Roomies [Active]

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

Character(s): Edward Elric and Basil of Baker's Street
Content: Uhm...Ed and Basil meet and eventually end up being roomies.
Setting: Villas Salonas (Specifically the apartment complex Ed found to live in while he's stuck here.)
Time: Right after this. (Week 32)
Warnings: Ed's potty mouth. Always Ed's potty mouth.



Ed closed the journal, grabbed his apartment keys, and walked out to the front of the building to meet up with...a mouse. A mouse and his pet dog, apparently. He hadn't been in Paixao long, but it was long enough for him to assume that there would only be stranger things coming in and out of the gates of the city. At least the mouse sounded intelligent.

Ed leaned against the front wall of the apartment complex near the doors, checking his watch for the time and huffing out of impatience. He had never been a patient person. Al had always been the patient one. He looked down the street that lead lead to Joutenhiem gate and also towards the center of the city. It would be very likely for Basil to be coming from that direction. He had yet to show up, but then, Ed had just walked outside and he had no idea if the mouse was even close. He should have asked. Either way, it was at least nice out, or as nice as it could be being under a dome and all. As he waited, Ed watched the zombie-like citizens walking to and fro, doing whatever it is they felt like doing.

Comments

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

Only a few taps on his journal had brought up the map and informed Basil of the exact shortest route he would need to take to arrive at...whoever it was' apartment building. The lad's name was hardly important anyway. He hopped down off Toby or just a moment, making sure to get the dog's attention.

"All right Toby, we don't have anything for you to track, so you'll have to listen to me very carefully. Do you understand? TOBY!" The dog's head snapped back down to look at Basil from the store window his eyes had wandered to. "Do you understand?" The dog's brow furrowed for a moment, then he nodded enthusiastically. "Good! All right, off we go then!" He climbed back aboard his trusted hound and grabbed onto the leash.

Some time later they arrived, and Basil had little trouble noticing that the lad seemed to be wearing a metal gauntlet on his right hand. Picking him out from the rest of the crowd had been easy, of course, the boy's yellow eyes did that quite readily, along with his differing sense of fashion--most particularly the braid, and that horrendously gaudy red coat. Something about the position of his left leg struck Basil as strange as well.

Toby had a different idea though, and decided to start barking like a wild animal the very moment he set eyes about the boy. "TOBY! Cease! Desist!" Basil was left trailing by the leash as the dog rushed forward toward the lad, growling and barking for no reason his owner could possibly fathom.

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

Well, that caught Ed's attention. Since Basil was so small, he didn't see him until the dog was a bit closer, but he had a feeling it was the mouse anyway. He didn't know of anyone else who had a dog. The citizens sure didn't.

Thankfully, Toby was a lot smaller than Alexander had been, and he stood a very good chance of not being run over by the canine. He smirked. He knelt down and pet him with his good hand. "You might want to spend more time training him than yelling at him." He picked up the leash and dangled it in front of his face. If the mouse was still holding on, he could see Ed eye to eye now.

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

The sudden stop made Basil almost go flying, it if weren't for the boy lifting the leash into the air--while Basil still had quite a firm grip on it. The mouse put on the most indignant expression he could muster at being dangled from his own hound's leash. "P-Put me down this instant!" he demanded, folding his arms.

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

Ed couldn't stop grinning. This was pretty funny. (He had never had anyone smaller than him to pick on!!) "Here you go pipsqueak." He carefully placed the mouse on the ground and laid the leash next to him.

"I guess you can ride your dog up. I'm on the third floor." Ed jerked his thumb at the building behind him.

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

"Thank you." If Basil could, he was certain he'd be growling. Of all the nerve! He scowled up at the boy, then picked up the leash in both arms and waved toward the dog.

"Toby, let me up!" The hound obedient placed his head low to the ground so Basil could climb aboard. "Toward the door, boy," Basil said, and Toby pointed is head in that direction and started walking.

Riding the hound up and down stairs had never been the most pleasant of experiences, as it was rather jarring to be bounced up and down each and every step, but it could have been far worse.

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

Ed opened the apartment door and held it for the dog, waving him inside. He closed it behind him and he flopped on the couch, kicking off his boots before placing them under the coffee table.

"So, you wanted to know about binding souls with alchemy?" His face was serious now. He leaned back and stretched his arms over the back of the couch, gazing at the mouse.

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

Toby padded inside happily, going straight to the coffee table so Basil could jump off, and then sitting down on the floor right next to Ed. The hound's expression and posture were clearly begging for Ed to pet him.

Basil took note of each individual item of interest in the apartment, rapidly scanning and recording each minute detail his eyes, ears, and nose could catch. The lad himself was rather nonchalant about something he'd made such a big deal of over the journals, which meant Basil should be preparing himself for something of a lecture.

"Alchemy? Surely you don't mean that silly attempt at science that would turn water into gold." The word itself may have been suspect, but the boy didn't seem to be from Basil's own world. The mechanical left leg alone made that quite clear.

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

"Actually, where I'm from, alchemy is a thriving science. The military even recruits alchemists to be used as human weapons." Ed fished out his watch from his pocket and placed it on the table next to the mouse. "I'm one of them, though I haven't been given orders to be a weapon yet."

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

Did every single thing this boy said make so little sense? Basil paid close attention to the make and detail of the pocketwatch, but it didn't tell him anything useful in and of itself.

"Very well then, I'll take your word for it. Different worlds do seem to be marvelously dissimilar, and with no evidence to the contrary I have no reason to argue with you."

