Chapter Text
The sixteen castaways can hear nothing over the propellor chopping through the wind. Edward Elric stares out the window of the helicopter, marveling at the expanse of the island as they draw closer toward the ground. Turquoise waves lick the rocky shore, glittering from the sunlight’s kiss. He’d never seen anything quite so blue. Probably because Amestris is landlocked and his fictional continent doesn’t grant much in the aesthetic department.
Beside him, Roy Mustang has tensed, taking in the massive body of water with a wary gaze. When he agreed to be on this reality show, no one ever said there would be so much water involved. The humidity percentage must be off the charts. No way he’ll be able to create a spark in a place like this.
Due to his distress, Olivier Armstrong begins to cackle, crossing her ankle over her knee, looking out at their new home for the next thirty days.
In the helicopter flying parallel to them, Fuhrer Bradley growls irritably as wind pressure beats against his eyepatch, pushing it askew.
“Mrergh,” he mrerghs unhappily.
The image makes Winry Rockbell suppress a chuckle.
He’s normally so scary, she thinks. But right now, he’s just like us.
“Once we land,” he grumbles, yanking his eyepatch back into place, “I am going to lacerate this machine and end the lives of everyone responsible for its construction and manufacturing.”
Winry blanches and thinks, Never mind. Never mind. Oh my god. Never mind.
Both helicopters, alongside two others, land moments later. The castaways are led outside, onto the sandy shore of...whatever country this is.
A tall man with dark hair and award-winning dimples greets them. He waves his hand over his head and says, “Welcome!”
The castaways look around, sizing their competitors up. All except Alphonse Elric whose gaze has fixed on a baby bird that has perched on his armored foot.
Olivier’s eyes gloss over Alex Armstrong and she sneers, crossing her arms. “I didn’t realize we were allowing cowards on the island.”
If he’s wounded by the statement, he doesn’t show it. He merely extends his enormous arms with affection. “My dear sister--”
“You will all have time to converse later,” interrupts the dimpled guy. He smiles, setting his hands on his hips. “For now, let’s get to the game. Because we only have one hour per episode--forty, really, due to commercials--and we need to make sure we get all the first-day stuff into this one.”
“Episode?” Lan Fan whispers in question. She nudges Ling Yao beside her. “My lord, what is an ‘episode’?”
“For the thousandth time, I’m Greed,” he says with an eyeroll.
“Anyway!” the man says, somewhat miffed by the continuing conversation when this is supposed to be his moment to shine. “My name is Jeff Probst. I was hired by CBS decades ago and I made a blood oath to be the host of Survivor until the day I die. So today, I welcome you...to Survivor: Not Amestris.”
“Not?” asks Jean Havoc, bouncing on his heels. Without his smokes, he’s beginning to grow agitated. Rebecca Catalina shoots him a chiding glance that he ignores.
“Well, yeah.” Jeff Probst shrugs. “Your country is landlocked, so no island. We literally just dumped you guys closest to the nearest body of water we could find.”
“Is that safe?” asks Riza Hawkeye with somewhat of a worried look.
Again, Jeff Probst shrugs. “The hell if I know. We’re not getting paid for this season, so we didn’t have the budget to get a crew out here to survey the area.” He nods at the ocean. “For all we know, the loch ness monster can be living under there.”
“What if one of us is attacked by a poisonous bug?” Winry asks.
“Well, then you’re shit out of luck,” says Jeff Probst. “We couldn’t afford paramedics this season either. In fact, the camera crew was literally plucked off the street. Weren’t you, guys?”
A stark-white dude with ink black hair waves tiredly from behind his camera. He wears a tattered Amestrian military uniform.
Solf J. Kimblee narrows his eyes. “Wait...is that--Archer?”
Olivier and Lan Fan exchange a confounded look. Riza, on the other hand, gapes in astonishment.
“Archer?” she repeats. “As in the Archer I shot? To death?”
“Long time no see, Hawkeye,” he says with dead eyes. “You too, Kimblee. I see you’ve exchanged the mullet for a white hat. It suits you.”
“Who the hell is Archer?” Greedling murmurs to Roy who continues to stare, aghast, at the former officer.
“Uh,” Roy shakes himself out of his stupor. “Wow. Okay. Archer was one of the corrupt soldiers in the original Fullmetal Alchemist. He shot my past-self’s eye clean out of my head and the Lieutenant took him down in her fury.”
“It wasn’t so much fury,” says Riza from across the assemblage. “He was literally a robo-soldier and a danger to society.”
“She was crippled by grief,” Roy continues as if she hadn’t spoken. “As I, the love of her life, lay dying in a pool of my own blood--”
“I shot him before I found you, sir.”
“And afterwards, she wept over my cold body--”
“You were alive.”
