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"I don't care who you are. I'll burn everything that stands in my way."
— Roy Mustang, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
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Midnight – Otis's Tent, Edge of the Forest
He slowly sharpened his axe, the rhythmic scraping of a low hum in the night. Nearby, his gear rested within easy reach. His eyes never left the fire burning in front of him.
There was something strange in the air.
Too quiet. No insects. No owls. Nothing
He had checked with a simple chakra detection technique that he learned, but there was nothing in the radius of hundred meters
But his instincts didn't lie.
So, he stayed awake through the night.
Midnight.
The sky darkened a little more. Otis looked up—rain was coming. He could feel the change in the air pressure,
And then it returned—that feeling.
Like something was watching him.
Otis didn't move right away.
He sat still, breathing slow,
Then he activated his chakra detection technique—for the seventh… eighth… tenth time tonight.
He had checked again and again, always finding nothing.
But this time, he felt it.
Dozens.
His eyes narrowed.
More than forty-five chakra signatures.
They were close.
They were moving. All of them towards him.
And they weren't trying to hide anymore this time.
Footsteps—crunching dry leaves.
Twigs snapping.
A low murmur of voices. Weapons. Metal clinking.
Otis stood up, his hand brushing the hilt of his weapon.
The fire behind him hissed as the first drop of rain touched flame.
The dense forest blocked his view, but he could feel their movement. And now, he could hear it. Crunching leaves. Snapping branches. Their Footsteps.
"No formation," he muttered.
This mission?
It was never going to be "just" a C-rank. It seems
Otis picked up his axe and slung it over his back with a grunt. The familiar weight of the steel. The axe had become more than a tool. It was a part of him now
Then, he reached for the spheres, choosing the medium-sized ones—roughly the size of baseballs. His eyes narrowed.
They were coming.
But Otis had trained for this.
He wasn't going to let them get close.
He didn't wait.
Otis channeled chakra into two metal spheres, his fingers tightening around them. The surface of the balls shimmered faintly as the chakra inside began to destabilize—he had only seconds before they get close
The spheres glowed with a dull blue light
His breathing deepened as the chakra flooded the spheres. He guided the flow shaping it like molten metal inside it. The sphere began to vibrate gently in his palm, a quiet hum growing louder in his ears.
This technique was never meant to exist
He'd discovered it by accident, months ago Otis had been training beside the riverbank, he tried forcing chakra into a stone. He didn't know what he was doing then—just experimenting, testing limits and Curious.
Maybe he could make the rock harder. Sharper.
He had already learned how to enhance objects with chakra, but only to a safe degree.
That day, though, he pushed further.
More chakra. No control. Just raw force.
He felt the stone begin to vibrate in his hand.
He thought it had reached its limit—
But still, he kept going, wondering how much more it could take.
How durable it could become.
Then—boom.
The stone exploded in his palms.
He remembered the sound. The pressure. The heat.
His palms had torn open—flesh ripped away, bones exposed. The explosion shattered the small bones in his hands. His forearm had deep gashes, and blood ran down in the river
Then everything went white.
He barely remembered what happened next. Blurs of movement, some voices, yelling? Maybe.
It was Hinata and Sayuri who had carried him to the hospital, their clothes stained with his blood.
It had taken over a month to heal. Even with medical ninjutsu, his hands had been wrapped in thick white bandages. But Otis still marveled at it—how such a brutal injury could even be treated. Shattered bones, torn flesh... healed as if it had never happened in the first place.
Hinata had come to visit him every other day—her eyes were full of tears, holding his hand gently trying her very best to not make her tears fall.
Sayuri had been... less gentle.
"You idiot," she snapped, her voice shaking. "Y-you—what the hell were you thinking? What would you have done if you lost your hands?"
Otis hadn't answered. He couldn't. He just looked down at the bandages, his lips pressed, he knew they were both right, it could've cost him his arm.
He could have lost more than his hands. Maybe even his life.
But power came at a price. And he'd paid it.
Now—months later—he had learned to control it.
He could manipulate chakra in a way that would make it more chaotic than ever. He could push it into objects or anything and twist the energy until it became volatile—turning it into a delayed explosive. It required a massive amount of chakra.
It took a massive amount of chakra.
He had tried, again and again, to make it work with less, but it still drained him heavily.
So he rarely used it.
But tonight was an exception.
He held the sphere a moment longer, his eyes scanned the surroundings. The humming from spheres grew more intense, and faint crackles of energy began sparking off the surface like static electricity. It was ready.
And then he threw them—one sphere into the forest ahead, another behind him.
For a brief second, there was silence.
Then—a harsh sound tore through the air. The trees shook.
Crack—WHOOOM.
A shockwave tore through the forest,. rippling outward in violent rings of force. Birds erupted from the trees in a frenzy. The ground shuddered beneath his boots.
Twin explosions ripped through the forest and lit up the dark night like the flashes of lightning.
Otis didn't stop.
He moved fast, grabbing more spheres from his pouch. His hands blurred—
Whic. Whic. Whic.
He hurled them at every moving signature within range. Anything that twitched in his detection was a target. Toward anything alive.
He reached into the pouch again. More spheres.
Whic. Whic. Whic. Whic.
Each throw was precise. His breath steady.
He could feel them—every flicker of chakra.
He didn't stop until there was silence.
Total silence.
The forest was still again.
Nothing moved.
Nothing alive.
Then—
A flicker in the corner of his eye.
Something fast. Too fast.
Otis narrowed his eyes.
Then—movement behind him.
He spun, dragging his axe upward just in time.
Clang!
Sparks flew as steel clashed—a kunai clanged against the axe's blade.
The masked figure darted away, fast—then came around again, quicker this time
Otis twisted, dropping his weight and bringing the axe down in a heavy arc toward the figure's head—But the attacker bent mid-motion, dodging fluidly, avoiding the strike by a hair.
In the same instant, a kunai lunged toward Otis's eyes.
He tilted his head—
Shhk.
A shallow cut opened on his cheek, blood tracing a line down his jaw.
--
(A/N)
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