Chapter 3

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Edward stuck out his tongue when the nurse brought his meal tray. The woman, to her credit, barely flinched and set the food down on the bedside table and walked away. The young pilot's stomach rumbled and he grabbed at the wheeled table with his left hand.

"Fuck it." Having no luck at getting the whole tray with his non-dominant hand, Ed picked up a sandwich and started eating.

"Brother..." Al's voice chastised his sibling for cursing. "That's not necessary."

"...Doesn't hurt." He mumbled between munching. "Where's that Doctor Gearhead? She said she'd fix my arm."

"You really should be nicer to her. She's working really hard to help us." He added. "And I could tell she really didn't want to...we're lucky, you know."

"She knows that when Mustang gets off his ass and approves the funding, the military will dump a shitload of cenz in her lap...that's all the motivation she needed." The young man tried not to avert his eyes from his brother's half of a face, yet, he sorely wished for the new arm to fix the damage to Al's robotic body.

"I don't know...I think there's something more." Al noticed Ed's eyes just wouldn't meet his sole remaining one. He didn't need to expel air or sigh, yet he did just that.

"We are so close now, I just know it! What we've been searching for...it's down there." Ed motioned toward the window and the barren planet spinning below the station. He reached for the metal cup on the tray and took a swig. "Ack!" White liquid spewed from his mouth almost as fast as it entered. "Fuckin' milk!" He slammed the mug down on the table and wiped the offending substance from his upper lip. "How the hell do they get milk on a space station anyway?"

"It's powdered or replicated." Winry stood sulking over Ed's sickbed, she'd entered so swiftly that the doors just swished shut. "...and it is dietary perfect nutrition when you have broken bones. You should drink it."

"No way, never liked it." Ed spat and grabbed a cup of pudding, licking the stuff right out of the container, not even bothering for a spoon.

"Pudding has milk in it." She snarled.

"The chocolate covers it up." Ed smacked his lips, trying to get all the sweet stuff. "Do you have my arm fixed or are you here to bitch me and Al to death?"

"Ed!" Alphonse admonished.

"Ungrateful!" The doctor stomped back and forth. "I'll have you know that I do have your arm done!"

"About damn time!"

"I should chuck it through the trash shoot you tiny little asshat!"

"Who are you calling TINY!" He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Girl or not, no one called him small.

"Miss Rockbell! Brother!" Al turned toward the fray. "Please!"

"He started it!" Ed and Winry pointed at each other and yelled in unison.

"Fine..." Winry exhaled and blew a tuft of hair from her eyes. "Why does this robot call you Brother, anyway?" She carried a bag slung across her shoulder which she let slide down her right arm and set it on the bed next to the still seething young man.

"Uh...I thought it'd be fun to program him to think we're brothers...say, is that my arm?" He tried to change the subject. "It looks a little different."

"I couldn't quite understand the power sourcing used in the remains of your old arm...lithium batteries?"

"Yeah, what of it?"

"Primordial." She teased. "So I set you up with state of the art technology, not something used when people actually lived on Earth."

"Hey!"

"The arm's powered by your own body heat- that is, the internal temperature generated by your cells, so you have to keep up your nutrition – milk for example..." She ignored the fuming boy on the bed and pulled out a gleaming platinum and titanium arm. "...is perfectly and nutritionally sound."

Alphonse's resulting chuckle earned a glare from his brother while the young woman held the arm in place.

"As much as this is an upgrade compared to your old arm..." She aligned the arm to the bare port on Ed's right shoulder and readied for insertion. "There's no way to keep it from hurting like a bitch when I do this!" Without so much as a count down or warning, she shoved the pin into it's housing and twisted a bolt effectively connecting the metal to Edward's nervous system. This resulted in a horrific yowl from the young man- a yowl that morphed into a slew of curses.

"God damn it!" He puffed as sweat poured from his forehead. "You should have warned me first!" The pain of limb insertion just about took his breath away forcing him to lay back.

"Big baby." Winry huffed again and started tightening the arm's attachments to the port. "I was lucky only the plating of your leg needed work…" She grunted at adjusting the last bolt. "The leg could use an upgraded power source too, you'll just have to deal with it since you're in such a hurry!" Winry stood back to admire her work. "Do you want me to synthesize skin? Could make the metal totally invisible, you know. You don't have to walk around like a machine." She wished she'd bit her tongue as Alphonse lowered what remained of his head. "Oh...I didn't mean..." She turned to the android. "I'm sorry."

"No, don't have time or the need to cover this up, just need you to get the hell out so I can fix Al!" He wanted the young woman out of the room.

"Fine. But just so you know, I doubt there's enough salvaged parts to put him back together and you'll need a proper workshop." Winry put her hands on her hips. "And, this Mustang you keep sending messages to, he's not responding." The blond turned on the ball of her foot and made way toward the automatic doors. "If I don't see some cenz soon, I'll have to take it from your wreck of a ship...I could pawn the light drive easily..."

"Just scram!" Ed hollered as the woman stuck out her tongue and exited, leaving the two alone.

"Brother, she's right...

