paixaorpg | [Closed] Exchanging questions and answers

Entry tags:

[Closed] Exchanging questions and answers

Character(s): Deidara, Edward Elric, Pride, Sasori, Zetsu
Content: Three ninjas, an alchemist and a homunculus discuss important matters of the day.
Setting: F4
Time: Evening
Warnings: Possible language, discussion of the ickier side of alchemy, maybe some morbid ninja stuff?

After returning Nina to her room with crayons and paper to keep her interest and promising to check in on her soon, Ed lead the strange party down the hall towards the room he'd been assigned. Once at the door with the appropriate number written in brass at about eye-level, he turned to Pride, offering him a friendly smile.

'Could I have the key back, Pride?' he asked. When the homunculus held out the key however, he made the mistake of trying to take it with his right hand, only to discover that the last two fingers on said contraption had frozen some time during their frequent abuse in the last 24-hours and the rest of the hand was mediocker at best.

He sighed, crouching down to retrieve the keys, this time using his real hand, and finally opened the door and lead the way in. He was slightly startled by just now nice the room, or small suite really, was. There were two large beds, easily big enough to fit two people each, a closet with extra pillows and blanket, windows nearly as tall as the ceiling and what looked to be a fully-plumbed private bathroom with a shower.

'... Is there any rhyme or reason to the economy here? This is what some leaves gets me?' Ed asked of no one in particular.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Zetsu was mildly sorry to see Nina and Alexander go; they had, after all, been the people--yes, dogs counted as people too--he was most curious about, since it was easier to talk to them than it would be to quiz Ed about his strange scent and mechanical limbs. Still, he watched with interest as the mechanical hand failed Ed--it seemed to have suffered some sort of damage, and recently, for it to malfunction so without Ed realizing how poorly off it was.

Sasori was the best mechanic they had in the Akatsuki, that was for certain--he presumed that Folios did some mechanical work, given their trade, but didn't know how well they did it. Whatever their quality was, there would be at least one good mechanic in Paixao Ed could turn to.... And with that wonderfully maddening chakra-like scent surrounding him, Zetsu imagined that it would be a good idea to have Ed as an ally, or at least owing them a favor. A scent that strong, after all, spoke of considerable power--or at least, exposure to such.

Regardless though, Sasori was the one who intended to ask questions at the present, not him. And he had agreed to go speak with that doctor, brief though the meeting ought to be.... He could only shrug at Ed's question. "Be grateful their economy is what it is; even a city this big would have trouble finding jobs for so many foreigners stranded here." That, and they were quite possibly providing the natives with more work this way; with all the time he'd been here, the trees had yet to even come close to running out of leaves. That meant they either grew the way natural plants did, or there were some sort of craftsmen making and replacing them.... Or something along those veins, though he wasn't sure what else there would be.

But back to business. Zetsu offered a polite nod to Ed, Pride, and the Akatsuki pair he'd arrived with. "We have a little business to take care of; we should return before too long. If you need us, don't hesitate to call." That said, he turned, stepping into and through the wall; a moment later, he had melded in entirely, vanishing from sight as he left to complete his errand.

((OOC: Quick exit for Zetsu here; he's off to chat with Lexaeus. =P He might return to the thread, might not, depending on its length; feel free to harass him via journal or telepathy, should any of the characters want to do so.))

Like Zetsu, Sasori's attention was caught by Ed's hand's seizing and freezing; he was used to watching for flawed joints (although they were not found in his work)and would've been hard-pressed to miss this. He would ask after it, he decided; Ed was not an enemy, and he disliked leaving things broken.

"I suppose we should get started..." He never had cared for waiting, and he never would. "You'll forgive me for being forward, but I want to know what you can tell me, regarding Pride; I'm curious, and can't ignore that something is odd. Also, I would like to know if you would want a look at that hand."

[ooc: good lord, late post is late and I apologize.]

Deidara followed after Sasori, and only spared a cursory glance at Ed's mechanical hand issues. It was taken into account, as Deidara rarely let anything escape his observation, but not as something terribly important, or even interesting. Of course, he thought, Sasori no Danna would be interested, and when he asked after it, Deidara was not surprised.

