"Edward's home!" The soft-spoken cry made the long haired boy flinch. So close... He had been so close to getting into his bedroom without being noticed. He steeled his will and turned to be greeted by a pair of light pink eyes, staring out of the gloom. Sighing, Edward pulled out the tie in his hair, and raked his fingers trough the silky strands, effectively undoing the braid.

For the briefest of moments he contemplated pretending he hadn't seen the creature and continuing on, but he knew all that would happen, is that it would grow confused, and scared.

"Food! Edward! Hungry!" He sighed, passing his hand over a sensory device located in the wall to his left, and blinked as the hall was immediately flooded with a glaring light. The creature gave a sudden yelp, and pressed itself back against the faded green wall, just like a cornered animal.

"You're not hungry, Ana; you only think that you are." The creature blinked incomprehensively, dismissing the words. It was obviously female, one could tell from body shape alone, but nature would have never thought up the creature's design. She was a quadruped, unable to stand on elongated and misshapen hind legs alone, and balanced precariously on arms longer than they had a right to be. Her features were set into a flat face, her eerie and seemingly pupil less eyes protruding slightly, and set forward instead of to the side as in most animals of prey. Two small slits, surrounded by pink skin made her nose, and this twitched madly in a constant hurricane of breath, and surrounded by a multitude of whiskers. Her legs ended in powerful paws designed for leaping, but their function was rendered useless by the half-hand, half-paw of her front limbs. Useless stubby fingers scrabbled on the floor, as she tried to dig an escape route in the concrete ground and all that was left of her thumb was an ugly nail, in the place of a dew-claw. The monstrous appearance was finished by two elongated ears poking out of a white bird's nest of hair, and a white fuzz that covered her body which was too short to be called fur. She was about the size of a small child.

Edward sighed. Failures weren't pretty. The creature turned slowly, beginning to realise there was no danger, and glanced over the blonde haired boy. "Hungry." The comment was as thoughtful as the creatures' instincts (A strange combination of human and rabbit) would allow, almost as if the creature was aware of set boundaries of what Edward would allow it to do. She wiggled slightly closer, but remained well out of reach of Edward, standing and watching in the hallway.

The boy in question shook his head, knowing that the creature was trying to wheedle treats from him. He would not fall for the innocent pleadings of the rabbit, instead, he replied, "I'm not going to feed you every time you say that, Ana." However, inwardly he was impressed, that she had picked up that word association. It was a mark of how brilliant the woman had been, that even after DIGITization, she could still create those word associations, and form simple (if crude) sentences. The creatures' ears drooped.

Edward sighed, and ignored her, moving toward his bedroom quickly. Ana followed tentatively, her steps hobbling and lopsided on mismatched feet. Even as Edward entered his own room, he felt the motion and heat sensors detecting for his unique imprint. He sensed, more than heard, his personal message system whir into life, then speaking in sync with the tired voice, he commented, "Welcome Edward. You have... pause..." he did so, grinning slightly at how stupid he would have looked, "Zero new messages!" His grin grew, as the machine fell into silence. "There's a big fucking surprise."

"Edward shouldn't swear." Ana mumbled from the doorway. It was as far as she ever dared to go, her rabbit instincts keeping her there out of fear. Edward ignored her, choosing to instead flop onto his bed in a dejected manner. Lying on his back, he folded his arms under his head and brought one knee up into a bent position. Ana brought a hind leg forward to scratch behind one of her long ears.

He turned to look at her briefly and felt a twang of sadness in the pit of his stomach. He knew that whatever was left of Ana in the rabbit would be exceedingly frustrated at her inability to preform more than the simplest of tasks, and even then, not well. The Ana Edward knew would have grounded him and locked him out of the house systems for a week, rendering him unable to access any form of entertainment in the apartment's in-built computer. Strangely, he found himself missing the sense of having boundaries in place.

The more boundaries Edward had, the less responsibilities his life contained. He frowned.

Ignoring the rabbit, he stated into the air, "Computer, Message Winry Rockbell." A holographic screen appeared just below the ceiling, slanted so that he could look up at it without changing the position he was in. "Hey Win'!" he spoke to the screen, "Just a quick note to say I'll come over to Aunty Pinnakos' birthday party. I would come over to say it in person but..." He grinned to himself. "..You pissed me off pretty bad."

"Bad Edward!" Ana scolded. Again, she was ignored.

