FMA: Now and Then: Chapter 1

"Hey. Hey!"

The sharp voice cut through the comfortable fog in his brain and Roy winced.

"Colonel!" A hand touched the side of his face. "Will you fucking wake up already?"

He pried his eyes open, and had to blink several times before the blur of color and shadow resolved itself into his youngest subordinate.

"Fine, you're not dead."

Roy coughed, and winced again as his head throbbed. He brought a hand to his forehead and found a rough bandage. "What happened?"

"The floor gave way." Edward sat back to give the older man room to push himself up. "You're so useless, you hit your head on the way down."

Roy scowled, but didn't dignify that with a comment. Instead, he squinted through the dusty air at their surroundings.

"Some kinda basement," Ed said needlessly. "Looks like it's in better shape than that wreck up above."

As if on cue, the beams above them creaked and groaned alarmingly as an anxious voice called out, "Brother? Colonel?"

"Al-watch-the-floor!"

"Ah!"

The creaking retreated as the heavy armor withdrew to firmer ground, and they both sighed in relief. "That would be all we'd need," Roy muttered. It was bad enough that he and Edward had fallen down here. He pushed himself to his feet. "We should—" He broke off as the room lurched and swayed. Squeezing his eyes shut, he swallowed against a sudden wave of nausea and bit back a groan.

"Idiot!" Mismatched hands grabbed his arms and he found himself propped up against a wall. "Don't move like that when you've got a concussion!"

"Sir? Edward?" Hawkeye's careful footsteps could be heard moving across the traitorous floor above them. "Are you both all right?"

"We're fine, Lieutenant," he called up without opening his eyes. If he couldn't see the room, then it didn't have a chance of moving when it shouldn't.

Ed snorted. "Stay back from the hole, I'm gonna transmute us a way up."

The colonel risked opening his eyes to see the teen clap. He got few chances to watch the young man perform alchemy. There was something compelling about the circle-less transmutations, something raw and organic.

However, as soon as the boy's hands touched the floor the room around them erupted into blinding arcs of crackling energy. Roy threw himself away from the wall and raised his arms, when suddenly he was flung to the floor with a heavy weight pressing him down.

A moment later, the chaos had ended as soon as it began. He listened to the thud of his heart in the sudden quiet for several seconds before his mind could accept that, yes, he was still in one piece.

"Colonel! Edward!"

"Fuck!" The expletive was hissed next to his ear and he realized what the weight on top of him must be.

Roy grunted as the boy jabbed him several times in the process of pushing himself upright. Thankfully his arm had saved him from getting another concussion, but he had enough bruises without Edward giving him more. "Fullmetal. Just what did you do?"

"It wasn't me!" he snapped. "I was only making a ladder! The wall just. . . ." He gestured helplessly. "Went crazy."

Roy raised his head to look at what had previously been a smooth concrete wall. He could see Edward's aborted latter rising about a foot from the floor; behind it, the wall was a twisted mess of shapes. Waves and branches of material crashed and broke against each other, and other, less defined shapes bubbled and sprouted between them. "All the same, I'd prefer you not try again."

The young man rolled his eyes. "I'm not stupid." He stood and cautiously approacehed the wall. "It's like a dozen alchemists all transmuting at once."

"But how?" The colonel eased himself to his feet, wary of triggering another wave of vertigo. "And why?"

The floor above them creaked again as Hawkeye edged over to the jagged hole. "Sir?"

"It seems we're stuck for the moment," he confirmed. "See if you can find another way down. For now, Fullmetal and I will continue the investigation down here."

She saluted. "Be careful, Sir. Edward." Roy couldn't see her expression with the light behind her, but knew her well enough to read the genuine concern in her seemingly professional tone. And perhaps something else. He didn't dwell on it, and simply nodded to his lieutenant as she carefully withdrew.

Off to his side, he heard Edward snort and mutter, "So much for keeping out of each other's faces." Perhaps it was the concussion, but Roy thought he seemed much less upset by it than he had a few days ago.

* * *

"This isn't just a quick once-over, this is an entire investigation!" The boy flung the assignment overview back onto Roy's desk. "I don't have time for this!"

Roy suppressed a sigh and nudged the papers off of a stack of folders. "Your last official assignment was concluded three months ago. As far as the military is concerned, you do have the time."