He leaned against a wall carelessly and waited to hear what Ed had to say. He was more patient than Sasori--not that that required being terribly patient--but not by much.

Pride, meanwhile, was content to stay close to Edward, though the little off movement did give him pause, and he blinked at it. Edward's hand was the same, but something about it wasn't. It didn't quite move like a hand was supposed to, even though it had before.

That led one hand to fall to Edward's and take it, the other following, Pride's fingers gentle as he ran them over the metal and pressed each digit back and forth as if testing them, a look of bland... almost-concentration on his face.

Ed stared openly as the plant-man melted into the wall. That was... 'strange' did not cover it. His attention was pulled away when Sasori spoke and then his eyes went back to Pride, who, he noted, was playing with his automail. He was so gentle, not tugging or moving it by much, that Ed hadn't noticed it.

'I can't tell you anything about him specifically,' Ed said, pulling his hand away from Pride. The fingers were already in poor shape and if Pride forced a frozen joint he could inadvertently break it. 'I can tell you what I know about what he is and how he was made, although I don't know who would have made him.'

When questioned about his arm, Ed sighed. 'You're a doctor or something? Thanks for offering, but this arm isn't exactly normal.' Ed hesitated for a minute; he needed to check his hand over and see if there was anything to be done about it for the moment, but he was in a room full of strangers. Of course, given that a half-man-half-plant had just walked through a wall, automail couldn't look that strange by comparison...

He decided to take a look at his automail now but leave it attached, given that he didn't know either of these people and, though he did seem fairly harmless, Pride was a homunculus and that required some consideration. He pulled off his vest and shirt and unfastened the clips holding the rubber 'skin' to his automail before pulling it off to reveal the machinery beneath.

"I'd like you to tell me everything you can; this meeting is, more or less, confidential. How he was made..." Well. This certainly had Sasori's full attention, and was, in his opinion, well worth waiting for. "That is definitely of interest." Pleased with the promise of pertinent information, Sasori folded his hands, still shrugging at Ed's question. "Not precisely....I'm not a healer, though I'm just as familiar with human anatomy and its working." He watched, intrigued, as the false skin was removed, and almost smiled. "However, I am entirely capable of working with something like that."

Deidara smirked at Ed's gaping, and tilted his head in Pride's direction at the mention of the boy's being made. A puppet like Sasori. But Deidara hadn't noticed, and he didn't think Sasori had, either, and certainly Sasori would have. Something else, then. Of course Sasori was interested.

At the revelation of the metal that lay within Edward's false hand, Deidara showed only a moment's interest. That was Sasori's thing, not his; all it meant was that Edward either lost his hand or had it chopped off in favor of a mechanical one.

Well, this room was just full of people--or not people, whatever--Sasori could get along with, wasn't it? As for Deidara, he was playing silent sentinel to Sasori's relatively talkative mood. Really, it was quite a role reversal, even if it wouldn't last. He wondered if Sasori would notice.

Content that no one was going anywhere with the door closed (unless he really wanted to, since he could do things 'no one else could,' even though that would be silly,) Pride finally let his hands drop from Edward's sleeve and fingers.

Sasori, he'd already met. But now there was a new thing of interest: the not-Edward named Deidara. His hair was like Edward's, but his mouth was different, his eyes and nose different. While Edward and Sasori talked, he padded carefully over to the bomb-nin and stopped in front of him, considering as if they had never met before. Which they hadn't, really. At least not by Pride's 'proper' standards.

So he reached to touch again, fingers without clay this time, and pressed his hand to the side of Deidara's cheek, fingers brushing the cool metal of his scope.

Ed raised an eyebrow at Sasori's claim of being able to fix the prosthetic. He shrugged in vague accent and moved to sit at the small table on the side of the room, turning on the electric light over it and looking more closely at his hand. 'Something's probably broken,' he sighed in annoyance. 'I just cleaned it a couple days ago, so I doubt there's enough junk built up in it to freeze it this bad...' He used his flesh hand to poke gently at the fingers and feel where they stopped.

