AN: Okay, so a little over a month isn't bad. Glad to know that I managed to get this out faster than the last one. I can't make any promises, since my life is a bit unstable these days, but I'll try to update when I can.
Disclaimer: Youjo Senki is the property of Being X. FMA is the property of Hiromu Arakawa.
IV. SIEGE PERILOUS
ROOF, ALPHONSE'S CENTRAL APARTMENT, 13 APRIL, 1917
"So how's the chi flowing today, Tanya?" From her spot next to the roof door, May sipped from a cup of Winter Haze oolong tea while reclining into a nice comfy chair. By her side, Xiao Mei sat on the roof… and of course, she also had a cup of tea.
And where was I? In the spot where she once stood several weeks ago, when she first demonstrated Alkahestry. What was I doing? Take a guess. You only need one. The answer was obvious. I was practicing her clan's Tai-Chi form, shifting from one stance to another, limbs and body flowing like water.
How did I get that proficient in a few weeks? A person can do a lot in a month. Especially considering that particular experiment on neuroplasticity and wearing eyeglasses that caused inverted vision. I'll skip right to the conclusion rather than bore you to death with the details of the experiment itself: do something for 21 days straight, and it'll create new neuropathways in your brain, turning it into a routine. Well technically, it's 21 to 40 days, but 21 is about minimum. Further repetition to at least 66 days will then make your routines evolve into habits, which as I already said, are an artificial instinct. They run on autopilot. You don't think about brushing your teeth or tying your shoelaces. At least I hope not.
Anyway, the point is, I've been learning Tai-Chi by coming up here every morning at six, and giving it 110 percent of my sweat, all the way to just before lunch time. If you're going to get into something new, you better put all your hard work into it. It helps you master it all the better.
The brilliant part was, with how seriously I took this training, I was actually starting to understand the Xingese perspective by experience. Something like a third eye had opened up in my being, so to speak, because that question she just asked?
"Wide flow, calm current."
I could readily answer it like I was watching a weather bulletin on the morning news.
"Perfect for smooth sailing," I added, jokingly shifting the river metaphor to a more literal sense before going back to Alkahestry. "Looks like today's a good day to get some transmutation done." It's hard to explain how it works, exactly. The best way I can put it is like when you've spent the whole day playing around in a swimming pool. After you're done, showered, changed, and lying down in the resort room you booked, you can sometimes almost feel like you're still floating around in phantom waters, complete with a current, if any, and the sensation of your body bobbing up and down. It's like that. That's how I sense the Dragon's Pulse.
"Think you're ready to pull it off?" May took another sip. "Yesterday didn't exactly work out, even with similar conditions on the Pulse."
I grinned widely, a wild, burning determination visible in my eyes. "Yesterday ain't today! Never let the past dictate the future!" I clenched my fist before pulling up a pair of kunai from the black obi around my waist – she'd given me one of her old gi to use for training. It fit surprisingly well.
If it wasn't obvious by now, Xing had a combination of both Chinese and Japanese characteristics. It's probably weird imagining a nine year old blonde Caucasian girl wearing a Japanese gi while practicing a Chinese martial art… but that's pretty much what I was at this point.
Feel free to laugh at a mental image that would fit perfectly in a hypothetical 80's Hollywood action comedy entitled 'Kindergarten Kung Fu Master'. Somehow, I got the feeling that going through this for almost a month was part of some plot that Being X intended to use to embarrass me.
"Hoh." May seemed impressed enough by my declaration, and nodded her head before finishing her tea. Xiao Mei poured her another cup. "I always did like your spunk, Tanya. That never give up attitude of yours will take you places."
Damn right, it will. I closed my eyes and focused. The Pulse was there, ebbing calmly like a wide placid river. The wider a river is, the calmer the currents get. The same principle seemed to operate with the Pulse. That made things easier. At least I didn't have to subject myself to some bizarre counterintuitive analogy. That being said, with May's training, I could now appreciate the chi element of Alkahestry as something approaching a legitimately scientific method.
Formulae flashed through my mind's eye. I knew exactly what I had to draw. All those extra hours of studying Alkahestric purification circle diagrams alongside my own Alchemic transmutation circle diagrams were starting to pay off. I picked up the chalk in between my toes and drew it: that basic pentacle she had so quickly done so as to make it look like child's play. You could of course imagine the amount of balancing needed to draw such a diagram while standing on one leg. But May had taught me that exact form, and I had no trouble with my balance. While it took me about half a minute to do so compared to her scant split seconds, it was at least geometrically correct.
