#ishvalan veteran edward au

[thegreenfiles]

aight, I want to work on my WIPs today but I’m having trouble deciding which one to start with. So! Which one should I work on?

Propaganda under cut

Don’t Call Me A Hero

Super hero au fic for DSMP, Techno-centric with a heavy focus on the favor system, attempting to live a normal life after being yanked out of villainy and forcibly rehabilitated, all while investigating the disappearance of a hybrid that leads to the discovery of something much worse. Also takes a look at Sam and Techno’s dynamic because I think that’s an underutilized relationship that isn’t examined enough.

The Grave Sting

Zombie apocalypse au fic for Hermitcraft. It’s a heist to steal the cure for zombification from the Perimeter and Mumbo is in the process of turning into a zombie. Featuring the soup group plus Scar and Grian with background watcher lore. 4/6 chapters posted with about half of chapter five written.

The Price You Pay for Arrogance

A post canon Hermit! Niki one shot where Niki has crashed on the Hermitcraft server and has to slowly heal with the help of the other hermits before she can even think about fixing the space ship that got her there. Featuring Gem and Pearl talking Niki through the trauma of leaving a dying server, Bdubs and Niki bonding over horses and just a nice bit of fluff.

How Dare You Speak of Grace

Detective Pikachu AU for the Junoverse of the Penumbra Podcast. An examination of Junos relationship with his mom and his brother after Benton’s untimely death as Juno unravels just what Ben was up to, befriends a talking Pokémon who sounds strangely similar to him, and maybe falls in love with a nosy and cologne drenched journalist.

Right Me When I’m Wrong

Murder mystery set in the world of Fullmetal Alchemist with a heavy focus on a couple of OCs, one of them being a veteran doctor from the Ishvalan war who has seen firsthand the horrors of what State Alchemists’ power looks like and wants nothing to do with it (they moved to that small mining town for a reason), so when former state alchemist, Edward Elric, comes knocking at their door, accusing them of commuting the crime of human transmutation, they’re bound to be a little angry. Elric reveals that Central has received reports of a serial killer who’s struck the town and seems to be using the bodies of their victims for sick experiments that could only be that act he understands all too well.

Secret Sixth Option

Wouldn’t you like to know weather boy?

[asthmaticbee]

Ok, to anyone who actually, like, follows me because of my fanfics (first of all hi I love you sm) or generally reads them: since I'm actually on the last third of one of my longfics, and almost done with a shorter one, I need to decide on which WIP will fill the gap of both those fics (I need a certain amount of variety to keep me going through writer's block). And I figured, hey, I can always let you folks decide! I'll keep this pinned and open vote for a while, so just vote via notes/comments/asks and I'll keep a spreadsheet!

Options w/ short summaries below cut.

gloria of rubies and gold (FMA, Rated M for violence)

Ed, Al and Winry are born eight years earlier, which leads to Ed having to fight in the Ishval Civil War. Yes, it's the Ishval War Vet Ed AU. Complete retelling of canon with flashbacks to the war.

so we step into war with blood on our hands (BNHA, Rated M for violence and Major Character Deaths)

Aged-up Characters, Villain!Izuku. Shouto is stripped off his hero license and ordered to infiltrate the PLF and kill the people in charge under threat of being thrown into Tartarus if he refuses. Hero-to-Villain character arc/Fall from Grace. TodoDeku. Dark.

Ignis Fatuus (ATLA, Rated T)

When Ursa kills Azulon, Ozai banishes her and Zuko to the SWT. There is no raid that kills Kya. Firebender!Sokka because I can't help writing angst for this poor child. Canon Retelling with major Divergence. Probably Zukka because I'm trash. Might include Major Character Deaths.

a dead man's war report (BNHA, Rated T)

AU (modern, no quirks, fantasy, reincarnation, isekai). Non-linear timeline/narrative, switching POV. Murder mystery of sorts. TodoDeku. Best way I can describe this is sort of like Youjo Senki/Saga of Tanya the Evil? Basically TodoDeku die and are reincarnated/isekaid to different points in time in the same world and find each other again, while there's intrigue and stuff going on and I can't actually give a better summary without spoiling shit, just trust me that it's whack.

