1 Full Metal

Full Metal

Chapter 1

Roy Mustang

Beta : Sage Nameless

Something was wrong: something was very very wrong. I remember going to sleep, but I didn't have any memories of waking up. If you think that sounds confusing, just imagine how I felt..

I tried to look around, but my eyes didn't respond properly. My voice didn't work either when I tried to call out, and I began to panic. Was I dying? Was I dead? Would I be stuck here forever?

That was when I heard it, the fucking crying. Urgh someone please, make it stop!

Something warm washed over me, before the light grew blinding, and I had to close my eyes once more, but throughout it all, the crying wouldn't stop. I yelled out, cried for help, prayed to any God I knew of, but I received no answers. Maybe that was why I was so shocked when I finally heard an understandable voice.

"Look at him Adrian, our baby boy! Isn't he precious?"

A female voice spoke, loud yet clear to my ears, saying something and I was starting to dread what was happening. There were so many stories about this online and yeah, I will admit, I read a few in my off time and idly imagined myself in the situation, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality. Yet, here I sat, a sense of dread creeping up my spine as the pieces of the puzzle formed into a single extremely clear and intimidating picture.

I didn't have any more time to think about that, as I suddenly saw a large blurry shape possessing, from what I can assume by the perceptions of my barely formed eyes, either a large red bushy beard or the world's most large and horrific pimple. Short pudgy and stubby hands reached forward, and the bearded and/or horrifically deformed man laughed.

"Strong and active already, just like his father! A true Mustang!"

The panic was setting in now; I didn't want a new life, a new family, new friends. Would my family and friends be alright without me? Who would be there to support my sister through her breakup? Who would be there to visit Dave in the hospital?

Before I knew what was happening, I was swaddled in so much fluff and warmth that I wanted to sleep for a week. Something creamy hit my tongue and that was when I realized I was starving. As my sight slowly faded, I heard my new mother talking.

"I'm telling you Adrian, our boy's gonna do great things, I can feel it!"

Even if I was uncomfortable with the notion of a new mother, the sentiment was still–

"Look out world, here comes Roy Mustang!"

–really nice to h–…

…

…

WHAT!

0 - 3 Years...

Damn it sucked being a kid again. It also doesn't help that I was named after a infamous fictional character from my own world either. Weirdly enough, I wasn't actually in FMA, the name was just a coincidence. That's not to say I wasn't in a fantasy world, however… I have magic! I've been meditating every chance I can, accessing and experimenting with that warm well of power within me. So far I can only levitate a few leaves, but that's better than anything I could do in my old world!

6 - 7

So… it turns out all that meditation had a bit of an effect. Ever since I started being more open about my magic use, people are calling me a prodigy, and I don't really understand why. I mean sure, I'm advanced, but I'm just moving magic into different shapes with my intent? Surely that isn't that hard, is it? At least my parents are happy.

9 - 10

Found myself enrolled to the indoctrination, sorry, "homeschooling" with a few other young wizards and witches, some of which I recognized from canon. Also, the people were different! Andromeda Tonks's daughter attended classes with me and damn was Ted Tonks a lucky sumbitch. I was suddenly very thankful that I was going into school with his daughter because mama Tonks was a damn fine. I was also attending class with a "Charles Chang" in place of Cho from the story, who despite his maleness still looked remarkably similar to Katie Leung. I wasn't gay, and I was positive about that, but that didn't mean I couldn't tell that he was almost unfairly pretty, by anyone's standard. I also attended class with fraternal twins Ginny and Ron Weasley, neither of whom resemble their respective actors in the slightest. I was excited at first to meet some of the Weasley family, but that only lasted for about five minutes until I was forced to listen to stories about the green-eyed Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived-and-then-Died-and-then-Lived-Again himself, who slayed dragons and killed trolls to rescue innocent maidens just like Ginny. He wasn't at the "lovechild of Princess Diana and Jesus Christ" levels of fame that he had in the books, Ginny just happened to be a really big fan, but he was still quite well known. Think Jaden Smith, if Will commissioned a bunch of best-selling children's books about him.

