so there are a couple of easter eggs in here. see if you can find them!

Nina looked at Edward's stomach as he ate a bowl of ice cream on the couch. He noticed she was staring at him and turned his head at her. She smiled.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked.

He shrugged and made a noise of nonchalance. Nina made a face and crawled closer to her father.

"Daddy, do you hate your tummy?"

"Uh huh." He answered without taking a beat.

"But I was in there too… did you hate me?" Edward shook his head no. "Then how come you hate it?"

Edward grabbed his notebook beside him and wrote on it.

They took me when I was little and did things to me. I didn't know it was not good. This time I know it's not good and they hurt you in the process.

Nina read it and pointed at 'process'. "What's that word?"

Edward spelled it out for her and she sounded it out.

"Prah…kess?"

Sometimes Cs make S sounds.

"Prah-sess." He nodded. "What's that?"

For here it means they hurt you while they were trying to do stuff to me.

"Oh… but it didn't mean it, Daddy." Edward looked at her. "It didn't mean to grow, right?"

Edward thought about it for a moment and smiled at his very intuitive daughter. I'm so glad she ended up being so smart!

I guess you're right.

Nina grinned. "So are you still gonna hate it?"

Edward shrugged, truly not knowing how he was going to react to it. So far it looked like it was only one baby this time, not multiples. He was almost done with the pregnancy as well, being in his last trimester. He hoped that he wouldn't have to go through the same ordeal as before, being by himself.

There was a knock at the door and Edward put the ice cream bowl on the counter to go to the door. He looked in the peephole and saw what looked like the mailman. He opened the door and the person looked up. Edward instantly felt that something was wrong and tried to slam the door. The person grabbed the door and stopped it with his feet. Edward walked backwards, yelling for Nina to come with him in his broken English. She rushed to his side as the man took off his hat and looked down at him.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't Edward. I thought I'd find you here." The man said with a large smile and a shining single gold tooth.

Edward tried to keep Nina behind him and protect his belly at the same time. How do these weirdo people keep finding me?! he yelled in his head. The man started to take off his gloves.

"You most likely don't remember me. You were usually drugged most of the time but don't think I've forgotten you." He said, twirling his finger at him. "You little breeding thing, you. Looks like Will and Solaris actually accomplished something. It only took them what? Three years?" Edward just stared. "They were amateurs. Now that you're quite ripe for the picking, I want to see if my experiment works on you."

"No." Edward growled.

"You've become quite feisty. But let's not get into the logistics of everything. Come with me and I'll leave your little girl out of this."

"NO!"

The man nodded and then reached into his shirt, pulling out a gun. He pointed the gun at Nina and smiled.

"Now will you come with me? I don't mean to brag, but I'm an excellent marksman."

Nina shivered against her father's leg as Edward shivered too. He had to protect Nina… He started to walk forward but Nina grabbed his leg.

"Daddy, no…" she whispered.

Edward put his hand on her head to comfort her as he stepped away from her grip.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why do I want you?" Edward nodded. "My dear boy, you don't realize what you are, do you? You're the missing link, the bridge that closes the gap… You don't realize what else he did to you, do you?" Edward shook his head at the other man laughed. "Well that's okay. I only really want to use you for my own serums' purposes. You're just the perfect guinea pig! Now come along."

Edward walked with him as Nina stood there in confusion and fear. Before the door closed, Edward gave her the signal to use the phone and closed the door.

Maes was very confused as he looked at the number of cases that were way too similar on his desk.

"You seeing what I'm seeing?" the other officer asked.

"You mean the same type of disappearance? Yeah. What's this got to do with me?"

"First of all, your boy Edward is in there. Second of all, we found one other boy and he was in the same type of condition that Edward was in, minus the pregnant part. But I think that they were trying to do the same thing. He had bruises all over his body and looked like a junkie rather than a kid." He grabbed the folder and opened it up to look for pictures. "See?"

Maes took the picture and looked at the bruises and scratches and pinprick makes all over his torso and arms. He frowned at that when his phone rang.

"Officer Hughes speaking."

"Mr. Maes?"

"Nina? What is it, kid?"

"A… a… a bad man came and took Daddy."

Maes's eyes widened. "What?"

"A man came in and told Daddy if he didn't come he would hurt me. He was gonna do something to him."

Maes pinched the bridge of his nose. "Your father is like a walking victim, you know that, kid?"

"Please save my daddy!"

"Don't worry, Nina. I won't let him get away from me again. You stay in the house and don't you answer the door for anyone, alright? I'm going to be coming there shortly."

"Okay."

She hung up and Maes leaned over, hitting his head against the desk.

"You alright?"

