"What is there that is left to believe will enable me to love and protect and care for and keep safe and cherish and defend the Young Lord, our people in the Yao clan, the people of the rest of Xing, the people of Amestris, and people elsewhere in an existence and a reality and a planet and a world like this?"
"No matter how many times someone shatters or grinds rocks to dust, or incinerates beautiful flowers; we can always lay them on a path again, or buy flowers or put them in bouquets or give them to others or plant them once more."
Lan Fan's eyes flew wide.
For the first time since Wrath had cut her arm off and she'd become a liability to the Young Lord and Ling, genuine, true hope surged up to flood through all of Lan Fan's being.
"That is the nation, and the world, that the Colonel and Ed and Al and the rest of us, and I, are fighting for.
"Is that a purpose for being here that you're willing to see as an answer to fight for?"
Lan Fan didn't hesitate.
She retracted her automail blade.
Then she turned, avoiding Colonel Hawkeye's gun, and swept into a low, Xingese Royal Imperial Court bow at the Yao clan height, and then stood with Amestrian military official propriety and raised her right hand in a diagonal Amestrian military salute.
"Yes, future Your Highness Führer Queen Colonel Riza Hawkeye, ma'am!
"Yes, sir!"
Colonel Hawkeye's face and voice stopped being a mask and became relieved, empathetic, sympathetic, understanding, knowing, and approving, but also wryly amused.
Colonel Hawkeye lowered her gun and holstered it.
"At ease, General Lan Fan," she said with an amused smile.
To her surprise, Lan Fan found her lips curling up in a genuine grin, and she said, "I'm just a lowly private.
"I agree with you, but that doesn't mean that I have a commission, much less the one of a five star General."
"Then, once of my first acts when I'm the Führer Queen will need to be to write a diplomatic communique that successfully convinces Emperor Ling or Empress May, whoever becomes the next ruler of Xing once we're done talking to May, to promote you to a five star General," Hawkeye grinned with sincere warmth and affection back.
Lan Fan could tell that Hawkeye had wanted to say, 'or to offer you his hand as Empress.'
A different familiar pain rose to flood through Lan Fan and swallow her.
But she pushed it away.
That she could never be together with the Young Lord in the way that Hawkeye could now be together with Mustang; because Ling's position as Prince of the Yao clan prevented him from establishing a romantic bond because, if he didn't gain the throne, he was required to choose a wife who he wasn't related to from a different clan to form an alliance that would strengthen the Yao clan's position and remove one of its potential adversaries; and if he did he was required to choose fifty wives from all of the clans; made no difference.
As Hawkeye had just taught Lan Fan, the Young Lord and she were people who shared the same dream, no matter how far apart they were, or what their bond was.
Hawkeye had convinced her not to give up hope that she could love and protect and care for and cherish the Young Lord, so now there was another member of Xingese royalty who needed her, as well as Hawkeye.
That May was a rival Princess of a rival clan no longer mattered after what Hawkeye had just taught Lan Fan.
Lan Fan needed to love and protect and care for and cherish May every bit as much as the Young Lord.
So she sighed heavily and pushed her own selfish wishes for the specific kind of bond that she herself wanted to have with the Young Lord, and the particular way that she wanted to share her dream with him and have him share his with her, and she turned to face May.
But before she could open her mouth, the door flew open and Edward Elric ran in.
Lan Fan suppressed her reflexive urge to bristle at the sight of him.
How he talked and physically interacted with the Young Lord, and her late Grandfather, didn't matter outside of how the Young Lord didn't once deserve to be referred to, vocally or physically, the tiniest amount badly; and the same had been true for Grandfather.
Edward Elric and she shared the same dream.
"How is Alphonse?" May asked right away, a mixture of emotions in her voice.
Edward made his face a complete mask, and his voice was the same when he answered.
"He woke up, but he fell back asleep before I left him with Winry and Julia."
May's face became a mask in a way that Lan Fan recognized right away, and she cringed.
