Brief Commentary:
Kekeke...I don't have anything to say. :) 110+ reviews, eh? Thanks! The other fanfics I've been writing/started on have been to get my creative juices flowing - I recently hit a hard case of writers block and I needed something to get me out of it. Just for reassurances, TFD is something I will write on and off - RNFYE is still my main focus.


Reasons Not For Your Ears
Chapter Twenty-Two

Winry woke up with a start, quickly regretting the sudden movement as the back of her head began to throb. Instead of the lumpy garbage bags she had been dumped on, she found herself in a comfortable, clean bed, dressed neatly in...in clothes she wasn't wearing before. What the...?
Kicking off the sheets and nearly falling off of the bed (and suppressing a groan from her aching skull), as Winry stood, she found herself in a long-sleeved shirt and baggy sweat pants. They were comfortable enough; a little small, maybe. But who...?

"O-oh!"

A voice startled her out of her thoughts. Glancing towards the bedroom door, she blinked to see Ranfan standing there, a small blush lighting her cheeks. She blinked a second time when she realized Ranfan was not in her school uniform. Well, of course not - she whacked herself inwardly; today would be the day they had off. Instead, the exchange student was dressed in a pair of baggy jeans and a long red shirt. Her hair, so usually neat and tidy, was now messy and tangled. Her reading glasses were perched on the edge of her nose, in danger of falling off.

"S-sorry," she said weakly, "Did I wake you, Winry-san?"
"Uh, no," Winry assured her, "I woke up, like, a minute ago."
Gesturing to her clothes, she asked,
"Did, um, you do this?"
"Y-yes, sorry. Is that all right? Your uniform...w-well, it wasn't exactly in good condition..."

Winry felt a small wave of nausea surface as she remembered the last night's events. Nodding once, she sat back down on the mattress, surprised at how nicely it sank under her weight. She flinched; her head did not appreciate this sudden moving she was doing.

"Raaaaaanfaaaan!" an all too familiar voice chimed.
"Ling-senpai," Ranfan admonished him as the exchange student walked in casually, waving a hand in greeting. "Please keep it down. Winry-san still has a fairly bad head injury."
Wearing a pair of jeans himself, his shirt was instead a solid black color, with the white design of a snake printed near the side of where his abdominal muscles would be. Pointedly ignoring Ranfan, Ling grinned over at Winry, his tone practically musical as he said,
"I was so very concerned for Winry-san! When we saw what those terrible men were doing to you, of course it was necessary for us to lend you hand!"
"Oh, yes...thank you for saving me," she bowed her head quickly, embarrassed that she hadn't done it before. "Mei Chan-san...she was with you?"
"She was," Ranfan confirmed, her voice edged with contempt, "but she left for her own home."

Winry allowed herself a brief glance around the room, and found that the style and decor were foreign to her. Well, obviously - Ling and Ranfan were from a foreign country. The confusing conversation that had occurred between the three students the week previous flashed in her memory again, and, with her curiosity intact, Winry turned to look Ling squarely in his squinty eyes, and asked sharply,
"Speaking of Mei Chan-san, what were you all talking about that day at lunch?"

Ling and Ranfan looked to be taken by surprise at first, before they blinked and exchanged dark looks. Ranfan, with anger tinting her cheeks, blurted,
"It has nothing to do with you! Ling-senpai is-"
"Ranfan, it's fine," he assured her suddenly, barring her way to Winry with his arm.
"B-but, Ling-senpai..."
"Winry-san deserves a right to know - we were foolish enough to discuss something as serious as that at a school, now we must pay for our actions. Not to mention that she's caught up in this whole thing as well - she probably doesn't know it, though."
"Surely we can't-"
"Ranfan, please."
"...okay, Ling-senpai..." Ranfan glanced down at her feet, abashed.
He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder for a brief moment, before it fell back to his side again as Ling sat on the floor, gesturing for Winry to join him. Ranfan stood by the door, her expression dark and wary, as if she were expecting a mass murderer to come racing into the room armed with a rifle. Winry carefully did as asked, making sure to move slowly as she crossed her legs and propped her head up with her palm.
"So," she said briskly; impatient. "What's this about?"
Ling smirked.
"Nothing much. Just the actual reason we're here in your country."
"I look forward to it," Winry remarked blandly, although still surprised at the fact - she tried not to show it.


