spin - part 4

[metisket]

The lab is creepy as fuck. Ed hadn’t really noticed the first time, being busy chasing down Mustang and crew. He’s not sure why it’s coming as a surprise to him now, because obviously it’s creepy as fuck, right?

Maybe it’s all the pipes. Creepy pipes.

“We’re never going to find him,” the Xing girl says, and Ed would yell at her, except she’s not actually whining. She sounds fuckin’ terrified, and…okay, he gets where she’s coming from. “He’s everywhere,” she whispers, her cat thing clinging to her shoulder and shaking.

“It’s cool,” Ed tells her. “We got until tomorrow. And then it’ll still be cool, cuz we’ll be dead and won’t care.” Relieved of all cares, like Hawkeye said.

“Ed, please don’t try to comfort anyone in my hearing ever again,” Roy says, compulsively checking six. He’s obviously missing Hawkeye more than Ed misses his arm. Again, Ed would mock, except he’s missing Hawkeye almost that much, too. Why’d the moron have to get herself stabbed in the stomach?

“It would be more efficient if we split up,” Hohenheim announces.

Shoe drops. This is what the bastard was holding back, this is what he was after. So he wants alone time with the father guy, huh?

Well fuck that.

“We got all day,” Ed points out, bracing himself for the bullshit Hohenheim’s gonna use to defend his stupid idea.

Hohenheim turns to Lan Fan, of all random things. “This young lady and I could form one search party, and the rest of you could form the other. You’d have Miss Chang’s alchemy to support you in case—”

“Just you and Lan Fan? No fuckin’ way, dirty old man.”

“Edward, would you deprive me of the pleasure of a lady’s company?”

Ed doesn’t know what Hohenheim thinks sneakin’ away is gonna accomplish, but he doesn’t much care, either. Point is, it’s not happening. “Screw you. Is running out on people hardwired into you, shit-for-brains? We’re not splitting up. We got an entire day to find the guy. When we do find the guy, we’re gonna tackle him all at once, right, because that’s the smart option. As opposed to your plan. If you have one.”

Hohenheim frowns. “Edward, I think I have more years of strategizing behind me than you do.”

“Yeah? I think I got more killing people behind me than you do, so shut the fuck up.”

“I did manage to destroy my entire country out at one point, you know.”

“Uh, no you didn’t. You stood there with your head up your ass while somebody else destroyed your country. Face facts.”

“We’ll stay together,” Roy decrees out of nowhere, wearing his I’m the Alpha face. Ed laughs at his stupid face, but doesn’t argue. Long as he’s gonna be on Ed’s side, Roy can act as alpha as he wants.

Come to think of it, this is how Ed manages to get along with Greelin, too.

Hohenheim sighs and turns back to Lan Fan, whispers something to her. She stares at him incredulously for a second, then takes off. The traitor.

“What was that about?” Ed demands.

“She’s doing a little reconnaissance for me,” Hohenheim says, trying to look trustworthy. Bombing spectacularly. The family face doesn’t do trustworthy, apparently.

Well. Al did it pretty well. He’s dead, though.

“Fine,” Ed says. “But if she gets killed, it’ll be your fault.”

Hohenheim sighs. Roy squirms cuz apparently he can’t handle family drama. The Xing girl and Gran try to act like they aren’t listening. Ed rolls his eyes at all of them and almost wishes Hughes were here. Except that’d get the idiot killed, which is why they didn’t bring him. Right.

They walk.

* * *

Ed’s starting to get seriously depressed about Central. Like, how fucking oblivious can you get? They have a goddamn monster factory in the middle of their city, and they don’t notice? They don’t notice monster factories, they can’t throw a proper riot, the hell are they good for?

Monsters. It’s ridiculous. Five minutes after they walked into the lab, they opened the wrong door and got tackled by a bunch of pissed off chimera. Ed has a funny feeling that this is how the whole lab is gonna go. But at least the chimera weren’t a huge problem—they wiped the poor bastards out so fast, it was almost sad.

Ed had never seen the Xing girl fight before. He understands now how she made it across a desert and through Amestris with no bodyguard. Damn.

After chimeras, they got swarmed with some kind of freaky doll-soldiers. What the fuck those were, Ed neither knows nor cares to know, but they were a bitch to kill. Not as bad as homunculi, but still a sincere pain in the ass. In the end, Roy burned them to ash. Every once in a while, Roy is pretty useful.

So. Chimeras, doll-soldier things, and now this. Central is completely dead to him.

“You’re early,” says this walleyed guy with weird teeth and, like, evil wrinkles. He’s giving out enough waves of creepy to drown the whole city. Ed would’ve tried to kill him right off the bat, but he got sidetracked by the Bradleys, and that gave Roy and Hohenheim a chance to start talking. They’re actually talking to Walleye. Unbelievable.

The Bradleys are even more annoying than the doll-soldiers. Ed didn’t like Bradley Mark I, and now here’s a whole flock of wannabes. They’re tough, not to mention creepy as fuck. Still, between Ed and Gran and Mei, they’re making progress. Or at least, Ed thought they were.

“You’re far too early,” Walleye says, interrupting Roy and Hohenheim’s babble. He grins a slimy, sexual predator’s grin.

An array kicks up, and Ed realizes, way too late, that Walleye is standing in the middle of a circle of five Bradleys. And somehow nobody noticed, which means they all deserve to have their asses kicked, because what kind of fail alchemists are they?

While Ed’s staring at that looming disaster and wondering if there’s anything he can blow up to stop it, a Bradley sneaks up behind him and grabs him. He let someone sneak up behind him, for fuck’s sake, and grab him. He seriously deserves to get his ass kicked.

Which may be what’s about to happen. It feels like he’s getting sucked down into something, or pulled backwards, or who even freaking knows.

Actually, it feels…kinda familiar.

Oh fuck.

“We need to keep you occupied for a while,” Walleye says. “Until you can be of use.”

Crackle, flash, a nauseating feeling like being shredded, and the world is gone.

* * *

Or anyway, that world’s gone. But Ed knows this one, too. White space. Big door. Grinning non-person.

Back in this old nightmare again.

Thing is, it’s such an old nightmare, it’s hardly even nightmarish anymore. Mainly it’s familiar. Familiar and annoying. He’s dreamt this so often that his brain eventually did a neat trick and, as far as Ed can tell, totally disassociated the place from what happened here.

So now Ed looks up at the Gate, and even though he knows this is how he killed Al, that’s not what he’s thinking. He’s thinking, Do you know how much sleep you stole from me, you bastard?

Reality’s got nothing on his subconscious when it comes to horrifying the shit out of him, anyway.

