I'm going to be honest; I had no idea what to write for this chapter. If it seems kind of random and not very well thought out…it is. :P

Al sat there for a long time, not knowing what to do. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He knew what he should do; he should wait here like Colonel Hawkeye had ordered him to. But that wasn't what he needed to do. He needed to follow Ed and get Rina and Winry back.

Stepping lightly onto the floor, he winced and had to use the bed to support himself as a wave of dizziness washed over him. I can do this, he thought resolutely, letting go and walking to the table on the other side of the room where a pair of clothes lay, neatly folded.

When he had been unconscious, someone must have changed him out of his torn clothes, because now he wore the standard wear of a hospital patient. He wondered who had left this set of clothes, but that was answered when he lifted the shirt and a note fell out. It read only two scribbled words: Be careful.

Ed, Al thought. Did he know that I'd try and sneak out…? Gingerly changing into the clothes his brother had left for him–a long sleeved shirt and pants, presumably chosen to hide his cuts and bandages–he looked around the room for a means of escape. There was a window right above his bed; looking out of it, Al was dismayed to see that he was on the second floor.

He couldn't leave through the main door without attracting attention; he wasn't Ed, who was neither seriously injured nor known to be a famous state alchemist. He couldn't use alchemy either, as that would draw even more attention. He'd have to figure out a way to get down. Sighing as he looked down at his bed, he knew exactly what he'd have to do.

---

After about twenty minutes of climbing down the side of the wall of the military base, avoiding being seen by hiding in the cover of the surrounding trees and having to go down excruciatingly slow because of his arm and still-hurting chest, he reached the ground. Once there, he quickly darted to the street and blended in with the bustling crowd, glancing back over his shoulder the entire way to make sure no one was following him.

When he judged he was a safe enough distance away from the military base, he slipped down a deserted-looking side street to figure out what to do next. Leaning against one of the walls, he debated what to do next. He had no idea where to even begin looking for the others, and he hadn't thought to ask Ed where exactly he was going.

What was I thinking? Al groaned internally. I should have thought this through more thoroughly before I decided to sneak out.

"Hey, Al; it's about time you got here," a bored voice greeted. Al looked up to see none other than Ed walking towards him from the other end of the side-street, acting as though they had planned to meet ahead of time at this exact spot, at this exact time.

"Ed?" Al asked, gaping.

"The one and only," Ed replied dryly.

"What are you doing here?" Al asked, standing up straight and trying not to wince from the effort. Ed's eyes narrowed, but he didn't comment or answer Al's question. "I thought you went to look for Winry."

"I thought you'd follow, so I decided to wait for you," Ed answered.

"How'd you know I'd come here?" Al inquired, still confused.

"I didn't," Ed replied simply. "I followed you after you snuck out of your room. Though, I must say, you nearly gave me the slip."

"Where do we go now?" Al asked after a slight pause.

"Ah, finally a question that's worth asking," Ed replied, grinning. "Now we go to where Winry and Rina are."

"Which is…?" Al asked doubtfully.

But Ed only kept grinning. "Follow me," he said, turning and walking back the way he had come. His pace was quick, and Al had to start running to catch up. All the while, he couldn't help but think that there was something in Ed's smile that had looked …dangerous.

---

"This is the place?" Al asked, peering around the corner of a brick-red building. They had entered a rather abandoned section of the town, with no people in sight and all but one of the windows broken in the house they were currently hiding behind. There were similar houses lined along the street, their empty window and door frames gaping toothlessly at the likewise broken streetlights.

"Yeah," Ed replied. "It was listed in the papers Winry had in her journal; I figured it was worth checking out."

"I thought you told Colonel Hawkeye that you hadn't had the time to look through her notes thoroughly…?" Al trailed off.

"I didn't want her to know that I knew about the notes," Ed explained. "If she had known, she probably wouldn't have let me out of her sight."

"Where is this again?" Al inquired, surveying the shattered remains of the building Ed had pointed out to him earlier. It was just like the rest: empty windows, graffiti painting the sides, the bricks a faded red, and the roof crumbling in near the edges and gone altogether in some parts. A door leaned crookedly in the frame, barely still on its hinges.

"Rallaway Street, building 609," Ed answered. "This is definitely it, I'm sure of it."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Al asked grimly. He was about to step forward, but Ed grabbed his arm, yanking him back and making him wince.

"We can't just walk out in plain view," Ed hissed. "We need to get in there without being noticed."

"How?" Al asked, impatient. They had finally gotten this far only to be stopped right before their final destination. "Using alchemy would get us noticed right away and anyone could look through those windows and see us. The only other way in is through the door, which would draw attention to us more than anything else. How, exactly, do you propose we get in?"

Ed stared past Al for a minute, then snapped his attention back to his brother. "I have a plan."

