Chapter Three

Sure enough, a wolf met the two sisters on the road. "Where are you going, Red Riding Hoods?" it asked.

"How do you know our names?" Little Red Riding Hood asked.

"Why, everyone has heard of you," the wolf replied. "Your riding hoods are very beautiful."

Flattered, Red Riding Hood said, "We are going to see our mother, who is feeling poorly."

"Does she live far away?" the wolf inquired.

"Not far," Little Red Riding Hood answered. "Her house is the first one at the end of the forest."

"Then I shall take the path that forks off this one," the wolf proposed, "and go to your mother's house as well, and we shall have a feast."

- from the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood"

Nina sat in a hard wooden chair at the long conference table, listening half-heartedly to General Gladstone explain the next phase of the suppression of the Sect. Gladstone, a barrel-chested man with a booming voice and a white walrus mustache, gestured authoritatively with a thick finger at a map of Central laid out before him on the table. Mustang and a few other Lieutenant Colonels stood around him, examining the map and listening to him with rapt attention, but all of their subordinates were seated too far down the table to see anything but a bunch of blue-clad backs silhouetted against the wide windows that spanned the far wall. The other walls were covered with detailed maps of Central City, dotted with red and blue pins that marked the positions of Sect and military forces. The room smelled of coffee and too many bodies packed into too small of a space.

"Now, Jones," Gladstone boomed, "you will take your men..."

Nina let her mind wander with her gaze; both roved down the table, passing over each soldier seated there. Some listened intently, others stared into space. Fuse looked in danger of nodding off, and a young man sitting next to him seemed to be playing tic-tac-toe with himself on one of the many blank pads of paper provided. Trisha caught Nina's eye and surreptitiously faked a yawn; Nina grinned back at her. It wasn't that Gladstone was a particularly boring man, but Nina didn't understand why he couldn't just brief the Lieutenant Colonels and let all the subordinates do something more worthwhile. Like…paperwork….

"Mustang," Gladstone said, and Nina perked up to listen. "You and Farland will join forces and capture the twelve Sect members, then bring them in for questioning. We've managed to intercept a message to the Sect leader with the information that they'll be headed through the sewers. You will intercept them…here." He pointed to a certain place on the map, which Mustang looked at carefully.

Nina looked back at the others, and found that they had all straightened in their seats as well. Fuse fiddled almost frantically with the sleeves of his military jacket; Dirk blinked in rapid succession as he watched Gladstone; Bones furrowed his brow in concentration. Then Nina looked over at Trisha and shared an excited look with her. Nina hoped the days of running errands and getting tea for Dirk were gone for good.

After several more minutes, General Gladstone rolled up the map and said, "That will be all."

A chorus of chairs scraping against the floor echoed through the conference room, and everyone saluted the General before filing out the door. Nina stood at Trisha's side, waiting for Lieutenant Colonel Mustang to join his subordinates, and watched the river of blue uniforms course past her.

"So!" The voice boomed very close by; Nina turned around quickly and saluted again as she saw Gladstone standing right behind her. "The Solid Stone Alchemist, I presume?"

"Y-Yes, sir," Nina stammered, her voice sounding thin and weak compared to his.

"And the Cornerstone Alchemist," Gladstone added, nodding to Trisha. "I've heard much about you from your father, of course. Being the daughters of the Full Metal Alchemist, I'm sure we can expect many great things from the two of you. Good luck." He gave them a smile and a wink, then moved off.

"Th-Thank you, sir!" Nina managed to gasp at his back. When she turned to exchange a thrilled look with Trisha, another voice called out her name.

"Ah, so you must be Nina and Trisha Elric!" said a woman from the other side of the table as she walked briskly towards them. She was a pretty woman, with grey eyes and curly brown hair pulled into a ponytail to keep it out of her face. She looked just as thrilled as Nina and Trisha had. "The daughters of the Full Metal Alchemist! I never imagined I would actually get to meet you, let alone work alongside you!" Noting their confused expressions, she smiled and held out her hand. "Lieutenant Colonel Lydia Farland."

Nina shook Lydia Farland's hand numbly, and before she could find something to say Farland's subordinates crowded around the two sisters.

"The Full Metal Alchemist's daughters!"

"It's an honor to meet you, an honor!"

"Wow, you must be very skilled to become State Alchemists at that age!"

