.:Six:.

In Which Edward May or May Not Throw a (Sophisticated) Temper Tantrum

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It was mind-numbingly cold. White flakes swirled in a frosty gray haze, and Edward hunched himself against the harsh winds, his footsteps thumping forward through fresh snow.

At the moment, he was trundling through an evergreen forest, but he knew it wouldn't be that way for long. Not in this fickle landscape. He'd rarely been to this area of the gate before; the Beasts in this section were cruel and unpredictable.

Out of the grey storm came flashes of red and sparks of fire. Something in the distance roared loudly, and Ed thought he heard Mustang's voice before it was extinguished by the snorts and snuffles of the Beast. The air warmed, heating his flesh until it burned. Ed groaned aloud, his world overtaken by fire and then by lightning, lightning that gripped him with the Gatekeepers' little fingers, lightning that stung with the power of alchemy, lightning that wouldn't let go. He couldn't breathe.

The world turned blindingly white before his eyes, the Gate changing shape almost instantly. But it wasn't the Gate. It was the hospital. Memories floated back to Ed slowly, but the pain from his dreams didn't go away. There was an odd pressure on his face. He coughed, turning wearily to see his brother sitting in a chair next to his bed, a book in his hands.

Al's eyes lit up. "Brother! How are you feeling?"

"Like a monster ran me over," Ed grumbled. His voice was muffled, and Ed noticed for the first time that there was a clear mask around his mouth. He pulled it off, struggling to sit up.

"Ah—Brother, you shouldn't do that."

Ed winced as his skin protested his movements. "What—"

"The doctor said you'll have bruises for a while, from the Beast…" Al trailed off as Ed lifted his shirt to see a dark purple mark across his chest. From the way his arm and thigh smarted, he assumed he'd find something similar if he looked there as well.

He glanced at Al, whose forehead was lightly bandaged. His arm was firmly wrapped in a splint. "Al! You're hurt!" he said.

Al followed his brother's gaze and smiled again. "It's not really broken, just a small fracture," he assured Ed. "I'm fine, Brother."

Ed nodded slowly, coughing again, but he couldn't look away from his brother, whose health had never been a problem before. Ed couldn't remember the last time that he had worried about dragging Al along beside him, but now a nagging fear settled in the back of his mind based on the notion that Al could now be hurt more seriously than bandages could help.

"Besides," Al continued after a moment, "you were much worse off, Brother. I was worried about you."

"I'm fine now," he said, as a nurse poked her head into the open door.

"I thought I heard talking," she said amiably. "I'll have the doctor come by in a second." She barely gave Al enough time to thank her before she vanished.

"What time is it?" Ed asked. "What happened?"

"It's a little after two," Al said, frowning. "You've only been asleep for a few hours. Everyone else is alright. The Pyro is locked away in the stadium—Mustang snuck out through one of the side doors." He paused, thinking. "They said he did an emergency press conference, too. About two hours ago, I think. People were starting to worry, and I'm not sure what he said to calm them down…"

"He's got a silver tongue," Ed said, without bite. "I'm sure he thought of something."

A few moments later, the doctor stepped in, a smile stretching across his freckled face as he rattled off their list of injuries: a hairline fracture to Al's arm and a deep scratch to his head, three cracked ribs and a heavy dose of smoke inhalation for Ed, and a smattering of scrapes and bruises for both of them.

"It's fairly normal to experience shortness of breath after what you've experienced," the doctor explained in a gravelly tone as he pressed his cold stethoscope to Ed's chest. "We've kept you on oxygen while you were asleep—take a deep breath for me—and your lungs are still healing, Edward. You need to be sure to take good care of them. You're free to leave if you'd like, Alphonse, but we'll be keeping your brother for an additional twenty-four hours for rest and observation—" he said, pausing as Ed snorted in amusement.

"I'd like to see you try," he said with a brazen grin.

The doctor's youthful face sobered. "I've been told that you have the habit of being reckless with your health, so I must warn you that if you're not careful, there's always the chance of permanent lung damage…" he said quietly.

"I'll be fine," Ed said, but Al caught his attention. He had that gleam in his eye, and the expression on his face reminded Ed of the one their mother donned when she was dead set on getting her way. It was a flat, no-nonsense sort of thing.

"He'll stay," Al contradicted.

