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CHAPTER 9:
BUTCHERY AND A BOMB
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Kazuki had still barely come to terms with what Tokiko and Bravo were now going through, and Ed and Al, and Victor, and Ed's older brother, and what Kazuki had become and was still becoming, and how he was stranded literally a world away from his family and Tokiko and his other loved ones and his closest friends and other friends and his home and school, and all of his consuming icy and swallowing debilitating cold terror and horror and sense of being cut away from everything that he knew and the loneliness.
But no matter the Earth that he was standing on, it still didn't change how much death and pain hurt, and how, if he wasn't the one who died and got hurt, other people would.
He'd have time to try to come to terms of everything that had happened since they'd reached the LXE's laboratory, and everything that was still happening, when all the battles and struggles of this hard and fatiguing day were at long last over.
And, even though he knew that he couldn't stay in Amestris because he needed to bring Ed back to Al, the knowledge that Kazuki might not be able to drain anyone's souls on this Earth, with the way energy flowed here, even after around fourteen weeks were over, unless he physically touched that person himself, or with his kakugane or Buso Renkin, made what he was becoming a lot easier to deal with for the time being.
And there might be a chance that he could find a way to return Ed to Al without returning to Japan, or his Earth, himself, so, if Ed was right about how his Stone worked here, as long as he or his kakugane or Buso Renkin didn't touch anyone, no matter how far his Stone evolved, he couldn't tear any living being's soul out of his or her own body.
A young woman around Ed's age with long brown hair and pink strands in the front was running into sight with a backpack on her back, and another young woman of a similar age with long blonde hair slightly behind her and to her side.
The first girl turned to face the direction from which the loudspeaker had sounded, and she shouted at it with perhaps even a far worse terrible agony and a profound anger in it than Kazuki had heard thus far in Ed's voice.
"If you honestly believe that you're going to use me against Ed once again, as Dante used me against both Ed and Al to keep Scar from creating the Stone the way that he wanted," Kazuki suppressed the urge to cringe, "You can forget it!"
Even with what Ed had said about what Stones could do at their worst, just how horrific were the things that the abuse of alchemy had done to the people of this world, and this country named Amestris, because it had been much more successful on this Earth than on his?
"I have no interest in talking to a known rebel and war criminal," the old General, Edison, responded to her over the loudspeaker. "I'm speaking to Mustang."
"You're going to talk to me anyway!" the young woman shouted back, now sounding measurelessly more furious and anguished.
"The last time I looked, Bradley and his supporters, like you, were and are the rebellious traitors and the war criminals!"
"Ed's unconscious, but he's fine!" Sciezka shouted down to the two other girls.
"Then leave Edison to me," the mostly brown haired woman said to the blonde haired girl.
She unzipped her backpack and reached inside it, taking out a small first aid kit and handing it to the blonde haired girl, and then reached back inside it.
"Now that I can see that no one here is injured, I can tell how to sort the medical supplies we brought in the event that Ed was hurt on my own, so I can do that myself as well.
"You can watch Ed."
"If you think I'm not going to back you up in all of this, and stay in a position to protect Ed as well as you are, you're out of your mind!" the other girl shouted back.
She reached into the backpack herself, the fingers of her hand moving as though she were already holding small things between them, and began to move her hand to sort the supplies.
Kazuki blinked as Sciezka looked back at Mustang and, once her face was out of sight of the terrorists outside, she gave him a smirk.
Mustang slid his eye back to her in a way that was most likely some kind of signal.
What were the two women truly doing in that backpack, and why had Sciezka smirked and Mustang given her the eye signal?
"Especially when, even though I know that you would have if I hadn't, I'm the one who convinced Sciezka to bring the bomb here!" the blonde haired girl continued.
"Ed and Sciezka and you are all in danger, and this is my responsibility!
"I'm cleaning this mess up!"
Not without Kazuki's assistance, they weren't.
At least, once he figured out how to assist them without the bomb being set off as soon as he moved.
He wasn't wearing the blue of the soldiers here, but he was clearly with them, and depending on how much Edison and the Glorious Dragons had heard, they might know that his Buso Renkin's designs were what Ed and the others kept calling transmutation circles.
After he'd prevented Ouka and Shusui from dying as Chouno almost had and Bravo had considered him worthy of becoming an Alchemist Warrior at last, Kazuki had believed that he'd finally gained the strength and experience that he needed to keep anyone else from dying, or getting hurt too badly any more than they already had before he'd met them.
But first Victor, and then Pride, had proven Kazuki wrong with little difficulty.
And now Edison might very well do the same thing, because even if it had been safe for Kazuki to change into a living Stone and raise the energies of what Greed and May had called phase transitions within what Kazuki now thought of as the Sunlight Heart Plus to full capacity, he knew that he still wouldn't have been able to move fast enough to prevent Edison from setting the bomb off.
