(no subject)

[fullmetal_alchemy]

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!"

Comments

[mlle_belle]

Belle was startled by the sound of a shout, clutching her books tighter to her chest as she stopped in her path, not entirely sure who was shouting, but she didn't think it was a shout that could be ignored. She set the books down on the table and hurried towards the sound of the voice, staring at the young man warily when she found him.

"Who's Alphonse?" she asked.

[prongsdefiant]

To James, it sounded like some sort of curse and he stepped back a little, waiting to dodge whatever jet of colored light was surely about to come his way. While he had become something of an expert at casting curses without speaking out loud there were some that needed an audible spell to be pulled off correctly and while he'd never heard hohenheim before, it didn't sound good.

"Whoa, mate, watch where you're throwing curses," he said, frowning a little. Still, nothing had hit him and all the usual signs of curse-receiving weren't present: no singed eyebrows, no rips in his trousers, no extra appendages or infected pustules. It seemed to have missed him entirely.

"Er, it was a curse, wasn't it? Hohenheim?"

[morethanhuman]

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."