Characters: Alphonse, Davesprite, Dug, Homura, and Sora Location The aquarium Date: Day 177 Summary: Many people converge on the aquarium Warnings: None
[The aquarium is a creepy place, let's all mingle.]
[He's just starting to notice how Davesprite seems on edge. It's not the strangest thing here, but he can't help but wonder if something specific has happened.]
[Scared? Is that how he comes off? His mouth presses flat, tight, but he knows he's been more wary lately. Homura pointed it out too.]
I'm not scared, just careful. The last time I was here was when I ran into Bucky, and you obviously saw what I said about that. Not to mention the static and the eyes. Plus we've been going down around the entrance area, through here and then past the fire station, then ran into other people yesterday... There were six of us at that house; you know the risk. So now I hear a mystery clanking from deep in the building, and like hell I'm going to barge in blindly after that.
[It slips out in surprise before he can hold it back. He's not that offended, Davesprite didn't think that when he saw who it actually was, but it's not pleasant to know he can put people that on edge just from the sound of his footsteps.]
I guess my footsteps do sound kind of unusual.
just in case, cw: abuse mention (though Davesprite doesn't recognize it as such)
It's more... Metal sounds mean 'watch your back' to me. My brother trained me to sword fight, and sometimes he'd do sneak attacks, so I had to keep on guard. Then in the game my friends and I played, my land was full of gears just constantly clanking in the background. And if I heard more footsteps coming, something irregular, it meant an underling might be coming. It's basically instinct by now.
[The explanation feels inadequate somehow, but he doesn't know how better to put it.]
[He can't really look confused, but the subtle way his armour moves says he's curious. He's not particularly concerned, it sounds like the sort of training Izumi would employ.]
That makes sense. My teacher used to sneak attack us on occasion to keep us on our toes, it definitely means I have sharper instincts now.
[He shrugs.]
Swords sound pretty cool, I've never really trained in weapons of any kind. I know alchemy and hand to hand fighting for combat, I guess that's all I've ever needed.
[He hears the tiny clinks, milder with the slight movements, but there just the same. It's been a while since they were there in the background so frequently, but he's better at not reacting once he knows the source, even thought something like a gut feeling keeps nagging him that it's unsafe.]
Al, you're a kid with a giant suit of armor. You could probably knock someone across a room if you slapped them hard enough.
[So no, he does not expect he would need a weapon.]
But how do you use alchemy for combat? We made new weapons with the form we had, but I'm gonna guess that's not what you mean.
Well, alchemy is based on the principle of Equivalent Exchange.
[He perks up, obviously extremely passionate about this particular topic of conversation.]
An alchemist then uses the power of tectonic plates shifting to transmute materials from one thing into another, as long as it's the end product is the equivalent of what's been used. But that doesn't just have to mean making a chair out of the ground, and leaving a small hole behind. It could be leaving that same hole behind, but creating a giant fist out of the earth to punch someone with.
[Alchemy is awesome, okay?]
Combat alchemy is pretty much what I specialise in, creating weapons and defences out of the environment around me. Or even bits of my armour, I could transmute the metal of my arm into a blade or something similar.
["Uses the power of the tectonic plates" sounds so fuckin' bullshit fantasy mumbo jumbo. He kind of loves it, moreso when Al goes on to describe it further. If all science was like this he'd be more interested in it. Al even gets a soft whistle of appreciation for the giant fist thing.]
That's badass.
I could make some pretty cool stuff in Sburb, but not on the fly and not that freely. Our alchemy was this whole tedious process with punch cards and captcha codes and a bunch of machines, based around trying to combine items to see if something useful would result.
A lot of alchemists do need to prepare for a transmutation, there are transmutation circles to draw in order to prepare. Some alchemists, like my brother and I, can perform alchemy without a transmutation circle which means our alchemy is much more instant.
[Don't ask how they can do that.]
Would you tell me a little more about how your alchemy works?
Okay, but you gotta tell me about transmutation circles and junk after.
