Creation began on 04-22-20
Creation ended on 05-03-20
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The Living Alchemist: Backup
It was only because Shinji hadn't returned to get them, and because Hughes was chaperoning them until he had returned, but the Elrics needed to make sure that Shinji was alright after hearing an explosion and people running away from whatever was going on.
"Some guy turned into a monster!" A woman yelled.
"The State Alchemist killer showed up and killed another State Alchemist!" A man explained. "Then he attacked that kid that's been doing good while also a State Alchemist!"
"The Living Alchemist is fighting against a monster!" Another woman cried.
Why is it that while we're all State Alchemists, Shinji seems to attract more notoriety than Al and I do? Edward wondered as Hughes drove them down the damaged street where the scene of conflict first happened, recognizing the signs of transmutation.
"You think Shinji did this, brother?" Alphonse asked.
"Yeah, it looks like it," he answered back.
"The only positive to this is that there's no casualties," Hughes informed them, seeing no signs of human remains on the street or sidewalks. "It looks like Living had the people get away."
"You left out whoever this Scar killed before he turned his sights on Shinji," said Ed to him.
"I don't consider anyone murdered by Scar in this case a casualty if your guardian is being attacked by some…monster. What the heck?"
He stopped the car and spotted Ross and Brosh on the sidewalk, covered in scrapes and dirt.
"What happened to you two?" Al asked as he and Ed ran over to them.
"Let's just say that…Shinji Ikari has a knack for attracting danger," Denny suggested. "He figured out that Scar, the State Alchemist killer, is a native of Ishbal, and the guy killed Brigadier General Basque Grand before setting his sights on Shinji himself. Then this other guy showed up and stated that he was after Shinji. I don't know, but it sounded like the guy that turned into a monster saw him as a threat."
"It was the Iron-Blood Alchemist that was killed?" Ed questioned.
"Scar grabbed his head and blew his brains out," Maria answered. "Shinji suspected that he used some sort of alchemy, but we didn't hear much of it."
"It sounded like Shinji explaining how it's a step-by-step reaction and that Scar only does two of them instead of all of them."
"Step-by-step? Yeah, the three steps of alchemy."
"What about the guy that turned into a monster?" Al brought up. "What did he look like?"
"Probably a little older than Shinji, with dark green hair and dark clothing," Denny described. "Then he turned into a large animal I've never seen before."
"Do you know where they went?" Ed wanted to know.
"No," Maria explained, pointing to the remains of large, transmuted walls. "Shinji made those walls after the guy turned into a monster and there was some kind of explosion afterward. I hope he managed to get away from it, though."
-x-
Dragging… Something…was dragging down a dark place. As he opened his eyes, Shinji saw a dark ceiling with small lights. He raised his head up…and saw Envy, still in that monstrous form he took on, dragging him by his left leg with his tail. Feeling his fingers twitching as his arms were dragged behind him, Shinji had to come up with a plan to get free.
"Shinji Ikari, the Living Alchemist," he heard Envy say. "I honestly don't know what she expected of you when you tried for the State Alchemy Exam. If you're not going to craft a Philosopher's Stone, you're as useless as other experienced alchemists that are too afraid of their damn shadows. We should've tried to manipulate those two bastards you're watching after all the time."
The Elrics? What's so important about wanting a Philosopher's Stone? The way they're made makes them immoral and unethical.
Shinji brought his hands silently together, forming a circle with the necessary alchemic runes in his mind, and then placed his right hand against the wall beside him.
Flash. Envy noticed something happening behind himself, but never got a chance to properly react as spikes shot out of the wall and impaled him.
"Gaurgh!" He groaned.
That's when Shinji got free and back onto his feet.
"You're going to regret not taking me out when you had the chance," he told Envy.
"You think your alchemy is a match for me?!" The homunculus snarled, breaking free from the spikes. "I'm the strongest of the homunculi!"
Clap! Shinji slammed his hands to the ground and transmuted a sword.
