Enigma

By TeriyakiPrinces

Rating: Teen+ Audiences, but whatever.

Warnings for the chapter: Science talk. This is Teen+ so expect some bad language.

Disclaimer: Not mine. To see original content, look up Hiromu Arakawa.

A/N: If you've read the previous chapters, the first part of this chapter is a re-cap, just in case you're wondering why I've written it again. It's there for everyone who hasn't gone back to read the edit.

I hope the chapter doesn't seem too choppy, but if it does tell me and I'll try to fix it.

Special thanks to spacetimeenigma, for their reviews! Thank you so much to the people who read, followed, favorited, and especially reviewed the first four chapters. Do you guys have any questions you'd like answered? Review with them!

Please, if you have absolutely any suggestions or criticism, express it, even if it's bad, but please also explain your view if criticizing- I can't fix what I don't know is broken.

Reviews are welcomed with open mind and open arms.

The first thing that grabbed Edward's attention about the woman in front of him were her eyes. He had never seen that shade of green eyes before. Heck, he didn't think he'd ever seen green eyes, period. He could have noted how tall she was, because at nearly nine inches taller than him, she stood at 5'8" tall. He could have noticed that she was barefoot, or the large, ropy, silvery scar extending from somewhere around her knee, which strangely enough she didn't cover completely by her brown pants. But no, the first thing he sees of her are her green eyes that seemed to glow in the sunlight.

He is about a meter away from her, and she sweeps her eyes across his form, as if appraising him.

He began to prepare himself to rebuff her statement when she opened her mouth to say how-

"Young."

-he was?

Ed's eyes widened in surprise at her words, but not to seem caught off-guard, he scowled and took a defensive pose.

"You've got a problem with my age, hag!?"

"No. It just never really clicked that you were Winry's age. With how she goes on about you, you'd either think you were the devil incarnate or a middle aged man."

Ed could feel his face heat up, and- BAH! She wasn't even smirking, dammit!

"Who the hell are you, anyway?!" Edward Elric yelled at the stoic woman. Who the hell did she think she was, walking up to them all stand-offish and dammit, she was tall!

"I'm Gaia Maurer." His mind stuttered to a halt.

"You're the Gaia Maurer?" Alphonse's voice piped up from behind Ed. The two brothers had received many letters over the past years from the Rockbells, detailing the goings-on of the prosthetics engineers' daily lives. Then, about two and a half years ago, about half a year after they left for Edward's State Alchemist Exam, Gaia Maurer had burst onto the scene. From the letters (read: novels) Winry sent, the two could tell quite clearly that Winry had taken to the girl like a fish to water- studying with her, helping her in every which way, and recently even becoming the girl's personal matchmaker (which was way too much information, thank you very much, and had led to even Ed feeling some pity for the female stranger).

Traveling as they were, the Elrics either called the Rockbells (rarely) or picked up any letters addressed to them on their monthly reports to Eastern Command's very own Colonel Bastard.

"I'm Alphonse Elric, nice to meet you." Alphonse stuck out his hand, and Gaia took it, smiling pleasantly at the suit of armor.

One moment, Alphonse was introducing himself, and the other his hand was being used as leverage by the eighteen year old, her bare foot using one of the chinks in his armor to gain altitude, and his helmet was being lifted from his shoulders. He flailed, careful not to crush the body holding onto him, and heard his brother exclaim loudly at the woman now peering into his empty body.

Oh, dear.

"That's some good rune-work for an eleven year old. Especially when you take into account you were bleeding out of two limbs."

Alphonse was confused for a moment before he realized she was talking to his older brother, while still having her head lowered to peer inside the armor.

"It's incredible how well the blood has kept, too. Under normal circumstances it would have flaked off a long time ago. But you know, blood runes are a foul piece of alchemy- I could feel it miles away. I could use this as a tracking mechanism, actually, if you added an amplification rune right under it- ah, but that would amplify the bond, and might rebound by expelling the resident soul. How fascinating."

"What the hell are you talking about, you psycho! And get down from there!"

At once, his head was back in place and the eighteen year old jumped down from her perch on him. She turned to face his brother, with a sullen smile on her face, as if explaining the mysteries of the world to a stubborn child.

"Sorry, I guess my way of showing you that I know your secret was a bit out of left-field."

Alphonse wondered whether left-field had some type of special meaning that only he was missing, before he realized what the older girl was saying and gaped at her, fluttering his limbs and stumbling over his words. Gaped as much as a suit of armor inhabited by a soul could, anyway.

"I-I-I- Y-You-Wha-WHAT?! How do you know?!"

