Pre-Show Note: I've always wanted to start one of those random fic collections, so this will house reddit prompts. I'm /u/somehotsoup over there.
First up is Praelias' prompt of FMA x Star Wars, from a crossover challenge put forth by kilogram666. In this instance, the entirety of FMA (less a tweak with the finale to push things into dystopia) became the prequels and I couldn't be more sucked into a mashup I'd not considered before. Hooray!
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Banana For Scale
Praelias Part 1
~ Lady Eldaelen ~
I'll protect those under me. And they'll protect those under them. And we'll all keep protecting each other, until the world is free.
There was no crowd this time. No bets placed, no emcee, no mounting sense of excitement. No one even knew they were meeting.
If I do this, use the Stone, you must promise me that you'll continue the fight. You cannot stop until that thing is defeated.
Edward stood before him whole in body but broken, so broken, in spirit and mind. From this distance away, the red tattoo above his collar bone stuck out like a bruise, as visible a declaration as any to what had changed in the young man.
What would Al say, about what you've done?
They didn't speak. They didn't have to. One last deep breath, and then Edward looked up, the unnatural violet hue to his eyes making him look younger and otherworldly, nearly unrecognizable. A stranger.
He's a homunculus, sir! I saw the tattoo with my own eyes, right before he killed Russell.
The tightening of a jaw muscle, slight furrowing of a brow. They moved simultaneously and the ground quaked beneath their combined powers before it gave way and crumbled altogether.
Soon, Maes. Soon.
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In the quiet stillness of the border way station, a young woman peeked her head around a corner before sliding along the wall and crouching in the first small alcove built around one of the hall's many open windows, the only source of temperature control in the desert.
"Come on, stupid piece of junk," Leia Armstrong muttered. She knocked her fist against the unyielding metal sphere in her other hand and frowned. "I'm sorry, little guy. I just don't have time right now!"
She glanced up at the sound of a door slam and suppressed a groan. The hallway's emptiness, and her good fortune, wasn't going to last much longer. "Come on, come on!"
She closed her eyes and concentrated. The slick metal warmed under her touch as she envisioned the fine engraving on the inside of its inner shell. The sphere momentarily glowed pale blue before spindly metal legs grew out of the curves and began to move.
"Yes!"
A low echo of footsteps quickly gained volume. Leia took one more cursory glance around the hall, then chucked the wriggling ball of metal out the window.
"Be safe, little guy," she whispered.
The footsteps sped up and Leia took one final moment to smooth over any last sign of apprehension. Drawing on the strength of the entire Armstrong line, she stood taller, ready to face her demons. Or at least the ones history told her to fear.
"Miss Armstrong, was I misinformed or were you not told that it was imperative you remain in your quarters? For your safety, of course."
Leia eyed the deceptively youthful face and fought to keep her eyebrow from upturning in what Mother called her silent sarcasm.
"Master Elric, let us put aside the posturing. You have no reason to detain me and I have no reason to defy you. Regardless of what you and your leader may think, my time in Xing was purely for leisure, a cultural experience to take back to my home in Creta."
"Your mother is Amestrian."
"As you must be aware, she has chosen residency in Creta after the loss of her brother and sister."
"The death of traitors should not be mourned."
"Do you not mourn your own brother?"
Elric's face contorted into unnatural fury and Leia wondered if she finally crossed the line Mother was forever warning her to watch. Elric snapped his fingers and two cadets stepped forward. He was already breezing away from her when he sealed her fate, cold and dispassionate once more, "Take her to the train. We leave within the hour."
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"You're late," Riza murmured as they entered the kitchen. She started ferrying pots and plates to the table for breakfast.
"Blame Jean, he wouldn't stop talking to the weekend crowd."
"I've been taking Luke to the market since we moved here. You both should know me better by now."
Jean snagged an arm around Luke's shoulders, giving him a hug before releasing him so they could both sit down. He poured the coffee while Riza thunked the last bowl on the table. "As long as I don't hear any complaints that the rice is dry."
