Concerning Ed sleeping in a room that was just painted:

Uh, yes, I admit that was a bit of stupidity on my part. I'll just post the review that pointed out my error here to clear things up. Hope you'll forgive me :D

Vul: Sooo. You wrote that Ed was going to sleep in his room and I was like "Wait, aren't the walls still wet?", but then I figured, Ed had probably dried them with alchemy. Then I thought "Wait, wouldn't the fresh paint, even if it was dried, still stink for quite some time?" but then I remembered that Roy's specialty is, in fact, transmuting gases, so he'd probably get rid of whatever molecules the stink consists of.
...still, I felt like that should have been mentioned, not only so that people with weird thought processes like me aren't confused by this, but also to showcase a bit that Mustang is, in fact, a capable alchemist and can use that in non-combat situations (especially ones that are right up his alley), too.

Chapter 18

Revelations

Sunday morning started with someone knocking on the apartment door, loudly and insistently. Ed groaned, and tried to block it out for a moment before finally opening his eyes. At first he was slightly startled to see he was in a nice room with yellow walls, but then a smile crept on his face when he remembered that it was his room now. The smile vanished though when the annoying pounding on the front door began again. He rose from his bed and walked out of the room, entering the living room at the same time as a grumpy Mustang.

The dishevelled and not very happy colonel stalked over to the door and flung it open. His posture changed in a millisecond to professional alertness though when he was faced with a saluting soldier.

"Pardon the intrusion, sir, but we need you immediately. There has been another murder," the man explained hastily.

Mustang gave a short salute so the soldier was allowed to lower his arm. "I guess their sending you here to get me instead of using the phone means that it is rather close by?" he asked, his eyes narrowing as his sharp wit demanded a fast answer.

"Yes, sir. That, and the fact that they actually saw someone leave the crime scene and are shutting down the perimeter so they might catch them."

"Why didn't you say that immediately!?" the colonel demanded to know from the flinching soldier. But he didn't wait for an answer and turned to fetch his clothes. He probably needed approximately 43 seconds to get into his uniform. In that time Ed only managed to fix his hair in a ponytail and get his pants and his boots on, so he threw his red coat over his sleeping t-shirt.

"What do you think you're doing, Fullmetal?" Mustang asked when the boy followed him out the door.

"I'll take a look at the crime scene," Ed said, trying to keep up with the colonel's long strides as they followed the soldier out of the house.

"You are aware that this corpse will look the same as the last?" Mustang snapped, not very pleased and Ed knew the colonel was about to order him to go back to the apartment.

"I'll wait until you put a sheet over it or remove it," Ed retorted, determined. The older alchemist scrutinised Edward and the boy glared back, not giving in. He wanted to help, to prevent any more people from ending up as such a horrible mass of dead flesh.

"Of all times, the fire just had to start burning now." Mustang sighed but allowed Ed to follow.

"Wait here," was the short order when they reached the yellow caution tape. And Ed did.

He looked at some of the MPs who stood guard for the 'on an early Sunday morning unlikely case that a civilian stopped to gape'. "Are they still chasing for the person they saw or did they lose them?" he asked one of them. The woman slightly turned towards him.

"As far as I know, they lost them but we managed to cover a wide part of the town with alert men pretty fast, so we hope he or she is still around somewhere. The witness only saw the shadow of someone with a hat walking around the corner anyway, and is now pretty traumatised so we are not sure if it will be helpful in any way," she told him.

Ed thanked her and stood around waiting for a while, before there was a barked: "Fullmetal, you can come over." Swallowing hard, he ducked under the tape and walked into the alleyway. There was a white sheet over a distinctly human shaped form, the cursed transmutation circle peeping out at the seams of the fabric. Mustang stood a few feet away, talking to some other military officer but watching Ed from the corners of his eyes.

The alley was small but relatively clean. The dumpster near the wall had a few blood sprinkles on it but otherwise was unharmed.

Ed frowned. No sign of a struggle here. But the array was so big, how could people not see it and be dragged into it? "Colonel?"

The colonel finished his conversation with the other soldier and came over to him. "Yes?"

"Do you... do you know if the people were still alive when that was done to them?"

"They are too... deformed to be sure if there was a knife wound or the like and there are no bullets. The toxicological test showed no drugs. And judging by their facial expressions...we think they were pretty much alive and awake until the array finished its job," Mustang explained grimly.

