EDIT: I think I fixed the formatting weirdness?

YOU POOR, POOR ABANDONED NEOPETS, I AM SO SORRY I HAVEN'T FED YOU IN SO LONG! I swear I've been working on it! It's just complex and has a lot of moving parts and connects to a lot of OTHER moving parts that you can't see yet, but they're THERE, I PROMISE. Thank you once again so so so so so much for all your lovely reviews, including the ones that have been nagging me to get my ass in gear and finish this chapter!

CONTENT NOTE: An animal is in brief distress in this chapter, and I DON'T MEAN in a Nina and Alexander way, I promise.

Alright, here we go: this chapter is named for "Ballroom Blitz" by Sweet, and you better believe we're gonna earn that title.

Are you ready, Steve?
- Uh-huh.
Andy?
- Yeah.
Mick?
- Okay.
Well, alright, fellas—well, let's go!

Havoc led Edward back through the ballroom doors into the outer hallway, and then past the cloakrooms and the uniformed footmen in the foyer all the way to the front doors. The cool air was refreshing; Ed hadn't even realized how warm it had gotten in the house until he stepped outside. For a moment, finally, it was peaceful, and he took a welcome breath of fresh air.

Then the moment ended—as these moments often do—with a loud, strangled yelp and the sound of branches and leaves crunching.

And then a voice:

"Fuery, get out of there! You're gonna mess up the topiaries!"

Then laughter.

"Your mom's gonna mess up the topiaries."

"You leave her out of this! Just get out of the goddamn garden and come sit down!"

"I will in a minute! I just have to—"

"For cryin' out—"

Havoc led Edward along a footpath toward the side of the house, through an open wrought-iron gate and into the far edge of the gardens. It was sparsely lit; before his eyes adjusted, all Edward could make out were the looming silhouettes of bushes and shrubs in the dark. Then he squinted, and took in the sight of trellised climbing vines, low flowerbeds arranged along the ground beside the paths—and First Lieutenant Breda, trying to coax Warrant Officer Fuery out from the middle of a dense thicket of rose bushes.

"I have to get a rose, Breda, you don't understand. If I don't have a—a boot on—" he paused. "A boutonniere—I'll be the only one without one in the photos, and that'll be ridiculous."

"A boutonniere? Fuery, it's not a wedding. You don't need one. And even if you did, you can't steal one from the Armstrongs' goddamn garden."

"It's not stealing! Obviously I'll give it back!"

"That's not how this works! Will you just—"

"Hey Fuery," Havoc called. "Look who's here! It's Ed! C'mon out of that shrub and talk to Ed."

"I can talk to him from in here," he replied.

"Yeah, but those thorns are gonna mess up your outfit!"

He was unfazed. "They're more durable than you'd think," he said.

"Listen, you don't need a boutonniere," Havoc ventured, switching tactics. "You've already got your new medals. That's plenty of accessories."

"Yeah, you're a frickin' decorated soldier, Fuery—you don't need flowers."

"Uh—yeah," Ed chimed in, not really sure what was expected of him here.

Fuery scoffed loudly, looking down at the medals pinned to his jacket. "Oh, please," he said, his disgust piling on unusually thick. "These are—these are a total joke."

"Oh, come on, now—"

"No, no! It's the truth! They're a joke," he continued, gesturing widely with both hands for emphasis. "That whole ceremony was a joke. It was so—so—"

Havoc and Breda exchanged uneasy glances as their junior comrade strained to find his words. This was already the most unfiltered they'd ever seen Fuery—by a very wide margin—and his unfiltered thoughts on the day's events on this particular day could have particularly serious consequences.

"Uh—Master Serge—no, shit, you're a—a—" Ed began, hoping to prompt him out of revealing anything he shouldn't. But his half-hearted efforts were in vain; Warrant Officer Fuery found the word he was looking for and kept right on going.

"It was so negligent," he proclaimed, his eyes flashing behind his thick glasses. "It was a complete sham what the brass left out of the picture. I mean, how could they—?!"

"Fuery, come on," Havoc hissed. "You've gotta be more—"

"I mean, I'm sorry," he said, undeterred, "but that horse deserved so much better. So much better!"

There was a beat of silence as the others absorbed this statement.

