"You have got to be kidding me."
Ed chuckled in response but said nothing. He walked into the stables with a purpose and several large heads popped up over the stall doors curiously.
Havoc remained planted in the open doorway. "Seriously, we can just go back to Headquarters and borrow a car. You have the authority you know. Heck, I have the authority."
Ed ignored him as he walked up and down the stalls, patting reaching noses as he went, trying to decide which animal to take. It probably didn't matter in the end since they were all well trained work horses. But they were all so big.
With resignation, he settled on the chestnut mare because she was the smallest horse on the team. He made sure Havoc knew the choice was strictly because he liked her colours, though, and certainly not because he felt dwarfed by the others. Sure enough, her tack and saddle hung beside her stall and he got to work. He paused when he realized the other man was still standing by the door.
"Well?" he said with a touch of exasperation, "Are you coming or aren't you?"
Havoc leaned casually against the door frame. "I'm, uh, pretty sure this is illegal Chief…"
Ed shrugged to show he didn't care.
"Seriously, though, why aren't we just using a car?" reasoned the older man.
Ed sighed forcefully, showing impatience as he propped himself on the stall door in order to look straight at Havoc. "The road leading to the mine is a shitty dirt road," he started as if he was explaining that the sky was blue to a toddler.
Havoc didn't appreciate the condescending tone but his easy going nature won over and he let it slide. "At this time of year, it'll be soupy with mud and probably washed out from the spring storms. Which means," the teen went on, ducking as the horse chose that moment to nuzzle the back of his head and sent loose strands fluttering in her warm breath, "that a horse is the better choice to foot the road. If Hartley really did use that car, he was either smart and left it at the main road then walked in or stupid and got stuck halfway up the hill and had to walk in anyway. The point is he's on foot. So despite having a head start on us we may just be able to catch up with him."
The two stared at each other.
"Huh," was Havoc's only reply to that. "Alright, that….actually makes a lot of sense," he admitted finally in resignation. He stepped up to one of the stalls and reached in to pat the nose of a spotted gelding.
Edward watched him a moment longer. "Ever ridden before?" he asked with a touch of skepticism.
"I'll have you know," said the older man with a mock scowl, "that my grandparents owned a cattle farm and I probably have more experience riding than you do."
He went about proving this by tacking up his horse in record time. He finished while Ed was still fiddling with the bridle. "Although," he admitted, leading the animal from his stall, "I haven't done it since I was a teenager." The teen looked up long enough to shoot Havoc an incredulous look before he went back to convincing his horse to take the bit.
"Oh and by the way," he added, pinning the young alchemist with a smirk that almost rivaled Mustang's, "if I get charged with horse theft, I'm telling them you ordered me to do it."
Ed seemed to ponder this for all of two seconds before shrugging with a casual "whatever" thrown in for good measure. The teen was not worried in the least and Havoc could only wonder at what else the Elrics had gotten away with.
When they were finally done, they led their horses to the yard and found the mechanic waiting for them. "I'll open the gate for you," he said, eyeing the horses but didn't comment on them.
"We'll take good care of them," Ed reassured him, placing his foot in the stirrup and climbing into the saddle. He struggled a little because the horse was so tall but managed it pretty well otherwise. Once Havoc was seated in his own saddle, they waited for the man to open the gate.
"How did music lessons turn into a manhunt on horseback in the middle of the night?" he mused, lighting a cigarette.
Ed shrugged dispassionately as he tied his long hair back in a messy pony tail with a strip of leather he must have picked up somewhere. It was a different look on him, one that made him look older somehow.
"Do all your missions go like this?" grinned the older man.
The teen returned the grin. "More or less," he offered vaguely.
Havoc laughed. He was beginning to see where all that paperwork came from.
They made good time. Once they got going, riding came back to Havoc easily. It really had been a long time since he'd been in a saddle, not since he was much older than Edward. But he found that he still enjoyed it. The horse was well tempered, as he would expect from a work horse.
It was lucky that they were already close to the edge of East City in the direction they were going. The horse's shod hooves made a metallic click clack on the streets that seemed unbearably loud in the stillness of the night.
Havoc followed Ed since he didn't really know where they were going. The road took them north east out of the city and the ground started to rise gradually. Once they left the city lights behind them, the moon lit the way. It was waxing, not quite full, but bright enough to cast shadows over the road.
