Chapter 1: Watch that first step

The Iron Sole Alchemist (Chapter 1) Watch that first step.

by Howlin

(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to this universe, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

. . .

Alchemy.

This mysterious and contradictory force had dominated my life, even before my encounter with Edward Elric gave that force a name.

I came from a place that used to be called Liore. Like everyone else at the time, I believed that Father Cornello was a prophet working miracles in the name of the sun god, Lito. Still, even then, ignorant as I was, I was questioning the established dogma.

I didn't question the father's power, nor did I doubt its source in the sun god. I questioned the motivations of the sun god. Why bestow his gifts on us and not on all those on whom his light falls? With the arrival of the Fullmetal Alchemist, I got my answer, but like every other answer I've ever gotten, it only led to further questions.

The false prophet Cornello had been able to manipulate us because we were ignorant. I was resolved to never let that happen to me again. I left for Central that day, not long after the Elrics.

When I got off the train in Central, I was overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of the big city. I was snapped out of my wonderment by a bit of gossip I overheard.

"If the killer's really so dangerous that he's getting away with targeting State Alchemists, how does moving the people most able to catch him out of Central make us more safe?"

"Hopefully, with all the Alchemists running away from Central, the killer will follow."

"Excuse me, miss," I said. "Did I just overhear you saying that all the alchemists have left Central?"

"That's right, young man."

"Damn. The only reason I came to Central in the first place was to learn Alchemy."

I wandered the streets for Central feeling sorry for myself for a long time. Then I saw it in a store window. Introduction to Alchemy. I ended up spending my train fare home on that book, but it was more than an equivalent exchange.

. . .

I didn't have enough money left after buying the book for both food and shelter, so I spent the night on the street. It was just as well. A bed would have been wasted on me as I spend the whole night reading by the light of the street lamps.

One of the concepts in the book was difficult, not because it was complicated. I was prepared for that. It was difficult because it contradicted my experience with alchemy. Equivalent Exchange. Father Cornello's miracles never followed that law. It didn't fit, but then again, it didn't matter.

When the sun came up, I went down to the river to attempt my first transmutation. The silt on the bank made the perfect medium in which to draw my circle, and the mud from the bed was the perfect material to transmute.

I carefully drew the circle, then gingerly placed my hands on the array. Nothing happened. I felt betrayed. The theory had seemed to make sense. The book's array had looked flawless.

It was at that point that I noticed that some water had formed a trickle from the clump of mud I put in the middle, and had washed away part of the array. Embarrassed, and hoping no one had noticed my earlier outrage, I repaired my damaged array, and placed my hands on it more quickly this time, so as to hopefully avoid my earlier complication.

The array began to glow with an incredible golden light. The mud in the center began to move on its own. As I stared at it in intense wonder, a cloud of smoke exploded in the center of the array, blinding me momentarily, and causing me to fall backward.

Coughing and wiping soot from my face, I realized what had gone wrong. The book's array had called for dry ingredients. The mud had all the materials for the transmutation, but it also had water, which had to go somewhere.

When the cloud of steam and dirt cleared, I saw the results of my transmutation. A fired and glazed ceramic cup. It worked.

I was struck by how people walking by didn't even seem to miss a step. Back in Liore, they would have said I'd performed a miracle.

I used that array several more times almost as if to prove the first time wasn't a fluke to myself. By midday, I had dozens if such cups strewn across the river bank, and I was covered head to toe in the dirty water that condensed from the minor explosions after each transmutation.

Then, my stomach growled.

I was out of money, and the thought of begging for charity was rather unappealing. As I was contemplating what a fool I'd been for not preparing for this journey more completely, a solution occurred to me that seemed too simple to be a real option.

I gathered up the cups I had transmuted, and spent an hour or so washing the dirt off them in the river. That done, I spent the remainder of the day finding a shop that would buy them.

The sale earned me enough for a room at a hotel, and a couple of hot meals. Once I had a full stomach and was lying in bed, the implications of that sale hit me.

In spite of the access to education people here in Central had, most chose not to avail themselves of it. I could manufacture things using alchemy, and even though everyone here could do the same with a little training, they'd pay me to do it for them.

I now had a plan for funding my education, and I wasted no time putting it into practice.

