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CHAPTER 15:
A FULLMETAL ARM AND LEG, AND A RED STONE HEART
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All Kazuki was aware of now was the frozen nightmare of terror and horror and death and despair and pain that was now suspending all of Ed's and Winry's and Rose's and Al's existence in an endless frigid phantasm of nothing but, not even the absence of, pain and terror and death lacking even boundlessness, one that would last forever past even unending forever if Ed didn't return to Winry's and Rose's side before it was too late.
If Winry broke, and enabled Viator to perform the transmutation, and Al was with Tokiko, and this brought her here as well, at the cost of around two hundred thirty people; or she was unable to prevent Viator's human transmutation from bringing Al here at the same cost; Tokiko might feel slightly better that she could keep her promise to Kazuki more effectively, and perhaps Kazuki could as well; but this would also ruin her.
And, after what Mugear had just said about Kazuki himself; Kazuki now might be starting to understand the frozen world of death and pain and terror and battle and despair that had engulfed Ed and Winry and Rose and Al whole, and that was threatening to engulf Sciezka, and perhaps Armstrong, if it hadn't already, well enough to finally begin grasping exactly how much of a victim of the horrors of alchemy, and reality, Ed and Winry and Rose and Al were, and Sciezka and Armstrong might become, if Kazuki didn't enable them to leave it, or stay out of it fully, or from now on.
He'd worry about what he was, and could become; when he had time to settle down and stop reacting as not just two worlds, but four worlds, now, kept throwing more and more things that he hadn't known were present in reality and couldn't fully understand before him; just as he was with everything else.
After what Mugear had just said that he was, and could become; for the first time, Kazuki couldn't keep from wondering if Tokiko and Mahiro and Bravo were actually right, and he was running headlong into horrors that were immeasurably too mammoth for him, and that he should know better than to be casting himself plunging within.
But, even at this time, even after what Mugear had just told Winry and Ed and Rose and him, nothing had altered from when he'd first seen Tokiko in the abandoned factory, and Mita in his cobra Homunculus form.
If he refrained from making the one set of choices that he most understood how to make, and didn't run to one or more people's sides to protect them as swiftly as he could, without any delay whatsoever in any fashion, shape, form, or way at all in the tiniest bit, one or more other people would be the one or more people to be hurt or frightened or scraped or die, not him.
In order to be able to return to a world of kindness where he could take the time to rest and come to terms with each new adversity a world of pain and combat, or either Earth, or Japan or Amestris, or Gensai and the forests outside it or Central and Baschool, cast in front of him; he needed to run forward.
Kazuki refused to believe, as much widespread success as alchemy had enjoyed on this side of the Gate, that there was no such thing as warmth and kindness in Amestris, or on this Earth.
He was putting Ed's and Winry's and Rose's and Al's sweaters and leggings back on over their artificial limbs and automail, and slamming the window shut on the frozen cold of this world that was freezing them into endlessly preserved death, right here, and right now.
There were enough people nearby that, if Kazuki could drain energy without touching anyone on this side of the Gate after all, he should be able to revert without hurting anyone too badly.
But he had no idea where Pride was, and how adept at performing alchemy in a battle situation Viator was, and if the Brethren of Trismegistus had been spying on the LXE, they knew one of Kazuki's weaknesses, and they might be gambling that he was so shell shocked by everything that had happened since yesterday that he wouldn't anticipate a research team that had surreptitiously backed them trying to exploit that weakness once more, this soon after it had been exploited the first time.
Kazuki reached as far down into the depths of his wishes and hopes that the people who he loved and cared about were able to survive death and terror and pain, as well as he himself, and his heart and soul and mind, as he could, and tore the copper skin back over his body.
Ed, his face white so pale it was almost transparent, whipped to look at him.
Tears were now streaking Sciezka's face, and she looked as though she just wanted to fall boneless to her legs and knees and never move once again for the rest of her life.
Kazuki couldn't see Armstrong's face, but he was shaking and trembling and shuddering extremely violently.
Buccaneer had a black, furious scowl on his face.
But all that happened was that crimson started cascading over his skin and clothes, and thankfully, blessedly, thankfully, blessedly not the Sunlight Heart Plus, and it didn't extend out in any direction from his skin or clothes, nor did blue flames appear.
Tears pushed forward into Kazuki's eyes.
Ed had been right.
Unless he touched someone, he couldn't drain souls on this side of the Gate.
But the red currents made it almost certain that Ed had been right about the rest, and that the Equivalent Exchange for this, as Ed put it, was that if Kazuki touched any living being, human or otherwise, he'd drain his or her or its souls in a matter of seconds; assuming that he hadn't already started doing so if there were any microbes on his body or clothing, or right by them.
"I've got this here," Kazuki informed Ed.
"Get back to Winry and Rose! The LXE tried to use a tactic on Bravo, Tokiko, and I yesterday before we started fighting them at Gensai Academy, luring us to their lab so they could strike the school, and if they know that I'm not used to that trick and still might not be, Viator might be en route to Winry and Rose right now, if he hasn't already reached them!"
Ed eyes flew wide.
He opened his mouth, but Kazuki cut him off.
"No one else but me can afford to move around outside of this pit until we're sure that Winry won't arrive, so I'm in a lot of danger of someone touching me no matter what I do, and there's no longer any point in me not fighting at close range with what I've learned from the Alchemist Army.
