A/N- Sorry for the wait :( It's just Christmas is a busy time of year and I had to do a lot of stuff. This chapter is from a general point of view as Ed is a little bit incapacitated at the moment as you might imagine. Anyway here it is!

DISCLAIMER- I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist, it belongs to Hiromu Arakawa. All that I own is the story line and 9 FMA volumes (one bought today :D) and the complete Brotherhood collection. Yay!

Chapter Six

There was fire and rubble strewn about the place. All the villagers could do was thank any god that nobody had been in the church at the time, until the military arrived, seeing as the building had been destroyed in strange circumstances crowded around the wreckage of the church. They stood there gazing at wonder at the mass of destruction that had taken place there. One family was crying onto each others shoulders, wondering if they were going to see their son ever again, because he had left the house for the church 10 minutes before it exploded. No one had seen him since.

What sat in the place where the church used to be, was a battlefield. Chunks of stone and wood were scattered around, some supporting each other up and in danger of collapsing. Lots of what was left was on fire, and the villagers could feel the heat radiating from it. Stained glass shards littered the ground, making gouges where they had slid across the ground. It had been hard to breath at first, because of all the dust in the air, caused by some of the stone being blown up. It almost created a mushroom around the site.

Three black cars rounded the corner, the colour indicating they were military. The cars braked in front of the church and a swarm of blue seemed to spill out of them as the soldiers got out of the cars. One man was obviously the leader, as he stood about shouting at everybody.

"Fraser, Logan, Connelly and Beal start by stopping the fire. After that clear away the rubble." The respective men rushed away to their jobs, as the man watched them, then, nodding, turned to face the rest of them again.

"Okay! Collins, Kotler, Mowat, Stephen and Watt get yourselves over there and clean up this place. Search for survivors while you're at it. The rest of you get that crowd AWAY from here then try to find out who caused this god-damn explosion." He stomped off, towards what was left of the church, probably to over see the clearing away of rubble.

The rest of the military swiftly marched or ran off to complete their jobs. The shifting of the rubble took a considerable amount of time, as the church had been a large building. It had not gotten any smaller, it was just in smaller pieces. Large trucks with open backs were called in to carry the material away. The fires had long gone out, and everybody was either rubble and looking for anything (or anyone) salvageable. That or searching for any sign to shed light on how the church managed to explode.

Warrant Officer Beal was currently moving rubble into the trucks. He was covered in powdered stone and mud, but he kept on going, muscles straining from lifting all those rocks. Suddenly a shout came from the Lieutenant who was commanding them at the moment.

"Beal, Kotler swap jobs!"

Beal smiled. Kotler had been assigned the job of looking for survivors. That would be easy. All he had to do was look around a small area. Both men nodded and got on with their new jobs. Beal surveyed the wreckage. Best place to start would be under the piles of stone of the west side. He marched over there and began gently moving the stone chunks off the large piles, hoping to unearth the young man that family had been looking for. He ran the description over in his head. Short black hair, blue eyes, wearing brown.

He had almost finished with this pile when he saw a flash of brown. He glanced back over his shoulder wondering if he had actually seen that. Beal walked back to the pile and shifted a few more pieces of stone. He raised his eyebrows as he realised that he was looking at someone's head. His mouth fell open on shock when he/she actually moved. He began to unearth the person in the rubble frantically, shouting out to his colleagues at the same time. He began to work faster when he saw that the person was struggling to breath. By then (thankfully) his friends had heard him and rushed over to help. They pulled away the last of the rubble to find a teenaged boy underneath it all. From behind his injuries didn't seem to be to bad, but when they rolled him over Beal had to fight back to urge to gag at the sight of it. He could actually smell the flesh burning.

"Oh my god... somebody get an ambulance!" Beal started of whispering but ended up shouting, slightly hysterical.

He cradled the young man in his arms, trying to ignore the groans that he was emitting. The boys face was unrecognisable. His face was covered in horrible burns, which extended down his neck, torso, left arm and leg. After a closer examination, he realised that the teenager was missing an arm and his leg was automail. It was hardly recognisable as automail anymore though, it was so melted and twisted. The mans eyes had somehow miraculously escaped being harmed too badly, but Beal could see that his left eye was cloudy and glazed over. He was breathing in short, shallow gasps shuddering at each intake of air. His hair was long on the left side of hos head while on his right it was burnt down to the roots, leaving scorch marks on the boys head that Beal knew would leave scars. Beal lifted his head up at the sound of an ambulance, realising that his friends were standing next to him, looking down at the boy with gazes that were mixtures of pity and disgust.

Beal wondered vaguely where the ambulance had come from, there were no proper hospitals in the nearby area. He figured the military had phoned one of their own hospitals,which they were permitted to do if it was an emergency. Obviously it was a matter for life and death to this boy here. Beal gently picked him up, wincing at the small shriek that came from the boy, trying to handle him more carefully. The paramedics came with a stretcher and he laid him down on it, teeth clenched from the effort of slow descent.

"We'll take him from here, Warrant Officer."

Beal nodded dumbly, unable to reply due to shock. He watched the ambulance drive of with sirens blaring, and he wondered if the boy was going to be all right.

A/N- Thanks for reading! Okay, things to explain.

1) The reason Mustang hasn't heard of the explosion is because, nobody apart from a few people know that Ed was there and that was more of the higher ups than the ones that come to the scene of the crime.

2)Reason for why there is no higher ranking officer at Guilden is because I don't think they would take an exploding church with no known casualties as a high ranking priority.

3) Yes, the boy is Ed if you hadn't figured it out.

Please review and until next time!

Fullmetalsoul0062