Since all three were already there, the boys decided to help her pack in her room. It's not like she needed it; all she really had was her journal, some clothes, and other miscellaneous, but needed items. She also found some of her old transmutation gloves. She had no use for them now but decided to take them just in case. The rest of her actual stuff was still at Roy's.
"All of that looks like light clothes," Al comments as she packs.
"Here." Ed disassembles her suitcase and grabs her green jacket and the pillow she had been provided by the Bradleys. With a quick clap of the hands, there's suddenly soft, warm feathers adorning the inside of the hood. He presents it to Iris and she smiles gratefully.
"Thank you, Ed," she says sincerely, and the way her lips curl up so genuinely makes the boy look away, hoping his face doesn't look as red as it feels.
"One more thing," she mutters to herself, taking out an extra pair of pants she had stored away. She transmutes the plaid fabric into a scarf with little tassels. "Perfect."
With all her things are packed they say goodbye to Mrs. Bradley and Selim with the promise to come back safe and sound. Iris had a feeling that the promise would be difficult to keep.
•••
Iris was wide awake for the entire trip. She was fascinated by the snow and how quickly it fell once they were deep into the North. She sat alone in the train seat while the brothers were on the other side of the aisle. Usually, she would have squeezed in next to the older brother, but Iris wanted the window seat to see the snow and Ed wouldn't budge, probably wanting the same view. She quickly became irritated when he dozed off to sleep immediately after the train departed.
Once the train stopped, Al woke up his brother and they left the train. Ed, being reckless and eager to stir up more trouble, got off quickly and ran down a flight of stairs only to fall on his butt by the slippery ice. Not only that, while he was trying to get a grip, he latched onto Iris's coat and pulled her down with him. The ice to her body was a shocker and hurt quite a lot.
"Ed, you dumbass!" she yells at him, grabbing onto the beam for the stairs and pulling herself up carefully. Ed gets up as well, rubbing his now-sore rear end.
"Are you two okay?" Al asks, earnest.
They both just grumble and glare at each other. The armor giggles.
"Let's just head towards the fort, okay boys?" She takes the lead, walking to where she thinks is north.
"The fort is this way, genius," Ed calls to her, pointing in the opposite direction.
"I knew that," she scoffs, her face turning redder than it already was from the cold. "It was a test for you two."
"Uh-huh," he says flatly, unbelieving. "Let's go."
They headed in the same direction for quite some time, not seeing many people. Eventually though, they caught a man with a horse carrying items who said he could take the three to just about they were headed. They took the invite without question, and soon enough they were in front of a wooden fence. Iris was fiddling with the horse and scratching its head as the boys looked ahead to the rest of their journey. Up ahead was a barely noticeable trail. It was a little hard to tell; there was just so much snow!
The brothers said their farewells and thank yous to the kind man and they had a small conversation that Iris didn't pay attention to while she put on her scarf she had made in Central.
"We'll be there soon, right? I can't stand the damn cold." Ed griped as they followed the trail. The scenery was mostly white, the only pops of color being the pine trees spread about. But they, too, seemed like they were about to be swallowed by all the snow coming down on them.
"Shit," Iris cursed. "It's coming down a lot, and in chunks!" She quite liked the cold but in moderation. This was just too much. She could barely put one foot in front of the other.
Suddenly, Iris felt herself being lifted up off the snowy trail by the forearm. She screamed in surprise, then immediately started to feel lightheaded as she dangled in the biting cold air by a thick automail piece.
"Who are you punk-asses?" a rough voice yells. This is when Iris has her first chance to see the opponent. With no exaggeration, she thinks this guy is equivalent to a bear. He is tall and foreboding, has a killer mohawk-braid type of thing, and was currently about to get her into some trouble. The thing that was most apparent to her, though, was the familiar blue military garb, just slightly modified for the snow.
"Iris!" both Ed and Al shout, getting ready to attack.
"Wait! Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!" she wailed, clawing at the automail that had her in its clutches.
But alas, her pleas were to no avail, and the man flung her far before the boys could reach her. She landed in a somewhat cushiony patch of snow, disoriented by being upside down and shortly airborne. If it weren't for the sounds of alchemy and her supernatural powers, (Was it really qi? She didn't know.) she wouldn't have figured out where they were. She'd been thrown so far, there was nothing to see but snow! She ran back to the fight fast, or as fast as she could through the awful conditions of the blizzard.