'The damn thing's too fragile,' he griped as he found that the pinky wouldn't budge at all and held the hand up to the light, trying to see what the discrepancy was. 'It's really a piece of cr-junk compared to the ones my friend makes...' His eyes flicked to Pride momentarily as he corrected himself. True enough that the homunculus looked like a teenager, but he seemed so very child-like that Ed felt compelled to censor himself like he would have for Nina.

The eyebrow was regarded with Sasori’s usual calm, without comment---the curiosity remained, however, and he approached out of interest. The puppet master peered at the work exposed for a long moment, before drawing back a step and shrugging, deciding to offer an explaination. “I’m used to installing a number of mechanisms into my artwork, and I’m used to mending.” An exchange of information was expected, after all, and that wasn’t anything of great worth---it certainly wouldn’t do the traps justice, even if word was out. “…and reinforcements, as well, if you’re interested.”

He’d glanced to the other artist, half-expecting an argument to arise at the mention of art, but the bomb-nin was busy---Pride’s investigation was thorough enough, and demanded any subject’s attention in return---and could be trusted to behave, for the time being. An eyebrow was raised at Ed in turn; the offer stood.

Unlike Pride's first investigation, Deidara was fully awake for this one, and he jerked at the touch, catching Pride's hand just as it touched the scope. He was not one to enjoy uninvited touching, especially so close to his face--his precious left eye, at that. Deidara's palm rested on Pride's wrist, the mouth almost certainly able to be felt by the strange boy.

Pride tasted strange. There was something that reminded Deidara of chemicals in it, and he just stood there, frozen, uncertain. Chemicals and dead flesh.

Something like Sasori, then. Something inhuman. Mockery of humanity.

He didn't like Pride.

Edited 2008-04-24 23:20 (UTC)

There was a strange feeling on his arm. It didn't feel bad, but 'good' was far from how he would explain it, if he could.

He drew his hand back, bringing Deidara's with it, and took the bomb-nin's in both of his, turning it over and around and blinking at the strange thing in the center of his palm. This was interesting.

Each finger, he moved in turn, gentle as he had been with Edward's. First, second, third, fourth, thumb, pads of his own fingers across Deidara's palm, around that strange, cross-ways line, then over it as if tracing a line on a map. So curious, this blonde, quiet not-Edward.

So Pride volunteered a question, and wondered if it would be answered, this time. "What is it?"

Ed gave Sasori a friendly smile. The guy obviously wanted a look at his craptastic automail, just like Winry always had to inspect any machinery she hadn't seen before for new ideas and general curiosity. 'If you could help me fix it up temporarily, that would be great, but I don't really think this thing is worth reinforcing, and it's already too heavy.' He laid his hand on the table, palm up. 'Actually, with all the people here from different worlds, there's a chance somebody here knows how to make decent automail, and even with fix-jobs, this thing isn't going to last long. I should go out tomorrow and see if I can find anyone to replace it.'

He poked higher up, trying to see if it was something sticking in the forearm, perhaps, as he went on. 'It's been a while since I had a good one... This one doesn't have any feedback, so I can't tell how hard I'm gripping something or anything like that. Dad set it weak so that I wouldn't break stuff by accident, but I can switch it into full power too, still, it would be a lot more convenient to just have the feedback, even if it does hurt like he--ck.' He glanced up toward Pride again and was made nervous by the blond man's obvious irritation with the homunculus. 'Pride, I don't think he likes you doing that,' he called.

Sasori smiled in return, although the expression was fainter on his face. “I’d like to try. I make every effort to maintain things, as Deidara can vouch---I pride myself on it.” He nodded as Ed continued speaking, retrieving a storage scroll containing some tools---those meant for the mechanical modifications in his work. (Projectiles, secret compartments, and additional joints were priority.) “It certainly looks heavy… If I come across anyone capable of fashioning something similar, I’ll pass word on.”

The puppeteer pulled out a chair and seated himself as well, selecting some instrument as he began to examine the automail in earnest. There was a silent nod in response to the comment on feedback, and Sasori found himself again appreciating what remained, regarding his sense of touch. Even with texture lost, there was still pressure, and temperature to a lesser degree…

With the automail opened before him, the older artist was too intent on his appraisal to spare more than a glance, again, over to his partner and Pride. For what it was worth, that glance spoke of the expectation that Deidara would continue to behave.This was ~~extremely interesting, if~~ moderately serious business, after all.

