Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist. I live in a box under the freeway. Don't sue me. Props to Masashi Kishimoto and Hiromu Arakawa, who own the characters and most of the setting.

Spoilers / Setting: Set starting chapter 144 in the Naruto Manga, and post Manga slightly AU for Fullmetal (since I don't know how the series ends.) There may be spoilers for up to Volume 15.

Summary: A Fullmetal & Naruto Crossover, (as if the disclaimer hasn't given that away). Ed ends up extra dimensional after the final showdown with the forces of Evil in Amestris. With no way home, he tries to get by in a new world, and keep out of trouble. But when does anything ever work out as planned for Ed?

The Truth Decays

By Marz

Chapter 1

Naruto glared at the pillows, and after a moment of intense thought, put his feet up on them. That would show that jerk. Nobody liked a pillow that smelled like feet. Of course he had to mess up his own pillow too, to make sure the pervert sage couldn't just trade with him. He frowned and went back to looking at the wall.

Stupid pervert sage, off chasing women when he was supposed to be teaching cool jutsu. Naruto was so mad he couldn't concentrate. Well, mad and bored. No, mostly bored he decided as he thought about it. He went to the window and looked out. The pervert sage probably wouldn't be back for hours, and this was the second time ever Naruto had been out of Konoha. He pushed open the window and used his chakra to climb down the wall. He'd have a look around and be back before he was noticed.

The city was crowded but once he got a few blocks out of the 'fun' district, it wasn't quite as elbow-to-the-head-every-other-step, sardines-in-a-tin crowded. Naruto supposed it was a pretty good city. The people, if they noticed him at all, smiled at him. Of course it wasn't likely that he'd run into a cool ninja willing to teach him jutsu, but that wasn't likely to happen at home either.

He was wandering through a street that seemed to sell nothing but hats when he saw the light. It was blue and then gold and Naruto would have called it pretty, except that was an un-cool and girly thing to say. It was coming from inside a store that sold mostly knit hats with weird frilly things on them. Despite that he entered the shop.

Inside there was an old lady with a scowl and a teenage boy with a scowl and they were arguing and pointing at a small pile of cash on the counter.

"-cost you a hundred times more if you had to replace it!" the boy said.

"All I saw was flashing lights! How do I know you did anything?" the old woman demanded.

"You could look at it, you batty wrinkled old-"

"How dare you speak to me that way you foul-mouthed runt?!"

"Who are you calling short, you demented miniature hag?"

"You…you tiny swindler!"

"Swindler? Fine!" the boy shouted. "I can just put it back the way it was."

"Good point," the old lady said with a sudden smile.

She reached into her apron and pulled out another bundle of cash. She grinned at the boy and slapped it down on top of the pile, and he scooped it up with a smirk.

"You need a hat, kid?" the old lady asked Naruto as if he had appeared only then.

"What was that light?" Naruto asked.

The old woman's scowl returned. "Look what you did!" she yelled at the teenager. "You are stealing my customers!"

"I'm drawing them in you doddering geezer! Who would come inside just for hats? And now the roof isn't going to fall on them either!"

"How dare you insult my work? Hats are my life! I have a hat for everyone! Even this boy would look good if he had one of my hats!"

"Uh…hey!" Naruto complained, realizing she meant him.

Naruto wasn't really sure how it happened but after a few minutes of loud discussion between the woman and the teenager, somehow Naruto was standing outside wearing a gray fur hat with abalone buttons in a swirling pattern on it, (which didn't match his orange jumpsuit at all) and the teenager was walking away up the street.

"Hey wait!" Naruto called.

The teenager stopped.

Naruto thought the other boy looked a lot like him. He wasn't that much taller than Naruto, but he got the impression the other boy was older than he looked. He had blond hair like him, though it was longer and done back in a braid. But he had gold eyes instead of blue.

Naruto didn't see a forehead protector on him, or any ninja insignia, but the teenager did have a black cross embossed on the back of his red vest. The cross had a snake curled around it and a crown with wings above it. Maybe it was a clan symbol or something. The teenager's other clothes were all black; black pants, long sleeved shirt, even black gloves despite the heat. He was carrying a messenger bag with the word "repairs" embroidered on the side.

"Hey mister!" Naruto said, running to catch up. "What was that light? Was that a jutsu?"

"Jutsu? You mean those ninja spell things?" the teenager asked.

Naruto nodded.

"Naw," the teenager said. "I'm not a ninja."

"Oh," Naruto said. "I thought it might've been a jutsu, cause I am a ninja and I'm trying to learn as many jutsu as possible cause I'm going to be the best ninja ever and they're going to pick me to be Hokage for sure."

