Ninjagirl: Here it is, the next chapter! But before you enjoy it...EDWARD!!

Ed: -walks in- What?

Ninjagirl: There you are. Do the disclaimer and I'll let you kick Mustang's butt later.

Ed: -grins- BlackNinjagirl does not own anything but Rai and this story. Now can I go kick Mustang's butt now?

Ninjagirl: Be my guest.

Ed: -runs off to find Mustang-

Ninjagirl: Anyway, to the story! Enjoy!

The Lightning Alchemist Chronicles--Finding the Stone

By BlackNinjagirl

Chapter Three: The Eastern Frontier

The next day, they were on the train headed for the east. Naturally, Ed and Rai were bickering for most of the train ride, Al using the chance to stare out the window.

"Ugh!" Rai bellowed finally. "It's like arguing with a fencepost. You're so damn stubborn!"

"Well you're as much to blame as I am, so can it," Ed retorted.

Rai sighed and stared out the window, having the window seat opposite Al as she was sitting next to Ed. "There's no point in arguing my point if you're not going to get it anyway, so screw it."

Ed looked at her. "Well you have to admit, Mustang is a bastard."

Rai looked at him. "I don't like him either, but he's not a total bastard. He's saved my life more times than I can count. Especially then…" Her eyes got a distant look in them, practically unreadable.

Ed looked puzzled. "When?"

Rai waved a hand at him. "We have a deal, remember? I'm not telling anything until then."

Ed crossed his arms. "And you call me stubborn."

Rai looked at him, then laughed. "I guess that's another thing we have in common then." She looked out the window. "Hey, there it is! There's our stop."

Ed blinked and looked out himself. "Whoa…that's the East?!"

Rai grinned at him. "It's a coal-mining town, Ed--of course it looks unsophisticated."

Ed waved a hand at her. "No, no, it's not that, it's just…it's a little bigger than I expected."

Rai raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, what did you expect? A few houses and a cave?"

Ed nodded. "Something like that."

She laughed. "No, no, it's nothing like that. It's more sophisticated than that." She looked at Al. "Do you find it interesting?"

"Well," Al replied, "like Ed said, I was expecting it to be smaller."

"It's small compared to Central," Rai retorted.

"Well, yeah, but Central's huge," Ed interjected. "It's the military headquarters."

Rai huffed in exasperation. "Arguing is giving me a headache…"

"You sure it's not Ed?" Al teased.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ed demanded of his brother.

Rai shrugged. "Might be Ed too, but mostly it's the arguing."

Ed glared at her. "Rai!!"

Al laughed. "Brother, you're too easy to tease."

"I wasn't teasing, I was being serious," Rai told Al.

Al laughed again. "Rai, you're funny."

The three of them got off the train once they got to their destination, looking around.

"Looks like there's nobody in sight," Ed commented.

"There's somebody here," Rai told him. "It's not deserted, otherwise we wouldn't have been sent here."

Ed looked at her. "I hope you're right."

Rai sighed before taking off her left glove and sticking it to her forehead, the cool of her automail soothing her headache some. "Ahh…that feels better."

Ed watched her. "Still got that headache from earlier?"

Rai nodded. "Yeah…too bad I can't get rid of it." She heard someone coming and quickly put her glove back on, though she missed the cold of the automail already. "Someone's coming…I told you there was someone here."

Ed glared at her. "Oh sure, rub it in, why don't you?"

Rai sighed. "Now's not the time," she murmured to him before he waved at a kid who was walking towards them with a big beam on his shoulder.

The kid looked instantly perked up and went over to them, Ed getting hit in the head with the beam.

"Ow!!" Ed yelled, rubbing his head. "Watch it with that thing, will ya?"

Rai looked at the kid, who looked interested upon seeing them. "Hey, are you guys travelers?" the kid asked them.

Rai scratched her head. "Eh…sort of."

"You need a place to stay?" the kid continued. "I know the perfect place. Hey Dad!!"

The three 'travelers' looked over to see a man with a similar size beam on his shoulder. "What is it?"

"We've got travelers!" the kid called back.

Rai groaned. The headache was getting worse the longer they stayed in the sun. "Ed, can we at least find somewhere to rest? My head is throbbing."

Ed looked at her, then nodded. "Alright." He looked a little worried. "Think you can hold out for a few more minutes?"

Rai put a hand to her head. "I don't know."

Ed looked at the kid. "At least take us somewhere to sit and cool off."

