A/N: Hello all :D So, many circumstances of Summer and other such things have prompted me to post a chapterlet today! Wisdom teeth were a real pain and I couldn't bring myself to work on the next full chapter and I'm also going to be out of town for a little while so I wouldn't have been able to post on the 13th like I wanted to. So, not wanting to stall 3 weeks and knowing the story needed a break from all the seriousness, I bring you this little side story. I hope you enjoy it, keep in mind it's just a chapterlet and I wrote it in about 3 days so it's probably not up to usual standards, it's just meant to make you laugh.
Special thanks to my little sister who gave me the hilarious conflict to this chapter and to JMichelleW, who helped me decide to use it. Now onward!
In all honesty, it really wasn't the most horrifying thing Dolcetto had stumbled in on in his life. In fact, it didn't seem like anything threatening when he first saw it, just Roa sort of frantically scrubbing something off in the sink.
"Heh, did you finally spill your tea on something impor-?" The third syllable of the word disappeared along with most of the blood from the dog chimera's face when Roa whipped around to face him and he got a clear view of just what was going on. Again, he really couldn't say it was the most terrifying moment of his life but it certainly felt like it to Dolcetto when he saw Greed's iconic, fur trimmed, leather vest getting quickly drenched under a stream of tap water.
"Wha-what the f-ck- Have you lost it?!" The small man practically screamed as he launched over to Roa's side, finding himself there far quicker than really should have been possible and started trying to wrench the faucet knobs back into their off positions.
"Mh! I need that!" Roa actually hissed, in his own grumbling way, and Dolcetto found himself stumbling back a few feet. "And keep quiet."
It took the chimera a second to catch onto the fact that the other had pushed him but the confusion over that didn't hold him for long.
"Geh? Why? Roa, what the hell's going on?" He whispered to the big man, unconsciously going along with his request, while grabbing his friend's shoulder. Even in the hushed tone, it was easy to hear the worry slipping through in his voice. What in all of creation could make Roa abuse Greed's vest? The homunculus treated that thing like a best friend, only ever shirking it to keep it safe, in the heat of a moment or when he slept and sometimes not even that. A thought that the older chimera had just started going senile began aggressively worming at Dolcetto's mind.
"This." Roa replied shortly, though still with an edge of panic, as he thrust the soaked piece of outerwear right under the dog chimera's nose. It turned out to be one of those incidents where his sense of smell actually wasn't the most relevant. The residual scents of perfume, sweat and bitter black tea did help piece together the story but the enormous, discolored patch on what should have been pure, white fur already told him most of that anyway.
"What-you-!" Dolcetto sputtered hoarsely, finally understanding the need to keep quiet since he was pretty certain Greed was still asleep somewhere in the building. "What did you do?!" He barely managed to keep himself from shouting as he clenched onto the sopping leather, the only thing keeping his voice low being horror.
"Exactly what you said." Roa grunted, prying the other man's hands off the vest so he could plunge the article back under the water.
"Wha-?" Dolcetto started dumbly, not really sure what the ox chimera was talking about before he remembered his initial joke. "Wait, you actually spilled on it?!" Once again, the chimera's voice brushed the line of being too loud, Roa shot him a look equivalent to slapping a hand over his mouth over. "I was joking!" He went on more quietly, catching the message. "You never-How the hell did it happen?"
"...The couch is in the wrong spot…" The bigger man started reluctantly, evidently not liking having to relay his clumsiness but tipped his head over to the sitting area of the basement. Sure enough, when Dolcetto looked, the couch to his right was skewed oddly (as was the rest of the furniture, now that he noticed.) The man was about to ask what had happened to make the room that way but the other chimera cut him off.
"He left his vest on the end and I-... I was tired so I wasn't really looking." Roa finished, not full on saying he tripped but insinuating it enough for Dolcetto to understand. The sentence also gave the dog chimera the answer to why the rest of the room was so disarrayed. Ditched clothing coupled with certain noises he'd heard the night before made it fairly obvious.
"Guuh, that's what you get for wandering around with your eyes f-king shut." The dog chimera groaned, shoving intruding thoughts over the exact story of other half of the room got to such a state for later and clutched his forehead. "How long have you been at it?" He went on, Roa apparently having ignored him and was back to trying to salvage the trim.
"At least ten minutes." He muttered back, rubbing at the large stained area with his calloused hands but only succeeded in pulling out strands of fur.
'Maybe we could...' Dolcetto started to muse, 'Cut the stained parts out-? Who'm I trying to kid? He'd notice in a second.' He was about to suggest the best places in the city to hide or offer to help pay train fare for the thoroughly doomed man when he finally remembered something.
