Krow, Jackyll 'Jack' Gauner

[Guest]

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CASE FILE: Alchemist/Alkahestrist

"Pull the shades down, honey."
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FULL NAME:
→ 'Jack' Jackyll Gauner Krow
→ Aliases: Celesto (most renown for), Ringo, Korona, Lingo, Rook, Papaya, Mercedes, Kastiel, Kain, Sawyer, Tye, and more.

AGE:
→ 25

SEX:
→ Male

BIRTH PLACE:
→ Lior, Great Desert

RACE:
→ Half Gelemortian, Half Cersian

DATE OF BIRTH:
→ February 15, 1987

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HEIGHT:
→ 5'11"

WEIGHT:
→ 143 lbs

PICTURE:
→

Spoiler:

DESCRIPTION:
→ Jack’s trademark is his stark orange hair, contrasting heavily with the sky blue of his eyes. When he was younger, there was a time in his life when he hated his hair and shaved it all off into a buzz cut. The reason for that was simple: he hated himself. The orange hair reminded him of his twin brother whom he never met for obvious reasons. That’s right, he was born dead as Jack should have been had they not saved him. In fact, he’d be dead in about five years from now if he hadn’t invented himself a new heart with which to replace his defective one. This new heart is lodged into his chest by way of Labrose Alloy that carefully connects the mechanical automail heart of his creation to the rest of his body. On the outside it looks like a circle of metal with seven dashes of blue halogen lights vibrantly shining through. These lights can very easily be concealed, but most of the time, they steadily glow through the shirts he wears. Speaking of shirts, Jack wears an array of different clothing. For business he, of course, plays the part of snazzy, smooth, and clean-cut CEO, wearing suit after suit, mostly pinstripes and dashed with a sprinkle of expensive cologne. He has his shoes shined (against his will, but deals with it, seeing as it is practically a requirement for a man of his standing) and they are even tied for him if he is too busy for the job. But PLEASE he can tie his own damn shoes. It’s a real problem sometimes. It really is.

He gets his hair styled for important press conferences, interviews, etc., but most of the time when he is slaving away in his shop, it’s thrown up and all over the place with man work sweat. His hair is kept mainly at shoulder length since after his recovery in the hospital after being comatose for just about ten years (with sparse awakenings here and there). When he woke up, he looked like Rapunzel. Don’t ask. Needless to say he cut it, but not all of it this time, no. Jack wanted to keep those memories—wanted to learn something from his mistakes and rise from the ashes of yesterday. This was his new beginning, and he would have hair this time. So much hair, that he could even braid it if he wanted to, and oh, did he want to. For some reason, braiding two braids (along usually the left side of his part) comes across to him as badass. When he has time (usually seldom), Jack partakes in braiding that side of his hair and leaving the rest down. His long bangs often obscure his eyes, but when he doesn’t have to focus on anything in particular, allowing his sight to be impeded is a welcome reprieve. However, during work, he sports a small pony tail of those bangs on the top of his head and jams out to 80’s Rock N’ Roll.

When he isn’t dressed as the rich suit-adorning Jack Krow, he is parading through his mansion corridors with a variance of his favorite band tee-shirts. Please note, he doesn’t work in his many band shirts because for some reason, (he found out), grease, sweat, and rough machinery does some damage to the insignias (not that he can’t buy a new one if need be). Regardless, he tends to do the muscle shirt, black beater thing when indulging himself. Yeeep.

Jack has those kind of eyes that attract attention. They are very stare-worthy, thus asserting many to continue making eye contact with them. Now that—that can get very annoying. In a roomful of people staring at you, wouldn’t you get a little…eh? Sometimes such occasions can be a bit overwhelming to him especially seeing as he is usually the centerpiece for the whole equation—the focus of attention. As much as he can love it, it can get to the eh point fast, where he will then open a tab and proceed to switch gears. But switching gears, can be hard without a little bit of alcohol, you know? It’s a pretty simple concept. Go to a party with too many people fawning over you, get drunk, have a good time, and then don’t remember it the next day. That’s how some of the best business deals are done.

In his left ear is what appears to be a black stud earring, but is actually a device invented by him to prevent himself from going deaf in the occasion that he uses his lightning alchemy. This small piece utilizes invisible, high-pitched sound waves to counteract the thunder following the strike of his alchemic blast. In short, it blocks the loud, deafening rumble by using something just a bit more intense than a dog whistle. He came up it when he was watching Oprah once. Hey, he was on that show a couple times.

Oh, one last thing. Jack’s eyesight isn’t as perfect as his reputation; he’s a bit far-sighted. Just a bit. He can see perfectly fine, but glasses help when he works. He has prescription goggles of varying kinds, colored glasses for working with blowtorches, and you get the jist. Along those lines, Jack is an expert at disguising himself. Occasionally, he dabbles in being a spy for the Gelemortian government, tasking himself as a Ciel Militant for the betterment of the world in order to pursue world peace and eradicate war, all that stuff. For that reason, he doesn’t make weapons like his father did; Jack makes computer systems, innovative technology, and automail that more or else can be used as a weapon… That’s beside the point. Jack owns a million and one cellphones, often forgetting which is which. He can hardly stand owning such a slow and outdated device, but for disguising appearance’s sake he doesn’t have much of a choice. Despite that, he always has his own crafted smartphone on his person somewhere at all times (it's an addiction). He has colored contacts, wigs, and can obtain any sort of uniform needed to become whatever he has to be in order to get what he wants, but usually Jack doesn’t have to go into the danger zone in person; he has computers equip with his alchemy for that.

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PERSONALITY:
→ Jack: a man who never has to do anything for himself, but insists on doing the heavy labor. He’s the lone gunslinger type that ignores help like a buzzard of bees, stingers aimed and ready. He’s self-assured in that he and only he can get the job done to the best of its ability. Well-aware of his mental capacity, he knows his limits and when he can and cannot do something. In the sense of completing something, it is black and white to Jack. It’s either done by him or done by someone else. Regardless, it is done; nothing is impossible. He gets obsessive with his work and anything that he commits himself to. He will spend day upon day coped up in his tempered glass box of a workshop in the basement, blind to all other outside noises or even people yelling in his ear. He has an encoded password for getting in that only specified people have access to in order to keep those not prepared for his obsessive behavior out and those accustomed delayed by having to type in a passcode. Jack has many secrets that he doesn’t outwardly share with people, but he openly tends to brag about most other things. While he can be completely cryptic with stuff pertaining to his health or an important project he is working on that cannot be leaked, he can also be almost obnoxiously open about pretty much everything else. He doesn’t care—what’s he got to lose?

He doesn’t mask his personality with forced words that people want to hear; he says his opinion outright and bluntly. Using his intellect to twist anything in his favor, he can assert his argument to its full potential, gaining the popular vote. And, oh, does he love the cheers. Like a rock star with a keyboard, he tap-screens his way to the stop of the stairs, and loves standing there. Always being right earns him a bit of an ego, but despite that ego, he wouldn’t exactly admit to ‘loving himself’. Jack sort of sees himself as essential for the world to function to its full potential, but he’s not the type to gaze into the mirror and admire how fabulous he is. Actually, he rather dislikes looking in the mirror if only to shave without slitting his neck and make sure his hair didn’t morph into a fro overnight. When he was younger, haunted by the specter of his twin, Karis, he would break every mirror he saw out of fear of his own reflection. So even now, he feels slight discomfort catching that reflection. But likewise, having confidence and a blown-up ego with guns to back it up is nothing short of everyday behavior.

To most people, Jack comes across as a joyful, happy-go-lucky asshole that is unintentionally stuck as a show-off like a robin with a red breast. Except Jack’s ticker isn’t so hot. He suffers a heart condition that even with his own constructed automail running his life support via a constant beat, he still is subjected to fainting spells and lightheadedness when overexerting himself. He has to carefully maintain his diet and constantly drink his own mixtures of healthy minerals instead of water. Ironically, water is too risky. He has an exercise regimen that he sticks to religiously despite not believing in god. This consists of working out at the gym, martial arts practice, and whatever else appeals to him at the time.

He is elitist when it comes to anything to do with technology or automail, constantly criticizing, but he would never stop a random stranger on the street to tell them how ineffective their appendage is, instead, he would turn to whomever he is with and complain to them. When it comes to complaining though, Jack doesn’t really partake when it involves himself. If he is in some sort of pain or otherwise, he typically mentions it offhandedly so information is available, but never gripes about it; it’s not his style. Those close to him must learn how to read him and catch the discreet shifts in his demeanor in order to translate his monotone replies into feelings and then respond accordingly. There are many things that Jack would never admit to out loud and those things must be lightly treaded in order to avoid complete withdrawal from the topic. Such being, mostly subjects related to health.

