.

CHAPTER 14:

A CALL TO HOME AND HEARTH FROM THE COLD

.

Alphonse Elric couldn't remember how he had come to look up at an ivory ceiling, his body aching everywhere inside and outside, especially on his left arm; or why two blue uniforms that appeared to have once been worn by two older teenage girls were covering his torso and legs as a sheet and blankets; and something soft, most likely a uniform belonging to a younger girl, was pillowing his head from behind.

"Al?" someone's voice asked.

"Are you awake now?"

He should be able to place the voice that must have just awoken him, but he couldn't.

For some set of reasons that he couldn't identify, he both did and didn't want to turn to see who had spoken to him.

But then everything returned to him, and he twisted his head in the direction of Victoria's voice so quickly that all of his aches burgeoned many times, lancing knives sliced through his skull, and everything swam and shifted around him.

Tokiko was standing near Victoria, leaning against one of the sets of tanks in a position that was putting as little strain as possible on her own torso.

Al's vision clouded with tears, and the aches retreated to edges of his awareness.

Tokiko gave Alphonse a smile that he could see clearly enough through his tears to tell was sincere.

"The girl with me wouldn't identify herself until she woke you up, but she said that she partially reverted a Buso Renkin of hers into a kakugane, and used yours and one other and mine to heal my injuries enough that I'll be all right in time," Tokiko spoke in a combination of concern and worry for him, and relief, because she must have seen a medic who Victoria knew and knew that they'd reached Yokohama.

Victoria must not have told him that she hadn't fully disassembled the Underground Searchlight into a kakugane, and that the laboratory they were in was clearly part of it, because she hadn't wanted him to worry too much about whether her kakugane would work on Tokiko.

Al didn't care to be told white lies, even ones of omission, but he couldn't fault Victoria for it, as desperate as she must be not to drive away the first person who had given her refuge from the nightmare that she'd lived for over a century.

That also meant that the laboratory that Al was standing in now was itself likely a chamber sized transmutation circle, perhaps for transmuting Alexandria's means of returning Victor to his original body.

"The girl brought me into the passage where I found Kazuki's kakugane, but we're now below the clinic that I woke up in, so I have even less idea what's going on.

"And the girl said that she doesn't care for Alchemist Warriors, which I assume is because she knows Victor; and that she doesn't want to repeat what I need to know.

"That in mind, is there a cure for Kazuki, and a means of defeating Papillon, here?"

Al brought his arms out from under the two uniforms, and cringed when Tokiko's eyes went wide at seeing his left arm, which was now a mishmash of scrapes and dried and clotted blood.

Victoria must have healed it as much as possible after Tokiko was out of danger.

"Why didn't you use a kakugane to heal yourself sooner?" she questioned with protective anger.

"There's so much blood on your arm that I can tell that you let it bleed out longer than you needed to."

"You were the one who needed it," Al answered, pushing himself into a sitting position.

Tokiko gave him a furious scowl.

"As for Kazuki and Chouno, hold on," Alphonse went on.

He winced as Tokiko's face became neutral.

He looked at Victoria.

"Are you hungry now?" he asked.

Tokiko started, and then her eyes widened as she realized why his arm was injured, and why he was asking that question.

She took a long step quickly to her side, clenching her teeth against the pain, and assumed a guard position, eyes wary and hateful, and Al could tell a lot of the hate was because of what had happened to his arm.

Al forced himself to his feet and ran to place himself between them, feeling in his pockets with both hands for his kakugane as he did in the event that Tokiko was so vengeful towards Homunculi that she'd be willing to attack Victoria.

He gave Victoria a reassuring smile when he reached the two of them, and winced as her own face became a mask.

Then he turned to face Tokiko.

"She's not an enemy," Alphonse told her.

"She's been eating cloned brains from her mother for the last around a century, Alexandria, Victor's wife."

Tokiko's eyes flew wide, but she didn't lower her guard.

"If you're afraid that Victoria attacked me, I offered her a strip of my own arm so she wouldn't need to keep eating her mother, and I said that I'd keep giving them to her as long as I was here."

Tokiko's jaw dropped, and the shock at what he'd said and done was apparently a lot greater than it appeared, for she swayed and she needed to brace against the bank of brains to remain standing.

"To answer your question," Victoria interjected, voice now sharp and harshly edged and more guarded than almost any other time Alphonse had heard it before, "It's just been a day, so I can go at least two more without eating.

"Now can we stop discussing this with an Alchemist Warrior here?"

Tokiko looked as though she wanted to say something about what Al had done, and offered to keep doing, at least to him. But, even as much as she hated Homunculi, she obviously understood enough of what Victoria had gone through for the last about one hundred years to know better than to remark about this further.

"I don't have any problems at all with that," Al said, knowing that Victoria would feel even more uncomfortable if he looked back at her as he said this, so he didn't.

"To answer your question, Tokiko, Alexandria is developing a means for neutralizing Victor's Stone, but I'm almost certain that they don't have a means of creating a spare, so this was a dead end in regards to Kazuki."