[royedismyaesthetic]

RoyEd Vampire AU

In a world based completely off of the Wikipedia summary of the movie Daybreakers (2009), Ed, Al, and Trisha are abandoned by Hohenheim, and it is during this time that a plague breaks out. Vampire plague specifically. The Elric house gets broken into in Papa Hoho’s absence, and Trisha gets bitten. 

Edward blames himself for not being strong enough at the time to defend his mother, and he is horrified by the vampirical changes that she undertakes, particularly her newfound lust for human blood. Ed and Al give her animal blood, and she resists biting her own children for a while, but it isn’t enough. Hungry, she eventually lashes out and tries to bite Ed and Al. The brothers lock Trisha up in their basement, and together they attempt to create a cure for her condition. Being deprived of human blood, Trisha's condition only worsens, and she begins to mutate. She loses all memory of her past life, and becomes a sort of beast who can think of nothing but bloodshed. 

Ed and Al think they have come up with a cure, and try to give Trisha said cure, but they are overcome by Trisha's power. Edward is able to inject Trisha with the cure, but Alphonse gets bitten in the process, also turning into a vampire. The cure doesn’t work on Trisha, and so it was all for nothing. Trisha is beyond saving. She would not only turn, but devour, Ed if given the opportunity. Ed and Al leave their mother locked in the basement of their family home, and move away, vowing to return with a cure. Alphonse is left to hunt humans in the night for their blood. 

Meanwhile, the plague turns most of Amestris's population into vampires. In fact, some chose to become vampires as a means by which to gain immortality. Edward speaks out, warning vampires about the mutation which may occur if a vampire is deprived of human blood. But he is hunted in the night, as are the other remaining humans. The human population quickly plummets, leaving vampires in desperate need of human blood.

While in the military, Roy Mustang (a human) was forced to round up human Ishvalans to feed his vampire superiors. He was used, abused, taken advantage of by his vampire superiors, and then turned against his will. After his term of service was up, he was tossed out onto the streets with other veterans, homeless and hungry for human blood. He sees fellow veterans around him in the same terrible situation, and joins coalition to develop a blood substitute as the cost of blood spikes. But he finds that greedy people only want to raise the price as high as they can, leaving the poor to turn, and mutate, and lose their humanity. 

When his friend Maes Hughes begins to lose himself and mutate, Roy seeks out the guy who publicly warned people about the mutation and was working to develop a cure. Who was Ed, of course. Roy goes to Resembool to meet Ed and beg for his help. The only way to stop their society from falling apart is for them to work together to turn the vamps human again. 

I don’t know what would happen during the rest of the story, but Roy and Ed develop feelings for each other, and work well together. Someone’s always sleep deprived though, because one person sleeps at night, and one person sleeps during the day, but they’ve still gotta stay up and get work done. There would be a lot of coffee involved. 

It might be too late to save the vampire-dom though. I don’t know. 

[asthmaticbee]

I just realized how angsty and gut punchy Hughes' death will be in my Ishvalan Veteran Edward AU and I will hate myself when I write it because knowing myself it will break everyone's hearts.

Like they will have been comrades-in-arms.

And also Hughes is the type of guy who sees a 15yo made to indiscriminately genocide a whole people and go "that's my son now, Roy you his grumpy uncle".

Then when Envy murders him and Ed finds out it will just be angst city.

I'll be so proud of myself.

[asthmaticbee]

Ishvalan Veteran Edward AU, snippet 3

Disclaimer: these snippets might get edited or scrapped when this undergoes its final writing process. You may also go and go crazy with the AU idea to your heart’s contend. I mean it. Go nuts.

Part 1 / Part 2

--

“Captain Maes Hughes?” The man in question turns from the table covered in maps and documents towards him, and Edward sees the moment his appearance fully registers. He salutes briefly. “I’m the Fullmetal Alchemist Edward Elric, I was assigned to your quadrant.”

