InuYasha Fan Fiction / Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ In Pursuit of the Green Dragon ❯ Truths and Revelations ( Chapter 3 )

03. Truths and Revelations

True to his word, the food at the King's Head pub was excellent, and Dr. Higurashi paid for supper, though not without a look of astonishment as Ed and Al each put away three helpings of the excellent roast lamb, served with mashed potatoes, carrots, and peas.

Higurashi waited to speak until Ed had finished his sticky toffee pudding, and Al was scraping up the last spoonfuls of a strawberry trifle. He curled his fingers around a pint of beer, studying the two boys with a thoughtful expression that strengthened his resemblance to Roy Mustang.

Ed let his fork drop against the dish, and happily patted his bulging stomach--with their limited funds, it wasn't often that he and Al got to eat out, though they were both competent cooks, thanks to their rigorous studies in alchemy and chemistry. They knew how to measure ingredients, and create reactions using heat applied in different ways, so the results were--usually--edible.

"I really am terribly sorry about lying to you, and for aiming a gun at you," Higurashi began quietly, his long fingers drumming against his pint glass. "But you must understand--it was absolutely imperative that I convince you to agree to travel to Japan with me. The lives of my family are at stake."

"Because of Envy--the dragon, I mean?" Al asked, his voice breaking mid-sentence.

Al's restored body had just turned fifteen, with the embarrassing and uncomfortable side-effects of shooting up a foot almost overnight, and a voice that wavered unpredictably between a boy's tenor and a man's deep tones. Give him another couple of months, and he'd be borrowing Ed's shaving gear…

Ed leaned forward, and propped his elbows on the table. "Maybe you'd better start from the beginning, Dr. Higurashi. How did the dragon get to Japan? The last time we saw him, he was wounded, and tied to the ceiling of Professor Haushofer's villa."

"I believe you were both present when Dr. Haushofer and the Thule Society attempted a coup d'etat in Germany a year-and-a-half ago, yes?" Higurashi asked.

Ed frowned. Higurashi kept saying he wasn't part of the Thule Society, but how else could he know this stuff about them?

Higurashi was still talking. "Did you also know is that Professor Haushofer spent time in Japan before the Great War, as a guest instructor at a military academy?"

"Yeah," Ed waved a casual hand. "He wrote a book about Japan. Didn't read it, though now I wish I had."

"Professor Haushofer managed to recruit a number of the academy cadets during his stay in Japan, convincing them that Japan and Germany shared a destiny as the overlords of their regions--Germany was meant to rule Europe, and Japan to rule Asia--and that the realization of this destiny lay in racial and cultural homogeneity, as well as the acquisition of certain...shall we say, culturally significant items."

"Mythical kingdoms in the Arctic and magic spears and all kinds of bullshit like that," Ed sneered, and Higurashi smiled in agreement.

"These ideas hold an attraction for a certain class of people, many of them associated with the military. In the aftermath of the failed coup, some of Professor Haushofer's associates managed to smuggle the dragon out of Germany, and transport it to Japan. How they managed this, I do not know, but the dragon arrived in Tokyo last spring."

Higurashi finally took a sip of his neglected beer, and continued. "The Japanese Thule adherents were ecstatic to acquire a real, live dragon--it is an ancient and powerful folklore symbol in Japan, and they see possessing such a beast as proof of our nation's superiority over China and the other nations of Asia."

"And how did you become involved in all this, Dr. Higurashi?" Al asked, wiping the last smears of strawberry sauce from his mouth.

"As I mentioned earlier, my family owns a Shinto shrine in one of the suburbs of Tokyo. Its grounds are quite extensive, and the shrine itself is very old. As the oldest son, I am its head priest, though I am forced to divide my time between my duties at the Imperial University and my religious obligations. And--" "

"You're a scientist and a priest? Huh." Ed interrupted disbelievingly, scratching the back of his neck, where the stiff celluloid shirt collar was a constant itch under the ponytail. "Isn't that kind of a contradiction? I mean, science, has rules, proof, theories, and religion, is, well, just a bunch of superstitious crap...Hey!" he exclaimed as Al elbowed him sharply in his side.

