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kashiwrites) wrote2008-11-04 04:38 pm
kashiwrites) wrote2008-11-04 04:38 pm
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NaNoWriMo - Fullmetal Alchemist Fanfic - Chapter 2 (part two)
(See Chapter 2, part 1)
“The thing is, Roy,” he said in answer to his friend’s quiet remark, “we really have to know if it was possible for anyone else to get hold of Riza’s father’s research. You have to tell me that nothing – nothing – escaped that burning in the fireplace. Are the two of you absolutely certain that there was no trace of this alchemy left, outside of that house?”
He expected an immediate, certain confirmation. But instead, Roy and Riza exchanged an uneasy glance. He pounced on it immediately.
“There is something, isn’t there? What is it you haven’t told me?” After another uncomfortable silence, he pressed the point. “Come on, you two, this could be important. I have to know.”
For some strange reason, Riza set down her cup, then reached up to begin unbuttoning her uniform jacket. “It seems,” she said calmly, “that I’ll have to show you.”
“Show me – what are you talking about?” Maes gaped as the jacket fell open and she began to unbutton the shirt she wore under it. “Now just a minute, Riza – what’s going on?”
“Riza,” Roy said, his voice stopping her immediately. “Don’t. Please.”
“He ought to know, Roy,” the woman said. “It’s all right. I don’t mind. Better him than – “
“All right, we can tell him. But please – he doesn’t have to see what I – what I did to you.”
“What I asked you to do,” she amended softly.
“Just tell me what you’re talking about first,” Maes put in.
Roy leaned forward, clasping his hands together between his knees. “Riza’s father left one last record of his alchemy. It was a complex array that contained everything – every possible permutation of the alchemy that there could be. And he inscribed it…” He paused, frowning, staring at his intertwined, white-knuckled fingers.
Riza finished for him. “Father inscribed the array on my back.”
“He what?” Maes cried. “He painted the thing right on your skin? What in the world did he do that for?”
“He…didn’t paint it. It was a sort of cross between a burn and a tattoo. He wanted to keep one record of his work, but he wanted it to be constantly guarded. And I was the guardian he trusted.”
“My god,” Maes whispered. Sometimes he couldn’t believe the lengths these alchemists would go to, to preserve or perpetuate their work.
“But it’s not that,” Roy said tightly. “It can’t be that. Because I destroyed that too.”
Maes couldn’t even respond to that one. He stared back and forth between them. He knew that look in Roy’s eyes, the guilt, the misery. It meant – it could only mean –
“Are you saying…you used your flame alchemy to…”
“I mutilated her,” Roy answered bluntly.
“At my request,” Riza augmented gently, firmly, as though this was something he needed to be reminded of occasionally. “After what happened in Ishbal, I didn’t want even this record of my father’s research to be preserved. Roy burned off enough of the array to make it unworkable.”
“So you see, Maes,” Roy informed him with a dark frown, “even that last shred of information is gone. Flame alchemy will die with me.”
“But someone might have seen it, Roy,” the woman insisted. “We didn’t get rid of this until after Ishbal. Who knows who might have caught a glimpse of it there? When I was in the shower or changing clothes or – “
“Some peeping Tom, you mean? Do you really think someone would have had the presence of mind, in that awful place and under those circumstances, to copy down that array? They’d have had to catch you with your shirt off several times, to get it all. Surely someone would have noticed someone hanging around after a while. But I don’t think it was that. It couldn’t have been. It’s not your fault, Riza.”
“You can’t know that.”
Maes had no choice but to add his voice to the argument. “Roy, the problem is…Riza may be right.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Roy scowled.
“Let me show you something.” Maes shoved aside his and Roy’s cups, and motioned Riza to push the tray to the other end of the coffee table. As she did so, he pulled a clump of paper out of an inner pocket, and unfolded it to spread it out on the table, revealing a map of Central. As he flattened and straightened it, he pointed to several dots on the map that had been circled heavily in red. “These are all the buildings that have had fires since we got back from Ishbal this last time. Do you see a pattern to them?”
