Disclaimer: The original anime Hagane no Renkinjutsushi and the movie Shambala wo Yuku Mono are based on characters by Arakawa Hiromu, with writing by Aikawa Shou. Characters, settings, and events have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use.

"A Knock at the Door"

As Ed leaned against the door, watching Roy talk around this other Colonel like he'd talked around at least five hundred people in the last few months, he felt like there ought to be a soundtrack playing. Every damn thing they'd done to get their answer was about to click into place. They should've had an organist, like at the flickers, playing something dramatic that broke into a fanfare when Blackburn said the guy's name.

Instead, they got a quiet, "It was Lt. General Fieseler, sir," and Roy tucked the note away.

"Thank you, Colonel Blackburn. That should be everything we need." Ed swung the door open so Roy could lead the bewildered-looking officer toward the hall. "Why don't you sit in the officer's lounge until this blows over? Have some coffee."

"My department-"

"My men will secure your staff. They'll be safe."

All the confusion in Blackburn's face hardened to a frown, like he'd realized he'd just turned in a dangerous asshole. "Thank you, sir," he said, then saluted and turned for the stairs.

Roy, meanwhile, flagged the first soldier they passed from his brigade, an enlisted man who barely looked older than Al.

"Corporal Cessna. Your unit finished their shift at the talks?"

"Yes, sir, Brigadier General Mustang, sir!" The kid snapped to attention with his eyes half bugged out of his skull.

"At ease, soldier." Roy pulled out a notepad, scratched a few quick lines, and tore out the sheet for the Corporal. "Take this to the bell tower. They'll know what it is."

"Right away, sir."

"When you're done, rendezvous with your squad. Take all staff in the Eastern Liaison's office to wait with Colonel Blackburn in the officer's lounge. If trouble starts, you're authorized to move everyone to a shield room."

"Trouble, sir?"

"No time for questions, Corporal. Get to it."

"Yes, sir!"

With another salute, the kid broke for the stairs at a run, and Roy nodded at Ed. "Ready to see the Lieutenant General?"

"Is that a trick question?"

~/~

The bells tolled, and Hawkeye counted off low and high tones to decode Roy's message.

Her orders were to be at Fieseler's office in fifteen minutes.

She signalled the guard in the hallway to get a replacement for her post, then fixed her eyes back on the meeting table.

The Xingese prince had his eyes on her. At a shift of his hand, his two guards moved toward opposite ends of her field of vision. Roy had warned her this might happen and had ordered her not to engage. None of the other delegates noticed the bodyguards, unfortunately. For now, she watched them as best she could.

They'd follow when she left.

She'd just have to lose them.

~/~

Everyone in the Regional Affairs reception office - and here the lights had been fixed! - jumped to their feet as the two of them walked in, saluting Roy and looking at Ed in nervous twitches. At least the rolling bells gave him the soundtrack he'd wanted.

"We're here for the Lt. General," Roy told the Captain who'd stepped up.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't told to expect you, sir. Let me check-"

"This is urgent, Captain Boeing."

"... Right this way, sir."

Roy stuck on their guide's heels as they wound through the maze of back hallways, making the man walk twice as fast as when they'd started. The three of them barreled around corners while people standing in office doors left trails of whispers behind. Finally, after one last turn, Ed saw Fieseler's mug at the end of the line. The General saw them, too, and looked straight into Ed's eyes.

If he'd been worried when they showed up, now he was scared. Their dipshit dropped his papers on the nearest desk while his staff panicked. Fieseler waved them back to their seats, but even Ed could tell he was pretending to be calm. He walked toward his private office. Roy got closer on Boeing's heels.

The Captain stepped through the door and stood aside, eyes wide and a question in his open mouth. He never got to ask. The lock on Fieseler's door silenced everyone, followed hard by the sound of a window sash slamming open.

Escape through the window. Classic.

"I'm here to arrest Lt. General Fieseler on suspicion of treason," Roy announced, as if he did this every day. "No one leave this room."

Roy pulled on his gloves. Everyone backed against the walls with their hands up.

"Ed?" Roy asked, nodding at the locked door.

With a clap, he made a better door, with nicer detailing on the panels in addition to being unlocked, and they pushed through. Nothing to see but an open window, of course.

"Look for closets and hidden compartments," Roy ordered, checking under the desk before looking out the window. "Confirm he's gone."

No one tried to run. Maybe they were accomplices, maybe they weren't. By the time Roy had finished checking the furniture and Ed had run over half a wall looking for secret nooks, it was too late for anyone to bolt. Captain Hawkeye had shown up to guard the door.

Behind a bookshelf, Ed found the crack of a secret door and pushed it open.

"Jackpot," he announced. "He's got a radio set with a reel-to-reel recorder." He broke the padlock off a latched box, giant wheels of audio tape inside. "And he kept the old recordings in metal boxes. There's a chance we can still get audio off of these."

"We'll hold this position until backup arrives. We can't risk evidence walking away."

"You're not worried about the dipshit running through the city?" Ed asked, scanning the walls for more hidey-holes. "He got his leg fixed, Roy. He can run now."

"When will you learn to trust me, Fullmetal? My rank isn't just for decoration."

~/~

From the rooftop, Lan Fan watched the blue-suited Amestrian forces - some up high, some blockading streets throughout the city. The blond woman had gotten lost in a sea of uniforms and traces of human spirit, but there was more than one way to hunt a hunter. When you knew what it was hunting, the job was halfway done.

"Any sign of Liu Zhou?" she asked Fu, hoping he'd felt some hint of the alchemist at work.

The old man squinted off into the distance. "Keep your eyes on the Amestrians. That confusion looked like they're chasing one of their own, too."

"It might not be related. Mustang didn't mention anything but Drachma and the circle."

"He wouldn't. But a man on the inside is more likely than our Emperor conspiring with Drachma for something so focused on Amestris. Either way, make sure they don't find Liu before we do. We need to draw him into the open."

The Emperor's alchemist would prefer to lay low, she knew, in the middle of this show of force. He'd avoid any chance of a defeat that would implicate Xing - and thereby Qi Zhou. His Highness had made it clear, they needed to reveal him publicly for just that reason.

Fu's breath caught, and she turned her head to see his eyes snap open.

"He's here. Tiger branch, 200 meters."

~/~

"Report," Roy ordered as Fuery, Breda, Falman, and Havoc fell in.

2nd Lt. Fuery was still red-faced from his run. "We chased him after he jumped out the window, but he dropped smoke grenades at the corner of 3rd Street and Park. 115th Division reports Northern and Western perimeters are secure."

Falman held up a pile of blue fabric. "We found his uniform, three blocks east of where he disappeared. No hits on the East or South perimeters."

