Premium Selection: Fullmetal Alchemist (Fresh meat for messed up fiction.)
Caution: Mature themes, violence….you get the picture.
XxXxXxX Criss-Cross XxXxXxX
Chapter One: Do You See The Blood In My Eyes
One might call school Alphonse Elrics forte, but definitely not what comes wrapped up in the confusing hormonal package known as junior high.
If he is so similar to everyone else, then why do others avoid him like the plague? He was sure he wasn't hideous, actually Mrs. Pinhill once told him he was a very 'ripe', what ever that meant. But it must have been a good thing since she smiled kindly after mentioning it.
And he was pretty certain he didn't smell bad. As if to make sure he lifted one slim arm and ducked his head to check. And of course at this moment, a very pretty girl he knew to be named Bree, approached him.
Quickly lowering his arm with a small blush on his cheeks, he watched her draw near as he attempted to smooth out an imaginary wrinkle in his pale blue polo shirt.
Bree stopped in front of the lone student and flipped back her long crimson hair. Al managed to whisper a quick hello and although his eyes were nervously glued to the table.
"Hey Alphonse," she purred in a distinctly snide fashion, though the poor boy was fretting too much to notice, "I was just hoping that maybe you would come to this next dance the school is having. Cause you know…I haven't seen you at a single one."
Pleasantly surprised that she had noticed, Al looked up with his heart happily fluttering, "That's because I just had no one to go with.."
The pretty girl put one dainty hand to her collar bone in a gesture of mock surprise. "My gosh, you haven't? Well in that case, I was kind of wondering if…"
The lonely boy held his breath in anticipation, his fingers gripped the bench he sat upon as he waited for the most beautiful, popular girl with hair like fire to ask him to the fall dance.
"If…you could go with Agatha for me?"
A group up chattering teens he hadn't noticed behind her began to laugh as realization sank deep into his heart. Agatha was one of the schools mentally disabled students.
He peered past his jeering classmates to the corner of the lunchroom where Agatha sat with her guardian. Her head lolled to the side as she tried to communicate by hooting and slurring no words in particular.
Al's shoulders hunched over him as if trying to protect him self from the merrily laughing children, but Bree was not done yet.
"Well? What do you think Alphonse? Wouldn't she be perfect for you because she hasn't been to a dance in her whole life either?"
At that moment, the bell chose to ring and save the boy from trying to defend him self, or Agatha's honor to the red heads piercing questions.
Standing up abruptly, Al picked up his tray of an unfinished sandwich and an unopened carton of milk and headed for the trash with his yellow backpack rolling in tow by his side.
Once he made it to the bin, he cast a glance around the cafeteria to make sure he wasn't in any ones direct line of vision and then grabbed his leftover food, bent low to unzip his back pack, and carefully placed it beside his algebra book.
The rest of the day rendered him safe, for the other children could not escape taunting him without being scolded by Mrs. Pinhill for not paying attention.
Ten minutes before class ended, a telltale knock on the door signaled that Al's older brother Edward was here to walk him home from school.
The sibling entered upon hearing a curt "come in". Ed has golden locks much like Al's though longer and distinct angles to his face, where as Al's was still soft and boyish looking.
Since at the end of every class was "clean up time", the students continued picking up pencils and paper from the floor and wiping their desks uninterrupted to Edwards appearance.
After nodding to the teacher he headed directly to his brothers desk in the third row, an impish grin overcoming his features.
Al was currently underneath his desk scavenging left over pencil shavings when he heard a comfortingly familiar voice yell, "HEY AL!"
Cocking his head up in surprise, he hit it hard on the wooden desk and yelped out in pain. He then emerged with a hand placed sheepishly on his head and grinned at his smirking older brother, "Hi Edward! How was high school today?"
Ed rolled his eyes and said, "Same thing different day, you know that. Everything is boring as hell."
"Ahem!"
Edward turned to and winked at her disapproving expression.
The last bell rang and a flurry of students immediately began gravitating toward the door, but the quickest of them all was Edward with his hand gripping Alphonse's wrist, hauling him past everyone at lightening speed to escape the crowd, and the teachers now flustered appearance.
