This chapter's songs are Paramore: Decode and Linkin Park: New Divide. Even though I didn't get the five reviews I said I wanted, I'm updating anyway! I just couldn't wait any longer. You all are lucky I'm being nice!
Review responses:
Red. Wolf. Of. Fire—This fanfic isn't supposed to be after the movie. That's why Mustang isn't General, he's still Colonel! Also, the extra O's are for making the sound louder. "NOOOO!" is more emotional and stuff than just plain "NO!" right?
Xblackxtearsxofxlovexandxkatex—Epic username! And thanks for the nice, long review! It made me happy. I don't really know what you meant by Paramore and No Doubt not being in existence… they exist! And as for Ed-kun not liking Misa-chan's clothes, I'm pretty sure this chapter will assuage any misgivings you have about how he feels, haha!
GoddessPhoenix3173—Thanks for reviewing!
shinespire—Thanks for reviewing! I'm glad you think my plot is original!
And now, on with the show!
Âme de Minuit
Chapter Two
Edward's POV
"Midnight Soul, meet the Fullmetal Alchemist."
"Huh?" I said stupidly, following Shitface's gaze to a smokin' hot blonde about my age sitting on the couch, softly murmuring to a frightened gray cat in her arms. I hadn't noticed her when I'd stormed in, but once I looked, I couldn't fathom how I'd missed her. Let's just put it this way: To describe this girl as "smokin' hot" would be like describing the permafrosted wasteland that was northern Drachma as "pretty chilly."
"Shh. It's okay, Neko," she whispered. Neko must've been the cat's name; not that I cared. I was more interested in listening to her musical voice. I'd never heard anything like it. She had the voice of the solo soprano in a choir of angels.
"Good God, Fullmetal," said Shitface, interrupting thoughts that I probably shouldn't have been thinking in the first place. "Close your mouth; you're practically drooling."
"Wha—? Oh, shut up, taisa-yarou! Nobody cares what you think anyway." I forced myself to take my eyes off the girl and look at Shitface again. The sight of his ugly mug was enough to remind me why I was angry—mostly because of the fact of his existence, but that was neither here nor there. "I find it hard to believe you called me all the way down to Central to introduce me to Little Miss Look-At-Me-And-My-Adorable-Kitty-Aren't-We-So-Kawaii. Tell me why I'm here—so I can leave."
Shitface leaned back in his chair, looking for all the world like he needed a face-full of my metal fist. "Kind of a lengthy epithet, but I daresay my niece could get used to it eventually."
His niece. Well, fuck.
"Ano, oji-san," said the girl, standing up. (Somebody needed to get around to telling me her name.) "Is this the person you were telling me about?"
"Wait, you were telling her about me? Why?"
Shitface ignored me. "Yes, this is he."
She looked indecisive for a moment, then stepped forward and held out her hand. "I'm Misako. But you can call me Misa."
I didn't shake—not because I wanted to be purposely rude, but because I didn't want to shake with my right hand and give away my… unfortunate condition. "Ed," I grunted at her, arms crossed.
Looking confused and injured, she let her hand fall limply to her side.
His niece. His damn niece. No fair.
I turned back to Shitface. "Answers. Provide them."
"I've got a mission for you."
I had deduced as much, Captain Obvious. (Or rather, Colonel Obvious.) "Get to the point."
He gave a little cough. "A mission for both of you."
I looked at Misako, then at Shitface. "You're joking."
"Nope."
"No shit."
"Cross my heart."
I stared him down for a moment, looking for a sign that he was pulling my leg, but Shitface's shit face was as somber as death. "No."
"What do you mean, 'no'?" Shitface asked with that cocky grin plastered from ear to ear.
"I mean I'm not doing it," I growled.
"Take that up with the Führer if you want, Fullmetal, but I doubt he'll give you a reprieve. In a few hours, you and Misa will be on a train to…" He consulted the contents of a folder on his desk. "Bueáire."
Misako did a double take. "The capital of Aerugo?" (A/N: Taken with permission from LadyWordsmith, an FF user—this city name is just fanon, not Arakawa-sensei's invention. LadyWordsmith-san told me to say that.)
"What, is the Führer trying to send a couple of teenagers to singlehandedly infiltrate a foreign government?" I snorted at the idea.
"Something like that," said Shitface, offhand. "I don't know."
Misako cocked her head at him. "Didn't you read the assignment, oji-san?"
