A/N: Not much to say here. So, I don't own anything except Tea (same for last chapter). Enjoy!
"Ed, where are you going?" I asked. It was the break of dawn, and Ed had just stepped off the front porch.
"To find Al," he said, then, with a pointed look at me, added, "Alone."
I gave a bitter laugh. "Like hell you are." I walked down the steps of the porch and stood next to him. "Look, Ed. I want to help you find Al, but it's more than that. I need to get even with this bitch."
He looked at me, then gave a short laugh. Looking away, he said, "I suppose you do. Well, let's get going. We have a lot of work ahead of us."
By the time the sun had reached it's highest point in the sky, we still hadn't found anything.
"God dammit!" Ed shouted, slamming his fist into a tree. "I thought they wanted us to find them!"
"We will find them, Ed," I said. "We just need to be patient."
"Patient for what? For them to kill Al?" He demanded, turning on me. "For them to kill some innocent girl from my home town.? I don't think so!"
"Ed," I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I won't let that happen. We're going to figure this out. I know they want us to, but they're not going to let us find them so easily."
"Well, do have a better place for us to look?" He asked.
"Since I don't know your town very well, no, I don't." He started to say something, but I held up my finger to silence him. "But I have an idea."
"Which is?"
"Are there any caves? Or even better, underground caverns?" I asked.
"Yeah, some caves, why?" Then the answer hit him. "Oh! Because they were in an underground hideout. But since that's not available to them here, they needed something secluded and far away from people to stay hidden."
"How many caves are there?"
"Well, technically one, but it's a huge maze. We had best start exploring them if we want to make some progress."
I nodded and we headed off.
It was dark in the cave, and I had lost all sense of time, but it felt like a few hours had past and we hadn't made any progress.
"Hey, Ed?"
"Yeah?"
"What's, um, what's going on between you and Winry?" I could practically feel is body tense up.
"W-what do you mean?"
"Well, she likes you, right?"
"Does it matter?"
"She likes you, right?" I repeated.
"I don't know, I guess so."
"You don't even know? How oblivious are you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Ed, she's head over heals for you," I said. "That's why she takes such good care of your automail."
"She's my friend, of course she cares," Ed replied.
"She puts so much detail into the automail, she works really hard on it to make sure it's right height and strength. She goes far beyond what you should expect from a friend. And she doesn't just care about your automail. She cares about you. She puts all that effort into her work so that you can protect yourself and come home safely. You really never noticed?"
"I never had time to," Ed said. "I was busy trying to fix what I'd created."
"You mean what happened to you and Al?"
"Yeah, only, Al was going to get his body back," he said. "I was fine with my automail arm and leg."
"He's going to be okay, Ed," I said. I looked over at him. I plopped down on the floor to take a break. "I don't think they want him dead. If they did, they would have killed him already."
"I just wish I knew what they wanted," he said in exasperation, sitting down next to me.
"I told you, didn't I? They wanted to create a new breed of homunculi. I guess it's a world domination thing."
"Right," he said. "But then why capture Al?"
"I don't know. You fought homunculi, you know more about them than me," I said.
Ed sighed and looked down. A moment later, his head snapped back up. "Wait a minute. There was one homunculi, the second Greed, who was actually created within a living person."
"Like what Tanya tried to do to me?" I asked.
"Sort of, only, if that was her goal, she was doing it wrong. My friend Ling was a prince from the Xing country. He came to Amestris seeking the philosophers stone in order to save his king. Unfortunately for him, the guy who was behind most of the homunculi creations back when I was in the military, took an interest in him, I guess. I'm not entirely sure on the part, but this guy, the homunculi called him 'Father', sort of created Greed in Ling. Ling was still his own person, but Greed would sometimes take over his body sometimes."
"Interesting," I mused. "But… Do you think she'll try that with Al?"
"I… I don't know." He paused. "Either way, we need to find him."
"That won't be too hard," a new voice said, causing me and Ed to spring up, ready for a fight. We looked around until we saw Greed standing against a wall rather nonchalantly, a lazy grin on his face. "Come with me, and you might just get to see something interesting happen."
"We're not here to play games," Ed said.
"Neither am I," Greed said, not losing his nonchalant air.
"Where's my brother?" Ed demanded.
"Come with me and find out." With that said, he turned and left, not waiting to see if we were following.
Ed and I exchanged glances and then hurried to follow him.
We walked down a tunnel that Ed and I had been down already, but he stopped halfway down and pulled a lever hidden between rocks.
"You're kidding me! How did we miss that?" I cried out with out thinking.
"It was hidden," Ed pointed out, but he seamed annoyed that he missed it, too.
I let it drop, though. This wasn't the time.
