Not Even Close!
As the spikes shot forward, the boy's face turned grim. He accepted his fate as he realised that there was nothing could do to stop those spikes from piercing his body. There was not enough time for him to get out of the attack radius and neither did he have the strength to escape. So, he closed his eyes and accepted his fate.
But to his utter surprise, the spikes never reached him. He heard someone's voice but he was not focused enough to figure out who the person was.
He slowly opened his eyes and found the spikes stuck in a dome made of stone.
"Try not to damage the library. Please."
He heard a voice that sounded extremely familiar.
'That voice…'
The dome fell apart as he turned around and found a black-haired boy that looked to be the same age as him— walking towards them with an amused smile.
'He is the guy from earlier.' The Ishvalan boy thought as he remembered meeting the person just a few minutes ago.
The tallest of the four ruffians scowled as he saw the raven-haired boy walk towards them. "Stay out of this, foreigner." He scoffed.
"I would have." Burne said. "But you guys are making it extremely difficult for me to concentrate on those books." He smiled. "So, I will stay away as long as you leave this place."
"This cunt!" One of the men spat on the ground before using his alchemy to shoot a spike towards Burne.
Burne was bemused as he pushed forward his palm. The spike— on contact with his skin, shattered into tiny pieces. "Is that all you can do? Create earthen spikes?"
Everyone was shocked with how easily Burne was able to stop the spikes.
"Now, I can understand why this guy was able to knock out seven of you."
The other two, excluding the tallest in the group, clicked their tongues and used the same attack in succession.
"Again?" Burne asked as he shattered the spikes just as easily.
The Ishvalan boy who took out the seven ruffians was equally shocked. It took him an excessive amount of energy and calculations to be able to stop those spikes, yet this person was breezing through them.
The tallest of the ruffians— who was the leader of the group, asked Burne. "Who… are you?" His frown deepened. "Are you a state alchemist?"
This question made everyone including the boy from the library freeze. State alchemists were strong and it was not possible to defeat them without being well proficient in alchemy. And even if they did manage to defeat a state alchemist— it would end up in a mess because of the law. Attacking a state alchemist was considered a clear sign of opposition to the military and that was not something the ruffians wanted to do.
"Nope." Burne replied which made the ruffian leader grin. But before he could do anything, Burne made his move.
"Do you know why many alchemists use the earth element in battles?" He asked with a smile before lightly tapping the ground with his foot.
The four men paled as they realised what the boy just did.
They felt the land turn soft and when they looked down— they found the land changing into quicksand.
"Because it barely takes any effort to transmute it." Burne explained. "Soil is made up of minerals, water, organic matter and air. You change one of them, and everything falls apart."
He tapped on the ground again which caused the sand to harden— trapping the men in the ground.
"It is pretty easy to mould." He said as he stood in front of them. "Now… Why were you creating such a ruckus?"
The leader coughed as the pressure of the hold increased.
"He hasn't paid his loan yet and he refuses to pay it."
"Lies!" The librarian boy yelled. "We already paid you but you kept on increasing the interest every day!"
Burne raised an eyebrow and asked. "Is it true?"
The boy nodded vigorously and the men remained quiet. This made Burne chuckle.
"I can bury you all here and no one will ever find out. You will turn into nutrients for the plants." He said. "I can do that… or you can leave this guy alone."
Burne noticed the men frowning but it didn't take long for them to agree as Burne started to change the soil into quicksand once again.
He grinned as he saw the men nod vigorously.
He lifted the ground, allowing the men to escape from the quicksand.
The leader was an outlaw but he was not stupid. He knew that it was not a fight that he could win. He agreed and left without saying much.
'He might come back later… but he is not my problem.' He looked at the boy with a smile. "Are you alright?"
The boy was too shocked to answer at first but after a while he was back to his senses and nodded.
"Err… Yeah." He said. "Thank you."
"Mhm." Burne nodded and extended his hand towards the boy, who stood up with his help.
__________
__________
While Burne was busy learning about the culture and history of Ishval, a certain few were moving forward with their own nefarious plan.
"I told you not to go after the man." Sighed a beautiful woman.
"B-But he smelled so delicious. I had to eat him." Said a short fat man, fidgeting with his fingers.
Both of them argued, making another figure groan at their lack of diplomacy. While it could be argued that the place that they were in was the least diplomatic thing about their situation— the person seemed to pay no attention to the state of their surroundings. The figure seemed annoyed by their banter.
"Shut up both of you!" The person roared. "We are here on a mission, which would have been completed if you two didn't mess around so much."
The woman snickered. "Like you didn't enjoy yourself by morphing into me and making those fools waste so much time. You could have set this up far better than us, yet you didn't."
The genderless figure went silent for a while. It was true that instead of using the morphed form for entertainment, it could have been used to progress the mission faster.
"We are already late. Arguing will only delay the mission. We need only a few more resources which we can gather by tomorrow." The blackette smiled. "Just a bit more and we will have enough"
The fat man and the genderless being agreed with her statement.
"Father would not like us delaying this mission any more…" The genderless figured looked at the other two. "So get to work."
__________
__________
"So where did you learn alchemy?" Burne asked as he went through an alchemy book.
"From my brother." He replied. "He is a warrior monk, training under a warrior priest. Whenever he comes back, he teaches me a bit about alchemy."
'He developed such skill from that little training? He is talented.' Burne was impressed as it takes years for many alchemists to be able to do what this guy just did.
"But you are amazing." The boy said. "We are most likely the same age but you are far above my skill level."
Burne smiled. "It's because of my grandfather. He was a great alchemist… before passing away he taught me a lot." He confessed, remembering his mentor and family. But his smile faltered as he grabbed his left arm.
"I see." The boy said. "So what may I call you, sir?" He asked which made Burne chuckle.
"You can call me Burne... what about you?" Burne asked, completely forgetting that the boy had introduced himself previously.
"It's Ammon." He replied and looked out of the window. "It's about time to close the library."
"Oh, I see." Burne said. "I need to practice a bit of alchemy as well. I don't want my skills to get rusty… So, I will be taking my leave as well."
This made Ammon pause and put on a hopeful face. "Err… May I watch?" He asked. "Mother won't be home tonight so may I watch your alchemy?"
Burne thought about it for a while. 'I won't be trying any forbidden alchemy… so it should be fine.' He looked at Ammon and shrugged. "Sure, why not."
'Not like helping an Ishvalan would hurt.'
__________________________________________________________________________
[A/N: A lot of the readers still seem to be confused as to what this fic is about. It's a Full Metal Alchemist fic. It's set around 10 years before the start of canon… so it will take a little bit of time for us to reach the canon timeline. Don't worry we will be seeing canon characters in like 1 or 2 chaps… but not the main cast for now (Ed and Al). And there is not much to work with FMAB as we are pre-canon and even when we reach canon it will be like the copy paste version of FMAB with MC replacing Edward— which I don't want. So I took the freedom to change the timeline a bit as the Ishval war hasn't started yet… and it should have originally started like 6 years ago.
I have changed a few things and expanded the existing world and plot so that I don't have to follow everything from A-Z.
I won't be adding OGs (Other than MC and his Gramps obviously) so don't worry. But I will be adding OG plot about alchemy as everything in FMAB was about homunculus, Philosopher's Stone and creating earth spikes… and human transmutation. That should make the fanfic interesting.
Welp. That's it for now. And let me know about spelling and grammatical mistakes… and weird sentence structuring through paragraph comments.]
[Discord Link: https://discord.gg/DXwDzxSAED]