Creation began on 06-12-20
Creation ended on 06-22-20
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The Living Alchemist: A Promise Made, A Promise Kept
State Alchemists, often viewed as living weapons due to their success in the Ishbal Civil War, were rarely seen as anything other than the perfect solution to ending an unrest when other options were useless. But here in Ishbal, where their success as living weapons was shown, they were able to show that they could be more than what the military had designated them to be. Like regular alchemists, they, too, could be thou for the people, rebuilding war-torn homes, healing the maimed, what they could use alchemy to do for the good of the people instead of personal motives.
"Welcome home, people," Shinji greeted the former refugees as they looked at the land they thought they had lost.
"Thank you," a woman praised him, walking out onto the streets, taking in the sights.
Shinji looked to his left, seeing a woman in black with a pair on her that most men would give theirs just to hold onto. Then, looking down at his pouch of Red Stones, four of which he had left from using to heal people that asked for their limbs or eyes back, and walked over to the alleyway the female homunculus was hiding around.
"Yokubo," he greeted Lust with her name in his native language, seeing her with Scar. "I believe you've waited for me to do what I promised you long enough."
"Yes, I believe so, too," she agreed with him.
"Scar," he greeted the Ishbalan, seeing his right hand. "If you want, I could probably help you with your arm and face, too."
"I take it you've spoken to the same exile as I have?" Scar asked him.
"I have. There are some secrets of alchemy that people weren't meant to exploit, no matter what the reason is, and the Philosopher's Stone is the darkest secret that should be forgotten about. Your right arm…is an unfinished Philosopher's Stone made with the souls of people that died in the war and your own victims."
Scar looked at his arm, the same arm that belonged to his brother, his constant reminder of what had happened in the past so that he couldn't forget. The exile had told him the truth shortly after he had told the Living Alchemist, about how his arm had served to contain the souls of their people and his enemies. But then he told him something about the alchemist that was unusual.
"He may not look it, but the one they call the Living Alchemist is more powerful than he seems," the exile had told him. "He cares not for power or advancement, but cares for people to have a better future, devoid of jealousy and betrayal, hatred and ill desires, pain and suffering. He must've been led astray in the past, only to escape and swear to himself that he wouldn't become a harbinger of endings, but a forger of new beginnings. He embraces life rather than take it from those around him. If anything, he may tap into a power that is beyond what the Philosopher's Stone offers. He may one day turn out to be your greatest ally."
But Scar found this to be unlikely, and only because this boy was affiliated with the Amestrian State Military. Still, there was something about him that was unusual, something that he couldn't fathom due to his lack of understanding of alchemy.
"I doubt that you could," Scar told Shinji.
"I was able to destroy the Philosopher's Stone that woman had. I don't boast about my abilities. I'm willing to help in any way that I can." Shinji explained, and then took out two Red Stones from his pouch and held them in his left hand in front of Lust. "Whenever you're ready."
Lust stood in front of him and awaited his next move.
He pressed the stones to her forehead and chest, triggering a transmutation similar to the one he did on the man that was once Gluttony. He thought the same way about how he was able to pull it off, about how much potential people had in them to do as many things as possible within a day. They had untold, untapped potential in them for greatness, to accomplish wonders beyond what they knew, and he kept believing in this, not wanting to believe that people were lazy and incapable of becoming more than what society had intended for them.
Homunculi are the result of an alchemist's inability to complete the transmutation to revive a human being, he thought, feeling that familiar pull as he found himself standing before the Gate again. They're not really failed attempts to recall people from the dead, just incomplete because their soul is missing. More energy is needed to complete the process. We have the potential to finish what we start long ago if we have the will to keep going.
The Gate opened and revealed to him the countless eyes belonging to countless children that were inhabiting its internal realm beneath a much larger eye with silver rings around the pupil.