[Talking is good. Al isn't his player, this isn't Sburb, and his coding would tell him to be all full of riddles and to let the player figure out how the system works on their own, but he's got this knowledge in his head and he likes giving info people want. Besides, it's a good way to smooth back the nervous edge he's been on.]
Sburb was pretty complicated in general, so I'm gonna try to simplify, but a pretty integral part of the whole thing was punchcard alchemy. You had to make a certain item just to enter the game world and keep from getting clobbered by meteors, and it's how you got better gear or replicated food and junk while you were in it.
[Unless you grew things yourself, but he's not Jade.]
The whole thing relied on this inventory system called a sylladex. Basically there were these fancy cards, and if you captchalogue an item, that means storing it in one pf them. And each card had this captcha code on the back—this string of letters and numbers that were a kind of code for the object in it.
There were these machines that got deployed in the whole setup process of the game, too. I'm not going to go listing off what each one was unless you really want me to, but the whole thing revolved around punching captcha codes into sylladex cards in order to copy them or else combine them into new stuff. Let's see, what have I got...
[He used a couple as examples back when he explained it to Sora, but he wants to change it up this time. He ends up curling the end of his tail into view, where he has a flower crown keeping the curtain he wears wrapped around it in place.]
See this flower crown? If I captchalogued that, it would have one code. And if I captchalogued this wooden spoon— [He takes it from the loop on his utility belt.] —it would have another. I could just do the stuff with either code alone and get an extra flower crown or spoon, but that's boring.
Say I punched two separate cards and overlaid them, then stuck that in. The result would probably be some kind of floral patterned spoon. But if I took one card and punched it with the codes for both items, then used that, I'd probably get like... a spoon crown. The flower crown but made outta wooden spoons. In other words, you mix form or function depending how you match codes. And you can do more than two, like say I overlaid a card punched for this bandana I'm wearing with the double-punched card. Then the spoon crown would probably have paw print patterns on it somehow.
If you did all that with the right objects, you could make cool weapons or clothes or other useful stuff. You follow me?
[Some of the principles that Davesprite is laying out make sense, and some make no sense at all, but it's obvious that Al is intensely interested. He leans forward a little, hands clasped in front of him eagerly, and his head tilted to one side.]
I understand most of that, and I guess some of it seems like a simplified version of the alchemy where I'm from. Though I'm still not really sure how cards can produce anything, don't you need to use the items themselves?
[He reaches out to tap a finger on the wooden spoon.]
A transmutation circle is like this...
[He pulls out a notebook and pen from his backpack, and draws a circle that looks something like this in design, but not precisely the same. There are different symbols and the pattern of circle is tighter.]
...the chemical composition of the wooden spoon is entered in the pattern, and then the composition of what else I want to make from it, and then the rest are guiding symbols to make sure the power from the tectonic plates is channelled properly.
[Al's got his part to explain, and Davesprite listens and watches with interest through the process of it. It's interesting, but nothing like how it worked in Sburb in his eyes.]
See, that sounds all sciencey and believable until you get to the tectonic plates part. How does a fancy circle channel that? At that point you might as well be doing magic. Fancy, rule-bound magic, but still.
[He finishes off with a shrug.]
Anyway, you didn't need the object itself. Technically you could even get around captchaloguing it in the first place if you had the right tools. I had a camera that could give me the code for things on the back of the pictures I took of them, and Jade's sylladex let her draw things. But it wasn't like we were making stuff for free, either. See, Sburb had these monsters we had to fight, and if you defeated one you'd get this stuff called grist. And every time you alchemize an object, it costs a certain amount—sometimes more, sometimes less, or a different type, et cetera. There's a couple exceptions like the entry object each player makes, or artifact grist, but that's basically how it works.
[It actually relaxes him quite a bit to hear about this grist, even visibly making his posture much looser. This had seemed too much like alchemy without equivalent exchange, and he knows how much that can lead to bad things, at least this way it seems like there is some exchange for the transmutation.]
Could you learn how to draw things and alchemise that way? Or are those types of alchemy that are specific to one person?
[Much like nobody else could click and create flames like Colonel Mustang, the mystery of flame alchemy lost to anyone else.]
