Zilo: I'm back from staycay!

Chizi: WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?

Zilo: Staycation…like I just said…

Chizi: Oh. Well, thanks to Furorensu-chan, peppaminty, wintermoon, Megan May, shadowdice, Just Leah, Jibbette, x sematic-Shrooms, Azelf, Hell-bound-Bitch-Triss L Oddy, Storm Uchiha, xdreamernumbuhfour, Pumpkin2Face, GhostHoundFanGirl, Koinu-chan, and MochaLulu for reviewing.

Zilo: And here's the next chapter! Woo!

Rating raised for language. Doggone it, Chizi!

5: Inconsistency
In which Ed breaks the rules

Then, the air next to us started to shimmer. We all stared, me fascinated at actually seeing a summoning firsthand, but also dreading the aftermath. A blurry shape appeared in the glimmering air, and we could already see the distinctive red and black. Cassie sat up.

"Brother!" Al exclaimed.

The sparkly quality of the air dimmed, and before us stood the figure of the Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric, holding a plate of food and looking very confused.

God, I know I haven't paid you a lot of attention lately, but please, let my family survive today. I'd really appreciate it. If we're all alive later I promise I'll start tithing or something, okay?

"What the…hell?" were Edward's first words.

Ricky and I exchanged another worried look. Al had been a little easier to keep calm, mostly because he was so nice. But Ed was a force to be reckoned with. What if he demanded answers and started yelling and screaming? No doubt one of our neighbors would call the police.

Ricky made head motions, telling me to sacrifice myself and talk to Ed first. I brandished my fist at him, then turned to face Ed.

"Brother, you're here!" Al was saying.

Ed turned to Al, holding a fork in mid-air. "Al? What, uh…" He started looking around. I tried to think of what he was seeing: a seemingly normal living room, with all the furniture in a broken disarray. His eyes finally landed on me and my siblings, and his expression became more confused.

"Uh…hi," I said, offering a little wave.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked.

"Hey, watch it, there's a child present," I automatically shot back. Next to me, I could practically hear Ricky's eyes rolling. Well, yeah, I swear in front of Cassie sometimes, but I'm trying to quit, honest.

"What's going on?" was Ed's next question.

"Well, uh…" I began slowly. Of course I wasn't going to throw my little sister under the bus, but I couldn't weave a great tablecloth of lace-lined lies after promising Al I wouldn't.

"My head hurts," Cassie said to me.

I looked down at her to see that she had one of her little hands pressed to her temple. "Did you bump it?" I asked her.

She shook her head, and her face scrunched a little. "It really hurts," she said.

"Oi. Ricky, go break out the kiddie aspirin," I said.

"Okay, but, uh, what about—"

"Go on." I made shooing gestures. "I'll take care of this, like I always do."

Ricky shot me a look, but turned and went into the kitchen. Cassie followed him, shooting a glance back over her shoulder at Ed and Al

I turned back again to see Al talking to Ed. "…just stay calm. I don't think they mean any harm," he was saying.

"Stay calm? About what?" Ed wanted to know. "One second I was eating dinner, and the next I'm here! Where is this place?"

"Well…" Al began, then paused. He turned to me, and Ed's gaze soon followed. "You never did explain where we are," Al said to me.

Oh great. I heaved a sigh upwards, briefly lifting a few strands of my hair on the air current. "Well, that's one of those things that I said would be hard to explain," I began slowly.

"My head's okay now!" Cassie yelled from the kitchen.

"Great!" I yelled back absently. I chewed on my lower lip as I tried to think of how to explain this.

"Listen," I finally said. "For now, the main thing we wanna do is send all of you guys home as soon as possible. And, um, right now isn't the best time to be asking a bunch of questions. It'll just get you a bunch of panicked looks and no answers. So, if you guys will just promise to stop asking where you are and what is this and what year it is and all that—"

"What year it is?" Ed repeated.

Whoops. "Just don't ask questions, okay?" I snapped.

"Like hell I won't! You can't just drop us into some suspicious situation and expect us to sit around without knowing what's going on!" Ed snapped back.

"Look, you'll just have to trust me on this one. It's better if you don't know!"

"Trust you! I don't even know you!"

This was going nowhere fast. I was starting to get a headache. Maybe I was the one who needed aspirin. If this didn't stop soon, my legendary temper was going to explode all over the place, and that was the last thing we needed.

"Uh…Joey?" Ricky's nervous voice came from the kitchen.

"WHAT?" I demanded, already worked up.

