Diary

Chapter 4: Belief

Ok, this is the last chapter, y'all... unless further notice... it's long, but not that long. (for me)


It had been his original idea to spend some time going over his geometry work. After all, the semester final was on Friday, and the last grade he had gotten on a test had been a C. He was going to fail miserably, he just knew it.

He got to work, copying down all the legible parts of the journal. He stopped to consider this, and flipped the book over so that it opened the other way, and began writing in it backwards.

A few weeks ago, I found this journal, and I'm not sure if it's real or not. Basically, it's about these kids, Ed (who purely coincidentally has the same first name as me) and Al, who when they were nine…

So many strange things had been happening to him lately, and he needed a place to dump all of his emotional shit. Unless that is that he wanted Owen to bug him about why he was depressed every other second, or Zach to follow him around making mocking mopey faces at him whenever he got the chance.

Although he would never hear the end of it if anyone found out that he had started to keep a diary of his own. It was to stay at home, in the bottom left corner of his desk at all times.

He was going to finish reading it through tonight, and then try to get at least halfway through copying it down again in his book.

He wondered why he felt a need to re-copy it down. Was it that he thought that it was a good plot that he could publish and make money off of or something? Or was it the fact that he believed that whoever wrote it would come back for it eventually?

He didn't know, but for some reason he just had to have this with him at all times. It seemed like a part of him, like the memories described were real; his. He could see the expressions on everyone's faces that he had come to know and love.

He hated to admit it, but he even had a soft(ish) spot for the bastards likeHoenheim, Mustang, and Envy.

It just seemed too… real to not have emotion for. Dear lord, was he turning into some kind of fanboy?

Maybe if he just put it away for now he could get his real work done.


He walked into the building, absorbed in the journal, as usual.

He had stayed up past midnight last night to finish it, it was hypnotizing, in a way. Once he picked it up to read it, he had a really hard time bringing himself to put it down and go do something more productive.

Coming down the hallway, he saw a short little kid kicking a locker furiously, trying to make it open. Was this person even a high school student? He barely looked twelve! He put his book at his side, and approached the person.

"Uh… do you need help with that?"

The short kid looked at him with a look that he was sure was not possible for a human face to make.

"DOES IT LOOK LIKE I NEED HELP?"

"Uh…" This guy was really intimidating. That wasn't a great way to make friends if he was a new kid.

"…What's your combin- ah!" He looked up when he saw what locker the kid was standing in front of, trying to open. His.

"Why the hell are you trying to get into my locker!"

"What the hell are you talking about, punk? This is my locker!"

"So then why can't you open it and I can?" He pulled the lock slowly and it clicked and unlocked itself.

"STUPID! That doesn't prove anything! Any half-wit could have just used a little bit of alchem-!" He stopped, put a gloved hand to his mouth and ran.

Wha-Wha? Did he just say… Alchemy?

The book flew from his side, his finger flipping the pages furiously. He held up the photo that he pulled out of the book next to the slowly shrinking image of the kid running down the hallway.

No way….


Caffeine good….

He needed something, and aside from anything illegal, caffeine was his best bet. It was odd; usually people get jumpy from caffeine, but his twice-daily dosage of iced-tea seemed to calm him down, at least for a little bit.

He was so engrossed with his lunchtime caffeine ritual that he almost didn't notice Owen sit down across from him.

"Hey, Ed! Look! There's a new kid!"

What could possibly be so pressing as to interrupt the all-important consumption of caffeine?

"I ran into him in the hallway earlier today, literally. He kinda punched me and stalked off though." Owen laughed half-heartedly and rubbed his jaw.

"But! I had a class with him, so I invited him to eat lunch with us! That's okay, right?"

To be honest, Ed couldn't really care one way or the other.

"Umn, sure. Whatever, Owen." He paused, still not looking up from his book that he had to finish for English.

"Hey, you. What did you say your name was again?"

There was an uneasy silence.

Ed looked up and almost spewed out his iced tea all over the table. It was that...delinquent person from before. The one that looked just like...