. . .

For the first few weeks, I was living in hotels, dividing my time between learning more about alchemy and finding buyers for the products of my experiments. As my alchemy improved, the increasingly complex products I was able to make eventually earned me enough not only to pay rent on a small apartment and keep food in the cupboard, but left me enough to buy more alchemy books.

Such was my way of life for more than a year, and I might have happily lived like that for the rest of my life if word hadn't reached me about trouble back in Liore.

. . .

I spent more time preparing for my trip back to Liore than I had when I left for Central. I added transmutation circles to the soles of my shoes to regulate traction, as well as the integrity of the surface I was walking on. I knew that if I was going into a war zone, the ability to move quickly would be vital, and the soft sand in Liore would make that difficult unless I had an edge.

What I just couldn't wrap my mind around was, why had the people of Liore rebelled against the state? The Fullmetal Alchemist had demonstrated Cornello as a fraud, but apparently an acquaintance of mine had overheard some Colonel or another talking about a miracle working priest back home who really incited a revolution. How had the folks back home fallen for the same trick twice?

A diagram etched into my canteen would serve as a water purification system, allowing me to safely drink from any water source I found. After all, in desert warfare, thirst can be just as much a threat as bullets, and the military hasn't exactly proven itself above contaminating water supplies when it has suited their aims.

Perhaps the same betrayed feeling which led me to study alchemy made the others even more desperate for something to believe in. So desperate that they were ready to abandon the lesson about false prophets we learned from Cornello.

My provisions gathered and preparations made, I set out from my apartment in Central toward Liore. The first part of my journey was by train, and was relatively uneventful, but when I reached the end of the line, I found that it would be impossible to travel to Liore by car. Not only was no one willing to drive me to a war zone, but the military was supposedly detaining any civilian vehicles approaching the city. I would have to go on foot.

. . .

Thanks to my preparations, my journey progressed quickly. In under a day, I crested a dune and saw Liore. There was obvious damage from the fighting, but somehow, there was a kind of symmetry to it that suggested a pattern to the chaos. Just outside the city was the military's encampment. There were armored vehicles massing in the camp. The military was preparing to pacify the city with violence. I had to get inside.

I climbed down the dune, then began circling around the military's encampment. I'd made it about a quarter of the way around when a patrol noticed me.

"Hold it right there!" The lone soldier leveled his rifle at me.

I stopped in my tracks, painfully aware that my life was the twitch of a finger from ending, then and there.

"Hands where I can see them!"

I had to do something. His voice had a nervous crack to it. The longer that rifle was pointed at me, the more likely it would go off, but what could I do? Without a plan, I had no choice but to comply and hope this soldier had the restraint to keep his weapon from firing.

I raised my hands, then lifted my left foot meaning to turn toward the soldier. As I did so, I remembered the transmission circles on my shoes. It was my only chance.

When I finished my turn, I stomped my left food down, activating the array. The sudden movement startled the soldier, but he couldn't react in time. Arcs of violet light were visible emanating from my left foot. The ground under his feet lost its integrity, and collapsed in on itself, taking my would be killer down with it. The pit I transmuted was deep. It would take him some time to climb out of it. Meanwhile, I would have reached the city.

. . .

There wasn't much fighting going on inside the city. It was eerily calm, perhaps foreshadowing the proverbial storm. I took advantage of that time by updating the geometry of my shoes' arrays to allow for a greater variety of transmutations. I had just completed the new arrays when I saw the procession approaching.

Rose, the girl who had taken into herself the best aspects of what Cornello had preached. She formed the heart of a procession of white robed figures. Standing behind and beside her was a man who's scarred face spoke of an intense rage scarcely held in check. Rose was carrying a baby.

The crowd around me was treating her like some kind of religious icon, looking to her for leadership and inspiration. If I was going to be of any help with the city's defense, I would need to find out what the plan was. After Rose's procession passed by, I started following them, hoping for a moment away from the crowds where we could talk.

I wasn't prepared for what I would learn when I got that chance.

. . .

As it turned out, the scarred man was leading the defense. The plan was simple, but brutal beyond belief. The symmetry I had noticed in the damaged city was part of a transmutation array. The entire city was made into that array.

