Chapitre deux! It's coming along well, and the ideas are still coming strong! 8D
LoveChild Rosie: xD Yeah, well you know what? Get used to it. xDD
silver candle: On it. :3
Momma Mustang: xD You was waiting for this, wasn't you? Glad We gots it up? xD YEAH WELL YOU KNOW WHAT? YOU WANT A SPOILER? TOO BAD, YOU'RE NOT GETTING ONE. xD Unless you ask Us on MSN and then We's tells you. xD
Did you likes it? We're glad, it was quite overdue. xD Really? Nothing likes it ever? Wowies. o-o
Bar-Ohki: xD He's going to have problems being a woman.
hyperdude: Actually, popular belief is yours. We've barely seen anyone who says 'Aru', 'cept for like... Momma. And Envy. And Rosie sometimes. Some of Our friends. Anyway, We say 'Aru' and 'Aruphonse' out of preference. It's much too easy to type 'all' when you try to type 'Al'. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.
Jane Austen Girl: xD You have no idea how much We were confused over that first part about the alter ego until We went on your profile. xD He hates that damn thing. It must be so constricting...
Roy: Rawr! Yesh! Genderswitch! xD You thought it was PotC, dinchu? xD
Woah! Our break lines work now! Sweet!
Disclaimer: Don't own it! Song is Breathe In by Frou Frou.
THE PRINCESS DIARIES
diamond
Edward loitered around the town for hours. He browsed shops, sampled pastries at the bakery, and stopped at the library to borrow a book from the kindly librarian, who saw the Elric siblings often and was quite good friends with them, often letting them fall asleep there. He returned to the castle with the book clasped in his arms, a schoolgirlish pose his sister had adopted.
He made to go to his room, and then he realized that he was supposed to be his sister and sighed. Why did his sister have to be so... her? He supposed he would have done the same thing, but still. He opened the main door to her chambers, still fuming silently, and realized he wouldn't be able to get the damn gown off without help. Plus, despite his best efforts, he'd gotten mud all over the front of the red skirt.
Why did today have to suck so much?
He finally sighed in defeat, then opened the little hatch that covered the intercom pipe. "Rose," he called wearily down it. "Can you come up here and help me?" There was no answer, and he flopped back on his backside. She couldn't be everywhere, he realized. Rose was probably doing something else. So that meant... he would have to do it himself.
Damn.
The next fifteen minutes were spent wiggling and hopping about the room, as Edward tried furiously to undo the back of his dress. Why did girls wear these stupid things?! It took so damn long to get them off! Not to mention the wind liked to sneak up under the skirt and make him fricking cold... He gritted his teeth, lying upside down on the floor with his feet in the air over his head as he struggled with it, then froze as the door squeaked open and he found Rose looking at him with a mix of amusement and confusion on her face.
"Erm... What are you doing?" she asked, blinking and approaching to help turn him back upright.
Edward scowled, sitting up and slumping indignantly. "I was trying to get this stupid thing off," he snapped, folding his arms and pouting in a very unladylike way. "I wouldn't have been making a fool of myself if you'd been here to help." He gazed up at the girl with a look that dared her to argue.
And of course she didn't. All Rose did was giggle, then crouched behind him, where she began to unzip the dress and untie the corset. The salmon-pink piece of what Edward could only describe as 'hell' loosened, and he immediately found himself letting out a sigh of blissful relief as a feeling of what seemed like all the pressure in the ocean being lifted away from his middle. "Yup," he mumbled, leaning forward and almost flopping right over. "That still feels horrible..."
"Of course it does," agreed the blue-eyed girl. "But," and this he found quite reminiscent of his sister, "it's fashionable. It's all the rage with the women in Central City."
The blonde 'princess' scoffed. "Yeah? Well women in Central must have learned not to breathe!"
/I read you, and God I'm good at it, I'm so spot on/
It took a mere five minutes after that for Rose to direct Edward to his sister's bathroom, where he found himself in what seemed like a mermaid's cavern, or something of the sort. The walls seemed to be changing color, but when he looked at them, it was simple enough to explain. Colored water was pouring down them at all times, creating the effect. Shells, bottles of sand, and interesting rocks were stacked upon every available surface, and he could swear there were fish in that big glass vase over there. It was much prettier than his smaller bathroom, which had a single porcelain tub, one with legs. This wasn't even a tub, though, this was more of a small pool. It was tiled, and bubbles frothed along the surface. What the hell was with this?
