The Gunslinger Alchemist (Fullmetal Alchemist Fanfiction)

The two soldiers stepped out of the train car into the open air between the cars. Hair and unsecured fabric fluttered in the heavy wind, and Carlyle grimaced as he realized that the train had accelerated. Erasmus must have forced the operators to take the train to full speed. The train began to turn, and the two men had to brace themselves on the external handrails to stop themselves from falling off.

Colonel Carlyle took a small piece of chalk out of his pocket and quickly scrawled a transmutation circle on the area just outside of the rear door of the next train car. The transmutation circle was an alteration matrix keyed to interface with silicon dioxide and iron-carbon alloys. Chemically speaking, this type of alchemy was much more complicated than the type that Carlyle was used to. Most of the alchemy he performed involved complicated changes in the physical form of chemically simple objects.

The transmutation circle activated, and the train's exterior began to shift and change. A nearby window was pulled into the alchemical process, and it morphed into a new shape over several seconds. Once the sparks of creation ceased, a long metal tube had been built into the train's bulkhead. The tube was a periscope that contained several pieces of polished glass at such an angle that one could see inside of the cabin without having to actually stand inside.

Carlyle looked through the periscope, and he saw what he expected to see. Three men aimed submachine guns in the direction of the door, and another three men stood elsewhere in the cabin, slowly writing clumsy transmutation circles on the walls and floor.

The Colonel looked over at his subordinate and slowly shook his head. Every soldier in the world knew that assaulting a fortified position filled with armed men was a bad move. He knelt down, making sure no one inside of the cabin could see him. The fact that the men inside hadn't started shooting yet was concerning, Carlyle thought. They knew to wait until he and Hotchkiss made their move to reveal their trap.

A gloved hand brushed against the heavy chain connecting the two train cars, and Carlyle transmuted the steel within the chain into its most brittle form. Within a second, the weight pulling on the chain caused it to snap, decoupling the rear half of the train from the front half. Carlyle watched the train car holding his toothbrush and clothes slowly decelerate and fall behind the car he knelt upon.

When the rear train cars were more than fifty meters back, a hazy figure with the unmistakable silhouette of Miriam, the female alchemist, appeared. A part of Carlyle would have preferred for her to show herself before they were out of shouting distance. He would have liked to verbally revel in his second victory over the female alchemist.

"Come on," Carlyle said once he was confident that Miriam was too far back to do anything. A transmuted pillar of steel could only reach a certain distance before it collapsed under its own weight. "Let's climb onto the roof."

A fearful look appeared on the Lieutenant's face, but he regained his composure after a moment. With a sigh, he said, "Another day in paradise."

"Yep," Carlyle responded with a madman's smile.

The two men climbed up the external ladder and slowly began crawling across the steel rooftop. Tree branches and railroad signs flew overhead at high speed, and the two soldiers could do little more than cover their heads when the train threw them through a tapestry of green leaves.

Once they were through the low-hanging branch, Carlyle spat out a leaf and brushed a few pine needles out of his coat.

"With respect, sir," Hotchkiss said in a tone that was as far from respect as possible, "I didn't expect to be doing something like this when General Schneider assigned me to a murder investigation."

"It is the venerated obligation of a soldier to follow the insane, pointless commands of a superior officer," Carlyle said, quoting an ancient Amestrian poet.

"I guess I should consider myself lucky, then," Hotchkiss shouted over the wind in an attempt to ignore the danger of their current situation.

"Why's that?"

"Usually, the insane superior is sitting in his office while his inferiors do his bidding. I have the rare honor of standing beside my superior while carrying out his stupid orders."

"Laying, technically," Carlyle said, gesturing to their prone bodies.

Hotchkiss allowed a sardonic laugh to escape his lips, and the two men continued crawling. Miraculously, they eventually reached the other side of the train car, and they frantically scrambled down onto the other side. Carlyle and Hotchkiss jumped onto the next train car, and Carlyle quickly detached the previous car with alchemy as he did before.

As the train car holding six anti-Amestrian insurgents began to decelerate, Carlyle performed another act of alchemy, causing a large sheet of steel to be interposed between the two soldiers and the insurgents. This shield saw use after a few seconds as gunshots began to ring out, and a staccato of plinking bullets could be heard from the other side of the metal slab.

Carlyle took several deep breaths to steady his breathing before saying, "That was much harder than I thought it would be. They do that all the time in adventure novels, and it always seems so easy."

"Train roofs aren't meant to be climbed on when the train is moving at full speed."

"I know that conceptually, but experiencing it was very different. Honestly, I was expecting there to be handles on the side."

"Well," Hotchkiss sighed as the hail of bullets began to subside, "at least it's over. Hopefully, we won't ever have to do that again."

"Hopefully."

Carlyle peered over the side of the train and looked forward. With the decoupling of the other train cars, only three cars remained. He stood on the last remaining passenger car, and the only cars in front of him were the storage car and the engine.

A small part of his mind held out hope that all of the insurgents remained in the decoupled train cars, but the pragmatic corner of his brain told him that was a pipe dream. Within seconds, Carlyle's pessimism was confirmed as the unmistakable sound of Erasmus the Magician's voice called out from inside of the cabin.

"Colonel Simon Carlyle, it's good to finally meet you. I hope my assistants didn't give you too much trouble."