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CHAPTER 6:

EQUIVALENT WAITRESS

.

Rose jolted violently and whirled to look at him, her eyes and her entire face coming alight and alive as she beamed with warm, wide elation.

The illusion, or maybe it was reality, or maybe it was the light of her warmth, or maybe it was all of existence everywhere in all of unobservable and observable dimensional and the void of space and time and within him and his self and his being and his soul and his heart and his mind and his brain and his body, shattered into so many motes of nothingness and everything that it simply fractured.

There was too much life and elation, and warm joy and life, in her visage.

It was a lot less worshipful and unthinking, but she was looking at him very much in the same way that she'd looked at the statues of Leto, and Cornello.

At long last, Edward understood the reason why the Gate had sent him to this world.

"No…" he breathed, horror and terror that couldn't even be encompassed by the terms for them in his voice.

"I can barely believe it," Rose breathed in revering awe that verged on reverent.

Edward twisted his eyes and face away before he threw up.

"Ed, what's wrong?" another voice, terrified and horrified and distorted with worry and sick with concern in ways that he'd never heard it before, asked as footsteps ran around from behind the counter so fast he was frightened their owner would trip over her feet.

But the illusion was gone, and the backs of his eyes stung, but no new hot tears pushed into them.

Edward forced himself to smile at Winry, wearing a basic light tan traveling cloak, as she rounded Rose from where he must not have noticed her sitting at the far corner of the restaurant, and sprinted up to him so quickly that when she came to a halt in front of him, she needed to struggle to breathe.

She looked as though all that she wanted to do was pull him as close and secure as possible, and once he told her who he really was, he wished that he could ask her to.

Because, in so many uncountable ways, this was so much worse than what he'd done to the Rose and Lior of his own Amestris, that he just wanted to collapse boneless into her and Al's and Granny's arms and just let them hold him near and warm and tight and secure and keep everything away forever.

But for now, the sole comfort that he could gain from Winry, even though he'd never had any justification to take any comfort from any Al or Winry or Granny since the instant of his inception and, after this, he never would no matter what space and time he crossed to or the infinite permutations of all infinite and not infinite voids empty of lacunas outside of them, was that if she was as close a friend to this Al and this Ed as she was to his brother and him, at least she wouldn't run away from the Truth.

"Ed! Get up, Ed! Get up, Ed, and mo–"

"I'm sure, whatever happens, you'll find your way out. You've got st–"

But moving back or moving forward didn't matter now, when this Rose could actually have been smiling and laughing, but it was all wrong of even incorrectness.

As much as this was going to hurt her, as Al obviously hadn't told her.

No one else was close enough to overhear save for the familiar thin, mustached café owner standing behind the counter, and this Rose appeared to know him as well as the Rose from his home world knew the other café owner, so it was most likely safe for him to hear this, as well.

Even if it wasn't, he was just one person, and no one who wasn't at least a slight amount friends with this Amestris' Al, or this him, would believe these things that he was about to say.

"The Ed that you know is asleep, safe and in good health, within his body, because I'm an Ed from the world on the other side of the Gate who was stuck here as the price for giving my own brother Al back his own human body; so I'm working with Al to try to leave it and travel back to my own brother and the Winry and Granny who I know, so we can return him to all three of you and I can return home to them."

Winry's mouth dropped slack, but the next second, she firmed it tightly together.

But, although her eyes and face moved as though she was fighting tears back, no tears actually appeared in her eyes.

Had this Al, or Edward, exchanged the same kind of promise with her that the Ed from the second anti-particle world

because this world was the sickest joke of the Truth and Equivalent Exchange of all it couldn't be a particle world it couldn't even be an anti-particle it couldn't be anything but the state of the cosmos before the Big Bang when particles and anti-particles hadn't even formed solely to collide together and obliterate each other and one another and anyo

"Then why are you standing here crying tears of pain, when you should be with the Al here trying to figure out how you can reach your home with them once more, so you can cry tears of joy and sheer happiness rather than these sad ones?" Winry questioned, her voice a mixture of protective love and furious concern.

The Ed here had exchanged the same promise.

A small amount of lightness moved through him.

Rose jolted violently once more, but at least her expression altered into an intermingled one with mostly sincere immense delight that one Al had gotten his body back than disappointment that he wasn't the Edward who she knew.

But how let down she was was still measurelessly unimaginably too abysmal and acute.

