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Ed was in a hole from a cave at one of the sites they had been excavating in Drachma. He could hear the shouts from the rest of the team and stared up at the hazy bobbling lanterns as they leaned over the newly formed pit as far as they dared.
“A transmutation circle!” one of them yelled.
Ed blinked and he was somewhere else.
In this somewhere else, he counted four guns and a gloved hand pointed at him. Wait what?
“General,” Ed began and then snapped his hands up and took half a step backwards as the gunmen twitched.
“Mustang, get your clicky, explosion hands away from me. It’s Ed. Some transmutation circle went whacko at the new site we were excavating and I don’t even know how because as you know, I cannot physically do alchemy but I guess Truth still really hates me. Wait, I didn't pass through the g –”
Ed automatically stopped talking at Mustang’s stand down gesture. The Flame Alchemist, himself, does not lower his hands but the other guns get trained down at the ground and Ed takes a chance to sweep his eyes over at their owners.
It seemed like the old crew were all here in some sort of freak coincidence. Breda, Havoc, Fuery, Falman and Hawkeye –
“Dang Hawkeye, when’d you cut your hair? We had a matching thing going,” Ed continued flicking his braid, which had fallen over his shoulder, back with a flourish.
The room suddenly got ten times colder and Havoc made some sort of aborted choking sound.
Ed turned his attention back to General Mustang, “Yeah, yeah Barbecue… I’ll write a report on the incident. Not that I'm technically on the team anymore –”
And then Ed froze because Mustang, without having changed his expression once, was now furious instead of merely wary and confused and Ed, finally, finally noticed the markings on his epaulets.
“Shit – Colonel, what year is it? You have met me, right? And Alphonse. How the – Winry’s gonna kill me!”
—
Colonel Roy Mustang was having a quiet day at the office, all things considered.
He’d been successfully dodging his paperwork (while enduring a call from Maes with another unsolicited update on Gracia’s pregnancy). He could hear the quiet chatter from the rest of his team as they got through their own swathes of red tape.
Then there was a sound like wind blowing through a tunnel and a rough shriek like a train’s emergency brakes.
Mustang was out of his office in an instant, an ignition glove on and pointed at the disturbance of crackling alchemy discharge in the office along with Hawkeye, Breda, Havoc and Falman’s guns. Fuery had backed into the corner with his radio equipment, likely already recording and preparing an emergency broadcast.
The alchemical lightning faded leaving the figure of a man, roughly Mustang’s age with long blond hair and wearing a brown trench over a black shirt and pants.
The man opened his eyes – which were gold! –, clocked the guns, then Mustang's own hand and… relaxed?
“General,” the stranger said. And wasn’t that one hell of a greeting, even if the man was obviously confused. It wasn’t just the title itself, but the way it was spoken like a tumbled mixture of affection, annoyance and ease of long term familiarity.
And then the way he spoke to Mustang with easy humour and an odd half report, half-vent style. He clearly recognised Mustang and when he commented on the Lieutenant's hair – she’d never worn it long – he’d clearly recognised her as well.
And, perhaps worse than that, he could read Mustang. The unexpected comment about Hawkeye’s physical appearance, vastly improper at most times and especially egregious here, had pissed Mustang off. He had switched from hostile but vaguely curious to injure as need be . That shift should not have been noticeable to anyone but Riza…
Yet, the stranger had instantly zeroed in on Mustang, and on his shoulders.
The stranger addressed Mustang correctly this time and it took him a moment to parse the sentence. The year? Time travel? Why was that Mustang’s first leap of logic? But, the man was so confident in his knowledge of them… and who were Alphonse and Winry?
“Havoc!” The man in question startled and Mustang put another incredulous point to the time travel theory.
“Your sad date calendar,” the man continued, “where the hell is it?”
“Who are you?” Mustang managed to ask.
“Edward Elric,” the stranger answered distractedly, “formerly a state alchemist by the name of Fullmetal, currently, according to the date – thanks Havoc, a six year old boy. Great. Mum’s just died.”
Elric glanced up from Havoc’s calendar and looked directly at Mustang, “What do you reckon General? Is acting like my own father going a bit too far? At least until Al undoes this nonsense. And it’ll take at least a year because he’s in Xing… Yeah, I’m going to do it anyway... Truth knowingly put me here, that bastard.”
There was a silence after that statement broken by Hawkeye a few moments later.
“Excuse me, Mr Elric. You shouldn’t call the Colonel, General. Others would get the wrong impression.”
Elric snorted, “What do you mean wrong, Ma – Lieutenant? Whoever those ‘Others’ are have already foreseen the inevitable. And sorry to say General Bastard but the miniskirts were vetoed quite violently by Armstrong.”
Mustang blinked, “The Major?”
Elric smirked, “Nah, Brigadier General Armstrong. You know, one in the list of scary women I keep meeting.”
At that, Elric gestured vaguely at Hawkeye with a small smile. She nodded. Mustang and his men quaked in their boots.
“Anyway, Useless-in-the-rain, reckon you could get me some papers organised. Civilian? I need to head home.”