Just as a heads-up: there's a part of this chapter that's based on events that only happened in the manga, so there will be a tiny piece of unfamiliar information for those that have only watched Brotherhood ;)

And please leave a review, though please no flames :)

Chapter six

Roy thanked the nurse and then locked the door to Ed's room again with a sigh. "Listen, I know you don't like me or like this mission, and I'm not exactly happy about you playing bait for a killer, or killers, in this way, but we need to talk this out so that we can actually live side by side peacefully." He had to admit that he was having a hard time looking at the kid after what had happened tonight. To look at the pain in the boy's features. There was something so sickening about the thought of it. Roy had no idea how much pain Edward must be in still. And the doctors had only been able to have provided them with estimates about how long it would last. All they had said was that it would probably take a couple of months for the nerves to begin to calm down enough for them to attempt to reattach it.

"Why the hell should I wanna be around you in a peaceful way at all?! We're here to pretend to be someone that we're not and so what you and me are supposed to be doing is that we play bait as we gather information, then we share that information and then I don't want or need to speak to you when those things aren't happening because I thereby get a well-deserved break!"

"A well-deserved break that also includes the fact that you're going to need my help with washing your hair and your upper body, as well as changing your bandages for the next few weeks," Roy said, turning around to see the kid having paled considerably, his eyes wide in horror.

"No."

"Edward, there aren't any other options available. And like I said, it's only your upper body."

The boy just stared at him in increasing horror, before glaring instead. "So that's why you're being so chummy all of a sudden? You just need to keep me from yelling at you in the bathroom or glaring at you in the corridors at Rosebuds?"

Roy sighed heavily yet again, beginning to feel a little irked as he walked over and sat down at the foot of the kid's bed. His actions instantly earned him a scowl and Edward immediately pulled his knees to him, back to lying on his left side. "You know, Edward, I joined up because I wished to protect the people of Amestris, and still do. Alchemists work for the people, and that's what drew me to learn how to perform it in the first place."

The boy frowned at that, though he looked faintly surprised. Faintly surprised, and his eyelids were beginning to droop, most likely due to the painkillers taking effect, as well as his overall exhaustion and the strain that this had all in all had on his nervous system.

And then Roy noticed something else.

Fear.

There was a large amount of fear in the kid's eyes. Fear and embarrassment and loneliness.

And Roy had a strong feeling that there were some abandonment issues added into the mix.

"You know that nobody's thinking that you're weak for your reaction to what happened in the forest, right?" Roy asked, his voice a lot softer than what he had ever presented the kid with before.

Edward looked away, before mumbling grumpily at him. "I don't need to have this conversation," he told Roy, trying to get into a more comfortable position. "Like I told you, I'm not some weak and stupid child, and so I really don't need you to treat me like I'm some snotty brat."

Roy just sighed once more. "Hughes told me that one of his colleagues threw up as they removed the plating and that they were surprised that you hadn't thrown up yourself from the agony."

"Just shut up and get some sleep and then we can talk. I'm not having this conversation when you've been brainwashed by Hughes and are sleep-deprived," the boy mumbled even less intelligibly than before.

Then his breathing evened out and Roy sighed and stood up to unlock the door.

There were definitely a lot of issues that they needed to address, but reaching through that protective barrier of teenage pride and his state of viewing Roy as his enemy would make that an almost impossible task.

This was going to be even harder than he had thought.

And it seemed that they had a long conversation ahead of them for when Dylan would be leaving the room to have a shower in a few hours.

"Hey, Aurora, why are you looking so worried?" Meghan asked as she walked inside the classroom, pushing her pink hair behind her ear.

"It's only two minutes before lessons start, and Dylan's not here!" came the upset answer almost immediately, her two best friends seeming equally upset.

And the answer was of course that their worry mostly stemmed from how Dylan wasn't there like he usually would have been about twenty minutes before now, and neither was Freddie Hadleigh.

Basically, Aurora, Bella and Diane were fearing that Dylan was snogging Freddie somewhere and was so caught up in his new girlfriend that he would even lose track of time to the point that he'd be late for school.

Megan thought it was honestly pitiful. And that it was nice for both parties involved if they were happy with snogging. Freddie was obviously lonely, and having Dylan as a boyfriend would certainly help her get more at ease with being at school all of a sudden.

And she was damned well nicer than Aurora and her giggly gang.

"DYLAN'S IN THE HOSPITAL!" came a terrified voice behind them, and they turned around to see Wendy standing there. She was the one who was even worse with her crush on their classmate than Aurora. Wendy was short, thin, wore pretty dresses wherever she went, and had been trying to get some help with her homework from Dylan after school more times than Meg could count.

Though her news definitely sparked some interest, and it made her stomach clench. Because he had been Freddie's escort yesterday, and she and her mother were amongst the type of people that the killer had targeted before. "What about Freddie?!"

Wendy was near tears. "I saw them tonight from my window! They were being put inside an ambulance, and they were both covered in blood! And they'd removed Hadleigh's automail arm and her entire back was covered in blood and she was completely unresponsive, so I think she might be in a coma," she explained rapidly. "And Dylan looked absolutely horrible!" she then told them a lot more passionately than with Freddie. "His face was covered in blood and he was pressing something against his side and his hands were completely covered in blood!" she said in misery, obviously not using a particularly wide vocabulary in her current state.

Meg didn't even think as she walked up to her classmate and slapped her. Hard. "What the hell is wrong with you?! You think that someone who fits the serial killer's favourite type of victims and whom you believe to be in a coma, is less important than the guy that you could actually see was able to walk by himself?! What's wrong with your moral compass, you selfish brat?!"

