Kaleidoscope of Hours, Part Two
Title: Kaleidoscope of Hours
Author: mfelizandy
Rating: PG-13
Type: Post-anime AU plotfic, featuring alchemical time travel and a ten-year-old Roy Mustang.
Warnings: Language and vague hints of one of Roy Mustang's past love affairs.
Author's Notes: This story starts in an AU in which Edward Elric was not catapulted into another world at the end of the series, and Al did not lose four years of growth and memory in regaining his body. Other AUs will make an appearance through the story. When the kaleidoscope turns, we're in a different timeline.
Summary: The State Alchemists were disbanded years ago. The homunculi have been destroyed. Amestris is finally enjoying some peace--until one of Brigadier General Roy Mustang's old flames brings him evidence that someone is tampering with powers that could tear him and his world apart.
In another version of history, Maes Hughes is a Central City police detective, with a very strange case on his hands.
“Second Mirror, Counterclockwise”
Central City, Amestris
November 12, 1916
“Yeah, yeah, I'm coming.” Maes Hughes grumbled as he lurched in the direction of the ringing phone. It was the part of his job he liked the least-the fact that his cases tended to erupt in the middle of the night, and time was almost always of the essence. He picked up the phone and didn't bother to try and sound awake. “Hughes.”
“Wake up, Detective, you're working.” The voice was that of Chief Robert Greenward, night-duty commander of the Central City Fourth Precinct-and not a man to call out a Special Cases detective lightly.
“I am?” Hughes ran a hand over his rough-stubbled face and reluctantly turned on the hall lamp, blinking away the last vestiges of what had been a warm night's sleep. “What am I working on?”
“Something that's your kind of weird. Enough alchemical energy to knock out the power to six blocks, but for all we can tell, only thing it was used for was burning the grass on public property. Know any alchemists who specialize in large-scale vandalism?”
“No.” Hughes shifted and put his hips against the table. “It's just vandalism? No bodies, no major property damage?”
“Not exactly. Look, Hughes, you need to see this. We've got a suspect in custody, and I think you're the right man to get some answers out of him.”
“You've got someone and you called me in the middle of the night?”
“We've got someone, but he doesn't fit the profile, or much of anything else. Like I said, it's your kind of weird.”
Hughes sighed. “I'll be there in twenty minutes-but I'm going to mention this when I put in for a raise.” He hung up the phone, and turned back toward the bedroom.
His wife, Gracia, had taken the time to put on her soft green bathrobe, and not only find but polish her husband's glasses. She put the wire framed lenses in Hughes' hand as he paused to kiss her temple. “I'll put some coffee on.”
“No-go back to sleep. You need your rest.”
“I'm fine, Maes. I'll take a nap while Elysia's at school.” Gracia slipped by Hughes and went into the kitchen. “You need at least a warm roll and some coffee if you're going to be working at this hour.”
Maes didn't argue further, putting his glasses on and finding his way to the bathroom. He didn't have time for a proper shower, but he did wash his face and do enough work with the razor to make it look like he'd at least tried.
“Daddy?” Hughes' daughter stood barefoot in the bathroom door, her eyes all too large and uncertain for a five-year-old.
Hughes glanced at his child, then into the mirror. He mopped the remaining shaving cream from his face, and went to pick Elysia up. “Don't worry, Pumpkin, everything's all right. Daddy just has to go to work.”
“You always have to go to work,” Elysia said in a child's weary protest. “Can't the bad men just stop for a little while?”
Hughes smiled a little, and ruffled his daughter's unruly curls. “Remember when I told you about the vacation? That's only three more weeks from now. Then we're all going to go to the mountains and go skiing, remember?”
“I remember.” Elysia put her head on her father's shoulder as he carried her back to her bed. “And you're not going to go to work for two whole weeks.”
“That's right. We can play in the snow all day every day. For now, though, you need to sleep so you can be my bright and beautiful girl tomorrow, okay?” Hughes tucked Elysia in, picking up Danny the stuffed elephant and make sure his trunk was sticking out beside his daughter's cheek. Elysia was very particular about making sure her playmate was warm and able to breathe comfortably. With his daughter safely in bed, he went to have his coffee and switch roles from husband and father to criminal investigator.
