Aztec Goddess: I didn't mean for a certain line in here to sound perverted, but that's just how it came out. Anyway, happy reading!
New Side Quests
Ed went back to the apartment feeling like he was missing something . . . "Hey, where's Winry?" he asked himself as he walked up the apartment stairs. He shrugged. "Hopefully, she's still not inside Hometown Buffet."
The fact was: Winry had run back to the apartment like a wet chicken as soon as the fire started, much to Wrath's dislike. Poor Wrath was knocked out by a wrench so Winry could cuddle him. Al was too busy reading the classified ads to help poor Wrath.
"Hey, I'm home," Ed said as he entered the apartment room.
"Ed! Why'd you stay for the fire?" Winry asked while she was practically strangling Wrath.
"Things came up. Y'know, like fireworks," Ed replied. "Wait, what are you doing to Wrath? Where's Al?"
Al came out of his room, newspaper in hand, and declared, "I have decided to get a job!"
"Why?" Ed asked as he forced the now semiconscious Wrath out of Winry's grasp.
"Well, someone needs an income around here," Al replied. "The money I won from the battle with the Fab Five won't last much longer-"
"Huh? What are you talking about?" Ed asked, utterly confused. He pulled Wrath to safety away from a whining Winry.
"Hey, I wasn't done cuddling with him!" Winry whined. " . . . Who is he anyway?"
"I'm . . . Ed's son!" Wrath replied sleepily.
Winry gasped dramatically. "Ed, is that true?"
"Yeah, sure," Ed replied sarcastically. "Anyway, Al, what kind of job are you planning to get?"
"Since everyone starts out working in a restaurant, I guess I'll start like that, too." Al replied.
"But then who am I gonna hang out with all day?" Wrath whined. He heard Winry snicker evilly. He slowly turned his head to see the happy look on her face and almost cried. He said to Ed, "Please, mommy! Don't tell me she's staying here!"
"You can always go back to the other homunculi," Ed replied. "But not right now. It's ten o'clock. That's way past your bed time!" Holy crap! Ed thought. I really do act like his mommy!
"Who's sleeping where?" Wrath asked.
"I'm a guest, so I should get a bed!" Winry said.
"I don't even need a bed," Al said. "And there's a couch right here, so . . ."
After an entire minute of careful planning and preparation, the sleeping arrangement went like this: Winry got Al's bed, Wrath got Ed's bed, Al got the living room couch, and Ed ended up on the bathroom floor.
"Wait a minute!" Ed said as he picked his head up from the cold tile floor. "How the hell did this happen?" No one answered him. They were either already asleep or just didn't want to answer him. Ed didn't bother to use his brain to think of sleeping at least on the carpeted living room floor. He just made himself as comfortable as possible (still not very comfy) and fell asleep.
The next day . . .
Envy was feeling pretty low again, but mostly pissed off when he found out Roy wasn't one of the Militarists that got expelled. He met up with Ed walking to school the next day and started yelling at him. "What the hell? Half the school year is almost over and Roy is still around! And why are you wearing a girl's uniform again? You want more rumors to start or something?"
"This is freakin' Roy's fault again!" Ed yelled back. "You think I like this?" He pulled his skirt down as low as possible to make sure his boxers wouldn't show again. "And you know what else I don't like? You using Russell like this!"
"Jeez, you're acting like I'm doing stuff to him! He's the one who – aw, forget it." Envy sped up his pace.
Ed was forced to break into a jog. "What? What are you saying?" Envy didn't respond. Ed gave him a horrified look. "You're pregnant!"
Envy whacked Ed over the head. "No! I was gonna say that he came on to me first! I plan to end this 'relationship' before he gets ideas like that anyway."
Ed rubbed his head. "Y'know, the weirdest part about this is that he really does like you."
"Yeah, it's a bit awkward."
Meanwhile, on the streets with Al . . .
"Wow, it looks like that one Hometown Buffet has already been replaced by another restaurant," Al said to himself. He went over to the new restaurant to investigate. It looked like a mini Kelly High: red and white. It had a sign with a huge red W on it and under it read Winis (the Spanish word for weenies, pronounced the same way).
Al inspected the door. It had a Now Hiring sign on it. "Oh, goody! This could be my new job!" Al entered the restaurant and asked to speak to the manager. He was an average Mexican with the most common Spanish name in the world: José. (Aztec Goddess: I literally have at least ten family members with that name!)
"Um, hello. I'm Al," Al introduced himself. "I'm looking for a job here."
