Okay. So this is an idea of mine that's been written twice before already, with the RWBY universe instead of the MHA universe, but like all my older stories, has never lifted off properly.

What makes this time so different? Well, I'm three years older, I have less time to write, and most of my writing time is actually dedicated to writing a different story.

So let's just see how this goes.

The air was charged with a strange energy. Many events had led to this climax but even after the final blow was dealt, felling the creature who claimed to have harnessed god's powers for itself, conflicting emotions ran rampant. Nobody knew whether to cheer or cry. The young man who stood in the center of the clearing could barely register what had just happened.

On one hand, the threat was gone and humanity was saved but many lives were taken as the cost for victory. The young man morbidly noted that this small war seemed to follow the laws of equivalent exchange, just like the alchemy that had been used to end it.

He looked down at his feet to see a broken suit of armour that once housed the soul of his little brother. Alphonse had exchanged his soul so Edward could get his arm back once again. Edward was now in a frantic state of mind, thinking of all the possible ways to try and bring his brother back.

He promised Alphonse that he would never use a human soul to restore either of their bodies so the only option was to use something else. But there was nothing in the world that could be equivalent to a human life. Edward racked his brains to try and think of something that he could use.

With a spark of inspiration, he realized something that the world might consider to be even greater than a single human soul.

"May, back up," he said to the tear-stained girl who lay hunched over his brother's old body. Picking up a stick off the ground, he started to carefully draw a pattern in the dirt. He cringed a bit at the pattern on the ground, but continued with determination. Hopefully this would be the last human transmutation circle he would ever see.

Despite the shock on his friends' faces, he stood in the center of the circle and clapped his hands together. "I'll be right back," he said. He hoped that his expression was much more confident than he felt. "Here comes the Fullmetal Alchemist's final transmutation." He slammed his hands against the ground and felt the disturbingly familiar feeling of being deconstructed. He felt his body disappearing from the world and his consciousness slipping away with it.

When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but a white silhouette of himself, sitting casually in front of a large door. "Come for your brother, eh?" The thing, "Truth" as it called itself, never seemed to make a sound. Edward only felt its words resonate inside him. "How do you plan to extract a human being? How will you pay? Will you offer me your entire being?"

Edward ignored its suggestion and walked past it as casually as he could. As he walked up to the door that seemed to hold all the secrets of the world, he felt his confidence gradually increase. The only thing that would be equal to a soul would be the laws of the entire world itself.

"All is one, one is all," he thought to himself.

"I've got your payment right here," Edward said, not even bothering to confirm his suspicions. "It's really big, though."

A moment of silence passed before anything happened. "The gate of truth lies within every human being. Thus, it is also the potential of those human beings to use alchemy." Edward heard the words echo through his mind. The words were mostly emotionless, but he thought he could sense a bit of surprise in them. "Will you sacrifice the power to use alchemy and simply become an ordinary human being?"

"I've always been an ordinary human. Just a little man who couldn't even save one poor girl they turned into a chimera. Someone who caught a glimpse of the 'Truth' and started over-relying on its gift only to fail again and again… It's all been one long dance."

"Are you sure you're alright with losing this?"

Edward turned around to catch a glimpse of Truth's featureless face. "I don't need alchemy as long as I've got my friends."

As Truth gave him a wide grin, Edward turned back around to face the Gate and mentally prepared himself to pay the largest toll that alchemy had to offer but Truth's next words shocked him.

"Well it looks like you're not done with your journey just yet, alchemist," he heard. It took him a second to register what it had just said. He turned around to look at Truth. Ed had never realized it until seeing it, but without the wide grin usually covered most of its head, staring at a completely blank face was an unnerving experience.

"What- what do you mean by that?" Edward asked.

Truth gave him an shrug. A chill ran through Edward's spine.

A few seconds passed before Edward regained his senses. Shaking his head, he steeled his mind and turned to face Truth. "What the hell are you going on about?"

