Authors Note: I had this done yesterday morning, but the site wouldn't let me log in and post it! Well, since the site wouldn't let me upload this one as one big file either, everyone gets to enjoy the cliffhangers of having one of these stories of mine actually posted in chapters! Enjoy! wicked grin

November 7th, 1940

"I'm going to beat you!" Sara Elric shouted the challenge as she charged ahead down the pavement, feed pounding against the ground.

"No you won't!" Edward grinned, picking up speed and matching his thirteen year old daughter stride for stride as they ran. The house was only another hundred yards up the sidewalk and approaching fast.

In a matter of seconds they both hit the stairs and slapped palms against the door then leaned against it, panting and laughing.

"Darn it! A tie," Sara panted, looking up at him. "I thought I was finally going to win!"

"Good try, kiddo," Ed smirked. "But you'll have to do better than that. It was a good run though." He enjoyed their morning five mile runs almost as much as their sparring sessions. "Maybe next time."

"Yeah right," Sara blew a puff of air from her mouth that sent her bangs fluffing up out of her face. "Though I guess Maes' Dad was wrong."

"Roy? What did he say?" Ed asked curiously as he opened the door and let them both inside. He was so ready for a good hearty breakfast!

"Oh he said that now that you were past forty he was sure you'd slow down," she grinned, and Ed realized she was trying to get a rise out of him. He stuck out his hand and ruffled her hair. "Gah! Dad, stop that!"

"Call it revenge," Ed grinned.

"Sounds like you two had fun this morning," Winry's voice came from the living room. "Breakfast is ready. Get cleaned up if you want to join us!"

"Beat you to the bathroom!" Sara laughed, and darted upstairs at full speed.

"I think I'll just wash my hands in the kitchen and worry about that later," Ed chuckled as he entered the living room and walked over to where Aldon was setting the table and Winry was bringing out a steaming plate of bacon, eggs, and sweet toast. "It's easier than playing with lightning," he teased.

"She almost beat you, didn't she?" Winry smiled; a note of pride and amusement in her voice.

Ed nodded as he grabbed a towel off the basket of clean laundry waiting to go upstairs and walked into the kitchen. "It was close," he confirmed. He may be forty-one, but he hadn't slowed up any. Still, Sara was getting very good at matching him in some things. She couldn't beat him in a fight, but she was getting close at that too! "Some day soon she's going to."

"And you'll be the proudest father ever when it happens," Winry laughed. "I know you."

"I don't like getting beat," Ed pointed out as he washed up.

"You like to see her succeed," Winry countered. "And she doesn't like to lose any more than you do. She just keeps her temper in check better."

"Guilty as charged, and true on all counts," Ed smiled. Winry knew them both too well, and Sara had proven more and more to be 'Ed's daughter' as she got older, with a driven enthusiasm for everything she did that came from both parents, but her father's keen knack for problem solving and putting together complicated and disparate information. She had taken to alchemy like a bird to flight, and had boundless energy in her lithe little frame. Fortunately, she wasn't quite as hot headed, given she certainly wasn't known for being tall either. Though she was taller than Ed had been, reaching five foot one already, when he still hadn't cleared five feet at that age!

Ed felt better for a quick wash. He'd shower after his stomach stopped growling! He came back into the living room and sat down at the table as he heard Sara's feet pounding back down the stairs. She had changed out of her sweatshirt into a tank top and, as happened often of late, Ed found himself startled by the fact his baby girl wasn't a kid anymore, but a young lady on the verge of turning into a woman.

No, that didn't make him feel old. Not in the slightest! Yeesh.

"This looks great Mom!" Sara grinned, filling her plate and, only out of having manners pounded into her by her mother, did she not start inhaling her food. It certainly wasn't something she had learned from Ed's example!

