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CHAPTER 2:
THE HAND OF GOD
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"May!" Scar shouted in reassuring concern.
But Edward could see that Lin was looking at the Xingese girl named May, clearly a member of a rival clan seeking the Xingese Imperial throne, in shock; so Edward forced away all of his memories of two other girls, one with dark brown hair in braids, another with darker brown hair and pink bangs in the front, and he twisted to run in his direction before Dad's Homunculus, or Envy, could force him away from Gluttony or murder him.
It was too late, however.
Envy swung his thick tail over at Lin and slashed it into his side, tearing his hand off of his scimitar and sending him flying through the air in an uncontrolled tumble towards one of the nearby pillars.
Lin turned his tumble into a barely coordinated backwards somersault and struck the pillar feet first to slide down and land on his feet, but then he doubled over against the side that Envy had struck, and crimson crackled out from the robed Homunculus' feet into the stone in front of Lin and it rose to close around his legs as though it were an upside down funnel.
If Dad's Homunculus could be sure that this May wouldn't die from having stolen Greed's Stone, Ed knew, and he hadn't needed Lin's body as a possible spare, Lin would almost certainly be dead now.
May staggered, clenching her teeth tightly as crimson stormed over her and more veins emerged all over her visible skin, and tears brimmed in her eyes and a minority fell free, but she bent onto her knees and slammed her hands onto the transmutation circle, and once more blue-white currents of energies coursed off of it.
A small panda who Ed hadn't seen before sprang out from where it had been hiding behind one of the curving tubes on the floor and raced to May's side to stand there on his or her two rear legs and make noises of fear and concern.
May smiled with strained weakness and reassurance at the panda, and also relief.
One of the reasons that May had come here had very likely been to look for the bearcat, who must be a pet.
"How in the cosmos can you transmute!?" Envy howled in shock.
Edward opened his mouth to tell Envy the reason should be self-evident, but May must be skilled in the medical alchemy of Xingese alkahestry, for the veins throbbing on May's skin receded very slightly and she planted her palms firmly against the floor and preempted Ed through clenched teeth.
Ed let himself sag slightly.
As terrible as it was that May was about to become a prisoner of her own body, she was at least sufficiently skilled or talented, or both, to contain the damage that the high energy of human souls were inflicting on her body, she might have an even better chance of living through joining with Greed than Lin did.
"We weren't listening in until we heard you start talking about the parallel worlds, but with what's happening inside my body, now that I'm at its origin point, I can tell what's going on below this place," she responded with strained challenge.
"Your head researcher is brilliant, I'll give you that much.
"You wedged a Philosopher's Stone underground between the energy that Amestrian alchemists use to power your transmutations and set up one or more means to keep extending its area of effect over all of Amestris so they'd end up calling upon it when they powered regular transmutations. But as these are regular transmutations, the energy brought into them wouldn't actually drain the souls themselves, just redirect them into the transmutations, after which they'd recombine without any permanent damage to the souls."
Ed had believed as much, but it was good to have a second opinion support that.
"And, while you did this, you lied to Amestrian alchemists that their precepts are being energized by whatever you claim is their real power source, and not the one that you set up to imitate it and keep it under your control.
"But alkahestry doesn't use whatever you've tricked Amestrians into using to power its research.
"It uses the river of power known as the Dragon's Pulse that carries life all throughout the planet."
May smiled in strained victorious challenge.
"Scar's transmutation circle partially involves alkahestry himself, so I'd keep your distance from him, if I were you."
Edward knew better than to believe that that meant that Ishbalan Grand Arcanum hadn't incorporated an imperfect Stone in it.
May then looked down at the panda and gave him or her another strained, but far more welcoming, smile.
"It's wonderful to see that you're safe, Xiao Mei."
The panda, apparently a female, cried wordless sounds of fright and worry.
"Don't worry about me. I've been through worse.
"But, for the sake of our people, it looks like it will need to be a while longer until we can keep each other company."
Xiao Mei clenched her own teeth in surprisingly human anger and frustration, and anguish and loss, but she appeared to have been domesticated enough to know when to calm down.
May unsteadily raised the pinkie of her left finger, near Xiao Mei, and to Edward's further surprise, the panda raised her own right forepaw, and high fived it.
May cringed and clenched her teeth against a violent, hacking cough that caused blood to erupt over her chin and around her lips.
Xiao Mei's fur stood up and she emitted a low whimper, but other than that, she didn't react.
Edward pushed away his memories of Nina's blood on the alley wall; and Rose's mouth moving soundlessly and the all but sightless, unfathomably endlessly far off, separated, imperceptibly unendingly distant, look in her eyes.
"I'll be seeing you," May finished.
Then she lowered her pinkie, and Xiao Mei retracted her paw, and she dropped to all fours and ran back from May to turn to face her when she'd reached a decent distance from the Xingese Princess, though not one too far away, so she could comfort her owner with her closeness.
May now turned her gaze inwards.