"See you there, Win. It's still on Sunday, right? From Ed." He grinned. "Computer, End message." There was a click, and the computer switched itself off. The boy sighed, moving one of his hands under his pillow to pull out a small frame. Though uncommon, the practise of framing the most important snapshots of ones life could still be found scattered throughout Earth and this was the only picture Edward had done so to.

The snapshot itself was nothing special, a three second moving loop slightly blurred and charged by the residual energies of the apartment's computer. However, to Edward none of this mattered. The only thing that was important was the subject matter of the image.

It was a simple picture of himself, Nick, Ana and the whole Rockbell family at his fifth birthday party. He smiled as he traced over Nick's face with a gloved finger. The man was slightly drunk, that much was obvious from his happy grin and bemused eyes. A small smile made its way onto Ed's face as he stared at the photo, at how beautiful Ana had been, with sun-kissed blonde hair, cut to her neck, for that was as long as the research company she had worked for allowed it. She had startling, bottle green eyes, and beautifully tanned skin, and would not have looked out of place in a beauty magazine. She was laughing slightly at her husband, playfully tapping his shoulder, and her eyes sparkled with amusement. Aside from being a bit drunk, Nick himself looked splendid. His black hair was cropped short, and a small goatee graced his chin. Somehow though, the dark colouring of his hair did not make his skin pale in comparison, and much like his wife, his tan glowed bronze. He grinned out of the frame, the light catching off his purple contact lenses. Edward couldn't remember what colour Nicks' eyes were originally, he had only seen him once or twice without the lenses, and then he had square reading glasses on. To Edward, The man had purple eyes, end of story.

He glanced at Aunty Pinnako, strict even in the photo, smiling sternly. Her greying hair was pulled back into its usual tight bun, her spectacles were on, and her pipe was permanently fixed in her hand. "Same old hag." He muttered to sadly to himself. Standing slightly behind and in the shadows, were Winrys mother and father. The photo did Mr. and Mrs. Rockbell no justice, and Edward (Who had hardly seen them) found himself struggling to remember their features. Though, he knew that they had taken time off from their medical positions in the war effort to be there that day.

And finally, Edward turned his attention to the focus of the picture, himself and Winry, looking much younger and chubbier. He had his hair cut short, and hers was held back by a simple headband. They were both beaming and looking over his birthday present, an action figure from his favourite cartoon. His eyes flicked up to where the toy now sat upon his shelf, broken, but with too much sentimental value to merit it being thrown out.

"What Edward doing?" Ana enquired from the doorway, not appreciating being ignored.

He looked at her sadly, feeling tears prickle at the corner of his eyes, at the difference between what she was, and what she had become. "Nothing important, Ana." He replied, though he knew she couldn't understand him. "Just an old photograph."

Her face curved into a mimicry of the sad smile on his. "Why Edward leaking?" She asked, a strange amount of humanity leaking through her mutated exterior.

Scrubbing his eyes with the back of a gloved hand, Edward forced a grin. "No reason." His voice was dangerously choked, and he attempted to calm it before continuing. "Ana, why don't you go get Nick. It must be almost dinnertime."

The rabbit brightened at this, and looked at him from her position in the doorway, recognising the word 'dinner.' Without a backward glance, she bolted from the room, muttering something that sounded like, "foodfoodfoodfoodfood!"

Edward gave a weak laugh at her antics, taking one last glance at the picture in his hands. A sigh escaped him, despite his best efforts to hold it back.

"What was it you used to say, Nick?" He spoke to the air, "That's right. The past is gone, and cannot be changed." He ran his fingers over the frame. "The future is uncontrollable and continually changing, but the present, it can be controlled. Do what you can with it, to change your life." He sighed, placing the picture back under his pillow and sat up. An odd rustling, like feathers sliding over one another filled the room. Edward laughed shakily. "I don't think that you would have guessed my present includes going insane and looking after two rabbits, now would you?" He closed the door behind him as he exited.

A/n: Sorry to everyone who was expecting cutesy bunnies instead of the deformed half-creatures I gave you. Hopefully people aren't too disappointed.

Ana is loosely based on the Nina-chimera. Nicks' design hasn't been finalised yet, but he will be very similar to Ana. No cutesy humans with bunny ears and fluffy tails here!

Oh, and before I forget, I had two very lovely betas who looked this one over for me, Bard Linn and one of my friends from school, Megan! Hopefully, the three of us managed to pick up all my mistakes. -heh-

Review and feed a hungry authoress?