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With Al as much as out of commission as a disembodied spirit could get, the decision of how to move forward now was left up to Roy.

Of course, as he was barely in better shape than Al, that wasn't very reassuring at all.

The ceiling was too low for standing to be an option, and Roy was still a bit doubtful about his ability to even make it to his feet, never mind remaining there for any period of time. Unfortunately, that limited his options to crawling, crawling, and more crawling.

Whatever he'd broken in his shoulder, because Roy was getting to be certain he'd definitely broken something, made crawling hurt like an absolute bitch.

But, no matter how many times he had to stop and gasp through gritted teeth, Roy continued to work his way around the train car, trying to forge a way to Alphonse as well as count up all of the injured- and, if he was lucky, find a way out.

So far, no progress on that last front, but he'd found a few more injured to make their total up to twelve, in addition to him and Al.

The few that were well enough to get impatient with him were.

Coughing, Roy covered his nose and mouth more firmly with his collar and pulled his military jacket even further over his head, then ducked under a low hanging bit of crumbling wreckage. The motion dislodged a shower of blistering ashes and he shuddered, trying not to gasp, and pulled himself along another foot.

The sound of someone screaming stopped him.

Roy held still for a few moments, straining to hear beyond the hiss and crackle of flames. There- there, again! That definitely wasn't his exhausted imagination dreaming up the sound of help from outside. No- there was somebody there.

"Hey!" he shouted hoarsely, banging his fist on the ground as hard as he could. "Hey! Over here! Can you hear me?! Over here!"

The shouting stopped for a moment, then abruptly continued before, even louder than ever. Gasping with relief, Roy let himself lay back down on his stomach for a moment, finally grinning a little with wordless gratitude. Finally, some help.

"Hey! Hey! Al! AL, IS THAT YOU?! AL?!"

Roy jerked a little, the unexpected voice shocking him, and he started to smile even wider than before. "Fullmetal?!" he shouted back, relieved again but now for entirely different reasons than before.

Silence again, then, a shocked, "Colonel?! That you?"

"Yes, it's me! Fullmetal, are you okay?!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine!" His voice came even closer then, definitely on the outside of the wreckage. "What about you?!"

Roy managed a one-armed shrug, smiling in wry amusement. "More or less! Full-"

"What about Al?! I can't find him anywhere!"

The edge of panic in his voice grew a little more, then, and suddenly, even though he could not see his subordinate, Roy knew exactly how desperate he must've looked right then. Of course. Ed would be just as panicked as Al was right now. "He's fine!" Roy called back, still shouting over the hot hiss of flames. "Missing his legs, but I spoke to him! He's fine!"

There was a short silence again, and this time, Roy knew Ed was out there shaking with sheer relief.

Swallowing, Roy pulled his jacket further over his head and craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of his subordinate through the haphazard wreckage and ash over his head. "Fullmetal!" he shouted again, trying to get his attention back on him. "We've got a lot of injured people in here, and I'm not seeing a way out! Can you see one from out there?!"

"No!" he called back without hesitation. "I've been trying to find one for the last ten minutes!"

Roy swore under his breath. If Ed couldn't find one in broad daylight, then the chances of him managing the feat when the air was choked with smoke and ash and soot clung to every surface like a shroud, were nearly zero. "Our next bet is a tunnel, then," he coughed out as loud as he could, swiping at the smoke in front of his face. "How stable is the ground out there? Enough for a tunnel?"

"I wouldn't risk it, Colonel! There's already been one landslide!"

Damn it.

That had been their only option.

"Never thought I'd be saying this," Roy mumbled, this time only to himself and not to his subordinate outside, "but... I'm praying for rain, then." He coughed again into his collar, mind already racing the steps of smoke inhalation and how much longer would end up being too much longer.

"Oi, Colonel, can't you do something about this fire?!" Ed shouted back at him from outside. "You have your gloves, don't you?!"

Roy scowled. Of course he had his gloves- but that was hardly the point here, and Ed, as an alchemist, should know that. "As much as it pains me to admit it, Fullmetal, no, I can't stop it! I can only start fires- I can't stop them!"