Edward folded his arms and slouched down in his seat; a portrait of a sulky teenager. "Can't believed you called us back to East City for this."

Frowning, the colonel separated the first three folders and dropped them into the boy's lap. "So long as you're on the military's payroll, Fullmetal, you will occasionally be called upon to earn your keep." He sighed at the petulant scowl and tapped the remaining folders. "You're not the only one who's been assigned to this case, and I'm no more pleased about it than you. I have enough work on my plate without having to track down rumors."

The teen sank even further down in the chair. "Shit. Don't tell me I have to work with you."

"Calm down, Fullmetal. It's not as if we'll be in each other's faces. Your assignment is to figure out the purpose of those formulas." He brandished the top folder in his stack. "Mine is to figure out if there's any pattern to these events. I doubt we'll overlap much."

Edward scowled a moment more, before snatching up the folders and pushing to his feet. "Well, good," he muttered as he stomped out of the office. "I'd probably get sick if I had to stare at your face all day."

"Oh, you will have to check in regularly," he called after the teen. "I'll expect to see you by the end of the day tomorrow."

Roy chuckled to himself at the answering grumble.

* * *

Ed let the flashlight beam play over the mangled wall. There didn't seem to be any sort of pattern to the shapes. They were all organic, without any of the straight lines and angles that alchemists usually favored, but otherwise he couldn't see any order or reason.

He was hyper-aware of Colonel Mustang standing to his left, shining a flashlight at the base of one of the protrusions. It took great effort to keep his attention on the wall and not glance over at the dark-haired man. The panic he'd felt when the colonel had been unresponsive after the fall was still a thick lump in his gut. His relief when the man had finally opened his eyes had almost been palpable.

"There were definitely arrays scratched into the wall," Mustang's deep voice cut through his thoughts. "But the transmutations distorted them."

"Yeah, I think that's why they stopped," Ed confirmed. "The arrays got warped to the point where they were useless." He swung his light over to an untouched portion of the wall. "There's more. It's like someone was using this as a scratch pad."

He spared a glance at Mustang as the older man frowned in concentration at the intact designs. He didn't often see the colonel outside of the office, and he'd never gotten to see him actually working on something like this. It was weird.

"Are these from the equations you studied? Why are they clustered? It's like they're using three arrays to do the work of one."

Ed snapped out of his daze and turned back to the wall. "Yeah. Judging from the formulas, they couldn't stabilize the energy flow with a single array. It's wasteful, though." The young alchemist could easily see how he could accomplish the same thing using concentric circles and a more precise placement of the runes.

He grimaced; not that he would ever want to do such a thing. If he was right about these arrays. . . .

"This one looks like a basic array for altering shape." Mustang indicated the top array in one of the triads. "That one must be the stabilizer. The other. . . ."

"That one stores the energy."

Ed hadn't been able to keep the growl from his voice. He avoided the older man's questioning gaze as he scanned the array clusters on the wall. It looked like the alchemist had been trying to perfect the design. "Step back, I wanna try something."

Mustang shot him a wary look as he moved back several paces. "Fullmetal, are you sure that's wise?"

He tucked his flashlight under his arm and clapped. "What? It's not gonna be a big transmutation." He touched a hand to the floor, and then sprang back.

* * *

"This is the first time you and the colonel have worked together on an assignment, isn't it?"

Ed dropped his chin to his hands and frowned down at the papers on the table. "We're not really working together. We're just working on the same thing. He's not even working on any of the alchemy, he dumped all that on me."

"That's too bad," Al commented as he set a stack of tomes on the edge of their table in the library. "I think it would be nice to work with the colonel on something; he's really smart."

Ed scoffed. "He's an arrogant rank-climber. All his smarts go into manipulating the system. He complained, but he probably volunteered for this assignment because he thinks it'll look good on his record. It's all he cares about." He pulled the first book off the stack and flipped to the index, adding in a mutter, "That, and women."

He tried to ignore his brother's tinny laughter as he scanned the list for a chemical he'd seen in three of the formula fragments. Al found it amusing that he'd developed something like a crush on his commanding officer. It was nothing more than his teenage hormones reacting to someone who was, admittedly, quite attractive. It didn't mean anything. Really, Ed couldn't wait for the infatuation to pass, and for his hormones to latch onto someone else—preferably someone who didn't annoy the hell out of him with every other breath. Until then, he had to put up with his little brother's teasing and those stupid twinges of jealousy whenever Mustang went out on a date. At least Al was the only one who'd noticed. As far as he could tell, no one else had even noticed his lack of interest in girls. He wanted to keep it that way.

