Yeah, update! Please review, and if you have critisim, please tell my what I need to work on! Also... *takes breath* THE FOX SQUIRREL (SCIURUS NIGER) CAN COMMONLY POSESS A BROWN-YELLOW COAT OF FUR!


At first, the only thing Ed was vaguely aware of the faint sounds of some high pitched voice chattering behind him. He was lying on something uncomfortable, cold and a dusty as well. Not to mention that his wrists hurt. He tilted his head a little to the right. He winced. God, why did that action hurt like that? He then tried to lift his head. Fuck, it hurt like hell, but he could do it. He completed the action before expending a bit more of his willpower to look around. The first word he thought of was bright mauve. He hadn't thought that was actually possible. He remembered the rooms he had explored... How long ago was it? He had no idea. That wasn't good. His wrists were chained to something, he finally realized,so he couldn't get up or, from the distance apart they were, use alchemy. On the floor, it's top about a foot higher than the top of his head, was a box. It was covered in a sheet. The colouring was like if a lime and a rare species of biolumenecient moss had a child, and then that child was dunked in something... Glowey? Ed wasn't thinking very clearly. A burst of sudden nausea was realized soon after. Ed fell to the ground, clutching his stomach. So much hurt...

He started hyperventilating. Or maybe this was normal? He didn't really think so. He giggled a bit at how worked up he was getting. That didn't help though. He was practically gasping for breath now. He thought he could remember being shot by something pointy. Maybe it was a tranquilizer. Maybe it wasn't adjusted to his weight and he had overdosed on it. Maybe... Or he could be sick. He had never really been this sick though. Winry had once, other people had, but never him or Al. That's kinda... Cool. He pieced together. How were thinking stuttering? Wait, that wasn't right! Were thinking stuttering? No, that was completly wrong! Objects started blurring together. He retched a bit. Some acid had come up, but Ed couldn't see it through the swirling dance the world had decided to perform for him. He did numbly feel it though. So that's sorta what it's like for Al. He managed to think, before drugs forced him back to sleep in a small puddle of his own bile.

When Ed awoke again, his face was damp, like he had just washed it. There was the familiar, comforting smell of chalk in the air, and he would have almost felt safe if there weren't the scents of fur from a few types of animals in the air along with the disquieting, all too familiar and recognizable metallic tang of blood that he had come to learn. The nausea and bile weren't there anymore, thank god, but his neck, he learned after looking up, was still just as intent on giving him hell as before.

On the subject of looking up, he sorta wished he hadn't. Some form of malicious, over saturated rainbow was apparently wrapping itself around a woman's body in an attempt to strangle her. Ed opted for staring at the ground. He bent his left arm in the most unnatural way his limb could manage as well to give an impression of weakness. After all, if an enemy underestimates you, you'll have all the more chances to kick their ass. The trick seemed to work with the woman. The moment he gasped out a weak " Wha... Where am I?", she whirled around on the heel of one of her lava hued stilettos. He didn't quite expect the answer he got to the "question". "Finally! I was getting bored." She went over to him, her heels clicking as she walked. "I took off your automail arm and leg you had." She told him as she leaned over him, her oversized blond pigtails irratating his face and making him blink. "They would've just made things more complicated then they need to be." Ed lay confused for a second. Then his eyes widen. The chalk. The covered box. The removal of more complicated elements. There was a transmutation in store for him, and from the smells of fur and blood, he could make an educated guess on what kind of transmutation it was.

When he looked down at the ground, the tiny section of transmutation circle he could see was familiar, and though he didn't recognize it exactly, he knew why. It was the circle he had seen in the Tucker household for making chimera. He recognized elements of it from the circle he had come to know so well from nightmares. His face was starting to get hot, a telltale warning of tears. "Now, before we start," He had to start thinking of something else. Like how in god's name he was going to stop this from happening. "There's someone you should meet." With mounting horror, (The woman turned around again) he realized that there was nothing he could do.(She began walking towards the box, the noise from her heels echoing in the small space.) With his arm and leg gone, ( Click, click) he was helpless to do anything. (Click, click). He felt sick with his own inability to help anyone. (Click.)