Maes Hughes, Special Detective, arrived at the Fourth Precinct Police Station twenty-five minutes after he'd hung up his home phone. The dispatcher pointed him not toward the chief's office, but to the door to the interrogation room. Hughes flashed his badge to the pair of uniformed officers standing guard, then went into the room where the Chief stood frowning at a pane of one-way glass. There was a notebook open on the writing shelf below the desk, but from appearances Greenward hadn't added anything to the scrawled notes in it in a while. Hughes followed the veteran policeman's gaze, and couldn't help but double-take. “That's your suspect?”
“He's the only piece of evidence we've got. Patrolman was walking his beat, nice and quiet, and all of a sudden the damn air is on fire. Knocks out the power for the whole district. Next thing anyone knows, there's a fifty-foot alchemy circle burned into the grass in Swift Park.”
“Have any of the State Alchemists turned up to take responsibility for the mess?”
"The military's dogs are all accounted for. That's the weirdest part. That fire went out all at once, and when we got some lights out there, we found him."
"...a child?"
"Looks like one--but with these alchemists, you can never be sure."
“What's he told you?”
“Nothing. At least, nothing anyone can understand.” The chief scowled at the figure huddled in the corner of the interrogation room. “Arethusa-the dispatcher--speaks a little Xingese, and she says he sounds like he's talking some dialect of that, but she doesn't understand what he's telling her, if he's telling her anything at all.”
“We're a hell of a long way from Xing.”
“I'm glad to hear you know your geography. But if he understood Amestrian he wouldn't have-well, he'd be better dressed right now.”
“Looks like he put up a fight.”
“He did when we emptied his pockets. That's another strange thing-he didn't resist arrest, but the way he howled when we fingerprinted him, you'd think we were cutting his fingers off.”
“Are the reinforced cuffs and leg irons really necessary? He doesn't look like much of a flight risk.” Hughes' eyes traveled over the slight frame of the suspect.
“He's mixed up in alchemy, Detective. According the Fraser-that's the beat officer-there was a thirty-foot high circle of flame fifty feet wide and burning blue in the park where he picked our suspect up. No one's going to set the city on fire my watch, little kid or not.”
“Yeah.” Hughes gazed through the window at the prisoner. “Unless I miss my guess, though, that's a victim, not a perpetrator.”
“You sure of that?”
“No-but most alchemists with the power to control the kind of energy it takes to throw thirty-foot walls of fire are more than eight or ten years old.” Hughes went to the door.
“There's FullMetal,” Greenward said stubbornly. “He was what, twelve, when he started? And you know what kind of damage that kid can do.”
“FullMetal was a freak accident,” Hughes answered in a firm tone. “There's evidence that his father was experimenting on him before he was even born, and continued his tampering right up until we got too close and he took off. Then his mother and brother died-he might have even killed them both himself.” Hughes paused with his hand on the door handle, closing his eyes briefly. “FullMetal was mentally and alchemically unstable even before...he joined the military.”
Greenward was silent for several second before saying grudgingly, “So how do you know that's not another little walking bomb looking for a place to detonate?” The chief nodded at the window.
“If he could do what FullMetal can do, this whole block would be a smoking crater.” Hughes went through the door.
The boy huddled in the corner of the interrogation room had been resting his head on his knees, but he snapped to alertness as soon as Maes Hughes opened the door. His eyes went wide as the detective closed the door behind himself, and he pushed himself harder against the walls, lifting his cuffed hands as though to ward off a blow.
Hughes stopped while still a few feet away, slowly lowered himself to a crouch. “Easy, kid. I'm not here to hurt you.” He did his best to make his tone unthreatening. “I'm Detective Hughes. It's my job to find out what happened tonight. It would be a lot easier if you'd help me.”
The raised hands lowered half an inch, and eyes so dark Hughes couldn't tell pupil from iris stared back at him. The face was dirty, tearstained, and sported a fading bruise that covered much of one high cheekbone. Black hair that badly needed trimming brushed the shoulders of a thin wraparound shirt that had probably started out a dull blue, but had faded with wear to a lifeless blue-gray. The sleeves left the forearms and chapped hands bare, and there were what looked like old burn scars as well as the more recent bruises on those arms. The boy wore pants of the same material as his shirt, loose to the knee and wound snug from the knee to just above the ankles. On the child's feet were a sort of adjustable shoes, made of leather and gathered up with laces that tied around the ankles-just below the dully-gleaming steel of the leg irons.