Both Roy and Riza leaned forward, peering down, eyes traveling back and forth across the paper, trying to discover what he meant. But finally Riza shook her head. “I don’t see it,” she murmured. “The points are pretty scattered.”
“Ah,” Maes said smugly, “but that’s if you don’t follow them chronologically. Watch this. Here’s the first one,” he put his finger down, “and the next,” another finger tap, “and so on, one after the other,” he finished, setting his finger down six more times.
Roy’s eyes narrowed. Maes expected him to speak first, but it was Riza who said, “It’s a spiral.”
“Exactly. Moving from the outskirts of the city and, oh, with the last three fires or so, getting much closer in.” Maes pushed his glasses up. “Now. Let’s follow the general trend of the spiral.” He traced it again, from the first fire to today’s, and then continued, following the trajectory that had been set. At last the finger came to rest on a spot where, if the spiral were to continue as it started, it would finally end.
He looked up at his audience. Roy sat so still, he might have been a statue. Riza raised shocked eyes.
“The colonel’s house,” she whispered.
“That’s right. Roy’s house.” Maes leaned back against the couch back. “So here’s my theory, and now that I know about the array on your back, Riza, the theory’s even stronger. Someone saw what your father had put there, and managed during the war in Ishbal to copy pretty much the whole array. And ever since then, in secret, they’ve been learning how to do the actual alchemy. And then, six months ago, Roy went back to Ishbal, and this person recognized him and followed him back to Amestris. And now he’s using Roy’s own alchemy in Roy’s own city, gradually closing in as he terrorizes Central. And the final goal, I suspect, is to target Roy himself.”
A heavy silence fell in response to his words. Riza stared across the table at Roy, while Roy himself continued his survey, stoney-faced, of the pattern laid out on the map. He leaned his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers under his chin as he gazed down at the paper. They saw his eyes move, following the spiral, around and around until they came to stop on the block where his own house stood.
“Sir…?” Riza ventured.
Slowly his eyes lifted to hers, then moved to Maes’s face. And slowly he sat up straight, leaning against the couch back, this time spreading both arms along it. And unbelievably, he smiled.
“What an interesting development,” he said, the casual drawl creeping into his voice.
Maes snorted, recognizing the tactic. He mirrored his friend’s move, leaning back himself and crossing his right leg over his left knee. “Yes,” he agreed cheerfully, “changes the whole view of things, doesn’t it?”
“Of course we can’t tell anybody,” Roy added.
“Good god, no,” Maes chuckled.
Riza put in thoughtfully, “Because if the perpetrator knew we had figured it out, he’d change the pattern.”
“Exactly,” Maes nodded.
This time it was Riza’s turn to lean further over the map and study it at length. “Do you suppose,” she mused, “that we could use the pattern in a predictive way? To guess the alchemist’s next target?”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” Maes said. “So it sounds like you think my theory carries some weight?”
“It sounds all too plausible to me,” Riza nodded.
“Not necessarily,” Roy shook his head. “We still have no real proof that it’s an alchemist, though our lack of proof of anything at all seems to point most strongly in that direction. But one thing we do not have, Riza,” he insisted, leaning forward again and fixing his eyes on her face until she had no choice but to return his gaze, “is the slightest shred of proof that anyone saw what was on your back.” He held up a hand to forestall her when she began to protest. “No,” he said firmly. “Listen to me. The only thing we have is a coincidence: that the fires started after we returned from Ishbal.”
Maes raised his eyebrows. “That’s a pretty big coincidence, Roy,” he put in.
