UNEXPECTED

CHAPTER 5

A week later, I left the Rockbell household.

There was a lot of protesting (on Tyler's part) and a lot of tears (on Al's and Winry's part), but in the end I won, and we parted ways.

The week before I left had been…up-lifting, to say the least. Tyler finally got off his scrawny ass (figuratively, the kid was still in a wheelchair) and we made a plan. He would join the military and suck every bit of knowledge out of them he could.

Did I think it was totally messed up that a child could be recruited into the military? Yes. Did I really care…? No, no I didn’t. Too much was at stake to let my morals get in the way. Meh. Never been overly righteous anyway. 

And besides, Al and I would be right behind him. At first Tyler resisted us coming along. It was all his fault, Al doesn't need to do anything, blah, blah, blah. We snapped him out of that real quick. Well, Al and I kind of ganged up on him, so he didn't have a chance with our cute charms to contend with. I had to sigh when I thought about the fact that I got saddled with a self-sacrificing i***t, but Ed really wasn't all that bad once you got to know him, I guess.

He finally owned up to not only what he had done to himself and his brother, but also what he had done to me. We had a long in-depth awkward talk in which I held back most of the bad stuff, like the fact that I had had a family of my own, only telling him that I would very dearly like to go back, and could you please do that for me Tyler? I could tell he didn't know what to make of me, and kept stuttering, but I left him to keep on guessing. I know I was being mean, but I just couldn't help it. I was still kind of angry (okay, a lot angry. Furious.) about what he had done, and that was Reason One for my departure. I needed to distance myself a little so I could let go of some of this crippling anger that was preventing me from being a civil human being. It wasn’t helping anything, and I didn’t need to alienate the only people who could help me out of this situation.

The Second Reason was this: Tyler would need to get fitted with automail before he was going anywhere. I was floored to discover that a society that seemed to be trapped in the early 1900's technology-wise was already advanced enough to create a robotic arm or leg that attached directly to the nervous system. It even responded just as quickly as a flesh counterpart! Not even the technology at home was that advanced yet. Evolution divergence really was strange. 

Winry explained to me that the procedure was very painful, and it would take at least two years for Tyler to be able to function normally again, and then who knows how long training to become a State Alchemist. That was just too long to be sitting around doing nothing in my book.

I don’t even think it really hit me until that moment just how long I would be stuck here...It occurred to me that I could just go off on my own, but I realized that in this body, I was just a child. No one would take me seriously, and no one else knew. No. I would have to stay with these boys. There was really no other choice...

Reason Three: I wanted to improve my martial arts skills. Both Tyler and Alphonse were already at my level (from what Al has told me) from only two years of training. I needed to find their teacher and beg her to train me. If I was going to be following around these superhuman boys, with all their magical science and insane backflips, I was going to need to be a part of their team, and that meant being their equal. This world was dangerous, if half of what I had heard about this country was true, and I needed to be prepared, especially if I was going to be smack-dab in the middle of military work.

I curled my lip in distaste at the thought. I was going to be involved with this–this foreign military...didn't really know how to feel about that, to be honest. From all I had heard, they weren’t the most virtuous bunch in any reality, but...but I could use them to regain my life. And that was enough for me. I would just have to hope that none of us would be sent in to fight a war. 

What a nightmare that would be. Hopefully we got back to normal before something that drastic could happen.

The Final Reason: Alphonse was too dependent on me, and it was becoming unhealthy. For the sake of feeling he attached to me as often as he could get away with; at mealtimes to taste what I ate or at night to be able to sleep and share my dreams, and it was slowly driving us both insane. It was as if my presence was a barrier to his healing and accepting what happened. Also, I could feel this 'empathy' link getting stronger and I was getting pulled along. It was getting harder for me to distinguish his feelings from mine every time we 'connected' and I was afraid of what that meant. We still didn't know why his soul didn't just push mine out and go back to its body. 

Tyler theorized that the soul seal that attaches Al to his armor was preventing him from fully taking over my borrowed body. But it was only a theory. For all we knew, he could be slowly pushing me out, and then what would happen to me? I needed to leave, and Al reluctantly agreed. I supposed I was lucky that neither one of the boys seemed to think it was a good idea to just shuck me and re-attach Al's soul. They seemed Hell-bent on getting me back to where I belonged, and for that, I was grateful.

So we made a plan. I would leave and Tyler would get healthy again. In two years time, I would return stronger than I was before, and then we would head to Central together as the Elric Brothers Three.

