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CHAPTER 4:

THEORY OF THE TRUTH, AND DREAMS OF SACRIFICE

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Al jolted violently and looked up at them.

Then he jolted violently a second time at the sight of the foreign Edward.

The masked figure continued walking in their direction, and the foreign Edward couldn't see his eyes from this distance.

Two bipedal figures, doubtlessly Chimeras, both possessing gray fur and one with a light green mane and the other with a dark orange mane, in open vested Cretan military uniforms of their own; walked up from behind the back of the mining contraption to position themselves on platforms further back as the human officer, now close enough for Ed to see that he was an adult, walked up to one near the wheel at the front.

Then Al inhaled in breathless horror and terror and despair and guilty self hatred and pained agony of his own, because Julia was close enough that he could see her eyes.

"You swallowed the Star, didn't you," he said.

It wasn't a question.

"That's good to know," the masked person interjected from where he was standing, his own voice echoing as hollowly as Al behind his own mask, and his words were harshly deep, as though his vocal cords were badly strained.

"Then I have but one facet of our parents' research left to end.

"Yes, I'm the real Ashleigh Crichton."

Julia's face became a partial mask of intermeshed skepticism and horror and terror, and a desperate longing and hope that Ed had seen every time he looked in the mirror even before today, and that was in the native Ed's eyes, as well.

"And yes, I gave the order to fill in the valley."

Al began shaking incomprehensibly and imperceptibly comprehensibly more violently, and shuddering, and trembling, as the Al of the first anti-particle, or particle, world had.

The Edward who had already confronted Sloth and Envy experienced a small rush of new sickness.

This Al and Ed must not have confronted a Homunculus of a family member yet; or, if Dad's Homunculus here had similar ties to their own double of Dad to the one from the first particle, or anti-particle, world in this Amestris, learned of those ties yet.

The Edward who had already been through something very close to this wished that he could keep the three Homunculi from the third world away from them, so they didn't need to learn what this was like any sooner than absolutely necessary.

However, the ebb and flow of hardship and reward, anticipated or not predicted, of the current of All Is One, One Is All, didn't work that way.

Julia tensed slightly.

The other Edward clenched his teeth incredibly tightly with furious blackness, and there were a number of new things in his eyes and face that were now in how Al was shaking.

The Edward who was a soul in another's body clenched his left hand so hard that his knuckles turned ghostly white, and all five of his nails drew blood from his palm.

"You now have your own, new Star, as I swallowed the original that lured Creta to invade Milos centuries past after Atlas betrayed us."

Julia tensed further, and pressed her lips together.

Al looked as though he was barely staying on his legs, and that he might not have been able to if he hadn't potentially needed to transmute a new wall at any time.

The other Ed's scowl became more acute and drawn.

"I would have preferred not to tell you that I was still alive until I'd been able to catch the murderer of our parents, but as I now have no need to tolerate Amestris' jurisdiction over Table City," so this third Amestris was here, "and the native Milosians' presence in this valley, I have initiated an operation to reclaim the holy land for Creta.

"I'll bring Atlas to judgment another time, assuming he escapes this offensive alive.

"Within a matter of hours, I will have filled in the valley that gave us, and our parents, no end of torment when we were children. And shortly afterwards, the Cretan military will exploit the large numbers of losses they incurred when Atlas transmuted the second Star,"

Julia's lips pressed together more thinly at the revelation that an unknown large number of the enemies of the people who she was fighting to free had become components for her Star.

"And that resulted from your pointless revolution, to dislodge them from Table City.

"It is now safe for you to come home with me to Creta.

"I'm sincerely sorry for how long it took me to rescue you from the valley dwellers and Amestris."

But, with the exception of slight undercurrents of discomfort in Ashleigh's voice, his tone didn't change at all during the apology, so Edward extremely highly doubted that he meant it in any of the ways that mattered.

"But we can now be together once more at last.

"And, as the presence of a second Fullmetal Alchemist here has proven, our parents' theory of a new world on the other side of the Doorway of Truth appears to have been correct."

Al staggered.

"So we might even be able to complete our parents' research into the Crimson Star sooner than I'd believed; and thus open the Doorway to the world's Truth, and establish a new order amongst the entire world around us into a safe place where no one will even need to wage war, or suffer through any pain, to live content and safe lives."

Al needed to correct his stance to keep from falling now, and now Edward was almost literally unsure that Al really couldn't shake hard enough to damage his blood seal.

Julia's jaw dropped slack with her eyes wide and partially unseeing in still another new form of horror and terror and agony and self hatred, this time at the knowledge that her own Brother wanted to try to sacrifice every single human in the entire world.

The other Edward was white with intermingled horror and terror, and rage and fury.

"Humans are controlled by their sins, and the Philosopher's Stone has power far greater than any weapon ever forged. So I've taken cities. Humans would destroy the world. The lives lost have been necessary martyrs, saving mankind from itself. I am the guardian, the Shepherd of Sins. I have to live on, to prevent you humans from doing something foolish with the Stone."

He'd believed Dante, but he'd never actually thought or felt that he'd one day meet someone, on any planet, who was actually willing to try to sacrifice every person in the world.

Incomprehensibly measurelessly less the same day, according to the time of his Amestris, that Dante had shown how flawed humans could be to Edward.

A strand of black night stabbed through the cliff side to their right and sliced an opening around the shape of a circle in it, and it slid out of the cliff wall and fell to the trash below.

"That is not what the world's Truth provides us with," Dad's Homunculus interjected in his common calm and removed voice, at last having reached them, standing between Envy in his dark green haired human shape, and Pride's Selim form from which a puddle of shifting shadow within which eyes and mouths of differing sizes moved in haphazard directions while curling and curving smaller strands of various thinness and thickness arced out of its edges as though they were the distorted arms of a spiral galaxy.

