"We're going to have to explain at some point," Ed hissed to Nirvana.

The two of them stood in Allana's minuscule bathroom, Nirvana sitting on the sink while Ed practically stood in the tiny, stand-up shower. Above them, the sounds of water gurgling through the pipes provided the background noise needed to cover their words. Someone flushed overhead, and Ed made a face as a water stain seemed to grow on the ceiling. Nirvana seemed less perturbed by the cramped spaces or open plumbing, though she was unhappy about their current predicament.

"Look, I'll just tell her I went out to look for your sorry carcass after you didn't come home, and that I may have ticked off the police while I was at it," Nirvana said, waving him off.

"Is that what really happened?"

"Substitute 'police' for 'spinejacker', and Bob's almost your uncle."

"For one, I don't know what that means, and for two, how did you end up with spinejackers following you?!"

Nirvana clapped a hand over Ed's mouth, looking suspiciously at the door to their right while Ed fought to free himself.

"Quiet, you dope, maybe she's listening - ow!" Nirvana yelped as Ed bit her palm.

"Next time, don't try and strangle me!"

The two sat there fuming in the dim light of the one fluorescent bulb, and Nirvana sighed.

"So what's the plan?" she mumbled.

Ed gestured to himself incredulously.

"You expect me to have a plan?"

"Somehow, you always manage to come up with some harebrained scheme to get us out of the current flustercuck we inevitably end up in."

Ed paced in what little space was offered him, scratching his chin. They couldn't stay here forever, and they couldn't leave either. The sandstorm wasn't so much the problem as the authorities. Then there was the fact that an innocent civilian was mixed up in all this. Altogether, it was not a good combination. As long as Nirvana had not revealed her location, then they'd be fine, but if they did, indeed, track Nirvana to this particular unit...

"Maybe we should tell the truth," Ed reasoned.

Nirvana stared at him, dumbfounded.

"Yes. Let's tell your news agent buddy all about how we're part of a clandestine group of terrorists plaguing the underground. While we're at it, we might as well inform her that we're part of Oasis as well! Oh, let's not forget to say that we're wanted people who've personally pissed off Father."

"I said the truth, not the whole truth!"

"Then say that next time!"

There was a knock on the door, and the two immediately shut their mouths, staring at the only thing separating them from the curious girl on the other side.

"Are... you guys okay in there?" Allana asked. "You've been in there an awful long time."

"Ed's been constipated for three days, so you'd better give him a minute," Nirvana shouted back, and Ed slapped Nirvana's thigh in retribution.

Nirvana only snickered mischievously while Allana walked away from the door.

"What, you can't seriously tell me you thought about doing anything with her-"

"Doesn't mean I disclose bathroom habits to random people. Alright. So what are we going to do?"

Nirvana leaned back against the mirror and blew out a stream of air, before she threw her hands up in the air.

"You know what? Screw it. You tell her whatever the heck you want. I'll just sit and eat cheese puffs on her couch and try to find something good on the tube."

With that, the two of them came out of the bathroom, and Allana sat on the edge of the couch, fully dressed by this point. Ed put his hands on his hips and readied himself to explain, rather sheepishly, what this was all about while Nirvana made a beeline for Allana's kitchen. Allana leaned forward, expectantly waiting Ed's response, and he rubbed his forehead.

"Why's this gotta be so hard," he muttered to himself.

Finally composed, he put his hands together and said, "So I haven't been completely honest with you-"

"Gathered that, Sherlock," Allana said with a stiff smile.

"Lemme finish! Okay, so... I'm not really from Merika. And Nirvana's got a rap sheet a mile long."

"Guilty as charged," Nirvana called from the kitchen, her mouth stuffed with cheese balls.

"So... what, are you guys? Thugs or criminals or..." Allana asked, slightly apprehensive.

"What? No! No, no, actually we're..." Ed's eyes flickered to Nirvana momentarily as she walked out of the kitchenette with a bag of puff snacks.

"Al...chemists," Ed stated slowly.

Allana stared at him in disbelief.

