D E B R I E F
After Ed's incident in the incubation room, he'd wandered around for days in a sort of haze. He had realized this idly on the top of the rooftops of that skeleton city sitting out in the desert, but had not given it thought ever since. And now, his mind was consumed with it as doubt pecked away at his mind like a thousand woodpeckers intent on completely felling a massive tree. The question had assailed him back in 1915, when things were simpler and easier to understand. The answer had also been equally simple and equally easy to reach. It hadn't taken much thought to find the answer, after all, because it had always been standing right next to him in that giant suit of armor, waiting and waiting.
But now, the question had reared its ugly head, and the answer happened to have died nearly two hundred years ago, surrounded by family and friends- except for the one person that mattered most to him.
What was he fighting for?
Edward's answer had always been 'Alphonse.' Al this, Al that, everything revolved around his little brother. He'd joined the military for his brother's sake. He'd fought homunculi and vicious chimeras, just for a scrap of information, a tidbit of research, a lead that would lead anywhere to that bright future he saw shining at the end of the path that would lead to his brother's restoration. He would've taken down ten legions, a couple alchemists, and maybe even a homunculus to boot, just to see him smile. After all, look how far he'd gone for his mother. Blood was thicker than water to Edward, but he wasn't sure anymore because the only family he had now was unfamiliar and changed in so many ways. They weren't really his family. They may have his blood in their veins, his mother's and his brother's, flowing through them, but Edward did not know them at all, and therefore they meant nothing.
Perhaps water was thicker than blood. Just maybe. But nevertheless, it still brought up that one question.
What was he fighting for?
The tempo of his punches and kicks continued to hike upwards as he pounded on a large punching bag. At least, these things hadn't changed in the past couple hundred years or so. Sure, the design and the material had been changed slightly, but it still had the usual look and feel of a good old punching bag. Edward hopped on the balls of his feet, swaying side to side as he stared at it. The question was still revolving in his head. He'd seen the people of this place, and he'd thought they were strange, almost backwards. Still, they were good enough people. Of course, he'd had to see the dirty side of Oasis. To add to his stock of nightmares, he saw Nirvana in his dream, screaming herself hoarse as she begged and pleaded to the open air. And sometimes, whenever the dreams were really bad, he'd imagine that it was him in those chains instead of her, trapped in a never ending nightmare.
That was what his life had become, after all. Everything he'd strived to save and keep safe was dead and gone. His entire purpose had shriveled under the weight of doubt, information overload, and overwhelming fear. He couldn't survive in this world. There had been an old saying that he would use- ... used. The word is used. That he used to say to Mustang all the time just to rile him up a little bit. You couldn't teach an old dog new tricks. Well, Ed was exactly that, and the dog didn't just have to learn new tricks nowadays. He had to reconfigure everything about the dog, from the way it walked, the way it barked, and even the way it ate and crapped in its dainty little box. Back in his day (oh how weird that sounded), you let a dog outside and it did its business. Around here, that apparently didn't fly considering there wasn't a whole lot of grass and dirt for a dog to have a nice bit of privacy time.
Ed continued, his fists blurring as he rapidly threw punch after punch at the bag, causing it to rock back and forth, swinging towards him after every hit. He hit it with a flying kick, sending it swinging in the ceiling's general direction, which it probably wasn't used to considering how heavy it was. Ed was lucky the workout room was empty. He would've had a pretty veritable crowd standing around just watching him go at the bag with blind resolution, as if the thing had done him a grave personal injury. The movements were familiar. The steps were always right. The tempo almost never changed. But there was something missing. This wasn't natural, somehow. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there was just something that was absent here in this routine that should've been normal. Suddenly, Ed realized it, and his eyes widened into two gold discs as the punching bag flew back and hit him square in the face.
He was knocked back on his butt, staring at the bag in disbelief. If a punching bag could look smug, this one certainly did. Edward wiped off his face, not having realized how sticky it was getting. It was generally pretty cool in the workout room, a breezy sixty eight degrees Fahrenheit. He'd always thought that it was weird that the people here in Oasis used Fahrenheit instead of the usual Celsius, but then again, the Fahrenheit system was only just that much more accurate in terms of numeration... Ed turned his thoughts back towards his revelation, which had been rudely interrupted by the punching bag's sudden rebuke. The reason why he'd felt something missing from this was because there was no reaction towards his moves. No one to move in tandem with him. No one to challenge him. He'd proved himself against Nirvana, and that was enough for most people to stomach. He wasn't quite unmatched, per se, as... he didn't have anybody to join in the dance.
