Ace: I finally have Internet access again! *does happy dance*

Sonya: Oh, Ace, so full of yourself for so little reason.

Ace: I actually get to romance-romance in this chapter.

Sonya: *does happy dance*

Lela: Wait, for just Kayla or all of us?

Ace: All three of you.

Lela and Kayla: *do happy dance*

Envy, Ed, and Greed: *collective sweatdrop* Oh God.

Envy: Furorensu-Chan, I will be forced to hunt you down and gut you like the horrible piece of fish that you are. I AM NOT AN IDIOT BECAUSE YOU MISREAD ME!

Lela: As you can see, taking out your anger on Envy wasn't the smartest thing you've ever done.

Sonya: EternalHypernova, let me assure you that I did make his death horrible and excrusiatingly painful. No one sexually abuses my sisters like that and gets away with it! And no, Walmart never was the same ever again. We hit all the ones in a 15 mile radius of Ace's house too...

Greed: Let me guess on who was in your house of wonders. Ling-Greed, right?

Kayla: Hey, Ed!

Ed: What?

Kayla: Furorensu-Chan told me to rape you!

Ed: NOT AGAIN!

Sonya: DarkVampirePrincess8 again! What the Truth was saying there was that I was a new kind of homunculus sort of thing (notice the brief mention of the violet eyes in the scene where she becomes an angel? Yeah, that's her when she's a homunculus), only instead of being a sin, I'm a good person-thing called Justice.

Kayla: Aw! You want to protect me? Thanks for the lovely compliments!

Ed: But she's my responcibility to protect, and I WILL PROTECT HER IF IT'S THE LAST THING I EVER DO!

Ace: I'll explain the timeline after this chapter, okay?, okay. Now, someone do the disclaimer!

Envy: Ace5980 does not own FullMetal Alchemist.

Lela: Enjoy!

17: A Problem Without Solution

"So you were brought back from the dead," Greed said slowly, "but instead of becoming a homunculus, you became a fallen angel?"

Sonya didn't meet his eyes. "I guess. They had trouble unlocking my full angelic powers, but other than that detail, you got it right."

"What can you do?" he asked, curious.

She bit her lip, running through the list in her mind. Unnatural speed and strength, feathery wings, unbelievable beauty, full blindness (in theory), the ability to go back and forth to the Gate (since the Gate was sacred ground after all), creating weapons made of pure light (or shadow if she had gone evil), making others into angels as well (in effect, deputizing them). "Nothing too impressive," she lied.

He saw through her deception but didn't push her. He'd been feeling fond of her for years, but there were so many kinds of wrong with that particular fondness towards a fourteen-year-old. It'd been harder to fight the feelings after her feeding, but he would for her sake. "If you ever need anything, angel, I'll be here for you."

She smiled, feeling her heart lurch a little. "Okay," she whispered. For once, she found that she was willing to lay aside her pride and let someone help her, and it was all because of a little tickling feeling in her heart that had started sometime after he'd rescued her from those damned alchemists. Then, without warning, she pressed her lips to his.

"Lela," Envy whispered, stretching out a hand towards her slowly in an attempt to comfort his kitten. He had never taken away anguish from someone before, only given it, so he didn't really know what to do, but he wouldn't let that stop him from trying. She growled at him, flashing her teeth threateningly, but he was confident enough she wouldn't horribly maim him that he reached back and stroked her hair softly. Almost immediately, the growling dissolved into satisfied purring, and she moved a little closer to him without her body asking her mind for permission. What are you doing? her logical side screamed at her, He is the enemy! He's trying to stop you from destroying your research!

No, she thought firmly, surprising them both by crawling onto his lap and burying her face in his half-shirt as though she was little more than a newborn kitten, He's stopping me from destroying myself. "Envy," she purred, her tail wrapping around his arm contentedly.

"My kitten," he growled possessively, tightening his arms around her.

"I am yours." She looked up at him, her green eyes half-lidded in happiness. Seeing her like that, a quivering mass of fur in his lap, sent him over the edge. Quickly, before his common sense could catch up to him or the chimera in his lap could figure out what he was about to do, Envy, the cruelest and most hard-hearted of all the homunculi, leaned down and captured Lela's lips in a kiss.

"Oh Kayla, how did you ever find the courage to let anyone come near you after all that, never mind reach the level of comfort you've obtained with Al and I?" Edward asked, caressing Kayla's head and purposely ignoring the tears gleaming on her muzzle.

"I feel very safe around you, and you've never given me reason to doubt that," she admitted, putting a paw on his arm in a very human-like gesture. "Whenever I'm around you, I feel like all those bad alchemists can't touch me and if they ever tried, you would fight to protect me." Before he could manage to come up with a reply to that, however, she sneezed, her entire body jolting cutely with the force.

"Bless you," he chuckled, resisting the urge to go 'awwww' and kiss the very tip of her nose. "Do you think you can change back so that we'll have an easier time sneaking you into the hospital with me?"

Her eyes lit up mischievously and suddenly it was Kayla standing there in front of Ed rather than the silver wolf that Kayla took when she shape-changed, but for once, she didn't lean forward to lick his nose like she normally would. Instead, she leaned forward and swiftly bit him at the base of his neck. "There," she murmured, "I marked you."

He yelped lightly and jerked, which made her realize she might've hurt him just a little, and her tail and ears drooped. She gently pressed her mouth to the wound in an apology, feeling a tad bit relieved when she couldn't taste any blood on her tongue. "What are you doing, Kayla?"

"Protecting you from chimeras," she breathed against his skin.

"How do you reason that one out? You can bite pretty hard, Kayla."

"My scent covers both you and Al pretty thoroughly, and one of the perks to being an Ark Angel is knowing that to a normal chimera, my scent goes straight to the self-preservation parts of their brains. Anything short of another Ark Angel isn't likely to bother you, especially with that bite on your neck now."

"Yes, but what does it mean to them?"

Mate, she thought, it means I've marked you as my mate. "That you're part of a pack. My pack." He rolled his eyes at that, well aware he was the Alpha in their little pack, not her, and gave his red coat to her to hide her tail, fur-covered arms, paws in the sleeves because she was actually smaller than he was, and ears underneath the hood. She followed him back to the hospital, thinking hard about what she'd just done. She didn't regret it, but would he if he'd known what she'd done? Outside his room, Kayla tugged Edward to a stop, causing him to look back at her in confusion, and steeling her nerve, she pushed up onto the pads of her back paws in order to gain the height she needed to lock her lips with his.

Ace: Okay, you three do the epic timeline thingy for DarkVampirePrincess8!

Sonya: I was 11 when the story started, 9 when we escaped, died at 8, captured at 7, lost my dad at 6 and my mom at 5

Kayla: So I was 12, then 10 at the escape, 8 at capture, lost dad at 7, and mom at 6.

Lela: And I was 13, then 11, 9, 8, and 7.

Envy: Wow, you all were such strange children.

Ed: I'll say.

Greed: Our childhoods were far more normal than yours, and we didn't even have much of a childhood at all.

Kayla: Oh yeah, what did you guys do at Wal-mart that took you all so long?

Ace: We were looking for the boob guy who stole our stuff when it went over the cliff. He took all the Cheez-Whiz and whipped cream before we got there. We're now gonna go try to find a nice Publix to rob for sugar so that we can make our own frosting!

Kayla: Anyone who reviews gets some of our magical frosting we make!

Lela: And for Ace's loyal reviewer, Furorensu-Chan, there'll be a special surprise in the next chapter for you! Until next time, readers!