"Uh…right. Good luck with that," the teenager said.

He turned and started walking again.

"Hey wait mister!" Naruto said. "If that wasn't jutsu what was it?"

"It was just a little alchemy," the teenager said.

"What's alchemy?" Naruto asked, following along as the other boy turned up the next block.

"It's the science of transmutation," the teenager said.

"Um…I don't understand," Naruto said. "Does it have math in it or something? I'm bad at math."

The teenager sighed. "Don't you have somewhere to be kid?"

"No, not really. The old pervert left me in the hotel room so he could chase women, but I got bored so I'm looking around," Naruto said. "So far this is a pretty neat place."

"Your dad just left you in a hotel?" the teenager asked.

"He's not my dad," Naruto said, slightly disturbed by the thought. "I don't have one. He's just some old guy who said he'd teach me some jutsu if I helped him find this woman he used to know, but then he went chasing this other woman, who I'm pretty sure he just saw right then. Anyway do you know if anyone around here knows any jutsu?"

"Sorry kid, I don't know any ninja and I try to keep it that way."

"Aw!" Naruto said. "How come you don't like ninja?"

"I didn't say I didn't like them," the teenager said. "I'm just trying to stay out of trouble, and ninja and trouble are synonymous in this country."

"What's synonymous?" Naruto asked.

"It means the same thing."

"The same thing as what?" Naruto asked.

The teenager sighed again. "If I buy you food, will you stop talking?"

"Uh…sure!" Naruto said.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Uzumaki Naruto was one weird kid.

Ed had come to that conclusion within 5 minutes of meeting him. The smaller boy had introduced himself to the waiter when they got a table at a restaurant, though he hadn't bothered to do so with Ed. Perhaps he assumed Ed knew who he was, or it had slipped his mind. The kid seemed to have a very slippery sort of mind.

He did finally ask Ed to identify himself in a roundabout way. Naruto had asked him "who do you think you are?" after Ed ordered extra vegetables on his behalf. Ed had asked Naruto who he thought Ed was, which finally prompted him to request an introduction. Ed was a bit concerned that someone had let the kid wander around outside unsupervised, but based on what the kid had said between mouthfuls of mooched food, he didn't appear to have anyone looking after him anyway.

Ed was kind of amazed by the kid's ability to eat. It wasn't that Ed wasn't eating more than a normal person might. Nor did he think he couldn't pay the check. This land had no rules against transmuting gold from base metal, and it wasn't likely Ed would end up making enough to destabilize the economy anyway. Still if the kid kept eating, stuff would have to start coming out one end or the other. The human stomach only held about a liter after all.

"-but I'm gonna' be way cooler than Sasuke bastard! And then Sakura will go on a date with me, do you think, maybe?" Naruto said.

Ed was also kind of impressed at the kid's ability to eat and talk at the same time. Maybe it was a ninja skill. Ed tried not to snort. He wasn't sure he believed anything this weird little chatter box was saying, but it was kind of nice to have company. Still if this kid was some kind of ninja in training, he'd better move along soon. The ninja here seemed much more dangerous than the one's he'd tangled with from Xing in his own world. He'd avoided the local military authorities since falling into this strange world, and he didn't want to be found by them now.

"Hey Ed! How do you get a girl to like you? I mean besides with just awesome ninja skill?" the kid asked before cramming five tempura shrimp into his mouth.

I'm not really the best person to ask…Ed thought, trying not to remember too much about the home and the people he wasn't ever going to see again.

"I'd say buy her a wrench, but maybe we aren't thinking about the same kind of girl," Ed drawled.

"What would Sakura do with a wrench?" Naruto asked.

Ed shrugged. "Fix things, hit people-"

"She does like to hit people!" the kid said, nodding. But then he frowned. "But she likes to hit me the most, so maybe that's not a good idea. She already punches pretty hard."

Ed nodded. The kid inhaled three more sushi, and then leaned back with a happy sigh, followed by a burp. Apparently the kid had filled all of his stomachs. Ed estimated that Naruto possessed between 5 and 8. Ed waved for the check.

They wandered outside. It was late afternoon and the streets were still pretty crowed. Ed thought he saw something dart from one roof to the next above them, but didn't pay that much attention. He'd seen ninja jumping between roofs in the first village he'd stumbled into after falling out of the void. It just wasn't that impressive anymore.

"Hey! Dango!" Naruto declared. "You got dinner, so I'll buy dessert!" he declared pulling out a wallet that was almost bursting at the seams with cash.