His face forlorn, Edward picked himself back up, brushing off the pair of shorts that he was wearing along with the kneelength, undershorts that went with them. He'd never understand what was with these people. Shorts were shorts- why add to them? He sighed, looking around the room. It was empty, which was slightly strange. Usually there was someone in here. Ed looked back at the punching bag, and he stuck his tongue out immaturely at it. It almost seemed to wiggle with indignation at the sign of contempt, and Ed walked away towards the showers when suddenly he saw out of the corner of his eye a flash of white-blonde.
Edward whirled around to stare at Willow, who'd enter from the side of the workout room. With her was Spencer, who was helping her walk. She had a sleek looking prosthetic on her leg, and he marveled at her for a minute. His heart had stopped for all of a beat because for just that one beat, he'd thought... he'd seen... But he came back to Earth pretty fast as Willow bluntly said, "Wow, you must've been working out, because you're really sweaty." Winry wasn't... well, quite that blunt. She would make a sarcastic or caustic insult, but she wasn't exactly the type to lay it out like that in such a cheerful tone. Ed watched curiously as Willow went up to a machine that scanned the prosthetic leg. She stood on another machine, and suddenly she was moving, flying across as her legs pumped up and down in a piston-like fashion. His eyes widened as he watched, realizing that this must be the souped-up version of a treadmill.
"Shouldn't you be in the hospital?" Ed asked incredulously, walking over and staring at the leg intently. It didn't seemed to impede her at all. In fact, if anything, it seemed to enhance her speed by a fraction. Willow smiled and panted, "No... not really... my recovery... time was... cut in half. My... mom made... this new... model and- WHOA!" She almost fell off the machine, but Spencer caught her easily. The machine whirred as Willow stared up at Spencer appreciatively with a look that was softer than Ed had ever seen it. Suddenly, something clicked in his head, and he realized- oh. Oh. A buzz of disappointment echoed for all of a moment, but he pushed it away. He frowned at himself, angry that he'd ever contemplated it. She was not Winry, no matter how alike she looked or how much she sounded like her or... or any of that. It was unfair of him to ever have thought otherwise. Still, that pang-
"Her mom made a new model that cuts recovery time in half. She hardly has to wait more than a couple days to start physical therapy. Pretty vamp, right?" Ed blinked at the new term.
"Um... what?" Spencer patiently smiled and said, "Vamp's a term that means like... awesome, or nifty." Ed was almost insulted that he'd used the word 'nifty.' Come on, he wasn't that old. Grandma used that word, seriously... He tried to get his mind back on track. Crap, why couldn't he ever get his thoughts to just stay on one frickin' train and leave it at that?
"Well, that's great. I didn't know recovery was that short," Ed said with a slight hint of awe. The model that Willow was using happened to be a metallic blue and silver one, which looked lightweight and pretty shiny and new. Spencer nodded and said, "Yeah, usually it takes about two weeks to get used to one of these things, but her mom's a genius when it comes to automail, and so is her dad." Ed did a doubletake as he realized that this was no ordinary prosthetic- it was automail that required only two weeks of recovery time. How long was the-
"Physical therapy usually takes a few days. Three or four at the most," Spencer answered. Ed's chin just barely brushed the floor.
"Iced out, huh?" Willow said. Ed nodded numbly, and suddenly he felt that pang again, that feeling that he was so far behind everybody and everything. He hardly remembered saying goodbye to Spencer and Willow, walking to the shower rooms, and turning on the water. He stood under the hot water for a few minutes before realizing just how much it hurt. Ed had only ever been impaired in one way before, and that had been automail. Even that hadn't really been an impairment- in some ways, it was an improvement. His intelligence had been second to none. He could fight with the best of them. There hadn't seemed to be anything that could stop him except for the laws of nature and physics, and he periodically bent those as he willed. But here, he had a major handicap. Information was at his fingertips, but he couldn't interpret any of it. He could hardly keep up with all the new developments. Everything was moving so fast, they passed at a blur. He hardly processed what passed by as anything more than just another footnote on a timeline. It was so clear that he was in the wrong century that he suddenly felt utterly alone.
