This is a companion piece to Even If I'm Different Now, but both stories are meant to stand alone. While both fics are set in the same alternate universe, EIIDN follows Al's feelings of being abandoned, this one focuses on his brother back in Amestris. I'm not quite sure what possessed me to write this, but I'm going to do something I haven't in a while - start posting this without a complete draft while I'm still working on getting Good King Hohenheim ready.

Anyways, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy.


Part I

The Chimera-Lady Arrives

The first time I remember anything strange and unusual happening around Al, we were both very small. It was around the time the old man left us. He had walked out on us a few weeks before, and Al was starting to catch onto the fact that he would never come back.

We had an argument about if he'd come back, and I'd brought up a point that struck a chord with Al: if the old man was coming back, then why was Mom crying all the time? Al went quiet, tears forming in his eyes, and then the family picture that Mom had hanging in the living room fell off the wall, its glass breaking. This in itself wasn't so far out of the ordinary, but when we tried to put the picture back up for Mom, only she and us two boys were still in the picture.

There were a few other weird things that happened over the years too: things that happened around the fights Al and I used to get in; things that happened while we were running scared around Yock Island or from Teacher; and, most notably, the time Al rescued me from the rebounding human transmutation circle whose theory we'd worked so hard on. But I stopped thinking the weird incidents could be magic after Al and I started studying alchemy out of Hohenheim's books – or even just alchemic theory, in Al's case. Surely, they had to have an explanation, just like why Al could never actually perform alchemy.

Thus, I was skeptical and irritated when an old lady who could turn into a cat – some sort of chimera, I was sure – showed up wanting to take Al away to magic school. She was decent enough I guess to insist that she talk to an adult about it before dragging Al away, but I thought the school called Warty Hogs, or whatever its name was, was surely just a front to do something weird to the children who went there.

Then at the Rockbells' house, the chimera-lady insisted on demonstrating her so-called magic by turning the coffee table into a pig and stuff. Al at least tried to agree with me and my doubts at first, saying that she could be hiding a philosopher's stone somewhere.

Being in the days when Al and I were still looking for a philosopher's stone to get our bodies back to normal, I smirked and held out my hand to the chimera-lady. "Hand it over, you second-rate scam!"

She didn't hand me a philosopher's stone. What she handed over was that fancy stick she claimed was a magic wand. I proved to myself that the philosopher's stone wasn't hidden in the stick somewhere, perhaps in the thicker part at its handle by giving it a wave and having nothing happen although I'd had a transmutation in mind.

That just meant that the stone was on the chimera-lady herself, hidden somewhere in her emerald green robes, and I called her out on it as I handed her stick over to my brother.

But then, I heard words I hadn't expected: "Brother, I felt something."

I turned toward my brother, who was looking at the stick with something like awe on his face. I had to ask, just to be sure. "What did you say?"

"When I took this wand, I felt something." When Al looked up at me, I could tell he meant it.

Al felt something? I knew better than anyone that Al no longer had a body capable of sensation – I'd attached his soul to a suit of armor myself.

It had come much as a surprise to me when the armor started to transform after I put Al in it. Cold, gray metal had molded into warm, peachy flesh. It seemed for a single moment my salvation – I hadn't harmed my brother after all. That was before I'd heard his muffled cries. Though unconscious, my brother was shaking, his teeth biting his lip, his throat making sobbing sounds. All that was missing were the tears.

I knew there was something wrong with my brother. I tried to slap him awake, but no matter how hard my left hand hit his face, Al didn't react. Blood didn't even come to his face where he'd been slapped. And as I later found out, how could it? What housed my brother's soul looked like his own body, but it was still really that suit of armor that I'd put him in.

I remember faintly trying to drag Al out of the room, but the only thing I remember clearly is something he said after he woke up that really scared me: Al was scared, and he couldn't feel his body anymore.

And so now I dropped my jaw when Al said that he'd just felt something, just by touching the supposedly magical stick I'd handed him. Its owner, the chimera-lady who'd come to tell us my brother's a wizard and to take him away to magic school, couldn't possibly be right, could she?

