Name: Bizzy
Journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quietcreativity
AIM: TheBizzy
Plurk:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
brb_herding_cats
Email: brb.herding.cats@gmail.com
Character Journal:equinamity
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Bizzy
AGE: 27
JOURNAL:equinamity (Character Journal); quietcreativity (Personal Journal)
IM / EMAIL: AIM is TheBizzy (and I’m never there); e-mail is brb.herding.cats@gmail.com
PLURK:brb_herding_cats
RETURNING: Nope, I am new here!
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Riza Hawkeye
CHARACTER AGE: 29 (Approximated; I’ve never been able to find a canon age for her. She is stated to be younger than Mustang, who does turn 30 in the series…thus, this my best educated guess and the age I almost always write/play her.)
SERIES: Fullmetal Alchemist
CHRONOLOGY: Promised Day, about thirty seconds before she passes out from blood loss. This correlates to chapter 100-101 in the manga (I lost my copy of the manga when I moved and I just...can’t remember. I’m so sorry!)
CLASS: Hero. Registered, most likely. Her alignment would be most in line with either lawful good or neutral good, though at the end of the series she leans more to neutral good.
HOUSING: I’m comfortable with randomized housing. I would also be amused if she were placed in housing with castmates in game, but that’s in no way a necessity.
BACKGROUND: Riza Hawkeye Wiki
Riza Hawkeye is a First Lieutenant in the Amestrian military. She’s the daughter of Berthold Hawkeye, an alchemist living out in Eastern Amestris—the alchemist who ultimately is Colonel Roy Mustang’s teacher and the father of flame alchemy as it is known. Information about her childhood is limited; her mother dies when she is young and her father is consumed by his study of alchemy and pursuit of the truth. When he takes on an apprentice, he does so with verbal disdain for Mustang’s plans to join the military. After Mustang is taught only the basics and leaves the Hawkeye household to join up, he returns to find the home in disrepair and the alchemist near death. It is then that we find out that Riza is the bearer of Berthold’s research in the form of a coded alchemical array tattooed on her back. It is at the grave of her father that she commits to following Roy’s dream of alchemy being for the people, agreeing to give Roy the research.
Her next significant life event comes in the form of the Ishval War. Riza is a gifted markswoman in the Academy, and she is sent out to the front lines in the desert Ishval prior to graduation. As a cadet in the field, she earns a name and reputation as “The Hawk’s Eye”—a gifted sniper who successfully protects soldiers in the field. It is in Ishval that she runs into Roy again, as well as his friend Maes Hughes. At the culmination of the war—which is seen by many of the soldiers who fight through it as a massacre or even genocide—she requests that Roy burn and crush her back, marring the tattoo so it can never be used to give birth to another flame alchemist. He does so.
Her next appearance is when she is requested by Roy to be his personal aid and bodyguard. The significance is that he tells her that her position following him grants her the right to shoot him in the back, should he stray from his path. His dream has changed as he’s grown and he now wishes to reach the top of the military hierarchy, to prevent events like the Isvhal War from happening again. Riza agrees to follow him on this path.
Fast forward to some time later; Riza continues to work with Roy as his aide. They have formed a respectable and reliable team of soldiers that work very well together. We’ve finally caught up with the actual start of the story: Roy and Riza make their first appearance reaching out to the Elric brothers shortly after their failed attempt at human transmutation. Her involvement in the events of the Elric brothers is limited for some length of time. It isn’t until the death of Maes Hughes that the danger of what she and her commanding officer have gotten into begins to truly settle in.
An attempt to study the Fifth Laboratory results in Lust, one of the homunculi, telling Riza she’s killed Roy. The following meltdown and ultimate surrender of her own life ends with Roy not being dead, and Riza being protected by Alphonse Elric, the brother in the suit of armor. She is later chastised by Roy for surrendering.
Roy’s consistent digging for information regarding the homunculi ultimately leads to his team being completely dismantled. It is at this point that Riza is assigned to work as the Fuhrer’s personal assistant, essentially making Riza a hostage—by now, they are aware that Fuhrer King Bradley is also a homunculus and that the country’s government is far more corrupt than they had originally believed.