He stared at it for quite a while. He was going to have fun having baths, wasn't he?
The blonde paused a moment. No one would come to 'help' him bathe, would they? He didn't want to blow his cover so early on, but he rather needed a bath, and this looked so fun... He shrugged, stripping down and lowering himself into the already-hot water. He paddled about for a moment, then decided he didn't need to move and simply floating leisurely. This, he confirmed, was much better than his crappy little tub. This was one aspect of being his sister that he decided he would like. He didn't, however, enjoy very much the way he sank when he let go of the blue side of the pool. So he clung, dragged himself up, and seated himself on the shell of a rather lazy tortoise that seemed to live in the bathroom. He could only wonder where it had come from. He washed his hair while sitting there, freeing it gratefully from othe rather tight bun it was in. Much better now.
The young prince spent maybe half an hour there, then decided he was going to bed. The water was cold now, and he had to talk to his parents about the disappearance that was supposed to be his own, not to mention get some skin from the Rockbells.
/Chord shapes in air go press that dissonance if you dare/
The morning was spent louncing about and doing nothing. Edward supposed that doing nothing was another of his sister's many privileges as princess of Resembool. When he was ready, he called Rose up, who helped him pick out a black gown with electric blue accents and sleeves, and then he went to the engineers'.
/And you breathing in, finesse an innocent/
Rockbell
Metalworks was a clean little shop that was down on the ground floor of
the castle. The two women were always tinkering away at something,
filling the shop and the kitchens nearby with the sound of hammers
clanking and the scent of smoke and firewood. In exchange, the kitchen
wafted the scents of whatever the chefs happened to be making at the
time into the shop. It was here that Edward entered, marched over to
the closest woman, and slammed his hands down on the worktable.
"Granny, I need some help."
The little old woman looked up, blinking behind the thick spectacles perched on her nose. She began to grin amicably, like she usually did with Allie, but it faltered as she paused. She seemed to be wondering if indeed this was really Allie. Then she began to cackle, slapping her knee. "Nice look for you, shrimp!"
"Shut up," replied Edward, folding his arms indignantly over his false bosom and pouting. "At least I look better than you do, micro-granny." Pinako's grin grew.
"Chibi runt!"
"Teensy hag!"
"Mini amoeba!"
"Microscopic witch!"
The old woman began to roar with laughter again. "So what brings you here, Ed? Didn't bust your arm again, did you? Course, you wouldn't be doing anything to break it wearing that, I wager, but anyway..."
A new voice cut in, and Edward suddenly found himself with a throbbing pain in his head and a wrench sliding innocently off the quickly-growing bump it had left behind. "Broke what?!" A girl in an apron and a tank top and short skirt stomped into view, fists clenched. "You didn't break my masterpiece, did you?!" Her face was contorted into a snarl, and her blonde ponytail, Edward noticed, seemed to be crackling. He hoped it was just full of static and she didn't have super mind powers or something. She paused, and Edward knew that it was only now that she really saw him. She'd basically aimed for his head blindly, skilled at such a feat simply out of a habit of overreacting at Edward. "Erm... Ed?" began the youngest member of the Rockbell clan, Winry, "Just... what the hell are you wearing?"
He scowled. "Look, it's a disguise, okay?! I didn't ask for this!" Besides, none of it had anything to do with what he was wearing! "Anyway, I'm here to know if you can outfit my arm and leg with some of that skin you guys were working on. I need it for my disguise."
Pinako, who was like a... almost a dwarf, with almost pink hair that may once have been red, smirked. "That we can do. Come on, now, Allie," she grinned. "Step into my office."
Edward followed, seating himself on the little examination table in the 'office', which was more like an operation room than a real office. It was a little dim, but there was a skylight, so natural light poured in and gave them a decent light to work with. "So what do we do to it?" he asked, blinking.
