OK, in this chapter, there's more "military stuff" than the last and honestly, I don't really know anything about basic military commands or formations or marching at all, so if anyone can point out any mistakes or things that should be edited, I hope they will.

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"Ed! Hey!" Roy hissed. He knew some people liked how "cozy" the library here was, but Roy personally thought that if they just put all the bookcases in straight lines, got some better lighting and threw out a few armchairs it would be much easier to find people in here.

Roy wriggled between two chairs and a coffee table, almost knocking over a lamp as he poked his head into a sunlit cranny, finally seeing what he was looking for.

Ed was sitting, not in the thick armchair but next it on the floor, his back up agaisnt the wall under a window. Around him were stacks and stacks of ancient books. Or if they weren't old, they were at least beginning to fall apart. A stack almost up to Ed's head was next to the boy while another s tack occupied the armchair. Various books were scattered in his lap and around him as well as tossed haphazardly on the windowsill behind him.

"Ed! We gotta go!" Roy hissed again. The boy didn't look up. "Ed!" Roy stompoed his foot and Ed waved vaguely. Roy snapped his fingers, careful only to let the flames dance on Ed's ankle for a moemnt. Unfortunately, Ed was so entrenched in the book he was holding three centimeters from his face that he didn't notice his smoldering pants.

Roy was now trying to wiggle between the top-heavy lamp and an oddly angled bookcase so he could put Ed out before he really caught on fire, but the damn cast-iron thing was too heavy to lift out of the way, insisting on crashing to the floor instead. At which point, Ed finally looked up just as the smoke alarm went off and it began to rain inside the Eastern HQ library.

By the time the sprinklers were deactivated, Roy and Ed were both soaked through and cranky as they rode in the car to the park. As they closed in on it, Roy spoke for the first time since yelling at Ed when the sprinklers had first gone off.

"Under your seat is a suitcase with clean clothes in it. Pull it out," he said. Ed glared but did as he was told. "Now look for my green shirt, will you? You can have whatever you want in there, but it's pretty much all my size."

"I'll be fine." Ed stuffed the suitcase back under his seat, a dark green shirt lying between the two alchemists.

Roy pulled into a ninety degree parking space and ordered Ed out of the car. The FullMetal could see Armstrong clearly in a group of little people in the middle of the park. As he started toward them, he glanced back at Roy who was adjusting the collar on his dark green short sleeved T-shirt with three buttons beneath the collar.

He caught up with Ed and then passed him and the blond quickened almost to a jog so as not to let Mustang outpace him.

Armstrong reached for Ed's collar and Ed half-crouched, sliding behind a man who was about six inches taller than he was to get out of Armstrong's reach. The Strong Arm Alchemist let the FullMetal get away, promising himself to give the kid a hug later.

"OK everyone- ...HEY!" Roy was using a megaphone to get the milling crowd's attention. "OK, then. Here on this clipbaord I have a diagram of the Fuhrer's plans for our parade display. Major Armstrong is here to help us and make sure our part is in sync with Central's squad-"

"Using my special skills of marching choreography that have been passed down the Armstrong line for generations!"

"Yeah... We'll be using basic military commands, here people. You learned those in booot camp so start recalling them." Roy didn't hear any objections or questions, so he ordered all his Eastern Alchemists to line up in straight rows.

For soldiers who had been at one point, very good at lining up in neat rows and columns, it took them a long time to get it right. Ed nearly got trampled.

"Now. The sandbox and the slide mark the boundaries of the parade-grounds. That is the amount of space we have to move around in." Roy paused, "Rows one, two and three- MARCH!"

Roy watched the first three rows of soldiers begin to march forward. He spotted Edward's wet red jacket in the fourth row.

"Column three march!"

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Ed watched the middle column march single file toward the first group and heard Roy over the megaphone yelling, "Now! Columns one, two, four and five, I want you to regroup. Make a butterfly formation!"

Ed looked around uncertainly. He was finally having to move, but he didn't know what a butterfly formation was. He followed the man next to him as he turned and headed into the fray.

"HALT!" Roy yelled into his megaphone. "This is a display! Alright- Silver Alchemist move to the right and back. You're in the middle. Now I want the Sparking Alchemist to move, while continuing to face me, to Silver's front and left! That's more like it."

The man Ed had attempted to follow fell back from beside him, leaving Ed up front on his side which was slightly uncomfortable for the boy since he was no closest to Roy and still clueless.

"That's right- Gravity Alchemist, you're next. Wait for the Construction Alchemist." Roy had resorted to using their State aliases. It was easier for him to remember than name or rank. "FullMetal! Hurry up!"

Edward turned and scurried backward, someone grabbing his shoulders and hauling him to a spot somewhere in the mob, the man growling, "Stupid kid can't remember basic stuff."

"Everyone, about-face!" Roy commanded. Major Armstrong was instructing the other group that had been the first three rows near the other end of the park Ed noticed as he was sandwhiched in by clumsy soldiers stepping on his feet and awkwardly waddling forward when Roy yelled, "Forward March!"

For now Ed waddled with the crowd, but when they spread back out into "Wing-Tip" formation, Ed had more range of movement and had to decipher the commands for himself as copying the man next to him didn't work.

Since it appeared that Ed was now supposed to be mirroring the man next to him, plus Roy had just made them spin in circles in his attempt to get them all to face in the right direction, when Mustang again called for a forward march, Ed turned and marched forward from what he considered to be his starting point- that is, the direction they'd all been facing when they started.