Al corrected his stance once more.

The other Edward fisted his hands tightly enough that his automail's gears whined, and his left fingers punctured his left palm in red.

Julia's face shifted with a number of emotions.

With Ashleigh this close, Edward could see his eyebrows raise.

"I have no need to argue with a human, but I don't care to have the tenets of my theories challenged this severely, so I am willing to point out a small number of its precepts to you."

It was good to know that Dad's Homunculus at least wasn't so arrogant that he was above even having his feathers ruffled slightly.

"The world's Truth keeps the worlds in their place, as well as the people within them," Dad's Homunculus went on. "It is the arbiter that maintains reality's order; and that stores all of the knowledge learned and experienced by all of the species, organic and soul, from bacteria to animal, that has dwelt within the universe; and it has combined these small pieces of knowledge into one consciousness within this planet that is aware of all of the particles and wavelengths residing within space and time.

"Opening the Portal of Truth that leads to this knowledge will not allow you to reach another world.

"It will allow you to reach the fabric of this one.

"Any human without a Philosopher's Stone who endeavors to seek beyond this fabric will discover nothing but a suitable penalty awaiting him or her, meted out as the All Is One flows into One Is All, and the Law of Equivalent Exchange, requires it to be mandated, in order to put him or her in his or her place.

"And any human with a Philosopher's Stone will not discover a means of endless bliss, but just uncover further proof of how cruel and painful the universe, and the Truth, are.

"The worlds on the other side of the Doorway of Truth are nothing more than other minuscule parts of the Truth that contribute this knowledge to the consciousness of each world.

"The Truth that is the ultimate arbiter of order, and that you humans see as God, is nothing more than that."

Dad's Homunculus was at least as cynical as Dante, but at least, unlike her, who had thought that everything was nothing but pointless and meaningless and all of the effort that you put into everything that you said and did was futile and accomplished nothing whatsoever for others, or you yourself; he believed in something, and in the Truth and in the Law of Equivalent Exchange, even though he saw it as as relentless and ruthless and unforgiving and remorseless as Dante saw a reality without it, and he was determined to break through it in far more worse ways than even Dante had desired to.

Ashleigh's eyes just settled.

"Based on Selim Bradley's inhuman features, ones that exist within no natural animal, I take it that you're Homunculi, then.

"I assume that you're intervening here because you're interested in the Truth itself, for yourself, or for Amestris.

"I would have believed that an artificial life form would wish to escape the confines of the barren wasteland that is this world even more than naturally created humans."

"You're correct about that much, but all the world's knowledge will provide us with is the power to live free of all boundaries within this world.

"Reality is built on hardship and sacrifice.

"In order for living beings to thrive, they need to devour, and prey upon, each other and one another. That is how all life forms operate at their most basic, and the consciousness of the planet is the sum total of all of them, so it is a life form that functions through similar means."

Dad's Homunculus' face then shifted a small amount.

"I'll revise that much.

"The consciousness isn't a life form, because God is not a life form, but a perfect being."

Ashleigh snorted derisively, and Envy bristled violently.

"The burden of proof lies on the alchemist who posits the hypothesis," he responded.

"A hypothesis that you're welcome to prove within your own borders.

"However, whatever the ignorant valley dwellers claim, this is Cretan territory, and I'm on the verge of reminding you Amestrians of that as well, so I advise you to deport yourselves.

"Otherwise, you can evaporate along with everyone else in this valley."

Envy bristled further, but this time it was Pride who looked at him in warning, and Envy cringed violently this time and terror appeared on his face.

Edward assumed that Pride was far less tolerant of kin who caused the one who they called Father problems than their supposed Father himself was, at least in one or more meaningful ways.

"Now, Julia, would you rather that we judge our parents' murders before we return to Creta, or would you rather just come with me back home now?

"Neither!" Julia shouted back, agonized and denying furious disbelief in her voice.

"This is my home, and my homeland!

"And it's not a barren wasteland! No place where people cherish warmth and joy, and life and love, can be a barren wasteland!

"I can't believe that you're really Ashleigh.

"Even if you're not lying about why you're researching the Star, you sound just like this Homunculus. You just see the valley, and Amestris, and the rest of the world, and all of the worlds, as nothing but cruel, and all that you want to do is to be a hypocrite who lives in the same ways that you claim to stand against."

The Cretan officer cringed, and his eyes widened slightly, and then narrowed with a far more bitter and distorting and careening and coiling and twisting and knifing and warping and whiplashing and hooked and twisting and plunging and abysmal and measurelessly contorting and plummeting sense of agonized betrayal than Julia's had possessed.

Edward's insides warped themselves, and new stomach heaving sickness surged up.

"It was this Homunculus who raised this possibility, but as much sense as both your stories as to why you're Ashleigh make, I just can't believe it, at least not fully.

"If you really are Ashleigh, restrain the lava and call off the forthcoming attack on Table City, and let us claw our way out of this valley."

Ashleigh's eyes glared angrily now.

"You must recall the wolf Chimera who was chasing down Atlas," he responded, voice now partially defensive and defiant.

"I ordered the other two with me to watch over you to protect you from him, as well; and to protect you from the rest of the filth residing in this cesspool.

"If you need further evidence that I just want you at my side, and safe; stand back and watch me dispatch the barbaric Amestrians threatening you as well, both human and Homunculus, alongside both of them."

The other Edward bristled violently and furiously, fisting both hands tightly that Edward was worried that he was going to strain his gears.

How reckless he still was was further proof that he hadn't yet learned the lesson of Lior.

"Would you just shut up, already!" the other Edward shouted. "You're the one who is just dwelling in a landfill! The Star that you swallowed engulfed your soul along with it, as the price for running away into your delusional dreams where it's okay to sacrifice other people!

"Both you and the Homunculus are crackpots!

