The next morning I’m making breakfast again for Nina. She’s already happy but she let’s out the biggest smile when she sees her dad make his way to the table. “Daddy!” She gloms onto his side.

He looks a bit confused then smiles ruefully patting her head. “Hey, you’re acting like I was gone forever haha.” Nina opens her mouth to say something but clears some starts of tears from her eyes before burying herself back into his chest. It kind of hurts to see just how happy she is to see him eating breakfast with her…

Shaking my head, I start working up in the kitchen again. “Anyways… I’ll fix up a plate for you Mr. Tucker.”

He smiles and sits down. Looking around the kitchen in a confused state. Like he doesn’t recognize the place.

He turns to me, a slight smile on his face as he sees a helping of food coming his way. “What happened to this place anyways? It’s so…. Clean?”

I point my spatula at him. “Yeah, we cleaned it. It’s pretty easy you know doesn’t take much time to maintain?” Zig let’s out an amused hiss at that.

Looking at him he feels my gaze and turns away. “What?”

Seeming to weight his options before finally deciding on something. “My lord… I believe you are being a… what they call a hypocrite?” I can’t help but feel a little embarrassed at that.

Rubbing my neck as I suddenly feel a bit less comfortable. “H-hey come on. I was never this bad…” He gives me a long look.

“Really?” He just nods in response. I just put my hands up in defeat. Giving a glance to the giggling Nina still holding onto her dads’ side.

Finishing up I sit down with them. “So, any plans for the day? I know you’re turning in your stuff to the government tomorrow. That’s all ready?” He let’s out a small smile.

“Yup, I’ve got everything ready in my lab… It feels like a load off my shoulders…”

“Great, well… take a load off ours and go take a shower and clean yourself up a bit.” That earns another small giggle from Nina.

He raises his arm up and makes a show of sniffing. Nina makes some gagging sounds before giggling again.

“Fair enough, I should probably do that after eating…”

After finishing up our dinner and Mr.Tucker getting a much needed shower and shave we have a bit of an awkward moment in the dinning area.

Mr. Tucker looks down at his hands. “So… what do I do now? It feels like it’s been so long since I’ve had any… free time?” I look over at Nina who has a hopeful smile. Alexander seemingly feeling he excitement starts jumping around with his tongue lolling about.

I put my hand on Mr.Tuckers shoulders and point out the elephant in the room. “Why not take her out for a day at the park or something?” He gives me a confused look then seems to seriously think about it for a moment.

“I guess… It’s been… since my wife left since we last did anything like that.”

“Yay! Daddies going to play!” She starts doing a little happy dance with an excited Alexander leaping around with her.

After a moment she realizes something. “But what about big brother Du?” She looks over at me.

“Well, I’d rather not get in your way. Besides I’ve got some stuff to work on and have to look over Edward when he gets here so he doesn’t hurt himself.” She looks conflicted but reluctantly nods.

“I…I understand. It’ll be fantastic though right daddy?” She looks up at him hopefully and he looks a bit overwhelmed.

Looking nervously between me and Nina he takes a drink of water before speaking. “I…Uh right! Um it’ll be good, uh great!”

He’s going to blow it… oh well… She’s going to love it regardless.

Edward and Al show up before they leave.

“Looking good, Mr.Tucker? What’s up with the clean up? Last I saw you; it was like your shirt had become a second skin bonded to you through grime and sweat.” The blond smoking prick is back with them.

“Just uh spending the day with my daughter. D-don’t worry! I already have everything filled out for tomorrow. I’m just relaxing since it’s all done.” He looks to me as if confirming why he’s going out rather than his excited daughter.

Nina being a little bundle of joy starts nearly bouncing in place. “Daddy is taking me to the park and then he’s taking me to a a a restaurant then he’s taking me to see a museum! It’s going to be the bestest day ever! I wish alexander could come with us to the other two.” She tones down a bit near the end.

I don’t even have to warn the blond this time as he puts out the cigarette himself this time when he catches my glance.

“Well good for you. Just make sure it’s in on time. Ah, also you should know there’s apparently a nut job going around killing state alchemists. They took out the blood and steel alchemist yesterday. So just keep an eye out.”

Mr.Tucker looks worried for a moment before nodding to himself holding his chin. “I’m probably fine. I’m not as public as some of the other alchemists. I hardly leave the lab so it’s not like most even know what I look like. That might change once my research is presented but for now, I should be good.”

The blond guy just waves a hand dismissively. “Alright, just figured I’d warn you. That goes for you Elrics too. Keep an eye out for a man with a scar on his face.” Interesting, it’s not really surprising that seriel killers are in this part of the world too. We had our own share, but we just shipped them off to… here. Right, I’m starting to see why that may have been a problem.

Edward raises his nose. “We’ve got ourselves handled. If we see them, we’ll kick their ass!” Holding up his metal fist threateningly to the sky. But the moments ruined by his stomach growling loudly.

“Right after I get something to eat… I’m starving!”

Al sounds a bit concerned at that. “Brother we already ate before we left… where’s it all going?”

“Right to my height! I swear I feel like I’ve grown since yesterday! Let’s get this show on the road!” He walks right in straight to the kitchen.

I can’t help but chuckle at that. Al quickly follows after sending a quick. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t destroy the kitchen.” Over his shoulder.

