The Empath Alchemist {Edward Elric X Reader}

21

Scar had disappeared after his encounter with Envy, Shou Tucker having been the last State Alchemist that he had gotten the opportunity to execute. This had been his first encounter with a Homunculus, and his last. At least, as of now.

Envy had done much more than put a scratch on the burly man, and that was enough for the Ishvalan to rethink his entire purpose. He had managed to critically wound him. Their fight had been long, drawn out. Scar could tell that the hideous creature had been trying to tear him down, bit by bit, before he defeated him. Envy had managed to do just that.

They hard charged at each other in the deceased state alchemist's basement, and somehow the battle moved outdoors and into the sewers. Raw power against raw power, inhuman strength against inhuman strength. Scar had already been surprised when the brawl looked as if it would end in a draw. When he found himself waking up in a small tent surrounded by Ishvalan refugees in the east after having been stricken down by the hand of an artificial being, he was mortified. Scar's power, his brother's dominant power, had been too weak to defeat a simple Homunculus. The first thing he thought when he woke from consciousness, ribs and head aching from collision and overexertion, was that he had let his brother down. He had failed the one person he had dedicated his life to avenging. Everything he had ever done was for him, and now that he was laying helpless on a cotton mat, being told to wait until his wounds healed before he could move by a ten year old Ishvalan, he was ashamed.

Scar could barely remember what went wrong. As he stared intensely at his hands, blistered and covered in fresh scars, he remembered the way the Homunculus regenerated when he managed to land a blow on him. Envy's body would consume itself in frightening red sparks, signifying his malicious intentions and lust for chaos and blood. He was disgusting, a mere disgrace to the human race. Scar spent the last few weeks cursing the name of Homunculi, traveling the country with a misfit or two, who had no place else to go but with him- the big, strong man that could protect them from the government. Despite the fact that these two men that hovered by him as he traveled up north were nuisances in their own way, but they did manage to keep him company. One was a former corrupt member of the Amestrian military, who babbled on like a baby about getting revenge on the state alchemists that ruined his life when the topic of alchemy was brought up. The other was a scientist on the run, doing what he could to keep his identity and face concealed from the general public. Scar didn't know how he ended up with the two. The former alchemist, Yoki, had been waiting for him to wake up in the Ishvalan sanction of the east. When Scar jumped up and out of his tent, much too soon for his wounds to properly heal, the man instantly glued himself to his side. As for the scientist, called Tim Marcoh, he was a mystery.

Though Yoki was quite useless, Scar learned plenty of helpful information about the Homunculi from the scientist. He learned where they came from, what their purpose was, and that they planned to turn Amestris into a Philosopher's Stone. The more Scar discovered about the fate of this country, the more cautious he became of the secrets of Alchemy his brother passed to him in his dying breath. Scar had always hated State Alchemists, and the alchemy they used. He'd always hated everything they stood for, everything they were involved in, and the issue with the Homunculi was just another problem created by alchemists. Men of 'science' who justified their wrongdoings with curiosity. It was appalling, but the only things that proved to be worse than State Alchemists were Homunculi.

Above all, Scar learned that the Amestrians were not the people who began the Ishvalan Civil War. A state alchemist was not the one to shoot a young Ishvalan child in broad daylight and evoke a national outcry in 1901. From Marco, Scar discovered that the creature who shot the child and orchestrated the entire war was, in fact, the Homunculus that he fought hand to hand and lost to. Orchestrating the war was something of a game to him, as well as the other Homunculi he worked with. Every single thing that had been done, the people killed, the life of his brother lost, was not caused by the Amestrians but by the horrifying creatures that worked behind the scenes. Scar took a good amount of time trying to digest this. He'd killed, and killed, State Alchemist after State Alchemist, and in the end, they had just unknowingly been following the orders of the Homunculus that governed their country. Granted, the soldiers were still at fault for murdering thousands of his people, but now Scar knew that it was all because of a simple misunderstanding. A trick. A scheme.