"There's no freedom from the pain of the Truth in any way!

"All we can do is accept this reality for what it is, and live with it!"

"That's rich, coming from an Amestrian serving three Homunculi who dabble in God's domain, and who has a brother who has done the same thing, and who has himself."

Al repositioned himself a third time.

The other Ed's jaw dropped slack at the comparison.

Julia started violently.

Ed himself suppressed the urge to cringe at that one, wholly empathizing with, and understanding, how this Al and Ed must feel about this comparison.

"You're too young to have fought in Ishval yourself," so this Creta used that translation, "But I'm sure that this Homunculus fomented that war in his own pursuit for the Truth for his own individual respective reasons; and I'm sure that he's sacrificed just as many lives and souls as I have, both then and beforehand and afterwards, to do so, and that he intends to continue to do so.

"And he must have extensive influence in the Amestrian government to have been able to successfully foment that war. Yet you serve as a State Alchemist, and your brother spends most of his time researching the alchemy that you do while serving.

"Do not call me a hypocrite when you endeavored a human transmutation, and then joined a military influenced by a Homunculus who regularly challenges the Truth of God himself, undoubtedly to find a means of reversing the price that you and your brother paid when you wholly know that it can't be done."

"Brother isn't with them!" Al shouted up at Ashleigh, a mixture of further different shapes of horror and empathy and agony and self hatred in his voice now.

"He'd have resigned a few weeks ago, now that we know that they're tied to the government, and that they provoked the Ishvalan," this Amestris used that name itself, "War of Extermination, if they weren't threatening to try to murder one of his best friends, a childhood friend of ours named Winry Rockbell, hostage if he didn't!"

Edward suppressed the flood of sickness and self hatred at how the third Al had just confirmed for the doubles of the Homunculi who he knew that holding the second Winry hostage would very likely rein in the Al of the first anti-particle, or particle, world; and the Ed who he was possessing, if he was able to wake up sooner or later.

"Nor is he willing to sink to their level!

"We refuse to use the Stone to open the Portal!

"We're going to cross to the other side and bring our bodies back by walking on our own legs, without sacrificing a single human soul!"

Ed opened his mouth to bring up that this wasn't even the same three Homunculi, but Ashleigh responded first, now sounding furious himself.

"You're sacrificing the lives of the rest of the Homunculi's potential future victims by selfishly valuing Winry as much as I value Julia and my parents, and you are willing to oppose the Homunculi and sacrifice them to protect her; and you have the nerve to turn around and tell me not to sacrifice anyone to pursue the Star and the Truth to protect Julia, fulfill my parents' legacies, and establish a better world where no one at all will be sacrificed once again?"

Al staggered a little, but this time he didn't reposition himself.

The other Edward, however, was now shaking and shuddering and trembling violently himself, in fury and anguish, so the disembodied Ed had no guarantee that he wasn't on the verge of needing to keep himself on his feet.

"To say nothing of how the Ishvalan Civil War, and countless other wars to defend your country against foreign invasions or rebellious majorities or minorities who the Homunculi might or might not have influenced, depending on how old they are, were supported by even the least corrupt factions of your government, and by the populace itself, to promote what they term 'justice.'"

Edward suppressed yet one more surge of insides warping sickness.

As Ed himself had believed in revenge; until Winry, Granny, Mustang, Hawkeye, Havoc, Armstrong, Sciezka, Ross, Bloch, and the others had taught him more about how to truly grow up.

"The Homunculi wouldn't have been able to foment the war that they initiated with Ishval if Amestris' own people hadn't believed that Amestris had valid reasons to declare war, due to how the Ishvalans murdered and hurt large numbers of Amestrians because a careless Amestrian, or one in the employ of the Homunculi pretending to be careless, fatally shot a child."

Edward sighed in relief that Al and the other Ed didn't react much other than to shift a little at Ashleigh raising the likelihood that someone had fatally shot a child on purpose.

"Most of Amestris' populace thus believed that the war against Ishval was morally valid, because the Ishvalans had killed or harmed large numbers of Amestrians; so, in the name of what they call justice, the Ishvalans who had murdered or hurt them supposedly needed to die to be penalized for murdering or harming Amestrians.

"The large majority of Amestris' wars have been supported by the general population and the supposedly 'incorruptible' factions of the military for similar reasons.

"Justice is nothing but a flowery word for senseless slaughter, yet the average Amestrian waves it like a white flag of peace.

"Even though killing or hurting others because others have killed them or hurt them; due to how their dreams and their reasons for having them, and their beliefs and methods, are opposing each other's, and one another's; whether they oppose each other's and one another's to exploit or hate them, or defend or protect them; are the very sources of war and death and pain in the first place."

Al needed to reposition himself.

The other Ed staggered, but Ed sighed heavily in relief to see that his shaking and trembling and shuddering actually lessened, and that he'd understood what Ashleigh meant.

Maybe, if it wasn't already too late, he wouldn't cause a Lior himself, after all.

Julia's face became neutral at her awareness that this Al and Ed had at last realized what she'd been trying to get across to them, but they'd learned it in one of the worst ways possible.

"How is letting who knows how many other people potentially die, or suffer, at the hands of the Homunculi, and the Homunculi themselves die, or suffer; to protect and defend Winry, any different in any form from how other Amestrians repeatedly sacrifice innumerable enemies who wage war against them to death or injury, physical or emotional or mental; to promote that which they call justice?

"What will you do if I attempt to kill these Homunculi where they stand, regardless of whether I've convinced Julia of who I am, to protect and defend the majority of Amestris from them; and they request you to protect them; and you know that, if you don't, and any of them escape, Winry will very likely die, but if you, they will die?"

Al repositioned himself once more, but with a little less difficulty.

The other Ed's shuddering and trembling and shaking resumed, but he didn't stagger once more.

This time, Envy just bristled slightly.

