Tall monochrome buildings loomed over us as we entered the complex. Hughes stalked in like he owned the place, waving and grinning like a maniac at everyone in sight, while I tried to blend into his shadow. It was working better than I had originally hoped on account of the fact he had a pretty large shadow, being a tall man.

We were at the front desk in one of the buildings when he grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me in front of him, presenting me to the woman at the desk. She had thick brown hair, bushy in a way that instantly brought up a mental image of Hermione Granger in her first year at Hogwarts, that disaster of a mane from the first movie. Her face, however, was smooth and unblemished with a soft smile at the sight of the rambunctious Lt. Colonel. Her eyes were a dark green that made me classify her complete look as demented woodland fairy. If demented woodland fairies wore blue military uniforms.

"Gooood morning June! I need a visitors badge for one Stephanie Arcaro."

'June' leaned over the desk to get a good look at me, (I tried not to immediately see it as condescending) and smiled, although it held a slight tint of exasperation.

"Did you pick another up off the streets, Hughes? You know kids aren't like kittens, you can't just keep them."

'How many times has he done this? Picked a random teenager off the street and brought them to work with him?'

June lowered her voice dramatically,

"If you're here against your will blink twice."

I blinked once out of shock, then laughed at her antics,

"It's fine, I'm just here for something that happened yesterday, I'm not quite a stray."

She looked at Hughes who was grinning innocently and gave an unconvinced, "Hmmm."

Then her attention snapped back to me as she filled out the visitors' pass, asking me to spell my name for her. After she was finished she handed me a cheap, plain black lanyard with my information attached to the end. Hughes was about to continue marching into the building when she snapped an arm out to grab the back collar of his coat. His limbs flailed with an anime drama quality as he halfheartedly attempted escape.

"You know the drill, Lt. Colonel. All visitors must have their bags checked before they can proceed into any part of the building, no matter who they're with."

She dropped him in a heap to the side of her desk and turned an endearing smile my way, holding her hand out for my bag,

"I'll be careful, I promise, Miss Arcaro."

I nervously tugged the bag off my shoulder, sifting through my memory to remember what was in the bag.

"Just Stephanie is fine."

I gently handed over the bag, and she set it down in the cleared area, reaching in to grab whatever was on top. I was fairly certain nothing damning was inside, seeing as I kept most of that in my hidden inside coat pockets. One of the worst that I didn't want them to find was my favorite pen. While that seems like a kooky thing to 'normal people' out there, you have to understand that I am a fangirl. My 'pen' was a full-size tenth doctor sonic screwdriver, with actual working light on the end. It was a black light, used to reveal the 'invisible ink' from a different pen attachment that I kept in yet another pocket.

Even if you ignored the blatant 'future-ish' tech the whole 'invisible ink' thing didn't exactly scream trustworthy.

The first thing she pulled out was my folded piece of black shirt, still ripped and with dried bloodstains. She looked at me and raised an eyebrow in question, eyes scanning me and just then noticing the dried blood encrusted near the bottom of my jeans that hadn't quite come off with my vigorous scrubbing the night before. I shrugged at her and attempted a nonchalant air, 'attempted' being the keyword there.

"Hey, shit happens."

She rolled her eyes and set it to the side whilst shooting a disapproving look at a snickering Hughes standing in the background. Next was a blue tie-dye wallet, which she opened and found only spare change because I'm broke and not allowed to drive at the moment. I thanked whatever powers that be that I had forgotten my driver's license at home; it would have been a pain to explain every aspect of it. Particularly since I had been an organ donor. Doubt they had that in this time frame. Kinda creepy to explain. 'Yes, if I die it means random Joe number 42 gets my spleen and random Jane number 71 gets my lungs.' Doubt that would go over too well in this 'time period'.

She pulled out the coins and examined them closely, she glanced up at me,

"I'm sorry for being nosy, really, I've just never seen currency like this. Where is it from?"

Of course, I froze and blurted out the first name that came to mind.

"Tatooine."

I nearly cried out of pure shame. Star Wars. I named my little, isolated, island after a planet from Star Wars. I suppose I should feel lucky I didn't say Gallifrey or some random thing from Dragon Ball Z, but Atlantis might have been a nice name. Then again they did have something resembling Greek myth seeing as Edward Elric told the story of Icarus and his wings of wax, so them knowing a legend similar to Atlantis was possible. Tatooine it is then. Odds are good they don't have Star Wars here in 1910s whatever anime-not-Germany.

