Aztec Goddess: You know what I've been wondering for the longest time? How is it that homunculi have belly buttons? Heh-heh. Belly button sounds funny! Anyway, I don't claim ownership of Oprah, bonbons, or Nike.

Closer to the Truth

Al was getting sick and tired of his job, so he went back to looking through the newspaper at home. "What kind of job do you think I'll be good at, Winry?" he asked.

Winry was watching Oprah on TV while eating bonbons. "I dunno, Al. It's been a while since I worked!"

Al flipped through the ads. "But what do see me working as? Someone who takes care of pets? A dentist? Pharmacist?"

"Don't you need licenses for stuff like that?"

"Oh, that's right . . ." Al turned the page and gasped. "Hey, I think I found the perfect job for me! I'm gonna be a shoe salesman!"

"That's wonderful, Al!" Winry cheered.

"Yeah, listen to this!" Al read the ad. "Local shoe store seeks shoe salesman. No experience required. No work required. Just show up and you'll get paid for all your effort!"

"Then go for it!"

Al left the apartment right away to pursue his new career.

A couple days later, on the George Lopez plane . . .

It was the last day of Winter break. Wrath and Fletcher were harmoniously watching TV on the plane again. Russell was, I dunno, reading. And Ed and Envy seemed to be getting along quite well. In fact, they were apologizing to each other for all the stuff they've done.

"Um, sorry for staring at you so much when you were a female," Ed said awkwardly.

"It's alright. I would have been worried about you if you didn't," Envy replied. "Oh, and sorry for being an ass towards you for so long . . . and speaking about assess . . . stay away from Jean Havoc. Don't ask."

"Um . . . okay. Anyway, I think I know who has the philosopher's stone!" Ed said triumphantly.

"Our principal, right?" Envy replied.

Ed lost his enthusiasm. "How'd you figure that out?"

"Well, he's the one who's been adding countries from the other side to this world," Envy replied casually.

Ed was shocked. "Really? That's crazy! I didn't know the philosopher's stone could be that powerful!"

"What confuses me the most is that not many people seem to notice that. People like you!"

Ed twiddled his thumbs in embarrassment. "I was suspecting something like that, but then I thought I just plain sucked in geography."

"DORA!" Wrath and Fletcher cried again. "Why must you be so retarded?"

"I can't seem to find the train!" Dora stated like a retard.

"Let's walk on the train tracks!" Boots said. "We'll find it that way!"

Wrath and Fletcher didn't have time to turn away. It all happened too fast. The train came, and left behind only half of Dora and Boots. It was pretty damn gory for a little kid's show. The poor little boys screamed their heads off. Fletcher jumped onto Russell and Wrath jumped onto Ed.

"Why did we even leave the TV on that channel?" Russell asked as he tried to calm down his hysteric brother by petting him.

"Fletcher and I wanted to be brave!" Wrath cried.

Ed cradled Wrath like a baby. "It's okay, Wrath. You're just a little kid."

"Yeah, only you're cuteness matters!" Envy added.

"Aw! I love you guys!" Wrath gave both Ed and Envy a big hug.

Russell ruined the moment by saying, "Fletcher, Wrath. You two should get back to your seats."

Back at Kelly High, at the end of the day . . .

So many guys were disappointed to see the male Ed back in school. It's like whenever he's around, the female Ed disappears. They just couldn't quite figure that part out . . .

"You're gonna see the principal again?" Envy asked Ed as he headed out the door of seventh period.

Ed hastily caught up to him. "Of course! There's no doubt that he has the stone, right?"

"Yeah, I guess . . . I'll be expecting it soon then."

Ed nodded. They went different directions. But when Ed entered the principal's office, no one was there. "Hey, what the hell? Principal's can't leave early!" Then Ed shrugged, and decided to take advantage of the moment. First, he looked through the letters on the principal's desk. Ed groaned. "They're all just fan letters."

Ed quietly opened one of the drawers. He found a diary inside, so naturally, he began to read it:

Okay, how do I start one of these things? Wow, I just did. Man, why do I get the feeling that somebody drugged me? One second, I was on my way to Tijuana, and the next thing I knew, I'm here in some place called Central, I think. And people here take alchemy so seriously, it's crazy! I don't know how some people can't use it here; I figured it all out really fast. And let's see . . . what else is worth mentioning? I'm the principal of this one retarded school. And . . . Oh, yeah! I missed my world, so I duplicated some countries and added them here. And it's all thanks to this kick-ass thing I found. Man, it's so awesome; I don't know how to explain it! It's like something all powerful and stuff and it makes ANYTHING possible! Don't know what it's called, so I named it Paco.

