Alchemy is deconstruction, recombination, and reconstruction. A heap of sand, recombined, becomes a slab of hard stone; a hard stone, deconstructed, becomes a pile of dust.
Every alchemist learns many transmutation circles, but only a few can wield them in battle—the difference lies in how deeply they understand and apply those circles. Take Roy Mustang: he isn't a man who can conjure flame from nothing. In damp air—or where there's no oxygen—he's all but useless.
The A4 Kash District lay toward the city's edge, home mostly to freelancers. Here you heard only sporadic shots. Now and then, figures flickered past the windows of nearby homes; from time to time, a glint skated over the ground before Allen—binocular glass, he knew.
There was none of the fierce, blazing resistance raging outside. Only a crushing pressure. On this street, at Allen's position, no fewer than dozens of rifles were trained on his head. Ishvalans revered peace, but that didn't mean they feared war.
Allen had stripped down to his shirt. Early spring wasn't warm—if anything, it was cold. A gust scraped along the empty street, sending stray scraps of light debris dancing into the air. Stark desolation.
Holding the filter between thumb and forefinger, he dragged hard, face blank. As pale yellow smoke left his lips, he flicked away the smoldering butt, a little coal-bright stub. Maybe his wheat-brown skin, so close to an Ishvalan tone, stayed their hands in the shadows—for the moment, they only watched the man standing in the street.
As that tumbling half-cigarette sank toward the ground, scattering a few sparks, Allen's mouth curled into a thin, chilling smile.
Time seemed to freeze. A searing red circle sprang into existence where the butt fell—like a boulder dropped into a placid lake, its ring raced outward in an instant. Soundless. Uncanny. Uncanny to the extreme.
Where the rolling circle touched houses, they shredded like roadside thatch huts in a typhoon, then kindled into raging fire—yet without a whisper of sound.
Someone recovered first and shouted; gunfire swelled at once. Bullets poured down like rain from every direction, a seamless storm. Ishvalans firing from farther out already wore triumphant grins. They'd seen combat alchemists before. Whoever entered the field always prepped their killing ahead of time—often by plating their skin with special materials through alchemy—except for those rare few with overwhelming strength.
The first wild shot grazed Allen's forehead and punched into the bluestone street, leaving a fist-sized crater. Then the hail hit. In a blink, the spot where he stood vanished under a geyser of powdered stone. A few Ishvalans leaned out of unshuttered windows, lifting their rifles high to cheer their comrades. Bringing down an alchemist—unheard-of glory.
While they cheered, the dust settled, revealing a rounded stone shell pocked with pits. The cheers died at once.
Silence.
The battered shell began to split like a hatching egg. Cracks crawled across it; in an instant, blue-green light lanced skyward along those lines, ripping open the dark clouds. The shell lifted, parting. Terror washed over Ishvalan faces—Allen stood in the center, untouched.
He smiled like it meant nothing and looked toward a fourth-floor window across the way. His lips parted, as if he were speaking, but there was no sound at all.
A few seconds later, as his lips closed, a vast transmutation circle flared cyan beneath his feet. The corner of his mouth crept wider. A pillar of light punched into the sky—and from Allen as the center, countless stone spires burst from the earth, thick enough that two men together would barely encircle one, three meters high, racing outward in a radial ring.
Panicked shouts, wretched screams, the thunder of impacts—these rolled over the whole district. Allen never moved an inch.
To trigger a transmutation, an alchemist must complete the circuit. Most do it with their hands. Even someone like Izumi—who can transmute without drawing a circle—must press her hands together first to close that critical loop. Allen didn't need his hands not because of some secret "special ability," but because his feet could complete the circuit too.
A little way off, on the top floor of a four-story building, a young, fair-skinned man stood at a window. He wore an exquisitely expensive black tuxedo and a bow tie, his sleek black hair combed back. A monocle sat over his right eye, a pure-gold chain linking it to a chest ornament. He flicked dust elegantly from his fingers, ignored Allen's gaze, smiled just the same, turned, and slipped from sight. The instant he vanished, the building collapsed with a roar, stone spires having riddled it like a hornets' nest. With the only man who'd stirred even a faint sense of threat gone, Allen cut loose, smashing all restraint. He didn't care what that man intended. Allen knew himself—perfect. Invincible.
Compared with Armstrong, Allen's method was almost gentle. Armstrong, by now, wore nothing but that miraculously elastic waistband; the rest of his clothes had shredded to rags on the wind. His powerful frame and mounded muscles screamed force. Braced on his shoulder was an eight-barreled, oversized grenade repeater, spitting shells in a frenzy.
Everything around Armstrong lay in ruins. Not a single intact house—hardly even an unbroken wall—remained. Shattered stone and splintered wood were everywhere. Bodies blown apart into pieces lay silent on the rubble.
Armstrong cast a glance toward Allen, felt a jolt of urgency, and charged toward the crowds being evacuated in the distance…
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