Roy Mustang severely disliked mornings. In fact, he wouldn't be averse to saying he outright hated them. He stared at the steaming cup of coffee on his desk and wondered briefly if Hawkeye had brewed it. He certainly hoped that was not the case, but all the same, it was hot and it was caffinated. Taste didn't matter that much…. Right?
He was studiously ignoring the Elrics. Instead, he glanced at the small pile of reports sitting on his desk. He frowned at the reports, sifting through them idly. Edward was tense, so that meant that something had happened … usually bad. That was not something that Mustang wanted to hear first thing in the morning, but there was hardly any way of getting around it. Finally he shuffled the papers together and made a show of straightening them. He glanced up, meeting Edward's eyes.
"You're four days later than I expected," he said.
"We were delayed," Edward fired back.
"In Resembool, I suspect," Mustang said promptly.
"You'd be right," Edward ground out.
Mustang hesitated, surprised at the admission. The mess must be worst than expected, for Edward to concede a point so early. "Why the delay?"
Now Edward hesitated. "It's … kind of hard to believe," he started out slowly. Mustang raised an eyebrow, folding his hands before his face to hide his amused grin. When Edward prefaced something with "kind of hard to believe", he wouldn't be surprised if the boy spoke of uncovering a long-extinct race or finding a flying machine … the Elrics had a tendency to get their hands into unbelievable things of those caliber.
He still hesitated, which made Mustang worried. Alphonse coughed, which had to have been designed to draw their attention since he didn't technically breath. Then he rapped his chest twice, when Edward's attention still was not drawn to him. Alphonse glanced helplessly at the colonel … Edward was still trying to find a proper way to phrase it. With a sigh, Alphonse shifted and started to unhook his chest plate. "'Niisan," he said softly. "Why don't we just show Colonel Mustang?"
THAT got Edward's attention. "What?" he snapped, turning around violently in his chair to face Alphonse. He already had his chest plate off, though, and Mustang's eyebrows shot through the ceiling as a red-and-blonde blur shot out of Alphonse's chest cavity.
The blonde crouched on the floor for a second, gloved hands splayed out in front while Edward shouted "What the HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!"
Mustang watched, somewhere between amused and horrified, as Edward turned on Alphonse, shouting something about betraying him. However, his attention quickly shifted to the newcomer, who straightened and doubled over backwards, presumably working out the cricks from being stuffed inside of Alphonse's chest cavity. They were dressed almost identically to Edward, with small changes in the outfit here and there. However, as Mustang's gaze traveled up further, he realized there was at least one big difference.
She propped her hands on her hips and gave him a large grin … a grin that Mustang had seen several times before. "My name is Edana Elric," she announced. "But I'm known as the Fullmetal Alchemist."
Roy was going to need a lot more coffee.