And Kazuki had no full idea how much altering the Sunlight Heart Plus' energies so drastically they'd become a white as effulgent as a flash bomb had drained him, so he didn't know how combat capable he still was in or out of his human form.
But he needed to do something.
Kazuki still didn't have a full idea what Ed and Al and their older brother, and the other people in Amestris and on this Earth, had suffered through and were still suffering through, or what he was and might become, but enough was enough.
Victor and Pride had been two periods of helplessness and powerlessness too many.
He was figuring out a way to assist Winry and Rose, whichever girl was which; and Mustang and the others; in disabling the bomb before it could be exploded, no matter what it took him to do so.
"If you try, you can die as your parents did in Ishbal," Edison replied to the blonde haired young woman.
Mustang stiffened slightly.
The blonde haired woman must be Winry, then, and the other woman must be Rose; as Ed's older brother had said that Mustang had shot Winry's parents.
"At least you inhumane monsters aren't hiding your intentions behind a shield of nobility any longer!" the Winry retorted.
"Oh, excuse me, I forgot."
Winry's voice dripped with derisive sarcasm.
"We're all 'barbaric savages' because we don't want to turn our own people into laboratory samples, slaughter them en masse or individually, and torture them."
"As an automail engineer, you must be aware that automail made all of the advancements it did today because it was tested on countless crippled people over the centuries," Edison replied in gently chiding amusement.
"You're in no position to argue that sacrifices aren't necessary evils for nations to grow when your entire life and livelihood are based upon a business that would still be struggling to establish itself in any markets if not for the thousands of people who have paid for automail because they've lost one or more limbs."
Kazuki started violently.
Were Ed's right arm and sword automail, then?
"There's a difference in prosperity originating from providing for people already in need, and prosperity originating from causing people to become in need, and you know it," Winry rejoined.
"Which is what you and your movement have now become.
"Whether or not you set that bomb off or shoot anyone here, you've just destroyed most of the support your political party has garnered for the coming election, so you're deluding yourself into believing that you'll accomplish anything through pointless terrorism other than destroying everything you're campaigning for in the coming election.
"And if you believe that you no longer need that support, and that you can pull off a revolt, you're kidding yourself even more.
"Yes, Central was recently attacked while that didn't happen a single time under Bradley, but after everything Sciezka has publicized about Bradley's abuses of power, very few people will support a coup, so even if you pull it off, you'll just be tossed back out of the government the way that you entered it shortly afterwards."
"Miss Rockbell is correct," Mustang now spoke up.
"If you tell us how you knew that Ed was here, and Winry and Rose would thus involve themselves in this and drive the car here; and you disarm the bomb and yourselves and surrender, we'll be as lenient as we can about the crimes that you've already committed.
"But if that bomb goes off, or you fire a single shot, you'll very likely never walk anywhere outside the halls of a prison again for the rest of your lives.
"Even if this is some kind of diversion so one or more of your allies can try to pull off something really drastic such as hitting one or more governmental buildings; as Miss Rockbell just pointed out, even if you're on the verge of overthrowing the government, you'll be ousted back out in a minority of days.
"And if this isn't a diversion from something that drastic, and it's a diversion from something else, you won't even get those minority of days before you end up in prison.
"This is just self defeating posturing, and making a violent protest through grandstanding.
"Surrender now, and save what credibility the Glorious Dragons have left."
"I don't care," Edison responded.
"When you assassinated Bradley, you prevented us from doing it.
"As you know, Bradley monopolized alchemy research partially to prevent other alchemists from utilizing it to wage wars on any scale but a local or civil one."
Kazuki's stomach heaved violently at the concept of alchemy being applied to wage any wars at all in the first place.
It still caused him to feel as though he wanted to retch at the knowledge that the leader of Amestris had been willing to work for an inhumane alchemist.
"And that he reassigned any officers to distant posts who believed otherwise, and who believed that Amestris' unparalleled alchemic learning and military might gave the glorious State the manifest destiny of colonizing as many other cultures throughout the world as possible and raising them out of their buffoonish savagery."
May bristled furiously and whipped around to glare with even more fury in the direction of the loudspeaker, but Edison just scoffed wordlessly and derisively over the loudspeaker at May's reaction.
"After Bradley's ineffectuality led to the massacre of thousands of soldiers during the last battle of the Lior Revolution, we'd had enough.
"Our cadre intended to assassinate Bradley, and then use how his incompetence had led to the virtual annihilation of the whole city of Lior to convince the people to back our own new government.
"So we had been putting measures in place that would have led to Bradley's assassination, but then you convinced Major Armstrong to revolt in the North, and Bradley thus sent most of our supporters up there to suppress him, and we were unable to remove Bradley from power and create an Amestris willing to fulfill its manifest destiny.
"Yes, that Bradley sent most of our supporters North meant that he was aware of our forthcoming assassination attempt. But as his secretary, Douglas, had recently disappeared, we know for a fact that, if not for you, we would have been able to pull off the assassination and take control of the Amestrian government.
