Bloodless Roses

So please work with me because I know a got some things wrong and all that jazz, but I had to change some things to make the story work the way I wanted to. This is an interesting story plot I thought of, but I didn't watch Brotherhood yet, so don't tell me anything or get all up in my grill! Also, I sort of got the idea of the narrator and playing with word formation from The Book Thief, Markus Zusak. So if anyone can guess who the narrator is, I'd be impressed (maybe it won't be that hard to figure out.) But I'll give you one hint, it is a person from FMA.

~Part One of Part one

Several Jeeps sprint through the desert heading towards Ishbal. The car at the front of the pack trips over a rock and jumps into the air. The colonel inside bounces up with it and his head hits the ceiling. This is Roy Mustang, the Flame Alchemist. And this one journey, will change his life. Now I'm not going to give away anything, well, I'll try not to. But the end, yes, the end. I would have never guessed that fate would do that to him. I'm sorry, I'm going off topic.

Roy's head bangs up against the low ceiling in the car, he mutters out some swear words while rubbing the bump on his head.

The driver, Lieutenant Havoc, attempts to start a conversation to cheer up the mode, "Colonel Mustang, it's very unlike you to swear like that."

The Japanese man continues to rub his head as the car plows over some more bumps, "It was an outburst."

He shifts around in his seat uncomfortably. He gets used to the scene; legs crossed, hands on top of his knee, staring out the window at the yellow canvas with blue paint perfectly cut at the horizon. He could get used to something like this easily, a little too easily.

"Are you nervous? I mean, only because this is the first effort someone in the military trying to meet a non-violent agreement with the Ishbalites." The lieutenant keeps his eyes forward on the road, his cigarette rolls over to the other corner of his mouth, not lit.

But what kind of question was that? Roy Mustang, the Flame Alchemist, scared of some third world people? Never! But trying to make a deal with these people? He wouldn't admit it, but maybe. This thing is easier said than done.

His black eyes scan the desert's area. "I'm not nervous," he spoke to the landscape. So that much was half true. Every time Havoc mentions it to him, he grows more tense near the shoulders. He could feel his muscles knot themselves up in a panic. I go to sit next to him in the car, Mustang shakes from the sudden chill in the car.

~A CONVERSATION~

"Did you turn the AC on, Havoc?"

"No, why?"

"Is it cold in here?"

"What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing, what's wrong with you?"

Yes, he was stressed now. To be honest, the colonel didn't know why the military wanted to kill off all the Ishbalites. Sure, they might know how to make the Philosopher's Stone, but wouldn't you want to keep them alive so you could get the information from them? Can't the military and the Ishballites make a deal? Like, information about the Philosopher's Stone for protection? He guessed that it would be to easy, anything that would be too easy in life would never happen. Things like that would only exist in fantasies.

Roy's mind raced with insane ideas that could possibly work if he could slip from the militaries hands. I mean, he managed to do it with Marco and wasn't even punished for that. Now the colonel was thinking.

He could stay with the community to protect them from bad people, or racist people. He could help more than ever because he thought like the military: the next move, where they wouldn't look, they could even be a couple of steps ahead! But then again, he'd be only be able to offer if there was a giant distraction. Plus, he wasn't so willing to give up because he wanted another promotion. But then again, the military sent him to go warn the Ishbalites, not give them a peace treaty. They wanted these people dead, which Roy didn't understand why. Actually, no one did except for the Fuhrer.

Mustang smiles at the great, ingenious idea he just processed through his golden mind. He closes his eyes to envision the success and half laughs, a faint smile painted on his face.

"Havoc?"

"Yes," he replies.

"What would you do without me?"

The lieutenant looks at him using his review mirror. His face is swept with fear quickly, "I don't like that devilish look on your face. What's your insane idea this time?"

~A TIME~

Let me make this simple:

Havoc had a girlfriend.

The girlfriend went to the movies with Mustang.

Havoc was melancholic and Mustang thought this would effect his work.

A mission was assigned to find the lieutenant a girlfriend

And he ended up at Armstrong's.

Let's make this part even less complex:

He was then dumped...again. It was a long day.

"What are you talking about," Mustang acted like he has never had a "great" idea before. He thought he was practically good at everything, and lying was on his list of many things.

"You had that look when you told everyone to look for a girlfriend and I was sent to Major Armstrong's place."

"Oh yes, I remember that day quiet vividly. Where that cute girl rejected you because she likes men like her brother.

"Yes. I also remember that was the day where you forced everyone to dig because there was a bone on military property and it turned out it was a stupid dog that brought bones next to the warehouses."

