I'm not even gonna comment on how stuck I got on this one and how my brain hurts from thinking about the amount of time it took to write this MINISCULE AMOUNT OF PAGES.

You guys, (To whoever is listening, IDK…) the story will run uber-smoothly now that this part's up. I know I'm a slacker ( -.-" ) but things are gonna go much faster now that 'm done here. The Authoress apologizes.

Disclaimer: If I owned FMA, Roy would call Al C3PO.

Enjoy.

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"Marin, I can't accept this report."

Of course he couldn't. Of course. It's not like she spent hours trying to summarize all of the things that had happened to her in Persterone. It's not like she had messed up and started over about 17 billion times on the typewriter. And it wasn't like she had to conjure up every single horrible thing that had happened to her in the town, every gut clenching memory wretched up from her mind and painfully typed up every little detail that made her inwardly cringe. It wasn't like that at all. And now? Now he wasn't even going to accept the report.

Fucking Colonel.

He glanced up at her, and flipping through the pages, asked, "If you think that writing up these reports is some kind of opportunity to mess with me, than you've got some nerve handing something like THIS in."

Oh God. She wished she didn't have to talk about this. She wished that Mustang had never summoned her to his office from her place in the barracks. Her eyes flickered over to the door from the couch, and she prayed that Edward would come bursting through the door like he did before. Which wasn't very logical of her at all, to tell you the truth. Edward was probably still putting out the flames on his ass from when the Colonel came back, sweaty and angry, and found his filed cabinet broken into and his files being poked through. When she came back the following morning, they were still working on reconstructing the office from the damage he had done. Plus those boys were still looking for her.

She hoped Alphonse was okay.

"Marin?"

"Hnn? You say somethn'?"

"You know, you could at least TRY to LOOK like you're paying attention when I'm talking to you."

"Does it look like I would even do you that favor?" She asked, clearly annoyed with him at the moment.

"Look Marin," he said exasperated, "What do you think would happen if I filed this report? You've got mentions of homunculi, children being murdered, and a fabled element that hasn't even been proven to exist in your report."

"Oh, no one ever looks at those things anyways," she scowled.

"Marin! This is serious. Are you going to tell me what happened or not?!"

"Can't you clearly see that I'm trying to avoid it?"

"MARIN."

"Fine. You know what?! FINE. You want to know what I saw in that town?" She growled venomously. "I went there on the information that the military gave me, which, surprise! Was WRONG. Sure, things were being stolen. Knives and reaping hooks. But kids were disappearing too, Mustang. And that night…I went to the meat warehouse because I heard a scream. And you know what I saw? I saw a pile of dead kids, Mustang. Lifeless. You know. I KNOW you know. The hollow look that they get." Roy looked away. "Corpses- they're all the same inside." She was shaking furiously. "So I went around the corner of the haystack, and a person with a ouroborus tattoo on their left thigh with long dark hair was there covered in blood. And he was ripping up kids, Mustang. HE WAS RIPPING THEM UP. Saying shit like 'Let's see what makes you tick' and 'where is that damn stone?'" She didn't remember standing up or starting to shout, but she was. "And you know what I did? I ran away. I ran away AGAIN." The silence was deafening. Mustang wasn't even looking at me anymore- he had averted his eyes down to the papers on his desk. She was still shaking, and she took a deep breath. Walking towards the exit, she faced the door and said, "I'm taking a few days off."

He stared at her back, and said quietly, "You're going to those boys, aren't you?"

It wasn't a question. She put her hand on the doorknob, and it opened halfway before he asked, "Why are you helping them?" She stopped for a moment, and then without answering, she left the room and closed the door behind her.

_________________________________________

"Brother? You've been so quiet today. And that means you're thinking about something. Or you're just in pain from the colonel. In fact thinking about it now it's probably the latter." Al inwardly cringed at the memory of the colonel with his gloves, bursting into the room.

Ed glared at him, and unconsciously rubbed his backside.

Come to think of it, it was pretty close to being dark. They would be getting back to the base, but Al insisted that it probably was best to stay away from the colonel for a little bit…which it probably was. There was a silence between them.

"That girl…" Ed muttered.

"That was a little odd," Al admitted. Ed looked up at him funny.

"What? No, I was going to say…RUDE! She couldn't have told us that she was the alchemist we were looking for in the first place?! I mean, if she had, we wouldn't have been caught by Colonel bastard and had our asses- well, MY ass- burned off! We wouldn't even have had to break into the file cabinet!" Ed ranted. "I mean, all we wanted was her help! I even asked nice!" he said, throwing his hands up in the air. Turning to Al and pointing his finger at him, Ed said in a low voice, "And I NEVER ask nice!"

"You were always a little hostile towards strangers brother," Al admitted meekly.