A glance at Al's face revealed a smile, his eyes directed at me. What was that on his face? Hope, maybe? That he could feel again?

I dismissed any hopeful thoughts that I had about that – there couldn't be such a thing as magic in this world that first took away kids' mothers, and then their bodies when they stopped the world from taking their stupid brothers too. The so-called magic was simply a scam, the wand a device thought up by the con artists.

The wand looked real enough alright. It looked wooden, and it had felt the right weight for it too when it was in my gloved hand. What trick did the chimera-woman have up her sleeve?

Speaking of the devil, the chimera-woman prompted Al to go through the next step in her scam. "Well, aren't you going to give it a wave?"

Wave it Al did, but I didn't understand what happened: green. My clothes were green. It was a simple enough thing to dye clothes alchemically, but dying clothes without dye, without a transmutation circle or even touching the clothes was a different matter. And besides, my brother was incapable of performing alchemy, unless the stick made up for whatever was wrong with his Gate, but I didn't even want to think of the exchange for even dying fabric without anything.

"Al?"

My green clothing was a trick. It had to be. The chimera-lady must have transmuted my clothes when Al waved the stick. But the chimera-lady's lack of visible transmutation circles, the trick with Al's sensation earlier – why go through such great lengths to get my brother?

Al met my eyes. "Are you alright?"

And now I was the one Al was worried about. I looked away, just in time to see a jet of white light hit the pig that had once been our coffee table, making it a coffee table once again.

I made myself snap out of it. I had a younger brother to attend to, and he was letting out a sigh. "Al?"

Looking up from the newly-restored coffee table, Al shook his head. "It's nothing."

But I didn't buy that. Al didn't get like this over nothing. It must have been something to do with the so-called magic and the chimera-woman who wants him so badly to pull a stunt like this. Forming fists, I vowed to myself that I would not let her take him. "Al, do you...?"

Something warm patted my shoulder. It felt like Al's not-really-human hand. "I was reminded of alchemy for a moment when she did that," he said, "only, I could do something too. I thought I could become like you for a moment."

I thought vile thoughts about the chimera-woman. How dare she give my brother false hope like that.

I heard Al talking to the chimera-woman a moment later. He seemed to be dismissing her, sounding disappointed, but that meant he'd be safe.

However, Granny Pinako interfered. "What Al's trying to tell you," she said, "is that these boys need time to think things over. Come back tomorrow."

Traitor.

I remained as I was as the chimera-lady walked off. That is, until I heard a loud crack. Glancing at Al, I knew he'd run to check it out, and whatever it was, it would be part of the scam meant to take him away. I had to go investigate too.

When Al and I ran out the door, we found that the chimera-woman was gone. There wasn't even a complete set of footprints leading away in the muddy ground.

"Wow!"

Of course Al would say that. He was still young and impressionable – barely eleven! His few months traveling around with me on my military missions wouldn't have been enough to wisen him up to the ways of the world. I shot him a dirty look.

"Wow," he repeated, grin leaving his face. "Just wow. Quite an impression, huh?"

Growling under my breath, I ran up the stairs. I would find a way from keeping the dangerous chimera-woman from harming my brother. Somehow. I wouldn't let Al go.

I brainstormed ways to keep Al from falling into the chimera-lady's trap, but I didn't have any particularly good ideas by the time Granny came up to talk to me.

"What do you think the chances are that McGonagall actually has a stone like the one you've been off looking for?"

"It's the only thing that makes sense." If my voice was a little louder than it should have been, it was just because I was letting off steam. I wasn't actually mad at Granny for being fooled, even if she was a traitor who wanted to let the con artist come back to talk about taking Al away. "Scientific laws are laws for a reason: you can't break them."

Call it silly, but I folded my arms, resting my left hand on my unnaturally hard automail arm. If you tried to break the laws, you'd just end up paying – my automail was a private reminder of that little fact.

