Creation began on 05-04-20
Creation ended on 06-05-20
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The Living Alchemist: Recovery from Ramifications
A/N: Who will be left to carry on?
Shatter! The Philosopher's Stone owned by Dante, created by Hohenheim of Light over four-hundred years ago, shattered into atoms by Shinji Ikari, the Living Alchemist, in front of Dante after it was separated from her person.
"The stone," Dante gasped, seeing the stone destroyed by the alchemist in a transmutation meant to unmake it. "No!"
With the stone no longer in existence, she was trapped within her elderly body, unable to transfer her soul to another body.
Shinji, stripped of his shirt and coat, bleeding on his chest and left arm, looked at Dante with a cold stare. His fight with her hindered by Pride and Envy, but he persevered with the aid of Greed and Lust, their abilities augmented by his Red Stones, seeing the stone that had been created from sacrificing human lives, the remains of those lives still suffering within the stone, and he released those souls to end their suffering.
"Dante," he uttered to the withered woman, "you should know by now that immortality is more of a curse than a blessing. To live forever is a pipe dream that deserves to remain as just that, a dream…and should never be realized because it becomes obsessive. And look at what it has done to you and the people you've harmed. Your eternal life has more negatives than positives when you look at the irregularities of your past with the stone."
Scar, Greed and Lust could see what Shinji meant by that when Dante had her dress' left side ripped away, revealing decayed flesh underneath, like this woman was a rotting corpse that was still alive. If this was what the Philosopher's Stone could do to people, then it was a terrible price to pay to obtain it.
Dante merely transmuted her clothes back to normal by clapping her hands together to repair the damage, acting as though nothing was wrong.
"Necrosis," Shinji explained, "degeneration of the cells in the body due to damage. You might be able to cover it up with clothing, but you're only prolonging the inevitable. Not even the Philosopher's Stone can save you from the truth."
"And you would know?" Dante asked him.
"If you never attempted such a practice to repair the body, then you have no skill in the art, as using the stone the way you have…only augments what you already know yourself to be capable of. I use alchemy for the sake of medical purposes, but even that means I must eventually cross the line to save lives. But the safety measure is to bend a rule to avoid breaking rules."
"Except I am saving lives. By preventing people from misusing the Philosopher's Stone, I've ensured they can go on living."
"But to acquire the stone, you spread myths and legends about how it came to be, hoping to inspire alchemists to cross their moral lines to do whatever it takes to create one…because you don't have what it takes to create one yourself. Is that why you have your homunculi do the horrible things you have them do? To spread despair and suffering across the nation in the hopes that one with nothing left to lose and everything to gain will do you the honor of making for you the one thing you desire more than anything else in the world?"
"Human beings are ruled by their sins and desire for dominance, and the Philosopher's Stone has more power in it than any weapon ever forged in the past and future. So, yes, I've taken cities, destroyed lives that became necessary martyrs, saving mankind from itself."
"Don't try and convince me. You're no different from any other person that desires something unrealistic. You're just a selfish, greedy, fearful, old bitch."
Greed had to admit to himself that he couldn't have said it better than Shinji, pointing out Dante's flaws. A woman that feared death had no right to continue living, and a woman that commanded artificial humans to do her bidding and inflict atrocities on others that have done nothing to deserve it…had no right to be considered human.
Pride, depleted of the vast majority of his Red Stones that gave him his regeneration and fueled his strength against his master's enemies, was unable to defend Dante due to his sword being broken by Greed and his body fused into a wall by Shinji.
Envy, pierced in his torso by Lust's fingers was unable to move on account of his nodes being pierced, as well, immobilizing his body.
"So, what will you do?" Dante questioned Shinji. "Are you going to kill me for my crimes?"
"No," Shinji told her. "I'm not the one you've caused harm towards for the sake of prolonging your delusion that you're everlasting. Even if I brought you before the military, your relationship with Pride here would complicate matters, as you manipulated the whole country by creating a homunculus to serve as a leader, just to help you get the Philosopher's Stone. So I won't bother with trying to figure out a legal point of view on how to deal with you. I'll leave your fate…to be decided by him."
Shinji walked away…and permitted Scar to exact vengeance for what was done to his people and home not so long ago by her.
"Wait!" Dante tried to plead with Shinji. "Don't be rash about this, Living Alchemist! You're a powerful person now, but you could be greater! What do you want?! You must want something!"
But Shinji didn't respond to her attempts to bribe her way out of being killed by Scar. Even if there was something Shinji wanted, she couldn't give it to him. She was a parasite; all she did was take and take, never truly giving.
"I would allow you a moment to pray," went Scar to her as he raised his right hand up, "but there's no redemption for where you're going."
Shinji walked over to where Envy was immobilized…and heard the final scream of Dante as Scar deconstructed her.
"You bastard," Envy called Shinji. "You'll pay for your unruly behavior! I'll kill you! Do you hear me?! I'll kill you!"
But Shinji wasn't afraid of him.
"I won't bother with trying to save you, Envy," he told the homunculus, clapping his hands. "Your attitude is just harsh and must be quelled in the least condemning way. I'm sending you back into the Gate."
"Are you even capable of summoning the Gate?!" Envy challenged. "Someone who refuses to play God doesn't seem capable of such a feat!"
Shinji placed his hands on the floor again and transmuted a circle around himself, Lust and Envy. It was a circle Envy recognized as one used for Human Transmutation, except the Living Alchemist didn't plan to transmute a human. All the runes in the circle were inversed in ways that didn't match up to the way the actual circle appeared.