[Davesprite lifts an eyebrow. He doesn't know why he'd be so relieved, but if he's not volunteering, he doesn't ask.]
Nah, it's not specific, and not really a thing you 'learn' either. See, each sylladex has a fetch modus, which controls how stuff is stored and retrieved. Jade had one that let her do that, but if I put the same one on mine, I'd be able to store stuff the same way. And the photo thing I got from alchemizing a camera with a sylladex card.
So it's really not an ability in you at all, it's completely based on the technology that you own?
[In one way, that's amazing and wonderful because it would open the power of alchemy to everyone. On the other hand, it being a hard-learned ability means alchemists are experts and respect the power they wield.]
Yep. I said there were a bunch of machines involved, right? Sylladexes were kind of their own thing before that just for storage, but they linked in together for the whole alchemy process.
[He taps his fingers together as if counting them off.]
You got the cruxtruder, the punch designix, the totem lathe, the alchemiter itself... They were kind of a pain in the ass to deal with, but if you could figure out the codes for the different equipment, you could consolidate it all via the jumper block extension and punch card shunts so everything was just combined with the alchemiter itself. But I know that's a bunch of nonsense words to you, so don't worry about it.
Uh-- you're right, none of that really makes sense to me, but it's all really interesting. It makes me sad, sometimes, to think of all the things we could be learning from each other if our abilities worked.
[There might even have been something to help him get his original body back.]
[Davesprite falls quiet for a space as he considers it, shrugging in the end.]
Maybe. This isn't really something I could show like that. It would be holy shit the world is ending level bad news if Sburb got involved with this universe, and I don't even want to think how coordinating a session with this many people would work...
[He trails off.]
But I had other stuff. I couldn't reshape matter, or do half the stuff my friends could do by the point I was there last, but... [Something faint but complicated crosses his face.] I was better than this.
[There's something there, a hint of some hurt underneath the words, but he doesn't really understand exactly why. His voice is warm in response.]
You're pretty cool the way you are now, I don't think you need to worry. It's annoying not having our abilities here, but we'll show them that we're more than just the sum of our parts.
[It's an interesting turn of phrase Al picks. Davesprite was made by parts, the Dave of an offshoot timeline he started as and the body of a crow killed by accident, cobbled together with the code of Sburb into the thing here before him. He's had identity issues enough that he pauses on it like second nature.]
[Reaching up, he pats his scaled hand against Al's large, metal arm.]
Big words, Al. Is this that optimism you were trying to sell me on?
[His tone is a lot lighter than it could be, to the point of teasing.]
[He sees the play of emotions across Davesprite's face, though it's hidden partially by the shades and he doesn't really understand the why, but he appreciates the pat on his arm.]
Mm, I guess it is.
[He sounds like he's smiling.]
I get it from my brother, he's always been able to turn even the worst of situations around and give me hope again.
Not exactly. My big brother, Edward, he's the most determined person I know. No matter what life throws at him, he always finds a way to get to his feet again and keep moving toward a better future. He's my role model.
[The way Al puts it speaks to a clear admiration, even before he gets to the 'role model' part. He can't miss it. And for a second he pauses, just absorbing it, what it means.]
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no subject
[Locked in between the armor and whatever Al looks like on the inside. Surely the armor can't be all he is, right?]
I'm fine. [Simple, dismissive, even tone.] Just pays to be careful around this place, you know?
[Or hypervigilant about sounds with bad associations. Either or.]
no subject
Yeah, I know.
[Can't deny that being careful is important.]
...you seem kind of-- scared, is everything okay?
no subject
I'm not scared, just careful. The last time I was here was when I ran into Bucky, and you obviously saw what I said about that. Not to mention the static and the eyes. Plus we've been going down around the entrance area, through here and then past the fire station, then ran into other people yesterday... There were six of us at that house; you know the risk. So now I hear a mystery clanking from deep in the building, and like hell I'm going to barge in blindly after that.
no subject
[It slips out in surprise before he can hold it back. He's not that offended, Davesprite didn't think that when he saw who it actually was, but it's not pleasant to know he can put people that on edge just from the sound of his footsteps.]
