230A/N: First, since I forget this in almost every story I first post: I don't own either Final Fantasy VII or Fullmetal Alchemist, Brotherhood version/manga or otherwise! And, I'm not making money off this story! (If I was, I wouldn't be posting it here! :D) I'm also never going to bother saying this again, since it's not going to change between one chapter and the next-I will never own FFVII or FMA:B/manga. :P
This is a new story I came up with after reading another crossover fic where the Materia functioned on the same alchemic arrays as Ed was used to—but for some reason, even when Ed found out he couldn't use his own alchemy around Reactors, the author didn't have him start using Materia, which completely didn't make sense to me.
As such, despite the similarity in Materia/alchemy functionality, all the rest of my story is completely different, and takes place starting July 6th, 0000 (before Genesis gets injured and before Cloud talks to Tifa at the well in Nibelheim) based on the FFVII Compilation timeline. It also encompasses data from the entire Compilation (Before Crisis, Crisis Core, FFVII, Advent Children (very, very little currently, since I don't even think Denzel has been born yet), and Dirge of Cerberus), so took a huge amount of research, despite my having played a few of the games.
I've changed very little pre-0000, but I'll leave an A/N at the start of the chapter to mention a specific change which is pre-Ed's arrival in 0000. The Materia has been stabilized to the FFVII version in the original game, though with modification, as I have no idea if the Materia functions the same way in the remake, and the only change I've currently made is that Fort Condor has a Reactor leak. I tried to keep purchase prices which made sense accurate to FFVII's game prices as well, but there's a note at the end of this chapter about selling prices.
When I originally wrote this years ago, I had been basing Ed's known money system on actual European money denominations (their version of cents/dollars). A reader later pointed out to me that they actually use a penny system like Japan/Gaia, but I've chosen not to change that in this story. And their money would look different regardless. A different reader questioned the gil used in FF games and how I presented it in this story. To clarify: in FFVII, gil appears as silver coins with a hole through the middle, and there are coins up to 1000 gil with bills for denominations above that. However, I'm leaving my current system for them intact in this story, because I still feel bills above 100 gil are more feasible with the amount of gil it's possible to collect.
Also note: Because someone has posted an anonymous review which just said 'too ooc', I feel I should mention that posting a review like that without any useful data about who/what and why is completely pointless, so if you're going to post a review (anonymously or otherwise), give me the details so I know what the Hell you're talking about! If a reviewer doesn't give appropriate details, the review is summarily discarded as a person just being an ass for the sake of doing so.
Anyway, sorry for the long intro author's note, and on with the story!
Materia
The sixteen-year-old boy opened golden eyes and stared up at the sky above him, rather confused about where he was and how he'd gotten there. The last thing he remembered was the Alchemist's Gate opening while he'd been in the process of defeating 'Father' (because he had effectively performed a human transmutation using the being as the source of energy), then nothing. His body ached, and he knew some of it originated from the battle injuries he'd gotten, but the majority of it felt like it was from some kind of full-body muscle and tendon strain, not even 'exhaustion' from the overuse of his muscles. His apparent change of locale also bothered him because he definitely wasn't in Central anymore, with no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there.
Since his usual braid was digging into his back in a progressively uncomfortable way, he slowly sat up as he took stock of his state outside the injuries and muscle strain. Golden bangs fell to either side of his face, where he had a couple scratches, while the majority of his hair was pulled back in a basic braid falling to between his shoulder blades, and his slender, toned body showed a fair bit of battle damage. During the battle, the upper right side of his black, sleeveless top had been torn so it hung down on that side, showing wicked scars around the shoulder joint, but his black leather pants were in good shape and his klunky, black leather army boots weren't damaged beyond scuffs. A touch to his left knee joint and down his shin assured him that his automail leg was still there and intact, unlike his right arm, which his brother had transmuted back into his original flesh-and-blood one...in exchange for his soul. The most severe injury he had was from where the metal rod had gone through his left arm. Given how 'little' injury he had, he felt comfortable pushing himself to his feet so he could look around and get a better idea of where he was—and had to sigh in irritation as he realized he was still...vertically challenged.
