HI, HELLO, I'M SORRY THAT TOOK SUCH AN INSANELY LONG TIME! I don't think I've replied to all of my reviews yet but THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR WRITING THEM, each and every one specifically injected so much serotonin directly into my brain and filled me with great joy. Each one is lovingly slam-dunked into my groupchat with my friends to explain to them why I am working so hard on this extremely large fic. Song for this one comes to us thanks to one of said friends who helped me with this when I was stuck by blessing me with this extremely unhinged idea. The song was written by Irving Berlin, though you probably know either the Fred Astaire version or the Taco version! In my research I found a version by Ella Fitzgerald that I really love, so that's what's playing in my head, but as for what plays in your head, well, dear reader, that's up to you. Part 8: Puttin' On the Ritz
Have you seen the well to do
Up and down Park Avenue?
On that famous thoroughfare
With their noses in the air
High hats and narrow collars
White spats and lots of dollars
Spending every dime
For a wonderful time
Now, if you're blue
And you don't know where to go to
Why don't you go where fashion sits?
Puttin' on the Ritz
Different types who wear a day coat
Pants with stripes and cutaway coat
Perfect fits
Puttin' on the Ritz
Dressed up like a million dollar trooper
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper
Super duper
Downtown
Uptown
Get your kicks
At the Ritz
Dine and wine, but not till nine
The time is right for us tonight
Now, if you're blue
And you don't know where to go to
Why don't you go where fashion sits?
Puttin' on the Ritz
There was no way into the building without first passing through the gauntlet that was Alex Louis Armstrong—clad in a tuxedo that, while perfectly elegant, tailored as it was to his unconventional proportions, stood out primarily as a sheer feat of engineering—waiting to greet his guests.
Winry and Pinako escaped Armstrong's customary bone-crushing hugs in favour of a sweepingly formal bow and chivalrous kiss on the hand apiece, but the Elric brothers had no such luck.
"See, there are downsides to being back in your original body," Ed muttered pointedly to his brother after the Lieutenant Colonel set him back onto his feet.
Al just grunted in reply, struggling to catch his breath after having most of the air squeezed out of his lungs, and then they made their way into the house.
After hearing through the grapevine about the Fullmetal Alchemist's difficulty in grasping the concept of "black tie," a then-still-Major Armstrong had taken it upon himself to write out a helpful primer on expected etiquette—of the kind passed down through the Armstrong family for generations—in the form of a very lengthy letter. Edward had opened it, skimmed it and quickly tossed it aside, and of course Alphonse was left to pick it up and actually read it in its entirety.
The inner foyer of the house was—as was expected—enormous, with sweeping high ceilings and elegant mouldings, and a squadron of uniformed Armstrong family staff were taking people's coats and showing them further inside. The room was crowded with guests, most of them completely unfamiliar; a few dark-blue parade-dress military uniforms stood out in the crowd, but the vast majority of people were in civilian formalwear, congregating around the doorways to the cloakrooms and around long tables by the entrance to the great hall.
Winry had known in advance, thanks to Al's intel, that there would be dance cards at the entrance to the party; she eagerly grabbed one from the table where they were laid out in neat rows, writing her name on the front page with the teensy little pencil attached to the beaded wristlet by a satin ribbon. They were cream-coloured paper booklets, each one barely bigger than a book of matches, marked with the date and the Armstrong family crest in gleaming gold leaf.
"Wait, what are those? Do we all get one?" Ed asked, looking over Winry's shoulder as she slipped it onto her gloved wrist. "Do we just take whichever one we want?"
"We don't take those," Al told him, shaking his head. "Only the girls do."
"Well, that doesn't seem fair."
Winry rolled her eyes. "I'm sure they'll let you have one if you really want," she said, sliding her card onto her wrist. "But you might have a hard time filling it up."
"I—" Ed scowled, resenting the implication that he might be unsuccessful at something purely on principle. "I would not! I could totally—uh—"
"—get a bunch of guys to ask you to dance?" Al supplied, amused.
"I—oh." Ed faltered, blinking. "Oh, that's what it's for?"
Al nodded, while Winry laughed.
"Well—okay, I won't," Edward said, still indignant, "but I could!"
