Chapter 21: Insubordination

In Central, Roy Mustang was suffering through the boredom of a four-week field studies rotation with one of the battalions that furnished Military Headquarters with commissionaires and night watchmen. In East City, Riza Hawkeye was on a steep learning curve. She was now a fourth-class cadet at the newest and least prestigious of the five military academies.

On the first day, the one hundred and thirteen recruits assembled on the dusty parade grounds. They were hardly an impressive sight: gangling kids in stiff new uniforms that had not been donned with anything like practiced care. Many had overgrown hair and unshaved chins. All but a few who knew something of military life stood at a clumsy approximation of attention.

To Riza's amazement she was not the only girl present. Knowing that Mr. Mustang's class had only three female cadets she had expected to be more or less alone. Instead, she picked out more than a dozen young women in just a cursory glance at the line. All were older than she, of course, for despite the rule permitting enrolment at fourteen most cadets were old enough to sign up on their own recognizance. Riza didn't care. Age was a relative trait and easy to overcome. Gender, on the other hand, was more obvious. She did not want to be singled out, and among a group of women she had a better chance of blending in.

After the address by Colonel Nolan, Eastern Academy's commanding officer, the cadets were given their barracks assignments. Fifty men were put in Barracks A, and forty-five in Barracks B. The eighteen girls were assigned to Barracks C.

It was a low stone building with a roof of corrugated tin. Inside, two rows of cots occupied the bulk of the floor space. An NCO with a receding hairline assigned each cadet to her bed and ordered the girls to stand at the foot of their cots.

"I'm Master Sergeant Rosenflower," he said briskly. "I'm your barracks commander. I want you to know that I take my job very seriously and I run a tight organization. I don't tolerate any nonsense. Keep your sheets squared, your boots polished and your hair off your shoulders, and you won't have any trouble from me."

He paced up and down the length of the room as he spoke, eying the recruits in a cool, appraising manner.

"I know that some of you are going to be uncomfortable sharing quarters with an old man – which, let's face it, I am. Get over it and count your blessings. At any of the other academies you'd be in the big barns with the boys. And while time and my lady wife – God rest her soul – have stolen most of my sex drive, I promise they've still got theirs!

"If that last comment offended you, well, you'll have to get over that, too. Men are pigs, and soldiers doubly so. There's not a thing you can do to change that, but you can change the way that they look at a woman in uniform. That won't happen if you get catty with them, or complain about their juvenile comments, or throw a fit when one of them tweaks your ass. The only way you'll ever gain their respect is by behaving like a solider and an officer. Act like one and eventually you'll be treated like one. Act like a pampered princess and you'll be treated like the camp whore."

There were a couple of scandalized hisses. Roseflower cleared his throat. "There are eighteen of you," he said. "That makes this the largest body of female cadets in Amestrian history. Congratulations. I recruited quite a few of you, but for those who haven't heard me speak, I'm a lead proponent of women in the military. When I was a green corporal there was a joke that if we'd had our mothers-in-law on the western front we would've pushed Creda into the sea in a week. I don't think it was a joke. Women make extraordinary soldiers. You have a tenacity and ingenuity that most men can only dream of. Your courage is unmatched. Most importantly, you are a resource our enemies have yet to tap – and one that Amestris is only beginning to. I'm proud to say that Eastern is leading the way in that respect."

There were a few surprised cross-glances. Riza thought she understood them. Eastern didn't have the reputation of an innovator. Were there really so many girls here because females in uniform was a progressive concept that the more conservative attitude of the better schools discouraged? Or were they here because the lower standards at Eastern made it easier for girls to make the cut?

"Now. You're going to have to put up with a lot of inconveniences," Rosenflower said. "We don't have segregated shower facilities, so if you don't want the guys to get an eyeful you'll have to use them at the designated times only. Those are posted here and in the shower bunker. You also might have noticed that the barracks has no toilet. I'm sorry: it was all we could do to get money for windows. If you need to visit Mother Nature at night, you won't be penalized for violating curfew, but take my advice and wear your coat over your pajamas. Understood?"

