Games without Frontiers - Chapter 19 - Roy/Riza - Rated PG
Things are about to get nasty.
Series Title: Games without Frontiers
Series Rating: PG - NC-17
Main Characters: Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye (Royai/Snapshot)
Other Characters: Various other members of the Peanut Gallery called Fullmetal Alchemist
Word Count: 3,510
Warning: Some adult themes; potential overdosing of crrrrack.
Synopsis: As soon as he sat at his desk, Hughes pulled out a scrap of paper and pushed it across the desk toward Roy. He opened it and felt his expression freeze in place
Author's Notes: This is an AU, because I blend a little FMA, gently fold in some FMA:B, and liberally sprinkle with all kinds of headcanons. Some OOC, because, yeah, circumstances. It is also an almost total rewrite of my original fic, completed in 2005.
Commentary is certainly welcome and tends to make me go and do the Carlton Dance.
Each chapter is titled after a lyric in a song that was part of the soundtrack I have for this tale. Check the current music for the song.
Chapter 19: A Danger Illustrated
Rating: PG
Roy would have been the happiest person alive if the powers that were did not deliver any more surprises to his doorstep. General Grumman’s granddaughter. If he properly thought about it, he didn’t have anyone to blame for this lack of knowledge but himself. Confident he knew all he needed to know about his new adjutant, he hadn’t even bothered to read Riza’s file when he took possession of it after Ishbal. Perhaps if he had taken a moment, certain things would have fallen into place faster.
Grumman was smiling at him in that same way he did when he was about to trounce him at chess. “Please don’t tell me that you didn’t know. All those years in my son-in-law’s home, and he never told you that his wife’s father was in the military?” he thought about that for a moment. “Well, then he never did have a liking for the military, and I had little contact with her during the man’s life. Man had his own way of doing things. Shame, that.” He moved closer to the woman in question. “Riza is my darling daughter’s only child, Colonel.” He grinned again, the ends of his mustache turning up with his smile. “And I really would like to greet the girl properly. I’m feeling if you don’t release her she’s going to freeze this way.”
Roy cleared his throat. “At ease, First Lieutenant. At ease, all of you.”
The Lieutenant General - who was her grandfather, dammit - moved around her one time, then took her in his arms, nearly squeezing the breath from her. “Still the same, girl! Still the same.”
Riza cautiously put her arms around the man’s neck. “Hello, grandfather,” she said carefully, trying to maintain her professionalism. Roy took a bit of satisfaction in the fact that she was as floundering as he was.
After the touching greeting, Grumman looked at Roy over Riza’s shoulder. “Bet you’re wondering what I’m doing here, aren’t you, Colonel?”
“The thought has crossed my mind, sir.”
Grumman clapped his hands together and Roy barely held himself from a startled flinch. He hated being caught flat-footed!
“Well,” the General said, “There are two reasons I am here.” He looked again at Riza. “The first has to do with you,” he said, with a conspiratorial wink, “and I’ll let the Lieutenant Colonel here brief you about the second reason, but to start…” Grumman gestured.
It was strange, how quickly ones hands could go clammy when facing certain doom. He knew. The Lieutenant General knew about Riza. And if he knew about that, did he know about anything else?
“Me, sir?” Riza asked, maintaining her calm demeanor on the outside. Roy could look at her and tell what a shell it was.
“Certain types of information have a tendency to travel fast, Riza.” Grumman said. “I understand congratulations are in order.”
Riza blushed a full rosy shade.
“And don’t try to dissemble with me, girl. It takes a certain type of bravery to do what you’re doing, and I heartily approve!”
“Ah… thank you, Grandfather.”
“Are you all right, Colonel Mustang?” Grumman shook his head. “Do you have any reservations about Riza continuing in her condition? I wouldn’t worry… many women continue serving during this time. And my girl is a woman among women!” He patted Riza on the shoulder, the way he would any other solider. “Well, go ahead, Hughes! Fill them in on the other reason we’ve come.”
Exactly how had her grandfather found out about her condition? Roy cut his eyes at Maes, wondering if his friend’s mouth had taken off again without his brain.
Hughes came forward, wisely staying carefully an arm’s length away from Roy. For good reason. Roy gave him a death-glare and tugged on the cuffs of his gloves, and enjoyed watching Maes swallow around that sudden lump in his throat that he could see from where he sat.
Maes briefed them about a rash of thefts going on in a town called Tin City, near the Northern Headquarters. Someone was making off with the components to make explosive devices. During the recitation, Roy gathered up the shreds of his decorum and was able to respond in proper manner.