"Listen, I can fix you, don't worry." Ed hopped down and over to the forlorn form on the opposite bed. "I can use the bed frame if I need to." He scanned the lumps of metal and wires laying next to Alphonse, confident in what he was about to do. "Don't worry." Edward clapped his hands together and a soft melodious ring sounded. Blue sparks emanated from his closed palms and trickled through the young man's fingers as he slammed them on the android's torso. Slowly, the damaged side of the robot began to reform and indeed, some of the metal of the bed began to disappear as they were deconstructed and reconstructed into circuits and servos enabling the broken machine to move and walk again.

"It's not that I didn't think you couldn't, you know." Al, now complete with a right arm, torso and leg, hopped off his bed and faced Edward. "But I think Mustang's not going to bail us out this time." He sighed, half of his face, still metal and plastic, with a glowing golden eye. "And we're going to need all the help we can get..." His right eye's electronics focused on the large window in the hospital room, one that held a spectacular view of the planet below. "...If we're going to get down there."

"Damn it." Ed returned the robot's artificial sigh with a real one. "I know." The young man stood next to the taller android and they both took in the wondrous sight of the Earth from space. "I'm sorry I couldn't repair your face and skin...I don't have enough materials, but at least you can get around until I can."

"Yeah." Alphonse stared wistfully at the brown and beige planet. "You know...thousands of years ago, the Earth was covered with water, they used to call it a big blue marble."

"That's hard to imagine."

"Something catastrophic happened and the atmosphere slowly eroded away. In the time it took for the planet to die, mankind managed to escape to the stars."

"You're daydreaming again, snap out of it."

"I can't help it. This body has the knowledge of humanity programmed into it and I can access it. I don't know why you did that when you built it."

"Al, when I did it, I sure as Hell didn't know my brother's soul'd end up residing in a robot I constructed as a school assignment." He turned and walked toward a sleek black display on the far wall. "I needed to impress Teacher with the thing's artificial intelligence program so I hacked into the military database and downloaded their entire library." Ed placed his new right hand on the panel. "But...if I'd just put in the basic A.I. like I was supposed to, we'd never have found it." He lowered his head, shame and regret flooding his thoughts. "And you'd not be stuck in my robotics project."

"Stupid." Alphonse walked toward his brother. "I'm the one who read the first alchemy book. I'm the one who showed you." He hated it when Ed blamed himself entirely. "If we hadn't ever found it, I'd be dead." After all, it took both of them to perform the transmutation that took his brother's limbs and his entire body.

"Say, Al..." The young man perked up and thumbed at the shiny black panel. "Can you access this? I need you to do something for me."

"I should be able to." He placed his metal right hand on the panel and and exchange of data between the machines began. "I don't have the required codes...trying to bypass the firewall."

"If my commanding bastard's cut us off and if Dr. Rockbell won't help... I've got a plan." Ed's lips curled into a devious smile.

"Brother..."


"Sir, are you going to answer any of Edward's transmissions?" Riza Hawkeye adjusted her gaze only slightly toward her superior and then rest her mahogany eyes back upon her console and re-read the Major's requisition for repair funds and leave to enter Earth's atmosphere. She absolutely understood Roy Mustang's motives for ignoring his young officer. Mostly, he disregarded Edward's pleas out of spite. The young man frequently failed to report in or at all and truly, the young major spiraled off his commanding officer's radar, neglecting to even broadcast his location as required by Sol military command. Failing to recognize the Colonel Mustang at all, left said commander fuming mad.

"No." Roy also barely raised his ebony eyes toward his Lieutenant.

"Edward may have been injured...Alphonse was partially destroyed as well."

"Are you trying to make me feel bad, Lieutenant?" This time he did take a moment to look at the blond woman across from his desk. "Because that's not going to happen."

"Not at all, Sir." She recoiled. "However, we've not been out in the field in months...it may be a morale booster for the team to go retrieve our young Major..." Hawkeye never meddled with her Colonel's treatment toward the Elrics. She did, however use her skills to carry her superior's attention toward a more pleasant outcome for the boys than he'd originally have imagined. She could manipulate Mustang without him even knowing.

"You just want to see the home world again, don't you, Lieutenant?" Roy smiled. Women could be very cunning when they wanted something and Riza Hawkeye's discrete form of scheming rivaled only his own. He smiled, knowing she probably thought him oblivious. "I don't know why...it's just a round mass of sand..." His dark gaze turned toward the observation window and the many hued gray and brown rings of Saturn.

She'd manage to move closer to him and the spectacular view of the ringed planet. "I feel compelled to the Earth. Do you feel the same thing?"

"Yeah." His wistful gaze transformed into ire. "...and I don't like it because there's no reason for it."

"Do you want me to organize the team...call it an inspection of Resembool station?" She knew such inspection wasn't out of the ordinary since the station lay within their direct territory. "And pick up the Elrics while we're there?"

"General Grumman will have to be informed, I can trust him." Mustang's baritone voice nearly caused the woman to jump. "I'll report directly to the General...and you rally my men." He turned and briskly stormed out of the room, the automatic doors swishing at his coattail.

"Yes Sir!" Riza knew her commander failed to hear her, but she quickly moved her attention to making the arrangements for their trip.