Alphonse Elric, Al to his friends and family, lumbered beside his older and shorter brother. Thanks to a failed experiment with alchemy Al’s body had been completely destroyed and Edward had bound his soul to a large suit of armor. That same experiment had cost Edward his leg, and binding Al’s soul had cost him an arm. “We could have tried to fix the train you know.”
Ed looked over to his younger brother with a frown. “The engineer and conductor were killed in the explosion Al, even if I fixed the thing, no one on board knows how to run one of those things, and it’d be days before they even got word that a train was broken down. If that map was up to date, there’s a small village around here where we can buy a couple of… horses or something.” As usual Ed’s plan was being made up as he went along, flying by the seat of his pants.
“Hey what’s that?”
“Huh?” Ed looked back to where his brother was pointing, and shielded his eyes against the setting sun. He couldn’t quite make it out, but there was definitely a figure coming up on them, and fast. When it got closer, Ed could at least tell it was a woman.
Finally some people, Brianna thought to herself as she ran even closer to the two figures standing not too far off in the distance. From what she could tell it looked like a boy and his father in a suit of armor, or maybe a knight and his squire. Brianna had been running for hours now and all she had come across was woodlands, so judging by that and what Brianna could tell from the first people she saw in this world, she had probably ended up in some low tech dimension.
Which really cut her chances of going home down to almost nothing. Brianna could build another teleportation device, she had helped Gina with the first one after all, but without modern tools her options were severely limited. But just recreating even just those tools would almost take having to alter the very atomic structure of matter.
Now Brianna’s only real chance was hoping they had some good mages that could send her home.
At least she could get directions from these guys. Slowing her pace down to more of a normal speed, and after making sure the bandanna that she had made from a destroyed lab coat to hide her ears in case the people of this world thought she was a monster or something, Brianna came to a full stop just a couple feet away from the strangers. Slumping over from exhaustion, Brianna raised the one hand that wasn’t pressed against her leg to keep her from falling over in greeting.
She just hoped that a friendly wave was a hello on this world, and not a threat to bitch slap someone you just met.
Edward looked the girl over as soon as she was close enough. She was tall, very tall. That put her off to him right way. Barely being on the short side of a normal girl’s height his whole life had offset Ed to people taller than him on general principle. Most men could get away with it as long as they didn't bring it up, they were supposed to be taller after all, but here this woman was taller than most men he had ever met. It just wasn’t fair! Ed had to admit that despite her height and the sweat rolling down her body, the woman was… attractive. But only having someone like Winrey to compare her to wasn’t much.
At least Winrey’s chest wasn’t on eye level with his face.
“Hey,” Ed said non-chattily before he got ready to just walk past the girl and leave her be. He and his brother had about a full day of walking ahead of them, and only half a day’s worth of light to go.
“Hello there,” Al spoke up with a friendly wave, or raise really, of his hand. “Can you tell us how far it is to Red Oak?”
Thanking what or whoever was looking out for her that these guy’s spoke English, Brianna took a deep breath in order to talk. “Red Oak?”
Ed looked over to Al at that little bit of weirdness, and then back to the girl. “Uh… yeah. It’s a small lumberjacking community. It’s supposed to be about a full days walk in the direction you were coming from.”
Brianna’s mouth fell open. She wanted to smack herself in the head, but the half-werecheetah was pretty sure that would wear out the last bit of energy left in her body. “You mean there’s a town-I mean,” Brianna caught herself quickly, trying to think of something to recover. “You mean I’ve been heading the wrong way?”
Ed frowned at the woman’s obvious slip. Being in the State Army for almost three years had made him a bit paranoid, but it had trained him to notice things like that. But the tattoo on her face wasn’t an alchemic symbol, and she looked way too tired to pose any threat as a normal Sate Alchemist hater.
Well, it wasn’t his problem. They’d outpace her easily enough. And who knew, maybe she really was just lost.
“Yeah,” Ed told her. “It’s in the other direction.” Motioning to his brother it was time to continue on, Edward started walking. “Come on Al, we’d better get moving if we want to make it before the sun sets.”
“Brother wait!”
“Brother?” Brianna mumbled before looking back and forth between the two.
“What?” Ed grumbled, as if he didn’t know where this was going.
Glancing down nervously at his brother, or trying to anyway, his body couldn’t do facial expressions, Al wanted to gulp because of Ed’s tone of voice. “We can’t just leave her out here. Look how tired she is. What if a bear or something comes up and attacks her? We need to escort her to the town.”
Letting out a moan, Ed wanted to just tell his brother to forget about it and come on. But Al just HAD to of mentioned something about a wild animal killing the defenseless girl, playing on his guilt. “Okay fine we’ll…” Ed looked the stranger over for a moment, seeing she didn’t even have the energy to just walk for even half a day, he sighed in defeat. Well, it wasn’t like I would have been able to do anything when I got to Read Oak anyway he tried to tell himself. “… we’ll just make camp here then.”
“Oh no really you don’t-”
“No, I said we’re doing it and now that’s what’s gonna happen,” Ed told her. If she argued anymore he could just tell her it was an order from a State Alchemist or something. “So, what’s your name anyway?”
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(Posted Wed, 17 Aug 2005 04:38)
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