Chapter 8: Playing With Fire

Maes Hughes wrinkled his nose so that his specs crept up towards his eyebrows. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked, the picture of wary scepticism.

Roy surveyed the empty field with its thin dusting of crystallizing snow. Maes had found it, and it was perfect. The damp would keep the grass from catching alight, and it was far enough from the city that they were unlikely to be interrupted by any curious bystanders. It was perfect.

"I have to try it," he said. "I can't wait anymore."

"But you said you've only decoded part of your sensei's notes..." Maes hedged warily.

"Yes," Roy allowed. "But it's the important part. I know how it works now, I'm just not sure how to control it."

Maes closed his eyes. "Let me get this straight," he said. "You're going to experiment with fire without knowing how to control it?"

"I think I understand how," Roy said.

"How comforting."

"No, really, I do," Roy told him. "See, hydrogen and oxygen exist in normal air as covalently bonded atomic pairs. They're both volatile, but nitrogen and the noble gasses like helium, neon and argon aren't. Those elements are stable, and they won't burn. So if I make a shell of inert gas, and feed a column of hydrogen and oxygen into it, then—"

"Whoa, stop, I beg you!" Maes laughed. "That's way over my head. I'm just a normal human being: alchemy jargon's a whole 'nother language to me. You're the circus freak. Just make sure you know what you're doing, 'cause I solemnly promised Gareth that I wouldn't die in a farmer's field, cooked alive by a crazy cadet."

"If you don't trust me you can leave," Roy said coolly. He wasn't about to tease Maes back, for the moment was too serious. Strangely, he didn't feel cowed by the other boy's needling. This moment was too important for any inkling of self-doubt. If he could produce something – anything – today, then the efforts of the last three months would have meaning. His struggles, Riza's travails, they would finally bear fruit.

He took off his gloves and his hat, and drew a small silver cylinder out of his pocket.

"What's that?" Maes asked.

"I have to draw a circle with something," Roy said. "Since it needs to have contact with my hand and with the air, the best thing to do is to put it on my skin." He used his teeth to remove the cap.

"A lipstick?" Maes said incredulously, as Roy began to sketch the array onto the back of his left hand with the wedged tip of bright red grease paint. "I didn't realize that alchemy was so glamorous."

"Do you have a better idea?" Roy challenged. "Chalk wouldn't take, pencil doesn't mark skin, and if I used pen I wouldn't be able to wash it off. Lipstick is perfect."

"Did you get it from your mysterious lady friend?" asked Maes.

"I thought you didn't want to hear about her," Roy countered. He put away the lipstick. "Did you find a lighter?"

"You said it didn't matter if it had kerosene, right?" Maes said by way of response, holding out a cheap tin specimen with a narrow flint wheel.

"Perfect," Roy said. He took it in his right hand, and stood with both arms out in front of him. He had never performed a transmutation in such a ridiculous position. He felt disoriented, without the firm physical contact with the circle. 

He wondered if he should have drawn a mirror image, but then he focused his attention upon it, and he could feel the crackle of alchemical energy. It was as if his body, being so marked, had become a vessel of power. His heart palpitated nervously, and he exhaled to calm himself.

"Stand back," he said. Maes didn't wait for a second warning, but retreated post-haste to a position some ten yards behind his friend. Roy closed his eyes, trying to feel the molecules around him. Matter, matter everywhere... he was breathing it. It lapped at his skin. Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen. Trace amounts of argon, of neon, of helium.

The transmutation began. There was no surge of raw power, no crackling of blue light. It was a gentle, slow rearrangement of the freely floating elements in the air. In swept nitrogen, forming a column. A bubble, Roy imagined. A hollow sphere. Then into it he mentally injected a stream of oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen was flammable, deathly flammable, and oxygen was nourishment for the fire.

When he thought he was ready, he flicked the thumb of his right hand against the flint, sending a shower of sparks from the lighter. He braced himself for the explosion of heat and beauty.

Nothing happened.