“Back again, young fool?” the Truth asks, smirking. Wearing Ed’s arm and leg. Ed has a sudden insight into his huge problem with the fuckers who keep trophies.

“Shut up,” Ed says, “I got no idea how I ended up here this time, and I don’t owe you shit.”

The Truth laughs at him. And if that isn’t fucking typical.

Truth’s still laughing when the sick-making shredding feeling starts up again. Ed is really goddamn tired of being jerked around like this.

* * *

When he opens his eyes again—or maybe when he has eyes again—he’s in some weird underground room. He huffs an irritated sigh, sits up, takes stock.

Weird underground room with creepy pipes everywhere and some kind of throne thing, check. That giant Gran guy, check. Hohenheim, on the floor looking almost as annoyed as Ed, check. Teacher…

Hang on, Teacher? “What’re you doing here?” Here, and not looking so great. “Shit, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. What are any of us doing here?” She sits up and looks around. Doesn’t seem to like much of what she sees. “Is that Van Hohenheim?”

“Izumi!” Hohenheim says like they just ran into each other at a freaking garden party. “It’s good to see you doing…well?”

“Likewise. For the moment, anyway.” Teacher shrugs. Too bad she didn’t kick Hohenheim in the face for being stupid. “So what is this place?”

“Lab 3, maybe,” Ed says. “Teacher, did you come through the Gate?”

Izumi frowns, shakes her head. “It felt like the Gate, but I came straight here. Did you go through the Gate?”

“Yeah.” Which is weird. “Yeah, what—?”

It’s tough to have a real conversation, seeing as they have to shout over Gran, who’s rolling around roaring in pain and stuff. He definitely had hands when they walked into the lab, but he doesn’t now, so he must’ve gone through the Gate, paid the price. But why? When? And Ed went through the Gate, too, even though he didn’t transmute anything. How’s that work? Did Walleye transmute the Bradley that was holding him? Did Ed get sucked into the array, too?

What the fuck would be the point of that?

But it looks like that is what happened, cuz there’s Walleye crawling around on the ground behind Teacher, dazed, but otherwise fine. Must’ve had a Philosopher’s Stone stashed somewhere.

They for sure don’t need any more of Walleye’s shit. Ed claps, walks over, and stabs the guy quick in the back of the neck before he has a chance to orient himself.

When he turns away, Hohenheim looks sad and Teacher looks pissed off.

“What?” Ed demands in, hey, a normal voice. Gran’s down to quiet moaning now, which is a relief. “We got bigger problems than that fucker. Get over it.”

Hohenheim shoves his hands in his pockets and stares at the floor. Teacher scowls, but she nods, too, like maybe Ed’s not wrong. She goes to put a hand on Gran’s back and make him shut up.

Of course Ed’s not wrong. They should be building up all the advantages they can while they can, cuz this situation is totally earmarked for going to shit sometime soon. Bearing that in mind, he has a look around the place. Not much here, really, apart from pipes and a throne.

A throne, huh?

He claps and smashes the shit out of the throne. Does it prove anything? Probably not. Does it make him feel better? Kind of.

Makes Teacher feel better, too. She’s smirking at him, now. He smirks back.

Good things never last, obviously.

“One,” says an annoying voice from the dark. “Two, three, and…four.”

A guy steps into the light. He looks just like Hohenheim, only older, and also like way more of a crazy asshole. Ed’s never thought it before, but seeing this guy, he decides Hohenheim has kind of a nice face.

“We’re one short.”

Ah. Five human sacrifices? Must be. So this is the father guy, makes sense. He must want five idiots who opened the Gate; that would explain Ed and Teacher and Hohenheim. And Gran, who—Ed checks—has finally managed to stand up. He looks like hell, but he looks like a fight-to-the-death kind of hell. Ed’s liking him more all the time.

“Dwarf in the flask,” Hohenheim says, surprisingly cool.

“Slave Number 23,” the father guy answers. “You once gave me part of your body. Now you’ll become part of mine.”

Hohenheim laughs, just in case anybody had any doubts about his total weirdness. “Here we are, finally reunited after so many years, and you don’t seem happy to see me,” he chuckles. Man has a real verbal diarrhea problem. He and Ed are gonna have to discuss that (if they survive, which obviously they won’t).

“Don’t talk to him, you stupid asshole,” Ed hisses in Hohenheim’s ear, making him jump. “Just fuckin’ kill him already.”

“Edward,” Hohenheim murmurs back, trying to act calm, collected, and like somebody who didn’t jump a foot when his own kid talked to him. “I’d like to understand why he—”

“Oh, fuck why he did it.” Hohenheim is a moron. “Point is, he did. And he’s gonna do worse in a minute. You’re such a tool.”

Hohenheim starts talking again (surprise, surprise), but Ed’s already moving.

There’s a look people get when they’re too far gone. It’s in the eyes, the mouth, the way they move. Something’s snapped, and it shows, okay? It shows bigger than shit, especially in somebody who’s been that way for a thousand damn years or whatever.

Ed gets one good hit in out of sheer surprise, and he tries to make the most of it. He pulls the same trick he did with Gluttony, figures it can’t hurt to see what happens.

What happens is he almost fucking dies.

If breaking down Gluttony’s Stone felt like a river of people screaming through him, then this is a goddamn battering ram tearing him apart. There’s a wall of sound, not individual screams, and sickening pressure in every direction. He can’t even fucking think; feels like his head’s gonna burst open. He does some screaming of his own.

Then it stops. One second thousands of wailing, shoving people in his head, and the next, nothing. Silence. Ed falls over.

He can see the father guy’s fallen over, too. At least it did some good. Ed rolls a bit to face Teacher, who must’ve dragged him away and saved his ass. Crazy dangerous—what if she’d been sucked in? “Hey,” he croaks. “Thanks.”

She smoothes back his hair, which is very weird. “You’re a lot of trouble, idiot apprentice. Get up. That didn’t finish him off.”

Hah, of course it didn’t. Ed heaves himself to his feet in time to see Hohenheim charge toward the father guy, who’s standing already, not looking anything like as bad as Ed. Fuck.

Teacher charges in after Hohenheim. Gran charges in after Teacher. Ed takes a couple more seconds to breathe, tells himself fuck it, and goes charging in too. He does love a free-for-all. He loves them more, though, when all life in freaking Amestris doesn’t rest on the outcome.

After about ten minutes, Ed’s bloody and dizzy from wacky alchemy and being smashed into walls, Teacher’s bloody and doubled over and looking seriously not good, Gran’s on his feet out of nothing but plain cussedness, and even Hohenheim’s starting to get kinda frayed around the edges.

