Notes: All right, there has been some requests for ages...and I'm sorry...honestly I'm only estimating . Oh, and I have a good idea how things'll end up, so don't worry, I'm sure the time line will be somewhat right in the end.

Child's Play

-Chapter 2-

Roy sat at his desk waiting for class to start. Resting his head on his left hand, he had to continually fight the urge to fall to sleep. His first class was English; he found it more or less useless seeing that he knew how to speak and he didn't really care which words he was using were pronouns and which were adjectives. After he yawned Roy lifted up his head and looked around the room, his eyes landed on John and Hymans who were tossing a wad of paper over a few desks to one another. He laughed to himself as John missed, the paper bounced off his hands, flew to the side and hit Cain the back of the head. The usually quiet boy only turned around and glared at John and Hymans, who only sat there pretending to be innocent.

"Idiots..." Roy whispered to himself as their teacher slid the door open and entered the room. Everyone was quick to settle down, as the man walked over to his desk and looked through some papers before moving to the front-center of the room and stood at attention.

"Roll call!" he commanded, and automatically every child stood up at attention and responded with a call of 'Sir, yes, sir!' After the man sat down, the individual students called out their names; last name, then first, then sat down. He eventually went through all of Roy's group starting with Hymans Breda, Cain Fury, John Havok, and then finally Roy Mustang himself, each of them calling back with a 'here' or 'present'.

After about 10 minutes, another man walked in and saluted their teacher. He was wearing a blue officer's uniform and automatically all the students sat up straight in their seats and gave each other uneasy looks. Their teacher stood up and saluted back and the officer went and started to whisper something in the man's ear.

"Really?" they heard their teacher say in response to the officer, "All right." and with that they both left the room, but didn't close the door. The students looked at each other again and started to mumble to each other.

"Hey Roy." he heard John whisper from his right, Roy then turned to him, but said nothing, "Do you think he's finally getting discharged for being a bad teacher?" he asked.

"...I highly doubt you can get fired for giving a test a week..." Roy said giving John an odd look.

"Havok! Mustang! None of that!" their teacher said sticking his head back into the room, both boys were always amazed at how good that man's hearing was. Roy then sighed and put his head back against his left hand, from the corner of his eye he watched John rest his head on his desk.

It took a few more minutes, but their teacher did come back into the room. Roy's eyes widened and he seemed to pale more so when he glanced behind their teacher. He sat up and sucked in his breath as his mind sent him the memories of the day before and the girl that had just moved in across the street.

"Students, I have an announcement, and as you all can very well see, we have a new addition to our class." their teacher explained, then turned to the child next to him, "Go ahead."

"Thank you sir," she said, then turned to face the class, "My name is Elizabeth Hawkeye, it is an honor to be joining you class." she said giving a slight bow. Her uniform was slightly different from the boys; it still had a light gray shirt with the military insignia, but it had a black skirt instead of pants that went just below her knees. Her hair was still pulled back in a loose pony tail and her serious brown eyes scanned the room as the murmuring began to grow louder.

"welcome Hawkeye, there's an open seat towards the back." the teacher explained pointing to the back of the room. It took both John and Roy a second, but they realized that the empty seat was actually between the two of them. When she sat down, John gave her a slight wave, but all she did was look to the front of the room and listen as the lesson began. After a bit Roy found himself becoming tired, but he knew that if he fell asleep in front of her, word was going to get back to his father very quickly.

Lunch was one of the few times during the day when all of the grades intermingled, and almost as soon as John and Roy hade made it into the cafeteria there was an arm around Roy's shoulder.

"So, I heard about your new neighbors." Maes said, "heard she's cute too."

"Stop it Maes." Roy said shoving the boy's arm away.

"She?" John said, "You didn't tell me about that!"

"I didn't tell anyone anything." Roy explained eyeing Maes suspiciously.

"What?" was all he could say in response to his friend's look, along with a sneaky smile back.

As they walked through the lunch line and made their way towards their normal table, they stopped seeing Hymans and Cain on a quick intercept course. "Guys!" they shouted and they almost fell over each other once they came to a stop.

"What?" John asked looking at them.

"It's about the new girl!" Cain said.

"New girl?" Maes asked looking at them with a sudden peak in interest.

"We saw some officers, we heard them talking." Hymans explained.

"Her father's one of the higher captains of the military!" Cain said before Hymans had a chance to. Roy then stepped out of the way, giving the other a chance to react to the news he already knew about.

"Really!" John said, "What is she was sent to spy on us!"

"That's what we think, there's no way she could be old enough to be in our class." Cain explained, Hymans nodded while standing next to him.

"Look...I highly dou--" Roy started, but was cut off when Maes pushed him to the side a little.

"Maybe the captain's testing us, seeing if we'll give into temptation." Maes said looking to the others.

"You've got to be joking..." Roy said, then moved away from the group, he could only guess what was said when he heard Maes ask them all a question.

"Yes" was the resounding answer from the others.