Deidara was stiff, his visible eye thin, held back only by a desire not to cause a scene which might result in Sasori poisoning him to stop him. The fingers moving over the mouth in his hand served only to unnerve him more, being far too intimate a touch in Deidara's mind as well as leaving the unpleasant taste as a reminder that what he was dealing with wasn't alive in the sense a human was. He jerked his hand away roughly.

"My hand, un," he spat, and the tongue in the hand that had been touched stuck out as if trying to get the taste out of it.

Deidara pacified it with clay.

The strange-thing-in-the-hand had never happened before. It was awkward and confusing, and Pride backed up more out of instinct than anything else. More sticky gray stuff, but it disappeared into the strange-thing, and Deidara looked pinched and annoyed, like Brother had before, and that was never a good thing.

A ripple passed over Pride's body, a flicker of nothingness taking hold as he forced himself to disappear from under the eye of the irate bomb-nin, leaving nothing behind but empty air.

'Yeah, it'd be easy enough to make something that looks like it and has all the right joints, the hard part is making something that can read the signals from my nerves and actually move,' Ed sighed.

He was still watching Pride and Deidara nervously when the older-looking blond did something bizarre with his hand that made Ed jerk in some mix of surprise and disgust. 'What the hell is that?!' he yelped in shock before catching himself. That was probably really incredibly rude. He'd made the automatic assumption that Deidara was human without thinking about it, but then, Pride looked perfectly human on first glance and Ed knew very well that that wasn't the case and Deidara had walked in with a huge plant-man... Ed wondered if there was some creepy, weird abnormality with Sasori too, but tried to push the question out of his mind. At least Sasori's hands looked entirely normal.

'... Uh, Pride,' Ed addressed the space the homunculus had formerly occupied, hoping he was still there, or at least in the room. 'Come over here, okay? Deidara doesn't want to play with you.'

Despite the time he’d spent working with Deidara, Sasori found it only reasonable to remain watchful; while Iwa’s absent artist was reliable, given a target and a time, his temper could be set off with similarities to his sculpture---in such a way that everything stopped in light and sound and smoke. Pride’s vanishing act was, by and large, ignored---having known and accepted it could happen, Sasori paid no unnecessary attention.

Instead, he was still focused on the automail, until Ed started. He straightened at that, and sighed. “As he said, his hand. There seems to be something in yours which doesn’t belong, if you’d hold it still so I can be certain…?”

At the reactions he was getting, he grinned, stuck the tongue of the hand not chewing on clay out at Ed.

"Like 'em?" he laughed.

His old mood seemed to have disappeared entirely, in favor of amusement. Deidara never had been one to maintain a stable mood.

Pride didn't much like Deidara anymore. He was a lot like Brother. Except with more tongues.

The homunculus did as Edward said, instead, flickering back into view at his shoulder... slightly behind him, for good measure. Sasori was better. He was more like Father, and Pride liked him.

Edward was the best choice, though. Pride crossed his legs, gracefully coming to sit on the floor with his back to the side of Edward's chair; if he tilted his head upward, he could see the other blonde, upside down. And the homunculus seemed perfectly content with being there, for the moment.

'Ah, sorry...' Ed said, settling again and holding still as Sasori worked. When Deidara offered him a better view of the strange orifices, Ed paled slightly and started to babble. 'Sorry. Surprised. In my world and the one I just came from everybody's body is configured pretty much identical. I mean, Pride isn't human but his internal organs are going to be pretty much a dead-on match to mine even though he's probably not using half of them. Of course in Munich people would have thought my arm was pretty creepy so that's why I had it covered, I mean, I'm sure as hell not someone to talk about normal...' He trailed off and flushed, embarrassed at his nervous rambling.

He patted Pride lightly on the head as the homunculus sat next to him and decided the best course of action was a subject change. He'd seen something just before all of this business with Deidara's extra mouths that had caught his interest. 'Sasori, that scroll, it looks kind of like rentanjutsu that I've seen, but how did you make those tools without material to work from? I mean, I could make those sort of objects easily enough with alchemy, but I'd have to have the steel and wood to start out with...' He looked curiously at the markings on the paper, it looked quite a bit like the Xingian characters he'd seen, but he'd never studied enough to learn the language.

