Ed begins coughing, and sets the bowl down. The coughing continues into a choking, and as he feels the skin of his cheeks flush hotly, he covers his mouth with one hand.

When he can breathe, he glances to the gracefully moving wrinkled-shriveled woman before him as she sniffs at the portion of the dish she has on her plate. He listens as the nin with white masks on their faces, perhaps assigned as the honor-guard, quietly shift their position to better watch his every damn move. He notices even Pinky hovers over his backside, and only then does he chance a quick glance to Master. For some reason he can't figure, she chooses to stand behind this… This hag-with the overly long blond hair..

(and a really long fucking name. )

Master's face is softer, less severe than when he saw her last, but he glances away before her sharp eyes can catch him. He hopes. She shuffles. Master? Shuffling? What the shit…? Her footsteps sound lighter, too. He darts his gaze about the fabric his knees barely touch. His heart hammers against his ribs, but no knife gets thrown towards his head.

Yet.

Each time he glances towards her, he wonders why she hasn't thrown at least one thing at him. At each glance, he sees that her mannerisms are slightly off: she's quiet. She has little to say that he understands - Not unusual that, but – the diffident way she allows the hag, important to this place or not, to dominate the room… make that "tent" .. thing..

He considers growing pile of evidence, and swallows. He recalls Envy, the shape changer of the homunculi, and closes his eyes briefly. He stills his mind, attempting to reach out with his very soul to the core of the creature, to the philosopher's stone that should be there. He knows he should feel.. something…

Nope. Nothing. Not a thing.

He lowers his brows, and lets out a breath. Figures. He had to try, at least. He's seen that stupid prince pull stunts like this off, but.. well, they had years on him. Maybe the woman wearing Master's skin is Envy, or. Nah, more likely not. Besides, there's the case of Pinky. And come to think, there was another lookalike he met a few weeks ago, that Not-Sheska girl…

… but he had hoped he could somehow do that super cool sensing trick, especially after overpowering..

..Pride...?

Wait a shit. I? I over-powered Pride? When did that happen..? Ed thinks as he opens his eyes.

He lifts his head up and watches a slimly built man enter the tent. A tidy pair of dark shaded glasses hides his eyes, and balanced upon one shoulder is this huge round tray nearly as tall as he is. The thing is loaded with hand sized bowls of food that has Ed's mouth-watering from the delicious aromas. The dark blue cloth restraining the mop of short cropped dark hair sports the metal rectangle that Ed finds depressingly familiar.

He flits his gaze to the other masked guys in the tent.

If that woman is Not-Master, then what the shit am I doing, sitting here with some self-important hag? I don't want to know her.. hell, I can't even speak her language!

I have way better things to do..!

With that thought, Ed climbs to his feet. As he wobbles, blood rushing to his head, he covers his unsteadiness by calmly, deliberately, brushing the dust, (both what is there and the imaginary) , off his transmuted jacket with all the dignity he can muster.

He mentally calculates the number of knives about him, and …

A heartbeat later, he stumbles to catch his balance as a sudden dizzy spell dredges up some millions of equations in his brain. A good number of those spin about in lazy, half-hearted squiggles, and swim before his eyes. He presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, helpless to much of anything to hold the mess in.

He hears the dishes crash to the ground…

(There are three or four main groups of clays: kaolinite, montmorillonite-smectite, illite, and chlorite. Chlorites are not always considered a clay, sometimes being classified as a separate group within the phyllosilicates…)

… in a tremendous racket, and Pinky reaches the man's side just after his head bops to the ground. She checks him over with her hand..

(Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue. Bones come in a variety of shapes and have a complex internal and external structure, are lightweight yet strong and hard, and serve multiple functions. One of the types of tissue that makes up bone is the mineralized osseous tissue.)

… and raises her brows at the streaks of red dribbling beneath his nose.

(Hemoglobin contains a mass of iron in the center..)

A glance to an ear pulls the corners of her mouth down, as she spots red drips about the fleshy shell.