“No, not really. There could have been someone right here in Central who was biding his time, and suddenly realized I could have been killed in Ishbal last time, and he’d lose his chance. So when I got back, he started…doing whatever he’s doing. Or, you’re right, it could have been someone who followed us back…and who isn’t using alchemy, but has found some kind of chemical accelerant that gets consumed and leaves no trace after the fire is out. These are all workable theories, but you just don’t know yet, Maes. And neither do you, Riza.”
“But Roy – “
“Don’t even think it.” The man’s voice lowered, taking on a reassuring tone. “Riza, come on. I know you as well as I know anyone. With all the care you’ve taken over the years, to make sure the secret on your back was completely secure, I know you weren’t careless enough that anyone could have seen it. Don’t start second guessing yourself about this. Please.”
The two of them shared a long, eloquent look. Maes took off his glasses and fiddled with them, as though he wasn’t aware of the deep communication going on beneath the surface. They so rarely had a chance to express the real truths between them that he tried to give them whatever illusion of privacy he could.
At last, “Very well,” Riza said. “I’ll trust your opinion on that, and try not to put unreasonable expectations on myself.” As though subconsciously affirming that resolution to herself, she began re-buttoning her uniform jacket.
“Now then,” Roy said, turning his attention back to his friend. “Where do you suggest we go from here?”
Maes replaced his glasses. “I’m not sure yet,” he answered. “But I like the idea of trying to anticipate this guy’s next move.”
“Or this woman’s,” Riza inserted, raising her eyebrows at him.
“You think?” Roy drawled, leaning back again, flashing his usual sidelong smile at his companions. “Some former companion coming back to haunt me? The ultimate revenge of the woman scorned?”
“In that case,” Maes guffawed, “we could be looking at a multitude of suspects.”
“You’re hopeless,” Riza shook her head. “Both of you.”
“But really,” Maes added, “whoever it is, we might just be able to cut him – or her – off at the pass, if we can be waiting the next time they try to set a fire.”
“Right, then,” Roy nodded. “Lieutenant, go over the map with Maes, and try to find a building, or buildings, that could be the next target. Then I assume, Maes, that you’ll set some people watching?”
“On the QT, yes,” Maes nodded. “Or at least I’ll encourage the city police to increase patrols in those areas, asking them to be as inconspicuous as they can when they do. I can’t do much more than that, because we don’t know when the next strike will be. If we watch too intensely at first, we could lose credibility with the higher-ups too soon. But I’m still hoping we can get lucky.”
“You just might. Meanwhile, while the two of you are doing that,” Roy said, getting to his feet, “I’d better get out and see that the others are doing their usual duties. I’ll need to give them a plausible story about why we’ve been conferring in here.” He edged his way out from between the coffee table and the couch.
Riza, too, stood up. “One thing we must do immediately,” she said briskly, “is set an extra guard on you, sir.“
He stopped at the end of the coffee table and interrupted, “No. Absolutely not, lieutenant.”
“Colonel, be reasonable. If you’re a target – “
“If I’m a target, then the surest way to signal the attacker that we’re on to him is to set a guard on me. And anyway,” he smiled lazily, “we haven’t reached the end of the spiral yet. If we can’t catch the guy first, there are several more burning buildings between him and me. If Maes is right, I’m supposed to be the dessert at the end of the meal. So I’m in no danger just yet. So there’ll be no extra guard. Understood, lieutenant?”
She paused, and then nodded reluctantly. “Very well, sir. But I’m going to monitor the situation in case anything changes.”
“And then,” Maes stood to support her, “you’ll get a guard whether you agree or not. And that does come from Investigations. Officially. Do you understand, Roy?”
The man looked from one to the other, eyes narrowed, jaw set rebelliously. Finally he relaxed, smiling and shrugging. “All right, all right, you win. Tyrants, the both of you. Now. Can I finally get back to my real job, please?”
As he walked across the room to the door, Maes turned his attention back to Hawkeye as they shared a rueful smile. They both knew the drill, having worked with Roy for years.
