Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Veritas Hominum ❯ Equivalent Exchange ( Chapter 3 )

Equivalent Exchange

 

Human kind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one and only truth.

 

The younger Elric brother, Alphonse, had often been fond of saying that.

 

The older brother knew a Greater Truth: there was no such thing as Equivalent Exchange.

 

If you can increase the concentration of oxygen around you, by creating a spark you can cause fire to ignite on the air. If you rearrange the molecules of water and carbon in a person's body into ethanol, you can cause them to evaporate. However, all of these require the correct amounts of elements to already be present.

 

Alchemy was a science, although it didn't appear to be at first glance. It followed laws and was imminently knowable by anyone who bothered to study it.

 

There was only one glaring problem.

 

You can have all the correct amounts of elements of a human body, but an attempted transmutation of those elements into a living, breathing human only creates a soulless monster.

 

There is no equivalent exchange for a human life. Edward Elric was intimately aware of this.

 

He also knew that there is also no equivalent exchange for the human experience.

 

And one boring winter morning, lying quietly in his bed, he realized that was what made him so powerful.