I'm ALMOST over my yucky bug! Yay for not being sick anymore! However, the lower half of the left side of my face is still numb from the dentist's office... it feels SO WEIRD.
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"How could you treat Al like that?!" Ed screamed in Roy's face as the man reclined stonily in his office chair. After a minute, Ed followed with, "Why are you treating me this way?!"
"How does it feel..." Roy said with the barest of volume, softer than a whisper.
"What?" Ed stood back a little.
"How does it feel when I turn my head and ignore your words and feelings?" Roy's voice was still just barely audible. Ed frowned at Roy.
"You're pissing me off," he answered bluntly.
"It hurts, too, doesn't it?"
"N-no, you're just making me crazy! Cut it out!"
"It doesn't hurt? Well never mind, then." Roy stood and Ed jumped back a few feet.
"Your brother is probably making plans as we speak. We'd better go see what they are," Roy said with a stone-cold voice. Ed opened his mouth to object, then remembered who Roy was talking about.
'Oh shit, I have to see if Al's OK.'
Ed spun on his heel and made for the door. Roy would normally roll his eyes at Ed's spastic behavior, but now he simply followed Ed into the other office.
"Al!" Ed caught a glimpse of the other Elric heading out into the hallway.
"Havoc, Hawkeye and I are going to find Dad."
"I'll come wi-"
"No, Ed. Just stay here."
"Al, just because I hate him doesn't mean I'm just gonna let you run off and deal with him all by yourself. I want to see what's up with him," he added after a moment with a slightly pouty expression.
"So you can use it against him?" Al retorted.
"Did he hit you?" Ed's voice was suddenly grave and serious. Al studied his brother for a long moment.
"No. He tried."
Ed inhaled slowly, but audibly.
"Stay here, Ed. Please. Please don't make this tenser than it will be already. I'll have Jean and Riza with me."
Ed didn't know why Al had used the two soldiers' first names. Al walked out, shutting the door behind him. Ed remained where he was, proof of Alphonse's power over him.
"So you're still here," Roy sighed. Glancing around, he added an afterthought. "Where are Breda, Fuery and Falman...?"
Ed shrugged. "Not here. Do you want me gone?"
Roy eyed Ed with the mild distaste usually reserved for a recently discovered termite colony. Ed swallowed hard, suddenly afraid of the answer. But when Roy didn't say anything, Ed pressed him.
"Well? If you don't want me around, you should just come out and say it!"
"And if you would rather be running wild like a homeless nomad," Roy said slowly, "you should just come out and tell me."
Ed bit his lip and glared at Roy, ostensibly for confusing him.
"My house is not a perch or a handy nest, FullMetal." Roy enunciated perfectly, making each word crystal clear.
"What?" Ed's face lost its menacing confusion his only concious feeling upon hearing Roy's words. OK, so maybe there was a tiny bit of denial there, but not on the surface. Roy shrugged.
"If you're going to stay, stay. But if you're going to go, then go."
Ed stared at Roy, trying to understand why the man was being so thick.
"Not everything's that black and white. Haven't you ever heard of coming and giong?"
"I repeat, FullMetal, my house is not a handy perch for you to frequent like Breda frequents the coffee machine. It is a permanent residence."
Ed scooted closer to Roy. "Why not? Why does it have to be one or the other?"
"Because I need to know, Ed." Roy sighed, expressing his frustration by running a hand through his black hair.
"Roy-. I'll always come back. You know that. I wasn't even gone a whole twelve hou-"
"You promised me, Edward! After you ran off into the desert after your brother, you promised me you would always let me know when you were leaving! This is not some new, surprise rule I'm forcing on you! It's something you promised me!"
"My little brother-" Ed was shouting now, "the one I've lived for ever since Mom died, the one I've worked so hard for and who kept me giong all these years of dealing with automail, and the military, and you was just kidnapped by our good-for-nothing psycho father, and you just wanted me to sit at home and let all you 'adults' deal with it! And you weren't! You weren't doing anything-"
"That's not true-"
"but you still wanted me to just stay out of it and let you treat me like a little kid-"
"And you acted like one!" Roy roared. "All you had to do was come downstairs and tell me where you were going! That's all I'm asking! That's what you promised me!"
"You wouldn't've let me go!"
"I wouldn't have wanted you to go! Because all you've done for the situation concerning your father so far is make! things! worse!! You provoke him, you fight with him, you try to keep Alphonse away from him even though Al wanted to be with your father!"
"DON'T CALL HIM MY FATHER! I'm yours! Remember?" Ed pleaded the last.