A glance at his surroundings told him one thing: he honestly had no idea where he was. It was barren, lifeless, brown, rugged, rocky, and had plenty of sheer or steep-sided plateaus ranging from one foot above the ground to ten feet above, and the place he currently stood was on a small space of level ground near the top of a hill capped by some kind of huge machine or factory-like thing. Al was definitely not with him (nor anyone else, for that matter), and he didn't think panicking would help him find them or figure out where he was. It wasn't actually as simple as 'panic', either—if he was in Amestris, great, but if he was in some foreign land, drawing attention to himself would be very, very bad. As such, he'd be better off keeping quiet and not flying off the handle for ridiculous reasons.
Something glowing nearby drew his eyes to a narrow trail of dark green not-quite-slime meandering down from the metal monstrosity on the hill and trailing down the hill past him and out of sight. The green stuff was clearly a leak, and probably not a good one, but what puzzled him the most was the glowing green object about the size of a large marble which was sitting in the slimy stuff. He noticed there were several up and down the trail, and of the ones he could see, there were two he noted which were yellow and blue respectively, rather than the green of the rest.
Taking the few steps to the place where the nearest glowing, green orb was, he knelt and carefully lifted it out of the darker green liquid. However, as soon as he touched it, knowledge began assimilating into his mind against his will, so he dropped it onto the ground and slowly sat cross-legged in front of it as he thought about what had just happened. The orb itself was nothing special, being in a soothing, pale green much healthier than the gunk it had been sitting in, but when he'd touched it...
Reaching forward again, he just rested the tip of one finger on it, and again felt the surge of knowledge, but a little more controlled. Instead of completely overloading him, it was manageable, so he maintained the contact for several seconds as he assessed what was happening and what knowledge he was being given. Said knowledge included of the understanding of how to cycle energy into the orb to activate four similar alchemic arrays used in human transmutation of the injury healing variety-though there were also many sub-arrays controlling the functions of the main arrays. By knowing that, he could assume his contact with the orb was force-activating the first stage of an alchemic reaction, known as Comprehension, or the analysis and understanding of the inherent properties of an object to be used in a transmutation. It also seemed that, by using the orb, the only cost for the transmutation was in his own personal energy, meaning he could only use the effect so many times without a rest, but by that very fact, the orb seemed to be a form of a Philosopher's Stone...
And yet, they couldn't be Philosopher's Stones and still be laying around in a trail of slime on a mountainside, could they?
Lifting his finger and leaning back a bit to think, he let his gaze travel along the dark green trail of gunk, again noting the other orbs, and especially the yellow and blue ones. After all, while green orbs made some degree of sense in the green gunk, yellow and blue didn't. What he knew of them was that they held both knowledge and power, but while it activated similarly to the alchemy he knew, it was also very different, and if he wasn't so opposed to the existence of 'magic' and 'spells', he'd say that was exactly what those orbs were giving people access to, but spells weren't scientific and even these orbs had a scientific basis he could track by the arrays he'd seen when he touched it.
Regardless, he knew it was a bad idea for him to touch them directly currently, so he pictured a stone bowl with a lid and handle he could use to carry them, then clapped his hands together in the familiar motion and put them down on the ground—
Only for nothing to happen. At all.
Blinking, he tried again, that time paying attention to the flows of transmutation energy in his body, and found there wasn't one—it was all being sapped by something.
The last time that had happened had been when he had confronted 'Father' in the chamber under Central and the being had forced all of the energy out of the area, preventing alchemists from using their abilities until 'Father' had released it, though Scar and Mei had still been able to use theirs, somewhat. Amestrian alchemy was supposedly based on taking the energy of tectonic plate movements, but he'd found out later it was actually based on the residual energy of death, and of life. In Xing, they used a different flow which they called the 'Veins of the Dragon', and it was based on borrowing energy from existing paths of it which cycled the planet like veins, distributing energy to various places, allowing plants to grow and water to flow. He knew a few simple Xingese alkahestry arrays thanks to Mei and Scar, so wondered if that would give a different result from what Amestrian alchemy was at the moment.
Drawing a Xingese star array and using stones to 'anchor' each of the five points to create a simple, plain, stone dish, he placed his fingers on the rim and cycled the energy. Nothing happened, even though it was an array he knew how to use.
Straightening, he pursed his lips as he realized the area he was in was so dead there was no kind of accessible energy flow. It was painfully obvious something was wrong, but it wasn't likely he could do anything about it without knowing a lot more about the area, though his first thought was that the dead zone had something to do with the metal monstrosity on the top of the hill. Doing something about the situation may not even be possible for him, or for any one person.