"We've got the men with flares clearing the streets," Havoc said. "We're short on functional radio, but couriers are running between units."

He'd have to solve the equipment issue. Fullmetal's blast had destroyed most military-band transmitters, and they couldn't run this operation on frequencies civilians could monitor. He'd need faster reports than a courier could offer.

"Guards are locking down known haunts," Breda followed up, "and every train station is under watch."

Roy nodded. "Lt. Falman, 2nd Lt. Fuery, stay here and catalog evidence. Capt. Havoc, find Marshal Wright and anyone on the Council you can pick up. Give him this." He handed over a letter - written, signed, and sealed - to explain the situation. "Cooperate in full, and get an official warrant from Major General Defiant. Lt. Breda, take the Lt. General's staff officers to Detainment for questioning, then go to Security and coordinate operations. Capt. Hawkeye, Fullmetal - you're with me."

Everyone stepped to their duties. As he strode out of the Regional Affairs office, he heard the familiar click of Hawkeye checking the magazine in her gun and the spares in her belt.

"Where are we headed?" Ed asked.

"The police station. Their departmental radios were outside the blast. Their officers can relay messages, but we'll need to go there to arrange it. Unless you have a citizen-band radio?"

Ed dodged down a crossing hallway. "I know where one is. It'll save time, right?"

Roy followed his footsteps rounding corners, Hawkeye covering his blind spots as they dashed through the path Fullmetal left in the hallway traffic. When they caught up with Ed at Marshal Levochkin's office, he was already inside, talking with the red-haired intern at her desk.

Sure enough, she produced a radio and followed Edward out the door. She had someone in tow, Roy noticed - someone with a camera, and a very particular look in his eye. The look of someone who'd shown up to take pictures for a calendar but thought something more interesting was happening.

Roy cut the photographer off before he could open his mouth. "You can't come unless you keep up, watch your back, and stay out of the way."

"I covered battles with Aerugo. Nothing that'd get the front page, but I can handle myself."

Whether his newspaper would print something they might have to retract the next day, depending on how the Council reacted, was a question Roy decided not to ask.

"Be sure that you do handle yourself," he said, "and give my people room to work." He took the radio from Miss Hawker, tuned it to the police's emergency frequency, and pressed transmit. "Breaker-5. This is ISO with a 10-78. Over?"

The sound of a falling chair cut through the static, then a man's voice stammered, "C-come back? ISO? This is First Central Municipal Police. What do you need? Over."

"First Central, we're in pursuit of a fugitive. Male, 5'11'', 78 kilograms, mid-forties. Long dark hair, facial scar, automail leg. I need all available police to assist my troops by relaying messages on his position. Over."

"Yes, sir, ISO. Our people are on their way... And I've got a call back from Glebe Street Market. Man ran out of nowhere, upset a cart, and disappeared. That your fugitive? Over."

"Could be. Thank you, First Central. Tell your people to support my officers, but do not engage the fugitive. I repeat, do not engage."

He took a breath, and held back from giving the Lt. General's name, or identifying him as military over a public channel. The propaganda department would be mad enough that he hadn't handcuffed the newspaperman to a chair - but he'd prefer someone know the real story before the military rewrote history.

"I'm on the move, First Central. Send someone to rendezvous. ISO, 10-10. Over."

"Understood, ISO. First Central clear."

Ed smirked as he handed the radio back. "Is there any code you don't speak?"

"Let's go," Roy ordered, and their group of three plus one dashed down the hallway. "If he was near Glebe, he's doubled back toward the building."

~/~

From the overturned market carts, Hawkeye tailed Roy while he followed reports coming through their policeman's radio. Fieseler had tried to blend into a crowd the soldiers had herded into a library, unsuccessfully. He'd left one man unconscious and dislocated one man's shoulder during his escape, but no civilian casualties. Eyes on the rooftops tracked Fieseler down eight emptied streets before their little squad caught sight of him ducking into a building.

Residential, no maintenance on the walkways outside, apparently abandoned.

The address was one she'd found linked to funds diverted from the housing budget.

Roy didn't need her to say they were probably looking at the target's base. He knew. Instead of crossing the street after Fieseler, the Brigadier signaled with his hand, and Hawkeye translated for the photographer and cop as she pointed to a doorwell.

"Keep back."

She sent up a flare, and the policeman murmured into his radio, "Fugitive confirmed at 17 East. Is there a unit inside? Over."

Faces appeared at the windows on surrounding buildings - soldiers who'd have residents and whoever they'd found on the street on lockdown. No troops signalled from their target building, but she saw a flash of white.

"Movement on the third floor," she told Roy, sighting down her pistol.

He pulled his gloves taut. "I need to know if there're civilians in that building."

"The team in the adjacent building says the doors were locked, sir," the cop reported.

Two figures dropped off the roof behind them, and Hawkeye grabbed her back-up pistol from her rear harness. The Xingese guards, displaying their empty hands as they walked forward. At a nod from Brigadier General Mustang, she stowed her back-up and turned her full attention back to the building.

"We have the situation under control," Roy told them. "If your man is in that building, we'll bring him in. Return to your posts."

The old man answered, "You'd be walking into a trap. I felt an alchemical lock activate. You'll want to draw an alchemist out, not confront him in the middle of his work."

"We do know what we're doing!" Edward-kun grumbled.

"You wanted to know if anyone was in the building? We only sense two people."

Fieseler and the alchemist, by implication.

Roy frowned at the two guards. After Marshal Wright's flat denial last week to allow a joint operation with the Xingese envoy, he didn't have room to maneuver without undermining the government's authority. All he'd need was an inch, but even Roy Mustang couldn't directly controvert the Marshal in front of a foreign diplomat's staff.

"The Council discussed with His Highness Prince Ling the repercussions if he interfered. Return to your post."

If the Xingese contingent were telling the truth, they could be sure no bystanders were inside, but Hawkeye was just as happy to wait for confirmation. The only thing she wanted less than an international incident was unpredictable agents operating on her field. Still, they stood firm as troops set up barriers down the streets, one block in each direction.

From the western barricade, Hawkeye saw a blue coat running past the posted soldiers - Lt. General Bloch, wearing a wide belt with an inscribed array.

He skirted the row of buildings, ducking behind the same corner where the Brigadier had taken cover. "I'll be damned, Mustang. You actually weren't lying. What's the situation?"

"We believe Fieseler entered the building to meet an accomplice, probably our wanted alchemist. Men are on the roof to break in and confirm no one else is inside before I smoke them out. The Xingese ambassador has offered his guards in support, as you see. I was reminding them that I can't accept when you arrived. Are you taking command, Lt. General?"

