A/N: sometimes the characters use my "A/N:" sign to speak for themselves. I wanted to clarify that, because this chapter has a lot of character comments...sometimes their comments are signed, but not always...

arigatou to my lovely reviewers!! you all deserve cookies, but I only have kudos...

STAGE THREE: MEASUREMENT

Ed thought that his situation couldn't get worse. It just did. Now they had to measure his size. In front of everyone!!!! Oh, the horror!!!

(A/N: "Oh nose!!" "Roy!!! What are you doing here?! This is a drabble about the Elric past!!! Jerk, shoo!!!" -author -gunshot- "sorry about him," -author shutters in fear of Ms. Hawkeye-)

Fortunately, Mrs. Elric and Rockbell were familiar with Edward's short complex. So, they measured him without announcing the result. That situation easily solved, Ed went over to hang out with his friend and his sibling.

Winry was bubbling. Literally. Edward swore he could see the strange heart-shaped (A/N: "heart-shaped?!!! I'm not like that!!!" "Yes, you were!" "No, I wasn't!" "Automail-freak!!" "Bean-boy!!" "Who are you calling sho—" "SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!!!!" -author) bubbles floating around her. Al was also staring in puzzlement, wondering how she managed to get the bubbles to defy gravity and stay suspended in the air, but wondering more so how she managed to do heart-shaped bubbles (he wanted to know so he could get some kitty-shaped ones). Ed was wondering how she could be so happy when it was clear that the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it was about to happen, just as soon as this play was put on the theater.

By the end of practice, Edward had come to a conclusion as to what had caused him to freeze the day before. It was really quite obvious. It had to be stage fright. Yep. That was the only plausible solution. Stage fright. He disclosed this fact (rather proudly) to Al, Winry, and the heart-shaped bubbles.

'Jeez, you're stupid, nii-san. And in denial,' Al thinks.

(A/N: "hmm…some things never change…" "Al!!!")

Preparations continued. Ms. Pinako was not seen outside her work-room for many days as she slaved over her invention for the play. Mrs. Elric and Mrs. Rockbell's fingers became more calloused as they sewed nonstop. The director continued directing. The actors kept acting and memorizing. The lighting team began to set up spotlights and stage lights and back lights and fore lights and bright lights and….a lot of other lights. Until finally, was their first dress rehearsal.

Alphonse was unrecognizable beneath his wookie-exterior. The two mothers had done a good job in ensuring that he was comfortable, if a little warm. William really didn't look anything like Luke Skywalker, but that really didn't matter to anyone accept William. Mr. Rockbell now had a new hobby of sneaking up on people in the mask and accordingly scaring the stuff out of them. Winry looked like a blonde version of Princess Leia, except for the fact that she refused to wear her hair up in the weird cinnamon-shaped-style-buns. And Ed resembled Harrison Ford more in his attitude than anything else (although the costume was perfect, complete with replica blaster). The rest of the cast were also pleasantly surprised at the handiwork of the two women.

Rehearsal went well. At least, as well as expected. Ed, again, stumbled on that one line; however, his overall performance was quite professional, for a six year old, that is.

It was at this point that the director decided to move on to rehearsing the next two parts of the play: The Empire Strikes Back and the Return of the Jedi. At first, he had been hesitant to do so; but the whole town had contributed so much, it seemed a waste for the play to be a mere half-hour (it had, after all, been greatly condensed). He handed out the scripts to his leads (whose characters survived the first part of the play) and told them to memorize the rest of the script by tomorrow. (Don't worry; the play wasn't six hours long. Most of the parts had been cut or deleted entirely so the whole thing was only about an hour long mainly because it started at the bar scene instead of setting up the Luke Skywalker past and the fact that most of the battles were completely audio.)

-----A/N: I hope you all liked this chapter...I know that I do.

PLEASE REVIEW AND ENJOY.