Be Thou For The People — A Fullmetal Alchemist AU Quest

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Looks like we're going with… A tear-stained letter from your elder sister, and The Third Estates' Alchemy. Vote's closed!
Scheduled vote count started by Cataphract on Jul 13, 2021 at 8:36 AM, finished with 24 posts and 20 votes.
  • [X] A tear-stained letter from your elder sister
    [X] The Third Estates' Alchemy
    [X] Your old history textbook
    [X] Internal Alchemy
    [X] Thunderclap Alchemy
    [X] A tear-stained letter from your elder sister: You were born to a large, happy, and otherwise unremarkable mining family. Your mother taught you rudimentary alchemy, so after making a good first impression, you managed to gain an apprenticeship with a local alchemist. You learned much under your master, but they passed away some years ago before completing your apprenticeship. As their sole apprentice, you were left with their library, their equipment, and their personal research notes—eclectic by the standards of State Alchemist training but unique in an unreplicable way. Despite their many eccentricities, you miss your teacher fiercely.
    [X] The Third Estates' Alchemy: A particular specialization of alchemy that in of itself is not specialized. It is versatile, practical, and so broad as to be indistinguishable to the basics that all Alchemists learn. But then, that's part of the point, for the ideal of this path for an Alchemist to be all of the people, indistinguishable to the masses they were supposed to serve.
    [X] Thunderclap Alchemy: A highly specialized form of combat alchemy that focuses on creating and directing bolts of electricity. Your focus has left you merely adequate in most other typical applications of alchemy, though you'd say the ability to wield a storm in your hands is a fair trade.
    [X] Breathing Arsenalworks
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So while we wait for QM to finish the next part of Character Creation we need ideas on how to utilize our handyman nature to defend ourselves.
 
The update's in the oven, don't you worry about that.

But I just wanna point this part out from the description of Third Estates' Alchemy:

Cataphract said:
While strangers would sometimes scoff and call you a glorified repairman, most would then be underestimating your hard-earned skills and the versatility it affords you. Some problems—or so you were taught—could only be resolved by a sound thrashing, with or without alchemy's aid.
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You're not gonna fight like Basque Gran or Roy Mustang, but you can still fight for sure.
 
Well we can't just clap and have shit happen like Ed or be a one trick peony like Roy with his gloves, Unless we did some human transmutation in our past, so we need some skill with a weapon or fighting skill for anything coming to fast for us to draw a circle, I'd say a dagger with a per-drawn circle so we could change it on the fly and be small enough to not draw to many looks other then that I got noting.

Edit: Maybe also a handgun?

Edit2: May be a bit evil but a guard chimaera or a little animal friend?
 
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Cataphract said:
You're not gonna fight like Basque Gran or Roy Mustang, but you can still fight for sure.
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I know that, we wouldn't have survived the war if we couldn't fight. I was raising the point of how we fight to get ideas on how to improve.

If we had Lightning Alchemy we could go Misaka Mikoto route and work to level up our Alchemy so that we can get magnetism to turn ourselves into Lightning Mustang and get a Railgun or Iron Sand Manipulation as our next level alchemy to our general lightning blasts.

For the Arsenalworks tree, we could try telekinetically launch swords or arrows and practice launching them like Gilgamesh from Fate then work on getting Muskets and Cannons as an upgrade so that we can make a firing line of muskets before finishing off at transfiguring MGs and Rocket Batteries as our end-game level Alchemy. Making Grenades or Mines right under an enemy's feet is pretty devastating when you think about it. Plus arming a resistance is much easier when you can make them on demand and funding your resistance can also be made easier by being an arms dealer but I doubt the others will vote on this.

Stuff like that, I am asking for ideas on how to improve our character with the handyman skill.

epic said:
Edit: maybe also a handgun?
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It would be Real bad if we got disarmed, I think a bracelet or ring would be much safer.
 
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Little bits of jewelry and if our hair is long enough one or two of those metal hair spikes nothing to much that slow us down, Oh and wire in our mouth to lock pick if catch or throw in jail for something?

Edit: Bladed shoes like in spy movies =D
 
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Character creation pt. 2
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    • Here's part 2 of character creation! I hope it lets you get a feel for our protagonist and his backstory a little bit more. Again, thanks to @Vocalend for helping me with this update.