Roy tried again. Another shower of sparks, and nothing. Frustration surged to the surface, and broke his concentration. He could feel the steady outflow of spagyric energy vanish, leaving him empty. It was a moment of bathos that seemed to shrivel his heart and his enthusiasm into a wasted prune of bitterness. He had been so sure that he could do it.

"That's it?" Maes said, nonplussed.

That's it, Roy thought. Then he frowned, a cold glow of determination in his sloe-coloured eyes. He could do this, damn it. He wasn't just an average alchemist. He had mastered every basic concept he had ever been taught by his sensei – and one or two much more advanced tricks that Hawkeye had thought too far above him. He could do it. He could.

Again, he focused his mind and his strength into the transmutation. It was unlike any other that he had ever attempted, for it had to be continuous. A steady, controlled manipulation as he sent forth the catalyst spark...

Nothing.

"Maybe you need the rest of his notes," Maes suggested softly.

"Maybe," Roy allowed, staring down at his garishly painted hand. He was making the air move: he knew that much. But either he wasn't doing it right, or he was still missing some vital instruction. Clearly further study was needed. He put the spent lighter into his pocket with a sigh. "Let's just get back," he said flatly. "If we don't leave now, we'll be late for supper."

discidium

Captain Casperia was talking about the conflict in the Ishbal region. Since the course was supposed to focus on the science of modern warfare, the instructor was a bit far from the topic. What he was saying wouldn't be testable, then, and so Roy did not pay it any particular attention. He had another agenda.

He had drawn his sensei's array on his palm, this time using an eyebrow pencil obtained from the same dusty apothecary where he had bought the lipstick. He'd got a few odd looks from the druggist when he came to the counter with a fistful of cosmetics and a wooden comb. His old comb had been broken by Cadet Garland, a real joker who was the bane of shower-time. As for the paints... they worked well.

The feeling was different with the circle on the palm. It seemed to give it less exposure to the air. Roy closed his eyes and focused. His goal was to send out a thin column of nitrogen. His mind sifted through the air, sending unwanted elements bouncing away. It took an enormous amount of concentration to sort the hundreds of thousands of molecules. Oxygen to the left, hydrogen to the right. Mix in inert gases for safety, but keep the nitrogen pure. A narrow cylinder that lengthened and moved slowly, slowly down to the front of the lecture hall, where Captain Casperia was railing on about the red-eyed rebels who were defying the military's attempts to bring order to the eastern region.

Roy knew that he was too slow. Moving the air like this, he would never achieve the delicate arcs of flame that his sensei had managed with such apparent ease. Maybe a thick pillar of flame, if he used oxygen and hydrogen where now he had nitrogen, but never the acrobatic fire that he remembered Hawkeye-sensei producing. Still, everyone had to begin somewhere, and this was the best way he knew how to do it.

"—agree with Colonel Fessler. They have to be put in their place! Order must be maintained. It's essential for the wellbeing of all Amestris that—"

He was cut off in mid-sentence by a startled snort. His beady eyes whipped from side to side, trying to identify the source of the jet of air that had suddenly rushed into his face, ruffling his overgrown eyebrows. One or two cadets snickered at his expression of discomfiture, but only one smirked in satisfaction.

Roy Mustang was learning how to control the very atmosphere that he breathed.

discidium

He still came to her every night, but his visits were brief, and soon they would cease altogether.

Riza knew that Mr. Mustang was tired of staring at her back, trying to decode the third circle of the cipher. He seldom lingered for more than an hour, now, and most of that hour he spent talking to her, either asking for details of her day, or offering his. Riza wondered if he knew how much she appreciated this attention. It seemed almost as if they were truly friends again... but sooner or later the moment would come when she had to remove her shirt and lie on her belly, and then she was once again nothing more than a canvas. A worthless scrap of paper whose only value was that of the information printed upon it.

