Chapter 7 - Alchemy

Author's note: Regarding what I said in my last note, I should warn you that I do not have the same reservations when it comes to Sora and Riku. Feel free to view their interaction in this chapter in whatever way you prefer, but it was mainly dedicated to my best friend, who has a very yaoiful mind...

"What's the score now, Riku?" asked a broadly grinning Sora while he vigorously rubbed his hair dry.

"Well, I won that one, so -"

"No you didn't! I definitely won! You're completely soaked!"

Their eyes were fierce, but they were both still grinning. "What are you talking about, Sora? You're just as soaked, and I got you good with that last 'tidal wave'. That was the tie-breaker, and I totally beat you."

"Hey, I never agreed to that!" Sora was getting dressed now, but Riku caught him in a headlock, making him drop the shirt he held.

"All right, take this!" he said, giving him a noogie.

"Argh! Riku! Lemme go!" the boy laughed, and Riku echoed it, releasing his friend and giving hima playful shove.

"All right, get your shirt on and let's go before the others break down the door and find us in a compromising position."

Sora blushed, as Riku had intended. "Wha-what's that supposed to mean!"

Chuckling, Riku walked past him, pausing at the door of the changing room they were in and waving his hand dismissively. "Just teasing."

"Hey Riku," Sora said with a hint of honest laughter in his voice as he caught up with his companion. "Now aren't you glad you're not on the side of the Heartless anymore?"

Riku glared over his shoulder at the younger boy. "Hey now, that's playing dirty. Sheesh, haven't I repented for that enough without having to put up with your gloating, oh great Keyblade Master? Besides, you know I'm glad that we're friends again."

Sora smiled, no hint of condescension or teasing in his expression - just love. "I am too."

"Oh, Sora, I have a surprise for you." They were in their room now, Sora sitting on the bed while Riku dug through the things they had stashed in the closet. The silver-haired boy emerged with a bouquet of many-colored flowers held carefully in his hands, which he then solemnly presented to Sora.

"Huh? Why are you giving me flowers?" Sora asked in complete confusion, but accepted the bouquet.

"You wanted some, remember?" Riku sat down beside him and they admired the rainbow of silken petals and delicately trimmed leaves together. "I'm afraid they're fake. Real ones would wilt before you had a chance to get them back to Destiny Islands." Seeing that Sora was still in the dark, he added, "you did say you wanted some flowers to give to Kairi, right?"

Sora's eyes lifted to his friend's face in sudden understanding. "Riku... you bought these just so I could give them to Kairi? But what about you? Wouldn't you rather be the one to give them to her?"

"Kairi's not the one I wanted to give flowers to," Riku answered enigmatically, then crawled into bed, having already removed his shirt, shoes, and socks, and told Sora to be quiet so he could sleep.

Once again, Edward could not get to sleep. His arm was sore, and he simply could no find a comfortable position. Alphonse slept soundly beside him, sprawled out like a cat with a face as innocent as a child's. Ed was doing his best not to disturb his younger brother. For once, the cause of this insomnia had nothing to do with Lucifer. In fact, Al's pet was no where to be seen. Edward hoped that he was just hiding under the bed or in the closet, and had not slipped outside and gotten himself lost.

He spent another ten minutes trying to fall asleep, then gave up in weary annoyance and slipped out of bed. Stepping silently - quite a feat with a metal foot - he retrieved his red coat from the closet and draped it loosely around him before unlocking the door and moving out into the hall. Perhaps a walk would do him good. He would stay out of the hotsprings, or he would be risking the chance of dozing off in the hot water and drowning, but the garden was perfectly safe.

The hall was silent and dark, and it was all he could do not to walk straight into the wall. He made it to the exit without mishap... and froze just outside the door.

A disturbingly familiar silhouette perched on the edge of the hotspring, one leg dangling in the water while the other knee was bent and held close to his the chest. Long strands of hair fell lightly in all directions, and that was the most identifiable feature of the dark figure.

Snapping out of his brief moment of shock, Ed fell into a familiar fighting stance,

but his broken arm put him at a serious disadvantage. Ignoring Edward's aggression, Envy rose slowly and languidly to his feet, indulging in a feline stretch. To Ed's intense outrage, he even yawned before finally turning to face him and letting a slow, evil grin spread across his face. "Can't sleep, little brother?"

