Swinging the Stone slightly, Ed lazily looked around the room as everyone stared at him. Roy’s eyes widened slightly in realization of what Ed was implying, but the young State Alchemist didn’t say anything, waiting for an opening to start getting answers to the various questions he had. They had been answering a lot of questions about themselves, but they knew next to nothing about this world they were in.

“But how can a stone change Xander?” asked Willow, her green eyes focused on the stone.

Before Ed could speak up, there was a faint movement behind him as Al walked up to stand just behind Ed. “In order to gain something, you must sacrifice something of equal value. That is the Principle of Equivalent Trade,” quoted his brother in a gentle voice, and Ed turned slightly to toss the necklace to Al.

“We’ve answered some of your questions, but haven’t had a chance to ask any of our own,” Ed stated, meeting their stares. “Fair is fair. It’s time to balance the scales.”

Buffy stood up and glared at Ed. “Why should we tell you anything?” she demanded, planting her fists on her hips. “How do we know we can trust you not to betray us?”

Golden eyes hardened as the Fullmetal Alchemist glared at the blond girl who was only a few inches taller than him thanks to her ridiculous shoes. “We didn’t ask to be brought to this damn place, but it would be nice if we had a clue about how to survive here until we can find a fucking way home,” he growled, clenching his fists with a quiet clicking of gears as he got right into her face. “Now, unless you wanna go against me, sit down and trade information.”

“Buffy Ann Summers!” snapped Giles, jumping to his feet and glaring at the girl. “Sit down this instant and be quiet!”

“But Giles...” she whined, turning to pout at him, but Giles continued to glare at her. Huffing, she stomped over to grab her purse and stormed out the door without saying anything, slamming the door behind her.

Giles removed his glasses and seemed to sink, wearily, into the chair. “I apologize for her behavior. She is carrying a heavy burden,” he explained, raising a hand as if presenting the apology to them. “There is one girl born in every generation that has the power and ability to fight the forces of Darkness. She is the Slayer.”

“Forces of darkness?” asked Ed, exchanging a clueless look with Al who shrugged back.

Xander nodded. “Vampires, demons, ghosts, everything you told yourself that doesn’t exist in the light of day,” he drawled, sprawling on the couch.

Now Ed was even more confused. “What’s a vampire?”

“A vampire is a demon that has taken over a dead body and drinks blood to survive, killing other people and creating more vampires,” lectured Giles in an almost detached way, as if he was quoting from memory. Concerned brown eyes now flickered over to Ed. “What we encountered earlier were vampires. You seem awfully calm for having faced and killed something that resembled a human.”

“I was told that it wasn’t human and now you just told me that it was a demon wearing a human body,” Ed repeated, looking at Giles and cocking a blond eyebrow. “In my book, that makes them chimera and fair game.”

“How can you consider them chimeras?” inquired Willow, sitting forward with a curious look on her face. “In our mythology, a chimera was an animal with the head and front body of a lion, the hindquarters of a goat and the tail of either a snake or a scorpion, depending on the translation.”

A soft giggle accompanied Al as he stepped up to stand next to his brother. “Chimera are an artificial fusion by alchemically ‘marrying’ two genetically dissimilar life forms,” explained Al, gesturing with his hands. “Like a lion and a crocodile, creating a creature with the front half of a lion and the back half of a crocodile, incorporating the best of both animals.”

Ed snorted at Willow’s shiver. “It wasn’t that hard to defeat,” he bragged, folding his hands behind his head as he remembered the chimera from Lior.

“Not everyone has automail to help them, Brother,” Al remarked, reaching over to gently tug his brother’s braid. Ed only rolled his eyes before grinning at Al.

“Is automail anything like armor?” Willow asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “If it is, could you help us make some because it sounds like it could be really helpful during the next apocalypse.”

Closing his eyes against that hopeful look, Ed stripped off his gloves and shirts, exposing his automail and the scars where cold metal met warm flesh. “This is automail,” he stated in a flat voice, opening his eyes to meet her startled gaze as he held out his right hand. “My left leg from mid-thigh down is automail as well. It’s replacement limbs for those who have lost their own or in a few twisted cases have decided that they want metal limbs for whatever reason.” He let out a bitter chuckle. “Noting like having live wires attached to living nerves while completely conscious to make a person want to voluntarily repeat the performance.”