Fullmetal Ghoul
The First Day
Ed: YOU TOOK AWAY MY BROTHER'S SENSES?! ARE YOU INSANE?!
Me: I only took his sense of smell, taste, and touch! It's better this way—he can't feel pain!
Ed: YOU BITCH! -punches me-
Me: OW! -leaps onto Ed and starts pulling his hair-
Al: -pulling me and Ed apart- KORI DOESN'T OWN FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: BROTHERHOOD OR TOKYO GHOUL! KORI—
Me: BTW, HERE'S A FACT FOR LAST CHAPPIE! AL IS A GHOUL! THEY JUST THINK HE'S HUMAN UNTIL HE STARTS TO DISPLAY KOUKAKU ABILITIES! HE'D LOST HIS ABILITY TO USE HIS KAGUNE BECAUSE OF THE TRAUMA UNTIL HE REALIZES HE STILL CAN IN THE EPISODE MISSIONARY FROM THE EAST!
"Oh, dear."
Trisha Elric, a ghoul with a Koukaku kagune, blinked in the haze from the fallen bookshelf. Her two sons—both ghouls—were quite a handful, especially without her husband.
Edward, her oldest, was sitting, undisturbed, in a clean circle, surrounded by a wall of books that protected him from the dusty onslaught. Alphonse, the younger, was not so lucky; he appeared to be buried in a tower of hole-filled books that were smoking slightly.
"I told you boys not to disturb Daddy's study," she scolded gently, extracting Al from the smoldering books.
"We're not messing it up!" Said Ed indignantly. Then, to Trisha's great astonishment, he closed his eyes, and a burst of scarlet kagune grew from his back, and as her eyes adjusted to the new phenomenon, she realized it was Ukaku, and impossibly bright, not even flickering.
"I can do it too!" Cried Al, determined not to be outdone by his older brother; he closed his eyes, and yellow-and-crimson Koukaku sputtered to life from his back, a bit weaker than Ed's but strong nontheless.
"Th-That's your kagune, isn't it?" She stuttered, though she already knew the answer.
"Uh-huh!" Ed replied proudly. "And look—" His black-and-red eyes crackled, and he lifted a book, heaved it into the air, and shot an Ukaku spike at it. As it dropped, Al snatched it out of the air with his Koukaku and dropped it, with a gentle thud, onto the floor.
Trisha gaped for a few moments, then muttered, "Wait till the ghouls of the world realize that these two have a better grip on their kagune than I do..."
"Did we do something wrong?" She looked up at her two sons, who were staring at her with equal looks of worry on their faces.
"No, no, of course not!" She hastily covered up, smiling. "You did very well! I think I'll boast to all the neighbors."
Ed and Al turned, and beamed at each other.
And thus began the two young ghouls' obsession with harnessing their kagune. They learned under a teacher to control their hunger, their kagune, their power.
Life was satisfactory, and happy.
But that year, there was an epidemic.
Trisha Elric passed away.
Ed stared at the gravestone dully. Al, crouched in front of it beside his older brother, said in a small voice, "Brother, I'm cold."
Ed didn't answer.
"I'm hungry," Al added, in the same timid tone. He seemed to sense Ed's fragile state of mind, and was treading into the shadowed territory out of necessity and nothing else.
"Al..." Ed's Ukaku flared from his back, and he looked down at his brother, the scarlet pupils of his crackling black eyes still holding an undeniable anguish. "...Let's bring Mom back."
"Ghoul Resurrection?" Asked Al, his eyes wide with a mixture of excitement and horror. "But the book we read said it was forbidden!"
"I know." If Ed had known, at that moment, what fate he was sealing for himself and his brother, he would have never even thought about it. He would have refused even his younger brother's pleas if he knew.
But no matter how inhuman ghouls are, they will never be able to see the future.
"That's why it'll be our little secret."
"Done."
Ed lowered his pen, staring at the paper with an elated look on his face. The shadows under his eyes from sleepless nights, from studying hard, could never erase the joy in that moment.
"Al! Get the ingredients! Here—Uh... Water, 35 liters; carbon, 20 kilograms; ammonia, 4 liters; lime, 1.5 kilograms; phosphoros, 800 grams; salt, 250 grams; saltpeter, 100 grams; sulfur, 80 grams; fluorine, 7.5 grams; iron, 5 grams; silicon, 3 grams... And some... Soul... Data."
