(Gotta love how randomly these chapters pop up. But I think we're reaching the end of this story. Like, we're going to hit canon soon, and there's not much to do then.)
Ed and Al were on a train, in the middle of nowhere, heading back to East City.
It was funny. There were always claims about immortality, ignoring the rules of alchemy, or other rumors about something that might help them get their bodies back. The brothers had known this, and expected lots of traveling when they left home. What they hadn't expected was a long periods of inactivity, but those happened. Right now, for instance, they were heading back to East City. They weren't going there following any leads, and no one had ordered them back. They simply had no where else to be.
It didn't help that they'd been in Central last night. Al had met up with Arthur and played cards with him in the middle of the night. So compared to that, tonight was almost doomed to be empty and long no matter what.
Most of the people in the train car were asleep. Ed had done his best to stay awake, but had dozed off not that long ago. Al had pointed out he could. He had a human body and needed to sleep after all. There was one other person in the train car who was still awake, but he was doing paper work, had a book out, and seemed to be trying his hardest to make sure no one would interact with him.
So that left Al on his own. He knew he would have to do something soon, to avoid going stir crazy. Luckily, he'd come prepared tonight. Al reached into his armor and pulled out a stack of newspapers tied together. He'd been collecting newspaper for about a year. He read most of the parts he wanted to read right away. News was most useful when it was current after all. But he kept some parts for later. He had at least a hundred crossword puzzles to go through in this stack.