Disclaimer in previous chapters. Please see Author's Notes at the end.

- x -

The sound was so familiar and so comfortable that it took him a while to realize it was out of place.

Edward Elric hesitated, knowing he was more than halfway awake. If he tried to open his eyes, this pleasant dream would completely evaporate. He would no longer feel as if he was floating, no longer be warm and content to remain unmoving, listening to the soft and rhythmic sound of his brother sleeping beside him.

Just thinking about it brought him closer to consciousness, and he clung to his flight of fantasy stubbornly. He knew it wasn't real; it couldn't be. They'd long ago left Germany, hadn't they? There'd be no reason to be sharing a bed, no reason to even be sharing a room. Unless they both fell asleep over their research, which almost never happened –

Al.

Edward blinked, surprised to find his eyelashes glued together. A few more attempted squints made very little progress, and he stretched his eyebrows up, trying to pry everything open –

A sharp pain shot across his face, and he winced.

So much for dreaming.

He brought his left hand up, intent on rubbing his eyes, but was only able to move it a few inches before a much deeper twinge radiated through his back, stilling him instantly. It faded quickly as soon as he stopped moving, just as the ache in his face had done. Despite the discomfort, he still felt a little like he was floating. It wasn't the same removed sensation he recalled feeling when he'd been poisoned; this was almost pleasant.

Painkillers.

A pretty good dose, considering how quickly they'd calmed the throbbing in his cheekbone.

And despite the fact that he was now certain he was wide awake, he could still hear the gentle, slow exhale beside him. On his right.

That was what had struck him as out of place. Not the fact that it was Al, but the fact it was on his right side.

Al had always taken the left side of the bed, when they'd been forced to share one. Ed preferred the right, so he could sleep on his automail to keep it warm on chilly nights without accidentally hogging the mattress.

The wince had broken up enough of the salt on his eyelashes to pry them open. Or was it dried blood? The last thing he could really recall was Fuery –

Al was really there?

There was only dim ambient light, though the brightest glow seemed to come from his right. He turned unthinkingly in that direction, slightly surprised when his right shoulder began to ache, but he forgot it almost immediately.

There was indeed an Al-shaped silhouette, straddling the wooden chair beside his bed. He was sitting it backwards, with his arms folded over the back and pillowing his chin. He looked like he'd been there a while; his long brown-blonde hair was undone and hung around his shoulders like a mantle.

Ed watched him for a moment, half-afraid he was still dreaming, more than half-relieved to see him. Very little of him was visible, but if he was able to sit there and sleep, he was fine.

He was fine.

Ed let his head roll back into the depression in the pillow, finally recognizing the room. Recognizing the hospital, at any rate; the same one he'd woken up in after Al had transmuted them out of Germany. Hopefully he'd gotten the same doctor. Otherwise he was going to have to explain the automail, since it would be obvious at a glance that the port wasn't quite right –

Edward picked up his head slightly, this time expecting the searing but shallow pain in his right cheek. His shoulder had hurt, hadn't it? A glance at it revealed that the metal was still present, but that it was bare.

All of him was, beneath the light summer sheet.

So either he had the same doctor, or he'd forced one of the guys to chase the docs around with a clipboard, swearing them to secrecy. Fuery might have done it, if he'd been the one to call for a medic –

Mustang. Had they –

He'd said so, hadn't he? Which meant the bastard was probably somewhere nearby.

Edward glanced around the room, noting that it wasn't a private one; there was another bed to his left, unoccupied. What he assumed was moonlight was shining in the small window, illuminating rumpled sheets. A shadow seemed to flit across the room, and Ed turned back towards the door. The hall light outside was a bright yellow, and while the door was mostly closed, if he concentrated he could hear the bustle of an active ward.

He didn't have the place to himself this time, obviously.

That was probably not a good sign.

There was a deep sigh beside him, and Ed looked over to see Al pick up his chin. He couldn't make out his brother's expression, but after a second Al froze.

"Hey," Ed offered, in case Al couldn't tell he was awake.

Al cleared his throat, straightening slightly before rubbing the back of his neck. "Ow."

Maybe not quite as fine as he looked . . .? "What time is it?"

Al continued to massage the back of his neck while fishing his pocketwatch out of his trouser pocket. "About midnight. I'm surprised you didn't sleep till morning."

Ed blinked. Midnight was a good eight hours after the last time he could recall anything. "You okay?"