Pride, however, was apparently growing tired himself of hearing humans speak as though they were superior to Homunculi, for he now scowled blackly on his own initiative.

"I don't know if these Homunculi have traveled through the Doorway or not. But even if they're mirrors themselves, when word of their death reaches the Homunculi of this world and they hear that you let them die, Winry is almost as likely to die then as she will if you don't battle for the Homunculi from your Amestris."

"If they don't depart, and I murder them or forcibly evict them from territory that belongs to Creta, you'll see yourselves just how far you're willing to go to sacrifice countless lives and souls for the sake of your respective individual purposes and beliefs, and wishes and dreams."

This had gone on long enough.

"I don't see you living as any less of a hypocrite yourself," the Edward inside the body of an Edward who might still believe that his definition of morality and the Truth, and battling in the name of what he called justice, interjected quickly before anyone else could talk.

"If you understand that striving for your own individual dreams and reasons just kills and hurts people no matter whether they're to defend and protect, or hurt and kill, then why are you willing to sacrifice innumerable lives and souls?"

Ashleigh shrugged in irritated condescension.

"You sound as though you're the largest hypocrite of all, if you're willing to ask a question like that.

"With the world as it currently is; if I don't create a new world, I won't be able to protect anyone or anything, even the people who need me to."

"How is sacrificing the sister who loves you, and who you love, because you refused to move forward from the deaths of your parents, so you hid your survival from her to have a better chance of taking revenge against their murderer, supposed to protect her?

"Give me a break, will you?

"You won't even give her convincing evidence that you are who you say that you are."

Edward cast about for ideas, and looked around.

Was Julia wearing anything that might symbolize her former bond with Ashleigh, before their parents had been murdered and he'd taken a larger scale combination of Scar's and Mustang's paths?

A glimmer of light reflecting from the lava that sounded as though it were rising behind the wall, and nearing the top, brought Ed's gaze to an ornate rectangular earring with a green stone in the center dangling from Julia's left ear.

One that Ed now clearly recalled didn't have a second number in its pair hanging from Julia's right ear.

Hope surged.

This was one difference Ed might be able to make.

"Are you wearing an earring on your right ear that matches the one on Julia's left, and that you can show to her to prove that you are who you claim to be?"

Julia's eyes flew wide and sightless, and her face drained until it was as clear as the air.

Al's head whipped over to watch her closely, and what weakness remained in his stance faded.

The other Ed's eyes went wide in an indecipherable tangle of inexpressibly profound disgust and desperate hope.

Ashleigh started violently and his own eyes widened, and for a few seconds he stood in a defensively uncertain position, clearly unsure whether he wanted to let the shields down that he must have put up to endure everything he'd gone through for so long enough to answer that question.

But then he reached up, lifted his mask slightly with one hand and reached inside it to his right ear with the other, and removed it to hold up a similar earring by its chain where the lava clearly lit it.

Julia staggered herself and needed to reposition her own feet, and tears of her own pushed forwards into her eyes and spilled down her face.

Al broke into a sprint in their direction, though he kept his attention on the transmuted rock wall.

The other Ed clenched his teeth together tight enough that, if they'd been any weaker, they most likely would have chipped, and clenched his two hands tightly enough that his left nails didn't just draw blood, they turned the skin of his palms around where they dug into it pale, along with the knuckles of all of his left fingers, and his automail hand's servos and gears whined loudly enough that they could be clearly heard, although at a low volume.

Then flowing lava appeared over the top of the transmuted wall and began flooding down it, and to break it into shards from behind and above it.

Al clapped his hands, and the eyes of the Edward who had last spoken widened.

Was this Al a true Stone himself, or had he seen the Truth for another reason?

But Ashleigh extended one hand towards him, while raising his earring back to his ear with his other hand.

"I told you, I'm burying these vermin in this wasteland!"

Bright green cascaded over it, and then a thick column of incandescent green electricity erupted from his hand, and he swung it down over the trash covered surface that Al was standing on at his feet with almost as much swiftness as the Envy who was Ed's half brother could move, and Al barely leapt back out of the way in time to avoid it.

His Stone had partially merged with his body, enough to enhance his bodily functions to the very limit of what a natural human could accomplish without human transmutation being involved.

"Al!" Julia cried, her face still streaked with wetness, and then crimson coursed out of her feet and the dais that they were on rocketed the rest of the way down to the garbage.

Further crimson coursed out over the garbage to dance around the lava surging over the wall and convert it, and an unknown amount of the lava past it, into an enormous round shield of thick molten glass that then dragged itself down the almost fully collapsed wall and wedged itself into the garbage in front of Al.

"Stop it, Brother!

"The other Milosians, Al, and the two Eds aren't our enemies!"

Dad's Homunculus at last made his move.

Crimson currents coruscated out from his right foot into the wall to his side, and the stone there decomposed and reconstructed itself into a diamond hand that reached out to grab Ashleigh; while countless shadows erupted forwards out of the pool of night below Pride's feet, all of them with large teethed mouths at the front that moved in the direction of his mask to try to bite it off and force the mesh of scar tissue that was no doubt beneath it to be stung by the hot air; and Envy sprang forwards onto the wheel of the mining vehicle and enlarged back to his eight legged green barely human shape while shifting most of his body mass into his middle legs so he could dig them into the wheel of the vehicle and rip it out, sending the rest falling and causing Ashleigh to lose his position.

Without Ashleigh even needing to clap as Dante had, green oblate eggs of transmutation energies washed through the air in a storm towards Pride's shadow pool to freeze all of the moisture around his strands of shadow all the way back to where Pride and Dad's Homunculus were standing into compact reinforced prisms of ice that bent all the visible light around them into blackness.