12 - 14

Met the Malfoy's for the first time, and damn was his mother MILF material. I was starting to see a pattern for the women of the infamous Nobel House of Black, and was both terrified and mildly aroused at the thought of Bellatrix escaping Azkaban. Lucy looked like he would be far happier to have his nose in the Dark Lord non-existent pubes than to go on a family outing, which I assumed might actually have happened, given the man only had one kid with a wife that fine. Hell, I had two older siblings that had already moved out of the house, and my parents weren't half as attractive as Lady Malfoy. Not that I would notice, because ew, but still. Draco was still the little snot-nosed shit as the books, which had me laughing for a solid minute before he figured out I was laughing at him. Then the little shit tried to hex me, which I deflected easily with one hand. That stunned everyone, even myself, at the time I was circulating magic around my body in a simple mana-strengthening exercise. So I guess since it was directly thruming under my skin it worked like a quick reactive armor.

I wasn't very happy about giving away secrets like that with Lucy around, but the look Narcissa gave me definitely caused me to start puberty early.

16, present day…

Ignoring the party around me, I couldn't even try to stop my hands from shaking. In my hands, I was holding the invitation to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and honestly, I didn't know whether to join my parents in screaming in joy, or break down into a whimpering ball of terror on the floor of my bedroom. This letter had come far too late from what I could remember, but then again this was reality for me now and not a book. How the fuck did they expect a bunch of teenagers to live together over the next seven years without any deaths, I had no clue.

It had been a smooth sixteen years since I was reincarnated into what I slowly realized to be a dimension with remarkable similarities to the world of Harry Potter.

For the first few years since I had heard my mother refer to someone as a "muggle", I was barely holding myself together. My parents grew worried when I began to shut myself off from them, spending hours every day just staring into empty space with a look of angst. Not only was my former life gone, all the people I could ever care about in this new one were just ink on a page? How can you love someone that's not even real?

Eventually, after a few hard years of existential angst, I slowly began to come to a conclusion. It didn't matter where the people here came from, they were still people. They still thought, felt, loved, laughed, struggled, and cried just as anyone from my first life. If you tickle them, they laugh, and if you prick them, they bleed.

So what if they were created by someone from my old reality? The majority of people in my old world believed that some sort of higher being created them, but did that mean that they didn't consider each other to be human?

Ok, given all of human history, that might not be the best example, but my point still stands.

Not going to lie though, it was still a huge relief when I realized that there were some significant differences between this world and the one I knew from the Harry Potter books. For one thing, our goblins were green, had four fingers on each hand, and were completely hairless. Also, they did tons of stuff, not just banking. Goblins are natively from the Americas, so you didn't see many over here outside their main enclave of Gringotts, but there were more than a few goblins that worked in ordinary professions. They still didn't go to Hogwarts though, they had their own separate magic tradition.

Diagon Alley (whose name apparently originated as an affectionate, funny nickname for the much more reasonable "Dijon Alley") was much bigger than I expected, basically being a town in and of itself. Also, there was no shady "Knockturn Alley" directly next to it, that seemed to be Rowling's invention to make the concept of a black market more understandable.

Maybe the omni-verse was real, and the writers of my old dimension just had the ability to subconsciously peer into other realms? I live in a world of magic, it certainly wouldn't be the strangest thing I'd seen. It would be a lot more reasonable than J. K. Rowling of all people somehow having the ability to create entire universes, for sure.

Wait shit, does that mean I could have been in Star Wars? Damnit universe, why couldn't I have a lightsaber? That would be so badass!

That settles it, I am totally making a lightsaber once I figure out how. Oh Voldemort, you're using a protego? THE FORCE IS WITH ME, BITCH!

…

Ok, maybe I didn't come out of that existential crisis with my sanity entirely intact.

Anyways, getting back to the present, I actually grew to love my new parents throughout my childhood. My mother, Sabrina, was a potion's mistress who worked on a freelance basis, and the "strict parent" of the two. I still shudder whenever I see her take out oddly colored potions.