May obviously had many years of practice to be able to do it so fast.
I opened my eyes and looked at my target. That chair. It had been structurally mangled over the past weeks, primarily because it was the main subject of my transmutation practice. The backrest had already come loose and was hanging from the left nail, while one of the legs had become shorter than the other three. Or well, given the law of equivalent exchange, it's more likely that matter was removed from that leg and redistributed to the rest of the legs. The rear of the seat had sunk down so that using it gave you the impression that it was threatening to squeeze your butt tight.
In short, I had kept botching my attempts to use Alkahestry to transmute it back into a table. And May told me using Alchemy on it was not allowed.
Well, I was feeling pretty prepared today, and the Pulse felt really good. So why not make it happen for real? Twelfth time's a charm. My left arm flicked out as I chucked one kunai at the chair, while I stabbed the pentacle using the one in my right hand. Picturing what I wanted in my head, I set my fingers down to touch the diagram and start the reaction. Alkahestric energy arced from one kunai to the other, the two daggers connected by the flow of the Dragon's Pulse.
Light flashed bright and blinding for a moment. My eyes lit up in expectation and my lips curled into a smile. I'd done it! I just had to! There was no way that wasn't a success!
"That uhh…" Apparently, May was more used to that light than I was, because she could already see it while I still had green spots blocking my vision. And I didn't like the disappointed tone that her voice had taken. "I think you'll have to try again tomorrow."
I rubbed the glare out of my eyes. Slowly, they adjusted, and the blind spots disappeared from my field of view. It wasn't a table. It wasn't even that chair. It was a monstrosity. Some twisted, unusable construct of wood that would probably be more fitting in a surrealist's art exhibit than a living room. Where one needed straight legs, there were uneven multi-angled joints. Where one would expect a flat seat, there sat winding intertwined varnished appendages. There wasn't even a backrest to speak of so much as a wooden ball peppered with holes that vaguely resembled a face.
That chair.
"Okay, I think we should work a bit more on your visualization."
That chair.
"Tanya?"
That chair.
"Hello? Tanya?"
That chair…
"Tanya!"
"Huh?" I snapped out of some sort of reverie. "Y… yes?"
"I think we should get back to working on your visualization," May repeated, sipping from her teacup. "This is definitely not a table."
"Yeah. It's definitely not…"
I sighed and turned away from that chair in order to better focus on visualization. Everything went right in my head. I saw it all. The formulae, the current form, the underlying elements, the flow of the Pulse, the virtual meridians that I would use to reshape that chair into a table. What was missing? What did I do wrong? My mental images were crystal clear. So why did I screw up so badly? Self-doubt is a terrible thing. The uncertainty of not comprehending what your mistake was will only make you lose more confidence as you grow more paranoid about just what went wrong.
As the morning went by, and transitioned to noon, I did nothing but practice my visualizations. That mainly involved sitting down in a traditional lotus position and keeping my eyes shut, allowing the chi to flow through my being as I formed pictures, and combined them with principles and equations. I'd attempted that transmutation eleven times before, but it never went this bad. Not even on my first attempt. Each day I screwed up, I'd practice visualizing things again, hopefully to get it right the next day.
Visualization was a key component of Alkahestry, similar to, but not exactly like Alchemy, which used raw data before anything else. If you were going to visualize something alchemically, it would primarily be an object with specific measurements. Elemental, composition, mass, volume, density, temperature… See? Raw data. If it was an object in motion, like say, pulling bedrock out of the ground and turning it into a moving battering ram, you would factor in the appropriate physics equations. Velocity, acceleration, etc. Alkahestric visualization was more like… imagining yourself performing the transmutation, using virtual meridians of the Dragon's Pulse as your tools to reshape one object into another. In the case of medicine, the chi had a nourishing effect, revitalizing ailing biology.
May was teaching me to visualize revitalization. Nourishment. Healing. To 'heal' the 'injured' chair back into a table. But looking at it from both perspectives, I could do so much more than just that. The scientific methods of Alchemy, and the philosophical principles of Alkahestry could, when combined, do some pretty incredible things.
