Enter depressed Selena. I was in a bad mood when I wrote this chapter, but the moodiness should clear up in the next one.

It was cold, but I felt something warm nearby and huddled closer to it. I felt a hand ruffle my hair and brushed it away with annoyance, mumbling unintelligibly to get off, only to have it come back and shake my shoulder. I started to brush it off again, but then realized I wasn't sure where I was. In the forest with Greed and the rest, probably. Where were we headed again?

"Selena," I heard someone say. I muttered a grumpy "whaddya want," still wondering perplexedly where I was. A somewhat shaky sigh rustled my hair, and then the same voice said, "She's alive."

Alive? Wait…We were in the forest, and then… Blinking my eyes open, I furrowed my brows at the black shape I was huddled next to and the unevenness of my own breaths. Something was wrong; I'd felt an impact, and then I saw that half my torso was gone, right? Shouldn't I be dead? Or at least hurting like hell?

"How are you feeling?" Greed was sitting next to me as I sat up slowly, noticing for the first time the shakiness of my own arms and lifting a hand to watch it tremble.

"Okay, I guess," I replied slowly. "But why am I…?"

"Hohenheim fixed you," came Greed's candid answer. "But you're still weak, so don't overdo it for a while."

"Oh," I said. It was a pretty lame response, but I was still processing what had happened and my body felt so drained and unsteady, I couldn't think straight. "Thanks."

"He said his expertise isn't in healing, and you didn't have much time left, so you'll need to be more careful than usual for a few months. Your body came so close to death it's still adjusting."

"Okay."

Greed grunted and stood up. "Good to see you're all right."

I was still sitting on the ground staring off into space until, to my surprise, I was helped me to my feet by a slightly bedraggled Lanfan. My legs felt like rubber.

"Lanfan? You're here? And old man Foo," I noticed. He nodded at me. "Where are Al and that Pride homunculus?"

"Pride got sealed away by Hohenheim, but Al is stuck inside with him," Greed informed me.

"Al is still stuck with that thing?" I demanded with a little less force than I would have liked.

"It's immobile and harmless right now," Foo explained. "Right now, Al is just in a dark place with Selim Bradley—Pride."

"Bradley's son is a homunculus," I mused darkly. "He really isn't human…"

"Yep. And now we've got the little lady and the old man with us," Greed added, jerking a thumb at the two Xing idiots, who, I noticed, seemed kind of disgruntled with him. It took me a minute to remember that that was Lin's body he was currently occupying.

"And Lanfan, your arm…" I began. She held it up to reveal a harsh steel blade through the tattered sleeve.

"It's been fixed."

"Oh. That was fast." She didn't seem disappointed with my lackluster response, but it was hard to tell with the mask. Nobody else said anything when I had the same reaction to the monstrous mound of dirt that Hohenheim had transmuted.

I felt a hand on my head and turned inquisitively towards Greed. He had the strangest expression on his face.

"You gonna be okay?" he asked.

"Yeah."

He nodded.

"Good." He took his hand off my head but paused, hand hanging in midair like he was hesitating, shook his head, and stuck it in his pocket. "Don't overexert yourself."

"I know."

He nodded again, still wearing that strange expression, and started walking away. I watched him curiously as he jumped a bush and vanished between the trees, his black coat flapping. Reaching up to lightly touch my head, I pursed my lips. He had been warm.

He didn't come back.

Most of the group gave me some space after figuring out that Greed had ditched us, and I spent most of my time either wandering around the Kanama slums or leaning against the dirt mountain talking to Al. My visits were less frequent than they might have been, since the homunculus Pride still gave me shivers, but "Selim Bradley" was oddly less condescending than the other homunculi; sometimes he would pause in messing with Al's head to contribute to our conversations if we opened them to him, and answered our questions frankly. Homunculus or not, he seemed more or less like a normal kid. It was ironic that he could fit in while I couldn't.

"Are you still feeling worn out, Selena?" Al asked me after a few days.

"A little," I told him. "I've been eating a lot more than usual, too. Your dad says my body's compensating for the trauma."

