This one's a little all over the place, but it goes from Deliylah to Jealousy and back again~ It might be a while before I can get the next chapter out, but be patient~! Enjoy~!

Deliylah found herself unable to sleep. The ceiling was apparently much more fascinating to her brain than the pillow under her head or the prospect of sleep. She took a deep breath, allowing a wave of sadness to wash over her. It was only two day's ago that she had been laughing with Nina in the Tucker's large green yard, and now Nina was most likely sitting in a cage in the miserable laboratory, just another failed experiment.

She slowly sat up, unable to take staring at the ceiling anymore. Alphonse was sitting by Edward's bed, reading a book. It had taken a little while to get used to the fact that he had to stay awake all day every day. Whenever Deliylah need to wait for a little while she would take a nap, and the time seemed to fly by. But for Al it must have been slower than Deliylah could imagine. She felt sorry for him.

While in the middle of her thoughts, Edward suddenly jolted upright, breathing heavily with wide eyes filled with fear. Deliylah jumped, gripping the sheets of her own bed. She didn't know why, but she had been more than a little jumpy lately. "Edward?" She said softly. "What's wrong?"

Ed glanced at her, sweat dripping from his forehead. He then pulled his auto mail leg up to his chin. Deliylah faintly heard him mumble, "It hurts."

She slipped out of bed and gently sat beside him, placing a hand on his trembling shoulder. "Edward…"

"I… I had a nightmare," he muttered. "I'm fine."

Deliylah sighed. "…no, I don't think you are…" Edward hesitated a moment, then gritted his teeth and sat up, hugging his arms around Deliylah. Both of them knew that the other was in pain.

She held out a hand to Alphonse, who scooted over and leaned against the bed, allowing Deliylah to put her arm around his large shoulders. She comforted them silently through the night.

In the morning, Edward and Alphonse left for the Headquarters to see what would happen to Nina and Mr. Tucker while Deliylah stayed behind in the room. She leaned against the window, staring with glazed eyes at the street below. Finally she could stand confinement no longer and snuck out to the roof, locking the hotel door behind her.

Although the sun had been bright and warm when they were at the Tucker estate, clouds had formed and blocked out the rays on sunlight that were supposed to dry puddles that had formed during yesterday's rain. Deliylah laid down along the edge, letting one leg hang off the side.

As they usually did, her thoughts traveled. She wondered what Rose was doing right now, how the town was getting by without Father Cornello and their false god. She wondered how Mr. Halling and Khayal were now that they were taking care of the mines. She wondered if Edward had gotten to the Headquarters yet. She wondered what was going to happen to Nina and Tucker. Although she wasn't a very hateful woman, Deliylah secretly hoped something bad happened to him. He deserved whatever punishment he got, in her mind.

She ran her fingers through her hair, sighing loudly. She had never thought when she left Lior that she would be this unhappy.

Meanwhile, a lean woman sat on a railing, observing the burning town in front of her. Had this been a century ago, she might have felt sorry for the townspeople, but she was 130 years old now, and all empathy had left her long ago.

The woman next to her, curved and beautiful, also watched the destruction. She was even older than the first woman, and had been born to their Father rather than abducted and transformed. She cared even less, and enjoyed it even more.

"Look at that, Gluttony," she remarked to the short, fat man who, like the two women, enjoyed death and destruction. It meant he got to eat. "Humans are such fools."

The leaner woman laughed quietly. "Such fools they are, indeed, Lust." The tone of her voice hinted something that she didn't say. Lust, being an intelligent woman, caught on.

"Well, you certainly weren't when you were human, Jealousy, but you aren't the people of Lior."

Jealousy chuckled. "Oh, no, I was as much as fool as the rest of them, but that was then and this is now. I've changed a lot since then. Besides…" She looked out to the chaos. "Humans really are foolish."

"Quite right, Jealousy~" A voice caught he attention of all three people on the balcony. A grin spread over Jealousy's face. Her best friend had just joined the party. "But when things work out like you plan them, that foolish quality can be so nice."

Lust leaned back against the railing. "Ah, if it isn't 'Father.' Sorry you had to come all the way out here, we didn't have very many options. Besides, it was Jealousy's idea."

"Hey! You're the one that killed him, don't forget!" Jealousy slapped Lust on the shoulder playfully, carefully sliding off the railing to her feet.

"Yeah, well, when this is over I'm going back to the city that I'm in charge of."

Jealousy snorted. "You're in charge of? More like Wrath and I are in charge of. You never do anything!"

"Not true, I have responsibilities just like you!"

"Cut if out, both of you, what's done is done and it worked out for everybody." Lust scolded. She sighed, turning back to the riots and the smoke reaching into the sky. "Really, I was a little worried well the Fullmetal boy messed up our plans, but as a result our work was finished ahead of schedule, so he was actually a big help~"

'Father' chuckled. "Yes… all it took was for you two to spread some propaganda among my 'followers' to get them started, and this is the result. Humans really are simple creatures."

Jealousy sighed, stretching her hands above her head. "And they only seem to get stupider and more violent with every decade that goes by."

Lust nodded in agreement. "Bloodshed begets bloodshed, hatred begets hatred. The rage and emotion sinks into the land carving a crest of blood, and no matter how many times it happens they never learn. The human race is made out of violent, miserable fools."

Jealousy thought about her own existence and what it used to be. A florist, of all things, in the mid-skirts of Central City. The only reason she had anything to do with homunculi in the first place was because her idiot best friend had decided to get in their way. As punishment for his actions they had kidnapped her brother, and later herself, and gave them fates worse than death in the eyes of Benjamin Belnic.

"Oh, and Envy, can you lose the old man costume? It's rather… unattractive." Lust's slightly disgusted remark pulled Jealousy back to the present.

"Oh, come on, I was just playing the part. But, if I'm going to change shape anyway, why should I be a crusty old geezer-" Red lights flashed and danced in the archway of the balcony as the man who looked like Father Cornello morphed into their sibling and Jealousy's personal best friend. "-when I can be young and cute?" Lust and Jealousy exchanged glances, and Jealousy giggled.

"Even though on the inside you're the most ruthless of all of us!" Lust laughed playfully.

"Pfft, I get that you look young, but 'cute' not so much~"

"You two trying to pick a fight?" His voice had change from that of an older man to the raspy, gravely voice of a younger one. He put one hand on his hip and adorned an annoyed expression, but before he and Jealousy could begin arguing, a scared shout caught their attention.

"Y-YOU'RE A MONSTER!"

The four homunculi turned to see Brother Cray, whose tooth was still chipped from his run-in with the fist of the Fullmetal Alchemist's brother. "Aw, shit, who let him up here?" Jealousy muttered under her breath. Envy snorted.

"What's going on here? Father… what happened to the real Father Cornello? What in god's name are you?"

"What should we do?" Lust asked, concerned more for their cover than the well being of the man in front of them.

Envy scoffed. "He called me a monster, I am so insulted."

Jealousy cocked an eyebrow. "Well, he's not exactly wrong, En-"

"Can I eat him?" Jealousy stopped mid-word when Gluttony, who had been silent the whole conversation, piped up with one familiar sentence.

The next minute was filled with screams and the ripping of flesh.

In Lior, the rain had been warm and soft. When Deliylah was alone she even enjoyed it. Some days she would lay on the roof of a building and close her eyes and let it wash over her, then go into her room and dry off and have a nice steaming cup of tea while she curled up in a blanket and read her book.

But the rain in Central City was different. It wasn't warm or soft like she had expected it to be. It was cold and hard and she had to get an umbrella to try and block it out because it hurt far too much.

Nina's death had come as a surprise to everybody. It had already been bad enough that she had been mutilated like that, but to be slaughtered was even worse. Tucker had deserved it, but Nina didn't deserve any of it.

The boys had come back into the room with twisted faces and quietly broken the news to her. She had curled up into her pillow and cried the whole night with Ed's hand on her back. He had to comfort her just as she had comforted him the morning of that day.

Of course she knew that she would get through this. She had been through worse. She had witnessed lives that small getting torn apart in that same way. Her own life had been ruined; she could empathize with Nina. But it still hurt more than she could describe.

She could hear Edward and Alphonse mumbling to each other about the rain. Edward described his mistakes, exactly how much he had screwed up, and he complained about how the rain on his face bugged him. Alphonse looked up into the sky and wished desperately to be able to feel the rain. Deliylah reached out to place a hand on his shoulder when a soldier called out Edwards name and began running towards the three.

"Edward! Mr. Elric! Oh, I'm so glad you're alright!" He greeted them breathlessly.

Edward stood up. "What's wrong? Do you need me for something?"

The soldier nodded. "You're to report back to headquarters immediately, there's a killer on the loose in the area," he told them, just as a very tall man with an X-shaped scar across his face loomed over them, sending cold chills down Deliylah's spine that had nothing to do with the rain.

"Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist?" Deliylah could hear Edward draw in a sharp breath. Her legs tensed up; her fight-or-flight instinct was screaming at her to run as far and as fast as her legs would let her.

The soldier who had tried to warn them reached for his gun when he recognized the large scar running over the threatening man's forehead. Edward tried to call out to him, but it was too late. The man reached his hand up, and the soldier practically exploded from the inside out in a bright flash of light that looked suspiciously like alchemy.

Edward looked frozen in place. Deliylah silently begged him to move, to grab her hand and his brothers arm and run, but all he could do was tremble as the man stepped closer.

All three of them jumped when the bell behind them, signaling nine o'clock in morning, breaking them all out of their terrified trances. Deliylah hadn't even realized they had been out so early, but that wasn't on her mind at the moment. She pushed her hand into Edward's shoulder, screaming at him to move.

The man dashed forward, throwing his hand out to Edward. Deliylah threw the only thing she had, her umbrella, in-between them, and it shattered like glass. Pieces and scraps littered the ground, and Deliylah tossed down the remains of the handle and grabbed for her skirt.

They started racing down the stairs leading to the street, but the man pursuing them was faster. The stairs crumbled in front of them, and Alphonse had to grab his brothers ankle to keep him from breaking his neck on the ground below. Deliylah went to help pull Alphonse up, but then her stair fell apart too and the three went flying to the ground. Luckily Al landed on his feet and immediately caught Deliylah, but the man was still after them.

"Al, Deliylah, grab on!" Ed clapped his hands, and a large column pulled the three away from the man. But the man put his hand to the ground and once again everything he touched was destroyed. Al, Ed, and Deliylah once again found themselves racing down the street, passerby's exclaiming at the scene.

"What the hell is this guys problem?! Making enemies isn't something that I… well… I've never really avoided it, but there's no reason to kill me!" Ed shouted.

"Brother, Deliylah, this way!" Al popped out from an alleyway, pulling them in after him.

"What? He saw us go in there!"

"Just watch!" Deliylah stepped back to see a large transmutation circle in the mouth of the alley. A moment later and a wall blocked the path. "Now he can't follow us!"

"Nice work, Alph-"

BAM.

Deliylah yelped in fright when the wall crumbled, the man's hand extended toward it. Ed grabbed her elbow and shoved her down the alley towards the other side.

The wall beside her began to come apart, and then the whole wall in front of her. Her vision blurred and a sharp pain went through her skull and her knees; a large piece of debris had landed on her head, taking her to the ground.

"Deliylah!"

"I-I'm fine, it's nothing," she gasped, wiping blood from her aching forehead and blinking it from her eyelashes. She tried to stand up, but could barely see where she was going, everything was spinning. She collapsed back to the ground, her hands scraping the pavement.

She could hear Ed and Al angrily confronting the man, asking why he was trying to kill them. It was fuzzy, but she could hear his answer.

"Where there are creators in this world, there must also be destroyers." He answered with a gruff voice that reminded Deliylah of gravel being crunched under a shoe.

Deliylah curled her fists, grinding her teeth at the throbbing pain in her head. She wanted to get up and fight alongside the boys, to protect them from this new threat, but the blood pulsing down her forehead prevented her from even trying.

A loud sound made her look up, and what she saw made her scream.

Alphonse, or what was left of him, collapsed to the ground in a heap. Shards of metal that was heap stripped from his hollow body littered the ground.

Deliylah heaved herself up, the world spinning around her. She didn't care; she had to help Alphonse. "AL! Al, are you alive?! Say something!"

"E-Ed… Edward…" She faintly heard his whisper, pushing himself up on a splintered arm. His armor creaked and cracked.

"Al, stop! If you put much more pressure on yourself you might-" Deliylah couldn't finish her sentence. A sharp zing followed by a painfully loud bang drew her attention, and well as Al's. She looked up just in time to see Edward fall to his knees, the remains of his automail arm crashing to the ground around him.

"Ed…" Both Al and Deliylah lay speechless for a moment. But only a moment.

"EDWARD!"