"Devilish Alchemy"
by AC's Lovechild
A/N of doom: No, trust me, this isn't my first fic. Crossover with the manga Diabolo, which I highly recommend! Anyway, on to the story.
Ren knew it. Rai knew it.
Despite their best efforts, they would never find the real Mio, or be lucky enough to actually kill each other before they lost their souls.
Face it, they were doomed.
"Face it, we're doomed," Rai said, echoing Ren's thoughts. He rubbed his glasses on his shirt to try to clean them. "Very doomed. I bet we couldn't even die if we wanted to."
"Who said we wanted to die, Rai?" Ren sulked. "Hey, that rhymes!"
"I thought we both wanted to die!"
"No way! You may've been a sad and depressed orphan but I—I had Great Dreams before you got me into the devil mess!"
"Oh, really? And what were they?"
Ren did not pause to wonder why he had not bothered to tell Rai his Great Dreams.
"To be a singer! In a rock 'n' roll band!"
"A—" Rai could not find the words. "How was I the one that got you into the devil mess? Mio was your cousin…"
"Well, you liked her!"
"I—I did not! You know full well the only one I like is—"
"Did too!"
"Did not!"
Fortunately, around that time a portal came and swirled them into oblivion for about five seconds of what would have been spent arguing.
When the smoke and dust and everything cleared, the streets of Japan where hot homeless boys such as themselves spent their days trying to save people from the devil were gone. In its place were no cell phones. In its place were no scary e-mail messages. In its place—in its place…
In its place was a huge European-styled building with a bunch of blue-uniformed officials coming to and fro.
"Did—waitaminute, Rai, where are we?"
Rai had been drearily contemplating the slitting of the wrists.
"Let's hope we died."
"But—but Rai! I never told you the best part of my Great Dreams!"
"What!"
"You were going… to be the lead guitarist in our rock 'n' roll band!"
Rai suddenly had the compulsion to ask Ren with his awesome powers of ultimate offense to break his glasses so he could swallow the pieces. He was becoming even angstier than usual. Having only the awesome powers of ultimate defense will do this to you.
He was involving his mind in wondering why he was the one that got ultimate defense in the first place when he noticed a robotic-looking hunk of metal coming toward them.
"Renny? Ren-chan? Oh, forget it, fine, Ren?"
"Yeah, Rainny, Rai-chan, Rai?"
"Do you see that thing coming towards us?"
Ren glanced at it. It was coming into closer view now, and they could make out the details.
"Yup. Looks like a giant mecha. Except not quite so giant or mecha-esque."
"No. It looks like a demon sent from the devil to torment us before we turn eighteen."
Ren began to inexplicably hum the Kiss song from 1971 by that name. Rai failed to ask how Ren had come to know that song in the first place, or how he had come to recognize it.
In truth, in between all the angstiness, annoyance, and so forth and so on, he was much too interested in what the hunk of metal had in store for them.
"Let's get ready, Ren."
Ren nodded and struck a serious stance.
Rai nodded to himself and also struck a serious stance.
Talk would come after they had destroyed the hunk of metal, provided the hunk of metal could still inexplicably talk after they had destroyed it.
"Hey, Rai, about our band—"
"Hello! My name is Alphonse Elric!"
"Quit with the stupid tricks! We're here to kill you!"
Ren could have sworn the hunk of metal, had it had eyebrows, would have raised them. He decided it must have been asbesttoast from the building up ahead as the metal spoke again.
"Um…"
"Ren, what're you waiting for! I'll guard while you kill it! Like always!"
Ren stared at the figure again.
"I can't. It's too creepy."
"Creepy!" Rai glanced at the hunk of metal again. "Hey… you're right. It is creepy…"
"I'm not creepy!" Alphonse protested. "I just wanted to help you, was all! Bro-ther!"
A blond teenager who looked about two years their junior appeared suddenly from the asbesttoast filled building.
