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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!"

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"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.