Hagane no Renkinjutsushi - Volume 2 - Chapter 5

SEPARATE BATTLES

THE RAILS STRETCHED ON for what seemed like forever, a straight line cutting between mounds of brownish earth and imposing boulders that lay scattered across the landscape like the abandoned toys of a giant. The heat rose in a wavering sheet over the rails. A few warehouses stood nearby, evidence that people once lived here. Their roofs had crumbled, the walls caved in. Some of them were barely standing.

Towering in their midst was the giant abandoned factory.

The factory rose six stories above the dry ground. Iron gates blocked the front entrance, and a large shutter stood closed to the side where trucks once unloaded raw materials and picked up finished products from the factory. The place must have seen a lot of traffic when it was still in operation.

But now, the whitewashed walls had yellowed with years of exposure to the harsh sun. Grime and sand drifted off the surrounding prairie and caught in the building’s cracks and crevices, blowing straight through the many gaping holes where the walls had simply given way. Toward the upper floors, chunks of concrete had fallen away from the roof, revealing a skeleton framework of twisted iron bars. It was an abandoned, unwelcoming place.

Yet soon, this would be the site of a battle between thirty terrorists and one young boy.

“Ancy!” Edward’s harsh whisper echoed off the stone walls of the basement room. “Ancy! Answer if you can hear me!” Stepping carefully, Edward walked down the stairs into the small cellar. It was the fifth such room—probably once used for some sort of underground storage—he’d checked since freeing himself. In the moments after he came to, Edward had put together the stories Ancy told him about her family, the few details Roy had mentioned about the abductions, and what he knew about the terrorist bombings. If he had been brought here as the next abductee, then Ancy was certainly here as well. 

Unless … 

Edward swallowed. He had one thing going for him: the terrorists obviously thought Edward was just another kid. Why else would there have been no guards by the cellar entrance? Still, he was not entirely alone. Footsteps and the sounds of conversation drifted down from the rooms above, and when he peered out on the first floor, he caught glimpses of people walking by the large windows toward the front of the building. Ducking whenever he heard footsteps approach, Edward took great pains to stay hidden as he continued his search. He wanted to run straight for Colt, to stop his plans and put that smarmy know-it-all in his place, but first, he needed to be sure the girl was safe.

His feet stopped before the stairs to the last unchecked cellar. “Ancy, you down there?”

“Edward?” came a little voice in response.

“Ancy!” Edward ran down the stairs to find her sitting in the corner of the room. “Are you all right?”

“Sure. I’m fine,” she replied, looking up at him. “Kinda lonely, though.”

Unlike the dark room where Edward had been kept, this room had electricity. Ancy sat cross-legged on the floor, reading her art book by the light of a small lamp.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, smiling. “I drew a new picture. It’s for you. But my uncle, he said I couldn’t give it to you just yet, because the terrorists are bombing stuff again. He said I should hide down here.”

Edward blinked. The poor girl had no idea what was going on. At least, he thought, that means they probably intend to keep her alive.

Edward breathed a sigh of relief and took the drawing from Ancy’s outstretched hand. Edward recognized his own blond hair and Alphonse in his armor, standing with many other people, all of them smiling. Ancy pointed at two of them. “That’s my mom and dad, and there I am, in the middle,” she told him.

Edward looked at them. In the picture, they were all holding hands. He rubbed Ancy’s head fondly. “You’ll be going home soon. I know it,” he told her, helping her up to her feet.

“Really?” she said, her eyes filling with hope.

“I need you to be quiet for a little while, okay?” Edward put his finger to his lips and grinned. Ancy smiled, thinking it was some kind of game, and put her finger to her own lips and said, “Shhh.”

Edward moved quickly, leading her upstairs and into another cellar room closer to the main entrance. He hid Ancy behind a small table and looked her straight in the eye.

“Now, Ancy, listen to me. You might hear a lot of loud noises and some shouting. But I don’t want you to leave this room. Do you understand?”

“Loud noises?” Ancy’s eyes trembled at the serious tone in Edward’s voice. “Will it be scary?”

“I promise you’ll be okay,” he replied, smiling so she wouldn’t be too scared. “Us bigger people are going to … we’re going to play hide and seek. So, I need you to hide here, Ancy. Okay? Make sure they can’t find you!”

“Okay,” said Ancy, noticeably relieved. “I’m good at hiding!”

“That’s a good girl. In a bit, either myself or Al …” Edward paused, thinking, “or someone from the military—the people you see around town with the blue uniforms—will come to find you. That’s when you can stop hiding, okay?”

Edward had to assume the terrorists hadn’t also taken Alphonse, which meant that he would have gone to Roy at the first chance and told him what had happened. News of Edward’s abduction would be all Roy needed to make the connection with the terrorists, and that meant the cavalry was on the way … he hoped. 

Edward gave Ancy a final pat on the head. “Okay, you stay here, right?”

“Right.”

Edward made sure that Ancy couldn’t be seen from the cellar’s entrance before he walked up the stairs. 

“Okay, let’s do this,” he muttered under his breath.

Edward noted the position of the stairs rising in the middle of the first floor, as well as the metal fire escape he saw through one of the windows, and then he broke into a run—straight for the large gates at the front of the building.

THE HEAVY IRON GATES were opened just wide enough for a single person to pass through. Outside, a handful of the terrorists stood in a circle, smoking.

“Train not here yet?” one called up.

“I don’t see anything,” a voice answered from a floor above.

“The wind keeps blowing sand in my eyes down here,” the man outside the door grumbled. “I hope we get called back up on watch duty soon.”

Edward paused, his back to the gates, listening to their conversation. He crept closer, careful that their backs were turned. It sounded like some others stood watch higher up, waiting for the train, but Edward counted only three down here on the ground floor. Softly, Edward put his hand on the gate and then gave it a firm shove.

The gate swung shut with a loud clang. By the time the three had turned around to see what had happened, Edward had clapped his hands together and placed them on the gate.

“Hey!” one shouted.

“Who are you?! Open that gate!”

One of the terrorists reached out and grabbed the large handle of the gate.

Kazap!

A sizzling sound shot through the air, and the gate became a solid sheet of metal, completely sealing off the main entrance. Edward darted sideways toward a hole in the wall large enough for a person to pass through. He clapped his hands together again and placed them on the crumbling edge of the wall and an iron girder, using his alchemy to grow a wall over the gap. Next, he closed off another tear in the wall and sealed two of the large windows with a rippling sheet of transmuted concrete. Within moments, Edward had completely sealed off the entire first floor from the outside.

Darkness swallowed the room as the last light from Edward’s alchemy faded. Soon, the building was filled with the cacophony of fists banging on the metal plate that had once been an open gate, the strange rippling sound of walls shifting and transforming, and the shouts of tense voices on the floors above.

“What’s that noise?!”

“Hey, come here and take a look at this!”

Footsteps sounded on the ceiling, and a man started down the stairs in the center of the large room.

“Huh? Why’s it so dark?”

With most of the holes in the walls and the windows completely covered, the first floor was shrouded in a darkness so thick the man could barely see his own feet. From a corner of the first floor came the sound of someone clapping. There was a brief flash of light, and the final hole was closed.

“Wh-what was that?!” shouted a voice.

“Someone’s down there!”

“Intruder on the first floor!”

Several of the men came down the stairs from the second floor, stumbling in the darkness. Their eyes were accustomed to the light on the second floor—down here, they couldn’t see anything. They stopped and listened as several seconds later came the sound of someone climbing up the fire escape outside.

“You mean second floor,” Edward said to himself, grinning. Little did the terrorists imagine he had cleverly sealed the last hole in the wall on the first floor from the outside. Edward’s victory was short-lived, however—as he took his first steps on the metal fire escape, a sentry leaning out of a window on a floor above spotted him and fired.

