Room #302

[alchemic-bean.livejournal.com]

*Edward knocks on the door, half-expecting another weird episode. He has an armful of books with him.*

Hey, Hank? You in? I got my stuff, I can help you start putting your stuff back together again.

Comments

[alchemic-bean.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's a little town out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. For some reason or another, we warranted a train station.

*Pulls out a piece of chalk and starts to draw a circle on the ground around the pile of splinters.* Let's see what I can do with these, then...

[bluemanoncampus.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that the station is there precisely because the town is so remote? After all, if there's no other feasible way of getting there...

::watches Edward with interest::

[alchemic-bean.livejournal.com]

That's a possibility, I guess. I've been to more remote villages than I can count that don't have a train station, some of them were easily two or three times the size of Risembool. *shrugs*

*Edward finishes the array (http://artpad.art.com/?imubu61bukvw), then sits back on his heels. Then he places both hands on the chalk lines. With a burst of blue light, the shards form themselves into a sturdy chair - but slightly different than what it originally looked like.*

This suitable?

[bluemanoncampus.livejournal.com]

::is almost finished sorting the rent cloth into individual piles::

Quite suitable, thank you. How do you do that, anyway? Given the plethora of abilities evidenced by the students and staff, I'm hesitant to hazard an uninformed guess.

(OOC: Hey, it's still much much better than I could do.)

[alchemic-bean.livejournal.com]

Alchemy isn't an ability, it's a science. At least where I come from. Anyone is capable of using it, it just takes a lot of studying and a lot of willpower to properly harnass the energy to produce transmutation.

*Edward taps the chalk lines.* This array helps harness the energy and direct it - different kinds of arrays provide different results. This is one my brother and I came up with, it's an all-purpose array.

What I can't grasp is the people who use magic. Alchemy operates under two Laws, the Law of Conservation of Mass and the Law of Equivalent Trade - and the magic I've seen done since I got here quite clearly breaks those two laws. *shakes head*

[bluemanoncampus.livejournal.com]

The Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy is one of the fundamental physical laws in my dimension as well, but I'm unfamiliar with the Law of Equivalent Trade.

And although magic is apparently possible in my dimension, I too find it disturbing in how it "breaks the rules". Other than just blindly accepting it, the only internally consistent explanation I've been able to formulate is that magic-users are tapping into an outside power source and channeling it via their spells.

[alchemic-bean.livejournal.com]

The Law of Equivalent Trade pretty much governs everything where I come from. At it's core is "in order to gain something, you must sacrifice something." *Edward smiles, although it's a sad smile.* It's a law I know all too well.

I suppose that the outside power source is a distinct possibility, but it still does not explain the ability to conjure things out of thin air. I need to get my hands on a magic user and quiz them on the uses of their magic - maybe the equivalency is something that one cannot see without a proper working knowledge of their ways?

[bluemanoncampus.livejournal.com]

::Hank's gaze goes distant for a moment::

Equivalent Trade sounds remarkably like one of Newton's Laws of Motion: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

If you do manage to elicit a scientific, or even regulated, basis for magic usage, would you let me know? I'm curious as well.