Let's look at the field of medicine. If you combined this method of seeing yourself performing the act with say, encyclopedic surgical knowledge, and the fact that Alkahestric processes are far more precise than any mere tool, you could execute hideously effective surgeries that would make modern surgical advancements look amateur in comparison. Compare, if you will, a coronary arterial bypass, which involves diverting blood around a clogged artery much like a highway detour, to an Alkahestric 'surgery' where you simply remove the clogging by disintegrating the plaque. Oh, and it of course happens at the speed of imagination, so there is minimal risk of the patient suffering from cardiac arrest while you're doing it, not to mention the chi of the Dragon's Pulse keeping them healthy while you perform this 'surgery'. It can take the place of antiseptics, anesthesia, and any other drug that happens to be necessary to ensure a patient's safety, thanks to its vague concept of "healing".
The obvious caveat is that you actually need sufficient medical knowledge to perform a surgery of that scale, similar to that of a heart surgeon. What Alphonse did to my finger on the train was the Alkahestric equivalent of first aid. All that being said, and given my performance today, I'm far from being a certified medical Alkahestrist.
As the sun approached its zenith, I opened my eyes and stood back up, wiping the sweat from my brow and reaching for the towel hanging in the shade. May had also spent this time meditating, and was just snapping out of her trance. "Guess it's time for lunch, huh?"
"Yep, sure is." She opened up her eyes and stretched, Xiao Mei following her lead. "I'll be making Cha siu bao for the three of us."
"Just the three of us?" My eyebrow rose.
"Al went out early again today," she explained. "He won't be back until after dark."
"He seems to be doing that more often these days," I pointed out. "Is everything alright?" Normally, Alphonse would spend some time watching us here in the morning, before going back inside and working on his alchemic studies, or practicing Alkahestry on his own. Sometimes, he'd be chatting somebody up on the phone. So it was pretty odd that this week, in particular, he was going out more often. What could he possibly be up to? Heh. Maybe he's also preparing for the exam and plans to become a State Alchemist. Not that he needed the money, though. From the looks of this place, they were pretty well off.
"Yeah, everything's A-Okay!" May smiled and gave me a thumbs up. "He's just got to deal with a few major interests outdoors for the time being. Don't worry about it." She opened the door and beckoned myself and the panda to follow her back inside.
I helped out with making lunch. Why? Cooking was a practical skill to learn when living alone. At least, until TV dinners get invented (or TV, for the matter), I should be capable of making something that can satisfy my own palate. The fact that they had a refrigerator really aided in preserving the ingredients and allowing for advanced menu planning. We never had one at the orphanage. Mind you, this was a very, very early model that suspiciously resembled the original Kelvinator. Commercial home refrigerators only came out last year, and were still extremely hefty in terms of price.
Fortunately for us, May was a princess. Or at least, that was what she told me when I asked her about where she learned all of her Alkahestry. It would at least help explain why they had a phone and a refrigerator. The only thing missing was a car, but considering this apartment building didn't come with parking – because cars haven't completely replaced carriages yet, obviously – it would make sense that they would leave it out, at least until they bought their own property.
Of course, leaving aside that May was rich, there was still the issue of what kind of work Alphonse actually did, if he had any. He didn't seem to run a private alchemy firm. Could it be that he was devoting all of his time to studying? Well, considering his passion for the field, it wouldn't be surprising for him to just do so as soon as he stumbled upon this romantic subsidy. Ah, yes, I have to hand it to him. Mooching off his royal girlfriend's treasures is a very clever strategy. The fact that she shares his interests also makes her less likely to cut his funding. But surely, that money won't last forever. Maybe that's why he's preparing for the test. At least I think he is.
I don't know what the political climate is in Xing, but if House Yao's hastily-built unification bid screws up, then we might be looking at a republican revolution in the near future. And that would mean May and Alphonse would have to get jobs. "Have you ever considered applying for gainful employment?"
"Huh?" May stopped kneading the dough for a moment as she looked at me with a puzzled expression.
"I mean, it's nice that you're a princess and all. But these are pretty turbulent times we live in. Not to wish anything bad on Emperor Yao's efforts, but have you thought about getting to work on a Plan B to secure your future?"
"You mean, get a job?" She went back to kneading as soon as she understood what I meant.
"Exactly." I nodded as I chopped up the onions. "You're a highly skilled Alkahestric practitioner. Surely you could make a living, and not to mention help promote your knowledge and culture here by… I dunno, teaching Alkahestry at Central University, or something."
May laughed as she began to roll up the dough and cut it into equal portions. "A teacher. Well, I might consider it once my first two students graduate, mmm? Then I'll have more credibility as a teacher, and maybe Central University will be more likely to take me in."
I laughed along with her. "Yeah, you're right. I better make sure I turn that chair back into a table soon!"