"And don't tell me not to risk morphing into higher levels of the reaction if I need to and I can, now that we know that I can't drain energy without touching anyone here. If I start draining anyone or anything at level three without touching him, her, or it, I'll revert to level two; and even if that means that I can no longer revert to level one, as Victor survived for what was very likely months or years at stage two before being nearly killed, I should be able to do the same.
"But if I'm not draining anyone at level three without touching him, her, or it, I'm going even higher if there are any higher levels, I can, and I need to do.
"Just protect your friends, and I'll protect the rest of us."
Ed looked as though he wanted to say something, but he at last clenched his teeth.
He clapped his hands and slammed them to the ground, no doubt to form a construct that would raise him to the back of the pit, but nothing happened.
Pride must be nearby, and he must have just altered the surroundings so no one could transmute.
But the Sunlight Heart Plus wasn't returning to its black kakugane shape, so that meant that, as long as Kazuki wasn't partially human and fully accessing his imperfect Stone, Pride couldn't command the matter that made him, and the Sunlight Heart Plus, up.
"Brace yourself!" Kazuki cried.
Then he swung the Sunlight Heart Plus with restrained speed into Ed's back, ensuring that his hand and arm didn't near Ed as he sliced his Buso Renkin, and sent Ed flying up through the air to the back side of the pit and around a foot over its edge, where he should be able to land jostled, but no more than bruised, past its edge.
Mugear didn't waste any time.
He aimed his machine gun at Ed.
But a single tank shell had already fired, and it now struck the machine gun before it could unleash whatever bullets it possessed and smashed the majority of it into a concave crater.
A second later, a large number of familiar strands of knife pointed ebony shot out from the shadows cast over the front lip of the pit in Ed's direction, almost certainly having been fashioned through the shadows cast by the structures at the edge of Baschool a number of yards ahead, once again moving faster than a horse could run.
An arm of solid ice with a talon arcing into wickedly curved claws at the end with the thickness of a column curved after Ed along with it.
But this time Kazuki knew better than to bend the light of the Sunlight Heart Plus.
Pushing aside all of his self hatred at the concept of attacking a child, and forcing himself not to lose awareness that Homunculi on this side of the Gate were even harder to murder than on his side, Kazuki summoned the same fibers of his will to fight that he had when he'd brought Ed through the Gate faster than a rocket could fly.
Then he aimed the Sunlight Heart Plus directly at the front wall, and unleashed the gold orange within it forwards like a vast battering ram at the same speed that he'd taken Ed through the Gate, ripping into the front of the pit and continuing to extend the phase transition energies and the tip at their front outwards until he was reasonably certain that it had reached the first street corner that he'd seen past the road at the entrance to Baschool a large number of yards ahead from where they were, and then swinging it from side to side in an arc.
Knowing that the ground and buildings below Greed had now been taken out from under him and that he was very likely surrounded by so much rubble that it would take him a long time to navigate his shadows around them until he could strike at Ed once more, and by then Ed should be too far for any shadows connected to Greed to reach him, Kazuki dragged the Sunlight Heart Plus' separated segments back together, and then he let himself sag as his vision swam.
If Pride could have trapped Ed in the middle of another cage of light protrusions by now, he would have done so, so if Ed kept moving, he should be able to reach Winry and Rose before Pride, or any of his transmutations, caught up with him.
Moving, and striking, at that speed had been tiring in and of itself, so Kazuki knew better than to do that too many times, or for too long, unless he was willing to exhaust himself as much as he had by launching the Sunlight Flash Bomber.
Kazuki realized that the snow on the bottom of the pit was melting nearby, and now that he saw it, he could tell that the air was slightly hazy around him.
This body must give off heat.
Mugear was now lying back amidst the rubble extending outwards from the pit, and within seconds, Buccaneer had pulled back his sleeve; and extended an automail arm of his own, one with repeated jaws like an Earthmover's crane dropping down and rising up from the top and bottom and a chainsaw, currently silent, within it, down at Mugear's neck.
"I know better than to believe that taking you hostage will deter your buddies from continuing with their war games," Buccaneer said with smug triumph. "As futile as they are.
"The tanks aren't going to spread out or shut down, because it's obvious that the circle can be finished no matter how far they're separated as long as you keep the radios on, and that you can alter the radio waves into enough electricity to keep the radios on even without them having ordinary power."
Kazuki clenched his free hand as tightly as he could without risking overexerting the even more severe physical strength than a kakugane and Buso Renkin could give him, and that the lack of pain from the speed of his flight through the Gate had shown him he had when his body was fully a Stone, shattering the bones of his own hand.
"Likewise, I'm not going to bother using use as a hostage of our own."
"I can't transmute my automail ribs into a protective vest, or anything similar," Mugear spoke in frustrated rage. "So yes, you've defeated me.
"But even before Bradley was assassinated, the soldiers of Briggs were too principled to murder a helpless enemy.
"You have no means of intimidating me."
Buccaneer shrugged.
"That's true, but as you let Jude spy on you for the Glorious Dragons, and he's still working with you, this qualifies as a military operation against a group supporting a dissident faction, and I have the authority to inform you that the sole terms of arrest that we'll accept are an unconditional surrender.
"You're not going to be able to bargain your way back to your fellows.
