Archive of Our Own ^beta

Edward Elric is about eleven when he stands up, makes an extended effort to knock as many books off the old bastard’s shelves as he can, and says, “Fuck the military. Al, you interested in music at all?”

Alphonse Elric looks up at Ed with a gentle smile. What in the fresh hell, he doesn’t say. Instead, he offers a patient, “I guess?”

“Awesome,” says Ed. They’ve only got one suitcase and it’s oversized as hell, could probably hide a body or some withered animal corpse, but it’ll do. “I’ll go through the bastard’s old things, do some spring cleaning, dump all the shit at a market, and then we can pick up some fancy instruments and dominate the Central Symphony Orchestra.”

“First,” says Al, “could you tell me why?”

“Because we’re about to make a whole bunch of terrible decisions relating to alchemy, human transmutation, loss of limbs, et cetera,” says Ed. “And I say fuck that, and also fuck the military. But music? I think we can handle it.”

Al glances down at their notes meaningfully. His gaze takes a leisurely stroll over THE PLAN, circled thrice and underlined with the thickest pen they could find, complete with a helpful arrow dragging down to a very inconspicuous SHOPPING LIST!!!! followed by some choice ingredients and even choicier measurements.

“I did hear that the violin is a particularly nice instrument,” he says eventually.

Ed puts on his most manic grin. He goes to crack his knuckles with limited results. “Awesome,” he says. “Now let’s ditch before we get drafted.”

---

If Mustang doesn’t seem absolutely fucking devastated to have just passed the storm by, it’s because he doesn’t know what he missed.

---

The train ride to Central does nothing but lop off precious inches of Ed’s fuse and give him an awful crick in the neck. So obviously he takes his anger out on the goddamn fucking idiots who have the audacity to point the barrel of a shotgun at him and yap on about showing some respect, as if anyone who smells like a week’s worth of hangovers and morally bankrupt bullshit has any right to tell Edward fucking Elric where respect should go.

Al’s sighing before Ed can even start on his tangent.

“You want my respect?” Ed says with impressive restraint. He pulls himself up from the seat, grabs the barrel, and channels every last drop of spite into a steam explosion begging to happen. “You take a hit from me and keep your jaw unbroken, you earn my respect. Capiche?”

“You might want to watch your tongue,” Al tells the wannabe bandit.

The bandit says something like, “What the hell?”

Then Ed decks him.

Three audible cracks follow in close succession: first, from the asshole’s teeth cracking together and narrowly missing an opportunity to guillotine his tongue off, a second overlapping sound of his jaw breaking, and a final third from the abrupt introduction of skull to metal railing.

The bandit’s unconscious even before his brain starts bleeding. Ed ties him up anyway, because he’s in a bad mood and it’s a bad fucking day.

It takes twenty minutes, which is twenty minutes longer than Ed cares to spare, which does wonders for his mood. Like fancy little cartwheels of unadulterated anger and prepubescent emotional constipation, but with none of the charm and all of the crappy showboating. Look, Mom, I can be a bandit! Hey honey, mom’s fucking dead, so go sit in the corner and stop being a detriment to society and everyone’s safety, yeah?

No alchemic applause here, but the Elrics didn’t nab semi-miraculous, energy-conducting, array-fixing claps by sitting there and getting head pats. Not that they’re willing to start a country-wide disaster to get it back, obviously.

Chalk is used. When the box gets flung over the rails, Ed’s somewhere between ballistic and elated, because it’s his favourite time of day: knife o’clock.

Apparently two kids with knives is more terrifying than the threat of prosecution by Central Command, which is a damn near perfectly compliment. And holy hell can those bandits scream.

“Hey, asshole,” Ed says to Head Honcho Ugly, who rambles and gnashes his teeth and generally tries to act like a threat.

“If you could please put down—” Al thinks for a moment, then restarts with a more accurate suggestion— “If you could please surrender yourself peacefully and detach your automail, that would be just fine.”

“I’ll kill you,” Head Honcho Ugly roars. He then chooses to put the full length of his automail clampy arm through the side of the carriage, and Ed breaks into a splitting grin.

By the time Ed and Al are done with him (tied up in metal chord with an old Cretan sailor’s knot, gets tighter the more you pull because that’s the sort of paradoxical bullshit you need to ward off whatever the hell haunts the ocean), the asshole’s bruised nine ways to hell and blissfully unaware of his impending trial by fire.

“There’ll be tons of time for making a scene later on,” Al reasons, dragging Ed down to the last carriage. “We want to do things our way, don’t we, brother?”

And Ed has to say, “Well, yeah, you’re right,” because Al’s always right.

So while a fireworks show booms away eight carriages down, Ed and Al wrangle their stupidly oversized suitcase out of the luggage compartment and trail into Central like lost dogs. All they’re missing is an atmospheric drizzle and platinum skies and all that poetic shit.

---

Turns out that violins are expensive enough to warrant the loss of a nonvital organ, which sucks ass. Then again, Ed’s borderline gleeful as he heaps more and more of the bastard’s old garbage onto the pile.

What? All the stuff he left when he ditched is either growing some kind of alien mold or shaping up to be hell for someone with asthma. It’s a biological hazard and it’s got to go.

The suitcase is half empty when the manager calls in the owner. The owner glances over a piece of ceramic that smells like a tasty blend of old and nasty, pales, and makes a hushed call. Three hours later and there’s a museum curator handling the junk with gloves and wide eyes, which raises a lot of questions Ed doesn’t care to be answered.

Cash gets passed over in an envelope. Ed shoves it in his pants. Al sighs.

They wander two streets down to some store that’s been namedropped by every violinist who could tolerate being interrogated by two kids, since none of those idiots are ready for a dedicated relationship, let alone child-rearing.

Ed stops himself from kicking the door on account of the fact that a very expensive transaction is about to go down, and he’s not that much of an idiot. Al smiles like Ed deserves a sticker for demonstrating restraint, which is insulting in a stupidly heartwarming way.

The owner looks up from her chair, raises a single eyebrow (what, are they not good enough for both?), and dog-ears the corner of the page.

“Parents?” is her first question.

“Dead,” Ed says flatly. “We’re gonna make it big in the orchestra doing solos and shit.”

“Brother,” says Al, in a distinct accent of Exasperated Handler.

Apparently that’s just part of the normal crazies, because the owner stares on with disinterest. She radiates an aura of Waste My Time and Die Screaming, and she owns it so fucking hard that Ed makes a silent vow to up the ante. Crank the switch until it snaps and twist it around seven-twenty. Central’s got some real freaks, so Ed’s got to be even freakier without a glaring silver watch.

“Sure,” says the owner, in the same tone she’d say I will be there when you die. “Let’s figure this out.”

---

The Elrics don’t do giving up and all that shit.

They do if you knock me down I’ll get up and cave your face in, asshole, who the hell do you think you are?

Al’s version is probably something closer to, please take cover so you don’t get hurt.

Whatever. The point is that the Elrics go in and come out guns blazing. Ricochet’s just a sport of dodging.

“There’s no way you should be so good,” renowned and remarkably young violin teacher Anabelle says shakily, pointing a finger at the both of them like they’ve just murdered her entire family, but it’s her dog she’s particularly upset about. “You’ve been playing for—for two weeks!”

“Two and a half and counting,” Ed says flatly.

“We’ve been practicing hard,” explains Al.

Anabelle seems to like her hands a lot, because she’s got her pale face stuck up in them like they’ll tell her why her shitty boyfriend left her for the concertmaster of the East City Symphony Orchestra. Hell if Ed knows, and hell if he cares.

“Listen,” Ed says irritably, “we’re prodigies. Fuckin’ get used to it.”

In the space between Ed’s helpful statement and Annabelle’s next miserable sigh, Al shoves his elbow in between Ed’s ribs. “What he means to say,” Al says, raising his voice over Ed’s creative and tasteful expletives, “is that we’re really eager to try for the Central Symphony Orchestra.”

Anabelle gives them one of her God, Take Me Now kind of looks: one part wretched and two parts morbidly peaceful. “The Central Symphony Orchestra?” she says faintly.

“The one and only,” confirms Al.

If Anabelle sighs any deeper, Ed’s convinced she’ll go sputtering off into the atmosphere like a deeply depressed balloon.

Their lovely teacher sits in contemplation and probably ages fifteen years in the process. She progresses rapidly through all five stages of grief—which, honestly, power to her, fighting emotional trauma with sheer force of anger—then twists her perfectly lined lips into a scowl.

“Fine,” she says, hurling her snotty napkins in the bin. “The Central Symphony Orchestra? Fine." Her gaze does the world’s most violent u-turn, spinning on two wheels and squealing on burnt rubber and all. “Both of you are gonna solo the fuck out of everything, and then that bastard’s gonna go, ‘oh, Annie, you silly girl, I always loved you’ and try to break my fucking spine on the bathtub again, and then I’ll grab him by the coattails when he tries to run and transmute his shitty, expensive suit into a straightjacket and pour spiders directly down his throat.”

All of that flies over Ed’s head except for one word. “You’re an alchemist?” he demands.

Anabelle’s nose twitches, and not to sniff. “What about it?” she says warrily.

“What, so you weren’t smart enough to get drafted?”

“Fuck the military,” Anabelle says bitterly.

“I take back every terrible thing I thought about you,” Ed decides right there and then. He shakes the lady’s hand with both his flesh hands—that’s one thing done right—and pats her shoulder. “We’re gonna do awesome things together.”

Al sighs, but goes to shake Anabelle’s hand as well. “Thank you for your guidance,” he says, all proper.

Anabelle looks down on them like she’s just picked up a pair of feral cats off the street and is already thinking of what sweet lies to tell them to trick them into getting their shots. There’s a glint in her eye that’s curious one way and absolutely fucking terrifying another.

Ed and Al share a brief look. A few concealed knives, some body armour, a holster: take the violin out of Anabelle’s hands, and she makes a terrifying soldier.

“What the hell,” says Anabelle. “This goddamn country needs some turning over anyway.”

“With music or with a coup?” asks Al.

“I’m not picky,” Anabelle says dismissively. Then she leans in with all six feet and two inches of her very lean build like some kind of gothic tree, and, like a woman possessed, whispers, “We’re going to crush so many hopes and dreams with your innate talent.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ed says, bored. “Less testosterone and threats of court-marshalling this time, thank fuck.”

Al heaves a sigh, and if that doesn’t sum this all up, then nothing does.

---

The Elrics weren’t necessarily built for vigilantism, but they were built for general chaos, and vigilantism does a bang-up job sliding in gear.

“I had one request,” Anabelle says, visibly trying not to lose it. “Just one. Only one. Have you forgotten? You must’ve forgotten. How about you guess, then? Take a wild guess. Any guess at all. Take a wiiiild guess.”

Then she smiles, takes a deep breath through her mouth, looks up to the sky like she’s appealing to the fucking gods, and tries to settle herself with an unhinged laugh.

Ed isn’t scared of anything. He will admit, however, that he’s got a deeply ingrained fear of blond women wielding imaginary wrenches.

And what’s wrong with that? Wrench swings down, head goes crack, brain goes smush. One one two three five eight thirteen twenty-one thirty-five et-fucking-cetera, holy hell are they scary.

“Stay out of trouble,” Al recites quietly. “It was to stay out of trouble.”

“Oh no no no no,” says Anabelle, fully manic. “Close! But not quite.”

Al shuffles his feet. “It was, ‘please stay out of trouble, I’m begging you, for the love of all that is good in this world, keep your pointy knives and devil circles to yourselves, we’re new in town, please please please don’t get arrested,’” he says.

“That’s right,” says Anabelle. “And what did you do?”

“Get in trouble, use our knives, and draw arrays all the way down the alley.”

“And do you feel even slightly repentant about it?”

Al glances over the unconscious serial killer dangling by a massive rabbit trap. “No,” he decides.

Anabelle kneads the hell out of her temples. “Fine,” she grumbles. “Catching a serial killer, that’s good. Not getting hurt, also good. Vigilantism, eh, slippery slope there but it’s getting late and my head hurts and I need Advil. So,” she says, and doesn’t say anything else.

Ed’s eight percent sure Anabelle’s jaw would unhinge and bite his arm off if he pissed her off any more, so he just leaves it at, “So pie or nah?”

“Please.”

---

The name Fullmetal doesn’t mean jack, but the Elric Brothers start dotting hushed conversations, then page nine newspaper articles, then reports passed discreetly under coffee shop tables, and through all that backasswards meandering, finds itself being the first line of conversation from a certain Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes to one Colonel Roy Mustang.

---

Two years go by, Ed’s, what, thirteen? Anyway, they’re introduced to the small crowd of confused faces that make up the Central Youth String Ensemble, spend maybe a month outperforming everyone, then get shipped over to the East City and its Chamber Orchestra. Whatever the hell happens there, it’s enough to have the conductor politely introducing Ed and Al to more prestigious opportunities in Central, where they’ll be sufficiently distant for the others to start talking shit and having emotional breakdowns or whatever.

Hilariously enough, Fuery stumbles into them after one recital, all bashful and shy and pretending like his suit isn’t five kinds of fancy and six kinds of expensive.

“You were incredible,” Fuery tells Ed after recovering from a handshake, what the hell?

“Thanks,” Ed says, eyeing Fuery’s swaying form suspiciously. “You good?”

“I’ll be fine,” Fuery says, turns around, takes two steps, and passes out.

Anabelle speeds all the way to the hospital in a very blatant display of how little she gives a shit about death and god. The doctors take one look at Fuery and declare that his blood sugar is having a great fucking time bungee jumping, that bastard.

Ed suggests that they wait for Fuery to wake up. Al looks so proud he’s almost crying, which makes Anabelle cackle like a witch, so by the time Fuery’s rubbing the spots out of his eyes, Ed’s ready to rip someone’s head off.

“Fucking,” Ed begins, pointing an accusing finger at Fuery until part of brain tells him to calm down before he has a heart attack, “don’t do that again. Ever.”

“Stay in touch,” Al tells Fuery, pressing a slip of paper into his hands. “But if you could please keep us out of military conversations, we would appreciate that.”

Fuery nods vigorously. “I’ll try,” he says firmly, then waves a cheery goodbye as a ridiculously expensive car picks him up and drives away.

Huh. Revelations are free of charge, apparently.

---

“Crying’s best done in the privacy of your room,” Anabelle says sagely, walking past the practice rooms of uCentral with the eloquence of someone who’s never questioned the sounds coming out of those musty rooms and who isn’t about to start soon.

“Oh, yes, it’s probably better that way,” Al says, taking a few conspicuous steps away from the doors.

“Of course,” says Anabelle. “Wasting time in practice rooms is a crime punishable by death.”

Ed gleefully recounts one of several times he kicked open one of uCentral’s practice room doors to be met with a snarling, half-dead, emotionally wrecked music major shovelling crackers that were more salt than substance past lips that were auditioning to be the fucking desert floor. And Ed could’ve watched the kid down Advil like he was about to bodily tackle heart failure to the asthma attack inducing floor and start knocking its teeth out, but auditions don’t take hangovers or panic attacks as excuses, and Ed’s not that emotionally available.

They’re goddamn Elrics. They don’t hunt monsters, work alchemic miracles, or go around being thou for the people. They practice in practice rooms. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but has fourteen coded research journals disguised as travelogues, it’s probably an Elric.

After getting shipped back to Central, Anabelle goes around and wedges Ed and Al into every vaguely professional gig like the opportunistic witch she is. It takes all of six months for every pro in the music industry to cross to the other side of the street and avoid all eye contact with them should they be so unfortunate to wander into the no-man’s land that makes up the distance between Ed and anyone who feels inclined to piss him off that particular day.

Al smiles at everyone anyway because he’s got the heart of an angel and the face of a puppy. It works best when Ed isn’t around to snarl over his shoulder, rabies being contagious and all.

And, like, Anabelle hasn’t got anything better to do, so she buys first aid supplies in bulk, shoves them in her old purses, hurls them at Ed and Al when they try to sneak out and take down some disgusting criminal at two in the morning, and tells them, “Do. Not. Injure. Your fingers. Understand?”

Ed doesn’t say anything about how Anabelle looks crazed enough to break their fingers herself if she feels like it because he values his own life.

“You look like shit,” Ed says instead.

“He doesn’t mean that,” Al hurries to say.

“Yes I did. Get some more sleep, lady, or you’re gonna trip straight into an oncoming car.”

“Yes, yes,” Anabelle says lightly. “Nothing concealer and caffeine can’t fix. Curfew’s at five, any later and I’m siccing the military on you.”

It’s terrifying because she means it.

Things go on like that for a while, maybe six months or something, and it’s just another day of practicing for twenty-five of the available twenty-four hours per day, polishing up arrays on the side of water purification tanks they volunteered to upgrade for the Ishvalan settlement on the edge of town, prepping dinner before Anabelle gets back, yada, yada, the fruits of labour sell for five cenz apiece, whatever.

“Quick heads up,” Anabelle says one day as she locks the door to the apartment. She’s got that lilt to her voice that indicates it’s bad, but not panic-room levels of shit-hit-the-fan. “There’s a military guy going around and asking about, quote, ‘the Elric violinists’, unquote.”

Ed punches his definitely over-kneaded dough. “Black hair, bitch face, air of a rich heiress?” he asks.

“And not my type,” finishes Anabelle.

Al looks over from where he’s skinning some apples. “The Colonel,” he says simply.

“The fucking Colonel,” Ed repeats with all the disdain he can physically manage, which isn’t enough. “Fuckin’ knew he’d be out and about tripping and pretending to drop all his cards and geting his ass worshiped. The military’s a genocidal hooker and Mustang’s the idiot who fell in love with her.”

“I don’t know if that’s right,” says Al. “I’d say the military’s a vat of nitromethane and Colonel Mustang’s trying to balance it on his head, on one foot, on top of a unicycle, on top of a moving, burning car.”

“With Hawkeye watching.”

“And... huh. Do you think—”

“Hughes? Yeah. Yeah, probably. Works out like that.”

There’s an awkward silence that kind of makes Ed want to blow something up or throw something on the ground to break it. Anabelle pretends like she doesn’t hear anything since she knows how to stay in her lane.

“Bastard’s gonna get doused,” Ed grumbles, then punches the dough again.

“You can stop that now,” says Al.

“All attractive men are particularly flammable,” Annabelle adds, which... what the fuck, okay.

One dinner and half an apple pie later, there’s a knock at the door, a solid rap-rap-rap that gets all three of them staring sharply at each other and hurrying to move the cutlery around quietly.

By the time Anabelle opens the door, Ed and Al are sitting on freshly transmuted swings dangling from the side of the building.

The Elrics don’t run from their problems. They used to slap a hand over their eyes, yell coming through! and deal with the collateral damage whenever, and that was... like, it worked, same way capitalism “works”, but hindsight’s a bitch like that, yeah?

“Ms. Anabelle Sherman?”

Ed fucking cringes, a full-body reflex, and he’s scowling and growling low and sharpening his wits on a grindstone of pompous assery to brace himself from whatever the hell’s gonna happen.

Al’s head leans forward doing the thing he does when he doesn’t want to shake his head disapprovingly. Ed scowls harder, but stops grinding his teeth.

“Yes, that’s me,” says Anabelle, exceptionally calmly. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“I’m Colonel Roy Mustang of Central Command, and this—” a brief pause to make space for a gesture— “is Lieutenant Hawkeye. May we come in?”

“By all means,” says Anabelle, and the door closes without a single creak.

Ed and Al share one alarmed look before they, very quietly, extend the swings lower by another five meters. It’s fucking Hawkeye. Sue them.

“So,” begins Anabelle, “was there something you wanted? It’s not every day I get a visit from a colonel of our lovely country’s military. Nothing nefarious, I hope?”

“Nothing of the sort,” says Mustang, lying through his perfect pearly whites. That’s an oversight on nature’s part if Ed’s ever seen one, given how much coffee Mustang guzzles. Ed knows he burns through the office’s stash like he gets a high off watching his minions drag themselves off to make another pot. God knows why Havoc hasn’t picked up the damn thing and smashed it over the sorry bastard’s head.

“I see,” says Anabelle. “Questions, then?”

“Yes, Ms. Sherman. We’ll do our best not to take up too much of your time.”

The if you cooperate goes unspoken. Fortunately, Anabelle’s got the situational awareness of a capitalist god, and hell if she’s going to get all whimpering and whining over some well-dressed toothpick.

Anabelle snorts, one of her dainty sharp exhales where she flips her hair over her shoulder and looks up at the corner of the room. “Just Anabelle, if you would,” she says haughtily, pro musician act firing on all cylinders. Wr-wr-wrrrr goes the engine, and off she goes doing wheelies. “Ms. Sherman was my mother, bless her pretty, wretched soul.”

“Then, Anabelle,” says Mustang, “I’d like to inquire about a pair of violinists that have been spotted in the area—gold hair, gold eyes, highly talented.”

“The Elric brothers,” Anabelle says easily.

“You speak as if you’re familiar with them.”

“I used to be second chair at the Central Symphony Orchestra. I may be dim-witted, sir, but I assure you, my ears are very sharp.”

Sharp enough to snap, intonation! and your vibrato is uneven! at fuck-all in the morning. God doesn’t sleep so neither should you was her justification, as if they’re demon spawns sent to kill god or something. It’s freaky as all fuck because she’s so goddamn accurate.

