Creation began on 03-19-19
Creation ended on 01-14-20
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The Living Alchemist: Healer
Shinji didn't trust Mugear Baron as far as he could stand him; the guy just reeked of greed, almost in a way that was worse than the homunculus that embodied the sin itself. Even as he and the Elrics were invited into his mansion, the Living Alchemist had to be on his guard. There was something in the back of his head that was telling him that something here was off by several margins.
"You're new around Xenotime," Mugear greeted the three. "All three of you are just a bunch of kids. Yet you're all State Alchemists?"
"That's right, sir," went Al. "We're just looking for anything here that will…benefit the people."
"Like this, you mean?" He asked them, showing them a small, red, pebble-like object.
"That looks like a Red Stone, sir," Ed stated.
"That's because it is," he explained. "While it's not the fabled Philosopher's Stone that many alchemists often search for, it's the next best thing."
"What can't be found can be obtained through different methods," said Shinji, who had a suspicion that this little pebble was ill-gotten goods Mugear was showing them. "The Red Stone can be created from Red Water, but proper steps must be taken to ensure that it's done carefully. What methods do you employ, Mr. Baron?"
"Why don't you come to my lab and I'll show you?"
He led them down to what Shinji had assumed to be the basement; most people with labs kept their most guarded research down under. And then Mugear led them down past the basement, which looked like a regular closet, nothing special at all.
"You all need to wear these masks beyond this point," he told them, holding up three masks as he put one on. "It's not safe to breathe the air down here."
-x-
"…Hey, have you noticed the Iron-Blood Alchemist today?" Hawkeye asked Mustang in his office. "He seemed angrier than usual."
"Some believe that it's related to the destruction caused to the former fifth lab," he told her. "The military is still shifting through rubble, but there's been some speculation that whatever was going on there involved the prison next door."
"I spoke with one of the soldiers I had seen during my time at the academy, and she claims there was a small rumor regarding Major Ikari's possible involvement."
"There's no proof that the Living Alchemist was involved in the incident."
"Still, it's a rumor that Basque Grand started shortly before Major Ikari and the Elrics left for Xenotime. It's more than likely that he's just looking to use Major Ikari as a scapegoat."
But because there was no proof that the Living Alchemist, before or even after he had officially showed up in Central, had done any acts of foul play, there was little to nothing anyone could do to hold him accountable for the destruction and revelation that the former lab was still in use. Even Mustang, despite his own suspicions that the boy was hiding something, couldn't go and accuse him of something he might've had nothing to do with at all.
"Is there anything on the two individuals that were found there?" He asked her.
"For some reason, they're in the wind now," she answered.
"What do you mean they're in the wind, Hawkeye?"
"They're not in custody, anymore. They've disappeared."
Disappeared…or someone let them go free, he thought. "How long ago was this?"
-x-
The laser beam wasn't making a crack on the gate within the Geo-Front. It wasn't that they weren't advanced enough to inflict any degree of damage to the structure, but the gate itself was just too dense in its properties. Even the MAGI themselves couldn't determine the exact density of the gate's compositions.
"It looks like we may need to winch it open," said Misato to Fuyutsuki as they saw the research team remove the laser after failing to open the gate.
"That may be the only way to get it open," he agreed with her.
As the men carried the laser away, Rei and Asuka approached the gate again and placed their hands on the doors, feeling the texture for signs of damage.
"This gate is unchanged," Rei told Asuka.
"It feels like stone, but it's so perfectly carved," the redhead responded to the bluenette.
"Tell me something, Fuyutsuki," Misato had to ask the elder. "When you were trying to regather the NERV personnel…did you try to get her to come back, too?"
"I tried calling, but her number was disconnected," he answered her. "I don't believe she's coming back."
Of course, they were referring to Ritsuko Akagi. After NERV was disbanded, Misato hadn't seen or heard from the faux-blond woman. In fact, nobody had seen or heard from her.
Misato, only because she was upset about Shinji getting killed, hadn't spoken with Ritsuko much. She once asked Kaji if he'd seen her, and was let down when he told her that he'd not seen her himself for quite some time. It was like the woman disappeared into thin air.
