He woke to the sound of an alarm. It sounded like an old klaxon siren, the kind used to warn the citizenry of imminent attack, and Ed shot up, flinging blankets and sheets everywhere as he blearily grabbed his shoes and shoved them on his feet. The siren filled his groggy mind as he grumbled under his breath. He had to get out of here! Obviously, something was going on, and -

"Ed? Ed! Wait, Ed, no, it's okay, you're fine!"

Ed stopped and looked up, surprised to find that he was not, actually, in a military apartment in Central. Instead, his surroundings were rundown but warm. Behind him was a threadbare couch, along with a low-lying table and a dusty lamp. The walls were full of cluttered shelves full of books, knick-knacks, and clocks. The carpet was so worn in places, that concrete peeked through the fibers. The ceiling was low, and the walls were painted the color of mud. Slowly, recollections of the night before flooded back as he stared at the young woman standing in a doorway wearing a bathrobe. Allana looked a bit worried, her eyebrows drawn together in an expression of quizzical concern. It took a few seconds for his brain to fully connect the dots, and his eyes widened.

"Look, I know this must be confusing for you and all, coming from a farm, but-" Allana started, but Ed barreled through her explanation.

"I didn't... we didn't... do anything, did we?" Ed asked, one boot on one foot and the other remaining bare.

On his face was the purest expression of half-frightened anticipation. He hadn't even bothered to pull on socks. He abruptly realized he was still fully clothed, though he was most certainly bedraggled, and his hair was loose from sleeping in a braid. His face warmed as the implications truly settled on him. Did I? Didn't I? I can't remember. I don't feel different. Are you supposed to feel different? And why does my head feel like an elephant sat on it?

Abruptly, Allana snickered, her sleeve over her mouth, and Ed huffed.

"Don't laugh! This is important!"

"Pfffft. No, we didn't do anything. You, ah, told me it wasn't a good idea," Allana assured.

Ed's shoulders fell with relief, and he collapsed back onto the couch. That took care of that mess. He hardly remembered how he ended up here in the first place. He usually didn't make it a habit to follow young women home and fall asleep at their apartments, though Winry, of course, was a separate and altogether different case - he had Pinako's permission. Ed put his head in his hands, starkly aware of the massive headache that had built up behind his eyes, and Allana asked, helpfully, "Would you like water?"

"Yes," Ed moaned as he rubbed his temples.

The raid siren was not helping.

"What is that thing for? Why would anyone need to sound a siren around here?!" Ed complained loudly as he put his feet up on the coffee table and stretched his arms out.

"Yes, make yourself at home," Allana said drily as she disappeared from his line of sight to get him a glass of water. "That's the sandstorm siren. I was worried you'd run right out the door and end up sandblasted to pieces. You really aren't from around here, are you?"

Ed frowned as the realization hit him. He stared at his Widget, which was sitting on the coffee table next to his propped-up feet. The little message icon flashed on it periodically, as if to stab him with the reminder that his brother was probably about to lose his mind.

"H-how long do those last?" Ed asked. "When can I actually... you know, go home?"

"Hm? Oh, probably not til tomorrow. Sandstorms are brutal, and the whole place shuts down for at least thirty hours. And you don't wanna be outside either. Lots of people who can't find shelter just hide in the Underground when it comes through," Allana said as she walked over with a glass full of water. She frowned at Ed and bent down to look him in the eye. He leaned back and away as she dead-eyed him.

"You're not thinking of going out there, are you?"

"N-no! I just... uh -"

Suddenly, a sound like static blared outside, along with the raid siren, and Ed looked up at the window. To his surprise, where there had once been a street, there was only now a brown wall. It took him a few minutes to realize the wall was a cloud of sand. Entranced, he got up from his seat and walked over to the window, staring at the swirling maelstrom outside.

"What happens to people who don't get Underground?" Ed asked in awe. He could actually hear the sand scraping at the window, which he now noticed had incredibly small score marks in the panes from the countless amounts of sand that had blasted straight at it. It was amazing he could see anything out of it. He'd thought that was just an effect added by the manufacturer of the pane. Apparently that was why few people had any real windows on their buildings...