"What do you want this time?" the Alchemist growled. "Have you come back to kill me?"

"Sorry, no such luck," the humunculus said haughtily. "I just came to give you something to think about..."

As Envy slowly approached, step by step, Ed touched his right hand to his immobile left to complete his own version of a transmutation circle, but Envy rushed him before he could create a weapon and caught his metal wrist, twisting it back until something snapped. There was no real pain, but now both of Ed's hands were useless. Envy had made it impossible for him to defend or attack with his strongest weapon, alchemy...

So he kicked his attacker in the groin.

With his auto-mail.

Needless to say, Envy was not expecting this. "I ... should kill you... just for that," he gasped from where he had collapsed in a fetal position at Edward's feet, so Edward kicked him again, this time in the head. The humunculus had gone too far to deserve mercy. Ed did not condone beating someone when they were done, but this was an exception.

"Is this what you wanted me to think about?" Ed asked darkly, aiming the next kick at Envy's stomach. "That I can beat you without using my arms? Thanks, that almost makes up for what you did to me in Central."

"No!" Envy coughed, trying to block the brunt of Edward's kicks. To Ed's bewilderment. his eyes narrowed, meeting his opponents, and he grinned. "This is!" He rolled away before Ed could stop him, then began to shapeshift, but not into another human as Edward had expected.

The alchemist froze mid-step, gaping at the creature that now crouch before him. It was just too much. He could scarcely believe what he was seeing, and yet so may little, seemingly insignificant things suddenly made perfect sense...

The creature that Envy had revealed himself to be was none other than Alphonse's pet cat, Lucifer. The animal bolted, slipping past Ed before he could react and dashing through the door. Edward whirled and reflexively tried to grab it, but of course his hand refused to move.

"Al!" he shouted, chasing the cat as it ran back towards their room. He remembered with horror that he had left the door partially open. "Al, wake up!" His momentum caused him to stumble, and he was barely able to catch himself awkwardly with his knees and right arm. He pushed himself back up and made it through the door just in time to see the tip of the cat's gray tail vanishing under the bed. "Alphonse!" Ed gasped, his whole body shaking.

"Mmm... Brother, what is it?" mumbled Al, sitting up half-way and rubbing his eyes. "I was having such a nice dream..."

"Al, get away from there! Envy's under the bed!"

The sleepy-eyed younger brother gave Ed a very skeptical look. "Aren't you too old to be afraid of monsters under the bed? You just had a bad dream. Go back to sleep."

Ed was getting frustrated. "Argh. No! Look at my hand!" He thrust his right arm forward, the broken hand hanging limp. "Envy attacked me out by the spring, then turned into Lucifer and ran under the bed! Your cat is a humunculus!" Only after he said it did he realize how unlikely it must sound to Al. He would probably not believe it if he hadn't been involved in the incident.

"You must have been sleep-walking," Al reasoned calmly. "I bet you tripped and broke your auto-mail in the fall." At that point, Lucifer emerged and hopped up onto the bed. Ed tensed, ready to attack again, but the cat ignored him and merely padded up to Al and rubbed against him, begging for petting. Al obliged with a small smile, then looked back at his brother. "See? How could Lucifer be Envy? He's just a normal cat. Besides, he saved you from Envy, remember?" He scratched the animal's ears, bringing forth contented purring. "Come back to bed. We'll ask Winry to fix your hand first thing in the morning. I'm pretty sure she brought her toolbox along, just in case."

Edward wanted to move; to rip that monster disguised as a cat away from his brother and make it show its true self, but his body and heart refused to obey him. Al held the little cat in his arms protectively, stroking its soft fur, and Ed could not bring himself to so violently destroy the scene of peace. Maybe Al was right. Edward had been suffering an unusual amount of nightmares lately, and he was very tired. He had never actually sleep-walked before, but there was a first time for everything. Could he have simply dreamed up the presence of Envy?

Suddenly exhausted, he fell to his knees, causing Alphonse to rise from the bed and go to him in concern. Lucifer came down as well, and although Edward stiffened at his approach, the cat only sniffed his lifeless auto-mail hand and then licked it and head-butted it gently, probably wondering why it was not petting him.