If Ed had been drinking, he would have done a spit take.

"Kid, don't wave money around like that," he said.

"Hu?" the kid said.

"If people see you've got that much on you it's like begging to be robbed," Ed said.

"Oh, I don't worry about stuff like that," the kid said. "I'm an awesome ninja. Nobody will mess with me!"

Ed suppressed an eye-roll, but the effort caused the rest of his face to spasm.

"Alright, maybe," he allowed. "But what if there's a pick pocket? What if you have to run somewhere and you drop it? Even if you're sure you don't have to worry about bandits, it's a bad idea to keep all your money in one place, especially when traveling. Shit happens."

"Hu?" the kid asked.

"It can't hurt to be careful," Ed tried to explain. "Whenever we were traveling, me and my brother would each carry half the money, in case one of us lost it."

Or at least we did after I lost all our money for the fifth time, Ed thought frowning faintly.

"You have a brother?"

"I used to," Ed said.

Maybe somewhere I still do. He thought. Maybe Al found his way through the void. Maybe he'd stayed out of it like I told him to. Maybe, maybe…

"Oh," Naruto said, looking awkward for about 1\10th of a second. "So what kind of Dango do you want?"

"I don't know," Ed said, fairly certain his advice hadn't sunk in. "Let's see what they got."

They got into line and the kid started chattering about his favorite flavor and how there should be ramen flavored Dango, when two shadows fell over them. Ed glanced back and saw two guys in weird black robes with red clouds on them. They both had those ninja headbands, one with the same whirly leaf thing as Naruto had; the other had four little squiggles. The guy with the squiggles looked kind of like a fish, but Ed wasn't going to say anything. It wasn't like he hadn't seen weirder. They were still pretty creepy, but that one had the same band as Naruto, so that meant they were on the same side he supposed. It probably wasn't the kid's trainer, since the leaf guy couldn't be called an old man. Ed thought he and the stranger were probably about the same age.

"Uzumaki Naruto," said the leaf guy in a completely toneless voice.

The kid turned to look at the speaker, and all the color drained from his face.

"You will come with us."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Naruto froze. The guy looked like Sasuke, well and older version of Sasuke anyway, and he had the sharingan, Naruto could see the black tome spinning against red in the stranger's eyes. Naruto wanted to run but he couldn't even make himself blink. The other people in line for Dango had no trouble fleeing.

Why can't I move?

"What's your problem?" Ed asked the looming strangers.

Naruto wanted to warn his new friend that these were very dangerous people and he probably shouldn't be rude, but his lungs were broken. He couldn't even gasp for air.

"You can go," the one who looked like Sasuke said to Ed.

"Oh, I can go?" Ed drawled with a scowl. "Well you can go to hell and take your goldfish boyfriend with you."

Naruto realized there was another man behind the Sasuke look alike. That guy did look kind of like a fish, now that Naruto thought about it, maybe a shark instead of goldfish. And he was apparently an offended shark, because he'd taken a huge sword off his back and was swinging it in a horizontal cut faster than Naruto's eyes could track. Though the blade was still wrapped, he was sure Ed was about to be cut in half. The blade struck Ed's right arm and Naruto started at the metallic clang.

The force of the blow lifted Ed off the ground. The teenager kept his weight on his right arm and rolled over the blade, landing in a crouch. Scraps of his black sleeve and the white wrappings from the blade floated around them as the shark faced man shouldered his sword again. Naruto didn't know what was more surprising, the fact that the shark man's sword was covered in funny little spikes rather than being a solid blade, of the fact that Ed's right arm was covered in metal.

"What do you suppose he is, Itachi?" the shark man asked.

Naruto knew he'd heard that name somewhere before, but he couldn't remember where.

"It doesn't matter," Itachi said.

"I guess not," the shark man said.

He swung the sword again. Naruto's legs were just starting to function again, but they felt like jelly as he tried to move toward Ed. It seemed like Ed didn't really need his help at that moment anyway.

The blade was coming left to right, and this time Ed fell back under it with his hands pressed together as if in prayer. As the blade passed over, Ed reached up and slapped it.

The blade screamed.

The shark man snatched the sword back and it's screaming died back to a whine. Ed was just getting back up when the shark man lunged forward, kicking him right in the center of the chest. Naruto heard ribs crack and Ed went flying backwards across the street. A moment before his head collided with the brick wall of a building, a green blur scooped him out of the air.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

A last second rescue by a guy in a green leotard wasn't exactly what Ed was hoping for, but it beat the hell out of death by brick wall.

