I FAILED A TEST SO I'M SAD. But anyway!
Many thanks to Synneofthesun, D3athrav3n, Orange Singer, Unborn Hope, Took-Baggins, and Bar-Ohki for prettypretty reviews! Now for pertinent responses!
Synne: Maybe, maybe not! We'll see, though, won't we?
D3ath: There's a very good reason for where Envy is, but you'll have to wait and see on both counts! But I'm going to thank you early for helping me out with something! Won't tell you what, though!
Orange: Questions, yay! Ed's sight is important, you'll see. Yeah, Al can do some stuff. And the answer to the third is explained below!
Unborn: Me too! I like Envy. Maybe next time you visit the city. Don't give up... (bird poop is the evil)
Took: Yep, poor Winry. But will it be blessed with bad, or cursed with good? Nope, not Paninya, but she'll be back anyway!
Bar-Ohki: And so do I!
Okay, chappie time! Hooray!
"How do you feel?" Edward asked.
"Like nothing really happened to me," I said, checking my hands again. "I could've sworn that stuff in the bottle dissolved my face off! Did I just dream that?"
Edward shook his head. "No, you didn't," he said. "The pain you felt was real. It was the feeling of the contents of the vial soaking through your skin and bonding its cells with your blood cells."
"Wha-what?" I exclaimed. "Bonding with my...but wait! What does that mean?"
"Say ahhh," Trisha told me, a strange-looking thermometer floating near her head.
"But what's going on! I--"
My mouth opened itself, and in flew the thermometer. It stuck itself straight down my throat, and I gagged on it. "Mom, maybe you should have warned her," Alphonse said.
"It's easier if you don't know what's coming," Trisha said.
The thermometer was down my throat for only a second or so, but it felt like eternity. When it floated back out I had to cough a couple of times to get the gaggy feeling out of my throat. Trisha, meanwhile, checked the reading, and then showed it to Edward and Alphonse.
"Well, it's official," Edward said with a sigh, plopping down on the bed and turning to face me. "You've now got Abnormal attributes in your blood."
"I...what?"
"It means that in a few days or so, you'll manifest an ability," Alphonse explained. "Just like Mom, or Brother."
7: Fun's Over
I stared at them. "You mean...I'm going to be able to move stuff with my mind?"
"Probably not," Trisha said with a laugh, "but you'll be able to do something Abnormal. What was in that vial, Edward?"
Edward shrugged. "It was a mixture of several things. Any one of them could show up after a few days."
"But not all of them, right?"
"Yeah."
I continued to stare. Several items from the first aid kit floated out, hovered for a few seconds, then put themselves back. I could only guess that Trisha was looking for something. Alphonse noticed my stunned expression and gave me a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Winry; we'll be here to help you."
"And I guess you don't have to prove yourself after all," Edward added. "Now you've got something you'll need to keep secret too."
That statement snapped me out of my daze. "But this can't be!" I exclaimed. "What's going to happen? What am I going to be able to do?" I was nearly frantic. How had this happened? Was I really going to be doing something as impossible as Trisha's telekinesis? Or whatever Edward did with the memory thing?
"We won't know until it manifests," Trisha said, reaching out and putting a calming hand on my shoulder. "But getting worked up won't help matters."
"Where's Marta?" I demanded, now that we were on the subject of Abnormalities.
"She's asleep in the next room," Alphonse told me.
I looked around the room. For the first time it finally sunk in that I wasn't at Roze's. Envy, my burglar, must have brought me to the Elrics' when the peas-and-carrots barf spilled on me. There was a floor-lamp on, and the curtains were drawn over the window, so I guessed it was still dark out. I threw back the covers and swung my legs out of bed, nearly smacking Edward in the back.
"Where do you think you're going?" Edward demanded, looking as though he were going to push me back.
"Back to Roze's!" I stood up to my full height and glared down at him from where he sat on the bed. "Are you going to try and stop me?"
Edward glared back, but then heaved a sigh. "No, we won't, but you might want to put some pants on before you go barging out of the house."
I looked down and realized I was still in just my nightshirt. I blushed heavily and scrambled back into bed, quickly covering up. "Get me some pants!" I yelled in Edward's direction.
Edward, hiding what suspiciously looked like a snicker, left the room. Alphonse, who had covered his eyes, peeked out from behind them and then let his hand drop when he saw I was back in bed.
"Oh, by the way, here," he said, holding my wrench out to me.