I am not trying to play God, he continued to think. I will never be anything more than a mere human being in a world that is not his own. I will never decide who stays and who goes, no matter how much it grieves me. But if I can do something to alleviate pain and suffering, if I can make people happy by restoring to them some of what was taken from them…then I'd be a civil servant, not a god or miracle worker. Please…just let me fulfill a promise I made to someone that longs to have back their life. Please.
Then, the Gate closed in front of him…and he was back in the alley with Scar and Lust, the two Red Stones in his hands eroding from existence.
"You're…you're back," he heard Scar gasp, just as Shinji fell to his knees, exhausted from the ordeal. "You were able to do it. You brought her back."
Looking up at her, Shinji could see the woman that Lust had once been before dying…and was once again.
"I'm alive," she uttered, looking at her hands and chest, the ouroboros mark no longer present on her sternum. "Thank you, young man."
Shinji nodded…but then passed out on the ground.
-x-
"…I've never seen a livelier place than this before," went Mustang as he helped himself to a glass of wine, grateful that the project to help rebuild Ishbal had reached completion.
"The Ishbalans are pleased with the progress and the restoration of their religion," Hawkeye responded to him. "Some of them were asking about Major Ikari, though, wanting to know just how strong he is when it comes to his brand of medical alchemy."
"He's become the talk of the Ishbalans now?"
"Well, he is the only one who has used alchemy to heal the people that were injured due to the war. He's progressed in such a short time since he joined the military. How many alchemists in the military specialize in healing alchemy?"
"He's the only one…other than Marcoh…possibly."
"Except Marcoh disappeared before the war ended. Nobody has seen or heard from him. When you try to compare Major Ikari with Marcoh or Tucker, it's difficult to tell exactly which of them is better than the other two, as Ikari has gained a reputation for being seen as a healer of the injured people among the military dogs."
And it was in that regard that Mustang found Ikari to already be more of a celebrity than anyone else in the military, with the sole exception of the former Führer, that is.
"Maybe there's nothing about him to be suspicious of, Colonel," Hawkeye suggested once more.
But Mustang couldn't stop being suspicious of the Living Alchemist. There was something about him that was isolated from the rest of his existence, like he was hiding something he didn't want anyone to find out about. Not to mention he was able to best an experienced State Alchemist in a battle assessment that barely demonstrated his combat alchemy, being almost completely defensive, even though the late Basque Grand was clearly the aggressive combatant.
-x-
Shinji awoke sometime later as the sun went down, and he was inside a room that was illuminated with several candles.
"How long was I out?" He asked, seeing Scar sitting on the floor across the room from him.
"All day," Scar answered him. "You actually did what my brother couldn't do. You brought her back to life."
"Who…is she now? I mean, who is she called?"
"Persephone."
Shinji got up and stretched his limbs.
"How were you able to do it, though?" Scar asked him. "You didn't use a Philosopher's Stone…and yet you were able to complete a Human Transmutation. How?"
"I just focused on the potential energy that humans possess all the time," he explained. "There's the theory and belief that energy can't be created or destroyed, only transferred from one place to another. But how much energy does the human body really go through in a day? How much are we truly capable of when we forget about our limitations and just try to do more than what people expect of us?"
"Like running? Heavy lifting? Community service?"
"Among other possibilities."
"But the Red Stones. I thought the ones you carried were made from human lives, but…they're refined Red Water. Last I ever knew, Red Water was toxic to people."
"It is until it's been refined. The safest and most efficient way to detoxify Red Water is through plants rather than humans or animals, which it kills over time. Using the Red Stone augments my research into Living Transmutation, the process to regenerate lost limbs and damaged organs."
"It sounds like Human Transmutation."
"Except I'm not trying to bring someone back to life. I'm trying to regenerate someone's lost arms or legs, repair their ruptured spleen or cure a terminal illness that modern medicine of today can't treat. Playing God…isn't why I chose to study alchemy. I got tired of the violence of my past and sought to walk away from it."