Hughes inched a little closer. “Do you have a name? I'm Hughes. Hughes.” He put a hand to his chest as he said it.
The child just stared at him, a glimmer of something on his face. He relaxed a little, the wheels almost visibly turning in his head.
“That's right. I'm Hughes. I'm just trying to help.”
The boy hesitated, then said something. Unfortunately, it was only a soft flow of nonsense syllables to Hughes' ears. Mya tchnenni calooneya vetchai pirtuyu.
Hughes listened anyway, then shook his head. “Sorry, kiddo, I don't understand a word of whatever you just said. But we'll find someone you can talk to. There has to be someone who knows what “pirtooyoo” means somewhere in this city. For now, though, you're going to have to settle for getting out of here and a few square meals.” He got up, and went to tap on the window. “Hey, Greenward, get me the keys to kid's cuffs, will you?”
The chief must have had the keys in his pocket-he opened the door seconds later to hand the ring through to Hughes. “You sure about this? What are you gonna do with the kid, anyway?”
“Take him to see a doctor, then get him some warm clothes and see if anyone in the Xingese quarter can talk to him. I really want to know whatever he may have seen before the memory starts to fade.”
“Is it a good idea to take him out into the city? He could go walking-bomb on you.”
“Call it a hunch, but I don't think he will. He's just a scared kid, Chief.”
“You're the specialist-but if you're wrong, remember that I told you so.”
“Right. I'd like whatever you took off him when you booked him, please.” Hughes kept his tone pleasant, but his expression left no room for argument about protocol regarding evidence. Special Cases Detectives technically outranked precinct chiefs, and the nature of the crimes they worked on often necessitated bending rules.
Chief Greenward's eyebrows rose, but he sent an officer to the evidence room while Hughes moved toward the boy. The child watched Hughes' face closely, his solemn expression warring with his wide frightened eyes.
“Let me have those hands, kiddo.” Hughes took hold of the thick metal bar holding the locked cuffs apart. The snap of the lock opening wasn't loud, but the child flinched anyway. He didn't take his hands from the open cuffs until Hughes lifted the restraints away. Then he pulled his hands to his chest and rubbed his wrists a little, still watching Hughes' every move from behind his veil of shaggy black hair.
“That's better, isn't it? Those things are heavy, aren't they?” Hughes heard himself talking and knew he sounded like an idiot, but the boy needed to hear the tone more than the words. He freed the child of the leg irons. “Come on-hey, what the--?” Hughes lifted a hand as the boy quickly tucked his knees beneath himself, put both hands to the floor, then pressed his forehead to the tile between them, babbling in his mysterious, fluid language.
“Guess that's his way of saying thanks for taking the cuffs off. Xingese go in for a lot of bowing and scraping, don't they?” Greenward came up with a bag in hand.
“They bow instead of shaking hands, and they take being polite to extremes. That's about all I know that isn't hearsay.” Hughes put a hand on the child's back, patted him a little awkwardly, then took his arm to help him to his feet. “All right, son, you're welcome. Now let's go see a doctor, okay?”
The boy got to his feet, his face solemn. He spotted the bag in Greenward's hand, swayed forward, lifting one hand, then thought better of it and took a step back, lowering his eyes.
“Weird,” Greenward commented as he handed the bag to Hughes. “I'd sure like to know what's going through the kid's head.”
“So would I.” Hughes opened the evidence bag and looked inside. “This is what he had on him?”
“It took four officers to take it off of him, and he kicked one of them hard enough I put the man on a two-day medical leave.”
Hughes looked down at the object in his hand. The boy at his side all but vibrated with tension, but didn't move or speak. The child's property was a collapsible brass tube, about five inches long in its closed shape. Two well-made and tightly fitted brass caps, connected to the body of the tube by delicate hinges, covered the ends. Swooping engraved lines and symbols arced around the brass body of the thing. Hughes pulled the tube into its full extension-it clicked faintly as the parts locked into place-and opened the end caps. “A telescope?”