"Uh…" Breda began, then thought better of asking for clarification. When somebody's drunken tirade was heating up, experience had taught him that it never helped to add fuel to the fire.

Edward, however, had no such insight, and forged straight ahead. "Wait," he said, "what horse?"

The Lieutenant clapped a hand over his own eyes in exasperation. Leave it to the kid to douse the damn thing with kerosene.

"What horse?" Fuery echoed. "What horse?!"

"Uh—"

"How can you even—" he threw his hands up in the air. "See? This—this—is exactly what I'm talking about. You should know which horse! But we don't even know his name!"

Ed, at a complete loss, looked to Havoc and Breda for further instruction—but there was no time. Fuery had set off striding across the lawn with great purpose and speed, shaking his head in apparent disgust all the while.

"Fuery—" Breda called after him. "Fuery, where are you going? Wait for us!"

"No!" he shouted back without stopping. "I won't let him just be lost to history!"

"Can we just let him…?" Ed began, and Breda turned on his heel to shout at him instead.

"We don't negotiate with drunks, Fullmetal! That's a battle you always lose!"

"Well, what if he just wants to see this horse, and then he'll calm down?"

"The horse ain't even here, for starters," Breda said over his shoulder. "This is not a rational animal we're dealin' with."

"Fuery!" Havoc called. "C'mon back here!"

"No!" He shouted back. He tore away from the group with unexpected speed, and before they could react he had plunged further into the Armstrongs' garden, completely obscured by high hedgerows.

"What are you waiting for, chief?!" Havoc barked over his shoulder, already wheeling his way onto the garden path after his escaped comrade.

"Oh—uh—"

Havoc disappeared around the corner, and Ed ran to catch up.

Back in the ballroom, Alphonse had managed to waltz with the Lieutenant—no, the Captain—for a solid three and a half minutes without tripping anyone or breaking anything or falling down or throwing up, and he was fairly certain that he'd even been doing a half-decent job.

This, unfortunately, gave him more confidence. It even made him feel like he'd been silly for having been so cautious in the first place. Obviously he could do this; he was doing it right now. It wasn't that hard, and even if it was, well, just look at him. There was nothing really wrong with him. He could do this, and there was no need to have been so dramatic about it.

He traded smiles with Winry as they passed on the floor, and he was glad to see that she seemed like she was having a good enough time herself.

As the song drew to a close, Hawkeye gave him an inquiring look, ready to help him back to his seat so he could rest—but he asked her if she'd like to dance another.

"This next one's a bit faster—are you sure you'll be alright?"

Al nodded, a firmness in his expression that wouldn't have been out of place on the battlefield.

"Then I'd be happy to," Hawkeye replied, and they stayed on the floor and carried on as Winry wandered away to chat with Rosé, and then again for a third time.

Al had lost track of Winry somewhere during the third dance, a complicated Quarter-Cenz Turn that involved linking arms and switching partners several times. He'd handed Hawkeye off to Mustang, trading her for Rebecca Catalina and then for a woman with smooth, coppery hair and a dark-blue dress that he'd never seen before, and from the way she moved he was fairly certain she wasn't a soldier. And then, by the time Hawkeye cycled back to him, the other dancers in his peripheral vision were starting to smear together.

He was trying to focus on her, squinting a little as he tried to track his steps along with the swells of the music, and he tried to step forward with his right foot, but the left one moved instead, and he nearly stumbled. He caught himself just in time, but he could see Riza's face in front of him change from pleasant to mildly startled, and then immediately to concerned. And then he couldn't see it very well at all, even though he was looking.

"Alphonse, are you alright?" she whispered, still carrying the motion of the dance for the both of them. "Your eyes—"

Al screwed his eyes shut for an instant, trying to force them back into alignment, but it didn't work. Everything in front of him was a swirl of colour, and he couldn't get it to resolve into recognizable shapes.

I'm sorry, Captain, I think I need to rest until my eyes can focus.

He opened his mouth to say this, but all that came out was "I…"

Riza fixed him with a knowing look, squeezing his hand briefly in hers.

"Apologies, Alphonse—I think I need a bit of fresh air," she said, just loud enough that the others around them might be able to hear.

He nodded, and she took him by the arm and helped him slowly back off the dancefloor, with about as much grace as was humanly possible.

"Are you alright?" she whispered, and he nodded again.

