Amestris A.D.

What the hell happened?

Those were the first words that went through Ed's mind as he lie on his back, head throbbing. All he remembered was that he was fighting in Amestris's underground. Something had happened in the middle of it that he couldn't seem to quite remember. No matter how hard he thought about it, he just couldn't recall how he'd ended up where he was.

But remembering the bit about being in the middle of a battle made him stand up pretty quick

And he was knocked back down just as easily. Head throbbing worse than before, and a lump the size of a goose's egg growing on his forehead, Edward touched whatever he'd bumped into. He soon found out that, along with not knowing what had happened or what had hit him, he was also blind. His fingers bumped into something hard and metal. It was only two feet away from the floor that Ed was lying on. Ed presumed he must be in some sort of crawl space somewhere.

Did Al stash me here when I got knocked out? Damn it, what the hell happened to me? He punched the ceiling with his metal hand and it rang like a bell. He was blind, he was confused, and he had a really vicious headache because it felt like little gnomes were trying to beat their way out of his head using sledgehammers and a couple of wrecking balls. Breathing deep, Ed thought, Okay, be rational. You're probably in hiding. It's probably made of metal. If there's a way in, there's a way out.

Sanity finally taking residence in Ed's head, he clapped his hands and pressed them to the metal. And strangely enough, something happened that hadn't happened in a long time.

Nothing.

The metal wall above him didn't move at all. It didn't change either. There were no lights, no sparks that usually came with a transmutation. Suddenly remembering Father's ability to nullify alchemy underground, he cursed using every word he knew in Amestrian, as well as a few in Xingese he'd heard Ling use. Furiously, he kicked the ceiling, not caring if anyone heard him or not.

Breathing hard, he realized that if this was an enclosed space, he only had a couple of minutes' worth of air. Breathing shallowly, he explored the small place he was in.

He discovered it was a small rectangular box approximately six feet by three feet by two feet. It was probably made of metal, if his automail had anything say about it. It rung like a school bell every time he hit the walls of his tiny prison. There were no obvious exits.

Sighing, Ed quit trying to bust out. It had been about five minutes, and he was still breathing just fine. Feeling around the inside of the prison, he found that there was a strange, raised cylinder on top of the ceiling. Knocking a knuckle on the cylinder, he found it to be quite solid. Groaning with frustration, he sat back. A whisper of air brushed his face. Frowning, the blonde-haired alchemist realized that if this was indeed a completely enclosed space, there would be no moving air…

Scrabbling for the source of the moving air, he found it in the seam between two walls where they met. There was the smallest crack. If Ed focused hard, he could just see a bit of light shimmering through. With renewed vigor, he started to hit the inside of the prison, watching with unconcealed glee that the crack was getting just that much wider. He continued to bang the inside away. Every now and again, he'd press an ear to the ceiling so he could listen for voices if there were any. For the most part, it was silent.

After an hour of banging away at the ceiling the crack had become about as wide and as long as a finger's length. Ed panted and pressed an ear to the ceiling. To his surprise, he heard voices.

"…hear that?"

"…what do….mean? …hear…single thing."

The voices were unfamiliar, but after an hour trapped in this tiny space, they were like a choir of angels to Ed's ears.

"HEY!! HEY, IN HERE! GET ME OUT OF HERE!!" he yelled, banging harder on the ceiling. The alchemist continued to shout and kick at the ceiling before his foot collided with open air. Blinking in the extremely bright sunshine, he looked up to two dark clothed people that had huge guns strapped to their backs.

Ed suddenly realized that if these guys worked for Father, he'd be screwed.

He automatically bolted, deciding not to take chances. However, Edward hadn't taken a few things into account. For one, he'd been exposed to sunlight, therefore he wasn't underground. For two, if these people had wanted to kill him, they would've done so the minute that the prison was opened. Three, he had no idea where he was.

The minute that he hopped out of that little box, he stopped dead in his own footsteps. He backed up a bit in horror. Ed shook his head, looking around in disbelief. He was honestly contemplating if he'd ended up in Hell. Maybe God was finally punishing him or something like that.