Sasori almost chuckled as Ed spoke up and on (and on), but instead raised his eyes with an expression of faint amusement allowed onto his face. “To talk about normality is one thing we’re all entitled to. To claim to be normal, however, is beyond any of us, if we mean to be honest.” He turned his gaze back to the work before him, working the sliver of some material---it seemed to be metal---loose from where it had been wedged. “This is interesting, but I’d never believe it to be unsettling….”He glanced to the scroll as it was mentioned, setting the tool he had aside in favour of something slightly smaller. “Excuse me…? It’s a storage scroll; those tools were intact before they were in it. What else would you be able to do with alchemy?"

[ooc: loaded questions ftw]

Deidara tilted his head at Pride again. More and more of it was reminding him of something Sasori might make--though surely it was sloppier than what Sasori would have done, as the puppet master wouldn't have left in unnecessary parts and probably have added flamethrowers and poison darts or something.

Of course, it wasn't as if Deidara's organs were anywhere near normal, what with two extra digestive tracts and the utter mess that made up his chest: he almost laughed to think of the reaction the mouth on his chest might get, especially if opened to reveal his exposed heart.

"I'm the only one with these, un," Deidara said, making no attempt to hide the pride in his voice. "Guess it's a kekkei-genkai, but a new one."

[ooc: skipping Pride]

Ed considered for a moment asking Sasori what might have been considered abnormal about himself, as there was nothing evident in his appearance even up close. Perhaps his hair was a bit more vibrant shade of red than he'd ever seen before, but it wasn't anything shocking. He let go of the idea quickly as it seemed like too personal a question to ask somebody he'd just met and offered explanation instead.

'Well, the world I've been in for the past three years didn't have any very advanced medical technology. Prosthetics there were things like peg-legs, so this would have stood out a lot if I didn't keep it covered.' It was nice to have the conversation brought around to a topic he was more comfortable with. He had a working knowledge of automail and human anatomy, but alchemy and physics were the area where he excelled. 'Pride would be the extreme example,' Ed said quietly, unconsciously stroking the homunculus' hair. But whoever made him is either dead, disfigured or killed a lot of other people to do it...'

Ed pushed that away in favor of a more stepped explanation. 'The simplest form of alchemy is just going to be changing the shape of an object, or the physical state of the material, like water to ice. The more advanced alchemy would be changing the chemical composition of things, like turning water into it's separate elements of hydrogen and oxygen. The more complicated the compound, the higher the difficulty level. When you get into working with organic compounds, even simple carbohydrates, it's already pretty advanced alchemy.'

Ed watched Sasori as he talked, making sure he didn't get that bored, irritated look that Winry had always put on when he and Al started talking alchemy, or anything to suggest that his explanation was going too fast or too slow. 'Organic alchemy is the most complex because the chemical compounds are much more complex and there are some alchemists who work on a DNA level. I don't practice much organic alchemy because I don't feel confident on where to draw the ethical line, but I knew a couple guys who were really talented working with plants. Alchemy can be used to dramatically increase cell-division and make plants grow really fast, and while the same concept can be applied to animals, since animals tend to have more firmly set parameters on healthy growth, using alchemy on more complex organisms tends to result in a lot of cancerous tumors and such.'

Ed took a breath and glanced down at his copy again. 'Pride is what we call a homunculus. A false human created through alchemy. Usually they're the result of an alchemist trying to resurrect someone who's died...' Ed chewed on his lip uncomfortably. 'It will almost certainly result in a rebound that could kill the alchemist and anyone else in the room, and even if it works, you won't end up with the person you were trying to resurrect. And obviously Pride isn't me, though I'm pretty sure that was the attempt.' He sighed and rested his chin in the palm of his free hand. 'Sometimes they don't even look human, at first,' he said quietly, gazing down at the top of Pride's blond head but seeing, in his mind's-eye, an inside-out cluster of exposed organs and ribs, writhing in pain on a dusty wooden floor.

