108 Life in Resembool (II)

"...No. Well... somewhat."

"What?" Ally cocked her head while a slight frown crinkled her nose.

"The Rockbells don't need to die, I can change that. What I don't want to change is the immediate fate of Trisha."

"She still needs to start the events leading to their journey, does she?" Toni asked lightly.

"Without that event, they wouldn't try to bring her back and they wouldn't meet Truth and later pass his game. At that point, I wouldn't even recognize them. I'm not here to give the cast an easier life, I'd rather give them the tools to face a harder one and be proud of it. If they gain the power to reverse Truth from me after facing it wholly, then so be it."

Yuri wasn't just talking about the brothers at this point but telling this to himself and to Ally. She got the message, even letting a bit of gratitude float in the back of her head as she knew that is the kind of person he was. He didn't take revenge for her, he helped her grow stronger and supported her from behind as she took it herself.

Was she itching to bring back her mother figure by her own power? Her own answer to that question made her feel slightly ashamed. That wound had already nearly closed, her death had even sent her on the journey she was destined for and beyond so perhaps it was fated. She would do it if she had the power, but day by day acceptance was taking her beyond thoughts like those.

"Well... as long as nobody dies needlessly. I don't want my Winry-chan losing both her parents and we can be the support the Elric brothers need."

"That's the spirit. Besides, I don't plan on separating the good mother and the penitent father forever. If anyone deserves a happy ending, it's those two. I'm sorry, but it will only be temporary." Yuri held Ally's pouting face in his hands and kissed her forehead just as Toni cradled her arms around Ally's hips and sat her chin on her shoulder. Yuri wrapped his arms all the way around Toni's back as well and they stood in comfortable silence.

"How's this, princess? Being babied from two flanks," Toni whispered into Ally's ear after she couldn't hold it.

"Hmm, I would like to be the little spoon for both of you going forward!" Ally cutely whined.

Yuri snorted before lifting them both by the waists and carting them off to go to bed.

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The chirping of cicadas and the summer heat alleviated by a slight breeze encapsulated Yuri as he sat leisurely watching over two different groups.

Behind him, the repetitive but light knocking sounds of a small hammer was driving a pin into an automail arm reinforcement sleeve. Ally gave coos of encouragement to a girl with her same hair and eye color as she was the one pounding the pin into a joint that would be welded after it was flush.

"That's it, not too hard or you'll push it too far in," Ally spoke lowly.

Around the younger blonde girl's neck, a necklace with a brilliant sapphire and esoteric script hung and refracted the bright daylight. This was a general use soul gem, and the pendant it was housed in along with the entire enchantment was Ally's own handiwork. Beyond the usual smithing, she had gotten good enough for jewelry work and then automail mechanics, which she was now teaching Winry on.

Yuri was glad she was putting her smithing to work in this area, her interests were in smithing but with her spirit reaching new heights with refining, information was easier to absorb and her talents stretched even further than normal smithing.

Anyway, the soul pendant was there to ensure that even if Winry somehow fell victim to an accident due to their meddling in the timeline, they would have Winry's soul on hand to revive her instead of possibly losing it to the giant circle being made around the country. Yuri had already done this on a larger scale at the site of a certain war zone.

"I can't believe you had the idea of automail assisted living. I've seen prosthetics aplenty, but this sleeve you thought up might change the industry." Pinako spoke between huffs of her pipe.

"Not just a sleeve, people will need a powered suit frame if they want to be able to use its full potential. A sleeve will only weigh their arm down more, and that's not the goal." Ally didn't look back to respond, ready to intervene if anything happens on Winry's end.

"But maybe don't be too excited. Your invention will probably quickly be fashioned into engines of war. What else do you think they'll use these for? In this country?"

"Anything can be used for war, Pinako," Yuri interrupted at this junction with his sunbathing eyes closed. "It's not worth it to be afraid of advancement because of the potential for danger."

"Well this isn't a car or a radio, this is a super-suit they're building."

"A suit that can make a paralyzed man walk without amputating him to hell, save a worker from being crushed under rubble, allow emergency responders to reach the most desperate people in hazardous conditions in time-"

"Leap over trenches with a single bound and punch through barricade walls, survive a hail of gunshots and make one man worth a hundred!" Pinako added.

"Hmph, all it takes to turn those types of suits into scrap is a single Alchemist. In the face of Alchemy, I'm not worried too much about these being used as war potential. Besides, who says we'll let these work against our interests?"

"You've got a point there..."

"Can you two please be quiet?! We're trying to concentrate!" Erupted the furious little voice of Winry.

