snowblindrpg | [log] TAG TEAM [closed]

Entry tags:

[log] TAG TEAM [closed]

Characters: Alphonse Elric, Tadashi Hamada, Stephanie Brown, and Mami Tomoe
Location On the border of L10 and L11
Date: Day 10, Late Morning
Summary: Two sets of wanderers spot each other going in opposite directions and team up.
Warnings: None

[Despite it being comforting to have spent the night in a large group, this place was still too unexplored and the supplies were too lean to support them all continuing on together. So Al and Tadashi had splintered from the rest of the group and struck out eastwards.

Being in the company of a friend has done wonders for Al's mood, and his optimism has returned threefold. He doesn't realise that the afternoon and evening will bring tough conversations about death over the network, so for now he's still happy as he can be in this snowy wasteland.

He was amusing himself by trying to sneakily feed Mochi from the tube of toothpaste, when he spots two other figures coming out from the gloom in the opposite direction and slightly to the north.]

HELLO? HELLO OVER THERE!

[The young voice may be familiar, but the seven foot tall armour probably isn't.]

[OoC: This is a free for all for the four characters, it doesn't have to be kept to one thread.]

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[ She frowns, but shrugs and starts walking again. ]

Maybe you're right. But I'd still rather have undead friends than dead friends.

[He hates how many people give that reply, and his usual hopeful optimism is replaced by a very closed in stance and troubled tone.]

It's not that easy, bringing people back from the dead isn't-- it shouldn't be possible.

But it is. We've seen that much already.

But is shouldn't be.

[This is something he feels so strongly about, he's not about to back down.]

That sort of thing always has a cost.

[ She's trying to understand, really. She's just failing. ]

Like what?

[Oh. Well.

He should have seen that coming, shouldn't he? He's pulled up short, subconsciously hunching his shoulders a little as if against pain. He doesn't reply for a moment, and when he does, his voice an odd blend of wistful and guilty.]

What cost could be paid that would be of high enough worth for the price of a human soul?

[ It's strange, how much body language she can read in a suit of armor. Unsettling, even. She's starting to get the impression that Al has something to hide. ]

I don't know what that means. Like, a deal with the devil?

[He rubs one hand at the back of his helmet, struggling to find a way to explain this with the gravity it deserves without spilling the secret of his mistakes.]

Where I'm from there's a taboo on trying to bring back the dead, it's... to even try it is something only an arrogant idiot would do. You have to pay an equivalent cost in exchange for anything you create, and it's impossible to find anything that can count as equal to a human life. But... but the price still has to be paid somehow.

[ Yeah she is so confused. ]

Are we talking about necromancy?

No, not exactly, not really.

[He sighs, but he's sort of committed himself to explaining, so he'll do his best.]

Remember I told you my brother was a state alchemist? Well, in my world, performing alchemy is taking away something and creating something of equal value in return. So... I could make a statue of you out of the earth, but there'd be a crater there of the same mass when I was done. See? Equivalent Exchange. That's why human transmutation - trying to raise the dead - isn't allowed, because there is no equivalent exchange for a human life.

Oh!

[ It all clicks quite suddenly, and she gets it. She gets a few other things, too, things Al would probably prefer she didn't get. Good thing she knows how to keep a secret. ]

But we don't know that it's alchemy. Do we even know that people have really died?

[He doesn't realise that she may have suddenly put more pieces of the puzzle together than he'd be comfortable with, he hasn't run into the wily ways of the blogger before.]

It seems pretty certain that they have, people remember their deaths, and... and there have been prices paid. Memories, eyesight...

We know that they're moved. We know that they lose consciousness. Freezing to death is like falling asleep, supposedly. So how would anyone know, if they were saved at the last moment?

[Part of him desperately wants to cling to that and accept it as truth, it would make this all infinitely more bearable, but he just can't believe it.]

M-Mm, maybe you're right. I hope so, anyway.

Oh, don't worry, there's loads of worse possibilities. [ She says it so cheerily, like she isn't grasping onto that one logical explanation for dear life. ]

We might all be really clever robots.

[ That's just the silliest of her theories. ]

[He can recognise that for the attempt at lightening the situation that it is, and so he doesn't take it as a slight against his giant metal robot-looking body. He chuckles, though it's a little strained.]

Speak for yourself, I'm pretty sure I'd remember if I was a robot. But... I get what you're saying.

[ She hopes he does, because she doesn't like him worrying over something so specific that may not even be true. Then again, she supposed she understands, given his experience in the matter. ]

At this point, anything is possible.

[What experience? He has no experience with these things! Everything is normal...]

I'm not sure that's very comforting.

[Anything is possible is where all these troubles are coming from.]

Nope. [ There's wry humor in her voice. No, it really isn't comforting at all. ]

Maybe it might work to our advantage one day?

[He does not sound convinced. Like, at all.]

Maybe this is just me, but when I die I want to wake up two days later. [ Because everyone dies eventually, though that's probably not the best phrasing just now. ]

[That... really isn't the best phrasing right now. Al comes to a total stop in shock, the lights of his eyes blazing.]

Don't say that! You don't understand what you're--

[This place is so dangerous, it's too full of people who don't grasp the consequences.]

[ She smiles with no real humor. ]

I've worked too hard on surviving to give it up.

Then keep working hard on surviving, and don't let yourself die.

[Al can fully support and pig headed stubborn refusal to die, but not a wish to revive.]

But nobody should be allowed to play with the rules of death.

[ Her expression turns dark with the memory of everything she's been through. Her father putting a gun to her head. The driveby at the phone booth. Becky. The man with bandages all over her face, the terrible and repeating knowledge that she was going to die, her parents didn't love her and everything she was doing was pointless and insane. ]

It happens all the time. Even Superman's come back from the dead.

(given these two, pretty much the same thing)

that's a terrible thing to say, go to the back of the class

#swaggers to the back with trollface and finger guns

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