And a small but decent portion of her delight was still far too close to reverence.

That wasn't going to last.

This isn't R–

This isn't L–

"Ed! Get up, Ed! Get up, Ed, and m–"

"I'm sure, whatever happens, you'll find your way out. You've got s–"

It didn't matter any more.

Not when he himself

you didn't do this, it was another E

had done to Rose

this isn't R

and maybe all or most of Lior

this is R

what Cornello and Scar had.

"Because worlds on the other sides of the Gate aren't just inhabited by parallel denizens to your world, they're inhabited by parallel locations," Edward answered, including Rose in his gaze.

Blessedly, but not the most infinitesimally minute singularity amount mercifully, Rose looked happy that he was looking at her, but not in that much of a worshipful way.

"All of the damage done to this town was the result of a fake priest named Cornello who was using alchemy to try to trick the people here into believing that he was a divine agent capable of resurrecting them if they died in a revolution against the government that would instate him as the new President."

Winry pressed her lips together tightly.

"I wanted to find out what had happened to it.

"This town, Reole, has a double in my world, named Lior, and when I exposed the Cornello there, I didn't make enough of an effort to ensure that he wouldn't stop spreading his lies afterwards, so Lior was sacked by riots between the people who remained loyal to him and the people who didn't, and the State military that tried to stop it from happening."

Winry's clenched her hands so tightly that her knuckles turned white, but not enough to draw blood with her nails, and she still didn't cry.

Ed drew strength from that, but to make it easier to try to protect Rose, and her, not for his own sake.

"And even if you can make it back, you've just been through two pitched battles against two groups of Homunculi and a genius alchemist!

"You're in no condition to risk ending up in the middle of another one!"

Edward pushed it away.

Rose and Winry and Al mattered, not his dreams.

"I know that you're not the Ed who I know, but do you want a hug anyway?" Winry asked, almost as much heartfelt worry and sincere love in her voice as the Winry who he knew had expressed when he was going through the horrors of his automail therapy.

Rose's face absented itself of all expression, with the exception of her lips barely curving down at the corners, and Edward was certain that, if Winry hadn't been here, he'd have just passed out from the rising black talons of dizzy faintness.

As he'd been afraid of, it was even worse.

This Rose had a crush on him.

"I'll make it," Ed answered.

Winry's face briefly shifted to despair and fury, but then she sighed heavily and deeply.

Edward suppressed the urge to reach for her hand.

"Because you're with us, you mean," Al said, running up behind him, and the depthless endlessly of the lack of unendingness inverted switchback horror and self hatred that he must have masked for Edward's sake when he'd seen Reole himself on the train, and had discovered what he'd done himself, was now contained clearly in his voice.

Winry paled at the tone of Al's voice, knowing right away what it meant, and within less than a second, she did sprint up to Al and throw her arms around him to pull herself as close to a body that couldn't feel the warmth and reassuring and revitalizing and assuring and vitalizing secure strength of her hold, and whose sole comfort it could receive from it was seeing and hearing how close to him she was.

Rose's face became alive and alight a little, in the same ways it had when she'd seen him, and Edward's legs and knees practically hadn't existed.

At least it was mostly just the o

him.

Al brought up one hand and began to stroke Winry's hair with soothing gentleness.

"You know this is why the Gate sent you here," he put to words what he himself knew Ed must have figured out.

"To force you to pay the price for both of your sins at once this time."

"Except the two of you exposed a gigantic injustice in your two worlds, so you two did the right thing by exposing Cornello," a familiar thin, mustached restaurant owner put in from behind the counter, sounding as though he was having a very hard time accepting what he was hearing, but he was determined to try to ensure they didn't feel bad about it anyway.

Now no new tears even pushed against the backs of his eyes.

It wasn't just Rose.

What had he done?

You didn

This isn't R

This is R

"E"

"I"

"We all walk on our own legs now, and no one spoon feeds anything to us, nor do we spoon feed anything to them. Everyone is given an equal livelihood, such as the food that this café provides its patrons."

"That's right," Rose put in, with a smile that she must have believed was reassuring, but that just caused Ed to wish that he could cry until he dehydrated.

"We brought this on ourselves."

Ed had seen that coming.

