The Heist

AN: Hey guys, sorry for the late update! I try to alternate writing and drawing every week. But after I wrote Chapter 6, I was itching to write Metaphor, so I didn't start on this chapter right away. After I did, I realized I had to iron out some kinks in the plot for things to make sense. This is my favourite chapter, and although I ruined my no-20-paged rule, I feel like I really have to get to this point. Stretching things out more just sounds painful and self-indulgent.

Anyway, this part of the story is something that I looked forward to writing for a long time. I might even say that the idea of the events in this chapter is really what fueled me to write this story in the first place.

Also, just a notification: I tweaked something in Chapter 2. Ling said that he was looking for Lan Fan for years, but I realized a little too late that it doesn't really make sense. If Lan Fan is a member of Auto-Mail, and Ling is friends with the leaders of Auto-Mail, he would have found her very quickly if he just did a simple search in the network. So I just changed it to him looking for her for several months after Operation Greed 1.0, because then she would still be recuperating from her injury, and she'd be absent from the network.

Fun Fact: Lan Fan's favourite tea flavour from Tealicious is strawberry-mango milk tea. She was home-schooled.

Ling sipped the bowl of crunchy noodle soup that Lan Fan prepared for him after he woke from his nap. His mother had just called and told them that she would be late coming home from work. A client from hell visited, and it would take some time before she could pacify him.

Rosé was beside them, having a bowl of soup herself. "So, how long does it usually take to get another bottle of medicine?" she asked Lan Fan.

"The arrangement is usually for me to make the payment first," Lan Fan explained. "A few days later, I make a trip back to the mailbox, and the bottle of medicine is there."

Rosé nodded. "Your grandfather's temperature spiked up an hour ago. His fever is getting worse. Should I use more of your special medicine?" she inquired. "I'm not sure if there would be enough left if you have to wait several more days for the next supply."

"Stretch it," Lan Fan answered, looking conflicted. "Administer it only when he gets terribly worse. If you can, give him some over-the-counter pain relievers or fever reducers instead."

Scattered on the dining table were Ling's notes, mixed with the short, encrypted messages from the investigation after Mustang's crew arrived at the vacant Rush Valley Auto-Mail datacentre that morning. They had successfully confiscated all items that held the clues to the identities of some Auto-Mailers involved in the relocation. They found fingerprints from drink bottles and door knobs, hair strands from discarded hair elastics, and one volunteer even left behind a library card on a spare couch. Breda congratulated them on making the scene purposefully look like a harried attempt to escape a rather recently-discovered government inspection. The colonel had dispatched Havoc and Falman to follow one of the false trails leading away from Rush Valley. The trail to Metso was rendered amorphous so no one would question Mustang's decision to leave that at the bottom of their follow-up list. Identifying the volunteers would surely be the next priority in the investigation, and would mostly pacify the higher ups.

Really, everything seemed to be going as planned. Excepting, of course, for the major, unignorable turn of events caused by Ling's brother's appearance and consequent death. Ling still didn't know what it would imply. The fact that his brother, who had hinted that he was to report his findings to their father, failed to reappear would surely alert Chu that something had gone wrong. Ling wasn't worried about vengeance; Chu never harboured the kind of connection to his children that would warrant gross feelings of loss. He was more worried about what his father would deduce from the death itself.

He first became acquainted with this older half-brother five years ago when his mother casually mentioned that their Yao estate in Xing was vandalized by a scorned woman who happened to be one of Henry Chu's old lovers from before he married Yuna. Curiosity got the better of Ling, and he searched for information regarding his father's past romantic relations. Though he had little more to go on than rumours, there were also many that were confirmed; Henry Chu, after all, had been a prominent figure in Xingese politics as the intended heir many years ago. His first child, a daughter, was born only when the cursed man was sixteen, two years younger than Ling himself was now, gotten by a servant he'd enjoyed for a while. Ling remembered the repulsion he felt after discovering that, but some years ago, when he looked up the woman, he found out that she and the daughter were doing well after migrating to Aerugo. His sister was now married herself.

There had been plenty of gossip surrounding his father. The sibling who died last night was from a mistress whom Chu had promised to marry after being crowned. Of course, since Chu never got the chance, he never married the woman. Despite the shame that Ling was sure came with his illegitimacy, the mother made it well known that her son was Chu's flesh and blood, and she sent him as a young man to Amestris to reconcile with his father. He sprouted in the country under the name of Arthur Hwang, and he and Ling had very little contact except for some vile letters concerning inheritance that Hwang had sent Ling.

"Lan Fan," he began. "Tell me what happened when my brother showed up."

The Xingese girl shifted in her seat, and brushed her growing bangs out of her face. She spared a glance at Rose, who stared back, politely interested.

"Well, like I explained earlier, after I chased the Jester and was about to return to you, your brother happened to run into me. Quite literally too. Then Paninya showed up, and from what she said, it appears as if he'd raided Ridel's truck to steal the memory stick, which Paninya managed to take back. Then he started babbling, saying things about how his father would love to hear about... about, well, the mission that we were carrying out last night. I tried to stop him from leaving, and we engaged in a fight, which ended when grandfather surprisingly showed up and stabbed him."

Paninya related something similar before they had left Metso, but there were dots that Ling failed to connect.

In polite conversation, none of Chu's offsprings would dare bring up the fact that he's their father, at least not in Amestris where Chu grew his company as his very own empire. His was a name more commonly used as a weapon. And not many of his children could boast a close enough relationship with the man that they would be confident he would act as an aggressor on their behalf.

Lan Fan's reply sure sounded like something Arthur would say, but Ling listened to the gut feeling that told him there was something amiss. Now that his Hwang brother was dead, there was no one else who could confirm what happened. It wasn't like he doubted the older boy's connection with his father; that part he really believed, but what he didn't understand was Fu's rather exaggerated decision to kill him, only because of a threat that may not hold that much substance. Henry Chu already knew that Auto-Mail would try to escape the government's investigation of the black-markets. And even if Chu found out that Ling was also connected to the underground network, there wasn't much he could deduce from that either. Many people used Auto-Mail. Rich or poor.

Still, it seemed to Ling as if Fu and Lan Fan had other reasons for quickly resorting to eliminating the Hwang boy that way. Especially when Ling didn't even get a chance to question him.

"Lan Fan, this is dangerous," he said, as he took one final sip from his bowl. "We have to be more careful. Next time you find someone suspicious, bring him to me. Or Colonel Mustang, whichever one of us is closer. We have to find out as much as possible about the people whose actions affect us. It's not good to be ignorant of those things."

Lan Fan looked chagrined, but nodded.

"Why was he stealing the memory stick, do you know?" Rosé asked.

"The memory stick contained database configurations, though I'm pretty sure that stealing it is just a cover for the actual work that my father assigned him: namely, to spy on us," Ling answered.

"Database configurations..." Rosé mused. "Which database? I imagine Auto-Mail has hundreds, if not thousands of databases. Do you think it was random?"

Ling was surprised to realize that he hadn't bothered checking. He was so absorbed in trying to figure out the motivations of those around him based on what little he knew, that he completely missed the opportunity to widen his perspective.

Turning to Lan Fan, he said, "Paninya gave you the USB stick, didn't she?" His bodyguard nodded, and she headed up the stairs to her room to retrieve the portable drive. When she came back, he plugged it in his lap top, and fired up the directory explorer to browse through the files. He opened up one of the text files, and created a connection in DataHunter using the configurations the file contained. Once the access had been approved, he typed the command that listed the tables of the database. Lan Fan was beside him, looking over his shoulder.

"Those are the databases consisting of our info on government officials," Lan Fan said, reading the names listed in the result of the query. "Ling, I don't think it's a cover up."

His mind was on the same path. Among the notes on the table were printed pictures of the documents and files they found in the Tobha office. The preparation for Operation Greed 2.0 had coveted much of Ling's attention that he hadn't had a lot of time outside of school hours to devote to studying his findings from Tobha. That might have been a mistake. He sifted through the mess on the table, and finally pulled out all the ones related to Grumman.