"And then I would have become Führer, or one of the other officers in our party, perhaps even Raven; because if you'd never assassinated Bradley Milos would never have revolted and Raven would never have been reassigned to take Soyuz' place at a military base too vital for him to remain in contact with the rest of the Glorious Dragons.
"You say that you want to know how we knew that the former Fullmetal Alchemist was here, and for the supporters who you know we have in Central Command to set the bomb in Rockbell's car?
"An alchemist named Jude, who we tasked with joining this research team to recover information from it, and who its chief researcher let spy on it for reasons that he couldn't determine but that we'll address later, used the Fullmetal Alchemist's fights with them after the experiment that returned him to Amestris as a cover to escape the laboratory and join up with us."
For whatever reason, Mustang's blood drained out of his face at the knowledge that a number of rebels had alchemic knowledge about Ed's older brother's experiments, and perhaps the imperfect and full Philosopher's Stones.
"But we now have the information that we sought from them, so we're detonating this bomb and mowing you down as a statement that, in time, we will have the means of restoring the military to its former glory.
"And then we will do what Bradley would not, and enable Amestris to fulfill its manifest destiny to educate the other brutes all throughout the globe about the nature of true culture and civilization are!"
May bristled furiously.
"Xing knows full well what the State Alchemists did in Ishbal after all the reports that Prime Minister Knocs has made public since Amestris became a democracy!" she yelled in the direction of the loudspeaker.
"If you're calling the Xingese savages, I assume it's because our clans jockey for power at the expense of each other and one another most of the time!
"How is a unified State military that wages war against its own people, or small scale wars against surrounding cultures and ethnicities, any better?"
"Because Amestris alone of all the nations on this planet used to give alchemists an official position in its military."
Ed had used to serve Amestris' national military?
Then, in many ways, he'd been even more a victim of a world of death and pain and darkness and battle than Tokiko and Bravo and Chouno and Ouka and Shusui and Victor were, or had been.
Had Al served the Amestrian national government himself?
Kazuki realized that his jaw was hanging in sick horror, and he closed it.
"Amestris thus used to be the paragon of progressive culture and new thinking throughout the entire planet, and it could have used its military alchemy to enlighten every other culture on the Earth who has yet to enjoy such prosperity," Kazuki wanted to throw up at the concept that Edison was talking about, "Until Roy Mustang enabled Knocs to turn it into a mockery of everything that it used to stand for and sentenced the State to wither and wheeze into obscurity."
"For your information, you ignorant barbarian, one of the reasons that Bradley gave the military so much power was so they'd be in a position to wage smaller scale wars specifically against people who believed that Amestris, and its alchemic knowledge, should be utilized for those kinds of purposes," Sciezka now entered the conversation, a strange satisfaction on her face but otherwise sounding furious herself now.
"For all of his failings and sins, and all of the failings and the sins of the non military alchemists he also regularly worked with without public knowledge, one of the minority of atrocities that Bradley and his supporters had no tolerance whatsoever for was applying alchemy to wage full scale wars."
Kazuki sagged slightly to hear that.
"Bradley knew full well how snobbish belligerents of your kind think, and he enlarged the State Military partially to oppose your kind of so-called 'progressive thinking.' He watched carefully and closely throughout most of his term in office for assassination attempts from warmongers like you, and he regularly successfully assassinated any officers who tried to pull one off right back at them as soon as he had enough evidence that it was going to happen to put before High Command to justify the murder. If Mustang hadn't revolted, you and everyone else connected to it would be in your graves by now.
"You and your fellow conspirators owe Mustang your lives, so I recommend that you show him your gratitude by surrendering now and not making fools of yourselves."
Edison didn't respond back for a number of seconds, and Kazuki had trouble breathing.
Then his voice sounded once more over the loudspeaker, in tones as though he wanted to swallow every single syllable that he was saying and choke on them, "I could care less whether we owe Mustang our lives or not."
Kazuki sighed heavily.
"There are many officers among us who will feel otherwise, but not enough to oppose those who recognize the necessity for us to make a statement anyway."
Kazuki became aware of how badly his legs were aching.
"A bomb that Winry just finished disassembling," Sciezka announced smugly.
Kazuki started violently as he realized what Rose had truly been carrying in the backpack, and hadn't informed Sciezka before in the event that the people who had planted were listening in; and what Winry and Rose had truly been doing in the backpack.
He hadn't done anything to defeat the Glorious Dragons himself, but no one had needed his help, so it didn't bother him that much that he hadn't helped anyone.
"You're all under arrest."
There was no response on the loudspeaker for a number of seconds.
Then Edison spoke, his voice a mask, "We put in a contingency in place, so we're still going to make our statement, as you have a civilian in clear view."
Mustang went white and, for some reason, he turned his hand over so its glove was facing the floor and started to kneel, and Kazuki started to shift to wait for wherever the attack was going to come from.