"That's the spirit," Pinako said casually from behind them. She grinned, breezing past the three teens and into the great hall ahead of them, not stopping to pick up a dance card for herself. Al and Winry laughed, but it was short-lived.
"MS. PINAKO ROCKBELL," a deep, molasses-smooth voice boomed, and they all jumped.
It didn't take long to find the source; one of the curly-haired, uniformed Armstrong footmen was stationed just inside the Great Hall, and apparently his role was to loudly announce each guest as they entered the room.
"Oh, right," Alphonse said quietly. "They said that would happen."
Edward, Alphonse and Winry exchanged tentative glances as they watched Pinako in her long black dress wade into the crowded hall and blend into the sea of gowns and tuxedos. She was clearly leaving them to their own devices. Sig and Izumi had lingered by the entrance, and now they were on their own, standing at the threshold with nothing familiar in sight. It was hardly out of the ordinary for the three of them to be left to figure things out on their own—after all, the Elric brothers had been largely on their own for years now, and Winry had been allowed to test the waters by herself during her apprenticeship, too. Obviously Granny assumed they had this situation—this admittedly perfectly safe, low-stakes situation—well in hand.
Which was fair, probably, and made sense—but still. All three teens saw her disappear into the crowd, assuming they had no need for her, and felt their mouths go a little dry.
Alphonse was clutching his cane—smooth, black and shiny, more formal than the crutch he'd been using earlier, and purchased just for this occasion—in one hand, not leaning on it yet, trying to run through the contents of the letter in his head. When entering the ballroom, a gentleman should be sure to offer his arm to the lady he is escorting, so that she need not make her appearance unaccompanied.
Crap. Theoretically that meant he probably should have gone with Granny—but she'd already gone off on her own. Hopefully that wasn't anything too bad. So did that mean he should escort Winry? Ed should be escorting Winry, probably—but Ed was standing there messing with his cufflinks, obviously not paying any attention. It felt inherently uncool to upstage his brother here, especially when the stage was so blatantly set—to people with the slightest shred of self-awareness, anyway—for Ed to finally, actually do something.
Al was standing on Winry's left, while Ed was on her right—and over her head Al flashed his brother a pointed look, one that plainly said, "Well…?"
Edward stared back, his features spelling out a very clear "Well, what?"
Al shot him a withering look, and Ed responded with yet more confusion.
"Well—c'mon, you guys," Winry said out loud, grabbing an Elric brother on either side, and before they could object she stepped forward arm in arm with both of them.
"MISS WINRY ROCKBELL, MR. ALPHONSE ELRIC, AND MR. EDWARD ELRIC," the footman's voice boomed, and all three of them grinned awkwardly. Unfamiliar faces turned to look at them as they walked, and Winry unconsciously pulled both of the boys closer to her.
"Hey, you guys made it!" a voice called, and the three teenagers followed the sound to see Havoc—looking sharper than before in a full evening suit—turned around in his chair to wave to them. "And you cleaned up pretty good, too, look at that."
All three of them relaxed a little at the sight of a familiar face, and Winry freed the Elric brothers' arms from her vise grip as they headed towards him.
"Yeah, yeah," Ed replied, rolling his eyes as he gestured to his own suit. "For how much this stupid thing cost I sure hope so."
"You guys ever been to one of these Armstrong shindigs before?" Havoc asked.
They all shook their heads.
"Yeah, I figured probably not. C'mon," he said, gesturing for them to follow him. "Stick with me and I'll show ya the ropes."
Winry and Alphonse exchanged uncertain looks, but they followed after him and Edward through the crowd. He led them toward a long buffet table laden with food and drinks.
"Alright, so here's where the action's really at," Havoc explained, gesturing cinematically. "You just can't get this kinda thing anywhere else. Makes it all worth it."
The three of them stared, open-mouthed, at the spread on the table. It stretched easily halfway down the length of the room—which, in the Armstrong mansion, was saying a lot. Plates and plates of appetizers, in greater volume and variety than they'd ever seen in their lives, much less all in the same place, were spread out in front of them. Impossibly miniature versions of familiar foods, little sandwiches cut into spirals and star shapes, tiny vegetables wrapped in paper-thin strips of meat. Pieces of meat wrapped in paper-thin strips of vegetables. Flaky little pastries folded into triangles and twists. Elegant tarts and savoury pies. More colours than they'd previously realized food could come in.
