#dpsd

The chair swiveled around towards to face the door as the other man entered the office.

“Still no news on the mysterious rescuer from the train?”

Maes shrugged helplessly in response.

“I wish I could say I had better news, but none of the passengers are saying anything.”

Roy shot Maes a skeptical look. That was definitely not the best excuse the man had used before. “What about any of the terrorists? I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t want to see the person who defeated them so humiliatingly, not get humiliated in return.”

An almost excited glint entered Maes’ eyes now as he thought of what he had discovered.

As one of the lead officers of the Central Branch’s Intelligence division, it was infuriating that he’d managed to discover… essentially nothing substantial on the unknown fighter from the failed train-jacking two weeks previous.  

And although he hadn’t managed to discover anything about the person themselves, this was definitely going to be a step forward.

“I did go down to the jail to question them - of course I did Roy! But the interesting thing is, half of them are claiming the person was the devil, another portion saying he’s ‘invincible’, and the rest of them never even saw whoever it was that knocked them out!”

“And this is interesting…why?” Roy asked as he raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Because we now know 3 things,” Maes paused here for dramatic effect.

He raised his index finger.

“One. We know that this person is a trained fighter, and an alchemist. The first because they have to be trained if they managed to take out so many people so skillfully, in such a short amount of time. And the second…some of the officers found marks of transmutations on the train - not to mention that one guy’s gun.”

A second finger went up.

“Two - whoever it is they’ve got blond hair that was distinct enough for me to see from on top of a moving train while they were jumping down. Not as good as we’d hoped, but better than nothing.”

A third finger rose.

“And three. The results on Bald from the hospital finally came back - ignoring the damages from your flames.”

This caught Roy’s attention again as he spun around from where he had started staring out of the window.

“Oh? What did it say? I know he was certainly already injured before I took him down at the station.”

“His automail…” Maes started, looking serious for the first time since he’d entered the room. “His automail was completely crushed.”

“What?”  The response spilled out before Roy could stop it.

“The doctors had to call in a technical expert for help, but it seems like Bald’s arm was actually - sorry had been - actually pretty high quality combat automail. ”

Maes shook his head as he continued. “But whoever it was that beat him, they single-handedly - and I mean that literally - demolished Bald’s automail in a single blow.”

Roy let out a disbelieving huff.

“Well, then. This just makes it all the more important that we find him.”

The Flame Alchemist stared seriously at his friend.

(Ages – Ed: 14 ½ / Al: 13 ½)

Location: Central

“Well …. What do we have here?” she- no, the monster started maliciously.

“I see a pair of misbehaving and disrespectful students that I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing in only a few years, and yet they’ve already forgotten all the manners that I taught them so well.

Her eyes gleamed.

Izumi had finally managed to corner the boys after a good half an hour of cat-and-mouse. There was a faint sense of satisfaction welling up in her that she always got after a good hunt, and also a sense of pride that though there were those rumors she had heard.

Still, she let a predatory grin crawl its way onto her face.

“It is good to see you again Edward, and you too Alphonse, although it has been a while since we saw each other last, hasn’t it? Almost three or four years now, right? How have you boys been? Good I hope?”

Edward stared at her in a cautious confusion. Teacher grinning that way, the closest comparison he could think of was like a cat that caught the canary,was never a good thing. Especially with the tone she used when posing the last question – the sheer sweetness and nicety making the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

‘We definitely need to be careful`, Ed thought, ‘there’s no telling what she might do.’

Keeping a careful eye, he watched as Izumi took a step forward, hand out in greeting.

“Come here Ed, Al. It’s been such a long time.”

She had a smile on her face that set all his senses screaming out warning WARNING in addition to the uneasy sense he was getting from the way she was acting and the indiscernible look in Izumi’s eyes.

Still unsure of why their Teacher was acting the way she was, but deciding to go along with it all the same in case something even worse might happen – Edward met his teacher’s handshake with his right hand.

Clench

Izumi’s grip tightened around his hand suddenly, taking a strong hold of him.

Ed’s eyes widened in sudden realization.

‘Oh CRA-!’

Any further thoughts he could have had were cut off as he was flipped and thrown over the woman’s shoulder with perfect form.

