A/N: What wonderful reviews! Thank you so so much for all of your support, I hope that this chapter is to your liking.
Chapter 5
"Hey Al, you ready to go?" the blonde alchemist asked, poking his head around the door of his brothers room. Al jumped up from his bed at the noise.
"Uh huh, yes brother, I'm ready." Edward nodded and the two walked out into the corridor. They had barely walked two steps when...
"And where are you two going?" the brothers flinched and exchanged a small glance. Ed gulped and in the time that it would have taken a normal person to blink he spun round, an innocent smile plastered across his face.
"Oh, hey Winry! How are you?" Winry scowled and marched straight up to Edward, who cowered slightly at her presence.
"Don't change the subject. Where are you going?" She repeated her tone low and threatening. Edward stuttered slightly, mumbling a few incoherent phrases. Winry sighed in exasperation and turned her glare upon the younger sibling. Alphonse jumped at the intensity of the glare.
"Alphonse?" Winry questioned. The suit of armour scratched the back of his head nervously.
"Umm... you see, brother and I are going to central headquarters..." he trailed off as Winry's scowl deepened. She turned her attention back to the alchemist who grinned nervously at her. There was silence for a moment before Winry sighed, her scowl dropping. The two brother's stared curiously back at her.
"Well, I suppose that explains something." She muttered to herself. She encompassed both boys in her gaze before smiling slightly, causing them both to frown. Wasn't she mad at me two seconds ago? Edward wondered to himself. Winry's next statement brought him swiftly back to reality.
"Hurry up, let's go." She stated, turning her back on them and walking down the corridor. The two boys stood there stunned for a moment. Edward recovered first and with a quick shake of his head tore after Winry, skidding to a halt in front of her.
"What are you doing? You're not coming with us." He stated determinedly. Winry raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing, simply stepping past him and continuing on her way. Edward frowned at her back.
"Winry!" he yelled. The girl stopped and turned to look at him.
"Yes Edward?" she asked placidly.
"You're not coming with us." He repeated, a tad more forcefully than last time. Winry frowned at him, then folded her arms.
"You drag me out here with no explanation, and then you hint that it's something to do with the military and you think I'm going to sit in the hotel all day long while you go to headquarters? I don't think so somehow." And with that she turned on her heel and continued to walk. As she did so she craned her neck and called over her shoulder.
"At least this way I might find out some answers." Edward gazed after her for a moment, his mouth open wide. He then frowned and ran after his childhood friend, shouting the first excuse he could to make her stay behind. Alphonse sighed as he watched his brother go. He couldn't help but wonder whether his brother would make it to their appointment with the Colonel in one piece.
The clock in Roy Mustang's office ticked deafeningly in the otherwise silent room. The two men stared at each other, one waiting for a response, the other composing one. The man who was standing up sighed and raised a hand to his head, closing his eyes as he made the gesture.
"So let me get this straight." Maes began "You had a potentially disastrous argument... about flowers." There was silence for a moment before Roy replied in a defeated tone.
"Yes." Maes couldn't stand it anymore. He took one more glance at his friends face and burst into hysterics. Roy frowned up at his friend, waiting for the fit to subside. It didn't. In fact, Maes seemed to be having trouble breathing. A vein in Roy's temple twitched.
"Hughes, that really isn't helping!" he cried, standing up so rapidly that his chair toppled over. Hughes glanced up at Roy, still giggling slightly, but his composure was returning slowly. He took a deep breath before he began speaking once more.
"Sorry. It's just of all the things that people argue about you choose flowers. It's sort of ironic don't you think?" Roy's frowned deepened at the statement. Choosing not respond to the particular question he turned around and picked up his chair. Hughes sighed.
"You need to talk to her Roy. If she's as angry as you say she is, the sooner the better." Roy gave Maes a slightly worried look. He was never usually exposed to the full force of Riza's anger, and he wasn't exactly looking forward to the inevitable confrontation.
"Shouldn't I just wait for her to calm down?" he asked his friend. Maes' mouth fell open in horror. Roy looked at him feeling perplexed.
"What?"
"Do you know anything about women Roy?" Maes asked in shock. Roy smirked.
"Do you know who you're talking to?" he responded. Maes however simply grinned back at his friend.