"God, no. I thought you'd want a witness if somebody tries to hang you later. Would your men even listen to me?"

"Permission not to answer, sir?" Roy grit his teeth into a grin. Goodness knew, he might need help not getting hung depending on what the Council made of his actions.

"Granted," Bloch laughed. "But let me get you a better view inside."

Transmutation sparks flared around him as he touched the ground. Channels shifted in the road, pulling the earth away from the building and taking the brick with it. Red stone tumbled into the empty crossroads. Only the skeleton of the building remained.

Fieseler was there. He dashed behind a table and flipped it against a corner for cover. Another man in the room knelt, triggering his own transmutation, and walls of ice covered the sides of the building less than a breath later.

"That's definitely Liu Zhou," the girl from the Prince's guard whispered.

The policeman's radio crackled next to Hawkeye's shoulder with confirmations that the building was otherwise clear.

Roy took a deep breath as he settled next to her on the wall and whispered, "This'll be tricky with that much moisture pulled from the air. I don't want to burn the block down."

"You'll manage," she told him.

Soldiers moved into doorways in all the neighboring buildings, and with a snap, Roy sent a line of fire across the roads that caught on an exposed beam. Before long, black smoke curled out of melted fissures at the edges of the ice. A few moments after, a hole opened in the ice where the first floor should have been, and two men ran into the street. Roy stopped the flames, but the smoke still rolled out while Fieseler and his accomplice caught their breath.

Fieseler took cover behind a pile of brick. The other man - the one the prince's guards had identified as Liu Zhou - crouched close to the ground, a folder in his hands that he slipped into a thick sack on his shoulders. He glanced around the perimeter, then fixed his eyes on the Xingese guards still standing near Roy.

"You're working with Amestris," he shouted.

"We're in Amestris at the command of our Emperor, and here on the orders of our Prince," the old man answered. "Whose orders have you come on, Liu Zhou?"

The alchemist flung three long needles at the ice walls on the building, sending sparks across the distance from the band on his right wrist. The ice dissolved as a cloud formed overhead, as dark over the city as the smoke leaving the building had been. It was thick enough to turn the afternoon sunlight to a dusky shadow.

Brigadier General Mustang told the Xingese guards again, "Return to your post. We'll bring the prisoner in as I promised. If you insert yourself into the battle, I will be forced to take you into custody."

From what Hawkeye could see around the bricks, the shift of Fieseler's weight looked like he was pulling a weapon. He was also focused on his conspirator, not on the troops or the lines of civilians whom soldiers were leading from the buildings. Good. This'd be easier if the Lieutenant General wasn't interested in the crowds heading past the blockades.

A transmutation crackled behind her, probably Edward-kun turning a plate on his arm into a blade. Sure enough, the blond's voice came in a split second later. "He's gonna make it rain, Roy, and I can't wait much longer."

"So go." Roy snapped his fingers, raising a wall of flame between Fieseler and the Xingese alchemist.

Edward-kun shot into the road, skidding around ice-chains Zhou transmuted out of the air. The ends materialized around the Prince's guards, who stood unmoving with their eyes on Roy. When Hawkeye and Bloch closed to assist, the chains didn't shatter with normal force. Edward-kun took care of that, but the Xingese fighters were none too happy. Neither was Roy, who'd know how dangerous it'd be to ask them to run now, or to call more soldiers close enough to escort them out. The guards would resist. They couldn't afford that right now.

"Are we allowed to defend ourselves or not?!" the girl yelled.

Roy shared a nod with Bloch and answered, "I'll allow it. Fight in defense only. Subdue your attacker if necessary, but you are not to apprehend, remove, or kill him. Do exactly as I say, or I can't guarantee your safety - from him, or from us."

The girl and the old man nodded, and ran at the Xingese alchemist. Roy stayed behind long enough to nod at the photographer changing his film and the policeman.

"Our targets don't seem interested in non-combatants," he told her, "but if that changes, don't let them learn the hard way what an alchemist can do on the battlefield."

"Yes, sir."

With that, Roy and Lt. General Bloch advanced on Fieseler, while Edward-kun and the Xingese guards kept the alchemist too busy to call rain from the clouds. The lightning blasts triggered by the array on his left wrist, though, kept his attackers from staying close. Their new allies' answer was to strike fast and often. Edward-kun's was to turn a pile of bricks into a partisan spear with a wooden shaft. Meanwhile, Roy had Fieseler cornered in a ring of fire, circling outside as Fieseler circled inside looking for a weakness.

The longer he waited, with the circle burning stronger as it crept in, the clearer it became that he was outmatched. Roy wouldn't kill him, but the Lieutenant General's steps faltered as if near fainting from heat and lack of oxygen. The Xingese alchemist, as well as he fought, was no better off. In a flash of bodies, the old man managed to put him in a lock while the girl pointed a blade to his throat. Edward-kun clapped and grabbed his wrists. The bands marked with his battle arrays fell in tatters to the ground.

"Give it up," Edward-kun growled. "You can't win."

The man's eyes said he agreed. He wrenched out of the old man's grip with the pop of a dislocating shoulder. The limb hung at his side as he jumped away, tearing open his shirt with his other hand to show an array tattooed on his chest.

"You won't take me, or my work," he said. With his good hand, he flung needles toward the blockades.

Transmuted walls rose from the ground to block them - the Rubicon Alchemist's doing - and where the needles scattered, arcs of lightning built an electric wall that traveled inward, toward everyone on the battlefield including himself.

While Roy worked on dispersing the clouds and Bloch made earthen spikes to disrupt the lightning, Edward-kun kicked at the man's legs. The Xingese alchemist jumped clear, but what he didn't see coming was Fieseler, vaulting through flames to knock him to the ground. Smoking and charred, with skin burned, the Lieutenant General rolled his accomplice into the bricks.

"You're not dying! Not with those circles on you!"

In the split second it took everyone to rush them both, Fieseler pulled the alchemist's folder from his bag. The alchemist, for once, was terrified. "It's not stable! You can't!"

Edward-kun and Roy went stiff as sparks leapt from the page when the foreign alchemist tried to grab the papers.

Fieseler turned to the Xingese alchemist, whose face contorted with dread.

"Now, what was it you told me? I can activate a transmutation myself?"

"He redrew that with the triggers intact, Roy!" Edward-kun yelled.

The Brigadier General shouted at the soldiers on the barricades, "Fall back! Take those people and push back five blocks!" The policeman repeated the order into his radio, then nodded as Roy told him, "Someone in Base Squad needs to get to the ambassadors and move everyone out of those talks. They're in the radius." To the Xingese guards, he said, "If you can get there faster, do it."