When Iris finally arrived back, though, the fight seemed more catty than anything. Ed was now the one suspended in mid-air, his own metal arm trapped between the jaws of the man's fancy automail. The boy was yelling obscenities, then called to Al for assistance. With no other option, he throws his helmet to his older brother, who lodges the hair on the top into the overcompensating prosthetic arm. It gets jammed and Edward escapes, his arm miraculously taking little damage.
The military captain is baffled by the move as he quickly struggles to remove the hair. By this time, Iris fishes out her state alchemist pocket watch and shoves it in his face.
"Here! Here, you bastard!"
The big man huffs then raises his flesh hand to his mouth. A whistle from his lips pierces the air and not two seconds later, men in white coats are surrounding them. They point their guns at the three intruders, and their captain barks, "Walk! To Fort Briggs!"
They all hiked farther up the trail as the blizzard dissipated the farther they trekked. When the group reached what they supposed was the fort, they were stupefied, to say the least. Iris couldn't even try to guess how tall it was. It was the epitome of the word fortress, that was for sure.
There was no doubt that the woman standing at the very top was the protector of these lands. Her long and wavy blonde hair gave her away as an Armstrong, but everything else physically seemed almost nothing like the rest of her family's genes. Her voice boomed at the children.
"General Armstrong," Iris whispered to the two boys. Ed nodded, keeping his eyes on the intimidating woman.
"Just who might you runts be?!"
"Iris King, See-All Alchemist!" The girl introduced herself first, pulling her hood down so that the woman could see her entire face with no question. Edward stepped forward next.
"I'm Edward Elric. This is my brother Alphonse. We're with the military. But if you really want proof, you can have this letter from your brother." He goes to fish it out of his pocket, but then gets pinned down by one of the officers immediately. Iris face-palms. He shouldn't have done that; obviously, they would think he was going to pull out a weapon.
'So much for earning their trust,' she thought.
"Search them!"
A proper pat down was ordered, so that's what came. Officers swarmed them, and Iris felt violated. She had her watch in her pocket and push knives strapped to each of her thighs, which they found and confiscated. This upset her, not because of the placement, but because they were Maes'. When she was younger and had first become a part of Roy's life, she had a bit of a rebellious streak. She was about to be a teen after all! She had a tendency to steal his team's possessions, or 'make them go missing,' as she would call it. She once took the daggers from Roy's best friend Maes. They were at his house for a visit, and she swiped them from right under his nose. Hughes, being so impressed by her ability to steal them without his knowledge, let her keep them. She always cherished them - they were a cool weapon after all - but they were now even more important after his passing. She watched hopelessly as they were confiscated and went out of her sight.
The soldiers were finished with their search, only to find Ed had metal limbs and Al was empty. No big deal for them, but for these strangers, it was too suspicious. They took the letter Ed had mentioned up to the Armstrong, but she disregarded it by tearing it up and letting the icy air take it away.
"Let them in! Do not lose sight of any of them!"
They were escorted not-too-nicely into the fort, then shoved into the medical center to check for anything else. It was good to know they weren't all bad, but Iris was still heartbroken over those knives. She hoped she would get them back soon.
Still sulking, she gave herself a seat on an empty couch and watched Ed prosthetics be examined.
"Yeah," the automail surgeon said bleakly, "all that iron in your arm is gonna give you frostbite where your arm and the automail connects. Didn't you bother to look into any of this before coming up here?"
"It was kind of a hasty decision," Iris butted in, giving Ed a glare.
"Hey-!" Ed goes to fire back but stops when the same man from earlier busts through the door. Iris now knew him as Captain Buccaneer; the soldiers talked very highly of him and seemed to be loyal to the death.
He pushes the small alchemist out of the way, his entire flesh hand covering his face.
"Can't believe those two are actually equivalent to majors," the man mutters in a type of disgust, then starts a conversation with the automail specialist, pointing out the obvious trouble he's having.
"Hey!" Al suddenly perks up. "That's my head!"
Sure enough, there it was, hair still jammed in all the gears. Iris sighed, and gently pulled down Buccaneer's prosthetic and started undoing the tangled mess. They all stayed quiet as she quickly undid it, somewhat impressed.
"Don't ask me how, but when I had my long hair my state alchemist watch got entangled in it. This is nothing."
Al's head was removed in no time, the only problem being the hair was a frizzy, irreversible mess. With some scissors, the girl tried to cut it off as stylishly as she could, trying to leave as much hair as possible.
"There's not much left, but you can pull any hairdo off, Alphonse!" She smiled hopefully as the armor looked in a mirror and placed the helmet on his armor. He sounded deflated as he said, "Thanks, Iris." She rubbed his shoulder plate in sympathy.