If Al were here, Edward wouldn't feel this loneliness. If Al were here- Edward suddenly punched the wall, causing the tile to crack. Suddenly, the wall fixed itself again, and Ed watched it. He did it again and again and again, watching it crack and reform, crack and reform, crack and reform... The water ran over his head as Edward pounded the wall with his fist, unleashing the absolute fury that he was subjected to inside of his head. He'd tried so hard to keep it under wraps, trying to catch up, trying to bottle the frustration, bite on his tongue, and try to just forget everything for a little while just to get a bit of peace. None of it was working. And that question kept leering at him, the words issued from his brother's mouth in his mind's eye.
What are you fighting for?
He knew that Alphonse had gotten his body back. Though he hadn't been present, Al had managed to regain the entire thing and continue on the Elric line. Alice was testament to that, and to some extent so was Trisha, the woman he'd met back in the incubation room. Nevertheless, Edward felt so cheated. He'd gotten his brother's body back, hadn't he? So why was he still fighting? Why was he being so selfish as to just wish he could go back even if it meant that Al would lose that ability to regain his body? He stopped himself as he thought about it. Perhaps it was his leaving that had caused it. What if Edward's disappearance had somehow driven Alphonse to get his body? No, that couldn't possibly... but maybe... if... All this time travel was making Ed's head hurt, and he stopped pounding his fist into the shower's wall. It reformed for the last time, and Ed realized that he was crying.
Disgusted with himself, he got out of the shower, dressed, and walked out the back way without saying a single word to either Willow or Spencer. They watched him curiously as he left, whispering as he closed the door behind him with a slam. It was evident that the boy was practically a raging, blonde sandstorm waiting to take someone or something out. Suddenly, he felt a vibration in his pocket, and he nearly jumped. The people around him, all walking along the corridors of the public sector, stared at him as he tried to hold in a surprised yelp. Feeling self conscious and sullen, he pulled out a new WiCom from his pocket. Flipping it open, he saw that Mustang wanted to talk to him. He groaned out loud. Of all the people he didn't want to see, she was at the very, very, very top of his long list. Underneath her name happened to be every human being within five hundred square miles that was above and below the ground. Ed apparently was not a very happy person at that moment.
"What?" he snapped as he put a widget in his ear. It worked much like a wireless earbud, except that a piece of silver dangled from the earbud itself, which caught soundwaves from the speaker's voice. A crystal clear Hilary answered, "Edward, you're needed for debriefing which was scheduled, by the way, about three hours ago." Ed rolled his eyes. He was not in the mood for a lecture. In fact, he wasn't in the mood for anything other than smashing someone's face in with a large hammer. Or maybe collapsing a couple of levels; that would be quite enjoyable too. In fact, he needed something to let off some steam, and his workout hadn't really done a whole lot in that area at all. He took out the earbud from his ear, and he walked with the flow of people towards the Hole. "Ed? Hello? Edward Elric, you had better answer me. Edward?" She was sounding more and more like a mother hen by the minute. An image of a hen dressed up in a fancy military outfit assailed him, and Ed had to smirk to himself.
Upon reaching the lip of the Hole, he blatantly disregarded the sign that said "PLEASE DO NOT THROW ANYTHING DOWN THE MAIN VENTILATION SHAFT- MNGT" by chucking the entire earpiece into open space. Several people watched in horror, and some of the teenagers even clutched their own WiComs to their chest in fear like mothers watching a horrific scene of violence and shielding their children. Ed put his hands on his hips, watching the little flash of silver as it went down, and he smiled. That was oddly satisfying. He put his WiCom back in his pocket and continued to walk down the hallways aimlessly. There really wasn't much else for him to do other than to ignore Mustang's request, which was good enough for him.