“Okay,” Maes said cheerfully, sitting down and pulling his coffee cup back toward him. “Now that that’s over, let’s have a look at this map and see what we can figure out.”
(Go to Chapter 3)
“The thing is, Roy,” he said in answer to his friend’s quiet remark, “we really have to know if it was possible for anyone else to get hold of Riza’s father’s research. You have to tell me that nothing – nothing – escaped that burning in the fireplace. Are the two of you absolutely certain that there was no trace of this alchemy left, outside of that house?”
He expected an immediate, certain confirmation. But instead, Roy and Riza exchanged an uneasy glance. He pounced on it immediately.
“There is something, isn’t there? What is it you haven’t told me?” After another uncomfortable silence, he pressed the point. “Come on, you two, this could be important. I have to know.”
For some strange reason, Riza set down her cup, then reached up to begin unbuttoning her uniform jacket. “It seems,” she said calmly, “that I’ll have to show you.”
“Show me – what are you talking about?” Maes gaped as the jacket fell open and she began to unbutton the shirt she wore under it. “Now just a minute, Riza – what’s going on?”
“Riza,” Roy said, his voice stopping her immediately. “Don’t. Please.”
“He ought to know, Roy,” the woman said. “It’s all right. I don’t mind. Better him than – “
“All right, we can tell him. But please – he doesn’t have to see what I – what I did to you.”
“What I asked you to do,” she amended softly.
“Just tell me what you’re talking about first,” Maes put in.
Roy leaned forward, clasping his hands together between his knees. “Riza’s father left one last record of his alchemy. It was a complex array that contained everything – every possible permutation of the alchemy that there could be. And he inscribed it…” He paused, frowning, staring at his intertwined, white-knuckled fingers.
Riza finished for him. “Father inscribed the array on my back.”
“He what?” Maes cried. “He painted the thing right on your skin? What in the world did he do that for?”
“He…didn’t paint it. It was a sort of cross between a burn and a tattoo. He wanted to keep one record of his work, but he wanted it to be constantly guarded. And I was the guardian he trusted.”
“My god,” Maes whispered. Sometimes he couldn’t believe the lengths these alchemists would go to, to preserve or perpetuate their work.
“But it’s not that,” Roy said tightly. “It can’t be that. Because I destroyed that too.”
Maes couldn’t even respond to that one. He stared back and forth between them. He knew that look in Roy’s eyes, the guilt, the misery. It meant – it could only mean –
“Are you saying…you used your flame alchemy to…”
“I mutilated her,” Roy answered bluntly.
“At my request,” Riza augmented gently, firmly, as though this was something he needed to be reminded of occasionally. “After what happened in Ishbal, I didn’t want even this record of my father’s research to be preserved. Roy burned off enough of the array to make it unworkable.”
“So you see, Maes,” Roy informed him with a dark frown, “even that last shred of information is gone. Flame alchemy will die with me.”
“But someone might have seen it, Roy,” the woman insisted. “We didn’t get rid of this until after Ishbal. Who knows who might have caught a glimpse of it there? When I was in the shower or changing clothes or – “
“Some peeping Tom, you mean? Do you really think someone would have had the presence of mind, in that awful place and under those circumstances, to copy down that array? They’d have had to catch you with your shirt off several times, to get it all. Surely someone would have noticed someone hanging around after a while. But I don’t think it was that. It couldn’t have been. It’s not your fault, Riza.”
“You can’t know that.”
Maes had no choice but to add his voice to the argument. “Roy, the problem is…Riza may be right.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Roy scowled.
“Let me show you something.” Maes shoved aside his and Roy’s cups, and motioned Riza to push the tray to the other end of the coffee table. As she did so, he pulled a clump of paper out of an inner pocket, and unfolded it to spread it out on the table, revealing a map of Central. As he flattened and straightened it, he pointed to several dots on the map that had been circled heavily in red. “These are all the buildings that have had fires since we got back from Ishbal this last time. Do you see a pattern to them?”
