One More Fix
Over the week or so since Ed had talked with them, Tseng and Sonna spent quite a bit of their free time with Ed, much to both Rashad's and Shiro's bemusement, though Trisha didn't seem to have any reaction to seeing her six-year-old son with two Turks. A lot. Maes and Riza were both being trained by Turks as well, though Roy had gravitated to Genesis as they discussed fire arrays—and Roy even showed him Ed's books. The boy hadn't realized he'd carted them all the way out to the 'New Midgar' area with him, thinking they'd have been left with Granny Pinako. Then he remembered Roy saying he still referenced them, which was actually amazing in its own right.
While Shiro could have gone with the majority of the Wutains, he had instead chosen to stay in the area where Ed was. Nominally, while the region was now being called New Midgar, the developing town there wasn't named yet, and Lady Shinra didn't really want to give it any of the same old names from Gaia, so she was still thinking on what to call it. As for Shiro, Ed had seen him spend time with virtually everyone in the 'town' in almost equal proportion, though there were some people—individuals—he avoided, and Percia and Vincent were two of them. It was like he avoided people with multiple souls.
Why was he spending time around Ed, then?
Sometimes, Ed's child self wanted to actually play for awhile, and while it wasn't completely 'child-like playing', it was still more light-hearted than the boy tended to be when he was in 'adult mode'. That meant he joined the other children for awhile, which the Ishbalan children were familiar enough with, so the Amestrian children quickly followed their example—if Ed joined them, he became 'just' one more playmate. However, every time Ed did that, it produced amusement from the Gaian adults, making him pause in his playing to glare at them (though, to them, it looked more like a 'cute' pout). Even by the end of a week, they were still doing it, which ticked him off.
That afternoon, the frustrated boy sat by himself near their central bonfire, glaring into it—only for Shiro to sit beside him. "You look rather upset," the Japanese man commented.
"Why are the Gaians so amused that I actually play when I'm six years old right now?" the blond asked with a huff.
"I could hazard a guess and say that it is the result of them having an image of you in their minds which is an adult, and they have not yet reconciled your new physical age with the adult they knew," Shiro commented. "To those of us here, we first knew you as a child and needed to adapt to your mind being older. I believe that is an easier adaption than having to work things the other way. Of course, there is still potential they may become overly protective of you once they realize your body is a six-year-old's, which means you are not fully able to defend yourself. My people tend to aim for moderation, but these lands default to 'all or nothing', and the Gaians seem to follow the latter trend. Be prepared."
"I can protect myself just fine," Ed glared.
Shiro's brow rose and he asked, "So I could have left you to your own devices when Major Armstrong first seized you? And Roy, Riza, Maes, and I had no need to rescue you from the Führer, either?"
First, the boy began to open his mouth, but then he shut it again, knowing Shiro was right. Young as he was, there were things he couldn't do on his own which he used to be able to, so even if he wasn't helpless, there were legitimate instances when others had to intervene. "But then I have no way to get them to stop!" he replied, glare deepening.
"You do," the older man answered. "You still have useful skills, despite sometimes needing adult assistance. Age aside, you are able to do quite a bit more than the average child, and that is still a fact of who you are. They only need to protect you in some circumstances, not in all of them, and we will be able to help make that point. However, making it will still take time, and will require they adapt back the other way, though not completely. Bringing them to a moderate compromise will not be easy, and will take time."
"Ugh," the boy muttered, dropping his head onto his knees. "Not looking forward to that..."
"At least it is not forever," Shiro answered, sounding amused.
"Why didn't you go with the Wutains?" Ed asked suddenly, looking up at him.
The man looked even more amused as he said, "Two reasons. You still need my protection, and they have not yet adapted to me enough for functionality. The latter must be approached in small increments over time, while the first is an immediate circumstance valid until further notice. The Gaians are sufficiently strong, but they have not fought homunculi before, and would have no way of identifying one such as Envy, his being a shapeshifter by nature."
"I'm sure Minerva can identify Envy, though, even if there are others she can't," Ed shrugged.
"Which relies on the presence of a Cetra, who are in limited supply," the man chuckled.
"Or an Ishbalan," the boy pointed out. "Why are you avoiding people with two souls, but you aren't avoiding me?"
That actually made the Japanese man blink in surprise before he said, "You have a single soul, Ed. It may once have been separate, but it is not now. The two who I avoid have two distinctively separate energies sharing the same space, and while they could be called 'singular' in the sense that they experience no ill effect by being in such a state, the two disparate energies clash in my senses. I do not appreciate the sensation, so I avoid them."
"How do they clash when they're properly merged and should have only one energy?" Ed blinked at him in surprise.