Ed shook himself slightly and glanced back at the table for distraction, catching sight of the scroll again. 'I'm sorry, I don't really understand about this,' he said gesturing. 'The tools were inside? Where does the mass of the object go?' His curiosity was managing to push that memory back much more readily than normal, thoughts of hyper-cubes and the possibilities of fourth-dimensional alchemy percolating in his mind.

((Brit and I are reversing order for this round of tagging~))

Deidara listened to Ed's long winded explanation with varying amounts of interest. At this point, the mouth in his hand had finished pushing chakra into the clay, and spat out a small clay bird. He smirked at it. Perhaps alchemy could have some use in art? But Deidara already had his art.

Tch, people were always trying to cheat death. Life went on, and everyone died. He regarded Pride again. Looked human enough, but he didn't really taste it. Sasori must have been thrilled at the idea.

Deidara smirked at Ed's question regarding scrolls. "Magic!" he declared enthusiastically.

The puppet master paused again, obviously interested (and of course, Deidara knew him well enough to know he would be, from the very beginning). He nodded once, considered his phrasing, and spoke. “How, exactly, would alchemy produce the likes of Pride…?” He had to ask after the confirmation of Pride’s being a crafted thing---the result of someone’s sacrificing flesh and blood and bone to work with the same. Anything involving the preservation or improvement of those materials would be something he wanted to hear of, and although he had no such interest vested in plants, he suspected Zetsu would be sorry to have missed what was said. (As they were allies, he’d repeat it all later.) In short, Ed still had an attentive audience. “There are jutsus for reanimation and resurrection, I’ve learned from reliable sources, and while sacrifices are required, I’m unaware of any rebound for either…”

About to answer, but interrupted in the attempt, Sasori sighed and looked briefly to the ceiling, equally amused and exasperated---he should have anticipated such an answer, being in the bomb-nin’s company for as long as he had.

Pride didn't like this talk. Not anymore. This talk was of alchemy and hurt, and too much spark-smelling blue everywhere. As Edward spoke, he drew himself tighter, pulling his legs up and tucking his arms close. No expression crossed his face, no indication of his jumbled thoughts, flashes of alchemy across the forefront of his mind.

Homunculi. Disfigured. Killed. Dead. Dead, dead, dead-

Pride concentrated hard, closing his eyes. A shimmer of his flicker washed across him, and then he disappeared completely. It wouldn't stop the hurt that seemed to pull at his chest, but it would keep anything else from hurting.

Ed grimaced slightly at Diedara's 'explanation' and rolled his eyes. 'Last I heard, "magic" was not a place,' he replied in a dry voice. Although 'magic,' in his experience tended to mean 'process that we don't understand,' and since Sasori didn't bother to correct his partner, it suggested that they didn't know the mechanism, which was disappointing. 'Should I take that to mean that you don't know why it works, just that it does?' he asked with a sigh.

Ed looked down in surprise when his left hand, which had been sitting on top of Pride's head, suddenly fell. 'Pride?' he called, looking around, although it was obvious the homunculus had done his disappearing act and wasn't going to be visible anywhere in the room. 'Pride, what's wrong? Where did you go?' Ed asked the empty air around him, his brow knitting. Had the topic upset him? Was Pride not aware of what he was? Of course, since he didn't seem to have been assimilated by Dante or the other homuncli, it was probably pretty likely that he didn't, just as Wrath hadn't.

“I’m afraid you ought to take it as an example of my partner’s attitude.” The sigh accompanying this statement was small, but long-suffering---as it should’ve been, since exasperation with Deidara was only to be expected, from the first day of their art argument and ever after. “The mass of an object is forcibly converted to energy, through the user’s chakra---it’s comparable to something being burnt away, exposed to a flame hot enough to do so, although that isn’t entirely accurate. That energy is then sealed into the scroll, and the items are recovered through another application of chakra.”

Sasori held back a second sigh when Pride vanished, and instead regarded the empty space with his usual neutrality. “Pride? It’s alright.”

"Is that how it works?" he commented idly at Sasori's explanation; Deidara couldn't be bothered to question things that didn't matter to his art. Scrolls worked, and that was good enough for him.

He raised an eyebrow at Pride's reaction. Apparently he didn't like hearing abut how he was made. Well, if Deidara had been created like that, some sort of non-human, he wouldn't want to hear about it either. He rolled his eyes and decided to let Ed and Sasori deal with it. What did he care about Pride? His eyes fell to the bird in his hand, and he pondered what he would do with it.

