Hello to all my lonely readers who have been waiting for months for me to write another chapter for SOME fanfic and have been waiting in vain! Welcome to my 50th fanfic! ((Blows party whistle)) Geez, I don't have a life, but oh well, I guess I just really like writing? Eh heh...

Anyway, I wrote up the first three chapters of this a while ago but never uploaded them, so I'll upload all three of them shortly. The chapters after that, you'll have to wait a bit, but I'll try to get to it quickly. We'll see. Hope you enjoy it in any case, hehe.

Disclaimer: AdventureAddict thinks she's a kitty and is playing with my hair right now, which makes it difficult to see what I'm typing, though that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist.

There ought to be a law against bizarre things happening without warning or reason. The guy across the ping pong table looked normal enough to Edward, though something about him made him a little uneasy. Maybe he was just thinking too hard on it. The guy had simply invited him to a game of ping pong, after all.

But he knew from experience never to let his guard down. If something made him uneasy, it would be thoroughly checked before he even thought about dropping his guard. Edward steeled himself as the stranger prepared to serve the ball. Whoever he was, he would come to regret the day he challenged the great Edward Elric to a battle of ping pong.

The game started, and they passed the ball back and forth between them for several minutes before Edward made a wrong turn and lost the ball. He growled under his breath and knelt down to pick up the ball. So Mystery Guy had managed to score one point. He was pretty good, but not good enough. That one point would be his last.

Edward stood back up and glared at the guy, who had crossed his arms and was now laughing at his expense. Perhaps that was what made him uneasy. Maybe he'd known all along that he was a gloating jerk.

He served the ball, and they played for several more minutes before Edward lost once again. He growled under his breath once again as he went to fetch the ball and he swore that the guy must be cheating somehow. But how does one cheat at ping pong? He was sure the ping pong mastermind across from him would know how to do it.

Before serving this time, Edward quickly scanned his opponent, looking for anything that could've triggered his unease earlier. The guy looked to be in his thirties, and his hair was completely gray. There was nothing so unusual about that except that the guy had grown his hair out and was wearing it in a ponytail. As much as he'd like to point fingers based on that, it seemed a bit pointless since his own hairstyle was quite similar.

Continuing to look, he decided the sunglasses must have been what was bothering him. What kind of creep would wear sunglasses indoors? That had to be how the guy was winning against him. They were specially rigged ping pong sunglasses.

Without warning, he smacked the ball as hard as he could with his paddle, sure that Mr. Ping Pong Cheater wouldn't be able to smack that one back. To his dismay though, the guy managed to not only send it back, but to send it back so fast that it quickly went out of Edward's range.

The strange guy chuckled and started walking towards Edward. "Haven't had many people beat you at this, have you?"

Edward snorted and crossed his arms. "Gee, how could you ever tell?"

That only earned another chuckle from the guy as he placed one foot on a chair in front of Edward and laced his fingers together over his knee. He leaned forward and said, "You're not even going to ask me how I ever managed to beat the great Edward Elric at a game of ping pong?"

Edward had indeed been wondering that, but he wasn't about to admit that to the pompous jerk. He stuck his tongue out and turned away from him.

The guy shrugged and said, "If that's the way you're going to be, then I might as well just keep you guessing."

Edward snapped his head back to face the man and said, "Oh yeah? Well, I bet you really have no skill at all and just faked the whole thing. Who's the loser now?"

Why he was reacting so strongly to his losing a simple ping pong game, he couldn't say. He knew he was looking a bit ridiculous over a game, but something about this guy just didn't jibe well with him.

The guy just laughed at Edward's rant and shook his head in amusement, not at all the reaction Edward had been expecting. This was so unfair. This crazy guy needed to be cut down to size, and Edward balled his hands into fists, just in case.

The guy stopped laughing and looked at Edward, a bemused smile on his face. "I suppose I'm cheating in a way, but you wouldn't understand if I tried to explain it right now."

So the guy admitted to cheating, but how does one cheat at ping pong? "Try me."

The guy just smiled his annoying, mocking smile, and said, "You're not ready to understand just yet, but rest assured, you will beat me one day. I guarantee it."

Edward huffed and a few strands of his hair blew out of his face as he did so. "How can you claim to guarantee what will happen in the future?"

Another annoying smirk. "Have you ever heard of remembering the future and anticipating the past?"

A sigh. "Some wizard said that, I think," said Edward.

"Keep it in mind," said the stranger as he reached up and pulled off his sunglasses. "You'll need to remember it very soon."

"Why, are you going to give me a pop quiz?" Edward stopped in his rant long enough to look into the stranger's eyes, now that they were exposed, and he froze. Those eyes were the same golden color as his own. That was common within his own family, but generally not outside of it.

"Do I know you?" asked Edward.