They scaled the buildings like hills and ran over the rooftops. Hawkeye stayed. So did Lt. General Bloch, his face as serious as any alchemist's on the field. Creeping closer to the fight, the photographer had stayed, too.

"Leave if you want to know you'll live," Hawkeye told him.

"Thank you, ma'am, but I'd rather die." He framed another shot, with a look on his face she'd seen often enough to know he meant it. "And if I do, please get this film to my editor."

Well. He'd stayed out from underfoot this long, and until Roy tried to get her to leave, chances were good they'd all walk out intact.

"Fine," she said. "But don't be an idiot. Step past me and I throw you over the barricade."

"Understood."

~/~

The blue uniforms lining the platform were the first thing Alphonse saw when his train pulled into Central. They would've been hard to ignore. The troops had every person coming and going lined up for inspection, leaving the normally noisy station full of murmurs.

The guards by his door saluted as he stepped off the train.

"What's happened?" Alphonse asked, returning their salutes.

The left-hand soldier's face looked sick. "Orders from Brigadier General Mustang to detain Lt. General Fieseler, sir."

He'd been right to come back. Either Brigadier General Mustang had made his move, or their traitor - the Lieutenant General, it seemed - had forced his hand.

"Who's in charge here?"

"Lt. Blenheim has this platform, sir." The two guards pointed him at the stairs.

Making himself walk instead of run took every ounce of composure he had, especially when he got far enough to see the city blanketed in a strange layer of dust and dark thunderclouds. The weather had been clear for miles around. Those clouds had the smack of weather alchemy about them.

He had to find his brother.

The Lieutenant, with only a few stray wisps of light-brown hair flitting out of her bun despite the day she was probably having, was marking down all-clear reports when he walked up. She took a double-take, then she and her subordinates snapped to attention.

"Major Elric, sir! We weren't told to expect you."

"Lieutenant Blenheim," he answered, saluting according to protocol - although he still felt ill at ease. "I'm sorry, I couldn't call ahead. Do you know where I can find Brigadier General Mustang? I assume he's not in his office at the moment."

She turned to the man on her left. "Get me the communications-"

Before she could finish, a column of blue iridescence shot into the sky a few blocks from Central Command, sparking like lightning and hitting his ears with a brutal whine. Alphonse tightened his jaw, facing Lt. Blenheim with a smile. Her eyes had grown as round as marbles as she blinked at the light.

"What the hell..." She caught her tongue and turned back to him. "I'm sorry, sir. I can-"

"Don't worry, Lieutenant. I think I know where to go." He looked around the platform, full of soldiers calming the crowds who'd just gotten off the train or were waiting for the next arrival. "And you have nothing to be sorry for. You're doing a great job."

Barely pausing for a last salute, he dashed as fast as he could for the blue light. The long flap on the back of his uniform whipped in the wind as he took corners at a high-speed lean. He hadn't run like this since his days training with Sensei.

The guards at the blockade tried to stop him. Then they saw his face, his uniform, and the silver watch he'd held up for them to check. "I have information for the Brigadier General," Alphonse told them, and they let him through without argument.

It wasn't exactly a lie. He probably knew something Brigadier General Mustang would find helpful, although he couldn't be sure what it would be.

From there, he followed the ring of striking metal, explosions, and pieces of rock bashing other pieces of rock. Where he found those, as expected, he found his brother, screaming atop a stone cannon and firing a hail of projectiles at the strange blueness around Lt. General Fieseler. By the time he reached Capt. Hawkeye and the two strangers with her, though, the tower seemed less blue and more like a heat mirage warping the space inside. The whine had changed, too. It wasn't sound. It was sheer pressure on his bones and nerves.

His brother's projectiles went straight through everything in the column, smashing into walls Lt. General Bloch made to guard the town from Nii-san's onslaught. And when Brigadier General Mustang's flames hit the warping space, they flared up in a wild dance that left the ground inside unscathed. A Xingese man was drawing an alchemical array - their weather alchemist, Alphonse figured.

"I hope I'm not too late," he said to Captain Hawkeye. Pulling a piece of chalk from the box in his pocket, he studied the battlefield. His brother had switched from cannons to towering stone hands smashing down on the Lt. General's space - only to crash against the ground.

"All physical attacks are passing through the field?" Alphonse asked.

Captain Hawkeye nodded.

"Does anyone have a theory on how he's standing on the road? If he phases through all matter, I mean?"

"No theories that anyone's shared. They want to destroy the circle he's holding. Zhou, the Xingese man, thinks he can shape the column to open up an attack vector for your brother."

"That's Nii-san and the Brigadier General's work, isn't it?" It certainly looked like Nii-san's array in the Lt. General's hands, and the effects were consistent with their theories. If someone had stolen his brother's arrays, no wonder the city had begun blowing up. "Why isn't Nii-san-"

"He clapped, it twisted, it bounced back. Evidence suggests that control isn't Edward-kun's strong point. The Xingese alchemist thinks he can do it."

He wouldn't be the one to argue that Nii-san erred on the side of control, but he doubted anyone who didn't understand the effect in front of them as completely as his brother did would succeed. Hopefully matters wouldn't get too dire before Nii-san found a way to substitute fortitude for control, or some other way to stop this completely.

"Can Fieseler do anything besides turn insubstantial?"

As he asked, the warping inside the column became a harsh twist, with the Lt. General's body disaligning and realigning along with the rubble around him. Grotesque spires shot from the ground at all angles, then retracted, then punched long stalagmites at Nii-san as he ran.

Hawkeye sucked in a breath. "I think he learned how to do something else."

It didn't look like it was good for him. Once the field stabilized, he was bleeding in places he hadn't been bleeding before. "Okay," he murmured. These weren't the best conditions for experimentation, but there wasn't much else to do.

His brother saw him when he ran out on the field, as did the Brigadier General and Lt. General Bloch, but Fieseler seemed too occupied with assessing his own situation. To the right of the column, glinting with an iridescent shade as it moved with Fieseler's steps, Alphonse chalked a circle and left it sitting without activating it.

Lt. General Bloch moved his barriers and Nii-san turned piles of bricks into duck-headed turrets spitting red spheres. Fieseler dodged - they could count on reflexes, even if they couldn't hit him - touching the circle Alphonse had drawn. The ground beneath his feet puffed into an explosion of feathers, filling the air and leaving a crater in the dirt. That answered two questions.

First, he had to and could bat away the feathers from his eyes. No matter how ineffectual it was, he could touch them instead of phasing through. Second, he'd fallen into the crater and was climbing out with feather down sticking to bloody trails on his skin. External matter was effectively insubstantial, but matter included in the effect had substance to him.

