Alphonse Elric knew his brother was at peace. Too much peace. He was, in a word, bored. The countryside, the end of the war... it was all well and good, and yet... Colo- General Mustang had ordered them out of Central, supposedly for "a little R&R". Al had definitely needed it- he still felt the weakness deep in his bones every morning when he got out of bed. But Ed? Well, he claimed he was fine. Sure, he'd given up his alchemy, but that didn't change things! Ed needed to get involved. To get his hands dirty. Al knew his brother would never disobey Mustang, though. He was taking to his new position well, although the rumours about some sort of new uniform overhaul for female officers had been quashed almost immediately. Al snorted. Tiny miniskirts. Just like the Colonel. Er, the General. Technically, General Armstrong was the highest military authority in Central, but she'd returned to Briggs as quickly as possible. Which left Mustang as, well... as Fuhrer Mustang. No one was using that word anymore, but everyone knew it. Mustang had fulfilled his dream. The blinded Flame Alchemist had become Fuhrer of Amestris, the greatest military power in the world. Al was satisfied. But if he knew the faint frown on his zoned-out brother's face, Ed wasn't.

"...Edward? Brother? Hello?"

When Ed blinked, Al stopped waving his hand.

"Oh! Brother, you're still with us."

Ed nodded, shaking his head. He had been pretty gone there for a second.

"Sorry Al. Just daydreaming, y'know? What is it?"

"I was just wondering what you were thinking about, Brother. You looked... I dunno, sad. Or something."

Ed grinned slightly as he replied. Al knew he still looked a little comically skeletal. That, plus the slight sunburn he'd gotten while jogging yesterday...

"I was just thinking about the Homunculi... about Father. About Hohenheim. I- I kind of wish they were still here. That we were still fighting."

Al couldn't believe his ears. Wanting to get out into the world was one thing, but bringing them back?

"Brother! Are you serious? They tried to destroy the country! They almost killed everyone! I miss Hohenheim just as much as you do, but to wish for that genocidal maniac back... What were you thinking?"

Ed sighed, obviously realizing how stupid what he'd said sounded. He tended to do that a lot.

"Look, Al. I- I didn't mean it like that. You know I didn't. Father and the homunculi- well, except for Greed- were evil. They had to be destroyed. But I miss the adventure. Being fugitives from the law! Fighting for what was right! Peace is great and all, but..."

Al nodded wistfully. He did have a point. To a certain degree.

"Okay. I get it. I've caught myself thinking the same thing, Brother. For all that it was tough and scary and horrifying... yeah, it really was fun."

Ed sighed again, and Al matched his gaze, staring out at the sweeping green fields of Risembool. Winry had insisted that they go on regular walks, both to keep Ed occupied and to help Al get the strength back in his legs. Al felt he was making lots of progress. He could jog, slowly, even sprint a little. But there was still a long way to go before he was back to being- well, human. Maybe that was why Pinako kept on trying to serve them rare steaks.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Ed. The paper came this morning."

The Risembool Herald wasn't a bad paper, per se, but they tended to think a little too rurally for Al's tastes. He'd paid for the weekly Central Times to be shipped out by train, and eagerly devoured it every day. For all that Risembool was peaceful and unchanging, Central (and the rest of Amestris to boot) was still a hotbed of political activity. And Al got bored, in his own way. News helped.

"Any news?"

"Not much. There was a finance article saying that Havoc Supplies just gained a total monopoly of the industrial manufacturing capability in the Western Provinces. He's doing well for himself."

Al grinned as he spoke, feeling a twinge of pride. The wheelchair-bound Havoc, unconventional as always, had become an invaluable resource for the new Mustang government, acting as an economic and intelligence guru above and beyond anything anyone would expect from a simple merchant.

"Guess he's still got some of that fighting spirit left, huh? When Mustang granted him and his company tax-free status, I thought he was gonna cry or something."

