I love Malfoy as a ferret- Yes, band people are some of the messiest people Ember knows. It gets pretty bad sometimes. And she's glad you agree with the pick for Roy. She figured he needed something with a great amount of finger dexterity required, since he's always snapping in the manga/anime. As for Ed, she's not sure if she mentioned it or not, but he plays trumpet and she tried to make that a bit clearer. Why trumpet? It's really loud and really characteristic in tone- kinda like Ed. Plus, Ember LOVES long reviews... and they get long review responses (wink wink nudge nudge) XD.

SendMeAGiftBasketOrElse- The dance party in the guitar room is no lie. Ember plays clarinet in the real world, and that's exactly what her section did one time. It was every bit as pathetic as Ed and Roy made it out to be. Try to picture whiter-than-anything girls rapping. Yeah. It didn't work out. BTW, somehow it doesn't surprise Ember that it was a saxophone player that started your random dance party. Saxophone players are crazy as a general rule, but a fun crazy. Ember loves your joke, as does her cohort Rags to Riches, and thank you kindly for your long review!

~*~*~

Ember's going on vacation! After a two-day jaunt in St. Louis, she'll be heading somewhere quieter and closer to home (and therefore kept a closely guarded secret). So there won't be updates, but there could be a great story when she gets back!

And now...

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 2: The Aftermath

When they arrived the next day Roy quickly noticed that Elric was avoiding him like the plague as much as was possible in their situation. Not that that was surprising or even really unwanted; Roy had a lot to puzzle through about that situation.

That would have to wait, though. Before he had time to himself there was another day of practice to get through.

The morning would pass relatively quickly, since it was all review of what they had done yesterday. All that remained was correcting more of the freshmen who, being new, were almost invariably doing something wrong.

Flipping through the music people had already brought him to play during marching warm-ups when they got to that, Roy grimaced. Clearly they hadn't understood the requirements. He had to know how fast the song was, so an approximation of the beats per minute was necessary, and several of the songs he recognized as containing various profanities. Since this was a school activity, he just couldn't allow the latter, even if they were good songs.

Roy sighed. He'd just have to remind everyone of what he could and couldn't do. Again.

As he'd predicted, the morning went smoothly with no interruptions. It was early in the season and people weren't used to marching for so long out of the day. They weren't energetic enough to be up to their usual antics just yet. That was really a good thing, since Roy wasn't sure anyone else had the energy to deal with the troublemakers that, while really only numbering a few people, could easily seem to make up half the band.

During lunch there were a few freshman squabbles he'd had to deal with, but nothing too major. He'd had practice dealing with and being in far worse than that. His shouting matches with Elric were still something of a legend, and he'd caught everyone except the freshmen looking at them almost expectantly, as if they were certain they would start screaming at each other at any moment. So the relatively minor quarrels everyone else had were incredibly easy to deal with.

There was no rehearsal as a band that day. The director had decided that the time would be better put to use in sectionals fixing the many mistakes everyone was making. Roy was fine with that; it made his job easier, since all he and Elric had to do was make sure everyone was indeed working.

Doing his rounds quickly, he finally made it to the guitar room where the clarinets were supposed to be practicing. Hopefully this time they actually were; he had very nearly been scarred for life by the attempts at dancing that had been displayed the day before.

Quickly poking his head in, he sighed quietly with relief when he found they actually were practicing.

Before he could leave, though, the section leader called, "Roy!"

"Yes?" he asked, silently hoping this wouldn't take too long.

"Could you take a look at this one part? No one knows how to play it."

"Hang on. You're lucky I brought my clarinet; I can actually take a look at it. I'll be back." And with that he left the room with a spare part in hand, already skimming through it to try and guess how it would go.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ed walked around the halls in a more meandering way, checking rooms here and there as he went. He really didn't care where he went first. It didn't matter, as long as they made sure everyone was practicing like they should.

Of course, it had taken longer than it should have to escape the trumpet room. Everyone there had had some form of greeting for the drum major that played trumpet, maybe a comment here or there, and he'd had to respond to them all. While the trumpet section might not have been as large as, say, the piccolos, it was still a relatively big section and there were a lot of people in it.

When his feet led him towards where the guitar room was, Ed paused for a second. He remembered that Mustang had said the other day that the clarinets had been slacking off, so he should check on them. But the mental images he'd created had been truly horrific, and he was somewhat afraid of going in there.

Carefully he turned around the corner, braced to run at any second. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary so far. Then again, they could simply have learned the need to be quiet about slacking off.

Ed quickly shook his head. Slacking clarinets were never quiet; it was one of the first things everyone learned about the section. In all likelihood they were actually working.

Still, he was admittedly mildly apprehensive of what he might see.

Standing near the door, his eyes widened as he quickly looked inside.

Of all the things he'd expected to see, none had been the scene before him.

The clarinets were all paying close attention to Mustang, who had his own instrument and was evidently showing the rest how a part went.

Ed stood there for some time, taking in the scene of working clarinets. Goodness knew it was a rare enough scene. And it was a nice change to watch someone who clearly enjoyed doing what he did share his knowledge with others.

All of a sudden he froze. This was just wrong. He shouldn't be standing here like some kind of crazy stalker.

He couldn't help but look at the scene one last time and smile, though, before walking away.

As he began wandering aimlessly once more, he noticed that two saxophone players had somehow escaped their section leader and were messing around with a paper airplane, throwing it back and forth.

Walking between the two he deftly caught the paper airplane between the first two fingers of his left hand before proceeding down the hall accompanied by many protests.

After a while he shouted back in their direction. "You can make another one just like it when you're done with sectionals! Now get back to your section!"

Finding a corner, funnily enough the same one he'd spent the day before doing homework in, he sat down, examining the plane. It wasn't a horrible job, but Ed was amazed it had flown as well as it did. The properties were all wrong.

Refolding the plane here and there, he soon made it far better than anything those two saxophone players could have dreamed of. He smirked. It paid to pay attention in science classes.

Experimentally tossing the plane down the hallway, he smirked again as he saw it glide all the way to the other end before gently landing on the floor.

Picking it up, he decided that it would be more fun to have the plane rotate as it went and adjusted the wings accordingly.

Suddenly he remembered the conversation he'd had with Mustang the night before. He chuckled briefly. This could get interesting.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Roy was about to leave for the evening when something hit him in the back of the head. Turning around quickly, he looked for both the object and whoever had thrown it. He found a paper airplane, but the only person around was Elric, and he was walking away, already farther away than Roy was sure a plane could be thrown.

Sighing, he looked at the paper airplane more closely. It was designed differently than anything he'd seen made before. Wondering how it would fly, he threw it down a side hallway, amazed when it hit the door at the end at a height almost to the ceiling. It was a strange design, but it flew amazingly. Maybe Elric had thrown it after all.

Looking at it once more, his eyes widened when he saw a drawing of a pig's head with wings on one wing.

That was strange. Carefully Roy unfolded the plane to see if there was anything else on it.

There was a single line of handwriting. I told you I'd throw a pig with wings at you.

Roy stared at it for a while and then began laughing. It seemed Elric had a sense of humor after all.

END CH. 2