Chapter 19: Unto the Breach

"Never tuck your thumbs! How many times do I need to repeat something before you idiots figure out that I'm serious?" Captain Armstrong glowered mercilessly at the hapless cadet. "Never. Tuck. Your. Thumbs. Understood?"

"Sir, yes sir," the young man responded. Armstrong did not even acknowledge him before swooping down on her next victim.

"Get those feet closer together!" she barked. "Shoulder-width apart for optimal balance, one slightly forward so that you're ready to react."

She went around the room from pair to pair, criticizing them in her harsh, military way. Roy watched with amusement as his classmates obeyed with haste. They were all afraid of her, and she obviously expected them to be. That was where Roy had an advantage. She was strong, and self-assured, and everything he wanted to be when he was an officer, but she was entirely too reliant upon the assumption that her display of backbone would disarm and cow the cadets.

"Mustang! Straighten that spine!"

"It's as straight as it gets, sir," he said, with the barest hit of disrespect in his voice.

Her crystal-blue eyes narrowed to slits beneath their heavy lids. "Are you being fresh with me, Cadet?" she inquired, her voice low and dangerous.

She expected him to be afraid. He was afraid: everything about her, from her perfectly pressed uniform to her thick plait of pale hair – last week Roy had cheekily tugged her free-flowing tresses while she was upbraiding his sparing partner, an action that had earned him four hundred sit-ups and resulted in the style change – to her attitude of bold entitlement. But Roy had an advantage. He knew a woman stronger and more courageous than Armstrong. Nothing that this officer had achieved in her already very successful career – the details of which Maes had furnished – could compare to Riza Hawkeye's feats. That thought was a touchstone, and it helped Roy to keep the present moment in perspective. Armstrong might want to squash him like a bug, but he wasn't going to let her do it.

"No, sir," he said. "Only honest."

She curled her lip. When next she spoke, her voice was so soft that Roy doubted his partner could hear her. "Don't start anything you can't finish, Cadet," she hissed.

Roy smirked saucily. "I always follow through, ma'am," he said aloud.

There were a couple of startled hisses, and somebody snickered. The sound bolstered Roy's courage. He was developing a taste for showmanship, and an appreciative audience was always an asset.

"Sir," Armstrong corrected caustically.

"You don't look like a man, sir," Roy said, sweeping his eyes over her figure, which was almost but not quite concealed by the androgynous lines of her duty uniform.

Her lips spasmed and her eyes flashed with fury, but she kept her voice level. "You and I are going to put in a little time after class, Cadet," she threatened.

Oh, she was making it too easy. "My pleasure, sir."

This time, there were more than a few titters. Armstrong quelled them with a searing sweep of the room. "Laps, Mustang," she said. "We'll see if you can run half as well as you can lip off."

Roy didn't want to overplay his hand. "Yes, sir," he said softly.

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Maes looked up from packing his kit bag when a low moan came from the other bed.

"I hope you learned your lesson," he said wryly.

The rumpled, sweat-drenched heap of uniform stirred marginally, and another groan erupted from the mattress.

"You can't spit on an officer's boots," Maes told him. "Especially not an officer like Armstrong."

There was no reply. Maes crossed the room and took his spare shirts from the wardrobe.

"You're an idiot, Roy," he said happily, dropping them on the bed and beginning to fold them.

This, finally, elicited a response.

"Thanks, Hughes," the younger cadet mumbled thickly. "Thanks so much. I can't tell you how that makes me feel."

"Well, you've got to hear it," Maes told him. "And who's going to say it once I'm gone?" He moved into the water closet and proceeded to gather together his shaving essentials and such toiletries as he was permitted to bring with him. He raised his voice so as to be heard around the corner. "If you're going to go around antagonizing people, at least find people who aren't Amazons."

"There's nothing special about Captain Armstrong," Roy grunted. "She's just another brass act. And she's not as tough as she thinks she is, either."

"You know, it's that kind of keen insight into people's characters that gets smart-ass little bastards into a lot of trouble," Maes sang. "I have a feeling you're going to be seeing a lot of the track this term."

A long, torturous moan showed what Roy thought of that idea.

"Of course, there's a simple solution." Maes came into the room, tossed his leather kit on the bed, and sat down on his roommate's bed. "Move over," he said, nudging Roy's hip to make more space. He leaned forward, trying to catch the coal-coloured eyes with his own. "Stop trying to turn every class into a pissing contest."

"I oughta win," Roy said. "After all, she hasn't got the necessary equipment."

Maes slapped the back of Roy's head. "It's that kind of comment that gets you stomping grooves into the parade grounds 'til all hours of the night!" he exclaimed. "Take it from me, Mustang. Leave Captain Armstrong alone."