A few minutes later, as Nina and Trisha followed the others back to the office, Nina couldn't help smiling to herself. This was more like what she had imagined being a State Alchemist would feel like.

"That Lydia Farland," Lieutenant Colonel Mustang remarked lightly to his subordinates as they made their way down the hall to the steady tromp of their boots against the floor, "she's rather pretty, isn't she?"

A slight twinge of jealousy stabbed Nina's heart, but almost as soon as Mustang's words left his mouth, the other three men let out a chorus of groans.

"Not again!"

"Really, sir, for your own sake…."

"You remember what happened last time – when you tried to hit on Elysia Hughes!"

"All right, all right, I get the point!" Mustang snapped irritably, a slight flush mounting his cheeks. "I was just saying…."

Trisha raised her eyebrows at Nina. "What was that all about?" she asked Dirk.

Dirk rolled his eyes. "The Lieutenant Colonel. His aim might be top-notch, but he has yet to hit Cupid's arrow on target." Ignoring the murderous look Mustang shot at him, he continued, "Poor man. He has the worst luck with girls. Can't even get one date."

"They say it's his arrogance," Fuse put in, nodding wisely.

"How would you know?" Dirk asked in surprise.

Fuse smiled a little nervously, glancing over at Mustang as though afraid for his own safety. "I overheard a couple of the librarians once. You know, those pretty ones that the Lieutenant Colonel tried to ask out at the same time?"

Bones snickered. Nina looked up at him in surprise, but his face was solemn as though the large, stern-faced man had never laughed once in his life.

"Anyway," Fuse went on, "they said he would only talk about himself, and whenever they tried to say something about themselves, he changed the subject."

"What?" Mustang cried defensively, pushing open the door to their office. A whiff of tea and pencil shavings accosted them as they entered. "My life is infinitely more interesting than theirs! I'm in the military, but all they ever talk about is their hair or their friend who's about to get married!"

Dirk clicked his tongue and shook his head reprovingly. "Sir, I'm sorry to say it, but that's exactly why you can't get a date. I speak from experience: Let them do the talking. Woman's favorite hobby, you know." Then he noticed Nina and Trisha standing on either side of him, glaring. "Oops!"

Everyone laughed, even Mustang, who still wore a disgruntled expression. What with the good-natured jibes that began to pass back and forth between the men, Nina found it hard to believe that they would soon be risking their lives on another mission.

Nina stepped off the last rung of the ladder with a splash, and grimaced as she tried not to think about just what was swirling around her thick, military-issue boots. The smell was bad enough. She flicked on the flashlight as Trisha clambered down and turned on hers; the two of them looked around the blank stretch of tunnel as the others climbed down behind them, their boots clanging noisily onto each rung of the ladder. The darkness of the sewers closed around the vulnerable beam of Nina's flashlight like fingers around a slender throat. Everything was invisible outside the boundaries of the light. Invisible and cold. Three more flashlights clicked on, and Nina gratefully turned from the darkness to await orders.

With Farland's subordinates added to their ranks, they were twelve strong now, and Nina felt considerably more confident about this encounter with the Sect. She clenched her hand firmly around her stick of chalk, poised to draw a circle at the first sign of danger. Farland looked around at them all, saw they were ready, and said firmly, "Okay men, let's split up."

"Okay men, let's stick together," Mustang said at the same time.

There was an awkward moment of silence, then Farland pursed her lips and said, "If we split up, we can corner those Sect slugs from both ways in a pincer movement."

"And if we split up," Mustang added, "the 'Sect slugs' will outnumber each group two to one. Unless our timing is impeccable, we will be slaughtered."

Farland glared at him for a moment, then snapped acidly, "Very well. We'll keep together…since you're the Fuhrer's son."

"That's not-"

"Let's move out," Farland interrupted, starting forward and motioning her subordinates into position.

Mustang sighed and nodded to his own subordinates, and they fell in beside Farland's group.

As they made their way through the sewers, Nina grew increasingly conscious of their splashing footsteps that echoed wetly down the dark tunnel. She wondered if the Sect members had heard them and were waiting in ambush, ready to leap out at them at any moment.

Or maybe their flashlights would give them away. Five soldiers carried flashlights to light their way: Nina, Trisha, Fuse, and two of Farland's subordinates. Even so, the darkness pressed against their little group, and Nina couldn't help glancing over her shoulder several times, feeling as though someone was watching her from the shadows behind. She shuddered and wrenched her eyes back to the front each time, reminding herself that she was supposed to be prepared for attack.