The rice was fine, breakfast delicious as usual, and Luke began cleaning up before he was asked, earning a grateful smile from Riza that quickly morphed into a frown when Luke tried to hide something that fell out of his pocket when he stood up.
"Where did you find that?" Riza asked. She plucked the small, metal sphere out of Luke's furtive hold, turning it over in her hand. Her voice was a thousand miles away when she whispered, "It looks alchemically forged."
"Alchemy is a lost art," Jean murmured almost by rote, an old back and forth they repeated whenever the topic of alchemy was brought up. But his eyes narrowed as he studied the sphere, too.
"Scavengers must have dug up another exile site."
He lit a cigarette and rubbed his thigh at one of the ropey scars that crisscrossed his legs.
"No, this is all mechanical, I know quality when I see it, Jean," Luke said, eagerly awaiting for Riza to return the sphere. "I got it at the trading post."
"Well, keep it hidden, somewhere less obvious than your pocket. The last thing we need is the Central Eye bearing down on us over a mechanical trinket." Jean groaned as he stood, his steps halting as always nowadays, trying to keep from outright shuffling on his way to the courtyard to finish his smoke.
"Did you finish your schoolwork?" Riza asked.
"Last night."
"Don't spend all day tinkering with that thing," she advised, settling the sphere back in his hand. Even if he did, Luke knew she wouldn't mind. She gave him a hug, ruffling his hair before checking her rifle. After finding it satisfactorily ready for use, she slung it and a canteen over her shoulder and headed for the door.
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The morning sun spilled in through the shed's windows as Luke poked around the odd sphere. The owner of the trading post had said he'd found it "alive and kicking," spindly legs supporting its strange locomotion across the desert. But once he'd plucked it from the sand, the thing had curled back up into a closed sphere, with only the faintest of swirled markings to show what it could be.
Luke managed to remove the outer plating, jotting down notes to probably replace everything later. Hopefully. The workings underneath were incredibly detailed, delicate wires twisting around precision machined supports and gears.
"How are you powered, little guy?" he murmured as he teased apart a bundle of wiring that ran along the center like a spine.
"You're a guide," he said, tugging on an impossibly thin filament he traced to a leg, now revealed tucked up next to seven more. A few more sketches and he laid out a rough outline of this layer. Under the legs was seamless, and Luke had no idea how he was going to crack open the device further without ruining it.
"There's got to be some sort of release here." He ran his fingernail along the edges, trying to find a way in. "Maybe Jean can shoot a hole into it."
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Jean stifled a snort and rolled another cigarette. Luke should have known by now that Riza would have made the shot better.
Then again, they both knew that Riza was far less likely to indulge in the request.
Jean couldn't smoke without blowing his cover under a window in the shade between the shed and another outbuilding, so replenishing his stock filled the time while he eavesdropped. It had worked for a couple of years now, since they'd let Luke take over the space for his projects after tripping over one too many chunks of metal in the main house.
They'd eked out a somewhat passable life after the Fall. Riza had helped him recover after Marcoh used the last Stone on him and they were still hiding in the desert near Ishbal when Roy entrusted Ed and Winry's son to Riza. There was no way Jean would have left her alone, not when Roy then removed himself from the world as much as he could without actually dying.
Jean tried to check in on Roy a few times a year, but it got harder and harder to see him stuck in such a dark place. Especially after the oasis ambush that nearly put Jean back in a wheelchair again. He couldn't complain though, he'd had five good ambulatory years, which was about four and a half years longer than Roy got with his restored sight. Well, he still had half of it. Roy was damned lucky he'd even survived at all, that last time Roy and Ed had seen each other, fought each other, wounded each other. Arguably the two most powerful State Alchemists to be certified had risked more than their lives to a stalemate and razed Southern Headquarters to the ground in a final battle that hardly anyone knew about.
After Jean, Riza, and Luke moved to the city that had sprung up around what remained of Xerxes, Riza saw Roy far more frequently, and Jean was glad they could still find solace with each other. Some things never changed.