His WiCom buzzed again, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. They didn't know how to leave him alone. He picked up the WiCom and flipped it back open. Written on the Wireless Communicator's screen was a message that was typed, Nice try, asswipe. I can still text you. Edward, who'd managed to master texting quite well because he managed to do it so frequently by putting a bunch of junk in Mustang's inbox, typed back, Good for you. Now watch me block you. XP. He pressed the block button after sending the message to her. See how that worked. However, not two minutes later, it buzzed again, and he muttered, "What the hell?" Flipping it open for the umpteenth time, he read Mustang's message.
Idiot. I can practically control the WiComNet from my office. And besides, any numbskull with half a brain can hack a WiCom's block signal. Now get your insufferable butt up here so we can actually discuss this stupid mission and get it over with. Ed's eye twitched. The only thing he really processed out of the message was 'insufferable', 'numbskull', and 'idiot.'
It wasn't surprising when Alice found Edward furiously tapping away at the little keybaord on his WiCom nearly an hour later. Alice looked over Ed's shoulder from where he was sitting, his back up against a wall as people passed him by. In fact, several had almost given him change thinking he was homeless or something, until the realized a lack of a styrofoam cup sitting near his feet and the very expensive WiCom that happened to be in his hands. Not to mention, not many people ever forgot those gold eyes or that blonde hair... Alice's eyebrows rose up so high, they threatened to disappear behind her hair line. She knew Ed had a colorful vocabulary, but this made the rainbow looked like a monochrome arch. Talk about vibrant.
"Having... fun?" Alice asked as she stared at the blonde-haired alchemist, who had just sent a message.
"No," he answered grumpily, sullenly crossing his arms and tucking his chin into his chest, the usual pose for a sulking two-year-old who was getting frustrated. Alice leaned against the wall, her elbow and arm supporting her head as she asked, "What's the problem now?" He handed her the WiCom and said, "I can't freaking block stupid Mustang and her messages. I don't want to go to a debriefing, damn it! I want to be left alone for a couple of hours. Is that too hard to ask?" Ed was used to ignoring orders. He was not used to anyone actually doing something about it. Like sending him a bajillion texts with the same basic message along with jamming all of the games he'd managed to scrap up and store on his WiCom. They were oddly entertaining, and they were simple enough for him to understand, though there was one very interesting game called Finger-Revolution where you had to tap these little colored dots that came towards the bottom of your-
"I can block it for you, you know. I could own this entire WiComNet if I wanted to, practically," Alice said proudly. Ed scoffed and muttered, "Apparently, so can everybody else and their grandma..." Alice pouted as she stared down at Ed before tapping a few things here and there on his WiCom. She frowned as she said derisively, "You actually play Finger-Revolution? That's practically last centu-"
"SHUT UP. IT'S FUN."
Alice rolled her eyes and scrolled through a few more things before she let out an 'AHA!' and handed him back his WiCom. He stared at it for a minute. And another minute. And another minute.
And then he pumped his fist with joy as he realized that Alice had, indeed, done the job. She smiled modestly as she laughed, "Ohohohoho, no need for congratulations." She waved a hand at him, blushing prettily as little sparklies seemingly danced around her. Ed almost did a facepalm as he realized that he could practically see a pink haze behind her along with some flowers and rainbows she was so pleased with herself. Suddenly, there was a text, and Ed frowned at her. Alice's self-congratulating moment was cut short as she stared at the Com with a blank look. Ed rolled his eyes and muttered, "Good job, reje-" His eyes widened as he read the message. It wasn't from Mustang. It was from Kojak.
Seeing Ed's suddenly serious face, Alice peered over his shoulder to stare at message. "What? What is it? What's going on?" Ed looked conflicted as he said, "They're... they're releasing Nirvana today."
The room was dark, dank, and concrete. The four walls were discolored by mildew and cracks. Small, hardy plants grew in the crevices where the little soil that was available clung stubbornly. A single light shone on a bare, bright stick of luminescent, slow burning magnesium compound held inside of a small, mesh net. Underneath it, shadows spilling in all directions, was a girl with bright blonde hair, hollow eyes, and the face of a caged predator. She was on her knees, her wrists rubbed raw and her ankles so weak they wouldn't support her. Her body looked emaciated and bruised. Her eyes were darkened by shadows, and the green depths therein practically glowed behind specks of bright gold. Her breathing rasped in and out, her body shuddering with each inhalation. Nirvana was in bad shape, but her physical state was nothing compared to her mental.