"Even when the reason that someone from a family that had once had as low an income as Sciezka's used to have, was hired at a chief military library in Central in the first place, was because the maternal uncle of Sciezka's who she believed might be dead, was none other than the purported Nash Tringham?" Mugear questioned, with partially triumphant skepticism.
Sciezka inhaled with horror from behind Kazuki, and he jolted violently, but he knew better than to lower his guard.
"And when the Brethren of Trismegistus has discovered the real reason why Catherine Armstrong refuses to date males who aren't as strong as her older brother?"
"Chouno tried to blackmail me once, and all that convinced me to do was slug him," Kazuki interjected, ignoring the fury rising at how Mugear was trying to use issues that Sciezka and Armstrong were sensitive about to negotiate his release, as well as to buy time.
"Who said that this is blackmail?" Mugear questioned.
"I'm merely preparing Armstrong to reacquaint himself with the answer to the second question.
"You don't have a clear range to most of the Briggs soldiers any longer, but these will need to do, Sloth!"
Armstrong shifted into a defensive position, and halted his shaking.
Sciezka inhaled once more at that name.
Kazuki knew that this meant that another Homunculus was most likely about to ambush them, and he took a defensive position himself with the Sunlight Heart Plus.
He just hoped Ed hadn't heard that name.
He again considered whether to risk fighting a Homunculus with his body fully as a living Stone, as Homunculi died harder than humans, and again pushed away the idea as too likely to kill the Homunculus when he wasn't sure that he'd need to.
"Or, should I say, Abel Seth, nephew of the late Cain Seth of Lior, where the recently established Armstrong Fondation now resides!" Mugear called.
Armstrong must have recognized that name, for he jolted violently, and he started shaking and trembling and shuddering violently once more, though not as much as before.
Then Sciezka cried, "He's not just buying time, one of the buildings that fell into the rubble up ahead fell too far apart for, from the little details that I remember of its appearance, its damage to have been caused by the building's fall down here! One or more enemies are hiding there!"
The two tanks aimed at it.
The next second, a male who was larger than even Brigadier General Armstrong ran around from behind the rubble, relative to Kazuki's left.
All Kazuki registered was how the male had long black hair falling in separate strands a little way down the male's back as they fell along the sides of his face behind him; three brown strips of clothing on his torso, two running up his front to arc over his shoulders and probably down his front, and the other thicker and surrounding his torso; while he also wore brown leggings the same color that also enclosed his feet. Large chains hung off thick manacles on his wrists, and before he turned to face them, Kazuki could see a Uroborus tattoo on the back of his right shoulder.
But before Kazuki could do anything, the figure became nothing but a blur of color and air moving in their direction almost too quickly for Kazuki to follow it.
But apparently not enough for the soldiers in the Briggs tanks to react in time to fire two tank shells at it.
For whatever reason, the onrushing Sloth didn't alter his course, and both tank shells tore into him; and, greatly aided by Sloth casting himself upon them with his own momentum, sent him flying back through the rubble and out of sight even as they ripped his body into separate chunks as they tore into it.
Whether it was for the same reasons that Pride hadn't regenerated as fast as Homunculus uninjured by Buso Renkin did on his side of the Gate, or another reason, a number of seconds passed, but Sloth didn't reappear.
"How do you know what state Abel was in at the time of his death?" Armstrong questioned right away, contained agony and pain in his voice, although Kazuki couldn't tell from his voice whether or not he was crying.
Kazuki clenched his free hand very tightly.
"Cain threw himself into an oven in a forge in East City in order to incinerate his younger brother's death reports and keep the drugs that he'd taken from going on record and potentially resulting in the improvements he and Abel had made to the Lior police's detective program, and that they'd worked tirelessly to keep in place, would thus be undone in Lior, and in surrounding villages and cities and towns. The police pursuing him shut down the oven in time to keep Cain's corpse from being incinerated and identified it, but those reports were ashes.
"That the Lior police were able to falsify the cause for Cain's death, in order to keep people from becoming distrustful of their detective program, is proof of this itself.
"Did one or more of you retrieve the records from the oven in time?"
"I advise you to ask Catherine," Mugear responded, smirking in satisfaction that he'd now gotten Armstrong's attention even more.
"Or Miss Thomas.
"As you might have wondered about, yes, she knew the Seths, and better than you'd believe, and she still contacts the surviving members of the family at times.
"She might know the truth about why Abel died, and be able to figure out why we know.
"Or you can make things even easier, and permit me to return to my colleagues if I tell you the truth.
"About Sciezka's late uncle, as well.
"As further incentive, I'll even throw in the identity of the price the reverse transmutation circle that we brought the Fullmetal Alchemist, and Muto, to Amestris, pays."
Kazuki wished that he could believe that that was good news, but he knew as well as any of them that, even if that information could benefit them at all, it had as much of a chance of involving more blackmail as anything else that Mugear had to say.
Buccaneer opened his mouth, but Armstrong spoke first.
"We have no means of verifying anything you say, but the origin of the performance enhancing drugs that took Abel's life are a matter of national security, for it's very easy for someone to take a fatal overdose of them."
That explained why Abel was even more muscular than Armstrong.
"So, as the presence of a Homunculus of Abel vouches that your words might have credibility, very well."
Kazuki clenched his teeth tightly.
"The Brethren of Trismegistus wouldn't happen to have had a major or minor role in supplying them, would you have?" Armstrong questioned with deceptive mildness above contained rage and pain.