"Whoa," Al said softly, looking at the table in awe. "And can we—can we just have this?"
"Yup. As much as you want. Alex says they always have a crazy amount of leftovers, so go nuts."
It took a moment for Al to absorb this information, his eyes lighting up with possibility. "Oh my God," he said. "I'm gonna—I'm gonna try everything."
Winry grinned at him. "Just take it slow so you don't make yourself sick," she cautioned. "What should we try first?"
Ed only grunted in response, and she looked up to discover he already had a significant amount of food in his mouth. He gestured wordlessly at a plate of baked potato croquettes in front of them.
Winry shot him a mildly disapproving look, remembering the letter—In polite society it is wise to take small bites of the food served, avoiding the appearance that you are typically underfed while also refraining from chewing loudly or otherwise creating a mess—but, then again, they did look really good.
The croquettes were small enough to pop into your mouth whole, but Winry and Al exchanged a knowing glance as they each picked one up with white-gloved hands.
Winry took a tiny, tentative bite—and her eyes lit up. "Mmm!"
"Good, eh?" Havoc said, and they nodded—and then they turned expectantly to Al.
He still hadn't taken his first bite, and they all watched closely, hoping for a good reaction—and he didn't disappoint.
"Oh my god, you guys." Al's tone was hushed and reverent, his eyes wide and clearly inches away from filling with tears. "It's like…it's like if a baked potato was that stuff on a lemon meringue pie."
"Y'mean meringue?" Ed supplied, pausing mid-chew.
"I—I guess so. I don't know." Al closed his eyes, enraptured. "This is the best thing that's ever been done to a potato."
"You're gonna wanna reserve judgment on that until a little later, trust me," Havoc said. "These people do things to potatoes you and I can't even fathom."
This raised some Resembool eyebrows.
"See—look over here." Havoc wheeled a little further down the table, and they followed.
He gestured to a three-tiered stand of trays, each level laden with a different, inscrutable snack.
"See these little rectangle things on the top?"
They were two-inch-thick little golden-brown bars that looked more like shortbread cookies than anything—although upon closer inspection, each bar was made of at least a dozen thin layers of what looked like crispy pastry.
"That's all potato."
"What? No way."
"C'mon, would I lie to you, chief? Try it."
Edward shot him a dubious look, then turned to his brother. "I think he's full of it. Why don't you do the honours?"
Winry nodded. "Yeah, try it!"
"Well, if you insist," Al said, unable to keep the smile from his face now. He picked up one of the odd little bars—still warm, and lighter than he expected—and took a tentative bite, feeling all the layers crunch satisfyingly in his teeth.
Everyone watched his eyes widen as he chewed, and he put his hand over his mouth and nodded insistently.
"Really?" Winry asked, and he nodded again, enraptured.
"Oh my god," he said finally, and then immediately took another bite.
Ed and Winry both exchanged a look, and then reached for one apiece. All three of them were suitably spellbound for the next several minutes, and Havoc took great enjoyment in introducing them to the following two tiers of the potato tower.
"Okay, you win," Al said weakly. "I admit my ignorance. I'm mentally updating my potato periodic table."
"Yeah, seriously," Ed agreed. "Do you think Teacher knows about this?"
"She should!" Al replied. "I mean—the Maillard reaction multiplied across this many—wait, where is she, anyway?"
Ed glanced around the room, but he didn't see any sign of the Curtises anywhere—or Granny Pinako, or anyone else familiar, for that matter.
"What are…those?" Winry asked, interrupting them and gesturing toward a tray to her left. It was laden with tiny coin-sized tart shells, each one filled with a translucent, deep-magenta-coloured sphere.
"Huh? Lemme try," Ed said, and he reached over to pick one up. The little sphere jiggled as he lifted it. "Oh, whoa. I thought this was like a melon ball, but it's…I guess it's some kind of fruit jelly?"
"Oh yeah," Havoc said, "These people love to gelatinize things. It's damned unnatural if you ask me."