All the younger sibling could do is try not to trip and hold on tight to the plastic handle of his back pack, which was now half rolling, half bouncing frantically down the hallway.
The two brothers had always walked home together. Though at first it was by choice, then it was out of necessity. They didn't really know why, but for some reason Al had started to get viciously picked on by his peers since the end of grade school.
Ever since Edward found Al sitting alone at the gates of his school with blood leaking from his nose and a clump of mud flaking dry in his hair, he had insisted being let out early at the end of every day so that he could make it right when his younger brother got out.
Once Edward reached past the entrance gates he had found Al at a month earlier, he slowed down to a trot and let go of the wrist he had been holding onto.
They walked in comfortable silence, all but for the small clanking of Alphonse's banana yellow backpack trying to make it over large rocks on the gravel pathway they had descended upon.
Since neither was old enough to drive, the brothers had to walk a mile and a half to school every morning. Al didn't think it was so bad because he felt it was good to get exercise and breathe in the air before ending up in a stuffy classroom all day.
Edward down right hated walking to school. He disliked seeing the clean suburban area they needed to pass through on the way home and seeing the buildings get progressively grayer and more run down.
He felt it was just a reminder of how low in the food chain his family really was. Though this didn't stop him from putting on a happy face for his ignorant younger brother, who thought they had it great.
As if to prove this point, Al was practically skipping on the walk home, glad school was finally over for the day and that he had free time left to do whatever he wanted.
He observed the scarce vegetation in the area and was thrilled to find a small grouping of white flowers growing in the protection of an expanse of shade.
Running forward to get a piece of the beautiful sight, the small smile adorning his features slowly slipped off as he realized that the shade was an actual shadow of an intimidating building that he and his brother had always kept a steady distance from while passing.
It stretched a mile high and was made up of thick concrete walls, and the tiny windows speckled around the surface had strong metal bars outlining any escape possible.
The fence he was now a mere few feet from has sharp barbed wire curling around the end. Al's eyes sank from the amazing heights of the prison to locate his brother now far ahead of him.
When they were younger, their tiny sweaty palms had always been interlocked while frantically trying to evade the sight that was now before him.
Ever since Edward made it to the junior high he was now in, he had refused the trembled effort of Alphonse's hand to find his, claiming it was childish.
He watched his brother from a far, walking stiffly at an unhurried pace with his eyes straight on his destination. He supposed it was a good thing his brother was not afraid, but what about him?
Al turned back to the supposedly harmless clump of flowers as if it could now bite him. Though instinct told him otherwise, he gingerly crept forward anyway, and kneeled down in the dirt to pluck a single stem from its flock, thinking of how nice it would look in his room at home.
Gripping the plant between two pudgy fingers, he tore at it quickly and stood, his new gift to the dullness that had settled into his home since the boy's mother had died firmly in hand.
Before Alphonse could turn to leave, a loud buzzer that echoed around the deserted fields caused him to visibly jump, then watch with a dawning horror as men wearing shirts and pants the same sad gray color as the building they inhabited slowly milled out one lone door.
Al wouldn't be one to be called exactly innocent, and such is proven with the fact that he knew only bad men got put in places like this. Men who did terrible things that made him feel pain inside merely to hear. What he also knew was that men like that aren't supposed to be let out, like the display he was seeing now before him.
A sweeping gust of wind rode by the land, picking up dust and ruffling Alphonse's hair enough to bring him out of his stupor as his small body twisted to the side to try and catch sight of Edward, who was no where to be found.
His brother was probably even home already, and that meant Al was alone without anyone else around for at least a mile. Well, all accept the criminals now loitering within the fenced premises.
Turning back and watching the spectacle for a moment before getting ready to bolt in the opposite direction, he realized that no one was running for the fence. And not one had even seen him at all, they were just standing around with their defeated expressions lifted to the sky as if soaking in the sun as much as they can before their world becomes once again dim within the walls of their cell.
Suddenly thoughtful, the boy wondered if the caged men had something of a break time, much like there was a snack time in between classes back at school.
