Within seconds Riza has figured out this isn’t Roy. This is Envy. She and Mustang know each other that well, to the point she’s confident enough pointing a gun to an imposter within SECONDS.
Like, they exchange less than ten sentences talking to each other, and she knows enough to point a fucking gun at him.
And she’s smirking about the fact she knows how to prove it’s an imposter.
She’s immediately ready to take Envy down with this trickery.
She already knows how to do it.
How to be badass and prove this ain’t Roy and take down this damn imposter.
It only takes one statement for Riza to fool Envy into revealing himself. ONE STATEMENT “The colonel calls me Riza” and Hawkeye has entirely outmanipulated our shapeshifting manipulator.
bait taken JUST like that, so easy
The reason her lie is believable is because of how close Mustang and Hawkeye are
how close everyone knows Mustang and Hawkeye are
to the point even enemies like Envy would think “oh they’re together that makes sense”
to the point that when Riza tells Envy this lie, Envy doesn’t try to continue the facade and be like, “Well, how do I know you’re not Riza!Envy and lying to me??” Envy just goes “SHIT I FUKKED UP BAD” and flips
Riza knows that this will be believable and gets Envy to reveal himself, like, dayyyuumn woman
Envy’s immediate reaction is enough to prove beyond-all-shadow-of-doubt to Riza this is definitely-not-Roy. I mean, Riza already knew. But she just proved it. And so she shoots before Envy can
even
really transform out of the Roy appearance (in the manga, anyway)
That fast reaction
BANG
And then this calm “I lied”
like holy fuck that’s awesome
and then this fucking “Thanks for falling for it”
like fuck what she did was calmly tell Envy he fell for it and that she totally meant him to fall for it and that it was so easy for him to fall for it
like that’s power
that’s POWER, Riza
all so calm and steady and in POWER Riza
and then this fucking “Now do me a favor and die”
NOW
DO
ME
A
FAVOR
AND
DIE
bambambambambambambambambamba BANG BANG BOOMMMM RIZA GUNNING ENVY DOWN LIKE A BADASSSSSSSSSS
WAY TO GO HAWKEYE!!!
WOOOHOOO
YYYYEEEAAAAAAHHHH
BOOM
BABY
FUCK YEAH [insert Al gif here]
GNGE:OGIWENG:OIN YES
ICONIC RIZA MOMENT IS FUCKING BADASS AND ICONIC YO
They’re also both small, angry, love their friends, hate their dads, and are basically genius child prodigies.
This is official art. They’re friends.
This being said though Ed beat Father while he was already at his weakest because of Hohenheim and Greed’s contributions to weakening him.
Maka beat Asura while he was at his most powerful after he had been building his power for half the series. And she did so because her unmitigated courage was enough to force him into a breakdown.
What I’m trying to say here is if Maka and Edward threw hands she would kick his ass. But they won’t do that because, as you can see, they’re friends.
So, as it’s roughly explained, the state alchemist program is a kind of “recruit potential human sacrifices” mechanism, with a side-order of “brute strength for the army”. But basically, the state alchemist title is mostly about being a researcher–given people like Shou Tucker exist, and given that the only requirement to stay a state alchemist is to submit a yearly report of your research that says “look I’m still being a useful scientist”.
So far, so far this is sensible, yeah? Father and the delightful children from down the lane are running a recruitment program for potential human sacrifices. So sure–butter them up! Give them lots of money, get them buddy-buddy with the government, and give them endless resources for research. It’s be pretty easy to trick a state alchemist in that position to open the portal if Sugar DaddyBradley is nudging them to do it.
And I’m still willing to go with this logic for the whole “draft the state alchemists into war” move. They make it pretty clear that was something of a last-ditch effort. And the blood transmutation circle around Amestris was an absolute necessity for Father’s plan. So the risk of a few state alchemists dying or resigning from your Potential Sacrifice Pool is worth it for the completion of the circle.
Now. To get to my fucking thought.
Edward fucking Elric. This fucking fight-me 12 year old troglodyte shows up to the exam and performs circle-less transmutation in front of mother fucking Bradley, demonstrating to one of the seven Actual Fucking Homunculi that he’d already opened the portal. Ed was literally prepped as a human sacrifice before he showed up to Central. A fully set human sacrifice showed up at the homunculi’s door, said “hey look what I can do!”, proved he’d opened the mother fucking portal already, and said “hey yeah hire me”. Human sacrifice, free shipping, no assembly required, handcuffs not included!
They could have just tossed Ed into a shoebox and kept him there until the Promised Day. They wouldn’t even need to make up an excuse he attacked the f u c k i n g president. That’s fucking treason babey. He’s 12, he’s an orphan, he’s from a rural town in buttfuck nowhere, he’s literally the easiest person alive to disappear.They could have arrested him for assassination crimes, kept him in gay baby jail, and just popped him out for the Promised Day
What do they do instead?! “Oh lmao this kid’s great. Let’s give him infinite money, no supervision, no governmental responsibilities, access to all our secret resources, and toss him on a train to who-the-fuck-knows-where-land”
They fucking did that
And like? They then had the audacity to be concerned when Edward “Fight Me” Elric almost got himself killed about 293 times. Just an endless game of “I thought u were watching him” from one homunculus to another when Ed fucking absconds half-way across the globe to go entice some other hostile entity into murdering him to death. That’s the whole series. Every arc is Ed baiting death while the homunculi are in the background like “:/ wish he wouldn’t do that”
This only gets worse when you consider they later learned Al opened the portal too because really?? These two stab-happy globe-trotting public menaces are 40% of your final evil plan for godhood. 40%. Almost half. You couldn’t fucking set aside a cardboard box to keep these idiots in?
We all knew Father was terrible at planning when we learned his thousands-of-years-in-the-making-plan involved him procrastinating until the last five minutes to get his last sacrifice, while he was?? playing chess in his fucking basement, I guess. But it’s like every time I think about it like really think about it I find 7 more reasons Father was a fucking shit idiot moron, king of the stupid fucking idiot club, flesh and blood founder of seven other established dumbasses, all living in their idiot hovel under central, just giving random dumbass 12 year olds infinite money, j u s t b e c a u s e.
bullshit central 