"The problem with people these days is that they don't trust anyone anymore."

- Overused saying

There's something about bad days that makes them compound. They start off simply enough, at the start of the day you could stub your toe or maybe accidentally burn your hand on the toaster, (or both) and by the end of it, the world seems so cataclysmically, depressingly wrong that you find yourself wondering if there really is such a thing as Karma and you ask yourself, "What did I do to piss it off this time?"

Edward looked up at the abysmally tall man in front of him, and thought of all this in the time it takes most normal people to blink. To the six year old, the man seemed impossibly grown up and old, even though there were no lines in his face and his smile to normal people would be youthful, if not childish. Edward saw something in his eyes though, something so impossibly wrong that he found himself asking that famous question, Why did I get out of bed again this morning?

Edward would argue that his whole life had been a string of bad days, one right after the other. This type of thing happens when you dislike your father and your mother is long since dead, so you have no one else to turn to when the man's being more of a jerk than usual. Kinda like that incident this morning with the candy. (No, Edward didn't want the milk dud. It had milk in it. Didn't the man understand this at all?) But then again, that wasn't the whole of this particular incident. Even Edward had to concede that today had been truly bad, rather than just standard, run of the mill bad.

And, as the man in front of him would NOT let him get past, in fact, seemed to be enjoying Edward's helplessness in being able to fight back, Edward conceded it was quickly getting a lot worse. Finally at the end of his tether, the young blonde demanded in his ferocious, six year old, slightly high pitched voice, "What the heck do you want?"

He would have used one of the words that he knew (that, incidentally, six year olds shouldn't know) but there were parents around. You always had to keep your tongue when other people's mums and dads were present; otherwise you weren't allowed to go visit your friends. Edward had discovered this only a short while ago when he had said his favourite cuss word in front of Mrs. Collwell. Poor Mattie Collwell had been beaten black and blue when he got home, and had apologised profusely the next day saying that 'I just can't be your friend anymore, Ed, I'm really sorry."

So Edward knew it wasn't a good thing to cuss.

However, when he made to dart around the old man in front of him and was cut off yet again, he was severely tempted to do so, to use his favourite word. (the f-word. The REALLY bad one, he thought with a grin) In fact, if his father hadn't threatened to hold back his allowance again for that week if he got another angry phone call, he would have.

He said it quietly under his breath in a show of defiance only he knew about, before he tilted his head to stare stubbornly up at the man and demand he move. The man was staring straight back down at him, with a smirk on his features that said Edward was going to be in some sort of trouble very soon. It was the one he saw on Alphonse's face when Edward had just lied and gotten caught, or had been yelled at for snatching. It wasn't a nice look, and if Edward hadn't been so set against the person in front of him, he would have shied away slightly in fear. Did this man know about Edward drawing all over the front cover of Susan Elliot's notes? Or did he know that Edward had accidentally make Robin Goddard cry when he said that he wouldn't play with her because she had cooties?

He stared directly into the man's beetle black eyes and noted that they had a strange tilt at the edges. The man had black hair and it was cut short, not like Edward's dad's hair which was long and back in a ponytail. The man had nearly white skin too, like the colour of the paint Edward was forced to use in playtime because someone else had taken red. Edward decided he didn't like this man, because he had reminded him of that, and Edward deemed what had happened very unfair. (Red was Edwards' favourite colour, and he always used red. He should have gotten red.) "Well?" he demanded of the man.

The man put his hand on Edward's head, and his hatred grew. No one was supposed to do that, not even to look at his cat ears like the doctor had to do occasionally. Edward didn't like it and bared his teeth at the arm blocking his vision. "Are you Edward Elric?" The man's voice was a rich baritone and Edward decided he hated it. There was no smokers' husk like his big brother Hojou had and it was too light and melodious to be like his dad's or like his teacher's.

"Yes." He said, staring irritated up at the arm that was blocking his vision, "Who the hell are you?" He thought he could get away with hell, seeing as this man was a stranger. Edward wasn't even supposed to be talking to him, but the man had started it all anyway.

"Good. I found you then. This will be a lot simpler now." The man said, finally removing his hand. Edward noticed then that the man didn't have any ears on his head, so he had to be at least as old as 15 (Which, to a six year old feels like an adult) probably even older. What could this person want with him? "You don't know how many parents I scared asking their kids that question. Apparently it's shady to be standing outside an elementary school where no one's seen you before." He said this like Edward should care.

Edward didn't.