“You would like my team to investigate, sir?” he directed toward Grumman.
“Indeed. This needs to be handled before news gets to the higher ups.”
Roy cleared his throat. “As soon as my recon person arrives, I’ll send a team out.”
“Make sure you’re on that team, Colonel,” Grumman said, piercing Roy with a keen eye. “Considering what we know of the situation, I believe it would do us good to have an alchemist out there to examine the evidence.” The General moved to look out of the window behind Roy’s desk. “I don’t have to tell you how it will look if you solve this crime, do I?”
Roy blinked, the gears in his brain spinning off onto a new track. Another notch on his way up. Perhaps this was a surprise he could deal with.
“If you don’t know about incendiaries, I don’t know who would,” Grumman finished.
Roy pulled a bit at his collar. “Yes, sir.”
“Beg your pardon, sir,” Riza managed to ask, “But, why do you need an alchemist on this case? Isn’t this a simple theft?”
“Show them, Hughes.”
“I think it would be best if we do this in your private office,” Maes offered.
Roy waited a few seconds for Maes to give him any visual clues, but when nothing more than a heavy look was forthcoming, he quickly made his way to the door and held it open for Maes, the General and Riza.
As soon as he sat at his desk, Hughes pulled out a scrap of paper and pushed it across the desk toward Roy. He opened it and felt his expression freeze in place.
This was something he’d never thought he’d see again. As soon as he ran his gaze over the two arrays hastily drawn on the paper, he felt a hot wind caress the back of his neck. The smoke of distant, ugly memories rose behind his eyes and wrapped his brain in a haze of foreboding. For the barest of heartbeats he was transported back to Ishbal, and felt a hard rock of disquiet tumble into the pit of his stomach.
He never thought he would encounter this again.
He shook his head to clear it. “This is-,” he began, looking at his friend.
“Yes,” Maes answered urgently.
“No one outside of the military is supposed to know about this,” he continued, looking at the General. “I take it the witness is civilian.”
“Was,” Hughes said quickly. “And there is more.”
Roy swore. Along with an alchemist killer galloping around Amestris, bumping off alchemists, now we had this… spreading chaos too?
Maes placed a few photographs in front of him, like he was dealing a hand of twenty-one. Grainy, mostly in focus, military grade photographs. The first was a picture of the outside of a destroyed warehouse, presumably in Tin City. It took him less time to recognize what he was seeing than it did to blink his eyes. “What the…?” fell out his mouth. He clenched the rest of the filthy words he wanted to say behind his teeth and curled his lip.
They didn’t just need an alchemist, they needed him.
“This is arson,” he said. His voice carried no emotion, but he could see Maes blanch and Riza put a hand to her throat.
“That’s what it looks like,” Grumman agreed. Roy’s gaze moved to the Lieutenant General and he tried to see behind the ever-present, bland gaze.
That’s what it looks like. That meant there was more here, under what was on the surface. Roy swept his eyes over the photographs again, this time taking in the details like the starving at a banquet.
He picked up a picture of the interior of the warehouse. Aside from a few burnt pallets, the room was empty, as if nothing had been stored there. So someone had removed the materials before setting the fire. Black scorch marks covered all four walls and floor, moving in a counter-clockwise pattern from his view. He could easily pinpoint where the flame started and tracked its progress around the room, seeing where the windows had blown out from the heat, and where the metals in the walls and window casings had melted into slag. Every area of the building was scorched except for a small spot roughly in the center of the room; that was the epicenter.
A trembling began under the surface of his skin, spreading an uncomfortable heat through his body. He shook his head slightly to drive it deeper and picked up another photo of the interior.
What caught his eye in this close up photo was the absence of any obvious flash points. None of the remaining pictures - all close ups of the walls - showed a flash point, a source of the flames. All he could see was black carbon detritus painted on with a smooth, elegant hand.
How.
Dare…
The words escaped from between tightly pressed lips. “How dare he?”
He felt Riza lean over his shoulder to look. He heard her light gasp. “Colonel…” Riza’s soft voice broke through the tense silence following his words.
“Talk to me, Roy,” Maes said, leaning forward. “What are you seeing that we do not?”
Roy shot him a look. He could sense that his friend was trying to lead him up a path he didn’t want to go. Maes wanted the words hitting the open air, he wanted the thoughts to be made real. He took some time to find a way to explain this while keeping his rage leashed and controlled.
There were rooms like this in the Dahlia Sector. Many, many rooms. Warehouses and homes. Schools and shops. A sector reduced to shells of nothing in one day and night of heat, sweat, impotent anger, borderline psychosis and regret.