"Actually, he looks more like he could be your brother, Ren… provided you'd lost some of the innate hotness that I can admit comes from being tragic."
"Thank you, Rai!"
Rai paused.
"And he's shorter than you. A lot shorter than you."
The blond boy glared. The hunk of metal named Alphonse slowly walked behind him.
"Who're you calling a—wait, I am so innately hot!"
"Brother…"
"Even stupid old Colonel Mustang over there said that I was—when I—when he—"
"Brother! Don't tell me you got any enjoyment out of…"
"No, Al, I just appreciated being called hot, is all… I promise, don't act like that, it's never happened since…"
"Like heck it hasn't! I can picture him coming to get you again, that sick, sick, perverted, horrible, child molesting…"
Ren raised his eyebrows.
Rai raised his eyebrows.
The blond boy looked embarrassed.
"Anyway, yes, I am innately hot."
Rai's glasses-covered eyes suddenly registered something that the powers of ultimate defense had nothing to do with noticing.
"What's that horse and buggy doing there?"
"A reenactment!" Ren responded gleefully. "Or… maybe the devil hates us so much he's not only got everyone around us under his control, but the scenery, horses, and buggies too."
"Or maybe because most people that aren't rich don't have cars," the boy put in dryly.
"What? Waitaminute…"
"The cars," Rai said.
"The horses," Ren said.
"The asbesttoast," Rai said.
"We're doomed!" cried Rai in what he thought was unison until he noticed that Ren was instead saying something that sounded suspiciously like, "It's nineteen-fourteen!"
"Yes," Alphonse said.
"How'd you know that?"
Ren smirked, pulled out a remarkably pointless cross from under his shirt for no apparent reason, and used the cross to point to a banner on the building.
The banner read: "MAKE 1914 A YEAR TO REMEMBER! REENLIST!"
Rai pulled out a Bible from under his own shirt and hit Ren with it.
The blond boy felt that since religious paraphernalia was being thrown about, the time was right to introduce himself. After all, it had worked remarkably well a few years back…
"I'm Edward Elric, the Full Metal Alchemist."
"Ultimate offense is a stupid power when the other guy gets a Bible," muttered Ren as he attempted to playfully strangle Rai with the necklace that was attached to the cross.
"I think he wants us to introduce ourselves," said Rai through the playful strangulation.
Ren dropped the necklace.
"All right. I'm Ren, the Sword."
He picked up the cross necklace and put it back on for dramatic effect. Rai took this as a cue and he flipped through the Bible for less than dramatic effect, adding, "And I'm Rai, the Shield!"
Ed had never heard of alchemists with such titles and said so.
"We're not alchemists, we're humans."
"But we're humans too—"
"Yes." The angst was coming, Rai could feel it. "Humans cursed with the powers of the devil: ultami—"
"And blah, blah, blah, we'll lose our souls when we turn eighteen, but up till then we'll make a scene—another rhyme, Rai!"
"That's your angsty past? Get real," Ed said anachronistically.
"Well, that and there's a lot of blood everywhere," Rai amended.
"Oh. That changes everything."
Alphonse, ever the kind soul attached to a hunk of metal, asked, "Well, how old are you two now?"
"Seventeen."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"Don't worry, we are, too. Especially Rai. He's been feeling suicidal lately. I think it's a prelude to sadism, though that could just be because I told him about my Great Dreams. I don't know why, though, considering he can bop me with the Bible while I can only strangle him…"
Ever astute and noticing of such things, Ed suggested that perhaps it was because Rai only had a year left.
"Can't be that. I only have a year left myself but I don't want to die 'cause I don't like pain! There, I admitted it!"
Ed rolled his eyes.
"Great. I'm wondering how much pain you've had to endure with the whole special powers courtesy the devil quote unquote thing you claim you've got, but I've got to get back to work."
He turned his back and with a "Come on, Al," began to leave for the asbesttoast building where, yes, people were still coming in and out of and they were still wearing blue uniforms.
"Hold up, Brother. I think they need our help."