"You again?" the shark guy said.

"Indeed it is I!" the green-bowl-cut-ballerina said. "The noble blue beast of Konoha!"

"Um…could you put me down?" Ed asked in a wheezy voice. He knew the inability to catch his breath meant broken ribs. This guy wasn't quite as bad as Armstrong about manhandling the injured, but Ed wanted to be somewhere else if this guy decided to pirouette or something. The green guy set him down and Ed just barely managed to keep his feet.

"What did you do to my sword, runt?" the shark man growled.

"Same thing I'm about to do to your face you fish freak!" Ed roared, forgetting all about his busted ribs. He was about to charge in, but the green guy caught the collar of his vest.

"Do not be so hasty!" he ordered.

As soon as he said that another kid charged past them. Ed didn't see much but a blur, but the new kid looked a lot like the monotone freak, Itachi, the fish guy had called him. He seemed to have red eyes too, but Ed didn't get a good look. The kid was yelling incoherently and his arm looked like it was on fire.

"Sasuke!" Naruto called, finally snapping out of whatever it was that had glued his feet to the street.

The Sasuke kid charged his taller look-a-like and took a swipe at him with the burning arm, but Itachi dodged, catching the arm and discharging all its energy into the street. Naruto started to glow red, which Ed assumed was a ninja thing, but the fish guy swung his sword at him and the red light vanished.

The green guy charged in to get Naruto away from the fish freak, and Ed focused on the kid fighting Itachi. Apparently the kid was trying to pull his arm out of the others' grip.

"You're in the way little brother," Itachi said.

He turned his hand slightly and snapped his little brother's wrist. Sasuke let out a gargling, choked off scream and collapsed in the street. Ed glared. He didn't know any of their history, but someone treating their little brother like that pushed all the wrong kinds of buttons for him.

"Hey you bastard!" Ed shouted. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

The bastard ignored him. (Or perhaps misunderstood, since Ed was at least half a foot shorter then him.)

Ed clapped his hands together and slammed them down on the sidewalk. The street around the red-eyed freak burst upward and transmuted chains coiled around the ninja's arms and legs. Ed darted around the chained freak and bent down to check on his wreck of a little brother. The kid was conscious but seemed in shock, his skin was colorless and he was sweaty and shaky. He was also trying to get up.

"Don't interfere," Sasuke said to Ed.

"Yeah, right," Ed said, pulling the kid up by his undamaged arm.

Ed looked back at the chained psycho, who was just standing there. Ed thought he'd at least try to escape.

And then he exploded.

There wasn't time to transmute a shield from the ground so Ed brought his hands together and transmuted the air. He used a bastardized version of his old C.O.s oxygen density alchemy, but instead of bringing oxygen together to burn, Ed pulled in as much nitrogen as possible. The wall of air blocked the flying shrapnel and took the worst of the shockwave. He and Sasuke were knocked off their feet, but they were able to get back up again.

"Did he just blow himself up?" Ed asked.

"No," Sasuke said. "It was a clone."

Ed was about to ask what the hell he meant when he was stabbed in the back. The cold feeling spreading through his lower body told him the knife was probably stuck in something important too. The pain didn't register until a moment later, but Ed was already lunging forward. The blade pulled free, but the leg Ed was bringing around in a sweep went through empty air.

The red-eyed weirdo was already twenty feet away, beating his younger brother into further pulp. Sasuke would get smacked down and crawl right back up again. His punches weren't anywhere close to connecting, but he kept trying and kept paying for it. Ed was now pretty much convinced the kid had a death wish.

Why couldn't I just mind my own business? He grumbled to himself.

"Hey! You in the stupid red cloud dress!" Ed called.

Itachi let his younger brother fall in a heap on the ground.

Ok, got his attention, now what do I do with it?

Ed started to bring his hands together. He was planning on his usual automail-cover-plate-into-a-blade trick. But his arms just stopped moving. He looked in confusion at his hands, still six inches apart. It took him another second to process that the ninja was standing right in front of him grabbing both his wrists. Ed struggled to bring his hands together, but his arms might just as well have been trapped in stone.

How strong is this guy?

Ed looked him in the eye and glared. The guys' eyes started spinning. And then his pupils split open into a strange three pronged star shape. Ed was just considering driving a knee into the lunatic's nuts, since he was standing so close, when the street around them disappeared.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Author's Note: Yeah I can't help it. Cliff hangers are my favorite way to end a chapter. Don't forget to review. And don't yell at me to work on my other stories. I've got writer's block with the stalled ones, and am trying to knock it loose with a plot bunny barrage.