"He's interested in the president?" Rosé asked.

"I wouldn't be too surprised if he is," Lan Fan said. "If I were in the business of breaking every single law in the book, I'd be a little concerned about what the law enforcers are up to."

"But Grumman isn't a law enforcer," Ling reminded them. "He is a law maker. Chu is setting his sights a little higher than just trying to avoid the rear view of prison bars if Grumman is his target." Ling took one of the pictures of Grumman, a photograph in an article about his get-together with the leaders of their neighbouring countries, a year or so after he took over the title as president of Amestris.

"I don't understand," Lan Fan said. "I know Chu is a little bonkers, but if he's trying to take over the presidency, he's a lot more far gone than I thought."

"He'll be risking a civil war!" Ling added, pursing his lips. "And Amestris is still recovering from the political collapse of the Sanitary Movement. Amestrians would never support him. He wouldn't even have enough power to overthrow Grumman. Rich as he is, he doesn't control enough military power to do something like that."

"Is there anything else from your research that would suggest what he's probably aiming for?" Rose said, looking through Ling's pile of notes.

Ling set aside the articles on Grumman, and looked over his other findings. He hadn't been able to decode the names from Henry Chu's list of appointments that he took at Tobha, given that he hadn't had a lot of free time. But there were articles he kept track of, from newspaper clippings to online curated blog posts, as he'd always been on the lookout for any mention of his father.

"Let's see here. Last month it seemed as if he met with some entrepreneurs from Xing. Not surprising. The journalist didn't say if he struck a bargain with them though. During an outing up north, he ran into the Minister of Trade appointed by Grumman, and it was said that the two of them chatted for some time over the course of several days." Ling placed the articles down, and browsed through his notebook.

"There was one report from another Auto-Mailer," he continued, "that father was seen crossing the border illegally to Creta but came back on the same day."

"Are all the passes to Creta still closed?" Lan Fan asked, showing a degree of eagerness at the mention of the country.

"Looks like it. At least I've never heard of the quarantine being lifted. I remember there was a decline in the number infected, but as far as I know Grumman hadn't been confident enough to open the passes again after Bradley declared them illegal to broach."

"How about this?" Lan Fan asked, lifting a piece of paper not written in Ling's handwriting, but Edward's. It was a short report of all the questions Chu had asked him and Winry during their first interview with him. "Questions about Auto-Mail's discretion on assassinations. And once again, the topic of government personnel come up."

"So he's definitely interested in something or someone in the government," Rosé mused. "Though that doesn't narrow it down one bit. Even though Bradley's regime is over, Amestris remains very militaristic. We have more State Militants than we have doctors in this country."

"Do we know anything important that Grumman plans to do some time soon?" Lan Fan asked.

"There are several. Consolidating a treaty with Aerugo, finalizing a free-trade agreement with Xing, drawing a relief plan to help alleviate the poverty here in Amestris after the Sanitary Movement. A man like him tends to be very busy."

Lan Fan sighed. "That doesn't narrow it down either. Chu could be interested in any or even all of those things. A treaty with Aerugo means that war is over, and people won't have to come to him for funding their efforts. Same with the relief plans. A free-trade policy with Xing could affect his business if we're going to open up the market to about two hundred million people."

"We're getting ahead of ourselves," Ling stated. "The point I think we've established is that my brother showed up there possibly for a specific purpose other than to spy on us, and now that Chu is not going to receive what he wanted from him, there could be consequences."

A short silence blanketed the three of them, and Ling was convinced that they were all wondering in their own way how those consequences could manifest themselves. A shudder ran through Ling, so he collected his notes into a neat pile, and closed his laptop. He stood up and headed for the stairs, then called out behind him.

"Ms. Lan Fan, I believe we have a date tonight at a special, fancy mailbox. Better get ready!"

He changed his clothes and took with him the backpack he rarely parted with, then met her at the garage after she checked on her grandfather again. Leaving him to Rosé's good care, Ling and Lan Fan entered his car, and drove out of Dublith.

"Aren't you a little underdressed?" Ling teased, making a show of eying Lan Fan's knitted sweater and faded jeans. "I plan to have a very good night, don't you?"

She snickered, "Well the jeans came from your mother, for your information. I would hardly say that she has poor taste. You know what? Are you always like this?" she shifted in her seat so that she was facing him directly.

"Like what?" he asked.

"Like this," she said, waving to the empty space between them. "Flirty, or I don't know what to call it. All I know is that if Grandpa was here, he would box your ears."

Ling laughed. "Well, you tell me! Is this flirting?"

"You tell me!" she exclaimed. "You're the one who's been on 'like, two dates' here," she added, and Ling could only laugh more as he remembered what he'd told her the first time they met.

"Yes, and one of them was with you," he answered, nudging her playfully with his elbow. "I'm still not over you considering that night a one night stand."

She snorted. "You consider that a date?"

"Well, we were alone and we had some very intense moments, wouldn't you say? Heart-pounding, and I swear my palms wouldn't stop sweating!" he grinned back at her. "Much more exciting than my first date. Which, if you must know since it seems as if you're in the business of digging up my romantic past, was back in tenth grade with a girl who shared sushi with me. It was a special bento box, mind you, not the cheap ones."

"Are you kidding me right now?" she asked.

"Huh? No," he paused, stealing a glance at her, before looking back on the road. She was silent for some moments, and Ling couldn't help but wonder what was running through her head.

"Lan Fan, do you like to read books?" he asked finally.

"Read?" she repeated, sounding surprised that he followed all his teasing with something that might actually sound like a serious question. "Well, I suppose, yes."

"Then I don't know what to tell you," he replied. "Fictional guys would surely have something interesting to say when their love life sucks, some kind of emotional baggage from the past or a quirk that spikes up their sex appeal. You know, maybe a girlfriend he was prepared to marry died, or maybe girls couldn't see past his good looks that they never tried to get to know him for who he really is. You know, all those cliché stuff. But in real life... at least for me, life just happens. Romance just hasn't been a very big part of it, and I don't see why I have to question that."

Lan Fan remained quiet. After the minutes stretched, he laughed again to ease the awkwardness.

"Aww, now you're disappointed, aren't you?" he accused teasingly.

"No!" she exclaimed. "Not at all!"

"You think I'm boring, emasculated!"

"Absolutely not!" Lan Fan insisted. "I understand. Really, I do, so you don't have to feel bad about anything." She gave him a playful pat on the shoulder, as if reassuring him that he wasn't that much of a loser, but the smile she gave him was quite sincere.

She settled back in her seat, and began taking out money from her wallet to insert into an envelope for the deposit. His eye caught on an embroidered initial at the corner of the pouch. It was a very popular trend in Xing; people liked to embroider their names on things like fans or handkerchiefs, sometimes even pillows and bath towels.

"Is that your wallet?" he asked.

"Actually it was my father's," Lan Fan said. "One of the things I have from him. It's surprisingly sturdy to have made it through all these years."

Ling looked at the stitching again. "It's G.Y. Tseng. You don't carry his last name?" He remembered the e-mail he received from Ed of the name of the girl Winry found from Auto-Mail who could potentially be his employee. He remembered it distinctly, because after he met her, he couldn't get her name out of his mind, and because he had stared at her signature in awe after she signed his offer of employment.

She cringed, and shrugged her left shoulder. "Zhang is... just my legal last name here in Amestris."

"...legal? You mean–"

"When Grandpa and I left Tong Hua, Amestris didn't recognize it as an independent state," Lan Fan explained. "Remember the revolt that occurred after your grandfather died? You said that your father lost his claim to the throne. There were many other nobles vying for it too. And the Xiao clan won, with the clan chief's first son calling himself national leader now." Ling nodded. He knew that, and even knew of the widespread confusion of whether the Xingese should call their leader a king or a president – the nation was now striving towards a democratic government, but many aspects of its governance still bore the marks of the Imperial era.