One evening while delivering work to the Fuhrer’s personal home, Riza’s awareness is pricked—a familiar alertness to when she had been assaulted by Gluttony, one of the homunculi—strikes her. She finds out then that Selim Bradley, the Fuhrer’s “son”, is actually the first homunculus, Pride. Pride threatens her life should she share the secret. He ends the brief conversation with a reminder that he will be watching her from the shadows. Later that same evening, she receives a phone call from Roy. He’s aware that something has unnerved her. Their next conversation over lunch is a coded message: SELIM BRADLEY IS HOMUNCULUS.
Riza is instrumental in the passing of information along regarding the Promised Day. With the rest of her team, she deserts the military that she’s served her entire adult life. Her skills allow for soldiers still working for the Amestrian military to not be killed—only wounded—as the team makes their way underground.
Roy has a confrontation with Envy, the homunculus responsible for killing his friend Maes Hughes, that ends in the threat of Riza shooting him for having strayed from his path. How could the country want a leader whose mind has been clouded by hate and revenge? This is not who Roy was going to be—the threat is very real and nearly carried out, but Roy relents from his rage and the team proceeds forward.
Deep below Central City, Roy, Riza and Scar fight the failed fuhrer candidates. Outnumbered, they hold their own for quite some time before being overrun and restrained. Roy is told to do human transmutation. He refuses. As a consequence—or an incentive, or most likely both—one of the fuhrer candidates slits Riza’s throat. As she lay dying from exsanguination, she states she will not die as she’s been ordered not to. It’s an eye signal that she uses to tell Roy not to attempt the transmutation, as help is on the way. This is the exact moment in canon I will be pulling her from.
The help that arrives includes a young girl from Xing, a neighboring country, who is gifted in alkahestry. Her healing skills keep Riza from bleeding to death. They do not keep Roy from being forced to complete human transmutation via other means. After the human sacrifices are returned, Roy’s ability to successfully use alchemy is limited by his inability to see. Through sheer will, Riza acts as his spotter for the remainder of the final confrontation. The final canon scene of Riza in the manga shows her being treated by medics off of the battlefield.
In the epilogue, she is seen still working with Roy. The two now work closely as part of the Ishval reconstruction.
PERSONALITY: Riza Hawkeye is a quiet and collected woman. She is intelligent and dedicated; a diligent hard worker who plays an integral role in keeping her ‘office’ on track. By many she is seen as a model soldier: disciplined and rational, with a propensity for foresight and a strong intuition. Some may go so far as to perceive her as cold, rigid and occasionally mean, but this is primarily a result of her level of professionalism on the job.
A “model soldier” she may be at face value, but her stubborn streak shows in interaction with Roy Mustang. For starters, she follows orders from him at her own discretion. She will follow orders that make sense for both of them (as in, no I will not leave you here as you go to confront Fuhrer Bradley who we think is a corrupted homunculus, I will stay right here thank you). He makes comments regarding her pigheadedness more than once. Riza is seen directly disobeying orders a handful of times, but it is clear that she holds Roy’s opinion in high regard. She’s ordered once to be stronger after surrendering after she is told Roy is dead; later she is ordered not to die by Roy. Both times, it is clear that his instructions and regard are very important to her, a sign of her more companionable and impressionable side.
Though she approaches work with a no-nonsense attitude, she is not incapable of compassion and kindness—it simply manifests in other ways. She is gentle and loving towards her dog, Black Hayate. This kindness is not limited to animals; she is often shown as being very sympathetic and gentle towards the Elric brothers. She’s the gentle presence providing comfort to Edward after his confrontation with Scar; she is supportive and accepting of Alphonse and often seems accepting and unquestioning of his armor body. Early in the series, she is seen conversing with Winry Rockbell, a close family friend of the Elrics, regarding what it is like to be in the military. Riza tells the then-about-eleven-year-old Winry that she doesn’t like being in the military, but that she remains as she has someone to protect. She explains that there is responsibility in her position, but that she has no right to complain—she’s chosen her cross to carry, and it is hers to bear alone.
It is through Riza that readers—and Edward—get a full understanding of the events of Ishval. Through her telling of the story, it becomes clear she harbors immense guilt for the role she plays in the massacre. She bears the weight of having given Roy Mustang the information to allow him to become the Flame Alchemist; she also carries the responsibility for many deaths on her own hands, seen through the scope of her rifle. Her experiences in the Ishval Rebellion (slash war, slash massacre, slash genocide—depends on whom you ask) greatly color her more subdued and somber personality.