At the same time as he did this, with dexterity that even Scar hadn't displayed when transmuting while moving, he drew his sword with his right hand in a fluid and precise motion and leapt forward to avoid the fist of diamond while bringing the blade into a two handed overhead chop that he then slashed down into Envy's enlarging and elongating forehead, severing it cleanly.

Ed's eyes flew wide as he realized that he'd had the exact polar opposite idea of who was the most dangerous enemy here.

If Dad's Homunculus could transmute without moving through the gas of the air as Dante had been able to while clapping, he would have already done it.

But Ashleigh could transmute without moving through the gas of the air, and unlike Dante and Dad's Homunculus, he was very skilled at hand to hand combat as well.

Even if his own Stone hadn't possessed tens of millions of souls and just slightly over a million; or over five hundred thousand if the Stone of the Hohenheim of the first anti-particle, or particle, world, possessed half of it as part of his body or externally; he'd have been at a drastic disadvantage.

But Ashleigh's own Stone was capable of lasting far longer than Dad's Homunculus; so, unless his plan for obtaining both Stones didn't require him wearing down Ashleigh, at least a little, first; as Pride's amorphous shadow limbs appeared to be fashioned from photons converted out of the blackbodies of shadows, the Homunculi's sole advantage over Ashleigh was that, as two part human Chimeras shouldn't be much of a peril for a Homunculus, they outnumbered him.

That was also their own advantage, unless Julia was willing to join the battle.

Ashleigh ended the first transmutation and backflipped off of Envy to whirl aside and let the two Chimeras spring on him and claw into him as crimson sliced over his body and started to repair it, and Ashleigh's eyes narrowed in irritation.

Then he extended his free hand and ended the transmutation restricting Pride, and launched another thick green trunk of lightning up at Dad's Homunculus.

Crimson currents shot down the stone into the garbage to extend a gigantic tall megalith in the form of the black rubber of a tire up in front of him, and it absorbed the green lightning and altered its course to dance over its surface, while leaving enough space for new, much thinner and far more numerous, shadows of Pride's to extend down into the garbage, clearly intending to snake through the openings amid them and ambush Ashleigh from different angles.

Then the black rubber fell towards Ashleigh, and Envy once more extended his tongue out from his mouth far faster than it had moved yet to whip into the garbage behind Ashleigh and send it flying upwards and forwards, trying to force Ashleigh's footing to become unsteady and send him staggering into the tire.

Julia was now sprinting for the lava now almost entirely flooding over the wall, and she pushed her left foot down into the garbage slightly to send a dim glow of red into it, and all of the garbage beneath it and the lava beyond altered in an expanding wave into cool magma.

But, rather than end his new green lightning column, Ashleigh poured an incommunicably greater amount of electricity into it until it was dancing with whiplashing emerald, so much electricity that it wouldn't die away right away when Ashleigh ended the transmutation.

Then he halted it, and more green coursed over the garbage around him to drag all of it up into an enormous rising gout of continuous water that dragged up boulder of garbage after clump of garbage into the still howling conflagration of green amidst the rubber tire and launched it as though it was a curving volcano up at Dad's Homunculus and Pride.

Pride's eyes actually flew wide, and he whipped his shadows back into a shield of too many layers to count, but it was too late.

The waves of reinforced electricity well transcending anything that natural laws could fashion within the tidal wave roared into blinding green light that sent spots dancing over Edward's eyes and smashed an enormous crater deeply into the wall, but so much garbage and water had now joined it that the electricity continued to surge throughout the area even when Ashleigh ended that transmutation and sent another column of green lighting into the conflagration, continuing to maintain the electricity.

Then very dim green washed through the air towards the cool magma, and a number of thick streams of lava burst furiously up from beneath it to contort through the air and gather in a knot above his head, in preparation for an attack from any of the Homunculi or Amestrian humans, or perhaps even Julia; also giving the lava that Julia had trapped beneath it room to start bubbling and roaring back up out into the air and flowing in the direction of the river once more.

Julia, however, knelt and touched the garbage, and more crimson coruscated over it.

"This is what you were researched for," she pleaded to something unseen, as though sending out a desperate prayer to a deity.

"Please rise up."

Seconds later, a mammoth arm of magma many yards in diameter with a similarly colossal hand at the top with its palm open squalled out of the ground to tower up into the air and start to curve towards the lowest cavernous crater in the canyon wall below the geothermal power station from which the waterfalls of lava were falling.

Ashleigh snarled, and the knot of lava cut into a switchback to rip into the rising magma arm.

As soon as the lava streams touched it, the crimson currents writhing over it coursed down the lava tentacles and altered them into magma themselves before they could reach the hand. Then it began to drag the lava up out of the lava river, raising the arm further, although much more slowly now, as they increasingly joined it.

Envy whipped his tail around in a tight arc to bat one wolf Chimera, currently somersaulting backwards, back along his side. Then his tongue arced backwards in an opposing curve to wind around the Chimera while he was still in midair and had no purchase and drag him back to Envy's now mostly healed mouth, where he closed his teeth around his upper body and bit him apart.

The other Chimera sprang back and began to circle Envy warily.

However, the storm of emerald was still writhing around Pride, and Dad's Homunculus hadn't yet reappeared, so Ashleigh kept his transmuted emerald energy feeding more and more lava into the magma snakes joining the inexorably rising arm and increasingly altering it into lava, continually but irreversibly converting more and more magma back to lava faster than Julia could decompose it and reconstruct it as magma.

The other Edward, his automail blade now at the ready, snarled furiously and rushed Ashleigh to try to distract him, and Ashleigh brought his sword up to block.

But the eyes of the Edward who had gone through this twice before flew wide in far more surprise than he'd experienced in hours as Ashleigh's alteration of the magma arm to lava didn't slow down even a little.

Ashleigh was a genius alchemist on a level that even Dante could barely brush.