"It's not like I even said anything mean about her! Well, except for the anti-social thing, and even that wasn't that bad! I mean, that girl is probably just a stuck up, selfish military dog who doesn't give two shits about anyone but hersel-" he stopped as they rounded the corner, and came face to face with a terrifyingly calm and collected alchemist.

"I guess now is a bad time." Marin said, stony faced.

Ed looked a little surprised at first, and then, turning his face and sticking out his lower lip, said, "Why were you eavesdropping on us?" Al stood behind him; a little too shocked and embarrassed to speak. Marin raised her eyebrows, and said in a monotone voice, "I'm going to ignore that first question and give you a second chance to say something to me that will make me not want to have my foot make contact with between your legs." Ed opened his mouth to say a sour retort, but she glared at him and Al answered quickly before his brother could say anything, "How much did you hear?"

Marin, a little jarred by Al's voice, quickly recovered, and snarled towards Edward, "I don't know. I guess I'm just a rude, selfish, stuck up dog of the military who doesn't give two shits about anyone but herself and can't even eavesdrop properly." Al cringed.

"What makes you think you can go shifting around in my file?"

"None of your business," Ed said.

"It's MY FILE, DUMBASS. Of COURSE it's my business."

"We just wanted to know where we could find you!" Al gestured nervously. She looked over at him. There was a silence.

"What do you want?" She asked in a tone mixed with strain, exasperation and annoyance. "Why were you looking for me? A bunch of kids poking their heads around in my file – what in the world are you looking for that starts with finding me?"

The glanced at each other quietly, and Ed said, "We're…trying to find something important."

"Something important."

"Yeah."

"Okay, let me get this straight. You want me to help you two boys, who I haven't known for more than 5 hours, on a mission to another town that I don't even know the details of yet and that could be potentially dangerous, on the drastically vague premise that I would be helping you two 'look for something important.'" Ed scratched the back of his head and shifted his weight to the back of his heels.

"Uh…well, yeah." She stared at him then, and cold green met fiery wheat colored irises. She'd never seen anyone like this with so much force, so much determination. They locked eyes, and Marin remembered something she was certain that she had buried a long, long time ago.

Those boys had come around again last night, drunk and stupid. There was a lot of glass, she remembered, and she had told Joan and Brian to make sure that Lynn didn't step near it, because sometimes she didn't believe everything that they told her and hurt herself. She was picking it up with Mat,t who kept slicing his fingers, and they didn't say anything to each other about the broken window. She was ripping up an old blanket for bandages for his hands when he told her, "We'll get out of here one day, Marin. And I'll buy a big house with an icebox and a sink and we'll all live there together. I'll buy big colorful windows that we'll break on purpose and we won't have to worry about the cold getting in because I'll have enough money to buy ten more." She looked up from his sliced fingers and saw eyes that glinted with a determination she would never forget. They burned at a hundred degrees.

So did his forehead.

The memory ended. She blinked twice, and then asked, "What time does the train leave?"

Ed looked a little bewildered, and said, "Really?" She glared at him, and said in a threatening voice,

"Do not push my buttons, Fullmetal Alchemist." Al gave a little sigh of relief, and Marin jumped at this, forgetting he was there and looking up at him.

"Wait." Ed narrowed his eyes, and put a hand in front of Al to prevent him from stepping forwards.

"What now?"

"This is just too…picturesque. Suspicious. There's only one thing you have to tell us before I tell you the train time." She snorted, and said to him in a degrading tone,

"Well you're not exactly telling me everything, Mr. looking-for-something-important."

Ed ignored this, but his expression turned from steely monotone to curiosity, and he said with a slight twinge to his voice, "Why, exactly, are you helping us."

Her carefully composed mask shattered to the ground in a thousand pieces, and she was certain that her face showed everything that she was thinking.

"I- Wh-What?"

"Everyone has an ulterior motive. You're clearly a pragmatist individual- tell us why you're helping us."

"I- there's no-" she stuttered, caught completely off guard. Mustang's face flashed into her mind.

"Why are you helping those boys?"

It's not something I can explain to another, her mind screamed as she tried to reason with herself. She thought of Matt with the glass in his fingers, the look in his eyes, the smoke billowing up from the crater in the earth and the screams.

I will not run away again.

But she didn't say that out loud. She looked down at the ground, ashamed and silent, and a full minute passed by before Ed said in a gruff voice, "Fine. If you're not going to tell us, then it's none of our business. The train leaves tomorrow at 3. We'll come to the barracks. Be ready with a suitcase." He turned and walked away. Al started to turn, and he could have sworn that he heard her say, "Goodnight Alphonse." But when he turned around, all he saw was the tiny lick of the coat diving around a corner down the block. He shook his head. It was probably just his imagination.

R&R, please~