(Hemoglobin has a quaternary structure characteristic of many multi-subunit globular proteins. Most of the amino acids in hemoglobin form alpha helices, connected by short non-helical segments. Hydrogen bonds stabilize the helical sections inside this protein, causing attractions within the molecule, folding each polypeptide chain into a specific shape. Hemoglobin's quaternary structure comes from its four subunits in roughly a tetrahedral arrangement..)

Ed blinks his eyes shut. Hears yelling. He opens them again just as Pink.. Sakura!—Sakura is her name. He clings dearly to that scrap of information -She shoves both of her arms under the man and lifts him without difficulty, carrying him past the partition as if her arms are made of automail instead of warm flesh. She eases him onto the floor space there as Ed stumbles forward.

Instinctively, he reaches out a hand, and watches the man's chest rise and fall in slow steady pattern. He searches the clothes for dark wet spots, chunks of metal, or.. or.. something..! But there isn't a thing jutting from the man's flesh that is obvious.

In a way… the way the man just fell…

No. Not thinking of her. Not now. Not amongst these… these people.

Ed's skull pounds as he takes another step. Ed's brows lower as he shakes his head slightly to clear the lingering ghost images. The pounding in his head gets deepens, and there this ringing in his ears. Then his stomach begins a sickening lurch. He ignores the yelling completely, and jerks his arm free from someone's grasp—he doesn't bother to look as to whose.

…You're such a good son..

His stomach rewards him with another sickening lurch.

…Why couldn't you make me right..?

Rather than attempting to placate the organ with his palm, he stumbles past Sakura and the guy she's fiddling with, continuing on beyond the tent flaps to the outside.

He hears the crunch of footstep behind him. Someone follows him, of course, but he reaches the tree just in time regardless.

oooo

"Aoba..!"

".. he must have tripped a mental defense of some sort."

The ABNU move to restrain the stumbling boy as he goes, but the Hokage waves them all back with a hiss on her lips.

"Give him space and courtesy." She snarls.

She hears Shizune sigh, watches her former apprentice bend over and pick up the last dish the boy touched.

Sai crouches low by the tent entrance just past Sakura and wordlessly unrolls a scroll before his feet. A few hands signs later, a few ink creatures, she can't quite see which ones from where she lays, spring from the paper. The ABNU settle back, evidentially satisfied in spite of her wishes..

She lets out a breath and rubs the bridge of her nose with the thumb and index finger of one hand.

She replays in her mind the expressive emotions displayed on the boy's face. This… what was he called..? A mouthful that… stumbled over to the curtains, concern painted all over his face. That was quickly followed by horror? Pain…? Whatever was the case, it was certainly not Root like at all.

No. Root's pride depended upon expressing no emotion what so ever. At all times, not just while on duty.

An ink creature comes in, and Sai duly reports the boy vomits on the ground. She can hear his heaves quite well enough for herself. She can almost picture which tree he leans his hand onto.

"If it was a mental defense.. .A trap of some sort…" Sai continues.

"He would not necessarily be aware of it, and with a defense that strong…!" The Hokage let out a breath. " I am ordering no further attempts to get into his head with a jutsu. We must find another way to speak to him."

Shizune finishes her examination of the dish he chose to eat.

"This dish had the least amount of chakra enhancers, only one of the herbs."

"As I suspected. The junk food that he has been eating for the past few weeks did not have the special herbs in it. " Tsunade says, and glances over to Sakura. Her examination should be done by now, she reasons. "How is Aoba?"

"In a coma." Sakura responds, disgust coloring her voice. "There's not much that I can do."

"Not much anyone can do." Tsunade corrects. "He'll have to work it out himself, I'm afraid. That's the down side of mental jutsus like his."

Sakura's head bobs low, and the Hokage looks away. To Shizune she says quietly, " .. make sure not to add the chakra enhancers, and we shall see if I am correct."

"Hai."