"I just…uh…"

His words were too hard to corral into order, and he couldn't find the ones he needed fast enough to put them to any use. It was taking all of his concentration to hold Riza's arm and put one foot in front of the other, and the room around him with all its sounds and colours still hadn't resolved.

"Do you want me to go and get Edward?"

Alphonse shook his head. The absolute last thing he needed right now was for his brother to come running, all frazzled and worried, and confirming his suspicions that Al was too fragile and couldn't handle himself. Neither of them needed that. And knowing Ed, for all his good intentions he was bound to make a whole scene out of worrying over him, in front of Teacher and her husband, in front of Mustang's men, in front of all of these other people.

Riza was Ed's polar opposite in capacity for tact, and she continued to carefully help him toward the sidelines where there was a small seating area.

"S—some—somewhere more—um—" Al's features scrunched together in frustration as he struggled to get his point across.

"Somewhere more quiet?"

He nodded, and Riza put her battle-honed instincts to work, mentally scouting the perfect location to avoid detection.

"If memory serves there's a small sitting room just off the entrance hall," she said. "It probably won't be very full compared to the lounges upstairs, and you should be able to rest as long as you like."

She escorted him carefully back through the ballroom doors, out into the nearly-deserted hallway, and into the out-of-the-way little room she'd been thinking of.

It was perfect, actually—a dimly-lit room with dark-blue walls and brassy accents, a few sets of small tables and chairs, an assortment of comfortable-looking leather armchairs, a fireplace in the corner, and a long bar counter at the very back. There was one middle-aged man Al didn't recognize sitting at the bar, and another one in an Armstrong staff uniform behind it—and that was it.

Al sank gratefully into an armchair close to the fire, and Riza darted away to the bar, returning almost immediately with two glasses of icewater.

They sat quietly for several long moments, listening to the crackle of the fire, and Alphonse did his best to let himself relax. Usually these little episodes went away if he did, if he rested—but he didn't know how long it would take. Riza waited patiently, not saying anything at all.

Finally, Al's eyes seemed to remember how to focus, and his brain seemed to remember, more or less, how to pilot his body. He took a careful sip of water, and then cleared his throat.

"Thank you, Captain," he said. "I'm sorry about that. I'm—I'm fine, I just get these, um—these kind of episodes, ever since I've been, you know, back. The doctors don't totally know what they are, but they don't think they're dangerous."

"I see. You've got nothing to apologize for, Alphonse," Riza said warmly. "Is there anything else that you need?"

"Um…" Al thought about it. "Well, I should probably have grabbed my—"

Riza's eyes flicked downward to the side of his chair, and Al followed her gaze.

"Wha—how did this get here?!" he asked, mystified. His cane, the one he'd left behind in the ballroom when he'd gotten up to dance, had materialized there next to him.

Riza shrugged, but cast a glance toward the curly-haired bartender.

"The Armstrongs take hospitality very seriously," she said. "You can ask the staff if you need anything, too, don't forget. They're very good at being discreet."

"Sheesh, I'll say!"

At Al's insistence, Riza went back to join the rest of the party, leaving him alone after many assurances on his part that he'd be okay, and that he'd flag down the staff if he needed to. Then he was alone with his thoughts for awhile, finally.

I guess that could've been way, way worse, he realized. But I guess actually looking cool at a party for more than fifteen minutes was too much to ask.

Al ordered a drink—non-alcoholic, of course—from the little menu posted by the bar, and the bartender brought it to him where he sat. It was some sort of blend of lemon juice, herbal syrup and soda, and he was pleased to see that it looked just as elegant as the alcoholic cocktails he'd seen in people's hands all evening. It came in a short glass, with no ice—neat, they call that—and he took a long, slow sip.

It was delicious, so at least there was that.

He still had a long way to go; that much was obvious. He'd gotten cocky, and he'd overdone it—or, as his brother would probably put it, he'd flown too close to the sun again. That was maybe a bit dramatic; after all, he was just sitting here. It wasn't that big a deal. And as long as he could sit here quietly with his drink for awhile and rest without having to do anything too stressful or complicated, he could probably—

"Uh…Havoc?"