"Now, I presume you know a man by the name of Scar? By the look on your face, Winry-san, this is quite likely. Am I right?"
A slow nod to accompany a frightened expression.
"Has he attempted to kill you? A simple nod or shake of the head will be fine, Winry-san."
Another nod.
"With a gun?"
"...uh huh," she said quietly.
"I see! How helpful!" Ling said brightly, glancing with satisfaction towards Ranfan, who was busy scribbling something onto a piece of paper Winry had not seen her with. She hadn't seen the pencil, either.
"You see," the exchange student lowered his voice here, a grin still dominant on his face. "Ranfan and I are after him to kill him. Mei Chan-san is our rival in this assignment as well."
"...assignment?"
"Scar has murdered several important figures in our country; if he were caught, it would mean death for him. He was believed to have fled here, to your country, also with an ulterior motive. As of yet, we have been unable to investigate properly and find out what it is. Strange how he would fire shots at you...hm," Ling scratched his chin and glanced absently at an oil painting on the wall. With a shrug, he continued his explanation, "In my country, Ranfan and I (Mei Chan-san also) finished our schooling a long time ago, and you can say we were drafted for this assignment. At first the three of us...well, not including Mei Chan-san's panda, were supposed to work together, but our families are rivals, so it didn't exactly go as planned."
"Ling-senpai's and my family against Mei Chan-san's," Ranfan interjected quickly, hoping that she explained any confusion Ling might have caused.
"I...I see."
"It was only natural for us to apply for one of your high schools here - we would be rather out of place in this quaint town if we didn't 'attend' anything while all others our age did," Ling went on. The smile had disappeared from his face, to be replaced with an expression of boredom as he fiddled with a piece of thread poking out from the carpeting beneath them. "The only thing undesirable about attending the schools here is that the hours are long and we have less time to investigate - if my assumption is correct and that it was actually you who had been following us, that is precisely what we were doing in the alley ways - investigating, that is."
"But...you said you and Mei Chan-san were rivals in this...this 'assignment'? And how did you know the alley system so well? And-"
He held up two fingers to halt her questions.
"We are," he corrected. "But the 'persuading' part of the research usually works better when there are more than two people to do the 'persuading.' Secondly, we've been here for a long while, Winry-san. We've been here since before the day you moved into town, I can assure you. We've seen a lot of funny things. It's unfortunate that Ranfan fell ill with a fever the evening we heard gun shots being fired - I presume that it was Scar firing at you?"
Ranfan blushed slightly at what must have been an embarrassing reference for her.
"...when...when was it?"
"Ho..." Ling scratched the back of his head in thought, "Little less than a month ago, I suppose."
"...I see," Winry breathed in deeply before admitting, "Yes. The gunfire you heard was...was from Scar...although, he wasn't exactly shooting at me...he tried to at first."
The exchange student raised an eyebrow.
"There...there was some one else with me," she said quietly, twiddling her thumb and forefingers.
"Who?"
"His...his name is Edward Elric," Winry admitted, feeling slightly guilty about giving away Edward's name. Realizing this thought, she quickly reprimanded herself.
Who cares what Edward thinks anyway? She attempted to be angry with him, but it didn't work as well as she had hoped.
Ling snapped his fingers as if he had realized something.
"Ranfan," he said in a commanding tone, "My background notes are where I left them last. Please get them."
She nodded quickly and scurried out of the room, leaving Winry in to stare after her in uncertainty. She had thought that Ranfan had some sort of authority over Ling? But with his sudden change of tone and attitude... He noticed her confusion and grinned over at her.
"Ranfan is what you would call my subordinate, Winry-san," he explained rapidly, "She's a very good subordinate, as it is."
At that moment, said subordinate appeared again in the door way, only slightly short of breath as she handed Ling a small stack of neatly paper-clipped sheets. He leafed through them rapidly, looking all business, until the serious expression was lost to a smile of absolute glee when he found what he was looking for.
"Here it is! Alphonse Elric, then...hmm...mother dead...substituted parental authority...brother...ah ha. Edward Elric - occupation: none, intelligence quota...eh, 91, not bad...hrm, habits: smoking, promotes the use of violence...personality: not social, eh?"
He smiled up at Winry, who by now was utterly bewildered by the sudden overflow of information Ling seemed to know already.

"You're pretty lucky, huh, Winry-san? Saved by the anti-social, violent street wanderer of this quaint town."


Lol, that Ling. :D He's just a silly noodle sometimes (and I gave him a huge vocabulary - good for you, Ling!). And Ranfan...can you say stutterer? XD I don't know why I did it, but she blushes so much in the manga (when she first loses the mask). Not to mention she's got a pretty quick temper. Yikes. Btw, I has a three day weekend - that means another update will be rolling right along with this one!