My father, Adrian Mustang, of the Ancient House of Mustang, managed our family's traditional holdings. We weren't noble or influential, but our family had been here since the days of Arthur and Merlin: owning and managing our ranch for over two dozen generations. It didn't make us rich, but the various animal parts were more than enough to ensure we lived a comfortable life, even after my mother took her cut for ingredients. We had perfected the art of humanely extracting components for potion ingredients, enchanting, wand lore, and a hundred other things.

From what I was told, we were a neutral family and thanks to my grandmother, largely stayed out of the last war with Voldemort. Needless to say, my father only married my mother after the war ended. I would be worried for them, given the noseless wonder's magical un-disappearing act, but I was more than ruthless and intimidating enough to make sure we survived.

Well, I tried to be at least; whenever I looked serious for more than half a second my mother would squeal before pinching my cheeks or ruffling my hair. I'm trying to be menacing, damnit!

Sighing, I put down the invitation to murder-school and slumped back in my chair. Honestly, when I first discovered magic, I freaked the fuck out. That was only amplified when I later discovered I was going to be entering Hogwarts in 1991. I knew I had to consider my actions carefully: Harry was going to be on that train with me, and he was the key to the future.

My initial plans were to keep out of canon, but I didn't think I could stomach that. My own mother was a first generation witch, and honestly I wish a mother fucker would try and kill her or round our family up into one of those little death eater prisoner camps. That was when I realized there was no way I was going to be able to not fuck with canon. Hell, I didn't even know what parts of canon would still apply here, so it seemed a bit ridiculous to start worrying about such a thing.

Nnghklnmkjsdnfkrenf, stop ruffling my hair mom! I'm a grown man dammit! Not some pampered teddy bear to be carried around and petted, no matter how good it makes me feel! I was going to be the protector of my family, and was going to start today!

You know, if I was counting the dates right, I was exactly one week older than Harry. I feel a little bad knowing I was grumpy during my own birthday party, while he never had one. Could I have done anything about that?

Before I could think about it any further, My mom wrapped me up in a hug, ruffling my hair again. Rolling my eyes and DEFINITELY not smiling, I opened the next gift in the pile.

[ Ancient Iberian Runes: The Secrets of Spain Before the Spaniards ]

Looking down at the massive tome my face curled into a smile. Plans gathered within my mind: I was by no means a genius, but I had my old memories draw from. Not only did I have stories of thousands of different magic systems for inspiration, I had the most important thing, something I knew for a fact that no magical had in this reality: the knowledge and thought processes of a veteran programmer. In my last life, I could write code in anything from Python to Haskell to (I shudder) JavaScript. I knew how to design systems, link them together, and to create modular masterpieces.

I was a product of the computer age, while most Wizards were a product of a culture that had evolved little since the Witch-Hunts. My young mind was moulded by intricate systems of logic and data, while the vast majority of British Wizards had the worldview and intellectual appetites of someone who thought that the cure for every disease was "more leeches".

My interest in runes had started when I watched my mother brew some basic potions to stock the medical pantry around the ranch. We were in a room with a closed door, and being the curious semi-child that I was, I had to ask why. She went into a detailed explanation on how she kept her potions' lab clear of contamination, mentioning the air and water purification runes on the ceiling and the tank that contained her water.

From that moment on, I was hooked, and I made sure everyone knew it. Runes this, runes that, when can I take the runes class at Hogwarts, I made sure everyone in my family knew about my new passion in life. Soon, I was receiving basic instruction from my mother in what little she remembered from herAncient Runes class. Once I grew past that, she started inviting family friends around to give me smaller, impromptu lessons.

She was skeptical at first, but when I upgraded some of the basic fans that we used on the ranch to work ten times as effectively. All it took was a simple distribution cluster, and one fan could do the work of ten.

I then tried to use that concept in order to create a magical wind turbine, but needless to say, that was going a bit too, far too fast. The idea I had come up worked beautifully, up until a few seconds after activation when the momentum storage matrix exploded in my face. Apparently manipulating abstract concepts like "motion" and "energy" is master-level stuff, and I was lucky to still be alive.