Alright, a downer for the girls, but Jack’s not exactly a romantic. Involving anything love-related he’s one of those idiot guys that don’t know where to start. He’s completely ignorant of other people’s feelings, and really has no idea how to relay that he cares when he does. But he tries. He tries despite running in long dialogue circles that really take him only around the point he’s trying to make. Aside from failing to emphasize his concern of others, he also has trouble explaining anything technical using language understandable by normal people. He usually has to be reminded of this and finds it difficult to simplify things since they come out of his brain complicated. It’s kind of like being a translator: there’s a lot of lost in translation if he converts it into everyday speak. Therefore, it's a bother, but he manages.

Jack smokes, but he doesn’t smoke a lot, and he drinks, but he doesn’t drink a lot. He loves a party as much as the next guy, but even having so much money at his disposal, he doesn’t get much of a break. And, god, does he need a vacation. He doesn’t stop working, committed to not really the corporation, but his own personal pursuits and desires. It’s not really the way to run a business, but he wasn’t made to cooperate with demands. Another way to call it is being irresponsible. In fact, Jack rather despises rules and rather break them then bend them. One of his favorite things is to rewrite people’s opinions by carefully conducting a strong argument against said rule(s) whose sole explanation stunts the other party’s ability to refute him. At the same time, Jack is a protector, creating new inventions to fill the gap and breach the boarders fought over by countries. Yeah, he pursues peace full-force, aiming solely to eradicate the very thing that earns him business. …Well, maybe not completely. Having access to most systems connected to satellites, Jack is an information god, capable of hacking anything within reach. That at his disposal, there is nearly an unlimited list of options…

…like buying too many cars. Audis, Mercedes, classics: Jack has cars of the rainbow that he never takes out for joyrides. He only gets behind the wheel when he has to go somewhere, and he never lets anyone else drive him somewhere unless it’s to a ball, gathering, or meeting of higher status in which it is expected of him to be chauffeured. He loves cars and keeps his classics inside his house, sitting in them to think with or without playing the saxophone in the process. And because of his status, Jack is practically hunted by attractive females sporting plastic surgery like a disease. He doesn’t take too much interest in the fake types, but he does partake in playboy tendencies every once in a while. Only females that get on his case and hold intelligence that is at least able to measure up to his slightly are able to get anywhere near his bed. And he has a big bed.

One thing that Jack sucks at is remembering names, well, to explain it better, he typically doesn’t care to remember names. It’s only if the person means something to him that he cares to register the bit of information into his overflowing plethora of filing cabinets in his head. This gets him into trouble sometimes, but he always plays the innocent bachelor because honestly, he’s usually the victim due to others misunderstanding anyway. He loves giving nicknames to people. Like if the secretary at a bank has red nails, contrary to looking at her nametag, he’ll refer to her as ‘rednails’. That is another reason why Jack is often considered a heartless bastard. ...Even though, technically, he doesn’t have a heart.


LOVE:
→ Himself, King, Broom sticks, Having people that clean up his messes, Explaining things, Elaborating, Grey skies, Clouds, Rain, Water, The roar of thunder, Lightning, Wind, Windows, Night, Bonfires, Watermelons, Baths, Five Star hotels, Noodles, Tall buildings, Owning tall buildings, Cars, Old cars, Smart devices, Science, Technology, Computers, Designing new things, Tools, Blowtorches, Goggles, Other supplies, Automail, Being a smart ass, Being an asshole, Cracking insulting jokes, Insulting people, Steam punk, Style, People, Humans, Women, Men, Technology, Sweating, Cologne, Parties, Drinking, Alcohol, Gelemorté, Singing in the shower, Slow dancing, Winking, Whistling, Daydreaming, Movies, Thoughts, Fucking with people, Messing with people's minds, Getting lost, Gambling, Playing the lottery, Darts, Saxophone, Music, Classical music, Hard rock, Sex, Honeycomb cereal, Milk, Collecting expensive things, Wigs, Disguising himself, The element of surprise, Breaking and entering, Defying all odds, Running before walking,

HATE:
→ Strippers, Sluts, Whores, Salt, Ice cream, Spicy food, Cake, Cold, Snow, Winter, Sand, Too much attention, The press & the Media (though he answers to them), The news, Being studied, Taking tests, Answering surveys, Stares, Silence, Militaristic fools, Unnecessary fights, Uptight people, Rules, Sympathy, Religion, Death, The ideas people have of death, The concept of life, Reflections, Mirrors, Pain, Beds, Sleeping, Snoring, Nightmares, Daymares, Cats, Dogs, Pets, Playing cards, Bums, Old people, People who get in his way, Bouncers, Flies, Cellphone charms, Being handed things, His father, His mother, Karis, Not finishing books, Chocolate

DEEPEST SECRET:
→ That he's a spy.
→ His alchemist and alkahestric abilities.
→ That he fears black cats.

IDOL:
→ King

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HISTORY:
→ A soon-to-be father—a Gelemortian pride—married a Cersian soon-to-be mother on a white landscape, frigid with an unhappy coupling. It was only supposed to be a one night stand. He, with his over-imposed mind chose a life he knew he would hate for the sake of the child growing inside of her. She refused to the bitter end to get an abortion—REFUSED. So he didn’t really have a choice; responsibility was something important to him, almost as important as his dream to start an automail business. With his ability, Cardy Krow would change the industrialization of the entire world, starting in his hometown, Lior! On the day Gianna Balise became Gianna Krow, he pledged this, and began taking out loans to buy a place in the desert city. Once Zachariah was born, he settled with Gianna, accepting that she would be the sole woman in his life now. Ditching his playboy tendencies, they decided to have another child so Zachariah wouldn’t be lonely. However, to their surprise, twins grew inside her. She was HUGE and triply hungry. Trying to make enough money to support them, Cardy got involved in debts up to his ears. Collectors pounded on their door month after month, until finally Ginanna broke and couldn’t take it anymore. She begged her parents for money and they decided to move from Gelemorté to live with them in Amestris, splitting the rent, and allowing them to continue living there in relative happiness.

But something went terribly wrong. A month before the twins were due, Ginanna’s water broke. Panicked, she rushed to the hospital with her mother, and then disappeared into one of the emergency rooms for hours. When visitors were allowed, her mother rushed in to find her there, pale, and near death. She had given birth to a stillborn. It was a baby that wouldn’t ever cry—a life forfeit to the recklessness of a newlywed. The day before had been Valentine’s Day. The day before, Gianna had gone out drinking with Cardy. He demanded it, convincing her with sweet words and whisperings. Cardy cheated on her that night. Drunk, flustered, he danced with a half-dressed slut, made out with her, and avidly forgot about his wife’s existence. The ring on his finger meant nothing to him. It meant nothing to him, but it meant the world to her. It was February 15, 1987, and Karis was dead. When she managed to get a hold of her husband, in broken sobs, she told him one of the twins came out without breath. But what of the other, he asked. Jackyll probably wouldn’t make it through the night, she answered. Their love children were dead—dying. Her heart was falling apart. Their marriage yanked viciously at the loose seams that brought them together. Her father who was looking after Zachariah (age three), suggested a divorce, and Cardy jumped on it. Feebly depressed, Gianna had no more will to live, that was until she was told that the other twin, Jackyll, would make it. They managed to clean the blood in his body and stabilize his weak heart, albeit it still contained a murmur, but many people lived with those nowadays.

Jack’s life being saved was muted by the overall depression that Gianna fell into. As weeks streamed by, her father grew sick of caring for Zachariah without her help. Jack, still in an incubator in the hospital, was being released soon. Cardy was around, but only a shadow that continued trying to get her to sign the divorce papers. She refused, but came to the decision to put their two boys into an orphanage. She couldn’t handle raising them. Cardy said he didn’t care what she did with them; he wanted out. One mistake—one death, and Cardy couldn’t take it. He dropped the whole thing and moved into an apartment closer to his job where he was constructing new computer models, but he vaguely stayed in Gianna’s life because, well, they were still married. He threw his ring away, frequented bars, and coped with his mistakes in his own way, calling Gianna on the weekends. Her depression grew worse, and the day came when she took her two children to the orphanage. It was a large farmhouse with various other children of different ages. She left them there, feeling a tearing at her heart. But she couldn’t look at Jack without seeing Karis’ dead eyes. She couldn’t look at Zachariah without thinking of Cardy’s lost love. Her heart was broken, her mind was degrading, and she knew that she was in no condition to raise her children. Thus, she abandoned them, forcing away her memories, all their pictures, and retreating with her parents back to Gelemorté where she could forget the ruined refuse of her first beginning.

