Sorry for the cliffhanger and slight delay... but hey, here's chapter twelve! Enjoy, and please review!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

CHAPTER TWELVE: The Private Study

They crowded round the unopened door. Clara had asked if she could join them for the grand opening, as Maes had dubbed it, and anticipation was thick in the air as Roy prepared to finally reveal to the world the Elric brothers' study.

The lock was stiff, but after a few moments' struggle, the key turned. Roy suddenly realised he'd been holding his breath, and released it just as he turned the handle and pulled, opening the door to the-

-or at least he would've done, had the door not chosen that most inopportune of moments to stick.

The tension that had filled the air left almost immediately as the group burst out into hapless laughter. It took a good few tugs to finally open the door and finally reveal the dim room that lay beyond.

Maes switched on the powerful camper's lantern he'd brought and stepped into the room. In the yellowish light, it was eerie; cluttered with papers and books and bizarre bits and pieces. As Clara had said, there were arrays everywhere: pinned to the walls, on the covers of books... strange, intricate circles covered almost every surface.

"It was alchemy." breathed Roy. "How in god's name- why- oh, bloody hell."

"My thoughts exactly." muttered Maes. "I think we can safely say we know what the Sins where after though. This is unbelievable..."

Vato frowned. "Those books over there have no titles.... they look like journals."

"Where?" asked Maes, on the alert. "Oh, I see them- Riza, they're right behind you. Pass them here?"

Riza obliged, pulling one slim volume from the shelf and passing it to Maes and then stacking all the other untitled books on a nearby table. Maes opened the book almost reverently.

"A... travelogue?" he muttered.

"What?"

"It's a travelogue. But there's something weird about it... there's no canal through Lior, is there?"

Roy shook his head. "No... there's a river, not a canal."

"It's written weirdly, too. Kinda awkward, as if the author's not really sure about what they're doing..."

Clara, uncharacteristically silent up to this point, looked up. "I... don't think that's a travelogue." she said slowly. "The professor once got some research of his stolen by an associate, and ever since then, he used to write it in code... and the code he used..." she trailed off meaningfully.

"So... this is in code?" asked Maes, frowning. "Isn't everything around here... anyone got a cipher?"

"Afraid not," said Clara. "But can I have a look? I can't translate it, but... I read some of the Prof's 'travelogues' once- don't look at me like that, he let me, I couldn't understand anyway- but the point is that I might be able to tell you if it's coded or not. No promises, mind, but... it's a possibility."

"Sure," Maes shrugged. "Don't see why not. Here."

She took the book and flipped it open to a random page. "Hm."

"What?"

"This... it isn't the professor's. You're right, it is kind of awkward- there's no war memorial in Rizembul, no canal in Lior; but this mentions them... it's like whoever coded these didn't know what they were doing at all." she paused. "With a little time, you could be able to crack these."

Maes frowned. That seemed off to him... "The person who coded it was an amateur? But everything else has been so top secret, why would they let this slide... and I thought only the Elric brothers were allowed... in... here..." he trailed off, eyes widening. "No way."

The others quickly caught his drift. "Hey Clara, is there a name on that book? Anything?" Jean asked quickly.

She began to flip through the book, eyes scanning each page.

"...E.E." she said. "And A.E."

"E.E. and A.E." muttered Roy. "Edward Elric and Alphonse Elric."

"They coded their work?" Heymans said incredulously.

"Not very well," said Maes. "Although, for a pair of kids, they didn't do a half bad job... the Professor must've taught them to do it. After all, it's obvious he knew how dangerous all of this was, and it looks like he's the one behind all the security, so it makes sense that he'd try and teach his kids to code their work." he paused. "Well... sort of, anyway."

"This is waaaay over the top," muttered Jean. "All for one pair of kids?"

"And, apparently, alchemy." Riza reminded him.

"And it wasn't enough," added Clara. "They still..."

Jean bit his lip. "Oh. Yeah."

"This is getting really weird," said Kain. "You don't think they really... I mean, alchemy? Nobody's been able to do alchemy for hundreds of years. It was made illegal after the... Ishbal. All the texts were burnt- it's a lost art. It's... it should be impossible!"

"Maybe not quite as lost as we thought," said Roy, eyeing the arrays on the walls. "Although given what happened to the Elrics, I'd say they'd have been better off if it had been."

Maes tuned out the conversation around him momentarily, absent-mindedly looking over the other 'travelogues' as he thought. There was something bothering him about this room- something just wasn't right. There was a siren ringing in the back of his mind, his investigator's instincts in overdrive...

He glanced down at the open book in his hand. The page before him was dated the fifth of September, 1998.

I know there's something-

It hit him like a steamroller.

His eyes widened as he stared down at the date of the entry in the book. The entry that was so much more sophisticated, so much smoother than the entry from the first book- as if whoever had written it had had time to practice.

The older of the two of them had been ten when they were killed.

1998. It's dated 1998.

The Elrics were murdered in 1995.

The words left him in a single shocked breath:

"Oh, god," he whispered. "They didn't die."