"Good to hear," said the doctor, flipping the papers back onto his clipboard in a single, fluid movement. His face brightened again. "Take care of your body and it will take care of you, Edward!" he chirped as his disappeared into the hallway.

"What a creep," Ed muttered to himself. He turned to Al, who pinned him with an icy stare. "What?"

"Really, Brother. No running off, alright? You just came back from the Gate, and I don't want to lose you so quickly."

"Alright, Al," Ed said, sinking back into his pillows. He took a slow, rattling breath. Not that he'd admit it, but his body still felt weighed down and weary, and he wasn't in a huge hurry to leave his bed, for once. Al probably noticed this—he always did—because he, too, sat back with a satisfied look on his face. "Anyway, have you heard from Mustang at all? What's going on now?"

His brother shook his head. "He asked to be notified when you woke. I haven't heard anything new, except that one of the nurses was talking about the press conference she heard on the radio."

Ed grunted. He felt it unlikely that the Beasts had paused their attacks while he was asleep. "Not sure I trust that Bastard to figure things out on his own."

Al gave a halfhearted protest against Ed's perpetual nickname for the Brigadier-General, then sighed. "I would have gone myself if I thought it would help," he said. "But you looked so terrible I could hardly leave." He paused. "Besides, without alchemy, I don't think it would be of much use to them."

The heating unit hummed to life above them. Ed stretched his arms above his head and looked around the sterile room, already sinking into boredom. His brother adjusted himself in the uncomfortable-looking wooden chair, shifting his book to his good arm.

"What's that?" Ed coughed, tilting his head to look at the pages in Al's hands. Al followed his brother's gaze.

"Oh, I've been…researching," he said, sheepishly. For the first time, Ed noticed that there was a pile of books stacked up on the bedside table. "I went to the library for a bit to grab some books."

"Books about what?" Ed asked curiously.

"Different creation theories, some alchemical histories...it seems like all of this," he waved his hand, and Ed's mind leapt to understand that he probably meant the Beasts and their accompanying natural disasters, "used to be normal. At least, according to at least five different creation stories. The Beasts were just thought of as spirits back then, though. People sacrificed food and animals to try and appease them, but nothing worked.

"They could fight a lot more easily, though, because they could do alchemy without the rule of equivalent exchange. The alchemy was inside of them somehow—" he shook his head as he watched Ed's eyebrows rise "—but the texts aren't really clear on that part. What I do know is that they sacrificed their alchemy to make the Gate, which they called the spirit realm. It was meant as a completely closed system, somewhere that alchemy and the Beasts were trapped so that people could live their lives freely."

"But…?"

"But people started realizing that there were ways to work around the system. They started developing different alchemical arrays, which initially allowed them to do alchemy again without risking destruction from the Beasts."

"So, the Beasts were completely sealed off, and there was no equivalent exchange? They could just use alchemy however they wanted?"

"For a while. But when they created the Gate, its primary purpose was to keep all alchemical energy—including the Beasts—safely inside of it. The best guess that we can make is that the Gate somehow…evolved."

"Evolved?" Ed parroted. "How could it evolve? It's based on an array."

"I'm not sure, Brother. But alchemy is a form of energy, and maybe…I don't know. Maybe it just started working to fulfill its duty to the best of its ability. At any rate, it created an exchange rate. Equivalent exchange. Which," Al granted, resting his head on his hand, "wasn't really equivalent at all. It was subjective, according to what the Gate thought was proper."

A pause. "An imperfect system," Ed murmured, "but it worked. For centuries."

Al nodded. "Until now."

"Right," Ed said, suddenly annoyed. "And now we have to figure out how to get it back. How to recreate a whole alternate plane—"

"Not exactly," Al interrupted. "The plane should still be there, just empty. We just need to recreate the gate part of the Gate. The mechanism that keeps everything in the plane."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Ed asked, not really expecting an answer.

Al gave one anyway. "I'm not sure," He sighed. "Even with the ability to use alchemy, the cost would be huge. And we don't even know where to start as far as the array goes…"

The expression on Al's face became gloomy. "We'll figure something out," Ed reassured him, though the probably and eventually remained unspoken. Until then, they'd be forced to dodge Beasts and brave the elements until an answer came. But there was something in Ed's mind, some spark that refused to let him believe that the answer wouldn't appear.

"Excuse me, Mr. Elric?"

"Yes?" Al and Ed chorused instinctively.

