InuYasha Fan Fiction / Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ In Pursuit of the Green Dragon ❯ Lunch at Stonehenge ( Chapter 2 )

The Plain of Salisbury, England, April, 1925

It had to work this time. They had tried every other place in the British Isles.

Edward met his brother's determined gaze, and drew the pocketknife across his left palm, the flesh one. Across from him, on the other end of the large tarpaulin inked with an intricate transmutation circle, Al did the same. The red drops fell, kindling the blue glow of transmutation.

"Ready...steady...go!" Al chanted, and Ed clapped for good luck, then placed his hands, palm-down, on the edge of the transmutation circle, and threw all of his concentration into activating it. Alphonse did the same.

The blue glow steadied and brightened...but not enough. Not nearly enough.

Dipping deep into the limited funds afforded them by Ed's pay as a research assistant, the brothers had purchased a large roll of canvas the previous summer, and painstakingly recreated the transmutation circle that had opened a portal to their home world eighteen months ago.

They had used Ed's breaks from the university to lug the painted canvas transmutation circle all around the British Isles, spreading it out and attempting to activate it at every site rumored to have mystical properties. But, no matter where they went, the transmutation triggered by their blood always glowed weakly, then sputtered out.

Just like it did now.

"Fuck it!" Ed swore, and tried vainly to channel more energy into it, with the same results as always.

The transmutation dwindled away, leaving them in the midst of the circle of standing stones located in a large field crowded with grazing sheep.

Whatever mystical force Stonehenge possessed, it was not a gate between the parallel worlds of this place and their home.

"Brother!" Al said, automatically, as he did every time Ed swore, but there was no heat to his reprimand this time.

They stared at each other in dismay. Another failure.

"Well, Brother, is there any place left to try?" Al asked in their native Amestrian. He was hunched over a little, but Ed couldn't tell whether it was from disappointment, or from the cold spring wind.

"A couple of stone circles in Brittany, and then maybe we'll have to go overseas. From what I've read, the Egyptian pyramids might be a possibility..." Ed replied, unwilling to admit defeat.

Al sat back on his heels. Wistfully, he said, "I wish Miss Noah hadn't left us. She might've known other places to try."

Ed scowled. He hated failing at anything, and disappointing his little brother was even worse.

But he and Noah had parted ways shortly after Alfons Heiderich's funeral, which only confirmed his belief that she had been in love with his roommate.

His brother Al's startling resemblance to the late Heiderich, especially once Al hit a growth spurt, had clearly unsettled her, and when the brothers decided to cross the Channel and take up their quest in England, Noah bade them farewell, and joined a Romany caravan headed south to Provence.

"I'll think of something!" Ed said fiercely, clenching his ungloved hands, and heard the familiar clink of the automail fingers in his right hand as they curled against the metal of his palm. "Maybe we can--"

"What on earth is this? It looks quite intriguing," a cheerful voice interrupted from behind Ed. The voice was speaking Amestrian--an odd dialect, to be sure, but comprehensible.

Al's eyes widened in shock. "Colonel Mustang!" he squeaked.

Edward's head whipped around, and he felt his heart skip a beat. Standing right behind Ed, and leaning forward to study the transmutation circle with an expression of keen interest, was Roy Mustang.

Not the Colonel, Ed realized, after blinking several times and regaining his breath. This man must be Roy's doppelganger, just as Alfons Heiderich had been Al's.

This Roy looked several years younger than the Colonel, and he did not have the Colonel's eye-patch. The stranger was clad in tweed trousers and a matching tweed jacket, and carried a walking stick. His bearing was decidedly unmilitary.

"Forgive me for eavesdropping, but I haven't spoken Japanese since I left home, and hearing it makes me miss my native land," the man said, dropping his gaze under Ed's intense stare, and returning to his study of the transmutation circle.

"We weren't speaking Japanese," Ed muttered, scrambling to hastily roll up the canvas.

"Ah, please forgive me, but in that case, it is truly remarkable that we can understand each other!" said the man who was not Roy Mustang.

Persistent bastard, thought Ed, as he finished rolling up the cloth, and fastened the ties to secure it.

"If you will permit me to introduce myself," not-Mustang continued, with a polite bow, "my name is Souta Higurashi, from the country of Japan."

"That's nice," Ed said shortly, willing Higurashi-not-Mustang to just go away and leave them alone.

"Brother!" came Al's familiar reprimand. "I'm terribly sorry, sir. I'm Alphonse Elr--er, Heiderich," he continued, using the alias he had adopted after inheriting Alfons' identity papers, "and this is my older brother, Edward Elric, and we're really very pleased to meet you!"

