Fullmetal Ninja [Chapter 11]
Mar. 14th, 2009 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
esp_dragonFandom: Fullmetal Alchemist/ Naruto crossover
Summary: Ed and Al tried to resurrect their Mother but something went wrong. Not only did they fail, their bodies paying the price, but they are no longer in Amestris. They are in a world where all the natural rules aren't always obeyed...
Rating: T
Notes: Nothing much apart from general waaaaaa~ at Japanese and waaaaaaaaaaaa~ at Japanese food for good measure too.
O.o There's parts in here that I don't remember writing, 'cept, when I look at the original document, it's right there. Weird.
Thanks to ehxhfdl14 sooo much for beta-reading and all the information about dango,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lucathia_rykatu for the Japanese help, and sandrilenefatoren2 and Night's Bullet for the help on cheap sweets. :D
Genre: General
Word count: 3,493
Total word count: 27,583
Status: Work in Progress
Ed sighed as the front doors of the hospital opened and a small rush of air blew in, already refreshing him as it cooled him down just slightly. The breeze blew away the stuffy air he'd gotten used to inside the hospital and brought with it a dusty smell that also carried the freshness of the trees around them. It was a little cloudy, Ed thought, looking up, but at least then-
The fuck?
He gaped as he watched people (not just one, two or even three; much more than that) jumped from roof to roof as if the laws of gravity didn't apply to them. No-one should be able to jump that far normally – muscle enhancing drugs could only get you so far and these people were jumping twice as high and twice as far than should be even possible.
Ed stared at the legs of the closest people (they were hopping from the single storey building in front of them to the multiple storey building a little way away) – he could see tanned flesh under the short trousers, not the glint of Automail. But then – how were they – how did - ? He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and then opened his eyes again.
Nope, there were still people (different people this time; the others were already too far away to see properly) jumping about like they had springs for legs, even though he could see that their legs were normal.
So what did that mean? Did it mean that the diet here helped the people in developing stronger muscles? That couldn't be right, because they'd been eating the same stuff (assumedly, you couldn't know with hospital food, or so he'd heard) as they had. Maybe they'd just painted the limbs. Again, that was doubtful since the limbs still wouldn’t look like a normal human's. But they were on the other side of the world so their technology here would obviously be different, and what kind of paint job must it have been if the Automail looked almost like real legs, rather than just looking like metal with paint slapped on? Except… he and Al hadn't been asked about getting prosthetics yet. Not to mention, what kind of mass accident would there have had to been if at least ten people had all lost their legs? That couldn't have been the only injuries. It just didn't make sense.
Which was becoming too much of a norm, he thought bitterly, glaring at the people as they became smaller and smaller. Their Alchemy was different from theirs (not a surprise) but was it possible to actually strengthen their leg muscles that much with it? Their leg muscles should be huge if they were enhanced like that, but they weren't and they were in proportion to the rest of their body. Ed felt like beating his head against the back of the wheelchair.
More questions. No answers. They weren't going to get any answers for a long time. 'Hasn't anyone gone travelling at some point in their lives and came back again?' he thought with frustration. There had to be at least one person in the entire city who could talk to them.
But finding that person... Ugh. The fastest way to speak to the people here would be to just learn the language and not wait and hope that someone knew their language and then they'd just happen to cross each other's paths. Like it would ever be that easy.
Somehow, he put the jumping people to the back of his mind (not as hard to do as he thought, because most of them had disappeared off somewhere and so all he had to do was keeping his eyes at ground level). The next thing he focused on was the lettering (he should probably just call them characters) on the billboards. No matter how much he stared at them, he couldn't get any sort of meaning from them, or how they were even supposed to pronounce the... word?, which was what was bugging him the most. Maybe each line meant a different sound? Ed shook his head. Yeah, right. If they could at least possibly read the language, that would have made learning (and looking for words they didn't know and asking for a description) so much easier.