"You're joking. Do you know how illegal it is to do that without a permit? Oh my God, I could go to jail just having you in my apartment. I've been harboring an alchemist. Two alchemists. I can't believe this. Oh my God. You don't, like, peddle drugs or small children, do you? Are you part of some underground ring of alchemists that do, I don't know, horrible rituals and perform spells and all that? You don't drink blood, do you?" Allana suddenly spouted as she got up and held her head in her hands, walking around the couch as if to put something between her and the teens on the other side of her apartment.

"N-no! Look, it's not like that!" Ed stated, stamping a foot. "It's difficult to explain, but we're not out to hurt anyone, alright?"

"Well, he's not. There are a few people I wouldn't mind - oi, that was my toe, you mother-" Nirvana squealed as she hopped about on one foot, holding on to the other, offended appendage.

Ed glared at Nirvana for a couple more seconds before turning back to the frightened intern staring at the both of them from in front of a bookcase. He crossed his arms and huffed, suddenly lost for words. They weren't out to do anything bad. And geez, she'd spent a whole night with him as a complete stranger, so he wasn't sure how being an alchemist changed things. That was, quite frankly, insulting.

"So... what do you plan on doing? Just staying here til that dies down?" Allana asked, jerking a thumb at the window to the storm outside.

"Basically," Ed said, deflating. "We'll only stay as long as we think we have to. We don't want you involved anymore than you want alchemists in your apartment."

"Oh. Good," Allana said, slowly coming back towards the two.

Nirvana hopped over the couch and made herself comfortable, grabbing a remote and flicking on the pitifully tiny vacuum tube screen set into the wall.

"So what's on, anyways? I've been watching nothing but bad sitcoms, and let me tell you, I could do with a change of scenery..."

Ed and Allana glanced at each other and shrugged to each other before taking their seats on either side of Nirvana. It was going to be a long wait, so they might as well get comfortable...

Clottie, the Woman of a Thousand Knives, gripped the edges of the sink as tremors shook her frame. The bathroom was cheerful in bright blue, cutesy kittens plastered on the walls, with a decorative Lucky Cat sitting on a shelf over the toilet. The mirror was covered in cat stickers, probably put there by overeager children. The light fixtures were even in the shape of cat paws. It posed a stark contrast to Clottie's shaking form, sweat dripping down her nose.

The shivering attack had started thirty minutes into their teatime at the cat cafe. Clottie had thought that, with everything on Alphonse's mind, he needed a little bit of a breather, and she remembered from her history reading - how funny to think that was coming in handy this way - that Alphonse was an immense cat lover. It had worked like a dream, of course.

And, as if to throw a wrench in it, the withdrawals began again.

She had been off of shock for almost three months now. While she'd managed to bound over the biggest hurdle, the aftermath was still evident. She'd hidden the tremors and the insatiable thirst well for the past week, and she hadn't had an attack in almost as long.

Why? Why now?

There was a knock on the bathroom door, and Clottie's head shot up.

"Clottichilde? You alright?"

"Yes, sir. I'm fine," she said.

She turned on the water to create the illusion that she was finished with the bathroom, and she looked up into the mirror. She looked like she'd aged almost ten years. There were bags underneath her eyes, and a fine layer of sweat covered her skin. She splashed water on her face, trying to shake out the rest of the jitters, but she knew that it would be difficult to hide the craving. She wanted it. She'd kill for it. Her entire body was aching for a single jolt, but she knew better than to give in.

She left the bathroom to rejoin Alphonse in the main atrium of the cafe and nearly doubled over in laughter.

He was absolutely covered in cats.

Somehow in the interim, he'd managed to attract every cat in the cafe. They all meowed and pawed at the resistance leader, and he was barely able to keep away the small tray of cat kibble from the felines that were rubbing up against him.

"I'm going to have to launder my clothes after this," Alphonse chuckled as he pet a gray tabby cat.

Clottie slowly sat down beside him, hiding her hands beneath the table.

"We're lucky this place is deserted, or-r else there'd be some upset p-people saying you're hogging the cats," Clottie stated, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.