"It ain't hard to extrapolate, bub." She knocked her knuckles on his hollow body, making it give off an echo as he quickly took a step back out of habit. "Two boys lose their mother, go on a rampage learning Alchemy- which is the only known way to restore life, if only in obscure theory, and get into an accident that leaves one with two limbs missing and the other all of a sudden in a suit of armor three times as tall as he was before?"

Now his livid older brother was spluttering too. Alphonse was speechless. Major Armstrong, who Al just now remembered was outside with them, was exclaiming about her deduction skills, and that if he hadn't known better, he'd have thought she had come from the Armstrong line.

"Either way, even if I hadn't figured it out from what the Rockbells told me, your chi is totally out of wack, even more so than the stuff I can feel coming from farther east." Chi? What was that? The word sounded vaguely Xingese, but he hadn't heard much of that language outside of the occasional restaurant they visited while in East City.

"W-What's chi, miss Maurer?" Major Armstrong asked, subdued from his previous outburst, and the younger Elric noticed his brother was reluctantly listening for her answer, his anger simmering below the surface.

"Oh. Sorry, I forgot." Forgot what? This conversation was throwing him in all kinds of loops. "Chi's the Xingese concept of what in Amestris you call natural energy, only this life energy is believed to metaphorically flow from the tops of mountains down to the land, nourishing everything it passes. The Xingese based their entire version of Alchemy, called Alkahestry, on the principle of the Dragon's Pulse, also known as chi." The recitation sounded as if from a textbook, and Al wondered if that's where she got it from.

It seemed as if the calm recitation had quelled some of Ed's rage, as he unfolded his tense arms from in front of his chest and relaxed his stance.

"So what you're saying is there's an energy in the ground that you can sense, somehow," He raised a disbelieving eyebrow at the tall girl, still looking down at him, "That can tell you when someone's committed the greatest Alchemical taboo possible?" If anything could calm his brother down, it was research or an intellectual conversation.

"Yes." That was probably the worst way to put it.

"Why should we believe you?! Maybe you're some spy, or you were told by some evil mastermind what happened or, or..." His brother was wide-eyed and hysterical, and Al could practically see the cogs turning behind his eyes, and dreaded where his theories were leading him.

Edward stalled, eyes wide as he gripped his hair and took a few staggering steps backwards, away from the girl in front of him.

"You know. Holy fuck, you know." Gaia rolled her eyes.

"That is what I've been alluding to, yes. I didn't want it to be awkward between us for Winry's sake. She's wanted us to meet for a long time, so I thought I'd just let you know right away that I knew about the transmutation. It would have been really exhausting keeping up the farce if we were to know each other for more than a day."

"Y-You figured out this much about us because Winry wanted us to get along?! You are insane!"

A metal wrench flew out of nowhere, hitting Ed in the back of his head, and a furious blonde made her way towards the group.

"She's not insane! And stop fighting! This isn't getting anyone anywhere, now just suck it up and accept that everyone here knows about why you're a State Alchemist, alright?! No secrets, no worries, everyone's good. Got that?" Winry growled the last part, shoving the wrench against the still fallen Edward's cheek.

"Yeah, yeah, but it doesn't mean I have to like it either."

"Fine" Winry huffed and stepped off of his chest.

"Fine."

And that, it seemed, put a halt to the accusations and litany of arguments roiling in his elder brother's mind.

Alphonse asked where she went when he noticed there were only five place-settings at dinner, and Granny Pinako told them Gaia had turned in for the night, stating that the spring air didn't agree very well with her. Alphonse noticed the furrow between her eyebrows and the tightness around her eyes that had nothing to do with the three all-nighters the two Rockbell women had pulled to fix his brother's automail.

"Granny, is miss Maurer sick?" Edward looked up from his food, startled at the question, but turned curious eyes at Winry and Pinako.

"She didn't look sick earlier."

"It's just something that comes around this time of year." That was a brush-off if the young Elric had ever heard one.

"She is sick, isn't she."

"It's not my place to tell you, especially after that argument you two had with her. It's a private matter, and she hasn't disclosed much about it, even to me." Alphonse startled at the steel in her voice, and immediately backed down. He wondered, then, why he felt so concerned at that revelation.

Maybe he was worried about the only person to have ever figured out what had happened to them and not shown pity. Maybe it was her blunt honesty about it all.

Maybe it was because he felt like he'd come to know the older girl through Winry's letters, or maybe that was just his bias through knowing of her only through Winry's eyes.

He thought that it could also stem from the deeply concerned light in Winry's eyes as she pushed around her mashed potatoes, stealing glances toward the exit, as if willing the elder girl to appear.

Edward stumbled down the stairs, his left foot thumping on the wooden floor boards as he swerved into the kitchen, bleary eyed and still half asleep.

The sight that greeted him made him pause before jumping into a defensive position, arms up and left leg back.