"Mmm... good question. It... doesn't have a good answer," Allana admitted, watching Ed from the couch.

Ed eventually came back and sat, taking the glass of water. After chugging nearly half the glass, he put it back down on the table.

"I guess that means I'm not going anywhere for a while, then," Ed grumbled, crossing his arms petulantly.

Allana smiled at his childish behavior, and she patted his shoulder.

"Hey, it's alright. These things happen. You can crash here for a bit. After all, you've obviously proven you're not some crazy, razor-wielding hooligan. I think I can trust you with all ten of my things," Allana joked as she stood up and walked into the kitchen. "How about I make breakfast?"

"Hey, I never say no to free food," Ed stated, suddenly perking up.

Honestly, this was probably the best outcome that could've happened. After all, he could be lying, half-blitzed, in the street as Nature's sand-fist hit him in the face and sheared his flesh from his bones sand particle by sand particle. This was a better alternative. That didn't, of course, negate the fact that Alphonse was probably chewing his fingers down to nubs from worry. If the amount of messages he'd received was any indication (the number was in the double-digits), the poor guy was pissing blood by now.

"You mind breakfast burritos?"

"What the heck is a burrito?"

"I'll take that as a no. Pancakes it is then."

As Allana busied herself in the kitchen, Ed leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. Eventually unable to let himself relax and do nothing, he got up and walked over to the tiny kitchenette.

"You call this a kitchen?" Ed asked incredulously, looking at the absurdly small shoebox Allana stood in. There wasn't even room to fully stretch out his arms. The stove was a single eye, with pots and pans hanging from the ceiling over it. Most of the utensils sat out on the counters in trays, surrounding a tiny, metal sink with exposed piping. The largest appliance was a black and whitish-brown box sitting in its own cubby near Ed's head. Allana shrugged her shoulders.

"I mean- it's got a microwave. I'm trying to be positive here, screw off," Allana joked, waving a spatula at him. "What are you doing in here anyways?"

"There's nothing to do over there!"

Allana sighed and, as a concession, handed over a bowl full of eggs.

"Stir," she demanded, and Ed grumbled as he began to whisk the bowl.

As Ed stood to the side and whisked the eggs into a froth (perhaps a bit too vigorously), Allana leaned against the counter just out of the corner of his eye. The young man looked up and stared at her, an eyebrow raised at her appraising look.

"What?"

"You know, sometimes I regret the kind of trash I drag home, but you're honestly kind of cute. I don't know what it is about you. Maybe it's because you're provincial."

Ed flushed, and he quickly put all his effort into whisking the eggs, unconsciously reciting the periodic table under his breath. Allana laughed at his response, smiling broadly as she cheekily sidled up to him.

"You are deeeefinitely not from around here, farmboy."

With that, Allana went to the back of the kitchen to mix together the dry ingredients, and finally, Ed was glad to have some space. The entirety of the apartment could fit into one of Greed's many closets, and Ed hadn't been in such confined spaces since leaving Oasis. He glanced at Allana, surprised at how much she'd changed, at least appearance-wise, from the woman at the bar. It was much more apparent now that she was only a bit older than him, and without the make-up, he could see she had quite the young face, though she sported early frown lines. She wasn't too much taller than he was, and she had a bit of a thicker build than most girls.

"Seeing as you are from out of town - where are you from?" Allana asked as she turned around with her second mixing bowl full of dry ingredients. She gestured for Ed to come over and pour the eggs in, and he complied while trying to piece together an answer. It was more difficult than he'd thought it would be.

"Aaaah, I'm from... well, I don't know what you'd call it in Amestrian, uh... Merika," Ed said, making something up on the spot.

"Merika?" Allana asked, suddenly snickering. "What kind of dumb name is Merika? What is it, like, a tiny dot on the map or something? I've never heard of that."

"It's... yeah, it's super small! Really green, a ton of farms, and we've got lots of sheep-"

"Sheep? Like, actual animals?"

"...Yes?"

Allana stared at him in awe, mouth hanging open.

"What does a real sheep look like?!"

