A/N: Hey all! Okay, so I can't tell you all how much nicer it is for me to be doing bi-weekly updates, thank you all so much for being patient with that, it means a lot to me. Don't have that much more to say in this note but a recap, so here you are (though, per usual, you still may want to skim last chapter's ending.)
Recap: After finally being fully confronted, Mary reveals the entire Slicer Brother situation to the gang. Once she's finished, Greed leaves with Roa to "Take care" of some things, coming back the next morning with the handgun Mary asked for.
Now, onto the chapter!
It was a very good thing, Roa reflected, that Mary had been either curious or confused enough to skip her classes and follow Greed out on his sudden excursion as ordered. It was partially for the fact that he would have been the one made to forcibly drag the teenager along had she resisted but for a large part because of how much that would have further hindered her standings with their boss. The girl really didn't know how angry she'd gone and made the homunculus. Though, in her defense, Greed himself didn't seem so clear on it either.
Of course, learning that anyone had dared threaten his people made the man absolutely furious and the same went for the two that had kept it secret for so long. However, Mary and Bido only did so for the sake of self preservation, something Greed wanted them to have a large sense of in the first place. Had he been in on the situation, the homunculus would have just told them to stay quiet like they had and thus, was frustrated that he couldn't make up his mind on how livid to be with the two, along with being angry in the first place. Being the one to accompany him immediately after hearing Mary's story, Roa got to watch the brunt of his employer's confused outrage.
"Hey, Roa…" The ox chimera's musings broke with a slight twitch when the girl who'd been mostly keeping silent, called out to him quietly from her spot walking next to him. "Do you, uh, know where we're going?" She went on once Roa looked down at her, indicating he was listening, while glancing back and forth through the thickly wooded area Greed was hiking him, Martel and Mary through currently.
"...North." He replied after a minute, looking over at the other two of the group who were a ways ahead, the cardinal direction being pretty much all he could manage to answer. It was obvious to anyone involved that they were heading out to teach Mary how to use the handgun properly, Roa and Martel being present for the purpose of teaching since Greed seldom ever used weapon other than his hands and would be able to show anyone else anything about firearms. However, the ox chimera really didn't know anything other than that and they would keep going till they found a spot secluded enough for no one to come investigate the noise.
"Helpful…" Mary muttered with a roll of her eyes as she fidgeted with the shoulder strap of the bag Greed had had her stash the weapon in. "Well then, could you…" The teenager suddenly trailed off and looked over to Martel and Greed, who were still leading far ahead. "...Tell me what happened last night?" She finally finished.
Roa just stared down for a moment. He could guess why she'd checked to see if the homunculus was listening beforehand. Know him, he would most likely have barked something along the lines of 'None of your business' at the girl and made it be left at that.
"...He spent a while just mutter about you at first." However, Roa was quite different from his boss. The man still took issue with what Mary had done and her lack of trust in the group to look after her but he could bring himself to see the situation from the girl's side, more so than his cohorts at least. "But most of the reason we were gone so long was getting that gun." He went on.
None of the members of the Devil's Nest gang used any sort of arming on account of the liability it incurred, not to mention they didn't really need it anyway. So, unlike information, tobacco, liquor and a lot of other things Greed managed to procure quickly, they didn't really have a firearms contact. Roa really wasn't sure how long it took for him and the homunculus to find dealers, and then a weapon the teenager could feasibly wield, especially without her around. The standard ended up being if he or Greed could manipulate it with with any sort of ease, it was too big. The requirements were only fulfilled in a .38 revolver that was small enough to be completely enveloped by Roa's hands, sometime closer to sunrise.
"A-and what about t-..." Mary's next tentative question cut out before she could finish by her suddenly snapping a look back over her shoulder. It took the ox chimera a moment, but it wasn't hard to recognize the nervous demeanor.