"That in mind, Greed, you can stop trying to scare me. I'm fine with letting you wield my body as you want for the time being, although I intend to return to utilizing it by my command in time.
"But I can tell from the patterns in how your energy flow is stagnating that your memories prior to being stuck inside the other Homunculus have been suppressed."
Edward wanted to retch once more.
If that meant what he was terrified that it did, then this Greed was as virtually dead as the one who Dante had set up to be murdered by Edward.
"Before my soul is forced out of my nerve impulses, I intend to remove that block."
Envy snarled and swung his tail at May, but then Scar was sliding below it and jamming his right hand up into it, and Edward jolted in a mixture of sheer utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, absolute, absolute, utter, absolute relief and surprised and astonished shock as blue-white cascaded out from his palm as opposed to red currents, to rip blood and skin and the flesh and muscle and sinew and bone beneath into shreds and chunks, and Envy staggered back.
"I'd say that it's a little too late to bring back the Ishbalan boy who I shot as the Amestrian soldier in order to foment the Ishbalan Extermination Campaign, wouldn't you?" he sneered with derisive mocking empathy and sympathy and pity and concern.
Scar went completely stiff.
Envy was not going to do to May what Kimbley had to Scar.
"May, Scar, watch out!" Edward yelled, breaking into a run in their direction.
But yet once more, he was too late.
The next second, Envy opened his mouth and his tongue extended out into shifting humanoid forms and faces in the same ways as the bodies on his form proper altered themselves, and it collided with the side of May's head and she slumped, unconscious.
Scar tore out of his disconnection with reality with a roar of hatred and despair and agony and fury and stabbed his right palm hard enough into the tongue that its shifting arms and hands and mouths and eyes and features tore blood into it, and new light blue burst out of it to crackle into Envy's mouth and to the front of the tongue, and then the inside of Envy's head detonated in bone fragments and blood and he slumped to the floor, crimson starting to crackle over his body.
Scar raised his hand and slammed it down onto Envy's tongue, and sent new decomposition blue-white over the tongue and into his head, forcing further blood to geyser out of his head and currents of red to adumbrate him.
And then he repeated this once more, more sanguine light and crimson blood erupted, and then once again in red shades and red liquid, and he continued to do so.
Knowing that he could trust, whether this Scar was fully or partially an enemy, he was now distracted keeping Envy on the defensive, Ed altered course towards May.
Ed had no idea how to protect May from Greed, or how to remove the block on Greed's memories, but his studies of human transmutation and his military first aid training had taught him enough about how the human body worked that he might at least be able to keep May alive through the transmutation of her soul, mind, and body.
But then she jerked violently, and a familiar Uroborus tattoo constructed itself in darker red on the back of her right palm, and her eyes changed color from their black to a red shade of its own.
Edward staggered to a halt in a mixture of knee weakening relief and further inwards powerless and helpless hate.
He pushed aside his memories of the inaudible movement's of Rose's mouth and her ghostly eyes, and Nina's blood flowing down the brick.
May was still alive, even though she was now a prisoner in her own body, mind, and soul.
And Homunculi were as human as any other natural born person.
May wasn't Nina.
"Good grief, May is a naïve little girl," a voice with familiar arrogant and covetous tones emanated from her voice in a male voice that was much closer to being high pitched than that of the Greed who Ed had known.
"First of all, why does it matter what happened to my memories when Father just gave me new life?"
Edward clenched his teeth tightly in a new surge of frustrated helplessness at the confirmation that May had failed to remove the block on his memories; and that, although Greed clearly had enough of the memories of the life that he must have lived with Marta and the other Chimeras to feel the need to look uncomfortably away from the dead Chimera on the floor nearby, he still rose to kneel before the Homunculus who had once trapped him in his own body, and inclined his head.
"A life that I am very thankful for," he said.
"You're welcome," the robed Homunculus answered.
"As your first means of showing me your gratitude, I no longer need to wait for the Promised Day, and if I can obtain both of the Stones that I now believe that I have located, and not just one, I won't even need to utilize human sacrifices."
Al started violently.
Whatever that meant, Greed's eyes went wide.
But, although Edward knew full well that a fourth Al was now in imperceptibly indefinably more peril, at least this Al was now in less.
"Unless I'm in error, and a third Stone is available at this location, or is about to become available, all that I require for certain is for Sloth,"
"Why didn't you bring me back to life?"
"What's wrong? I thought you wanted to see him."
Edward pushed even this flooding sick insides and heart and stomach warping agony and self hatred and horror away.
"To fulfill his role, and to open the Portal.
"However, doing so with backup will expedite matters, so your first duty is to beat the puny human inconveniencing Envy into submission, through death or incapacitation.
"So that, rather than my Stone, I might use him, and the other illegal Xingese alien, as the toll to open the Portal, and then to return."
Greed nodded firmly, but with his mouth twisted in annoyance and irritation that he'd just been ordered, and not asked, to say and do something for someone.
