Trying to Be Human
Chapter 2: Never Go To A Doctor Whose Office Plants Have Died
A/N: Sorry this took so long. I'm a very lazy person.
OOH! We got cable! Which means that every other weekend (when I'm at my dad's), I can watch ADULT SWIM! Which also means that I don't have to watch random pre-recorded/FanSubbed episodes at friends' houses to get my FMA fix! (I'm psyched). Following this line, very special thanks to Amateur Conspiracy Theorists Chesca (sp?) and Winry, for all their inspirational insanity/phone tapping. Give them a hand, everybody.
Review Answers:
Asakihe: OH! I forgot to answer your review last chapter! I'm so sorry! .:dies:. I know you weren't flaming me... I really do... AH! And now it seems like I'm mad because I didn't answer your review in the first chap... I don't know how I skipped it... SORRY!
Dragonwing08: Nice pen name, I like it. You're welcome for the sequel. And the chocolate syrup.
Contemplative: Thanks... I was worried, because sequels usually do suck, so I'm happy for the feedback... And I'm glad someone liked the "Arise, Chicken" chant.
WelcomeToKatzMotel: Flawless, Cruel, and Funny? Can't ask for better praise than that.
Adrienne: Congrats on being the first reviewer! Sorry the update wasn't as quick as you would have liked, but very very happy that one more person in this world likes Gluttony. I feel I've done my duty.
Oh! Hey... there's a Reply button under these reviews... maybe I should use that next time... Wow... I need to spend more time on fanfiction, so I can tell what's going on. Oops.
Interesting Factoid/Trivia Tidbit: In Japan, when something is very Western influenced, they say it 'smells like milk', because we consume more dairy products than they do (i.e. milk, cheese, yogurt, exc.) (And if you think about how milk smells, you realize this isn't a complement). For example, FMA smells like milk. Ed smells like milk. That's why Ed hates milk. It's a joke.
---
Name: Greed
Human Name: Greg
Official Power: He has one... really, he does!
Actual Power: Pointy Teeth, Good People Skills
Description: Pointy teeth/hair, black leather vest with white fur trim, and Elton John sunglasses... Also, he seriously looks like Hughes. (Please, back me up on this one.)
Favorite Movie: Annie, Get Your Gun
First Thing He'd Do With A Soul: Start worrying about his age. ("Ah! A gray hair!")
Quote: A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.
---
Sunrise found the Sins still sitting around Greed's room.
"So," Envy observed, "we're alive."
Lust continued to stare at the wall. "Yup. Pretty much."
"What now?"
"What do you mean, what now?" gasped the ever-optimistic Sloth, shocked that anyone could ask such a thing. "We're ALIVE!"
"... so?"
"So, enjoy it! Life is a precious gift! It's beautiful! Cherish the moments!"
"No, Sloth. Stop. Stop it now."
"You all are so cynical! Be happy! We finally have everything we want in life! We're alive! We have souls! We have a nice house, cash to spare, and digital cable! Wrath's getting married! One of us turned out normal! We should be celebrating!"
There was another very long stretch silence.
"So..." Envy tried again. "What now?"
"Order a pizza?" Gluttony suggested.
"Domino's is having that 555 deal," added Greed. "We could get anchovies."
"Or we could not."
—
As for Reg and Elly, at sunrise they were staggering into Elly's house.
"Do you mind sleeping on the couch, Reg?" Elly whispered, trying not to wake her mother, who was sleeping, as are all sane people at dawn.
Reg sat down on the couch, intending to ask "Won't your mom be a little scared if she comes downstairs in the morning and finds a stranger on her sofa?", but the instant he sat down, his body mutinied and he fell over, asleep.
—
"I don't wanna go downstairs and think about the blood we have to clean up," Lust groaned, slamming the back of her head against the wall and closing her eyes.
"Maybe we should burn down the house," Envy muttered. Greed perked up.
"I've got the kerosine!"
"I was joking, Greed."
"Oh."
"I'm hungry," Gluttony announced.
"I've got a hangover," Lust added.
Sloth coughed up a bit of blood still stuck in her lungs from the bullets.
"Um...I'm still wearing Greed's clothes?" Envy volunteered, not wanting to be left out.
"Ha. I've got you all beat." Greed laughed. "Envy's wearing my clothes, there are a bunch of people invading my room, and I've still got bullets embedded in my organs."
The rest winced. "Uh, Greed? That's not good..." With great effort, Sloth stood up. "We should probably get you some medical attention before you get lead poisoning... Come on, let's go to the hospital. Oh, and we should call a maid service and see what they can do about the living room."
—
Click.
The little sound was barely audible, but it woke Reg up instantly. After years of living with his family, he didn't need to open his eyes to know a rifle had just been loaded and was pointing straight at him.
"Don't move, or I blow your brains out," growled a voice somewhere above him.
"Mum! What are you doing?"
"Elly? You're home?"
"Reg, whom you're currently holding at gunpoint, and I got in last night. I didn't want to wake you up, so we let ourselves in."
Nervously, Reg opened one eye. "Um... can I move yet?"
