#v:fma

[frogprinceus-a]

@almostemperor [x]

“You are right. So what do you plan to do with it?“

[frogprinceus-a]

@crimsonchessmaster [x]

Winry was just about to throw her wrench only to see Jiraiya.

“Well Ed’s broke his automail for I don’t know how many times right now, but I’m sure he can wait. Is something wrong with your automail?” She looks behind her with a smile, at least glad Ed wasn’t walking in on her.

Jiraiya scratched his head in embarrassment.

"I'm very flattered, Winry-san! Well, you see, it sometimes freezes and starts shaking, not letting me do anything with it. It's a bit annoying. "

[frogprinceus-a]

@crimsonchessmaster  // sc

Riesenburg was a wonderful place where I wanted to live. But Jiraiya still had a lot of things to do, which demanded a decision, before he decided to stay somewhere. He knocked on the door and smiled at the young fair-haired girl.

"Good afternoon, Winry-san. I would like to fix my automail, it does not listen to me at all. "

[nagiarashi-archive]

alchemicalalphonse

     It had been a stroke of pure luck that she had seen the tall,      grey armour walking in Central. She had been unfamiliar in      the city, unknowingly walking amongst the sea of people as      she tried to figure out the best way to contact Edward. Edward      had never left any phone numbers, any forwarding addresses      for him, and while she knew he was in the military, Nagi had      always been hesitant in involving herself amongst military affairs.      They had sent her father off to war, after all, and he had never returned.

     Despite her hesitance, she was about to give up trying to      find Edward at random and just going to Central command      when she heard, rather than saw, the grey, clanking armour,      audible even amongst the bustle of the city. She remembered      Edward talking about her brother, describing him to her, with      a genuine, wide grin on his face while his eyes sparkled with      love. Seeing the pure devotion Edward had to his brother had      put a smile on her face as well, and she knew she could never      mistaken Alphonse for another, even if she had never met him before.

     She trotted after the armour, using her long strides to catch      up quickly to Alphonse. When she caught up to Alphonse,      she stood in front of him, hoping to stop him.

{戦士} - "Are you Alphonse Elric?" she asked, although she knew that he was. 

[nagiarashi-archive]

pipsxueak replied to your post:"HEEEEY. How's the weather down theeeere?" Ed calls from a balcony. I always wanted to say that.

{;;☤;;}— “……no?”

{戦士} - "Liar!"

[itachishu]

[Untitled] Closed starter for edwardxelric.

Walking through the night, never losing his way, the boy did not remember the name of the direction in which he is walking. He knew there was a train route that passed his hometown early every morning and late every afternoon, and the station was nearby. He was going there, and leaving rubble in his wake.

On a passenger train, in a dark booth, a young boy leaned against the window. His hair and clothes were dark and baggy and hid him away in shadow. The legs of his slacks were smoky and pale from dirt. There had been an effort to brush them off but it was stuck in the weave of the fabric.

He sat like he was starving, curled inward with his arms holding himself together. He was shrinking away, deeper into the dark corner of the seat.

On the seat beside him was his luggage bag, with shiny buckles and smart leather straps. It looked near empty, and it was. Inside were only a change of clothes, a pair of shoes, several socks, and antibiotics. The heaviest possession was a book, and hidden in its pages was the most valuable: a photograph of two brothers in the summer.

He fell to his knees and caught himself, his hands firmly in the cinders. They were still warm. Throwing them, moving them beyond this place of rest, would be unforgivable. He could hardly feel anything beyond the ashes between his fingers, and the hot stinging ache of his wrists. 

Where was he? His one survivor? None of these ashes were familiar enough!

A man cleared his throat but the boy did not raise his head. It was the conductor, standing in the isle and scowling. "Your ticket?" The man's hand was outstretched and waiting. The kid pulled his admission out from his coat pocket and put it in the man's hand.

The conductor eyed the dark haired boy. He flicked the ticket back and forth between his fingers before taking a good look at it.

"Going East?" The boy nodded from behind his hair. The conductor's brow furrowed. So close to those impoverished wastelands leftover from war. Why the East and not to Central, where a street urchin might have a fighting chance?

