I'm. TRYING. To. Write. STOP. GIVING. ME. HOMEWORK!!! (except for you, Mrs.Bio - I don't mind if you give me homework!)
Does anyone else ever get this feeling? XD, Hello, I'm back. Again.
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"No, no! Go away!" Jean waved at Riza with much futility, trying to convince her not to clash her cymbals over his and Ed's heads. She considered it her duty to get all the soldiers in the house up and moving and had resorted to using a pair of cymbals to do it, but one certain Second Lieutenant was desperate to stay in bed with his sleeping companion who was still snuggled close in his sleeping bag.
"Please! He'll be cranky, can't we just sleep? There's no paperwork to do!"
"Then, as a responsible soldier, you should spend this leisure time keeping in shape, washing and patching your uniform, practicing your marksmanship-" Riza smashed the cymbals together when Jean stopped listening and rolled back onto his side against Ed. He jumped: "Noo! I said not to!"
Ed moaned and snuggled up tighter against Havoc's side.
"What the hell was that?" he mumbled.
"It's time to get up, FullMetal," Riza said clearly. Ed froze mid-stretch, blushing.
"Heyy!" He eyed her cymbals and pulled the sleeping bag flap over his head.
"Second Lieutenant. Up. That's an order. And get the Major up, too." Riza backtracked upstairs, where she stood, resolutely clashing her cymbals, in front of Roy's door for the next twenty minutes.
"Come on, Ed. An angry Hawkeye is a cruel, slave-driver Hawkeye." Jean climbed out of the sleeping bag and stashed the plastic bottle in his duffel bag. Ed groaned. Jean reached back into the sleeping bag, so Ed transmuted it shut.
"Don't make this difficult!" Jean whined. "Not at this hour." He got no response.
"You transmute that back right now, young man!" Jean tried to sound threatening, but Ed laughed inside his-...boy the air was getting stuffy in there. Ed opened up the bag and climbed out, deciding to get up if for no other reason than Jean and Riza were making it impossible to sleep. He immediately marched up past Riza, still clashing her cymbals, to check on Al.
"Hey, Al."
"Ung." Al was holding a pillow over his head. "Make her stop..." he groaned.
"OK, what do you want for breakfast?"
"Just make it stop."
Ed marched out into the hallway, shimmying past Riza and coming into Roy's bedroom uninvited. Roy was in much the same state as Al.
"Roy, get up." Ed stood over him.
"Look who's not even dressed yet," Roy retorted to the effect that Ed shouldn't be pointing fingers.
"Hawkeye's driving Al crazy-"
"Really?" Roy rolled over. Ed pursed his lips.
"I'm gonna go make breakfast."
"Sure," Roy muttered.
"I'm going to set your towels on fire with cooking oil."
"Uh-huh," Roy mumbled.
"Jeans' gonna teach me to blow smoke rings."
"Greayy..." Roy meant 'great' but he didn't know what he was talking about anyway. Ed sulked. Why wouldn't Roy pay attention?
"Roy-yy!" Ed sat on Roy's back and shook his shoulders.
"Gah! Ed, get off!"
"Payy at-ten-tion," Ed shook him again.
"I am! Get off my back!"
Ed slid off Roy's back and Roy rolled onto his side.
"That hurt, Ed," Roy warned him.
"You have to get up, Hawkeye won't stop banging her cymbals until you get up and she's driving Al crazy. And I'm hungry."
"Poor, poor, Alphonse," Roy snorted sarcastically. He immediately regretted it when he felt the heat of Ed's glare.
"Well she's driving me crazy too!"
"Up! I want food!"
"Eat some leftover curry."
"No! I hate that-"
"I'm going to sic Havoc on you again if you don't behave."
Ed became quite huffy, flushing and puffing himself up.
"Go get dressed," Roy ordered. Ed let out a little, "hmf," and left the room.
"Damn lazy bastard."
--
"Is the colonel awake?" Hawkeye asked. Ed glared at her for a moment, then snatched her cymbals and stormed back over to Roy's bed.
CHANG SMASH SHRING
"Edward-get-out-of-here-right-now-before-I-throw-you-out-a-window-for-God's-sake-what-is-wrong-with-you!"
CLASH! CLASH CLASH SHRING!
"EDW-"
"Up!" BANG! "Get up!" SHRINGG!
Roy jumped out of bed and Ed ran for the door, dropping the cymbals. Ed tripped on one as soon as he dropped it and Roy thought he had Ed captured, but Ed turned his tumble into a rolling somersault and came up onto his feet just in time to scurry into Al's room, where he transmuted the door out of the wall.