Whatever. Something else to puzzle over. Later, he thought stubbornly. There wasn't much point in thinking about it if they didn't have a way of getting the answer, not until they learned the language. Which, he was sure, he'd said that before. Maybe he should just find a way to stop thinking. He turned his thoughts away from the old frustrations. 'There's so many people here!' Ed mused, staring at all the people around them. It wasn't crowded so much that people had trouble moving around, but was populated enough that they still had to keep an eye on where they were going. The last time he and Al had looked out the window, it'd been pretty late in the afternoon so it was kinda weird how it was so packed now. Was today the weekend? Maybe. Ed didn't bother following that thought in trying to figure it out because even if he'd try to analyse it, it'd get him nowhere and just leave him annoyed again.
"What's wrong?" Iruka had stopped a little distance from the hospital doors, off to the side so that people weren't bumping into them. Ed realised with a wince he was going to have to get used to feeling most of the dips, bumps and rocks on the ground when he was in the wheelchair outside. He'd ignored the sensation when he'd been distracted but even though they had stopped, there was still a little buzzing in his body as an after-effect.
"Questions," Ed replied, sighing. "Big..." No, that wouldn't work. "One plus one plus one plus one questions."
Iruka said something which Ed assumed meant either 'a lot' or 'many'. He repeated it, trying to commit it to memory. He made a note to himself to start making a list of all the words and phrases they knew – they were doing okay at the moment, but soon they would be told too many words to keep track of and remember easily.
When he checked on Al to see how he was finding the things around them, his brother was still watching the people who were up on the roofs. Ed remembered a conversation they'd had a few years ago about some stories they'd read.
"They don't have wings," Ed pointed out, looking at them, squinting, just to make sure.
Al gave him a look that said he wanted to stick his tongue out at him, like he'd done last time. "They're still kinda flying," he argued back.
"Their feet are touching the ground." Roofs. Whatever. "That's not flying." He was grinning. It'd been a while since he'd teased his brother. Especially since they'd found themselves here.
Al swatted his head. "It's probably as close to it as we'll ever get," he said wistfully.
A pointed cough. They looked up at Iruka sheepishly. "You okay?" he asked them.
They glanced at each other and then nodded at Iruka. Had they looked like they were arguing? "Yeah." There wasn't much they could do about their questions at the moment, so, as much as he hated to, they had to leave it for now. Just enjoy their time outside right now.
They started moving again after Iruka had made sure they were feeling all right (or whatever he was checking. He hadn't said.)
xXx
Some of the shops were (not surprisingly) completely different from what Ed and Al were used to; some others looked exactly like the shops back home. There were also a lot of places that looked like bars with a counter and stools but they were pretty much outside. Not that, he supposed, he could blame them. Why have a bar that was inside and stuffy when you could have it outside (but sheltered, obviously, for rain) and be cooler because of the breeze?
When there actually was one at least. But he didn't know if the weather was normal today. No-one seemed that bothered by it but for Ed and Al; the temperature was about to border on Dublith heat. Ed repeatedly pulled at his collar and let go, trying to create some artificial breeze from somewhere.
Iruka was in a food shop at the moment, leaving them outside since the wheelchair didn't fit in through the door by a small margin. In the window was a variety of stuff, none of which they'd been given at the hospital. There were square packets of something, lining one of the shelves in a variety of different colours. They showed a pile of circles on the front, but what the heck they were, Ed didn't have a clue. Right behind the window, there were plates with food on them. One held a see-through packet that looked like it had multicoloured spiky balls inside it. Another had a box lying on top of it, the background of it red, the characters on it white, and there were some brown and yellow sticks behind the lettering. Furthest away were small square dark blocks of chocolate encased in the clear material again (just what was it, and how had it been made?), the edges of it festive yellow and green.
The sound of a door clicking shut brought his attention back to the actual shop. It was finally Iruka after two false alarms. In his hand, he was holding two sticks that skewered three spheres each; the spheres looked like smaller versions of toffee apples. "Mitarashi dango." He gave one to each of them, smiling, and put his index finger to his lips. "Shhh."