"Asked around as much as he could but it looks like they skipped town. Don't worry, the boss was careful to not make it obvious." Roa replied, indulging the teenager in her paranoia of not saying anything directly about the supposed Slicer out loud, despite there being no way two lumbersome convicts could be anywhere within ear shot. The discretion seemed to sate the girl some and she stopped frantically scanning the area, it wasn't long before a different sort of worried look came to her face, though.
"...He won't stay pissed for long." The chimera stated after a few moment.
"Huh?"
"The boss, he's not gonna be angry for too long." Roa clarified, giving his best guess as to what the teen was musing over as he checked to see that Greed still wasn't obviously listening. "You're back on his blacklist, so you're gonna wanna do whatever he tells you for a while...but we all would've made the same deal as you." He eventually continued. It was the truth, when he thought about it. While it definitely hadn't been gone about in the best way, Mary was just trying to keep herself safe and not by the worst possible method; the chimera could easily see most of them reacting in a similar way under pressure. "He knows so, so he's not gonna stay mad forever."
"Oh...yeah, here's hoping, anyway." The teenager replied with a bit of a worried smile. But, for some reason, there was still an absent edge to her replies, like there was something else on her mind, a reaction to which Roa pointedly raised an eyebrow. Understanding or not, the man had few intentions of leaving the girl to hide something so soon after the revelation of what she'd been keeping secrets about.
"I've just been thinking…" Mary started once she caught the man's look, figuring out what he was asking. "Keeping my mouth shut kept me and Bido safe but...they're dangerous to other people too. And I didn't even think about that till just yesterday." She finished a little more sharply than she'd been speaking before, expression intensifying with a sort of anger and sadness that Roa was pretty sure was disappointment.
"...Nothing to do about it now. And Greed's right, reporting is would've just gotten you more trouble." The ox chimera replied quickly, not sure how to feel about the teen's moral compass suddenly deciding to gnaw at her. He eventually decided, though, that it was fortunate for it to wait until the Slicer had made it to another district to prickle her conscience. There was even less point in speaking up by then and, hopefully, Mary would remember that.
"Guess you're right…" The teenager muttered, not looking at all like she believed what she was saying. However, before Roa could pursue the topic further, Greed barked out to them.
"Ay, you two! Get over here, found the place!"
Both of the pair flinched to look over and got stuck in the eyes by a sudden excess of sunlight. They hadn't noticed but they'd been lead to a break in the forest, the treeline of which the homunculus was standing right before with Martel, snickering at how Mary and Roa hadn't caught on in time and were squinting and rubbing their eyes. "Heh, come on." He eventually added, smugly pushing up his sunglasses while waving the group the rest of the way into the clearing.
At first it looked to be one of those bare spots that occurred inexplicably in forests but the reason started to become apparent when Roa noticed pine needles crunching underfoot while Mary and Martel tripped over thin tree stumps in quick succession. There had evidently been fir trees standing in the past that had long since been cut down, probably by Winter Solstice celebrators that were willing to go so far out of their way to avoid paying (now that he thought of it, Roa had no idea exactly where Greed got the evergreen he always dragged into bar in the middle of December. The man started talking again before he got more of a chance to ponder.)
"Alright, this is definitely far enough out." Greed declared while moving over to Mary and slipping the bag with the gun in it off her shoulder. "Anyone ever teach you how to shoot, half pint?" He asked, digging the small revolver out of the bag and proceeding to pop the cylinder and fumble around loading it with his rather too large hands.
"Not...really." Mary conceded, biting her lips. "I shot a hunting rifle once or twice but that's it. It was always too loud so I'd leave whenever anyone started…"
"Feh, figures…" Greed half laughed, half grunted in reply before giving the full cartridge a spin and snapping it back into place.
BANG!
"Y'ow! Well, it works." The man hissed, struggling to pull his fingers out of the petite sidearm that he'd just fired without warning.
"F-for what!? Making people go deaf?!" Mary snapped right back, her voice an octave or two shriller than normal as she dropped her hands from their positions near her head where she'd failed to cover her ears quickly enough.