"Oh yes how could I forget. So tell me Roy, how many arguments have you gotten into with one of your one night stands?" he asked sarcastically. Roy dropped his head, admitting defeat. Although he was loathed to admit it, his lack of long term relationships did put him at a disadvantage in this situation. He raised his head once more and locked eyes with his friend.
"All right explain." He stated weary, falling back into his chair. Maes smiled.
"If you leave her, then she'll just control the anger. Hone it down into a complex and tight set of points that no matter how hard you try, you cannot counter. Plus women always seem to drag in other flaws into the arguments if given enough time." Roy looked slightly afraid at this point.
"Other flaws?" he asked tentatively, not really sure if he wanted to hear the answer. Maes nodded enthusiastically.
"Yep. Some other small insignificant thing that you did months ago that annoyed her. Women have this unique ability to store all of these up in their mind to use them at just the right point. So you had better find her before she remembers too many, or you'll end up apologising for something you don't even remember you did." Roy was now truly afraid. He could think of countless things that he had done that would annoy the hell out of Riza. This confronting her was becoming both very appealing and daunting at the same time.
"Oh!" Roy turned his attention back to Hughes.
"What?" he asked, dreading what he was about to hear.
"Make sure you find her before she talks to one of her female friends" Maes warned dangerously. Roy couldn't help but shudder slightly the tone of voice his friend used. Maes looked him dead in the eye his face completely serious.
"If she tells a friend about the argument, and considering how ridiculous that last one was, then you're completely done for. Their friends have some sort of duty to turn you into the bad guy and will rant on for ages about how wrongly you have been treating her. And once those ideas are in their heads, there they will stay until all of them have been said. Believe me Roy; you don't want to know what Riza's friends are going to convince her to do to you." With that last sentence out of his mouth, Roy made a decision. He rushed towards the door and threw it open, glancing into his office and startling his subordinates. Seeing a vacant desk, Roy glared at his officers.
"Where's Hawkeye?" he bellowed at no one in particular.
"She just left chief." Havoc replied with his pen still in his mouth. Roy paled slightly, Hughes' words running through his head. He quickly marched across the room, throwing the outer office door open, only to come face to face with a suit of armour.
"All right, let's get this over with." Edward stated, walking past his brother. Mustang however, ignored him.
"Later Fullmetal." He grunted walking past him.
"What! You told me ten o' clock! I'm here on time, you bas..."
"I have more important matters!" Roy spat back at the boy.
"Actually Roy, you don't. The Fuhrer is demanding the latest intelligence today so you really need to speak to Edward now." Hughes stated, coming up behind them. Roy turned and stared at his friend, his mouth hanging open.
"But...but...but you said" he started, before Hughes interrupted.
"It's alright; Miss Rockbell can go and find Lieutenant Hawkeye. If that's alright with her." Hughes stated, smiling kindly down at Winry. Winry smiled back.
"Of course, I'll go now." She stated and left the doorway. Roy slumped slightly as the girl walked away and resigned himself to his meeting with Edward. He turned around and glared down at the blonde alchemist. Edward grinned mischievously back at him.
"How badly did you screw up this time?" he asked.
Riza breathed heavily, leaning slightly against the wall.
"Damn it." she hissed, raising a shaking hand to her head. This was not normal. She may have been overreacting before, but now she knew that there was something going on, and whatever it was it didn't look good. Whoever was sending her the flowers knew not only where she lived, but where she worked. But more importantly, who she worked for. She straightened herself as a thought struck her. This person made it known that they knew of her connection to Mustang, so this must be a threat to him in some way. There would be no other reason why someone would so desperately attempt to attract her attention.
"Lieutenant Hawkeye? Is everything okay?" Riza turned and smiled at Maria Ross.
"I'm fine." She said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. Maria smiled back and the two walked together towards the door of the women's locker room.
"I'm glad I found you. I wanted to apologise for the flowers. I just assumed that the Colonel sent them to you." Maria stated nervously. Riza sighed and glanced at her friend.
"No, Roy never sends me flowers. They weren't for me anyway, there was a card on them, the front desk must have made a mistake." Riza wasn't sure how plausible the lie sounded, but it was the first thing that came into her head. She didn't want anyone to know about the threat to Roy's life, but considering the argument she had just had about the roses, it was important to dismiss the flowers.
"Wait a second. Colonel Mustang has never bought you flowers?" Maria asked in shock. Riza stopped and frowned at the brunette.
