I love Malfoy as a ferret- Thank you for your kind review. And Ember must point out that she LOVES your username. (Also loves Malfoy as a ferret XD.)

Trumpet-Geek- Ember is glad that you are intrigued. Very glad. She likes to think she's intriguing.

And now, to get into the real story so you all can get more of an idea of what this is like. And hopefully a better grasp of the way things are going will prompt more reviews? Please?

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Chapter 1: The First Day

Ed stood to one side, feeling rather useless.

Admittedly, the physical activity part was Mustang's forte, and he hadn't been very much against the other teenager leading warm-ups. Still, he felt totally useless. This wasn't exactly how he'd expected things would go when he'd signed up to try out for the position.

Still, the better parts were coming. They just had to get through the morning.

Finally warm-ups were over and marching lessons could begin. Ed smiled. Finally he could be useful.

"All right," he stated. "We're going to start learning how to march. I'll explain what you do, and Roy—" he stressed the name ever so slightly, it being the first time he'd ever said it and also to show that he was attempting to be civil— "will demonstrate."

Mustang glared at him for a split second, but did as he said without complaint. This was going better than he'd thought it would. Maybe they could work together after all. As long as they could keep the words he knew they were both longing to shout in each other's general direction to themselves while they had to appear to be in charge of things, it would be all right.

After a strained morning of marching lessons, Ed was looking forward to the music lesson, as neither of them would have much to do there for the first couple of days. He wasn't disappointed, as it was entirely possible for the two of them to be on opposite ends of a very large room.

When they broke for sectional practice, Ed smiled. It was time to get a little homework done while he still could. Finding an empty corner that no one was likely to stumble upon, he had just gotten his books out when his phone rang.

"Hello?" he answered.

"Hey, it's me," said a voice. "I was wondering if you could help with my chemistry work?"

Ed smiled. "Sure, Winry. Which problem?" he asked absentmindedly, already flipping through the packet in question.

"Number 13, that one with all the bonding explanations?"

"Oh, no problem. Did you try to draw the structures? That really helps."

"Yeah, but some of them I just couldn't get."

"Yeah? Which ones?"

"Well, nitrogen for one."

"Ok. What happens with nitrogen is you have two Ns next to each other with a triple bond between them. Then there's a pair of dots left for each N. All right?"

"Yeah. Got it," she said after a moment.

"Ok. You got the structure for oxygen, right?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Now look at them both and tell me what's different between them."

There was silence for a second, and then she said hesitantly, "Oxygen has more pairs of dots than nitrogen does?"

"Exactly." As the question continued, Ed scribbling on a scrap sheet of paper as necessary, he quickly forgot about the day's events with the presentation of his favorite thing in the world: a challenge.

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Roy walked down the hall, having just made sure the clarinets were actually working. (They hadn't been, but he had changed that quickly enough. It wouldn't do to have his own former section slacking off.) As he turned a corner, he stopped suddenly, staring.

What the hell was Elric doing?

Well, that was fairly obvious. He was talking on the phone and doing homework. But why was the more important question at hand.

With a few more moments of observation that too became obvious. He wasn't just doing homework; he was helping some person Roy didn't know over the phone.

Roy watched for a few more moments before turning on his heel and walking back in the direction he had come from. He had been intruding, of that he had no doubts. However, he had seen a side of the younger teenager that he hadn't thought existed. Usually he was convinced Elric was a stuck-up elitist nerd. But someone matching that description wouldn't help anyone with their homework over the phone without at least a few disparaging remarks.

Well, it was something to think about. Maybe Elric wasn't quite as bad as he'd previously thought.

Maybe, just maybe, this whole thing could work after all.

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Finally, they were done for the night. Ed stayed behind to clean up the room a bit. Really, it was amazing just how messy the others could be. He finally understood why the director was always yelling at them about the mess. It was just… awful.

Turning down the hallway to leave, he paused when he heard a sound.

Strange, he identified it as the sound of a clarinet, and he was never wrong about these things. But everyone else had left long ago, or so he'd thought.

Sighing, he figured it was some unfortunate freshman who had failed to get a ride home. He turned back around to go offer said freshman a ride himself, since he was the only other person still here at this point.

Looking through the window of the practice room to see who it was, he froze in shock as he realized it was no freshman who sat there practicing some etude or other. It was Mustang.

Sitting outside the door, he listened for a while. Sure, he despised the person, but the music he was playing sounded… amazing. The tone was absolutely beautiful, and he was being very musical with the piece, where so many others would regard it as what they saw: just a few notes on a page. It was no wonder that he was perennially top clarinet in whatever band he happened to be in.

Having easily lost himself to the music, he didn't hear the door to the practice room open. He jumped when a voice said, "And what might you be doing here?"

Getting over his momentary shock, Ed replied, "I was cleaning up the band room, and then I heard someone playing and figured it was some freshman who couldn't get a ride."

"You mistook me for a freshman? I am mortally offended." Despite the words, Ed noted with more than a little surprise that there was hardly any actual malice in his voice. That was really strange, normally they'd already be screaming at each other.

Maybe it was that surprise that prompted him to say what he said next, something that would never have normally been uttered in Mustang's presence: "That was… amazing, by the way."

Mustang looked every bit as surprised as he was that he had said that. "How else do you expect me to stay on top of one of the most competitive sections there is? It's not by sitting around and doing nothing, like the rest of the section."

"You sound like you speak from experience."

"Oh, I do. I caught them earlier today in sectionals trying to have a dance party in the guitar room."

"You WHAT?!" Ed shouted through a sudden bout of laughter.

"I caught them trying to have a dance party. I say trying because they really can't dance to save their lives." Mustang couldn't help but smile a bit himself.

Ed was clutching his sides by this point, seriously worried that they just might split. "Well," he managed to say between fits of laughter, "I'm really… not surprised at all… that the clarinets were being… lazy as usual. But that's… beyond lazy! That's just… sad!"

"Yes, it is," Mustang agreed.

Ed instantly stopped laughing. "No way," he stated.

"What?"

"Did we just honestly agree on something?"

Mustang appeared to think back a bit before taking on a shocked expression. "You're right. I'm going home before hell freezes over and pigs start flying all over the place."

"Just for that, I'm attaching fake wings to a pig and throwing it at you tomorrow."

Mustang snorted, the bastard. "As if you could. Bye now!" And he walked away before Ed could tell him exactly what he thought of him and his sarcastic remarks.

END CH. 1