Ed woke up just as the sun was beginning to rise. Al was still sitting in the corner and Alexa had managed to roll mostly off the bed so that her arm was completely draped over Ed. He smiled and sat up, rolling her back onto the bed where she cuddled into her pillow and smooshed her cat. Nyko made an angry noise and she quickly moved over a little. Ed stood up and walked over to where his coat was. Swinging it on, Al looked up.

"Where are you going Brother?"

He asked softly.

"Just out for a walk. I'll be back soon."

Al nodded and went back to watching the sound-asleep Alexa. Ed turned and opened the door. As he was stepping out, Alexa sat bolt upright with both eyes wide open.

"My sisters. My sisters, it's my fault. I shouldn't be the one alive and well right now. Give them back, I swear I'd do anything."

Her eyes were wide with fear and she was speaking very quietly and distinctly. Her pupils were next to nothing in size and after a moment, Ed realized she was having a nightmare. He ran over to her and grabbed her hand.

"Alexa. Look at me. You're dreaming. Alexa!!"

She shivered a few times and blinked. Color returned somewhat to her pale face.

"What...where am I?"

She looked around the room and caught sight of Al, who had remained seated. Then she glanced at Ed's worried face and down at her hand that he was still grasping tightly. He blushed and hurriedly let go.

"Sorry, I didn't know how to wake you up."

She shook her head and smiled weakly at him.

"Leaving so soon?"

"Just going for a walk, that's all."

She nodded and fell back into the bed. Within a moment she was sleeping, this time peacefully. Ed stood and smiled ruefully at her.

"She's an odd one."

"You're one to talk, Brother."

Ed made a face and left to enjoy the sunrise. Fifteen minutes after he'd gone, Alexa sat up again, but she was fully awake now. She rose and began smoothing her unruly hair.

"Sorry about that Al. My dreams are....very vivid."

"It's all right. I'm just glad Brother was able to wake you up."

She turned and smiled at him before heading towards the door herself. Al quickly stood.

"Wait! Where are you going?"

Nyko yawned and stretched hugely before springing down lightly and walking over to twine himself around Alexa's metal leg.

"I was going to go get some practicing in. I'm sure Roy will make us fight today."

Al look surprised.

"So soon?"

Alexa nodded and smiled wryly

"Roy was never one to be patient."

Al knew this to be true himself and he nodded. Alexa turned away from him.

"Make sure Ed meets me in the courtyard by high noon, okay?"

Al nodded again and then realized she couldn't see him.

"Yeah, I will."

Alexa paused, as if she wanted to say something more, then shrugged a little and left. Al stood for a few moments, staring at the closed door, then ran to open it.

"Alexa!"

She and Nyko were nowhere to be seen. It was like they had...vanished.

***************************************

Ed stretched and yawned like a cat. He flexed his fingers and rolled his shoulders in the typical masculine show-off moves. Alexa simply stood and rolled her eyes, albeit discreetly. Roy stood in the middle and a large crowd of militants who wanted a break from paperwork had gathered around to see a fight between the famous Fullmetal and some mysterious girl whose stance and speech reminded them of the Flame Alchemist.

"The rules are simple. Both of you know what's at risk. I will call the match, keep fighting until I do so."

Roy looked hard at both of them.

"I don't want to see any serious wounds."

With that, he turned abruptly and stalked off to stand next to Lieutenant Hawkeye. She raised her gun. Ed and Alexa leaned forward slightly, measuring each other. Hawkeye fired.

Ed immediately clapped and transmuted his arm into a short sword. He was quick and began racing towards Alexa, intending to end the fight quickly before he had time to think. She didn't move. Suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, knives began flying at Ed. His eyes opened wider and he jumped, dodged, and ducked, the endless river of flying knives. Once he'd gotten within arm's length of Alexa, he began slashing.

She'd pulled out more, and longer knives, and held one in her left hand and three smaller ones in the spaces between the fingers of her right hand. She wielded her right hand like a clawed one and her left as a parry to Ed's arm. They were both very fast, Alexa only slightly faster. They came in and backed out, in and out, slashing and parrying the other. Alexa hit Ed more times, but they were small blows, he could hardly even feel them. She managed to hinder his eyesight with some gashes above the eyebrows so that blood dripped into his eyes.