"Ay, you asked for this." Greed retorted with a glare back at the girl who looked, as they all could have guessed, extremely shocked by the noise while he shook out his hand that apparently hadn't fared well jammed in the tiny trigger guard. "And it's even louder when you're the one firing." He went on, grabbing the still smoking gun by it's barrel with apparent intent to pass it over but seemed to think of something and pulled it closer to himself instead.
"Kid, you get that you having this thing is pretty damn illegal?" The homunculus questioned.
Amestris wasn't extremely overbearing when it came to gun control but a licenseless teenager wandering around with a firearm that had quite literally been dealt under the table was bound to curry trouble if discovered.
"...Yeah…" Mary assented after a long minute, nearly grunting and whole body giving the image of someone squirming with herself. The arm of the law didn't bear down on the teenager nearly as heavily as it once had but this situation would be her first time actively disobeying the given authority, as opposed to just keeping certain things secret. For a moment, Roa was unsure whether she'd actually do so but soon noticed the change in her face. The apprehension was obviously present but the more prominent look was stern and determined, whatever effect the Slicer suspects had had on Mary, the end result was her being finished enough with being left defenseless that legality wasn't much of a concern anymore.
"Then ya get it's your last resort. Anyone but us or the person you're firing at see you with this and you're life could get totally screwed." Greed explained even though the girl already knew the risks. She could probably get out of doing jail time but her already tentative position at her university would definitely be dissolved, rendering her future totally derailed. "Hell, your target could f-ck things up if they get away." He continued, holding out the grip of the illegal weapon to the teenager.
Nothing was said in response but it was easy to tell Mary was heavily thinking over everything Greed had just said while she stared at the firearm. Eventually though, after a deep breath in, she took the revolver, looking a little surprised at how heavy the thing was.
"So, uh...what the hell am I shooting at?" The girl asked after a minute, effectively shattering the serious mood.
"Oh, right." Greed replied quickly, evidently having forgotten that detail and started off for the trees on the other side of the clearing, rummaging around in his pockets for something all the while. After coming to the edge a dozen or more yards away from the group, the man folded out a big piece of paper and proceeded to fasten it to the nearest tree. It only took Roa and Martel a few seconds to figure out what the large, yellowed poster was, so they got to watch as Mary's eyes switched from squinted to wide when her poorer vision finally processed her target.
"Is that-"
"Well you gotta admit, it's appropriate." Martel cut the girl off, rubbing her chin while Greed wandered back over to them, looking subtly, very satisfied.
"That was the idea." He chuckled while giving the group that was still staring at the wanted poster for the Slicer that Mary would be shooting at, a smirk. "Guessing you've got no idea how to work that thing, kid?"
The teenager flinched at his sudden question but quickly stammered in reply.
"W-well I...not one."
"And that's why you're here." Greed stated to both the chimera's at once, not sounding surprised but still sort of annoyed at Mary's lack of knowledge on the subject.
"Oh, like you're one to talk. That test shot was awful." Martel rolled her eyes in response, doubtlessly thinking on how the homunculus's poor form of only using one hand and not bracing himself in the slightest, something Roa agreed on.
"Alright, right way to fire a gun now…" The snake chimera started, taking up a position next to Mary while Greed mutter something at her with a glare. "Always use both hands, especially you and, this is gonna sound weird but you have to...to…" Martel had glanced over to the teenager to make sure she was copying the movement of holding out her arms at chest height but trailed off and dropped them upon looking.
"What?"
"You're doing something wrong…" She replied to the question blankly, though the perplexed expression and the way she scratched her chin again gave a lot of indication that she didn't know exactly what.
"...She's left handed, Martel." Roa explained after a minute of staring, knowing it would take the snake chimera far too long to puzzle out why what Mary was doing looked so off to them.
"Oh, right. Ugh, can't you fix that or something?" The woman questioned a second later with a groan, no doubt dreading the idea of having to flop directions for the sake of the teen's quirk.
"Wha-? It's not something you fix, stupid!" Mary snapped back immediately, the intensity of her reaction and glare at the suggestion out of proportion enough to make the whole group flinch. A retort was halfway out of Martel's mouth but before anything could really be said, she pulled back, getting the message that she'd touched on a bad subject.