What he saw was a landscape of apocalyptical proportions. The massive buildings around him were scattered like felled trees. Skeletons dotted the road he was standing on. Sand blew through the gutted city. The wind howled in the empty buildings and the barren landscape.

"Where the…am I… Is this Hell or something?" Ed asked the two standing behind him. The taller black man on the right shook his head.

"It might as well be, but no. This isn't Hell. At least, I don't think it is," he shrugged. The woman next to him looked inside of the box that he'd ended up in.

"Smart man, hiding in a safe. However, you aren't so smart as to actually lock the thing so you couldn't get back out," the woman commented. Ed looked at the box he'd been fighting his way out of for the past couple hours.

It was black metal laced with something else. It was empty as of then, but the inside was gray with little bits of paper littered at the bottom. He stared at it with disbelief. How'd he get in there?!

"I didn't hide in the safe. In fact, I don't know what happened at all. I don't even remember what happened to me!" he shouted, throwing up his hands. He looked around.

"Where am I anyways?" he asked. He tamped down panic as he realized he had no idea how to get back to Al and the others in Amestris' underground labs. In fact, he could be in a completely different country. Maybe he was in Xing or maybe to that country to the south, which he could never remember the name of. Perhaps the Homunculi had knocked him out and stuffed him into a small safe and dropped him off to hell knows where!

The fretting teenager was jerked out of his thoughts as the woman said, "You don't even know what country you're in? You must've gotten a pretty heavy bonk to the head in that safe if you don't know. This is Amestris, buddy." Ed snapped around to stare at the woman. He gave her his most deathly glare and growled, "Don't toy with me! Where ever this place is, it isn't Amestris!" The woman looked at him with a calm face and hefted her gun.

"I wouldn't speak like that if I were you," she said in a nonchalant tone of voice. Her partner patted her on the shoulder as he warned, "Easy, easy. He's a kid, see? A little thing."

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SMALL HE RIDES DUST MOTES?!?!"

Rolling his eyes, the black man took his partner and spoke to her in private. Ed huffed and sat down in the sand, staring up at the shells that had once been buildings. He'd never seen anything so big. Even in Central, you couldn't find anything this massive. HQ would probably fit into one of these things with space to spare. Curious, Edward walked up to one of them, fingering a steel strut. The very smallest frame of the thing was thicker than Ed! Of course, everything was bigger than Ed, but…

"Hey! Don't touch that!" the woman yelled. Ed jerked his hand back reflexively, and yelled back defiantly, "And if I do?!"

"The whole structure might collapse, you dipwad!" the woman shouted angrily. Ed scrambled back, craning his neck up to see the remains of the giant building. If this thing were to just suddenly cave in on itself… He shuddered and ran to catch up to the two who were walking down the sorry excuse for a road that ran through the middle of the derelict city.

The wind echoed eerily through the hollow structures. Ed shivered. He wasn't one to be superstitious, but the sounds of the wind made him think of ghosts. Chastising himself for being an idiot, he focused on the two in front of him.

The people in front of him didn't seem to mean him any harm, though that could change at a pin's drop, it seemed. The black man was pretty old, probably in his fifties or so. The woman was younger, probably in her thirties. They both wore the same vinyl clothing, despite the arid atmosphere. Each of them had a gun, a small backpack, and a pair of what appeared to be goggles, though Ed couldn't be sure. They were very tense and quiet, as if they didn't want to get caught. But caught by what?

Ed ran into the back of the black man. He stumbled and hit the ground, earning himself a nice sized bruise on his gluteus maximus. He was going to say something rather rude to the man in front of him, but both of them had gone completely still and silent.

"…You hear that?" the black man whispered. The woman nodded.

"Oh yeah."

"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

"You can bet your life on it. Literally," she answered, quickly running off. The black man stooped down next to Ed and mumbled an apology.

"What's with the- THE HELL?!" The black man lifted Ed in a bride's carry and ran as fast as he could to his partner. For someone so old, he could definitely run fast. Ed screamed profanities until the woman finally got him to close his mouth.

