Chapter 1: Traveller from Xing

Who's screaming?

That was Rita's first thought as she woke up to heat unlike anything she'd ever experienced before. She rolled from her side and arched her back away from the scorching hot sand.

It didn't take long to realise the screams were coming from her, as she gasped for air with her sore and dry throat, only to let out another ear piercing scream of agony.

She opened her eyes, blinded by the hot sun. She tried to lift her left arm to shield her eyes, but nothing happened. She stumbled to a sitting position with the support of her right arm and looked down.

And bit down another scream.

Oh god.

There was so much blood. The whole left side of her green jacket was dark with it.

Her arm was gone.

"No..." Rita clenched her teeth together. While she cried her eyes out the rational part of her brain was yelling for her to do something.

She managed to momentarily overcome her panic, and shrugged the jacket off. She grabbed one of the sleeves with her right arm and one with her teeth, and tied it around her shoulders so that it would hopefully slow down the bleeding, working as a makeshift bandage. As far as bandages go, it was a relatively shitty one. She tightened it as hard as she could, and was glad the sleeve was in her mouth, because she pretty was sure she was screaming again.

Rita willed herself stop crying. Stop being such a wimp, she thought. Despite the thought, she couldn't stop the occasional scream and whimper while she squinted at the unfamiliar landscape around her. The sun shining down on her felt like a judgement. It was so hot she could barely think.

She was in the middle of a desert.

Remaining rational part of her brain told her to start walking before she died of blood loss and shock, never mind of thirst.

She stood up, her shaky legs and her whole body screaming at her to just sit down and stop moving and give up. But she stumbled forwards and started walking. She shifted her shoulder bag so her right arm was stradding it and it wouldn't fall down from her shoulder.

Sweat mixed with blood.

She was going to die, Rita thought as she walked.

And walked.

Her arm was gone.

Where the fuck was she?

And walked.

Maybe she was dead already, and this was some form of elaborate torture in hell.

After what felt like eternity, she saw the vague shape of buildings in the distance. The harsh glare of the sun made it hard to see, but she was sure it was...

A city!

She hastened her steps at the sight and stumbled, falling down in the hot sand. On her left side. The one with the bleeding, deadly wound on it.

Her vision blurred as she let out a hoarse yell.

"...someone...there!"

"...injured...from Xing...blood!"

"Someone...!"

She looked up faintly and saw several people running towards her. The sun was directly behind them, making it impossible to see any details apart from their siluettes against the bright glare. She closed her eyes in relief.

Thank god.

When she came to, the first thing she felt was pain. Not too much, but enough to make her gasp out a breath at the sensation. She opened her groggy eyes and found herself staring at a ceiling of some kind of a tent. She didn't understand what the hell had happened. Nothing was making any sense.

"Are you feeling any better?" a strangely accented voice asked her.

She blinked.

"You must be, since you no longer screamed yourself awake."

She used her right hand to get into a sitting position, and almost fell down again when she focused on the person speaking. Her eyes widened.

"What the..." she started. "Did you get me on some really heavy pain killers or something? Because I'm fairly sure I'm hallucinating."

"What do you mean?" the man asked slowly, in heavily accented English. She got the impression that he wasn't quite fluent in English.

"You look like you have red eyes, man."

The man blinked and tilted his head curiously. His hair was greying, so he must have been close to middle-age, if not older. "Yes?"

Rita frowned. "You're kidding. Nobody just has red eyes like that. Well, maybe albinos, but you look completely normal otherwise. Ergo, I'm totally hallucinating."

"I'm sorry if my appearance is… startling…" the man continued, obviously trying to find the proper words. "This is how my people look like."

Rita felt like the pain in her nonexistent arm wasn't such a problem anymore. She was getting a headache. "Your…. people?" She had assumed she had somehow ended up in Afgnistan or Iraq, and been blown up, but based on the guy's appearance, she was now doubting it.

