Chapter 3: Truth and Tolls

Author's Note: Thank you PaperHandy453 and Mami-Chan for Reviewing! Thank you for the encouragement! I can't reveal what will happen too far ahead the story, PaperHandy453, that would ruin the surprise! ;D However, I can say the action will start heating up soon and I'll get to do some character whumping! 3 Please review and enjoy the story!

Disclaimer: Truth is a bastard. I offered up this kid who wouldn't stop annoying me as a toll for FMA, but he said it wasn't equivalent exchange 'cause I WANTED him gone. Nitpicking baka.

Brann's POV

Information swirls around me, I don't know if I'm screaming, my headache blocks out everything else. Except the information. I understand suddenly, understand everything. Life makes sense, the world is governed by laws that I now can see, the whole universe flowing into my head and I can't take it! No one person should see this, feel this. It's too much! I've gone through my entire life practically deaf and blind, stonewalls between my mind and the world, and now those walls have come crashing down. Two worlds, my own and Amestris are residing in my skull, two universes worth of knowledge and power, every star, every blade of grass, particle of air is explaining itself to me! Cosmos swirled through my understanding, synapsed firing and connecting faster than humanly possible, fighting to keep up with the onslaught of information! Dully, I knew that when I left the gate, much of this painful knowledge would be gone, forgotten. My brain is simply incapable of processing this. It's outside my limits, and I'm lucky I'm not brain dead from the electricity charging through my mind as it attempts to retain the newfound enlightenment. Shadowy hands reach around me, grasping, desperate. It hurts… it hurts so badly… burning into my flesh, my mind, I can't take it! Too much… too much… too sad… too lonely… the gate is cold, full of what life is, but not what makes it worth living… if this was all Truth had, no wonder he was a bastard. All alone, for centuries, millennia, knowing only the sinners, the angry and lonely and sad. Cursed for doing his job, hated by everyone he has met for maintaining the natural order and forgotten by anyone who might understand… because if they understand him, they never do anything that would lead them to meet him. Truth was a prisoner to himself, chained to the very entity he guarded. For the first time ever, I felt pity for him, all alone, forever. All eternity spent in this cold, lonely darkness. There was a burning, wrenching pain at the base of my skull, and then blackness. Blessed darkness, my mind at rest.

(AMAZINGLY AWESOME LINEBREAK! It just made state alchemist!)_

I stirred, groaning. I ached all over… my head was KILLING me! It was concentrated at the place my skull met my spine. Truth, that HURT! I sat up slowly, my body seemed sluggish, slightly less responsive than usual. Understandable I guess. Looking around, I realized it was rather dark. Peering through the gloom, I spotted Niki sitting up, groaning. Danni lay next to her. I could tell she was awake because her face was screwed up in discomfort and a soft moaning sound was coming from her direction. I quickly looked over myself, what did Truth take? I looked the same as always, even my clothes hadn't changed. I looked at my two sisters-in-arms again, checking for damage. I caught a glint of metal, Niki's right arm had become auto mail. From her expression and they way it hung limply at her side, she would have to go through the physical therapy necessary to learn how to use it. Hopefully the time spent learning how to work it would be cut down because she wouldn't have to recover from the pain of the surgery. Danni seemed unharmed, but she still hadn't sat up. I willed myself to my feet and went over to her.

"You ok?" I asked. She made a face,

"I feel heavy." She told me, "It's hard to move." I lifted one of her arms to help her to her feet and raised an eyebrow, the arm was flesh but felt like it was thirty pounds or more. I felt the bones through the skin, checking for irregularities. They were… cold. And much harder than usual.

"I think you have auto mail bones." I told her, "They probably make you two hundred pounds heavier." She made a face,

"So much for dieting." She told me, "The scale will always tell me I'm overweight." I chuckled, only Danni would say something like that after facing the Gate. Well, maybe I would too, but I was weird. Actually, we all were, it was one of the reasons we got along so well. I helped her to her feet, she'd have trouble moving until she built up the muscle needed to lift and use the new bones. It was a good thing I was strong, lifting about three hundred pounds is NOT easy, especially seeing that Danni couldn't help much because just getting her feet under her was a struggle. I walked over to Niki next. Forget swearing the air blue, she was cursing it every color of the rainbow as she tried to wiggle the fingers on her new arm. Just looking it over I could tell it was a piece of crap, and I was far from a mechanic. Many of the covering plates were missing, leaving wires and gears exposed. The metal was of inferior quality, brittle and weak, and the design was something a quack would think up. I sighed, of course Truth wouldn't give us anything that was quality work, but this would make do until we could get it redone. Better than nothing. I felt a moment of unease as I wondered what Truth had taken from me. I shook my head, I'd find out soon enough.

"How you holding up?" I asked Niki quietly.

"Mother fucker gave me a piece of fucking shit that won't fucking move, the asshole. I'm gonna go kick the bastards white ass and tear him some actual fucking genitals and find out if his shitty blood is fucking white like the rest of the fucking asshole and if it's not, I'm gonna use it to stain him a fucking new shitty color and shove the son of a bitch through his own fucking gate into his own fucking hell. Then I'm gonna-"

"I get it." I told her, cutting her off, all the swearing made me a tad ill, and I REALLY didn't need to hear her more graphic descriptions. I had a strong stomach, but Niki could test it like nothing else. "Are you in pain?"

"What do you fucking think?" she snapped, "Aches like a bitch but isn't bleeding. I'm fine as I can be after what that mother fucking jackass did. Great, just great. I'm gonna miss so many dance and gymnastic lessons with all this crap. On top of that I have archery, rehearsal, voice, trapeze, advanced engineering, god my life is hectic. At least my mom cant find me to kill me."

I nodded, then winced. My headache still wasn't gone yet. I helped Niki to her feet, using her flesh arm to pull her up. I stood and swayed for a moment. All of a sudden a stabbing pain lanced through the base of my skull, electrifying every nerve as all my muscles seized up. My body wasn't listening to me anymore! I shook as I fell, unable to catch myself, a soft cry of pain escaped my lips as I fell hard to the ground. My muscles didn't respond as I tried to sit up, they only quivered, clenching against my will. Slowly, the shaking stopped and I sat up, sore and out of breath. What just happened? Niki and Danni were next to me, clamoring with panic and asking if I was ok and what just happened. I rubbed the back of my neck where it still hurt, groaning. I turned to Danni; she was the medical expert.

"What does it mean if I have a headache concentrated where my skull meets my spine and it flared up right before the little 'episode'?" I asked quietly. She quickly switched to doctor mode,

"What kind of pain?" she asked in a no nonsense voice.

"Throbbing now, painful, but not agonizing. Lancing and sharp right before the episode, and it burned through the whole thing. I couldn't control my body and it felt like very nerve was on fire." Now was NOT the time to be brave and hide pain, now was the time to figure out what was wrong with me. Niki looked like she wanted to tear Truth apart atom by atom there and then, but Danni looked thoughtful before her eyes widened in understanding.

"I think" she started hesitantly, "That he damaged the Cerebellum, the area of your brain responsible for muscle control. Damage to it can lead to seizures and involuntary movement as well as extreme pain. Hopefully it wasn't bad enough to lead to paralysis, but from the length o your episode and how well you were moving before, I doubt it will get much worse. You'll suffer from muscle spasms and more of those episodes on occasion, and probably find yourself off balance at times, but other then that you should be fine." I nodded, thinking. It would be hard, but I could deal with this. It wasn't the end of the world. I turned to my sisters and asked,

"Now what?"