With a sigh as he accepted his inability to do anything just then, he decided to see how big the dead zone was instead, so rose and began walking down the hill, following the trail of gunk until he found the grass line. The border between the grassy area and the dead zone was surprisingly clear, and the slimy trail he'd been following only just passed over into the grassy area, where it formed a small pool a couple feet across. As he'd found both the pool and the border between living and dead at the same time, he moved just a little past said border to test his ability to use his alchemy, this time putting the grass fiber to good use.
Again, he focused on what he wanted, in this case for his cloth shirt to be repaired like new, then clapped his hands and put them down on the grass. With a brilliant, lightning-like flash tinged in green, his shirt was fixed with cloth matching the texture and color of the cotton, but the transmutation had barely used any of the nearby plant fiber. With a relieved, pleased grin, he thought again of something he wanted—cloth gloves so he'd be able to pick up the orbs without touching them directly. Moments later, he had a pair of white, surprisingly comfortable gloves similar to the ones he'd been wearing before the battle against 'Father', and noted again how he seemed to be getting much more product out of a lesser quantity of the starting material. He'd have to re-learn his quantities if that was the case, but he was very pleased with the result, as it meant he could do a lot more with the same amount of materials he was used to using.
Finally, he moved over to a patch of white, pink, blue, and yellow wildflowers and performed one more transmutation, that one to produce a side-strap-style bag he'd be able to wear across the chest from one shoulder to the opposite hip. While most of the bag was in deep, grass green, he'd pictured it having hems in small, white, red, blue, and yellow swirls, and it currently had three internal pouches. One of them was quite small and he'd probably use it for money and things like keys, and the other two which were the largest main one and a second, smaller one for travel items and maybe some of those orbs he might want to keep with him. He threw it on over his left shoulder so it rested on his right hip, then went back to the pool to start collecting the orbs in it.
Immediately upon picking one of the orbs up, he noticed that putting a layer of cloth between the orb and his skin prevented the automatic activation of the Comprehension stage, but something still reached him anyway—the orb's basic function and its internal designations of the arrays he'd seen. The way it came out was that he was being given the orb's 'name' and the 'spell names' which matched the arrays, along with the fact that he could only use the first of those 'spells' with his (or was it the orb's?) current level of experience. Each orb, he put in the bag without noting anything more than its name, so it didn't take him long to gather them, and he paused only when he picked up another of the healing array orbs—it was called 'Restore' and had the 'spells' 'Cure' (which he could use), and 'Cure 2', 'Regen', and 'Cure 3' (all three of which he couldn't use yet). By letting it slightly touch his skin, he followed the array instructions to use Cure on himself, which completely erased his open injuries without even leaving scars.
By the time he got back up to the factory (?) leak's origin, he'd collected quite a number of green orbs of several different types, but still found himself most interested in the yellow and blue ones, especially when picking them up produced very different names from the green types and no additional data while he held it in a gloved hand.
The yellow one came first, and was designated as 'Enemy Skill', so since he couldn't find out any more without touching them directly, he held the orb against the back of his arm to assess its arrays. It had a large number of overlapping but largely dormant arrays, and the instructions came out to those arrays activating if he, while the orb was touching his skin, felt the effects of certain, special 'monster' attacks—were they 'monsters' or just some kind of animal? Unless he could correctly interpret the arrays, he wouldn't have any clue what the attacks were or what kind of 'monster' might have them, but he could tell some were healing or protective while others were damaging, some elemental and some not. As it had no stored attacks yet registered to it, the Comprehension data was so small it didn't affect him the way the green orbs did, and it had piqued his interest, so he put it in the smaller of the two main pouches.
Directly under the leak was the blue orb, which was also the last one. Surprisingly, it did the same as the yellow one through his glove—its only data was its name, 'Final Attack'. Repeating the process of pressing it to the back of his arm, he found its instructions taking more to access than Enemy Skill's, but not an overwhelming amount, so assessed what it did through the arrays and instructions together. It had to be 'paired' with another orb to function, and it would monitor his state of health once linked properly. If he died, it would force-activate the orb it had been paired with. By the arrays, which were currently dormant, he knew the form of the orbs it could be paired with were typed into categories amounting to 'effect', 'calling', and 'ability'. What did that mean? He was still staring at the blue orb in his hand after lifting it off his bare arm, wondering what he'd found.