Technically he has the rank of a Major, one above Hughes, but every quadrant was required a State Alchemist, and each State Alchemist was to defer to the highest non-alchemist officer.

It wasn’t the first time Edward felt the itch to scream at someone for this convoluted bullshit.

Green eyes hidden by a pair of square glasses were wide, and the man was speechless for a while, then swallowed dryly. He nods once, curtly, then gestures Ed towards the table. “Can I have a rundown of your alchemy techniques?”

Ed eyes him warily. “That an order or a request, Captain?”

“An inquiry,” Hughes replies cheekily, his grin a small, dead thing.

They look at each other for a moment, Edward’s age an unspoken thing between them. There’s only eight years between them – barely anything in the grand scheme of things, much less the military – but, much like with anyone Edward has come across so far, age is only a number past 18.

“I don’t need anything except two working arms,” Ed says in that monotone his voice hasn’t been able to lose since the summons came. “As long as it’s theoretically possible, I can do it. I usually focus on hand-to-hand combat and use my alchemy for distance attacks. I was also a decent shot during the crash course they gave me beforehand.”

Hughes frowns at him. “Now, I’m a layman, but doesn’t alchemy need preparation and drawings?” He draws a circle and some squiggly lines in the air. “A friend from the academy is an alchemist, and he uses gloves with arrays on them for his alchemy.”

Ed shrugs, avoiding those piercing green eyes. “Well, I don’t.”

“Hm,” Hughes hums thoughtfully, then seemingly drops the line of questioning. “I guess there’s a reason someone this young got the certification. How old are you, again?”

“I’m 15, Captain, certified for three years, now,” Ed can’t help the slight challenge in his voice. It had been exhausting, one half of the military looking at him like he was just a thing to be used, the other looking sick to their stomachs at his age. Part of him just wanted to walk into command and blow the whole thing to smithereens, but he couldn’t, not when Al was still an armor-bound soul and two of his limbs were metal.

“15?” Hughes’ voice was strangled.

“You got a problem, Captain?”

The man straightens, eyes taking a quick sweep of the tent, then focuses back on Ed. “Would you care for a walk?”

Edward sighs, crossing his arms. “If you are going to pity or patronize me I’d rather punch you straight away and take the insubordination charge instead of listening to meaningless platitudes for the hundredth time,” he pauses, for a second, then adds a quick. “No offense, Captain.”

“None taken,” Hughes chuckles, briefly, his smirk a little less dead this time. “So, walk?”

[asthmaticbee]

Ok guys since my brain ain't shutting up I decided to just word vomit any and all Ishvalan Veteran Edward AU scenes that come to mind into a doc so I can eventually come back to it and edit the motherfucker.

Again, this won't receive actual serious work until I have finished other fics and my thesis and I actually have, you know, the time and brain power to plan and write this properly.

That does not, however, mean I won't randomly send snippets out into the tumblr void to make you all suffer alongside my dumb ass.

(that's like half the motivation for writing PTSD war veteran Ed in the first place, the other is that my mid-20s ass has developed an obsession with writing about war and PTSD for some godforsaken reason)

So, have fun, I guess?

Disclaimer: these snippets might get edited or scrapped when this undergoes its final writing process. You may also go and go crazy with the AU idea to your heart's contend. I mean it. Go nuts.

Part 1 for the curious

--

Alphonse doesn’t say goodbye.

“I can’t believe him,” Winry’s voice is small as she walks him to the train station, the streets deserted as they have been for months. Most people in Resembool had been evacuated long ago.

Edward stays quiet, eyes far away. The blue uniform is stiff, new and never worn. It feels more like a collar than the silver watch ever did, and weighs more than his metal limbs ever could.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?!”

He stops midstep, eyes wide and aware for the first time since the summons. “Winry, what-,”

Tears run down her cheeks as she glares at him. “First they take my parents and now-,” she hiccups, and her voice breaks. “Now they make you-, Ed, this isn’t right.”

