"I'd like to get this over with quickly, Edward."

"Why should I answer any of your questions? You already know what I've done, everything that I've stolen, so you might was well just sentence me to prison already."

"It would be better for you if you answer—"

SLAM

"Lieutenant Colonel, General Hakuro's been—!"

'-'

Edward Elric was annoyed. Irritated. Vexed. Why? Because his colorfully dressed companion across the way was pestering him about alchemy, and more specifically, the Philosopher's Stone. Now, Ed may have been a genius when it came to alchemy, but the most he knew about the Stone was that it was a legendary object that couldn't possibly be real.

Ling didn't believe him, however, and he was now stuck in an unofficial interrogation. An official one between he and Hughes had already taken place earlier that day, but was soon interrupted by an officer bearing bad news.

"Are you sure you don't know anything about it?"

Ed's eye twitched. "I fail to see what could make a stone so valuable that it surpasses the law of Equivalent Exchange. So no, I don't know anything."

Ling sighed in defeat and slumped down on his cot. "Oh well, it was worth a try." The Xingese boy then descended into a doze, leaving behind a blissful silence.

One which was not so blissful a few minutes later when Ed began to get fidgety.

Edward was no stranger to waiting: as a thief, he had to be prepared to wait for any amount of time in order to get what he wanted, but this kind of waiting was unbearable. He had no idea what he was waiting for, he had nothing to occupy his mind, and to make matters worse, he had only one leg available to him and was therefore unable to walk.

So all he could do was wait. He'd heard guards talking as they passed by his cell, muttering about how he should be imprisoned without a trial. He didn't get why they all believed him to be a thief, even if it was true; he had been suspected of petty thievery a few times by MP stations in small towns, but he'd always been able to fool them. He supposed that by now, almost everyone was desperate enough to believe that a crippled kid was Fullmetal.

With a sigh, he began tracing imaginary transmutation circles on the wall, wishing he could use them and get out of this damn place. But even if he could, there was no way to escape unless some abnormally friendly fellow prisoner with skills in certain areas was willing to fetch his limbs for him. . . .

His eyes trailed over to Ling.

. . . That might work. However, he couldn't risk the other detainees overhearing his offer, because they might try to join in, and he couldn't have that. Then there were the guards; if any of them heard, the news would spread fast, and while half of them would believe he was completely incapacitated, most of the other half would believe he had some trick hidden up his sleeve. The rest of the latter half would be unsure of what to think and try to stay out of it. There was an off chance that a soldier might have connections in the underworld and want him out of jail for some reason, but he doubted that.

So how on earth would he get a word in with Ling without anyone hearing?

Unfortunately, no miraculous solution revealed itself to him.

Ed sighed, formerly active hand going limp. He had managed to solve the problem of how he was getting out (probably), even though he was unwilling to trust Ling. Now he just had to figure out how to eliminate the other problem.

'-'

Roy sighed as he hung his coat on the coatrack. A long day of work was over, and now he could finally—

The door burst open behind him. "Hey, Roy!"

. . . Relax.

He sighed and turned around. "You could at least have the decency to knock."

Hughes smiled. "What would be the fun in that?" His expression then dropped into a more serious one. "I need you to come with me." He grabbed Roy's arm and began dragging him out the door.

Roy narrowed his eyes. "Where are we going?"

"To my place, of course! You need to relax—"

"I was planning to do that before you burst into my house."

"—and have a nice dinner with my family, you've been working so hard on the Fullmetal case you deserve to have a break, and the best way to spend your time is with my wonderful wife and my adorable daughter!"

Roy sighed again and allowed himself to be dragged along, wishing that Maes had given him the chance to change out of his military uniform.

They arrived at the Hughes family's apartment about fifteen minutes later, during which time Roy had to suffer through his friend's endless babbling; he did notice that Hughes's cheerfulness seemed fake, like something was bothering him, but decided not to ask about it until after dinner when they would be guaranteed privacy.

Dinner was enjoyable and relatively relaxing, much to Maes's satisfaction, but Roy was glad once it had ended, because he still didn't quite know how to deal with Elicia, even after all these years of his best friend dragging him to these dinners.

An hour after dinner ended, he was still stuck there playing along with Elicia's story, which she had apparently made up and been shoving in people's' faces, or rather ears, for days. It was something about a teddy bear trying to make friends with a cat. . . . Roy really didn't get how or why she came up something like that.

"All right Elicia," Gracia broke in, "it's time for bed now."

After the little girl had been hustled away with much protest and promises of a bedtime story, Roy narrowed his eyes at Hughes, who dropped his cheerful act at once.

"What's going on, Hughes? Something's bothering you."

"That's actually why I brought you here." Hughes stood up and began leading the way to his office. "There's something fishy going on in this country."

Roy raised his eyebrows, standing up and following. "How so?"

Maes opened the door to his office and shut it behind them once they had both entered. He then proceeded to whip out a map of Amestris from his desk and began unrolling it. "I noticed that there have been a lot of insurrections over the centuries—"

Roy nodded, remembering Hughes's odd behavior yesterday evening.

"—and I circled each of their locations. All I had to do then was connect the dots."

Roy felt a growing sense of dread in his stomach, and rightly so, it seemed, when Hughes laid the map flat on the desktop.

His eyes widened; Hughes didn't need to do any more explaining.

I'm not a huge fan of emphasizing traits in characters (as in making Hughes always go on about his daughter and Armstrong constantly rip off his shirt), but I somehow end up making it happen anyway. . . . Anyway, I finally decided this chapter was finished after I realized that what I had written yesterday was a good enough ending. Yippee! *cough* Anyway, hope you enjoyed, because I wasn't completely satisfied with this chapter, partly due to its length.

*starts getting distracted reading and writing D. Gray-man fanfiction* What? I wasn't doing anything. (*watches D. Gray-man Hallow* Anyone else happy about this continuation anime?)

Please review!

-Quiet Leaf