"Good grief, fine. I was joking." Martel waved off. "Be as weird as you want, I'm not gonna switch around the directions around for you, though." She went on while taking her position back next to the girl and completely ignoring that she wasn't anyone to be telling people they were weird, as Mary was pretty clearly expressing with her continued glare that also wasn't getting paid attention to.
"Anyway, it's not what you'd think but you have to lock your elbows before firing, otherwise the kickback'll screw everything up." Martel continued, lifting her arms back into the mime of holding a gun she had before, though since her elbows couldn't really 'lock' anymore, she just made a show about extending till her arms were perfectly straight. "Aiming's where it gets hard. When you focus on the target, it's gonna look like there are two barrels on the gun, so what you have to do is keep looking at the mark and line it up so it's right between the two-"
"That's not right."
"Eh?" Both women twitched and threw a look over to Roa who, as odd as it was, had been the one to interrupt them.
"I said, that isn't right." The ox chimera repeated flatly as he shifted closer, taking up the spot on the other side of Mary from Martel. "That's not how you're supposed to aim, you close the non-dominant eye and adjust for the difference."
"Huh-? No it's not!" The other unofficial instructor shouted back, overtop Mary's head, looking very confused and extremely annoyed at her supposed 'Partner's' interjection. "That'll ruin her aim! Where the hell'd you learn to shoot?"
"Same place as you." Roa replied blandly. He had thought, since they'd both been soldiers, they would have at least similar methods, which was probably what Greed had been hoping for too but apparently there wasn't a universal standard after all.
"That double barrel way takes too long and this is for quick draw."
"And she won't be able to hit the broad side of you your way." Martel continued, quickly losing patience. "Are you trying to get her killed, old man?"
"She's more done for if she wastes all that time lining up a shot when she could be-"
BANG!
In a rare instance, Roa actually jumped (though not high in any sense) when what was unmistakably a gunshot fired off right next to him. On account of the noise, when the chimera looked down he wasn't at all surprised to see Mary with her arms sinking back into place from where the recoil had knocked them, smoke drifting from the end of the revolver and the girl herself having a rather shocked, but somehow gratified, expression.
"Wha-?" Martel blurted a few seconds later, taking her time in processing what had just happened. "What did-an-And don't fire without telling us, dumbass!" It hadn't taken her too much longer to catch up, not to mention shout and smack the back of Mary's head.
"Gah-! Hey, ow!" The teen hissed, clutching the back of her skull with her lightly shaking support hand. "Greed gave me the go ahead! It's not like you two were gonna stop arguing!" She went on protesting. Martel looked extremely tempted to bark something like 'Never listen to Greed!' in reply but she understood as well as everyone else that Mary was currently on thin ice with the homunculus and didn't really have the choice to go against him in anything left to her, so she just went with the option of glaring down the instigator himself. Unfortunately, the object of Martel's glower was already meandering off in favor of checking how the teenager's first shot had fared.
"...Well at least tell us if she hit it!" The woman called out to Greed, she'd obviously been expecting him to declare the verdict as soon as he could see it but he just ended up pulling the poster off the tree and then wordlessly start his return, staring down at the improvised target the whole time, looking totally baffled.
"Yeah...yeah she hit it, alright." The man muttered back absently, not taking his eyes off the paper for some reason the others still couldn't figure out. However, having a far higher vantage point, Roa was able to see what had Greed so bemused and, while it didn't show, had the same sort of reaction upon seeing it.
There had been five small portraits on the Slicer wanted poster, each depicting a current suspect. If the ox chimera's memory was serving him properly, the pair one over from the left side of the page were the convicts Mary and Bido had run into. However, it was harder to tell than it would have been before, since the center picture had a bullet hole right through its depiction's face.
0*0*0
Roa was standing a few feet inside the treeline the group had originally come through, just enough to be completely in the shade, while he watched the worst case of beginner's luck he'd ever see unfold for the past twenty minutes.