Tokiko's eyes went even wider and she needed to reposition her feet and shift her body against the brain bank to keep from once more falling to the floor, and a mixture of such imperceptibly stark and indescribably acute desperate hope and despair coalesced on her face that Alphonse's heart twisted, and his aching registered even more.

She looked over Al's shoulder at Victoria, and Al walked to the side so she could face Victoria better.

Victoria's face was still a mask, very likely because she wanted to cause her feelings for Tokiko and her desire to give Kazuki back his humanity to become clear in her facial expressions, if not her body language, but she was refusing to let them show for Alphonse's sake.

"How do you intend to return Victor to his humanity?" she questioned. "Perhaps I can think of something that you've overlooked, and come up with a way to create a spare."

Victoria's face didn't shift, and her voice was neutral.

"It took all the additional thinking pathways of all of these brains, and decades of research, for Mom to figure out how to protect Dad, and even then she needed the sole two other black kakugane as the ingredients for the chain reaction transmutations.

"I gave you the first one in Mom's Buso Renkin, a device known as a Rurio Head that hijacks a person's nerve impulses so Mom can wield that person's body and sample his or her memories.

"You likely still have a headache from me assisting Mom in using it on you while you were unconscious."

His existence, and all other existence, disappeared, if there had even been such a thing, or hadn't been, or Al could sure, or even unsure, that there had or hadn't been existence.

"Don't worry," Victoria spoke quickly.

"Yes, Mom and I know what the real Stone is now; but she didn't look at any of Tokiko's memories of you, and pry."

Reality reappeared, but Al now ached so much that he could barely stay on his feet himself, and new hot tears obfuscated all of the existence that he was again aware of anyway.

New terror that caused everything to ache flooded everything that Al registered that Victoria was about to take his hand or shoulder when he knew that she wasn't comfortable with it.

But, even though he tried to keep the terror out of his visage, Victoria must have seen something, for she said with irritation, "And you don't need to worry that I'll do that to myself, either.

"Now can you please knock it off?"

Alphonse sagged in relief, and he reached up to wipe his tears out of his eyes, and off his face.

If Tokiko knew what Al had been afraid of, and Victoria had been talking about, she didn't give any evidence of it.

"That aside," Victoria addressed Tokiko again, "Even after all that time, Mom could just contain the Stone's power. Her success at developing it showed her how to develop a finished model, one that can cancel out Victor's Stone or Kazuki's, but she has no idea how to transmute a second one without creating another negatively charged Stone to convert into a positively charged Stone first."

Incomplete Stones could be separated into negatively charged particles and positively charged particles, then?

That was new.

And that must have made Kazuki's Stone a flawed neutron, as it had been a partial combination of an imperfect Stone created from protons with an incomplete Stone created from electrons.

Was that why Victor's and Kazuki's Stones acted on their own, then?

Because they were components of what alchemists in Amestris referred to as the Fifth Element that had been separated into subatomic particles, and, as they weren't complete atoms of both negatively charged particles and positively charged particles, they could interact with other substances without anyone needing to consciously transmute with them?

Did that mean that other imperfect or true Stones defied the Law of Equivalent Exchange by repulsing it, but these Stones broke through it by attracting it, and they thus converted any other substance they touched and converted them to substances that Stones could interact b–

Existence didn't even vanish as what was very likely the primary goal of Viator's research on this side of the Gate at last became apparent to Al.

Because nothing could vanish, as nothing had been present, not even nothingness or present, in an existence that had never and never would exist or had existed or hadn't existed or would exist, in the first place.

Complete, total, whole, absolute horror so undiluted in its distilled epitome that it was pure of even purity wiped and washed everything that wasn't or was, that had once not been or once could be, and that had once been and would never be, of all understandable or imperceptible existence and unreality and nonexistence and reality.

Victoria blinked, and her brow furrowed slightly in concern.

Tokiko started.

"What's wrong now?" Victoria questioned, but this time there was no true defensiveness or anger in her voice.

"As long as we're alive, we can't keep living as our own dreams are all that matter. Okay?"

If not for Brother's words, Al wasn't sure that he'd have been able to speak once again at all, for as long as he remained alive.

As it was, horror shrank his voice down to something tiny and very young.

"I know what Viator wants Victor and Kazuki for," Alphonse breathed in a minute, little tone.

"And what one or two of the other circles that Dad wouldn't tell you, Victoria, about, transmutes.

"I'm very sorry that I need to say this, but if you discover how to finish this third kakugane, it will just make things a lot worse for Victor."

Victoria went white, and the glass of one of the vats shifted as Alexandria wordlessly asked for Al to go into further detail.

"Viator wants it as well, but what Alexandria is developing won't hurt Victor any more in and of itself if Kazuki's Stone just completes itself the same way that Victor's is trying to.

"However, Kazuki is the key to what Viator is trying to do."

Tokiko's face became as white as bleached bone in a combination of horror and terror and hate and fury, and she needed to reposition her feet a third time to stay on her legs.