At first I resisted the idea of basically becoming their brother in all but soul (cause, you know, I was kind of their blood brother), but Alphonse was insistent. In the end I agreed, it would be the easiest way to explain why I was so similar to Tyler without getting into all of the awkward details of being basically a substitute in someone else's body. And I was ok with being Al's brother, he was a sweet kid, but I didn't think Tyler would ever think about me that way, nor I about him. As a cover story though…it was a good plan. So that's what we would do.

So after a tearful (Winry and Al) and sullen (Tyler) goodbye, I found myself in front of the home of Tyler and Alphonse's alchemy teacher. And I was sweating bullets.

She couldn't possibly be as bad as they say. Did she really throw knives and leave them on a deserted island just to learn some obscure alchemical truth? Was I going to be strong enough for this? I gulped and took a bracing breath before lifting my hand to knock on the door. I was twenty-three damnit! She couldn't possibly be that much more intimidating than my last martial arts instructor. That man was five-foot-full of the ferocity of a tasmanian devil. If I could train under him, I could train under anyone!

Or maybe I was overestimating myself. The second my fist met the door, it was slammed open in my face, sending me sprawling back on my ass, nursing what was sure to be a black eye.

"What!" shouted the fiercest looking woman I had ever laid eyes on. She was easily three feet taller than me and built like a tank. Her arms, though slim, were corded with muscle and I was sure if I could see though her white tunic, her core would be hard as a rock. Her hair was long and braided back in dreadlocks tied into a pony-tail, and she wore a furious expression. 

She glared at me with black eyes. Was I intimidated? Yes. Did I want to run screaming with my tail tucked between my legs? Yes. Was I seriously f*****g jealous of her bad-ass body? Hell yes.

As quickly as I could register all of this, here expression changed when she saw who I was. Or rather, whom I looked like. "Alphonse?" she asked, her face smoothing out into one of deceptively pretty innocence.

"Not quite," I groaned from my seat on the ground. She crouched in front of me and frowned intimidatingly. I froze nervously and could almost physically feel her black irises burn as she inspected me. Eventually, she let out a heavy sigh and helped me to my feet. "I can already tell that this is going to be a long story, so come on in. It's getting dark." She didn't know the half of it, I grinned ruefully to myself as I followed her inside.

She seated me at a table in her quaint little cottage ("Sit," she commanded. "Yes ma'am!" respectfully), and served some tea. And so I told her everything. Well, not everything, everything. I left out most of the sob story that was my life and focused just on the events from the moment I woke till now. The whole time I spoke I gazed into my teacup, and she did not interrupt me once.

"So," she said dangerously calm once I had finished speaking, "those boys took everything I taught them only to commit the ultimate taboo, not only destroying their lives and disgracing my teachings, but ripping an innocent from another world against his will."

"Yup." Oops. I probably shouldn't be so flippant about this. Silence reigned for a moment and I could almost imagine a fuse sparking at the top of Izumi's head. I watched with an almost numb fascination as the seconds ticked by, wondering idly if I should fear for my life. I didn't have to wait for long.

"Aaaaaaaagh!" she screamed in fury. In a feat of inhuman strength she lifted the heavy white table that we were sitting at and threw it out the window.

"…" I sat with my eyes wide open in shock, cold teacup in my hand, at the suddenly much more empty space in front of me. Jerkily I looked up at Izumi.

She stood with her arms akimbo, staring out the now much bigger window and huffing like an enraged bull. Eventually she calmed enough to pinch the bridge of her nose. "So why are you here?" She gritted out.

I snapped my mouth closed and answered immediately. "Ed is going to join the State Alchemists–Gah!" The volatile woman had punched through the wall this time.

"So they think by joining the State they will be able to go back to normal! That way only lies the path of blood and destruction!"

Intimidated, and a bit awed by her strength and fury, I didn't answer. That is until she turned her menacing eyes on me. "So that's what they are doing, but you didn't answer my question: Why are you here?"

A sharp shiver ran up and down my spine. This was it. Make or break! My spine, that is...Gulping and gathering my nerve, I stood. Bowing in a traditional sign of respect that had been ingrained in me since I was very young, I lifted my hands before me with my right fist touching my left palm and put all of the conviction I could muster into my voice. "Master Izumi, please teach me how to fight!"

"No!" The next thing to fly out the window…was me.