In the distance military personnel shouts orders, preparing the train that will carry him away to a desert covered in blood and ash. There is a chance he’ll return in a casket, and this truth has been hanging over them like a fog for the past weeks.

“Ed, I-,” she’s cut off by his arms wrapped tight around her, and her hands come up to clutch the back of his new black coat. The fabric barely gives under her fingers, crisp and unforgiving like a shroud. Edward feels distant like a ghost rather than solid against her, and it is as if he’d already died.

“I’m sorry, Winry.” It’s not what she wants or needs to hear, but Edward won’t make his last words a lie.

“Don’t go.”

Her plea is useless, and they both know it. When he pulls away from her his eyes are alive for once. “I really am sorry, Winry. That’s not why I asked you for an arm and a leg to stand on,” he goes for teasing, and he almost seems like his old self in that moment. Then he swallows, and his face closes off, his eyes like golden disks. There is a distance between them, then, civilian and soldier.

Winry doesn’t think that distance will ever disappear again.

She looks at him, decked out in military blue and death black. There is the briefest flash of two holstered guns underneath his jacket as he bends to pick up his suitcase again. The four golden stripes and singular star marking his rank are covered by his coat but she knows they are there. A fifteen-years-old Major; she thinks it sounds like a bad joke but she must have missed the pointe.

Their eyes meet again as he straightens back up, and he hesitates briefly. He moves the suitcase to his left and shifts, then holds out his right. When Winry looks down she sees the silver of his pocketwatch shining in the morning light.

She meets his gaze again, and there is a wry smile barely visible on his face. “Keep it safe for me, will you?”

It’s the closest he dares to promise his return, and she swallows thickly, wiping at her eyes. Winry nods once, taking the watch with a white-knuckled grip.

“You better take this useless hunk of metal back, you alchemy freak.”

“As if I’d let you keep it forever, you automail fanatic.”

Edward takes one last deep breath and straightens fully. Winry wonders if he’d always been this tall or if it’s just the way he seems to have aged years in the span of mere weeks, before he’d even been deployed.

His gold eyes are hard, and he sets his jaw. “Goodbye.”

Winry can’t bring herself to say it back, just nods and tries to keep her tears at bay long enough to see him off.

The last she sees of him before he boards the train is his retreating back.

As the train departs, she weeps.

[asthmaticbee]

Oh, hey, it's me pouring my bad mental health into torturing one of my favorite anime husbands, what else is new?

Disclaimer: these snippets might get edited or scrapped when this undergoes its final writing process. You may also go and go crazy with the AU idea to your heart’s contend. I mean it. Go nuts.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

--

Ed hadn’t expected granny in the kitchen, but when he thinks about it he’d probably hoped she’d be there. There are two glasses on the kitchen table and a bottle of whiskey. “I’m underage.”

“Old enough to serve is old enough to drink.”

He has half a mind to argue with her on principle alone, and Ed never thought of himself as the type of person to drink in the first place. But there has been a pressure in his head and a numbness in his body for months now, and he thinks a different kind of numbness might be just what he needs. He sits down across from her, eyeing the amber liquid in his glass.

“Did you find them?”

“No,” Edward wonders if feeling will ever return to his voice. “It was a different unit.”

There is a moment of silence, then Pinako hums. “I’m glad.” She takes a sip from her drink, points the butt of her pipe at his neck. “What happened there?”

His flesh hand comes up to rub at the rough bandages, his eyes far away. “Someone got the drop on me and tried to choke me. Got the guy a bullet in the head for his troubles.” Something flickers over his face for barely a second, too fast for Pinako to really tell what it is, and she watches him take a sip from the drink in his glass, face impassive as he swallows. He glances at the liquid. “Kinda thought it’d be worse.” There’s a double meaning there that goes ignored.

The air between them is heavy with something unspoken, and in the hallway the clock ticks the seconds to midnight. “You don’t have to talk about it, Ed,” she gives him an out, if he wants it. He can take it and pretend nothing has changed.