Through all of this, Riza is also shown to have an acerbic wit. Her humor is dry and nonchalant—the sort of woman who makes a joke about that girlfriend that you love back home in Resembool while cleaning out her personal firearm, without even raising an eyebrow. Little seems to rattle her: even confronted underground by the homunculus Envy who has disguised himself as Roy, she simply tells the figure “the Colonel calls me Riza when we are alone” and then proceeds to shoot the faker repeatedly without batting an eye. She is not oblivious to the unspoken rumors regarding her supposed romantic relationship with her superior officer (hint: there is none, though it’s heavily alluded to).
Ultimately, Riza is a dedicated and diligent lieutenant in the state military that is ready and willing to do whatever it takes to provide for the good of her country: from the small sacrifices to the large, she works tirelessly towards her goal.
POWER: 1. Ridiculous marksmanship. Skip gifted and ‘actually achievable’ and go directly to ridiculous—do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. This is very much canon. She’s a firearms specialist and frequently referred to as the best markswoman (and man!) in the state military. She didn’t get the code name ‘The Hawk’s Eye’ for fun, after all. It was hard earned.
2. Perception. This is something I want to expand upon from canon. She’s specifically seen as very perceptive with sharp intuition—she has an awareness of a certain amount of wrongness coming from the homunculi prior to truly understanding their motives. I’m not sure what level of perceptiveness would be permissible in game, but I would like to see it grow quite a bit. I imagine it more as an ability to pick up on extremely subtle cues from others, to an extent that is a bit more than normally achievable. This level of perceptiveness will have to come with a permissions post. I know a cross-canon reference might not be the best way to describe this, but in some ways I’m picturing it almost like soul perception in the Soul Eater universe. This allows the perceiver to “read” the other person—giving an idea of characteristics, personality, alignment, etc. I hope this is a clear enough explanation!
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
Bam! Test drive =)
I | Video
[Keeping a low profile is necessary in hostile territory, and though there has been no outright attack on her person being kidnapped and deposited in an unknown area certainly qualifies as being placed in hostile territory.
Watching alone, however, hasn’t done enough. It’s time for her to ask questions; calmly. While many likely panic, the woman on the video feed appears calm and collected. Though her expression is calm, she appears somewhat disheveled—hair is loosely draped over her shoulders, stained deeply red at the ends; her turtleneck appears dirty though the origin of the stain is unclear. Just at the side of the camera screen is what appears to be a bloody handkerchief. Someone had the foresight to clean the blood off of their face before making a call!]
Seeing as I’ve just arrived, I can’t quite figure out what I’ve done to have so many people so interested in me. As soon as I walked outside, there were people interested in taking photographs and getting autographs. Frankly, I think they’ve got the wrong person.
Unless there’s something that you all know that I don’t, anyway.
[The woman looked away from the camera, fingers pressed against the side of her neck absently.]
I suppose if I’m going to ask for assistance, it would be wise to introduce myself. Good afternoon; my name is Riza Hawkeye.
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Riza is no stranger to intuition. It is through significant time and effort that she’s honed the skill from simple awareness of what is happening around her to something akin to its own sense. Even still, she’s unprepared for what meets her eyes when she first snaps into what she can only describe as a sense of perception that is otherworldly.
It comes with a peculiar level of awareness, yet what feels like an inappropriate sense of detachment. Around her she can sense more than see the presence of others, thing she should not be able to see or know—least of all regarding strangers. The woman down the street pushing a baby carriage is worried about paying for groceries. Why does she know this; even more important would be how? Even from her position she could see the weight of stress on the mother’s shoulders, the slight drag in her step indicating distress—but the prickling awareness just out of her reach is something entirely different.
The perception itself is distracting; it cries for her full attention, for her to focus entirely on the stream of information coming to her through an unusual source. It came so suddenly as well that she’s almost unaware that she’s stopped talking midsentence.
Hearing. She’s hearing something—someone is speaking to her. They seem far away compared to the other information; it requires conscious effort to reframe her focus to tune out the sixth source of information. Somebody has their fingers digging into her shoulder, the slightest shaking of her form to snap her out of it.
Startled, she blinks once and then twice, a third time. Fuzzy vision begins to clear, and she focuses on the face in front of her. Colonel Mustang looks appropriately distressed for a man who just watched someone stop midsentence. Is he asking her a question?