"It's not like I chose to attract all of them," Al sighed as one of them hopped into his lap and began to nuzzle his face. He scratched behind its ears, looking content, and Clottie smiled wanly. It was nice to see him relaxed and happy, rather than pacing rooms, giving stern orders, and tensing his shoulders while looking over plan upon plan upon plan. The smile on his face made him seem so much younger, and it was odd to know he was, in reality, something like 200 years old. Her eyes fell as she considered this.

"Do you think we're running a fool's errand?" Al suddenly asked, chucking a few cat kibble pieces to his left to lead away the begging felines.

He picked up his mug of coffee, and Clottie frowned.

"What, sitting here in this cat cafe, or...?"

"Trying to find a way to send Edward back to his own time," Al stated quietly, holding the mug in both hands.

With that pensive look on his face, it was easy to mistake him for a young man. His eyes were hooded in contemplation, staring into the dark coffee in his cup.

"Why... would you ask me? That's a question better suited for Bismuth or Jade-"

"They'll say what they think I want to hear. They respect me too much," Alphonse admitted softly. "If I can't be criticized, I'm not human. And they don't see me as a human. They see me as some kind of demi-god that will bring about the new world they're trying so hard to create. They can't see me as anything else but their shining beacon. But you... left Splinter at such a young age with your mother. You weren't a part of their quasi-religious society. You see me for... well, you know, for me."

Clottie's trembling hands now trembled for a completely different reason. She opened her mouth to say something, but she found she had no words. Her gaze was cast down, and she swallowed.

"Clottie," he said.

He took his hand and lifted her chin so she was staring him eye-to-eye, and her eyes shone with tears.

"But I do see you that way. You are our reason for living. I... I'm no different. Why would you -"

"You brought me here. You knew I needed to get away from it, to get some down time. You don't see me as an indefatigable leader. To you, I'm a person."

He stroked her cheek, and she leaned into his hand. For years, she and her mother had carried Alphonse's vessel in the hopes that one day, he would find a reason to return to them. She had been too young to remember the last time Alphonse had actually spoken, though her mother had made it quite clear that he was indeed a human with human wants. In her fantasies, she had considered that she would witness Alphonse's new rise to glory, but this was never in the cards. Here was their raison d'etre, and he was no more divine than Edward or Nirvana or Zhang. She had spent so much time with him, since that last encounter in the parking garage, and yet she felt this praise was unwarranted.

But her mother would have been so proud.

"I... It... I can't see how it could be done, Argentum. I just can't. Time does not flow backwards - it's linear. Even Nirvana, with all her abilities, cannot take a ball and send it flying back down the path it came from. Linear motion is stagnant and unmovable, and time seems so much the same," Clottie sighed. "Our efforts are better focused in the present, in what we can change. I'm not saying we should... give up entirely, but there are other things going on right now. These are the things we most definitely can change, rather than gamble on something we have no idea will work."

Suddenly, she remembered something, and she snapped her fingers.

"I forgot to tell you. Intelligence says that there's been a lot of launch activity in the city lately. There's a full report upstairs in your command center, but the gist of it is that multiple rockets have been going up in the past week. No one's really sure what that means, but considering what Lust told you..."

Alphonse's expression darkened considerably.

"Did you find out what was going up? What was on the manifests?"

"Satellite arrays, and particularly big ones. They're pretty strangely shaped, though," Clottie admitted. She pulled out a pen from her pocket and grabbed a napkin, drawing the general shape of the arrays to be assembled in low orbit. It was a slight crescent shape, as if someone had cut out the edge of a paper plate.

"Anything on what they're used for?" Al asked seriously.

"They're just satellite dishes. From what I could understand, they're for boosting the already existing signal of other satellites. The eggheads say their schemata doesn't look like an amplifier dish, though. Something about the circuitry being too spread out," Clottie sighed, leaning back into her chair.

Al blew air through his lips, making a buzzing noise while he tapped the pen against the table. A cat bounded into his lap, meowing, and his expression lightened a bit.

"Well, we'll leave work in the office. We're here to enjoy ourselves a little, aren't we?" Al asked, giving Clottie a smile, and she quickly turned her eyes away.

She absentmindedly scratched the ears of an orange cat at her side, and she permitted herself a small, shaky smile.

"Got any fives?" Nirvana asked, a popsicle stick jiggling in her mouth as she talked.