"We're being pursued. I think it would be best if you shut up." Ed's mouth slammed shut. The man and woman continued running until they reached an odd-looking vehicle with many wheels. Ed couldn't make head or tails of the thing.

"How many?" the black man asked. The woman answered, "Maybe five, possibly more."

"More what?" Edward asked irritably. The black man ignored him and whispered urgently, "We need to get out of here now. What do you think led them here?" The woman's eyes shifted over to Ed. The aforementioned shrimp blinked and noticed that both of them were staring at him.

"Don't stare at me! I don't even know what's chasing us!" Ed hissed quietly. The woman shook her head and stated, "This is a waste of time. Just trank him and go." The black man shook his head.

"The little man—"

"I'M NOT LITTLE!"

"—Doesn't even know what country he's in. What do you think would happen if we tranked him?" The woman glared at Edward and mumbled, "It would be a lot quieter." Ed did the most immature thing he could think of, just to get on her nerves. He blew a raspberry in her face. The woman didn't appreciate that because she pulled out a very small handgun and aimed it squarely in the middle of Ed's forehead.

"Uh, Georgia…"

"Shut up Kojak. I've had enough with this twit." She cocked the small gun, and it made a strange whirring noise. Ed put up his hands in forfeit.

"Easy with that thing...you might hurt someone…" Like, I don't know, ME?!

Kojak continued to try and persuade Georgia to put down the gun. The brunette lifted one perfectly sculpted eyebrow and pulled the trigger.

A small patch of electric blue flew out of the gun and stuck itself to Ed's forehead. It suddenly flashed bright then faded into his skin. In seconds, Edward was fast asleep. Kojak scratched the back of his head.

"Did you really have to do that?" he sighed, picking up the limp alchemist and stowing him away in the Octis. The vehicle's eight legs splayed out a bit as Kojak added his own weight to Ed's. It had the look of an ATV; it just had extra wheels behind the mains.

"Actually, yes I did. If the kid had made any more noise, those stupid chimeras would've gotten us in no time flat. I lied when I said five. I meant nine. You better get moving out of here before one of them decides to eat you. I didn't want to freak out the kid any more than I needed to," Georgia explained. Kojak nodded, knowing that Georgia didn't do anything without some sort of reason, however flawed that reason may be.

Georgia climbed up on her own Octis, and revved the quiet engine. It made a smooth whisper of air. Both Kojak and Georgia hit a button on the panel of their rides, and they were gone in a whirl of sand.

Blearily, Ed rubbed his face. He'd had one hell of a night. At first, he'd dreamt that he'd been dropped in a safe, and then these people found him and yelled at him a lot…well, the woman did, but Ed was used to women yelling at him all the time. Winry did it, Maria did it, Granny did it… And then there was that awful landscape! It was all gray and lifeless, and there was sand everywhere.

Sure that he'd woken up in an infirmary, he tried to swing his legs out on to a wooden floor. Instead, he fell down and landed on something a lot colder and much, much harder. After muttering several words unpublishable, he stood up and took a look around.

The room was incredibly barren, with only a chair, a sink, a toilet, and a bed. In fact, it was pretty reminiscent to the prison cell he'd shared with Al at the Brigg's Fort in the mountains. He blinked, and realized that the 'dream' he had had was not a dream.

It was more of a living nightmare.

Yelling wordlessly with frustration, he kicked a wall with his automail leg. It bounced off harmlessly, though there was a good sized dent in one of his toes. Glaring at the wall as if he could melt through it, he thought about how angry Winry would be when he told her he'd smashed his toe into a wall inside of some strange prison in the middle of nowhere. He wondered if they still had the 'one phone call' rule here in…where ever.

"That isn't a smart thing to do, you know," a young, female voice from above said. Ed looked up, but all he saw was the white, plastic ceiling with its one fluorescent light. He frowned.

"Where exactly are you?" he asked.

