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Greed’s been under some stress, which means Ed’s under some stress too.
The military’s becoming more active in South City, and they’re also gearing up for more operations in Central and East, too. Greed never talks about it in a way where Ed thinks they’ll have to move from the Devil’s Nest, but he always says to ‘just to keep an eye out.’ Greed lets his shield slip a little around Ed, and while he’s thankful for that, it keeps him on edge, unable to relax.
The Devil’s Nest is the only place that Ed and Greed’s little brother knows, and he doesn’t know any of the other Homunculi—Ed’s worried that they won’t be so forgiving of Ed creating new life as they were for Father creating him and ruining their seven sins theme going on.
He’s worried. He can’t stop being worried, even when Greed tells him that they’re safe and nothing will happen to them. Ed can’t make himself believe him.
A voice travels down to the lower floors that gets Ed moving immediately: “—I need to see your boss.” Boss means Greed, which means it’s Ed’s problem, which means he gets up to the barfront before he has time to reconsider.
He’s been told very specifically not to show himself at the Devil’s Nest proper without Greed to accompany him, but he can’t help it. Ed’s too good at running interference—he wants to help. It’s a core of his personality to meddle.
He makes it to the top floor of the Devil’s Nest, closest to the street, before his senses can make their way from his neurons to his extremities. Greed often says that Ed lets his heart get the better of him—but that’s what’s good about you, kid. Don’t let me change you.
“Look, could I just talk to him? It’s nothing serious, I’m sure, I just need to…oh, it’s you.” The stranger in the Devil’s Nest is what Greed would call cookie cutter. He’s clean, rigid, and straight-backed; he’s clearly trained in some way, though Ed doesn’t recognize anything on his person that could tell him how much he’s been trained.
Dolcetto turns to fuss at him immediately. Ed can imagine his ears would be pinned back if he had them. “Edward, what are you doing up front?”
He thinks about answering Dolcetto’s question, but decides it’s best to confront the stranger in their midst first. He won’t let the military cause them trouble; there’s enough patrolling officers in South City as it is, and it makes their friends in the Nest nervous to be watched so closely.
And it’ll attract Wrath’s attention instantly if there’s too much noise here too, so they have to worry about him finding out that they’re causing trouble. Ed nor Greed are under any delusion that Father is unaware of their whereabouts, but he’s had the decency to not snuff them out yet.
“Why are you looking for me?” Ed asks, using Greed’s age-old tactic of I asked you second, so answer me first. “Don’t give Dolcetto trouble. I promise I’m of age, alright? If you’re worried about me being a teenager, don’t.”
“I’ll need to see some kind of ID to confirm that,” the stranger says smoothly. He even smiles, and he’s got this little dimple on one side of his face that is firm in its cuteness.
Unfortunately, Ed doesn’t have an ID of any sort, so that makes things tricky. He’s not technically a real person, and he can’t use alchemy like normal people can to forge documents. It’s also hellishly expensive to pay for forged documents that Ed shouldn’t have to need. He’s deliberating on how to answer the stranger honestly about his suspicious absence of identification, when he remembers a conversation he and Greed had not too long ago.
“You got a warrant?” Ed asks. “You’re obviously a cop.”
The stranger blinks, baffled. Dolcetto looks like he’s about to have a heart attack.
“I don’t have to prove who I am to you,” Ed says as composed but seriously as he dares. This is so far out of his wheelhouse in terms of social interaction that he’s probably bumbling it without even knowing what he’s bumbling.
“Kid,” the stranger says slowly, like Ed’s a spooked animal, “I can ask you for identification without needing a warrant. If I’m so obviously an officer, then you do have to comply with me when I ask that.”
Fuuuuck.
Truth it is, then. Ed bumbled it big-mode, and he does need to own up to that. He feels his cheeks heat up in embarrassment, but there’s no time to worry about that mistake now; it’s not like humans can’t ever make mistakes, and this guy thinks he’s human.
He doesn’t want to cause Greed any further trouble, or allow Mr. Military to find Al in the basement with Martel by running from this social interaction. “I don’t have any ID,” Ed admits. He crosses his arms to try to feel bigger.
“None?” The stranger asks, surprised. “None at all?”
“Nope,” Ed says. “I, uh. I have a complicated background? Orphaned, living with non-family, that sort of thing. I don’t have a birth certificate or anything. I’m kind of just… out here.”