"There's a problem…"

I put my face in my hands. Not now. The last thing we needed—next to my aforementioned explosion—was more problems. "What is it?" I asked.

"The chainletter's, like…broken," he replied, hesitantly.

I whirled around. "Broken?" I repeated, running into the kitchen. "What do you mean?"

Ricky was sitting at the kitchen table, the laptop open in front of him. Cassie sat in the chair next to him, aimlessly swinging her free-hanging feet. I went around to look at the laptop's screen over Ricky's shoulder.

"See?" Ricky said.

I swallowed, trying to understand what I was looking at.

Return Form ERROR
Character: ERROR
Anime: ERROR
Version: ERROR

Error 14.5: unauthorized access.
unauthorized access.
system disabled.
backup files transferred.

"What the hell did you do?" I demanded.

"Nothing! I just opened it up now and it looked like this," Ricky said.

I took a few deep breaths, resisting the urge to hit my brother. "Okay. Can you pull up an earlier version or something?"

"I can try," Ricky said. He backed through a couple of screens and pulled up the original e-mail. When he tried to click on the "read e-mail" button, however, the screen froze.

"Ah, come on," Ricky urged the computer, jiggling the mouse. My hands clenched into fists at the thought of another delay. Cassie peered around Ricky's other side.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Ed and Al had come to the kitchen entrance and were watching us, but I didn't pay any attention to them at the moment. "Restart the computer," I suggested.

Ricky hit Ctrl-Alt-Del in quick succession, but nothing happened. He tried the Escape key, and then pressed random keys, but the laptop seemed to be truly frozen.

"It's not working," he said, a note of fear in his voice.

"Oh, God, this can't be happening. Ricky, I don't care what you do, get that damn thing working!" I half-yelled at him.

"I'm trying!" Ricky exclaimed.

"Can we help?" Al asked suddenly.

We all looked up, startled. Al and Ed were still in the entrance to the kitchen, with Al bent over a little to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling, and Ed's arms crossed and a thoughtful frown on his face. "…What?" I finally said.

"We can tell you guys are a little frustrated with something, though we don't exactly know what. Maybe we can fix it for you with alchemy," Al offered.

My face drained of all color. Oh no. Oh nonononono. What would they do when they found out alchemy doesn't work here? What would we say?

"Oh, no, we're fine," Ricky said hastily.

"Thanks though," I added just as hastily.

"But…" Al began.

"We're fine!" Ricky insisted, jumping up. He jumped a little too fast, though, and his hand knocked a mug off the table. It hit the tiled floor with a spectacular (for a mug, anyway) crash.

The five of us stared at the mug silently. "Mommy's mug…" Cassie said. Sure enough, it was Mom's favorite coffee mug, the pink one with "WORLD'S COOLEST MOM" on it in big black letters. Cassie had bought it for her, after six months of earning money by doing chores for me and Ricky.

"Ricky, you idiot," I couldn't help saying.

"I didn't mean it!" Ricky exclaimed, his voice cracking a little.

Cassie got out of her chair and went over to where what remained of the mug had landed. "Mommy's mug is broke…" she said, tears starting to fill her eyes.

"God, you wanna screw up anything else today? Wanna go for the world record of fu—fudge-ups?" I yelled at Ricky.

"I said I didn't mean it!" Ricky shouted back at me.

"Calm down, will you?" I heard Ed say. I turned around to see that he had knelt down next to the pile of mug. "It's easy to fix." He clapped his hands.

"No, wait!" Ricky and I exclaimed in unison. If Ed tried to do alchemy, he'd see it fail, and then we'd never be able to explain it.

Ed's fingertips touched the edge of the pile. I felt a wave of dread. But then, to my utter astonishment, the pile began to glow a radiant blue, and a strange wind kicked up. My eyes had to be as huge as saucers, and when I looked at Ricky, I saw that he had a similar expression on his face.

The wind and glow died down, and instead of a pile of pink ceramic, there was a perfect WORLD'S COOLEST MOM mug sitting on the floor. It looked perfect, like nothing had happened to it.

"You fixed it!" Cassie cheered. She reached down and picked up the mug, hugging it to her chest.

"No sweat," Ed said with a grin, the first one he'd had since he arrived in our house.

"You…you really fixed it…" I said faintly.

"Of course," Al said, coming fully into the kitchen so he could stand upright.

"Something like a mug is kid's stuff," Ed said as he stood up, a hint of smugness in his tone.

"But…how…?" Ricky said faintly.

"What do you mean?" Al asked.