The sound of the woman's clicking stopped. Silence, for a few precious seconds, reigned, before being dethroned by the sound of heels once again clicking and long rusted wheels screeching. Underneath the scraping cacophony of metal, Ed could barely make out a squeaking noise. It could be an animal, a rodent maybe, panicking, or just the groaning of metal. The box was abruptly stopped half a foot away from his face to one last brief movememt of the symphony of metallic scrapings. When the echos died away, he was left with squeaking. There was no mistaking it now, just as there was no mistaking the pit that had just opened up in his stomach. He... He was hyperventilating again. "Don't be so worried about it." The woman told him as she unlocked a little door on the box Ed hadn't noticed before. "You'll see, it'll be fun!" Fun? How would this be fun in any way? He was about to be turned into a whatever-boy! The woman grabbed something. "Now, meet your new friend," She held up something small, carmel yellow and fluffy "Tedd!"

A squirrel boy. Ed thought with mounting horror. I'm going to be a fucking squirrel boy


IN A NEARBY CELL BLOCK. NO, NOT THAT CELL BLOCK. ANOTHER ONE.

Winry slowly half opened her eyes before deeply yawning. She must have gone on the train, judging by how sore she was. She tried to strech her legs. She couldn't. In an instant, her eyes snapped from tired squinting to full alertness. She was tied to a metal chair in a room who's hues had forsaken their right to call themselves blue. The chair was bolted to a wall near a door, and the wall was... Well, a wall, so she wasn't getting the chair off it. She'd say that the chair was a steel iron alloid, which was durable enough to be used in interior plating in automail, meaning that if she saw a blowtorch lying on the floor, she could probably get free. Oh, no blowtorch? How surprising. There went her grand, brilliant escape plan.

How did she get here? She had gone on a walk with Shao May in the forest, not doing anything dangerous. She hadn't seen anything that could contain this pathetic attempt at a room.

"Wha... Where am I?" Winry's breath caught in her throat. Was that Ed talking from behind the door? Really, there was no mistaking his voice, but she didn't want to risk too much of her composure if it was someone else. It might have been. That could happen. Maybe, just this once, he could not be in some sort of horrible danger... Oh, who was she kidding. It was certain, beyond doubt, that by some horrible twist of fate, the boy she was in love with had also been sedated and was in the room behind and to the right of her.

A familiar, higher voice answered Ed. "Finally! I was getting bored." Why did she recognize her voice? She'd never heard before. Wait, that wasn't entirely true. She could remember the voice saying " Aren't you just the cutest little panda? Who's a widdle cutie? You - OW! Come back here! You aren't supposed to be running!". Winry could guess why the woman would have said that. She felt relieved that Shao May had escaped this place. Whatever this place was. The woman started talking again. "I took off you the automail arm and leg you had." What?! This woman dared besmirch her beautiful babies? She would pay for this insult to her craftsmanship, preferably in cens or blood. "They'd just make things more complicated than they need to be." A thrill ran up Winry's spine. What would Ed's automail make more complicated? Anger had been pushed out of the way by terror, and now that was the case, Winry found that she preferred anger. "Now, before we start," Start what? A..A transmutation? No, that was just paranoia talking. Why would it be that? "There's someone you should meet." Why would she have thought have that even? There was no corralation between them, so-There was. There was something. On the edges of her memory, Winry remembered.


Winry watched as Ed carefully removed the leaves from twigs before putting them in a transmutation circle. The pair couldn't have been anymore than 7. "Ed, why are you snapping the leaves off the sticks?" She had asked. And Ed had answered "I don't want 'em to make the transmutation all weird." Then Winry had said "Oh. Can I help?". And Ed, ever the gentleman, had told her "Sure." And so they picked the leaves off of the small pieces of wood. Ed had made a little bird for Winry. They must have been in that forest for hours before Al found them and started to drag Ed away by the hand. Ed and Winry had cried as one "Stop it Al!" Al had said sorry. And then, by way of explaination, he had said " Stew." "Stew?" Ed repeated. "Stew!" Al had replied. By the time the three were out of the forest, they had taken up the chant of "Stew! Stew! Stew! Stew!" Pinako had looked to be on the very edges of her resistence to laughing, while Trisha had looked bemused at first before adding her voice to the cries of stew, leading her fellow Champions of Stew to their prize.