"See," Ed replied, holding up the tart to eye-level and jiggling it pointedly, "it's people like you that are holding back scientific advancement."
Winry, never one to hold back scientific advancement, was undaunted. "What is it?" she asked eagerly. "Is it strawberry?"
"Let's see." Ed popped the entire thing into his mouth. There was a brief, tiny lull—and then his expression soured immediately, and he shook his head.
"What the hell, Havoc?!" he said after surfacing from an entire glass of punch. Havoc was doubled over laughing in his chair. "It's beets. How could you not warn me it was beets?!"
"How was I supposed to know you don't like beets?" Havoc fired back, still laughing. "They're good for ya."
"Who would do that? Who would create this?!"
"Oh, what, now where's your scientific spirit?"
"Okay, I don't want the beets," Alphonse said, making a face. "But I don't know what I want next." He stepped toward the table and looked studiously out at the sea of options, clearly getting lost in thought.
"It's so weird wearing gloves you're supposed to be keeping clean," Winry said, turning to Ed beside her while they waited for Al. "I thought we'd at least be taking them off to eat, but the letter said not to!"
Ed laughed softly. "Oh, yeah—I guess I'm still pretty used to it."
"I'm so used to getting gloves disgusting and then taking them off," she continued. "This is so counter-intuitive."
"It's easy," he replied, looking at her with a glint in his eye. "Just pretend you might accidentally draw attention to having committed a crime against the laws of nature that'd get you arrested if you don't keep them on."
"You're so dramatic," she said, rolling her eyes. "You do know how many normal ways there are to lose an arm, right?"
"Look, I'm just saying—"
"…But I definitely want…whatever this is." Al finished finally, and he picked up another tiny hors d'oeuvre, recapturing the attention of his little audience.
"Lemme see?" Havoc craned his neck to look, and his face lit up. "Oh yeah, that's the good stuff. Some kinda glazed fig halves with...what's that, pancetta?"
Ed turned to look. "Oh, that's a fig?"
"You don't know what a fig looks like?"
"Well—I mean, I've heard them mentioned in books, but I've never actually seen one."
"Me neither," Winry agreed, and Al nodded.
"It's so purple. These…don't grow in Amestris, do they?"
"Nope," Havoc said, grabbing one and taking a bite. He covered his mouth with his hand while he chewed so he could keep talking. "They're from way down south, so we can only get 'em through Aerugo usually."
"So, like, we can't get them, usually, then," Ed supplied, and Havoc nodded.
"Exactly. But—" He popped the rest of the fruit into his mouth. "—people got a long memory for good food, y'know? There was almost a trade deal when I was a kid, so for like two years we had all this stuff coming over the border, and we really got a taste for 'em. But even with connections through the store and all that, they're real hard to get."
Ed picked one up, considering it. "Wait, so are these…illegal figs?"
"Maybe," Havoc said, shrugging as he reached for another one. "Although—knowing the Armstrongs, they probably just paid a completely insane amount to have some shipped up around Aerugo on ice or something."
"Like through the desert?" Ed gawked, looking from Havoc to the fig in his hand and back. "No way."
"Yes way, chief. Rich people do that shi—ah, that sort of thing."
Ed snorted at his half-hearted cover-up attempt. "Well, if it's worth that much to 'em, I guess it's worth trying, eh?"
Al and Winry nodded, and all three of them got ready to take a bite at the same time.
Their reactions were a flurry of incoherent, enthusiastic noise and emphatic gesturing, and Havoc laughed.
"Oh my god," Winry said, covering her mouth with her gloved hand.
"Man, fuck the war with Aerugo," Ed said, staring at the half-bitten fig in his hand and shaking his head in amazement—and Al and Winry looked at him in shock and horror, shushing him frantically.
"Oh—sorry. I mean, uh, screw the war with Aerugo."
Al and Winry still looked disapprovingly at him, eyes wide.
"Uh—to heck with the war with Aerugo?"
They were glancing around nervously at the crowd around them, trying to see if anyone's delicate sensibilities had been offended—and Havoc burst out laughing.
"You guys can relax, y'know," he said. "I'm sure the Major gave you the whole big society etiquette spiel, but the fact is if you ain't here tryin' to get promoted or get married it don't really matter."
