InuYasha Fan Fiction / Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ In Pursuit of the Green Dragon ❯ Epilogue ( Chapter 37 )

1: The Long Way Home

No sooner had Kagome's cheerful farewell wave and Inuyasha's scowl vanished from Ed's sight, when he felt the first violent jerk on his ankle. In its wake came a cold that numbed his skin, and made his bones ache.

He fell, screaming, into platinum light that seared his eyes, his skin, his brain, as dozens of tiny grasping hands dug into his flesh, clawing, and pinching. He struggled blindly, kicking, flailing.

His automail grew icy, leaving searing pain where the metal was fastened to his flesh and bone at thigh and shoulder.

For each hand that he managed to heave off, two more seemed to take its place.

This felt nothing like the gentle drifting that had accompanied his jaunt to Japan's past. And it felt exactly like his previous trips through the Gate.

It worked this time. It really worked this time! he thought even as he fought against the unseen forces that were trying to tear him limb-from-limb. That thought was immediately followed by panicked desperation as he realized he was alone.

Where's Al? He struggled for breath, trying to squint through the light that surrounded and obscured. Where's my brother?

"Al! AL?" he screamed, but the light devoured even his voice.

He was still trying to peer into the heart of the sun when he lost consciousness.

oo0oo

Ed woke up to a pounding headache, and an all-over bruised kind of feeling, as if he'd been tromped on, repeatedly, by hooligans wearing boots. Really big boots.

"Brother?" A fragment of the nightmarish trip through the Gate returned, and Ed forced his eyes open, confirming that Al was really there.

His younger brother was crouched over him, his brow creased with concern. He shook Ed roughly. "Brother, wake up!"

"Mmmphglarg," Ed said, as brightly as he could, and tried to sit up. Every single muscle in his body screamed in protest. Ouch. Fuck.

Al handed him a small tin canteen, a souvenir, courtesy of the Japanese Imperial Army.

Ed gratefully swallowed a mouthful of tepid water, which helped unstick his parched tongue from the roof of his mouth, and generally lubricated things in his throat. He tried speech again. "Did we make it?"

Al looked around. They were in some kind of meadow, with forest all around. "I don't know. Brother, this doesn't look like Amestris."

Ed was forced to agree...in fact, minus the Bone-eater's Well in the middle of the meadow, this looked an awful lot like Inuyasha's Forest. Had they been sent back into Japan's past...again?

And without the jewel or Envy, how would they get away this time? He groaned

"Fuck."

For once, Al didn't reprimand him for his language. "Yes."

There was rustling in the undergrowth nearby, and then soldiers clad in unfamiliar uniforms stepped out into the meadow. They were carrying rifles, which they raised and aimed at Ed and Al as soon as they spotted the two of them.

One of them barked a question at Ed, who shook his head in mute incomprehension. Okay, they're not Japanese. I guess that's good news...

The soldiers advanced, rifles still pointing in their direction.

Even if they hadn't ended up in Amestris, maybe they'd still managed to cross through to their home world, Ed thought. And if that was true, then alchemy would work here.

Okay, it's now or never...

He pictured the transmutation circle that he needed, and clapped.

Energy--sweet, singing, powerful energy--flowed through him, and matter bent to his bidding. Yessss!

A huge stone wall rose out of the earth like a slumbering dragon awakened, shedding clumps of grass and clods of dirt as it reared high, hiding the advancing soldiers from Ed and Al.

"Run!" Ed shouted, and Al obeyed without question.

They plunged into the trees on the other side of the meadow, and kept going until they were sure they'd shaken their pursuers.

"Brother--what--?" Al panted, when they finally dropped behind the shelter of a giant fallen log to rest.

Ed grinned at him. "I don't know exactly where we are, Al, but we're home again! And since we can use alchemy again, we're fucking unstoppable!"

Al looked skeptical. "But those men--those uniforms--"

"If that world and ours share the same geography, then it makes sense that we're still kind of in the same place, even after crossing through the Gate. And if that's true, then we must be somewhere off the coast of Xing right now."

Al blinked. "That's still on the other side of the world from home, Brother."

"C'mon, Al, where's your sense of adventure?" Ed asked enthusiastically. It was all coming clear to him now. "All we have to do is get to a harbor, and find a ship bound for Amestris. You'll see--it'll be easy!" Ed finished. He rose to his feet, and brushed dead leaves and twigs from the seat of his trousers. "You coming?"

"Of course, Brother." Al rose, too. "And while we're walking, perhaps we can discuss how we're going to come up with the fare for the ship."