Gianna’s father died relatively early in life from a heart attack. Unfortunately, Heart issues ran ramped in her family on her father’s side, but skipped her generation at least. She fretted about Jack getting the right care and warned them about his early problems after birth, but as she slept, Karis haunted her each night. JUST ONE NIGHT. How could drinking one night ruin…everything? Haunted by each day, she eventually left her mother’s home and ventured back out into the world. She spent years running a bar, working as a hostess, and various other alcohol-related things. One would think she’d never go to a bar again, but after Karis’ death, it was her element—her fix, no, her fate. She believed that this was how it was supposed to be for her. This was her life, and this was her mistake. She lived the rest of her days basking in her own suffering. Occasionally Cardy visited; worried about her, caring for her, finding that he just couldn’t leave her completely alone despite his being with other women on the side. It was after he kept coming to find her that Gianna finally signed the divorce papers and mailed them back to Cardy’s rejected form.

The children, deposited as an insurance that Gianna and Cardy’s lives had one crossed, became beacons for a second beginning. Jackyll was treated carefully, soon growing out of the restraints of hospital gowns. Because of that, as Zachariah matured, he acquired a long-lived nickname: King; he became the stable tower with which Jackyll could cling. And desperately he did so. While they were both surrounded with happy faces of children streaming by, they grew apart from them—separate—an entity all on their own: brother protecting brother. Since that was all they had. Too small to know the difference between mother and caretaker, they found safety in each other, sticking together until their first steps were taken.

Ever since his brain began to record memories, Jack had lived in the same farm house. Over the years, the paint peeled and was repainted only to be battered once again from the outside world. As he grew, he realized before most that it was nearly impossible to have this many brothers and sisters all related to him. It was then that he found out he didn’t have parents—well he did—just no one knew if they were alive or dead or what. Being so young, he couldn’t fathom the idea of not having parents. It haunted him and often gave him nightmares at night, but they soon faded away with time as his eyes drew to King for comfort. It was met, completely with the eternal promise of protection from his brother. From that, Jack grew content despite his constantly fluctuating health. As King spent many of his days inside reading, Jack occupied himself with the leftover books that no one really wanted to read. He entertained his young mind with technological studies, automail books, and other complicated texts that really he didn’t understand at all until the third or fourth time around reading them. It was something to do aside from blare the hard rock station on the radio and get yelled at to turn it down.

The farm house itself was built many years before King and Jack were born on the outskirts of Lior, but it wasn’t founded as an orphanage until soon after. The owners donated the large farm and the surrounding acres to an organization that specified in adopting children and raising them. King and Jack were just two of the many children all of different ages that were adopted by the hired caretakers. The caretakers were organized by number, but the children still called them by their names. Some kids even made jokes out of their numbers by calling them mom number one, mom number nine, etc. Of course, the caretakers were not all female; there were a few men that dedicated their time to raising the orphans as well. A time came when some of the children were older that the men began to teach them how to help out working on the farm. At first, their pleas were ignored and they were told that they didn’t need to help at all, but eventually with Jack’s insistence, the caretaker’s gave in.

While they were working every day and enjoying themselves, the thirty-or-so children grew closer and closer; they became like a real family. All was well and good, but Jack refused to accept that popular point of view. He did, at first, suggest the incorporation of work into their everyday lives, but it was soon after that he saw it as a prospect for danger. It was that realization that forced him to appoint himself as ‘the protector’ of the realm. While King’s bitterness set him apart from the other children, Jack would keep watch over them. In his mind, it made sense. In his mind, he was doing King a favor. He knew that the caretakers weren’t all there at once and they tended to distance themselves from the kids unless they were needed. Jack knew all this, but this also meant that without someone watching over them closely, anyone could easily get hurt by doing a simple thing wrong. But above all else, Jack wanted to also protect his real sibling, King, regardless of his own weak physical condition.

With time, his protector’s complex only grew further and a few of the children tended to resent him for always correcting what they did—like the way they held the rake, or the way they pushed the plow. There were many things that could go wrong, but no one seemed to notice! Jack was aggravated and after a year or so of his struggles, a caretaker by the name of Safra confronted him about it. She always would say to the others that Jack was a well-behaved child and would always look after the others, but soon she saw how much trouble he was going through—trying to learn all the proper ways to do everything and then forcing perfection onto even the smaller ones. She disapproved, and this shattered the careful stability that Jack had built up on his own. Everyone seemed to look down on him at that time. He dropped his corrections and began to watch from a distance. It was only a short while before he took on reckless abandon and began to be care less about his own practices, hoping futilely that he could suck all the recklessness from the others and bring it upon himself.

It was around that time that King began to eat less and less that Jack had his first angina pectoris. Working the hay cleaner, his breath suddenly caught. Thinking he exhausted himself, he went to step away from the danger zone, but a jagged pain formed under his armpit. Freezing and growing increasingly pale, one of the kids turned to him with wide eyes and asked if he was okay. The others stopped shoveling hay into the machine and turned to gander. Knowing of Jack’s proneness to health issues, one of them rushed away to get one of the caretakers. By then, the pain had inched it way into the front of his chest where he clutched and panicked. He had never experienced this before—never felt such horrendous pain ever… It crawled to the back of his shoulders and down his arms, causing him to fall onto the ground, unable to breathe. His heart was squeezing the life out of him; everything was failing apart. His life was nothing. He accomplished nothing. He was going to die.

When Jack woke up, he was surrounded by people and covered in ice packs as if to preserve his dead body, but wait! …He was alive? He felt perfectly fine, but was urged to be taken into the city to see an expert physician. It was Jack’s first time leaving the farmhouse and he was thus exposed to many things like trains and highways, droves of people and business men. He swooned from the backseat until the results from his examinations brought back terrifying results. At age ten, Jack was diagnosed with Myocarditis. There was no cure, and slowly, his heart would degrade beyond salvation. At such a young age, this information was astounding. He wouldn’t live much longer? What. The page turned, leaving him shocked into silence. All the previous joy was sapped out of him, leaving Jack a shell of what he used to be.

King continued to search for clues of their parents, but honestly Jack was only slightly interested in his endeavors, more so determined to make it to eighteen. He started eating healthier, exercising less, pushing himself not at all, and avoiding stress like the plague. They put him on a medication called Toprol and told him to limit his sodium intake. It made him sleepy. All. The. Time. Dealing with constant fluxes of dizziness, light-headedness, and fainting spells, Jack frequented his bed, taking to reading instead of any form of work. He hated it, but his mind began filling with bits of random unusable information. He ate automail books for breakfast and technologies encyclopedias for lunch. Dinner mostly consisted of spying on King and trying to annoy him. However, Jackyll frequently got bored, and one morning he decided not to read. Instead, he daydreamed out the window. Man, wouldn’t it be cool to do something with his life? What was he doing here…? He felt like he was wasting away in this place… Wasn’t there something more beyond these walls—beyond the fence that not only kept them in, but kept the real world out? What…was this? He spent the rest of the morning making King a cake for his fifteenth birthday. It was chocolate and flooded in rainbow sprinkles. Jack himself was covered in icing, but ate none of it for fear that the sugar would speed up his pulse and kill him. King, too, refused the cake, making Jack feel even more useless. He spent the rest of his time in his room, continuing to stare listlessly out the window with a cake no one would eat…

He heard King’s footsteps approaching, and quickly spun around from the window to see a letter gripped in his hands. A letter?! Eagerly, small tendrils of fingers tore it open like a godsend. All the while Jack’s mind was teaming with the possibilities that the parchment contained. Inside it read:

Dear Zachariah and Jackyll,

I know we've never met, and I know your parents never wanted us to, but you're the only grandchildren I have. Your mother tells me that you were the most beautiful of brothers; handsome and true Cerisians even at such a young age. We haven't seen your father in a few years now.

I know, this message is brief; but I love you, il mio bambinos. Whenever you can, come to visit me in Vaingloria, I'll be waiting.

- Constanza Balise, your grandmother

…WHAT!? Jack was silenced in mild shock, his heart racing despite his constant attempts to keep himself under wrap, but—but, but…!! Before he knew it, he was packing everything he had ever cared about, shoving in books he didn’t technically own, along with small mementos of his life here. God knew, Jack was sure they were never coming back. King’s eyes looked as if they were on fire, blazing a trail ahead for them to follow, but Jack felt slighted. He saw the path, but what if their grandmother didn’t care about them either? What if this was just some sick joke? But seeing the world—leaving—exploring was motivation enough to get him the hell out. As the night dawned, they snuck out into the pastures and King took pliers to the fence that was easy enough to roll under. Fleeing into the desert, they hit the train station and wagered for tickets to Creta where they then hopped a boat to Vaingloria, Gelemorté. It was on the long train ride that Jack realized with horror that he forgot his medication. His condition worsened the longer they traveled, but he put up a cold and distant front to keep King away from him so he wouldn’t notice. He then occupied those three weeks with learning Gelemortian from one of the textbooks he stole from the library. …Whoops.