"Paco?" Ed repeated to himself. "Whatever. That's definitely the philosopher's stone –"

Before Ed could finish his sentence, the door swung open. Ed had his back to the door, and found himself completely immobilized. Then he felt something wet like water hit the back of his neck. "S-sloth?" Ed managed to spit out as the water found its way to his mouth. The water immediately receded.

"Oh, it's just you," Sloth replied. "Wait, what are you doing here?"

Ed was practically having a heart attack, so he couldn't respond right away. ". . . I was just . . . cleaning?"

"Oh, okay then. But you should work on not talking to yourself so loudly. We wouldn't want other people to get interested in the philosopher's stone, right?"

"So you know . . ."

"It is undetermined whether or not George Lopez has the philosopher's stone, but the odds seem to tilt to that side."

"When can I see him again to make sure we're right?"

Sloth shrugged. "He's always taking personal days. I don't know when we'll see him again."

"Oh, that sucks . . . So can I go back to cleaning?"

Sloth gave Ed a questionable look. "You think I'm stupid or something? But if you insist: I want all the rooms in this hallway spotless before you leave campus." With that said, she left the room.

"Damn." Ed cursed. Then he went back to searching through the drawers. But nothing else looked suspicious, so he commenced to do some real cleaning.

A month later (that makes this February), in the apartment . . .

Winry seemed to be attached to the couch. She has become obsessed with TV and was trying to rub off her bad habits onto Wrath.

"I don't want to watch Oprah!" Wrath cried as Winry had him restrained to the couch by using a lot of rope. "It's so boring! Mommy, Daddy, help me!"

"Winry, stop whatever the hell you're doing," Ed said, not really paying attention to what was going on. He and Envy were on the floor working on their miniature versions of stages. Ed's was turning out pretty sad. He was using a shoebox and all he had in it were rocks (people), confetti (fireworks), and grass (grass). And let's not get into his background coloring.

Envy was also using a shoebox, but he painted it so it wouldn't look cheap. His fireworks were painted all beautifully in the background. His people and buildings were made out of clay, and they were well detailed. All he had to do was fix up the lighting (a bunch of wires, mini colored light bulbs, and one of those fat rectangular batteries).

"Why isn't anyone helping me?" Wrath whined.

"Shut up and watch TV, cutie!" Winry ordered. "It's good for you!"

"We'll pay attention to you later, Wrath," Envy replied. He twirled a wire around a mini light bulb, and got shocked by it. "Shit! How the hell do you do this?"

"What are you trying to do anyway?" Ed asked. Then he took a good look at Envy's shoebox. "Hey, you're done already! Quit wasting your time and help me with mine!"

"No! You shouldn't have waited 'til the last day to work on it!"

Ed stood up from the floor. "I've been working really hard on this all week!" he yelled.

Envy looked at Ed's shoebox and almost laughed. "You can't be serious."

Wrath looked sad. "They're back to hating each other," he mumbled.

Winry patted Wrath's head. "No, it's alright. That's just a normal fight." They watched in awe as Ed pounced on Envy and started pulling his hair. Envy did the same and added some nails to the face. ". . . Okay, that's not normal for two guys."

Then Al came home. He swung and shut the door as loudly as possible and sounded really annoyed. "A fat woman came to the store today."

Envy and Ed ended their cat fight to listen to Al's wondrous story. Al almost always came home with a new story about a fat woman coming to the shoe store.

"She asked for a size six," Al continued. "So I asked her what kind of style her kid likes. And she got really offended for some reason. Before I knew it, I was trying to get some size six pumps on her feet. And I swear, if I didn't have this armor body, I would have died today! That freakin' shoe exploded on me!"

"Wow, Al," Ed commented. "Being a shoe salesman sounds dangerous!"

"You don't even know the half of it," Al sighed. "No work required my ass." He lazily walked to his room.

Envy fiddled with his wires some more. ". . . Aha! Success!" He got the light bulbs to go on and off in a pretty pattern. "Now I must go nurture Wrath!" Envy untied Wrath from the sofa and took him out for a walk.

"It's not fair," Ed pouted. "It was my turn to take Wrath out for a walk!"

"Wow, you sound so motherly right now, Ed," Winry commented.

"Hey, I am a great mother! . . . Wait, what the hell am I saying?" Ed didn't want to waste any time pondering his confusion. "Whatever. I need to finish this." He went back to working on his shoebox.

"Can't you just use alchemy to fix up your box thingy?" Winry asked.

