Name: Ena
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enabeansContact Info: AIM: luthienabler / Plurk: enabeans
Other Characters Played: Cain Knightlord, Mogget
Preferred Housing: 1649 Albright Lane (I have received permission from Trisha and Nyanpire).
Character Name: Alphonse Elric
Character Series: Fullmetal Alchemist (Manga/Brotherhood)
Character Age: 16
Background:
Here Personality: Alphonse is at once child-like and wise beyond his years. His emotional growth was stunted when his soul was placed in a suit of armour as a child, and as such he's retained an innocent and almost naïve outlook on life. He's genuinely kind-hearted and compassionate, and will go out of his way to help anyone in need. He has an intense love and respect for life, and will protect it at any cost. He states that he has seen too many people suffering on his behalf, and he will do anything at all to make sure nobody else ever has to suffer or die for them (he and his brother). This can lead him to taking reckless risks with himself in the pursuit of protecting others, such as shielding a chimera working for Greed inside his suit of armour, to try and prevent her being killed by Fuhrer King Bradley. Unfortunately, he is unsuccessful and the inability to protect her left him with an even stronger desire to make sure nobody else was killed if he could help it.
He prefers to see the best in situations and in people, trusting long after most people would have turned their back and giving chance after chance to the people around him. Even those he's come to see as his enemies, he is capable of trusting if the situation demands it - this is shown clearly when he asks Scar, who has been murdering State Alchemists and attacked his brother, to take an injured girl from the battle as they had no other choice to get her to safety. Another example is with Von Hohenheim, his father who abandoned the family when he was a very tiny child. Unlike his brother, who remains bitter and angry at the man, Al almost immediately gets along with him and even believes the fantastical tale about his past without any doubts.
Definitely someone who could be described as optimistic, Alphonse always looks for the silver lining in any cloud... and he has a lot of clouds to choose from. Instead of dwelling that he is unable to eat any longer in his armour body, he instead keeps a snack list of things he will eat again when he can. He takes a certain amount of pride in his 'hair' (a long ribbon of hair attached to the helmet of his armour) and is distressed when it gets cut short. He still loves things that a lot of children do - like playing horse-back rides with the small children they come into contact with, or taking care of stray cats by hiding them inside his chest cavity.
That's not to say Al is incapable of darker moments; he is still only human, after all. The tragedy of losing their mother, and the subsequent failed human transmutation to try and bring her back, is something that haunts both brothers constantly. For many years, Al blamed himself for the transmutation failing, as he had been inside their 'mother' looking out at Ed. However, they learned that it had never even been their mother in the first place, and some of his guilt there is assuaged. He still blames himself for Ed losing his arm in order to transmutate his soul, and is determined to find a way to get it back for him.
There are moments when he gets overwhelmed or sad by their situation, at one point telling Ed that they have to get their original bodies back, as he can't cope with the loneliness of the nights any more. His armoured body can't sleep, can't eat and can't feel, and he often laments that he can't feel the rain or sun on his face any longer. He can also be a little sensitive about his size, woefully declaiming that he never asked to be this large. Just like any boy fighting such impossible odds, sometimes he doubts himself and their abilities to get their original bodies back, even allowing another armoured soul (Barry the Chopper) to half convince him that he had never even been a real boy.
But these moments are always ones that Alphonse overcomes, falling back on his immense trust of his brother and the determination to 'keep moving forwards'. It would be a good point to note here the relationship that Al shares with his older brother, Ed. The two are very close, being all the family they have left after their mother died and their father abandoned them, and Al would literally do anything for Ed. This is shown the most prominently near the end of the series, when Al sacrifices his own life in order to give Ed back the arm he lost (via equivalent exchange), so that his brother can continue fighting on.
In many ways, he is the opposite side to the same coin as Edward. Where Ed is loud, brash, obnoxious and hot-headed; so Al is quieter, calmer and much more capable of thinking logically through a situation. He even says at one point that it's not fair he never gets to lose his temper, as Ed always gets there first. But however brash Ed can be sometimes, Al knows that his brother has a good heart. And in that, they are pretty much the same - they'll both fight for life, and for the good of everyone around them.
Abilities: Alchemy would be Al's greatest ability. Alchemy is based on the rule of “equivalent exchange”, meaning to create something, then something of equal value must be lost. It's a science of manipulating matter, which apparently comes from tectonic plates in the Earth. The art of alchemic manipulation of matter is called “transmutation” and must be performed using a “transmutation circle”. Alphonse, as well as his brother Edward, are two of the only people to be able to perform alchemy without needing to draw one of these.
He's a prodigy much like his brother, as both were shown to be able to understand complex alchemical theory at a young age, although he trails slightly behind him in talent. To be an alchemist, a person has to understand complex theories as well as in-depth recognition of elements. For example, when the boys were trying to bring their mother back from the dead, they actually calculated the exact amount of minerals and so forth that make up a human body. Al's alchemy is much less 'flashy' than his brother's; it's equally as effective, but he tends to keep his actions efficient and to the point.
He's also very strong, agile and quick on his feet as a hand-to-hand fighter. His teacher, Izumi Curtiss, made sure of this. It's stated in canon that Al is a better close combat fighter than Ed, and the elder brother has 'yet to win' a fight against him.
It should be noted that in his metal armour body (which he may regain at some point), he also has the added advantages of being invulnerable to pain, the elements, as well as not needing sleep.
Sample Entry:
Sample at dear_mun