May was twelve years old while Alphonse Elric was sixteen, but childish crushes that weren't sincere romantic love, and that had no chance of establishing a working bond of that form of love, put the people who were willing to entertain them through a lot of pain in their own right.
"I need to catch a train to a town called Citrine as soon as I can," Edward said.
Hawkeye glanced at Lan Fan.
"I won't give up any more than you, the Young Lord, or the Colonel have, now," Lan Fan assured her. "You don't need to worry about me, and you can arrange for a train for Edward."
Hawkeye gave her a thankful smile and ran out into the hallway to attempt to make it happen.
"I can't transmute at all now, because I needed to trade my ability to do so as the Equivalent Exchange for giving Al his body back," Edward continued.
Lan Fan started violently.
That was possible?
"But I still learned martial arts from one of its most skilled Amestrian practitioners, and I'm a veteran of the recent battle with years of military training.
"That will need to be enough.
"There's another pureblood Homunculus in Citrine who might be starting to cause problems," May's eyes widened, "A friend of mine known as Sheska might be involved in them, the Dwarf in the Flask is interested in her himself, and I now have reason to believe that she's extremely dangerous in ways that even the Dwarf in the Flask isn't at this time.
"But before I leave, I need to know a number of things about alchemy that I don't, and that Hohenheim's Xingese alchemy and alkahestry might.
"My issues with the crackpot aside, I can't find Hohenheim or Granny, and thank goodness for that."
Lan Fan suppressed the urge to frown.
"So I'm hoping that you know at least a small amount about the alchemical tenets that I need to research now.
"Do you know anything about a Truth of Understanding, a Truth of Decomposition, a Truth of Reconstruction, an Animus, an Anima, a Persona, and a Circuitus?"
May's eyes widened at the last one.
"I know a little about a supposed 'Truth of Decomposition,' a supposed 'Truth of Reconstruction,' and a 'Circuitus,' but who did you hear the term 'Circuitus' from?"
"Bingo," Edward sighed heavily in relief.
"Good. You know at least a small amount.
"But if I tell you who I heard the term 'Circuitus' from, you'll be very curious, and you can do without that until you feel better."
May forced a snort.
"I'm already curious now, because you just said that."
"You'll be a lot more curious if I tell you," Edward answered. "Trust me."
May met his eyes challengingly, and Lan Fan blinked as Edward actually looked away this time.
What had he learned since they'd parted ways below Laboratory Number Three?
"Whatever floats your teeny boat," May responded with an irritated sigh.
Edward bristled, but he didn't respond, or even look slightly angry in any other way.
Lan Fan kept a smile of approval from coming to her face.
"But I don't know much," May said, her face now a storm of tumultuous emotions at the knowledge that she couldn't be of much assistance.
Lan Fan cringed.
Edward looked like he wanted to say something about how he himself recognized that May was feeling but he knew that he didn't have the time.
"But what I do know is that 'Circuitus' is a concept that the legendary Western Sage, who I now know was your father," Edward's face became a mask at this, however, "Introduced to Xingese alkahestry when he truly got the practice going.
"He said that it was one of the central hypotheses that the first alchemist, the Peregrine Hawk Alchemist, Nicholas Stephen Flamel, who began the whole practice of alchemy in the nation of Alexandria in the Verdant Crescent around two thousand years ago, had developed to prove the theory of alchemy."
Edward's eyes widened.
"That sounds really intimidating, for reasons that should be self-evident."
"I know what you mean," May agreed.
"But most Xingese alkahestrists saw the concept as charlatanism, and for similar reasons, by the time that your father told practitioners of alkahestry about it, no other fields of alchemy had retained knowledge of it save for Xerxian alchemy.
"Once Xingese alkahestry dismissed the hypothesis as charlatanism, they let it fade into the mists of history.
"The tiny amount that I know about it is that it refers to theories of space and time called a hypersphere and imaginary time.
"Both posit that this universe were born from space and time that never had a beginning, and will never end."
Edward jolted violently, and all the blood drained from his face, while Lan Fan suppressed the urge to start violently.
May cringed.
"Did I strike any nails on the scalp?" May questioned.