Ed stared at Allana as if she'd grown a third eye. What kind of person wanted to know what a sheep looked like? It was like she'd never -

It suddenly hit him that these people in the city had probably never even seen a real animal in their entire lives. Something in that realization sobered Ed a bit, though he wasn't able to get over the sheer audacity of a person being interested in sheep. To Ed, they were some of the most boring, ridiculous looking creatures on the planet.

"They... are, uh, about yea high." He knelt, gesturing to about the height of a sheep. Allana was giving her rapt attention.

"And... they're fluffy. Like cotton. And they also smell pretty bad, especially if they get wet. And don't get me started on cleaning out a barn full of them," Ed groaned, remembering his summers as a small child, earning pocket money by helping out some of the farmers (well, 'helping' was a generous term for what he did). "They've got this long face, and they go 'baaaa'."

Wondering how far he could push it, Ed suddenly added, "Oh, and a lot of the time, they're born with two heads."

Allana gasped.

"Two?!"

"Yeah. They're rare, but those are the ones that give the best cotton. Their mutton also tastes like steak. They go for the highest price."

"Are you serious?"

Ed almost couldn't keep a straight face. Did she really believe him? Two headed sheep that give better cotton and taste like steak? What next, a dog that can play the harmonica and tap dance?

"Yeah. Absolutely serious."

Allana narrowed her eyes as she saw how difficult it was for Ed to maintain his composure.

"Edward, I hope you know, I didn't get nothing out of this journalism internship, and I can say, I smell BS from a mile away by now."

"No, no, I'm being serious!"

Allana rolled her eyes and went back to mixing ingredients while firing up the stove. She gave Ed a half-hearted glare, to which Ed only answered back with a completely innocent look, and she began to pour the batter mix over the griddle.

"Okay, mister. Why did you and your brother leave Merika for a place like this? It ain't exactly paradise," Allana said, flipping a flapjack.

Ed watched her with an odd feeling of nostalgia. There were days when Ed had woken up at Teacher's house to a plate full of pancakes. Of course, those were the days he was the most suspicious, because the only time Izumi made pancakes were on the days when the beatings were going to be extra rough. Nevertheless, chowing down on fluffy pancakes was perhaps one of his better memories.

"...No choice of our own. I was..."

What was the best way to put it? He glanced at the barcode on his arm.

"I was kidnapped. My brother chased me down, if pretty indirectly-" Sending a teenage girl with a drug problem is pretty indirect. "- and eventually we escaped."

"That's some brother you've got, chasing you down across the desert just to find you. Wish I had siblings that cared about my skin that much," Allana sighed as she continued stacking pancake after pancake on a dish. "What's your brother like?"

Ed smiled sheepishly and said, "Ah, he's the sweetest guy you'll ever meet. Al's nothing but a lump of sugar. I honestly feel bad about being here, because right now he's probably losing his mind."

"I'm going to lose my mind," Al moaned, holding his head between his hands and staring at the communicator on the table. "It's been over twelve hours. Where could he be?"

It had taken everything that Ingra - or Chrysoprase - or Clottichilde - at any rate, she nearly had to employ duct tape and physical violence to keep Alphonse from walking out into the sandstorm to find his older brother. While Alphonse regularly listened to reason, the past few hours had been daunting. There was no way to launch any kind of search, not with the weather the way it was. The longer the time dragged on, the more worried Alphonse became, and the more worried Alphonse became, the less rational he acted.

"He could've been kidnapped! Or maybe he was stolen by some slaver? What if he's stuck in some alley Underground?" Alphonse wondered out loud as he paced the boardroom.

"Sir, I'm sure that once the storm clears out, he'll turn up," Clottie assured, and finally, Alphonse sat down, dejected.

Clottie felt for him, she really did - but if he tried to go out one more time, she was going to have him stapled to the table. She ran a hand through her hair, fingers shaking as she tried her best to suppress the insatiable thirst for something a bit heavier than water. She sat down next to him, trying to hide the shake of her legs, while Alphonse took a deep breath.

"I just... it's been such a long time, and I don't want to lose him again," Al sighed, playing with a tiny cat charm on the end of his Widget. "It was hard enough the first time. I don't know what I'd do if it happened a second."

Clottie patted his shoulder and looked up, only to be floored to see a fuming Nirvana staring at her from the other side of the glass boardroom door. That was all the warning they had before the door was kicked open, and Clottie cringed while Al flinched.