"Brother, are you all right?" Al was kneeling in front of Ed, his hands on his brother's shoulders. He lifted one hand and pressed against Edward's forehead, then compared its temperature to his own. "I don't think you have a fever. Does your head hurt at all? Maybe you hit it when you fell. Your concussion still hasn't healed, you know."

Ed allowed his protective little brother help him up and onto the bed. The darkness of the room, the blurry nighttime atmosphere, and the slight dizziness that had come over him combined to make him doubt the reality of the fight with Envy even more, and he finally submitted to Alphonse's urging and managed at last to sleep.

"Winry?" started Sora. He, Winry, and Riku had woken up before the other three and were now sitting around one of the small, round tables in the common room, enjoying an immense stack of blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

"Yes?"

"Um, I didn't want to ask him personally, but... what happened to Edward's arm? He told us about his leg on the way here. Was it the same incident?"

Winry chewed thoughtfully on a bite of sweet pancake before replying. "Sort of. Do you know the saying 'I'd give my right arm for you?' To put it bluntly, Edward took that literally. I don't feel comfortable going into detail without his permission, but basically he traded his arm for his brother's soul."

"Wow... They really do care about each other."

But Winry looked past him instead of continuing the conversation. "Oh, speak of the devil. Hey, Ed! Al! Good morning!"

"Good morning, Winry," Al said, somehow making his voice sound cheerful yet serious. "We need your help. Brother fell and broke his auto-mail. Can you fix it?"

Winry stood up and met them half-way, taking Ed's right arm and examining the wrist. "Geez, you really messed this thing up! Stay here and I'll go get my tools. I'd let you come to my room, but Noah's still asleep." She pushed him in the direction of the chair she had just vacated. "Al, you can have one of my pancakes if you want. I'd offer you one, Ed, but Al would have to hand-feed it to you," she said with a giggle before whisking away down the hall.

Alphonse dragged another chair to their table and happily took up Winry's offer, but frowned when he noticed his brother's subdued expression. "Brother, do you still not feel well?"

"No..." Ed shook his head. "It's just... I'm worried about what happened last night. Even if that was just a nightmare, it's still likely that Envy will come back again. He really has it in for me. I know that sounds paranoid, but he's said it himself."

"Wait... What's this about Envy and last night?" Riku asked suspiciously.

Edward met the other's narrow aqua eyes as he spoke. "I fought with Envy last night, out by the hotspring. I remember him breaking my right wrist, then transforming into Al's cat, but Al says it was just a bad dream, and I have half a mind to think so, too."

"I'm not so sure about that," Riku stated, then explained why. "Last night, something woke me up about half an hour past midnight. I heard a noise from outside and went to check it out, in case it was a Heartless or something. I saw a figure standing in the garden that looked like a slender person with dark hair that sort of flowed out in long spikes, but then the figure seemed to just disappear. I tried to search the garden, but it was too dark to find anything." He gave Edward a curious look, waiting for his reaction.

"Damn... That definitely sounds like Envy. What you saw as disappearing could have been him shapeshifting into Lucifer..." Ed bit his lip worriedly. "Al, is Lucifer locked in our room?"

"Yes, but he can't be Envy!" Al said with alarm, fretting over his beloved pet. "Why would he be so friendly if he was?"

"What's this about Envy?" Winry asked as she rejoined them, kneeling next to Edward and retrieving his auto-mail arm with one hand while she fished around in her toolbox with the other. She listened to Ed explain the happenings of the previous night one more time while she expertly adjusted, removed, replaced, and tweaked the damaged parts of his wrist.

Sora commented before Winry could. "You know, it might not be Lucifer or Envy. Riku's mention of Heartless got me thinking... it's rare, but some of the more powerful Heartless can take on human shape. One time, I fought a Heartless that acted like a shadow, able to flatten itself and move through the shadows on the ground, but it looked just like me. Maybe there's one that looks like Envy. It was dark, so you could have mistaken a fast-moving shadow on the floor for a cat, don't you think?"

"Can Heartless speak? Because whatever it was that I saw last night and in Central spoke and acted exactly like the Envy I remember."

"Well, um..." Sora faltered. "Not that I know of, but there are a lot of different Heartless. Maybe some can. There were Heartless in that alley in Central. We barely got there in time to save you from them."