    "Excuse me. Could I please see your ticket, sir?"

    You're drawn from your halfhearted nap by someone's voice. It takes you a moment to pull your hat from your face and to sit up to see whoever's woken you. A man is standing before you with an apologetic, and maybe a little tired, expression on his craggy face. He's wearing the night-blue jacket and flat-topped cap of the conductors of the Amestrian National Rail Company. A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, its lenses large and round like saucers, make him look like a very large and very meek owl.

    "Oh, yeah, of course." It takes you an embarrassingly long time to reach into your jacket pocket and you proffer the half-crumpled ticket to the conductor.

    "You've nothing to apologize for. If anything, I should be saying sorry to you, sir! I woke you up, after all." The man nods with an almost comically serious look on his face.

    You're about to crack a small joke to lighten the mood when you notice that his eyes have become deadened, somehow. He barely takes a moment to glance at your ticket—before his left hand expertly draws a revolver, just about ready to point at you.

    You don't even look at the hammer's position, as your own left hand flicks in and out of your coat pocket. Whatever it was that he expected from you, it's not the feeling of fabric whipping at his face. Just like your master always did in your spars; a handkerchief thrown perfectly into his face.

    He grunts as he brushes your handkerchief aside, pointing the gun at you—

    But by then, you've already stood up. In one hand you carry your oaken walking cane, and as you pray that your aim is true as you whip the cane up and towards your attacker's arm, the steel cap on the handle glinting, whipping the revolver away from the other passengers.

    There is a flash of thunder, followed by a deafening crack. The gunshot is deafeningly loud in the close confines of the train car, but you can feel the cacophony through your skin as your aim strikes true and the bullet does not. As your hearing returns seconds later with that all-too-familiar ringing in your ears, you hear the screams of your fellow passengers — as parents shield their children with their bodies, a young man barely twenty is shoved to the ground by his grandfather, a veteran of the Mournings. Quiet down, he says as he hunkers behind the bench. They won't hurt us. — as their sense of normalcy is upended. The wind leaks from the hole in the ceiling, bringing with it the northern chill that you've grown up with.

    But this isn't time for nostalgia. You had recovered quickly but the 'conductor' had been nearly as quick. As you swing your cane down on his shoulder, you merely clip his jacket as he takes a step back, raising the revolver up once again.

    He didn't expect your shoulder tackle, though, as you loop your hands around his, ensuring the gun keeps pointing up and away from the crowd as you yell, slamming his back at the carriage window. You feel something crack as air is forcibly expelled from his lungs, crushed between your body and the steel frame. He wheezes for air—and you give him no quarter as you ram your forehead onto his nose.

    Something definitely cracked there, as blood begins to spill out of his nose—

    —And as the carriage door opens to reveal a man built like a bear, holding within his meaty hands a brutal-looking shotgun. At the sight of your form and his probable companion, he merely wrenched your hands from the fellow assassin, freeing him and driving you to the ground.

    Leaving you to stare down the two barrels of his sawed-off shotgun.

    And here, the world slows down. For here, you will need to take a decision that should never be done lightly.

    In front of you are two assassins, sent to murder you.

    Behind you are innocent bystanders, a car full of simple people who were chatting happily about the armistice and the peace of a nation only seconds before.

    And so your decision is made.

    You do not hesitate as the finger of the second assassin brings his weapon to bear. You slide your fingers just so on the cane as you tilt it up, and the almost invisible grooves carved into the end of the oak wood light up with the unmistakable crackle of golden light.

    Just as the assassin squeezes the trigger, the steel cap of your cane flies off with a wreath of crackling light and slams against the twin barrels of his weapon.

    However, unlike your previous attacks, the metal does not knock the man's aim off. Instead, it splashes against the twin barrels of his weapon, smearing itself on the weapon as if you'd thrown a clump of mud and not a knot of steel. It lodges itself in the twin muzzles just as the transmutation reaction ends, turning what were the two open barrels of a shotgun into a solid metal plug.

    Naturally, the explosive force of the two shotgun shells has no place to go, save for the sole place where the energy can escape—back towards the breech of the poor bastard's weapon.

    For what it's worth, the men die instantly; your little trick turns the gun into so many shards of metal and wood that go flying towards, and through, them. They rip up flesh, puncture organs, and shatter bone, and turn two men into ghosts.

