Disclaimer: I do not own anything except a defective brain that I got out of a recycle bin.
Alchemy no Jutsu: Hagane no Shinobi
Chapter 3: Hagane no Shinobi
I will never give up. That is my ninja way.
-Uzimaki Naruto
Ed found himself eating in a grubby ramen shop, squeezed between Naruto and Sakura. He couldn't help but stare at Sakura's pink hair – it was a bit conspicuous and strange. Ed only found it stranger when he asked and realized this was its natural color. Naruto was a ramen-eating-machine who could finish four bowls in the blink of an eye. Sasuke seemed very quiet, detached, and distinctly aware of everything that happened around him.
"Ne, Ed, where did you come from? I mean which world?" Naruto asked unexpectedly through a mouthful of ramen. Ed, having finished his bowl of ramen, pushed it aside and replied without looking at Naruto, "Somewhere far, far away. It's too bothersome to explain."
"Please do. I want to know why your right arm and left leg are metal." Sasuke cut in, his voice devoid of emotion as always. "If someone has the skill to do that in your world, where you live is a very interesting place."
"You knew my arm and leg are automail? Oh, let me guess, my left and right footsteps make different sounds and I blocked the kunai knife with my bare arm."
Naruto and Sakura, amazingly, were not surprised. In fact, Naruto seemed amused. "Hah, I get it now! That's what 'seek the eyes of gold and limbs of steel' meant!"
"Well, I have a mechanic back home who can do it. Actually, in my world, many people can make artificial limbs. It's called automail engineering and quite common there."
Sakura regained her voice and asked, "Why are you missing two limbs? How long have you had steel limbs?"
Ed grimaced. "Since I was ten, but I'd rather not go into details. My younger brother and I did something forbidden…and we were punished."
Naruto persisted. "It can't be worse than anything we've done. I mean, after all, we're part of Konoha's ANBU. We've probably seen most anything." Ed gave him a strange look, and then pushed his seat back to stand up.
"I think it'd be easier to demonstrate rather to explain. I highly doubt you've seen anything like I have. Could you take me to the nearest open area where others won't be disrupted by us?"
Sasuke paid the bill and got up. Naruto and Sakura followed suit. Together, they took him to an empty training ground – the one they used to use, to be exact.
Ed looked around the training ground and commented, "You don't mind if I destroy your nice garden, do you? I'll fix it after I'm done." Naruto grinned. "Nah, this training ground won't mind – it's been through a lot."
"Then, I'll just…" Ed gritted his teeth and clapped his hands together. "…do this." He rammed both hands into the ground and let the transmutation begin. Immediately, the ground around them exploded in a mass of rock and vegetation – even twenty-foot tall trees were uprooted like twigs. Sakura put her hands over her head while Sasuke and Naruto both drew kunai knives.
When the dust and rock finally settled, the four teenagers found themselves standing in a deep valley with towering walls of rock on each side. Naruto blinked and touched the smooth rock wall. "H-how? You only made one simple hand seal! I've never seen this kind of ninjutsu before…or is it genjutsu?"
Ed shook his head. "It was alchemy. In my world, I was a State Alchemist, so I can perform high-level alchemy. Alchemy, as I just demonstrated, means understanding something, decomposing it, and rebuilding it into something new. I merely changed the shape of the surrounding rock and vegetation, so what I just did was elementary alchemy."
Sasuke closed his eyes shortly, and, when they reopened, Ed was shocked to find they had changed from their usual black to a crimson red. Sasuke scanned the entire area and remarked, "It's not genjutsu. You actually used chakra to move the rock and vegetation…but you seemed to be pulling enormous amounts of chakra from somewhere else."
Ed sighed. "I have no idea what chakra is, but that wasn't really advanced alchemy – it was just to impress you." Ed clapped his hand together again and pressed them lightly to the floor. The rocks slowly sank and the trees righted themselves again, leaving Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura standing in the forest clearing just like before.
Ed clapped his hands and walked over to a tree. "This is far more advanced alchemy." He touched the bark of the tree lightly, the plant glowed with a blue light, pulsating, and growing as Ed channeled alchemical energy into it. When the alchemist finally stopped, the tree had grown from a sapling to a forty-foot giant. Ed tapped the bark again and the entire tree burst into a shower of cherry blossoms, falling lightly onto the ground and blanketing the clearing.
"A-amazing." Sakura watched as the petals, symbolizing her name, rained down in the millions. "How did you do that?"
Ed looked at her and said, "Alchemy consists only of creating the something new with old material. To create something, you must present something of the same mass and chemical properties. Technically, you can recreate anything you want…but there is a law that was settled by universal agreement."
Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura all looked questioningly at Ed, waiting for an explanation. Ed looked from one face to another before deciding that, if he was going to find out more about them, he should tell them a bit about himself first.
"There is a law in alchemy…and my brother and I broke it. You see, our dad left us when we were very young and our mother…she died when I was eight. We knew about alchemy and decided, theoretically, it was possible to recreate anything."
Sakura gave a sharp gasp. "And you tried to recreate your mother." Ed averted his eyes and swallowed a lump in his throat before continuing.
"It was taboo. Nevertheless, we tried anyways. On that night, we…we…we failed. Miserably. We created a monster, and, in exchange, my younger brother, Al, lost his entire body while I lost my left leg. Then, in my desperation, I sacrificed my right arm to seal my brother Al into a suit of armor nearby. That made me what I am now. We…did more stupid things later, but that's not part of my answer to your question. I won't go into that."
Sakura softened her voice. "I'm sorry, we never knew." Naruto struggled with himself for a second before breaking out into a forced grin.
"Well, at least we learned something new. I wonder if alchemy has anything to do with ninjutsu?"
Ed shrugged. "I've never heard of ninjutsu, but then again, I've never heard of anything in this world. I'll have to see ninjutsu before I can tell you."
Naruto, in response, began a series of hand seals before shouting, "Kage Buushin!" Immediately, a clone of Naruto appeared besides him. "Rasegan!" Sasuke gave a ghost of a smile when recognizing the all-too-familiar technique and Ed could only step backwards in shock as Naruto reduced a nearby tree to smithereens.
"There, that's ninjutsu." Naruto proclaimed, proud of his perfect execution of his favorite technique. "Is it related to alchemy?"
Ed stood in shocked silence for a moment before answering cautiously, "Unless I'm hallucinating right now, then you just created mass from ionized alpha light particles mixed with negatively decomposing gamma rays, controlled it, concentrated incredibly high levels of pure energy into your hand, and shredded the tree with enormous amounts of rotational energy."
"Huh?" Naruto understood about three words from everything that Ed said. After all, the alchemist was a genius in every area of advanced sciences. Naruto was not.
"In other words, its alchemy." Ed finished, but added an afterthought. "It's just that, with my alchemy, it would be impossible to do that. I guess the strange hand postures you made and some special property about this world I don't know about yet lets you do that. It's really strange alchemy."
Sasuke, much to his annoyance, barely understood anything that Ed said either. "Then is this alchemy? I am going to cast a genjustsu on you. Sharingan!" His pupils immediately turned crimson red and, once Ed made eye contact, Sasuke pitched him headfirst into advanced genjutsu.
Ed was standing on the training grounds a moment before he made eye contact with Sasuke's eyes. 'I wonder how he makes them turn red like that?' Then, next thing he knew, he was standing in the middle of nowhere amidst pouring rain.
"What the hell?" Ed felt the cold rain seeping into his clothes, and, when he turned around, a house materialized out of thin air. Ed, in curiosity, pulled open the door and immediately found himself sucked inside. The moment he was inside, gravity must have gotten confused, because he fell down from the floor and onto the ceiling, which should be completely impossible.
Ed clapped his hands together and tried to alchemize something, anything. Absolutely nothing happened. That meant that there was only two possible explanations for this: either he was hallucinating for real, or he had been sent to another world again.
Then again, considering that gravity wasn't functioning properly, Ed came to the conclusion that he was hallucinating. He stood up from the ceiling and told himself, "I'm hallucinating, aren't I?"
Immediately, his surroundings dissolved into a blur and Ed found himself in a clearing again, with Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura. He blinked, working his brain furiously to come up with an explanation. "Was that genjutsu?"
Sasuke nodded. "It was a very simple illusion, considering that you could not interact with your environment."
Ed blinked, then smirked. "Now I'm interested. How 'bout we make a deal? I'll teach you all alchemy, and you all have to teach me this ninja stuff."
A/N:
Ahahaha, I like…forgot about this fic for a while, and then, by the time some wonderful people reviewed and reminded me, it was already a LONG LONG TIME since my last update. DEEPEST APOLOGIES bows down and begs for forgiveness
Anyways, the storyline is completely planned out now, so fear not! Since the votes between long and short chapters is roughly even, I'll settle for slightly shorter, but more medium length chappies!
Kay, that's about all I have to say…except for drumroll
REVIEW! REVIEW! REVIEW LIKE CRAZY AND I'LL GIVE YOU A COOKIE (maybe :P)!