The two bystanders pursed their lips and cleared their throats before settling back down and watching the other party.

In the expansive backyard that dipped into the strawberry valley at some point, Toni took to the grassy plateau while expertly handling two hyperactive blonde brothers who were bobbing and jumping and running about. The Elric brothers were trying to get the jump on their trainer for the day while they had their own pendants dangling from their necks, reflecting an emerald glow and set in silver.

These necklaces didn't capture souls, but gave them a sensitivity to Chi that rivaled the greatest warriors of Xing, while it also gave them access to the Tectonic energy below the suppression field that Father had set up. With this, they could feel the Chi in the earth and start to collect it to train. Their Alchemy would also grow beyond the standard limit that all the others in Amestris didn't know they were dealing with, but their Alchemy could still be negated by a move from Father or Yuri.

Yuri would replace their necklaces when he feels they had outgrown the need for the Chi training aspect, maybe add a few things to the next version.

Yuri lazily returned his attention to the brothers who were now panting on the floor. They were only four and five years old, so their current physical training regimen consisted of more training forms and trying to make them apply it while wearing them out. After they were, Yuri would take the wheel and start a small class about Alkahestry while their bodies, now sensitive to Chi, would seek it out to refill their stamina and increase their physical capacity little by little.

"Alright, kids, time for class!" Yuri called out as he got up from his lawn chair and the grass beneath his feet seemed to part before the earth hardened and flattened out. A small platform rose from the ground at curb height to serve as his 'chalk board'. The brothers crawled over, already used to but still a bit perplexed by the show of power.

"I still don't know how you do that without a circle, teacher." Edward grumbled because this wasn't the first time he had asked. Alphonse silently nodded his head.

"As I have said before, you wouldn't want to and I won't teach you. Now moving on," Yuri flexed his hand and a perfect circle was drawn in the ground platform as a five-pointed star was crossed inside of it with a single stroke.

Suddenly, five kunai flew up through the air in a high parabola and landed on each of the five points that connected with the circle. The brothers grew startled while Yuri flexed an eyebrow at Toni who was twirling a sixth kunai on her finger. She matched Yuri's eyebrow with her own as if to say: 'I know what I'm doing, move along'.

Yuri cleared his throat before he introduced the Alkahestry circle to them for the first time.

"Are the knives necessary?" Alphonse raised his hand.

"The knives are Chi markers. They are usually highly personal knives that are heavily associated and Alkahestrically bound to the user, making communicating between two different Alka marks much easier. If you have absolute control, you may be able to forget the knives later.

"But these are teacher Toni's knives!" Ed mentioned.

"Well, I made them..." 'With my bones' "Did you hear what I said? You can communicate between two different Alka marks. Alchemy can't do that."

"WHAT?! With this stupid little drawing you call a circle?!" Ed pointed at the Alkahestry mark with as much flabber as he could gast. If this was an actual anime, Yuri might spring a tic-tac mark on his forehead right now.

"You're using Chi to power the mark instead of tectonic energy, meaning the transmutation is incredibly easy to control as long as you temper your will and understand the flow of the Dragon Pulse." Yuri slapped the ground beside the platform and another one grew some distance away with a fresh circle. Rods made of some metal he shaped from the earth popped out of the vertices and with his other hand, Yuri activated the sender circle. The receiver circle lit with the same golden glow and two lifelike brown statues of Edward and Alphonse back to back were built in seconds.

"You... you really performed Alchemy from a distance!" Edward rudely pointed at Yuri, who was grinning smugly at the child.

"How did you do that, teacher?" Alphonse asked much more calmly. Yuri's face smoothened out and he continued on about the merits of using Lifeforce in Alkahestry, imploring them to think further than just normal Alchemy.

"Alkahestry isn't about equivalent exchange, it's about redirecting the flow of the Dragon Pulse. The more in tune with your own Chi you are, the easier it will be to direct the Dragon Pulse and give it your own intention to follow. Keep those necklaces on, breathe the world in, and you will start to notice the difference day by day," Yuri looked up and noticed Trisha waiting patiently at the edge of the yard around the garage. It was almost dark.

"Alright, guys, good work today. Class dismissed!"

Ed held out his hand for a fist bump and Yuri took it before offering it right back to Alphonse to quickly followed suit. Toni surprise attacked the brothers in a hug from behind and Alphonse in particular grew somewhat embarrassed as they returned it. Toni got a smug smile on and waltzed toward Yuri who rolled his eyes.

"You better be careful, baby! Al might whisk me away in a couple decades if you're not careful!" Yuri grabbed her by the hips and brought her in as she threw her arms over his shoulders and grinned.

