Sorry for the delay, I know I said this chappie was supposed to be put up a few days after the last one, but writers block - the unwanted house guest that somehow likes to make themselves at home in my head - decided to visit me. I have shooed him out though, and so I bring you this. I hope you like.


Hitsugaya stayed with the boys that afternoon and aided them with figuring out the finer points in being able to open the gate with minimal energy. The young white haired Taichou, once he was given a quick explanation on the understanding of Alchemy, was pretty useful in giving ideas. The guy liked to think outside the box, which Ed thought was useful, considering he never really liked boxes in the first place. All they did was create insubstantial reasons for keeping thought and ideas within confines and kept ideas from reaching their full potential.

By mid afternoon the three were talking amiably together until-

"HEEEEEEEELP!" Urahara's voice screeched loudly from across the shoten, and all three boys jumped. Hitsugaya quickly screwed the cap back on the jar and placed it quickly on the desk again. Once he was done Ed grabbed his arm and the three boys ran towards the sound of Urahara's pained shouts.

Ed rounded the corner into the common area and almost fell over.

"SURPRISE!" a large group of people shouted from the common area, making Ed's heart stop beating for what he was sure was at least three seconds.

"…The hell is this?" Ed asked breathlessly. In the common area there was Urahara with his ridiculous smile and the huge guy Tessai standing behind him with a platter heavily laden with food. An apologetic looking Uryuu stood next to a widely smiling Chad, and Rukia, and Orihime were smiling like idiots with what looked like a homemade sign that said 'happy birthday Edward' in sparkly rainbow colored letters and, of all things, cartoon bunnies surrounding his name. Ichigo was standing next to Renji, who had his arm loosely around the waist of the blonde woman he vaguely remembered as Matsumoto, and on the other side of the trio was the guy with the 69 tattoo and spiky hair.

"I probably should have warned you." Al said apologetically through a smile.

"It's my birthday?" Ed asked blankly. With all the work they had been doing it had slipped his mind. Had they actually been here for two weeks already? It didn't seem possible.

"We usually can't do surprise parties," Urahara said, "Too many of us together give off a lot of reiatsu. When we found out you couldn't sense it though…" Urahara shrugged.

"How did you even know the right day?" Ed asked.

"It's simple!" Orihime said brightly. "Al told Uryuu, then Uryuu let it slip one day at school so I found out—"

"I assure you, this was not my intention." Uryuu said while pushing his glasses up his nose.

"So I told Rukia," Orihime continued, as if Uryuu hadn't said a word. "And Rukia got really excited and decided to throw you a party."

"This was your idea?" Ed asked a pink faced Rukia.

"I just thought it would be nice." She said softly and blushed a bit deeper. She looked over at Urahara and gave him a dirty look. "It was his idea to make it a surprise."

"Everyone likes surprises!" Urahara exclaimed, gesturing widely with his hands. Uryuu shook his head and rolled his eyes while Renji huffed.

"Yeah, only if you're the one who's not being surprised." Renji muttered.

"Now, now, this is supposed to be fun!" Urahara chided, then pulled away from the group and towed Ed over to a seat at the large, low table in the centre of the room.

"We have cake and presents!" The blonde named Matsumoto said, then shooed Renji and Ichigo over and wheeled a lopsided cake with army green icing and the letters 'Happy birthday Edw' on it. He looked at the words with a single quirked brow.

"We uh… Ran out of icing." Matsumoto said when she caught Ed's look at the words. Ed almost laughed out loud but once the words were out of the blonde's mouth the atmosphere in the room changed so quickly Ed almost wondered if someone had opened a door to the outside, letting cold air through the room. The majority of the people in the room had taken on an apprehensive state.

"Wait, did you and Orihime make this cake?" Ichigo asked carefully while eyeing the dessert like it had suddenly become a live bomb that could go off at any minute.

"Of course we did!" Orihime clapped her hands and bounced over to Matsumoto, who also started to bounce up and down. "We had so much fun making it! There's sugar and flour in it-"

"And milk and red bean paste," Matsumoto chirruped happily.