"Never getting anywhere with that. Come on, I've got an idea." Dolcetto clipped out as he grabbed the large chimera's sleeve again and started pulling him toward the back rooms as best as he could.
0*0*0
'Huuh...wonder how much Greed would have to pay Mary to get her to do the laundry too...' Martel sighed to herself as she trudged toward the little, back storage room the washing machine was kept in, to retrieve her clothes. The standard rule in the Devil's Nest was, if you wanted your clothes cleaned, you did it yourself. There had been attempts to establish a laundry shifts in the past but they all seemed to end with either a fight over whose turn it was or certain articles of clothing rendered a different color or far smaller than they should have been. As nice as the simplicity of having the teenager always take care of it would be, though, Martel knew that the money for adding that to her job would be channeled right from everyone else's allotments, so she decided to just be content with not having to clean up the others' messes.
Of course, that only applied to clothing.
"What the hell are you-!" Martel's shout at Dolcetto and Roa who were crouched over one of the square drains all the rooms had, the ox chimera holding nothing less than Greed's fur trimmed vest and the dog with a big, brown glass bottle, got cut off by both of them making frantic shushing gestures.
"Skk! Martel, shut it! Please!" The smaller man pleaded under his breath, desperately clasping his occupied hands together as best he could after he was done with the 'Cut it out' throat slash signal.
"Eh?" The woman choked, even more confused than before but the stares the other chimera's were giving her were positively begging, so she decided it better to go along with them until she knew what was going on.
"Alright, what the f-ck are you doing?" She repeated in a whisper as she made her way over to the drainage spot in the center of what was originally designed to be a liquor store room and started stooping to join them.
"Roa spilled tea all over the boss's vest." Dolcetto replied in a hiss, grabbing the stained portion of the article Roa was holding and jerking it closer to the snake chimera before the culprit could get a word in himself. Martel's crouching very nearly turned into a fall at that explanation.
"What?!" She gasped back as she caught herself on her hands and ended up just staring at the two, eyes gone ridiculously wide. She had to have misheard him, Martel was sure, but the pair just gazed right back at her, the older actually looking worried and irritated (though it was hard to tell on his face.) And then again, not much else sounded like 'Roa'.
"You?" Martel finally started speaking again. "You spilled your drink on it?" The fact that the big chimera had actually slipped up like that was almost more surprising than what it had been on.
"The damn couch was in the wrong spot." Roa muttered back, not really looking at her, giving off the further impression he was angry with the uncommon use of a swear. It was over a minute before the snake chimera responded.
"...He's gonna turn you into a new pair of boots." She stated blankly, staring down at the huge stained swath on the previously pristine fur.
"He might still have a chance." Dolcetto contradicted while Roa just clutched his temples. "This is some new kind of lye stuff Mary bought-"
"Won't that only be good after he's skinned?"
"It's not lye, it's called bleach." Roa replied to Martel's question, looking none too appreciative of the joke. "It's supposed to make stuff turn white."
"...Think it'll work?" The woman questioned, staring critically down at the extremely obvious discoloration in the fur trim; it seemed unbelievable that there could actually be an escape from that for the older man.
"Worth a try." Dolcetto said as he gestured for Roa to hold out the vest again, then quickly yanked the cork out of the bottle.
"Ulk-!" The container slipped from the dog chimera's hands when he wretched at the suffocating fumes that wafted out the second the bottle opened. The smell wasn't easy for Martel or Roa to handle either but something tore their attention away from the chemical scent. Mainly, it was horror when half the clear contents of the bottle went cascading all over Greed's leather vest.
'It's all over, I did my best, no point in obsessing over it.' Mary chanted to herself for what must have been the dozenth time as she came up to the front of the Devil's Nest, returning after the first of her final exams. 'Besides, I did better than I thought on the first ones and I studied way more this time.' She thought optimistically. Along with that realization, there had mercifully only been one test that session, it hadn't been monstrously daunting, her next one wasn't till the afternoon of the next day and it was barely even noon on the current one.
'...I'm still doomed...' However, all the pleasant little facts did virtually nothing to alleviate the psychological stress. The teenager knew she had to look like a regular drunk or drug abuser the way forlornly slumped in the alley created by the shady bar but she didn't have one ounce of care to give. The girl's mind was far too preoccupied with musing over what she was going to do after she flunked out of her scholarship and, after that, if she would make a good career criminal.
'I've got tiny hands,' She muttered internally as she dragged herself to the side entrance. 'I'd make an okay pickpocket-' Mary's thoughts got abruptly cut off at the sound of muffled yells once she reached the top of the stairs. The noises getting louder as she descended to the outer door confirmed that they were indeed coming from inside and it didn't take long after that for her to recognize the sound of Dolcetto and Martel having a sort of screaming match. That wasn't all that weird a thing to happen but as she got closer and the shouts became more clear, Mary could make them out as much more afraid, pained and angry than was normal.
