So yeah. Back in December, I signed up for the annual Risembool Rangers Secret Santa on deviantArt, and the Ranger I ended up getting had requested a Fullmetal Alchemist and Trauma Center crossover. Sooo... I wrote one.

The FMA bits are based on the manga/newer series - and if you haven't finished one or the other, may contain some spoilers. The Trauma Center bits are based solely on information contained in the first game, Under the Knife, because I know absolutely nothing about the sequels, and am in fact a newbie when it comes to the first game as well.

This fic takes place sometime during the beginning half of the story in terms of FMA, after the Elric boys have met Dr. Marcoh but probably before they've met Olivier Armstrong. (No, I don't know exactly when.) In terms of Trauma Center, this is taking place between the first and second games.

Also, for the purposes of this story, this is a slightly AU where Amestris and the homeland of the Trauma Center gang (America, I know) exist in the same world, and always have. This is because I was too lazy to come up with an explanation as to how the two worlds would cross, and also too lazy to rewrite one or the other to exist within each other's canon worlds (if that makes sense).

CHAPTER I: Quarantine

"Ugh… my shoes feel like they're filled with lead."

"Easy for you to say – my feet are made of metal!"

Edward cast his brother a sideways glance. "Yeah, but you can't get tired, Al."

Al's hackles went up a little at that. They had been walking a long time in order to get to Central City, and both of their tempers had become rather – well, short. "Oh yeah, lucky me! Just because I can't get tired doesn't mean I'm not tired of walking, Brother! If you hadn't beat those guys up back at the last town, we could have asked them for a ride! They said they were heading past Central anyway, remember?"

"Those guys asked for it! That old geezer called me short!" Ed fumed.

Al threw up his arms in disgust. "He didn't call you short, he called you SPORT! They tried to tell you that themselves, but you were too busy having a fit to listen to them!"

"Oh… really?" The flames in Ed's eyes slowly gave way to blank confusion. "But I could've sworn he said…"

"That's 'cause you always think that. Trust me Ed, he said sport. But no, thanks to you, we had to walk all the way here."

There was something oddly, awkwardly endearing about a giant suit of armor kicking at stones and pouting the way Al was doing just then, and it made Ed forget whatever snappy retort he had been about to say. Instead, he smiled to himself, and did his best to sound contrite. "Sorry, Al. Once we get to Central…"

Ed and Al stopped dead in their tracks. They had reached the top of the last hill that had been hiding the city from their view, and the sight that they found before them was not what they had been expecting.

The road was closed. The gates which had always been wide open to traffic before were locked tight, and soldiers stood on guard just inside, their faces covered with white surgical masks. Although these hid their expressions, it was clear from the way they were gesturing at each other and their raised voices, which the boys could just barely make out.

Intent on their discussion, the guards had not noticed the brothers yet; motioning to Al for silence, Ed indicated that he wanted to move closer and take refuge behind a large tree in order to better hear what the guards were saying. Al was loath to eavesdrop, but the masks and the closed gates concerned him more, and so he followed his brother's lead.

"I'm telling you, we should quit and get out of here, while we still can!" the guard on the left was saying.

"We can't do that!" snapped the other, who seemed to be doing his best to sound like the boss. But even Ed and Al could hear the longing in his voice; he wanted to leave, too. "Someone has to stand guard here and make sure no one gets in or out, so it doesn't spread!"

The first guard shook his head. "But it doesn't have to be us. We need to leave while we've still got our health, before we catch it too. I don't want to die!"

"I don't want to die either. But we can't just… leave! They said that foreign doctor was supposed to be here soon, they say he can help…"

"I don't believe a word of that crap. There's not a single doctor here that knows what's going on, why should he know any better than them?"

Ed and Al shared a wide-eyed look. This was serious. Something had gone very wrong in Central in a very short amount of time. The last time they had checked in with Roy Mustang over the phone, a little over a week ago, everything was business as usual. What had happened to the capital city?

"I don't know about you," the man continued, lowering his voice so that Ed and Al had to strain to hear, "but I'm leaving. Tonight. I can't do this anymore. Are you coming with me?"

The guard on the right, who seemed to be the younger of the two, looked down miserably. Although the boys could not see it, his hands were shaking. "I- I can't. My wife is inside. She's not sick yet, but she can't leave until the quarantine's lifted. And I can't leave her."

The first guard looked stricken. "That's… rough. I'm sorry. I didn't know. Well… good luck to you two. I hope you guys make it, I really do."