She gave me a funny look at the name, and before she could ask anything Hughes butt in.

"Is that the country you were talking about last night? The one where you're from?"

I nodded, "Yeah, I never did tell you much about it last night, sorry about that."

I turned back to June, "Those are from my home, I seriously doubt they're worth anything here, even if melted down. They're kind of a mishmash of different metals that only have value because the government there said so. I'm just keeping 'em around for sentimental reasons."

She nodded and started placing them back in the wallet but stopped when she reached a rather shiny dime, "What does this number mean? 2001? Is this the value or something?"

I shook my head, "No, it's a year." I could've slapped myself, I was really on a roll for dumbassery. I continued on quickly, "An expiration date of sorts. They were trying to phase out certain types of coins at certain times and transition to paper money. It's a pretty long-term plan."

She stared at it for a second, and I started to worry that she would read everything else on there. I resolved to melt them all into jewelry or something the first opportunity I got. They were much too troublesome. As was my runaway mouth. I understood on some level that I was in shock from everything but that was no excuse to not think things through before blurting them out. Eventually, she put it back in the wallet and set it to the side.

2 packs of gum, a journal (written in Spanish as practice for the class, thank god, my secrets remain my own), a pair of bright purple socks, some loose peppermints, a zip-lock bag of homemade fudge, an unsharpened pencil, and we had finally arrived at the last item in my bag, save the little balls of lint clinging to the bottom. She pulled out the little bottle of pills and checked the prescription. Or rather, tried to. She glanced at me, "What language is this?"

Italian. But I'm not telling her that. I got my original prescription when I lived with my grandmother in Sicily. We always put the new pills in the original bottle after an incident at school and a particularly mean teenage girl (that wasn't me this time). Meaning all information on the bottle could only be read by me here in this wacky dimension, apparently.

"It's the language of my country." Not technically a lie. I'm Italian American, I spent a good bit of time there. "It's a small island, extremely isolated." Slight lie. Island yes if we're talking about where my grandmother lives, small, not really, isolated, hell no.

She opened the bottle, having no trouble with the child-proof lid and I had to resist the urge to pout. I almost always had issues with it. The idiotic thing nearly cost me my life before.

"And apparently, it's very advanced when it comes to medicine. I went to school to be a nurse, but I dropped out, fear of needles, ya know. I've never seen anything like this."

I shrugged, "I couldn't tell you much, I'm not a doctor."

"What's this for anyway? Because if it's diet pills I'm gonna strangle you, I swear."

I laughed a bit,

"No, it's for an illness I'm working to recover from."

Hughes suddenly spoke up and I jumped slightly, not expecting him to join the conversation.

"This illness of yours, you mentioned it last night, I don't mean to be intrusive but is it deadly without the right treatment?"

The question seemed random; it wasn't what I was expecting at all. I had up to 13 different responses for possible questions. This one not being one of them. I'm ashamed to say that I was once again shocked honest.

"Possibly." The knee-jerk teenage response leaving my mouth had me immediately throwing together defense after defense to drag my stupid, sorry ass out of the hole I'd dug myself when-

"Possibly?" the deep voice resonating from behind me caused me to jump once more. I turned to face a questioning Roy Mustang.

I withheld a fangirl squeal at the sight of him. Some may scold and say get a grip, "you've seen him before", but those people just don't understand. This man is Fine. Just the aura-

Hughes dragged my attention back to the conversation at hand while June packed up my things in the background. "Why would you travel away from where there's treatment for you when you know you have a potentially deadly illness?"

I shrugged, "I mean, I'm better? I'm not going to drop dead, if that's what you're asking."

I really hoped my dumb ass hadn't just gotten myself excluded from military service because of my runaway fucking mouth. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to, but I didn't want any options disappearing prematurely.

"All I have to worry about at this point in time is mind over matter. You know, eat some vegetables, maybe learn how to do a pushup or something. The 'possibly' is more because human beings can literally die from anything." Here's hoping someone buys that.

I grabbed my bag back from June, and turned to the two military officers,

"So, where to now?"

Mustang gestured silently for us to follow him, seemingly still mulling over what I had said. But then again, he could be thinking about whatever he was gonna have for breakfast, that's also entirely possible. Hughes and I fell into step behind him, silently navigating the corridors. I geared myself up to answer all questions about why exactly I was in Amestris, praying that I didn't end this day in a cell because of my stupid runaway mouth, fuck am I out of my depth here.

~TimeLordOfPie