"People don't just lie down on an unknown transmutation circle; they wouldn't be that stupid, would they? But then, how did the murderer get them there? I can't see traces of a fight and they would have smudged the array so it couldn't work if they had struggled or resisted..."

"Maybe the killer hit them over the head so they were unconscious until the pain from the transmutation woke them. But we can't tell, their skulls are like cracked-open eggs and the brain is the yellow and white content. Though it would have been hard to get the unconscious people in the alleys without being seen, so it must have somehow happened in here. Problem is, none of the people lived near the place where they were killed. So how did they get there?"

"And why? Do you think the murderer contacted them and made them come to the alley?"

"Could be possible. Would explain the lack of a fight. But then what did he or she tell them to make them come and maybe even lie down on the array out of their own choice? None of the people are related to the other in any kind, so how does the killer know them all? And if he doesn't know them, what could a stranger promise that would make you agree to come?"

"Maybe threaten your family and friends?"

"One of the victims had no family and friends, his only social contacts being the people at his work place. And even they weren't very fond of him."

"They don't need to bait them all with the same thing, do they?"

"You're right. So how does this realisation help us?"

Ed sighed. "Probably not at all." For a moment they stood in grim silence and sadly stared at the covered corpse. "You can't just print the array in the newspaper and tell people not to get near it, can you?"

"No." Mustang shook his head. "Could lead to some nutcase trying to activate it or become the next murderer. All we can do is warn people not to trust strangers who want them to come to a dark alley."

"Every kid is told not to climb into a stranger's car and how many do it anyway?"

"Too many," the colonel answered, even though the question was rhetorical. "Well," he continued after a pause, "seems like I need to go to HQ and work on a Sunday. Couldn't that bastard have waited until Monday, or even better: Never have killed again at all?"

None of Colonel Mustang's subordinates was very happy about being called to work on a Sunday, but they knew they had chosen a time-consuming job from the very beginning, so they did their usual complain marathon but nothing more. They dutifully sorted the material Investigations brought in, discretely making sure none of the crime scene photographs made it near Edward's eyes and cursing the serial murder all the way. Ed thoughtfully poured over the profiles of the victims.

"Huh, Boss, you trying a new style?" Havoc asked him when he caught sight of the white sleeping t-shirt Ed was still wearing.

"No, the colonel just managed to put on his uniform freakishly fast and I had no time to change my shirt if I wanted to follow him," Ed grumbled.

"Excuse me for hoping we might get to chase down that murderer if we hurry!" Mustang defended himself but no-one really heard because Havoc excitedly yelled "You're talking!"

"Uh, yes?" Ed said, blinking in confusion.

"This is so wonderful!" Fuery clutched his hands to his chest as tears ran down his face.

"Call him short, Falman!" Breda demanded, grinning.

"Uh?" Falman didn't understand it.

"Havoc, you call him short!"

"Why me?"

" 'Cause If he's back to normal enough to rant, then I don't want to be the one who gets punched."

Edward just stared at the excitedly bantering crew of crazy soldiers.

"It's good to hear you talk again," Hawkeye offered with a smile, stepping next to him so she could be heard over the ruckus the others caused. Ed smiled back at her and grinned at the others. It felt good that they had missed his sharp tongue. It felt even better than the ease with which he could talk again. The suffocating feeling of loneliness, the fear to break; that had kept him from just speaking up, but it didn't press down on him so much anymore.

He looked from the still smiling Hawkeye to the four male subordinates which were yelling funny stuff while flailing their arms around and finally to the colonel who sat at his desk, smirking at them all over his interlaced fingers. He grinned. No matter what happened, he could always be sure that some things stayed the same.

When he had read the colonel's first note back in Risembool, he had remembered a scene just like this one and it had helped, had dragged him back here. And now that he saw it live he knew that for once he had made a right decision. Maybe it had been a bit selfish, but it had not been stupid. Because all these people here might have had to carry his desperation with him for some time, some more, some less, but now that he was better he could return the favour, make them happy too. And even though he didn't trust equivalent exchange very much anymore since Al died, here it had definitely worked out and this was quite some comfort.

He received a few friendly claps on the back and Havoc, Fuery, Breda and even Falman demanded he'd say a sentence to each one of them. He called them all overly doting idiots and they were laughing and happy with it.

When the next Investigations officer brought in new material, they sobered up a bit though and resumed working. Ed read the files of the victims again and again, trying to connect them to one another. He sighed. They all really just seemed to be picked out randomly. The age ranged from twenty to seventy, both male and female and all looked different. The culprit didn't seem to favour a specific type.

