Okay people, don't freak because Mustang acts like that. He's a bit of a flirt, and so...

(Shrugs)

When Rae answered the knock at the door, Mustang and Hawkeye walked in.

"Hello, ladies." Mustang said to them cheerfully.

"Oh, it's you guys again." Lin said, in a voice that was not necessarily unfriendly, but not really welcoming either.

"Yes, we're back. I heard your leg should be better soon."

"Yes, thank goodness!" exclaimed Lin with feeling. "I hate being stuck in hospitals!"

"Then you should stop getting into trouble." Said Rae quietly, but in an unmistakably irate tone of voice.

Hawkeye coughed, and they turned to look at her.

"In any case, what we're here for-"

"There would be a reason. Can't people just drop by for a nice social visit?" Muttered Lin.

They gave her a Look.

Lin's mouth twitched, but she said nothing.

"...well," Mustang continued, "Fullmetal told us about ...what's the young lady's name? Winnie? Winly?"

"Isn't Winry?"

"Yes, it is." Hawkeye said.

"Oh right. Well, have you all learned anything new?"

The girls sighed and shook their heads.

"Well, what do you know? I only know the bare bones of the situation."

Lin shrugged.

"Don't look at me. I just do it."

Rae sighed.

"Okay, the first thing to understand is that there are many worlds. It's very difficult to get into other worlds, but it is possible. "

"How did you do it?"

Rae shifted her weight nervously.

"Well..."

Mustang and Hawkeye looked at Lin. She placed her hands behind her back, and made flapping motions, and then mouthed, "Black angel."

It took them a few minutes to get it, but they got did.

"So how did you get through?"

She shrugged.

"I followed Rae. Cause of" she made the flapping motion again, "Rae gets to ignore the rules-"

"What rules?"

"Well, in theory," Rae explained, "each world has its own rule you have to follow to get into. Like for example...let's see..."

"Some worlds demand a blood sacrifice!" Lin said dramatically, and earned another Look from Rae, who then sighed and ran her fingers through her hair.

"Okay, let me think...Ryon itself is very easy to get into...you just need to believe...um... I can't think of anymore examples right now..."

"Looks like you should have more attention in class." teased Lin

"At least I actually showed up and didn't play hooky all the time!" retorted Rae.

The atmosphere in the room changed ever so slightly, as both girls realized what they'd said, and tried to figure a way out, to find what to say next.

"You skipped school? That's not good! You need an education!" Roy unknowingly solved the problem by saying.

The mood gone, Lin thankfully went back to her usual self, but it would remain the back of her head, to come out to the front, just waiting.

Slowly, Winry paged through the book.

According to it, the theory was that the plague had started when a sick stranger had staggered into town.

"No one recognized him," it read "but an old widow, who attempted to nurse him back to health, took him in. Within hours, he was dead, and the widow soon fell sick as well.

Townsfolk had flocked to see this stranger, and the plague speeded up.

By the next day, people were falling ill left and right.

And dieing even quicker.

People didn't just stand there. There were many attempts to stop it.

They gathered all the mages with even the tiniest spark of power of healing power in the Town Square and they attempted to cast a healing spell over the entire city.

People locked themselves into their homes, hoping not to get infected.

Nothing worked.

Within weeks everyone was dead.

It happened so quickly the outside world had no knowledge of this, and weeks went by before anybody noticed and then they only noticed when a peddler came to town.

He was looking for customers, but he only found corpses.

Luckily, those weeks when the town lay untouched seemed to have killed the plague.

The Black Death was over and more one of the largest towns of Ryon was gone was gone."

That ended the first chapter.

Winry's fingers shook slightly.

Am I chasing a dead end? She asked herself, but I can't stop wondering. This Ryon world seems to be very large. Why did I first end up there of all places?

Winry remembered something the Black Angel had said on the way to this town that she was in now.

"It seems you have come here through the workings of another. You were doing nothing that could have brought you here.

Maybe you were summoned or maybe someone performed a spell incorrectly. If we found out who did perhaps we can find out how to send you home."

Was it an accident? Or was it on propose? Does that person even know me?

Winry sighed and laid her head on the table.

"What do I do know?" she whispering to herself, "am I ever going to get home?"

Al and Ed were busily searching the library for the second time (mostly as an excuse to keep Ed from mutilating that stupid doctor.)