That being said, whether or not Yao succeeds, I gain from this transaction. If unification works out, then I'm a princess' good friend. If he fails, then I can add 'inspired the mainstream teaching of Xingese Alkahestry' to my resume. Well… actually, I get the latter in either scenario. A big, fat, successful resume helps out when it comes to getting a job. Even if I fail the test, I'll have a very good backup plan. I could become an Alkahestry instructor to pay the bills while I prepare for the test next year. Hah! Ah, the seemingly endless possibilities of youth.
After lunch, it was business as usual. I went to my room to review my alchemy materials for the exam in a few days, while May did some housework before going back to her own training. Around dinner time, I spotted her looking over a flyer for Central University while she cooked up wontons. Looks like she took my suggestion more to heart than she had let on. Good.
I dragged that chair back into my room as the sun went down, setting it by the window. As much as I'd want it to rot out in the open, May wanted it protected. After all, it's become something of my training dummy. That little chore done, I sat down at my desk and began practicing my craft. The night went on. I would perform basic transmutations on a small block of marble that I'd bought from a nearby hobby shop. Then I'd work on more complex processes involving solids, liquids, and gases. It would culminate in spending the second half of my evening session practicing my specialization, the trump card I believed would revolutionize the Amestrian military and give me that coveted silver pocket watch in a few days.
Then I'd finish up with some reviews of my studies before I finally threw in the towel, so to speak. With the details of Flamel's 59th Hieroglyphic Figure growing blurry and incomprehensible, I shut my book and looked up at the wall clock to see it was almost eleven. No wonder it had felt like so much had happened. I'd been at this for nearly five hours. That might not seem like a lot to most adults, but when you're below a certain age, time seems to move slower, because your heart beats twice as fast as that of an adult. This is why flies are so hard to hit: their hearts beat so fast that time is a trickle to them. Your 'fast' hand is but a slow moving wall of flesh. In human terms, this would of course lead you to having generally better raw reflexes than when you're grown up. This is also why children can be seen as so impatient: it's because the world is so slow to them.
That said, I was experiencing a different problem with being in a prepubescent body: it still needs a ton of sleep. At this age, I'm recommended to have nine to eleven hours, or else I can't function at peak efficiency. You could say I need to maximize my waking hours before anything else. Sure, my superior perception of time helps balance it out, but I can't bank on that to carry me forever. After all, I'll eventually grow up. Might as well make the most of this second childhood.
And so, this hefty concern on my mind, I dragged myself into bed and blew out my lamp…
"I see that even after nine years, you haven't changed at all, my poor lost child."
Who? What?
"Yes, you aren't dreaming. I am here."
I shot out of bed, sitting up straight with my eyes wide open as I scanned the room. That voice. There was no mistaking it. It could only have been him. The giveaway was the fact that it sounded exactly like that talking pigeon from the train station. But what was that bastard using as a mouthpiece this time?
"A little to the left."
Instinctively, I followed his directions. My eyes immediately fell upon it. That chair. That chair that I'd accidentally transmuted into a hideous abomination, with the strange ball full of holes that vaguely resembled a face. Well, those holes were now glowing. He really was here. My eyes narrowed. "Being X."
"And you still refuse to acknowledge who I am." As he spoke, the lights on the 'face' flickered to match his words, almost like a visual soundwave effect.
"No shit." I rolled my eyes. "What you did proves nothing. I can take an animal from its natural habitat and transfer it to a new one, and that wouldn't give me the right to be worshipped by animals. This is just a higher form of abduction."
"You lack all your modern conveniences, and yet you continue to wallow in your unbelief." He continued. "Whatever happened to what you said?"
"You're taking my word for it now?" Oh, wow, that was rich. I got up and approached that chair, eyes focused entirely on it, and its occupant. "You really don't get it, do you? When I say modern science and conveniences raise doubts about the divine, that doesn't necessarily mean the opposite would encourage it. It's not a binary choice. There isn't any excluded middle to this. If anything, suffering makes things worse for your case." Now that I was in less precarious circumstances and could think more clearly, I could better lay down my arguments. "There are two types of atheists. Rationalists like me, who have arrived at our conclusion because of logic, reasoning, and evidence, and then there are people who have been traumatized into unbelief. Their side of the story is also logical, if more emotionally grounded – and thus abused into a stereotype. How could there be an all-loving, almighty God who rules the universe when so many terrible things are happening all around us? If he is all loving, then he won't want bad things to happen to his children. If he is almighty, then he won't allow these bad things to happen. But since they happen, then it is ultimately reasonable to assume that there is no God."