The father guy, meanwhile, looks annoyed. Otherwise, not too different.

Ed laughs. He’s not sure why. Because everybody’s gonna die, and it’s hilarious? The father guy clearly takes it personally, though. His problem is, he’s got no sense of humor.

“Where is he?” he screams. “Where’s the fifth?”

Ed laughs more. Regardless of how it turns out, he likes how badly they screwed with the plan. For one thing, they’re a day early, which means father guy’s gonna have to pin everyone down here until doom’s day (goooood fuckin’ luck). For another thing, the moron’s short a sacrifice.

He probably doesn’t want any Xingian alchemists since he can’t short circuit them, so no Mei. He might go for the crying Armstrong, but he’s not conveniently at hand—he’s meant to be watching his feral sister. So that leaves Roy.

Roy, who hasn’t shown up. They are short one weasily, scheming colonel.

Ed’s still grinning about that when the roof caves in and he almost gets knocked out by a chuck of ceiling and a Xing girl. The cat thing lands right on his head. Greed falls down a few feet away, cackles to himself, and immediately jumps up to help Hohenheim.

“Nice timing,” Ed tells Mei, holding a sleeve to the claw-marks on his forehead (thanks, cat thing). “Might’ve been better if you hadn’t almost smashed me flat, but hey, I’m not complaining.”

She clearly doesn’t have time for his shit; she’s too busy staring around all wild and fierce and stuff. Which is fair.

Mei and Greed falling from the ceiling hasn’t made as much of a stir as it should have. Ed kinda hoped Greed would do a number on the father guy, but of course not; father guy zaps Greed every time he gets in range, same as Izumi and Gran. As Ed watches, though, father guy bends backwards and black shit comes stabbing out of his mouth.

What the hell’d they do to make that happen? Eurgh. Still, gotta be a good thing, right?

Wrong. Shit, it’s the opposite of good. The stabby things are forming into a small, kinda human-shaped mass of black and eyeballs. It’s like a snake shedding its skin.

And as if that’s not fucked up enough, Ed spots the elusive Pride hanging out in the shadows in the corner of the room. He must’ve fallen down when Mei and Greed did. It freaks Ed out that he didn’t notice before.

Pride looks just like his pictures, which is to say, he looks like a little bastard who doesn’t deserve to live. He’s watching the fight with a bored expression that says he’s not worried about the outcome. Pisses Ed off.

“The kid’s a homunculus,” he shouts to Izumi and Gran, pointing helpfully. They don’t hesitate at all, just attack as soon as Ed shouts. This working with people thing isn’t so bad. Maybe people have a point about that.

Although Gran’s doing alchemy by smashing his stumps together, which is disturbing to watch. And Ed feels kinda responsible for it. Downsides to teamwork.

The father guy’s freaking chatting with Hohenheim again. Something about how he’s gonna become a god or swallow god or blah blah. It’s the kind of thing that’s only cute when Greed says it. Ed decides this is a good time to try to smash in an eyeball with a rock.

For once, Ed’s rock makes contact instead of getting zapped, but it doesn’t seem to do anything except irritate the guy. A few eyes turn toward Ed, then a black, eyebally hand touches the ground, and this wave of something slams out like a thunderclap.

Izumi growls and Gran bellows. Ed claps and, ignoring the horrible sinking feeling, touches the ground.

Nothing happens. This is what Hohenheim was talking about, then.

“Alchemy’s broken,” Ed tells Mei, who’s been hanging out all this time watching them fuck up, apparently too angry and confused to join in. She snaps out of it to shoot Ed a pitying glance, then draws a circle and transmutes a rock into the shape of his head. Although he likes to think he doesn’t actually look that stupid.

“I never liked you,” he tells her. He feels she should know this before they die. She rolls her eyes, says, “Unbelievably rude,” and sends the Ed-rock flying toward the father guy. It hits him in the face. It’s gratifying how much the bastard didn’t see that coming.

But he’s sure as shit noticed them now.

“Get close to me!” Mei shouts. Everybody obeys except Greed, which strikes Ed as weird. Shouldn’t there be more disobedience? From him, at least? Well, any port in a storm, maybe. Mei draws a circle, puts her hands down—

Father guy tries to attack, but he can’t get through Mei’s circle. That, Ed has to admit, is awfully useful.

Well, in a way. In another way, Hohenheim is now fighting the bad guy while everybody else hides behind him and a little girl, and Greed makes pointless sneak-attacks that never work. It’s shameful. Happily, Pride fixes that problem.

He can’t get in the circle, his freaky shadows can’t get in the circle (Ed is not about the freaky shadows, that is so fucked up), but he can stand outside the circle and throw rocks in, just like the brat kid he looks like he should be.

It’s not serious, Ed tells himself, just annoying. And anyway, Ed’s got his back to Hohenheim, propping the guy up. What if he left and Hohenheim fell down and the world ended? Wouldn’t he feel like a jackass then?

Pride throws a rock that just misses Teacher’s eye, and Ed’s good sense takes a walk.

“Hey, Gran!” he shouts over the scream of apocalyptic alchemy. “Get over here and hold this guy up!” This way Hohenheim won’t fall over, and Gran can stop fucking smashing his stumps together. Genius.

Gran obliges, and Ed charges out of the circle with Teacher right behind him. Kid doesn’t have a prayer against both of them, especially not when he’s gonna try to be gentle and they sure as shit are not. (It’s good to be a sacrifice.) Even the worse for wear, the Demon Alchemist and Izumi Curtis don’t need alchemy to beat the crap out of somebody.

They pass him back and forth for a while, fight going about the way Ed thought it would. Kid cuts them up with those shadow things, sure, but there’s no real doubt about how this is gonna end. It’s actually kinda fun, fighting with Teacher.

Or it would be, if Ed hadn’t noticed the father guy taking off for the hole in the ceiling, Hohenheim and Greed chasing after him. That’s troubling. Sucks the joy out of things.

“Typical humans,” Pride gasps, fending off Ed, ignoring the way his dad just ditched him. “So unspeakably stupid. Don’t you see that there’s no greater use for you than this? Why won’t you let us make something of your lives?”

Teacher’s royally pissed, and the last thing she wants is some snot-nosed homunculus giving her lip. Ed could’ve told him that. Too late now, though: she’s already grabbed him by the neck and flung him into a wall. A structurally unsound wall. Pride hits it pretty hard, and then half of it lands on top of him when it collapses.

On top of him and also Ed. Ed thinks, watching these enormous chunks of wall come falling toward him, that this is where teamwork flat-out sucks.

Al-voice screams his name. It’s the last thing he hears for a while.

* * *

Brother. Brother. Brother.