“Screaming to the heavens, ‘Dammit, Roy Mustang--’”
“You are taking this way out of context. I did not ‘scream to the heavens’--”
Roy nudges Greedling with an exhausted sigh. “And you should have seen her after Lust--”
“For the love of God!” Jeff Probst exclaims. “We have forty minutes and this chitchat has just reduced it to thirty four. Yes, the technical crew consists of forgotten characters we plucked out the the original Fullmetal Alchemist universe. The gaffer is Wrath and Chimera!Tucker is on camera number two.”
The two nod from their respective locations, and the castaways stare in shock. Izumi Curtis fights the urge to vomit blood at the sight of her past-self’s son. But she keeps her composure and stares dead into Jeff Probst’s eyes.
“Tell us, Jeff Probst,” she says, widening her legs in a stiff stance, “what is the objective of this game? How do we play?”
“She gets straight to the point, I like her,” he says decidedly. “Okay, you’re going to be separated into two tribes and go set up camp. Later, you’ll have your first immunity challenge and the losing tribe will go to tribal council where one of you will be voted off. This process repeats until we’ve narrowed down to half the players we have now, whereupon, we will merge and the challenges will be for individual immunity.”
“The brochure said there would be reward challenges too,” says May Chang with a frown.
“Ah, yes!” Jeff says. “Reward challenges! Occasionally, we sprinkle those in where we treat the winners with lavish prizes, often including food, comfort, and entertainment.”
Scar glares at him. “So we have budget for opulent rewards, but not for paramedics? Or a cameraman whose head is rightside up?”
“I have feelings, you know,” whispers Chimera!Tucker.
“Listen, Red Eyes Black Dragon,” says Jeff Probst with a dismissive wave, “here on CBS, we have priorities.”
“We could die out here!” Winry exclaims.
Jeff Probst raises his palms. “Not my problem. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to my luxurious 5-Star hotel suite off the island. I’ll be back for the immunity challenge. Let me know how everything goes. Your tribe bandanas are in that basket over there by our prop guy, Maes Hughes.”
Everyone looks at the basket that stands to their left. Roy’s neck nearly snaps from how quickly he jerks his head.
“Uh...there’s no one there,” says Ed, raising an eyebrow.
That’s when the bandanas float out of the basket, followed by a disembodied, “INCOMING!” The castaways are pelted by flying bandanas.
“I forgot to mention, our prop guy is a ghost!” yells Jeff Probst as he hops into a yacht that materialized quite literally out of nowhere. The yacht zooms away as he yells, “GOOD LUCK!”
When the bandana storm has passed, the sixteen castaways are separated into two tribes, as per the colors they are now sporting.
The red bandanas are worn by Ed, Kimblee, Roy, Olivier, Lan Fan, Rebecca, Scar and May.
The opposite tribe, with their yellow bandanas, consists of Alphonse, Hawkeye, Winry, Havoc, Izumi, Bradley, Greedling, and Alex.
“Brother!” Alphonse cries. “We’re not on the same team!”
“Wait,” Olivier’s eyes widen in horror. “Roy Mustang? I have to live on the same campsite as Roy Mustang?”
“My lord!” Lan Fan grabs May Chang by the sleeve and demands, “Switch colors with him!”
“That’s against the rules!” Wrath the Gaffer interjects.
“Shut up!” Roy yells. He looks over at Riza helplessly. “Lieutenant…”
From the water comes a guttural sound, followed by an explosion of bubbles. The bickering ceases at once and everyone stares at one another in terror. Except for Alphonse who has no expression and Olivier who is afraid of absolutely nothing.
“...maybe we should go to our camps,” says Havoc.
“Yeah, I second that.” Kimblee makes a face. “In as much as I’d love for you all to die, I’d much rather it be in a blaze of glory, if you know what I mean.”
“With more of a fight,” Bradley adds, and the two share a meaningful smirk. Alphonse makes an uneasy sound that echoes through his armor.
On that note, the two tribes set out.
RED TRIBE // CAMP
Red Tribe Confessional: Edward Elric
“Uh...excuse me!” Ed growls, craning his neck. The only part of him that’s in frame is the blond piece of hair that stands in between his bangs.
“Sorry about that, Edward,” Chimera!Tucker whispers, tilting the camera down so it catches his bust.
Ed crosses his arms and looks away in disgust. “Yeah, whatever. Anyway. So Al and I are on opposite tribes, which sucks almost as much as being on the same tribe as the guy who had me impaled does. If it were up to me, I’d throw the first immunity challenge just to get that explosive-happy bastard off the island.”
Even though using alchemy at camp is forbidden, everyone still cringes every time Kimblee so much as brings his tattooed palms within a few inches of each other.
“That guy is a loose canon,” Ed murmurs to Lan Fan, who is, by default, his best friend on the tribe. Solely because it’s either her or Colonel Hothead as Olivier still terrifies him and May has formed an alliance with Scar. And there’s no way in hell, Ed is going to side with him. The impending Promised Day, that’s one thing. But here, when there’s money and glory at stake? Fuck that.