Ed grinned. "Fucking unstoppable, right? I bet it's not against the law here to alchemize gold..."

2: Pandora's Box

"Captain Ikeda, er, perhaps you should wait to open that cage," Officer Shin Masumoto said, nervously eyeing the long metal box currently taking up most of the space on the conference table.

The branch of the Tokubetsu Koutou Keisatsu known as the Sons of the Dragon had their own headquarters in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo, in a modest brick building located next door to a business that specialized in preserved fish. As a result, the Tokkou's offices always smelled of soy sauce and anchovies, which Matsumoto found oddly comforting.

Ikeda and half his squad were currently assembled in one of the basement rooms, normally reserved for interrogating prisoners.

Ikeda's lips thinned with displeasure. "What did you say?" he snapped.

Matsumoto looked around at his two fellow officers, both of whom had been with Ikeda and Matsumoto at the Sunset Shrine. Neither of them looked happy, but none of them would meet his eye, either.

I guess I'm the only one brave--or stupid enough--to speak up, thought Matsumoto.

He gulped, and came to attention under Ikeda's glare. "I was thinking, sir, that it might be more prudent to wait until the others arrive. With only the four of us, I'm not sure our revolvers will be enough to stop the youkai if it esc--"

"Shut up!" Ikeda's face reddened. "Are you implying that I, who managed to transport from Germany a dragon ten times the size of this pathetic substitute, cannot handle one measly snake?"

Maybe Ikeda had handled a German dragon by himself, but Matsumoto had just this afternoon witnessed how it had taken an inu-gami to control the beast currently in Ikeda's possession.

Matsumoto had grown up hearing cautionary folktales about the havoc wrought by gifts from spirits. Even the well-intentioned ones often proved double-edged, and the inu-gami at the Sunset Shrine had not seemed particularly...friendly or well-intentioned towards the police.

Matsumoto had considered himself a skeptical man when it came to ghosts, demons, or spirits, but that was before he had seen a real, live spirit being.

Yeah, all things considered, opening this gift seemed like an extremely bad idea. He wondered why Ikeda seemed oblivious.

"No, sir," Matsumoto said, knowing it was futile, but knowing he had to at least try to dissuade his superior. "But, just to be on the safe side, we should--"

"Fool!" spat Ikeda. "Coward!"

As if Matsumoto's cautionary words had goaded him, Ikeda reached for the box's intricate latch, and fumbled with it.

The beast within made a sound somewhere between a hiss and growl, and threw itself against its prison, making the long metal box jump and quiver on the table.

Ikeda flinched, then, his face reddening, he tackled the latch with renewed ferocity.

He finally succeeded in opening the box, and the next few minutes passed in a gory blur.

Afterwards, Matsumoto could never recall the exact sequence of events--and that was probably a mercy--but a few images remained indelibly imprinted into his memory:

The frilled serpent exploding out of the box, and engulfing Ikeda's head in a single huge gulp and crunch of jagged teeth.

Fukuda screaming as the beast turned on him next, yellow-green venom mingled with the blood dripping from its mouth, and how the beast's movements painted the floor with streaks of Fukuda's blood like grotesque calligraphic strokes of ink.

The deafening pop-pop-pop of rapid gunfire as Matsumoto raised his gun, and squeezed the trigger again and again.

Himegawa throwing down his weapon and scrambling for the door, slipping and skidding in the gory mess on the tiled floor. The serpent launching itself, quick as a lightning strike, and bringing him down with fangs sunk deep into Himegawa's shoulder.

Matsumoto aimed and shot, and like something out of a nightmare, the bullets bounced off that scaly hide.

The screaming--oh, gods, the screaming--as the beast's poison began to dissolve Himegawa's flesh, silenced only when the serpent shifted its grip to his throat and tore it out.

And, finally, the sight of the beast's left eye exploding into blood and bits of jelly as Matsumoto's last bullet found a vulnerable spot.

It shrieked, writhed convulsively for a few seconds, then stilled.

Fukuda gave one last wheezing moan, and lay still, his wounds still smoking where the youkai's fangs had penetrated.

Shaking, Matsumoto reloaded his gun, and then ran to Fukuda's aid. Ikeda and Himegawa were both very messily dead, but maybe Fukuda--

No pulse, no breath. Too late.

Matsumoto rose shakily to his feet, his heart pounding madly with the after-effects of the battle.

Averting his eyes from the corpses of the three men he had known and worked with for years, he warily studied the remains of the youkai.

Was it really dead, or just waiting for a chance to ambush him?