Ed slowed to a stop, trying to orient himself. He'd taken a straight path that followed along the side of the Armstrong house on his way into the hedges, and then the path had started to curve to the right. There were muddy bootprints on the pavement leading down the left-hand fork at the end of that path, and then to the right-hand fork at the next intersection—but the prints got fainter and fainter, and by the time Ed followed the curving path to a third intersection there was nothing left to follow.

Beyond that, he'd thought he could rely on his own sense of direction, and his own unshakeable powers of logical deduction.

"…Ed?"

It was Havoc's voice, distantly.

"Yeah, I'm here—where are you?"

"I'm in a fucking hedge maze, that's where I am."

"Thanks for that," Ed replied, as deadpan as he could be while shouting. "Where's…uh…Breda?"

"BREDA?" Havoc called, bellowing much louder than Ed had.

"…Guys?" The reply sounded much, much further away.

"Where's Fuery?"

"He's…He can't be far," Breda replied.

"What the hell kind of answer is that?!" Ed shouted at full volume.

All three of them had been going in circles for the past fifteen minutes at least, and none of them could seem to figure out how to catch up to each other again, let alone their quarry—but at least now they were finally within easy earshot.

"Listen," Breda said, "We gotta get more co-ordinated about this or we're never gonna find him. So I'm—let's see, I'm facing due east…"

They took to yelling out turns and cardinal directions to each other, trying to puzzle their way to the exit as a team—but another fifteen minutes later, they hadn't made much progress.

"Why the hell did they let these things get so stupid-tall?!" Breda yelled, staring up at a dense hedge-wall in frustration.

"'Cause the Armstrongs are stupid-tall," Havoc replied.

"Yeah, and I guess they all have some labyrinth-navigation technique that's been—"

"—Passed down through the Armstrong family for generations," all three of them chorused wearily.

"I mean, at least if we can't find our way out of this stupid thing totally sober, there's no way Fuery's gonna be able to," Havoc said.

"Yeah, this might be the best-case scenario. He'll probably just tire himself out, an' then we can just bring him in."

"Exactly. It's like a natural playpen for wayward drunks."

"Uh…" Ed had just rounded another corner, stepping—for the first time in awhile—into a part of the maze he was fairly certain he hadn't already seen. "I wouldn't count on that."

"What?" Breda yelled. "Did you find the exit?!"

"I think I found an exit."

Ed took off his jacket before stepping through the ragged, almost-person-sized hole in the hedgerow, trying not to break any more branches on his way. There was another wall in front of him—but it had another, almost-identical hole in it too. He clambered through it gingerly, and emerged out the other side, at the far opposite end of the Armstrong mansion.

"Ah, crap…"

A hand landed on Alphonse's shoulder suddenly and forcefully enough that—had he not been sunken into an overstuffed armchair—he definitely would have been knocked off his barstool. Instead he yelped, startled—which sent up a roar of laughter from behind him.

"What's a young fellow like you doing sitting over here in the corner all by himself, hmm? Too shy to join the party, eh?"

"There's no room for wallflowers at your age, son! Why, in my day, the whole lot of us chums would've been—"

"Where's your joie de vivre? There won't be another ball like this until the spring, you know—you ought to be making the most of it!"

Before he knew what was happening, Al was surrounded by at least half a dozen very old men, all of them in very old-fashioned military dress uniforms. None of them looked the slightest bit familiar to him—owing, probably, he thought, to the fact that they'd all retired well before he was even born.

"Ah, I know a lad having girl troubles when I see one! Chin up, old sport—plenty of other fish in the sea, don't you know!"

"Barkeep! Better fetch a scotch for our young friend."

"Uh…" Al started to protest. "…I'm, um…I'm fifteen..."

"Ah—a scotch and soda, then, barkeep!"

Al caught the bartender's eye over the nearest old man's epaulet-clad shoulder, shaking his head ever so slightly, and the bartender nodded subtly.

The men were all still firing questions and bits of advice at him indiscriminately, and he could barely decide who to look at. They seemed in especially high spirits, and they all absolutely reeked of cigars.

"Um…"

"Listen here, lad—why don't you tell us all about what went wrong with this lady friend of yours, and we'll all see if we can't get you sorted, hmm?"

"Well," he began, "t—that's not really—I mean, um, that's not why—"

One of the old men fully perched on the arm of Al's chair, leaning a bony elbow on his shoulder. "Now, now, son, be honest. There isn't a tale you can tell that'll shock this lot." He was twirling his silver moustache around his finger as he spoke.

