***Following a Lead***
Central, Amestris, May 1918
Munich, Germany, May 1924
"Thanks, Fritz, I'll let you know if this pans out," a young man with a golden ponytail dressed in a long brown trench coat spoke as he hung up the hotel receiver. Before rising, Ed scribbled down the pertinent information in his ever present notebook. Once done, he slid the small leather bound reminder of home into his pant pocket.
Thinking over the lead, Ed considered the likelihood that it would be a bust. They had been following every whisper for the past 6 months, so the chances that this was what they were looking for weren't great.
'Well, here's hoping we catch a break,' he told himself optimistically as he stood.
He climbed out of the telephone cubical into a bland reception room that was lit with warm yellow light. Navigating past the elevator and night filled lobby windows, he made his way back to his room, rereading the notes he had made during the quick call.
Turns out that his hunch about potential buyers might have paid off. An unusual conglomerate of international big wigs was arriving in droves at a discreet, but posh, hotel in Berlin for an exclusive auction. The only thing was, the item up for bid was not being explicitly advertised. All the hub-bub was definitely worth a look, though.
Almost to his door, Ed dug his right gloved hand into his jacket pocket and heard a muffled clinking noise as he grabbed the metal key. He unlocked the door and entered the room. It was messy and small, but all he and his brother needed were two beds and access to a bathroom. Really he wouldn't have minded sleeping in the same bed as Al, but people on this side of the gate had some funny ideas about what would and would not be proper for two men sharing a room.
'Fucking prudes,' he thought as he sat on the edge of his single bed waiting for his brother to get back. Not that they were doing anything like that, but who cared if two guys wanted to go at it? What did it matter to anyone else? Well, apparently here in Germany, everyone cared, or at least those that did were loud and forceful about it. Stupid idiots.
Anyways, the only thing that Ed really cared about when renting a room was if the restroom was at least on the same floor. It was safer to have it en suite, though; there would be less of an opportunity for someone to notice him.
'That's all we'd need,' Ed thought pessimistically, 'for someone to notice me.' To be fair, piss yellow hair and eyes along with tan skin were a strange occurrence in Amestris, too, but his coloring was just the tip of the 'strangeness' iceberg. He brushed the offending locks out of his eyes with his right hand as he laid back onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling.
He didn't need people to notice his metal right arm and left leg, not to mention figuring out that he and Al were dimension hopping travelers from a world with alchemy. It would be dangerous if a certain remaining Thule Society member, that hot headed jackass Lieutenant Hess, found out the brothers were still in Germany. It would definitely put a damper on doing what they needed to get done. They were on a mission: to find and destroy a bomb that shouldn't exist.
When that fucking nut job Huskisson had been ranting and raving about his 'scientific prowess' back in 1914 (so that made it 1920 here in Germany, right? Fucking time misalignment bullshit...), he had propositioned Ed and Al to bring his Uranium bomb to the State. The brothers had refused the hack outright. Of course, their rejection had prompted the 'scientist' to resort to his back-up plan, using human transmutation to turn his dead miners into weapons.
He'd paid the ultimate price in the end, or so the brothers had thought. Turns out that asshole had ended up on this side of the gate and had proceeded to blab his mouth here, too. Damn fool.
Ed agitatedly pulled a rumpled, well-worn train schedule from his left pocket. He held it above his face and began scanning it for the route and times he and his brother would need for their trip.
A sympathetic Thule Society had found Huskisson soon after his arrival. They'd sought to study and use his bomb to promote their own ends. However, recently the group had lost most of its impetus for crossing over to Amestris after their crushing defeat both there and in the streets of Germany.
Ed and Al hoped that, after the brothers had closed that damn gate for good, those crazy bastards wouldn't try another invasion of Amestris, but you could never be too careful. This was especially true since Ed's blood had already proven able to open a temporary portal, even though everyone in Thule's returning advance team who had passed back through had been killed in the initial trip to Amestris.