". . . Did it come from?"

Ed blinked up from the text. "Huh?"

Al's helm shifted in a way that Ed recognized as a smile. "I said, if the colonel's been assigned to work on this too, where did the assignment come from? Who assigned it?"

"Oh. I dunno." He frowned. "Didn't think to ask that."

"Of course you didn't, Brother." Al sat down across from him and picked up one of the books.

"What does it matter? Let's just get this done so we can go back to our own work."

* * *

"Tripwire arrays?"

"Yeah." Fullmetal grimaced at the mutilated wall. All the arrays in about a five-foot radius had responded to the small transmutation, but not equally. A few had barely warped the concrete. "These seem to be from the development stages. They're only triggered by nearby alchemy, and there doesn't seem to be any direction to them."

Roy frowned at the young man's tone. Alchemists had been trying to come up with arrays that could function as alarms and tripwires for ages, but hadn't been able to get past the basic fact that arrays needed the will of an alchemist to activate and direct them. But instead of seeming pleased or excited by this apparent breakthrough, Ed appeared disgusted.

Edward swung the flashlight beam over the rest of the basement room and Roy followed his gaze. Boxes and piles covered much of the floor. A large table was pushed against the far wall, its surface littered with papers. Haphazard chalk lines marred the nearby wall, a striking contrast to the neat scratches on the wall behind them.

As the teen picked his way toward the table, Roy turned his attention to the detritus cluttering the floor. Most of it seemed to be the ephemera common to any lab; used beakers and flasks, crumpled paper, scrap pieces of different materials that showed evidence of transmutations, jars and cartons labeled with different elements or chemicals. But there were also blankets and a cushion in one corner, piles of clothes, and a wastebasket with some moldy odds and ends that had probably once been food. It was obvious someone was using this for more than a lab.

In the center of the room, a rotten staircase rose about five feet before the collapsed boards made it unusable. The trapdoor above it had been nailed shut. From the look of things, no one had used that entrance in years.

Roy grimaced and rubbed his forehead. The headache was making it hard to think anything through. he scanned the layout of the room again. No other stairs. No ladder or sign of a hatch entrance, either. If the floor hadn't given way beneath them, they probably wouldn't have found this basement. And yet the room was clearly in use. "How do they come and go?"

"Huh?" Edward barely looked up from the papers.

"There're no stairs."

Ed swung his light around the room again. It paused briefly at the ruined staircase, then continued along the walls. "That's weird. Obviously someone's using this—there. That wall."

Most of the wall was concrete, but there was an uneven patch toward one end. Coming closer, Roy could see the outline of a door that had been obscured by a stack of boxes. The wall a few feet on either side seemed to be lath-and-plaster.

Edward grinned as he walked over. "How much you wanna bet that's not part of the original design?"

"Mm. But if an alchemist is using this as a laboratory, then why wasn't this door made with alchemy?"

"Dunno." The teen jiggled the lock, the stuck his flashlight under his arm and clapped.

"Fullmetal, wait!" Roy grabbed his wrist and the boy shot him an irritated frown. "Do you want to trigger more of those?" He jerked a nod at the opposite wall, wincing when the movement made his head throb. "We have no way of knowing what arrays are under the plaster."

Ed's eyes widened in understanding, and his frown turned pensive as he glanced back at the door. "Good point." A moment later he added a quiet, "Um."

Roy realized he was still holding onto the young man's arm and quickly let go. Odd; he would have expected Ed to simply snatch his arm away. "We may have gotten our answer about the construction of the door," he added.

"Um. Yeah." Edward cleared his throat and reassessed the door. "Well then," he said, a wicked grin spreading across his face, "Plan B."

Roy jumped back as a metal fist smashed into the wood. "A little warning next time!"

Ed scoffed and punched the door again. "Desk job make you soft, Colonel?"

He scowled, raising his arms against the flying splinters. "Hardly. I'm just used to people with a little more discipline."

"You're confusing discipline with being whipped."

He had to admit, it wasn't always easy to tell the difference in the military.