They rode in silence for a good half hour. Havoc's hands were starting to get cold and he alternated them between the reins and his coat. He could see his breath puff in the air around his face. It was spring, after all, and the nights were still very cold. He almost wished he was back in his sweltering apartment. Almost.
Without a word, Edward veered into a side road that Havoc would have missed completely. Where the main road rose gradually over the hills, this side road rose steeply.
"Tires," said Ed suddenly, pointing down into the mud. Even in the shadows of the branches overhead, he could clearly see two deep ruts in the soft mud.
"I guess we're on the right track," answered the older man. They stood still for a moment looking up the narrow, dim road. "Hey, Chief, is there any chance you can," he waved a hand in front of him vaguely, struggling with the word, "alchemize me a gun?" he finished lamely.
Ed stared at him with an expression somewhere between horror at the butchering of the term and amusement. "No," he said, shaking his head. "I can't transmute you a gun." He gave the older man a sarcastic look before adding "You might not be aware of this, but I haven't spent much time studying the inner components of firearms. So unless you want a weapon that's more likely to blow up in your hand than to shoot somebody, I can't help you."
He started off again and Havoc followed, making a face behind the alchemist's back that read sorry I asked. Teenagers…
They followed the road a long way further into the bush as the terrain got rougher around them. Eventually they came around a corner and saw a large dark lump sitting low on the road. The soft light from the moon glinted off the sleek metal body of a car. There was no movement and the road was silent except for the soft chinking of the horse's harnesses and their gentle snorts.
Ed dismounted, his feet landing in the mud with a squelch and he walked around the car cautiously. Havoc kept an eye out to the surrounding woods from his high position in the saddle. After a full tour around the car, Ed came to stand beside the Lieutenant's mount, his breath rising in front of his face.
"There's foot prints leading away from the auto, looks like it got stuck in the mud," he said without having to add the I told you so which was evident on his face. "The hood's still warm so it can't have been here that long."
Havoc opened his mouth but a shrill cry cut him short. It was long and mournful at first and then broke off into a chorus yips and yells. Both horses startled but stayed where they were and Ed jumped, his head whipping around to the north slope. He made a grab for the mare's reins before she decided she wanted to be anywhere but there.
Havoc grinned from his perch, patting his horse gently on the neck to calm him.
"Coyotes," he said flatly but he couldn't keep the amusement from his face. He'd never seen the kid startle like that before.
"I know that!" snapped the teen. He climbed back into his saddle and the mare made a full nervous turn before coming to a stop close to Havoc's horse.
"Let's get a move on, we're catching up," huffed the alchemist with another glance to the north.
Havoc couldn't agree more. The coyotes sounded a long way off but he still didn't want to meet a pack of them in the dead of night without a weapon.
They started off again at a quickened pace.
The road carried them deeper into the forest and, rounding a sharp bend, opened into a wider clearing before continuing on the other side, eventually, leading to the railroad. On one side of the cleared space, the rock rose sharply and in the side of that hill was a gaping hole.
"That's the mine," Ed stated needlessly.
The hole was a square, clean cut into the very rock of the hill that was wide enough for a car to drive in and high enough for a tall truck. Fog billowed out of the gaping, dark hole and caught the clear light from the moon.
"Well that's not creepy at all," remarked Havoc drily.
"It's the temperature difference," explained Ed, apparently oblivious to the other man's sarcasm in favor of a scientific explanation. "The warmer, more humid air outside is condensing in the colder air flowing out from the mine."
Havoc raised an eyebrow. That didn't make it any less creepy. "How did you even find this place, anyway," he asked, casting an eye around the clearing. Rusty, old mining machinery lay scattered just beneath the shrubs and dead winter grasses.
The alchemist dismounted and led the mare to the side of the clearing. She would have to stay here, he couldn't risk her panicking in the closed, cramped space of the tunnel. "Me and Al came here last fall for, er…," he glanced at the other man nervously. Ed wasn't sure how much Mustang's crew were privy to the brothers' real research. "Never mind. The point is, I'm familiar enough with the area that I remembered it when we did the evidence analysis. It was the metals, see. Bismuth is not exactly a common metal but it is around here."
Havoc followed his example and also dismounted. He looked at the gaping hole in the side of the hill. "I had no idea this was here," he remarked with wonder.