After that little stunt my parents decided that a lot more supervision was necessary, even for the most innocuous things, like making a cup that could heat itself. My parents told me that before I could try a practical experiment again, I would need to read all the books in the family library on generalist rune work. That rule, while annoying at the time, eventually elevated me to near-mastery in the use of Nordic runework, the one size fits all staple of European enchanters. Even though I was sixteen, I was still their baby boy, and they didn't ever want to see me get hurt. Theory was fine, but actual practice? Not after the scare I gave them!

Yeah, I followed that advice about as much as you'd think.

Sneaking out the back door of the party, I made my way out to the stable on the far right of the ranch. Looking around to make sure no one was following me, I opened the hidden stairs my grandpa told me about, picking up my stash of runic tools and notebooks.

Sitting in my little nook at the top of the stable, I pulled out my tools for rune carving, and picked up the project I'd been working on for the past two years: a lumos crystal. Right now, all it did was store a bit of your magic to radiate outwards, but I was hoping to use it as the base of dozens of different projects.

Told you I'd make my own lightsaber.

Sending a minute amount of magic through my fingertip, I shut my eyes as the lumos crystal lit up with a searing pitch-black glow, blinding even with my closed eyes. The effect was truly amazing, like a black hole had manifested itself entirely in my hand, outlined in glowing white. I hoped this wonder never got old: I was going to make sure that I never got so jaded that magic became just another thing to life.

I theorized that the amount of magic in your body determined the strength of the initial glow, and sure, it was already bright when I first made it, but the searing glow I saw now was entirely a product of my months of storing my power inside it. I figured that with a few more months, I should have more magic inside my lumos crystal than Dumbledore would have in his body, if it lasted that long. This was the most durable crystal I had made by far, and I was excited to see what the limit would be.

Putting those thoughts aside, I opened my newest birthday book and got lost within the pages. Soon, I would have to go inside, and face the reality of the most dangerous seven years to ever grace Hogwarts. For now though, I planned to enjoy my book.

I was only halfway through the second chapter, and I already had an idea to improve my Lumos Crystal. Pulling a pen and paper, I wrote out a few basic matrices for energy and durability, and then slowly decomposed my current energy storage matrix to work them in. I then whipped out my runic etching tools, along a blank spare crystal I kept around for testing, I etched the new pattern.

Rolling the crystal around in my hand, I cocked my arm back before flinging it at the far wall.

Lab safety? That's for pussies.

Light flashed across my vision as pain blossomed in my forehead from the crystal rebounding off the wall using a pitch black jet of my magic. Rubbing my forehead, I laughed off the pain as I picked up the crystal and moved across my makeshift lab to attend to my latest experiment.

I had another, slightly modified Lumos Crystal that I called a "Power Crystal" set between two copper wires, each leading to a series of capacitors connected to an empty Type D battery. Double-checking my work, I made sure I had the positioning and alignment of the system correct, before slowly starting to release the magic in the crystal that I had stored up over the past few hours.

*bzzt*

A spark of electricity came off the copper wires, and I darted away from the crystal, stopping the flow of magic just as the smell of ozone reached my nose. Scrambling out of my chair, I pulled up a transfigured sheet of steel in the shape of a shield. It was something my grandpa had made for me after my first few exploding rune works: he managed to tie in an advanced transparency charm so I could see through it like I could glass. On the back of the shield, I activated the diagnostic rune: one of my first projects, based on the medical scanning array my mother had set up in her potion's lab.

I restarted the flow, and a small display appeared on the back of the shield, which I directed at the glowing crystal of power sitting on my workbench. The diagnostic spell couldn't read the capacitors, but I could tell it was being overloaded from a visual inspection. The good news was, they eventually did settle, and the meter connected to the battery was increasing at a steady rate.

I watched in awe as the needle went from low end empty range to the other end of the meter. Within a moment, the small battery was filled, and I had to rush to connect the other leads to the other stack of batteries off to the side.