"See! Test of temptation!" then came the response from Maes. Trying to ignore them, Roy moved over to their table and sat down. He didn't notice the sudden silence from his friends, nor did he realize there was someone standing next to him.

"They're talking about me aren't they." she a quiet voice to Roy's right. When he turned he saw Elizabeth standing there with a tray of food in her hands.

"They're just paranoid." Roy said sitting up straight, "Of, and I don't recommend eating that." he said pointing to a piece of white meat, "It's worse than the Chicken A'la King MREs"

"Oh...thanks." she said, "Sorry to bother you." she gave a slight nod then turned to leave.

Roy gave his friends a side-long glance, and got an almost wicked grin on his face seeing that they looked to be frozen in place. "Hey Riza." he said.

"Hm?" she looked over her shoulder back to him,.

"Sit." Roy said motioning to a seat across from him. She gave a slight smile, as if she was simply happy to be accepted somewhere, and went to sit down.

"Thanks." she said, then looked up past him, "Are your friends ok?" she asked pointing to the others.

"...'ok' is an understatement..." Roy said, then turned to the others, "Look!" he put his fork into something on his own tray of food, "You can almost identify the Mystery Meat this time!" that being said, the four boys snapped out of their shock, hurried over to the table and looked at Roy's food.

Once they had settled down a bit, the other boys sat around the table and everyone began to eat. Riza still seemed a little nervous, as would anyone that had just transferred in to a new should would be.

"All right." John finally said breaking the quickly becoming awkward silence. "My name is John Havok, and on behalf of everyone here. I'd like to welcome, the lovely, Elizabeth Hawkeye to our circle." he said standing up and gesturing to the others, then to the girl. Cain and Maes smiled and clapped slightly and Hymans who was sitting next to her lightly patted her back.

"Now for the round of introductions." Maes said waving a little, "Since you already know Roy here, we can ignore him for the time being." that line drew a look from Roy, who wasn't given a chance to respond, "My name is Maes Hughes, you won't really see me around much since I'm in a higher grade than all these kids here." he explained, he seemed to take joy in pointing out the age difference.

"I'm Cain Fury, if I'm not wondering around with these guys, I'm probably reading." he said then shifted his eyes to Maes, "which is something he doesn't do very often either."

"I read, I just don't study, but there's all right for those of us who don't need to study." Maes said giving a slight smirk.

"Right...anyways, I'm John Havok, and as you saw, I'm in your English class." he said waving slightly again. Riza nodded seeming to remember his gesture from earlier.

"I'm Hymans Breda, I'm in English too." he said resting his elbow on the table next to her.

"It's nice to meet you all." Riza said smiling to them. She blinked a couple of times though as she felt someone take her left hand and pull to outwards.

"My name is Alex Louis Armstrong, and it's always a pleasure to make an acquaintance with a strong person such as yourself. If you ever need help with any project, or homework just ask me." he said, there were even a couple sparkles that seemed to come out of no where and float around his head.

"...uh...hi." Riza said giving him a very confused, and slightly disturbed look.

"Sit down Alex." Hymans said gesturing to the empty seat next to him.

"I was just going to formally introduce myself to you all." Riza said turning back to them, "My name is Elizabeth Hawkeye, but I guess you guys can call me 'Riza'. My parents and I just moved here from Lior." she explained.

"Hey I've been there once, nice place." Maes said, he then looked over at Roy from the corner of his eye, then elbowed him, "Don't you agree?"

"What? Oh! Yes! Nice place yes!" Roy said trying to quickly catch himself up to the conversation topic. There was a resounding laughter as a result. After the bell rang, they all went their separate ways to other classes.

When school got out that day, both Maes and Roy waited at the gate for Riza, they figured it would be convenient for her if they would just wait since they all lived relatively close. When they started out, Roy tried to go through his normal routine of watching the ground, but couldn't help but find himself interested in whatever conversation Riza and Maes would bring up.

"I noticed there weren't too many girls in the school..." Riza said as she walked between both boys.

"That's because of the higher classes. They move away from a lot of the academics and more towards military training." Maes explained, "I'm almost up to those levels myself, and trust me, a good part of me isn't looking forward to it."

"Oh." Riza said

"I think it'll do you some good Maes, it'll at least give you some discipline." Roy said giving him a look.

"I'm plenty disciplined. You just never see it." Maes said, "Believe me, I'm very good at what I do."

"Oh? And what would that be exactly?" Roy asked, but stopped as Maes began to pull away from him and Riza.

"I'm very good at knowing when to back off." the taller boy then winked and went towards his house. Roy only stood and watched as his mother let him in and waved to both him and Riza. The girl waved back a little, and Roy felt his face getting slightly warm as he waved back to the woman. They started walking again after she turned and shut the door.

"Who was that Maes?" his mother asked as she closed the door watching her son.

"Honestly? I think she might be one of the best things that'll ever happen to him." he said and with that he turned and walked up some stairs to his room.