"Oh, right, I forgot—you're already zero for two, huh?" Ed said mildly, and Havoc scowled.
"Who the hell told you about that?!"
"Falman! He said the Colonel told him all about it."
Havoc's scowl deepened. "Goddammit, Roy…"
"Did I hear my name?"
Everybody turned to look; Roy Mustang himself had materialized from the crowd as if from nowhere with a noticeable glint in his eye.
"Ugh, it's you again," Edward muttered, and Roy laughed.
He had opted for civilian formalwear too, cutting an impressive figure in a full tuxedo with his freshly-minted medals pinned to the front. His hair was slicked back, and he looked far more comfortable dressed like this than Edward had previously thought possible—although, as Ed was oddly pleased to note, his cufflinks were just the ones from the uniform.
"Well, Fullmetal, it looks like the tailor knew how to help you, if nothing else," Mustang said, nodding approvingly. "And my goodness," he added, changing his tone completely as he turned toward Winry. "How did you convince this lovely young lady to come with you, when she must have so many admirers vying for her attention?"
Winry giggled good-naturedly as he pulled the same dramatic bow and hand-kiss as Armstrong had, albeit turned down in intensity by a few notches, while Ed rolled his eyes.
Mustang shook Al's hand again, giving him a much more sincere-sounding compliment on his suit (even though the Elric brothers were dressed almost identically, having gone to the same tailor and asked for the exact same thing)—and meanwhile, Hawkeye and Breda emerged from the throng of guests behind him.
"Riza!" Winry called out excitedly as Lieutenant—or rather, Captain—Hawkeye came walking towards them, her gait noticeably different in low-heeled evening shoes. She was wearing a long, simple dress made of charcoal-grey silk, with a sharp square neckline and half-sleeves that went from her shoulders to the edges of her elbow-length gloves.
She laughed as Ed and Al both did a very obvious double-take. "Yes, I know, I'm a little out of my element here," she said, smiling gamely.
"Whoa, you look…nice, Lieutenant," Ed stammered. "Er—Captain."
"Don't worry about it, Edward," she said, brushing her hair back gently. It was still up, but the normally sharp shock of hair that hung over her face had been waved softly, with a few curled tendrils hanging loose on either side, while the rest was swept up into a wide, elegant roll instead of her normal severe clipped bun. "And thank you. It's all a bit much for my tastes, but this was a gift so I'm making the best of it."
She touched the necklace circling her throat as she spoke, and Edward looked; it was a wide, scroll-edged band of pale-green silk embroidered with Far-Eastern-looking floral designs in pale pink and gold, with two looping strands of tiny, ceramic roses and leaves hanging on either side. Suspended from the centre was a heavy-looking pendant—a gold-edged teardrop shape that was easily three inches long and made of what looked like solid glass, with rose petals trapped inside it like amber. It was aggressively ornamental, and just about the least Lieutenant Hawkeye thing Ed could imagine—and then, as he looked, he realized with a jolt why she'd probably decided to wear it anyway.
"Oh, right," he said aloud, nodding. "Because of the—" He lifted a hand to his own throat without thinking, and she laughed.
"Exactly," she said, and Ed reddened slightly after realizing he probably shouldn't have made that gesture. Hawkeye looked completely unbothered, but Mustang was suddenly staring daggers at him.
"Oh, that's so pretty!" Winry said loudly, oblivious to the grim undertones—or pretending to be, anyway—and Hawkeye smiled.
"Thank you! Lieutenant-Colonel Armstrong's parents brought it back with them from Xing for me, if you can believe it." She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Princess May Chang actually had it made specially, if you can't tell."
"Oh wow, did you hear that, Al?" Winry said pointedly, giving him a sidelong grin.
"She mentioned it in her letter, actually," he said sheepishly.
Riza took the opportunity then to fuss over Winry's dress and hair, and Ed and Al tuned out of the conversation. Instead they got to talking with Havoc and Breda, continuing their expedition through the snack table's offerings as they went. It was awhile before they circled back—and when they did, Al was filled with alarm.
"Winry, oh my god," Al said as he grabbed Winry's arm, panic in his voice. He was glancing nervously over her shoulder to a spot across the room that he'd apparently only just noticed. "There are girls here. The letter didn't say there would be girls here!"