"Where is the nitwit?! I'll grind his skull to flour beneath my heel," Nirvana demanded, slamming her hands down on the long boardroom table to face Clottie and Al.

"You mean... Ed-?"

"No, I mean the garbage man - yes, I mean Edward!"

"Vana, why do you want to know?" Clottie asked, genuinely worried about her friend's sudden, angry disposition. As Nirvana went into a tirade, Clottie could only wonder upon the blond's responses. It wasn't as if she wasn't usually some form of angry, but this time around, she'd been so depressed and out of it lately that it was surprising to see her active once more. Either something had triggered the response, or Nirvana was just transitioning through another stage of the grief process that involved loudly shouting and waving her hands about.

"...because he owes me, and we've come too far for him to get caught in a sandstorm, and by God, he'd better not be kidnapped or dead or something! I put way too much work into finding out whether we can time travel for this crap! And he has my 20th century book in his room, and his room is locked," Nirvana finished.

"That's it? That's why you want my brother? To get a book?" Al asked, genuinely puzzled.

"...Were you not listening to the other fifty thousand things I just said?" Nirvana grumbled. "Now seriously, where is he? You're not seriously gonna tell me you really lost him? I thought maybe you'd sent him out on a super secret mission or something."

"No, we... we really don't know where he is, Vana. We lost contact with him last night. We can't really get a signal with the storm going on either. It messes with the comm units," Clottie explained calmly, and Nirvana threw her hands up in the air.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid- you know what? I'll just go and find him myself. How's that?"

"Wait! I'm coming with you!" Al said, getting up and following the departing blond, but Clottie dragged him back. The door slammed as Nirvana made her exit. Clottie quickly wheeled Al around to look her in the eye.

"Oh, no, no, no, High Argentum, sir, we can't let you just walk around the city, especially not in a sandstorm."

"But-"

"Sir, I don't think it'll help to have both Elric brothers out of contact. I'm sure that where ever Ed is, he'll figure out a way back. He may know how to find us, but you definitely won't be finding him. Let Nirvana handle it. The city's changed a lot since you, ah, were-"

"Bodily present?" Al added with resignation.

"Er, yes."

Al collapsed into his chair and stared at his Widget, playing with the cat charm again. It flicked between his fingers, the tiny cute kitten smiling at him in all its gray-striped glory.

"Alright, okay. I see your point. And even though I know it's the right answer, I'm not going to like it."

He stared balefully at the door, the cat charm twirling through his fingers absentmindedly. She watched the tension in his shoulders build, and she bit the tips of her fingers as she paced.

Clottie sighed heavily, hating to see him so unhappy. Finally, she asked, "Um... Mr. Alphonse... sir... did you know there's... a cat cafe at the bottom floor of Greed's tower...?"

"They're probably nothing like what you've got back at home, but they're what I've got," Allana said as she sat down on the couch, plate in hand.

Ed, who'd already loaded up his plate, was shoveling food into his mouth like it was going out of style. He mumbled something to Allana, and she drily answered, "Why, thank you. It's a real pleasure."

Ed swallowed hard, taking a minute to really breathe, and he finally said, "I'm going to need another three pancakes."

"What?! I made you four already!"

"I'm a growing guy, I need it, okay?! I'm the guest, I get to make the requests!"

"Abusing hospitality, much. Geez..." Allana sighed, shaking her head and staring at the ceiling.

The two sat in mostly-silence, the only sound being Ed's furious chewing as he powered through another set of pancakes. He looked sidelong at Allana, whose eyes were locked on the raging sandstorm outside, and he asked her, "You interrogated me - now it's my turn. Where are you from?"

Allana fiddled with the end of her bathrobe, her eyes half-lidded.

"Eyrie district. Dad's a banker, Mom's a trophy. I'm the last of seven," she mumbled. "I'm the disappointment of the family."

Ed, who had had his fork halfway to his mouth, suddenly began lowering it.