"If he hasn't gotten over his kid crush by then, he's welcome to come talk to be about loaning you out," Yuri returned her little grin and she gasped as if she was grievously wronged. Yuri took advantage of her open mouth and sunk his tongue in it before they started rolling around in the grass to decide the victor.

Winry cocked her head at the commotion. "Aunty Ally, what are they doing?"

Ally snorted and diverted the topic as they sipped on their break drinks. "They're just play fighting, deary. How about a game?"

"We're almost done with the arm, Aunty! Let's get back to it!" Winry's level of focus threw Ally for a loop but she smiled and brought her before the arm once more.

Less than an hour later, the Rockbell couple came to pick up the senior and the kid while thanking the Nightingales for their hospitality. Yuri drove them home without taking no for an answer and got back shortly to his home.

It had been over a week since that dinner, but the house was filling out. In a basement complex Ally carved, reinforced, and outfitted with Yuri's help, her own forge was taking space wall to wall. A rack of successes and a pile of failures bordered a behemoth Ally called the Heaven Forge that she fueled with her own Dragon Fire while specialized equipment was arranged in cubicles or sometimes used the walls for reinforcement. On a bench anvil that looked like it might outlast the rest of the world, a longsword was taking shape under the mighty swings of a hammer that would be much too big and heavy for even ten normal men to handle. She can apply more pressure than anything man-made, even in Yuri's old era.

The original piece she started with was actually twenty feet long, four feet wide, and over a foot thick and it had hardly been shaved down during the process. Only folded. It was well over 300 lbs of a metal called Enderial, which Yuri provided the first sample of. The cool thing about Alchemy was if you knew enough about the properties of a substance and enough mana, Yuri could transform anything into anything without having to pay for it again. Permanently. Paying for a spell that was advanced enough to identify all the details of a material was a small price to pay for this kind of leeway.

Enderial was an odd choice for a sword base material, but her experiments cost Yuri next to nothing and he knew it had some value if she could get it right. It wasn't known for being incredibly durable, in fact, it was best known for being only slightly stronger than magisteel and behaving like aerogel when it came to energy. He could see that she left intentional rivets connected by circuits along the lower spine of the blade, and it was then that he believed he knew what she was up to with it. He left her to her work as the stifling hot air blasted past him with every strike of the hammer, and went upstairs.

If the filling out of the ground floor and above had a culprit, it would be Toni. In 9 days, she had made over 30 large canvas paintings of the environment that gave the giant bare wall space they had some life. In the parts of the house accessible to their friends, the more harmless paintings were hung with scenic imagery that oftentimes depicted the throuple in the foreground of their very real and fantasy-like expeditions. The neighbors thought they were fictional.

The other paintings were hung in the wings of the house that were not open to guests. Even Yuri would lose track of time and go in a mesmerized state for a while if he looked at these for too long.

This was the first indication that something was happening with Toni. Her talent with art was nothing to scoff at, but mesmerizing a spirit even momentarily with a mere painting rang warning bells in Yuri's head. His investigation turned up nothing, but a pleasant surprise would later reveal itself from this.

Aside from painting, she was something of an interior decorator who was using her alchemy to create anything she needed as a method of practice and avoiding unnecessary expenses. Curtains and drapes of deep purples and earthy natural hues decorated the house while shelves and picture frames started to display their moments and the unified successes of students and teachers. The parents, of course, were offered first dibs but rarely employed it.

And what was Yuri doing during all this? Well, he too started something he had never done before and found rewarding success. Toni noticed his new hobby and often asked for accompaniment during her painting sessions. Yuri obliged, and played his Clarian Harkwood Violin he had named Ganya Sul, the shortened form of a phrase: 'Even the brightest sun must set'.

Clarian Harkwood is a type of wood that hums beautifully alongside any consistent tone. It is used in instruments across the Record. Yuri can't reproduce living things like those trees and their unique growth pattern, so he buys the seeds of the Clarian Harkwood sparingly and only made a single piano and a violin so far. From different angles of light, the surface of the violin makes it appear like it's a different shape than any other angle.

Toni's favorite song of his at the moment was a cover of Love-Nwantiti he played from memory. {Here's a link}

{I am now informed that posting links in comment sections has become impossible. How dare Webnovel protect people from shady links! Anyway, here is a link you cannot interact with but can certainly type: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-QeBhOXPf8. OR you can search (love nwantiti - dramatic violin cover - joel sunny) on Youtube. Can't miss it.}

On the tenth day of his time in Resembool, Yuri decided it was time to take care of the other residents of his world: The falmer.