It was smarter for Ed to fade into the faded tapestry of this muted world while looking to tie up Huskisson's last loose end connecting the dimensions. They had even left the little place above Gracia's, trying to erase any trace of themselves. The Elrics had been destroying any references to Amestris, alchemy, or portals in their search for Huskisson's bomb for the past six months.
'And then what?' the thought floated across Ed's mind. He crumpled the train schedule at the thought and stared at the ceiling instead.
'Well… we'll cross that bridge when we come to it,' he groused back, slightly concerned that he was arguing with himself. Anyways, once they found the damn bomb, they would still have to figure out how to dismantle and then destroy the thing before they could consider what to do next.
Not to mention, they would have to find all the research notes related to it that might exist and destroy those, too. It might take the rest of his life to find all the pieces anyways, so there was no rush to figure out what to do with himself afterwards.
'Well, that's depressing,' he thought as he sighed deeply. It would be just like their search for the Philosopher's Stone, Al and him seeking the unattainable. Again.
Ed knew deep down that he was responsible for the Uranium bomb being here in Germany in the first place. He had forced Huskisson's hand, and now he needed to stop the destruction that the gate had shown him when he first crossed over. Why else had it shown Ed that terror?
After Dante had tried to kill him by pushing his mind and soul through the gate, he had crossed over and arrived in London during an air raid. The gate had shown him the awful destruction left by a mushroom cloud yet to come in this world's future.
Once Fritz had shown him that propaganda photo of Huskisson holding the uranium bomb, Ed was sure that the bomb would be responsible for this world's demise. So really, what choice did he have? Ed had to do something to stop it. Alphonse saved him from exploring that thought further, as he returned from the shower down the hallway.
"Hey Al, Fritz might have found us a lead," he told his brother as he sat up, leaning back on his hands.
"Oh that's great, Brother," Al smiled as he began putting his toiletries away. "What did Mr. Lang find?"
"Well, remember that idea we had about seeing if the Thule Society was trying to off-load Huskisson's bomb to cut their losses and make some quick cash?"
His brother turned and nodded as he sat on his own bed, his attention sharp in olive eyes.
"Well, looks like there is a hush-hush auction in Berlin in four days, but no one seems to know what they're selling. So, if we leave tomorrow morning, we can catch a train and make it in time to take a few quick peeks at the buyers and whatever's behind the curtains before the auction."
His brother took in every detail then smiled.
"Sounds like a good lead, Brother." Al stood and began to pack, grabbing Ed's shirt off of the desk chair and began folding it. "I have a good feeling about this one," he said over his shoulder brimming with assurance.
"That's what you said about the last one," Ed half-heartedly complained.
"Well, Noah found that band of Roma when we went west, just outside of Dresden, so at least there's that." Al hesitated before continuing, "Do you still think it was ok for her to go off like that? We'd only just met them. Do you think she'll be alright?"
"Sure she will. They're her people, and besides, she's better off with them than the group she was traveling with when I met her. They'd tried to sell her, if you can believe it." Ed chuckled at the memory of firing a rocket at her pursuers before he and Noah ran off back towards his and Alfons' place in Munich.
"They tried to what?!" His younger brother nearly shouted as he rounded on Ed. "Don't you worry that Ro-Noah will be in danger with this new group?" his brother protested.
Al still had a hard time differentiating Rose and Noah in his head. What really mixed him up was when Ed had started to date Noah but had insisted that he and Rose were just friends. How do you keep body doubles straight anyways?
"Naw. I wouldn't worry about it. Noah said that one of them was a second cousin or something. She should be fine. Plus, I think that her cousin has a secret gift of his own." Al starred at Ed as his elder brother confided in him. "They'll keep each other safe."
By the stunned look on Al's face, Ed guessed his brother had not picked up on the way that the young man with two-toned brown and auburn hair had gone out of his way not to touch anyone. How had his perceptive younger brother missed that? Al had probably been distracted by the fact that Noah had abruptly decided to leave them. Ed wasn't going to pretend that it hadn't been a little awkward after he and Noah broke up. He figured that running into her cousin had given her the excuse she needed to leave him and Al.
