.
CHAPTER 13:
STONE AUTOMAIL AND A FULLMETAL TEACHER
.
Edward pushed away all the unreality and horror and anguish and self hatred and despair and nightmarish dreams still weakly moving against the edges of his perception as though they were squeezing and compressing breath stealing shuddering walls separating him from all existence, in the same ways that he'd pushed his emotions away when he'd fought Sloth and Envy.
He pushed away the yawning all and history and outside of time and nothing devouring endlessly repeating unending switchbacks of inversions of a vacuum bereft of even the absence of a void lacking an emptiness naked of even a lacuna at the knowledge that Al was literally another space time and another dimension and another universe and another world away from him once again, as well.
The frozen and frigid horror of what the person had just said wherever they were was in countless ways even worse than what his half brother had said before he'd woken up, and dealing with the knowledge that his half brother was pursuing the Stone and close to it was so infinitely beyond thought or feelings or memories or imagination or dreams or creativity or hallucinations or nightmares or delirium or words or expression or definition or body language or sounds or communication to convey, even negatively, worse than the knowledge of who Sloth and Envy had been, and who the new Pride was.
But Ed wasn't the one who was meant to be the most injured recipient this time.
Winry was.
"Why didn't you bring me back to life?"
"Ed! Get up, Ed! Get up, Ed, and move forward!"
"Listen when your mother is talking to you!"
"Stop playing this Mom card!"
"Even when you close your eyes, there's a whole world out there… outside of ourselves and our dreams."
"Is that all you got? Impersonations with guilt trips attached? You'll have to do better than that. You're still a Homunculus under that face. Have you forgotten what I did to your friend Sloth? I killed her while she was wearing the face of my own mother!"
"Give up, kid. You don't have what it takes to kill me."
"You couldn't have picked a better face! Show me what you really look like! Instead of being a coward! Whose only real power is to hide behind other people's faces!"
"What's wrong? I thought you wanted to see him."
"Envy was the very first Homunculus, created by Hohenheim almost four hundred years ago, as the result of the failed human transmutation of our son, who died prematurely from mercury poisoning. I suppose you could say that Envy was once your brother."
"But then he abandoned me, and started fresh with his wife and kids. Needless to say, I never did like being replaced."
"Edward!"
"Edward? Can you hear me?"
"Rose… Who am I crying for? Al?"
"He used alchemy to bring you back, Ed. After you died."
"The Philosopher's Stone. He used it to fix my body and pull my soul from the Gate. Then what happened to him? Don't tell me… Don't tell me he's gone, Rose. Al! Al! Al!"
"I'm sure, whatever happens, you'll find your way out. You've got strong legs. You'll get up and use them, won't you, Edward?"
"We're real, Edward. We're not just part of your dreams like you thought. I care, and I make mistakes. I may not live much longer, but I'll still be here. Just don't forget me."
"For as long as we're alive, we can't keep living as if our own dreams are all that matter, okay, Al?"
"No!"
"You don't know what I did!
"I used to possess the same weapon as what your kakugane is in a different way, but it hurt so much that I refused to use it and I just lay there and let Brother almost die!"
"Keep your Stone away from me!"
Not this time.
Winry's eyes were wide and her face was slack in so much drawn horror that Ed couldn't even tell if she knew that she was unaware of reality, or even what the difference between awareness of reality and unawareness of it were, while tears had manifested in her eyes and were falling down her face.
Rose's face was set with her lips pressed tightly together in a mixture of empathy and understanding and knowledge and sympathy, and tears of her own in her eyes, a number of which were even spilling down her face.
Kazuki was looking back at them with his eyes wide and visage contorted in uncertainty and terror.
Sciezka's mouth was open, tears cascading down her own face.
Tears weren't just streaming down Major Armstrong's face in the rearview mirror of the military car that they were in, his hands were clenched on the steering wheel and shaking so violently they threatened to wrench it free of the dashboard at any time.
Ignoring the hotness that was actually pushing against the backs of his own eyes, Ed moved his head at Sciezka to tell her that he wanted to get up, and she extricated herself from below his legs and opened the door to the car and got out.
Edward then sat up in the seat, turned, and pulled Winry into his own lap as close and tight and secure and warm and safe and protected as possible with her face buried against his chest, and then he started rubbing her back with as reassuring, firm circles as he could think of.
"Don't take what you just found out too hard," Ed spoke through a voice that was cracking.
For he knew that Winry wasn't going to believe a single thing that Ed was saying any more than Ed had until Winry at last convinced Al and him to talk about their respective fears that the other brother hated them after so many years of far more terror and self hatred than, in many ways that Al and Edward hadn't known, had been fully self defeating and totally pointless.
Or any more than Ed and Al had been willing to believe for a second that what had happened to Rose and Lior and the crushed girl and Central hadn't been their faults and their responsibilities.