The kid took them to a bar, where Rai sat with her head on the table, attempting to get rid of her headache, while Ed and Al were over finding out how much it cost to stay at the inn.

"Say what?!?!" Ed yelled upon finding out. "Are you serious?!?!"

Rai grunted and looked up at Ed. "Could you not yell so loud?"

Ed looked over at her. "Sorry Rai."

Rai sighed and put her head on the table again. "Ugh, I hate headaches."

Ed turned to the woman and asked her something, but the woman shook her head and Ed sighed before walking over to Rai, sitting next to her.

"I tried to get you something but the woman said no," Ed told her. "Sorry…about your headache, I mean."

Rai smiled lightly. "It's okay, Ed. Thanks for trying, though." She closed her eyes, sighing. "Maybe if I take a nap, I'll feel better."

"I don't think Al would make a very good pillow, though," Ed teased lightly.

Rai smiled at his attempt to make her feel better. "I don't think he would either." She sighed and got up to go over to the woman herself, but her vision started wavering and then went dark entirely as she fell to the floor, unconscious.

Rai came to in a bed with Ed sitting in a chair next to the bed, and attempted to sit up but was pressed back on the bed by a woman with short hair and lavender eyes.

"You're sick and need to recover. Go to sleep, you'll be fine," the woman assured her, and Rai felt a cool and wet cloth being placed on her forehead, which felt good.

Ed looked at the woman. "She'll be alright, though, won't she, Lyra?"

The woman, apparently named Lyra, nodded. "She'll be fine." Lyra looked at Rai. "Never thought I'd meet two State Alchemists in one place before."

Rai blinked at being told she was sick. "Sick? How did I get sick?"

"You have a fever," Ed explained. "You must've caught something in Central."

Rai frowned. "I doubt it. I've never caught anything before when I was up in Central, I don't know how I would have caught anything…" She closed her eyes. "That cool cloth feels good, though…"

Ed looked at her. "Think you'll be feeling better soon?"

Rai smiled lightly. "I'll probably be fine after a nap," she told him, yawning. "I heal fast and I sure as hell don't die easily."

Ed laughed. "Good to know. Well, get some rest then," he told her. "I'll see you in the morning."

Rai smiled and nodded. "See you in the morning," she murmured back before she went to sleep.

Rai was startled awake in the morning when she heard some kind of explosion and blinked, then got out of bed and got ready, as she felt fine now, no headache or anything, running to meet Ed and noticing as she did so that Lyra had left at some point.

It wasn't long before Ed ran out of his room as well, then blinked at Rai when he saw her. "You weren't kidding, were you?"

"What was that explosion? What the hell just happened?!" Rai demanded.

Ed shook his head. "I'm not sure."

Rai took off running. "C'mon, let's go see what it was."

Ed nodded and ran after her.

They got to where the explosion had happened and blinked, seeing the inn had been blown to pieces.

"Holy hell!" Rai yelled. "What the hell happened here?! Who did this?!?! I'll kick their asses."

Ed elbowed her lightly. "Rai, settle down."

Rai shook her head. "Not until I get to the bottom of this." She cracked the knuckles of her right hand as if to make her point.

Ed sighed before the two of them heard movement and saw Al getting a kid out of the rubble--the kid they'd met earlier, and the kid was taken to his dad before Al walked over to Ed and Rai.

"You alright, Al?" Ed asked him.

Al nodded. "I'm fine, Brother."

"Good," Rai interjected, "cause otherwise I'd have to kick you."

Ed blinked at her before turning to the others. "Why don't you guys just move and take up residence somewhere else?"

Rai nodded. "It'd be easier--you wouldn't have to deal with this kind of stuff."

"You wouldn't understand," the kid's father retorted. "This is our home…and our coffin."

Rai looked at Ed, who had a thoughtful look in his eyes. "Home and coffin…that has a nice ring to it." He turned and walked off, Rai blinking at him and following along with Al.

"Brother? What is it? Are you going to help them?" Al asked him.

"We have no home," Ed told Al. "We burned ours to the ground. But that doesn't mean we can't save their home."

Rai looked startled. "You burned it to the ground?"

Ed looked at her. "The explanation is in the deal," he told her.

Rai nodded, understanding completely--if it was part of the little deal they'd made, he'd give her the explanation when he was ready. "Well, do you think you're going to help them?"

Ed sopped in front of a train car full of rocks. "This should do it."