"I'm guessing that the two of you are discussing what happened tonight?" came Mr Sopwith's voice as he walked around the corner and stood in the doorway of their classroom. Their Amestrian teacher was a short, bald man of only about 1.65 metres. He had a small, round face with a pointed chin, making his face similar to a thick droplet that was upside down, and which featured a pair of large, brown eyes at the centre above the small, pointed nose. He was in his late fifties, and wore a pinstriped dark brown three-piece suit with a deep blue shirt underneath and a white tie. That was all he ever seemed to wear, and had appeared to have done so for all of his respectable twenty-nine years of teaching at this school. There was an old school rumour that the man had some thirty-odd years ago found that suit in a clothes shop and had bought fourteen of them so as to be able to be wearing them till the day that he'd be popping his clogs at the age of seventy-seven. Meg didn't know exactly why seventy-seven, and yet she, like everyone else here, just thought he seemed like the type to die at that particular age. A 'that's just like old Reg Sopwith to do' sort of thing.

"Do you know what's going on, Mr Sopwith?" Meg asked urgently.

Their teacher looked about the room, seeing the rapt attention of everyone present, and sighed. "Well, as about eighty per cent of the class is already present, I might as well just tell you," he said, walking over to stand in front of the teacher's desk. "But I'd like you all to take your seats first."

Everyone scrambled to sit down at their desks, and had all done so within ten seconds.

And so their teacher spoke up again with another sigh, his voice a sort of dry sharp one that wasn't so because of anger or impatience, it just sounded like that. "Well, the teachers were all informed earlier this morning about the way that the young Mr Eastaughffe and Miss Hadleigh were attacked tonight by the serial killer. From what we were told, they were both assaulted with a dagger, where Mr Eastaughffe received a cut to his forehead and to his left side, and lost some amount of blood, though not to a life-threatening extent. The young Miss Hadleigh appeared to have been the main target, and had the dagger then shoved up underneath the automail plating on her back, and it was shoved all the way up to the automail port and has put considerable strain on her nerves."

"Oh, God..." Harriet said in horror, having paled completely three desks to Meg's right, the girl instinctively clutching her hands around her automail ports.

For once, Mr Sopwith allowed a student to speak without permission, making it clear just how bad it must be. It made a chill run down Meg's spine, especially as he just gave Harriet a small nod of recognition and almost approval. "Miss Hadleigh is currently being subjected to a lot of pain and will be so for a while, so I believe it to be much more fitting that today's lessons before lunch are to instead be dedicated to each of you making a card each with words of encouragement that we will then staple together to a form of get-well-soon booklet. And so you will be making two, one for Miss Hadleigh and one for Mr Eastaughffe, though I wish to stress that you put extra thought into the one for your new classmate, she has just received one of the cruellest welcomes to our town that she could receive, and must be very worried after having been targeted in such a way."

Everyone were exchanging nervous glances of fear and alarm, and Meg's stomach was subject to a horrible lump of disgust and concern.

"And so I would like a couple of you to volunteer for delivering them to Miss Hadleigh and Mr Eastaughffe during lunch break as the military base is only ten minutes away from here."

Meghan shot her arm into the air at the same time as Aurora and her friends, as well as Wendy, the three perverts, and basically everyone except those that had after-school activities to go to.

Meaning a lot of volunteers.

There was a small streak of softness and a hint of pride in Mr Sopwith's features at that. "I guess this means drawing lots."

Ed woke up with a yelp at a sharp stab of lightning from his shoulder as he moved over on his back in his sleep, and he sat bolt upright in his bed within seconds.

...Being met by a very concerned-looking boss in the visitor chair next to his bed, holding his hands around Ed's waist to keep him from hurting himself further. The man had obviously only just woken up from his uncomfortable position in his chair, and yet he had instinctively reached out to immediately have steadied Ed. "Just take it easy, Edward, you're still not well."

Ed was confused, awkward, and batted Mustang's nearest hand away. The feeling of those warm palms was just wrong. Everything was wrong and Ed had embarrassed himself. And the Colonel was practising that 'you're a child in my care'-crap. He had now mentally dubbed Ed as a 'child', rather than 'subordinate', because Lieutenant Colonel Hughes had obviously reminded Mustang about it because the former was a father. But Hughes was nice by nature.

The Colonel didn't really want to do this and had needed a damned order by the Führer himself to actually be willing to act like he cared about Ed.

After all, the guy had made it pretty clear after Ed's practical exam when he had got his licence that he was only seeing Ed as a tool for his promotions.

They had basically been locked in a stalemate ever since that day, considering how Ed had pointed out how the Colonel had been the only officer who hadn't seemed alarmed as Ed had charged at the Führer, and Mustang had in turn threatened to snitch on Ed if he were to say anything about the guy's lack of loyalty to Führer Bradley.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Colonel?! It's bad enough with the crap you're doing as Rita! Now stop treating me like I'm some stupid child, dammit!" Ed seriously just wanted to slap him.

"I'm not thinking that you're stupid," Mustang said calmly, before he sighed heavily. "And, like I said, you're off duty right now, and so am I, so please call me Roy."

Ed just stared at him in horrified awkwardness. "You're actually trying to bond with me?!"

The Colonel sighed again. "Yes, I am, because it's not that I'm just doing this to get practise for the mission, that's not the most important reason at all, actually..." He frowned like he was trying to make up his mind about something. "You're aware that I was worried before we left Hughes's house, right? I was worried about bringing you on an undercover mission, and pretending to be your mother is one of the most cruel things I could have done to you, and I'm feeling pretty lonely."

An odd sort of uncomfortable feeling of semi-pity-but-not-really-so shut-the-hell-up came over Ed at his words.

And then anger. "You're just lonely because you can't go on dates, so now you're going with the best option available!"

Yet another heavy sigh escaped the man's lips, still holding his hands on Ed's waist, though this time he seemed to be doing so in order to have Ed's full attention as he locked his eyes on Edward's. Then he lowered his voice and leant forwards slightly to be closer to Ed's left ear as he instead placed his right hand on Ed's left bicep. "All right, I want you to promise not to repeat to anyone what I am about to tell you: because a lot of my dates are actually informants from that hostess bar I told you that I like to frequent... Which is owned by my only living relative who is an excellent intelligence operative, so I grew up in a hostess bar which is where I learnt my charms and am using it to casually work my way up the chain without raising as much suspicion, also because it makes me look like an obnoxious fop who steals everyone's girlfriends... I won't deny that I'm technically also being the latter, though."