"Especially not this one," said another, and Al was suddenly engulfed in a powerful cloud of cologne as this second old man leaned an elbow on the shoulder of the first man.

The first man threw his head back and chortled richly. "True enough, Harris, true enough!"

"Don't listen to a word of advice this old weasel tries to give you, boy," said a third man with a noticeably troubling hairpiece, leaning on the other arm of the chair.

"The only old weasel here is the one sitting on your bald old skull, and you know it, Opper," the first man fired back, "but that's besides the point."

The whole little crew broke out into uproarious laughter again, and Al was on the receiving end of several slaps on the knee.

"Listen—listen—where's Philip?" the cologne-man was saying now. "We ought to get him to tell the story—"

"It's Philip's party, you dunce. I'm sure he's busy hosting with the wife—and she's certainly not going to let him tell that story."

"Well, someone ought to! If not, we'll have to let the Duke go on and on again about his alleged Cretuan baroness again—"

"She was a Contessa, I'll have you know—though you'd never guess it, from the way she—"

The old men showed no sign of slowing, nor any sign that they might be either letting Al get a word in edgewise or letting him get up and leave. When the bartender finally came over to bring them all another round of drinks—including a "scotch" and soda—Al shot him what he hoped was a surreptitious but clear visual cry for help.

Back outside, the three of them had finally made it through the holes in the hedgerow, and were all trying to scour the exterior of the maze for any signs of Fuery.

"Oh—guys! I got something!" Ed called, and Havoc and Breda came rushing over. There was a set of bootprints in a nearby flowerbed. "That's gotta be him, right?"

Breda crouched down to look. "Oh, yeah. Size nine. Let's move."

They followed the direction the prints were pointing, leading them not back toward the house—thankfully—but toward one of its semi-detached outbuildings, where they could see an open door swinging on its hinges and a light turned on.

"Uh oh," Breda said. "What's in there?"

"It's the carriage house," Havoc told him. "You can tell 'cause it connects right to the—"

"The what?"

"The what?!" Ed chimed in.

Havoc put his head in his hands. "…The stables."

"SHIT!"

Back on the dancefloor, Winry was finally getting the hang of things. She wasn't stumbling over the steps anymore, and with Rosé's help she'd filled in a significant chunk of her dance card with strangers' names. It had all happened so fast that she'd barely registered who each of these people actually was, but they had been arriving in front of her with hands graciously outstretched.

She wouldn't go so far as to say she was pulling it off; she knew she still stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the girls her age who looked like they really belonged here. She wasn't fooling anybody, that was for sure—but she was pleased to discover that nobody really seemed to mind. And if they did mind, she was too busy dancing to really notice.

This was fun. And it was fast, which Winry hadn't really expected. She'd imagined 'ballroom dancing' loosely to be kind of slow and sedate, just because it seemed so formal and that's how formal things tended to be. But the waltz, and the Quarter-Cenz turn, and the Ruritagne échange—they all moved at a rollicking pace that left her a little out of breath. The weight of her dress felt punishing some of the time, but whenever she got the chance to spin it felt worth it.

And the names Rosé had helped her fill up her dance card with—well, they belonged to an interesting mix of people. There were a few other definite outsiders like herself among them—other civilian honourees from the ceremony, mostly—but the majority were these people, these high-society people who lived in Major Armstrong's bizarro world full-time.

At the next change, Winry had just enough time to glance down at the little booklet around her wrist and check what—and who—was coming up next. The little printed card read "Waltz Vesserèse." She squinted, silently mouthing the unfamiliar word to herself.

"It's a slow one, Miss Rockbell."

She jumped, startled, and looked up to see a tall and very blonde young man standing in front of her, his hand outstretched.

"Oh! Uh—" Winry extended her hand in turn, and then realized her mistake. Crap. Crap, I forgot to read this guy's name. We met like twenty minutes ago, definitely, but I've met a gazillion other people—but now I'm gonna look super rude for forgetting—and the dance card is ON THAT HAND and now I can't LOOK at it—

He smiled as he bent to kiss her hand. "Heinrich von Sterzinger. Pleased to make your acquaintance properly."