"Damn machine. What crazed gearhead designs something so impenetrable that it can't be worked on?" The light taps and general clinking of Luke's endeavors gave way to a frustrated and louder clanging as he tried a more brute-force method. "Why won't you just open?"
Another sharp bang and the timbre of the air suddenly shifted. A chill shot through him as the hairs on Jean's neck and arms stood up. Though it'd been years since he had been around a recent transmutation, he immediately recognized the sensation.
"Please, Roy Mustang, you're my only hope."
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"You've been having nightmares again, haven't you?"
He didn't answer but of course he had, he never looked so undone with a good night's rest.
"Roy, it's time," Riza whispered into the cup she'd accepted from his hand, their fingers lingering together for a fraction too long. He'd made her favorite tea, like he always did when she showed up at his door. "It's past time."
He sat across from her, hunched over his own cup, studying the amber liquid like he could divine their futures in the ripples. Or, more likely, as if he could work out how things ended up so completely sideways.
"You made a promise to Winry. And Al." She searched his expression, studying the details of his face. It was harder now, with half of it swallowed up by the patch covering the scars and missing left eye. Harder, but not impossible, not with how long they'd known each other. His poise had slipped when she spoke their names. "And-"
"Don't say it," Roy hissed, harsh only to keep from outright pleading.
She allowed him that bit of grace.
"Some of our neighbors are already suspicious. He's too good with metals- any materials, really. So far we've been able to brush it off as just mechanical skill," Riza paused.
"It's in his bones, Roy. In his heart like it was in… Edward," she didn't shy away this time, the syllables foreign on her tongue. "Like it is in you."
Roy clenched his fists. Even now, with the blinding midday sun pouring in from a skylight, she could make out the faint scar of his flame sigil on the back on his hand. "You've always had absolution, Roy, from her, from us."
"And him? Both of them? What I did to their fath-"
"That wasn't Edward, Roy. Not anymore."
"Of course it was Ed. It still is Ed."
They had reached the inescapable vortex of their circular reasoning, neither willing to give way, neither wanting the other to be completely wrong. Riza stood, heading for the door behind her. "Luke is going to need an alchemy teacher, Roy. We won't be able to protect him from the truth much longer, none of us."
"You and Jean should have had kids," Roy remarked.
Riza turned around, and they shared a tiny, wistful smile. She traced her steps back to the table, then further, until she was right up next to him, like she had been so many times before. Always by his side.
"We had Luke. I don't know if I ever thanked you for bringing him to us, but it really has been a treat, raising him. Besides, the only person I have ever cared for more has been exiling himself in Xerxes for fifteen years." She leaned down and kissed the top of his head before laying a pair of embroidered white gloves next to his teacup. "You know what you have to do, Roy."
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Luke kept reaching back to check that the spider sphere was still in his bag as he hurried through the dunes towards the ruins of Xerxes. He tried everything he could think of to get the thing to replay the bit of message, but nothing caused the sphere to glow blue again. Armed with a canteen, snacks, and a sidearm, he'd taken off without even leaving a note and guilt was starting to settle in. It would take him another hour or so to the outskirts, and who knows how long to search for Roy Mustang, if he was even real. Jean had warned Luke to be wary of the people who lived there. The deeper into the ruins, the crazier the inhabitants. Jean often joked the only one he trusted in Xerxes was the 'ghost of the alchemists.'
Still, Luke remembered a few hushed conversations between Jean and Riza late into the night, about a 'Roy' and 'alchemy' and 'not that man anymore.' His guardians rarely talked about their old life, hardly any adults did. If they did discuss someone, Luke knew they were important.
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Roy walked along the high dunes, the old Xerxian plaza where he currently lived below him. He'd taken a breather after Riza left, clearing his mind with a directionless hike. With his lineage, Luke had a high probability of having alchemic gifts, they'd always been aware of that. It was what they'd tried to protect him from the most. Why they picked the more remote desert to live, amongst people who historically didn't put much stock in alchemy, even before it became a more universal thing to be feared.