"I am Ishvalan."

Rita blinked. "Why does that sound vaguely familiar?"

"I do not know if you Xingese have heard of it... But there was a great war involving my people some years ago. We are refugees ever since."

"Eh," Rita said, trying to make sense of the man's explanations, "Backtrack a bit. What did you say? Zing what?"

The man frowned. "You are Xingese, aren't you?"

"You mean Chinese, right?"

The old man stopped for a moment. "Yes, I am sorry, it has been a time since I spoke in your language. I am sorry for using the Amestrisian word for it."

"Ehhh," Rita said, feeling like her head was going to burst. "Amestris?"

"That is the country across the desert, I'm sure you must be familiar with it. We assumed it was where you were going. There is nothing else here."

She squinted at the red eyed old man. "Amestris..." she sounded out. Maybe it was some European country she had vaguely heard about? "That sounds really familiar. But it doesn't explain why I'm here. Last time I checked, I was in New York City."

The Ishvalan, unbelivably, didn't show any recognition at the name. "I'm afraid I haven't heard of a city with that name," he said, making Rita's eyes widen. Who on this Earth hadn't heard of NYC? "But I am not an expert on the matter. Perhaps you will find someone who knows your city in the town nearby. We will have to send you there, after you've recovered from the worst. There is no doctors here."

Rita looked down at her nonexistent arm, now covered in bandages, and bit back a curse. "Do you have any idea what happened? Was I attacked by an animal or something?"

"The cut is clean," the Ishvalan said. "I do not know of any animal like that..." The man's expression soured. "Maybe alchemy."

Her eyebrows felt like they were going to float off her face. "Sorry?"

"It is common in Amestris," he said and stared at her. She got the feeling he didn't particularly enjoy talking about the subject in question. "You are not an alchemist?"

"Hahaha," she coughed. "That's so funny. I almost believed you for a moment!" She laughed. "Achemy! That's hilarious! So I was right, you're just messing with me!"

The man was quiet. He didn't stop his unnerving staring.

Rita shut her mouth. And swallowed.

"You mean..." she trailed off. "Alchemy is real?" She stared back at the man and his red eyes. "Wait, do you mean the turning coal into gold kind of alchemy, or the 'I can do anything I want, blow stuff up, and shit, except for waking up dead people' kind of alchemy?"

The man's sour expression was answer enough.

Fuck.

She was in Fullmetal Alchemist.

The Ishvalan refugees were kind enough to let her stay in their camp until she was stable enough to walk. She suspected their hospitality had something to do with her Chinese heritage. She didn't look Amestrisian enough for them to be hostile.

They sent a young man to escort her to the nearest town, which happened to be Youswell. Just her luck.

The young man also didn't speak any English, so the trip was made entirely in silence. She said her goodbyes to the young man as well as she could, and found herself blankly staring at the town center as people walked past her, giving her curious looks.

A woman passing by must have noticed her blank eyed stare, because they stopped and asked if she was okay.

That's what she assumed the woman asked, anyway, since it seemed like everyone here spoke goddamn Japanese instead of English. Yep, it was something she'd figured out at the camp, since the old Isvalan had been the only one who understood any English. Which was apparently Xingese here. Don't even ask how the writing system was supposed to work, Rita had no idea. She wondered if this was the universe's idea of a joke.

"Uh," she said and blinked, doing her best to remember the basic Japanese she'd learnt during high school and the vocabulary she'd gathered from all the anime since then. She looked pointedly down at her left shoulder and at the bandages there. "Hurt?"

The woman's eyes widened, and she took her hand and started leading her towards the town Doctor's office.

Rita was trying to remember the word for money, as in 'I have no goddamn money' as the woman pushed her inside.

The woman said something in rapid Japane- Amestrisian, Rita was unable catch, so she just went with it. Hopefully they wouldn't put her in jail when they figured she had no money.

The woman knocked three times, and a deep voice called them in.