There was no response, not a flicker from the homunculus, not even an indication that he was still in the room.

Too much talk of alchemy. Too much hurt and everything bad, too much like Home and Brother and the others, of Father. Even invisible as he was, everything hurt, everything needed to go away. If his eyes were corporeal, they would have stung. If he'd had tears, he could have cried. There was nothing... just a silence like muffled cotton.

Edward would have been very interested in Sasori's explanation and his mind might have gone off onto a whole freight train of hypothesis on Einsteinian physics theories and the conversion of mass to energy, but he was suddenly very concerned by Pride's disappearance. 'Pride?' he asked the empty air. 'I'm sorry, Pride, I didn't mean...' Ed trailed off, not sure exactly what he hadn't meant. 'I didn't mean to make you sad or, whatever... I'll stop talking about that stuff now, okay? Will you please come back?' He pursed his lips for a moment, glancing back at Sasori and then around the room again. 'Are you still here?'

"It is," to Deidara, along with a warning look---his explosive 'art' was one of the last things which would improve the situation.

Sasori returned Ed's glance without speaking further. The token reassurance had been only because Pride had proved himself to be agreeable company earlier, when he had first been found, but words were only words; the topic could be left for the time being, and if Pride was observing, unseen, it would be obvious before long that there were no intentions of acting on the conversation.

Another sigh. Really, this was just annoying. He moved to a window, leaning out it casually, though still keeping an eye on Ed--there wasn't much to be done about Pride's location. The bird remained, lifeless, in Deidara's hand. He had to do something with it; it wouldn't do to waste something with potential.

But he'd wait for now. He perched on the windowsill.

[ooc: skipping pride]

'Is... he gone?' Ed asked quietly, looking around the room, a worried expression on his face. If the homunculus had left... If Envy found him, or if another of the homunculi or, worse, Dante were here... Pride would be turned from a confused child into a killing-machine. Just like Wrath had been. He'd gotten his second chance to protect Nina and damned if he was going to let anything happen to her or Pride. They were his responsibilities now, his children, and he'd fight an army of Dantes before he let either of them go.

'Pride! Please! If you're here, come out! Please!' he moved towards the door, intending to search outside if the homunculus was not to be found in the hotel room.

"I couldn't say." Sasori might've shrugged a little, if anyone had been looking; it was, after all, only the truth. He relied on his eyes more than normal people might, considering it the only necessary sense (as it was necessary, for his art) but his sight wasn't exceptional by any means or measure. He could wait, and he would, but there were very few options for acting.

There was still nothing where Pride had once been. Still silence, not that any more could be expected of the childlike homunculus than what he'd already shown was a pension for quiet observation.

Then there came a flicker, like a ghost, a thin veil of Pride's full body, before he disappeared again. Another, halfway across the room, and finally, a third, before a solid presence showed itself, tucked back behind Sasori's robes, head ducked under his arm and face pressed close to the nin's chest.

What Edward had spoken of was still... terrifying. (Without a soul, how could he feel such things?) Sasori was quiet and calm, and deflected Edward's twanging personality like a stone. With him as a shield, Pride could become tangible again.

((OOC: Hope you guys don't mind me coming back. <3))

The trip was short and simple, as they always tended to be for him; when he knew where he was going, he never got lost. Zetsu appeared soon after Pride did, stepping wraithlike through the wall not far from where he had left in the first place. He offered a small bow to those present, silently seating himself so as not to interrupt the flow of conversation.

((not a problem. argh... i've been so tired and my muse has been dead... sorry for my slowness and all of this crap...))

Relief washed over Ed as the homunculus reappeared, before being replaced by a cold discomfort as Pride pressed against Sasori for comfort, keeping his distance from Ed. His shoulders sank and his arms hung limply at his sides as his expression melted into quiet, understanding depression. Pride really should be afraid of him. He was an alchemist. He was the kind of sinner responsible for Pride's miserable situation.

