It became a routine.

Ed would spend his days holed up in the evidence warehouse analysing coins, go back to the hotel to have dinner, alone, then spend his evenings trying not to strangle Second Lieutenant Havoc. He discovered that he did not have the patience to be a good teacher.

He didn't understand how Havoc could have so much difficulty learning something that came so easily to himself. He got impatient and frustrated but then he saw how hard the man was working to learn and didn't really have the heart to give up.

Al, he thought miserably, was always better with this sort of thing. Al was patient and kind and did not have difficulty showing empathy, or any emotions, to others. It added a level of cruelty for the gate to give Al an emotionless face when his brother had such a big heart.

He was more than a little worried and upset that Al had not called him from Central. Then he thought guiltily of all the times he had promised to call someone and never did. Maybe Al had simply got distracted or lost track of time. Ed noticed that, because Al didn't have the need to eat and sleep, he sometimes lost sense of time.

He told himself to wait before panicking. But it had been three days and he hadn't heard from Al. He was worried. And being worried distracted him. He was so distracted on his way into the evidence warehouse, in fact, that he did not see the man before he walked full force into him.

Despite his age, Ed was quite solidly built with the added weight of his automail to help anchor him. But the man was a fully grown adult. They collided with just about equal force, spilling the man's coffee over the both of them.

"Woah-,"

"Watch it! Oh it's you." Detective Hartley eyed him with dislike as he tried in vain to wipe the coffee from the front of his uniform. "Watch where you're going, Sir," he practically spat, tacking on the last part with a mocking snarl.

Ed returned the look with equal dislike, not truly bothered by the lack of military respect, since he had never asked for it to begin with. "Same to you, detective," he said, shaking the coffee off his now stained gloves. He eyed the man's shirt and tie, which seemed to have absorbed most of the coffee, though his own clothes had not been completely spared.

He pressed his hands together and touched his clothes, lifting the coffee from the fabric of his red coat and gloves easily. He had washed his clothes this way since leaving Resembool and it was a familiar transmutation. As the light of the transmutation faded, he caught a glimpse of a look of surprise on the older man's face, but it quickly vanished.

He smirked cockily at the man, which was met with a scowl. "Sorry about your uniform," he added without any sign of remorse.

Detective Hartley glared murderously at him, his face showing signs of redness from his supressed fury. Ed thought, amused, that the man should be careful about his blood pressure but chose, in a moment of rare wisdom, to keep that to himself.

"You think you're so smart, don't you," the man sneered. "You think you're just better than everyone else-,"

"I never said that-,"

"-that just because you got your licence, it makes you a goddamned expert all of a sudden. Well you're not! You're just a naïve little punk with a few tricks to impress the Brass."

Ed frowned at this. He never considered himself to be an expert but he knew he and Al's skills, when it came to alchemy, were better than average. And he sure as hell had earned his licence, just like everyone else.

"Are you questioning my credentials, Detective?" he asked with a dangerous edge to his voice. There was a fire in his amber eyes.

"The fact that they even let a little kid become a State Alchemist is ridiculous! What are you, ten?"

"I'm thirteen dammit!"

"Whatever, you-,"

"What's going on?" Sean appeared in the doorway behind Ed, taking in the spilled coffee, the stain on the front of Detective Hartley's uniform and the way the two of them were glaring daggers at each other. He gave the older man a cold look as he stepped forward to stand beside Ed. "Is there a problem, Ben?"

It took half a second for Ed to realize that he was speaking to Scruffy. Apparently, his name was Ben, who knew.

Detective Hartley glared at Sean, too. Ed wondered if there was anyone this man actually liked.

There was a long tense moment where the two of them glowered at each other, waging some silent battle with a history Ed did not understand until Detective Hartley scoffed. "Of course not," he said with his usual gruffness. Ed figured that Detective Hartley didn't care about showing disrespect to Ed when they were alone, but Sean might report him to the Commissioner. Apparently he valued his job more than whatever issue he had with Ed being a State Alchemist.

"You do realize that being a State Alchemist isn't all rainbows and sunshine, right?" he jeered at Ed. He shrugged his shoulders as he made his way passed them to the door, probably on his way to the washroom to try and save his uniform. "But what do I care if you get yourself killed playing the hero."

Before he disappeared completely, he turned back, his eyes resting on Sean briefly as he continued to address Ed. "But I'd watch my back if I were you, kid," he said, and he left.

The two remaining alchemists looked at the empty doorway for a long second after the man had gone.

"Well that was pleasant," remarked Sean with his usual cheerfulness.

"What a jerk! What the hell is his problem, anyway?" Ed seethed.

"Don't listen to him, he's probably just jealous," said Sean shrugging. "You know, he failed the State Licence examination three times," he added.

"What!? That man's an alchemist?" Ed stared out the empty doorway as if the man was still there. He was not surprised by the fact that Detective Hartley had failed the test. A lot of people tried, and failed, to get their State licences every year. It was excruciatingly difficult. In fact, Ed was sure that without the knowledge from the Gate, he would not have been able to pass it as easily as he had. Still, though, thought a smug part of himself, I scored among the highest the year I took it. This was not common knowledge though, and most people were simply impressed by the fact that he had passed it at all.

Sean made a face. "Lucky us, looks like we're stuck with him for today. He's not wrong though. I would watch my back if I were you, I wouldn't put it past him to try something. He's slimy that way…"

"Yeah, well, he doesn't know what he's messing with" replied Ed dangerously. He wasn't afraid of Detective Hartley, even though the man did his best to intimidate him. He'd dealt with meaner and scarier people already. Still, now that he knew Scruffy was an alchemist, it did bother him that he had no idea what he was capable of.

Mustang would know.

