Welcome to chapter seven! Disclaimer: I Do not own FMA.
Claimer: I own NOM, The Muffins, and Ninjas!
Kittens! Bad Kittens! No Elijah!
The early morning sun streamed through the windows the next morning, waking me up. I quietly closed the curtains then collected the books and put them back in the library. Ed didn't seem likely to wake up any time soon, it was probably too early, so I grabbed a glass of milk and sat in the kitchen, reading Coraline and listening to Muse.
Ed wandered down at about half past nine, three hours later, wearing his normal clothes and a tired expression. By then I had finished Coraline and was now reading The complete idiots guide to Cheese.
I put the book down when he came in, marked my page, stood up, walked over to him and gave him a hug. He squirmed until I let go, then I went back so my seat and picked up my book again. He shot me a strange look and put some bread in the toaster, I turned the page. Ed sat down at the table and ate some toast, watching me read. He twitched a few times then snapped.
"Why are you reading that?" I looked up, and tilted my head to the side.
"What do you mean? It's a book, they're for reading." He sighed and shook his head.
"So what crazy scheme have you cooked up for today?" I looked up once again.
"Crazy? I? Never!" He raised his eyebrow. "Well, okay, maybe a little. But any way, I didn't really have anything planned for today. We should go see Al and Oryx, Al might feel abandoned or something." Ed's facial expression now looked to be a mixture of happiness and guilt.
"It has been a while since I've had a good conversation with Al." I nodded at him, and ran around the castle with a bag, shouting to Ed as I did.
"Maybe we could stay the night! Or a few, give you some brotherly time or whatever." Ed, who was following after me, seemed to like this idea. So I sent a message by Catbus to Oryx and Al, asking if we could stay for a bit.
They sent a reply back with Totoro, saying that it was fine and that they were looking forward to it. I grinned and Ported with Ed to the front of their castle. Oryx pulled open the door before I could push the button and annoy the Chibi Naruto again.
"Tampo Kachi! I lost the Game!" Oryx yelled, smiling. I grinned back, I smiled even harder when I saw what she'd done to her hair since the last time we met: It was now bleached white and partially died semi-fluorescent purple.
"Dotto! Nice hair!" I said.
"Thanks." We continued to discus her hair until Al invited me and Ed inside. Their castle was mostly the same as last time, only there was a little more purple, and many, many, more cats.
I stepped over two, petted a few more, and then tripped halfway across the Front Hall, dropping my bags and the mound of notepads I was carrying. I didn't land on any cats; I did fall off my cliff though. I sighed, and landed in a river.
I sat on the river bed for a moment, then decided to swim out. But before I could, I was kidnapped by orange muffins. They jumped onto me with their muffiny skills, tied my right hand to my right ankle and tied my left hand to my left ankle, and carried me away downriver on a raft. I tried to struggle but they subdued me with muffin powers. (That or they fed me drugged muffins).
They tied my hands together in front of me for better mobility, and threw me into their muffin base in the middle of the ocean. They walked me down some hallways, and shoved me in a closet and proceeded to discuss what they were going to do with me.
I peeked through the crack in the door, and saw nothing, so I drilled a hole with a silent drill and looked out of that.
"I say we send a note, ransom and the like." Said the tallest muffin, to the right of a high backed chair.
"No, we don't even know where she came from. I say we put her to work. In …" This muffin was holding a clipboard and standing directly to the left of the high backed chair, which I now guessed contained their leader. The muffin looked at his clipboard before saying; "The Factory maybe."
"The Factory… I like it, get her in there." This voice came from the chair; I still couldn't see who was in it. The muffins that I could see walked over to the closet and dragged my out of it by my hair.
"It's the Factory for you, so move along." The muffin holding my hair hauled me onto my feet and pushed my down the corridor. I realised that I hadn't said anything this whole time.
"Excuse me." The muffin with the clipboard, who I had decided to call Larry, looked over at the other muffin, who was now Peter, who nodded.
"What?" Asked Larry, snappishly.
"What the hell are you kidnapping me for? And what's the Factory?" Larry considered this then nodded to Peter.
"Because we need more workers, the Factory is where all of the new muffins are tested before joining our ranks."
"Ranks of what?" I asked, Larry and Peter looked a little shocked that I'd even asked.
"Why the army of Nefarious Orange Muffins." Said Larry proudly.
"So, NOM." He sighed a little.
"Yes fine NOM. We have reached the Factory" We were outside a door, it was a deep grey and had a small sign on it that said: 'The Factory". Peter pushed open the door and I saw a long high ceilinged room with rows and rows of tables, at which a great number of people, and muffins, were sitting and talking to other muffins. I stood and watched them all, until a cry broke the spell.
"Imposter! Security breach! Lemons!" Larry ran off in the direction of the shouting, I turned to Peter.
"Lemons? What's so bad about Lemons?" Peter lead me through the tables, I wondered why no one had looked up, but then I saw the blank looks in their eyes as they asked a list of questions and wrote down the answers. I knew that I'd have to get out of their before they did the same thing to me. I started to scout out the room, looking for exits of any kind.
By the time I was seated and had a list of questions and a muffin in front of me I had counted Twelve doors, ten guarded, and one the one that I had come through before. One hundred and thirty nine windows, fifty seven of which were too high to be of any use, twenty of which were too small, and sixty five air-conditioning vents, all of which were accessible and looked to be the right size.
I looked at the muffin across from me, maybe it was a lemon muffin, and if it was it might be able to help me. I looked down at the questions.
"What is your name and age?" A simple enough question, the muffin was staring down at the concrete floor.