Edward looked surprised, and then his expression grew even more intense as something that had been nagging at the back of his mind for some time finally came forward. "There were Heartless in the alley, after my fight with Envy, or whatever it was? Why didn't anyone tell me that sooner?"

The others looked surprised by his sudden alertness. "Well... I guess we didn't think it was that important... or we thought you had known. It's not like Heartless attacks are that unusual right now..."

"No, it's not... and I think I might know why." Winry let go of his hand at that point, and he flexed it experimentally, nodding in satisfaction. "Thanks, Winry. Now, would you mind calling Central Headquarters and asking them to check the records and see if any alchemy was used directly before and in the same area as each Heartless attack? You should probably wake Noah up, too. Sora, Riku, you two go fetch your keyblades and meet me outside. We're going to perform a little test..." He did not actually grin in determination, but the others still got that impression. Regarding the no-nonsense tone in his voice, they swallowed their curiosity and did as told. Even though Sora was the one who could find the keyhole, Edward had taken over the role of 'leader', as was usual for him.

"Brother, what do you think...?" Al trailed off.

Now Edward did smile. "Let's go, Al."

When Sora and Riku caught up with the brothers, Edward was standing several paces out from the doorway with his back to them, while Alphonse was leaning against the wall, watching with patient wonder. As soon as the Fullmetal Alchemist heard Sora that Riku's footsteps come to a halt, he clapped his right hand to his left and drew them apart again, transforming his auto-mail into the armblade that had become a sort of trade mark weapon for him. When nothing happened immediately, he repeated the motion,this time creating a spear from the ground and tossing it to Alphonse. Then he waited, something about his determined stance and attitude discouraging the others from speaking.

A minute passed, and then another. Riku stood stoically, but Sora and even Al were starting to fidget. When the first shadow appeared, however, everyone became instantly focused. Edward slashed the little monster in half, turning on the next one even as the first faded into nothingness. As more Heartless appeared, the others joined the fight. Against all four, the Heartless were no match, or so they thought.

Though Alphonse had spent many an hour sparring with his brother, much of that time had been while he was an animated suit of armor. Out of the four of them, he was the least used to fighting in his current body. When two shadows and one of the more powerful, armored Heartless surrounded him, he found himself in more trouble than he had expected. He took out one shadow with a blow from his stone spear, but the other used that as a chance to come in close and give him a good scratch with its claws. The wound was not deep, but it surprised him and set him off balance. The third Heartless rushed him, causing him to stumble as he attempted to ward it off and counter-attack the remaining shadow at the same time. He fell, and the spear slipped out of his grip and clattered across the ground, stopping out of reach. Edward finished off the last of his own opponents and turn just in time to see the armored Heartless looming like some sort of nightmare's ghoul over Alphonse, reaching for him with long, dagger-like claws as if to pluck out his heart, which, in a way, was exactly what it intended. Al's eyes grew wide with fear, and he tried to scramble backwards, only to find himself pinned against the wall. Edward made it three steps closer, but he was on the opposite side of their make-shift battleground in the clear area between the hotspring and the garden, and he knew he couldn't make it in time. A sharp horror came over him as he saw how his own careless actions had so endangered his brother.

Suddenly, a shiny metal object came spinning through the air from the doorway and conked the armored Heartless on the head, while at the same time, a small gray form streaked across the yard and tackled the shadow. Al rolled, coming to his feet with spear in hand and taking down the stunned Heartless, then watching as Lucifer - a hissing ball of gray fuzz, teeth, and claws - tore the shadow to shreds.

Ed made it to his brother then and, seeing that Sora and Riku had finished off the last of the Heartless, restored his auto-mail to its original form and placed his hand on Alphonse's shoulder. "Al, are you all right!"

Al nodded his head quickly, though Edward noticed that he had one hand pressed to the bleeding scratch on his side. Lucifer, after making sure that there was no trace left of his pray, trotted to his master and rubbed against his legs, as if asking in his own way if Al was truly all right. Alphonse reached down to scratch the cat's head lovingly. "Thanks, Lucifer. You saved me."

"Hey, don't forget about me!" Winry complained as she retrieved the wrench that she had thrown at the Heartless.