Edward leapt through an emergency exit on the second floor, right into two terrorists who were standing at the top of the stairway to the first floor.

“Huh?! Wh-who are you?!” one shouted.

“Hey, someone just came in through the second floor exit!” the other shouted, raising his weapon as Edward came flying at them. 

“Too late!” 

Edward’s right arm lengthened into a flashing blade, and with a smooth, flowing sweep the sharp edge snicked through the barrels of both guns. The severed barrels clattered to the floor.

One of the terrorists gasped at the stump of a gun in his hand. The other drew another pistol and shouted “Who is this guy?!” even as he pulled the trigger. He fired at Edward twice, while behind him, a third man came running down from the floor above and began firing.

Empty shell cases clattered to the floor, but none of the bullets hit their mark. A brilliant light flashed before the gunmen, and where Edward had been standing a moment before there was … 

“A wall?!”

“Wha—?!”

“He’s an alchemist?!”

The men stood flabbergasted, weapons emptied and smoking, staring at the wall in front of them, as several more armed men came running down the stairs.

“What’s going on?!”

“An intruder!”

“What? Where did that wall come from?!”

The men tried to scramble around the wall to get at Edward, when the looming panel of transmuted concrete wobbled.

“Got a present for ya!” Edward shouted, giving the wall a good kick from the other side.

“Yeeeargh!” The wall slammed into the ground right behind the fleeing men.

“And now, for my next trick!”

Hidden in the swirling dust, Edward clapped his hands and touched the fallen wall. It transformed, assuming the shape of a cylinder and shooting toward the staircase like a horizontal pile driver.

The men on the stairs saw the fast-approaching point of the concrete lance and hurriedly ran back up to the third floor. No sooner had their feet left the stairs than the concrete smashed into the metal frame of the staircase, crumpling it like an old tin can. 

Edward whirled around, heading for the emergency exit. Expecting bullets from the floors above, he clapped his hands as he emerged, touching the outside wall on the side of the doorway. From beneath his fingertips the wall buckled, rising like a welt. A ripple ran through the concrete and the surface of the wall extended out until it formed a canopy extending upward over the exterior stairs. 

“Wait! I can’t see him!” a voice shouted from somewhere above.

Like a vast concrete blind, the wall spread out, blocking the view of the men aiming their guns from the upper floors. Edward climbed up a floor, poked out his head, and then headed back under cover of the rippling wall, confusing the gunmen, who couldn’t tell where he had run.

HIGH ABOVE THE COMMOTION, on the sixth floor, Colt paced across the rubble-strewn concrete. The roof had long since collapsed, taking most of the walls with it, and Colt had a commanding view of the rail line as it passed in front of the factory. When the shooting began, a man had run up to give Colt the news, but Colt chose to leave it to his underlings. After all, the intruder was alone—probably a scout from some other radical group that had caught wind of Colt’s plans. It mattered little with his plans so close to fruition. 

Soon, a freight train loaded with weapons and ammunition would appear on those tracks, and when it did, Colt would be ready to stop it. Obstruct the tracks, and the train would be forced to brake. Then he would strike. Even if, for some unforeseeable reason, the train did not stop, the obstruction would certainly derail it. Either way, the end result would be the same. Sure, some people on the train might be wounded or perhaps killed, but as long he achieved his final goal, Colt couldn’t care less.

Colt’s brow furrowed, and he lowered his binoculars. Why was there still gunfire? Wasn’t there only one intruder? Behind him, one of his men came running up the stairs.

“Colt! We’ve got trouble!” he gasped before he fell to the ground, exhausted.

“What’s all this? What about the intruder?”

“We can’t catch him,” the man panted. “I mean …” He shook his head. His forehead dripped with sweat. “We can’t even go downstairs! Everything from the third floor down has been sealed off: all the windows, the walls, everything. No one can get out!”

“What?!” Colt raised an eyebrow in surprise.

This wouldn’t do. If what his man was saying were true and the building were sealed off completely, Colt and his men wouldn’t be able to get out and stop the train. He couldn’t let his plan fail, not now that he was this close.

Colt grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and dragged him to his feet. “What do you mean ‘sealed off’? How?!”

The man trembled at the cold fire raging in Colt’s eyes. Everyone who had worked with the fiercely temperamental, intellectual man for any length of time knew that Colt hated nothing more than a change in plans. If someone were to blame, that person often found himself on the receiving end of a .357 Magnum. Just the other day, Gael had disobeyed orders and nearly killed a soldier and civilian he’d caught at one of the target sites. The only reason he had escaped summary execution was that his monstrous strength was still useful to the leader. Anyone else, and Colt would have shown no mercy.

The man squirmed, praying that Colt’s rage would not be turned toward him, the bearer of bad news. “An al-alchemist!” he stuttered. “There’s an alchemist down there! He’s destroying the walls, the windows, the stairs—he’s warped everything so we can’t get out, and he’s nimble as a fox! We can’t catch him! Every time we think we have him, poof! There’s a wall in our way!”

“An alchemist!”

Colt released the man and stood at the edge of the floor, peering down through the exposed iron framework of a collapsed wall. Below him he could see the warped concrete three floors below and the twisted metal of the stairs.

As Colt watched, a boy flew out of the third-floor emergency exit and landed on the stairs. The boy clapped his hands together, and the stairs below him lurched upwards and reformed into an iron grate, sealing off the exit behind him, barring his pursuers from following him to the fourth floor. As he ran up one of the men stuck his pistol through a hole in the grate and fired at him, but the wall rippled out in the boy’s wake, sending the bullets ricocheting into the air. 

The boy looked up and their eyes met. It was Edward, whom he had locked in the cellar.

Edward grinned wildly and jumped through the doorway to the fourth floor.

Colt slapped one of the exposed iron struts with his hand. “Edward. Edward. Edward,” he chanted the name. “Not the Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric?” Colt swore. “Damn it. How could I not have noticed? I knew Elric was young, but I didn’t expect him to be so short! Wait …”

Colt suddenly remembered Gael’s report describing his encounter at the freight depot. He swore again under his breath and turned briskly around, running down to the floor below.

Colt’s men kept their spare weapons and other supplies on the fifth floor. Other than Gael and the few men with binoculars watching the rails, the floor was unoccupied. The sounds of gunfire and shouting drifted up from below, followed by the thump and crash of falling concrete.

Colt walked over to Gael, who was stretched out on a large metal container, and fired several shots into the side of the container just below him. “Gael! Up!”

“Hrmmm?” Gael’s eyes fluttered open. He seemed utterly calm, oblivious to the holes in the container and the still-smoking gun in Colt’s hand. “What is it, Colt? I’m tired.”

“Remember the civilian you saw at the freight depot the other day? What did he look like? Was he the same kid I brought back this morning?”

“Huh, what’s this all about?” Gael grunted, his languid drawl a sharp contrast to Colt’s hard, sharp tone.

“Answer the question!” Colt shouted, aiming his gun at Gael’s temple. Gael shrugged and rolled over until he was looking straight down the barrel at Colt. 

“How should I know? You know how bad my memory gets, Colt. I forget everything!” Gael smiled, seeming per-fectly at ease despite the certain death staring him in the face. “The blond kid, right? Dunno who he is.”

“If that blond kid’s that alchemist downstairs, the one wreaking havoc on my plans as we speak, then the armored guy I left in the inn might have reported this morning’s abduction directly to the military! If they make the con-nection between the explosions and the kidnappings, they might catch on to our plan and that … would be bad.” Colt’s finger moved down to rest on the trigger of his pistol. “Your negligence has caused far too many problems already, Gael.”

Just then one of the men at the windows raised his voice. “Colt! The train! I see it!”

Colt lifted his weapon and looked down at Gael, who was in the middle of a luxurious yawn. Colt motioned with his chin toward the stairs leading down. “Go stop that train.” He turned and walked back toward the stairs up to the sixth floor.