But he still wished that he'd have lost his ears and their internal components, rather than hear Rose, by an imperceptibly and definably and expressible and conveyable and communicable and not communicable and perceptibly and incomprehensibly and comprehensibly and indescribably boundless and eternal amount of voids after it and before it and outside it measurelessly amount one of the most loving and caring and considerate and forgiving people who he'd met in his life, say that anyone had deserved to suffer or die, caused Ed to wonder if, if there was an afterlife, being unmade from all creation when he died was actually worse than it happening over recurring eternities of torture fragment by fragment, or if unending torment was actually the worse penalty for irrevocable and blindingly erased transparent sins.

"We depended on miracles to enable us to live easy lives, and we stopped thinking for ourselves and turned our eyes away from the truth about how you need to work to gain any kind of happiness.

"So what else should we have believed would be the price for our mistakes?

"If not for the Ed from here, and Al,"

Rose wouldn't even name the person who was actually present before this Edward.

It was arguably a very slight mercy to the Ed from this world that he was asleep now, and hadn't heard this.

Not that it would matter, because he'd find out about this anyway, sooner or later.

At least the Rose from Lior, and the people of that Lior, almost certainly wouldn't have dismissed Al if he'd accompanied Edward to Lior.

What had he done?

This isn't R

This is R

"E"

"I"

Except Rose wouldn't, when she found out about this.

She'd forgiven him for what he'd done to her and Lior, but once she found out that anoEdward himself had lied to herthis isn't R and deceived herthis isn't R and the survivors of the eradication of RLior into worshipping him and the Truth, and the Law of Equivalent Exchange, she'd retreat back into some other existence and reality that solely she herself knew and never be able to speak another word no matter how much pain he was in and it all should have been him he should have been the one to lose his voice he should have been the one to be severed irrevocably from reality where was the Equivalent Exchange in losing your voice and your ability to even perceive existence when what you'd lost wasn't your vocal cords but your hope and your heart and no price could be paid nowhere that wasn't anywhere and everywhere that was no place and nowhere that was every location and no cosmos that was every universe and any side of the Gate that wasn't any world and any Truth that wasn't every hallucination and no particle that wasn't any energy and no life that wasn't every cosmos and no home and secure love and warm hearth and close embrace that was any relentless and unforgivable and unforgiving and ruthless and remorseless ruined and fractured and shattered and broken and fragmented crystalline pinpoint too near Sun ray light wave beam singularity sharp to get any of that back

"we might have turned into an army of soldiers without any minds at all, and who weren't even afraid of death.

"But look at what we've become now, because we're rebuilding this town.

"I'm not the sole person who is grateful for what you've done for us.

"We all are.

"Thank you both so much."

"But still, even if I can't prove it's true, I have to try. For your sake, Al."

"Even when you close your eyes, there's a whole world out there… outside of ourselves and our dreams."

And I don't care if it's childish to believe in its precepts. I'd rather be considered a child than live in a world of cynicism, chaos, or apathy. I'm sorry. I thought I didn't care about it, but I did need to believe in something… all this time.

This was not going to happen once again.

And this time, he was going to protect Rose in a way that he wouldn't need to apologize for later.

"I tried to convince the Rose, and the people of Lior, who I met, the same thing," Ed informed Rose, and the restaurant owner.

Rose gave him an approving smile, but it didn't matter how much it hurt everything that he andwashewasn't to see it.

"I"

It's not R

Edward ignored it.

"What you need to understand is that both of us were wrong, as well," Ed went on.

Rose's mouth opened, and she appeared to want to say something, but she had at least retained an amount of the spirit that the Rose from R

Lior

had had when he'd first met her, and she'd at least taken enough of the good parts about what the Ed here had tried to convey to her not to argue with him the same way that she h

The R

ad about Cornello not lying to her, or anyone.

The café owner blinked, but he looked at the two of them as though he just believed that he was saying this because of how bad L

R

ior appeared now.

"Yes, you can rebuild your homes and businesses, but you can't rebuild all of the pain that you went through before it happened, and one of the things that we were right about is that you can't bring back the dead.

"It doesn't matter what mistakes you made.

"The Law of Equivalent Exchange is a promise between people we make to others to enable them to both move forward from hardship, and protect them from it, not just to give them a means of recovering from adversity."

Rose started violently, and he waswasn't new, desperate breathless hope.