“Worry not,” Lan Fan says in the low murmur she has reserved for whenever she’s about to do something particularly elusive. “Tonight, as he sleeps, I will cut his throat.”
“Hey, hey!” Ed exclaims, raising his hands. “No, okay. We’re not killing anybody. Besides, I’m pretty sure that violates at least ten FCC rules.”
Elsewhere, Roy and Rebecca scour the jungle for anything they can use as firewood. Roy, with an armload of dried sticks, sighs.
“One transmutation, and I could have set this entire place ablaze,” he says.
“God, Riza wasn’t kidding!” Rebecca says loudly, throwing a branch over her shoulder. “You really are useless whenever you can’t use your special gloves.”
Roy’s face falls and he deflates completely. “Hawkeye really said that about me?”
Red Tribe Confessional: Rebecca Catalina
Rebecca giggles with a shake of her head. “Mustang is so distraught without alchemy. It’s like he doesn’t even know how to be a functioning human without it.” She grins devilishly. “So I’ve decided to have a little fun and mess with his head.”
“Oops!” Rebecca says, covering her mouth. “I’ve said too much!”
Red Tribe Confessional: Rebecca Catalina
Rebecca stares into the camera shamelessly. “Riza never said anything about him. But I’ll make him squirm if it means making him an easier target in the future.”
Over at camp, Olivier has tied a bandana across her forehead and stands at the shore with a stick she has sharpened into a spear using her teeth and sheer badassery. With a yell, she hurls it into the water and when she pulls it out, she’s skewered at least five fish at once. They writhe and twitch futilely.
“Haha!” she guffaws. “That is the Briggs way to hunt!”
A few feet away, May Chang is weaving a roof out of twigs and leaves. Scar has set to work, building the foundation of their shelter. He stares at Olivier and shudders.
Red Tribe Confessional: Scar
Scar frowns deeply at the camera as he speaks. “General Armstrong is a fierce Amestrian. A good asset to our team. Unfortunately, she is often overtaken by her own strength and tenacity. I fear she may not be a good team player, as evidenced by her refusal to partake in group activities. And her blatant disregard for most of our tribemates.”
“I shall name you Roy Mustang, fish,” Olivier says, prodding the impaled, bleeding creature with her finger.
Ed happens to walk by at that very moment, and he quickly looks away, muttering, “I’d hate to be on her bad side.”
“Are you two friends?” Lan Fan asks, glancing over at the woman as she guts Roy Mustang the Fish with a sinister grin.
Ed responds with a noncommittal hand wobble. “She doesn’t loathe me, which is as close to friends as I think the General will get to anybody.”
“I suppose that is good, then,” she says, and looks down sorrowfully. “We need friends if we are to make it to the merge.”
Ed sees that she’s visibly upset, but comforting people has never exactly been his forte. Still, he offers her a sincere smile and claps her shoulder. “Hey, Lan Fan.” She looks up, her dark eyes going wide. “If we work together, we’ll make it to the merge. You’ll be reunited with Ling and I’ll get to see Al again. But first…” Ed looks at the rest of their tribe, and Lan Fan follows his gaze. He sighs. “First, we have to make it through tonight.”
YELLOW TRIBE // CAMP
“Hey, Al,” Winry says. He has set to picking bananas off the trees nobody else is tall enough to reach. He lets a few drop into his hollow suit before moving on to the next tree. They strike the inside of him with a series of clanks.
“Yeah?” he says.
“You and me...we have an alliance, right?” she asks, her gaze sweeping their area to ensure nobody hears.
A tiny laugh escapes the suit of armor. His stance relaxes some, as if he were sighing in relief. “Of course, Winry.”
Yellow Tribe Confessional: Winry Rockbell
Winry looks positively radiant with the confessional’s tropical backdrop. She smiles softly and says, “I can’t help but feel relieved that Al and I are in this together. Not that Miss Izumi and the soldiers don’t seem nice too. But it’s just great to be able to know somebody here. The closest thing I have to a friend outside him is Miss Riza. And there’s no casual way to go up to a person and say, ‘Hey, you lowkey inspired me to punch six holes into my head.’”
Alphonse and Winry walk a little further and see that Hawkeye and Havoc are perched on elevated ground with makeshift bows and arrows they’ve fashioned out of sticks.
Riza closes one eye for focus and let’s her arrow fly. It disappears into the clouds, which makes Havoc sigh in defeat.
“Wait for it,” Riza murmurs, maintaining her fierce gaze. Moments later, an enormous bird hurtles from the sky and smacks against the ground with Riza’s arrow protruding from its eye.
Havoc springs to his feet in perplexity. “How the hell did you even see that?” he demands. “That was way out of our line of sight!”