"You want to know how the Xiao really won? They were such underdogs," Lan Fan continued. "But they conglomerated the support of outlying states. Tong Hua had been requesting independence for several decades, and in exchange for my peoples' military support and espionage during the civil war, the Xiao promised our independence. And they gave it to us. Unfortunately, when our independence was granted, Tong Hua crumbled under the feet of squabbling warlords from different tribes, more used to the art of war than art of peace. The Empire had kept them well-behaved for centuries, but..."

"And that's why your family fled?"

"Yes," she said. "The Yaos wouldn't take us in, even though my family served them for generations. Many of them view us as traitors for separating. I was two. Mother and father didn't make it through the journey here."

She was quiet for a while, fingering the red embroidery on the wallet. If she had been so young, Ling wondered whether she even remembered anything about her parents.

"But when we got to Amestris, they wouldn't grant us citizenship after our refugee status expired. They didn't accept the papers we have from the newly established Tong Hua, so... well, so Grandpa asked someone's help to forge papers that make it seem like we hailed from southern Xing."

Lan Fan was an illegal immigrant. Damn, the more he got to know this girl, the more tragic she seemed! Dealing with displacement and lost parents would have been bad enough. But not being granted a citizenship, and losing her arm in a freak incident, then taking care of a sickly grandfather...

"And here I am, complaining about my non-existent love life!" he exclaimed with disbelief. "I never thought I was so insensitive. I'm such a jerk!"

Lan Fan chuckled. "No, please, by all means, cry over your love life. Weep to some Drachman love songs. I'm not here to put your life into perspective."

When they reached the 24/7 post office, Ling accompanied Lan Fan inside. He watched as she placed her five thousand sens deposit inside the mail box, gave him a hopeful look, and locked the box.

"Then we wait," he said softly, to which she nodded.

-o-

Riza placed the headphones over her ears, adjusting the band across her head. Beside her, Fuery tinkered with his machines and computers, as they waited for their other companions to join them in the little trailer. On the couch at the back of the trailer lounged the Elrics' tigress of an adoptive mother, looking as if she would eat away the five blocks separating the trailer and the office that Henry Chu had chosen for their second interview. Riza could hold her own in a fight, but even she wouldn't be fool enough to deliberately cross paths with Izumi, especially when she was all wound up with tension.

"How are we doing there, Fuery?" Riza leaned over to watch her young companion adjust the metrics on his software and turn the tuners on his receiving device. A low buzzing came through Riza's headphones, and a moment later, she could hear a whispered conversation ensue on the other side. Winry was talking, and Ed seemed far off. After another adjustment, Winry's voice came clearer, and Edward sounded much closer.

"Got 'em!" Fuery said excitedly, just as the door to the trailer opened up, and in came the two young Xingese teens. Ling gave a good-natured wave at Izumi, who merely nodded to acknowledge his existence. Lan Fan squirmed behind him, but after noticing Riza, she headed over to the chair beside the Lieutenant.

"How are things going?" Lan Fan asked.

"They've just been invited into the office," Riza answered. "We installed a communicating device on Winry and Edward. We can hear what's going on around them, and they'll be able to hear us if we use this microphone," she pointed to the one near Fuery. "Henry Chu thinks he's got the upperhand asking all the questions. But if there's one thing I learned from the Colonel is that one can find out as much information based on the questions asked. We'll be helping Winry and Edward navigate through the interrogation game."

Riza remembered the worried phone call they received a week ago from Ling, who asked for several trustworthy State militants to keep an eye on some Auto-Mailers. Ling related the events of Edward and Winry's interview with his father, and how they were forced to reveal the identities of some of their fellow members in the underground market. They were able to deploy some younger ranked officers to help keep tabs, and Winry also rounded up some folks within Auto-Mail who knew a thing or two about keeping safe.

So far there were no incidents other than the unexpected death during the first hoax. But even that was unnerving enough. Mustang had told Havoc to write it off as foul play. The residents of Metso were highly uneasy about finding a man murdered in their quiet little town, but with clear evidence that there were several gangs up and about the night before, Mustang decided to blame it on the Jesters. The residents of Metso were pacified when Mustang offered them the protection of several officers at the town gate.

Riza didn't know how many more men they could ask to help without revealing accidentally what they were up to. There were those who were loyal to them as friends – Armstrong, Ross, Catalina, Brosh – and who would probably not question their methods even if they seemed a little oblique. However, one of the lynchpins of Operation Greed was that no one outside of the operation was to discover that Mustang's little entourage willingly conspired with the black-markets. It would be traitorous, and they would sooner be sent to jail with ruined reputations than they would get the chance to prove their intention of freeing the Amestrian government from Henry Chu's monopolistic chokehold.

Their team was given a few hours break from their investigation in Rush Valley, giving Fuery and herself enough time to travel east to the new meeting place that Chu picked for his second interview with Winry and Edward. They would regroup again the next day with whatever discoveries they made today.

The door to the trailer opened again, and Ridel LeCoulte stepped inside, looking a little disheveled.

"Sorry, I'm late! Satella is visiting the doctor and I couldn't find a babysitter quickly for the baby," he adjusted his glasses on his nose, before taking the last seat in the trailer. From his pack he took out his laptop, and mentioned for Ling to come beside him.

"I created a program," he said. "It makes use of a learning algorithm that gives us several areas of interest based on a subject and a context. I've fed it all of the data that Ling gave me on his father, and with more data coming in from the interview, the program will give us suggestions on what Chu might be after."

"Can't we make the same deductions based on what we hear and read?" Izumi asked, crossing her arms across her chest.

Ridel blushed. "Well, sure. After all, we can never make computers do things that us humans don't already know how to do. But it streamlines the process, and I've added a bias parameter. We can clear it so that it analyzes the data with no bias to a particular area. I'd say that's a helpful advantage! Not something we can exactly do to ourselves, don't you think? For many people, they only notice what they want to see," he laughed softly, but Izumi just shrugged, regarding his laptop with a dubious expression.

"Gadgets today, honestly," Izumi said. "I'd say our instincts are more reliable."

They all quieted when Ed's voice, clear as if he was standing in the trailer with them, emanated from the speaker.

"You don't need another man this time, Chu. We've shown you how well-behaved we could be last week," he said, half spitting out the word and surely remembering how it felt to be under the power of someone so singlemindedly cruel.

"Ed, relax," Riza whispered into the microphone.

"I think he's trying to behave normally," Lan Fan suggested.

"That's right. If he's too calm, Chu would suspect something," Fuery added.

They listened as Chu ushered his guests to sit down. He wasted no time drilling them again on the inner workings of Auto-Mail. He asked about the most common requests that Auto-Mail received (job matching), how they expanded and maintained their network (word of mouth and web crawling), and how influential they were across the border (not much). Riza told Winry and Edward how to fashion their answers so it would look like they were telling all of the truth, while still withholding information they would have recklessly revealed otherwise. Izumi often had to calm Ed down, though how she managed to do so using threats of eviction and missing dinners, Riza could not fathom.

"Have you had any requests concerning Creta?" Chu asked casually. The connection was so clear that Riza could hear the pat-patting sound of the man typing on his keyboard.

Creta was a sensitive subject even among the governing body of Amestris. Everyone agreed that Bradley's measure against the plague that broke out almost a decade ago had been executed poorly. The barricade against both entry and exit into the country prevented Amestrians from learning of improvements or degradation in their western neighbour. But Bradley wasn't the worst part. The most embarrassing blight was how they lost, during their revolt against Bradley, the only hope of making things right. At the time, it was the lesser evil, but Colonel Mustang still hid his face in his hands whenever the subject was brought up.

Riza leaned in to the microphone. "Tell him first only of requests you received from people who want to know when the Amestrian government intends to lift the security protocols on the border." She'd noticed that it was better to mete out their answers, because Chu tended to withhold feedback when he got what he wanted. But when he didn't, he pursued the subject with vigorous intent, giving them a better idea of which direction his interest lies.