“I apologize, sir. I’m…not certain what came over me.”
Journal:
quietcreativity AIM: TheBizzy
Plurk:
Email: brb.herding.cats@gmail.com
Character Journal:
equinamity〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Bizzy
AGE: 27
JOURNAL:
equinamity (Character Journal); quietcreativity (Personal Journal)IM / EMAIL: AIM is TheBizzy (and I’m never there); e-mail is brb.herding.cats@gmail.com
PLURK:
RETURNING: Nope, I am new here!
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Riza Hawkeye
CHARACTER AGE: 29 (Approximated; I’ve never been able to find a canon age for her. She is stated to be younger than Mustang, who does turn 30 in the series…thus, this my best educated guess and the age I almost always write/play her.)
SERIES: Fullmetal Alchemist
CHRONOLOGY: Promised Day, about thirty seconds before she passes out from blood loss. This correlates to chapter 100-101 in the manga (I lost my copy of the manga when I moved and I just...can’t remember. I’m so sorry!)
CLASS: Hero. Registered, most likely. Her alignment would be most in line with either lawful good or neutral good, though at the end of the series she leans more to neutral good.
HOUSING: I’m comfortable with randomized housing. I would also be amused if she were placed in housing with castmates in game, but that’s in no way a necessity.
BACKGROUND: Riza Hawkeye Wiki
Riza Hawkeye is a First Lieutenant in the Amestrian military. She’s the daughter of Berthold Hawkeye, an alchemist living out in Eastern Amestris—the alchemist who ultimately is Colonel Roy Mustang’s teacher and the father of flame alchemy as it is known. Information about her childhood is limited; her mother dies when she is young and her father is consumed by his study of alchemy and pursuit of the truth. When he takes on an apprentice, he does so with verbal disdain for Mustang’s plans to join the military. After Mustang is taught only the basics and leaves the Hawkeye household to join up, he returns to find the home in disrepair and the alchemist near death. It is then that we find out that Riza is the bearer of Berthold’s research in the form of a coded alchemical array tattooed on her back. It is at the grave of her father that she commits to following Roy’s dream of alchemy being for the people, agreeing to give Roy the research.
Her next significant life event comes in the form of the Ishval War. Riza is a gifted markswoman in the Academy, and she is sent out to the front lines in the desert Ishval prior to graduation. As a cadet in the field, she earns a name and reputation as “The Hawk’s Eye”—a gifted sniper who successfully protects soldiers in the field. It is in Ishval that she runs into Roy again, as well as his friend Maes Hughes. At the culmination of the war—which is seen by many of the soldiers who fight through it as a massacre or even genocide—she requests that Roy burn and crush her back, marring the tattoo so it can never be used to give birth to another flame alchemist. He does so.
Her next appearance is when she is requested by Roy to be his personal aid and bodyguard. The significance is that he tells her that her position following him grants her the right to shoot him in the back, should he stray from his path. His dream has changed as he’s grown and he now wishes to reach the top of the military hierarchy, to prevent events like the Isvhal War from happening again. Riza agrees to follow him on this path.
Fast forward to some time later; Riza continues to work with Roy as his aide. They have formed a respectable and reliable team of soldiers that work very well together. We’ve finally caught up with the actual start of the story: Roy and Riza make their first appearance reaching out to the Elric brothers shortly after their failed attempt at human transmutation. Her involvement in the events of the Elric brothers is limited for some length of time. It isn’t until the death of Maes Hughes that the danger of what she and her commanding officer have gotten into begins to truly settle in.
An attempt to study the Fifth Laboratory results in Lust, one of the homunculi, telling Riza she’s killed Roy. The following meltdown and ultimate surrender of her own life ends with Roy not being dead, and Riza being protected by Alphonse Elric, the brother in the suit of armor. She is later chastised by Roy for surrendering.
Roy’s consistent digging for information regarding the homunculi ultimately leads to his team being completely dismantled. It is at this point that Riza is assigned to work as the Fuhrer’s personal assistant, essentially making Riza a hostage—by now, they are aware that Fuhrer King Bradley is also a homunculus and that the country’s government is far more corrupt than they had originally believed.