Ed never quite knew when to take an out anyways. He takes another swig from his drink, bigger this time, and Pinako sees Hohenheim in him for just a second, that almost-dead look in his eyes and the cut of his jawline. “Nah, I think I need to, just once.” He tilts his head slightly, mulling over his words. “I’d rather it be you than Al or Winry.”

“They wouldn’t think differently of you if you did.”

“No, they would,” his voice is firm but still lacks emotion. “I… don’t think they really get it. I didn’t really get it before I got to Ishval, either.” He rests his head in his left hand, twirls the liquid in the glass with his right as he stares off into the middle distance, mind far away. “After the first I puked my guts out for so long my commanding officer was about to have me declared unfit for duty. Kinda wish he had.

“It got easier, after,” he chuckles wryly, sips from the whiskey again – the glass is half empty now but his eyes are clearer than Pinako thinks they should be for a boy his age on his first drink. “Can’t believe I’m saying it, but it did. Killing people got easy at some point, it’s fucking hysterical.

“Apparently there were bets going on amongst the senior officers; which of us would crack first and go nuts, which would be sent home because they can’t handle it, which of us would have the highest kill count – stuff like that. ‘Cos it was such a novelty to have State Alchemists walk around like human weapons blasting through people like a one person army. Disgusting pricks,” he finishes the glass with two gulps and refills it almost at once. Some emotion is bleeding back into his voice, and Pinako isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol or talking about it or a mix of both. “I topped the first two lists, Mustang the third, by the way.”

Edward smiles wryly at her, and there is the faintest flush on his tan cheeks. “I cost a bunch of old fucks a lot of money. The first of us to crack in the head was the guy who found Aunty and Uncle – to be fair I think the asshole wasn’t right in the head from the start. He loved what we were doing down there, I hated when we were stationed near each other, his laughter echoed through the streets more than the shots did. He blew up part of command, couldn’t even find all their body parts afterwards.

“The first they had to send home was a guy named Armstrong. Broke down crying after they shot a kid in front of him,” something must have shown on her face because he elaborates. “Any Ishvalan we came across was to be treated as a combatant, armed or not, adult or child – didn’t matter,” he swallows half his second glass at once, clears his throat. “Mustang did end up with the highest unassisted death count.

“I was fourth.” He knocks back the rest of his second glass but doesn’t reach to refill it just yet. He looks more like himself from before now, but his eyes are still dull. “You know what was worse than the screams and the unending shots? The silence, because the only thing you heard then were the snipers.” His right index hovers over the rim of his glass. “When there’s a barrage of shots someone might die or not, you can’t really tell until the cleanup gets there. Snipers though-,” he taps the glass once, the clock in the hallway ticks five times, then he taps it again. “It was so regular. A shot, five heartbeats, another shot. Each shot equals one death. Made me sick at first, but eventually it was all just-,”

Edward breaks off, rubs his left hand over his face, then grips his hair tight, as if trying to force some sort of feeling back into himself. “Eventually I just got so numb, granny.” His eyes find hers and they shine in the low light of the kitchen. “At some point I just-, it was like I wasn’t inside my body anymore, not really. I just didn’t feel anymore, and it was so scary because I didn’t want to feel anything anymore, but I also didn’t want to just die inside.

“You said Al and Winry wouldn’t think differently of me if I told them, but that’s not the point. Because I am different.” He fills his glass again, only to empty it immediately after. “I’ve murdered people, I’ve murdered children. I have the fourth highest unassisted body count of all deployed State Alchemists, granny. What does it say about me that I held out till the end when a grown-ass man was sent home after a nervous breakdown?”

Pinako looks at him for a long moment, and with a sigh she empties her own glass. “I don’t know, Ed, but I think you’re a strong enough man to not let this consume you.” She picks up the bottle and gets up to put it back in her liquor cabinet. Behind her, she hears Edward move to the sink and rinse out their glasses, his footing sure in a way she doesn’t think three full glasses of whiskey on an empty stomach should warrant.

“I’m sorry, for unloading that all on you, granny.”

“Eh, that’s what grandmas are for, Ed.”