"First and foremost, you did not do what Al and I did when we performed human transmutation, or in Lior or Central the last time that I came back.
"You didn't study anything that you should have known better than to research.
"You were just trying to be our sister.
"I was the one who came up with the idea of performing the human transmutation.
"I was the person who left Lior when I discovered that there was no Stone there and left it to Dante's and Cornello's mercies, after I'd refused to say a word to you for around four years because I knew that you'd try to rein me in.
"And Al specifically left you behind because he knew that you'd try to stop him from opening the Gate in Central.
"You did not kill Mom, or anyone else, or cause anything that happened afterwards."
But Winry just gave off a number of shrill, weak, manic, hysterical, very, very young, wordless sounds, and said nothing.
Kazuki inhaled harshly.
"What on both Earths happened to the two of you?"
But now that Ed had said the first things that Winry needed to hear, he had more to worry about than Winry and Rose and Kazuki and Sciezka and Armstrong.
And Edward hoped that he'd said and done the right thing by talking to Winry first, and not the soldier in the tomahawk wearing a black Briggs uniform; who, from his appearance, could only be the Captain Buccaneer who Sig had once told Ed he envied because Teacher had undergone her own wilderness month long alchemy training on Briggs Mountain and Captain Buccaneer's muscles, particularly the ones in his abdomen, were, unlike Sig's, supplemented by a military grade automail arm.
Ed could think of any number of reasons why the person working for his half brother was provoking them.
And, as close to the imperfect Philosopher's Stone, and the true Philosopher's Stone, as Brother had no doubt drawn on his own, no single one of them was an appealing one.
Ed looked at Buccaneer without altering his embrace of Winry or how he was rubbing her back.
"Have you deployed anyone wherever we are to go after my half brother's research team without searching the surroundings for the same kind of transmutation circles Dante and Scar set up in Laboratory Five and Lior?" Ed questioned.
"We've stopped at the outskirts of the abandoned Northern mining town of Baschool," Buccaneer responded, jerking his head to his left.
Edward twisted his face to the side and back to see the buildings of a large city resting on terrain of white winter well past a group of military cars and trucks that were surrounding them, even along with fourteen tanks that were wider and longer than the ones that the Central forces and the Eastern forces deployed, with similarly wider and longer treads and barrels.
Whatever was going on, Mustang clearly wasn't taking any chances that they'd fail to arrest his half brother and his research team this time.
Edward looked back at Buccaneer to see him grimace.
"We're here for research notes that Hohenheim might have hidden here," Buccaneer answered.
Edward started violently.
"And, in the event that your brother's team already knew about them themselves, we sent a hot air balloon over Baschool that landed and reported in hours ago as soon as Sciezka told us our destination, and we analyzed everything that we have on record about Baschool up until now and trying to figure that out
"It looks like they were right that they know about them, and that they've most likely already found them."
Edward agreed with that, but hearing it still caused him to clench his teeth violently in rage and frustration.
"But we haven't discovered any evidence of one or more Philosopher's Stone transmutation circles.
"We've analyzed extensive maps of the arrangement of the streets and roads, the girders and railings in the town, the mining tunnels, the railways, the arrangements of the buildings and the rooms inside them, even the way the boxes storing mining supplies and the supplies within them are arranged, but unless the circle isn't Amestrian or Ishbalan, we haven't found any evidence of such a circle in Baschool.
"Or, for that matter, in the event that they can somehow set one off elsewhere from Baschool, in any of the surrounding residential or rural areas."
Edward started violently.
He hadn't considered that a Philosopher's Stone transmutation circle, whether it was regular sized or citywide, or of some other measurement, might be able to be activated at a different location from here.
But, as Buccaneer had said, the circle might not be Amestrian or Ishbalan.
"You really are still in denial of the Truth, aren't you?
"After what you just said, if you say a single thing to me about how you've learned to face the Truth and not close your eyes to it, I'm going to laugh in your face.
"Do you honestly believe that, just because you incinerated all of the research into the Stone in Amestris, and because I'm responsible for all of the practical research into it on the other Earth, that no one else, in some other location, in the near or far future, will be able to discover how to take it up again?"
Sickness caused Edward's insides to distort and his stomach to warp.
What had he been fighting for and striving for, for so long and so hard, since he'd learned that the Ishbalan method of transmuting the Stone sacrificed even more human souls than the Amestrian method did at its worst?
As Buccaneer had just said, if cultures such as Xing and Milos had studied the Stone themselves, Ed's half brother might have a circle from one or more cultures elsewhere hidden somewhere in Baschool, or nearby.
At least, as Buccaneer hadn't ordered anyone not to charge the location of the person who had told them what Winry had done, or even open fire on him or her, he wasn't deploying anyone into Baschool itself yet.
