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 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.