InuYasha Fan Fiction / Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ In Pursuit of the Green Dragon ❯ Exercise in Futility ( Chapter 12 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Author's Note: A big shout-out to ThisIsMeSmiling at MediaMiner, for noting a huge consistency glitch. This version of the chapter corrects the error...thanks, Amber!

Musashi's Domain, 16th-century Japan

Over the next week, Ed discovered several interesting things about the new world he found himself in.

The first was that the food of the average Japanese peasant consisted of rice, vegetables, more rice, more vegetables, and occasionally, some fish. By the sixth day, Ed decided that he was willing to kill for some roast beef or pork chops.

Secondly, the supernatural was a real and active force here; something that his skeptical scientist's mind found difficult to accept.

And, most importantly of all, no matter what he tried, neither the well nor his alchemy refused to come to life again.

It was the afternoon of his seventh day in the Sengoku-jidai, and the transmutation circle he was positive would work this time--hadn't.

"Fuck it," Ed said in disgust, and his voice echoed up the well.

Another failure, and he'd had to campaign hard with his new acquaintances to even be allowed to try alchemy. Only the fact that he had exhausted his other options, and that they really needed this Kagome person, had convinced them.

In a transparent ploy to help Inuyasha save face while moving him safely out of the range of ill effects, Sango had suggested the hanyou youth accompany her to help clear out a nest of rat-youkai infesting the granary of the next village over.

At first, Inuyasha refused to leave his vigil next to the well, and only a vigorous application of Miroku's logic (and a thump over the head with his staff) convinced Inuyasha that Edward's plan would only succeed if the hanyou was not hovering anxiously on the fringes of the transmutation, puking up his guts.

Agreeing to the plan hadn't stopped Inuyasha from scowling sullenly, though, as he reluctantly followed Sango out of the village.

The youkai-exterminator had been dressed in close-fitting leather armor, reinforced with plates of youkai bone at shoulders, knees and elbows, and she was carrying a large--and extraordinarily heavy, Edward discovered, after an experimental heft--youkai-bone boomerang strapped to her back. She might be pretty, and petite, but she was definitely not a frail blossom of womanhood.

As he and Miroku had watched Sango and her hang-dog companion disappear down the narrow dirt track that connected this village to its neighbor, Ed had heard the monk sigh and saw his shoulders slump a fraction.

"You like her, Miroku-sama?" Ed had asked, using the variant of like that had a romantic connotation.

Miroku had nodded. "Very much. She's promised to marry me after Naraku is defeated, and the jewel reclaimed."

That statement had made Ed blink in astonishment. He hadn't seen anything between the two of them that pointed to a romantic relationship. Hell, Sango didn't even call Miroku by name, consistently referring to him instead as houshi-sama. And they were engaged to be married?

The Japanese language might be like Amestrian, but that's where the similarity ended. Ed had found the elaborate courtesies of modern-day Japan difficult enough; the customs of medieval Japan were puzzling beyond all belief.

And it didn't help that almost all of the villagers, with the exception of old Kaede-sama, the village priestess, considered Ed a youkai because of his hair and eye color, and avoided him with cautious politeness.

"Uh, congratulations," Ed had offered awkwardly, and that had been the end of the conversation as he and Miroku watched until Inuyasha was safely out of sight.

Then Ed had lowered himself into the well and spent the morning painstakingly smoothing the dirt at the bottom and tracing a new transmutation circle.

Which proved an utter failure. He had gotten nothing more than the feeble blue glow that his blood always kindled, but it had died away almost immediately.

Ed stared down at the intricate, useless pattern drawn in the dirt, and felt like smashing something. Why?

Why had he been able to open the well, before? And why had he been able to transmute once in this place, but not again?

His flesh palm was crisscrossed by fresh and half-healed cuts, which itched and throbbed like crazy. He was sweaty and covered in dust and the rice-flour that substituted for chalk in this place.

And, worst of all, Ed was now completely out of ideas.

It was an uncomfortable and unusual position for him to be in. He always had a plan for everything. His plans were what had kept him sane during his quest to regain Al's body, and afterwards, during his long, solitary exile in Germany on this side of the Gate.

But now, he didn't know what to try next. Cursing made him feel better for few seconds, but didn't help anything, not really.

"Edward-sama?" Miroku peeked down over the rim of the well, the sun glinting off the small gold hoops in his earlobes.