After what felt like a long time of staring at the beast, Matsumoto concluded that it was probably dead, after all.

What should he do now? Dispose of it?

It was hard to think around the voice in his head chanting oh shit oh shit oh shit. His head hurt, his temples pounding in time with his heartbeat, and his stomach was roiling uneasily.

He didn't want to touch it.

He stared at the beast's scaly length, with its gaudily-colored frills and long fangs, and shuddered. The smell of blood mingled with the sharp smoke of discharged weapons and something musky and caustic that clung to the lining of Matsumoto's throat.

Let someone else take care of this mess. Ikeda's superiors would probably want to preserve the youkai's corpse for propaganda reasons.

A taxidermist could probably work wonders in creating a mascot for this police division, Matsumoto thought, and had to stifle hysterical giggles. Then no one could say that Ikeda had died in vain.

As for himself--he was done.

Done with the Special Higher Police, and done with the Sons of the Dragon.

Never mind what Gramps had told him about his glorious ancestor, a samurai who had served the Great Dragon at Kasama Castle in the days before the shogunate.

The life of a traffic cop sounded just dandy to him right now.

With shaking hands, Officer Matsumoto gently closed the door of the blood-spattered basement room behind him, and staggered upstairs to notify the necessary authorities.

3: Full Circle

Souta Higurashi floated in a timeless place. It was dark and very cold. Then an odd ripple that passed through him, as if Souta had become one with the icy water, and the dark waters receded.

Consciousness returned.

Souta opened his eyes slowly, feeling the world spinning gently around him.

He was drunk, he decided, closing his eyes again. Had he been at that campus izakaya with Professor Tozen again?

But oddly enough, he couldn't remember drinking anything...and what on earth was he doing at the bottom of the Bone-eater's Well?

A boy with fangs and dog-ears. Slippery mud and castle filled with youkai. The dragon. And fire...

Fire.

Memory returned to him, and his eyes flew open. Since he was already lying on his back, it took no effort at all to look up.

There was a roof high overhead. Souta gave a deep sigh of relief as he realized that he'd been returned home, to the Sunset Shrine.

Did that mean that all the rest of it--the journey, the youkai and the hanyou, the alchemy--had just been a vivid dream?

Souta squinted up through the dimness. Something wasn't quite right….

Then it came to him: the ceiling looked old, red paint flaking away from the beams and grimy cobwebs creating fuzzy shadows in the spaces between the beams.

But we just rebuilt the well-house a few months ago, he thought, dizzily. It shouldn't look this decrepit already….

The well had the power to transport people through time. Had he accidentally been sent to Kagome's time, fifty-odd years in his future?

Souta sat up, and studied his surroundings more closely. A twig broom and a dustpan lay next to him, as if he'd carelessly dropped them, and a tall ladder carefully balanced against the curved inner wall of the well

He frowned, feeling the first stirrings of alarm. Hadn't he been home, cleaning out the Bone-eater's Well on that morning...?

The well had the power to transport people through time…forwards and backwards.

Is it…? Can it be…?

He had to see!

Souta propelled himself to his feet and scrambled up the ladder in a desperate hurry, then pushed open the sliding door that led out of the well-house. The door slammed into the frame with enough force to shake the entire structure.

He ran up to the shrine's main courtyard, and looked around. All the old buildings from before the quake are still standing.

The sun was concealed by a heavy cloud cover, and there was a strong wind sending leaves swirling through the courtyard. As Souta stood gaping, he heard Kaoru and Yoshi arguing over whose turn it was to scrub and refill the purification basin.

The delicious smell of sautéed onions and chicken hit his nose, and it was suddenly difficult to breathe--he felt as if his suit had shrunk two sizes and his heartbeat began to pound heavily in his ears.

Old shrine buildings…wind and clouds from a typhoon over Tokyo Bay… déjà-vu.

It was September 1, 1924, and Souta had just been given a second chance.

He turned and ran for the house, sparing a glance in passing for the storage shed on the far side of the courtyard, which showed sign of the reinforcements that the Tokkou had added for the dragon currently chained inside.

His house looked just as he remembered it on the morning of that fateful day.

Souta's fingers were trembling as he raised the latch to the gate that separated their private garden from the shrine grounds.

Can it be...? Is she...?

"Akiko!"

Without taking off his shoes, he ran to the back of the house, where the kitchen was, and pounded inside

His heart gave a mighty leap as he saw Akiko--alive! Oh, gods, alive!--her kimono sleeves tied back, bent over the charcoal stove in the tiny tiled kitchen, vigorously stirring a pan of frying vegetables.

