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"Thanks again for all your help!"

Sheska cried with joy as she was dragged away by Maes Hughes, leaving Edward and Alphonse Elric alone with the research notes she'd been asked to transcribe for them. They were desperately looking into how to create a Philosopher's Stone and planned to use Tim Marcoh's research notes to reach their goal.

"Well, Al, we're now one step closer to getting you your body back!" Ed exclaimed as he grabbed a handful of papers.

"Yeah, I can't wait! It'll be so good to taste food again."

"Easy, Al. We can't relax just yet. First, these notes have to be translated."

"Right…wait, what's this?"

Al picked up a stack of papers and examined the page on top. "'Tips on how to improve your self-esteem, by Dr. Loki Howitzer?' How did this end up in here?"

"Hm…not sure. Maybe Loki Howitzer's a pseudonym Marcoh used so he wouldn't attract attention. You know, like how he was known as Mauro to those villagers."

"Maybe," Al agreed as he started working on translating the text.

(3 hours later)

"Man, they've been going at it for a long time," Sergeant Denny Brosh said as he and his partner, 2nd Lieutenant Maria Ross, stood guard at the door. They were charged by Major Alex Louis Armstrong with protecting the Elric Brothers while they were in Central, and now stood ready to fight anyone who would attack them.

Ross turned to Brosh and said, "They have some pretty amazing stamina for just being kids, don't they?"

"I just wonder how long it's going to take them."

"No idea, but I've heard Major Armstrong say that some alchemists can spend days on end without food and water trying to encode their research notes, so decoding them might take even longer than that."

"I don't think I could last that long, to be honest."

"Well then, let us take over for you," came a sultry feminine voice that startled the two guards. They reached for their weapons as two figures emerged from the shadows, wicked smiles on their faces.

(With the Elric Brothers)

"I think I've got something here," Al said as he wrote down the second batch of translated notes from the self-help book he'd found.

"Is it the secret of creating the Philosopher's Stone?" Ed inquired.

"Well, there is a formula for a transmutation circle written out here, but I haven't translated what it's supposed to accomplish yet."

"At least you're making progress, Al. I'm still trying to figure out how Marcoh encrypted the books I've got."

Before the two brothers could talk more, they heard gunshots fire from outside the door. They moved to help the two soldiers who were guarding them, but watched as the door was flung open and the soldiers' bodies were tossed inside.

Ed looked at the assailants with a look of anger in his eyes. A man and woman calmly walked through the door and stood opposite the brothers. The man was bald, short and pudgy, with a blank look in his eyes and a ravenous smile on his face. The woman wore an elegant dress that revealed her shoulders and a fair portion of her cleavage, with shoulder-length opera gloves on her arms and wavy black hair flowing from her head. Just above the woman's cleavage, Ed could see an unusual tattoo.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Elric Brothers," the woman said.

"Since you know us already, why not tell us who you are?" Ed said, angry at having his work interrupted.

The woman smiled and said, "I doubt that will be necessary, since we're here to keep you from learning too much."

"What are you—" Ed's sentence was cut short when the woman extended her fingers at the Brothers. While they dodged the fingers easily, they saw them go through a bookshelf and tear it to pieces in mere moments.

"You're pretty quick on your feet," the woman said. She then turned to her partner and said, "Gluttony, slow them down for me, will you?"

"Can I eat them, Lust? I haven't eaten in a long time!" the short man responded, drooling as he watched the two targets.

"No; Father told us to leave them alive," the woman, now identified as Lust, responded. "Just keep them occupied long enough for me to destroy the research notes."

"Okay, Lust!" Gluttony said as he launched himself at the Brothers.

"Al, keep the papers away from her, no matter what!" Ed said as he transmuted a wall between him and the bald man.

"Okay, Brother!" Al responded as he ran over to the notes.

Ed was surprised as Gluttony ate through the wall and started punching at him. "This guy's like a black hole; he'll swallow anything in his path!"

Lust walked over to the table where the notes were spread out and headed toward the candlestick on the table. "Burning valuable information is one way of maintaining secrecy, and this is one secret Father doesn't want revealed."

"Stop it!" Al cried as he frantically drew a transmutation circle to use against the good-looking woman. He activated the circle, which instantly grew and froze Lust in her place.

Before he could ask why she wanted to destroy Marcoh's research, Gluttony landed a punch on Ed that sent him flying and crashing into Lust.

"Brother!" Al yelled out of concern.

Suddenly, the circle glowed a sinister yellow light that blinded everyone as Lust and Ed screamed in pain. After a while, the light died down and the two fell to the floor.

"Brother, are you okay?" Al said as he rushed to Ed's side.

"Lust?" Gluttony said as he walked toward her.

Before Gluttony could rejoin his partner's side, a fireball ignited the fat man and sent him flying out of a window. Al turned to the direction the fireball came from and saw Colonel Roy Mustang standing in the doorway, with Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye close behind.

"What the hell happened here, Alphonse?" Mustang said.

"We were conducting research when two people attacked us. I took care of the woman, but Ed got caught in the crossfire. Please, help me get him to a hospital!"

(The next morning)

Ed woke up the next morning and thought, "Oh, man, what happened?" He then remembered the two that attacked him and his brother and sat straight up in the bed he was sleeping in.

"Where are those two…ow! My shoulders are killing me. When did that happen?" Ed said as he rubbed his shoulders to relieve an unknown pain. He thought about what the pain might have been when the door to his room opened up.