"Not like I asked to be born or anything. I had to fight my way into getting any kind of attention. I wasn't exactly the first pick on anyone's list, even though I was planned. I grew up normal, got sick of living in the ivory towers, and came here to live among the plebeians," Allana said ruefully, tapping her foot against the coffee table covered with books, magazines, glasses, and discarded jewelry. "I convinced Daddy Dearest to pay for the apartment so I could do this internship. They'd originally wanted me to do something like modelling or ballet, but I hated both of those things. Journalism made Mom's toes curl. She said it was 'undignified'."

The fork landed on the plate, and Ed frowned. Allana played with her food, her brows pulled together.

"What about you? What're your parents like?" Allana chirped.

Ed leaned his head back on the threadbare couch, and he thought hard.

"My... mother's been dead a long time," he finally admitted. "She got sick... we didn't have the same kind of doctors you do here. They couldn't save her."

Allana put a hand to her mouth.

"I'm so sorry. I know that's not doing much, but... Man, that really sucks."

"Yeah, and Dad was gone a lot, didn't even come for the funeral. I just caught up with him a little while ago, and... we kind of patched things up, just a little," Ed said, surprised that he meant it.

He and Hohenheim had sort of buried the hatchet, though... for Ed, some of the blade still peeked through the dirt. He would always have that little edge of resentment towards his father for abandoning him and Al in their time of greatest need, but at the least, he was an island of familiarity in a sea of strange.

"Enjoy them while you can. You don't know when they'll be gone," Ed murmured. "We aren't guaranteed tomorrow. Or even today."

Allana took a large breath.

"Well... on that note, I'll take that if you're done with it," Allana offered, motioning to the plate in Ed's hand, and Ed tossed it over.

"Still owe me three more."

"You'll get three more after you start cleaning up the place. Those who don't work, don't eat," Allana jabbed with a smile as she went back to the sink. Ed stuck a tongue out at her and stretched out on the couch, putting his feet on the armrest at one end, his head at the other. He lazily grabbed a magazine and began flipping through it, his eyes barely skimming the words written on each page.

"So do you have any other siblings?" Allana asked over the sound of running water.

"Nope. Just Al," Ed sighed.

"So... you're all you have of each other," Allana continued.

"Yep. Me, him, and the whole world. Dad doesn't count," Ed mentioned, barely looking up.

"Must be nice, having someone that close to you," Allana said, and Ed looked up briefly.

"Your parents pay for a whole apartment. You've had everything handed to you on a platter. You think they don't love you?" Ed asked.

Allana stopped washing the dishes and stared at him through the breakfast nook.

"Can we talk about something else please?" she blurted out, suddenly scrubbing hard.

"Hey, you're the one who brought it up," Ed reminded her, quickly scanning a piece on how sunglasses were somehow giving people cancer. He could hardly say he felt bad for hurting her feelings. Maybe she should have less sensitive emotions.

After a while, though, the silence dragged on, and he looked over the couch back at Allana, who was standing in the kitchen, the water running over her hands. Her eyes were downcast, and she looked ready to cry. Ed's eyes widened as he realized what that meant. Waterworks were about to start. Ed was absolutely no help in that kind of situation. People who cried were not a part of his repertoire, especially not crying women. Rose had been a bit of another situation, seeing as he'd already been mad to start, but he'd touched a nerve with this girl, and there was no walking away from the apartment, not without getting torn to pieces.

Though that seemed a better alternative, frankly, than being trapped with a hysteric girl he'd just met...

"Have you ever felt unloved? Like, overlooked?" she asked, finally turning off the tap.

What is this, therapy time? Ed wondered, but he answered anyways.

"Sure."

"Now, apply that to your entire life. Welcome to being one of the Baxters. I just wanted someone to see me as Allana, not Kid #7. My own father couldn't even remember my name. Having more than one kid is expected in the Eyrie. It means you've got the funds to buy a tank, pop them out, and fund their education. And I was lucky number seven," Allana spat. "And this - this is how I do it. By living in a crappy apartment in the worst part of the city and getting a crummy job. That's how I get noticed."

Ed frowned at her, putting his chin on the back of the couch.

"So what?"

Allana looked at him, taken aback.

"What do you mean, 'so what'?"

Ed's frown deepened.