"If the neutron particles of Kazuki's Stone are fully transmuted into an imperfect Stone created by nothing but neutrons, it will be able to set off another involuntary transmutation that murders Victor or transmutes his own soul into an indistinct part of his own Stone, and that coagulates the other two opposed kakuganes together into a single composite imperfect Stone.

"But, whether it's because the three Stones weren't originally full atoms, or for one or more other reasons that I'm currently ignorant of, this Stone won't challenge the Law of Equivalent Exchange by breaking it.

"As these subatomic particle Stones already do, it will push the envelope of the Law of Equivalent Exchange by transmuting all substances it comes into contact with into a form that it can better associate with in the same ways that other matter does."

Victoria's jaw and eyes hung slack as she realized what Al was talking about.

The glass of the same tank that had moved before shifted, as Alexandria asked Al to confirm what she believed he meant.

Tokiko's brow, however, furrowed in uncertainty, as she wasn't following.

Alphonse wished that he could keep it that way; but not telling her the Truth now would just hurt her in the end as Brother had been hurt unimaginably incomprehensibly worse, and almost died, because Al hadn't brought up what Brother knew as well as he did about Douglas, and what he was just denying to himself.

"If this imperfect Stone can be transmuted into a true Philosopher's Stone, Viator will have a refined form of a genuine Philosopher's Stone that can create a virtually limitless supply of real Philosopher's Stones from one large population center after another with transmutations that take a matter of seconds; merely by taking the genuine Stone to that population center and transmuting with it, without him needing to set up a transmutation circle to transmute the real Stone, or to first gather the ingredients for it over a short or long amount of time."


Kazuki, still in the clothes that he'd been wearing when he'd given Tokiko his uniform yesterday even though Sciezka had changed into a military uniform as soon as they'd left Winry and Rose in the car, started drawing the final lines of the transmutation circle that he'd now memorized.

He looked over at where Ed was talking to Captain Buccaneer, Armstrong, and Sciezka about potential ways to react to however Ed's older brother tried to ambush them.

Something that, the longer that Kazuki spent drawing this circle, the more time they'd give Ed's brother minutes to come up with ideas of new potential ambushes as soon as the Briggs tanks were deployed into Baschool.

Ed's brother didn't have a theoretically boundless amount of ambushes that he could set up, as he'd clearly had a specific reason for try to provoke Winry into spurring them to fall into his trap rather than someone else, a reason that they hadn't yet figured out.

But the longer the minutes stretched that they gave him the time to think of new ideas for ambushes, the more of a disadvantage that they'd be when they at last entered Baschool.

Thankfully, while Kazuki was willing to admit that Tokiko and Chouno might have at least a small point about his artistic skills when it came to drawing people, he was enough of a master of art to draw the circle.

That reminded Kazuki.

He put the last touches on the circle, and then he placed his hands on the cold snow below it and reminded himself of the chemical composition of the snow and dirt and rock beneath him.

Crimson currents cascaded over the circle, and he altered it into a snowman around May's height with all of Ed's visible body wrinkled as though he were an old person whose body was inexorably becoming smaller and shorter and collapsing in on itself.

Kazuki grinned and waved at Ed, and then he called over to him.

"I'm all done!" he called.

"How does it look, and do you still think of me as a small time alchemist compared to you; if you catch my meaning in regards to you yourself, and the snowman?"

Ed started in surprise at how Kazuki was still joking even at a time like this, but then he turned to give Kazuki a grateful smile and sauntered over to the snowman with an ease that relaxed Kazuki's heart and chest.

He examined it, and the circle, for several seconds, and then his eyebrows rose.

"I dunno'," Ed commented in a relaxed voice. "It looks more like you're telling me that I'm so minuscule that I can stand inside a drop of moisture in the air, not a snowball."

Kazuki felt lighter at Ed's willing participation in the joke.

Carrying someone else's pain and fear for him or her was as revitalizing and encouraging as it always was.

"Got it in one," Kazuki replied easily, grinning.

Ed snorted.

"Do you have the substances making up dirt and rock, snow and water, the iron of the watch tower over the mineshaft, and the dynamite that we might find inside the mineshaft below it, memorized yet; as well as the basic transmutation circles for decomposing and reconstructing them?"

Kazuki raised his guard, and went back to focusing on his motivation to fight for Tokiko and Mahiro and Ouka and Shusui and Chouno and Ed and Al and his other friends, and others.

This might mean that they're done.

"I'm not sure about the composition of the dynamite, as there's a lot more to it," Kazuki replied.

"But yes to the rest.

"Am I ready, now?"

"I have one more lesson for you, for the time being," Ed responded.

Kazuki suppressed the urge to sigh, because he could tell that Ed was still having severe misgivings about having agreed to teach him.

Kazuki didn't want to think about Bravo right now, after what he'd said that he was willing to try to do if his superiors believed that it was necessary, but he wished that Ed had been able to spend more time with Bravo before he'd left.

Maybe Bravo's confidence, and his own optimism and lighthearted spirit, could have given Ed more confidence in his own abilities as a teacher.