The nurse who had appeared in the doorway cleared her throat. "Mr. Edward Elric. You have a phone call at the front desk. Normally, you'd be able to take it here in the room, but the power has been in and out, and the generators can only take so much…"

"It's fine," Ed coughed, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Al stood without being asked, and his eyes dared Ed to object. "Lead the way."

She led them through the maze of hallways. The hospital was a madhouse due to recent events, and the familiar buzz of movement was only magnified by the sheer number of stretchers being carried and the feeling of urgency. Al remained close enough to Ed's side to catch him if he stumbled but not close enough that it felt like hovering.

They reached the nurse's station. The woman pressed a few buttons on the phone, and Ed pushed a few coughs out of his system before he took the phone from her.

"Hello?"

"Fullmetal?" It was Mustang. Ed could hardly hear him over the bustle and noise that came through as well. "How are you feeling?"

For a moment, Ed was taken aback by the concern. "What?"

"How are you feeling?" The voice was more deliberate this time, as though speaking to a child. "It's not a hard question. The doctor told me the smoke inhalation was severe. And you've broken your ribs?"

Seriously, thought Ed, irritated, do they have to exaggerate so much? It's not like I'm dying.

"I'm fine, Mustang," he growled. He cleared his throat, which still felt dry and tasted of ash. "Anyway, I hear you put the Pyro away."

"We did, but there's more where that came from." Ed became aware of the sound of shouting in the background, and he pressed his ear into the phone to hear better before Mustang continued. "It's these little black ones," he said, "the ones with the creepy grins. We're in Tobha. There was a mudslide that buried half the place. We're trying to get people out safely, digging through the rubble, but these little—" he broke off, cursing, and Ed heard gunshots. "They've been tripping anyone trying to escape, flinging mud back where we've been digging people out. They're even pushing over buildings—you'd think they're too small, but with enough of them—"

"Mustang, calm down," Ed warned. "You're giving them what they want."

"If I still had alchemy, I would have fried them hours ago," his commanding officer snarled.

"They're not dangerous," Ed insisted.

"You said that the last time!"

"Yeah," Ed agreed, rolling his eyes, "but that was before I knew it was going to fall in love with you. Look, there's no way to contain the Keepers. There's too many of them. Besides, they're only curious. Deal with the Keepers like little children," he suggested. "You just give them a distraction and ignore them until they go away."

There was a pause on the other line. "That's your philosophy on child care?"

"Mustang," Ed growled.

"Alright, alright. A distraction."

Ed coughed, thinking quickly. "Build a fire," he said after a moment. He had hardly spoken the words before he heard Mustang's muffled voice relaying the order to some of his men. He waited impatiently, watching Al drum his fingers on the desk beside him.

"Hope this works, Fullmetal," Mustang said into the phone. "Because if we have to try to cage all of the Beasts, we'll start running out of places to stash them all."

"It'll work," Ed said confidently. Then he quickly added, "and I can help with the others, too. I can be to Tobha in a few hours," he said, ignoring his brother's raised eyebrows.

"No, Ed," Mustang said firmly. "You're still recovering. And the last thing we need is for you get seriously hurt on the job—"

"I'm fine," Ed protested, annoyed, "They've checked me out—"

"—and I've already heard about the twenty-four hour resting period. You're meant to be doing research. You and Al are our best bets for figuring out how to deal with this mess in the long term."

"We can't do research if we're stuck here in the hospital anyway!"

"But that's where you'll be doing it. Do not leave the hospital until the doctors let you," Mustang said.

"Is that an order?" Ed snarled.

"You looked like shit the last time I saw you, Fullmetal," Mustang said flatly. "Stay where you are."

A click signaled the end of the conversation, and Ed slammed the phone into the receiver, swearing to himself. "It's for the best, Brother," Al said easily after a moment, having caught the gist of the conversation. "We need to figure out what to do more than anything else, and we can work from here."

"I know that," Ed grumbled. "But that doesn't mean he has to order me around and treat me like a child."

"I half-thought you and Brigadier-General Mustang would get along a bit better after a year of separation," Al said to himself, staring at the ceiling. "I don't know why I thought that."

"Me neither," Ed barked crossly. "Let's get back to the room."

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Something about a full stomach always put Ed in a better mood. Or maybe it was because it had been such a long time since he'd had some of the foods. As he wolfed down his first warm roll of bread in a year, he felt decidedly better about the whole situation. Hell, even hospital food was an improvement over what he was used to, which was nothing at all.