For the first time, the Ed from the Amestris where the Stone was the most cost effective fully understood why his own brother usually won most of their spars.

The reckless way that this Edward was dueling Ashleigh, and all the openings that it was creating, was preventing Ed himself from finding an easily apparent opening to join the duel and fight together with his double without risking a friendly fire incident.

Al apparently cared about Julia too much that he wasn't joining the battle himself, and he was just standing a good distance away and watching what was going on warily.

And, from how he'd talked and acted in regards to Julia earlier, the Edward who had gone through this twice already wasn't sure that he could trust Al to do so even if it appeared that he had no choice.

Ed himself wasn't uncertain what to do, as getting in the middle of Ed's and Ashleigh's duel

Ashleigh walked backwards a few steps, while deflecting and parrying the other Edward's strikes, but even now his reconstruction of the magma arm back into lava didn't lessen its pace even a tiny bit.

And he must be keeping an eye out for the ambush from the sole transmutation capable Homunculus that he knew was coming.

"It doesn't matter whether the dwellers of this valley are capable of kindness," Ashleigh spoke as he tried to dart forward and knock the other Ed's slashes to the side to create an opening.

And even while talking, and engaging in a fast paced sword fight, his transmutation didn't decrease its rate even a little.

Was even Dad, who had been able to put his body, mind, and soul back together when he'd been imprisoned in the Gate with them separated when he shouldn't have been in any condition to perform alchemy at all, close to as brilliant as Ashleigh?

"They still saw our parents as traitors, and abandoned them to Atlas," Ashleigh was continuing.

The other Edward leapt up and twirled into a kick at Ashleigh's face with his automail leg, and he sidestepped it and sliced up to try to catch that Edward in the left side of his stomach or chest, but Ed whirled to the side and tucked forwards into a forward descending ball to alter the position of his body and cause its tip to pass centimeters or even millimeters past his back.

"They gave their lives for the secret of the holy land, so I need to protect it and finish their research, and if you were still the Julia who you used to be, who felt at home in Creta with me, you'd understand that, and help me do it."

"You have it backwards!" Julia shouted in response, and intentionally end her reconstruction of the magma back into lava throughout most of the arm to try to send more magma up a much thinner strand in the center and just force the hand up faster.

"You should be helping me!

"They gave their lives for the people who are fighting for us themselves!

"And I'm fighting for them myself now!

"If we pull this off, they'll never see any reason to hate alchemists, and fear them, again!"

But Ashleigh just stopped extending more lava up into the arm and started arcing the green into the thinner magma core at the center, and the green inexorably crawled closer and closer to the hand, which now slowed down once more as Julia struggled in vain to change the lava back to magma.

"What future can monsters so inhumane that they'd oppress the people trying to free them from oppression create?" Ashleigh challenged.

"Their willingness to inflict the same adversity on their saviors makes them even worse than any of the Amestrians save for the Homunculi, who are repaying their origins as experiments by turning the Amestrians into experiments.

"The people who you're so loyal to didn't learn a thing from all their suffering, with the exception of how to cause other people to suffer in the same way.

"Do you just want to position the people who you claim to care about to do to another ethnic minority what Creta and Amestris did to us?

"If I spare this valley; within a matter of decades, if not years, there's a good chance that they'll offer economic aid and resources to the Ishvalans and give them a new home and a chance to start over within the Milos that you believe you're about to establish; just for them to betray them as Amestris betrayed us both and consign them to dig for scraps and momentos, such as our earrings, in a natural sewer."

This reminded Ed of what Dante had said about other humans having no ability to not let their sins rule them earlier today, and Teacher had told him about discussing with Dante, so he opened his mouth to join in the argument.

But Julia's eyes flew wide, as though she'd just become aware of something very important, and she started to raise her left hand, perhaps to remove, or at least touch, her earring.

However, before either of them could say or do anything further, Dad's Homunculus at last emerged from beneath the garbage in rising red, altering them into waves as he ascended, with something clutched in his right hand.

The leader of the third world's Homunculi didn't even say anything.

More crimson just coursed outwards in all directions, and Ashleigh emitted a pained cry and threw so much weight into his next blow that Ed knew that he'd end up overextending himself, slashing his sword into the other Edward's sword with so much might that it broke the automail blade apart and smashed that Edward backwards and downwards to fall onto his back and sink into the trash.

But, though he looked a little unsteady on his feet now, he still continued to progress his transmutation on the part lava, part magma arm, although now gradually enough that Julia at last started to decrease its rate.

Julia clenched her own teeth this time, and though she tried to disguise it, Ed had enough experience with facial expressions and body language in this kind of circumstance to tell that it wasn't just from emotional and mental torture.

A violent chill seared up his spine.

What had Dad's Homunculus just done?

"What did you do to him?" she questioned.

It was Pride who answered, standing on the rough floor of the bottom of the crater that the emerald electricity had gouged into the cliff side and that had at last faded away, leaning against a raised chunk of stone and breathing heavily with burns scoring most of his body.

The remaining Chimera, still circling Envy and looking for an opening, stopped moving.

Within a minority of seconds, Envy's tongue cut under the trash a short distance in front of him, and as soon as enough of it was below, the hands and arms of the smaller figures that kept shifting out of it all must have picked up hard pieces of garbage, for a storm of precisely aimed chunks of garbage exploded out of the trash to fly at the Chimera's eyes, wrists, neck, stomach, and other sensitive regions of his body while he was unprepared for the attack.

The Chimera staggered back, and then the tongue itself shot up out of the trash and thrust into the lupine figure's windpipe, crushing it.

He fell back and gasped for air.

"The citywide circle is in pieces, but this valley itself surrounds the Hill of Milos in a circle in this world," Pride spoke, his tone tired and strained.

Al jolted.

The other Ed, sitting up painfully, sagged a little in relief.