Gael finally got up. “What, you’re not going to help?” he grunted at Colt’s back as he pried open a crate with one hand and began slinging weapons over his back and off his shoulders.

“Unlike you,” Colt said without turning around, “I’m not much for physical labor. It’s all I can do to pull this trigger.”

Colt walked up the stairs, leaving the two lookouts on the floor with Gael to exchange relieved looks. They knew that Colt’s short temper and itchy trigger finger had ended many lives already, and they heard the thinly veiled threat in his words: “Fail me and die.”

“Bwa ha ha!” Gael laughed out loud. “That’s right. You were always the brainy one. Me? Give me a gun and something to shoot, and I’m happy as a clam!” 

The massive man finished slinging weapons onto his back and went down the stairs at a leisurely pace.

CONFUSION REIGNED on the floor below as Edward dodged around through the dusty darkness, occasionally blinding his pursuers with flashy bursts of alchemy. He was glad he had thought to seal off everything from the first to the third floors. Not only did it keep the terrorists from reaching their target on the rails outside, but it also gave him the cover he desperately needed.

“Where is he?!” he heard one of the terrorists shouting.

Edward dodged around the gunman’s back and ran toward the far corner of the building.

They’ll never shoot me in the dark like this—too risky. They might hit one of their own, thought Edward, wrongly.

“Fire! fire!”

“I don’t care who you hit! Get that boy!”

“Hey! The train’s coming any minute! Open a hole or something on the first floor, now!”

Edward had forgotten to account for the men’s desperation this close to their prize. They fired like crazy.

“Yikes!” Edward watched as bullets riddled the wall he had thrown up for protection. He threw up another before it completely disintegrated, and then he dove to the floor. A hail of bullets smacked into his makeshift wall, covering him with dust and pieces of concrete. Originally, he’d planned on sealing all the terrorists up on the third floor and heading up to take on Colt alone, but against thirty men, he found his plan wasn’t going so well.

“Get here fast, Colonel!” he grumbled under his breath.

Just then, a tremendous booming noise thundered over his head, and the wall he had created flew apart before his eyes.

“Wha—?!”

No gun did that! Edward tensed his muscles, ready to move once he figured out just what was going on.

“Hmmm?” a familiar voice said. “Not here, I guess …”

Edward looked up to see a mountain of a man towering above him in the gloom.

Gael …

Edward had known that, if this abandoned factory truly were the terrorists’ main base of operations, he would run into Gael sooner or later. He had just hoped it would be later.

Gael looked down and saw Edward rising to a crouch. He grinned. “Found my little rat!”

“Freak!” Edward shouted, scurrying away from Gael’s upraised fist. He ran at an angle across the room, trying to get distance. Edward had witnessed Gael’s inhuman strength at the freight depot. He knew that his hasty patches on the walls would do little to deter Gael from simply walking through them to the outside.

And if he gets outside, he’ll stop the train.

Still, the ceilings in the building were quite high, and, superhuman or not, Edward doubted Gael would jump from above the second floor. He had to stop Gael here, on the third floor, or everything he had done would be for naught.

“You’re staying here,” Edward grunted under his breath. His eyes darted to both sides, marking the positions of the other men in the gloom.

“Hey, maybe Colt was right. You do look like that kid from the other day!” Gael shouted across the room, tilting his head curiously. “But maybe not,” he said straining his eyes. “Ah, who cares.” Gael lunged forward, swinging his fist like a hammer. Edward clapped his hands together and began creating a weapon when another man shouted, “Gael, the train! Forget the kid and get outside!”

“Oh, right!” Gael grunted, turning away from Edward and instead swinging his ham-sized fist at the exterior wall.

“We’re on the third floor!” shouted Edward. In his hands was a long, polelike weapon he had fashioned out of scrap metal. Vaulting through the air, he brought the heavy pole down on Gael’s right arm with all the strength he could muster.

“Ouch!”

The heavy iron pole smacked into Gael’s bicep. The giant man barely flinched. “Hey, that really hurt!” he said, twisting around to grab the pole with his empty left hand.

Edward stood in amazement. Gael had taken the full brunt of the blow like it was nothing and then gone for the pole so fast Edward barely had time to react. Edward felt a rush of wind as his feet left the ground. He let go of the pole, and Gael flung it to the far corner of the room. Edward fell on his back, the wind knocked out of him.

“Unh!” He tried to sit up.

Gael’s grating laughter rang out. “Bye-bye, little rat!”

He looked up to see the giant man wave and walk toward the wall. Before the astonished Edward, Gael’s massive frame burst through the wall to the outside like it was the thinnest sheet of paper. Edward squinted against the glare of the bright sun coming in through the hole. He held up his hand to shield his eyes and caught a glimpse of a giant silhouette framed against the light. It seemed to hover motionless for a second, then plunged out of sight.

“I don’t believe it!”

Edward jumped up before the other terrorists figured out where he was. His ears caught the sound of a steam whistle blowing in the distance.

A SINGLE COLUMN of smoke rose in a corner of the sky.

“Not again!” Roy spat, watching the grey smudge rise far in the distance.

“That’s the ninth so far,” Hawkeye noted in the driver’s seat beside him.

Roy sighed. “They don’t seem too big, but I have a sinking feeling that these blasts are going to distract our reinforcements.” Roy looked down at Hawkeye’s hands gripping the wheel. Her knuckles were white. “You okay with driving?”

“I’ve gotten used to it,” Hawkeye responded. “She’s a little quirky, but nothing I can’t handle.” She kept her hands gripped firmly on the wheel, facing forward as she spoke. “I’m more concerned about the others.”

Ahead of them on the road, another roofless utility vehicle like their own raced down the road at a fair clip, occasionally lurching from one side to the other. With each lurch they could hear screaming.

“As long as he figures out which is the gas and which is the brake, they’ll be all right. Thankfully, there aren’t many things to run into out here,” Roy said, his hair waving around in the rushing wind. He looked up, beyond the car in front of them, to the black lump of the abandoned factory visible on the horizon.

Roy had wasted no time contacting the other nearby bases once he determined the terrorists’ true objective. Central had sent out troops, enough to storm the place in force.

Then the blasts started—bombs set along rail stations and bridges, all detonated without warning. Roy knew he was losing his backup as teams were diverted to the blast sites. At this rate, once they got to the factory, they’d be entirely on their own. It was infuriating to watch the terrorists’ plan work so perfectly. In the end, they had left Falman and Fuery in charge of coordinating efforts from Eastern Command, and Roy, Hawkeye, Breda, Havoc, and Alphonse jumped on the first train out of town.

They had barely made it halfway to their destination—a small station just before the abandoned factory—when their train stopped. Smoke rose from the tracks in front of them where another bomb had just gone off.

“Still, we got lucky,” Roy muttered.

“I would say so, sir.” Hawkeye agreed, her face in the wind.

Roy’s team had left the train and run to the next station, looking for any military vehicles in the area they could requisition, when they found two abandoned cars, roofless and modified for rugged terrain. Roy recognized them immediately: these were the very same vehicles he had seen the terrorists driving the other day at the freight depot. They were identical, down to the bags of weapons lying under the backseat. Roy stopped to warn the local police force that the terrorists were nearby, and then he requisitioned the cars.

“They sure jacked these things up,” Hawkeye said, struggling to keep them on the road. The vehicles went over bumps and craters in the road like they were nothing, but the improved acceleration made them hard to control. “I wonder what they’re planning to do with all the money and weapons they’ve been gathering, anyway?”

Roy shrugged. “Stage a coup, maybe? Whoever’s in charge of these people, he has a serious bone to pick with the military.” Roy looked over the weapons piled up in the backseat. “They say whoever has the most guns rules. Still, nothing good has ever come of a weapon picked up in hatred.”

