I know I should cover the revelation of Edward's world to Alfons, but… I'll do it later. Aw, I just wanna write about WWII! I suppose I can try to slip it in here somewhere!

Edward wasn't easily frightened, but he had to admit, he was quite shocked when civilians began to set buildings on fire in the middle of the night. Edward had stayed up late reading Shakespeare, something that didn't exist in Amestris. The spelling was something that Mr Shakespeare could probably have looked up on. Alfons had the original English copies, which Edward didn't really get, because Alfons' English was poor.

He was straining his eyes reading in the dim light, since Alfons had gone to bed and he didn't want to wake him up. Of course, it didn't really make much difference when a few hours later, screaming could be heard from the town centre. Edward put his book down, curious. He peered through the window, but finding that he couldn't see anything, heaved it up and stuck his head out in an attempt to get a better look. In the distance behind the houses and the little shops towards the town centre smoke could be seen rising above the rooftops and the flickering orange light that was unmistakably from a fire.

"Shit," Edward swore in Amestrian and flicked on the big lights so that he could see what he was doing.

"Shit, shit, shit," he muttered, working himself into quite a flap trying to figure out what to do. In the end, he just pushed the responsibility onto someone else.

"Alfons!" He yelled, going back to staring out of the window in horror. "Alfons!"

Alfons, however, wasn't moving fast enough for Edward's liking, and so the younger ran into his elder's bedroom, still shouting his name. The man in question was trying to wake himself up before Edward did something callous like throw a bucket of cold water on him.

"What's't'matt'r?" he mumbled, sitting up before his brain had figured out how far off the ground his head was, and thus giving him vertigo.

"Alfons, the market's on fire!" Edward shouted, his eyes wide, getting more and more frantic by the minute. "Come on! People are setting the shops on fire! It's going to be like the Great Fire of London again!"

Alfons was quite concerned, and willingly let himself be dragged out of bed, but failed to see what Edward was getting so hyped up about. Edward wasn't one to be a drama queen after all, and he was certainly riled up for it being so late at night.

Edward practically forced Alfons' head through the widow to look at the scene, and Alfons was, to say the least, shocked. The fire had moved rapidly from where it had been when Edward had last seen it, and it was now close enough so that the orange glow illuminated Alfons' pale face leaning out of the window clad in his stripy pyjamas.

"Oh Christ," he exclaimed, practically falling out of the window to crane his neck so that he could see the extent of the damage.

Shouts and screams could be heard not-so-far off in the town centre, only a few blocks away from where they lived, and what Edward had said seemed to be true, it wasn't just a fire, but an act of arson, and a pathetic attempt was being made to prevent and put out the fire, if any attempt at all.

Alfons pulled his head back into the house, coughing slightly at the shock of the cold night air after being so warm. Edward looked at him strangely, but Alfons just passed it off as smoke, which was a load of rubbish, clearly, as the smoke had not reached their street yet.

"We must warn Gracia," he told Edward, completely forgetting that he was wearing nothing but his pyjamas and that it was the middle of the night. The excitement and fear had him twitchy and his hands shaking slightly with adrenaline, his heart thudding frantically in his throat. Alfons threw open the door out of the flat that opened to the stairway into the shop and raced down the wooden steps. Alfons didn't do much racing and therefore stumbled and nearly fell by the time he reached the bottom. Edward swiftly descended with a lot more grace after him.

Alfons banged his fists against the door to Gracia's flat, shouting her name. When a light flicked on upstairs, Alfons finally let up, stepping back from the door and ceasing his ridiculously loud shouting. Once again, when he was quiet, Alfons looked back on how he'd just behaved and found himself a little embarrassed. Edward must have been rubbing off on him, though thankfully, not too much, since Edward never seemed to show any remorse for however stupidly and loudly he might have acted.

Gracia reached the door and slid in the latch and opened the door a crack. Edward held back a laugh. Alfons looked aghast at his own behaviour, especially when Gracia didn't recognise his voice simply because it wasn't accompanied by a polite knock and a meek 'excuse me.'

"Alfons, is that you?" She asked quietly, peeking around the door. Alfons smiled sheepishly and ran a hand through his hair, noticing in the process that he was wearing his pyjamas still. Gracia laughed at his expression, then noticed Edward standing behind the taller man. "Edward, Alfons, what's going on? It's one in the morning, you know."

Edward didn't smile at her. "Miss Gracia, there's a fire in the market square spreading up the main street."

Gracia stepped back a little in surprise. She closed the door, and then re-appeared a moment later, having taken off the latch. She stood about as smartly as Alfons in a lilac night-gown that had seen better days and a white towel dressing gown, her bare toes tugging at the carpet absently.

"What do you mean, Edward? She asked, frowning at the young man, "A fire?"

Edward nodded. "Yeah, a big fire. It looks like arson, it's spreading too quickly to be an accident." Edward told her, glancing towards the shop windows by reflex, but uselessly, since the shutters were down.

"Oh God… I wonder why… Should we…?"

"Go and help? I don't know… I wonder how dangerous it-"

Edward started to get annoyed. People on this side of the gate were such pansies. It was all 'the law' this and 'the government' that. "Of course we should help! What were you planning to do? Stand and watch!?"

"Well, Edward it's not quite-"

"Don't even start! If you can help, you should! And we can help, right? Whatever's going on out there, you and I can help!" Edward shouted in Alfons' face, some purpose that was rarely seen shining in his eyes. Alfons stepped back at the confrontation, but Edward seemed to take that as some kind of cowardice, and advanced on him again.