"Who the shit are you?" Edward replied to the man's statement, using one of the cuss words he knew to tell the man he meant business. He didn't care that he had used it wrong, in fact, he didn't even really know.

"For now, you don't need to know." The man said, with the 'you're-in-trouble-and-I'm-not' smirk on his face. "I'll tell you in time, but first we need to talk." Edward felt his tail flick behind him and made a face of irritation to go with its quick, sporadic movements. "Oh, and by the way, you should have used 'hell' or 'fuck' for what you just said to come out effectively."

So the man had a few redeeming features. At least he let Edward cuss when he wanted, unless he was going to tell his father later and Edward would get into lots of trouble. Because the man was a lot older than Edward was and his father would believe him over what Edward had to say any day. "I'm not saying anything more to you until you tell me your damn name." Edward said, wondering if he'd get in trouble for not doing what a grown-up said.

The man sighed. "If it is truly that important, my name is Roy."

And like a good boy, to make up for the forbidden crime of insolence, Edward said "Thank you." It, he told himself, would be the last time he ever said it to the man unless the man gave him a present. You didn't dare not thank someone who gave you a gift after all. You got yelled at for being not polite.

The man nodded, like he had just found something redeeming in Edward as well and Edward thought it was possible that the man didn't like him either. It wouldn't surprise him and he didn't care, it was just something interesting to know.

Not many grown-ups liked Edward after all. He got called Hellion and disobedient a lot and this made his father upset at him. In Edward's eyes, anything that made his father upset was something to do more often, so he kept up his bad behaviour and wore his badge of troublemaking proudly. Alphonse didn't like him for it, but then, Alphonse was a goody-two-shoes who sat quietly and did everything that a grown-up asked of him. "So what do you want?" Edward said, deliberately not using the man's name to see the reaction he would get.

There, a twitch. Edward grinned cheekily as the man's smirk waned a bit. If Edward was truly in trouble, he wouldn't go down without a fight. The man squatted down in front of him, so that they were on eye level. "Your mother said I was supposed to pick you up tonight because she couldn't make it."

"Of course she couldn't make it, you liar, she's dead." There was that twitch again. This was fun.

Edward didn't really know the level of thinness of the ice he was walking on as he plundered ahead with, "Why are you really here?"

The man groaned and muttered something to himself about difficult children and that something called the seven moons should really pay him more for what he went through with them. "Well, I am here to take you somewhere." He said a little louder, and Edward grinned.

"Where?"

The man faltered again. Clearly, he was unused to dealing with children. Edward could use this to his advantage. "To..." He strained visibly, "...An amusement park." Then quieter in a voice he must have thought Edward couldn't hear, "Yeah, that'll do."

Overcome with sudden excitement at the fact he could be going to an amusement park, Edward immediately dismissed the fact that the man was shady and Edward had deemed him untrustworthy and all of the man's unhappy behaviour seemed only a trick to make the amusement park visit a surprise. Edward was so happy about it in fact, that he took the man's hand when the man stood up and offered it to him, and nearly skipped alongside him for ten metres until his father's voice demanded behind him, "Where are you taking my son?" Edward couldn't understand why his dad sounded so afraid and worried. Maybe he wasn't supposed to know about the amusement park trip until he got there?

He found himself promptly snatched away from the 'Roy' person and hoisted behind his father's long, muscly legs. "He was taking me to an amusement park, Papa." Edward said in his best 'I'm sorry' voice.

His father bristled. "I've a good mind to call the police." He said, "Unless you can explain yourself right now, Young Man." Edward thought that he was talking to him, but the other man coughed and Edward noticed that his father's angry look wasn't for once directed at him, but at the Roy person. Edward shuddered; he would hate to be the man right now.

The man shrugged at them both, and turned, and in a blink he was gone, leaving Edward to stare at where he had been in momentary shock. Shaking his head and thinking that he could tell everyone about how mean his father was when school started again tomorrow, Edward put the event out of his mind.

He'd discover, five years later that he probably shouldn't have done that, but for now he was too busy being bundled up into his father's car to really care. As for his father, he could hear the man saying something about stranger danger, but he didn't bother to listen.

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A/n: No, Roy isn't a sick paedophile. You'll find out just what he was doing later on.

Umm... not sure what to say here really. This is just a teaser chapter really, testing the waters so to speak, because I'm always a bit iffy about doing crossovers. This is Hui Yan's prizefic so I'm also testing to see if she likes it and if I should continue with it or just start again from scratch.

Please leave a review and tell me what you think? I need to know if I have to improve this or not.