video; un: fullmetal alchemist

[fullmeddle]

[Blond fifteen-year-old boy sitting at the kitchen table of one of the standard apartments, dressed in a black shirt and a strikingly red jacket. There's a glass of water in front of his white-gloved hands.]

Edward Elric, state alchemist. I know this place has those bots to fix everything up after... what happened... but I'm offering my help, too, if anyone wants it. I'm skilled at transmutation, and I can fix something little, like this -

[He intentionally smashes the glass of water in front of him. It ends up in big, jagged pieces, water splashed over the tabletop. Since he planned this, it barely takes him any time at all to afix the array he needs in his mind, clap his hands together, and place his palms firmly on the table. With a flash of blue electric light, the glass becomes whole again, complete with the water in it again. He raises it to his lips and takes a sip from it, showing off that even the water's okay to drink again.]

- or something bigger, like a building. I'm not asking for much of anything in exchange - there's still stuff I want to learn about here, if anyone has time for questions.

And I'm looking for a mechanic, too. Someone who could work on prosthetic limbs. [He's not sure he wants to announce why he needs that on an open network right now, though a decent handful of people already know since they saw him without his prosthetics during the whole horror mess they just got through.]

Comments

[fullmeddle]

We don't have magic.

[Bold words for a kid who just did what was, for all reasonable intents and purposes, magic. But the idea of faith magic makes him think of what Father Cornello did in Reole, so that makes him bristle a bit.]

Alchemy is - complicated when it comes to people.

[sleepfan]

I don't understand. I know you classify alchemy as science-

[ Linhardt is paying attention to the other conversations. ]

What I don't understand is why you seem to consider magic and science incompatible. Our world's definition of magic is roughly 'skills and techniques that use raw human will and life energy to effect change'. This is in contrast to mechanical or raw biological energy sources such as a water wheel for a mill or animals for pulling a merchant's wagon. How do you define magic?

[ It's an honest question. Linhardt has just realized that he's accepted people's words about their worlds at face value, but if a world defines magic differently, then perhaps Asuka's world does have magic. She just doesn't define it as such. ]

Can alchemy only safely be used with inorganic materials?

[ 'Complicated' is a siren call. Linhardt loves things that are complicated. However, Edward is clearly uncomfortable and he's not going to risk the boy ending the conversation. Alchemy is one of the most fascinating things he's seen since his arrival. He'd hate to lose information because of human feelings. ]

[fullmeddle]

Bio-alchemy is possible, it's just... specialized. And can have some terrible consequences.

[The annoying thing is, when you put it like that, he guesses alchemy could be a kind of magic. It just hurts him to call it that because it's not.

His face is going through a Journey trying to figure out how to explain this. He taps one gloved hand against the tabletop.]

Alchemy has three basic steps: comprehension, destruction, and reconstruction. You understand the material, you break it down into parts, and you rebuild or build something new using those parts. It works on the principle of equivalent exchange - what you make has to be made up of what you broke down. It takes a lot of study and understanding to become good at it.

[A little grumpily:] It's possible that what you call magic isn't that far off from alchemy, by that definition.

[sleepfan]

[ Oh, this is fun to watch. Linhardt peers into the camera, watching Edward's face with open amusement. There go his eyebrows. And his mouth is making a funny little twitch. The mage isn't able to keep the sparkle out of his eyes, though his voice is still measured when he responds.]

I can see why that process would be complicated in living things: Too many systems are connected to one another, and there's almost nothing in the body that's made of one specific substance. In addition, living things are in a constant state of change: Reconstructing parts of the body to how they had been may not be the appropriate way to heal someone.

[ Linhardt takes a few moments to process what Edward is describing. What are the limitations? How large of an object could be repaired? Most of Fodlan's magic is destructive - healing magic is the exception and it's why faith magic is Linhardt's preferred school of magic.]

It requires a lot of study because you have to know how much energy to use and the properties of the materials you're working with, I'd imagine?

[ Alchemy would differ a great deal depending on what it was being used upon. ]

Does alchemy work with intangible or invisible substances? Such as air?

I'd consider alchemy a type of magic so far, but one that's more rigid and structured than the magic used in Fodlan.

[Which is not at all a bad thing. Sometimes the fuzzy nature of healing magic drives Linhardt quite mad.]

[fullmeddle]

We don't fully understand what makes up some of the parts of living creatures, either. How do you comprehend life? What materials make up a soul? Even if you do successfully perform the transmutation you wanted, the price might be too high to pay.

[It's something he has painfully learned, since he and Al tried to perform a resurrection using alchemy. Not to mention Nina...

On a more cheerful note:] It's not my specialty, but you could use alchemy to do things like heat up air if you wanted.

[sleepfan]

[ Now it's Linhardt's turn to make a face, his features contorting into odd configurations as he considers the implications of what Ed is telling him and how to explain something that he's known his entire life. Something that he knows deeply, innately, in the way that he knows he is hungry or tired. Something he's never had to explain with words.]

Life energy and souls aren't matter. They're...

[What are they, exactly? Linhardt isn't sure - he hadn't known about the scientific classifications of matter and elements until after he'd arrived in Etraya. What would be a good thing to compare it to...?]

They're more like...space and time?

[He's learning.]

Life energy and souls are an observable property of the universe itself, not something made inside the universe. If you want to heal a damaged life force, you need to give some of your own. And conversely, if you need some, you reach out and take it directly. You can't turn a tree into time, and you can't turn time into a tree.

[ Not that Linhardt likes stealing life force from people. It hurts them. Ugh. He's not explaining this well at all. As he'd just said, the stricter nature of alchemy is not necessarily a bad thing. Some aspects of magic are annoyingly ill-defined.]

What is your specialty?

[If he knows Ed's specialty, he might be able to ask better questions.]

[fullmeddle]

[As fun as it is watching someone else go on a Face Journey(TM) like that, the look on Edward's face gets more somber as Linhardt explains.]

I used to think life could be quantified like matter. That you just had to crack the right code for it. But it doesn't work that way back home, either.

[It doesn't work that way anywhere, probably. And the price you pay exchanging life for life is too great.]

I guess... I'm still deciding. But my brother and I are researching philosophers' stones, back home.

[sleepfan]

Anything can be quantified. But you are correct: Treating life as though it is matter is inadvisable, and there are limits. Some harms cannot be undone, and once a life dissipates, it is gone.

[Or at least, Linhardt and other healing mages can't feel them anymore. Edward isn't the only one with a somber look on his face; the healer is looking off in to space, clearly remembering and looking at something that isn't there. Remembering all the times he's seen the dancing light of a life suddenly stop, like a snuffed out candle. Remembering the times he's done such a thing.

It turns his stomach.

Shaking his head, Linhardt inhales.]

What is a philosopher's stone?

[fullmeddle]

It's a myth on my world.

[It's not a myth. But he's not about to announce what he knows about it on an open network. There's a reason Dr. Marcoh encoded the information so heavily.]

Alchemy works under the principle of equivalent exchange - anything that you make has to come from something. With a philosopher's stone, you would be able to ignore that principle.