"Hey, where's Ed? Brother, where are you?" Al looked around, but Ed was nowhere to be found.
Riza looked at him. "What do you mean, 'where is he'? Where did he go?" She looked around. "Great, now we have to search for a search-party member." She groaned. At that moment, a horrendous sound was heard. It was a mixture of splintering wood and twisting steel. Riza looked towards the sound.
"Steel Manufacturing! It's going down!" Everyone watched as the 3-story building, only a street away, collapsed before their eyes. A giant dust cloud raced towards them. "Move, now!"
Everyone ran and hid behind another building. After the dust settled, they stepped back out. "Come on, guys. Let's find Ed." They started walking in the general direction of the now-collapsed steel plant, when 2 children ran up to them.
"Help, help! Miss, please help!" A little boy ran up, his little sister in tow. They both looked fine.
"What's wrong? Are you hurt? Where are your parents? What are your names?" She kneeled next to them and put her hand on the boy's shoulder.
"We're fine, miss. I'm Matthew, this is Kay. Our parents were here on business and we ran off to play… Don't tell them, please! We were playing in the old steel place when the storm hit. The wall fell on us, but it also hid us from the bad storm." The little girl began to cry. Al sat down next to her and she walked over to him and held his hand.
"How did you get out?" Riza looked at the children. They couldn't possibly have moved their surroundings even an inch. They were so little!
"We called out for help, and then we heard a voice. A boy found us. He was kind of short for an adult, though. He remade our shelter and saved us." The boy sat down by his sister.
Al spoke up. "What do you mean, remade? Like this?" He grabbed a scrap of wood and reshaped it into a small horse using alchemy.
"Yes, just like that!" The boy looked almost scared.
"Describe the boy to me, please." She looked at Al meaningfully.
"He had yellow hair, and yellow eyes. He was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt with a stiff collar over a black tank. Black boots, and black pants. He had a braid, and a silver hand." The boy paused. "He saved us." Kay started to cry.
Al gasped and stood up. "Where is he now? What happened? How-"
"Al. Stop, you're frightening them." The kids were trembling, with tears in their eyes. "Is he still in there? Or did he get out?"
"He saved us and told us to run. I don't know." Matt looked down. "I hope he's ok."
Riza stood up. She looked at a guard. "James, take these children back to Roy. Tell him what happened. Help find their parents. We are going to get Ed back."
O-O-O
Ugh… What happened? Where am I? Ed slowly opened his eyes, but all he saw was darkness. He tried to lift his head, but he hit it on something. He reached his hand up and felt that it was a steel beam. He tried to move his right arm, but nothing happened. He reached over and felt nothing. His arm was gone. He reached up to his shoulder and felt a little bit of metal. But he also felt blood.
He tried to scoot down a little so he could sit up, but as soon as he tried, three things happened; the rubble on top of him shifted and almost collapsed on him, he heard a horrible sound like metal grating on concrete, and excruciating pain shot through his left side.
"AAAAGH! Goddammit! What the hell?" He slowly reached down near his hip and instantly pulled his hand back. "No way… Aw, shit!" He reached back down and his fears were confirmed: there was a large, steel pole sticking out of his side. That must have been what made that grating sound. But that means… It was sticking out his back. It was also covered in something sticky.
Blood.
At that moment, he realized that his whole back was wet, as well as his head and arm. He also noticed that his jacket was gone, his right boot was off, and his shirt was shredded. He reached up to his head and felt that the back of his head had a huge gash in it. Blood was slowly oozing out of it. He touched the gash and almost screamed out of fear and pain. Is that… my skull?
By this time, he could kind of make out the shapes of the ruin he was buried in. A large chunk of wall was pinning down his left leg, and a wooden beam was on the other. He slowly turned to the right and saw a familiar sight trapped under an old conveyor belt: his right arm. He tried to slowly shift sideways to grab it, but as soon as he moved, the rubble shifted again. The steel beam over his head shifted backwards, and pieces of concrete and bricks fell on him, pinning his arm down.
"Hey! Is anyone there? Hey help! Al, Riza, anybody!" He yelled as loud as he could, but he heard no response. For the first time in a long while, he started to cry. "Dammit, is no one out there?" He kept yelling until he went hoarse.
The last thing he thought before everything went black was I'm sorry I broke our promise, little brother.
O-O-O
When the search party reached the steel plant, the sight that greeted them was horrible. All of the walls had collapsed and everything was piled on top of everything else. The floor had collapsed, allowing everything to fall into the basement. Some of the wood was on fire, and the steel was twisted. Huge chunks of the wall were sticking up out of the rubble like ghosts.
"Big brother! Where are you?" Al ran up to the fence and ripped open the rusted gate. He was about to jump into the rubble when Riza stopped him.
"Al, if you jump in there and just start moving stuff, and Edward is still in there, you could kill him. We have to do this VERY carefully. We have to wait for back-up. The only thing we can do is determine if he really is in there." She looked around anxiously. "Alright, break up into 4 groups. Al, stay with me. Everyone go to a different side of the building and see if you can see or hear Edward." The group broke up and got to work.
Al and Riza's group was by the side nearest Ed. Al walked over to a scrap pile by the fence and grabbed a large conveyor belt. The gears were missing, but the steel was still strong. He set it down by the edge of the hole and used alchemy to make somewhat of a small overhang.
"Riza, I'm too heavy to do this. Walk out to the end and lie down. See if you can see or hear him." She nodded and precariously walked out to the end. She slowly got onto her stomach and scooted to the end. She pulled out a flashlight and called Ed's name. After five minutes of doing so, however, she had no results.
"Al, I'm sorry. But if he's in there, he's either unconscious or way down there or-" She stopped suddenly and looked like she was going to cry.
Al just looked down into the pit of destruction. "Ed, please. Please be ok."