User Profile

Character: Alfons Heiderich

Series: Fullmetal Alchemist

Timeline: Immediately after Edward and Noah witness him coughing up blood and he runs off to the factory.
Personality: While Alfons' appearance is nearly similar to that of his Amestrian counterpart, Alphonse Elric, their personalities only match up to a certain extent. Alfons is more guarded and harder to tap into than Alphonse is. While he is quite personable, it takes a lot to get him to truly open up about himself, and he can be rather shy; almost a loner, some would say.

One thing he is never shy about discussing, though, is his passion for science, and rocketry in particular. Once Alfons gains a passion for something, he latches onto it and will not let go easily. And if someone ever brings up the topic of one of his passions, he is sure to talk for hours about it, loving nothing more than to share his interests with others.

Connected to his passion for rockets is Alfons' deep-seated fear of being forgotten, the memory of himself fading away once he, himself, is gone. Such is one of the reasons he is so adamant in trying to succeed in building a working rocket, so that his name will be recorded in history as an important one, not to disappear in time or be forgotten easily.

Alfons' mind is one of science and fact, and he believes firmly in such things and he is not one to partake of stories and fancy (as seen by his dismissal of Edward Elric's tales of Amestris as just that--tall tales, and nothing more).

Alfons will never hesitate to lend a hand to someone in need, whether long-time friend, complete stranger, or merely a stray kitten on the street, though Alfons will never try to actively 'be a hero'.

Calm and collected, Alfons rarely loses his temper, nor does minor stress affect him much. He would much rather let things roll right off his back and just go along with life than argue and fret over things. Even in stressful situations, Alfons is more apt to smile and laugh things off with his rather strange sense of humor. An example of this would be when Edward falls through the roof of the factory from an airplane to land on the floor. While the people around him are, as would be a quite normal reaction, freaking out, Alfons merely chuckles and comments on how they "... won't have to pick him [Edward] up now.”"

If he ever does become angry, he can tend to snap and lash out, as is shown when he hits Edward, throwing him into the stairs and shouting at him about how Edward's 'home' is nothing more than a dream and that he, himself is real (this outburst was partially triggered by his previously mentioned fear of not being remembered--after all, who would remember a dream world forever?).

Background: Born in Germany in 1906, little is known of Alfons' background before his teen years. As a seventeen-year-old living on his own, it is assumed that his parents are dead and that he has no other close relatives to support him and take him in. He lives and works with Edward Elric, one of the few people he seems able to get close to in life, and he is, in turn, the only person who Edward opens up to truthfully about his life in Amestris. Though Alfons laughs off Edward's stories as tales of fancy, he doesn't let it affect how he cares for or acts towards Edward.

A rocket scientist, Alfons works for the Thule Society, a secret organization with links to Adolf Hitler, who fund the research and building of his rockets. Alfons' dream in life is to one day build a rocket that can carry a man into space

As the story unfolds, Alfons is shown with an unknown illness (the most widely accepted theories are that he either has tuberculosis or that he is affected by fumes from the fuel of the rockets he works on). At first, he only coughs a little, leading Edward to believe he merely has a cold. But as time goes on, he is soon coughing up blood, even going so far as to tell Edward that he "doesn't have much time left".

Alfons' last act show of caring towards his close friend Edward was to put him into his completed rocket and switch it on, sending Edward back to his world. Members of the Thule Society caught Alfons, though were too late to stop the rocket (their rocket) from taking to the air. In order to stop him from trying anything else, one of them fired, shooting Alfons in the back, bringing his already shortened life to an end. He fell to the ground with a small smile on his lips, having seen one of his rockets fly and also helped his best friend's dream come true.