"I'm good." It was much more awake, and fairly cheerful. "Just don't ask me to turn my head," he added drolly, tucking his watch, and the only physical symbol of his National Alchemy certification, back into his pocket. Then he straightened, and Ed could almost feel the gaze focus on him. "How are you feeling?"

Ed watched his younger brother unfold himself from the chair, walking across the room to turn on a lamp. The light was bright, but not painfully so, and Edward just stared at him.

"You take a dirt bath?" he finally commented.

Al was a disaster. His ivory shirt was no longer ivory; it was right around the same color as his pants, which were a little darker brown than he remembered them being. Al's face and hands were scrubbed clean, and as he returned to the bedside, Ed could see small, angry cuts across his brother's neck and collarbone.

"Yeah, I did," he admitted, turning the chair around properly and retaking his seat. "And you're changing the subject."

Edward gave his brother a dirty look, and tried to sit up. The previously bearable ache in his back spiked with startling intensity, and Ed swallowed a curse, easing his weight onto the armor. That resulted in more pain, not less, and he growled in irritation as he gave up, dropping back to the mattress.

What the hell . . .?

Al hissed for him, leaning forward but not putting a hand on him. "Take it easy, nii-san! You were nearly cut to pieces."

One scratch on his cheek, and he was making a big deal –

His right shoulder hurt.

It hurt a lot.

But the armor was still there . . .

Ed glanced at his shoulder, shocked to see a rough, poorly filed puncture through the top of the shoulderpiece that made up the false port. He wiggled the shoulder experimentally, trying to gauge the depth of the wound. The surface pulled oddly, which meant stitches, and beneath that was an ache he'd long ago associated with Winry's drill.

The rock ribbons. He remembered feeling a few impacts before Armstrong had gotten him out, but they hadn't hurt –

They'd been so sharp, and he'd been so far removed . . .

Shit.

"Shit."

No wonder Fuery had been so concerned. He'd probably been bleeding all over the place.

"That's what I said," Al half-growled. "Before you get any other bright ideas, you've also got about thirty stitches in your back and a concussion."

Edward tried to relax, letting the drugs take the edge off. But his mind was whirling, a thousand questions and he wasn't even sure which one to ask first –

The Tringums.

"Al, what about Russ and Fletch –"

"They're fine." His tone was soothing. Already predicting the barrage, apparently. "Just tired. Russell's been at it since about six pm, Fletcher went out to relieve him an hour ago."

At it . . . ? Relieve him? That explanation could wait. "What about Hawkeye?" Obviously he hadn't died from the compound, but he could have, which meant she could have –

"She's fine too. Last I saw, she was sleeping off the rest of the poison . . ." He trailed off. "How did you know . . . ?"

"Where's the old man? There was an old alchemist –"

"Dead," Al interrupted shortly, and he leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms. "My turn. Where did you go this morning?"

It had been a long time since they'd had to play alternating questions. Not since Germany. "To visit an old alchemist. The letter Hawkeye gave Mustang, just after class, was addressed to Bradley. Pride had commissioned him to make something, and he'd finally done it." Al needed more details, but they could wait. "The old man's dead?" At least it was one less battle with a ridiculous over-powered alchemist to worry about -

"Craege Irving killed him," Al confirmed.

Craege Irving.

The alchemist's apprentice wasn't just an apprentice at all.

He was the man's son.

And the old man really had been Johann Irving, the Fusing Alchemist.

Al took advantage of his stunned silence. "Why didn't you tell me where you were going?"

"No time. I saw Mustang ditch his bodyguards, so I followed him out." It sounded almost as stupid as it had ended up being. "He let me read the letter. Irving put some kind of compound on it, absorbed through the skin, to eliminate any hostile party 'the Fuhrer' was planning on bringing with him."

An odd expression crossed his brother's face. "So that's how you knew –"

Ed nodded, trying to get a feel for where the other stitches in his back were. At least with the old man dead he wasn't looking at a combat situation for a few days. He wanted the armor off, so he could see how badly the concrete ribbon had gotten his shoulder. Even if Patterson was his doctor again, there would have been other assistants, a nurse to change the dressing -

And Winry was going to kill him for wrecking it.

Hell, she was going to kill both of them anyway, for getting into a fight. Al looked whole, but it was obvious he'd been through an ordeal of his own.

He glanced at the armor again, surreptitiously, and his brother cocked his head to the side. "I tried to transmute your armor whole again and couldn't. Why is that?"