Ed froze, staring as Mustang leant back and removed his hand from his waist, though the one on his bicep still remained.

The Colonel didn't look like he was actually lying either.

"...What the hell?" Ed asked weakly, just staring at the man's unusually solemn expression.

Mustang raised his left eyebrow at him slightly. "You know, it makes it very easy to have people underestimate my intellect," he smiled just slightly. But not like a smug smirk. Like he was joking slightly. Joking encouragingly.

Ed was trying to let the information sink in, something which was very hard to do.

Very, very hard to do.

Then came a sharp lightning-like stab from his port and he let out a loud gasp of pain as he instinctively threw himself forwards. It was like someone had just ripped off his entire arm again and he couldn't even think beyond making his best effort at not crying from the agony. Ed clenched his hand around the duvet that was covering his legs, and just panted with anguish. Having barely any adrenaline and no little brother to stay strong for as well as a lot less blood loss and blind panic than when he had first lost his arm made it suddenly a lot easier to clearly notice just everything from the little pinpricks to the overwhelming stabbing and throbbing. And the desperation that followed the knowledge that it wasn't even real.

He instantly had the Colonel's right hand on his back and his left holding Ed's upper arm. "Edward, what's going on?!"

"Just leave me alone, dammit!" Ed panted through clenched teeth. Tears were pressing in his eyes and he just wanted Mustang to stop being so creepy and friendly-like.

Instead the hand on his back began stroking up and down it with a sort of urgent attempt at comforting him. "Pain level on a scale from one to ten?"

Ed gasped again at another sharp stab, desperation reaching him at the loneliness of the situation. The loneliness at the situation and at the way that the Colonel's attempts at comforting him were feeling much more like he was taunting him, considering what had happened when he had lost his arm. He wanted an escape. Needed an escape. Because the pain was only escalating and he didn't want to break down into tears in front of his boss. But fact was that it was nearly impossible because his port was adding losing his arm on top of the automail surgery. "Ten, dammit! Ten!" he blurted. He needed help.

He needed the pain to stop.

He needed his brother.

He needed something else than the memories of what they had made during the transmutation and of lying on the forest floor, trapped by his own agony.

He barely registered the hands disappearing, only for Mustang to grab his left hand fifteen seconds later and Ed instinctively clenched his fingers around it to have something to grip, dizzy with the agony. He was hyperventilating through his clenched teeth and unable to stop the tears, and he squeezed his eyes shut, feeling a faint, cold stinging on the top of his hand.

Then his pain began to fade as he suddenly began feeling tired, and he found himself with the Colonel carefully turning him over on his left side, his right hand under his left armpit and the other on his waist. "I've given you a sedative, the doctor gave me an emergency one in case something like this should happen, so you might be waking up with electrodes on your chest in a few hours..." the man said quietly as he gently let go of his armpit and instead placed his hand on the top of Ed's head. Ed's vision was blurry with tears, and he found himself breathing shakily as everything turned dark.

Meghan was extremely pleased with herself for having been allowed to join her two classmates that had been the winners of the lot-drawing, simply because of one tiny detail:

Her uncle worked at the local military base and he was available to escort them. Asking him for help without letting the one from 8B that was actually related to him join them would have been a bit weird, and so here she was, walking alongside the concrete wall together with Jo and Calvin. Jo had instantly volunteered because of her hate for just sitting still and worrying, and so the sandy-haired, thin girl with the long, thin face was striding forwards determinedly. And the brown-haired, chubby, little Calvin looked terrified. But he was also determined because he was angry with the killer, and yet terrified of soldiers not liking him because of how his big brother had been dishonourably discharged after he had drunk himself stupid ten years ago and had given his CO the finger and had called him a 'shellfish bashtard'.

Meg was very happy with them, they were some of the nicest people in class and weren't doing this to flirt so they weren't mocking their injured classmates.

She smiled and waved as Uncle Jack came walking towards them. He was a captain and thirty-one years old and was bald with thick, brown eyebrows and had a lot of stubble. He had bright blue eyes and he was almost two metres tall, and Meg thought he was awesome. He had carried her on his back and shoulders more times than she could count as she had grown up, and they had used to play that he had kidnapped her when they had been playing in the garden with her three brothers. She had thereby spent a lot of time having been laughing her head off as she had been carried under his arm. That had been her favourite game as she had grown up. Plus, he had always been available for a stick sword fight in the garden even now that she was fourteen.

He was awesome, basically.

And she would never truly understand how he was related to the severely dull accountant that her father was, and who had always had very little spare time. Uncle Jack had thereby sort of filled in where his big brother had been lacking in the fatherly department and he had always felt and acted a lot more like a dad to her and her brothers than their own had ever done.

And so she ran at her uncle and hugged him around the waist, the booklets safely stored inside her satchel. "Do you know how they're doing, Uncle Jack?"

"Not much, it's not really my department, but they told me to let you know that Freddie's been sedated because the nerves in her arm was running haywire, so Dylan's the only one that's conscious." He sounded sad and horrified and hugged her tighter to him.

She hugged him back just as hard.

And so they arrived at the infirmary ten minutes later, and the first thing that met them was a woman with black hair who was sitting by Freddie's bed, who instantly turned her head around to look at their quarry. She seemed stressed and scared and confused, meaning that the doctors had obviously thought that it would be a nice thing to surprise them with their visit to cheer them up.

Dylan looked partially happy, partially heartbroken, and had a bandage wrapped around his forehead. He sat up immediately upon seeing them, and the result of his actions was that he winced and clutched his side.

It was an odd thing for Meg to watch. To see that those around her were in pain like that. And even though she was seeing their expressions and the heart monitor beeping next to Freddie's bed, it still didn't really feel real to her.

"What are you three doing here?" Dylan asked, obviously confused.

