Metal and Madness
A Naruto, Full Metal Alchemist crossover.
I'm not normally in the habit of enjoying crossover stories, let alone writing them... however, one of my closest friends is absolutely in love with FMA. I as a Naruto fan was discussing with her how cool Deidara is and how sad it is that he looses his arms. She, teasingly, stated that he needed to meet Winry and have an auto mail arm attached in place of the one he lost.
My muse, being the bastard he is, thought it was a great idea.
So here you have it. My first and probably last foray into the world of crossovers.
Enjoy it while you got it!
He came awake slowly, ears ringing and head throbbing so furiously he was surprised it had managed not to explode like so many little clay figures destined to come to a shattering end. Blue eyes shot open and he tried to gain his bearings, sitting up quickly and looking around only to gasp and slide back onto the ground as agony laced up his shoulder.
"What the hell…." He ground his teeth against the pain and turned his gaze to his arm only to blink stupidly for a moment and snarl. "Shit…"
It looked like he was going to be begging help off of the sewing freak Kakazu. That was… if he could find the rest of his almost entirely missing limb.
Flashes of memory made their way through the fog of pain and fatigue.
Him flying above a deep ravine, the clay summon keeping him easily out of range of his pursuers.
The nine tailed Jinchuriki trailing after him, hatred in scarlet eyes as he tried desperately to reach his fallen comrade.
The copy ninja, all cold intellect and collected thinking.
The Sharringan.
Mangekyo.
"Shit shit shit." He hauled himself into a sitting position once again, the pain racing to his head so quickly the dizziness almost forced him to the ground again. He had to move, they could be anywhere… and if either found him… hed be worse off than a lost arm. Managing to convince to ground to stop spinning he climbed to his feet, stumbling slightly before taking a moment to look around. His head was woozy with blood loss and what was left of his shoulder hurt like hell, but he couldn't stay here.
Reaching with his other arm into his hip pouch he sought out the clay nestled at the bottom only to come up empty. He huffed a dry laugh. "Fantastic. Looks like I'll be walking, yeah." With the ground spinning again, and only the thought of getting somewhere safe the injured Akatsuki member slowly set out into the woods, never realizing just how different the scenery truly was.
"Edward Elric get a life! I'm not going to be attacked just walking through the woods! Haven't you ever just wanted a moment to yourself?" Blue eyes narrowed on the man standing in front of her looking sullen and abashed but holding his ground. Blond hair fell around his eyes emphasizing the slight wrinkle of a frown between them.
"I didn't say you couldn't…" He pouted, "I was just…"
She laughed, her irritation giving way to amusement at the hurt puppy look that had already consumed his features.
"Ill be back in less than an hour. Go help Al clean up the work room. You should be doing it anyway since it wasn't Al whose leg was broken in a reckless fight." She smirked at his grumbling glare, ignored the half muttered defense of "it wasn't reckless" and shooed him off with a wave of her hands before tugging her jacket around her shoulders and heading down the road that had the quickest path to the woods.
She'd walked it a million times before, with and without Ed. Sometimes Al would come along- if the brothers were home that was- sometimes Den would follow her, but most of the time it was just her alone. Winry enjoyed it. It gave her a chance to think, to get away from the more tedious and consuming thoughts that were required of an Automail mechanic, the blueprints and highly specific requirements that ensured that any piece attached would not only function, but function without causing damage. Ed was actually her most accomplished and noteworthy achievement. She had spent untold hours making sure his arm and leg could withstand the beating he put it too on adaily basis.
It was a good thing his head was hard enough to withstand her beating… she would have been sad to loose such a good example of her work.
The blond haired woman couldn't help but laugh at the thought of Ed's face if she ever said that aloud.
Turning her thoughts to other things she walked further into the woods, enjoying the silence and the cool fall air as it brushed past her cheek.
She blinked as the scent of iron hit her nose and looked around. It might have sounded odd to anyone else, but an automail mechanic was used to the tangy metallic scent of blood. It was simply part of her job description so being queasy wasn't an option. Brows furrowed in worry and confusion she set to looking around only to come to a dead halt before a dark cloaked figure. He was sprawled on the ground, the red and white cloud on his back barely raising as he struggled to breathe. It was clear that the dark fabric was soaked in blood and its source was the flat place of his sleeve where an arm should have been.
"I should have let Ed come with me."
For the second time in not so many days he came slowly awake, instantly irritated that he wasn't as alert as he should have been. Where was he? Had he gotten away from the copy nin and Jinchuriki? Maybe Zetsu had found him and taken him back… the plant ninja did have a way of getting around that the former Iwa nin hadn't quite figured out yet.
Struggling once again into an upright position he groaned as his head throbbed and set it in his hand to balance himself, breathing deeply. His forehead was met with a cool metal surface that moved nimbly over his fingers.