Roy had no idea what sort of life the leader of these terrorists had led, but he probably had his reasons for taking up arms—after all, if your life were perfect, you’d never need a gun. And Roy knew that whether it was he or a terrorist who pulled the trigger, the end result was the same: someone died. Maybe Roy had more in common with the terrorist leader than he cared to admit. Still, he had made a choice: to join the military, to do what he thought was right. He had to believe in that choice. 

Roy sat, gazing down at his rifle hand. Next to him, Hawkeye muttered, “You’re right.” Her eyes traveled down to her own hands, gripping the steering wheel. Taking up a weapon was never easy, but Hawkeye, too, had made her choice. “Maybe there’s no real difference between them and us,” she said after a while. “But I think I’d rather use a gun to protect something—not to take something away. That’s what I think.”

Roy looked quietly over at Hawkeye driving, then turned back around to look at the road ahead. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Yes, sir,” Hawkeye said, pressing the gas pedal to the floor.

HAVOC GRIPPED the wheel of the lead car. 

“Hey, you sure we should be getting this far ahead of the colonel?” Alphonse said worriedly over his shoulder. Havoc looked around behind them.

“Yikes! Forward! Eyes forward!” Breda squealed. “Havoc, eyes on the road, please!”

The car lurched first toward a warehouse on the left, then back toward the rails running alongside the road on their right. Breda and Alphonse grabbed Havoc’s head and physically forced him to look forward.

“Hey, stop it,” he shouted in protest. “You could get us all killed!”

“That’s our line,” Breda shouted back. “You’ve been gun-ning this thing since we left, and you’re still not used to the steering! Thanks to you, we’ve almost lost the colonel, not to mention our lives, a good half-dozen times already!”

“I’m telling you, it’s the car! This thing is way more juiced up than the one the colonel’s driving, honest! I’m only going so fast ’cause I’m not used to it, okay? Hey, at least we’ll get there first,” Havoc said, shrugging off Breda’s rage.

They were almost at the factory.

“Just a little farther!”

Havoc slowly eased up on the gas, fearing that they would be seen. Breda and Alphonse relaxed and let out a sigh of relief when suddenly, they lurched forward and began picking up speed.

“What the—!” Alphonse jerked upright in the backseat.

“H-hey?! What’s the big idea?” Breda shouted, clinging to the exposed roll cage overhead for dear life. Havoc kept the gas pressed down to the floor. 

“That’s what!” he shouted.

Breda’s and Alphonse’s eyes followed Havoc’s gaze.

“Oh, no!”

“The rails!”

“If the train runs into that, it’ll derail for sure!”

Ahead of them, a group of men was rolling large logs onto the train tracks where they ran in front of the factory.

“We have to warn the colonel!” Alphonse shouted, looking behind them, but Roy’s car was still a good distance away. 

Havoc yanked the wheel to the right, and the car sped along the line of the rails. “Breda!”

Breda stuck his rifle out of the side of the car and fired a warning shot into the air. The men had already spotted them—they began to take cover behind the logs and returned fire at the car. But many of the men were unarmed, having just finished setting down the log, and the car was still a good distance away, so most of the shots flew clear. Some of the men tossed down their guns, out of ammunition.

“We need to get cover!” one shouted.

“We can’t let them move that log! Go get weapons!”

While a handful of men provided covering fire, the others retreated back to the factory. Havoc’s eyes fell on a large man standing in their midst, a gun held in both hands.

“Uh-oh,” he shouted. “There’s the big guy Roy was telling us about.”

He decided not to drive too close to the men. From what he had heard, the big guy alone was strong enough to flip over their car. Havoc reached around in the seat behind him, picked up three hand grenades, and handed them to Breda.

Breda pulled the pins and lobbed them one after the other, taking care to toss the grenades far enough away from the rails so as not to damage them. It might have been overkill, but Roy had specifically warned them that this Gael was the kind who could “grab a cannonball out of the air and throw it back at you.” This was no time for restraint. The train would arrive at any minute.

Gael watched as the grenades came arcing through the air toward him. He grinned. “Nasty pack o’ rats! But you’re too late!” Gael and the other men bolted across the clearing back to the safety of the factory. 

Havoc brought the car to a screeching halt next to where the men had laid the logs across the track.

“Oh, no, there’s three of them!” he complained loudly, jumping out of the vehicle. Breda took cover behind the car and began firing in the direction of the factory.

“It won’t budge!” Havoc grunted, straining at one of the logs.

It had taken six men to place each of the logs. Even with Havoc and Alphonse tugging at them, the giant logs wouldn’t budge.

“This is bad. Real bad!” Havoc felt the rails vibrate faintly with the approaching train. He pushed again at the log, in vain. He could already see the dark trail of smoke rising from the train’s smokestack in the distance.

It was coming, and fast. The boxy shape of the train was now clearly visible down the long, straight line of the rails. Alphonse pushed and pushed at one of the logs, finally sliding it an inch or so. Quickly, he drew an alchemical circle in the wood and set it off with just enough force to send the log rolling off to the side of the tracks. Havoc and Breda cheered, but Alphonse was shaking his head.

“I can’t do that again,” he said. “Too risky—I might damage the rails.” Alphonse tried pushing the next log, but it barely moved.

“Havoc, hurry! The train’s coming!” Breda shouted, gauging the distance to the train in between sporadic bursts of fire from the factory.

“I … know!” Havoc grunted back. They still had a little time before it was upon them, but he didn’t see any way they could avoid forcing the train to stop.

THE TERRORISTS must have realized the same thing and withdrawn temporarily. There was no point wasting their bullets now when, in a few minutes, they would have all the weapons they needed delivered right to their doorstep. There was sure to be an all-out attack once the train stopped. It didn’t matter if the train stopped before it hit the log or if it hit the log and derailed. Either way, the terrorists would win.

“Please move!” Alphonse pleaded, straining as he pushed. Then, somehow, miraculously, the log moved. “Ha ha!” Havoc cheered, joining Alphonse until they had the log rolling right off the tracks. One log left. They heard a whistle blow and looked up to see the train slowing down. The conductor must have noticed the blockade.

“What’s keeping the colonel?” Havoc grunted, as he and Alphonse pushed at the last remaining log with all their strength.

If the train slowed down too much, it would take too long for it to accelerate again. The terrorists would still have a window of opportunity to strike. Sweat poured down Havoc’s forehead. The train continued to slow. He could hear triumphant shouts from the abandoned factory.

Too late … 

Just then, the second car came careening across the grass from the road.

“Out of the way!” Roy shouted, leaping from the rushing vehicle.

“You’re late!” Havoc yelled, as he and Alphonse dove away from the final log.

Roy rolled on the grass, got to his feet, and thrust out a gloved hand. An alchemical circle shone brightly on his palm. He brought his fingers together with a loud snap, and sparks flew through the air.

“Burn!”

The sparks danced, and the log on the rails burst into flame. Within seconds, it exploded, sending wood chips flying in all directions, burning to ash before they hit the ground. The train began to pick up speed once more. Roy stood and heard shouts of rage and gunfire coming from the factory. The final showdown was upon them.

“HOW UNFORTUNATE …” said Colt, looking down from his vantage point on the sixth floor of the abandoned factory. He watched through his binoculars as the train passed in front of the factory and continued on. Soldiers had arrived on the ground below, driving his own vehicles, using his own weapons against him. They approached the factory slowly, taking cover behind the small warehouses that stood in a line nearby. They were getting closer.

Colt raised his head, listening to the sound of gunfire from below. The train was already far away, leaving nothing but an empty set of rails crossing through the wilderness under the slanting rays of the sun. 

His plan had failed. There would be no escape for him, nor for most of his men. From the shouts and the haphazard shooting, he knew that they had already lost what semblance of organization they had. There is no greater confusion than when triumph turns suddenly to failure.