"It's no use," Ed said, roughly. His vision blurred--he must have gotten some of that damned rice-flour in his eyes--and he dragged a grimy shirt-sleeve across his face. "I'm never going to be able to get this well to do whatever it did before I came here. It would help if I knew how it worked--how can I figure out anything if I don't have any fucking data?" His voice rose to a near-shout.

Miroku's dark brows drew down in a concerned expression, but he said only, "Why don't you climb up and have some food? It's past noon."

Shippo's auburn head popped up next to Miroku's. "Kaede-sama sent lunch for us," he said. "And there's Pocky from Kagome's backpack."

Right on cue, Ed's stomach growled, loudly, and Miroku chuckled. "Perhaps a full stomach and some sunshine will stimulate your thoughts, and help you solve the problem."

Ed grasped the knotted rope that served as a makeshift ladder and began to climb up.

Kaede's luncheon, wrapped in bamboo leaves, proved to be the ubiquitous onigiri, rice balls filled with seasoned items. There were also bamboo containers filled with green tea and a large, checkered waterproof cloth to sit on.

"Something from Kagome-sama's world," Miroku explained, as he spread the cloth out on the grass."

The three of them ate in silence for a few minutes. Ed finished off one rice ball stuffed with what looked and tasted like salted, dried minnows, and bit cautiously into the next one, which contained a tiny, extremely sour pickled plum. It wasn't bad, but he was definitely yearning after a thick roast beef sandwich, layered with good English cheddar cheese and slathered with horseradish.

When the last of the onigiri had vanished, Miroku wiped his fingers on a cloth napkin, handed around the containers of lukewarm green tea, and waved away Shippo's grudging offer to share his box of chocolate-covered biscuit sticks for dessert.

Then he folded his hands in his lap, and waited in that calm way he had, while Ed marshaled his thoughts.

"The thing is, it should have worked," Ed began, "my transmutation circle, I mean. I've never had anything not work, not like this."

Miroku furrowed his brow, thinking. "It might help me understand the problem, if you explained how this alchemy works. You will forgive me for saying so, but what you've been doing bears a strong resemblance to writing out a spell, or a charm."

Ed nodded. Despite Miroku's suspect status as a clergyman in Ed's atheist eyes, he had found the young Buddhist monk to be an intelligent and interesting person.

"As I've said before," Ed began. "It's not magic, it's science. What you do in alchemy is learn how something works, then take it apart and re-form it as something different. Those are the three principles: understanding, decomposition, transmutation." Ed began to warm up to his subject as he talked. "And the law that governs transmutation is Equivalent Exchange. You can't get something from nothing...for example, I can't take a pebble and transmute a boulder...but if I take a boulder, I could transmute a statue of equivalent mass with it."

"But merely understanding something is not enough to change it," Miroku observed.

"That's where the circles--those patterns I draw--come in. They're actually equations that allow me to focus the energy for a transmutation, and to control the results."

"And where does this energy come from?" Miroku asked, hitting the heart of the matter.

"That's the thing, see?" Ed said, excitedly. "That's why I wasn't able to use alchemy in this world before, because a transmutation draws its power from a force that passes through the Gate that separates this world from my world. But it doesn't seem to work the other way, so the whole time I've been here--in my time, that is--I haven't been able to activate a circle without using the blood of someone...or something...from my world. Al and I discussed this, and we think that maybe the blood somehow serves as a conductor for energy from the Gate."

"And this is why you need the dragon?" Miroku asked, shrewdly. "So you can--what was the word?--transmute a way back to your world?"

"Yeah," replied Ed. "I mean, it worked before." He remembered his brief journey home with a pang of guilt. If only Dietlinde Eckhart hadn't managed to pass through the Gate as well! But the death and destruction that she and her cohorts had caused in Central had left Ed with no choice but to return to his exile, so that he could seal the Gate and prevent further invasion of his homeworld.

"And what you did to Inuyasha--encasing him in a column of a stone--that was also transmutation?"

Ed nodded, and Miroku frowned. "But there was no blood, nor did you draw a transmutation circle."

"That's just the thing," Ed said, slapping his automail palm against the picnic. "I shouldn't have been able to do alchemy in this place. I, uh, don't always need a transmutation circle, but I do need that energy, and I can't figure out where it came from. And why I can't do it again."

"Hmm." Miroku pursed his lips, and fell silent for a few minutes, his dark gaze turned inwards, while Ed did his best not to fidget. Finally, he spoke again. "Edward-sama, will you tell me everything you know about this transmutation energy? It seems to be the key to resolving this problem."