To the others' horror, there were no locked doors to prevent Fuery from getting into the stables. Ed rounded the corner of the entrance just behind Breda, Havoc just at his heels, and was greeted by the sight of the slight-framed warrant officer standing up on a bale of straw beside a bay-coloured mare. The horse—if you squinted—if you were very drunk—looked broadly similar to the police horse honoured at the ceremony earlier that day. The horse was still harnessed, and had anyone had time to look very closely they would have noticed the elegant green-and-gold letters "v" and "A" decorating the tack, presumably to match the carriage of one of the Armstrongs' higher-profile guests.

Nobody noticed. The ceremony had taken place a lifetime ago, a thousand hedge-maze dead ends ago. Seven or eight very generous servings of punch ago, in Fuery's case. And this was how he came to be standing beside this wholly unrelated horse, his own medal of service clutched in one hand, giving an impassioned speech about the horse's unsung valour in battle.

"It was a dark day for this city, for this country, and none of us knew how badly things were going to go," Fuery was saying. "We were all scared, and we were all outgunned and out of our depth, and—and—"

"Fuery, get down from there."

"No! This horse—this horse—he didn't do anything he did for the glory or the rank or—or—or to end up on the winning side," he was saying. "He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, when there were bullets flying through the Market Square, and a—hic—a tank rolling toward the central compound—when the moon was blocking out the sun itself—"

"Fuery—"

"And he was hardly the only one among us to be spooked that day," Fuery continued, "or in any battle, for that matter! Wasn't he brave as any of us?! Wasn't he injured in the line of duty?! Wasn't he there on the front lines just like we were?!"

"Fuery—c'mon, buddy, take it down a notch, okay?"

"I will not take it down a notch! I'm—I'm taking it up a notch. I'm—" He hiccupped, then cleared his throat pointedly. "By the power invested—invested in—no, by the power vested—uh—"

"Fuery…"

It was no use. Far from winding down, Fuery had escalated to unpinning one of the medals from his own jacket.

"By the POWER VESTED IN ME," he continued, bellowing now in defiance of the rest of the room, "by the State of Amestris, under military command of—hic-of Führer-President Grumman, I hereby present you with the Promised Day Service Medal, for—for—hic—for honourable—um—"

"Fuery, no, don't—"

He was doing it; he had unfolded the little pin-back, and he was driving it like an awl through the leather of the horse's brake strap.

"Oh no," he said suddenly—and Edward was relieved to see him coming back to his senses. "Oh, that was stupid. Sorry—"

The horse snorted softly.

"It's okay, just come on back to—" Havoc began, but Fuery just reached back to his own jacket.

"That's the wrong one. I just gotta—" He was fumbling with the remaining medal on his jacket, the actual Promised Day Service Medal.

Breda was losing what little patience he had left. "Fuery, dammit, just—gimme that—"

Fuery's battle instincts were sharp; he dodged Breda's hand and ducked under his arm, darting in from the opposite side with the gleaming badge in hand.

Things happened fast. The pin went through the harness at a different place, where the leather was just the slightest bit thinner—and it was just, just enough for Fuery to misjudge by about a millimetre. Not enough to do any harm, but exactly enough to get a reaction.

The horse yelped. Ed had never heard a horse yelp before, but that's what it did; it let out a shrill, high-pitched yelp, and then reared back on its hind legs, squealing, its front hooves kicking in agitation as everyone leapt instinctively out of the way. Then, before anyone had time to make another move, it happened: the horse bolted out of the stable, the doors flapping behind it like the gates at a racetrack.

It sprinted all the way back along the front expanse of the house, frantic, before disappearing into the dark.

"FUCK!" Breda bellowed, well past restraining himself—and then he went barrelling out after it into the garden.

Ed and Havoc were left standing in the stables, dumbstruck, for a long moment. Finally, Ed broke the silence.

"What the hell does he think he's gonna do," he asked, "tackle it?"

"I was just gonna say! I can't believe we're the same rank now. No friggin' plan at all. Mr. Battle Strategy out there, just—just galloping around—"

"Alright, alright—what are we gonna do? It's so freaked out—it's not gonna just come wandering back in ten minutes."

"Can't you just go an' transmute the thing into a big cage or whatever?"

Edward's face turned to absolute stone. "Yeah, I'll do that, right after you stand up an' do a jumping jack."

"Hah—right. Sorry. Forgot."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. We gotta come up with something else."