"Yeah… me too."

Ed, meanwhile, had gone quite pale, and was no longer listening. Al, noticing his reaction, whispered, "Brother? What is it?"

"Winry," Ed whispered back, his voice barely audible even though Al was right next to him. "Remember the last time we called her? She said there was some famous automail designer coming through the country on tour. She said she wanted to come to Central to see him…"

The exhibition was supposed to have been earlier that same week. They had completely forgotten about it.

"Oh, no," Al gasped. "Winry!"

Ed wasn't thinking. He rarely took the time to, with matters this close to his heart. He needed to act, and without stopping to think of a better plan, he strode out from behind the tree and went straight over to the guards. A second later, Alphonse stumbled after him, and the clinking and clanking of his armor body caused the two men to finally look over in surprise as the boys approached.

It was all Ed could do not to shout. "We need to get inside. Now."

"Eh…" The guards glanced at each other. "This city is under quarantine, by order of Fuhrer King Bradley. No one is allowed in or out until further notice. Haven't you heard the news?"

"I need to get inside!" Ed yelled, his patience already gone. In the back of his mind, he had already imagined a thousand different plagues ravaging the city, each one worse than the last, and every time the thought of Winry, sick, suffering – alone – made his stomach turn over. He had to find her, now. He had to know if she was all right. And if she wasn't… "Look, I'm a state alchemist, all right?" He flashed them his silver pocket-watch. "I'm a higher rank than you, right? So I'm ordering you: let us in!"

The younger guard looked nervous, but the one who had been so intent on leaving suddenly decided to take charge. Just because he wanted out didn't mean he wanted anyone else to get in and run the risk of infection. Especially not two kids. "Sorry, sir, but our orders come straight from the Fuhrer himself. No one is to be let out or let in, not even state alchemists."

"Is there someone inside you're worried about?" said the other, recognizing all too well the fear in Ed's golden eyes. "If you give us a name, we can have someone look up whether they've been checked into the hospital."

His companion shot him a dark look, which he tried to ignore. They both knew that the hospitals were the most chaotic places in the city, with more and more patients being admitted every day, and nowhere near enough staff, even when all the doctors and nurses had been called in. Not everyone who got sick made it to the hospital, and not everyone who made it to the hospital got checked in properly. To make matters worse, the disease itself worked fiendishly fast – if the person in question had been among the first wave of the infected, he or she was likely already dead.

Ed started to protest that it wasn't good enough, but Al stayed him with a hand on his shoulder and spoke up first. "Yes. Thank you, that's very kind of you. Our friend's name is Winry Rockbell. She's from Risembool; she was supposed to have come here to see an automail exhibition."

"Oh yeah, the exhibition," said the older guard. "I saw that. Pretty impressive. It's too bad those guys got stuck here for the quarantine. Absolutely the worst luck."

"We'll have someone look into it," the other soldier told them, smiling at them reassuringly. "It might take a while though, so you'll probably want to find somewhere to camp out for awhile. Come back in a few hours, and we'll let you know what we find out. All right?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you!" With that, Al dragged his brother away before he could cause any more of a scene.

"Al, we have to get inside," Ed said as soon as they were out of earshot of the guards. "We have to find Winry. She's alone in there somewhere, and she might be sick…"

"She might not be alone. She might've gone to stay with Mrs. Hughes and Elicia."

Their eyes met in horror. What had been meant as a comfort instead only added to their anxiety. Winry was not the only one within the walls of Central that was in danger; Maes Hughes' lovely wife and darling daughter were at risk too, as well as all of their friends in the Mustang gang.

"I want to get inside too, but you heard those guards. They won't let us in. And what about you, what if you get sick too? We don't even know what the disease is!" Al watched his brother pace agitatedly back and forth, and wished he could do something to work off his own nervous energy. Pacing wasn't quite as effective when you couldn't get tired, or even feel your own limbs.

Ed looked back over his shoulder at the wall surrounding the city. "Well, like I always say: if you can't find a door, or in this case if you can't get through the one you found, make your own. We'll just go farther down the wall and…"

"Brother, weren't you listening?" Al exclaimed, and moved to block Ed's path when he began to head back towards the city. "We don't know how the disease spreads. We don't even know what it is. For all we know, you could get sick just by being near someone who has it!"

"Then I'll just have to be careful, won't I?" Ed's eyes gleamed with a metallic resolve. "Those two guards can't help us. We have to get inside if we want to know how Winry and the others are doing. I can't just sit out here and wait for the quarantine to end."