Meg drew out the two booklets from her bag. "The class made these for you, it's a card from each of us." She then walked over to the black-haired woman and held out the booklet with the bright red front page with white letters in neat cursive 'Freddie'. Meg gave Mrs Hadleigh a sad smile. "It's a bit of a bad timing, but it's still very nice to meet you, Mrs Hadleigh, I'm Meghan Hudson," she said gently as the stranger took the booklet from her and placed it in her lap and then took Meg's right hand in hers.

Mrs Hadleigh seemed lost. Lost and scared. But she still mustered up a small smile. "Thank you, Meghan, this was a very kind thing of all of you to do, I'm sure Freddie's going to appreciate it."

It was twenty minutes and a couple of hugs from Uncle Jack later as they made their way back towards the school that Meg spoke up. "I've forgotten one of my textbooks at home and my house is five minutes away from here, I'll be back before lunch break is over in thirty minutes!" she told them and ran before they had time to even say something in return.

Meg had a plan.

Because, judging from the pattern so far, Rita and Freddie Hadleigh would be dying tomorrow. The first murder had happened two months previously, the second two weeks previously, and now Freddie had been lucky to have made it out alive, and so, if the killer was following the same pattern, then the next one would logically be two days from the most recent attack. And, considering how strong and hard to beat Freddie Hadleigh had proved herself to be, they had decided to have taken away her strongest weapon, namely her arm, and so now they could be sure that she'd be together with her mother and defenceless, so they would be easier to kill.

And it didn't matter that they were at the military base if Meg was right about this. After all, nobody had seen or heard anything before the five other had disappeared. No forced entry, no screams, nothing.

Which obviously meant that the killer could have supernatural powers and could break in anywhere, including the military base. Because someone had either caught the Curse, or this was Warren Barclay's work. Ghosts could get in everywhere and nobody would even know. It was the most logical explanation for it when the police and the military hadn't found anything for two months now.

And so it was a necessity to pursue the explanation that the military and the police hadn't done yet.

Which was why Meg hadn't told her classmates about it in case they would have insisted on joining her. After all, she would never forgive herself if the Curse was real and they died because of her. And she had read up on everything supernatural and she'd just bring everything that was used to fight evil with. She'd bring silver knives from the cutlery they used for nice parties and she'd take one of the spray bottles and fill it with flammable liquid and bring her lighter, and fill another spray bottle with salt water and she should probably bring garlic just in case and a sharpened stick too.

Because she was going to kill the ghost before the ghost could kill anyone else.

And so she ran. She ran home and got everything that she needed and then made her way to the back of the house and found the crumbled piece of concrete in the old wall surrounding the building. She doubted that even the current owner knew about the small hole in the wall that had been covered by shrubs so that it had grown larger unnoticed as the concrete had crumbled slightly. And Meg was just about thin enough to squeeze through.

She pulled away the plants, brushed a spider off her shoulder and gave it the finger, and then pushed her bag through first and then gingerly wriggled her way through the hole herself. She got a small cut on her right cheek for her efforts, but that could hardly be helped.

Although she suddenly had this mental picture of a sort of ominous black smoke seeping into her open skin, letting the Curse take root and addle her brain into a homicidal frenzy or a drop off a cliff.

Which was even more of a reason to kill the source of the Curse. If it was real, then she'd kill it, if it wasn't, then she'd be fine.

Win-win either way.

And so she got to her feet and found her electric torch, and her knife and flammable liquid spray bottle were on her tool belt together with her lighter silver knife, and short, sharpened stick, the sharp end facing down in its leather pocket, just like with the knife, and in her free hand was her salt water spray bottle. She'd read something about how salt repels ghosts and her electric torch was mighty fine for blinding whatever bastards there were.

She found herself scared as she looked up at the large three-storey house where it loomed above her. It was in dire need of some renovations, the light blue paint long past peeling...

She had never before been so frightened.

...Save when she had walked inside the infirmary and had seen the two black-haired women, and had realised that they would possibly be there, and then just...

...Not.

Because there was somebody who wanted them dead.

And nobody would have been taking her seriously if she had told the military that their killer had been Old Man Barmy.

She suddenly felt like kicking the house for possibly having killed five people and the way that it was still torturing an innocent girl.

And so she didn't think as she made her way over the gravel surrounding the house and found the back door to have been partially broken off its hinges through the storms and general wear and tear without any care for the past fifteen years. She sneaked her way through the opening and turned her torch on.

The house was creepy, all right. There was mould and a few old wasp nests in the ceiling and it was stuffy and dusty and not a place for her asthmatic little brother.

Not at all, actually.

The walls were covered in peeling light green wallpaper that showed old planks underneath, there was an old painting hanging on the wall depicting a cat in a rocking chair.

It was all just really, really creepy. With shelves on the walls and paintings of technically cute animals that were painted so that they looked cold and deadly.

She was beginning to regret this. She shouldn't be here.

She really shouldn't.

But the mental pictures of Rita and Winnifred Hadleigh were popping up in her mind like a pep talk. And Meg had been to the two funerals. Had put flowers in the forest by the trees where the other five victims had been found.

She had shed tears over those that had died, even though she hadn't ever known them.

And so she kept walking, the creaking floor giving her goosebumps as she continuously whipped around with her torch in all directions, nervousness making her jumpier than she'd thought had been humanly possible before now.

As Meg found herself in front of the staircase where Neil Barclay had fallen and had hit his head so that he had lost his sight, she paused, wondering where to go next. Logically, Old Man Barmy should be prone to haunting in the bedrooms of his family and in the bathroom where he'd killed himself, but she didn't know where to find those places.

She turned her torch to her right, and spotted something shimmering in what appeared to be the living room. It looked like a dollhouse.

She had a very strong feeling that she had found her spot.

And that she still wanted to run.

And yet she didn't, her horror story-loving self screaming at her to run. But common sense was common sense, and technically, ghosts didn't exist and Ava Barclay had lived here for an entire year without anything having happened to her, and the guy before that for twenty-eight years. It made little sense for this to prove itself fatal for Meg within ten minutes.

