Hello, hello! Here we have the first chapter with double digits. Thanks again to everybody who left a review, and thanks so much to all you lovelies who read this story.

May, Lanfan, and I gaped at the philosopher's stone in dead silence for a good six seconds. Nobody moved. Finally, May and I both looked at Lanfan. She immediately blurted, "I did not do that."

May began slowly, "It came out of your…"

"I said it wasn't me!"

I was still propped awkwardly against the door, upside-down and speechless, when it suddenly rattled with someone's knocking. Ed's voice was muffled by the wood. "Guys, what's with the racket? Did something break?"

"Lanfan, did you kill Selena?" Lin called.

"I'm right here, dammit!"

"Oh, there you are. It was so quiet after all the yelling, I had to wonder."

I heard Ed grumble. "We're trying to sleep out here, and Havoc's gonna be pissed if you break anything. Hurry up and go to bed."

"WAIT!"

We girls leaped into action. I gave myself another bruise as I scrambled to sit upright. As we burst through the doorframe, Ed and Lin blinked at us in confusion, already half-turned to walk away. Al, Jelso, and Zanpano crowded curiously at the end of the hall.

"Uh. Did something happen?" Ed asked apprehensively.

"We found—um—" I glanced back over my shoulder and did a double-take. Lanfan and May followed my gaze.

The stone was gone.

"What the hell?!" I squawked. As the three of us rushed to check under the bed, the dresser, and anything else it could have rolled under, the boys in the doorway exchanged looks.

"Where did it go?" May pulled Lanfan's blankets off the floor and shook them out. "Lanfan, did you take it again?"

"I told you I didn't take it!"

I groaned. "For god's sake, it was in your damn scarf!"

"I didn't know it was there! Someone must have planted it."

"How did you not notice a rock-hard lump in your scarf?"

"I keep smoke grenades there."

"You crazy ninja bitch!"

Al nudged between Ed and Lin to poke his head in the doorway. "What happened? What are you looking for?"

May, Lanfan, and I looked up simultaneously, our faces all equally frantic. "The philosopher's stone!"

That night, the whole neighborhood rattled with shouts and the scrape-thump-bang of furniture moving around. We got two noise complaints. I might have felt some remorse about that if we had actually found the damn thing, but no. I got to line up in the hall with the other two suspects, the Xing idiots that had attacked me less than ten minutes earlier.

"This is bullshit," I growled. "This is complete bullshit."

Ed called from the bedroom, "Where are the air vents?" Something thumped. "Oh. Never mind."

"Such bullshit," I repeated. On the couch, my belongings, May's, and Lanfan's sat in the "already been searched" pile. May's panda had usurped Zanpano's job of guarding it.

"Find anything?" Havoc prompted the bedroom search brigade.

I heard Lin and Ed reply with a jumble of "nope" and "nuh-uh." Al emerged from the bedroom, shaking his head. "No luck. We could check under the floorboards, but they don't look like they've been moved in years."

"Nah, there's no gap underneath," Havoc sighed. "Just knock on 'em to make sure nothing sounds hollow."

Making a frustrated noise in my throat, I let my head drop back against the wall. "If the stone doesn't show up, I think I'm going to kill something. "

"Are you sure you don't have it?" Lanfan scoffed.

"You're kidding," I shot back. "The damn thing fell out of your scarf and you still won't admit it?"

Lanfan sent me a sideways glare. "I have no reason to interfere with my clan's rise to power. You could have planted the stone on me to save your own skin."

"Oh my god, don't try to pin your shit on me."

"Both of you shut up," Ed interrupted, trudging out of the bedroom with Al and Lin. "We got nothing, Havoc."

A series of groans and sighs rippled through the rest of us. Havoc ran a hand over his face and told everyone to go to bed. We would have to keep searching in the morning.

"This," I ground out, "is some bullshit."

I heard Havoc mutter, "Damn straight."

I don't know how everybody else slept after all that, but I tossed and turned for hours while the hurricane in my head settled down. I mean, sure, the philosopher's stone problem had me stumped. It had to be Lanfan, though. That much was obvious. Kicking the truth out of her would have been my main concern, if not for the look I'd caught from Lin earlier—an indecisive, searching stare. Not quite betrayed, but close. That had my stomach in a butterfly knot.

For the second time today, something Al had said rang in my ears. "Is it really Lin you're worried about?"

I pulled the covers over my head. Sure, I'd been dying to get Greed back. Sure, everything had fallen to shit. Sure, he suspected me of stealing the philosopher's stone, found out I was still crushing on him, and then rejected me. But no way in hell was I going to cry myself to sleep like the little girl he obviously thought I was. Screw that. Screw him.