Rather than taking offense, Higurashi smiled. "I see no contradiction, Mr. Elric. I am deeply interested in how the world works, and the study of physics has helped to answer some of my questions, but not all of them. I can tell you the chemical composition of a star, but not how the universe came into being."

He looked as if he might be ready to launch into a longer speech about his beliefs, but once again, Al sprang into the gap.

Though, Ed noticed, rubbing his bruised ribs, he didn't go so far as to elbow Dr. Higurashi.

"So, your association with the Thule Society was because you were looking for answers that science couldn't provide?" Al's tone was polite, but his expression was skeptical.

"I'm afraid so." Higurashi took a deep pull from his beer, looking deeply uncomfortable. "My only excuse is that I was young, and quite foolish. While attending the academy, I became involved with one of the groups that followed Professor Haushofer's teachings. My former associates came to me last year and ordered me to become the dragon's guardian while it healed from its wounds."

"So you are a member of the Thule Society!" Ed snapped. He knew it!

"No, no, I was just once part of a group interested in exploring Japan's role in a unified Asia," Higurashi protested. "But that was years ago, and I did not wish to became the dragon's keeper, but you must understand--some of these men are university administrators, and they threatened to take away my tenure, and to publicly disgrace me as a fraud and a plagiarist. None of it true, but the mere accusation would have destroyed my academic career..."

"So you became Envy's babysitter." Ed gave a humorless chuckle.

"In a manner of speaking, yes. In the course of caring for him, I realized it could speak...and reason."

"What did it tell you?" Al asked.

"Many things," Higurashi said, dreamily. "He told me of a country called Amestris, where alchemy served as science. He told me about an ancient witch named Dante, and the homunculi, who were artificial beings who longed for souls. And he told me about you."

"What did Envy say about Brother?" Al asked.

"He said that he and Edward had come from the same homeland, and that Edward was the author of all his ills."

"That bastard would try to blame me," Ed said, sarcastically. "You should've seen what he tried to do to us before we sent him through the Gate." Seeing Higurashi's confusion, he decided to change the subject slightly. "Did Envy ask you about anything? Did he seem interested in a particular place?"

Higurashi nodded. "When I told him about the shrine's legends, he had many questions about the mysterious Bone-eater's Well, in which the bones of demons are said to periodically appear and disappear."

"So, how did he make his escape?" Al asked, leaning forward intently, his elbows on the table.

"There was an earthquake," Higurashi said quietly. He looked down at the pint glass cradled in his hands for a long moment, his gaze a little unfocused. "A terrible earthquake. It was noon on the first of September last year. I remember the time precisely because I was at home, smelling my wife's wonderful cooking, waiting to eat. And then, everything began to shake. We have frequent earthquakes, and most of them are small, so I waited to see if it would get stronger. It did. I called for my wife, and ran outside, to the courtyard. Then--"

He paused, and took a long, shuddering breath. "Then the roof collapsed," he whispered. "I remember thinking that the tiles sounded as if all the crockery in the world was being shattered. I screamed for my wife, but she did not answer. I tried to go back inside, but the house was filled with collapsed beams, and I couldn't push them aside."

"Was your wife...all right?" Al asked, his eyes shining with sympathetic tears.

Higurashi shook his head, and resumed his story in a hoarse voice. "One by one, the shrine buildings also collapsed, including the storage building where the dragon lived. I saw it emerge, and look around, but it was still constrained by the the chains driven deep into the ground. I could smell smoke coming from the kitchen, and I screamed for the dragon to help me move the beams, so that I could reach my wife. The dragon asked me what price I was willing to pay in return, and I told him that I would remove his manacles and show him a way to escape, if only he would help me.

