Eep! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, don't hurt me! I know I said I wanted to have this out by May at the latest and it's June, but... yeah. Real life takes too much time. I vote we ban real life!
Anyway... Here it is! The Wedding of Winry Rockbell; the sequel to the Alchemical Type. It's short, it's a prologue, I will update every week, and, as always, I don't own anything. Sadly. But I do have an incredible amount of knowledge regarding spy techniques, so you'd never catch me! BWAHAHAHA-*coughcough* Enjoy.
Edward Elric was no stranger to life-and-death situations; he'd looked death in the eye hundreds of times in his short nineteen years. He had dealt with starvation when he was only seven years old. He'd faced down near-immortals and survived meeting God itself. But none of those situations compared to the danger in front of him at this particular moment.
"What do you mean we have to go out of town right now?" Winry ground out, he eyes glowing with the intense anger she felt at that particular moment. Ed cowered under the glare, holding one automail hand out between him and the wrench she'd managed to pull from thin air. He could have sworn he'd removed her weapons of mass destruction before he'd told her the news.
"I'd really rather not," he said, trying to appease her. "But Führer Bastard needs me in Franca for three weeks. They've got some texts from a few centuries ago that they can't translate; looks like Xerxian. They might be stuff from Hohenheim. It's all mixed in with their 'witchcraft' books." He subconsciously shuddered; glad they were moving passed their insanity, even if it had taken three years.
"Ed!" Winry shot him an exasperated look. Sighing, she began speaking again, much slower, as though trying to communicate something to a child. "Our wedding is in a month. I need help! How am I supposed to get everything done if you're gone?" Her tone got progressively louder, until she ended up shouting at him.
"I'm sure May would love to help. She's in town since Al's back from his trip to Creta," Ed squirmed under her piercing scowl. "Besides," he tried, "it's not like there's all that much."
He was quickly proven wrong by a nice wrench to the head and a rant from his fiancé, detailing her checklist. "I need to get the headcount on our guest-list in! There's my last dress fitting, the marriage license needs to ordered, I haven't sent out any invitations for our Rehearsal Dinner yet and I need to get the seating assigned. I haven't even started my vows and I need to buy bridesmaids' gifts. You still need to set up your final tux fitting and don't try and tell me you've already gotten your groomsmen gifts. Then there's the automail Garfield ordered, your tune-ups, the wedding portraits! Ed, you can't get banged up there, the portraits still need to be taken!"
Ed was frozen in place for a good fifteen seconds before slowly backing away from the girl who he couldn't comprehend marrying at the moment. When he got his back against the door, he quickly turned, flinging it open as he did, and rushed out, running as fast as possible to get the train station. "I'll-be-back-as-soon-as-possible-see-you-later-by e!"
Winry shot her husband-to-be's trail of dirt a scornful look before grabbing his luggage and trudging after him, estimating the next train's departure time at fifteen minutes from now, at least. She knew full well he'd need his clothes – he had a tendency to destroy them in a macho display of her automail. She grinned to herself, glad he acknowledged her work to others, at least.
As she headed down the door, she grabbed a hefty stack of letters from the mail box, glancing over the RSVPs. There was Paninya's, Ling's – not his note he'd set earlier that practically screamed "I'm planning to cause mayhem," but an official "The Emperor Ling Yao will grace you with his presence" RSVP, written by Lan Fan, no doubt – the Youswell crowd, and a few foreigners who Ed had made an impact on in his travels; a couple of sailors from Aerugo, a metallurgist from Bohemia and a card filled with logographic characters. Not understanding almost anything about Japanese, Winry brushed it off as a simple RSVP from that club they'd visited almost two years ago.
Had she translated the card herself instead of giving it to Ed to translate, she might have picked up on the symbol for the week, or the three horizontal lines preceding it. If she had asked Ed at the train station, he would have told her to prepare for chaos, maybe even refused to leave. As it was, the Host Club's announcement of their arrival date in just three weeks would go unheeded.