Chapter 7 – The General's Wife

Ed waited by the elegant black car parked in front of Laboratory 7 main entrance, spinning his silver State Alchemist watch by its chain. He wasn't vindictive by nature, but General Hakuro was a special case. He deserved every ounce of what was coming to him and Ed could hardly maintain his composure when he saw his adversary emerge from the main doors, half-dragging Mustang along with him. Hakuro was obsessed with decorum and he always wore his best show uniform when he accompanied Colonel Mustang to his appointments with Shou Tucker. Because this appointment marked the beginning of Roy's last trimester Hakuro even bothered to buy a huge bouquet of exquisite blood-red roses for the man he openly referred to as his "pet."

Hakuro spotted Edward halfway down the wide marble stairs and his lips spread into his signature condescending smile. He demonstratively placed his arm around the Colonel's waist. "Your commanding officer is going to do some overnight duty with me," Hakuro said smugly as he approached the waiting car and opened the door. "I doubt I'll discharge him until late morning, I hope you don't mind," he laughed. "Hell, if my wife fucked like Mustang did that one time, I wouldn't need to spend so much money on whores!"

Edward desperately wanted to punch Hakuro out cold, but he doubted any punch he could deliver would hit the perverted General as hard as the sight of his wife, sitting inside the limo with hands folded over her full chest. Fullmetal watched with delight as Hakuro's poisonous smile evolved into a white mask of horror. The hair on his neck literally stood on its ends.

"Gwen…I swear…I can explain…" the man stumbled backward, trying to flee, but he was too slow to evade his enraged spouse.

Neatly styled hair and kind, green eyes belied the ferocious nature of Gwenevere Valera – the eldest daughter of the Armstrong clan. Having taught hand-to-hand combat techniques for a decade she had a famous killer punch and a notoriously explosive temper. Mrs. Hakuro leaped out of the car faster than Edward's eyes could follow, grabbed the bouquet of roses out of the General's hand, and begun to swat the roses across Hakuro's face with such force that all the petals scattered in the air like a scarlet cloud.

"Bloody hell! My eye!" Hakuro cursed, gripping the bloodied side of his face raked raw by the huge thorns. "It wasn't what you think! The overnight duty…I meant…PAPERWORK!"

"I gave you two children, I MADE you a General! And now you're using your rank to fuck male junior officers and buy whores?!"

The woman growled like a tigress, sinking all five of her long fingernails into Hakuro's crotch and squeezing as hard as she could. She was beyond all control. "I'll show you overnight duty, you sorry pervert! GET in the car!" she commanded, "or I'll castrate you with my own hands right in front of your grunts!" Mortified, Hakuro looked up with one eye to see a huge crowd of soldiers who gathered at the top of the stairs to watch the family drama.

"Ok ok, just…let GO of my cock! Your nails are cutting off circulation!" he pleaded, nearly fainting from agony. "Let's get out of here, I'll explain everything later!"

"Just WAIT until we get home," Mrs. Hakuro spat in disgust. "You'll be lucky to have enough of your unfaithful dick left to piss upright! Cheating lying dog! I want a DIVORCE!"

Colonel Mustang was thoroughly entertained by the drama that unfolded before his eyes, but his laughter was cut short when Mrs. Hakuro shifted her attention to him.

"I'm glad you find this amusing, Colonel Mustang!" She hissed, rising the barren bouquet of rose stems like a sword. "My husband gifted you my grandfather's house AND I suspect it wasn't for superior handling of paperwork!" she cried, swatting Roy with the thorny flower stems. The attack was so forceful that the pain from the thorns forced Roy to drop the long coat he was holding in his arms to hide his pregnant stomach.

"And…you're PREGNANT?! Bloody hell, now I'll have to kill you too!"

"Wait, WAIT!" Edward screamed, jumping between the enraged Mrs. Hakuro and Mustang. "I…your husband isn't the baby's father, m'am, I am!"

"But you're just a kid?!" Mrs. Hakuro paused, looking Edward up and down and evaluating the situation, and then she swatted Edward with the thorny roses.


"Are there any normal men left in Armestis, Lieutenant Hawkeye?!" Mrs. Hakuro spat in disgust, kicking her husband in the knee as the car sped through the sunlit streets.

"I'll let you know when I detect the presence of any, m'am," Hawkeye smiled from the driver's seat, catching the woman's glaring eyes in the mirror. "But I wouldn't hold out hope."

"Indeed. You're a sorry-ass adulterer," Mrs. Hakuro pointed at her husband, "you're male AND seven months pregnant out of wedlock," she shifted her gaze to Colonel Mustang, "and you're about to become a father at 17!" she narrowed her eyes at Edward. "Can any of you explain how this degenerate love triangle came about?"

"I'm not saying another word," Hakuro hissed, unable to decide whether he should be griping his scratched face or his injured crotch. "It'll just make things worse!" Mrs. Hakuro kicked him again, this time with enough force to make the General forget about his injured eye and penis and to start worrying about his shattered kneecap.

"What could possibly be worse than me having at your manhood, dear?" she demanded.

"Furor Bradley having at it," General Hakuro sighed.

"What's he got to do with this?" Edward demanded, rubbing his scratched forehead.

When the General didn't answer Mrs. Hakuro's face begun to turn bright red in breathless anger. Sensing her murderous intentions Hakuro raised both hands up in surrender.