"Maybe she developed a crisis of conscience," she uttered.
"Or she just relocated to the countryside," Fuyutsuki suggested to her.
"Either way, I've not forgiven her for her role in his death."
Suddenly, the two adults saw the former pilots of Units-00 and 02 back away from the gate.
Asuka looked over at them, her face contorted with shock.
Rei's face exhibited a similar emotion as she turned.
"What is it?" Misato asked them.
"We…we saw Shinji's remains the day we fought the Twelfth Angel," responded Asuka, "but is it possible…that…that…"
"What?" Fuyutsuki uttered.
"He might've been displaced?" Rei questioned. "Doctor Akagi had explained that the Twelfth Angel was potentially linked to another dimension. Is it likely that he might be alive elsewhere, maybe wherever this gate leads to?"
-x-
If there was one thing about his sudden disinterest in the Red Water's negative effects on the people whose environment it spread into, Shinji found the fact that he was in the presence of a man that was harvesting such a dangerous substance in the form of a reservoir with a water fountain something he was having a hard time keeping him from going crazy. The very sight of the alchemically-enhanced water leading from a fountain into the small reservoir under the mansion just sent a bad vibe down his spine.
"You pull up the Red Water from a source under the town and channel it into this place to refine it?" Ed questioned Mugear.
"That's right," Mugear answered. "I used to have an alchemist that specialized in refining the water, but he had to leave me a few days ago."
"You had an alchemist that specializes in the refining of Red Water?" Shinji asked. "You mean, Nash Tringham?"
It was only for a split second, but Shinji saw something in Mugear that he wished he hadn't seen when he asked the obvious question. How often did Shinji not expect to see a sign of hesitation in someone before responding with an answer?
"Yes," he answered the Living Alchemist. "It's sort of embarrassing, though."
"How embarrassing, sir?" Al asked. "Alchemists are relied upon by the people all the time to achieve things that wouldn't be possible, otherwise."
"He was supposed to find a way to revitalize the gold industry that brought wealth to the town, but he had his doubts that his research would ever promise results."
Shinji had recalled reading the failed research of Nash Tringham's and began to recall how certain words in the notes were darker than the rest, as if someone intentionally marked or highlighted the keywords in order for them to be found later on. In the order of the words he found, Shinji had read a secret message: "Red Water is hazardous to the biological functions of living beings! Do not introduce Red Water into any drinking water or water used for bathing!" This had left him to assume that Nash himself had discovered something that was so bad with the Red Water research that he couldn't risk it getting into the hands of anybody that would either attempt what he had done or much worse, especially if they were immoral or lacked any humanity in their goals.
"Tell me," Shinji then said to Mugear, taking something out of his jacket's left pocket, "was something like this a promised result?"
It was the Red Stone Shinji had unintentionally harvested from the man at the bar, holding it in front of Mugear like a carrot being dangled in front of a rabbit.
"Very," he responded. "Where were you able to obtain a Red Stone of such considerable size?"
"Do you believe in God? Do you believe in angels?"
"I do."
"Well, I also believe in damnation. To gain this stone, I nearly crossed my personal line when I decided to become a State Alchemist. The line: Taking someone's life. While I understand that being a State Alchemist also means being at the beck and call of the military when the time of war is upon the country, I'm hardly what you might call a fighter. I'm just a simple young man trying to escape the darkness of his past."
Ed and Al got the impression that Shinji meant something much more than what he was saying. It was the way he was talking, like there were bits of his past before they met that night they tried to bring back their mother that he wasn't proud of and wanted to forget entirely.
"Did you hear something just now?" Shinji asked them.
"I didn't hear anything," Mugear said.
But Shinji pointed down the tunnel.
"Are you sure?" He questioned, now walking down the tunnel, his right hand feeling the wall. "It's a sound you don't really forget once you hear of it with your own ears."
"What sound is that, Shinji?" Ed asked him.
Turning around to face the brothers, the Living Alchemist responded, "Imprisonment."
Clap! He clapped his hands and put them on the wall, transmuting a small portion of it into a door…and opened it to reveal a man tied up and on the ground, sporting a few bruises on his face and a hat on his left side.