Had Rose

this Rose was this real after all if not in the ways he'd idiotically dared to hope for once maybe he hadn't obliterated her too

But the café owner frowned slightly, clearly not caring to have had what the Edward from this Amestris, and Al, had tried to teach L

Reole

deconstructed effectively.

"And the Truth, and the Law of Equivalent Exchange, don't restrict everything in the world, or the cosmos, or reality."

Al jolted violently.

Winry pulled back partially from Al, while keeping her arms around him as much as she could, so she could turn and give Edward a look of shock.

Rose's jaw dropped, and she glared at him with protective and defensive rage for the sake of the Edward of this Amestris, and Al.

But the café owner looked restrainedly furious.

Ed's insides twisted with thick sheerness and disjointed jarring, but Rose was paying attention, so he plunged on.

"Once you die, all of your work was for nothing, and while other people can carry on your legacy or learn from your example, you're no longer capable of making an effort. Nothing can be exchanged to cause death to become a good thing. In addition, while you can pay a price to restore a home or a restaurant, no hard work can prevent the torment that you went through before you recovered from having happened in the first place.

"You can move forward from it, but that doesn't change that the fact that it took place, and how terrible it all was, were mistakes of their own.

"I'm not arguing that effort and work themselves are wrong; I still believe that much. If you don't make an effort, you can't obtain anything. You'll just end up leaning on the crutches of what other people give you, and you won't be able to learn how to protect people from hardship, or to move forward from hardship when things go wrong.

"But that doesn't mean that anyone deserves to be hurt if they make a mistake.

"The Truth doesn't bind everything, and beliefs and dreams vary from person to person."

Rose looked as though she was considering this much.

But the café owner's jaw dropped himself, now, and he went pale with fury.

He was reminding Ed of Scar and Marta and Ashleigh, now.

Edward turned slightly towards him, giving him a look that told him that Ed now didn't trust him, and if he tried to say or do anything that hurt Rose, Edward wouldn't let him say or do it.

The café owner just glared back at him.

But Ed's guard was now up.

The owner of the café had used the word 'injustice,' and he believed that it was okay to work and fight for your dreams, and that it was supposed to be all right if other people were hurt or died in the process as long as you could attain them, or as long as you kept them from attempting to trample all over your own dreams, or those of other people.

The owner of the cafeteria was just the same as he had used to be until around two weeks ago; when he'd done nothing but live in Al's dreams of regaining his original body, and in his own dreams of regaining his left leg and right arm; and he'd believed that it was okay to sacrifice other people, or their homes, to torment or death, or let them be sacrificed, or lose their homes, to torture or by being murdered; as long as Al and he had gotten their bodies back.

This was precisely what had obliterated Rose and the people of LioReole and their homes and businesses.

Even with how much they were still being tormented, Rose and RLior were actually taking genuine steps in moving forward, and picking up the pieces of what Ehe had done to them, and abandoned them to.

And they were still suffering horribly at this time.

He wasn't going to let the owner of the cafeteria do to Rose and Lior what he'd done to them; and undo all of the strides they'd made in getting back on their strong legs and moving forward, and let them continue to live in another torturous abattoir that he'd condemned them to with his own hands and arms and legs and feet.

"As I pointed out above, because death and the past can't be reversed, this is proof that reality is flawed.

"People are flawed as well; if you weren't, you wouldn't have been willing to hurt people and Reole because you disagreed about Cornello, and the military wouldn't have objected to it because it caused their ability to maintain order to look bad.

"A lot of the time, there's also no answer to life's problems.

"For example, say, rather than the military stopping Cornello, he was arrested and sentenced to imprisonment in a jail cell, or even death, and he was thus hurt or killed badly."

The café owner's jaw dropped, but then he set his lips together in a mild but condescending smirk, as though Edward had just said something completely and fully and utterly and wholly ludicrous.

Ed ignored it.

"Yet if no one had put him in prison, he'd still be able to hurt or kill people himself.

"How does a single law provide an answer to what to do in a situation like that?

"With all of this in mind, while hard work pays off, yes, what you get back for your effort might not be what you put into it. It might be something very bad, whether you make a mistake or you don't, and then you'll be left to clean up those messes. People who get hurt don't get hurt because they violated the Law of Equivalent Exchange; they get hurt because no matter how hard you try, your efforts can go astray because each person has a different, respective dream and belief; and because reality and people have flaws.

"To sum this up, this means that the Law of Equivalent Exchange doesn't teach us to let adversity and pain take place, or to cause hardship and death to happen.