"I don't know how to transmute myself. You were the only human to ever try."

Edward realized exactly why Truth's simple shrug had bothered him so much. He'd never expected a being called "Truth" to be uncertain about anything.

"So is that it? Is this the end?" Edward asked, clenching his fists together until his knuckles turned white.

"No," it replied, giving Edward a spark of hope. "Probably," it continued, giving a weak chuckle as its smile reappeared on its face once again.

"I don't know how to transmute myself, but that doesn't mean that nobody knows how," it said as it pointed upwards. Edward followed the direction of the finger and looked up to the sky.

Somehow, when he had been in the world of Truth he had never once decided to look up, but now that he had, he couldn't look away.

He saw a door. Many doors, stretching further than his simple human mind could comprehend. This was more than the Truth of his entire universe. This was infinity.

And then there was one.

Edward couldn't quite understand whether his mind had somehow erased the other doors from his perception in order to protect it from the incomprehensible truth of infinity, or if they had actually assimilated into one.

It was nearly identical to the one floating in front of him, but something about it made him shiver. His own Truth had never made him feel like this, even as his limbs were being torn from his body, even as the collective knowledge of the world was crammed into his mortal brain.

He didn't understand how he knew, but he knew that the second door wasn't something right. It wasn't natural. It didn't belong.

"You of all people should know that there's more than one way to see the world," it told him, the wide grin fully visible now. "Your world isn't black and white. Why would my world be so easy?"

Edward couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from the gate. He told himself that it was silly, but he couldn't help but think that he would be attacked if he dared to look away from it. He barely even heard Truth's words as something screamed at him to distance himself from him, but another voice in his head was much louder. A voice that had been screaming at him for his entire life.

"So if I go in there I'll get my brother back."

Though Edward kept his eyes fixed onto the second gate, he sensed Truth shrugging again.

"I don't know if it's possible in the first place," it admitted casually. "But whatever the answer to that question is, you'll learn it in there."

"Of course," Edward said grimly. "Just my luck."

The door above him opened up and Edward saw darkness within, again so similar to the darkness within his own gate of Truth, but somehow so different. He ignored the urge to turn away and simply extended a hand to the slow tendrils of darkness that creeped out.

As a tendril touched his hand, he let out a sigh of relief and finally allowed himself to turn away. Now that he was trapped, there was no way that he could give into the temptation of simply running away and abandoning his little brother for good. He turned to Truth. "Got any tips for me?" he asked.

Truth didn't drop its smile. "It's an entirely different world out there, operated by an entirely different Truth. You'll be a foreign object, so be careful about what might happen over there. Will you be eliminated by the world itself? Will you still subscribe to my Truth? Will your body assimilate to the laws of the new world? Who knows? I've never been so clueless, it's not in my nature." It shook its head though it was still grinning. "Whatever the case, have fun. Hopefully you'll see me again soon."

Edward nodded as he felt the new Gate of Truth pull him towards itself.

Then everything seemed to explode.

Whenever he entered the Gate, which was much more often than he had liked, he felt as if the entirety of his body was systematically being deconstructed. It was a painful and unnerving process whenever he felt his body simply leaving him. This Gate was different in that he wasn't being deconstructed but instead, he felt his body being overloaded with a large amount of energy. At least with his Gate, you couldn't feel the pain in an arm you didn't have. With this Gate, he had no such solace.

But it was over in an instant.

He opened his eyes to find he was lying down on his back. The ground was hard and he could feel a light breeze tickling his face. His vision was blurry, but he could see a faint white light shining down on him from overhead.

After moving around a bit, he confirmed that he was still completely there, though he still wasn't all too used to having both of him arms being made of flesh.

Despite the terror that he felt from merely looking at the gate that had swallowed him, he had to admit that it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected. He turned over onto his side, still too weak to actually stand up. His vision was still slightly blurry, but it was getting better now. Edward was pleased to learn that it was only temporary.