That reminded Kazuki of something that he'd told Tokiko after their battle with Washio.

"As Winry and Rose said, you're a victim yourself," Kazuki spoke.

Ed's face became neutral, and Kazuki sighed heavily.

Ed was at least as resistant to the concept of people protecting him as Tokiko had been when they'd first met, until Kazuki had started making progress in breaking through the walls that she'd put up to keep kindness and a world of laughter away from her.

Assuming that, given what Kazuki now knew that he was and could become, that that hadn't been fully or mostly Mahiro's doing, and Kazuki had had nothing, or little, to do with why Tokiko had increasingly let down her shields and bonded with all of them.

Kazuki pushed it away.

He had a relatively better chance of protecting Ed now than Tokiko.

"So that also means that, because your family started such successful and widespread alchemic research on not just one, but two, Earths, and research that has made this much progress; that, whatever the costs of it has been, you possess the same ability to live in a world of pain and a world of kindness that Tokiko and Bravo and Ouka and Shusui do, and you're as qualified as they are to protect other people.

"Just what is the reason that you won't have more confidence in yourself?"

"Because, even with all that you've learned over the last two months, and the last two days, you still don't fully understand what cost is," Ed responded.

"I died in almost every sense but the literal one when I first met Tokiko," Kazuki reminded Ed. "Going through that, and all the unusual amounts of pain that I can feel afterwards, taught me plenty about prices."

Kazuki thought of bringing up how Ed had permanently lost his right arm to point out that Ed had gone through something similar, but he didn't know how Ed felt about that, or how it had happened, so it might be a bad idea.

"It's not your own pain that I'm talking about," Ed responded.

Irritation rose.

"Tokiko hasn't directly told me why she became an Alchemist Warrior, but I've pieced it together.

"And recall what I told you about Ouka and Shusui going through things that I can't talk about.

"Chouno has himself, and I can't talk about them without betraying his confidence.

"I'm aware of what other people need to struggle through."

"We'll continue this lesson later," Edward said.

"For now, all you need to know that is, because you saw the pathways of alchemic energy and knowledge that travel through the Gate as I did, what alchemists call the Truth; and now that you have firsthand experience with a transmutation circle, and you've memorized the circles and substance compositions necessary to transmute them; you should be able to transmute by clapping as I have."

Kazuki started violently.

"But Stones themselves, imperfect or full, get around the need for regular transmutation circles in their own ways.

"However, transmuting as a living circle can be channeled by subconscious or unconscious impetus the same way that kakuganes and Buso Renkins can. I transmuted by just clapping the first time myself that way."

Kazuki grinned triumphantly.

Maybe there really was one way he could one up Ed with transmuting through the methods used on this side of the Gate.

"You have that right," Ed said, clearly being able to tell what Kazuki was thinking of.

"If you try transmuting that snowman into a weapon, you might be able to make a head start at transmuting with your bare hands, or at least one ahead of mine."

"Watch and behold," Kazuki responded with another grin.

He clapped his hands, turned, and touched them to the snow once more.

More blue currents coursed, and he called on his wish to protect Ed and Al and Sciezka and Armstrong and Winry and Rose and everyone else here from Ed's brother and his research team, and visualized an arcing and elongating thin lance of ice.

The snowman shifted into one, arced into the air, and then burst towards the empty mining town to sail across a large number of yards and smash into the wall of one of the closest structures.

Buccaneer started and whirled on him.

"What was the point of that, greenhorn!?" he shouted angrily.

Kazuki dismissed the other large soldier's anger as he usually did Tokiko's.

"I doubt they'll be fooled, but there's a small chance that that might have drawn one or more of our potential ambushers out into the open."

Buccaneer sighed heavily.

"If the Fullmetal Alchemist wasn't so well renowned, I'd lock you in one of our rearmost vehicles and leave you there," he said.

"You're right that you most likely fooled no one, but you might have weakened the structure of the house you just hit enough that we can't use it for positioning or cover in the coming battle."

Kazuki felt his blood drain away.

"I don't know how you did things where you come from, but this is a national military, and we fight together in large numbers, Briggs soldiers more than most.

"If you want to fight with us, don't make decisions on your own initiative to suit your own methods of operating; and cooperate with us in tandem and do what the more experienced alchemists tell you to, not what you believe is the best course of action.

"If you're not willing to do that, vacate what's about to become a battlefield, or you're going to end up getting one or more of us seriously injured or killed, or perhaps you."

Reality shifted uneasily, but Kazuki saw his point, and he knew enough about how military forces worked to understand much of what Buccaneer wasn't talking about.

"I get what you mean," he answered.

"I'll follow your orders, too."

Buccaneer clenched his teeth.

"Did you listen to a word that I just said about experience or not?

"I don't have any experience giving orders to alchemists in a combat situation. Unless you're specifically commanded to follow my orders, do not obey them; or that's as likely to get someone hurt or killed, or you yourself, as acting on your own initiative. Fight under the Fullmetal Alchemist and the Strong Arm Alchemist, and fight with everyone else."