"The Law of Equivalent Exchange teaches us to stop seeing what we believe in, and dream of, as the truth of the world; and promise other people that we'll persevere in giving our hardest effort and working as much as we can to defend them, and move forward to clean up our messes; in order that, by doing this, we don't cause anyone to be hurt, or die.

"It took me a very long time to learn that myself, so that's why I argued the way that I did in my own Amestris, and it looks like the Edward from this one has yet to learn this.

"So yes, everything that you went through here was wrong, and Al and I have valid reasons to be upset that it happened.

"If you want to keep believing in the Law of Equivalent Exchange, go ahead. When I urged the Rose who I know to get up on her strong legs, I saw having faith in the laws of alchemy, science, reality, and the world as ceasing to have blind faith in miracle cures, and just living by what you can prove.

"But I couldn't have been more wrong.

"I was believing in the proven natural laws of the Truth and Equivalent Exchange as a miracle cure."

Rose's mouth opened, but she didn't say anything, and closed it.

She looked as though she wanted to open it once more, but she didn't.

The restaurant owner smirked slightly once more, and although Edward kept his guard up, he just ignored him this time.

"And whenever you believe that there's one single miracle, or set of miracles, that can solve everything, you start having faith in nothing but your own individual dreams and pursuits, and you close your eyes to the people in the world outside of them, and the world outside of you.

"And then, as I did when I lived for nothing but the Law of Equivalent Exchange, the Truth, my own dreams, and my own personal reasons for revealing that he was a fraud, I just exposed the Cornello in my own Amestris to try to acquire his alchemical talisman, and then left Lior once I found it that my blind faith in alchemy wouldn't work as a miracle for Al's, and my, problems, and abandoned the Rose who I'd met, and the people of that Lior, to his further efforts to exploit it.

"I'm not recommending that you not believe in the natural laws of the proven Truth of alchemy and science if you want to.

"If we don't believe in anything, we'll stop caring about other people as much as if we believe in a single all solving miracle that can fix anything.

"But you need to stop seeing the Law of Equivalent Exchange, and the Truth, or anything else, as the solution to all of reality's, or the world's, problems; and that anyone who is hurt or dies because he or she doesn't believe in it was hurt, or died, for valid reasons.

"Otherwise, you've just exchanged not standing up on your own strong pairs of legs and thinking for yourselves by listening to Cornello for blind faith in the Truth."

Edward closed his mouth and kept it closed for a number of seconds to show that he was done with what he was talking about.

Al and Winry didn't still have their hands and arms on each other, and Al's expression was unreadable due to the nature of his face.

Winry, however, was looking at him in a combination of sheer astonished shock, disbelieving surprise, incredible skepticism, and uncertain but genuine and heartfelt understanding and empathy and sympathy.

Rose's lips were thinned together tightly as indecipherable emotion after unidentifiable feeling flowed over her expression.

The owner of the cafeteria restaurant was glaring at them with a tight, distressed frown now.

"Get out," he snarled a small but meaningful amount.

"You just said that you shouldn't have revealed Cornello's atrocities to us, and that he shouldn't have been imprisoned or sentenced to death, and that it's not okay for people who want us to die to die themselves so we're safe from them.

"Even though we'd turned Reole into a lounging parasitic noble's estate in almost every way, so something needed to be done to improve the horrible lives that we were living, and to convince us to stop just letting someone tell us what to think and keeping us from even being able to dream at all."

Edward spun fully to face him.

This confirmed it.

He should have been certain of it as soon as the café' owner had used the word 'injustice' to refer to what Cornello had done, but he'd given him a benefit of the doubt, for R

this Rose's

sake, as well as LReole's.

"And how does saying that make you any less atrocious than Cornello?" Edward questioned in angry irritation and annoyance now.

"Ed, you're letting your own past mistakes cloud your judgment now!" Al spoke from where he was standing, Winry still standing further back, too much worry and concern for Edward now on her face in addition to everything else that Ed couldn't take the time to try to understand it.

Not when Rose and Lior needed him to keep them from dying and being erased as the othey had been before.

"You're talking as though every single dream does nothing but hurt people and kill them, for no other reason than because he or she has one, or more, of them! That means that it's wrong for this Winry to dream of building better automail for this variation of you, even though better automail will enable big brother to not just stand on stronger legs to protect me from hardship, but the people of this Amestris from the Homunculi and the President, too; or for me to dream of not letting anyone else die because I don't want to see it happen any longer!