"Jean, how do you keep a kid from getting kidnapped every time you turn around?"

"Edward?"

"That was his daughter, Nina. She said someone came and took him after threatening to hurt her. That boy needs to learn that not all threats are real."

"I dunno. A boy with limited understanding of the world and only knowing how cruelty works would make sense as to his inability to see the bluff."

"What?"

"Look, the kid has had bad luck and has been treated cruelly by most of the world. Knowing the evils, it's easier to give in than to fight it because he's probably aware how evil breeds evil. He just doesn't want to take a chance."

Maes nodded. "I know. It's more or less my question of how do these people keep finding him and taking him?"

"I'll try and look into it if you like? I need to talk to Will and Solaris anyway about some holes in their stories."

"That'd be great, thanks."

Maes grabbed his coat and headed out the door.

Edward woke up, dazed and confused once more, but something else was odd. He heard the sound of a baby crying. He looked over and saw the man who had come into the house holding a screaming child.

"Naw, how cute you are now that you're out of that stupid ole stomach…"

Edward made a face and looked down at his stomach, finding it flat. The man looked over and sneered at him.

"You're awake, I see. How was your little nap?"

Edward tried to reach out but he was too tired. The man walked up and grinned at him.

"It looks like my serum might actually work. You are the best guinea pig, Edward. I'm so glad Tucker created you."

Edward made a face as the man laughed a little.

"Oh, I'm sorry, you didn't know what he was trying to do?" Edward shook his head slightly. "You are a guinea pig. That's it. That is literally what your job is for us. You see, we needed a human who could be flexible in regards to anything we put to it. We asked Tucker to make us a human guinea pig that was fully functional in all aspects, considering his affinity for bio-alchemy. The problem was that he had to start fresh. He needed something that would most likely bond with the chemicals we may or may not dump into you. He found you, rewrote you, and programmed your body into something malleable… something that would give us the exact results we needed."

The man put the baby somewhere and he came back, looking over Edward a little too close for comfort, his beady eyes dancing across his body from behind those square glasses and that gold tooth a disgusting eyesore as he grinned almost continuously.

"You were Tucker's only true success. You were the one that he was waiting for but just when he was testing you out, you were found. One of your triplets survived, huh?" Edward didn't do anything. "I guess that would be self explanatory wouldn't it? The little girl… oh and that baby I was holding. You see, unlike Will and Solaris, I know the formula Tucker used on you to make you pregnant, but mine's a tweaked version of his." The doctor grabbed his chair and scooted it close to Edward's face. "You'll be so amazed by it, I swear. The half-version worked so well on this baby that I know it'll work well on what I have in store for you with the full version."

Edward's eyes widened as the doctor left the room for a second and he wanted to die. He just wanted a normal life with his kid and his friend. What harm was that? Why was it that life hated him that much that he always ended up somebody's bitch on a lab table? He was human and whether or not he was really intended just to be a guinea pig, he was still human. He had emotions, fears, felt pain… I just want peace… I just want… I can't take it anymore. I can't take being another crazy scientist's bitch. I can't take having my life dictated for me, my body used however they like, my mind fucked over again… I can't… I can't.

Maes had taken Nina to the police station to give a description of the man who took her father. After the artist drew him out, she nodded and said that that was who they needed to be looking for. Maes had seen that picture before and went to search his files or it. He finally came across the picture and made a face.

"Shit." He said.

"What's up?" Jean asked.

"This is guy." He said, pointing to the photograph. "A disgruntled doctor with an amazing understanding of human anatomy and an access to guess who?" He pulled out a picture of Shou Tucker and flicked it. "Tucker. His name is Dr. Kimyona Kinba. Apparently, he and Tucker worked in the same hospital when he was kicked out due to unethical procedures he would come up with for surgeries. The staff was always a little uneasy around his strange theories but apparently one day he took it too far and the hospital realized he was a whack-job. He did a one-man riot against the hospital for not letting him express his creativity in the scientific arts. A few years later, Tucker was fired for the same reasons but more so for actually attempting the procedure in hospital. They must have hooked up at some time before Edward was captured but I don't think they worked together… Would you mind getting some more information from Tucker on this guy? See what you can find out?"

"Sure thing. Where are you going to go?"

"I'm going to check this guy's house and see if he doesn't have something like what the Hohenheim's had in regards to a secret basement lab or something. It's a start…"

Jean nodded and grabbed his coat to leave. Maes put his face in his hands. He had to wonder how Edward always ended up in these situations.

"Alright, I'm back!" Dr. Kinba said, coming in with a large syringe.