"Not much," admitted Pinako, hauling out a large box that looked rather dangerous for her to be handling, but she simply shoved it up beside the prince, crinkling Edward's taffeta skirt in the process. "Pick your skin tone, then fit it on like a glove. It's thin, but not translucent, so you can't see the metal beneath it." She opened the box, then gestured to the smaller boxes that inhabited the inside of the big one. "There's a label on each one with the color of the tone, match it up with yours."
He nodded, then selected the proper tone after a few moments of searching. "Kay, got it," he announced, then slid the glove-like cover over his hand, flexing the metal fingers to get a good feel for it. "This'll do fine." Plus now he could wear sleeveless dresses... "Thanks, guys, I owe you."
"We get paid, it's fine," grinned Pinako, shouldering her own giant wrench. "See you when you bust that thing again." She opened her mouth to say something else, but of course, Winry's voice broke in from outside the little room.
"I SAID NOT TO BUST IT!"
/And I'm high enough on all the waiting/
Edward passed some twittering maids on his way back up to his sister's chambers to pull the arm on fully. The little snippets of conversation he could gather added up to say that there was some new suitor here for Princess Allie. He'd just send the guy away, he supposed... This was Allie's domain, this part, and he wanted none of it. He didn't want a girlfriend, who said he wanted a boyfriend? He was quite prepared to simply stay out of the romance scene altogether, never marry, and go down fighting in a flurry of flames.
Of course, he wouldn't be doing it in a blue-and-black taffeta gown, but that was irrelevant.
Anyhow, he rushed up to the rooms, shrugging his right arm out of his dress sleeve to pull the literal second skin on, then rushed back down, pulling his sleeve up as he went, and hoping he wasn't making too bad a mess of the thick, bouncy little ringlets his ponytail had been put into in the morning. It just wasn't proper for a 'young lady' such as himself to be in such a dither that he completely ruined his hair.
When he came back down, more than half of the maids had congregated in the Entrance Hall, but they moved when they saw him coming, one hand holding up his skirts so he could walk a little more properly. They had moved into a formation so that there was a single neat walkway that he could stroll down to meet this new suitor of Allie's, and he did so with a rather smug grin on his face. He was going to open the door, give the guy a once-over, and slam the door in his face. The maids would whisper, but he didn't care. Allie probably wasn't coming back, she didn't need a reputation.
This plan was working well. That was, till he opened the door and saw the rather handsome man stepping out of a carriage drawn by twin black horses, with diamond splotches of white on their foreheads. The horses' ankles looked like they'd been dipped in bleach, they were so white. As soon as the man stood, the footman hopped off his perch on the side of the carriage, removed the new suitor's bags, and carried them behind him with a look of snobbiness. Well, he certainly didn't like the footman... Luckily, he could have such a person dismissed; he'd seen his sister do it countless times to servants who were less than gentlemanly. Now, to see if thesuitor himself was like that.
Edward stepped out of the grand doors leading into the castle, slippered feet padding quietly on the marble steps. He paused some five feet away from the beginning of the stairs, watching the man step gracefully up the stairs and give a rather dashing smirk to the maids, who immediately squealed and began to quarrel over which of them he'd 'smiled' at. Ed rolled his eyes, but grinned. This guy was smooth. He'd have to keep his guard up.
And then finally the guy scaled the steps and bowed to him, and he was rather taken aback, not quite sure what to do. The man didn't seem to notice, however, and straightened back up. He was taller than Edward, to be sure, but he still may have been a little short. He had short, feathered raven hair, and dark, rather expressive eyes, ones that gave away secrets his face would never. This guy was... woah. Edward stuttered for a moment, unsure of what to say to this new one, but the man took his left hand (he thanked all the non-existent gods for this one) and placed his lips upon the fabric of his white glove rather like a feather touching down after a long spiralling fall would do. "Lady Allison," murmured the man against Edward's hand. Ed stared for a moment, then snatched back his hand. The man took a sweeping bow, and then somehow produced a crimson rose from... out of nowhere? What was this guy, a street magician? He presented it to the short boy with an air of princelike dignity. "Lord Roy Mustang, at your service."
Oooh, so this guy was a lord. Allie was missing out, thought Edward with an inward smirk. He nodded to the Lord guy, clasping his hands before him.
This guy was going to be so fun to mess around with.
/To ride a wave on your inhaling/
Rawr! Second chapter, fini!
