[network] @Enoch; Day/Night 46 [open] [vomit warning]

[warriorscribe]

A: Day 46, video

[The first thing that appears is the image of a bottle, faint in the darkness of the snow-covered hospital. It appears to be filmed with the inside camera of the tablet, using the tablet's own light to illuminate the label. It's hard to read in the faint blue light of the screen, but not impossible to make out as he slowly tilts the bottle in his hand: it's labeled "potassium iodide". Enoch's voice comes from off-screen, behind the tablet.]

I found this in here, and I don't know what it is. Does anyone recognize it?


B: Night 46, video

[Enoch sits in one of the many waiting lobby chairs outside the hospital rooms on the third floor. His face is hardly visible in the darkness, though there is at least one other backlit tablet screen behind him.]

This day was not without its findings...for my part, I found a video...one moment.

[He fails to turn off the video as he pokes through menus on his tablet and speaks to its assistant.] Helel, would you please show them this one?

[A link to an attachment is posted.]

The video shows a young child ill or injured enough to vomit blood, so I would caution against watching it unprepared. Whatever happened here was disastrous. I don't recognize the surroundings, so they must be on a lower floor. Perhaps we'll find something there tomorrow.

Also, Quark found...something. I'm not quite sure what it is...

[He glances back at one of the tablet lights behind him, and the shadows shift as when Quark hears his name mentioned, his focus immediately snaps up from his own tablet.]

Yeah! Look, it’s a program or something! There’s a picture of a bird on it, but it doesn’t have anything to do with birds at all!

[He all but clambers over Enoch to show his tablet on Enoch’s feed, and he complies, shifting his arms to let him crawl over him and get into the shot. (Information about the app can be found here.)]

I know a little bit about computers, but not so much I really know what to do with this, and I don’t want to press the wrong thing and break something. Does anybody recognize this? Maybe that’ll help me figure out what to do!

[Enoch adds, once Quark is done talking:]

Whatever it is, it was well-hidden. I believe I went over the same room he did and found nothing, so wherever it was, only a child could reach. Surely that must mean something...

Comments

[warriorscribe]

And it all relies on your powers of alchemy? Is there no alchemy you know of which doesn't require a power? I seem to recall word going about in Egypt...but it's been so long since I've been there I don't remember clearly.

[If there's some mundane version of this (it's called, of course, chemistry, but he's entirely unaware), it would be very useful.]

[armoured]

Alchemy is just a branch of science, and there are plenty of scientific methods and research which don't need that kind of power. Branches like physics, chemistry, biology... but they're not branches that I'm particularly well-versed in. I know a lot of the theories of chemistry, but mostly in how they relate to alchemy.

[The Elrics kind of heavily specialised.]

Maybe Hiro would know some more, though, I think he's studied the regular sciences.

[warriorscribe]

All right. If I haven't had an answer here I'll contact him.

[Why can't he find things that are obvious to him, like tools and such. Even the food is unfamiliar! (chocolate is pretty good, though, if sweeter than he's used to.) He likes learning new things, but so much he knows being outdated or just plain wrong is starting to wear on him a little.]

I wonder how I keep finding these things I know nothing about.

[armoured]

It's happened a lot to me too, I guess it's because this isn't either of our home. I mean, I suppose it's not anyone's home here, but a lot of people have at least heard of the country this town is meant to be in. And those people seem to recognise more of the technology and items that are found.

[He gets it, it makes him feel homesick.]

[warriorscribe]

There is no design that has not been improved on so much it is unrecognizable, it sometimes seems.

[He chuckles a little, irony laced with nervousness.]

I am impressed, of course...I've heard so much of what we're capable of and this is standing proof. That we are in completely different places and speaking to one another as if we were merely on opposite sides of a crumbling wall...it's unthinkable where I come from.

If only whatever had befallen this town had not happened. I would have liked to see it when it was alive.

[armoured]

We had some technology kind of like this, but way more primitive. I could never have imagined motion capture of someone's face sent to someone days away, the most we had was an audio line that wasn't even really portable.

[He hopes he can remember a lot of these things when he returns, he can't imagine how much this sort of tech would benefit Amestris in the long run.]

You must really miss your home, huh?

[warriorscribe]

I miss the world I came from. [He offers a sheepish sort of look. It's not the best answer, he knows. Please don't worry about him, is what he's trying to say.]

I didn't have a home, exactly...I traveled too much. I was looking forward to finally having one, though...I would rather it not be here.

[armoured]

That definitely makes sense, this isn't exactly the most welcoming place to make a home.

[Though he can't deny his interest has been piqued now.]

What made you travel around so much? Was it your job?

[warriorscribe]

...Well, yes, in the simplest of terms. My mission was to find Fallen Angels that were hiding somewhere on Earth, and they were hidden, ah...perhaps too well.

[He hesitates a little, a bit of lingering caution from his need to keep his immortality secret.]

...Well enough it took me three hundred years to find them.

[armoured]

[He can't help a sharp intake of breath. He has met others who have lived so long, but it's still unnatural enough to be a surprise.]

But how did you survive that long? I thought you were--

[Human? Normal?]

--a regular person.

[warriorscribe]

I was.

[Maybe he still would be, if he had remained with his family, his original family, so long ago. He can't say he regrets agreeing to go to Heaven, partly because he can no longer remember the moment he was invited and partly because, though it may have been severely tested, his piety has largely remained intact.]