"Well, none of my teachers or fellow alchemists know much about it," Ed replied. "It was just there, you know, and alchemy studies focused on how to manipulate that energy to get the results you wanted. Alchemists have specialities--for instance, my commanding officer in Amestris was an expert in using fire--" Ed realized he was beginning to digress, and pulled himself back on-topic. "Okay, so, anyway, my brother and I started looking for something called the Philosopher's Stone, that would allow us to circumvent the Law of Equivalent Exchange--"

"Why?" asked Miroku, looking interested.

"It's, um, a long story," Ed said, uncomfortably. "Anyhow, one thing led to another, and we discovered that the Stone was made from human lives--thousands of 'em--and that transmutations were powered by deaths on the other side of the Gate. Actually, it's probably not really the death, but the life-energy being pulled through the Gate after someone dies on this side--"

"Your alchemy is powered by the souls of the dead?" Miroku asked, his composure now visibly rattled.

"Just like Kikyo?" asked Shippo, but neither he nor Miroku added any explanation of who or what Kikyo might be.

Ed frowned. "I'm not sure that alchemy is powered directly by souls," he said, carefully. "But, yeah--someone dies on this side of the Gate, and some kind of energy is released to power transmutations on the other side. But that still doesn't explain how I was able to transmute dirt into stone last week."

"So, you were able to draw upon transmutation energy then, but not now," Miroku mused. "What has changed? What is different now?"

"Inuyasha's not here?" Shippo interjected flippantly, mumbling around a mouthful of chocolate-covered biscuit sticks.

Miroku's expression brightened. "Of course!" he said. "Perhaps it's not merely death-energy that powers your alchemy, Edward-sama. What if the youki, the life-energy of a demon, also works?"

Ed blinked, trying to remember exactly what he had been doing when he performed the transmutation. Inuyasha had been on top of him, pinning him to the ground...

"Maybe that's why he got sick after you performed your spell!" Shippo said, excitedly. "If you drained his youki...he's only a half-breed, after all," the boy added, wrinkling his nose.

All the pieces suddenly fell into place for Ed. "You may be right," he said. "I wonder if there's a way we could test this theory without Inuyasha breaking my arms..."

Miroku cocked his head, and Ed saw a mischievous smile curve the monk's mouth. "Well, we do have a full-blooded demon available..."

He reached for Shippou, and the little kitsune backed away hastily.

"Miroku, don't you dare!" cried the boy, and vanished with a pop and a puff of green smoke.

Ed blinked, but after nearly a week, the fox-kid's illusions were no longer as startling as they had been at first.

"Inuyasha might just prove the key to reopening the well," he said, feeling hope begin to claw its way out of the black abyss of disappointment that had claimed it earlier today. "If it's not too dangerous. I mean, I wouldn't want to suck the life out of him, or anything. But I'm sure it'll work, and that we can open the well and get Al--and your Kagome, of course--back!"

"But what if it doesn't work?" asked Miroku, still in that pleasant tone. "What then?"

Ed shrugged, trying not to think of another exile in a strange land, not knowing where--or when--Al was. "Maybe we can find a more powerful demon--or the dragon. If not, we're out of options, and I guess I'm stuck here."

"Stuck here, with no way of returning Kagome to us?" Miroku asked, his voice suddenly hard. His pleasant expression vanished. "If so, Edward-sama, then I shall be forced to kill you."

"Why?" Ed said, beginning to scoot backwards on the picnic cloth. The monk's posture hadn't changed visibly, but he was now positively radiating menace.

It didn't help that Shippou had taken refuge behind Ed after casting his illusion, and was now blocking his escape path.

"If you cannot reopen the well, and bring Kagome-sama here, then you will have condemned me to death," Miroku said, softly. He flexed his right hand, which was covered by a gauntlet and wound about with rosary beads. "So, I will take my revenge first, for destroying all our hopes with your carelessness."

"But--but--" Ed flailed to his feet, ready to run like hell if the monk made any sudden moves. He tried to shake off Shippo, who was now clinging to Ed's knees, but the little demon's claws dug through the wool of his trousers and hooked into the sensitive flesh of his thighs. "Ow!"

But Miroku stayed put, though his expression remained implacably hostile. "We have not told you all of what has happened here," he continued, "but suffice it to say that I am under a curse that can only be lifted by killing Naraku and recovering the Shikon no Tama. And we cannot find and purify the jewel without Kagome-sama." He fastened his dark gaze on Ed. "Don't fail."

