Chapter 4: The Hospital is Insane!

Adapting to a brand new life style!

Roy slid off of his bed onto the floor with a loud thud. Groaning, he rubbed his head and stood up. He sighed. His head was barely higher than the bed – it was hard enough for him to get on it, let alone make it.

He walked into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. Again, too high. He walked into the dining room, took a chair, and slid it into the kitchen. He then carefully climbed onto it and stood up. Finally. He grabbed a box of cereal and shut the door. He put the cereal box on the floor and slid the chair until it was beside the refrigerator. He pulled the door open and put the chair in front of it, repeated the same procedure as before, this time with the milk, and shut the door. He did the same thing to get a bowl and a spoon (although he had to climb onto the counter to reach the cabinet with the bowls in it) and sat on the floor and made himself breakfast. He put everything back into its place, on a lower shelf, and ate his breakfast. He looked up at the clock.

"Already nine!" It had taken him an entire hour just to get the things he needed for his breakfast and put them back. Hurriedly, he fumbled through his clothes. About halfway through, he remembered that his uniform no longer fit him, and he glumly put on a suit he had bought instead.

Poutingly, he stepped out his front door and through his small yard onto the sidewalk. He started to walk to his car. Again, he remembered.

He walked up to it and hit his head on the door in sorrow. How am I supposed to get to work? It was too much.

"Hey- Colonel!" a voice called. Roy turned. It was Havok. "We thought you might have some troubles." Roy sighed and followed Havok to his car. Roy grimaced as he sat down. He couldn't even see over the dashboard. (Note: I have yet to learn to drive a car or even have a slight interest in them, even though I am of age; please excuse me for this blatantly uneducated sounding statement. I'm assuming the front thingy is indeed a dashboard.) The car began to drive off and Havok casually puffed a cigarette. Roy wheezed. He'd forgotten how sensitive his lungs had been when he was a child. "Oh! Sorry, Colonel. I probably shouldn't do that, seeing as they're probably gonna give you a physical examination an' all." Havok threw the cigarette out the window, a look of sadness on his face. One has no doubt that he was emotionally attached to it, and felt sad to send it to such a mournful end. "Phy-physical?" Roy asked, still coughing a bit. Havok said to the Colonel with the most straight-forwardness he could muster, still keeping his eyes on the road, "Colonel, you degrew from about yay-high to about this'e here." Havok moved his hand from near the ceiling of the car to Roy's height. It was a rather distinct drop. Roy felt like a crushed soda can, with all the soda supercompressed vacuum style.

The two set off towards HQ. It took only about ten minutes.

When they arrived, they discovered that Edward was not there yet. Apparently, after hearing about the physical, he profusely protested and chained himself to one of his beds. They were still trying to drag him out, but he had bonded the steel of his limbs, the bed, and the chains together so well that he completely stuck onto the bed. Al was bickering with Winry about how to transmute him off, because she did not want his automail to be damaged any more than Ed had damaged it. Taking the bed with him was out of the question; it wouldn't fit through the door.

"What do you want me to do?" Roy asked the doctor. "We're going to do a basic check up, and a biopsy." The nurse replied. She was tall with orange-blonde hair snapped back tightly in a clip. She had a mildly fierce expression, and in a way, she somewhat resembled Riza.

Roy grimaced. "Biopsy?" He asked. The nurse complied, "The higher ups want your flesh to be tested to check for any kind of radiation, chemical imbalances, or mutations that could give any slight clue as to what has happened."

"Oh, I know that," said Roy, "I was just curious as to where." The nurse shrugged. "Dunno," she said, "Could be lots of places."

Roy frowned. Great. Multiple biopsies. In lots of places. Spectacular.

Edward sat on the bed/stretcher/doctor thing with his back hunched over and a frown on his face. The doctor frowned also. He would greatly have liked to tell him to sit up straight, but it might be more painful. The military's hospitals at the time were notorious for incredibly low ceilings.

If Edward had ever seen the movie Godzilla, and watched as the gigantic mutated dinosaur-looking monster crushed the tiny model buildings of the city of Tokyo, he would have had something reasonable to compare himself to. He had not, and continued to glare miserably at the far off floor. He had imagined being tall as being far more satisfying, but so far it had caused him nothing short of pain.

