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[in_the_cracks]

It’s been a while since Telrim’s had time for anything but business. But there must have been a lull back home, because once again there’s a Controller in the Nexus, quietly watching the people around her. As always the Yeerk is privately sizing them up - hosts, threats, interesting specimens - but her eyes follow the human-looking ones in

Comments

[haganenomore]

"Hmm." Ed thinks about that for a moment. "Depends on the rumor. If it sounds plausible, I might be inclined to think there's something to it. And back when I was a teenager, I chased every rumor I could find on something. They never panned out though."

[in_the_cracks]

She nods. "More or less the outcome you'd expect with that type." There's an argument to be made for the uses of unstable killers. She's never been really convinced. "The situation's pretty similar to your own world?"

[haganenomore]

Ed shakes his head. "The big guy doesn't exist in my world. There's also other differences like there human transmutation results in dead things that don't look human and never will and human transmutation in my world resulting in homunculii. The woman behind trying to have the Stone created is dead. She made the rather fatal mistake of having my wife kidnapped."

[in_the_cracks]

Telrim shakes her head, mostly for show. Taking humans' loved ones is a high-stakes game, she knows that. Though they do tend to overstate it. "Sounds like you had an easier time... for some definition of 'easy'."

[haganenomore]

"Mmm, I suppose. Dante wanted the Stone to be made on a smaller scale. As in the array would have to be about city-sized."

[in_the_cracks]

"In my universe, the Philosopher's Stone was said to make a man rich and immortal. I assume it has a slightly different purpose in yours."

[haganenomore]

"It's basically a battery that lets alchemists do transmutations without paying the cost. Like get a six foot tall marble statue out of a one foot tall block of wood. Or in the bitch's case, transfer her soul from body to body without damaging her shiny new body."

[in_the_cracks]

Oh really? Raised eyebrows. "The first part I can see the attraction of, but the second... how fast did she plan to go through them?"

[haganenomore]

"They start to rot after awhile," Ed explains. "Combination of the original soul being severed and the hers having worn away from too much body-hopping."

[in_the_cracks]

"So you need a connection." She tilts her head, fascinated. "What exactly happens when the soul... wears away?"

[haganenomore]

"Humans aren't exactly meant to live forever," Ed points out. "Given enough time, she'd have finally died, but considering that by the time my time-period rolled around, she'd been around for about four hundred years, it could have been another hundred."

[in_the_cracks]

"I was thinking along the lines of mental symptoms. Though from what you've said, I suppose she wasn't the sanest person anyway..."

[haganenomore]

Ed snorts. "I'm pretty sure she was crazy even before she started body-hopping."

[in_the_cracks]

"Another attempt at immortality?"

[haganenomore]

Ed nods. "Yep.She didn't want to die, so she'd make other people die for her. Charming woman, wasn't she?"

[in_the_cracks]

"I'm almost sorry we never met," she says dryly. "But putting it that way, she wasn't so unusual. Only her methods were."