Don't tell anyone I gave this to you. Ed grinned back in return before turning his attention back to the... confection. Ed sniffed it, wondering. It smelled like it was sweet. Yeesh. Very sweet. Maybe it was going to be exactly like a toffee apple, just without the apple. He didn't know what the syrup was covering; it was white but other than that... He took a bite and half choked. Ow. He'd bitten into it expecting the inside to be at least a bit solid, but his teeth passed through it with almost no resistance. The next sensation that hit him was the overpowering taste of the syrup. The white stuff itself though, whatever it was, was chewy and really not that bad. Ed didn't think the mitarashi dango was going to last too long, and looking at his brother, he doubted Al's was going to last either.
They were moving again after the first bite. There were more people milling about now but they all got out of the way of the wheelchair. A few times, Ed would see a flash of silver from those bands on several different people – there didn't seem to be a set place for them, when he could actually see it on a person: most were on the forehead, while others were around arms, necks or used as belts.
Ed fanned himself with a hand, grumbling. He was sure it was getting warmer and warmer by the second. They neared another of the outside bars, and Ed's mouth watered as the smell of the mitarashi dango hit him again. You could eat it hot? His mitarashi dango was already finished and he could have easily had another. They passed by the bar, both of them looking mournfully at it. They turned around a corner and... wow. How had they missed seeing that? That was a side of a cliff that had four faces carved into it. On the far right, there were wooden constructions twining up beside the fourth face. It was nowhere near the top of the cliff; it was more about the lower nose levels on the faces. Still, he could see (if he squinted) people moving planks and other things to make it steadily taller.
He sighed. At least this looked relatively normal compared to the Alchemy they'd seen here. But why would they decide to do that in the first place? Who were these people?
More. Questions. Stop it.
They went down an alley into another street, and Iruka stopped in the shade of one of the insanely tall trees. Pretty much all the trees in this city were huge, some even easily towering over the multi-storey buildings. The diameter of the trunk, he didn't even want to think about it.
'Just how old are these trees?' he wondered, putting a hand on the trunk. It was a little quieter here with less people about, and the people present were either by themselves or in pairs, in contrast to the groups of four or five people in the other street.
They could still see the cliffside clearly from where they were, not that it was difficult to not see it, and the streets were parallel to each other anyway.
"Hokage," Iruka said to them, pointing to the cliff. Ed frowned. Hokage? But wasn't that... Was that their name? All of them? Naruto had told them that their names were switched around here so... Was it just an extremely weird coincidence that all five of them had Hokage for their first name?
...Or it was a misunderstanding when they were talking with Naruto or Hokage? People didn't carve gigantic faces on a cliffside for no reason. Ed searched for the words he wanted to use. "Hokage Tsunade... Doctor?"
Iruka looked down at him, head tilted. "Yeees. Hokage and do." And with the way that the language went... She was doing the job of a doctor, and also Hokage. The way the question had been answered, it seemed like Hokage was actually a position or a title, not a name. Iruka pointed to where the construction was. "Godaime." Held up a hand, fingers splayed wide. "Five." Five Hokages altogether? Or the fifth Hokage in line? The second option made more sense.
Iruka walked around the wheelchair, crouching in front of them so that he could look at them both easily. That felt better; he wasn't straining his neck to look up anymore. "High Hokage," Iruka said, holding his palm flat now, and raising it. "Hmm... Genin, Naruto." Iruka's hand was just above the armrest. He raised it about an inch. "Chuunin, Iruka." His hand went up another inch. "Jounin. Anbu. Hokage." After every word, he raised his hand further. Iruka kept his hand there for a few seconds before dropping it. "Understand?"
Ed nodded. "Yeah." It was a lot like how the ranking went in the military. Alchemists were automatically majors once they passed the test, but what were these ranks for? Hokage was at the very top, which, if these people followed the same system, either meant general or Führer. But it couldn't be just a general, because you didn't immortalise their faces as a giant rock carving (but this was another culture, so who knew?).
But if that was true, why would the Führer come and see them? She had the rest of the country to look after – what was so important about two kids that she had to see them personally? She was a doctor, fine, but there wasn't that big a shortage of medical personnel, was there? The doctors and nurses who'd come after her were usually the same most of the time, but when they'd left their room, they'd seen a lot of other staff about as well.