There'd been accusations of cronyism, rampant militarism and corruption when it was discovered that Mustang was essentially using a former subordinate as an unlimited black market military-industrial contractor. That had quickly vanished when the Havoc Rail Works (a company Al knew for a fact had only been in existence for about three months) opened up a brand-new rail line direct from Ishbal to Central, and began the first of its weekly aid shipments. Where Mustang and Havoc got the money, he couldn't begin to guess. No one had expected the State Alchemists to become glorified construction workers, but then again no one had complained when they rebuilt Central in three days.

They walked in silence for a few more minutes, both enjoying the bright sunlight and the slight breeze that caressed the fields. Al's knees were starting to get a bit sore, but he knew that if he worked through it-

"Ed! Al!", a voice sounded over the fields, shortly accomapnied by a slamming car door. They turned simultaneously, startled by the bespectacled figure in a military-issue greatcoat.

"Sergeant Fuery! Kain!", Ed whooped, rushing towards the bespectacled radioman.

He stepped away from the long, black automobile, grinning as he always did.

"Good to see you again, Fullmetal! How're you doing?"

There was a brief exchange of warm handshakes. Al was worried, though. Something wasn't quite right here.

"Kain, what are you doing here? You don't drive around in government cars on your spare time."

Fuery sighed.

"Always to the point, aren't you Al?", he said, leaning back against the car and polishing his wire-frame glasses on a handkerchief he pulled from the inside of his coat.

"Officially, I'm here to supervise the overhaul of Risembool's main radio hub. I left my engineering team back at the station. But the Fuh-Mustang wanted me to deliver this to you. We- uh, well to be honest, we've got a mission for you."

Al cocked an eyebrow as Ed examined the wax-bound letter, its seal stamped with the Fuehrer's crest.

"I thought we were retired. We were promised that we were free from all ties to the military!"

Fuery laughed placatingly.

"Oh, no, this isn't military at all!"

Ed glanced through the letter, his growing confusion plain to read.

"The Ministry of Transportation? Experimental Division?"

Two immense steam engines throbbed as the airship slowly came to rest, huge landing struts unfolding from the bottom of its swollen cargo bay. The ice cracked and crunched as it absorbed the ship's bulk, but held. The loading ramp clanked downwards, locking into place against the frozen ground. In a blast of steam, two Ember Group Howling Dragon-model mobile artillery platforms trundled onto the ice, two sets of twelve pedrail wheels each hauling a pair of bulky steam projectors.

General Si pulled his scarf closer about his face as he squinted at the dial of his watch. It ticked away, impervious to the frigid, blustery breezes that flung crystals of ice in his face. It was technically sunny, but the ground-level winds were so intense that they cast a continuous cloud of ice fragments, making it difficult to see at the best of times. He looked up, straining to see as he heard the triple roar of the airship group overhead. They were on schedule.

He dropped back into the dimly lit main chamber of the Howling Dragon, pulling the top hatch tight against the cold. Nodding firmly at the chief artilleryman, he settled into the commander's seat, stretching a detailed topographical map across the control panel in front of him.

"Signalman."

"Sir!"

"Message for Unit Two and the carrier. We are at T-minus twelve minutes, thirty seconds. Operation is a go."

"Yessir."

Behind him, the boilers began to chug as the engineers fed more coal into them.

Waterbending Master Pakku couldn't restrain a start as he came around the corner and saw the Fire Nation soldiers. Old habits died hard. There'd been widespread complaints when Fire Lord Zuko offered to establish a small airship depot in the Northern Water Tribe. The hardliners had raised hell, but Chief Arnook had silenced them, insisting on the benefits of modernized contact with the rest of the world. Pakku had to admit he was right, if only grudgingly. After the war, the Fire Nation had immediately retired their entire fleet, converting them from flying warships into long-range couriers and cargo ships. Many people still couldn't believe that it was now possible to travel from the Northern Water Tribe to the Southern in less than a week, but that was fire Nation technology for you.