Winry repeated what Riza said, and before she could even finish, Chu began cutting her off.

"How about movement between the countries?" he interrupted.

Riza gave Ridel a meaningful look but the young man was already hoarding the information away.

"Several weeks ago, a girl came to the network asking for medical attention for a cousin from Creta," Winry explained in a level tone. "She'd smuggled in the cousin using the bluffs along Xoporor."

Riza heard the click-clacking of keyboard keys through the line.

"Now let me ask you something a little more... open ended," he continued. "One of the countermeasures against the black market that Grumman plans to use is to sign a free-trade agreement with Xing. Surely Auto-Mail has heard of that. With cheaper goods coming from the East, Amestrians won't need to resort to the black markets to cheat market prices. What are you going to do then?"

"The free-trade policy pertains to goods only, does it not?" Winry answered. "Auto-Mail doesn't compete directly with those businesses. Ours is a service. It's true that perhaps this agreement will improve the economy so much that people wouldn't have to resort to under-the-table sources of income. And to me, that is a good thing. Auto-Mail started out as a way to help people. If you think I will be upset that they will no longer need my help, then you're wrong. What's important is that people will have stable jobs and they will be able to take care of themselves and their families."

Chu laughed after Winry finished. "I like you. So noble, like the typical Amestrian you are. How do you people do it? Scythe down all those who are different from you and still feel righteous enough to say that you're doing the world a service? Colour me utterly impressed."

"What are you saying?" Ed growled.

"Calm down, Ed!" Ling said into the microphone. "He's baiting you. He's like that. I swear the man was already trolling when he came out of his mother."

Chu answered Ed, and to Riza's relief he didn't sound irritated with Edward's attitude. "All I'm saying is that I'm more used to the Xingese way of politicking: subtle but honest. We don't condescend to those we oppress under the banner of 'justice', then act as if they owe us even more for at least being nice. When we don't like someone, we let them know we don't like them. Don't frown at me like that, young man! You make yourself look constipated.

"Here's a scenario to think about. You are in a speeding bus full of people, and it's out of control and heading towards a cliff. Suppose you could magically stop the bus from its inevitable demise by throwing out one of the passengers. What would you do?"

"Huh, easy," Ed answered. "I'll throw myself out, which will save everyone else in the bus, and then I'll find the bastard who screwed up the bus and beat him up!"

"The bus is speeding, and you'll throw yourself out?" Chu asked.

"Hey, this is a world where magic exists, isn't it? You said so."

Riza couldn't help but grin. Edward may have a foul mouth, but he also had a wise one. Which was probably part of why he was so annoying all the time.

Chu snickered, and they heard some shuffling across the line.

"You're a smart boy, I'll admit that. And you're right. In a fantasy world, it would be easy to figure out what to do. But in the real world, that isn't always the case."

"It's a corrupt man who would let his environment shape his principles," Edward retorted.

"And it's a selfish man who would expect the world to accommodate him," Chu shot back. "I'll cut it short today. You two have been very good sources of amusement, but I have real work to get back to."

Riza heard Winry inquire about the hostage in the next room, and Chu lazily dismissed him before bidding the two youngsters farewell. The sharpshooter doubted that the man would make it out of the building alive, since Chu was the greedy kind of person who would begrudge others if they knew the same things he did. Information on Auto-Mail was a collateral Chu secured in exchange for millions of sens. Even if the man couldn't hear what the three were talking about in the adjacent room, she doubted Chu would take the risk.

But it's better if Winry and Ed didn't share her speculations. They did a great job handling this situation for now.

Ling was typing notes on his mobile phone, while looking over Ridel's software. "Well, we certainly know he's interested in Creta and the trade negotiations with Xing. Grumman is related to both, so perhaps that's why he's been keeping a close eye on the president."

"But what's with the hypothetical questions near the end?" Lan Fan asked.

"He's alluding to some moralistic principle," Izumi answered. "At least that's how I saw it. We all know he's planning something. People like him don't just sit around counting their money all day. Whatever it is, he's trying to justify it in his head."

"We can bring it up again when we regroup with everyone," Riza said, standing up from her chair, beginning to gather her belongings. "We need to have a meeting soon anyway to talk about merging the second hoax with the final stage of Operation Greed." Ever since Edward notified them last week about the nature of his interviews with the leader of XYZ Ltd., Ling proposed to shorten the span of Operation Greed 2.0. He couldn't allow his friends to risk their lives – nor their sanity – every week that they wait before the operation finished.

But squishing down the last two stages would mean that they have to plan for a grander scale of coordination in half as much time. Riza didn't feel good about it, but she was much less comfortable with allowing Winry and Edward to remain as Chu fodder.

Ling and Lan Fan left with Izumi, and LeCoult made his way back to his home separately. Winry suggested that she and Ed didn't make contact with any of them after the interview, so they would have to retrieve the communication devices later on.

"Well, Fuery, let's get back to the Colonel."

-o-

The days went by with coiled anticipation for Lan Fan. Ling experienced his first wave of consecutive assignment due dates, and with less than two weeks before the predicted finale of Operation Greed 2.0, the boy could hardly get a good night's sleep. She offered to help him with his homework, typing up his reports after he'd outlined them, organizing his notes, summarizing course readings.

When everyone met again to discuss their plans, they narrowed down the list of Auto-Mail volunteers whom Colonel Mustang's entourage was responsible for sniffing out. Five was the maximum, and included in it was the Tattler, who would reveal the location of the money that Chu provided as well as the contract that XYZ Ltd. made with the leaders of Auto-Mail. Hunter Manos, the young man that accompanied them to Metso the previous week, eagerly volunteered for the position, saying he looked forward to seeing the faces of the State militants once they find out that their beloved private loaner collaborated against them. Since no one else wanted to deal with military officers not included in their little game, Winry gave Manos the privilege and risk.

Lan Fan thought it would seem too easy. Auto-Mailers were some of the best operators in the underworld. To be caught by the military dogs in a duration of three weeks would make them look not as good as they were reputed to be, or it would make the government appear quite efficient. Too efficient, perhaps. But then again, Mustang had a reputation from the Sanitary Movement already. Maybe nobody would be too surprised.

On the Wednesday after the first hoax, she and Ling returned to the mailbox to find out that her grandfather's medicine hadn't arrived yet. Grandpa Fu was getting worse, and Rosé had finished the bottle. They had to take him to the hospital before they went to the post office, because his fever turned dangerously high, and even though the hospital didn't have any Red Stone, any medical assistance would help at this point.

She was hoping so badly that the bottle would be there, that even when she'd scanned the entirety of the mailbox with her eyes and hand and found nothing but cold steel, she couldn't quite believe it. She closed the mailbox and opened it again, and she knew she looked so silly standing there staring into empty space, but Ling remained patient and kind.

"We'll come back tomorrow," he said, patting her on the back. "Maybe he's just busy. I imagine he would be with that kind of product on his hands. You said it usually comes within five to seven days, right? It's only been five nights."

Lan Fan knew that, but when they got home, she still felt dejected.

When the seventh day approached and it still wasn't there, Lan Fan felt like screaming. This was the worst possible time for something like this to happen. While everyone else was finalizing the details of the operation, she sat chewing her fingernails, barely listening as Ling related her duties to her.

"Lan Fan?" he called out, nudging her a little. They were sitting on his bed, like the king and queen of essay drafts surrounded by their textbook peasants.

"I'm sorry, Ling, what were you saying?"

He gave her a sympathetic smile, but there were lines around his eyes that told her he was tired and would appreciate it if she paid him a little bit more attention.

"Well, I suppose it's okay. We don't have a big role in this latter half of the operation. Everything hinges on our volunteers and on Mustang's team."

"Right," Lan Fan replied, trying to clear her head of the horrifying what-ifs plaguing her mind. She felt light-headed and numb. "What do I have to do?"

"Not much. We're just on-call. We will be monitoring the progress of the chase through communication devices similar to the ones Winry and Edward used on Saturday. If anything goes wrong, we will try to help them."