“But you just-,”

“I was prepared for them to come back in body bags, Ed. I was prepared for you to come back in one, too. I’m glad I only had two bodies to bury.” She turns around and finds herself wrapped in a tight hug, smelling like whiskey and oil. There’s the underlying smell of desert and blood clinging to him still, and she wonders if it will ever leave.

“Love you, granny,” he whispers, and he feels solid in her arms, like a part of him has started to return to him, to them.

“Love you too, pipsqueak.” There’s only a wry chuckle where before would have been a lost temper and banter, and it wrenches her heart more fiercely than anything else has, yet. It’s the sudden certainty that a part of Edward was forever lost in the desert sands, and would never come back.

[asthmaticbee]

Okay, I just finished a longrunning multichapter fic I can finally start outlining my Ishval Veteran Ed AU, should be short!

Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans comes out

Okay, I'll write a quick sub-1k oneshot fix-it, then go and outline that AU

starts outlining the AU

Okay, why am I eleven chapters in and only just introduced canon Winry? Why am I doing a non-linear narrative? Why do I suddenly plan to rewrite the entirety of canon? Whomst?

goes and rereads Blue Moon Rising instead because she craves good fucking canon

(yes this is the way my stupid brain works and is the exact reason I have six ongoing fics and 12 WIPS to outline, your point?)

[asthmaticbee]

Okay so guys, since my brain cannot let things go worth shit, and because I get distracted by plot bunnies the way a kitten gets distracted by a laser pointer, here, have some WIP content to give you a sneak peak on how this fucking AU is gonna be.

Warning, it's depressing as fuck and I have zero regrets about making you all suffer lmao:

---

The air smells of iron and smoke, and Edward thinks he is going to be sick.

It’s funny, how the military never had uniforms his size until they decided to send him out to murder innocent people.

Suddenly, it was very important he look the part of a killer.

There is bile in his throat and he spits into the sand. It’s wholly stomach acid and saliva.

He doesn’t know when he’d last been able to keep down food.

Edward shields his eyes against the blazing desert sun of Ishval and tries to ignore the way his white glove is stained red, pretends it’s oil instead of blood.

There is a wave of heat from somewhere to his right and up ahead, yards away but unnaturally strong, and the wind carries with it screams and the smell of burning flesh.

A shot echoes through the stillness of the high noon, and he counts to five in his head. Another shot.

His eyes catch movement to his left, and he turns, gold eyes meeting red, and he wants to puke.

The man is barely standing upright, right hand pressed to his bleeding side. A gun shot, Edward thinks. Not the Hawk’s Eye’s work, or the man would be dead.

Another shot, as if to punctuate his point.

They are separated by only about three feet, and it must be close enough for the man to see him clearly. See how young he is, and see how dead his eyes had become.

Another shot rings out.

“You’re a child.” The Ishvalan’s accent is thick, and Edward would probably have had trouble understanding him, before.

“Not really,” he shrugs, and steps forward, closing the gap between them. Another shot. “Not anymore,” he corrects himself.

Red eyes flicker down as Edward raises his right hand, the desert sun reflecting off of his transmuted automail hand. The man looks up again, and their eyes meet.

Another shot.

“I’m sorry,” Edward says, monotone and feeling like he’s somewhere far away from this heat and smell of death. He is quick with it, one clean slice across a neck, gold never leaving red, and he catches the dead man midfall, lying him down with a gentleness he can’t afford.

Another shot, another wave of heat, now behind him, screams carried away by the wind.

Edward doesn’t believe in gods and devils. He’s met the Truth, and it’s just as cruel as the rest of them.

Nevertheless, he whispers a prayer he memorized during the days on that train leading him towards this desolate battlefield, in a language he doesn’t speak.

It falls on dead ears, and is answered by no one.

Another shot.

For curiosity's sake:

How many of you would want to read a fic of Ishval Veteran Edward?

Basically, main trio aged up by 8 years and 15yo Edward is recruited for Order 3066 as well as some retelling of canon events that would be affected by this?

It would obviously be a while before it'd see the light of day but I had this idea and need to know how many people would be interested in that.