Colt’s keen intellect understood what had happened. He could see every little misstep, every mistake he had made, but it did not ease the anger that rose inside him now. His outrage at his own failure mingled with his hatred of the military and grew into something unimaginably huge. So much time spent plotting and planning. How could it all have gone wrong?

Colt hurled his binoculars upward. In one swift motion, he drew his pistol and shot them out of the sky. Then he stood, quietly trembling with rage at the first failure he had ever known.

ROY’S TEAM had left the cars and split into two groups to better cover each other as they approached the factory. Roy got into a position where he could see the whole site.

“What’s with that building?” he muttered.

The lower half of the building seemed utterly without windows or any other openings, save two giant holes on the first and third floors. It was like a solid, square box. The walls were traced with strange, raised welt-like ridges that ran horizontally and vertically for the length of the building, and all of the external staircases were twisted and warped beyond use.

“I’m guessing my brother did that,” Alphonse told him.

“Your brother was always a bit of a show-off,” Roy replied, though he knew this was hardly news to Alphonse.

There was much one could respect about Edward: his commitment to duty, his mental endurance. But sometimes, his actions crossed the line between reasonable and overkill. When he thought he was doing the right thing, he did it with all the strength he could muster, never wavering until the deed was done.

“I doubted the Fullmetal Alchemist would be sitting on his behind, playing the good prisoner. Guess I was right.”

Roy felt relieved to see evidence that Edward was most definitely all right and in action. It left one less thing for them to worry about. Still, if he was inside that building, he faced some pretty fearsome odds. They needed to get in there as fast as they could.

Roy glanced back at Alphonse while he waited for Havoc’s team to get into position. If he had been playing this one by the book, he should have left Alphonse at Eastern Command. Alphonse hadn’t even asked for permission to come. He knew the rules, and he knew how significant this operation was. But when Alphonse had come out to see them off, Roy had reached out his hand.

“No stunts, okay?”

“Thank you, sir,” Alphonse had replied eagerly. “I’ll be careful!”

“Great,” Roy had said, grinning. “Let’s go get that abducted troublemaker of yours out of there!”

Havoc signaled and his team began firing on the building, driving the defenders back inside, while Roy and Alphonse ran up, getting their backs to the factory wall. 

A FEW WOUNDED TERRORISTS sat listlessly by the entrance to the first floor, having lost the will to fight. One of them waved weakly to Roy as he peered inside. The interior staircase had been warped beyond use, so he headed for the fire escape on the outside of the building. It hadn’t fared any better.

“I have to congratulate Edward. This really is a work of art.” Roy looked up at the once-straight staircase. It was so badly twisted he didn’t know whether he would be able to climb it, assuming it could even support his weight. “Well,” he said, taking off his jacket. “I guess it’s been a while since my last workout.”

Roy grabbed a support post that stuck out horizontally from the wall, just a little above his head. He jumped, curling around the pole as his momentum carried him upwards. He brought his legs around and caught on to another pole farther up. Behind him, Alphonse grabbed another support strut and began to climb.

Working their way up the weaving bars of the twisted stair, they eventually reached what must once have been an emergency exit door on the second floor. Alphonse crouched and drew an alchemical circle on the wall.

There was a bright flash of light. Roy waited for it to fade and then kicked in the newly formed door in the wall beside them. A hail of bullets came streaming out.

“Whoa!”

Roy and Alphonse quickly ducked off to the side at the sudden sound of heavy gunfire. They could hear bullets smacking into the other side of the wall. Roy contemplated burning them out, but without knowing for sure who was in there, firing blindly would be too risky, so he merely stood by the door, tensed, waiting for the firing to stop. 

Alphonse, for his part, did not fear bullets. Even if they did penetrate his armor, there was nothing inside to hit. But he did worry about bullets ricocheting in the darkness and possibly hitting Edward or even Ancy.

“We could call out to them, see if they’re in there,” Roy suggested, “Though I doubt we could be heard over this racket.”

Alphonse thought for a moment. “I know something that would get a response … I wouldn’t even have to say it loud. Ed would hear.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“He’d be angry, though. Real angry.”

“This is an emergency,” Roy told him.

Alphonse nodded, and apologizing to his brother under his breath, he stuck his head up to the edge of the doorway and said very softly “Hey, shorty!”

He said it so quietly that Roy was worried Edward wouldn’t have heard him, despite what Alphonse might think. But when there was no response, Alphonse nodded with some confidence and pointed further up. “He’s not here. Let’s go.”

“Your brother’s that sensitive about his height?” Roy asked, amazed.

“Oh, yes. ‘Little bean’ and ‘shrimpcake’ are good ones too. He completely overreacts when people comment on his height. I tell him he should drink more milk, but he says he doesn’t like it.” Alphonse shrugged.

They made their way up to the third floor, where Alphonse repeated his performance. Nothing. At the fourth floor they stopped. There was no sound of gunfire up here, nor running feet. It seemed like the floor was empty. Alphonse tried again anyway.

“Oh, little bean?”

The response from above them was immediate. “Hey! Who you calling ‘little bean’?!”

“Guess he’s on the fifth floor,” Alphonse said.

“Your brother’s got good ears.” 

They heard shouts from above and the sound of gunshots. Roy and Alphonse tensed, ready to run in through the fourth floor emergency exit and up to join him, when a howl of rage stopped them in their tracks. 

“All right, which one of you called me ‘little bean’?! Out of my way!”

There were five loud thumps, followed by a sudden silence. Roy peered inside to see Edward come running down the stairs.

“Who was it?! Who said that?! Come out and take what’s coming to you!” 

Roy and Alphonse exchanged glances. 

“He’s your brother,” Roy said.

Edward looked up and saw them standing in the doorway. He charged, arms waving, his face red with rage. This was no abducted troublemaker. This was an abducted madman.

ALPHONSE calmed his brother down at last and asked if he knew where they were keeping Ancy. Edward told him everything that had happened, and Alphonse went downstairs to tell Hawkeye and the others below. Meanwhile, Edward and Roy went upstairs to arrest Colt.

“If I’d known one little word could set you off like that, I wouldn’t have needed to come in here. I could have just shouted from outside with a megaphone and let you handle them all,” Roy said, picking his way through the men lying unconscious on the stairwell. In his rage, Edward had taken out five terrorists with his bare fists.

“Quiet!” Edward snapped, glaring at his superior officer.

“What’s so bad about ‘little bean’?”

“I said quiet!” Edward growled, raising his fists.

Then he stopped. He saw something moving in a corner of the room.

“Beans?” a heavy voice said. “I like beans!” It was Gael. “Ow! Sleeping on grates sure gives me a sore neck!”

“What’s he doing back there?!” Edward had been fighting up here the whole time, but he hadn’t noticed Gael come back at all.

“I was just takin’ a rest. Heavy work puttin’ them logs on the train tracks, you know.” Gael seemed unconcerned. Either he didn’t know that the logs had been moved and the train had gone past or he didn’t care. He stood up and stretched.

Gael’s display of superhuman strength at the depot still vivid in his mind, Roy aimed his gun. However, he didn’t fire, fearing a ricochet off the steel box that Gael had been sleeping on. While Roy hesitated, Gael took the opportunity to grab a small table sitting next to the container and hurl it at them.

“Whoa!” Roy shouted, ducking.

“There he goes again!”

They dodged the flying table, and Gael howled with laughter. 

The fifth floor, where the terrorists had kept their supplies, was filled with crates, tables, and even some of the large containers that were used for loading materials onto trains. Gael had plenty of things to throw, and worse, he had a gun. 

Smiling, he raised his weapon, the heavy pistol looking like a toy gun in his massive hand. But Edward and Roy knew it was no toy. They ran for cover behind a nearby stack of crates. The space where they had just been standing filled with a spray of bullets, splintering a nearby table to pieces.

