Crossed Path Alchemists 2

Crossed Path Alchemists 2

Sarah still had her confident composure (as indicated by her smug expression, crossed arms, and snide remarks contradicting anything Edward would say about Mustang) all the way into the Central Headquarters building. She even hardly noticed all the military officers that stopped to stare at the two Elric "twins" as they walked through the middle of the main room and the hallways to the colonel's office.

Her confident expression turned to a more thoughtful one as they stood in front of the door, Edward being the one to knock for permission to enter. Sarah had to make sure she knew what she was talking about. However slim the chances, if the colonel was anything like everybody else had been, he may not even know who she was.

"Enter," the colonel's voice said behind the wooden portal. Ed grasped the doorknob and turned, swinging the door inward.

Both Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye and Colonel Roy Mustang found themselves staring blankly at Sarah and Edward. Al went virtually unnoticed.

"So I, uh, take it this is the girl?" Mustang asked, turning his attention to Edward. Riza took this opportunity to leave the room on a different errand; whether the errand was real or something she made up on the spot remains a mystery.

The blonde boy nodded. "Like I told you before."

Looking back to Sarah, the colonel inquired, "So, you're Sarah, correct?"

"Colonel Mustang, you know who I am!" Sarah said indignantly.

Raising an eyebrow, Roy replied, "I'm quite sure I don't."

"Sarah Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist, come on!" Sarah said, her voice rising. "Or are you like everybody else in this crazy place and forgotten me too?!"

"I don't find that possible that you have that title as an alchemist," Mustang said calmly. "Our Fullmetal Alchemist is standing right next to you. You must be mistaken."

"How can I be mistaken about it?" Sarah scoffed. She yanked back the sleeve to her coat and showed the colonel her arm; full automail. "Remember? Having an automail arm and leg is how I got my title!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Ed interjected. "I'm the Fullmetal Alchemist, and that's how I got the title, you good-for-nothing lousy fake!"

"I am not a fake!" Sarah shouted back at the boy. She turned back to the colonel. "Come on! You have to remember something!"

Mustang massaged his forehead with his fingertips, closing his eyes to think. This was getting quite out of hand. It was quite clear that the girl wasn't the Fullmetal Alchemist he knew, that much was certain. But she seemed convinced of what she was saying, and it wasn't likely she was trying to pull an act; by now, any other impersonator would have given up, and besides that, this girl obviously hadn't tried to hide the fact she was a female, meaning that she wasn't trying to pretend to be Ed in any way.

"I have a feeling there's a lot you aren't telling us," he said to Sarah.

"That's because there's nothing to tell!" Sarah cried in exasperation. "Sarah Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist, sister to Alphonse Elric! That's who I am! Nobody here seems to get that!"

"None of us know a Sarah Elric. The only two Elrics I know are standing next to you, and as far as we know, they have no sister. So, until you're ready to tell the truth, I'm afraid you're going to be under our custody for awhile."

"What?!"

-----------------Later at Hughes' Office..............

"So this is all the stuff she had on her?" Maes Hughes asked, gesturing to the array of items strewn across the table.

"Everything but the clothes she was wearing," Mustang confirmed.

Hughes picked up a photo; it was the one of Mustang dancing with Sarah. "So what do you call this?" he asked, raising one dark eyebrow.

"I have never met that girl before today, so I have absolutely no idea where she got that," Mustang said, a note of anger in his voice.

"Sure," Hughes said. He then picked up the photo of Sarah and Kain. "Then what about you, Fuery?" he asked the bespectacled young man next to him.

"I haven't seen the girl, period. I don't know where she would have gotten a picture like that!" Fuery said frantically, waving his hands wildly in contradiction.

Hughes looked at the other items on the table; a few more pictures, a state alchemist's pocket watch, and a red pet's collar with a silver bell attached to it. "Well, I don't know what I can get from this," he said, running his fingers through his short crop of hair. "All these things seem to match up with what she's saying."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Riza said. "Edward is the only state alchemist we've had this young." She pointed at the pocketwatch. "And that still doesn't explain why she has these pictures. None of us know who she is, where she's from, or how she seems to be everything that Edward is, down to claiming that Alphonse is her own brother. She even says she knows all of us." Hawkeye then pointed at another picture; Sarah in a military uniform in front of the entire military team under Mustang's command.

"That's the part that I don't get," Hughes sighed. "All of this stuff seems authentic. None of it is faked. But unless all of us had a severe memory lapse where we forgot that we hired a sixteen-year-old girl that looks and acts like Edward Elric, she obviously can't be as she says."

"She does not act or look like me," Ed muttered, glaring at the photos (particularly the one of Sarah, Al, and the mysterious cat that the group had concluded the red pet's collar had come from).

Mustang tapped a finger on the table. "She's not an imposter. She would have cracked by now, and by the way she acts it's obvious she's not trying to be Edward. She's entirely convinced about what she's saying."

"So we've basically got a mental case on our hands," Ed said bluntly.

"I don't think that's quite it," Hughes said dismissively.

Everyone in the room sighed collectively before Roy told Hawkeye to bring the girl to the interrogation room. Hawkeye saluted, then turned to leave the room while Edward gave the colonel a hard look.

“Why? We already know she's crazy!” Edward asked.

Roy looked at him and then said, “You'll see, Fullmetal.”

................... Meanwhile in Sarah's Jail Cell........................

"Damn it all," Sarah thought, sitting on the cot in the small cell. Her hands were bound in front of her in a locked plank of wood, preventing her doing any alchemy to escape. "Stupid colonel! Why would he do this? Could he really not remember me?"

She glared at the mirror hanging on the wall across from her as her reflection stared acidly back. She thought about everything that has happened to her ever seen she and her brother tried to bring their mom back from the dead.