"Whoa!" Al gasped; he had never expected for there to be someone imprisoned down here.
"How do you want to explain this, Mr. Baron?" Shinji asked the landowner, who found himself unable to respond with a logical explanation over how this stranger ended up in his possession. "I'll take it that this man is Nash Tringham, the alchemist that attempted to utilize the Red Water to revitalize the goldsmith industry…but later had a change of heart when he realized how dangerous the method he discovered was," Shinji expressed, sounding rather displeased with Mugear right now. "We can do this the subtle way or we can do this the rough way, Mugear. I'm all for talk, but if you decide to try and fight me with your security, you'll have no idea of what I might do."
-x-
She was in the darkness. Sitting in the darkness had brought her no peace of mind. No, for Ritsuko Akagi, there was hardly any peace for her anywhere. Ever since the death of Shinji Ikari, NERV had gotten much disgrace over how the situation with the Twelfth Angel could've been handled over how it all went down. And after the last Angel was defeated and the original scenario was disposed of, along with Gendo Ikari's murder, the faux-blond woman had tried to move on with her life after NERV was disbanded.
Unfortunately, the masters behind NERV refused to let the past go, and so she was brought here, to a secret location by SEELE.
"Doctor Akagi," said one of the men behind the holographic monoliths that represented SEELE to her as she continued to sit in the chair, "surely, this could proceed without your stubbornness, can it not?"
"I can't give an honest answer without first having a question to answer," she responded.
"Then answer this," went SEELE 03, "just how are we expected to bring about the Human Instrumentality Project when the Lance of Longinus is in lunar orbit, the Evas have been dismantled, and the Angels have ceased their activities against humanity?! We've been reduced to existing in an eternal rut ever since the Third Child was sacrificed prematurely! Without the Lance of Longinus, we can't use Lilith to implement our version of Human Instrumentality to save the human race! Even if we were to reorganize it with Evanglion Unit-01, it would still be an incomplete process! Ikari might've authorized your plan to blow up the Twelfth Angel, but it was you that carried out the plan. Now, he has paid for his carelessness with his demise, but what of you? Is there truly no means to salvage our agenda?"
"If the Third Child was integral to your plan, then your goal is for naught without him," she told them. "Even if by some miracle he did survive, whole and everything, he'd most likely suffer from some form of head trauma. Or worse, his brain could've shut down or overloaded, rendering him brain-dead. Ikari always needed his son to be broken, pliable enough to exploit until he could achieve his own goals. Beyond that, he told me nothing else. Even he couldn't foresee which way destroying the Twelfth Angel would entail. His only concern at that time, NERV's only priority at that time…was salvaging Unit-01. The safety of the pilot was a secondary concern. Surely, even SEELE would care nothing for one child that was sacrificed for the greater good."
"Unfortunately, when it's one that the Dead Sea Scrolls decree as a requirement," SEELE 01 explained to her, "we can't risk any child that's a necessity. People like the First and Second Children are expendable. People like Ikari and Fuyutsuki are expendable. Minds like yours and your mother, however, aren't as expendable as we would want to believe they are. So tell us, Dr. Akagi… If it were possible to salvage the Third Child from his remains, would our scenario itself be salvaged?"
That was the question that Ritsuko didn't expect to hear. If SEELE wanted to try and create a clone of the boy from his incomplete corpse, then there was a possibility that they could regain control over their situation, despite the fact that NERV had been shut down. Even if the paramilitary had been brought back into service and a convincing story about the Third Child's return was spread, there was still a chance that nothing would change for the people that had control over the world governments. If Ritsuko told them this, there was a chance they'd just kill her, but if she lied to them, what then for her?
"Salvage the Third Child?" She uttered. "You mean…clone him from the DNA of his remains? Create an exact duplicate of the boy from before he was blown to pieces? Falsify that he was alive when the Angel was defeated and that he was put into hiding? Reinstate NERV and the Evas and then wait for the Angels to come back to attack?"
"Precisely," went SEELE 10.