"That's not fair to the people who have to do everything themselves. But look at Envy's! How the hell did he do it?"

"How 'bout you jack Envy's then?"

"He'll probably murder me."

"Oh, that sucks. But, y'know, he's been a lot nicer to you lately." Winry gave Ed a suspicious look. "What did you do to him?"

Ed mimicked Winry's look. "What do you think I did?"

Winry gasped. "Oh, my God! No, you, didn't! But, wait; he's a homunculi. Wouldn't it just grow back?"

"The truth is I didn't do anything. . . I guess it's what Wrath said . . ." Then Ed gave Winry a disturbed look. "Wait, what were you thinking?" Lucky for Ed, Winry couldn't bring herself to telling him.

The next day, in seventh period . . .

Ed, Envy, and all the other students in seventh period Theater stood in a line with their mini stages, waiting to present them to Hoganson. It was soon Ed's turn. Envy had just finished receiving his A.

"Would you like want another day to finish this?" Hoganson asked Ed.

"Why would you say that? I stayed up all night to finish this!" Ed replied. But the thing is that all the extra hours he put into his project didn't really change it much.

"For one thing, I don't know any country with the word Nike all over it," the teacher replied. "And why is it so . . . rocky?"

"Those are people!"

"Please turn in your completed project tomorrow."

Envy pointed and laughed at Ed for a while. When he finished he said, "Okay, I'll help you on your project today. But you better get more information on the philosopher's stone right away."

"Yeah, I know. I'll go see if the principal is here today."

So when school ended, Ed marched back to the principal's office. And lo and behold, he found George Lopez doing paperwork there! "Hey, principal!" Ed said. "I'm not leaving until you tell me where you have the philosopher's stone!" George did not respond. "Hey, don't ignore me!"

George looked up from his paperwork. "Oh, didn't see you there. You lost?"

Ed's eyebrow twitched. Was he saying something about my height? "No, I'm just here to ask for the philosopher's stone."

George ignored what Ed said. "Man, you look just like this one annoying girl I had to talk to one day."

"Did you even hear me? I – want – the – philosopher's – stone!"

"Yeah, I heard you the first time. One question though: what the hell is that?"

"It's the thing that can do ANYTHING!"

"Oooohhh! . . . Why would I give you something like that?"

"Um, because I asked nicely for it?"

George considered this for a while. Ed had just made a very good point. "Tell you what: I'll let you borrow it once you graduate, okay?"

"But I don't wanna wait that long!" Ed whined.

"Too bad then. I can't just let some retard borrow something this powerful. You need to have at least a high school education."

Well, that only seemed fair, so Ed gave in. "Fine, see you on the last day of school."

"Why so confident? I've noticed that all the new students are dropping out like crazy this year."

Ed didn't really have a response for this. "Um, 'cause I'm cool like that?"

Aztec Goddess: So, is Ed truly cool like that? What are the odds of him surviving another expulsion chapter? Cookies will be rewarded to anyone who knows where I got the Al being a shoe salesman idea. Anyway, I dunno when I'll update next. Just got the full FMA season on DVD. Wanna see it a couple of times, so, yeah.

To Lil-Kudo: It's hard to get cured from writer's block. But how is it prevented? Is there a type of antibiotic or something? That'll be awesome.

To Angel-of-Music1331: I know, Wrath is too cute to be real! Wait, he isn't, Damn. I dunno when it happened, but I suddenly started liking Wrath and I love treating him like a baby!

To nadisrad: If you look at the pic Ed drew of Envy in the anime, you'll see that he really isn't wearing his skort. But then again, he doesn't even have a lower body. What I find odd is that Ed wasn't embarrassed to show his drawings to people. I mean, if he can draw perfect transmutation circles, why not Envy?

To urbanfae: I don't like speaking to most adults either since I speak really improper Spanish. It's not my fault! I learned it from my relatives in Mexico, and they're ranchers! Almost every other word we say is a syllable shorter than it should be. I can't break that habit!

To Iwin Ulose: There are still a couple more chapters to go. I still need to explain to No Stoopid Peoples Act, the philosopher's stone's whereabouts, and maybe some other stuff. Oh, like how Ed's been doing in his Spanish class!

To nonesofar: HA! You can try as hard as you can, but I'll always come back! I'm a goddess, after all! . . . And what are momos? Sounds tasty.

To Paola: Coin? Is her name Penny? Dime sounds like it could be a cool name. August fourth sounds familiar . . . Is that when we get out of summer school? Anyway, I'll answer your questions about this story at school.