I took it and looked down at it. It looked fine also, like nothing had happened. "Is the wrench going to manifest an ability too?" I asked sarcastically.
"I don't think so," Alphonse said, smiling sheepishly.
Trisha checked her watch. "Oh, I've got to go to work," she said, standing up. She gave me a warm smile. "Everything's going to be fine, Winry. You've got your own support group in us." Alphonse nodded enthusiastically at this.
"I'll see you guys this afternoon," she said, walking out. The door swung itself shut behind her.
"I should probably go too," Alphonse said. "I have work at Paninya's. You'll be okay with Brother and Envy taking you home?"
I nodded. Alphonse gave me a smile not unlike his mother's and left with a cheerful goodbye, manually closing the door behind himself.
So now I was left alone with Envy. I glanced at him and saw he hadn't moved from when he had stepped away from the door. His attention was on something I couldn't see that required him to tilt his head diagonally. The silence felt kind of oppressive, so I searched for a way to break it. I found a way in something Trisha had said to me when I first woke up.
"Envy, right?" I found myself saying. His eyes slid over to me, like I wasn't worth turning his whole head. "So...why did you have to switch the vials?"
He blinked twice, but said nothing, and didn't even alter his slightly bored expression. It was as if he couldn't muster up the effort to answer.
"Okay, Mr. Personality," I mumbled, crossing my arms and looking down at my poor wrench.
"Edward told me to."
The voice was just as effeminate as I remembered. I looked up, startled, to see that Envy hadn't moved a millimeter. Still looking at me in that sidelong way, he spoke again. "He was supposed to give you some harmless colored water, so something like this wouldn't happen. He botched it up and sent me to fix it."
"Why didn't you just say that?" I asked. "I would've given it to you."
"The goal was for you to think it was important," Envy replied.
My brow creased. "Why does Ed have to be so sneaky about everything? Can't he just say or do something straight up? What's all the intrigue for?"
"It's a part of his job," Envy said sharply, as if I had insulted his mother.
I instinctively pulled back a bit at his tone. "Okay, I'm sorry I asked. I just wondered."
Envy sighed, like my speaking was a nuisance.
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, I tried again. "So...you're an Abnormal?"
Envy did that sidelong glance thing again, and I felt like bonking him with my wrench. But this time, it didn't take him as long to answer. "Yeah," he said.
"Are you...do you know Lust?"
"Related," he replied.
It made sense. "Can you turn the temperature to freezing like her?" I asked.
"I erase memories," he answered, in a way that made it almost sound like a threat.
Just then Edward came back in. "Pants!" he yelled, flinging open the door. He held a pair of slim black jeans in one hand.
Envy saw them and pushed himself off the wall. "Those are mine," he said, sounding peeved.
"Shut up and buy more," Edward answered, tossing the pants to me. I fumbled them once and caught them. "The sun's just coming up, so Envy should be able to sneak you back into your room. Ready to go?"
"Now?" I said.
Marta, who I hadn't even noticed, jumped off Edward's shoulder and down onto the bed. "Yeah, before those people you're staying with notice," she said.
"They didn't notice my screams of terror?" I questioned.
Edward glanced quickly at Envy, who shrugged, the most movement I'd seen from him yet. "I used the sound barrier, just in case," he said.
"Oh," Edward said, relaxing. He turned back to me. "A sound barrier keeps others from hearing any noise from the inside. Like a soundproof booth. Nobody heard you."
That was definitely weird. I shrugged like I wasn't stunned. "Okay," I said.
So Edward and Envy escorted me back home. Envy tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and swiftly climbed the side of the building. He pushed open my window and dumped me on the floor.
"Ow!" I yelled as my butt came in contact with the carpet.
Envy didn't apologize, or say anything, but simply shut my window and dropped out of sight. I got up, rubbing my sore bottom, and opened the window again. I glared down, a little surprised to see that Envy had already gotten to the ground. Ed waved at me before he and Envy started out of the parking lot, casual as could be.
I glanced over at the clock on the wall and saw that it wasn't even 8 AM. Walking to the door, I opened it and poked my head out into the hall. Roze's and Noa's doors were closed, and everything was quiet. They really hadn't heard a thing. I was amazed, and I quietly shut my door and went to sit on my bed.
"Man, this is so cool," Marta exulted, hopping off my shoulder and onto the bed. "Now you're gonna have an ability! I wonder what you'll do?"
