“Owowwoooo” A large white dog starts barreling towards me. Zig steps in between to protect me and the dog screeches halt before quickly turning around and running back to wherever it was hiding before with it’s tail tucked between it’s legs.

A little girl with pig tails and bright blue eyes looks at us in confusion. “Daddy! People are here!” She rushes off to go chase after her dog. “What’s wrong Alexander? Wait up! You’re supposed to jump on them!”

Shou Tucker pokes his head out the door soon after, tiredly chasing after his daughter. “Nina, haa oh well. Welcome Jiang, Zig. This is my daughter Nina and this big oaf is Alexander.” Nina smiles up at me and Zig. Meanwhile Alexander seems to want to get away from Zig. Likely feeling that there is something wrong with him.

“Come in, come in. Sorry about the mess. Ever since my wife left, I’ve been a bit behind on chores.” Walking in I can’t help but notice a smell in the house. While the outside looks nice it’s clear that the inside hasn’t been cleaned in some time. The floors and some of the walls are clean but only up to a certain line. If I had to guess it’s right up to where little Nina can reach.

“Edward and Alphonse are in my library. I’m going to be working on some things. I’d appreciate your assistance if possible….” He seems to trail off near the end. A bit of desperation in his eyes. “I have an important deadline in a couple of days… I can’t afford to miss out on this, or my certification will be revoked…” That does seem pretty important.

I just shrug. “We talked a bit about helping each other before. I’m fine with giving some help so long as you answer my own questions about alchemy. I’ll put your stuff up first though. I don’t want you to lose your resources. Besides even if you fail, I know the Hamburgangs wouldn’t mind having a doctor on staff. Their old alchemist retired and doesn’t perform alchemy much anymore. I know their daughter Amy would love a medical expert to be around and they can pay well. Maybe even give your daughter a place to run around and girls her age to play with?”

He seems a bit lost in thought. “You mean… I’d be able to just give some lessons to them and have my research funded to do in my own time…” He smiles for a moment. A bit of the tiredness draining from him. “This whole time I thought that this was my last saving grace. That it was my only path forward…” He staggers slightly holding the bridge of his nose, some of the tension being all that was keeping him up.

I can’t help but chuckle at that. “I’ve fallen for that same mistake plenty of times with my experiments. I once spent months working on a transmutation array that makes ice-cream from added ingredients. It was mostly a novelty, but it was becoming quite popular before I’d left. I wasted so much time on it.”

He looks over at Nina and their dog running around in the yard. “Well… I guess we will see what happens. It’s a good fallback plan at the very least… and you’re sure they would accept me?”

I nod and pull down my shirt at my neckline a bit showing off some of the bandages. “You worked on my injuries after I helped save their daughter. They obviously need some medical alchemist there and they seem to be pretty rare with the military grabbing all of them up.”

We finally reach a room that’s walls are covered in cages and shelves full of various creatures’ organs. I can’t help but feel awed by the sheer amount of biological data and unique specimens.

He walks in with a sigh. “This is my laboratory… it’s kind of embarrassing I’m popularly regarded as the authority on chimeras, but the truth is… it hasn’t really been going that well lately. Two years ago I managed to make a chimera that could speak… but it didn’t last long. It was in pain and starved to death.” Interesting… a chimera capable of human speech? Looking around in various cages I see some interesting miniature monkeys with multiple heads and other animals.

I can’t help but ask the first thing that comes to mind here. “Are these animals capable of breeding?”

He seems confused by that for a moment. “Well, some of them yes. Only the ones that are using parts from the same species. Even then sometimes they are rejected. I’ve found that the blood type needs to match and through the use of alchemy the rest can be rewritten.”

Interesting so he’s able to somehow make the creatures combine and graft on parts that are functional… “So as long as the species is the same you can add parts… What traits do the offspring have? The original or the new grafted ones?”

He holds his jaw and starts considering it before going over to some notes he has at one of his tables.