Winry shot him a deadpan look. "I mean, I think it was implied, Al."
Al ran a hand through his hair. "Oh my god. Oh my god, I haven't prepared for this."
"Calm down, Al, jeez," Ed scoffed. "It's just girls. You've seen girls before."
"Yeah, but now girls can see me!"
"Al, don't worry!" Winry said. "You look great!"
"No, I look all spindly! Look at me, I'm like—like—when a horse is just born, and it's just standing there like an idiot."
"Al, you don't look like a baby horse," Ed said firmly, clapping his brother on the shoulder—and then he turned back toward the table to load up on more snacks.
Roy was already there, sampling a tart that was half tiny dark bubbles of caviar and half some kind of soft, strong-smelling cheese, and he looked up at Ed as he took a bite.
"Hey, look at that," Mustang said mildly. "Looks like there's actually some kids your own age for you guys to hang out with for once."
Ed grunted in response, unimpressed, though he did at least look where Mustang was gesturing. Sure enough, there actually were a few groups of teenagers standing around in the hall, though they didn't look like any teenagers he'd ever seen before. The boys were all in near-identical tuxes, while the girls were in sweeping jewel-toned gowns and towering hairstyles, and all of them managed to look incredibly bored without sacrificing their immaculate posture.
"What are they here for?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Are they cadets or something?"
"I don't think so," Mustang replied. "I'm pretty sure they're just civilians."
"So they all won awards, or what?"
"No, they're just—" Roy shook his head. "They're people's kids, Fullmetal. They're here to eat food and dance with each other."
"Huh."
"You might want to consider getting acquainted with a few of them now that you're here."
Ed looked at him blankly. "What? Why?"
Mustang bit back a laugh; he'd really underestimated the extent of Ed's disinterest. The kid was so goal-oriented. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised, after, well, everything—but it was still jarring.
"Well, the connections could come in handy, for one thing," he supplied. "I'm pretty sure those two by the stairs are the Wellesley twins—as in Major General Wellesley."
"Hmm."
"Yeah. So you play your cards right, you could have a great ally in the House someday—"
"—or you could marry into 300 million cenz and a massive estate out west," Breda interjected.
"That too," Mustang said, nodding.
Ed made a face. "Ugh, will you cut it out?"
"Cut what out?" Mustang replied, feigning innocence.
"This evil puppet-master routine! I don't need you setting me up some weird political arranged marriage just so you can climb the ladder faster."
"Oh, who says it's just so I can climb the ladder? Maybe it's for your benefit."
"I don't wanna climb the ladder! The only reason I'm still even on the ladder is 'cause you practically begged me to stay. And the only reason I'm here is 'cause you got her to bring me." He cocked his head in Winry's direction.
"Who ya pointing at, big guy?" Breda asked, raising an eyebrow, and Edward turned around to look.
Winry wasn't standing by the table where he'd left her. Al was still at the centre of a little crowd of onlookers, all of them eagerly handing him bits of food and watching his reactions—but Winry wasn't there. He scanned the area, looking for any sign of her in her pale-blue dress, but he didn't see her.
"Isn't that her over there?" Mustang said, gesturing toward the far end of the table where the punch bowls were.
"Ah, yeah," Breda chimed in. "See, looks like she's making some friends."
Ed looked; sure enough, there was Winry—that was Winry, he reminded himself, even though she looked so like that—being handed a glass of punch by one of the aforementioned bored-looking teenagers. Except—well, this one didn't look quite as bored.
"Oh," he said, his voice level. She had her back to him, so he couldn't see the look on her face—but he found himself hoping it wasn't as eager as the one on the guy talking to her.
"So you really still didn't bring her here as your date, huh, Fullmetal?" Roy said, looking back at him with an eyebrow raised. "How long are you planning on keeping this up?"
"Yeah, we thought for sure something like this would do the trick," Breda said, nodding. "I mean, hell, you've got everything workin' in your favour here. Man in uniform, man in a tux…the nice music and everything…the tiny little toast…"
"I—" Edward stammered, reddening as he looked from Mustang to Breda and back. "Will you guys—look, it's not about the little toast, okay?! I'm not—" He roared in annoyance. Then he paused, and when he spoke again his tone shifted completely. "Hey, isn't that Fuery over there?"