"Any experience with winis?" José asked.
"Um . . . excuse me?"
"Winis! The thing in the middle of a hotdog!"
"Can't you just say hotdog?" Al was feeling very uncomfortable.
"No. It's only a hotdog when the wini is between the buns."
Al couldn't even respond to that.
"What, you got a problem with the word wini? You being racist to Mexicans now?" (Aztec Goddess: Yeah, wini is the word Mexicans use. At least every Mexican I know.)
"No, sir! I'm just-"
"Good, you're hired! Now go meet up with your fellow workers!" José gave Al a funny red and white hat and pushed him to behind the registers where he was introduced to Gluttony and Greed.
"Hey, aren't you guys my neighbors?" Al asked. "And aren't you guys homunculi? What are you doing here?"
"We were forced to work," Greed said. "That's what we get for getting expelled."
Gluttony went off to the kitchen to eat his ass off. "Should we stop him?" Al asked Greed.
Greed snorted. "Yeah, I'd like to see you try." Then he got a customer.
"Excuse me, but what are winis?" the customer asked.
Greed sighed. "The thing in the middle of a hotdog."
"Why can't you just call them hotdogs then?"
Greed had a lot of trouble saying this: "As our motto says . . . It's only a hotdog when the wini is . . . between the buns." Greed covered his mouth as if he was about to throw up. "Excuse me . . ." He ran out back and started laughing hysterically. "I DON'T BELONG AROUND WINIS! I SHOULD BE OUT CLUBBIN' AND PICKING UP GIRLS! BUT NOOOO, I HAD TO BE A HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUT!"
Al, as freaked out as he was, turned to face the camera and said, "Please don't let this happen to you, kids! Stay in school and away from places called Winis!"
In Kelly High, seventh period . . .
Ed's been having a lot of trouble during passing periods. Now he had to sit in the uncomfortable fold-out chairs in Theater, even though his ass hurt like crap. "Why is it that everyone thinks I'm 'that one hot girl from the first day of school'?" Ed whined to Envy. "And why do all the guys feel like they need to pinch my ass?"
"Apparently, you have a woman's ass," Envy replied. "Consider it a compliment! At least you're popular now, right?"
"Ha, ha. Very funny," Ed retorted as he rubbed his ass.
"Listen up, class!" Hoganson said. "Like, second semester is starting soon, and we're gonna work more with making stages from now on. The theme is: foreign countries! So, I like expect you guys to do a little traveling over Winter break!"
Envy's face lit up. "Hey, let's go to Mexico!" he said to Ed. "At your expense, of course!"
"No way!" Ed replied.
"You can't say no 'cause you still owe me two favors!" Envy declared. Ed groaned. "Heh, you'd think I'd forget or something?"
" . . . How many people am I paying for?"
"Well, me and Russell, of course. And Fletcher will probably need to come, too."
"You're bringing them?" Ed whined. "It's gonna be so awkward for me! And why Mexico? I can't even speak Spanish!"
"Oh, yeah. Alvarez said to me that I should tutor you. You're failing, aren't you?" Envy gave Ed a sly look.
"No!" Ed lied. "I just need some help with the conjugations and translations and . . . everything else."
"Did you know that Russell is getting an A in his Spanish class thanks to me? Care to owe me another favor?"
"I'd like to know what you want from me in the first place."
Envy stared at Ed as if he was the most retarded person in the world. "After all this time you've known me, you still don't know what I want?"
Ed gave Envy a nervous look. "It isn't anything . . . perverted, right?"
"Yes, of course it is," Envy replied sarcastically. "In fact, all of us homunculi want to be apart of it. We want something so horribly sick from you, something so disturbing that it'll have to be censored, and it's called the philosopher's stone."
Ed's expression while Envy was elaborating was priceless. He looked like he peed his pants, er, skirt. But when he heard the last two words, he calmed down, until they fully registered in his brain. "You know I can never make a philosopher's stone!" he said. "You remember what the secret ingredient is, right?"
"Human flesh," Hoganson replied dramatically. He was sitting behind Ed, listening to their conversation the entire time. Ed nearly jumped out of his seat because of this.
"How did you know that?" Envy asked the teacher.
"Everyone knows stuff like that now," Hoganson said matter-of-factly. "Ever since George Lopez became our principal. He knows so much about alchemy and stuff like that, it's like, crazy!" Then he started to whisper. "I heard that he used some form of alchemy to find his way here! But don't spread it, okay?"