“Damn! This is worse than before!” Edward shouted to Roy next to him, as wood chips rained down around them.

“He’s stronger than us, and he’s better armed!” Roy shouted back. The shower of splinters stopped and he risked a peek around the edge of the crate. A hole opened in the wood an inch in front of his nose.

“Colonel!” 

“Get down!”

The bullets kept coming, opening holes in their cover. The two sat covering their heads and eyes from the flying fragments, steeling themselves to not move as the wood splintered above their heads.

“Hrmm? Not dead yet?” they heard Gael say, punctuated by the sound of an empty clip hitting the concrete floor. Edward and Roy took their chance and dove behind another container. They looked back at the large crate they had been hiding behind.

While each of them expected it to be riddled with holes, they found that the bullets had all struck the crate in a tightly controlled pattern, startlingly close to where their heads had been.

“Oh, great. He’s a marksman, too,” Roy sighed.

“What about you, Colonel?” Edward said, looking down at the gun hanging from Roy’s waist. Roy did not draw his weapon.

“There are metal containers back there. My shots could ricochet. I’m not sure it would be wise to open fire.”

“Well, he sure isn’t holding back.”

“Maybe he’s more confident in his aim.”

They heard the sound of a clip being replaced.

“Either that, or he isn’t thinking at all,” Edward said. Both of them jumped at the same time.

A second later, bullets zinged across the floor where they had just stood, sending concrete chips flying through the air toward the fleeing pair.

“Stop that scuttling!” Gael howled. “I’ll catch you yet, my little rats!”

He was standing atop a large container, laughing and firing like crazy, a gun in each hand. Edward and Roy ran in two different directions, and the guns followed, filling the air with the sound of gunfire.

“This guy’s insane!” Roy shouted as sparks flew off the metal container right next to him. The bullets ricocheted off into the room.

When Gael had a clear shot, his aim was uncannily accurate. Edward could no longer count the close calls he’d had in the last minute. When they took cover, Gael took a guess as to where they hid and filled the area with bullets.

The large storeroom filled with dust and the smell of gunpowder.

Roy sat panting, his back to a large wooden crate that provided a moment’s worth of cover. His ears were ringing with the sound of gunfire.

“We might as well be fighting a whole platoon!” he hissed to Edward behind a nicely finished oak table a short distance away. “He has to run out of bullets sometime. That’s when we make our move—from the back!” Roy took off at a run through the room, weaving between crates and tables until he was sure Gael’s back was turned on his position. Roy popped up, saw Gael, and slumped quickly back down.

So much for running out of ammo … 

“Now this is fun!” the massive man howled. Roy watched from around the corner of a crate as Gael, roaring with laughter, threw down a spent weapon and immediately replaced it with another from an army’s arsenal worth of pistols and rifles slung around his waist and over his shoulders.

Roy, an alchemist in his own right, could throw fire at him, but he had set off enough ammunition in his life to know that a direct flame hitting all those weapons would turn the room into a deadly fireworks show. He may have been good enough to be a State Alchemist, but he didn’t trust that his skills were sharp enough to strike the man without hitting the guns slung all over his back.

Roy felt like a turtle, afraid to show any limb for fear it would get nipped off. He made a sour face and ran, feeling a barrel pointed at him the whole way, as bullets whizzed by his head, smacking into the wooden crates around him with an unsettling sound. 

Like splintering bone, Roy thought, finding a medium-sized metal container to hide behind. Pausing, he caught his breath and the firing stopped—and then resumed, but clearly at a different target.

He must be focusing fire on Edward now … please, Ed, don’t do something stupid, Roy prayed as the gunfire swept across the room, coming closer. Just as Roy began to suspect that Gael had somehow figured out where he was hiding, Edward appeared around a corner and plunked down on the floor next to his superior officer, panting loudly.

“What do we do?” he asked between gasping breaths. Sweat poured down Edward’s forehead. He must have been running quite a bit. Once he had caught his breath, he pointed behind them with his thumb. “He’s out of control! We can’t fight back, we can’t get close, I don’t even have time to transmute something. And he never seems to run out of ammo! He just keeps pulling out new weapons!”

“I know. He’s got more on his back, too,” Roy told him.

“For real?” Edward slapped his forehead with his hand in exasperation and looked up at the ceiling. “If we could just get in close.”

“He’d shoot you before you got anywhere near enough,” Roy said. He had an idea of what Edward had in mind. Roy tugged at the collar of his shirt, trying to let off some excess heat, when he heard pounding footsteps. He was walking on top of one of the containers across the room.

Slam.

Roy flinched. Gael must have jumped onto another container from the sound.

How far apart were those containers? Roy wondered. Beside him, Edward was thinking exactly the same thing. Impossible!

Slam!

The containers were too far apart. He had too many weapons on his back to … 

Slam!!!

The container they hid behind shuddered, and a shadow fell over the two alchemists. 

“Found you!” Gael announced joyfully from right above them. “Game over, little rats!” He brought two smoking barrels to bear on them.

But now, things were different: he was close.

No sooner had Gael appeared than Edward lunged away from the side of the container, giving himself a little room to run before turning around. And run he did, straight at the container the grinning Gael stood on, looking for all the world like some kid who’d just won at King of the Hill. Beneath him, Roy quickly dropped to one knee and stuck out his arms, weaving the fingers of both hands into a cup. Edward’s foot landed right on Roy’s linked hands, and Roy lifted.

Edward flew upwards, holding his right hand out extended toward Gael. “Didn’t think you’d ever come in close!” he shouted fearlessly, bringing his left fist up to the palm of his right hand and straightening his fingers in one swift motion.

A light flared in his palm. It flashed, brilliant in the dim light, and then froze. Material dissolved and reformed, and when the light faded, a sharp blade extended from Edward’s right arm.

Gael stood in bewilderment as Edward’s arm-blade neatly severed the barrels of both his guns. The massive man gave a surprised grunt, like a bullfrog coming face-to-face with a hungry raptor, as Edward landed with a clang on the container surface in front of him. The arm-blade flashed again, severing the belt that held the weapons at Gael’s waist, sending guns and rifles clattering to the concrete floor a good ten feet below.

It was all over in a matter of seconds.

Gael staggered backwards, howling, and fell right off the edge of the container after his weapons. He landed heavily on his back.

“What’s the big idea! Don’t scare me like that!” Gael howled, scrambling to his feet. Edward sighed. A ten-foot fall onto hard weapons and a harder floor, and the giant barely even winced. Why am I not surprised? Edward thought, as Gael stood, his fallen weapons crunching under his feet.

He stood to his full height and stopped. A gun was pointed at his head.

“Don’t move.” It was Roy. “Hands on the container. Slowly.”

“Hey, no fair. It was two against one!” Gael complained half-heartedly, putting his hands on the container as he was told. Edward squatted on the container top above his head.

“Too bad, eh, Gael? See, we don’t need guns to fight.” Edward flexed his arm, and the blade shone and became a hand once again. “Now you’ll come along with us quietly.”

Gael laughed through clenched teeth. The container Edward was standing on made a groaning noise.

Edward tensed. What’s going on?

Gael stood, perfectly still, both hands pressed against the container. But when Edward looked closer, he saw Gael’s muscles rippling.

He’s pushing the container!

The realization came a moment too late. Gael howled, Edward shouted, and the container tilted slowly and toppled on its side with a deafening noise. In the last split second, Edward managed to leap to another container nearby. He looked back to see Roy standing alone in the roiling dust, coughing too hard to do anything. Edward looked frantically for Gael when the container beneath him lurched.

No way!

Edward turned and leaped again. A second deafening crash sounded behind him and dust flew into the air. From the looks of it, the containers were filled with straw. A green haze filled the room, mingled with black dust, perhaps from a container of coal.

“Ow, my eyes!” Edward shouted, rubbing them with his palms.

“Hey, you okay?” came a familiar voice.

