Disclaimer: I do not own Konjiki no Gash Bell, Zatch Bell, or Fullmetal Alchemist.

Chapter One: The Quarrel of Meeting

It was a dark, moonless night. The perfect time to go to the bakery.

Eleven year old Edward Elric threw himself through the window of the bakery. He crept as silently as he could through the store. His goal? To grab a soft, flavorful baguette.

This bakery—Pat's Bakery, to be exact—did have a pretty bad alarm system, so Ed leeched off of this bakery every chance he got. The only bad thing about the alarm system was that once it went off, the bakery and everything inside it became quite noticeable.

Ed picked the refrigerator's lock which held the baguettes. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a long, relatively soft baguette. He closed the refrigerator and prepared himself to avoid alerting the police.

He was quite famous in this small town for stealing food and being able to escape the police. If he was found out this time, so many police would come, that there would be no guaranteeing his safe return to the alleys.

Ed turned around and almost took his first step, but he stubbed his big toe on the counter. He screamed, dropped to the ground, and rolled around in agony. This caused quite a commotion; Ed knocked over bottles, sugar, bread, flour…everything you can find in a bakery. The bakery was covered in white. This caused the alarm to go off. The bakery flashed in orange and red, and the alarm could be heard five blocks down, making it very noticeable. Ed cursed, forced himself off the ground, and sprinted towards the window.

Fourteen year old Megumi Ooumi looked out the window as she rode down the street in her manager's car, going home after a long, tiring concert. She was starting to droop off to sleep, so she sat up straight and kept herself alert so that she wouldn't not be able to sleep for tomorrow's long day.

You see, life for a teenage idol isn't all it's cracked up to be. Megumi has to go through bullying at school, mostly because the girls there think Megumi thinks that she's too good for them. The boys take pictures of her, abuse her, and try to touch her breasts and flip up her skirt in the hallway. Most of the time, Megumi is unable to stay for all of school because of her life as an idol: she has to go to voice recording, concerts, photo shoots, etc. And, at the end of her long day, she has to struggle with absentee homework. All her homework piles up from being absent too much. Finally, she practically collapses on her bed to rest up for the next busy day.

As Megumi rode past Pat's Bakery, she noticed red and orange lights flashing within it, everything covered in white, and its alarm blasting. She also noticed a short, young boy covered from head to toe in white with a white baguette in hand sprinting up to the window.

"Manager-san, stop the car!" she yelled.

The car instantly came to a stop. "What is it, Megumi-san?" he asked.

"I'll be back," she said as she opened the door and ran towards the boy.

Ed threw himself outside. He closed his eyes and took a moment to shake all the flour and sugar from his body. Then, he opened his eyes and brushed all the flour and sugar from his baguette. When he looked to the side of him, he saw someone running across the street towards him. He assumed it was a police officer, gripped the baguette tightly, and ran as fast as he could.

Ed looked back to see if the officer was still trailing him, but didn't see anybody. He ran even faster, just in case the officer was still trailing him, still looking back to reassure himself.

He collided with long legs. The impact was so hard, his baguette flew to the other side of the person. He released himself from the legs, rubbing his forehead. It was throbbing a bit, and he was slightly dizzy, but that wasn't enough to keep him from being mad at the person for foiling his escape. He looked up to see who he bumped into.

It was a tall, slightly curvy girl with long, brown hair and big, brown eyes. She stared down at him with serious eyes and her hands on her hips. She wore a green jacket with an orange shirt under it, and a short, red skirt. She practically resembled a model.

"You're pretty young to be out so late," she said. "What are you doing outside?"

"Who are you, and why are you in my way?" Ed said with an angry look on his face, but secretly admiring her tallness. He was pretty short for his age. Only four feet, eleven inches to be exact.

"Answer my question first."

Ed heard police sirens coming from behind.

"That's none of your business," Ed replied, trying to run past the girl. However, she somehow knew where he was going to step, because she followed his moves with freakish preciseness.

"How do you do that?" Ed asked.