The two slit their fingers lightly, biting their lips, and the blood dripped into the pan.
Ed's crackling ghoul eyes stared at the pan in the middle of the basement floor, feeling a fleeting sense of fear.
He saw Trisha Elric's warm smile dancing tantalizingly in his line of vision.
"Al, on three, okay? One, two, three!" The two focused their kagune power into the pan on the floor, and the mass rose, taking the vague shape of a human with tentacles rising from its back in a golden light.
And, in that moment, everything went wrong.
A violet light rose from the gold, dyeing it, and it rose into the air sharply before descending upon the human figure, destroying it, before rearing, shaking its "head", and turning towards Al, whose black eyes were wide with tangible fear. The violet had begun to engulf him, shrouding him in a kind of thick mist, when Ed shoved him out of the way.
"Move it, Al!"
Al awoke blearily in a haze of smoke.
He sat up, vaguely realizing he couldn't smell anything. He moved a hand opto his mouth, realizing he couldn't feel it, and when he coughed on what appeared to be a trickle of blood, he couldn't taste it. He caught a glimpse of himself in the polished armor beside him, and to his astonishment, his hair was a shock of silver instead of its usual gold.
He looked around, eagerly, for his brother, for his mother. Then he realized his older brother was standing in the middle of the room, swaying, with two types of kagune sprouting from his bloody back, his eyes—one ghoul and one not—open wide. He stared back for a moment, mouthed his name, Alphonse.
Al bolted forward, catching his brother before the boy hit the stone floor. He cringed as his hand touched his brother's back, which was slick with blood and the two kagune fighting for dominance, but seeing as he couldn't feel it, figured it wasn't like it mattered much.
"Brother! What happened?! And... Your kagune..."
"I... We... Before the light took... You too... I pulled you out of the way and took the blast..."
Ed winced, and Al looked around the haze, his eyes screwed up against the thick smoke. "What about Mom?"
"Don't look, Al!" This was said with the most force, and Al glanced at his brother with a bit of surprise as Ed grabbed the front of his shirt with vigor that was not expected of a young boy who'd lost God knows how much blood. "It wasn't alive..."
Al's silver eyes had already slid over the black, pulsing mass, and he gasped, backing up to the wall, clutching his older brother closer, wanting to protect him. "Why... Why did it... Brother, your theories, the diagrams, they were perfect!"
"It wasn't the theories that were wrong, Al... It was us..."
Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang, Flame Ghoul, stared at the young boy sitting curled up in the wheelchair. His arms hid his face, though the blood dribbling down his forearm signaled his fangs were embedded in his arm to keep from lashing out at his human friends. It was pitiful, really.
"As a State Ghoul, he'll be prdered to act as a soldier in times of war, but he will receive various special privileges, and research of the highest level will be possible." The shrivelled old woman, nearly the height of where his knees were, took a long drag on her pipe, watching as a young girl—her granddaughter, perhaps?—offered the boy a mangled limb of some sort, looking concerned rather than disgusted. The boy slowly took the flesh and sank his teeth into it, and Mustang couldn't help but marvel at how well the boy was able to control his hunger.
"That thing in the middle of their basement..." Pinako Rockbell couldn't stop herself from glaring at the military man. "Did their ghoul powers create it? Why would they ever want to continue with something that created the creature there?"
Mustang's eyes darkened. "They may be able to return to their normal state if they carry on."
Ed's head jerked up, ignoring the blood dribbling down his chin, staring at Mustang, a fire flickering in his eyes that definitely hadn't been there before. Then he hissed to Pinako, whoe eyes widened, "Granny... I'm gonna need to get the extra off of my back."
Edward Elric stepped smartly into the middle of the room, facing Fürher President King Bradley, smirking. He then closed his eyes (which he'd gotten into a habit of so that no one else saw that he was a half-ghoul), and two kagune sprang to life from his back in bright silver. There were multiple gasps. Then Ed rushed forward at the Fürher President, his Rinkaku pointed at him, his Ukaku speed urging him faster.
He stopped mere inches from the man's throat.
"The President gave you quite an ironic name."
"You must have nerves of steel."
"He decreed you a State Ghoul..."
"...By the name 'Fullmetal'."
"Has an oppressive feel to it."
"Good luck, young ghoul!"
"I'll take it!"