The stranger looks sympathetic to Ed’s plight. But Ed isn’t under any illusion that it’ll mean Mr. Military will let him go because he’s got a sob story. “I see,” the stranger says. “I’ll need you to come with me, then. I’ll give you some identification. How does that sound?”
Ed doesn’t change his facial expression from resigned-irritation at all when he says, “great.” When Dolcetto nor Mr. Military move—which means it’s Ed’s turn in the social order to speak or move or do something—Ed exhales until his shoulders deflate as he goes to stand next to Mr. Military. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Colonel Roy Mustang,” Mustang says, holding out his hand to Ed like he’s got any choice. That’s one of the things about humans that has always annoyed Ed, and it has ever since Greed and him first started talking about the military—the whole country’s in love with power and got a hunger for it, and they don’t even know. Greed’s out there with his hunger, baring it for all of the world to see; and here Mustang is, giving Ed his hand like it isn’t a power move.
You’ll shake my hand because it’s what you do, the social order says. You’ll shake my hand because I can ruin your life, the military says.
Ed shakes his hand. “Edward. Just call me Ed.” He does not smile, but Mustang does. It’s gonna be a long day with this guy. As Mustang opens the door to the Nest and waits for Ed to go first, Ed turns around to look back at Dolcetto. “Tell the boss that I’ll probably be gone for a while. I’ll be safe, though.”
“He’s not gonna be happy,” Dolcetto says which actually means we’ll keep him in check until you come back.
Ed nods. “Yeah, I know. Tell him I said sorry.”
///
Southern Command is as ugly as Ed remembers it being.
Wrath has made absolutely no work endearing it to its people, and its sad, beige walls remind Ed just how unlikable their military truly is. It’s sturdy, large, and intimidating from the perspective of its purpose; it’s just also sad, bereft, and unremarkable from the perspective of Ed’s eyeballs. Roy Mustang both fits perfectly within it and not at all, in that contrarian way that human beings can be with their surroundings.
Roy Mustang is undoubtedly very charming and polite and would make small talk with Ed if he had half the mind to share in Mustang’s good nature. However, Ed’s nerves make him an unlikeable guest under his charge, and a silent one too. When Ed would typically be offering anecdotes or fun facts about alchemy in the grimoires he’s read to the other residents of the Nest, he looks off at the dying sun and doesn’t offer anything particular to Roy Mustang.
He wonders if this makes him a more suspicious ward to him, if people—real human beings, unlike Ed himself—would be making small talk if they were nervous. Would they clam up like Dolcetto did when he saw Ed walk to the storefront, or would they talk even more like Ed’s seen some regulars do after they say something stupid? He doesn’t know what humans do, and for all that it could make Ed sad, it doesn’t—this world is still so unfamiliar to him that it all still feels so untouchable, even when observed.
He hopes that this time with Roy Mustang doesn’t awaken any further love for humans in him—that will bother Greed, and it’ll make staying put even more difficult than it already is. Ed’s need to interfere got him into this, and he’d like to be able to get out if possible, even if he has to only use his head for it, and not his heart.
Greed’s admonished him for that thought before. Kid, we’re all that we are.
“We’re only what we’re made to be,” Ed murmurs.
“What did you say?” Mustang asks politely.
Ed swallows. “Nothing.”
“I’m not trying to catch you, you know,” Mustang says with a soft sigh. “I’m not trying to trip you up or make you feel guilty for not having any sort of identification. Sure, it’s strange, but it’s not the strangest thing to ever happen. I’m doing my job, that’s all.”
Mustang opens up a side door to Southern Command, likely someplace inside will offer Ed the technology to register himself on their files. It could include finger printing and an ID being issued with the name he gives them.
“I know,” Ed says. “It doesn’t make it any easier for me or my people, but you’re doing what you can. I get that.”
“How did you get involved with the Devil’s Nest, anyway?” Mustang asks. Ed shoots him a look that reads you don’t think I’m stupid enough to answer that, do you?
Mustang waves his hands around, like he’s wiping off dust from the air. “Look, Edward—”
“Ed,” he corrects. Something regal and official for you, kid. You just got that air about you.
Greed’s voice: Yeah, but Ed just fits him better, don’t you think? He’s got that sweet charm to him. Ed.