“But,” says Anabelle, in a concerningly mischievous tone, “I hear they’re absolutely wonderful alchemists.”

Ed lets loose the stream of very vicious, very pointed, and very quiet expletives he’s been holding down for a while, whereas Al just gives a heavy sigh.

“Is that so?” Mustang says, feigning ignorance like he has a monopoly on the damn act. “You know them that well?”

“I know them some,” Anabelle says casually.

“And may I ask why you’re privy to such information?”

“They’re teenagers, Colonel,” Anabelle drawls. “Are they supposed to have any secrets other than who they’re in love with and where they’re really getting their volunteer hours?”

“I was thinking something more along the lines of vigilante activity,” says Mustang.

“Motherfucker,” hisses Ed.

“Brother,” Al hisses in response, then makes the universal neck-slit gesture for shut up shut up shut up.

It goes quiet upstairs. “Did you hear something?” Mustang asks innocently, in the same way he’d say, I eat rats for breakfast because I’m a sadist.

“Oh, the trough?” says Anabelle. “It always squeaks when it storms hard. Could you upstanding military folk do something about that? I’m not sure the civil engineers have that much time, since I assume they’re off in Ishval fixing up the society the military, you know—” a purposeful pause that’s the embodiment of shanking someone with a meat cleaver— “annihilated and razed their civilization to the ground. But,” Anabelle adds with a little laugh, “what do I know?”

“While not entirely accurate given the current state of our government, you paint a very likely scenario for the future,” Mustang answers smoothly, without a beat of hesitation, because fuck him.

Anabelle stays quiet for a little longer, probably scoping out the way Hawkeye’s trained on her like there’s gonna be a shootout any second, and sure, whatever, it’s not professional to empty your clip into a lady with a god complex, but that single set of cutlery on the table is damn fine silver and could be swapped out for a scalpel without anyone on either end complaining.

“Well,” Anabelle says simply, “I’m afraid I don’t know any more about the Elrics than what I’ve told you.”

“You’ve told us plenty,” Mustang tells her, which is just awesome, he’s definitely not gonna hightail it to Intel and grimace through an hour and a half long spiel of oh my baby, oh my sweet Elicia before siccing the hounds on Ed and Al and sniffing them out to their eyelashes.

Being a good hostess and whatever, Anabelle shows them out and says, “Thank you for your service to our noble country, brave soldiers!” before shutting the door with purpose and poking her head out the window.

“So we’ve got a problem,” she summarizes as Ed and Al haul ass to flip over the windowsill and deconstruct the swings just as Mustang and Hawkeye stroll out the front door of the complex.

“Problem,” Ed repeats sourly. “Mustang doesn’t make problems. He is the problem.”

“He probably doesn’t have any bad intentions,” says Al. “He never got to ask us about Dad, and we all know what’s up the Colonel’s sleeve.”

“No we don’t,” says Ed. “That’s the point.”

“Cards, I meant. He’s got cards up his sleeve. Please just go with the metaphor, Brother.”

“Bastard’s got a card gun and his aim isn’t as shit as I want it to be. I say we knock out power to Central HQ for a week, maybe blow out a sinkhole right under their fancy, shiny, greasy shoes, maybe catch some of the fuckin’ skeletons giving the orders,” suggests Ed.

“If they’re really as old and incompetent as they sound, a bad fall could kill them,” Anabelle contemplates aloud. She touches hand to chin. “Not bad,” she says, brows creeping up her perfectly contoured face.

Maybe all Amestris needs for a brighter, less war-crazed future is a bucket of water and a careless janitor. Ed pockets that idea for another time.

“Either way, it really is best if we avoid the Colonel,” Al tells Anabelle. “He gets... ideas,” and there’s the furtive glance over to Ed, “which we’d rather not be a part of.”

“Because none of us are missing limbs or a suit of armor,” Ed tags on bluntly.

That gets Anabelle’s attention for a brief moment. “That was curious use parallel structure,” she notes.

“I was, like, sixteen when they tried to get me to commit war crimes, so.”

“Huh. That’s messed up.”

“Colonel Mustang isn’t a bad man,” Al assures her, “but our association itself kind of spawns disaster.”

“More like fuckin’ calamity,” Ed says. He makes grandiose gestures outlining mushroom clouds to illustrate the drama, the threat of the death, the general fuck-uped-ness of their Promised Day shenanigans. “Last time, and I shit you not, we brought about the actual fucking Apocolypse.”

“Biblical?” Anabelle asks incredulously.

“Yeah, God hates us,” Ed snarks. There’s a horrible moment where Anabelle’s eyes go wide, so he says, “No, not the biblical one, the hell?”

“Store-bought,” Anabelle mumbles under her breath. “Should’ve known.”

“Let’s just all go on with our individual lives,” Al says, looking between Annabelle and Ed like he’s juggling a lit fuse.

“Got it,” says Anabelle. Her notebook’s out in a second, the tacky one with a billion sticky notes and leather strap without a button. “Elrics and Colonel Insincere will literally ignite if put in the same room and set the entire country on fire.”

“It’s sad because it’s true,” Al mutters sadly.

“And that Hawkeye woman was quite attractive,” notes Anabelle. She even smiles a little.

“No,” Ed says, after his higher cognitive functions start chugging away again.

“Yes, I know, fraternization regulations are bullshit and the like,” Anabelle says dismissively. Ed kind of wants to bash his own head in with a rock. “Whatever. So should we terrorize East City again, make some people cry, or should we let Colonel Mustang find his merry way back?”

“Auditions are in two weeks,” Al says, mildly scandalized.

“Stalling for time it is,” Anabelle decides, already moving to make a few calls. Whatever number she dials, it’s one burned into her memory by the way she doesn’t care to look and holds the receiver as far away from her as humanly possible. “I don’t know how good those kids in Intel are, but orchestra kids got a bond stronger than love, tougher than hate.”

“Not sure what a bunch of underpaid music majors are gonna do against, you know, the military,” Ed says miserably.

Anabelle turns with the face of someone who met the Devil and wasn’t impressed. “You’d be surprised,” she says slowly, “just how many back-alley rats would kill to get on the good side of their favourite bard.”

Slap, slap, slap, Al connects the dots. “Oh, because of their libido,” he says elegantly.

“More or less.”

“Hughes is like a bloodhound on crack,” Ed warns Anabelle. “He’s got rats too, probably bigger, and they can do shit like run marathons on rooftops and shoot people.”

“Neat,” Anabelle says, thoroughly unimpressed. “Ours own bars and brothels and can charm their way into and out of your pants and you’ll be thanking them for stealing your wallet along the way.”

“Mustang’s got bars and brothels covered too. Paranoid doesn’t even begin to describe that asshole, and then Hughes comes in and handcranks it to a whole other fuckin’ level.”

“How much do you want to bet that the Venn diagram of Colonel Insincere’s people and arts kids is a circle?”

Ed opens his mouth. Shuts it. Runs through numbers that start with military state and lack of funding for the arts and ends with rent’s fucking expensive. Swears loudly, then punches the couch.

“Watch the furniture,” snaps Anabelle.

“What the hell is it this time,” goes the other side of the line.

The voice isn’t familiar, but the underlying It’s Six O'Clock and It’s Still Too Early For This has Ed on edge immediately. The lady talks like a bullet and something tells him that it’s probably better that this conversation is happening over the phone than in person.

“Got some golden boys here with me,” Anabelle says without blinking.

“The smartasses?”

“I think ‘prodigy’ is the term cultured people use nowadays, Linnie.”

“I manage a cultured whorehouse, Annie, don’t give me shit. Casualties?”

“Wh—nobody’s fucking dead,” Ed says, offended.

“None,” Anabelle tells the aforementioned Linnie. “We’ve got a puppy on a long leash yapping at our heels, though.”

“Name?”

“One P-15, notoriety included.”

“Madame’s kid? How’d you get your hands on a catch like that?”

“Apparently everyone in this little club orbits around the same black hole.”

Linnie snorts. “And what do you want me to do? I’m not playing cards with Madame. She’s got a goddamn card gun and the rest of us are lucky if we even get the sleeve.”

Ed makes a very loud show of throwing his arms in the air and kicking the couch, which squeals halfway across the room before coming to a stop.

Al blinks tiredly from where he’s still seated on a damn cushion. “Brother,” he says flatly.

“The fucking furniture,” Anabelle sings, sweet as petrol. To Linnie, she quickly amends, “No, no, we count bars, not cards. All I’m asking for is a nice, young fellow to show two impressionable young children around Central Command.”

A sigh would’ve probably filled the transitory silence if not for the muffled sounds of promiscuity and other kinky shit crooning through the line.

“Must be a cheap-ass place if your walls are so thin,” Ed says, voice recklessly and purposefully loud.

“You don’t have to beg if you want me to dig out your pretty eyes with my fingers and sell them to some creep in Aerugo,” says Linnie, every word popping off her tongue like a semi-auto that’s way too fucking happy to piss ricochet through every wall.

Ed has a sneaking suspicion that this woman might be blonde. He swallows hard, and Al gives him the Oh, Silly Brother smile, which just makes his fucking day.

Anabelle throws on a wicked grin. “There are children here,” she says cheerfully.

“Then tell them there’s no way their parents haven’t been flipped upside down and all around getting into the mood.”

The very thought of any of that makes Ed wants to douse himself in the drinks Anabelle alchemizes into the floorboards for a particularly bad day and walk directly into a fucking fire. “Die,” Ed says half-heartedly, then gives his all in sinking directly into the couch.

“Can you do it or not?”

“And, pray tell, what do you intend to do on said tour?”

“Study,” Anabelle answers cooly. “I hear Central was originally built on top of an extensive cavern system. The boys, bless their innocent hearts, want to look around the grounds, examine the paving, estimate the probability of a sinkhole opening up and dropping a few old bluebirds into a nest of sewer water and cement, and the like.”

“Hah! Playing with chalk and markers again, Annie? I thought you’d given that up years ago.”

“Bad influence goes both ways,” Anabelle says, and refuses to elaborate.

By the time the back-and-forth exhausts itself, Ed’s temper has mostly run its course, and that marathon sucks ass. Instead of transmuting every fucking floorboard in Mustang’s house into nitrogen triiodide and staining everything he loves a violent, regal, tasteless purple, all Ed wants is to decompose the entire flat down to its base elements of Overpriced Rent and Shitty Insulation, except that would kill a whole bunch of people and his moral compass isn’t that fucked. It’s just been whacked on a rock a few too many times, maybe blown up and impaled a bit. Whatever.

“Wonderful news!” Anabelle declares once the nightmare is over, and not a goddamn second too soon. “Linnie’s agreed to get one of her best girls sweep one Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc off his feet!”

The words Second Lieutenant and Jean Havoc rattle off the sides of Ed’s brain like a particularly antsy spider in a glass jar. “The fuck,” is all he manages once he’s recalibrated.

“Uh,” says Al, “not to discredit Ms. Linnie’s connections, but that’s one of the Colonel’s men, isn’t it?”

“It’s impossible to compromise anyone on his team,” Ed says heatidly. “Bitch had to put her nasty, dusty nails all the way through his whole spine to knock him out, and he fuckin’ came back. Literally guns-a-blazing, surprise-bitch style, put Mustang in debt so hard the bastard still gets queasy whenever someone smokes twenty feet around him.”

Apparently Havoc isn’t Anabelle’s type either, because she starts filing her nails as if they aren’t nubs already with single-minded intensity. “Good for him,” she says. Scritch scritch scritch. “Cross lung cancer off the list, that’s nice.”

“We’re all gonna die,” Ed says bitterly.

“It’ll be okay,” Al says soothingly. “As long as we practice like we’re about to die, I’m sure we’ll make it.”

It isn’t despair Ed feels, but it’s damn near close. “I meant Havoc, Al,” he says. “Not the audition. Fuckin’ Havoc.”

“Well, I’m sure that’ll go just fine as well,” Al says, notably less confident.

If Ed can’t turn Mustang’s house into a powder-spitting boobytrap, significantly lower the land value of every surrounding building, or get everyone else to sit the hell down on this double-decker making for the literal apocalypse, there’s only one thing Ed can feasibly do to stay sane.

He turns on his heel and marches to his room, stomping his feet down as hard as he can physically manage without putting himself through the floor and probably convincing their downstairs neighbours that he’s managed to transmute a whole horse into the apartment this time around.

“I’m gonna go practice,” snarls Ed, “and we meet back in two hours to figure out how to keep the underground zombies in.”

Anabelle’s brows creep up her forehead. “You’d think zombies would be the first item on the list,” she says evenly.

“Yeah, well, turns out ‘kill it with fire’ works eleven times out of ten.”

“Molotovs it is,” Anabelle decides, and exits the kitchen to dig out some of her assorted illegal goods.

“I’ll go practice too,” Al says. He beams as if to say, See? Life isn’t so awful when you drop the repeat offender act.

Ed screams into a pillow at a perfect A, tunes furiously to the echo, and breaks half the hairs on his bow shredding through the third movement of Sibelius, because if there’s one thing he knows he can’t fuck up, it’s a goddamn killer energico.

Hypothetically, Ed could walk up Havoc with a smile like a demon and give him the old, “Lungs haven’t fossilized yet, you lucky bastard?” or variants.

Havoc clearly puts two and two together quickly, what with the minors marching toward him like they’re here to pitch him the best boy scout cookies he’s ever going to have in his life or die trying.

Ah, fuck it. New year, new me.

The first thing that comes out of Ed’s mouth is, “I’m Al’s older brother. Older, yeah?”

Then he says, “And my eyes are naturally that way, thanks for staring, ‘m not fuckin’ blind.”

And, as an afternote, he adds, “Show us the plaza none of you puppies ever use so we can upgrade it from a sorry waste of space to functional political leverage.”

Ed can tell Havoc’s decently unsettled by the way he hasn’t gone for a puff in half a minute. “What?” Havoc asks dumbly.

“I’m sorry about my brother,” Al says, jamming an elbow between where it hurts and where it hurts more, the goddamn traitor. “He’s Edward Elric and I’m Alphonse Elric. You can just call us Ed and Al, though.”

Havoc leans down and in, which is insulting on a very personal level, and Ed’s tempted to stick that smoke up his nostril.

“You’re the Elric brothers?” he asks incredulously. “The genius soloists? The ones who make grown men weep tears of existential dread?”

“We’ve got Prokofiev crammed up to the eyes,” Ed says sarcastically.

“And, uh,” Havoc says, probably thinking Ed’s just admitted he has some incurable disease, “the other pros don’t got, uh, that?”

Al smiles gamely. “Maybe just up to the knees,” he offers.

Havoc’s hand twitches for another cigarette, his brain apparently running on a single brain cell and forgetting that he hasn’t finished his current two-minute carcinogen-inhaling break yet. “Cool,” he says weakly. He clears his throat and gives a less lame, “Well, come on, then. I promised Aria I’d give you boys the full show.”

And then Havoc gives the world’s most unenlightening tour, what with Central Command being a literal military facility, and if you look to the right you’ll find offices, and on the left you can see more offices, and that’s mess hall, looks and feels like a prison half of or all the time, and over there? That’s classified military intel, kid, I can’t have you running around, not like you’ve been up and down and all around these halls a billion times trying to pry your CO’s head out of his ass to hand-feed him reports like some kind of underpaid translator. And that’s ignoring the whole child soldier thing, but welcome to Amestris, amiright?

“You know, it’s kind of funny,” Havoc says, trying real hard to act like he doesn’t care. “The Colonel was actually kind of curious about you two. Y’know, prodigy violinists and all,” he quickly amends when Ed scowls.

“It really isn’t that unique,” says Al.

“Nah, but we’re unique,” says Ed. He gestures to Al’s—everything, then throws Havoc a flat look. “See? Actual goddamn angel. Fresh from heaven ‘n shit.”

The corner of Havoc’s mouth twitches. It would be more subtle if his cig didn’t jerk violently upward. “What about you?” he asks.

“I’m loud and I’m fuckin’ mean,” says Ed.

“I can’t refute that,” says Al.

Havoc takes a long draw, exhales, then says, “Ah. Kids.”

“Shut it, big-city boy,” says Ed, but with less I’ll kill you than usual on account of the whole low profile thing. Whatever.

“No, no, I’m from out East. You know, where—hang on, I want to get the number right—I’m going to say a whole zero people live, sheep have an organized government, and the occasional traumatized veteran wanders off into the woods and comes back with lights in their eyes, so you gotta throw them in the nearest river and scrub them down down with the foulest goddamn soap you’ve ever had the displeasure of smelling.”

“What, you guys still do the fairy scrub?” asks Ed. “That shit is vile.”

Havoc shrugs. “Hey, you do what you gotta do,” he says. “The fey are freaky as hell.”

“You treat that as fact?” Al asks, probably delighted to meet someone who actually believes in that crap.

“No, it’s superstition and I swear by it,” says Havoc. Another puff. “Best not to take your chances with stuff like that, right? Stay safe, stay level-headed, heed warnings, the sort.”

Ed takes his chances even when his chances are shit fuck. Al just gives a blank smile and returns a good-natured shrug.

“Yeah, I’m guessing you didn’t digest any of that,” says Havoc.

“We’re Elrics,” explains Al.

“Hell yeah we’re Elrics,” says Ed. “Our blood is, like, a fuckin’ smoothie of childhood trauma, poor decision-making skills, impulse like a landmine, and fifty kinds of emotional baggage.”

To Havoc’s credit, he does look mildly concerned. “Huh,” he says contemplatively. “That’s... definitely over weight capacity.”

“You do what you gotta do,” Ed says in his best I Work For Mustang and Every Day of My Life Is Suffering voice.

“Brother,” Al says sharply, before turning the full force of his smile on Havoc. “If it’s not too much trouble, could you please show us around the central plaza? We’re curious about the landscaping and the paving. Architectural engineering is the key to success for a regime like ours.”

God, Al, way to press all the nationalism buttons and smash in the monitor with a goddamn hammer.

“Yeah, we just loooove this cozy military dictatorship we’ve got,” Ed says plainly. “Would be a real shame if some ambitious bastard of an alchemist fuckin’ tripped over the rug and toppled the government by accident. But,” he finishes pitilessly, “the hell do I know, right?”

“Brother,” Al repeats, with emphasis on the unspoken why must you be like this.

Havoc, the poor bastard, freezes in place like he’s been photographed mid-tase. On a totally unrelated note, he coughs into his elbow and puts out his cig with more force than strictly necessary. It turns into some kind of panic jig, what with the limbs flailing everywhere and the polluting. “Sure,” he says quickly. “Plaza. Right. Aria mentioned something about—rocks. Paving.”

“Rocks,” Al repeats cheerfully, and Havoc wisely shuts up and stops embodying foot-in-mouth.

It’s maybe five minutes to the plaza. That’s five minutes too long for Ed, so he passes the time by glaring at everyone who walks by and instilling the fear of angry children into this entire damn base. Fuckers need a reality check real bad, and Ed’s the most generous philanthropist in the world when it comes to serving those up.

It’s an okay weather day out, but somehow the sorry excuse for a garden gives the impression that it’s the End fucking Times. The plants are alive and probably more than happy to be cannibalizing each other given some of them look way the fuck foreign and super invasive, and the eight-foot tall statues of people who are definitely war criminals or straight up facist icons by the look of their facial hair form a pentagram smack-dab in the center of the plaza. The latter of the two observations definitely has Ed’s hackles up and teeth bared, but then Al reminds him about body language and being a nice person and shit.

“Here we are,” Havoc says, gesturing vaguely to the huge waste of space. “Start, uh, looking around, I guess.”

“Cool,” Ed says, and they bolt in opposite directions and immediately start scheming to cave the entire place in.

The first stone comes off without putting up much of a fight, which is nice, because Ed isn’t exactly famous for his restraint, and he’s also got a crowbar. The sentience of stone tiles is probably some kind of nutjob paper at uCentral for all he cares. And he does. There are maybe three people in Amestris who understand the bullsit putty that constitutes a soul; one of them’s a blood relation and the other’s the closest thing Ed can think of to a vengeful god.

The deconstruction array is painfully simple. It would take a really shit alchemist to fuck up something this basic, and it would take an even shittier alchemist to assume, hey, ground’s ground, how about we sink this bastard and assume everything’s gonna be puppies and rainbows?

“You getting mostly normal readings?” Ed shouts to Al.

“Ignoring the hives I’m getting from zombie aura, yes,” says Al.

The immediate action, single-minded determination, and mention of zombies probably smells like a lot of mistakes in immediate succession, and Havoc gets that whiff right up his nose and kind of just stares in bewilderment. Like, the hell are you supposed to do when two creepy kids start pulling out crowbars and prying up paved stones? Tell them “hey, wait, that’s kind of weird” and receive a “yeah, I fuckin’ know,” and just... leave it there?

“Kids are so goddamn weird,” Havoc swears under his breath. Louder, he asks, “Hey! What’re you doing?”

“Getting a compositional reading of the ground, hotshot, breathe or you’re gonna pass out,” Ed snaps.

Havoc chooses right fucking now to peek over Ed’s shoulder and stare blankly at the deconstruction array, which communicates to Ed that the extent of Havoc’s knowledge in chemistry is gunpowder + fire = bad if you didn’t mean to make it go boom and other equations resulting in explosions.