The scarred man explained, "You and the others will lure the military's forces into the heart of the city. Rose and Lyra here will evacuate the civilians through a series of tunnels beneath the church. When all of their forces are inside the city, I'll activate the array. The soldiers will die and be forged into the Philosopher's Stone."

While I wasn't sure about this man's claims about the Philosopher's Stone, there was no doubt in my mind that whatever the array did, it would be enough to kill everyone in the city. Alchemy as a weapon of mass destruction.

. . .

There was little time to weight the moral questions involved, however. Word reached us that we were already under attack. The man called Scar and I rushed to bolster the defense.

Partially because of the arrays on my shoes aiding my stability, and partially because I was more familiar with the city's layout, I reached the fighting well before Scar.

What was attacking was not men but monsters, strange animals like something out of a nightmare. With the tooth and the claw, they were tearing people apart. I stomped my foot on the ground and activated my array. Arcs of violet light accompanied the eruption of a stone spike from the earth beneath one of the creatures, impaling it before it could reach the soldier it was pouncing on.

My transmutation caught the attention of the creatures, who formed up like a pack of wolves. I stared them down, giving the rest of the soldiers a chance to escape.

"Now you'll die."

The voice came from one of the creatures, and it was only then that I realized what I was facing. They could only be chimeras. Created by alchemists who combined different animals together, these chimeras spoke of something even more sinister. For it to speak the human language meant that one of the "components" of each of these chimeras was human.

My eyes widened in shock at the realization, and without meaning to, I glanced at the one I had killed when I arrived. Blood was still dripping down the spike, and it hit me what I had done.

Before I had fully recovered, the chimeras took their chance to strike. They came at me so quickly I fell over backward trying to avoid them. That might have saved my life, since the lead chimera leapt right through the space where my torso had been. I wasn't so lucky with the next one, who latched its jaws around my right ankle. I heard a sickening snap, and saw my foot go limp as the chimera tore it from my body. Barely aware of what I was doing, I kicked the chimera in the head with my remaining foot. The array activated with a storm of purple light, and when the red mist that resulted cleared, the chimera's head was no where to be seen.

At that point, my death seemed inevitable. Surrounded by a dozen chimeras, and bleeding badly from the stump where my right foot had been, it would take a miracle to get out of this alive.

Then, he appeared, the man with the cross shaped scar on his face. He threw open his robe, revealing, for the first time since I'd met him, his right arm. The unusual transmutation circle tattooed around his arm activated, glowing red, as he caught the first chimera leaping at him. Closing his fingers around the chimera's head, the creature's brain exploded out the back, in a smear of blood and gore.

He struck another with his open palm, and the alchemy turned its flesh into so much ground meat. Seeing the strength and skill of their opponent, the remaining chimeras fled, with Scar giving chase.

I may have been saved from the chimeras, but I was losing blood quickly. An idea occurred to me, and I began to crawl to the spot where my foot had fallen, leaving a trail in the blood soaked ground. I grabbed my foot, and tried to sit up. The blood loss must have been worse than I had thought, because I nearly fainted.

I dipped my finger in a pool of blood. I wasn't sure whether it was my blood, the blood of one of the soldiers, or blood from one of the dead chimeras. It didn't really matter. I drew an array with the blood, placing my still bleeding leg in the center and holding my amputated foot up to the stump.

I activated the array, and it began to glow with a golden light. I could see the transmutation beginning to take effect. Then, a horrible pain, worse than when the foot had been torn off, shot through my body. That was how I learned that alchemists couldn't transmute their own bodies.

Giving up on the foot as a lost cause, I adjusted the array. I used it to transmute the fabric of my pant leg into bandages and a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. Once I saw the transmutation complete, my will gave out. The combined strains of losing so much blood, and continuing to spend my energy to perform alchemy sapped my strength. Now that I was out of immediate danger, I collapsed and lost consciousness.

. . .

I awoke to the sound of gun fire. Men wearing the blue uniforms of the state military were standing almost on top of where I lay, firing down an alley. I must've looked like I was dead for them to have ignored me like that. I had dipped my finger in another pool of blood, when the man they were shooting at charged into sight.