“It would be easier to transmute the rocks.”

“He’s pretty sturdy. Pull harder.”

Brother, wake up.

“I don’t think that will work, Ling Yao.”

“You make it sound like my name tastes bad. How do you do that?”

Brother!

I’m awake, Al, for fuck’s sake. Shut up.

“If you dislocate his shoulder, I will have to fix it, so please let me…”

Ed thinks, Fuck you, Xing girl, I’ll fix it myself. Then he remembers he promised Roy he wouldn’t pull that shit anymore. Then he thinks Roy never showed up and is probably dead anyway, so what difference does it make?

This is about the time he realizes he actually is awake.

“Fuck you,” he rasps out, trying to squirm away from—Ling?—whoever it is that’s yanking on his arm. The flesh one, not the metal one. There’s shitty luck for you. “Are you trying to rip my arm out of its socket?”

“Please stand back, Ling Yao,” Mei says.

Ling’s right, she does make it sound like the name tastes bad. That’s some talent.

Now that Ed’s awake and able to complain for himself, they don’t take too long to get him free. Mei transmutes the rocks out of the way, and they drag him out. Thanks, Ling, for not letting that happen before.

Only thing that saved Ed from being squashed flat was the transmuted wall he was next to—Teacher’d been using it as a shield at one point. The big wall chunks fell against Ed’s transmuted wall, tipped sideways, and made a little triangle of space for him to not die in. Just another near-death experience thanks to Teacher, no big thing. He isn’t even all that beat up, apart from the initial knock on the head.

Which, yeah, may yet turn out bad. Whatever, it’s a good sign he woke up, and he’s clinging to that thought.

Mei’s staring at him. “Thanks for finding me, I guess,” he tells her, trying to be nice about it. He does owe her big time. She keeps staring. “Probably would’ve died, so. Yeah.” Still staring. “Okay, what?”

“Did they win?” she asks.

“You just pulled me out from under a fucking pile of rocks,” Ed reminds her. “And you’re asking me if they won.”

She scowls. “Well, did they?”

“They did,” says Ling, who’s wandering around the wreckage and the bodies of random Bradleys who must’ve fallen down here, looking all kinds of punch drunk. “If they’d lost, we wouldn’t be alone. We’d have Father keeping us company, assuming we were alive at all.”

“There you go,” Ed tells Mei. Who’s ignoring him now, cuz she’s busy looking for a way to climb out. She spends a lot of time ignoring him. In fact. “What’re you doing down here anyway?” Ed aims the question at Ling as the more friendly ear in the room, arm-yanking or no. “Thought I saw you and Greed go climbing out.”

“And we were thrown right back down.”

“Yeah? And Greed let you take over?”

Ling pauses, considers one of the bodies, turns it gently over with his foot. He leans down and starts rummaging through the pockets. Ed wonders about this guy sometimes, seriously. “Greed is gone,” he says.

Riiiight.

Ed’s spent a lot of time watching Roy, who is one sneaky bastard, and he knows the signs of sneaky bastards who aren’t on the level. It’s possible that Ling’s really cut up about Greed and is trying to hide it. It’s possible. But Ed suspects that actually Greed’s not as gone as Ling’s going to want, say, Lan Fan and the nation of Xing to think.

This is so very much not Ed’s problem that there may not be a word strong enough to express how extremely not his problem it is. He’s asking nothing.

He likes to think Greed’s still around, though. Greed was fun.

“Whatever,” Ed decides. “So you got pitched down here Greedless, and yet somehow you’re fine?”

“Mei Chang did me the honor of healing the worst of my injuries,” Ling says, randomly formal.

Ed whirls to face the Xing girl. “You saved his life?” This girl? She is un-fucking-believable. “I thought you wanted him dead. I’m kind of a pro in this area, and listen, if you want somebody dead, it’s a good idea not to save their lives. Fucking what is wrong with you?”

“Actually,” Ling murmurs, “it was a brilliant move on her part. I’ll defend her clan with my life, now.”

“Whatever your life’s worth, idiot,” Ed snaps at him. “You get possessed, you get tossed into pits, you think you can cut it as an emperor? Bet me.”

Ling gives Ed a woozy grin. “Oh, I will. Name your terms.” And he proudly holds up a bottle of red stuff.

“Oh, shit. Is that a fucking Philosopher’s Stone?” It totally is a fucking Philosopher’s Stone. “Where the hell did you get that?”

Ling gestures vaguely toward one of the corpses. The one whose pockets he was rummaging through. Ed squints and tries to make out some features under the blood.

Oh, yeah. Walleye. So did he have a whole stash of Philosopher’s Stones, or did he just not use up his one?

“That was my kill, asshole.”

Ling stops smiling and stares wild-eyed at Ed, as dangerously uncontrolled as Ed’s ever seen him. “You owe me, alchemist.”

Ed grins. He loves it when people flip out; it’s like they have common ground or something. “Yeah. Guess I do.” He gives Ling and Mei a second to be really confused before he throws in, “Like I’d want one of those creepy-ass things anyway. What the hell’d I do with it? Fuck that. Essence of dead people: it’s all yours.”

Ling relaxes all at once, sinking down on some debris, eyes closed. Been kind of a long day for him, too, huh? “I’m going to find Lan Fan,” he says eventually. “Aren’t you worried about your people?”

‘His people.’ Shit, Ed doesn’t even wanna know. If they’re dead, they’re dead, nothing he can do about it. If they’re alive, they’re gonna want to fuss over him and fix him and shit. He doesn’t need the aggravation.

Plus, if he never knows for sure, he can assume they’re alive. Right?

Coward.

Al-voice never pulls punches. Ed sighs, claps, and touches his hands to the ground.

Nothing happens.

Well, that’s that question answered.

In view of fucking broken alchemy, Ed has to climb up to the floor above the hard way. He notices he’s really sore and bleeding all over the damn place (still no maggots), and not only is he not allowed to fix it, he can’t. Shit.

“Don’t worry about us!” Ling calls after him. “I’m sure we’ll be fine! We’ll just make our own way out!”

“You have the only alchemist in Amestris who isn’t worthless standing next to you, dipshit. Shut the fuck up, don’t bother me.”

Ed hoists himself onto the upper floor really carefully, cuz it’d be just his fuckin’ luck for the edge to collapse and pitch him back down, thereby crushing Ling.

But no. It holds. He edges along on his belly for a while, then stands and starts walking. He hopes that didn’t wear out all his good luck.