“You two are alchemists,” Havoc says, with none of the usual shock.

Who the hell knows what Roy’s been telling his pawns. Ed rolls his eyes as dramatically as he can. “If you think this is impressive, I don’t know to tell you,” he says. “Have fun with the heart attacks every time you gotta shake hands with a state alchemist.”

“I get palpitations every time one of them sneezes in the same room,” says Havoc. “Who’s to say their crazy isn’t airborne?”

“Ha! Fair enough.”

“On another note, mind telling me why you’re dismantling the ground, and if I need to ask for an evac order?”

“It’s nothing nefarious,” Al says helpfully. He brushes the alchemical residue off his pants and wanders over wearing a smile like he actually means it. “We’re just getting a lay of the land.”

“Okay,” Havoc says skeptically. “And you need that because...”

Al puts on his if I talk enough thesaurus I won’t have to bonk you on the head to get you to cooperate face. “Well,” he begins as Ed prepares to zone the fuck out, “Central Command was built on a really neat plot of land, you see, rich in dolomite and gypsum, which means, naturally, that sinkholes and caves are all the more likely to occur unexpectedly, especially given Central’s constant tampering with the land, the constant pipe maintenence, the possibility of there being an underground system of sewers and general not-goodness and the like stretching from beneath Central to all the major cities of Amestris, and maybe the occasional military parade. Let me tell you all about it.”

And Al does. Three minutes in and Havoc’s face is already starting to do laps in la-la-land. Ed scratches away at the aptly named sinkhole array and tries not to cackle when Havoc glances his way like Ed’s just run away with a stick of dynamite and a matchbox.

“Huh,” Havoc says when Al takes a short break to breathe. “Cool. So, to ask again, why exactly are you prepping the ground for a transmutation?”

“Because we’re hopped up on crazy juice,” snaps Ed. “Now can you calm the fuck down?”

Havoc leaves them alone after that, probably because you can’t tackle a thirteen year-old and feel like a wrestling god instead of a grown ass man physically assaulting a minor and boy is that uncomfortable. He gives them some serious side-eye though, and Ed would bet his right fucking arm that Havoc’s gonna scamper off to one Colonel Shitty Space Heater and give a long, emotional spiel about why parenthood is ass and comitting to love is a curse.

The whole process takes five arrays because learning from your enemies is step two on How Not To Die: A Guide, after staying in your lane when Major General Armstrong rolls her terrifying presence into the room like a tank and looks at you like she’s trying to decide where to hide the body.

Havoc lets out an audible sigh of relief when Ed and Al start moving the tiles back in place. “Oh, thank god,” he says. “Can we go now? Are we done?”

“We’re done,” Al says brightly. He bows, a perfect forty-five degrees according to some courtesy rules Ed heard once and then purged from his brain. “Thank you for the tour. It was very informative.”

A new kind of fear lights up in Havoc’s eyes as he watches Ed and Al retrieve their crowbars. “If HQ goes up in a giant explosion, I’ll be pretty pissed,” he tells them warrily.

Ed snorts. “Explosion,” he repeats mockingly. “This isn’t a demolition; it’s step one to revolution.”

Havoc blinks like his brain short-circuited. “Oh my god,” he says distantly. “It’s a tiny Colonel.”

And Ed’s about to put his ass in the fucking ground alongside the rest of the shitty old skeletons running this godforsaken country because the words tiny and Colonel were just used in the same sentence refering to Edward fucking Elric which is a war crime punishable by death.

He’s halfway through his losing-my-shit inhale when Al grabs a fistful of his braid and yanks back hard.

“Al!” Ed half-protests, half-gnashes. “The fucker just called me fuckin’ short and I’m gonna break his fuckin’ kneecaps with my fuckin’ forehead.”

“Brother,” Al says serenely, “we have an appointment to keep. Besides, you have a crowbar.”

That’s one way to say if we miss our session in the practice rooms I will destroy you to Ed and ha ha our secret! to Havoc.

All that’s great because Havoc’s upgraded from kind of afraid to openly terrified, which makes Ed narrow his eyes and growl at the thoroughly traumatized bastard experimentally.

“O-kay, it is one-hundred-percent time to leave,” Havoc says, voice pitched up at the tippy fucking top of the parabola. “Let’s go, exit’s this way,” he tries to add, doing his best to herd Ed and Al out of military grounds without stepping within a three meter radius of them.

They’re coming around a corner when Al freezes. That obviously makes Ed freeze, and Havoc jolts up like he’s got a stick rammed up his ass.

Al tilts his head like he’s listening hard, which he is, to a whole slew of shit Ed can’t hear. His face goes all inquisitive, then his brows shoot up.

“We should go,” he says quickly to Ed.

That directly translates to window, out, out, out. Ed doesn’t even think to ask questions because questions take time which Al implies they don’t have.

“Cool,” Ed says, slapping a few bills into Havoc’s hands. “Fee for the tour, hush money, do whatever. We’re heading out. Say anything and I’ll haunt your fuckin’ dreams and blind spots. Bye.”

They’re sprinting into the bushes before Havoc can think to scream or pass out. Whatever the hell happens after that, Ed doesn’t really give a shit. Havoc’s not the kind of guy that melts like a really shitty meringue just because he crossed Bradley in the bathroom, and even if he was, it’s not like the Elrics have tap-danced across every panic button just yet, so they got time and wiggle room.

Besides, that’s Mustang’s problem now. Asshole.

---

Some idiot once said confidence was the secret to a kickass performance. Ed has two glaring problems with that: first, confidence doesn’t do jack if you’re stupid, and second, he’s pretty sure some pro-war crazy wrote that in a propoganda paper and called all Ishvalans unenlightened savages in the next paragraph.

“Let me get this straight,” Anabelle says, handling her cutlery like a serial killer on a mission. “You want to perform for all of High Command. And the Fuhrer.”

“He’s a rich man with a mansion and everything,” Ed argues. He feels like he’s going up against Mom, with the whole no, it’s a good idea, I swear, if you let me throw this match into this room full of loose flour something really exciting will happen. He wants to, pardon his Cretan, bash his head in with a tuning fork.

Anabelle looks like she’s contemplating throwing him out the window. She closes her eyes, probably realizing that a fall from the fourth floor wouldn’t kill something like Ed. “And,” she says, “what would you even play?”

“Canon in D,” Ed says nastily. “I’ll do Zigeunerweisen or something, what the hell?”

“And Al?”

“Accompaniment, obviously. Then he goes up with Liang Zhu and I jump on piano.”

“Huh. Sections?”

“All of them. It’s one goddamn movement, doesn’t matter.”

“You’re going to make the Fuhrer sit through twenty minutes of a Xingese love story?” Anabelle says, like it’s unreasonable or something.

“The Fuhrer can drop dead for all I care,” Ed says dismissively. “And don’t tell me we can’t get a grand in there. Central HQ reeks of old money and we’re gonna make them stack it all in a nice high pile before we set the place on fire.”

“Oh, wonderful. You can lightly sear your violins as well.”

“It’s metaphorical, woman, holy hell.”

“As much as I’m enjoying this conversation,” Al says, peeking his head out of his room with all the charm of a cobra who’s been jabbed with a stick one too many times, “I really am trying to get this Prokofiev down, so if we could all practice our inside voices, that’d be wonderful.”

Anabelle takes a short break from her rage to blink curiously. “Tybalt?” she guesses.

“Yes,” says Al. “And we all know what happened to him.”

Then he shuts the door with a soft click.

“Last I remember, he got murdered by Romeo,” mutters Anabelle.

“And then everyone dropped dead,” finishes Ed. He rolls his eyes when Anabelle frowns disapprovingly. “That’s exactly what isn’t going to happen. Fuckin’ chill out. We’re pros. We know what we’re doing.”

“That’s exactly the kind of hubris that’s going to get you perforated,” says Anabelle, reaching across the counter for another drink, “but what the hell. Transmute the Fuhrer’s uniform inside-out. Blow his socks off. Literally, metaphorically, doesn’t matter as long as he takes a great black marker and crosses out meritocracy and writes nepotism over it instead. You get my vibe?”

“Lady, I’ve been cheating the system since a man twice my age broke into my house, told me to stop being a giant pussy baby, and baited me to join the military,” Ed says flatly.

“Half the time I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Anabelle tells him, then wanders over to the washroom to presumably have a small panic attack.

---

It occurs to Ed as he’s tuning that Mustang probably has Hawkeye trained on him like—like a hawk or something.

Anabelle catches his mutinous expression and fires back with a say something stupid and I’ll strangle you, brat kind of look.

“Motherfucker,” Ed resigns himself to muttering.

Briefly, Ed glances over the small ocean of graying, balding, money-sucking goblin scalps and at their comeback kid.

Bradley’s ugly stache doesn’t even twitch. He’s got that annoying grandpa smile on, all cheerful and creepy and weirdly approvingly, which is just—no, no, Ed’s a pro, and pros don’t get nervous.

Fuck. At this rate Ed’s just going to spew Dance of the Knights everywhere, except Prokofiev isn’t fun unless you’ve got a brass section that claps one hand over its eyes and spits out fortississimo like it’s going to save them from a sudden and swift death by baton, and what’s the point if Ed doesn’t get to deck the principal trumpet?

Whatever. Bradley can come out with the dual-wielding and the prophesying eyeball shit for all Ed cares. Going toe-to-toe with a homunculus sans clap-alchemy can’t possibly be harder than nailing left hand pizz. Ed has a hypothetical understanding of the former and crushes the latter, so he’s pretty much as good as it’s gonna get.

Al, being fully aware of Ed’s mental wrestling match, cues him in with a sharp inhale.

And for all of Edward Elric’s faults, at least he can guarantee that he fucking delivers.

---

Havoc shows his face way faster than Ed gave him credit for. A week was a generous estimate, but hey. Ed’s in a real generous mood.

He’s feeling nice enough not to growl when Havoc pushes open the door of the otherwise vacant office like a haunted man. Al makes a sound of acknowledgement over his coffee.

“Hey,” Ed says to Havoc, who jumps maybe four feet and has to sit down to put his shoes back on.

“Elric,” Havoc says shakily. He clears his throat and tries a more confident, “Uh, hey. I saw the tail end of your, uh—” a short jerk over his shoulder and out toward the gaping void of architectural failure and oddly flammable puddles— “performance. You were good.”

“We were great,” says Ed, gesturing with his mug. “But thanks, or whatever.”

“You look tired,” Al says kindly, which is nice-person talk for how many hours did you spend studying the inside of a toilet bowl. “It’s nice to see you again, though. Did they send you to find us?”

“I mean, you guys took off just as the entire place came down,” Havoc says, some of the mania filtering out of his system at the sight of a less hostile face.

“We know a situation when we see one,” Al tells him helpfully. “We thought it’d be dangerous to get in the way of the first aid responders.”

Ed peers out the window and watches a vaguely familiar asshole with three well-roasted stars get pulled out of the hole on a stretcher. “We know our way around fire,” he says. “Get burned a few times and you start carrying a bucket of sand around, right?”

“Got them under the cabinets,” Havoc mutters to himself.

“Awesome. The hell do you want?”

“We’ll be fairly busy for the next week,” says Al. “The Central Symphony Orchestra’s auditioning and we’d like to be there to watch.”

Havoc nods like he knows shit about music. “Makes sense that you’d be there to audition,” he says sagely.

Al smiles at that, and Ed cracks one too, rolls it into a damn fine omelette. “We aren’t auditioning,” Al tells Havoc. “We’ll be rehearsing with the orchestra once everybody’s been settled.”

You could fit a beehive behind those eyes and there wouldn’t even be a brain in the way to piss off the bees. “Okay,” Havoc says vacantly.

“It means we’re soloists,” says Ed. “We play solos. You know what a solo is? Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, pick one and we’ll demo if you’re so inclined.”

“Though the experience is much more engaging if you attend a performance at the Central Symphony Hall,” Al points out.

“Despite how it seems, I’m not actually stupid,” protests Havoc. “The Central Symphony Orchestra—that’s, like, the State Alchemist edition of orchestras. Right?”

Shit, has Havoc been in on it the entire time? “Sure,” Ed says suspiciously. “You go poking around music circles or what?”

“I’m seeing a harpist at the moment, so yeah, I know some music stuff,” says Havoc, and Ed has a stupid moment of raming facefirst into the pyramid of conspiracy before realizing, you literal buffoon, Aria’s got the face of a wood nymph, hair like a siren, etc, etc, and fingers that probably make grown men break out into cold sweats.

“Yeah?” Ed asks, still cautious. Who knows what Mustang’s been whispering to his funny little gang. “How about you tell me what you know about orchestra life?”

Havoc apparently finds it necessary to get in a smoke, which makes it a whole lot more convincing.

“Alright,” he begins in the universally respected according to my girlfriend voice. “The violins all got their heads rammed way up their asses, which is bad because you can’t rearrange their dental work without making the sexual tension skyrocket, but then again, you don’t have to deal with the yapping, so kudos to them. The violas could all drop dead and nobody would miss them; throw a few second violins in and it’s just as good, if not better, than before. All you have to do to win an argument with the cellos is mention Canon in D, and they’ll be thanking you for bringing them out of a traumatic episode.”

Ed’s almost impressed as Havoc dismantles all the shit that is orchestra dynamics and finishes on the dirtiest joke trumpet joke Ed’s heard in, what, at least a week?

“Fine,” Ed says grudgingly. “Whatever. Aria’s been shittalking, big surprise. Did your CO slide over a Suzuki book and tell you to go wild?”

“My CO’s busy mourning the loss of the coffee machine,” Havoc says sadly.

Al glances meaningfully at his mug, then at the alchemically-powered machine on the table. It glugs away, sending off the occasional tiny blue spark of heat dispersion.

“How tragic,” he says evenly.

---

Out of all the shitheads that Ed’s had the misfortune of running into in his whackjob of a life, admittedly, Mustang isn’t all that shit.

Doesn’t mean that Ed isn’t overjoyed when he hears the ticket prices for the season. If Colonel Snappy Snappy Boom Man wants to send in his team to do stalk the Elrics, he’s either going to have to sell off a few organs or invest in a violist informant, and god knows which one of those is the bigger loss.

---

“I’m hoooome,” Anabelle sings one night.

Ed and Al are alchemizing the cutlery into lethal weapons before the crazy lady takes a single step into the kitchen, reconsiders, and stays leaning against the wall.

The sparkling silver knives in their hands just make Anabelle smile wider. “Guess what I got my hands on today?” she asks, all chipper and dreadful.

“Someone’s broken neck?” Ed says warily.

“Close, but not quite,” says Anabelle. She steps out of the corner like something straight out of Ed’s nightmares and tosses a pale, skinny, naked body onto the couch like it’s a blow up doll.

“Oh my god you can’t just do that,” Ed screeches, kicking the—the fucking thing off the cushions and onto Anabelle’s ugly rug, getting a blast of formaldehyde up his nose and all the way up to his eyes. “I can’t even sit on the fuckin’ couch anymore, you got zombie juice all over it and it’s a bitch to clean out!”

“Boo hoo,” says Anabelle. “What do you think, Alphonse?”

Al’s already kneeling over the zombie with a look in his eyes that communicates to Ed that he really wants to cut it open and examine every nerve that makes the thing’s eyelids twitch. “From previous experience, I think it’s safe to say that these are supposed to be ‘immortal’ vessels,” says Al.

“I don’t like that word combination,” Anabelle says cautiously. She kneels down on the ugly rug, pulls out two scalpels from her coat and hands one to Al.

Ed’s not about to start whining about why he doesn’t get one. When it comes to all things twitchy and alive, Al’s the expert; alkahestry’s as much of a science as it is an art, and while Al’s ears are tuned toward every metaphorical cardiac movement from the dragon’s pulse, Ed’s studies took a leap of faith into quintessence and climbed out of that pit after five years with a terrifying new view of the universe and a few stupidly dangerous, reality-warping tricks that his Cretan friends just loved to bet drinks on. Yeah, Ed’s so fond of sticking his grubby hands into the fabric of time and manhandling the wheel while a supposedly hypothetical fifth fundamental force cuts the brakes and tells him to drive safe.

It takes all three of them a combined total of two minutes to clear the kitchen table and draw in all the curtains. The mechanical precision of forks here, spoons there, knives out, clip the curtains closed almost makes Ed proud until he remembers standards are a thing that exist.

“Bloodless, no surprise there,” Anabelle comments as she starts slicing away. “Guess they bypassed the problem of blood loss by removing the factor completely.”

“I doubt these were created to last a long time,” says Al. “All they were supposed to do was kill, and, failing that, irreparably mutilate. Though,” he adds contemplatively, “if I remember correctly, they didn’t need to fall back on Plan B very often.”

Anabelle scoffs. “Too much for the Elric brothers to handle?” she says skeptically.

“We were fifteen, sue us,” Ed snaps. He kicks his feet up onto the table purely out of spite and scowls when Anabelle glares at his toes like she’s trying to figure out how to sell them to Linnie with the least amount of screaming involved. “Besides, fire works, and it works really fuckin’ well.”

“Fireworks. One word or two?”

“Hell, probably both. The temperature’s gotta be enough to cremate—I’d say shoot for a thousand just to be sure. Either that or take out their legs and upper jaw. They’re still dangerous that way, but at least they won’t be able to put their chompers anywhere near your vitals.”

“Hm,” Anabelle says, probably pocketing that tip for a bad day.

Al’s taping at some sort of cartilage with the back of his scalpel now. “I wonder how many philosopher’s stones it took to power one zombie,” he says more than asks. “They have the physique and strength of a normal human plus a pretty intense shot of adrenaline, so hypothetically...”

“Wait wait wait,” Ed interrupts, dropping his feet to the ground and uncrossing his arms. “Hypothetically,” he starts, pointing rapidly between Al, Anabelle, and the zombie, “if we sat down and had a real heart-to-heart with one of these creepy bastards, we could shake them up like Hohenheim did and get them on our side.”

Al stares at him for a long moment. “Well,” he says, “I was actually going to say that a good stash of shotguns should do just fine. But,” he amends quickly, seeing how he’s crushed Ed’s hopes and dreams, “that was going to be my second point.”

“That’s not nearly as bad as I imagined,” Anabelle says brightly. “I was under the assumption that one bite would make you just as pale and as hairless as them.”

“Pale from blood loss and trauma, maybe. Hairless, you’re better off waxing,” says Ed.

After an extensive test to confirm that the creepy zombie is out of commission for real, Anabelle stuffs the body into some old double bass case she dug up from the hell that is her room and says she’ll be back by dinner.

The click-clack of Anabelle’s heels takes itself out of the building, and Al turns to Ed.

“I wonder how she got that zombie,” he says.

“I really don’t want to know,” says Ed.

---

The thing about being a) a soloist and b) brothers with the other bigwig soloist in the city means that every conductor puts on puppy eyes and wriggles their bottom lip as Ed and Al figure out how to say stop asking me to play Vivaldi or I’ll break your bow over your head for the nth time.

Nothing against Vivaldi or whatever. But having both Elrics perform at the same venue and time is pretty goddamn dangerous given that’s literally how Eyes With A God Complex got a jump on them last time.

So one day Al might say, “I’m performing Paganini at the Hall tonight,” and Ed will say, “Shit, good luck,” and then he’ll stuff all his sheet music into a bag and make for one of Linnie’s nicer places.

Ever since Ed realized Liebesleid plus a good dose of molto espressivo nabbed him the most tips, he’s been bringing it from club to club, all while the patrons that frequent the back wall stare dreamily at him like he’s their fairy grandmother. Is it weird? Fuckin’ yeah, it’s weird. But wandering innocently among the creeps are Linnie’s girls, and never before has Ed felt so enlightened to just how goddamn scary a hostess can be.

The weirdest night had to have been when Ed was redoing his braid after a particularly long gig—he was scheduled for two hours and ended up doing four since the other guy didn’t show, and some extra cash for strings and other miscellaneous accidents isn’t as much of a luxury as a necessity for the Elrics.

So he stepped out for some fresh hair, rolled his shoulders, cracked his knuckles, the whole procedure. And he was just undoing his tie when the sound of glass on skull followed by somebody hitting the pavement hard had him transmuting the nearest metal pipe into a spear and threatening amorphous shadows with the pointy end.

Something to get straight: Ed’s fucking proud of his Fuck With Me and I’ll Rip Your Spine Out Through Your Mouth Aura. It took years to build it up, what with the infamy and the close quarters combat and the general you should see the other guy attitude.

The red stiletto that slid out of the shadows and metamorphosed into a lady with a smile like a knife is, to this day, the target Ed’s shooting at.

In hindsight, she probably didn’t have any crazy training under her belt, no pro assassin strats or weapons. But she did have a bottle of outrageously expensive wine and the most kickass shoes on this side of the planet, and honestly, that’s all you need.

“Foul weather we’ve been having recently,” the lady said.

Ed took one look at the creep’s bleeding brain, the broken wine glass in the freaky lady’s hand, and said, “Yeah, it sucks ass.”

Then he went inside and finished his gig. The freaky lady walked him home without speaking a word. Anabelle started laughing, did some reflection, and stopped laughing.

Ed’s been through a lot of shit in this life, and every time he thinks, you know what, maybe I got this, life comes up with new ways to sneak a rope around his ankle and drop a brick on the gas.