"Gah. When are you leaving, again?" Roy groused. "I want a little peace and quiet."

"You heartless wretch!" Maes moaned melodramatically. "I'm being sent into battle – to fight, perchance to die for my country – and all you can think about is when you can expect to be free of my nagging? You're going to feel awfully guilty when I'm dead in a ditch somewhere, and you're sitting here without your bespectacled conscience to keep you from snarking yourself to death."

Roy whirled from his belly to his back with a speed that belied his aching muscles. He pushed himself up on one elbow, using the opposite hand to seize Maes by the forearm. His dark eyes were suddenly wide. "Don't talk like that!" he snapped frantically. "You're not going to die. It's a training rotation. They won't put you in any real danger. They won't. They can't."

Maes chuckled a little uneasily. "Relax, buddy," he said, prying Roy's fingers loose from his arm. "There hasn't been any real danger on the western front for six months. In the last eight weeks, there have been two casualties, and one of those was a case of dysentery gone bad. I've seen combat before. I'll be fine."

Roy scowled in annoyance, effectively folding his terror back into its box and replacing it with the necessary facade of bravado. "Yeah, well, make sure you eat with one hand and wipe with the other," he said. "Since dysentery's killing as many soldiers as the Credoans are."

Maes nodded sagely. "I hear that some tough negotiations went into that treaty," he said. "Now, while I'm gone I want you to forward my letters as soon as they come, you hear me?"

Roy nodded, kindly overlooking the thread of anxiety. He knew that Maes was worried about Benjamin, but he wasn't going to address it unless the older cadet brought it up first. "And you make sure you write and give me all the hot tips on passing the rotation."

"Easy," Maes said. "Don't get killed." Damn. He'd done it again. Why, among all the volumes of knowledge that they imparted upon cadets, was there no course in coping with the emotional repercussions of being a soldier? "And eat with one hand, wipe with the other," he added, to lighten the mood. Roy huffed appreciatively.

"And don't antagonize Armstrong!" said Maes.

"That'll be hard to do from the western front," Roy lipped.

Maes rolled his eyes. "I was talking about you."

"I know," Roy said. "I was just pretending not to understand... because we both know I'm not going to listen."

Sadly, Maes thought with wry amusement, that was the truth.

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Through the weeks of swordplay, the first-years spent a good deal of time practicing stance and technique alone. They sparred with each other about every second class. Captain Armstrong taught with criticism, insisting that her pupils learn from their mistakes, instead of arming them with the information that might have allowed them to circumvent error in the first place. There was logic to her method: if they merely put theory into practice, time would make them sloppy and errors would occur. If they screwed up now, they would be careful not to do it again.

Though she demonstrated most of the techniques solo, they had not seen her spar with another person. It was this point that Roy – who was by now quite the endurance runner, thanks to his multitudinous punitive laps – made on the second-last day of class.

He knew even before he opened his mouth that the comment was suicidal. He didn't care. Maes had been gone for three weeks, sent out with the rest of the first-classmen for his final semester, which was a practical placement in a combat zone. Maes was lucky to have drawn the western border, where there had been little action. A third of his class had been distributed along the border with Aerugo, where the fighting was hot and the political climate was uneasy. Some had even been sent out east, to spend time with the battalions struggling to quell the terrorist uprisings. An unlucky few had been sent north into the Briggs Mountains.

So Maes was fortunate, but Roy still missed him. He had yet to be assigned a new roommate, and the solitude that he had missed so sorely when he had first come to the Academy was now annoying. He didn't have as much time to see Riza as he would have liked, and the Friday night forays into the social life of Central were not nearly as fun without Hughes. Simply put, Roy was bored. The thrill of picking at Armstrong – like poking a tiger with a stick – was the most excitement he had in his life at the moment.

At his comment, her lips tensed and her pupils vanished into pinpricks. The corner of one eye twitched almost imperceptibly.

"So you want to see me spar, Cadet," she cooed, striding across the room from the pair she had been lecturing.

"No, sir. I only wondered why we haven't yet," he said innocently.

She didn't buy that, of course. There was a flash of steel as she whipped her long blade from its sheath. "As the masters of the art say, Mustang, have at thee!"

Roy felt his eyes widen. "Me?" he said. "Me, sir."

"Who else?" Armstrong swept the room with her gaze, and suddenly there was a wide circle around the two of them as the other cadets backed away, torn between terror of their instructor and startled admiration of their compatriot. "Unless you're afraid."

"I'm not afraid, sir," Roy lied boldly. "Though I've never fought a woman before..."

