Author's Blog: Yah another beautiful Chapter Beta'd by HoldOnToYourTunaCans. Love you!!
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"MUSTANG THAT'S NOT FUNNY! YOU ALMOST GOT ME!" Amelia shouted as the smoke cleared. She had jumped out of the way of the Flame Alchemist's flames just in time.
"Then don't say things like that!" Roy glared at her.
Amelia finally started laughing along with everyone else who had gathered around.
"Well, that's enough laughing and bruises for one day. Excuse me while I go shower." Amelia left with a twirl of her hips and a swish of her hair. Once she reached the crowd that had gathered they parted like water, and she continued past them. As he stood, shaking his head at the situation, Ed noticed two figures advancing toward the clearing from the opposite direction and, recognizing Al and Winry, ran to greet them.
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Hawkeye was tired. She had spent the whole afternoon trying to get the Fuhrer to do his paperwork but, obviously, he was still flustered with the memory of an eight-year-old girl defeating him in battle. It only made things worse that now the entire military knew.
He was almost seething while doing the paperwork, so Hawkeye just sat behind her desk. She tried talking to the Fuhrer, even flirting, trying to get him to cheer up a bit, but nothing seemed to work.
He was ticked and that's how he was going to stay.
Mustang was being so irresponsible right now that she almost, almost, needed to get her gun out and point it at his head while he was signing his name.
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The water was so nice.
"Damn, I haven't had a fight like that in a long time. I'm sore everywhere." Amelia said to no one in particular while turning off the water and wrapping a towel around her body.
Thoughts about the military meeting she would have to attend wouldn't leave her mind. The three other Colonels, the Fuhrer, dozens of state alchemists, and many other military personals would be conversing that evening about the destruction of the Homunculi.
"The meeting is going to take all night!" She sighed, exasperated, at her reflection in the mirror.
She walked out of the bathroom swinging her hair behind her. She would have to deal with the meeting when it happened. Until then she was going to have a nap.
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*meanwhile*
A red coat flapped in the wind while its owner ran towards the pair entering the Central Military Headquarters.
"AL!!! WINRY!!!!"
At the sound of their names the couple stopped and turned.
"Brother," Al laughed watching his older brother stop in front of him and Winry, gasping for breath.
"Hey Winry…" Ed started before being interrupted by a screech.
"ED YOUR AUTOMAIL IS FIXED!!!! HOW!!! WHO!!!!" As Winry continued to scream at him a wrench mysteriously appeared in her hand.
With fear in his eyes, Ed he proceeded to tell the mad wrench-wielding teen how Amelia had fixed his auto mail. It was this that stopped the screeching.
"Amelia Richards…she fixed it. She improved on my work. She's better then I imagined…" Winry went off into a daydream before shaking her head and taking a step backwards.
"Ed you reek!" She plugged her nose with her wrenchless hand.
Ed lifted his shirt and sniffed. "So I do…"
"I'm not talking to you again, Edward Elric, until you have a shower." She told him before grabbing Al's arm and dragged him into the building behind her.
Ed sniffed the air around him and agreed that a shower would not hurt.
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Al had found his brother, with hair still slightly damp, walking towards the entrance to the female military rooms. He tried to stop him, thinking Ed in this area was not a smart idea.
"Al I don't care. I'm sore everywhere. I'm going to go see her. I just want to go check to make sure she's alright." Both Ed and Al were standing just outside The door to her room. Ed had his hand on the doorknob.
"Brother please… she'll come out soon."
"Al, stop being such a baby." They walked into her room and heard the shower going. 'Her room is actually messy' the blonde alchemist thought to himself upon sitting on her un-made bed.
He saw a couple drawers open and saw that a military uniform was hanging out of one and a bra hanging out another. Al shuttered seeing the bra, but Ed, besides blushing, looked in the exact opposite direction and coughed.
A door opened from the bathroom and out came Amelia wearing only a towel around her body. Her eyes were closed as she swung her hair.
Ed thought he was going to faint.
The towel was just low enough on her chest and short enough below her thighs that it was barely covering anything.
Amelia opened her eyes and almost screamed. She saw Ed blushing almost cherry and Al with his helmet turned away. She immediately grabbed her towel around her chest and held on tight.
"What are you two doing in here?" She almost yelled at them, but somehow she found a way to say it calmly in a stern form without a hint of embarrassment.