"Define 'properly'," Shiro replied in dry amusement. "Because you may have merged the soul 'properly' without taking into account—at all—the excess energy surrounding each of the two; their auras, if you will. If you do not manually merge their auras, they remain separate forces, and they do clash in spiritual senses."
For a long moment, Ed just stared at him in lack of comprehension, then suddenly realized what he meant—and yelled, "Genesis! We have something to fix!" Several people nearby turned to stare at him in surprise before going back to work, and soon after, Genesis emerged from between two of the buildings across the way from him, followed by a very curious Roy.
When the red haired man was in normal speaking distance, he asked, "So, what do we apparently have to fix?"
"When I was originally working on Percia and Zirconaide, back the very first time I met you, we were working out how to put the shards of Zirconaide's soul back together. When Fuhito forced my hand, it became the two-person one I showed you which merged Percia and the shards. But, it also missed an element people like you and me wouldn't usually think about—the actual energies surrounding each soul, each person. In the end, that merged the soul and body the right way, but it didn't merge their energies. Maybe to them it hasn't made a huge difference, but apparently Minerva and Chaos missed it, too, because Vincent has the same problem with un-merged energy."
As Genesis crossed his arms in thought, Roy asked in wide-eyed amazement, "Wait, how did Genesis apparently hear you call from all the way over there?" as he pointed back the way they had come.
"Didn't he tell you SOLDIERs have enhanced senses?" Ed asked in bemusement.
"No. What does that mean?" the black haired man asked in surprise.
"It means their strength, reflexes, and physical senses—sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch—are about five times stronger than a human would usually have them, maybe more," the blond boy explained with an amused smile. "Their physical regeneration from injury is also enhanced—they can be shot by a bullet through the head at point-blank range and recover from the wound in about five to ten minutes. Yes, they're built like tanks and very hard to kill."
"Okay..." Roy gulped. "Then what happens if they go bad?"
"Then the Turks kill them," the boy snorted in amusement.
That actually made both Roy and Shiro blink in surprise as Shiro asked, "Excuse me, but did you just say the un-enhanced Turks are responsible for eliminating people with such high power and regenerative ability?"
"They actually know how to kill us, though, and can successfully and repeatedly take us down," Genesis told them in absent bemusement, obviously still thinking hard. "I was almost killed by a tiger once—a completely ordinary animal. After I had been enhanced for years and knew how to use my skills properly. Most of the SOLDIERs now like to compare the Turks to tigers."
"How appropriate," Shiro chuckled lightly.
"Okay, back to the situation at hand," Roy said, looking rather alienated. "If Minerva missed the merging problem, too, does that mean you need to fix it, or could you leave it? She might have done it on purpose."
"Maybe, but that wouldn't be like her," Ed shrugged. "I'll ask, though." Reaching out to tap Minerva's energy, he waited for her to acknowledge him, then repeated to her what he'd told Genesis (with a few wording changes), and asked if she'd meant for the aura energy to stay separate or not. He then repeated her answer, "She says she's not sure Vincent's and Chaos' could be fixed, but no, it's not intentional. It hadn't seemed to affect him or his host, so she didn't worry about it and only tried working it out when she had free time, so not very often. She knows a few things that won't work, so she'll give us those and let us work from there."
"Okay, why are we working on this right now?" Genesis asked with a quirked brow.
"That would be Shiro avoiding Percia and Vincent because he can't stand the clash of energy. Apparently, 'spiritual' people from Earth are going to be more likely to notice and react badly—we probably never did because we were so inundated with energy anyway," Ed explained. "Which also means it's possible it will start having an effect on them, and my first thought would be things like irritability."
"Okay, that's fair," Genesis agreed. "Where's Ria, then? We're probably going to need her database and projections." He then parked himself in front of where Ed and Shiro sat, and Roy sat beside him curiously (he'd quickly overcome his alienation in the name of alchemy), clearly intending to help as well.
"Hi!" Ria announced as she jumped up onto Ed's shoulder from behind. "I heard you call for Genesis to fix something, so I thought you might need my help. Am I right?"
"You are," the blond agreed with a grin as he reached up to pat her head and the others all chuckled.
"Does that mean we can help, too?" Shelke's voice asked curiously from the direction Ria had come from, so the others turned to look at her and Yufi (Yukisa! He had to remember it was Yukisa! Then again, no one had ever really stopped calling her Yufi...) as the two grinning, curious young women stood behind Ed.
"I don't know how helpful Yu—kisa will be, but you're welcome to lend a hand and see," Genesis commented. "You're always useful in these kinds of things, Shelke. But didn't you have another project to work on?"
"The one I lost on Gaia I can't start again until we have better technology, and Reeve and Scarlet are currently testing Winry in things I already know," Shelke replied in amusement. "So as much fun as it is watching a five-year-old—who is actually just five—answer things at my level, I don't really have anything else to do. This will be more fun."