"Edward," Granny used the full version of my name, but she actually said it gently. The old lady came and sat next to me on the guest bed. "Please explain to me how turning my coffee table into a pig and back is scientifically possible."

"You can't break the laws," I repeated, "but you can get around them with other laws. For example, a philosopher's stone has properties that allow it to bypass the alchemic law of Equivalent Exchange – you can get something more out of the transmutation than you put in, and I'm sure you could rid your transmutation of unwanted excess materials as well. Like the table and the pig."

Granny chewed on the end of her pipe for a minute. "Then Al must have one as well."

"What are you talking about, you miniature hag?"

Granny scowled at me, but she didn't return the insult just yet. "Your family had a copy of the picture with Hohenheim in it once. One day, Hohenheim was simply gone. What happened to him?"

I scowled at the mention of my old man and looked down at the rumpled blue bedspread we were sitting on. "We can't prove that has anything to do with Al."

"Then what about that armor mimicking his real body, or any of the countless other weird things that have happened around him? Don't tell me it's someone else – the only thing consistent when anyone noticed things like this was Al."

I stood up and walked over to the dresser, which had an alchemy book on top of it. I picked up the book and looked at its front cover reverently: A Philosophy of Alchemy. "I don't know what's going on with Al," my voice trembled a bit, "but it's not magic. It can't be – magic is for frauds who are trying to hide what they're really after."

"And if it is real?"

I stood there, hand on the cover of my book, lips turning downward. There couldn't be such a thing as magic. Why entertain that possibility?

"Think of it this way," Granny said, "there is something going on with Alphonse, some sort of phenomenon. Even if you assigned it the term magic, it is still a phenomenon with an explanation, isn't it?"

If Granny was paying attention, she saw my body starting to shake as I let out a low growl and tightened my grip on the book.

"You're a scientist. Shouldn't you be trying to understand a new phenomenon instead of dismissing it? You're hurting your brother with your attitude, you know."

I didn't explode quite yet. See? I can be patient. Besides, I had to explain to her why to keep the chimera-lady away, for Al's sake.

Taking a deep breath, I said, "I'm trying to protect him from people like that woman. She told us that she was doing magic, but I know what she's doing has an explanation. I think it's a bad sign that she wouldn't give the explanation to us, so I don't want Al to go anywhere near her. She might rub off on him."

But Granny was too stupid to listen to reason. "I know you're worried about Al, but he's put a good head on his shoulders. He's already gotten a lot of experience thinking critically as an alchemical theorist. He can decide for himself how to think."

It only took one motion for me to spin around and send my book flying past Granny's head. Couldn't she see that Al was not thinking clearly about this magic thing?

Then she was shouting. "Are you trying to stop your brother from learning something he can actually do, you small-minded beansprout?"

I let the insults rip as I got revenge for the slight on my height. Granny had no right to call me short, the micro-grandma!

The two of us would have kept shouting at each other, but the bedroom door opened and there was Al, holding a book in his arms. Had he just heard us shouting, or had he heard something more? I didn't mean to offend him over the magic issue.

After I'd weakly greeted him, Granny greeted him with a more confident question: "Al, why don't you tell your brother how you really feel about magic?"

No matter what I'd sometimes said about Al when I was angry, I thought I knew that Al really was a good brother – a loyal friend who'd never betray me. Maybe in the coming years I'd feel as falsely betrayed as Al would feel falsely abandoned, but what Al said then was something that showed how loyal he really is to me and softened me up: "I'll stay here if Brother doesn't want me to go. I just came to get Brother's opinion on something, but I can see that you two are in the middle of something. Would you two please just stop arguing about me? I've already made up my mind about Professor McGonagall's offer."

Then Al left the room, holding his book tightly in his arms and keeping his head hung. I stood up, ready to go after him. "Al."

The guestroom door closed in front of me.

"Didn't it occur to you that no matter how you feel about the matter, Al might feel differently?" Granny asked. "You really could have handled things better."

