He holds his head high as he boredly scans the crowd, and walks down another random street. Most of the freakishly tall people dressed in colorful bath robes tower over him by a foot, and he wishes for his old ass kicker boots instead of the stoopid sandals nearly two sizes too large currently on his mismatched feet.
There is a familiar pattern to their purposeful movements. The people gathering supplies. The packing a great deal of things in too small of spaces.
He narrows his eyes slightly, identifying the underlying calm panic. He found something like it only in those around the well trained soldiers stationed with the North Wall. He recalls his stay at the fortress of Briggs, which had soldiers that were ever ready for war with Dracma at a moments notice.
Someone down the way points upward, the gesture drawing eyes, and he hears a low hiss of what should be a curse word behind him. He dully notes it for future use as he, too, allows his gaze to wander up. Movement in the clear blue above catches his gaze, and he shades his eyes as he watches. First one bird of prey begins a lazy circle overhead, then three more sweep by as it dives towards a rooftop.
From that height, Ed thinks, this entire place should be easier to search.
Ed's gaze sweeps next over the irregular tops of the towering buildings, and an idea quickly forms.
The sky glows a cheery orange when Ed locates Riza, her four blond pony-tails are an easy feature to find in the crowd below. He could only watch as she entered the round looking beehive a distance away, through a set of double doors at ground level. He counts at least thirty people with the metal headbands darting in and out of that place before he gets bored with the mental drudgery of the task.
The place is obviously important to the headband guys. He swallows, for the time being he decides to keep his distance. He has no desire to chance them changing their minds, as he rather likes not having chains attached to his limbs all the time.
That "Gaahrahh" guy. Not that Ed wouldn't've managed to free himself. That was his routine since he was dropped off here by the Gate, when he wasn't drugged up to the gills by his captors. Or poisoned into puking his guts out. Or feverish from infected wounds his captors refused to treat.
The thing that eats at his logic is this: if not for the boy's visit to his hospital room the day before, he suspects he would be less likely to be free to roam right now. He scowls. He has no idea what this Gahrah gets in exchange.
He figits, hating the wait. Somehow, no matter what he tried, he had always been recaptured within a day. His skin crawls with goosebumps, and he folds his arms. The headbanded guys hadn't pursued him since the day before, so, what does that mean?
The redheaded kid with "love" carved onto his forehead holds some sort of importance. If the bowing by the masked guys in the hall was any indication, the significance borders closely on a sort of religious fervor. He has no idea what Gaahrah gets in exchange for freeing him. He has no idea.. He thoughts swirl darkly about the cold pit of terror in his soul, the moon swallowing the sun on the Promised Day...
No. He thinks firmly. Not again.
He raises his head, lifting his jaw from his cupped right hand as he sees Riza finally emerging. He narrows his eyes, calculates the quickest route, and darts off.
He leaps off one roof and dives into a roll as he lands on another. He rises smoothly back onto feet, runs full tilt with furious pumping legs, and leaps onto the next roof. The next, which proves to be a bit tricky to land, is a round sort of beehive much like the building his quarry exited.
His right foot slips even as his left heel bangs uselessly against the sandstone.
Thinking fast, he manages to turn the flying fumble into an ungraceful lunge, giving him a chance to slap his palms together before his left elbow so much as bangs the rough surface of the rock.
Silicon. Oxygen. Matrix of two by one. 3 percent magnesium, aluminum. Point 2 percent.. Oh. Gold..?
Equation shining bright in his mind, he slaps his hand down as the bruising force of his fall jars his bones. Blue lightning flashes beneath his fingertips, and the rock erupts into a gentle wave, responding to his will. Gravity pulls him down, but with his hand so near stone, the alchemical reaction effectively slows his fall. It is a near thing: The building towers over the narrow alley by at least fifty feet.
He pushes away from the curved wall a heartbeat before he hits, and tucks in his false limb to absorb the brunt of the fall. The pavement loudly cracks at the impact. Immediately he leaps into a backwards flip onto his hands and away from the shallow crater, landing into a series of hops onto his living foot.
He darts his gaze down at his metal toes a moment, carefully flexes the heel of false limb, rotates the flange.
He snorts: of course there's no damage. It's of Rockbell quality.
A breath later the angry shouting around him registers in his brain. He allows his gaze to drift towards the sources, and the corner of his mouth twitches upward at the impossible sight of the people standing on the walls in defiance of gravity.
Several point at the warped sandstone wall he just rode down. He pats the air in their general direction and smirks wide.
"Yeah yeah. I get it." He calls out loudly in Amestrian, and slaps his hands together. He adds in the new curse word he learned for good measure. He sees brows lower as blue lightning dances throughout the alley.
The brilliant blue glow of the reaction engulfs the curved wall, but he strolls down the primitive street beyond, hands causally tucked into his pockets, before the transmutation finishes.
Listening to the shouts of astonished surprise, he whistles tunelessly as he thinks of the sawtoothed bat winged bee he calculated and placed at the very top. He believes, yes, the addition of such a sculpture is just what the dull place needs.
Sent via a stray supercharged nano particle of unobtainium....
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