all_inclusive | (no subject)

Ed took a step back, nearly stumbling as he stared at the lobby of the hotel he suddenly found himself in. He'd been hurrying full-tilt into the lab -- and well, this certainly wasn't the lab he'd been in before. There was no familiar pattern of alchemy on the walls either. Which meant this wasn't the lab.

It was only belatedly that he realized he was also by himself. Everyone he had been traveling with was gone. He spun around quickly, braid twisting momentarily into the air. Nope, he was by himself. He grabbed the door he had just run through, twisting it back open, but the familiar streets of Central didn't wait outside of it. The realization of what had happened sat coldly in his gut. But, it should have been impossible.

Hastily, he pressed both his gloved hands against up the wall next to the door. His alchemy crackled along the wall before a new door was called into being. Even as the energy poured through both his real and automail arm, he could feel that there was something off about it, as if his connection had been altered in some way. He hastily grabbed the knob of the new door, pulling that open as well. What was behind wasn't the same as the first door he had opened -- but still wasn't Central. He slammed it shut, moving automatically to create a second door, and then a third. Each one opened up to a new place, but none of them were the world Ed had just left behind.

"What the hell," he growled under his breath, unable to hide his rank irritation. He spun back around from the wall, facing the expanse of the hotel in front of him again. There was only one weapon he had left to him now.

"Alphonse!" he bellowed. And then, even though he didn't want to: "Hohenheim!"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Erik heard the shouts, distant but getting closer, but couldn't make out what the person was yelling. He sounded distressed, whoever he was. Normally Erik would stand firmly by the perspective that what wasn't directly affecting him wasn't his business, but it was almost impossible to concentrate on reading with someone stomping around hollering at the top of his lungs nearby.

He left his room and went toward the sound of the voice, rounding a corner and coming face to face with a teenaged boy vaguely reminiscent of Summers— that is, blond and surly looking— drawing breath for another shout. "Would you mind keeping it down?" Erik snapped, folding his arms. It was only as the kid turned on him that Erik's metal sense tracked the movement, alerting him to something unexpected. Testing with a thread of his power showed him— amazing— two of the newcomer's limbs, an arm and a leg, were made entirely of metal.

Taking a step closer, Erik's brows furrowed together and his head canted to the side, his hands dropping to his sides as his power scanned the artificial limbs and learned their makeup, their inner workings. "Metal limbs that actually work," he said, now sounding curious and impressed, his eyes meeting the boy's. "You certainly don't come from any world I've ever heard of."

Ed turned at the sound of the reprimand. He wasn't unaccustomed to adults telling him to calm down or giving him orders -- but he was also incredibly accustomed to ignoring them.

However, any snappy response he might have had to the misplaced request was silenced when the stranger commented on his limbs, which were fully hidden. He might have chalked it up to the guy being some kind of bizarre expert on automail, except for the fact that he sounded surprised to even hear about the existence of automail.

Ed knew that he was being overly paranoid at the moment, but he couldn't help the way his skin started to crawl, senses blaring warnings at him. There wasn't anyway this guy could have known about his arm and leg, and there wasn't any place he knew of that hadn't at least heard of automail.

He clapped slid his hand over the metal, letting his alchemy transform it. A thick blade slid from his wrist and he held it in front of him, eying the stranger distrustfully. He didn't attack it -- knew that was overzealous at the least, but he hoped to show that he could certainly take care of himself if he needed to.

"Yeah, and who are you?" he asked, voice sharp.

Erik's eyebrows shot up as the blade extended, even more impressed and intrigued than he'd been a moment before.

"Not a threat," he said dryly. "At least, not to you." He took another step closer, in part to illustrate how unperturbed he was by having a sword brandished at him, and in part to get a better look at how it worked. But the kid responded by stepping further back, looking wary and angry in equal measure.

"I'm not going to attack you," he said, a little impatient. "I've a sense, an affinity for metal. I couldn't help noticing. My apologies for intruding." He stepped back as if to leave, then added, "You might want to avoid waving that sword around to everyone you meet. You'll find some sparring partners, I'm sure, but you'll scare the hell out of the cleaning ladies."