"Is there anything salvageable if anything does go wrong?" Lan Fan asked.

"It all depends on what goes wrong, I guess," Ling said, and he pulled a map over her lap. "The most complex part of the chase is to coordinate the escape of the volunteers, excepting for Hunter Manos, and the pursuit of the State militants. Anything can interfere with this process though, from heavy traffic to unpredictable pedestrians. Even though Falman has memorized even the minutest details from the intervals of traffic lights to the busiest café sidewalks, there are still many more variables that we can't predict. This is the part that the higher ranking generals would scrutinize the most, so if there was a clear chance that Mustang could have caught an Auto-Mailer but didn't, it would arouse suspicion."

"They won't be happy that there's one who is willing to yap?"

"They would be, but they also care about the process." He then pointed to a spot on the map deep in the maze of South City. "Our job is to create diversions if they're needed. If an Auto-Mailer is impeded by, say, traffic, we have to make sure that the the officer who is pursuing them is also held back. We'd have to be rather creative about it though. Edward, Winry, Alphonse, Mei, Paninya, and many others are going to be on-call as well, so we also have to co-ordinate amongst ourselves which of us can act the most efficiently given the location and the situation."

Lan Fan nodded. "And I guess I'm supposed to bodyguard you at the same time?"

"Well you know," Ling shrugged, giving her an impish grin. "Just make sure I don't get run over by a truck or something."

"That's funny, because that would be the perfect diversion," she joked, and Ling let out a loud laugh. When he stopped, he looked much more refreshed, and she realized that they all probably just needed a good laugh. The lines around his eyes eased a little, and small smile remained on his lips. He reached out to play with the fringe of hair by her cheek.

"Hey, don't worry too much, okay?" he said. "I'm sure things will be fine. They always work out in the end, right?"

Lan Fan knew he was referring more to her grandfather than Operation Greed.

"Do you think he might have raised the price and is waiting for the remainder?" Ling asked.

Lan Fan shook her head. "No, usually he leaves a note when that's the case. The several times he raised the price, he gave me the bottle, but told me to include the difference with the next deposit." It had given her a wave of despair every time she saw that note, but now it came to her that she would have rather seen a ragged piece of paper with his chicken scratch than an empty vault.

With a flash of impulsiveness, Lan Fan wondered what would happen if she just told Ling everything. About the reason her grandfather was sick, about why she was so poor, what she was doing at the site of Operation Greed 1.0 two years ago. What was the worst case scenario?

"Ling?"

"What is it?"

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if he knew. He might not let her participate in the final stage of OG2.0. Or he might hand her over to the police. Eh... still, he wouldn't let anything happen to Grandpa Fu, would he? Fu was innocent. It had all been just her.

She took a deep breath. "Look, the reason you shouldn't blame yourself about my arm is because–"

Ring.

Ling's cellphone went off with the funky upbeat ringtone he assigned to Edward. He picked it up, mouthing a 'One sec' to her, before giving Ed his full attention. It appeared as if Ed wanted to confirm some things for the day of the chase. She watched with an amused smile as Ling animatedly went over the details, answering and revising some of the plans, and it dawned on her that the worst case scenario was not that he would have her arrested; the worst thing would be that he would hate her – this smiling, exaggerated clownish genius would not want to be her friend anymore, and for reasons borne out of longing and loneliness, she knew she couldn't take the risk.

She felt the stab of regret, knowing that things might have been smoother if she'd just told her entire story in the first place, because at least she wouldn't need to rectify more than a month's worth of friendship built on what some might consider lies.

Now exposing her secret could cost her one of the things she'd always dreamed of as a child.

Snap out of it, Lan Fan! She reprimanded herself. Everything she did was for her grandfather. Yes, Ling's friendship was important, Ling himself was important, but she could not ignore the one thing that had sustained her her entire life, the one who nourished her and loved her. And despite knowing that Fu would abhor being the reason she would do the wrong thing, she didn't know how to untangle herself from this web she created.

"Hey, you were saying?" Ling asked, and his gentle hand on her shoulder brought her back to the present. His phone was carelessly lying on a tower of books.

She stared back at him, his narrow eyes shining with eagerness and warmth. Eh... no, she couldn't do this.

So she just went with a different truth. "I just wanted to say that you shouldn't blame yourself about my arm because you're a good person who shouldn't burden himself with things that aren't in his control."

His lips curled in an amused smile. "Aww, thanks Lan Fan. Coming from someone like you, I'll consider that almost as a love confession, eh?"

She rolled her eyes, but allowed herself a laugh.

When the next day came but the bottle of Red Stone still didn't, Lan Fan tried to remain calm. They still checked every day after Ling's classes ended, and she began to feel bad for dragging him there daily, but the necessity of improving her grandfather's health never vanished.

Finally, on the eve of Operation Greed 2.2, as dubbed by Ling, he apologized to her that they might not have the time to detour before getting to South City. "We have a lot to prepare for before the pursuit begins at dawn."

Lan Fan nodded. "Is it alright if I'll take a cab? I won't be long. I'll just check it, and come back. That way, you can begin with preparations, and then you'll just fill me in when I get there."

He shrugged. "Sure, I don't see why not. You'd only be missing two hours max. Keep your cellphone open though. It's good to keep the communication going."

"Alright," she replied with a sigh of relief. She was half afraid he would refuse her request, seeing that this was the day, the single most important day of the entire operation. "I'll try to regroup with you as quickly as I can."

Hoisting her pack over her shoulder, she set out a few minutes earlier than Ling. He gave her cash for the cab, enough to get her to the post office then into the heart of the city. Earlier that day she checked on her grandfather at the hospital. Although he wasn't getting worse, it didn't seem as if he was getting better either.

She tried to meditate during the cab ride to the post office to clear her head. Even if the Red Stone wasn't there, she would go to Ling and help with the operation as best as she could. Then when Chu was dealt with, well... hopefully all her problems would go away.

And then she could tell Ling everything. Maybe he would even forgive her.

Still, she couldn't calm her racing heart as the cab rolled into the driveway of the post office. She could almost dance to its beat as she exited the car and then entered the small building. The employee on shift today gave her a greeting smile, but Lan Fan just nodded in return. She walked up to her mailbox, pushed in the key and unlocked the door. Inside, she saw a Red Stone bottle.

But it was empty.

An icy coldness pooled in her stomach. Her head buzzed with a dreading so thick she couldn't think a single thought. Slowly she reached out, retrieving the bottle from the darkness of the box, hoping against all odds that maybe the medicine just wasn't red anymore; perhaps it's just transparent now.

But there was nothing in the bottle. She opened it, and it truly was empty.

Finding it hard to swallow, she looked inside the mailbox again and found a small slip of paper. She took it out, unfolded it with shaking fingers, and almost passed out with what was written in it.

'Sorry, but you didn't think it would last forever, did you?'

For some moments, all she could do was stand there, staring at the words, unable to register their meaning. The place felt surreal, and a surge of hope shot through her when she thought that maybe she was just dreaming. Maybe she would wake up, go downstairs and find Ling and Yuna goofing about in the kitchen, complaining about not having found a maid yet.

Thinking about it made her lose her grip on the bottle, and it shattered on the linoleum floor of the post office.

"Something the matter?" the lady asked from behind the counter. She was eying the broken glass with consternation.

Lan Fan snapped out of her haze, and came back into focus. She stared back at the words, finding from somewhere more primal inside her the ability to concentrate and understand the meaning of what just happened. She crumpled the paper, and took out her cellphone. The first number she dialed was Rosé's.

"Is Grandpa okay?" Lan Fan asked, not bothering with niceties.

"When I left the hospital an hour ago, he was," the girl answered. "But visiting hours are over, and I have a lot of homework for school, so I just came home."

"That's okay, Rosé. Thanks for everything."

"Is something wrong?"

"Uh, no," Lan Fan answered, at least not for Rosé. "Don't worry about anything."