"I'm somewhere." Rolling his eyes at the vague response he asked, "Okay, I think I figured that out. The key word was 'exactly.'"

"Who are you?" the voice asked as if Ed had never spoken at all. At this point, Ed was getting very angry. He'd been locked in an enclosed space, called little, shot, and now he was being interrogated by a voice that didn't seem to come from anywhere. This wasn't Ed's idea of fun, though God seemed to think otherwise.

"Your worst pain in the ass. Who are you?" he quipped in an irate tone. The voice didn't answer back. It seemed that Edward had made it quite hurt.

After several seconds silence, it came back saying, once more, "Who are you?" Rubbing his temples, Ed finally answered, "Edward Elric." There was more silence. After several minutes, the voice asked, "What year is it, Edward Elric?" Raising an eyebrow inquisitively, he answered hesitantly, "It's 1915." Again, there was silence.

"Edward Elric, where do you originate from?" Sighing with annoyance, Ed asked, "Can't I get some answers?!"

"Please, Edward Elric, answer the question." If Ed had known where the voice was coming from, he would've flipped them the bird. However, he couldn't do so, and therefore he had to answer said question.

"I'm from Resembool, Amestris," he drawled out, making a point of staring at the ceiling with a hateful glare. He didn't like to give out information about himself. It was quiet for a time…

And then a door opened out of nowhere with a quiet whoosh. A smart looking blonde woman with black eyes came in. Ed scrambled to the far wall, away from the magic door that had suddenly opened out of nowhere. It closed behind the woman and the wall was a wall again. Cautiously stepping away, he stepped past the woman to inspect the wall. The woman didn't seem to be expecting that because she stared curiously at him.

Ed felt the wall with his hands, trying to find some sort of seam in the wall that would betray the whereabouts of the door. He blinked because the wall was completely flawless. It was just a wall.

"You've never seen anything like our Octises, or these types of automatic sliding doors have you, Edward?" the woman asked, her face a cool mask. She wore black vinyl like everyone else, other than she wore a short jacket over the regular clothing and the jacket sported two long yellow stripes across the arms. Ed studied the face over his shoulder before fully turning around. He hadn't noticed it before, but she looked exactly like—

"My name is Hilary Mustang. I am a Commander here at Oasis," she introduced, holding out a hand. Ed shook it.

"I'm Ed. Edward Elric, the Full Metal Alchemist." Ed studied the face in front of him. At first glance, she looked exactly like Riza, but from closer inspection, he could see that her nose was too thin and her hair was too light. Her eyes were the wrong color, but they were the exact shade of black that Colonel Mustang had. Who was this doppelganger, really, that she looked like Riza and Roy mixed together? She even had the Colonel's last name…

Hilary motioned for Ed to sit down. He declined by staying standing up. She sighed.

"I'm going to tell you now, you are going to want to sit down. If you don't, you might fall over," Hilary warned. Ed cocked his head to the side and assured, "I'll take my chances." Closing her coal black eyes, she breathed deep.

"I've got a lot to tell you, Edward. A lot to tell you. I'm hoping that none of it's too disturbing as well. You might not like what you hear. I can almost guarantee you will probably be shocked. You have no idea what's happened because you suffered from head trauma as well as retrograde amnesia. Do you know what that is?" Hilary asked before continuing. Ed had been staring at the far wall for quite a while, on taking in half of what Hilary was saying.

"Not really, no. I know what amnesia is, but I don't know what retrograde amnesia is," he said. Hilary nodded.

"Well, retrograde amnesia is one of the things that can occur when one receives head trauma. We found that you had a concussion as well as a good sized lump on your forehead." As she said that, Ed gingerly touched his forehead. "Retrograde amnesia is where you can't recall what happened before the event of which you received the head trauma. You won't be able to remember what happened before someone whacked you over the head." Ed nodded. That was easy enough to understand. Now, how did they figure out he had it in the first place?

Hilary didn't leave any space for questions. She plowed straight on through to the point.

"Edward, the year here in Amestris isn't 1915. It's 2165. You're 250 years into the future."