Who: Roy Mustang & Marco (Harry Dresden cameo) What: Marco gives the nerdy alchemist a scientific calculator Where: Roy's lab When: After the tribbles are gone and Ed stops trying to die. Warnings | Status: Veterans | Log - Complete
Now that the place wasn’t covered in Tribbles (which were still less weird than the Helmacrons, which said so much about his life), Marco was taking Roy up on this whole ‘alchemy’ thing. Sure, it sounded like a bunch of bullshit, but the Arn put souls in jars, so what did he know? Marco walked to the place where they were supposed to meet and knocked on the door, hoisting his backpack up on his shoulder.
It was a weird picture since he was in his morphing outfit, which was a skintight set of shorts and a similarly tight T-shirt, but it was just easier than constantly destroying or leaving clothes everywhere. The only things in the backpack were snacks and a graphing calculator anyway. Because Roy was from 1915, and math had gotten so much better in 80 years, Roy wouldn’t even know.
Marco scowled and picked a piece of rock out of his bare foot.
***
“Knock harder,” A tall, 6’9” to be exact, specimen of a man told the boy who was standing awkwardly outside the office door on the inside of a gigantic lab. Harry Dresden, wizard extraordinaire, leaned out of another door just a little ways down the three thousand square foot room. A massive dog also poked its gigantic head out, eyes alert.
“He ignores it most of the time,” Harry told the kid, eyeing him. They didn't usually have many visitors to the lab who weren't Harry's clients. Or, well, prospective clients. And the landlord.
Strange.
But Roy Mustang was definitely in there. He eventually would open the door, his dark eyes (dark enough to appear black, but which were in fact a deep, deep blue) cast around then… down.
He snorted. “Look, another one for the midget brigade.” At 5’8”, he was average for a man, but he packed a lot more muscle than seemed readily apparent. He was dressed quite the opposite of Marco, who looked prepared for… swimming? Or running. Or cycling. Mustang, in contrast, was dressed in sharp, pristine blues of his uniform, boots and all, his decorations evenly lined and in perfect order. The only bit of him out of place was his hair, dark as his eyes and floppy, it did whatever it wanted. He didn't seem to mind.
Mustang stood back to let the kid inside. He and Harry exchanged a vague nod. The Colonel closed the door behind the boy then returned to the chair behind his desk, tenting his fingers.
“Marco, then.”
Of course he knew. Roy Mustang had eyes everywhere, even here.
***
Uh. Okay. That was not Roy Mustang. Or at least Marco didn’t think so. He raised a hand in greeting and then nodded and - man, that dog was huge. What even was that? Marco raised a hand and this time he pounded on the door. He was 16; he liked having permission to hit things.
“Oh, come on.” Was his response to Roy’s greeting, “Yes, I’m short. So what?” Marco asked defensively, crossing his arms. It wouldn’t have been so bad that he took after his mom in most traits, including height, if he was a girl, but he wasn’t.
For his part, he looked Roy up and down and raised an eyebrow. Somebody was clearly a bit OCD.
He followed Roy inside, taking a look around the place. It looked like something out of a fantasy movie. Was there Eye of Newt and a cauldron in here somewhere? It definitely felt like he was in some kind of witch’s den. Marco snorted at Roy’s tented hands, “It’d look more evil if you had a cat or some reflective glasses.” He informed him.
“And no, it’s the tooth fairy.” He answered sarcastically before opening the backpack and taking out the calculator and setting it on the desk.
“I figured if we were going to be doing math, this would help.” Marco said with a shrug.
***
Roy's office was a mix of things. Order and chaos in perfect alignment. The walls were peppered with every manner of arrays on paper, the symbols and the necessary science scrawled out in sharp writing and coded in… the names of women. But Amestris specific from a lifetime of doings whose meaning only Roy understood. Sure, Hawkeye could read the code, Alphonse too, but deciphering it took more than a cursory glance.
The desk though was in perfect order, thanks to Hawkeye’s perpetual cleaning. The bookshelves were haphazardly stacked with books covering many different topics from math to biology to physics. Where had he gotten them all? When you screwed the local underground crime lord, it provided nice perks.
“I prefer dogs,” he said flippantly. He loved dogs. They were fantastic loyal little assholes who loved you no matter what.