Aldon filled his plate as well, while Winry helped Ethan up onto his booster seat. The three year old was grinning broadly as he reached for the sweet toast. They had called it French toast on the other side of the Gate, but Ed and Winry hadn't wanted to explain 'France' to strangers, so they just called it sweet toast. "I want some!" he grinned. "Please, Mommy!"

"Just don't get too much syrup on your hand," Winry chuckled. "Wait a second." She pulled out a small glove and slipped it over Ethan's right hand. It covered his auto-mail fingers which, Ed and Winry had learned as soon as Ethan had been fitted with them right after he turned two, was necessary if they didn't want to spend all their time cleaning them out with all of the things small children got into! It didn't bother Ethan of course. As soon as Winry was done, he was grabbing a slice and reaching for the cup of syrup. "I want to pour it!"

Ed smiled as he watched. Despite his worries when his youngest had been born, Ethan had proven to be a very independent spirit; fearless and eager, exploratory, even more than Sara had been at that age. He was into everything he could manage, and while sometimes he knew it drove Winry a little nuts, it made Ed proud.

Aldon was definitely the quietest of the three. Not that it made their middle child any less precocious! He was ten now, and still often the calming balance to Sara's sometimes reckless enthusiasm. Their relationship, despite the larger age difference, often reminded Ed of Al and himself, though Aldon and Sara often had different interests. Aldon had showed little interest in his father's alchemy; at least, in learning it for himself. Aldon understood how it worked. He didn't want to design auto-mail like his mother either, but he spent a lot of time tinkering around with electronics and building things anyway. He had even helped Ed fix a few things around the house; simple projects, but he definitely had a good mind for mechanics design and implementation. Ed looked forward to seeing what Aldon was doing in a few years with his passion for invention.

"When you're done," Winry said to Ed as everyone ate, "Roy called. He wanted to know if you'd come over this afternoon. He wants to talk."

"Did he say what about?" Ed asked curiously between bites. He was glad it was a weekend, but he'd been hoping to spend most of it with the kids and Winry. They were planning a family vacation, and there was a lot left to decide on!

"Xing," Winry replied simply, a brief frown on her face. "He sounded concerned, but he wouldn't tell me why."

"Isn't Xing having a civil war?" Sara asked, looking up from her plate. "Teacher was telling us about it in class yesterday."

Ed nodded. "That's right. We haven't had contact with their government in months. Maybe he's finally heard something." Why he'd want to talk to Ed about it, he didn't know, but he had a feeling it couldn't be good. Still, he shrugged casually and went back to eating. "I guess I'll go over and see what he wants."

"Daaad!" Maes Mustang called out as he closed the door behind Ed. "He's here!"

"Thanks for the announcement, twerp," Ed laughed, ruffling Maes' hair. It got the same reaction out of Mustang's dark haired son that it did out of Sara.

"Hey, stop that!" Maes ducked away, smoothing his hair and looking up at him with an annoyed scowl. He was only eleven and the same height as Sara already. Eventually, he'd be taller than Ed, who was going to enjoy the fact that the kids were smaller than he was for as long as possible!

Really, Maes and Sara were best friends and often joined at the hip when they were together. Ed actually got along pretty well with Roy's son most of the time. He just enjoyed tweaking the kid sometimes. "All right," he chuckled. "How's the alchemy coming?"

At the mention of his favorite activity, Maes' eyes lit up. "Awesome!" he grinned broadly, an eager expression that looked almost out of place on a face that was almost an exact replica of his father's. "I made this yesterday," he turned to the side table in the Mustang entry way and picked up a very simple sculpture of a rose, but it was made of steel. "I made it for Mom; a rose that can't wilt!"

Ed smiled. "I'm sure she loved it too." Even Riza would appreciate something like that.

"Edward." Roy nodded as he came down the stairs from the second floor. Suddenly, Ed's happy-go-lucky Saturday seemed duller; Roy was frowning seriously. "I'm glad you're here."

"Well you sure don't look it," Ed chuckled then dropped the humor. "What's going on?"