"There we go." Edward hooked his fingers through the ruined hole in the wood and swung the door inward.

"So much for stealth."

"We lost that when we fell through the floor."

"True enough."

The young man paused a moment before going through the door. "Speaking of," he said, without turning, "how's your head?"

Roy gingerly felt the back of his head. His hair was sticky with blood, and there was a good sized lump under the crude bandage, but the vertigo seemed to be gone. At least when he didn't move suddenly. "I'll manage."

Edward grunted. "Good. Not that I care or anything," he added hastily. "It's just that—well, Hawkeye would be upset."

He raised an eyebrow as he followed the teen into the dark passageway. "Of course. We wouldn't want that." Interesting.

* * *

"The house is condemned, has been for years," Hughes informed him. "It's hidden from view from the street, but the neighborhood kids have been known to goof off on the property."

Roy propped the phone against his shoulder and made some notes. "Are the kids the ones who heard the noises?"

"Yep. Most of them think it's haunted." He laughed. "So the credibility of those reports might be in question."

"The property is owned by J. Oxgrave?"

"That's right. He inherited it a few years ago, but it hasn't been in use for a decade or more. He lives somewhere in the south, and doesn't seem to pay much attention to it."

"And his brother?"

"As far as I can tell, they don't have much contact. Matthew Oxgrave has been a hard one to track, he doesn't seem to have much traceable contact with anybody."

"But the reports we do have of the last few months all place him within a few hours of that property."

"Right. But no one has reported any signs that the house was occupied. As near as I can tell, he rents a room about three blocks away, further up the hill."

"Still, it's worth checking out."

"Mm. So. . . ." Roy cringed as he listened to the change in his friend's tone. "I suppose you'll be bringing Ed along."

"Yes. I suppose I will be," he said through gritted teeth.

"This'll be the first time you've worked with him outside of the office, won't it?"

"It'll be the first time we've worked together at all." Roy didn't want to admit that, as apprehensive as he was, part of him was looking forward to it.

"Really? Two highly talented state alchemists, and you've never had the opportunity to work together? That's a shame."

He bit back an exasperated sigh. "You know it doesn't work that way. Fullmetal is on the road more often than not, anyway."

"Pity. But then, I suppose that makes it easier to keep your hands off of him."

One of these days he was going to break the phone with how violently he tended to ended his conversations with Hughes.

* * *

Their footsteps echoed off the stone walls; Mustang's with sharp, military precision, and Ed's with the uneven cadence he'd had since he was twelve. It was a striking contrast, and Ed wondered if all soldiers habitually marched. It wasn't something he could imagine himself ever doing.

"This tunnel had to have been shaped by alchemy," Mustang observed. "The walls are too smooth."

"Yeah, but it's old. Much older than the door."

They fell into silence again. Interacting with the colonel outside of the office like this was still something Ed was having a hard time getting used to. The man wasn't so bad when he wasn't being an ass.

But he couldn't let him know that.

The passage terminated at another door. But before they reached it, a scraping on the other side made them freeze.

Mustang clicked off his flashlight and with a start Ed did the same. A second later the door swung open. Weak lantern light spilled in, and Ed got the impression of a skinny figure of medium height, before the person swore and slammed the door shut.

"Shit!" Ed sprinted the last few steps and skidded, almost slamming into the door in the dark.

"Fullmetal!"

He flipped his flashlight on and found the door handle, and yanked the door open.

The rapidly retreating light beyond an irregular stone archway was all Ed took the time to notice as he sprinted. If this man was involved with those arrays, then he had some answering to do.

Rounding the corner, he caught sight of his quarry about ten yards away. "Hey!"

The man glanced back, then put his head down to try to gain speed, but Ed closed on him easily. He snared the back of a ratty jacket and yanked, bringing the taller figure up short. The man crumpled, dropping his lantern and scrambling against the rough floor.

"Are you the fucker who made those arrays?" The man squirmed against his hold and Ed gave him a sharp shake. "Are you?"

"I—I don't—" The man twisted and reached back, and clamped both hands onto Ed's arm.

Automail has some feedback sensors, but compared to a natural limb, it's essentially numb. So the pain that suddenly shot up his right arm took Ed completely by surprise.

He cried out and jerked his arm back, but the man held on fast. His arm felt like it had been dipped in acid. The pain was crawling up his shoulder, spreading from the port to his nerves and across his back, clouding his senses and slowing his reflexes. He jerked back again but his arm wasn't responding properly. "Fuck—let go!"