I guess my footsteps do sound kind of unusual.
just in case, cw: abuse mention (though Davesprite doesn't recognize it as such)
[His answer is quick and firm.]
It's more... Metal sounds mean 'watch your back' to me. My brother trained me to sword fight, and sometimes he'd do sneak attacks, so I had to keep on guard. Then in the game my friends and I played, my land was full of gears just constantly clanking in the background. And if I heard more footsteps coming, something irregular, it meant an underling might be coming. It's basically instinct by now.
[The explanation feels inadequate somehow, but he doesn't know how better to put it.]
no subject
That makes sense. My teacher used to sneak attack us on occasion to keep us on our toes, it definitely means I have sharper instincts now.
[He shrugs.]
Swords sound pretty cool, I've never really trained in weapons of any kind. I know alchemy and hand to hand fighting for combat, I guess that's all I've ever needed.
no subject
Al, you're a kid with a giant suit of armor. You could probably knock someone across a room if you slapped them hard enough.
[So no, he does not expect he would need a weapon.]
But how do you use alchemy for combat? We made new weapons with the form we had, but I'm gonna guess that's not what you mean.
no subject
[He perks up, obviously extremely passionate about this particular topic of conversation.]
An alchemist then uses the power of tectonic plates shifting to transmute materials from one thing into another, as long as it's the end product is the equivalent of what's been used. But that doesn't just have to mean making a chair out of the ground, and leaving a small hole behind. It could be leaving that same hole behind, but creating a giant fist out of the earth to punch someone with.
[Alchemy is awesome, okay?]
Combat alchemy is pretty much what I specialise in, creating weapons and defences out of the environment around me. Or even bits of my armour, I could transmute the metal of my arm into a blade or something similar.
no subject
That's badass.
I could make some pretty cool stuff in Sburb, but not on the fly and not that freely. Our alchemy was this whole tedious process with punch cards and captcha codes and a bunch of machines, based around trying to combine items to see if something useful would result.
no subject
[Don't ask how they can do that.]
Would you tell me a little more about how your alchemy works?
no subject
[Talking is good. Al isn't his player, this isn't Sburb, and his coding would tell him to be all full of riddles and to let the player figure out how the system works on their own, but he's got this knowledge in his head and he likes giving info people want. Besides, it's a good way to smooth back the nervous edge he's been on.]
Sburb was pretty complicated in general, so I'm gonna try to simplify, but a pretty integral part of the whole thing was punchcard alchemy. You had to make a certain item just to enter the game world and keep from getting clobbered by meteors, and it's how you got better gear or replicated food and junk while you were in it.
[Unless you grew things yourself, but he's not Jade.]
The whole thing relied on this inventory system called a sylladex. Basically there were these fancy cards, and if you captchalogue an item, that means storing it in one pf them. And each card had this captcha code on the back—this string of letters and numbers that were a kind of code for the object in it.
There were these machines that got deployed in the whole setup process of the game, too. I'm not going to go listing off what each one was unless you really want me to, but the whole thing revolved around punching captcha codes into sylladex cards in order to copy them or else combine them into new stuff. Let's see, what have I got...
[He used a couple as examples back when he explained it to Sora, but he wants to change it up this time. He ends up curling the end of his tail into view, where he has a flower crown keeping the curtain he wears wrapped around it in place.]
See this flower crown? If I captchalogued that, it would have one code. And if I captchalogued this wooden spoon— [He takes it from the loop on his utility belt.] —it would have another. I could just do the stuff with either code alone and get an extra flower crown or spoon, but that's boring.
Say I punched two separate cards and overlaid them, then stuck that in. The result would probably be some kind of floral patterned spoon. But if I took one card and punched it with the codes for both items, then used that, I'd probably get like... a spoon crown. The flower crown but made outta wooden spoons. In other words, you mix form or function depending how you match codes. And you can do more than two, like say I overlaid a card punched for this bandana I'm wearing with the double-punched card. Then the spoon crown would probably have paw print patterns on it somehow.