Docking drove his sea legs mad. He could barely walk on land when they arrived, but immediately, they set about looking up their grandmother’s whereabouts. During that time, Jack felt it was safe to say that he was in the worst condition he had ever been in. Flopped on a motel bed in fits of fever, he managed to stay calm enough not to succumb to an angina pectoris again. King was certainly catching on by that time, and assured that he was as comfortable as he could be given their dwindling monetary supply. This made Jack all the more thankful to have an older brother like King. Surely, he was a king… maybe he was even the prince of Gelemorté!

When they finally located their grandmother, she seemed thrilled they made it all the way there alone. But hearing that heavily Cersian-accented “Hello?” through the receiver that King held to his ear was something that changed Jack’s life forever. Constanza, their grandmother, drove over almost immediately to their location, despite it being close enough to the crack of dawn. Honestly, Jack was sure they would have hit voicemail…

With a teary-eyed elder woman that was apparently related to them, Jack was close to some feeling of sediment. Truthfully, he was touched, surprised, and immediately took to her despite knowing nearly nothing about her. Family? So this was family. He had King, but now…now they weren’t alone; it wasn’t just the two of them anymore! But this new feeling took some time to acclimate to despite the acceptance in his depleting heart. Immediately, they set out to get him the medication he needed, and he improved just enough to operate like a normal human being, but still… was he going to have to watch his breathing like this forever? Was there no end to this? Despite being happy, Jack still suffered in secret, masking his pain with smiles and laughter.

To occupy his bright and seething mind, Constanza began teaching Jack alchemy. He put aside the books from the farmhouse and broke out her library of transmutation circles, delving into a new world of science and magic. Nearly overwhelmed with the viable options, he sought for more and more, taking everything he could out of the information available to him. He learned about undiscovered types of elemental alchemy and grew more and more intrigued to crack the code. Along with that, he also took up mastering Gelemortian and delving into Cretan language. During the times he wasn’t studying his brains out, Jack was torturing King with spy games and other fun, childlike shenanigans until a day came filled with rain and thunderstorms. Thunderstorms. Like cable gone mad, the thunder crackled violently so much so they almost didn’t hear the feeble knock at the door. At this hour? Surely that knock was just the cable guy. Their grandmother had mentioned briefly a few times that her daughter, their mother, might come home to visit someday eventually, but she never knew when…

When came as the door swung open to reveal cheap perfume and dankened, red lipstick. Jack lost all self-control and bolted for her in a fit of tears hardly knowing what he was doing. There was a connection with this woman he felt with no one else. They smothered each other in saltwater—a story unclichéd by the woeful tales of broken families no more. Jack knew he was much younger than King and that his innocence tended to mask the questionable, but still he could not grasp the intense rejection in his older brother. He remembered the cake, saw the fervent light in his eyes, and decided not to ask. As he growled like a feral animal about to tear their mother limb from limb, Jack found himself in the middle and his grandmother on the outskirts looking in. Was there nothing he could do to allow King to accept her?

Forgive and forget, but regardless there were questions—questions that needed answers. Blue eyes bright with determination, Jack fiddled with plausible answers, asserting to himself that maybe it was best not to ask. Why were they abandoned? H-how could they be abandoned even when she looked so happy to see them? Through various sources, Jack determined that their mother co-ran a bar currently—that she had divorced their father named Cardy Krow who still lived somewhere in Amestris. They were a half breed, broken from a Cersian mother and Gelemortian father, but he was missing for the last few years. Hm. It brought to light no possible answers as to why she did not take care of them… Why!?

Swallowing the questions, Jack told her everything about himself, hoping that by sharing with her, she’d share with him in return. That was mainly how he obtained the seldom information above, but something was missing—a key piece of discovery. It choked him each night and he stopped bothering to try and get King to let him in. Weeks went by and King stayed in his room. Weeks went by and Jack noticed their mother growing more and more disturbed every time she looked at him. The look changed when she saw King, but whenever her eyes fell on Jack they held remorse, depression, sorrow, misery… so many negative connotations. But what had he done? Was it because of his Myocarditis? What the fuck was it!? He wanted her to stop looking at him like that. Anything—anything that would change her back to how she first was… But as it continued, Jack found that he wanted her to go away again. That look. It was driving him mad.

That was when the sobbing started, keeping him up at night, and plaguing his nightmares with terrifying images of abandonment. With his thirteenth birthday passed, Jack stopped comforting his mother. He burst into her room at the peak of her hysterical sobbing to find that her suitcase was already packed. Mascara-stained cheeks shook at him as if his presence alone made her go haywire. No, what? She fell into the carpet and clutched him close with shaking hands. Painted nails, filed to sharpness, pricked his back, digging at his shirt, and soaking him with her remorse. There was only so much a thirteen-year-old could take. He pushed her away, saying nothing, but demanding answers with a single, dejected look.

No more, she could hold it in no longer. “It’s your face—your face…it’s the same.” Jack’s eyes widened. His face? He touched his cheeks that were wet from hers, staring straight into the lion’s den. ”You had a twin brother... his name... his name was Karis..." Karis. Karis… It echoed in his mind, slamming against his ribs with the thunder in his chest. Twin…brother? His knees slammed into the floor as his mother rose to her feet and fled the scene. It was his turn to cry.

When the front door slammed shut with her exit, King found Jack silently crying in shock. Shaking him, there was no reaction for a while. In a string of slurred words, he managed to relay what he had just learned. Not yet had it sunk in, but it explained…why she looked at him like that. A twin… someone just like him? Did that mean that Karis was…? “It’s not true, she was just lying, it’s not your fault, there was never a twin, he never existed, he never existed, he never existed!” In vain, King attempted to feed him these lies that Jack knew were lies. Despite that, he clung to those words through the nightmares that spoke otherwise. From that day onward, Jack was a different person, stripped of his innocence—naiveté, broken though not bleeding visibly. Stumbling down the hall he had grown accustomed to, he murmured about dreams, muttering the scenery of nightmares as if it were real. He started seeing Karis during the day, starting breaking all the mirrors in the house, starting hating himself and what he looked like. He shaved off all his orange hair the same shade as his father’s, he slept less and less until he would pass out on the couch midday. He even stopped taking his Toprol medication because he just didn’t care anymore. What was he alive for?

King tried to reason with him, opted with following him around like a shadow in case he decide to slit his own throat or something, but Jack already knew it couldn’t be that easy. He would die from a heart attack one day—a surprise eternal sleep. At least then the nightmares would stop. At least then Karis would stop whispering that it was his fault he was dead. But what could he have possibly done to cause Karis’ death? Nothing, that’s right. SO STOP. But Karis was begging him to bring him back. Bring him back!! What…did that even mean? Jack had no idea until he stumbled upon a book entitled Human Transmutation where horrors of the world burst from the pages and into his genius-qualified mind.

Putting chalk to hand, he set about mindless plans, hardly knowing the meaning of taboo and why he should not do it. Planning for a couple of days, he snuck out to gather supplies and hide them in one of his drawers. It was easy to figure out; the formulas came naturally to him and flowed through his eyes and into his mind as easy as cake. He set up the procedure, closing the book he found without reading it all the way to the end. And then…waited.

His grandmother was out at an elderly counsel and King went out to the grocery store. With a small window for the transmutation, Jack immediately set to work with unveiling the chalk circle he had spent days on. Sprinkling his blood over various chemical elements and supplies, he slammed his hands down on the circle and didn’t close his eyes a moment. KARIS!!!!!

He was submerged in a glowing world, shrouded with skeleton faces and sticky bones grabbing on to his shirt, dragging him under wave after wave of sand painted the color of blood. He clenched his lips closed, blinking fervently at the sky for salvation. But none came, but a white land filled with everything but nothing. Eyes—eyes everywhere, but only two looking at him. No, they weren’t eyes. It was a white blob of festering everythings. The World. A gate slammed before him, sucking him into the flow of knowledge. “See,” it said in Amestrian, locking him in. Years, he floated just above the surface, deluged with so much knowledge that his mind burst, broke twice—three times—four—he lost count over and over again, started counting again and then lost count again. All the pain of the world slammed into his small frame, filling his mind with mud, dust, and rubbish that turned into gold, worth everything. It was then and only then that Jack realized what death truly was. When he came back to logical thought, he was standing just as he had been eons ago. Bewildered, lost, knowing everything yet nothing at all, he opened his mouth to ask, but was silenced. “What will you give up?” Give up?

Equivalent exchange. That was right… he could not obtain something without first giving something up… The very basics of alchemy. H-how had he forgotten that!? Did he seriously think that Karis would just come back without any compensation? Before he had a chance to answer The World, it reached forward and suddenly things were missing. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe—suddenly he felt that same pain again as an angina pectoris wreaked havoc over his body. He reached up to touch his chest, but nothing happened except blood. Blood. Blood. Everywhere. His eyes met the steady gaze of The World, laughing—laughing at him. “It is the duty of the Truth to deal you just despair so that you do not become conceited.”

