Edward Elric and the Ordinary Girl.
One day Edward Elric was walking along a street in Amestris. Al wasn't with him, because everyone knows that Al is stupid and that Ed really doesn't like having his brother around that much. Anyway, Al usually just made it difficult for Edward to meet those strange girls that kept popping up all over the place. Edward was feeling good this morning, largely because so far no-one had misspelled his name or given him a cruddy and culturally-confusing Japanese title.
But sadly Edward, being the object of so much fictional angst that he sometimes wished someone would hurry up and invent emo-goth punk rock, knew that such a good feeling couldn't last.
Sure enough, he felt the insidious beginnings of an inexplicable and violent hatred for Winry, the girl who had been a close friend since childhood and the best automail mechanic he knew. The Winry-loathing was always a reliable warning sign, and Edward braced himself for what was to come. Within the next ten minutes, Edward tripped over a tree root and fell into a plot hole.
He came to several seconds later, no longer in Amestris, of course, but in some bizarre place with epilepsy-inducing neon lights, an obscene number of shiny, fast cars zooming by on the road, and Playstations. This knowledge was somewhat disturbing because Edward, coming from a time when television hadn't even been invented, had no idea what a Playstation was. But now he knew that they existed. As was usual in the situation, Edward took a moment to deeply regret Fullmetal Alchemist being licensed, before he decided he'd better get up and look around before someone decided to step on him.
(Of course, deep down, Edward simply loved being stepped on, just as he loved flat-soled shoes, the word "bean", and the You-Must-Be-Taller-Than-Henry-Penguin-To-Ride-On-This-Rollercoaster sign at Disneyland).
Edward wandered what Disneyland was as scrabbled to his feet, dusted off his knees and gave himself a once-over.
Well, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. He didn't seem to have any extra automail limbs, his red coat was still intact, and his clothes had barely been altered. His pants were a few sizes smaller than they had been, and Edward was certain his bangs had gotten shinier, but he couldn't really complain. Better than that time they'd put him in a dress. It had been a very short one, too. And putting him in a closet somewhere with Roy had just been freaking sick.
Edward cast a distasteful look at the red ribbon on the end of his too-thick braid. He could only hope his eyes were still the same colour…or at least the same colour as each other.
Now, the only thing to do was to wait for the girl.
Sooner or later, there was always a girl. Edward had learned that the best thing to do was to wait right where he was until the girl showed up. In the long run, it saved a lot of time and hassle, and also that way he usually avoided meeting anyone he knew. It was terrible, sometimes, the way they'd been altered. Watching Hawkeye sob over her dog getting a cut on his nose was something he never wanted to see again. So he just waited where he was.
Sure enough, the girl showed up.
"Hello," she said, in a gravelly voice, "You look lost."
Edward frowned. Those were the right lines – the sort he was used to hearing whenever he fell through a plot hole, but the voice was totally wrong. Whichever way he tried to listen to it, it couldn't be described as "like a heavenly bell tolling the sweet praises of a ludicrously romantic sonnet on a bright summer's morning". It just couldn't. Maybe they'd glossed over the description of her voice, then?
"I'm fine!" he muttered, equally surprised that he could be brusque with her and even felt like she was a bit of an idiot. Usually he was unavoidably weak around the knees by now. What was going on here?
"Okay, just thought I'd ask," she said calmly and without a hint of exclamation mark abuse. And then she sidestepped him and kept walking.
Edward watched her leave with growing astonishment. She was moderately tall, a little overweight, wearing a sensible black skirt and a cotton shirt. Her hair was a rather unremarkable shade of brown, cut into a bob, and she had the sort of skin that even a dermatologist couldn't use more than three words to describe.
"What the hell is going on here?" Edward growled under his breath. These things had routines. If there was no routine, how could he ever get fucking out of here?"
"Hey!" he yelled, "Oi. Um, what's your name?"
The name. It had to be the name.
The girl rolled her eyes at him as she turned around. They were green. Not hazel, not emerald, not limpid pools of sparkling seawater, or even lichen-infested pools. Just green. Green green.
"Would you make up your mind? First you were rude to me, now you're asking questions? I'm Jane. Jane Smith. Now, do you-"
"Jane?" Edward asked incredulously, "Just Jane? Not Jane-chan, or Jane "Lotus Blossom" Smith, or Janinishiyana "Jane" Smithetta? Not Jane "Remus Lupin" Smith, or Jane Ruby Butterscotch Harmony Secretly-The-Eighth-Homonculus Starscream Smith? Not even Jane "Tulip Alchemist" Smith?"
"No. Just Jane. Jane Anne Smith. Anne after my mother."
"And your mother?" Edward gibbered, unable to stop, "Was she killed in a horrible accident? Were you raised by a brutal and abusive stepfather who forced you to enter the military at age two and a half? Have you ever been a) a prostitute, b) a fairy, c) a demon or similar, d) a relative of mine, or c) a man? Are you pregnant to someone who raped you? Do you have an evil twin? Have you already been resurrected once? Have you found the Philosopher's stone? Are you dying of a strange and mysterious disease?"
The girl clicked her tongue and whipped out a pencil and paper.
"Look, buddy, I wish I could help you, but I'm late for work. Here's the address of the asylum. It's a few blocks up. Come see me when you're better, yeah? Maybe we could go for a drink sometime."
"WAIT!" Edward called, running after the girl again, "I'm not insane! These things…usually happen to me. Look, it's…" and then Edward latched onto the one thing she had said that made sense.
"Go for a drink? Sure. You're madly in love with me, huh?"
"Look, you're not bad-looking, but I'm busy, you're crazy, and I'm already in a stable and loving relationship, okay? Bye!"
Edward watched her go. What the hell was going on? Who was that person with the one-syllable name? Why was he not inexplicably attracted to her? Why were there spaces between the words and no lapses into Japanese or German? Why didn't anyone have cat ears? Why were there no urges to kill Winry, have sex with Al, or turn Roy into a chimera? Why were there no urges to kill Al, have sex with Roy, or turn Winry into a chimera? Hell, he didn't even want to have sex with a chimera he'd just killed. The girl had been a totally ordinary girl. What was going on here? This was impossible.
"It's almost like being canon," Edward muttered to himself, knowing that such a thing could never really happen. In this place, with its bright lights, he could not be canon. There was only one way to return to canon, and in order to perform the necessary transmutation, he needed to find a "Kimiko Ashmina "Phoenix Alchemist" Erlic" or similar.
Only then could he transmute the spork that could take him back to Amestris.
--
to be continued…