Kazuki sagged.

He'd known that fighting at the side of alchemists who he didn't know, at a location that wasn't just a natural environment away from Gensai City but a literal planet; was going to be so much harder than the first time he'd fought with Tokiko against Washio in the forest, or when he'd broken into the LXE experimentation ward with Bravo and Tokiko yesterday, that he should be ready for the difficulty to far surpass anything that he could anticipate.

But discovering how to fight at Ed's and Armstrong's sides in Amestris, on this side of the Gate, even surmounted what he couldn't anticipate.

"Don't get discouraged," Sciezka shouted over to him with an encouraging smile.

"I enlisted when I was fired as a librarian because I was such a klutz that I loved reading more than fulfilling my responsibilities, but I still learned how to work for the Amestrian military well enough that I was able to assist Ed in beating Dante.

"If I can do that, so can you, and you're clearly not a klutz."

"I'll take that to heart, but you need to keep in mind that, you need to know what joy is yourself in order to bring people into a world of fun, so you're not a klutz yourself, and your love of reading would have actually enabled you to become one of the best librarians around if not for the issue that the library needed to make money," Kazuki called back.

Sciezka started, and then she gave him a wide, thankful grin.

Kazuki turned to Armstrong, who was assisting soldiers nearby in loading rounds into one of the tanks.

"And, if you see yourself as a klutz for liking fitness a lot and not just fulfilling your military duties, the same thing goes for you," he shouted to Armstrong.

"What's the point of fighting for your nation if all you know is how to hurt people, and you don't know how to show them to live ordinary lives to the best of their capacity?"

Armstrong stiffened, but in such a way that told Kazuki that he was both pleased and offended to hear what Kazuki had just said.

"Who says that my two interests don't go hand in hand," Armstrong shouted in return.

"You have yet to see the potency of my artistic alchemy."

"I hope that I won't need to wait much longer," Kazuki replied.

Then he turned to Ed, who was watching Rose as she sat with Winry in the back seat of the car that they'd traveled here in, her arm around Winry as she held the other girl, who was still looking out sightlessly at her surroundings, against her side with Winry's head on her shoulder.

"Was that good enough, or do you want me to do it again due to me attacking the town?"

Edward jolted, clearly having been so worried about Winry that he'd partially lost awareness of Kazuki, but then he turned.

He gave Kazuki a weak, but approving, smile.

Kazuki sighed heavily and deeply.

Assuming that he couldn't beat it out of Ed's brother as he had Shusui, he was going to find out exactly what the Elrics and the Rockbells, and Rose, had been through as soon as this fight was over, whether they stopped Ed's brother from accomplishing the transmutation or not.

Although Kazuki had no intention of letting it succeed.

All or most of the Briggs soldiers here were not about to be swallowed by a Stone incomprehensibly worse than the one Victor had almost engulfed Tokiko, Mahiro, Angel Gozen, Daihama, Okakura, Rokumasu, Wakamaya, Kawai, and the other students of Gensai Academy with.

He didn't know how much difference he could make in this battle himself, but whatever it took, he was going to back up Ed and Armstrong in making enough of a difference that they'd win it themselves.

"You did fine," Edward answered.

He looked back at Winry and Rose.

"I'll take care of Winry," Rose informed Ed with determined resolve.

Ed didn't say anything back, and he just nodded wordlessly.

Rose cringed, but she just settled back against the back seat with Winry and turned her head to watch the battle that was about to start warily.

Edward looked at Armstrong and Buccaneer.

"We're all set on our end," he informed Armstrong.

Buccaneer nodded, and he turned to start calling out orders to the Briggs soldiers.

Sciezka pulled an unremarkable sized military gun out of a holster and opened up its ammunition to examine it, and the gun itself, for flaws with clear uncertainty.

Kazuki's insides twisted.

Was this her first time actually participating in a battle?

And the first time that Sciezka might need to kill someone?

"I'm sorry. Koushaku Chouno."

"Don't apologize. You hypocrite."

Kazuki didn't know whether she hadn't killed anyone before for sure, but she was clearly much more inexperienced than anyone else here, and most likely just here because she knew where they might be able to find Hohenheim's research notes and material in the small chance that Ed's brother had missed one or more caches of them.

Unlike Tokiko, who he'd just joked about being an older sister while he'd hoped even then that one day he might be able to establish a romantic relationship with her; Sciezka's scatterbrained but heartfelt concern for him and other people, and her optimistic but perceptive way of living, reminded Kazuki of Mahiro so much that he truly did believe that he could come to see Sciezka as an older sister.

His insides twisted achingly at the reminder of Mahiro, and the comparison, and he needed to blink hotness out of his eyes.

Because he needed to at least protect Sciezka.

From herself as much as any external enemies.

If she truly hadn't killed anyone before, he wasn't going to let her be forced to need to make the same choice that he had with Chouno.

"We're set," Buccaneer called.

Sciezka started violently, and she quickly chambered the bullets and holstered the gun.

Armstrong was now standing at the side of the two foremost tanks, with Ed on his right.