Rai eyed the train car, then looked over at him to see him pull out a bag which looked like a money purse, and sounded like it had a lot of gold in it, too, and got what he was going to do. "You know if they find out about this, the military might get mad at you. It is illegal, after all."

Ed climbed into the car and grinned at her. "Then let's make this our little secret," he replied before dropping the money into the car and transmuting the whole thing into gold.

"Well, my only question is, how are we going to get all of this to where we want it?" Rai interjected.

Ed stood up, grinning. "We'll figure it out somehow."

They got the transmuted gold back to the place Rai had woken up in and hid it in a room, and they waited until a guy with black hair and a moustache showed up and Ed walked over to him.

"Think you could sell me the whole town?" Ed asked him. "And throw in everything surrounding it while you're at it."

The guy blinked. "Sell the town?! You're out of your mind!"

"Actually I think he lost that some time ago," Rai told the guy, teasing Ed.

Ed shot her a glare before turning back to the guy, Rai grinning. "Well, if you could sell it, how much would you want for it?"

The guy thought a moment, then said, "I doubt you could pay anywhere near the amount I would ask for it anyway."

Ed sighed in mock distress, and waved a hand at Al, who opened the door to the room full of gold. "Oh, that's a shame. What would I do with all this gold then?"

Rai had to restrain herself from laughing at the man's reaction to the transmuted gold--he was practically drooling over it.

Ed saw this and grinned. "Just draw up some papers saying you gave me the town and all of this--" he indicated the gold, "--would be considered a gift from me to you. What do you say?"

Rai was now having a really hard time keeping from laughing--she was already giggling from the look on the guy's face.

Ed put a hand around him. "Just think of it--Colonel Yoki."

The guy, apparently named Yoki, looked at the gold, then at Ed. "Done."

The papers were written in no time flat and the three of them left, Rai bursting out into laughter once they were outside.

"Oh my God!! Did you see the look on his face when he saw all of that?" she asked him. "That was hilarious."

Ed grinned. "And he fell for it, too."

Rai continued laughing. "That's the funniest--no, scratch that, second funniest--thing I've ever seen."

Ed blinked at her. "What was the first?"

Rai giggled. "When I was five, I burned Mustang with his own gloves."

Ed started laughing himself. "You actually did that?!"

She nodded, still giggling. "Yes, I did! You should have seen it, it was hilarious."

The two of them settled down, and Ed looked at Rai. "Alright, you go and put the inn back together--I'll go and talk to the guy in charge of the inn." He waved the papers.

Rai blinked at him. "What're you planning on doing with those?"

Ed grinned. "I'm going to trade them for a night at the inn."

Rai grinned back. "Sounds good to me," she replied before running for the inn.

She had it up with a simple clap of her hands and a slap to one of the broken pieces of wood, and she looked to see people walking over, praising her, and she scratched her head, blushing a little from all the praise.

"You fixed it!" someone nearby exclaimed. "Why did you fix it?"

"Because Ed and I aren't like that Yoki guy that comes around," Rai explained. "We don't try to drain every last penny from people. I don't know about Ed, but I do know that I became a State Alchemist in order to fix whatever I could. I happen to care about the people--Yoki's true love is money and nothing else."

The people around the revitalized inn and tavern cheered and continued cheering even as Rai made her way through the crowd to where Ed was standing with Al and the guy.

"So," Rai interjected, resting her right arm on Ed's shoulder, "did you tell them that now they don't have to deal with that bastard anymore?"

Ed grinned at her. "Yep. Yoki is not much of a big deal anymore."

Rai nodded. "Good to hear. Minute I saw him I wanted to kick his ass."

Ed rolled his eyes. "You want to kick the ass of anyone who decides to piss you off."

Rai grinned. "Yep, cause anyone who pisses me off deserves an ass-thrashing."

Ed laughed, but stopped when they heard a car pull up, and Rai dropped her arm from his shoulder to turn and see Yoki get out of that car.

"Well, speak of the devil," Rai muttered to Ed.

They walked over to greet Yoki, and the man pointed at Ed and Rai. "What happened to my gold? I went into that room and all there was in there was rocks!"

Rai looked at Ed. "You transmuted it back?" she asked him in a whisper.

Ed grinned at her. "You didn't think I'd actually let him keep all that gold, did you?" he whispered back.

Rai giggled. "Ed ward Elric, you are one devious bastard."

Ed's grin widened. "Don't I know it."

