If any of you are asking "where's the plot?" my answer is: "Wherever the beef went." Maybe sometime, eventually, I'll cook up some hamburgers. But not right now…right now I'm just trying to be stupid and humorous. Eventually I may find my beloved plot bunnies. But to be honest, I don't want the RAs to find out I was keeping pets.

Bigger Fish to Fry

The door opened and Schezska took—by the Colonel's watch—a good hundred and forty-five seconds to wrestle the mail cart inside. "Why does nobody help me with this thing?" she pleaded vainly. The others shrugged, and with a withered look the young woman began to pass out huge bundles.

There'd been some trouble recently with various things…the dead fish in the plumbing, for instance. Mustang had no idea who'd thought it would be funny, but really it had only made everybody mad because they couldn't use the bathrooms, sinks or water fountains until the system was flushed a week later. He was about ready to pull on his gloves and make the culprit slightly crispy. Or extra crispy, to their preference.

Well, his preference, anyway.

All of this trouble, though, involved paperwork. Sheaves of it. He'd only been able to tell that Schezska had arrived with the mail because he recognized the sounds of her effort to get it through the door.

Schezska balanced two bundles of papers, about a dozen folders, an entire clipboard of notes and an armful of letters on top of his already-teetering stacks. The whole ensemble invariably crashed, and the Colonel groaned and buried his face in his hands. The bookworm blushed a little, but steeled herself and gestured to it as if he was the one that had caused the collapse.

"Nothing's going to get accomplished if all you do is complain about it," Hawkeye told him sternly, peeking briefly over her own mound of chores. A sea of eyes (or eyebrows, in Falman's case) was on him now.

"Do you always have to treat me like a child?" He asked, probably a little more harshly than needed. He was having a bad day, and he wasn't particularly happy with the Lieutenant either. His face still hurt from when she'd slapped him.

She snorted softly and turned back to her work.

"Are you going to help me clean this up?" Mustang turned back to Schezska, who was fussing with the now-empty mail cart.

"Do you ever help me get this thing through the door?" she countered, and proceeded back toward said door. Yet another woman intent on resisting his every request! Mustang said something indistinct in the back of his throat and looked wearily down at his desk, which despite recent events was still not clear.

"I vote we take a break to read our fan mail," Havoc said cheerfully, waving three envelopes that were all set on a decidedly pink scheme.

The Colonel looked back down at the mess on the floor, began to sift through it for his own letters. For once, Havoc was right. Best to get those out of the way. He counted aloud as he gathered them. "Two, four, six…twelve…twenty-seven…forty-three…"

"You stopped picking up envelopes thirty seconds ago, Sir," Fury pointed out. He was neatly tearing his own apart with a sword-shaped letter opener. "And we all know it's highly unlikely they're all love letters. Considering the amount of paperwork you have."

"Well, I don't know," Mustang answered, and thought It isn't you I'm trying to make jealous. "March is my month, after all. I'm sure there are women ogling our lovely Men-of-the-Service calendars all across town—"

A paperweight flew from the general direction that contained Havoc, Breda and Hawkeye, and glanced off his already-present bruise. Taking the hint, he shut up and starting tearing apart the envelopes. After a few minutes, he shoved what remained of his paperwork off onto the floor and separated the letters into five sections—from the higher-ups, from the lower-downs, business from outside headquarters, love letters from civilians, and love letters from military women.

The latter two were strangely depleted…and as he shuffled through them he muttered, "None of these are particularly appealing, either. Two of the gals are married and admitting as much. Do they think I'm some kind of sicko with absolutely no regard for the fact that most other men could probably beat me in a fistfight?"

Hawkeye certainly had no trouble with that, and she wasn't even a man.

"What was that, Colonel?"

"Nothing, nothing…" How depressing. Sometimes being an alchemist in the military had down sides.

A few minutes passed. Much paper was shuffled. A few pens scrambled across various ink-receiving documents, replying to mailed prompts. Everyone soon became absorbed enough in themselves to want to boast.

"Hey, my sister's gonna have a baby!" Fury flashed a great big grin at the others. "She and her husband are moving back to Central and they wanted to invite the company to visit after the baby's born."

"That could be a nice little field trip," Havoc said. There was something odd about his voice.

"What's wrong with you?" Breda asked.

"Nothing," Havoc said quickly. Knowing just by her comrades voice that his words were far from the truth, Hawkeye glanced up to watch what followed.

"It's not nothing. Let me see." Before Havoc got a chance to respond, Breda snatched the offending letter out of his hand. His lips moved just slightly as he read…laboriously. Reading didn't come naturally to Breda.

"Someone wants you to go all the way back to Eastern for a date? That's a field trip. Is this addressed properly?"