"I'll try not to," replied Ed, sourly. He paused for a moment, feeling he owed the monk something more, then continued, "Believe me, I want to reopen the well as badly as you do. Tell you what--if I fuck this up, I'll let you kill me, because I'd rather be dead than separated from my little brother again."

oo0oo

Inuyasha was even angrier than usual when he and Sango returned from their extermination assignment near sunset, and heard the news of Ed's failure.

He didn't even wait to hear Ed's proposal. As soon as the words, "It didn't work," left Ed's mouth, Inuyasha's mouth twisted in disgust and he pushed past Shippou and Kaede.

The reed curtain that served as a door to Kaede's cottage rattled noisily in his wake as Inuyasha stomped off, presumably to resume his vigil at the well.

"Well," said Kaede, fixing Ed with a stern look from her single eye. "What are you going to do now?" The expression on her grandmotherly face managed to convey disappointment and worry.

Ed gulped a little. He liked the old lady, and she seemed to have a close relationship with Inuyasha, odd as it seemed for a priestess and a half-demon.

"As a matter of fact, Grandmother Kaede," Ed said respectfully, "Today's attempt wasn't a complete failure--Miroku-sama and I learned something important--"

"--and I helped!" interjected Shippou, and Miroku smiled.

"Indeed, you did," he said, before picking up the conversational thread, and filling Sango and Kaede in on the new plan.

"Edward-sama, are you seriously suggesting that Inuyasha try this?" Sango asked, incredulously, when Miroku had finished speaking.

Ed nodded. "I've tried everything else, believe me. Nothing's worked."

"And do you know how dangerous it would be to drain a hanyou's youki?" Sango continued, spreading her hands for emphasis. "Inuyasha might be trapped permanently in human form--or even die. We cannot risk it."

"But do you not think Inuyasha should be the one to decide what risks are acceptable?" Kaede asked, gently. "Or have you not noticed that he's barely eaten or slept since he and Kagome were parted? If we do nothing, it's possible that Inuyasha may simply starve himself. You know the depth of the bond he shares with Kagome…"

Sango bit her lower lip, and nodded.

"You know if there was any other way, we would not ask this of him," added Miroku, in a gentle tone. "But after speaking with Edward-sama, I truly believe that this is the only path left to us." He put a hand on the youkai-taijiya's shoulder, and she nodded again.

"But there's a snag," said Ed. "I'm sure Inuyasha will say no if I suggest it, just because…well, just because it's me, so someone else needs to approach him. Maybe Miroku-sama could…"

"No, I think not," Miroku said firmly, his hand still on Sango's shoulder. "If Inuyasha is going to put his life in your hands, Edward-sama, then you should be the one to ask him to do it.

Ed swallowed his instinctive protest, and nodded. Given the monk's revelations over lunch, he felt that arguing the point would get him nowhere.

Before lunch, he had begun to consider Miroku a friend, and thought the monk might be feeling the same way.

In retrospect, it seemed painfully apparent that Miroku's cheerful assistance and friendliness had been a ploy to win Ed's cooperation in retrieving Kagome.

It was only natural, Ed told himself, trying to push down the disappointment that crept like a dismal fog into the crevices of his heart. He was a stranger here, and these people had no reason to like or trust him. And he had disrupted their lives, even if it had been an accident on his part. He owed them his best effort--the principle of Equivalent Exchange demanded no less.

"I'll talk to him tonight," Ed told the group gathered in the cottage. "If he comes back."

"Or you might go to the well, and speak to him privately," Sango said.

"I think I'm the last person he wants to see privately," Ed told her.

"I have an idea." Sango knelt and dug around in the giant yellow knapsack that had apparently belonged to the mysterious Kagome. She withdrew two curious, bowl-shaped packages, and partially unwrapped them. Then she held them out to Kaede so that the priestess could fill them with boiling water from the kettle hanging over the cottage's central open hearth.

Sango offered a bemused Ed the two bowls, which now gave forth garlic-scented steam.

Kaede nodded approvingly at Sango's actions. "Inuyasha is a proud boy," she said to Ed. "His life has been very difficult, but despite all this, he has a kind and generous heart. However, because he is proud, he has a difficult time expressing any softness or willingness to compromise if there are others around."

"That's why it's best if you talked to him without witnesses," added Sango. "I'm certain that he'll at least listen to what you're proposing."

"All right," replied Ed, accepting the bowls. "I'll go talk to him." Privately, he wondered if he'd be forced to transmute something again to save himself once Inuyasha heard his request.