And all of a sudden, she didn't have time to be 'prepared' anymore. Before they were anywhere near their destination, someone shouted, and a group of men rushed into the beams of their flashlights. Soldiers and Sect members alike fired their guns, and Nina launched herself at the nearest wall. She couldn't draw a transmutation circle on the submerged floor, so instead she hastily inscribed one on the wall, activating it as she saw the answering blue light from the other wall. A stone wall closed off the tunnel behind the Sect members, trapping them. Nina saw Bones grab one of the Sect men's guns, his large muscles bulging as he wrenched the rifle out of the man's hands and jabbed him in the stomach with it.

Just as Nina started to rush forward and draw another circle, a blinding flash filled the tunnel. Nina threw up her arm to shield her eyes, but the piercing white light stabbed through her eyelids all the same, momentarily blinding her. Without sight, the confusion in the tunnel seemed even greater. There were gunshots, yells, splashes, and Nina was jostled so roughly that her chalk flew from her hand. The cacophony echoed around the sewer walls, till it sounded like a full-fledged battle.

"Aaaah!"

"What's going on?!"

"My eyes!"

"What are you-"

Footsteps sloshed and splashed away from them at a run, and then only silence remained.

After a few moments, Nina slowly lowered her arms. She couldn't see anything, not even the beam of a flashlight. "T-Trisha…?" she hoarsely asked the darkness.

"I'm here," Trisha's voice said directly to her left, lowered to a whisper. "What happened?"

"I don't know," Nina started to say, but then she heard other movements, people sloshing about in the water.

"Someone get a light in here," came a low voice that Nina could easily place as Mustang's. There was a splash, a fumbling sound, and then a flashlight turned on, pointing at the source of the voice. Mustang held his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare, squinting around in an attempt to assess the situation.

Nina felt something next to her foot, and reached down to discover that it was another flashlight. She turned it on, and in the added light she saw that all of her companions were there: Trisha, Mustang, Fuse, Dirk, and Bones. Farland and her subordinates were nowhere in sight, but at least Mustang's group was intact. They were all covered in grime, Bones had a nasty cut on his forehead, and Dirk was clutching the arm that had been wounded in their last skirmish with the Sect, but other than that everyone seemed to be unharmed. Nina let out a breath she hadn't known she had been holding, but then Bones rumbled, "There are bodies here, sir."

Everyone hurried over to where Bones stood, and saw that there were indeed many bodies sprawled in and out of the water, all clothed in civilian garb. Nina quickly counted them: Twelve. Fuse and Dirk picked their way through the bodies, examining them. "All dead as doorknobs," Dirk announced, shaking his head.

"And…none of them are from Farland's group," Fuse added in a strange voice.

All eyes turned to Mustang, whose face had gone blank like the time Fuse had suggested the possibility of a traitor. "We were supposed to take them prisoner, not kill them," he said tightly. "They could have given us valuable information about the Sect." Suddenly he looked up at his subordinates sharply. "Did any of you fire?"

They all shook their heads, and Dirk added, "You know we wouldn't do that. And you can check our ammunition if you like, sir."

Mustang waved the suggestion away. "That won't be necessary. If I didn't trust you, you wouldn't be here."

Bones reached out to one of the immobile bodies and plucked a small object from its chest. Holding his red-stained fingers under the beam of Fuse's flashlight, he examined the tiny glint of metal that had dealt the killing blow. As he turned the bullet over and over, the light caught a tiny insignia engraved into the metal. Nina's nose tingled as she recognized it: the beast within the pentagram, the military's official seal. "Sir," Bones said cautiously, for once looking worried, "doesn't this mean-"

"Yes," Mustang said tersely, and Nina noticed that his hands were clenched tightly around his rifle. "Farland disobeyed orders and had them all killed."

For a moment, the silence was so loud that Nina wished someone had screamed instead. It would have been easier on the nerves as well as the ears. She didn't know what to think of this – a Lieutenant Colonel deliberately and blatantly disobeying orders – but she could see no other explanation of the evidence. Only soldiers had access to those bullets.

At last, Mustang broke the silence. "Let's get out of here, men. We need to get back to Headquarters immediately."