"We've experimented with numerous drugs over the centuries, including those," Mugear replied. "But no."
Kazuki didn't know whether that was better or worse.
"They were developed by researchers working under the former military governor of the former Table City in what is now the Republic of Milos, Peter Soyuz, as a means of attempting to improve his soldiers' abilities to contend against the Cretan secret police if they were discovered spying on Table City, as the Cretan secret police employ Chimeras fashioned by Cretan alchemists."
Buccaneer made a sharp gesture with his head to a nearby Briggs soldier, obviously to relay this to someone so Soyuz could be arrested as soon as possible.
"When Abel first met Catherine when she was conducting her civilian investigation of the East at Olivier's request, his dislike of athleticism, even though it wasn't as drastic as his favored younger uncle's, drew Catherine to him.
"Catherine had been pretending to be interested in the Armstrong family's interest in sports and sculptures, but from what Sloth has remembered of Abel's life, she actually hated both of them due to leading her four older siblings to make the choices that they did, and the strain that it caused in your relationship with Olivier.
"All of the mind using methods that Cain and Abel had established to improve the skills and talents of the Lior police detectives; and how many police departments in nearby cities and towns and villages, such as at Aquroya, had followed their example, at least slightly, impressed Catherine immensely.
"It was no coincidence that the Fullmetal Alchemist was arrested as soon as he arrived in Aquroya after his attempt to expose Cornello in Lior. The detectives of the Lior police who still applied those methods advised all of the police stations in nearby locations that a State Alchemist might be headed in their vicinity, and a less competent detective of Aquroya assigned to arrest an alchemist who they were hunting for didn't feel the need to ask the Lior police for the State Alchemist's name or gender, and interpreted the alchemist's potential arrival as meaning that the criminal was actually a State Alchemist living an illegal private life.
"Catherine admired Abel's skill at this from the time that she met him.
"Abel didn't get in good shape, and take the drugs making inroads into Lior, and then move to East City to impress her by having gotten in better shape without telling her that he'd taken them; in order to better date her, and because he was afraid that she'd break up with him if he didn't meet her supposed interest in athleticism halfway. He knew that he could trust in Catherine's love for him.
"One of the central reasons that he began to date her was because he had a close childhood friend who had developed romantic feelings for Abel without telling him so. Abel didn't return her feelings, however, and one night, the girl asked him to escort her to a dance, supposedly so she wouldn't be alone as she waited for a friend to show up, but in reality, because she was hoping that he would dance with her for romantic reasons. He said that he'd consider it, but when she arrived with futile hopes that he would to hear his answer, and he refused, she tried to kick him in the leg.
"However, Catherine had been on her way to meet Abel, so she used her scant athletic knowledge at that time to run in front of the attack and shield Abel from it by taking the kick herself and being bruised by it. Catherine then informed the girl that if she tried to hurt Abel again that she'd press charges against her for unprovoked assault, and that the sole reason that she wasn't doing so at that time was because Abel himself had believed that the girl had been a close friend to him until she'd just betrayed him. After this, Catherine stood between the girl and Abel and stood up for Abel when the close friend who had just betrayed Abel's trust in her started screaming at him for disregarding feelings that he hadn't been aware that the girl had had. The girl left, and stayed away from Abel from then on, but that brought to Abel's attention how much Catherine cared about him.
"He knew that Catherine genuinely loved him.
"He moved to East City and took the drugs because Cain had identified the origin of the drugs, and he was operating undercover to infiltrate Soyuz' drug ring. He stayed away from Catherine as much as possible until he could stop taking the drugs.
"But he told Catherine why he had gotten in shape, and that he was taking the drugs, and why, so when Soyuz discovered how close he was becoming to exposing him and slipped him the experimental version that you know caused the overdose, she believed that Abel had died because she hadn't supported him during the investigation."
Armstrong clenched one of his fists so tightly that his nails drew blood, and terror surged through Kazuki that he'd break his hand with his own physical strength.
Kazuki himself wanted to throw up at what Mugear had just said, and how Catherine was as trapped by the past as Tokiko and Winry were.
"As a result, she became as devoted to physical fitness as you are, and became determined never to date a person who wasn't in good shape himself, out of fear that if she didn't, the same thing would happen once again.
"We acquired Abel's records because, once Catherine met Havoc, she met Breda shortly afterwards, and recognized that his talents come from his mind and not his physical strength but that he believes that as little as she now does.
"So she gradually came to love him for the same reasons that she'd fallen in love with Abel."
Armstrong shifted uncomfortably at everything that meant.
"I have no idea if Breda returns her love in the same way, but he realized the specific way that she cares about him even though she continues to deny it, and, after you chose to establish the Armstrong Foundation in Lior rather than in Ishbal due to your ties to Abel, he pieced together enough about what happened to Abel to file a report.
"We ran across it, figured out the shards of the mystery that Breda hadn't and saw the potential that transmuting a Homunculus who had taken an experimental overdose of performance enhancing drugs gave us, and Jude thus transmuted Sloth."
"And Sciezka?" Armstrong questioned, a different kind of contained agony and pain now in his voice.
Kazuki moved back so he could look at both Sciezka and Mugear.
"It's much simpler," Mugear smirked viciously.