* * *

First body he comes across that he cares about is Hawkeye’s. He almost has a fuckin’ heart attack before he figures out she’s just unconscious, not dead. Which is cool as far as it goes, but there’re a lot of questions Ed might ask her if she were conscious. Things like, What the fuck are you doing here? and, Didn’t you say twenty-four hours, you lying asshole? and also, Are you trying to get yourself killed? Tell me now so I can stop giving a shit about you.

She’s out, though. He’s gonna have to save those questions up. Maybe add a few more. In the meantime, he checks around to see if he can work out how she ended up like this. Who did this to her.

He almost steps on the little baby thing a few feet away. It’s like the size of a bean, weirdly cute. There’s a funny round gem or something right in the middle of its widdle forehead. Ed’s got no fuckin’ clue what it is, but there’s nothing else close by to explain what knocked out Hawkeye. So was she protecting the bean, or did she beat the crap out of some homunculus ‘til it turned into a bean?

Ed makes an experimental cut down the thing’s back with one of metal scraps on the floor. The cut bleeds for a second, then seals up and heals like it was never there.

Homunculus, then. Must be Pride: Ed seriously doubts that any force on earth, even Hawkeye, could ever make Wrath look like this. Kid must’ve sliced Hawkeye up with shadows, then bashed her all over the room ‘til he knocked her out. Nice. He didn’t kill her, and she clearly got her own back, but that doesn’t mean Ed feels like giving him a chance to try again.

He knows this thing has a mother who’ll miss him. He knows.

Everybody’s got people they miss, that’s life.

He kills the thing. It dissolves into dust, the way they do. Sad to watch, maybe just cuz it was so small.

He is actually feeling bad about killing a homunculus. Fucking Hughes broke his brain. He stands abruptly and turns to Hawkeye. Focus on the living, idiot.

Hawkeye’s not looking like she’ll wake up any time soon, and he doesn’t want to drag her ass around this maze looking for an exit—that might kill her. Which means he’s gonna have to leave her here.

Why does the best option have to suck so much of the time?

But whether it sucks or not, it is the best option, so Ed drags Hawkeye into a corner and throws his coat over her. With the coat over her face like that, she looks like a lump of trash or a corpse. Nobody should bother her, why would they? Ed nods, satisfied, and takes off to find Hughes, who’s definitely here if Hawkeye is. Hughes can take care of her. Put that busybody impulse to good use.

Ed ends up wandering for a while, and it’d be interesting if he weren’t on the clock. Rooms with weird arrays, trashed labs, dead chimeras. Whole libraries full of what’re probably really bad ideas. A huge room with broken doors, an array on the floor, and a second storey balcony. Ed looks up.

That is totally Hughes clinging to the rail and staring down at him with a knife in his teeth. This is Hughes all over. Goofball, goofball, homicidal maniac, goofball. You never know where you stand with the guy.

Nice to have him on your side, though. Nice he’s not dead.

God, him and Hawkeye. Twenty-four hours, huh? Yeah right. Ed’s gonna beat the shit out of everybody just as soon as he works up the energy.

Hughes pushes back from the rail and pulls the knife out of his mouth, which is too bad, cuz it means he’s gonna talk. “Ed,” he says. “There you are. I was afraid I was going to have to go digging for you.”

Ed rolls his eyes. He was starting to suspect that not even death could save him from Hughes, and check it out. He was right.

* * *

Hughes leads him two rooms over and up a level, which is apparently where Roy is. Hey, Roy’s alive, their survival stats are awesome. Apparently Roy and Lan Fan didn’t make it to the fight with the father guy cuz they were busy up above, making friends with Kael and taking down Wrath.

Which, Ed guesses, is good to know, but he wishes Hughes’d shut the fuck up for a second. He’s talking so fast Ed can’t get a word in about Hawkeye. It’s just starting to really piss him off when Hughes abruptly stops talking and waves him into the room where Roy is.

Roy’s standing over a body.

Well, not quite a body. A soon-to-be-body, though. Hohenheim. And in all the shit Hughes said, he couldn’t have mentioned this?

Fuckin’ Hughes. He wants some sappy deathbed scene, guaranteed. He’d probably freak if Ed tried to walk away, but where’s the point in talking to somebody who’s practically a corpse?

Ed does want to know for sure that the father guy’s dead, though, and this is the easiest way to find out. He trudges over to almost-dead Hohenheim. This is gonna suck. “Hey.”

Hohenheim turns quick as he can to face Ed. Quick as he can isn’t all that quick at this point. It’s depressing.

“You nail that father guy?” Ed asks. Keeping on track.

Hohenheim smiles, puzzled. “Yes. Didn’t you notice?”

“I was under a fuckin’ pile of rock, thanks for your concern,” Ed tells him. “You really are a shitty excuse for a father.”

Hohenheim keeps smiling. Well, he did take a lot of hits to the head. “When your children complain about your parenting, you can tell them about me. They’ll count their blessings.”

It’s not real promising that Ed hears your children and instantly thinks broken bottle shoved up—but hell. If the idea of Ed having kids makes Hohenheim feel better, fine. He’s dying. If Ed’s ever gonna throw him a bone, better be now. “Whatever, old man, I’m telling ‘em I hatched from an egg.”

Hohenheim manages to laugh a little, give the guy credit. “Well, that should be easy enough to believe.”

“Shut up, bastard, you weren’t even around to raise me wrong. You don’t get to give me crap.”

Hohenheim laughs again, but he’s kinda breathless. “That’s fair.”

“So how’d you take him down?”

“Hm. In the end, the people who made up his Philosopher’s Stone weren’t on his side, but mine were on my side. He ran out of the time he needed to tip the balance in his favor. I owe a great deal to Greed. And to you, of course.” Still smiling at Ed, like he’s trying to make up for ten years’ worth of smiles right now. “It would have been a mistake to take him on alone. Thank you.” He trails off and goes quiet. Ed thinks he’s gonna leave it like that, but no. One last thing. “I’ll say hello to Trisha and Alphonse for you.”

And then the bastard dies.

“Nice parting shot,” Ed whispers. Fucker. If the dead really do wait on the other side of the Gate, then Ed’s gonna have some kind of welcoming committee. He probably won’t even make it to his family. Be torn to pieces before that.

Family of four, three of ‘em dead, and the last one’s…well, the last one’s Ed. Bad luck, that’s all. Bad luck family. Just goes that way sometimes.

Of course Ed’s not having any fucking kids.

He reaches out and closes Hohenheim’s eyes. What’s with this dying like a normal person? Ed was expecting him to break down to dust and nothing. Being a Philosopher’s Stone.

At least I didn’t have to kill him.

Al-voice is crying.

“Are you all right?” Hughes asks, quiet.

People really, really need to stop asking Ed that question.