“A kaleidoscope,” Greenward corrected. “Never seen one that fancy, but it does the same thing my sister's kid's does. Point it at something and see the pretty colors.”
The boy sucked in a breath as Hughes put the kaleidoscope to one eye and experimentally turned the barrel. The faded walls of the room, reflected five or six times by the toy's cleverly placed mirrors, still didn't offer much interest. Hughes closed the kaleidoscope and pushed the end caps back into place, then offered it to the child.
The boy's eyes went wide, then he hurriedly snatched up his prize possession and pocketed it before Hughes could change his mind. He pressed his palms together and bowed low, then went further and dropped to his hands and knees again.
“Kid's going to wear out his knees, if he does that every time someone does him a favor,” Greenward said, raising both eyebrows.
“He's scared and he probably doesn't understand anything of what's happened to him in the last few hours.” Hughes bent and pulled the child to his feet again. “He's probably overdoing his thank-yous, just in case.” He offered the bag back to Greenward.
“You missed something, Detective.” Greenward upended the bag, shook something out into his palm. “This is why I called you in the middle of the night.” He held out the pair of steel tags on their sturdy, unadorned chain. “Know anything about this guy?”
Hughes took the oblong tags and narrowed his eyes at the lettering stamped into them. One read Roy Mustang, Brigadier General, Reg No. 1906-8219-158. The other repeated the registration number, along with a tiny circle and the words, Flame Alchemist.
Hughes shook his head as he pocketed the military dog tags. “Never heard of him.”
Part Three
http://mfelizandy.livejournal.com/4496.html#cutid1
*Tiny detail note: In doing a bit of research for this story, I discovered that I really should have called the kaleidoscope a teleidoscope, since that is the technically correct name for a tube with mirrors inside it that reflect multiple images of an image captured by a lens. A kaleidoscope, technically speaking, must have some small objects or perhaps a tube of multicolored oil to provide the colors. For reasons that will become apparent later in the story, I can't turn the teleidoscope into a proper kaleidoscope. The word "kaleidoscope" sounds better in the title, and I thought "teleidoscope" might cause unnecessary confusion, so I'm going to leave it as it's described. Maybe a handy side character will correct Hughes on the matter later.
Author: mfelizandy
Rating: PG-13
Type: Post-anime AU plotfic, featuring alchemical time travel and a ten-year-old Roy Mustang.
Warnings: Language and vague hints of one of Roy Mustang's past love affairs.
Author's Notes: This story starts in an AU in which Edward Elric was not catapulted into another world at the end of the series, and Al did not lose four years of growth and memory in regaining his body. Other AUs will make an appearance through the story. When the kaleidoscope turns, we're in a different timeline.
Summary: The State Alchemists were disbanded years ago. The homunculi have been destroyed. Amestris is finally enjoying some peace--until one of Brigadier General Roy Mustang's old flames brings him evidence that someone is tampering with powers that could tear him and his world apart.
In another version of history, Maes Hughes is a Central City police detective, with a very strange case on his hands.
“Second Mirror, Counterclockwise”
Central City, Amestris
November 12, 1916
“Yeah, yeah, I'm coming.” Maes Hughes grumbled as he lurched in the direction of the ringing phone. It was the part of his job he liked the least-the fact that his cases tended to erupt in the middle of the night, and time was almost always of the essence. He picked up the phone and didn't bother to try and sound awake. “Hughes.”
“Wake up, Detective, you're working.” The voice was that of Chief Robert Greenward, night-duty commander of the Central City Fourth Precinct-and not a man to call out a Special Cases detective lightly.
“I am?” Hughes ran a hand over his rough-stubbled face and reluctantly turned on the hall lamp, blinking away the last vestiges of what had been a warm night's sleep. “What am I working on?”
“Something that's your kind of weird. Enough alchemical energy to knock out the power to six blocks, but for all we can tell, only thing it was used for was burning the grass on public property. Know any alchemists who specialize in large-scale vandalism?”
“No.” Hughes shifted and put his hips against the table. “It's just vandalism? No bodies, no major property damage?”
“Not exactly. Look, Hughes, you need to see this. We've got a suspect in custody, and I think you're the right man to get some answers out of him.”
“You've got someone and you called me in the middle of the night?”
