The wind was howling. It was dark and cold on the Amestrian border, and the air was heavy with fog and anticipation. The moon rose high in its fullest stage, but only brief glimpses of it could be caught through the dense layer of low-hanging clouds. The troops sat in wait, huddled into the ground with arms at the ready. Soon, many of them would be falling into the same ground, burying their broken necks and bleeding hearts into its unforgiving solidity. Everyone knew that they could, and probably would, find themselves in graphic scenes of carnage sooner or later. And still, they were ready for the fight.

Edward crouched low, grouped with three other soldiers, halfway hidden behind a scraggly bush. The frigid weather had not been kind to the flora and fauna up here, and their bush like many others was missing the majority of its leaves. They were scattered onto the hard dirt around them, rotting into the frost.

Ed grit his teeth, resisting the incredible urge to shiver. It was so damned cold and he had nothing but his black undershirt on, leaving one bare arm exposed and on the other his metal port was siphoning freezing cold directly into his shoulder. He thought he saw traces of frost on the automail. He hadn't really considered his arm when he'd decided to keep only the undershirt, but it was obvious now, in the flashes of moonlight, that his arm reflected light in a nearly proportional manner to the behavior of a mirror. When the light hit it in the right way, it glinted like a second sun through the scarce branches of the bush. Damn, if it hadn't been so new it wouldn't be this polished. Winry must've really honed her skills over the years and figured out a trick or two, because the metal just wouldn't lose its initial gloss.

He felt the tension coming in waves from the group around him. They were probably not so glad to be stuck with him in their group. Going solely on appearances, he was a runty teenager with injures indicative of someone entirely accident-prone (which was only half true) and a metal arm that would give away their position no matter where they hid amongst the wasteland. He maybe hadn't exactly told them about the whole 'alchemist' thing, but he figured it was a better surprise that way. And he really didn't know who he could trust not to go to the Drachmans with that information.

He could at least take out a couple of them before that little factoid got out, right?

The wait was maybe the worst part of this operation. Ed had been fine with the bustle of getting into squads and doling out supplies and arms, but ever since they finally got into position, which felt like it had been hours ago, the restlessness had slowly been building. He was not good with not moving. It wasn't in his nature to no move. The fact that he had gotten by with just rubbing his hands, shuffling his feet and shivering for this long was deserving of a medal, truly.

Just as Edward thought he might explode from this tension, a commotion broke out just on the periphery of his night vision. The enemy had come at last. It was time to deliver a walloping.

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Roy Mustang was not having a good day. The next encounter with the Drachmans was going to happen in less than an hour, maybe less than a few minutes, and that circumstance was really only putting a strain on everything else that was currently going entirely wrong. Edward was still nowhere to be found, despite him having searched through seven of the closest bases. How anyone could miss a flaxen midget with a metal arm and extreme, chaotic alchemic prowess; he had no idea.

With the battle looming so closely, he was stuck at a post between two major fronts of attack. The higher ups had given him a team of six top tier soldiers for this one; by the look of them, it seemed like the caliber of the top soldiers was dwindling as more and more of them were eliminated. He recognized none of their faces but one shared a last name with a woman with whom he'd shared a previous assignment. She'd been the one who he had seen sliced cleanly down the middle by a ruthless soldier. Roy wasn't able to kill him after, and it was one of his biggest regrets on the battlefield.

The cold of winter was blowing in with full force, and the heavy clouds threatened freezing rain. If that were to happen, the Amestrians would be one alchemist short on their side and he would likely be killed. Not that he didn't face that possibility every time he went out into the field, but he really wished it wasn't such a prominent threat tonight, of all nights.

He needed to find Riza again, as they had planned to meet before every battle in case it was the last for one or both of them. She most likely could not find him, and he really couldn't leave his post as leader of the squad. If he died here, she'd probably kill him.

Roy knew Riza wouldn't die this battle, and even below any optimism, his realist self was still doubtful that Riza was actually capable of dying. It just wasn't a practical possibility or a feasible situation. A voice in the very back of his mind said, You thought the same of Maes, but he ignored it. Riza was in her element. She was probably safer in battle than on the street.

Edward, on the other hand, was a wild card (in the sense that he wasn't safe in battle or on the street or in his own fucking bed) and Roy was certain that somehow, somewhere, the idiot had found his way into danger. And as soon as the Drachmans appeared, everything would be set in place. Then there would be nothing he could do.

In that moment, a commotion broke out somewhere in the distance. Lights blazed into the dense cloud covering, and the sound of gunfire and screams of death exploded from faraway trees.

Based on the general luck that boy had, he had a feeling he knew where Edward was.

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As soon as the first gun fired, Ed was running. It didn't even register immediately that he was running. But there he was, legs pumping and breath heaving more with anticipation than enervation. When that had processed, he began to chastise himself for being a huge wimp and running away from the first sound of battle.

That was when the second realization came. He wasn't running away; he was running toward the fight. Maybe all that sitting still had finally driven him completely insane.

He looked back to see what was happening at his original post. The squad he'd been put with were standing at a distance from their hiding place, shuffling toward the mêlée like they knew they were supposed to be there but really didn't want to die today. Smart soldiers.

He didn't slow as he made these observations, and when he looked forward again he noticed that he was more than halfway to the source of all the gunshots, screaming, and chaos. It sounded like an awful heck of a party, and he was already putting together seals in his mind that would activate through his palms. Each one that ran through his head became progressively more and more complex as he fell back into his old groove. He brainstormed subconsciously until he came up with the right arsenal for this fight.

In twelve more paces, he found himself on the edge of the battle. There weren't many surprises. The Drachmans not only outnumbered the Amestrians, but physically each one outmatched the average Amestrian soldier in height and width. The foreigners had different and more widely arrayed weapons as well, including at least a dozen different types of sword, double that variety in guns, and an open miscellaneous category that included everything from spears to chainsaws.

Edward remembered briefly that in all the time he'd had, he hadn't mentally prepared to kill anybody in the slightest. It was too late to care about that as he was already leaping to the middle of the fray.

After all of his plans for clever uses of alchemy, he was confronted too early to even clap. A man with paper white skin and greasy dark hair was face to face with him, toting a spiked club that swung around nearly into Ed's skull. As a result, he had to resort to punching the guy in the face with his automail fist. He felt the man's nose give way into a squishy pulp, and the force of it continued until the upper teeth and both cheekbones followed suit. He reached up desperately with a wavering hand, but Ed kicked it away and removed his hand only to punch the man again in the stomach. It was a little high; two ribs had to break before he reached any organs. The club fell to the ground, and soon after its owner did the same.

Edward moved his hands to clap, but was rudely interrupted by a bullet whizzing past his ear in conjunction with a spear diving for his shoulder. He spun around to kick the spear owner in the crotch, which was foolishly unprotected, and landed a punch on the stunned man's jaw. It cracked and half of the bone was displaced beneath his fist.

He looked up from the defeated man to a dismaying ratio of blue to black. The Drachmans were doing about as well as the Amestrians in battle, but more crept in from the shadows to replace the fallen. Edward clapped his hands, ready to even out this fight.

-philos