Disclaimer in previous chapter. Please see Author's Notes at the end.

- x -

The Gate, time irrelevant

"Make him the way he was before!"

It was open; the cordlike golden strands that he knew made up the interior of the gate were completely hidden by the darkness and the eyes. The long arms, the tiny hands hadn't started reaching out for him yet, but he knew it was only a few more seconds before they went for Ed.

They always went for Ed. The last time they'd gone through the Gate, when he'd gotten his body back, they'd gone for Ed, too.

Nii-san was calm and unafraid, and he was there. He wasn't simply staring at nothing. He wasn't trembling. His golden eyes were open and steady, and they were fixed on his right arm.

It wasn't just his automail in a rubber glove. It couldn't have been, because he didn't have his automail anymore. It hadn't been in his cell, and it hadn't been in his laboratory. Al didn't know what had happened to it, but it didn't matter now.

Ed was whole again.

How could this be?

"Al?" he said quietly, flexing his fingers a few times before glancing at the Gate, "What's going on?"

Of course, he didn't have his bulletholes, either, did he? Hadn't he just spoken?

Al reached up and gingerly touched his throat. The torn flesh, the ragged edges that had felt so foreign to him were gone, and his skin was smooth. Of course, it was likely that he was merely his soul and mind at this point, he might have already had to exchange his body again, or he may have accidentally decomposed it when it fell into the circle. He might have died. It didn't really matter.

He tried to hide the gesture by rubbing the back of his neck and arranging a silly grin on his face. He was really too old for it, but no matter how long he spent with nii-san, he would always feel like the younger brother.

"I tried to decompose the uranium bomb, nii-san," he said, by way of explanation. "I don't know if I succeeded, though, so look for it on the other side!"

Ed just stared at him, his flesh and blood arm apparently forgotten. "Al?"

"Don't worry!" he exclaimed, watching the thin arms snaking out of the Gate towards his brother. "Just get to the other side and make sure we did it, okay? And remember to thank Winry and the Colonel for me!"

Ed saw them coming, too, and despite the years on Earth, he instinctively clapped his hands and waved one – over his human arm. He did not transmute it into a blade, being skin and not the metals he was expecting, and then the black arms had him once more.

"Al! Wait, Al!" he shouted, and then he was gone.

The arms yanked the Gate shut behind them.

Alphonse Elric waited a moment, listening to the ringing silence. There was light to see the Gate by, an ambient glow that didn't seem to have a direct source. But there was no wind, nothing else to make noise. Once the echo of the Gate's refusal stopped reverberating, there was a great sense of empty space going on infinitely.

Ed didn't force himself back out. No one else did, either, not Wrath, not Envy, not his father. If there could have been tumbleweed in front of the Gate, he would have expected some to drift by.

After a few tense seconds, he dared to take a step towards the Gate.

Nothing happened.

Al studied the closed Gate. Was this Truth? Did he gain a greater understanding just by looking at this dark, monolithic structure with its tortured statuary and imposing air? Or was it like sensei had said? Was it Hell?

Could he summon her out, and ask her?

The last time he'd gone through, he'd been on an airship, in a suit of armor, and he hadn't gotten a chance to really stare at it. All he'd seen was that the arms had snaked into the armor in a way that reminded him a bit sadly of Martel, and then they had withdrawn.

They'd never touched him. Perhaps they hadn't realized he was there, considering he was in two containers. But that didn't make sense, because they attacked all the other men in armor –

"Why didn't you take me?" he asked aloud. "Am I dead?"

The Gate remained silent several moments longer.

Then it swung open.

- x -

Amestris, 1917

The sudden explosion caught her off-guard, and she glanced toward the sky, not trusting her ears. Sound bounced between the storefronts, down alleyways, was buffeted by the wind. Something that loud would have to make smoke, or at the very least a large cloud of dust. That dust would rise, and tell her where the sound had originally been produced.

She found her answer immediately – what had been a sizable piece of debris from the damaged airship was bursting into pieces, and she watched them only a second before she shifted her gaze back to the ship itself. It had broken away from the transmuted stone column that had impaled it, which meant –

Either Alphonse Elric and the Colonel had succeeded in taking the airship, or they had failed.