Not a threat. Ed had almost the compulsive need to laugh at that, because he lived in a world where priests, and presidents, and goddamn kids masqueraded under masks of righteousness but, hey, turned out to be threats.

"Right," Ed echoed. "You've got an affinity for metal, but you've never seen automail before? That's kind of hard to believe, buddy." Besides, there was something off about the way the guy had said it. He'd been around nutjobs who loved automail -- that town that Winry worked in had been full of them. They'd love her clean, effective word, had gone crazy when they'd seen his arm and leg. Not that he'd really liked having people that close -- but he was used to people being impressed by his limbs. This felt different, although he couldn't say exactly why.

"I've certainly found some sparring partners, many who have been ladies," Ed answered with a wry and ready grin. Though, he didn't think he'd sparred any cleaning ladies yet, to be fair. He glanced around, although his eyes barely flitted off the stranger for more than a second. "Where the hell are we?"

"Automail?" Erik repeated. "Never heard of it." But if the kid didn't realize he wasn't in his world anymore, that would explain the skepticism. It was hard to derail himself from quizzing the newcomer more about a world where working metal prosthetics were (apparently) commonplace, but somehow he managed.

"We're in a hotel called the Nexus." He'd given this speech so many times by now, he could recite it practically without thinking. It was enough to make him wish he'd printed out Welcome to the Nexus pamphlets. "Whatever world you were in before, you're not there anymore. You might be able to get back, but trying can have mixed results. The doors here don't always go where you expect them to."

Edited 2014-04-13 02:15 (UTC)

Ed's shoulders dropped a little, his stance less standoffish when Erik didn't make any attempt to actually attack him or close the distance between them. He still let the blade jut out of his arm, because, well, if something did go awry, he'd at least gained a few valuable seconds.

Ed didn't want to believe what he was being told though. A hotel that pulled people from different worlds and didn't let them go home. He supposed he'd heard stranger things lately, but not by much. And certainly not so out of his realm of understanding. The things he'd learned lately had been based out of alchemical myth. This -- well, this was impossible, simply put.

"I had noticed that," Ed said bluntly and perhaps just a little sourly. He jerked one hand up to gesture with his thumb at the row of doors he'd made. None of which had led him back to the door he so needed to reach.

"Who are you?" Ed repeated again, not certain what the next good question was to ask, but reluctant to let go of a potential source of information.

Erik recognized the sullen resentment— quickly, and uncomfortably, as it was quite similar to the emotions his arrival to the Proserpina had once upon a time provoked in him. He, too, had treated every new acquaintance as a dubious source of information to be mined, and been convinced that what everyone told him had happened to him, couldn't really be true.

How quickly he'd been disillusioned. He wasn't sure whether to hope it happened to this boy faster, or slower. It wouldn't be enjoyable either way.

"My name is Erik Lehnsherr," he said, patient as he could be in the face of a hostile teenager. "I'm from Earth, the year 1962. I'm a mutant with control over metal and magnetic fields." His head canted slightly to one side as he added coolly, "I could give you my whole history, but that might take some time."

"Edward Elric," Ed answered. "Earth. 1905."

The fact that they had to stipulate that they were from Earth sat a little easily with Ed. Because it meant that there were people here, presumably, who weren't from Earth.

However, the second part of what Erik said caught Ed's attention much more quickly. A mutant with control over metal and magnetic fields. He had no idea what the word mutant entailed -- it brought to mind the odd experiments he'd seen come out of the laboratories. But the notion that this mind could manipulate metal worried him, made him feel vulnerable in a way he hadn't been in a long time. He'd lost his arm and leg young. He'd had the automail almost as long as he hadn't. But he didn't like the idea that this man could use them against him. Now, it was obvious how Erik had known what he had.

Worse, he didn't exactly know how to handle the situation. He shifted uncomfortably, weighing his options. A fight would be stupid then. Running -- well, he'd have to make a door. And they were strange right now. He didn't understand how they worked, and he also needed both arms to make a door.