There seemed to be some sort of creature in the kitchen, its back to him, long shaggy mane obscuring most of its hunched back, indistinct in the dim pre-dawn light. It took a deep, rasping breath, and turned its- most likely hideous- head, slowly.

It spoke, breath rasping from deep within its' chest, asking him-

"Want some coffee?"

The Fullmetal Alchemist was shocked out of his disbelieving stupor, and flicked on the light switch, illuminating the kitchen with the bright artificial light.

The thing- was it a thing? Because he wasn't so sure anymore- hissed and hunched more as it threw an arm over its eyes.

"Goddammit, kid, don't you fucking know common courtesy?! Turn the damn light off!"

Oh. That wasn't a goblin or something, was it? Ed realized that the scratchy voice was vaguely familiar, if it smoothed out more, and if that hair was put in a ponytail then he was sure the creature-person would have a striking resemblance to-

"Maurer?! What the hell, woman!"

"You'll wake up the entire house, you moron! Keep it down!" a whisper yell came from beside him, where the woman had migrated as his sluggish mind acclimated to the new situation, and he watched as she flicked the light switch, sighing in relief as the kitchen was once again plunged into semi-darkness.

She turned to him, and, was she... pouting?

The tall woman stomped back to her original station at the kitchen counter, bare feet slapping against the wood floorboards, in front of the stove top and what looked to be a coffee pot.

That was definitely a pout.

But coffee was coffee, so he let the fact that she was ignoring her earlier outburst slide. So sue him for accepting a steaming cup of pure bliss from a grumpy goblin.

"What's up with the voice?"

"Haven't taken my meds yet." She rasped, and he had the strangest vision of her as an old warty witch, like one of those from the fairy tales his mom used to read to him and Al, stirring a cauldron rather than the young woman stirring sugar into her coffee.

But the fact that she needed medication meant that she was sick, as Alphonse stated the night before. And by the sound of it, it had something to do with her lungs.

He took a sip of his own heavenly elixir, and nearly moaned in ecstasy.

"That's the best cup of coffee I've ever had!"

"It's a recipe I learned from my mother. It's called Turkish coffee, but with a personal twist." She sounded proud, but there was a downward lilt to her lips that he could now see due to the dawn light peeking through the kitchen windows.

"We've heard a lot about you from the letters Winry and Pinako send us, but they never mentioned anything about your family." He almost regretted saying anything at all at the sad look that crossed her face for a spit second before her brow evened out once again.

Almost. He felt the need to vet this stranger that had found a way into his family's hearts, and for that he needed information and motives.

Gaia took a pill and threw her head back to swallow it with her coffee before steeling herself.

"That's because I don't have a family. I lost them during the Ishvalan Geno- Civil War. Sarah and Urey Rockbell ended up fixing me up, and I decided to repay some of the favor they showed me by locating their remaining family. Along the way, they became my family, too."

"I-I'm sorry for prying."

"No, you're not. But thanks for not apologizing for my family's fate. Pity is the last thing anyone needs when they've witnessed a family member die."

"Is this a bad time to interrupt?" came a meek voice from behind the two, and Gaia brightened up considerably, clapping her hands together as she stared at the younger Elric brother.

"Not at all, Alphonse! Now! I've spilled some beans, so it's your turn! I've heard a lot about you second-hand, but that's all from when you were twelve years old or younger. I want to get to know the rest of this family, so sit down and spill your guts with all the juicy stuff- and don't skim the Alchemy mumbo-jumbo, that's the best part, I'm sure!"

Her wide grin unnerved the brothers, and her request sounded more like a command, but they obediently sat down and opened their mouths.

If they didn't even entertain the thought of refusing, then no one would ever be the wiser.

Ed didn't know how to feel about this newcomer, yet.

She may still be a spy, or some evil goblin-witch, and he wasn't gonna trust her with no reservations for the time being.

But her cooking may just be what would win him over, in the end.

Gaia had set the breakfast table with six place settings, a stack of what seemed to be a fluffy take on crepes in the middle of it all, and a glass of what vaguely smelled like chocolate in front of each chair.

"What's this?" Edward asked as he eyed his glass suspiciously.

"Chocolate milk. It's been cooling in the fridge overnight. Have you never had it before?" She asked nonchalantly.

"No. And I'm not gonna." That drink had the word milk in it, and he wasn't gonna have anything to do with that foul stuff. He turned away from the sweet smell, arms crossed and nose in the air, an affronted look on his face.

"It's sweet and tastes like chocolate, with the nutritional value of milk."

"Are you trying to say something, hag?!"

"Try it. You may like it. If you try and genuinely can't stomach it, I won't force you to drink it. Unless you're really as much of a pansy about milk as Winry always said you were." A challenge?

Well played, hag, well played.