Ed narrowed his eyes at Nirvana before grinning devilishly.

"Go fish," Ed triumphantly declared, and Allana guffawed as Nirvana spouted curses at Ed, drawing another three cards to add to her growing hand.

"I can play poker, I can play blackjack, I can even play gin rummy, but go fish..." Nirvana grumbled to herself.

"Hey, you can't be a master at everything," Ed smugly retorted, and Nirvana threw the used popsicle stick at him.

"Hey!"

"If you can't take it, don't dish it," was all Nirvana would say, leaning back in her chair.

They'd been playing a myriad of card games since the television went out. Some power line had probably been downed, and the entire apartment was black, besides the candles that Allana had lit around the small living room. With nothing better to do, they'd pulled out some cards, and thankfully for Ed, few card games had really changed over the years. As it turned out, he was actually creaming his two, more world opponents.

"I gotta pee. Hang on a sec. Don't go making out the minute I leave, okay?" Nirvana said, getting up to go, and the two others rolled their eyes.

As the door to the bathroom closed, Allana looked over to Ed.

"So... about last night..."

Ed winced. Oh boy, here we go.

Allana twiddled with her thin hand of cards, her eyes cast down, and she finally asked, "Did I... do something to make you uncomfortable? Was that why you wanted to stop? I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to push you or anything, or make you feel unsafe, or-"

Ed stared, wide-eyed, for a moment as he tried to process her question. That was definitely not the response he was expecting. He'd wondered if maybe she might ask if "his door didn't swing that way", to put it in antiquated terms. He'd heard the kind of bathroom banter men in the military talked, and they had made it sound like refusing was a cardinal sin among men. It didn't help that Ed didn't remember much from the night before, though he did vaguely remember kissing Allana.

Ed rubbed the back of his neck and winced.

"No, no, it's... it's not that. Well, okay, maybe a little. Where I'm from, you don't, you know, do that until you've put a ring on it and everything," Ed explained.

He pulled on the neck of his shirt, trying to get some air in. Sheesh, it was suddenly getting very warm all of a sudden. Probably all of the candles, right? Nothing to do with talking glibly about how he'd nearly had drunken sex that he'd immediately forgotten about the morning after.

Allana tried her best to keep from laughing, and Ed stared at her with incredulity.

"What?!"

"You are so not from around here," Allana finally giggled. "It's sort of cute. Almost kinda innocent. All the guys I know, they've probably got five illegit kids running around. But... you said that wasn't all of it."

Ed fiddled with his two cards, thinking hard. Yeah, there had been another reason, and he sobered significantly.

"There's a girl I know back home. I guess to you it's... it's kind of old-fashioned, but I was hoping that the two of us might... Ah, never mind, it's dumb."

"No, no, go on. So you have a girl back home? I mean, if I'd known tha-"

"Had. Had a girl... back home."

"...Oh."

"It's okay."

"Edward... I'm so sorry. Did she -?"

"It was a long time ago. You didn't do anything wrong. I guess you could say I waited too long." 200 hundred years too long.

Allana patted his hand in sympathy, her lips pressed tightly together. Ed looked up at her in surprise, and, suddenly, she jerked his hand down to see his cards.

"You did have a 2! Cheater!" Allana exclaimed with glee, and Ed stared, open-mouthed, with indignity.

"Who're you calling a cheater, you card-peeking little-!"

Greed sat back in his chair, flipping through his phone with lackluster interest. To be honest, very little interested him anymore. He was greedy by nature - he wanted everything and anything he could get his little mitts on, but that was hardly any fun when he could literally have anything he saw within seconds. No, what he really wanted was to run this entire city himself, to own the whole thing from Underground to Eyrie. To know that each of his so-called "siblings" had a slice got to him like a needle under his fingernail.

He wanted it all, and then some.

But that was just going to have to wait. As far as he knew, Father didn't have the slightest idea of what was going on, and it would stay that way. Too soon, and he'd end up... well, he didn't know what exactly would happen, honestly, but he had a good idea that it would not be pleasant. For some reason, a boiling vat came to mind, but he wasn't entirely sure why.