"-and mashed up green stuff for the icing!" Orihime finished and the two girls hugged and laughed brightly together. Ichigo and Renji suddenly grabbed their noses and ran for the back of the shoten saying something about allergies while Uryuu and Chad shook their heads in unison.

"It happens every time." Chad laughed, and the two came over to sit with a shell shocked Ed. Hitsugaya and Al came to sit on the other side, and things started to calm down a little after that.

Matsumoto, Hisagi, Hitsugaya and Urahara eventually started chatting together about Seireitei. Uryuu and Chad helped Tessai to serve the meal, which turned out to be vegetable tempura and the most delicious soba Ed had ever tasted.

He was about to head over for thirds when Orihime started to serve the lopsided cake to everyone. Ed smiled and took the plate he was offered and cut a forkful and put it in his mouth, then regretted the motion immediately. By the looks of it no one else had partaken of the cake except Orihime, Matsumoto, and, strangely enough, Chad.

"You like this stuff?" Ed asked quietly while Orihime forced yet another piece on an unsuspecting victim, this time Urahara.

Chad nodded. "It's good." He replied, then shoveled another piece into his mouth. Uryuu and Ichigo – the latter having returned a few minutes after his and Renji's spontaneous allergy moment - shuddered.

"Dude, sometimes you really weird me out with the things you eat." Ichigo said.

"Oh Ichigo, you don't have a piece! Here let me serve you up." Orihime said, and pushed a large slice of cake into Ichigo's hands.

"Uh… Thanks." He replied with a sour expression.

"Don't you want to try it?" She asked. The look on her face was so hopeful and kind that Ichigo gave her a forced smile, and lifted a miniscule piece on his fork to his mouth. His face went a little pale but he chewed and swallowed.

"It's uh… Good?" He said carefully. Orihime smiled so widely Ed was worried her face might crack.

"See, it is good! I told you everyone would like it Rangiku!" The girl said and Matsumoto and Orihime started talking animatedly about food, and all the uses – of all things – of red bean paste.

"Does she usually make the cake?" Al asked as he gingerly prodded at the piece he was given with his fork.

"Orihime likes to cook." Rukia replied carefully, while sitting next to Ed, and pushed her piece off to the side, feigning fullness.

Uryuu sighed. "She also likes red bean paste, much to our chagrin."

Ed smiled as a thought came to him and looked over at Chad, who had finished his piece.

"You want mine?" Ed asked. Chad nodded and he quickly exchanged his slice of cake for Chad's empty plate with a sigh of relief.


With all the excitement Ed's head was starting to get dizzy and after a few hours he was finally able to get a moment to himself and slipped outside for a breath of much needed fresh, quiet air with his new jacket.

After the cake was served (and secretly disposed of) the gifts had been brought out. Ichigo had given him a cool looking black t-shirt with the words 'Heavy Metal' in large, iron grey letters across the front. Renji had marveled at it, before bugging Ichigo about the shirt he had given the redhead, something about a pineapple. Urahara had given him a brand new notebook. The pages were crisp and unused 'so you can make your own code' the inside page said in his scrawling letters. Uryuu, in a flash of excitement, had given both he and his brother a gift – new coats that could stave off the oncoming cold - while he went on and on about what kinds of stitching he used, and even went into detail about the thread count of the fabric. Ed's red coat was still useful, but with the weather changing as quickly as it was, the jacket did not come amiss.

What also did not come amiss was the fact the jacket bore a striking resemblance to the garb Uryuu had worn down to the training facility the day they had opened the gate for the failed experiment. They were both stark white, with blue piping and trim. His coat reached to his knees and on the back there was even a cross on it, similar to the back of the plush talking toy's head that Ed met once at Ichigo's place. Al's jacket, although not to his knees, was the exact same make, white and blue, with a cross on the back.

