He felt bad, for running from Alphonse. But he had to. Otherwise he would've been caught, and the team would've followed, and the whole blasted operation would go up in smoke!
"Hey! Are you listening!" Strawberry yelled, cuffing him.
"Ouch! No! Okay? Now stop hitting me!" he snarled back. "All I caught is that we need a new place to hide!"
"Well, someone left the list of hide-outs in the shop, so we can't go to any of them." Lyn hissed, shoving Dark. He growled, punching her.
"Hey! You don't hit her!" Karina yelled, hitting him.
Pretty soon, they were all fighting except for him, Black Cat and Terios. "Cover your ears, or you'll be hurt too." she instructed, pulling out her small chalk-board.
They happily obliged. The rest were left reeling in agony. "Ouch!" whined Violet, looking small and pitifully at them.
"Yeah, well, shut up and think instead of starting a fight, why don't ya! Dark, you have no excuse for losing the notes, and Lyn, you don't have to start fights! Now shut up, 'cause I'm trying to think, even if no one else is!" he ordered.
None of them could come up with a plan. At least no good ones, anyway.
"Oh, this is aggravating!" groaned Karina, throwing her arms out in exasperation.
"If you have a good idea, now is the time to share it. We have no plan, no place to stay, no nothing." sighed Violet. "Oops, double-negative. Don't have anything." she corrected herself.
"Yeah, very nice. Wait… we do have something…" he said, perking up a little.
"What? What do we have?" asked Terios, confused.
"A child-hood friend of mine. Winry Rockbell. She'll most likely trust us… If she doesn't brain me with a wrench and kill me first…"
"But it's our best bet! The only thing we have to go on!" pointed out Daisy, now smiling, probably at the image of him getting whacked with a wrench.
Frowning, he shrugged. It was their only lead. He led them carefully through the trees and shadows to a place near the Rockbell residence.
He went up to the back door and knocked. Thinking about what might be in store for him, he backed up a pace. When Winry opened the door, he opened his mouth to speak.
"You idiot!"
As he had expected, the wrench hit him.
"Yowch! Winry, you don't even give me a chance to explain!" he complained.
"You'd better explain! We got a call saying to let the military know if we saw you and your friends!" she yelled.
"Hey, tell me, did you say child-hood friend, or did you mean to say child-hood enemy?" Terios asked, leaning over him.
"She's a friend, and my mechanic. If she'd just give me a chance to explain, maybe she'd hide us." he grumbled.
"Oh, so these are your friends? From the way you guys were described, he was hanging out with a bunch of thugs or something!" Winry laughed cheerfully.
"Oh, that's just cold. But his arm and leg are your work? I'm sorry if the leg may get screwed up later, but at one point we were in a tight situation and I had to do a patch-job." Violet said, stepping forth.
"Whaaaaa?" all of them but Winry were shocked.
"P-patch-job? You mean I'm walking on a bomb or something?" he cried.
"No, I mean it isn't quality work. I did the best I could, but we were under attack and I had to fix you."
"Well, who knows how long ago that was, and he's holding up so far. So I'd say you did a pretty good job. I'm still gonna wanna take a look, just to be sure, but I can hide you guys for a few days." Winry said, nodding. "And you better have an explanation for all this while I'm looking at it!" she yelled, pointing to Edward.
"Well, we kind of dragged him into this. We found out that this country is the base for an enormous trans-mutation circle, and we're all reincarnations of the originals, who tried to prevent the military from taking over. There is only one person the amulet for each person will work for. So if he had refused, we'd all be in prison and he'd still be a State Alchemist. But since he accepted, we're working to uproot the military before the trans-mutation circle is activated." explained Terios.
"I am the Red Alchemist. Cathrine is the Orange, Daisy is Yellow, and Karina is Green, Dark is the Blue Alchemist, Violet… Well, her name is her color, and Lyn is the White Alchemist, and Black Cat is obviously Black. Edward is the Spectrum Alchemist." Strawberry nodded.
"Well… what about...?" Winry asked, pointing at Terios.
"I'm the advisor and a were-cat. I simply advise them in what to do and what not to do. I'm their nanny. Big whoop."
"That must be fun. Whatever, come inside before someone sees you!" Winry instructed.
His leg was just fine, as it turned out. It made him wonder if Violet had a step-by-step hand-book to his auto-mail. But there was only one glitch with having to crash at Winry's place…
"You mean we all have to share the same room?" asked Karina in disgust. "You mean with… boys?"
"Sorry, but it's all we can do. For one thing, we don't have enough rooms for all of you, and for another, that way you can have all the privacy you need from us." Pinacko nodded.
"Before anyone could respond, Lyn stepped forth. "Thank you for all of your trouble. We will try to keep our needs to the minimal." she said coolly and neatly, bowing.
"Not at all. Just don't go fighting and making a ruckus in the middle of the night."
"Hmph. Like that'll happen. When pigs fly." Cathrine muttered under her breath.
"Oh, just be quiet. We're already putting them in danger. The least we can do is be grateful." Ed grumbled.
When he woke up, he wondered why the room was full of people at first. Then he remembered. Groaning, he sat up, careful not to disturb the two little girls. Because of how few beds there were, they had to share. He, Karina and Violet shared a bed, Lyn and Cathrine somehow managed to negotiate sharing a bed, Daisy, Strawberry and Terios were all sound asleep, and… He blinked.
Dark and Black Cat… He didn't want to look any longer, so he averted his gaze to Strawberry, Terios and Daisy. Terios and Strawberry were doing the same. Growling, he got up. He poked the brunette and ex-prince. "Oi, we have kids here! Do you really have to do that?" he hissed. Blushing, the two broke apart.
He went over to Dark and Black Cat. "You two knock it off! Do that kind of thing on your own time! There isn't time for love on the battle-field! And I don't think taking a pregnant woman around will be easy!" he hissed as they broke apart, blushing and muttering apologies.
"Whass'oin' on?" yawned Karina, sitting up.
Everyone hurriedly acted normal. "Oh, eh, nothing, why would you ask that? Silly kid!" laughed Dark.
"Something happened between you two and you two and Edward caught you is my guess." Lyn was awake.
"Yes—No! No!" they all said.
"Looks like a couple of affairs t' me." snickered Daisy, waking up Violet and Cathrine. "What cute couples!" The words 'cute' and 'couples' were drawled out.
"Shut up! Winry and Pinacko will hear us, and then we'll be screwed!" he said through gritted teeth. They all willingly shut up. None of them wanted to become Winry's targets. Who knew how their hosts would react to two young couples having an affair in their house? Especially since Terios was only fourteen and Strawberry was sixteen! Dark and Black Cat might get off the hook, but not those two!