"No. Why?"
"Not once? Come on he must have given you flowers at least once! Not on your first date? Anniversary? Birthday?" Maria questioned. Riza shrugged.
"No, he hasn't. I haven't had my birthday since we've been together, we don't celebrate our anniversary and... Let's just not talk about our first date." Riza stated briskly. Maria's mouth fell open in shock.
"Why don't you celebrate your anniversary?" she asked, obviously confused. Riza frowned
"Well, I'm not sure that Roy knows when it is. I mean, I know when it is but I suppose we've only been together for four months, and I spent the last one finishing off all of his documents seeing as the men all wanted to go out for the night to celebrate the successfulness of...
"So he forgot your anniversary AND made you work on it!" Maria cried in anguish. Riza's eyes widened considerably.
"No, not at all, it's not like that." She stated hastily.
"I cannot believe that! He went out drinking with the guys on your anniversary! Seriously Riza, why didn't you say something." Riza felt completely confused. Seeing her reaction Maria grabbed her arm and began leading her down the corridor.
"I think you and I need a serious chat Riza" she stated calmly, dragging a very confused Riza behind her.
"How did we not see this before?" Havoc whispered, staring at the paper's in front of him. Edward frowned picking up the police report.
"So they were killed in exactly the same way?" He asked. Hughes nodded.
"Yes, except that these cases were dismissed as there was no evidence to suggest that they were more than simply crimes of passion. All except the last one." Edward threw the file back on to the desk and slammed his metal arm on the table.
"This still makes no sense! So the killer starts with two low life men and moves on to a business man and three women with absolutely no connection between them?"
"Oh I wouldn't say that." All eyes turned to Roy. He smirked back up at Edward from his seat behind the desk.
"Some of us Fullmetal do extensive research to back up our findings. And if you look closely at the files, you would see that all of our men do have one particular...ummm... habit in common." Mustang stated smugly. Ed ground his teeth together in annoyance at the tone his superior used, but considering that he had completely lost what they were talking about, said nothing.
"What did you find Sir?" Fuery asked quietly. Hughes coughed slightly, causing Mustang's grin to widen.
"The business man, Simon Keel attempted to hide it well, using an alias and leaving himself almost untraceable, but we found it in the end. All three were regular guests at the sugar bowl." He stated. This caused a number of different reactions. Fuery turned a violent shade of red, Breda let out a bark of laughter that he attempted to cover by coughing violently, Falman raised his eyebrows but other than that made no reaction, while Havoc immediately attempted to hide the fact that he was suffering from a particularly hasty nose bleed.
"What sort of place is that?" Al asked innocently. All the adults immediately became silent and exchanged glances.
"Never mind." Hughes stated swiftly, ignoring Edward's indignant spluttering. Roy grinned and clapped his hands together.
"Yes well, that means that we at least have a place to begin." He stated getting up.
"Wait. What about the women?" Edward asked. Roy froze his back to the rest of the room. Hughes shot his friend a worried glance but stayed silent.
"We believe that from what you told us Fullmetal, that they were simply a way to get the military's attention. There was nothing connecting any of them and apparently none of them exhibited any strange behaviour before they died. They were just random attacks." Silence filled the room for a moment, each of the occupants lost in their own thoughts. In one swift movement Roy turned around.
"Now, I have a plan" he stated, an odd glint in his eye. The rest of his subordinates exchanged looks with each other. For some reason, none of them liked the tone of voice that their superior had adopted when saying that.
The girl at the desk flicked through the pages of her book without really reading them. It had been a slow day so far, and there really wasn't much to do. She glanced up as the door to the shop opened. She smiled professionally, automatically hiding the book out of eye shot.
"Can I help you?" she asked sweetly.
"A dozen white roses please." Her eyebrows shot up at the request, but she complied. White roses were hard to come by in Amerstres, making them exceptionally expensive. As she gathered the flowers together she turned and smiled at the customer.
"They sure are wonderful flowers. For someone special?" she asked politely.
"Oh yes." Came the response "Although she doesn't know how special yet." The girl smiled.
"Well these are certainly beautiful. I'm sure she will love them. I know I would kill to get a bunch of these!" she stated with a laugh. The customer laughed along with her before replying.
"Oh yes, they certainly are beautiful. Perfectly fitting for her. She's just going to die when she sees them".
A/N: Please review with what you think.