Ed smiled sadly as he thought over all the gifts he had received, and a tiny little ache worked its way through his chest. These people may be odd and strange, and when he had first met them he was cautious to say the least, and they definitely did some strange things. But all in all, they were good people, with even better hearts, willing to give and protect the things they loved and even willing to open their arms and homes to two orphaned kids who, in all actuality, fell from the sky to drop on their doorstep. There were no complaints, no scathing remarks about the situation either. It was just an honest and open familiarity that Ed had not felt in a good long while.

When Ed had come to this world he wasn't expecting to find a place that he could feel so comfortable in, and leaving this place, with all these new friends had that tiny ache growing and entering a much more dangerous place: his heart. There were few times in his life that he had ever felt truly at home, the last being when he was young, before the knowledge of what war truly was, before the knowledge of what death was and the hard lesson that had come the day of Winry's parents passing. Before their mother took that fateful trip to a place beyond where Ed and Al could follow. To find something so like the feeling of home, and yet so far from where he was originally from, was a little hard to digest, but there it was, wrapping its invisible welcoming fingers around him.

There was a part of him, a growing part that could see him living in this world, helping them with the war that they would need to fight. True, it would be painful to help in yet another war, see the death and the innocence lost in countless faces, the blood on his hands from more death, and possibly at his own hands- but he could help. He understood a great deal more about warfare than these kids did, and he could help them with that knowledge, and be there to guide them through the worst of it was something Ed found himself truly pondering.

Maybe, if he were to stay, he could save a child from losing that indefinable something that's lost too soon when gunfire surrounds their home, help a family escape the terror that he had learned at too young an age. Maybe…

"It's understandable you're out here." His voice said, and Ed turned to see Hitsugaya leaning against one of the support beams along the shoten porch.

"I seem to get that comment a lot. Am I that easy to read?" Ed sighed.

Hitsugaya shrugged, his ever present frown lifting just the tiniest bit. "I needed a break too."

There was a ringing silence between the two boys as each stared into each other's eyes, broken only by the laughter and muffled chatter of the people inside. Hitsugaya just looked at him, into him, it seemed and Ed was hit once again with the familiarity in them, that pang of unspoken knowledge and understanding the two seemed to have was there, staring with green-blue seriousness and Ed stared back, unable to stop looking. Ed still felt strange whenever they looked at each other, and going by Hitsugaya's face, it was the same for him too.

"So you felt it too then." Ed said quietly, finally voicing his inner thoughts now that the two were alone.

"How could I not?" Hitsugaya huffed, "There are simply too many similarities between you and I for me to ignore. For instance, you're a prodigy, as am I."

Right out in the open then. Ed could deal with that. "And you're a dog of the military." Ed replied back in the same tone. Hitsugaya frowned deeply.

"I wouldn't consider what I do to be so low."

"But it's what you are. Don't bother denying it." He had a feeling his first conversation alone with this guy would bring up some weird things, and he was right. Hitsugaya shook his head slowly from side to side.

"I think you have some preconceived ideas about what shinigami do."

"I I have an idea about how the program works." Ed snapped. He understood how the rules went when in a military role. He had learned it at a young enough age that it was almost ingrained in him now, even though he was far from that life, from that world. That this guy could pretend that taking orders and killing when he was told to was as simple as breathing, and to defend those things was ridiculous in Ed's mind.

Thinking about war always seemed to make him touchy.

"Yes I've heard you might… Major Edward Elric." Hitsugaya looked him over again and Ed stilled at his words. There was a long pause in which both boys scowled at each other.

"I don't go by that title anymore." He said quietly, breaking eye contact. The rising anger he had originally felt when Hitsugaya tried to defend himself disappeared as quickly as it showed up. He kicked a single pebble from off the porch so it went skidding across the yard.

"But you did."

"Well I made different choices from—" Ed choked his sentence off.

There was a pause.

"…From me?" Hitsugaya asked softly. The two boys held each others gazes again, bright gold against green-blue.

"…Yeah."