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

"Tell me about it." Even though he was talking to this guy right now, Ed still didn't want to admit that he held a conversation with a mouse and a candlestick.

He suddenly gave the mouse a surprised look. "How else did you expect a soul to be bound to anything if it wasn't though alchemy?"

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

"Where I come from alchemy is nothing more than a silly joke used to scam people out of money. You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical. Such as thing as 'binding a soul' is nothing short of magical, and, if you'll forgive the term, quite impossible and extraordinarily hard to believe."

Then again, most everything he'd come across here thus far had been just as difficult to accept, so it wasn't such a stretch, sad as he was to admit it.

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

Ed grinned. "I guess I'll just have to show you some then." There was a floor lamp next to the couch. Ed got up and clapped his hands together before placing them on the lamp. A bright light seemed to emit itself from his hands, and when it faded, it was obvious to tell that that lamp had changed. Nothing big. Ed just changed the design to that it looked like the pole was wrapped in barbed wire. Bad-ass.

He looked back at the mouse with a smug look on his face. "That's just simple stuff, but you can do a lot more with it."

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

That display was far more than Basil had been expecting. In fact, it even left him speechless--a rare and very difficult feat to accomplish. the mouse stood there with his jaw open, dumbstruck, for a good ten seconds, trying to wrap his mind around what precisely it was he had just witnessed.

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

"Why don't you take a picture? It'll last longer." He almost felt like he had been transported back to Lior, where everyone was calling basic alchemy a work of miracles.

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

"How on earth did you create that sort of a reaction?" The smell left behind told Basil that clearly some sort of chemical reaction had taken place to change the physical structure of the lamp, but all the theories running through his mind were instantly proven wrong by the evidence that was now staring in his face.

"The transmutation of matter, with virtually no energy lost to the system...simply astounding!" If nothing else, Basil read as clearly impressed.

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

Ed plopped himself back on the couch. "I made a kind of transmutation circle by putting my hands together. The rest is just remembering equivalent exchange really." Well, at least for him. He wasn't going to explain how he could go without actually drawing a circle unless he was asked, and even then it'd be brief.

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

"Do you normally need a circle?" The process was so marvelous that Basil simply couldn't get enough information about it. "And how do you draw them? Chalk, graphite? Lead?" Each question brought the mouse closer to the edge of the table.

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

This was weird. Ed never thought a mouse could remind him so much of himself.

A...a tiny, minuscule, little mammal...

ANYWAY!

"Yeah. You can draw it with anything really, as long as it's there." Ed got up and fetched some paper and a pen from the desk then came back to the coffee table where Basil had seated himself. He drew a simple circle (http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs31/f/2008/198/c/6/Simple_Transmutation_Circle_by_vinny144.png) and pushed the piece of paper towards the mouse.

"The circle focuses and directs the flow of energy from the earth and through the matter you're transmuting. It also represents the circular flow of the earth's energies that you're using to manipulate things. The runes on the inside allow the energy in the circle to be released to do what you want them to. Depending on what you want to transmute, you'll draw different symbols in them. Like if you want to transmute something with properties like water, you'll draw one kind of rune, and for something like rocks, you'll use another."

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

Oddly, the symbols looked familiar to Basil, much more so than than he had expected. They were very old, and he had seen them used a number of times in old silly books talking about legendary magic language. Total nonsense, obviously...but perhaps it wasn't, in the world that Edwad had come from.

"Would you mind if I tried it?"

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

"Go ahead."

Well, this would be interesting. Ed wondered if the mouse would even be able to do anything, but then again, he didn't see why not. He might not be human, but he had a soul and he seemed smart enough to work things out. There shouldn't be any reason why he wouldn't be able to preform alchemy. Ed sat back and watched.

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

A few moments (and lots of muffled mumbling) later, Basil had scribbled out a circle on the table. "Now all I do is..." He rubbed his hands together, then put one on either side of the circle. "Ha!"

At the mouse's shout, the table lit up underneath him, and soon was, instead of square, round. "A-HA! What a remarkable process!"

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

Huh. The mouse did it. Though, just making the square table round? Ed would have added a bit more flair to it. Oh well. To each their own.

"Yeah. You can do a lot with it, though there's limits." Ed didn't really want to bum the guy out, but it'd be better to mention this earlier rather then later. "Just do me a favor and don't try any human transmutations."

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

Basil was silent a moment. "That would be why you lost your arm and leg, wouldn't it?" he asked cautiously. He tapped his fingers together nervously, and was a bit twitchy.

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

"Yeah." Ed was gazing at his automail hand. "My brother lost his entire body, but I managed to pull his soul back through the Gate and bind it to a suit of armor. I promised him I'd get his body back, but now I've ended up here."

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

"...Oh..." That quieted the mouse. "I promise I won't be trying this with anything better animated than a plant."

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

"You don't have to promise me anything. I'm telling you so you don't make the same mistakes I did."

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

"Very well then, I've been suitably warned. You did say human transmutation, any particular reason you're being so specific?"

[milkisgross.livejournal.com]

"It all boils down to equivalent exchange. If you want something, you need something of equal value to give in exchange. Human transmutations tend to deal with souls. I don't really think there's anything of equal value to one."

[ifyoullexcuseme.livejournal.com]

"Ah, so when you say that, you really mean any transmutations involving a soul. Though that is a rather intangible thing to be dealing with in a process like this one."