"In here," Roy gestured to his private study. It was his home office and alchemy lab. "Maes, your mother wants you to finish putting up your clothes."

"Yes, Father," Maes sighed, setting down the rose. "Are we still going to play ball later?"

Roy paused, looking a little stung, and nodded. "Of course," he smiled. Then he disappeared inside.

Ed followed him and closed the door. The room was fairly large in reality, not that anyone could tell. The walls were lined with bookshelves, counters, and a desk. The variety of knick-knacks, experiments, and other things often found in an alchemist's lab were evident, as well as paperwork that apparently even Roy couldn't always escape at home. Over the years, Ed had become much more sympathetic to the difficulty of Roy's life choices. "So, what's this about Xing?" he asked.

Roy didn't turn back to him immediately, going over to the small bar in the room and pulling out a bottle and two glasses. Adding ice, he poured drinks. "They're invading."

What? Ed couldn't have heard that right! "Invading?"

Roy nodded, turning around with two glasses in hand. "I got a call from Breda this morning. There's a Xing force that's appeared on the Eastern border in the desert. They're heavily armed, and they're making ultimatums."

Ed's stomach sank; an invasion force. "This is ludicrous," he replied. "Months without word from their government, turmoil and civil war going on over there for years, and suddenly we're being invaded?!" Suddenly, he knew why Roy had called him over and his mood darkened further. "You want to send me to deal with this."

Roy held out one of the glasses. Ed took it, still glaring, and sniffed; it was a good brandy. Roy looked like he regretted what he was going to say next, but that didn't improve Ed's mood. "It's not a decision I came to lightly, Ed. I'm sure you know that. But yes, we need you." Not I, but we: Amestris. Roy had probably already talked to members of the Assembly.

"So get someone who doesn't have a wife and three kids," Ed retorted. He hated war, and while he didn't mind a good fight and defending his homeland, he wasn't going to just harry off and disrupt their lives.

Roy looked angry, then –was that embarrassment? He took a long sip from his glass then met Ed's eyes again, looking worried. "I'm not ordering you to go, Ed. I'm begging."

Begging? Roy Mustang? That caught Ed a little off guard. "You have plenty of other Generals."

Roy sighed. "I'm not asking you to go because you're a General. We're mobilizing the State Alchemists."

"You're what? Are you insane?" Ed nearly dropped his glass, his hand shaking in anger. Mobilizing: this wasn't 'keeping the peace.'

"They… they're using alchemy, Ed." Roy's voice was little more than a whisper.

This was getting ridiculous! "But Xing alchemy is based in medicine, in healing!"

Roy scowled, his mouth twisted into an ironic grimace. "Apparently, for this, they're willing to subvert that."

"But what do they want?" None of this made sense! Why attack Amestris? What could Xing possibly hope to gain? Up until recently, they had been peaceful!

"The key to immortality."

A proverbial rock landed in Ed's stomach. "The Stone? They want the damned Philosopher's Stone!" What the hell?!

"Calm down, Ed," Roy finished off his drink. Clearly this was not something he had decided easily.

Ed nodded and drained his own drink in one long swallow. This was absolutely crazy! "We're not going to give them that information are we?"

"Of course not," Roy scowled, clearly insulted. Good, at least he was still Roy! "We've already told them we refuse to negotiate or offer them that kind of information. We don't have it."

"How did they respond?" Ed asked.

"They said if we didn't provide them with the key to immortality they would start attacking our border towns. It seems like an act of desperation of some kind really, but we don't know why they so desperately want it; and it's not clear that they even know 'what' they're looking for."

"So who's going to lead the defensive?" Ed asked. Obviously, if he was being invoked specifically as a State Alchemist, it wouldn't be him. Really, that was a good idea. Ed's specialty was not large unit tactics, though he could manage in a pinch.

"I'm putting Breda in charge," Roy replied, turning back to the counter and refilling his glass. "More?"