Suddenly, the lights in his - very spacious, incredibly opulent - room began to flicker, and he rolled his eyes heavenward, muttering under his breath, "Oh geez."

"What's the matter, Greed? Not happy to see me?"

Greed looked over the edge of his phone, in time to see the darkness engulf the room in a spray of shadows full of eyes. He was so melodramatic. Yes, so maybe Greed did enjoy a good light show, and he liked to do things with some flair, but Pride had a habit of making a huge deal about his presence. Frankly, it was annoying... though Greed was sweating just a little more than usual.

"Sure, I always love when dear old Dad comes calling in. What, you get tired of his licking his boots and needed a change of scenery?" Greed asked petulantly, flipping through his phone with exaggerated nonchalance.

Pride didn't rise to the beat, merely chuckling. Greed hated it when he did that. It meant that Pride was overly happy about something, and that usually came at the expense of the other six. Greed had an idea that Father was planning something, but he wasn't sure what it was just yet. He'd talked it over with Alphonse, but so far the two had come up with a blank as they stared at the intel gathered over the past two weeks or so.

"Well, this is more than a social call. I just wanted to tell you to keep on your toes. Alphonse is out and about, you know."

Oh, I know, Greed thought ironically.

"What, so I should be ordering adult-sized diapers and sitting in a safe room, pissing blood while I wait for him to come kill me?"

"Oh, no, quite the contrary, really. After all, a good offense is the best defense, as Lust learned rather harshly. Father wants you to start looking for him and his little cell of freedom fighters. People have gotten awfully upset lately, and we'd like it if they didn't get ideas," Pride said with contempt, the eyes moving over the ceiling and down towards the bed.

Greed tactfully ignored him, continuing to check his phone.

"Fine, fine, I'll get my men on it. I'm not too worried about it, honestly. What's a bunch of humans going to do? You seriously think they're going to storm the Library, find Father and kill him or something?" Greed sniffed.

"No... not humans, anyways."

Greed looked up at that comment, narrowing his eyes.

"You implying something?"

"Not at all. Just something to keep in mind. I'll be checking in on all of you, of course," Pride said in its whispery voice, almost gleeful. "Gives me an excuse to say hello. Take care, Greed."

With that, Pride dissipated from the room as if in an instant, and the lights returned. Greed continued to look through his phone, but he realized that he wasn't paying attentino to a single thing on the bidding site he'd logged in to. This was bad. If Pride had somehow gathered that one of the Homunculi were up to no good, that meant their whole little shindig was going to blow open. He couldn't have Pride snooping around and finding Alphonse and company.

He realized very suddenly that he was going to need to do all of this the old-fashioned way. He, Alphonse, and what was left of the Oasis contingent had made a sort of panic phrase, just in case, but there was no way Greed could use it in person or by phone. It was too traceable. It would be much easier to just send someone, preferably someone forgettable.

Greed speed-dialed a number, and his assistant almost seemed to materialize within five seconds after.

"Tell our house guest that the cat's gotten out," Greed said, and his assistant nodded with some trepidation.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"I'll have the proper people tell him. But I'd be prepared to make a call to the vet after," the assistant said tacitly, and Greed grit his teeth.

When it rains, it pours.

"When's the power going to come back?" Nirvana moaned.

"Well, they can't do anything about it until that storm dies down," Allana sighed, pointing towards the window with her thumb. "Until then, we're stuck with just candles. And it looks like I've only got, like, three left."

She looked into her emergency supplies box and huffed as she pulled out two meager paraffin wax candles, and Ed sat up with interest.

"No you don't. I can just make more. You have any old candles you can't use anymore?"

"Um... yeah, but..."

"Well, bring 'em here. It won't be hard to just combine what's left of the wax and glass and make probably another two or three."

"I don't want candles, though," Nirvana groaned from her reclining position on the couch. "I want actual light for God's sake."

"Quit your whining already," Ed grumbled, half-kicking the alchemist, and she winced away from him.

"Won't doing alchemy... you know, attract...?" Allana asked, hugging her elbows.

In the wan light, she seemed much younger than she was. Ed snorted derisively.

"The two of us have been doing alchemy for the past six months, and not a single person has suddenly magicked into existence to haul us away to alchemy jail. I think we'll be fine," Ed promised, hands on his hips.

