Fullmetal Alchemist: The Abducted Alchemist
Novel by Makoto Inoue, Original Concept by Hiromu Arakawa

Train lines destroyed in a series of devastating terrorist strikes—all without a single victim! A string of kidnappings targeting the friends and families of the military! Civilian anger mounts with every passing day, and the authorities seem powerless to catch the insurgents. Colonel Roy Mustang alone sees a connection between the two crime sprees, but he’ll have a tough time convincing his superiors at Central Command... At least, until Edward and Alphonse Elric find themselves in the middle of the investigation—and the kidnapping too!

Read an excerpt from Fullmetal Alchemist: The Abducted Alchemist, the second volume in the newly re-released light novel series from the iconic manga Fullmetal Alchemist.

“Aaaaaaaaaah.”

A yawn erupted, great and sudden beneath the lazy afternoon sun. “Not here yet, Al?” Edward Elric called out to his brother, who stood a few feet in front of him. Edward sat atop his traveling trunk, which lay on its side on the cobblestones, with his chin in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees. He lifted a sleeve to wipe away the tears produced by the yawn.

“I’m afraid I don’t see hide nor hair of it,” his brother Alphonse replied. Alphonse stood looking down a set of rails that ran across the cobblestones at their feet.

Edward sighed. “The train—it was supposed to be here at noon, right?”

“Yup.”

“Well?” Edward pointed to a clock hanging on a low post on the platform that passed for a station. “It’s already three. Do the trains not have to run on schedule out here in the boondocks or something?”

“Don’t ask me,” his brother replied. “It’s my first time this far out too, you know. Maybe things just run late out here.” He looked up at the clock. “Hours late.”

Alphonse gazed off in the direction from which they had come. Off in the distance, a cluster of roofs popped out of the landscape, a fittingly tiny little hamlet for this middle-of-nowhere place. Alphonse and Edward had left the village to board the train. But where was the train?

Edward sighed again. “All this way, to leave empty-handed. And now we’re stuck at this blasted station.” The station was little more than a line of cobblestones sitting out in a field. No roof, just a post with a clock and rails heading off into the distance. “Can’t things go right just once?” he muttered. He peered down the rails to where they faded in the distance. There was no train.

Edward Elric was a short boy, skinny, with long golden-blond hair that he wore plaited in a braid. He seemed average enough at first glance, but closer inspection revealed an unusual history for someone so young. Several years before, he had broken an alchemical taboo—and paid for it with his right arm and his left leg. The auto-mail replacement limbs shone dully beneath his clothes. To recover what he had lost, he had joined the military and become a State Alchemist. Maybe because of this unusual career path, he had a look in his eyes not found in many boys: a fierce determination that sparkled with a keen light.

His brother, Alphonse Elric—younger than Edward by a year—was also unusual for a boy his age, but on an entirely different scale. Alphonse tended to be soft-spoken and eager to make peace, in contrast to his passionate and all-too-frequently hotheaded brother, but you would never guess it from looking at him. He stood far taller than Edward and was clothed in a giant suit of armor. Inside the armor was nothing. No flesh or bone—just a single mark, written in blood, that tied the boy’s soul to the walking suit of metal that took the place of his body.

The two brothers were on a journey to find the fabled Philosopher’s Stone, the only alchemical artifact that might restore their original bodies.

Read more of Fullmetal Alchemist: The Abducted Alchemist here.