He saw that Edward was laying on the table but he wasn't doing anything. He frowned and went over to him. He watched him for a moment and then punched him in the stomach to try and make him do something. Edward made no attempt to even grunt. Dr. Kinba snarled and moved Edward's face to look at him and found him staring at nothing, mumbling. He came in closer to see what he was saying.

"Sceneries being blow away seem to whirl in front of me… Even if I get desperate… I won't overlook my target anymore…"

"Are you singing?" he growled, grabbing Edward's head and pulling it to him. Edward didn't answer. "Did you just go brain dead on me?"

He let go of Edward's head and it thunked back to the table. Dr. Kinba breathed in angrily and drummed his fingers on the metal table, trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He watched Edward for a moment and then looked at his syringe. He drummed his fingers again and sighed.

"Waste not, want not."

He plunged the syringe into Edward's stomach and depleted the liquid inside.

"Your body still works even if you've decided to check out of reality with your mind. I'll be back in an hour and I should see some results."

Dr. Kinba left the room and Edward laid there for a moment in the silence of the dark lab, only his muffled singing filling the room when he stopped. His fingers twitched and he turned to look at the ceiling, his eyes turning a piercing red.

Let's get started. Ready. Steady. Go.

As Maes was searching the neighborhood with Nina for Dr. Kinba's house, a man came up to them panting like he had run a long way.

"Are you Officer Hughes?" he asked.

"Yes, that's me."

"I'm the owner of the bar over there and I got a call from a colleague of yours. He said he has some information for you."

Maes took Nina's hand and they walked to the bar, where he picked up the waiting receiver.

"Maes speaking."

"This is Colonel Hawkeye."

Maes immediately straightened as if she could see him.

"Yes, pleasure to be speaking with you, sir!"

"Havoc tells me that you're looking into a missing person's case?"

"No, I… remember the little boy that Roy found some years ago?"

"I do."

"He asked me to take care of him and as you know, he disappeared again. But I found him and now he's been kidnapped again. I'm just trying to find my son, Colonel."

"Good, that's what I wanted to hear. Since it's a familial thing, I thought I'd give you some intel about his whereabouts. We got an address in the town you're in that may be where he does his experiments. Do you have a way to write this down?"

Maes nodded and motioned for a pen from the barkeep. He wrote the address down and nodded.

"Be extremely careful with this man, Hughes. He's not like the Hohenheim's and he's not like Tucker. Havoc said you spoke to Tucker?"

"I did and yeah, I can see they're different. Even he said that he didn't like working with him because the reasonings behind his ideas were discomforting. Then again, Tucker has been trying to play the saint since we found him…"

"True. Good luck, Lieutenant."

She hung up the phone and Nina looked up at him.

"Is Daddy gonna be okay?"

"I don't know, sweetie. I hope so…" He motioned for the bar tender. "Hey, do you know where this address is?"

"Yeah. About two blocks over at the end of the cul-de-sac. Can't miss it."

They continued down the road to Dr. Kinba's house.

When he got there, he found the neighborhood watching the house in curiosity. He got out, Nina behind him, and went over to a few people.

"What's going on?"

"We heard a loud feral scream coming from in there and then the sound of breaking glass. We're not sure what's going on in there…"

"I'll take a look, ma'am."

A strange scream sounded from the house and Nina turned to it. She shuffled away from Maes and ran to the house. Maes looked down and saw she was running to the house.

"Shit! Nina! Nina!" he ran after her.

She opened the door to the house and was met with destruction and blood. There was blood everywhere. The sound of a baby crying caught her attention and she climbed over some debris to where the sound was. She walked down the hallway as the strange scream echoed in the house again. She covered her ears and squatted in the floor until the screaming stopped. Once it was done she continued on her way to find where the baby cries were coming from. She opened another door and saw the baby crib and walked slowly to it but stopped when she felt something staring at her. Nina turned and saw that whatever had busted a human shaped hole in the wall and was staring at her from the other room, red eyes glowing in the flickering hall light. At first she was afraid but then she remembered seeing the creature before. She thought it was a dream once before but the creature was very familiar to her.

They stared at each other for a moment when the baby's hiccup caught both of their attention. Nina ignored the monster and went to the crib. A naked baby boy was flailing in the crib, half crying and half just uncomfortable. Nina wished she could get in when the lights flickered a little. She turned and saw the monster was right outside of the hole, staring at her intently.

"Nina, what the hell is- WHAT THE HELL?!" Maes screamed, grabbing for his gun. "Nina, run!"

"No! Don't shoot it!"

"Nina, that's not a play thing!" Maes shot off a round towards the monster. "Get away from here! Go!"

"Stop it!" she yelled, running to Maes and pulling on his arm. "You'll hurt him!"