"What?! Aren't you the Flame Alchemist, Mustang?!"

Nice. Poke at a sore spot, why don't you. "Well I don't know, Ed, aren't you just a short little pinprick that loves to get on my nerves?!"

It was a childish response, he knew it, and Ed's was just as bad, the alchemist sputtering and yelling something obscene at him from outside the wreckage, and, groaning, Roy just let his head drop onto his hands. He shut his eyes for a moment to ride out another ripple of pain, shuddering with it and gritting his teeth until he could breathe again. "The only thing that puts out fire is water," he called back, when he thought his subordinate had calmed down. "I know a few emergency arrays, but nothing that would be helpful on this scale. We'd need a specialist in water alchemy for this. The only thing I can do at this point is add more fire to fire. You'll forgive me if I don't see the wisdom in that plan, Fullmetal."

There was a very faint sound which Roy thought just might've been Ed grunting at him, and then, "I'm going to go round up all the other alchemists here. See if we can figure something out. Hang on. Whatever you do, don't make a tunnel."

And with that, Ed was gone, and Roy was left with nothing else to do but try and fumble his way through the ashy heat in search for a way out.

His shoulder throbbed again, aching from the injury sustained in the crash down to a very old scar wrapped around his bicep to his elbow, and Roy grimaced, grasping at it.

This was going to be a very long day.


Convening all the alchemists present had been a good idea, at least, but in the end, Ed grudgingly had to admit it had gotten him nowhere.

He'd not expected a host of brilliant ideas, but the utter lack of ability he'd been greeted with had been simply astounding. He was, as he had found out, the only State Alchemist on the train aside from Mustang. While, of course, not all civilian alchemists were untalented- Izumi and his brother being two prime counterexamples- the meager group on this train were. Never mind any large scale water arrays; no one present had the ability to safely transmute anything of any large size at all.

He groaned, standing back again to look over the fiery ruins that separated him and his brother. The military was about two hours away at this point, far too long for him to wait, and by the way Mustang had been coughing, the people still trapped in the train didn't have that long either.

"There's got to be a way to slow this fire down, at least," he muttered under his breath, scowling at it all. Flame Alchemist, indeed. Tch. If he's no use in a fire, what use is he at all?

Ed huffed again, folding his arms in aggravation. He was tempted to try and force his way into the train from the outside in, but knew this could only make matters worse, and cursed, fists clenching.

Still pacing, as dammed painful as the hobbled sort of walk was for him right now, Ed turned again in his walk back and forth in front of the train.

The glint of metal from the trees caught his eye.

He stood there for at least ten seconds, staring closely through foliage and smoke, and when the realization finally hit him, it made his breath quicken and his blood run cold.

Slowly, Ed carefully wiped his expression clean and began to limp back to the train, his heart now pounding.


"Mustang!"

Roy jolted, blinking in surprise at his subordinate's unexpected re-entry into conversation with him. "Fullemtal?" he called back, wincing when he discovered it was even harder to raise his voice than before. "What's-"

"Something's happened. I'm not going to have time to think of something else, so a tunnel's your best option. I've got most of the other survivors over here; whenever you and Al are ready, make a tunnel. Just one, and as small as you can. The people out here will help you, so just try and get everyone that you can out of there as fast as possible and when you two get to the other side, just seal it up and hope for the best."

Roy blinked at the sudden urgency in his subordinate's voice, his head swimming. He had to shake his head a few times to clear it and grimaced, realizing belatedly the smoke inhalation and difficulty getting in oxygen was starting to get to him. "What's... what's happened, Fullmetal? Why the change in plan?"

"...I saw a few people out there, closing in, Mustang. No uniforms, but they're heavily armed and they don't look very friendly."

Roy stopped dead in his tracks, understanding hitting him like a bucket of ice water.

Except ice water would actually be a blessing right now, so a bucket of rocks might be a more fitting description.

This was a controlled explosion, I've known that from the start. Someone purposefully derailed this train. Soldiers from another country would go for a military train; with just me and Ed as targets this one hardly qualifies but, terrorists...