This was beyond even my wildest expectations, the conversion ratio of magic to electricity was absurdly high! Yes, a D battery doesn't have that much power, but only a few hours of minor drain could fill up a whole box full! Next stop, car battery, and then… the world!

MUAHAHAHA!

Cackling to myself like a mad man, I watched on as the extra banks powered up. There was a pop as one of the capacitors couldn't take it anymore and popped from the energy build up. Holding the shield before me, I sprang into quick action. Grabbing the large red lever to cut the copper wires, I yanked down as hard as I could, still cackling gleefully.

There was a very distinct and audible pop as the power petered out, looking down, I found the crystal that I was using had cracks running throughout its surface. There was no hiding the frown on my face as I realized that with my current system, a quartz would only be able to transfer power at a small rate, cracking and breaking with anything higher (and therefore useable)

Letting out a sigh, using a gloved hand to tap the crystal, and watched as it shattered into smaller shards. As I was idly playing around with them, I noticed the lumos crystal had changed to a pearlescent grey, and was getting a lot brighter; the diagnostic spell was picking up a whole lot of ambient magic in the air.

That was odd…

Before I could investigate more, I heard my father yell my name from the back of the house. Pouting at the ruined mess of shards, I put aside my mad ideas of being Obi-Wan or Thor out of my head as I worked my way back down the ladder. Once I got to the bottom, I realised I was still holding my shield, who I called "Bob" which stood for Beautiful Original Blast-shield, in my hand as if I was about to be attacked.

Chuckling, I placed it on my hip before heading back into the house to see what my parents wanted. Walking back into the house like nothing had happened, I wasn't able to escape as my grandpa instantly zeroed in on Bob at my hip.

"Still playing at being a rune wizard, aye laddy?" Gramps said, as I walked into the dining room, immediately catching the attention of my parents. grunted before putting my head on the dining table in a thoughtful gesture.

"You didn't blow up the stables again did you?" My mother asked as she ran her hand through my hair.

"No, but I am going to need more capacitors before I can do anymore experiments." I grumbled.. "It wasn't a total bust though, the scanning runes on Bob picked up some residual magic from the broken crystals. I'm going to need to test it more, but I think the storage matrix on the power crystal might actually have multiple points of egress, which means that if I can–"

"That's interesting dear," my mother said, cutting me off with a faux-interested look on her face. "On another subject, your father and I agree that you can go and pick up your school wardrobe this weekend."

"Cool! I think I will pick up a few books on enchanting?" I said.

"I'm not so sure," My mother started to say, but was cut off when my dad saw my pleading look and was willing to help the poor birthday boy. "It's fine if he gets one or two books,… He'll need to do it eventually, won't he?"

After a few seconds of thought, my mother let out an explosive sigh.

"I don't want you destroying the house young man." she said as she, pointing a finger at me. Trying not to roll my eyes, nodden, pulling out my wand and performing a quick and silent tempus charm.

"Still need a hand with the Abraxan, grandpa?" I asked getting up and flicking my wand once more, sending it back into the arm holster on my wrist. It was lovely: wood from an ancient cedar tree paired with a thunderbird tail feather. My family was very excited when they found out my feather was from one of the four immortal birds, a feather from one of them was supposedly a sign of a very long lifespan, and one from the thunderbird specifically indicated a uniquely free spirit. Cedar wood, on the other hand, spoke of me having self confidence and wisdom, and together, the two created a wand that would be highly capable at any subject, but uniquely suited to elemental magic and the usage of electricity.

You can say when I heard how well my wand matched my runic experiments, I was shocked!

Man, I crack myself up sometimes.

Anyways, it turns out most half-bloods and purebloods get their wands around a year before Hogwarts, but it was up to their parents to teach kids the basics. The years before that were meant to be spent teaching reading, writing, geography, politics, and all the basic knowledge any wizard was meant to know.