"There's no guarantee, either way. There's no way to make absolutely certain that anything will change. We were dealing with forces that were truly beyond our comprehension. We can comprehend as much as we can about the human body, but the mind and soul, if the latter truly exists, that is, we can't define in their entirety. We're not gods. We're not even demigods. Can we be completely sure that we can even bring back the Third Child exactly as he was? You never knew him. I barely knew him outside of the synchronization tests. Nobody truly knew him."
"He was a fourteen-year-old abandoned by his father and made to pilot the Eva," said SEELE 05 to her. "What else is there to know about him? He had no dreams or ambitions. He was no different from cannon fodder."
-x-
Mugear had a lot of explaining to do to the three State Alchemists. And as for Nash Tringham, he had some explaining to do, as well, but not so much to compromise his freedom.
"Your research into the Red Water was looked at by me not that long ago, Mr. Tringham," said Shinji to the alchemist that sat in front of him and the Elrics, "but why would you choose to work for a greedy man like Mr. Baron, who doesn't seem to have the interests of the people in this town at heart?"
"I just wanted to save the town," Nash explained to them. "The gold mine that once gave this town its success and resources is all dried up. I thought the use of the Red Water would help Xenotime by transmuting the minerals and inexpensive metals into gold that could be harvested…but my research hit a stopgap."
"Introducing Red Water into the biological functions of living beings proves hazardous to them. I know because I met a guy out there that nearly died because his blood had become contaminated by the water and was filling his lungs with it to keep him from breathing. Tell me, was there really a leak in the town's plumbing a few months ago?"
"No, there was no leak. Mugear had the Red Water introduced into the town's water supply because he wanted to accelerate the creation of the Red Stone. I told him that it was a dangerous plan because of the pregnant women that live here."
"If they got sick, what good would having any wealth restored to the town be," went Al, "if you can't buy a cure or medicine?"
"Has anyone died yet because of the Red Water contamination?" Ed asked Nash.
"Not that I've heard of," he answered him. "As far as I can tell, all the mothers are in their second trimester, so there might be a chance to help them since the water wasn't leaked for too long. But this wasn't my area of expertise, treating afflictions caused by the Red Water."
That's when Shinji got an idea.
"Wait a minute," he went, "you said in your research that this water is dangerous to people because their bodies can't regulate it properly. Tell me, did you ever try using it on any other form of life?"
"Cats, dogs, sheep, even rats…but they ended up dying after being exposed to it," he explained. "Short of keeping it contained in storage drums, Red Water can't be used on people or animals and converted into a stone without causing harm to them."
"I think I know where your research was going wrong now. You focused more on Mother Nature's short-lived creations when you should've tried with her long-lived ones instead."
"What are you talking about?" Ed asked Shinji.
"We should try something really crazy."
-x-
"…As soon as the winch is in place and set," went Misato as the gate was being prepped to be forced open, "be on the lookout for anything."
Sealing the room and leaving one of the workers wearing a containment suit and armed with a pistol, the research crew prepared to pull open the gate.
"What could possibly be inside it?" Hyuga wondered.
"It could be anything," Shigeru suggested, "or maybe nothing at all."
"Commence pulling on the count of three," Fuyutsuki ordered. "One…two…three."
A mechanical pulley activated and pulled the cables attached to the gate, causing a rumbling sound to be heard; the centuries of being sealed starting to act on the gate's doors as it was being forced to open.
"It looks like the doors are giving out," said Aja to them. "They're giving out!"
With more force applied, the winch had successfully pulled the doors of the gate open.
The worker in the containment suit slowly approached the gate, looking at its interior…and soon wishing he hadn't.
"Aaaaahhh!" He screamed, and backed away.
"What is it?" Misato asked him. "What's in there?"
"People," the worker gasped. "They were looking at me! They were looking at me, wanting me to step inside!"
Fortunately, the man's suit possessed a body camera, so they could evaluate what he saw.
Rumble. The doors of the gate sealed themselves closed on their own, surprising everyone.
Or rather, whatever was seen inside the gate closed the doors.
-x-
"…Okay, who's next for treatment?" Alphonse asked as the people of Xenotime as they were lined up outside the makeshift clinic Shinji transmuted from the ground up, two weeks later. "Don't be shy!"