"There's no such thing as the strongest homunculus," he told Envy and realized that the tunnel they were in was not associated with the city's sewage system. "What is this place?"
"Like I'd tell you anything!"
Shinji put his sword down and clapped his hands again, slamming them onto the floor and causing more spikes to shoot out from the walls and impale Envy further.
"Gaaurgh!" The homunculus groaned.
"Stay there for a while," he told Envy, picking up his sword and running off.
"There's no way out for you!"
-x-
This was a disturbing and unusual alliance between the three of them. They didn't have much of a history with one another and had no reason to trust one another, either, but there was one reason they were even down this deep underground: Shinji Ikari, the Living Alchemist.
Scar, the disfigured Ishbalan with the destructive right arm, wanted to kill him because he was a State Alchemist affiliated with the country that had ruined Ishbal.
Lust, the female homunculus, needed the boy to make her human with his Red Stones after seeing that it was possible to use them in place of the Philosopher's Stone, as per their pact.
Greed, because he was set free by the boy, just wanted to make sure the guy survived because he didn't like Envy or the person pulling the strings behind the country.
"Why do you think he's an enemy?" Greed asked Scar.
"You already know why he's an enemy to my country," he responded. "This country decimated my homeland, using their alchemy to wage genocide."
Lust, quietly fuming over this assumption that Scar made, sighed and uttered, "Amestris might've been involved in the war with Ishbal, but they were not the ones that instigated the conflict. Not directly. It was Envy that sparked the civil war."
"How do you know this?" Greed asked her, as he didn't know for sure.
"Because I was there when it happened…and he told me what he did."
"You lie," Scar told her.
"I do not," she defended. "Envy lies, but he boasts about how he feels whenever he can't keep something to himself. He posed as an Amestrian soldier that opposed the idea of war and killed an Ishbalan child on purpose to spark the war…and then he killed the soldier to cover up his tracks by posing as an Ishbalan. But he didn't do so of his own accord. He was told to."
"I'm guessing Dante was the one that wanted the war to happen?" Greed asked.
"It was all for the Philosopher's Stone. She said with the stone, homunculi could become human. I believed her. So long as there were alchemists that could be manipulated into doing our bidding, I held onto the belief that there would be one that could craft a stone and then we'd take it from them. But then the Living Alchemist showed up and changed everything."
"He offered to craft a Philosopher's Stone for you?" Scar suspected.
"No," she answered. "I told him about the Red Water in Xenotime and he discovered a means to create the Red Stone more effectively. He was unwilling to sacrifice human lives in favor of seeking a way to create a stone that required no human lives as the ingredients. When he perfected the creation of the Red Stone, a Philosopher's Stone forgery, I had him use one of his stones on Gluttony, transmuting him into a human…and he completed his transmutation along with bringing back to life all of his victims. The Living Alchemist is truly capable of feats that make him incapable of taking anyone's life."
"Hey," Greed stopped and pointed towards a small pouch on the ground, half open and exposing at least four crimson rocks. "Are those the Red Stones?"
"Yes," Lust realized, picking up the pouch. "They must've fallen off him when Envy dragged him off."
"Why didn't he just take them from the boy?" Scar wanted to know.
"Probably because they're not like the Philosopher's Stone. They're not made using human lives. He'd prefer the real thing over an imitation."
"But if he won't make one, why capture him?" Greed questioned. "Why not just kill him?"
Lust got the feeling that they would find out the further they went down this tunnel that wasn't connected to the sewage system.
-x-
"…Still no sign of Major Ikari?" King Bradley asked Mustang upon being informed that the Living Alchemist had encountered Scar and was, supposedly, attacked by a homunculus.
"No, sir," Mustang answered.
"A homunculus attack? That seems like a falsehood claim."
"One of the witnesses claim to have seen a man turn into some kind of monster. Some of the military believe that it was a rogue chimera made by an alchemist unaffiliated with the military."
"And Basque Grand?"