She finished the call, and began to dial Ling's. Then she stopped. Ling would wonder what's wrong, and Lan Fan didn't know how she could even begin to explain. The truth was that most likely she wouldn't be able to. And that would make him worry. Worse, it might distract him. They couldn't afford that right now.

She glanced at the time flashing on the screen of her phone. 11:37 pm. It's still a long way away from dawn. She approached the car waiting for her at the driveway, and went inside.

"So, to downtown South City, right Miss?" the cab driver confirmed.

Lan Fan had two options. Go back to Ling, risk the possibility that her distraction and desperation would ruin the operation for everyone else. Or she could settle this herself, and even if she didn't make it back in time, it wasn't like she was a pivotal part of Operation 2.2 anyway. She would hardly be any help to Ling if she was this agitated, wouldn't she? She might even put him in danger by perturbing him...

"No, actually. Change of plans. Let's go back up North. Go to Tobha."

-o-

In the hours that ticked by, Ling had attached the tracking bug to his wrist, placed the communication device on his molar, checked and double-checked all the intersection points where the Auto-Mailers would encounter the military officers. He had gone twice to the location of the money and the contract, ensuring they were in their proper places, and then back again to the café where he was to pose as a lounging student cramming for a test in the morning.

And still no Lan Fan.

He'd called her enough times to make his service provider regret offering him the unlimited call plan, but they all ended in the same way: a string of endless rings. He called his mother, but she hadn't heard from Lan Fan either. He called Rosé, and the drowsy girl explained that Lan Fan wanted to confirm her grandfather's health a few hours ago, a little before midnight.

That would have been around the time Lan Fan reached the mailbox. Something must have happened.

But why didn't she call him?

Ling looked at his wrist watch. 3:20 am. Where the hell was Lan Fan?

He almost jumped out of his skin when a pair of hands covered his eyes. For a second he thought it might be Lan Fan horsing around, but that was impossible because Lan Fan never horsed around, nor did she have two hands.

Slowly, the fingers pried themselves away, and leaning over his shoulder was Winry's smiling face.

"Hey Ling! Got a minute?"

"Oh Winry! Aren't you supposed to be in 4th District?"

"I am. I just wanted to talk to you for a bit before we begin."

"Sure, what is it about?" Ling asked, piling up the books he brought along for his disguise as a crabby student.

"Is Lan Fan nearby?" Winry asked, looking around.

"Well she's supposed to be," Ling answered, and explained what happened a few hours ago.

Winry looked nervous as she sat down in front of him. "This is not good. Do you want to stop the operation?"

"I thought about it," Ling admitted. "But we're too far in at this point in the game. It'll complicate matters for Colonel Mustang, and I don't want to do that to him. Lan Fan doesn't really have a significant role in this, so if she doesn't show up, not much really changes." Except, possibly, for his daydream of celebrating the news of their success with her.

"I hope she's okay, but I guess I'll take this opportunity to clarify some things. Alphonse mentioned something to me earlier," Winry began. "You're curious about Lan Fan's grandfather's medicine?"

"I am," Ling admitted. "Has he found out anything new? Mei told me a few days ago that the sample I gave them was useless. I was hoping to give them a fresh batch to work with, but the medicine hasn't arrived yet. It's put Lan Fan on edge."

"Mei said she couldn't find anything indicative about it?"

"Well, what she said was more like, 'found barest trace of hydrochloride, ibuprofen, some strange cellular buildup, blah-blah-blah, more science stuff, it's probably some strange bacteria from your disgusting feet, next time give me something real to work with'. Uh, yeah."

"Alphonse said you called it the Red Stone," Winry said.

"That's what Lan Fan calls it too."

The blonde girl in front of him frowned in confusion. "That can't really be true. You see, my parents helped create the Red Stone."

Ling froze. "Wait, what?"

Winry looked down and toyed with one of Ling's pencils. "I wish you came to me first, but I can understand why you went straight to Mei and Alphonse. You wouldn't exactly know that I have direct knowledge about something like that, and it's not like I'm also allowed to go yapping about it whenever I want."

"W-wait, hold on," Ling said. "What are you saying? What is the Red Stone? I thought it was just some slang for a black market deal, which was obviously how Lan Fan was getting it."

"What it was intended to be is a cure-for-all medicine. My parents worked on a highly confidential project for the government before they died. The goal was to create something that can cure any kind of ailment. There was a whole team of doctors who were involved in the research. In the end, they engineered a special type of cell that can learn peculiarities within the human body and decipher which of those anomalies are the sources of the sickness."

Ling remembered when he and Lan Fan were eating lunch at his campus and she said that she didn't know what was making her grandfather sick. At that time he just thought she was lying, but it could be true. If the Red Stone was meant to cure anything, Lan Fan didn't have to know what was wrong with her grandfather, since the medicine would take care of whatever it happened to be, regardless.

"I don't know much about it myself, but after the Sanitary Movement, Lieutenant Hawkeye and Colonel Mustang visited me one day, and told me that although my parents and their co-workers managed to make one prototype of the medicine, the government lost it during the rebellion."

"One prototype?" Ling asked. "Lan Fan has been giving Fu this medicine monthly for the past two years."

"Yes, so you can see why I'm dubious."

Ling shook his head. Maybe it was just a coincidence. The antidote was red, so it was likely someone would name it that. Everyone knew of the myth of the Philosopher's Stone and its other synonyms. Anyone who wanted to make money off of some incredibly powerful medicine would not shy away from using that name, especially as a marketing strategy. Besides, if Lan Fan was using it for years, why was Fu still sick? If what Winry said was true, then shouldn't the Red Stone have restored Fu's health already?

"Look, when Lan Fan comes back, let me speak to her," Winry said, standing up to leave. "I think there's a lot more to that medicine of hers than even she thinks she knows about."

Ling snorted. "Yes, please, talk to her. She might open up to you about it. Goodness knows I've been trying pry some information from her ever since who-knows-when."

"But Ling, you have to understand this: if the medicine she's using to cure her grandfather really is the same Red Stone my parents worked on, then someone out there is making a lot of money off of it. We've got an epidemic in the west, an ebbing war in the south, a harsh dessert to the east. And you of all people know that when there's a lot of money, there's a lot of stake. Lan Fan could be dealing with something really, really dangerous, which might be what's keeping her mouth stitched."

"Are you saying we shouldn't trust her?"

"I'm saying we need to help her, because she could be in over her head." And with that, Winry turned to return to her post, promising him that she'd help confront Lan Fan later.

When dawn approached and Mustang rang the alarm to initiate the pursuit, Ling opened his laptop and watched the dots appear one by one on the tracking program they used to determine if everyone was in place. His own dot appeared where he expected it to be. Reluctantly, he searched for Lan Fan's tracker, hoping that perhaps she'd turned it on since he last checked, but she came up blank. He slapped the desk in disappointment.

"Cramming not getting you anywhere?" a voice asked, and Ling looked up to see a barista opening up the café for the early rush hour.

"Eh... not really," he said, and turned back to his laptop. Well, at least his disguise was working well.

He looked back at his phone, wondering if he should try another phone call to Lan Fan. The fear of hearing those rings were starting to overcome his desire to hear her voice. Instead, he dialed his mother's phone.

"Before you ask, I took an emergency day off from work today," his Ma told him even before he could get in a 'Hello'. "And yes, I'm on my way to look for Lan Fan."

"Oh, thanks Ma! You're the best."

He felt a little appeased after hearing that. He also tried telling himself that Lan Fan had been taking care of herself for years, and he doubted she could lose that kind of survival instinct within the few hours that she was away from him. Now... what he needed to do now was focus on the work in which he had invested so much of himself, of his time and of his money. He wasn't the only one with the stakes here. Everyone else who had something to lose had placed their lot in, called in the bets, and expected him to pull through. He couldn't disappoint them. Besides, what would it mean if he failed yet again?

No, now wasn't the time for worry. It was the time for action.

