Ace: Guess what? I have a new story!

Envy: What happened to the old ones?

Ace: Uh... I'm still gonna do them... I just... couldn't get this one... out of my head... and I really wanted to do it... and, aw hell, I just don't have any real excuse for this.

Ed: And how'd you write this up? You've been hiding behind the bathroom door for about 3 days straight even though you keep yelling at us that it's not the flu and you aren't doing anything in there!

Ace: I kinda stole my dad's work laptop...

Ed: Oh.

Envy: Ace5980 does not own FullMetal Alchemist.

Ace: ENVY, I'MA GONNA KILL YOU!

Envy: ... If you come out of the bathroom, you do know that it will be you dying, not me.

Ace: Dang it.

Prologue: Escaping the Garden of Eternity

Kitty ran through the seemingly endless forest of the Garden, her thigh-length fiery red hair flying behind her and tangling in clumps around her ears. Her bare feet were soundless on the matter dirt beneath her, but her fluffy white dress had several tears in it from where it had caught on the surrounding flora. Chest heaving, she tossed her hair aside as she continued to run as fast as she could, far past her usual limits of endurance. Hearing the sounds of the Hounds behind her, she ran faster, the fear lending her renewed strength. Finally, after she was beginning to fear she'd never reach it, a large ivory watchtower came into view along with an elegant wrought-iron fence encrusted with ivy. "Kit!" she cried as she came closer, "KIT!"

A head popped out of the top window. "Hey, Kitty! What's up?" He looked up then, seeing something she couldn't from her lower vantage point. "What the hell did you do this time, Kitty?"

"Just open the damn gate, Kit! The Hounds are after me!"

An older boy with long hair the same color as hers stepped out from the ivory stone as though it wasn't even there and caught her by the arm. "What did you do, Sister? Why are the Hounds chasing you? What did you do?"

She bit her lip, yanking her arm from his grasp. "The less you know, the better, Brother."

"Tell me. I'm not afraid. Only a fellow Guardian can penetrate a Watchtower and they would never betray one of their own to a Royal."

"... I stole something, Kit, something that would give them more than enough reason to yank off all my tails if I'm caught."

He sighed, jerking a hand viciously through his hair. "Fine, Kitty. I can tell I won't be able to get the truth out of you, so I'm not gonna press you for why you want out of the Garden." He walked over to the fence, pressing a slender hand to the ivy. For one moment, he was surrounded in a green glow, his hair floating upwards as he seemed to look almost prouder, more regal, but then the moment was gone and it was only her younger brother standing before the fleeing girl. The ivy retreated from the metal, which liquefied under his touch to make a hole just big enough for Kitty to slip through. "Be careful, Sister," he warned, catching her before she weaved out of the Garden.

She smiled sadly. "Shouldn't it be the older sibling saying that, not the younger?" She leaned forward to kiss his cheek fondly, eyes shining. "Make sure you don't lose yourself, Kit."

"Kitty," he sighed, and they both froze at the sound of unearthly howls rising from where Kitty had come. "Go, go," he urged, his face fierce.

She wriggled through the fence, pressing herself against the metal so that her face was near his. "You'll make a phenomenal Guardian one day, Kit. I can see it."

He wrinkled his nose delicately. "I know I'm not one for hiding, but I think it would be safe to seek haven in the human realm. No one would ever think you would go hide there."

Kitty shivered delicately. "Yeah, but don't the human realms revolve around knowing someone? I know no one in that realm who would take me in as is, never mind if they knew the truth."

"I'm no Seer, Kitty, but I can See that if there's one person you can trust, it's what I can only describe as a traitor to our kind."

"Thanks for the insight, Kit." She gave him one last smile, holding it until the ivy hid his figure from her view. Only then did she let her smile slip from her face, turning her back and running. She didn't dare stop moving now that she was outside the protection of the Garden. There were simply too many enemies of her kind here in this no-mans'-land for her to risk it.

Acting on instinct, she recoiled violently from her first landmark in the blurry landscape, a pool without reflection, only to narrowly avoid a woman with dark black hair, red eyes, and unnaturally long fangs collide with her. Kitty, heart in her throat, turned tail and ran as fast as she could, narrowly avoiding another collision, this time with a long-haired man with a beak mask on his face. Pinned between a tree and the pool, she had little choice of where she could go. Fearfully, she glanced back to the water, debating the pros and cons of venturing inside. "Oh no," the woman hissed, "I don't think you want to venture into the Pool of Fate. It will dump you out into the worst possible place you can imagine, little one."

Kitty already knew that. Why else had she been planning on using the Portal rather than one of the more unpredictable Pools? But in her current predicament with enemies all around, she had little choices left to her. Her hand flew to her neck, grasping a small fox on a necklace chain so hard her knuckles turned white from blood-loss. In a sudden movement, she wheeled, breaking the chain from her neck so that she could slam the little fox icon onto an upraised rock beside the pool and then, before either of them could stop her, land solidly into the pool and disappear from there in a flash of white light and intense pain.

Edward sighed, running a hand through his hair absently. He couldn't believe that even after he had released his story to the public that some idiot had still tried to perform Human Transmutation. He didn't really want to go find what was left, but he had no real choice in the matter. Roy Mustang had called in a favor, so he had ended up standing there in front of a small house with his current traveling companion, none other than his tame-ish homunculus, Envy. The sin had taken the form of a fluttery little girl who looked almost like a younger, girl version of Ed and was glaring holes in her slender dress at her thigh, no doubt imaging the red flamel that had taken the place of his Ouroboros once Ed had defeated Dante, the only reason he couldn't simply kill the alchemist and get on with his life. "Envy, doing a death glare isn't going to get rid of your mark, you know."

"And giving the house we're supposed to go into a death glare isn't going to get rid of the fact that you need to go in there and do that stupid favor for Flame either, Master."

Ed grimaced at the homunculus's sarcastic response but didn't bother to discipline him. Nothing could really turn off that part of the artificial human, so he was stuck with having a sarcastic bastard under him in addition to a perverted bastard calling him to fulfill long-forgotten favors. "Let's just get this over with so that I can go back to figuring out how to get you to stop insulting me for longer than five minutes."

"Right behind you, O-chibi-san." With that last comment, Envy skipped off into the house, 141 Fox Creek Lane, with Edward glaring daggers into his immortal back the whole way.

Kitty groaned, shaking her head in pain. She knew her trip through the Pool had done something to her, something she didn't even want to think about right now. She could sense a dimming presence, one she took to mean a life had recently been extinguished in this residence, likely in the very room she'd been dumped into, in addition to a strangely golden light approaching towards her behind an even more out-of-place light that seemed overly swollen to her. Slowly, she tried to regain movement of her limbs, but nothing came. Instead, fierce pain laced through her right arm, and she whimpered in response. Something was not right here, and she had to figure out what it was and fast.

Envy: So let me get this straight. This is a mainly manga-based story, but you're going with part anime simply to keep me alive and give me a reason to be under Ed's control?

Ace: Uh yeah, pretty much.

Ed: And what's up with Kitty?

Ace: Um... you'll find out later...

Ed: I hear typing in there...

Ace: It's nothing!

Ed: Kitty?

Kitty: She's planning out your OC character.

Envy: Damn it, that means I'm with you.

Kitty: Wha?

Envy: Nothing. *halo appears around head*

Ed: That is downright creepy.

Kitty: Agreed. Let's just offer halos to whoever decides to review this and leave it at that.

Ed: Yeah. It's the only way to get rid of it.