Hey everyone! I'm here with the next chapter! So next week is spring break for me, so I'll be updating a couple more times, probably. And now-

EJ: Hey; hold it!

Sady: What is it now?

EJ: You made a reference to that weird sci-fi show you like; the one with the guy who travels in time and space in a blue box and your mom has a problem with his hair?

Sady: Oh yeah. . . Yeah; none of you guys got the ". . . Possibility of time and space travel with a funny man in a blue box. . ." reference. D: And yes; my mom has a problem with both Ten and Eleven's hair. I honestly don't know why.

But anyway, review time!

DoctorWhotaliaandtheOlympian s: Glad you enjoyed it! :D

Kashgal and Natures Ruler: :O)

Synk: I decided to add that bit in there because I didn't know when else EJ was gonna tell them, and that seemed like a perfect place to put it. :)

Elysenjazz: Wrong fanfic? LOL

Flameflinger Girl: It's no problem; i forgive you. Thanks for sticking with me!

TaIoFoReVeR523: I have no problem with the long reviews (they help so much), but don't hesitate to PM me with any questions you may have. In response, when EJ saw the Truth, it didn't take the actual organ that digests food, but it took the muscle and the skin that sits just over it. When I was first writing this, I thought about how that would work and went with that. And you have to remember that Ed isn't really into the sappy huggy thing, so he was actually standing next to EJ when Izumi was hugging the three of them.

Stormyspiritstar: I'm glad you enjoy it! :)

And I'm gonna say it again because I haven't said it in a while: Allons-y!


Chapter 43

Izumi returned to her spot at the window and stared out of it.

"To think that you saw it and managed to survive. I can't tell you how amazing that is." She said contritely.

"Yeah. . ." I didn't really feel amazing at that point, just exhausted.

"Even so, I cannot accept the decision you've made." She turned on us but directed her next statement at the Elrics: "You're expelled." They gasped, but apparently knew better than to ask questions that didn't really need answers. Izumi turned her back.

"The trains are still running; get on one." The three of us turned to leave after giving our thanks to her, but she caught my shoulder on the way out.

"EJ, I must ask that you remain with me for a bit." I stared at her in confusion. "I'll send her home as soon as I'm done with her." She promised the Elrics, and Ed wouldn't meet my eyes. They just turned and walked out the door, Sig following behind them.

Once they were gone, Izumi took my hand and just about dragged me into the kitchen.

"Just sit there on the counter for me, dear." She told me, and I did as I was commanded. This whole situation was starting to bother me.

"Why did you—"I started to ask, but Izumi saw where I was going and cut me off.

"Send them away? I'm wondering how long it's going to take for them to realize that, since they are no longer my students, they can feel free to talk to me as an equal, much like you and I are doing now." She explained, pulling a knife from the sink and sharpening it.

"Well, they are kind of stupid like that." I muttered.

"You and Edward seem to care for each other very much. Is there anything going on between you?"

My face turned pink.

"Romantically, no. I don't think he feels that way about me." I answered, fiddling with a lock of my hair by twisting it around my finger.

"But you feel that way about him."

I bit my lip and my face turned even redder. Just thinking about Ed made my heart start to race, which really didn't help my circumstances.

Pounding footsteps outside the door and then having it thrown open jolted me out of my thoughts. Ed stood in the doorway, slightly out of breath and I could see Al right behind him.

In that instant, I made a decision never to get on Izumi's bad side. She threw the knife she'd been sharpening with deadly accuracy so it impaled itself in the wall right where Ed's head would've been had he not ducked at the last second.

Ed and Al had gotten the same explanation about their expulsion from Sig that I'd gotten from Izumi, and had come back to explain that they were looking for a way to get their bodies back, and refused to leave until they got what they came for.

Izumi sighed. "You idiots."


The four of us sat in the living room, the Elrics on one couch and me sitting next to Izumi on the other.

"Al, you didn't see the truth did you?" She asked. She had a look like she was thinking hard.

"No; I'm not entirely sure what that means."

"Maybe he lost his memory from the shock?" I wondered out loud.

"Possibly; no matter how it happened, we need to get Al's memory back. His entire body was taken; imagine what he must've seen."

I realized Izumi had a point. She, Ed, and I had only paid with a part of our bodies for what we'd seen, whereas Alphonse had paid with his entire physical being. He'd gotten closer to the Truth than any of us.

As much as I wanted Al to get his memory back, I couldn't help but remember what it looked like to me: a bunch of waving black hands grabbing at me hungrily, like: "A sinner! Let's take away a part of their body in the most painful way possible and laugh in their faces as we do!"

It only made me despise Truth more than I already did.

"That doesn't matter;" Al said fiercely. "If there's a chance that it could help us, then I wanna do it." I smiled up at him, amazed at his bravery. If I'd lost my memory I don't know if I could go through with regaining such a terrible experience. I would've wanted to stay oblivious.