I heard something rattle just as I was getting drowsy. At first, I dismissed it as the house settling. Then, I heard the same sound, followed by the thump of something falling. I sat up and pressed my ear to the wall. More clearly now, I heard it: something moving through the store.

I rubbed my eyes and sluggishly pulled my jacket over me, sliding out from under the covers. Whatever was in the store, it didn't sound very big. Probably some animal. I might as well check it out, since I wasn't going to fall asleep anytime soon.

I heard Lanfan's low whisper as I shuffled to the door. "Where are you going?"

"Heard something in the store," I mumbled back, yawning. "Gonna go check on it."

She made a skeptical-sounding grunt but left it at that.

I passed through the living room, where the boys snored gently, and into the attached "employees only" entrance to the store. Closing the door quietly, I listened for movement. There—another thump. I wandered from aisle to aisle until I saw something dart under a rack.

"Come on, where are you?" I muttered, crouching to look underneath. Right on cue, a tail zipped past my nose, scurrying to the next shelf over. "There you are, ya little bastard. How'd you get in here?"

"The hell are you doing this time?" A voice behind me made me jump at least a foot.

I whirled around. "Greed?! Where the hell did you come from?"

"Heard you walking through the living room," he said, jerking his thumb back toward the employee entrance. His sleep-husky voice sounded kind of like it did after I kissed him, but I buried that memory fast. "Why aren't you in the house?"

"I heard something in here. Could be a squirrel, or maybe a smallish cat. I couldn't tell for sure."

Greed grunted. "You can deal with it in the morning. Go back to bed."

"…I can't sleep."

For a minute, Greed fell silent. I sat by the rack, half-listening for the animal but mostly sulking shamelessly. I kept my head down when Greed dropped to a crouch next to me. Of course, he put his hand on top of my head and made me look up, pulling me off balance. My back bumped his knee.

"Dude!" I protested, instinctively grabbing his hand.

"Listen up, you idiot," Greed cut me off. "I know it sucks, alright? You think I'm not sick of living with a friggin' seventeen year-old kid who gets turned on at the drop of a hat?"

"Didn't need to know that, thanks."

"I'm not done. Yeah, some privacy would be real nice. But you're not gonna get yourself killed over this shit."

Gritting my teeth, I shoved Greed's hand off of my head and stood up to walk away. "I heard it the first time."

He grabbed my arm, jerking me to a halt. "Come on, get back in the house. I'm too tired for this."

"I'll come back in when I find the cat," I growled, leaning forward with all my weight, but Greed didn't budge.

"Now it's a cat?"

"I don't know!" I kept pulling as hard as I could. "Go back to bed if you're so tired!"

"I can't let you wander around by yourself. I told the other guys to keep an eye on you, too."

"You're shitting me! What the hell am I gonna do, Greed? I can't do the transmutation without you in the circle!"

"You set booby traps all the time at the Devil's Nest. Come on, let's go." Greed tugged my arm, but I braced my feet, set on finding the cat. He groaned. "Come on, Selena. Do you really wanna end up like Ishmael?"

I went stock-still. Greed froze, too—he knew damn well that the Ishmael card was off-limits—until my heel shot out at him. The kick struck him in the hip, knocking him off balance long enough for me to take off at a sprint. Honestly, I didn't really have a plan, but the Confidential Activities Corner was in the storage room two aisles away, and the asshole running after me had been stupid enough to mention my talent for booby traps.

I grabbed the doorknob to the storage room. Locked. Behind me, I heard Greed skid around a shelf as I snatched my gloves from my pocket and grabbed the doorknob again. This time it opened. I raced for my stash in the back of the room, where various blunt objects lay within arm's reach. Hell, I could transmute something out of the wall if I had to.

Then Greed tackled me from behind.

I hit the ground in a sprawling heap, wheezing as a douchebag-sized weight crushed the air out of my lungs. My chin felt bruised, Greed had me pinned, and I could freaking see the corner where I had put my damn supplies. Ten more steps, and I would have made it. Greed propped himself up, gasping for air.

"You're such a pain in the ass," he huffed.

Gritting my teeth, I slammed my hands against the floor. Greed went rigid as the ground crackled, and sparks of alchemic energy carved paths through the cement. It left a transmutation circle as big as the room.

"Aw, shit," Greed said.

In a blinding flash of light, I triggered the transmutation.

So ends chapter ten, in which Selena does emotions like Michael Bay does movies: explosively. Well, chapter nine was like that, too. And chapter eight.

Blah blah drawings, blah blah Tumblr, blah blah aki13thfanfic.