Ed studied it in the light, laying atop the thin sheet. In the car he'd noted the odd warping of that thickened panel on the back of his wrist, the one Winry had put in place to give him more blade to transmute without weakening the rest of the armor. The finger joints were a little off, too, like someone had been interrupted in the middle of transmuting them back –

But back from what? If the old man – Irving, he reminded himself – had just been curious to see if the limbs were missing or not, why transmute? Why hadn't he just pulled the armor off? Could he not figure out how it came off?

"I don't know."

He wondered idly if he could transmute the leg armor, too. He hadn't noticed that it was deformed, just poorly fitted. Maybe they'd managed to get it off, but couldn't find the access panel in the arm?

"You don't know?" Al sounded skeptical. "What happened to you two, Ed?"

That wasn't a fair question. It was going to be a long answer. "I don't know," he repeated calmly. "We got there just before the compound on the letter caught up with me. I passed out, and when I came around we were transmuted to a wall in a storage room. The old man had already tampered with it, at least I think it was the old man. I don't know why. I don't know what he did. I can complete a circle, but I can't seem to pass any alchemic energy through it." He hesitated. "And it's not giving off feedback like the other ingredients –"

"I noticed that too." Or he was sure Al would have gotten it as far from him as possible, the crime of human transmutation be damned. That secret was probably going to be out of the bag by the end of the month, considering he'd easily just doubled the number of people who knew the arm was still intact. If Patterson had even known before he left the hospital five months ago.

"The elder Irving was transmuting with some other kind of amplifier. I couldn't even see the alchemic energy leaving him to travel to the ingredients. It was . . . almost instantaneous."

Ed blinked. Alchemic energy, in all cases but a Philosopher's Stone, was summoned by the alchemist, and left the alchemist. It didn't just suddenly appear inside the materials being transmuted. "Al, that's impossible –"

He just shook his head. "I know. I saw it just the same. It wasn't the same amplifier Craege was using. It didn't cause the feedback problem."

And it was definitely a problem. Everything that alchemist had transmuted, down to the smallest pebble, was a danger to alchemists. Only alchemists, if what he'd seen before he'd been whisked off Tracer Avenue was any indication. But even so, moving that much material out of the city –

Was there some way to . . . eliminate the energy bond that amplifier had created? Was that even what it did?

Where the hell did the weasel – Craege – get the thing in the first place?

"You fought the younger of the two, didn't you." After all, he'd known how Russell Tringum transmuted, so it stood to reason, if Al looked to be in the condition he was in –

Dirt bath. Did he get the same treatment that Ed had?

Al scowled. "Not really," he grumbled. "Johann pinned us down the second he rolled into the Tringum's door. I almost had him talked down before . . . Nash Tringum's research. The old man was looking specifically for it." He rubbed his nose idly with the back of his thumb. "Then I think he added something to it. We smelled ozone, Johann said something, and then it sounded like he had some sort of attack."

Ed closed his eyes, trying to relax back into the pillows. "He said that the compound he'd made for Bradley was part of a 'bigger picture.' He never told Mustang what it was, but I'll bet anything that's what he mixed with Russell's amplifier."

They both chewed on that a moment. "Before Johann died, he said, Bradley's a madman, or something like that. Do you think Pride was trying to find alternative amplifiers to the Philosopher's Stone?"

That seemed . . . possible, but unlikely. Wouldn't Dante have known that it took human lives to perform human transmutation?

But then again, the old man had had that bizarre amplifier of his own . . .

And given how few of the things in his lab had been labeled, they were unlikely to ever figure out how the crazy old coot had done it.

All that damage, and nothing to show for it but that damned white crystal.

"What happened to the amplifier the weasel was using?"

Al smiled slightly at the nickname, knowing instantly who his brother was talking about. "Currently, I think it's in Havoc's pocket." Al graciously forwent the obvious joke; in fact, he sobered considerably. "None of the alchemists could get near Craege's remains, so Fuery and Breda carried them out to the HQ parade grounds to isolate them. It hit them pretty hard, but it took a long time for symptoms to show, so they didn't start getting sick until they were almost done –"

"Wait." Ed thoughtlessly tried to sit up, hissing as his wounds reminded him why he was in the hospital in the first place. "That feedback wasn't hurting them –"

"It just doesn't hurt them as quickly," Al corrected, a little wearily. "Apparently the type of bond the amplifier creates with transmuted matter . . . is like radiation, to borrow the term. It's an energy bond of some sort, I think that's why it allows such large transmutations so effortlessly, but that bond starts to break down the moment it's formed. Alchemists are sensitive to the type of energy it releases, and it does so diffusely, which is why it feels so much like alchemic feedback."