He pushed Lan Fan's absence from his mind, and buckled down in his seat. He connected his communication device with the central hub where everyone's connection pooled into. Immediately the voices of his comrades blasted in his earpiece, and he had to block some of them before he drove himself crazy with loud gibberish.

"Ling, you finally in?" he heard Edward whisper in his ear.

"Yes," he whispered back. "Sorry if I can't be louder than this, but I can't afford to look like I'm talking to myself."

"You are a freshman in college, doing last minute studying for a test. If someone sees you talking to yourself, they will understand, don't worry."

They set up the scenario that the five volunteers were engaged in an early morning administrative session for Auto-Mail; since three of them were Winry's co-admins, it wasn't too hard to make it look like the scene was legit. Ling watched as the five blue dots occupying the office, which Edward rented out for this purpose, dispersed suddenly into five different directions.

So, the lair had been apprehended, as evident by the four red dots that began surrounding the building. The two other dots, who Ling knew to be Fuery and Falman, were lingering by a side street.

As instructed, one of the dots began to approach the side of the city that Ling was responsible for monitoring. Within ten minutes, he saw the figure of the young lady jogging on the sidewalk, and heard the distinct siren of a military cab pursuing after her. She made eye contact with him briefly, but he continued to look preoccupied with interest at the cars trying to make way for the military cab. He knew that he had to try and act like everyone else was acting, and since the girl was wearing workout gear, not a lot of people suspected that she was whom the officers were after.

There was a cab waiting for the girl by the side of the café. They paid the driver in advance to take her out of the vicinity and up north. When the girl got inside, and the cab began to drive away along the eastern route, a bicyclist tried to run the red light, and crashed against the side of the car.

Ugh, Ling thought. Why do I always have to deal with rogue bicyclists?

He turned to his laptop and routed his communicating device to the girl. "Ahney, get out of the car. I have a metropass in my bag. Use it to hop onto a northbound subway train. I'll tell Al to meet you at 7th District."

Ling noticed that there was an old pedestrian who was trying to finish crossing the street before some cars passed through the intersection, and he thought that helping him would be the perfect excuse to turn a blind eye on what was going to happen next.

By the time he'd helped the old man cross the remaining gap to the sidewalk, his backpack was gone, slung over Ahney's shoulder who was now at the end of the block.

"Hey!" he yelled. "That's mine, you second-rate thief! My metropass is in there!"

He made a show of being ballistically furious that he actually frightened the man he'd helped across the road into running away from him with surprising agility. The military cab rolled up next to the café, and the window slid down to allow Breda to ask where the girl had gone.

"The subway most likely!" Ling said, acting terribly annoyed. "She stole my bag! Go get her, what are you talking to me for?"

After the commotion passed, Ling sat back down to analyze everyone's position. Breda was moving north, and though the girl's signal went out momentarily since she was below ground, Ling notified Al that he would be able to find her at the station by 7th District. Mustang and Hawkeye were heading east pursuing Manos; Falman was trudging southwest after two of the co-admins, and Havoc accompanied Fuery circling the largest mall in the city for the last conspirator.

Ling packed up, hailed a taxi, and changed locations where he could be more of use. But after that one contact with the Auto-Mailers, no one else seemed to need him. He stayed connected with Edward and Mustang mostly, sometimes Mei, but he didn't run into any more incidents. He found his hands sweating out of anticipation, hoping that maybe, maybe everything would work out and all their hard work and preparation would pay off.

He was beside himself when he saw the blue dots and one red dot converge in the right appointed place just outside of South City, where they had stored the millions of sens and the documents in a hideout. He crossed his fingers, as he waited for the call that would dismiss him and tell him that they were taking Manos to the police station.

His heart jumped to his throat when the Colonel's voice came through his earpiece. With a hand shaking from both anxiety and excitement, he tuned the device to better receive the signal.

"Hello, Mustang?"

"Ling, we have a problem."

Ling's heart sunk. "Why, what's wrong?"

"The three million sens and the contract. They're not here. They're all gone."

-o-

Henry Chu tried to suppress a powerful yawn as he reached his office at Tobha. Coming from a bumpy train ride from the norther part of East Area, his bones felt stiff, and his skin pasty after adjusting to the warmer temperatures down south. One of his advisers warned him not to cut across the agricultural fields of the east, but it was the fastest way. He didn't want to waste time going through Central Area too. Already, he felt himself lagging behind schedule, and he frowned in distaste at the rising sun that illuminated the front part of his office, though he didn't know if he disliked it more as a reminder of yet another new, dreary day, or because its light made his temples pound.

Damn, he didn't even get time to sleep.

But sleep was not a benefit that came with his job, not when he was the only one who even bothered to care anymore. The rest of the continent teetered on the edge of sanity, and they were all enjoying it. Bah, let them enjoy it. What did he care? Bliss was for the ignorant.

He stepped a foot across the threshold between the main lobby and the stairs leading up to the front door. Immediately, he felt the hairs at the back of his neck rise in a muted sense of jeopardy. He scanned the interior of the building, though nothing looked amiss. The lights were on as he expected them to be; he always had some of his men look after his offices whenever he was gone. The place was clean, spotless in fact. There were guards standing by the wall adjacent to the door, heads slightly bowed in deference to him.

He turned around, looking through the streets, not knowing what he was searching for. The roads were empty this time of the dawn, just as they should be for a town the size of Tobha.

"Mr. Chu?" Rue spoke up beside him. "Is there something wrong?"

"Has there been any disturbances last night?" he asked the woman who was in charge of his security team for this particular office.

"There was a black out for the entire town last night," she explained with a bitter voice that sounded like she was woeful to admit it. "It lasted precisely three minutes and fourteen seconds."

He stared back at her, searching her eyes for any signs of treachery, but this woman had been loyal to him for many years, and the only reason he didn't punish her for the atrocious breach of his office some weeks ago was that there were other people, less useful, who bore the brunt of his anger. She looked back at him with the ease of someone who was used to staring danger in the eye and spitting in its face.

He resumed his entry into the building, and made his way up the stairs to his room. He was about to open the door, when he felt that distinct uneasiness again. Nobody else was in the hallway. But he knew better than to ignore it. One did not grow up as a prince of Xing without listening to their instincts, and right now his instincts were screaming for him to move away.

So he did, and he took a side stairs to the basement, a highly secure room where he stored some of his more confidential documents. The guards were standing beside the door, and they gave him a respectful nod. As soon as he'd scanned his fingerprint and he entered the lower ground, the discomforting pressure eased away.

He snickered. There was only one entry and one exit into this part of the building. There was no way –

A fist slammed into his left cheek, the force strong enough to send him crashing against a desk. He heard a crack on his side, and molten pain shot across his torso where his body met the edge of the table. He stumbled to his knees for a moment, though his intuition told his body to get up and assume a defensive position. But that one split-second was all his assailant needed to slam yet another blow against his head. Then another, and another, until he could hardly hear the sound of attack around him, so loud was the ringing in his ears.

He tried swivel away, his feet aiming for an angle that would swipe his attacker's footing from underneath them, but when he swung his legs around, they didn't bump against anything.

And yet the punches persisted, each one packing such strength that drove his breath from his lungs. He opened his eyes, but the objects falling from the desk prevented him from acquiring a clear view of whom he was against. It was dark in the room, and from the small glimpses he caught between the attacks, he could tell that his assailant was both wearing dark clothes and that they were really, really quick.

There was something else. The style of the onslaught was remarkably Xingese. It wasn't a haphazardly trained street fighter he was up against, nor a tough, heavy-weaponed Amestrian militant. He smirked. He knew who this was. There was only one person who would visit him in such a manner.

And with that insight, he rolled to the right, grabbed a paperweight that had fallen from his desk, and threw it against her left side. He then brought up both his hands, one to catch her oncoming fist, and the other to deliver a timely cuff to her jaw. He applied enough force that she went sprawling on the marble floor, but she lithely summer-saulted back into a standing position.