Inside of her mind, she saw monsters everywhere. They were circling and snapping at her, laughing. She could feel flames lick skin, and she felt panic rise like bile with its acrid, jittery fingers trailing dissent and fear down her spine. She wanted to scream, but she'd already shouted herself hoarse. She wanted to move, but her body refused to budge. As long as these shackles were around her wrists, she didn't have the capacity for mobility. Her mind strayed from one thought to the next like a roving, hungry animal. It pounced on any sort of input, anything to distract it from the horrifying panic that consumed it. Dogs were eating at her sanity, tearing chunks of it away like thieves in a house. She had already tried to bite her tongue, make herself bleed, anything to quell the fear and horrible feeling of being out of control. Weakly, she shrugged against the invisible reinforcements that strapped her wrists and ankles to the floor. Every day, they pulled the chain a little shorter, a little shorter, a little shorter... What happened when she hit the floor? Would she disappear into it? Would she scream and cry? Would she shout uncle and finally be done with it?
The door into the room clanged open and closed. Nirvana sucked in breaths one by one, each one sounding more painful and labored than the last. This... This ultimate fear was crushing her. And the only reason why she was subjected to it was because of herself. She shivered as she lowered her head, a shivering moan emitted from her mouth. She would wait for the person to reach her before she would strike. The only person that would be inside this hell was Mustang. She'd created it, after all. Why shouldn't she come to gloat at her latest masterpiece? She'd always loved torture. She didn't look up as someone knelt in front of her, going for the shackles around her wrists-
She pounced, letting out a war cry as she slammed her hands around the person's throat, shoving them to the floor. They made a strangled noise as she sat on top of them. She could hear shouts from behind the glass wall that split her prison into two parts, but she didn't much care. By the time those useless buffoons got here, Mustang was already going to have a crushed windpipe and two weeks recovery in the-
Suddenly, Nirvana realized that she wasn't choking Mustang, but Ed. He suddenly decked her in the face as her eyes widened with recognition, and she flew back. The restraints slammed her in the ground, not allowing inertia to do its job and let her slide across the floor. She groaned as she sat up, staring at Edward. She hissed in a gravelly voice, "What are you doing here? Why'd she let you in here? Are you here just to mess with me? LIKE HELL I'LL LET-!" Her words were stopped as Ed gave her a swift slap to the face. Nirvana shut up long enough for him to say, "I'm here to get you out of here, you dope. That was, until you strangled me. Now I'm thinking about just leaving you here." His eyes were steely, and Nirvana just stared, her own eyes moving to different points on his face in some crazed pattern. Ed's face held both anger, irritation, and... well, sympathy, almost. Alice came in behind Nirvana, who flinched and was read to mule kick her backwards, but stopped just in time to see the person's face before she did so. Alice had already moved back anyways.
"They're... they're letting me... letting me go," Nirvana whispered in disbelief. Her glare was suspicious. She didn't believe a word. Everything they said was lies, and all the things they made were to kill, and-
"Yes. We're letting you go," Ed said slowly, putting a hand out. It was if he were reaching out to a dangerous, wounded animal. It wasn't far from the truth. Nirvana stared at Edward's hand before she attempted to stand up and regain what little dignity she had left that wasn't in tiny bite-sized pieces. It was difficult, as the restraints caused her to hunch over from their short length, but she managed. Ed looked over at Alice and motioned her over. He muttered, "You do this. I've got no idea how to work this thing." Alice scoffed and said, "God. Boltbucket." Ed stuck his tongue out and pulled down on eyelid at her, but she ignored it as she took a strange looking device out of her pocket. It looked a lot like a top, though a very, very shiny green and black top at that. It whizzed above her hand, and she placed it on the ground. It whizzed to each of the sockets that corresponded with each of the restraints that Nirvana had on, and one by one the shackles fell off. Her wrists were still bloodied and bruised, but Ed could see that they'd been bandaged as well. Her ankles, too, were treated, but they were shaky and just barely managing to hold her upright. Ed wondered why'd they'd let her get in such a bad state to begin with. Negligence? Just to teach her a lesson? He never found out, because Nirvana suddenly punched him in the face hard enough to leave a galaxy of stars in front of Edward's eyes. Ed stumbled back a few steps before landing on his butt for the second time that day, staring at Nirvana with a surprised, bewildered look.