Well, okay, maybe it was because they'd found themselves across the world from home but how would they have known that? Ed shook his head a second later, feeling annoyed at himself. How had he and Al figured out that they were on the other side of the world? Nobody around them spoke the same language as them. They also knew it because the map Tsunade (he guessed he should probably start calling her that again) had drawn was different from the map they knew. So they would have come to the same conclusions as they had.
Iruka pointed to the furthest face on the left. "Shodaime." Moved his finger a bit to the right. "Nidaime." Again. "Sandaime. Yondaime." Ah. First, second, third, fourth. So 'daime' worked like their '-th'. Kind of. Not really. Actually, Ed thought a little enviously, their way was easier since they mostly seemed to use the same word for each number – different from mutating it like 'first'. Then again, he didn't know how the rest of the ranking went so maybe it got complicated later.
"First," Al said next to him, translating and holding his index finger up. His middle finger then went up. "Second. Third. Fourth."
They stayed in that area for quite a while, Iruka telling them the names of most of the things around them and vice versa. The longer they were there, the more people they could see moving about and finally the heat started to ease off. When Al's stomach rumbled, Iruka chuckled and pointed in the direction of the hospital. "Dinner?" he asked them.
Ed made a face but nodded. "Hospital food. Ugh." He hoped that nurse wasn't serving the food again – she had noticed that he wasn't drinking the milk with their food and she'd stare pointedly at the still-full cup and back at him when she collected their plates after they'd finished. You didn't need to know the language to know what she was saying. He had a feeling she would either start standing there while they were eating and try to guilt-trip him into drinking the stuff or attempt to make him drink it through force pretty soon.
Iruka chuckled again. "Sorry," he apologised as he took the brake off and turned Ed around. Ed ignored him – it wasn't his fault that the food there sucked.
They hadn't done that much today, but as they slowly made their way back both Ed and Al were yawning widely, no matter how much they tried to stop it. This time, they didn't go back by exactly the same streets they'd gone down before; instead, they were going through more of the back alleys. There were still shops around them, but not as many, and it looked like houses were dotted in between them.
The hospital was cooler when they re-entered it– that might have been because the front door had been propped open with a chair to let a slight draft in. It didn't take them long to get back to their room and settled into their beds. After making sure that they were okay and didn't need anything, Iruka said to them, "See you... tomorrow," frowning slightly as he said the world slowly.
Ed perked up at that. So he wasn't just dropping in for one day then; he'd actually be teaching them. They waved at him as Iruka left the room. "Bye." Glancing around showed that the papers they'd left strewn all over the bed had been put into one tidy pile on one of the side tables, while their bed had been remade. Ed shuffled across the bed and started flipping through the papers. He eventually stopped at a sheet that had only been used on one side (the Array on the other side made a lioness standing on three legs).
"What're you doin'?" Al asked curiously as he made his way closer to him.
Ed scribbled 'Known Words/Phrases' at the top of the blank page and underlined it. Then he took a couple more pieces of paper to try and stop his pen from ripping right through the paper as he wrote. It kinda helped, but his handwriting was still shaky since the paper still bent anyway.
"Oh, cool!" Al said from his shoulder. "What should we start with?"
He shrugged. "Numbers... The phrases that everyone uses everyday..." He trailed off and he winced. "The word order?"
Al smiled faintly. "We know it's the other way around for them." Which was better than nothing. The other language didn't always change the word order though and they didn't know enough to ask about it and it was just far too confusing.
"Don't know how things make sense to them when they're talking," Ed muttered as he wrote 'Itchy'. The second 'e' in 'Knee' went wonky as Al elbowed him.
"They could be thinking the same about us too, you know," Al reminded him, looking at him pointedly.
Ed paused as he thought it over. But their way of speaking... This was making his head hurt. Alchemy was one thing; languages were something else entirely. "Fine," he said quietly, resigning to the logic. "Anyway, you gonna help with this or not?"
Al rolled his eyes but said, "Shouldn't you put the translation next to the word?"
He blinked and then looked down. "I was going to!"
Previous Chapter | Next Chapter
Summary: Ed and Al tried to resurrect their Mother but something went wrong. Not only did they fail, their bodies paying the price, but they are no longer in Amestris. They are in a world where all the natural rules aren't always obeyed...