"Why wouldn't someone be that much in love with me?" Havoc replied tersely, glaring at where the Colonel had just a moment ago been standing. That was odd…had he knelt back down on the floor to gether the rest of his paperwork? "Just because I have to use matches and I wasn't in the war doesn't mean I'm not perfectly lovable. I mean, at least my hair stays combed and I can go outside on a sunny day and not get a uniform tanand I can clean up after myself."

"Amen to that," Hawkeye muttered.

The area around Mustang's desk had gotten strangely quiet…but nobody else had noticed. He didn't answer her pointed little comment…and he never let her get away with her veiled insults inchallenged.

"So what did your mail say, Breda?" Fury asked. "I'd bet fifty cens the only woman that ever writes to you is your mommy."

"Cough up," Breda told him sourly. "As a matter of fact, my girl from back home sent me one today. It's right there, if you don't believe me."

Hawkeye, skeptical, leaned over and inspected the wide, curly writing. "You wrote this yourself, Second Lieutenant."

"S—shut up!"

Everyone except Hawkeye and Breda burst into convulsive laughter. Well, it was kind of funny. Breda had probably been expecting someone would bet he couldn't pick up girls.

"Well what about you?" Breda asked, and snatched at Hawkeye's stack. "Bill, bill, department newsletter, bill—hell, don't you have any friends?"

Practically wins, she thought to herself. "Do you seriously think I would give them my work address? That's asking for trouble."

"Well it proves she's not getting love letters," Falman said, and shrugged.

The others looked at him, "Huh?" written all over their faces.

Falman squinted in puzzlement at the sudden appearance of the ink marks, smirked a little to himself. Hawkeye turned to stare at Breda, Fury and Havoc, who'd all been leaned up against the exterior wall of the office. Could you do that with alchemy?

Falman, continued, "If someone who didn't know her was trying to contact her, the easiest way would be through work. I mean, she practically lives here."

Hawkeye picked up another paperweight and launched it from her fist. It impacted male cheekbone with a deeply satisfying thak. Fury, meanwhile, was poking Breda's arm and demanding 50 cens in return for trying to trick him.

The Colonel's voice finally spoke up. "Well, it's true no one would want to date you, with that attitude. And your uniform just looks strange because your breasts are so big and you really do need a haircut and—"

"That's not what you were saying this morning!" Riza somehow managed to raise her voice over the sounds of uncontained exuberance from her co-workers. Her reply made them laugh harder, and so it became impossible to say anything more without getting closer. When she came around the side of his desk, though, all she saw was a little round hole in the floor, over the men's showers.

She was suddenly aware of the smell of decaying seafood.

"I guess that's true, isn't it?" The door from the hallway burst open, and the Colonel's form appeared through it. He was holding a bucket of bait. "But before I start hitting on you more today—to everyone's enjoyment—I have another big fish I'd like to fry."

Falman was trying very hard to appear as if he didn't notice that his uniform was smoking.

"I'll wait."

Everyone who'd finally caught the pun (in other words, everybody except Breda) was now staring at the Warrant Officer. Hawkeye glanced down at the letters on Mustang's desk. One, in unfamiliar script, was asking why the company's lockers seemed to smell funny these days.

"It's great how sometimes you lot forget I can do other things with alchemy besides start fires. Although it is my favorite," Mustang continued, grinning just slightly. "Care to 'fess up?"

"Not particularly," Falman said, shrugging and fidgeting.

Foom.

Havoc, as always practically lying on the floor in his chair, fell out of it. Breda was knocked backwards into the wall. Fury, who'd ducked back under his desk, wasn't hit by the shock wave at all.

Havoc struggled upright and inspected the warrant officer. "Nice work, Colonel. I enjoyed that you let him keep his boxers…I imagine we don't want to offend the lady and all."

Riza snorted, and walked up to the now twitching, soot-covered Falman. There was a single piece of paper on the man's desk. It was a bill from the market for fifty pounds of mackerel.

"Care to tell us why, at least, before I report this and let you do all the paperwork?" Mustang asked.

Falman's shoulders twitched again in a nervy approximation of a shrug. "I needed something to do. Why the writing on the poor boy's faces?"

"Because they should have at least smelled something!"

"I don't suppose it'll be washing off anytime soon, will it?" Havoc asked pleadingly, noticing Breda's face at last and realizing dejectedly that "Huh?" was written onto his own as well. "I was going to take some time off and go back to Eastern…"

"Talk to me in a week."

Havoc groaned. "I hate you alchemists."

Hawkeye shook her head and brushed past the Colonel in the doorway. She padded slowly down to the women's locker room, and only then let loose with what she couldn't possibly have in the presence of her comrades. She learned later, via Fury, that her chosen private was not a terribly insulated place, and with the help of another well-placed hole (the Colonel was going to pay for that one) every officer on the floor heard her laughing anyway.