Ed was careful to keep his face a blank mask, but it was hard, looking into those eyes that seemed to know him, that he seemed to know. He had a sudden memory flash behind his eyes–

"What is this place? What's happened to me?" Ed cried as he looked to the hand Hoenheim held as he pulled him from the doorstep. It was the hand that once was metal, now flesh and bone and normal… but not his. "My face… My hand…"

Hoenheim gripped his wrist in a vice grip, running through streets that he had never seen before, filled with people, panic stricken and running just as quickly as they were, all of them wearing strange clothing he had never seen before. Above in the sky, large balloon-like monstrosities floated above, their grey colors tinting their ghastly shadows against the orange and charcoal clouded sky above.

He could hear the screams of children, see young mothers gripping their small hands just as tightly as his father held his, their voices calling out names and words he had never heard before, like 'air raid' and 'zeppelins'. They ran faster, around a corner, down and ally and along another street, this one filled with paper banners pasted to grimy brick walls saying 'Britain wants YOU!' in bright letters on paper that had once been pristine white, their shine now faded to a mottled yellow-grey.

"What city is this?" He asked in a shaky voice, barely able to contain the panic within him. But the answer never came from his father, another voice, so like his own from inside him-

"Who're you?" Ed choked on his own breath and looked disbelievingly to the hand his father still held.

A right arm made of flesh.

"…Who ARE you?" The voice said again, scared, panicked, small.

"Oh God… This isn't my own body…" He whispered harshly to himself as realization finally crashed with an almighty thump and skip of – his? - heart, and if it wasn't for his father pulling him along he would have dropped to his knees right then and there as his legs almost gave out on him.

The memory hit him harder than he would have thought, and Ed closed his eyes to hide away the pain that lanced through him with the remembering of it. Would it have been the same if the gate had opened up in Soul Society? Would he have been thrown into Hitsugaya's body? Heard his anguished cries from inside his head, all while Ed wore that white haori instead of him, Hitsugaya's zanpakuto slung across his back?

"What's wrong?" Hitsugaya asked, eyebrow quirked.

"N-nothing." Ed said, his voice sounded shaken and strained, and he ran a hand through his hair in order to push his bangs back from his face and the emotion from out of his eyes – using his metal hand, and strangely enough, the sight of it calmed him, if only for a moment.

"You're not all that good at lying."

"And you're not that good at taking a hint." Ed snapped.

Hitsugaya's eyes narrowed and seemed to think something over. Ed could see it the moment realization dawned. "This isn't the first time you've experienced this is it."

"Fuckin' prodigies." Ed grumbled. He was starting to gain a new appreciation for all those other people in his past who had said that exact phrase to him in that exact way. Because being smart was one thing, being a friggin' genius however, meant your secrets were laid bare any time you opened your mouth, it seemed. He had never experienced something like this and he was finding it more and more annoying each and every time it happened. And it seemed to be happening with Hitsugaya a lot.

"How many other worlds are out there?" Hitsugaya asked. The undertone of his question was easy to read: how many have you been to? How many others like us are there?

"Three that I've seen. My world, the one my father is in, and this one… Well four actually, if you want to count Soul Society – since the gate has opened there too."

"And Hueco Mundo makes it five." Hitsugaya nodded to himself.

"But the possibilities are endless." Ed said with a shake of his head.

"Endless… Do you truly think that?"

"If you asked me that question three weeks ago I might've disagreed. Now…" Ed shrugged.

"I see. And it's your home you want to get to…?" Hitsugaya asked. There was a strange sound in the back of his voice, one that Ed recognized.

"I'm not going fishing for other worlds damn it!" Ed shot back and clenched one of his fists. The tenuous connection he and the guy had was starting to feel more fragile, as if one wrong comment could fray the thin wire of understanding between the two. If Hitsugaya understood him as well as Ed thought he did, his assumptions were way off. True, it would be an interesting idea to travel from world to world, see the differences between each, maybe even create a study, and it was more than once that the idea had snuck itself into the quieter places of his mind, but that would only be possible if all the risk and danger was removed from the equation, something that was absolutely not possible. To travel was to take his own life in his mismatched hands, into the GATE's hands, and that was much too high a risk to take.