“Colonel?!”

Visibility in the room was zero.

“Sort of …” Edward began, and the container under his feet lurched. “… Not!” Edward vaulted from the container onto the floor and ran, feeling the concrete beneath his feet tremble with the force of the container’s impact.

From the sound of it, Gael was moving through the room, flipping over every container he could find. Dust rose everywhere, and the floor trembled. 

Suddenly, Edward looked down. Grinning, he squatted and touched the floor. A brilliant light blazed, and the room filled with the sound of crackling electricity. In the flash of light, Edward saw Gael, his eyes opened wide, trying to see what the alchemist was up to.

But when the light faded, nothing had changed.

“Hey, nice try—whatever that was,” Gael said, chuckling, raising his weapons. The light had given away Edward’s position.

“Colonel!” Edward shouted, running toward Roy. He held his hand in front of him, the index finger jabbing repeatedly toward the floor in a signal that only Roy would understand.

“Got it,” Roy shouted, dodging fire from Gael and running toward Edward. In his hand, he held an automatic rifle from the pile that Edward had cut off Gael’s waist. Roy spun around and began to fire at the floor in front of Gael’s feet.

“Bah!” the giant laughed. “You missed me!” Gael danced back out of harm’s way, and Roy followed him back, spraying the concrete with more bullets. By the time that Roy’s gun ran out of ammunition, the dust had settled somewhat, and they could see again. Edward, Roy, and Gael faced off from across the large room.

Gael chuckled. “What’s the matter, soldier? Out of bullets?”

Roy smiled back. “And you’re out of luck.” His fingers snapped.

There was a flash of light, and an explosion went off in the far corner of the room. The floor trembled.

Gael looked in the direction of the corner, grinning. “Oooh, so you’re an alchemist, too? Too bad you’re just as bad an aim with that as you are with your gun.”

Roy snapped again, and more explosions went off, this time in all four corners of the room.

“You call yourself a State Alchemist?! Even my grandma shoots better than that!” Gael howled, as Edward made a large, thick wall in front of him.

“Make all the walls you want! I’ll just break them down!” Gael said, stepping forward. Roy snapped his fingers again.

The explosion went off at the base of the wall, sending the entire panel of shaped concrete flying through the air toward Gael.

“Ah, so you want to play catch!” Gael shouted. He snatched the ten-foot section of wall out of the air and laughed, lifting it over his head. “Now you catch!” he roared. And then he stopped.

Beneath his feet, the entire floor buckled. Gael lost his balance, falling to one knee. The chunk of wall in his hands slammed into the floor in front of him, and it shook before breaking apart with an incredible tearing noise. 

“You’re going to take us all down!” Gael bellowed as he fell. Edward didn’t budge.

“No, only you will fall.”

Beneath the alchemists’ feet was another floor—a shelf that stuck directly out of the unharmed wall behind them.

“Aieee!”

Gael and his scream were swallowed by the collapsing floor, followed by a rain of posts, beams, and rubble.

TEN MINUTES LATER, Edward and Roy stood looking at the staircase up to the sixth floor.

“He’s up there,” Edward said quietly.

“Probably so,” Roy agreed.

The sound of gunfire, until now a constant background noise, had fallen silent. The abandoned factory was eerily quiet. Either all of the terrorists had surrendered or they had been knocked out of commission. Regardless, no one here could stop Roy and Edward from going up the stairs and putting an end to this once and for all.

“I hope Ancy’s okay.”

Roy patted Edward’s shoulder. “Alphonse has probably told Lieutenant Hawkeye’s team where she is by now. I’m sure they’ve already gotten her out.”

“What about Gael?” Edward asked. He’d seen enough of that man’s monstrous strength by now to know that the fall probably hadn’t killed him.

“An awful lot of rubble went down with him,” Roy mused. “Should have knocked him out at least … I hope.”

“Hmm. You think I overdid it?”

“Overdid it? Now that’s the last thing I expected to hear you say,” Roy said, smiling. “Have you seen the first three floors of this factory lately? It’s like … a work of art. Really bad art.”

Edward glared at him. “Hey, you took long enough getting here. I had to do something to pass the time.” He didn’t need to mention how difficult it was fighting one against thirty.

Roy shrugged. “You’re the one who got abducted. I’ll consider you in my debt.” He grinned, and winked at Edward.

“Hey, no fair!”

“Now, now, you dug your own grave this time … son.”

Edward winced. 

Roy shot him a cheery smile. “I’ll have you pay me back when this is all over. With interest, of course.”

“Interest, right,” Edward grumbled.

“Just a little more left.”

The two looked up the staircase. Colt was somewhere up there, waiting. They exchanged looks, nodded, and began to walk up the stairs.

THE SIXTH FLOOR was in shambles. Huge gaps gaped in the outside walls, and the roof had collapsed here and there, giving glimpses of the open sky. Where interior walls once stood, iron supports stuck out of the rubble at strange angles, blocking their field of view. Through the metal and concrete thicket, near the other side of the room, stood Colt.

He sensed their presence but did not turn around.

“You’re under arrest for acts of terrorism and multiple kidnappings. Come along nicely now,” Roy announced, his voice quiet but commanding enough that Colt was sure to hear.

“There’s no one left,” Edward added. “You’ve failed. Give yourself up.”

“Failed?” Colt said at last. “Oh, yes, I failed. What went wrong when? The plan … was perfect.”

“Where did your plan fail?” Edward asked coolly. “That’s beside the point. You did wrong, Colt. You were caught in a trap of your own making, blinded by your lust for revenge, for money. You were so far gone, you couldn’t have succeeded.” Edward paused, then added, with a hint of a smile: “And you mistook a State Alchemist … for an army brat.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Colt said, turning around. “I wasn’t always this way, though, you know. I was honest once, when I was a boy. Like you.”

Edward shrugged. “Too bad you didn’t manage to stay that way.”

Colt laughed in a derisive manner. “Tell me, O mighty State Alchemist, how could I? Do you want to know what it’s like to lose your parents in a military crackdown? To be struck from the ranks of the elite and left to fall on your knees?”

Colt’s voice filled with venom. In other circumstances, what he said now might have been moving, but he spat his words out like daggers, and it was clear that he wanted no sympathy. The cold, dark hatred emanating from him sought no pity.

“I don’t know your life’s story, Colt,” Roy said, “and frankly, I don’t care to. All I know is that you’re a criminal, and you’ll pay for your crimes.” It didn’t matter what Colt said. He could criticize the military until he drew his last breath, and he wouldn’t say anything Roy didn’t already know. Like Edward had said, it was beside the point. What mattered was that this man, Colt, had chosen the path of revenge. He made his choice, and he would have to live with the consequences. 

Roy took a step forward, raising his pistol. “Put that gun in your hand down on the ground in front of you, and raise your hands over your head. It’s over.”

“How like a military man,” Colt said with a thin smile. “But I have my convictions too. And my pride won’t suffer arrest.” Almost before he finished speaking, Colt opened fire and dove behind a partially collapsed section of wall. The sudden, blindingly fast motion caught Edward and Roy off guard.

“Ow!” Roy yelped as a bullet grazed his shin.

“Colonel!” Edward looked over at Roy and a bullet grazed the back of his hand. “Ow!”

The two turned in the direction of the gunshots, but Colt had already moved again. More gunfire came from yet another place, ricocheting off the rubble around them. They lunged for cover as they heard the sound of empty shell casings hitting the concrete floor. Roy rose from a crouch, trying to find Colt through the tangle of iron supports that ran between the floor and what remained of the roof. 

Moving quietly, Edward began to slink toward the side of the room when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. “Take this!” Edward put his hands together and smacked the floor. The floor buckled, and a wave shot across the concrete toward Colt’s hiding place, spraying the room with fragments of metal and debris. Colt dove aside, and Edward leaned over to send another burst at him when Roy stopped him.