After the first fire, the common trend quickly changed to Mary's shots barely managing to keep hitting the same tree. Evidently the bullseye at the start hadn't come from any real skill. Another thing that Roa realized soon after that, was that having two people trying to teach the teenager how to use one small firearm was just thoroughly confusing her and decided to fall back and let someone closer to her size instruct (besides, he'd already noticed Mary automatically using his method of closing one eye, so he was content to keep his peace.) Though as he watched another argument erupt between the women after the girl's most recent miss, he was starting to debate whether his decision had been for the best.
"Damn kid, this is gonna take way longer than I thought." Greed suddenly muttered from his spot leaning against a tree a few feet away from the ox chimera, the cigarette between his lips bobbing up and down with each word.
"It's only her first time." Roa responded automatically, already anticipating the need to sate his impatient employer in some way. "Besides," He went on when Greed just started grumbling in his general direction. "She's already picking up on it." The big man pointed out, hoping Greed had noticed how most of Mary's shots were hitting within at least five feet of each other by then.
"Yeah but if that brat whips the thing out on someone and misses, she's screwed." The slighter of the two grunted in reply while shaking the ash off of his more than half burnt out tobacco roll, though still having every intention of smoking the thing till the bitter end. He was right about the firearm in that situation. Even if the targets would be closer, there was still plenty of room for the girl to miss if she tried to fire on a living person, and the reaction to attempted murder like that would more than likely be a successful reciprocation. Having the gun and not being able to use it properly could be even more dangerous than staying unarmed in some respects, though there was another contributing factor it brought to Roa's mind.
"Think she could really do it?"
"What?" Greed half snapped back without really looking, evidently not in the mood for vague questions.
"Kill someone."
The clarification deftly caught the homunculus's attention. It was probably a mix of the facts that he'd been totally unexpectant of the question along with how point blank Roa had been about it, though he should have know there were never warm ups or more words than absolutely necessary with the older man, Greed seemed closer to shocked than anything else. He ended up spending several seconds just blinking, mouth holding slightly open while he tried to think of a response, leaving the remaining quarter of the cigarette to wobble precariously.
"...You mean something like planning it?" He finally asked, though he already must have known that wasn't right. "Nah, the kid doesn't have what it takes for that." Greed went on before actually getting an answer.
"But...if we're talking thick of the moment, do or die, self defense, sorta thing…" The man's gaze drifted off along with his sentence, eventually resting on the snake chimera and the teenager once again having it out over something. "Then yeah, she'd pull. Probably do it without thinking, like usual…" His expression slipped into more of a glare at the last statement, obviously thinking back on why the whole situation was happening in the first place.
"But could she handle that?"
The question caught Greed just as off guard as the last which didn't really surprise Roa, his boss never was the sort to think from other peoples' perspectives when some scheme wasn't involved, so he had been prepared to stare while the homunculus processed. The ox chimera did realize he was probably the only one that had actually given much thought as to how successfully using the firearm to its purpose would affect Mary, though he sincerely hoped the girl herself had a little, especially since he Roa wasn't convinced she could.
She was strong and capable of dealing with a lot, as he'd clearly seen and she was tough enough to keep up with their vagabond gang but there were other parts of the teen's personality they all knew about too. Young, that was the predominant one, extremely so in the ways of the world and just too much so to be able to really recover from something like killing another person.
It took him quite a while longer but it was obvious on Greed's face when he reached a similar conclusion and he didn't seem happy about being made to ponder it. 'Just shut up, old man' Was essentially what the look he took on said, an order which Roa complied to, though that didn't keep him from watching.
"...Neh! Not like we've even gotta worry about that." He eventually snapped sharply, tossing his gaze back into the clearing as another gunshot rang out. "On purpose, at least. Not if half-pint keeps up like this." He went on, remarking on how the bullet had whizzed off into the crowns of the trees.
Roa sighed a little, internally. It was a serious concern, so he'd been trying for an answer out of the homunculus but evidently all he'd done was stir up some second guessing, the way Greed's glower had quickly shifted into a subject change made that fairly obvious.