"Scar dispatched during a verbal altercation with Ikari."
"I see… Continue with the search for Major Ikari."
"And should we encounter the chimera…or homunculus?"
"Execute it."
"Sir."
When Mustang left, Bradley got up from his desk and walked over to a bookshelf and pulled a book halfway out, causing the entire shelf to part to reveal an elevator.
-x-
"Brother," went Al to Ed as they assisted with the repairs to the buildings and street, "do you think Shinji is alive?"
"It's unlikely that he'd allow himself to be taken out so quickly by anyone," Ed explained. "Also, I get the feeling that there's more to him than even he lets on."
"What do you mean?"
Transmuting a broken wall back to it original state, Ed answered, "Shinji has more persistence in him to live than anyone else we've met in our lives. Plus, I think his alchemy goes further than what we've seen."
"It seems like he's capable of the same alchemy that we're capable of, but he tends to focus more on healing amplifications rather than simple reconstruction or offensive-based alchemy."
When Al pressed his hands onto the transmutation circle on the ground and repaired the street around himself, Ed retorted, "He might have an interest in medical alchemy, but that doesn't change the fact that he has used alchemy defensively many times in the past."
Al sighed and had to accept that as the truth, despite the truth also being that Shinji hated fighting due to his claim to having been in conflicts that he couldn't speak of. He had to wonder just what sort of conflicts were so terrible for him that he would renounce fighting in favor of using his alchemic abilities for medical practices.
-x-
Shinji wasn't in a sewage system or sanitation center when he found a doorway and passed through it. No, he wasn't in any building, at least not in the regular sense.
"What is this place?" He wondered, seeing large buildings and streets within the large chamber he found himself in. Is this…a Geo-Front?
Of course, due to his past memories of his previous life as an Evangelion pilot, Shinji would think that an underground place like this would serve as a Geo-Front. But it was really old and the buildings were in varying states of disrepair, despite looking stable; the longer a building or any sort remained in need of maintenance, the more unstable it became and risked collapsing or some other form of disaster.
I wonder how everyone is back in Tokyo-3, he thought as he wandered down the street.
-x-
The gate continued to mesmerize the former NERV personnel that studied it. A new attempt to pull it open with the winch was scheduled, but the crew had to make sure that they were as prepared as possible for what lurked within it. People that might've opened it before and got trapped inside was one possibility, but they could've been only a fraction of what was there. Still, that didn't stop the former First and Second Children from sitting in front of the gate or walking around it.
"What do you think it means?" Fuyutsuki heard Misato say to him. "What the guy said about obtaining and losing?"
"He said that in order to obtain, something of equal value must first be lost," he responded. "I've never heard of such a saying before."
"I had a recent dream where I thought I heard the meaning behind it. Some voice called it equivalence or something."
"Equivalence? That's how our society functions with trading merchandise and services. You can't get without first giving."
"And when you can't give enough…or have nothing left to give…or you just get something without paying for it?"
"Hardly anything is for free."
"If you could get something from that gate in exchange for something else, what would you give? What would trade?"
"I'd exchange the Evas for a pre-Second Impact world returned."
"That…doesn't seem like a bad trade."
"What would you give in return for something else?"
"I think you know what I'd give and what I'd want."
"Yeah…I do."
Gasp! They saw Rei back away from the gate and walk towards them.
"Is something wrong, Rei?" Misato asked her.
"I saw Ikari-Kun in an underground city," she explained to them.
"What?" Fuyutsuki reacted.
"He was in an underground city," Rei repeated.
-x-
SMASH! Envy, once he had gotten free of Shinji's impalements, tore through the building that led to the underground city.
"I know you're here, Living Alchemist!" He howled as he roamed the streets. "I'll find you! I'll find you and tear your legs off!"
-x-
"…Well," went Lust as she led Greed and Scar to the underground city beneath Central, "now we know that this is where Envy brought him."
"What is this place?" Scar questioned.