Post-Fall in Amestris proper, the new government wasted no time in hunting down adult alchemists, enlisting ones that would cooperate, killing any whose loyalties wavered. The only authorized alchemy became heavily regulated for the State nearly overnight, sending the few remaining free alchemists deep into hiding. Then they began testing children, pressing too-young hands against circles, forcing those with the skill into camps like what had grown and raised Bradley. Trained in combat and unscrupulous alchemy, the best cadets were sent through the Gate.
Roy remembered the day he found out that bit of news. He was still in Amestris then, still blind, still figuring out the new power Scar's transmutation had unlocked in the world. A midnight phone call from Winry, a hysterical teenager, it was the beginning of the end in Roy's mind. Fletcher Tringham described his older brother's last hours, with Ed trying to get him to join the Homunculus' twisted plans. When he refused, and refused to fight Ed, Ed killed him. Fletcher had been hiding, watching from his cover, and when Ed finally left, the boy ran.
The sands shifted, tremors under the surface alerting Roy to activity nearby. Pickers, a hodgepodge of displaced mercenaries and criminal vagabonds, weren't usually this active during the afternoon. From the amount of activity, they were hunting.
Roy slid down the dune, clapping halfway to the bottom to create new footpaths and smooth over his tracks. No need to make himself more visible than necessary. He was coming alongside the end of the ruins that overlooked the ever-growing city, as close as he dared get to Riza on his own. Two things caught his attention at once.
The first, golden hair bobbing between the ancient pillars. The second, a Picker scout at the mouth of the old city gate.
Roy ran.
It was too late for stealth, too late for anything but containment. He yelled for the boy to duck and slammed his hands to the sand. A pair of giant arms shot forward, clapping the scout like a fly and dragging the poor soul into the depths of the desert with little more than a shift in the dunes.
In the sudden silence, a low whistle nearly made Roy jump.
"Damn, old man. That was one hell of a trap."
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The air hummed with tension as soon as Riza entered the city limits. She cursed and reached for her rifle. She didn't carry much when she visited Roy; now she wished for an ice cream truck full of gear.
She kept to the alleys, making her way to the city square along the western edge. There she met up with a few locals.
"They've surrounded your compound, Miss Riza."
"What? Who?"
"The Pickers."
"Why?"
"They found out Luke bought something from the market this morning. It shouldn't have been out."
"That stupid sphere," Riza whispered.
"Yeah, that. They're still looking for it."
"Thanks for the intel."
"Miss Riza, they killed everyone, not just the owners of the trading post. All the market vendors. Even their kids."
"If you can, leave. Get as many people as far away from our place as possible. Head towards Xing if you have to."
She made it to the safe room coming from the outer entrance. Jean was already there, headphones on, listening to the surveillance bugs they'd set up around their camp. Breathing heavily, he had one hand pressed against a growing dark spot on his side, the other wrapped around his service revolver, slick with blood. In spite of his pain, he relaxed at the sight of her.
"He's not here. He went to find Roy before they came."
"Roy?"
"Of course Roy."
Riza's breath hitched unintentionally. She crossed the distance to Jean, reached to check how bad he was hurt, but he grabbed her hand and shook his head. His breathing was already labored, and getting worse.
"It's not Edward," she said, mutinous tears starting to pool in the corners of her eyes.
"That's all we can hope for, now."
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"Are you alright?" Roy asked for the second or third time, he couldn't even remember, not with the frantic beat of his heart that had nothing to do with the physical exertion of sprinting to the boy's side.
"I'm fine, thanks again," he insisted. "I'm Luke."
"I know. Come on. We need to leave."
"How did you rig up the entire corridor? That must have taken forever. And what if some random person walking through set it off? Are you going to reset the trap? Shouldn't we see if the person's alright? Who was that?"