"Fair enough," Ed agreed. "Join us, then. Ria, you first have to record the base data and the arrays Minerva's already tried so we know what she already figured out won't do what we need."
"Okay," Ria agreed, jumping to the ground and activating something which made one of her ears start doing tiny, sharp twitches—active recording of both video and audio. That kind of recording was different from her basic recording and filing of data in that they'd be able to call up a holographic image-recording of it later, not just still shots as she regurgitated data. "Ready!"
With that, Ed began giving them what data he had on the original arrays used and Minerva's attempts to fix it, then branching out into what he knew in general about soul array arrangement, particularly of merged souls. By the time he was mostly finished, it was time to sleep, so they took a rest and returned to that spot to work on it the next morning. It was intensive work, especially now that they were trying to pull apart the pieces, so even Yufi found herself so intent on her part in the task (she'd ended up somehow making an effective 'place-holder' for them) that no one noticed others gather around them to watch.
Until a new, unexpected voice said, "You lot realize you've missed something obvious, right?" They all looked up at Basque Gran in surprise.
"What's that?" Genesis asked him curiously.
The large man stepped into the circle and pointed at a string of runes in one array on Ria's current projection, saying, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but this line here would actually be the one controlling the aura—in every one of the outer-most sub-arrays. I don't think you could merge two auras until you found these corresponding strings of data, and if there are two auras, the problem is that each array with this control line has two strings of data here. Then, you'd have to find a way to reduce it to one.
"If souls are so complex and the problem is two strings of arrays where there should only be one, guessing is probably not going to work. You can't speculate or generalize, you need the actual soul arrays of the person you're trying to fix—it has to be very specific to him or her. By extension, for every person needing this fix, it would need to be developed independently. Now, if you don't mind my asking, why in the world are you working on this to begin with?"
"We have two people definitely needing this fix," Ed sighed tiredly. "Thanks though—I'd never have thought of that myself. It also means we need the two who have the issue to join us at least long enough for us to get a copy of their soul arrays."
"How is that even possible?" Gran asked with a furrowed brow, gaze on Ed like he didn't know what to make of him.
"With Minerva's help and my specific bond to her," the boy answered in amusement. "Normally, it would be impossible, because people's bodies don't work the same way as Materia—you can't take an imprint of the arrays as a rule. But, in my case, I actually can, as long as I have Minerva's help, otherwise I could only see my own arrays."
"And will she help you do this?" he asked curiously. "Because from what I've heard and seen, you actually do need this data to even be able to begin fixing it."
Ed turned to look at Genesis and Shelke, and it was Shelke who said, "Actually, we should have thought of double lines of data before now—two auras wouldn't exist without two strings of codes to define them. And Mr. Gran is right to say it has to be done individually for each person with the problem, so we need each one's data independently."
"I can go get them, then!" Yufi grinned, jumping up. "Since I know who they are, it won't be hard for me to find them, either. Shall I?"
"Yes, but one at a time," Genesis told her, making her blink. "Who do you want to start with, Ed?"
At the request, the blond boy looked at Shiro to ask, "Could you tell if one was in a worse state than the other, Shiro?"
"They were very close. If I would say one was 'worse', however, it would be the woman called Percia. That may be for several reasons, though it is likely part of the issue is that, from what you have said, she is female while the being she was merged with is male. Such a difference could easily have created additional and unintentional issues," the Japanese man replied.
"Of course..." Ed sighed, then gave a nod. "Percia first, then, Yufi. She's the one who will be harder to fix, and once we can do it for hers, Vincent's should be easier to work with."
"Sure thing!" the fourteen-year-old agreed with a grin, sprinting off to find the Turk—and vaulting over several startled people who were in her way in the process, causing yelps of surprise and chuckles.
When Yufi returned, it was with a very puzzled Percia, so they first had to explain to her what was going on, and she absently sat down with them as she thought for a minute—then asked slowly, "In my case, could part of the reason be the how and why I merged to begin with? Would that have influenced more energy differences rather than less?"
"What does that mean?" Roy asked in surprise.
Ed, on the other hand, paused to think about that, then said, "It has potential. Even if you gave me the okay to do it when Fuhito came back that time, it was under duress and not really your choice. At that point, it was the only thing which stood a chance of saving you."
"Us both, more accurately. You know as well as I do that Fuhito would have killed you when he was done with me," she told him dryly. "At this point, I don't regret it, but at the time, it was, in a way, the lesser of two evils."
"So what happened to cause a situation like that?" Riza asked as she stepped forward to sit between Roy and Percia (Percia had placed herself between Roy and Genesis). And for once, Shiro hadn't moved, but had obviously bristled.