"Did she stop?" Al moaned.
"For now." Ed looked at his lethargic little brother closely, concentrating on the lump he made in the bed.
"Are you feeling alright, Al?"
"No. I'm achy all over."
"Would breakfast help?"
Al sighed and put some actual effort into thinking about it.
"Maybe some fruit," he suggested.
"I"ll be right back." Ed hopped to it.
--
Roy tried to detain him by blocking the bottom of the stairs, but Ed jumped over the railing and took refuge amidst the crowd of soldiers in Roy's kitchen as he searched for fruit good enough to feed to Al. Jean was holding the fridge door open and staring into it blankly. Ed ducked under the second lieutenant's arm and opened the fruit drawer. Jean grunted in recognition and rubbed the top of Ed's head, causing his hair to spring up in odd places, lumping in others. Ed whacked his hand away lightly and grabbed a bag of peaches from the drawer, a small pang surfacing in his chest when he realized he didn't really know whether or not Al still liked peaches. Ducking out from under Havoc's arm, Ed retreated upstairs with the fruit, slipping past Roy on the stairs and high-tailing it up to Al's room before Roy could say a word to him.
--
"Here, Al, peaches!" Ed said brightly. Al sighed from under his covers, then sat up, blinking owlishly.
"I haven't had peaches in years," Al yawned with an ironic tone to his voice. Ed smiled sadly, unsure what Al was trying to say. Was he angry? Ed handed him one of the ripe fruit and then took a bite of his own, watching Al carefully.
"It still doesn't taste... like it should. It tastes metallic," Al lamented softly. Ed sat down on the bed next to him, his motions soft and unalarming.
"It'll come back, Al, you know it will. It is coming back right now, remember? It takes you by surprise and freaks you out, but your taste is there sometimes."
"Not just my taste!" Al laughed. Ed nodded happily.
"See, it keeps coming back and one of these days it'll stay for good. I guess we just have to be patient..." Ed and Al stared at each other for a moment and then Ed lowered his gaze, guilt darkening his wide face.
"I'm sorry, Al," he said very quietly. "I'm so sorry. I know you've been patient ever since I put you in that body and I'm sorry." His voice lowered to a soft, attritional(1) whisper. "And I didn't even fix you," he added, tears burning in his eyes.
"Brother! Please don't cry, it's OK," Al was taken by surprise by Ed's guilt. "Does it even really matter how I got my body back?"
"Yes!" Ed shouted suddenly. "Yes it does because-! He used a stone, I know he did! He let me use it!"
"But, but Ed, we didn't kill those people-... did- did we?"
Ed shook his head angrily. "No, Al, we didn't but... I let him do the dirty work for me, Al. I should've kept studying the stone and found a way to get your body back sooner! I shouldn't have waited so long, I should've just..."
"No," Al growled suddenly. "No, you're wrong, Brother! You've been trying too hard these past years to tell me you should've been trying harder!
"But I- I should've been the one-"
"Who's going to take care of me now that I have a body," Al told him firmly. "Stop worrying about it. Let's just forget about it, OK? We can just put this behind us now."
Ed looked at his feet, reluctant to accept that getting Al's body back could end up being so painless. If he could just let it be that way. He glanced up at his light blond nii-san for a moment, opening his mouth to agree with Al to just let it be that simple.
He never spoke, having been interrupted by Al's bedroom window shattering. Envy somersaulted through the glass, landing a wild kick on Ed's automail arm that sent the blond flying backward onto the floor. Al screamed, knowing how defenseless he was at the moment. In seconds, Ed was up, in between Envy and Al's bed. Envy dove forward and wrapped his arms around Ed's waist. Disconcerted, Ed threw glancing blows on Envy's head and shoulders as the homonculus picked him up off the floor.
"BROTHER!" Al cried.
"It's OK, Al!" Ed reassured him rather unconvincingly as he kicked, battering Envy's stomach and upper legs. Envy didn't even seem to notice the kicks as he approached Al's bed, shuffling Ed up over his shoulder. Ed transmuted Envy's back into some abstract blobbish object. He would've done something more useful, but he wasn't completely certain of what Envy was made of. Envy stopped, twitching under Edward as his body tried to heal the abnormality on his back. Ed sloppily transmuted Envy's flesh a second time, taking mass from his leg and piling it onto a random spot on his stomach. Envy crashed face-forward to the floor and Ed slid off his shoulder, jumped to his feet and grabbed two fistfuls of Envy's thick, bunchy hair. He swung the homonculus by his locks and sent him flying out the window just as Roy and Jean burst through the door. Al screamed at them that the homonculi were here and to help his brother, but by that time it didn't seem like Ed needed very much help.