Luke barely took a breath between questions, though he did lower his voice the further they walked. Roy held out a hand to keep him back as he peered around a crumbled statue. The area beyond was clear and Roy couldn't feel any other scouts nearby.
"Alright, this way."
He crossed the small distance to the next ruin and pressed his hand against a leaning stone wall. To Luke, it looked liked he'd found a loose tile, but Roy had quickly unsealed an opening with alchemy.
"In."
Luke studied Roy briefly before nodding once and crouching to squeeze through the entry. Roy slipped in behind him and sealed the passage closed.
"What is this place?" Luke asked while Roy lit a small lantern.
"My home." He pulled up his cold box and handed Luke a canteen of water.
"I'm a little short on food, need to make a market run." Roy said. He rummaged through his rations for a couple of bars to share.
Luke accepted the snack, offering him a piece of jerky from his own pouch. "How do you know me?"
"You're Riza and Jean's boy."
Luke nodded. He looked like Ed, achingly so. Same compact build, all wiry muscle and natural athleticism. Same mop of golden hair, if in a shorter, more regulation haircut. The biggest difference was the eyes, Luke had Winry's blue eyes. Roy was glad Jean had stayed with Riza, they'd never been questioned about whether Luke was theirs. No one blinked at Luke not calling them mom and dad, either, the Fall had created too many orphans, too many broken and traumatized families to bother with conventional labels.
Roy realized he'd been staring at Luke a moment too long when Luke cleared his throat and swallowed the last half of his ration bar whole. "You've been very accommodating, but I should be going-"
"What are you doing out here?" Roy interrupted, "The ruins aren't for kids."
"Me? I... I'm…" Luke hesitated, gaze dropping to the ground. After a moment of consideration, he reached for his bag and retrieved a small metal sphere. Even from across the room, Roy felt the pull of alchemy emanating from the device. Arrays more detailed than he'd studied in years whispered to him, called for activation.
"I found this at the trading post this morning. I've never seen anything like it. Earlier today… I… it… it spoke somehow. Like a radio or something. A recording. Whoever made it was looking for Roy Mustang."
Luke eyed Roy again, and it was the same intense stare he remembered from his and Ed's first meeting that kept Roy from plucking the sphere right out of his hands.
"Your name is Roy, right? Are you Roy Mustang?"
And just like that, the hold was broken.
"I haven't been Roy Mustang for a long time."
Blue eyes blinked at him like he'd sprouted a second head, before accepting his obfuscation as easily as Riza used to do. "Then I guess you don't want to hear the whole message."
"I guess I don't," Roy said, leaning back in his chair.
Luke immediately tensed, thrown off by Roy's nonchalance, just like Ed used to- no, Luke wasn't Ed. Or Riza, Winry, or Jean. He couldn't be. Not if they were going to survive this.
"You're an infuriating old man, you know that?"
"Your temper is as short as your father's was."
Luke blinked, demeanor changing yet again. "You knew my dad?"
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"I have Miss Armstrong in custody, sir."
"Good, very good. Bring her to Central at once."
"Sir, I do not believe she will talk without… persuasion."
"The Armstrong patriarch died two days ago. The remaining family members, less Miss Armstrong, are already detained. We have all the persuasion we'll need."
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"What was he like, my dad?" Luke asked. "How well did you know him?"
Roy swallowed thickly, a hundred mundane, happy memories crowding his thoughts, pushing aside the recurring nightmare of the final meeting they had yet to have.
"He was…" A stubborn fool, brilliant beyond genius, compassionate and loyal and generous. "He was the greatest alchemist I have ever known."
Luke gave him a blank look, completely nonplussed. "Alchemist? Really? That was the big secret they didn't want me to know?"
Surnames were forgotten in the desert, most who lived there were seeking refuge, anonymity paramount. Roy had listed Rockbell on Luke's birth papers before he'd smuggled him out of Amestris; though he doubted even that would ever get used, Roy couldn't bring himself to connect Ed to the baby. The name Elric carried a lot of weight, nearly all of it bad. Fullmetal's exploits, on the other hand, were remembered with a much fonder eye, though the fact that Fullmetal and Ed were one in the same was overlooked with surprising regularity. Maybe Riza had been right on that account.