Ed sighed. Alphonse had an even worse penchant toward helping strange and insulting people than he did.
"Fine, I'll transmute straitjackets."
"I don't mean that, Brother! I don't think they belong here!"
"No kidding. They're civilians. Aren't you?"
Nods.
"But see, we... aren't from 1914. In fact, we're not even from... where is this?"
"Germany! Or something like it!" came Al's swift reply.
Crud, Rai thought. He had just known that something was up when the first person he'd seen was a blond. Okay, so Ren was blond, too, but Ren was very much a token blond.
Plus, what with the whole Great Dreams revelation, Rai was not quite sure he really knew Ren quite as well as he'd thought.
"So where are you from?"
"Twenty-first century Japan."
"Great." And Ed forced on a wide smile. "Listen, Al, don't get me wrong, but I don't think there's any helping these two."
"Hey! We'd help you out!" Ren forgot to include the if and only if clause that came with such a statement—if you were about to be killed or have your soul taken by the devil. Or if you looked anything remotely like Mio.
Ed was annoyed. In the past several minutes he had spent with the two, he had not had the chance to make any angsty speeches about equivalent exchange, what not to do when bad things happen, etc., etc.
"Al, I'm telling you, let's go!"
Alphonse looked as near sorrowful as a suit of armor could manage.
"I think they would help us, Brother! We can't just walk away from them!"
Well, if Ed couldn't manage any speeches, he could at least point out why it was pointless to try to help them.
"Al. We don't have a clue who they are, other than their names and that they're supposedly from a hundred-odd years in the future, in Japan. We don't even know if they're insane fanatics that escaped the institutions. And even if they are really who they say they are, then how are we supposed to get them back where they came from?"
It was an exceedingly long paragraph. Rai envied it.
"We're not fanatics. And we're not crazy just yet."
"Yeah, we just want to go back to Japan and get our souls taken by the devil over there. And start that rock 'n' roll band. What do you say, Rai?"
Predictably, Rai said nothing, only sighed and mentally bemoaned his fate if he was the one that started changing first. He now had no doubts in his mind that Ren, whom he had thought he knew well in many different ways, was more disturbed than he himself was.
Ed realized that this could be an opening for, if not an angsty speech, an empowering speech. Ignoring his constraints on time (after all, coffee break shouldn't have been as long as it was already but Ed had long held the suspicion that coffee break involved Hawkeye in more ways than handing Roy his cup of coffee), he began, determined face pushed into a somber expression, shoulders straight, boots pushing his natural height of four feet, eleven inches to five feet and one inch.
"So you're just going to go back and sit there waiting for him? That's stupid! You're not going to even try to fight him? What kind of people are you? You don't take crud from anyone lying down! You get up! You both have perfectly good sets of legs—" the final moment, sturdy and ultimately convincing, "so stand up and walk!"
Rai blinked.
"Brother, didn't you use that speech a couple years ago?"
"Be quiet, Al."
"What do you think we've been doing!" Rai gazed bitterly at the skies. "All this time, we've tried our best. And if it so happens that our best involves us killing each other, what's it to you?"
Ed narrowed his eyes.
"That's what you plan to do about the devil?"
"Yes!" Ren chirped. "We swore before he really, really got us, we'd commit homicide. Means we'd die. That makes two rhymes and a half."
"Brother..."
"Yeah, Al?"
If possible, Al looked piteous from his armored head to his loincloth. His very shoulders were sagging, because he had believed he could help the two unfortunates.
"There really is something wrong with them... something really wrong... let's just get back to work, okay?"
"My thoughts exactly," and the two departed, gone to science, to alchemy, and to State.
Rai cursed loudly, smacked his hand to his forehead several times, and muttered many things. Ren, however, looked blissful... the happiest Rai had seen him in about ten years.
"Oh, Rai! We can start our band right here! This being 1914 and no one having ever heard rock, ever, we'd be the edgiest band for half a century!"
finis!