"But I can go inside without getting sick!" Al knew trying to deter a determined Edward was like trying to move a boulder with a twig, but he had to try. "Let me go in and find them, and you stay out here and…"

"You're not a state alchemist, Al. There are a lot of places you can't go that I can, and you can't sneak in because… well, you sort of stand out." Ed folded his arms. "I'm not going in just to check on our friends. I need to know what happened here, and the only real answers we're gonna get are gonna be from the higher-ups. I need to talk to Colonel Mustang." Ed could only hope the Colonel hadn't fallen prey to whatever sickness it was that had befallen the capital. "I promise I'll be as careful as I can, Al. But I'm going in."

"Ed…" Al's voice cracked.

Ed patted his younger brother's arm as he walked past him. His automail hand clanked loudly against Al's armor. "Don't worry, Al. I don't plan on dying anytime soon. We've still got a philosopher's stone to find, remember?"

Although the city was heavily guarded on the inside to prevent panicking citizens from escaping, it was not generally expected that someone should want to sneak into a plagued city; it wasn't long before Ed and Al had managed to get inside. While the guards (a different pair from before, stationed farther down the wall) were more than a little surprised to suddenly notice a young man and a tall suit of armor seemingly appear out of nowhere, they only warned the boys quite sternly not to try to get out, and handed them extra pairs of surgical masks, exclaiming at Ed and Al's carelessness in apparently having lost the ones they were issued. The Elric brothers played along, and promised they would keep away from the city limits, and after Ed had put on his mask (and Al had stashed his away), they continued on their way, making a beeline for the Hughes household.

They hadn't been quite sure what to expect once they got past the guards, but the chaos in the city was nearly overwhelming. Ambulance after ambulance rushed by, rushing patients to the hospital, while hearses drove in the opposite direction, transporting unfortunate victims of the disease to their final resting places. The streets were filled with masked citizens; some were in a rush, while others dragged their feet. It was easy to tell which were on their way to the hospital and which were on their way back home. Some simply sat on the sidewalk and wept.

Stalls manned by volunteers armed with masks and latex gloves were set up every few blocks, handing out more masks and gloves, along with water bottles and flyers listing the known symptoms of the disease and possible means of transference. Ed grabbed some gloves and one of the flyers as they passed by one of the stalls, and after a quick glance through it, he realized two things.

One, that things weren't as serious as he had thought; they were worse. Two, that one guard had been right: the doctors still had no idea what was going on. Ed made to throw the flyer away, but Al took it from him; after studying the list of symptoms, he stashed it away with the extra mask inside his armor, grateful for once that his metal face lacked the ability to show how frightened he was.

They knew Central well, and soon they arrived at their destination. Ed knocked loudly, calling out for Mrs. Hughes to answer, and at length the door was cracked open, and a tired-looking Gracia peered out at them cautiously. "Ed? Al? What are you doing here?"

"We wanted to make sure you and your daughter were all right, Mrs. Hughes," said Al. "Are you guys okay?"

The mask on her face made it difficult to tell if she had smiled at them, but her voice was as warm as ever. "Yes, thank goodness. So far we've managed not to get sick. But I thought you two were out of town?"

Ed nodded. "We were. We had to sneak in."

"What?" Gracia stared at them, aghast. "Why would you do something so reckless? Don't you realize…"

"Yeah, we do," Ed cut her off. "But Winry's here too, and we have to find her. Have you seen her? Is she staying with you?"

"Oh, that poor girl. No, I'm afraid I haven't seen her at all. I… hope she's all right. Are you sure she's here?"

"She'd never miss an automail exhibition as big as that one. She's here." Ed clenched his fists. If she wasn't with Gracia and Elicia, chances were she was already in the hospital. "Thank you anyway, Mrs. Hughes. We've gotta go now."

"We're glad you're all right! Stay safe!" Al called back over his shoulder as they turned away and made for the hospital.

"You too! I'll let you know if I see her!"

Ed never looked back. He barely heard her answer. His mind was already at the hospital, imagining Winry lying in bed in agony, afflicted by the horrendous symptoms on the flyer. Or worse…

No. She had to be alive.

They were running now, though neither quite realized it, their minds being too preoccupied to notice or care. Unfortunately, they were also too preoccupied to notice the man coming around the corner until they had run straight into him, colliding at top speed and ending up in an agonized pile on the ground. "Dammit! Watch where you're going!" Ed snapped as he got up and brushed himself off.