His eyes fell to the small, rectangle…. It wouldn't be fair to call it a “box” given it was thin. But he leaned forward and touched it with long, thin fingers.
“What is it?” He asked.
He picked it up, the natural scientist nerd that lived inside every Alchemist making him curious as he began his inspection. He turned it this way and that, his dark eyes seeming to brighten. His expression less severe.
Give an Alchemist a mystery and they were happy. Roy was no exception.
***
Marco wasn’t sure what was up with the walls; they looked like mandalas or something. Whatever. At least the books made sense. He nodded in agreement, “Yeah, dogs are pretty cool.” If he was going to nothlit, he’d be a dog.
He blinked.
What was it?
Oh. Right. Roy was old as dirt.
“It’s a scientific calculator,” Marco explained, stepping up next to Roy and pressing the button to turn it on, “It’ll do math for you. See?” He quickly typed in ‘12 ^ 2’ and hit the enter key so the calculator displayed ‘144’. “It’s just a lot faster than doing it all by hand. You can do geometry, trig, and calculus on it too.”
***
Roy leaned in closer to the “calculator” and watched when the display turned on, his brows furrowing in misunderstanding until the boy typed in the numbers. Like buttons. But different from the type of keyboard on the tablet, given they were a little raised.
Marco entered the calculation. The correct number popped up.
His head whipped around and he looked at the curly haired other in surprise. His eyes narrowed, his lips thinned, then he… well he looked back at the calculator and then he laughed.
A calculator?! It did the equations for you! He snatched the thing off the desk, lifting it close so he could look it over more closely. He wanted to crack the case to see how it worked on the inside, his fingers traced the grooves to that effect.
“This would speed the process so much,” he said. “The god damned math is the hardest part.” Well. No. Not for him. Chemistry, math, biology were all things Roy could do, physics too. But this? This would help.
His stupid boyish grin crossed his face, it glittered there in his dark eyes, making him look younger than his 30 years. Boyish. Roy pushed a hand through his dark hair.
“Oh, damn. Now I can figure out what the Hell I'm doing wrong.” He paused though. “What do you want for it?”
He'd buy it. He didn't understand how common they were these days.
***
This had to be how Ax felt all the time. How did he not laugh in their faces? Because Marco wanted to laugh, seeing a grown man looking like he was his age and grinning all because of a stupid calculator you could pick up at any Target.
Roy had a nice laugh, though, and it was better to see the man smiling than… whatever else he’d been trying to do.
“Yeah, it makes things a lot faster,” Marco agreed, “I mean, props to you guys, doing it all by hand.” He shook his head, he couldn’t imagine.
What did he want for it?
Marco shrugged, “You can keep it. You’re showing me stuff, so it’s only fair I’m showing you stuff too, right?”
Keep things nice and equal. The way Marco liked it. No pity. No favors.
***
He peered at Marco for a long moment, his eyes unreadable. Then he nodded crisply, finding the terms acceptable. It was a remarkable exchange.
It would make Roy's current quest to transmute diamonds that much easier. He'd hit a wall recently and then with the tribbles.. But all that was behind him. He set the calculator back on the desk but his fingers lingered on it, happy.
He looked happy.
Roy Mustang was a strange man. Strange that something so common could change so much of his outlook. He wasn't stable.
Wait til he told Hawkeye though. She'd never share his excitement, given she wasn't an Alchemist. But she'd be glad he was happy.
“You know how to use it. You know the kinds of math it can be used for. I'd hazard a guess you can do the math, too.” Good. He wouldn't be working from the start in his explanations.
“What do you want to see?”
*** It wasn’t that Marco couldn’t figure out how to get people in good moods. It was just usually more informative to piss them off. Made them more easily distracted. But that wasn’t what he wanted out of Roy right then, so there was no point.
“Uh, yeah. I can do up through single-variable calculus. Dad was trying to teach me more than that, but I didn’t get it.” Marco sounded a little… upset with himself. Like come on. It couldn’t have been that difficult.
What did he want to see?
Despite his life experience, Marco was still, in some ways, a 16 year old boy. So there was really only one answer.
“Fire.” Duh.
“That way I know this isn’t a bunch of bullshit.”
