A/n warning. CRACK. SERIOUS CRACK.

"Colonel!"

Ah, a familiar voice. Roy Mustang wanted to turn his head to see his Lieutenant, but he knew as he turned his head that all he would see was darkness. "Lieutenant. Where are you?"

"Right… right here…?" Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye reported, sounding much closer than Roy expected. He jumped and turned his head to the left, hoping his guess was right. "Can't you see me? It's pretty dark in here, though."

"Ah, well… it appears my eyesight was taken from me by the Truth…" Roy tried to laugh it off, wondering where the others had gone. He could distantly hear them shouting far off, but they had run off suddenly, leaving him alone and in the dark. Not that he could blame them, there was work to be done.

"You're eyesight? You mean- blind?" Riza was shocked, it sounded through her voice like a pang of electricity.

"Can't see a thing," Roy muttered, sobering suddenly. He felt helpless.

"… Do you have any idea what happened?" Riza seemed to sense that there was not much to be said about his loss of sight and moved on briskly, just as a cool, levelheaded lieutenant was supposed to. "I've been trying to find out information, but everybody is rushing around in a panic."

"Yes… I know what's happened…" Roy whispered, feeling that hollow mass of shock within him swelling up, suddenly, catching in his chest, making it hard to breathe or swallow. "It's all over, Lieutenant."

"That… Father succeeded? The philosophers' stone was created?" Riza gaped. Roy heard a noise and imagined her sitting down in shock, closer to where he crouched on the ground.

"He succeeded, but, no, he didn't make a philosophers' stone. I think- though it was confusing because I couldn't see what was happening- he took all the souls of the land and turned them into energy inside of himself, to become a super being," Roy tried to explain, remembering the scripted voices from before and frantically trying to tie them to faces. It was ridiculously confusing.

"Wait," something close to frantic dread was clutching at the lieutenant's voice. "All the souls…? Everybody outside of that black circle is… dead?"

Roy bowed his head and nodded grimly. He heard Riza let out a shaky moan of anguish. "Oh no," she murmured, her words filled with dread. "No, no, no, no, no…."

Roy could only listen as Riza fought to calm down, tears in her gasps and, no doubt, on her cheeks.

After a moment, Roy tried to do the only thing he could think of to calm her down. "Lieutenant, now is not the time to be in hysterics. There's work to be done. We need to see if this can be reversed." When that didn't seem to calm her down, Roy tried a joke. "At least I'm still here, right? You can still protect me!"

"Pro-protect you?" Riza asked at last, her voice breaking. "With no military, there's no need for me to do that, right?"

"Huh?" Roy felt a little betrayed. "Well… that's true, I suppose. I guess I always just kind of figured you protected me because you wanted to… you know… since you joined the military to protect me and all and because I know you love m-"

"Joined the military for you?" Riza asked, her voice stronger. "Wh- I- I didn't join the military to protect you! I pretended to be solely protecting you so that my enemies wouldn't target who I was really protecting- did you honestly not notice all the signs?"

"Wh-wh-what?" Roy demanded, for a second completely forgetting about their dire situation with Father. All he could think about was this startling and betraying revelation. "Th-th-th-then who?! Who are you protecting?"

Hawkeye sniffed wetly. "I c-couldn't protect him in the end," she sobbed. "I'm so sorry… Alex."

"Alex…?" Roy repeated blankly. The name rang a bell.

Suddenly it hit him. Of course. That repeated name. The muscles. The sparkles. The stripping…. Hawkeye was in the military to protect…. Alex Louis Armstrong?!

A/N LAWL for a long time it's been my theory that Hawkeye is only pretending to protect the colonel while really she is really protecting someone else… coughARMSTRONGcough. Who could resist the sparkles, muscles, and stripping? Not our teenage twilight fans, that's for sure. Oh Hawkeye, if I had to love a twilight fan, it'd be you.

Just a little something to cheer up that depressing chapter 104, ya? Hahaha.