The blood was all over the floorboards. His vision was leaving him. His heart was…stopping. Quivering to some sort of consciousness, Jack focused dully into the void of his creation. There…there, came eyes blearing from the alchemic steam, parting to reveal a rumpled form brought to light. Baked in sunlight, a crispy bundle of flesh moaned, gurgling nonsense noises and flailing almost violently. Its body twisted off into a malformed shape, curling in on itself as if dragged out of a grill where flames had eaten it. It wasn’t human. A shriek fell out of his mouth when it started crawling towards him, eyes beady and sucking in all the light around it as if it they were the very definition of darkness. Fumbling to run, Jack slowly watched pain show through its eyes, saw it writhe violently in agony, thrashing at the air as if it were tangible. It opened its mouth wide, only silence exiting. It…it was as if it was trying to tell him something—trying to communicate something to him, but nothing happened—nothing but the degradation of its own body. In slow motion, it broke apart, shifting particle over particle into ash. The door slammed open, Jack on the edge of insanity, staring at the pile of ash as if it defined him. King was there, and so were dots, eating at the corners of his vision until unconsciousness took him evermore.

King ran into the grimy city rainwater, drenched by both blood and puddles. The hospital ER opened its doors, taking in the hopeless. With a rare blood type on top of a heart condition, it took time to get a blood transfusion to save his life. The doctors were baffled he was even alive, explaining that essential organs in his body mystically vanished without a trace. They included both his liver and kidneys. Gone. Along with his left arm. Jack was hanging on the ropes of life, nails ripped tight into the twists of fate, but he did not fall. No, he did not fall.

Hooked up to life support and a dialysis machine, Jack was subjected to a vegetable state. As the doctor relayed the information to King, he denied all prospects of euthanasia and spent the night in the hospital with his brother. Their grandmother was informed quickly, but did not come to the hospital quickly. Seeing the state of Jack’s room, she appeared in the hospital the next morning, toting all of their things in tow. She dropped them at King’s feet and declared in a hateful voice that she had no intention for Jack to use the alchemy she taught him in such a fashion—that even her daughter in all of her misery hadn’t resorted to such witchery. She said that she wanted no such persons living in her house or having anything to do with her family. Thus, King and Jack were again abandoned.

Jack’s condition fluctuated constantly, allowing him few waking moments where he tried to explain to King—tried to get up from the bed only to fall and nearly suffocate. Always in pain, he told him he had always been in pain. He had dreams—nightmares about that thing—that thing that had been Karis… But he understood that it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. Karis was gone. That thing—that thing wasn’t Karis; it was something that had no means to exist in the world. That was why…it turned to ash. Even knowing that, he was followed by leftover figments of shadows. He apologized over and over again, crying so much that it normally exhausted him into fits of sleep. Then, he would not wake again for a long, long while. He did not die, but he also could not live; Jack had transgressed into a near-death state of medical limbo.

Ten years passed with Jack not awakening in half that time. Hope was degrading as his physical condition worsened but further. Because of his rare blood type, donor organs were seldom if any and nothing came. However, as new technological advancements came onto the market, over a few years, new prosthetic artificial organs could be attained. Soon, they were licensed for official use, using automail principles and artificial tissue. Imperfect, they ran at only roughly 95% efficiency, but were immune to disease and other illness associated to the specified organ. By way of surgery, King was informed that Jack’s condition could be cured. After so much time dealing with this, he could rise among the living once more… Yet, the surgery itself was risky, having not been typically tested on very many patients prior. The prototype surgery revolved around a waiting list, and the longer King waited to sign them up, the closer to the bottom of the list they fell. With only a 30% survival rate coupled with Jack’s rare blood type, the danger outweighed the free surgery. It was definitely something to think about.

After some decision-making, King signed it, but it was during those weeks as the organs were prepared for his brother that King became something else entirely: he wasn’t human anymore. He came to stand over Jack’s bed, watching the still form, unhinging his jaw with a plan shrilling to climax. Jack’s unconscious soul left his body, locked inside of the new Gluttony...where he, too, became someone else, but in a different life, composed of two years’ worth of time in a dream. …his name was: Celesto, and he was no longer himself. Think of it like lucid dreaming.

[Guest]

----------------------------------Dream-----------------------------

When he was fifteen, Celesto had memorized countless transmutation circles including the human transmutation circle that Hagane no Renkinjutsushi had used to gain The Truth from The Gate. He really didn’t understand that part, but if it was the truth, then it had to tell him about lightning alchemy, right? It was the alchemy in the book his parents had entrusted to him and Karis, his twin. It didn’t matter what happened; Celes was willing to bet his meaningless life on it in order to give it meaning. At this point, he knew it was a taboo, but he was able to justify this in his mind, seeing as others got away with it and survived. It would be okay; he knew that his adjustments to the human transmutation circle would yield successful results. This was the confidence he needed in order to achieve The Truth, of that he was sure.

The day came in early summer when the heat was first settling in; it was stifling. He had just turned sixteen and was at the peak of his individualism. He spent days behind the closed door of his privileged and personal room. This was only possible because many of the children who were older than him had already left the farm to begin their lives. Some got jobs far away, others lived close and would visit on their days off, and some even joined the military. Celesto too, would leave after he perfected the art of lightning transmutation, but he would never join the military as a slave to those in power. Never. It was corrupt. All of it! What he wanted to do was to show them that life wasn’t about power and rank. Life didn’t revolve around this magic called alchemy. A bunch of curious children proved such a fact. Look! Celesto wanted to show them his pain. This is what happens when you meddle with the hands of god.

The hot summer day went smoothly with the completion of the circle that was carefully drawn with a piece of chalk he had secretly borrowed from a girl named Rebby who was four years younger than him. He then gathered the materials that were needed to create a human that he had hidden in the barn furthest from the house. He had chosen that place because it was where the cows slept and hardly anyone went there at night. It was ideal. He spent the entire day making sure everything was perfect; checking and rechecking his work to clarify that the formulas he invented would still be able to open The Gate that felt like a gamble to him. Fun.

Finally, what he thought as the very literal ‘moment of truth,’ was upon him. It was three in the morning when he placed his hands against the chalk and was enveloped in yellow light. Instantly, his entire body was showered with pain unlike anything he could have imagined. Bruises, scratches, the ache of a day of work was paler than pale in comparison. Right when he was sure he would pass out from the pain and it would all be over, white completely took over his vision. Then there it was…right before his eyes. Panic crept into the depths of his heart and gripped it tightly, choking the breath from him and leaving him trembling without a word to say. He watched the shapeless World voice words that reverberated throughout his entire body. They were words he could never remember, ones that sent a shock through his entire existence. It was only in that very moment that he realized what death truly was. Shaking, he fell through the open doors and the pain began again. This time it felt as though all of the pain in the world was aimed straight into the very core of his mind. He felt it shattering and breaking down into nothing only to be reformed into everything. It was too much, but he craved more, to know more—to understand everything. When the gate doors echoed closed, he felt the most sadness he had ever felt and watched as that world that felt more real than reality faded away.

Before he opened his eyes he was met with a smell that was so putrid it was worse than that dead snake Oronaru found in the yard. Heavy breathing sounded in his face and he was persuaded by curiosity to open his eyes. The moment he did, his body was flooded and overpowered by sheer agony, fear, and denial. He screamed, the sound of his own voice wafting through the humid night air. He couldn’t see anything except the creature in front of him. It wasn’t alive, it didn’t have a soul, it couldn’t be seeing him…it couldn’t be staring at him as if asking him why. Why? That’s what he wanted to know… Celesto hadn’t planned on this—he didn’t want this—there wasn’t supposed to be a physical result or any result other than the knowledge he gained. How could this have happened? He was frozen, watching the darkened thing’s glowing eyes watch him. It felt like many lifetimes were spent in a staring contest; he couldn’t take his eyes away. Time crawled by, but only a few minutes passed.

“Br-bro-thher…” It croaked, clawing at the wooden floor boards underneath them. Celesto felt tears streaming down his face. No…it wasn’t. He hadn’t wanted to bring back Karis. No! No! This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was supposed to be something…else. But…hadn’t he wanted Karis to be brought back? Secretly…wasn’t that his desire. Oh no…

“Ka-Karis I-I’m so sorry!!” Celesto cried.

He came back to himself suddenly to realize that the monster that had been staring at him intently was now writhing in pain. It was probably because it didn’t have a soul anymore. In horror, Celesto went to bring his hands to cover his mouth, but found that he could only see one make it there. He glanced to the side and his vision became red…no, the scenery—his room was what had become red. It wasn’t just a color; it was blood—his blood. He couldn’t see out of his left eye anymore, but he knew it was still there. Was only the sight taken?