"Dimitri Citrine renamed himself Nash Tringham and disappeared along with his older brother from his sister's life, when Sciezka's mother caught with her current chronic illness as the first victim of his research into the Philosopher's Stone and red water."
Sciezka pressed her lips together tightly, but Sciezka's mother must not be in that much danger from her illness, because she didn't pale that much.
But Sciezka didn't look at all relieved, because she knew as well as Kazuki that, as Mugear hadn't had much to say about Sciezka, it was now even more likely that the truth about the reverse transmutation circle involved further blackmail.
"What's the catch involved with the price of the reverse transmutation circle?" Sciezka queried, her tone tight in a different kind of terror and anger now, for Ed and Kazuki.
"It's nothing more than just another variation of the same catch involved in all transmutations," Mugear responded.
"You know how it works.
"Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. In exchange, something of equal value must be lost. This is alchemy's first Law of Equivalent Exchange."
That was what the Law of Equivalent Exchange was?
But then why could kakugane and Buso Renkin enhance the biological processes of a human body, particularly if it involved human transmutation; as what Mugear had just said meant that Ed and Al might have initially lost all of his body, and two limbs from his body, respectively, due to an Equivalent Exchange involved in human transmutation, and that that was why they'd been trapped in his Earth?
If Tokiko, Bravo, Ouka, or Shusui had forced anyone to pay a similar price by utilizing a kakugane or a Buso Renkin, the Alchemist Army would know about it, so Kazuki extremely highly doubted that any humans were hurt or murdered by transmuting with a kakugane or a Buso Renkin, even if human transmutation was involved.
But even the possibility caused his insides to contort.
This also at last told Kazuki the reason that Ed wasn't simply performing another human transmutation himself so he could return to Al, and Kazuki could return to Tokiko and Mahiro and the others.
"I take it that's why Ed and Al lost all or parts of their bodies, and kept getting sent between worlds," Kazuki interjected.
"We're actually not sure why the Fullmetal Alchemist and his brother were continually transferred between our two Earths," Mugear responded.
Kazuki suppressed the surge of hope at the potential advantage that this might give them, as Mugear might be lying.
"We assumed that, when he gave Alphonse back his body, he would transmute a Homunculus himself to do it. Or he would restore Alphonse his mind and body by trading himself, soul and mind and body, to the Gate, and then Alphonse would transmute a Homunculus to remove the Fullmetal Alchemist.
"We sent Huskisson through the Gate believing that the Fullmetal Alchemist, with or without Alphonse, would travel through it to try to return Hohenheim from your Earth, and that that was why they would be stranded on your Earth.
"We're similarly uncertain why the Gate brought them to Gensai City, and tried to sentence Alphonse to Victor's Stone, or yours."
Kazuki's stomach and chest ached and warped.
"We believed that we'd need to use a human transmutation circle in order to remove the Fullmetal Alchemist from the Gate, and send Alphonse into your Earth; when we were ready to lock onto your Stone and bring you here after you inevitably isolated yourself from your companions to battle Victor alone in your full Stone form," Kazuki cringed that Viator and the Brethren of Trismegistus had anticipated that Kazuki would do that if he saw the necessity to, "And you and Victor had both worn each other down enough.
"Yes, we can locate and lock onto Stones in the other world, but the reasons as to why we initially intended to wait until then are too sensitive for you to know at the present.
"This might have worked in our favor, however, because the results of your own actions have turned out to be harder to anticipate in than we'd believed in their own ways; and if we'd left them be until you and Victor had worn each other down sufficiently, you could have caused us serious problems."
Kazuki gave Mugear a challenging smirk at that.
"It takes one troublemaker to know another," Kazuki informed the Mugear.
Mugear snorted derisively.
"Bold words, from the person who provided us with the Equivalent Exchange for the reverse transmutation circle."
New terror and horror twisted Kazuki's chest and heart and warped his lungs and stomach and the rest of him.
Now what was wrong with him?
"Was it the remains of my first heart?" Kazuki questioned.
Sciezka's mouth fell at the revelation of precisely what Kazuki's heart was.
"As it was directly linked to your survival impulses during the seconds that your Stone replaced it before your Stone assimilated it, it brought your soul close enough to the Gate that, when we activated the reverse transmutation circle, we were able to use it to direct your passage through it to the Malkuth Laboratory, yes.
"As well as to shut out information from potential futures in each world from their respective opposite sides of the Gate, so travelers through the Gate lack the ability to reach the other opposite Earth in accordance with a different pace of time than the one that the Earth the traveler sets off from progresses at.
"In order that, beginning yesterday, until the reverse transmutation circle ceases being fed its price, we'll no longer need to analyze the currents of energy to determine how that information will most likely interact with a traveler, and think of how to work around the different years or months that travelers will most likely appear in as they move between the worlds."
Kazuki hadn't even realized that much, if at all, that he was worried about how hard it would be for Ed to ensure that they didn't return years, or even decades or centuries or millennia or eras, after they'd left; with all the attention he was paying to waiting until later to come to grips with everything that had happened so he could focus on ensuring that other people didn't go through the same things.
Was he plunging in over his head now?
But Kazuki's stomach now heaved so screamingly sickly that he was frightened that he was about to throw up?
But, as this was how people who journeyed through the Gate ended up at different points of time after they'd previously left a world, unless Kazuki misunderstood what Mugear meant, merely his heart could perform a phase transition to shut out information enabling traveling to different points in time that varied depending upon which side of the Gate it was on?