Walking inside the room was Ed's childhood friend Winry Rockbell, who had since grown to become his automail mechanic. Since she was here, Ed guessed she was here to check his automail.

"Excuse me, but do you know where I can find my friend?" Winry said, confusing Ed.

"What are you talking about?" Ed said. As he talked, he finally took note of how he sounded. "Wow, I almost didn't recognize my own voice! Maybe I just need a drink to get it back to normal."

Winry continued talking by saying, "He's a short blond man with a braided ponytail, red coat and an automail arm and leg."

Struggling to contain his anger at being called short, Ed took a drink of water and said, "Come on, Winry. I know I haven't been home in a while, but—"

"How do you know who I am?" Winry said, now a little scared.

"Okay, you can stop with the joke no—" Ed cut himself off when he realized something. "I…I sound like a woman? When did that happen?"

"Look, lady, I don't know who the hell you are, but you better quit playing games with me and tell me where I can find Edward Elric!" Winry said, getting annoyed.

"I'm right here, Winry, and I…wait, did you just call me "Lady?""

Edward ran to the sink in the room and looked in the mirror directly above it. To his shock, he saw the face of Lust, the woman that attacked him last night, staring back instead of his own face. After making several faces in the mirror and slapping himself hard, Edward confirmed that this wasn't a dream.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Wha…what's wrong?" Winry said, scared at the sudden scream.

"I switched bodies with this woman!" Ed screamed, now fully aware that he was using the woman's voice, as well as her body. "Winry, you've gotta help me find my body!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Winry, it's me, Ed!"

"What's going on in here?" Mustang said as he walked into the room with Al, Hawkeye and a bandaged Brosh and Ross.

"Colonel Mustang, this woman's saying she's Ed!" Winry said. "She's clearly losing her mind; can't you sedate her or something?"

"I'm telling you the truth, Winry!" Ed responded. "Last night, while Al and I were translating Marcoh's research notes, we were attacked by this girl and a fat guy. I was fighting the fat guy when I ended up bumping into her in a transmutation circle, then there was a bright light. The
next thing I know, I wake up here as a completely different person!"

"How do I know you're not making this up?" Al said. "You could be pretending to have switched bodies with my brother so you could get on our good side."

"Al, it's really me!" Ed said. "How else can I remember the time we tricked that greedy bastard Yoki into handing the deed to that mining town over to Halling and Khayal, or even when we decided to leave Resembool to join the military?"

Mustang thought for a while, then turned to Al and said, "What transmutation circle is she talking about?"

Thinking about the battle, Al quickly drew the pattern on a piece of paper and said, "This one."

Mustang looked at the paper, then got a surprised expression on his face. "What…it couldn't be…"

"Colonel, is there something wrong?" Hawkeye asked.

"This circle…it's Howitzer's!"

"Wait, Howitzer's a different person? Who is he?" Ed asked, uncomfortable with being in Lust's body.

"Lieutenant Colonel Loki Howitzer, the Trickster Alchemist; one of the most skilled infiltrators in the military. He was usually sent on undercover missions to sabotage the enemy in some way. This was because of his special brand of transmutation, which allowed him to take on the appearance of anyone he wished and forcibly make other people look like each other to cause widespread panic within the enemy ranks."

Al quickly asked, "Wait, isn't that human transmutation? I thought the government frowned on that!"

"Führer Bradley allowed it due to some crap about how it didn't deal with resurrecting the dead or some other lame-ass excuse."

Ed looked at Mustang and, gesturing to his new body, asked, "So, how do we fix this?"

Al spoke up, saying, "Actually, Brother, I translated more of those notes while you were recovering, and I can't use the transmutation circle turn you back for at least a week."

"A week?!" Ed and Winry screamed in unison.

"I can't stay like this for a week!" Ed replied. "Colonel, take me to this Howitzer guy and let him—"

"Sorry, but Howitzer was discharged from the military a few years ago. He was aggravating too many female officers and civilians with his…stunts to be allowed to remain in the Führer's good graces."

"So I'm stuck like this for a week?" Ed said, slumping to the floor. "What about my body?"

"Technically, you still have your body; it's just been transmuted to look like the woman that attacked us last night," Al said.

"And since this woman now looks like you, we can keep her here in the military hospital under heavy sedation until we can get you back to normal," Mustang said. "We'll just say you had to have a more thorough medical examining."

"You're just enjoying this, aren't you?" Ed coldly remarked as he saw Mustang's mischievous grin when talking about how to keep his body in the hospital. He then turned to Winry to apologize for this new trauma, but he then saw a starry look in her eyes. "Um, Winry, what are you staring at me like that for?" Ed asked, nervous about the answer.

"You'll need to live like a woman for a week, right?" Winry asked. When Ed nervously nodded, she said, "Well, who here can teach you how to be a woman better than me?" Before Hawkeye and Ross could interject, Winry grabbed Ed's feminine wrist and dragged him out of the building. "We are going to have so much fun; clothes shopping, makeovers, jewelry, and, to top it all off, the spa!"

"Have fun, Brother!" Al said as he waved goodbye while Mustang, Hawkeye, Brosh and Ross followed suit.

Ed only had one thought running through his mind as he followed Winry. "SOMEONE WAKE ME UP FROM THIS DAMN NIGHTMARE!"