Mustang squinted. "Oh, you're right."
"Who's that he's talking to, sir?" Breda asked.
"You know, I'm not sure," he replied. The three of them could just see Fuery's face in the gap beside a very strapping, very blonde man in a jarringly teal suit.
"Whoa," Ed said, taking stock of the man's outfit. "Since when is that allowed? It's not even black!"
"No, Fullmetal, it's not the colour, it's—"
"Are you telling me I could've shown up here in whatever colour suit I wanted, so long as the tie was black?!"
"No, Fullmetal, it's—"
"Guys," Breda prompted, "he's comin' over here!"
"You guys!" Fuery said, just a little too loudly, making his way over to them with a huge smile on his face. "You'll never—oh, hey, Ed!"
"Hey."
"You'll never guess who I was just talking to by the punch bowl!"
"Yeah, who was that guy?" Breda asked.
Fuery was practically vibrating with excitement as he dropped his voice to a stage-whisper. "It was Marshall Q. Armstrong," he said. "As in the actor!"
Ed's face lit up. "Wait, the guy from the—?!" He immediately mimed vague action-hero punching motions, mimicking the character from The Beasts of Devil's Alley.
"Yeah, exactly!" Fuery nodded excitedly.
"Wait, is this the same guy from Study in Cinders?" Breda asked, lighting up too. "The detective one?"
"Yeah, him!"
"Wait, I haven't seen that one," Ed cut in. "Is it good?"
"Oh, it's so good," Breda said. "There's this one part where the bad guy sets a fire on the top floor of this huge building, right, and he's at the top of this big flight of stairs on the fire escape and there are all these guys in his way, and he's all like hwagh! Hoo! Pow! And he knocks his way through all of them—"
"Yeah, and he does this flip, too, where he's like kiyaahh—"
Edward nodded seriously, eyes wide, as Fuery and Breda continued miming out fight scenes from the movie, complete with their own sound effects.
"You guys are such dorks," Mustang said, sighing and shaking his head.
"What?" Ed replied. "Fight scenes are cool."
"Yeah, but it's not like he can really do that stuff," he said, shrugging. "Those movie stunts are all fake."
"No, no, you don't understand, sir," Fuery said, again just a touch too loudly. "Marshall Q. Armstrong does all his own stunts. It's his trademark."
"Yeah," Breda said, "it's like a whole big thing—he trains like crazy for all of these movies so he can do that stuff live on camera. Ed and Fuery both nodded emphatically.
Mustang rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure they print that in those dumb movie magazines," he said, "but they just make that stuff up for publicity."
"You really think so, sir?" Fuery said.
"Yes."
"That's funny," Fuery continued, "because he just told me he uses a series of extremely advanced martial arts techniques that have been passed down through the Armstrong family for generations."
Everyone's eyes widened.
"Wait," Mustang said.
"Wait," Ed and Breda both echoed, and they all exchanged glances.
"So he's—"
"—one of the Armstrongs?"
"I know, I couldn't believe it at first either!" Fuery said, grinning excitedly. "You'd think the Major—I mean, the Lieutenant Colonel—would have said something before now, right? I guess I just never made the connection because I figured he would've told us."
"Yeah, I never would've put that together," Ed agreed. "Although now that I think about it…it was kinda right there in the name. And…I mean…the moustache…"
"Hmm, yeah," Breda said, nodding. "That was a clue."
"Wait, so—" Ed looked up with a jolt. "Oh, man, I gotta tell Winry about this!" He paused. "And I gotta get another one of those potato rectangles."
"Slow down, Ed—don't forget to save some room for dinner. It should be starting in a few minutes or so," Breda said, checking his watch.
"Wait, is this not dinner?" Ed gestured toward the enormous table of food he'd been eating copiously from for the past hour.
"No, that's the emergency rations to keep people from getting wasted during cocktail hour," he explained. "They're probably about to sit us all down for the actual meal any second now."
Ed swallowed. He'd eaten a lot. "The…the actual meal?"
"Yeah, all five courses of it."
"What?!"