If just one small part of a human body could be exchanged to synchronize two phases of the very flow of time when connected closely enough to a soul, just how potent was a true Philosopher's Stone?
And why did survival impulses bring a soul close to the Gate?
Was the Gate tied to life and death themselves?
Kazuki didn't know whether he was more awed past all potential or not possible comprehension, or terrified beyond all not potential or possible language and methods of communication, to know that that might be true.
"And to enable us to, as long as the reverse transmutation circle is being powered, send sound waves of words that we have spoken into the Gate.
"But one heart itself can't enable us to keep the information of the future shut out, or to send sound waves into it.
"You provided us with the price through a different means.
"As the Elric brothers got in over their head by performing human transmutation that they knew was forbidden for alchemists to practice, because they arrogantly and foolishly believed that they could somehow surmount all of the laws binding the world and existence; you did the same thing in the haunted factory, and flew too close to the Sun yourself with wings on your feet and legs that you were too proud to learn how to fly with first.
"A reverse transmutation circle is applied to undo walls put in place to restrict the tides of energy that alchemists use to power their transmutations.
"All alchemy performed on your side of the Gate is powered by the energy of living souls; and though the souls of the dead pass into a theoretical afterlife, or an actual one, the energy released by their deaths power transmutations on this side of the Gate."
Kazuki's stomach and lungs and the rest of him warped further, but for whatever reason, he didn't retch.
That in itself was horrible in its own ways.
And that meant that everything connected to the study of alchemy, and performing it, on this Earth did reside in a world of death and pain and terror and torment.
But that still didn't mean that that was all there was to this world, or its alchemic practices.
Kazuki could never believe that.
Not when people like Ed and Al and Sciezka and Armstrong and Winry and Rose lived in it.
"Approximately two weeks ago in the Amestrian calendar, and about eight decades ago in your Earth's, the Thule Society invaded Central, and a large number of people from that Earth whose deaths should have supplied us energy died in Central, while Hohenheim Elric died in Munich, in the Weimar Republic and his death supplied energy to the Gate that it was never intended to receive.
"Ordinarily, when someone from our planet dies as a result of being taken into the Gate, and within the Gate, the energy released by that death mostly just fades into nothingness or the afterlife. But the processes of the Gate that call energy from your world still drag enough traces of that soul into its rapids that, over a long period of time, so much accumulates that it very slightly dislodges a newborn soul from its body in your world and enables that person to perceive the memories intertwined with the souls of others by touching that person.
Kazuki started violently.
Clairvoyance could be accomplished on his planet even without a kakugane, Buso Renkin, or Stone being involved, or someone becoming a Homunculus?
"But when Hohenheim died, he died not within the Gate, but on its other side, and that energy wasn't at the location of the Gate, so it was thus unable to even enter the current of death power.
"This is what is named a Brownbody Dwarf.
"While the energy released by the deaths of all the Germans in Central on February Fourteenth was released in this world itself, and not in yours.
"Immense quantities of energy from death has thus been flooding Central in a conflagration for over two weeks now, without having been channeled through the Gate and diluted throughout the planet.
"This is known as a Dissolution Suspension.
We thus; aided most of all by an alchemist known as Tucker, who has once performed a human transmutation that involved a soul outside of a body; developed a circle for harnessing a small but significant minority of this energy itself to open the Gate, as the exchange for locking onto the energy released by Hohenheim's death as we can lock onto Stones.
"The reverse transmutation circle harnesses that energy to call upon the wellspring of death within Central in the same ways that people call upon the ocean of death from your Earth when performing alchemy; and draw it into your planet, bring the price for the reverse human transmutation circle into its rapids, and then circle it back to this side of the Gate along the same pathways that the energies of the deaths of people on your planet itself geysers into ours, yet in a way that we are directing to ensure that it supercharges the exchange that the circle is making so it can be paid gradually.
"One last component was required, and this is what you provided us with, as a result of your own arrogant naivete.
"Hohenheim's energy could only be channeled to extract this price from someone exceptional enough to have, through a part of his or her body such as hair, partially merged with the embryo of a Homunculus from your world who it then separated from without murdering the Homunculus."
Kazuki couldn't even feel the pain or terror or horror or despair this time, and he barely remembered that he needed to take it into himself to bear it in other people's place.
Or whether he was seeing the dust covered panels of the window that Tokiko had left open, or the tears blinding everything that was himself and existence and that was all space and time that never had begun and always wouldn't be and wasn't everywhere and was reality and the world.
"I came to get you," Mahiro said, smiling with her eyes closed in loving and welcoming worried warmth and concern.
"It was getting late and you weren't home yet. Let's go home. I grabbed you some dinner."
"I'll be all right. Chii-Chin, Saa-Chan. I… remember now. Didn't I tell you about it? About that scary dream I had? Well, that dream was real. And my brother came and saved me in the end. And he's going to protect me again now! But this time, he's fighting for all of us!"
Kazuki brought the Sunlight Heart up through the floor below the Revised Humanoid Homunculus he could hear Mahiro talking to Chisato and Saori from in front of, almost certainly blocking them from it as it strode inexorably towards them, and tore up into the monster to shred it to chunks as Mahiro pointed her right hand and arm at him with a wide, open mouthed, welcoming and eagerly elated and excited smile as he at last confirmed for her, before her very eager and joyful eyes, the faith and trust and hope and belief in him that he now realized that she'd known on some level since he'd first protected her from Mita, and that had never once flickered or dimmed the most microscopically infinitesimal, the most minutely minuscule bit.