The parents that taught the classes considered me a prodigy, and so did my parents, and honestly, it wasn't all due to my advanced age. Turns out, having an adult's memories combined with the neural plasticity of a six-year old is a serious boost to learning of any kind. I knew that advantage was slowly slipping away, but I wasn't yet advanced enough in my runic studies to recreate it.

"Hey champ, could you help an old man with some cleaning?" my grandfather said, smirking while shakily standing up from his chair. Chuckling, I left the house before he could get his shoes on, heading towards the stables.

Levitation spells fired out silently from my wand with a few flowing circles, and without even having to look, animation charms went out to bring to life the brooms and dustpans. Setting them to work on cleaning out the much from some of the stables with large Abraxans. Needless to say, the day I mastered those two charms to the degree I could use them to no longer spend hours picking up Abraxan shit was a very good day.

It didn't take more than five minutes, and after a few passes from one end of the stable to the other, the individual pens were cleaned out and each of the Abraxans were given new feed.

"Kid, you're a sight you know that?"

Turning around I spotted my grandpa walking with his hands still in his robes. My mom was standing on the porch, and I could see their amazement and pride as they watched me work my magic. Had I really not shown them this before?

"You do know it's just magic right?" I said, turning back around and making my way towards another stable.

"No Roy, you're wrong." My grandad said as he walked at my side. "Of course it's magic, but it's also how you are seamlessly using that magic, and not even breathing heavy. And without incantations to boot! I can't think there is a pureblood child I can name that's able to do the same things you can."

"And I'll tell you what I always tell you: stop thinking of magic in such two- dimensional terms." I replied with a shrug. "Magic is all about intent, will power and most of all imagination. If you have all of those, yelling fake Latin doesn't matter as much."

"And I will keep telling you the same thing, that's not exactly an easy thing for most Wizards to do. Only very few wizards have ever had the power, imagination, and will to cast like that at your age. For Merlin's sake, the last one I know of was Albus Dumbledore! I'm sure that if we knew more about the Dark Lord, he'd be in that number too, but that's only two in Britain in the past century!"

Letting out a laugh, I waved my wand at the water tank, a little bit of intent and will power had the top of the water tank levitate upwards.

Before my grandpa could do anything, water was already congealing as light started to shine from the tip of my grandad's wand. Letting out a chuckle, I watched as he put his want back in his robes as I levitated back the top to the water tank. I kept up my liberal use of magic as my grandad walked beside me. I knew he wanted to talk, but didn't know how to start.

"So any advice about Hogwarts you would like to share?" I asked while flicking out my left wrist, using an unfocused burst of magic to brush the leaves from the walkway towards the green house.

"Hogwarts is, to put it bluntly, the beginning of the rest of your life. What you do there will determine what you do for decades to come. They say that at Hogwarts you'll either find great friends, or you'll make enemies, but knowing you it's probably both."

He pulled a pipe from his robe, lighting it.

"I suppose I don't have to warn you to be careful of Dumbledore?"

I chuckled.. "What, are you telling me that the most politically and magically powerful wizard in Britain isn't just the doddering old professor he likes to portray himself as? Perish the thought!."

My grandad laughed, and I continued.

"I've learned well enough from history that no man achieves that level of power without getting his hands at least a little dirty, and that anyone who says otherwise is either naïve or lying.

I looked back at him, to see a bemused and slightly shocked look on his face, Huh, I don't think I'd ever really have talked politics with him before.

"Just so you know, you don't have to talk to me about being neutral." I said, moving my wand in a crisp Z-shape, lighting the fire salamander's pit with a burst of flame.

"Catch"

I turned around just in time to catch a bag of galleons thrown at me.

"Gramps?"

"For Hogsmead visits." he said before turning around. "If I remember correctly, Hogwarts has a lot of pretty witches."

Despite what he and my parents would later claim, I was definitely not blushing and stuttering as I went back inside the house.

A/N

Shout out to the beta on this fine chapter Sage Nameless.

Leave your comments and thoughts in the section below. Yes, the name is the same from Full Metal Alchemist, but it's an SI.

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