Colonel Mustang was a recruiter for the State Alchemy program and always seemed to know everybody's business when it came to alchemy. In fact, he always seemed to know everybody's business in general. Ed made a mental note to ask the Colonel next time he was in the office.

They made their way to the now familiar long table and settled down to work.

Half an hour later, Detective Hartley came back, wearing a clean shirt, and sat himself at the far end of the table without saying a word to either of them. Ed did not miss the dirty looks that were sent his way but he ignored them. He wasn't here to make friends although Sean and Anna were the only ones who had befriended him. In all honesty, he just wanted to get this job over with quickly so he could go back to focusing on what really mattered to him; the philosopher's stone.

Thinking of the stone made him think of Al again and he felt a pang of worry in the pit of his stomach. Where was he? The two of them had seen enough insane alchemists that it was not a far stretch for him to imagine his brother getting kidnapped by a mad professor of archeology.

He shook the thought out of his head. He would call the University tonight and ask around.

Ed realized that he'd been staring at the silver coated copper coin in his hand for a full three minutes without really seeing it. His thoughts were elsewhere and he lost his place in his book.

Growling in frustration, he crossed out his notations aggressively and had to review his notes again to find his place. It didn't help that his handwriting was a barely legible scrawl, something Mustang loved to point out from Ed's reports. He made a face at the thought that no one seemed to appreciate the fact that he was, technically, ambidextrous. Edward was naturally right handed and had to learn, among plenty of other things, how to write with his left hand.

He sighed, reviewing his notes. It was the same monotonous pattern he'd been staring at for the last three days. Groaning, he let his head fall onto the open pages. "Remind me again why the hell are we doing this again?" he asked the crease in the center of his notebook.

Sean looked up at him then with a raised eyebrow.

"I mean, seriously, what's the point?" whined the teen.

"Didn't you go to the meeting?" asked Sean.

Ed did not want to admit that he had not been paying attention at the meeting. He did read the report, though, now that he thought about it, he realized that he had not really been paying attention to that either.

Sean shook his head in disbelief and chuckled. "You have a selective attention span, don't you? The point is," he continued, amused, "that we have no idea where these coins are being manufactured and they're hoping that by analysing the raw material used to make them, they can pinpoint a location and finally get somewhere with this investigation."

It took a few seconds for this information to filter through Ed's tired brain. They didn't know? Hadn't he been staring at the same make-up of material for the last three days? It had been so obvious to Ed that he just figured they were looking for something else. Copper, iron and bismuth. They were the most abundant metals found in the rocks in this very area. Ed didn't need to be a geologist to know that.

He was an alchemist. And he was very familiar with the rocks in this part of the country; they had been easy material to come by when he and Al had starting learning alchemy from their father's books.

It was obvious that the coins were created by alchemists, but not very good ones. And certainly not by someone who knew much about making fake money, not that he'd ever done it himself…

His head popped up from its place among the coins on the table and he looked at his friend seriously. "You're telling me that they have no idea where these coins are coming from?"

Sean gave a half frown while trying to keep the usual humor in his voice. "Yeah, that's why we're analysing them… did you think we were just doing this for fun?"

"Well it's obvious, isn't it?" said Ed, staring at him like he couldn't believe the other man could be so dense. When Sean didn't respond, Ed went on. "It's local. Probably a mine somewhere just outside of East City. This is the only place in Amestris where this material is as common as, well, dirt."

Sean shook his head. "The police already looked into and investigated all the mines in and around East City. They were all clean."

Ed frowned at this and looked around. His eyes scanned the back wall of the warehouse for the familiar map of the area. His stool made a squealing screech as he pushed it away from the table and jumped down. Sean watched him go and, sighing, put his own notebook down and followed the teen to the map pinned unceremoniously to the grimy wall.

Ed had to climb up onto the desk directly underneath the poster and balance on his knees in order to be at eye level with it. He scanned the dirty yellowed paper for a few long seconds before jabbing at a spot with a metal finger.

"There! There's an abandoned chalcopyrite mine there, I bet that's where it's coming from," he stated with confidence. It all started coming together in his head. East City had seen the most confiscated coinage in all of Amestris which meant two things. It was either being made here and sent elsewhere or made elsewhere and had to pass through East City to head east, maybe to Xing. But what use would Xing have with Amestrian money?

And the makeup of the coins proved that they were being made here, they had to be. An abandoned mine would be the perfect set-up for criminals to make fake money.

"And there's an access road for the railroad that cuts right through this land here," he continued, drawing the line with his finger, "it's secluded enough not to draw too much attention but well-kept because it's funded by the military."

Sean shuffled around in the map cabinet before pulling out an equally yellowed paper. It was a zoning map from the Department of Land Use. He found the location Ed had pointed to, a hilly area just outside of the city, and shook his head.

"There's no mine here. Even if it is abandoned, it would show up as industrial or mining," he said scanning the legend in the bottom right corner. He passed a thumb over the symbol of two crossed pickaxes that meant mining. There were none near the spot where Ed had pointed.

Ed smirked. "That's because it's private property, it was never registered as a real mine."

He knew this because he and Al had been there 7 months before for a completely different investigation.

Sean stared at him for almost a full minute.

"Well aren't you clever," he said finally. "You see? I was right. It only took you three days to-"

Ed snatched the map from his hands, jumped down from the table and walked away with purpose.

"Hey!" exclaimed Sean, "where are you going?"

Ed was halfway to the door, and he waved the map sheet in the air above his head.

"Solving your case!"

A/N:

1. Sorry for the delay, my internet connection has been spotty at best. I also needed time to plan and research for this and upcoming chapters.

2. Thanks enormously for those of you reading this and even more so for those who took the time to review!

3. Chalcopyrite (kal-ko-pie-right) is the most common mineral from which copper is extracted. :)