He could hear Al’s shout of surprise behind him (though he really shouldn’t have been, I mean it is Teacher), along with the gasps and reactions of the civilians of the city as he flew across the road and slammed into the garbage cans, then into the wall of the opposite alley. He had to bite off the end of a grunt of pain as he felt his shoulder shift – Ed spared a moment to think thank Truth it was his flesh one Winry would’ve ripped him a new one if he did something to his automail so quickly since his last checkup – but dammit Ed swore he heard a pop and felt a crack as he began to get up.

In the other alley, Alphonse couldn’t react in time, and could only watch as his brother crashed into the brick walls. With only the thought of running to his brother and making sure he was okay on his mind, he missed the hand flash out beside him as he moved to run across the street – and the next thing he knew he was in the air, people flying past him before he crashed into the opposing alley just like Ed did.

Ed let out a groan as he lifted himself out of the garbage that had fallen from the bins. Dammit he would need to wash these so many times to get the stupid smell out.

Looking beside him to make sure that his brother was okay, he rubbed his now injured shoulder a bit to get some feeling back into it and assess the damage – it didn’t seem to be too bad, at least it wasn’t dislocated. He let out a curse as he knelt to help Al out of his own pile of garbage beside him.

He berated himself for not seeing that coming.

‘Really though, I should have expected tha-‘

He let the thought cut itself off as he froze, hearing the slow clacks of footsteps wearing a particular kind of footwear come closer and closer.

Now normally he would at escape at the first chance he could see, or at least make sure that Al could get away, but in this case…

He looked over his shoulder at the person in question just to make sure.

The gleam in Izumi’s eyes was even more pronounced than earlier as she made her way through the crowd across the street towards the alley that he and his brother were in.

As a well-trained fighter and alchemist, along with just being an intelligent person, he knew when it was appropriate to give in and to continue fighting. Especially when he was in the sights of someone like their Teacher, the one who taught them everything they know.

So, he did the only thing he could think of as he watched the woman approaching him. Whether this would help him, or make everything worse would remain to be seen.

Izumi stopped in front of the two just as Ed’s knees touched the ground and he bowed as profusely as he could.

“I’m sorry for running, Teacher. Please forgive us.”

The eight words were infused with as much sincerity as he could.

Alphonse’s own reaction of the equivalent of palming his face was ignored in the background.

Location: Central Café

Ed stared down at his hands in his lap as he and his brother sat beside each other, across from their Teacher. Al kept his gaze to the side, almost desperately trying to focus on the other patrons in the cafe instead of the tense atmosphere between the three of them.

Izumi just stared down at Edward's lowered head, arms crossed as she thought about what topic to breach first.

Them running away from her at first sight? The undeniable fact that he had two automail limbs for some reason, and that Alphonse was an empty suit of armor? Or maybe the biggest question she had – why the rumors of the traveling brothers said that he could do alchemy without a circle.

Finally she broke the silence.

“So. Is anyone going to tell me what happened these past years and why I had to find out from rumors of all things, or are you going to make me ask you.”

Both their heads turned to face her after hearing that.

“Well...” Al started hesitantly, looking towards his brother.

Ed straightened up at this before talking. “I'm sure you already know.”

He looked Izumi straight in the eyes.

“After all, we can both do transmutation without a circle for one reason.”

The only reason, went unsaid between them.

The two held each others' gaze as Alphonse watched, not knowing quite what to say at this knew turn of events.

After all, Ed had told Al his thoughts on why he had a new found ability to transmute without a circle, being that it was an effect of surviving an attempt at human transmutation – even if it was unsuccessful. But to find out that their Teacher, who had been so vehemently against even the concept of human transmutation, had also once attempted it...

..well, it certainly explained why she had tried to drill into them that it was a taboo.

Izumi broke the eye contact first, closing her eyes as she let out a sigh before leaning back against her chair.

“I certainly did know it, even if I was hoping otherwise. I was really hopping you boys wouldn't be so foolish as to actually try what I had thought I made sure you knew was a taboo.”

The two brothers stayed silent.

“Why did you try it in the end? Are you really that stupid?” Izumi asked, her voice gradually rising to a low shout as she berated her two idiot students.

“...we just wanted our mom back.”

Alphonse's voice spoke out, even as the emptiness of the armor caused it to echo and make the moment all the more solemn as all three understood and contemplated what they had all done.

Izumi leaned forward, and even if they thought she was going to hit them again neither of them showed anything as they stayed still.

Instead, she reached out and pulled the two of them towards her holding them closely.

“You idiot boys,” she murmured, “I was so worried.”