There were buildings that had been reduced to rubble, matter shaken and deconstructed by an adroitly designed imbalance, attended by maniacal laughter and the blessings of the battle commanders.
There were also buildings like one he was looking, razed into hollow, blackened shells, carefully created, brought to life through military orders, manipulated by misguided duty, and kept at just below five hundred degrees Celsius.
“Roy?” Maes cut through the memories.
He remembered all of the commanding officers taking special pleasure in walking through afterward, commenting and commiserating on the differences and symmetry between raze and ruin.
“This is not the deconstruction you would expect from these symbols,” Roy finally said. “And there are no accelerants present,” he concluded. He gave them nothing but fact, knowing that conclusions would be reached without his help.
“You’re sure?” Grumman asked, leaning forward and pinning Roy with a careful look.
“Absolutely sure, sir.” He gestured at a couple of key points in the photos. “A fire starts when a flammable or a combustible material - an accelerant-in combination with a sufficient quantity of an oxidizer such as oxygen gas or another oxygen-rich compound, is exposed to a source of heat or an ambient temperature above the flash point for the fuel oxidizer mix, and is able to sustain a rate of rapid oxidation that produces a chain reaction.”
Grumman blinked at him and took that in for a moment. “I sometimes forget that you State Alchemists are scholars in your own right,” he said. “Say that again, in words an old man like me can understand.”
“My apologies. When a… normal… fire is set, four things are needed: heat, fuel, oxygen and the chain reaction those three produce. I see the heat, I see that there has been oxidation that caused a chain reaction all around this room from oxygen - that’s a given.” He waved his hands over the photos. “But I see no source of fuel in any of these fires. The area where the fuel was placed would look different from the rest of the area - this is how investigators discover the source of a fire.”
“Not a normal fire.” Maes said haltingly.
Roy was sure that everyone could hear his teeth grinding as he tried to keep it in utter control. He would save it for catching this… miscreant. “This is … not … a normal fire.”
How dare he? Roy roared in the back of his mind.
“So these fires were not caused by the materials stolen.”
“These fires were set to appear to be covering up evidence.” Actually, these fires were set to appear to have been set in a specific way. “These drawings,” he tapped the paper, “do not make sense when coupled with what is seen in these photos.” But then, when had anything that motherfucker had done make any sense?
Roy cleared his throat, halting questions by standing and smoothing his uniform jacket. He hoped that his hands were not visibly shaking; and he was doing his best to keep the vibrations he felt just below the surface of his skin hidden. When he looked over at Maes, he saw where his friend’s eyes were being drawn. He looked down at his gloves too. Roy threw a quick, warning glance and stepped from behind his desk.
“As soon as Second Lieutenant Havoc returns from Risembool, my team will leave for Tin City,” he stated, allowing Riza to open the door for the men and allowing the General to precede him.
“Tell me about this team,” Grumman said as they made their way to the main room.
“It will be myself, the First Lieutenant as my backup, Second Lieutenant Havoc at recon and Sergeant Fuery at communications.”
“I will go as well, General,” Maes said, “to gather any further evidence.”
Grumman turned a sharp eye on Riza, then looked at her Commanding Officer. “Are you sure that is wise?”
Roy stopped mid-step. Come on, folks, cut me a break. Please? “What do you mean?”
“Are you sure she should be on this type of mission in her condition?”
Were you planning on telling her she couldn’t go? Roy mentally asked the General. Before he could answer, Riza spoke up. “My condition has not compromised my abilities, sir.” Riza said flatly. “And won’t in the foreseeable future. I can go.”
“If you are sure, my girl...”
“I’m positive.” Roy was pinned by a glance from Riza, daring him to contradict her. It was on the tip of his tongue to say something she would think stupid, but under her non-verbal assault, he subsided, but the look of warning she threw him behind her grandfather’s back spoke volumes.
“If you say it’s so, then I will not argue,” the Lieutenant General said. “Now, dear granddaughter, come and tell me all about this new turn of events of yours. You don’t mind if I borrow her for a few moments, do you, Mustang?”
As if he had a choice, he gestured vaguely and watched the Lieutenant General take his granddaughter to a desk situation in a corner of the office, placed there for files to be filed.
Roy sighed to himself and sat at his desk in the outer office. Even though he tried with everything he had to distance himself, his mind kept returning to the photographs and what they showed. He looked up to ask Maes a question, and noticed that Havoc had returned. He was about to say something cocky to break his mood until he took a good look at the shadows under his Second Lieutenant’s eyes.