So, unless they were standing on top of an underground circle, no one was currently at risk of contributing to an imperfect Stone or a full Philosopher's Stone.
"Have you found anything else out of the ordinary?" Ed questioned.
"There are wires and poles for conducting electricity extending from platforms and balconies on the watch tower over the central mining shaft at the center of town out into the square outside it, and they meet with a circle of similar wires at the edges of the circle connected to six outer lines and six outer corners
"But according to what Mustang and Armstrong told me, they're set up in the shape of a human transmutation circle the size of the square."
Edward jolted violently and clenched his teeth.
"That they were so easy to identify, and they're so easy to avoid, means that they must just be a subset matrix, or the central matrix, of the real array somewhere else, as Scar's arm's circle was the central matrix of the Lior array.
"But from what Rose told Mustang, your half brother must have used up whatever he had left of the original Stone by now, and a single transmutation that breaks the Law of Equivalent Exchange uses up so much of the Stone that transmuting people over a diameter that's too much larger would be all but unfeasible even for an alchemist with a full fledged Stone.
"So whatever the real circle is, it can't be that big.
"Still, the presence of the sub array is one of the reasons why I held us back.
"We're not moving into Baschool until we're reasonably certain that no alchemist there is going to perform a human transmutation on one or more of us, as ingredients for one or more Homunculi or to directly open the Gate; to yank one or more of us into it or into someone else's body or a suit of armor, or some other human transmutation on a living person that we're unaware can be pulled off."
Edward thought it over, even as he continued to hold Winry and rub her back as before.
He drew as much vitality and reassurance and confidence and assurance from her warmth and closeness as he could to consider more sharply.
A human transmutation circle created by electricity was similar to the one that Eckhart had projected in Haushofer's villa, Hohenheim had been with Envy when it had been created and hadn't told Eckhart that an array of light couldn't function, and Brother and his research time had somehow been analyzing what had been happening on the other Earth for a long time.
So this circle might involve directly opening the Gate through a projected circle.
Tucker had developed a theory Ed wasn't yet aware of, utilizing a transmutation circle known as a reverse transmutation array to open the Gate.
Was the reverse transmutation circle the larger circle, or at least another part of the matrices of the square array or whatever the full circle was?
Edward ran over the little he knew about Ishbalan Grand Arcanum and Xingese alkahestry, but he still wasn't able to identify the equations in the reverse transmutation circle.
"Brother said it himself," Edward spoke to Kazuki.
"He taught your Earth alchemy for a reason.
"Tokiko told us, directly or through implication, that Homunculi are born from chain reaction transmutations involving embryos that infect humans and then perform a human transmutation to sacrifice the host body as the price for altering it into the new Homunculus body.
"She also said, directly and indirectly, that kakugane and Buso Renkin were developed to be able to disable or kill them in effective ways; but she doesn't know the precise link the kakugane and Buso Renkin alloys have to the substances that make up Homunculi on your side of the Gate."
"While you were asleep, we met an alchemist from the nation of Xing, named May Chang," Kazuki replied.
Edward started in surprise at that, but it made sense that Xing would have sent one or more ambassadors to Central after the Thule Society attacked it.
"She identified my kakugane and Buso Renkin, and thus likely Homunculi, as substances that underwent phase transitions, matter altered into a different phase and that can be best affected by focused light or matter that is similarly in a different phase."
Edward had run into the theory of phase transitions, altering matter into different phases of particles and energy that obeyed the laws of the material universes in a different form, a number of times when incinerating Dante's research notes in the cathedral.
But, as astonishing as it was that his half brother had figured out how to pull it off, that still told Edward nothing.
Without more specifics than that, however, or seeing the full circle involved in transmuting a Homunculus on Kazuki's side of the Gate, or knowing whether or not the kakugane and Buso Renkin crossed the line into actual human transmutations, Edward had no idea whether a phase transition was involved in Brother's research.
Perhaps he was just accounting for matter and energy functioning in different states.
Dad had named himself the Alchemist of Light, so what might be the central, or sub, array might not actually be in place unless the wires were fed electricity.
Dante had named herself the Alchemist of the Deep Wood, and preferred to transmute the ground, so the nature of Baschool might mean something.
This location was also covered in snow, so if the true Stone wasn't involved, Brother's study team might at least be researching red water.
Edward considered the possible pieces.
A projected circle that could directly open the Gate.
Research on two different Earths.
Matter and energy following different laws.
Light.
The ground.
Human transmutation.
Red water.
A violent chill shrieked up Edward's spine, and although his embrace of Winry and the circles his hand was making didn't falter, he still had problems breathing, and reality briefly separated at the edges of what he could register as he became of not just where the full circle was, but when.