"You're going too far by saying things like comparing this person to Cornello!"

Since when did living for other people, and the worlds, outside of yourself, have anything to do with strength?

Living for other people, and the worlds, outside of yourself and your dreams, had nothing to do with having a strong body or a strong heart, or a powerful soul or powerful dreams. It was about not looking away from how other people cried and smiled and laughed and died, and preventing them from experiencing hardship and torment and death, or taking away their adversity and suffering; not overcoming suffering that you already let happen.

Edward just ignored Alphonse.

"Yes, you needed to stop thinking what you were told to think, which is why you shouldn't let the miracle cure of the Truth of the natural tenets of alchemy, and the alchemic Law of Equivalent Exchange, do all your thinking for you any more than the miracle cure of scripture," Edward continued addressing the café owner.

"Are you even paying attention to how many people died in the riots and the military's efforts to suppress them, and how many people will never be able to be rebuild their lives?

"Or how horrific the suffering was that they went through?

"Are you saying that it was okay for the Rose right in front of you to have been in that much danger?

"Too many horrific things to number could have happened to her!

"Too many horrific things to number did happen to the Rose who I know!

"How is that okay?"

"I'm not saying that any of it was literally okay; but I, and most of the rest of us, have come to terms with it, because we recognized that what happened was unavoidable if we wanted to protect Reole from Cornello, and make it a better place!

"If Rose had died, or something else terrible had happened to her, we would have hated it, but sometimes tragedies are unavoidable for the sake of the greater good!"

That was it.

He was too exhausted of all of this now to care to restrain his emotions any longer.

And no one was close enough to hear him if he raised his voice to a louder volume.

And if Bradley's agents had tracked Winry, or them, to RLior, they'd have already entered the city, and they'd have just done so openly, without seeing any reason to spy on them from concealment, even if the people here vehemently objected to the nState military's presence in Lior.

The more people who the State military murdered or hurt in Lior, the easier that it would be for them to foment a second war or battle, and potentially complete a true Philosopher's Stone inside a city where people were already furious at the State for how it had oppressed the riots so ruthlessly.

Yes, this Bradley administration was functioning differently enough that it hadn't promoted Hakuro to five star General, and the head of High Command, but spying on them in secret would make it harder for the Homunculi to transmute the second Cselkcess method true Stone than if they sent the military in openly.

It didn't matter if someone who he couldn't see overheard him.

"So that means that you should just turn a blind eye to murder or harm and cause it as supposedly necessary and acceptable, or abandon people to it!?" Edward shouted, verging on yelling.

"Have you taken leave of your mind!?

"Look what that did in Ishbal!"

The cafeteria owner bristled violently at the comparison.

"Ishbal is one of the best possible examples of why we need to stand up and fight when people try to walk all over us!" he cried back, though in a slightly quieter tone.

"If we'd just let Cornello do whatever he wanted, he'd have done to us what the Amestrian military did to the Ishbalans!"

"That wouldn't have happened if the Ishbalans hadn't been partially to blame themselves!" Edward shouted in reply.

"They could have surrendered at any time, or not gone to war in the first place, but they hated Amestris for how it was exploiting them, and then they got even angrier when it fought back!

"Even though, as much as Amestris did to them, they were the ones who started the war!"

"If a nation shoots a child, it deserves to be gone to war against," the café owner responded with flat rage. "You don't just let people murder you or hurt you for seeing you as inferior to you because you're different from they are, and then for speaking your mind about it."

"So it was okay for the Ishbalans not to tolerate Amestris' differences from them!?" Edward cried. "Most Ishbalans saw every single Amestrian as as much of a monster as the soldier who shot the child, just as most Amestrians saw every single Ishbalan as inferior! The last that I saw, at least Amestris didn't launch an all-out attack and systematically murder large number of people merely because one Amestrian shot one Ishbalan!

"And as for starting a war merely because people look down on you!?

"The last that I was taught, children are taught in elementary school to ignore it when someone insults you!

"If people start a war because other people see them as their inferiors, they're nothing more than spoiled brats who need to grow up!"

"Cornello claimed that the rest of Amestris was beneath him," the cafeteria owner responded with a furious scowl.

