The weekend spent at Chuck’s house was slightly awkward to Winry. She loved Chuck, and his mom, but with Chuck gone since he had a job, Winry was mainly alone with his mom. There was nothing wrong with that, but his mom was very talkative and she always wanted to know if Winry would come to their family gatherings and reunions, and on top of it all, Chuck’e mom did not understand why Chuck and Winry were just friends.

She would always give Winry a hard time and sometimes even inquired why she wouldn’t marry her son. Sometimes Winry had to say she had to be somewhere when things got a little out of hand, but when Chuck’s mom wasn’t going off about the subject, she was fun and even a friend to Winry. After all, she did not have a mom to pal-around with anymore…

When evening came the next day, Winry was strangely excited to go to Desmond’s house to hang out. She didn’t get why she felt this excited since she had gone over to his house several times in the past, and she didn’t get why she wanted to dress up nicer than the usual either. She had put on a casual dress and fancy shoes, and she did her make up more than usual as well as her hair! With her hair, she had decided to let Chuck’s mom do that since his mother did not have a daughter of her own, so Winry was like her daughter in a way.

It was a privilege for Chuck’s mom to do this, and with the cumulated time on her hands, she even went out of her way to try several styles with Winry’s hair. Chuck’s mother had put Winry’s hair up into fancy origami shapes with her many hair pieces, and she put it in many different types of buns, but in the end Winry decided on curly hair.

“Thank you Mrs. Quinn,” Winry said as she fully and readily walked out the door onto the Quinn house porch step. Smiling, Mrs. Quinn winked at Winry and waved good-bye to her- knowing where Winry was going of course and for who it was. Winry used Desmond as sort of a weapon of defense on the woman whenever she brought her and Chuck up together. At one point she almost slipped and told Mrs. Quinn that she liked Desmond… a lot (Just to keep his mom from saying anything more about them of course).

So she descended down the many steps that lead from the cement porch to the filthy city sidewalk, and headed off in her nice coat and beanie keeping her warm. The winter won’t last that long, Winry thought to herself to keep her hoping. At the same time she wondered how this dinner was going to go with her friend. Would anything happen between them this night, especially after that awkward phone call the other day? Winry was so nervous that she was tempted, several times, to turn back and not go to see him.

Eventually Winry did let her nervous system control her, and about half way to Desmond’s house, she turned and headed back to the Quinn’s. Suddenly she stopped in the midst of all her walking when she got a phone call. Persuading herself to not answer, she did anyway, and it was unsurprisingly Desmond. She answered the phone very reluctantly.

“Hi- Hello?” She shivered. “Hey Winry are you still coming?” Desmond asked silkily while sitting in his pleasant, warm home. “Y-yes,” she stuttered while freezing outside. She immediately turned back around in the direction she was supposed to be going in the first place and began walking fairly fast.

There were several things for her to be worrying about and this made her want to hurry to his house as soon as possible. The fact that she had to go to Desmond’s alone made her anxious, the fact that it was freezing made her feel like she was dying, and the fact that the sky was growing cloudy really fast worried her that rowtags could approach out into the open as soon as the city was dark and shielded by the clouds. “I’ll be there really soon. I’m already heading there,” she assured. And just like that, Desmond said, “Ok, see you in a few minutes,” and hung up. That was all he needed to hear to hope for the best.

As she dragged her seemingly heavy feet through the damp streets, the sky was completely dark with gray clouds. Pretty soon as Winry thought it was going to rain, she ran underneath a nearby bus stop to stand next to a few other cold and worried citizens. But it didn’t rain, in fact the weather began to get even colder and the winds stirred viciously. The wind was coming in all directions, and it began to pick up fiercely and stronger every second. The more volatile and intense it became, the more people ran through the streets for shelter as they always did when a rowtag attack or cloudy weather occurred.

Winry bravely stood her ground underneath the bus stop with her arms folded across her chest to keep warm, and she hoped that by standing there looking unworried, the other people at the bus stop would stay there with her. Some of them exchanged looks and kept looking at her. Was Winry crazy to be out in this weather, or was she just confident that nothing bad would happen? The few of them were scared to death, but when they saw how well Winry acted, they remained thinking there was nothing to worry about…

Far off in the distance, there was a loud explosion and after that it followed with black smoke in the air. Before the people watching knew it, a twenty-story building was collapsing. Of course it was a decently far away distance, but it was loud and devastating. The few people at the bus stop looked back at Winry immediately for a relaxed or worried look. They received neither from her. She glanced ahead at the disaster of the falling building and waited for more sound. The sound of people was quiet from where the falling building was, but from the street Winry was standing by, people were watching and screaming.

“Rowtags! I just saw a rowtag,” a middle-aged woman cried out while putting her hands to her face. Right at the resonance of her voice, the people who were left standing in the streets were in total panic. People headed for the nearest house, store, Movie Theater, or ditches that they could find and some of the people didn’t even care about the people who they were with in the large scramble. Someone could be best friends, or even married to someone else and it wouldn’t matter. It was every man, woman, and child for them self in this despicable world.

Desperate people would bang on the front doors of peoples’ homes, which were already barricaded with steel and scream at the top of their lungs until someone answered, and sometimes if they were unsuccessful at getting inside somewhere, they headed straight for the ditches and the underground sewage systems. But Winry would not do this, she had to get to Desmond’s! The second she took a step from underneath the shelter onto the street, the other few people who once stood there took that gesture as being frightened and they ran off.

She tried to run, but the wind almost swept her off her feet countless times. Her hat had flown off somewhere too, but she didn’t care about that now. She didn’t care how messed up her hair was, how white her skin was, or how red her nose was from the cold. She only cared about getting to Desmond before rowtags got to her. I will not be a damsel in distress, she thought. Instead of being the coward I have been all my life, I am going to run and face ten rowtags if it means getting closer to Desmond’s house! She ran a whole block both being out of shape and exhausted from the weather that was trying to hold her back. She could see it through the darkness of the city because it seemed to light up. It was his house on the top of a very tall building just like always.

When she got to the doors of the apartment building, she knocked on the door hoping that someone walking through the halls would let her in, but there was no one inside. In fact the security system was on and at that point there was no getting into the building. Oh God, she thought while preparing to cry. Just then, another loud crashing noise came but it was a lot closer to where Winry was this time.