He drenched himself in Winry's strength and warmth and reassuring and vitalizing closeness inside his arms, and he called and summoned every last fiber of it he could into his very being and very soul and very body and very brain and very mind and very heart and very self and very existence.
Because Brother was studying a horror of alchemy that, even after everything Ed had learned about what Victor and Kazuki had and could become, at least on their side of the Gate, and about how many souls were sacrificed to create a total Philosopher's Stone with the Ishbalan method of fashioning one, caused everything currently inside Ed's stomach and body to contort and warp and twist and distort so sickeningly that he didn't understand why he wasn't retching violently and eternally until he'd dry heaved endlessly every string of his insides.
Brother had drawn close enough to the true Philosopher's Stone to transmute it with the human transmutation circle, all right.
And it wasn't just one whole Philosopher's Stone.
Edward should have realized the liquid inside the restoration flask was a form of red water as soon as he'd learned what wounds it could enable someone to recover from, and analyzed the circular bottom of the restoration flask Victor had recovered in before they'd left Gensai Academy.
Worst of all, this was going to wipe away even more of Al.
And this meant that what Brother was researching was partially Ed's fault, and Ed's responsibility, in ways outside of defeating Dante to free him to accelerate it.
"An equation for the complete Stone is involved in the full circle," Edward told Buccaneer, his voice a threadbare breath of horror and terror.
"Time flows differently on both sides of the Gate, altering its rate in accordance to means that I don't yet understand, but that nevertheless constitute matter and energy operating in the same different phases that Brother was aware off when he kicked off progress in alchemic research on the other Earth.
"However, the reverse transmutation circle must have somehow directly matched matter and energy on our Earth to the flow of time on theirs.
"Most likely by somehow involving the traces of the Homunculi that bound themselves to the suits of armor the soldiers who invaded Central left behind on this side of the Gate, and perhaps the ones that I brought back themselves.
"That army, working for an organization known as the Thule Society, invaded Central because a physicist who Al and I once met sent a bomb through the Gate after performing a human transmutation. Brother, perhaps in concert with one or more members of his research team, must have taught this physicist human transmutation to play them against Amestris so they would invade and give Brother the ingredients for the reverse transmutation circle.
"The full circle is a three dimensional seven pointed transmutation circle for transmuting a true Philosopher's Stone projected by waves of light that imitates regular six pointed human transmutation circles also generated by waves of light at seven separate locations. It harnesses the red water of incomplete Stones at all seven points as vital ingredients for the transmutation and links them together through sending light waves through the snow near and at Baschool. And it's curved by the underground mass of both Earths into a circle extending over both worlds on both sides of the Gate."
Kazuki gasped in a new form of familiar terror and horror.
Edward clenched his teeth tightly and drenched himself in Winry's strong reassurance and warm vitality once more.
Someone, most likely Mustang or Sciezka, had told Kazuki the truth about the real Stone.
But Ed would give whoever had told Kazuki this a piece of his mind another time.
"Are Tokiko, Mahiro, my friends, and anyone else in Gensai City in any danger from this?" Kazuki questioned in tight, sick fear.
"I extremely highly doubt it," Ed reassured him.
"The water in Victor's restoration flask was a form of red water even though the color itself was different, and one of the six points must be a transparent glass circle in the bottom of the flask that can conduct light waves.
"One of the alchemists who was working for the League, perhaps the one who Moonface said actually fled the battle, Shinyo Suzuki, must be an agent of Brother's who received his instructions through the Gate the same way that the bomb went through it. Though I don't understand the precise means involved unless the instructions were on an unusual substance less familiar than most to the Gate, such as the one making up the bomb.
"Brother must have anticipated what an alchemist who became a living Stone would do, and that red water was necessary to heal the injuries that would almost certainly result from his or her vendetta, and altered the bottom of the restoration flask into that circle.
"But that red water shouldn't require any further human souls, as it should have already been in contact with the transparent circle long enough to feed it all of its souls."
Kazuki sighed heavily.
Ed twisted his head back to look at Kazuki, and saw that he was still pale and breathing worriedly, but he now looked set to confront what was going on.
Edward kept looking at him, needing to witness how Kazuki reacted to the rest of this.
"This red water is why Brother wanted your Earth to research Homunculi who eat humans for around five centuries."
Kazuki's jaw dropped.
"All of the red water was most likely gradually transmuted from the souls of all or most of the tens of thousands of humans who the Homunculi of your world have eaten over your Earth over the course of nearly five centuries.
"Through methods that I don't have the means of identifying at this time, the souls must have been supplied by Shinyo or one or more of Brother's agents to the League over the century that it operated, in order for Bakushaku would develop that flask without knowing what the water was.