“I barely knew the guy,” he says. It’s hard to push the words out, like his throat’s decided to choke itself. Idiot body. Idiot Hughes. “Hey, Mustang,” he goes on before Hughes can think up any more good, lacerating questions. “Burn him for me.”

“Burn…?” Roy looks baffled by this request, even though, thanks, it’s a totally fucking normal one. Cremation. It’s a done thing. Ed maybe didn’t much like his worthless dad, but that doesn’t mean he wants the guy to be maggot food.

“Ed, are you sure you want—”

“I said burn him.”

Roy stares with no expression in those blackout eyes of his. Ed scowls back, cuz this is fair. This is fair, he can ask for this. He has the right.

“If you wait until we get to a proper crematorium,” Roy says finally, never looking away, “then you can collect the ashes. Wouldn’t you prefer that?”

No. No, because what the fuck is he gonna do with dead father ashes? Dump ‘em somewhere? Where? Where d’you dump a guy who was always running away?

But obviously Roy’d prefer it, which is fuckin’ weird, people are weird about death. And Ed’s no better. Why’s he even care if Hohenheim’s body gets maggoty? Not like anybody’s in there anymore. But he does care. What is that, some kind of biological programming?

“Fine. But you burn him. And you better not leave bones, cuz I am not dealing with old man bone chunks, Mustang.”

“I can do that,” Roy agrees. They study each other for a while. Ed turned to this guy to take care of his worthless dad without hardly thinking about it. Now that he is thinking about it, that seems weird. Hohenheim wasn’t anything to Roy. So why?

Weird.

Eventually Roy sighs and turns away. “Let’s find the Lieutenant before she shoots someone on principle,” he says.

“Shit, Hawkeye!” Distracting Ed with dying fathers, cheap trick. “Doubt she’s even come to yet.” They ought to haul her ass to a hospital and tie her to a bed, Knox-style.

“What do you mean, come to?” Roy’s freaking out. He’s so high-strung.

“We’d better go find out, hmm?” Hughes gives Roy a significant look that means nothing to Ed, then throws his jacket over Ed’s shoulders and wanders into the maze of the lab, calling out Hawkeye’s name. Roy follows him.

What’s that about? Does Hughes think Ed’s cold or something? What the fuck?

Ed finds himself clutching the jacket closer, which pisses him off more. But he trails after the two of them anyway.

They leave the body behind.

* * *

They find Hawkeye; she’s fine. She’s even awake. Apparently dumping her in a corner and leaving her was a great idea, health-wise.

“Do you ever wash this coat?” she asks with what sounds like polite curiosity, but isn’t.

“Well, you bled all over it, so I’m gonna have to wash it now,” Ed tells her. “And fuck off, by the way. Should’ve let you freeze. Ingrate.”

She makes a scary face at Ed. He bares his teeth back at her. Sometime soon, they’re gonna have a talk, just the two of them, about injured people who make lying promises not to sneak into dangerous labs and do stupid shit.

“Lieutenant,” Roy says. “You and Hughes agreed to wait twenty-four hours before coming here.”

Ed horrifies himself by thinking, Yeah, what he said.

She turns to Roy with her very blankest face. “Yes, sir,” she answers, that special style of yes, sir that actually means fuck you.

“And yet you seem to be rather early.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why is that, Lieutenant?”

She blinks at him. “I’m glad you’re alive, sir.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you’re alive, too. But if—”

“If I hadn’t come, you might not be alive. Sir.”

Roy shakes his head and makes a little touché gesture. Hughes is grinning like a mad fool, maybe cuz he is a mad fool. And Ed…

Ed needs to learn all of Hawkeye’s tricks, because they rock.

“Can you stand?” Roy asks.

“I should be fine once I’m on my feet.” She holds out an imperious, bloody hand. Roy pulls her up, guides her arm over his shoulder, puts an arm around her waist. “I will find out why you came here,” he says.

She says, “I’m sure you will, sir.”

* * *

They walk out of the ruins of Lab 3 and run into Teacher and Sig, who’re apparently also still alive. That’s a surprise and a relief. Teacher actually hugs Ed, it’s freaky. Mei’s here, too, hovering over the Gran guy. And Ling’s here; he’s getting bitched out by Lan Fan. No sign of her granddad, though.

It looks like Gran’s dead. Too bad. Ed liked him.

A bit further on, there are a bunch of random military types. Both Armstrongs, looking beat to hell, and the Briggs guys. Plus Havoc in a wheelchair and Breda with a cane, deeply full of themselves for some reason. Then there are a flock of fierce-looking civilians. Every frigging one of them seems to know more about what went down than Ed does. Wild congratulations on all sides, whatever. Lots of shouting.

Roy and Hughes shove Ed between them so he won’t get molested by strangers. If he didn’t know they were doing it to keep him from killing people, he’d be sort of touched.

They’re almost to the middle of the crowd when the light goes weird. Ed squints up and watches for a second as the moon blacks out the sun.

He does some quick calculating. Unless he spent more than ten hours under a pile of rock, there is no fucking way that makes any sense.

* * *

Apparently Hughes and Hawkeye waited almost eighteen hours to come back to the lab. Roy was irritated about them being six hours early, but that’s nothing to how early Ed thought they were. This explains why everybody who wasn’t a sacrifice looked so fucking exhausted—they’d been fighting for a whole day.

Fourteen extra hours, give or take. Teacher decides Ed and Gran and Hohenheim must’ve spent those hours in the Gate, cuz it’s the only difference she and Ed can come up with. Impossible hypothesis to test, obviously. Gran definitely opened the Gate, but they can’t exactly check with Hohenheim.

Assuming they’re right, though, it means time can pass differently inside the Gate if the Gate freaking feels like it.

Ed loved Amestrian alchemy, he really did. He’s gonna miss it like crazy. Even so, he’s kind of glad everybody’s gonna be forced to love Xingian alchemy instead, cuz when you come right down to it, Amestrian alchemy was some scary shit.

So that’s the abuse of alchemy problem solved: alchemy’s broken. And Xing’s purification arts are meant to be about love and peace and healing, so Ed likes to think it’ll be a couple years before Amestrians manage to fuck them up. (He’s trying not to remember Mei Chang on the warpath.) Now the only problem is goddamn politics, and Ed, for the most part, doesn’t care.

He’d vaguely wondered what Hughes was getting up to while everybody else was living, eating, and breathing alchemy. Now he knows, because they crawl out of that hellish lab, Ed blinks, and Roy’s the fucking fuhrer.

Ed’s never gonna bitch about the scheming again. He can’t wait for Chris to get back. She’s gonna laugh her ass off about this, and he wants to see it.