"Ed, what could have been a quick, uneventful arrest and containment of Hohenheim is now practically gang warfare! I'm- me and my crew- we're not acting as part of the military right now! We're basically just the bigger gang in this! And all because you put his guard up, you provoked him, and then you let the situation with Alphonse get out of hand!"
"You're the one who let it slip that you were going to arrest him!"
"You handled this badly from the start! Don't get on my back for a little slip of the tongue."
"I was handling it my way-"
"Your way is screwing up all my efforts to help you!"
"Well maybe I don't need your help!"
"Well maybe your way of doing things is violent and stupid!"
"Well so what if it is?!"
"If you would let me, I could teach you how to handle things like an adult, but nooo, you have to be a brat!"
"You never do anything! You wait until the last possible moment to act, unless one of your subordinates is telling you how to handle the situation! Just because I didn't pull your strings like they do, you got mad at me for actually doing something!"
"I am trying to balance all the things in my life, Ed!" Roy took a tiny pause before lowering his voice. "I am trying to balance a career in which I am basically committing treason every day I come to work here, my subordinates safety, my public reputation, my friendships with my colleagues in the military, and you. I know it doesn't seem like it, but I am trying to make sure you have what you need, OK? But I have already made so many mistakes that I'm trying to cover all these different things up, or keep them from one person or another, that I can't afford to slip up again. I know you think I'm slow to act, but there's more giong on behind the scenes than you know about."
"So you're hiding stuff from me, too?"
"Edward!" Roy sighed in frustration. "If you knew everything I did, especially in my work life, people would target you. For information."
Roy's words reminded Ed of General Hakuro's "visit" earlier that day.
"Um, speaking of that," Ed began a little sheepishly, "I actually came here for another reason, too... General Hakuro..." Ed trailed off for a moment when he saw the oh-God-let's-hear-the-damage look on Roy's face.
"Hey! Don't look like that! Hakuro found me this morning and asked me what you were looking for, so I told him you were looking for my father, Jass Kholl and he said something about a military car and I said yeah, sure, you were looking for that, too, but you didn't want anyone in the military finding out you were looking for my father because he was dishonorably discharged from the military and-"
"I'm going to kill you," Roy said through gritted teeth. Ed scuffed his foot on the floor a little, looking just a bit guilty for having taken his little rebellion that far.
"Now, when a man is dishonorably discharged from the military, it means that he had a trial and was deemed unfit for further military service," Roy explained to his impossible, disobedient progeny. "Officially, at least, he has been sentenced and punished and no longer merits any interest for anyone involved in the military. You told the General that whatever your father had done had affected someone still in the military, enough that he would be likely to seek revenge on your father. And someone who would find out about our search for him if it were included in our reports. A superior officer in charge of reading the reports and briefings from this part of the country, perhaps. So, now, Ed, Hakuro will go straight to the records of all the discharged soldiers in the past decade or so, and he and his team will search diligently for the name- Jasskal, or whatever it was- that you told him. Because he wants to curry favor with his superiors. Understand?"
Ed gave a curt nod, head still down. Now it was bowed with self-punishing anger rather than apprehension. Ed grit his teeth. Roy was right. By making up some fantastic story meant to throw Hakuro off the trail, Ed had instead given him even more information. Once he realized there was no Jass Kholl, he would come snooping again...
"So, I hope you're beginning to see that sometimes it helps to think before you act, to contemplate the consequences of your actions before acting."
Ed didn't have an answer to that. 'Yes' was true, but Ed didn't want to say it, embarrassed and angry at himself as he was. He didn't notice Roy moving until the man's hands were suddenly gripping his shoulder and jaw, tilting his head up. Ed flinched, then looked up, Roy's eyes digging into his own.
"Do you understand what I told you?" Roy asked, his gaze searching Ed's eyes for deception.
"Yes," Ed ground out. Roy held their strong eye contact for a long time before letting go of Ed's chin.
"I realize that you don't really understand the way the military, my self and crew included, works sometimes, and I think that if you did, you would see why I am sometimes reluctant to act. Now, so far in your military career, I've protected you from this side of the State. But now I think it's time you learned how we really work."
Roy's words sounded ominous to Ed, but hid didn't have a chance to protest or ask questions before the colonel strode back into his office and plopped down in his chair.
"Come here, Ed. Now tell me how to spell Jascal."
"It's Jass Kholl. J-A-S-S, K-H-O-L-L," Ed corrected. Roy wrote that down.
"How big would he be? How tall, how much would he weigh?"
"Uh-," Ed was confused, "I don't know."
"Make something up!" Roy snapped.