"We c-came to see if y-you were al-alright…" Ed stuttered.
"THAT'S NOT THE POINT!!!" Amelia took a deep breath in and tired to calm down. "Well I'm fine so you can leave and let me get dressed…" she lifted one of her arms and the towel started to slip so she quickly grabbed for it.
"NOW GET OUT!!!" she yelled, and instantly the brothers ran for the door. Just as she was about to close the door on them the towel slipped even more. The towel did almost nothing to cover her body now.
Al had already left the room but Ed was still standing there on the other side of the doorframe. Amelia quickly slammed the door and left an even redder Edward on the other side.
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*later that day*
She thought she would die.
Winry found Edward fighting with Mustang about calling him short again, while a girl dressed in purple and black with golden blonde hair was laughing next to Hawkeye.
Winry let out a fangirl scream and pointed in Amelia's direction, starting to stutter.
"Y….y…your Amelia Richards!!!! OH MY GOSH YOU'RE MY IDOL!!!! Can I see your auto mail! Can I see your toolbox! You have to teach me everything you know!" Winry had stars, if not hearts, in her eyes as she looked at Amelia who had an embarrassed grin on her face.
"I take it you're Winry Rockbell. This was getting boring anyways, so sure. Common, lets go talk since I won't hear the end of it until we do." Winry tried to keep quiet, instead of squealing like the fan girl she was.
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Tools scattered the office floor and desk as Amelia and Winry were looked over blueprints for different auto mail limbs Winry had drawn. Ed was lying on the navy upholstered couch without a right arm.
"Ok, so if we bent the cover plate downwards more…"
"No that would burn out the bearings in the shoulder. In just a couple of days the arm would stop functioning all together. Winry, it's the side shoulder plate, not the cover plate that would need to be bent down."
"Oh, I never thought of that." Winry blushed in embarrassment.
Her idol was helping her with some new arm designs for Ed she had been working on. To her disappointment, it seemed as if everything she had been working on was not going to work.
"Ok, now if you tighten this screw…"
"And this finger joint is twisted like this…"
"Alright, Ed can have his arm back now."
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~* that evening *~
"That was some stunt you pulled earlier on me Amelia." A man was sitting at a table leaning his head on his hand while taking a sip of his scotch. A teenager sat on a chair opposite him watching the water in her own glass swirl round as she rocked the glass back and forth in her hand.
"You know if you turn that water to ice the owner is going to kick you out. Us alchemists are forbidden to use alchemy here." He said, straitening his posture before leaning back slightly in his chair.
"Doesn't it bother you? I mean, me being here. You talk to me just like you used to. I left the state alchemist training to live a life I never knew I could live, and decided that I couldn't do it. I was 8 when I joined the military with you Roy. You know that. You know what I did to be able to do what I am capable of."
She looked around to see if anyone was in hearing range. Realizing there was no one in the bar at this late hour who cared to eavesdrop on their conversation, she turned back to her glass and continued to twirl the water, allowing concentration to cloud her eyes.
"If anyone found out about me being part Ishballan I could be killed. Of course, it's your call now…but that doesn't change the fact. I should be in isolation with the others…" She quit twirling the water in her hand before putting the glass back on the table with a sigh. "Roy, I'm not the same person that I was way back when. Our Father…" she started before being interrupted by Mustang.
"Our Father has nothing to do with this Amelia, and no one cares about your lineage. Amelia, You helped me get into the military and become a State Alchemist. If you hadn't bought me my first pair of fire gloves, I would never have passed the test. Drawing circles in the ground wasn't going to cut it…"
"Yeah but… I'm not a State Alchemist Roy. I never was. And I still have to go through all the tests." She sighed and stood to leave. She grabbed her money pouch out of the pocket of her purple jacket, and placed some coins on the table.
"It really is good to see you again Amelia. I missed you…" The Fuhrer said as he watched her walk through the door and disappear into the night.
Mustang was certain something was wrong with her. She wasn't the same girl he remembered, never mind the fact he hadn't seen her for two years. But he had purposely assigned her to the Western State because of it's simple ways of life, and even though there were lots of confrontations in the west, very few required true violence. As far as he knew she never even carried a gun. But when he saw her leave, she had a gun holster at her waist. The idea that it could have been given to her by her over protective First Lieutenant who become sick on the travel to Central flittered across his mind, but he got a better look at it when she turned and saw her initials bevelled on the side of it.