Now that the painful part was over, I found myself wondering the same thing. Would it be something related to my personality or skills? Or would it be something completely out of the blue, like superspeed or something? Having something that would essentially be like a superpower excited me. This was what happened to kids in the big city, right? At least in the movies.
Marta was still talking. "...hope it's something useful, at least. Not, like, the ability to communicate with fruits or something dumb like that," she was saying.
"Communicate with fruits?" I repeated, a laugh in my voice. "That would be entirely useless, I think." I got up and made my way to the closet to pick out an outfit.
"Maybe," Marta said, sounding devious. "Unless..."
"Unless what?" I asked, picking out a blue-and-white-striped shirt.
"Unless you were in a produce store and somebody decided to hold it up for dough. You could tell the melons to gang rush him," Marta said, all with a straight face.
I glanced at her over my shoulder, and we both burst into laughter.
That day Marta and my borrowed pants stayed hidden in my tote while I hung out with Roze. Marta complained a little, but she was used to hiding from humans, so that wasn't a problem. I met a couple of Roze's friends, and we saw a movie. It was about a boy who moved to the big city and became the leader of a pack of superpowered animals that fought crime. It was kind of lame.
The second biggest problem of the day was my appetite. I ate before we left the house, halfway through the mall wandering, just before the movie, during the movie, and directly after the movie. It was like all the food and snacks I was eating were being sucked into a black hole. I was just so hungry, and everything looked tasty.
"Wow, you've got some appetite," Roze teased when I stopped yet again at a food stand.
"Yeah, I'm just..." I laughed nervously, unsure what to say.
"I'm jealous. If I ate like that my thighs would explode," Roze said, sounding wistful.
All I could do was laugh nervously as I paid for the three hotdogs and the slice of pizza. I finished off two of the hotdogs before we were even out of sight of the food stand.
"What do you want to do next?" Roze asked, checking her watch.
"You know what's around here; you decide," I said around the pizza.
So we did some more window-shopping and wandering around, chatting aimlessly. I dwindled the contents of my wallet some more, buying more food. I wanted to cry because I felt so greedy and ravenous. This was a really awful side-effect of the whole superpowers thing, and I wished it would go away.
"Oh, good, a bathroom," Roze said, seeing a sign hanging over a door. "I've really got to go."
"I'll wait out here," I offered.
Roze waved cheerfully as she hurried through the swinging door. I sat on a nearby bench and tried to ignore the rumblings in my stomach. I was still hungry? This sucked.
I was so preoccupied with my hunger rumbles that I didn't notice my biggest problem of the day was approaching. He startled me by sitting down next to me with a thump. I looked up in surprise.
It was a boy. He was really pale and looked to be a few years younger than me. He had very long hair for a boy, and it was dark and thick and wild. His skin was pale, and he was dressed in an oversized shirt which almost completely covered the bike shorts underneath, high tops, and studded wrists cuffs. All black. But his eyes were the creepiest. The left one was a nondescript dark blue, but the right was in the creepy violet family like Lust's and Envy's. He looked like someone's emo vampire goth child.
"Can I help you?" I asked, noting that he was staring directly at me.
"You don't look so tough," was his response.
"Okay?" I said, unsure what this meant.
He grinned, pretty scarily actually. His teeth looked a bit too sharp to be normal. "You're that girl that took away Al," he said.
Warning bells rang in my head. I looked around, but no one seemed to notice this creepy kid. At least he couldn't use some crazy powers to hurt me without making a scene. "What do you want?" I asked him warily.
"We want you to pass along a message," the kid said.
Suddenly everything chilled around me. I thought it was my own nerves at first, but then I realized when it got progressively colder that this wasn't all in my mind. I whirled, trying to spot Lust, but she must have been hiding. The cold wrapped around me like a vise, making my limbs hurt. My fingers and ears were already going numb.
"Tell the Elrics that they have to surrender to us," the kid said, as if I were taking notes.
I tried to speak but couldn't. The coldness around me was taking its toll on my body. My skin was turning white, the tips of my fingers blue. I looked around beseechingly for help, but the crowd had thinned out, and no one paid me any mind. I remembered movies I had seen where the villain had hurt the hero while people in the big city paid no notice.
Why did this have to happen to me?
The kid leaned forward as if about to share an important secret. "Tell them it's from Wrath and Lust," he said in a low voice, grinning much too smugly.
Were there icicles in my hair? I didn't know. I so wished I had some kind of power to use, to kick Wrath's smarmy butt and Lust's hidden butt. But the only thing that had manifested from the Abnormal potion was the ravenous hunger. I was doomed.