Not every gig is asscakes and generally crappery by the blessing of some unnamed higher power. Point in case: Ed nearly chokes on spit when he sees Adrian the Principal Trombone sneaking around the side wall of Anabelle’s Friend Jessie’s bar. A week later he triple-checks his water for hallucinogens when he watches Carole the Third Chair Viola flirt with and subsequently chase off the bartender. Then Reyna on Timpani clocks Fredrick the Pianist, which is the point where all the bullshit that’s been dogpiling on top of Ed’s shit luck snaps.

The BGM shouldn’t get into bar fights, if you break your fingers I’ll break your everything else, yada yada, don’t punch people. Whatever.

Al takes one look at Ed’s hobbies, shakes his head, and finds himself a quartet that performs at hospitals and hospices and orphanages.

Obviously they all wear shirts that say I’m a good boy and my brother’s an idiot, feel free to ask me how I know.

---

It’s slow going without the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my friends they had last they ran this track, so eight months after Edward and Alphonse Elric make Central their music bitch, they pack their bags and hop on the train.

They head West first. That’s Ed’s territory—mean, hostile, infuriatingly tight-lipped—which means he can go twice as hard and Al doesn’t get to give him shit for it.

All Ed has to do is haunt a few choice bars, beat the crap out of a few idiots (his idiots), and suddenly all of Pendleton, Wellesley, and Ebolas are pledging their allegiance by throwing the wildest parties Ed’s seen since Adrian the Principal Trombone broke into a fire truck and drove it into the river with half the cello section riding on top.

The South’s easy enough. A few eardrum-blowingly loud calls directed to Rush Valley and Dublith has every potential problem crushed beneath the feet of some really fucking scary women.

When Ed and Al stroll into the Devil’s Nest this time around, it’s with the confidence of someone who met god and pissed in his face.

Ed lets the grunts outside pretend to be big and bad and scary until he gets bored. He’s feeling a low-effort, high-terror kind of day, so he scuffs his rings against the wall and builds the sorry bastards into a soup of brick and mortar.

Al pokes his head out of the dank passage leading to the basement. “Brother,” he says disapprovingly.

“I left a cavity so they can breathe,” Ed says, waving dismissively.

The idiots who thought waving their pointy sticks at Al would be fun litter the way down. Interestingly, Ed can’t feel any of the residual alchemical energy that usually chokes up the air after a transmutation.

“Not feeling it today?” asks Ed.

“It’s probably best if I leave the area clean just in case you decide to use some of your nastier techniques,” Al says, descending down the stairs with all the grace and serenity of someone who didn’t just casually suggest winding the concept of time around a stick of dynamite and chucking the whole package into a room full of very alive people as a valid problem-solving technique.

Clearly Ed’s face communicates his horror, because Al sighs and smiles.

“You need to give yourself more credit for your research,” he says kindly. “Otherwise you’ll dig yourself into a hole, seal off the top, convince yourself that you’re a danger to everyone you love, and go somewhere far away and never come back.”

Motherfucker. “No I wouldn’t,” Ed grumbles, trying to convince himself that wasn’t exactly what he was thinking sans the expletives.

“I ran the numbers too,” Al reminds him. “So if you’re wrong, I’m wrong too. Do you think I’m wrong, Brother?”

Motherfucker. “You’re playing the guilt-tripping card,” Ed protests. “I always lose when you play the guilt-tripping card. Who the fuck taught you to play so hard?”

“The gambling dens in Qinghe were very helpful.”

“Wh—you never mentioned anything about fuckin’ gambling!”

“I won lots, don’t worry,” Al says soothingly.

Ed’s about to pledge to get Mei on the Dragon Throne—the craziest thing she could do is convince Al to adopt a town’s worth of pandas, which is so much better than becoming some kind of gambling god under the watchful eye of Emperor Yao, that fucker—when Al knocks politely on the double doors leading to the next scuffle of the day.

The caterwauling and flailing on the other side shuts up. The door creaks open to reveal the irritating gecko guy from who knows when.

“Good morning,” Al says cheerfully.

“Who the hell are you?” Gecko Face says suspiciously.

“I’m Alphonse Elric,” answers Al. He steps aside and Ed fills the void, scowling as he scans the room and recognizes a ton of faces he knows didn’t get proper burials. “This is my brother, Edward Elric. Could we speak to the owner of this establishment?”

Both of them stare-slash-glare at Greed, who stares-slash-glares back from a couch that looks like it’s been in more wars than Mustang has.

“Well, well,” Greed says, mouth coming up in a way that makes Ed itch to plant his fist right between those stupidly pointy teeth. “It’s not often we get visitors. How can I help you, Alphonse and Edward Elric?”

Ed’s just about exhausted his patience. He shoves his way past the lizard, plants himself smack-dab in the center of the room, and pretends he doesn’t see a handful of chimera minions block off the door. Al grabs bravado by the ears and punts it off a ten-story building, opting to go for the smiley I’m a healer, but route instead.

“Huh,” Ed says, deeply unimpressed. “Kills me to say it, but Ling’s face made you a thousand times more tolerable.”

Greed gives him a lazy up-and-down. “Do I know you?” he asks casually, but there’s an undermining recognition in his voice that immediately has Ed’s cognitive processes going balls to the wall.

“Do you?” demands Ed. “Where’d we meet? What’d we do? How long did we travel together? You offered a deal—what was it?”

Everyone kind of stares at Ed like he’s thrown himself off the deep end.

“Maybe that wasn’t the best introduction,” Al tells him helpfully.

“And somehow it was still better than last time,” Ed grumbles. God, what he wouldn’t do for some ibuprofen right now.

Fuck this. The Fullmetal Alchemist operated off honesty as the best solution to everything, and hey, would you look at that, Edward Elric’s in the room and he’s the same goddamn person.

“Alright,” says Ed. He juts out a finger accusingly at Greed, who’s still smiling. “You’re a homunculus, everybody else is a chimera, you’re all runaways and you’re probably underpaid as shit, but if you calm the fuck down and swear not to go running back home to daddy, maybe help us overthrow the government or whatever, we’ll give you stable jobs plus benefits.” Al whispers something in his ear, and Ed adds on confidently, “We’ve got dental.”

Now they’re all staring at him like he’s a hundred percent gone.

“Are you a dentist?” someone pipes up from the corner.

Ed turns and shifts his dramatic pointing to some feline guy. “No,” he says meaningfully. “We’re violinists.”

“We debuted in Central a few months ago,” Al adds helpfully.

It’s then that some brainless idiot who should’ve been unconscious for at least another half hour stumbles through the door, points a shaking finger toward Ed and Al, and declares, “It’s—they’re lying! They’re alchemists!”

Al looks decently surprised. “I suppose you’re right,” he says, “but that was a pretty bold leap given the fact that I didn’t use any alchemy to put you to sleep at all.”

“Wrong numbers, right equation,” says Ed. He points at the quivering guy with purpose, then demands, “Give me a violin.”

“I don’t have a violin,” the guy says miserably.

“Then you’re just gonna have to believe us,” Ed finishes. He turns back to Greed, who looks like he’s having the time of his goddamn life. “I’m offering you a deal, bastard, give me a yes or no so I can decide how hard to put your ass in the ground.”

“I think you mean ‘if I should put your ass in the ground’, Brother.”

“What he said,” Ed says, as disingenuously as he can manage.

“Alchemists, huh,” Greed says curiously. “Either of you happen to know about human transmutation?”

“We’re literally two of the three specialists in this entire wretched country. Congrats, we found you. Deal or no deal?”

“Maybe if you let slip some of your tricks, I’d consider it. Make you a few drinks, even.”

“First, underage drinking is illegal,” says Al, “and second, I think the saying goes no fucking way.”

“God, I love you, Al,” Ed says, and stretches taught the latent, unobservable energy in the room between his fingers.

Greed sighs like the drama queen he is: all performance, no substance. He pushes himself out of the couch with false disappointment, then starts pacing casually toward Ed and Al. “That’s unfortunate,” he says, smiling like a demented lawnmower. “Well, you know what they say about dough. If you want a good bread, you gotta knead the crap out of it.”

“You’ve obviously never made bread before in your life,” Ed sneers, and leaps.

The ensuing fight definitely isn’t as intense as Ed remembers it being. He doesn’t even need to pull out his favourite neck-breaking kick, which is a damn shame.

Most of the chimeras that throw themselves at Al end up being workplace hazards, strewn about in every inconvenient place ever. Some of the fuckers—a snake girl and a dog guy in particular—manage to avoid getting poked in their vital points long enough for Al to pull out a pair of sharper, shinier, more persuasive tools.

Ed goes about doing his usual business beating the crap out of people. It’s all daisies and unicorns until Greed starts pulling out his freaky Look At Me Mom I Know What Carbon Is act.

Quintessence isn’t anything close to low-effort, but it makes up for that by being deeply and utterly terrifying on a primal, existential level that doesn’t have Ed waking himself up screaming as much as it has him converting to fatalism. And is the Fullmetal Alchemist really the Fullmetal Alchemist if he doesn’t have people screaming around him at all times?

Ed dodges by reflex, earning himself a sticker as he’s dancing around by shutting the fuck up and zoning Greed the fuck out. He needs to focus, and he needs to focus hard. This isn’t just some alchemical rebound shit. If he screws this up, god knows what, where, and when they’ll end up next.

There’s a snap between his hands like a stubborn hair elastic. The lingering energy from his previous transmutations whines, pulling back and trying to tie everything back down to physics proper.

Ed grabs the immaterial by the hem and pulls.

It’s like taking a picture. Snap, and freeze.

Undoing of all Greed’s fancy times suit takes all of ten seconds. Ed wanders over to Al and punches some of his batch just because he can, and then shakes his hands loose.

Molasses falls from his hands, and Greed cracks open like a badly boiled egg while half a dozen unsuspecting bastards drop to the floor. Greed’s face is all uhhhh but how could this happen? and Ed laughs loud and mean at him like a real Cretan.

The fight goes to all kinds of shit valley from there, but Elrics are Elrics no matter when they are.

“Listen, fuckface,” Ed says, a foot planted solidly on a smoothie of carbon and superiority complex, “we can do this one of two ways. One, I keep smashing your shell against a wall until you’re just runny yolk, or you get cleaned up, tell your people to chill the fuck out, and get dental. We have dental.”

Ed can’t tell if Greed’s shocked into silence from getting his ass whipped by two teens or if he’s just catching his breath. Either way, he laughs long and loud.

Al peeks over his shoulder from where he’s checking if anyone’s bleeding from their brain. Ed gives him a look, and Al cocks his head and goes back to his aura-sensing thing.

“Oh, I like you two,” Greed tells them, equally vindictive as approving. “You want to overthrow the country? Take down big, bad Father?”

“Eyes With A God Complex, yeah,” Ed says flatly.

“That’s just dandy,” says Greed. “And after Amestris will be there for the taking, yeah?”

Ed thinks for a bit. Grumman did a bang-up job playing his cards, but Mustang’s got contingency plans for his contingencies, and Major General Armstrong is just... so scary. So fucking scary.

But Greed’s pretty much right. “More or less,” Ed allows.

“Awesome,” Greed says, baring his teeth. “Welcome to the team, Elrics.”

Ed’s heard this all before, but he argues with Greed about who’s the boss and who’s the henchman out of principal. They leave the debate at a standstill because Teacher kicks the door down and knocks out what remaining brain cells Greed had into the wall.

They go to Teacher’s house for dinner. Greed gives them his number and says to keep in touch or die, it’ll be entertaining either way or whatever.

The visit to Rush Valley practically doesn’t happen by comparison. Paninya gets to show off her kickass automail, Ling slinks out of the alley like a starved zombie, Ed and Al kick assassin ass.

“Stay alive,” Ed demands, slapping a page and a half of contacts into Ling’s palm as they’re boarding the train. Lan Fan’s pretty much still hissing and Fu looks weirdly approvingly at them. “I need you to help me overthrow the government and kill a few immortal monsters. We’ll pick up a philosopher’s stone or two along the way, so don’t bitch.”

“You know, your brother is so much nicer than you, but I think I like you fine,” Ling says cheerfully.

Ed smiles like a demon. “Fuck you too,” he says, and they’re off to the North.

They’re on the train for so long Ed’s feels like he’s starting to dream in Monotone Stop Announcement. His ass feels like a fucking brick and he wishes there was a group of incompetent bandits loitering around each station. At least it’d be less boring.

Then they get to the base of Mt. Briggs and Ed kind of wants to die right there.

Fortunately for Ed, half his limbs aren’t frostbite magnets this time. Unfortunately for Al, he can actually tell how much of a freezing wasteland this ninth circle of hell is.

They haul their frozen asses as far as the Briggs patrol will let them go which is too long by any biological means because ha ha, look at these nerds, they don’t even have the nice parkas Major General Armstrong threatens Central Accounting into giving us, how about we watch their bodily functions shut down because we’re sickos like that?

There’s a reason Ed only ever visited Drachma on business conferences and emergency calls, and even then, he never skipped out on bitching at Mustang for stranding him there. The weather’s a perfect stage play of the hypothetical nuclear winter Ed and his minions were studying before everything got fucked, and god help them when some idiots in the next century think eternal snowballs are worth fireblasting everything into literal shadows of what was.

Fuck. Ed needs his team.

Those guys were some of the smartest, naggiest, baddest bitches on the face of this planet. Egres and Johanna are probably still in school right now, and Keblar’s probably running around Creta making every physicist’s life a shitshow. Promised Day shenanigans isn’t good enough of a reason to pull them out of an education that’ll make them paragons of science.

It’s getting dark, and it’s getting cold.

Fucking hell.

“Got you a parka,” Egres says, holding up red and black godsend, flamel emblazoned on the back like a war flag. “You’re always saying how it’s too cold even when it’s Warm Degrees Celcius outside. Maybe this’ll get your big baby self bundled up, yeah?”

Good shit, Egres, but your parka sucks ass. Fucking thought that counts or whatever. You’re getting a new coffee machine for Christmas.

There’s movement at Ed’s six o’clock. By the way Al’s breath comes slower and deeper, it’s obvious he catches it as well. Nobody’s leaping out at them with the intent to gut them and flay their innards all over the snow, so it’s more marching until then.

Ed’s impatient—he’ll fight a wall to the death and win, and everyone who’s heard the name Elric knows it—but he’s not stupid. Alchemy or no, the last thing he wants is to flail around in Satan’s freezer and end up as a bear’s appetizer.

Briggs sucks. Drachma sucks. Ed is going to kill someone.

Somewhere in the back of Ed’s mind, Mustang says you may be capable, Fullmetal, but a battle of attrition against you is a battle won.

Then he has the audacity to laugh like an ancient Xingese tactician, and Ed’s patience snaps like peanut brittle. Or a rubber band.

Crunch crunch, snap snap.

Al barely gets to say, “Brother, wait,” before Ed’s tugging on the loose threads the universe couldn’t bother to snip away, and the whole landscape comes undone.

---

Two weeks later, they’ve got a dead lieutenant general, a dead homunculus, and a tentative agreement with a fortress full of soldiers who think Ed’s reality-bending bombshells and Al’s tickle fights with literal tectonic movements are funny enough to throw them into an impromptu stand-up comedy night with Kimbley.

Ed’s fifteen going on fifty and he’s in a piss poor mood. If somebody manages to impale him with a metal beam again he’s going to write himself out of existence and be done with it all.

While Al’s handling Darius and Heinkel, Ed spools the physical embodiment of his temper around a finger and stomps toward Dumb Fuck With An Even Dumber Hat.

Kimbley doesn’t get to say shit. Ed marches out of Al’s perfectly coordinated snowscreen and snarls, “Good fucking bye, dipshit,” and scuffs his rings together.

Surprise writes itself onto the psycho’s face just as the left half and right half of his body distort in opposite directions.

There’s a pop that would be comedic if it wasn’t the sound of physics breaking.

Between one blink and the next, Kimbley’s put down and out of existence. Fuck, science is weird.

Darius and Heinkel get front-row seats to the Let’s Wipe Kimbley From the Ledgers of History Show. They stand there all baffled, and Al jumps on the opportunity and starts with offering them hot cider and ends with sitting them down and signing them on for one hell of a shitshow.

By the time the snow settles and the snipers who’d been a hundred and five percent sure they could administer a well-needed dose of .30 cal Magnum between Crazy Blow You To Bits And Not In A Sexy Way’s eyes before the bastard hacked up a red murder rock wander cautiously into the empty plaza of an even emptier mining town.

“Where’s the body?” one of the snipers asks.

“Made it disappear,” Ed says irritably.

The agents look at Ed, then down at the hot cider in his hands with what can only be deep disapproval.

“I fuckin’ took everything he was and made it not,” Ed hisses. “Or do you want the full rundown? Better sit your asses down and crack open eighty philosophy of science papers and fifty years’ worth of astronomical observations from the United Cretan Center for Astronomical Studies’ Hyble Telescope. Or maybe you haven’t spent ten years picking reality apart and seeing how it bounces back, and maybe you should leave the theoretical alchemy to the theoretical alchemist.”

“You just called yourself a theoretical alchemist,” Al points out like the traitor he is. He turns to the agents with a thermos in one hand and a short stack of canteens in the other. “Cider?”

The agents stare for a while longer.

“Why not,” they eventually decide, and for a moment Ed feels his blood pressure drop to something healthy before fucking Scar pokes his head around the corner and makes Ed consider impaling himself just so Darius and Heinkel can take him far, far away from the disaster of a commedia dell’arte that is Amestris.

---

Very, very, very fucking carefully, Ed and Al escort Scar to Rush Valley and call up a few friends from Central.

Whatever conversation goes on in that room that smells of metal and sweat and serious emotional trauma, Ed and Al don’t know. They’re just here to make sure nobody gets turned into a really fucking uneven paint job on the wall.

Then Winry pokes her head out the door and says, “Hey. We’ve worked things out, kind of.”

“What sort of ‘kind of’ are we talking here,” Ed says cautiously. He knows two and they both end in broken noses if Ed’s in a good mood.

Winry levels a frighteningly even stare at him. “I’m taking a stop back home for a while,” she says, “and Scar’s coming with.”

Even Al stares back in his polite are you insane way. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says.

“I’ve had worse,” Winry says, then drags them both into the room.

---

It’s probably important to mention that Ed and Al are practically touring the entire goddamn country while they’re hopping trains and slapping names back under the second-hand umbrella that makes up their old friends. So when Al says, “We should stop at New Optain, I hear they just renovated their music hall,” it directly translates into “Oh boy do I love instilling the fear of god and Paganini into military officials who’ve convinced themselves that immortality is a savarin with Chantilly cream instead of a shit sandwich.”

Apparently Mustang, Grumman, and Major General Armstrong have an oligopoly on all the braincells in the country, because every general treats Al like he’s a sickly genius living out his last years as a virtuoso and nods at Ed like he’s a deeply tortured musician taking his inner demons for a walk.

It’s almost too easy to pry information out of the fuckers. Ed doesn’t even need to use a crowbar. He’s devastated.

“Oh, I understand you well,” General Aye Hole will say all dramatic and teary-eyed. “When I was your age, I blah blah illegal act 1, blah blah you’re definitely not recording this are you, blah blah code transcript, send half-half to Mustang and Hughes, the end.”

Anabelle’s never far behind. She sits at the same cafe whenever they need to deliver a parcel to Colonel Matchstick, scribbles bowings onto sheet music, and slides by with an invisible tradeoff: outgoing delivery for incoming have you practiced?

The East is great. It’s still a mess from, you know, the Ishvalan genocide, but at least they get to stop back home and nab some of Winry’s apple pie. Then Granny Pinako introduces Ed and Al to Bahur, who has the best poker face Ed’s seen in all his question mark years of driving blindfolded through life.

Bahur takes one look at Ed. Glances down at his legs. Asks, “Why do you walk like you have automail?”

“Oh, I like you,” Ed tells the kid, smiling at least eighty percent crazy.

It’s awesome to see Resembool take in more of the scattered Ishvalan population. The people are skeptical as hell first, which, okay, fair, but then Winry shows up with a wrench and starts cracking away at Rush Valley East, and then Ed and Al host a music exchange and drool over a qanun for an hour while Miesha tries to get the pressure distribution even over the bow.

Obviously there’s the murderer riding an elephant in the room to address, and Ed does his best to remain calm and collected and does great for the first minute and a half.

“Listen, fuckface,” Ed sneers, ready to give Scar the quantum flux version of a haircut and disappear his follicles altogether, “if you don’t clap down on the ha-ha ‘spolde face murder spree, I ‘splode you. Am I understood?”

Scar could at least have the manners to dick back. But nooo, he just has to sit passively in the only good chair the basement has all normal and shit.

“No answer is frankly worse than a bad one,” Al informs him calmly, choosing right now to execute his godlike Elric multitasking by wiping down his knives.

They’re both pulling pages out of Mustang’s book like it’s their personal bible. That very thought alone strikes Ed dumb and then makes him so goddamn angry he punches a wall.

Scar frowns all wise and reformed man hoo-ha, trick or treat, blow your head open, aren’t we having fun here?

“I’m gonna dumb this down real nice and stupid for you,” Ed says, sweet as cyanide. He strolls real close to the couch Scar doesn’t fucking deserve and gets even angrier when he realizes they’re eye fucking level. If there is a god, he’s a mighty bastard that needs to sit still so Hawkeye can open up the way to his inner thoughts. Physically. Permanently. “Winry’s given you the rundown on how we operate. You’re a murderer, I’m a murderer, Al’s toed the waters but he’s a better man than we’ll ever be—”

“Brother.”