The next second, pain erupted out of his left chest over his heart.
"Kazuki!" Sciezka screamed in horror, jumping into the room and running towards him.
But, with spreading frosted iciness, Kazuki knew that there was no point in hiding it now.
He staggered to the side out of sight of the rebels as though fatally wounded, and then brought one leg out and corrected his stance.
"You'll most likely need to ask Ed for the details, but the imperfect Stone May was talking about is my new heart," Kazuki gasped through the familiar pain, talking quietly so just Mustang and Sceizka and Armstrong, and the other nearby soldiers, could hear him.
Sciezka skidded to a halt, her eyes wide and mouth open in shock.
Mustang stopped his kneel and clenched both fists.
More tears started falling from Armstrong's face.
The mouth of the younger soldier with the glasses, doubtlessly Fuery, fell wide.
"I fired your idiotic temper terrorist tantrum shot," a new voice spoke up over another loudspeaker.
"Now provide our families and loved ones and friends with the economic support that you promised them, or we're telling Mustang our locations and turning ourselves in to whatever penalty we get for assisting you in making your petty statement."
"If you turn yourselves in regardless, we'll see you declared innocent for aiding and abetting assisted murder under extortion," Mustang spoke up right away.
"You know better than to believe him," Edison reentered the conversation, sounding a mixture of triumphant and infuriated. "Your families and loved ones and friends were disenfranchised precisely because they believed in a stronger military and a military State.
"We will provide for them now, so you have no need to fear that they will become further victims of the Knocs administration.
"And Zampano, because you used to live with your wife and son, and Jerso, who used to live with his wife and daughter, need to worry the least, so you have the least reason of all of us to turn yourselves in to Mustang.
"So you know the escape route for us that we've requested you to give us out of Central, and you have every reason to create it for us and continue to work for us.
"Because all of your families and loved ones and friends who you have given us the names of are now being provided for in their new homes in Jude's laboratory, as they assist him with his studies in similar ways to how the late Chimeras of Laboratory Five, and the four of you, assisted those researchers in their studies."
Sciezka went bone white, and tears brimmed in her eyes behind her glasses and started falling down her face.
Mustang, now standing, clenched his fists so tightly that his gloves tore.
Far more tears now streamed down from Armstrong's face.
Fuery went pale.
Kazuki's insides twisted, and he wanted to run closer to Sciezka and Armstrong, but he couldn't or the Glorious Dragons would see him once again.
Now what?
"Find Edison and his associates and arrest them at once, and locate Jerso's, Zampano's, Darius', and Heinkel's service records so they can be identified!" Mustang yelled furiously.
"If you can identify all four, shoot to kill the others if necessary!"
The glasses wielding soldier turned to shout down new orders.
"Sciezka, Armstrong, what's wrong?" Kazuki questioned, his quiet tone tight and tense with terror and horror and concern and worry.
Sciezka was the closest to him, so she walked towards the edge of the opening in the wall, and Kazuki stepped back so she could pass it without becoming uncomfortable by walking too close to him.
"You can do without knowing," Sciezka responded in a similar quiet tone, as she was close enough to him to be able to talk to him.
The familiar tired hurt and irritation rose.
"Not as long as people like you are involved with violent alchemy," he argued.
"I fight with alchemy so I can do so in the place of people such as you, so people such as you can live lives of fighting and pain less, or fully leave, or fully stay out of, a world of dark battle and enter one of kindness and happiness."
Sciezka started violently and her mouth opened wide, and then she grinned in approval, and she started wiping away her tears.
Kazuki sighed in relief, and Sciezka's mouth stopped closing in further surprise.
"You are definitely one of Ed's friends," she said in very pleased approval.
But then her expression became more determined.
"But that's why I won't tell you.
"You're close to the Stone, so you have enough problems."
Kazuki clenched his teeth in further anguish and irritation.
But then Sciezka glared angrily.
"Oh, no, you don't," she hissed angrily through clenched teeth.
"Envy shot Mustang's and my close friend Hughes because, for similar reasons, he was assisting Ed and Al, and Mustang, practice alchemy. He wanted to give Ed and Al and Mustang a regular family and a home, with assistance from his wife and daughter, and he died for it."
Kazuki's insides twisted further, but he pushed his irritation out of his face.
Sciezka sighed in relief.
"I refuse to hurt someone like Hughes and Ed and Al that way once again.
"And with that in mind, since Ed used to have a tendency to be tight lipped about things that he shouldn't have been, and take too many burdens on himself, and you ought to know a number of these things, how much has Ed told you about the imperfect Stones and the complete Stones?"
Hope surged through him.
"Very little, save for that imperfect Stones unintentionally drain souls, slowly or quickly, as a form of subsistence so they can try to progress to full Stones; that creating them involves causing people a lot of pain and can even release toxins into the nearby environment; and that at their worst, under special circumstances that he won't identify, imperfect Stones can drain around seven thousand souls from living beings, including humans, at once, from an area the size of a city.