The worrying thing is, Hughes is obviously not done yet. Hughes may never be done. Scheming may be to him what alchemy is to Ed. Or what killing people is to Ed. Either way it’s scary.

Ed follows the upheaval from a safe distance, which isn’t hard: politics is all anybody’s talking about. Inevitable side-effect of a coup. Ed takes a quick trip to Rizembool to dump worthless father ashes next to his mom’s grave (he wants to see the fucker run away from her now), and it seems like every train stop on the way back brings a wave of new gossip.

Ling and Lan Fan and Mei went back to Xing, where Ling instantly finagled his way into being emperor (Ed suspects assassination). Now suddenly Xing’s super-friendly with Amestris for the first time in living memory.

Roy’s busy doing nice things for Ishbal—Ed heard as much from some scowling Ishbalans who were waiting for the axe to fall. Ed found himself in opposites world: he was the guy telling people they didn’t need to be paranoid. Meanwhile, a lot of non-Ishbalans are freaking out. They say the evil Ishbalans are invading the country or whatever, like it wasn’t their country to begin with. People are assholes.

The general Armstrong’s second, that guy Miles, he’s the liaison between Roy and the Ishbalans. That’s cool. Ed hears he’s randomly collected a troop of chimera guys, like bodyguards or who knows. Apparently they follow him everywhere and it’s hilarious. Ed’s gotta see this in action sometime.

Mrs. Wrath is overhauling the entire adoption/orphanage/foster care system in Amestris. Whenever anyone complains to her about the money she’s spending, she says, “Your fuhrer killed my husband.” And she gets her damn money.

Tough lady. Ed wonders if she’s doing all this cuz she’s still looking for her kid.

And finally there’s the local stuff. Knox is working in his son’s clinic like a real doctor. Hawkeye’s signing up for some military shooting contest that she’s totally gonna win with her off hand because she’s not human. (And thinking of that, Ed buys her a freaking mirror to replace her old one and has it shipped. He figures it should keep her from hunting him down.) Havoc and Breda are making a fortune as contractors specializing in weapons R&D. They like to pretend they’re not still Roy’s lapdogs, but Ed knows the truth. And he hopes to God they never meet Winry.

Ed’s been following the gossip, yeah. But he hasn’t been involved, and he likes it that way. When the world was ending, he was pretty confident he couldn’t make it any worse. The world’s not ending anymore. There is once again plenty he can fuck up if he lets himself. He’s done.

He was living in some kind of dream world if he honestly thought he could get away with that. Hughes catches up with him about a month after Roy goes fuhrer.

“Edward Elric,” he says. “Just the man I’ve been looking for!” He must’ve been looking hard, too, cuz Ed’s been avoiding him like a leper.

The thing is, Hughes’s been so crazy busy that Ed thought he’d be safe for a while. Hughes is the one managing Roy and the newspapers and the ambitious types. Like, he set up everybody who wanted to be fuhrer with jobs so awesome they don’t want to be fuhrer anymore. He put the general Armstrong in charge of the entire border, which was evil genius.

But you apparently can’t keep Hughes busy enough. He chased Ed to ground in a shitty restaurant on the outskirts of town where nobody knows any Demon Alchemist (not personally, anyway) and Ed has to pay for his own food, which sucks. And it didn’t even help. Nowhere’s safe.

The problem is, Hughes knows everybody, and what’s more, everybody likes him. They fall all over themselves to do him favors. Probably he just had to stand in a bar and say, “Gosh, I wonder where the Demon Alchemist is these days,” and bam, everybody in Central turned into a freaking Hughesian spy.

Ed thinks idly about setting fire to something to put this conversation off for a while.

“Now, now, don’t look at me like you’re daydreaming about the color of my blood,” Hughes says, which obviously causes Ed to do just that. “I’m doing you a favor. Do you know how many phone calls I’ve gotten from Winry Rockbell?”

Ed looks away. Winry’s one of a long list of people he should’ve called after whatever. He didn’t call anybody, though, and it’s clearly coming to bite him in the ass.

“She was threatening to come look for you herself if I didn’t find you.”

Right. Ed shoves his chair back from the table. Screw setting fires, he’s running the fuck away.

No, shit, that never works with Hughes.

“I’ve been thinking,” Hughes says, predictably not put off by anything Ed does, “that your mistake is in your life philosophy. You’ve been guilty of narrow thinking, Ed.”

“I’ve never known what the hell you’re talkin’ about,” Ed rasps out, preoccupied with Winry and how fucking pissed she’s gonna be once she catches up with him. “Not once, not in the whole damn time I’ve known you.”

“What I mean is,” Hughes goes on, “you seem to have a gift for saving entire countries. Maybe individual people are too small. Although you’ve done pretty well with Hawkeye.”

Ed’s mind goes perfectly blank, like somebody dumped a bucket of white paint over everything in there.

Hughes thinks he’s good at saving people.

Hughes is insane.

“I have a suggestion!” Hughes beams. Ed should feel the chill of foreboding, but he’s too busy reeling from the last deranged comment. “You can be the new fuhrer’s bodyguard. Because, you see, the fuhrer is the state. In a sense. And you helped save the state once before. It makes perfect sense.”

“…Out of your fucking mind.”

“Hawkeye’s with me!”

“So what!? So you’re both out of your fucking minds! Fuck off, Hughes, I kill people. You know that’s all I do. And screw you anyway, I’m busy, I’m—”

“What are you busy doing, Ed?” Hughes asks, abruptly deathly serious, leaning forward across the table. “What are your plans? Back to Demon Alchemist duty? I don’t think you’ll find it very satisfying.”

Ed laughs, tries to ignore how cracked and shaky it sounds. “Yeah, well. Everything’s a letdown after the end of the world. I was thinking alchemy; it needs some help. The great swap to purification arts, yeah?” That’s what Teacher’s been up to, learning the purification arts.

Turns out to be a good thing the military was so stingy with its alchemists. Independent alchemists are pretty thin on the ground, and State Alchemists got hoarded like crown jewels, so the economy never depended on them. If it had, the father guy might as well’ve leveled the country, cuz it’d turn out the same.

Even so, it’d be nice to have alchemy back. And Ed would, you know, like to be in on that.

Hughes is grinning. Ed looks at that goddamn grin, and he knows, no avoiding it, that they might as well slap him in a cage right now, because he’s never gonna be free of this man. Roy and Hawkeye might let him go (maybe) if they believed that was what he wanted. Winry he might be able to avoid. Teacher doesn’t ever go looking for people, they can just fucking come to her.

Hughes, though? He’ll never give up, he can find Ed anywhere, and he doesn’t give a flying fuck what it is Ed thinks he wants.

