The Gunslinger Alchemist (Fullmetal Alchemist Fanfiction)

The female alchemist's hand shot toward Carlyle's gun, and he responded by reaching to grab her outstretched wrist. At the last possible second, Miriam retracted her hand, and two bright sparks of incomplete transmutation shot into the air.

"Smart move," Carlyle said as Miriam fled backward a few steps. "You certainly would have come out on the losing side of that exchange."

"You can't beat both of us, State Alchemist," Miriam said through gritted teeth.

"Maybe not," Colonel Carlyle said, though he was still confident in his abilities. His only real concern was that the fight would force him to reach deep into his bag of tricks and into the forms of alchemy that violated the laws of man and God.

"I wasn't lying, you know?" Carlyle shouted loud enough for Miriam and Erasmus to hear him. He used the opportunity to peek out the side of his eye to watch how the fight between Hotchkiss and Erasmus was progressing. A large sheet of impassable steel had been transmuted in the center of the cabin, preventing Hotchkiss from reaching the eccentric alchemist. "Both of you are skilled enough to become State Alchemists, and your skills would be greatly rewarded if you joined the military. Think about it. I can offer you both a yearly research stipend of ten million Cenz and access to the national libraries in Central. Wouldn't that serve your purposes better than random acts of violence?"

"Do you really think you'll be able to stop us with petty words?" Miriam spat back.

Though her denial was unequivocal, Carlyle could sense some hesitation in the female alchemist's words. Naturally, he didn't think his suggestion would convince them in the slightest, but he had hoped that his provocation would cause Erasmus to reveal his position. Instead, Carlyle sensed a gap in the armor of Miriam's loyalty to this Order.

Instead of claiming that she would never become a State Alchemist, Miriam retreated to the rhetorical position that Carlyle must be lying. The Colonel knew that this was the strategy of someone who didn't want to consider the alternative.

"Not necessarily," Carlyle said as he rotated his cylinder onto a Body Alteration Round and whistled another order to Hotchkiss.

Change targets.

The Lieutenant immediately understood the order and turned to Miriam with violence in his posture and expression. If Erasmus refused to show himself, Carlyle thought, then he would just have to neutralize his partner.

Before Hotchkiss could attack Miriam, a small hole was transmuted into the steel wall bisecting the cabin. Carlyle turned toward the source of the transmutation and saw Erasmus's face peering out through the hole. It was not the magician's true face that Carlyle saw; Erasmus used an angled hand-held mirror to look through the hole.

In the magician's hand, he held a playing card that was marked with a simple five-pointed pentagram. As Carlyle recognized the symbol, he looked down and saw an identical symbol inscribed on a playing card at his feet. Before he could react, sparks shot out from the playing card, and five steel bars shot up around Carlyle, trapping him in a thin prison cell.

Alkahestry? Where had they learnt that? Only a handful of alchemists in Amestris knew of Xing's strange version of alchemy. Carlyle learned of alkahestry on a trip to Xing four years ago, and he used an altered version of it to become a State Alchemist. To that day, very few State Alchemists knew the origins of his "long-distance alchemy."

There was no time for Carlyle to express his confusion as Miriam used this opportunity to attack. Hampered by the steel bars pressing against his body, Carlyle attempted to aim his revolver at the female alchemist. A moment before he could get his sights on target, Miriam grabbed Carlyle's revolver. There was a flash of light, and the gun disintegrated into pieces.

Hotchkiss arrived before Miriam could continue her attack. Blood splashed onto the ground as the Lieutenant slashed into her back. She cried out in pain, though the attack was not enough to neutralize her. The female alchemist knelt down and pressed a hand to the ground, causing several steel spikes to spear out toward the Lieutenant.

Throughout this altercation, Carlyle's hands did not remain stationary. With his left hand, he plucked a transmutation disk out of his messenger bag and pressed it against the steel bars, causing them to swiftly decompose into dust. With his right hand, he gripped one of the bars, transmuting it into a primitive single-shot pistol. This new pistol couldn't be used to transmute at a distance, but it was chambered in the same caliber as his revolver. Even without alchemy, a gun was a gun.

Carlyle loaded a bullet into his transmuted firearm and took a step forward. If he had spent more time researching Iron Blood alchemy, he could have created a machine gun. As it was, his desire to comprehend a broader scope of alchemy limited him to simplistic firearms like that one.

Hotchkiss slashed once more at the female alchemist, cutting her hand and wrist. As the scimitar made contact, one of Miriam's tattoos lit up, and the scimitar was deconstructed into steel sand.

"It looks like Plan A didn't work," Erasmus said from the other side of the partitioning wall. "Time for Plan B."

A bright flash of complex alchemy filled the cabin, and more than a dozen holes were ripped into the steel of the cabin. The steel wall was completely destroyed, and several person-sized holes were torn into the side of the train car, causing a heavy wind to enter the cabin.

With Erasmus now revealed, Carlyle could see that he was now wearing a leather gas mask under his top hat. He knelt down and pressed one hand against a leather bag, which had been placed atop a complicated transmutation circle carved into the ground. Blue lightning flashed once more, and a thick smoke filled the cabin.

Seeing the attack coming, Carlyle began to hold his breath. This was insufficient to completely counter the effects of the gas, as his eyes began to water, and his vision began to become hazy.

It was tear gas.