The Not Quite Truman Show
Hello, hello. This is my second fic ever, my first one for Fullmetal Alchemist. So yeah.
And by the way, since I am the author, I'm going to be changing things up a bit.
This is an O.C. fic. For those of you who don't like it them, simply don't read. There may be a chance of a romance with one of the canon characters, but I think realistically if you fell into an alternate dimension, especially one that's as action-packed and mentally and physically stressful as the Fullmetal Alchemist one, you would have a lot more to worry about than your love life.
So did some calculations for the money currency there (cenz) and I've assumed that 500 cenz = $1 USD back in the 1910s, judging by how much it cost for a short phone call. But $1 USD back then is around $25 dollars USD now. So essentially 500 cenz is equal to $25. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, as this is just my assumption. If you think of something better please P.M. me :)
Also, if anyone knows how to do that line or paragraph breaker thing, please P.M. me cause it would be really helpful
Disclaimer : I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist. Only my O.C. and possibly other O.C.'s I add into the story
Warning: Rated T for swearing, violence and other stuff which I'll warn you about later
Edited 7/4/17 - yeah, it has been a while. Sorry for not updating in a long time, but I'm eating my way through the next chapter which should be up soon :)
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Chapter One: Well Fuck
In the duration of my fifteen years, I've always been prone to having strange dreams.
One I had was where I walked into the bathroom, only to find my Dad having a bath in the toilet. His legs has somehow disappeared into the bowl, and his arms were rested on the rim. Another where, for some reason, it had been socially unacceptable to be seen entering a library. I remembered that one quite vividly. At one point, someone had entered the library in a lobster costume in order to remain anonymous. But I digress, this dream I was in takes a cake for, well not being my strangest dream, but still being one of my top twenty 'pretty weird' dreams all the same.
To put it frankly, I was in a white space filled with white nothingness with no definite ending. No walls, no ceiling and, I looked down, no floor. I could not tell where and when the floor met with the roof. It all seemed to merge into endless white. But strangely enough, the ground below me was quite solid. I jumped up and down. It felt like concrete, no spring in it at all. It was vaguely disorienting, and wrapping my head around the physics of this place was giving me a headache. I hated physics.
For a dream I was quite aware. I mean, sometimes whilst in a dream I had realized I was dreaming, but never to this extent. I flexed my wrists, rolled my shoulders and cricked my neck, feeling the muscles and joints work together in a very realistic fashion. Strange indeed.
"Welcome," a strange, unfamiliar voice cut across my train of thought. Though I heard it coming from behind me, it seemed to echo across the endless white, making it seem as if it were a hundred voices instead of just one. I pivoted around. Before me was a weird figure, sitting down with one elbow propped against its knee, which was close to its chest.
The figure was human, or at least humanoid. It was completely white, save for some kind of dark aura - for lack of a better word - surrounding it. Not only that, I noted as I looked closer, it produced shadows. There was one under its chin and another from under where it's arm was resting on its knee. I looked up, trying to detect a light source, but there was nothing but endless white. I looked back down at the figure.
"This dream is pretty strange, even for me," I stated, glancing at the figure curiously.
The figure cocked its head to the side. "What makes you think this is a dream?" It asked. Its voice, or voices, made me shiver. It sounded like a mix between a beautiful voice of a singer and a pack of wolves howling at the moon. Feral, dangerous and raw.
I scratched the back of my head. "I mean, I remember going to bed before this, so what else could it be?"
The figure didn't answer, just continued to stare at me. Actually, I take that back. It couldn't stare at me, considering it had no visible eyes. But still, something about its presence caused my heartbeat to increase, caused the beginnings of my fight or flight mode to kick in. Something in the back of my mind told me to get the hell away from here. Which was ridiculous. This was just a dream, right?
"So, who are you?" I asked, trying to keep the waver out of my voice.
It brought its hand to its chin, as if pondering the question, "I am what you call… the world. Sometimes the Universe. Usually God. Occasionally Truth. Never All. Infrequently One and," It paused, bring its hand from its chin and pointing it at me, "I am also you."
I laughed nervously. "That sounds rather ominous, don't you think? Is that what you say to all the girls, or am I just special?"
