Nothing at all really happens for the next couple of hours as Tamaki and Edward wait for Kyoya to get there. They get dressed, eat breakfast, realize that if Tamaki's being put under he may as well be in his pajamas for it, and so change back into a completely identical but yet unworn set of powder-blue pajamas. As they wait, Tamaki shows off the internet to Edward, as they both seem to be sharing the consciousness for the moment. Ed is, of course, floored by the easy access to information and steers them down a rabbit hole of physics that Tamaki can conveniently understand but only through the osmosis of his brain-buddy's genius intellect. They've just started researching coding to hack into CERN's database to explore particle collider experiment results when Shima alerts them that Kyoya (and company) have arrived.

Kyoya and Haruhi are seated in a parlor drinking tea as a team of five dour men in scrubs sterilize an adjacent dining room.

"I'm not actually getting surgery, am I?" They say, nervous, and Kyoya and Haruhi look up at them.

"Senpai?" Haruhi asks, squinting.

"Yes but also no!" Tamaki smiles at his darling daughter, and then Ed rolls their eyes. "We're in an eternal tug-of-war over movement and shit."

"Concerning, but as long as we can attain Tamaki's consent for this it can be, hmm, 'rolled with,'" Kyoya pulls out a folder and opens it, revealing a slim stack of paperwork. "Sign here, here, and here, now, Tamaki."

"Fuck no! We're not gonna sign this shit without reading what it is, first!" Edward exclaims.

Kyoya's face darkens, and he sighs. "Look. Edward. We want you to go home. You, presumably, want to go home. I will avoid damaging Tamaki at all costs, but based on the fact that both of you are present at the front of Tamaki's mind leads me to believe that whatever this is, however this happened, it will be irreversible if not corrected as soon as possible." Somehow, his demeanor darkened even further. "In truth, I don't truly need the signature. As you are in Tamaki's body when you gave verbal consent yesterday, I can easily defend this operation, even without this paperwork, but it would make it easier to explain to others why we're doing this and protect Tamaki's reputation with this signed. So, read it. Take your time, and lose your family forever."

Tamaki's consciousness shrank under Edward's rage, but he asserted himself. "It's ok, Ed. I trust Kyoya. Just... what are you going to do?"

Kyoya's severe look eased into its normal passive sternness. "First, we will be administering a strong anesthetic. We will keep you in a medical coma for an hour, and once you wake up, we will evaluate if we need to proceed to a riskier procedure."

"Alright then, Kyoya. I think I'm ready." Tamaki smiled up at his closest friend, determined, and was rewarded with a scoff.

"We make a clean room for a reason, idiot," Kyoya said fondly, and pulled Tamaki back up by the arm, which Ed shook off with a teasing look of disgust. Kyoya glanced pointedly at the packet of papers, and Tamaki scrawled the kanji of his name in the sticky-note-marked blanks.

As Kyoya resettled the body-snatched host in the dining room, Haruhi calmly sipped her tea. "If I didn't need to convince senpai, why am I even here?"

"To keep me company, of course," Kyoya replied, back in the parlor, Tamaki-and-Ed-less, with the doors to the other room shut behind him.

"That was fast," Haruhi replied.

"Ah, well, even if Edward has provided some traits to Tamaki, they still fainted at the sight of a needle, so I didn't even need to hold his hand- which was truly your original purpose in being here, in fact."

"Do you think it will work, Kyoya-senpai?"

"There is very little way to tell, but I believe I have given us the highest chance of success possible."

Meanwhile, the doctors injected a cocktail of drugs, and lowered Tamaki's body from the dining room table to a shallow inflatable pool of ice water that had been tucked out of sight under the grand dining table. This would lower vital signs to quite possibly invisible levels, but with their preparation for reheating, hypothermic complications, and emergency resuscitation on-hand it would not kill him. All they could do was wait.

A/N: I thought I was going to finish it this year, guys, but it wasn't to be. I was planning to run through all my bullet points in my outline but this one point turned into a whole chapter so *shrugs* what can you do, I guess. Anyways, next is going to be the result and basically the epilogue, but since my epilogue notes are in two sections because both Ed and Tamaki have endings in their own worlds I may do an Ed-pilogue and a Tama-pilogue separately. Feel free to weigh in in the comments, if you care, or just wait and see what I do next year.

Speaking of which, happy Fullmetal Alchemist Day 2022! Thanks to everyone who stuck around through 5 years of slow updates! Or, if you're reading this for the first time, I gift you a year-long hiatus on a cliffhanger.

Je t'aime, et bon appétit, mes chers.