"And another alchemist from my world said that imperfect Stones are made from the souls of animals."
Sciezka's eyes flashed with a mixture of fury and understanding.
Behind Sciezka, Winry ran through the opening in the wall to Ed's side and sat down on his left to pull his head into her lap, and Rose sat down on Winry's left to clasp Ed's hand in her left hand, and then clasp Winry's left hand with her right hand.
So Kazuki's assumptions about Ed and Winry, and Ed and Rose, might have been right.
But he'd worry about Ed's bonds with the people who he loved and his friends at another time.
"I understand why Ed didn't tell you, but if your imperfect Stone is connected to your heart, you're already so far involved in this that, while the rest of the information about the Stone is very painful, it should hurt you less to know it, as soon as possible.
"If you're sure that you want to know this, I'll tell you this much."
Kazuki pushed all emotions away as far as he could.
"I'm sure.
"I need to know, so I'll have less of a chance of hurting someone unintentionally with my Stone."
Sciezka pressed her lips together tightly and uncomfortably, and Armstrong entered the room behind her to stand at her side as additional support, and then he wiped his tears from his face and composed it so he wouldn't make things worse for Kazuki by crying himself.
"I'll be the one to tell you," Sciezka spoke.
"Because I have an idea how to perhaps lure Ed's half brother, or at least one or more members of his research team, out of hiding."
Mustang started from where he was and turned to look at her.
Relief filled Kazuki anew.
"And this is all related to the Stone.
"My job in the military is to publicize information about the late Führer King Bradley's abuses of power. And, as Dante was one of Bradley's strongest supporters, I've been trying to supplement this by searching for evidence of abuses that Ed and Al might have missed. Ed burned all of Dante's research, but that doesn't mean that Ed's and Al's late father, Hohenheim Elric, himself hasn't discovered alchemical hypotheses, theories, and laws that Dante hasn't.
"And that he hasn't hidden research notes, or research material, that Dante was unaware of and that someone in Bradley's military discovered without telling Bradley himself about it.
"So I've paid a number of visits to the two cities where Hohenheim slaughtered its people searching for these notes, and I've combed military records for any sightings of Hohenheim during the years that he didn't live in Resembool, Ed and Al's hometown, with them. Especially in the North where we believed that no one knew how to transmute the Stone, so it would have been the easiest for Hohenheim to hide, and most likely Ed and Al's half brother.
"I searched the two cities extensively, and I haven't found any evidence of research notes or research material in them yet.
"But several months ago, I uncovered records of a number of reports, of a stranger wearing what Hohenheim was when Winry and I first met him, being sighted a large number of times over many years spending time in the abandoned mining town of Baschool in the North.
"If Hohenheim left any research notes or research behind, they might be hidden there, or at least one or more clues to where they can be located, in the two ghost cities or elsewhere, it might be there.
"If Ed and Mustang go looking for them, and you if you want to assist Ed that much; whether or not one or more of you find anything; as Ed's half brother, or one or more members of his research team, will almost certainly be watching the two of you from now on, one or more of them might try to ambush you to acquire any potential research material or research notes himself, herself, or themselves."
Mustang nodded, and he turned to resume talking to the other soldiers and officers.
"I'm going whether or not Ed is," Kazuki said.
He had no idea how he was going to defeat Pride if Pride tried to steal any potential , but he'd figure out some way to avoid Pride.
Sciezka grimaced, and Armstrong frowned.
Kazuki knew better than to tell Sciezka and Armstrong that Ed himself had opened the Gate, and they'd been brought here afterwards, with Winry and Rose nearby, at the present.
But he continued on.
"Ed and I were brought here for a reason, so any research that might have connections to the Stone involves me as well.
"I'm not from Amestris, so I have no justification to ask anyone to come with me, but I assume that Ed can get me a visa. So if you're willing to please tell me where Baschool is and where Hohenheim was seen in Baschool, as soon as Ed gets me a visa, I'll do whatever odd jobs that I need to around here to earn enough of whatever currency you use to travel North myself and investigate Baschool."
"I'll acquire a visa for you myself," Armstrong informed Kazuki, and Kazuki sagged a little more.
"However, while Mustang has too many duties here in Central, Sciezka and I should be able to get leave to accompany you to Baschool, so you won't need to go alone.
"Your recklessness reminds me of Ed, so I know better than to try to talk you out of it, but would you at least please give us a chance to accompany you?
"I can also use my post in the military to take charge of a small number of soldiers from Olivier's post at Fort Briggs, as it's in the North, and closer to Baschool than the North's key military base at North City."
That was good news.
That would give them a much better chance at defending themselves against Pride.
"And, although Olivier and I haven't gotten along for years, she might be willing to lend me Buccaneer and a small squad of Briggs soldiers who she brought with her to Central to investigate the recent attacks.