"Hey, is everything okay?" She called out as she shoved the final, obscuring door open.
Somehow, the feel of the room the teen had entered just positively emanated desperation. Roa was standing near the back, static face managing very well to give the look of utter despair, Dolcetto had positioned himself half sitting on one of the couches, clutching his stomach and occasionally yelling hoarsely back at Martel who was thoroughly berating him while brandishing-No, that couldn't have been Greed's vest.
Before Mary had a chance to come to her own conclusion as to what could have been going on, the whole group flinched to face her. After that, they all simultaneously got very similar looks on their faces, ones the girl really wasn't sure she liked.
0*0*0
"Guys, I really don't think this is a good idea." Mary protested halfheartedly as she finished the last details of the complex transmutation circle she'd drawn out on the table.
"It's not like we've got any other options." Martel replied, squeezing in next to the teenager and spreading Greed's destroyed vest out on the array. Everyone present winced and Roa felt a distinct chill cascading down his back when the enormous, milky stain the bleach had created on the leather came into full view, not to mention the stark swath of brown tea residue still mixed in with the trim.
"But...I don't really know what kind of reaction I'm reversing or what this thing's even made of." The girl started up again, rolling an undamaged corner of the article around in her fingers. "I'll probably just make everything way worse. If I had time to read up on it-"
"Middle class, Greed'll make Roa into shoes if he sees this." Dolcetto stressed while eying the ceiling above him, most likely trying to will the homunculus above to stay asleep.
"Wouldn't he make a better coat?"
"We don't have time for this." Roa himself finally cut across the teen's stalling, not even slightly in the mood for the jokes by that point. "Just fix it already."
"Alright, Alright!" Mary called out, holding her hands out at the ox chimera. Apparently, he'd sounded more demanding than he'd thought. "But nothing is getting blamed on me if it doesn't work."
Roa nodded in response, willing to go along with anything to salvage the catastrophe.
Turning back to the table, the girl took a few deep breaths, shaking out her hands and Roa felt a shred of hope bubbling up inside him when she her small fingers made contact with the surface.
"Y'know, anyone else think about how funny it is that this wasn't my fault?" Her hands pulled back to her sides before anything could happen as the teen chuckled nervously, evidently horrified of damaging the homunculus's favorite accessory even more.
The most likely would have been several screams of "No!" had a new voice not slipped in first.
"I thought I heard trouble."
Roa came close to saving their boss some trouble and jumping out of his own skin as he whipped around, praying the last statement hadn't belonged to who he thought it did. As he already knew though, it had been pointless. Greed was standing at the base of the stairs that led up to the bar, asking gaze seeming incredibly sinister to the ox chimera despite it being no different from normal.
"What the hell's-" That was when the man's eyes finally fell on the table and expression did demonstrate a few new things. Roa really couldn't decide whether it was the looks themselves or the speed at which they altered that was more disturbing.
In what had to be less than a second, the homunculus's face switched from complete, blank shock, to horrified realization, into a despairing look like he'd seen one of his best friends brutally murdered (though, for all the ox chimera knew, that might have been what it felt like to him) and then even more quickly into a glare that several times earned the title of bloody murder, though still bearing essence of all the previous faces. Roa flinched again when that stare appeared, though not as much as he would have thought, considering it wasn't directed at him which left the chimera confused. He got his answer very quickly after that, though.
"I was not me!" Mary, who Roa felt stupid for not realizing had been the target of the look in the first place, almost screeched and the large chimera suddenly felt something claw into the back of his overcoat. "This wasn't my fault!"
"Then who?" Roa flinched again when Greed snarled his question, suddenly appearing just a few inches in front of him and peering around in effort to get at the teenager who the chimera felt tugging on him, trying to shift her drafted human shield.
The big man just went along with it for a few moments, not having much notion of what was best to do while Greed started switching his stare around between all those present (save for Mary who he couldn't really see.) After a round or so of looks, Roa caught on that Martel and Dolcetto must have not been giving any indication as to who was responsible and that even Mary, who'd immediately gotten saddled with the blame, wasn't saying anything.
Roa gave an internal sigh and wondered if the others knew what their silence had inadvertently obliged him to. His friends were refusing to sell him out, which would definitely cause problems all around, so now he had no choice but to come forward.
"It's my fault, boss." The ox chimera stated with all the depressed resignation of someone uttering their last words.
It ended up taking longer to convince the man that it was indeed he, Roa, who'd caused the mess and that he wasn't just covering for someone else than the actual explanation, though the slight stall didn't look to change how Greed felt, the killer look not disappearing from his eyes.
