Equivalent Exchange

By Nchan.

Ok. I tried to resist the plot bunny. I really, really did. Justified it with platitudes like 'I should be working on TBGE if I'm going to take time off from study to write' or 'c'mon, I shouldn't be an idiot about this, I should wait until I've seen more than the first DVD of the series and read a patchy few of the tankoubon'. But somehow, once bitten, this particular rabid little beastie of a rabbit wouldn't let me go. So here it is; unproof-read and sent out into the wild wooly web. And now I go to bed.

Disclaimer: For once, absolutely all of the characters portrayed herein do not belong to me. They belong to various combinations and variations of DC comics, AOL Time Warner, Hiromu Arakawa, VIZ comics and whomever else.

Further note: I have seen a grand total of the first four episodes of FMA, and read volumes 2-4 and 7 of VIZ's translations. This forms the sum total of my knowledge and I'm already a hopeless addict. Doubtless I will cringe when I re-read this in the future when I know more of the story.

Further note two: in Teen Titans (comic canon) timescale this takes place in the post-52 series, after the incident involving the gorilla, the brain and That Kiss.

He couldn't understand it. He'd failed again. The tissue, unstable at best, had lasted less than twenty-four hours this time. //Worse than my last two efforts! Using the gorilla's data hasn't helped at all!// Simmering frustration made him want to smash his fist against the tank containing his latest failure; iron-clad discipline forbade it. He'd slipped once before in anger, to his detriment and that of others; the crashing shatter of Perspex so relieving to his rage then, had brought Wondergirl down to the basement to investigate. // And to kiss. And that should never, ever, have happened!//

Guilt sent him back to his workbench, to tirelessly continue his labours. Somewhere, somehow, there had to be a way to bring back his best friend, to re-clone Superboy.

Resolutely, he ignored the niggling doubt, so transparently obvious that it had been the first thing even Wondergirl had commented on on discovering what he was attempting to do. Just because you make a clone of him, it won't be the real him. It won't be his soul.

His mouth thinned, grimness tugging at the sides of it. He hadn't told Cassie all of the truth, hadn't told her the fullness of his hopes; it was too early, his first plan too embryonic, and frankly a little too horrific, to try without assessing all other options. Though he was running through those other options with marked alacrity and depressing lack of success; his enquiries into the potential of a magical resurrection had proven a further dead end only a few days earlier; neither Zatanna nor Zatarra had powers that were compatible with what he needed to do. In fact, as far as research had taken him, he'd come back to his original plan.

To get Superboy back. That was the goal. But it was more subtle than what he'd confessed to the blonde girl now accidentally burdened with his secrets. She thought he meant a mere clone. A copy, 'trained' to be like their Connor.

But to Robin, that was merely the tip. He needed to create a stable body. One that would last Superboy for the term of a lifetime, however many years that would be.

Then he needed to get back his best friend's soul.

He'd figured out how to do it, too. The battle with the resurrected Brother Blood had given him a couple of useful pointers and while he was pretty sure that Kid Eternity wouldn't be interested in opening the gate for him, he was fairly willing to bet that Raven could broach the issue with a little more success.

Provided, of course, he could convince her to do so.

Assuming, naturally, that the Titans ever actually managed to find her.

As to how to get Connor's soul to actually reside within his newly minted (and as-yet hypothetical) body, well, he had a couple of ideas on that score, too.

//But it's all a moot point unless I can create the bloody thing!// His determination and open-mindedness (flavored with a hint of desperation) had lead him down more avenues than his rigorously scientific mentor would likely have approved. //But, Bruce, pure science has failed me.//

Pure magic, he knew, was beyond his means without some fairly substantial help. //And after my investigations, I kinda get why Bruce hates it so much. The talking backwards thing is a pain.// So now he had to try something different. Something in between. //And luckily, I think I found my 'something'.//

It had been simple happenstance that had led him back to the bookshelf of his own library. He'd been moving books back into Wayne manor. After a year, the sight of his father's substantial and eclectic library holdings no longer made him weep, though some of the volumes did still fill him with a despondent melancholy. Others now made him smile. One of these latter types had been a strange volume his father had given him when he was a child of five or six; a curio that the man had picked up on his travels in Europe, it was a textbook of sorts.

Though Tim had had little trouble deciphering it even at that tender age, he'd never thought to put what it offered into practice. After all, the principles were just based on the fantasies of medieval men obsessed with gold.

Weren't they?

But when the book had fallen open in his lap some ten years after he'd been given it, he was struck with the scholarly, textbook style of the prose. //There's no whimsy here. It's not a book just to entertain children. Whoever wrote this intended it as a serious teaching text.// That alone had rated a closer perusal and though the demands placed upon his time by vigilante-ing and rebuilding a super-team had limited his time substantially, he'd still read the book cover to cover, extrapolating from its theories.

He often wondered how his father had gotten hold of the text. It could have been something as mundane as a bookshop or estate sale, but somehow Robin doubted it. No particular reason, other than gut feeling. //But then, Dad had the standard of the Lost Roman Legion tucked into the hallway closet 'for safekeeping', so perhaps its not as impossible as you'd think that he'd be guardian for a book such as this.//

//And now I've nothing else to try. Nothing new, save this. Which may well be pure fantasy anyway.//

Feeling just a touch foolish though more hopeful than he'd care to admit, he began his preparations. The high-tech, costly lab equipment that liberally peppered his workspace in the basement of Titans Tower – both new and those few hand-me-downs from the JLA tower – had been shoved to one side; a large space cleared on the floor, chalk marks marring the smooth concrete.

The ingredients, unlike his usual scientific experimental materiel, had been remarkably simple to obtain. Carefully measuring them out, Robin began. Muttering, almost chanting to himself, he poured each completed sample into the middle of the floor.

"Water, thirty-five litres; Carbon, twenty kilograms; ammonia, four litres; lime, one-point-five kilograms; phosphorus, eight hundred grams; salt, 250 grams . . ."

To Be Continued?

Notes: the Lost Legion story happened in Robin canon some years ago. The ingredients above are exactly what all the Fullmetal Alchemist fans think they are.