The brothers agreed to start at opposite ends and work their ways toward each other.

Al sighed and returned yet another unhelpful book to the self.

He was more than halfway done and he hadn't found even one thing that was helpful.

Al sighed again.

Of course I really shouldn't be surprised, he thought glumly, when we were researching human transmutation, none of father's books mentioned it. None of master's books mentioned it.

Al glanced down to where Ed was working.

Unlike his brother, Ed wasn't brothering to put things back. he just dropped them on the floor leaving the shelves empty except for the books that he was absolutely sure couldn't help him. But there were few of these, and mounds of books were carelessly dropped on the floor, enough for several children to make castles with.

It wasn't Ed's usually methodical style of searching.

It was more hurried, more desperate.

There were traces of black circles, and al remembered his brother's tossing in bed the night before.

He's even more worried about Winry then I am.

Ed loved Winry.

It seemed to al that he had ALWAYS KNOWN THIS. IF YOU HAD ASKED HIM, HE WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN Able to tell you when he first learned, unless it was their famous fight over who would get to marry her. Later events had only proven him right.

Ed defiantly loved Winry.

And Winry...

The reasons she gave for refusing them.

"Al, I don't love you like that" such a mature response from the then little girl.

"I don't want to marry someone shorter than me."

After Ed had finished ranting, he asked

"What about when I get taller then you?"

"Okay!"

Well to judge from the conversation Ed and I had with Lin and Rae, they haven't made any progress in their relationship, which is just like them. I wonder if there's anything I can do...?

"Hey, al?"

"Yes? What is it?"

Rae shifted her feet slightly wondering what to say.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that she was standing in front of him, while he looked at her, she couldn't figure out what to say.

"Well...I was wondering..."

"Yes?" prompted al.

"What-what do you think of Lin?" blurted out Rae.

Al looked at her, surprised.

"What do I think of her?"

"Yes"

"Well..." he began, "she's nice, but she can be a trouble maker. I mean, sometimes Nii-san can do .likes to do things that kind of evil, but that will usually be because he's mad, or doesn't like that person. Lin will just do it just because she thinks it's funny. But she's not evil. From the beginning she was unhesitant helping me."

Al looked art Rae's expectant face, and knew she was waiting for him to say something else.

Confused, he went on.

"Lin is pretty stubborn, but she finishes what she starts. She admits when b she's been proven wrong.

She wasn't afraid of scar-"I don't think she knows what fear is-"

He stopped at the d4spondent look at Rae's face.

"I suppose that's partly father's fault. He was always telling us to be sure that we had justice on our side. He said IF WE DID, WE'D ALWAYS WIN. Lin would tell him he didn't know what justice was, and then they would fight again."

"Would they do that a lot?"

Rae sighed.

"Every day almost. Mother and I would try to stop them, but-" she sighed again.

"They were both too stubborn! Lin likes to think she's invincible. I'm not sure why, but I think she just decided it was because of belief or something."

"Belief?"

"Well, our father always believed what he was doing was always just, so he would always win. So she thought it was belief.

When she decided that, she decided that the reason that she was losing all those fights-"

"All those?" what she getting into fights on a regular basis?"

Rae shifted her feet.

"Well...yeah."

"Did your parents know?"

"Mother knew, but father didn't. When she tried to tell him he brushed it off, or said he didn't want to hear."

"What she fighting about?" asked al, even though he had a feeling he knew. He knew Lin, and he knew what she would fight for.

Al knew he was right when Rae flushed and looked away.

"Umm..The kids who made fun of me, kids who badmouthed my mother, kids who badmouthed her mother..." she trailed at the confused ,look on his face, the flashed then it hit her. "Oh, that's right you don't know! Lin and I re actually step-sisters. After her mother died, her father married my mother, and we become sisters."

"Oh, I see."

That made sense. And now that he thought about it, when talking about the black plague, Rae had said, "MY mother died."

There was one other thing he wanted to know though.

"How did her mother die?" al asked.

"I think you should ask her that question." Rae responded, then realized something.

Isn't that a rather personal question, so he'll probably wait till they're alone to ask it. And all the best romantic moments happen when people are alone!

Al gave Rae another confused look as she blissfully started to daydream.

He glanced back at Ed, who was almost finished.

The black circles seemed even darker.

Hehe...Rae's been reading too many romance novels. I wonder what world she found those in?