One evening while delivering work to the Fuhrer’s personal home, Riza’s awareness is pricked—a familiar alertness to when she had been assaulted by Gluttony, one of the homunculi—strikes her. She finds out then that Selim Bradley, the Fuhrer’s “son”, is actually the first homunculus, Pride. Pride threatens her life should she share the secret. He ends the brief conversation with a reminder that he will be watching her from the shadows. Later that same evening, she receives a phone call from Roy. He’s aware that something has unnerved her. Their next conversation over lunch is a coded message: SELIM BRADLEY IS HOMUNCULUS.
Riza is instrumental in the passing of information along regarding the Promised Day. With the rest of her team, she deserts the military that she’s served her entire adult life. Her skills allow for soldiers still working for the Amestrian military to not be killed—only wounded—as the team makes their way underground.
Roy has a confrontation with Envy, the homunculus responsible for killing his friend Maes Hughes, that ends in the threat of Riza shooting him for having strayed from his path. How could the country want a leader whose mind has been clouded by hate and revenge? This is not who Roy was going to be—the threat is very real and nearly carried out, but Roy relents from his rage and the team proceeds forward.
Deep below Central City, Roy, Riza and Scar fight the failed fuhrer candidates. Outnumbered, they hold their own for quite some time before being overrun and restrained. Roy is told to do human transmutation. He refuses. As a consequence—or an incentive, or most likely both—one of the fuhrer candidates slits Riza’s throat. As she lay dying from exsanguination, she states she will not die as she’s been ordered not to. It’s an eye signal that she uses to tell Roy not to attempt the transmutation, as help is on the way. This is the exact moment in canon I will be pulling her from.
The help that arrives includes a young girl from Xing, a neighboring country, who is gifted in alkahestry. Her healing skills keep Riza from bleeding to death. They do not keep Roy from being forced to complete human transmutation via other means. After the human sacrifices are returned, Roy’s ability to successfully use alchemy is limited by his inability to see. Through sheer will, Riza acts as his spotter for the remainder of the final confrontation. The final canon scene of Riza in the manga shows her being treated by medics off of the battlefield.
In the epilogue, she is seen still working with Roy. The two now work closely as part of the Ishval reconstruction.
PERSONALITY: Riza Hawkeye is a quiet and collected woman. She is intelligent and dedicated; a diligent hard worker who plays an integral role in keeping her ‘office’ on track. By many she is seen as a model soldier: disciplined and rational, with a propensity for foresight and a strong intuition. Some may go so far as to perceive her as cold, rigid and occasionally mean, but this is primarily a result of her level of professionalism on the job.
A “model soldier” she may be at face value, but her stubborn streak shows in interaction with Roy Mustang. For starters, she follows orders from him at her own discretion. She will follow orders that make sense for both of them (as in, no I will not leave you here as you go to confront Fuhrer Bradley who we think is a corrupted homunculus, I will stay right here thank you). He makes comments regarding her pigheadedness more than once. Riza is seen directly disobeying orders a handful of times, but it is clear that she holds Roy’s opinion in high regard. She’s ordered once to be stronger after surrendering after she is told Roy is dead; later she is ordered not to die by Roy. Both times, it is clear that his instructions and regard are very important to her, a sign of her more companionable and impressionable side.
Though she approaches work with a no-nonsense attitude, she is not incapable of compassion and kindness—it simply manifests in other ways. She is gentle and loving towards her dog, Black Hayate. This kindness is not limited to animals; she is often shown as being very sympathetic and gentle towards the Elric brothers. She’s the gentle presence providing comfort to Edward after his confrontation with Scar; she is supportive and accepting of Alphonse and often seems accepting and unquestioning of his armor body. Early in the series, she is seen conversing with Winry Rockbell, a close family friend of the Elrics, regarding what it is like to be in the military. Riza tells the then-about-eleven-year-old Winry that she doesn’t like being in the military, but that she remains as she has someone to protect. She explains that there is responsibility in her position, but that she has no right to complain—she’s chosen her cross to carry, and it is hers to bear alone.
It is through Riza that readers—and Edward—get a full understanding of the events of Ishval. Through her telling of the story, it becomes clear she harbors immense guilt for the role she plays in the massacre. She bears the weight of having given Roy Mustang the information to allow him to become the Flame Alchemist; she also carries the responsibility for many deaths on her own hands, seen through the scope of her rifle. Her experiences in the Ishval Rebellion (slash war, slash massacre, slash genocide—depends on whom you ask) greatly color her more subdued and somber personality.