The tiniest metallic scraping sound caught her attention, and she immediately dropped her gaze, scanning the market for any signs of motion. She'd half expected these dead troops to drop when their general was defeated, but it was becoming clear that they were able to continue functioning, probably as long as that general was here.

Which begged the question, where had this attacking force come from? The quick answer was out of the ground, and it explained the earthquakes, but that just spiraled into a series of mysteries.

Someone needed to get a handle on how and where the enemy was going to regroup, and given the way command had been scattered throughout the city, she was fairly certain no one had done extensive recon yet.

There was a terrific smashing sound directly behind her, and First Lieutenant Hawkeye didn't even jump. It had been a long time since she'd last fought with the former Lieutenant Colonel Alex Louis Armstrong, but you never quite forgot the way his metal-clad fists sounded when they were utterly annihilating something.

He hadn't even used alchemy. He was just that strong.

"Miss Hawkeye!" he protested in his heavily accented voice. "You should be more careful."

She turned to face him, lowering her Browning 1910 to a rest position. "I was distracted," she admitted. "Lt. Colonel, do you know where the enemies' ships were first spotted?"

He tossed the smashed armor behind him casually, using his now-freed right hand to stroke his chin thoughtfully. "Judging by the strength of the earthquake and the airship's current heading, I would say the enemy attacked us from beneath the city."

Beneath the city.

The hidden city, then. But hadn't the reports said its inhabitants had died a long time ago? Surely after all this time they wouldn't launch an attack?

Hawkeye glanced up again, watching the newly freed airship begin a steep banking towards the city. If the colonel and Al were still on that ship . . . where did they intend to take it? And if they had been captured –

"Come on!" she barked, and without another second's pause, headed immediately in its direction.

It didn't matter if Alphonse Elric and the Colonel were still on that ship or not. They weren't going to get any intel on the enemy unless they located one that was still alive. The bodies in these armors were all dead from their impact with the ground, falling from their ships as they were spread throughout the city. Maybe they'd been dead before that. Shooting them in the head seemed to take them down permanently, so obviously there was still something left of them, but she hadn't heard a one of them speak, or cry out in pain.

Maybe they were incapable of speech. It would certainly be useful to deploy troops that were completely unable to leak intelligence if captured.

And if the Colonel and Al were on that airship, and they actually had control of it somehow –

Then just where the hell did he think he was going without her?

Surely he was on the airship. Once she'd gotten a brief moment she'd used her rifle to find the balloon, drifting harmlessly out to the south and losing altitude. There had been no one in the basket. There was no doubt he'd abandoned it at some point, and its trajectory should have taken it reasonably near that stone column.

Armstrong followed her without protest, his footsteps odd in his patent leather loafers rather than the hard rubber of their military-issue footwear. She had missed him, though she'd be unlikely to admit it around the others. His trust had seemed to mean a lot to the colonel, and had come at a time when he needed that reassurance.

The disappearance of Edward Elric wouldn't have had nearly the effect on the colonel if Hughes had still been around. She didn't know what Maes had done after the Ishbal conflict, but whatever it was Mustang had needed, she hadn't been able to give him. Seeing him saunter up to Central, raising his right hand in that arrogant gesture she'd seen a thousand times – he was still in there.

Roy Mustang was still lurking inside that dejected man. She'd seen him with her own eyes.

And just as soon as he'd arrived, he'd slipped away again.

Riza Hawkeye noted the motion in her peripheral vision this time, and she'd already braced her lead leg against an inactive suit of armor and taken aim before she realized she was sighting a friendly. At least, it was wearing the blue uniform of Amestris, but it couldn't really be Jean Havoc –

And not twenty steps behind him was Heymans Breda. Also sprinting.

She paused a moment, wondering if she should order them to come with her; obviously, they were on some mission of their own. It was taking them in the same direction, though –

"Havoc!"

