parched winds swept along the mountain range. Sunlight bathed the rocky terrain, producing a heat that made the air shimmer. This was the south of Amestris, where the town of Rush Valley lay.
The town, having made a name for itself within Amestris for its steel industry, was frequented daily by travelers and merchants who came and left by way of steam locomotive. However, even the congested station temporarily regained a sense of peacefulness after each train departed.
The station roof shadowed the deserted platform after one such departure. In a corner of the platform, a lone girl spoke over a phone.
“Uh-huh, that’s right. Ed and Al are going to Dublith. I’m about to head to the place I was told to apprentice at.”
The girl seemed familiar with whoever she was on the phone with. A smile occasionally flitted across her face as she spoke, her wide blue eyes blinking in delight and her long blond ponytail swaying. As she chatted away, her silver earrings glinted with all the bright charm that the girl herself emitted. Wearing those sparkling earrings and a short black skirt with a white camisole, she was the very image of a girl with a sunny disposition.
“Uh-huh, yeah. I will. It’ll be fine … You too, Granny. Okay then, I’ll call you later.”
After smiling for the person on the other end of the receiver, the girl—Winry Rockbell—hung up the phone.
“I wonder how far their train has gone,” Winry said, staring at the rails stretching out from the platform—the rails that had carried the departing train she had just seen off.
“Next time you can make me a better one of these!”
Those had been her childhood friend Edward’s parting words to her as he leapt onto the train with his little brother, Alphonse. He had pointed at his arm as he spoke. Edward, whose right arm and left leg were automail, and Alphonse, who had a suit of steel armor in place of a flesh-and-blood body, had started a journey several years prior in search of a way to regain their original bodies. Winry, an automail mechanic, had always supported the siblings from the sidelines. Ever since she lost her doctor parents when she was young, she had been raised by her grandmother Pinako, who was also an automail mechanic. Winry had been doing automail maintenance in her hometown, Resembool, for as long as she could remember.
However, Winry was standing at Rush Valley’s station at the moment, which was a long way from the place she had been born and raised.
“Winry, how about we get going?” A voice called to her from the ticket gate.
Paninya, a friend from Rush Valley who had come with Winry to see Edward and Alphonse off, waved at her. The brothers were the reason Winry was in Rush Valley in the first place. She had wanted to improve her skills so that she could create even better automail in order to help them regain their original bodies, even if just a day sooner. Because of that, she had decided to train in Rush Valley.
She would be living a new life in an unfamiliar town and training away from family. From this point forward, everything would be a new experience.
Black smoke rose high into the sky in the distance, from where the rails traced a loose curve and disappeared into the mountainous terrain. A thought flitted through Winry’s mind.
Maybe that’s the train they’re on.
The thought proved that she wasn’t immune to melancholy, but the emotion faded quickly as she watched the smoke dissipate into the azure of the sky. In the melancholy’s place, her chest overflowed with anticipation about what she would learn in the course of her apprenticeship.
“All right, time for me to get to work too!” she encouraged herself. Then, with a skip in her step, Winry headed over to the ticket gate where Paninya waited.
“whoa, that’s bright!”
The blinding sunlight the south of Amestris was known for welcomed Winry as she left the station. When she raised her hand to her forehead to block out the sun’s rays and see where she was going, she was able to make out a towering, bare rock face.
The mountains encircling Rush Valley contained a wealth of mineral deposits. Traces of mining scarred the rock faces, but the ores within had yet to be exhausted.
Though those ores had many uses, in this town they were primarily used for prosthetics. With the exception of assistive devices that supported physical movement, limb-replacement prostheses were divided into two broad categories. One was automail, a type of prosthesis that the user had full control of through the electrical impulses of their terminal nerve endings. The other consisted of ordinary artificial limbs made from steel and wood. Because of a large-scale civil war that had broken out nearly a decade prior, prosthetics engineering had advanced, which had brought about Rush Valley’s rapid expansion into a large town.
The town, hailed as “the Boomtown of the Broken Down” and “the Mechanic’s Mecca,” was packed with rows of prosthetics shops. Studios had even been built in the cramped flat spaces that were few and far between within the surrounding rugged mountains. The streets overflowed with boisterous crowds, their voices making a general hubbub.
Paninya, a Rush Valley native, slipped through the throng with learned ease. She turned to look back at Winry.
“You left your stuff at the hotel, right? How about we grab that before heading to the shop?”
“Okay. Let’s please do that.”
“Then there’s a shortcut over here.”
Paninya, who had volunteered to lead Winry to her apprenticeship, put her hands together behind her back and lightly skipped forward. Both her legs were automail and, unknown to observers, contained a cannon and a blade. Her automail, which required a skilled hand to create, had been made by Dominic, the man who had introduced Winry to the place where she would be studying.
Rush Valley was teeming with other mechanics just as fantastically skilled as Dominic. Those very mechanics were flourishing their wrenches in front of their shops to show off, occasionally shouting solicitations.
“Welcome, welcome! The Junk Shop is having a sale for a limited time only!”
“You there, sir, passing by! Won’t you trade up to the latest in automail? I’ll whip up any order you can think of!”
“We’ll give you a free estimate! We even offer loans!”
Automail and run-of-the-mill prosthetics shops weren’t the only offerings—there were junk shops and loan establishments, as well as painters making a living by creating signs for the businesses. Any way you looked at it, the town revolved around prosthetics.
As a matter of course, customers gathered in droves. They came from all over Amestris to haggle in front of the shops, stipulate their orders to the mechanics in great detail, and obtain the prostheses of their dreams. The entire town of Rush Valley buzzed with the enthusiasm of both the buyers and the sellers.
“Wow …”
Though Winry had walked through the town with Edward and Alphonse before, she was once again overcome by the passionate energy filling the place. Struck with admiration, she was swept away by the crowds she had yet to grow accustomed to. Several kids ran past her.
“Miss, outta the way! Outta the way!”
“Oh, sorry.” Winry quickly dodged them. When she looked at where they were headed, she saw a crowd forming in a vacant lot. She glanced over to see a weightlifting competition in progress between people with automail arms. Bets were being taken on the strength of each participant’s automail. The event felt like a natural fit for a town that revolved around automail, and the lot was bustling with spectating children, contestants waiting their turns, and mechanics waiting for an opportunity to coax the losers into having their broken-down arms serviced at their shops.