Family History

Chapter 5 and 6

On with the story!

-_-_-_

"What are you doing, Al?" The next day, neither seemed to remember the fight before that may have traumatized the littlest kids. John had just walked into his little brother Matt's room.

"Watching the show about our great-great-grandpa," he said innocently. He sat on his bed with a laptop on his lap, most likely on Netflix again.

"Seriously? I think you have rerun that 3 times in the past week," Ed said incredulously. "Don't you have homework?"

"Nope! Finished it all before school ended," Al chirped without taking his eyes off the screen.

"Don't you have really good memory, though? You probably already know some of this word for word."

High intelligence ran in the family, and most of that intelligence is due to them having the memory of an elephant. It's quite obvious how deep that trait runs when you notice how much and how detailed poor Edward, the Fullmetal Alchemist, remembered things.

"That's my goal."

"..." Ed didn't know what words to say, but the silence said enough.

"Look, considering there's barely any information that I totally know to be true anywhere else, this is the best way to learn about our ancestors." Al had finally directly looked at his sibling to explain before continuing to watch.

"It's a show. They most likely changed things," he reasoned in monotone.

"Better this than nothing." The little brother shrugged, unblinking.

"Wait, what about that picture you found? There's gotta be more than that." Ed sat down on the bed next to the laptop. Al sighed as he paused the episode.

"I dug deep. There is very little information about them. It's basically date of death and their offspring. There wasn't anything about occupation, besides that photo, or where they have lived. No documents, no letters, no signature. There wasn't even a date of birth."

"Conclusion?" Ed rubbed his chin.

"Either they purposefully left little evidence of their existence here, or those that have any of those things have kept them hidden and not public."

"Very easily both."

"Right."

"...Of course, it could be a much more innocent reason," Ed mused.

"Yeah, like any of their friends that have things are probably elderly and don't keep up with the times." Al smiled. "They might not even know that they can put those documents online, much less how."

"Raisin-faced geezers." Ed smirked.

Al put on his scolding pout. "That was rude, even if this is a private conversation." ...They still don't know I'm here...

"What you said could be considered rude too," Ed defended.

"All you said was insults!" Al threw up his hands. "Wait- stop. I don't want to start another fight, especially since the last time we did one in my room you broke some of my stuff." Oh, seems they remembered the incident the day before after all.

"I broke your stuff?! You're the one who threw your lamp at me!" Ed accused.

"Boys, I don't want to pick up shards again! Play nice!" Their mom called from the kitchen.

"We were just discussing something!" the elder yelled back.

"I know what happens after discussions with you, John."