She walked forwards, her stomach clenching harder and harder as she neared the little dollhouse that had been given its own little table. She found herself to be switching to holding her lighter because it felt safer for some reason as she carefully avoided a piece of mouldy floorboards. Just so that she could put something on fire for attacking her.

She leant forwards to inspect the dollhouse, finding it to have been carefully crafted, with walls and beds and everything having been neatly painted by hand.

Recently neatly painted by hand.

Her stomach felt like it had dropped several feet below where it belonged, especially as she recognised that the entire thing appeared to have been made from human bones, the legs of the beds from teeth, the little bath upstairs from a cheekbone.

"For God's sake, run, girl!" came the sudden and terrified hiss of an old voice as the floor creaked from the doorway to her left.

Meg screamed, instinctively and unwisely enough, and yet she followed the old man's orders, only for the floor to give out after just four steps as she forgot about the mouldy floorboards until it was too late.

She crashed down to the stone floor of the basement, winding her as she landed on her bum, and she found the room to be lit by a series kerosene lamps and was a lot warmer and cosier than the upstairs rooms.

Except for the multitudes of stuffed animals whose maker had had various amounts of success with as they had perfected their taxidermy skills. There were foxes and weasels and stoats and an otter and a beaver and a series of mice and rats and a pair of cats and a dog and about twenty-five birds.

She was in a storage area.

She was in the homicidal psychopath's storage building.

Meg stared where she sat, frozen by terror.

And also at the shadow from the person that was standing right behind her.

"Do you like them?" came a quiet whisper, the sound so low that she couldn't even tell if she recognised the voice.

She dared only nod slightly, having a bad feeling that any sudden movements or sounds to express her discontent would cause her a premature death. She had a knife and a small, sharp stick, yes, but it was at a bad angle and she wasn't going to reach it in time for the stranger not to stop her.

Which was when realised that she wasn't going to ever leave here alive.

I'm sorry... I'm sorry, everyone...so sorry... so sorry... so sorry...

It became a mental mantra as her obvious captor knelt down behind her and placed a hand on her right shoulder. "Lovey doesn't like intruders, though..."

She froze, her breath quickening as tears began building in her eyes.

"But don't worry, Lovey will make you into a special doll too," came the quiet whisper as a scalpel was slashed deeply across her throat.

Maes froze at the sudden smoke that he spotted from his window.

Black smoke.

He went closer to window, and froze.

Then spun on his heels and ran to the little home office from where he was back from the military base to keep guard, seeing Sergeant Brosh's alarmed face. He was the only one here whom they couldn't let leave here inconspicuously as he had helped the Hadleighs at Rosebuds the day before. "What's wrong, sir?"

Maes pulled on his uniform jacket. "There's a house on fire, and I think it's the same one that we're being told is haunted! Phone the military base right now!"

"Yes, sir!" came the reply, though Maes was already running out the door and into the street outside.

Then he headed for the house as fast as he could, cursing inwardly, already sweating after only about a hundred and fifty metres because of the warm weather and the wool of his uniform.

When he reached the building, he could already hear sirens, though he couldn't do much but curse as he stood there in front of the heavy wrought-iron gates of 'Old Man Barmy's place'. Others had already arrived up there, a few helpful and hopeful neighbours had run out of their homes with buckets full of water.

And the paranoid owner of the house had had the gates wielded shut so that nobody had been able to have opened them through cutting through some chains.

And so Maes could only do the most useful thing possible right now.

To start taking pictures for the Flame Alchemist to look at to hear if he had any ideas or points to add once Maes went back to the infirmary.

And the house was catching fire quickly, the building rotted and lacking anything that could keep it from burning to cinders.

And so Maes took photos, and a couple of minutes later, the fire trucks started arriving and so were the military cars and a group of schoolchildren who were all looking both pale from horror and fear and also red from sprinting. "Meghan didn't come back to school!" three of them shouted at the same time.

The name rung a bell.

It had been one of the three kids that had visited Freddie and Dylan an hour ago.

"MEGHAN!" came the panicked yell of one of the soldiers, the tallest one there, so he was easy to spot. "MEGHAN!"

Easy to spot, and obviously the soldier that was Meghan Hudson's uncle.

Maes could understand the man's terror all too well, his stomach lurching violently.

Because the fire had spread quickly enough for the girl to most likely already be dead if she had been inside when it had started.

Either that, or she was a pyromaniac.

The desperate soldier spotted Maes and ran at him. "Sir! If she's... If she's gone after the ghost... She believes... She might have started it to kill it by burning down the house..." There were tears of terror building in his eyes. "...Please, sir, we need to start a search... Please... I need to know... She's fearless about things like this... Fearless and loyal and she's... She was probably inspired by visiting the infirmary... Please... I need to know where she is... Please, sir."

Roy looked up as Hughes came inside the infirmary and instantly locked the door, the man's expression grim. Grim and frustrated. Edward was still out of it, his breathing even. The boy had scared him a lot today. A ten on Edward Elric's pain scale wasn't something that one should take lightly.

At all.

Because it was most likely somewhere between a twelve and a fifteen to everyone else.

But what had happened could be pointing towards there having been a psychological component when it came to having triggered it. Stress could for instance trigger migraines, and that too went straight to one's nervous system.

Either way, Roy was going to burn those bastards for what they had done to his subordinate. It had been odd as he had read through the booklet. This entire morning had been odd, really. Especially as he had ended up speaking with Dylan for a few hours. And it had become clear to him that the boy was trustworthy. Trustworthy and terrified. And so Roy had given the kid some alchemy lessons, having told him that he'd been dabbling in it a bit himself, which had been why they had sent him with the Fullmetal Alchemist.

Hughes walked over and leant down to whisper into Roy's ear. "Do you mind if we tell Dylan who you really are? We could really use the Flame Alchemist's expertise because I've taken a tonne of pictures of the way that Meghan Hudson appears to have set the Barclay house on fire in order to kill the ghost... And she's gone missing after that because she never returned to school after lunch; she had just told her classmates that she'd run to her house to grab one of her textbooks which she'd forgotten... We think that either she set the house on fire, or the killers did as a diversion tactic, but I can't show you and discuss the pictures without making Dylan curious and confused, and I can't exactly just ask for a private office to show a civilian waitress classified pictures of an arson attack either. This is the least conspicuous room right now, but there's a teenage civilian four metres away from us."