In the first week since Mugear was put in the custody of the State Military for the time being, Shinji and Nash had found a different method of producing a Red Stone without the need of endangering the lives of the people of the town.
Edward was surprised that Red Water was able to be detoxified by being absorbed by plant life, the long-lived creations of Mother Nature that Shinji had mentioned, and using alchemy to accelerate the detoxification process had enabled the four alchemists to have a large enough number of small Red Stones to be used to treat the sick.
"Thank you, sir," a pregnant woman praised Shinji, feeling relieved of a bad cough she had for a few weeks now.
"I don't understand, though," Nash spoke with Shinji while in between helping the people recover from the Red Water affliction. "You found out how to make the Red Stone safely. You three could've taken it and left the town. You could've even turned over the stone to the military in exchange for further prestige or advancement through the ranks. Instead, you're using the Red Stones to cure the sick and elderly. And all three of you are State Alchemists, so you'd be within your authority to take the stone and the research."
"The research alone will suffice for the military," said Ed to him. "As for using the stones the way we are, that's on Shinji. We might all be State Alchemists, but he's older than my brother and I, so he has seniority."
"Age hardly has anything to do with it," Shinji countered. "I prefer using alchemy for medical purposes, the opposite of using alchemy to harm people. I may have some skill in fighting, which I'm not proud of in any degree due to preferring a pacifistic way of living over conflict…I have to believe in alchemy being meant to benefit people, not to profit off of them. And besides, this is just the method we employed to create the Red Stone, meaning how the research behind it…is dependent upon what we alchemists choose to record in however way we desire. I've already written down how to produce the Red Stone safely. It's not really my fault if people won't be able to read it because it's in my native language."
And it was true; neither Ed nor Al could understand Shinji's native language, as Japanese wasn't a language anyone in Amestris was familiar with, enabling the Living Alchemist a way to protect his secrets without much coding involved. And what was more…the discovery was more Shinji's than the Elrics', who were striving for different goals than what Shinji was striving for.
Looking at the Red Stone he had acquired from the man he had saved earlier in his visit to this town, Shinji had pondered the latest question he had in his mind: Could the Red Stone method he had found be used to complete a homunculus transmutation and turn them into a full-fledged human being? He wanted to believe that it was possible, since using the stone on a man that had suffered from the Ishval Civil War had resulted in something unexpected; in addition to curing his Red Water affliction, the stump where his left hand used to be had regenerated into a new hand, fully functional and capable of sensation.
Living Transmutation, he thought of the designation for his research into using alchemy to regenerate limbs, avoiding Human Transmutation altogether.
"So…what will you do now, Nash Tringham?" Al asked the adult alchemist as they were getting set to leave Xenotime.
"Hopefully, return to my family," Nash answered the Building Alchemist. "I've been away from my wife and sons for too long."
"If you're lucky, if you have hope, you may be able to salvage your personal relationships with them, Mr. Tringham," Ed told him.
"Until we meet again one day," Shinji expressed, bowing to Nash. "Sayonara."
"Uh…sayonara, Living Alchemist," Nash repeated, unsure of what that word meant, but had to assume that it was "goodbye".
Walking down different paths, the four alchemists headed to their next destination.
"You think he's going to be able to reconnect with his family, Shinji?" Al asked.
"Yeah," he answered. "You saw the look on his face when he expressed a desire to see them again? He's gotta be tired of being away from them and is hoping they'll be there when he sees them again."
"How do you know the military won't try to question how you used the remaining Red Stones to revitalize their agriculture, Shinji?" Ed asked.
"The wonders of the loophole," he answered again. "The law we're under by the State Military specifically says for us to not create gold, which we didn't do. All I did was grow plants, which will improve their produce cultivation, enabling Xenotime to prosper. Besides, what are we going to do with some manufactured gold pieces? Buy a mansion? Bribe a soldier? Run away like criminals?"
The brothers found Shinji's logic currently impeccable; since there were loopholes in rules, the teenager hadn't actually violated any regulations set by the State Military, so none of them really broke any laws.
"But what are you going to do with those remaining Red Stones you have in that pouch?" Al asked Shinji, pointing to the small pouch he had tied around his belt on his right side.