Al watched him in amusement as he picked at his own meal, which had presumably been provided because even though he was technically discharged, they were the Elric brothers, after all.

As one of the nurses bustled in to give Ed another once-over, Al brought up the problem of the Gate once more.

"Whether or not we actually find a way to harness all the alchemy, we'll need to recreate the Gate. I might know where to find the array—or maybe arrays—to help."

Ed moved so that the nurse could check his pulse. "What do you mean? Those things would have been made centuries ago. Millennia, even. How could they have survived?"

Al shuffled through his pile of textbooks, drawing an aged brown one form the stack. "Most of the books only discuss the necessary arrays vaguely," he said as he flipped through the pages, "and it's difficult to draw such a complicated array in such a small book."

"Right," Ed realized. "With all of the required elemental tiers, it must have been huge."

"Exactly," Al agreed. "This author has tried to detail some of the bits and pieces of it, but…" he trailed off, pushing the book toward his brother. As he turned the pages, Ed could see that many of the pages were faded and worn, and a few were partially or completely ripped away. "With only this, it's impossible to see which pieces fit where, or how much is missing."

"Well, where did he find the information?" Ed asked, coughing and rubbing his sore throat. He began flipping through the pages again, waving the nurse off as she tried to get him to lie back down in bed.

"Well," Al said slowly, gently prying the book back from Ed's hands and flipping to the first few pages. "The introduction of the book mentioned…" he paused, reading. "It looks like these are copied from a series of famous cave paintings just outside of Senna…and…researchers travel there to study some of the primitive arrays. But some of them—like this one—are extremely complex." He looked up at Ed. "Which means that most of the studies probably end up being pure conjecture."

Ed paused to let that sink in. "We need to go there," he said quietly.

"It would help," Al agreed warily. "But in the meantime—"

"I'm signing out AMA," he said flatly. This was directed at the nurse, but when he looked up, he realized that she must have left.

"Brother," Al groaned in exasperation, "you know you're meant to stay put. We still need to research to figure out where we're even going to get the alchemy from. These arrays are useless if we can't power them. You know that."

"How much work are we actually going to get done here in the hospital?" Ed asked. "If we're stuck here without access to a library—"

"They could bring the books to us, Brother," Al said. Ed shot him a look, knowing that Al felt the same as he did: it was nearly impossible for them to research without being able to browse entire sections, to really put their hands on the books, to decide for themselves which ideas were worth pursuing. "Alright," Al conceded, "that's never really worked for us before."

"No, it hasn't," Ed agreed. "Al, it's not like we're going to be fighting or anything. We just need to take a train and sit in a cave for a while to look at the arrays. Nothing dangerous."

Al hesitated. "Still, I don't think that the Brigadier-General—"

"We can go if we want," Ed said haughtily. "There's no need for Mustang to check in again if he thinks we're under lock and key for the next twenty-four hours under his orders."

"Brother," Al said, "you know that's not what he meant. He's just worried, that's all."

"Mustang can kiss my ass. Besides, we're researching, just like he wanted. We're just not doing it in a stuffy hospital ward."

Al huffed, running a hand through his hair. "You're just throwing a temper tantrum," he argued, voice rising a bit. "If the Brigadier-General hadn't forbidden you to leave—"

"We'd still be going anyway," Ed said.

His brother sighed, but Ed knew he felt the same. "It could be dangerous if we run into Beasts out there, Brother," Al chided.

"Yeah, but it's dangerous anywhere," Ed said seriously. "It's not like the Beasts will leave us alone just because we're in a hospital."

Al hummed, and Ed knew he could see the logic in that, at least. "Alright, Brother," he said finally. "But when the Brigadier-General comes to kill you this time, I might just step aside and let him do it.

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A/N: Slow chapter, I know. But look on the bright side: both Ed and Mustang are back to normal. For those of you interested, the Pyro comes from Roald Dahl's fabulous and peculiar short story "The Minpins," although there it's a monster called "the Gruncher." The story is meant for kids, but it's a great read if you can get your hands on a copy, especially if you're a fan of Dahl!

Thanks to everyone who reviewed! It's awesome to hear from you all. I hope you enjoyed this chapter as well, and feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you thought!

~ket

Next Chapter: A Wild Mirkworm Appears! Ed Uses Sarcasm! It's Not Very Effective…