The blow arced through the air so quickly that he scarcely had time to raise his blade. The force of the impact shuddered up into his shoulders and made his teeth rattle. He drew back, dancing nimbly away from her – but Armstrong was swift, and the katana was her art form. She struck again, and again. On the fourth parry, Roy realized with a pang of terror that he was hopelessly outmatched.

There was a collective gasp as Armstrong swept low with her sword. Roy leapt into the air just in time, in a motion that he had learned from Maes' father, who had taught him the basics of hand-to-hand combat. Such a leap was meant to be used against an opponent with a staff – but Absalom Hughes had never said anything about a berserker woman with a sword, so Roy was improvising.

"Observe," Armstrong was saying in her teacher's voice as her sword whistled through the air. "The control extends from the elbows into the wrists. If you direct the force from your shoulders you can muster enough energy to take off a man's head in one swipe."

Roy was damned glad that he had heard that, because he ducked instinctively just as her blade grazed the air above his scalp. The two swords met again, and this time both combatants leaned into it. Captain Armstrong glared viciously at him, and Roy tried to smirk. Then she twisted her wrist, and his sword flew across the room, torn from his fingers.

Startled, Roy sprung backwards. Armstrong whirled, her coattails and her braid following the centripetal motion. Her blade came down, and the flat of the katana smacked Roy just behind the kneecaps. He fell backwards, landing hard on his tailbone. His head slammed against the floor, and suddenly Armstrong was on top of him, one knee on his chest and her face as close to his as the awkward position would allow. Her blade was on his neck.

"My match, Cadet," she said coldly. The katana was withdrawn, and she straightened her back, easing her weight off of his ribs.

Roy was trying to catch his breath, but he could hear the awed silence of his comrades. Damn it. Not only did he look like a fool, but she was a goddess of war. He'd lost face and bolstered her image. It was a tactical error that was also a blow to his pride. Then in a moment of incomprehensible genius and monumental stupidity, he sat up, leaned forward, and planted a quick, smacking kiss squarely on her generous lips.

At oh-two-hundred hours the following morning, he staggered back to his dormitory room with on legs that felt like jelly. It was worth it: the hoots of laughter from his comrades were still ringing in his ears. Mustang hadn't lost face after all.

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Captain Olivier Milla Armstrong had accepted her reassignment orders reluctantly. Though the western front was quiet, it beat the hell out of trying to teach a crowd of snot-nosed brats how to wield deadly weapons. The last few weeks had only proved her point. The Academy was wasted on little shits like Mustang. His personnel file was lacking in many of the usual details, but she didn't need ink to fill in the blanks. He was obviously the son of some rich merchant or politician (not an officer's boy, obviously, or she would surely have run into him at some military function over the last two decades). He was spoiled, cocky, and he had an inflated sense of self. All of her efforts to bring him down a notch had backfired. If anything, he seemed more arrogant now than he had been at the beginning.

Olivier slammed her fist down on the desk, flattening the heap of evaluations that she had to complete and submit by tomorrow morning. She was not cut out to teach. She belonged in the battlefield, safeguarding Amestris from its enemies.

There was a knock at the door. "Come in!" Olivier snapped, before remembering to modulate her voice. She couldn't lose her temper. Too many of the pigs she worked with assumed that a woman was incapable of reigning in her emotions. With so few females in the military, the onus to prove the bastards wrong rested all the more heavily on the soldiers of officers like Armstrong.

The door opened, and a small creature came in. She was blonde and slender, clad in cheap clothing that had been given a tasteful makeover by some very skilled seamstress. Enormous carmine eyes dominated a pale, elfin face. It was the eyes that drew Olivier's attention. They were hard as rubies, and illuminated by a fierce determination.

"Who are you?" she asked bluntly. The girl could not be more than fifteen or sixteen years old. What was she doing in the faculty offices of the National Academy?

"Riza Hawkeye, Captain," the girl said. "I had... an appointment."

Olivier remembered now. Nanny Gret – Mrs. Andrew Oakley had come to her with a special request: would Miss Livvy consent to speaking with a young girl of Mrs. Oakley's acquaintance who was interested in enrolling in the Academy. Though Olivier did not admit it to anyone, she loved her one-time nurse. She trusted Greta Oakley as she trusted no one else, and if she thought the girl had merits, Oliver was willing to take the time to do her nanny a favour. The truth was, though, that with the modules coming to an end and Mustang being an adolescent idiot and her hot temper smouldering at temperatures that would melt diamonds, the assignation had slipped Olivier's mind.

"Quite," she said coolly, lessons in courtesy and formality asserting themselves. "Please, have a seat."