"Joey, I'm," he hesitated, but only for a moment. "Fifteen." I nodded and wrote it down
"Why do you wish to join the fine and upstanding, loyal and just, brave and… The ranks of Nefarious Orange Muffins?" The question had gone on for a while longer, but I was sure that I would either die of boredom or fall off my chair with laughter if I had to keep reading. The muffin, Joey, squirmed a little then met my gaze.
"I want to join the Nefarious Orange Muffins and make a name for myself so that my mother will be proud of me for once!" I nodded and wrote down what Joey had said. The questions were boring and generic, so I spiced them up a little. Adding my own when the questions got a little too repetitive.
"What is the square root of one hundred and ninety six?" Joey thought for a moment.
"Fourteen." I wrote down his answer next to the question. The next question was maths too, I looked up at Joey.
"Complete this sentence, butter's for…"
"A bee sting." I raised my eyebrow; I had guessed muffins were smart, what with the math, but knowing that? I was suspicious.
"What is your favourite flavour of ice-cream?" Joey looked surprised at this question.
"Umm, Mint I guess." I hummed and made a fake note on my clipboard, this
was still really boring.
"Okay, so say you were walking down a street and some guy runs past with all this money, and you heard that morning that a bank robbery was taking place, what'd you do?" Joey looked really put off now, close to tears. If muffins can cry that is. He leant towards me.
"How long have you been here?" He asked. I looked around, and leant closer as well.
"I got here just before I started talking to you. Why?"
"I'm not an Orange muffin I'm a Lemon muffin. I'm here on an undercover mission. These other people have been here to long, they wouldn't want to leave, but you might."
"Yes please. I heard that you were a dreaded enemy of NOM, what're you doing here?"
"Trying to find people like you, people that we can set free."
"I really do appreciate it."
At that moment a team of Lemon Muffins smashed each of the sixty two useful windows and six of the high ones, and attacked the guards. The other questioners were too stunned to do anything, Joey pulled me up and we ran over to a muffin.
"Caleb!" Joey shouted over the din of fighting muffins, "I found one!" He handed me over to Caleb, who handed me on to another muffin, who handed me on and so on.
They passed me up and out one of the high windows; once they had me out they threw me into a helicopter. The battle lasted long enough for me to be debriefed by the muffin commander, Caleb, and find a secure seat in the helicopter.
The Lemon muffin base was much better concealed than the Orange muffin one. I was welcomed by the muffins, they taught me some muffin combat and codes, I was learning about the fall of the first muffin king when Caleb said it was time for me to go back home. Before I went the muffins gave me a bag of gifts, one of which was an Orange flavoured muffin.
They had flown me halfway to the castle when the Ninjas boarded. For the second time that day I was tied up and dragged around, this time with a blindfold on.
Skull-Face Omnibus!
I was dumped onto what felt like grass. When the blindfold was removed, I saw that I was under an oak tree, with Ninjas surrounding me in a tight circle. I tried to run but I was still tied up. They held me still and explained that they only wanted to teach me some of the way of the Ninja, for they felt I would need it. I agreed to the training, but only if I could be back with my friends in a few days, they discussed this and agreed.
Over the next few days I got a crash course in Meditation, Self-Defence, Concealment, and, since they found I had a talent for it, Elemental Magic. They took me back after four days of intense training during which I barely had enough time to sleep, and left me in the middle of The Forest, with more gifts, the most mysterious of which was a long thin package.
I walked through the Forest and Ported to Oryx's castle as soon as I reached the edge. Oryx tackled me as soon as she saw me.
"What did you do now? Where did you get all that stuff? Where'd you go?"
"Calm down Oryx. I was kidnapped by Orange muffins, then saved by Lemon muffins, then kidnapped by the Ninjas again." Oryx raised her eyebrows.
"Why does all the cool stuff happen to you?" I laughed and turned to Ed, who was standing just behind his brother.
"What have you been doing this whole time?" I asked.
"Nothing much, just hanging around with Al and Oryx." The aforementioned owners of the castle had vanished for unknown reasons, or to find one of their cats.
"I'm sorry." I said, and I was, I hated just vanishing like that. Ed shook his head.
"It's not your fault, you were kidnapped. I'm just glad…That you're alright. You are alright aren't you?" I nodded.
"Just a few bruises." I saw Ed twitch a little and felt even sorrier than before. I took a few steps forward and caught him in a hug. He shivered at the touch but relaxed eventually. I pulled away.
"I'm still sorry." Oryx and Al burst back into the Hall in a puff of timing.
"Now then, weren't we planning to have you over to stay?" Oryx asked, grabbing my arm and dragging me up to her room.
I have no idea what you're saying so I'll just be over here doing this instead…
Three days after my kidnapping I sat down on my bed with the long thin package the ninjas had left me with spread out on the bedspread in front of me. I pulled the string holding it closed off and threw it up into the air, momentarily distracted by watching it fall to the floor, and slid the brown paper off of the thing inside; it was made of a dark mahogany wood.
I pulled the paper off entirely and the thing rolled out to the other side of my bed and stopped at the edge. I leant forward and snatched it up to get a closer look at it, as I did I noticed a white rectangle of card sitting on the bed in the middle of the wrapping.
Picking it up I saw that inscribed on it in flowing calligraphy were the words 'Elemental Staff'. The staff was tall, taller than I was, and covered in a twining silver metal like a vine would cover a tree branch, twisting into a shining cluster at the top. It also had a crescent moon shaped depression in the wood about twenty centimetres down.
I stood up and hefted the thing in my hand, twirling it around, it looked rather awkward to transport, it would be easier if it was smaller. As I thought this the staff began to shrink, retaining the crescent moon depression and the twining silver. I stared at it, and decided that it was clearly magic, and inexplicable, firmly chose not to worry about it, and went to practice some Elemental Magic.
That was Chapter seven everyone! Hope you enjoyed it, don't trip on your way out! Bye!
Next time on CCC: Holidays are planned and met.
