(12) Black and White
A thin, flimsy bolt of lightning sparked a few inches in front of them, then sizzled out in sad, pathetic sort of way.
Donald blinked, then turned to glance at Edward and said, "What I said before, I take it back. Because that was the most puniest thunder spell I've ever seen in my life!"
If Al hadn't had a helmet for a head, he might have been blushing with embarrassment. It was still obvious, however, and Donald took pity on him.
"Ehh, kid, try this one instead," Donald said, getting an idea and giving him a quick run-down on a different kind of spell.
Al gave it a try. He said the spell, went through the motions, and (surprisingly) voila! He cast cure.
Encouraged by this, Donald went ahead and taught him more support magic, or as he called it, white magic. Cure, reflect, panacea, protect...after some practicing, Al had easily mastered them all.
Donald was clearly impressed. Edward, who hadn't even mastered one spell yet, was just plain dumbstruck.
"Well, whaddaya know," said Donald after the Elric Brothers were finished with their very first magic lesson, "One's white, one's black. It's more useful when you can do both kinds, like me and Sora do, but as long as you work together, you should be fine."
"Eh heh heh," Al snickered. His older brother had, admittedly, been slightly more proficient at alchemy than he had. But with magic, it appeared to be the other way around. Al had mastered several spells today, while Ed had just barely got the thunder spell down pat and was mistakenly attempting to learn fire. (His eye brows came close to being singed several times.) Given the circumstances, Al just couldn't help to be a little smug.
Ed could feel this smug pride radiating out from his brother, and not to mention the quiet snickering. He narrowed his eyes at Al, a look of pure sibling jealousy; the kind that was brief, harmless, and instantly denied by the instigator.
"Shut up Al," he snorted, "Or I"ll zap you to pieces. Don't think that I won't..."
"Eh heh heh," Al replied, "I'll just reflect them back at you with my awesome, better-than-black-magic white magic."
"That tears it!" Ed shouted, clapping his hands together.
A short game of "Dodge the Thunder" ensued.
"All right, all right, cut it out you two!" Donald shouted, while frantically trying to avoid the stray bolts that apparently seemed attracted to him. (In fact, most of the bolts were hitting him as opposed to Al. That short kid really needed to work on his aim.) The quarrel was trivial, Al laughing and running around enjoying himself while his short-tempered brother chased after him, firing bolt after bolt in his direction but not very seriously.
Cute, sure, but not worth getting electrocuted for. Donald quickly cast a gravity spell to stop them. "I said, cut it out! Stop wasting your magic on petty sibling rivalry! Save it for a real enemy!"
As if on cue, a Shadow melted up from the ground and looked at the three curiously. Another appeared, and then another...until there was a good sized horde of them.
Ed grinned like a lunatic at the sight. "So, Al, what are you gonna do to them?" he said laughingly as the heartless approached. "Heal them to death?"
"Hey, that's an oxymoron," Al pointed out before taking offense at the remark. Not that it made any difference, because Ed was already diving through the mass of Heartless, lightning flashing off where ever he went.
None of the Heartless even made it to Donald or Al. Within just a minute, all of them were destroyed by a thunder-happy Ed.
Scorch marks patterned the ground where his bolts had hit and the sandlot itself looked like a crater. Standing in the center of it, Ed turned around and flashed them a thumbs up sign, a full grin on his face.
"I just totally kicked some ass here!" he exclaimed, full of pride and excitement. He pumped a fist into the air.
And then he promptly collapsed to the ground.
"Brother!" Al cried out, rushing to his side. Donald just groaned and shook his head.
"Ed! Ed!" Al grabbed his brother's shoulders and shook him. "Are you okay?"
"Not with you shaking me," he said irritably, batting Al away. Without Al propping him up, though, he fell back onto the ground. "Ow."
Donald made his way up to them, muttering to himself under his breath and clearly annoyed. Once he was looming over Edward, he took his staff and smacked him square in the head unmercifully.
"OW! What the hell was that for!"
"For being an idiot!" Donald spat at him. "Just what did you think you were doing?"
"Fighting the bad guys! Why, is that a crime?" Ed rubbed his head and glared at the duck. What was his problem? Ed wanted to get up; he hated being looked down upon, especially by someone who was actually shorter than him. But when he went to sit up, he found himself suddenly too weak to do so. A wave of weariness hit him, making him feel as tired as if he had just run a marathon.
He sighed and gave up, letting himself fall back into the sandlot once again. At least it was soft. He stared past Al's and Donald's faces and into the blue, cloudless sky instead. His eye lids started to droop, despite himself. "Okay then," he said dejectedly, "What did I do wrong this time?"
"You exhausted all of your magic power all at once," Donald explained, taking a less harsher tone now. "You used it recklessly on weak Heartless, which was just plain stupid of you. Also, your body isn't used to channeling magic, so it probably drained some of your physical energy too. Tsk tsk," Donald wagged a finger at him, "You shouldn't have been so careless. Magic has a limit, you know."
"Does this mean Ed can't use magic anymore?" asked Al, sitting himself on the ground next to where his brother lay.
"Not until I get him some ether, he can't." Donald patted his coat, but then he remembered that Goofy had most of their inventory with him, since he had big pockets. Donald did manage to come across a few munny, though, leftover from the Heartless. "All right, you two stay put. I'll be right back. Don't move and don't do anything stupid!" He made sure to stress that last one, then headed off down an alley to another part of town.