"Girl instinct," the girl said, pointing to her forehead and winking, cocking her head a little.

Ed blushed.

The short boy with short, blonde hair, gold, serious eyes, and tattered black clothes stood in front of Megumi. He almost looked like Gash—same colored eyes, same colored hair, and similar height, but this boy was a lot more serious. His blush quickly turned into a scowl. This time, instead of trying to run past her, he pushed against her legs.

"Move…" he grunted. "I really need to get by…"

"Not until you give me answers!" Megumi said firmly.

A searing pain suddenly went through Megumi's right leg. She grabbed it, spreading out her legs. The boy used the opportunity to crawl through her. While he was crawling through her, Megumi saw the boy swiftly move his leg, but had no time to react. Before she knew it, she was on the ground, slightly trembling. She looked at her right leg. Blood seeped through the bite marks in it. She looked back and saw the boy turn into an alley with his stolen baguette in hand.

Megumi forced herself to get up. She ran into the alley, but unfortunately saw three pathways going north, east and west.

She ran down the west pathway first. It was a dead end with the boy nowhere in sight.

Next, she followed the east pathway. It ran back to the place where the boy collided with her.

Finally, Megumi walked down the north pathway. She heard frantic footsteps and took that to be those of the boy; she began to run. The boy eventually came into view. He turned around, saw Megumi, and started sprinting. However, Megumi's long legs were no match for the boy, and Megumi threw herself into him, rolling on the ground for a few seconds until pinning him down. The boy struggled to get himself loose, but Megumi was too strong for him. The boy eventually gave up, and Megumi felt him relax his muscles.

"What are you doing, being out so late?" Megumi asked again. "It's dangerous for a young, small boy like you to be out by yourself."

"Shortbread?! Who're you calling shortbread?!"

Before Megumi had a chance to say that she didn't call him shortbread, and that he had just focused on the word "small", the boy opened his mouth to bite her again, but Megumi said, "No you don't", waving her finger in front of him, like a tsk-tsk type of discipline, and winking again. "You don't want me to call the police and turn you in, do you?"

The boy blushed a little, then clenched his teeth, making his blush disappear. Megumi could tell that he was getting a little annoyed by her cheerfulness. He cringed and said: "I…was trying to get food to eat."

"Hm?" Megumi said, confused.

"I…don't have anybody or a place to go to, so…I stole this baguette"—he pointed to the baguette, still held firmly in his hand—"and was trying to find a safe place where the police couldn't find me to eat it, but then you came along and ruined it all… It was almost a successful escape."

"You haven't a place to go?"

"Please, let me go, so I can eat in peace."

"What's your name?"

"…Edward… Edward Elric. …Wait, why do you care? And why won't you leave me alone? Just…leave me be!" But despite these words, Ed made no attempt to get loose. Megumi assumed he didn't want to waste energy trying to fight a battle he obviously couldn't win.

Megumi wasn't the type of person to leave an unhappy, lonely person on the street. She didn't want to take him to an orphanage; he'd be really unhappy then. So, she decided to take him with her—to live with her and Tio, the demon she found drowning in the ocean.

Now all that was left was to find a way to take Ed with her. If she tried to take him as is, he would probably escape, despite her threats. She assumed that Ed had probably escaped from a the police before. Megumi wasn't actually going to turn Ed in, anyway; she felt pretty bad for him. Megumi suddenly came up with an idea to get him to come with her.

"Don't worry… Everything will be O.K.," Megumi said with soothing eyes.

She turned Ed's head and kissed him on the cheek. She assumed it was a great kiss, because Ed's whole face turned red, and his face was frozen in a wide-eyed expression. It looked like Ed had lost consciousness, so she picked him up and carried him towards her manager's car so they could go home.

Her manager was still parked in the same spot he had stopped in when Megumi saw the bakery's alarm system going off.

"You sure were gone a long time," Megumi's manager said. "What were you out doing? And who's this little boy?"

"Oh, I wasn't doing anything much," Megumi said, plopping Ed into the seat across from her and securing his seat belt. "Just making a new friend."