"Oh, my God!" Winry gasped. "Ed, what happened to Kirina? What happened to you?"

Ed shoved passed Winry and went inside the house. "There's no time. I'll explain later. Al, could you carry her."

"Ed, what happened to your hand?" Winry asked, grasping the metal stump.

"I told you that I'd tell you later. Al, quit looking at me and get her upstairs."

"Yes, brother."

Al took Kirina upstairs and Pinako followed. Winry grabbed Ed and dragged him into the workshop.

"Okay. Talk. Now!"

"Um, could you fix my hand first?"

"Fine. But talk while I'm working. And don't skip a single detail."

Ed sat down on a chair and Winry took down a tool chest. She took a seat next to Ed and started examining his arm.

"We were talking when this person named Anger showed up," Ed began.

"Anger?" Winry asked, bending Ed's arm this way and that.

"Yeah. She came and started saying stuff. She said that Kirina's real name was Kimiya."

"Kimiya? That's a Greek word."

Ed looked up at Winry. "What?"

"Kimiya is an old Greek word that means chemistry."

"How'd you know that?"

Winry frowned and twisted the wrench to tighten a screw. "Never mind how I know. Keep talking."

"Anyway, I get the feeling that Anger personally knew Kirina. She knew about her tears."

Winry stood up and walked over to a table. "Tears?"

"Kirina's tears are red. Anger also said that it was dangerous for Kirina to cry. What I don't get was the thing she said to me. Anger asked me if I had touched Kirina's tears and when I said no she looked very relieved. She also mentioned that people tried to kill Kirina in the past and if it weren't for Dr. Marcoh, she wouldn't even be alive."

"How strange."

"Well, at least that bit explains her laceration scars. There was one more thing I didn't understand. Anger asked Kirina if she'd known of a song called 'Kesenai Tsumi'. When she mentioned it, I think Kirina lost it."

Ed heard someone sniffing. He looked up and saw Winry's shoulders were shaking.

"Winry, what's wrong?"

Winry started sobbing and quickly his her face in her hands.

"What's going on?" Ed demanded.

"Edward. . ." Winry broke off her sentence and sat down. Finally, when she could speak coherently, Winry told Ed what she had seen a few days ago. The day that they arrived in Risembool.

"Edward, she shouldn't even be alive. It defies all logic, but Kirina's entire spine is made of metal. Even with surgery, something like that isn't even possible."

Ed's body grew cold. "What are you saying?" he whispered. "Are you telling me she's not a human being?"

"No," Winry snapped, rubbing her eyes. "Let me finish. Kirina doesn't have a spine. It was ripped out. I could see the scars in the back of her neck. Scratched into the metal was the word 'kimiya' in Greek letters. Beneath it was the translation."

Breathing hard, Ed sat back down on the chair. He was chilled to the bone at the news. "Her spine . . . had been ripped out?"

The door swung open and Al burst into the room.

"Brother, Kirina's asking for you," he said. "She's really sick."

Ed stood up. "What? What the hell are you talking about?"

"Pinako said that whatever she got hit with was either rusty or full of a powerful poison. Her wound is infected and she has a high fever."

Ed ran up the stairs and burst into one of the spare bedrooms. Pinako looked up at him and shook her head.

"She might not make it," she said quietly.

"No," Ed whispered. "Kirina."

Kirina was breathing hard and her face was sweaty. There were two bright red spot high up on her cheeks, but the rest of her face was pale like the white walls in the room.

"Ed . . ."

Ed took Kirina's hand. "I'm right here. Don't leave me now, Kirina."

"I'm . . . sorry. Please, Ed . . . I'm sorry . . ."

"It's okay. Don't worry about it. It was an accident."

Winry and Al walked in the room. Winry took one look at Kirina and turned away. It was too much like when Ed had had a fever. Even he had almost not made it.

Kirina said two more words before drifting off to sleep.

"Kesenai . . . tsumi . . ."

The limp hand fell out of Ed's grasp.

Hello and how do you do? Anyway, I felt it to be my duty to explain about the human spinal cord to avoid confusion. The spine is made up of several tiny bones stacked together. However, Kirina's spine is made of metal. The reason Winry said that even with surgery, something like that isn't possible because for a spine to be completely made out of metal and be surgically added to one's body would probably damage the nerves that connect to the brain.

I don't know if most of it is true or not (I'm no doctor.), but some people do have metal rods in their backs. The only difference between Kirina and those people is that they never had their spines ripped out (Well, not as far as I know.)