"Yeah, didn't you read the letter?"
Ed's sound of despair and disbelief was drowned out by the sound of a dinner bell ringing out over the crowd—and then a squadron of Armstrong staff were shepherding everyone into yet another enormous room filled with long tables.
"Oh my god," he said under his breath, already feeling uncomfortably full as he was marched toward his seat and deposited in a very stiff high-backed dinner chair. "This is probably how I'm gonna die."
"Begging your pardon, sir?" the curly-haired Armstrong footman asked him.
"Uh—I said I'm, um, having a great time."
THERE YA HAVE IT! I hope nobody was too hungry reading this chapter-I built a huge collection of insanely fancy recipes while getting inspo for it, so I know I was. Not as much research went into this one since it's mostly just our favourite teens havin' a good time, but I will still provide
RESEARCH NOTES:
- Etiquette! I was originally going to make this a way more etiquette-centric chapter, pulling especially from this book a friend of mine got her hands on called The Ladies' Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness by Florence Hartley, but that didn't pan out for two reasons.
1. She lives far away from me and it was impractical to keep making her send me photos of snippets of the book, and
2. It got pretty repetitive pretty fast, once I realized in basically every instance the action would be "Al is worried about Manners Thing, and Ed is not worried about Manners Thing and does it anyway".
Plus, well, it's true what Havoc says in the chapter: if you don't have any reason to live in high society, the consequences of behaving imperfectly there don't really have any impact on you.
(...OR DO THEY?! FIND OUT LATER!)
- POTATO RECTANGLES! The Zoomers among you may have recognized the TIKTOK FIFTEEN-HOUR POTATOES, which are apparently going kinda viral right now based on the fact that I saw them on somebody's instagram story yesterday. Maybe they went viral six months ago; I don't know. All I know is that I was imagining some kind of crispy, many-layered potato thing, vaguely, in my own brain-and then yesterday, out of nowhere, the exact perfect potato thing revealed itself to me. On somebody's instagram story. And now I offer it to you.
- FIGS! It's briefly mentioned in the Prince of Dawn and Daughter of the Dusk video games (yeah, the ones they never released in English) that Aerugo grows a lot of different fruits and stuff, and because I'm a big dork who took one (1) international political economy class several years ago, I've decided that the longstanding on-again off-again border conflicts with the South have meant that pockets of people from certain age groups have extreme wartime yearnings for specific fruits that they briefly tasted and then never got to have again. Y'know, like British people and oranges during WWII. Or Americans and Kinder Surprises during right now. Or, well, more like Americans and anything from Cuba. Whatever. You get it.
- I think I mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again: I'm pulling a lot of vague Armstrong fanciness inspo from those video games, but not 100% treating them as canon. ...Okay, no, I just checked the previous chapters, and I've never mentioned them here before. I don't know what I'm thinking of. Maybe I DM'd somebody about them? AHEM. I AM PULLING A LOT OF INSPO FROM THOSE VIDEO GAMES, because some beautiful soul has put a ton of the gameplay and cutscenes on YouTube with English translations, and there's a whole thing where Ed, Al and Winry attend the Armstrong ball. It's REALLY fun and I highly recommend going and looking it up-it's set before Ed and Al go north, during the time period when they're looking for May in Central, and it's all set up so that it fits within the existing plot, which I appreciate enormously. It just gets a little too silly in a few places to take 100% seriously tone-wise, and as we know, this is a Very Serious Fanfic. ಠ_ಠ That said, I'm pulling lots of details and vibes from it (including Ed's total disgust with the excesses of wealth), but I'm not treating it as though it actually Happened, meaning that this is the first time Ed, Al and Winry have ever been inside the Armstrong mansion, the first time they've ever seen Hawkeye in a fancy dress, etc. Also yes, sadly I have eschewed giving Major Armstrong a purple sequined tuxedo, but I hope you will trust me when I say I HAVE MY REASONS.
Okay! That's probably enough outta me. I hope you enjoyed it, and please leave a review if you've got time! OH, AND ONE MORE THING: I've started updating my wordcount for the upcoming chapter on my author profile, so if you're used to staring forlornly at this fic wondering if I've been hit by a bus and will never post again...no more! You can check there! :D