"But to join the military?"
"They have resources that regular alchemists can't have access to, but I'm not a killer. I'll use alchemy to detain someone, but I can't cross that unforgivable line and take their life. It'll follow me in life until it leads me to my grave."
"Yet the military will seek out the use of your research for their own purposes."
"Not if they can't understand my research. Nobody in Amestris can read or speak Japanese."
"Japanese?"
"My native language."
"Oh."
"So…how did you become capable of…what your arm can do?"
Scar looked at his right arm and responded, "My brother crossed the line and tried to…do something to end the war. We crossed paths with a State Alchemist that could turn anything or anyone he touched into a bomb."
"A guy that transmutes with his hands? Turning objects into explosives? I think I read about him before during my earlier days as a State Alchemist. Solf J. Kimblee, the Crimson Alchemist. He's still incarcerated in Central City for various crimes, including over a dozen for murder. He's going to die in prison and nobody's going to give a care about him when he breathes his last breath. Personally, he sickens me with his brand of alchemy. However, he's nothing more than another example of how anyone, regardless of their belief structure or background, can use something that could help people…to kill them instead…and just keep going. But he's from the old system of how the state operates. The retirement of the Führer has left the previous assembly going over the records of previous State Alchemists to confirm which ones in prison can be rehabilitated and Kimblee is among those that can't."
"How do you know he won't try to escape?"
"They kept his arms separated to prevent him from transmuting after he was arrested. Three days after the Führer retired, the assembly decided to ensure that he couldn't transmute at all by removing his left arm."
-x-
"Still haven't heard from Ritsuko Akagi?" Fuyutsuki asked Misato as they stood before the head of the Production Model Eva Unit-02 in the cage.
"No," she answered him, "and I don't expect to hear from her, either."
"It was mainly Ikari's fault for authorizing the operation."
"But she was the one that carried it out. The only people worse than the ones that give permission to do something harmful…are the ones that carry it out."
He didn't deny this as a truth. To willingly do something harmful was just as awful as being one that gives permission for one to do something harmful.
"We'll be ready to begin in ten minutes," he told her.
-x-
"…Where were you all day?" Edward asked Shinji as he returned to their tent.
"Just keeping a promise I made to someone a while back," he responded, sitting at the table and pouring himself a cup of tea. "I didn't expect it to take most of the day, though."
"Why did it take most of the day?" Al asked him.
"I lost consciousness and lost track of time."
"Do you ever look at your pocket watch after you got it?" Ed questioned.
"Do you ever look at yours, Fullmetal?" Shinji countered, which caused Ed to look away from the teen. "I don't look at it unless I need to know the time. After that, I don't look at it until later. Time is…not that much of an issue with me for the time being. I mean, it still matters, but not as much. It just gives a schedule for people to organize their day-to-day lives."
Al then took out his pocket watch and checked the time. It wasn't long until midnight, but it was getting pretty late out. With Shinji, it was probably somewhere in the middle due to him being slightly older than they were and having been involved in something they knew nothing about, other than the fact that it had clearly been violent and stressful.
"Say, Shinji, just one thing," he uttered to the Living Alchemist. "Is there anything you have planned for the future of the country besides your Living Transmutation?"
Shinji thought about it for a minute and then said, "Anyone around here know anything about bicycles and planes?"
"Bicycles?" Ed repeated, confused.
"Planes?" Al added, just as confused.
Of course, having studied the varying degrees of technology in this country, Shinji was aware that there were no feats of aerial vehicles or even basic bicycles or motorcycles. But he couldn't rely on his world's history regarding such technological feats, meaning that in this new world, albeit primitive to a degree, could be improved upon if led down a better future. He could live with a better future, deprived of the creative methods most people sought in their pursuit of power and wealth.
