Roy and Damia were startled awake by the sound of a loud, echoing blast. They jumped out of the truck, ready for orders and ready to attack to be greeted by a bright afternoon sky. To their great surprise, Miles Schroeder stood with a large gun in his hands in front of the truck. Apparently, he was the one who had been guarding the truck while Roy and Damia were sleeping.

"Miles?" Damia asked.

Miles turned to face them. "Oh, good, you've rested," he said. "Don't mind the blasting. It's not the enemy." He then spoke into his mouthpiece, "General, they're up." After a few moments, he nodded and said, "Yes, sir." He turned to Roy and Damia again, this time noticing the pink and red skin colorings on Damia's leg. "Are you injured, Colonel Elric?"

"I'm fine," Damia answered. "I have a spare pair of boots in the truck and it feels good to only have one pants leg in this heat."

Miles smiled and nodded. "I trust your judgment, sir." He paused for a second before adding, "You two should be receiving information on how to proceed soon. It seems the worst of it is over."

"Miles, I'm sorry," Roy said. After hearing "the worst of it is over", he felt bad for Miles. The war had caused so many Ishvalans to die and, in his mind, it must have been difficult for Miles to have to fight a group of people that were a part of his own ethnicity.

"Don't be," Miles responded quickly. "I'm not Ishvalan, I'm Amestrian. If the Ishvalans had it their way, I would have never been born. They decapitated all of my ancestors, all because my grandmother crossed over the Galiciyan border to get some of that mineral water. Her father got injured working with some machinery at one of the cucumber farms, so she went to get the water in order to cleanse his wound so he wouldn't get an infection. Once the village found out, they killed all of her family under the belief that their blood was tainted by the devil. Only evil would bring an Ishvalan to request help from Galiciya, especially if it was about the mineral water Ishval viewed as sacred. It's what they do there."

A beat of silence passed. Roy was disgusted, yet astonished at what he had just heard. His stomach twisted into a tight knot and for a moment he felt like vomiting. Damia, although not at all surprised to hear of the twisted and inhumane beliefs of the Ishvalans, was at a loss for words of how to respond.

"Did your grandmother get the water?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah, the Galiciyans were no problem," he replied. "They were kind to my grandmother. It was a Galicyan soldier who helped her get back over the border to Ishval by escorting her through the caves in that rock formation between the two countries. It was that same Galicyan soldier who saved her life when the village people were waiting for her return so they could kill her. It was a Galicyan who helped her immigrate to Amestris, where there were work opportunities at the Neu Landen mills." When Roy and Damia both looked at him with surprised expressions, he added, "My grandmother was thirteen at the time. Maybe the Galiciyan soldier had a kid her age. Or maybe she was just lucky … Anyway, I have go to."

Miles began to walk to his truck, which was parked right beside the one Roy and Damia had slept in. Before he got inside, Roy asked him one more question.

"Miles, what was Armstrong's troop doing over here?"

"That's not really your concern, Mustang, but – clean-up crew," he replied. "Bye. Oh. And, forget I said anything. Forget I said everything."

"Okay, Miles, no problem," Damia said with a nod.

He got inside his truck and drove off. Roy and Damia watched as the truck disappeared into the distance. They then noticed that Miles had joined a caravan of four other identical tan trucks. The "clean-up crew", as Miles had described it, were leaving. Damia and Roy were once again on their own.

"I have to change my boots," Damia said. She got inside the truck and began to do so.

Roy stood in front of the truck near the open door where Damia was sitting inside. "Damia, what's the big deal about the mineral water?" he asked.

"It's too much for me to tell you right now," she replied. "But the Ishvalans viewed it as sacred while the Galiciyans saw it as a medicinal tool and then started using it to make booze. Let's leave it at that." After she finished tying her spare pair of boots she leaned back into the truck and pulled out two bags of muesli. She tossed one to Roy. "Eat up."

Roy smiled and opened his bag. "How do you say that in Galiciyan?"

Damia got out of the truck and shut the door. She opened her bag of muesli and poured some in her mouth. "Smacznego," she answered through a mouth of chewed-up granola and raisins.

About twenty minutes passed before Alex's voice came on their earpieces. "Elric-Mustang, survey the area. You will be notified of any updates."

Damia and Roy did as they were told and surveyed the area for somewhere between ten to twelve hours. Although they were both still tired from the previous day and a half, the surveying felt like leisure time after what they had just experienced. The only times Damia and Roy received any updates through their earpieces were on a few instances where either Heather or Alex would tell them to keep away from a certain coordinate because of reported toxins in the sand. Once their time of surveying passed, they were told to retreat to the truck. When they reached the truck, they found that Havoc, Heather, and Alex were already inside waiting for their arrival.

Damia got in the truck, smiled at Havoc, and patted him on the shoulder. "Nice to see you, Jean."

"Yup, I'm here and I'm seeing you too, Damia," he said casually.

Once they were all inside, Alex began to drive the truck away from the site they were at. A few moments passed before Havoc looked over at Roy and spoke again, his tone now quite different than when he responded to Damia.

"Why'd you have to make me work so hard, eh?!" he asked, not in an angry tone, but in a tone which was trying to incite a response from Roy.

"Huh?" Roy asked.

"What do you mean?" Damia added, thinking that Havoc was asking her as well. "We've been working together for seven years, Havoc, you know what I can –"

"Not you – him!" Havoc interrupted and pointed a finger at a puzzled Roy. "I never thought so much fire could come from that guy! He's the quiet doodle-man in the office and then – BOOM! I had to do a lot of smog control, Roy Mustang, I can't tell you how hard –"

Heather, who was sitting beside Alex in the front passenger seat, turned around and said with a mild irritation in her voice, "Yeah, Mustang, you owe me two drinks when we get back to Amestris." She then looked at Damia and continued in the same tone, "And you owe me a drink, too, Elric. Just one. What the hell was in that water you used to put out Mustang's inferno? I bet General Grand's unit could smell it miles away!"

"Ugh!" Havoc exclaimed, twisting his face and turning his head toward the open window next to him. "God damn, what the hell was in that Damia? It was like a seaweed-drenched barbeque over a pit of coal and manure!"

"What was this, the suicide squad?" Heather added.

Damia, sick and tired of being hassled over what she and Roy had to do at the end of their non-stop on-and-off battle, glared toward Miloski and grumbled through gritted teeth, "Will you people leave me –"

"Enough," Alex said. He did not raise his voice but his speech as loud and held a sternness that one did not usually hear from him. The truck automatically became silent. No one uttered a word as the ride back to the hotel continued.

A corner of Damia's mouth curled up into a smile. Technically, she could pull rank on Alex and allow the bantering to go on until someone like Basque or Olivier told them to stop. However, Alex was designated as Mission Commander since he was the highest-ranking officer outside of Damia, who was needed in the midst of combat. Since they were not back at the hotel, they were legally still on a mission. It was a good reason not to pull rank, for the lack of voices was calming to Damia. All that she could hear was the rumbling of the truck as it travelled. It was relaxing and it calmed her nerves to ride in the vehicle. She sank down in her seat to a more comfortable position and closed her eyes, oddly with an old Romanese classical guitar song playing in her mind.