ossifragant | 009 Things Acquired

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009 Things Acquired - [text;]

You know, there's something to be said about this place.

I get here in April and things are strange as a newcomer. It takes some getting used to, but it's not all bad. Then there's May and that's when things get screwy. The weird hail during an otherwise sunny week, and then that weekend when everything went to hell with the crystals and people popping up who aren't normally here. I only wish I could remember more of it clearly.

Then, in June, it snowed that one day. Actually snowed! In the middle of summer! What the hell are the chances of that? It melted the next day naturally so whatever caused it fixed itself.

July gave us a hurricane with sharks flying through the air and then August was suspiciously normal when it comes to weather.

Now, here we are, three days into September, and we've already had dogs and cats falling from the sky like someone up there is taking a metaphor a little too literally.

I'm disappointed we didn't get snakes raining from the sky today. Or porcupines.

I've been here just about five months now and I must admit this place has its ways of keeping a person entertained.

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Things are still rather fuzzy now, though I've only experienced it the one time.

For all of the peace this place has, there are certainly aggravating parts to it. Causing an entire population to forget that three days happened is close to top of the list. Though I wonder what caused it to change?

We're not sure, actually. That's one of those things that no one figured out, there are reasonably few of us here that still even remember it being that way, and now that it seems to have..."fixed itself", in a manner of speaking, no one questions it anymore.

The people here are as complacent as they are anywhere else, in other words. Once something stops being an inconvenience, they never try to work out why it was ever an inconvenience to begin with.

One can question it for a while, but unless there's some way of knowing how something has changed most people are content to let it go.

People have short memories, too. Especially given how people seem to come and go from this place all the time.

Of course - whereas as of next month I'll have been here for three years.

That's a long time. There aren't many people from that long ago left, are there?

It hasn't even been half a year for me and it's odd how used to this place I am.

Well, we don't have much choice but to adapt, given that we've been immersed completely in this place from the start. It's not how I'd prefer to do it, but it's effective in that I'm not finding myself fazed by much anymore.

There are a few of us still around, but not many. Most have gone and come back again, if they remember that long ago; I also...left, I suppose, but it was only for about a month's time.

I've been told that some are less quick to adapt than others, but that doesn't surprise me. I don't think any of the people she's talking about have been around for quite some time, however.

Leaving and returning seems common enough. I was here, once. But I don't remember any of it. That's how I found out that until recently, most of the representatives of Amestris have been from your side.

Envy wasn't sure which version I was at first.

Most of the ones I've seen have been the ones from my side, yes. We had quite a few for a while; most of them have gone back by now, however.

Some of them were able to answer questions for me before they left, at least. I won't say it was nice, but it was appreciated.

I had that happen to me recently. It wasn't exactly pleasant.

[...hold on. Let's just. Make this private now. Because Alphonse is here now and while he knows that Greed and Kimbley were allies, he's not exactly keen on too much getting out.]

At least being given information fills in the holes. It's confusing considering everyone is from a different point in time.

[Oh, he's noticed that lock.]

Dare I ask what you were told this time around?

Confirmation on who killed me. How it happened I wasn't told but that's mostly because I doubt he was told the specifics.

I have an idea anyway.

...That must have been charming.

[It's a bit difficult to say whether that's seriously deep sarcasm or a vague attempt at sympathy, just judging by wording. Good job, Kimblee.]

Most of the questions I had answered were things that weren't resolved for me before my death; I wanted to know if they ever were. So it was nothing quite like that.

It was rather uncomfortable.

[Greed doesn't mind either way, really.]

What sort of things if you don't mind my asking?

[...oh, this is a little awkward. Not so much because it was deeply personal, even though in some way it may have been; it's more that there's...no real way to describe this without sounding stupid as hell.]

I wanted to know what sort of effect the conflict I'd been involved in had on the world. That sort of thing. Obviously it was impossible for me to know for myself.

[...that's...better. Not entirely truthful but better.]

[He's a trusting guy, so he takes all of this at face value.]

You've told me you wanted to see what humanity was capable of.

