Heymans Breda
Heymans was in trouble and he knew it. The new Lieutenant Colonel was gunning for him. The question was, did he want to get caught?
He was eating at his table in the staff room of Grumman's office to avoid Mustang in the mess hall, and playing chess with himself. Speak of the devil. Mustang came into the room.
"I heard you were here," Roy said. "Mind if I join you for a moment? I brought something." He set down a tray with each of the four dessert options from lunch in the Officer's Mess.
"Oh! Thank you, sir," said Breda, but he didn't invite him to sit down. Mustang did anyway, taking only the cup of coffee from the tray.
"I know you're not interested in joining my team, but I value your opinion," Roy said. "What do you think of the people I've got so far?"
"Depends on what you're trying to do, sir," Breda answered. He finished the first half of his sandwich and started on the second half.
"You know what I'm trying to do. I'm recruiting Alchemists and helping out Lt General Grumman," Roy said, taking a sip of his coffee.
"Recruiting Alchemists?" said Breda. "Falman could make sense there. He doesn't just have a photographic memory - he's great at research in general. Anything you need to find out, if it's ever been written down, he'll find it. Of course, he'd be great for almost anything requiring information gathering."
Heymans finished the second half of his sandwich, and started on the salad.
"Havoc makes no sense, though. You let any of your potential recruits close to him and he'll explain exactly why they shouldn't join. He's a crack shot, though, and a hard worker. You need someone for combat, he'd be great."
"Fuery makes sense, but anyone would want him. Everyone could use a tech genius. I knew Lt General Grumman liked you when he let you take that kid away from him."
Heymans took one of the desserts from the tray. Better start with the ice cream, before it melted any more than it already had.
"Hawkeye's another one that makes no sense, though. At least, since you already have Havoc. Why do you need two combat people to recruit State Alchemists? On the other hand, if you wanted a bodyguard, she'd be the perfect complement to Havoc. Havoc would be your outside man and Hawkeye would be either your outlook or your right-hand man."
"But of course, that all makes it sound more like you're expecting combat than recruiting Alchemists," Breda said, reaching for a second dessert. Custard.
Roy looked at the chess board, which Breda had left untouched since he had entered the room, and changed the subject.
"If you play chess with yourself, you'll always lose," he said.
"No, sir, I can also draw," said Breda. "And whenever I do lose, I will always win as well. I always come out even."
"Don't you ever want to come out ahead?" asked Roy.
"Depends on what you mean by 'ahead', sir. I like staying alive."
"Then isn't the military a rather strange profession to be in?"
"Not really," said Breda. "Amestris is a military dictatorship. If you look at the military as the people who do all the fighting, then yes, it's stupid for someone who doesn't want to fight to go into the military. But if you look at it as the people who make the rules, then the safest place to be is where you can keep an eye on the rulemakers. And maybe become one yourself."
Heymans had gotten to the third dessert: apple pie.
"Besides," he added, "Bradley made it pretty clear in Ishval that just because you're not a soldier doesn't mean you can't be killed like one. A soldier is just a target who gets to carry a gun."
"You weren't in Ishval, though," Roy said. "You were in Pendleton."
"I was top of my class at the Academy. I asked for Pendleton and got it. It was the safest posting out there, except for Central."
"You didn't ask for Central?"
"Pendleton was my second choice. Central was first, Investigations Office. The officer in charge didn't want me."
"Major Hughes?" Roy frowned. He'd checked Breda out with Maes and gotten a thumbs up.
"He's there now, isn't he?" said Breda. "But he was in Ishval when I graduated from the Academy. The guy who turned me down was Brigadier General Raven."
Heymans started on the last dessert from the tray: a cookie bar.
"Lieutenant Colonel, I'm interested in your proposition. But I still need to know two things. First, what are you really planning to do with your team? And second, why me? Yes, I know you want a strategist, that's clearly the position still missing, and that's what I'm best at, but why me?"
"We're going to get rid of Bradley," said Roy. "By peaceful means, hopefully. I plan to replace him as Fuhrer."
That was practically the only answer that Heymans would have accepted to that question. Nothing else would have fit the pieces Mustang had assembled.
"Why?" asked Breda. He'd finished the desserts, and took a sip of his iced tea.
"Because I don't like what happened in Ishval," Roy answered. "Because I don't like that the only difference between civilians and soldiers is that the soldiers are the targets who get to carry guns."
"So Lt Colonel Mustang becomes Fuhrer and that makes everything all better?"
"No, Lt Colonel Mustang becomes Fuhrer and he and his team make this country a democracy so nothing like Ishval ever happens again."
"You are ambitious."
"That's what everyone says."
"So, why me?" asked Heymans.
"You and your squad came under fire at the Cretan border," said Roy. "You disobeyed orders to abandon two of your subordinates and held your position until you were relieved."
"The orders were to shoot them, not abandon them," corrected Heymans. "It was a ridiculous order. I needed the firepower."
"They had Cretan parents. They were security risks."
"That was the reasoning," Heymans said. "But I thought I got that incident purged from the records. It would be a courts-martial offense." Then he understood. "Falman saw it?"
Roy nodded.
Heymans stood up and gathered the empty dishes from his lunch and the desserts on the tray.
"Okay," Heymans said. "I'm with you, sir. But you have to make this good with Grumman. I'm going to be the second one you've taken from him."
Mustang looked a little sick at the prospect.
Heymans chuckled as he left the room with the tray.
Author's Note:
Manga volume 15, p169
"Oh! Thank you, sir."