Alphonse had begun to watch more with curiosity, rather than horror, just when a furious yell ripped the atmosphere and startled him enough to drop the plastic handle of his backpack and let it fall with a thump in the dirt at his side.
A particularly large man barreled through the door that other inmates had shifted through calmly. His heavy arms were hauling men in navy blue off his shoulders as another frustrated scream tore Al from his senses.
Glued to the spot, the boy continued to watch the spectacle of this man who was terrifying, powerful, strong, and it amazed the small boy who held a flower in his shaking hand from beyond the fence.
The man trudged on forward, even with two holding his arms and another desperately trying, and failing, to keep his slim arms around the mans thick middle. Tendons flexed in the prisoners neck from the effort, and with a sudden lurch, the officer on his left arm got flipped to the ground, his head making an inevitable cracking sound as it hit the dirt, and the prisoner was now facing an awed Alphonse.
Scar tissue marred his features and deep creases formed on his brow telling of dark intensions.
The brief contact Al's eyes had with the trapped man's face ended as he was tackled from behind by two other men, causing the struggler to topple onto the ground.
Even with his face pressed to the dirt with an elbow and police now coming down on him with a flurry of beatings from their fists and nightsticks, he managed to lift his gaze to Alphonse.
Blood oozed out of the left corner of his forehead from the impact of the fall and bleed around his eye, though that didn't stop him from locking his vision with the boy on the outside.
The small boy with freedom that held a flower whose petals were now being lost in the harsh whips from the wind. Al was struck by the bold stare, rendered stiff and unmovable. All he could do, all he wanted to do, was continue watching those defiant eyes even as he was already beaten down.
Then the man was lifted to his feet and dragged back within the walls that held his life, and Al was all of a sudden afraid.
He fell on his hand and knees, a strangled sob escaped his lips as he scrambled for his belongings, then shot up and took off running for home faster than he had ever run before. Even faster then when Bobby Thornton threatened to break his nose.
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When Alphonse got home that night, he barely spoke to his brother who had barked at him what had taken so long. Instead he smiled and went to his room, placing the stem with no more than a bud onto of his wooden dresser by his bed, and then leaving the house to go play in the yard.
He made mud houses with grass for the roof, and his brother came out to join him shortly. Edward brought along a bucket of water from the well next to their home and pretended to flood the small town Alphonse had created, then they both laughed and rolled around until their father arrived.
Though it was nearly always midnight with the only parent the two brothers had left came home, they always waited to have supper with him no matter how hungry they got, for it was the only time they could be a family together.
It was a fairly normal evening, and a normal morning as they walked to school at the same time. They went the same pace and took the same path.
Ed displayed his usual behavior when walked past the prison, and Al slowed to a walk behind him so that his brother didn't catch him trembling slightly as he snuck glances at the imposing structure.
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Class was it's usual affair, except when a wad of paper got thrown at Al, he wouldn't run to see who did it. When some once placed a tack on his chair, he didn't yelp from the slight pinprick of pain as he may have. He merely brushed it off and sat back down.
Eventually his classmate became annoyed at his lack of response and for the most part left him alone for the rest of the day. Even his teacher had noticed and was concerned at Al's unusual behavior.
The truth was, everything was the same. Alphonse wasn't in a bad mood, nor in a good mood, he was merely distracted. So distracted in fact, that when the child two rows behind him, four seats over, threw a pointed paper airplane that him squarely in the ear, he didn't even take notice at all.
He was thinking about the man with the piercing red eyes.
However, Al did notice when when Mrs. Pinhill announced that they would be going on a field trip. They were to have a guest speaker at the beginning of the day tomorrow from the cities police academy on the importance of law and safety. As for the trip they were going to be making, it was to a state prison. Fundorus Jail Penitentiary, the gray building the two brothers will walk by that very day in an hour on the way home from school.
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Authors Note: The end of chapter one, oh it feels good! I haven't mapped out the second chapter yet but I'm sure that will be done soon, and most likely tomorrow in class when I should actually be paying attention. Review if you'd like, or flame to amuse me.