A boy with blond hair and golden eyes walked into the book store, those odd orbs searching the aisles for the information he needed. This parallel universe didn't have alchemy, but there must be something he could use to get back to his home in Amestris. Already the boy had searched through every book in the Science section, finding many interesting studies, but not the information he needed. Dropping into one of the lounge chairs at the end of the aisles, Ed rubbed the stump of his arm where the prosthetic connected. There was no automail here, but at least he had gotten a cool hook for a hand. Even after all he had been through, Edward was still a teenager.
"Hey, look, Fullmetal Alchemist!"
Edward sat up at his code name. Golden orbs searched for the person who had pointed him out. There wasn't any reason anyone here should know that name, and no one was murmuring, there were no cries of "where?" The call had come from an aisle not too far away, and Ed got up from his seat to go investigate.
The area was full of comic books, graphic novels of every genera imaginable. Ed picked one out to flip through it, eyes widening when he saw a human turning into a weapon. And a few pages after was a buxom woman covered in nothing but bath bubbles. The teenager put the book down quickly, blushing. Who would draw something like that? Even the idea was improper.
Then Ed heard the same voice, "Awesome, they have the new book!"
The teen peeked around the bookshelf to see who had spoken. It was another boy, around Edward's age, holding a book in his hand and flipping through it. Golden orbs narrowed when they caught the title, "Fullmetal Alchemist." On the cover was a cartoonized image of himself and Al, standing back to back ready to fight, superimposed over a transmutation circle.
"Aww man, it's almost over"
"How can you tell?" one of the boy's companions asked.
"Al's got his body back. Man, I'm glad they're making a new anime, the first one sucked."
"Yeah, Brotherhood should be awesome, can't wait to see it tonight."
"You know it, I've got Adult Swim programmed on the DVR, gonna' record everything."
Edward watched the two boys walk away toward the cash register, glancing at the line of books named after himself. The alchemist picked up the first volume and flipped through it, surprised at how much the character looked like him. The story was creepily correct as well. Ed was disturbed at the detail the author knew about his time in Lior. A few hours went by and a store clerk walked by, yelling at Ed to buy the books or get out. He hadn't realized that he had been standing in the aisle reading volume after volume of his life in comic form. Snapped out of his trance, the teen grabbed a copy of each volume and carried them to the checkout line, getting a few stares from the other people in the store. He had no idea why, confused by the mutterings of "geek" a few of the men and women uttered.
The books were expensive, but Ed could spare no expense for them. When he got back to the apartment he shared with some person who kept a night shift at the hospital downtown, the blond boy found his roommate eating breakfast. She stared at the pile of books Ed brought in with him, shaking her head.
"Did you really buy all those comics? God, why'd I have to be stuck with such a geek. Whatever, as long as you didn't spend your half of the rent on those I don't care what you do."
Ed just looked at Kate with a confused expression on his face. Sitting down at the table, he dropped the pile of books and stared at the nurse. "What's wrong with buying books around here? First the people at the store, now you. What's up?"
The girl just stared at him for a moment, pushing her brown hair behind one ear to keep it from falling in her breakfast. "I don't know about where you came from, but around here only geeky teenagers or former geeky teenagers buy a whole stack of comic books. It's just not something that normal people do."
Edward ignored the jab at him, not caring if he looked weird to anyone else. He was a child prodigy, after all, he was used to getting odd stares. Besides, this was important research that could help him get home. Rising from the chair, Ed shuffled to the fridge, his prosthetic leg awkward to walk in on the linoliem of the kitchen floor. More than once he had slipped and fallen on his face or the back of his head. Kate turned around to watch him, worried that the prosthetics might be hurting him. It was a new technology they had used, with a bar being screwed into the bone of the missing limb. Ed tended to use his prosthetics as though he hadn't lost his arm and leg, and that could eventually cause the bones to crack. Kate, being a nurse, always worried about that.
Hooking his hook in the handle to the fridge, Ed opened it and grabbed a leftover chicken leg from last night. He really missed Winry's automail, it was so much easier to use than the clunky stuff they had here. Turning around, the teen asked Kate, "What channel is Adult Swim on?"
Kate groaned. She couldn't believe she had just been worried about this kid! At the rate he was going to become a degenerate and be no use to her anymore. If he didn't go to his job at the lab, he wouldn't make any money and couldn't help her with the rent. Nurses didn't make as much as actual doctors, and she was still new on the job. "Chanel sixty, just don't stay up all night watching stupid cartoons."
With that Kate got up and grabbed her bag, walking out to the car. It was time for her to go to work, sitting around making sure none of the patients at the hospital needed anything during the night. Ed watched his roommate leave, shutting the door behind her. She reminded him of Winry a little, just without the obsession for automail. In fact, there were certain features that were similar to his mechanic's. If Kate didn't have brown hair, he might have mistaken her for the automail expert more than once. But he couldn't dwell on that right now, Ed had books to read and a show to watch.
By the time the cartoon came on Ed had gotten through quite a few of the comics. He found that at some point in time the story-lines diverged. There was what he knew had happened, the whole deal with Dante and his father, and this comic with the Xingese and so many others that he had never met in his life. He had heard of them, yes, like Major Armstrong's sister, but he had never met them. The cartoon was the same as the books, detailing some stuff that had happened to him and some that hadn't. He had never been trapped in Gluttony's stomach! Yet Ed couldn't help thinking that maybe he was supposed to. There was something that seemed right about it all. Why hadn't he done this, why hadn't he met this person? There was only one way to find out out, but it would be difficult.
Ed went into Kate's room and turned on her computer, logging onto his account and getting on the net. He had to learn more about the author, Hiromu Arakawa. A Google search brought him to Wikipedia, which told him that there were two separate endings. The alchemist then went in search of this first comic online, learning that it followed the life he knew exactly. So which one was supposed to happen? The life he knew, or had fate diverged from its path? Then again, this could all be some peculiar coincidence. There was only one way to know, and that was to go speak to the author. A plane ticket to Japan was terribly expensive, and he didn't know if he'd even find the woman. A wild goose chase was not what Edward needed.
The lock on the front door scraped open and Kate walked in, trying to be quiet. For some reason Ed didn't want her to know what he had been doing, so he turned off the computer and slipped quietly down the hall to his room, jumping into bed when he heard the nurse's quiet footsteps coming down the hall. The light in her room flipped on and for a few minutes Ed thought he was safe. Just as the teen was beginning to doze off her heard a creak in his doorway and nearly jumped out of bed. As it was he simply sucked in a large breath. The dark form paused, wondering if it had woken the boy. Kate turned her head back out the door, wondering if she should leave, but made up her mind to sit slowly at the foot of Edward's bed.
The alchemist stared at Kate through slit eyes, about to sit up and ask what she was doing, when he saw movement. The brunette was rubbing his prosthetic leg, looking at it with sad eyes. Ed didn't know that she was wondering how exactly he had lost his limbs, didn't know that she worried about him every day, with every stumble and every wince. He just knew that she was a nurse and was often annoyed with him, and was now showing a moment of uncharacteristic kindness. When his roommate left Ed rolled over and went to sleep, dismissing what he had just witnessed.