Gracia Hughes quickly returned the rifle to its resting spot above the mantel. "Sorry, Reggie. I didn't realize it was you... you can understand my reaction."
"Yes. Of course. Sorry to surprise you like that, ma'am."
"No need to be sorry. Simple misunderstanding..." Gracia laughed and turned back to her daughter. "I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow. Didn't you visit Reg's family?"
"Oh," Elly smiled innocently. "They were a little busy this weekend, so we decided to stop on the way back and see them...That's alright, isn't it, mummy?"
"Of course, dear."
Behind her mother's back, Elly grinned and winked at Reg, who grinned back. Operation Cover Up had gone off without a hitch, and life went on.
—
"I don't understand how these bullet holes managed to heal themselves... and without any scars, too," Dr. Soice, the Sins' family doctor, and only doctor in the little village they lived in, muttered, poking at Greed's back with a tongue depressor. "It doesn't seem natural..."
"Yeah, yeah," growled the patient irritably. "How do I get rid of these bullets? Can you, like, pick them out or something?"
"Well, surgery could probably remove them..." the doctor admitted, squinting blindly through his coke-bottle glasses. Lust bit her lip and glanced at Envy. Both of them were wondering about the odds of surviving surgery at the rheumatic hands of Dr. Soice.
"But we don't have the technology here for anything like that. You'll have to go to Central, they'll be able to do something... I think."
—
"I hate that quack so much," Greed grumbled from the front seat of the car. "I was going to kill him as soon as Wrath got out of school, so the kid could get a job close to home, and I was really, really looking forward to it."
"No denying we could use a decent doctor in this town," agreed the driver, Lust. "You have to wonder how many people have died while this guy's been practicing."
Gluttony mumbled something along the lines of "Remember when Wrath sprained his ankle, and he tried to convince us it was only bruised?"
"Yeah. It puffed up to the size of a coconut, and we couldn't get a doctor's excuse to take the poor kid out of school." Lust shuddered. "That was awful."
Suddenly, a fight broke out in the back seat. "Lust! Sloth's on my side of the seat!" whined Envy.
"I can't help it! Glut's crowding me!"
"Liar! You have plenty of room."
"Lust, Envy called me a liar!"
"Why does Greed get to sit up front?"
"Greed gets to sit up front because he's sick." Lust explained. "Now shut up. I'm trying to drive."
"I think I should drive. I know where I'm going better than you do," pouted Sloth.
"No way! Sloth drives like a granny," Envy griped.
"Oh, yeah? Well, you drive like a five-year-old on crack, Envy, so you aren't one to be talking."
"Neither of you is driving!" Lust snapped. "Now BE QUIET!"
This achieved three seconds of absolute quiet.
"LUST! Envy pinched me!"
"I did not! Sloth stuck her tongue out at me!"
"Oh, who's the liar now, palm-tree boy?"
"I don't think Sloth should be allowed to call me names!"
"Ow! LUST! Envy keeps pinching me! Make him stop!"
The car screeched to a halt, forcing a semi-truck to swerve around it. Seething, Lust turned to the backseat passengers. "You kids stop fighting, or so help me, we are turning right back around, and Greed is just going to die!"
Envy crossed his arms and glared sullenly at Lust as she started the car up again. "I didn't want to go to Central, anyway," he muttered under his breath.
Lust spun back around, her metal fingernail at the ready. "Care to repeat that little comment, Connie?"
"No."
"That's what I thought."
And the drive continued in silence for another five minutes.
"I'm hungry," Gluttony whimpered.
"I have to go to the bathroom," whined Sloth.
"I'm getting squished," Envy complained.
"Are we there yet?" asked Greed.
Lust groaned. "Don't you start, too," she pleaded.
—
Since they had nothing else to do, Reg and Elly decided to walk around town that afternoon and unwind. "Mom's inviting a couple of old friends over for dinner tomorrow night," Elly notified her fiancee. "I was thinking of telling them about our engagement then. Saves me the trouble of calling all of them up."
"Yeah. That sounds good... So, I should be on my best behavior, then?"
"Aren't you always?" Elly smiled sweetly at him, then had an ADD moment and pulled him towards a bakery. "Do you want to get a cinnamon roll?"
Reg grinned. "Sure... Gl-Boris makes the best cinnamon rolls ever, you'll have to remind me to have him make some next time..." Reality hit Reg like a sack of potatoes. "Never mind."
"Reg," Elly bowed her head guiltily. "I have a confession to make...I ..." she choked a little, and Reg put a hand on her shoulder reassuringly. "I miss your folks."
"I think I do, too," Reg whispered.
"Isn't that horrible, though? We shouldn't miss them... We should be glad they're gone."
"I know... we should feel good that the world is short five people." Reg laughed a little to show he was joking. "It's natural to feel a little weird about killing someone, or losing someone. We'll get over it, eventually." I hope...
—
It was dark out by the time the Sins' car pulled into the Central Memorial Hospital, mostly because they got lost several times, and Sloth, who knew where they were going, was refusing to speak to anybody by that time, so they had to piece together a mental map from their faulty memories.