Roy felt his stomach clench violently. He'd only just met the girl about three hours ago, and now she might have burnt to death in order to have protected her classmate and Roy himself.

"The house was rotted through after fifteen years of abandonment and it's been burnt to the ground extremely quickly because of that... They haven't told you anything before now because of how you've been subjected to enough stress as it is, so my official story for being here is that you should know so that you can figure out what to tell Freddie when she wakes up in about thirty minutes," Hughes muttered under his breath. "I've got the folder with the pictures inside my jacket."

Roy sighed and nodded, before turning towards the boy in the other bed, seeing Dylan's confused and scared look. "Dylan, there's been a recent turn of events and somebody has burnt down the Barclay house. Which means that you're not going to look over here as I go through the crime scene photos and share my expertise with him as the Flame Alchemist."

The boy's eyes went wide in somewhere between awe, terror, horror and nervousness. "Y-yes, sir, I'll keep my eyes to myself... They're certainly taking this seriously..."

Roy just nodded as Hughes pulled out the folder and then went over and grabbed one of the visitor chairs over by the other boy's bed while Dylan picked up the alchemy guide that Ed had made him as his birthday present.

"Thank you, Dylan," Hughes said with a solemn kindness.

"Of course, you really shouldn't be thanking me for this at all."

Roy couldn't help that slight twinge of suspiciousness that came with the knowledge of how Dylan had provided them with information on the Barclay house less than twenty-four hours before it had apparently been burnt down for the fake ghost. Though said ghost had also not been Dylan's work and he hadn't been the first to have brought it up either. Roy himself had been sitting in the bar with plenty of people who had been more than happy to have warned him about Old Man Barmy and to stay away from the place. Some of the locals had taken the legend more seriously than others, and they had talked about 'the Curse' as something with a capital letter, even.

But it had been private property that had been about a twenty-five minutes' walk away from the forest and it would have been extremely hard to have brought any sort of bodies in or out of it, especially because of the walls that had surrounded the building.

"There's a gravel sports field behind the house that was been made more aesthetically pleasing by having a large group of trees planted along the edges when it was made sixteen years ago, though barely anyone's used it after the deaths of Neil and Ava Barclay," Hughes explained as he sat down, before pulling out a photograph from the back of the folder and lowering his voice. "...And we found a small hole in the wall that was just big enough for a kid to squeeze themselves through it, but not a pair of grownups by the size that Ed and Dylan's recounts would fit with, so evidence seems to suggest that she could have gone in through there..." He seemed scared.

Roy didn't blame him, he was so too. Meghan was only fourteen and could have seriously misjudged the flammability and have got herself trapped inside the building.

Or she had climbed in, had set the house on fire from outside, and had then squeezed her way back out through the hole in the wall and had run off to have hidden herself somewhere in order to have found out how to now be able to avoid trouble.

She seemed like the type to not think things through before acting on whatever ideas that seemed good at that moment and then not soon after.

Which was probably why she had taken to Freddie Hadleigh so quickly, though Meghan Hudson was of the type that wore her heart on her sleeve. Easily moved, stubborn to a fault, and not someone who would be particularly good at chess. Nor have the patience to get good at it.

Meaning that she may have found herself having been put in checkmate.

Question was to what extent.

And just how much Edward Elric would blame himself when they found out.

Roy began studying the pictures as much as he could, willing them to tell him where to find Meghan Hudson, thinking back to the stories he'd heard at the bar, and especially the words of a an old home teacher of a few of the kids who had died.

'It was gruesome, that... Found them myself... Was twenty-three at the time and Mr Barclay was a really nice man... Still can't get myself to believe that he'd do such a thing... I'd have dinner with'em three times a week once we were done with the homework and he even taught me how to play poker. He was good at telling jokes, too. I became something of a ninth kid to him, told me I didn't even have to knock when I came by. "Make yourself at home, sonny, and then we can have ourselves a spot of brandy when the kids are off to bed and Karen's knitting new scarves for the kids at the orphanage, what do you say?" he'd say. And then one Saturday I came by like I'd always done, and I could tell that there was something wrong straight away... Too quiet. I'd usually have Ursula run at me and hug my legs, she was only five, sweet beyond belief, always loved to hum... "Uncle Ian!" she'd shout happily... But not that day. In fact, the only light that was on was the one in the hallway.

'"Hello?" I said. "Are there anyone here?" But no answer. So I started searching through the house and then I saw the blood spots on the floor that went between the bedrooms. Big drops of it... I remember it clear as day, you know... Used my foot to carefully push the door to Ursula's bedroom open as it was the nearest... I'll never forget it... She seemed so peaceful, but her head had been smashed through... I went through to the other bedrooms, same story with each of them, save the bathroom... Mr Barclay was just lying there in there underneath the water, the knife sticking straight up from his stomach, the water completely red... Had nightmares for weeks afterwards, but I've always found a bit of comfort in the fact that the kids never even knew what had happened, so they actually died peacefully in their sleep...

'Once the building had been cleaned up and the deaths had been blamed on Mr Barclay having snapped, killed his family, and had then killed himself because of the guilt that came with the realisation of what he'd done, the property was inherited by Mr Barclay's older brother... And let me tell you, that man was one mean bastard if there ever was one. First thing he did when I tried to talk to him about it all because I could have used someone to speak with about them, Jeremy just told me to sod off and not to expect any pity from him... He completely misunderstood my intentions, and he was obviously angry at finding out that the only thing he'd inherited had been the house and the money had all gone to charity... He'd had gambling problems and had just lost his old house during a divorce... And so Jeremy moved into the house and lived there for twenty-eight years, he remarried, though, and lived there with his reasonably rich wife until she left him for her old flame from school, she was fifty-three at the time, and he died peacefully in his sleep a few months later at the age of seventy-nine, leaving the house to his only family, namely his son... If you ask me, Jeremy's the one who killed them because he was envious of how well his little brother had done for himself with his happy and loving family...'