"But I'm sure that Ed will be willing to accompany you.
"This involves his half brother and the Stone, the latter alchemic research that he's tried very hard to erase from Amestris; and Ed fights for similar reasons that you do."
Kazuki was fully aware of that by now, and he'd been almost certain that Ed would want to see if his father had left any research in Baschool, but it was good to have it confirmed.
"Then we're leaving as soon as Kazuki has his visa and we can take a military train, even if Ed hasn't woken up yet," Winry spoke up, with a vehement and fiercely protective determination and resolve in her voice and face that caused Kazuki's heart to ache agonizingly with how much it reminded him of both Tokiko and Mahiro.
"I've been with Ed on one of his journeys before, so I have experience accompanying him, and with what he just learned, I'm not letting him out of my sight."
She clenched her free hand into such a tight fist that her nails drew blood from her palm, and she clenched her teeth in stark self hatred and guilt as tears manifested in her eyes.
"I should have found a means of stowing away through the Gate to your world along with Al in the first place, or figured out how to pilot one of the flying vehicles that he used to return that had arrived here with that one and crashed, and followed Ed and Al that way."
Rose squeezed Winry's hand with tight comfort, and then relaxed the squeeze.
"But we need to leave as soon as we can, whether or not Ed has woken up yet," Winry continued.
"The sooner that Ed is able to live for other people, the better, however small, he'll feel."
"I'm coming too," Rose said.
"I didn't save Ed from Sloth and support him after he found out who Envy was," Winry's face became neutral of all emotion, and Kazuki cringed at how Ed most likely felt about the numerous reasons why how Rose had been there for Ed both times while Winry apparently hadn't was bothering Winry, "To abandon him to fight an actual member of his family alone, or to a Homunculus of his father."
Then Rose faced Winry, and gave her an empathetic and knowing and understanding and sympathetic, although sad and uncertain, smile.
"And I'll keeping saying this as many times as I need to.
"I understand how you feel.
"I was there, and I left Ed to opening the Gate because I didn't know that he was going to do it."
Kazuki cringed.
"And then I was too busy overseeing the repairs in Lior two weeks ago to follow Al or you to Central, so I let Ed and Al pass back through the portal by themselves just as you did," Rose continued.
"If you'd traveled with Ed and Al to Lior, or to the underground city, you could have done for them what I did, and very likely a lot more.
"Yes, as you hadn't gone through what I had, if he'd found out about Sloth the way that he did, you might not have been able to protect him the specific way that I did. But you'd have recognized Sloth for who she was as soon as you saw her and told Ed who she was, so she wouldn't have even been able to do that to Ed, and he wouldn't have even been hurt fully, if at all, the way that she hurt him when you weren't there.
"And if you'd been with Al rather than Ed, Scar couldn't stop Kimbley from trying to transmute him into the bomb," Kazuki cringed again, "So you wouldn't have been able to yourself, and you wouldn't have had any chance at all of defeating Scar himself.
"Nor would you have been able to keep Envy from capturing Al. If Al dropped his guard due to his act as you, he'd have done it if Envy had pretended to be someone else close to him.
"And even if you had been there, I still would have had no reason to be there for Ed to truly connect him to Mustang, or when he discovered that Hughes was dead." Sciezka cringed, meaning that she must have been the one to tell Ed about this. "So if you hadn't returned to Central and then to Resembool, and you'd been with them at Lior, you wouldn't have known that Hughes was dead, or that he was a close friend of Mustang's, and no one would have been able to be there for Ed and Al as effectively as you were able to because you'd returned to Resembool.
"I doubt that I need to go through the full list of all of my points still once more, so I'll stop here.
"No one can say what lies in the future.
"We can't say or do anything more than focus on what we believe to be the right thing right in front of us.
"So you don't need to be upset that you weren't there for Ed and Al both of those times.
"How am I supposed to believe that now, when Ed just lost Al again and then discovered that his half brother is pursuing the Stone and created a Homunculus of his father, and Al is all alone on the other side of the Gate now?" Winry asked back.
Kazuki knew better than to tell Winry and Rose at this time that Ed's half brother might not have gotten away if they hadn't stayed on the radio with Sciezka.
But he could address this.
"Actually, I have a close friend named Tokiko who I left him with," Kazuki informed them.
"She's as protective of her friends as you two are.
"He's not alone."
Winry gave Kazuki a wan, weak smile.
Rose nodded her thanks to Kazuki for telling them that, and she gave Kazuki a stronger smile, but one that was much more uncertain in its own ways.
"But Al still lost Ed once again, and, as I keep saying every time that Rose argues this, if I had been there during his final confrontations with Dante, I would have known full well that Ed was going to do something reckless, and I'd never have let him open the Gate. Yes, I wouldn't have been able to talk him out of doing it indefinitely, but you're taking too much of the blame on yourself."