I take it what you learned wasn't entirely to your satisfaction?

It was and it wasn't. My relationship with the question is a bit complicated, I think.

I see.

Our situations are quite a bit different, but I understand complicated relationships with information. This place has a way of lending itself to that.

You seem to understand better than most I've spoken to here, actually. Which really isn't a surprise, when I think about it - I've never really gotten along terribly well with humans when it comes to understanding and sharing points of view.

[This is probably not exactly a good thing, but then again Kimble has been filed away in the same category as the homunculi Greed knows for months.]

This doesn't surprise me. The others from your world must have seen something in you, otherwise you wouldn't have gotten inside their circle at all.

A human might have a problem with such things, but I never have.

[...]

You know, I never did ask them about any of it. Why they were willing to allow the arrangement at all, I mean; exactly what it is they liked.

[And that's...huh.

He never would have thought to put it into words, but now that somebody has he's going to be thinking about it, thanks.]

What happened in Ishval? There's no reason for you to tell me, but that's where things started to heat up in my world.

The chimeras I gathered together were part of a manufactured uprising. They were told there was an assassination plot and sent in, but the truth was they were scapegoats to give the military a reason to invade.

During the war, the alchemists sent in to end the conflict were given false Philosopher's Stones. All of this was something that must have been closely monitored by the master. I'm curious if anything overlaps.

The war in Ishval was the result of already-existing civil unrest; the Amestrian army had already occupied the territory in an attempt to quell it, but in actuality things were being further escalated by the Homunculi, and all of that came to a head when Envy (disguised as one of our soldiers) "accidentally" shot an Ishvalan civilian, a child. At that point the unrest quickly turned to rioting, and due to Ishval receiving assistance from Aerugo, that eventually turned into all-out war.

Philosopher's Stones weren't distributed to all of the State Alchemists involved; there was actually only one. Outside of the people who created the one used in that conflict in the first place, I was the only person who knew about it, because I was the one who received it.

I also knew about the Homunculi by that time; I was aware of them before I was sent to the battlefield. So it wasn't anything that I did in Ishval, given that I'd cast my lot in with them already.

I've told you about the sheer scale of what they were trying to pull off before. Obviously, with an operation that size, it's impossible to keep it a complete secret. Once in a while, the cracks would show. People would find out. Most of them were eliminated; at least one chose to try to act out against it and was killed by Bradley for his effort. There were some members of the high brass that were given an incomplete briefing of what exactly was going to happen - pawns, essentially, who would be sacrificed along with the rest. I was the exception for some reason; I knew everything, and they knew better than to expect me to be one of their sacrifices at the very end so it's not as though they wanted something in particular.

This is going to irritate me, but I'll handle it.

[You were chosen for some reason and Greed can't figure it out. Kimblee's line of thinking matches rather closely to the homunculi, so that might explain part of it, but it doesn't explain all of it. The part it doesn't explain is what's getting to him.]

I take it that man, Hughes, was killed in both versions for the same reason. He learned too much and became a threat.

[What gave it away may have been different but he still met with the same fate in the end.]

Maybe you were the right person who happened to be there at the right time. Someone who wouldn't eventually cave in to human morals.

It's what happened to their pet alchemist before Tucker. Marcoh, I believe his name was, though since I got this information from Tucker it's possible it's inaccurate.

I think it's safe to say from what you've told me that the Philosopher's Stones between our worlds are completely different, though how they're made is ultimately the same process.

Marcoh...?

[wait what

hold on we're getting derailed here because what]

What do you know about Dr. Marcoh?

[Woah, that was not quite the reaction he had been expecting.]

He was a State Alchemist during the uprising. He helped develop the incomplete stones under watch from the other homunculi. Since this was ten years ago, he must have been working with a young Lust and Envy. I doubt Pride would compromise his position, though it would be obvious he knew about it.

He fled at some point during the war and wasn't heard from again. Tucker took over Marcoh's work after they staged his execution.

[None of this happened in your world at all, did it? Goddamn.]

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