He'd seen her, obviously, but he didn't slow. Instead, he waved his hand nonchalantly in acknowledgement, possibly even dismissal, and otherwise ignored her.

Riza's eyes narrowed as she watched Breda do much the same. They were about to disappear into the alley of what used to be the tanner's and a seamstress's, when Falman and Fuery burst into the scene, apparently in pursuit.

"Oh," Armstrong murmured, at her right shoulder. "I wonder where they could be going in such a hurry?"

She didn't even glance back, she just started after them. Had they already decided to follow the fast-sinking airship to its landing position? It was trailing a great deal of black smoke, but she assumed that was actually a symptom of its propulsion method and not actual damage. It didn't appear to be crashing, it certainly looked like a retreat –

"Miss Hawkeye!"

By the time she made it across the ruined intersection, Fuery and Falman had caught up. Both seemed surprised to see her, and both were already out of breath. How far had they run? She thought they'd been commanding the dispersion of the armor units throughout the city, but obviously they'd met up with Breda and Havoc at some point –

"Where are they going?" She gestured at the other two, now out of sight down the alley.

Fuery was staring at her with wide eyes, the effect further accentuated by his round glasses. He apparently didn't have the breath to speak, because he just shook his head and kept running. She kept pace with them, not surprised to see the Strong Arm Alchemist bounding along effortlessly behind them.

Fuery didn't know why they were following? Then again, neither did she. Their party narrowed obediently to a single file line as they passed through the cramped alley, dodging several charred and still-burning fragments of homes, of the city, of the enemy's vehicles. The shopping district had been one of the first to be defended, and suits of armor littered the street.

She scanned them quickly, but none seemed to be reacting to their presence. It was odd, that there would still be fires burning here considering it had been several hours since this portion of the grid had been declared retaken. Even as she watched, tiny pieces of debris were still raining down, trailing lines of soot through the dusty air.

She glanced up, noting the haziness of the sky, and realized they had come to the crash site of that destroyed piece of airship.

Did Havoc or Breda think more of the armored troops had been deployed? Could the enemy have survived both the fall and the shelling, when a head shot seemed to take them down?

She would have asked, but after the slightest of pauses, both the Second Lieutenants had continued down another, much wider, corridor, to the northern blocks of the shopping district.

Despite his lazy demeanor, she'd done enough training with Havoc to know that he could run all day. It was a little weird, that such a heavy smoker could still run twelve or more miles consecutively if he had to, but he kept himself well enough fit. Breda, on the other hand, had a much heavier build, and wasn't suited for sprinting. They'd have to slow down sometime.

The four of them emerged from the alley into what had once been the corner of the main street market. A few of the shorter buildings had gone down recently, but not in the last few minutes. So this damage hadn't been caused by the crash of the wreckage –

Havoc and Breda had already come to that conclusion. She saw them staggering to a stop just a few dozen yards east, and she followed them, keeping her pistol ready.

Small wisps of smoke still curled up from beneath the grey stones, a sure indication of recent fire now extinguished. The two Second Lieutenants were standing before what had once been two equally-sized shops, and judging from the way the rubble had fallen, something large had landed directly between them. The impact and resulting explosion had created enough of a shockwave to shatter the glass on every storefront within the block. The cobblestones directly in front of the two destroyed shops were also badly charred, as though something had detonated directly on the spot Havoc and Breda now stood.

But despite the damage to the two shops, and the glass, the rest of the block was relatively unscathed. How could something have hit the ground with enough force to completely destroy two several-story stone buildings and not touch any of the surrounding ones?

And where had it gone? There was nothing in the wreckage of the shops that seemed alien. No twisted pieces of slag, not even so much as a piece of the enemy's armor.

Hawkeye slowed to a jog, then a walk, scanning the street as she approached the gasping men. Whatever it had been, it was too big to hide in what rubble lay in the street, so it had either already left the area, or it was occupying one of the larger buildings. As she came to a stop directly behind Breda, she noticed something else strange.