It wasn't like Ed and Noah weren't attracted to each other. Obviously the loud nights they had shared showed that, but Noah had said Ed was looking for someone else. When he had pressed her, she had said that if he didn't know who it was, then she wasn't 'going to spoil it' and left it at that.
Whatever that meant.
***What the fuck was that?***
Central, Amestris, May 1918
Munich, Germany, May 1924
Ed plopped down on the front edge of the General's empty desk and picked up a few loose forms from the pile there. He couldn't read them, of course, this being a dream and all; they were just squiggly lines of ink across the page. The room was unoccupied this time, and it almost made Ed laugh to be waiting for the bastard to show up in his dream.
It was entertaining to Ed to know he was dreaming. These random imaginings were always different than his normal flights of fancy, mainly because they weren't nightmares, but mostly because he was aware he was dreaming.
They always tended to happen whenever he got the feeling he was making headway in his search for the bomb, ever since that first dream he'd had six months ago.
"Find anything interesting, Fullmetal?" Roy asked after being suddenly deposited into his faux office. He laughed to find the youth waiting for him on his desk. Roy noticed the teen startle but not get down from his perch. Instead, the blond crossed his legs to get more comfortable.
"Well, I can't read these, but I think we found a good lead in the search," the missing man leaned over to release the pages into Roy's outstretched hands and accidentally brushed his fingers with the general's.
The touch sent a shock through Roy's hand, and he retracted his extended arm at the sensation. He frowned wondering how he could feel something so acutely in a dream.
"Well, that's good news," Roy acknowledged as he self-consciously sat down at his desk, straightening the sheaf Fullmetal handed him. "So, you'll be off again. For how long this time, Fullmetal?" Roy was the blond's C.O., but he couldn't for the life of him remember what the young alchemist was looking for, not that it mattered.
"It'll take us about a day to get there and settled, so who knows? If it's a bust, then it's only a three- or four-day detour. We'll be off to some plush hotel to get some information," Fullmetal discussed conversationally. "Can you believe it might even be up for auction? If it's there, maybe we can sniff out where the research notes are, too."
Fullmetal sounded buoyant, so Roy let him talk. It was nice to see the young man excited for a change. Usually these dreams had a subdued tone to them. He always seemed to get them when he was in the middle of trying to piece together what some other general or assembly member was playing at, usually waking up with some insight after bouncing ideas off his subconscious. It was strange that the recent incarnation was the young blond before him.
"Anyways, I should get back to Al. Got an early morning train," Ed said as he jumped down from the desk, noting that it wasn't as far down as it had once been. He smiled to himself. See, he was still growing; not that he had ever been… short.
"Wait, Fullmetal," Mustang called awkwardly to him as he was walking towards the mist building in the doorway ready to take him to wakefulness.
"What is it, General?" Ed asked as he turned, still feeling pretty good about this trip and not seeing a reason to add the usual 'Bastard' to the address.
"Be safe," Mustang toned with a hint of concern to his features.
Their eyes met, and it made Ed feel apprehensive. Then he took a really good look at the remembered image of the older man for what seemed like the first time; it was unnerving.
Mustang had always been a good looking man, but Ed was noticing his dark searching eye juxtaposed with the black eye patch that, last Ed saw the general, took up the majority of the left side of his face. His cream colored skin was smooth over broad cheek bones with slender lips. The sleek yet rounded contour of his jaw fed down along the alluring line of his throat, making Ed wonder for the first time what the other strokes of his body looked like beneath the uniform.
Ed stood in awe for a moment as his vision took in the new aspects of his attention. It was like Mustang had morphed from his annoying CO into a strikingly masculine force worthy of another look.
"Uh, sure, General." Ed turned quickly back towards the misty door as he waved over his shoulder.
Ed woke, blinking his eyes into the bright light of the morning, thinking, 'What the fuck was that?'