The office had no secretary and the room was very bland and small. There was a writing desk, a simple bed for the patient, a white partition to allow some privacy, and a couple of cabinets glass cabinets that were full of medicine and other important equipment. A man in his late forties was sat behind the desk. He had dark curly hair and a simple pair of glasses on his face. He seemed to be absorbed in reading some kind of file, and only looked up when the woman closed the door.

"Ah, Helen," the man, who Rita asummed was the doctor, said and smiled wearily, "It's been a while."

"This isn't a social visit, Dr. Benner," the woman, Helen, scowled, "I found this girl in the town square, she says she was hurt."

Rita followed the conversation with interest, only able to catch a few familiar words here and there.

Dr. Benner's smile slid off his face, and his eyes instantly snapped into Rita's left side. The jacket draped over her shoulders was dark with dried blood. That must have alarmed the doctor, because he stood up and motioned for Rita to sit on the bed while he slipped on a pair of white gloves.

"What exactly happened?" Dr. Benner asked, while taking out a roll of fresh bandages out of a drawer.

Rita hesitated, hugging her shoulder bag, which enclosed her last worldy possessions, to her chest. The question was obviously aimed at her, and from the context she figured the man was questioning her about the wound. "I… Amestris speak very little. I hurt. People help."

Dr. Benner frowned at her. "Amestrisian," he corrected her. "You don't speak Amestrisian?"

Rita kinda understood the sentence so she nodded.

The doctor groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. He turned to Helen. "We'll have to clean the wound and see how bad the damage is."

He took off her jacket, handing it to Helen, who took it without a word. She then asked if he needed assistance, and after his negative answer, she left the room with Rita's bloody jacket in tow. Rita followed her blankly with her gaze and wondered what was going to happen to her only jacket now.

Then she forgot about it, because Dr. Benner had opened up the bandages and was looking at the relatively clean cut with wide eyes.

"This doesn't look like an animal bite," he breathed out.

Rita stared blankly at him, because she had no idea what he'd just said.

The doctor shook his head slightly. "No matter, we need to properly clean the wound with alcohol and then bandage it." He glanced sharply at her. "You look pale, have you eaten anything?" He mimed eating so that he would be sure Rita understood he meant. She recognised the word.

"A little," she said. She had a feeling she was going to sound like an idiot, speaking with one or two word sentences for a while.

Dr. Benner let out a sigh and grabbed a bottle of alcohol and a piece of cloth. "As soon as this is done, you'll need bed rest and lots of fluids."

She figured out he was talking about something concerning her, so she decided she should just tell him she was broke as hell. She'd finally remembered the word for money too.

"No money," she said and repeated it, pointing at herself with her remaining hand. "No money."

"I don't care, you idiot girl," the man growled, "I'm not letting you of this clinic until I'm sure you won't fall dead in my streets."

Rita stared at his violent ouburst. "I don't understand," she said. Because she really didn't.

Dr. Benner just waved a hand at her questioning face and continued his work.

She was pretty sure she was still hallucinating. Or it might have been the medicine she'd been given at the camp, but everything was feeling really surreal right now.

"What year now?" she said suddenly.

Dr. Benner gave her an odd look. "1912," he answered.

It took her a while to translate that to English numbers, but when she did, she sighed.

"Great, just great," she muttered in English, earning a curious look from the doctor.

It had been ages since she'd read the manga or watched the anime, so...

If she truly was in Fullmetal Alchemist, she had no idea when in the story she was. The only thing she knew for certain was that Edward had carved a date with the year 1911 inside his State Alchemist pocket watch. Which meant that the Promised Day had been a few years after that, and shit was going to be hitting the fan sometime soon.

Rita had no money, no ID, and her fucking arm was gone. She only had a basic, almost useless vocabulary of the local language, and as far as she knew, she hadn't in fact gained magical alchemical knowledge or ancient martial arts from crossing the Gate.

She was so fucked.