"Well, today's been interesting," piped Al as Donald left them.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Ed thrust out his arm. "Now help me up."
-------
The two sat there, back to back (since Ed was still too weak to sit up on his own) and waited. No more Heartless appeared. No people appeared either, for that matter. Sora and Goofy were still off doing whatever it was they were doing, and Donald seemed to be taking his time getting that ether-thing or whatever it was. It was only them, the empty sandlot, and something shiny glittering in the middle of the lot, almost beckoningly...
"I wonder what that is," said Al.
"Yeah, me too. Wasn't their before, I'm sure," replied his brother.
"Huh."
There was a pause in conversation as they both stared at the glistening object in silence. Then:
"Gah, just go and get it, Al!"
"Um...okay." Al got up, slowly so that Ed could keep his balance and remain upright, then ambled over to the unknown object. He bent over and scooped it up, turning it over in his big hands and examining it.
"It's some kind of crystal!" he shouted to Ed, waving the blue rock in the air to show him.
"Well, bring it here so I can see!" Ed shouted back.
Al crossed the lot and handed over the crystal to Ed. It was a transparent blue color, bright, and about the size of his palm. Ed held it up to his eye and looked through it at his younger brother, who saw a larger version of Ed's eye ball, magnified and blinking at him.
"Pretty," Ed mumbled, lowering the blue crystal so he could look at it with both eyes. "Bet it sell for a fortune," he added with a wicked grin.
"But where did it come from?" Al wanted to know.
Ed shrugged. "Who cares? Finders keepers, right? It wasn't there until after I defeated those Heartless, so maybe they dropped it or something."
"But Heartless steal hearts, not diamonds," Al pointed out. He sat back down on the sand to prop up Ed again, who was looking a little wobbly.
"Maybe they didn't steal it," Ed mused, resting against his brother's back. "Maybe they made it."
"Made it?" Al asked incredulously.
"Yeah, like, maybe that's their waste product. Every living thing produces waste, you know, and they have to expel it sooner or later."
"Are you saying that crystal thing is a Heartless feces?"
"Could be. I mean, heart-lacking creatures made of pure darkness pooping out crystals...why not?"
"Ew. Ed, that's gross." Al shook his head.
Ed laughed. "Yeah, and unlikely too, but I just wanted to theorize." He dropped the "Heartless feces" to the ground in front of him and sighed, in a sort of tired way.
"Everything's so crazy now, huh?"
"Yeah," Al agreed. "But I have to admit, it's been kind of fun too."
"Sure, but...what about the Stone? We can't make any kind of progress with our quest if we're stranded here on some other world." Ed stared down at the crystal that lay in front of him. It shone brightly back up at him suggestively. A thought occurred to Ed.
"Unless..."
"Unless what?" Al prompted.
"Unless...unless a form of the Philosopher's Stone exists here too. I mean, you can't really rule out the possibility. If there are a bunch of different worlds, then chances are, there's got to be some type of instrument or object in one of them that can restore our original bodies, right?"
"Yeah, that makes sense," said Al excitedly, the idea catching on to him as well. "Or there isn't a Stone, there is at least magic. Maybe Donald knows a spell that change us back!"
Both boys were getting excited now. Maybe, possibly, when they returned to their own world, they would already have their original bodies back and wouldn't even have to bother anymore with that complicated mess they were involved with back home. Ed could quit the military, and they wouldn't be in constant danger all the time, and...well, they didn't think about what they would do after that. They were too caught up in their newest plan to think that far ahead.
"Now, if only that dumb duck would hurry his ass up," Ed grumbled, but in an ironically cheerful way. He was still incredibly tired, but his spirits were high.
Perhaps, for once, things would turn out okay.
--TBC--
A/N: I am ALIVE! o0; I'm just writing painstakingly slow. Sooooorrry.
Okay, so. I'll try to update this more often. No, really. I will. I was planning to add a chapter every month, to give me more time to write it...but then it wouldn't be finished until sometime next year. That, or each new chapter would be extremely long. So now I'm just gonna update it whenever I can, which means it will be inconsistent and probably not my best writing...but I'll try my best. :cough:when it's convient:cough:
(Random Extra!) (The SEPOEPWARP)
This didn't work well in the first KH game, but they don't know that...
Axel: So, I've noticed that us Nobodies have a lot in common with you Homunucli, you know? So, maybe we should like, join forces or something.
Lust: Hmm.That's not a bad idea.
Envy: I'll do it, but only if I'm allowed to kill Ed! And get to appear in this fanfic!
Axel: Ed's that short kid, right?
Somewhere, far away, poor Ed is sneezing his nose off and feeling full of dread for some unknown reason...
Envy: Yeah.
Axel: Okay, sounds doable. So, whaddya say?
Envy: Red, you have yourself a deal!
Wrath: If we're gonna join forces, we need a cool alliance name.
Axel: The kid's got a point.
Envy: Okay, how about...the Super Evil Party of Evil People?
Lust: -rolls eyes-
Axel: That's good, except that none of us are really 'people'. Not in the technical sense.
Envy: Fine. The Super Evil Party of Evil People Who Aren't Really People.
Axel: Sweet.
And so, the the SEPOEPWARP was born.
(TBC...?)
R&R! Plzkthnxbai. (Zana, out.)