It was Scar. Even though their gunfire wasn't very accurate, he was still shot twice in the chest. Whatever pain it may have caused him, he kept on charging as though nothing had happened. The moment he cleared the alley, he sidestepped, never taking his red eyes off the soldiers.

My transmutation circle was half done by this point, but it turned out to be completely unnecessary. As Scar sidestepped, a dark hared woman was revealed behind him. The moment scar was out of the line of fire, the strange woman pointed her finger tips at the two soldiers. In the blink of an eye, the woman's fingers extended a good ten feet, impaling the soldiers through the heart and brain with surreal accuracy.

Then, as quickly as it had happened, the woman's hand returned to normal, and the soldiers fell to the ground. Scar hadn't missed a step, and continued to run down another side street, with the dark hared woman following close behind.

Left behind again, I became acutely aware that in spite of the fact that the state military was clearly inside the city, I couldn't hear any gunfire except the occasional shot from the direction Scar had run off in. Time was running out. With our people no where to be found, the military in the city, and Scar injured, he might activate the array that would kill everyone in the city at any time.

I grabbed the rifles from the two dead soldiers, hurriedly traced an array, and transmuted the guns into a pair of crutches. Then, I crawled to a nearby drainage pipe, and dragged myself upright.

I was light headed and dizzy, and with only one foot, I wasn't sure if I could make it out of town. Even so, I had to try. However bad my odds of survival were trying to get out, my odds if I didn't try were worse.

I'd traveled less than a block when I saw a group of three soldiers. They noticed me, and signaled that I should stop. I didn't have time to talk to them, or to answer whatever slew of unimportant questions they were bound to demand answered before letting me go. I could feel the time ticking away, and had no idea how long it would be before the alchemic annihilation of the city of Liore.

When I put my foot down at the end of my step, I used the array on my one remaining shoe to transmute the ground under their feet. Unlike earlier, when I just destroyed the integrity of the sand creating a pit, this time I created a square stone room with smooth walls covered in glass to prevent their escape, and a bridge over it, so I wouldn't have to walk around it and waste valuable time.

I'd made it halfway across the bridge when, all around me, a brilliant red light was erupting from every part of the city. A wall of alchemic light surged into view like a tidal wave, deconstructing everything in its path. Buildings turned to dust, revealing the total devastation emanating from the center of Liore. Inside the light, I could see soldiers being broken down, and emitting sparks of red light fueling the chain reaction of the transmutation.

The light was moving too fast for me to outrun, even if I hadn't lost my right foot. Seeing my only slim chance, I tucked my body into a ball and dropped into the room below. I knew stone walls weren't going to stop that wave, but I still had one idea left.

I hit the bottom and nearly had the wind knocked out of me by the impact. The soldiers I'd dropped down here were in a state of panic, hearing the screams of their dying comrades and seeing the red glow through the open top of this underground box. They offered no resistance as I scrambled on my hands and knees over to the wall nearest the wave I'd seen coming.

Rolling onto my back, I planted my foot against the wall, and began my transmutation. The entire room glowed violet, and a ceiling slid out of the top of the nearest wall, entombing me with the three soldiers. I kept the alchemic energy circulating through the room until the wave reached us. As the array around Liore worked to deconstruct the walls I had built, I used the array on my shoe to reconstruct those walls. If I could keep the transmutation up until the array around Liore ran out of energy, we might survive this.

The soldiers sealed in with me were even more agitated. Now that they were completely sealed in, and with the walls, floor, and ceiling all glowing purple, the very barriers, both physical and alchemic, that were protecting us from the storm of alchemic energy outside were causing these men to panic.

"What the hell are you doing!" demanded one of the soldiers.

"Saving your lives, you morons!" I yelled over my shoulder, my voice fighting the roar of the opposing transmutations. "Now, shut up and let me concentrate, or we'll end up like everyone else in the city!"

That reduced their panicked yells to frightened whimpers as they backed away from me and huddled together. Whatever sense of security I'd managed to give them was lost on me. I could feel my body's energy starting to give out against the effort of maintaining this continuous transmutation. If I couldn't hold the transmutation, and my odds of success were looking worse by the minute, we were all going to die.

Reaching inside myself, I discovered reserves of strength and will I didn't realize I possessed. Tapping those reserves, I managed to hold out another few seconds. Then I reached my limit.