Through all of this, Riza is also shown to have an acerbic wit. Her humor is dry and nonchalant—the sort of woman who makes a joke about that girlfriend that you love back home in Resembool while cleaning out her personal firearm, without even raising an eyebrow. Little seems to rattle her: even confronted underground by the homunculus Envy who has disguised himself as Roy, she simply tells the figure “the Colonel calls me Riza when we are alone” and then proceeds to shoot the faker repeatedly without batting an eye. She is not oblivious to the unspoken rumors regarding her supposed romantic relationship with her superior officer (hint: there is none, though it’s heavily alluded to).
Ultimately, Riza is a dedicated and diligent lieutenant in the state military that is ready and willing to do whatever it takes to provide for the good of her country: from the small sacrifices to the large, she works tirelessly towards her goal.
POWER: 1. Ridiculous marksmanship. Skip gifted and ‘actually achievable’ and go directly to ridiculous—do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. This is very much canon. She’s a firearms specialist and frequently referred to as the best markswoman (and man!) in the state military. She didn’t get the code name ‘The Hawk’s Eye’ for fun, after all. It was hard earned.
2. Perception. This is something I want to expand upon from canon. She’s specifically seen as very perceptive with sharp intuition—she has an awareness of a certain amount of wrongness coming from the homunculi prior to truly understanding their motives. I’m not sure what level of perceptiveness would be permissible in game, but I would like to see it grow quite a bit. I imagine it more as an ability to pick up on extremely subtle cues from others, to an extent that is a bit more than normally achievable. This level of perceptiveness will have to come with a permissions post. I know a cross-canon reference might not be the best way to describe this, but in some ways I’m picturing it almost like soul perception in the Soul Eater universe. This allows the perceiver to “read” the other person—giving an idea of characteristics, personality, alignment, etc. I hope this is a clear enough explanation!
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
Bam! Test drive =)
I | Video
[Keeping a low profile is necessary in hostile territory, and though there has been no outright attack on her person being kidnapped and deposited in an unknown area certainly qualifies as being placed in hostile territory.
Watching alone, however, hasn’t done enough. It’s time for her to ask questions; calmly. While many likely panic, the woman on the video feed appears calm and collected. Though her expression is calm, she appears somewhat disheveled—hair is loosely draped over her shoulders, stained deeply red at the ends; her turtleneck appears dirty though the origin of the stain is unclear. Just at the side of the camera screen is what appears to be a bloody handkerchief. Someone had the foresight to clean the blood off of their face before making a call!]
Seeing as I’ve just arrived, I can’t quite figure out what I’ve done to have so many people so interested in me. As soon as I walked outside, there were people interested in taking photographs and getting autographs. Frankly, I think they’ve got the wrong person.
Unless there’s something that you all know that I don’t, anyway.
[The woman looked away from the camera, fingers pressed against the side of her neck absently.]
I suppose if I’m going to ask for assistance, it would be wise to introduce myself. Good afternoon; my name is Riza Hawkeye.
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Riza is no stranger to intuition. It is through significant time and effort that she’s honed the skill from simple awareness of what is happening around her to something akin to its own sense. Even still, she’s unprepared for what meets her eyes when she first snaps into what she can only describe as a sense of perception that is otherworldly.
It comes with a peculiar level of awareness, yet what feels like an inappropriate sense of detachment. Around her she can sense more than see the presence of others, thing she should not be able to see or know—least of all regarding strangers. The woman down the street pushing a baby carriage is worried about paying for groceries. Why does she know this; even more important would be how? Even from her position she could see the weight of stress on the mother’s shoulders, the slight drag in her step indicating distress—but the prickling awareness just out of her reach is something entirely different.
The perception itself is distracting; it cries for her full attention, for her to focus entirely on the stream of information coming to her through an unusual source. It came so suddenly as well that she’s almost unaware that she’s stopped talking midsentence.
Hearing. She’s hearing something—someone is speaking to her. They seem far away compared to the other information; it requires conscious effort to reframe her focus to tune out the sixth source of information. Somebody has their fingers digging into her shoulder, the slightest shaking of her form to snap her out of it.
Startled, she blinks once and then twice, a third time. Fuzzy vision begins to clear, and she focuses on the face in front of her. Colonel Mustang looks appropriately distressed for a man who just watched someone stop midsentence. Is he asking her a question?
“I apologize, sir. I’m…not certain what came over me.”