"I have an acquaintance who might know how to retrieve your memory. But let's eat dinner first; gimme a hand." Izumi led us into the kitchen.

I woke up the next morning to find the house absent of a couple of Elrics. Well, it was minus an Elric in a suit of armor anyway.

Where would a seven foot tall suit of armor run off to? I thought as I wandered outside. I had my hair pulled back into a braid that morning, which was one of my better ideas.

"Good to see you're finally awake." A familiar voice had me making a face.

"If I can be honest: you are not the first thing I was looking forward to seeing when I woke up."

". . . That was harsh Samuels." Ed replied after a moment. I turned to face him.

"I can be exceptionally blunt when I've just woken up." I stated.

"I can believe that." Ed had his hands in pockets as usual, with that smug smile in place and his blonde hair braided.

It made me jealous that I didn't look that good first thing in the morning. You sexy b**d.

"Have you seen Al anywhere?" He asked me. I stared at him blankly.

"I was just about to ask you that. I mean, he's not that hard to spot, but I haven't seen him at all this morning."

"That's weird. I'm gonna go look for him. I want you to stay here on the off chance that Al does come back, okay?" Ed ordered me.

"Think back to the last time you wanted me to stay somewhere; how well did that work for you?" I shouted after him.

Ed paused and turned around to scowl at me.

"I'm serious this time. I don't care if you can handle yourself in a fight; I am, in a sense, asking you to stay here."

"I feel a little sense of responsibility for a lost Al; I wanna help." I pleaded, finally clinging to Ed's arm like I used to do to Dad when I wanted something. He sighed.

"You're just not gonna let me off the hook with this are you?"

"Is that a yes?" I smiled up at him.

"If it'll make you stop giving me the puppy dog face then, yes."

"Yay!" I cheered, squeezing Ed's arm.

"Why do you feel the incessant need to be so d**ned adorable?"

"I don't try to be; it just happens." I slid his arm over my shoulder and leaned into him. A small snicker escaped Ed's mouth, but he didn't protest against me being so close to him.

"Now where would a seven foot tall suit of armor run off to?" Ed asked rhetorically.

"Funny; I was thinking the same thing earlier." I told him as a slipped myself out from under his arm. "Do you lose Al a lot or something?"

"Oh shut up." He nudged me with this elbow.

"I'd be happy to tell you where you can find him," said a raspy voice from a nearby alleyway. "But first you can tell me what his secret is."

I couldn't really tell who the voice belonged to, but it had an almost reptilian hiss to it. I glanced at Ed out of the corner of my eye.

"I'll let you do the honors if you want." I gestured towards the alley and Ed proceeded basically beat the crap out of our mystery courier while I examined my nails.

"EJ, you might wanna come see this." Ed waved me over and I stood next to him in the alley. His unconscious opponent had pale skin that was gray in areas underneath the bruising, and unless I was hallucinating, he had a tail.

"Is that—?" I wondered.

"Yeah; he's a chimera." The tightness in Ed's voice surprised me, and then I remembered that Nina had been turned into a chimera right before she'd died.

"Any idea where he came from? He said he knew where Al is." Ed didn't say anything for a long while.

"Just follow me."


Ed and I burst into a warehouse sized room occupied by a decent sized group of people. Al sat against the wall, shackled at the wrists and ankles. Ed threw his chimera buddy in and got everyone's attention.

"Brother! EJ!" Al exclaimed.

"Never really crossed my mind that you could get kidnapped." Ed said with a flat voice.

"Brother: this guy is a Homunculus!" Al told us. I looked around and sent Al a silent "which one?"

"Hey! Way to ruin it." The speaker was a tall, skinny man with black hair, and purplish eyes. He wore a black vest with a white fur trim, black pants, and black shoes. Black leather straps decorated his wrists.

"We might be able to get some leads from him about how to get our original bodies back!" Al almost sounded happy, but Ed kept his game face as Homunculus guy raised his left hand with the palm facing away from us.

My heart stopped; I recognized that marking because I'd seen it in my dreams the other night, and that horrible night when I was five years old: an ouroborus tattoo.

"No it wasn't him; it's not in the right place." I muttered under my breath to calm myself down. Ed gave me a glance out of the corner of his eye.

"Your girlfriend's certainly observant. Well, I was only hoping that I'd have to deal with the little armored giant."

"You gotta name?" I demanded.

"Ooh; she's spunky." Homunculus Guy raised a suggestive eyebrow at Edward. "Anyway Princess, the name's Greed."

"Nice to meet ya Greed. But I'll let you in on a little secret: the name's not Princess." I was about to charge him when Ed held out his arm to stop me. A look from him said: "Leave him to me" and I backed off.

"Why don't you just ask your partners whatever you wanna know?" Ed inquired skeptically. Greed looked confused.

"Yeah; the rest of the Ouroborus gang from the fifth lab. They had a couple of souls bound to suits of armor with them as well."