It never occurred to Riza that this was not at all how Mr. Mustang saw her at those times. She would never have guessed, scarred as she was by her father's uncouth treatment of her, what went through the young soldier's head each time she spread herself out before him. The moment of horror, when he realized each night as if for the first time what her father had done to her. The admiration that he owed to the valiant young spirit who had not only submitted herself to this atrocity, but was still fiercely loyal to the monster who had used her so abominably, protecting his research with her life and her honour. And the uneasy undercurrent of self-loathing, because he knew in his heart of hearts that if he had not gone away, Mordred Hawkeye would never have been able to do this... and worse, that by studying the array like this he was validating his sensei's sin and perpetuating the dehumanization of the brave and beautiful young woman before him.

Riza imagined none of this. The brief examinations that now replaced the hours of tormented study were to her purely academic. He was studying her from a fresh perspective each time, looking for something that he might have missed. He had almost all of the information he needed. When he had no further use for the tattoo, he would have no further use for her.

And yet the days passed, and he made no sign of discontinuing his nightly pilgrimage. It was all most strange.

discidium

Maes watched as Roy drew the sigil on the back of his hand. It had been almost a fortnight since they had come out here the first time. Now, Roy insisted that he was ready to try again.

Maes thought this was a bad idea. He had a layperson's natural mistrust of alchemy, and the fact that his best friend was a practitioner of the mysterious science did little to allay that. 

The idea of doing alchemy with something as dangerous as fire... well, Maes had never been this far out of his comfort zone.

"I've got it this time," Roy said. "I've been practicing."

"What? Where?" Maes asked. "When?"

"Not with the fire, just with air," said Roy, rolling his eyes a little. "I practice in class, at meals, anytime I can. It's easier in closed rooms, where there's no draft, but I can do it outside, too."

"With air? I thought you said this was flame alchemy?"

"I tried to explain before," Roy said. "The fire is just a by-product. What I'm really doing is manipulating the concentration of different gases in the air..." He paused, taking in Maes' blank expression. "Never mind. You're going to see flames today."

He held out his hands. He looked a little absurd with his arms extended straight in front of him, a lighter in one hand while the other bore the circle. Maes didn't bother to step back: he didn't doubt that this would be the same spectacular failure that he had witnessed last time.

Roy closed his eyes briefly, visibly centring himself. Then he lifted his lids, staring ahead with alarming intensity. Suddenly, Maes felt a breeze, though the day was calm. Air was moving and shifting. The cadet almost fancied he could feel the roiling chaos being brought to order – what his friend was surely feeling, for he was the one who was doing it. Then Roy's thumb moved to the wheel of the lighter.

There was a glow of gold and a cacophonous thunder of small explosions. An enormous ball of fire appeared before Roy, roiling and surging wildly. There was more wind, wild and uncontrolled this time. And then nothing but breathless silence and the sharp stink of burnt wool and scorched hair.

Maes removed his glasses from his face, wiping them with his handkerchief. When he put them back on, he was pleased to see that Roy was still standing, though there was a large burn across the front of his military greatcoat and the fine fringe at his hairline was almost gone. Maes braced himself, trying to think of something comforting to say.

To his astonishment, Roy threw back his head and laughed victoriously. "I did it!" he whooped. "Maes, I did it!"

Maes stepped forward, and drew him into a bracing embrace, clapping him on the back. "You did it!" he agreed breathlessly. His pulse was still pounding, but Roy's joy was infectious.

Cadet Mustang pulled back and looked sheepishly at his left hand. The knuckles were burned and already starting to blister. "I obviously need more practice with the proportions, though," Roy said. "I think I had too much hydrogen, and I need a thicker buffer between the volatile gases and my body..."

Maes could see the cogwheels turning with the precision of a thirty-jewel watch. Roy had solved yesterday's problem, and had proved it spectacularly. Now he was already working on the next one. His brow furrowed in thought, and his eyes clouded over slightly as he stopped focusing on his surroundings, but he was still grinning enormously.

He'd probably stop smirking when he had to explain to the commissary how he had ruined his greatcoat, Maes thought with wry amusement.