"As well as, in the laboratory that Bravo dueled Moonface at or one hidden nearby, enough materials for at least six backup or potential backup flasks with similarly concealed transparent circles that, whether or not they're fully intact; are still in contact with enough red water, or already were long enough for the red water to feed the circles.
"If Chouno was healed in a similar flask after however badly you hurt him before, that was very possibly one of them.
"If he was, Chouno undoubtedly took a large number of those souls back, and Victor's Stone almost certainly obtained far more from his own flask when he recovered.
"But there should still have been enough left that it's very unlikely that he needs any more souls from there, or he wouldn't have let Victor leave Gensai Academy.
"All Brother should need are the souls of the rest of the Briggs contingent who he clearly lured here inside the frozen snow water of Baschool, within an unknown range of the human transmutation matrix at what is no doubt the center of the circle of light waves that he's about to activate.
"Then, due to the amount of souls who the Homunculi have obtained over nearly half a millennium on your Earth, he'll most likely be able to transmute not just one, but seven complete Philosopher's Stones out of around one hundred eighty thousand human souls each."
Rose went bone bleached.
Kazuki's face became drawn and phantom white.
Armstrong was so shocked and appalled that just a small number more tears pushed free of his eyes and down his cheeks.
Sciezka's mouth moved soundlessly.
"But what I can't figure out is what human transmutation has to do with this.
"Brother clearly wants to perform some kind of human transmutation on someone, perhaps himself, perhaps one or more of his researchers, perhaps to alter Dad's body around Pride and maybe Pride himself as the first stage of supposedly giving him the justification to become a human.
"But Brother didn't know that he'd be able to create Pride until just around two weeks ago according to my time, and he's been setting this transmutation up for around half a millennia on your side of the Gate and over four centuries on mine, so he hasn't put it in place just for Pride.
"And you shouldn't need that many Stones to enable the person who performed the transmutation to survive it. Dante was able to keep Dad alive when he transmuted the first Stone with just a relatively small piece of one Stone."
Kazuki started violently.
"Brother is studying something with the human transmutation that he wants to initiate that I don't have the smallest idea how to discover."
Edward faced Buccaneer.
Letting go of Winry and stopping rubbing her back, and leaving her, at a time like this shrieked and seared and screamed at everything outside and within who and what Ed was in ways that even not chasing after Envy to try to rescue Al as soon as Wrath had released him had seared and shrieked and screamed at him.
But his dreams of loving and protecting Winry meant as little as his dreams of loving and protecting Al had, compared to the two Earths outside of himself.
Additionally, if Brother had needed any less than all or most of the number of souls comprising the Briggs contingent that he could have anticipated that would be sent to Baschool, in order to finish providing him with the ingredients for the transmutation, he wouldn't have gone to all this effort to lure these many Briggs soldiers here.
So Edward was almost certain that, as long as too many Briggs soldiers didn't enter Baschool, Brother wouldn't be able to perform the transmutation.
But, if Edward was wrong, and he did what he knew that he now needed to do, he'd put himself in a huge amount of danger of losing his soul to one of the seven Stones.
However, whether he was wrong or right, if Edward didn't do something before any more time passed, and they held back out of Baschool too long or retreated from its vicinity, Brother would just supply the last ingredients to the Stone through some other means.
Brother knew how experienced Ed was in defending or evading Dante's and her Homunculi's tactics, so, even with what he'd revealed to Mustang and Ed at Central, he'd hurt Winry to try to provoke them to maneuver them into providing him with the last ingredients in a way that involved a plan that might have already have set a contingency operation for acquiring the last ingredients in motion.
And that might even involve maneuvering Kazuki, or Armstrong, or Edward himself, or all three of them, into being the person or people who initiated the transmutation.
They had no time to spare.
From the size of the procession, although Ed didn't know how many soldiers were driving each tank, Edward knew that the rest of the procession was staffed by approximately two hundred five soldiers, including Captain Buccaneer, Armstrong, and Sciezka.
Brother aspired to harness most, or all, of them as the final ingredients for the seven true Philosopher's Stones he sought to transmute in concert with whatever the goal of his large scale human transmutation was.
The Thule Society's invasion of Central had been the end.
Ed was not going to let even a single other person's life or soul who was right in front of him be sacrificed to the horror of the Philosopher's Stone and the other horrors of inhumane alchemic research once again for the rest of his life.
"However, whatever he wants to transmute, if he doesn't have the tens or over a hundred souls of this brigade, he shouldn't be able to pull it off," Edward told Buccaneer.
"If someone can destroy the central circle, the rest of the circle is still in place, so, if he doesn't already have one or more contingency circles somewhere, Brother will be able to set one up somewhere else sooner or later.
"But if someone can destroy the central circle, we might at least be able to buy ourselves some time to come up with a way to permanently prevent Brother from achieving whatever his objective is.