Granny didn't need to tell me – I knew. I felt like scum for the look I'd seen on Al's face just then. I sat up for hours after Granny left, thinking. I did want to keep Al safe from the chimera-lady, but I didn't want to deny him the answer to why weird things kept happening around him either.

Speaking to my lap, I said, "If it's something he really can do, I guess I'll have to give him a chance."

Granny studied my posture. "Promise me you will."

I nodded, but I was still thinking of how to keep Al safe.

I slept on the problem all night, but I had no semblance of an answer until I took a look at Al's book before breakfast. I opened to the page he'd bookmarked and felt something squirm in my chest.

Al had been studying Gate theory last night. I supposed whatever was wrong with his Gate and whatever caused strange stuff to happen around him could be the same thing, and now it hit me exactly what the chimera-lady's words, fraudulent or not, had meant to him – not only could it possibly give him the answer to why he could never do the alchemy he loves, but maybe it could even give him an alternative method to do it, if that supposed teacher wasn't lying.

Perhaps if the chimera-lady was asking permission to take Al with her, and if she'd wanted to talk to an adult, she wasn't all that bad... I could only hope and be sure to keep regular contact with Al to watch for signs of trouble.

I went into the kitchen for breakfast and saw that Al really was mad at me about magic just by seeing all the milk and milk-flavored products he'd made. For once, I consumed them. I had to.

Luckily, Al's anger did evaporate with a surprised cry that I had drunk my milk. We were able to talk, him presenting me with a valid hypothesis of why he can't do alchemy based on our experience with the chimera-lady and her stick yesterday. "I was thinking about the thing that Professor McGonagall calls magic last night," he'd said. "Then I wondered if I can use her magic but not alchemy because I get a different power source than most people through my Gate? Like maybe my Gate's just aligned with a different power source than most other people's Gates. So I reviewed that book last night, and I think that could be the case, Brother, but what do you think?"

I gave Al some input on his hypothesis – it didn't quite explain everything the chimera-lady had done – and told I'd let him go to Warty Hogs, but I added one condition. "Just promise me you'll do your own thinking about what they teach? You're way too good at alchemical theory to let your mind be corrupted like that."

Al nodded. "I think I'll go try it out for a year. I'll miss you too, Brother."

We smiled at each other, but his smile was as fake as mine. I was letting Al go, but my protective instincts were still telling me not to. I couldn't bear to see him leave, so I mumbled out an excuse I made up on the spot. "I've got to call the colonel."

Then I actually did. "Al's leaving with the lady from your office – looks like she's a chimera. It looks like I'll be on my own from now on. Unless you have some background on her I can use to stop Al from going with her?"

Mustang's answer was not what I wanted to hear. "Minerva McGonagall is from another country. We only have international records for her, but I guess being a chimera is not an international crime or anything. She seemed responsible enough to me."

I made a fist out of my free hand. "She's taking my brother far away, and Al says he's going with her for a whole year. I just want to make sure he'll really be alright."

There was a sigh from the other side of the line. "This is going to be fairly difficult, but I guess I can have someone look into her background."

For once, I actually had a smile on my lips while dealing with my commanding officer. He would help me keep my brother safe, wouldn't he?

Before I could actually hang up, a stroke of inspiration hit me. "Hey, chimera research deals with biological alchemy, doesn't it? Maybe if I learned more about that sort of alchemy, I could figure out a way to get mine and Al's bodies back to normal. Is there somewhere I could go to learn more?"

"You could always try the library. I don't think the military has any experts in that field right now, but we are administering the entrance exam in a few months. Perhaps someone will show up to take it. I can look into it, but you'll owe me, got that?"

I frowned, but I really did need that information. "Yeah, yeah, I got it, but you'd better find me something good."

When I got off the phone, Al was gone. Granny and Winry said they'd seen him disappear into thin air with the chimera-lady.

It was doubtful that such a thing actually happened, but it sure felt like Al could disappear from my life as though into thin air.