Scar clenched his teeth tightly from where he had just stood up to run at Envy, because the largest Homunculus had literally bit his own tongue off to stop Scar from decomposing his head.
Then, his face set in resignation, he stood up quickly and strode back to position himself at a location where he could defend himself against one, or two, or all three Homunculi without being forced back into the column of rippling air still washing out from Gluttony.
Edward's stomach and insides distorted further at the memories of Nina's blood pooled on the wall and Rose's hopelessly removed eyes and soundless lip movements, and the knowledge of what Scar was willing to do, but he did need to move forward and believe in something as much as Rose did.
So he pushed away the familiar horror and terror at the concept of someone paying the price for a human transmutation, or opening the Gate.
Now that Lin didn't have a decent advantage against the Homunculi, they didn't have as much reason to threaten this Resembool's Winry, so as long as Ed didn't give them a chance to if they regained a good advantage, he might be able to risk fighting once more.
He ran towards Greed.
"I don't know if you knew a Nina Tucker, but I'll take Greed myself, so you don't need to, and because I don't trust you not to try to euthanize her," he let as much sarcasm as possible drip from the last two words.
Scar clenched his teeth further.
"I don't care what parallel world you come from, or whether the Amestris that you serve employed you as a State Alchemist, or it didn't," Scar snarled.
"After what the large Homunculus just said, it appears that directing my revenge against State Alchemists was partially misleading, but you still resemble a State Alchemist, so I have no interest in fighting at your side."
Edward wanted to press the matter of Nina, but this wasn't the time.
"I could care less whether or not you want to.
"If your brother gave you that arm the same way the brother of the Scar that I knew did, he wanted you to keep living."
Scar's visage became a mask, but he just turned to face Dad's Homunculus.
"I will condemn you all to oblivion for what you've done regardless of your answer, but I refuse to allow May's sacrifice to be for nothing, so, in order that she's better equipped to bring the Stone back to her clan, she and I require you to tell us.
"Why did you believe that your research into the Truth merited the slaughter of my brother, all of my family, and most of my people?"
Scar was one of the very last people who Ed wanted to tell how to transmute an imperfect or incomplete Stone, as, due to how his circle decomposed on this side of the Gate, there was a chance that this Scar didn't yet know.
But from everything that they'd already said, he had already learned enough to most likely be able to put the rest of the pieces together anyway, so it was better that Ed know for certain that Scar knew than for it to be in doubt.
"I can answer that much," Edward informed him.
"Stones are transmuted from human souls, and these crackpots wanted your people to become many, most, or all of the ingredients."
Scar went absolutely stiff.
"The others were likely, or are likely intended to be, other cultural and ethnic minorities who Amestris' ethnic majority see as outstanding nuisances," Edward went on.
"If it's any comfort, all or most of them shouldn't have been trapped in a virtual inescapable prison with the oppressors who discriminate against them."
Scar wordlessly inclined his head very slightly, but Ed knew that it was almost certainly not because he'd tried to support Scar and the Ishbalans or Ishvalans, but to express his thanks for enabling him to better support May.
"Are you so sure?" Envy mocked Scar and Edward, restrained daggers of agony knifing through his voice.
"Perhaps the fourth-rate fraud who you're familiar with was so incapable of practicing anything but bad science that she needed to avoid alienating majorities, but we, as I keep reminding you, are not meager humans.
"We've already contributed plenty of Amestris' majority to our second Cselkcess style Stone, and we've long since set up means to provide it with many more."
"Means that you will now identify," Scar commanded Envy, and the other Homunculi, in no uncertain terms.
Envy glared at Scar with surprising, unrestrained and undiluted hatred.
"Don't look down on me, human," he roared.
Edward started violently.
"Needless to say, I never did like being replaced."
Was Envy even any more confident in who and what he was, outside of his dependence on the Gate and the Truth, than the first Envy who Edward had met, and the rest of Dante's Homunculi?
"I'll do as I please, especially with you," Scar responded with focused hatred and challenging satisfaction.
Envy's jaw opened slack.
"If you're going to fire the first shot in a genocidal war by lowering your gaze downwards towards an innocent child, and pretend to be an Amestrian who had opposed the presence of its troops in Ishbal in the process to convict him for the very teachings that he saw as anathema, you're in no position to tell me not to look upon you similarly."
Envy's mouth worked soundlessly for a number of seconds.
But then he tilted a head with skin and insides still knitting back together amidst crimson upwards and howled with laughter.
"I'm in no position?" the large Homunculus roared.
"I'm in no position?
"The next time that you want to decompose something with your hand, I recommend that it be whatever shoulder you pat yourself on the back with to reward yourself for your delusions of grandeur.
"I just fired one shot.
"How many did you fire in return?
"Your people torched part of Resembool merely because its foodstuffs supplied the Eastern Amestrian military, and the rest of it, to a lesser extent, while they were as innocent of participation in bloodshed as the child who I shot was.