Roy had found it an interesting theory, though very inconsequential, considering how the man was still long since dead. Plus, his words had hinted towards Warren Barclay's alcoholism that Dylan had told them about. It would therefore appear that the man had hidden it well, even from his 'ninth kid'. Hughes had searched through the records, and had found that the old school flame of Mrs Barclay had been from Aerugo, which had been where they had moved and had obviously had no clue about her ex-husband's passing or similar once they had got into contact with her following Neil Barclay's death.

Basically, Dylan had got it right, it was complicated and tragic.

And had resulted in a stupid legend that had possibly now resulted in a fourteen-year-old girl having burnt to death.

Ed was confused when he woke up to find himself lying in a hospital bed with a heart monitor beeping next to him. He suddenly had a hand on his cheek and he looked up to see the black-haired woman that really didn't like much sitting on a chair in front of him. "Hi, there, how are you doing, Freddie?" Rita asked gently.

Ed slowly began putting two and two together. Especially at the way that his shoulder port was aching dully. Aching dully, but not full of stabbing lightnings of agony. "How much have you pumped me full with this time?" he asked sluggishly, vaguely remembering breaking down into tears as his port had been going haywire. They must obviously have given him some very strong painkillers, so he had a feeling that he'd be falling asleep soon enough, especially at the heaviness of his eyelids.

At that, the Colonel turned around to look over his shoulder and nodded at a blonde doctor who nodded back at Mustang and then left the room. A sense of dread hit Ed, especially as he realised that this wasn't his room at the infirmary, and he found himself with the Colonel holding one hand on Ed's arm and the other on his right side, keeping him still. "We haven't amputated anything or removed your port, so just lie still... I spoke with both Alphonse and the Rockbells, and they believed that it was the best solution after what happened earlier today, it was even Pinako Rockbell's suggestion in the first place. So what's happened is that we've had the best team of neurosurgeons in the country come here from Central City with gag orders from the Führer himself, so they've meticulously given you intentional temporary nerve damage to the main nerves connected to your port so that you're mostly just going to have odd, faintly tingly numbness to the entire area instead for the next two months or so."

Ed paused, frowning, before horrified realisation hit him. His stomach clenched violently. "How long before I can use my automail?! It's controlled by me controlling my nerve impulses, but if I can't feel them for the next two months or so...?!" he demanded sharply.

The Colonel sighed. "The Rockbells believe it will take about six months before you're back to complete function per your standards, though you'll get your arm back once the wounds are healed, so you'll be able to put your palms together to transmute without the pain that there would otherwise have be-"

Ed cut him off, drawing parallels between now and after the automail surgery. "How much time where I should be looking after my brother will be spent on physiotherapy to get my arm working properly?!"

"It depends highly on your recovery," Mustang said with a heavy sigh. "You're not at risk of losing your licence, and, as this will most likely interfere with your amount of available time for the next few months, Führer Bradley is allowing for you to be exempt from your yearly assessment... The State is paying for all of the medical expenses, and this way, you'll also get to go back to Rosebuds as early as tomorrow if we seem to be having good pain management schedule and your wounds seem all right. We're going to be brought back to the infirmary in an ambulance in a few hours. It's currently just past eight a.m."

Ed paused. "So you just decided to keep me drugged for the entire day without my permission?!"

"You know how neurological conditions are worsened by stress?"

"So this was all for the mission?!" Ed exclaimed with a glare.

The Colonel's look grew stern, but seemed just a bit haunted. "No, this was because you began yelling from agony in your sleep because of a nightmare and because you want to save lives."

Ed felt terror grip his chest at the way that the Colonel looked. "There's more, isn't there?"

"Three of your classmates came by the infirmary at lunch today to give you and Dylan get-well-soon cards from everyone from 8B; more specifically Jo Loening, Calvin Dayton and Meghan Hudson." He sighed heavily. "Which means that I believe that I made the right decision, considering how Meghan told her classmates that she'd forgotten one of her textbooks at her house which had only been five minutes away. She never came back to school and the Barclay house was set on fire a little while after she should have returned."

Ed froze, eyes widening in horror. "She actually went after the so-called 'ghost' and burnt the house down?"

There was a bit of pain in Mustang's eyes. "We're still searching for her, though Hughes phoned me thirty minutes ago to tell me that they'd found some human teeth and bones in between the remainders of the building... And so now you'll at least you'll be able to go to a funeral in a week's time, whether it is for an unidentified victim or for Meghan Hudson remains to be seen."

Ed felt like he'd been punched in the gut, horror making it a lot less easy to fall asleep from the painkillers in his system. "So you think that she set the house on fire, but accidentally got trapped inside it and burnt to death?"

"We can't tell yet, and Hughes says that there's a chance that it's someone completely different, because they also found a large assortment of animal bones and teeth in there too, so it could have been an old victim."

"Though you don't believe that..." Ed said quietly.

Mustang sighed heavily once more. "I don't know what I believe, though our best hope is that your classmate's an arsonist."

"Who might be dead because she tried to save our lives," Ed whispered before thinking about who it was that he was talking to. "And I don't wanna discuss that with you," he added firmly. He didn't know what to think or do right now. Because everything was wrong, his arm was gone for a while, he was alone with the Colonel...

...And Meg might be dead out of some stupid sense of loyalty because she hadn't known that they were actually soldiers.

The Colonel moved his arm to the top of Ed's head, and he snapped at his boss. "To hell with you, Colonel! Just leave me alone for once!"