Ed shook his head; one was enough. He needed his wits about him. How was he ever going to explain this to Winry and the kids? "Breda's good for this," he agreed.

"You will be in charge of the Alchemists," Roy continued. "Havoc will go along as Breda's second in command."

Ed noted, but did not comment on the fact that he was the only family man in the bunch. Okay that wasn't entirely fair. Breda was engaged, but Nancy had been married until her last husband died, and her son was fully grown. It wasn't quite the same. "Sounds like quite the party," he forced a dry chuckle.

"Should be," Roy nodded, leaning back against his desk. "Believe me, if I had the option, I'd go myself."

"I know." It had to be driving Roy crazy that he couldn't go and take care of the problem personally. As much as he had delegated over the years, this was where he was most at home; doing something directly about problems. And now, as had become custom, when Roy couldn't deal with it personally thanks to politics and positioning, he sent in Edward. Ed wasn't sure if he should feel honored or used, probably both. "When do you want us ready to move out?"

He hoped his family would forgive him.

"What is Roy thinking sending you into a war zone?" Winry asked, angry and stunned at the same time. She was still having trouble absorbing Ed's news. "Mobilizing the alchemists! Has he completely forgotten Ishbal?" she snapped, annoyed with herself as much as the situation as tears stung her eyes. Even though she had forgiven Roy Mustang for killing her parents all those years ago on orders, that didn't mean she approved of using the alchemists this way. Even if they were being invaded, all using alchemists could do was lead to more deaths!

"Of course not," Ed put his hands firmly around her upper arms, making her look at him. "We're going in to trump them and end this before it has a chance to turn into a long drawn out conflict." His expression said clearly that he was frustrated and angry too, but he had already accepted. He was going to go no matter what she said; just the way it always was when Ed felt he had something he 'had' to do. "We're there to take out their big artillery, destroy supply lines, anything we can do more effectively that frees up regular soldiers elsewhere. Disrupt their lines the way we did in Drachma, and deal with their alchemists if we come up against them directly."

There was something in his eyes though that made Winry not entirely believe him. "And what about 'be thou for the people?" she asked, perhaps too harshly.

Ed winced but he didn't look away. "If we have to kill Xing soldiers to keep them from coming into the heart of the country, we'll do it Winry. We can't let them get a foothold here, or all we'll do is lose more lives. This isn't slaughtering innocents; they're invading 'us.' They've already started killing innocent people. I can't let them get away with that."

"Why you?" Winry asked, already knowing the answer.

"Because Roy can't, and better me than Alphonse," Ed replied flatly. "Because I can make the decision to kill soldiers and live with it and because 'these' kinds of tactics I'm good at

All good reasons, though the last two made Winry flinch. No, she couldn't see Alphonse giving offensive orders to kill. He would do it, but Ed had dealt with those issues inside himself long ago. "How long?" she finally asked softly.

"I don't know," Ed admitted then, pulling her tightly into a hug. "Longer than we'd like I'm sure. Probably at least a couple of months unless we get lucky in the first couple of engagements and scare them off. But they don't seem like they'll scare that easily. A desperate enemy never does."

The kids didn't like the news either, not that Winry had expected them to.

"Will you get shot at?" Ethan asked later that evening as he sat curled up on Ed's lap. Winry had made a pot of hot chocolate and served it before Ed broke the news.

"Probably," Ed nodded, but he grinned. "Don't worry though. They'll probably miss. They usually do. That or they always end up hitting me in the auto-mail. That doesn't hurt."

"Okay," Ethan seemed mollified.

Sara was frowning. "It's been a long time since they used alchemists in a war."

"This is why we teach combat alchemy and fighting at HQ," Ed explained. "It's not just physical conditioning, Sara. You know that. Sometimes you 'have' to fight, and that's when you don't have time to train anymore."

"When do you have to leave?" Aldon asked, looking worried.