A little less than what appeared to be approximately half of the Briggs officers and soldiers here, their uniforms a mix of white and black, were arranged in cars and on foot in two lines two person apiece behind those two tanks, the other six tanks arranged two abreast behind the front two.

Sciezka raced up to Armstrong's left, and Ed rushed to stand in front of them both.

Kazuki ran to Sciezka's other side.

"Injuries such as a slipped disc are curable," Kazuki informed Sciezka, remembering when Tokiko had first fully started to connect with Mahiro and her own brand of scatterbrained but sincere kindness, "But death isn't, both for the person who takes the shot and the person who fires it.

"You'll never recover if you kill someone, so I advise you not to do it."

Sciezka jolted violently.

"I enlisted knowing full well what I might be required to do, sooner or later," she responded.

Kazuki's heart and insides twisted with even more searing spears now.

"You don't need to worry about me when this is your own first true fight in Amestris."

Kazuki's stomach plummeted at the knowledge that she hadn't been in a battle before.

"At least I've fought," Kazuki responded.

He opened his mouth to say something else, but then Buccaneer shouted, "All forces with the exception of the ones ordered to remain here, move out!

"All tank units, fire at will on the transmutation circle in the square as soon as the Fullmetal Alchemist, his apprentice, and the Strong Arm Alchemist can give you a clear shot in range!"

Kazuki heard the car that Winry was in, now with Rose driving it as a military vehicle temporarily loaned to her as a civilian, ignite and accelerate to high speeds to drive Winry and Rose far away as quickly as it could.

With unexpected precision and concert Kazuki hadn't seen in any of the videos of armed forces on his Earth, the Briggs soldiers began marching forward in unison, and the tanks started rolling forwards shortly afterwards.

Kazuki wanted to call the Sunlight Heart Plus into his hand, but he didn't know if an alchemist would be able to transmute with it if he touched it, so he let his black kakugane continue to rest inside his chest as his heart and focused on staying alert for whatever direction the forthcoming ambush was going to be launched from, and how it was going to happen.

"If I see anyone about to start the surprise attack before they do, should I make the first move, or stay on the defensive?" Kazuki asked Ed.

It was Armstrong who answered.

"That itself could be part of the ambush," he spoke up.

"Our adversaries might wish to lure one or more of us away from the rest of our forces to make it easier to strike us down, or for one or more other reasons.

"I've confronted surprise strikes myself like that a number of times.

"If you see any of our ambushers, feel free to draw your Buso Renkin, but remain on the defensive."

Kazuki didn't know what the Amestrian salute was, but if he had he would have used it even though he wasn't part of the Amestrian military and Armstrong was currently looking forward, as someone might be able to tell Armstrong about him doing so afterwards.

But all he could say was just a militarily contained but meant, "Yes, sir!"

Armstrong nodded, but he didn't say anything back.

A number of minutes passed, and they saw no signs of any attacks, and no one reacted as though he or she had seen another visual signal like the one that had tried to provoke them by hurting Winry.

But then purple light cascaded over the snow around the two foremost tanks and the rest of them, and the area around them descended into the ground.

Ed clapped his hands, and blue crackled and brought his automail blade out of his arm, so Kazuki knew what that meant.

"Buso Renkin!" he shouted, and light blue coursed out from his own chest and the unfamiliar lighter weight and shape of the Sunlight Heart Plus appeared in his right hand.

"Hold your fire!" Buccaneer barked.

Armstrong moved forward to run before the farthest tank and hold his gauntlets and the transmutation circles on them in a defensive position before him, and Ed sprinted in front of the closest to take a defensive position of his own, while Kazuki ran in front of Sciezka.

A moderately old, thickset male with short gray hair and a similarly short gray mustache and beard, walked up to the front edge of the wide pit that they were now in, holding what looked like a multi barreled rotating machine gun, with an oddly shaped partially oval of gray metal attached to its back, in both hands, with tubes that were extending from the oval inside the person's two sleeves.

Ed must recognize the figure, for he clenched his left hand tightly.

"It's been a long time, Fullmetal Alchemist," the person greeted them.

"I can assure you that today, our red water will be transmuted as I intend for it to happen."

At least Kazuki knew that this figure was an alchemist.

He wished that he could know as fully whether Ed's beliefs about what this figure sought to accomplish here were accurate.

"Outside of what you want with Winry, I could care less whether you transmute your red water," Ed shot back furiously.

"On those lines, are you the crackpot who told her about Mom?"

Kazuki's insides twisted at the precise reason that Winry was now a complete wreck.

"It was indeed," he responded.

"Then you're about to become good friends with a different kind of red," Ed informed the other person in tones of focused, lethal fury that surprisingly didn't hold any hate at all.

Kazuki started violently.

If someone had done to Tokiko or Mahiro what this person had done to Winry, he wasn't sure that he'd be willing to not hate the person.

Ed was much kinder than even Tokiko, Mahiro, Ouka, and Shusui.