"No kidding. This cannot get any more outta hand. Let's see…what have we got in here? This is a huge stable, there's gotta be some kind of…" His face lit up. "Oh!"

Ed looked; Havoc had wheeled over to the opposite wall, where a series of tools and tack were hanging—as well as a length of rope.

"What the hell are we supposed to do with that? Fake our deaths?"

"No, Major Dipshit, it's a lasso. We can lasso it."

Edward stared. "…How?"

"What d'you mean, how? Aren't you from the country too?"

"Yeah, but I'm not from a cattle ranch! I didn't exactly have time to become a fucking junior rodeo champion!"

"Well, I did. But that's not really gonna help us now, is it?" Havoc groaned, raking a hand back through his hair—but then something caught his eye. "Oh, but this will."

He pointed to a black leather bag that was hanging just out of his reach, and Edward grabbed it for him. Havoc unzipped the bag and examined the contents. "Oh yeah, this'll do just fine. C'mon, chief, we gotta get to higher ground."

Frantic and wild-eyed, with great purpose, they arrived moments later at a side entrance to the house. To Ed's amazement a smiling, uniformed Armstrong maid greeted them and showed them inside as if they looked completely normal. They didn't. Both of them looked noticeably dishevelled, with their jackets in hand and bits of hedge stuck to their shirts—not to mention their harrowed expressions. Notwithstanding any of this, the maid showed them toward the electric lift that would take them to the highest balcony overlooking the garden, not even asking what was in the bag.

Fortunately the party was still contained to the first and second floors, so they were reasonably sure they were able to escape unnoticed through the deserted upstairs halls and through a set of ornate glass doors.

The view of the entire Armstrong Mansion garden from the third-storey balcony was nothing short of breathtaking: the climbing vines and trellises, the precisely-trimmed topiaries, the flowerbeds still bright with life even this deep into autumn, the spiralling hedge maze, the pond, the trees, and all of it lit up with hundreds of tiny lanterns so it could be enjoyed even at night like this.

Ed and Havoc didn't have time to appreciate it; they were busy rearranging patio furniture into a chair-height sniper's nest. They pushed a small end-table right against the edge of the curving balustrade, letting Havoc wheel his way under it right to the end of the balcony and rest his elbows against it so he could line up his shot.

"Alright, so here's how this is gonna go," Havoc said. "I'll let you handle the tranquilizer part, and then you let me handle the gun part."

"Works for me."

He handed Edward the bag, minus the gun.

"Here—look, there's practically a whole little chemistry set in here, but there should be instructions. You mix us up a couple darts' worth, and make sure we don't end up accidentally murdering this stupid animal, and I'll get eyes on the target."

Ed gave him a deeply sarcastic salute and then started rummaging through the bag.

He glanced over the faded paper instruction booklet. "Oh—no, if we want tranquilizer, it's just the one bottle. Sodium pentothal. It's right here."

"I'm takin' your word for it," Havoc replied, not turning around. "Load it up."

Edward opened the little darkened-glass bottle, leaning away reflexively from the powerful chemical smell, and poured its contents into the chamber of the first dart, then screwed it tightly closed and handed it off.

Havoc loaded it into the chamber of the gun with an unsettling casualness. "Great—now we might need a couple more, 'cause I'm not Hawkeye and that horse is frickin' huge."

"Okay…" Ed went to pour another, but the bottle ran dry with the dart only half-full.

"That's the end of the bottle, so—uh—maybe there's another one in here?" He replaced the cap on the tail of the dart. "Lemme just—here, can you hold this a sec?"

"Huh? Sure."

Edward handed Havoc the half-full dart very carefully, holding the sides of the barrel between two fingers as he passed it over. As soon as he turned away, Havoc laid the dart on its side on the table that was perched over his chair's armrests. The legs didn't reach the ground, and the angle wasn't great—he had to lean way further forward than he normally would—but it would work.

"Okay, let's see…" Ed was rummaging hastily through the bag of veterinary supplies. "Isopropyl alcohol…gauze…some type of…worm pills?...oof, cyanide, don't wanna get that confused…holy shit, is this morphine? They just have a little bottle of morphine in here?"

"Shit, really? Horse morphine?"

Havoc turned, his eyebrows raised, hoping to see inside the bag and check whether or not his teenage comrade was pulling his leg.