School ended. Envy went to Russell's house to tell him and his brother about the trip they're going to take to Mexico. Ed went to the principal's office to do some investigation about George Lopez.
Luckily, Ed made it to the principal's office just before he was leaving. "Hey, Mister Lopez!" Ed called out. "I have a question to ask you!"
"Um, okay," George replied.
"You're foreign, right? How did you find your way here?" Wow, Ed didn't realize how informal he was being to his principal.
George shrugged. "I crossed the border."
"No time for jokes!" Ed whined. But George wasn't really joking. "I really wanna know the truth! It's for um, Journalism!"
"No, it's a secret."
"C'mon! Tell me!" Ed whined as best he could. It seemed to be quite effective, especially since he looked like a girl at that moment.
"Fine, I'll give you a clue: I had help from the most powerful alchemic force in the world. Wow, alchemic sounds so sophisticated!" With that said, George Lopez left.
Ed stood in place, talking to himself for a while. " . . . Could he be talking about the philosopher's stone? Oh, that'll be great! So all I'll have to do is come up with a way to steal it from him! Wait . . . if he has the philosopher's stone, won't that make him an alchemist? I've never seen him use alchemy before though . . ."
Ed talked to himself for quite a while, until a custodian showed him the way to the door. As he walked home, he started talking to himself again. "Poor Wrath. Maybe I should bring him with me to Mexico. Yeah, no one will care if Winry's alone."
In the middle of the night . . .
Wrath missed his old friends, so he decided to pay them a little visit. Sloth was up late working on school papers in the living room. "Hey, Sloth! How are you tonight?" Wrath chirped.
"Tired," Sloth yawned.
"What are you doing?" Wrath curled up next to Sloth on the couch and looked at the papers. They looked just like any other school forms to Wrath.
"I need to make sure I made no mistakes on who's expelled," Sloth explained. "Let's see . . . only ten State Militarists registered for this school. And . . . six are gone now. Wow, such little numbers."
"Where are the other Military peoples?"
"I suppose they have already left the country to not deal with the No Stoopid Peoples Act. Those crafty bastards didn't want to deal with the humiliation of high school."
"Oh, I see. Hey, is anyone else here still awake?"
"Probably not. And you shouldn't wake them. They've all been angrier nowadays."
"Don't worry, I'll be alright!" Wrath jumped off the couch and entered Envy's room. He carefully opened and closed the door, tiptoed up to his bed, then jumped on top of the sleeping Envy.
Envy's muffled voice sounded like a distinguishable HOLY SHIT! He threw off his covers and searched for the intruder.
"Envy! I missed you!" Wrath jumped onto Envy again and hugged him. Then he got a confused look on his face and backed away from Envy. "Oh, I knew something was different. Why are you being a female more often now?"
"It's part of my plans," Envy replied, then went back under his covers.
"Hey, don't fall asleep just yet! I wanted to tell you that I'm going with you guys to Mexico!"
Envy didn't look so happy at Wrath. "We're leaving in three weeks. Couldn't you have told me any other time before that?"
"Yeah, but I just couldn't wait!"
Wrath ate pillows that night.
Aztec Goddess: Please go to my homepage to see my fanart about this story! If you do, don't forget to leave comments!
To: Everto Angelus: Hey, that's actually the right answer! No one really noticed Ed in Winter Formal, and that saved his ass. Oh, and Ed is happy to hear that you like his ass. Ed: Finally, a girl notices my nice ass!
To nadisrad: Well, since George is a celebrity and stuff, I guess he has a lot of houses. But in this story, like any other principal, he probably lives in the little condo called the handicap bathroom stall.
To Angel-of-Music1331: Hey, did you update already? The eBay person said that my DVDs might take two weeks to arrive, they don't know. Damn them!
To Lil-Kudo: Oh, okay. I guess I'll check out their stories when I get the chance.
To nonesofar: HAHA! That won't work on me 'cause I don't drink soda! Did you know that drinking it every day of your life will eventually make holes in the outside of your stomach?
To Iwin Ulose: Yeah, but a story doesn't need romance to be angsty. Now I think I wanna write something really violent next. I dunno. I guess I'll find out once I finish this story.
To Paola (ch 12): Yay, you finally read! Hm, maybe I should draw some of the pictures Roy saw . . . It might be too scary though.
To Paola (ch 13): That'll be cool if the real G. Lo reads this! But what are the odds of that? Anyway, are you gonna make your own blog thingie?