To his knowledge, nothing really deadly was in the West right now, but maybe…maybe it wasn't the territory that made her carry it. He took another sip of his scotch. Maybe it was her new position. He had only promoted her a few weeks ago, because when the meeting was scheduled, he wanted her to have a firm position on the matter. It didn't matter that the previous Colonel was caught crazed murdering innocents, and having no Lieutenant Colonel in the West – and not really wanting to transfer anyone – the obvious choice was the next highest available rank in the West, First Lieutenant Richards.
But even with the new rank, he still couldn't understand her need for a gun. She didn't like them, that was why she was an automail mechanic for the military in the West. She didn't like guns since the Ishballan war. He remembered finding her arguing with the General about using her for his purposes, and that she refused to participate in the killings. She was assigned to make sure the children, if not the parents, would leave their homes into the appointed land for their isolation. The general wanted her to hold a gun, and he remembered her yelling that she wasn't a soldier, nor an alchemist, and being around all this wasn't right. The image of finding her crying in one of the tents, a bullet hole in her shoulder, blood running down the tent sheets, was still carved into his mind.
At age eight, his sister had seen and experienced the horrific and deadly nature of the military.
No one knew of her being his sister and that's the way the two liked it. They couldn't risk people knowing that his father, Gregory Mustang, had cheated on his wife with another woman. Roy himself was a miracle child to his mother, since she was never supposed to have children. But Mustang supposed that his father wanted more. After his wife found out, he murdered her to keep her silent, and then he killed the other woman too.
Amelia and her twin sister were lucky to have survived. Both were together in a specialty hospital in a different state then their mother. She was miserable having been separated from her children, but they had contracted a terrible disease, and needed to be isolated. No hospitals in the East had been advanced enough for their disease at the time, only one in the North was specializing for this disease. Thankfully, their father never knew what their names were, having never met them. He even only knew of their existence because their mother had begged for their lives before he killed her.
Before, Gregory had found a way to reach them, the Military – Roy specifically – had found him and put him in prison. He escaped prison less than year later, and the military had been searching for him ever since with no leads. Maybe that is why she was carrying a gun now. She had a lead on him.
The only reason she would carry a gun would be if she knew her alchemy wouldn't be enough.
Which brought on another possibility. The humonculi.
He looked down at his scotch glass, now half empty, and placed it on the table before getting up and walking out himself, leaving a few coins on the table as well. "Too many possibilities. Too much chaos in the world to deal with. Please don't bring him into this too...." he whispered to noone but the night sky.
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~* meanwhile *~
"Well this is great! I thought my sister would never come back to wanting to become a State Alchemist. And now that the Fullmetal knows her, he will probably know her story soon too. And that Mustang…" A long black haired homunculi was seething while pacing back and forth.
"Oh please Pride you blow everything out of proportion!" Envy was sitting looking very bored with an Amelia look alike – with black hair and purple eyes - pacing in front of him.
It had been only a year since the new Pride had come. After their last Pride died, Hoenheim of Light had chosen her to be the new Pride. Hoenheim was very secretive about her and her human sister. He said that a human transmutation had been preformed on her years ago but because she didn't fit the part of Sloth, she had to wait inside the gate. The human transmutation had only one problem and that was that the soul didn't take to the body.
When Envy found out that this homunculi's twin sister, that had preformed the transmutation, was involved in the military and that she was soon to be close to the Elric Shorty, he was more then delighted to show her the ropes. But this Pride was very proud. She would either be bragging or complaining about everything.
But he would put up with her…for now.
"Ahh here you two are!" said a woman in a black dress, with a fat man and a small young boy following her.
"Lust, Gluttony, Wrath. What a pleasant surprise." Envy not at all thrilled at their presence.
"Not to be rude Envy, but actually, we have come for Pride. Father has another mission for you. He wouldn't tell me the exact mission; he wanted to tell you himself. But what he did say was that it has to do with Edward and his many emotions, and something about your sister thrown into the mix as well."
"A mission to destroy my sister…how exciting…She is nothing compared to me! I was always the better part of the two of us and then I had to catch that wretched disease. She should have caught it! I'll make her pay!"
"Now Pride, don't be going and getting too proud now… and stop ranting! You sound too much like Wrath when he's having a bad day." Envy sighed again. If it weren't for the Elric Shorty he wouldn't have to put up with Pride.