Ricky seemed to realize what he'd just said. "Well, I, uh—"

"He's never seen alchemy in person before," I jumped in, which was entirely true. "None of us have. It looked…well, awesome." That was also true.

Ed looked a little pleased at our awe. "Alchemy is pretty cool, isn't it?" he said.

The three of us Jones kids nodded like bobbleheads. Cassie was starting to get a worshipful look in her eye as she gazed at Ed.

This is so crazy. How is it Envy couldn't use his powers, but Ed could? Is Ed just that awesome or something? I needed investigation.

But first…an idea had just popped into my head.

"Hey, uh, you saw the condition the living room was in, right?" I asked Ed.

7PM. Dinner time. Things had calmed down, at least a little. The living room looked perfect—all the broken and dented furniture was completely back to normal, and everything was back in its place. The basement door was fixed, and the chair Envy had broken repaired to its former glory and stashed in the living room.

I had escaped into the kitchen, and was now busily making dinner. Ricky had escaped to his room with the laptop, and was trying to figure out how to get an uncorrupted chain letter, or at least that's what he said he was doing. Cassie had her last load of homework dutifully spread out in front of her at the dining room table, but she seemed more interested in watching Ed, who sat across the table from her but had his chair pointed in my direction. Al sat next to him.

I can't tell you how utterly strange it was to have Edward and Alphonse Elric in my kitchen. Every time I found myself looking back over my shoulder, they were still there. It was like I had to check every few seconds to make sure I wasn't dreaming or hallucinating.

"So you're the oldest?" Al asked me.

"Yep," I replied, looking over my shoulder again. Ed and Al were still there, all right. I returned to the boiling pot of pasta and pan of sautéing chicken I was slaving over. "Taking care of those two knuckleheads is a full-time job sometimes."

"Hey!" Cassie said indignantly.

"Well, you're all right," I told her.

"How old are you?" Al asked.

"Just turned 18," I said.

Ed, who was taking a drink of the Kool-Aid I'd nicely offered him, seemed to choke for a moment. "What? 18?" he repeated.

"Uh, yeah, why?" I asked, glancing back again.

Ed firmly set down his glass and stood up. I turned back to tend the food, assuming he was going to get more Kool-Aid to replace what he splashed onto the table. Imagine my surprise when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I was turned roughly around. A piece of chicken nearly flew off my spearing fork.

"Hey! Wha—"

I stopped when I realized it was Ed. He had a calculating look on his face. His free hand came up, held straight and flat, and for a second I thought he was going to karate-chop me in the face. Instead, he held the side of his hand at a little above my forehead. Then he moved his hand so it hovered at the top of his head.

"What the hell are you doing? I mean heck?" I asked him.

A grin spread across his face. It looked a little evil. "You're almost the same height as me," he said.

"And?" I prompted, pulling my shoulder free of his hand and going back to the chicken.

"Brother," Al sighed from the table.

"Joey's short for her age," Cassie piped up.

My eyebrow twitched. "Cassie, I thought we talked about you telling people random facts about me…" I said.

Cassie giggled. "Sorry, Joey."

"But what about your brother? He's a giant," Ed pointed out.

"I dunno. Everybody in my family's a giant. It's kinda unfair," I said, turning off the burner under the pasta.

"Tell me about it," Ed said. I heard his chair scrape, and when I looked over my shoulder again, he had sat back down and was finishing off his Kool-Aid.

I turned back to the chicken, absently flipping it. It was still amazing that this was actually happening. What was ever crazier was the inconsistency. Envy's powers were cancelled out, but Ed's weren't. Why was that? How did it make any sense? Well, none of this made sense, really, but even in its non-sense-making, there should still be rules, right?

"Okay, dinner in a few. Cassie, go collect Ricky, would you?" I said.

"Okay." I heard Cassie's chair scrape, and then her footsteps as she skipped out of the room.

For a few moments, there weren't any sounds except me putting the finishing touches on dinner and pulling out plates and utensils. Then Al spoke. "So your brother Ricky is still working on that…lap-top thing, right?"

"Yeah," I said, with another quick glance over my shoulder.

"What does that thing do, anyway?" Ed asked.

"Ummm…" I concentrated on carrying the stack of plates and utensils to the table and setting them down. Then I mustered my courage and looked up at them. "Well, its…sort of an advanced piece of technology."

"What's 'advanced piece of technology' supposed to mean?" was Ed's next question.

It looked like it was interrogation time. "It means it's something you're not familiar with. But, basically…it's what's responsible for you all being here. Some kinda problem came up, but we're working on fixing it so we can get you guys home."