“We've got someone, but he doesn't fit the profile, or much of anything else. Like I said, it's your kind of weird.”
Hughes sighed. “I'll be there in twenty minutes-but I'm going to mention this when I put in for a raise.” He hung up the phone, and turned back toward the bedroom.
His wife, Gracia, had taken the time to put on her soft green bathrobe, and not only find but polish her husband's glasses. She put the wire framed lenses in Hughes' hand as he paused to kiss her temple. “I'll put some coffee on.”
“No-go back to sleep. You need your rest.”
“I'm fine, Maes. I'll take a nap while Elysia's at school.” Gracia slipped by Hughes and went into the kitchen. “You need at least a warm roll and some coffee if you're going to be working at this hour.”
Maes didn't argue further, putting his glasses on and finding his way to the bathroom. He didn't have time for a proper shower, but he did wash his face and do enough work with the razor to make it look like he'd at least tried.
“Daddy?” Hughes' daughter stood barefoot in the bathroom door, her eyes all too large and uncertain for a five-year-old.
Hughes glanced at his child, then into the mirror. He mopped the remaining shaving cream from his face, and went to pick Elysia up. “Don't worry, Pumpkin, everything's all right. Daddy just has to go to work.”
“You always have to go to work,” Elysia said in a child's weary protest. “Can't the bad men just stop for a little while?”
Hughes smiled a little, and ruffled his daughter's unruly curls. “Remember when I told you about the vacation? That's only three more weeks from now. Then we're all going to go to the mountains and go skiing, remember?”
“I remember.” Elysia put her head on her father's shoulder as he carried her back to her bed. “And you're not going to go to work for two whole weeks.”
“That's right. We can play in the snow all day every day. For now, though, you need to sleep so you can be my bright and beautiful girl tomorrow, okay?” Hughes tucked Elysia in, picking up Danny the stuffed elephant and make sure his trunk was sticking out beside his daughter's cheek. Elysia was very particular about making sure her playmate was warm and able to breathe comfortably. With his daughter safely in bed, he went to have his coffee and switch roles from husband and father to criminal investigator.
Maes Hughes, Special Detective, arrived at the Fourth Precinct Police Station twenty-five minutes after he'd hung up his home phone. The dispatcher pointed him not toward the chief's office, but to the door to the interrogation room. Hughes flashed his badge to the pair of uniformed officers standing guard, then went into the room where the Chief stood frowning at a pane of one-way glass. There was a notebook open on the writing shelf below the desk, but from appearances Greenward hadn't added anything to the scrawled notes in it in a while. Hughes followed the veteran policeman's gaze, and couldn't help but double-take. “That's your suspect?”
“He's the only piece of evidence we've got. Patrolman was walking his beat, nice and quiet, and all of a sudden the damn air is on fire. Knocks out the power for the whole district. Next thing anyone knows, there's a fifty-foot alchemy circle burned into the grass in Swift Park.”
“Have any of the State Alchemists turned up to take responsibility for the mess?”
"The military's dogs are all accounted for. That's the weirdest part. That fire went out all at once, and when we got some lights out there, we found him."
"...a child?"
"Looks like one--but with these alchemists, you can never be sure."
“What's he told you?”
“Nothing. At least, nothing anyone can understand.” The chief scowled at the figure huddled in the corner of the interrogation room. “Arethusa-the dispatcher--speaks a little Xingese, and she says he sounds like he's talking some dialect of that, but she doesn't understand what he's telling her, if he's telling her anything at all.”
“We're a hell of a long way from Xing.”
“I'm glad to hear you know your geography. But if he understood Amestrian he wouldn't have-well, he'd be better dressed right now.”
“Looks like he put up a fight.”
“He did when we emptied his pockets. That's another strange thing-he didn't resist arrest, but the way he howled when we fingerprinted him, you'd think we were cutting his fingers off.”
“Are the reinforced cuffs and leg irons really necessary? He doesn't look like much of a flight risk.” Hughes' eyes traveled over the slight frame of the suspect.
“He's mixed up in alchemy, Detective. According the Fraser-that's the beat officer-there was a thirty-foot high circle of flame fifty feet wide and burning blue in the park where he picked our suspect up. No one's going to set the city on fire my watch, little kid or not.”