Edward suppressed the urge to clench his own yet another time at the revelation that the two Cselkcess variations of the Stone had been transmuted from a citywide circle.

Pride was giving Envy an appraising look, however, and Envy stiffened in a surprising mix of terror and fury.

"Don't you dare," Envy hissed viciously and furiously and savagely through clenched teeth.

"I haven't died enough times for my cores to have been siphoned enough for it to work.

"And you know that, as talented a son as I am, Father will never let you hear the end of it if you do it."

Pride frowned in affronted indignation, but whatever he'd been thinking of, he didn't put it into action.

He just continued his explanation.

"And garbage, as you know, attracts countless carrion beings, many of which are feasting on the foodstuffs and other resources within it as we speak.

"Carrion animals that have also imbibed the blood shed by too many injured Milosians to count over the course of their lifespans.

"Father doesn't, yet, understand all of the specifics of the citywide transmutation circle for forging the Milosian Stones, but he has enough of a general idea of how most of it is set up that he was able to rearrange the rodents, and other carrion life forms, in the vicinity into a matrix that would hijack the matrices of the Stone circle proper, and enable him to utilize it to set off a chain reaction within your Stone that excites the energy within your souls to move faster.

"He now has Ashleigh's former face in his right hand."

Ashleigh went fully stiff, and Julia's mouth opened.

"When Atlas fused it with his own face, he needed it to still have partially oxygenated blood in it, or it would have just all become scar tissue of his own. Thus, a small amount of Ashleigh's soul was intermingled with Atlas',"

Ashleigh started acutely, while he was still stiff.

Julia clenched her hands together tightly.

"And when Father murdered Atlas, because that soul was a foreign entity that Atlas' body continually attempted to reject, it was attached loosely enough that Father's own Stone could separate it from Atlas as his own soul departed the material realm."

Ed realized that his jaw was slack, and the chill grew incredibly icier.

Dad's Homunculus might be less competent than Dante at influencing a government, but he'd been wrong to assume that he wasn't that much better, or better at all, an alchemist than Dante.

Even Dante hadn't known how to transmute pieces of a virtual single soul and separate them into distinct portions.

Dad's Homunculus, as well, might be far more brilliant than the Dad from his own world.

If so, what did that say about the double of his Dad from the third world, and perhaps this one?

"Through the traces of Ashleigh's soul left behind, Dad is keeping the face's blood flowing.

"Atlas himself is dead, but the small traces of your own soul in the blood of your former face are now close enough to you that, although they aren't a full soul and ordinarily able to do this; with the assistance of the Stone transmutation circle and the rate at which the souls fused to your body are moving; it has enough energy to influence the link it has with your body through your spirit, the tether that connects your body to your soul.

"Your Stone isn't fully part of your body, so you might be able to remove it and retain it if Father used his ordinary methods of stealing a Stone; but it still reconstructed itself as enough a part of you and your soul that, due to how close he's now standing to Ashleigh, he now has a direct connection to Ashleigh's Stone.

"And, as Atlas stripped off a piece of your right side and connected it to his own skin, and you're in close vicinity to Ashleigh, both of your Stones are now starting to drain into his, and they should have fully reconstructed themselves as part of his Stone in a matter of minutes."

Al fell to his knees at how this meant that Ashleigh would very likely die without the Stone connected to him and vitalizing his body, but he wasn't able to do more than tremble slightly.

New tears pushed into Julia's eyes, and she paled so much that she appeared to have even lost the transparency of being nothing but clear skin.

The other Edward's face became as white as a sheet, and his mouth opened.

"I'm sure, whatever happens, you'll find your way out. You've got strong legs. You'll get up and use them, won't you, Edward?"

It doesn't matter who you are. If you work hard, it pays off. I know Equivalent Exchange is true. And I don't care if it's childish to believe in its precepts. I'd rather be considered a child than live in a world of cynicism, chaos, or apathy.

"Maybe what Dante said was right. Maybe you can give up all you've got, and get nothing back. But still, even if I can't prove it's true, I have to try. For your sake, Al."

"Ed! Get up, Ed! Get up, Ed, and move forward!"

Edward was not going to become disheartened this time.

He ran through everything that he knew about how the pathways of energy washed in both anti-particle, or particle, worlds; and in his own world; and even in the world where the pathways of energy hadn't allowed alchemy to have any successes; and everything that he knew about Philosopher's Stone, incomplete and genuine, transmutation circles worked; and about the two forms of Philosopher's Stones themselves; searching for a way to stop the transmutation without catalyzing a rebound.

But, before he could discover anything, Julia's face set in determination, and she raced in Ashleigh's direction.

Caught by surprise, he wasn't able to take a step back and to the side soon enough to prevent her from touching him, and a fountain of spiraling green moving and swirling like an upside down funneling geyser and shedding motes of emerald extended horizontally out from where Julia had touched to flow around her.

Ed started, trying to figure out what he'd done.

"You won't kill Ashleigh if I sever the three way connection by transmuting both of us to a different side of the Doorway other than this one, and from each other, and I convert all of the lava emerging from the geothermal power station into enough carbon in the air that I'll have enough ingredients for a human transmutation to merge Ashleigh's almost clinically dead face back with the scar tissue on his true face."

Al struggled to raise his arms to force himself back to his feet, but he appeared unable to move more than a little.

The other Ed's mouth moved soundlessly, but he knew as well as Edward did that there was nothing that they could do.

Ashleigh's eyes and posture became completely unreadable.

But, as much as Ed himself completely and totally and fully and utterly and entirely and absolutely and incomprehensibly and entirely and indefinably hated himself and felt guilty for feeling it and thinking it, so much desperate hope flooded him now that it flooded his eyes with a small amount of new tears.

Julia had already told him precisely what Amestris she wanted to visit.