At least for now. The first thing they'd learned in alchemy was how the alchemist's understanding would dictate the results. No one knew the rules yet for what Nii-san had cooked up with the Brigadier, not even the two of them, and they certainly didn't know what other changes might result from Fieseler's evolving understanding of the power he'd taken.

Best not to wait until they found out.

Alphonse snuck behind Fieseler while the man was struggling to his feet and sketched another circle as fast as he could. This one sprouted stone tendrils that bound Fieseler's hands and feet. The man craned his neck to catch a glimpse of him.

"Damn you Elrics!"

Lt. General Bloch wiped some dust off his hands. "You're the only alchemist I've ever seen come to a fight with a piece of chalk," he scoffed. "How the hell do you draw that fast?"

"Necessity."

Sensei never had given anyone time to dodge.

All five of them - him, Nii-san, Mustang, Bloch, and the alchemist named Zhou - walked toward Fieseler and his column. The Xingese man threw six needles, one by one, spaced around the force in the air. Energy shot between them. The column around Fieseler twisted in on itself. Nii-san picked up a partisan capped in razor-sharp steel, and aimed the point at the paper Fieseler was holding while Brigadier General Mustang stood by ready to snap.

Lt. General Fieseler's skin had the look of old leather worn to holes. He struggled to get an arm free, cutting further into the raw patches, trickles of blood smearing on the surface. Inside the wavering patch of reality where he stood, even the stone Alphonse had transmuted to hold him seemed to warp and mutate, flecks of dust trickling down from thin cracks in the structure. With one last wrench before the Xingese man finished his work, Fieseler freed a battered folder from his grip. It fell, and Fieseler caught at two pages, both marked with circles that sparked at his touch.

His body seemed to stretch and fade. The whine in the air and the heat mirage vanished along with him, all in an instant.

The five of them glanced around the street, back to back.

"Your directed leap theory?" the Brigadier General asked Nii-san.

"Those arrays aren't finished, damn it! They haven't been tested! I don't even know if all of him'll come out at the same place!"

Lightning cracked a block away in the direction of Central Command, with an inhuman cry like a whetstone on metal. Brigadier General Mustang in the lead, they ran, the stampede of their boots kicking up clouds of dust. The column was gone, but they could see a haze around Fieseler's tattered figure, sparks jumping between papers fanning out from his belt.

~/~

All Ling wanted was to jump on the table and demand to know whether the other ambassadors and the Amestrian general were completely deaf. But he sat. Yelling would be satisfying in the short term but would reflect poorly on him and on Xing in the long term. The desire to appear cool and reasonable was eroding, however, because those idiots wouldn't pack up despite the news Lan Fan and Fu had brought.

Counselor Ilyushin scoffed, flaring his nose at Ling and his guards. "Cheap dramatics. That's what you get when children play politics. Have we talked too long? You'd like to leave for an afternoon nap? Go on! The adults will arrange things in your absence."

"I beg your pardon, Counselor. I won't leave my honored colleagues to a grisly doom while I drool into a pillow."

The General tapped her pen against the table. "Your Highness, that your guards claim to have met with Brigadier General Mustang in direct opposition to our agreement - and for your sake, all I'm taking as certain is that you sent them somewhere - in no way demonstrates that we're in danger."

Saulnier's stone gray eyes didn't have Ilyushin's contempt, at least. The Cretan and Aerugan ambassadors were less blatant in pooh-pooh-ing him, but that was politeness more than respect. Only the Amestrian seemed to think he was just out of order, not a fool.

"Brigadier General Mustang has men," she said, nodding at the security officers by the door. "If he's concerned about the safety of the summit, he'll send one of them instead of relying on foreign agents."

"If we need someone to check my guards' information, so be it. Surely Amestris has a protocol for running to the street to check for a blockade! Or is that too complicated to be worth the minor issue of settling the concerns of a diplomatic envoy?"

The General nodded to the soldiers at the door. One man stepped out, and the sound of him hustling away filled the air.

Everyone in this room, one way or another, knew that a single alchemist could take on an army, and that more than one was plenty reason to take cover. He didn't remind them. He'd been duly warned before leaving Xing not to bring it up, just in case Aerugo wanted to renew threats to declare the State Alchemists war criminals, or to demand battle alchemy be outlawed on any treaty they'd sign. That could come down on Xingese alchemists' heads as well.

Turning to her notes, Major General Saulnier cleared her throat. "While we wait, shall we finish deciding this? If we're agreed on ball-bearing jump ropes, would each country supply its own ball-bearing jump ropes, or how should we standardize them if we're standardizing?"

"I don't think ball-bearing jump ropes should be a requirement," the Aerugan ambassador put in, and Ling felt like dropping his head through the table. "We've always issued knotted jump ropes in government facilities. The disadvantage to our-"

The soldier who'd left ran back through the door, two other panting soldiers at his side, yelling, "Major General! We have to evacuate!"

Soldiers from rushed in and saved Ling from shaking any ambassadors by their ties until they'd shut up about jump ropes. Amestrians flanked the door as Saulnier's face turned grim. "Gentlemen, Madam," she said as she stood, "if you'll please follow me to a secure location."

All the dignitaries stood from their seats - and to their credit, none tried to hide under the table. Then the wall collapsed into a heap of cinderblocks and plaster. Fu and Lan Fan jumped between him and the giant crumbling hole, taking guard positions as a bleeding, glowing man walked closer. It was one of the Generals he'd met his first day here, probably the Amestrian Lan Fan had said was working with Liu Zhou.

That was one General who was out of a job.

The Drachman ambassador sputtered, "What's the meaning of this?"

He didn't get any further. The bloody general blinked away from where he was standing and reappeared with his hand about a centimeter from Ilyushin's throat.

"You failed. I won't."

Soldiers tried to pull him back, but their hands passed through the General's body, and from the way they shook Ling guessed it didn't feel pleasant. The blue glow from the man's hand didn't look like it was any better for the Drachman. His skin started wearing away, and Ilyushin half-choked a noise that might have been a scream if he'd been able to put air behind it, but Ling could hardly blame him for being too scared for that. Even though their attacker looked worse for the wear - his skin rough and broken, though not as badly as the Drachman counselor's - how could they fight someone they couldn't touch?

~/~

It wasn't easy to keep up with a man who could teleport. Under his breath, Roy whispered bare thankfulness that Fieseler had a target and hadn't run at the barricades.

"Could be worse," Ed yelled at his brother. "He hasn't figured out how to bilocate!"

"He could really do that?!" The cringe in Alphonse's voice echoed in Roy's gut.

"I'm not gonna test it right now! But don't worry! There woudn't be two of him - just one of him in two places, so I can resolve him into a single mass!"