Edward clenched his hands into tight fists that shook with contained agony and horror and terror and fury.
"If you did, that means that means that the hypothesis of the Dwarf in the Flask's that we disproved yesterday is less than a microscopic piece of the theory that he wants to prove.
"He knew about imaginary time and hyperspheres, but he believed that imaginary time started along with this universe, and he just wanted to research the Truth as it existed since the beginning of this universe."
May went deathly white, and she started shaking and shuddering and trembling in ways that told Edward and Lan Fan that, due to what Edward had just told her, she now knew something inexpressibly measurelessly worse than anything that they'd confronted thus far.
"I'm really really sorry, but that's all that I know about Circuitus.
"In the tenets of Xingese alkhaestry that we learned from your father, the theory of the Truth of Reconstruction refers to the well-known theory that energy can't be created or destroyed, only changed. Solids, liquids, gases, and plasma can merely be interchanged, and photons of light can merely be altered between particles and wavelengths, or both.
"It's the Truth of Decomposition that worries me a lot.
"I know of two central hypotheses of the theory of the Truth of Decomposition, though from what I know about it, I have valid reasons to believe that there are others.
"One refers to a hypothesis of something called a phase transition, that I know nothing about, so I don't know if anyone might be hurt if someone tries to prove it.
"The hypothesis, that might or might not be connected to the hypothesis of a phase transition, that terrifies me is the second one.
"It maintains that energy itself can be destroyed."
Edward jolted violently, and went deathly ghostly white himself, as Lan Fan struggled to suppress her own surge of horror and terror.
"That's what Circuitus is," he breathed.
May started, but she said nothing, and just waited for Edward to elaborate.
Lan Fan suppressed the urge to say anything herself.
"It's a fundamental transmutation circle with not three theorized perfect Truth of God beings as its matrices; as Al, Teacher, Julia, Hohenheim, and I were the matrices of his circle for paying the toll to open the planet's Gateway of Truth, but five or six.
"The transmutation circle that the Dwarf in the Flask used to transmute Al, Teacher, Julia, Hohenheim, and I was a derivation of the Circuitus hypothesis.
"If you're right about what the Truth of Decomposition and the Truth of Reconstruction are, and Circuitus is what I hypothesize that it is, then there's two or three facets to alchemy that its research hasn't yet unlocked, though practitioners of alchemy have gone to extreme lengths trying to uncover one of them for the last around two millennia with the bad science otherwise known as the Philosopher's Stone, or the Crimson Star.
"I have no idea where to begin researching what the fifth theoretical Truth, or the sixth theoretical Truth, if there is one, is.
"But, to me, the nature of the hypothetical fourth Truth is blindingly obvious.
"As you said, you can't create or destroy energy, and just change it.
"The fourth Truth, the one that crackpots keep spewing con artist drivel that they can supposedly prove with one form of bad science or another, is the theory of the Truth of Creation, a Truth that can create energy."
May clenched her teeth very tightly herself at the revelation that it might be possible to somehow transmute an alchemic catalyst that could genuinely break the Law of Equivalent Exchange.
But, as much as this horrified and terrified and intimidated and infuriated Lan Fan, she needed to focus on suppressing the urge to smirk at how she at last had a chance to genuinely repay the genius prodigy who was the Fullmetal Alchemist for all the times he'd verbally, otherwise audibly, or physically caused the Young Lord, Grandfather, and her to look bad.
After what Hawkeye had just said to her, it was blindingly obvious to Lan Fan what the fifth Truth was.
As well as whether or not there was a sixth hypothetical Truth.
Because, if Edward's hypothesis about what Circuitus was was accurate, Lan Fan had little doubt that there was one, and what it was.
But she suppressed the urge to smirk.
Now, especially, they needed to share the same dream.
So Lan Fan simply said, "The fifth Truth is the opposite of the Truth of Understanding."
Edward started, and, even though she wasn't surprised at all to see realization dawn in his eyes and on his face, she suppressed a surge of irritation that he'd realized what she was talking about.