Though he gave out a big sigh, he decided to be grateful that he was alive in the first place, and that he had the opportunity to finally revive his little brother's body, even though it involved travelling so far into the unknown. He was grateful that the foreign Gate hadn't decided to kill him, and he was grateful that he wasn't killed as soon as he fell into this new world. As peaceful and empty his surroundings seemed, he had no way of knowing his exact situation, though the fact that he hadn't been attacked since he'd arrived was a good indication that things could be worse.

He was hit with the sudden realization though his vision was still blurry, he could see the movement of shadows crowding around him. People, if his guess was right. It wasn't something to be proud of, but he'd been concussed and low on blood enough in his life to craft a vague understanding of his current situation despite feeling so faint.

Edward tried lifting his arms, in case he needed to defend himself, but the movement was awkward and sluggish barely lifting them off the ground.

Well, if he was surrounded by hostiles, he would be dead.

As the muffled sounds of people screaming and shouting surrounded him, his consciousness slowly faded away, with him having no say in the matter.

As Edward slowly came back into consciousness, the first thing he acknowledged was that he was alive.

Alive, injured, and possibly drugged up. A familiar situation, aside from the drugs, but he hadn't regained consciousness enough to tell if his slow-mindedness was just a result from grogginess. Regardless, Edward kept his eyes closed as he ran his body through a series of tests, twitching every muscle slightly to make sure his body was working properly without moving too obviously, in case somebody was watching.

It was only after he had decided he was fully functional that he realized there was a metal feeling around his right wrist. Opening his eyes slightly, he sighed once he saw the metal handcuff that chained him to his bed.

Abandoning the facade of sleep, he opened his eyes completely and scanned his surroundings.

He was in a hospital, for sure. The white walls, beds, and equipment, even if he couldn't recognize half of it, was a dead giveaway. So he was being tended to, at the very least. As he shifted in his bed, he noticed a large amount of bandages draped over his chest. The reminder of his broken ribs from his previous battle and the fact that he couldn't feel them, gave him hope that the drugs he was on were simple painkillers and nothing nefarious.

But there was still the matter of the handcuff.

It seemed he was in a communal hospital room, though the curtains on either side of him made it impossible to tell if he was alone or not. At the very least, he was out of sight. As slowly as he could, he lifted his left hand, tapped it gently against his right, and pressed a finger to the blankets that covered him.

A small flash of light emitted from his fingertips as the alchemical formula within him affected the blanket, creating a small cloth figurine of his own head.

So he had his alchemy. That would be useful. Tapping his hands together again, he pressed down on the mini-Edward, turning the cloth back into a part of the blanket.

He was still unsure of whether he was in danger or not, but one of his general rules of survival was that being underestimated was often a point of advantage. Though the handcuff continued to irritate him with its existence, he would keep it on.

Until he had a reason to transmute it off, it was safer to keep his abilities quiet. Thankfully, flashes of his alchemy test seemed to go unnoti-

"NEVER FEAR, FOR I AM HERE!"

"BWUAGA!"

Edward couldn't stop the shriek of shock that escaped his lips as the deep voice shouted at him from nowhere. Above him, in the corner of the room, a box of light peered down at him, and within it, an incredibly buff but tiny man peered out at him and started to laugh wildly.

It was horrifying.

There was a flurry of footsteps from down the hall and Edward violently clapped his hands together, readying himself to use his alchemy in case a horde of tiny buff men rushed into his hospital room.

"What's going on?!" a male voice shouted, right before the door opened to reveal a bespectacled man of normal shape and size wearing what Edward recognized as doctor's clothes.

"HAHAHAHA!"

Edward shrieked again as the tiny man in the box laughed again.

"Get that thing away from me!" Edward yelled.

What the hell was wrong with this world?!

This story will be posted here and on Royal Road under the name SalMonroe. If you happen to use that site and happen to see this story, there's no need to be concerned about plagiarism.