It still bothered him that they hadn't changed the uniforms yet. To most people, the stylized skull mask and pointed shoulders of a Fire Nation trooper held... unpleasant connotations.

Something subconscious made him look up, past the blazing light of the summer sun. There were airships up there... three of them? And they were approaching from the north, hardly the normal route. Something was up. Those were not couriers. And hadn't Arnook ordered a delay on all non-official air traffic for the potlach?

Si stared down the optigraph telescope, reading the coded messages flickering off the airships. They were commencing their bombing run. As he watched, barely breathing in order to keep the telescope steady, he watched the bomb bays fall open, dropping dozens of barely-visible man-sized cylinders, each trailing an undersized parachute. Righting themselves as they fell, tiny clockwork devices within their metallic shells sprang to life, carefully measuring altitude. At precisely the right moment, hatches sprang open in their sides, and they began to trail long streamers of brackish brown mist. Si sat back from the telescope, folding it away. He didn't need to see what would happen next.

"T-minus fourty seconds. Confirm firing solution?

"Confirmed, General."

The interior of the artillery platform was now uncomfortably hot, the pressure tanks radiating heat through their thick ceramic insulation.

"Fire."

The Howling Dragon bucked as the two steam projectors activated simultaneously. Steam under thousands of tons of pressure poured into the firing chambers, forcing two ten-kilogram shells out barrels at several dozen times the speed of sound. As they left the barrel, small panels on their outsides unfolded into miniature fins, spinning the projectiles and keeping them stable. They crossed the kilometres of glacier in seconds, their internal fuses crackling merrily. Then they hit the cloud of highly explosive heavier-than-air gas that carpeted the Northern Water tribe. The fuses hit four packages of high-explosive blasting jelly. Only three of them caught, but they were enough.

Suddenly, the air was filled with the horrible odour of rotting eggs, and something sickly-sweet. Coughing into his sleeve, Pakku staggered through the oily mist, feeling it cling to his clothes. That smell... he knew that smell. Where had it come from...

Then he realized, gasping in horror. It smelled a little like Fire Nation siege oil. Extremely flammable Fire Nation siege oil. He'd seen what it did to human flesh. Acting on instinct, he began to Waterbend, sinking into the ice below. He had to get out of there. The only safe way was down.

The gas ignited instantly, creating a roaring shock wave of expanding superheated air. The temperature within the bay that held the capitol skyrocketed from below freezing to well over one thousand degrees. The entire city flash-vaporized under the intense heat, the resulting cloud of saltwater steam further increasing the size of the shock wave. Then it hit the inside wall of the cliff. Miraculously, it managed to avoid destroying the Spirit Oasis. Rebounding from the cliff wall, the shock wave compressed against itself, generating more heat and a zone of overpressure that exploded upwards, rocking the rapidly ascending Ember Group airships. The sea roared away under the force of the blast, a huge tsunami that destroyed every ship within several dozen kilometres. Then, slowly, it began to pour back inwards, filling the superheated crater that was all that remained of the city. Huge chunks of partially-melted glacier slid into the sea, casting up small, secondary waves. As the steam and smoke cleared, all that remained of the Northern Water Tribe was a crater, several kilometres across, filled with ash and sooty debris.

Si smiled, leaning back into his seat as the ringing in his ears died away.

"Signalman, give the order. We're done here."

"Yes, General Si!"

Si smiled to himself, but when he spoke it was directed to everyone in earshot.

"Gentleman, that explosion signals the end of the Four Nations."

The Roaring Dragons rumbled back up the ramp, and within minutes the cargo airship had disappeared into the icy skies.

-~0X0~-

This... this is only the beginning.

Review, comment, and ask questions, please! Reviews are what keep me going! If you want me to write more, then dagnabbit I will!

EDIT: Fixed the broken paragraph dividers.

EDIT 2: Rewrote most of the chapter to fix continuity, add a bit of foreshadowing, and narrow down the number of POV characters.