Ed looked down the hill at the destroyed lab and sighed. Another person who screwed up using alchemy he thought. He glanced at his brother. "Well, we better go take a look. Then we can ask the locals what happened." Al nodded and followed his brother down the hill. Ed was on another mission, and this time Colonel Mustang hadn't had a lot of information. He had said that a group of alchemists were all suddenly killed in an explosion, and it was up to Ed to figure out if that was true, and also to find any remains of their research. So far the locals hadn't been that unwilling to talk, which was a good sign.

They reached the lab and started searching the debris. "Wow, it looks like they did a number on this place. Wonder what happened," Al said. Ed replied, "It looks like they didn't want anything left to tell us what happened here." Ed tossed aside a couple of heavily charred wooden beams, looking for anything useful, and found some differently colored ash. He dug around a little more and found part of a melted metal object over an almost untouched piece of earth. Ed blew away the ash and saw a miniature transmutation circle inscribed in the ground. "Hey, come here Al, check this out!" Al came clanking over. "Whoa, what is it?" Ed shook his head. "Dunno. It looks like someone was here during the explosion and tried to save themselves by using alchemy." "But brother, the circle's so small," said Al. Ed squinted down and replied, "Yeah, maybe a child did it." "Or someone really short," Al joked. Ed gave him a warning look before he went any farther. "Come on, let's see if anyone saw what happened."

They returned to the inn they were staying at to regroup much later that day. Al sat down at a table and looked out the window at the night sky. Ed sat across from him, leaned back and closed his eyes. "What a waste of time. We've been all over the city and we've learned a lot about what happened, but nothing about those alchemists' work." Al was more positive in his assessment. "Come on brother, at least now we know those alchemists didn't seem to hurt anyone in the town, so their work must not have been that bad. All the villagers here seem to like alchemy." Ed snorted. "Nah, maybe they were all gonna get paid off if those researchers did anything good." Al looked at his brother. "That man said all the workers were still inside when it happened, but there weren't any kids working there." He looked pensive. "So it was probably an accident…"

Ed looked up, obviously deep in thought. "I think it was an internal explosion, from the way the earth is scorched the most in the middle, so either they knew it was coming or they did it themselves. There were definitely bodies there, so whoever did it wanted everything destroyed, even the alchemists, so there wouldn't be anything left of their work. Makes my job easier, heh!" Ed laughed, then continued. "Still, I wish I knew what they were working on that was so important. No one knew, it was some big top secret deal. Probably something illegal, like human transmutation, or philosopher's stone stuff." There was a silence, until Al voiced his brother's unspoken words. "And it's all gone now." They both sighed, and headed up to their room to get some sleep.