Such…a terrible thing—how could something soulless suffer? Could it even think? He shuddered at these thoughts as his consciousness poured out from him. How could he do something like this just to gain knowledge? Was he so selfish that he thought human transmutation wouldn’t bring something back? No, he had thought it was impossible…Impossible like lightning transmutation. Remember…nothing is impossible…except bringing the dead back to life, right?

The carcass of the thing withered into a pile of ashes as if it had been burned and the bones melted as if the air had become acid. Every moment Celesto watched, sobbing more than he did in his worst nightmares. When five minutes had passed, he crawled to a corner in the room only to find more eyes on him. Cowering before them, he shut his own eyes. He would see no more; he couldn’t take anymore. But he was being shaken and yelled at, except all he could make out were the curse words.

He didn’t regain consciousness until a week after it happened. Upon which, he was told to never speak of what he did. Very nicely and very carefully, he was also instructed that he was to be kicked out of his home in a year. That was the first thing he heard since the grunts of suffering that came from the monster he created. He knew then, the old Celesto had died that night with the disintegrating flesh of the thing. He was drilled to tell anyone that asked that his eye had lost sight because he stabbed himself with hay while feeding the horses. Reality hit him in the face when he realized with sick humor that the last thing he had ever seen out of his left eye was that…thing who had called him brother. When Celesto had come back to himself a bit more, one of the caretakers broached the subject of fixing the dimmed sight of his right eye with laser surgery very sympathetically. He cringed at the thought that someone could feel sorry for him for the horrible thing that he did. He didn’t deserve that…

He decided to do the surgery and poured his entire savings into it with no regret. Immediately, three weeks after that night, he was put through a different version of hell. The doctors had said that instead of the sight just being taken from his left eye, it appeared as if it had affected the sight of his right eye as well. The thought haunted him and he refused to think of it…maybe it was because he resisted it? He didn’t want to know; just this once he allowed himself to be ignorant.

Afterwards, Celesto gained full sight in his right eye, but his left was unrecoverable, they said. The rehabilitation took longer than everyone thought and it wasn’t until Celesto turned seventeen that he had complete control over his arm and didn’t experience too much pain. It was a long and grueling process that left him drained of emotion, physical, and mental strength. The horrified looks he achieved from his ‘brothers and sisters’ sliced deep into his heart and took his voice from him. He hardly ever spoke to anyone by the time the end of spring came.

This was the time in which every year the orphans cleaned everything. It was also the time when Celesto was supposed to leave for good. He was indifferent to the idea and no longer felt obliged to call this place his home; it was just an old, smelly barn that he lived in for his whole life. That was it, nothing more, nothing less. When he went about gathering his few things, he made sure that the room was completely spotless. The room he had previously transmuted was now reconstructed into a new bathroom that was more like a small bath house.

Checking under the bed, Celesto spotted a shadow. Frightened at first, he pulled away in fear and went to leave, but something drew him back to that shadow. Maybe he would always be compelled by the untouchable, but this time for sure, maybe he could grasp the shadow and make it into something worth reverence. Smiling at his petty thoughts, he reached out to touch it and felt his fingertips connect with worn paper. He pulled it out quickly and his eyes fell onto the only thing left of his childhood—of his brother, his parents, and of his dream: the book on basic alchemy. Blinking away an onslaught of tears, he opened the cover…

After Celes left, he had traveled to Central: the alchemic center of the world. There he spent his time mastering his alchemy until it reached levels beyond what most people dream. However, he heard rumors of a girl in the military whose abilities bested him in every way. Her name was Reila Tsukino: someone that intrigued him. After living on his own for a while, with aspirations to overcome her, Celesto’s façade became more natural. He even fooled himself sometimes—maybe he didn’t even know he was fooling himself anymore… but he still believed that he did not deserve to be happy. Carrying the burden of Karis and Human Transmutation with him everywhere, Celesto developed a silly, wild sort of personality that allowed him to enjoy existence a bit. Still, there were those nights when he was all alone that the memories crashed through the foggy windows and slammed into him over and over again until he couldn’t take it. The gears. They were the gears…turning…spinning metal…rusted…sterling silver… They burned into his blind eye, searing his mind and making him a slave to sorrow. Though no one could know or guess. He was happy to keep this secret.

Celesto became a pirate! That’s right, he joined a crew! Of course, they were modern day pirates. Between North City and Fort Briggs in the wilderness tundra lays an abandoned pirate ship from 2,000.12823 years ago when Drachma and North City were still under water. The wood is maintained and still holds its elaborate paint designs in gold, royal blue, and red. Inside is a kitchen with a working refrigerator, stove, etc. Somewhat recently, a strange generator was brought in that is able run on Celesto's lightning alchemy. Hanging down from the highest area is a chandelier that is able to light the entire bottom floor. There is a second floor with a set of creaky spiral stairs. In the middle of the second floor is a large hole that had formed with age before Sal and his crew got there. Spreading out just below the deck (which acts as the ceiling) are a series of rooms where the pirates sleep. Seeing as beds cannot fit up the stairs, futons are laid out. Usually each pirate is able to have their own room. The only bathroom is located next to the sitting/TV room and the kitchen and contains a bathtub and a shower. The shower runs on melted snow water and is heated by Celes. No doors separate any of the rooms save for the bedrooms and the single bathroom. Privacy is reduced to only a single room. Regardless, Celesto was happy to be a part of something again. He gained purpose and together they would overthrow the Amestrian dictatorship and establish something called democracy. Celesto was currently reading a book on it and he didn’t really understand it. Stuff like politics just didn’t really get through to him. Sure, people called him a scientific genius and he was good a battle tactics in video games (he didn’t have experience in real life), but some things just didn’t connect. That was just the kind of man the happy-go-lucky Celes was. He began living together with a bunch of varying people named Jack (his captain), Salazar, and a girl whom everyone called Aren, but he insisted on calling her Euphie and Salazar, Salz. And thus began Celesto’s love for giving people nicknames… The end was nigh.

Of course, however, the obnoxious page will always turn to a new chapter. Celes' end wasn't quite anywhere near from happening just yet. The happy-go-lucky idiot blond decided to enjoy himself at Central City's annual Festival by planting a bomb in the woman's bathroom and making out with his hot co-worker (Euphie). Since Jack fell off the face of the earth, they determined this method was very much...awesome! Therefore, the assassination of Hild was eminent!! Or...not. Instead, some crazy chick with the ability to erase people's memories swooped in and destroyed their wonderful plans. She was dangerous. So Celes grabbed his girl and his pet (Captain) and fled to safe ground. The next morning, he made breakfast (he was forced to) and life went back to the planner. Which involved bringing his twin brother back to life for real this time...

* * *

"How many years has it been?" Celesto murmured to himself in the darkness. His hands were caressing his eye patch, slowly untying the string and letting it fall to the floor boards at his feet. His heart pounded against his chest, an unseeing eye cast further into the very darkness of his own soul. This time--this time for sure... The small pentagon window in his room was open, a freezing winter breeze entering and tossing papers around in the leaking moonlight. The papers were filled with years of calculations that he had lived his whole life to discern. A circle was drawn into the floor perfectly in pale, white chalk. Sky blue eyes shifted from the masterpiece and to the pile of chemicals collected in a jar made of the Ceres crystals from his lightning. Everything was there--everything that a human being possessed. How simple it seemed... But just the circle and these chemicals hadn't been enough. Tonight was going to be different. And so would be the results.

He looked inhuman, standing there bathed in moonlight. His golden hair latched itself to the silvery light, dripping down the nape of his neck and meeting the gaze of a sharpened blade. He caressed the thin tendrils with the tip until a ripping sound burst from the contact. Celes' long hair fell from his grip, collecting in the cracks of wood around the circle. Their DNA was identical. So this, and... He raised the knife to his wrist, a cruel frown gathering on his usually smiling lips. His favorite facade was long gone. Celesto was planning on giving his life for Karis. He had nothing left to live for—no value in his existence. If this failed, what reason would he have to try again? He had nothing left to sacrifice. He was worthless.

As he sliced his wrist open and painted his blood over the large circle, he thought back to the time at the festival. Euphie and her long, lavender hair in the woman's bathroom watching him wistfully as he set up bombs. His first kiss, her captivating eyes in a fit of surprise and brief passion. Their eventful escape and the bombs conjured to life behind their retreating backs. Since Karis' death, Celes had learned mastery over nearly every element: fire, wind, water, lightning, and...love. A bitter sweet smile flickered to his dying lips and he stared at his searing wrist. The minute pain fluttered through his nerves, but he easily ignored it. Please just let me talk to my brother before I die...I just want to say one thing. "Will I ever be happy again?" He whispered to the moon peering through his window. He closed his eyes, bare feet touching the very edges of the human transmutation circle. Celesto S. Krow took a deep breath and feel to his knees.

