Ed widens his eyes as the blond girl's body slumps and, with a start, looks around his surroundings.
He quickly stands up in the inky blackness, seeing nothing in the gloom. He breathes deep, intending to holler out, but feels no complex interplay of muscles to intake the no breath. Not sound passes through the nothing that must be his lips, and a heartbeat later, he realizes he hears nothing echoing in the surrounding ether. He knows his heart would have raced with sheer panic, and he wonders if he still has one, somewhere.
He channels his fear into anger, his most reliable of friends; it bubbles forth from his being, and he finds himself wishing he had something to strike with his fists—even though it is a futile wish. He is nothing but a passing thought, and even if it is a crazy notion, he somehow he knows it as true.
Is this how Al feels..? He thinks, darting his non-eyes about. A rumble of something like thunder passes overhead and he looks up to see a flash like blood soaked lightening above him. He reaches for it, and through the afterglow, sees the ghosting of his fingers. His throat would have tightened, he knows, and he wonders if he's dead. He looks closer at his digits and sees dark and red tinted storm clouds forming about his dim form.
No. Those are not clouds, he thinks. He watches them, billowing about above him, and all around They are not composed of something as mundane as water, a mere pair of hydrogen atoms loosely bonded to an oxygen atom do not behave that way. Not in here, wherever here is. Whatever they are, they are certainly pure and very pervasive.
He looks away and around, seeing all of them quickly drape and arrange themselves into orderly formula after formula. He works out what they are, and something of a thought later, permutations of billions upon billions of alchemical arrays storm forth from one of his hands alone. They are numbers: the purest form of data. A particularly ragged looking seal simmers to life at his command from a few of his outstretched fingers, and he can't help staring at the beauty of it. This huge volume of knowledge—a foggy mass that the Gate itself stuffed into his head—obscures the darkness of his own mind from him.
He feels a sharp pain in his remaining knee and gasps. It's a real gasp, and a dull ache of something else in his gut follows. The sudden influx of reality parts the haze from his disembodied sight, and.
He sees her, or rather the ghostly image of her. She floats in the darkness, utterly at home and snarling far far below his current position.
"So what if I can't walk, you idiots! I worked for the Akatsuki! I worked for the Akatsuki! You call yourselves shinobi? " She says clearly in Gibberish, then forces a wicked laugh. "What I did to that Inoichi.. I swear I'll do the same to every last one of you, and when that's done, I'll move on to--to every one of your family members! I swear that Konohagakure will be nothing but dust and bones by the day's end!"
By her words he is sure she is the one that did this something, whatever it is.
No. She couldn't.
Logically, if what he is seeing around him is pure Gate knowledge, leaking as ever from his mind, then he is still somewhere within his own body. If that is so...
Oh.. this is so very very familiar in so many disturbing ways. This is his body, dammit, and somehow she has total control of it!
He would have laughed had he a diaphragm to do so.
If she has control, it won't be for long. She is only human, and nothing really, compared to that ancient monster, Pride, who once, in desperation, tried to wrest his body from him. He won that terror of a fight entirely on his own, and with nothing more than his own mind and soul as weapons. She doesn't know how badly she has miscalculated. She doesn't know just who she is messing with.
She doesn't stand a chance. He thinks. If she expects me to not defend myself against such an hoary invader..!
He figures he'll deal with what and who is beyond that when he gets there; No big deal, really, he thinks, and settles himself to begin.
He tells himself that he is a philosopher's stone, with the power of a single soul, and reaches out.
He lifts his non brows at just how off his perceptions are in this place when his ghostlike hand fully encompasses the girl. He easily lifts her, for she is but a tiny thing, really, and as she rises in his massive grip, she turns to look at him. He winces as she shrieks shrilly, the sharp sound pierces his mind like an unwelcome knife, and leaves a pounding headache in its wake. He supposes he glowers her way in response, for she seems to shrink into herself in her fear. When she is the size of an insect and scrambling along on his forefinger, she brings her hands together. She proceeds to twist her fingers into a complex pattern, filled with the air of one that expects something to happen.
When nothing does, she looks up at him with wide, terror filled eyes. He watches the tears stream down the shape of her face. Even here, he can't but help be reminded of just who this girl, this—nin—looks like.
Besides, he tells himself, those tears are in no way real. He tries mightily to keep his silence stony as he regards her, but here, especially here in what must be his core, he can feel the cracks of his many flaws grinding. As ever, it is those cracks which threaten to shatter his heart to pieces.
ooooo
He hears the rustle of fabric by his ear as he gasps, and feels the clinging wetness of tears upon his cheeks. He looks aside and sees Kakashi squat down by him as he lifts his head a little from his hands.
"Ino..? Is that..?"
Ed narrows his eyes at the man's mismatched gaze, and pushes himself off the tiled floor. The sluggish response of his false leg surprises him, and he teeters precariously to his left.
"No..I suppose not." Ed hears the man whisper, the words nearly lost in the noise filling the hall. He picks out the high whirling of straining automail gears amongst the general din of voices, and looks down. Many cracks meander from broken tiles, and two of his metal toes are missing.
The gianormous white dog stands nearby and whines as he ambles towards a white washed wall. The gathered crowd hushes as he stops mid step, feeling the sharp edge of a knife biting at his throat. He follows the arm as far as he dares, but the strong whiff of dog tells him that it has to be the wild haired boy that has the weapon.
"What was that you were saying about Konoha?" He hears the boy growl in his ear. The dangerous position he is in reminds him much of his days he spent in training, but he swallows anyway.
It is afterall, expected.
ooooo
A/n- still working on it, and it flows so much better this way..
Sent via a stray supercharged nano particle of unobtainium....
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