They would go for a civilian train.

And they would've been watching when their explosives went off.

Clearly, their plan had gone wrong, if there were any survivors at all left to tell the tale.

They were coming to rectify that.

And Ed, undoubtedly injured, and definitely alone, was going to try and fight them.

Absolutely not.

"Fullmetal, this is an order: you get yourself and any other survivors that you can out of here."

"What?!"

"That's an order!" he shouted back, hoarse voice rising over flames no matter how much it strained his throat. "Save who you can, get as far away as possible, but do not engage! I know how confident you are in yourself, but you know nothing about these people! Not numbers, not abilities, nothing! You've got no backup coming and just don't waste my time by lying and saying you're not already injured!"

A round of hacking coughs stopped him before he could go on, forcing him to break off but evidently not loud enough for his subordinate to hear, because Ed shouted right back at him without heed for the fact he was currently curled over breathless and wheezing on the floor. "What the hell are you saying?! Just leave you and Al?! I don't think so, Mustang!"

"A-Al... Al'll... he'll be f-fine," Roy gasped out, as soon as he could breathe again. The hot and acrid air burned his throat, and the next smokey wheeze of smoke left him ready to kill for even a hint of fresh air. "Al can wait it out... until backup-"

"I know he can! I'm not worried about Al, I'm worried about you!"

He raised an eyebrow, gaze wandering over smoldering wreckage in hopes of catching just a glimpse of his subordinate. Beyond ash and sparks however, was just more ash and sparks; there was nothing to see except for a red glow in the dark, and he sighed, letting his head rest on his hands again. "Worried about me, Fullmetal?" he muttered to himself, another cough shuddering through his shoulders and down to the very base of his spine. "How very uncharacteristic of you..."

Roy disliked very much to admit it, though- and certainly would not shout the news to Fullmetal- but in his current state of being reduced to a crawl, one arm nearly immovable and the shoulder twitching with agony with every choked breath, his ribs taking their tortuous revenge every time he inched another step forward, and barely able to even breathe, perhaps a little worry was not entirely unnecessary.

But, that changed nothing.

"Fullmetal," he called back at last, shutting his eyes for a moment and ducking even further beneath his jacket, shuddering at another wave of heat. "...Be honest. What is your condition?"

The brief silence that awaited him before the answer told him everything he needed to know, but when Ed still finally fulfilled the request and answered him, Roy was angry enough to chuck the boy straight off the cliff.

"My leg is gone, Mustang."

An uncomfortable, slow beat of absolute silence. Roy closed his eyes, just breathing through the anger and disbelief, because screaming at him now would only tick Fullmetal off and put him in even more pain than before, it was not worth it, it was not worth it-

"...I'm just saying, it could be worse-"

Just, fuck it.

"Could be worse?! You are missing! A! Limb!" he bellowed, and hellfire he just did not care how painfully his chest reacted to the screech. "You flaming dumbass, remember when I asked you earlier if you were all right, and you said ohhhh yes, I'm FINE, Mustang, I'm just dandy out here- did you just not think your leg was relevant?!"

"I never said that, you melodramatic asshole-"

"I don't care! I do not care! You lied through your teeth; what else did you lie about?! You've still got your arm, do you, or did that fly off as well?!"

"Why don't you come out here and ask that question?! Oh, wait, you can't, because you're useless, and stuck waiting there for me!"

"Useless? Me?! Oh, that's rich; I'm going to love to see how much use you're going to be without your leg!"

"Go screw yourself!"

Another round of breathless coughs left Roy unable to answer- probably a good thing, because right now he didn't have the self control or the patience to stop until he screamed himself hoarse. He ducked his head for a moment, gasping for what little oxygen he could manage to get, trembling in the sparks and forced to just wait until he could grab enough air to say something loud enough to be heard.

Damn it, Ed was missing his leg.

And the kid had been planning on making a stand?

Hell, he had been opposed before he'd found that out; now, Ed was getting the hell out of danger even if Roy had to crawl his way out and drag him back himself.