"He's going to save… all of us!"
"Mahiro…"
Was that Kazuki's voice, or the wind whispering through the yawning open maw of the double window of the nurse's office that Tokiko had vanished through into the frozen cold empty of even absolute zero frost that froze even the hottest frigid star in a vacuum dead of even death and horror and terror and pain?
Who was it who was smirking at him?
"Don't tell me you never realized until now why Tokiko didn't kill the embyro right away," the person lying on his back spoke, every single letter, every single enunciation, every single syllable, every single inflection, gouging itself into the foundations of a heart that could never have been replaced or a Stone that could never have taken any fragments of anyone's souls because he and no one else had once had a heart or soul, or would for as long as infinite endlessness unfurled so many unending times even those unending times had not even the lack of an end.
Kazuki grabbed Tokiko around her left shoulder, and Tokiko grabbed him around his right.
"Older sister!" he cried in unison with her. He knew that it was a ridiculous lie, and that no one, especially Mahiro; as much as she would want to and, in her heart strong impulsive and life and fun loving ways that Kazuki was determined at all costs to keep from being strangled as his own cheer was beginning to suffocate, try to convince herself that it was true; would believe it, but it was all that he could think of that Tokiko might be willing to play along with without him offending her in the process, and if he didn't say this he might drive away someone who he could already tell desperately needed to learn how to laugh the same way that Mahiro and he could.
"She already knew you well enough by then to tell that you would hate it if she murdered a baby, even a monster, unless it was totally necessary, so she but knocked it away.
"And as a result, both Tokiko and Chouno almost died, and now Mahiro has been condemned to the same irreversible sentence that Ed and Al once were, and Al still is.
"Yet, due to how the process is gradual, although it has already begun and it cannot be reversed or stopped unless someone takes her place, or one or both of you depart your own Earth forever, she won't lose any parts of her body.
"Rather, when the energy from the murders of the Thule Society's dead decreases below a critical mass around two to three weeks before the time is at hand for your body to shift into level two, the Gate will merely gradually begin to siphon all five of her senses and memories over the period of a number of further weeks.
"And all that will happen to her if no one performs a human transmutation to exchange himself or herself for her is that; after the chain reaction is over; she'll be left to live out the rest of her life without the ability to recollect a single memory of love and kindness and home and hearth and vitality and joy and safety and laughter and security and protection and soundness, feel warmth and a close embrace, smell the ocean spray and the breeze, taste ice cream and crackers, hear enervating and vitalizing music, see a kind smile and a caring gaze, or even recall a single instance of any of those seconds when she had any of those senses.
"This is the destiny of all arrogant naïve fools who fly too close to the Sun and drown themselves in the practice of alchemy."
No, it wasn't.
Whoever was saying this, he was lying through his teeth.
Mahiro was right there, standing at his side with her face so white it was almost indistinct from the surrounding air or the glasses reflecting a body that for some reason Kazuki couldn't remember he knew shouldn't have the same colored skin as hers, no differently in any way than how he couldn't remember why he should be holding something in his right hand that was much longer than the black hexagonal thing in his palm; tears streaking her face and spilling down it to reflect the tears that were unendingly of not endlessly and everlastingly recurring boundless repetitions of endless eternal not infinities comprised of eternal unending not unending and neither boundless and either infinite and neither everlasting repeating and not recurring not eternal and everlasting and neither endless and either everlasting not eternal and boundless unendingness more frozen frigid frost colder icy than the frigid frozen emptiness that just wasn't there past the gaping black hole of the open window.
She was right there, and she was fine.
"See, Sis'."
Mahiro's eyes flew wide and her mouth dropped open.
But then why was he calling her Sis'?
He was being silly.
This was Mahiro.
But it couldn't be him speaking, because there never had been such a person as Kazuki Muto, and nowhere was, and nowhere and never in time would be.
"It's cold out here, Mahiro… You shouldn't be out here… Please, you should go inside where it's warm, and safe, and comfortable… I'll put your sweater on and close the window and keep the cold out, and I won't let the Homunculi hurt you again… Not for the rest of your life… Please, go inside… Where it's warm… Where you're safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…
"Please, go inside… I'll keep the cold out and keep you warm and safe…"
He didn't know why he was saying them, only that he needed to say them, that he needed to keep the cold out and keep her warm and keep her safe and protected and sound and secure from all death and harm and keep her by the refuge of the hearth and the refuge and shelter of home because if he didn't put her sweater on her and shut the window the cold and scary world would get in and the Homunculi would eat her or the Philosopher's Stone would steal her soul and she'd die frightened and in pain because outside the window everything was frightening and painful and people died and were tormented and suffered and were tortured and ignored starving children and crippled children and unwanted children and children and adults who hadn't said or done anything wrong just because they might in the future and tortured and murdered every one of them and murdered and devoured each other and one another and murdered each other and one another and slaughtered every child and adult living in cities and fought wars and massacred entire cities and towns and villages and MahiroSciezkaTokikoOuka couldn't take that if she stepped out into that space time and dimension and Earth and existence and world and reality and planet it would negate her and wash her clean and wipe her clear and annihilate her and exterminate her and obliterate her and eradicate her and erase her and destroy her and wreck her and ravage her and ruin her and he needed to keep it away from her keep it all away from her keep reality away from her keep everything away from her keep anything away from her
"Now do you understand why this world needs to change?" a hollow echoing very young voice that he should have recognized asked.