The man was on his knees now, looking up with a crazed mix of fear and amazement. "I didn't—think that would actually work. You must've—" Flames erupted between them and he broke off with a cry.

Ed stumbled back and fell to the ground, clutching at his arm. He was dimly aware that the man was now huddled in a fetal position, but the residual pain wasn't allowing for much thought.

Black boots stepped into his line of sight, and an icy voice said, "That's my subordinate you were attacking."

* * *

One minor burn and the man was huddled and whimpering. Pathetic. But it gave him a moment to check on Edward.

"Fullmetal?" He spared a quick glance at the prone form.

"I'm fine." Said through gritted teeth.

Roy glanced over again as Edward pushed himself upright. The kid didn't sound fine.

He opened his mouth to state this when the ground just ahead of him bucked and shot upwards. He stumbled back, his arms pinwheeling in a futile attempt to regain his balance. An arm caught his waist as he fell, mostly breaking his fall, but his head still connected painfully with the stone floor.

He groaned, clutching at his head.

Ed squirmed out from beneath him. "Shit—you okay?" There was a clatter, and then a light shone against his closed eyelids. "Colonel?"

"I'm fine," he asserted, lifting a hand to block the light. He didn't think he'd gotten a second concussion, but it was hard to tell. "No worse than I was, anyway." He rolled to his side and pushed himself up. "I suppose he's long gone by now," he added, eyeing the new wall.

"Probably." The young man set the flashlight down and raised his hands. The hesitation before he clapped was brief, but noticeable. When he touched his hands to the stone the light from the transmutation highlighted an odd, pensive expression on his face. "This cave branches, and there's no way to tell which one he took," he said, shining the flashlight through the reopened tunnel.

"Mm. We're in danger of getting ourselves lost as it is." Roy stood, gingerly rubbing the new tender spot on the back of his head as he watched Edward get to his feet. The teen was flexing his automail hand as if unsure of it. "What about you? You didn't look so well when I got here."

"I'm fine."

The older man paused long enough to raise a skeptical eyebrow.

Edward grimaced and rubbed at his right shoulder, near the port. "He was doing some kinda weird shit to my automail, but it's all right now."

He studied the young man in the poor light. He was steady, but seemed very conscious of his arm, and was maybe a little too pale.

Roy closed his eyes, trying to think through the fog of pain and unexpected emotions. When he'd seen Fullmetal being attacked, the surge of rage had almost blinded him. The only thing that had kept him from incinerating that unknown alchemist had been his proximity to Edward. It had only been afterwards, when Ed was safe, that the potential foolishness of such a brash action had occurred to him. And now the mingled relief and concern was making rational thought hard. He was protective of all his subordinates, but this felt different. It was a difference he was reluctant to look at too closely.

"Mustang?"

And that was another thing; was Fullmetal actually concerned about him?

"The last thing we want to do is get ourselves lost down here." He glanced back the way they had come, then down the passage the alchemist had used. "But we should pursue him. We can mark our path as we go."

"I hope you have something to make marks with, then," Edward commented as he stepped through the opening in the barrier. "I've stopped carrying chalk; it kept getting crushed."

"You've gotten spoiled." Roy unfastened his uniform jacket to search the inner pockets.

The teen snorted. "Al says that, too. He thinks I should carry some, just in case."

"You should." He found a chalk stub and refastened his jacket, then stooped to pick up his flashlight. "It always pays to be prepared." He straightened—and groped for the wall as the room lurched and swayed. He steadied himself as much as he could and brought the other up to his forehead, closing his eyes.

"I told you not to move like that, dumbass!"

Ed's hand gripped his shoulder, and Roy found himself unconsciously leaning into the stability. "I'm fine. Just give me a second. . . ."

"You're not fine, you have a concussion," he snapped. "Two, for all I know."

"There isn't much we can do about that here, it there?" The room had settled, so he pushed away from the wall and lowered his hands. "If we can't find that alchemist, let's at least see if we can find a way out of here."

"Yeah." Edward stepped back, and Roy was surprised to find himself disappointed by the loss. "Yeah, we should."

* * *

Elsewhere, a rogue alchemist was making a mad dash for the surface and, he hoped, salvation.