"So now you're saying that suffering causes doubt." Being X paused, as if to think. For such a powerful entity, he didn't seem to have a lot of common sense, did he? "Sounds to me like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too."
"That's just how the universe works. The odds are stacked in the favor of unbelief because there is no God to believe in anyway." I've always pegged him as some sort of post-physical alien entity, which at least makes some degree of sense. "Would you like me to cite examples from personal experience? The orphanage never had nice things, like refrigerators, leading one of the administrators to cuss God out. Oh, and if there is a God, he's probably evil to let all this stuff happen. In fact, he probably loves suffering. Why else would radical fundamentalist lunatics from Lior bomb a government building a block away from the orphanage, in the name of 'Leto'? That's one of your names in this world, right?"
"No, Leto is a false god constructed by Cornello's Cult." Well, that sounded blunt and matter of fact.
"False gods, true gods, there isn't a difference to me. There is no God. You might as well be the same thing as Cthulhu."
"Trust me on this. I play games with Cthulhu on Saturdays. We're nothing alike."
I can't tell if that was a serious statement, or if he was making fun of me. "That you claim to hang out with Cthulhu only better proves my point. You're not God. You're just some far more advanced being that's millions, probably billions, of years ahead of human technology. You evolved first. And if human technology can progress from horse carriages to space shuttles in a span of five centuries after discovering science, then a race that has a million-year head start could easily do things comparable to miracles. Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, after all." I smirked. "They could probably even create their own little pocket universes, like this one I'm in right now." And when even miracles can be replicated, then there is no more room to argue for God.
"So if I perform a miracle that can't possibly be misconstrued as advanced technology in action, then you will believe?"
"Wait what?" Oh no. Here he goes again. Jumping to a hasty conclusion based on some flimsy premise that doesn't necessarily undermine my arguments. How am I supposed to tell the difference between a miracle and advanced technology anyway? Clarke's Third Law is clear! You can't tell them apart! "I never said that!"
My words fell on deaf ears. Or well, that chair didn't really have ears, so that statement was strictly metaphorical.
"Then I shall bless you with an unmistakable miracle!" That chairbegan to glow brighter. "Rejoice, young girl!" Something was happening. Whatever it was, I didn't like it.
This had to stop. I picked up that chair and bashed it against the floor. It exploded in a blinding flash of light.
My eyes opened. The cuckoo clock was ringing. Sunlight was starting to peek in through the window. It was five thirty.
I sat up in bed, and looked around the room. It wasn't technically a guest room. Alphonse said that his brother would use this room whenever he would stay in Central, so it was full of books and other alchemic paraphernalia. He did mention they were both really into alchemy. I never actually got this brother's name – why should I? – but I did spot a color photo of the two of them when they were younger, proudly holding up a prized fish catch of some sort. He had the goofiest smile. Alphonse was, as expected, more subdued.
I turned to look in the direction of the window, expecting to see that chair in pieces. Instead, I saw a familiar oak table. So I definitely wasn't dreaming. Being X came for a visit last night. There was a sheet of paper sitting on it. What was this, his calling card? I stood up and slowly walked over, flipping the sheet around… "Deus… lo vult?" Oh come on. He goes on a bombastic speech about giving me a miracle, and all he does is reverse the transmutation on that chair then leave a dumb message on it?
Either he has a lame sense of humor, or he really is that dumb. I crumpled the sheet and tossed it away. There was no time to fuss over Being X's trolling. I had to continue my training.
EXAMINATION ROOM, CENTRAL COMMAND, 16 APRIL, 1917
The last few days until the exam went by uneventfully. May found out about the table and scolded me, assuming that I'd used alchemy to change it back. Well, doing so out of frustration was a far more sensible explanation than saying 'Being X did it!' It would be the equivalent of saying a dog ate my homework. So I just ran with that. If anything else, it was part and parcel of the expectations one would have of an immature little girl, and should have been completely excusable. Which she did. In fact, she even thanked me for my 'honesty'! Hah!
And then she turned it back into a chair. I was of course, going to have to succeed with Alkahestry by first doing it 'fairly'. No question about that.
But today was different. Today, I was walking down esteemed marble hallways in order to take the alchemy exam. Finally, after six long years of hard preparation, I would have the chance to show everyone that I could contribute to the nation! And then, I would be granted that delicious State Alchemist grant.