“—Ed,” Mustang says, letting himself be corrected. “Witness testimony is by and large completely useless. I can’t do anything with what you tell me because you’re not saying it on any record, and my memory isn’t to be trusted. So just tell me anything you want. It’s not like I can use it.”
Ed doesn’t know enough about the military or how it’s actually run to actually help him figure out if that’s true or not; he also doesn’t know whether he should or wants to trust Roy Mustang, and the little prickle in the back of his mind that worries about Greed and Al can’t be ignored.
He won’t lie to Mustang, but he won’t go out and spill his guts, either. He has to be careful. “I needed a place to go,” Ed says, “and the Nest offered that to me. The man it’s run by was kind enough to let me join them back when he was getting it started. That’s all. It’s a place to belong.”
Greed’s never given Ed a name to call him that would be considered a human name, and he’s nervous to try and make something up on the spot. None of their siblings do, either—well.
There’s Bradley and Selim, he supposes. But calling them out to be his brothers will raise so many more questions than answers, and Ed will probably get melted for it. He’d like to avoid that, if possible. He has Al to take care of in the basement of the Nest, so he can’t be found—even if Greed does end up taking care of him tonight.
“I’m glad you have that,” Mustang says sweetly with a small smile on his face. His current smile doesn’t reach into his dimples, but his eyes shine with it. “That’s lovely, really. I’m not looking to upset that.”
“Okay,” Ed says, and part of him really does believe Roy Mustang when he says that. Ed smiles at the ground.
“Right this way, Ed. We’ll get your fingerprints on that paper, you see it? I just gotta grab the ink from the cabinet.”
“Both hands?” Ed asks as he goes to sit.
“No, just one. One moment,” Mustang says as he dips just out of sight, to an adjacent room.
The second Mustang slips out of sight, Ed sets his Stone alight. Cosmetic alchemy like the method Envy uses is ultimately a non-invasive method—it isn’t so much deconstruction of your whole body, but rather specific elements. Ed internally reaches into the dermal layer of his fingertips and changes the pattern of his fingerprint manually, swishing around the lines and moving the swirls like a spoon stirring through foam.
He exhales from the tingles of pain after his hand is finished being remade. It’s going to hurt to heal, but that’s okay.
“Back!” Roy Mustang hums in a sing-song voice. “Ink grabbed. Let’s get your fingerprints, alright? Which hand?”
“Right hand!” Ed says brightly. Mustang’s good nature is hard to deflect for long. It’s easy to press his fingers down one at a time into the ink, then onto the paper, then into the ink, and back onto the paper. It takes no time at all. By the time they’re done, Ed is smiling at the paper curiously, oo’ing and aw’ing at the swirls and lines.
“Like rings of a tree,” Ed says as he pulls the paper back and forth to look at it from different angles.
“Exactly right,” Roy says sweetly. “Each fingerprint is unique to a person, and the patterns on a tree are unique, too. Isn’t that neat?”
“It is neat,” Ed says back, finding himself more affectionate toward Mustang’s tone than he has been in a while. Greed’s nice, but this guy’s nicer. “What else?”
“I have to get your information down, so you just be honest and talk, and we’ll get through this with no problem at all. How about that?” Mustang asks, putting his elbow on his desk to hold up his head, then he smiles brightly and this time his dimples do return.
“Okay!” Ed says. “I can do honest.”
“I know you can,” Mustang hums.
FUUUUUCK.
Ed can do honesty, can’t he? Ed can do honesty because he has to do honesty. He just has to do honesty that he can back up with explanations that a human would accept. Right? He can do that.
“What’s your name?” Mustang asks. Ed can read the paper he’s writing on, which is nice, but it has all of these questions he doesn’t know how to answer such as how old is he? How old is he? A century of life is far too old to say, but he has no idea what he looks like. Youthful enough that he can be mistaken for a teenager, but will Mustang help him? He needs to get Mustang talking in order to figure out what’s a rightfully fitting answer.
“Edward,” Ed says.
“And your last name?” Mustang asks.
“Hohenheim,” Ed answers. It’s the closest thing he has to a real name, anyway, and Father speaks about Hohenheim like he’s a lost brother. If he’s the closest thing to human, then isn’t that okay to be used here?