"You yourself murdered the two Rockbell doctors,"
the blinding fury that he'd let go of for Mustang just yesterday shrieked up to wash everything within what wasn't inside him and nothing outside of what wasn't about him and beyond it and that would or might extend afterwards and that hadn't before into painful anguish, but Edward forced himself to focus on how this at least meant that Winry and Granny at least hadn't been betrayed in that specific way by Amestris, and that it meant that this world's Mustang hadn't done it
"two humans who didn't just have no interest in killing, they sought to try their hardest to keep it from happening.
"And let's not forget how old the Tucker girl was, Chimera in need of euthanasia or not."
So much for the possibility that, as Scar and not Mustang had murdered Yuriy and Sarah, Nina was still alive, and maybe even still human.
Edward suppressed another urge to sit down
"I fired just one shot to prey upon you mindless goons selling yourselves to a God who, if He even exists, is as idiotic as you are, and in response, you fired hundreds of thousands of them for almost a decade, and even the locations that you never fired a shot in all over the country were forced to writhe in the quicksand wasteland that you call your territory for it.
"Wallow in the depths of your hypocrisy.
"It's so entertaining and amusing that you humans are nothing more than comedy routines.
"So do me a favor and can the wagging your tails and panting with your tongues lolling out because you believe that it will get you a bone, and just resign yourselves to who and what you are and rip people apart with your bare teeth as the hunting hounds you are, and then savage their bloody and broken bodies and lick and slurp up their blood like good little doggies, while digging for what frail scraps you can keep after you're done jumping around and barking to each other's and one another's tunes as you tear into each other in your pack wars.
"You stuck up tapeworms have no capability to do anything else, and slink before our toes and feet and eyes and the noses that we look down past the entire time."
Even though he could see fully clearly, Edward wasn't sure whether he was just remembering the hotness in his eyes, or tears were actually in one or both of them, as they had after the Homunculus of Brother had passed through the Gate.
Yes, this Envy had as little confidence in who and what he was as the Homunculus of Edward's true Brother.
Ed didn't know why, but Envy's supposed confidence in his nature as a Homunculus, apparently, was nothing more than a flask of his own that he'd erected to shield himself from how he truly felt.
"Don't tell me that you're walking confidently on your own strong legs when you feel as inferior to humans as Dante's Homunculi."
Envy went completely, absolutely stiff, and his mouth moved speechlessly.
"I'm not looking down on you," Edward spoke quickly.
"I'm just trying to convince you to face the Truth yourself.
"I don't know if it's because Dad abandoned you as he did the first Envy that I met, or because you've crippled yourself by becoming dependent on the Gate and the Truth, or for some other reason.
"But if you honestly believed in how strong your legs are, you wouldn't care whether natural humans looked down on you."
"That's enough, Envy," Dad's Homunculus interjected, although Ed didn't know if it was because he truly didn't like how Edward was trying to convince his foster son that he didn't truly have any faith in himself, or because he just didn't want Envy to say or do anything rash.
"You know your duty, so fulfill it."
Envy clenched his teeth together so tightly that, due to how they were still repairing themselves amidst crimson, a number did shatter into bits, and new currents of red crackled around them so new ones extended themselves upwards.
But then he nodded with so much hatred and fury obviously suppressed that he appeared to be a reactor on the verge of going critical.
So Scar, his own face a study of suppressed hatred, slapped the floor with his right palm, sending large megaliths of rock ripping up out of it towards Envy.
Envy sprang back with all eight legs and Scar pursued, continuing to strike the floor as he endeavored to drive him back towards the nearest wall and trap him there, moving with the same skill and sense of where his body was that the Scar who Ed had fought repeatedly had.
However, this Envy must not be as agile as the one who Edward had dueled in the cathedral, or he'd have shifted to that Envy's favored form or another one and leapt from piece of rubble to piece of rubble to close in on Scar.
Or altered another part of his current large body to do something similar.
The Gluttony who Ed had repeatedly faced off against had been mature enough to possess limited tactical and strategic skills, and Edward had no reason to believe that Dad's Homunculus had raised and trained this Gluttony any less effectively, so even though the leader Homunculus had said that he wanted Scar and Lin alive and Gluttony couldn't drag them into his flawed Gate, Ed couldn't fully count him out as a threat.
But, for now, two of the Homunculi shouldn't be able to interfere with Ed's own battles that much.
Regrettably, one of the ones who wasn't being waylaid was the one who could perform alchemy, and thus, by far, the most dangerous one.
The familiar black of the Ultimate Shield flowed up over May's arms, although they stopped at her shoulders, and Edward suppressed a heavy sigh at the knowledge that, even though he'd at last, and weeks too late to have started truly trying, reached Wrath; he was about to need to fight another child.
"Don't kill Greed or May!" Al called.
"I don't know what you believe in, but big brother refuses to kill anyone!"
Edward suppressed another surge of more familiar pain, but he just nodded quickly and charged Greed.