    (A part of your mind, that quavery little voice that you first heard since after that night raid in Ishval several years ago, can't help but note how neatly the blowback was funneled away from you—while the back end of the train car is now tattered with holes and smeared with gore, not a single piece of debris has gone near you or any of the civilians that you decided to protect.)

    You take a single moment to glance down at the men you've just killed, reach up your free hand to dust yourself off… and are interrupted by another set of firearms clicking.

    "Freeze!" You turn around and see the three soldiers who had previously been riding in the car with you. They're pointing handguns—two-shot derringers and a snub-nosed revolver; civilian weapons that even an enlisted soldier can buy any moderately-sized general store, the sort of good-luck charm soldiers might keep around for a little peace of mind on the long and dangerous trip to the North District—pointed at you. As their leader, a handsome blue-eyed Amestrian man who might as well have stepped off a recruitment poster, takes a good look at your handiwork his steely-eyed expression curdles a little bit with uncertainty and maybe a little disgust. Still, he has the wherewithal to keep the mettle in his voice. "Drop the weapon, and start explaining yourself right now!"

    Your cane drops to the floor with a clatter as you raise your hands above your head.

    "I'm Major Solomon Abrams—a State Alchemist. I was just taking the train to Semoy City, same as you." Even as a 'dog of the military' you were never much for pulling rank, but it's easy enough to take on that confident and authoritative tone you've heard so many times before. Beyond that, you're technically not lying; while the Prefecture of the Fuhrer has already rescinded your access to state assets, you're certain that you've left before the Military Police can begin to post wanted posters. "Those two," You jerk your head to the shredded corpses lying on the floor. "Attacked me without provocation."

    You give a little mental sigh of relief when the man's eyes widen—not in anger or shock but with the realization of a ground-pounder standing before a commissioned officer. He schools his expression a second later, but he seems the tiniest bit less hostile. To their credit, the soldiers don't take you at your word, though their expressions defrost a little bit.

    Maybe you're not so unlucky after all.

    "If you reach into the left pocket on my jacket, you'll find my pocket watch and my identity card." Again, you're thankful that you had decided against buying a new identity from your 'friends' when you'd heard the bad news; there was still a little time before you couldn't pull rank like this anymore.

    Their leader—a captain, from the looks of his epaulets—doesn't take his eyes off you, nor does the barrel of his gun waver.

    "Hammond, check it out. Laney and I will cover you."

    The member of the trio who stood closest to you—a dusky-skinned man with cornrows—steps forward after tucking his derringer away beneath his military-issue overcoat. The cold air continues to whip around the train car, driving the smell of blood and gunsmoke away. It's enough to send your overcoat a-fluttering, which certainly doesn't make the task of verifying your identity any easier for the man.

    As instructed, Hammond reaches into your front pocket with all the delicacy of a florist pruning a prize rose bush. He takes a moment to examine your pocket watch, then turns back to his comrades.

    "Unless this guy's a top-class forger, it's the real thing, Captain." The soldier holds up the watch for his comrades to see. The Amestrian Dragon, ensconced within its alchemical polygram, glints beneath the yellow lights of the train car. After a moment's hesitation on his part, the captain nods. "Card checks out, too."

    "He is an alchemist…" A mousy-looking woman who can only be Laney shrugs her shoulders. "Top-class forgery isn't exactly outside their remit, sir."

    "He'd have to be able to forge military-issue identification as well as the State Alchemist's pocket watch—but if he could, he'd certainly be out of our league anyway. Stand down." As the captain lowers his weapon, Laney follows suit without complaint. For his part, Hammond takes a respectful step back. "Still, I thought I'd have to wait until we joined the garrison at Fort Briggs before I'd see combat again." It's clear that the man has a million questions for you, but he instead snaps off a salute—one that his subordinates repeat a few seconds later. "Captain Foster, sir. These are Lieutenants Laney and Hammond. I must apologize for our conduct."

    "None needed, Captain. I'd have done the same if I were you; these are dangerous times we live in." With that settled, you reach down and pick up your cane. Thankfully, it hadn't rolled into the quickly-growing pool of blood at your feet, but after what you just did, you feel like you'll have to clean it nonetheless. "The train needs to be secured. The first one came from the front of the train, and his friend there came from behind us. There may be more of them."