***
At this point, 16 year olds being able to do single variable calculus wasn't new. But Roy looked at Marco with raised brows. “That's it?” He said, deadpan. Some university professors barely got it. He snorted and shook his head.
But then his good cheer died in his eyes and he nodded again. Slowly this time. Fire, yeah, of course. Everyone wanted to see fire. He should have asked for silver to gold.
Roy reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of white gloves, which each had an array stitched across the back in red. He passed one to Marco then pulled one on the other hand.
“These are my design, made out of a thing I call ignition cloth.” He raised his gloved hand. “When I rub my fingers together it creates a spark.” He rolled his fingers in a ‘snapping’ motion to show the spark. “With the spark comes fire.” He rolled his fingers again and the snap of ignition hit the air and a fire roared to life in Roy's palm. Another twitch of his fingers and the precision of his fire burned a sheet of paper on the desk.
“I'm the military's most useful weapon. Mostly I'm a neat party trick.”
He stared at his hand for a moment then cut the flow of oxygen fueling the fire. It left the smell of ash behind. Roy smelled forever of cinders and smoke.
***
“Yeah, sorry,” Marco said sheepishly. If this required anything more complicated, he wasn’t going to be much help. But it probably didn’t, right? Those other two were doing it… but maybe everybody studied calculus in their world, Marco didn’t know.
He caught the glove easily and examined it, turning it around in his hands and cocking his head at it. Marco ran his fingers over the fabric, then pinched it, but he couldn’t really tell that anything was different. Human senses sucked sometimes. The mandala - array - Marco corrected himself, on the back seemed pretty complicated to stitch into gloves.
But he forgot the glove entirely when Roy made fire.
It was just… cool.
Well, this alchemy stuff definitely wasn’t bullshit.
Marco’s brown eyes lit up, and for a minute they actually looked like the eyes of a high schooler instead of a weary veteran.
Then he snorted, but still he had an excited look on his face, “Yeah, I’ll bet. I’d put you in the fighting too.”
His face took on a more thoughtful look, he’d noticed the look on Roy’s face and the phrasing, so for once it seemed like Marco might be able to ask someone about something he’d been thinking about.
“What do you think about that? I mean, what you’re good at mostly being good for fighting.” He asked seriously.
***
Roy pulled his glove off, took the other, and carefully tucked the little fateful things inside his coat again. Then for the second time in the ten minutes the boy had been there he surprised the Colonel. Roy's expression softened considerably, though his eyes looked troubled.
Marco and he both had the eyes of weary veterans. He'd noticed it, but Marco's had become much more clear when his face lit up at the sight of fire.
Damn. He was just a kid. Like all the other damned kids that had been sucked into the Extermination.
And that question?
Roy appraised Marco with serious eyes. “I'm a soldier,” He said quietly. “I don't mind war.” Who had ever asked him that question before? “... Mostly I hate it.” He spread his hands. Hands that were made for destruction, not creation.
He curled his fingers into fists, “You fought?”
*** He relinquished the glove easily; it wasn’t like he could do anything with it.
Marco was about to retort that that wasn’t the question he’d asked, but Roy surprised him by actually answering him honestly. Then the question was how did he hate it? Because everybody (minus Rachel) hated it, but it was whether you hated it and enjoyed it at the same time that was the question.
Another shrug at Roy’s question, then Marco scratched the side of his nose, “Yeah. 3 years against a bunch of body snatching aliens. We won.” At that he grinned, and it wasn’t a completely nice smile.
“My job was to come up with really fucked up plans.” He laughed.
***
That was the look of a man been made to do too many horrible things in his life. Marco seemed to lack the guilt Roy felt every time he talked about Ishval. But then, they were different people and Roy didn't know the circumstances of Marco's war.
So the Colonel did the only thing he could do in that scenario. He accepted it. He just nodded, no revulsion. No judgment. No horror. Just one soldier to another who understood when you wanted things to end.
Roy had burned the entirety of Daliha to the ground to end the war. Civilians. Women and children alike.
But he met Marco's eyes and that not so pleasant smile. “You did what was necessary and went home. That's all any soldier wants in war.” He pulled the calculator close again.
So excited to use it.
Roy Mustang wasn't stable.