The man's brows raised in false surprise. Ed knew that expression--back home, Mustang had used it a lot, usually while he was reading Ed's mission reports. "Elric? You would not, by chance, be relations of Professor von Hohenheim?"

Ed felt suspicion prickle his spine at the mention of his late father, but Al's smile grew positively sunny. "He is--I mean, was, our father, Mr. Higurashi. Did you know him?"

"Indeed! He was a great man--a great mind--and he showed me many kindnesses while I was a graduate student at Cambridge. And after I returned home to take up a teaching position at Tokyo Imperial University, we corresponded on a variety of topics. He had some unusual theories--" Higurashi's gaze flicked sideways, at the rolled-up canvas, "but he was an extremely well-read and reasoned man. And," Higurashi drew himself up to his slight--but still taller than Ed, dammit!--height. "I was proud to call him a friend."

"Oh yeah? Well, he never mentioned you," Ed said, drawing a scandalized glare from Alphonse. This guy was just rubbing him the wrong way.

And it was true--Ed had lived with his father for several months after arriving in this world, and while Hohenheim's circle of acquaintances had been large, Ed was sure he would have remembered this Higurashi fellow, if only on account of his nationality. Japan! That's the other fucking side of the world!

Higurashi looked taken aback by Ed's bluntness, but he seemed determined to soldier on. "I'm sure your honored father would remember me, if you asked him--"

"He's dead," Ed said flatly, just as Al protested, "Brother! You're being rude again."

Higurashi swept his hat from his head and bowed gracefully. "My most sincere condolences on your loss," he murmured, but Ed noted that he didn't seem surprised, which meant he had probably known of Hohenheim's death.

The prickle of suspicion returned, stronger this time. What did this man want? It was becoming clear--to Ed, anyway--that their encounter here, in the middle of bloody nowhere, was not a coincidence.

Higurashi licked his lips nervously. "I am shocked, of course, to hear of your father's untimely passing," he began. "I had hoped for the opportunity to repay the many kindnesses that Professor von Hohenheim showed me while I was still at Cambridge. In fact, I returned to England expressly to invite him to visit my home in Tokyo--it's an ancient shrine, nearly a thousand years old, and he had expressed interest in Japanese history. I am devastated to discover that I will never be able to..." He heaved a melodramatic sigh.

Higurashi was warming up as he went along, Ed thought, observing the other man critically, but it still mostly sounded like bullshit.

He glanced over to Al, and found that the smile had disappeared from his brother's freckled, friendly face.

Hah! So Al wasn't completely fooled by this guy, after all!

"Ah!" Higurashi interrupted himself, sounding like a second-rate vaudeville actor. "But perhaps I can repay my debt to your father in some small way, by inviting you both to Tokyo in his stead! Hosting the sons of the esteemed Professor would be my pleasure. Please say that you will return to Tokyo with me! I could book you passage on the same ship I'm traveling on. It departs next week, and I am certain that you two gentlemen would make for entertaining company on the long voyage."

Go all the way to Japan with some guy we just met? Are you out of your fucking mind? Ed thought, but Alphonse pinned him with a stern look, so he said only, "Thanks for the invitation, Mr. Higurashi, but I can't leave the university for that long."

"Oh, are you a student? I'm certain I could work something out with your professors," Higurashi said, eagerly.

"Sorry, not interested," Ed replied coolly, wondering just how far the Japanese man was willing to go, and why he wanted so badly to get Ed and Al on that boat.

"I'm sure Japan would be very interesting," Alphonse added, "but it's an awfully long way from England, and we have...things...we need to do here. We really can't leave."

Higurashi's eyes widened with dismay, dispelling his resemblance to Roy Mustang. Ed was pretty sure that the Colonel would never have let his mask slip like that when he was trying to hustle someone.

Then, to Ed's astonishment, Higurashi drew a tiny pistol from his jacket pocket.

"I am so very sorry, Mr. Elric," he said, his voice barely audible with nerves. "But I really must insist." He pointed the gun at Ed.

Ed barked an incredulous laugh at the sight of the weapon--if something of so small a caliber could rightly be called a weapon. Besides, even if he did pull the trigger, Higurashi's hands were shaking so badly it would be a miracle if he managed to hit anything.

Ed calculated the distance between them. If he took one more step, he might be able to--

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

Al sprinted past Ed, launched himself in the air, and aimed a flying kick at the Japanese man's head.

Higurashi went down with a heavy thump. Ed saw the little pistol fly away in a high arc, and disappear into a thick clump of grass around one of the fallen megaliths.

