A/N: HELLO THERE EVERYBODY. Welcome to my spinoff/original idea for my fanfic, Alchemy and Vending Machines (previously Alchemist's reincarnation). The idea here is that Masaomi Kida is the reincarnation of Edward Elric rather than Shizuo. Whether or not I'll continue this is debatable, if you all like, review, and alert it like hell, then I'll definitely continue. I'm continuing my stories of Harry Potter, Code Geass, Magi, Pandora Hearts, Naruto, etc.
And if I switch tenses, forgive me as the beginning was intended to be told from present tense, but wound up switching between past and present. I will now do it as I intended to, with a few cuts in between, to add more substance to this work.
I do not own Full Metal Alchemist or Durarara! The creative ideas are my own, however the work I'm borrowing from is owned by Hiromu Arakawa, Studio BONES, Square Enix, and Ryohgo Narita.
Chapter One; Deja vu
Sometimes, he doesn't understand the world, as much as he doesn't understand himself. He's much more complex than he appears, and he's smarter than people think he is. In fact, the idea of him being considered stupid by people pisses him off. It doesn't take much to piss him off, in fact. Even being called small pisses him off.
What he's been through has been enough to make him nearly insane, or at the very least, clinging to what remains of his sanity.
It's amazing, he thinks, what people fail to grasp, even if it's right before their eyes. Perhaps the person who understands that the most is himself.
These are just the amount of questions Masaomi has drifting around his subconscious. It doesn't really matter what they are. These feelings confuse the blond teen, and he's not quite sure what to call them, nor what they are. They unsettle him, but at other times they're annoying.
One of the first things he can remember feeling off about as a child is when he and Mikado are playing. They're playing together, like they always do.
Mikado happens to mention something about a series named Harry Potter. So while they are reading the book, Mikado happens to mention something casually to Masaomi. What he certainly isn't expecting is for Masaomi to react the way that he does.
"So you know, Masaomi, there's this thing that they make called the Philosopher's Stone, and.."
The brunette dropped the book he was holding and stared at him with wide eyes, his golden eyes filled with confusion. "Repeat that last phrase again, Mikado?"
"Uh, Philosopher's stone. There's nothing wrong with that. It is fiction after all."
A bunch of strange thoughts take over Masaomi's head, and before he knows it, he doesn't know what he's saying. His mind is in a strange sort of fog, a strange mix of emotions. The next thing he knows, he's grabbed Mikado and is shaking him violently.
"No, the Philosopher's Stone is real! I've seen it, it exists! It's amazing, you can do so many things with it, like heal the sick, cure injuries, and bring about eternal life! What are you saying, Mikado?"
"Masaomi?" Mikado says, "This is just fiction. It's not real. Stop overreacting."
Masaomi suddenly puts his hand over his mouth, unable to believe what he'd just said. "What just came over me, Mikado?"
"You were trying to tell me that a fictional object exists."
"Was I? Uh...I don't remember. That's odd. Hey, Mikado, sometimes I don't entirely feel like myself." The brunette admitted.
The incident passes by forgotten. He and Mikado move on to other kinds of play.
Mikado's parents watch over them, occasionally whispering a few words of concern, but otherwise things are back to normal.
Or so it seems.
It is then and there, that for the first time, Masaomi has realized that there is something different about him, compared to other kids. It is there, it is there as he lies, asleep in bed. It is there as he plays with Mikado, whispering scary tales to him to make him flinch.
He is not ordinary.
Just knowing this scares him so much. And his fists tighten.
He isn't quite sure why he feels this way.
All he knows is that somehow, he is wrong.
The second time that this happened, it was all about his hair.
Masaomi's father has never been around, as long as he can remember. He ditched them when they were younger.
They, who is they?
Another odd thing is that Masaomi swears he's had a brother somewhere before. He often thinks of Mikado as his brother, even though Mikado swears they're just best friends.
But they laugh like brothers, they talk like brothers, right? Perhaps their relationship is different from what people would conventionally think of when they think of best friends.
About his hair.
His mother is around. She tries her best to provide for him, but there are times where she is imperfect. This is one of those times.
Masaomi's mother notices Masaomi standing by the mirror, glaring at his hair. She has noticed how her child has an extreme hatred of his hair style, and even the color of it. She's not quite sure why.
"I hate it," He says.
"What's wrong, Masaomi?" She asks.
The brunette turns around to stare at her. "My hair should be blond! Why is it not blond?" He cries.
"Masaomi, your hair is fine as it is!"
"It's not right!"
Before she can stop him, her son Masaomi takes a pair of scissors and starts to cut his brown hair, wildly.