He was also sure Al would have been just as interested in the orbs as he was, so felt collecting them would be good so he'd be able to show his brother later. Well, assuming he could figure out where he was and how to get back to Amestris...
"Eh, did you already grab all the Materia shards down to the pool, then?" a deep voice asked in mild surprise from a few feet away. Looking up, the blond teen saw a big, burly man who reminded him greatly of the men in Youswell—generally good-natured and hard-working with the rugged looks of a man who had done a lot of heavy labor in harsh environments. His hair was dark and he dressed in a sleeveless shirt in blue and brown pants.
"Sorry, what?" the younger of the two asked in confusion, knowing the man had been talking, but not quite getting what he'd said, beyond it being a question. He had to question whether he 'hadn't caught the words' or 'hadn't understood the words', as a language barrier would be a huge problem.
Nodding at the blue orb in the smaller's hand, the big man clarified, "Were you just starting up at the top here, gathering the Materia, or did you start at the pool at the bottom of the hill?" That time, it came through clearly, much to Ed's relief.
"Oh, I started at the bottom," the teen replied when he realized the man seemed familiar with the object he was holding. If all the orbs were called 'Materia', that was one less mystery. "Was there anything in particular I should do with them?" It also suddenly occurred to him that in a foreign country, he probably didn't want to be known as a foreigner, so should probably not ask 'where am I?'
"Nah. The shopkeeper likes it when we sell extras to him, but otherwise—finders keepers, you know?" the man grinned.
Blinking, the blond asked, "So he'd pay me for the duplicates I picked up?"
"Sure will. Since you're new to the area, I'll show you to the town and to the Materia shop." At the words, the dark haired man turned and beckoned the boy to follow, leading the way along a path which lead down a steep, rugged hill. "The name's Kurt. What's yours?"
"Edward, or Ed," the blond answered, following the man, but staying alert just in case of an ambush or something. "Thanks."
"Looks like you got a Support type there, which are really rare out of the Mako Reactor. And it's not an All, or I'd recognize that."
"Yeah...How often does that monstrosity produce yellow and blue—Materia?"
With a laugh at the term 'monstrosity' for the Reactor, the man readily explained, "It comes out to one every month or so, usually a Command type instead of a Support. In the case of the Command type, it's usually Sense. Once every year or two, it spits out a windfall, either in the rarity of the types it produces or in the variety, and I'm guessing you got this round's windfall by that Support. At least the Reactor is good for that, given the eyesore it is."
"You may be right, since I also found a—Command—one on my way up which definitely wasn't Sense. What about the other types it produces?"
By the fact that the man had specified the blue one as a Support type, Ed was forming an educated guess as to the yellow one being the Command type, which was two more questions answered, but he still had more. He just hoped he could get the answers without making himself look like he didn't even know 'what' Materia were! Since he had no idea where he was or how to get home, looking too out of place or too stupid wasn't a good idea. At all. As they reached a more difficult section of the path down, he put the blue orb in the same pouch he'd put the yellow one, as he'd decided to keep it as well, and right then, he needed his hands free to maneuver.
"Well, I think it very, very rarely produces a Summon Materia, usually Phoenix, but that's only happened twice that I know about since the Reactor was built decades ago—it's rather ironic that the Fort Condor Reactor creates a bird Summon! I've never heard of it producing an Independent Materia, but by and large, it produces Magic Materia. Not usually very rare ones, but common and frequently-used ones are more useful and valuable to us, anyway. It's never produced anything legendary, but we sometimes get ones as useful and rare as Revive, Transform, and Time."
"Revive?" the teen asked in surprise. "As in, bringing the dead back to life? There's one like that?"
With a chuckle, Kurt clarified, "It's not a use-all, it has a window—you have about ten minutes to bring them back with the fatal damage undone. Well, that's assuming there's a mostly intact body for it to work on as well. Doctors often have one on them. I know the shop over in Junon has Revives for sale, but we don't have it here."
"I see...You also mentioned legendary Materia. What would those be, as an example?"