A moment too late, Ed realized he was marching away from everyone else and not just Sparky next to him. Immediately, the man who'd grabbed him earlier yelled, "Somebody get that kid outtta here! He doesn't know what he's doing- he hasn't got a clue!"

Ed opened his mouth, embarrassed and angry but Roy grabbed his arm sighing heavily as he pulled FullMetal aside.

"Are you trying to be difficult?" Colonel Mustang leaned down to Ed's eye level.

"No-"

"Good. Now, you should remember all of these commands and formations. Why don't you?"

"Uh..."

"You did attend basic preliminary boot camp, didn't you?"

"Uh, um, yeah. Sure." Ed didn't know what Roy was talking about. Roy looked at him silently for a long moment before saying, very quietly, "Wrong answer, Elric."

Ed thought it was weird that Roy would call him by his last name and was uncertian of what exactly Roy was thinking or what he'd just claimed to have attended.

"You're coming with me once we're done here, you understand? For now you can watch and learn."

Ed sighed and rolled his eyes.

He pretty much stopped watching when Armstrong took off his shirt and began an hour long demonstration of what a soldier's body should look like, and Mustang became so hoarse he sounded like a suffocating cat as he screamed through his microphone.

It's not so much that the soldiers weren't following orders, it was that they couldn't seem to do them all at the same time. They hadn't had to move along in such a large group in years.

"NO!" Roy wheezed, "You two on the end are going left!" His gasping and panting through the megaphone irritated Edward. The man obviously didn't have the sense God gave a turtle as far as he was concerned. The boy decided to do Mustang a favor and then he wouldn't feel bad about scramming and ditching Roy here.

He clapped his hands and focused for a moment, the air in between Roy and his men shimmering and warping almost imperceptibly. He'd just moved all the atoms of oxygen and nitrate to hte side which meant if anyone wandered into the zone he'd just created, they would suffocate, plus he'd also warped the space itself for Roy. Hard to do with alchemy, messing with the fabric of space but he was Edward.

The next time Roy choked a command through his megaphone, even Armstrong froze it was so loud. Most of the men were left looking at eachother wtih their hands over their ears.

Roy blinked at them, his mind puzzling out the volume of his last gasp. He looked over at Ed who suddenly realized was walking away, and yelled, "Ed! Did you do that? Get back here."

"Yes and goodbye." Ed waved and took off running. Roy snapped his fingers, nearly engulfing Ed in flames.

The boy was rolling on the ground putting out the last of the flames on his jacket when Roy and all the other soldiers came to stand over him.

"What is that kid doing here?" The man complained again.

"He's the FullMetal Alchemist!" Roy threw his hands up in the air, not capable of understanding what the other man couldn't seem to figure out. Why did he think Ed was here?

"That tiny kid-" The man was upside down sailing through the upper branches of a tree before you could say 'bean sprout.'

"CALL ME TINY WILL YOU? COULD A MICROSCOPIC PIPSQUEAK DO THAT?" Ed referred to his ability to heft men many times his size into the air.

"EDWARD!" Roy grabbed Ed by the shoulders roughly, squeezing as hard as he could to try to recline his frustration. Ed tried to run, pulling and crouching and thwacking Roy's arm.

"That's it," Roy hissed, his voice dripping venemous rage. "Major? Would you please take over here while I attend to FullMetal? Here are the diagrams." Roy picked the clipboard up off the gorund with one hand, keeping the other clamped on Ed's shoulder and handed it to Major Armstrong.

"Yes, I shall do my best to keep order while you attend to the boy," Armstrong said with much emotion as he accepted the clipboard. Roy grabbed the back of Ed's jacket and dragged/shoved the boy toward the car.

Ed flung his arms wide to avoid being shoved into the car and Roy spun him around with all the force he could muster, cornering Ed against the side of the front seat. The boy was wide-eyed with fear and the sudden realization that his commanding officer actually was a force to be reckoned with.

"I have had it up to here with you. I don't even know what to do with you I'm so fed up. You caused me enough frustration yesterday alone to make me lose it, but today tops all, Ed. I know you have a good memory, so why can't you follow basic commands? I recieved the certificate that confirmed you had been to boot camp, but for some reason you can't seem to remember it. Why would that be, hm?" Roy looked at Ed for a moment before hissing, "How the hell did you get out of that? And I don't care if that soldier called you every word for short there is, that was no excuse to cause him bodily harm. And then you tried to take off on me. I am your Goddamned commanding officer and if I tell you to stay put and watch, you better stay put and watch, you understand me? You are in the military, you follow orders. It was your decision to join, so now you have to follow the rules. Do you understand me?"

Ed swallowed and stared up at Roy, his expression disturbed.

"If...you did complete the training," Roy said slowly, "Then there would be a duplicate certificate in General Raven's files. How about we take a little break here and go check with him, hm?"

Ed opened his mouth and Roy shoved him backward into the car, slamming the door against Ed's escape. Ed twiddled his thumbs during the ride to HQ. He had a feeling he knew what Roy was talking about now.

See, back then, Ed felt that since he'd passed the exam, there was no real need for him to waste time doing other "entry level" military stuff. He just wanted to get going with his search for the philospher's stone. So he'd forged some signatures and the like and bypassed many things he'd deemed unnecessary, such as medical exams, meetings of any kind and boot camp.

Of course now it was too late to cover this up, as Roy was already well and clearly onto him.

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