"You need to order everyone from Briggs to stay back.
"I'm heading in to destroy the central circle, and to retrieve whatever, if any, research notes and materials Dad left here, by myself."
For the first time, Winry reacted, and she shifted slightly in Edward's arms, although she didn't say anything.
Rose and Sciezka started violently, and Kazuki jolted similarly.
"You need to think about what you're saying," Rose spoke, her own voice tight with worry now.
"If you hadn't dropped your guard, you might have been able to defeat Envy and Gluttony by hurting them enough that you'd have used up all of their red stones, especially if you'd maneuvered one or both of them outside of the range of the transmutation circle so you could transmute yourself.
"Then you could have defeated Dante.
"But Kazuki told us what Pride did to you, and your older brother is almost certainly as accomplished an alchemist as Dante and your dad were, and he's seen the Gate as they have and he can thus transmute without a circle.
"From what Kazuki said, the alchemist named Crichton has as well.
"Furthermore, Kazuki told us about Greed as well; one or more of the alchemists in your brother's research team might have also seen the Gate, or at least have Scar's and Mustang's skills; and who knows how many other Homunculi or Chimeras are working for him and his cabal.
"If you walk in there to disable the array alone, you are going to die or become an ingredient of one of the Stones, and you are kidding yourself by telling us, and you yourself, otherwise.
"There's a difference between living for the world outside of your dreams and throwing your life away, and all that trying to ruin the matrix alone is going to accomplish is the second course."
"I agree, so I'm coming with you!" Kazuki cried.
"You saw what Victor could do! I've recovered my stamina and I've kept my mind on the coming battle and off of everything that's happened since yesterday for the most part, so my fighting spirit is as attentive as I can make it. And even if it's too dangerous for me to fully do what he did, I should be able to fight partially with Victor's caliber of talent and strength even though I don't have his experience, now that the Sunlight Heart has become the Sunlight Heart Plus.
"And it will be easier for me to avoid touching anyone in the wider maneuvering areas of a city, so I might even be able to risk fully battling like Victor.
"You'll be at a lot less of a disadvantage if I'm with you."
"If a single alchemist touches you, and you're not in Victor's form, and you don't rip that person's soul out of his or her body as soon as he or she does, he or she will be able to transmute with you," Edward informed Kazuki.
Kazuki paled with wide eyes.
"Taking you in there with me will thus be a double edged sword, whether or not you shift fully into what Victor is."
"Then teach me how you perform alchemy without a kakugane, Buso Renkin, or Stone," Kazuki requested.
Reality separated once again, and Edward needed to focus on Winry's presence and strength and reassuring warmth to drive the walls back away yet once more.
He was incomprehensibly unimaginably immeasurably less qualified to teach anyone alchemy than Teacher had been.
"As I have a lot more alchemic studies at my disposal on this side of the Gate to keep people from dying and feeling pain and fear with, I did to try to learn them to the best of my ability, too," Kazuki went on.
"So I meant to ask you if you'd be willing to do that anyway," Kazuki went on.
The shuddering separating walls were back, and this time, drenching himself in Winry's warmth and security and closeness and strength just caused them to mostly vanish and waver for a number of seconds, and even after they fully disappeared Edward wasn't sure whether or not he'd need to submerge in Winry's reassuring protection and warmth to push them away once more, or for how many times.
If he taught Kazuki Amestrian alchemy, he'd just cause Kazuki to become fathomlessly measurelessly indescribably incomparably more of a victim than he already was, and lead him down the same path that Dad and Teacher had led Al down, and that Ed now knew that Winry had followed Al and him down every solitary last single tiniest meter of a step of the way.
Edward could never teach alchemy to anyone, from any Earth.
And if Ed taught Kazuki Amestrian alchemy, Edward would drag him into a mess so much more ruined and larger than anything Tokiko had brought him into that it would shred him to tatters and eject him at the end as torn and ripped to strings of whatever warmth and kindness and innocence and joy and effervescence and laughter he was still holding onto.
And, unlike Al and Mustang and Major Armstrong, he hadn't entered that nightmare because he'd already gone through horrific hardship himself, either by doing something stupid such as performing a human transmutation or going through years of training and then following orders that he should have known better to obey during an oppressive genocidal war.
He just wanted to enable people to laugh and smile and run through the breeze and joke as much as he could.
Kazuki was clearly learning how remorseless and unrelenting and brutal and ruthless and unforgiving and harsh and savage and relentless the Truth of reality was, but even with what he'd already learned, even with what he'd discovered he and Victor were, Kazuki had no concept of how horrifically and profoundly death and pain and terror and violence genuinely plummeted.