"So, Greg, you have bullets in your guts." Dr. Hibbert, a jovial middle-aged man, informed him, eyeing the x-rays. "We'll want to get those out as soon as possible."
"But you can do it, can't you?"
"Oh, yes." the doctor chuckled the satisfied chuckle of a man who has lots of money coming to him in the near future. "We'll start with a fund-depleting incision at the base of the corpus brontellus, then use financial straights to remove the shrapnel from the antipodus xanthippelum, the mallomus barmus, and the spleen. Next, we'll come up through the expensivus procedurum, and get that little guy up there in the cogito ergo, and finish up with a nice, exorbitantus dimsum procedure. Will you be paying cash or credit?"
"I didn't catch a word of that, but it sounded painful," Greed whispered to Envy.
—
Back at Elly's place, later that night, Reg sighed and stretched out on the couch in the living room. Life was looking good. He and Elly were getting married, he'd finish med school and get a job with a ridiculously high salary, and they'd live happily ever after. Maybe they could move into his old house. Or not. It wouldn't really be the same without the others. Oh well.
Reg was just starting to slip out of consciousness when someone threw a stick at the window.
Clutching simultaneously at his palpitating heart and the edge of the couch, Reg sat bolt upright.
The tap came at the window again, and an all-too familiar voice asked, "Is this even the right house?" Reg pinched himself. It couldn't be.
"Of course this is the right house." a self-satisfied woman confirmed. "Real estate market's too tight around here for a widow to afford a new one." It simply couldn't...
"I was thinking something more along the lines of you forgot the address." Impossible...
"Impossible! How dare you question my perfect memory?"
"This is the right house," verified a third voice. "I can hear him breathing." The tapping at the window grew louder and faster. Reg clutched his pillow defensively in front of him and huddled into the couch.
"Wrath! Open the—,"
"Shh! Don't call him Wrath, he's at his girlfriend's house. Reg, puppy, it's us. Open the window."
Pale as death, certain the ghosts of his family had come for him, Reg crept to the window.
The streetlight cast an weird light over the four figures crowded in front of the house, making everything seem all the more surreal. Gluttony waved a little.
Now thoroughly terrified, Reg through open the window. "Do what you want with me, just don't hurt Elly," he pleaded heroically with the vengeful specters.
"Oh, relax," Envy snapped. "We aren't going to hurt you."
"What do you want with me?" Reg, his voice breaking, whispered harshly.
"Just wanted to talk to our favorite little boy," Lust said warmly, reaching towards him to pinch his cheek affectionately. Reg jumped away from the window.
"Puppy? What's wrong?"
"Stay away from me!" hissed the young man. Lust stared at him quizzically.
Behind her, Gluttony whispered something to the other two, causing them to double over with silent laughter.
"He... haha... he thinks we're dead, Lust," Envy explained when he could talk again. "Sorry, Reg, should have told you... We're back."
Reg's mouth dropped open.
"Um... surprise?"
—
Tap tap tap tap tap.
"Elly! Elly, wake up! I need to talk to you!"
Elly squinted at her alarm clock. 4:00 am. What on earth could Reg have to talk to her about at four in the morning?
Yawning, she stumbled to the door. "What is it, Reg? Oh, God. You look awful. Can't sleep on the couch?"
Reg did look a bit of a mess. He was still wearing his PJ's, but with muddy tennis shoes. His hair was covered with a hearty sprinkling of twigs, and his eyes were bloodshot from exhaustion.
"Couch?" he echoed blankly. "Oh, the couch.. The couch was fine... No, I went for a walk... with... with...You won't believe me... I don't believe me... but, it's true... it's really happening... I just got back from taking a midnight stroll... with my family."
Forgetting her fatigue at once, Elly's eyes widened. "Are you feeling alright, Reg?"
"No... I mean, yes... I mean, I'm not sick, just freaked out."
"But, Reg, your folks... they're dead."
"I know, I thought so, too. But they aren't. They've... come back to life."
"That's impossible. They're dead. I killed them."
"No more impossible than a boy without a soul," Reg murmured, mostly to himself.
"What are they doing here, Reg?" Elly gulped. "Are they... angry about...?"
"No, not really," Reg shrugged. In truth, he was more bewildered by this than by the miraculous reanimation of his relations. Not wanting revenge for something like being massacred was completely unlike them. "They don't seem to care at all. They're just in the neighborhood, and they wanted to stop by and see me." Reg pondered this for another second. "Is that weird at all?"
Elly had to think about that one. "Well, your folks have never been exactly normal, so I can't really say... Are they in town long?"
"Um... Greg's getting surgery this morning, and they were going to leave as soon as he's good to go... probably tomorrow."
"We'll have to go visit them...unless... I don't suppose they could make it to dinner tonight?" Elly asked hopefully, having recovered from her initial shock. Reg shook his head.
"Nah, They'll probably want to stay their hotel so the hospital can reach them. But we could ask them, I guess."
"You wouldn't mind, would you? I'd like Roy and Riza to meet them."
Reg paused. "Roy and Riza... Mustang?"
"Didn't I tell you? They're coming over tonight... I could have sworn I mentioned it... Reg, darling, you're all pale! Maybe you should try and get some sleep."