The Alchemist
They were an odd-looking group in an odd-looking office. Most of them seemed to be the wrong rank.
The guy with the spare tire around his middle and red hair cut very short everywhere but on the very top looked the right age for a first looie, but was only a second lieutenant. His desk was a mess of digital storage devices, paper and sticky notes. His corner, to the left of the door, had one bulletin board wall tacked with index cards and various sized scraps of paper. The other wall had his pride and joy - a huge white board that could save whatever was written on it to disk. He had a smart-pad that went with him everywhere and was currently docked to a 20" flat-screen monitor. Heymans Breda, Intelligence, Strategic Ops.
The short kid with the heads-up display glasses and the black hair that stuck up without hair gel was a tech sergeant, believe it or not, even though he was only 19 and had enlisted just a little over two years ago. His area was next to Breda and had a wall of cubbyholes filled with various kinds of equipment - some actually recognizable as thumb drives and power supplies and other computer-related equipment. He didn't have a desk at all - just the cubbyholes and a couple of tables with IT equipment in various degrees of disassembly. He also had a stand with his current toy: a computer he was building in the shape of a firefly-class spaceship. Kain Fuery, Tech Support, Hardware.
The tall blue-eyed blond on the other side of Fuery was a second lieutenant and he actually looked like one. His work-space was like the corner of a gym with cushioned work-out mats on the floor. One wall was a floor to ceiling window; the other was covered with sheet monitors that looked out on vistas from all over the world. Something that looked roughly like an umbrella rack on coasters held rifles, guns and other dangerous-looking paraphernalia that were probably weapons of some sort. His only concession to office work was a tiny roll-top desk with a folding chair that he opened up when there was paperwork that actually had to be done on paper. Jean Havoc, Field Ops, Weapons and Training.
The other blond, not as tall and with hazel eyes, looked young enough to be a second lieutenant but had a no-nonsense manner that made her seem older. Her rank, first lieutenant, seemed to fit her too. She shared the floor to ceiling window with Havoc and had her own wall of sheet monitors looking out over the world. Her normal-sized desk was in the middle of the floor, which was normal tile, not covered with mats. Her smart-pad was plugged into a 20" flat-screen monitor and her sniper rifle was mounted in a cradle on top of her desktop hutch. Riza Hawkeye, Field Ops, Adjutant.
The warrant officer, across from Breda on the other side of the door, looked old enough to be a chief master sergeant. Part of that was his prematurely white hair, but part was due to the fact that he really was the oldest one in the office, being in his late thirties. As tall as the blond second lieutenant, he was the only one who had what might be considered a standard military office setup: desk, credenza, return, four-drawer filing cabinet, four-shelf bookshelf - all in military-issue solid metal grey. He also had a real coat and umbrella stand, which was actually used for coats and umbrellas (his and the others'). On top of the desk were three computers of various types, each with a different operating system. Next to it was a small rack with rack-mounted computers and various routers and appliances connected via a switch to a single old-fashioned laptop with a 19" screen. Those were the in-house servers for the little group. Vato Falman, Intelligence, Archives and System Admin.
Between Falman and Hawkeye was the black-haired, dark-eyed lieutenant colonel who looked part Japanese. He was only a year or two older than Breda and looked it. He had the officer's version of the warrant officer's desk: maple wood finish rather than grey metal. His monitors were all sheet monitors like the ones that Havoc and Hawkeye used: one was fastened to something that looked like a picture easel and several others were strewn across his desk top like so much paper. The wall behind him had a particularly large one that was currently set to a terrain view of the world with an overlay of country names and boundaries. To one side of it was a door to his private meeting room.
Roy Mustang, Brigade combat team Modernization Command, Technologist Recruiting Officer. Nickname: "The Alchemist."
Author's Notes
Written for Prompt 113 at FMA Fic Contest: Modern AU
There really is a Future Force Integration Directorate, Brigade combat team Modernization Command in the US Army. I have no idea what its offices actually look like, or if there is a technologist recruiting office. The IT stuff exists (although I don't know how big you can actually make the flexible monitors).