"There used to be huge mines around here like a hundred and fifty years ago," continued the teen. He looked appraisingly at Havoc. "Geez, didn't you pay attention to history in school?"
Havoc offered a sheepish grin. "Er, I wasn't exactly in school very often, if you know what I mean." It was true that he and his friends had spent more time skipping school than attending.
"Slacker," Ed teased with an approving grin.
Havoc gave the younger man a gentle push on the shoulder. "Yeah, you're one to talk. At least I didn't drop out of the fourth grade," he countered.
Ed sighed, shaking his head. "And yet I still know more than you. Just stop before you embarrass yourself even more. Come on," he cut in as Havoc opened his mouth to retort, reminding him that they were in somewhat of a hurry.
Standing at the mouth of that dark opening, Havoc could feel the colder air flowing past them and see the fog curling around their ankles. A broken and rusted lantern reminded him suddenly of an important fact. "We're going to need light," he said quietly. The ominous presence of the mine made him feel small and insignificant.
"Right," agreed the younger man with a glance at where Havoc was looking. The old lantern looked like a carbide lamp. Easy to repair, for an alchemist, but dangerous. He shook his head. "Open flames underground are a bad idea. But maybe…"
He crouched down over the old lamp and frowned in thought for a long minute. Havoc stood staring, waiting for something to happen.
"Uh, Chief?" he asked after a while.
"Ammonium chloride, manganese dioxide and zinc and then adding a bar of carbon," the young alchemist muttered to himself, ignoring the lieutenant.
"Got it," he said at last, rocking back to sit on his feet. Touching his hands together, he then placed them on the ground around the broken lantern. The bright light made Havoc look away and the horses whinny nervously. When he looked again, Ed had in his hands a long metal tube with a glass end and on his face, a satisfied grin.
Havoc raised an eyebrow.
The teen hefted the tube once, testing its weight, then pointed the glass end towards the darkness of the mine entrance and flicked a switch set on the side. Light beamed from the glass end and illuminated the clean cut walls just inside the opening.
"It's a flash light!" he announced proudly. "I saw one in a shop in Central once. It runs on a battery cell," he explained.
Havoc had also seen the devices once or twice. They were a relatively new invention and he was impressed that Edward could create one, seemingly, from thin air. "You reverse engineered a flash light from something you saw in a shop one time?" he asked, astonished. State Alchemist, he reminded himself. This kid had earned his State Alchemist licence at the age of twelve.
"Yeah, well, once you know how it works, the rest is just," he shrugged casually, "chemistry."
Havoc frowned. "And you still won't make me a gun?" he pushed.
The smile fell from the teen's face and he frowned. "No," he said shortly, handing the flash light to Havoc in order to free both hands in case he needed to use alchemy. Without another word, he started for the tunnel, expecting the older man to follow.
With a resigned sigh, Havoc did follow, holding the metal tube so that the narrow beam would light their way.
Maybe it was just his imagination, but Havoc was really starting to think that Edward just didn't like guns.
A/N:
1. I know from the series that Havoc's parents were country store owners but I wanted him to have a farm experience background so his grandparents farmed cattle.
2. I'm not sure whether or not Ed really does have experience with horses or if he's just bluffing his way along. ;)
3. The description of the mine is based on a personal real life experience visiting an abandoned Mica mine close to my hometown. Albeit, I went during the day time and brought a flashlight from home rather than transmuting one...
4. While we're on the subject of flashlights. You might be thinking "Hey, they didn't have flashlights in the early 20th century!" Fun fact: Portable electric lights were invented around 1896! They were shitty as hell and could only light for a few seconds at a time, hence the name "flash light". However, even if they weren't so old, in Ed's world (where they have such marvels as automail) it would be completely conceivable that they had also invented battery powered portable lights by the time this story takes place. Not that I'm trying to be completely historically accurate in a fictional world...
5. "Why does Ed keep calling cars autos?" - I don't know. He just does. Chalk it up to a queer Resembool dialect if you must. I don't imagine they have many autos in such a backwater town.
6. Ok last one. End of the year is a busy time for everyone, myself included. That said, I'm saying this now, there probably won't be an update until well into the new year. Yes I am continually working on it, bear with me folks! Thanks a million for all the lovely reviews!