Chapter 144: Values
A magnificent horse with a fiery golden mane and a shiny obsidian coat was resting lazily in front of a restaurant as passersby both familiar and unfamiliar with the horse gave him the kind of attention he loved. Numerous hands brushed and pet his sleek and soft hair, creating a crowd in front of the business that wasn't even remotely interested in it.
The owners, or rather the temporary renters of the horse, were enjoying a nice meal in a setting they had never experienced while being completely oblivious to this.
Winry had managed to pull the date here at her request, and Ed had managed to play nice with Arvanak and borrow him in order to arrive at this hole-in-the-wall. It was reportedly one of Winry's favorites, a new satellite restaurant taking advantage of the increasing momentum of this town. One of the few things that traveled the best from the neighboring Crete was its cuisine, or as Yuri would've called it: Italian.
Across from this very restaurant, a series of bushes had sprouted suddenly and out of season, perfectly obscuring a ridiculous amount of binoculars from view. Well, from a single angle.
Al walked up casually to the bush, seeing not 1, not 3, but 6 asses sticking out of a bush and a 7th on the ground beside them like he was in a picnic.
"I was wondering where you guys-"
"Shhhhh!!!" Sarah and Trisha, the two most interested mothers, pulled their heads out of the bush and shushed him, revealing their hair with leaves sticking out of it before going back in.
Al shook his head and went to sit beside Yuri, the picnicker. As he did, he started hearing a static-like voice and identified a radio. He frowned again.
"What's this?"
"I gave the wait staff pictures of them and paid them to sit at a certain table, then bugged it for our viewing pleasure."
"Tch... I thought you were the normal one here."
"Well, Hohen needs to give him notes afterward to make sure he isn't being an awkward hormonal teenager still. Ain't that right, Hohen?"
"Ah, ah, as a father this is my solemn duty." Hohen lifted his face from his pair of binoculars and showed his serious face. A serious face that had black ink rings around his eyes from the lens.
Al looked back at Yuri blankly, whose cheeks were straining to retain their shape as he was huffing air. Hohen frowned.
"Yes, *cough* that's right, Hohen. Gotta make sure your boy isn't doing anything untoward!" Hohen nodded and went back to viewing.
"How did you even know they would come here?"
"Ally told me it was Winry's favorite restaurant, and the woman should always win the first date venue if he did it right."
Yuri turned the volume up on the radio and they all heard Winry's voice clear as a bell.
"Are they still there?" Winry asked.
"Yup... Al just joined them so that makes five. I can't feel the Nightingales but I'm sure they're there as well."
The foreheads of the parents gained black lines as their binoculars drooped.
"Damn, the Rockbells barely have a signature. His sensing has gotten good!" Toni applauded.
"This is nothing to be happy about! It's time to retreat!" Mr. Rockbell whispered.
"If we go now they'll know we can hear them! Get your head in the game!" Sarah berated.
"Yuri, can you hide us? Or make it seem like we left little by little?"
"Hmmm... I've got a better idea."
Yuri split a clone from his body and made it go undetectable before returning to detectable some distance away.
"Oh, Yuri's coming," They heard Ed say as the couple spotted him from the street-facing window.
Clone Yuri looked down at the bush they were hiding in, pantomimed into the bush as if he was actually questioning their behavior, and waved his hand before Ed lost their signatures. Clone Yuri looked over to the restaurant and gave a signature thumbs up with sparkling eyes.
Ed wept manly tears of gratitude and returned a thumbs up. "Yuri took care of them for us, what a good guy!"
Winry gave him a glance of suspicion. "Are you sure?"
"Of course! Now where were we?"
In the Nightingale house, the hardwood floors received the crumpled forms of Hohen and Yuriy while the mothers were let down softly with some decorum.
"What's the big deal, Yuri?! I thought we could stick around?" Trisha asked. Yuri put the radio on the dining room table and let them all hear it.
"We've never really talked about... what you want to do in the future. Are you intent on traveling around Amestris and working for the government indefinitely? You're always gone and I... I don't want that if you want to take us seriously."
Ed smiled lightly and leaned forward. "Winry, I'm not going to settle down for a long time. I want to learn Alchemy and whatever else Yuri can teach me for as long as I can, I want to see how much I can do and what I can become. Hell, I want to see the world beyond Amestris and what it has to offer." Ed was also thinking of the worlds that Yuri can open the pathway to for him.