Behind him, Zhou growled, "I want nothing to do with Amestrian alchemy ever again."

When they got to the ruined wall, all levity vanished. Fieseler had stopped, but whatever he was doing to the Drachman ambassador, Roy knew the sound of a man dying. Hopefully they weren't too late to stop it.

"Why aren't these people gone?" Roy yelled at the room.

"I'll take responsibility, Brigadier General," Major General Saulnier answered as she pushed the Cretan and Aerugan ambassadors toward the door. "Now, you'd better have a plan!"

"Underway, ma'am!"

Whether teleportation had consumed the energy the first array had created, or whether Fieseler had learned to rein the effect in to stop Alphonse's trick from working again, they had no way to tell, but there was no material inside the glow to exploit besides Fieseler's body.

No matter. They had the original plan.

The Xingese alchemist scratched his circle in the dirt - a combination of Xingese symbols and the work he'd done with Ed. Broad, rough, but functional as hitting a brick with a sledgehammer. Not everything needed precision. Ed watched him draw, too, a snarl on his lip as he waited for the chance to strike. But the instant Zhou threw his needles, Fieseler zipped away and reappeared at the broken wall.

He stared Zhou down with a manic elation in his eyes.

Major General Saulnier caught Ilyushin. "Get this man to Medical!" she told the soldiers who stepped up to carry him away. Turning to the Xingese ambassador, she said, "Your Highness, I need to get you clear."

The Xingese Prince and his guards edged closer to the gap in the wall where Roy stood.

"I'm not leaving without him," the man answered, pointing at the alchemist facing down Fieseler. Roy nodded to Alphonse to lead the party to Hawkeye. Getting them out of the battle zone was non-negotiable. Ling Yao, meanwhile, explained to the Major General, who was losing patience, "Liu Zhou leaves in my custody, to stand trial in Xing for his actions here."

"This is not the time to discuss extradition!"

Roy edged closer to Fieseler, looking for a way to distract him long enough that Zhou could finish his work and there would still be an extradition to discuss. Dead prisoners and destroyed worlds would benefit no one.

Fieseler ran his foot over Zhou's circle. At first, it had no effect. Then, the iridescent glow retreated from his leg, as if the Lt. General were pulling it back, and his foot smudged the lines in the dirt out of existence. Once the array was broken, he set the glow back into place. That test over, he launched into a flickering fury of attacks.

The Xingese alchemist dodged, escaping by the smallest hair as Fieseler zipped from place to place, but he had no time to draw, and this close to civilians, their options were more limited. They needed to steal Fieseler's attention, and secure his position. He and Ed had never finished a countermeasure to contain something like this.

He felt Ed step up to his side an instant before he felt the tug on his sleeve.

"You think that guy can hit a moving target if he knows where it's going, Roy?"

"If you mean what I think you mean, you had damn well better not get hurt."

He couldn't vouch for his actions if Fieseler got a hand on Edward like he did on Ilyushin.

The blond squeezed his arm. "I've got this. You keep our new best friend in line."

As Ed dashed toward the fountain in the courtyard, Roy didn't try to kiss him for luck - he wouldn't let himself think Edward needed luck - and he certainly wouldn't kiss him goodbye. Sentiment would wait until his blond came back, the way he always did.

Perched on the fountain's basin, Ed yelled, "Hey, dipshit! Why don'tcha pick on somebody your own size?!"

Every eye not already on him turned to see him transmute the fountain and the grass around it into a knot of stairs and towers. The stone under Ed's feet grew eight feet into the air.

"Not all of us need a circle you can kick apart! How you gonna handle me?!"

Like a wounded animal, Fieseler moved at him hard and fast. Roy strode over to the Xingese alchemist. "Draw your circle. Aim when he attacks, before he phases out."

"I can manage that."

Transmutation flashes came every second or two - towers growing and shrinking, bridges forming and disappearing, stairs twisting - while Roy watched Ed jump over or duck under Fieseler's jabs. He wouldn't look away for an instant. Even if he could have believed that the brutal grace in Edward's every leap was a sight he could live with missing, he knew he had to be watching when, in whatever way, this ended. It wasn't just his sight watching, but his bones and skin and sinew straining as if they could will Edward to make his distance.

The General flickered.

Ed taunted him.

Roy barely heard a word.

And in one horrible second, in a flash, everything shifted. Fieseler had his target in sight on the tallest pillar. His single approach to Ed opened his back to the Xingese alchemist. Roy knew it was the moment, and he knew Ed wouldn't move till it was over. It'd be over faster than he could snap his fingers, but that was still too long.

The General lunged.

The heartbeat when he realized Zhou's needles wouldn't strike first choked in Roy's throat, and his breath wouldn't move. A blur of blue pierced red beneath a streak of gold. Six flying needles hit Fieseler's back.

When the blue around him faded, he tumbled, taking with him the red and black that Roy refused to believe was Edward. That would never be Edward.

Then a shot of black flew up from nowhere, driving a punch at Fieseler's gut that blew them both to the grass outside the plot of stone. The Lt. General's arm, Roy saw as his breath found him again, was stuck through a blond-haired dummy - made with it's tongue sticking out, and wearing the shirt and vest Ed was now missing.

Jumping to the tallest tower in the lot, the real thing smirked with his metal-plated arm and sweat-sheened skin gleaming in the sunlight. He spread his hands to drop shreds of what used to be alchemical circles, falling from his fingers like autumn leaves.

Over the click-click of a camera shutter, the Xingese ambassador murmured, "He's not what I expected, but I think I like his style."

Roy glanced over his shoulder at the rapt gazes from the spectators' gallery.

"He's spoken for," he said.

Just in case anyone had ideas.

Hawkeye cocked an eyebrow at him, then rolled her eyes at his grin.

In the settling dust, Alphonse and Lt. General Bloch pulled Fieseler off the ground. His feet dragged and he couldn't lift his head, let alone resist. One job done.

"Get him to Medical, too," Major General Saulnier called out, striding over the rubble. "I take it our next Security review will be an interesting one, Brigadier."

"Did the Drachman ambassador survive?"

She glanced at the door, wiping dust off her nose. "There'll be a scar, but the doctors seemed to think he'd recover. I'm sure he'll be thrilled that you care."

"I did give my word he'd go home alive."

But as much as he wanted their problems done, a high whine in the air cut his relief short. The Xingese alchemist stood where the needles had fallen from Fieseler's back.

"Amateurs get hurt when they meddle with forces they don't understand. A professional doesn't leave his job unfinished."

Under his control, the blue shimmer formed into whips, crumbling the towers Fullmetal had built a hundred times faster than Fieseler had done. Edward jumped to the grass running.