When Havoc looked up, he noted the august company and stood to offer his salute. Roy gestured for him to come to the main desk.
“How is Fullmetal?” he asked.
He watched Jean chew on the butt of his cigarette for a moment, then his eyes narrowed. “He needed his entire arm replaced - including the port.” He grunted. “He’ll be out of commission for a while.”
“What happened?”
“His recklessness happened,” Havoc said shortly. His tone of voice captured Roy’s attention and he took a better look. There was something dark and shuttered in Havoc’s eyes that didn’t fit with the man’s usual easy-going nature. Roy socked that information away for future dissection.
“Look at this,” he said, shoving the photos at Havoc.
Jean ran his eyes over them. Roy watched his gaze stop at certain areas, and waited.
“This don’t look right, Colonel.” Roy waited for more, but it seemed that Jean was not forthcoming with anything else. It wasn't like his Second Lieutenant to be this stingy with his words. He wondered if Fullmetal had suffered more injuries than Jean was letting on.
“Indeed,” Roy growled, subsiding when the Lieutenant General wrapped up his conversation with Riza and came to the desk himself.
“This is my best recon man, Second Lieutenant Havoc,” Roy said by way of introduction. Grumman shook Jean’s hand enthusiastically, waving away a second salute.
“How is Fullmetal?” Riza asked quietly.
“Yes, I hear he was banged up pretty bad,” Maes said.
“He’s always getting banged up,” Jean muttered. “You know he focuses only on the task in front of him, and not on his own welfare.”
“Sounds like a dedicated lad,” the Lieutenant General said expansively.
Jean’s gaze skittered to the side and he muttered “Sounds like a dedicated idiot.”
No one else heard it, but Roy caught the growl in his voice, and filed that next to the other observations. “Let’s get ready to move out.”
###
The train moved painfully slow. The General’s presence allowed them a private car, but that just increased the boredom of the ride. It gave Roy a chance to brew on the evidence he’d seen and the heat behind his eyes kept rising. Riza sat beside Roy, and he knew she was watching the frenetic energy dancing behind his eyes. It was one of the things she did best. He didn’t have to tell her that what he really wanted to do was get off the train at their destination and chase down the depraved son of a bitch who thought he could do something like this and get away with it and turn him into a winter festival lantern.
“How dare he?” he muttered again, tugging on his gloves.
“Ro-Colonel,” Riza murmured. “That is the second time you’ve said that.”
He pulled the photograph out of his breast pocket and handed it to her. “Look at this and tell me what you see. Look closely.”
While he watched the scenery change from the monotony of the Eastern skyline to a darker, flatter landscape, Riza took her time examining the photograph. Finally, he felt her tug at his sleeve. He looked at her, keeping his expression purposefully blank.
“This is…” she started, then took a breath and began again in a more measured voice. “Someone is trying to make this look like...”
She looked into his face and he let the righteous anger cloud his eyes again.
“And I know who it is,” Roy growled.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry. Ishbal hadn’t made him this angry. During the worst of his training with Riza’s father, when Berthold would push him and push him, and then to finally criticize him, Roy never showed all of the levels of his anger. When he was forced to hide in the dumbwaiter to get a moment or two away from the man’s inconsistent moods, and even the one time he had to spend an entire day, without break, practicing perfect circles, Roy kept his temper and channeled it into perfecting his craft.
But this. That someone was producing evidence to make someone believe that the destruction was caused by flame alchemy… he wanted to break the window.
What was worse, what insulted him the most was that it was all wrong. He had a distinct style and it showed in his work. What he was looking at was, in his estimation, a piss poor imitation of the real thing.
For something like this, Roy would have spread the fires in a clockwise motion. For the razing of a room, he would stand at a 40 degree angle to his starting point. He would raise his dominant hand and leave the other at rest. For a room this side, he would only need the one hand. The rest was simple: ignition and the blaze would move with him as he twisted his arm and torso in a clockwise motion. Simple, refined, graceful, if he did say so himself.
Riza leaned forward and touched his shoulder. “We’ll get to the bottom this,” she said. “I have no doubt.”
“Of course,” Roy said, negligently waving his hand. That’s what he needed. Validation that they would catch the imposter.
“If it’s who I think it is,” Maes said, “this is going to be one interesting mission.”
“Do we take him alive or dead?” Jean asked.
“It would be best alive,” Maes answered.
A winter festival lantern. “Questions need to be answered,” Roy growled. “So I would say mostly alive.”
No one in the train car contradicted him. No one dared.