"Bear with me for five seconds, Lust," Shinji told the female homunculus as he clapped his hands again and pressed them down the floor, activating the circle.
FLASH! All three were engulfed in light…and then stood before the Gate itself.
"Damn you!" Envy yelled as the doors began to open. "I'll take you with me!"
But before the weakened homunculus could attack either of them, these long, black arms shot out from the Gate and grabbed Envy, pulling him away from them.
"No! Aaaurgh! Why, you… I'll be back, Living Alchemist!" Envy declared. "Do you hear me?! I'll be back for you!"
The doors closed…and Shinji and Lust were back in the large room with Scar, Greed and Pride.
Shinji turned to face Scar…and saw that Dante's elderly body was mutilated beyond what he'd normally see in a horror film somewhere.
"Are you going to try to kill me now, Scar?" He asked the Ishbalan.
"No," Scar answered him. "If that woman was truly the one that caused the civil war that massacred my country, then I got revenge for Ishbal by killing her. What will you do with him?"
Shinji looked down at Pride and contemplated his fate.
"Dante is gone. What will you do with what's left of your life?" He asked him.
"You're giving me a choice?" Pride questioned.
"I would offer you an incentive: I let you live as you are until you die of your own accord, but you stop with Dante's desire for the Philosopher's Stone, end Amestris' military reign towards other countries, leave the survivors of the Ishbal Civil War to reclaim their home. You do all of this…and I'll let you walk away, Pride, because honestly…I'd respect you better as King Bradley, a man that leads an entire nation until he considers taking retirement instead of Pride, a homunculus that served a woman that wanted nothing except a stone made with human lives…because some things desired…are best left undesired."
Pride looked at him, then at Greed, Lust and Scar…and sighed at how beaten he'd been by the Living Alchemist.
"I…accept your terms," he submitted.
"Do you swear?"
"What?"
"You must swear. No lying, no trickery."
"I swear."
-x-
All the damages done to Central City were repaired, but there was no sign of Major Ikari, Scar or the creature from earlier. It was as though they had just disappeared.
"Where are you, Shinji?" Edward wondered, standing near a manhole down the street from an outdoor café.
Bang! The manhole popped up and caught Ed's attention.
It was moved out of the way, revealing Shinji.
"Shinji Ikari!" He gasped. "I thought you were… What happened to Scar and the creature that attacked earlier?"
"Scar took off after we dealt with the creature," Shinji told him, climbing out of the hole. "Is everyone alright up here?"
"Everyone except for Basque Grand. He was the only murder victim by this Scar."
"Pity."
Shinji then placed the covering back on the ground and resealed the sewer entrance.
"It seems like your little adventure was bigger than you expected it to be," Ed suspected.
"I'll tell you about sometime," he responded.
-x-
"…Do you really believe that he'll go along with Ikari's conditions in exchange for his right to continue living?" Greed asked Lust as they watched from a rooftop at the Living and Fullmetal Alchemists, referring to Pride…or King Bradley now.
"If he knows what's good for him, he'll abide by the terms Living set for him," Lust responded. "He could've sent him through the Gate, too, but then he couldn't explain the whereabouts of the Führer without incriminating himself. By letting him live, he can avoid revealing him as a homunculus and preserve the country's memory of him as a human."
"And Scar?"
The Ishbalan had left through the underground system while the Living Alchemist would try to make it seem as though he probably got killed in a structural collapse underground.
"So, what do you really get out of all of this?" Greed asked.
"When this is over? I get my life restored to me," Lust answered him.
"Good luck with that."
"Thank you."
-x-
"So, you're back," Shinji heard Mustang say to him as he walked towards the latter's office, needing to give his statement about what happened.
"I am," he told the Flame Alchemist. "How many casualties?"
"Just one. Basque Grand. What happened to Scar?"
"Probably dead."
"You mean, you don't know?"
"We both had no choice but to work together to deal with a chimera-like creature that attacked earlier. It dragged me underground. Scar claimed he followed it in order to kill me. The creature was followed into an underground structure that was unstable. I got free and had to team up with Scar in order to deal with it…and ended up dropping the whole building on it. I lost consciousness for a while, but when I came to, I couldn't find Scar…and the creature was dead."
Roy Mustang looked at the teen, trying to see if there was a hint of deceit in his eyes…and saw none that could be exposed.
"So, it's possible that Scar is still alive," he told Shinji.
"It's possible," Shinji accepted.
"Be careful out there. You have a target on your back."
"Everyone does."
"Dismissed."
Shinji bowed his head and then turned away, but Mustang still had the impression that the Living Alchemist was hiding something.
-x-
The night was quiet, but Shinji, walking to burn his adrenaline from earlier off, found himself thinking back to the aftermath of letting King Bradley return to Amestris after feeding him one of his Red Stones made from refined Red Water.
"Until we meet again, Living Alchemist," Bradley had uttered to him.
Shinji then offered to make good on his promise to Lust and restore her to her previous life as a human, but she told him to recoup.
"When you're well, you can make it up to me, Living," she told him.
"Something about your Red Stones, boy," Greed stated, "made with just alchemic water, but they feel more invigorating than those incomplete Philosopher Stones. You should consider looking for more sources of Red Water. Nothing lasts forever."
Nothing lasts forever, he thought as he walked back to the barracks where the Elrics were.
To be continued…
A/N: Happy Birthday to me! I hope y'all enjoy this chapter until the next update.