In a flash, Ed threw himself atop the man on the ground and pinned his arms.

"Okay, you bastard, tell us who you really are, and who sent you," he growled. He looked over his shoulder. "Al, search him."

"But, Brother, don't you think that we should notify the police?"

"Now, Al."

Al obeyed, patting down the Japanese man's clothing, removing his wallet and identity papers.

Looking down at his prisoner, Ed added, "I'm betting this guy never met Dad, and that he doesn't have anything to do with any university."

Higurashi made a sound of protest, but quieted under Ed's glare.

Rifling quickly through the confiscated papers, Al said, "Brother, he really is a professor of physics at Tokyo Imperial University..." Color rose in his fair cheeks. "Oh, and it says here that he's serving as a guest lecturer at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München... sponsored by a Herr Doktor Professor Haushofer... um."

Confronted by this unmistakable evidence that Ed was, for once, correct in his suspicions, Alphonse's voice stumbled to a halt.

"Hah! I knew it!" Ed barked. He hooked two automail fingers under Higurashi's stiff celluloid collar, and twisted. "Okay, you. Talk."

Higurashi gasped for breath around the sudden constriction, and blinked up at him with worried black eyes, but remained mute.

"What's your connection to the Thule Society? Why are they sending you to do their dirty work?"

"You are a little less blond than they prefer, Dr. Higurashi," Alphonse noted, refolding Higurashi's papers into their leather wallet.

Ed heard his brother muttering under his breath, Higurashi, Higurashi, why does that sound familiar?

Come to think of it, the name sounded familiar to Ed, too, though he couldn't think of where he'd heard or seen it before.

"Mr. Elric, I am not a member of the Thule Society," Dr. Higurashi said, with as much dignity as he could muster, sprawled in the middle of a pasture with a furious Ed sitting on top of him.

"Ah! I remember now where I've read your name!" Al exchanged a glance with Edward, and Ed gave his brother a tiny nod, willing him to go ahead. "Dr. Higurashi, I think Brother and I read one of your papers last year," Al said, his face lighting up with boyish enthusiasm. "Did you write A Determination of the Deflection of Light by the Sun's Gravitational Field, from Observations Made at the Total Eclipse of May 29, 1919?"

Dr. Higurashi was a true academic. He managed to preen at the mention of the paper, despite his uncomfortable position. "Oh, no, most of the credit for that paper must go to my esteemed colleagues, particularly Professor Eddington," he murmured. "I was but a lowly graduate student at the time."

Ed pursed his lips, thinking, and asked shrewdly: "But even if you're really a professor, then why are you going home for a visit before spring term ends at the Ludwig-Maximilians University? Japan is a long way away from here--I'm guessing it would take at least a month to travel there by train and steamer."

"I'm not a member of the Thule Society." Dr. Higurashi repeated, stubbornly. Then he sighed, and looked directly at Ed. "All right, I will tell you the truth. I was sent to Europe to find you, because certain of my...associates in Japan acquired something that once belonged to the Thule Society. It's gone missing, and we hoped to enlist first Professor Haushofer's help, then yours, in finding it."

Could it be...? Ed's heart began to pound. "W-what did you lose?" he croaked, barely able to force the words past his throat.

Dr. Higurashi did not reply for a long moment. Another sigh. "I hope you will not disbelieve me, but...it was a dragon."

"Envy!" Ed and Al said, simultaneously.

"I want to hear the whole story," added Ed.

"Then you agree to help me?" Dr. Higurashi said, in astonishment.

"Of cours--" Al began to say, and Ed cut him off with a sharp gesture.

"Maybe. We need more information."

Al shot him a long look, and Ed climbed off his victim.

Dr. Higurashi sat up, and rubbed futilely at the grass stains on his tweed jacket. "I know of a pub in Salisbury that serves very good supper. Please, allow me to treat you to a meal, and I shall tell you everything I know."

oo0oo

Historical and Canon Notes for this chapter:

The scientific paper I've attributed to Higurashi Souta in this chapter, A Determination of the Deflection of Light by the Sun's Gravitational Field, from Observations Made at the Total Eclipse of May 29, 1919, was actually only authored by FW Dyson, AS Eddington, & C.R. Davidson, in 1920.

The Souta Higurashi in this chapter is Jii-chan's older brother, and great-uncle to Kagome and Souta Higurashi.

Regarding the Amestrian language: the names of places and people in Fullmetal Alchemist point to Amestrian being nearly identical to English. However, in homage to the series' original voice actors, I decided to play with the canon a bit, and make Ed and Al's native language similar to Japanese rather than English.