A/N: I started writing this last December, but of course ended up being to busy with life to finish it. So now that I'm officially done with the first year of college I decided to come back and give this story and ending and thus a point. So here it is, my attempt at FMA humor. This is dedicated to all those who are suffering/will be suffering/have finished suffering through college finals.
General disclaimers apply. I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist in any way. Not the characters, not the plot, not even the premise. So please don't sue, as I'm dirt poor and you wouldn't accomplish anything by doing so except for possibly giving me a giant headache.
On that note, on with the story!
Wassail!
"Ummm sir? Why are we doing this again?"
"To raise money for…" There was a rustling of papers and a few flying curses before the sentence was finished. "For Open Hearts, a charity dedicated to helping provide meals for the less fortunate in Central."
"Yes sir, I remember that part, but why are we the ones raising money for them?"
"Does it really matter Fury?" barked Colonel Mustang, the annoyance that had originally been present in his voice growing tenfold. "The Fuhrer thought the military needed to better its public image, so this is how we're to go about doing it."
"By going door to door, singing songs off-key, and coercing people out of their hard earned money?" mumbled Havoc, cigarette butt drooping from the corner of his mouth.
"Yes, exactly. Wait! I mean… no, that's not what we're doing. We shall be singing beautiful, traditional folk songs and collecting voluntary donations for Open Hearts," Mustang corrected himself by quoting directly from the packet that had been dropped on his desk that morning with the daily delivery of paperwork. He would have ignored it like he normally was inclined to do with paperwork, but the glossy paper had caught his attention.
"When you say sing, you don't mean we all actually have to… sing… right?" Falman asked, apprehensively eying the packets Lieutenant Hawkeye was holding.
"No, by singing I actually meant you would be dancing around in a bear costume while juggling knives," Mustang responded, sarcasm dripping from every word.
"I think I'll stick to singing." With that, Falman slouched down in his seat in the corner.
"Now, if there are no further questions, Lieutenant Hawkeye would you please pass out the song packets?"
"Sir, why do we need these song packets?" Brehda asked, flipping through the songs, eyes growing wider as he took in the pages full of indecipherable black dots interspersed among sets of lines. "I think we all know most of these already…"
"You don't know the harmonies though, do you?"
"HARMONIES!" shouted all the men in the room simultaneously. "You mean we have to sing all of these parts!"
"No, not all of them." A collective sigh passed through the room. "Lieutenant Hawkeye will be covering the high part."
"But isn't the high part the melody?" Fury queried, studying each of the songs. "We only know the melodies. I've never even sung harmonies before, sir!"
"Me neither," grumbled Havoc, putting out his cigarette in the nearby ash tray and reaching to light another. "I was in a school musical once though…" His voice trailed off as he thought back to the pretty female lead that had induced him to try out in the first place.
"Sir? Who is going to be singing which notes?" Falman wondered, his foot tapping nervously against the leg of his chair.
"Well, as I said before, Hawkeye will take the highest notes, as she is the woman here. Fury, you take the notes right below her's-,"
"Aren't those notes meant for women too?" interrupted Fury.
"No, of course not," Mustang replied a little too quickly. "Moving on… Havoc, you take the… ummm… 'tenor' notes. Brehda, you take baritone, and Falman, you sing bass."
"What about you sir?" Brehda asked, feverishly going over the unintelligible harmonies of each song.
"I'll be conducting, of course."
A loud bang rose above the close harmonies produced by the soldiers, making the walls and all the furniture in the room vibrate. A smoking gun remained raised in the air above everyone's heads. Lt. Hawkeye glared at them all before lowering the gun and replacing it in its holster.
"QUIET, MEN!" yelled the colonel. His head ached after practicing with his men for only an hour. He wasn't quite ready to face the truth yet, which was that they all really sucked at singing – terribly. It wasn't in his nature to give up, though, so he plowed on valiantly. Mustang would never let it be said that he was a quitter, even if the activity was training his unit to pass as something resembling a dinner entertainment act.
"Geez! Who made you the conductor?" grumbled Falman in Hawkeye's general direction only to suddenly find himself on the receiving end of a glare that could have frozen a polar bear.
"That was a blank, the next one might not be. Consider yourself warned."
