But he wouldn’t be destroying that arm with alchemy. He wouldn’t need to. His left fist came up and smashed me in the nose. I heard it break with an unpleasant crack. A second strike with his left fist aimed for my throat. I pulled my body to the side, forcing his fist to narrowly miss my neck before letting go of my swords once more.

Their tassels, predictably, wrapped around my wrists and the swords animated themselves into motion to strike at Scar. He was already disengaging, but not before his right hand brushed against the sleeve of my jacket. The sleeve did not explode off of me, but for the briefest second my arm felt numb.

But then? Then my nerves burst into motion at a sudden insertion of energy. I immediately clapped my hands and expelled the energy inserted into myself through my heels. The destroyed surface that was once the road – that was once the ceiling of the sewer, was struck with all the force of Scar’s alchemy.

I panted in exertion, sparks of violet and gold spilling from my hands from the sudden, improvised transmutation. Scar looked at me in abject shock. “You… You channeled my destruction technique through your body?” He asked aloud. I didn’t think he was expecting an answer at the time, but I entertained him anyway.

“Nah,” I denied, “I just transferred the potential energy of your transmutation through my heels.”

In some ways, I was like a lightning rod. I started with drawing potential energy from things that generated heat, mostly fire. But electricity counted. The second step was boosting my nervous system with that energy, increasing my reflexes, my speed and strength, even my senses. In that step, what mattered was that I had energy in my body to work with, not just potential energy. In this case, Scar provided that energy with his transmutation… but…

I felt something in my chest ache and, quite suddenly, spat blood. A sense of vertigo threatened to overwhelm me before I immediately quashed it with the hard acknowledgment of the situation. Scar’s shock turned to realization, “So you didn’t make it through unscathed… but you did survive. It’s more than most can say.”

Survived. Yeah. Right.

I was pretty sure his deconstruction alchemy was so volatile that even when I used my own alchemy to counter it, the effects ruptured my organs and threatened to force them into a state of critical failure. If Scar managed another solid smack against me, I’d die.