"Furor Bradley is a Homunculus!" he said quickly, leaning backward as his wife continued to lean forward, baring her teeth in a furious sneer. "Wait..wait..there's more!"

Hearing the words Lieutenant Hawkeye slammed on the brakes, brining the car to an awkward stop on a lawn next to Mustang's new residence. Edward swallowed hard as he recovered from his shock. He was shaking his head in disbelief because what he heard both made sense and couldn't be true. The President of our country is a monster, a counterfeit human?!

"Bradley is trying to create a new type of chimeras," Hakuro continued nervously, "and to understand how chimerism happens on molecular level he needs Roy and the baby as research subjects. Bradley ordered me to coerce Mustang into sex so that I can father a child, and he ordered me to break you two up when we learned that you got him pregnant first Ed. I shouldn't have cheated on you…dear," he said sheepishly, turning to his wife, "…but I was just following orders!"

"So this is what Hughes died trying to warn me about?" Roy said quietly. "Guess that leaves me and the baby on the hook as Tucker's lab rats for now." The sadness in his voice forced every pair of eyes to focus on him. "I'm not in shape to start any nationwide uprisings to unseat the Furor, even if he is a fake human. And as long as he's in charge I will always be somebody's pet dog."

"Don't say that, please! I hate it when you get so fatalistic on me." Ed ran his fingers down Roy's cheek. He wished that he could sound more mature and confident, but his voice was breaking and his uncertainty was painfully apparent. The world suddenly turned to a much less friendlier place. Edward rested all five of his fingers on top of his lover's swollen stomach, waiting for the baby to kick, but the child remained still, as if sensing the dark mood. "You have all of our support. And Lieutenant Hawkeye and I and the guys, we'll think of something."

"What I have is a bunch of loyal but powerless subordinates," Mustang narrowed his eyes in a flash of anger. "One word from Bradley and you all will find yourselves in cages alongside me or worse. We can't trust anybody now."

"What are you going to do?" Mrs. Hakuro said as she observed the conversation intently.

"I'm sorry to have involved you in this," Mustang said carefully, avoiding her eyes. Mrs. Hakuro retired from the military with the rank of a General and he couldn't bring himself to challenge her. "I'm sorry about this mess too," he added, trying unsuccessfully to sit up to get out of the car. By the second attempt Mustang realized with horror and a good share of humiliation that his heavy stomach wouldn't allow him to exit gracefully. Mrs. Hakuro's irritated stare softened, until she finally sighed in sympathy.

"No, it looks like I owe you an apology instead. You're a victim in all this. And you can trust me, Colonel," she said. "I'm sure you know that the Armstrong clan is very powerful. Half the senior brass at Central is related to me by blood or marriage. You badly need friends who are higher than you are on the military food chain, and that I can provide you with. But if you want to get out of the noose Bradley's got you in, you and your men will have to do some dirty work on the ground."

"That wouldn't involve anything illegal, would it, m'am?" Lieutenant Hawkeye asked suspiciously. "If your plan involves killing Tucker I wouldn't want the boys anywhere near that. Killing a State Alchemist is punishable by death."

"I didn't become a General for being an idiot, Lieutenant!" Mrs. Hakuro said smugly, her old lust for battle returning to her expressive eyes. "There is no need to kill anybody. The entire Chimera Research Operation is nothing but a bunch of paperwork and paper burns so easily…if you get my drift. If a fire were to break out at Lab 7, all the information Tucker's gathered on Colonel Mustang would be destroyed, and so will all the research from prior years. They would have to start back up from scratch, and that would take years. And who knows what will happen by then? Furor Bradley might not be Furor anymore…" she added suggestively. "What do you say, Fullmetal? Becoming a daddy is easy, you ready to be a man? This will take some guts to pull off."

"Burning down the entire Lab 7 you mean?!" Edward gasped in horror. "That's three stories and two underground floors! What about all the people working there?!"

"Ah, that's where a certain General in charge of Lab 7 comes in…WEEELLL!?" Mrs. Hakuro demanded, kicking her husband for the third time when the General didn't respond to her cue, "are you going to just sit there with your hand on your balls, feeling sorry for yourself? Did you hear what I said?"

"What do you want me to do?!" Hakuro groaned. "We already established that I'm a cheating lying dog."

"That you are, and to make up for it you're going to help Edward burn down Laboratory 7 safely! Have all the backup files sent there, figure out a way to get all the people out of there, you know the drill. Or else…I'll introduce you to the garden scissors!" Mrs. Hakuro made snipping gesture with her long fingers.


"I sure am glad I gave you a call," Edward shrugged, uncertain about what he was getting himself into but relieved to have one of the military's sharpest minds on their side.

"Talk about this to the wrong person and we all will be court-martialed and put to death." Mrs. Hakuro extended her warm hand to Edward as her eyes fired up. "My husband will be in touch if he knows what's best for him."

"I still don't understand why you're helping us?" Mustang asked before closing the car door. "This is a nasty conspiracy to get involved with for a stranger."

"I'll let you think on that Colonel," Mrs. Hakuro said mysteriously. "Maybe it's because I am an old soldier itching for war against Bradley, him being a fake human and all? Or maybe it's because as a mother I find what he's doing to you repulsive? Or maybe, it's because I have a soft spot for you two fools and this is the most fun I've had since retirement. You can keep my grandfather's house, by the way. I think you've suffered enough to have earned it."