Winry's voice broke and cracked, and the tears spilled over now.
Rose squeezed her hand tightly once more, and this time she didn't relax the squeeze.
"Unlike you, I knew where Homunculi originate from.
"If I'd been there, even if I hadn't been able to protect Ed from Envy, I might have been able to figure out what Wrath convinced Al to do to him, and then Ed could simply have found Gluttony and opened the Gate with him, and brought all of Al home that way."
What in the world did Winry mean by, 'all of Al?'
Tears appeared in Rose's eyes and fell down her face, and Winry squeezed her own hand back with tight comfort, and didn't relax it, either.
But when Rose spoke next, her voice was cracked and broken and anguished and swallowed by despair.
"You didn't figure it out over the next two years, so it's very unlikely that you'd have figured it out then.
"And even if you had, Ed wouldn't have sacrificed someone else to save Al, and you know that as well as I do.
"You were able to start moving forward from your fears that Ed and Al would be hurt without you there to protect them, and from how much you've wanted to be a part of their lives," Kazuki's stomach heaved violently. Then how bad Winry felt that Rose had been able to be there for Ed when she hadn't two very important times was far worse than he'd believed, "So you need to start moving forward from your guilt over what happened to them.
"I haven't wanted to bring this up before, but I haven't wanted to bring it to your attention that you could have made things worse, but it's looking like I need to."
"What if you had accompanied them to Lior, and Kimbley had done to you what he did to Al, and Scar had then put his circle on you for Al's sake, and you'd thus become as much of a victim as Nina and I?
"What would that have done to Ed and Al?
"Or if you'd accompanied them to the cathedral, and Envy had stabbed you rather than Ed when you tried to protect him when he dropped his guard? Al would have then saved you as he did Ed, but what do you think that it would have done to Ed to know what he'd done to you because he'd dropped his guard, in addition to sentencing Al back to the Gate?
"Assuming that Dante didn't just throw you into the Gate along with Ed the first time. That would have been one of the two most likely outcomes of you traveling with Ed to the cathedral. Even if you hadn't been caught in the initial transmutation, you would almost certainly have reached Ed's side while she was maneuvering him in place for it with her arguments about Equivalent Exchange. So you'd have been so close to her that you could might have been able to keep her from performing any other transmutations due to Dante's lack of any practical hand to hand skills, so it would have been Dante's safest option afterwards and she very likely wouldn't have killed you. And if she hadn't sent you along with Ed, he might not have made it back in time to spur Al to fight back if he'd been trying to bring you back with him, if he'd have even made it back at all.
"Perhaps worst of all, if you'd intercepted Dante's first transmutation and kept Ed from being sent into the Gate, he'd have almost certainly beaten Dante before she could perform the transmutation a second time. But as soon as he went looking for Al he'd have run into Envy, and the result of that duel would have been the same whether he'd been willing to transmute or not.
"And depending on whether Ed found Al before Envy encountered him, Al might not have been able to protect him. And even if Al had, Ed wouldn't have reunited with Hohenheim and known how to pull Al back out of the Gate, and this very day he might still be walking a living nightmare searching for a way to return both of you from it.
"It's not your fault.
"You tried as hard as you could to be there for Ed and Al through all of what happened, and if you hadn't, Al very likely wouldn't have even reconciled with Ed when he was afraid he wasn't who he'd believed himself to be and Dante and Sloth could have easily manipulated him into transmuting the Stone himself, and then things could have been much worse.
"And by not traveling with Ed and Al to Lior, or to the warehouse, or to the cathedral, you gave Ed a number of months to live with Hohenheim as true father and son.
"Hohenheim might still be alive if things had gone differently, but Ed wouldn't have had a true father for the first time in his life, and no matter what had happened, Ed and Al would still need to fight their half brother now.
"You gave Ed back the father who he'd never had.
"You need to keep that in mind."
Winry gave Rose a broken smile, but she didn't argue further.
And the small amount that Rose had been able to comfort Winry would all be torn to shreds as soon as Winry learned that she was the reason that Ed's and Al's half brother had escaped.
They might be able to avoid telling Winry for now, but if someone didn't tell her, that knowledge would be an obvious weakness that Ed's half brother could exploit.
So, sooner or later, someone was going to need to tell her.
And then Winry would become as much of a victim of the horrors of alchemy as Chouno still was, and as Ouka and Shusui had been; and as Ed and Al and Rose themselves had been, due to whatever they had gone through, and Ed wasn't going to be able to do anything but watch it happen completely and totally powerless, and completely and totally helpless, to stop it.
Kazuki let a few tears push forwards into his eyes and fall onto his cheeks.
And, for the second time in his life, Kazuki himself could do nothing to stop it.
He couldn't even slow it down.