“Yeah.” Hughes gazed through the window at the prisoner. “Unless I miss my guess, though, that's a victim, not a perpetrator.”
“You sure of that?”
“No-but most alchemists with the power to control the kind of energy it takes to throw thirty-foot walls of fire are more than eight or ten years old.” Hughes went to the door.
“There's FullMetal,” Greenward said stubbornly. “He was what, twelve, when he started? And you know what kind of damage that kid can do.”
“FullMetal was a freak accident,” Hughes answered in a firm tone. “There's evidence that his father was experimenting on him before he was even born, and continued his tampering right up until we got too close and he took off. Then his mother and brother died-he might have even killed them both himself.” Hughes paused with his hand on the door handle, closing his eyes briefly. “FullMetal was mentally and alchemically unstable even before...he joined the military.”
Greenward was silent for several second before saying grudgingly, “So how do you know that's not another little walking bomb looking for a place to detonate?” The chief nodded at the window.
“If he could do what FullMetal can do, this whole block would be a smoking crater.” Hughes went through the door.
The boy huddled in the corner of the interrogation room had been resting his head on his knees, but he snapped to alertness as soon as Maes Hughes opened the door. His eyes went wide as the detective closed the door behind himself, and he pushed himself harder against the walls, lifting his cuffed hands as though to ward off a blow.
Hughes stopped while still a few feet away, slowly lowered himself to a crouch. “Easy, kid. I'm not here to hurt you.” He did his best to make his tone unthreatening. “I'm Detective Hughes. It's my job to find out what happened tonight. It would be a lot easier if you'd help me.”
The raised hands lowered half an inch, and eyes so dark Hughes couldn't tell pupil from iris stared back at him. The face was dirty, tearstained, and sported a fading bruise that covered much of one high cheekbone. Black hair that badly needed trimming brushed the shoulders of a thin wraparound shirt that had probably started out a dull blue, but had faded with wear to a lifeless blue-gray. The sleeves left the forearms and chapped hands bare, and there were what looked like old burn scars as well as the more recent bruises on those arms. The boy wore pants of the same material as his shirt, loose to the knee and wound snug from the knee to just above the ankles. On the child's feet were a sort of adjustable shoes, made of leather and gathered up with laces that tied around the ankles-just below the dully-gleaming steel of the leg irons.
Hughes inched a little closer. “Do you have a name? I'm Hughes. Hughes.” He put a hand to his chest as he said it.
The child just stared at him, a glimmer of something on his face. He relaxed a little, the wheels almost visibly turning in his head.
“That's right. I'm Hughes. I'm just trying to help.”
The boy hesitated, then said something. Unfortunately, it was only a soft flow of nonsense syllables to Hughes' ears. Mya tchnenni calooneya vetchai pirtuyu.
Hughes listened anyway, then shook his head. “Sorry, kiddo, I don't understand a word of whatever you just said. But we'll find someone you can talk to. There has to be someone who knows what “pirtooyoo” means somewhere in this city. For now, though, you're going to have to settle for getting out of here and a few square meals.” He got up, and went to tap on the window. “Hey, Greenward, get me the keys to kid's cuffs, will you?”
The chief must have had the keys in his pocket-he opened the door seconds later to hand the ring through to Hughes. “You sure about this? What are you gonna do with the kid, anyway?”
“Take him to see a doctor, then get him some warm clothes and see if anyone in the Xingese quarter can talk to him. I really want to know whatever he may have seen before the memory starts to fade.”
“Is it a good idea to take him out into the city? He could go walking-bomb on you.”
“Call it a hunch, but I don't think he will. He's just a scared kid, Chief.”
“You're the specialist-but if you're wrong, remember that I told you so.”
“Right. I'd like whatever you took off him when you booked him, please.” Hughes kept his tone pleasant, but his expression left no room for argument about protocol regarding evidence. Special Cases Detectives technically outranked precinct chiefs, and the nature of the crimes they worked on often necessitated bending rules.
Chief Greenward's eyebrows rose, but he sent an officer to the evidence room while Hughes moved toward the boy. The child watched Hughes' face closely, his solemn expression warring with his wide frightened eyes.