"The only one I know of off the top of my head is a Magic called Comet. You know, if you really want to know more so badly, the library in Junon should have a lot more data than I can give you. Well, they are a much bigger city than ours, so it makes sense they'd have more data and a lot more goods of better quality available."
"Sounds like my kind of place. It'll be worth the trip once I'm done here."
By then, they'd reached the town, which turned out to have been built into the hill like an anthill. It was a surprisingly bustling place with men mostly running along Kurt's line, women in dresses, and children in similar clothes to the adults, divided by male and female. Though, it also didn't take him long to notice some women not dressed in the standard dresses of the wives and mothers, but rather, in pants and combat gear; not nearly as many as of the 'dresses' type, but enough to be noticed. Kurt led him through the paths and tunnels, pointing out the items shop and the inn along the way, and to a shop which had two counters, one to the right and one to the left of the entrance. One obviously had weapons and things like bracelets (?) on display while the other showed a selection of green orbs—Magic Materia—like the ones he'd found.
Kurt was already talking with the shopkeeper at the Materia counter, but the sight of a language he didn't understand made Ed pause by the door, eyes shooting from sign to sign and price tag to price tag—then it was as though something clicked and everything suddenly became legible. There was no reason or explanation for how the words suddenly started to make sense to him, and while he was grateful for it, it also left him with a plethora of unanswered questions, because how had that happened? In what reality did people suddenly switch from not knowing to knowing a language they'd never seen before?
When Kurt called him to the counter, he set that aside to examine later and faced the smiling shopkeeper to ask, "So how do we work out the prices and such?"
The shopkeeper answered, "Most shops—items, armor, weapons, Materia—will buy items off you for half price (1)—unless you've got a really strong Materia, which would be more—so the easiest way is to pull out everything you collected other than ones you've already decided you're keeping, sort them into types, and decide if you want to keep one of that type. If you do, put it away and I'll buy the rest off you. Nothing to it."
"Okay..." Edward mused as he dug in his bag.
At that point, Kurt gave a wave and walked away, and the teen started pouring the Magic Materia onto the counter top. He gave a wry grin at the man's impressed whistle, and began separating the types out until he found one independent one with no duplicates. It was 'Seal' and had 'Sleepel' and 'Silence' on it, but he honestly didn't have much use for it, so held it out to the shopkeeper.
"Seal I don't need, though I only found one of it. How much is that one worth?"
"Seal? That's a rarer one and is three thousand gil full price, so you'll get fifteen hundred if you sell it to me. Are you sure you want to do that?"
The man pulled out a paper and a box to make notes on the items being sold to him, and at Ed's nod, he wrote down on the paper 'Seal x 1 1500G = 1500G', and the Seal Materia was placed in the box.
"Sure am—I'm not really the type to do things like that to enemies. Now, as for the rest, I think I'll keep one of each, so that's a Restore, Heal, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth, and Poison...That leaves you with the rest."
Ed put his chosen ones in his keepers pouch in his bag as the shopkeeper wrote out the list of what he was left with and moved the spare copies to the box once they were written down:
Restore x 3 375G = 1125G
Heal x 1 750G = 750G
Fire x 5 300G = 1500G
Ice x 4 300G = 1200G
Lightning x 3 300G = 900G
Earth x 2 750G = 1500G
Poison x 1 750G = 750G
The total of the list came out to nine thousand, two hundred and twenty-five gil, and when the shopkeeper pulled out the money from his till, he gave Edward nine of the thousand gil bills, two of the hundred gil bills, two of the ten gil bills, and five one gil coins. In the process of the count, the shopkeeper left the till open, so Ed took a bit of time to examine the sizes of the bills in it, finding them to consist of ten, fifty, one hundred, five hundred, and one thousand gil denominations, with only the one gil coin being any different from the rest. What he could assess by the sheer size and apparent commonness of even a thousand gil bill was that these people counted in pennies, not in dollars. He didn't really know the exchange rate and wasn't even sure they'd have one with Amestris, but at least it gave him something to work with.
Notes:
(1)—In the FFVII game, I believe the sale price of goods is 1/4 or 1/3 of its purchase price and Materia sell for only the amount of experience on them, but that's quantifying the experience too much for a more real world, so I've chosen to make the sale price a flat half of the purchase price. Besides, Ed would be pretty much broke if I kept the original prices and wouldn't even be able to afford a room at the inn!