    You're only a little surprised when Foster disagrees.

    "If they wanted you dead, sir, they would've come at us already." His eyes flicker about as if he's trying to soak in every grisly detail of the scene before him. "A State Alchemist's not a soft target, especially if you've lost the advantage of surprise."

    "You're right." It's been a little while since you've had to tell soldiers what to do, and you're realizing how much you still dislike doing it. But as the old saying went: when needs must, the devil drives… "Nevertheless, we can't rest until we know the people on board are safe. Go and secure the other cars, and check on the passengers there. I'll head to the front of the train and see what happened to the other conductors—you'd think they would've heard this racket. Meet me back here in ten minutes."

    "Sir." The captain gives you a salute with his free hand, then gestures for his subordinates to follow him. You'd commend him for being quick on the uptake, if only as an apology. You certainly don't envy the mess that he'll be in when the dust settles.

    When the soldiers leave, you reach up and pull your suitcase out from its place above your bench. All of the other passengers are still too busy cowering to give you so much as a second glance, and you can't help but feel a little dissatisfied with how you're leaving them. If the old man were here, he would've cuffed you about the ear and told you to say something to these people. You can almost hear his voice, see his heavy brow furrowed with concern—Solly my boy, this is your mess and you dragged these poor people into it. The least you can do is tell them that everything will be alright.

    Perhaps he would've conjured up a silly trick to get a smile or two or even turn some juice into wine to fortify the nerves.

    You yourself could use some liquid courage right now, but you don't have the luxury of time. You've already gone and made things that much worse for you by giving Captain Foster your identity. It's pretty obvious that your pursuers will get your name from him or one of his subordinates when the train pulls into Semoy City. With a soft sigh, you walk forwards through the baggage train and to the train's engine. You might not be returning to debrief the good captain, but you'll at least check up on the engineers.

    Thankfully, it seems that whoever these men were, they didn't bother with too much collateral damage. They'd gone and waved their guns a little, and taken the uniform of one unfortunate conductor, but as soon as you informed the crew that they wouldn't be coming back they reassured you that they'd get the train and its passengers to Semoy City, safe and sound—after slowing down the train for a few minutes, of course. Luckily for you, they had been too thankful for your rescue to really question why you needed them to do that.

    With that all said and done, you make your way to the end of one of the baggage cars and tap the handle of your staff against the railing. Again the golden lightning crackles to life as you transmute wood and steel into an oversized sled that rests on a ramp that will, as soon as you give it a good push, let you disembark from the train in a hopefully safe manner.

    After securing your suitcase at the bottom of the sled, you take a moment to stand atop it as you stare out at the landscape before you. You see stretches of evergreen trees heavily blanketed by snow—the wide expanses of the North. While you were born in a mining town some ways south of here, the landscape is a little nostalgic. As you gaze out onto the horizon, you catch a glance of a crossing—If the train driver was right, that crossing would take you to your destination after a good day's walk... barring any inclement weather, of course.

    And so, as the train slows down at your command, you sit on the sled and give a nice strong push. From an outsider's perspective, it is like something out of a film—an alchemist hurling himself from a moving train atop a comically oversized sled. However, unlike the movies, there are no comedic misunderstandings nor star-crossed romances, just two more corpses and a man evading the long arm of the State.

    One clumsy landing later, you stand up and shake off the pain from your impromptu disembarkment. While you didn't fall off the sled, it was a close thing indeed. Such was your 'ride' that you have to take a moment to check that, yes, the road was still there and you hadn't doomed yourself to wandering the hinterlands until your pursuers found you.

    You take a glance at your sled, your noble steed for all of thirty seconds, and then tap the bottom of your cane against it. In a flash of golden light, the sled is reduced to kindling and scrap metal in a second; another transmutation buries it beneath several meters of permafrost. It would've been easier to wait for the train to pull in at Semoy City and find a truck, or failing that a cart, that would take you to the village of Morozov.

    Easier, however, does not necessarily mean better; if the government is already sending gunmen after you, a trek through the wilderness is worth the chance you'll shake off any pursuers who still have your scent. Being this far north meant that there was still enough resentment among the native Drachman population—those not enough trouble to expel and too stubborn to leave—that any investigation would have a great deal of trouble simply getting the locals to speak with 'those Amestrian dogs'.