Hitsugaya pushed off the support beam and dipped his head and pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. "I never said that you would." He said softly, and Ed almost smiled at the undertone of apology.

"I know that tone Hitsugaya." Ed said with a chuckle.

"You think you know me so well?" Hitsugaya asked with a small quirk of his lips.

"Yeah. I do. Like you said, the similarities between you and me are too hard to ignore. "

"You mean you and I."

Ed huffed. "You're gonna lecture me on grammar now?"

"It seems you need it." Hitsugaya sniffed and looked disdainfully over his shoulder into the yard.

"Whatever."

"Hey where'd shorty go?" Renji called from inside. Both boys on the porch tensed.

"Don't call me short!" They yelled in unison at the door, then froze.

Then paused. Then laughed ruefully together.

"Wanna help me kick Renji's ass?" Ed asked.

Hitsugaya's mischievous smile was more than answer enough.


This was Envy's ticket to the boys and home.

He didn't think he would be able to find the boys hiding so out in the open like they were, maybe they just weren't expecting him to find them. Well, no matter, the fact was, he found them. Envy allowed himself a smirk and climbed through the little window and into the waiting darkness beyond.

It had taken him more than a few days to finally find the place, and the only reason why it was uncovered is because one of them used alchemy not far from where he was searching for them. Like usual, both boys were nowhere to be seen, but it was ok, the Alchemic reaction made near a construction site earlier led him to a building that had the stink of Alchemy all through it, permeating the very ground and walls, making his head buzz and the tiny hairs on his arms rise uncomfortably.

The feeling of it was starting to grate on his nerves, making his arms itch and the sore spot on the side of his head from that fucking arrow a few weeks ago throb painfully. Honestly it was starting to become a twofold reason to find them, first and foremost, for Hoenheim, but also so he could tie their hands up and make sure they didn't do anymore of those annoying Alchemic reactions.

The room he had climbed into was dark, and using his sixth sense he was able to deduce that no one was here, at least for the time being. He searched for the light switch, stumbling around in the dark and cursing under his breath when he tripped over something hard and vaguely waist height. But he eventually found the light switch, and once illuminated he found he was in a bedroom, neat and tidy and small, with a single bed, a desk with the chair he had acquainted his knee with while stumbling in the dark, a bookshelf holding a vast amount of books and picture frames, a closet with one door open where pristinely pressed clothes hung perfectly on wire hangers, and blank, white walls.

Envy paused, frowning. This didn't look like the room where the Elric brats were staying, at least not in this room. For one, there was only one bed. Even if one of them was an overgrown tin can he still would need to sleep. There was no palette on the floor either, which led him to the next possibility…

"The other room…" Envy murmured quietly, and opened the door to the darkened room beyond. The light switch in this room was much easier to find, but the results were much more interesting.

It was a small living area, just as neat and tidy as the last one. There was a long grey couch off to the left, light blue floor pillows strewn about with little white crosses patterned on them, and a small box on a stand with a mirror-like surface with a dark, low coffee table between the box and the couch. He had seen a few of those boxes in shop windows with moving pictures on them before; he remembered the sign saying something like Hi Def TV or something. Why anyone would want to be highly deaf he had no idea, and decided to keep away from the strange technology.

Beyond that there was a tiny kitchen with a tiny sink that would probably only hold five dishes at a time, a gas run stove that was polished to gleaming, a quaint white fridge with a calendar and bills attached to it with magnets and across from that a little table that looked as if it could seat four, but that wasn't what caught his absolute attention. It was the contents on top of the table.

Thin lips turned up in a cold smile. This was definitely the home of an alchemist.