"Nina, stop wrestling my arm!"

During the altercation, his finger shot off another bullet, hitting the monster. Not hearing the bullet enter something, Maes looked over but the monster wasn't there.

"Where did it go?"

Nina looked behind Maes and gasped, pulling him down to the floor.

"Look out!"

She yanked him down just before the monster grabbed a hold of him and they both rolled on the floor. Maes turned around and pointed his gun at the monster.

"What the hell is that thing?"

"It's Daddy!" Nina yelled, jumping in front of the monster.

"Nina!"

"It's Daddy! Please don't hurt him! You gotta help him!"

Maes watched as the monster just stared, not moving, its shoulder bleeding from where it had been shot.

"Nina, that's not Edward. That can't be Edward."

"I'm afraid it is." Someone said, followed by a wet cough.

Maes looked around and found a beaten up and broken man in the corner of the room looking at them. There was a piece of wood sticking through him and he had coughed up blood but not enough to hide th shine of a gold tooth.

"Dr. Kinba?"

"Those idiots did a lot of experiments on that kid but they didn't realize that they had made a monster in the process." He coughed again. "He snapped on me and turned into that thing, but he's got buns in the oven to worry about now." He cackled even when he was choking on his blood. "My formula still worked."

"Daddy? Daddy, please come home."

Maes looked over as Nina went to the monster- Edward. She touched his bloodied hand and looked up.

"I love you, Daddy. Mr. Maes will keep us safe again. He'll get all the mean people and they won't find you no more. Please come home… I miss you and I'm scared and… and if you don't come home I'll be sad!" She started crying. "I don't want them to hurt you no more! I don't like to see you not like you! You're a good daddy and nice and fun and smart and I love you!"

Maes watched as the monster changed and eventually, returned to Edward. He was completely floored. Holy shit, what did those people do to him?

Edward touched Nina's face and wiped her tears.

"No." he said softly.

Nina gasped and wrapped her arms around him.

"Daddy!" She gasped again and pulled back. "Daddy, your belly!"

Edward looked at his distended stomach and sighed.

The man in the corner laughed, blood coming up.

"You'll give birth within the next few hours, Edward. You're the perfect guinea pig… the perfect one…"

Maes was about to get up but Edward walked over and it looked like he had punched the man but when Edward pulled his hand back up, his arm was dripping with blood and there was something in his hand. He looked back at Maes and glared at him, daring him to say anything. Maes kind of wanted to but decided that Edward was owed some sort of payback for the horrible things that had been done to him… still done to him.

Edward threw what he had taken out away from him and went over to his son. He reached in and picked him up, sighing as he looked at the little boy for a moment. He felt his stomach quiver and then gripped the side of the crib as his belly bulged out some more. Maes came over and held out his jacket to Edward.

"Here, wrap him up in this so he doesn't catch cold. Do you know where your clothes are?"

Edward shook his head as he wrapped up the boy in Maes's jacket. He felt another quiver and hissed in pain as his belly stretched again. Maes looked down, seeming to finally notice his stomach.

"Are you growing?" Edward nodded with a painful look. "Shit, kid, again?" Edward gave him a glare and he threw his hands up. "Sorry… I mean, you have to admit it's getting kind of annoying?"

Edward gave him a sarcastic look. Tell me about it. You think it's annoying to you? he thought. He held the boy out to Maes so that he could get a grip on his stomach as it bulged out again.

"By the rate you're going, you're going to have it soon. Come on. I'll go find your clothes, or some clothes in general, and I'll take you to the hospital. I won't let them hound you, okay? Let's just hope this is the last time."

Edward nodded as he followed Maes, who turned to look over his shoulder.

"And next time, don't answer the door."

Edward just sighed as they looked for his clothing. He was with Maes on the matter and hoped that he didn't have to go through anything of this nature again. He would never hurt a kid but he was so tired of having his body used against him. Pretty soon Maes wouldn't be able to take care of him and his children if he kept ending up pregnant. He frowned at that, wondering if there was something he could do to help Maes out. He'd have to ask him later when he had a pen and paper and wasn't rapidly growing a child.

dagnabbit it looks like he was inflicted again! poor thing just can't seem to catch a break, huh? one more chapter after this one and this story is going to be over! this will all be explained in the next chapter so worry not. but to confirm, there was a hint of this happening in an earlier chapter. the one where he actually faced up against will and in between then and being found he had actually had a transformation off 'screen'.

and remember, this was an AU to begin with so riza is the colonel while roy and hughes were lieutenants. also too, they didn't have much in the way of radio contact back then unless you had a telegraphy machine or something but they wouldn't have that in their cars so phone calls it is.