"You have a family. You have an apartment. You have a job you actually wanted, and you don't have to sell your soul for it, either. Yeah, you don't get noticed by Mom and Pop. Well, here's a piece of advice - living well is the best revenge. You don't have much of an excuse. You've got less than some, but more than most, not to mention a brain in that hard skull," Ed shot back. "I've seen a lot of people do more with less because they didn't mope about not getting noticed at home."

He crossed his arms on the back of the couch, and Allana's eyes flickered to the hardware that replaced Ed's right arm. Self-consciously, the blonde teenager covered it with his left, readjusting on the couch to make it seem he'd just shifted.

"Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt."

"I never said it didn't. You'd be surprised what kind of pain you can live through, when you've got a reason to," Ed stated.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, and the two glanced at each other in disbelief.

"Your apartment have a breezeway...?" Ed asked.

"No, it's just a railing outside to a courtyard. There shouldn't be-"

The door suddenly busted in, and the wind blasted through, filling the place with sand. Ed and Allana coughed as they shielded their faces, and Ed immediately clapped his hands, forming a long blade out of his automail arm. He vaulted over the couch despite the low visibility, roaring, as he clashed against something else hard and metal -

"Idiot, stop, stop! It's me, you igmo!"

Edward halted his attack, pulling back, as the door slammed shut on its own, pulled in by the suction force of the wind.

Nirvana brushed off the sand from a strange looking, plastic garment that covered her from head to toe, examining a rip where Ed's blade had met her metal arm.

"Oh, for the love of - You cut the skin! I just had this redone. Now I'm gonna have to get someone to reanneal it. You know how long it takes to cover an entire arm in syn-skin?" Nirvana complained, gesturing to the metal exposed beneath the thin layer of fake skin.

"Hey, you're the one who bashed down the door!"

"Who are you people?" Allana shrieked as she backed up against the door, and the two, bickering teenagers looked at the terrified girl holding a frying pan in one hand and a spatula in the other.

"You went home with that? Come on, Ed, I know you haven't had a girl in like a year but -"

"I didn't do anything with her! Get off my case! It was that or wander around the city, lost!"

As the two steamed at each other, Ed finally said, "This is Nirvana. She's-"

"A friend, who's gonna be hauling this idiot home."

"You're alchemists," Allana squeaked, pointing with the spatula to Ed's arm.

Realizing it was still a blade, Ed grimaced and reverted it back to its normal state.

"Uh... yeah, sorry about that. I didn't mean to startle you."

"But... that's illegal. The Spinejackers -"

Nirvana scoffed and said, "Honey, that's a rumor that they can find you just by alchemy alone. It's really a lot more complicated than that. Trust me, we'd know."

"Nirvana!" Ed chastised, mortified.

"What?!"

"Go and tell her everything, why don't you!"

"Well maybe I will!"

The two were nearly forehead-to-forehead, steam coming out of their noses, before Allana asked, "W-what... is going on here, Ed? Seriously, who are you? You're not just some-some-some guy from Merika. Not if you two can do alchemy and... just bust down doors, walk through sandstorms..."

"Merika?" Nirvana asked, glancing at Allana, then back to Ed. "Seriously? Merika?"

"It was short notice. What was I supposed to tell her?"

"You could've come up with a better name than that. Okay, look, toots, real nice meeting you and all, but we're going to be leaving. Come on, we're going. I've got an extra plastic monkeysuit, just for you, Ed-boy. Let's hit the tarmac."

Allana stood resolutely against the door, spatula and pan at the ready.

"No, no, no, you're staying right here until you tell me what the hell is going on right now."

Nirvana gave her a look and said, "Oh, honey, you have no idea how deep you'd be in right now if we did. Look, I'm not really up for debating. I've got a twentieth century textbook rotting away in Ed's room, and I seriously need his passkey."

"You wanted to find me because of some stupid book?" Ed shrieked at her.

"Yeah, why else would I risk my flawless complexion for a moron like you? You can't even answer your phone."

Suddenly, the apartment shook as something flew over head, and the three went quiet, all of them staring at the ceiling.

"So they can track through a sandstorm," Nirvana muttered.

"What can?" Ed and Allana asked simultaneously.

The blonde girl didn't answer, instead taking a deep pause.

"New plan. We stay here."

"Well, if you're going to be staying here, then you can at least fix my door."