Once the ox chimera finished, there was a lengthy and painfully tense pause during which the homunculus just stared, totally still aside from his forehead occasionally twitching. Eventually, Greed started moving forward, something to which the rest of the group shuffled back automatically. Surprisingly, though, there wasn't any indication of an attack or violent outburst, the man just went over to the table and slid a hand under his vest, as if cradling an injured animal.
"Half-pint." He eventually said in an obviously strained voice that made him sound like he was trying to swallow a scream. Roa felt Mary's grip, which had been becoming looser until the homunculus approached them, tense, though she still replied.
"Y-yeah?"
"Can you fix this?" The man said so seriously that Roa actually forgot his dire straights long enough to feel guilty.
"Oh, uh…" She stammered, having trouble reacting to how grave the homunculus had just become. "I-Yeah, probably. If I read up on it a little-"
"Then get to it!" He suddenly snapped, making the girl practically leap back onto Roa. "You've got books on alchemy stashed somewhere and if that doesn't help, go the the library, a bookstore, whatever. Just don't even think about touching this till you're exactly sure how to get it back!" Greed commanded, not quite as sharply as the first order though his voice continued to partially break at points.
It took a little while for Mary to fully process everything she'd been told to do, probably on account of the adrenaline high she was definitely experiencing, but she eventually pried her fingers out of Roa's outer shirt and started nervously shuffling for the hallway back to her room; Dolcetto and Martel followed similar suit.
"...And don't go feeling all smug about this not being your fault!" Greed suddenly barked after the teenager. Mary flinched and snapped a look over her shoulder, seemingly to say something. They turned out to be words she thought better of at the last second, though, and instead zipped out of the room silently.
For some reason, Mary's disappearance seemed to be followed by most of the warmth in the room along with any sense of security Roa had left. (He would work out later that that had probably been a subconscious realization that they were no longer in the presence of a relative 'Child' and Greed wouldn't have any reason to hold himself back. Not that he actually would have if she'd stuck around, though.)
"Roa..." The ox chimera came to a great understanding off the feeling of skin crawling as he very slowly looked back down at Greed. To say the man was seething would have been the understatement of the year; Roa really wasn't sure how to give it words but the feeling Greed gave off was something similar to watching a gale force storm roll in and having no place to take cover. The whole thing was made even more disturbing by how the homunculus's face kept twitching out of the horribly forced clam expression he was maintaining, making him appear as if he was murderously smiling occasionally.
"Ye-ah, boss?" Roa nearly stammered, feeling his flight instinct kick in full force and make him unknowingly start estimating how quickly he could get to the door.
"...Half-pint's gonna be worn out after she fixes this." He finally continued after several more twitches. "She'll need'ta eat. Go buy us all some lunch."
The ox chimera felt one of his eyebrows tilt involuntarily, it was just too surprising. He was being sent out on an errand? That was Greed's revenge?
"...What are you doing standing there?! Get out! And don't take too long!" Greed suddenly bellowed, knocking the pieces of what was really going on together for Roa.
It wasn't that getting food was actually at all necessary, his employer was just making him leave so he either would have time to calm down and not just rip him to shreds or so he could think of more creative means of retribution. Knowing Greed, it was probably the second one. Even knowing that, though, and only having less than five hundred cens to spend, Roa wasn't going to engage in the suicide of refusing. It was just a pathetic delay of the inevitable but the chimera was going to take it and was at the exit within seconds.
"Oh, and Roa..." Greed added once he was halfway through the door, making him whip back around to look. "How much bigger are you across the shoulders than me?"
"..." Roa just blinked at the question for a few moments before finally remembering that he not replying wouldn't end well. "Uh...don't know, boss. A couple of inches on each side." He stated hesitantly, having no idea what the man could be getting at. That was, until he responded.
"Yeah..." Greed mumbled back, running his hand along his collar bone to measure. "Yeah, shouldn't need too much tailoring..." He went on while he absently mimed putting on a jacket.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed that, I'm particularly fond of those last lines myself, also crossing my fingers that everyone was in character and believable. Remember, just a chapterlet and not to be taken too seriously. Don't have much to say this week aside from thank you all so much for the continued support and attention (been getting a lot of reviews lately and not to mention there are almost 90 followers now, thank you all a million times.)
Oh, one thing I did remember: Considering the time period, I settled on them having Bleach but the liquid commercial stuff being a new sort of thing (basically, early clorox.) And Lye is an old sort of cleaner that did similar sorts of things but also seems to be used in leather working XD (hence Martel's joke.)
If you ever have an idea for a chapter or something you'd like to see in one, don't be shy and send a message over! Also, as always, reviews are not required but...I'm running out of clever things to say about them. Ah well, might as well be up front, I love getting them.
The next chapter should be out on July 20th!