"Look. Ed." He squinted up through the clouds of ash again, looking to where he hoped Ed was crouched outside the wreckage. He forced himself to calm down a little, draining hostility out of his voice, because if he spoke from anger alone then that was how Ed would respond, and they would get nowhere. "Without your leg, you can't even fight. They'll kill you. Get out of here while you still can. They won't attack us, they don't know there are any survivors, and-"

"Mustang, shut up. You're actually doing this? You're actually telling me to abandon you and Al and save myself? Did you hit your head as well or are you really just this fucking stupid?"

"Fullmetal-"

"I told you my condition, now tell me yours! You want me to leave? Then tell me everything that's wrong with you, so I can at least be confident you won't die while I'm gone!"

Roy cursed under his breath and fell silent. Had it been Hawkeye out there, she would've simply trusted his orders and followed them to the letter. But, no such luck. Ed was one of a kind, and if an order went against his conscience, he simply wouldn't follow it. Whether he was just too dammed moral for his own good or it was the fact that he was only a child still, and stubborn and idealistic the way only a child could be, Roy hadn't yet figured it out- but the fact remained that Ed was not just going to blindly follow his order and leave.

God damn him.

The self-assessment he'd given Al had been willing and confident, done so that he and the boy could best work together in a trying situation. The one he gave Ed now was reluctant and upset, done only because he was forced- because he knew, once he heard it, Ed was not going to leave.

But he couldn't bring himself to lie.

"...I can't move my left arm. I suspect, though can not confirm, several broken ribs. And I estimate no more than three hours before we all suffocate from the smoke."

Another short silence, this one even worse than the one that had followed Ed's report of his own injuries.

"...Fullmetal, you can't fight like this, and Al will be fine, I swear it, so just get yourself out of here and-"

"Yeah, and by the sound of it, you would die before backup showed up. Sorry, Mustang, but I'm not about to leave you for dead when you're still alive and kicking. Leg or no leg, bastard."

"Fullmetal!"

"Shut your stupid, ugly face. Don't you dare expect me to run away like a coward and leave you behind. Don't bother to make it an order, either, Colonel; I'll just throw my watch back at you and then fight anyway."

God damn the kid, god damn him! This was really happening. Ed was actually going to fight an unknown, dangerous enemy while missing his leg- and he was doing it just to save him.

There was something unspeakable wrong with that, but no matter how horrifying he found it, nothing he said could take Fullmetal out of this.

Ed was about to risk his life for him.

Roy's hand lowered to his pants pocket, slipping in to curl tightly around one of his gloves. If he could just get himself out there, just one snap and the fight would be over, and Ed wouldn't have to put himself in danger, and he'd be safe.

His lip curled, and, frustration rising, Roy brought a fist down to hit the hot ground again, and when pain whiplashed up through his limb at the movement he did it again and again until he had to grit his teeth not to scream. Ed was about to throw himself into a fight, and here he was, lying down like a lump of uselessness, barely a hundred feet away and even with his gloves but simply unable to help.

God DAMN it!

"Oi, Colonel! You hear what I said?! I'm going in there whether you like it or not!"

Grimacing, Roy swallowed the frustrated scream and tilted his head back, squinting up through the smoke and ash to where he could just glimpse the hint of gold hair. All the things he wanted to say, the screamed orders to get the hell out, the terror he was going to get himself killed, the lie of a promise that he'd be fine, just run and escape now while he still could- all of it failed him, and he just stared upwards, breathing hard, his heart in his throat.

"Be careful, Fullmetal," he ordered at last, his voice hollow, and wished again he could claw his way out to fight with him.

Ed fell silent, clearly having expected more resistance and not been ready to handle something that wasn't a fight. It was quiet save for the hot crackle of fire, Roy prostrate and shaking with anxiety, and Ed, trapped on the outside, about to enter a fight with nearly zero chance of winning.

At last, Ed spoke back to him, and in his voice, Roy heard only coldhearted determination.

"Yes, sir."