"Soon," Ed replied. "As soon as I get orders and we have a ship-out date, but probably in the next couple of days."

Winry's throat tightened again, as it had at various moments all evening. She had to tell herself that Ed had survived combat situations before, and he would be fine. But her head supplies too many images of Ed injured after his duel with the Ice Alchemist, Ed in the hospital after the Lab 5 incident, Ed sitting in her living room missing auto-mail limbs, all the way back to the suit of armor that was Al holding a badly bleeding Edward on that fateful rainy night. She shook her head and forced those memories away. They weren't helping! "We'll have to make sure he's packed and ready okay?" she smiled encouragingly.

"Right," Sara nodded, looking serious. "You can't forget something important!"

Ed reached out in a gesture for a hug, and Sara and Aldon crowded in against him and Ethan. "I'm leaving everything that's really important right here," he replied as he squeezed them all tightly. "Where you're safe. That way," he smiled, but he was looking past the kids at Winry, "I have to come back."

November 22nd, 1940

Getting the alchemists mobilized was no small task. Ed had been asked to hand pick two squads who would be going to the front; thirty alchemists in all, not counting Edward and Armstrong who would be the ranking officers in each of the two squads. Roy had made it clear that Alphonse would be staying behind on this one; a decision Al disliked, but that relieved Ed. For once, he was glad his brother wasn't going to be coming on a mission with him. Someone needed to keep the training program going, and Ed was better suited for combat. It was for that reason that Ed had also told Miriam Golan to stay behind and assist. Marcus and Matthias – the other two Ms – he wanted on his personal squad. They had worked together for years now, and he trusted them with his life.

They had traveled with the rest of the deployed troops by train, and then by military truck convoy out to the Eastern desert. It was hot, even this time of year; very hot. Ed had honestly forgotten just what it was like to have the heat beating down around him, day after day, and while it got cooler at night, it was still uncomfortable.

"We've gotten soft," Havoc joked as he, Breda, and Ed stood inside the small room of the Eastern outpost that would now be their Base Command. It was nothing more than a rectangular concrete building with very few windows, and a single door on the western wall. Soldiers had assembled a map table, desks, and anything else they might need, and made sure the radios were working. Havoc was leaning against the wall, trying to look relaxed in uniform as he dripped with sweat. "You want one?" He offered a cigarette to the others as he pulled his ever present pack of out of his pocket.

Breda just shook his head, paying no attention as he was already analyzing the map and looking at the reports they had been given. He was sweating worse than Ed and Havoc, but he didn't seem to be thinking about it.

"No thanks," Ed grimaced. "You know I don't smoke." Neither did Breda.

"Pity," Havoc chuckled. "You might be less spastic."

"What was that?" Ed glared at him.

Havoc just stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. "See what I mean, Chief?"

"Enough," Breda said, mopping his face with a handkerchief. "It's too hot for arguing."

"I can't argue with that," Havoc replied glibly.

"Ah well," Breda sighed with some resignation. "Nancy wanted me to lose a few pounds before the wedding anyway. The heat may do it for me."

Two days, they had been here just two days, but the time it had taken them all to arrive had been a couple of weeks. The local contingent from Eastern Command had been holding out as best they could; but it wasn't nearly enough. The war had already begun. "So where do you want us?" Ed asked, walking up beside Breda.

On the map, he could see how far the line of the Xing army extended. He knew the empire was huge, but the number of men marked on the map was staggering compared to what they'd dealt with in Drachma! Yet he had the sinking feeling it wasn't anywhere close to the full army of Xing. All of the villages nearby had been evacuated already; fleeing the artillery of Xing and its soldiers.

It seemed like far too much trouble to go through for something like the Stone. But obviously only the Amestrians knew that.

"I'd say take your alchemists here, Elric," Breda tapped a point to the left flank of the Xing line, North of their current position. Then he tapped a point on the right, further South. "Have Armstrong position his men here. The flanks are less solid, and if we can break them fast, we can send them crying home." Armstrong was outside preparing their own troops for deployment out to the front lines as soon as Ed came out with orders.