The girl took the chair on the other side of the desk. It was meant for students coming to ask help of their instructor, but as Olivier deliberately cultivated an aura that was not conducive to approachability, it had not been used even once since her arrival.

"Mrs. Oakley tells me that you want to enrol in the Academy," Olivier said. "I assume you have questions about what it's like to be a woman in the military?"

"No, ma'am," Hawkeye said quietly. Her eyes were now fixed in her lap, and without their resolve boring into her Olivier found it easy to regard her visitor as an overgrown child. "I think I already know what it would be like."

"Oh, you do, do you?" Olivier asked.

"Yes. I won't fit in. I'll have to work hard – twice as hard as any of the boys. I won't be accepted, and I won't have an easy time, but I know how to work hard, and I know I can do it." The girl inhaled slowly.

"I don't know if you can do it," Olivier said; "but the rest of what you say is true. This isn't the life for a girl who's just looking for a good paycheque. If you want that, try prostitution."

"I want to make a difference," said Hawkeye firmly. She still did not raise her eyes from her lap. "I want my life to be useful. I want to protect... the people of Amestris."

"Laudable goals," Olivier told her. "It sounds like you've given this a great deal of thought."

"I have, Captain."

"Then why are you here?" demanded the soldier.

The girl looked up at last, her extraordinary eyes boring into Olivier's as if the child could see right into her heart. "I need the endorsement of an officer in order to be eligible," she said. "I wanted to ask for yours."

"You've given thought to your goals, but you haven't done your research," Olivier said, affecting a scornful tone to cover the way that those eyes were disconcerting her. "You need a lieutenant colonel or better to apply to the National Academy. Major or better for Western or Southern."

"I know. But the Eastern Academy takes endorsements from captains."

"There's a reason for that. East City is a desert backwater, and Eastern is a substandard school. It doesn't have the staff or the funding that the other four do. The university isn't as good, there are fewer courses available, and Eastern graduates almost never advance in the ranks. It isn't the place for an ambitious cadet," Olivier said.

"I'm not ambitious," said Hawkeye. "I don't want to be a general, I want to be a soldier. I want to help... I want to..." Words seemed to fail her. She closed her eyes and drew in two bracing breaths. "I don't need to go to the best school to achieve what I want to. Eastern is good enough for me."

"Because it's the easy path you want to take it?" Olivier sneered. "That's pathetic. You want to do something with your life, fine. But if you're willing to settle for mediocrity, you're not good enough for me. Get out."

"But Captain, I—"

"Out!"

The girl seemed to arrive at a sudden decision. Something snapped into place, and she fixed her eyes on Olivier.

"My mother is ill," she said, a little too quickly. "She's at the State asylum in East City. I want to attend Eastern so that I can be close to her. If you won't support my application, I can find somebody else, but I thought you might want the chance to give another person the same opportunities you had. You enrolled when you were only fourteen, too, didn't you?"

This gave Olivier pause. "You're fourteen?"

"Yes."

A fourteen-year-old who wanted to protect her country, who was settling for a substandard college so that she could be close to her mad mother. It was a story that might have made misty the coldest of eyes and melted the most frigid of hearts. All that was irrelevant to Olivier. What she saw instead was the steel backbone of obstinacy shining through those extraordinary crimson eyes. She cocked her head to one side.

"I'll consider it," she said.

The girl shook her head once. "The application is due in two weeks' time. I have the letter written: you only need to sign it." She held out a piece of paper.

Olivier took it and perused the neatly printed lines. "Hmm. My thoughts are beautifully phrased," she said wryly.

"I have a way with words," Hawkeye told her.

"So you do," Olivier said. The girl had gumption – and a great deal of gall, coming in here with a pre-written letter. Her quiet boldness appealed to Olivier's nature. The officer smiled and picked up her pen. "Eastern Academy," she mused as she scrawled her name. "I think you're aiming too low... but maybe you'll prove me wrong and excel in spite of it."

"Maybe. Thank you, Captain." The girl took the letter back, folding it with care. She stood up and moved to the door.

"Miss Hawkeye," Olivier said, stopping the girl in her tracks. "Would you like some coffee or something?"

"No, thank you, Captain," said the child. "I have what I came for. Good day."

Then she was gone. Olivier sat back in her chair with a soft sigh. Driven, efficient and to the point. The girl would make a good soldier, she decided.

It was not until many years later that Olivier Milla Armstrong learned of the lie that Riza Hawkeye had told, but she never held it against her. They were both cut of the same cloth: determined and courageous women, each ambitious in her own way, fighting the odds in an organization built to accommodate men alone. Though never friends, they were compatriots in the same difficult battle, and they respected one another.