The thing merely grinned. Okay, say what I might about its presence, but its grin made my previous feelings of uneasiness feel like a nice, summer's breeze. It was a smile that could break the will of even the strongest men. It was a grin that knew all your deepest darkest secrets, knew who you really are. It was a grin that knew the best and most efficient way to ruin you. I felt bile rise up my throat. I swallowed it back down, ignoring the burning sensation it caused, and closed my eyes.
"This is just a dream, this is just a dream," I whispered to myself, slowly backing away from the figure, counting my steps. "One… two… thre-." I felt my back hit something solid. Startled, I whirled around. In front of me was some sort of giant door, hovering above the ground so the bottom of it was in line with my hip. I backed away and looked up at it. It was a dark grey colour, with strange inscriptions carved into it. The inscription kind of looked like a tree. Long and thin, with branches stretching out. Those branches ended with circular shapes. A circular shape rested on top of the tree, with some sort of crown around, and the bottom of the tree was feathers. There was writing, I noticed as well, but it was too far away for me to see what it read.
"Your presence here will be like the wind to the trees," the figure stated. I slowly turned around. It was now standing up, hands resting by its side, the terrifying grin still glued to its face.
"You may stir the leaves, even knock a few branches loose, but the tree itself remains unchanged. You will know exactly what course of action is going to happen, but whether the leaves will be stirred is up to you."
I raised an eyebrow "Wha-"
Suddenly, I heard the door behind me quickly swing open. A loud, groaning noise greeted my ears, as if a giant had awoken from its nap. I turned around again to face the door. In the open doorway was…
...Well...Shit.
In the doorway, surrounding by darkness, was a giant, grey eye, glaring and luminous. It protruded out, to close to me for comfort. Looking at this set off something inside me; the hairs on the back of my neck rose and my heartbeat rate increased tenfold. Panic set in and I felt adrenaline rush through every corner of my body. I began to full out sprint away. Anyplace, anywhere, I didn't care about my destination just as long as I got the fuck away from there. But before I could get any more than three metres, thin tendrils of shadow wrapped around me, circling everywhere from my head to my feet, and began to drag me back into the dark, looming doorway.
"NO, LET ME GO!" I screamed. I fought, kicked, scratched, punched. I tried to break free, tried to run. But every time a part of me escaped, two more tendrils came in its place. They wrapped around me twice as tight, dragging me back twice as fast. "PLEASE, I BEG OF YOU. LET ME GO!" I felt tears of desperation spill down my face as I could do nothing but feel myself being dragged back into the dark doorway.
The doors began to close in front of me and the endless white of that strange space becoming slimmer and slimmer. Before the doors had completely shut though, the figure had one more thing to say.
"I wish you the best of luck." It said, a terribly amused tilt to its voice. The last thing I saw was its horrifying, will-destroying grin. Then the doors slammed shut with a deafening bang and I was surrounded by darkness.
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I woke with a start and sat up, my breath erratic and my heartbeat so quick it could match a hummingbird's. 'It was just a nightmare', I told myself. 'Calm down, it was just a nightmare'. I began to do my breathing exercises. In for four, hold for five, out for eleven. I could feel my heart rate decrease. As I saw the light that surrounded me and felt the warm breeze flow through my hair and clothes, I reassured myself. 'See, everything's perfectly normal'. I felt my panic start to ebb away, in its place relief. 'It was just a nightmare'.
But that panic came screaming back at full force when I adjusted to my surroundings. When I realized that the surface beneath me wasn't my bed and when the area that surrounded me was definitely not my bedroom. Instead, I was on some kind of street. Well, technically a footpath, but I digress.
It was filled with people in clothes you would see your grandmother wearing. Which wouldn't be too strange except for the fact that I see people in their twenties who walked around in that exact fashion statement.
The cars that filled the street were certainly not your average Ford or Toyota either. Instead they were those vintage cars you point out every time you see them drive down the street, as it was such a rare occurrence. They were the ones you see in documentaries and movies based in the early to mid 20th century. I remembered back when I had gone to an old car museum with my Dad, and I had seen cars almost identical to the ones parked in the gutter.
'Have I gone back in time, or am I still in some hyper-realistic dream?' I thought as apprehension filled me to the brim. I touched the ground beneath me. It was cobblestone, cracked and worn with weeds poking through into the surface. Much unlike the concrete streets back home. The people who walked passed me mostly ignored me, and only acknowledged me with looks of contempt and disgust. Whether it was because of my 'strange attire' or the fact that they thought I was a beggar, I had no idea. Probably both, to be totally honest.