"Listen to the midget."

"Who're you calling a midget?!"

Allana grimaced with a bit of a smile as the two bickered, and she slunk off to go and find the extra candles. Now that Ed and Nirvana were more or less alone, the two glanced at each other.

"You ever... I don't know, think about what Father was talking about? About-"

"He's lying," Ed suddenly stated, interrupting her.

Nirvana looked at him seriously from beneath white-blond brows, and she said, "I'm serious, Ed. What if he's right?"

"I know what's real and what's not. I remember everything. Besides, how can anyone make a 'copy' of anybody else? Al talked about this whole 'cloning' thing, but-"

"It was a huge thing, actually, in Oasis. Our numbers were falling because of Redspot virus, and people were getting desperate because no one could conceive, so instead they cloned. And some people used those clones for organ doubles, when the original's organs finally went bad," Nirvana said solemnly. "Eventually, though, a couple clones banded together and started arguing for their own autonomy. The progenitors fought back, saying that they wouldn't be alive anyhow without their genetic material."

"You talking about the Clone Crisis?" Allana asked as she stepped back in with arms full of candles.

Nirvana nodded, and Ed sat down on the coffee table.

"Hard times. My dad was alive for it, and he even had a clone in the works before they struck cloning down officially. I'd say the entire city was ready to eat a hat, they were so in shock. No one thought the law would pass," Allana sighed. "Crazy to think about 35,000 clones across the city were killed, along with their progenitors."

"In... in our country, too. Wasn't just here. Xing had it bad, but I think they've figured something out, letting the clones live autonomously in their own compound somewhere in the Xinjiang mountain region," Nirvana said.

"I've heard that the Oasis did some crazy stuff with cloning," Allana said with a devilish grin on her face. "You know, that crazy compound of weirdo conspiracists in the desert?"

"Yeah? Where you hear from, some crackpot sandwich board holder down in the Underground?" Nirvana scoffed.

In the meantime, Ed prepared a transmutation, half-listening the conversation.

"Ooooh, no, no, my dad is a contractor for the city's defense corps. No, he told me that the reason the clone law was passed was because they needed to make Oasis look bad for their cloning practices. Mostly because they were planning on cloning some people from the Dark Age."

"Dark Age?" Ed asked as he assembled bits and pieces of candles. Some had their wicks completely burnt out, others were little more than numbs not useful for more than a few minutes' light.

Allana turned to Ed with surprise.

"You didn't learn about it? It's about the time before the City. There's still places in the Underground where the old city used to be. It was a time full of war and outrage with the countries around them. Then the old country tried to use alchemy to subdue one of the other warring states, and, well, here we are."

Ed was about to protest, but Nirvana shot him a look, shaking her head.

"What's all this about cloning people from the Dark Age?" Nirvana asked seriously.

"Apparently there was some odd plan about cloning people like Riza Hawkeye, Alphonse Elric - famous people, you know? For morale."

The weight of the rumor fell on Ed's head like a ton of bricks.

"That's a load of bull," Nirvana dismissed, leaning back against the coach arm, waving it away.

Allana waved her hands in the air, and she retorted, "Hey, I checked my sources, and I found a looot of stuff that said it was probably true. Lots of things like stealing artifacts from under the city ten years ago in an excavation. Apparently they captured some guy, a historian or something, and then released him later in a plea deal with Oasis."

Nirvana's eyes tracked to Ed, who was preparing the transmutation. He clapped his hands and placed them on the coffee table, and a bright light suffused the apartment in a flash for a moment before dying down. On the table was a single, giant candle - in the shape of a gargoyle.

"Eugh! It's so ugly," Allana complained, and Ed huffed.

"Hey! You've just got no taste, that's all!"

"Ed, if she ain't got taste, you ain't got a tongue. That thing is hideous," Nirvana muttered.

Suddenly, there was a loud thump at the door, and all three jumped. They stared at the door with ice under their skin, liquid lightning in their stomachs. The door jolted again, the hinges creaking against the cheap concrete they were screwed into.

"Friends of yours?" Ed asked.

