The Final Chance

Chapter 31: The Other

Now beginning Edward's Route

Days had passed since their job has started and after recently hearing about how Alex and his group took down Greed, that made Ed and Al a bit more antsy to get theirs done as soon as possible.

For the last few days Ed and Al had essentially looked everywhere to try and find Sloth yet absolutely nothing had appeared for them.

Ever after multiple steak outs and all nighters, nothing ever showed up once.

This ticked off the brothers and especially infuriated Ed who wasn't really the patient type when it came to these types of missions.

After checking up on Alex who was a little battered at the hospital, the two made their way to HQ in form Roy of what's happened so far.

After a short walk the two entered the building and greeted a couple of members before they finally walked over to his office.

One knock later and the two were now sitting in his office as Roy turned to face them.

"So. How's it gone so far you two?" He asked.

Ed scoffed. "Boy wouldn't you like to know." He said sarcastically as Al awkwardly chuckled.

Roy gave a small smile and knew this was the brothers way of saying not good.

"Well then, how about Alex? Have you two gotten any word on how his mission as progressed?" Asked Roy as Al nodded.

"Turns out he's already taken down Greed. Though he got roughed up a bit and is spending a few days at the hosptial." Said Al.

"I see. Well then I'll make sure to see and give him my thanks tomorrow." Said Roy making a note to himself.

"Could you help us out for christ sakes and tell us where to go? We've been looking over tons of random spouts doing stakeouts and all nighters and we haven't gotten a single glimpse or view of our damn Homunculus." Said Ed.

Roy simply sighed as he knew something like this could've happened if things didn't go their way.

"Listen Fullmetal. If I could help I would but unlike Greed, we don't have Sloth's last known location. We can only approximately get their location. Your just gonna hope you get lucky in finding her."

"LUCKY!?"

Ed immediately tried to lunge at Roy only for Alphonse to succescully hold his brother back as he sat and mananged to calm him down all while Roy had a small laugh over all this.

"Listen boys. I have the utmost confidence in both of you. I'm sure you'll be able to find Sloth in the upcoming days. It's only a matter of time until it changes from you going to the Homunculi before the Homunculi goes to you." Said Roy having a high confidence in the brothers.

Al smiled while Ed kept the same unamused expression before they got up and left the room as Al quickly thanked Roy for his time before he followed Ed out of the room.

They left HQ shortly afterwards as Ed punched a tree in frustration.

"What the hell are we supposed to do now!?" He shouted as Al kept quiet as he himself didn't know either.

"We've quite literally done everything we could do to find a person! Stakeouts, all nighters, searching lots of large chunks of land yet nothing has turned up!"

"M-Maybe we should trust what the Führer said." Al said, trying to calm his brother down.

"The Führer was probably just spouting all that lucky nonsense cause he enjoys having us run around with no clue about what we're doing." Replied Ed as Al sighed.

"Brother. Roy's Führer now. I'm pretty sure all of his teasing and jokes when he was the Colonel have all went away now."

"That's what you think."

After a brief banter between the brothers, the two continued to walk off as they began to think and discuss on what they were gonna do now after their talk with Roy.

Much to their dismay, they had no choice but to continue their usual routine of staking out and hope to god that something will turn out this time.

After all both Al and Roy had a point.

Due to how elusive Sloth has apparently been, it would require a ton of luck, foresight, and patience to catch and spot the homunculi should it reveal itself.

Who knows?

Maybe Roy could be right and instead of the brothers spotting Sloth, Sloth could spot the brothers first and strike.

That meant Ed and Al needed to also be wary of a suprise attack should it happen during their stakeouts and investigations.

With all of that realized, the brothers sighed as they knew they weren't gonna have it easy at all no matter what happens tonight, tomorrow, or how ever long it took.

Finding a Homunculi is one thing, but finding one, let alone killing one is gonna be nearly impossible to do depending on what Sloth's unique ability was.

With that being all thought out, the brothers went to do whatever they did to pass time until the night and hoped that it would go different this time than it had gone the previous couple of days.

[The Next Morning]

Ed felt a poke on his shoulderas he slowly opened his eyes to see Alphonse standing over him.

He yawned and sat up stretching for a bit before he sat up.

"Should I even ask?" Said Edward as Alphonse sighed and shook his head no as Ed groaned.

"That's it! I'm gonna march into that idiot's office and knock his teeth out so he can give me actual help cause this shit is annoying!"

Ed immediately began to run off towards HQ as Al followed behind him.

Once they were close they began to powerwalk.

"Ed calm down! Let's try and get help from someone else! You never know! Maybe someone could offer to help us on the mission!" Said Al but Ed was having none of it.

"As if. No one could possibly hel-."

Before Ed could finish speaking he suddenly bumped into someone as he fell onto the ground with a thud.

"Brother! Watch where your going!" Said Al a little upset at Ed as he was about to pick him up until the person Ed had bumped into offered their hand.

Ed accepted it and stood up. "Thanks for that. Sorry for bumping into you. My name's Edward and he's my little brother Alphonse." He said.

The person smiled and nodded their head.

"Apology accepted you two. I'm Akari C. Satsuki."

Chapter 31: End