Riza didn't understand, but a few of her classmates appeared to. One or two looked annoyed. Others seemed horrified.

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Sergeant Rosenflower then took the girls through a rote of regulations regarding the care of their bed space and personal property. He went through several demonstrations of necessary skills including boot-blacking, button-polishing and field-pressing of uniforms. After that it was off to the mess hall, where Riza discovered that Mr. Mustang's horror stories about the regimentation of eating habits were all too true.

The afternoon was spent on the parade grounds, where the class muddled through their first lesson in stance and drilling. That night, after a bland supper full of barked reprimands, Riza made her weary way back to the barracks. She was hot and tired, and she wanted to take a shower.

Many of her classmates agreed, and with womens' time scheduled between twenty-thirty and twenty-one-hundred hours, they quickly gathered fresh uniforms and toiletries, and moved en masse towards the bathing bunker. It was a concrete structure with tiny windows set high under the eaves. Inside, there was an area of benches where the girls might deposit their clothes. A laundry bin stood beneath four shelves stacked with coarse military towels. There were a couple of cracked and neglected mirrors along one wall. Then the floor took an eight-inch drop into the shower area. Riza stared at it in horror, a cold knot coiling itself into the pit of her stomach.

There were a dozen corroded showerheads, each with two taps midway up the bare pipes. Half as many drains were sunk into the bare cement. There were no partitions, no curtains... no semblance of privacy.

Riza was not the only one who hesitated: a tall girl with brown hair piled high on her head shrank back against the door with dismay in her eyes. Most of the others, though, began to undress at once – some with brisk efficiency, others reluctantly. A red-haired young lady shook loose a mess of curls and laughed aloud as she writhed out of her blouse. "C'mon Steph!" she called out. "You've got to get 'em off eventually."

The brunette shook her head. "I'll wait," she mumbled, flushing a brilliant shade of red as one of the cadets near her flung off the last of her garments and brushed past en route to the showers.

"For what?" her friend demanded. "For second year, when we'll be two to a dorm room and you can bathe in private? Or maybe for nine o'clock, when the guys can get in here. Come on; we've all seen what you've got."

The tension in the room suddenly broke as the more nervous girls started to laugh. "That's right, we have, haven't we?" asked a broad-shouldered blonde. "I mean, we're all girls. What're we afraid of?"

"Exactly!" said the redhead. She marched across the floor, grabbed Steph by the wrist, and drew her towards the nearest bench. "Hurry up, now. You smell like an ox."

Steph rolled her eyes. "Thanks, Lucy. Thanks so much," she said with self-conscious sarcasm. Still, she began to disrobe.

Lucy surveyed the room, alert for any other hesitators. Her eyes fell, naturally, on Riza.

"You, too," she coaxed. "C'mon. Nobody has any interest in what you're hiding."

Maybe not now, Riza thought, but the minute she undressed... maybe the others had all seen what Steph had, but Riza could guarantee they'd never laid eyes upon anything remotely like her naked body. She shook her head. "I can't," she said, backing towards the door and shifting her change of clothes to one side so that she could grip the handle. "I just... I can't..."

She turned and fled into the gathering dusk, leaving a couple of startled shrieks behind her as her exit made a sliver of the bunker visible to the empty grounds without.

When the others returned to the barracks, clean and damp and united by one of the many indignities of military service, Cadet Hawkeye was already in bed, her oversized men's pajamas – standard issue, of course – clinging unpleasantly to her perspiration-slicked skin. They assumed that she was asleep with her face buried in the cotton pillowcase, and no one made any move to include her in their conversations. Riza, wide awake and overwhelmed with the scope of her problem, did not disillusion them.