“I’m not sure… I’ve never let them keep their pregnancy long term. Usually I dissect them to see what sorts of changes have occurred and use the unborn child as part of the process of making a different one…” He starts moving papers around catching on to my idea.

“But if you’re able to have them reproduce. Then you could alter animals to become better farm animals. Larger cows with choice meat growing to larger sizes. Special domesticated pets that have colored fur. Combining the fur of different creatures then having them skinned. All these seem like possible avenues you could explore.” I hear his paper rifling stop.

“I-I could have been doing those all this time… I’ve spent… I’ve spent 3 years working to make intelligent chimera… when all I had to do was that?” He staggers again catching himself on his desk. Looking pale.

Poking my metal finger into a cage and letting a two headed monkey try to bite at it. I can’t help but chuckle at the way he’s reacting. “I mean it sounds simple but theres probably a long process.”

“No! Those are all things I can already do… My research into intelligent chimera has had… many faults. I’ve had to start getting creative… but if I just went down a different avenue I’d have already accomplished so much!”

I wonder… “When making intelligent chimera. What were you using? Some animals are quite smart. Wolfs and some dogs are capable of math and understand speech. Several species of birds can actually talk. The only real problem is mixed creatures dying.”

He seems a bit nervous for a moment before a thought occurs to him. “Well, I am sad to say I used a dead body. I was lucky enough to purchase one from a willing family. Unfortunately, most are not as open minded to having their loved ones turned into a chimera for the sake of scientific progress.”

Interesting… I suppose that a monkey or some other already semi sentient creature plus a human body frame and tongue could comprehend words if given time.

“The main issue are the growths of flesh that start to grow within the tissue of these chimera. My other experiments using dogs and monkeys to enlarge their brain led to rapid growths in their brain and others developing all over the body.” He pulls out a couple of slides of the tumors.

Looking at them they are pretty easy to recognize. “Yep, those are tumors.” He raises an eyebrow at me.

“When you perform alchemy, it leaves those alchemy marks if you didn’t picture it perfectly right?” He nods then looks back at the growth and its approximate size and shape but picturing it without being given time to grow before slamming it on the table. “It’s leaving the alchemy marks as growth patterns! If I was able to predict where they would be I can replace or fix the tissue individually!” With that he just starts getting to work right in front of me. He grabs a small cage of mice and another full of hamsters and starts working on combining them.

Realizing attempting to grab his attention now would prove useless I just head out the door. “Well Zig, Let’s go check in on Edward and Al.”

Out in the halls I see more and more proof that the place really needs a maid or something. I pass what looks to be the kitchen with the sink full of dirty dishes and a smell wafting from the room that says that it hasn’t been clean in some time.

Next is a set of double doors with a little girl holding onto a dog peeking inside. I sneak up behind her. Just before I’m about to scare her I realize I’m not sure if this is okay or not. I don’t really know her that well. She might not scare well… She might not like i-

A somewhat startled “Eep!” Comes from the girl in front of me as she finally noticed my presence. “Oh! Um hi there!” Well… I guess it’s too late to think of that now.

“Hello, my name is Jiang.” I hold out my metallic hand. She shakes it smiling up at me. “I’m Nina! Are you an alchemist too? Daddy has a lot of guests recently.” She’s smiling up at me at that. Probably happy to have some people around in this large empty house.

I tilt my head side to side as a sort of noncommittal no. “Well, not exactly. In my home country it’s called Alkahestry. I’m helping your… ‘daddy’ with some work while he helps me understand his alchemy. What about you? What are you doing over here?”

I can’t help but smile as she nervously shuffles her feet a bit. “I was spying on the short mean brother… Alexander likes jumping on him, so we were waiting to ambush him.”

Man Edwards going to be pissed. I toss ruffle her head a bit her braids flopping around as she giggles. “Alright, do you just want to spook him? Because I’m sure me and Zig can help.” She looks up at me with big blue eyes and smiles at that.

“Yes! You two are all dressed up like ninjas! Can can you two like disappear and drop Alexander on top of him?” Alexander seems to give a concerned wine as if understanding what’s being said.