There was alien wreckage in the street, many yards away. Still smoldering pieces of dark metal lay in the street, a few holes in roofs indicated where other pieces had pierced them. But there should have been a much higher concentration of dross in this immediate area, unless the shockwave had knocked it all aside -

But then, if it had made such a large explosion, it would have been a bomb, an explosive designed for such a thing, and who would design an explosive that would do such specific damage to such a worthless target?

Breda turned as she approached them and grimaced, still gasping. Havoc took several deep breaths, then cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, "Oy, Colonel! Can you hear me?"

Colonel?

Colonel Mustang?

Suddenly the charring in front of the shop, the focused design of the explosion, it all made sense. He'd used alchemy to destroy the two shops in order to create a shockwave powerful enough break up the largest piece of debris before it could take out the block? But the armor units had done a pretty good job of that, what could he have seen falling that –

What had he been doing in this section of the city? How could he have gotten there? Even if he had abandoned the balloon elsewhere, the prevailing winds were blowing south, not north.

"Colonel!" Havoc tried again, hopping onto the rubble like a man half his age. "Are you here?"

Breda was looking over the rubble, and he broke left, circling around while Havoc continued to explore the main ruins of the shops. Fuery brushed past her, taking the right side without word, and she turned on Falman, who was approaching her outright.

"Falman, what's going on?"

The gray-haired man looked as grim as ever, and he had the audacity to reach out and take her by the elbow. "Lieutenant, don't you think we need to reorganize the armor units and deploy –"

Riza yanked her arm out of his grasp, and his always-narrow eyes closed further. "What was the Colonel doing here?" Had Breda and Havoc known he was in that district? For what purpose? Had they responded when they'd realized the falling wreckage was going to land right on him?

Oh, god. Flames and explosive atmospheric gases were well and good, but his flavor of alchemy wasn't designed to ward off multiple incoming ballistics. Surely he wouldn't have been careless enough to get caught up in his own shockwave, but what if it had incapacitated him? He tended to go a little overboard when excited, and even if he still had access to the red stone this would have been a fairly major alchemic reaction –

Falman tried to start again, and by the tone of his voice she knew he wasn't going to answer her question. "Lieutenant, I –"

"Answer me, Second Lieutenant. That's an order. Was he here when the wreckage fell?"

Vato hesitated, then saluted smartly. "I do not know, First Lieutenant Hawkeye!"

She glared at him in irritation, but he didn't offer any further information. Armstrong began to speak, but she ignored him, heading straight for the rubble. If Jean was calling for the Colonel and they were focusing their search here, clearly they thought he was here. The why didn't matter. All that mattered was finding him.

Of course, looking in the rubble itself was probably not going to yield any clues, the colonel wouldn't be stupid enough to destroy a building he was in. Shockwaves spread out equally in all directions, and the fact that this one had been generated between two buildings had allowed the blast to be focused almost directly up. It explained why the buildings besides these shops were still standing. The charring in front of the shops indicated another place he'd ignited a large concentration of oxygen, which had prevented the blast from moving vertically.

Everything had been pointed up . . . to prevent damage to the surrounding buildings, or to stop something from hitting them?

But if that was the case, then where the hell was it?

She jogged across the street, her boots crunching on a surprisingly small amount of glass. Most of the storefront windows had shattered inward, so if he hadn't been careful, he could have been cut to pieces by it. For him to control such a large reaction, he'd have had to have been fairly close by. He would be in one of these buildings.

She chose the one directly across from the destroyed shops, which she knew had once been a bakery. Not only had the main window been blown out, but the glass display cases as well, their cakes, pastries, and rolls now sliced to pieces by the force of the explosion and the flying shards. They were all still basically intact, though – there was no evidence anything as large as a body had been thrown through the case. It would have knocked aside many of the baked goods.

She turned carefully, grinding pieces of glass gratingly into the tile floor as leaned across the counter. Luckily, it didn't appear as though any employees had been here either when he'd detonated it – there were no bodies, no blood. A shadow seemed to pass over the sun outside, and she turned to see the massive form of the Strong Arm Alchemist in the window.

"Miss Hawkeye." It wasn't a question, and it was quite formal. He then spun on his heels, remaining at an almost parade rest outside the storefront.