"I made a promise to a woman a while back," he responded. "Maybe now I can uphold it."
-x-
"…They looked like children," explained the worker to Fuyutsuki and Misato, detailing everything he saw while the gate was open in the brief moment they had managed to obtain from winching its doors. "But they were scary, always smiling, never blinking, trying to reach out to you, as if they want to pull you into their world. I almost gave in, but I saw something else that would've been frightening and inescapable if I did."
"What else did you see?" Misato asked him, handing him a cup of tea.
The man inhaled a new breath and sighed at what he recalled.
"There were other people in there, older than the children-like people that were there," he continued, "but they were screaming at what was being done to them. The children were… They were dismembering their bodies, over and over again. But they weren't really killing anyone. They…they were giving them something that they couldn't turn down, even if they wanted to. The people that were being dismembered, they…they had done something in their lives that led them into the gate. I don't know what exactly, but I heard one of those child-like beings say something to me that was their fault. They said that those being dismembered had paid too little for what they had desired…and were unable to give any more than what they had to give to begin with."
People had gone into this gate before, thought Fuyutsuki as he was trying to comprehend what this man was telling them, but they were unable to pay a price in full and are just…stuck in some sort of limbo?
"So…what, there's some sort of price that needs to be paid in order to go through the gate?" Misato questioned.
Drinking his tea, the man just wanted to forget about what he saw in the gate. But he couldn't forget about the children he saw in there, being made to tear the adults apart and put them back together…just to tear them apart all over again. It wasn't even their fault; those kids were just…victims of bad karma.
"In order to obtain," he suddenly spoke up, "something of equal value must first be lost."
"What?" Fuyutsuki went, hearing him say this. "What did you just say?"
-x-
"…He was able to make use of the Red Water in Xenotime?" Envy asked King Bradley as they and Lust stood on the roof in Central, a few days later when the Living Alchemist had returned to drop off research for his goal.
"That's what some are saying when they ask him about what he was doing with some small, red pieces of crystal he had on him," Bradley explained. "He had visited a veteran from the war and offered to use one of the crystals on him…and to his surprise, the leg he had lost was regrown."
"He had to have created a Philosopher's Stone! There's nothing else more powerful than that!" Envy declared, but Lust didn't think so.
The fact that Shinji refused to go down the route that required one to sacrifice human lives was what made going after the stone in the first place seem unlikely. And they still had a deal in force. If the Living Alchemist had found a way to get the Philosopher's Stone without violating his principles, she could uphold her end of their pact; her return to human life in exchange for all the information she had on who was in charge of the homunculi, who desired the Philosopher's Stone, and who was in control of the country. She would reveal everything to him.
"If he created a stone, he's no longer necessary," Envy expressed further. "Let's take it from him and then get rid of him in the desert or an alley!"
"We shouldn't," Lust insisted. "Have you seen his research notes yet? The Living Alchemist writes nearly everything related to his work in a language that nobody in this country even understands. He even wrote his name in the same language, Envy. If we got rid of him now, the exact way that he produces a Red Stone goes with him. If we try to force him to translate his research, he might just falsify bits and pieces to prevent us from discovering his methods."
"Then he'd be just another stupid human, utterly useless to our cause."
"We may not have the time to deal with the Living Alchemist at this time," Bradley informed them. "The State Military may have a…problem they didn't expect to have."
"What sort of problem?" Envy demanded.
-x-
In the depths of the night, on the ground in an alleyway, a newly-made corpse lay. It was a male member of the State Military, his blue uniform soaked in his blood, his head, or rather, what was left of his head, on the ground and the side of a wall.
Walking from the scene, a large man in a rag shawl, as if a hidden vigilante on the move with a mission to do. The mission: Deliver retribution to the harbingers of the Devil's miracle and avenge the fallen ones.
They must all be punished, thought the man, now convinced of what he must do.
To be continued…
A/N: Sorry this took long. You can't rush success for anything, but this was rushed to a semblance of completion. Who do you suspect was seen from a distance at the end? Will Lust achieve her goal and uphold her end of the pact between herself and Shinji? Will Ritsuko be forced to work for SEELE? What about the gate? Anyone?