"As Amestris won the Ishbalan Civil War through genocide, it's obvious that if Cornello had been allowed to continue lying to us, they would have eventually taken childish offensive to Cornello looking down on them and invaded anyway."

How much of a hypocrite could this person be!?

"Get over yourself, will you!?

"Reole is one small town, and the Amestrian majority would never have tolerated a national military attacking it merely for making them look bad unless you gave them reason to!

"Caring about looking bad, and trying to improve their lives, is what happened here!

"The Reole riots started for no other reason than that some of Reole's citizens were angry that Cornello had played them for idiots, and the other citizens of Reole didn't want to lose their chance at increasing their prosperity!

"The people who knew Cornello for what he was weren't in any danger from him any longer! If they'd just kept it together, Cornello would have had too many people to raise his army, and eventually his supporters would have realized this, and that would have been the end of it!

"But you refuse to accept that other people might have a different idea of what constitutes a happy solution to the world's problems than you do, and your egos were offended because people disagreed with you and made you look like idiots; so you cared more about being humiliated and your dreams than about how much pain people can suffer through, and how many people can die because you close your eyes to the world!

"You have no concept, or idea, of what happened to the Lior in my Amestris!

"You have no concept, or idea, of what can still happen to the Reole here if you keep seeing things the way that you do!

"You have no concept, or idea, of what happened to the Rose from Lior!

"You have no concept, or idea, of what could have happened to the Rose here!

"But you are saying that it's okay, because when you argue that people should live for their dreams, and fight for them, rather than for the people in the worlds around them, you're saying that they're more important than how much other people are hurt or die!

"Stop closing your eyes to the people and the pain and the reality and the world around you and living in a whimsical daydream where everything happens for a reason and makes sense, and start looking around at how much people suffer and die!"

"Ed, you raise a lot of good points, and I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with any of them, but you don't fully understand what happened in Reole yourself," Rose interjected, her tone a mixture of determined protectiveness of the owner of the café and understanding and empathy and sympathy and reassurance.

An amount of the agony and fury faded at hearing this Rose say that she was thinking over what he'd said.

"If Equivalent Exchange governs everything, even death and pain, Cornello would have been able to bring Cain back, and it would supposedly be okay for him to have died.

"So I see where you're coming from.

"But the military didn't oppress us as much you believe.

"Forces from East City stepped in to stop the rioting at first, but then the military High Command of Central City itself unanimously ordered them out, even though that was very bad in its own ways because it left the rioters free reign to spread their violence; because they were afraid that if they let any troops stay here, they'd end up repeating what had happened in Ishbal."

Edward jolted violently.

What in the world!?

Dad's Homunculus had had a prime opportunity to significantly contribute to his second Cselkcess version Philosopher's Stone here in Reole if he'd sent in enough soldiers and officers to make matters even worse, yet he'd passed it up to let a lesser amount of bloodshed happen that would make it a lot more difficult, and cause it to take a lot longer, to transmute that Stone!?

And the military High Command had voted unanimously to do it!?

A violent chill of absolute zero ice as frigid frozen frosty cold molten ice as the universe had been during the first fragments of a second after the Big Bang devoured all of his breath and pulsing blood and bioelectricity inside his heart and soul and brain and mind.

The Homunculi hadn't just installed one agent in High Command, rather than as the President's secretary.

Dad's Homunculus wasn't less competent than Dante.

He was so much more adept and experienced with subterfuge that Dante was a cadet learning shadow play about spying on an adversary nation behind enemy lines by comparison.

Every single General leading Amestris under Bradley was cooperating with him, and the rest of the Homunculi.

And that meant that there might be civilians here who High Command had ordered to report the dealings in Reole to it in exchange for compensation for the riots, civilians who trusted the Bradley administration to stay true to their end of the bargain because, whatever Dad's Homunculus was trying to do with an Amestris who he'd bound in fathomlessly tighter strings than Dante had bound the Amestris of his home world, he hadn't actually let soldiers and officers stay in Reole for long.

Someone really could be listening in on them, so by giving the owner of the café a piece of his mind the way that he had, he himself might have just put Al, Winry, this world's and Amestris' Rose, and this world's and Amestris' Reole, in new unimaginably limitlessly horrible peril when their nightmare had already ended.