“And we’ve gotta do our part in this broken hell of a country, and I hate to break it to you, but going around peeling skulls apart like oranges isn’t the most convincing way to say, yeah, you know Ishvalans? Like me? Like, I’m an Ishvalan if anybody doesn’t know yet? And I’m systematically making brain juice out of the government, if we’re cool with that. Oh? What’s that? I’m a serial killer? No, no, I’m a champion of justice, a paragon of virtue, the physical embodiment of chivalry—”

“Brother,” Al says again, resting a firm hand on Ed’s arm to remind them both that he can and will put Ed into the wall.

Ed deflates them, mostly because he’s running out of breath and needs to calm the fuck down before he ruptures something or has a cardiac event.

Al lets him enjoy the wonders of oxygen and turns to Scar with the flattest expression someone like Al can manage. Which is straight up dead, zero twitching, you’d think he was a suit of armor by the way he ohhh wait.

“You probably don’t know us very well,” says Al. He leaves a very deliberate silence. “Do you?”

“I don’t,” Scar answers calmly.

“We’re violinists by trade, alchemists by... hobby,” is apparently the word Al lands on.

That’s brownie points to Scar for not blowing his lid and going all irredeemable heathens. “Why do you do this?” Scar asks, probably referring to the Elric shitshow as a whole. “You say you work in music. You bring harmony and peace. Why do you choose to involve yourself in these matters?”

Real fucking bold of Scar to consider orchestra life peaceful. “We’ve seen events play out once, and although things might be different now—even though we might not need to get involved—we still try, because it’s the right thing to do,” Al says aptly.

“The entire country’s gonna be a curly straw for Eyes With A God Complex if we don’t neuter him with pepper spray,” Ed elaborates.

“That too,” says Al.

If Scar’s confused as to how they went from his redemption arc to the actual apocalypse, he doesn’t show it. “You haven’t killed me,” he notes.

“Yet,” Ed hisses.

“You want something from me,” Scar says. There he goes looking down at his hands again all melancholic and flashbacky. “You called this country a broken hell. You want to overthrow the government,” he concludes.

“How in the fuck did you guess that,” demands Ed.

“You wear your emotions on your sleeve, and, failing that, slather them across your fists,” Scar says flatly.

“Yeah? Let me test that theory,” Ed says venomously, rounding on Scar and wishing for a second that he still had an arm fit to put through a wall.

Scar seems weirdly fucking docile for a serial killer who’s getting threatened with a facefull of broken teeth. That’s wrong in, like, all the ways, every way, every goddamn way.

Before Ed can do something drastic like open up a direct ventilation duct to the backyard with Scar’s forehead, Al grabs his collar and tugs back hard.

“Al!” Ed protests, feeling the whiplash in his goddamn brain.

“Ed’s temper is a work in progress,” Al tells Scar, which is just awesome, super neato, adult psyche with pubescent teenage hormones is a dream come true. “But you’re right. We would like your help, and we can promise it’ll be worth it.”

“Your definition of worth and mine may differ,” Scar warns him.

“We’ll airdrop the skeletons running Central Command into jail, install someone in the seat of Fuhrer who genuinely cares about the progression of Amestris into an era of peace, develop State Alchemy under civil professions, and personally jumpstart the alchemical effort to rebuild Ishval,” says Al.

That shuts Scar up for the next stretch of silence.

Ed’s impatient tapping has more or less turned into full on rabbit-thumping by the time Scar says, “I’ll hold you to that.”

Then he stands up and holds out his hand, presumably for a handshake, obviously wildly uncomfortable but putting in an effort to be understanding toward Amestrian customs, and—fuck.

Ed’s gotten his arm blown off way more than once. He’ll just deal if it happens again.

They all shake hands. Nobody paints the walls. It’s a bona fide victory.

“We know your brother was working on an array,” says Ed. He waves dismissively when Scar’s eyes narrow in that what other secrets do you hold, child prophet way. “Keep your notes. I know the gist of them and Al’s got at least half of it memorized.”

“I’m a practitioner of qigong and alkahestry,” Al explains when Scar goes all dumbstruck. “As much as I know, I unfortunately can’t activate the array with full certainty given that the secrets lie with, ah, someone else.”

The conversation goes all fucky wucky from there. Scar stops on three different occasions to confirm that Ed and Al aren’t actually omniscient deities sent to test him. Ed only punches a wall once and doesn’t even break anything.

They wrap up the whole disaster of an encounter by making a few calls to get one of Linnie’s girls—a military therapist who goes by Abbie—out to Resembool, where she’ll be able to keep an eye on Scar if he lapses back into blowing people apart at the seams like a jigsaw puzzle wrapped around dynamite, maybe tranq him when she feels like it.

At least Bahur and Miesha and the growing Ishvalan community are there to instill some embarrassment in him should he go all Magic Hands. Great fucking day if Ed’s banking on Scar’s social competence to keep murderous tendencies in line.

When Ed and Al pack their bags, and hop off to the station, Bahur and Miesha are there along with Winry to see them off.

“Your teacher told me to threaten you into maintaining your nails,” Miesha tells them cheerfully.

“Thank you,” Al says at the same time Ed snaps, “Tell her we’ve got fuckin’ eyes.”

Bahur walks over and hands Al some kind of salve. “It’s made from eucalyptus and tea leaves,” he says in total deadpan. “It might help with headaches and nightmares. And,” he adds, glaring at Ed pointedly, “Do not let Edward handle it. Either he will lose it, explode it, or eat it.”

“Hey,” Ed says at the same time Al laughs and shakes Bahur’s hand.

“I do not yet know if it is possible to overdose on the salve, but I figure that if anybody can manage, it would be Edward,” Bahur continues. “I will diagnose you preemptively: your migraines are stress related, the pain in your leg and arm is psychosomatic, and burning through your fevers before they burn through you is not a valid medical procedure.”

“Fuckin’ hey.”

“Send me one of your violins you won’t miss if it mysteriously catches fire,” Miesha reminds them in the same way Ed used to say I’ll definitely be more careful with my automail this time, promise.

“I’ll send you a luthier, go make her life a living hell instead of mine,” says Ed.

Winry doesn’t have a lot to say. She’s still got grease in her hair and smudges of mystery blackness on her cheeks.

“Don’t get killed,” she tells Ed and Al, leaning in to wrap one arm around each of them. “I’ll kill you if you end up dead.”

One luthier shipped off to Resembool and one ex-serial killer settled into backwater sheep-herding country later, Ed and Al chug up north with the train and end up somewhere familiar.

Like, really familiar.

They find Mei in Youswell. When she tells them she conned Yoki into selling the mines to her by playing the racist orientalism bullshit she was getting so hard that the officials actually started wagging their tails every time she said ohhh I’m a mystic lady and the clouds whisper to me when I dream, Ed spits out his drink like a faulty hose and laughs until Mei knocks him out for fifteen minutes. Then he wakes up five early because he’s an asshole, sees Mei’s squashed tomato face, and laughs at her until she puts him out until the next morning.

Ed loves Mei. Not like love love, that’s Al’s space right there, but every time Ed had to visit Xing on business, Mei would be standing there by the border patrol, arms crossed and stuffed to the teeth with concealed knives.

“Elric,” she’d say.

“Chang,” Ed would say back.

They’d glare at each other until one of them decided food was more important than a damn pissing competition, and then they’d raid the nearest market, waving around wallets like they were running off post bank heist high. The smartest vendors knew not to narrow their eyes and ask “Are you sure?” when they pointed to the extra large version of an extra large bowl of congee and started shoving over tiger shrimp and tripe and cuttlefish and insisted that everything edible be sloshed in.

That’s a power meal right there. Amestrians don’t know what the hell they’re talking about when they say soup isn’t a meal, oh woe is me, all I’ve got is watered down unsalted porridge and hostility toward other cultures’ factually superior food.

Fuck that. Ed and Mei have literally killed people powered by super bowl congee and spite alone.

Speaking of killing people—

“Hey, Mei,” Ed says, balancing his chair on its back legs to look at the frowning girl, “you plan on staying here or what?”

Mei winces. Awesome. “I mean,” she begins defensively, “I was just regaining my strength after the journey across the desert. I will find a philosopher’s stone to bring back to my clan.”

“I know,” Ed says, actually putting some weight behind it for once.

A really bad idea poofs into Ed’s mind like most ideas do. It’s a good thing Al’s busy refurbishing houses right now and not worrying if he’s made a catastrophic error by tossing two powder kegs in the same room. Maybe he’s doing both. Elrics are great at multitasking.

“Kinda weird, actually,” Ed says casually. “I met a guy who’s got that same act down fuckin’ pat.”

Hostility doesn’t even begin to explain the dagger-sharp steel that drops over Mei’s face. “What’s his name?” she demands.

“Bastard goes by Ling Yao.”

“Yao,” Mei repeats venomously. Even her mini panda goes hackles up like they share one hive mind or something.

“Guess you’re competing,” says Ed. He jabs into his potatoes to give the illusion of superiority, etc, etc, see Mustang for more details.

“And you’re acquainted,” mutters Mei. She looks down at her tiny hands, either to guess how well Ed’s neck fits between them or how quickly she can take out his eyes. In classic Mei fashion, she does none of that and instead says, “How much will it take for you to tell me all that you know about the philosopher’s stone?”

Ed grins. That look in Mei’s eyes tells him that she’s more than willing to fuse the skin of his arms together to get him to talk.

“I don’t need any of the Chang clan’s resources,” he says. Mei’s shoulders come down in relief, but the knives in her eyes are poised to strike. “Y’know, we were planning to stop in Liore next. I hear there’s a corrupt priest that needs to either be put behind bars or in the ground.” Ed lets his chair fall down on all legs. “We could use a few extra hands. And, I dunno, maybe the bigwig fraud even has a philosopher’s stone,” he adds casually.

“I’ll get my belongings,” Mei says, pushes in her chair with a loud squeal of old wood on older wood, and bolts upstairs.

Al walks in like two seconds later. He glances between Ed, the empty seat, and the unfinished food.

“I don’t think I’m going to like this,” he says cautiously.

“No, it’s good, we got it covered,” Ed assures him just as Mei trips over the top step and performs a kickass midair roll to right herself and land on three points of contact.

“I’m well,” she declares, swinging her satchel over her shoulder. “Shall we leave now?”

Al looks like he wants transmute Ed’s pants back into the cow they came from. “We might as well,” he says, generously forgiving. Doesn’t mean Ed won’t wake up with pink hair tomorrow.

---

Liore’s a mess. Big fucking surprise.

Bald With A God Complex goes down before Ed can kick in the doors and say your religion is a fraud and your miracles are the science fair equivalent of philosopher’s stone whoopdie-fucking-doos like a badass because apparently Mei’s already had enough of this bullshit and she hasn’t even heard the bastard yap.

Hell if the Elrics can’t predict a waterfall on this endless tsunami of a boat ride.

It’s pretty awesome when Bald With A God Complex starts his spiel of ha ha wow I’m so evil, I love abusing religion so much, aren’t I so big and bad and smart, look at the sick refraction going on with my shiny scalp, you can see how much brain I don’t have through my pale head given that Al’s mic'd up and broadcasting this confessional session live.

Learn from your mistakes: that’s the Elric way. And god, are they learning so much all the time.

“Al,” Ed says sharply, watching from way the fuck up and on top of the clocktower as all of Liore sharpens their pitchforks. Al turns expectantly, mouth pulled in a neutral grimace. “And hey, Mei,” gets their special guest momentarily distracted from the horrors of the world at large. “You guys in any rush to tell an entire city to calm the fuck down while I go make a call to Mustang?”

“Be careful,” Al calls after him as Ed leaps down to find the bald bastard’s office and maybe a phone or whatever.

This particular number is one Ed’s got carved into the mushy pinkness of his brain. He can practically hear his synapses growling and hissing and reacting with general disgust at what Ed conditioned himself into believing was the equivalent of brushing his teeth with lava.

Twelve year olds. Fucking love them.

The phone doesn’t even get to ring for the second time before a voice that sounds like it’s been dry-cleaned and freshly pressed says, “Colonel Mustang speaking.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” Ed says, trying not to sound too relieved, what the hell? He moves away from the window as Al and Mei start alchemically projecting their voices over the mob. “Alright, bastard, listen up real good. You know Liore? Three stops from New Optain, five from East City?”

Something in Ed’s tone must alert Mustang to some kind of bloodshower or plague of locusts, because the bastard skips the who is this entirely. “What’s the situation?” he asks tersely.

“Yeah, so, turns out the head honcho here’s as nasty as half-baked religious terrorists can be,” says Ed. “We were passing through town and tripped over the damn rug and the bodies he threw down there jumped up and were like, ‘Ah ha! I’m alive, but not really, because human transmutation is a lie and riots are my kind of Friday night entertainment!’”

“Do you have any information that happens to be more coherent,” Mustang says in his teeth-grinding this is not a proper report, Fullmetal voice.

So Ed puts on his baby voice. “We’re out here trying to keep a riot down,” he says, pulling every word through molasses. “We’re also trying not to doom the country, so bring your gloves, your babysitter, your entire goddamn chess set if you’re so inclined in case we get shish kabobed, and tell Grumman to keep the Central troops way the hell away. Fuck,” Ed shouts loudly at the trademark blue-pink spray of whatever transmutation Al and Mei are performing that needs an approximate fuckton of quartz.

There’s a brief pause on the other side of the line. Then Mustang comes back with an even, “Am I speaking to Edward Elric?”

“Ha! That’s a conversation for backstage,” Ed barks, then hangs up.

---

Apparently Al and Mei’s solution to shutting everybody the hell up was to add a new monument to the central plaza.

Ed studies the new quartz dragon that takes up way too much space and is more of a giant FUCK YOU than anything symbolic or functional. “I like it,” he says approvingly.

“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” mutters Al. “We’ll put it away once things have settled down.”

“What? No, it’s wonderful!” Mei protests, short arms stuck up and flailing at the artistry, the Xingese and Amestrian influences, etc, etc. “Besides,” she adds, “isn’t this nice? Now the people of Liore have a monument to remind themselves that strength is something one must grasp for themselves—that the only legs they should rely on to carry themselves forward is their own!”

“What she said,” says Ed.

Al sighs. “As long as it doesn’t get in the way of business,” he allows like he’s a uni student living with two roommates who routinely set fire to things he didn’t know were flammable.

All three of them stare up, up, and way up at the serpentine dragon, its kickass claws, the totally not a replica of the philosopher’s stone between them, and the picture-perfect replica of Al’s face when Ed does something particularly disappointing but with scales and whiskers and shit.

“I’m gonna add a Fuck you, Mustang plaque, hang on,” Ed says, already rubbing his rings.

“You might as well,” says Al. “It adds character.”

---

Ed gives Mustang’s team a week tops to move out and start combing the city.

It’s gonna be a real fucking busy week.

---

“Do all Amestrians act as if they’re about to drop dead within the next minute?” Mei asks warily, eyeing Ed with something adjacent to respect.

Ed washes the blood off his hands in the aqueduct. Homunculus fluids—nasty. “Nah,” he says. “You gotta be a certain kind of crazy to be like us.”

Mei glances meaningfully at where Lust and Envy are busy disintegrating into century-old powdered sugar. She takes a few healthy steps back away from the cloud and lifts her sleeve over her nose, under the reasonable but fundamentally incorrect assumption that homunculi are contagious. “I suppose you’re a special case,” says Mei.

“It’s just one of my specialties,” Ed says, baring his teeth. “Now come on. We’ve got a gig in the plaza and you’re coming with.”

“Should I expect any buildings to come down or go up without warning?” Mei asks flatly, following him down the dank tunnel and up into the cathedral anyway.

“Fuck, I dunno, maybe if I’m feeling funny.”

“Yes, of course. Forgive me. I forgot that you’re a paragon of humour and not a rude bastard.”

“Bold of you to assume those are mutually exclusive. But hey: I’m in a good mood. I’ll even tell you some of Ling’s weak points, maybe give you some intel into his assassin bodyguards.”

Mei’s face shifts into her targeting look. “I will allow you and Alphonse exceptions to Xing’s visa policies once I raise the Chang clan to the throne and become Empress,” she says immediately.

“Deal,” Ed says just as quickly.

Ling might be pissed and end up cutting the leash on his war dogs altogether, but Mei’s a damn fine combatant and grows out of naivety like she’s been wearing hand-me-downs this entire time.

The cards they’re playing with this time are rigged to fuck and shittery. It would be great if Ed was the one who rigged them. Hell, it tolerable if Mustang rigged them. It’s blatantly obvious that Eyes With A God Complex has no idea what he’s doing if he’s letting his minions get dusted or run away from home every other week. Ed would almost believe they were all playing a somewhat fair game if it wasn’t for the sheer amount of bullshit they have to scoop out of their sinking ship.

---

Despite Ed and Al’s kind suggestions for Mei to go back to Youswell and wait for them to come back with a philosopher’s stone, Mei glares at them with all the intensity of a twelve year-old who’s been wronged and is prepared to do really fucking drastic bullshit to get the world spinning to her rhythm again.

Been there, done that. Ed’s resigned to flames and explosions as he pays for a third ticket and herds Mei onto the train.

Central greets them by sending Reyna on Timpani to greet them at the station.

All things considered, it could be so much worse. Ed’s still eyeing the pillars, the class ceiling, the departing passengers, just in case anyone thinks it’d be funny to throw them a surprise party that ends in cuffs.

“Hey,” says Reyna. “Who’s the kid?”

It pleases Ed greatly that Reyna’s differentiating between Mei (kid) and Ed and Al (not infants). “I’m Mei Chang,” Mei says, then bows a full forty-five. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, miss.”

“Ah, so Ed doesn’t actually spread angry whenever he sneezes, got it,” Reyna says lightly.

“Fuck you very much, where’s the cab,” says Ed.

Mei plasters herself against the window as they roll down Central streets. Ed has no idea what’s got her so ooo and ahhh and oh my, how exciting when every house looks is a carbon copy of its neighbours and it’s impossible to find something that can truly and completely get him plastered within fifteen minutes of base.

“When everything settles down, a Xingese restaurant will open there,” Al says, pointing at the corner of Elgin and Kings. “It’ll be a really nice place and Ed’s going to spend his life savings on monster congee.”

“Hey, that shit’s good,” Ed says defensively. He turns to Mei with a glare that says back me up.

Mei takes five seconds to run the numbers and then says, “It sure sounds like an efficient way to eat,” which is as good as it’s gonna get given the lack of covert ops and life-threatening bonding experiences so far.

Anabelle’s waiting at the entrance to the Hall. She peers lazily over the top of her folder, gives Mei a quick mental diagnosis, and holds the door open.

“Welcome back,” she says. “Colonel Insincere told me to tell you, and I quote, ‘I’ll buy your goddamn tickets, stay put so I can have one normal fucking conversation with you.’”

Ed’s mood jumps up from Ew, Mustang to Suck Ass, Mustang so fast it probably makes a fucking vacuum. “Swear words included?” he asks excitedly.

“Indeed,” Anabelle says, faintly amused.

Four hours later and Mei’s tripping over her own tiny feet trying to spill Al’s praises and chucking the leftovers Ed’s way. Doesn’t matter. Ed’s in a great mood. He doesn’t scowl once through all of Paganini Mvt. 3 and everybody gives him a wider berth than usual once they’re done rehearsal, probably under the assumption that someone cut his fuse and this Ed isn’t as much happy as just trying to find another lighter.

---

“Oh my fucking god, you should see the look on your face right now,” Ed says, demon smile batting a thousand.

Mustang looks like someone’s been holding a rain cloud over his head for the past week as Anabelle closes the door behind them. Well, not fucking really; he’s doing the thing where he manually scrubs every wrinkle off his forehead and repeats inner peace, inner peace, roasting minors is bad.

“Elric,” Mustang says without any inflection.

Hawkeye and Havoc form a small entourage after him, and isn’t that hilarious.

If Al isn’t going to ruin Havoc’s silent but obvious pleading to the gods, well, Ed just has to pick up the slack.

“Hey, Havoc,” Ed says, splitting open into a full-on face of teeth when Mustang slowly turns over his shoulder to stare at his handyman. “Hope Mustang hasn’t caused you too much grief, yeah?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Havoc says faintly.

“You still goin’ a pack a day? Lungs haven’t fossilized yet, you old dino?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Havoc repeats, but with, like, negative ten times the spirit and will to live.

Al elbows Ed between the ribs, rude, and starts doing his damage control thing or whatever. “I’m sorry about my brother,” he apologizes, planting a firm hand on Ed’s back and practically bending him in half at the waist while giving a modest thirty himself. “He never outgrew his twelve year-old temper and decided to make a comedy show of it. Can we help you, Colonel?”

Ed comes up with a scowl. “He’s been stalking us for a year, Al, stop giving credit where it isn’t due,” he grumbles.

“And we’ve been harassing him with false leads and very mean baiting for even longer,” Al points out. He raises a placating finger. “Let’s call it equivalent exchange, okay?”