"This is all that remains of a city that had existed over three-hundred years ago," Greed explained, "pulled underground to erase all memory of its existence."
"Who would do such a thing?"
"The only person I can think of that would do such a thing is the one that made me, the same person that has the most to gain from wanting a Philosopher's Stone. Dante?"
"And this Dante is the one that wanted the war that ravaged my country and people?"
"It has to be her," Lust expressed. "Everything she does, all that she tries to manipulate others to do for her, is for the Philosopher's Stone. If she's here, then she'll likely want to meet with him."
But Scar already had something else in mind if he met this Dante. If she was responsible for the massacre of his people and the destruction of his country, he wouldn't let her live to see another day…because he would kill her. He watched as his people were slaughtered around him and it was all for a stone that was just as deprived of hope as the slaughters behind it caused.
"Where does she hide down here?" He wanted to know.
"She likes the building with the ballroom," Greed revealed; he could remember this when he saw Dante over a century ago.
"Here," Lust told Greed, offering some of Shinji's Red Stones to him.
"Thank you," he praised her and downed the stones in one gulp. "These feel refined."
"They're just solidified Red Water," she told him, consuming three of the stones herself. "They may not have the same benefits as an incomplete Philosopher's Stone, but they're better than nothing against Envy."
"They actually taste better than the last stones I ate over a century ago."
SMASH! They saw a dust cloud several blocks away, indicating where Envy currently was.
"He's heading for the ballroom building," Greed realized.
-x-
Music? An old record being played inside a building Shinji was trying to hide from Envy inside of. It sounded eerie, haunting, something to be feared…but at the same time, Shinji felt drawn to the source…and walked down the hall. The melody got louder as he got further.
I…I've heard this melody before, he thought as stopped walking. It sounds familiar…but where have I heard it before?
He brought his left hand up to his head as he shook it to clear his brewing confusion. There were faded images flooding his vision. A woman, bathed dark red light, with tainted eyes and insight…looking down upon him. He was…laying upon a circle, surrounded by a pool of his own blood, unable to get up.
"You just couldn't keep away, could you?" He heard her say to him. "I can't have you exposing me, so I must dispose of you and all traces of your existence."
He felt his mouth moving, uttering something to her, but he couldn't decipher the words that escaped his throat.
"Oh, really?" The woman expressed. "Well, maybe you'll know what that's like where you're going. Goodbye."
Clap! That sound had signaled his darkness.
The Gate had appeared before him, opening its doors and releasing these long, dark hands that reached out to receive him. He couldn't scream, couldn't move, his body either dying or mutilated beyond recovery. And then…he was alone in the darkness. The music continued to play around him, within the depths of his mind, and serving as a haunting reminder of what he had forgotten.
Two lives, he thought as he slid down to his bottom against a wall. I have lived two lives. One that revolved around my cruel fate dealt by my parents…and another trying to escape from a darkness some deranged woman condemned me into…just because I discovered how twisted she was. Dante…Dante of the Deep Forest…a wretched and wicked woman that has renounced all humanity in favor of the belief that eternity made her superior to everyone.
He then fell to his right side, seemingly unresponsive as the music continued to play in the darkness around him, his eyes glazed over.
"…Well, well," he didn't react to a voice speaking in the darkness. "It looks like you stumbled upon a bad case of fatigue."
Someone grabbed his arm…and lifted him up.
-x-
"…Who's that a picture of?" Winry asked Nina, seeing that she was drawing a picture with some crayons.
"Shinji," the little girl answered, putting down a black crayon and picking up a red one.
"Why does he seem sad?" Winry noticed as Nina drew him laying on the ground in a dark place.
"That's because he just found out something awful that's made him feel bad."
"And…that?"
Nina was drawing a tall man with an eyepatch and a sword.
"He's one of the bad guys that wants to take over the world," she explained.
"How many bad guys are there?"
"So far, just three bad guys."
