The Game of Three Generals

by Lady Norbert

A/N: Yes, we're almost done! Only two chapters remain after this one - don't worry, I wouldn't leave you hanging. The next chapter will answer the question I know everyone is still asking. In fact, it's the actual name of the chapter! "Prince or Princess?" With a little luck, I'm hoping to wrap it up this weekend, but we'll see how it goes. Thanks for all your patience and the lovely, lovely reviews.

Chapter Twenty: Komadai

Komadai: A wooden stand where captured pieces are stored until they are returned to the game.

While MPs take Piper to the holding cell (where, presumably, he gets to hang around and trade annoyed stories with Sikorsky), Grumman leads the procession of allies to the Situation Room. Personnel are flooding the corridors, the word evidently spreading quickly that the report of the Fuhrer's death has been greatly exaggerated, and they line the walls, saluting and gaping simultaneously. Roy and Riza are right behind him, the exonerated convict scarcely less a subject of fascination, and are themselves immediately followed by the Elrics, and then everyone else.

Once they are seated around the great table, Grumman stands, steepling his fingers for a moment as he smiles at them all.

"First and foremost, you have my thanks," he says. "From everything I have been given to understand, your actions today have prevented what could have been long-reaching and possibly devastating consequences for Amestris, and also for Xing." He turns to the Princess. "Your traitorous half-brother has reared his head once more, and was involved in this plot. Once Amestris was in our enemy's hands, an effort would have been made to take Xing from the Emperor."

"I wish I could say I'm surprised," she says ruefully.

"I promised most of you an explanation when we were at General Armstrong's house," he continues, "and I know that you two" - he nods to his granddaughter and her husband - "deserve one most of all. You must be wondering why I stayed hidden for so long, allowed this to happen to you."

"I admit I'm curious," says Roy. Riza only nods.

"Let me start at the beginning, when the office blew."

Grumman is in high spirits after his meeting with the Cretan ambassador. Setting aside the fact that Amestris is finally starting to find some kind of peace with Creta after so many years, he's happy to have his family in the city again. His granddaughter is healthy and his great-grandchild is halfway here, and now he and his grandson-in-law - his most trusted aide, his prize pupil - will discuss the threat that continues to linger in the shadows and how they might draw it out. He wants this Acheron character defeated before the baby is born.

Piper is preparing coffee when he reaches the office. "You're about out of sugar, Your Excellency," he says, rising and saluting. He's all right, Grumman supposes, although he'll feel better when his own adjutant returns from bereavement leave. "I need to go down and get some more. Your papers for the meeting with General Mustang are on your desk."

"Dismissed."

Piper leaves the outer office and Grumman opens the door to the inner sanctum. He starts to cross to his desk, and then pauses. Something smells slightly off.

He moves back to the corridor and looks around. There is no one in sight. Even the guards who are normally stationed in the hall are noticeably absent. There's an eerie stillness to the whole scene, and he feels a chill. He looks back at the door to his private chamber; it's still ajar, as he left it. He grasps the back of Piper's wheeled desk chair and gives it a good shove, sending it flying across the room to collide with his door and slam it shut.

The explosion comes barely two seconds later. It's all he can do to drop down behind Piper's desk to keep from being too badly hurt by the flying debris, but it's not enough to save himself from a broken arm or some deep lacerations.

Someone rigged his office. He thinks he has a good idea who it was - he had plenty of opportunity, after all. He wonders if the attack was solely meant for himself or if Roy was a target too; thankfully something delayed him. No time for such contemplations, now, however; he's got to get out of here, because if his saboteur returns and finds him still alive, he won't stay that way for long.

There's a well-kept secret about the Fuhrer's office at Central Command, one that Piper wouldn't know. Groaning, feeling the pain in his aging and wounded limbs, Grumman pushes a half-incinerated bookcase until it exposes the room's hidden exit. He slips inside and, grunting, pulls the case back into position. There is a ladder here that will take him to the sewers - the Fuhrer's private mode of escape. But where to go?

He can think of only one place. Nearly an hour later, he's beating as best he can on the trapdoor in Madame Christmas's basement. One of her daughters pulls open the hatch and points a gun between his eyes, then retracts it quickly when she recognizes him. "Your Excellency!"

"Help?"

They keep him there, Chris and her girls. They set his broken arm, nurse his cuts, fuss over him in a way that, if things weren't so dire, would make him feel like a giddy schoolboy. Chris shuts down the bar, fearful that he'll be discovered. Her son has been arrested for the explosion, giving her a decent cover for the shutdown - it looks as though she's fled the vicinity. He feels terrible, letting Roy go through this - letting Riza go through this - but he's afraid to move. Roy's in prison and Riza's essentially a prisoner in her own home. If he reveals himself to the enemy, it could be very dangerous for one or both of them. He bides his time, waiting for the outcome of the trial, decently confident that justice will prevail.