It was his arm, in this case, that was the problem. He braced it against the top of the table so he could rotate his torso, just a little too heavily—and the table tipped forward.

The tranquilizer dart gun was still clutched in his hand—but Havoc had just enough time to react with a single, truncated syllable—"A—" as the little dart rolled swiftly off the edge of the table and dropped out of sight.

It was almost a harmless mistake. It would have been, completely, had their little squad had the benefit of its communications specialist co-ordinating their efforts—but unfortunately, while Havoc and Edward had been setting up their makeshift sniper's nest on the third-storey balcony, Lieutenant Breda had gone to the side entrance and discreetly asked a member of the staff to send Roy Mustang outside to deal with an urgent matter.

The newly-minted Brigadier General was walking at a brisk pace out of the side door to meet Breda, who was waiting in a well-lit spot just outside the garden gate. This would have been harmless too, if not for something shiny lying in the grass that caught the former's attention. He squinted; it was! It was one of the brand-new Promised Day medals, right there on the ground.

Mustang bent down to pick it up.

At that very moment the dart was plummeting swiftly, and before either Ed nor Havoc had time to react it had landed squarely in the hindquarters of their commanding officer.

Breda looked on in blank shock as Mustang frowned vaguely, tried to glance over his own shoulder, and then dropped to the grass in front of him.

Then Breda looked up, and was greeted by Ed and Havoc, both leaning wide-eyed over the balcony railing two storeys up.

HA. THAT'S RIGHT.

Special thanks for this chapter go to my very dear writing buddy friend who 100% thought of the horse thing and gave it to me (the greatest gift one can receive), my very dear English degree haver friend who let me sleep on her couch and workshop these scenes endlessly, and my very dear TWO other friends with comics genius brains who helped me finesse the action sequences.

DON'T WORRY, THE HORSE IS SO FINE.

Alice's Research Notes for this chapter:

- All of the "wrangling a very drunk friend" material in this story is based on primary research for maximum authenticity. Sometimes I'm the wrangler; sometimes I'm the friend.

- Breda is right: you should never fuel or negotiate with drunks. You should give them greasy food, make them eat it, make them drink a huge thing of water and then put them on a couch next to a bucket or large bowl. You should not let them attempt to distribute military honours, regardless of their current rank.

- Horse vocabulary! All the gear associated with a horse is called "tack". The "brake strap" is a specific part of the harness you use to attach a horse to a carriage, and it goes kind of around the chest. I'm gonna be honest, I kind of phoned in my horse research because I just didn't have the strength on top of all the changes I'd already made to this, but if you know even less about horses than I do (or less about horses in English): now you know slightly more.

- THE TRANQUILIZER DART! So what's in that dart is a chemical called sodium pentothal. It's been historically used as a veterinary tranquilizer for a long time, and also has been experimented with as a "truth serum" drug on humans, especially during the cold war. It's also similar to what the Russians use in S3 of Stranger Things! It's a short-acting barbituate sedative, meaning that it can indeed knock out a horse-or a Mustang-relatively quickly. It happens a little quicker in my story than it would in real life-but in The Alchemy World, I think it's reasonable to imagine they might have a slightly more advanced drug formula. They'd definitely be pouring enough money into finding one.

- THE TRANQUILIZER GUN! The gun part of this is actually a pretty modern invention-the tranquilizer dart gun as we know it was invented in the 1950s, and it uses pressurized gas to propel the darts. Once again, though, I think this is a reasonable thing to imagine as a priority for the Amestrian military industrial complex.

- THE BALLROOM DANCES! The Viennese waltz, aka the main waltz, is indeed a pretty fast dance. Look up a couple youtube videos and you'll see what I mean. Look at them go! Look at their heavy dresses! Damn! There is a slower version of the waltz known as the English Waltz, too. The others-the Quarter-Cenz Turn and the Ruritagne Echange-are made up by me, because so many of the authentic names of these kinds of dances lean really heavily on place names from the real world, i.e. the Schottische, or really culturally obvious names that I also found kind of leaned too much on Real Europe, i.e. the polka, the Mazurka, etc. So I thought I'd have fun with it instead. MORE ON THAT LATER.

I think that's it, but if you have any questions feel free to send them my way! THAAAANKS!