"You two?" It was late in the evening already, and Ed and Roy had been waiting for their results for hours. The two were sufficiently traumatized.

Roy's doctor, a man who seemed more interested in his clipboard than anything else, had instructed the nurse through the entire physical. The woman prodded him repeatedly on the cheek and the stomach (without being instructed to ever do so), and smiled strangely at him when she did, as if he were a stray kitten rolled out on its belly.

Edward's doctor, on the other hand, was much more frightening. If he had seen this woman on the street, his first guess to her occupation would have been a model. A scary model. For clothing catalogs. Her hair was bright red, in sharp, long ringlets, her eyes were neon blue, and her lips were a shimmering candy apple red. She had the nerve to slowly rub her hand against his flat stomach, touch his arm, and even drag her brightly varnished index finger leisurely across his face. While doing so, she giggled quietly as if she were the shy, quiet type, and completely innocent. The entire time, Ed felt nothing less the victim of a horrible assault. He wondered if the woman had been informed that in reality, he was still a young teenager, and in all honestly, hoped that she had not.

Little did any of them know that the woman would afterwards be taken to the back lot of the hospital, slapped, pummeled, beaten, and tackled violently by a pack of savage (but just) Ed fan girls.

The doctor, (Roy's, the one who seemed in love with his clipboard) sat down in front of the two and looked up at them briefly with a stern face. He said, "The results that the medical technicians found is interesting, but the results that the military's alchemic scientists found is even more interesting." Both Ed and Roy leaned forward. It seemed as if time was working particularly slow, and they both vainly tried to see what was written on his clipboard themselves.

"You are an adult, and you are still a child." The doctor pointed at Roy and Ed in order. They nodded. This was something they both new already. They waited. Nothing.

"But what did the medical technicians find out?" Ed asked after a long, awkward pause.

"Exactly that." Said the doctor. Roy looked at him confusedly. "But we know that already."

"That's exactly what makes it interesting."

Ed and Roy looked at each other questioningly.

"Wait," Roy said, "You mean… right now?" "Right." The doctor agreed. "Wait!" Ed exclaimed. "You mean… I'm still a kid!" The doctor nodded. "Technically speaking, yes. Even though you look like an adult, chemically you're right where you left off. You're still growing, and have hardly even hit puberty yet." Ed shuffled in his seat. He knew the doctor was implying that he had yet to go through that typical teen growth spurt yet. But… wait. That was bad!

It suddenly struck Ed that if this was what height he would be as an adult, then if he went through a growth spurt like this-! He would be a giant! An enormous freak of nature! A monster! He wouldn't even be able to enter a normal building, and you could find him in a crowd instantaneously! He had always dreamt of being taller, but this-! This was too much! Edward shook in his seat, clutching he knees. "OMG!" He trembled.

"So you mean… I'm stuck like this!" Roy's greatest hope was that even if everything failed and they did not find a way to reverse what had happened, he could at the very least wait to grow up again. Now, his back up plan was ruined.

"I don't know. I don't really understand the scientific results very well. I mean, I do, but I don't know what that means you can and can't do about it."

"What are they?" Roy and Ed quickly demanded.

"Well," said the doctor, "They said that… it doesn't look like anything happened to you. You show no signs of being chemically deformed or radiated or anything. It's as if you've been the way you are now your entire lives."

Ed and Roy stared at the doctor with their mouths gaping open. "What?" Ed yelled. "Lemme see this!" Roy said, snatching the clipboard out of the doctor's hands. He stared at it for about a minute, reading page after page at lighting speed. "This sucks!" He finally yelled.

The doctor quickly snatched his clipboard back and clung to it defensively. "I don't know what this means or what you're supposed to do, but the military has asked that I remain out of the picture once you have been told that. And now you have, so good day!" He walked off clutching onto the clipboard as if it were the last remains of anything he owned after a fire.

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Okay. So, it took FOREVER for me to post this. I've been away, too keep it short. But, to let you in on it now, I'm also working on another FMA fic, which I plan on completing ENTIRELY before I post it… so it won't happen to that one, ever. Sorry about this, you guys, because I know you were looking forward to this a bit, I guess I did sort of forget about posting it… so here it is.