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The fourth-class cadets had ninety minutes of unscheduled time the following afternoon. They dispersed to the corners of the campus, laughing and chatting together in small groups. Riza knew that she had no place in their socialization: she had not been around a crowd of peers since her father had pulled her out of school at the age of ten. She toyed briefly with the idea of going back to the barracks to sleep for a while, but instead she made her way towards the parade grounds. A group of seniors were drilling to the commands of one of their number. Riza took a seat on the wooden stands and rested her chin on her hand, watching the smooth, precise movements that were so vastly different from the muddled marching of her own class.

A booted foot and a blue-clad leg swung over the bench to her left. Riza turned her head in surprise to see Lucy, the redheaded girl, straddling the wooden plank. She grinned amicably.

"Hi," she said. "Hawkeye, isn't it?"

"That's right," Riza said. Making eye contact too rather more courage than she had at the moment, so she looked down at her own boot. There was a thin layer of dust covering the sleek leather. She would have to wipe them down before evening muster.

"We haven't been properly introduced. I'm Lucy Bacall."

"Riza Hawkeye," the younger girl murmured, accepting the proffered handshake. "Pleased to meet you."

"And that's Stephanie Isaac," Bacall said, pointing.

Riza turned around and realized with a start that the brunette had crept up from behind and seated herself on Riza's right. "Oh! Hello," Riza said.

"Charmed, I'm sure," said Stephanie. There was a hint of shyness in her voice, and she cast a quick look at her friend. Bacall exuded confidence, but Isaac seemed more human. Riza preferred the latter girl.

"So... is it true you're only fourteen?" Lucy demanded without further preamble.

"I'm a hundred and eight, unless it matters," Riza said pertly. Her eyes widened a little at her own boldness. It sounded like something Mr. Mustang might say.

The other girls were not offended, however. Both laughed. "I'm seventeen," supplied Stephanie. "Lucy's sixteen."

"Surprised?" Bacall asked. "Most people think I'm the older one. We're from Youswell. What about you?"

"Central. Hamner. I'm... I'm from a village called Hamner. To the north."

"Really? How far north?" asked Isaac.

"Not far. It's... it's in the eastern province," Riza said. She took a breath that seemed to relax her. "It's a very quiet place. Or it was. I've... I've spent the last couple years in Central."

Lucy whistled softly. "Central? Really. City girl."

"I suppose..." Riza said.

"Why'd you apply out here?" asked Steph.

"My application was endorsed by a captain," Riza told her. It was a convenient equivocation.

"Why apply at all?" Bacall queried. "We signed up so we wouldn't have to spend our lives as balmaidens in the black hole of the universe, but if you'd already made it to Central..."

"There's not much for a girl to do in Central, either," Riza said. "I didn't want to grow old working in a factory. And I wanted to protect..." She stopped, thinking of Mr. Mustang, who despite his bravado and his intelligence still sometimes seemed like a careless little boy. She didn't want to tell these two about him. He represented something sacred... a secret aspiration that she needed to enshrine in her heart. "To protect the people," she amended.

"Sounds like a plan," Bacall chuckled. She put a companionable arm around Riza's shoulder, and the smaller girl stiffened. She wasn't used to frequent physical contact, and certainly not from virtual strangers. "What do you say the three of us do it together?"

Riza wasn't sure quite what the other cadet was proposing, but Steph took hold of her elbow and smiled amicably. "Lucy's a great friend to have," she confided. "You'll see: she's got enough confidence for all of us."

Riza thought defiantly that she wanted confidence of her own, but she smiled and nodded. "I guess I'm glad to meet you," she said.

"You don't need to be scared of us, or of the other girls either," Lucy said. "I've talked to most of 'em, and I'll tell you this: we're all a bit scared. Who wouldn't be? It's a man's army; we don't belong here."

"But here we are," Steph put in.

"Exactly," said Bacall. "And you heard Master Sergeant Cue Ball. If we act like officers, we'll turn this into an army for women. We're going to make history."