"I could say the same for—say, are you not the Fullmetal Alchemist?"

Of course, the man was looking up at Alphonse when he said this. It didn't improve Ed's mood, but at the moment he had no time to waste kicking the man's ass. That would have to wait till later. "Not him – me, you idiot."

The man got up in a hurry, a huge smile spreading across his face (they couldn't see it beneath his mask, but his eyes lit up and crinkled at the corners in a telling way) as he thrust out his hand. "Oh, 'tis a pleasure to meet you, truly it is!"

Edward, surprised into a temporary halt by the man's abrupt change of attitude, did not offer his hand, but found the man shaking it regardless. "You have a strange accent," he observed, rather bluntly in Al's opinion.

"Ah – uh, do I?" The man made a painfully obvious effort to adopt a more Amestrian accent. "Well, uh, I spent some time abroad recently, and, uh…"

"Look, that's great and all, but we've got somewhere to be," said Ed, and tried to pull his hand away. But the man tightened his grip, and pulled Ed nearer to him, as if to impart a terribly important secret to him.

"The hospital, yes? Better get there soon… you don't have much time." Ed gasped as something sharp jabbed his left side, but by the time he managed to pull himself away, the damage was already done. Something metallic glinted in the man's hand before he palmed it, chuckling to himself. "I've done it, I got the Fullmetal Alchemist!" He sprinted past them, running down the street.

Ed stared after him, too shocked at first to move.

"Brother? Brother, what happened? What did he do?"

He swallowed hard. The most important thing to do first was to catch the guy; dealing with what he had done to Edward would have to wait until later. "Come on Al, we have to get him before he gets away. THIEF! THIEF!" Ed shouted, pointing at the man, and raced after him, with Al hot on his heels.

No one stepped up to help them catch the supposed thief – they were all too worried about contact with strangers who might be infected – but that didn't matter to Ed. The way they moved aside, keeping far away from the man and from them made him easier to chase, made it impossible for him to blend into the crowd as he had intended. Cursing, he pushed himself to run faster, counting on his stamina to keep him ahead long enough to simply outrun them.

If Ed had been on his own, this might have worked. But as Ed had pointed out earlier, Alphonse didn't tire like regular people did.

When Ed began to fall behind, he went for his last resort and clapped his hands together, intending to try and transmute a wall ahead of their quarry. But when his hands hit the pavement, only a weak blue light flickered beneath them, and instead of a wall, a low barricade barely better than a speed-bump rose up from the street.

Luckily, however, that was enough. The man, caught off-guard, tripped on the bump and face-planted painfully against the street.

"Good job, Ed!" Al congratulated him, and ran over to drag the man to his feet.

Ed didn't respond.

"Geh… your little friend over there… sure is a powerful alchemist…" the man panted, even as he struggled (vainly) to escape Al's (literally) iron grasp.

"Yeah…" Al wondered whether the man had seen alchemy before. Sure, Ed was a great alchemist, but the transmutation he had just performed was elementary – most children could have pulled it off. And the man hadn't been looking back, so he couldn't have seen Ed clap his hands together, rather than drawing a circle.

Al looked back at his brother, who was uncharacteristically quiet as he approached them. He was panting too, and sweating, but something told Al it wasn't just the exercise that had Ed looking so out of sorts. Normally by now he'd be gloating, or threatening to beat the crap out of the guy for… whatever it was he had done.

"Hey, Ed, what did he take from you, anyway?"

Ed stared at the man for a moment; the expression on his face made him seem a thousand years old. His eyes burned – but he was trembling. "You bastard. What did you do to me?"

"Oh, I think you know," the man replied, just as he slipped out of his coat and tried to make a run for it. But Al was faster, and brought him up short by his shirt-collar. "Gack! What is this? Are you even human?" he complained as he tried to twist away from him.

Al tightened his grip briefly, and the man choked.

"He's more human than you by a long shot," Ed said in a quiet, threatening voice. The man became still. "This disease… it's not just some random sickness, is it? This was done to Central on purpose, wasn't it?"

Al inhaled sharply. "What? What do you mean?"

"Does it matter? You are wasting time here, boy. You had better get to the hospital – not that it will do much good."

Al shook him hard. "What are you talking about? Ed…?"

"Come on, Al. He's right, we're wasting time. We have to take him to the Colonel right away." He turned away, unable to look Al in the eyes. "And if he keeps struggling, knock him out."