His own ability to transmute had been restricted even more tightly than Al's double's, but if Dad's own double's Homunculus had assimilated with his younger foster brother, he very likely had a means of harming carbon even as hardened as Greed's somewhere in this experimentation ward.
All that Ed needed to do was find it.
The size of his current blade was unfamiliar, but Ed was still experienced enough at hand to hand combat to dart into a series of quick alternating low and high and side to side cuts, while varying between the angles and altering his direction.
Greed backpedaled to avoid risking Ed coming so close that Edward had a valid chance of striking him somewhere that wasn't reinforced, particularly due to how long his sword was, and Ed circled to force him back away from the edges of the room, paying close attention to where Greed was trying to keep himself from being driven as he lunged so he'd know where to look for this means.
Dad's Homunculus just stood there and waited, apparently unconcerned about the ability of his foster children to defeat natural humans who he saw as no more than insects.
As soon as Edward had disabled Greed, he'd remind that Homunculus that insects included wasps and bees, who could sting; mosquitoes, who could suck blood; and fire ants, who could give other living beings very painful bites.
A decent distance away, Envy swung his now fully restored tail around his own right side and whipped it forwards to send pieces of rubble flying at Scar, and though this Scar ducked and twisted while maneuvering through them, the distraction still bought him enough time to shift to his right so Scar couldn't force him into a corner and Envy could keep backpedaling.
Edward blinked as Greed's eyes shifted to a chain that Envy was passing near.
He smirked.
Check.
He dropped low and barreled at Greed, and Greed raised both of his arms in front of his chest.
But Ed's automail arm, and its proximity to his offensive weapon, served him as the close range shield that it usually did, enabling him to move close enough to Greed without being cut or stabbed by his sharp claws, so Edward just continued to run at the young Homunculus, and moved his arm to parry two successive thrusts from different angles, one with his sword, and the other with his automail arm proper.
Then he grabbed the overextended Homunculus' arms with his flesh arm, pivoted, and hurled the small Homunculus over his shoulder directly at the chain.
Then he raced in the direction of Greed to catch him as he fell and throw him into whatever contraption Edward had just caused to start moving.
Two large portions of the floor between the table and chair, almost certainly belonging to Dad's Homunculus, at the center of the chamber, and the balcony at the back, separated, and a gigantic metal vat radiating with heat rose slowly out of it.
Greed back flipped to land on his feet, and the armored night of the Ultimate Shield shifted to begin to extend up over all of his body, but Ed doubted that it would make a difference.
But he knew full well what would.
So, rather than continue his rush at Greed and let the transmutation capable Homunculus intercept him, Edward skidded to a halt when he was a good deal past Gluttony and the Homunculus of Dad, but not so far that a motionless transmutation could reach Gluttony before this did, and he used his momentum to whip around to face Gluttony.
As he did he reached into his pocket, felt the weight of a pocketwatch identical to the one that he'd used to carry himself, tied the chain into a knot, and brought it out.
He wanted to risk that it had red stones inside, and that throwing them at Dad's Homunculus would set off a rebound that would temporarily prevent him from transmuting, but he couldn't take the time to find out, and he still didn't know enough about the roads alchemic energy took on this planet to take the chance that the rebound would even happen.
He hurled the pocketwatch in a ramrod curving arc so it landed and caught between two of Gluttony's long ribs without falling into the still surging beam and the chain behind it settled around Gluttony's neck, caught it, and dragged forward into its back as though it was a noose with an opening forwards and to Gluttony's right.
Gluttony gasped and began to wheeze, and he started staggering and turning in the direction of Dad's Homunculus.
Dad's Homunculus sighed in tired exasperation.
"This is a waste of time."
Then crimson cascaded around him, and the stone of the floor rose up around him as the liquid mud that it had become, and he descended into it and it closed above him and around him and the red faded away.
Edward's jaw dropped, and for the first time, genuine uncertainty and terror sapped his energy from him.
He refused to acknowledge it any more than he had when Wrath and the Homunculus of Scar's brother's fiancé had surrounded him in the alley, but now he was truly uncertain if they could emerge victorious in this confrontation.
He raced to the side as Gluttony corrected his stagger a few steps past where the Homunculus of this Hohenheim had used to be standing, and a second later, a metal speaking tube of ordinary iron rose up out of the floor in currents of red.
Even now, Dad's Homunculus' voice still sounded calmly disinterested.
"You are the ones who I recommend surrender," he said.
"In addition to my ability to shield myself with the floor and the ground, and leave anyone's field of vision, I have means that I see no reason to detail for keeping track of almost anything that goes on anywhere in this complex.
"Furthermore, as soon as Lin took Gluttony hostage, Envy implemented a code that we developed decades ago, whereby he shifts his lesser bodies to alter the currents of air in a specific pattern of scents that convey orders that the Chimeras guarding this complex have been trained to respond to.
"By now, they should have alerted military forces stationed in this complex who are specifically loyal to myself and my children we call leftovers, and they should all be on their way to reinforce us.