Winry blinked away the tears that had begun to form in her eyes. They always did when she thought of Ed and Al's mom. She hadn't meant to remember that much, but she knew that she had remembered the connection. But it could be anything. One clue did not a certainty make. And she hadn't even tried to think up other options, though she had a feeling that anything she could come up with wouldn't be any better. She listened closely to the other room. Click, click, click. What was that sound? The noise stopped for a moment, before taking up a different cry. SCREEEEEECH, SCREEEEECH. The noise pierced the door, along with Winry's skull, for just long enough for her to pray for Ed's poor, unsuspecting eardrums before coming to a stop. It took a few more seconds for her own poor, unsuspecting eardrums to stop ringing. The moment it stopped, she heard a soft noise. Squeak. What was going on inside that room? She decided to risk calling out. "Ed?" No response. "Don't be so worried about it. You'll see, it'll be fun!" She called again. "Ed!" Even if she could be heard from this side of the door, she was cut off by "Now meet your new friend." She opened her mouth to call out another time."Tedd!"

Before Winry could process what she heard, more was added to it. "He has yellow fur, so he'll be a perfect match for you. And, in case you didn't notice, he's just the fluffiest little thing!" Then she had to process it. "NO!" She knew what was going to happen. She knew there was no way to stop it. Still she tried. As fast as she could, she aimed a kick at the door. She didn't know why she thought it could help, but she futily kept at it. She must have kicked it 50 times before her foot hurt too much to continue and she just listened. Ed was talking again. A brief sentence escaped, the firmness within it a miracle for how terrified he must be. "Stay the fuck away from me, you oversaturated god-complexing bitch!" Despite her worry, she cracked a small smile in the brief silence. Ed had always had a gift for making her feel better. (He would have gotten hit with her wrench a lot more if he hadn't.) The woman regained her bearings enough to angrily stammer for a few seconds "Bu... How are you coherent enough to... That's mean!" "Are you serious? That's mean? That's the best you can do? Honestly, that's pathe-" "SHUT UP!" Winry heard something slam against stone as she was blinded by light, though she called out to Ed all the more desperately. Then the horrible sounds of an animal crying out in pain. Then the soft cries, the quiet sounds of pain that she recognized from the surgeries. They were more painful then the animal's. Then, a brief sound she thought she would never hear.

The shortest yell of pain had escaped Ed's lips. And she could have gone an eternity without hearing it. She should have. In another moment, everything stopped. A doorknob creaked, with a murmer of "I could of sworn I heard something from over here." The door opened. A woman clothed in much too bright clothes came through. "Oh." A second passed as Winry looked around the woman into the room behind her. Ed was covered in fur "What did you do to Ed!" The woman stared at her like a deer caught in the headlights for another five seconds. Swit. Something sharp caught in Winry's arm. She tried to move her hand, but it was strapped to the chair, and everything was so heavy. Surely the chair hadn't been quite this soft before...


His head was resting in fur. Or at least he assumed it was fur, because that idea made a strange sort of sense based on the situation he remembered being in. A transmutation circle. The woman. The squirrel. The fucking squirrel. Who'd have guessed that a squirrel would be an essential part in the latest chapter of the slowly burning book that was his life? And Mom. He could have sworn he had heard Mom's voice calling his name throughout the whole process, beginning with her crying "No" when the woman talked about Tedd. He Ed began to shake, even in the warmth of the fur. He had thought that he was gonna die when he heard Mom. For the third time that day, Ed lifted his head.

For a second, he convinced himself that the caramel tail and black claws were detached completely from him. The second passed. He kept looking down. "Fuck." "Fullmetal, don't use that language. How many times do I have to tell you?" Ed gave himself a few seconds to do a double take before whirling around to see Roy Mustang, with... With dog ears. He blinked. Then he asked "Do you have any more of an idea of what's going on here than I do?" Roy cracked a smile, a smile that was somehow more genuine than his usual smirk. "Depends on how much of an idea you have. If expirence is anything to go on, you'll probably fall a little short." The colonel hadn't realized what he said until it was too late.