Time passed; the one thing that even Alchemy couldn’t figure out the needed equations to change. As it passed, lands grew, were conquered, reconquered, and such; the natural progression of any nation.
And through it all, they watched, learned, and existed. That was not to say that they kept out of events. But attracting attention to their existence and unique gifts was not something they wanted to do if they could help it. They had no desire to be instruments of war deferring to whoever was in charge.
After all, nothing guaranteed that those in charge were always acting in the best interests of the right people.
Of course, not every thing they did was well hidden…
Lust looked around at the celebrating townsfolk. The disease that had been striking here—a disease that they had released on Dante’s orders—was supposed to have made the area ripe for someone to create a Philosopher’s Stone. The Fossil Disease was made to require such for a cure.
But none of them were suffering. In fact, according to a man named Lujon, the disease had been finally wiped out earlier in the week, and thus the reason for the celebration.
Two strangers wonder into town and discover a cure in less than a week, she pondered, recalling the tales the villagers had only been oh-so willing to tell. She wasn’t willing at the moment to return to Dante and inform her that the disease she had created was now destroyed. And the fact that it was done so in less time than the woman had used to make it, would only serve to earn a harsher reaction towards the messenger. Oh no, she was not looking forward to that, especially after hearing the stories of what happened to Dante when some old human he had been sent to fetch had not only killed himself, but took several homunculi with him, including the previous Lust.
“I better see if I can at least get a description of them,” she muttered. “Come Gluttony, we need to…
“What is that?” she asked, pointing to a ribbon pinned to her partner’s shirt.
“1st Place, Pie Eating Competition,” grinned the ever-hungry homunculus. “Can I stay? They’re having a watermelon eating contest in an hour!”
Until we finally come to the present…
Nabiki thanked the waiter as she looked over the local paper. Not much was scheduled to happen around this particular city today or within the next few days.
Just the way she liked it; less people to remember their faces or get in their way.
Though she was worried about some of the obvious spin she was reading on both the military actions and the leader in charge. If this keeps up, Ranma-kun and I might have head towards the Americas sooner than planned. After all, regimes like this one were very notorious for looking for anyone or anything with power to either assist them or destroy as a threat to them. And she had no desire to spend her gift of apparent immortality inside a cozy and dank cell in some forgotten complex.
Sure, they took chances once in a while, helping out here and there. Sometimes they would cure a minor outbreak, others would be some bandits that ‘disappeared’ instead of attacking again, and sometimes it was just helping out when Mother Nature was not able to.
Shaking her head, she folded the paper and put it in the middle of the table, as she dug into her own breakfast. She just had to wait for her ‘other’ to return from his little adventure, and then they’d be off once more.
I’ve got too much wanderlust in me, she mused. After all, part of her wondered what she might have accumulated after all this time if she had just managed to set down some roots. After all, it was all but impossible to try and bring about some technological marvels in this world when you had no permanent base.
It had been an idea, but it was an idea that died when they had seen what had happened to their teacher’s former house. From the looks at the devastation and the efforts of Nature to erase and hide the scar, Ranma had said it was very likely it happened within a few weeks of their leaving.
And something that would have forced the Old Man to use such a tactic…
No, until they discovered who or what forced Sensei to pull such an act, setting down roots was a poor idea. The fact that people would eventually notice that two of their residents never grew older, even after so many decades, would only add to their troubles. Not to say they didn’t have some places where they stored funds, keepsakes, and small libraries of their works. And if one was going to use their Green Stones to summon the Gate of Truth and take another peek at what lay beyond, one would prefer to have a secured place where you wouldn’t take an innocent with you.
She shivered a bit at those memories, constantly seeing that Gate before her, seeing the images that lay beyond. It always seemed to end with them having some extra knowledge. Sure, you might learn a new trick, but you almost never learned how you did it, just that you could. This was one of the reasons they only ‘visited’ the Gate every five years if they could help it. Ranma didn’t trust any gift he couldn’t fully understand. After all, you could only adapt something so much unless you knew its inner workings.
“At least it kept us from getting bored,” she murmured.
“Thinking about the past isn’t a good thing to do too often, Biki,” said a voice on the other side of the table, as her partner faded into view.
She barely arched her eyebrow at his arrival, being all but certain he did that just to tick her off a bit. “How’d it go at the Library?” she asked. They had been there to see what new knowledge of alchemy might have been discovered during their journeys. Sure, public libraries were good.
But the best secrets were the ones usually placed in the State Alchemist Libraries.
“Not much this time around,” Ranma said as he set three books on the table. “A few nice tricks in plant alchemy I want to try, but other than that…”
“Are you ever going to tell me how you copy those books?” she asked, fingering the pages of one. The title was one long phrase that spoke more about the author’s ego than anything else, but those were usually the tomes that had the most to offer.
Ranma just shrugged. “We all need to have our secrets,” he said.
“That only works for girls,” she countered. “And last I checked, you’re only one about half the time.”
Ranma just smirked. “Then call it a bargaining chip for later use.”
“I taught you well,” she smirked back. “Now, why don’t you order. I’ve already covered my meal.”
“But it’s your turn,” Ranma said, confused.
Nabiki just shrugged. “I saw a poor family that needed some cash. No sense letting them suffer when I can fix it.”
“And you call me the bleeding heart,” he muttered, raising his hand to summon the waiter.
“You know better than me what its like to go without food for a while,” she murmured, recalling some of his stories about life on the road. “I think I slipped them the cash without harming the mother’s pride. Besides, she has a kid to worry about, and money isn’t a problem for us at the moment.”
“Okay then,” Ranma said as the waiter approached. “But the next time I want to buy something you think is stupid and useless, you can’t complain.”
Dante stared out the window as she drank her tea.
There was another force out there, she was certain of it. Mathew Gilman had killed himself to keep something or someone he knew secret. She suspected it was tied into the persons responsible for what had happened to her Fossil Plague. That alone took someone with either great skills or a Philosopher’s Stone.
But that had only got her the barest of details about the group. Nobody really recalled details except for hair colors, as the trio had worn masks of some sort. So all she knew was that she was looking for a black-haired man, and two girls with either red hair or brown hair. That was assuming of course that that had been their true hair color and that they were not a front for the real powers involved.
“Perhaps they are related to Hohenheim,” she mused. Such acts sounded like something that fool would play in, attempting to ‘ease the burden of his soul’ as he called it. And considering how well he had hidden himself after all this time, it was a possibility. Could he have started to surround himself with others, as she had done with her Homunculi?
With so little if anything to go on, her hopes of finding out weren’t good at the moment.
But she did have the Elric Brothers still. Yes, the boys did seem to be on the path to obtaining the Stone within her time frame, through one way or another. Until then, she just had to be patient, and wait for either her wishes to be fulfilled, or the shadowy threat to make themselves known.
Either way, there was little she could do about it now. And after living so long as she had done, patience was a virtue she understood and practiced in spades.
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(Posted Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:43)
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