Winry looked at Nina's other drawings and, despite how childish they seemed, she saw some signs of there being more involvement with Shinji than there appeared to be with Ed and Al. It looked like Shinji was drawn taller than the brothers and identified having dark strands to symbolize his hair.
"Shinji always seems to look like he wears a mop for hair," she told Nina..
"He keeps his hair tidy," she responded, drawing what looked like a large room with a stage and curtains, depicting a stick figure with a large arm of fire and a woman with circles where her arms were, facing a large animal that seemed unlike anything that ever seemed to be a part of the natural world before.
"Nina…does Shinji go up against these people?" Winry asked.
"Not all of them," Nina pointed out to the man with the arm and the woman. "These two are among the few that come to help him, and this creature is among the bad guys that want to take over the world."
"What about Ed and Al?"
"For some reason, I can't see them with Shinji. I see them by themselves on the streets of Central. Ed is upset about it while Al is fine."
"Sounds like Edward doesn't like it when Shinji seems to get more adventure time than he does, despite Shinji only trying to keep watch over them."
"Why does Shinji have to watch after them when he's a kid, too?"
"Because my grandmother asked him when we met him way back. He's older than the three of us and has more authority, though Shinji probably lets them run off a little bit."
"But then he'd be terrible if he didn't watch out for them, wouldn't he?"
Winry chuckled at how sensible Nina seemed to be…and then saw a drawing of a woman that held a red object in her hand.
"Who's this, Nina?"
"That's the lady that wants to take over the world," Nina revealed. "She sees Shinji as the one that can stop her from doing so, and sends her minions to either catch him or stop him."
"She seems like a very awful lady."
"She is."
-x-
"…Nobody's seen Major Ikari," went Maria to Ed and Al as the streets and buildings damaged in the conflict earlier were all repaired. "Whatever that creature was that attacked him, I don't think it chased him around the city."
"Any idea where it could've taken him," Al questioned, "assuming that it captured him instead of killing him?"
"Underground?" Suggested Denny to them. "There are plenty of places under Central to hide."
"Okay, we'll look underground in the sewers and so on," Ed declared.
"Oh, one more thing," Maria gasped, reaching into her pockets and pulling out two pouches. "Major Ikari had requested that I make sure you two got these. I guess he wanted to make sure you were able to hold your own if you were alone."
Al looked inside his pouch and saw several large Red Stones, most likely made recently by Shinji earlier today.
Ed examined his Red Stones and wonders why Shinji would really entrust the two with the Red Stones, as they were more his achievement than theirs.
"He probably trusts you two enough to know that the stones, while helpful, aren't invincible," Maria expressed.
"Yeah," Al responded, tying the pouch to his belt and putting it in his right pocket. "Let's go find him now."
-x-
Blink. Shinji came to and found himself in a large, well-lit room.
How long was I out? He wondered as he got up.
Looking to his left, he saw Envy, still in that monstrous form of his, but standing beside Fuhrer King Bradley and an elderly woman that he didn't recognize.
"Did you have a nice rest?" The woman asked him.
"What's going on?" He spoke instead of answering her, showing that he wasn't the least concerned that the Fuhrer was in the presence of a monster. "What is this place and who's the woman you two are with?"
"Oh, she's a concerned civilian, young Living," Bradley explained.
"Is that so? Well, I find that questionable, seeing that you two are standing right next to a creature that makes even chimera look like tamed dogs, and this one looks like a big, reptilian cat with insect mandibles. And judging from the fact that you're not showing any fear of the creature, I must assume that you know what it really is…and are no different from it, Bradley. Or should I address you as Pride now?"
"It looks like Lust really did expose your identity to him," they heard Envy say as he changed back to his previous state. "She betrayed us and Gluttony is no longer among us. It was a mistake to let this kid run free."
"A pity," the woman stated. "I had hoped that you were just some skilled alchemist that could help me, but you're just as he was so long ago."
"I'm going to take a chance and believe that you're the one behind the homunculi. You're Dante. Dante of the Deep Forest."