His niece, I reminded myself again. There was no way this girl didn't know how her body language looked; it was physically impossible for someone to be this cute by accident.
"Heavens no," Shitface responded. "I don't even read my own paperwork. What makes you think I would read yours?"
"Good point," Misako conceded. "Then if it's all right with you, can I see that folder and actually read what's inside?"
Shitface tossed it at her and she caught it reflexively, not even jarring that little stupid cat when she moved. Her grace was merely surprising; her body was… mesmerizing. "Arigato, Uncle," she said. Then, "Come on, Fullmetal-kun, we're going." Like it was nothing.
"Excuse me?" I snapped. "One, I'm not a -kun. You may refer to me as Fullmetal-sama if you like. And two, who says you get to tell me where to walk? I decide where I go. Only me." Unfortunately, despite my blustering, I'd made the mistake of ranting about this while following her out of Shitface's office and into the hall.
"I have to go home and pack," she told me. "Don't you also have things to get?"
"No. I have a suitcase. See? It is in my hand." I held it up. "It contains… stuff. The stuff inside is useful… stuff. I use it for… stuff-related things."
"I see," she said with a slightly amused tone. "Well, I have to go home, so I guess you'll have to follow me."
"Who says I have to follow you? I'm going home."
"And ignoring the assignment?" she countered.
"Hell yeah." So take that, bitch, I added in my head. "I don't need a partner."
"Well, you got one, so try to deal," she said unsympathetically. "It's not like you're the only one who is affected by this. I mean, poor Neko! She hates trains! Even a few minutes on one gets her all flustered. How will she survive the hours and hours it will take to get us to Bueáire?"
"The cat's not coming," I said firmly. "Pets do not belong on military missions."
"I beg to differ."
An hour and a half later, I was sitting on a southbound train next to a cat carrier complete with the "all flustered" cat. It looked the same flustered as it did non-flustered, so I was taking Misako's word for it.
"Fullmetal-kun?"
"No," I said harshly, cutting off any form of conversation she was trying to create.
"Ed-kun?"
I refused to respond.
"How about I call you Edo-kun? It's cute."
"Yeah, real kawaii. It's better than tapeworms. Leprosy. Train derailments. Unwanted pregnancies. Jazz."
"Look, I know we got off to a bad start, but I think, for the sake of the mission—"
"—You should shut your trap? Good call, Midnight. I was about to suggest the very same thing. You're psychic. You should put on big earrings and bangles and fluffy clothes and tell fortunes from an old carriage that smells like goats."
"I could never do that job."
"Mm?" I grunted questioningly, not interested enough for a real response.
"Well, I can't do that belly-dancing thing," she deadpanned. "I've tried, but it just looks like I'm trying to give an invisible person a lap dance."
"Belly dancing, lap dancing, what's the difference when you get right down to it? As long as everybody gets paid."
"True," she admitted after a moment's contemplation.
For a few minutes, Misako gave me blessed silence, which I filled with my new mental mantra: "his niece, his niece, his niece, his niece, his niece…"
"Do you really dislike me already?" she asked in a soft voice, breaking me out of my trance. I realized that I had been staring again, but this time I had forgotten to make my expression not look irritated (the default position of my face) which meant she probably thought I was glaring at her. "What did I do?" she asked, her voice rising in pitch like she was fighting tears (and failing epically, judging by the watery diamonds swimming in her argentate eyes). "Have I done something wrong?"
What is it with women and crying? "No, no, no, no, no, don't do that!" I stuttered.
"I… uh… just… um…" she mumbled, covering her face with her hands. "Gomenasai, Edo-kun."
From a piece of my seat arm that was already splintered, I transmuted a piece about the size and shape of a grain of rice, then flicked it at her. She snapped out of the dark mood long enough to flail around and try to figure out where it had landed. I smirked and watched her comb her fingers through her dirty-blonde hair, trying to find it.
"What was that piece of thing?" she asked, looking at me through her entrancing cyaneous orbs, shimmering with yet-unshed tears.
"Just a distraction," I said with a smirk. "It worked."
"No, I mean, didn't you just transmute it? I saw the light, but not the circle…" At this, she seemed to enter a speculative trance, her forehead creasing.
"I don't need a circle to transmute," I bragged.
Misako gasped and leaned forward. "Really?"
Yesss! I internally celebrated. Finally, something that made me look less like a jerk and more like somebody talented and smart, whom she might want to f-…uh, never mind. "Yeah," I said nonchalantly.
"So you've seen that thing too?"