"A minority of the leftovers signaled back, by altering the scents of these Chimeras in specific patterns themselves, that their superior officer ordered them to divert to hunt down a rogue snake Chimera he must have taken the initiative to transmute without telling me, and who has gone rogue and absconded elsewhere into this complex with a vital resource two other Chimeras were guarding."
Ed clenched his teeth.
That appeared to be still another mess that he needed to clean up.
"One of these leftovers should also have made contact with my eldest son, Pride, and while he's currently tied up overseeing another matter that we're attending to, he ought to be keeping an eye on these events, and he should be in a position to intervene if necessary.
"This has gone on long enough.
"Surrender, or Pride will give the order for an officer in the know to call our base nearest Rush Valley, and Miss Rockbell will be taken into custody."
As long as alchemists were close to the Stone's forbidden power in one world or another, Edward hadn't even gotten moving.
Edward didn't want to put this Al through losing what was left of his big brother, particularly this soon after he recently had, for who knew how long; and to the very Gate that Ed was now about to bring Dad's Homunculus through in the way that he wanted to travel it, but in the ways that Edward wanted it to happen.
If Ed couldn't stop Dad's Homunculus from pursuing the Stone in a third Amestris, Ed would assist him in doing it before he was ready to start the search, and so he'd be in a better position to try to stop him.
Blocking the flow of the energy of death couldn't prevent the Gate from extracting a price from someone when a human transmutation was involved and someone intentionally paid that price to the Gate. And there was a Gate nearby, although it had was flawed, that this Ed appeared to have been able to connect to the true Gate.
As well as a transmutation circle that Ed knew by heart now, and that, although he hadn't confirmed whether or not it practically existed on this planet; with as many similarities as there were in how alchemic research and Amestrian society had developed on this planet to there own, Edward had valid reasons to believe had been discovered.
Inscribing Al's blood seal onto his right automail arm, and then extending it into Gluttony's clear beam, wouldn't do anything if it wasn't a practical circle; and if it was, it wouldn't return this Al's soul to the Gate, or this Ed's right arm to it, unless Edward directed it to.
But it would enable Edward to access his own right arm and left leg inside the Gate, and exchange them even further than he already had by separating the parts of his soul that were still inside all of the blood in both limbs from them and giving the Homunculi of the Gate direct access to those parts of his soul that they'd been denied; at the cost of almost certainly wounding both limbs so ruinously that, even if he wanted to try to get them back once more, they'd almost certainly be too ravaged for him to be able to reconnect them to his body for the rest of his life.
As well as to take anything currently in contact with the solid that Edward was standing on into the Gate.
Dante's transmutation with Rose's baby had been a sufficient price for Dad to reach the first parallel world, so direct access to all of the fragments of his soul in both limbs might be more than enough of a cost for one trip through the Gate to a fourth world, and one trip back.
Hopefully with Dad's Homunculus deposited somewhere hundreds, or thousands, of miles, away from here when his own return trip was over.
Edward lowered his right hand into his pocket, fishing for the spare paper he'd used to carry in it, and a spare pen.
They were both there, and he slowly and surreptitiously began to draw the blood seal.
"I wouldn't be so sure," Edward challenged the robed Homunculus.
Edward extremely highly doubted that this would work, but there was a small chance that the Homunculi would figure out what he was about to do even though it involved limbs from another world, so he needed to give them a distraction.
And Dad's Homunculus was so incredibly arrogant that there was a minute chance that he'd take this bait.
"And you know that yourself.
"If you're so sure that we're just insects, why are you still keeping whether you're trying to transmute yourselves into Gates, or the Truth itself, from us?
"Why won't you tell us exactly how you intend to transmute your second, most likely key, Stone with the Cselkcess method?
"And so on.
"You consider that knowledge sensitive information for a reason.
"You know, if we acquire it too soon, that we'll be able to use it against you, and that means that you're not infallible.
"If you disagree, fill free to fill us all in on all of the blanks."
"The only blank that anything is going to be filled in with is the one that I'm going to put in your brainpan if you don't stop accusing Father of being stupid enough to waste his research on us," Envy snarled.
Edward suppressed the urge to start, not wanting it to damage the circle.
"We're not Father's adopted children.
"He literally gave birth to us, and he owes us nothing."
Shock and surprise shrieked and seared and screamed through Edward at the knowledge that he wasn't talking to an alternate version of a Homunculus of his long deceased older brother, and that the Sloth on this world was similarly different.
His heart twisted in another hot throb of acute, sharp longing.
But every whole world, no matter what side of the Gate it was on, was out there, outside of himself and his dreams.
This wasn't the time.
New agony and despair and fury and self hatred surged up throughout all of the fibers that were Ed, but he could argue about this once th supposed Father had been defeated.
Edward finished drawing the top curl of the blood seal and then maneuvered the paper that it was on into a hinge in one of the fingers.
Then he walked up to Gluttony, brought his arm out of his pocket, and extended it into the washing waves of air.