Then Ed was gone again, and Roy was left with twice as much urgency as before and absolutely no time to spare.


Maes looked at his watch, pursed his lips, and pressed his foot over the gas pedal just a little harder.

"One hour," he told Hawkeye somberly, and she just gave a tense nod and continued to clean her gun.


When the terrorists attacked, Ed was ready and waiting.

Six of them, each armed to the teeth- one of them firing before they'd even fully reached the site of the crash. Ed had already been expecting it and been just waiting to yank up a metal shield to surround himself and the other survivors- bullets ricocheted in every direction but back at them, and when the metallic ringing finally ceased and he risked peeking his head out into danger, he found that three of the terrorists had already been shot and were out of commission.

He grinned.

"Any chance you wanna take that as a sign of my superiority and give up now?!" he shouted, grin widening, then abruptly ducked back behind his shield at the sound of another bullet firing. "Okay then, guess not."

Without his leg, his usual method of close range ass kicking wasn't really an option here, but this group had already shown themselves not to be too bright. Right now, his main worry was not being too destructive- this cliffside was unstable enough as it was, and a few large blows was all it would take to kill them all. He had to balance a conservative fighting style alongside a rapid takedown, because while his secondary concern was the cliffside collapsing, his primary one remained getting back to Mustang in time.

Normally, conservative and rapid were counterintuitive goals.

But Ed didn't really care much for what was considered normal.

Flexing his hands, Ed took a few steps backwards to return to the mostly intact first train car and his Plan B. While the terrorists remained occupied with staring at him and being afraid, clearly not having been ready to deal with an alchemist, Ed clapped his hands together, took a breath, and slammed them down against the metal of the train car.

The screech of metal tearing itself apart roared across the crash site in an instant, azure light flashing in a brilliant glow as the previously destroyed metal began to stretch upwards. Sheets of metal split apart into bars with an earsplitting, nails on a chalkboard creak, and Ed's knees buckled as he struggled to control the massive transmutation. This is only for show, Ed, come on, this is only for show... make it, damn it, don't give out now...!

Slowly, piece by piece, his final desired object took form until finally, glinting in the sunlight with the shine of something brand spanking new, an absolutely gorgeous work of metal alchemy, sat a tank.

...Okay, well, it wasn't actually a tank. Ed didn't know enough about the inner of mechanisms of a tank or artillery to transmute one at all accurately- hell, he couldn't even make a working gun. But the point was, it looked like one.

"All right!" he cried out, ecstatic, and somehow managed to work himself up into his newest creation even with one leg currently missing. He grinned wildly- okay, so maybe this was a little fun!- and began to drive the monster forward.

"'I'm never letting you touch my car, Fullmetal," he quoted under his breath, sticking his tongue out at the memory of Colonel Bastard mocking him when he'd asked to drive. "'You don't even have a license and besides, you're so short you can't even see the road.' Well, what do you say now, bastard?! I'm saving your ass while driving a dammed tank! I don't even want to drive your car anymore anyway, I'll just steamroll it with this!"

Ed laughed again, beaming when the terrorists panicked at the very sight of him and began to huddle themselves closer and closer together. Clearly, they hadn't been expecting a State Alchemist to be on board. "Now, are you going to come quietly, or do you want me to show you what this baby can do first?!"

Quite clearly, none of them had absolutely any interest in seeing just what Ed's tank could do.

(Probably a good thing, considering it really couldn't do much more than drive.)

With the terrorists all huddled together now, though, his goal had been realized, and Ed grinned. He quickly clapped his hands together, then vaulted out of the tank (his leg gave a furious spike of pain again at that one), and slammed them to the ground to send the earth around the enemies spiraling up to form a cage around them.

First half, taken down by their own bullets, and second half, by their own cowardice.

Easiest. Fight. Ever.

Ed approached the cage, arms folded and expression firmly set in a smirk. "When they ask you in prison, you can tell them that Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist, who is totally six feet tall and not a dammed shrimp, defeated you all singlehandedly, while Colonel Bastard Flame Alchemist did absolutely nothing except depend on me to save him. Got that?!"