Their fight halted, and against what little light that streamed through the tiny glass window of the door, he saw the familiar big, dark eyes regarding him with hatred.

"Hello Lan Fan," he smiled.

"Chu," she spat back. She was taut with unspent energy and outrage. "You owe me a bottle of Red Stone. Actually, make that two, since the last one you gave was botched."

"Ah, was it, now?" Henry wanted to laugh, but found his sides protesting furiously. Still, it wasn't like he hadn't been under painful duress before. He looked aside, through the window of the door, and noticed that nobody was guarding it anymore. "Lan Fan, dear, what did you do to my employees?"

"Worry about me, Chu! Not them!" she exclaimed, and he looked back at her, schooling his face in an expression of baffled fondness, as if he had no idea why in the world he would concern himself with someone as small as her. And really, he didn't. Lan Fan was being reckless, and if there was anything he learned both as a royal and a businessman, it was that impulsiveness only catered to long-term damages, not quick gains. "I can kill you right now," she hissed, her eyes narrowing in saturated anger.

He laughed then, ignoring the searing pain that shot up from his broken ribs. He laughed, because it was like watching a squirrel hurl acorns at a passing car, or a blade of grass fuss against the wind that bent it.

She sprinted forward and pushed him hard against the wall, and he indulged her. He only felt the sting of split flesh on his cheek at about the same time he felt the warm wetness of blood trail down to his chin. He glanced down and realized belatedly that she was holding a short knife, and that she must have slashed him right before pinning him. Heh, so she'd gotten a little faster than before, not a big deal.

Moving her arm methodically, she positioned it against the middle of his chest, her fist digging against his throat. He gasped for breath.

"You know that I can do it if I want to," she snarled. "You knew it before too. Why else did you bargain with me?"

"But I also know that you don't want to," he wheezed. He was beginning to feel the lightheadedness that accompanied the shortage of oxygen. He gave her a predatory smirk, and raised his own hand so that he could caress her face.

"Back in Xing," he uttered, trying to get what little air he could past his lips, "I used to enjoy myself on girls like you."

Her eyes widened a bit, but it was enough. She hobbled several steps back, eying him with revulsion. He pushed himself away from the wall, and he rubbed the spot on his throat that she compressed. There might be a bruise there by the end of the day.

"You can never kill me, because you don't know where the Red Stone is," he taunted her.

"I paid you. I've played along all these years, pandering to your whims! The least you can do is hold up your end of the bargain, you snake!"

"The least? Now hold on –"

"We had a deal!" she shouted, loud enough that Henry began to wonder how many of his employees had 'vanished.'

"That we did, little girl," he said. He straightened his back and rolled back his shoulders. Goodness, how he hated getting slammed into things. "But deals and contracts are subject to situations, and rarely are they ever for life. Now as I remember it, I did hold up my end of the bargain, two years ago. I saved Fu's life and yours, and I even made sure that the military would not find one trace of you in the murder scenes of The Dealers' Guild. That was my end of the bargain, Lan Fan. I've completed it. Really, what right do you have to keep insisting that I provide you with the Red Stone?"

"Grandpa would have never fallen ill if it wasn't for you and your experiments!" she snapped. The handle of her knife broke, so tightly she was holding it. "I would have never killed the Dealers if it wasn't for you! You can't paint yourself a hero for fixing things that you broke in the first place."

"Now, now, let's not point fingers," Henry stated, grabbing his handkerchief from a pocket and using it to staunch the bleeding on his cheek. "It's mighty childish, don't you think?"

To his surprise, Lan Fan merely stared back at him in indignation. Then she pulled out a lighter, walked calmly over to his desk. She picked up a sheet of paper from it, lighted it up, and let it fall in the waste basket. She picked several other sheets of paper, began tearing them up with her teeth, and added the pieces slowly to feed the fire. The room bloomed into life with a blaze of orange.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"The things here are important, right?" she said, her voice devoid of the ferocity it held only moments before. "That's why you're guarding them so heavily. Well, I don't care about them. I'll just burn them. Maybe I'll take what's important to you too." Henry watched as she picked up one of his heavy ledgers, and began tearing into them and sacrificing them as fire fodder.

He cleared his throat. "Why do you think I will keep giving you the medicine when you've been conspiring against me?"

She paused from her juvenile revenge, hand poised on top of a folder soon to be a victim to the flames.

"Oh? You don't think I'd find out, did you?" He giggled. "Lan Fan, you are so naïve! You are so stupid, it's almost cute. The thing is that people like me don't get to be on top without knowing what we're up against. By necessity, we become experts in those who want to drag us to their level. How can I miss it when it's so obvious?"

He walked up to a shelf, pulled out a bottle of sparkling water, and poured its entire contents into the trash bin. The room darkened eerily with the death of the fire.

"How does it feel like to sell yourself to a Yao?" he continued, enjoying her growing apprehension. "Tell me, do you warm his bed as well as watch his back? Is that part of the deal you made with him? What was it called again? Oh, that's right, Operation Greed!" Henry allowed himself another bout of laughter as he watched her expression fall into grave concern and fear. "Judging by how high the sun is when I came here, I predict that the last phase is happening right as we speak.

"I know a lot about Ling Yao," Henry said. "He's been dabbling in the black markets since he turned ten. I know that he is friends with the some of the authorities in the underworld. In a way, he reminds me a lot of myself. Which is why it's so easy to predict what he's going to do."

"He's nothing like you!" Lan Fan bellowed.

He found her conviction almost endearing. "That's because you either don't know him very well, or you don't know me very well. Either way, I think we've established the fact that you don't know much at all. You see, some time before Yao's Auto-Mail friends came to me, a State Military echelon visited me first. I knew that the amount Elric and Rockbell asked for was preposterously small if they truly wanted to evade the team deployed to investigate them. So I got curious."

"You... you know about Mustang?" Lan Fan asked, her eyes cautious.

"Of course! And I must say, I'm honestly surprised that Rockbell decided to throw her entire life's work to the teeth of the military dogs. Though, I'm not exactly disappointed. I'm getting all the trade secrets in return. She has sabotaged herself twice over, which only implies how desperate you all were to get to me. And you know how I feel about people who try to cross me, don't you?"

Lan Fan exhaled raggedly, and clutched the edge of the desk.

"Oh, don't worry. I'll forgive your disrespectful attempts at conspiracy, if we make a new deal," Henry suggested, and he couldn't help the smile that stretched across his face at the way her eyes snapped back up to his, hungry.

"Kill Ling Yao," he stated. "And you can have as many Red Stones as you like."

AN: Aalrighty! Everyone saw that coming, right? If you're confused, don't worry. Lan Fan will explain everything to Ling in due time, and you guys will get the whole story.

So, two twists in one chapter. Well, there's another one that's coming up in Chapter 9, and it's very LingFan-ish, but I'll cross the bridge when I get there. Needless to say, Ling is not gonna be too happy about this. He really ought to stop naming his plans after Greed. It brings him bad luck, hehe.

I've also been studying some of my favourite books that have a lot of intrigue. And what I noticed is that most of them tend to include the perspective of the antagonist. So, I think from now on, Henry Chu will be one of the focalizers of the story. I really think that it's an effective way for the readers to know what the stakes are, so that things don't just sort of jump out of nowhere. (I mean, I tried to put as much foreshadowing as I can when it came to Lan Fan's secret that she's Chu's puppet, but I don't know. How do you guys feel about that?) And I'm not exactly fond of the whole villain-reveals-his-secret-plans-to-hero, so I think I'll include more of Chu's POV from now on.

Please let me know what you guys think! Thank you so much for all your support and comments and faves! The response last chapter was amazing, really I'm so grateful! (Also, let me know if I have to increase the rating. Henry Chu is a creep, no denying that, but I tend to rely more on innuendo when it comes to sexual matters, and I don't think it'll get any worse than it was in this chapter. Aw, sorry if that disappoints you if you were looking forward to some LingFan action, but I think it's clear to say they got a TON of things to work out before they get to that level yet.)