“Hohenheim?” Mustang asks, but this time his inflection has changed—ho-en-HEIM? He must know Hohenheim from somewhere, which is almost a relief, since Father worried he’d dropped off the face of the earth centuries ago. He always spoke so sadly about Hohenheim—like his lack of confidence in his existence was a personal failing of Father’s part. “You’re related to Van Hohenheim?”
“It’s—complicated. Orphaned, remember? Or maybe disowned is a proper word for it, anyway. I don’t have any relationship to the guy besides blood. It’s… it’s not easy for me to explain.”
That seems to wilt Mustang’s enthusiasm, but he nods a little. “I see. Alright Edward Hohenheim, how old are you?”
“How old do I look?” Ed asks, trying to pose like Greed does when he asks regulars that question. Greed often gets a range of mid twenties to early thirties, but Ed isn’t sure he matches that—Greed’s more ‘chiseled’ than Ed is, as he’s been told.
“You’re certainly not a teenager as the reports say,” Mustang says as he investigates Ed’s face with a curious twinkle in his eye. “You’re eighteen, at most.”
“Twenty, but thank you,” Ed says, feeling like it’s more proper for the person to be older than the guessing, and it’s true that Ed’s not eighteen by any stretch.
“Twenty, alright, have to keep me on my toes, don’t you? Eye color? Hair color? Weight, and height, too, if you would. Easy to pick off rapid-fire, huh?”
“Eye color, gold. Hair color, blond. Weight, I’m sixty-six kilograms. Height, I’m about one-seventy-two centimeters.” That stuff is all true and based in reality, at least; he doesn’t have to lie about what he looks like. Well—for the most part, that is. He rubs the pads of his fingers together underneath the table, the skin still warm from where it sizzled earlier.
“Relatives?” Mustang asks.
“There’s Hohenheim, but beyond that? I…” He has Al, who’s the closest thing to a true brother he’ll ever get—the most literal half of his heart that he could have, but does he want Al’s records in the military’s records?
Does he want Wrath to know?
“I don’t really have anyone else, is all. Sorry. I could consider the people at the Nest my brothers and sisters, but that’s not really what you’re asking for, is it?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Mustang says sympathetically. “I understand you, though. I have many sisters, but biologically, none of them are truly related to me. It’s certainly an odd feeling.”
That reads as true to Ed, though he can’t tell why that’s true or why everything else he’s been saying hasn’t felt as true. Or maybe it has and he doesn’t remember? He’s not great at reading people, and he trusts easily—but suddenly he feels kind of unnerved by all of this. He regulates his heart rate by counting his breaths, pressing his thumb and finger together to feel its changed pattern.
“I also need a birthday of yours, if you wouldn’t mind.”
If you wouldn’t mind is another one of those power move phrases. Even if Ed did mind, he can’t do anything about it. Greed’s voice in his head rings like a bell, harmonious and welcoming, bringing clarity to Ed’s situation: Everybody wants what they don’t have, and more of what they do. If you think you want power, kid, you haven’t met the soldiers who got a taste already and are starving for another.
Does Roy Mustang hunger for it? Is he starving? Is that why he lies, because power hides in wait for the hunter who can find it in secret?
What’s Ed’s favorite day if he had to ask himself? It comes around every year, when the sun starts to shyly return, but before it gets warm or noisy with pollen. “February third,” if he said he’s twenty and the year is nineteen-fourteen, that’d be— “eighteen-ninety-four for the birth year.”
Completely nonsensical. It doesn’t need to be remotely true anyway.
“Just turned twenty, did you? Well, happy late birthday to you. I’ll need a photograph, too,” Mustang says with a smile. “And that’ll be the last thing. I’ll write a description up for you, and that’ll be all.”
“I don’t get to keep the picture, do I?” Ed asks. He pauses. “And thank you. About the birthday. It did just pass.” He is so goddamn bad at this. Mentally, Greed is giving him a noogie for being so terribly bad at lying.
Mustang smiles at him evenly. “I’ll take two, how about that? You’ve been so patient, I’ll foot the bill for the extra film.”
Ed nods. “I’d like that.”
They both rise, and Mustang puts all of Ed’s paperwork into a manila folder, and then writes his initials on it: E. H.
It doesn’t look right, but then again, nothing will so long as Ed isn’t a human person. He isn’t used to having a last name, and trying to make it so he does will always be a strange experience. He wants to get back to Greed by now, and Al, and Dolcetto—he wants to apologize for the hassle, and stop thinking about the military.
