The Call of Doom
This was the best vacation ever for Ed. God only knows he needed it badly. It was the life. He had his new automail (courtesy of Winry's expert talents), he had his glass of fresh lemonade, and he had his brother.
Yeah… life was grand.
And then there was that little devil thing called a phone. It has never rung with such urgency before. He thought it would be a call for Pinako, or even Winry, but when the blonde female walked out onto the porch with that look, Ed just knew his vacation was going to be cut short by at least thirteen days.
Picking up the receiver, he heard the familiar background noises associated with the Colonel's office.
"What do you want, Bastard?"
"No need for such language," Mustang's smug voice replied.
"Wouldn't have to if you'd leave me alone. I finally get a vacation and you have to drag my ass back? What the fuck Mustang?"
"There's a lead." Ed's facial expression went from pissed to mild interest in the topic. Sure, he wanted to get the Stone, but this was still his vacation damn it.
"It's close," Mustang added. "In fact, it's back in Lior."
"Lior!" Ed screamed into the phone. "We were just there! That stone was destroyed."
"Well, there is another one. I'm only telling you. That doesn't mean you have to go. By all means, you can resume your search after your vacation, but it may not be there at that time.
"It's up to you Fullmetal."
Ed stared ahead of him blankly with the phone still in his hand. Only when the operator came on did he hang it up. He sat down in the chair that was placed near the table. Setting his head in the palm of his hand, he began to think about what the Colonel said.
He really didn't want to go back to Lior. Not this soon at least. He was still recovering from the last thing with Cornello. Damn, he really didn't want to go back.
His short…no, brief train of thought was disrupted when he noticed Al coming through the door with a few envelopes in his armored hand so it looked like the mail came. Al placed them down on the table by the phone while Ed continued to look at them. One envelope in particular caught his attention.
At first, he thought he saw the name 'Elric' for the sender's name, but neither he nor Al sent any letter to them if they were going to be there. The envelope was yellow-brown in color with green ink. He picked it up and looked at it, Al getting interested in it as well.
"Who the hell is 'Skye Elric'?" Ed mused aloud.
"Maybe she's a cousin we don't know about," Al thought. Ed went to open the letter, Al went a little uneasy.
"No," Ed said. "Hohenheim didn't have any siblings. We don't have any cousins."
"Nii-san…" Al said as Edward started to rip the envelope open. "What are you doing? That's not ours."
Too late though. Ed was already halfway through the letter. Al noticed the expression on his brother's face change from confusion to something mixed between deception, anger and sadness. Al looked at the envelope next to his brother's elbow.
The letter came from Lior, and he heard his brother saying something to the colonel about Lior. That he didn't want to go.
Al was beginning to think that they might be going for a slightly different reason.