---

"How do you know this will lead us to that building we saw?" Al asked nervously. He was crawling behind his brother in the dark through a tunnel he had created with alchemy, which he had assured him would lead them to the cellar of that building where that Avalier person was supposed to be. "How do you even know if there's a cellar?"

"Don't worry about it, Al," Ed replied, his voice echoing slightly in the underground tunnel. "I just made it according to the way we needed to get there."

"And the cellar…?" Al persisted.

"One way or another, we'll get inside," Ed answered, his voice impatient, a sign that he wasn't sure that there was a cellar at all. Al sighed, but he knew this was probably the only way to get there without being immediately noticed. When they finally reached the end of the tunnel, it was a blackened old window, only about two feet tall and wide, looking as old and dilapidated as the rest of the building with cracks running through it like spiderwebs.

"Now what?" Al whispered.

"Now we get Winry and Rina back," Ed muttered grimly. He carefully removed the single window pane, setting it down beside him, and peered inside. Al craned his neck over his shoulder to see, and nearly fell over Ed in surprise.

The room was far newer than the outside let on; in fact, it hardly looked like it was even in the same building they had just seen a few minutes before. There were beams criss-crossing one another right in front of where they stood, and some twenty feet below them, the ground was littered with equipment that Al couldn't even begin to recognize. The walls and floor were still broken and cracked here and there, but not to a noticeable degree. Two doors, one looking like it led to a closet and the other a pristine white, were set in the wall. It looked no one was there.

Ed jumped out of the window frame to land nimbly on one of the beams. He beckoned for Al to follow, keeping a sharp eye on the room below them. Al quickly joined his brother, having to stop himself from stumbling on the first step by grabbing onto another beam.

"Come on, we need to start looking for the others," Ed breathed, lowering himself onto a lower beam, then jumping agilely to the floor. He looked up at Al expectantly, but he was slower in coming because of the pain he felt every time he put strain on his arm. When he finally did land heavily next to Ed, his brother had to grab his uninjured arm to keep him from falling.

"S-sorry, Brother," Al muttered.

"It's fine, Al," Ed replied softly, his voice gentle. Al wondered if his brother was regretting bringing him along since he would only slow him down, but Ed just turned to the white door and started walking over to it. Al hurried after him, trying to make his steps light, but just before he reached his brother, he felt a large weight knock into him that sent him sprawling to the ground. Before he could do anything, he heard a crash and Ed was standing in front of him protectively, his hands poised to use alchemy if necessary.

"Al, are you okay?" Ed asked tensely, not looking back at him.

"Yeah," Al muttered, getting to his knees. His head was pounding from where it had hit the ground, but it didn't feel like there was any blood, so it probably wasn't anything serious. Looking past Ed, he could see a man standing on the other side of the room. It took him a few minutes to identify him past the out-of-place officer uniform of the military, but he eventually recognized the man as Mr. Dublin.

"Glad you could make it," Mr. Dublin greeted coolly from where he stood on the other side of the room, a drawn sword gripped lightly in one of his hands.

"Where are Winry and Rina?" Ed asked bluntly.

"Impatient, are we?" Mr. Dublin asked dryly, walking forward, but Ed didn't back down.

"You're Avalier, right?" he asked. "What do you want?"

"What do I want?" Mr. Dublin asked, stopping. "I want to fix the corrupt state that this country is in. It's falling apart at the seams, and it's all because of the military. If they would have listened to my plans in the first place, it never would've come to this."

"Come to what?" Al asked warily, standing up behind Ed. "To hurting innocent people? Or trying to get revenge on the military?"

"As I recall, both young ladies you are referring to are part of the military; hardly innocent to any degree," Mr. Dublin said wryly.

"Winry has nothing to do with any of this," Ed objected. "Give her back. Now."

"Temper, temper," Mr. Dublin said mockingly. "If you want to help your friends, then you have to help yourselves first." As he spoke, the white door opened, and someone entered the room. At first it was too dim to make out who it was, but then Al's throat closed up as he recognized exactly who it was standing there.

Rina.

Uuuugh I hate this chapter uuuugh it's crap uuuugh I'm so tirrrrrrrreeeed. T-T

Do you know how many dashy things I put in there? Three! That's three too many! And why does it always seem like I have a character randomly get hit and then have another character do something and not say what it was?! Crap. I needed Ed and Al to get to where Rina and Winry are, but I didn't know how, and I've been busy with Pre-FBA all day yesterday, at least four or five hours' worth of homework, and this project that took me at least four hours to do and I'm still not done yet. I hate chemistry; I really do. T-T Back to the point: I know this chapter sucks, but I never had it planned out or anything and I'm exhausted (not that either are any excuse), but please bear with me for now; the next one will be better…hopefully. And don't ask me why there was a window to the cellar, it just worked that way. D8

Okay, my rant is over. Sorry everyone. ^.^' Only two chapters left~