Roy catapults himself at the lieutenant and wraps his hands around his neck tightly.

The car panics, racing from side to side.

Mustang shoves Havoc out of the way and takes the steering-wheel away from him. Just as easy as taking a piece of candy from a baby. He puts his foot all the way down to the floor and the car sprints full speed ahead.

All the other cars follow his lead.

"What are you doing? Killing us all?" Havoc continues to yell at the colonel, his cigarette flies to the dashboard. He picks it back up and places it back in between his teeth. It was already chewed enough, but his teeth thought it could squeeze some more of something out, maybe some more flavor. He just wanted to torture the object just a hint longer.

The colonel grasps the wheel a little tighter, straining the wrinkle of his white gloves. If that wheel were a person, it would've most likely suffocated. "I'm getting anxious, I can't sit in this friging car any longer!" His right hand flies from the steering-wheel and smacks Havoc across the face. He turns his attention back to the evenly-layered sand in front of him, his shoulders relaxing a bit.

Havoc sat there with a dumbfounded face, "What the hell was that for?"

Mustang sighs.

For that was his reply.

The village of Ishbal was coming into sight.

The colonel's black eyes dilated with pure excitement.

His smile grew deviously large.

Hopefully, there will be a distraction on his good side so his new plan could unfold. More than likely, unfold faster than slower.

He slams on the breaks, making the airbags rush out of their assigned positions and accidentally smashing into roy and havoc's faces.

Roy rushes out of the car to observe the place.

It wasn't in shambles, though he thought they were in Ishbal.

There were tents set up

People were thriving the "streets"

Children were playing

All the Ishbalites stopped in there tracks and halted their chores to stare at their company. All their faces burned bright with anger at the sight of the military and the thought of another war.

As the whole military exited their cars and became organized in neat lines with their guns by their sides behind Mustang, the Ishbalites huddled in a crowd blanketed with murmurs, confusion, and rage. They stood cautiously, about a hundred feet away from the colonel.

He clasps his hands behind his back and straightens his posture. Roy takes a deep breath and makes the Fuhrer's message loud and clear, "This is a message form the military's Fuhrer himself: 'All people in an Ishbal village must reveal the Ishbal secret to military authorities at once. If this does not happen in an orderly, peaceful manor, like expected, then the people will become imprisoned or killed.' Once again, this is a message from the Fuhrer, not me. Now does anyone want to step forward to tell me what this secret is?" In a matter of fact, he already knew that it was the Philosopher's Stone. He just needed the information. The simple fact that a threat was hovering over these people's head might not help the fact either.

The crowd shifts to part in the middle, like a dog bouncing his way through a field of wheat. A young woman squeezes out of the crowd and stands bellicose towards Mustang.

The colonel smirks at her with flirtatious eyes. I can guess he hasn't changed much sense my death.

Oh how he could tell she was different from any other girl he's flirted with. Very, very different. Her dress was all roses.

Her top was two, giant rose petals that criss-cross to look almost like a sports-bra.

The skirt was a series of soft petals with ends that curve at the middle of her muscular thighs.

Her waist was being hugged by thorny stems with a giant rose acting as a bow.

She has bracelets of thorns around her wrists and ankles.

Her eyes are the most different; one a red, a red as bright as freshly spread blood and one green, a green as bright as green grass on a bright, cloudless summers day. But both somehow burned with hurt and anger.

Her hair, yes, her long, flowing, slightly-curly, brown hair.

I could watch Mustang's eyes travel down her lovely hair that stretches down to her lower back.

~A THOUGHT FROM ROY~

It's so...puffy.

It's so...distracting.

Yes!

Distracting: just what is needed.

But she's only turning me on, not the military.

Why does she have to be so hot!

The young woman stares him down, thinking that he would shrink until he disappeared. But all she got was a flick of the eyebrow and gleaming teeth that seeped through a smirk. Her cheeks turned slightly rosy, but not to the extent Roy wanted her to.

"Why are you here," she snaps at the military. "Are you here to kill us all again for no apparent reason?"

All the soldiers take their guns out and aim at the innocent Ishbalites. Mustang holds his arm out perpendicular to him; a signal to hold fire. He takes a couple of steps forward and the whole crowd shifts back, but the girl doesn't. She stood there, like her feet are buried under cement.

Roy moved forward until he was only half a foot away from the girl. His plan could unfold any second.

"Listen and hear me out," the colonel begins. "In my job, the military, we get orders. Not explanations. I did ask why before we left and all I got was a dirty look as a reply. I'm assuming that it meant 'they have what we want.' I'm assuming that all humans strive for what your people obtain. So I'm assuming you know what I'm talking about. Yes?"