Finally, his face turned red and he spluttered, "What the hell was that for?" Nirvana shook out her sore hand and spat back, "For kidnapping me, cessbrain. Are you really that dense? You probably are, considering the fact you almost broke my hand with your face. Oh, and about that-" She gave him a hard kick, which sent him flying backwards into a wall. "This was for nearly breaking my hand with your face." Ed got up in a cloud of dust, coughing slightly, but still looking like the flames of hell were raging in the background behind him. His eye twitched as he said, "Well, it's not my face you decided to break your hand against my head. Maybe you need to get a stronger hand."
"Maybe you need to get a more hollow head. Then there'd be space left for a brain!"
"You already have the hollow head, so you beat me there, sister! All you've got to do is find some gray matter to put into it!"
Alice resisted the urge to hack Program into dropping two twenty-pound blocks of lead on both of the blondes' heads. In fact, Program was contemplating that itself, considering the fact that they were now using some rather anatomically impossible suggestion towards one another, including something about sticking their foot up their own-
"Can't you two shut up for more than two seconds? Sheesh..." Alice complained as she tapped her foot impatiently, staring at both Nirvana and Ed. Both blondes scoffed at her suggestion, but Nirvana's derisive response was interrupted by a sharp sound of pain. She hit the floor, her ankles finally giving up on her. Ed managed to catch her, but not before she'd managed to sit on the ground while hissing with pain. The door creaked open again, and all eyes stared intently at the newcomer. Kojak looked rather out of place and large in the concrete room, seeming to fill up the entire space with his vastness. On him was a medkit, which he'd already started to program for whatever it was ailing Nirvana. The big man reached all of the teenagers in hardly two strides, and he knelt next to the downed alphysicist with hardly a whisper of sound.
"You let her keep me here?" Nirvana suddenly asked, a hurt and angry look in her eyes. Edward's own orbs flickered between the two, and Alice was already heading off into a corner to call up something to help transport Nirvana to the medical bay. Kojak's lips turned almost white as he pressed them together. He looked down, tending to Nirvana's ankles. He shook his head, and he said, "Nah, baby. I couldn't do anything. They wouldn't let me in. I was takin' care of your lawyer and all those other legal suites you managed to get yourself into." Nirvana winced, though from her ankles or the mention of her variety of angered legal enemies, Ed didn't know. He swallowed deeply as Kojak removed the bandages from around her ankles, showing a rather gruesome display of raw sinew and ripped skin. It didn't seem to be infected, but Ed was sure it was painful and would take quite a while to heal.
"You missed the debrief, Ed," Kojak said quietly, a mere statement. Even so, Ed could hear the annoyed tone in it, and he looked away with a chagrined, angry look. He'd thought it was better that he not be around anyone at the time. He'd already recieved hell for beating up several of the idiots in the Sci-Dep that decided to mess with him and make fun of his 'antique.' He decided to demonstrate that his antique could out-pulp any of their new models any day of the week. Needless to say, Mustang was not happy that Ed beat up a couple of science geeks. His answer?
"Well, they were asking for it."
Kojak lifted Nirvana up, but the girl shoved him away from her defiantly, attempting to stand on her own. She managed, but just barely. The thickheaded alphysicist wanted nothing to do with either the large black man or Edward. Alice, once she'd seen that Nirvana was back up on her feet in a very literal sense, ran over with a smile on her face, but it was quickly demolished when Nirvana shoved her aside as she walked out the door. Alice watched Nirvana leave with a slightly heartbroken expression when the door slammed shut and banged back open from the force applied to it. No doubt, Nirvana had felt the reverberations in her wrist tenfold from that little stunt, but she probably didn't care all that much. Ed scoffed as he muttered, "Asshole." Kojak shook his head and walked towards the door while Alice continued to look towards the exit that the legendary figure had exited from.