Mustang stood up sharply and strode over to the door and locked it, before sitting back down in the visitor chair and glaring at him. "Dammit, Edward, do you think I like this?! Do you think I'm happy with this mission?! You're making me your sworn enemy whenever I'm trying to make this easier on both of us, and you're only giving me your rebellious teenage crap and jumping down my throat every damned time! I know you've got issues with this mission and with me, but you're acting like I think that this is fun! My reasons for doing this are the exact same as yours, namely to save lives! I need training, but that's because, unlike you, I don't know anything about being a parent except for what I've learnt from Hughes, because my own died when I was the same age as you when your mother died! You're being a selfish and childish brat about all of this because you assume that you're the only one who's allowed to have abandonment issues! You're telling me that you hate being on this mission with me, but I've told Hughes from the beginning that I don't like this, just like I told you this morning! That it's cruel and that I don't want my subordinate to be stuck in the mental torture chamber that this mission is! I hate doing this to you! And this mission is damned well rubbing in every mistake that I've done, just like with you, but while you see one person dying and one horrible and traumatic experience, I see thousands! And I'm stuck with the irony of how we've been tasked with going undercover to catch a serial killer, when that means that I'm masking the fact that I am one after what I did during the Ishbalan extermination campaign, all the while wondering just what the hell my dead parents would have thought of it!"

Ed froze, not really knowing what to say or do at that moment.

Though Mustang obviously wasn't done. "You're not the only one here who's in the military to right their wrongs, you know! You've figured from my act that I'm just reaching for the top in order to gain power, right? Well, Elric, let me tell you this: I want to gain the power so that I can give their holy land back to the remaining Ishbalan survivors, restore power to the Parliament and make this country a democracy! And you and I are both alchemists, and so I believe that you owe me something in return for the fact that I have technically committed semi-treason by not having reported you and your brother and have instead recruited you, meaning that if Führer Bradley finds out about what you two did and that I knew of it and never told on you, then you're not the only one who'll be spending their days locked in a cell! I have put so damned much on the line for a brat like you, and your reaction to all of this is to tell me that you're not some stupid child, when that is exactly what you're proving yourself to be!"

Ed just stared at him, not knowing how he was supposed to react.

At all.

Which was why it sucked that tears were pressing in his eyes with everything else that was going on. "I'm sorry..." he said quietly, looking down.

The Colonel took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, before his voice became significantly softer. "Please don't repeat to anyone what I just told you, not even Alphonse..." Then came a small smile. "Can't let people know the dirtiest little secret of the entire military..."

A tiny, tiny snort escaped Ed. "Yeah, can't let people know that the egomaniacal, bastardly, womanising Flame Alchemist is an altruist."

Mustang chuckled slightly at his words. "Thanks, kid..."

"So, 'Roy', was it?"

"Does this mean that we've got ourselves a truce?"

"It means that both of us are worried and guilty and partners in crime and that I'm high and you're sleep-deprived." Ed snuggled up into his pillows, his eyelids practically aching with tiredness from whatever they'd put in his system to make him forget about having been sliced open twice within the past twenty-four hours. "Now pat my hair while I fall asleep again, you bastard, so that I'll hopefully not have nightmares and be well-rested to catch a pair of psychopaths."

Maes was worried and the man next to him definitely was so too. Maes had ended up searching the sewers together with Captain Jack Hudson, seeing as how he appeared to be the only one who could make the man feel useful and taken completely seriously at one a.m. Ed and Roy were back in the infirmary, Ed's pain having been considerably dulled after a successful operation, thankfully.

Maes had met enough rats to last him a lifetime during these past twenty-five minutes, and as he heard the squeaking of yet another congregation of them, he could feel the same apprehension and urgency at finding out if they had gathered around the corpse of a young girl.

They were both painfully aware that they might be searching for a person whose remains they had already found hours ago.

...But Maes wasn't complaining or berating Hudson for this. Not at all.

Because he would have been the same way had it been Elicia.

The current rat group had only been centred about a dead fellow of their own kind, and the tension both grew and diminished at the fact.

And so they pointed their electric torches in front of them as they kept walking.

And then froze as they rounded a corner two minutes later.

...Because someone was sitting on the middle of the ladder below a manhole cover, their legs bent so that they were a couple of rungs below them, a stick fastened from their spine to the back of their head so that it wasn't hanging down limply.

They were wearing a children's old-fashioned, frilly, pale yellow dress, had buckled, brown shoes and their pink hair was in pigtails, their long fringe hiding her face from their angle as they walked.

"Oh, God, no... Please... No... Not Megs..." Hudson said weakly, striding forwards. "Not my little Megs... Please..." He walked in a way that was both urgent and afraid, making it clear that the man was desperate to know and terrified to see if it truly was his niece. "Please don't be my little Megs... Please don't let it be her..." he pleaded as they made their way up to the dead person that was sitting there.

Maes felt his stomach churn violently at the sight of the young girl up close as they reached the body. Her chest, waist and ankles were tied to different rungs of the ladder to give the illusion of her sitting up, her throat had obviously been slit and sewn shut posthumously. Her eyelids were gone, her chin and cheeks were cut in a ventriloquist doll-like fashion and then sewn shut as well, and she even had rosy cheeks...

...And a garlic chain over her shoulders like some sick imitation of a scarf.

And her hands had been glued to a piece of an old wooden floorboard which rested in her lap, revealing the message that had been carved into it.

Hudson turned around swiftly after just a second of looking at his niece and threw up in the water that was running alongside where they were standing. Maes was barely keeping himself from gagging when his colleague began crying as he walked back up to the girl.

Especially as he couldn't even touch her.

Only look.

...Because he too knew that they shouldn't do anything else when it could interfere with possibly finding any traces of the identity of the killer.

And so Hudson kicked the wall next to the body instead. "DAMN THEM!"

Then he just slid down the wall and held his head in his hands, his voice barely more than a thin whisper. "She even grabbed some garlic just to be sure that she'd be prepared for anything supernatural in her way..."

The man began sobbing as he looked up at the sign in her hands again.

I've learnt that I should only do

as Mummy says

So, just as another explainer: no, I'm not turning this into a horror story, which is probably explained by the supposedly haunted building being burnt to the ground so that there's nowhere to be haunted.

CallMeWaffle: Thank you so, so much, that really means a lot! I really hope you enjoyed this chapter too, even with the rather grim and horrible ending!