"Not yet," said the stranger, "But you will. Soon. Now listen," he stood up normally and walked over to Edward. There was something in his hand, a small vial full of some sort of blue liquid. "Someone is out to get you, and he's such an evil genius that he'll succeed and get away with it without any help." He paused and looked at the vial in his hand. Edward stared too and felt his stomach tighten. Now he knew for sure where the bad feeling was coming from. It wasn't the gray-haired stranger, it was the liquid.

"The next time you feel sick, assume you've been poisoned and drink this." He swirled the blue liquid and Edward's stomach did a flip. He wouldn't come close to drinking that so long as he was alive.

The stranger continued. "This will neutralize the poison and save your life, but it will carry some rather, um, unexpected consequences as side effects."

Edward raised his eyebrow. Just who did this guy think he was, anyway? Who would be crazy enough to randomly trust the word of a complete stranger on how to survive an attack in the future? For all Edward knew, it was probably the stranger himself who wanted to kill him.

Edward crossed his arms. "Yeah, and how would you know what going to happen in the future?"

The guy reached forward and put the vial in Edward's pocket, gave it a light pat, and then stood back up. "I'm simply remembering it. You would do well to learn to remember it too." He took a step closer to Edward and rubbed the boy's hair with a strong fist. It burned and Edward tried to pull away, but the guy simply grabbed his chin and forced him to look at him.

"Kid, time doesn't just run in one direction. It's not like a line on a graph or a chart. Everything that has ever happened is happening now, and everything that will ever happen has already happened."

A snort escaped from Edward's nose and he pulled his chin out of the guy's grasp. "And what's the point of telling me all this? Why would you even care if everything's already preordained?"

The stranger didn't flinch or look even the slightest bit angry at the question. He actually smiled at Edward and put a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder. "Nothing is preordained, and the only constant is change, but until one understands time, deliberate change is impossible."

Edward huffed again. This was getting old fast. He wanted the guy to stop speaking in cryptic language, and he wanted him to tell him right now who he was. "Alright, Mr. Bigshot, if you're so smart, why don't you tell me what's going to happen next?"

The guy smirked and then pointed to the door behind Edward. "A girl is about to walk through that door carrying a tray of food. Unbeknown to her, one of her shoes is untied, so she is going to trip over her shoelaces, splash the hot soup all over herself, and then be rushed off to the hospital."

"And you're not going to do anything to stop this." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. He had met people who were as uncaring as this jerk before, but he hadn't expected to have one standing in front of him like this while calmly telling him the fate of an innocent girl. Then again, it wasn't likely to happen. No one could actually tell the future.

The next moment, the door was kicked open, and in walked a girl with a tray full of food. There was nothing unusual about people carrying trays around here, but he couldn't help but notice the steaming bowl of soup on the tray. Edward glanced down at her feet and was horrified to realize that she was indeed walking around with one loose shoelace.

"Hey, watch out," he called, "Your-"

But it was too late. The girl had looked up at him when he'd called, only to forget to watch where she was stepping and trip over her shoelaces. As she fell, the soup splashed all over her, and she hit her head upon landing. Edward clenched and unclenched his hands several times before getting his wits together enough to run over to the phone and call an ambulance.

It wasn't long before the paramedics arrived, but Edward couldn't hear a word of what they said and could barely see what they were doing. His pulse was pounding in his ears. That strange guy had known this was going to happen, but how? More than that, why hadn't he tried to stop it? How could he be that inconsiderate? Surely with that kind of foreknowledge, he could have saved her from this trouble.

"I already tried to help her," said the stranger, almost as if he'd read Edward's thoughts. "Some things just cannot be changed."

"When did you try to help her? I didn't see you do jack!"

"The first time I ever saw her do that."

"Huh? She does this regularly?"

"No, uh… You'll understand that later." He chuckled nervously like he'd just let something slip that he hadn't intended. Edward smirked and prepared to move in for the kill since he was finally getting to him.

"Why is everything 'later' to you? What ever happened to your whole talk of all time being now and all that?"

The guy sighed and ran his fingers through his bangs. "The instant I tell you anything, your life will change for good, so I've been postponing that for as long as possible."

"Are you thinking I'm too weak to handle it?"

Another chuckle from the man. This was getting annoying to Edward, but he couldn't help but notice the nervousness in the man's voice this time. "No, you're not weak, Ed. I wouldn't be here now if you were."

"What do you mean?" said Edward.

The man took out a soft cloth and began cleaning his sunglasses. They didn't look all that dirty to Edward, so he had a sneaking suspicion that the guy was simply trying to get out of answering him. Edward growled. "For goodness' sake, just tell me what the heck is going on!"

The man sighed, put the glasses down, and looked up at Edward, fixing his eyes upon him. He took a deep breath and said, "I'm you."

Hope you liked the chapter, and hope to see you back here soon for the next one. If you have suggestions or criticism, feel free to comment. Now I have to go punish AdventureAddict for being a pest while I'm trying to type. :P