"Hmm," Ed said.

"And whatever's wrong with it can't be fixed with alchemy?" Al asked.

"Um, I don't think so. You've gotta know the components of whatever it is you're transmuting, right?" I said.

They nodded.

"Yeah, so that wouldn't work. Thanks for the offer, though."

Ed downed the last of his Kool-Aid and set the glass down. "Okay, so maybe we can't use alchemy. But we could probably figure out this…whatever the hell is going on, by working together. But we can't do that unless you tell us what's really going on around here."

I bit my lip. That was true. It didn't seem like Ricky and I were doing too well on our own with this thing. But telling Ed and Al the truth just seemed like a bad idea. I mean, who was to say they would believe me? And if they did, well, that meant a whole new set of questions.

On the other hand, if I didn't explain this to them, they might look for information elsewhere. And if they left the house…well, it would probably be whatever is about ten levels above culture shock. Maybe it was better if I handled this.

Slowly, I sat down across from them. "Okay," I finally said. "But, trust me, it's going to sound totally crazy. You might not believe me. And even if you do…well, it's kinda shocking, you know?"

"We can handle it. Just tell us," Al encouraged me.

I blew out a breath of air. It was like my friend Ike says sometimes: there was nothing to it but to just do it. "All right, then, I'm just gonna say it, and you take it how you want. Okay?"

They nodded.

"Okay." I'll admit, I was stalling a little; I just didn't know how to approach this situation properly. "Okay," I said, again. "Here's the deal. We're, um, this is actually—"

A weird crashing noise made me look up towards the ceiling. It sounded like it had come from Ricky's room. "The hell was that?" I wondered aloud, getting out of my chair.

"Sounded like someone fell on the floor," Ed said.

"He better not have broken his leg or something stupid like that," I grumbled as I headed towards the stairs. Maybe whatever it was he was doing had something to with the chain letter, like him throwing the laptop to the floor in frustration or something.

I was halfway up the stairs when I heard the sound of a door slamming, followed by running feet. I paused, having a sudden feeling of—well, I couldn't quite describe it. It was like I knew what was about to happen, even though I didn't really.

Nevertheless, I kept climbing the stairs, and had made it two-thirds of the way when Ricky appeared at the top, the laptop under one arm, and Cassie under the other. He had a look of terror on his face. The indescribable feeling got worse.

"Ricky? What—" I started to say.

"Run!" he yelled. "Run!"

My breath caught in my throat. I started to move up towards him again, when he threw a look over his shoulder—and gasped. He literally threw himself at the stairs.

But he wasn't fast enough.

A long, dark projectile whizzed through the air, and I watched in horror as it quickly stabbed into and withdrew from my brother's shoulder. I heard him let out a strangled "Guh!" and my arms automatically shot out to catch him as he fell. He landed heavily on me, knocking the three of us backwards. I felt us falling, but my eyes were pinned to the top of the stairs, knowing who would appear but hoping and praying I was wrong.

Unfortunately, I was right. Like a nightmare, Lust appeared at the top of the stairs, the nails on her right hand partially extended. Even as we fell, I locked eyes with her. Those were some cold eyes. She looked…frustrated, maybe, as she raised her nails and pointed them in our direction.

Nononoshitshitshit nononodamndamndamn, I was thinking.

There was a sharp clap behind us, and before I knew it, the stairs had taken on a blue glow and were rapidly changing shape. Lust's nails shot towards us, but sections of the stairs twisted themselves into tendrils and wrapped around her nails with lightning speed, stopping them in mid-air.

It was Ed. It was Ed!

Even though Ed had stopped Lust from shishkabobing us to death, we were still falling. But then there was another flash of blue light and a rush of wind, and I felt my back hit something soft. Having Ricky, Cassie, and the laptop land on top of me turned my sigh of relief into an "Oof!" of pain.

I felt Cassie's arms wrap around one of mine, and was relieved she seemed to be okay. After a moment, I started to shove at Ricky. "Geddoffgeddoffgeddoff!" I wheezed.

It wasn't until Ricky let out a yelp of pain that I remembered his shoulder injury. "Oh God I'm sorry!" I wheezed instead.

"No…it's okay…aghh!" he cried out, clutching his shoulder. Now that it was only a few inches from my face, I could see that Ricky's injury was fortunately just a flesh wound, and hadn't actually gone straight through his shoulder. It probably still hurt like hell, though.

Somewhere near us, I heard what had to be the sounds of Ed and Lust duking it out. I knew we needed to get clear of the action, but Cassie had turned into a deadweight hanging off my arm, and Ricky was making all sorts of faces as he held his shoulder.

This was even worse. Now Lust was here, and she had all of her powers. What else could go wrong?

"All right, guys, we have to get to safety," I wheezed, trying to squirm out from underneath my siblings. Ricky finally rolled off me, but not without another yelp. Now free, I flipped over so I could better survey what was going on.

Ed and Lust seemed to be having a brief standoff. A wound on Lust's neck was rapidly healing, and Ed had a few holes in his coat, but seemed to be all right. He'd transmuted his customary automail blade, and she had the nails on both hands withdrawn for the moment. Al was motioning to us to come over to where he was, in the relative safety of the living room entrance.

"So this is where you got to, Fullmetal," Lust said in her smooth voice.

"That's right. You miss me?" Ed shot back.

"Let's get over to Al while they're doing their bantering thing," I whispered to my brother and sister.

"What's bantering?" Cassie whispered back.

"Ghhhck, my shoulder hurts," Ricky said through gritted teeth.

"Then don't jostle it. Come on, let's move it," I said firmly.

I slid to the edge of the alchemized thing that had saved me—which turned out to be a combination of the stair railing and a couch cushion—and peered over it. Normally the stairs would have been right below us, but all the steps had been transmuted into something else, so there was only what looked like a thin wooden border a few feet below. I braced myself, and pushed off the platform.

I landed on my feet and bent my knees, like I was a good little freerunner, and then twisted around. The platform was just over my head. Cassie and Ricky peered down at me. I held up my arms, and Cassie slid over the edge and landed in them. I set her down safely, and then we looked up at Ricky.

"Maybe with the right incentives I'll get some answers about what you're doing around here," Lust was saying.

Ricky dangled his legs over the edge, looking nervous. I motioned for him to come down. He pushed off the platform, finally. I reached out to steady him as he landed with bent knees, a look of pain flashing over his face. Cassie was clinging to my side again.

"Don't think about trying anything," Ed was warning Lust.

"You mean like this?" I could hear the smile in Lust's voice, and I whipped around. Her hand came up—pointed in our direction. Automatically I shoved Cassie and Joey behind me, ignoring Ricky's gritted "Ow!"

I wasn't a moment too soon. Lust's nail shot out, and I thought for sure we were toast. But then they stopped. I froze. Her middle nail was about four millimeters away from my forehead. The other four surrounded the three of us, forcing us into a terrified single-file line.

"No, don't!" Al cried.

"They'll have nothing to worry about, so long as you explain what's going on," Lust said. "Envy came after you two and never returned. What did you do with him? And where is this place?"

"We don't know!" Ed burst out.

Lust's eyes narrowed. The nail pointed at my forehead shifted towards my eye. Oh God, she was going to turn me into a pirate.

"No, we don't, honest!" Al insisted.

"Oh, really?" Lust said, sounding skeptical.

My eldest sibling senses were tingling again. I had the feeling I would have to speak up. I didn't want to. I wanted to wake up and realize this was all a stupid dream brought on by my anime addictions. But it was real, Ricky was really hurt, and Lust was really here ready to murder us all. I had to say something.

"Listen," I managed to say, drawing Lust's gaze. "Put your, uh, nails down, and I'll explain everything."

"You?" Lust repeated.

I have to admit, her tone of incredulity made me a little angry, which lessened my fear. "Yes, me," I snapped. "I'm the one with the answers, you—" I managed to stop myself from insulting her just in time. "Look. If you wanna know what's going on, you can just ask, instead of threatening people's lives, all right?"

"Oh really?" Lust said, but she at least seemed to be listening.

"Yes. So withdraw these damn things, and I'll tell you what's going on. Or you can just go stabbing away, and you'll be stuck here forever."

There were several moments' silence as Lust digested this. Ed and Al both looked as tense as I felt as we waited for her decision.

Finally, Lust withdrew four of her nails. The one pointed at my eye remained. I felt a small wave of relief. "I'm willing to listen, but if Fullmetal tries anything, you pay the price," she told me.

"Fine," I said, making myself sound more assured than I felt. "Ricky, Cassie, go." I pointed at Al. Ricky needed no more prodding, but he had to pull Cassie off my waist.

"Now," Lust said once Ricky and Cassie had made it safely to Al's side, "explain."

Chizi: That's kind of a cliffhanger.

Zilo: ...You wrote that part.

Chizi: I did? Oh...damn.

Zilo: See you next time!