"Ladies! This is a rehearsal, not a shooting range!" Mustang shouted, his patience thinning by the second.
"Do I look like a lady!" complained Falman indignantly.
"You're sounding like one right now and that's close enough for me. Now shut up so Havoc can run through your parts again."
Havoc, being the only one with remotely any musical experience whatsoever, had been designated as The Instructor. He was currently making himself blue by playing out people's parts on a pitch pipe, note by note. It didn't help him much that none of the soldiers had any tonal memory either. As a result, he ended up playing the notes over and over again until his lungs felt like they were about to burst and he had collapsed in a gasping heap.
"Up and at 'em, soldier!" ordered Mustang at the lump on the floor that was Havoc, reclining in his chair, his "baton" (actually a newly sharpened pencil) bobbing to no beat in particular. "Two more hours and I think we should have it."
Everyone raised a skeptical brow at this, but Mustang didn't notice. He was too busy conducting the symphony of carols playing in his head to pay attention to the people actually singing the carols.
One week and twenty hours of practice later, Mustang's unit plus one dog were marching around Central in their civilian clothes, carrying a donation cup and dog-eared packets of songs. Falman, Brehda, Fury, and Havoc trudged along, trying their best to hide their faces behind upturned collars of their coats. Of course, that only succeeded in making them look shady and Falman had ended up being smacked on two occasions by old ladies with canes when he happened to walk to close to them. Mustang was up front, leading the pack while looking at his list of houses to carol at, and Hawkeye, well, she just looked like she was out walking the dog and she just happened to be doing so while surrounded by a bunch of semi-shady men.
"Here's the first house, men," Mustang called, pointing out a small blue one-story surrounded by a white picket fence. Everyone except eyed it with apprehension, except for Hawkeye who just walked right up to the door and rang the bell.
"This is going to be terrible," Brehda muttered as he heard footsteps approaching the door. There was a simultaneous group gulp when the knob turned and the door swung open to reveal a cranky-looking old man.
"Whaddya want?" he croaked, pulling his bathrobe tighter against the chill.
"We're here representing Open Hearts, and organization helping-" started Colonel Mustang before he was whacked between the eyes with a cane.
"GO AWAY, SCOUNDRALS!"
"At least we didn't have to sing…" Fury whispered to Havoc, who nodded discretely while keeping one eye on the colonel. He didn't have anything to worry about though; Colonel Mustang was too preoccupied with his throbbing head to yell at his subordinates at the moment.
"We've been to… how many houses, Havoc?" asked Falman.
"Twenty-three. Twenty-four if you count the first one where the colonel got knocked between the eyes."
"Twenty-four houses. Twenty-four! We've been chased away from EVERY SINGLE ONE!"
"And we didn't even sing at half of them," Fury added. "I think they pay more for minimum wage than we've collected."
"One more house, men. Then we're done," groaned Mustang, cradling his head in his hand. That cane had hurt! The pain was so bad and so distracting, in fact, that he didn't notice whose house they walked up to until the front door had been thrown open by an overly energetic man holding a ridiculously cute little girl.
"Roy!"
"Maes!" Ocrapocrapocrapocrapocrap. Must take evasive action immediately!
"What are you doing here?"
"We, uhhh, just stopped over to say 'hi' since we were all in the neighborhood… imagine that! So, uh, we'll just be, uh, going… that way…"
"We're here collecting donations for Open Hearts. Would you care for a song?" Hawkeye asked calmly, tugging on the leash to keep Black Hayate from racing into the Hughes' household. The rest of the men stared at her as if she had gone insane.
"A song? Of course we'd love to hear a song, wouldn't we Alicia?" Maes replied, much too enthusiastically for his own good. There was a devious glint in his eye that clearly said, you will never live this down, Roy. Never.
So they sang. Falman, Brehda, Fury, and Havoc all averted their eyes as they went through the song, looking at anything except their co-worker and friend. Hawkeye occasionally glanced down at Black Hayate but for the most part smiled slightly at Alicia, and as for Mustang, he turned his back to the door and focused all his being on conducting. At least that way he was able to partially block out the sounds of Maes Hughes heaving with laughter.
Never again. Never EVER again, thought Mustang as he gritted his teeth and prepared for the next song Maes had eagerly asked for as an encore.