If Edward dragged him into a world of alchemy, and violent alchemy, that had been incomparably more successful and had become endlessly more widespread than the one that he was still coming to know, he'd be ripped to strewn and flaccid and asphyxiated and skeletal and hanging strewn strings of hopeless ruined torment and despair.
But if Ed took Kazuki under his wing as Teacher had Al and him, he'd be in a much better position to protect Kazuki from it.
Could he turn down Kazuki's request, knowing what he'd be abandoning Kazuki to if he did?
Edward felt Winry's head move slightly up and down against his chest once, a minute nod that told him how much she believed that he could be the teacher who Kazuki needed him to be.
That just caused him to want to retch violently until he'd dry heaved violently so much that his body kept doing it reflexively even when he passed out from exhaustion from ceaselessly doing so.
Kazuki cringed at how Edward was reacting.
"Alternately, Victor said that there's one or more stages involved in becoming an imperfect Stone past his current stage.
"Maybe I can unlock one or more of them while I'm still in stage one, before I'm trapped in them, and outperform Victor as he currently is, so I'll have a better chance of assisting you in winning this before anyone can transmute with me."
Tokiko hadn't exaggerated about how reckless Kazuki was.
Edward wasn't even sure that he'd have been willing to take an impulsive risk like the one that Kazuki was talking about taking, before he'd returned to Lior and discovered what his rashness could bring about.
But Edward still remembered clearly enough how Mustang's, and other people's, response to his own impulsiveness had just angered him and convinced him to become even more determined to be reckless to know how to respond to Kazuki's.
Did that mean that Edward's experience with, and ability to understand, Kazuki's impulsive rashness as well as Ed could, made Edward one of the best alchemy teachers who Kazuki could possibly have?
Ed's stomach heaved so violently it brought tears to his eyes, and he pushed the thought away before he truly did risk throwing up.
But he still gentled his tone, as Mustang never had when he'd been m
giving Ed advice.
"Victor has nothing but his own experience to base his knowledge of how the process works on," Edward said. "We have no way of knowing what will happen if you direct your will to fight in a means that pushes you past a temporary stage two into a temporary stage three, or higher. That might also result in you becoming locked in a later stage before the approximately fourteen weeks are up," Edward responded.
"And that could make it a lot harder to stop the chain reaction."
"As hard as it will be for you to defeat your brother and his research team on your own?" Kazuki challenged.
"I don't want to see anyone else become a victim of the misuse of alchemy any more than you do, and that's another reason that I became an alchemist.
"This isn't up for debate.
"Tokiko and the rest of you can say what you wish to about the choices that I'm too unsure to make, but the one choice that I always make whenever someone needs me to is to keep someone else from being hurt or feeling scared.
"I'll keep what you said about risking changing into a higher stage Stone in mind, but other than that, if you go in there, I'm coming along."
Terrified and horrified cold shrouded all of Edward and gripped all of his insides.
If he needed to die once again, or became an ingredient of one of the Stones, he didn't care as long as he'd done his part, cleaned up his messes, and prevented anyone else from dying or careening into a nightmare.
But he couldn't let Kazuki cascade into it himself.
Edward knew full well from what Kazuki had already said and done since Edward had already met him, and Edward's own experiences with rashness and impulsiveness that, if he left, Kazuki would just follow him anyway.
Particularly because Kazuki was so kind that he'd cast himself willingly into a nightmare when he hadn't even understood much about how remorseless the Truth, and the Law of Equivalent Exchange, were.
Edward sighed heavily.
"All right, I'll stay here," he said.
"Let's figure out a way to disable the central array from out here."
Kazuki's face shifted through a cacophony of relief and disappointment, and Edward felt his insides twist in relief of his own that he'd at least kept Kazuki from collapsing into an even worse nightmare than he already knew.
"Is there any way that your tanks can fire on the central array from this range?" Major Armstrong questioned.
Buccaneer clenched his teeth.
"As much as I hate to admit the soldiers of Briggs have any weaknesses, we're trying to find ways to increase our range.
"But no.
"I'd need to order their crews to drive them into Baschool a decent distance, and without enough souls in the brigade that they'll probably be able to acquire enough ingredients, we'd just be asking for your brother and his research team to ambush us."
Major Armstrong opened his mouth, but Buccaneer cut him off.
"Don't even bother saying that you're going to do something stupid, such as defending a tank charge on your own," he spoke in irritation and annoyance.
Kazuki paled another time.
"If you were the Flame Alchemist, or you knew how to decompose like Scar, you might have a shot at defending us long enough for the tanks to get in range to fire on the core circle, whether or not you'd survive the effort.
"But, as musclebound as you are, you're not Mustang or Scar."
Armstrong sighed with heavy reluctance, and a violent chill almost wiped away all existence as Edward realized what he was about to say.
This time, he was used to continuing to detach enough to keep reality present without focusing on Winry's revitalizing warmth and reassuring strength in his arms, though.