Memories flooded behind his eyelids--horror-filled nightmares that had once been reality. It called him... The inhuman thing had been alive...just briefly he had retrieved his brother's soul. It was possible. He had to picture him—every detail identical to his own. His hair was now the length it had been then... Everything had to be the same. With vicious eyes, glinting in the dim lightning, Celesto held the pictures and all the knowledge he obtained in front of his eyes, ready to make it materialize in front of him no matter what the cost. Take me—take my entire existence; I don't care!! He shot with his mind into the powdery circle that was covered in drying blood. He slammed his hands against the floor and listened to it creak beneath his weight. Would the whole pirate ship break down from this power? He hoped he could at least spare his friends the misfortune he carried with him everywhere. He thought of it--everything and the entire room filled with bright yellow transmutation circles. They collected in the air all around him. The large one on the floor mirrored onto the ceiling and over each opposing wall. The entire room was painted in Celes' alchemy. He didn't need to draw the circles, they birthed from deep within him. This was his only gift.

He wasn't sure when he lost conscious—If at all, but he found his mind and soul trapped just beyond The Gate. "Hello, World," Celesto said sardonically. The white being sitting in the air raised nonexistent eyebrows, furrowing its genderless brow in seeming thought. The blond laughed bitterly and held out his arms. "Take what you want, leave the rest, but send back my brother. It mimicked his every movement and then smiled a teethe grin that made Celesto think that it was about to devour his flesh. He stepped back slightly, feeling fear for the first time that night. His skin crawled as if a million nails were running gingerly over it. "W-well?" He stuttered, cold eyes meeting the existence that is all.

"You cannot bring back the dead," it said as if it was the cold, hard truth that everyone else knew. The Truth... Celesto's heart clenched and a sharp pain writhed in his chest. What had his whole life been for then?! "But... that is only what you humans have been led to believe. Look," it said, motioning to the blank whiteness that surrounded them. And suddenly Celes could see out of both his eyes. And he saw—he saw everything. There were bodies...countless, unseeing, festering bodies that weren't moving. His stomach flipped and he turned to the side, sure he was going to be sick. The white being raised a hand and the feeling passed. Just what...was this? There were so many questions he wanted to ask. He opened his mouth. " You cannot have everything. Take only what you have come here for. Remember your true intentions and if you waver, it will have been for naught. Humans...cannot know. There are things you cannot know and things that you shouldn't know. You know more than you should. Do not seek to know more. Your existence is already tainted with unreceding pain. I will take what is left of your value. Should you lose something important again, you will no longer mean anything." The World motioned to the fading piles and piles of bodies that littered the entire space. It never ended. "Find him."

Days...months...years—how long was it? Celesto was lost. He swayed through the mists of disappearing bodies, digging through fellow Gelemortians and Cersians, and Drachmans, Amestrians, Cretans, Criegs, Aerugese, Xingese... Who were all these people?! He felt his sanity leaving with the sweat that stung his eyes and poured in rivets down his neck. His fingernails were bent and bloodied from digging and digging. Never would he find his brother... Karis was lost. And for the zillionth time, his hoarse voice rung through the deadly silence of nothingness. "KARIS!!!!!!!!!!!!" Time was running out. He was dying, he felt himself fading too...like all the others, he was becoming useless and...one of them—lifeless and blank. He would lose himself. But he had to keep going...had to keep going. He began humming a song, to keep his thoughts at bay. And soon he began whispering the words to the forlorn shells of humans he stepped on and pushed aside. Although he wished to save them all, there was only one he could. "I want to stand at the top of a mountain," he sang, "And whisper before we are destroyed 'Keep going' The caress of winter and neon lights A cold kiss Licking at the seams of history I’m slipping In high heels— In boots And find the faraway sound of a bell ringing...Can you hear it too? The graffiti on the wall reads 'The end is near', but I want to stand at the top of a mountain And whisper before we are destroyed 'Keep going’." His voice wavered, energy pouring out of him. How long could he go without food or water? It seemed as if he could survive without it... And then his cold fingers wound around something—the smooth, familiar touch of skin that was no one else. It was Karis. He knew it was Karis before he pulled out the body from under a pregnant woman. He gazed on the unburnt skin, the closed eyelids that weren't gazing, dead at the sky. This...was a miracle. Alchemy could do this? He was preserved...just as he was before death clutched him. Celes felt tears—real tears—run down his cheeks as he clung his brother to him and stared up at the white nothingness of a sky. "I've found him," he whispered to nothing in particular. How long had he been in...here?

"You have gained years in your soul," a floating voice boomed from the depths of everything, "in reality, no time has passed; it has been passed onto your twin's body instead. He will be the same age as you now when he is brought back. Keep the knowledge clear in your mind or his soul will reject its natural container. Concentrate..." it whispered, the sound fading into the white. Celesto felt his arms lighten and glanced down to notice that Karis was no longer with him. No... he wanted to scream. But instead, he threw away himself--his emotions--his wishes--all his existence, and focused. He let memories cloud his mind, fixtures of alchemic waves, bouncing off every fiber of his body. Light and circles, mixtures of magic, words, and symbols crowded into the white space and spun Celes into oblivion.

When he came back to his body all he knew was pain. Make it go away, he shrieked in his mind, clawing at the wood, only to catch one of his nails on a nail. He didn't notice, because his mind had plunged into hell. He waited for it...he waited for death to bristle its cold, bony fingers up his spine and clasp his neck. He waited, his eyes sealed shut. And when he opened them, he was once again blind in one. And...he was alive. He was breathing, his lungs pitching and heaving as he sucked in each breath. He was alive. And in front of him... the steam was clearing and beady eyes didn't meet his own, nor did the croaking word that had tormented him all this time... Instead, Celesto's lips formed the single word that had carried over the ages to this very moment. "Br-bro-thher?" There was no answer. Or if there was...he couldn't hear it because his ears were ringing so loud he thought he would go deaf. Darkness ate at the corners of his vision, licking over his pupils until they shrank to nothing, drowning in a sea of unseeing blue. Celes for the first time realized he was holding himself up with just one arm instead of two. He glanced to the side and saw horror with hazy vision. It was gone. His left arm was gone, cut cleanly off. Was that...was that all it took? Just an arm? His twin's body and soul for an ar—Nightmares during the day—it was a voice in his head clear as a bell ringing from beyond The Gate. It was still glowing. The circle was still glowing. He had to concentrate. The wrist he had cut was aching more than the severed arm. Numb..it was so numb—numb enough to allow his mind to fasten itself around the circles glowing throughout the room. And all at once, on their own accord, they vanished and Celesto collapsed onto the ground. His chin slamming into the chalk, eyes fluttered closed, but as much as he wanted to he couldn't pass out. The numbness was running out of him, carrying the pain he had woken to back into his system. He cried out, rolling on the ground and clutching at the stub that spurted blood all over the floor. There was so much...there was no way he was going to survive. But he wasn't losing consciousness. Why...why, why!? Was this part of the curse!?

* * *

Floods of meetings overlapped the feeling of being cursed. He met a man named Wolfie—he shared moments with another named Grimm. Celes left the pirates and ventured slowly back to his homeland of Gelemorté. Abandoning everything he had and loved, he turned tail to the snowy tundra. Even he was uncertain, but after bringing Karis back to life—after succeeding only to be dejected by this twin, Celes couldn’t take the pain. He just could deal with being in the same place only to be ignored—to be set apart from the family that he wanted to have. Family was something…it was something one couldn’t find anywhere else. So he left. He trickled back to Gelemorté, leaving behind everything else. Wolfie was a silly guy, but Celes felt he was becoming less and less like himself. He stopped laughing like a fool, stopping whistling, giggling, making snow angels. He found less amusement in this life. The colors became dank, the joy was sucked out of the scenery. He began to question why he was even living at all. Why was he even liv—?! His name…it wasn’t Celesto…

----------------------------------Dream End-----------------------------

It was so real. Waking to know that the last two years of his life was a dream came as something nearly unbelievable. The mistakes of his past were remedied with growing technology, reforming his perception of the world and sobering him to the truth. Ten solid years had scalded past, leaving burns that marred the skin around his mind; however, Jack was not prepared to give up. This was his life, and he wasn’t about to bite the dust just yet. Preparing himself for the worst, he opened his eyes to the dim-lighting of the hospital room. His dreamless self was fully intact and ready to start rolling in the tanks to fight whatever came next. He was here; he was himself, and Jack Krow was done frolicking in some made-believe universe. After being forced into an invented body named Celesto, Jack had nearly lost every piece of himself only to rise without pain for the first time since he remembered waking up in the same hospital bed again and again. Immediately, he learned of the automail organs now functioning within him, powering this life and allowing him to be whole again. The nightmares were gone along with the dreams; this was reality. Damn, that was one helluva trip.