He wiped it away without a second thought. Eventually, he landed a pretty large cut across her ribcage and she sprinted backwards. They both stood, warily regarding each other. Alexa takes off her long coat and throws it behind her. Ed liked the idea, as he was sweating profusely and did the same. Alexa threw him a small grin as he glanced down at the blow he'd just landed. He turned to Mustang.

"Call the ma-!"

Ed had wanted it to stop there. The cut was deeper than he'd intended, much deeper. But just as he'd turned, Alexa dashed forward, covered her left hand in blood and began slashing at him. He quickly responded, but she'd managed to land some blows first. They wove in and out, showing off profound knife skills. Roy was quite impressed with his cousin and Ed was getting very tired, but was afraid to hurt her much more.

Al was observing closely and he was the first to realize how big of trouble his brother was in. Alexa obviously had a plan, one that had involved the deep cut in her side to lure Ed into a state of fearing to hurt her and now she was executing another step, although what that may have been, Al didn't know. He glanced over at Mustang.

Roy had been watching equally as closely, but he understood what Alexa was doing and was frankly surprised at how muddled Ed seemed. The reluctance about further injuring Alexa, he could understand, (Roy also thought it was very tricky and a little heartless of her to take advantage of his obvious crush on her, but he grinned at the thought), but Ed did not seem to understand the nature of her attacks. He blocked and parried fine, but she was still landing enough and the colonel was shocked that no previous enemy had ever tried this kind of tactic on Ed before.

Alexa, was in fact, playing on Ed's weaknesses, of this he was sure. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to begin attacking her back again. But why was she bent on attacking his arm? Sure it was his weapon, but as far as he could see, she was simply prodding, with a lot of force, but mostly just prodding and poking at different parts in his arm. He didn't understand at all. Until of course, it stopped working.

She'd been holding her side with her left hand and stabbing with her right and when she suddenly spun and pressed her blood soaked hand to his forearm. He cringed and waited for her to further attack him, but she didn't. She simply stared at him. He checked to make sure she'd drawn no alchemic circle, but sure enough, there was nothing but a bloody handprint. Al, however, as well as everyone else, has seen that when she spun, she clapped her hands together before pressing Ed's arm. Al wondered at this apparent use of alchemy. When had she seen the Truth?

Ed whirled and used his arm in a mighty slash, intending to hurt her and then end the fight. Surely she'd lost so much blood that she was on the brink of passing out if cutting open her hand last night had made her woozy?

However, she held up her left dagger and stopped him with a resounding clang of metal. And suddenly, Ed's arm no longer functioned. He could not move his arm for the life of him.

"What the hell?"

Alexa stood and smiled for a second before trying to slash at his chest. He sprung backwards, using his good arm to flip around. He smacked his unusable palm and hit the ground, summoning many rocks to go flying at Alexa. He was outraged! And Winry was going to kill him!

She dodged the rocks skillfully, although still getting hit some. As she came in close, he stood quickly and wound up and large roundhouse punch. He was going to fake the punch and then trip her while she ducked. Except his plan didn't quite work.

She did duck the punch and he threw out his human leg to trip her while she, unfortunately, knocked the hilt of her dagger into the side of his automail knee in just the right spot so that it collapsed beneath him. He did succeed in tripping her and she went sprawling. So did he. To land right on top of her. In doing so, he not only knocked the wind out of her, but also accidentally hurt her deep cut to such an extent that she passed out. Ed now only had one arm and one leg and he just barely managed to clamber off of her.

He looked down at himself and saw he was completely covered in blood. In her blood.

"Oh God. Alexa!"

The wind was still knocked out of her so she didn't appear to be breathing. He attempted to lean down and listen, but his balance was precarious and he fell next to her.

"I need more limbs."

He growled. Roy had run over with Hawkeye.

"If you killed my cousin, I'm going to have to kill you."