Three needles flew at the building. Roy snapped, and Zhou's circle shot into a column of flame. It was char by the time the needles landed.

The blue whips faded. The guards shoving him to the ground took care of the rest.

"You shouldn't have done that," Roy told him.

"Speak for yourself. I was only controlling that energy. Your circle created it."

As the guards pulled him away, the whine crescendoed like gravity filling the air, thin blue threads rising. Thin grew thicker, gaining substance, taking on the column shape it'd had before Fieseler had drawn it in. Only now, the twisting and destruction of the world created a nothingness while creeping outward. Stone collapsed in on itself like popping balloons. Thin as a hair, a new column formed in the middle that he could only call "black", but that made the world look like scenery flats on a stage, skewed ever so slightly so that he could see the wings.

Edward ran over, breath heaving in even beats while Roy's heart hit triplets.

"So much for the effect dissipating when the array's gone," the blond muttered.

"Tell me you've learned enough in the last five minutes to contain that."

"Only one way to find out."

Ed swung onto a drainpipe and climbed to the roof, turning toward the imminent destruction of reality the same way he met Kyrian verb conjugations: with distaste that passed from mulishness into iron conviction that nothing so petty could beat him. Then he clapped his hands, and sparks of transmutation arched across the sky.

~/~

Him, or the destruction of the universe. Whatever happened, he thought at the shivering sliver of reality unmaking itself, there was only room for one of them in this...

Um. Universe. And after he survived, he'd look up more words for 'all of existence'.

Eyes locked on the utter emptiness, he could feel it shredding every differentiated atom into something far finer than dust. Reducing everything to sameness, stagnation, and stillness.

It was a peaceful nothingness inside ultimate dissolution. Consuming, leaving nonexistence behind as it collapsed in and in and in with the world sinking toward it. But not a peace he wanted. A yell curdling inside him, Edward pulled the world back, and forced the energy running wild to reinhabit the stillness. That was where it needed to be. Forcing the particles out of their inert lack of shape. Making them something other than nothing.

But it wouldn't stop until he gave it shape. That was what was missing. Even if the stuffness and the energy was willing to be something, it'd lost every inclination towards something to be. Remixing raw matter - like making clay from dust and water instead of reshaping matter that was already as pliable as new clay from a riverbank - the strain dropped him to his knee, but he pushed through a shape to let the matter back into reality.

The column of energy was gone. Now, amidst the broken remnants of the little playground he'd built from the old fountain, scores of tiger lilies bloomed around a brand new fountain, where dancing satyrs blew streams of water out of their pipes.

That was better. A smile broke over Ed's lips. On the ground, Roy was smiling, too.

Taking a breath to steady himself, Ed flexed his knees and jumped down. The Xingese alchemist wasn't so happy. Tied up inside, next to the Major General, he stared out at and through and far beyond the little patch of flowers, terror on his face. He wasn't going to be able to self destruct and take all the evidence and witnesses with him.

"Eat that," Ed called out, fighting the shake of his jaw and limbs. Roy's arm around his shoulder helped, keeping him up straight.

The Colonel nodded to Hawkeye "Would you assess the damage here, then go to the office to take reports as they come in? I'm taking Ed inside."

"Yes, sir."

The Major General stood still by the miraculously unscathed meeting table, arms crossed over her chest and as stone-faced as ever. "Someone will call at your office for a final review at 10:30 tomorrow morning, Mustang. I assume this is done?"

"I just destroyed the rabbit hole," Ed shot back. "It's gone. That's as done as it gets."

Might as well get that project closed as soon as possible.

"And I assume we can discuss extradition now?" Ling sang at the Major General.

'His Serene Highness' my ass, Ed thought. Bastard was a fucking shark.

His legs felt steady enough to walk. Off by the rows of troops marching in, Hawkeye was already coordinating cleanup. Ed took one last look at the government's new lily garden. "I guess that shirt's toast. It actually fit, too."

Roy flicked a glance down from Ed's face. "I'm prepared to deal with the consequences."

His insides already felt like a runaway train. Roy's hand on his skin, tight on his shoulder, only made the adrenaline worse. His hormones were going to make him do something stupid any second now, and that bastard was totally enabling.

"Not here, Roy," Ed growled at him.

Then a shutter clicked, and a flashbulb went off in front of them.

The photographer shrugged from his spot near the rubble of the wall. "I had instructions to get a picture of you two together."

Roy chuckled as they neared the man, leaning over to whisper, "When the Major General realizes you were here, the first thing she'll do is order a media blackout."

"Right. Why don't I go see if I can make the deadline for the evening paper."

He backed out of Saulnier's line of sight and ran for the street.

Roy had that grin he always wore when the world went his way. And by the time the Colonel got his stumbling ass to the back door of the East Wing, the screaming crowds had run up to the barricades. Screaming crowds. Could you get more cliche than that?

"It's over!" Ed yelled. "Go home!"

"Are you Edward Elric?!" One of the kids standing at the edge of the blockade waved a green pamphlet over the barrier. "The Edward Elric? I've read all your work, and... and! I'm making my friends come to your lecture at the university next month! Maybe they'll stop calling Kyrus a snooze fest. I can't believe I'm actually seeing you! Can I have your autograph?!"

"...W-wait, what?" Ed stammered as he got a look at the title on the green pamphlet.

'Concerning the Judiciary Process, and the Foundations of the Right to Trial by Jury.'

'By Edward Elric.'

It wasn't hard to assure himself he hadn't gone crazy and asked a printer to run those up while he was out of his head. He sure as hell hadn't picked that title. He'd called that topic, 'Bullshit Essay No. 23: Why it's not Justice to throw people into dark closets willy-nilly just because you said so,' when he'd dropped it on Roy's desk. Ed narrowed his eyes at the Colonel, who clearly wasn't surprised about what was going on.

"Ladies, gentlemen," Roy said in his ringing, oratory voice that somehow didn't sound like yelling. "Mr. Elric will be happy to sign autographs next month at the university. Right now we need to get him inside. Thank you!"

The bastard didn't look sorry at all. He pushed Ed inside the building and doubled over laughing in the emergency stairwell, but never once looked even a little sorry.

"Roy. Are you gonna explain what you did, or do I have to... to..." He shook his head, imagination circuits shorting out. "I don't know what I'll do, but there will be potatoes involved."

A sigh fell from his tricky asshole of a boyfriend's lips as Roy pretended to ponder how he was going to get out of this.

"Well." After another pause, Roy shrugged and hit brand new levels of unapologeticness. "I've been using you to drum up support for a democratic reformation, and to create a body of principles the Federal Diet can work from next time they draft a governmental framework."

"Were you going to tell me that before or after they put me on a stage to give a lecture?!"

