A/N: Wow guys. 55 chapters in, and still going strong! This one's dedicated to everyone who's poured their time and energy into making this my most popular fic out of all the other stories I've posted to the site. Here's to many more entries! :) Happy reading and as always, leave a review!

This is in honor of hitting the big 150 review mark. According to lilaclily00, I'm stuck with this story for a very, very, very long time. ;P

Enjoy!

Does anyone other than me think Equivalent Exchange is nothing more than an illusion for the desperate, foolish and stubborn who know deep down, the world is harsh and cruel and nothing goes according to plan but don't want to accept that no matter how hard a person works they're not going to get equal results.

No?

Well, me and Al learned the real world doesn't work that way. Now that I think about it, he seemed to have a more realistic view of the world than I did but I didn't want to listen. I didn't want to accept the fact the world wasn't perfect and inequality was never fully gonna go away no matter how hard I wished it would.

Ya might be wondering why I'm bringing this up book. I haven't talked about it yet, so now's a good time as any to do it.

You gotta understand something. After Mom died, Equivalent Exchange became our whole world. With Hohenheim gone we had nothing to fall back on. Even though Pinako and Winry were close by, they weren't going to replace what we lost. We became disillusioned with life. Well I did, for sure. I stopped believing in God. If He was good, then why didn't He save her when she became sick? Why didn't He let the old man receive any of our letters? We weren't ready for her to be taken from us so suddenly and we still aren't. I still miss her, especially on the anniversary of her funeral.

I remember shortly after we laid her to rest alchemy's most basic principle floated through my numbed brain as I stood staring at the graven tombstone bearing Mom's name her brithdate and death. 'Mankind cannot gain anything without getting something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost '

Now keep in mind, this rule was meant to be applied to controlled experiments in a lab or field research. Not something forbidden like trying to raise the dead. But in our grief, Al and I threw away our common sense along with alchemy's most basic tenement when we tried to play God.

I should've known better.

I know, I know. It still doesn't excuse what we did was wrong. Maybe that's why I wanted to kill that bastard Tucker when I found out what he'd done to Nina and her dog. I never liked it when someone else called me out on committing the ultimate sin. As much as I hated the guy, for a few moments in that freezing cold lab, the lines got blurred. However, unlike him, I was sorry for what I'd done. He wasn't. In fact if we hadn't stopped him when we did, the military would've whisked him to a secret location, fully fund his demonic research all in the name of 'scientific progress' then provided him with a steady stream of young test subjects and every animal you could think of.

Hah! Progress my ass. It would've meant more dead kids and broken families. Scar might've ridded the world of one scumbag, but there's other alchemists out there way more monstrous and opportunistic than Tucker. And that concerns me.

I dunno...I've been getting this strange feeling something big's coming down the pike and nobody's gonna be ready when it hits. But maybe that's the stress talking and it'll pass on its own. I hope so. I feel like I've soiled this page just mentioning Tucker's name. Ugh.

I'm glad he's dead. That's one evil bastard the world isn't gonna miss.