"Time for plan b." She sighs, and settles herself back into her pillows. "Sakura, I need you to go to the library. Hopefully a teaching scroll survived that focuses on basic reading subjects.. Bring one back here and …"

Ooooo

The pounding in his skull pummels his brain to mush, and he knows his nose is wrinkled, curling his upper lip back in a snarl as he glares through his curtain of long bangs.

The fat merchant stands before the wagon, and waves his pudgy arms in a shooing motion. Ed stumbles towards the thing anyway, allowing his arms to droop from his shoulders as he takes each pain filled step. Tayooshi moves to block the door with his round belly, and though disgusted, Ed does his best to paw the man aside.

A kid's voice pierces his ear on his right, and he turns his gaze towards the offending sound. There are actually three kids, but that one. Brown eyes. A shock of brown hair. And a long ass blue scarf about the neck. So what. But the face, that's the one part that holds his attention.

It's so very close in structure…

Ed turns away from all the incessant screeching to rub a knuckle at his aching forehead. He figures his brain is playing tricks on him. Elicia. She could have been this kid's sister… More talking goes on, and the nonsense is just a lot of blather, but he gets the idea that Tayooshi is saying something like "shooo!" to the kids as well.

A hammy hand lands on his shoulders, and before he can shove it away, turns him about. He brings both of his hands up by his face, and glares emptily at what he gets pointed at. He squints against the pounding roar in his head, reaching inwardly for….

His brain is mush. He can't think of a thing.

He blinks stupidly as Sakura walks forward. Just behind her is a guy in white. Long dark hair pulled back in a pony -tail, and eyes so pale he looks to be blind. Only, he moves like he isn't. Tayooshi waves their way with one hand in a grand fukken gesture, and pushes against his spine with the other.

Ed stumbles forward from the wee bit of force, and frowns. He skews his brows as he glances back at the door, and the wagon which contains what has been his bed. The wood panel jiggles slightly, but there is a breeze…? Tayooshi pushes him once again, and he turns away to maintain his balance. Tayooshi steps back, and takes in a breath.

Ed glances towards the blind looking guy, and Sakura adds a dramatic nod of her head. She even throws in her own sweeping of an arm. He narrows his glare at them both. As inclined as he was to trust someone with Rose's face, which was a little less than a smidgeon, there was no way that Sakura was anything like Rose.

He shakes his head slowly, and staggers backwards away from them. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement. Someone dressed in gray moves on his other side, and he works out that it's Sigh-guy. He hears chains jingling and stiffens his leg muscles, ready for some hasty movements he would pretty much regret later. He already regrets the thumping his skull provides.

Sharp words exchange between Sigh-guy and Sakura, and the jingling muffles as Sakura pats the air with both of her hands. The guy in white folds his arms like he's bored.

Ed feels a massive thing wraps about his shoulders, and he moves without thinking. He grabs the thing with both hands, rolls his shoulders forward, and steps backward with his right all at the same time. He then yanks down, hard. The thing turns out to be a fat man's arm, and the rest of said fat man, still attached to the arm, follows over his head to bounce once in the dust.

Ed widens his eyes at Tayooshi, fat arms flaying and on the ground on his back like a turtle or something.

Ed automatically steps back into his fighting stance. Of course it would work better if his automail would hold his weight, but he manages an unsteady sort of hop step to keep his balance. Darting his gaze about, he finds all those surrounding him patting the air with their hands open. He eases his arms down, and Sakura lets out a slow breath.

Ed sways as Sakura stands a few feet away. She says something, and places both hands together and touches both to one of her cheeks. She then dramatically closes her eyes. He raises his brows.

A/N—Bwa-ha-ha! A midmonth update! Yeah, I couldn't wait. What's here is the fully baked stuff, the half-baked is still on my computer. I'm just having a lot of fun in the Narutoverse, and I have to share! Soooo many possibilities…. I hope it is an entertaining read, oh.

& Thanks for reading, and more to come soon. Hopefully in a week or two.

5/18/2013- Found some goobers! I neatened things up. Hope that makes it easier to read.