damned_institute | Day 69: Sun Room (3rd Shift)

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Day 69: Sun Room (3rd Shift)

Tomatoes in both choices. Lloyd's face fell the moment he heard the announcement, and with a groan he let his forehead thunk against the table in the Sun Room. He couldn't even ask if he could have a sandwich made without tomatoes in it. The lunches were already made, his nurse holding one of each in her hands. Unhappily, he accepted the one that had meat. Maybe something could be salvaged from it.

Ignoring his nurse's cheerful parting words to enjoy his meal, the teen waited until she'd stepped away before he took his lunch out of the bag and started picking it apart - only to freeze, heart pounding unevenly. A deep, rattling breath had just- Lloyd didn't even finish the thought. Something was here! He whipped around, not even sure how he was going to defend himself. The only thing he had was one of those plastic spoon-forks, and if he was up against that same thing they'd run from last night-

There was nothing. Nothing but nurses and patients passing by. Not even any cats. No one else looked like they'd even heard anything. Lloyd's eyes darted around, but still nothing showed up.

Come on, I know I heard it...

[For Ed and Al!]

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Feeling sickened and paranoid now, Lloyd opened his sandwich again, pulling it apart even more carefully than before. He didn't discover anything worse than a couple tomato seeds, though.

...huh. Funny how those didn't seem quite as disgusting as they had before. Even so, he made a face and pushed his own sandwich away.

"If you did that in my world," he said to Ed, "I'd call that a mana technique, like the one I used. Either that, or magic." He eyed his pear. It looked whole and untouched. Would it be safe...? "So what makes the two of you different?"

Ed eyed his own pear in paranoia. "We get it from Dad. It sometimes runs in families. Not everybody can do it. Be it because they can't wrap their brains around the science, or they just don't have the talent."

Al used his fork to look through his salad, then checked his sandwich. Both seemed free of any contamination...so far as he could tell.

"It's a bit like how some people can train all they like in vocal practice, but just don't have the right voice to be a great singer, while other people have perfect pitch and sing well with barely any effort at all."

Edited 2013-02-28 03:02 (UTC)

Lloyd wrinkled his nose at the word "science." He couldn't imagine having to do science every time he wanted to use a technique. "So you guys are naturals, then." That concept was simple enough. There were natural fighters and natural geniuses. Maybe they were something of both. "You still have to work for it, though, right?"

Deciding to risk it, he took a bite of his pear. Thankfully, it seemed to be normal enough. "Yo' c'n haf my sa'wich if you wan'," he offered through a mouthful of fruit. He nudged the offending food forward, then swallowed. "I don't think anything's wrong with it. Just the tomatoes."

Ed nodded. "Pretty much, and yeah, we've had to work at it. It takes a lot of study and there's always new things to learn."

"You don't like tomatoes," he asked as he reached for Lloyd's sandwich. After a suspicious look inside for in case a surprise magically appeared in it, he started eating. "Thanks."

"We taught ourselves as much as we could with our father's books, but eventually you hit a point that you need to find help to go any further." Al grinned. "And besides that, there's plenty of specialties that we aren't too practiced in, like fire alchemy or botanical alchemy."

Al pushed his sandwich and pear over to Ed as well. "Why don't you like tomatoes? The texture, or taste?"

Lloyd made a face at the question. "Both?" He was pretty sure he couldn't stand either. Speaking of which, he hadn't inspected his salad yet to see if it was tomato free. Not that salad was his favorite food, or even all that filling, but he was going to be pretty hungry if he didn't eat something.

"Botanical alchemy... You use magic with buttons?" Wow, what kind of weird world did Ed and Al come from?

Ed choked on his mouthful of sandwich as he started laughing.

Al sighed, elbowing his brother before replying. "Botany is working with plants, not buttons," he says patiently, remembering how clueless Link had been.

"Oh." Lloyd flushed just the lightest shade of pink. It was always embarrassing to be called out on not knowing what a word meant. "So what do you mean by botanical alchemy? If it were night, could you do magic with my salad?" Okay, now that was a weird thought on the same level with the buttons. Maybe even a little bit weirder.

Ed finally found his ability to speak. "The people we know can use it to do things like help plants grow faster. Among other things.

Al nodded. "We could recombine the cut pieces into a larger whole as well, or if we had enough turn it into a loaf of bread."

Lloyd blinked, trying to take that all in, comparing it to his own experiences. Tried for a moment to picture himself doing things like that. Lloyd Irving, able to make loaves of bread from plants, or destroy things with a touch like Ed did last night. A grin began to spread across his face. "That's pretty cool! You don't suppose I could learn to do that? I mean, we already know I can do things with energy. How different can it be?"

Ed blinked at him. "Well, it took us years of study to learn how to do this shit. You sure you wanna have to get a ton of science crammed into your head?"

Al shrugged. "And there's no guarantee you'd have the ability, even if you did put in the time to study. Besides, from what I remember of last night your own abilities are pretty cool! Was that pure energy you fired off at it?""

Years? Okay, that was enough to put a slight damper on his enthusiasm. His face fell with a mixture of dismay and disappointment. "I'm... not that great with studying." Especially not science. "There isn't an easier way? I didn't see you doing anything that looked like science back there."

Pausing for a bite of salad, he turned and looked at Al. He swallowed, then nodded. "Something like that. That was my mana, the energy inside me. If I concentrate it, I can use it in my attacks. I guess I thought it was pretty cool when I first learned how to do it, but I've been able to do that for a while now."

In other words, the novelty has worn off.

Ed was quiet for a moment, looking down at his sandwich. "Most alchemists need to draw arrays to get their transmutations to work. So did I when I first started learning. My being able to do it the way I do... has a very heavy price."

Al pokes at his salad, avoiding Lloyd's eyes. "It's not something most people are even aware is possible, and for good reason."

It should have been good news that there was an easier way. It should have, but it wasn't, not with the edge in their voices and they weren't meeting his eyes as they tried to warn him away. Lloyd looked from one to the other, trying to figure out how bad this "price" was.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "If you did it, how bad can it be?"

"There's a reason I don't have all my original limbs," Ed said quietly. "Most of my left leg is also made of automail."

"And before Brother and I were brought here, I was a soul attached to a suit of armor," Al added solemnly. "What we did was taboo, a sin. That was our punishment."

Lloyd's eyes widened for a moment, then followed with a wince as the severity of the price really sunk in. Even at the gain of being able to do their techniques without being slowed down by the science, it wasn't worth it. Not to him. You couldn't just get pieces of your body back. Once they were gone, that was it. Only-

With a start, he realized what Al had just said. His eyes whipped back to him. "Wait, if you lost your body, how did you get it back? How are you even alive at all? Wouldn't you have been dead?"

"If I hadn't moved fast enough to attach his soul to armor, yeah," Ed said as he finally looked up. "The people that brought us here are why he's back in his body."

Al shrugged. "We had been searching for an artifact called the Philosopher's Stone, a catalyst that could increase an alchemist's power and ignore the Law of Equivalent Exchange. That's the only way I can think of that they were able to give me a body again."

"The Law of Equivalent what?" Lloyd echoed the turn of phrase blankly. Inwardly, though, he was tensing. Ed had trapped Al's soul somehow, keeping it from leaving the world, and now they were talking about some kind of stone. He knew, logically, that they weren't from his world, but the pieces felt connected anyway, and stood too similar to things he already understood for him to ignore easily.

His hand clenched, then he held it out, letting them both get a good look at the Exsphere mounted on the back. His gut twisted uneasily. "A Philosopher's Stone... It isn't one of these, is it?"

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