Though... Ed knew it was superficial to think like that and usually he wouldn't care less about people's looks but he had been searching for connections and the only connection he could find between these people was that none of them was very attractive. Some looked, dare he say it, ugly, and others were little grey mouses you wouldn't notice. None of them was what people called a looker. Was that important? Was it just Ed's own point of view?

He stood, gathered the files and walked over to Mustang's desk. The colonel was hovering over a map that covered his workspace and was pinned with needles. He looked deep in thought. Should Ed disturb his thought process? What if he was thinking of something that would be the solution to it all? But the colonel emerged from his thoughts on his own and sat back in his chair with a rather unpleased face. "Found something?" he asked Ed, sounding a bit hopeful.

Ed fanned out the files of the victims so their pictures were all there to see. "What do you think of them?"

"Huh?" Mustang asked, leaning forward to have a proper look at the pictures, but not getting what Ed wanted him to do.

"Look at their faces, what do they all have in common?"

"Nothing really as far as I can tell," the colonel said frowning. "They're all just normal people, nothing special abou-..." he stopped.

"You wouldn't take one of these girls to a date, would you?" Ed asked as he saw realisation dawning on Mustang's face.

"When you say it like that you make me sound horribly superficial," the colonel said with a face that came very close to pouting.

Ed grinned for he had managed to faze the colonel's ego but then became serious again. "So, do you think that it's important that none of them look, uh, very handsome or pretty?"

"Well, the murderer uses an array that was originally thought to form human flesh in different shapes. Maybe he or she is even more superficial than we are and doesn't accept that people aren't defined by their looks so he/she tries to change them and fails. Or tries to punish them for hurting his eyes or something like that. There are people who're psychos like that," Mustang pointed out, thoughtfully tapping his chin while thinking. "Or we're just seeing things."

"Does this realisation help us in any way right now?" Hawkeye asked from where she was standing at the colonel's right side.

"I'm not sure but we should definitely keep it in mind," Mustang said as he stared down at his desk once again.

"And we should give that bastard a nickname. I mean, we called the brain blowing man Scar, so how about we give this one a name too? It's easier to refer to," Havoc announced from where he was sitting and staring at the gruesome pictures on his desk with disgust.

"What, you suggest we call him shadow with a hat? 'Cause that's the only description we have so far," Breda retorted with a raised eyebrow.

"The magician was said to wear a top hat," Falman offered, being their walking encyclopaedia.

"Yes, the magician." Fuery whispered in fear, as always falling for every ghost story he heard. "He was an alchemist who was said to have killed ten girls on stage without the audience noticing anything. He acted as a wizard, performing illusions on stage to make a living. His most famous trick was to make his assistants vanish in a box and an animal to appear where she has been. Little did people know that this was less of an illusion and more of a chimera transmutation. The magician believed that offering his assistant girls to alchemy was the price he had to pay for his fame. He called it equivalent exchange. And he was never caught..."

"But it's boring and stupid to use the same name twice!" Havoc exclaimed. They looked over to Mustang, expecting him to lecture them about putting too much thought into ghost stories again. But the Colonel was still staring at the map on his desk.

"Uh, sir?" Havoc asked.

"Sir?" Hawkeye repeated, a bit sterner.

Mustang just shoved everything but the map from his desk and frantically started to draw lines over it. "Either I am paranoid and seeing things that aren't there...or someone is mocking me, "he growled, finishing the last line and stepping back, revealing his flame alchemy transmutation circle drawn over the map. The pins that showed the murder places all neatly at the meeting points of the many lines.

"Holy shit," Breda breathed.

"Indeed. If this is no coincidence then the murderer isn't done yet," Falman joined the group around the desk.

"Shall I set up surveillance teams for the points of meeting lines that are yet to become a murder scene?" Hawkeye asked.

"Yes, get the police and everyone else alert. We'll catch that scumbag and I'll show him that this array is mine and not for him to mess with!"

There was a united, "Yes, sir!" and Mustang's team hurried away to do their job.

Ed looked at Mustang who stared at the array on the map with a look that made him wonder how come the thing wasn't burning yet. But then the colonel smoothed his features, leaving only his usual indifferent mask for the world to see.

"Don't go near these places, Fullmetal," he finally ordered and pointed at the map.

Ed nodded, though he knew he would not stay behind when they started hunting that serial killer down.