…Just gotta act…normal…

The kid sitting next to Owen was wearing all black, somewhat morbid, if you had asked what Ed thought of it. What was really weird was his hair though. It was so long that it almost made him look like a girl. He wondered why anyone would actually want their hair that long. Not that he really cared that much.


It was the end of the day, at last. He had felt that the uneasy aura surrounding him since this morning was going to last all day, but just the mere thought of going home lifted his spirits.

There in the mass of students shoving their way out of the torturous building, his earlier acquaintance stood out like a sore thumb. Even though he was short, he was a tad peculiar looking.

"Ed! Edward!" He yelled pointlessly into the crowd. What he needed was something that would get that brat's attention.

"Hey, you! FULLMETAL!"

That did the trick. The boy looked up in complete shock.

What? How would someone from here know that alias of mine?

While the Elric boy stood there in shock, Ed came up to him.

"So it really is you, huh? Edward Elric, the "FullMetal Alchemist". Isn't it interesting how fate decides to work itself out? I guess the gate really does work in mysterious ways." He decided to add, just to creep the other person out a little.

"Wha..?"

He pulled out the journal.

"I suppose you'd like to have this back, wouldn't you?"

Just when the alchemist thought he couldn't be even more surprised, this… child pulled out his very own journal that he had kept since he was eight.

"WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GET THAT?"

The notebook was being held by that brat that stole his name, high enough to be just out of his reach. He started to jump at it, but every time, the kid would just hold it up a little higher. It was almost comical to watch.

"Gosh, I'll give it back to you if you really want it. But," There was a brief glimmer of light in his eye.

"But not without a price. Alchemy is based on the principle of "Touka Koukan", or "Equivalent Exchange", no? You certainly rambled about it enough in here. So, therefore, it wouldn't balance if I were to just hand this over to you, now would it?"

Edward sighed. He was right. But that still didn't put him in the place to toy around with him.

"So what do you want from me?"

"Just an answer to one simple question."

He brought the book back down to waist level.

"…And that would be…?"

"Tell me, Edward. Is this all…"

He paused.

"All what?"

"Is all this…. true?"

Edward leered at his namesake. He just loved giving vague, cryptic answers.

"Maybe. Believe in what you want to. Sure as hell I'm not the one to be telling you what to believe and what not believe. Hell, I'm not sure what I even believe in anymore..."

He paused andlaughed lightly.

"Yeah, it's all true, kid. Down to the last gory little detail. I can just hear you say 'But there's no such thing as Alchemy!'. Well, in this world, no there isn't. But on the other side of the gate…"

He paused for a few seconds.

"I guess you read all about that, too."

He nodded slowly. "Mhmm."

Edward leaned over to collect his possession.

"Well, I'd better get going…"

When Edward had grabbed the book from his hand, he could have sworn that he saw the tiniest glint of light off of a metallic surface.

Before Edward had a chance to walk away, he heard the boy asking him another question.

"So, that still doesn't explain how you got into my locker in the first place."

"I thought that I had been assigned locker #121, and it just hit me that it might have been 112 instead. As for the locks... a mechanic friend of mine taught me how to pick them a long time ago. Honestly, those locks wouldn't keep anyone out of those lockers if they had half an idea of what they were doing."

He paused and turned his back to Ed, walking away.

"That's enough questions for today..."


The next day, Ed walked into the hallway where his locker was. He found that locker 112 was logically very close to his. That was to be expected, numerical order and all.

What shocked him the most was when a girl came up to it and opened it. It was neat, with a mirror on the door, and a magnetic clock, and a tin, probably containing some kind of makeup.

He knew that he would never see that Elric person again, if he ever had, and maybe, he decided, there were just some things left unanswered.


Owari

Certain people are supposed to represent certain people. Obviously Ed is Ed, but I tried not to make it too cliched personality-wise.Honestly, I think that it would be pretty easy, seeing as I suck at that kind of stuff and all. Gosh, I've been wanting to end this for a while, because the ending was the part that I had thought of first, and it was really kind of tedious doing the first few chapters.

Now that SB05 is coming up (thursday!) and i no longer have the flu, I shall be fic-ing a lot more lately.

'Taters