Allana swallowed hard, and she said, "I... don't think so."

The door bucked again, and both Ed and Nirvana bolted towards it, alchemical sparks flying off Ed's hands, a Sharpie-drawn circle in Nirvana's. A lattice of concrete grew up towards the ceiling and embedded into its drywall, while Nirvana turned the deadbolt to stone.

"How'd they find us?" Ed growled.

"The light off that transmutation probably gave us away. Good job, Ed."

"Hey, you didn't exactly stop me!"

The door bucked against the concrete lattice, and it threatened to come down. Ed blanched. Even that wasn't going to deter them? Well, good grief.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god..." Allana muttered as she paced behind them, the glow of candles the only thing illuminating the apartment.

"Nirvana, you gotta get her out of here. How many of them are out there?" Ed asked.

"There could be dozens. We don't have anywhere to go anyhow," Nirvana hissed angrily, trying to seal the edges of the door, but the middle of the door was now cracking under the strain.

"We can't hide in here forever!" Ed growled.

That seemed to click something in Nirvana's mind.

"You're right. Not in here," Nirvana suddenly stated, running towards Allana. She grabbed the girl by the arm, and Ed immediately followed after. The door would hold for the moment, but unfortunately that would only give them a couple of minutes. Nirvana led them into the tiny bathroom.

"You think we can hide in the bathroom?" Allana whispered hoarsely, jumping at the sound of her front door bucking.

"No. But we are going to get out of here. Who's name is on the lease to your apartment?"

"Uh, my dad's -"

"Good, they'll start harassing him instead of you, and that'll buy you time to make an alibi," Nirvana said as she drew a circle on the bathroom wall. She touched it, and in a blast of light, the entire section turned into a door. She pulled it open, revealing a chasm going deep down through the apartment complex.

"Where does that go?" Ed asked, peering over Nirvana's shoulder.

"We're not going in there, are we?" Allana asked glumly.

"No time to explain. Get in there!" Nirvana said, shoving the reporter into the crawlspace. Next, she shoved in Ed, and by this time, the door to the apartment sounded like it could take maybe a good gust of wind and then blow down. Nirvana was about to hop in, but some small thing stuck in her mind. She ran out the door, back to the coffee table, and grabbed the ugly candle Ed had made before blowing out the rest and diving into the rent in the drywall in the bathroom. In another flash, she sealed it shut.

The door very suddenly blew inwards at that moment, throwing chunks of concrete and cheap titanium in all directions. Tall, corpse-white humanoids entered the apartment, scanning the apartment for any signs of life. Their long, spindly fingers traced the walls as six entered the apartment, sniffing objects and entering rooms. One of them inspected the concrete lattice that had made been thrown up in front of the door, and she hissed, "Alchemist."

"But where are they?" another said in a clicking language to its sister.

The others fanned out, but they found no one in any of the rooms. One of them stopped in the bathroom, and it stopped to listen in the dark. Only the sound of the sandstorm cut through the silence and - ... was that breathing it heard? It ran up to the back wall of the bathroom, and it put a single, clover-like ear against the dry wall, listening intently for the sound of a scared alchemist. It closed its eyes and hissed out... but nothing.

It pounded against the drywall in anger, denting it, and it walked away from the bathroom.

In the crawlspace, Nirvana covered her mouth, her nose almost touching the drywall on the other side. Too close, much, much too close, her mental mantra ran. In the dark, she fumbled to light the candle she'd taken with her, and below her, she could see Ed and Allana hanging precariously on the struts that made up the building walls. She pointed down, and the three began a haphazard descent into the dark.

A/N:Hello, hello, hello all! Here's the newest installment, and the plot thickens! Things are finally picking up, and hurtling towards what I'm hoping will be a satisfying end. Don't worry - I'll be taking my sweet time getting to it, so you don't need to worry about rushing straight through.

A huge thank you to all of my reviewers: Brenne, lilaclily000, and Hikari Hellion! I'm glad all of you really enjoyed the story, especially Ed's incredibly bad fibbing. It makes my day to see people enjoy what I write.

As a late Halloween present, I'll leave you all alone questions-wise. Just enjoy the story! God bless you all, and happy reading!