Rating: T
Notes: Nothing much apart from general waaaaaa~ at Japanese and waaaaaaaaaaaa~ at Japanese food for good measure too.
O.o There's parts in here that I don't remember writing, 'cept, when I look at the original document, it's right there. Weird.
Thanks to ehxhfdl14 sooo much for beta-reading and all the information about dango,
lucathia_rykatu for the Japanese help, and sandrilenefatoren2 and Night's Bullet for the help on cheap sweets. :DGenre: General
Word count: 3,493
Total word count: 27,583
Status: Work in Progress
Ed sighed as the front doors of the hospital opened and a small rush of air blew in, already refreshing him as it cooled him down just slightly. The breeze blew away the stuffy air he'd gotten used to inside the hospital and brought with it a dusty smell that also carried the freshness of the trees around them. It was a little cloudy, Ed thought, looking up, but at least then-
The fuck?
He gaped as he watched people (not just one, two or even three; much more than that) jumped from roof to roof as if the laws of gravity didn't apply to them. No-one should be able to jump that far normally – muscle enhancing drugs could only get you so far and these people were jumping twice as high and twice as far than should be even possible.
Ed stared at the legs of the closest people (they were hopping from the single storey building in front of them to the multiple storey building a little way away) – he could see tanned flesh under the short trousers, not the glint of Automail. But then – how were they – how did - ? He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and then opened his eyes again.
Nope, there were still people (different people this time; the others were already too far away to see properly) jumping about like they had springs for legs, even though he could see that their legs were normal.
So what did that mean? Did it mean that the diet here helped the people in developing stronger muscles? That couldn't be right, because they'd been eating the same stuff (assumedly, you couldn't know with hospital food, or so he'd heard) as they had. Maybe they'd just painted the limbs. Again, that was doubtful since the limbs still wouldn’t look like a normal human's. But they were on the other side of the world so their technology here would obviously be different, and what kind of paint job must it have been if the Automail looked almost like real legs, rather than just looking like metal with paint slapped on? Except… he and Al hadn't been asked about getting prosthetics yet. Not to mention, what kind of mass accident would there have had to been if at least ten people had all lost their legs? That couldn't have been the only injuries. It just didn't make sense.
Which was becoming too much of a norm, he thought bitterly, glaring at the people as they became smaller and smaller. Their Alchemy was different from theirs (not a surprise) but was it possible to actually strengthen their leg muscles that much with it? Their leg muscles should be huge if they were enhanced like that, but they weren't and they were in proportion to the rest of their body. Ed felt like beating his head against the back of the wheelchair.
More questions. No answers. They weren't going to get any answers for a long time. 'Hasn't anyone gone travelling at some point in their lives and came back again?' he thought with frustration. There had to be at least one person in the entire city who could talk to them.
But finding that person... Ugh. The fastest way to speak to the people here would be to just learn the language and not wait and hope that someone knew their language and then they'd just happen to cross each other's paths. Like it would ever be that easy.
Somehow, he put the jumping people to the back of his mind (not as hard to do as he thought, because most of them had disappeared off somewhere and so all he had to do was keeping his eyes at ground level). The next thing he focused on was the lettering (he should probably just call them characters) on the billboards. No matter how much he stared at them, he couldn't get any sort of meaning from them, or how they were even supposed to pronounce the... word?, which was what was bugging him the most. Maybe each line meant a different sound? Ed shook his head. Yeah, right. If they could at least possibly read the language, that would have made learning (and looking for words they didn't know and asking for a description) so much easier.
Whatever. Something else to puzzle over. Later, he thought stubbornly. There wasn't much point in thinking about it if they didn't have a way of getting the answer, not until they learned the language. Which, he was sure, he'd said that before. Maybe he should just find a way to stop thinking. He turned his thoughts away from the old frustrations. 'There's so many people here!' Ed mused, staring at all the people around them. It wasn't crowded so much that people had trouble moving around, but was populated enough that they still had to keep an eye on where they were going. The last time he and Al had looked out the window, it'd been pretty late in the afternoon so it was kinda weird how it was so packed now. Was today the weekend? Maybe. Ed didn't bother following that thought in trying to figure it out because even if he'd try to analyse it, it'd get him nowhere and just leave him annoyed again.