There was a sudden explosion to my right. People screamed and scattered. In my peripheral vision I barely made out a display of fake plants that was now on fire. Distracted, Wrath turned. In that moment when his attention wavered, someone scooped me into their arms and whisked me away. Everything was moving around me in a blur. I couldn't make anything out. What I did notice, however, was the viselike coldness around me being dissolved by a blanket of heat. I reveled in it, feeling the sensations come back to my hands and feet. My arms and legs prickled like they had fallen asleep. It stung a bit, like it does when you take cold feet into a warm house, but I was soon back to a normal temperature.
All the whirling stopped, and I was set on my feet. I was in a whole different part of the mall now, nearly deserted. I turned to see who my rescuer was and blinked. "Mr. Roy," I said in surprise.
"Just Roy, kid," Roy Mustang said to me, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Feel better?"
I nodded, rubbing my wrist as the feeling came back into it. "So you warmed me up? You've got the power of...heating things?" I asked.
"Yep. And you looked like you could use it."
I shuddered. "That was Wrath back there. And Lust. They were threatening the Elrics," I said.
"I figured as much," Roy said with a sigh. "Come on. Better convene at Ed's house."
"Wait!" I said as he started for an exit, obviously expecting me to follow. "I can't just leave Roze here by herself."
He gave me an incredulous look, but shrugged. "Call her and tell her you'll be right back then. But this is important," he said.
I opened my tote to get my cell phone and remembered that Marta was supposed to be in there. Had she felt the cold too? I flipped a couple of items aside, wondering if she was hiding. Near the bottom of the bag, Marta lay unconscious.
"Marta!" I exclaimed, quickly pulling her out. She was cold all over. "Oh no, are you all right? Can you hear me?"
She lay motionless on my palm.
Roy came back over and examined her with his eyes. "Hmm," he said.
"Fix her! Heat her up!" I commanded, holding her out to him.
Roy touched Marta's head with a finger. "All that cold would probably kill a smaller body," he commented.
"Don't say that," I said fiercely.
Marta's skin regained its rosy complexion. The coldness on her body vanished. She took a couple of coughing breaths, and her eyes fluttered. "What the hell?" she gasped.
"Lust attacked us," I said.
"We'll catch up later. Let's get to the Elrics'," Roy said firmly, like an authority figure.
"I need to call Roze," I said, reaching with my other hand into my tote.
"On the way," Roy said, grasping my arm and towing me along. Marta weakly climbed up onto my shoulder, and I patted her back with a finger. "Knew it'd be an adventure hanging out with you," she said, still getting her breath back.
"You don't have to talk, Marta," I told her. "Go ahead and recover."
Marta scowled, but she did fall quiet. I pulled out my cellphone just as it began to ring. The display showed Roze's name. I quickly flipped it open and put it to my ear. "Roze?"
"Winry, where are you? There was this crazy accident outside the bathroom. Some stuff caught on fire. I looked for you, but—"
"Yeah, I'm, uh, going to...the hospital!" I said, quickly improvising. "I, er, got burned."
Roze gasped. "Are you okay? Where are you, I'll meet you."
"No, no, I'm fine! I ran into someone I know, and he's taking me there. I'll be all right, Roze," I told her quickly.
"You're sure?" Roze said, sounding concerned.
"Uh-huh. You go on home. I'll see you there, okay?"
"Okay. Call me with an update."
"Sure." I closed my phone and dropped it back in my tote. By this time, we had made it outside.
"You need to work on your lying skills, now that you've become a part of the Abnormalities," Roy commented bluntly.
I glared at him. "Oh, take your dental fillings and shove it," I griped.
Roy paused for a bit, glancing at me, but then continued to walk. "So how'd you know I had dental fillings?" he asked, sounding casual.
I blinked, then scrunched my brow in confusion. How had I known? I'd never examined the inside of his mouth. It was almost like I could tell, like some people can tell when others have on veneers or contacts. "I don't know," I said, with a shrug.
"The vial," Marta piped up.
My breath whooshed out of me. "Really? You think this is the ability?" I asked her, realizing that it could make sense.
"Maybe, dunno." Marta still seemed tired. I patted her back again.
"Something else to discuss when we get to the Elrics," Roy said as he stopped by a black car. He opened the passenger door for me.
Dun-dun-duuuuun! Is Winry's ability manifesting that quickly? Will Wrath Lust attack her again? Will the fake plants ever recover?!
Find out next time!