And the eerie feeling that Mustang’s kindness gives him, too. Ed can’t tell if he’s legitimately this good-natured or if it’s an act. Over time while in Mustang’s proximity, Ed becomes less and less certain. There is a hunger to him. A very human, unrelenting hunger—Ed doesn’t get it, but maybe one day he will. Maybe there’s something out there he’s hungry for.
“Just down the hall, if you would,” Mustang says, opening up the door to let Ed through first.
“Could you stop that?” Ed asks. Mustang blinks.
“Stop what?”
“Stop with saying that shit—that power move shit. It’s, I don’t know. Unseemly. Okay? ‘If you would,’ ‘if you don’t mind,’ it’s not true. It doesn’t matter if I mind. So could you stop already? It makes you sound duplicitous, and it kind of ruins how nice you sound otherwise.”
“Oh,” Mustang says. He looks a little taken aback, maybe even a bit hurt if Ed tried to ascribe an emotion to a human—something he’s not the best at given his lackluster education on what humans actually are like.
Mustang doesn’t move for a few seconds longer, but then he nods sagely. “I’ll stop that. Thank you, Ed. That was… an unexpected correction.”
Ed looks at him for a moment longer, searching Mustang’s face for a lie, and then shrugs. “Alright. No problem, then.”
Mustang leads the way after Ed steps out. Behind him, Ed shakes out his right hand to heal it, the sound of the sizzling alchemy little more than the hum from a fan. He cringes at the pain, then rubs his hand against his pants to get rid of the static-feeling as his nerves fry and heal rapidly.
Mustang doesn’t even look back. It’s almost a disappointment—Ed thought humans were more curious than that. Or maybe Mustang is just a very controlled person, someone who heard the sound and then didn’t feel the need to spook Ed any more than he already has.
That’s almost as unnerving as a truth spattered among comfortable and easy lies.
Southern Command is so far from where everything is going down, so far from the real blood and meat of Father’s plan and the rest of his children. It’s why Greed moved here in the first place—it’s, after all, the farthest place a rebellious child can go without extracting more trouble from the soil. Being too far invites a reason for a collar, but being far enough invites proper solitude.
“Why are they letting you do all of this?” Ed asks. “By yourself? I thought, in the military, everyone had rules and clearance about what they were supposed to do. But you’re coming in and doing all of this for me. So why?”
Mustang doesn’t pause his walk, but he looks somewhere between the path ahead and Ed’s face, eyeing the wall. “A Colonel is well trusted to act appropriately and to know where everything is. Even something as simple and below-my-paygrade as registering someone’s documents for them. But you—”
Mustang stops to look back at him properly. Ed feels a wave of unease pass over him as Mustang’s face changes minutely: it looks bare to the world all of a sudden, his eyes dark and piercing, all too insightful, and his mouth is flat as he thinks. He looks suddenly older, like Ed’s gotten a new side of him by asking too many questions. It also feels true—like Mustang knows when he is or is not being duplicitous, and it’s a part of his mask.
Envy’s the one with the power to change his form, but Ed’s never seen a human come so close before.
“You’re an interesting one, I’ll give you that. There’s something about you that I’d quite like to covet.” Ed’s heart hammers unbidden under Mustang’s gaze, feeling like he’s been caught.
And then Mustang’s face changes again, and he smiles. “I don’t want to scare you, either! Goodness; I’m just a man, and you’re just some kid. Really, I rather you feel like this is not an interrogation. It’s all about keeping the people of Amestris happy, you know.” Mustang turns away from him to keep walking, but Ed doesn’t move for a few more moments. He clutches at his chest, with his Philosopher’s Stone inside of his heart. It hums with anxious energy, making his breath rattle.
“For fuck’s sake,” Ed mutters, and then follows closely behind.
So Mustang is being two-faced on purpose, then. It’s likely that he was lying earlier and is likely to be lying again, should he say anything more; the truth of his “sisters” anecdote was the nail in the coffin for Ed, but would probably work on humans. They’d probably be comforted by the truth, rather than confronted by it. Ed has to watch him very carefully from now on.
He rubs at his chest as Mustang leads them both into another room, one with an even blanker wall and a camera that he nabs from a cabinet. Ed keeps rubbing his chest as Mustang prepares the camera, then puts down his hand when Mustang turns around.