"What's wrong?" Iruka had stopped a little distance from the hospital doors, off to the side so that people weren't bumping into them. Ed realised with a wince he was going to have to get used to feeling most of the dips, bumps and rocks on the ground when he was in the wheelchair outside. He'd ignored the sensation when he'd been distracted but even though they had stopped, there was still a little buzzing in his body as an after-effect.
"Questions," Ed replied, sighing. "Big..." No, that wouldn't work. "One plus one plus one plus one questions."
Iruka said something which Ed assumed meant either 'a lot' or 'many'. He repeated it, trying to commit it to memory. He made a note to himself to start making a list of all the words and phrases they knew – they were doing okay at the moment, but soon they would be told too many words to keep track of and remember easily.
When he checked on Al to see how he was finding the things around them, his brother was still watching the people who were up on the roofs. Ed remembered a conversation they'd had a few years ago about some stories they'd read.
"They don't have wings," Ed pointed out, looking at them, squinting, just to make sure.
Al gave him a look that said he wanted to stick his tongue out at him, like he'd done last time. "They're still kinda flying," he argued back.
"Their feet are touching the ground." Roofs. Whatever. "That's not flying." He was grinning. It'd been a while since he'd teased his brother. Especially since they'd found themselves here.
Al swatted his head. "It's probably as close to it as we'll ever get," he said wistfully.
A pointed cough. They looked up at Iruka sheepishly. "You okay?" he asked them.
They glanced at each other and then nodded at Iruka. Had they looked like they were arguing? "Yeah." There wasn't much they could do about their questions at the moment, so, as much as he hated to, they had to leave it for now. Just enjoy their time outside right now.
They started moving again after Iruka had made sure they were feeling all right (or whatever he was checking. He hadn't said.)
Some of the shops were (not surprisingly) completely different from what Ed and Al were used to; some others looked exactly like the shops back home. There were also a lot of places that looked like bars with a counter and stools but they were pretty much outside. Not that, he supposed, he could blame them. Why have a bar that was inside and stuffy when you could have it outside (but sheltered, obviously, for rain) and be cooler because of the breeze?
When there actually was one at least. But he didn't know if the weather was normal today. No-one seemed that bothered by it but for Ed and Al; the temperature was about to border on Dublith heat. Ed repeatedly pulled at his collar and let go, trying to create some artificial breeze from somewhere.
Iruka was in a food shop at the moment, leaving them outside since the wheelchair didn't fit in through the door by a small margin. In the window was a variety of stuff, none of which they'd been given at the hospital. There were square packets of something, lining one of the shelves in a variety of different colours. They showed a pile of circles on the front, but what the heck they were, Ed didn't have a clue. Right behind the window, there were plates with food on them. One held a see-through packet that looked like it had multicoloured spiky balls inside it. Another had a box lying on top of it, the background of it red, the characters on it white, and there were some brown and yellow sticks behind the lettering. Furthest away were small square dark blocks of chocolate encased in the clear material again (just what was it, and how had it been made?), the edges of it festive yellow and green.
The sound of a door clicking shut brought his attention back to the actual shop. It was finally Iruka after two false alarms. In his hand, he was holding two sticks that skewered three spheres each; the spheres looked like smaller versions of toffee apples. "Mitarashi dango." He gave one to each of them, smiling, and put his index finger to his lips. "Shhh."
Don't tell anyone I gave this to you. Ed grinned back in return before turning his attention back to the... confection. Ed sniffed it, wondering. It smelled like it was sweet. Yeesh. Very sweet. Maybe it was going to be exactly like a toffee apple, just without the apple. He didn't know what the syrup was covering; it was white but other than that... He took a bite and half choked. Ow. He'd bitten into it expecting the inside to be at least a bit solid, but his teeth passed through it with almost no resistance. The next sensation that hit him was the overpowering taste of the syrup. The white stuff itself though, whatever it was, was chewy and really not that bad. Ed didn't think the mitarashi dango was going to last too long, and looking at his brother, he doubted Al's was going to last either.