With clear reluctance on his face, Armstrong turned to face Edward.
"If you're willing to teach Kazuki how to transmute with Amestrian alchemy, so there's much less risk of an enemy alchemist drawing close enough to touch him, if three combat alchemists engage your brother and his research time with a smaller contingent of Briggs soldiers, we will have a valid chance at defending the enemy tanks long enough for them to drive close enough to fire," Armstrong spoke.
"I understand your reservations, but this is the only way."
Edward kept reality present, but he could still barely feel, or even think.
Winry at last spoke, but she didn't pull her buried face back out of his chest even a little.
Her voice was broken and ruined and ravaged and cracked, but each word felt like it was being spoken directly into the soul and heart hovering and beating directly below her face.
"Ed, do you remember what you said to me when I forgot about the screw?" she questioned.
"You told me that it all turned out for the better, because if I hadn't made that mistake, you'd very likely have been hurt a lot worse.
"Our mistakes teach us as much as our accomplishments, and you know that in your own ways from all the ones that you have made.
"I know that you're worried about teaching Kazuki to make the same mistakes that you did, but who else do you believe, even Al since he didn't actually come up with the idea of performing the human transmutation, would be in a better position to teach him not to make them than you?"
This time, Edward almost couldn't even remember to keep existence with him.
"And don't forget," Rose spoke from where she was sitting.
Edward knew what Rose was about to bring up, and he remembered to keep existence about him, but that didn't cause his heart to squeeze and warp and twist and contort and distort and wring any less violently, in any less of an immovable vise of wholly unyielding diamond.
"If you hadn't taught me what you did, and what you learned from making the mistakes that I had, I might have regained my faith in Cornello. And as popular as I was, enough of the other people of Lior might have regained their faith in him as well, and Dante might then have started the war with the State the way that she'd initially intended to.
"And then Cornello or Scar, or maybe even I myself if I'd learned any alchemy by then, would have transmuted the complete Stone much sooner, and Dante would have been able to acquire it right away.
"And even more people would have most likely been slaughtered in Lior before that happened, both the people of Lior and soldiers, and I'd still very likely have lost my voice."
Kazuki's eyes flew wide in so much shocked horror and terror that Edward couldn't even begin to brush the thinnest string of the thickest surface of it.
"And without your support, even if Dante hadn't then successfully transmuted me, I most likely still wouldn't have gotten it back, and I might even still live separated from reality myself."
Kazuki went skeletal bleached of all blood.
"What you taught me from what you'd learned from your mistakes protected me and saved me, and kept things in Lior from becoming even worse.
"You can teach Kazuki.
"I believe in you, and that you can, and that will never change."
Edward couldn't think or feel of what to say, but Winry and Rose were right.
He didn't need to think about what to say.
Ed looked at Kazuki and gave him a tired, but heartfelt, smile of acceptance.
Kazuki's eyes lit up, and he grinned happily and eagerly and joyfully and excitedly back.
But, although Ed would try to teach Kazuki the alchemy that he knew, Amestrian and otherwise, he couldn't believe that becoming his alchemy Teacher would enable him to protect Kazuki from the full depths of the horror of the Philosopher's Stone, human transmutation, human artillery alchemy, and its other abominations.
As Winry and Rose had just said, however, if Edward himself didn't at least try to, someone who might be even less capable of teaching Kazuki alchemy from this side of the Gate and protecting him from its anathema nightmares would very likely need to do it.
So teaching Kazuki alchemy from this side of the Gate was another part that Edward needed to live for outside of himself and his dreams.
Edward stopped rubbing Winry's back and loosened his hold on her, and she whimpered quietly.
Agony and self hatred and guilt and sickness seared all of who he was and his self and existence and being as empty cold seized all of his insides and outsides at how boundlessly and endlessly distant her warmth and strength and vitality and assurance and reassurance and revitalization now were.
"My own Teacher first started instructing me on the job, and from what you and Tokiko told me, you started learning that way yourself," Edward once more forced the vitality and spirit into his voice that he'd once possessed but that he'd inexorably lost more and more of since his return to Lior, and that he no longer believed that he could regain and had lost almost all interest in recovering.
"So if you'll head back with me into cover, my first lessons for you will be about how to pull off a small number of basic transmutations, and then we'll forestall the one that's been set up here."
.
"Skywalker, still looking to the horizon. Never here, now, hmm? The need in front of your nose. Hmm?"-Yoda
"I was weak. Unwise."-Luke Skywalker
"Lost Ben Solo, you did. Lose Rey, we must not."-Yoda
"I can't be what she needs me to be."-Luke Skywalker
"Heeded my words not, did you? Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters."-Yoda
STAR WARS:
Episode Eight:
THE LAST JEDI