Indigo washed through the chamber right away, and for the fourth time that day, the thin black arms with feelers of ebony for hands extended out of the darkness in Gluttony's torso to touch his body.
"Big brother!" Al screamed in so much horror and terror and despair and agony that Ed didn't even try to brush the top of the surface of it.
"Ed!"
Ed's heart twisted and squeezed with another pulsating ache at hearing that name in the voice of any Al.
But Edward would have felt even worse if this Al had actually called him a brother in any way, because he knew that Al's true brother might be hurt by hearing that the person who had claimed his body was being called that, in any shape.
"I separated the parts of my soul still stuck in my own right arm and left leg in the Gate as the price for directly and intentionally traveling to the fourth world in this body; and then I will bring your brother back to you, maybe even before this day is up."
Alphonse jolted violently, and his trembling and shaking and shuddering returned wholly.
"But that means, even if you find a way to open the Portal to your own home and return there without too much of a cost, you might never be able to get your own body back!"
Edward was so exhausted now that it wasn't even profound, or there.
He was too tired for there to be any such thing as concepts.
"I accepted that several days ago, when I at last learned what the cost of just living for my own dreams was."
"We learned that cost, too, but the wife of one of the victims pointed out that if we gave up on our dreams, that cost would have meant nothing!" Al cried.
Edward blinked.
He hadn't considered that; but that still didn't change the matter that this person, who Edward hoped wasn't this world's Hughes as that sounded like something Gracia might believe, had suffered or died when he hadn't needed to do.
There was no Equivalent Exchange for death.
You couldn't murder someone, and then try to turn that into a good thing by what you said and did afterwards.
Once you died, everything that you'd given couldn't obtain anything.
"Don't do this to yourself!
"And even if you can make it back, you've just been through two pitched battles against two groups of Homunculi and a genius alchemist!
"You're in no condition to risk ending up in the middle of another one!
"And that's if you make it, and a fourth world exists!"
Edward forced a grin that he discovered was partially honest.
"The third time's the charm, as it goes," he responded.
At those words, a different kind of exhaustion caused his vision to swim and him to sway, and the feelers gripping him reacted to that by starting to tug him towards the column of clear air.
Was Al right?
Could he keep this up?
Or was he destroying everything that he was fighting for by risking plunging into still a third extremely challenging confrontation with one or more brilliant alchemists and Homunculi this soon after he'd participated in two others?
But, even if this time, he couldn't prove that giving everything he had would get anything back; his brother, Al, and two other Als, still needed him to try; for his sake, and for their sakes.
As well as three whole worlds out there, outside of himself and his dreams.
"I directed this transmutation to take me to the most easily reached Stone created by a Xerxes or Cselkcess method, or something similar, on the theoretical fourth world repulsing this one; as it's most likely the safest way to reach the other planet.
"If I'd failed, the Gate would be acting a lot less gentle about forcing me to pay the price.
"And this battle isn't over.
"I'm bringing your dad's Homunculus with me."
"Not while you're inside my complementary container, you're not!" a new voice, young and with an echo even more hollow than the Als living as armor, spoke in, and one that Edward knew as well as any Amestrian who paid attention to the news.
This world's Selim Bradley was a Homunculus himself?
The next second, a number of interspersed large eyes with crimson irises opened amidst an expanding pool of shadow in the wall nearest them, and countless tendrils with sharp points the same shade of obsidian as the feelers that Ed had almost let bring him to the horizontal column tore out of it towards Gluttony to grab him and lift him into the air.
But they both knew that it was a futile gesture of defiance.
Dad's Homunculus must have realized what Ed had done as soon as he'd done it, and that he hadn't tried to stop Ed meant that he had accepted that it was too late, and that he was just focusing on paying a price with his own Stone to keep the Gate from retaining any of him.
Edward couldn't be sure that the Rose on this world had learned the same lessons that the Rose of his Amestris had, or even that the similarities between how the people of his Amestris, and this Amestris, had grown up in their similar situations extended to small ethnic minorities whose lives would have been at least relatively less influenced by the similar paths that alchemic energy surged through on this world.
But this world's Lior, or Liore, or Reole, was the safest place for Winry to hide.
"If I don't make it back before tonight in your world's calendar, and this makes sense to you, take Winry to the place where you replaced a radio with your armor as a radio tower!" Edward shouted.
Then all he could see was clear air.
The first thing that Edward knew after this was an almost completely black vacuum above of an ocean of what appeared to be blood strewn with varying sized rubble of different kinds, one that he extremely highly doubted that he'd be able to see anything in at all if Dad's Homunculus wasn't being pulled through it beside him by other arms.
Edward clenched his teeth tightly at the sight of another group of arms dragging Envy along with them, and a fourth set carrying this world's version of Selim Bradley in black formal clothing, although there were currently no shadows around him.
Dad's Homunculus must have brought them along with his Stone.
