[network video] @JPHawkins; DAY 17, 1pm [open]

[rattlingthestars]

[ When the video cuts on, Jim isn't looking at the camera. His head is twisted around to stare somewhere over his shoulder as his chest heaves with exertion (or maybe fear.) There's a bruise blossoming on his cheek where he'd fallen trying to escape and a dried trail of blood from his nose to his chin that he's forgotten about.

The microphone picks up the noise of the monsters outside in the snow over the rattle of Jim's breath. When there's a break in the sound Jim seems to remember what he'd been doing and turns back to the tablet. ]

Please tell me someone else is seeing these things. They're some kind of - of - of shadow things.

[ Jim has seen weird. He's seen creepy, thanks to Captain Flint. But he's never seen anything like those. Still, something about them had seemed almost too familiar. It's that which makes him wonder if it's all in his own head. ]

If you are? Don't fight them. Just run.

Comments

[armoured]

They look kind of like simplified transmutation symbols, but they're missing a lot of key elements that would make them work.

[Perhaps that similarity, however vague, is a tenuous connection between their worlds, though.]

If I find anything with those on, though, I'll definitely let you know.

[rattlingthestars]

Make them work to do what? Do you know anything about - all this? I thought you didn't have technology!

[ If Jim is a little accusatory, it's only because the shadows are making him twitchy. ]

[armoured]

We do have technology!

[Wow, rude, just because it's not spaceships (literally) or fancy holograms.]

But I'm talking about alchemy now, it's a type of science. Some symbols kind of like this, but more complex, are drawn when someone wants to perform transmutation. It might be related, but... maybe not.

[rattlingthestars]

And the symbols can transform things?

[ That sounds like magic, Al. Suspiciously so. ]

Or do you mean equations?

[armoured]

No, they're just the conduit between the alchemist and the energy used to perform transmutation. The actual transformation comes from the alchemist themselves.

[This explanation probably isn't helping the 'not magic' theory, is it?]

Like... if you drew the symbols, it wouldn't work. You have to be an alchemist and understand the transmutation circles in order to make them work for you.

[rattlingthestars]

[ Yeah that's magic, Al. Or at least Jim thinks so. Still, any distraction is a good distraction, so he's compelled to ask: ] And what makes someone an Alchemist?

[armoured]

It's just something that's born inside you. You still have to learn, you have to study alchemical formulae and application, but the ability to become an alchemist is there from birth.

[Ed and Al were destined to be alchemists, considering their father was a living philosopher's stone.]

[rattlingthestars]

So even if you understand it, you can't do it, no mater how hard you try? If you're not an alchemist?

[ That doesn't really sit right with Jim, but then life's unfair. ]

Sorry for the wait

[armoured]

Right. Alchemists aren't exactly uncommon in Amestris, but they're not everywhere either.

[He shrugs, the sound of it communicating through the tablet as a tiny clink of metal.]

Besides, not everyone would even want to become an alchemist.