    You stretch your legs and examine the trail before you. Luckily it looks like it hasn't snowed in a couple of days, and the sky was clear. If you kept up a good pace, you'll make it to your rendezvous before the deadline. Most people would balk at traveling nearly twenty kilometers in some of the most dangerous terrain in all of Amestris, but most people weren't alchemists like you. The cold and dark was trivial for a man who could fashion himself a shelter in a matter of seconds. Hunger and thirst were easy to resolve by that same virtue, though you really hoped you wouldn't have to dig up hibernating animals for some kind of hunter's stew. No, the only thing you'll worry about is how badly your feet will ache by the time you arrive.

    For a moment you stare up at the sky, at the stars slowly emerging from the gloom as twilight wanes on. Again, you are reminded of your childhood—those happy nights when the sky was clear and you and your master would sit on his roof and pick out constellations with the help of his telescope. If you look carefully, you're sure you can see them; the Wise Man, the Maiden, the Great Whale...

    That was more than a decade ago, now.

    "I've really gone and messed up now, huh? I wonder what advice you'd have for me right now, master." You can almost see him now—see him as you strive to remember him; a huge barrel of a man with a smile as wide as anything standing in the middle of your family home, entertaining your mother and father and all your siblings with stories of far-off Xing or some alchemist's fable passed down from his own master and his master's master before them. "You'd probably tell me to sit down and make a cup of tea before anything else. Maybe bake some scones while I was at it."

    You laugh at that. Tea and scones would be really nice right about now. With that thought in mind, you take your suitcase in one hand and start walking. As you disappear into the quickly darkening countryside, your mind begins to wander. It was almost funny how your entire life could be overturned so quickly, how you could go from State Alchemist to outlaw in what felt like the blink of an eye.

    Your mind drifts back to that fateful day:

    [] The Manchini Request. It had started with an Aerugonian mobster with a cache of machine pistols...
    [] The Violet Tome. It had started with what seems to be a fatal knife attack by Cretans on an Amestrian professor...
    [] The Bogatyr's Fence. It had started with a call from a Drachman bank robber...
     
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    • [X] The Bogatyr's Fence. It had started with a call from a Drachman bank robber...

    Let's go for the northern theme
     
    [X] The Violet Tome. It had started with what seems to be a fatal knife attack by Cretans on an Amestrian professor...
     
    Cataphract said:
    Perhaps he would've conjured up a silly trick to get a smile or two
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    I don't think it'd work too well while standing over two bodies with their brains blown out, but now I want him to try it some time.

    Can't recall anything about geography, nations and politics, thus choosing purely on the merits of the criminal activity involved!

    [x] The Bogatyr's Fence. It had started with a call from a Drachman bank robber...
     
    [X] The Violet Tome. It had started with what seems to be a fatal knife attack by Cretans on an Amestrian professor...
     
    [X] The Bogatyr's Fence. It had started with a call from a Drachman bank robber...
     
    [X] The Bogatyr's Fence. It had started with a call from a Drachman bank robber...

    I hope that we can have Armstrong as a backer
     
    Nevill said:
    Can't recall anything about geography, nations and politics, thus choosing purely on the merits of the criminal activity involved!
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    You don't need to worry about that. The series doesn't really spend a lot of time on them—which is where a lot of the AU elements will come in!

    Edit: for future reference's sake, here's a link to the map from the FMA wiki. If the name of the city isn't mentioned in canon, you can assume I may change it to something that sounds a little nicer if only because I'm pretty sure that a lot of those names are lorem ipsum-style filler text.
     
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    [X] The Bogatyr's Fence. It had started with a call from a Drachman bank robber...
     
    Cataphract said:
    You don't need to worry about that. The series doesn't really spend a lot of time on them—which is where a lot of the AU elements will come in!

    Edit: for future reference's sake, here's a link to the map from the FMA wiki. If the name of the city isn't mentioned in canon, you can assume I may change it to something that sounds a little nicer if only because I'm pretty sure that a lot of those names are lorem ipsum-style filler text.
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    link's broken on my end
     
    [X] The Manchini Request. It had started with an Aerugonian mobster with a cache of machine pistols...

    Gun running sounds interesting.
     
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