Just as much desperate, sheer relief blinded up through all of what his self, and he, was and wasn't, and had not not been, and might be, and wouldn't be, too.

Just healing Ashleigh's face, even as one this horrifically damaged and literally practically almost nothing but scar tissue, shouldn't imprison either of them in the Gate, so they should both survive this freely.

And, although Ed hadn't been successful in any of the ways that he'd hoped that it would happen, and he was in no condition to affect where Dad's Homunculus would reappear on the other side of the Gate, or even on which of the three sides, this might have been it.

The chief alchemical researcher close to the Stone on the third world had been prevented from obtaining two more Cselkcess variant true Philosopher's Stones that would last for who knew how long, and that he needed as two of the central pieces of whatever method he intended to implement to decompose and reconstruct the Truth itself as part of him.

And he'd been connected to Ashleigh's and Julia's souls when Julia had catalyzed the human transmutation on Ashleigh, so he was part of the transmutation now as well, and whatever happened to him as a result, it might render him unable to continue his research.

All that Ed might need to do now was defeat the remaining Homunculi in that Amestris, remove whatever minority of military forces loyal to them served in that Amestris' government, and destroy all of the research into the Stone there, and he'd have freed that Amestris from the pursuit of the Stone's forbidden power, as well.

The Al and Edward here had confirmed that his double on the fourth, and perhaps legitimately hopefully final, corner of the charged particle universes comprising the cosmos knit together by the Gate, was also very likely just as close to the Stone, and Ed had no means of returning to this last corner of the Gate any time soon any more than he did his own.

But, as Mustang had said last night, Ed could only focus on what was right in front of him.

He'd leave the alchemists and Homunculi close to the Stone in this fourth, and last, corner of the oppositely charged cosmos to this Al, Ed, Winry, Granny, and their other loved ones and friends, at least for now.

He reached down into his pocket and wedged the paper with the blood seal back into a finger of his automail hand, and then he brought it out of his pocket and clapped it.

Julia turned to give Al a heartfelt and sincerely protectively thankful smile.

"Al, Ed, Ed, thank you for everything.

"Can you please tell Vatanen what happened here, and that I'll find a way back here as soon as I'm reasonably sure that it's safe for me to return to a place where these Homunculi can find me easily?"

"That's a promise," Al responded, his own words just as heartfelt and protective.

The Ed who didn't belong in this Amestris opened his mouth to thank Julia for what she was about to do, himself, but before he could say anything, for the fifth time in the space of twenty-four hours, long and thin arms as ebony as the void and with feelers for hands grabbed his body, and this time he was rocketing towards two ordinary shaded stone double doors with an intricate inscription that was at once a diagram and a picture that appeared familiar, but that he couldn't place the identity of, in front of him.

Edward's heart refused to beat, and his lungs refused to work; as he hoped desperately that this was, in all of the ways that mattered, the end of his second battle with alchemists and Homunculi close to the Philosopher's Stone.

.

"It looks like the sky isn't going to be on my side in this fight! Dorothy! Get out of the way!"-Roger Smith

"What the h-ll is going on!?"-Dan Dastun

"Truth. Those who seek it out, unknowingly become obsessed with this grand illusion that they're able to control this world, this tiny world! The incomplete book of Gordon Rosewater's, written in his younger days, depicts the final days of humanity and the foolish humans who use the power of God."-Michael 'Schwarzwald' Seeback

'I think you understand, Dad, why I did what I did. As I emulate you, I will create history with my own two hands.'-Alex Rosewater

"D-mn! Who are you!? Who the h-ll is your pilot!?"-Roger Smith

"The Memories are here, Negotiatior!"-Michael 'Schwarzwald' Seeback

"Big O, it doesn't make any sense to just let him have his way, don't you agree? No matter how often you come back from the grave, that's where you belong. Eternal sleep means eternal! It's moving? It's you! Alan Gabriel!"-Roger Smith

"Oh, I must say, this does feel good! I haven't felt anything quite like this since I decided to quit being a total human! My body, my nerves! They've all been tied directly into Big Duo! Big Duo itself is my very own body!"-Alan Gabriel

"You'd go that far. Well, you have it backwards. That incomplete Megadeus has control of you."-Roger Smith

"What!?"-Alan Gabriel

"An incomplete Megadeus seeks out a Dominus. You're just being used as a device to activate it. That's exactly why your master stole Dorothy, isn't it?"-Roger Smith

"Which master do you mean? The Union? Rosewater? Either way, I don't really care who it is. There's just one thing that I have to make perfectly clear and teach to you. I have to teach you that your unwarranted self-confidence, your arrogance in believing that you can control machines, is just a delusion! By sending you to h-ll! Big Duo! Showtime!"-Alan Gabriel

"D-mn! It must have been that last attack! Ordinarily, I'm not one to whine, but I do have to admit that this fight has me a little worried. However, that isn't the Megadeus' original form. The fantasies that Gordon Rosewater dreamed about will not be repeated! People who don't do anything but live in their twisted dreams, should just stay in their dreams forever!"-Roger Smith

"Be afraid, Roger Smith! This particular dream isn't going to end until I bring your life to an end!"-Alan Gabriel

"You're nothing but an inhuman monster!"-Roger Smith

"Die!"-Alan Gabriel

"A Megadeus chooses its Dominus."-Michael 'Schwarzwald' Seeback

"Who the h-ll said that!? What!? What!? What the h-ll is this!? Why is this happening!? But I haven't killed him yet!"-Alan Gabriel

"You! You possess the foolishness of both man and machine!"-Michael 'Schwarzwald' Seeback

"Shut up!"-Alan Gabriel

"It chooses one who controls the power of God, created by man. One who is able to arrive at one truth. That's not the case with you!"-Michael 'Schwarzwald' Seeback

"Ye guilty."-Big Duo

THE BIG O II:

Act 24: THE BIG FIGHT