"It's the Truth of Uncertainty," he spoke what Lan Fan would have said, if he hadn't said this first.
"Lan Fan, can you please ask Greed, or Ling if Greed is willing to let you talk to him, to take you down to the central experimentation ward chamber of the Zero Laboratory where we battled the Dwarf in the Flask yesterday?"
If Greed refused to obey the Young Lord's order to not try to keep him from talking to her, not give him permission to do so, then Lan Fan would have enough justification to remind Greed that violence and rejection were also one of the roads that dreams of a better present and future could take.
"The transmutation circle that he used to pay the toll for proving his bad science involved the Principle of Uncertainty," Edward continued, "Which is obviously a core tenet of the hypothesis of rejection and the theoretical Truth of Uncertainty.
"His transmutation circle might have been a derivation of the Circuitus hypothesis.
"Another reason that I believe that is that there is a theorized sixth Truth."
Lan Fan suppressed the urge to snarl this time.
How had Edward figured this out just from what she'd said?
Maybe it involved how he'd been able to transmute his ability to transmute itself.
"If the Dwarf in the Flask had known what it was, he might have been able to develop the Circuitus transmutation circle himself, or at least a better derivation of it.
"It's the theorized Truth of Dreams.
"The theory that; because the Dwarf in the Flask has no concept of what the theorized Truth of Understanding that he's reconstructed as part of his soul, mind, and body actually is; and he sees it as one absolute Truth of factual information and knowledge, and not shared individual Truths of subjective dreams; he understands the least.
"Thus, he might not have even been aware that he could add a sixth point to his transmutation circle for paying the toll."
May opened her mouth to ask something, but then she closed it, and Lan Fan understood why.
The concept was unendingly immeasurably more horrifying and terrifying than almost anything that Lan Fan had encountered before in her life.
May opened her mouth once more, and this time she asked the question, her voice incredibly terrified and horrified and intimidated and uncertain.
"If you're right, and this is what the hypothesis of Circuitus is, what do you believe that the Circuitus circle theorizes that it can transmute?"
Edward clenched his teeth together and clenched both his newly restored hand, and the hand that he hadn't lost, into extremely tight fists, though not ones that were so tight that they drew blood.
"I don't have the slightest clue," he spoke.
"But even with everything that went wrong two days ago, and during the Promised Day, I can assure you, if the Dwarf in the Flask or another crackpot discovers how to create one, it's a transmutation that isn't going to happen."
Then Edward's expression softened and gentled, and he gave May a warm, reassuring smile.
"You've been a great help," he spoke. "Thanks a ton."
"You're welcome," May said in a tone that sounded as though she didn't believe that she deserved his thanks.
Edward sighed heavily with understanding, empathy, sympathy, and concern.
"I'll risk taking the time to say this.
"Whatever your own sins were, you're overlooking something due to your guilt about what happened to Al and the rest of us.
"You were incredibly more instrumental in protecting Winry and Granny and around fifty thousand other souls, Amestrians and foreigners within it, than anyone else was, even Hohenheim."
May's eyes widened, and her mouth opened.
"The few aren't any less important than the many, but the many aren't any less important than the few.
"You have much more reason to get back up on your legs and move forward from the hardships of the two days prior to the Promised Day, and the hardships of the Promised Day itself, than anyone else here.
"I highly recommend that you keep that in mind."
May nodded.
"I will.
"Thanks yourself."
"You're welcome right back at you," Edward responded.
Then he turned and sprinted out of the door as fast as his legs could carry him without losing his coordination.
.
"With your gentle fingers
When they reach in the end
Only now only you
Won't that be all you can believe in
.
"Everyone is breaking down
Searching too long for a wish
You're falling looking for a place to land
.
"Wounded and unable to stop shaking
If these whispered feelings are our reality
.
"We break each other down
Until we can't move
Our lonely wings overlap
.
"We've not found the light
Just the glare of this era
.
"I'm not afraid of the power to change
In the deep rumbling that lies ahead
Painted with the shared flames
Carry your destiny"
'Ignited'
GUNDAM SEED DESTINY