"Jerk," Alice muttered, her eyes suddenly taking a steely, hardened cast. She scuffed at the floor with her foot and followed behind Kojak, reminiscent of a puppy following its mother. Ed stayed inside of the room a while longer, looking at the fallen restraints and breathing the dank, thick air of the chamber. He sighed, knowing that there was a reason for everything a person did. Nirvana had a right to be angry, but she was lashing out on everybody and anybody that happened to be in reach. Ed winced. Did he do that, too? On occasion, yes. He'd gotten better about it, considering the people he could hurt now were people who didn't know him at all and wouldn't understand. Was it even okay to take it out on people that did? Ed shook his head, wondering where this was all going. Really, it was like she was some sort of copy. She was different from Ed in so many ways, but they shared so many similarities that sometimes Ed thought it was just a little bit frightening.
Suddenly, that sense of claustrophobia hit him in a tidal wave, and he hurried out of the room. He had to get to a debriefing, after all.
"So glad you could join us." Mustang's tone was dry and brittle as she stared at both Alice and Edward. Everyone else who'd been assigned to the trip was there, too. The Xingese emissaries didn't seem too miffed that this meeting was being started so late (possibly because Zhang had been two hours late himself). However, the Rockbell twins, Georgia, and Imal weren't quite so easy-going. They shot glares at Ed and Alice, and Alice, in classic fashion, gave them the finger. Imal glared for quite a while at her rude gesture, but all she did was hold out her arms in a "Whatcha gonna do?" pose. Even Ed, who had no idea of social norms around this century, figured that it was an offensive gesticulation.
"Settle down, children. This isn't a prep versus goth team here," Mustang said wearily as she rubbed her forehead. Ed could see her make-up come off on her fingers, and he took a little satisfaction from knowing that he was causing her some grief in more than one department. She must've seemed to sense that smugness, because she immediately looked up and glared at him. The blonde alchemist quickly looked off, innocently whistling. The room was probably more distracted and vague than a preschooler's playhouse.
"Now that all of you are-" The door was kicked open, as always. No, the door could not be opened via turning the handle and slowly pushing on the metal. By some unspoken rule, it was taboo to enter Mustang's office through ordinary means. The door had to be kicked open. The vein in Mustang's head was getting dangerously proportional to a balloon animal.
Grayson strolled in like a summer breeze, his hair seemingly windblown and his clothes rumpled and disorganized. He was the picture of the reckless academic coming in from the field (of which happens to be the library). He sat down in a chair, giving the impression of folding his long limbs into it as he almost literally bounced up and down. He smiled at everybody, oblivious to Mustang's growing ire. He blinked as he realized that it was almost cricket-chirping quiet, and he asked, "What? Did I interrupt something?"
He was nailed in the middle of the head with a paperweight. Knocked out cold, he slumped in the chair with his mouth hanging slack and his limbs sprawled. Ed stared in horror as Mustang sat back down in her chair, dusted off her hands, picked up a piece of digi-paper and said, "Now, as you all know, this is going by live feed to Nirvana, who's in a womb tank right now to heal up from her... ordeal. She's also being given supplements to augment strength and speed-"
"Like she needs any more of that," Zhang muttered under his breath. He, too, ended up a victim of the vicious paperweight. His response was less lax, however, as he muttered several Xingese curses under his breath pertaining to Mustang and her mother's heredity concerning bovines.
"-and she can hear every word we say," Mustang continued without a hitch. She stared at everyone in the room, conscious or not. She turned back to her paper and said, "Now, all of the supplies for the trip have been purchased by Georgia, and we're ready to leave in twenty-four hours. You will not be arriving on camelback to Patron City." Inwardly, Edward pumped his fist and let out a loud yell of triumph. Well... at least what he thought was inwardly. He realized too late that this was not so as everybody stared at him. He shrugged and explained, "I hate camels." Mustang smirked as she leaned forwards and said mischeiviously, "Instead, you will be airdropping from twenty thousand feet to the desert surface right in the path of a refugee caravan that runs every two and a half weeks to Patron City from Drachma." Ed stared at her with a smile plastered to his face before the words were actually processed.
"...What?"