Several days after the blond alchemist's unexpected return the castle was once again thrown into chaos. A proclamation was found in the Daily Prophet and fliers were sent to every person even remotely related to Amestris or magic.
Attention!
All people of Amestris are to return home immediately. Orders have been issued to all state alchemists and military personnel in the area. If issues arise report to the nearest military person for assistance. Effective immediately.
The five foreigners endured questions for several days after the arrival of the notice. As was usual for the foreigners, just as things started to calm a brown owl arrived carrying official military letters for each of them. The blond alchemist received his orders at breakfast, which caused quite the uproar. The students around him all wished to know what was in the letter and why he was receiving one.
A small voice piped up next to the blond boy and asked the hardest question of all, "I thought that you would have to leave Ed." Neville paused before continuing, "I definitely didn't think that Al was in the military."
A frown stretched across the alchemist's brow before he answered with a small grin, "I'm part of the military, so I definitely get to stay. And Al gets to stay because King Bradley took a liking to us. He pretty much lets us do what we wish." What he said was partly true and he allowed a smug smirk to fall across his face, while forcing the worry and annoyance that someone had caught him before he stuffed Al's letter into his pocket for later.
"Fullmetal," the foreign words interrupted behind the blond.
The boy didn't move, he just picked up a piece of sausage with his chop sticks and asked, "What do you want Colonel Bastard?"
A crisp white sheet of paper dropped in front of the boy's eyes. Intelligent golden eyes quickly scanned the paper, reading it. "You got the Furher to sign this?" the boy asked turning to look at the Colonel with wide eyes.
"Everyone deserves a rest now and then, even if they are a shrimp," the man said patiently as he refolded the paper. Before the teen could even open his mouth to retort the Colonel continued, "Actually, I think the only reason this was signed was because the Furher heard about this thing called Christmas and he's expecting Christmas presents from us now."
Both foreigners rolled their eyes as Ed turned back to his breakfast muttering to himself, "Figures! Every single person in the military is a cheap skate!" Taking a bite of his sausage, Ed heard the Colonel's chuckle as he walked back to the teacher's table.
It was only a few seconds before he was bombarded with questions, "What was on the paper, Ed?"
Wincing slightly at the pounding headache the questions were giving him, Ed answered, "The Colonel managed to get the Furher to sign my Hogsmeade permission slip."
There were a few cheers and a few looks of confusion before the bushy haired Hermione spoke up from the edge of the group, "But I thought you didn't have a guardian, Ed." It looked as if the infamous golden trio had been listening.
A frown formed on Edward's face as he attacked his sausage aggressively, "I don't."
A small flash of pain moved across green eyes as Harry spoke up, "Dumbledore won't accept a permission slip unless it's from your guardian."
The alchemist poked his food with his chopsticks for a moment before answering, "I think the King of Amestris has more say on what I can and can not do than anyone else ever will." The teen ignored the stunned and doubtful looks that people sent him as he stood up, "Time to find Al and get some sparring in."
Without a blink, Ed turned and moved away from the table, the tails of his uniform flapping behind him as he walked. "Can we watch?" stopped the boy for a moment before he nodded and continued on his way, Harry, Hermione, and Ron following him as he moved.
The blond needed to clear his head and sparring was the only way he could think of accomplishing the task at the moment. It might have been chilly outside, colder than the boy was used to, but it wouldn't matter once their blood started to boil. Besides it wasn't as if Al could feel the cold, and the fields were still clear, perfect for practice.
The journey was short, before the alchemist found what he was looking for. A group of students had gathered around a familiar blond boy. Jeers and taunts were being shouted at the boy, while a few threats were dangled in the crisp cool air.
Edward went rigid, recognizing the ever present threat to his brother. Voice deadly quiet, he called, "Al! Let's go." The group surrounding the younger boy froze, not expecting the older brother to arrive. Taking the pause to his advantage, Alphonse navigated his way out of the circle to his brother's side. Just once glance showed that his brother was fighting with all of his might to keep the anger in check.
The boys started to walk away, but paused when a cool voice spoke up behind them, "Afraid of a fight, shrimp?"
Much to the surprise of the witches and wizards watching, Edward continued to walk without a pause. Snickering broke out behind the two foreigners as Malfoy commented, "He's just scared of me."
All anyone saw was a blur as Ed turned and launched himself at the boy. His metal fist slammed into the boy's cheek. The Slytherin stumbled and was flug backwards by the force of the punch as Ed rose from a crouch. "You're just a skinny daddy's boy with a toy stick," Ed told him, voice dripping with ice as he gave the boy a small piece of advice, "Don't pick fights with a dog of the military. We're trained to kill."
"Brother!" came a sharp reprimand in the teen's native language.
"No!" Ed yelled back, his voice emotionless to all but his brother's ears, "He relies on his Daddy to survive. He needs to learn to walk on his own. He has two legs." Golden eyes were narrowed into slits as he glared at the cowering blond. Without a sound Ed spun and started to stalk towards the lake. The boy only paused momentarily to call back to Harry, "If you want those lessons. Then, tonight."
Black hair as messy as always, Harry led the two brother's into the room quietly. Nearly twenty students stood casually inside the well padded practice room. It looked like the stereotypical dojo, or at least what the students thought was a dojo. Golden eyes surveyed the room suspiciously. "And we just happened to find a practice room in the middle of the school that no one knows about?" Ed asked sarcastically.