I added that to my list of future bedtime stories for Ed to tell me.

Ed and Greed kept talking, all attention focused on them when I heard someone go: "Psst!" from behind me.

And so, like an idiot (and Ed hasn't let me forget this), I followed it.

Footsteps led me down a hallway and into another room about the same size as the one I'd just come from. Except I wasn't surrounded by people and Ed wasn't exchanging witty banter with a creepy guy named Greed that obviously bore no connection to the one who'd kicked my a* back on the roof of the lab.

"Well, well, well. When they told me you were pretty, I wasn't expecting gorgeous to be synonymous with that description." I whipped my head around to see a guy a few years older than me lounging on a stack of crates against the wall.

"You know, I'm getting really sick of guys hitting on me. Who are you, pal?" I demanded.

"You're certainly a feisty one."

"I want an answer and if I have to smack you around to get one then so be it."

He raised his hands in surrender.

"All right, all right. No need to bring violence into this. If you wanna know so badly, the name just happens to be Lust." He gestured to himself as he stood in front of me. Like Greed, he wore dark pants and a white shirt, but didn't have a mark across his forehead. It spiraled upwards from his wrist and disappeared into the sleeve of his shirt. From a distance, that marks looked like chains, but as close as I was, the links were actually interlocking L's.

I couldn't really pinpoint exactly what color eyes or hair Lust had; you could think of the most handsome guy possible, and Lust may have very well looked like him. As it was, his eyes had almost a gold luster to them.

"Lust; interesting name." I folded my arms.

"I take pride in it; no need to ask yours. People talk about you a lot. . . EJ Samuels."

"So tell me, are you in league with the guy down the hall who kidnapped my friend?" I questioned, hiding my disgust at the fact that he knew my name. Lust stared at me blankly for a few seconds, and then had the audacious nerve to actually laugh.

"Oh please; I'd never willingly associate with those multi-faceted worms."

"Hmm. Well, if you and are done, I have a friend who's probably getting his a* kicked without me there." I turned to walk away when Lust caught a hold of my hand. A full body shudder traveled through me and I felt goose bumps break out all over my body. Lust noticed.

"I have that effect on people: I can literally send myself into their veins and force them to submit to any lust that resides in their minds." He paused. "Oh . . . but you're different. Your mind is much, much stronger than the others I've come across. If you were a normal female you'd be kissing me passionately right by now. Seems like I underestimated you."

I chuckled weakly, fighting the effects that Lust's touch was sending through me and glad that I'd taken a page out of Hughes' book and started carrying little knives up my sleeve. "People have a nasty habit of that. And it severely ticks me off!"

I flicked a knife out of my shirt and sliced open Lust's wrist, before plunging another one underneath his ribcage. I knew that should've been a killing blow and I hated to do it, but what came out of Lust's mouth next wasn't what I expected.

"Question for you: after killing me, what was it you were planning to do next?" He taunted. I looked up at him in shock; there wasn't any blood seeping from the wound. I released the knife and stumbled backwards, watching Lust as he gripped the handle and pulled the blade out from between his ribs. There wasn't any blood on the knife either. He tossed it to the side and I listened to it clatter against the floor, not taking my eyes off of the apparently immortal guy standing in front of me.

This was not going to end well for me.


So this next scene was what I had typed originally for this chapter, but I didn't know where I was gonna go with it, so I decided to turn it into an omake. Here it is!


~~*OMAKE*~~

I woke up the next morning to find Ed leaning over me.

"Hello to you."

"'Bout time you woke up." He teased me. I pushed him away, and sat up, and then realized that I was still in my pajamas. I began to push Ed out the door.

"What now?"

"I've gotta get dressed and I can't do that with you in the room! Unless you want to see me naked."

Ed gave me a suggestive look over his shoulder.

"Edward Elric, have you been picturing me with my clothes off?" I demanded of him.

"Maybe. . ."

"Oh my god; you are such a male!"

"It'd be kind of weird if I wasn't, considering you kissed me!"

"I slipped! It was an accident!"

"It was not!"

"It was too!"

"Was not!"

"Was too!"

"Unless you can show me proof that it was an accident, I am saying that it wasn't." Ed folded his arms.

"All right then; If I were going to purposefully kiss you, I would've done this," I grabbed Ed by the collar of his jacket and kissed him full on the mouth.

"Um . . . should I come back?" a voice squeaked. I looked over at Al and made a shooing motion with my hand as Ed and myself walked back into the room.

I'm just gonna let you guys let your imaginations run wild on that thought.


I feel really evil sometimes. But anyway, here's hoping your guys have a good week, and I will see you next time! Mr. Review Button and I still have massive amounts of virtual brownies to give out!

Mr. Review Button: *beeep beep whistle boop boop buzz*

Well, they're not gonna last long the way you're eating them!

Oh, and once we get up to at least 5 more reviews on this story, I will post a little one-shot that I've been working on! More cuteness!

~~Sady Mordan