“No I’m not,” Ed grumbled. Great, so this Brianna was tall AND pushy. Her score just kept getting lower in Edward’s eyes.
“Yes you are,” Brianna insisted. Maybe the kid didn’t even know how to start a fire in the woods. His jacket did look pretty clean for someone who spent a lot of time out in the wilderness.
“NO I’m not,” Edward replied. Deciding to the argument, Es slapped his hands together to form an alchemical array and then touched the log in front of him. Remembering what Mustang did to a rebel once, Fullmetal slid his hand across the log and increased the oxygen content in the air while rapidly exciting the molecules in the log. As he expected, the thing immediately burst into flames.
Blinking at the sight, Brianna tried her best not to glare at Ed when he gave her a smug look. “Uh Ed-”
“Yeah I know you’re impressed,” he told her. Why wouldn’t she be, he could do alchemy without a transmutation circle, something no one he’d met so far was able to duplicate.
“Yeah but Ed-”
“But that’s nothing really special. Truth is I just copied what I saw this guy do once. I wasn’t even sure I could do it myself until now.” But it really wasn’t the exact same as Mustang’s technique, he wouldn’t of had to actually touch the wood to set it on fire.
“ED!” Brianna shouted to keep him from opening his big mouth any more. So the kind new magic, big deal, Brianna’s father was much better with the stuff in her opinion. “YOUR HAND’S ON FIRE!”
“Huh?” Edward mumbled before looking over to his auto-mail arm to see the glove was burning. “AHHHHH!” Shaking his hand furiously, Ed quickly got the fire off his metal had and started to stomp on the thing once it was on the ground.
Brianna immediately grabbed the boy’s arm and pulled it over to look at while trying to bring up every piece of knowledge that she had inherited from Gina regarding burns. Only, she found that maybe the mechanical knowledge that her sister had passed on would be much more useful in this case. “Your hand, it’s…”
“Auto-mail. And thank you for NOT staring,” Edward told her before snatching his arm away gruffly.
Brianna could only blink at that piece of information. Cybernetics. They actually had cybernetics on this world. Even the nerds like Gina around the world hadn’t really gotten much of a hold on that part of science. Although, Ed’s arm did look a little… archaic. Then again, maybe it was just his personal preference, the guy’s brother did walk around in a huge suit of armor after all. “Sorry,” she finally apologized.
It was then that something occurred to the youngest Diggers sister. How in the heck had Ed performed magic when one of his limbs was fake? She knew that her father’s magic was all but useless when it came to metals, and although Brianna was hardly a magical expert, she would of thought that a metal arm would of disrupted any kind of magic that a person was trying to cast.
“So… how’d you do that?” the girl finally asked after a long moment of silence.
Ed blinked at the question. Well, not many people had seen alchemy done without a transmutation circle. “It’s alchemy,” he explained. When Brianna just continued to stare, Ed brought out a more detailed explanation. “I just exited the molecules in the wood and then used the friction to finally top it off.”
Brianna sat silent for a moment, absorbing the information. There was something off about it. Something that didn’t quite make sense. She just couldn’t put her finger on it yet. “You altered the things molecular structure?”
“Pretty much,” Ed shrugged. He guessed that the girl knew something about how the world worked, but this was obviously her first time actually seeing an alchemist. It wasn’t surprising, seeing as how they were in the middle of nowhere. “Although it was more like accelerated than changed. But I can do that if I wanted, or rearrange them. I could make a stone wall out of dirt, or even turn lead into gold. But the equation has to be equal.”
Now Brianna knew that was nagging her about the way Ed explained it. What he was talking about was supposed to be impossible according to her father. Mages were not able to rearrange molecules. She and her sister Gina had even proved that when they created a force field to stop their grandfather’s attacks during one of their early adventures.
But if Edward's magic could actually mold atoms…
“Ed… can I ask you something?” Brianna said nervously.
“What?” he mumbled while looking over his jacket and long sleeve coat. At least nothing else seemed to be burned.
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(Posted Wed, 17 Aug 2005 20:28)
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