She stops him by slapping him in the face.
Masaomi stares at his reflection in the mirror, taking in his sloppily cut hair.
Still, he's pleased.
"My hair should be longer than this..." He says, but she doesn't listen.
Adults don't listen, Masaomi realizes this by the time he's in junior high. Besides adults not listening, they're useless. They're useless to turn to about gangs, about anything at all.
Masaomi treasures his mother.
He must, or else something bad will happen to her. And bad it does.
He's around ten or eleven when it happens. He's not sure why the age is of so much significance to him, but it is.
That day, his mother smiles at him, pats his head and tells him she'll be back and that she's just going to the store to pick up a few things, and she'll be back in an hour. He waits for her. One hour passes, then another.
She does not return.
He decides to go to sleep and wait for her to come back.
When morning comes, she is not over his bedside, trying to wake him up. She is not in her room, which is still as shoddy and unmade as it was the day before.
He feels dread settle in his heart, for some reason he can't quite comprehend.
"Come on, Al, we've gotta find her." He says, before pausing and wondering, just who on earth is Al? Why did he say that?
Another odd thing Masaomi notices about himself is that he supposes he must have a younger brother somewhere, he often finds himself talking to someone named 'Al.' He's not sure why he does.
The other kids at school find that weird, so they often make fun of him.
But he doesn't care.
Masaomi is quite smart. He's always liked reading. But he only reads when it's necessary, ignoring the voice in his head that tells him he should be reading and studying more. He's always liked literature, and mathematics. He's especially good at that.
But the one thing that's always drawn him in more than anything else...is science. He's not sure why he's so interested in it. He finds himself eagerly wishing he could learn something more than what's in the textbooks. The textbooks don't teach him enough, but he seems like a lazy student to his class because he's always falling asleep.
He's always doing his own thing, and that pisses the teachers off more than anything else.
There is a knock on his door when he is sitting at a desk in his room, studying over his science textbooks, his golden eyes scouring over the page.
Cautiously, the brunette gets up and opens the door, in time to see a policeman standing there.
"Are you Masaomi Kida?"
Whenever he nods, the man continues on.
"I'm sorry to inform you that your mother has been in an accident. She is in the hospital, and your relatives have been called to take care of you."
Masaomi feels his heart pounding faster and faster. He can't lose his mother, he can't lose his mother, he can't, he can't!
The next day, Mikado is surprised when Masaomi is not in school.
He should be here, why isn't he?
It is not until later that afternoon, when he goes over to Masaomi's house, knocks and finds Masaomi's mother nowhere in sight and no sign of Masaomi himself.
The odd thing is, he can smell a funny odor coming from Masaomi's room.
When he opens the door, the sight he's greeted with is not a pleasant one.
"Masaomi!" Mikado cries, racing over to his friend's side.
He notices the textbooks open and answered homework. Funny, he always assumed his best friend was a slacker who never bothered to do any homework, and would rather be hitting on girls. What made him want to suddenly do it now?
He can see some odd-looking bottles near Masaomi. Was that...hair dye?
Mikado's eyes traveled back to Masaomi, who was...trying to dye his hair?
"Masaomi! Why are you dying your hair?"
"Because, Mikado, I'm supposed to be a blond!"
"Masaomi, not like this!" Mikado says. "Aren't you too young for that?"
"No, no I'm not! And my mother is dead!"
Mikado falls into a shocked silence upon hearing those words, looking at him.
Masaomi looked at him and then shook his head. "You don't understand. She died. There was an accident. She was in a car crash, and I couldn't save her..."
Tears went down Masaomi's face and at that second, Masaomi Kida broke, falling into his best friend's arms, who held him as he sobbed hysterically, and Mikado, too, started crying.
"It's all right!" Mikado cried. "I'm here for you! I always am!"
Masaomi tilts his head, a smile playing on his face, his newly dyed hair flopping in his eyes.
"That's great, Al! Let's go!" He says.
Mikado tilts his head, looking at his best friend in confusion. "What did you just say, Masaomi?"
Masaomi whirls back around to face him, his eyes full of confusion. "What is it, Mikado?"
"You just spoke...in another language, Masaomi! How do you know...German?"
"I've...always known German," Masaomi said, not sure why this was something that was bothering him.
"And who's Al? Some character on TV?"
"No, he's my imaginary friend! For some reason, I keep thinking I have a brother somewhere."
"But you don't have a brother, Masaomi!"
An idea popped into Masaomi's mind then.
"Then you can be like my little brother, Mikado!" Masaomi cried, hugging Mikado.