Percia sighed and said, "Fuhito was one of the worst of our criminals, largely because he just wanted to see all humans dead, period. He fully intended to kill himself as well, but because he viewed us as parasites, there were no holds barred, and he actually managed to blow up a Plate Support Pillar. Has everyone here been told about the Midgar back on Gaia?"
"There was that Upper Plate held up above the city on the ground below," Riza nodded. "Of course, since I spend most of my time with Turks, that had to come up. If he blew up a Plate Support Pillar, he crushed the lower city and totaled the upper, which meant an entire eighth of the city was wiped out. An eighth of about forty million people is around five million. Take into account transience between Plate zones and it would have been hard to specify more than that."
"That," Percia agreed as the non-Gaians' eyes widened in horror. "After the collapse, the Turks and SOLDIERs were the first ones in there trying to get survivors out, and Fuhito grabbed me while I was trying to free a child who was still alive. When I woke up, I was in one of his labs in another part of the city and he was ripping apart my chest to shove a Materia shard into it—one of five shards making up Zirconaide. At the time, he wasn't trying to kill me, so he tended the wound; he needed to find out how the shard would react to being graphed into someone.
"Even though he found out it started draining energy from me, he didn't know what to do from there, and the only people who might have had the knowledge he needed were Genesis and Ed. Because Genesis is a SOLDIER Commander and Ed was a non-entity, he figured the better one to grab was the 'non-combatant'." Percia paused with a frown and asked, "Ed, how did he catch you? It isn't like you were easily accessible to him, and I never got an answer to that question."
"I was out shopping with Kariya, Shelke, and Yufi—and Ria—when he decided to send some of his Ravens to create a mess not far away to force a response. In the chaos, a couple of his hybrid Wutains managed to grab me for him—and believe me, they weren't gentle," Ed replied sourly. "If I didn't have the same regenerative abilities as a SOLDIER, they'd probably have killed me, even though Fuhito wanted me alive."
"Hence you arriving there unconscious," Percia sighed. "I did hear about the mess on the street, but didn't realize that was when and how he grabbed you." She paused to shake her head, then went on, "He spent just about three days torturing us back and forth while the other watched." Those words produced more horrified looks, but from more of the crowd than just the non-Gaians.
"When he left us alone one time, Ed told me about my options now that a shard of Zirconaide was inside me—and those basically amounted to letting myself die slowly from the drain on my life force or letting Ed merge him into me. The only reason that would even work was because he could trick Fuhito into helping him by giving him half the necessary array, and for someone who wasn't Ed or Genesis, that would actually work, since they wouldn't be able to tell it wasn't a full array. Since I didn't want to die, I agreed to the merging," the brown haired woman finished.
"So...What happened to Fuhito once you merged?" Roy asked in surprise.
"The bastard realized something had gone wrong and used a modified form of the Exit spell to get out of there and to a place where even my new powers couldn't reach him," Percia sighed. "And after that, he dropped below our wire completely for about two years, until he and his started aiming for all the Reactors on the Planet at once, and we were sent out to respond to that."
"Damn...I'm really glad that guy's not someone we have to deal with here," Gran commented flatly. "He's not, is he?"
"No, he's been well and truly eliminated," Ed replied in amusement. "In a way, he got his wish—he killed off the Planet, so probably died quite happily."
That produced several snorts of amusement before Genesis asked cheerfully, "So now that we've had the customary 'story time', can we have an answer to getting those arrays to work on fixing them, Percia?"
Several more snorts followed the comment as a wryly amused Percia agreed, "All right. What do you need to do?"
"I have to do it. That means I need lots of paper and a pen," Ed replied. Soon after, a stack of paper and several pens in three different colors had been shoved at him—basic items people had actually had on them when the Omega had left Gaia.
With those in hand, he asked Minerva for help to read Percia's (her Earthen Champion's) arrays so he could make copies of them, and was pulled into a semi-aware state which gave him the visual of her arrays. As such, he started drawing. And drawing. And drawing some more. At some point, he vaguely realized he was running out of paper, only for a bunch more to be added to the pile under his hand, so he absently kept working.
And kept working until sometime during the night, at which point, he just sighed, dropped the pen from his cramping hand, and passed out. He didn't even feel Rashad lift him to move him to his bed (the pad between Rashad's and Trisha's which was 'his'(1)).
Notes:
(1) For those who care, yes, Ed's getting sandwiched between Rashad and Trisha at the moment, with Hohenheim to Trisha's far side. :P Actually, Al's is also there, and Zahir and Nasima are just below that group. Yes, in close quarters. Which annoys the Hell out of Doriss because it means there's no space for her there, protective 'Ma lion' that she is. XD