"You should have seen all my hair botched by Bradley!" Then she turned to Ed seriously. "You need to call Winry." She gestured to his right arm. "This needs to be fixed before you get seriously injured."
"If I call Winry, I will get seriously injured!"
The girl glares at him.
"Call her, or I will."
•••
The general wanted answers. She wanted to know everything. Why they were really here, why the younger brother possessed no body, but armor instead, why, why, why. The three couldn't possibly tell her the truth, not all of it. So the boys simply tell her that they want their bodies back and that Iris was looking into Xingese culture. None of it was a lie, really. It just wasn't the whole story. They do, however, tell her of Mei and her little panda creature, which interests her enough to allow them to stay in the fort while she searches for the little girl.
Iris couldn't meet Mrs. Armstrong's eyes, though, for she knew that the older woman was aware that the truth of their plan wasn't fully exposed. They were hiding the important parts, and she knew it.
Once she was finished with the little interrogation, a major by the name Miles came to escort them out to do their grunt work. He was a dark-skinned man with snow-blinding goggles and a proud stature. Ed convinces the major to reveal his own secret, only to find that he had Ishvalan blood running through his veins. He talks of his superior, Olivier, in high regard, and that they trusted each other, despite the traumatic history between those who came before them both.
"'There is no place for discrimination in the north,' she had said to me when I mustered up the courage to ask her one day." He smiles fondly and far away. This makes Iris's spirits raise, along with what the General had said to him.
They used an elevator to reach one of the higher levels outside the fort, then the trio was given their job: knock down all the icicles off the ceiling. Miles left them to do it, and Ed soon found out - much to Iris's amusement - that he was too damn short! The girl was only a few inches taller, but with her oversized ice pick she could take them down with no trouble.
"Need a step stool?" she teased, smirking. Edward found it extremely irritating that even though Iris was adopted, she had a signature Mustang smirk. "Or do you want to ride on my shoulders?" she continued.
"Who are you calling so short he'd need a fort taller than this to be noticed?!" He burst, waving around his own device for scraping off the sharp and frozen snow.
"Just get some stilts and you'll fit right in with the circus!" She laughed at her own jokes now, stopping her work to bend over and laugh. Al looks at both of them wearily, but deep down, laughs along.
There's a faint voice yelling something in the distance, and none of them hear it until they see a man running towards them.
"Is that...?"
"Warrant Officer Falman?"
Iris runs up to him and gives him a hug. A familiar face from team Mustang was always welcome, even though it made her feelings turn bittersweet. He hugs back, patting her on the shoulder.
"What are you doing in the north? You got sent all the way up here, huh?" she starts, crossing her arms. She forgot she was not the only one affected by all this.
"Yeah." He seems deflated. "I hate the cold, and I always get the worst posts...
"That's beside the point, though. The real question is what are you three doing up here? Stirring the pot?"
Ed grinned. "Yep."
"We thought this would be the best place to start looking for some answers to our questions," Al explains vaguely. Falman doesn't pry and just nods.
"Well, how's about we get warm and catch up a bit?"
The older brother lights up at the prospect of going inside, so Vato lets them into the development sector. He explained how the engineers were developing new weapons with foreign technology. This interested both the boys, but Iris was too busy with the chills going down her spine. Her first thought was that it was just the sudden change of temperature, but as she carefully watched the Briggs soldiers examining giant pipes for the origin of rocks shifting. As more and more sounds rang in the air, the girl felt more and more uneasy. It would be simple to assume she would get used to it, but really she was glad she was scared; she didn't want to let her guard down for any homunculus.
That's what this was, of course. But she had no time to warn anyone as the big meaty creature emerged from the rock and rubble from underground. Its tattoo was apparent on the back of its shoulder.
"It's another homunculus!" Alphonse shouted, the three of them running down the stairs to face it.
All it did was stand there, groaning and mumbling. "Go dig a hole, how bothersome... annoying... frustrating..."
The soldiers follow protocol and sound alarms, get their weapons, and prepare anyone who has not yet heard of the intruder. It's constructed chaos, and Iris felt out of place and in the way if she were being honest.
When Olivier got down there with her very own tank, she fired a military grade missile at the threat after it would not answer her questions, much less pay any real attention to her. The attack obviously does nothing to it but stagger a bit, and they watch in a mix of horror, confusion, and astoundment as its skin regenerates in seconds.