*** “Going home is weird,” Marco said in a conversational tone, “Once you get there, you don’t know what to do.” Sure, he packed his schedule as full as he could, but given he barely slept, that still left him with way too much time on his hands.
That’s why he’d started drinking.
“So,” He said, changing the subject before things got weird, “What’s like… the baby steps of alchemy?”
Marco grinned.
***
Going home was weird.
Once you got there…
Yeah. You didn't know what to do. Roy hadn't had a home to go to, being an orphan who grew up in a brothel, and then on the estate of a Master Alchemist who'd died the year he deployed to the war.
Roy had come back to nothing. Hughes never questioned why Roy had put a gun in his mouth and almost pulled the trigger. More than once.
But the boy changed the subject and Roy chuckled a little. He looked at the shelf of books, scanning it quickly. “Chemistry. Alchemy is the combination of elements. You can't change atoms, but you can combine the shit out of things to make another. That book on the bottom. No, the other one, Shaumer, it's a good place to start.”
Roy Mustang didn't take students.
What the hell was he doing?
***
The book on the bottom… Marco let his hand wander along the bottom until Roy clarified which book (which was good, because ‘the bottom’ had not been specific enough). Then he carefully drew it off the shelf and opened it up. Wow. It was old, and it was written like it was old. The typeface was all weird, to the point Marco half expected it to start all its chapters with ‘Ye’ for ‘The’.
He also nodded at Roy’s explanation. That made sense: the force holding atoms together was absolutely ridiculous, but atoms fused together all the time. Mostly in stars, yeah, but… that was a question.
“Fusing elements takes a ridiculous amount of energy. And how were you…” Marco stopped and thought for a minute, recalling the smell of the flame alchemy. Not the ash, he knew that smell, but there was something just before it, he could barely smell it but it was similar to something he’d smelled in morph… what…
“Oh, I get it, you’re controlling the oxygen. That’s why you only need a spark, if something is flammable enough then boom. Right?” Hopefully, or he’d sound like an idiot.
“But where does the energy for the fusing come from?”
Something else occurred to him.
“Have you looked at the modern periodic table?” Marco asked.
*** Heh.
Smart kid.
Roy eyed him again. Perceptive kid. Who paid attention to smells in wake of fire? Who asked the logical questions after so short a period of exposure to things beyond one's understanding?
And here this boy… Marco no name who won a war against aliens.. 16. This kid wasn't who everyone thought he was. The image he portrayed. Roy quirked a brow.
“Manipulating the oxygen density until it's combustible.” He agreed. “I can also separate the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen atoms in water molecules, and make that highly volatile and combustible, too.” He was a scary individual on the battlefield. Especially given his accuracy and ability to create pathways of oxygen to guide his flames.
“I've looked at the table, yes. I'm still learning it. The books on top are the newest shit in the world of chemistry and physics. From what world I have no damned idea,” given they were in the center of some kind of … dimensional bullshit. Physics hadn't reached time travel yet in Amestris, alright?
“The energy usually comes from within. Alchemy is an equivalent exchange. If you don't have enough to give what you're creating will never come to be. But it'll be happy to kill you in the process.”
***
Marco whistled, impressed. Setting water on fire… man, this guy was like a walking, talking, more deadly Molotov Cocktail. No doubt somebody had done some fucked up shit with that. He would have, “In theory you could use any element that was flammable, right?” He asked. Then he considered something else, “Dude, you could breathe underwater. Or in space. That’s awesome!”
“Have you done anything with radioactivity yet?” Marco asked curiously.
Everything Roy said just brought more questions to mind, some of which were his mind racing way ahead of itself, as it tended to do.
He nodded. That made sense. They were made up of atoms as much as anything else. Marco scrunched his nose up as he almost put something together, but didn’t quite make it. He hated that. When if he was just a bit smarter, something would make sense, and he could tell but couldn’t do anything about it.
So he dropped it.
“Right,” he said, “Because you only have so much energy, and so much matter, and if all your matter is energy, there’s no more you.” Marco made a ‘poof’ motion with his hands.
***
He laughed. “We don't have beaches in Amestris, we're landlocked on all sides. I think Lieutenant Hawkeye would murder me if I told her I wanted to try breathing in space.” He gestured vaguely out ‘there.’