Confused, she crunched her way back across the floor and stepped through the ruined windowframe, catching sight of the others. Breda and Havoc had returned to the front of the building, and they and Falman were huddled together, heads bowed as they quietly discussed something. She headed directly towards them, and Armstrong flanked her once more.

This time, Jean Havoc didn't ignore her. He caught her gaze and brought his head up sharply, immediately ending the hushed conversation. Breda and Falman glanced her way, then stepped aside, and she saw what it was they had been looking at.

Havoc was holding a scrap of bright white fabric.

He didn't say anything, and neither did she. She merely marched up to him and took it from his unresisting hands. She stared at the scrap as if in a dream, rubbing it between her fingers carefully before enclosing it tightly in her fist. There was no red transmutation circle embroidered into it, but there was no doubt it was ignition cloth.

It just wasn't the back. It was a piece of the palm of the glove, or possibly the cloth around the wrist.

The edges were torn, not neatly cut, and the fabric was mostly clean. No blood.

"Where did you find this?" Her voice was absolutely flat.

"Near the back of the collapsed wall of the building on the left," Breda answered. She pinned him with a look.

"Why did you think Colonel Mustang would be here? Was he following the wreckage?"

Havoc sighed quietly, and plucked the cigarette from his lips. "He was the wreckage, Riza. He fell."

She gripped the ignition cloth harder.

That was why the explosion had been focused upward.

He'd been trying to catch himself.

She took a breath. Then she took another. She was not going to panic. What had happened, happened. If he wasn't responding to their calls, it didn't necessarily mean anything. He could be unconscious. He could be hurt. He'd certainly be nearby, and he would be in plain sight. He wouldn't be under the rubble if the explosion had occurred before he'd hit the ground.

And he wasn't in plain sight. So either he had already moved himself, or –

Or –

An impossibly enormous hand clapped down on her shoulder with enough force to nearly send her staggering to her knees.

He fell.

He wasn't on the airship.

Which meant that it was either still under the control of the attacking general, or –

"What about Alphonse Elric?" No one else could have transmuted that stone column except Armstrong, and he'd been with her the entire time.

Havoc was watching her carefully. "I didn't see him," he admitted. "Look, Hawkeye, just because we –"

Kain came running around the corner, interrupting them by slipping on some loose stone and nearly going down. He got to his feet quickly, and he looked a little frantic, but he said nothing.

So he hadn't found the Colonel either. Unless he'd been injured, and dragged himself into one of these nearby shops to avoid being hit with the rest of the falling metal?

"Falman, Fuery, continue searching this grid. I want you to comb every room in every shop in a three block radius. Kain, contact us by radio when your sweep is done. Breda, Havoc, you're with me."

She started to take a step, but Armstrong's immovable hand on her shoulder stopped her dead in her tracks. She took a shallow breath, then turned towards his hand. She refused to look at him.

He cried at the drop of a hat, and if he was weeping now, she didn't want to see it.

The colonel was fine. Until she saw his body, she would continue to believe that he was fine.

If the shockwave was powerful enough to tear sturdy fabric like ignition cloth, the logical part of her mind whispered, it was powerful enough to tear his hand right off his body. It was possible they'd never find a big enough piece to identify him.

"I believe Alphonse Elric boarded the enemy's airship," she said, as calmly as she could. "Therefore, we will proceed to the rumored contact point and perform reconnaissance. You are no longer a member of this Parliament's military, Mr. Armstrong. You do not need to endanger yourself –"

"I am a State Alchemist," he reminded her, his voice strong and proud. "I will accompany you, Miss Hawkeye."

He squeezed her shoulder too tightly, as though he could transmute some of his strength into her, and then he released her. She began walking immediately, but the pace seemed too slow, and soon she'd broken into a jog. Then a run.

She didn't let go of the piece of ignition cloth.

- x -

Author's Notes: Okay, so I lied. It'll have to be three parts. This was the best place to split it yet again, so sorry about the short chapter. If you notice anything amiss, let me know!