When he finds that he's wrong to trust in this, he knows he has to show himself. He can't let Roy die. But he can't just pop out and announce that "Hey, surprise, here I am!" He needs a plan. And as the hours separating Roy from his fate dwindle down to the last handful, he hasn't found one. With the allies scattered and no reliable way to get a message to them, he feels trapped.

"I can see why you didn't want to talk," Roy muses.

"Riza in particular was in a bad position," says Grumman. "One wrong step and it could have been a complete disaster. I thought it better to wait and see what developed. Make no mistake - I was not going to let you be executed. But until Miles showed up, I wasn't sure how to stop it." He looks at them gravely. "I am sorry."

They are, of course, generous with him. He secretly expected nothing less. They are too relieved - relieved to be alive, relieved that they still have each other, relieved to have him back and to once again be surrounded by the people they love - to be even a little angry. Inwardly he chuckles; they are just slightly predictable in their good-heartedness, and he wouldn't have them any other way. He is proud of who they have become, his greatest hope for the future.

Scar interrupts the proceedings, then, by forcing Dong Bao to carry the dead body of their longtime enemy into the room. As interruptions go, it's almost comical, especially when he gives his reason for allowing the exiled prince to live as simply, "I needed him to carry the body." Nervous laughter rings in the room when he says this, even though it's fairly clear that he's not kidding.

Princess May orders the Xingese guards who have accompanied her to Amestris to take her half-brother into custody. "My brother the Emperor will wish to deal with him personally, with Your Excellency's permission, of course."

"By all means, Your Highness."

Acheron's body is taken to the morgue level, and Roy suggests that they have Dr. Knochs come from Central Hospital to perform the autopsy. The cranky, toothpick-chewing coroner is about as pleased to see them all alive as Grumman would have expected, and he's even less delighted to be picking at the semi-charred remains of a national enemy. "Fine, fine, just leave me alone," he grumbles. "I'll bring you my report."

From the morgue, they make their way to what's left of Grumman's office, and he's amused to find that this has turned into something of a parade route. As they turn down the hallway leading to the office proper, the little procession comes to a halt. Soldiers line both sides of the corridor, and when they spot their restored leader, they lift their swords in the sabre arch. He proceeds down the hall, the allies in close formation behind his family, as the blades separate before him. It's a mark of respect, of welcome, of homecoming. He's genuinely touched.

The office, if it can even still be called that, is cordoned off so no one can go inside. They pull down the barricades without a second thought and take a good look around. "Roy, Alphonse," says Grumman, "do you think you two can do something about this?"

Between the two of them, they are soon able to alchemize the office back into something closely resembling its original state. It's certainly near enough that Grumman isn't about to criticize; the furnishings will need to be replaced, but the structural integrity of the room and the building has been restored. They even throw in a fresh coat of paint while they're at it.

"I suppose that as Acting Fuhrer," Roy says mildly, "I need to officially step down and return the control of the country to its rightful leader. However, when I was arrested, I was stripped of that authority, so I'm not sure what the protocol is." He looks at Falman, who generally has codes and subsections memorized, but Falman only shrugs.

"There's no precedent for any of this, General," he says. "Even setting aside the fact that you were the first Fuhrer Auxiliary in Amestrian history, there's absolutely no precedent for a dead Fuhrer coming back to reclaim his post."

"Well, if I don't hear any objections," says Grumman, amused, "I'll take back my job."

Riza is reluctant to let him out of her sight, Grumman realizes, but she needs to return to the mansion. She explains about how she locked the loyal staff in the basement for their protection. He dispatches a number of soldiers to accompany the First Granddaughter, including the Armstrong siblings, with orders to round up any of Piper's loyalists who still guard the property.

"That's going to be a bit time-consuming," he observes to Roy, who remains with him at his wife's behest. "Figuring out who was just following orders and who was honestly in on it."

"We should be able to get at least some information out of Piper, especially once he knows Acheron is dead."

"That's probable," Grumman notes, polishing his glasses. "You look exhausted, my boy."

"You'll have to excuse me. It's been a pretty eventful day."

"Yes, I suppose it's not every day that we both come back from the dead."

"I hope not. It would lose all its novelty." There's a hint of contrived innocence in Roy's eyes, and one corner of his mouth quirks the littlest bit.

It's good to be home.