“Let me have those hands, kiddo.” Hughes took hold of the thick metal bar holding the locked cuffs apart. The snap of the lock opening wasn't loud, but the child flinched anyway. He didn't take his hands from the open cuffs until Hughes lifted the restraints away. Then he pulled his hands to his chest and rubbed his wrists a little, still watching Hughes' every move from behind his veil of shaggy black hair.
“That's better, isn't it? Those things are heavy, aren't they?” Hughes heard himself talking and knew he sounded like an idiot, but the boy needed to hear the tone more than the words. He freed the child of the leg irons. “Come on-hey, what the--?” Hughes lifted a hand as the boy quickly tucked his knees beneath himself, put both hands to the floor, then pressed his forehead to the tile between them, babbling in his mysterious, fluid language.
“Guess that's his way of saying thanks for taking the cuffs off. Xingese go in for a lot of bowing and scraping, don't they?” Greenward came up with a bag in hand.
“They bow instead of shaking hands, and they take being polite to extremes. That's about all I know that isn't hearsay.” Hughes put a hand on the child's back, patted him a little awkwardly, then took his arm to help him to his feet. “All right, son, you're welcome. Now let's go see a doctor, okay?”
The boy got to his feet, his face solemn. He spotted the bag in Greenward's hand, swayed forward, lifting one hand, then thought better of it and took a step back, lowering his eyes.
“Weird,” Greenward commented as he handed the bag to Hughes. “I'd sure like to know what's going through the kid's head.”
“So would I.” Hughes opened the evidence bag and looked inside. “This is what he had on him?”
“It took four officers to take it off of him, and he kicked one of them hard enough I put the man on a two-day medical leave.”
Hughes looked down at the object in his hand. The boy at his side all but vibrated with tension, but didn't move or speak. The child's property was a collapsible brass tube, about five inches long in its closed shape. Two well-made and tightly fitted brass caps, connected to the body of the tube by delicate hinges, covered the ends. Swooping engraved lines and symbols arced around the brass body of the thing. Hughes pulled the tube into its full extension-it clicked faintly as the parts locked into place-and opened the end caps. “A telescope?”
“A kaleidoscope,” Greenward corrected. “Never seen one that fancy, but it does the same thing my sister's kid's does. Point it at something and see the pretty colors.”
The boy sucked in a breath as Hughes put the kaleidoscope to one eye and experimentally turned the barrel. The faded walls of the room, reflected five or six times by the toy's cleverly placed mirrors, still didn't offer much interest. Hughes closed the kaleidoscope and pushed the end caps back into place, then offered it to the child.
The boy's eyes went wide, then he hurriedly snatched up his prize possession and pocketed it before Hughes could change his mind. He pressed his palms together and bowed low, then went further and dropped to his hands and knees again.
“Kid's going to wear out his knees, if he does that every time someone does him a favor,” Greenward said, raising both eyebrows.
“He's scared and he probably doesn't understand anything of what's happened to him in the last few hours.” Hughes bent and pulled the child to his feet again. “He's probably overdoing his thank-yous, just in case.” He offered the bag back to Greenward.
“You missed something, Detective.” Greenward upended the bag, shook something out into his palm. “This is why I called you in the middle of the night.” He held out the pair of steel tags on their sturdy, unadorned chain. “Know anything about this guy?”
Hughes took the oblong tags and narrowed his eyes at the lettering stamped into them. One read Roy Mustang, Brigadier General, Reg No. 1906-8219-158. The other repeated the registration number, along with a tiny circle and the words, Flame Alchemist.
Hughes shook his head as he pocketed the military dog tags. “Never heard of him.”
Part Three
http://mfelizandy.livejournal.com/4496.html#cutid1
*Tiny detail note: In doing a bit of research for this story, I discovered that I really should have called the kaleidoscope a teleidoscope, since that is the technically correct name for a tube with mirrors inside it that reflect multiple images of an image captured by a lens. A kaleidoscope, technically speaking, must have some small objects or perhaps a tube of multicolored oil to provide the colors. For reasons that will become apparent later in the story, I can't turn the teleidoscope into a proper kaleidoscope. The word "kaleidoscope" sounds better in the title, and I thought "teleidoscope" might cause unnecessary confusion, so I'm going to leave it as it's described. Maybe a handy side character will correct Hughes on the matter later.