Her eyes widen with what seems to be a concoction of many emotions. She knew what he was talking about, but she also knew that she would get punished if she even referred to it with stupid hand-jesters.

~ABOUT THIS GIRL~

Just so you humans know,

Her name is Rosa

She was stripped of her last name because her father,

Her father thinks she's a pimple on the family tree.

Her nickname is "demon"

She went against the Ishbal religion

And practiced the Great Art, in which she is the Thorn Alchemist.

She never had the chance to be a child,

For her father was busy moaning over the death of her mother's death

And she had to take care of her three brothers.

She has an arranged marriage

In which she hates the man, just a hint abusive...

I'm being sarcastic, that's all he is to her: a torture device.

She opened her mouth, she wanted to answer Roy, but she couldn't. All the words collided in her throat and stayed in her voice box.

"If you tell me," Roy spoke with a soft, reassuring voice, then I might be able to save your people."

Her eyes wandered to the ground and her expression became more melancholic. "I was told not to tell anyone."

The colonel already had the idea that it was the Philosopher's Stone, but he didn't want to sound crazy or anything silly like that. "Please tell me."

She shakes her head and sheepishly moves backward to blend in with the crowd. "I won't tell you anyways, no matter how much you threaten me. I know that the military will use it against us to get the job done quicker. You'll exterminate all of us, and I'm not willing to give you the information."

"Wait! You have the actual Stone!" Mustang reacts to his thoughts rather harshly. He grabs her shoulders and drags her back to where she was before, in the center of reality. "Where is it?"

The Ishbalites go wild. Not like the raging kind that would charge at them to save a fellow person, the kind that thrashes insults at the innocent person that's in trouble and encourages violence. "Kill that demon!" "Choke her! Choke her to death!" "Bring her back from where she came from!" The rude comments hit her like a flood.

Her body language shows anger building up, but her eyes clearly reflect sadness and are glazed with tears. She whispered to Mustang, wanting to get some weight off her already-stressed life, "It's against our religion to practice alchemy, but that's the only hope we have of surviving any of this." She claps her hands together and shoves them on the colonel's chest. Everything glowed bright green to the point where I couldn't see them through the concentrated, sickly green.

The ground trembled furiously.

Giant, thick stems shot up from out of the ground. Each of the thorns as big as Mustang's head and the circumference of the stem being larger than his body's width. The stems threw him up into the air, then braided around his body about sixty yards off the ground.

Rosa gazed up at the colonel as giant roses blossom above his black hair.

Mustang laughs with and insane tone to it. The sound almost as if you could lick it,

The taste aluminum.

He stops to gaze down at the ground, "Let me tell you a little secret of mine, darling. It's only two words: Life sucks! So, you ask what the point of something that sucks so friging much? No one actually knows, but there are theories to this thing we call 'life.' Mine is simple: we're animals. And why did Mother Nature create animals: who the frick knows. But what's our soul-purpose in life: reproduction. Yes, human are animals.

"Yet, we can't even do the simple task at hand because we get bored in the process of getting there. So what do humans do when we get bored or jealous or angry? We fight, destroy, decimate anything and everything we set our eyes on. This world, as we see it is a reality, an imperfection. And what we hope the world will one day become, a fantasy, a perfection. Yet, everything has it's flaws. And the things that don't have flaws will die off sooner than you want it too. Anything that is perfect will die off in a flash of an eye because people are selfish animals who only want to share it within themselves." He flashes a settle smile at the girl to brighten up the moment a little. He looks down at her, his cheeks turning slightly rosy. "By the way, I must say before I forget, which I doubt I would, but this is an exquisite view up here! I get a great view of you. What you have are a really nice pair of ––––."

The girl claps her hands together to summon up another thick stem from the ground. It is hurtled as Mustang and he gets smacked across the face to leave a giant bruise.

The contact of the stem hitting his face made an incredible noise, almost like a piece of meat being slapped up against a wall in a child's cartoon.

The flower stem disintegrates within the next couple of seconds.

She smirks back up at him, flicking her bangs out of her eyes with a jerk of the head. "That's super flattering of you to give me such a compliment," she said, "but I'm looking for someone who will love me and my people. The ones who don't kill my people."

"I wasn't going to kill them," he snaps back at her. "You know, not many people can make me angry! Which is only Havoc at the moment!"

You can hear him gasp in the background, "No? Really," he says sarcastically, "I never would've guessed!"