"Hm, she might not even want to keep it once you tell her how much it cost." Roa replied after a few moments, knowing full well it would be useless to try and drag the man back to the topic not that he'd decided to leave it. The idea was in his head now, at least; the ox chimera would play along with the desire to distract himself.
"Oooh, the brat's keeping it." Greed replied quickly, not using a harsh tone but still one that left no room for arguments. "After all the shit getting that thing, she'd better sleep with it under her gods damned pillow." He went on, finally spitting out the charred remnants of his cigarette and grinding them out under his heel.
"...But you're still gonna make her pay back every cen."
"Well, yeah." The homunculus responded, looking a little perplexed at why Roa would even see a need to bring that up, the chimera just rubbed his forehead a little on the teenager's behalf. She may have brought it on herself but being forty thousand cens in Greed's debt was downright shudder inciting.
'Hope she was already planning on working over the summer...' The big man mused over the quickly changing seasons while hoping that he didn't have to be too nearby when Mary was finally given the news.
Even all the way into the afternoon of the next day, Mary was still periodically clenching her forehead, blatantly regretting the current level of debt she'd thoughtlessly brought on herself. It was only the shock from the sheer, sudden amount, Roa guessed, that kept back a total eruption when she was told (though the initial reaction had still been none too quiet.) As a result of that, the full impact was more of a slow burn and most of the gang was careful to skirt around the teenager until they were sure it was out, especially considering she was armed now.
That was why, in his general fallback action, the ox chimera was making some of the cheap tea they had on hand while Mary sort of listed on the couch, somewhere between the precipice of total despair and the spike of renewed determination. It was a state that made it very hard to guess whether she be set off by the side door suddenly bashing open, or if she would even notice at all.
"Gah-!" It quickly proved to be the latter. "You don't need to slam-! Oh, h-hey there…" The abrupt change to an apprehensive tone made Roa wonder enough to turn and look, though there were really only two people it could have been.
Seeing Bido, panting with one hand clutched to his chest, was a little surprising since the man didn't tend to like making loud noises, but not that much. Mary was actually being more careful around the lizard chimera than she was with Greed ever since two nights before, evidently feeling guilty over lashing out at him in her panic attack but not really sure how to make up for it and just being nicer than normal.
"Uh, something u-?"
"L-look!" He cried out with a very strange sort of grin cracking his features as he rushed over to the couch before the teen had a chance to finish, practically brandishing a newspaper (more than likely stolen) that he'd been hiding under one of his arms.
Roa began shifting nearer the pair, trying to make out just what was in the post that had Bido so worked up but Mary's sharply snatching it away kept him from being able to make it out. Less than a second later, she was rifling through it, finally coming to rest a few pages in on whatever had been advertised on the front page and the ox chimera had a moment to read it, along with see the pictures that accompanied it.
Mass murderer 'The Slicer' apprehended.
Caught in the act and finally convicted, the culprit was actually revealed to be a pair of broth-
"Th-they…" The girl choked, crumpling the paper with a photograph of the familiar criminal duo in her fingers without thinking as she looked up at Bido with eyes gone wide and disbelieving. "They-they really caught 'em…?" She asked waveringly; the lizard chimera nodded back athletically, smile practically brushing up to his ears.
"...Huh...hu-Ha! Ha ha ha!" It was just gasping at first but Roa and Bido were soon caught off guard by Mary suddenly just full out laughing. "Heh-ha! Oh-oh gods, Bido we're-ha ha ha!" The next second, the teenager launched into the lizard chimera, wrapping her arms around his thin center and actually started spinning, lifting the man clean off his feet. "Wh-we're safe! Damn it! They're-they're really gone-heh!" After a revolution or two, Mary released him and flopped back down onto the couch, still chuckling stupidly in relief.
"...I-uh- I guess I should, uh...g-go tell Greed…" Bido stuttered after a few minutes, expression bearing a very confused look of shock and sounding like he really didn't know what had just happened.