Radioactivity. He furrowed his brows faintly. “I know another Alchemist who shifts the molecular and atomic composition to create explosives. Because we rely on equivalent exchange, he hasn't created a mass nuclear reaction…” since the war. He didn't say that part. He just shrugged. That went too far into the discussion of how Kimblee did it, which involved the Philosophers Stone and so much more bullshit than Roy wanted to discuss.
“Have you memorized the periodic table?” he asked. “My Master,” he paused, “my teacher, made me learn it backward and forward. He gave me two days.”
Berthold Hawkeye had been an asshole. But Roy respected the man until the day he died.
***
“So?” Marco gave him a weird look, “You’re allowed to leave this Amestris place, right?” They’d get leave, right? Or eventually Roy would have to retire; Marco didn’t see many 80 year olds in the army. “Go somewhere with water.” He shrugged.
Then he snickered. He couldn’t help it, “Who’s Hawkeye? Your girlfriend?”
One of the side-effects of Marco’s particular life experience is that he’d stopped acting like a child (or adolescent) with adults, in the sense that he perceived no differences in their social status. Not that he would ever notice that.
He nodded; making explosives made sense. “Yeah. What’s the range on alchemy anyway? I’m not setting off the equivalent of an atom bomb if I have to be around.”
“Wait. You know about nukes?” Marco furrowed his eyebrows.
“Uh, are you giving me homework? I haven’t done homework in 2 years!” He grumbled.
***
“Yeah,” he agreed mildly. He would kill himself on leave. Roy needed shit to do, a goal to work toward. Sitting around was only an option when he decreed it and usually only within the confines of his office while his subordinates did their work. He was lazy, but he was a man with a plan. Always.
Leave would remove all of that and then what?
“My assistant. And bodyguard. Sometimes driver.” and yeah, maybe in the future, his wife. He hadn't figured out diamonds yet. “You ask her that and see if she doesn't shoot you.” fair warning, Marco.
Roy pushed himself up and stepped to the bookshelf, reaching to pull down another book. “We called him the Crimson Lotus, but the future has terms that fit what he could do.” He'd learned what nuclear meant here on Knowhere. He'd read about what the future held in terms of warfare.
Solf Kimblee would die before Mustang allowed the man to destroy another nation.
“No, but you have the option. I don't control your life, after all.” if Marco wanted to learn, he could. But Roy wouldn't shove it down his throat.
Everyone had choices.
He valued that.
***
Oooh, so this Hawkeye and Roy were a sensitive topic. Marco’s eyes shone. Bingo. Might get shot? Might be worth it.
He frowned at Roy’s explanation, turning it over. He’d learned a little bit about nukes; including that at first they had no idea what would happen. If it was only 1915, then did they even have Einstein? Like, they obviously had some idea of how it worked, but… Marco exhaled. That guy cannot have fully known what he was doing, “Wow. What an idiot.”
So in short, yes, he had homework. Marco sighed, “Two days?” He confirmed.
Stupid cool fire.
***
“He's in prison now,” Yes. Kimblee was an idiot. A murderous psychopath who enjoyed the horror he inflicted on the Ishvalans. It made Roy sick to his stomach when he remembered Kimblee in the desert.
And yet the man had given all of them the only solid advice out there. To look your dead in the eyes and never ever forget them. Never ever turn away from it. Recognize what you were doing.
Roy shook himself.
He wasn't out there anymore. He was here and this boy beside him was warmth and stability in the present.
“Two days.”
***
“Yeah, that’s probably a good place for him.” Marco agreed. Because causing nuclear winter or blowing up the planet on accident would be bad. He just waited quietly for Roy to confirm; everybody spaced out once in a while. It was normal.
Wasn’t it?
“Right.” He affirmed. Two days. “So next time, your place or mine?” He grinned.
***
Roy laughed.
“Get the hell out of my office,” but he wasn't offended at the remark. He chuckled good naturedly.
Idiot kid.
It was fine. Marco wasn't a soldier in the military, Roy had no grounds on which to demand the kid take a more respectful position. With Edward Elric it was different. He was Ed’s superior officer.
For now though, Roy just reclaimed his seat, propped the book he'd dragged down open on his desk and reached for the scientific calculator.