Kazuki needed to find out what had yanked him and Al, and Winry and Rose, out of a world of kindness and warmth and into a world of dark alchemy and battle.

"Before that, would you care to fill us in on whether you want anything with Ed!?" Kazuki shouted up at the other person.

"And who are you, anyway!?"

"My name is Mugear Clockwrethal," he responded.

"I'm an old acquaintance of Ed's, and he has already acquainted me with more red than I cared to gain the company of, and I would have died then if the Enlightened Sage hadn't rescued me to scout me for the Brethren of Trismegistus."

They at last knew the name of Ed's brother's organization.

That was something, in and of itself.

"So I now intend for him to pay his debt to me by completing my new studies of red water in place of the alchemists who he convinced to quit my employ the first time that I studied it."

Seconds later, the barrels of the two tanks rose to target him.

"Unless he can do it while you're in a prison cell or a body bag, that won't be happening," Buccaneer informed him.

"Whatever the rest of your trap involves, you've now made yourself a clear target for not just two, but four, tank barrels.

"Surrender, or suffer for having made the arrogant choice."

"My reinforced automail ribs can hold out against them long enough for me to disable all four of them with my armor penetrating machine gun," Mugear responded.

Ed started violently and snarled furiously in a way that sounded as though he was emitting it through clenched teeth.

Kazuki cringed at what that implied.

"And my newest red stone, one as pure as Marcoh's were, is currently resting inside my body, thus enabling me to become the sixth sacrifice."

"Of what, specifically?" Ed challenged.

"Or did Hohenheim leave anything behind here that you can toss down to us for us to read and find out ourselves?"

"He left much behind against the chance that he might need to refresh his memory of his findings, and we have no intentions of telling you a single letter or diagram, or picture or symbol, of it," Mugear smirked triumphantly.

Ed clenched his left hand so tightly it shook and shuddered with anguish and fury while the nails of all five fingers punctured his palm and cause sanguine to drain from it.

"Much that accelerated our own research.

"Though we were still unable to get anywhere with it until Hohenheim was foolish enough to marry, and provide us with two children who we could drive to perform human transmutation, and thus free us from the need to cower up here to suffer the same fate of all Amestrians who became too close to the Stone.

"But now phase one is nearly complete.

"All of the ingredients but the sixth and final sacrifice have arrived."

"You have the option of giving us the details about what you're talking about, or you have the option of detonating in a fountain of blood," Buccaneer sneered condescendingly up at Mugear.

Kazuki cringed at the graphic terms that Buccaneer was using to describe Mugear's potential death.

Could he truly fight at the side of a military, knowing what he'd need to let the alchemists and soldiers in it do to anyone who he couldn't defeat through disabling him or her first?

Armstrong glanced back at Kazuki with concern before returning his gaze to Mugear.

Kazuki looked back at Sciezka, but her face, although it was very pale, was set with determination.

Kazuki knew all too well what would happen to that determination if she fired a single fatal shot.

That was not going to happen.

"As all of you yourselves need to know your options, I'm more than willing to oblige," Mugear rejoined with a visual arrogantly derisively condescending sneer.

"The Enlightened Sage, Ashleigh Crichton, Jude, and an alchemist who prefers to remain unnamed and merely known by a golden tooth he has replaced one of his upper teeth with, have all performed human transmutation; as have I.

"We have all become living transmutation circles, and those circles themselves can become points on a greater circle."

Kazuki pushed away the surge of new all consuming horror and terror at how much death and pain that might mean that he could inflict on other people and spun his head to focus on Ed as he started violently.

"As can even more unique circles combined with an imperfect Stone, such as myself."

Kazuki couldn't breathe.

"Or, as a relevant aside, circles such as ones whose souls partially or fully resided outside of an organic body at the time that their souls passed through the Gate, such as part of your brother's soul did when he first traveled to Munich.

"We're waiting for one such circle to arrive, and then we will have our final ingredient, and perform the transmutation."

Kazuki was no longer certain if his heart could beat, as well, at the knowledge of why that aside might be relevant.

And what it might mean for Tokiko and Mahiro, and the others, and the rest of the people of Gensai City.

Ed's entire body started trembling and shaking and shuddering so violently it appeared as though he would literally fall into bits.

"If you're referring to Al, you know that I won't tolerate that," Ed challenged Mugear, a breathless, sick, horrified, terrified fury in his voice that caused Kazuki's own insides to twist so violently that he couldn't believe that they weren't squeezing all of the contents of his stomach out through his mouth.

"Seeing as you don't have a backup circle combined with a Stone," Buccaneer's voice didn't betray his awareness that Kazuki could serve as a backup, "You're obviously confident that if we shoot you down now, you'll be able to live through it.

"So just hurry up and spring the rest of your trap so we can get down to business, would you?"

"We have already sprung it," Mugear informed them.

"I'm certain that you must have identified how our circle has been set up by now, but you have no concept of how versatile radiation is when it can be curved through different planes of matter and energy."

Further horror and terror erupted through Kazuki at the knowledge that there was just one ingredient the Brethren of Trismegistus still needed to acquire, but at least, unless Mugear was lying, Ed's belief about how the circle functioned was correct.