"Shut up," Mustang shouts at him. He turns his attention back to Rosa, "But I guess I can add a new one onto my list." He snaps his fingers and lets all the monstrous flowers catch aflame.

The woman turns around to face the people of Ishbal, "Will you idiots listen to me for once and run while you have the chance!" She claps her hands and slams them on the ground. She piers behind her shoulder to check on her burning flowers: They're black and turning into ash. Mustang is already pushing them aside, they turn into a puff of dark-gray clouds.

The whole area is being circled by a green light. The light quickly outlined into three, stogy rows of tall, implausible-sized roses.

The colonel steps over the pile of soot he just created and rushes over to Rosa with an insane-smile plastered onto his face. He pins the girl to the wall of flower stems before she had time to react. He finally snaps and yells at the girl, more directed at her stubbornness than anything else, "Look here1 I don't care who or what you are! You can't just lock all these people in here like their wind-up toys in a toy-box!" He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath of reality. He knew he couldn't do that, it's not good manors. He takes a little step backward. "Don't get me wrong, you're a very beautiful and attractive young woman, almost a temptress if you will. But you are also stubborn down to the bone. I will offer you one thing. I am thinking that this whole 'war' thing is an excuse to kill more people needed for the Philosopher's Stone. So I'd like to stay here for a while to prove to Central that you're people are nice people and deserve to stay in today's society. I would also like to find out more about your culture as an excuse to stay here and protect your people. This is an out-stretched attempt for me to save your people. I don't like killing, especially if it is the act of murder because my best friend, I believe, was murdered. So I beg you," he paused for a second to raise his hand up and gently places it on the women's neck, "let me go back to the station, convince them to let me stay here, and come back. And after that moment on, I promise you and your people won't see us ever again."

Roy slides his hand slowly to her blushing cheek, almost as if he were scared to touch her skin because it was too soft and would break easily.

Her pupils turned to slits and she lost her breath, "Your hands," she whispers as her eyes flutter shut, "your hands are so warm. Warm and comforting, not cold and soulless like everyone else's. It's like it has heart, a soul."

Roy relaxes some, "You mean I have a heart and a soul. I have one because I'm not a old-blooded murderer. Does that prove something to you?"

she breathes heavily, taking in the sweet scent of the moment. She rests her cheek on his hand. "I've heard of you, Flame Alchemist. I heard that you were quite a womanizer in Central City.

That word punched him right in the stomach: womanizer. Sure, he's been called that before, but it hurt him more coming from an actual woman.

His hand retreats to his side and his settled smile is cleaned from his face. "I have stole a couple of dates, yes. But I guess I'm...maybe it's because..." He couldn't seem to find the right words as he stared at her. His eyes became worried. Why was he such a womanizer? It never really occurred to him until now. But why would he care now? "Maybe it's because I'm undecided about what I want to do with my love life, but that might change." He lifted his worried eyes from the ground to bring them back to Rosa, "Who are you?"

"Rosa," she reaches for his hand and places it back on her cheek. She drifted off to her fantasy world again. The feeling, so great and warm, none like any other. "Rosa the Thorn Alchemist. I don't have a real last name."

He smiled at her while her eyes were closed, but it almost looked like it hurt. Like it was bruising him slowly, slowly and painfully. "You never answered my question. Do you think I'm a murderer any more? You know, since I've proven myself."

She shrugs her shoulders a little, "Maybe."

He laughs out loudly, "You are so stubborn!" Roy slips out his hand from her's and it hides in his pockets.

She looked up at him with her unique eyes, the sorrow and torture almost fully replaced with enlightenment and joy, "So you want to stay, huh?"

"I would. Just for a while. I'm thinking the military won't attack if a comrade is here doing some research. But I have to think of a secondary excuse because I'm thinking the Fuhrer won't be up to it at the first beat. Since I'm doing this," he goes to change the subject, "do you think you could let us out of this...cage?"

The woman rolls her eyes.

Mustang gives her a serious stare, he meant business.

She claps her hands and places one of them on the wall.

All the stems are sucked back into the ground like noodles.

All the military men surround her with their guns pointing at her head, their mouths ready to spit a bullet at her any second. Since they weren't trapped anymore, neither was their minds.

She smiles, "Shoot me now, I dare you. But if I do die soon or now," she starts, "at least I'll die knowing that one person likes me: the Flame Alchemist."

Mustang watches the scene from the back with a small smile, "How many times do I have to tell you idiots to hold fire?"

And so, Mustang had a plan, a theory about Ishbalites: not all of them were the same like everyone thinks, they're not all crazy, religious people. They have souls, they are humans.