Chapter 3

A Chapter by Keevan

That night, instead of sleeping in the dorms, I walked right out of Central Command and walked the streets. It was something I did that cleared my mind.

"Remember," I mumbled to myself. "remember already!" I lost my memory of eight years and under. I remembered nothing.

Somehow I could do alchemy, and I could do it without a Transmutation Circle. Why? Probably something connected to my past, but I couldn't remember it, so I was at a loss.

I sat down on the sidewalk under a flickering lamp and took out a cigarette and lighter.

"Where did I wander to this time?" I muttered as I looked around. I took a drag on my cigarette, and figured I had walked onto one of the many backstreets in Central.

I sighed, and pulled down my sweatshirt hood, exposing my long brownish-reddish hair. It felt good to get away from the military sometimes.

I heard some mumbling and fuzzy-sounding noises, and took the radio out of my pocket.

"Repeat that, if you please," I said as I held down the button. I released it, and I heard Colonel Mustang say sternly, "Lucy get your sorry a*s back here. You have a report to write."

I sighed. "On my way."

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The thing that I'm sure of is waking up on Colonel Mustang's doorstep one night with a picture in my hands. I knew nothing before that. He was kind enough to take me in, but four years later, I ran away. I lived on my own, just bouncing from village to settlement to town to city, not staying in one place for very long. But I eventually had to go back, and when I did, I discovered something about myself: I was really good at alchemy.

When I was living with Colonel Mustang, he taught me the basics of alchemy so I could practice it when I was bored. I studied a little bit more of it when I heard some people talking about it in a town called Dublith. That's about the time when things kind of started to make sense.

My memories had to be taken away by Human Transmutation. It was the only answer I could see at the time.

I began to experiment with it, transmuting myself. I learned how to decompose myself into a shadow that moved along the ground. And the part that I found was weird was that I didn't need a Transmutation Circle to do it. It might have been classified into Human Transmutation, but I just thought I had found a way around it somehow.

When I was thirteen, I went back to Central City and lived in the backstreets, stealing food and money and such from whoever I caught back there. I had accidentally killed a few people. It scared me at first, and soon, an idea started to form in my head: What if I joined the military and did good things? Would that cancel out the murders? I decided to go back to Colonel Mustang.

When I arrived back at Central Command at the age of fourteen, I asked Colonel Mustang to let me try and take the test to become a State Alchemist so I could do something with my life. And I didn't have any other place to stay, either, so I needed a reason to sleep in the dorms. I was also tired of living off of the streets, stealing.

I took the test at fourteen and became a State Alchemist, known as the Stealth Alchemist because of what I could do with my alchemy.

And during one of my missions is when the military officials discovered my other talent: I could kill without any effort. I wasn't afraid of anything anymore. Killing came natural to me. I almost lost an arm trying to kill someone and didn't even realize it until my opponent was dead on the ground.

I became an assassin, using alchemy to assist me. And during that time is when I discovered the horrors of alchemy. What too much power could do to one's brain.

That's when I decided to give it up. But I couldn't quit the military. Instead, the colonel reassigned me to Military Assassin. I had to keep the State Alchemist pocket watch for military proof.

And that's pretty much where my story gets interesting.

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I set down the pencil and paper clipped my report.

"Damn," I muttered. "that took forever."

There was a knock at my door, and First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye walked in.

"Lights out," she said.

"Who are you, my mother?" I asked as I stood up and walked to the window. I opened it and lit up another cigarette.

"I'm not your mother," she said with a sigh. "but if I were, I'd make you quit smoking, even if that meant pulling a gun on you and threatening to shoot."

"Why don't you go ahead, then?" I said as I turned around. She pulled out her gun, cocked it, and aimed it at me.

"Go ahead and shoot," I taunted. She shot, and it whizzed past my ear.

I didn't even flinch.

"You're not afraid of anything, are you, Lucy?" she asked as she put her gun back in it's holster. I shrugged and dubbed my cigarette out in the ashtray I always kept on the table.

"Well, I mean it when I say lights out," she said. Lieutenant Hawkeye walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. I laid on my back on one of the two

beds in the room and just stared up at the ceiling.

Roy Mustang and all of his other officers were really the only ones that put up with me.

Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc always called me his "smoking buddy", for he would always be borrowing my lighter.

I rolled over and covered my head with my pillow, trying to remember stuff before the Human Transmutation. What was I like? Did I have a family? Who did I try to bring back? Did I have any friends or siblings? Where did I live?

Was my name even Lucy?

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© 2011 Keevan

Author's Note

Yup. I guess I like how it's going so far. I'm only going to be working on this book a little at a time, mostly.

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Reviews

Carolyn

Again, very good, its good that you give background information on Lucy's story and you create questions but not yet give the answer to make the reader more intrigued... very clever.