They both exchange a look. Fuck knows equivalent exchange has its head up its own ass, but for the sake of the continuity of science or whatever, it’s quips and eyerolls until they get a lab and retest everything to make sure physics this time hasn’t been kicked half a milimeter to the left.

Fuck. It’s going to take forever to get a paper published.

Mustang looks over at Anabelle. Anabelle smiles back, lipstick the closest shade to blood that’s available on the market, nails short and blunt but matching. “It’s nice to see you again, Colonel,” she says amusedly to Mustang, “and you too, Lieutenant,” to Hawkeye, but with slightly more open body language.

“So this is the Amestrian military,” Mei says critically, sitting on a stack of old cushion seats. She looks them all over with knife eyes and frowns in a half-clinical, half-threat analysis way. “Your internal energies are in conflict with the natural state of the world,” she declares, obviously translating four Xingese characters into one wobbly Amestrian sentence. “I would recommend consulting a therapist to work through your trauma, then holding back on caffeine intake and centering your spirit through daily meditation.”

Hawkeye’s gaze trains sharper on Mei, whereas Havoc coughs loudly and violently into his elbow.

“Yeah, no, that’s not happening,” Ed says before Mustang can either give a thank you or oh hell, two meddling brats, God if you’re up there why. “But nice diagnosis. Mustang, meet Mei Chang, resident alkahestry and qigong master.”

“A pleasure,” Mustang says, slapping out sincerity like hotcakes. “Can I assume this is what you meant by part two of your ‘Central-wide fuck-you array’?”

“That’s right,” says Al. “Mei’s very familiar with array work, and she can certainly defend herself.”

Mei throws up a victorious pose to the side, her tiny panda doing matching acrobatics on her shoulder. “I can kill a man in fourteen different ways without a sound while retaining the choice of making it painless or unbelievably excruciating,” she says smugly.

Hawkeye’s definitely giving Mei some serious targeting eyes now. Briefly, Ed wonders what would happen if he locked Winry, Lan Fan, Mei, Hawkeye, and Major General Armstrong in the same room.

The resulting scenario, however hypothetical, is so fucking traumatic Ed grabs that possibility by the ears and punts it off into Oh God, Oh God No, Oh My God No land.

“Part one’s right here—” Ed gestures vaguely to the room and its current inhabitants— “and part three’s in a secure location. He’ll cooperate. Name starts with an s, ends in car. Part four’s the execution, which, eh, we’ll improvise the maybe bits, and god knows how that’s gonna go for classical violinists. Fuck. Whatever. Part five’s the cleanup, and all we really know is that Mei’s gonna hop back to Xing and become Empress.”

“I look forward to working with you in the future,” Mei tells Mustang brightly. Ed swears he can see Mustang growing new wrinkles by the second.

“All the indented in betweens are good to go, you know, suppliers, contacts, referrals, informants, a double-crossing homunculus, sleep-deprived music majors who’d literally kill for more funding and freedom of expression, a few old double basses we could smash and make a campfire to toast damn marshmallows, the whole nine yards,” he says casually.

“What was that fifth one?” Mustang asks carefully.

Ed ignores him. “We’ve got the pieces; now we’ve got to slap them all together, dump a bucket of industrial glue over it, and pray to every god in every pantheon that it’ll hold up against a cannonball,” he summarizes, then drops down into his chair and takes a long fucking drink of his water.

“I sincerely hope that’s not vodka,” mutters Havoc.

“We make it a rule not to drink when the world’s ending,” Al assures him. “It hinders your ability to prevent it.”

“Right,” Havoc says, in a tone that implies he sincerely regrets opening his mouth.

“You seem to be very well informed of... rather confidential details,” Mustang says, probably rearing to break up this shitshow. Tough luck. “I would ask how and where you managed to come across such information, but I find it difficult to believe you would cooperate.”

“Who the fuck told you that?” Ed says incredulously.

Is Mustang under the impression that they ding-dong-ditched him for a full year out of fear? Apparently Colonel Firecracker hasn’t understood that Ed is a creature that functions solely off spite and—does Mustang think he’s getting bullied?

Coming to that realization is the second most humbling discovery that Ed’s made in his entire life and sixteen years after the fact that just because you can play it slow, you can’t necessarily play it fast.

Ed stares long and hard at Al. “I have no idea where we’re gonna go from here,” he says soberly, “but I sure fuckin’ hope it’s up.”

“I know,” Al says sadly.

---

“We can tell you. Hell, we’d love to tell you. The crazy gets spread proportionately across everyone riding this double-decker to hell. Who knows how many layers this shit sandwich has now.”

“The story is... kind of hard to believe? Very hard to believe.”

“I proved it all in a paper fuckin’ ages ago,” Ed says moodily. “Now I don’t even have a lab.”

“You didn’t get a proper lab until you started research in Creta,” Al points out.

“Yeah, because over there government and military aren’t synonyms and papers are freely published and accessible to the common public,” Ed fires back.

Mustang finds this apparently startling. The only indication is a minute climbing of a single brow and the smell of reckless ambition.

“Anyway,” Ed continues, kicking his feet up on a free chair he’s now considering offering Hawkeye because he’s getting some weird looks, “Al went east, I went west. You wouldn’t believe the kind of crazy stuff they’re doing all over the world.”

“When the government isn’t spending all its resources on war,” elaborates Al.

“If you don’t mind,” Mustang interrupts, gesturing vaguely with one hand because he needs to do something and he clearly doesn’t know what, “why were you travelling?”

“To break the law of equivalent exchange,” Ed and Al both say at once.

Shit, now Ed’s tempted to kick the chair over to Mustang before all his blood vessels burst and they have to carry him out on a stretcher.

“I’ve heard of that principle before,” Mei says from the corner. She looks between the alchemists in the room, presumably trying to decipher the end me now expression on Mustang’s face and the laid-back serenity on Ed and Al’s. “In alkahestry we have something similar: that which you nourish will bear fruit in your name; take no more than what you owe. Though,” she adds, flipping a knife contemplatively between her knuckles, “alchemy seems to be a lot stricter on that front.”

“Play with fire and you’ll get burned,” Ed summarizes, deliberately making eye contact with Mustang.

“Alchemy is a cruel science,” Al says coldly. “Its origins are cruel. Its truth is cruel. The Truth is cruel.”

“So,” Ed follows up with a vague wave unto the world, “we set out into the world. Did a ton of research, met a ton of people, the sort.”

Mustang’s expression briefly blanks like his brain short-circuited, then comes back online with a slow blink. Fucking awesome. Ed didn’t even have to exercise percussive maintenance between the bastard’s eyes. “How old were you when you set out?” Mustang asks, something akin to realization dawning in his eyes.

“Uh,” Ed begins, looking to Al for confirmation, “eighteen?”

“I was eighteen,” says Al, “so Brother was nineteen.”

A long-suffering sigh. Mustang’s definitely going to spend the night plastered to the eyeballs and crying in sporadic intervals on his dining room table. “And how old are you know?” Mustang says tiredly.

Ed grins something evil and wretched. “I’m sixteen,” he says cheerfully.

“And I’m fifteen,” Al finishes brightly.

And a hush falls over the room. It lasts for a perfect three seconds and mostly consists of careful contained hysteria and exhausted acceptance.

Anabelle nods sagely where she’s leaning against the wall at what can only be a super fucking uncomfortable but indimidating angle. “I suppose my time travel theory wasn’t so off after all,” she says.

“Not so much time travel as consciousness travel,” Ed corrects, then glares at every alchemist in the room. He directs a particularly venomous look at Anabelle, who’s already smiling and has her mouth halfway open. “If anyone asks how the hell that shit works, better draw yourself a human transmutation array and go all clippity-clop on Truth’s door, because I can’t even begin to explain how in the fuckity hell only our memories made the trip and not everything else.”

“Philosophically speaking, it might be because a version of us already existed in this timeline,” says Al. “every world is defined by its particular boundaries, within which some understanding of reality emerges as truth. Two truths can’t coexist; the introduction of foreign bodies spawns conflict and chaos.”

“Something had to change—I guess our memories were the least tangible, most nonintrusive product on the shelves.”

“In terms of mass, memories would also pose the least risk of disrupting the spatial continuum.”

“And nothing had to be replaced, only added—unless we’re going full determinism, which is ass, so it’s safe to assume that Truth flipped out and chose the option that made it the least violently ill.”

“Maybe your brains got shoved into kiddy bodies,” Anabelle suggests, not as sarcastically as Ed wants it to be.

“Oh no,” Mei says, taking an appalled break from her knife-flipping. “Even using alkahestry, I can’t imagine a noninvasive procedure that wouldn’t cause severe trauma and a very swift death. Brain transplant,” she considers again, twists her face, and shakes her head. “Too many variables and moral dilemmas.”

“Hey, Mustang,” Ed snaps, getting pretty violently ill himself watching Mustang’s brain go cross-eyed, “how about you sit the fuck down?”

Ed generously kicks his legs off the chair and lets Mustang stare at it for forever and a half like it holds the secrets to the fucking universe. Obviously he gives up and accepts nihilism as the only true philosophy, because he drops all five hundred pounds of trauma onto the dusty cushion and sighs like his entire life is falling apart.

Fucking finally. Now they can have an actual adult conversation.

Al’s face falls like he just kicked a puppy. “I don’t want to presume, but I trust that you’ve been in contact with General Grumman and Major General Armstrong?” he says all soft and babying and shit.

“I have,” Mustang says tiredly, rubbing at his face. Fucking tough shit. “Although I would very much like to ask how you earned the favor of every official in the Amestrian Military with half a mind and an intact moral compass, the answer will probably take more time than we have today.”

“Oh no, it’s actually much simpler than you’d think,” Al assures him. “General Grumman frequents our concerts. Then we killed a homunculus and a rogue state alchemist for Major General Armstrong.”

Hawkeye definitely crossed the border into I Can’t Deal With This Shit territory at least ten minutes back, but now she finally decides to come out blazing with a disappointed, “Was this state alchemist under orders from High Command?”

Anabelle might’ve been right about the whole getting perforated thing, but Ed can’t help but slap on a manic grin. “Sure hope you weren’t friends with Kimbley,” Ed says, miming the psycho’s clap-boom gesture. “Sicko was planning to carve another crest of blood into Amestris’ already super bloody map, so you’re welcome.”

“Crest of blood?”

And Ed’s about to lay it out real nice and simple until his brain catches up with his mouth.

“We’ll tell you,” Al says, thinking the exact same thing, “but we’ll only do so with Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes present.”

Obviously that gets Mustang all blank-faced and finger-twitchy. “Why?” he says, drop-kicking courtesy into a dumpster fire.

“Because the last time we did this he ended up dead,” Ed snarls. “So will you fucking get on with it?”

The Hughes = dead equation slaps into place real quick, and Mustang briefly goes full stupid while Havoc freezes and Hawkeye’s brows pull her entire face up.

In the twenty minutes it takes for Hughes to abandon his minions to another four hours of overtime, Ed refuses to so much as make eye contact with Mustang. The bastard’s got his hands folded, elbows on his knees, and face tensed up in mental gymnastics like he’s a broke uni student trying desperately to squeeze out every last cenz from his minimum wage-paying job, and he’s weighing the pros and cons of foregoing food for the next week to pay for meds. Either that or he’s an infant trying to stack another block on the tower with single-minded intensity.

And, like, Ed’s prepared for shit. Lots of good people—really good people—bit the bullet the last time they went around this goddamn circus.

Ed had been resigned to going through shitty, heart-achey antics from the moment his consciousness got air-dropped into an eleven year-old body and he realized they’d have to do this all the fuck over again.

Doesn’t matter how many strings Ed breaks. Nothing prepares him for turning around just as Hughes goes, “How nice of you to invite me, Roy!” and strolls cheerfully into the room like he never fucking died in the first place.

“Oh my god, you do not know how good it is to see you,” Ed says, trying not to sound to broken up about it. He can feel all the tension drain out of his shoulders while his brain does loops going all haywire of Hughes is alive, Hughes is alive, do you know what this means and Ed can’t say anything because he doesn’t know what it means.

“Oh, it’s so nice to see you again,” Al says, visibly choked up, bowing his head a full forty-five. “I’m—Alphonse Elric, and this is my older brother, Edward.”

“Our special guests,” Hughes says brightly, rolling right along with the crazy. “I’ve wanted to have a good, long conversation with you for a while, seeing as you drove Roy up a wall so high he was drinking three floors above me!”

“Maes,” Mustang cuts in, swapping the budget calculations for face-in-palm like a wrung-out towel.

Ed kicks all the feel-good bullshit into the ravine of emotional problems he’ll deal with later. Or never. Whatever. He throws up a proper salute, fully aware of Mustang’s growing suspicions, and says, “Great to meet you. I’d offer you a drink but I told myself I’d stay sober through this conversation.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Hughes says, patting Mustang placatingly on the shoulder in that way your roommate says that the party will be super, it’ll be awesome, and you know you’re going to be camping out in some dank basement corner with the spiders. “The two of us will be anything but sober by the time we get home, so please, do tell us everything. Spare no details!”

Bringing Hughes up to speed is a thousand fucking times better than trying to paint out a nice bright picture for Mustang. Hughes is in Intel; he’s the first filter for crazy, diluting it nice and good and using the magic of sentence structure and tone to make the literal Apocalypse seem like a slightly more chaotic Tuesday.

“I see,” says Hughes. He levels a curious look at Ed and Al, probably trying to pick out all the subtleties in their body language. “So are you actually thirty-five? That changes the tone of this conversation by, hm, let’s say three inches to the left.”

“There’s no need for that,” Mei says flatly. “Edward acts like every day is his twelfth birthday.”

“Hey!”

“I second that,” Anabelle adds, raising her hand.

“I’m not fuckin’ deaf, you assholes.”

“If it helps, Brother was a state alchemist before,” Al offers, sending another ripple of shock through the room.

Ed rolls his eyes. The only people who aren’t staring at him like he’s just popped out an extra pair of arms are Al, who’s been on this side of crazy since before the border came down, and Anabelle, who nods curtly because it was the third theory on her list.

“Oh,” Mei mutters quietly. “That explains the...” She makes a vague gesture that usually stands in for explosion.

“My complete and utter disregard for the law, yeah,” Ed says, fitting in a yawn.

“Brother sometimes forgets that he doesn’t have a licence anymore and can’t worm his way into the restricted sections of state libraries or blow up ancient artifacts even if he fixes them afterward, then, failing that, cover it up with paperwork,” Al explains to the dumbstruck bystanders.

Being the only military personnel with half a flexible mind, Hughes arcs up an eyebrow and asks, “How old were you when you were enlisted?”

“Fuck. Like, twelve, probably?”

“Twelve?”

“Twelve, one-two,” Ed says blandly. “Or something. Who keeps track of shit like that, right?”

“The Fullmetal Alchemist,” Al says, just short of nostalgic. “You used to call him ‘Fullmetal’, Colonel.”

Hilariously, this makes everyone in military blue share a hot-potato game of furtive glances like Al just tagged on and everyone thought it was me because I was an eight-foot tall suit of armor.

“I used to call you Fullmetal?” Mustang echoes disbelievingly.

Ed looks him dead in the eye. “And when you got real fuckin’ brave you called me Ed,” he says sweetly. Hughes breaks out into an evil grin, and fuck, is this how they’re playing? “You were my CO, bastard, stop looking at me like I’m feral or I’ll decide I really am.”

Now if Mustang walked around with that face all the time instead of his know-it-all newspaper-baby politician smile, Ed wouldn’t be so angry. Alas.

“Well well well,” Hughes sings, slinking his entire arm over Mustang’s despairing shoulders. “Roy-boy’s got some screaming aces up his sleeve, doesn’t he?”

“You were twelve,” Mustang says slowly.

“It gets better,” Ed says all happy and shit because this is his hole to dig and he’s going all the way to the core of the planet. “When I was eleven, fresh off the worst alchemical hangover I’ll ever have and trying to cope with getting slapped in the face with double amputee, you broke into our house, called me a pussy bitch, and talked me into barking at your heels like a good military hound. So,” he says vindictively, jutting out an accusing finger, “are we doing this or what?”

“You’re not missing any limbs,” Havoc points out weakly.

“We passed on human transmutation this time,” Al supplies, awesome, throw more fuel onto the fire, burn the whole place down. Ed’s all in on the arson train at this point.

After another very length discussion about committing alchemical fraud, Mustang summons the west wind in his lungs and lets it out in one giant sigh. “Fullmetal,” he mutters to himself, and Ed hates how that one word changes the entire tone of the conversation to the hell do you want, let a guy get lunch before you brief him.

Hughes’ mouth twitches at the corners, communicating to Ed that he saw it all and plans to pull that card out at every inopportune moment ever. This is why Ed hates Intel.

“Now that we’re finally up to speed,” Anabelle says with indifferent impatience, “what was that about a blood array?”

Ed doesn’t want to be conscious for any longer than necessary. He doesn’t want to be conscious at all. He needs a fucking drink.

He spins around with more force than strictly necessary, scraping the chair along the floor and adding a nice scratch into the ceramic. Mei meets his eyes, frowns like she’s contemplating the advantages of transmuting Ed’s mouth and nose shut, and huffs.

She reaches into her robes and pulls out a map, one of those fancy ones from Xing printed on silk, and hops down from the tower of cushions. “I’ll explain the array,” she says, smoothing the map out onto the nearest table.

“But first, blood crests,” Ed says, unsheathing a red marker and pouncing at the map.

“I will transmute you into the floor,” Mei screeches, tackling her map away and spitting knives.

One of her evil daggers (they’re alchemical markers, Elric, do keep up, says older Mei, while Ed snorts and points out, hey dumbass, if it’s metal, has cutting edges, and can be used to murder someone, it’s probably a fucking knife) catches Ed’s marker right of his hands and explodes it red all over the wall.

Anabelle stares at the casualty for a long, silent moment. “Edward,” she says evenly, not blinking in that gothic willow tree way of hers.

“I got it, calm down,” Ed grumbles, framing the morbid splotch between two Ls. Then he pinches and starts to pull, which is his cue to reality to start bending aaany second now.

The fabric of existence catches up a moment later, rushing in like it’s five minutes late to rehearsal and the conductor is daydreaming of all the ways to public humiliate it in front of the entire orchestra. The red ink stretches taut like floss and starts wiggling like jello before Ed gives it a slap of fifth force juice and the thing turns into melted cheese. Almost every jaw in the room hits the ground and keeps sinking as he pulls, pulls, and pulls until one hand is well over his head and the string snaps.

Pop. Thing’s gone. Evidence erased. Hughes is looking at him like it’d be really fucking bad if Ed decided to pursue a career in homicide.

Mei’s the first to fully recover. She’s seen Ed pull all kinds of stupid stunts with alchemy, so she probably just takes the quintessence file and sets it on fire. “No more ink,” she snaps, cautiously rolling the map out again.

“My god, you’re sensitive,” says Ed, grudgingly settling for shotgun instead.

Everyone crowds around the table, keeping some distance away from Ed given new developments, which is awesome because Ed gets to haul his chair up and lean in on his elbows.

“This is what we’ve dubbed the nationwide transmutation circle,” Mei tells her audience once she’s done sticking daggers into the map like it’s any better than inking. She leans back, nods at her work, then gestures doctorally. “As you can observe, your country was purposely shaped to be a circle to better fit as many civilians into the array as possible, and the noted ten points, which were meant to be sites of bloodshed and tragedy, serve as the basis for the array.”

“Here’s a smaller version,” Al says, then slides a rough sketch of the connected lines onto the table.

Hamsters on wheels, all these overclocking brains.

“Ohhh, that is not good,” says Hughes.

Mustang tries to burn a hole into the label Ishval but only gets as far as pinching the bridge of his nose and trying real fucking hard to be a responsible adult. “You said you prevented a crest of blood at Briggs,” he says, “and you contacted us from Liore.”

“We can’t work miracles,” Ed says sourly.

“We’re lucky that Liore turned out the way it did,” Al adds. He frowns deeply and sprinkles his gaze across the map. “Everything... has been going surprisingly smoothly so far, actually.”

“Yeah, and it’s weird as hell. How many do we have left? Three?”

“Pride in the tunnels, Gluttony somewhere out in the wild, and Bradley,” Al confirms.

“Bradley?” Hughes repeats. His eyes go half-bug, half-manic and he laughs, entirely unamused. “Were you combining two different lists there? Please say yes. Because the first part sounded like something to do with our good friends the homunculi, and then Bradley.”

“The Fuhrer is a homunculus,” Ed says, waving his hand dismissively.

“What else?” Al mumbles to himself. “Oh, yes. All of High Command is corrupt, though that one was pretty obvious.”

“And they’ve got the immortal zombie horde,” adds Ed.

“And Pride in a Selim container.”

“And a kill switch for Amestrian alchemy.”

“And bad press,” they both say at once, then grimace.

“If you don’t mind,” Mustang interrupts, looking like he just aged another fifteen years, “how about you start from the beginning and move chronologically through events.”

Ed and Al exchange a look.

“We’re good for at least another hour and a half,” Anabelle informs them, glancing at her watch.

Abridged version it is. And fuck, is it still stupidly long and convoluted.