"Wha—huh?" Scratch that. I was still stuck on 'jerk.' "You… you… what?"
"You committed the taboo too, didn't you?" Her voice and face were full of an almost childlike fascination.
I narrowed my eyes. Nobody had ever caught on that quick, and never without seeing my automail. "What do you know?"
I could practically see the cogs in her head turning in the short silence wherein I stared down at her suspiciously. Then she leaned back in her seat and bent down to unlace the black combat boot on her right foot.
"What are you doing?"
She ignored me, the shoe thunked on the floor of our train's compartment, and she reached under her miniskirt and grabbed the elastic of her thigh-high fishnet stockings. I watched, nearly drooling, as she pulled the stocking down her leg, revealing pale, smooth skin inch by inch.
"What are you d-…?" I trailed off as she pulled the stocking down further and I realized what she was showing me. "Automail?" I whispered. "So I'm not the only one…"
"My right leg and left arm," she replied, staring at her right foot and wriggling the toes. "You have automail too, don't you? Your hand. You wouldn't shake my hand."
"Good guess." I pulled my right glove off and waved with my automail hand, but I didn't roll up my sleeve or point out my leg. She didn't need to know exactly how much of me was metal.
"I thought so," she said smugly. "Who did you try to transmute?"
"Uh…" There wasn't exactly a precedent for this type of conversation. I didn't know whether to tell her everything or keep my business to myself.
Misako leaned in and captured my gaze with those entrancing cerulean irises. The color was so shocking, I felt as if I couldn't look away. Her sandy hair fell forward over her shoulders. "It's okay," she said softly. Her breath—or maybe it was her hair; I couldn't tell—smelled like apple blossoms. "You can tell me. You don't have to be unsure around me. I'm very trustworthy."
I quickly realized I had forgotten why I was hiding this information in the first place, and blurted, "My mother. She was sick. I tried to bring her back from the dead."
Misako tilted her head. "Why?"
Too personal. "Because she was my mom. She was all I had." Wait! Why had I said that? I didn't want to tell her that!
"Where was your father in all this? Why didn't he prevent you from performing the transmutation?" She gasped. "He didn't aid you, did he?"
"He wasn't there. The asshole walked out when I was little."
"So you were all alone? How sad."
"I wasn't alone. I had Al." … Was this girl performing some kind of… voodoo on me or something?
"Who's Al? A friend? A neighbor?"
"My brother." Shut up, shut up! Why was I still talking? I couldn't stop!
"I didn't know you had a brother," she commented, shifting her weight so she had better balance on the moving train. Somehow, she never had to take her eyes off me to do it. Was she even blinking? "Where is he now, your brother?"
She must have noticed something in the way I reacted—my breath halted; I pressed myself further into the seat (away from her), and my jaw tightened.
"A sore spot?" she guessed.
"And what about you, Misako?" I asked to push the conversation's focus off myself.
"Misa," she corrected. "Nobody calls me Misako."
"Who did you transmute, 'Misa'?"
She leaned away and settled back into her own seat. When she stared out the window, her eyes seemed to lighten in hue to a soft periwinkle.
"Sore spot?" The fact that I had to lay my past bare for her but she wasn't paying me the same courtesy irritated me.
She ignored me and reached for the satchel on the seat beside her, pulling out a red iPod Nano and sticking an earbud in one ear. I heard Linkin Park: New Divide begin to play through the bud she'd left hanging.
I shot my best angry face at her for a few moments, but she didn't speak until I had all but given up on getting a response.
"It was my father. He was… ah, murdered. By someone."
"That is generally how murders get accomplished." She didn't return my smile, and it quickly faded. "What about your old lady?"
Misako's eyes flashed an angry carmine. She coughed a little, then she fixed her gaze on the window resolutely. "I don't usually tell people this much." By her tone, she was really saying, "Don't push your luck."
I frowned, stared at her a few more minutes, then decided the well of information was dry and turned away to glower at the window. I wasn't pleased. It had been only a couple of hours since I'd met the girl, but already she was driving me crazy—in both senses of the word.
And what did she have to hide, anyway?
I'm so glad to finally update this fic! I hope you people didnt think I'd quit on ya?
Misa-chan's history is a mystery—hey, that rhymed! Will Ed break through the emotional defenses of this unpredictable girl? Or will her mysterious past always remain just that—an enigma? You won't find out unless I see five reviews in my inbox! Get to clicking my green button already!!
Peace!
—mrs-hayley-elric-24