"Hadn't decided yet," Roy answered like he still wasn't sorry. And never would be.

"Potatoes," Ed threatened right back.

But as he leaned back on the cold wall, he didn't pull his arms away from Roy's, even though they couldn't pretend this was to help him walk. At least Roy had taken him the long way around, by the back stairs where no one ever went so he wasn't parading half-naked in front of the entire building. The way his heart was beating, he'd've probably ripped someone's head off the first time I heard uncalled-for commentary.

"Anyway, you could have written those things yourself! You already had opinions on that crap. You didn't need me to do it!"

"The one piece I wrote, everyone was too suspicious of my 'angle' to give it any thought. It seems the world at large expects an ulterior motive in everything I do."

"No! You?! Why the hell would anybody think that?!"

"One of the insoluble mysteries of life."

He worked his fingers into Roy's jacket, the warm of his lover's body fighting with the cold of the stairs. "You're gonna be sorry when people figure out that I have your ulterior motive."

"I don't think they ever will," Roy murmured in his ear.

A tongue in his mouth shut him up fast enough. The jitters of still being alive hit the sweat-mixed scent of cardamom in the air, and almost drowned out the little part of his brain screaming that it was a doozy of a bad idea to make out in the stairwell, even if no one was around to watch right this second. Roy's hand on his ass was not helping.

"Oi," he hissed into Roy's cheek, focusing on the cutting cold of the wall to keep his head together. "I'm all for 'Yay, the world didn't implode' sex, but if you're fucking me in this building, you're fucking me on your desk. That's what private offices are for, right?"

"If you insist," Roy laughed.

Ed scowled. "Are you saying that because your office is going to be full of brass? Because if anyone is gonna show up anywhere to ask me anything about any of this bullshit, you can just take me home right now."

"Suspects in custody are Major General Defiant's department. The desk is fine."

~/~

Alphonse slumped into a chair alongside all the Security personnel flopped with their eyes on the ceiling, listening to the sounds of their own breath. Lt. General Bloch had given everyone in Research an impromptu afternoon off while the Council convened about what to do from here, all the evidence the Brigadier General's team had gathered was with the Office of Justice, and inside these walls they could take a few minutes blissful refuge from curious people asking them questions they weren't allowed to answer about what had actually happened. Even Capt. Hawkeye looked like she was drinking in the peace, quiet, and lack of any immediate threat as she cleaned her gun in the light of a row of hanging lanterns.

"Nice of the Brigadier to let us take a breather," Lt. Breda sighed.

"Too nice," Capt. Havoc grumbled around his cigarette. No one jumped at the screech of furniture shifting inside the Brigadier General's office. They were all too tired. "It's suspicious. He never takes lunch. Now he's taking his lunch hour with just him and the boss and the door has to stay closed? What'd he actually say, Cap?" he asked Hawkeye.

"That he thought preventing the obliteration of reality was worth everyone getting an hour off, and I should hold all callers."

Lt. Falman pulled his head upright. "Is that what actually happened?"

Following Capt. Hawkeye's lead, all eyes turned on Alphonse, and he tried to think of a way to believe Nii-san's array would have fizzled out before it ate the entire universe.

His mind was a blank.

"As I see it, yes."

"That's definitely worth an hour," 2nd Lt. Fuery agreed.

The clatter from the next room sounded a lot like a chair hitting the floor, and Havoc's eyes flipped open. "What the hell? Okay, I dare somebody to open that door."

"Not it," the whole group muttered in chorus. Alphonse didn't have to. He was exempt. Everyone had agreed.

Lt. Breda shut the book he was reading. "They wouldn't be doing alchemy in there, right? So it's safe to look? Right?"

Over in the corner, Capt. Hawkeye smiled to herself. The thud from the Brigadier's office didn't sound like any office furniture Alphonse knew about.

"I triple dog dare somebody to open that door," Capt. Havoc answered. "We've gotta report the Council's appointment, right? I'm thinking of a number between one and twenty."

"Three," Lt. Breda called out.

"Nine," said 2nd Lt. Fuery.

"Ten," answered Lt. Falman from the corner.

Capt. Hawkeye didn't answer. She was exempt, too.

Pointing at Falman, Havoc settled his feet on his desk. "The number was one. You're it."

Just before the Lieutenant got to the door, another sound filtered out of the office. It sounded like his brother's voice, muffled somehow. And suddenly it clicked. Something about the number of times he'd come home to find the Brigadier in his brother's room.

While his brother was putting clothes on.

That'd happened a lot.

And the way Nii-san let the Brigadier steal his hair ties. He never let anyone...

Oh dear.

As soon as he heard the turn of the handle, Alphonse clapped his hands over his eyes. Given the silence after the door opened, he was sure he was right. But darn it! He did have to be certain. Not having verification was already bothering him, and it'd been less than a second!

He opened a space between two of his fingers to peek.

Well, that settled that. Nii-san had lost his shirt outside, but now his pants were half-off, the Brigadier's shirt was missing as well, and they were bent over the desk at the back of the darkened, shuttered office. It didn't look accidental this time, either.

Alphonse covered his eyes again.

"You didn't lock the door," he heard his brother say.

"I knew I'd forgotten something. Can I help you, Lieutenant?"

"Sir! The... ah. The Fuhrer's messenger reports that His Excellency is sorry, but your involvement in this investigation prevents him from naming you to the Council in Lt. General Fieseler's place. The empty spot will go to Major General Armstrong, sir."

"Excellent. I'm sure she'll do a wonderful job. Now, Lieutenant - if you don't mind?"

"Not at all, sir!"

The door slammed shut. Alphonse thought he could hear the tick of a watch on someone's wrist. 2nd Lt. Fuery finally broke the silence.

"Did anyone have 'apocalypse' in the betting pool?"

"No way was that their first time," Havoc answered. "We've been played."

Alphonse's voice cracked as he shrieked, "You're... you're not going to stop them?!"

All the officers glanced at each other, and Lt. Breda picked up his novel with a shrug.

"Well. They did prevent the obliteration of reality."

Capt. Hawkeye clicked her weapon's magazine into place. "Just this once."

Suddenly the weariness of the long day disappeared. Alphonse shot to his feet and backed toward the hallway door as more strange noises came from the Brigadier's office.

"Um. Okay. Well. E-Excuse me. I... I have to go feed my cats!"

It might be all well and good that Nii-san was... intimate with the Brigadier - and Mrs. Hughes had given him The Talk, so on an intellectual level, he had known that would happen - but he really didn't think brothers should listen to that sort of thing. He'd go celebrate the non-obliteration of reality by reading a book.

Somewhere else.

[The End]