They were moving again after the first bite. There were more people milling about now but they all got out of the way of the wheelchair. A few times, Ed would see a flash of silver from those bands on several different people – there didn't seem to be a set place for them, when he could actually see it on a person: most were on the forehead, while others were around arms, necks or used as belts.
Ed fanned himself with a hand, grumbling. He was sure it was getting warmer and warmer by the second. They neared another of the outside bars, and Ed's mouth watered as the smell of the mitarashi dango hit him again. You could eat it hot? His mitarashi dango was already finished and he could have easily had another. They passed by the bar, both of them looking mournfully at it. They turned around a corner and... wow. How had they missed seeing that? That was a side of a cliff that had four faces carved into it. On the far right, there were wooden constructions twining up beside the fourth face. It was nowhere near the top of the cliff; it was more about the lower nose levels on the faces. Still, he could see (if he squinted) people moving planks and other things to make it steadily taller.
He sighed. At least this looked relatively normal compared to the Alchemy they'd seen here. But why would they decide to do that in the first place? Who were these people?
More. Questions. Stop it.
They went down an alley into another street, and Iruka stopped in the shade of one of the insanely tall trees. Pretty much all the trees in this city were huge, some even easily towering over the multi-storey buildings. The diameter of the trunk, he didn't even want to think about it.
'Just how old are these trees?' he wondered, putting a hand on the trunk. It was a little quieter here with less people about, and the people present were either by themselves or in pairs, in contrast to the groups of four or five people in the other street.
They could still see the cliffside clearly from where they were, not that it was difficult to not see it, and the streets were parallel to each other anyway.
"Hokage," Iruka said to them, pointing to the cliff. Ed frowned. Hokage? But wasn't that... Was that their name? All of them? Naruto had told them that their names were switched around here so... Was it just an extremely weird coincidence that all five of them had Hokage for their first name?
...Or it was a misunderstanding when they were talking with Naruto or Hokage? People didn't carve gigantic faces on a cliffside for no reason. Ed searched for the words he wanted to use. "Hokage Tsunade... Doctor?"
Iruka looked down at him, head tilted. "Yeees. Hokage and do." And with the way that the language went... She was doing the job of a doctor, and also Hokage. The way the question had been answered, it seemed like Hokage was actually a position or a title, not a name. Iruka pointed to where the construction was. "Godaime." Held up a hand, fingers splayed wide. "Five." Five Hokages altogether? Or the fifth Hokage in line? The second option made more sense.
Iruka walked around the wheelchair, crouching in front of them so that he could look at them both easily. That felt better; he wasn't straining his neck to look up anymore. "High Hokage," Iruka said, holding his palm flat now, and raising it. "Hmm... Genin, Naruto." Iruka's hand was just above the armrest. He raised it about an inch. "Chuunin, Iruka." His hand went up another inch. "Jounin. Anbu. Hokage." After every word, he raised his hand further. Iruka kept his hand there for a few seconds before dropping it. "Understand?"
Ed nodded. "Yeah." It was a lot like how the ranking went in the military. Alchemists were automatically majors once they passed the test, but what were these ranks for? Hokage was at the very top, which, if these people followed the same system, either meant general or Führer. But it couldn't be just a general, because you didn't immortalise their faces as a giant rock carving (but this was another culture, so who knew?).
But if that was true, why would the Führer come and see them? She had the rest of the country to look after – what was so important about two kids that she had to see them personally? She was a doctor, fine, but there wasn't that big a shortage of medical personnel, was there? The doctors and nurses who'd come after her were usually the same most of the time, but when they'd left their room, they'd seen a lot of other staff about as well.
Well, okay, maybe it was because they'd found themselves across the world from home but how would they have known that? Ed shook his head a second later, feeling annoyed at himself. How had he and Al figured out that they were on the other side of the world? Nobody around them spoke the same language as them. They also knew it because the map Tsunade (he guessed he should probably start calling her that again) had drawn was different from the map they knew. So they would have come to the same conclusions as they had.