Al smiled. "Thank you, Winry. It's nice to know that that wrench works as well on real enemies as it does on my brother," he added teasingly.

The girl scowled, but ruffled his hair as she passed him. "Just be more careful next time, okay?"

"I'm so sorry," Edward said, startling Al and Winry with the desperation in his voice. "Al, you could have lost your heart, and it was all my fault... I'm the one who should have been more careful."

Alphonse blinked at him, and smiled sheepishly at patted him on the shoulder with his un-bloodied hand, so that they stood mirroring each other. "Don't worry about it so much, Brother. We've been in sticky situations like that countless times. I'm fine, so it's no big deal."

"But you're not fine! You're hurt!"

Al shrugged casually, and it was noticed by the others that right then, he looked like the older and more experienced brother. "This is nothing - just a little cut. You're the one with a broken arm, remember?" He winked. "Honestly, Brother, I can handle a little pain as well as you can. You worry too much."

Finally convinced that Al was out of immediate danger, Edward let himself relax. "Yeah, well, so do you."

"Heheh, yeah. I guess that makes us even." The brothers smiled at each other, bright and dark golden eyes meeting, and then they laughed.

"Well, now that that little ordeal is over, may I make my report?" Winry asked.

Ed faced her and nodded. "Go ahead."

"I talked to Roy. He said that he found records of alchemical use just before all but one of the attacks, but that probably just means to was an amateur practicing or someone doing something with alchemy that they did not deem important enough to make note of."

"Edward, does this mean the Heartless attracted to alchemy?" asked Noah from the doorway.

"I think at this point it's safe to say so," he replied.

"Would you say that your society - perhaps even your world - revolves around alchemy?" asked Riku, catching on.

Edward grinned. "I would."

Finally the rest started to figure out what was going on. "Hey..." Al said, "didn't you say that the Heartless would be attracted to the world's heart, Sora?"

"That's right, and so far, instead of gathering at one specific place, they've been gathering wherever alchemy is used. Edward...?"

The Full Metal Alchemist nodded. "All in one, one is all. That is the law of the world. Alchemy is the ability to understand and control the law of the world; to decompose and recreate. It could be called the key of this world, but that's just slightly off..." He let Sora finish.

"Alchemy is not the key. It's the keyhole."

"All right!" Edward cheered and clapped his hands together, while the others grinned victoriously. He knelt, placing his right hand flat on the short-cropped grass and the earth below it. Sparks and bolts of blue alchemical energy coursed away from his hand like ripples in water. Then brighter, more solid lines appeared, forming the shape of a giant keyhole. Sora stepped forward now, and swung his keyblade high, sending a bolt of glittering power shooting into the air to burst like a firework over their heads and rain down into the keyhole. The entire thing glowed with blinding white light, then faded and vanished with the resounding click of a lock. Everyone stayed silent for a moment, reflecting over the fact that they had just glimpsed into the very heart of a world.

Slowly, Edward stood up and brushed himself off. "This means our world is safe from the Heartless now, right?" he asked Sora.

"That's right. They'll all leave pretty soon." The keyblade master sheathed his weapon and grinned. "Well, that could have been a lot worse. The Heartless aren't a threat anymore, but we're not quite finished. Riku and I still need to find the next Door, right Riku?"

"I would like to get home sometime this year, yes," Riku answered with playful sarcasm.

"Don't worry," Edward assured them. "You helped save our world, so helping you get back to yours is the least we can do. We'll stick with you until you find that door."

"Why don't you all come inside, for now?" Noah suggested, glancing at Alphonse, who was still holding his side and looking a little pained. "We did bring first aid supplies on this journey, right?"

"I have a first aid kit in our room that Riza gave me before we left," confirmed Winry. "Al, why don't you come with Noah and I and we'll see what we can do about that scratch. The rest of you can figure out what to do next while you wait for us."

Al picked up Lucifer and followed the girls obediently, while Edward led Sora and Riku to his room to see if he had remembered to bring a map.

"So, Al..." Winry started when they were out of the others group's hearing range, "Noah and I have a question for you, but we need you to promise not to tell Ed."

"Huh? What does my brother have to do with this?" He narrowed his eyes and asked in the voice of a suspicious child, "What are you two plotting?"