That theory actually made sense. If the amplifier somehow used alchemic energy not to excite existing chemical and molecular bonds, but to add one of its own. It would take a ridiculous investment in alchemic energy, though . . . where was it getting that, if not the alchemist?

Wouldn't that energy have to come from the Gate? Either the actual one, or the theoretical one inside all alchemists?

So it still should have taken effort. Just as much effort as it might have without the amplifier.

Of course, he was ignoring the 'amplifier' portion of that label . . . how did any alchemic amplifier work if not to render the alchemist more efficient? Perhaps that portion worked as a focus only, and was no better an amplifier than it had been prior to its being mixed with the old man's compound.

"But the energy is disruptive to all living things," Al continued. "Russell already confirmed that with one of the hospital ferns. I think the first symptoms of lethargy and nausea came in about six hours ago? By now every clinic in the city is probably over capacity."

Lethargy and nausea. Such innocent words to describe what felt like being too heavy to continue existing. Hopefully it didn't affect non-alchemists so completely.

"If it's not safe for anyone, what's going to happen?" They couldn't just dump the material . . . although, the desert to the east was mostly empty . . . the idea of moving so much of the city that distance was mind-numbing. It would take months, and all the laborers would be suffering the entire time.

Al stared at him as if he'd grown another head, then glanced over at the pole beside the bed, that held a small bag of a clear liquid that was trickling into him via a line in his left arm. "They gave you the good stuff, didn't they," Al reflected, as if it was an excuse for incompetence. "I just told you it was an energy bond, nii-san. If you reduce the material to its basic elements, there's nothing to bond."

Of course. Elements were elements. If they weren't being combined, there was nothing to bond to. "So reducing all the matter that was transmuted with the amplifier to base elements, then reconstructing it . . ."

That was almost as daunting a task as carting it off. The stuff that had been transmuted once was bad enough, but the streets where alchemic fights had taken place . . . the street on Tracer had probably been used at least five times, some portions –

And the remains of Craege Irving. Dozens. No one would be able to transmute those, even at distance.

"Are Breda and Fuery okay?" He'd said they'd gotten hit hard, and if they'd carried those materials all that way –

Al winced. "Breda's throwing up blood," he finally admitted. "Fuery's a little worse."

Ed studied the ceiling for a moment. Was that what happened if someone stayed near those transmuted ingredients too long? Could it really kill them? "Have Fletch and Russ looked them over?"

"No." Al's voice was steady. "They were deployed into the city as soon as they could transmute. I should be back out there myself."

Ed's eyes snapped back to his brother's. "Al –"

"Don't start. I know." He rubbed at the stubble on his cheek, then ran his hands through his hair. "It came from Mustang himself."

Well, that made no sense, even considering the National Alchemists answered directly to him –

So did Heymans Breda and Kain Fuery.

"Are they going to be okay?" Surely he wouldn't sacrifice any lives, no matter how long sections of the city remained uninhabitable –

" . . . I hope so." Al's voice was small. "They're on this ward, but I didn't stop in to see them."

So he was in the critical care ward again? Or had he been put here to hide the fake automail? "Who else?" Armstrong was probably a mess, and Mustang –

Even if he was conscious and giving cockshit orders.

"I dunno, Ed. A lot of people. Ten alchemists, including Alex, Saundra, and Franklin. Another seven died." He looked drawn and miserable as he said it. "Then there were people who were hurt in the fighting, and then people who got sick . . . you'd probably have gotten a private room if they could swing them, but there's no space."

Ed glanced at the far bed, noting it had once had an occupant who was conspicuously absent. "I take it they got better?"

"Better is relative." Al didn't sound happy. "I hope the charge nurse was able to keep him at least restricted to the hospital."

" . . . you're kidding me." Surely he didn't mean –

Behind them, from the nearly-closed door, came the sound of rhythmic, stiff boots marching on tile.

Sounded like Mustang's bodyguards were taking their job a little more seriously this time around.

- x -

Author's Notes: Well, we needed a slowdown and summary chapter, didn't we? So here it is. Slowdown and summary! Big problems in Central! Lots of work to do. Two men down. Mustang is apparently cranky. And he's about to come and say hello to our favorite Elrics! There's one little thing I haven't tied up yet . . . first person to guess it gets a cookie! As always, I have looked, and I have found typos. So there are more. Many apologies in advance! And thank you all so much for the reviews and faves! I'm glad Silverfox isn't the only one enjoying it. ; )