"Y-yeah -heh- yeah, he'll wanna know." The teenager sputtered, either not noticing or caring about how much she'd surprised the two with her and went on quietly laughing.
Bido ended up shifting back and forth on his feet for a few moments but eventually made for the stairs up to the bar in search of their boss, still looking a little bewildered, though the ox chimera got the definite feeling Greed already knew the news.
While it didn't show on the outside, Roa felt a tension that he hadn't really realized was in the back of his mind about Mary and Bido's former accountability to the serial killers, entirely subside. Feeling himself breath a little easier, at least internally, the big man moved to go back to the tea kettle that was starting to sputter with boiling but Mary suddenly flinching and frantically rustling around with the newspaper once again snapped his attention back.
"...What is it?" He asked after a moment, watching the girl's head shift as her eyes darted down the page she found, head obscuring too much of the paper for him to see it himself. The teen didn't answer right away and kept her face practically pressed to the page till about a minute later, when she suddenly heaved a big sigh and slumped back onto the couch once again.
"They didn't kill him." She replied right as Roa was about to question her again, going on before he had time to be confused by the short statement, "It says 'Caught in the act' but the cops got there before the brothers could kill the guy they were after." Mary let out another big exhalation when she was finished, entire form emanating relief for another few seconds before she opened her eyes again. The expression Roa had seen on her face in the woods the day before was back, that vague look of self adversity that he didn't need to ponder much to figure out.
"...You're still thinking about what else you should've done?" It was more of a statement than an inquiry, though the chimera did still want to be certain. Mary twitched at it and stared, a little shock ghosting on her face at first but after a few seconds, her eyelids drooped and she took the harder face back on.
"Yeah." She replied, straightening up slightly before tilting forward into the stoic pose of resting her elbows on her knees and twining her fingers together.
"...Can't change it now." Roa said flatly after regarding her for a moment from his spot a few feet away. "Just make sure not to have regrets next time." The first part really was all he'd been planning to tell the girl at first. That sort of mentality was the smartest one for those with their lot in life to adopt but, for some reason, it didn't feel right leaving her at that and he quickly thought of something to add and just did so.
Mary just twitched and stared up at him in reply, seeming fairly confused. Eventually though, her expression relaxed slightly and she let out another sigh.
"Hm, not sure I like how you sound so sure about a 'next time'." She half chuckled, taking on a more comfortable posture.
"We both know you can't stay out of trouble for long." Roa finished as he went to rescue the tea kettle, which was giving out choked, sputtering whistles by that time.
A/N: Sorry this is out so late in the day even though I had two weeks. Watched Schindler's List for the first time (freaking amazing, by the way) and that ate up my afternoon. Anyway, I'm very happy with how this chapter came out and hope you find it that way as well, and also that everyone was in character and believable.
And yes, this concludes The Slicer Brothers arc. I loved getting to make it so I hope you enjoyed reading it. This is the longest running and most complex arc I've had so far and I would like to a million times thank first Hexalys, who as you may know gave me the idea for bringing the duo in in the first place and also to Zystx, who mentioned that she hoped the Slicer brothers would come in again and without that suggestion, I never would have brought them back and this arc wouldn't exist. Once again, thank you both so much and I hope you liked how I wrote it.
Review acknowledgements: Amber, I forgot to mention you in the last chapter but once again thank you for your reviews! (I actually already know what all Mary's sisters are like and I have tentative names but there actually may be an opening ;D)
Also, in case any of you saw, the 330th reviewer, Ela, was once again my evil little sister tricking me (and she did a damn good job of it.)
Long author's note but I had a question for people; what do you imagine Mary dressed like? I generally avoid going into detail with the clothing unless it's relevant, so I'd really like to know the image you guys have of her.
And, as always, if you have any ideas for chapters or just stuff you'd like to see, send over a message or review! I always love to get them, really. And another thing I always love to get are reviews *elbow nudge, wink wink* they are not required but I get my wisdom teeth out in a few days and could use the morale boost.