Ruffling Nina’s head again I look at Mr.Tucker again. “Well, go enjoy your day off with your daughter. After tomorrow you’re going to make good on your side of the deal just remember that.”

He nods seriously but still has a small smile. “Yeah… let’s enjoy it while we can. Don’t worry, I’ll make good on my promises. I owe you a lot after everything you’ve done. I just wish… I wish you’d been here two years ago.” He shakes slightly at that but looks at Nina solidifying himself.

“Well, that’s a bit foreboding… I’m going to go work on my project…” Waving goodbyes I go back inside working on a new matrix. I have two new experiments. One that works on the idea of purity and removing grime. I make the matrix to represent the dual paired nature of soap. Soap is interesting because it has one side that’s hydrophobic and one side that hydrophilic. This means one side like water and one side likes oils. This lets it bind to something oily and water to be washed off. With this new matrix I was able to remove a lot of the grime from the house that’s built up over the years.

The other one was the idea behind smoke, carbon monoxide and various small elements… I don’t remember the exact chemical makeup of smoke, but I don’t need to. I only need a proper representation thanks to the alchemy method of visualizing the final outcome rather than the process. I don’t have much control of either of them but alongside the water and mystery one from mustang I’m starting to get quite the collection.

I have each circle engraved along the sides of my arms. Typically, in order to use alchemy on a substance it needs direct contact with an object medium with the symbol engraved. So, I just made the joint on the plating of my arm able to extend slightly taking insperation from Edwards’s fist blade. It’ll let me touch with more transmutation circles at the cost of being able to bend my wrist as easily.

It’s a shame that someone’s going around killing state alchemists. I haven’t stolen the circle from this blood and steel alchemist yet. Though I still don’t have that greatest of control of these new circles either.

My new discoveries though led to a bit of an argument with Edward.

“It doesn’t make sense… It’s not drawing from the tectonic plates… It’s like there’s a blocker somewhere in between… even just the idea of drawing from tectonic plates is ridiculous. Transmutation circles need a medium. It’s like using Chi to produce the circle but only taking the stuff from the mountains rather than the energy found in everything.”

Edward smacks his fist into his metal hand. “And I told you that this ‘Chi’ stuff sounds like it doesn’t exist. Scientifically we are drawing energy from the earths natural shifts. I’m progressing in this ‘Chi’ training and showing results but it’s just an elaborate method of self transmutation that’s all! The energy from the earth is why equivalent exchange works! It converts a substance of the same type to another using that energy.”

“That’s another thing with you westerners. Equivalent exchange? You’re using energy from somewhere else! That’s still an energy loss. It’s not an equal exchange.” I grab a cup of water and freeze it with a quick flash of alchemy lightning.

“See this? What’s wrong here?” He looks at the frozen mug and touches it shivering slightly.

He just shrugs. “You made it colder now, so what? You changed it from liquid to solid. It’s the same substance so it’s an equal exchange.”

“But where does the heat go? There’s no such thing as making something colder. Frozen things are just substances that have their energy taken away. The molecules lock up and take on a more rigid structure and ice cube doesn’t melt because it’s no longer colder it melts because the surrounding energy transfers to it increasing it’s temperature.”

He tosses the frozen cup in the air a bit. Urging me to get on with it. “So what?”

“So? Where does the heat go when I freeze something? If it was liquid before the energy had to go somewhere right?” His eyes widen.

“Do you think… maybe it’s using that in order to pay for the transmutation?” That stops me for a moment. But it would need far more energy to do that than it would get back.

Shaking my head. “No, I don’t think so? It may do that anyways but it still wouldn’t be a fair exchange.” I unfreeze the water in the cup.

“See, it’s now warmer again. Where did that energy come from? The surroundings are still the same temperature.”

He just throws his hands in the air. “I don’t know, okay? Are you happy? It’s just another mystery of alchemy! Congratulations you found a new unanswered question! If you don’t mind it’s time for third lunch-dinner because your stupid Chi training is making me stuff myself!” He storms off.

I might be a little… testy with him lately. It’s mostly just because I’ve been annoyed with how alchemy or Alkahestry works in general. It made some sense when I was using fire in order to break apart bonds and reconfigure it. It seemed like it was easier too on the small scale It’s why I can’t do specific work with the large-scale alchemy. But thermodynamics? I have no idea how this is supposed to work. I’ve ran tests using thermometers. I’ve used alchemy to freeze an ice cube within a glass of water then took the ice cube out quickly… the cup maintained the same temperature never altering… It just doesn’t make sense… Ha…

Going down to the kitchen I see Al with Alexander.

I can’t help but raise my eye at it. “Oh, they sent him back already?”

Al just nods. “Must be, I didn’t see them come back but I found him scratching at the front door. He might not have wanted to come to ambush them when they came back or something.”

Alexander is yipping and giving low growls. Which is pretty out of the ordinary… for the couple of days I’ve known him. Maybe he’s like this when they are gone?

“What’s wrong boy?” I try to get down to look at him, but he growls again and starts hoping around the door.

“Is something wrong Alexander?” Another couple barks…

Al looks over at me. I can feel a growing concern… “Did something happen to Mr.Tucker and Nina?”