"Please, please forgive me,
But I won't be home again.
Maybe someday you'll look up,
And, barely conscious, you'll say to no one:
"Isn't something missing?". "

Evanescence (Missing)

Chapter Five:

The Missing Big Brother

"A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body."

"Humankind cannot gain without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange."

Alphonse Elric, that's his name... Alphonse was a short boy with golden hair that was tied into a ponytail and his bangs were parted to frame his face, like his brother he had a hair that stuck up between his bangs. He had gold eyes, and he was only fifteen years of age. He wore a black tee-shirt, brown pants, and a dusty brown hooded cloak with the emblem that his teacher, Izumi Curtis, had tattooed on her left collarbone. That emblem showed his relation to her. One other person had that emblem on their cloak... that was Alphonse's older brother... Who was now missing... MIA... No where to be found... his brother was Major Edward Elric the FullMetal Alchemist, the youngest State Alchemist in the Amestrian Military's history. He was also a hero of Amestris...but now he is MIA... How? No one knows...

All Alphonse remembered was-...

He didn't like to think about it... not at all... but he still had to tell Colonel Mustang over and over again incase he missed something or incase he remembered something... it was hard. But now he had to tell someone he feared more than anything...

his teacher...

Izumi was a built woman who had slightly dark skin, intimidating dark eyes, and black hair that were microscopically braided into box braids. She wore a long white collared-blouse with flowing backside, form fitting grey pants that reached her ankles and open-toed sandals with the letters "W.C" on them.

Alphonse and Izumi were in Edward's apartment. They were in the living room, drinking tea. Al didn't feel comfortable telling his teacher what happened to him and his brother, it was just... scary in every way imaginable to him...

"Alphonse, tell me what happened." Curtis pressed. Her dark eyes glaring into his gold ones.

He had been avoiding the question for an entire thirty minuets, now he cracked, "...O-okay...If you really want to hear what happened..." he took a deep breath... "From what Colonel Mustang told me, brother and I had been missing for two months, that is shorter that what it felt like... It felt like we had been stuck there for a whole year, but apparently I was wrong... all in all, it was unexpected... What happened was,... when Ed and I had left the train station after coming back to Central from a mission at South City, we were knocked out... then when we came too, we were then being tortured by a woman named "Dante". ...That wasn't really good for our mental health, you know,... because of the war with Father and everything..."

"Dante wanted us to help her make a Philosopher's Stone,... but we refused,...she said that our dad would've helped, but what she didn't know was that dad had sacrificed himself to get my body back after I "died" from being impaled at the blood seal by that support beam."

"Brother and I refused and were tortured for it...It felt like it would last forever,... after what felt like the millionth time, Dante was about to torture me next, to mentally torture Ed...but then he did something that scared me... he agreed... He said that we'd help her. When she smiled and left the room so we could catch our breath, I asked him why...why he would do such a thing."

"He said "Don't worry Al, I know what I'm doing... just...trust me, okay?". I agreed to it but I still had a bad feeling about it... When we were going to "help" Dante that is when brother attacked her, and that is when I realized what his plan was: an all out fight to the finish... I didn't last very long, since...well you know... I've only had my body for about six months. I was knocked out. The last thing I saw was Dante and Ed getting into a death lock...that's all I remember..."

Teacher stared at him for a good minuet, she was shocked. She sighed and put her teacup down, "Well from what I can estimate from that, one of two things probably happened..." Alphonse looked up at her, "one of them sacrificed Dante to do a transmutation on Ed... it's a small theory but probable..."

Al sighed, he knew that his big brother would do such a thing to save him if he had to.

"Its getting late, tomorrow, I'm going to have talk to that idiot Colonel of Ed's, and see if he agrees with my theory. If he does we'll begin doing Alchemy research..." she got up , "...Try to relax, we'll find him..."

She left the apartment, leaving Alphonse alone with his thoughts. After a good minuet, Al fell to the side and rolled over so he could stare at the ceiling. He stared and stared...then sighed. So many questions running around in his mind. Worry constantly eating at him. It was painful.

"Is this how you feel brother?..." he thought. "Do you feel like your world just came crashing down on your head?... Now I know how you felt when we first met Greed; when he kidnapped me..."

FullMetal fallowed Maka as she lead him to the dormitories. Class had just finished, so it was time to go home. He suddenly felt a ping in his heart, causing him to stop... he wondered why he felt as though he should read or go running around looking for someone... Where did this feeling come from?...

He looked up at the sun in the sky... it was a perfectly good day... nothing gloomy like this sudden mood he had stumbled into... so why did he stumble into this mood?

"FullMetal?" Maka asked, she was a bit ahead of him, she looked at him with curious eyes. "What's wrong?"

"N-...Nothing," he said, then ran up to her.

They both began heading to their destination... but the feeling didn't seize... After Maka had shown him to his dorm, she left him there since he now knew his way from the dorms to the school, not to mention for all new students of the DWMA there is food in the fridge, but once they'll get their first check, they're on their own. He hid his money and unpacked his things but when he was unpacking his last pare of pants, his old pocket-watch fell to the floor and popped open.

He picked up his watch and looked at it curiously, on the inside of the watch, etched in a strange language that he could understand somehow, was:

"Don't forget 3. Oct. 11"

He had a bad feeling about the date, but as he put the watch down and put away his clothes. The feeling that he had gotten when he was on his way to the dorm with Maka had gotten stronger. After he put the clothes away, he decided to go through his bag. He saw his old clothes, they were strange to him, the gloves, the cloak, the pants, boots, shirts, everything about the clothes became foreign to him. He put the clothes away, holding them felt stranger than looking at them for some reason. After that he looked into the bag again, he saw a small brown note book, he had the urge to read it but at the same time, he had a bad feeling in his gut about it. He put the book in a drawer, wanting to forget he ever saw it. Looking back at the bag he saw a blue Military waist coat with several badges in a pocket, that looked to be for the rank of a Major.

FullMetal couldn't help but let the idea run around in his head for a good minuet, "I'm in a Military?..." he strangely knew that the clothes would fit him perfectly...

Not wanting to think about the uniform or the badges any longer, he shoved the badges into the uniform's pocket and put the uniform away. He took one last look into the bag and to his relief, it was now empty. He closed the bag and saw the emblem on it.

A question immediately popped into his mind, "What does it even mean?"

He knew that he was never going to get an answer so he put his bag away and laid down on his bed. He had a weird urge to take off his gloves and stare at his hands... he always had that urge when he was alone and was laying on his back. He sighed, and slowly took off his gloves. He put the gloves to the side and held his hands up above him. His right hand was made of metal. It was a metal prosthetic that moved like if it was the real thing, but he can't feel anything, his left leg was also a metal prosthetic as well. He stared at his prosthetic arm for several minuets and suddenly...his mind flashed to something,...a word...

"Automail..."

Was that what the prosthetics were called?...