There was a small bag of sand, already opened. A few pieces of wood stacked neatly alongside it, two large measuring cups that he assumed held some kind of liquid at some point in the recent past, a few chunks of unrefined metal of some sort and a few little rocks as well. There was also a notebook, and once Envy fingered that aside there was a small, neat stack of papers under it with different alchemy circles – simple ones, Envy noticed – and beside all of that, an array of little things that had been created. What he took the most interest in though, was the chessboard.

It wasn't overly large or fancy, but the characters were very interesting to look at. Only half of the pieces had been created, but the white side was done up in white and blue, the king had a cape and all of the pawns (which at the moment, consisted of five) all had little bows drawn, as if they were about to shoot the other side down at any given moment. The black side all wore robes, black overtop of white, and all the pawns on that side held drawn swords. Envy stood for a time just staring at one of the black pawns, sure that he had seen such an outfit before, but still unable to place it. He eventually picked up one of the black pieces, one of the better made ones to get a closer look.

He knew immediately that this was not the Elric boys work. A new alchemist. How interesting. So did that mean the Alchemy he had been following was this Alchemists trail? No, he decided, this energy was new, it felt different to all the others, much less refined, and although there was that irritating buzz Alchemy always seemed to embody, there was a different feel to the energy that was put into the change; it was… almost an otherworldly feeling. Like Alchemy shouldn't even be done by them…

He placed the black pawn back where he found it, and traced a single finger along the side of the white king. "And who might you be?" He asked quietly to the silence, hoping, but not really expecting an answer. He lifted his hand away from the toy and turned to take in the living room again. There had to be some kind of clue here as to who this new Alchemist was. The best bet was pictures, if the person who lived here were in enough of them it should be easy to place, if they were egotistic and self centered, all the better – those types usually had a wall of themselves plastered somewhere with all their accomplishments.

Unfortunately the Mr/Mrs. New Alchemist was not as egocentric as Envy had hoped. To his dismay, they had very few pictures with only one person in them, and of the four single person shots, they were all different. Almost all of the other images about the house usually had the same four people in them and the majority of them were shots of teens. After finding the fourth picture frame with the same problem he sighed and pulled the backing off the frame – this one a picture of two girls, a redhead and a black haired girl with huge smiles while flashing peace signs at the camera – and hoped that maybe Mr/Mrs New Alchemist would also be meticulous enough to write names on the back. There was a date - which Envy shook his head at. Surely that had to be the wrong date! - But he could find no names. He placed the picture back on the shelf; not bothering to replace the backing on the frame again, then stood in the center of the small living space, and took in his surroundings a little more carefully.

There were many times Envy had to pretend to be another person, and after multiple lifetimes of switching faces it became almost a second nature to glean what he could from what was around him, picking up nuances of personality, vices of soul, the true face of a person, all from looking around a room. Sometimes, if the person was transparent enough, all it would take is a once over with Envy's eyes. He scanned the rooms again, taking a closer look this time around. It was neat and tidy, and no surface even had dust on it. An adult maybe? It was possible, but the pictures strewn about the little apartment had mostly teens in them, so, as deductions went, he was more than likely looking at a teen's home. Girls usually liked to keep up appearances like this. Did that mean he found the orange haired girl? Or possibly the black haired one? He slipped to the bedroom and took a peek in the already open closet. One look there told him what he needed to know. No dresses, no skirts, and no random sparkly, skimpy, spaghetti-strapped abominations that he had been stuck wearing a time or two when he had to keep up female appearances.

One item caught his eye and he pulled the item out. A dark blue shirt that looked strikingly like- He ran back to the living room, quickly scooped up a picture frame, the image held a huge looking ishvalan and a skinny kid with glasses, and the skinny kid was wearing the exact shirt Envy held in his hands.

"Jackpot."

A key noisily sliding into the lock made Envy's head snap up, then he scrambled to place the frame back on the bookshelf in the living room and flick off the lights in record time. He ended up hiding in the bedroom, leaning against the wall so he could look through the crack in the door he stood beside. How the hell this kid managed to slip past his new little power he was unsure of yet, and watched closely as the young man entered the room. He was the exact one he was hoping for, lean, black hair, glasses, crisp shirt even at this time of night. No wonder the entire apartment was spotless; it was the nerd who lived here.