At one point a little boy, who was holding his mother's hand, pointed at me.
"Look, there's a girl over there!" He shouted, with his accent twisted and folded into an American twang. His mother looked at me, before she turned her nose up and wrinkled it as if she had smelt shit.
"Ignore her Benjamin." The woman had a pompous and, like her son, an American accent (how she managed to sound pompous without being English, I don't know). "Trash like that are not worthy of our attention".
But the boy wrenched his hands out of his mother's and ran towards me. Upon closer inspection, he couldn't have been more than ten. He had big baby blue eyes and cropped blond hair, with freckles dancing across his pale skin.
His outfit... kind of looked like a school uniform. He wore a grey blazer over a white button up shirt, with dull grey shorts that went down to his knees. He ruffled through the pockets of his shorts, before he pulled something out and held them out to me.
"Here you go, miss." he said with a bright smile that was without his two front teeth. I hesitantly went to grab them out of his hand. They were some coins, ones that I have never seen before. I scrutinized them for a bit, then glanced back at the boy questionably, only to see him as he walked back to his mother.
"Wait!" I shouted, standing up. But his mother walked briskly towards him and grabbed his hand, before she hastily pulled him away.
"That's why you ignore them. You give one money, and they start surrounding you, asking for more. Vultures, I tell you."
I felt my blood pressure rise slightly at that. 'Takes one to know one, bitch', I thought. I then calmed myself. I've been called worse. The boy turned around and waved at me. I hesitantly lifted my hands and waved back. Then the boy and his mother then disappeared around the corner, out of sight.
I glance down at the coins he gave me. Three, I counted. They were all round and silver, similar to a twenty cents coin. But there were some differences. They were bigger and heavier, and on the backside was a crescent moon making a face. Or at least, that's what it looked like. Wait, no I take that back. It looked like a lion with no legs, only a ribbon that curled away from its torso. I flipped the coin over. On the other side was the number five hundred.
I thought of tossing the money away, but then reconsidered. This may be the currency for… wherever I am. I looked around. This definitely does not look like the streets of Wellington. My time travel theory was still at the forefront of my mind. Maybe it was time travel in a dream. That would be pretty cool.
'Whelp, no point staying in one spot,' I thought, and started to wander off in the opposite direction of the woman and her son. 'God forbid I run into her. The real vulture there. Looked like one too.' I thought venomously.
I stuffed the coins in my hoodie's pocket. Never before have I been so glad that I wore pants to bed than I was them as I was then. As I stood in the middle of the street with my hoodie that goes down to my mid thighs, and my black sports leggings that touch the floor if I stretch them enough. Unfortunately I didn't have shoes, but my feet were calloused enough for it to not be painful to walk in bare feet.
The more I wandered around, the more confused I got. I know New Zealand wasn't known for its skyscrapers, but there wasn't anything even distinctly modern here. The shops looked old and worn, their signs dusty and lacking the prominent colours that could be seen on most modern buildings. The strange thing was also, everyone around me had American accents; the boy and his mother weren't an exception. Considering the fact that I was still in my pajamas, I assumed that I was still in New Zealand. Or maybe, I've gone back in time. Who knows.
After what felt like hours that I wandered around, with the sun lower in the sky, I finally worked up the courage to ask one of the civilians of this place… where this place actually is. The woman I approached was average height, with long straight black hair, black eyes and an athletic build.
"Um, excuse me," I began, awkwardly. The woman looked down at me, smiling. She nodded, as if beckoning me to go on.
"Do you know what city this is?" I continued, accentuating each syllable, as I knew firsthand how hard it was for Americans to understand a New Zealand accent.
The woman looked confused, "Uhh, you're in East City." she said, as if that would clarify everything. Which it didn't. There were a lot of cities in the East. Napier and Hastings in New Zealand. In America, New York, Washington... I think. Or is that in the west?
"Okay… how about what country?" I clarified.
The woman looked, if it were possible, more confused than before. Her eyebrows furrowed and she peered down at me.
"Well, you're in Amestris of course."
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And that's the end, folks. Sorry for the short, boring and yes, I admit, pretty shitty chapter. I'm still getting used to writing fanfiction so give me some time.
Please review me some constructive criticism, that would be great.
Goodbye¬
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