The bomber blinked, turned his gaze to the metal fingers held before him, blinked again, and froze. Akatsuki didn't often freeze… it was a bit of a hazard in their line of work. But being met with a metal arm where nothing at all had been last time he checked was enough to throw anyone for a loop.
"Oh good, you're awake. I wasn't sure for a while, you were out cold and I didn't know how long you had been in the forest." A young woman spoke up from the doorway. She couldn't have been more than a year or two younger than himself. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a pony tail and her work overalls were belted around her waist, exposing only a black tube top across her chest. She was tugging off heavy work gloves and tossing them on a table covered in small bits of metal, tools, and screws.
"Who the hell are you, yeah? And what did you do to my arm?"
The woman looked less than pleased at his choice of questioning tactics and sighed. He thought for a moment she was reaching for a weapon but her fingers only closed around the thick handle of a wrench.
A moment later he learned a very important lesson about women and heavy wrenches. He considered repaying the favor with an attitude altering explosion but decided that with his lack of clay and her current grip on the tool, it would be better off to forgo the plan. But still… the urge was there.
Her brow twitched slightly as she finally spoke above his groaning and furious head rubbing. "You're welcome. My name is Winry. I found you in the woods bleeding out without an arm. Im an Automail mechanic. Its not the newest version… but that should hold for a while while you heal."
Deidara glanced up. "Automail…. Is that a kind of jutsu?" He looked at his arm again, baffled.
"Jutsu?" The woman seemed just as confused as he was. "Im not sure what a jutsu is… but its just metal, science, and hard work." She smiled.
The man blinked. She didn't know what jutsu was… just exactly what kind of backwater town had he ended up in? "Where am I, yeah?"
"Resembool." She replied watching him as if a screw in his head was loose.
He'd never heard of it, and that was saying something. The Akatsuki were well traveled, they had to be to keep the connections that ensured that they weren't found out, specifically by Konoha. But the name was so foreign to anything he had heard of before. There was no way he could have ended up so far away from the Hidden Sand Village… unless.
"Shit." He went to lean his head in his hand only to pull back at the last moment before the metal touched his skin, as if it would burn him. He wasn't used to it… never thought he would be used to it. Swinging his feet over the edge he stumbled from the recovery bed and towards the door.
"Hey, wait! You shouldn't be up yet…" Her words were lost as he made his way though it, following the shine of natural light, and making his way outside.
"Gotcha now Al!" The voice preceded the appearance of stone threads that sprang from the ground to wind around a life sized moving set of armor that struggled back. The voice belonged to a young man who clapped his hands together and hit the ground, causing the stone to curl into the shape of a fist that would have crashed into the armor had it not broken the stone holding it and jumped out of the way just in time.
"A stone element jutsu?" He muttered to himself blinking. Just where the hell was he?
"That's Alchemy." The woman spoke up coming to stand beside him as she watched the golden eyed man and the suit of armor fight. They moved almost like shinobi but there were no hand signs other than the clapping of hands, no weapons thrown other than those that appeared from stone or earth. The shorter one materialized an awl staff only to ignore it the moment the wood snapped against armor, resorting instead to fighting hand to hand. Another clap of his palms and his right hand seemed to extend, lengthening and slimming to a deadly point. It was then Deidara realized that like him, the arm was metal.
"What the fuc…" He faltered when her eyes narrowed dangerously. "…ah… I mean, what is alchemy, yeah?"
The woman… Winry as she had introduced herself, smiled. "Alchemy is the science of manipulating matter with energy. Giving something to receive an equivalent creation. Edward and Al are Alchemists. They've studied it for as long as I can remember." She looked at the pair fondly, watching their 'battle' like it was an amusing show.
Deidara sighed and looked back. "Damn it, I get it now…"
Winry looked confused. "Get what…?"
"The Copy nin, yeah. His sharringan. I should have realized sooner. Know enough about the damned Uchiha, yeah." Come to think about it, he should have worked harder to get rid of the copy nin. But how was he supposed to have known that Kakashi had learned to use the Mangekyo Sharringan. He thought only Itachi had figured that one out. Evidently he had been wrong. It made sense though. With how backwards things were here, the only explanation was that the Mangekyo had shifted his dimension.
Turning his attention back to his hands he held them side by side, looking at the detail on his new metal one and the slim scars on his real one. The mouth in his palm opened and stretched out of habit and he only became aware that it had done so when two things happened.
The first was the high pitched squeal of excitement from the woman beside him who instantly leaned over to look at the orifice in his palm, poking and prodding as if he couldn't still bite her… which he did just to prove his point…though gently.
And the second was the sudden feeling of a metal fist against his jaw.
So when, for the third time, in not so many days, Deidara came awake slowly, he decided that he probably would have been better off just wandering around without an arm for the rest of his life, if it meant he could go back to his own world.
A/N: Also, I apologize to anyone who is glaring at their screen and furiously wondering why Im writing this instead of updating In the Silence. Be consoled in the fact that Im in the middle of a chapter and hope to have one up soon.