That night, as Masaomi lies on his bed, he keeps thinking he needs his mother back. But a soft voice whispers to him that if he did that, the consequences would be more dire than he can imagine.
When he dreams, he dreams of screaming, of blood dripping out of his leg, of some humanoid abomination with glowing red eyes, of someone screaming for their brother, and of hard metal limbs.
When he awakens the next morning, he finds that his arm and leg are normal, like they should be. It was just a dream, after all. Only a dream. Right?
The next time he gets a sudden sense of deja vu is when he forms a gang called the Yellow Scarves. Yellow has always seemed to define who he is, that and the colors of red and black, for some reason. He finds himself wearing red a bit.
So why is it when he meets Orihara Izaya, he feels a strange sense of deja vu going through his body? A sense of sudden antipathy, a sudden sense of dislike. He does not like this man, even though the girl, Saki Mikajima, sure seems to, in an almost unhealthy way.
"Who the hell are you?" He finds himself saying.
The man chuckles. The informant smirks at him.
"Still the same as ever, I see." He says, patting the blond boy's head, who looks at him in confusion.
"Don't act so familiar with me!" He cries.
"Oh, I know you very well. Leader of the Yellow Scarves, Masaomi Kida-kun. Perhaps something more than that. I'm Orihara Izaya, pleasure to meet you."
He does not like this man. He isn't sure why.
This man is a lot like fire, burning and unpredictable.
Saki? Saki herself is strange. He doesn't quite understand her. What he feels for her isn't 'love.' Nothing like that, it's more like...a sisterly feeling. She's like a sister to him. Even though she's infatuated with him, he doesn't exactly return the sentiment.
Then Saki is hospitalized. In an event he could've prevented.
Something he could've prevented, if he had the chance or the willpower to do so.
Somehow, he can recall a little girl somewhere, her death, and he could've saved her, yet was too cowardly to do so.
He can recall pain from being in the hospital. He keeps on thinking his right arm and left leg shouldn't be there, that they should be somewhere else.
"Why didn't you protect Saki?" He finds himself shouting at Izaya, trying to punch the bastard, only for him to be knocked backward by him.
"You're too weak. That's your first problem. You're too naive. You're too different from how you were last time."
"Last time?" Masaomi remarks, not quite getting what the man's talking about.
"Ah, you still don't remember, do you?" Izaya says, sighing in finality. "This will make everything so much harder."
Orihara Izaya is an enigma.
"Still stupid, aren't you, Ed?"
That voice causes Masaomi to freeze. The golden-eyed boy looks at him in confusion.
"What are you talking about?"
"You reacted," Izaya says, grabbing Masaomi's arm.
But Masaomi wriggles out of his grasp. He hates this man.
"Is it true that you can speak German?"
"Shut up and leave me alone!" Masaomi cries, again in German. How does he know that? He's never studied it before. He blinks a few times.
Orihara Izaya is looking down at him, with an amused expression on his face.
"It's just as I thought." He says, pulling Masaomi back to his feet, before the Yellow Scarves leader can react. "You are him, aren't you?"
Masaomi does the only thing he can do-he runs away. Despite the voice in his head telling him to get back up and walk, to fight back, he doesn't want to. He runs instead.
"As I was saying, Mikado, Ikebukuro is an exciting place." He says, nudging the black-haired youth.
"Uh, Masaomi...remember back when you said we could be brothers?"
"Yeah?" Masaomi says in disinterest.
"Well, what if we were friends in a past life?"
"Friends! Maybe we were brothers! I, Masaomi Kida, the love extraordinaire, surrounded you with all kinds of women!"
'Don't be such an idiot, Masaomi Kida. There's no time for that,' A voice whispers in his head.
'Shut up,' Masaomi says back.
"Masaomi, you've been acting weird lately," Mikado says, staring at his friend in worry.
As they pass by all kinds of stores, Masaomi's eyes lock onto something. It was...a store. Not just any kind of store, but one with...medieval things.*
He noticed a suit of armor in the window.
Instantly, Masaomi made a beeline for the store, with Mikado behind him.
"Masaomi, why are you so interested in that?" Mikado asks.
"Armor, huh? Looks kinda cool, doesn't it?" Masaomi says, eying the armor up and down. "I like it for some strange reason. Not quite sure why."
He closed his eyes. He imagined a person in a suit of armor, walking around and talking.
'And the name of that person is...Al...?'
Mikado waved a hand in front of the blond's face, startling him out of his trance.
"Hey, Mikado, how's the weather?"
"Fine...why were you spacing out like that?" Mikado asked in worry.
"I don't know." Masaomi says.
To be honest, he doesn't know himself.
And that scares him.