I could feel my strength waning again, and this time there was nothing I could do about it. My eyes were rolling back, and I was on the verge of passing out. I knew I'd failed. These men and I were going to die.

Then, my reconstruction of our sanctuary and tomb completed unopposed. The transmutation of Liore was over, and we were alive. I had just enough time to smile at that knowledge before I lost consciousness, and the tomb was plunged into absolute pitch darkness.

. . .

I don't know how long I was out. Considering that the room was completely sealed, it couldn't have been too long, or we would have run out of air.

"D' ya think he's dead?"

"If he is, so are we, unless one of you two happen to have a pickaxe we can use to dig ourselves out of here."

"Hold on. I'll check."

The next thing I knew, someone had planted their foot in my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. Hardly thinking about anything but how much that hurt, I grabbed his foot and rolled on to my side. He hit the ground hard, and I had a chance to catch my breath.

"What was that for?" I demanded as soon as I could breathe again.

"You're alive"

"Yeah, looks like I am. Would it be too much to ask that you guys not move around while we're stuck in the dark? Your buddy here tripped over me."

"Ugh. Sorry about that. I was just trying to see if you were okay."

"Just no one move, okay?" I kicked my right leg toward the wall, and screamed in pain as the bloody stump where the chimera had bit off my foot hit the wall hard.

"Are you okay?"

"I'll live. I just forgot about my foot and did something stupid. I'll get us out of here."

More gently, I placed my left foot against the wall, and activated the array. The room was briefly lit by the violet glow of the transmutation, and when it was gone, sunlight was streaming through the staircase out of this bunker I had created.

I don't think they'd gotten a good look at me up until this point. They all looked down at me laying there. The gratitude I saw in their eyes became laced with pity as they noticed my injury for the first time.

Two of them helped me upright while the third cautiously climbed the stairs to have a look around. I already knew what he'd see. I don't think I'll ever be able to forget the faces of the soldiers I'd seen broken down before my eyes, and I had no interest in surveying the aftermath of the devastation.

When we reached the surface, they were all staring. There was nothing left. Liore had been wiped off the map. Where there had once been a small city, my home, there was nothing but a newly formed dune of sand.

While they stood, staring with disbelief at the desert, I got to my hands and knees and drew an array in the sand. The soldiers didn't even notice the light from my circle as I transmuted a new pair of crutches, and started to walk away.

One of them snapped out of his morbid fixation before I had gone too far.

"Wait. We don't even know your name."

"Marcus," I called back over my shoulder. "Marcus Oren."

. . .

You would think it would be difficult traveling through the desert without any provisions, and on one foot no less. As it turned out, it just gave me some time to think. My alchemy provided me with shelter from the sun, and came in handy for catching and cooking the occasional snake, lizard, or mouse I ran across.

Up until now, I'd always believed I'd go back to Liore one day, after I finished by studies. Now, not only was there no Liore to return to, but being honest with myself, I realized that I'd never fit in there in the first place. I'd have probably stayed in Central if it hadn't been for the rebellion.

I'd lost my way. Not literally, as I'd never known where I was headed through this desert. I'd lost my way in life. As I wandered, I came to two conclusions. One, that I'd never been happier than when I was studying alchemy in Central, and two, that I'd never felt more alive than when I put that knowledge to use in Liore.

There was also the small matter of my missing foot. I'd rather not spend the rest of my life on crutches, but my attempts to reattach it using alchemy had bet with miserable failure. I could only hope that once I made it back to civilization, and could take some time to study the question, I'd be able to find a solution.

After all, I'd seen alchemists do things the books said were impossible before. The books say you can't bring dead things back to life, but one of the first "miracles" I'd witnessed from Cornello was he resurrection of a dead bird. The books say that a transmutation circle is needed to perform alchemy, but the Fullmetal Alchemist hadn't needed one. There was knowledge out there that went well beyond the alchemy books I'd read in Central, and if I was going to become whole again, I'd need to learn it.

. . .

Author's comments:

I hope you've enjoyed this first chapter to the story of Marcus Oren, soon to be known as the Iron Sole Alchemist. I don't have a schedule for writing this, so it could be a while before I get chapter two up.