Both Roy and Riza leaned forward, peering down, eyes traveling back and forth across the paper, trying to discover what he meant. But finally Riza shook her head. “I don’t see it,” she murmured. “The points are pretty scattered.”
“Ah,” Maes said smugly, “but that’s if you don’t follow them chronologically. Watch this. Here’s the first one,” he put his finger down, “and the next,” another finger tap, “and so on, one after the other,” he finished, setting his finger down six more times.
Roy’s eyes narrowed. Maes expected him to speak first, but it was Riza who said, “It’s a spiral.”
“Exactly. Moving from the outskirts of the city and, oh, with the last three fires or so, getting much closer in.” Maes pushed his glasses up. “Now. Let’s follow the general trend of the spiral.” He traced it again, from the first fire to today’s, and then continued, following the trajectory that had been set. At last the finger came to rest on a spot where, if the spiral were to continue as it started, it would finally end.
He looked up at his audience. Roy sat so still, he might have been a statue. Riza raised shocked eyes.
“The colonel’s house,” she whispered.
“That’s right. Roy’s house.” Maes leaned back against the couch back. “So here’s my theory, and now that I know about the array on your back, Riza, the theory’s even stronger. Someone saw what your father had put there, and managed during the war in Ishbal to copy pretty much the whole array. And ever since then, in secret, they’ve been learning how to do the actual alchemy. And then, six months ago, Roy went back to Ishbal, and this person recognized him and followed him back to Amestris. And now he’s using Roy’s own alchemy in Roy’s own city, gradually closing in as he terrorizes Central. And the final goal, I suspect, is to target Roy himself.”
A heavy silence fell in response to his words. Riza stared across the table at Roy, while Roy himself continued his survey, stoney-faced, of the pattern laid out on the map. He leaned his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers under his chin as he gazed down at the paper. They saw his eyes move, following the spiral, around and around until they came to stop on the block where his own house stood.
“Sir…?” Riza ventured.
Slowly his eyes lifted to hers, then moved to Maes’s face. And slowly he sat up straight, leaning against the couch back, this time spreading both arms along it. And unbelievably, he smiled.
“What an interesting development,” he said, the casual drawl creeping into his voice.
Maes snorted, recognizing the tactic. He mirrored his friend’s move, leaning back himself and crossing his right leg over his left knee. “Yes,” he agreed cheerfully, “changes the whole view of things, doesn’t it?”
“Of course we can’t tell anybody,” Roy added.
“Good god, no,” Maes chuckled.
Riza put in thoughtfully, “Because if the perpetrator knew we had figured it out, he’d change the pattern.”
“Exactly,” Maes nodded.
This time it was Riza’s turn to lean further over the map and study it at length. “Do you suppose,” she mused, “that we could use the pattern in a predictive way? To guess the alchemist’s next target?”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” Maes said. “So it sounds like you think my theory carries some weight?”
“It sounds all too plausible to me,” Riza nodded.
“Not necessarily,” Roy shook his head. “We still have no real proof that it’s an alchemist, though our lack of proof of anything at all seems to point most strongly in that direction. But one thing we do not have, Riza,” he insisted, leaning forward again and fixing his eyes on her face until she had no choice but to return his gaze, “is the slightest shred of proof that anyone saw what was on your back.” He held up a hand to forestall her when she began to protest. “No,” he said firmly. “Listen to me. The only thing we have is a coincidence: that the fires started after we returned from Ishbal.”
Maes raised his eyebrows. “That’s a pretty big coincidence, Roy,” he put in.
“No, not really. There could have been someone right here in Central who was biding his time, and suddenly realized I could have been killed in Ishbal last time, and he’d lose his chance. So when I got back, he started…doing whatever he’s doing. Or, you’re right, it could have been someone who followed us back…and who isn’t using alchemy, but has found some kind of chemical accelerant that gets consumed and leaves no trace after the fire is out. These are all workable theories, but you just don’t know yet, Maes. And neither do you, Riza.”