Iris pounds at the tank for the general's attention. "Don't waste your time! It won't work! You can't kill it!" The girl could tell by the look in her eyes that she didn't think her statement was far off. She had already seen it take a missile like it was just an inconvenience.
"She's right, General," the other alchemist backed her up. "Try as you might, but it won't go down."
The woman pointed her sword at the two of them in accusation. "How could you possibly know that?! Unless you have affiliations with this creature?!"
"We don't!" he growled back.
"What is this thing in the first place?"
She demanded answers that the group couldn't give her. Not here. Not now.
Iris grit her teeth. "We can't say."
"Why do you seem to know so much about this?"
"We can't say," Ed and Iris repeated together.
"I'm tired of this nonsense! Tell me, or the consequences will be severe! Are you with us?!"
"We aren't against you!" Al tried to convince.
"Look, its anatomy is probably that of a human's, or very similar! It just so happens to be immortal!"
"And why is that?!"
"We can't tell you!" all three teenagers yelled.
Armstrong scoffs at their resolve and gives in, knowing their lips are sealed. She disregards them now and calls for Captain Buccaneer to retrieve tank fuel to try and damage its body.
The tank is used to drive the homunculus into the elevator. Once it reaches the top floor and stumbles out, the three pour fuel over the monster. It's exceptionally cold, and it thrashes in surprise. With the combined strength of the team, they shove it over the railing and tumbled down the many flights of the fort. They all watch as its thick body starts freezing instantly, right down to his core.
"That should freeze him to the bone," Buccaneer declared, calling it a victory. Iris had her doubts but didn't voice them. Ed and Al gave each other high fives and compliments, but it didn't last too long as the captain put both giant hands on either shoulder of Ed and Iris. They were quickly handcuffed and sent off into their cell, soldiers also taking Alphonse with them.
"Why are we being incarcerated, if I may ask?" Iris said, just dead tired from an exhausting day.
"Your refusal to answer to a superior is enough to get you sent off, but she said she needed you three. Begrudgingly, I might add. So you'll be staying here for now."
They reached their shared cell, which composed of the bare minimum. Two mattresses with proper bedding, one drinking fountain, and one toilet that they were sure they were never going to use.
"Good night, jailbirds!" he practically sang, then laughed gruffly on his way out.
"Well, this was a bust. You drag us out here just to get put in jail."
"Oh shut up," Ed bites taking off his shoes and retreating into the covers of the uncomfortable bed. "Just get some rest. I'm sure we'll need it."
Al just sighed at their squabbling and plopped himself down on the hard floor. Iris felt bad for him, even though she knew he couldn't feel the cold of the cement.
Iris follows in his lead and does the same, curling up into a ball on her own mattress. She pulled up the blanket to her chin, even though it was pilly and scratchy. She turned to face Ed and caught him staring at her. Their beds were only about two feet apart, determined by the size of the cell itself. She wanted to say something about it to him teasingly, but noticed his facial expression - something Iris couldn't quite place on him, she'd never seen him look like that - and decided against it.
Instead, she smiled and whispered, "Good night." She closed her eyes as she heard Ed say the same.
•••
Iris woke up cold but sweating. She looked around to find she was still in the cell, still had handcuffs, and that the boys were still with her. Al's head down was in the corner, and his red eyes were nowhere to be seen under his helmet. Ed was actually asleep but was a shivering mess. Some of his bangs fell over his face, but even then she still saw small puffs of air coming from his slightly open mouth. She sighed and got up, wrapping her coat around her tighter. She took her own blanket and dumped it over her freezing friend, hoping it would help him for the rest of the night. She would make do with her coat and another pair of socks on her feet.
Instinctively she brushed the hair out of his face with care, then covered him with the blanket completely. She felt weird doing this, but also natural. When she was about to get back into her bed, she felt eyes on her. Al was watching her. She walked over to him and crouched.
"Sorry I 'woke' you."
"Why'd you do that?" He gestured to his brother. "You'll get cold without your own blanket."
Iris shrugged, hoping the dark would keep her blushing face a secret. "He needs it more," she came up with quickly. "His automail, and stuff, y'know. It must be hurting him. Making him colder, too. So, uh, yeah. He needs it more."
Alphonse couldn't really argue with that, and just chuckled.
"Why's that funny, huh?" she asked defensively.
"It's nothing. Nothing at all. Good night, Iris."
"Night Alphonse."
She mounted back on her bed and the girl decided she should retreat and get some more sleep before the sun came up on yet another day in such a corrupt country that she and her friends were determined to fix.