Riza lowers her bow slowly, staring straight into the sun. “I am the Hawk’s Eye. I see all.”
Yellow Tribe Confessional: Winry Rockbell
Nervously, Winry gulps. “Miss Riza also scares me...a lot.”
Meanwhile, Fuhrer Bradley managed to build an elaborate shelter complete with walls, rooms, doors, and a latrine, all within ten minutes. Izumi, Greed, and Armstrong stare speechlessly.
“Continue to gawk if you please,” Bradley says, as he climbs the porch steps he made from seashells and tree bark. “But none of you are allowed to enter my castle.” With that, he slams his leaf-woven door shut.
The others stare at one another, agape. Finally, Greed’s hands ball into fists. He snarls at the environmentally friendly palace before stomping away.
Yellow Tribe Confessional: Greed
“He thinks he can just kick us out of his palace,” Greed sneers, crossing his arms. He flips Ling’s long hair over his shoulder with a flick of his head. “Well, he doesn’t know who he’s messing with. This island is mine. Everything on it. The tribe is mine. The shelter is mine. Wrath is mine. Even you, 03 soldier, belong to me.”
Behind the camera, Archer frowns.
“If he wants to play, fine, I’ll play.” Greed leans forward, tilting his head with a toothy grin. “Let’s play, Wrath."
\\ IMMUNITY CHALLENGE \\
Both tribes rejoin Jeff Probst near a different shore on the same island. Lan Fan lights up the moment Greedling comes into view. Similarly, Ed waves at Al, who waves back excitedly.
“Brother!” he cheers.
“Quiet!” Greed hisses, elbowing Alphonse forcefully with a thunk. “He’s on the enemy team!”
“Looks like the Colonel is all right,” Riza says with a slow exhale. She’ll never admit it, but she worried about him in all the time they were apart. After all, with so much water, he was practically a vegetable for all the use he was. Like, Sacred Star of Milos levels of useless.
“How are you all holding up!?” Jeff Probst asks the tribes.
“Havoc was bitten by a venomous snake and Major Armstrong had to suck the poison before he started foaming at the mouth,” Riza says with a glare that could probably cut through steel.
“‘Tis true!” Armstrong bellows, bringing his arms up over his head as his shirt tears off. Roses bloom by his feet as he twirls, and sparkles twinkle around his face. “As Lieutenant Havoc faced his untimely demise, I performed a poison-extraction that’s been passed down the Armstrong family for generations!”
“Was he, now?” Bradley asks. He looks away with a shrug. “I wouldn’t know.”
“He spent the entire night crying,” says Izumi. “There’s no way you didn’t hear.”
“My castle’s walls are soundproof,” he replies and Greed whirls on him, boiling with rage.
“Oh,” he says, his voice dripping with bitterness. “I’ll bet it is!”
Hey, now. Calm down, says Ling inside Greed’s mind. And Greed obliges only because Jeff Probst is looking at him with deep concern. Greed looks down and mutters, “Yeah, whatever.”
“O...kay,” Jeff Probst says slowly. He shakes his head and claps his hands together. “Anyway! Your immunity challenge goes as followed!”
He gestures behind him, where there are two dangling nets filled with red and yellow wooden planks, respectively. Adjacent to each is a board with vertically ascending painted up the middle.
“You will each take a turn in tossing balls at the numbers,” Jeff explains, nodding at two baskets, courtesy of Maes Hughes’s ghost, that sit before the boards. “With each turn, you will move farther back and have to aim higher. Each time you hit a number, a plank of wood falls out of the net. Once you’ve hit all the numbers, you will make a canoe out of the planks given to you. Then your tribe will canoe out into the ocean and race for that flag,” Jeff Probst points to the ocean where an orange flag ripples through the air in the distance.
“Shouldn’t be so hard,” says Ed, winding up his throwing arm.
“Also!” Jeff Probst adds, “Some balls are filled with paint and others with sand and there is no way to know until it breaks against your board. If you hit it with a sand ball, you have to surrender a piece of your canoe. If you have zero pieces when you hit a sand ball, you will have negative pieces.”
“That’s bullshit!” Ed yells.
Jeff Probst shrugs as if to say, Sorry, bitch.
“Survivors ready!?” he yells, and everyone hastily scrambles into position. All those in the Red Tribe immediately push Ed to the front of the line.
“Hey!” he shouts. “What the hell--”
“Sorry, Fullmetal!” Roy says. “You’re short and a liability. We can’t risk you throwing from a far distance.”
“You bastard!” Ed spits. “I’ll show you--”
“GOOOOOO!” Jeff Probst yells, throwing his hands forward and jumping out of the way. Ed glances at the Yellow Tribe where Havoc leads. The challenge begins, and he and the Second Lieutenant break into a sprint.
....to be continued