Winry gulped, but Noah kept up an appearance of innocence. "We're not plotting anything. There's just something that we need to know." She didn't say anything else, only waited patiently for Alphonse's promise. Winry led Al into their room and made him put down Lucifer and sit on the bed while she dug out the medical kit.

"Fine... I promise I won't tell Brother about whatever it is you're going to ask me," he finally agreed.

"Great!" Winry said cheerfully, returning to his side and laying the open box next him, but swatting his fingers away when he tried to reach straight for a bandage. "Nu-uh. Gotta clean the wound first."

"Aww, but it will sting!"

"Don't be such a crybaby! I thought you told Ed that it was nothing. It will hurt a lot worse if it gets infected, so sit down and shut up."

Al made a noise of protest, but still obeyed Winry's command. "So what was it you wanted to know?" he asked sulkily as Winry made him take off his shirt so she could get to the wound more easily.

"Who does Edward like better? Me or Noah?"

"What? Winry, what's that all abou-ow! Owww, that hurts!" Alphonse flinched, but forced himself to keep his hands off the cut while Winry tended it.

"Answer the question, please."

"Geez, you two are mean."

"Hey, don't include me," Noah said. "It was Winry's idea. Still, I would like to know, too."

Al sighed as Winry finished cleaning off the blood and unrolled a bandage. "I don't even know for sure which one of you he likes best. I mean, when we were kids, we had a fight over which one of us would marry Winry, but that was ages ago. He doesn't actually talk much about his feelings for either of you. I don't think even he knows for sure what those feelings are." To be honest, Al was a little annoyed that the girls had the nerve to ask him such a question. Was Edward really that much more attractive than him? He didn't think so. There he was, shirtless on their bed and everything, and they were too focused on his brother to pay attention to him. He just did not understand girls.

"Well, that puts us back on square one," Winry commented, fishing a small clip out of the first aid kit and using it to secure the bandage that she had wrapped around Al's waist to cover the cuts on his side.

"If you want to know so bad, then ask him yourself. Then again, he'd probably just say he likes you both equally..."

"Yeah, that's exactly why we didn't try asking him."

"Well..." Al chewed on his lip thoughtfully. "I guess I could ask him for you, though he might be annoyed at me for it, but... who knows."

Winry clasped her hands together and gave him her cutest smile. "Oh, would you, please? That would help us so much!"

"Um... I guess so," he said meekly.

"Thank you. You're all patch up, so let's go see what they others are planning."

Al retrieved Lucifer from Noah, who had been keeping the cat busy, and followed Winry out of the room with a sigh.

"Hey Al," Edward called as his brother and the girls rejoined the rest of the group. "Ready to go home?"

"Huh? But I thought -"

"Sora suddenly got the feeling that we need to go back to Rizenbool," Ed explained before Alphonse could finish. "He's the one who can sense those Gates or Doors or whatever, so I think it's best to trust that feeling."

"Ah! Okay! It would be kind of ironic if the Door they need was there all along, though, wouldn't it? They could have found it without ever meeting us. Then where would we be?"

"I don't know," Sora mused. "I know I didn't sense it before. When you guys told us about the Door you came through to get back to this world, you said it vanished right afterwards, correct? I've seen the same thing happen. I think the Doors only appear when they're needed, like maybe the worlds themselves know. I know that sounds weird, but -"

"But I've heard weirder," Edward finished. "That makes sense, though I'm still not sure if those Doors are the same as the Gate or not. Both are portals to other worlds, but the Gate's much more dangerous, like an untamed version of the Doors. That's only a guess, though."

"Well, whatever the case, when's the next train to Rizenbool?" Winry asked merrily.

"Actually that's what I was just checking when you came in," commented Edward, looking back down at the train schedule he had found. "It looks like there's one leaving at ten o'clock tomorrow morning that will take us to East City, and from there we can switch to one going to Rizenbool. I hope no one minds waiting one more day."

"Hey, it's one more day that we can spend here," the mechanic pointed out. "We should have a party to celebrate."

"You're certainly in a good mood," commented Edward, smiling at her.

"Well, we've almost completed this journey, and other than what happened in Central, no one's gotten seriously hurt and now we're all together and safe. Compared to the last big adventure of yours that I was involved in, that's pretty good!"

"Heheh, I guess you're right. Let's hope our luck holds until the end."