"Now you're catching on, pipsqueak," one of the last voices that he could have believed that he'd hear again for the rest of his life, and whatever, if anything, awaited afterwards, if he deserved to live into everlasting torture or endless contentment; spoke as another person with blonde hair and golden eyes, a little long and shaggy, wearing a familiar black shirt over his upper chest, remarked.

Edward was no longer aware of whether or not his soul and mind and brain and heart and lungs and veins did anything.

The Envy of his own Amestris stopped walking from where he'd emerged from around the corner of the structure that housed the food supplies for the outdoor café, and turned to face him with the smug, lethally vicious and savage smirk of a predator about to pounce on his prey.

"Your brother actually did it.

"By sacrificing the Philosopher's Stone that he'd become, he brought you back from the dead.

"I considered that it was possible that the Gate would deposit you here after you would predictably show your brother as much ingratitude as a person could thought of for what he did for you; but although the matter that I lost my chance to kill Hohenheim and ended up here gave me evidence that this might happen to you, too, I'd resigned myself to you getting another lucky break yet again!

"Until you blathered your drivel off in your usual clueless fashion, and disturbed the afternoon snack that I was eating so peacefully around the back of this cozy little outdoor espresso bar while waiting for this world's version of Doctor Marcoh to wake up from his coma alongside a military radio.

"This friendly communal neighborhood quack of a Marcoh fainted a few hours ago because he refused to tell me what the grandstanding sacks of meat who call themselves Homunculi on this world even though they've willingly given up their humanity are doing, partially because he wants to try to keep my own third chance at humanity away from me myself, and partially because he was afraid that the decrepit flesh bags who call themselves Homunculi here would raze the town where he hid into soot and rubble if he did.

"So I took him out of his prison in their lab and informed him as a firsthand eyewitness what will happen if he doesn't, and now he doesn't have a community any longer.

"My kindness in taking it upon myself to sack the town where he'd treated the people and slaughter everyone there, so he no longer needs to worry about the rotting tissue papers of skin here blackmailing him, apparently relieved him so much that he decided to take a peaceful nap for the first time in who knows how long.

"So I've been trying to figure out how the inflated spider web balloons so full of themselves that they believe that they're actually Homunculi, here, are trying to transmute their Stone here in Reole while waiting for him to rest off his stress; and listening to military channels on the radio that I snatched from them; when I heard you mouth off to the fine upstanding butler fellow here about your typical delusional moral codex.

"As well as another upstanding citizen who just reported what you said to Central City Headquarters, from which Bradley just said that he'd dispatch none other than this Amestris' ghost of the great, late Zolf J. Kimbley to arrange an audience between them and the corroded automail bag here.

"But then, wonder of wonders; who should interrupt my extremely well awarded meal than my very best preferred punching bag for when I can't take out my distress at having my chance to kick back and get some R and R after a long, hard day overturned, on Hohenheim.

"As you say that you're this determined to ensure that the Rose and Reole here don't go the way of the Rose and Lior who you love more than almost anyone or anything, and hate yourself almost more than for any other reason for abandoning to torment and death, and protect and defend this Rose and this Reole as you couldn't them; I'll need to ensure that you've brought matters well in hand by the time that he gets here.

"This is a Rose and Reole who didn't suffer and die as much; and, as hard a time as they are having at coming to terms with what all of the horrors and deaths that they did drown in; they're honestly picking up their legs and the pieces, but they still have a long way to go; so you're determined above almost anything else to ensure that this Rose and this Reole don't suffer and die any longer as Rose and Lior did,

"As I just did for Marcoh, I need to see what I can do about that."

.

"It's obvious that you dislike Orb and its policies. May I ask why? I thought you used to live there. If you're looking for some trivial excuse to drag the Representative into an irrelevant fight, I won't stand for it."-Athrun Zala

"Trivial!? I won't allow anyone to call it trivial! And you're wrong about it being irrelevant, too! My entire family was killed because of the Athhas! My family believed in the nation, and we believed in your so-called ideals. And in the end, my family was killed at Onogoro! That's why I will never believe in you again! And I will never believe in the nation of Orb! And I will never believe in any of your idealism again! When you said that you were going to uphold justice, did you ever think about the innocents who were going to die because you insisted on fighting for your values to the end!? I don't want someone who doesn't have any clue to talk like she knows the answers to everything!"-Shinn Asuka

GUNDAM SEED DESTINY:

Phase 5: SCARS THAT WON'T HEAL