For a reason that
couldn't know, MahiroSciezkaTokikoOuka ran in front of
and aimed a gun in a shaking, trembling, shuddering hand in the direction of the voice.
"And why all Homunculi, even the ones from your world who eat humans in a futile effort to regain their humanity, hate human transmutation so much?
"I have no idea if my memories are real or fake, but it doesn't matter.
"Unless I become a human, and stop living as a monster; everyone who I believe loves me and who I love will keep abandoning and betraying me and trying to snap my neck again, and the sole way that I'll receive any love and never lose it again is if I compel every single person on both of these worlds to worship me, and rid both of these Earths of anyone who refuses to.
"Unless Pride becomes a human, he'll never be anything more than an insect with no justification in any fashion to live in any way but to enslave himself as much as possible, as fully as possible, to humans.
"Unless Sloth becomes a human, he'll never be able to fully perceive reality again, and he'll always remain drugged up with his senses feeling as though they're jagged swords.
"Unless we realize the Promised Time, Mugear will never regain his economic status, and he'll never be seen as anything more than a disgrace to his wealthy family in East City and an asset to make money for them.
"Unless we realize the Promised Time, McDougal will never be able to force Amestris to demilitarize completely and never establish an army once more, so he'll need to spend a lot of, or all of, the rest of his life toiling to make enough money to hire lawyer after lawyer to put him on trial for war crimes in Ishbal until someone convinces a jury to sentence him to death.
"Unless we realize the Promised Time, Ashleigh will never be able to heal his younger sister from a body that is as much automail as the late Archer's, though she hasn't lost any of her brain, and her automail replaces different locations of her body.
"Unless we realize the Promised Time, Viator will never be able to allow Equivalent Exchange to even work outside of human transmutation.
"As you should know yourself by now from how many human and Homunculi adults and children try to prey on children and adults who are learning how to stand on their own legs on both sides of the Gate for their own sustenance and self improvement as Lunare and Shinyo and Kinjo and Washio and Kawazui and Saruwatari and Mita saw Tokiko and Mahiro and Masashi and Hideyuki and Koji and Chisato and Saori and Tokiko's family and friends; and see children and adults who can't provide them with nourishment or who threaten others' ability to inure themselves from pain as unnecessary and expendable as Victor and Bakushaku and Jiro and Mamoru, who you know as Bravo, did Chouno and you; or who strive forever and in futility to wither and die in lingering excruciating torment as Ouka and Shusui and Mayumi did; all hard work accomplishes is to provide people who have made no effort at all, or surmounted far less adversity, with a method of bettering themselves so they don't need to sacrifice themselves at all, or far less.
"Viator wants to create a world where Equivalent Exchange works."
Strange tendrils of black with large mouths and single eyes in them started shifting over the ground towards
"And we wish to bring about that Promised Time no later than today, February Fourteenth, Nineteen Seventeen.
"The day that we're now all dreaming of naming the Junius Valentine of the Celestial Heavens.
"Once the Promised Time is at hand, no one will need to cry, or be tormented, or experience fear, or die, on either world, once again, for boundless infinite time."
Within a minority of seconds, MahiroSciezkaTokikoOuka was standing in front of
and she placed her hand over
black kakugane firmly and securely and reassuringly and protectively and assuredly and protectively and warmly.
"I'm Sciezka, not Mahiro," MahiroSciezkaTokikoOuka spoke.
"But if you need a big sister, I'll try to be one for you.
"To that end, if you yourself are too scared and in too much pain yourself to fight any longer, though the kakugane isn't my heart as it is yours, I'll take the risk of becoming what you are and might turn into in the future by activating it as you discussed with Ed that they're activated; so I can feel the pain and fear that you are in place of you yourself, and fight in your place to protect you, so you don't need to fight and shoulder that death and fear and pain any longer."
.
"I had often wondered. Of the royal family, why must I alone be confined to a remote monastery, so far removed from the seat of our Crown? Even this I thought a burden light enough, if it meant the Kingdom would know peace. I played my part, yet still Ivalice runs red with blood. All this suffering and solitude. For what?"-Princess Ovelia Atkascha
"It has been the same for me. I was given the wardrobe of a nobleman, and so I played the part. A puppet, ever dancing for the amusement of patrons unseen. This wretched world does not reward endeavor. It is the patron and his troupe who are receipt – maggots grown fat on endeavor's corse. Most men but play the part they're given. Most live and die not knowing they play a part at all. But I am past all that now. I am their unwitting puppet no more. No more… I will exact from them the price of their gluttonous feast!"-Delita Heiral
"And just what is it you plan to do to them?"-Princess Ovelia Atkascha
"I will burn down this Kingdom, and from its ashes build for you a new one – a Kingdom worthy of you. I will show you a world where your light will outshine the Sun! A world that will know no darkness. And you will have no more need of tears."-Delita Heiral
"Such a world… is it possible?"-Princess Ovelia Atkascha
"I will not fail you in this. On Tietra's soul, I swear to you."-Delita Heiral
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS: THE WAR OF THE LIONS