But it wasn't his place to tell a runaway where to go. He clucked his tongue. "Good luck, kid," he said and held the ticket out for him to take.

The boy accepted his ticket back, careful to keep his coat sleeve from rolling down his arm. "Thank you," he said, and stared out the train window. He did not notice the conductor glancing back at him, trying to sneak a peek at the kid's face.

Outside the window, the train station was still dark from the night, and empty but for the workers scuttling around the train. 

The kid's wrists ached and prickled. He pulled back his sleeve to take a look. They were still swollen and red, and the black lines of his tattoo were darker and more menacing for it. He shrugged his sleeve back down and held his arms awkwardly to keep the rough fabric from scratching against the sore skin on either wrist. 

"Good morning and a pleasant trip to ya, fellas," the conductor shouted to the car. He took one last peek at the boy against the window and shook his head.

The conductor stepped out the back of the car to the one behind with a sniff and a flick of his nose. Now ready to go, the doors closed and the train whistled and jerked forward. The workers outside the window took a step away from the rails and waved to the early-morning travelers.

The train lurched and slowly, ever so slowly gained speed. The few people in the boy's car opened newspapers and books, settling into their uncomfortable seats for the ride ahead.

He knew it would not take long, but it came much sooner than he was prepared for. It had been a much longer walk the night before. The sun was still rising when the passengers could see the ruins on the horizon. One passenger yelped and scrambled to the other side of the car to get a better look. 

Seeing the ruins from so far away... tears came to the kid's eyes. It was no longer as he remembered it. It was no longer black from night, lit only by leftover fire. The land was only grey, and what was left of the morning fog weighed it down into the earth. Not even the haze would burn there.

The boy knew there was a cycle in it: of life succumbing to death and being reborn to live again. One day, the carbon in the ashes would nourish the soil and grow tall trees, and feed the birds and animals with nuts and fruit. They, too, would one day die and return to the earth to feed the trees as they were once fed.

He knew there would be life once more, but he could not see it there, then, when it mattered. His heart ached. He was apart from it now, detached -- only a boy on a train now that passed by rather than a firsthand witness.

          "Do we have a deal?"

... a perpetrator.

The news of the leveled town in the North would reach East first. The military would then gather North, and if there was a young child, a brother, to be found, they would take him to Central. The brother would tell them the story, but the boy on the train would be anywhere by then. He would be lost in Amestris, everywhere and nowhere as the young arsonist that destroyed his own family.

The boy folded deeper into the seat as the train moved around what used to be his hometown. It was a crematorium. He didn't brush his tears away. They were his burden.

Embers still burning bright and red, flaring in the wind that followed his steps; the remains of his home town pressed into the earth beneath his shoes.

The Law required him to live; live thousands of years of hardship to make up for the hundreds of lives he was responsible for. He remembered the child that had lived near the apothecary and had who cried every day in joy and sadness.

And so the boy would cry a lifetime of tears for her. It was only equivalent.

--------------------

A day later, the train came to its final stop in the East. Itachi was one of the last to leave the car, and still did not notice the conductor watching him from a ways. 

Itachi stood near the tracks under the train and pulled his photograph from his pocket. He had removed it from the pages of his book earlier. He took one last look at the image in his hand. It was a dangerous thing, now. Knowing what he looked like gave the military an edge he could not afford.

His sore wrists reminded him of the power he held in the palms of his hands, how one thought and motion could pull Hell up to Earth. 

So he touched the picture and gave it fire with his fingertips. It caught, turned black from heat and melted. What was left of the picture fell onto the tracks and burned away to nothing. The breeze blew away the rest.

Itachi picked up his suitcase and turned to the conductor, who had seen everything. The man was sputtering, bright red from anger and fear. As he approached, the boy raised one hand and his sleeve slid back to show one of a pair of matching arrays on his wrists. The conductor went cross-eyed looking at it.

For the same reason he needed to destroy the photograph, he needed to destroy this man's memory of him. Itachi brushed lint from the conductor's shoulder, and that was more than enough to set the man's collar aflame.