We walked a bit further before the tunnel opened up into a large cavern. With her back turned to us, Tanya with her blonde hair styled in a fancy up-do that seemed completely inappropriate for a cave. She had on a white dress that had a hoop skirt. My attention was quickly drawn away by someone shouting, though.
"Brother!"
"Al!" Ed cried out, taking a few steps forward, only to be stopped by Greed.
"Not so fast, kid," he said, arm stretched out in front of Ed.
"Edward Elric," Tanya said, back still facing us. "I hear you're quit the alchemist." She turned around and smiled at him.
"What of it?"
"I need your help," she said simply.
"Not in a million years!"
"Ah, well, that's too bad for your brother." Underneath where Al was hanging from the ceiling, the floor opened to reveal a boiling pit of lava.
"What do you need from me?" Ed asked, neither agreeing or refusing to help her.
"You know how Van Hohenheim created a homunculus within an living person, no?"
"I know that he did it, and I suppose I have a general idea of how he did it, but I doubt I could recreate it," Ed said. "And even if I could, I wouldn't want to."
"You will if you don't want your brother burning to his death," she said.
There really wasn't a choice for Ed. He glared at Tanya until he realized this, and his shoulders slumped in desperation. Looking at the ground, he hesitantly spoke. 'I… I…"
"Hold on!" I said. What the hell was I doing? "I have a score to settle with you. Right now. If I win, you let Al go, and you surrender yourself to the military."
"Like I would agree to that?" She said laughing, but then cocked her head as if actually considering it. "You know what, I do agree to that."
"Master? Why?" Greed asked in shock.
"Shut up," she said coldly, glaring at him, but she quickly returned her gaze to me. "Well, it's your battle. Make the rules, and we'll start."
"Anything goes. Alchemy, hand to hand, anything," I said.
"Fine then. Ready when you are."
I hesitated a moment, but it was too late to take this back. I was about to get my ass handed to me. And possibly get killed. I wondered if she had needed me at all. I hoped so, at least that would save me my life. For the moment. I sighed. "Begin!"
In a flash (literally) there was a spear of rock flying towards my face. I quickly side stepped just in time to see the spear whisk past my face.
"Nice move," Tanya's dry voice said. I looked over to see she had a spear in her hand and she was running towards me. I jumped out of the way just as she was about to hit me, but, despite my best efforts, she still managed to scrape my arm. I winced, and saw blood trailing down my arm.
I picked myself up and used alchemy to create my own stone spear. I knew I couldn't win, but I hoped Ed was taking out Greed and saving Al.
The fight continued with us using our stone spears as swords. Surprising, they didn't break.
Well, not until after a good swing from Tanya. My spear shattered, and I stumbled back.
"It's over, girl," she said with a malicious grin. "And I promise that your death will just as painful as your torture was. Maybe even more."
I had to try and stall her. I wasn't entirely sure how long this fight had lasted, but I wanted to buy Ed as much time as possible. "Don't you still need me?"
"With an Alchemist like Elric? Why would I need you?" She asked. "I never needed you anyways, I just used you to get to Elric. He's a great alchemist, and cute on top of that. The two of us will rule together forever!"
"In your dreams, bitch!" Ed yelled.
"Wha-" but her words turned into a scream as Ed's automail arm (changed into a knife with alchemy) was placed at her neck. "You're done here."
I fell to the floor, with a sigh of relief, exhausted from running from her, and in pain from the cuts I had gotten from her. I must not have noticed them from the adrenalin.
"You can't do this!" She screeched, trying to get away from Ed. "Greed! Greed! Get your ass over here!"
"He's not going to help you. I killed him," Ed said.
"What? But how?" She was completely hysterical.
"Maybe you shouldn't have been so over confident to have left his bone sitting in your old hideout."
Al came over and held out his hand to me. "Let's get out of here." I nodded, taking his hand and following Ed and Tanya out.
We were greeted by a worried Roy and Winry when we got back. I suppose it was only natural since we had been gone all day. I was vaguely aware that Roy had called the others out to take Tanya into custody as I collapsed into Roy's arms. I'm not sure how, but Al managed to have gotten me back with out collapsing under my weight.
The last thing I saw before my eyes closed was Winry first hitting Ed's head with a wrench and then hugging him. I went limp in my brother's arm's and everything was black.
A/N: So I hope this was long enough, and I think there's going to be one more chapter. I hope I'm not ending this too soon, because that isn't my goal. If you guys think I need more, please, feel free to yell at me (nicely) and I'll try and add more. The last thing I want is to abruptly end this. I could always add a Roy/Riza chapter for the hell of it, even if it's not entirely relevant. Let me know what you guys think! And I'm sorry this took so long to update. Senior year and all.