But, while this lessened Ed's chances of keeping the Cselkcess style Stone or Stones on this world away from the Homunculi, this was now two more Homunculi who he could throw out of the Gate far away from Amestris when he returned.
Seconds later, however, his eyes widened to see that he wasn't passing through white, but through the vacuum of space itself, with two large semi opaque and featureless doors yawning open below him that appeared to be literally miles tall and wide when matched against the planet beneath it, and two more partially opaque and featureless doors of an unknown scale opening above him to reveal another vertical eye with different shades of red inside the wholly ebony blackness it.
Dad's Homunculus' eyes flew wide, and his mouth dropped open, in eager shock and surprised delight.
But, though that very likely meant that this was the specific kind of Gate that he was close to the Stone for, that still didn't tell Edward whether he wanted the Gate, or the Truth within it.
Especially because there were no juxtaposed tapestries of sights passing by them anywhere, and there was no splitting pain in his head, just the sense of passing through something that his mind was brushing and trying to wrap itself around, and falling to even begin to comprehend or understand the tiniest amount.
The size of the two lower doors might just be an optical illusion, as well, but that Edward couldn't guarantee that left him with even another mystery.
Then the strands of obsidian dragged them into the upper Gate, and then they were falling out of a second set of similar doors away from another vertical eye amidst blackness between two open mostly transparent, yet equally featureless, doors into another space, this one composed of shades of silver and gray.
Then he was falling into two more featureless transparent doors that gaped open with an apparent size contrasting the planet below it that Edward literally believed could almost extended from the zenith of Amestris to its nadir.
And then he was inside it.
But this time, he could see everything clearly, and he was falling towards a deep pool of crimson that clearly was blood in the middle of a circular stone chamber of pale rock.
Someone grabbed his automail arm by the hand, and Edward briefly glimpsed an oblate light red Philosopher's Stone, either imperfect or genuine at a different scale, as the person did.
Small currents of red coruscated out from inside it, almost too dim to see inside their hands, and they started rising.
"Ed?" an unfamiliar, female, voice asked.
"How are there two of you?"
Edward looked up to see a girl who he'd never met, around his age, with long orange hair falling down her back and his own coat on it as well, with green eyes and wearing a black military uniform that he didn't recognize, lifting them up to a thin walkway of similar light stone with a small protrusion of compact snow that was reconstructing itself under her left, free hand.
The girl ended the transmutation and let the snow discorporate to land on the walkway with Edward at her side, and he brought his legs and knees under him and alighted on it.
He let go of her hand, but before he had any time to discover where he was, or what was going on around him, Dad's Homunculus spoke from below in his usual calm tones.
"I'm unwilling to waste my time any further allowing him to answer your question."
Ed looked down to see him standing at the center of a roughly oval platform of shadow with more large red eyes spread around it, as well as large curved mouths with large, closed teeth in positions about it, was spread over the center of the chamber above the pool of blood, moderately thick strands of the mysterious dark substance anchoring the platform in place into all of the walls.
Selim was standing at his left, and Envy, still in his large body, was now fully intact and standing on all eight legs on his right.
"My hypothesis appears to have been correct," Dad's Homunculus went on, but now the eager excitement and elation was partially back in his voice, although he wasn't smiling, and his emotions weren't apparent on his face.
"I won't need to wait for a solar eclipse to prove my theory.
"For, in the high caliber advanced Philosopher's Stone that you hold in your hand, reside tens of millions of souls of all of the Milosians, Cretans, and Amestrians who died over the last approximately three and a half centuries in the vicinity of the three dimensional citywide transmutation circle that must have been constructed throughout the Hill of Milos no later than about eight centuries prior to today.
"Furthermore; if I can but obtain the other one that I'm now even more convinced is nearby, neither will I need to go to the trouble to acquire five human sacrifices.
"All that I will need to do is to wait for Sloth to finish his job and the last crest of blood to be etched.
"Then I will at long last and finally become able to fulfill the dream towards which all scientists and scholars and alchemists; and evolution and progress and the cycle of understanding, decomposition, and reconstruction of the flow and ebb of One Is All, All Is One; have continually and constantly and always and ceaselessly yearned since the inception of all of dimensional space and never beginning imaginary time.
"I will pay the toll to open the planet's Portal of Truth, transmute sufficient photons of light into that Portal, obtain the Truth of all energy and matter in the universe, and make God a part of me and become a perfect being."
.
"Is this what you were hoping for, you b-stard!?"-Mu La Flaga
"You shouldn't blame me! This is mankind's dream! Mankind's desire! Mankind's destiny! To be the strongest! To go the farthest! To climb the highest!"-Rau Le Creuset
"Get real!"-Mu La Flaga
"To compete, to envy, to hate each other, and devour one another."-Rau Le Creuset
"I won't let your twisted logic make things worse!"-Mu La Flaga
"You see, you're too late, Mu! I am the product of all this! That's how I know!"-Rau Le Creuset
GUNDAM SEED:
Phase 49: THE FINAL LIGHT