"Riza and Jean talk about my mom and uncle far more often than my dad," Luke mused softly. "Were they alchemists, too?"
"They-" Roy started, then stiffened at the subterranean rumble that slowly grew in intensity. He'd set up a series of alarms that Riza and Jean could use if the time ever came, and this felt like one of them. Fine sand was soon falling from the ceiling, and even Luke could feel the low frequency tremor now, eyes darting all around, looking for the source of the disturbance.
"What-" Luke began, but Roy threw up a hand, cutting him off. He closed his eye, hoping that nothing further would happen, that he could send Luke home to tell Riza they'd be starting alchemy lessons in a couple of days.
The explosion took Roy's breath away, and Luke swore as the delayed impact sent them both tumbling roughly to the ground, Roy's hands against what remained of the ruin's foundation and his subtle alchemic reinforcement the only thing that kept the ancient structure from collapsing on top of them.
When the ground finally stopped shaking, they found themselves gathered at the high dunes with a collection of the other Xerxes inhabitants. Roy was fairly sure he was the only one who took up residence in the ruins themselves, mainly because he was the only one capable of making them habitable. Most actually lived in tents or more recently constructed buildings interspersed between the ruins, and it didn't appear that anyone had been trapped or injured in the ensuing damage. Instead, they all set their gaze in the distance towards the larger city to the southeast where Riza, Jean, and Luke lived. A billow of suffocating black smoke rose above the horizon, already beginning to disperse with the evening winds.
That much visible destruction could only have come from Jean and Riza's defenses. Their last defenses.
A small group discussed heading that way to check things out, and Roy took the opportunity to beckon the surprisingly quiet Luke away. With the bulk of the crowd behind them, the boy's demeanor deflated, a trickle of tears running down each cheek. He kept it mostly together until they were safely tucked back inside Roy's house, and then it was the Fall all over again. The chaos of defeat and retreat, Ed clinging to a suit of armor, its cold bite of unmoving steel a cruel reminder of the soul that no longer dwelled there.
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When Luke had cried himself out, he accepted a handkerchief from Roy and blew his nose while Roy made tea.
"Riza… Jean, too, I guess… They both told me if something happened — and I'd know it when it happened, I was to head towards Xerxes."
Roy nodded and an unspoken agreement passed between them. "I think it's time we take a look at that sphere."
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To be continued...
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Notes: I have a soft spot for the 2003 FMA anime, and in my own weirdness for wanting all my canons and eating them, too, on the top of my list when following Brotherhood events here was how to get Roy in an eyepatch again. Relatedly, I have never written more Havoc POV before now and most of it set in the immediate years after the Fall didn't even make the cut. Sorry, Jean. Sorry, backstory.
Leia's little spider-bot looks like some weird spherical mini of that hot mess of a vehicle Winry made that she and Sceizka went off-roading in in the 2003 anime. It has zero charm of R2D2 or BB-8, this ain't that world (brought to you by the people behind Ed's aesthetic and Archer!bot). The only mostly-inanimate object that gets to look cute is Alphonse's armor. And occasionally armor!Barry. Only suits of armor.
Obi-Wan is my favorite Jedi (can we just acknowledge the current Ewan MacGregoraissance? That man has aged beautifully), so focusing on Roy was perfect. I love me some angsty Roy.
The unlocking of alchemic power via Scar's Promised Day transmutation basically pushed alchemists that much closer to (Avatar) benders in my mind. The Force and alchemy bending isn't exactly a one-to-one, but I think it works well enough here for the 'supernatural' power element.
And lastly, I was really trying to get most of A New Hope in here, but the back third is being tricksy and I was in the mood to post, so a semi-contained snippet to read is what you get. Expect another part to this eventually. Now go wash your hands.
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