Ed twitches and drops his fork before he’s tempted to use it on Hughes.

“Ed, the job I’m offering you will be very exciting, and you’ll have plenty of private time to study alchemy. Travel, books, adventure! You won’t regret it.”

He’s regretting it already. “Do I get a pension?”

* * *

Ed’s bored.

Ed is really, really fucking bored.

If he’d known that saving Amestris would turn out this goddamn boring, he would’ve let the place burn. Travel and adventure, his ass. He should dismember Hughes, the shithead. And he’d like to see what the crime stats look like now that he doesn’t have time to keep people in line cuz he’s too fuckin’ busy babysitting Roy.

Al-voice murmurs that this is good for him. Course, Al thought milk was good for you too, when actually it might as well be poison for how disgusting it is.

“Ed,” Roy snaps, dropping his pen and bringing his hands up to massage his temples. “Feel free to go. Anywhere. For as long as you like.”

“Gotta stay until Hawkeye gets back,” Ed points out, then goes back to tapping an automail finger against the window. He’s been doing it for like an hour. Fuck you, Mustang in Morse code ‘til he got tired of it, then on to I’m so fucking bored in a code he learned from Mei, and he was just trying to remember if he’d ever learned any old-school alchemy tapping codes or any Ishbalan ones when Roy started bitching. “She’ll kill us both if I run early.”

“Five more minutes of this,” Roy says, “and I’ll kill myself.”

“Some devotion to your country you got, jackass.”

“Why don’t you practice your purification arts? Or read? Or do anything but that?”

“If I read, I won’t notice if people come in to kill you.”

“Then you could—”

“Tell me what you’re doing.”

Roy freezes like a mouse staring down a snake. Ed loves it when he does that. “Tell you?”

“Yeah, sure. It’ll be boring as fuck, but not as boring as sitting here watching you scribble things and pull your hair out.”

“You’d like me,” Roy says in a worryingly dreamy kind of way, “to share the contents of these top secret documents with you. Because you’re bored.”

“Basically, yeah,” Ed agrees. “Problem?”

Roy’s got a weird, unfocused look now. It’s kinda freaky.

“No,” he says finally, still not actually looking at anything. “No problem. Why would there be a problem?”

Thereupon follows, right, half an hour of the details of the opening deal Roy and Miles are working out with the Ishbalans. Ed already knows all this shit, because he introduced Miles to Mistress Shan and listened to them hammer it out in like twenty minutes. Done and done, right?

Wrong. So wrong. First the nice, clean agreement had to be translated into politicianese until nobody could understand a fuckin’ thing. And only then did Roy get to look at it.

Why anybody’d want this job is a frigging eternal mystery. Everybody should do like Hawkeye’s granddad. He calls himself an advisor, whatever that means. Far as Ed can see, it gets him a nice chair and sweet pay, plus everybody saluting him and calling him sir. In exchange for all that, he periodically wanders over to bitch at Roy. Otherwise doesn’t do dick. Or, if that didn’t appeal, you could do like the general Armstrong, who’s off smashing hell out of dissidents and having a blast.

Roy, meanwhile, gets the nice desk and good pay and saluting, but he has to read all this crap. And field death threats. But he doesn’t get to smash anybody.

He is the clear loser.

Or maybe Ed’s the clear loser, cuz he’s the one standing here twiddling his thumbs and watching Roy’s life suck, isn’t he?

Content of the paperwork’s not less boring than total silence was, but it is fun to know what exactly Roy’s driving himself nuts over. So there’s that. Plus every once in a while Ed can clarify something, since he was there for the original talk and knows what the bullshit language was meant to mean.

Roy’s face when he does that? Yeah, it’s never gonna get old.

This being trapped thing. Ed’s not hating it as much as he ought to. He’s letting himself settle here, letting himself be one of these people. And he knows it’s gonna end in tears and disaster cuz it always fuckin’ does. He is scared shitless.

But it’s so easy. They make it easy. They make it really hard for him to cut them loose like he should. The world keeps not going to hell, and it’s annoying. He doesn’t know how to act. For now, he’s trying not to think about it, which is a loser’s tactic. And impossible anyway, what with Al-voice acting all thrilled with developments.

Assholes. If they’d given Ed a proper, death-defying job, he’d be a safe distance away, and besides wouldn’t have time to brood about this shit.

Anyway, half an hour of boring-ass paperwork later, suddenly there’s Hughes. Holy shit, is there ever Hughes—Hughes laughing so hard he can’t talk. He staggers in, slams the door behind him, and leans back against it, weak with the fuckin’ hilarity of it all. He holds up a newspaper so they can see. Front page of the Central Times.

It’s a picture of Ed—blurry and far away, but still obviously Ed—and it’s titled ‘The Enigmatic Demon Alchemist—Noble Vigilante or Sinister Government Asassin?’

There is a typo in Ed’s fuckin’ headline. “Mark Rhodes,” he hears himself say distantly, “is a dead man.”

“You haven’t even read the article yet,” Hughes gasps out between fits of snickering. “Oh god, the scar! The black magic rituals! Sheep, sheep!” Then he’s laughing too hard to go on. Thank fuck.

“I’m not wasting my time reading that shit when I could be killing him instead, the—oh, hell, and I’m stuck with this bastard for another hour!”

“Now that Hughes is here,” Roy says, wild-eyed, “I think you may go. Hawkeye won’t hold it against either of us, because Hughes is deadly and paranoid enough even for her.”

“Seriously?” Ed asks. “Cuz if she hunts me down, I’m gonna blame you for everything I ever did wrong in my life.”

Roy scowls, which Ed doesn’t get. Dipshit can’t take a joke.

“Hmm, we wouldn’t want that,” Hughes murmurs, smirking. See? Hughes thinks it’s funny. Course, Hughes thinks everything’s funny.

Roy pulls himself together, good job. “She won’t hunt you down, Elric,” he says. “Go. Be free. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tonight?” Hughes cuts in. “Gracia is making an apple pie. The best apple pie you ever tasted in your life! My perfect Elicia is helping with the crust!”

“I hate apple pie,” Ed lies. He backs away in case Hughes is getting crazy ideas about grabbing his arm or something.

“Winry will be there!”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“Ed,” Roy interrupts, rubbing his forehead. “Just go.”

“You’re my favorite, Roy,” Ed announces, darting past Hughes, flinging the door open, and dashing out into the hall.

“Don’t kill anyone within city limits!” Roy shouts after him. Maybe not something the fuhrer should be shouting down the hall, huh?

Ed grins. It’s gonna be a good day. He can tell.


back to Part 1