Disclaimer: No connection to the powers that be in regard to FMA. No profit neither. Bummer, that.

Unknown Price

The morning started with the familiar blaring of air-raid sirens. Children not already awake groggily threw off their covers and were led by their parents to shelters. Only some of those working left their tasks - the streets quieted only minutely.

A normal, war-torn August morning in Hiroshima.

---

Part of his chalk chipped, stuck in a crack in the stone flooring. He paused his drawing to kneel and pick the fragment out while erasing the irregularity it had made on the curve of the chalk circle.

There was no telling how precise he would have to be.

Picking up his chalk-tipped stick, he closed the two ends of the circle.

---

The sun was well above the horizon when the alarms sounded again, this time announcing the ‘all-clear’. It was 8 o’clock and the summer day was just beginning.

---

The script had always been the hardest part for him. It looked so perfect in the books – every ‘i’ dotted, every ‘s’ curled with artistic perfection.

Standing back and reviewing his work, he concluded that there was a certain element of art in science.

---

Enola Gay lumbered across the sky, her four engines humming monotonously. Her shadow, disproportionate to her size, passed over the landscape.

It was 8:10 on a morning in 1945.

---

His hands weren’t shaking – they were frozen. Touch the circle, start the reaction.

He could do this. He would do this. How many years had he spent researching, preparing, laboring? He’d wondered if he’d ever make it to this point – but here he was, despite the doubts and limitations that had plagued him.

Now he had but to touch the circle.

He did.

---

Complete desolation was left in the wake of destruction. Days later, the rubble still smoked. It had not been a normal morning in Hiroshima.

---

His palms pressed harder to the stone floor, his fingertips tingling as the light of the transmutation consumed the interior of the cathedral. His entire being was too preoccupied to even remember to sweat. It was a wonder his heart didn’t forget its job.

There were people depending on him.

It would work. It had to work.

---

The people of Nagasaki were working on ships, teaching the finer points of language in schools, functioning as normally as possible two days after the attack on Hiroshima. Air-raid alarms blared early in the day, only to be called off 40 minutes later. Gradually, work recommenced.

Somewhere in the skies above Japan, the anxious crew of men aboard the bomber Bockscar altered their route amidst a barrage anti-aircraft fire– tipping their wings toward their secondary target.

On 11:02 on a summer morning, the industrial area of Nagasaki ceased to exist.

---

Images of life passed before his eyes. Not just his life though. Births – deaths – people laughing, crying – images of mere existence.

Then there was silence. The Gate. Tendrils of darkness grasping for him – those same tendrils thrusting something out of their midst.

Then there was darkness.

He opened his eyes.

Finis...