She looked up, startled, as he burst in. "Dear, what are you--"

"Akiko-san, get out of the house! NOW!"

Not giving her time to reply, he grabbed her hand, and dragged her out behind him.

"But--but the food will burn--" She tried to pull away from him, but he only tightened his grip.

She stumbled in his wake down the hall, nearly falling as he yanked her through the doorway with frantic haste, her soft house-slippers catching in the door-sill. Without pausing, he spun, caught her around the waist, and carried her all the way out of the garden.

Panting, he finally came to a halt in the relative safety of the center of the courtyard, away from the largest structures.

"What in the world is going on, dear?" Akiko asked, when they stopped their mad dash. Her confusion was plain. "Are you all right?"

"There's an earthquake coming--" Souta began to say, and then put his arms around her, holding on her with desperate strength.

He found himself shaking with relief--and the terrible foreknowledge that there was nothing he could do to save his parents from their fate.

Right now, they were on a train returning to Tokyo from visiting Akio in Kyoto. In a short while, when the train was passing through a small village west of Odawara, a collapsing mountainside would push the entire train into the sea, along with the village itself.

But Akiko...gods, Akiko was out of the house. She would not be crushed when the roof collapsed. She would not burn in the coming fire. She was safe…

He held on to her as a deep rumbling vibrated through his bones, and the earth began to roll and shake.

And, just as he remembered, the house shuddered and crumpled in a mass of splintered wood and roof-tiles, followed a moment later by the shrine's main hall. There was a deafening sound as if all the crockery in the world was being shattered.

Akiko's fingers dug into his waist as the shaking went on and on, and he clung to her in turn, smelling her sandalwood perfume, unable to believe that she was here, in his arms, and safe.

Alive.

"H-how did you know?" she asked, when the ground finally stopped moving, and they had waited through the period of breathless silence in the aftermath of the quake.

He grinned, a bit manically, and not caring in the least that they were standing out in the open, where anyone might see them, he bent and kissed her thoroughly.

"It was a gift from the spirits of this shrine," he said, his voice thick with tears of joy.

She returned his kiss, jumping a little as another building collapsed somewhere nearby. In the distances, sirens began to wail, and the shifting wind brought the strong smell of smoke.

They separated only when Kaoru and Yoshi came running up, looking a bit scratched up, but otherwise all right.

"Onii-san, all the houses in the neighborhood fell down!" Kaoru reported.

Yoshi looked around the courtyard, and his mouth dropped open in awe.

"That--that's your dragon, isn't it?" he breathed, pointing at a patch of green-scaled hide revealed by a break in the storage shed's wall.

Ah. I'd almost forgotten about the dragon.

Now what do I do?

Souta took a deep breath, calming himself, forcing himself to think through the possibilities with methodical logic. If I don't release the dragon, then I'll avoid all the unpleasantness to come with Ikeda and the Tokkou.

But, then again, what will happen to Kagome, Alphonse, and Edward?

Am I such a coward?

Souta looked at Akiko, who had taken charge of the two excited boys. Akiko, who had been restored to him through a miracle.

And he came to a decision.

Steeling himself to meet his destiny, Souta walked towards the damaged shed that housed the dragon.

He would release the dragon, and open the Bone-eater's Well for it.

Edward-san, Alphonse-kun, Kagome-chan—I'm looking forward to meeting you all again. I'll make different choices this time, and make sure I return home safely, because Akiko will be waiting for me there.

I've changed fate once. I'm sure I can do it again.

The End

Historical and Canon Notes for This Chapter:

The Japanese Tokubetsu Koutou Keisatsu (Special Higher Police), also known as Tokkou, was roughly equivalent to the FBI in the US, but with a much more anti-democratic flavor. It was established in 1911, specifically to investigate and control political groups and ideologies deemed to be a threat to the public order. The splinter group mentioned in this chapter, Sons of the Dragon, is entirely my own invention.'

The great Kanto earthquake was a real event, estimated to have been as strong as 8.4 on the Richter scale. Coinciding with a typhoon over Tokyo Bay, the quake and subsequent firestorms destroyed Tokyo and Yokohama, and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Using poetic license, I've shifted the date of the quake by a year: from Sept.1, 1923 to Sept. 1, 1924, so that it occurs after the events in the Fullmetal Alchemist movie.

inu-gami: dog-spirit. A minor deity, often bound to a particular person as a guardian.

Izakaya: a Japanese pub, serving drinks and small-plates snacks.