-x-
Ritsuko Akagi was fortunate enough to have a DNA sample of Shinji's to begin cloning him from scratch. That…and an adequate copy of the MAGI to try and create a base for the boy's artificial memories for SEELE to work with in their attempt to regain control and bring back their scenario to implement Human Instrumentality. She wasn't confident that anything they did would return the scenario after the Third Child was killed, not after everything else that happened following his murder. Even if they managed to create a perfect clone, it didn't mean they could bring the dead back to life and pretend like what had occurred…didn't occur.
"We killed him, Dr. Akagi," one of the technicians expressed to her before NERV was disbanded. "Even if it was to defeat an Angel, it's going to follow us all to the grave. How can we be forgiven for what was, more or less, an execution?"
People look at NERV with negativity for what was done, but it was either that or we faced extinction, she thought as she examined the cloned body of the boy inside a tank filled with chemicals needed to generate and sustain the body. We take risks every time that put us in jeopardy. How can we get overlooked for the lives we can't save…but get frowned upon for the kid we sacrificed? Shinji knew the risks before he piloted the Eva the first time.
Except Shinji didn't know the risks. Nobody told him that they were going to blow up an Angel just to salvage the Eva using explosives that were more powerful than nukes. Worse was that he hadn't been told anything above the basic information he was allowed to know; nobody had revealed that the Eva was not replaceable like people, including himself, were. And he went to the afterlife not knowing anything.
"Help me!" Shinji screamed as he sank into the darkness.
It's just the price of the job, she accepted, seeing the clone's eyes open, revealing a blank gaze. Even the light in the clone's eyes is nonexistent. Shinji had this small light in his eyes that didn't get any dimmer until after he went into the Eva for the last time.
Although NERV had been disbanded, SEELE still had the connections to ensure that their Evangelions would get constructed after authorizing the mass production of additional units. There was an Eva being constructed and would be finished by the time this duplicate Shinji was fully developed.
Beep! Ritsuko was alerted that the clone was nearing completion.
-x-
Clap! Shinji brought his hands together and then placed them onto the sand around him just several feet away from the structures of the Ishbalan settlement. He transmuted a portion of the vast sand into solid rock.
Since they were in a desert where the major resource was just sand, Shinji would have to use one of his Red Stones to fill in the gaps of what he was going to transmute in front of the Elrics.
Edward, despite knowing that Shinji's basic knowledge of alchemy stemmed from him somehow obtaining the information from Alphonse and himself, knew that the Living Alchemist preferred to follow the Law of Conservation of Mass over the Law of Natural Providence, being that if something weighed just the right amount to be transmuted into something else of identical mass, he would create that desired object from an available resource rather than obey the law that states that an object of a certain element could only be transmuted into another object associated with that element. So he was wondering how Shinji was going to pull off transmuting something that nobody had seen before in this world with the ground and one of his Red Stones.
"Okay, just one question before I start," Shinji told the Elrics and a handful of State Alchemists and Ishbalans. "Are you ready to have your minds blown by something basic?"
Everyone looked at each other, wondering how something Shinji had drawn on paper to describe it would be that basic to transmute, and then looked back to the Living Alchemist.
"Show us, please," an Ishbalan girl requested.
Shinji placed the Red Stone on the ground and clapped his hands together again before placing them on the ground.
-x-
They winched the gate open again…and Unit-02 reached down to keep the doors from closing again.
"Okay, send in the drone," went Misato as two men in hazmat suits brought an aerial drone into the chamber.
Asuka looked down at the gate, seeing those tiny eyes and seeing these dark, tendril-like hands wanting to reach out and grab whoever or whatever they could. And then…she thought she saw someone that looked Shinji's father, screaming in agony as he was being torn apart and pieced back together again by small children with creepy smiles.
Ugh! She grimaced, wondering if people that died here somehow ended up in the gate. But I didn't see Shinji. Did he go through it after he died? Or maybe he never went through it and I'm imagining things.
The drone took to the air in the chamber and flew towards the gate, flying into it…where it looked like four children covered in shadows grabbed it and took it apart.