"That makes sense. Is anything else different?"

I bit my lip. "I feel normal, but kinda strained. It's like I don't know what I'm supposed to feel after everything that happened to me. I mean, I can get through it, but there's always this kind of ache in the back of my mind."

"That's the trauma in your subconscious," Selim put in between the hollow taps of wood on metal.

"Oh."

There was long pause, full of rhythmic clang, clang, clanging and the chirping of birds.

"Selena?"

"Yeah, Al?"

"Are you okay? With Greed leaving and everything?"

I hugged my knees and said nothing. The strain was swelling.

"Hey! Selena!" I looked up towards the blonde figure waving me over from the campsite, and stood up.

"Sorry, Al. I gotta go."

"See you, then."

When I arrived, there were four chimeras instead of two, and three other men had shown up as well. One was Scar, one I had never seen before, and one I didn't recognize until he greeted me.

"Dr. Marcoh? What happened to your face?" I demanded.

"It's just a precaution," he smiled, touching his disfigured cheek. "I didn't want anyone to recognize me."

"Isn't that going a little too far, though?" I muttered, perusing the valleys and caverns that covered his raw skin.

"What's done is done. By the way, you have bags under your eyes. Are you sleeping alright?"

"I'm fine," I assured him. "Just a little injury. It's healed now." That was probably the biggest understatement of the year, but I didn't feel like explaining how I almost died. I wasn't sure what to say to Scar, so I didn't really talk to him for a while; I didn't speak with the third man named Yoki, either, after discovering that we didn't exactly see eye to eye.

It wasn't long after Dr. Marcoh and his comrades arrived that most of the others left to make their move against the homunculi. I saw them off from afar, sitting in a tree near the dirt dome while their small figures shrank and disappeared. Now it was just me, Al, Heistache, Marcoh, Yoki, and Pride. Me and two friends, and I didn't feel like talking to either of them. I guess there was only one person who could get me out of this mood.

I wrinkled my nose and hugged one knee closer to my chest. The bastard couldn't have chosen better timing to vanish into thin air—in fact, this was the second time he'd disappeared just when I needed him most. Why was he so slippery? What was it he wanted so bad he let everything else go? Was I not enough possession for his greediness? Maybe I wasn't. I didn't consider myself his possession, didn't act like his crony, didn't even act like he was superior. I just treated him like an equal. Wasn't that good enough for him? Wasn't I good enough for him?

I groaned irritably and swung my head backwards to hit it against the tree, but it was harder than I thought and I wound up on the ground swearing like a drunken sailor.

"Are you okay?"

I looked up at Heinstache, who had one brow raised to question my common sense, and sighed.

"Yeah. I'm good."

"Maybe you should come with me to see Alphonse."

"Right."

Selim was still tenaciously banging away at Al's head, inducing a frown from the lion chimera as we approached the mound. I wandered around it aimlessly, dragging the tips of my fingers along its surface.

"That clanging sound's been getting on my nerves since yesterday," he grumbled. "Hey, Alphonse! What's that sound?"

"Selim's playing with my head," came the muffled reply.

"Hmph. I guess in the end he's just a kid…"

The clanging went on for a moment, and then Heinstache suddenly yelled, "Stop him, Alphonse!" I jumped violently, ears jerking to attention beneath my hat. "Stop him from making that noise! It's morse code! He's telling them our loca—"

"Heinstache, behind you—!"

I was cut off by a deafening explosion before Heinstache heard my warning about the man in the white suit that had appeared behind him, hands raised. On the palms, I could clearly see the transmutation circle tattoos, black against the man's pale skin. In the next second I was ducking away from an onslaught of smoke and debris from the blast and choking on the unsettled dust that clouded the air.

"Hello. Thank you for coming, Kimblee," Selim called. I ground my teeth and crouched lower in the dust. This was going to be a hell of a day.

Yes, action! Now we get to see Selena pull out a bucket of whoopass and toss it all over Kimblee and Pride!

...If she can get past their buckets of rapeface. Who shall prevail? Alphonse shall, of course. :D Ba-boom!