"He agreed, but--but it was too late. He moved the beams aside, but the house was burning. I tried to go inside, to reach my wife, but--" Higurashi put his face in hands, fighting for control. After a long moment he said, "I only pray that she was already dead when the flames reached her."

Higurashi might have been lying to them before, but the pain that now limned his expression was very real.

"My condolences," said Ed, feeling genuinely sorry for the guy, despite the fact that Higurashi had pulled a gun on him a few hours earlier. Al echoed him.

"Thank you." Higurashi paused in his tale, and took a restorative gulp of beer. "In any case, the dragon had fulfilled his part of the bargain, so I fulfilled mine. I removed his chains and led him to the Bone-eater's Well, which is also on the shrine grounds, and showed him how to open a portal. I had never performed the ritual before, but it appeared to work...he vanished, and the well returned to normal."

"A Gate," Ed breathed, hardly daring to hope. A portal opened by the presence of a homunculus? It had to be a Gate!

"Tokyo was in ruins by the end of the day--nothing but heaps of rubble and fires as far as I could see. The next few days were chaotic...thousands of people lay dead, there were wild rumors of all sorts, and even riots and lynchings. My associates finally came around to check on me, and they were most displeased when I told them the dragon had escaped in the aftermath of the earthquake."

"Why didn't you open the well again, and let them go after the dragon themselves?" Alphonse asked, pushing away his dessert dish.

"I tried," answered Dr. Higurashi. "But when I repeated the ritual, nothing happened. My wife was...was dead, so they couldn't use her to threaten me, but I have several younger brothers, and my associates took them away under the pretext of caring for them. In truth, they are being held hostage until I return."

This story seemed closer to the truth than what Higurashi had told them at first, but Ed was still having problems with some of the connections. "What, exactly, did Envy--did the dragon--tell you about us?"

Higurashi sighed. "The dragon told me that there were people from Shamballa in this world. It was apparent that he hated you, so I suppose I should be skeptical of any of the details. What I did surmise was that beings from Shamballa were the keys to opening portals in this world. And so I thought, perhaps, if I could find you, you could open the well and allow me to pursue the dragon. It was the only hope I had."

"And you told your associates about us?" Ed asked, his annoyance lightened a little by unwilling sympathy for Higurashi's plight.

If those Thule bastards really were holding Higurashi's brothers hostage, then Ed could understand why Higurashi had been willing to pull a gun. He'd have done the same--and more--for Al.

"I had no choice," Higurashi said. "The dragon told me that Professor von Hohenheim and his son Edward Elric were both associated with the university in Munich, and that the Professor's younger son had also recently arrived in this world. So, arrangements were made for me to travel to Germany as a guest lecturer, and I was ordered to return to Japan with Edward and Alphonse Elric in tow, by fair means or foul."

"And so you tried the foul means first," Al said, sternly. "You should have just told us the truth from the beginning, Dr. Higurashi."

"I'm very sorry." Higurashi lifted his glass and drained his beer in one gulp. "Please, I beg of you: Help me. Come to Japan."

Ed and Al traded glances across the table. If Higurashi was telling the truth, then the Higurashi Shrine might be one of the rumored mystical places where they could open a gate home.

Al gave a slight nod, and Ed cleared his throat. "Okay. We'll do it. We'll come with you to Japan if you let us investigate that well of yours. How soon do we leave?"

oo0oo

Historical and Canon Notes for this chapter:

The great Kanto earthquake was a real event, estimated to have been as strong as 8.4 on the Richter scale. It destroyed Tokyo and Yokohama, and killed hundreds of thousands of people. I've moved the date of the quake from Sept.1, 1923 to Sept. 1, 1924, so that it occurs after the events in the Fullmetal Alchemist movie.

The real Prof. Haushofer really did spend a year teaching at a military academy in Japan during 1909-1910, and wrote about his experiences after he returned to Germany. His association with the Thule Society is a matter of speculation, though he was closely associated with key Nazi figures, such as Rudolf Hess.