'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'It's not fair... You deserved better... I'm... as guilty as whoever did this to you... You deserved a real life.' There was burning at his eyes and he was starting to feel weak. He hadn't slept in at least a full day and when was the last time he'd eaten? He was loosing logic to weariness and better judgment to hunger. Of course Pride would get upset by discussion of his creation; it had probably been a more horrifying event than most people could imagine, if Sloth's birth was anything to judge by... It was positively moronic to talk about that in front of the homunculus.

He swayed and then took a few steps back and let himself fall into a slumped sitting position on the end of the bed. 'I'm sorry...' he said again. 'I... I think I've been awake for about thirty-six hours or something... And... I really need to eat something... I'm not thinking very well...' He rubbed his real hand over his tired eyes. 'Sorry, Sasori, but I don't think this discussion is really appropriate right now... It... I didn't think about it... but it's really horrible. It's not something anyone would want to remember.'

He lowered his hand from his face and stared into space for a moment, considering his options. 'I need to sleep... But I should probably eat something first... I'm sorry about this. I'd like to talk to you more but my brain just isn't working right...' When he looked back up, plant-man was back in the room. Ed wondered how long Zetsu had been there while he failed to notice. He was really out of it.

[ooc: No sweat, the both of you. When do you think we should call it closed?]

Even knowing Pride's inclination towards touch--and even after seeing his approach---Sasori hadn't expected to be clung to. He was only accustomed to a thing within his space already under his control; any autonomous contact was (odd,) unusual (awkward). Admittedly, after it was established, it wasn't as uncomfortable as it could have been. In part, this was due to 'comfort' having very little to do with his experience of the world for some time, though it was also due to Pride himself; the homunculus seemed to have his autonomy suspended, in a sense, to some degree.

He held up aspects of a puppet, and a person, and was undeniably art, having been made. This entity was the result of someone attempting to hold on to whatever they could keep of another, and Sasori could appreciate that. He wondered, briefly, who the artist/alchemist might have been, but pushed the thought aside at Ed's speaking.

"It's alright." A nod to Zetsu, as the other Akatsuki sat. "Rest is important; I know that very well myself, and I wouldn't hold the wait against you, when that's the reason."

The homonculus' eyes appeared from behind his bangs as his grip on Sasori's robes loosened slightly.

Edward looked tired and sad, like he had before, once. The Edward that Pride had lost. Were they really both different? Or had Edward become like Pride, having only little bits of himself from before?

'Rest,' Sasori had said. That meant sleep, and that meant staying inside, staying with the others, and waiting. Pretending, himself. And then... what? More talk, more confusion, more...?

((OOC: I'm game for whenever; just go ahead and tell me when you decide it's done.))

Zetsu, naturally, caught Ed's murmurs, though he had no context to go with them. Rather, he simply glanced at Pride, then fixed a steady, almost unblinking gaze on Ed. His expression was impassive, for the moment; he was interested, curious, but unwilling to pass any judgment until he understood what had happened and what the dynamic was between the pair of not-twins.

It was good to be acknowledged, he supposed, though the others were still more interesting at the moment--it was a strange thing to see, someone coming to Sasori of all people for comfort..... and yet, he thought he could surely understand at the same time. Sasori was perhaps the best possible person one could turn to, in such a situation; it felt as though it had a nice symmetry.

"The hotel should have a restaurant, or we could get you something, if you'd rather." Zetsu offered; he could only expect his tacit acceptance of Ed's need to break the conversation off to be understood in the offer. "To let your health wane in a place such as this could be a dangerous thing." Not so much a profession of caring, so much, or even concern, as a simple warning. There was no telling what could happen in Paixao, and it was best to be prepared for it. Ed evidently had information that Sasori found valuable, at least, which meant that it was in their best interest to make sure that he stayed both alive and coherent for the immediate future. Still, he'd let the others interpret the comment any way they wished to; it wasn't his business what they thought.

'No, I'm okay, I can go myself. Thanks,' Ed replied to Zetsu, feeling a bit embarrassed. It wasn't like he was an invalid. Just a cripple. 'I'll just get something and then... sleep, I guess.' He rubbed his face again. 'We can continue this tomorrow then.' He wondered, as he pushed his hair back and stood back up, if Pride would go with Sasori and Zetsu.

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[Closed] Exchanging questions and answers

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