"She's dead?!?!?!"

Al had followed. His face turned into comical tears and he began shaking Ed violently.

"Brother! What did you do to her??? What did you do?!?!?"

"Calm down Al! I'm sure she'll be okay."

"You're covered in blood Brother!"

"It's not my blood...."

"She's fine, just unconscious."

Riza announced. Roy was still standing and now she stood as well.

"Well in that case, I call the match."

"So I won then huh?"

"Brother, that's not fair. You accidentally fell on her. Otherwise, you're completely out of the fight."

Ed glared at his younger brother.

"You're supposed to be on my side!"

"Don't worry so much. I'm calling it a tie."

Ed switched his glare to Mustang.

"I'm the one whose still conscious here!"

"And you are the one who can't even stand. Al did have a point."

"Mmph."

Al would have grinned. Ed was sulking in a corner as Roy tried to shake Alexa awake.

"Uhhhggg..."

Alexa moaned and struggled to open her eyes. Her vision was a little hazy. Ed was instantly over there, leaning over her.

"Alexa I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Whaaaaa?"

They blinked at each other. Ed sat back (sort of) and ran his fingers through his hair.

"I fell on top on you and everything, I'm surprised you're even awake right now."

"Well you are pretty small Fullmetal. See, there are advantages."

Ed had murder in his eyes as he stared at Roy. Alexa laughed, but Ed could hear the pain in her voice. He immediately turned back to her.

"Are you going to be all right?"

"Yeah, I just need to stop the bleeding."

Roy's eyebrows shot up and instantly he was kneeling and lifting her onto her other side. He reached up and Riza handed him a roll of bandages. Roy turned to Alexa.

"Sorry."

He then proceeded to strip of her top and undershirt, which were both slashed to ribbons, exposing her side. The wound looked pretty nasty and Roy set to bandaging her up. Al and Ed were both blushing very vividly and had turned away. Al walked over to retrieve Alexa and Ed's coats. He draped Alexa's on her and handed the other to his brother.

"You're both going to need to rest and stay in the infirmiry for awhile."

"What about my arm and leg? I'll need to get to my mechanic as soon as possible."

"I can help."

They all looked at Alexa.

"I knew what I was doing and prodded specific joints in you so I'll be able to undo that damage."

Ed smiled, but Alexa warned him weakly.

"I can't completely fix them, but I can do enough so they'll be usable till you can get home."

"Thanks."

Alexa grinned and then her eyelids closed and she fell asleep. Al carried Ed and Roy carried Alexa into a room where they could sleep. A nurse came to attend to Ed's cuts and he allowed himself to be bandaged. He had watched Roy's face as he had carried Alexa and was amazed at the way Roy looked at her. Ed had never imagined the colonel could look so...gentle.

Ed lay down, thinking he should get some sleep like Alexa. The others left and Al sat on the floor, thinking as usual. He figured Alexa could fix him tomorrow and then when they were both able to walk, they'd pay some visits. For one thing, it had occurred to him that perhaps Alexa would be able to sneak him and Al into the Restricted part of the library and it would be a real treat to be able to go through those books for anything interesting.

She, on the other hand, had definitely not seemed eager to go back, but Ed was confident in his persuasive skills. After that, they would definitely need to take the train to Reesembool to get himself fixed. Unless Alexa was able to fix him, then perhaps that particular visit could be avoided. Ed cringed as he thought of all the possible things that could go wrong with him visiting right now. For the first, Alexa would probably come along because there'd be no tactful reason for him to ask her to stay behind. And then there was the problem with Winry....

If it stayed between Winry and him, he might be able to handle it, although not well considering she was like his sister and his best friend and he still had a crush on her. But if Alexa got involved, as she obviously would, well, there was no telling what would happen. If Winry decided that she'd rather never see Ed again, not only would he be losing his sister, best friend, sort of guardian, for both him and Al, he'd be giving up their only home. He truly wanted to avoid that if at all possible.

He looked to the side at Alexa's peacefully sleeping face. In her sleep, she smiled at him.