“Wait!” Roy was staring at the place where Edward’s blast had ripped a hole in the iron framework that ran through the concrete of the floor. “Not good!”

“Huh?”

Roy grabbed Edward’s hand and pulled him quickly backwards. A chunk of roof fell down where they had just been standing. 

“Whoa!” Edward shouted, shielding his face from the flying debris.

“These iron struts are here for a reason,” said Roy, tapping one of the supports with his hand.

“Try to be a little more careful!” Colt cackled from across the room. “Don’t want to bring the whole place down on our heads now, do we?” He sounded like he was actually enjoying himself. “If you’re going to take me down, I plan to take at least one of you with me!”

“Whatever!” Edward shouted. “You just try!” Still, he didn’t feel as confident as he might have sounded. He had been robbed of his most powerful weapon: his alchemy. 

Colt’s victorious laugh echoed through the air. “Gladly! And it looks like I might just succeed! You owe me for ruining my plans, Alchemist! And to think, I was so close … so close! We had the weapons, the organization … we were ready to take over! Tell me, what is the difference between terrorists and the army? The number of people you own, is that it?” Colt ranted on, still laughing with each breath. “The military stole the life I should have had! How can you blame me for taking lives myself? Tell me, are we not the same?!”

“Give it up, Colt,” Roy shouted, stretching out his hand. “We may hold the same guns, but you and I aren’t the same.”

Roy snapped his fingers. Glowing red sparks flew toward Colt’s hiding place, igniting the dusty air over his head. There was a chain reaction, and it seemed like the air exploded. Though the fire burned itself out in a split second, the concussion of the blast sent Colt reeling. Roy and Edward heard the thud of a body hitting the concrete and the clatter of a pistol leaving limp fingers to skitter across the floor.

“You want to know what the difference is? We don’t use children and money to try to win people’s hearts. We may kill, but we don’t hate.”

EDWARD AND ROY went back downstairs to find that Alphonse had restored the front gate to its original form. He was standing with his arm on Ancy’s tiny shoulders. Next to him stood Hawkeye, Havoc, and Breda.

“Edward!” Ancy shouted, waving her hand. “I hid until the very end, Edward! Didn’t I, Alphonse?”

Alphonse nodded. “You did great, Ancy. The best.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

Ancy smiled and Edward tousled her hair. For the first time, he felt like things might finally come to a close. He turned to his brother. “Good job finding me, Al.”

“No problem,” his brother said, nodding. “I couldn’t have done it without the folks at Eastern Command.”

“Yeah, I know. Now I owe them.” Edward said, turning to Roy. The colonel was taking a report from Hawkeye.

“So, this girl is the art dealer’s missing child after all?” he was asking.

“Yes, sir.”

“And the other terrorists?”

“We’ve got them rounded up in the building, wounded and all.” Hawkeye pointed at the door behind them. “But … we couldn’t find Gael. Everything between floors three and five is such a mess that we can’t go in there until reinforcements arrive with heavier equipment.”

“I see,” Roy said, his brow furrowing slightly.

Just then, Breda lowered his binoculars. “The reinforce-ments are coming, sir!”

Roy breathed a sigh of relief.

“Well,” Havoc said, “I deserve a break.” 

The long battle was over at last. The team from Eastern Command breathed a deep sigh of relief … and the front gates to the factory came crashing down, nearly clipping Havoc’s shoulder on their way to the hard ground. They all spun to see Gael lurch out of the factory entrance, carrying chunks of rubble, broken tables, crates, and pieces of broken wall over his head. 

“Gra ha ha! So many rats to crush, so little time!” Gael grinned evilly. He hurled the collected garbage in his hands at Roy and the others in a final gesture of defiance. What his attack lacked in finesse, it made up for in sheer volume.

“Yipes!” An iron bar struck the ground right next to Havoc’s foot and stood there, sticking straight up. Three tables arced toward Breda, crashing and splintering behind his running feet. As everyone dodged the flying rubble, Roy broke into a run, straight at the gaping doorway. 

“Lieutenant! Look out!” 

A large wooden crate was falling straight for Lieutenant Hawkeye’s head. Roy pulled her arm and dragged her behind him, raised his hands, and lifted his fingers to snap.

“Colonel! Look out!” Hawkeye shouted, clinging to Roy’s back. Roy stumbled off balance, still trying to light a spark in his hand. The next moment, the wooden box split cleanly in half. 

Edward ran in front of Roy and Hawkeye, his blade-arm slashing, sending pieces of the crate flying to the ground. He landed and jumped again, straight for Gael’s massive torso. The glinting steel of his right blade-arm transformed into a metal rod, swinging down at Gael’s head. 

Gael reached out with both arms to stop the blow.

“Wrong!” Edward shouted with a grin. His pole-arm lightly grazed Gael’s outstretched hands before Edward danced upward, his feet finding purchase on Gael’s left knee and right shoulder. He vaulted over the giant and landed on the ground behind him.

“Al!” Edward shouted to his brother as he touched the ground beneath Gael’s unguarded feet. The ground swelled upward and split, growing up around his thick legs. In moments, he was trapped.

“Wh-what’s this? Hey! I can’t move my legs!” Gael windmilled his arms, not fully realizing what had just happened. A large shape stood in front of him.

“You know what this is called, mister?” Alphonse drew back his arms. “It’s called resisting arrest. And resistance . . . is futile.” 

Giant armored fists pounded Gael until he fell uncon-scious to the ground.

TWO OPEN-ROOFED utility vehicles sped across the country-side as the sun set on the horizon. Hawkeye drove one, with Roy and Edward as her passengers.

“Hey, Colonel,” said Edward, leaning forward from the back seat until his chin was almost on Roy’s shoulder.

“What?” Roy snapped. “Stop grinning like that. It disturbs me.”

Edward chuckled. “Oh, nothing. Just … I believe I’ve paid off my debt!”

Roy frowned. “Explain.”

“I just saved you from Gael, did I not? Saving someone’s life … that’s got to be worth something, eh?”

“Oh, that?” Roy said, shaking his head. “Sorry, you were saving the lieutenant there, not me. I don’t think I even need to mention that I had the situation totally under control. See, I was about to light a spark when you—”

“No, no, no,” Edward said, wagging a finger at Roy. “It was you I saved, and I’ve got the proof right here.”

Roy shot him a surprised look. “Proof?”

“Voila!” Edward said. In his hand, he held a fragment of the wooden crate he had split in midair. The words “Danger: High Explosives” had been printed along the side. “So,” Edward continued, “you said you were going to light a spark and … what, exactly?” Edward shook his head and gave an exaggerated sigh. 

Roy’s eyes opened wide and his mouth twisted into a grimace.

“I did try to warn you,” Hawkeye said from the driver’s seat.

“What?” Roy exclaimed. “You too?!” Had they all seen the markings on the box except for him?

Edward gave him a triumphant smile. “You should really be more careful.”

“I got distracted,” Roy muttered. “It’s not easy, worrying about your subordinates all the time.” He turned back around to look at the road ahead. “I tried, okay?”

Edward laughed merrily and looked up at the other car, driving on the road ahead of them. The car moved erratically over the road, slowing down and then jerking forward. Screams rose up with each lurch of the car from one side of the road to the other.

“Colonel?” Edward said after a moment. Roy didn’t look back. “Thanks … for trying.”

“Don’t mention it,” Roy said with a wry smile. The three fell quiet, listening to the screams of terror carried on the wind from the car in front of them.

The long battle was over, and a new destination now awaited Edward and his brother. No matter what the road ahead might hold in store for them, they would follow it to its end. It was, after all, the path they had chosen. They drove on toward an uncertain future, but Edward had faith that one day somewhere, somehow, he and his brother would find the Philosopher’s Stone and walk whole, in their true bodies once again.