The woman then gave a frown, most unbecoming of someone her age.
"Kill him, Envy," she told the shapeshifting homunculus, no longer sounding like a sweet and innocent woman.
Envy approached Shinji, intent on ripping his head off his neck.
Clap! Shinji clapped his hands and slammed them onto the floor, creating a large transmutation circle around himself and the homunculus.
Recognizing the circle as one meant to harm homunculi, Envy turned his right arm into a blade.
SHINE! The circle was activated…and Envy felt momentarily weak in his knees.
"Aarugh…urgh…blaaaurgh!" The homunculus vomited out some Red Stones that quickly evaporated upon hitting the floor. "Damn you, boy! Urgh…damn you!"
"Even if this doesn't kill you, at least you're no stronger than a regular human," Shinji told him.
He then got back up and grabbed Envy's blade arm and head-butted him, knocking him down. Then, he transmuted the floor to absorb Envy partially under it, leaving only his head, arms and feet, exposed.
"Aaaaurgh!" Envy roared in anger.
The woman couldn't belief that Envy was bested by a kid that hadn't even been a State Alchemist for a year.
"Now…can we talk about what's going on here…peacefully?" Shinji asked. "Or must we continue with violence?"
Bradley unsheathed his sword, but the woman stopped him from advancing towards the alchemist; this was a time for talk.
"How are you back?" She asked him. "I watched you get sent into the Gate. You were as good as dead with your fatal injuries."
"If I knew what you were talking about, I'd be able to answer more properly. However, since we're here, I should tell you something most wouldn't believe. People seem to be able to transcend from beyond lifetimes. Maybe I was the unexpected result of a human transmutation that didn't go the way the alchemist had intended for it…or I'm just an escapee from the future in one world seeking refuge in the past of another world."
"A world exists beyond the Gate."
"Yes. Depending on the circumstances of any given person's situation, there could multiple worlds connected to the Gate, but that's open to discussion. Why are you here? What is it that you want? I keep hearing talk about a Philosopher's Stone, but why would anyone go to the extreme lengths that are the sacrifice of many human lives? What would be the point of that route? What would be the point of all that suffering?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
That's when Shinji suddenly recalled something else: The way Dante looked right now, even with old age…just didn't match up with the way she looked back then when he saw her…or when someone like him saw her. In fact, he was certain that there was no way Dante could look the way she does without plastic surgery, which he was confident on Amestris or any other country having any knowledge of how to perform.
"Wouldn't you be interested in eternal life, Living Alchemist?" She offered him.
Stepping away from the trapped Envy, Shinji responded, "What would be the point of immortality? It always comes with a price that can't be paid. And even if the price could be paid, there's no guarantee that the promise of such eternity is even worth it."
"It was worth it for me."
"How can it be worth it for you? You're not exactly living proof of immortality if you're frail."
She smirked, giving a rather-wicked expression that Shinji found disturbing (probably because she was elderly).
"There are many forms of immortality," she explained, "and this is just the one that works for those that possess the Philosopher's Stone."
"Stone-based immortality? The closest to actual immortality anyone will ever achieve is just being remembered throughout history. Isn't it enough just to be remembered?"
"It's never enough. In the end, everyone wants to live forever."
"But in the end, all things must end. Nothing can last forever, even if we wanted them to. In the end, the sun will burn out, the oceans will dry out, and the animals will die. Nothing lasts, not even what we think, like our beliefs."
"You're wrong."
"No matter what we do, we're not meant to live forever. Sure, we'll find ways to live a little longer than most, but there are limits to what we can do to live as long as we can. How long have you been alive through the method you chose to use as your form of immortality?"
"Four-hundred years. I have lived for over four-hundred years through the use of the Philosopher's Stone. And soon, I'll need another one."
"You remind me of someone I met recently, someone that wanted me to do something that was against my conscience."
"And who would that be?"