What had been the point of acquiring a kakugane and Buso Renkin, and learning how to protect Ouka and Shusui and prevent them from becoming the next Chouno, and then graduating his training to become an Alchemist Warrior; if, even though he wasn't actively causing another Chouno, he was going to be completely and wholly powerless and completely and totally helpless to prevent it from taking place anyway?
Kazuki just looked back at Sciezka and Armstrong, seeing no reason to hide the ruined despair in his voice, for Sciezka and Armstrong knew as well as he did what Winry didn't yet.
"Can you please just tell me what I need to know about the Stone, and then get me that visa, and board a train North?" he asked.
Sciezka gave Kazuki an uncertain look for several seconds, and then she nodded.
"I'll head off to see the visa through now," Armstrong put in.
He turned and ran out the opening in the wall.
Kazuki pushed his emotions even further away this time.
Sciezka gave Kazuki one more uncertain look, but then she said, "First and foremost, though I can't be sure, I should tell you that the special circumstances that can murder thousands of people might require digging a transmutation circle as large as that city."
Kazuki felt a tiny amount lighter to hear that, but as Sciezka couldn't be certain, no more than a tiny amount.
"But here's the bad news," Sciezka went one.
"Imperfect Stones don't drain souls unintentionally; they do so because the imperfect Stones are transmuted from organic beings, anywhere from bacteria to mammals."
Kazuki's insides twisted once more, but he kept his face from shifting much.
"There's nothing wrong with your Stone, so there's nothing to fix within it.
"The worst news is that, as imperfect Stones are transmuted from other living beings; full Stones are transmuted purely from human souls, anywhere from around twenty if supplemented by a lot of souls from other organic beings to around one hundred eighty thousand if just human souls are involved."
Kazuki was suddenly so exhausted that he could barely stand, or even tell what or remember what standing was, and the room swam, or perhaps it was now the tears in his eyes and on his face that he had no justification whatsoever to hold back.
Where was Tokiko?
Why wasn't she holding him close and safe and secure and sound and protected and warm and tight once more, or threatening to eviscerate him?
Where was Mahiro?
Why wasn't she worrying about how cold the breeze turning everything and nothing and anything outside him and that was him to solid biting lancing knifing stabbing clawing twisting frigid frozen serrated ice through the window was again, or pestering him about how his connection with Tokiko was developing?
Where was his cell phone, so he could call Daihama, Okakura, and Rokumasu for strength?
But Tokiko and Mahiro and Okakura and Rokumasu and Daihama were sealed unimaginably tightly closed literally more than a universe and a planet away from him now, severed an infinite distance from him by a lock indescribably more unbreakable than a phone number on a cell phone.
All that he had now were Ed, Sciezka, and Armstrong, three new friends, but three friends who he still barely knew; and for all he knew, when he'd drawn strength from Rokumasu and Okakura and Daihama to get up and defeat Chouno, he'd done so literally; so if he did that with Ed and Armstrong and Sciezka he'd end up discovering that Ed was wrong and he could do the same thing on this Earth without touching someone, and very likely now far more lethally, or at least extremely harmfully, than he had in Chouno's lab.
He still refused to give up and die unless he had no other choice, or he'd betray much of what he was battling and striving for because he wouldn't be fighting to protect everyone.
But how could he justify even beginning to fight; even letting his new alchemically fashioned heart even begin to beat; and not just taking his kakugane and throwing it as far away as possible and then running further and further and further and further and further and further and further and further and further and further and further and further and further and further away from it until his awareness and self and existence and life merely disappeared; when this was what he was?
"I'm sorry that I told you."
There were new tears in Sciezka's eyes and streaking her face now, and Kazuki had brought them there, and he couldn't wipe them away.
"Do you want me to call after Armstrong, for him to come back?"
But now that Kazuki knew how much death and pain of this kind hurt, he couldn't stop fighting immeasurably more than at any time before, so no one else died or was hurt this way.
"Thank you very much for the offer, but I need that visa.
"And thank you very much for what you told me.
"It would have ended up hurting more not to know, sooner or later, so you didn't hurt me, you supported me.
"Can you please believe that, as much as Winry needs to?"
Sciezka gave Kazuki an uncertain, but genuine, smile.
"I'll try.
"And you're welcome."
Kazuki knew that that would need to be enough, for now.
But he was sure that the knowledge that he could still protect someone, and a friend, in at least a small way, revitalized him, and gave him strength, in ways that had nothing at all to do with an imperfect or whole Philosopher's Stone.
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BOOK ONE: TRANSMUTING THROUGH TIME AND SPACE
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Fin
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Begin
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BOOK TWO: THE FROZEN ALCHEMY ACADEMY WORLD OF BASCHOOL
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"Don't tell me you've never wondered… about the true extent of humanity's insatiable desires? About the madmen who pursued their twisted dreams in the name of progress? Because, after all, Kira… you're a child of this too!"-Rau Le Creuset
GUNDAM SEED:
Phase 44: SPIRAL OF ENCOUNTERS