Ed liked that idea. The faster they were gone, the faster he and the rest of his men and women – all alchemists that, at this point, he had trained personally or trained with – could return home. The faces of Winry and the kids as they'd hugged him goodbye at the train station were etched in his mind. He had a picture in his pocket, a recent family portrait that was only a few months old. They looked so happy. He didn't want that to change. "We'll be in position within two days."

December 20th, 1940

The war was not over as fast as they wanted; not even close. While Mustang tried to negotiate with the head of the army in front of them, with minimal success, the invasion continued, and the Amestrian line was doing all it could just to hold at the edge of the desert. As long as they kept refusing to give them the Stone, or any other way to make someone immortal, there was little negotiating that could 'be' done. So the fighting continued, day after day. More troops came from Southern Headquarters and Central, but the Xing lines had come prepared to pick a fight and sustain it, and having already entrenched, they had someplace to press from. The Amestrian army was playing 'catch up' and stuck on the defensive.

Their only useful offensive weapons were the alchemists. Edward and Armstrong and their squads pressed on the flanks, doing their best to make them break and moving in to take out their major artillery at every opportunity. Often they came up against enemy alchemists which, to Ed's disgruntled suspicion, were almost too easy to take out. It was obvious that their training was not in combat, and they only saw one or two. After the first week, there were no more reports of alchemy used against the Amestrian lines directly. That didn't mean they weren't dealing with their efforts however. The Xing artillery was alchemically enhanced in ways that Amestrian often was, but also in a few that Ed wasn't familiar with. Their accuracy with the 'big' guns was uncanny, and deadly.

Roy ordered the alchemists to push their attacks against the long-range artillery and 'take it out.' That meant not only getting up on the front lines, but getting right up into – and sometimes behind – the Xing lines in the middle of combat. The Xing never retreated, they never left their lines anything less than heavily guarded. They had the men for it, and that meant the Amestrians could do little to break through except in the chaos.

Finally, near the end of a particularly grueling day of combat, the pressure along the flank seemed to work, and some of the Xing infantry pulled back behind one of their artillery embankments before digging in again and continuing to fire. They never seemed to run out of ammunition either. It was a chance to take the thing out that they just couldn't pass up.

"How do they just keep coming?" Matthias commented to Ed as they huddled behind a solid wall Ed had brought up out of the sand. He had used it to avoid a Xing mortar that had made a huge crater in the sand just beyond them. The sun beat down on their heads from a cloudless washed-out blue sky. The ball of the sun above them was white.

"Must be hotter in Xing," Ed panted. "They're used to it." After a month, he was getting pretty used to it himself; the heat, the sand and grit getting into every pore, every crevice of his clothes, his hair constantly plastered to his head. Fighting in this was a real pain in the ass! "All right!" he called to any of his men who could hear him, scattered along the line as they were, most hiding behind walls like his. "Form up and let's take out those guns!" The Xing had explosions down to a science, and their damned 'canons' showed it! They looked like older models than what Amestris had, but that meant little in a combat situation. The one firing at them was a very tempting target. Working in groups, the alchemists had managed to take out three already over the course of the entire war so far, as well as defending the front lines from the attacking troops. The orders Ed had were to keep to the defensive as much as possible, but if they had to take people out to end this, then take them down. So far, they hadn't had to do that… much. He tried not to think about the climbing body count for every day the war continued.

Ed had winced, but he knew what it was costing Roy to say that to him at all. The Assembly was already upset, and the public wouldn't understand why they didn't just give Xing what they wanted to get them to go away! There was no way they could fully understand what was being asked. The higher-ups in Central had to be taking a lot of flack for this, even as people rallied to chase Xing out!