Alright, now that was one thing. Sure, running on hunks of metal in his body plated with human tissue and so forth made sense with the technology he saw powering his dialysis, but...what was this about being a sin? King was the cause of that insane two-year long dream that was so damn real that waking up hurt like bitch run through with a hoe? Yikes. Well, King always did like stuffing his face with various demands, but Gluttony? He was more than a little shocked to find out that if he threw his brother into the hay machine, he would become minced meat, but not die. The image was kind of…unsettling. He wasn’t sure if he was entirely okay with knowing that, but he tried to accept it to the best of his ability. He knew this wasn’t another damn false reality though. There was a difference. He wasn’t sure if he could explain it, but it was there. He could tell.

Weak as all hell, Jack couldn’t walk but a couple feet without completely exhausting himself and nearly passing out. He hated sleeping. He hated losing consciousness. He was DONE. Blasting his rock music made him feel better, but progress was slow considering he couldn’t overexert himself without having a mini heart attack. The first thing he did was shave. That beard made him look like an orange-haired Santa Clause on a clown fix. Seriously. Afterwards, he was affixed with his Def Leppard shirt, and thus reentered the world as an Earth-walker instead of a half-empty can of vegetables. He was satisfied, although he found it a bit hard to readjust to the fact that he wasn’t Celesto and his brother was, oh you know, an immortal sin called Gluttony who could suck people’s souls out into a fairytale dreamland. Whatever, he was living his life now thanks to that power…apparently? It still sounded like a terrible plotline to him; they needed better writers.

Speaking of writers, the next scene in his recovery happenstanced to be his own renovation of a cure for Myocarditis. Of course, he knew it was impossible, but he was already used to the idea of overcoming that simple thing. Look at his brother. Cut off his arm and it grows back. Out of nothing, it just reappears. Yeah, okay maybe he was still getting used to the idea, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t eventually beat what some conceived as impossible. Taking those thoughts with him, Jack began the long-winded process of fixing his condition. It took many months, whereas he also regained most of his strength. Eating healthy, drinking protein drinks, and other disgusting health-inducing liquids he proscribed to himself, Jack was on his way to success. But only a few steps further and he would have invented an automail heart, created from a metal incapable of rust. This metal he named Labrose Alloy, crafted from various Earth-found materials and mashed together into a sterling silver-esque luster. The heart he crafted was not really <3, but more like ☼, fitted snuggly into a carved chest cavity via a constructed, circular piece. Inside that circular piece is inserted the Labrose Alloy heart muscle. Powered by a digital battery of his own making, the muscle is then connected to a series of small electrical impulse wires, feeding from it to his nerves in order to make it function naturally. But all things artificial need maintenance and all technologies improve with time, therefore, Jack made it so fully accessible that he can work on the device without disconnecting it from himself (and thus dying). Well, the surgery to remove his faulty heart and connect the wires did give him a bit of a scare, but he insisted with the appointed doctor that there was no liability. With complete confidence, he died. And nothing special happened except his artificial heart bringing him back to life once connected. The only difference now was that when he wore clothing with loose fiber, the seven-pronged lines of ethereal blue halogen lights shine through. Hey, at least he had a nightlight to keep the devils of the night lurking at bay.

Not so much. After a night at the gym, Jack was basking on his bed, fiddling with the redesign of his automail arm whilst watching the ceiling fan spin so slowly he contemplated rewiring the whole system to actually ventilate the dusty, heated air instead of mixing it around like grandma’s beaters. But he was too tired to do much of anything besides stare into space, mixing and matching formulas, shapes, blueprints, and all sorts of equations. That was when King called him down to the bar. And what awaited was a surprise that Jack would have never guessed. Well, fancy that. Their old man decided to stop by for thirsty Thursday in King’s Gelemortian bar, Neuvo. Instead of ordering a drink, he ordered a beating. Fed up, King and himself slipped into a duet of telling off. All of his anger, all of his feelings of neglect sifted into this one moment he may or may not regret in the future. Swallowing that, he knew exactly what he was doing as they talked. In conversation, Jack learned that his—their father owns a corporation called Krow industries where he makes weaponized automail. Yet, it was obviously in bad shape for the guy to turn up. Evidently, his second wife ditched him and took his kids with him, leaving no heir. No heir. All it took was a few threats and King throwing angry words about until Cardy blanched. Quivering in the barstool, he handed over all he had left in the form of paperwork. But instead of King taking the highchair of the plummeting corporation, he told Cardy to sign it over to Jack. And in the back room as they bloodied their thumbs, Cardy told him that he was thinking about retiring anyway—that at least he could settle himself down somewhere knowing that one of his sons took over for him. Hearing this, Jack felt nothing, struggling with indifference. He was told later that the reason behind his name being written was because King knew jack about running a company. So be it. Jack was already formulating ideas: he had found his route 666.

And as soon as he got his hands on the corporation, as CEO, he began developing innovative products that began showing up in magazines and then on the news, and soon reporters were crowding in. Jack moved to Amestris where he erected a skyscraper in Central that bested the highest-quality corporations. In it, he installed various top-of-the-line technology, distilling it with his own tweaks of hardware and projector-utilizing screens. Needless to say, the stocks crashed through the roof and were number one in no time. Overnight, Jack became a multi-billionaire, celebrated as a technical genius mastermind.

...........................................................................

TRIVIA:
→ Crook is his middle name...literally its translation. He often brags about it to add to his character.
→ He is a fabulous actor and flamboyant liar.
→ He is not chivalrous in any way whatsoever.
→ He is selfish and narcissistic.
→ He is super ignorant to people's feelings.
→ He openly admits he's an asshole.
→ He lies to get out unwanted things.
→ He has trouble communicating that he cares when he actually does.
→ He'll never kill someone or get his own hands dirty.
→ He has way too much self-confidence.
→ He can read Binary (computer language) or any other digital codes like he can Amestrian (his first language).
→ Anything connected to a satellite he has access to.
→ Pervert in sheeps clothing.
→ His favorite song is "Rock of Ages" by Def Leppard.
→ His one eye is almost permanently winked.
→ He wears contacts, but does own glasses and wears them occasionally along with goggles when working with dangerous materials.
→ His favorite city is New York in Creta.
→ He can be perceived as a con-artist in some cases, however everything he does can be made legal.
→ He is CEO of a famous multi-billion dollar automail corporation called: Krow Industries.
→ He designs automail, various technology, and computers in his spare time.
→ What he spends his money on includes a list of charities, his automail corporation, and cars.
→ He owns a private jet and fourteen cars with his last name and their number as the license plates. Along with that, three of them are classics.
→ He owns a Krow Industries skyscraper in Central City, Amestris and a mansion in South City, Amestris lakeside.
→ He loves digging for information.
→ He enjoys giving people all sorts of nicknames because he can't remember names for the life of him.
→ He has an excellent memory (save for names).
→ The thoughts of other people taste like honey.
→ Sometimes the thoughts drive him out of his own mind.
→ He takes medication at night to knock him out.
→ He is addicted to Morphine and Nicotine.
→ He plays saxophone to help him think.
→ He will do pretty much anything to make sure that his brother is satisfied.
→ He has an automail heart in his body that he designed himself due to having Myocarditis. It still gives him some trouble and could at any time malfunction. He still experiences angina pectoris and takes toprol occasionally.
→ He has an automail left arm, liver, and two kidneys due to attempting human transmutation to bring his twin, Karis, back to life.
→ He doesn't keep his human transmutation attempt a secret, and in fact openly brags about it. However, when pressed for more information than what he gives, he clams up and immediately changes the topic to avoid bringing back the memories. This is how he deals with it: by laughing it off and pretending that it was nothing and had no effect on him.
→ He doesn't dream.
→ He always listens to ocean sounds on a device before going to sleep.
→ He is bridging on obsessed with darts and gambling, but he hates cards because it's never a challenge for him.
→ Can say "you're beautiful" and "where's the bathroom" in ten languages.
→ Thoughts have no language.
→ He is fluent in Amestrian, broken Cretan, and Rouenian (Gelemortian Dialect).

...........................................................................

ALIAS:
→ Aki

OTHER CHARACTERS:
→ Reila, Spade, Aurel, Toss, Elastor,

CREATOR'S COMMENTS:
→ Celesto S. Krow was originally made Jan 4, 2011, but I remade him.
→ Credit to Ross for helping to formulate the history plot.
→ 11,880 NEVER AGAIN.

FACE CLAIM:

Code:

[b]UTA NO☆PRINCE-SAMA♪[/b]/[i]JINGUJI REN[/i]

CUSTOM RANK:
→ KEEPER'S BROTHER

OFFICIAL TITLE:
→ Mastermind

...........................................................................

[Guest]

APPROVED

ITS AN ARMY OF WORDS! But he's fantastic, and just holy shit @_@ Tony Stark

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