New terror and horror for Tokiko and Mahiro and the others exploded throughout all of Kazuki, but he knew Ed well enough by now to know that he could trust that they would be safe.

And Winry and Rose should be far enough away by now to be outside of the range of the central matrix.

"The circle in the square was not built out of electrical wires, but of radio wires that feed the watch tower over the mine shaft was reconstructed into a unique radio tower that amplifies radio waves enough for them to be punched through into the high quality radios of your tanks.

"With the front two tanks out of the way, the radio waves arranged in the circle in the square have now been decomposed to reconstruct the radio waves that have been exchanged among the six remaining tanks to force the radios to remain active, and thus construct the central matrix amidst the six tanks."

"The objective of which is?" Ed shouted, new contained terror for Winry and Rose in his voice.

"We have two objectives," Mugear responded.

"You should be able to understand the first easier than anyone else here, for Alphonse's body and mind were once a prisoner of the Gate for five years after you tried to resurrect your mother with human transmutation, while his soul was imprisoned in a suit of armor for a similar amount of time, and you yourself lost your right arm and left leg due to this."

Reality tumbled end over end and reeled and whirled and spun and tilted and shifted and swam as Kazuki at last became aware of one of the core alchemic nightmares that Ed and Al had struggled through for so long.

It wasn't as horrific as he'd believed that it might be, but it was still terrible transcending anything that Kazuki could feel or think, or not think or not feel, of comprehending or not potentially comprehending.

Ed went absolutely stiff.

"A human transmutation circle involving living circles and seven true Philosopher's Stones, connected inside of the recipient of the transmutation by a circle reflecting this one, can transmute a person, or a Homunculus such as Pride, into a living Gate itself," he breathed.

Kazuki jolted violently, as a new kind of all swallowing terror and horror at what this implied for whoever became the living Gate, and what that Gate might be able to do to both Earths, cleared everything out from inside him and outside him.

"One that I'm sure can live as long as Brother, Dad, and Dante can, though perhaps through different means, as well."

"It appears that you're the true Fullmetal Alchemist after all," Mugear smirked with smug and sarcastic approval.

"The second objective is merely to remove everyone nearby above the edges of this pit from the vicinity of Laboratory Sefirot in Baschool, so that we might acquire the emanation of Kether in the form of Kazuki Muto.

"And, by doing so, the potential means of mass producing the true Philosopher's Stone as one of the necessary means for fulfilling the final objective of our research, by harnessing his Stone to transmute residential area after residential area without requiring a circle."

Kazuki didn't know what the hot wetness that was now obscuring all of his vision was, or what heat and a vision and wetness even were, or if such things, or the concepts of them, or whatever frigid icy frozen cold so absolute zero frosty that it burned everything that made him up and wasn't outside him and had and was and could be and would be present in whatever existence and its concepts were and weren't and that wasn't him so blinding molten searing shrieking screaming ivory onyx white hot ebony obsidian pearl brilliant incandescent of terror and horror and sickness and self hatred and agony and despair, meant and didn't mean.

Where were the voices still sounding, not distorted and existing right inside his most profound being and reality and not unending past the borders of all space and time, coming from, and when had they sounded, and who did they belong to?

"Therefore, Winry Rockbell, as I know that you're hearing this over the radio that we've forced to stay on in your car as well, now that you understand the situation and what you've done to Edward and Alphonse for all these years, here is the choice that lies before you.

"One of us added blood from one of your ordinary injuries to the location where Ed would reappear when he transmuted Al's blood seal, so when he transmuted Al's soul into the armor, a minor fragment of your soul passed through the Gate, and enabled you to become the sixth sacrifice.

"Alphonse Elric should currently be within the range of a human transmutation circle himself now.

"All that you need to do is to drive the car that you are in into the range of this circle, and enable the Enlightened Sage; Viator Virgil, or Viator Elric; to sacrifice the souls of less than two hundred thirty Briggs soldiers and transmute himself, and later Pride, into living Gates.

"Those souls are more than enough that the transmutation can spare a small amount for two other purposes.

"If you enable Viator, himself an Elric, and Edward and Alphonse's oldest brother, to perform the human transmutation that will decompose and reconstruct him as living Gates, your intentions will be added to the transmutation circle, and you will thusly at last be able to fulfill the dream that you have longed to realize for around seven years now.

"All that you need to do is to sacrifice around two hundred thirty souls from the military that murdered your parents merely for treating injured and sick people who the Amestrian military was genocidally exterminating.

"And you will thus be able to give Edward his right arm and left leg back, and bring Alphonse Elric back through the Gate to your side and his where they never need be separated from each other once again; and at long last bring Edward and Alphonse, together for eternity and fully in their original bodies; finally and forever, home to your grandmother, Pinako Rockbell, and you."

.

"The nascence of a new life form and the whole of its creation, is the demise of all life that has come before it."-Doctor Ritsuko Akagi

EVANGELION 2.22:

YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE