Abandoned

Envy crossed his arms and glowered silently at the ground as they followed Sallow. Greed quickly took note of this; it wasn't hard for him to notice the odd action, especially after everything they had been through. Something about the situation upset him greatly, and Greed was guessing that it didn't have to do with the nymph's lack of clothing.

Although that was probably something that could be easily fixed.

"Where's a decent place to raid for clothes?" Greed piped up, casting a brief glance over at his brother before rushing to Sallow's side. "My suit's not exactly practical right now, and my brother's clothing, like usual, is out of style-"

Envy poked his head up. "Hey!"

Greed smirked. Mission accomplished.

"Getting new clothes is a terrible idea, Greed," Envy continued, a mischievous glint in this eyes as he caught up to Sallow and his brother. "That suit is the best thing you've worn since we met each other again. Anything else is an affront to fashion."

He dramatically placed a hand over his heart. "How you wound me, brother of mine!"

"Brothers, brothers, do not fight! Where will fighting take you? What will it accomplish? Let us talk this out like civilized human-err...people! Civilized people, yes!" Raiden said, holding his hands up but speaking with little to no energy in his voice. His arms sort of flailed slowly.

"Long as ya find anythin' ta cover 'er up," Kendrik mumbled. The panther turned back to see that yes, Kendrik was still trying to look away from the nymph.

Lunis pointed to Kendrik. "Why do you care if somebody's nude?" the panther said. "It doesn't hurt anything."

Kendrik rolled his eyes. "This from the guy who don't even wear a shirt," he said.

Lunis jumped onto and off a small stone wall set into the earth. "What does Jaron wear under his overalls?" the panther said.

The hound looked at Jaron, who pulled out the straps of his overalls and looked down. Jaron seemed satisfied, because he snapped the straps back into place. Kendrik hadn't seen, but he put his hands over his eyes anyways. He'd let his hearing guide him.

Sallow quietly listened to the members of the group chatting away, trying to analyze their motives. She jumped when Greed walked up beside her, and then Envy. Why were they worrying about fashion choices at a time like this? Silly creatures. She'd never understand them.

"A few of the buildings over that way were residence houses," she gestured vaguely, "if you don't mind wearing dead men's clothes."

Something was being unspokenly communicated around the group. Asking for clothes had another motivation. Ah, it hit her suddenly they're uncomfortable with my nudity.

"Ugh- suffocating cotton products," she muttered out loud, shuddering in disgust, and then spoke to the group, "if you must force me to wear them, I will wear the bare minimum."

Greed's face split into a grin. "Now that's something I can agree with."

They walked to the houses in question. Though someone's clothing style might not accurately reflect the type of person they were, the details of their homes might provide him with clues as to what type of clothes were waiting for him inside. He made a beeline for the biggest and showiest of them all, dragging Envy along with him.

His brother protested - he had no reason to with his ability to change his form - but Greed wasn't going to let him stay out there alone. Besides, he needed to live a little. Digging through old clothes might not seem like the definition of fun, even in Greed's book, but he knew that trying on different outfits and making fun of how terrible they looked could brighten anyone's spirit. That was what he had done with his friends when he had first rescued them.


They had been waiting inside the building for quite some time; in fact, they had been there since they had arrived. It had grown increasingly hard for them to remain dedicated to their decision, but neither one of them were in a state where they could be seen by other people. They had no idea how they had arrived here, or where here even was. But what was certain was that both of them would stick out like a sore thumb if they emerged from the building and turned out to be in the place they thought they were in.

So they waited for something.

That something turned out to be the arrival of a group of people. He could hear the sounds of voices coming in through the slightly open windows. Getting to his feet, he cautiously approached one of the windows in question and peered out. It was hard to make out any clear shapes with the vines covering the window, but there were undoubtedly people heading towards the house they were.

He turned back to his companion, who was in the middle of cleaning the blade of his sword. "I think we have company."

His companion stood up.

"Good," he said, "because we're ready for them."

Lunis could sympathize with the nymph; he didn't much care for clothes either. But, with Greed around, it wasn't something he planned on saying. Instead, he followed Greed and Envy towards the houses. He could do with a laugh, at the least.

When he'd walked to about ten feet from the largest house, however, he held out a hand behind him to block Kendrik and Jaron. As he'd predicted (and because Jaron had kept breathing on him), they were right behind him.

"What's that for?" Kendrik said, trying to push Lunis's hand out of the way. Lunis immediately shushed him and cupped his other hand over an ear.

Yep, he wasn't imagining that. There were noises coming from inside the house. Faint mumbling, maybe the sharpening of a sword. Enemies.

The panther stepped right up to the wall and ducked beneath a windowsill. He gestured for Jaron and Kendrik to copy him as he slowly made his way around the side of the house, heading towards the back. Their stumbling, and Kendrik's mumbled cursing, got on Lunis's nerves. He was used to working alone, or with quieter people. These idiots would expose their location quickly, if they hadn't already. Still, there wasn't anything to be done now, and it was better than letting Jaron and Kendrik walk into the house and get stabbed. He respected them more than he wanted to admit.

At the back of the house, Lunis poked his head above one windowsill. He couldn't see much of anything past the vines, but it didn't look like there was anyone on the other side. Lifting the window up, he punched the netting into the room and crawled his way inside. It was easy enough to reach back through the window and pull the other two in.

Now they were in the house.

Sallow grew quiet. Her plants were trying to communicate something, but the image was blurry- whatever it was supposed to be. She guessed it had something to do with the house they were approaching. A few of the creatures seemed to sense the same thing she was, and they went around the house. She stayed at the front, drawing her energy in case she had to defend herself.

Greed marched over to the front door and knocked it open with a hard kick. It had already been slightly ajar when they arrived, but he admittedly had a flair for dramatics and there was nothing quite like a dramatic entrance. Grabbing his brother by the arm, he jerked him into the building and made a beeline for what had to be one of the bedrooms.

Then he threw open one of the closets.

Lo and behold, he found a plethora of clothes to wear. They were significantly covered with dust, but that could easily be fixed with a good shake. His eyes lit up when they landed a neat looking vest. "This looks familiar," he said, a grin spreading across his face as he brought the vest out. It wasn't an exact match, but it was close - black with a white fur collar. All that was left was to find a tank top that he could wear underneath it.

And, to his luck, he found exactly that.

He turned to Envy and held up his find.

Which, in turn, made his brother sigh. "Are you really just going to wear the same thing you wore when we ran into each other?"

Greed lazily shrugged. "What can I say? I have a style. Style, might I add, that you don't have."


He walked back from the window to his companion. They waited in the room for several moments minutes to see where the possible newcomers would go. Their wait paid off. There seemed to be two groups: one on the first floor, and another on the one they were on. The first floor group happened to be the loudest, and he couldn't shake the feeling that something about the voices he heard was familiar.

But the other group was much more subtle.

"I recognize the voices down there," he whispered, pointing at the floor.

His companion raised an eyebrow. "Odd," he said. "I do too, and we tend to know different people."

They looked down at the ground, and then back up at each other.

"I bet it's Greed," he said. "Breaking down the front door is something he'd do. And we were in close proximity when it happened..."

His companion thought for a moment, then held out his sword and approached the entrance to the room. "Then it might be best for you to go down there instead of me. Whoever our second batch of visitors seem to pose quite a threat from their entrance alone, and I doubt you would be able to easily avoid attacks in a small space like this."

He nodded. It sounded like a good plan to him.

So they went their separate ways, him to the first floor and his companion to greet whoever had just gone in through the window.

In the meantime, Lunis had pressed an ear against the wall. He couldn't hear the particulars of the conversation between the two strangers, but he could tell they reached some kind of consensus. One set of footsteps went downstairs, where Envy and Greed were talking loudly - oddly brash and unsuspecting for two people who had somehow managed to spot him - and another set of footsteps went in his direction. The strangers were clearly trying to be quiet, but it was an old house, and Lunis was great at picking up the creaking of wood.

He turned around and hissed at Jaron, "Do you have any smoke bombs, or something like that?"

Jaron, crouching towards the floor in the middle of the room, nodded. As Kendrik, standing behind Jaron, eyed the entrance to the hallway beyond, Jaron pulled out a gray sphere with a button on top from one pocket. He pointed to the button and tossed the ball at Lunis.

The panther caught it. Rolling the sphere around in his paws, Lunis finally pressed the button. When that button retracted and the sphere started spilling out smoke, the panther tossed it into the hallway. And then he gestured for the other two to follow him as he sneaked out of the room, heading to the right.

Sallow sat down in the grass a ways away from the entrance to the house, forgetting about clothes. There was no way she could go in there with the possible danger she had sensed. The reason she had knocked herself unconscious earlier was because of the sheer amount of energy it took to push vegetation through the floorboards. No, it was safer to stay out here on real ground. She'd just wait for the danger to come to her and take it by surprise.

As smoke spilled into the hallway, the larger of the two made his way down the stairs to the first floor. The other remained, now certain that the visitors had discovered that they weren't the only ones in the house. Readying his sword, he slowly began to make his way down the hallway. He would wait for them to attack. When they did, the Ultimate Eye would make short work of their maneuvers.


Greed had just finished changing into his new outfit when they heard someone approaching their room. Envy rose from the bed he was sitting on, and Greed took a step away from the mirror he was in front of. The skin of the second homunculus turned to hardened carbon; the first homunculus assumed a fighting stance.

But then the footsteps grew in volume, and the Greed's face immediately lit up when he realized who was heading towards their room. The two greeted the newcomer at the door, very happy to see their giant of a brother standing in front of them.

"Hey, Sloth," Greed said, "it looks like you got brought here too."

As he'd hoped, the stranger was still walking down the hallway, but slowly. That gave Lunis the time to dart into one of the larger rooms in the house. It looked like it used to be a bedroom, given that there was the rotting frame of a bed to one side and a busted-open dressed lying on the floor on the other side. And, best of all, there was a cord leading up to a square of wood in the ceiling. The entrance to the attic, Lunis figured.

He pulled Jaron over to the dresser, pointing to the inside. While Jaron crawled into the dresser, Lunis led Kendrik over to the bedframe. Kendrik bit his lip and looked nervously at Jaron, but didn't say anything. Not as though they could say anything in this dangerous situation. When Kendrik hid himself beneath the rotting mattress, Lunis ran over to the entrance and held onto the cord. The panther listened to the approaching footsteps of the stranger, now growing faster as the hissing of the smoke died. If and when the stranger arrived, they'd get a nice surprise.

To entertain herself, Sallow poked a few weeds through the first floor in the foyer of the building. It gave her something to do, and gave her eyes into what was happening inside. She flicked her finger, chin resting in a cupped hand, and made the little sprouts dance. All she could she inside was smoke. That was either a good or bad sign for the creatures that had gone in.

He crept down the hallway. As the smoke died down, it became quickly apparent that they had entered one of the rooms. He scanned the hallway for which room it could possibly be. While the Ultimate Eye would only go so far as helping predict his foe's attacks, a certain amount of common sense could help him pinpoint where the group was likely to have gone. A door that was slightly more ajar than the others provided to be the best indicator.

Holding his sword steady before him, he stepped into the room.

Lunis pulled on the cord, sending the attic door swinging out. He then grabbed his daggers and lunged, hoping to pin the stranger to the ground. It was possibly an extreme tactic, and he'd failed to win the last fight. Still, unlike Envy and Greed, the stranger had a sword. If the stranger was willing to up the stakes, so was Lunis.