“You’re an alchemist, aren’t you?” Ed asks. “The Flame Alchemist?”
“I am, yes,” Mustang answers easily. “Heard of me? They call me the Hero of Ishval.”
Father’s war. Ed nods. “I have my own opinions of Ishval, but—”
“I imagine you do, yes.”
Ed grits his teeth. “But I like alchemy. So if we ever see each other again, you should tell me about what you learned from being an alchemist.”
“Flame alchemy’s a secret, sorry, Ed,” Mustang says as he beckons Ed to the wall, armed with the camera. It’s a simple polaroid camera. “But I can direct you to the Southern Command’s library, and you can look up plenty of alchemy stuff there, alright?”
“Why is it a secret?” Ed asks. He twists his body back and forth so Mustang can’t nab a picture before he gets an answer.
“It’s personal,” Mustang says, but then he must realize Ed won’t stop wiggling until he gets something more specific. Mustang sighs. “It’s a weapon of destruction. All alchemy is. Lots of alchemists hide or encrypt their practical techniques because of issues of plagiarism or not wanting to ruin the world further. I do the same for the same reasons. Picture, now, please?”
“Are you a weapon of mass destruction? Since you’re an alchemist?” Ed asks.
“Something like that,” Mustang says, and the light of the camera temporarily blinds Ed. He blinks the sunspots out of his vision with wet eyes.
Barely a moment passes before Mustang snaps another picture and times it just as Ed opens his eyes to face him again. He is immediately blinded a second time, groaning about the burn of his eyes. He’s quick enough to rub at his eyelids with the heels of his palms to prevent a small instantaneous heal from happening in front of Roy Mustang, automatic thanks to his Stone. Ed can’t risk him seeing that happen.
“Beautiful picture,” Mustang says as he shakes out the second polaroid to hand it over to Ed’s waiting hands the second his vision returns. “I can see why people mistake you for being so young.”
Grabbing it, Ed investigates his own face thoroughly. The timelessly youthful nature that his Stone gives him prevents him from getting any wrinkles, and it keeps his eyes clear and sharp. Ed’s eyes are bright and perceptive when they nail on the camera for the second time, though there’s a small shine on his cheeks from when they started watering the first time. The goldness of his person seems otherworldly, but ephemeral too. Like how a sunset looks—unlasting.
He really does look young, and the curious expression on his face does make him look even more sheltered. He supposes it’s not untrue, but it’s definitely… he’s so different from the rest of Father’s children. The inherent difference between him and them makes him sad in a small way. It’s usually celebrated between him and Greed, but between him and the rest…
He holds the polaroid between his fingers tightly—until the film crunches beneath his fingertips.
“Are you alright?” Mustang asks.
“Thinking,” Ed says, “about the fact that I don’t know anyone out there who looks like me.”
That seems to make Mustang briefly, but genuinely, sad. “I see. Most people would consider that a blessing, but I can see why you wouldn’t like it.”
“It’s a different kind of alone.”
“That it is, Ed.”
Mustang puts the first polaroid photo inside of the manila folder with a safety pin, and then closes it. He can imagine Wrath doesn’t care much about seeing his documentation right now, but he will, at some point. Wrath will care and Ed will have to be very careful to not make himself a problem for Wrath, or he will have to make very sure he has the backup necessary to keep Al safe in spite of Wrath’s attention.
And then there’s always Pride, too. Ed shivers.
“Cold?” Mustang asks.
“No, not cold,” Ed says. “Just thinking still. It’s kind of my thing.”
“I can tell,” Mustang says cheerily, like it’s a good thing. “But that’s all I’ll need from you today, Ed. Are you alright going on home by yourself? The Devil’s Nest isn’t in a good area.” He smiles at him as he puts the manila folder under his arm. “I imagine you’re well and ready to get out of Southern Command, though.”
“That and more,” Ed admits. “But I have to say you’re a pretty nice guy, Colonel Roy Mustang. And, should I need anything… what, are you stationed here?”
“East, actually. I was just doing some pickup work over in South. We’re following a case.”
A case means a serial killer or something of some sort, for sure. Ed nods sagely, pretending he’s worried. It’ll take a lot to drain his stone, and a few bad attacks even straight on his person won’t do that. It’s lasted him over a hundred years already.
“In East, then. If an Edward Hohenheim pops up in East, you know who it is.”
“That I do,” Mustang says with a hum.