Mr. New Alchemist took off his jacket and placed it on a hook near the door and hung his keys alongside it, then flicked on the lights and started walking towards the kitchen. He stopped in the threshold between kitchen and living room, a scant five paces, Envy noticed, and tensed as his eye landed on something on the coffee table. It was the picture frame backing that Envy had forgotten to attach back to the picture that lived on the bookshelf across the room, and sure enough, the kid's eyes darted to the exact picture it had come from. "Shit. Change of plans." He whispered to himself as he watched Mr. New Alchemist's fists bunch and look suspiciously at the windows that were still locked. The kid was getting closer to the bedroom, and the only way Envy could see himself getting out of this one with the guy's help, was to do what came natural. He held in his mind's eye the person he wanted to look like, and let the shiver of energy wash over his entire body, changing his frame from dark, long hair and purple eyes to something that might help his cause just a little bit more.

Mr. New Alchemist did not react how he thought he would. His head snapped to the bedroom as if he had actually sensed the change, his thin mouth set itself into a grim line and his arm rose up to create a bow – a blue glowing bow – and Envy suddenly remembered exactly who this little shit was and why the costumes on the black pawns looked so frigging familiar. It was him that shot him in the face and the black costumes were worn by those assholes that tried to chase him down just after he had gotten here.

He remembered it with a shiver, because he had never felt quite the same after landing here. His body felt more wrong than he had ever experienced… and yet it felt right in a deeper, darker way that Envy had never felt before. The black body he instinctually changed to while travelling through what must have been the gate was sleek and strong, the power he held in each of his extremities was amazing, he was able to destroy even an entire building, just with a single swipe of his arms. It was singlehandedly the most fearful and glorious moment he had ever experienced. Fearful because of how he looked, glorious for how he felt. He could still feel the power surging under his fingers, coursing through him. It would only take a minute flex of muscle to show that power again. He smiled maliciously into the darkness.

He thought all of this in a matter of seconds, and waited for Mr. New Alchemist to make the first move.

"What do you want with me hollow?" Mr. New Alchemist asked as he pulled an arrow back and aimed it exactly where Envy was standing, as if the kid could see right through the wall and to exactly where he was standing. Envy sobered his smile and tried to look as 'in character' as possible, then pushed the door open and stepped through.

Lust had teased him once or twice about being a drama queen when he needed to be, and perhaps it was true, he thought with an inward chuckle as he watched the young man. His face was the perfect image of shock the moment he light hit Envy's new face. Pale skin paled even further so that he was completely white as a sheet, the hand holding back the shimmering arrow shook just slightly for a moment.

"You know you really don't need to be pointing that at me, do you my dear boy?" He said softly in a good natured voice that creaked just a little with age as he pushed his glasses up his nose and gave a kind, old smile.

"You… You can't be…" Mr. New Alchemist said in a dazed, shaking voice. The kid honestly looked like he was about to fall apart in some internal way, and Envy's inward chuckle turned into an all out laugh of glee and mentally patted himself on the back for picking a good face.

The bedside pictures were always the best ones to imitate.

Now all he needed was the kid's name, and everything would go much easier.

"And why not?" Envy said in the aged, kind voice, and raised his eyebrows in a slight question. Mr. New Alchemist's arrow was starting to dissolve, probably because of lack of focus.

"Because…. Sensei…. You're supposed to be dead."

~TBC~


A/N: I know, totally evil with the cliffhangers, but I just can't help myself, especially here.

Also, there is a shirt that Renji wears every once in a while that says pineapple on it, supposedly it was a gift that was given to him by Ichigo, and the first time I saw it I laughed, so I had to add it in here.

PS

I have a picture that I drew from this chappie, it's a picture that Tessai took of all of them... At least I think so. If you would like to take a look you totally can, the pic is here:

onlydani. deviantart. com /#/d2ztk8h

Just remember to remove the spaces!