The terrorists, all still cowering away from him, responded with a round of frightened, trembling nods.

Then, of course, because something always had to go wrong...

The ground started to shake.

It was a violent tremor that ripped his crutch out of hand and sent it flying. Ed gasped, already precarious sense of balance vanishing and sending him to his one knee, and he grappled to hold onto something solid, his mind racing. An earthquake? Now? His first thought was Al and Mustang's tunnel- but that would've destabilized the cliff underneath the third train car. He was many yards away from it.

Another rumble forced him to his back, the handhold his metal arm had managed to carve out into the ground dissolving into nothing. Ed cried out in panic, struggling to hold his own, but the third tremor was so powerful he was tossed forward in a bone-bruising roll that made his head spin, and he just gave up entirely on the traditional route.

Clap- flash- smash!

Metal arm, made into a pick axe, pierced through earth so deep Ed was buried up to his wrist, and he sighed in relief.

Whatever was going on, it wouldn't be dislodging him any time soon-

Ed's confident grin dropped, and he stared in absolute disbelief as he found himself watching the earth around his automail dissolve into mud soup.

Then, as if on cue, the fourth tremor came, and with it a rock came hurtling through the air straight for his head.

Instantly, everything became clear.

This wasn't an earthquake.

This wasn't an avalanche.

This wasn't a landslide.

The way that earth had dissolved... and the rock coming for him now...

Ed brought his metal limb up, the thing dripping with mud, and in a flash it had been transmuted back into a fist. He hurled it forward in as hard a punch as he could, and rock met metal and shattered.

This was the work of an alchemist.

Ed crouched, gasping, hands held only inches apart and at the ready for another transmutation. But the blow to destroy the rock whose destination had been his head, while successful, had spread a cloud of thick cloud of dust that only joined the miasma brought up by the quakes that he could still feel trembling at his feet. His visibility had dropped to nearly nothing, and Ed, breathing hard, was given no choice but to wait for the enemy to reveal himself.

"I know you're there, alchemist! Show yourself!"

A few moments of the dust cloud just shifting in the gentle wind, and Ed kneeling there, nerves tent and muscles taut with adrenaline.

And then at last...

"Oh? So you figured out this was alchemy, then? Good for you, boy, good for you."

Ed spun after the voice, hand forming a blade in the space of a milisecond, and prepared to strike. The dust cloud remained too thick to really see but it was slowly parting, and his eyes darted through it frantically, trying to find the one detail that would reveal the enemy.

"Now, what was that I heard about Mustang, earlier? He is here with you- and still trapped in the train, you said? Hmm... that's a pity, then. Would've been rather fun to fight the both of you together."

Ed snarled, fury rising in a monster he almost could not control. Mustang- trapped- slowly suffocating- "You keep your hands off him! I'm your opponent; leave him out of this!"

The enemy laughed quietly, and Ed squinted again, the dust cloud thinning enough that he was able to discern a shadow standing just where it sounded the bastard should be. Tall, at least six feet, slim, facing him-

"Relax, Fullmetal Alchemist. I'm not about to go through the trouble of digging him out just to kill him. The only one you need to be worrying about is yourself."

Then the shadow's arm raised to his own chest, there was a flash of light, and the dust cloud blasted outwards to leave all revealed.

Ed coughed and ducked his head in alarm, squeezing his eyes shut as dirt flew overhead and dug into his face and hair painfully. He coughed again, gasping in a breath of suddenly clean air even as he scrambled back, blinking stinging eyes to continue to stare at the enemy.

Rather than his face, Ed's gaze went directly to the necklace of a transmutation circle clenched tightly between thumb and forefinger. The man grinned at him, tilting the pendant upwards until it caught the light, and Ed's breath caught when he realized it was the symbols that would cause a landslide.

"Time for a proper introduction, Fullmetal. James Schmidit, formerly known as the Landslide Alchemist. Before I deserted the military, of course." He flexed his fingers, eyes flashing, and beamed. "Now, let's see this fight get interesting, shall we?"