Winry frowned. "Did you think I wanted you to think about settling down?"
"...Nnnnnot necessarily, but as a mechanic, you don't travel as much as I do and the Testing Grounds keeps you busy here..."
"I want to learn too, I want to keep learning everything I can from Ally and see what machines are capable of out there. So when I am ready, take me with you dumbass..."
Ed snorted and smiled brightly. "It can be dangerous you know? Not that you can't handle yourself."
"Hmph, as if that will scare me. Besides, you're my VIP customer. I can't very well leave you alone for long, the Testing Grounds can run itself when I'm done with it."
"Winry..."
"Hmm?"
Ed's real hand stretched to reach hers and grasped between each finger. "I'll be waiting for you to be ready, Win. Un-Until then, let's make a trade."
"A trade?"
"Hmm. I want your heart, and you can have mine. Deal?" Ed cocked his head with a nervous smile, looking at her and waiting like she was giving a verdict.
Winry snorted with a smallish curled smile and a dreamy expression. She pulled Ed's hand and he had to lunge over the table suddenly which Winry received. She lunged her head and Ed felt like the moment was in slow motion, giving him enough time to prepare himself.
In the dining room, Yuri held out his hand and a hologram floated above it. A scene was completely still for a while, the two leaning over the table and gently locking lips.
"Now they'll go upstairs next and pick up the pace, right?" Toni joked.
"Is that how you guys did it?" Sarah was unamused.
Yuri cleared his throat and clenched his fist, ending the visual.
"Why attach ours together instead? That sounds more like a commitment and less like a transplant."
"Yours sounds like a serial killer..."
Yuri laughed and shut the radio off. "I think we can give them some alone time for now."
"That place doesn't have an upstairs, does it?"
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Ed and Al were called to the Nightingales' house as soon as they woke up and made their way there promptly. A knock was followed by a quick invitation and they let themselves in, seeing an odd scene.
They were dressed as fancily as they usually are, perhaps a tad bit more so this time for some reason, but they were standing oddly still and they were even gloomy.
"Ready to go?" Yuri asked them.
"Uh, yeah. You ready, Al?"
"Mhm..."
In a fraction of a second, they had arrived in the middle of a street sidewalk in a dreary suburb. The people around them paid no mind to their sudden arrival.
"It seems we're early," Yuri commented before turning around and sitting on a bench that came out of nowhere.
"Early? What are we doing here?"
Yuri snapped and the bench extended as they all took a seat, Toni and Ally on either side of him.
"There is a man in this house who fancies himself an Alchemist. He is a perfect example of what people are capable of when they toss aside their ideals and ethics in pursuit of their ambition or their 'Truth'."
"...And we're here to stop him?"
"Waiting for the right moment, yes."
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"Daddy?" A little girl with pigtails, not older than six, was sitting cross-legged in a cage her father had put her in beside the family dog.
"It'll all be alright, sweety. It will be over soon."
A lanky middle-aged man with pale and unhealthy skin and a balding top of his head was scrawling chalk lines on the wooden floorboards of a corner room in his house. A house that he would lose along with the accumulation of his life's work if he failed to bring results to the State in his next evaluation. One that was happening tomorrow.
His only hope, he believed, was to repeat or make a better version of the experiment that gave him his title last time. He was Shou Tucker, the Sewing Life Alchemist. His first success was a combination Chimera between a human and some other beast. The result was a talking mixed animal, an animal that refused to eat and begged for death.
Having not brought anything of merit for the State in the last two years, he was unwilling to be thrust to the bottom once more. Perhaps a younger test subject was needed for an easier fusion!
"You will be reborn into something else, and you will help Daddy achieve greatness! It will all be okay in the end!"
The crazed smile and the glint of reddened and wet eyes behind her father's rounded spectacles scared the hell out of Nina Tucker. She held onto the fur of her family pet, Alexander, and cried. So this was how her mom disappeared? That creature that could barely utter a word and shivered unnaturally was her mother all along?
"No... Nooo!" "Boof!" Nina's voice quivered and her valiant dog came to her defense, covering the distance between them and growling.
Shou laid his hands on the Alchemical circle and smiled. It was going to be okay for him this time tomorrow! The lines glowed blue and lit the dark room with a vibrant blue tinged with evil. Lightning flickered through the lines and along the cage bars for three agonizing seconds.
"YYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" Nina squealed and clutched Alexander tightly while burying her face in his fur.
Until suddenly it just stopped. Shou Tucker looked around in his suddenly dark room as the only noise was his whimpering daughter. To his right towards the door, he saw three pairs of glowing eyes burning Red, Blue, and Gold. A shiver went down his spine, as if he was being looked down upon as prey. He heard a snap and balls of fire floated and lit the place in every crevice.
There were more than just the three pairs of menacing eyes present, two more teenagers were beside them with slightly less calm faces of anger and horror. The middle one with golden eyes spoke first.
"Shou Tucker, for the act of Human Transmutation on your wife and the second attempt of another on your own daughter, you will be judged-"
"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Ed's right metal arm glowed with a blinding rage he had never charged into it, casting it wholly in blue plasma.
*BAM!* Ed's fist landed squarely on... Yuri's palm.
"WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STOPPING ME?!" Shou had landed on his ass despite not being hit and backpedaled into the wall for the life of him.
"Don't beat the girl's father in front of her. Let's handle this in the right order," Yuri whispered. Ed looked back at the girl and remembered she was watching. Teary-eyed and shivering, Ally broke the cage open gently and she and Toni both brought her out gently and held her from the front and the back. Alexander was ready to put up a fight, but a wave of Toni's hand seemed to change his mood in no time.
"Damn you... damn you I almost had it..." Shou muttered under his breath.
Ed snarled and almost went back to beating him before Yuri clapped his shoulder and waved Shou into a remote region of Avalon. "We'll all get a piece, but the last verdict goes to Nina," Yuri said.
Ed frowned and nodded, dusting himself off.
Yuri turned his head and saw Toni looking at Nina's head, buried in Ally's chest, with consternation as she probed gently with Waking Dreams.
'Toni... We agreed...' Yuri telepathically transmitted.
'Hmph... I know we did. It just isn't fair to her... I can take the pain all away so easily...'
'Go ahead and put her on some strings and make her dance while you're at it.'
Toni pinched her eyes and glared at him, wet with tears.
'I'm sorry, but you know it's true. Taking away Pride's memories was an attack, it was a kill. Touching her memories would be an attack to her identity, she wouldn't be Nina anymore but a toy we kept.'
'I know... I know... I hate how you can look at things so objectively sometimes...'
'Well, people are a result of their genetics, their environment, and their upbringing. That doesn't change the fact that scum should die for the good of the people and it feels good to bring karma back around.'
'He'll get my personal touch later.'
'He'll get all of ours.'
'We'll have to go there in shifts.' Yuri nodded his head towards Nina and Toni understood.
'That's worth it.'
Yuri directed them all outside and they left with Nina, who had already fallen asleep.
"So, what did we learn?" Yuri and the brothers followed Toni and Ally out and continued talking.
"I didn't see Truth intervene, but this was clearly Human Transmutation?"
"Truth only intervenes when his boundaries are being crossed. He cares very little about human ethics or experiments regarding our physiology and horrid mutation with another species. Animal cruelty is way out of his orbit as well, if you were wondering."
Ed clenched his fist, Al outright said "Backward piece of shit."
"That's the spirit. What else?"
Ed and Al stayed silent.
"You called religion a tool to bind or weaponize and treated it with a healthy amount of caution. You should be doing the same with Alchemy. Why do you think I never introduced you to Organic Alchemy and instead went with Alkahestry?"
"Alkahestry heals, Alchemy mutates?"
"That is their primary goal, even though they can technically cross. There isn't a single ethical Organic Alchemist in Amestris. The government itself encourages the kind of warfare-leaning Biological Alchemy that people like us should frown upon. My point is... Alchemy is a powerful tool with limitless possibilities. The more you grow, the more possibilities will be opened to you in the future. But when the time comes on your road to your end goal and you find that your power grants you a solution that goes against your values, you need to ignore it. Fill your greater good with lesser evils, and at the end you'll find nothing but a greater evil."
"Yeah, no shit." Al spat and Ed laughed. "We don't stray from our ideals!"
Yuri snorted. "Well, I never doubted you. Just a reminder."
"Is class over baby?" Toni called back.
"I can cut it short."
Blue lights and warbling sounds of sirens blinked on and neared closer with each second.
"That's our time to go," Yuri clapped and everyone was sent back home, with one extra person in tow.
{Next Chapter: Induction and Adoption}
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