"I can't confirm status of the drone," she told Misato.
"We can," Misato responded. "It's still active."
"But how is that… That's impossible. I saw it get ripped to pieces."
"We're tracking it, Asuka, and it's still in one piece, wherever it is. We're getting pictures and video footage."
"My God," she heard Fuyutsuki utter, possibly because of what he was looking at.
-x-
"Wha…" Shinji muttered, finding himself back in front of the Gate. "But…I didn't do Human Transmutation again. I restored Gluttony and Lust to humanity, but I haven't committed any other transmutations that cross the line between mortals and deities. So why? Why am I in front of the Gate again?"
The next thing he knew, the doors opened…and something shot out at him!
"Aaahh!" He gasped.
Flash! He found himself standing before the people he was going to present the transmuted bicycle…but he appeared to have transmuted something else that hadn't been on his mind.
"What is that?" Ed asked, pointing to the object that wasn't a bicycle. "Do you add that to a bicycle, Shinji?"
"No," he answered, "that is not something you add to a bike at all."
It looked like something Shinji had only known sparingly, seeing very few people use them for recreational purposes, such as eavesdropping on other people. If he was right, this was a drone.
Click! It made a sound, and an Ishbalan girl backed away from it.
"What did it just do?" She asked, fearful of its capabilities.
Shinji picked it up and suspected that it took a picture of the girl.
"I think it took a picture of you, miss," he explained.
"This thing can take pictures?" Al asked him.
Click! Shinji looked down at it as it appeared to take another picture.
Turning it to its side, he found a green light on it that indicated that it had plenty of power running inside it, but its aerial rotors had been damaged.
Clap. He clapped and transmuted the rotors back to functionality…and the drone took to the air.
"Whoa!" Some people reacted as it just flew around, rather aimlessly.
-x-
"…These were what the drone sent back before the connection was cut," a man informed Fuyutsuki and Misato, showing the images and video the drone had taken. "There's clearly another world inside the gate, but where it leads to is anything but a paradise."
On the screens, they could see a desert terrain, and several people. They weren't primitive, but were quite modern…or as modern as their culture was at the present.
Gasp! Misato looked at the person the drone had taken a picture of, surprised to see his face.
"Ikari-Kun," Rei spoke, seeing the young man that had an uncanny resemblance to Shinji.
"Either him or a lookalike," went Asuka, but finding it hard to believe that anyone could look the way Shinji did. "But…the way his eyes are… They're just like his."
"There's something else, too," the man told them. "The drone got audio."
"I think it took a picture of you, miss," they heard Shinji's voice on the recording; even the way his voice sounded was exactly like the boy they knew.
Asuka then looked out at the gate that was still being kept open by her Eva, watching as those shadow children that seemed to be unable to leave it, despite the doors being prevented from closing up again due to the Eva holding them. If there was a small chance that Shinji was someplace else and this gate relocated him there, then there had to be a chance, even a small one, that it was possible to see him again. Beyond that small chance, even, to bring him back.
"NERV?" They heard a boy with blond hair say, apparently reading the side of the drone. "Isn't that supposed to have an 'E' at the end?"
"Unfortunately, not if it's spelled with all caps," they heard Shinji utter, sounding as though he was versed in the very world.
"You sound like you know the people behind the word," they heard another boy with blond hair, slightly older, say to him.
"In a way, I did know some people behind the word. I used to work with them before I met you two that night you tried to bring your mother back to life."
Misato, Rei, Asuka and Fuyutsuki all had their eyes widen with realization. This boy that looked like Shinji was not some lookalike. It was Shinji Ikari.
To be continued…
A/N: Now Lust has been fully transmuted, ending the threat of all the homunculi associated with Dante. And now there's a chance that Shinji has become aware that someone has tried to reach the world he has become a part of, but he doesn't know who yet. Now, what will happen as the story progresses?