"Edward, I know that you generally have a way of doing things… In the moment, but you have to think about the consequences here!" Alfons defended, quickly thinking. "I you're caught helping-"

Edward actually pulled at his hair, which Alfons though was a little over dramatic. "So this is about the Jews again, is it!?" He demanded, looking nothing short of livid. "I don't care what's going to happen to me anymore, I'll get to that when it comes. I don't care what you're doing, I'm going, and I'm going to help!"

Edward swept past Alfons, completely ignoring Gracia and took the door off the latch. He wrenched it open, heaved up the shutters, ducked under them and slammed the corrugated metal down after him with a resounding crash.

Alfons and Gracia were left stunned. Of course, after the shock wore off, Alfons started to feel extremely guilty. Gracia seemed to have worked that out and smiled at him.

"It's not you, it's Edward," she said. Alfons frowned at her in confusion, so she elaborated. "Edward has a very 'act now, think later' attitude towards life, he likes a fight, doesn't he? He likes to be a hero. Sometimes, you have to step back and think, you know?"

Alfons ran a hand through his hair again. "Yes, that might be true, but now I have to go after him anyway," he said with a sigh. "I'll just go and change into something more appropriate," he told her, before turning back upstairs.

~*~ Charismatisch ~*~

Alfons ran (for the first time in a long time, it was to be admitted, so there was nothing special to see) down the main street into the market square. It had been a while since he'd gone out at night, and things certainly were different in the dark. It was cold too, despite the fire blazing only a few streets away, and he felt it, having neglected to put on a coat.

"Edward!?" He yelled over the sounds of shouting and crackling that were growing louder the closer he got. "Edward!?"

Alfons knew that any attempts to locate Edward through shouting was futile, he wasn't the only person who had lost someone in the crowd.

Alfons came to a T-junction that opened into the market square, surrounded by shops, and above them flats, just like Gracia's. He slowed, taking in the sight.

The market was packed with hundreds of people, either screaming frantically up at the windows of their friends' residence, while their businesses perished in the fire or people doing all they could to make the situation worse, throwing pricks at windows or looting anything that wasn't completely destroyed by the fire.

And then there were people like Edward, who were here only either out of curiosity, or for the sole purpose of helping those who could do nothing to stop the horror that was clearly inflicted by those who had voted 'yes.'

"Edward!" Alfons screamed over the heads of the crowd, standing on his toes to see if he could spot that head of bright blond hair. "Edward!" He whipped his head back and forth, but it was hard to see anything passed the faces of the people in the foreground, doing the same as he was, yelling frantically, looking around wildly. "Shit," he cursed, pushing through the crowd gracelessly, still yelling the name of the younger man, and starting to get worried for his safety. Edward was exactly the kind of person to run into a blaze to save someone who he'd never even met, or get himself badly hurt in a fight trying to protect someone more venerable, which was a nice quality, but… things were different in the world (or this world as Edward would say) to how Edward thought they were in the safety of his own mind. The reward for being compulsive and coming out on top was not as high. It's always the reason, the interrogation, the means to the end.

"Edward, where the fuck-"

Alfons spotted him, lying in front of that book-shop that he'd been so intent on just a few months ago.

"Shit, Edward," he muttered, picking up the pace, not bothering to even apologise to the people that he crashed into in an attempt to get to his younger flat-mate in the least time possible. Edward had fallen on his side, facing the building and away from Alfons, and though Alfons was concerned to the point of feeling sick, he rationalised that I couldn't be that badly hurt. He was moving, and wasn't doing something morbid like lying in a pool of his own blood.

Alfons reached the younger, and pulled him up onto his lap. Edward's eyes were half open and he was mumbling something incomprehensible. There was blood on his face from a large but shallow graze on his forehead which had a nice-looking bruise forming around it. Alfons, having decided he'd live, and thankful that he hadn't found him dead, or arrested, heaved the younger into his arms so that Edward's head and arms dangled over his shoulders and staggered away from the crowds. Now that he was leaving, Alfons felt that same compulsion he assumed Edward must have had earlier, telling him that he must simply go and assist, but he ignored it. Edward was his priority. If Edward wasn't there, he'd have helped, but he could always come back later and do what he could. Edward was his responsibility.

~*~ Charismatisch ~*~

This chapter was getting long, so I thought I'd end it here, and continue on in the next one. Don't worry, Ed's fine.

Alfons is quite melodramatic about conflict, but that's because he's not used to it, and so when confronted with it, he tends to think more of the worst possible scenario, or something that he has read in a book. I tried to write him like this anyway.

I know Alfons rarely swears, and I wasn't sure what to do about him swearing, but to put yourself in his shoes, I think he can be excused. When he was shouting for Edward, I was very tempted to put his speech in capitals, but that's something I hate doing, and generally find it unprofessional (but that's just me, so don't get offended!). But he is really hollering, over the noise of everyone else screaming. Oh I hope everyone saw that as clearly as I did, I could see every scene in my mind as I wrote it, I'm so chuffed!

(I want to draw the scene where they are looking out of the window!)

I have a lot to say this time around! Sorry!

I'm off to Ireland tomorrow (I know, first it was supposed to be Canada, then Denmark, and now Ireland! It's getting closer and closer to home each time! Never mind, it'll be fun!) so I won't be writing for a week again, but I got a chapter in before I leave, so GO ME!

And yes, this was when the Nazis staged the mass boycott of Jewish business, which (I'm sorry) was BEFORE Hitler was voted in, which happened in the last chapter. But I wanted it to happen now. I'm sorry for messing with history!

See you next chapter!

~BS