There was a brief break as the alchemically enhanced canon paused. Reloading probably. Good. "Move!" Ed bellowed, and charged out from behind the wall, dodging general gunfire as best he could as he shot across the sand, the sun beating down mercilessly on his head. Matthias was right behind him. Coming in from various points, he could see other alchemists making their way at top speed in pairs – the strike team he had put together out of the alchemists he had thought best suited for real combat. Most of them were his own trainees, a few were alchemists who had previously seen combat, in Drachma, or even as far back as Ishbal.

It was almost a surprise when he reached the artillery piece, leapt over the berm of sand set up to protect it, and slid into the deep indention beyond that actually dropped down a good ten feet! Matthias skidded down behind him, and Ed spun to deal with any Xing soldiers manning the canon. He stopped dead, staring at the weaponry.

There were no soldiers! The canon was completely abandoned. "What's this about?" he scrambled up onto the thing, looking for any signs of soldiers in hiding. Could they fire it remotely using alchemy? That would be difficult, especially without rather specialized trained alchemists.

The other alchemists in his squad started jumping over the edge, and then Ed cursed when he saw someone follow them over he hadn't been expecting.

"Havoc, what the hell are you doing here?" he glared down at the Colonel, who looked like he'd rather be just about anywhere else!

"Surviving," Havoc panted. Breda had him coordinating things on this flank for the past couple of weeks. The Colonel had handled it well, but had been lucky not to get sucked up in the fighting, until today apparently. "My cover got blown, literally!"

"Great." Ed said aloud, though he cursed softly under his breath, glad Winry wasn't there. She'd be appalled by the language, but it seemed most appropriate in situations like this one! He looked under the canon, and then blanched. In front of him, a bomb was ticking! "Shit!" He scrambled backwards. "Bomb! It's a set-up!" he turned and headed back down to the other alchemists gathering, slipping in the loose sand. They looked up at him in surprise. "Retreat!" he yelled. "It's going to–"

Ed never got to finish the statement. Apparently Xing had decided that their artillery was expendable if it took out enemy alchemists – the bomb blew, and Ed felt himself slamming into the sand, skidding, the abrasive grit cutting skin and then digging into those cuts, a concussive shove that knocked the air out of his lungs…and everything went black.

December 21st, 1940

"Damn it!" Roy Mustang slammed his fist into his desk, making everything on it jump. "Tell me this is a joke, Feury!" he growled. This was not happening!

Feury looked surprisingly calm in the face of Roy's outburst. Perhaps he had been expecting it. He just shook his head. "I'm sorry, Sir. But that's what Breda sent." He gestured to the paperwork in Mustang's hands.

Roy straightened out the crumpled paper and looked at it again. It hadn't changed. Edward's entire squad of alchemists had been ambushed and was now missing in action, along with Colonel Jean Havoc! Major General Breda was not pleased; in fact, he was pretty worried. Not that the paper said as much, but Roy knew Breda. Behind the official report, he was probably cursing himself for the loss of half their alchemists, his second in command, and two of his best friends in one incident.

Loss: how cold a word that was. They didn't know if Edward and Jean and the others were dead. Chances were, given what had happened, and how desperate the Xing were to get their hands on something that would grant eternal life, they could well be captured and held hostage. Not that being prisoners of war was necessarily better than a quick death, but Roy hoped that might be the case. If it were, he had confidence that they'd get out of it. Ed didn't die easily, and neither did the men and women he had trained. Roy only hoped that the lot of them weren't just dead, slaughtered in one brilliantly 'failed' attack.

"You're dismissed Feury," Roy dropped into his chair. "Let me know as soon as we hear something more definitive."

"Yes, Sir," Feury ducked back out.

Roy's eye went to the phone on his desk. There was a phone call he should make, but he really didn't want to. Besides, he wasn't entirely sure who he should call first in this instance. With a sigh, he picked up the phone and reluctantly dialed Alphonse's office number. He was too much of a coward, he thought to himself as he did so, to call Winry first.