I look over at Zig who slumps slightly looking down at the large dog then back at me. Eventually he relents with a long sigh bends down and picks up the petrified dog that’s scared stiff.

“Haha Alexander! You’re being all goofy.” Thankfully Nina doesn’t seem to understand that her dog is just scared shitless of Zig.

Standing in the doorway Nina and I watch as Zig makes his way through a somewhat large library of books. Despite his large frame he’s able to manuver over the top of the bookcases with ease. At the far end I can see Edward and Al reading though several books completely absorbed. Eventually Zig makes it to the bookcase above Edward and looks back at me. It’s almost like a ‘do I really have to do this?’ look. Before finally letting go of the dog who immediately goes spread eagle and woofs out as he lands on Edward.

“God damn mutt! How the hell…” Nina is giggling below me and I can’t help but have a laugh too.

Finally, Al’s turns towards us pointing our way. “Um brother… I think Nina and Jiang are here.” Pointing off towards us. Edward wrestles his way out from under the dog. “Erg finally, we’ve been here a few days. Mr.Tucker is nice but he’s been too busy. Hey! You promised me a method to get taller!” Oh right… I need to get started on teaching him Chi. That’s going to take a while.

Walking in I can’t help but laugh again looking at the almost smiling Alexander as the dog has its tongue hanging out with a gleam of intelligence as it gives Edward a big lick across his face causing him to sputter.

“God… why?!” This time everyone laughs at him including Edward.

“Ha Stop, stop down!” Edward while fending him off still but at least laughing while doing so.

Nina speaks up. “I think he’s just happy to have another person my size around.” Edward turns with murder in his eyes for a second before changing directions to me.

Through gritted teeth and a stiff face, he all but growls. “Well… that should be changing soon… right?”

I wave him off. “Yeah yeah, we can start our first lesson tomorrow. Just be warned it’s very painful and will take a while to get a hold of. We’ll also need a lot of spare food.”

He nods rapidly smiling. Obviously in his own little world. “Of course, you need the added mass from something…” He just looks down at his body and smiles at the idea of being tall.

“Anyways, learn anything interesting while here?” They look between each other before looking back at me.

Al holds up two books. “Well… That’s one thing we were confused about. A lot of this medical alchemy is all contradicting. One states there are humors in the body that are out of balance and that restabilizing them helps with wellness. Another talks about the different components and organs and systems within us… but only one of them can be right?”

“It’s the organs and systems. Just throw the other book into a fiction area.” He nods. I turn to Edward.

He blushes. “I’ve been reading a book that goes into long detail about hysteria* and it’s cures.” His face turning a deep crimson red.

Al seems excited at the idea. “Oh? There’s a cure for hysteria? We should tell Wenry.” Al not realizing what that means tries to reach for the book.

Edward snatches it away and all but throws it under a pile. “Nooope nope nope. We aren’t telling her about that! Um it’s not very important. Let’s just um…. Oh, another thing was the medical properties of eating mummies and a few other things…” What the hell were these two reading? This all sounds like old medical practices that likely have fallen… oh we are in around the right age for it.

“Haaa well… I’ll have to look through a few of these things and figure out what’s fiction to not have you guys get any wrong ideas.” With that we start reading through several books. It’s annoying because there’s just so much wrong information in them. There’s no global information sharing system so people can only make educated guesses based on other peoples work who made guesses on other peoples work who lied to sound impressive… It’s honestly a mess.

With that we work far into the night before Edward and Al are dragged away by some military guy. They offer us a ride, but I just wave them off. Mr.Tucker being nice enough to offer me a room to stay in for the duration of our stay. I start reviewing the lessons that I used to have with Su in order to best start them for Edward tomorrow morning. Zig and I clean the kitchen a bit before he makes everyone a meal. Mr.Tucker hasn’t left his lab since yesterday but I remember seeing a small fridge in there so this is probably common. It’s nice to have a bit of time to relax and learn instead of nearly kill myself constantly… though most of the books seem wrong.