“Okay,” Ed begins, settling back into his chair again, "so our bastard of a dad ditched us when we were, like, five. And it was all fine until Mom died literally not even a year later. Can you guess where the topic of human transmutation came in? Whatever. Then Winry’s parents got murdered by Scar in Ishval, and we trained for a few months under Izumi Curtis, probably died a few times in the process, did a shit ton of studying, tried something pretty inadvisable, and then I’ve got an automail arm and leg and Al’s a suit of armor.”

“Did you mean Al has a suit of armor?” Hughes asks brightly.

“No, no, I was a suit of armor,” Al says. “The Gate took Brother’s leg and my body as payment, but Brother sacrificed his arm in exchange for my soul.”

Everybody gives Al a horrified look, then switches to Ed and gives him a silent but obvious didn’t they teach you not to touch the stove twice.

“If you guys are done with the questions, then let me fuckin’ get to the important shit so we don’t all die miserably and horrifically,” Ed snaps. “Or if you really want to know more trivia about things that didn’t happen and never will happen, leave them for the end. Fuckin’ okay?”

“And then Brother passed the state alchemist certification test by threatening the Fuhrer with a spear,” Al says brightly.

“I can’t be sober for this,” Mustang says despairingly.

“Sir,” is all Hawkeye says, but it’s so disappointed that even Ed sits up straight.

“Well hey, look what I found,” says Anabelle, pulling two bottles of god knows what poison-adjacent mind-euthanizing liquid out of a viola case. Mustang and Hughes whirl to face her, single-minded in their conquest to get absolutely plastered. “Are we all having fun? Yes? That’s very good. I can make it even more fun.”

“We’re all gonna die and I won’t even be sorry about it,” Ed says bitterly.

---

It’s way past curfew, but for once, Anabelle doesn’t seem to be losing her shit over it.

Of all places to rendezvous, Ed probably wouldn’t have chosen the Hall. Like, what kind of ballsy move is that? He’s ninety-five percent sure they’re being tailed and the general consensus is to say hello, fuck you and cozy up in one of the rooms backstage with a small truck’s worth of food.

“Okay, now I’m getting confused,” Ed says, eyeing the meats and cheeses and crackers and other assorted items that aren’t conventionally paired with wine. “Are we sacrificing someone? Because if we are, I volunteer Aria as tribute.”

“And what a fitting sacrifice,” Aria says dramatically, popping open a bottle of champagne. “Alas, we have work to do, and god’s a vengeful ex. Care for a glass?”

“I’ll just take juice, please,” Al answers and gets passed a whole bottle of sparkling pomegranate juice before Ed can grab a flute and surgically wire it down his throat.

Ed’s not going to be the bad example here because of older sibling pride and whatever. Shit.

So he lounges moodily on a couch meant for at least four people, significantly more sober than he wants to be, mood worsening by the minute when he realizes his feet still don’t touch the other fucking armrest, as the rest of the orchestra starts filing in.

At least one of his questions gets answered: Anabelle forced them into suits and ties because everybody else is dressed up like they’ve all been invited to one of the Armstrong’s galas and there’s an unspoken but cutthroat competition of who can dress the shiniest. The Armstrongs usually come out with the sequins and the stupidly sparkly fabric as if they aren’t hard enough to look at normally (see: Deconstructing the Armstrong Twinkle), but Mustang must’ve lost a bet or something because Ed almost lost a spleen laughing when he showed up in a holo suit, matching shoes and bowtie and everything.

Thank fuck all Ed had to do to maintain the minimum basic courtesey and dress code was ask Mei for one of those Xingese thigh slit robes. People would greet Ed with the shortest possible salutation available in their vocabulary and put as much distance between them and him as possible: when the gloves come off and the automail gets breathing room, the Fullmetal Alchemist is ready to suplex someone into the ground up to their knees.

Ed sure fucking wishes he had the same kind of aura right now, because everyone from Joseph the Third Seat First Violin to Mila on Trumpet is wandering over to bug him about the big plan and fun facts about their pseudo-immortal Fuhrer.

Al wraps about the greetings not a second too fucking soon. “What’s going on?” Ed asks, moving to sit properly. Al takes a seat beside him, and wisely, nobody squirms in at the first sign of an opening.

“Anabelle thought it would be nice to have one last fun night in case something goes horribly wrong,” Al tells him. He stares into his juice quietly. “Do you think it’s going to be okay?”

“We’re drowning in contingency plans at this point,” says Ed. “If we don’t make it, somebody down the line sure as hell will.”

“Mei would probably strangle Father with her bare hands if we broke our promise about helping her become Empress,” Al says, then smiles.

“Ling’s gonna be so fuckin’ pissed,” Ed says, smiling wider. “Too bad for him. He had his time to shine last run, and I would kill to see what kind of alkahestry-alchemy exchange programs Mei comes up with.”

Anabelle chooses then to drop down beside Ed, all spiffed up in a fancy red dress and completing the look by balancing a wine glass between two fingers. Fake it till you make it. “Well, tomorrow’s the big day,” she says brightly.

“And what are you gonna be doing while the country explodes?” Ed asks suspiciously.

“Making hell for the troops here in Central, of course,” she answers as if pro musicians aren’t known for being sleep-deprived professional sightreaders who go their entire careers hooked up to an IV pumping caffeine directly into their veins.

Ed glares at her with what he hopes is hostility and not deep confusion. “Oh, so you’re just gonna sit the whole damn orchestra in front of the main gates and have everyone play Czardas until you annoy HQ to death?” he says.

“Please,” Anabelle snorts, flipping her hair over her shoulder, “Czardas is a fun piece to play given that everyone can play it well and show off to their friends like it takes a half ton of talent and not five hundred cenz or however much Book 7 is nowadays.”

“So is that a yes or what?”

“If worse comes to worst, maybe. Or did you really think we have instruments in those cases right now?”

Ed eyes Anabelle’s violin case like his gaze alone will blow that motherfucker into flaming shrapnel before it does it itself. “What kind of asscrappery are you planning,” he says suspiciously.

“You wound me,” says Anabelle. If her smile is a whole lot more lopsided than usual, Ed’s blaming it on the wine for his own sake. “We’re musicians, yes? And we’re professionals, yes? So we’ll do as musicians do and perform, and we’ll do as professionals do and deliver.”

On cue, Carole the Third Chair Viola flips open her case and proudly displays... chalk. So much chalk. So, so, so much fucking chalk.

Al puts the pieces together. It’s a shit puzzle. “Oh no no no,” he says hurriedly, politely refraining from transmuting an orchestra-sized baby pen and giving a panicked wave and an aborted laugh instead. “I know you all have a basic understanding of alchemy, but we really could do without sixty Scars running around.”

“I like deconstructing buildings,” Carole says brightly.

“Yes, that’s Exhibit A right there,” says Al.

“We can cover you just fine,” Anabelle says, gesturing with a flick of her wrist and summoning a fleet of cello cases armed to the teeth with permanent markers.

Ed stares Anabelle directly in the eye. Anabelle stares right back. “This is not a good fucking idea,” he says slowly.

“If Brother’s saying it’s a bad idea, it is an extremely bad idea,” warns Al.

The room goes dead silent. Everybody’s exchanging looks like Ed and Al just declared unto the world that they’re quitting orchestra to join an improv club.

“Kid,” says concertmaster Klara, nursing a bottle of what can either be a two hundred year-old flask or a perfume bottle branded by a circus, “I guarantee that we’ve done things that are a lot worse than overthrowing some government.”

“Like what?” Ed demands.

“We’ve worked a ton of odd jobs over the years,” Klara says, looking over the orchestra and receiving way too many slight-agreement nods. “It’s a rough time to be in arts, obviously, so we go to Linnie and try to keep ourselves afloat.”

“So you kept yourselves afloat by jumping on a pirate ship.”

“More or less.”

“So why didn’t you, I dunno, keep on sailing with the pirate ship?”

“Because we didn’t feel particularly inclined to reenact the Titanic.”

“Fuck,” Ed mutters, feeling thoroughly trashed in the battle of the metaphors and not a single goddamn ounce more confident in this stage play of a plan.

“It’ll work out,” Anabelle says again. “You boys just do you fancy little tricks and explode this eyeball with a god complex or whatever you call him. We might even leave a salami for you. Our treat.”

“Half the time I have no idea what the fuck you’re saying,” Ed says bitterly.

Al throws a few side-eye glances toward the chalk.

Oh my god. Crazy is contagious after all, isn’t it? “Al,” Ed says cautiously. “No. No, Al, resist the temptation. Don’t give in.”

“Well, if that’s how it’s going to be,” Al says lightly, “we might as well pre-make some transmutation circles in order to minimize the number of limbs lost in the process of attempting to manually demolish Central Command.”

Anabelle’s creepy lopsided grin evolves into a show of teeth that would make Envy piss himself. “Well, well, well,” she sings, terrifyingly reminiscent of a certain knife-hurling, paper-pushing Intel agent, “looks like our fancy night out just turned into an arts-and-crafts session. Are we all good to plot out the dismantling of this backasswards government?”

“I like arts and crafts,” Carole says brightly.

---

Taking out the first wave of Central grunts takes about a fuckton of Briggs soldiers and another fuckton of Eastern troops.

“Why, if it isn’t Edward and Alphonse,” Grumman says, all cheer on a rainy day, high tea for Apocalypse halftime. “Have you come to watch the fireworks as well?”

“We’re lighting them, actually,” Al states.

“No thanks to your people,” Ed says flatly, gesturing sharply at the scattered explosions booming away from the city center. Sounds a little less exciting than the usual military parade.

“Ah, the springtime of youth,” Grumman says nostalgically, sipping his tea all feeble and helpless like he isn’t the rocket launcher equivalent of the standard pistol soldier. “Well, go on. Don’t you boys have a rehearsal soon?”

Al smiles like a knife. “I’m not sure we’d call it a rehearsal, sir,” he says politely.

“I don’t see why not,” Grumman tells his tea. “I certainly hope to be there at the actual recital in person.”

---

“Oh, Al! Thanks for the stickers—they can transmute an entire building down, did you know that?”

“Hey hey hey, Ed, hang on a second. This array right here, the immolation one, works real great! Who knew gunpowder was explosive? Anyway, as I was saying, hypothetically, if I scribble a whole bunch of little lizards onto this bad boy, something really cool should happen, right?”

“Coming through! Sorry for the damage—put it on the military’s bill!”

“Hey there! We’re civilians, ha ha, don’t shoot, please, or we’ll have to get really nasty, and you seriously don’t want to know how many of these slips I have under my jacket!”

“We’re gonna die, Al. We’re all gonna die and I’ll drag every one of those bastards down to hell with me.”

“Maybe we should just keep going, Brother.”

---

“That offer for dental still up?” Greed somehow has the luxury to ask as he’s being pelted by semi autos and other high-budget, low-return massages.

Ed snorts. “What, big bad Greed can’t fix up his own cavities with murder rock juice?” he asks.

“It’s for my idiot subordinates,” says Greed, gesturing back at dog guy, who’s nursing a broken jaw and probably an inhale like a train whistle.

“I think you’re better going to a veterinarian for that,” Al points out.

“I’m not actually a dog,” dog guy protests.

“I bet you piss with one leg up, go and grab a medic before you eat your tongue,” Ed snaps, then transmutes a fifteen-foot wall just as a fresh batch of Central troops marches in, glances around at the overturned cars and craters and fire with cartoonish shock, then starts squealing and screaming and maybe even giving orders.

“Don’t be too mean to them,” Al tells Greed. “They have weak hearts, so try to avoid giving anybody a heart attack.”

“Why, I certainly can’t help it if their poor hearts go aflutter because of my ravishing looks,” Greed declares, then snaps a rifle in half with one hand.

“Fuck you, we’re going,” says Ed.

---

To literally nobody’s surprise, Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong has the presence of a tank and a sword arm like a ballistic missile.

“Fullmetal,” she says, cold as a freezing knife in the gut. Ed would be more inclined to come up with cooler metaphors if the only suitable metaphor for Major General Armstrong wasn’t along the lines of knife and cold, because it is, and it’s because she’s nine kinds of scary and ten kinds of whoop-ass.

“Sir,” Ed says with what he hopes is confidence, snapping up in a salute. “We’re grateful for the support. Really.”

“Everyone from Briggs is a fighting machine,” Al comments, stepping to the side as Buccaneer bodies a poor bastard into and through a wall. “I think it’d be really fun if they all kept their sidearms safe in the likely case of rain, or imminent immortal zombie horde.”

“What helpful intel,” Major General Armstrong says flatly.

Ed and Al don’t even bother when some valiant idiot tries to knife her from behind: her sword straight up halves the guy, total, perfect bisection, and Ed’s not reckless enough to leap in front of her like I’ll save you, look at me, I’m capable! and be next to die.

Major General Armstrong swipes the blood off in less of an action and more of a reflex. Then she turns her glare on Ed, full What The Fuck Are You Still Doing Here, You Useless Piece of Shit. “I’ll keep that in mind for when this horde does appear. Now make yourselves useful and take out the rats in the basement,” she commands. “And if you happen to come across the leader of our great nation, greet him on my behalf with the humbling reality that humans are human because they survive.”

Then Major General Armstrong turns, coat flapping in the wind like a badass, and starts mowing her way down the streets again.

“I wish my coat did that,” mutters Ed.

“I’m half convinced that the universe twists in its own way around General Armstrong,” says Al, offering a few placatting pats. “Don’t be too down about it.”

---

Speaking of the leader of this great nation, Bradley looks way too sprightly for a sixty-something year old skeleton with a nuclear-powered eyeball.

“Hey, fucker,” Ed snarls, hurling handfuls of spite shaped like throwing knives his way because he has hands and what the hell are they for if he doesn’t use them, “you still trying to make hell out of Amestris, or did your back give out? You’ve been real shit at the blood crest game, and even worse at the not-dying game.”

“Well, I certainly know you,” Bradley says, sticking a sword where Ed was maybe two miliseconds ago. Bastard really is getting older by the second. “Edward Elric and Alphonse Elric, the two most talented soloists of your generation. Alchemists as well,” Bradley adds as Al twists the ground into a swampy mess from across the room.

“We’re unhappy with the state of arts funding,” says Al. “Sorry, sir, but we’ll be killing you and passing the chair onto somebody with better taste.”

“I’d be offended that you’d even compare my tastes to Grumman’s if we weren’t battling to the death,” Bradley says, fucking chuckles, and splits a support beam in half.

“I’d be offended if you named me Fullmetal knowing full well I had a brother who was full fucking metal,” Ed screeches, carves his rings into the wall, condenses a boiling wad of fuck you into five tails of decapitation, and forces them all down and through the floor.

Everyone scrambles, Ed glares bullets, and Ling, more exasperated than desperate, says, “Can we please just get onto the murdering?”

---

Ed’s about to burst an artery out of sheer frustration over the fact that they’re gonna be wrapping this up way the fuck later than he wants to when motherfucking Scar explodes his way into the room and starts hounding after Bradley like it’s the last thing he’s ever gonna do.

Which, by the look on his face, he might be resigned to.

Ed growls. People these days think they can just throw themselves out to get pincushioned like it’s a new fad or something, and he’s starting to get real pissed about it.

“Hey, Lan Fan,” he shouts from perched on top of a chandelier, “do me a favor and make sure Scar doesn’t go all redemption-in-death!”

“Try it yourself before you suggest it,” Lan Fan snaps back, pulling out a grenade with her teeth and warming the entrance hall up significantly.

Fu darts out of the fight to slap a handful of flash grenades into Ed and Al’s hands. “These might help,” he says, then draws a pair of fresh kunai and pounces back at Bradley.

---

“Well slap me on the ass, look who we have here,” Ed says gleefully.

“Of all times to make an entrance, Fullmetal, must it be after we kill the incredibly lethal, incredibly violent, and incredibly unnerving homunculus?” Mustang says, lilting the Fullmetal just the way Ed likes it: annoyed and fatalistic.

Shit, that might even help Ed’s mood. “Congratulations, nobody’s dead,” Ed allows, smiling wide and mean at Mustang and only wide at everyone else. “Looks like you guys made it out with your limbs attached. No spinal injuries?”

“Why are you looking at me?” Havoc asks suspiciously.

“Hindsight and foresight all at once,” Al answers, then sets his first aid kit down. Fat chance he’ll need to use it for anything more than bashing someone’s brains out through their nose.

While Al methodically goes around and kisses everyone’s boo-boos better, Ed settles for playing moral support and keeping watch down the long, dank-ass corridors.

Mustang looks like a soggy towel. Hawkeye looks like the person who wrung said towel. Havoc’s standing off to the side and leaning on the wall with a face the communicates to Ed that he really needs a cig right about now. Breda stares at them in full deadpan. Falman stares at them with attempted deadpan. And then Fuery, bless his machine nerd heart, pipes up with a delighted, “Oh! Ed and Al!”

“Robohead,” Ed says back, grinning like a demon as he shakes Fuery’s grimy hand. “Looks like you guys put Pride down, huh? Neat. How’d you pull it off?”

Fuery laughs nervously. “It didn’t really go according to plan, but we made do,” he says.

“The Colonel thought it appropriate to, quote, ‘borrow a page from the Elric brats’ journal and murder The Abyss Watches Back to death’, unquote,” Hawkeye provides.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Mustang says, thirty going on three hundred.

Ed surveys the halls. It sure is dark. It sure is hot. That makeshift cone with two-foot thick walls and a good smattering of molten rock slugs lazily toward one of many gashes making up the morbid wallpaper, flooring, crowning, etc. of this nasty place.

Looks like a homunculus got roasted in a brick oven.

“I approve,” Ed declares.

“That’s about the last thing I want to hear from you,” Mustang grumbles.

Ed waves his hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a temper like a bouncy ball and a skull like a brick, see variations,” he says flatly. “Heard it a thousand times but like a hundred times meaner.”

“Oh? Then I assume you must have burned down all of East City to receive that sort of reaction,” Mustang says, which means he obviously doesn’t know how ass Ed’s contracts can get when shit hits the fan.

Do us all a favor and refrain from exercising your passion for interior design when we visit the next ambassador and I suppose supplexing the chief of police is the extent of your social capabilities dot the tippy fucking top of the Mustang iceberg and Ed’s the stubborn bastard who keeps turning up the heat.

“I don’t know what kind of miracle worked itself backward, but you’ve got more gray hairs now than when you had to hound over me,” Ed says victoriously, barking out a clap of laughter when Mustang’s hand twitches violently in an aborted attempt to cover his scalp. “Looks like someone could use a fuckin’ hand, huh, Colonel?”

Al, resident healer and well of common sense, elbows him. “Don’t tease the Colonel,” he says. “No bullying, remember?”

Then he sits everybody down one by one, holding them by one shoulder to make sure they can’t run away from his needles of healing and rejuvenation and mystic energies.

“I’m not familiar with this method of treatment,” Hawkeye says skeptically, eyeing the needles like Al’s waving a pistol in her face.

“It’s a Xingese technique,” Al explains. Something about his body language must demonstrate that he isn’t about to murder everyone dead and put them behind glass, because Hawkeye’s shoulders drop while everyone else deflates like a balloon.

Mustang watches Al with a very Asset Acquired kind of look. Ed scowls, and Matchstick turns his way with more of a For the Love of God, Fullmetal, Please Get Your Rabies Shot kind of look.

“Mm,” Al says, removing his needles from Breda’s neck. He takes a few steps back, smiles at the entourage, and declares, “Very serious!”

Falman doesn’t look super enthused. “Pardon me?” he says politely.

“You all have extensive, but fortunately non-lethal injuries,” Al says brightly. “Any vigorous movement will only aggravate them, so I would recommend lots of rest.”

And they’re all probably about to jump up and start complaining, all no we’re adults and you’re kids and pride is a thing, lower case not capital, we just liquified the latter, let’s all hold hands and get murdered together! Best friends! Hooray! only they all start to lean at a full forty-five before the tension in the air snaps and they’re all snoozing into the floor.

“Anabelle can make sure they don’t get themselves killed,” says Al.

“Anabelle can sure do a lot more than that, but hey, go wild,” says Ed.

---

“Elric,” Mei says coldly to Ed, and then to Al, a stupidly perky, “Alphonse!”

“Hello, Mei,” Al says, smile all soft and mushy.

“You all set to go?” Ed demands.

“I’ve been waiting for the better part of two hours, so yes, I would say that everything is set to go,” Mei says in a slow you are baby drawl. They’ve known each other for a total of nine days and she’s already treating Ed like every one of his unappreciative colleagues. Awesome. “Lady Anabelle passed by not long ago. She reports that the monster called Gluttony has been neutralized.”

“Seriously? Nice. Who did him in?”

“I’m told that it was a combined effort of the Briggs and Eastern troops. As it turns out, a gaping void of a mouth is only as effective as long as you sit in one spot and let yourself get eaten.”

Ed barks out a laugh. Four hundred hardened veterans, screaming and parting like the Red Sea between every other rocket— “Sure sounds like a Tuesday, huh?”

“Then I certainly can’t wait for Wednesday to come,” Al says, then beckons them all forward and down the hall where they’ll probably all spontaneously combust for fucking over the plot this bad.

---

Apparently a centuries-in-waiting evil scheme is stupidly easily to tear apart if the equation five minus two equals three, which it does, because Ed double-checked the holy shitting fuck out of that. The Elrics take chances, but the Gate can go die in a hole.

For all that Scar and Mei don’t know anything about each other, they sure have real good teamwork four floors apart. “Here we go!” Mei shouts, then plants her palms on floor and brings the whole place down.