“Sarah Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist, sister to Alphonse Elric, and apparently non-existent.“ she thought not having much to do while she was on the plank.

She heard the cell being opened and looked to see Hawkeye standing there with a clipboard under her arm. The woman didn't say a word as she went up to the plank and took the bounds off her. The first thing she did was get off the plank happy that she was free to move around again.

“Follow me to the interrogation room.”

Sarah nodded not wanting to get on the bad side of Hawkeye and followed her out of the place. She wasn't sure why the older woman was taking her to the interrogation room when they thought she was crazy.

....................................................

Sarah was lead into the interrogation room later by Hawkeye, and saw the Colonel and Edward already there. She sighed, knowing that they were going to try to see if they get information from her (which, in her mind, was pointless, seeing as they obviously already thought she was insane as it was). She slid down onto the hard wooden seat, not saying a word, and fixed her eyes on the colonel. Strewn across the table she sat at were all the things they'd taken from her; the pictures, cat collar, and her watch.

Hawkeye went up to Roy and stood by his side before Roy said, "I have say that your short as Fullmetal here."

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SHORT THAT HE CAN GET LOST BEHIND STACKS OF PAPERWORK AND NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN?" Edward yelled. Sarah jumped slightly in her seat and gave Ed an odd look as he added, "What's that supposed to prove anyway?"

"I wanted to see if she was going to react the same way you do, and I have to say she didn't react like you." Roy explained as Hawkeye jotted the notes down on the clipboard.

"I'm not that sensitive about my height. I'll get a little angry, but you can expect a snappy comeback more than an explosion," Sarah sniffed in disdain.

"I have a question for you that I've wanted to ask for awhile. . . why is it you look so much like my mom?!" Ed snapped.

"If you're talking about Trisha, that's because she's my mother, dipstick," Sarah said coldly. She glared at her things on the table, still miffed that they'd been so quick to take her possessions. "Man, I swear this has got to be some sort of dream," she added under her breath. As a test she reached up and pinched the side of her neck; the hissed "ow" didn't go unnoticed.

"What in the world are you doing?" Mustang asked.

"Seeing if this was a deluded dream and I guess it's not," Sarah said, hanging her head.

"Look, I don't know who you think you are, pretending to go around being me," Ed began, slamming his hands down on the table, "but you need to knock it the hell off! All these things you're saying are lies!"

Sarah leaped to her feet and planted her hands down on the table as well. Leaning forward over the wooden surface she said acidly, "I've told you all before! I'm not lying about anything!"

"I find it a little hard to believe that you are related to my family in every single way that I am!" Ed shouted.

"I could say the same about you!" Sarah yelled back.

"Well-"

"Be quiet, both of you!" Colonel Mustang barked, shutting up both of the arguing teenagers. He leaned forward over the table toward Sarah and pushed the pictures toward her. "Explain where you got these," he commanded coolly.

Sarah pointed two the two pictures of her dancing with the colonel and Fuery. "These two were at the yearly party for state alchemists in Central, remember?" she asked calmly, though her nostrils flared as she spoke with suppressed anger after her yelling spout.

"I'm afraid I don't," Mustang replied.

With a sigh, Sarah responded, "Fine." She then tapped her finger against the picture of her in full military uniform with the rest of the team. "Then this was taken not too long after that party. And then this one-" she pointed to her, Al, and the cat, "-was taken after Al found Rolly." The last one she pointed to, the one of her playing with Elysia, came with the explanation, "And Hughes managed to sneak a picture of me playing with his daughter."

"What about these other things?" Mustang asked, gesturing to the watch and collar.

"The collar is Rolly's and the watch is mine, seeing as I'm a state alchemist," Sarah said rudely. "I probably have Rolly's collar because I took it off and slipped it in my pocket, then forgot about it later."

Ed looked over the pictures. "How do you get these things?" He asked.

"There just pictures, you take them with a camera, you idiot-"

"Al is not your brother! Lieutenant Hughes doesn't even know who you are! And Trisha Elric was my mother, not yours!" Ed interrupted. "There's no way you can prove all this is true!"

"For all I know I've stumbled into some freaking alternate reality here! But if I could really get you to talk to my brother and the people I know they would all be happy to explain to you who I am just as I have! Is that true enough for you?!"

Sarah's eyes widened. Stumbling into an alternate reality . . . after what she thought she did before all this, for all she knew, that could very well be true. The only thing she could think of right now was show them that she could alchemy without a transmutation circle.

............. An hour later in Roy's office......

Roy Mustang looked over the notes of Hawkeye about the girl who claims to be an Elric. He put Sarah in Edward's hands, much to his dismay, before she showed him that she could do alchemy without a transmutation circle. The only people that he knew that possess the ability to do this was Edward and his teacher from what the young alchemist told him. He had an the idea recruiting her, he didn't want to let another potentially useful alchemist slip from his grasp.

The sound of the door snapped him out of his thoughts as he saw Hawkeye come in with more paperwork. He let out a deep sigh, bracing himself for an hour of signing a lot of paperwork.

“Sir, was it wise to let that girl go and stay with the Elrics?” Hawkeye asked as she put the paperwork on his desk and Roy started to sign his paperwork.

Roy smiled still signing paperwork, “Lieutenant, you should know by now that I don't let any useful alchemist slip from my grasp.”

“But what about...” she was cut off by Mustang.

“No worries, they should find out tomorrow what I have planned for her..” Roy explained.

“What about this Envy character that she told us about?” Hawkeye asked. “All she told us that he cut off her other arm earning her that 2nd automail arm.”

“I'm wondering about that too.. your dismissed.” was all he said before Hawkeye left the area closing the door behind her.