Flash! Shinji saw images of this elderly replaced by images of Lyra, only she seemed older and more…twisted on the outside than she had been on the inside, surrounded by homunculi, an older, less-alive version of Rose, holding an infant, the Gate, and the Elric brothers, altered by their attempted human transmutation. Flash!
"My old man," he told her. "He wanted something from me that was unrealistic…and I told him that I wouldn't help him. He was my father…and I chose not to help him. I can't really feel guilt for my decision to let him face the end of his path…because we were already strangers. He saw me…only as a resource, not entirely different from the way you see me, just a resource you think you can exploit. You want a Philosopher's Stone? Make your own."
"Except I don't know how to make one."
Shinji found it unlikely that this woman had no clue as how to fabricate a stone made from sacrificing human lives. From what he had discovered from Lust, homunculi, while incapable of performing alchemy, were able to teach it if they had survived for long. But there had to be a point in homunculi teaching alchemy; there couldn't be a selfless reason in giving such knowledge that was useless to them.
"You're lying," he told her. "You do know how to create a stone. You're just too afraid to do it yourself…because you don't have the will to see it through."
Then…her face scrunched into a dark expression.
"Kill him, Pride!" She ordered Bradley, and the elderly man dashed forward with his sword.
SLASH! The sword came at him…but was blocked by…three, thin strands of dark matter.
Shinji looked away from where they were…and saw Lust, Greed and Scar over on a balcony.
"Hey, you put Envy in the ground," went Greed, actually impressed by the sight of the androgynous homunculus incapacitated and half-buried. "And I see you've met Dante."
The three jumped from the balcony and landed on the floor in front of them.
"Homunculi," Scar uttered, "and the one who commands them."
"Not all of them," Shinji told him, backing away from Bradley, or rather, Pride now. "This woman here only has two of them, her most loyal servants, and they're just as wretched as she is. Envy and Pride."
"And is she the one that orchestrated the massacre of my people?"
"The one in the ground, Envy," Lust pointed out, "is the one that shot the Ishbalan child."
Scar looked down at Envy, his eyes cold with rage.
"That circle," Greed pointed to the transmutation circle on the floor. "That's the circle designed to drain homunculi of their power."
"Your Living Alchemist made it on the go," Envy growled, trying to break free; the Red Stones that invigorated him might've been destroyed, but he was still strong enough to fight these useless pawns if he could break free from his bindings. "Rrrraurgh!"
Crack! The ground cracked and he broke free, shapeshifting into the monstrous form he had taken earlier once more.
"You're going to need these," Lust told Shinji, tossing him his pouch of Red Stones.
"Much appreciated," he responded. "Let's end this."
Greed changed into his armored form, but something was off with the way it looked; earlier, he appeared to be a dark shade of blue with the red nodes on his arms, front and back, but now he was all black with his nodes appearing much smaller.
"So, you really betrayed us, Lust," the woman uttered. "How could you do this?"
"Because the Living Alchemist changed everything…and can do the impossible, something I have lost my faith in you being able to do…if you had a Philosopher's Stone already and chose not to use it." Lust explained.
The woman then clapped her hands and placed them on the floor.
Flash! Large, stone golems rose from the floor, numbering in at least eight.
"Oh, you gotta be kidding me," Shinji sighed angrily, and clapped his hands, transmuting two large swords from the floor; unlike his previous sword, which looked like a katana, these new swords looked like oversized great swords. "Greed, how good is your swordsmanship skills?"
"Never used a sword a day in my life," Greed explained, grabbing the sword hilts, "but I learn quick on how to use them."
"Good," he told him, transmuting another sword, a katana. "I hate violence, but I can't escape it. I might as well deal with the violence the way I know I can resolve it."
It was three against four when you excluded the golems. One against two when you excluded the homunculi. An alchemical free-for-all when you threw in everyone.
Shinji Ikari, Dante, Scar, Envy, Pride, Lust and Greed.
A pity, thought Dante. I really had high hopes of you.
To be continued…
A/N: What do you think will happen later? Who will survive and who will fall?