The questions and problems for the written portion were university-level. Some were even particularly tricky, skirting the line between alchemy and law when they implicitly brought up the question of whether or not it was legal to transmute gold into some other element.
'Roy's girlfriend wants a lead wall to shield herself from an upcoming radiation experiment. Roy has 200 kg of gold to work with. How much gold must he transmute into lead to produce a 2x2x0.07 meter lead wall?' There is of course the question of density. More importantly, there was a hidden question: if turning lead into gold is illegal, is the inverse also illegal, or is it possible for Roy to do this without getting thrown in jail?
If you wanted to go into technicalities, it was technically legal. But if you went by the semantics, you would find that it was undesirable. Just because it's technically legal doesn't mean it's beneficial. While transmuting lots of lead into gold would flood the market and cause severe inflation that would destroy the economy, taking gold out of the market would cause deflation. Which would result in currency hoarding. Which would force prices to go down with the decreased demand… it would reach a point where production will also slow down immensely, resulting in a weak economy. This would lead to mass layoffs as employers try to cut costs. People lose jobs not because of personal inefficiency, but because of bad handling of the market. This is a waste of otherwise productive human resources.
Therefore, the correct answer would be that Roy shouldn't transmute his gold in the first place. Instead, he should convert it into cash, and use it to buy some other material that he can transmute into a lead wall for his girlfriend.
There were a couple of others, but overall, the written portion was a breeze. Now, I was on my way to take the practical exam, where I would show all the higher-ups how helpful I could be.
I stopped at a pair of gigantic granite double doors and waited for the two guards to push them open. With a nod, I went on in. It was a large chamber, with a balcony running along either side. As I approached the end of the hallway, I paid attention to three individuals in uniform standing at the center stage. On the right was a man with short black hair and a pretty bushy mustache. The golden shoulder boards and three stars indicated the rank of a full general. I knew it was going to be something like this, of course. Only one or two made it each year. That meant they needed top brass to evaluate any potential State Alchemists.
Somehow, I couldn't help but feel that the expression on his face was one of complete boredom…
At the center was a balding old man with white hair, an even bushier mustache, and rounded spectacles that concealed his eyes behind a glare that shouldn't be there. The electrical lamps here weren't strong enough to cause that sort of reflection, and there were no windows in this room. So where did the glare come from? His more formal attire, golden shoulder boards and four stars told me all I needed to know. He was the Führer. The CEO. The President. The man in charge. Above all else, I should impress this fellow.
I couldn't read the stoic look on his face. If this guy played poker, that would be an excellent asset to his strategy.
And on the left, also in the signature blue State military uniform, was a young man with short blonde hair, golden eyes, and the kindest smile. Wait. What?
"Ah, glad to see you all confident and ready for your turn, Tanya!" And the voice of a young woman.
No. No, this couldn't be right. How did I not see this coming? "A… Alphonse?" I struggled to keep my utter confusion from spilling out onto my face. Keep it cool. Keep it cool. "Y… you're a judge?" So this was why he was busy the past week? He wasn't preparing to take the exam… He was preparing to judge it?
"You didn't know?" Asked the dark haired general, now smirking. "You stayed with him for a month, right?"
"Well… yes, but…" But he minimized contact with me! I wasn't able to learn anything new about him at all!
"Then I guess he did a really good job of keeping work and home apart." The general's voice was playful, almost mocking. Alphonse could only give me an embarrassed smile as the general gestured towards him and opened his mouth again, "So, let's make this official, shall we? Tanya Degurechaff, meet Lt. Colonel Alphonse Elric, the Iron Heart Alchemist."
To be continued…
AN: WAAAAH! CLIFFHANGER! So the hard part here was the pacing. I had to do three scenes, and had only so many words to do them. But for the most part, I'd like to think it was worth it. As for how Alkahestry works in this story, there's nothing in canon material about visualization. All I could get was that it was better at medical applications because chi is apparently a healing force when used properly. Or… something. Everything else, I sort of just thought up.
I picked 'Iron Heart' as Al's title because it sounded right. He's a tough kid, after all. Though as it turns out, it's been used as the title of a Naruto Crossover. Also used as the title of some fanart someone did of Al. Props to you guys for using it too.
Oh, and of course, 'Siege Perilous' is Latin for 'perilous seat'. I guess that means that to besiege a city is to surround it and sit down until it surrenders? Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate. It's also a reference to… well, you could probably find out by googling it.
Anyhoo, feedback and reviews are much appreciated! Thanks!