Riza's smile was genuine now. This girl almost sounded like Mr. Mustang. She didn't have his wry, saucy humour or his new tactless, almost arrogant candour. Instead she had his optimism, his enthusiasm for his calling and his hope for a better future. Confident or not, Riza had a feeling that Lucy Bacall would be a good friend to have.

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By her fourth day on the campus, Riza could not bear it any longer. She had to take a shower. She had always been fastidious, even as a child, and the feeling of unwashed skin was unbearable. Her hair was choked with oil, and the back of her neck was dusty, and even under the layers of her uniform she could detect a faint, horrid smell of stale perspiration. She couldn't delay it any longer. Yet despite the other girls' increasingly flippant attitude towards the communal bathing, she could not bear the thought of undressing before them. Every time she tried to work up the courage, she remembered the black lines marring her back – and the exposure and humiliation that she had suffered at her father's hands as he had applied the tattoo. No one, save Mr. Mustang, had seen her disrobed since those dark days, and that was exactly how she had to keep it.

Her misgivings went beyond personal prudery. She was entrusted with a secret – a deadly secret. She had passed her father's knowledge on, and was freed of that charge, but she still had a duty to keep the information safe. Who knew? Perhaps one of the other girls was a student of alchemy. Perhaps they would tell someone who was. Perhaps...

Riza did not want to admit the third reason. She dreaded having someone ask about the tattoo. Even years after the fact, she could not cope with what had been done to her. The deepness of the betrayal, the realization that her beloved father had seen her only as an object, as a means to an end, was something that she had never quite reconciled herself to. Her mind skirted around the issue like a water strider navigating around a floating leaf, protecting her from the ghastly reality. If someone asked what the markings were... how they had come to be on her back...

So that night at twenty-three-hundred hours when the others were all fast asleep, she got out of bed. She put her greatcoat on over the pyjamas and tiptoed to the bunker door. Master Sergeant Rosenflower stirred in his cot, but did not awaken.

The compound was deserted. Riza moved swiftly along the path to the shower bunker, passing the streetlamps and the puddles of light that they cast on the packed earth. Once inside the deserted building, she stripped down and washed as quickly as she could. The warm water felt heavenly on her grimy body, and she worked the soap right into her scalp.

She had dried herself and was just pulling on her coat again when the door handle turned. Riza clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out as the door slid open. She had been caught!

A pair of green eyes fixed on her, and a now-familiar grin appeared. "Hey, Hawkeye!" Lucy Bacall laughed softly. "Breaking curfew?"

"Master Sergeant Rosenflower said..."

"That we could use the toilets after lights out," Bacall scolded amicably. "Not the showers. You're going to get yourself into trouble."

"I..."

Lucy flicked the lights off and took Riza by the wrist. She drew her outside, closed the door carefully, and hurried towards the latrine building, which unlike the other was segregated, divided into halves for each of the sexes. Beneath the harsh light of the naked light bulbs inside, the older girl studied Riza's face critically.

"Why don't you want to bathe with everybody else?" she asked. "You can't be that shy."

"I am," Riza said. "I really, really am."

Bacall laughed. "But honey, that's just silly! I told you, we're in this together. Nobody cares how you look without your kit, I promise."

Riza screwed her eyes tightly closed.

"I can't," she said emphatically.

"But kid, if you're in there outside the designated times a guy could walk in on you. Wouldn't that be worse?"

"If they did they'd be breaking curfew," Riza retorted.

"So are you," Bacall pointed out.

"But I won't get caught," said Riza.

Though Lucy didn't really believe her, she shrugged. The two of them walked back to the barracks together. After that, Riza took her shower late at night while her classmates slept. It was the perfect arrangement. None of them saw her, and of course the male cadets never walked in: they were all in bed, too. After a while even the fact that she was violating the curfew ceased to bother her.

It was Riza Hawkeye's first act of insubordination.