"It's the Room of Requirement, it changes with the users needs. It is also well hidden and not well known," Harry explained cautiously sensing the mood the other teen was in. Everyone had heard of Ed's bad mood, but no one seemed to understand why he was like that.
Ed snapped back a reply that made some of the younger students back away from him, "Fine! We're changing it!" Stubbornly the boy willed for the room to change and to his surprise it did. The padded room slowly morphed into a bare wooden room with nothing but dust and two barrels of water. The students looked around and at their make-shift teacher in confusion.
"Uh…. Mate…." Ron started, "I don't think it worked." The boy was expressing the confusion of the witches and wizards watching.
"Worked perfectly," was the short reply.
Unsure and on edge one of the Ravenclaw boys that the foreigners did not recognize called out, "Why is he here?" The question was meant for Harry but Ed cut the black haired teen off from answering.
A fist slammed into the wall beside the boy's head. The Ravenclaw hadn't even seen the foreigner approach and he jumped at the sound of wood snapping. The hand was withdrawn from the wall quickly and a large hole was revealed. "I'm here to teach you how to survive when your wand snaps and you're living in the middle of a battle field," the blond snarled. He wasn't being nice, but their teacher hadn't been that nice to them either. At least he wasn't dumping them on an island for a month without any magic.
With an apologetic smile, Ed extended a hand. The Ravenclaw took it nervously. Instead of the warm smile and hello, the younger boy found himself flying through the air over the foreigner's shoulder. With a loud thud the boy landed on his back. Murmurs of concern and malcontent ran through the crowd as they watched. Amazingly even the Weasley twins had fallen into silent shock. If anyone had thought that being taught by Ed was going to be easy, they were slowly coming to realize the truth.
After several pregnant moment so stillness, Hermione ran to the boy's side and helped him to a sitting position. "Ed! Why did you do that?" she asked sharply. "You could have hurt him!" was the quick reprimand.
"The more you hurt, the more you learn," was the emotionless response.
There was an extremely long pause before someone gathered the courage to ask, "Why did you get rid of the padding?"
With a small sigh of irritation Ed answered, "Is there padding in a fight?"
The group was quickly divided into pairs and using Al, Ed demonstrated the proper way to fall and block a simple punch. Training passed by quickly, with many grunts and curses. By the end, however, Ed had worn everyone out, but they had all learned something new. The group was covered in sweat and smelly with bruises littering their skin, but Ed and Al hoped they would have at least a small chance of better surviving an attack.
It wasn't until Al peeled his shirt off and poured the remaining water over his head that anything unusual happened. As usual, the girls found themselves staring at the handsome foreign body. Several of them were even wondering why they couldn't find boys like that in England. Only when something caught Ginny's eye did any of the girls say something. "Hey Al," she called, "Ed let you get a tattoo?"
Those words placed an invisible strain in the room. Edward froze and slowly turned around to look at his brother at the words. "Tattoo?" he asked, an unreadable expression on his face. The boy's golden eyes landed on the ragged blood red symbol between his brother's shoulder blades. "Alphonse Elric!" he whispered harshly with a sharp intake of breath.
"Brother…" was the meek reply. The boy turned around slowly took look at his brother, as the students in the room fell still to watch the exchange in confusion. No one seemed to understand what was going on. There was nothing wrong with a tattoo, right?
"You could have died! You still could!" Ed shouted, all color fading from his face.
Al's golden eyes dropped to the floor before he answered, unwilling to look his brother in the eye, "They knew what they were doing… it's not as if I grabbed a random person off the street!"
Ed snapped, "Just like we were experienced? Sure we knew alchemy, we knew the components, but that didn't help us at all did it? We still failed! You risked your life!" Edward stared at his brother, golden eyes unreadable while his brother paled under his gaze. Neither brother realized that they were being watched.
After taking a deep breath and gathering his courage, Al answered, "But nothing went wrong."
The alchemist lost all control at those words and he punched his brother, sending the younger boy flying into the wall. "One scratch and you'll be dead!" the state alchemist shouted in his native tongue. Golden eyes widened and looked at the shorter brother unmoving. A gloved hand reached out and pulled the younger brother to his feet. "Come on, you're going home," Ed said softly.
The room was silent as the two moved towards the door. Letting the guilt get the better of her Ginny stepped forward, "It's only a tattoo, Ed! No need to send him home!"
With a dull, sad, and resigned voice Ed answered her, "You don't understand."
The two boys continued to moved to the exit. There was no sound, except as the door opened and Alphonse spoke quietly, "Sorry, brother."
"Just don't do it again," came the quiet response.
The watching wizards could almost see Alphonse's smile as he commented, "You know, usual it's me yelling at you for doing something stupid."
With a small uneasy laugh, Ed asked, "When do I ever do anything stupid?"
"Well.. there was that one time with Russel and Fletcher-" Alphonse's response was cut off by the slamming off the door.
A/N: Well, sorry that took a bit of time. I've had it written in my notebook for over a week, just it wasn't flowing right. I had Ed going from happy happy joy joy to 'I'll kill you if you blink!' with no explanation… Hopefully I've fixed that problem at least a tiny bit. And this time Al doesn't randomly disappear:P
Anyway, hope y'all enjoy! I may or may not have another chapter posted by the end of the week. If I don't have one up by Sunday night, don't expect one for over a week. I'm going to Costa Rica for ten days with my old biology teacher and other kids (though oddly enough not with our school). Review and let me know what you think! bounces I love my reviewers and hope to have a chapter up before I leave!