Iruka pointed to the furthest face on the left. "Shodaime." Moved his finger a bit to the right. "Nidaime." Again. "Sandaime. Yondaime." Ah. First, second, third, fourth. So 'daime' worked like their '-th'. Kind of. Not really. Actually, Ed thought a little enviously, their way was easier since they mostly seemed to use the same word for each number – different from mutating it like 'first'. Then again, he didn't know how the rest of the ranking went so maybe it got complicated later.
"First," Al said next to him, translating and holding his index finger up. His middle finger then went up. "Second. Third. Fourth."
They stayed in that area for quite a while, Iruka telling them the names of most of the things around them and vice versa. The longer they were there, the more people they could see moving about and finally the heat started to ease off. When Al's stomach rumbled, Iruka chuckled and pointed in the direction of the hospital. "Dinner?" he asked them.
Ed made a face but nodded. "Hospital food. Ugh." He hoped that nurse wasn't serving the food again – she had noticed that he wasn't drinking the milk with their food and she'd stare pointedly at the still-full cup and back at him when she collected their plates after they'd finished. You didn't need to know the language to know what she was saying. He had a feeling she would either start standing there while they were eating and try to guilt-trip him into drinking the stuff or attempt to make him drink it through force pretty soon.
Iruka chuckled again. "Sorry," he apologised as he took the brake off and turned Ed around. Ed ignored him – it wasn't his fault that the food there sucked.
They hadn't done that much today, but as they slowly made their way back both Ed and Al were yawning widely, no matter how much they tried to stop it. This time, they didn't go back by exactly the same streets they'd gone down before; instead, they were going through more of the back alleys. There were still shops around them, but not as many, and it looked like houses were dotted in between them.
The hospital was cooler when they re-entered it– that might have been because the front door had been propped open with a chair to let a slight draft in. It didn't take them long to get back to their room and settled into their beds. After making sure that they were okay and didn't need anything, Iruka said to them, "See you... tomorrow," frowning slightly as he said the world slowly.
Ed perked up at that. So he wasn't just dropping in for one day then; he'd actually be teaching them. They waved at him as Iruka left the room. "Bye." Glancing around showed that the papers they'd left strewn all over the bed had been put into one tidy pile on one of the side tables, while their bed had been remade. Ed shuffled across the bed and started flipping through the papers. He eventually stopped at a sheet that had only been used on one side (the Array on the other side made a lioness standing on three legs).
"What're you doin'?" Al asked curiously as he made his way closer to him.
Ed scribbled 'Known Words/Phrases' at the top of the blank page and underlined it. Then he took a couple more pieces of paper to try and stop his pen from ripping right through the paper as he wrote. It kinda helped, but his handwriting was still shaky since the paper still bent anyway.
"Oh, cool!" Al said from his shoulder. "What should we start with?"
He shrugged. "Numbers... The phrases that everyone uses everyday..." He trailed off and he winced. "The word order?"
Al smiled faintly. "We know it's the other way around for them." Which was better than nothing. The other language didn't always change the word order though and they didn't know enough to ask about it and it was just far too confusing.
"Don't know how things make sense to them when they're talking," Ed muttered as he wrote 'Itchy'. The second 'e' in 'Knee' went wonky as Al elbowed him.
"They could be thinking the same about us too, you know," Al reminded him, looking at him pointedly.
Ed paused as he thought it over. But their way of speaking... This was making his head hurt. Alchemy was one thing; languages were something else entirely. "Fine," he said quietly, resigning to the logic. "Anyway, you gonna help with this or not?"
Al rolled his eyes but said, "Shouldn't you put the translation next to the word?"
He blinked and then looked down. "I was going to!"
no subject
Date: Mar. 14th, 2009 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 17th, 2009 05:29 am (UTC)*Grumbles* That's the annoying thing. He's working things out, but not the things I want to - they're still going 'We're on the other side of the planet lalala, there's nothing you can do or show us (yes, even the beings from that door) that'll convince us otherwise :DD'. I'm beginning to think they'll finally get home and still think they'd only been on the other side of the planet.
I don't think this fic'll get past... eighteen chapters? Knowing my planning skills, some chapters'll go over more than one chapter, but yeah, I think people'll kill me for a vaguly abrupt ending...
D: It does, doesn't it? I wanna try iiiit. *snickers*