etraya | video; un: fullmetal alchemist

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video; un: fullmetal alchemist

[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.]

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[ Linhardt has no interest in helping to fix anything. As the boy had stated, that is what the robots were for. He does, however, very much have an interest in Edward's talents - his transmutations. Enough so that Linhardt relents and sends a video message despite his aversion to being perceived and his preference for written communication.

The video opens on a green-haired man in his early 20s - slightly older than Edward - staring at the camera with fascination in his eyes. ]

How complicated of an object can you repair? Is the primary obstacle size or complexity?

I do not need help, but I want to see more of your transmutation.

[ Even if Garreg Mach is damaged, Linhardt doesn't much care.

While he does not know what Edward wants to learn about, Linhardt thinks it might be wise to demonstrate his own abilities. Looking around his apartment - which is packed with books and various odds and ends he's collected since coming to Etraya - Linhardt spots what he's look for. Linhardt makes a complicated gesture with his hand, sublingually vocalizing, and with a flash of white light, a plant appears on the table in front of him. The small white flower grows out of a terracotta pot and Linhardt can't help but frown slightly as he touches the delicate petals. He does need to show Edward, but deliberately harming any living thing - even a flower - displeases him. Still, he must. So Linhardt abruptly yanks the flower off its stem, picking it.

Then Linhardt's hands envelop the now headless plant, light emanating from them as his lips move almost silently. The stem quivers and the flower regrows, a glow lingering around its petals for a few seconds before fading, producing a perfect replica of the plucked flower sitting on the table. ]

You can ask me whatever you would like, though depending on the topic, I may be useless.

[ 'Stuff' is quite vague and if Edward has no interest in other magic, then this offer means nothing. ]

That's-

[ She's still staring at her communicator with a frown, as if she's trying to figure out what the trick is. ]

...you know what? Fine. I've seen some magic already. I don't have anything I need fixed right now, but... [ She shakes her head. ]

Maybe later. But I also can't help with the whole prosthetic thing. Maybe I can answer questions, though.

[ She's about to ask about 'transmutation' but then he provides a demonstration. ]

Ohh, [ she marvels, eyes bright. ] What a cool party trick!

[Wow? Incredibly rude? He narrows his eyes at the camera.]

Alchemy is a science, not a party trick!

[He is not! A magician!! And he's Annoyed(TM) that people think it is. Even if it does kind of look like magic from the outside.]

It's not magic. Alchemy is a science. I'm a scientist.

How long have you been here?

What... was that?

[That's nothing Edward's seen before. Regrowing a plant? Making it happen that fast? Alchemy can be performed on living things, but it doesn't... create life, or hasten its growth like that. And that's not even going into making it appear seemingly out of nowhere.]

Uh... six months I think? Give or take?

[ She's not kept a good track of it, honestly. ]

And got it. It's a science. Seems like magic t'me, but we didn't have it back home.

Healing magic. It's a subset of faith magic, which is one of three main types of magic in my world.

[ Judging from the boy's expression, his world does not have anything like it. Is it only healing magic, or is it every expression of faith magic? Linhardt has learned of worlds with no magic at all - or with minimal magic - but what Edward had just done was as unfathomable to Linhardt as his healing magic seems to be to Edward. ]

A plant seemed a kinder demonstration than finding a person and injuring them.

Does your world lack healing magic? You could not do what you just did to the glass to a shattered bone?

[ Oh, it's wheelchair guy. With a lot of words said and an experiment done that would actually excite Gorgug a lot, normally. But he's still in a fog after the events of the mission, and...

Well, he almost doesn't reply at all. But he thinks he might be able to help. ]

Hi, um. It's Gorgug--the green guy. [ His voice is quiet, awkward. ] If you can't get a hold of a mechanic, Aurora... I mean, she might be able to help with the limbs. Or, if she can get a hold of the materials... she might have something that can help.

If no one else can, [ he clarifies again. A last resort, at least. But then he thinks, and adds: ] --Unless, did you find any?

[ Maybe he needs them repaired? Gorgug might be able to help with that... ]

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.

It can look like magic from the outside, but it's not, really. You just have to study it and understand it to get how it works.

Were you one of the first people here?

[He sighs heavily.]

I got them back. But they haven't been working quite right since then - they keep failing on me. And I know Aurora would help, but they got messed up in her hospital so I don't really want to trust her with them if I don't have to.

[ Oh. ] Well... I'm a mechanic. I mean, I woke on vehicles and weapons, but... I can take a look. I've got a lab, so, um-- I can be careful.

[ Which is probably the most important point? But maybe being 'a mechanic' helps. ]

Right. I gotcha. I've been to university!

[ There's a beat while she thinks. ]

...not one of the first, but pretty close, yeah. It's been a weird time.

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. ]

[Jason finds Ed's demonstration interesting, even though he knows there are people from his own world who can do similar things]

What are your limitations? And since you said alchemist, does this mean you can manipulate lesser metals into gold?

I can, but it's against the law back home, and it wouldn't do much good here. Unless you really need gold for something other than money.

[Hmmmm. He's not 100% sure how much he trusts that, given that it's his arm and his leg they're talking about, but it might be worth it.]

Thanks. We'll see if that helps.

Was it different at the beginning?

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.

Nah. Don't need it. What kind of questions you got?

[Well. Ideally, he was hoping for people who'd been here longer than him, not someone who showed up last month.]

You settle in okay, now that the place isn't [what was the word?] Halloween?

[Jason shrugs]

As well as I can be for someone who suddenly got yanked from his universe to another. It helps there are enough similarities to this world and mine.

[Truth be told, his first month here has been shit. Hallucinating a more nightmarish version of his one of the worst moments in his life has left him on alert at all times. Makes it difficult to sleep too. It's hard to relax when one isn't sure if something resembling a supernatural Joker is going to spring up and try to pummel them again.

But that isn't something that should be said in polite company]

What about you? How's this month been for you?

[And he wonders if anyone else got as messed up as he did]

...I guess? It was quieter. It seemed calmer. Things were still weird.

Okay. Uh, you can see if anyone here actually knows about prosthetics. But let me know if nothing else comes up.

[ You know, just seeing if anything else comes up before they go down his route. ]

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