The next morning, long past sun-rise, I was up and already cleaning up the dining room. Out in the hallways, I hard barking and lifted my head to see Alexander on a leash.
"I get it, you wanna go for a walk, right?" Edward sighed.
I chuckled softly and stood up, as if about to go and see her, when something caught my eye. In the burning bowl on the table was some half burned scraps of paper.
"Ed, come in here!" I called.
Edward, looking uninterested at first, came into the dining room, Alexander following after her. She picked up the paper and uncurled it to see…
"What?!" I gasped.
It was the picture Nina had drawn last night; half burned, rolled into a ball but it was that picture. Edward and I looked between each other, gulping.
"We need to find out what's going on in this house." She said.
I nodded, "I'll say I'm going for a walk with Alexander and you. We act causal and leave casually."
"We go to Central Library to find out what we can. I'm a State Alchemist now, so I should be able to get us in with my name and watch." Edward stated.
I nodded, "We leave in 15 minutes; I need to hid the drawing and change my cloths."
"I'll wait by the front door." The blonde finished.
With that settled, we did what we said we would and ran like Hell for Central Command.
"Not this simple stuff." Edward dismissed, "I want to find out about a Chimera that a man named Tucker created two years ago!"
When we got there, while I tied Alexander to a post, promising him that Edward and I would be back soon, we turned around and ran for the Library. The Librarian at the front desk gave us a log of some sorts, but I couldn't understand a thing in it; all I got was it was about Chimeras.
"Please, miss, you have to tell us!" I begged.
The Librarian, a woman with dark skin, black hair and kind brown eyes, just looked at us as if we were clueless children, but then turned to a woman in the back with a mountain of books in her arms, "Hey, Sheska, do you know about this?"
The other Librarian Sheska, a pretty woman with glasses, gentle green eyes, light skin and chestnut brown hair, looked at us uncertainty, "Shou Tucker's reports are restricted reading."
"Would you check it out, please? I'm not any ordinary person, here!" Edward stated and held up her watch.
Sheska sweat-dropped slightly, those books still in her arms, "That's not what I meant. Unless you have permission from Brigadier General Basque Grand-" she then proceeded to trip and fall and I just wanted to jump over the front desk and go help her.
But I was barely tall enough to have my eyes above the counter-top, I couldn't help her. Dang it, I hate being useless.
"Brigadier General Grand?" Edward questioned.
I thought long and hard, trying to recall some sort of memory from my time listening to the radio. I then got one.
"The Iron Blood Alchemist?" I asked, "The one from the Ishvalan war?"
The woman seemed surprised I mentioned that so calmly, but nodded, "He's the foremost authority to redirecting alchemy to military techniques. If you need his permission, then it must be some big military secret."
"A military secret?" Edward questioned.
I tugged on her sleeve, "Come on; we won't be able to get anything more out of them now."
Edward sighed; with that, we turned around and walked out the front door.
"You can't go in! Please stop!"
I lifted my head to see a guard in uniform trying to stop a dark-skinned, white-haired man wearing civilian cloths and sunglasses with an x-shaped scar on his forehead from entering the library.
"The first branch is for State Alchemists only," the Guard explained as the man tried to step around him, "and no one without permission from the military can enter."
"But I was told that this is the only place where I would find out!" The Scarred man yelled.
He shoved right past the guard and I felt myself gulping in nervousness. As he walked past us, Edward grabbed his arm with her metal hand, halting him where he stood.
"What?!" The Scarred man demanded.
Edward turned her face to the man and gave him a sheepish and apologetic smile, "Sorry, but those seem to be the rules."
He continued on as if he hadn't heard her, but Edward didn't let go and ended up ripping the sleeve right off his tanned skirt. And revealing a tattoo underneath. Their pair gasped, Edward in surprise and the Scarred man in shock.
Edward took a few steps back to regain her balance, but when I saw the look on her face, it wasn't just surprise there… there was recognition. The man snatched the sleeve from out of her hand and ran off, the Guard following him close behind.
If only I'd know back then, what a big part this man would play in my life… I would have killed him if I had known back then. But I didn't… and that cost so many people dearly.