I told you that I was given blessings to help me on my mission... Immortality was one of them. They knew it wouldn't be so easy to find them.

[armoured]

[Immortality...

He hates the idea of it still, even after spending so much time with people who wanted to use it for good like Ling and May. His first thought is of how excited the two Xingese people would be if they heard this, Enoch would be kidnapped away and questioned to within an inch of his life in seconds.]

Oh.

[He's trying not to judge too much, trying to remember what Tim said about not holding other worlds to the standard of his own.]

What happens when you have found them all?

[Will he just keep on living forever?]

[warriorscribe]

I have, and...it seems I would simply continue living. We were going to discuss it further in the morning, the night after I succeeded, but I...woke up here.

[He thinks he's going to keep living forever. Mostly, it's because he can't imagine himself as a mortal anymore. He can't even remember being mortal aside from vague impressions.]

[armoured]

What will you do?

[He doesn't believe immortality is a good thing, but neither would he wish death on a friend, so he's more just curious where his life would go now that he'd completed his mission.]

[warriorscribe]

Well, there's a woman with me...or there was, at the camp before I was taken here. Ishtar is her name. She was chosen by God, too, so...perhaps she is also immortal.

[He rubs the back of his neck, suddenly sheepish.]

Regardless, we've both faced hardships and have grown close for it... Whether she'll grow old without me, or we'll both grow old, or neither of us will...well, I planned on asking her what she would think of marrying me.

[So embarrassing. He half-considers making this private. He doesn't normally make the first move, leaving it up to the other party to show interest - and she definitely has, but...well, it's a mixed bag that would take more time than needed to get into.]

[armoured]

[Of all the answers he had been expecting, that was not one of them. It's... such an adorable answer and warmth floods his voice.]

I really hope that works out for you, it's nice to hear someone has something nice waiting for them back home.

[That's a sad rarity here.]

What was she chosen for, if... if it's okay to ask?

[warriorscribe]

The same thing I was - to find the Fallen Angels. She initially failed, so I was to, in the course of binding the Fallen Angels, aid in her resurrection.

We...well, in the end, we helped each other out of our respective binds.

[He's not sure what to say about the fact that he actually met her before her death but didn't know who she was. That's still very weird and involves memories that are still mostly faded from time.]

[armoured]

[And again the conversation swings back to touch on immortality and resurrection, adding a veneer of discomfort to the genuine well-wishing he felt for Enoch and his possible future wife.]

I don't understand why gods would choose normal people to send after angels. I'm not-- I don't have a religion, but it seems unfair. Aren't gods powerful enough to control angels themselves?

[warriorscribe]

I would have once thought so, myself. ...It's more complicated than that.

[He's not even sure he's got it entirely right. It's all snatches of information gleaned over the course of three centuries or so, and some bits are clearer than others. Still, he does his best to explain.]

The story of Creation holds that God gave Adam dominion over the Earth. ...He meant that. Earth is ours. He wouldn't interfere, and angels in fact cannot interfere without express permission. It's much easier to get a human to volunteer themselves and bless them, I think, than tell every angel, yes, they can do this or that every time something they do might interfere.

[armoured]

[He doesn't really know the story of creation, nor has heard of Adam, the few religions that exist in Amestris are not compatible with this. But--]

I guess that makes sense, but it still seems kind of unfair. He's asking a lot of you, of anyone He wants to do this task.

[Not that he's saying Enoch isn't up to the challenge. But just because someone can do a task, doesn't mean that it's right to ask them to.]

But those angels you're hunting down don't have the same restrictions?

[warriorscribe]

I volunteered for the task. Nobody even asked me to...I suppose that makes it somewhat odd to call myself "chosen", but I was the only living human in Heaven to volunteer, and I was there because I was chosen to serve as a scribe. I can only assume Ishtar volunteered herself, too. They're very adamant about our free will not being imposed upon up there. Our right- our ability to say no is special, in their eyes.

[That out of the way, he takes a deep breath, sitting on the hospital bed in the room he's in as he thinks about the Fallen Angels. Fallen. That's the key word. They'd rejected their angelhood.]

Fallen Angels aren't...quite the same anymore. They've turned their backs on God and Heaven and revoked their ties to both. It's...dangerous, when that happens, because it's as if a child has come to inhabit a very powerful body - Fallen Angels lose much of their strength in the fall, but these found strength in another source, a pact with a demon. They...they don't quite grasp the consequences of their own actions. Certainly they will learn, but my world was threatened by destruction, because the children of angels and humans... [He shakes his head.]

When they mature, they become powerful giants who know nothing but inflicting destruction on everything around them. And yet...there were many mature Nephilim. Fire Nephilim, they're called. Their destruction, that consequence, they either didn't truly grasp it or they did not care.

[armoured]

[Al sits quietly and listens while Enoch explains, gripped with interest at such an alien subject. Even the possibility of alchemically created humans, homunculus, were overwhelming to believe in... but actually legitimate gods and angels? It blows his mind, far too surreal to really wrap his head around.]

That sounds awful, so frightening for both sides. I can't imagine how horrible it would be to be capable of nothing but destruction.

[But he can definitely see why they need to be stopped.]

And it was your task to stop them? You must be an amazing warrior.

[warriorscribe]

I wouldn't say so. With special weapons I do well enough, but I do what I can, and that's all I can truly say about my skills.

[Of course, without any powers at all, this is still the man who's going to eventually nearly kill Handsome Jack alongside Beckett. Combat experience is combat experience is combat experience.]