If you did all that with the right objects, you could make cool weapons or clothes or other useful stuff. You follow me?
no subject
I understand most of that, and I guess some of it seems like a simplified version of the alchemy where I'm from. Though I'm still not really sure how cards can produce anything, don't you need to use the items themselves?
[He reaches out to tap a finger on the wooden spoon.]
A transmutation circle is like this...
[He pulls out a notebook and pen from his backpack, and draws a circle that looks something like this in design, but not precisely the same. There are different symbols and the pattern of circle is tighter.]
...the chemical composition of the wooden spoon is entered in the pattern, and then the composition of what else I want to make from it, and then the rest are guiding symbols to make sure the power from the tectonic plates is channelled properly.
no subject
[Al's got his part to explain, and Davesprite listens and watches with interest through the process of it. It's interesting, but nothing like how it worked in Sburb in his eyes.]
See, that sounds all sciencey and believable until you get to the tectonic plates part. How does a fancy circle channel that? At that point you might as well be doing magic. Fancy, rule-bound magic, but still.
[He finishes off with a shrug.]
Anyway, you didn't need the object itself. Technically you could even get around captchaloguing it in the first place if you had the right tools. I had a camera that could give me the code for things on the back of the pictures I took of them, and Jade's sylladex let her draw things. But it wasn't like we were making stuff for free, either. See, Sburb had these monsters we had to fight, and if you defeated one you'd get this stuff called grist. And every time you alchemize an object, it costs a certain amount—sometimes more, sometimes less, or a different type, et cetera. There's a couple exceptions like the entry object each player makes, or artifact grist, but that's basically how it works.
no subject
Could you learn how to draw things and alchemise that way? Or are those types of alchemy that are specific to one person?
[Much like nobody else could click and create flames like Colonel Mustang, the mystery of flame alchemy lost to anyone else.]
no subject
Nah, it's not specific, and not really a thing you 'learn' either. See, each sylladex has a fetch modus, which controls how stuff is stored and retrieved. Jade had one that let her do that, but if I put the same one on mine, I'd be able to store stuff the same way. And the photo thing I got from alchemizing a camera with a sylladex card.
no subject
[In one way, that's amazing and wonderful because it would open the power of alchemy to everyone. On the other hand, it being a hard-learned ability means alchemists are experts and respect the power they wield.]
no subject
[He taps his fingers together as if counting them off.]
You got the cruxtruder, the punch designix, the totem lathe, the alchemiter itself... They were kind of a pain in the ass to deal with, but if you could figure out the codes for the different equipment, you could consolidate it all via the jumper block extension and punch card shunts so everything was just combined with the alchemiter itself. But I know that's a bunch of nonsense words to you, so don't worry about it.
no subject
[There might even have been something to help him get his original body back.]
no subject
Maybe. This isn't really something I could show like that. It would be holy shit the world is ending level bad news if Sburb got involved with this universe, and I don't even want to think how coordinating a session with this many people would work...
[He trails off.]
But I had other stuff. I couldn't reshape matter, or do half the stuff my friends could do by the point I was there last, but... [Something faint but complicated crosses his face.] I was better than this.
no subject
You're pretty cool the way you are now, I don't think you need to worry. It's annoying not having our abilities here, but we'll show them that we're more than just the sum of our parts.
no subject
[Reaching up, he pats his scaled hand against Al's large, metal arm.]
Big words, Al. Is this that optimism you were trying to sell me on?
[His tone is a lot lighter than it could be, to the point of teasing.]
no subject
Mm, I guess it is.
[He sounds like he's smiling.]
I get it from my brother, he's always been able to turn even the worst of situations around and give me hope again.
no subject
[He looks up at him more directly.]
Here I thought you grew it right in that giant chest of yours.
no subject
Not exactly. My big brother, Edward, he's the most determined person I know. No matter what life throws at him, he always finds a way to get to his feet again and keep moving toward a better future. He's my role model.
no subject
Mine—I looked up to him, too.
[But he moves on.]
Was he an alchemist like you?
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