Rai laughed and turned back to Yoki. "Aww," she taunted, "did your golden lover run off and leave you?"

Yoki glared at her. "Lyra!"

Lyra stepped forward and put her hands on either side of the necklace around her neck, to which the air in front of it glowed red and then blasted towards them, Ed holding out his right arm to block it, which only ripped apart the sleeve of his jacket as well as his glove, revealing his automail.

Rai blinked. So she sucks the moisture out of the air and uses it to create a powerful blast of air which would knock anyone over…Interesting.

Lyra's eyes narrowed. "You two are State Alchemists! Why are you helping them?"

"Because not all people in the military deserve to wear the uniform," Rai retorted. "If they did, we wouldn't have to clean out scum like them."

Ed nodded in agreement. "She would know--she's been in longer than I have."

"Only a year," Rai pointed out.

"That's still longer," Ed retorted.

Rai frowned. "True enough." She looked back at Lyra. "Why don't you help people instead of work for scum like him?" she asked the taller woman, nodding at Yoki. "I bet if you put your alchemy skills to good use, you might be able to help a lot of people instead of using it to help out bastards like that one cowering behind you."

"Rai's right," Ed agreed. "And you want to become a State Alchemist, don't you? Then why not help people rather than hurt them?"

Lyra glared at him. "Shut up, you don't know anything!" she yelled before powering up her necklace again, and Rai ran over and snatched it off of her neck with her automail arm, smashing it to pieces in her metal fist before dropping the remains onto the ground.

"Nice try, but that won't work on me," she told the other woman. "Ed's not the only person with automail."

Lyra blinked. "Why do you go out of your way to help them?"

"Because they deserve it after Yoki treating them like the dirt he walks on. People's lives aren't something to toy around with, I know that now, and I learned the hard way." She gave Lyra a hard look. "Equivalent exchange. Learn it well."

Yoki and Lyra left not long after that, and Rai looked at her tattered glove and sleeve of her jacket. "Well that sucks. This is my favorite jacket, too…"

Ed walked over. "Here, let me fix it," he told her before doing just that.

Rai looked it over, then grinned at him. "Thanks."

Ed shrugged. "No problem. Guess we head back to Central after we spend the night, huh?"

Rai nodded. "First thing tomorrow morning."

Ed grinned. "It's a deal."

They did indeed leave the next morning on the train back to Central.

"You think Mustang set this one up too?" Rai asked Ed.

Ed shrugged. "There's no telling. We'll just have to find out ourselves." He gave her a long look. "You know, it might not be too bad if you stayed with us more. It gets boring with just me and Al."

"Hey!" Al interjected. "I'm right here, you know."

Rai grinned. "I might like that, you guys are quite entertaining."

Ed grinned back. "You never know, we might be more entertaining than you think."

Rai laughed. "I'll think about it and let you know."

Ninjagirl: Wow, FOUR reviews! Cool. Better than last chapter. Ok, replies time!

ToshiroHitsugayagirlfriend: Thanks very much! ^_^

Ivywhisker: Ahh! Quit changing your name, it gets confusing! First from SpringForSummer14 to Kaelyn The Hedgehog and then to this! _ And as to the story you're working on, let me know when you have it up and I'll review on it! ^_^ Thanks for the review!

ShadowRainMemoirs: ^_^ Glad you like it. I aim to please. XP

VioletLily2010: I didn't want to completely skip it over anyway because of the whole "Nina getting killed by Scar" thing so I put it in enough so that that was important, not to mention that the whole "Ed seeing the body and passing out" thing was key to major hints about Rai as well. That and so many stories kind of skip over it. As to the description…you forgot she has a temper the size of Texas. But you haven't seen that yet…other than that, you have it just about right on the nose. XD And Ed IS smexy, especially when his hair is down. -drools- Also, thanks for the review!

MistressTaco: Wow, a person that's as crazy as I am! XD Nice to meet a person as insane as I am. XDD Oh, I wasn't intending on going too fast with the whole love thing. And I'm getting good at love stuff…as to the tragic thing, I was intending on it. XD but the kidnapping thing sounds good too….I might add that in. Hmm…well, I would get a friend of mine to do the Beta thing but he's not much for FMA…if you could do it that'd be great! Or your friend would be okay…^_^ Thanks for the review!! POCKY AND BACON FOREVER!!

Awesome! I'm getting popular. _ Eh, not really, but…yeah…Anyway, luv you guys! See you next chapter!