"Well fine!" Ed whined back in the same irritable tone of voice. "He's 5'7" and he weighs a hundred and forty-seven pounds."
"What color are his eyes?"
"Brown."
"Age? Birthdate?"
"Uhh... 39? July 19th?"
"Good enough," Roy said.
"What are we doing?" Ed asked.
"We are making a fake military profile. It'll never get an inspection by a Recordskeeper, but if we can slip it into the discharge records at the right time, Hakuro will find it and take the bait. Or at least be led to believe Jass Kholl actually exists. When was he discharged?"
"When he was twenty-six," Ed said uncertainly.
"Good. I'll make up a trial date for him. As soon as Fuery comes back, we'll send him to the printing room downstairs with this information. He's got a 'friend' down there, who, in exchange for a bit of money, will print absolutely anything the Master Sergeant asks him to, no questions asked."
Ed looked a little taken aback. "A fake record?"
"If we're stealthy, it will never be traced back to us."
"Do you do this a lot?" Ed asked suspiciously.
"Not this thing in particular. Usually it's more along the lines of covering up where you are and why you're there. You've gone on a lot of city inspections of East City lately, by the way. You always pay First Lieutenant Christin a visit."
"Who?" Ed was a little alarmed. Roy shrugged.
"Old friend."
"Old friend of whose, exactly? 'Cause I've never heard of him."
"Mine," Roy sighed as though it should have been obvious. "I give him a call whenever I don't want the higher-ups to know where you are and he...adds a bit to his weekly report."
"Well, but. What about if one of the higher-ups were in East City looking for me and I wasn't there?"
"It's a big city. And seeing as you never stay in one place for long, you'd probably turn up in some other town long before they got suspicious." Roy paused and then stated, "Christin and I are both very careful about keeping you away from where you shouldn't be."
Ed stared at Roy with a new view of the man. He opened his mouth and Roy held up a hand.
"Not now, you'll learn soon enough. Right now I need my lieutenants to run an errand for me..." Roy thought for a bit. Why would Havoc and Hawkeye be out driving around the city? They would be on foot again for a city inspection...
Fuery and Breda walked into the office carrying several cups of coffee. They came to Mustang's desk to drop off one of them and Mustang addressed Fuery.
"Master Sergeant Fuery, would you please run this down to the printing room for me?" he said casually.
"Yes, Sir." The man didn't even ask why. He took a look at the sheet of paper the colonel offered him, glanced at Ed, and then left. Breda, instead of returning to his seat, stood near Mustang's desk like a dog catching a scent on a passing breeze. The colonel dismissed him with a tiny wave of his hand and he headed back to the other office.
"Ed, come here," Roy commanded. Ed came and stood in front of Roy's desk. "I want you to read this report and then brief me on it. I don't have time for such a lengthy document today."
Ed accepted the offered report with a mixture of mild confusion and distaste. He plopped down on the couch and started reading. The report was five pages long, detailing everything the author had seen and heard during his week-long city inspection, which included sectors 17 and 16. The first page told about an unusual number of collapsed houses and buildings in the area. The second page followed with sightings of a large, ape-like creature seen numerous times, which seemed to have been following the soldiers, then turned to civilian rumors of zombies wandering the neighborhood at night, as well as lightning strikes in the middle of several clear nights. By the time Ed had read the whole report, he could barely sit still.
"Roy! Hohenheim's in Sector 16! Gluttony was following this guy, Envy was seen in the middle of the night, Hohenheim's been transmuting stuff at night, 3 people have disappeared, one turned up as a skeleton and not much more- that's Gluttony's work-."
"What?!" Roy jumped up from his desk.
"It was on your desk, how could you-"
"It just came in, Ed! That's why I wanted you to tell me what it said!" Roy snatched the report of Ed's hands, glancing over the text.
"Roy-."
"We have to wait until after work. I'm trying to keep a low profile here-!" Roy flinched when the phone rang loudly. He spun and took a step toward the desk to pick it up."Colonel Mustang...What? Have you called for an ambulance? Wait, who's- He did? Is he hurt? Injured? Well, just try to keep him there 'till we get there. OK, I'm coming as fast as I can." Roy slammed the phone down and before Ed could ask, snapped, "Hohenheim shot Lieutenant Hawkeye. Your brother's hysterical, come on."
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Oooh, am I mean or am I mean? Hehehe. This is only... like, my 2nd character death so far. Can you imagine that? 48 chapters and only two people have died so far? XD Except for nameless civilians and stuff...
R&R please! Your reviews remind me that I need to keep writing!