“But Roy – “
“Don’t even think it.” The man’s voice lowered, taking on a reassuring tone. “Riza, come on. I know you as well as I know anyone. With all the care you’ve taken over the years, to make sure the secret on your back was completely secure, I know you weren’t careless enough that anyone could have seen it. Don’t start second guessing yourself about this. Please.”
The two of them shared a long, eloquent look. Maes took off his glasses and fiddled with them, as though he wasn’t aware of the deep communication going on beneath the surface. They so rarely had a chance to express the real truths between them that he tried to give them whatever illusion of privacy he could.
At last, “Very well,” Riza said. “I’ll trust your opinion on that, and try not to put unreasonable expectations on myself.” As though subconsciously affirming that resolution to herself, she began re-buttoning her uniform jacket.
“Now then,” Roy said, turning his attention back to his friend. “Where do you suggest we go from here?”
Maes replaced his glasses. “I’m not sure yet,” he answered. “But I like the idea of trying to anticipate this guy’s next move.”
“Or this woman’s,” Riza inserted, raising her eyebrows at him.
“You think?” Roy drawled, leaning back again, flashing his usual sidelong smile at his companions. “Some former companion coming back to haunt me? The ultimate revenge of the woman scorned?”
“In that case,” Maes guffawed, “we could be looking at a multitude of suspects.”
“You’re hopeless,” Riza shook her head. “Both of you.”
“But really,” Maes added, “whoever it is, we might just be able to cut him – or her – off at the pass, if we can be waiting the next time they try to set a fire.”
“Right, then,” Roy nodded. “Lieutenant, go over the map with Maes, and try to find a building, or buildings, that could be the next target. Then I assume, Maes, that you’ll set some people watching?”
“On the QT, yes,” Maes nodded. “Or at least I’ll encourage the city police to increase patrols in those areas, asking them to be as inconspicuous as they can when they do. I can’t do much more than that, because we don’t know when the next strike will be. If we watch too intensely at first, we could lose credibility with the higher-ups too soon. But I’m still hoping we can get lucky.”
“You just might. Meanwhile, while the two of you are doing that,” Roy said, getting to his feet, “I’d better get out and see that the others are doing their usual duties. I’ll need to give them a plausible story about why we’ve been conferring in here.” He edged his way out from between the coffee table and the couch.
Riza, too, stood up. “One thing we must do immediately,” she said briskly, “is set an extra guard on you, sir.“
He stopped at the end of the coffee table and interrupted, “No. Absolutely not, lieutenant.”
“Colonel, be reasonable. If you’re a target – “
“If I’m a target, then the surest way to signal the attacker that we’re on to him is to set a guard on me. And anyway,” he smiled lazily, “we haven’t reached the end of the spiral yet. If we can’t catch the guy first, there are several more burning buildings between him and me. If Maes is right, I’m supposed to be the dessert at the end of the meal. So I’m in no danger just yet. So there’ll be no extra guard. Understood, lieutenant?”
She paused, and then nodded reluctantly. “Very well, sir. But I’m going to monitor the situation in case anything changes.”
“And then,” Maes stood to support her, “you’ll get a guard whether you agree or not. And that does come from Investigations. Officially. Do you understand, Roy?”
The man looked from one to the other, eyes narrowed, jaw set rebelliously. Finally he relaxed, smiling and shrugging. “All right, all right, you win. Tyrants, the both of you. Now. Can I finally get back to my real job, please?”
As he walked across the room to the door, Maes turned his attention back to Hawkeye as they shared a rueful smile. They both knew the drill, having worked with Roy for years.
“Okay,” Maes said cheerfully, sitting down and pulling his coffee cup back toward him. “Now that that’s over, let’s have a look at this map and see what we can figure out.”
(Go to Chapter 3)