---

“I expected many things, but I didn’t expect this,” Al says with a very obvious undertone of disgust, probably referring to all the Eyeball, God Complex Edition goop all around them.

“Impossible,” goes the goop all at once, making Mei and Ed fill the room with choice expletives in three different languages. “How could this be? You puny insects and your puny meddling!”

Turns out a reversal array, activated solo, is the equivalent of cracking a whip next to a sheet of rice paper. One moment Eyes is all big and bad and eating transmutations for brunch, and the next he’s literally going balls to the wall with creep factor.

The room has a wiggly tantrum for another two minutes until Ed loses his temper. Fu’s a godsend: Ed hurls every flashbomb at every wall and everyone in the room who knows him even a little already has their eyes squeezed shut and faces scrunched up in annoyance.

“My eyes,” shrieks the room at large. “My eyes! Not the eyes!”

“Fuck this, fuck you,” Ed scowls, grabbing Al’s arm and kicking reality so hard it pops off the hinges.

Everything goes a peaceful monotone. Mei’s face is scrunched up all disappointed and annoyed and not nearly as dumb as Ed wants it to be. Al gives a scientifically contemplative hum.

“Let’s get this over with so I can take a fuckin’ nap,” says Ed. “Go in with your qi-sensing splash shot thing or whatever. Then we can deal with the ensuing headache and how could you be so irresponsible, Fullmetal shit afterward.”

“Bold of you to assume you won’t be dealing with it immediately,” Al says cheerfully, and before Ed can ask what the hell he means by that, Al presses his palms together, takes a slow breath, and points at the room at large with a play gun.

“Bam,” he says, and thank fuck, that’s one errand list done.

---

Unsurprisingly, cleanup is ass. Mustang and his team, now sufficiently rested and way out of the loop, hurry to get Mrs. Bradley on air and sobbing about how she’s so broken up over her husband, how Central Command was all for feeding her bullets, and how it was only thanks to the valiant soldiers from Briggs and Eastern Command that she was saved.

Whatever. Mustang and Greed are doing a bang-up job leading the clean up crew. Hawkeye shoots them both in line when they start measuring each other’s dicks, and progress shoots the fuck up from there on out.

Grumman’s pulling out all the I’m An Old Man, Poor Me, I Busted My Hip cards, and if it wasn’t evident that he’s had a rigged deck this whole time, it’s pretty damn obvious now.

“You two look quite chipper for having just halted a scheme to destroy the country in the span of eight hours,” Grumman notes, fresh off a new pot of tea.

Ed throws the chair out, dragging two metal legs along the floor as long and loud as he can, and dumps himself onto the cushion. “Cute,” he says. “So when are you gonna march up to the doors and write yourself in as Fuhrer?”

“Brother,” Al says, then, seating himself all proper, “What he means to ask is when you’ll be returning power to the parliament.”

Grumman might be old and balding, but he’s not dumb. He returns Al’s stoney smile and Ed’s side-eye glare with a single arched brow and a high chuckle.

“You boys just let the skeletons of this country bury the bones,” he says lightly. “I’m sure you’ll be watching me with shovels in your hands regardless. I very much trust in your ability to keep all those rude, power-hungry, fledgling tyrants in line.” Another chuckle. “Am I right?”

“You wouldn’t see us with shovels,” Al points out. He grins a real Elric grin, hands folded and legs crossed. “We are alchemists, sir. Be thou for the people, be thou for the shovel-transmuters.”

“Worry about us all you like, but we’re not after your fancy chair,” Ed says. If nobody’s gonna have those cookies, he’s inhaling them all. “We’ve got the shovels, sure, whatever. But Mustang’s trailing after you with a damn chisel, ready to carve the last date into your headstone.”

Grumman laughs. Does he even have a gut he can afford to bust? “We all have dreams, don’t we? The youngsters of this country certainly have a promising... mettle to them. Don’t you agree, Edward?”

“Wow, how original,” Ed says flatly. “Mettle. Metal. Never heard that one before.”

All three of them stare over the balcony ledge via emotional cues or whatever. It’s a new future, people are alive, sacrifices need to be made to break through to a brighter tomorrow, etc, etc.

The moral of the story is if you find a crack in the game, you should totally reset and speedrun that bastard.

“Oh my,” Grumman says, in the reserved and proper equivalent of tapping his crabby fingers together and cackling like a gremlin. “What an eventful day this has been. I suppose someone ought to fill in the power vacuum before this country rips itself apart again, yes?”

“Give us funding and we’ll be cool,” Ed says, shovelling the entire plate of individually wrapped biscuits into his jacket pocket.

“And please hire Greed and his chimera friends,” adds Al. “With dental coverage. That’s important.”

“You boys have the strangest demands,” notes Grumman. His stache twitches in old person amusement. “I’ll certainly keep that in mind. And do watch your coat, Edward: those biscuits are shortbread. Very crumbly.”

---

“Where you fighting four battles at once?” Ed demands of Scar.

Even Scar doesn’t look super pleased, and he’s the stupid kid in the candy store that couldn’t choose a flavor and went with shoving every jelly bean in his face at once. “It somehow ended up that way,” he says tersely.

“Overachiever,” Ed says accusingly, then turns to Al and adds, “Don’t waste so much energy on him. God knows he’ll pick a fight with a stop sign and bust open all his stitches.”

“I will not,” Scar counters. “Unless the stop sign is another one of your homunculi. Then yes, I would fight it.”

Ed makes a sharp gesture to try and communicate his point. Al entertains him with a patient nod and keeps on smacking Scar’s qi back into something of a normal shape.

“You’d better tone it down,” Ed tells Scar. “Amestris is gonna remember what you’ve done. The military especially. You wanna keep the boom-brain hands way the fuck down. Capiche?”

“Despite what you may believe, I’m not a fool,” Scar says in complete deadpan.

“Horseshit, got it,” Ed says, then stands up and paces around the room because Al’s giving him a worried I think you need to be outside and/or speak to a therapist, Brother kind of glance.

Miles and Major General Armstrong are talking politics and strategy over in the way far corner, probably super confidential, but Major General Armstrong’s clearly decided that she’s not going to so much as budge for a bunch of incompetent children, and she’s got a look in her eyes that makes it abundantly clear that if Ed and Al so much as sneeze her secrets out, she’ll skin them and have herself a new pair of boots.

“Elric,” Major General Armstrong snarls as Ed’s making his eighth lap of the room, which scares Ed so bad he freezes at attention reflexively.

“Uh,” Ed says very, very quietly, lest he breathe the wrong way and end up being the nth victim on the General’s sword, “yes, sir?”

“If you’re going to expend the air in the room huffing and puffing with your emotional, childish antics, then you clearly have the energy to reign in your gaggle of—musical children,” Major General Armstrong snaps. “If you really are as responsible as you pretend to be, then make yourself useful.”

“Right, got it, yessir, very much,” Ed hurries to say, then transmutes another door because stepping within two meters of Major General Olivier Armstrong is the equivalent of hiking up an active volcano.

“Good luck, Brother,” Al calls after him, probably making sure Scar isn’t dribbling brain out his mouth.

---

Anabelle has her arms crossed and her heels shoulder-width apart like she’s some kind of feudal lord watching her minions plow the fields. She seems stupidly satisfied, like, really weirdly satisfied, and Ed gets a feeling that he’s better off not asking questions he’s not prepared to hear answers for.

“You wanna maybe get off that truck?” asks Ed.

“No,” says Anabelle. “But you’re welcome to join me up here.”

Ed grumbles and clambers up the side. Even Anabelle’s coat is doing that majestic flapping in the wind thing, which only reinforces the theory that god has a personal vendetta against Ed and won’t let him enjoy shit.

“Just another Tuesday?” Anabelle says sunnily.

“More of a Friday,” Ed admits. Sure, this whole adventure has been the biggest headache since his last biggest headache, but at least this time there were idiots like Anabelle and the orchestra to throw him ibuprofen along the way.

Klara the Concertmaster waves cheerfully from where she’s shovelling rubble into a pathetically small pile. “Ed!” she just has to shout, great, now everybody’s distracted, really appreciate that. “How’d your scuffle go? Are we all going to die?”

“I fuckin’ wish,” Ed mutters.

“We’re all living, and we’re getting some well-deserved funding,” Anabelle translates.

They’re starting to attract some half-manic, half-incoming adrenaline crash looks and Ed doesn’t like it. “The hell went on here?” he asks, gesturing to the general calamity all around them. Ed’s pretty sure those houses weren’t there yesterday, but what the hell does he know? “We told you to bring down some walls, blow up some cars, not rework the zoning.”

“The zoning thing was mostly an accident,” Anabelle offers, like that makes Ed any less twitchy around this disaster of an orchestra. Why couldn’t they be satisfied with their music degrees? But nooo, alchemy’s so cool, it does so many cool things like make flame-retardant stuff flammable and alchemize an entire country into a goopy rock and overthrow an ancient scheme in eight hours! I love chalk!

The civilians seem awfully excited to shake hands with all the crazies. “I know you!” they say. “You play in the Central Symphony Orchestra, right?”

“We’re all in the orchestra, actually!”

“All of you? What’re you doing, jumping into a coup like this?”

“We couldn’t possibly stand by and watch Amestris crumble,” Aria on Harp says, because she has enough common sense to know that throwing the entire government under the rug and steamrolling over it for the sake of cleaner backstage rooms isn’t acceptable civilian behaviour by any sane means. “We just did what we thought was right.”

“Thank god you did the right thing, then,” one sketchy woman in a long black coat and a big white sunhat says. Sounds like... knives. Maybe bullets. Phone-filtered bullets. “Alchemy’s one hell of a pebble in the pond.”

The civilians are all over this shit. They gape and ask, “You can do alchemy as well?”

“Well, we’ve got a pretty awesome teacher.”

Ed hisses like a feral cat, successfully deflecting the attention to Anabelle, who sops it up like bread to gravy.

“This is why none of you fuckers are going international,” Ed says sourly. “You’d cause some kind of political crisis and Mustang’s gonna have a heart attack bailing you out.”

“Ha! Then it’d do him well to grow a spine,” Anabelle laughs, and Ed throws himself off the truck just as Adrian the Principal Trombone trips over Reyna on Timpani and rams his palms into a half-garbled mess of an array.

Five minutes later, Ed has Adrian the Principal Trombone up in the air by the collar. The bastard deserves to hang. “You are an idiot of the highest calibre and if you manage to blow another sinkhole open I will twist that head from your shoulders and mount it over my fireplace,” Ed tells Adrian very slowly, splitting open a smile like a scalpel. “Am I understood?”

“Sure, boss,” Adrian says brightly, then fixes his collar when Ed drops him onto his heels.

Anabelle lays what she probably thinks is a placating hand on Ed’s shoulder. The only reason she isn’t getting screamed at right now is because Ed’s hungry and tired and it’s barely been nine hours and he’s wanted to be unconscious for ten of them.

“How about you go have a nice heart-to-heart with your old friends,” she suggests. “I’ll send Alphonse your way once our ex-serial killer isn’t at threat of splitting down the middle. Yes?”

“You and I both know I don’t have a choice,” Ed growls, slinking out of Anabelle’s grip and stomping on as much as rubble as he can physically manage. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go make sure Mustang hasn’t resorted to arson.”

Ed glances around once more to check for the sketchy woman with the hat.

He’s kind of relieved when he sees her back fading into the crowd.

---

“Oh, hey,” Ed says to Mei, finding himself pretty offended when she narrows her eyes and slip her hands into her sleeves. “What the fuck, I’m just here to pay back a debt, calm down.”

Mei’s big, dumb, kid eyes go even bigger, dumber, and kiddier when Ed pulls a vial of murder juice, cherry flavour out of his coat pocket.

“The philosopher’s stone,” Mei breathes, then straightens her back.

“I’m not gonna con you,” Ed snaps, thrusting the foul thing into Mei’s knifeless hands. “Just take the damn thing and hightail it home. Blow your Emperor’s pants off. Transmute his hair into a rug. Make him kiss your feet and change your entire country or whatever.”

“I will not be doing any of those,” Mei says, definitely going through the internal struggle of seeing Ed as a functioning human being. Then she sniffs and looks directly at the adjacent wall. “I will, however, consider the second half of that last suggestion.”

“Cool,” says Ed, pulling out a notebook. “I’ve got like, sixteen different international exchange programs and research initiatives I want to kickstart ASAP, so if the first Sunday of next month works, let’s talk business.”

Mei stares at him like he’s grown another head and is making out with it. “What,” she says.

“You’ve got this shit,” Ed tells her. “If Grumman can crawl his way to Fuhrer in eight hours of action, then you can cut it down to four.” After some consideration, Ed scribbles an address down, rips out the page, and puts that in Mei’s hands as well. “There’s a stupid talented healer in Qinghe, so make sure to recruit her so I can tell her how inefficient her conduits are and how mine are at least five point one nine eight times lighter.”

“Tell her yourself,” Mei says plainly. Then she drops her head, takes a sharp breath, and bows a full forty-five. “And... thank you for your assistance. I’ll remember this.”

Skippity-hippity-hop, and there’s Mei, off to destroy some baddies and maybe even rule a country along the way.

---

“I don’t like the look on your face,” Mustang says cautiously, slipping a glove back on.

Ed scowls. “My god, put down the sparky boom for one hot second, psycho,” he says, then takes a seat right next to the bastard’s hospital bed.

Mustang studies Ed with one of those elusive looks Ed’s never been able to figure out. If he could get one of the crazies in Psych to deconstruct every wrinkle of that not-pity, not-respect, not-realization looks, Ed could be smote right there and die at least a little less pissed.

“What?” Ed says bitterly. “Anabelle told me to check on you. So here I am, fuckin’ checking on you.”

“What do you plan on doing afterward?”

Route Pissed takes a detour onto Heartfelt Lane and now Ed wants off. Mustang still has that look on his face. The least he could do is go all blank so Ed could translate silence into my god, calm down, Fullmetal and will you heel, Fullmetal.

Ed shifts uncomfortably. He pointedly does not look at Mustang. “Hang around with the orchestra in Central for a few more years, make my name even bigger, go to Creta on tour, go to Creta on business, research equivalent exchange, break that fucker’s neck, publish all the papers I need to get me back into the Cretan Center for Observational Cosmology,” he says. Then he puts on a sneer and levels it at all of Mustang’s zero decipherable expressions. “What, you want my zodiac sign and horoscope too?”

“Perhaps you should consider staying in Amestris,” says Mustang.

“Uh, yeah, I just said that I would,” Ed says, narrowing his eyes and leaning in closer to check Mustang’s pupils. This guy didn’t whack half his brain out his ear, did he?

“Your talents apparently include making goodwill insulting,” Mustang says flatly, then waves Ed’s hovering face away. “Your brother intends on heading East, no?”

“To Xing, yeah. So what? What’s it matter to you?”

Mustang lingers for a little too long trying to wrangle up an answer and ohhh that’s why.

“You want our support,” Ed says, watching with glee as Mustang’s stupid mystery face turns into curse every fiber of your being, Fullmetal. “Ha! Hit the nail right on its dumb fuckin’ head, didn’t I?”

“I’ll be blunt with you,” Mustang says tersely. “As I’ve been recommended to deal with you as I would a twelve year-old.”

“Wh—Mei, you traitor.”

“Stay in Amestris,” Mustang repeats. “Pursue your research here. Tell me what it is you’re interested in, and I’ll fund it.”

Okay, now this is heading into nine sorts of freaky and Ed would very much like to go back to the spitfire banter. “Weird,” Ed says suspiciously, renewing his skepticism tenfold.

Mustang breathes in deep, smiles real condescending and congratulations, you’re officially a dog of the military bullshit, then says, “Give me your support. When I become Fuhrer, I’ll make it worth your time.”

“What, with five hundred and twenty cenz?” mumbles Ed. "Fuckin' boomer. It was metaphorical."

There’s a long moment where Mustang just kind of stares with peering-into-your-soul intensity.

Ed rolls his shoulders. Not to be all honest and weepy and shit, but working for Mustang every now and then... wasn’t bad. The pay was good, the jobs were three laps around a circus and a hike up the tent, but if there’s one thing Ed learned from his dumbass Cretan friends, it’s that he’s a clown, everybody else is a clown, and life’s a stage with low-budget lighting that creaks every other giant clown-shoed step.

Fuck it. How long can it possibly take, anyway?

Ed glares. At what? Mustang, the wall behind him, shit in general. Whatever. “Al can do whatever,” he says, “And I’m only staying as long as it takes you to either annoy Grumman into retirement or ass-kiss your way to getting elected.”

“Well said,” Mustang says all smug like the bastard he is. “Do I have your service, however temporary it turns out to be?”

Then Mustang holds his hand out, and what, does he want Ed to kneel and swear allegiance to his bloodline forevermore or something?

“Just shake the hand, Fullmetal,” Mustang says tiredly after a whole ten seconds of acting like a decent human being.

“Fuck you,” Ed says, then cracks a wide, mean grin. “By the way, Mustang? My rates aren’t cheap. I’m a pro, and pros fuckin’ deliver.”

---

Van fucking Hohenheim walks into the house on a Sunday morning, stupidly morose and confused out of his goddamn mind.

He doesn’t even get to take off his shoes before he makes eye contact with Ed.

And oh, Ed’s waited for years to be able to deck this bastard in the face one last time for having the audacity to sacrifice himself for kids he didn’t even raise but might’ve loved and how many ways fucked to hell and back is that?

Ten? Eleven? Who fucking cares.

“Hey,” Ed says, sweet as acid. He curls his right hand—all flesh and bone, no metal anywhere but in the dead of night on bad days—into a fist. “If it isn’t the bastard who left mom to die and two kids to the wonders of human transmutation, except that didn’t happen, because time is glitchy as hell and nothing makes sense ever.”

Hohenheim blinks real slow. Then he squints. “Edward?” he begins, wandering forward and tracking mud into the house Ed and Al just spent hours cleaning. “What do you mean—”

By that, he’d probably say, but then Ed clocks the bastard with forty years’ worth of emotional issues and pent-up grief, and Ed’s such a loser, Hohenheim’s such a loser, both of them can’t think for shit and deserve to die in a hole somewhere far away, and that’s awesome, just great, because Al has to calm down two crying idiots when he finishes rewiring the electrical grid.

Half an hour and an embarrassing number of tissues later, Ed, Al, and Hohenheim are sitting around the dining room table like they aren’t missing one person.

But—fuck. This is as good as it’s going to get, isn’t it? This is good enough, isn’t it?

“Edward, Alphonse,” Hohenheim says. “What happened?”

Which part of what happened? Pre or post almost human transmutation? What happened to Mom, to Eyes With A God Complex, to Amestris, to the Promised Day, to the entire fucking world?

The Elrics happened. That’s as simple as it gets.

Al takes a deep breath. “That... is a long story,” he admits.

“So you’d better make time,” Ed demands, holding Hohenheim’s gaze and refusing to turn away. “You want to know everything? Then sit the fuck down and we’ll dig up all the shit we burried way too long ago.”

Hohenheim is dead silent for way too long.

Then he says, “I’m already sitting.”

Ed dives across the table and punches him a second time while Al gives an exasperated "Brother!" as if the bastard doesn’t deserve it.

---

“Hey, Al?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever think what would happen if... I dunno. If things went differently?”

“Oh, all the time. A little on good days. A lot on bad days.”

“Yeah. Do you think there’s a god up there?”

“I thought we established a while ago that the both of us are as agnostic as they come.”

“Yeah, that’s fair. Fuck. I half wish we tried out more shit more before we got all old and achy.”

“We’re hardly thirty, Brother. You don’t get to complain about getting old until you start getting grey hair. But I get it—maybe I would’ve picked up the violin if I wasn’t, you know, two meters tall and made of armor.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Hey, Al—”

“What’s with all the questions all of a sudden? Are you feeling alright, Brother?”

“I’m fine. Hey! I’m fine, I promise! Can you stop staring at me like I’m about to burst into flames?”

“Whatever you say, Brother.”

“You’d betray your older brother like this? Stick a knife between his ribs and pry them apart?”

“Depends on what you’ve done this time.”

“I haven’t done shit! It’s just a bad fucking day. Alright?”

“There we go. Was that so hard?”

“You’re breaking my heart, Al.”

“Mm.”

“It’s... not a bad night, though. Right?”

“Didn’t you just say it’s been a bad day?”

“Yeah, well, we both know by now my head was installed backward when they made me.”

Al laughs. Ed hears it all the time, every day, every hour, every inhale and exhale and flash of lightning and storm that throws itself at Resembool but can never pry the tiles off the roof and spit them out on the other side of the country in someone’s yard they’ve never seen.

“If we had to do this all again,” Ed says, hands folded under his head, on top of the grass, in the middle of a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, “I guess I wouldn’t mind as much if we could get here someday.”

“Yeah,” Al agrees quietly, and sighs. “I guess... that wouldn’t be so bad.”

---

Ed’s first thought is, big surprise, a very pissed I didn’t mean it fucking literally.

What the fuck, he decides, locking eyes with a definitely-not-mentally-ten-years-old Al. They’re Elrics. This might as well happen. Hell knows it won’t be their last circus.

---

All in all? Not the worst Tuesday Ed’s ever had.