"Tell me exactly what happened," Roy demanded as Ed turned from the window to face him, panting from the effort it had taken to jettison Envy.
"Al and I were talking, Envy jumped through the window, I threw him out. Hohenheim knows we're here," Ed summarized with an unusual amount of composure for such a young man.
"We have to move," Roy frowned. Ed shook his head.
"We'll be followed. I don't want to run."
"What are you suggesting?" Jean looked bemused as if he thought Ed hadn't thought out a plan of any kind.
"We'll set a trap." Ed looked around, his mind working out the details. "We need to keep Al safe, in the center of the house and guarded. We'll wait for the homonculi to strike again and we'll capture them. Then he'll have no choice but to make a move on his own."
"What are we going to do with him here?!" Roy demanded. Ed's composure faltered, uncertainty flickering across his face.
"Brother, what are you planning on doing to Dad?"
Ed met Al's gaze squarely, no mercy in his expression. "I'm going to make him leave us alone, Al."
Al argued silently with his for a few seconds before speaking up. "What if I don't want him to leave us alone?"
Ed faltered for a moment, well aware of how angry Al would be at his next words. Then he gave a small shake of his head.
"No, Al. I'm your big brother, I'll take care of you and I won't ever let him near you again."
Al gasped in shocked anger, his brother's betrayal startling him to indignance.
"You can't do that, Ed!"
"I can and I will, Al. To protect you."
Al's face contorted in fury that clearly rivaled Ed's in potency. "Don't get a big head, Brother!" he snapped quietly. Ed just shook his head.
Al glanced to Roy and Havoc, but unfortunately, neither was sure of what to do. Roy realized when Al looked at him that he felt as though what Ed wanted to do with Hohenheim was none of his business as long as Hohenheim didn't hurt his little FullMetal. Jean was simply unwilling to take action, or sides, until his commanding officer made his opinion clear.
"Well?" Al demanded of them.
"You two have to work it out..." Roy replied noncommitally.
"Oh boy, you're a lotta help," Al growled, turning to focus his attention on his brother once more.
"Listen, Ed-"
"Do you even remember how he treated us?"
"Yes I do." Al's voice was low and dangerous. "He got me my body back. then he brought us both back to Central."
"Al!" Ed's surprised cry was slightly strangled. "He tied me to a wall, let Envy beat the crap out of me, wouldn't let you visit Winry and then tried to hold us as hostages while he- I don't know- tried to bribe Roy or kill him or-"
"You overreacted to that!" Al accused him.
"And the rest?" Ed retorted. Al broke into tears.
"I know he was bad to us, but I want to give him a chance! He's our father and I want to get to talk to him, to see if we get along, to try to get to know him!"
"Don't cry, dammit!" Ed balled up his fists in frustration.
"I don't trust him," Roy broke in with a firm, purposeful tone of voice, "but if he's in charge of the homonculi then we can't just dispose of him and set those monsters free." He paused before continuing, "So if Al wants to get to know him, he'll have a chance during the time that Hohenheim is under my jurisdiction because that's where I want him." Roy's mouth was just a little ahead of his brain, but Ed nodded. Al continued to glare at his big brother, but addressed his question to Roy in a shaky, wet voice.
"How are you going to capture him?"
Roy glanced at Jean to see if he had any bright ideas.
"We could use Ed as bait," Jean suggested. He honestly wouldn't have said anything, except that Roy had obviously been fishing for ideas.
"No," Roy shook his head.
"Why not?" Ed asked skeptically.
"You're already bait enough without setting anything up."
"That's what I wanted to do in the first place! Just sit and wait!" Ed yipped. Jean looked disapproving, while Roy was obviously bemused by Ed's childish tone.
Envy catapulted himself back through the window, landed behind Ed and was completely unprepared to have Al throw a book at him. It didn't cause the homonculus any real harm, but he hadn't been expecting it and the distraction gave Ed enough time to whirl around. Instead of attacking Envy, Ed dropped to his knees and transmuted a net of vines which wrapped around Envy's limbs and torso. Roy jumped forward and pulled Ed behind him, causing Jean to step on Ed's heel as he stepped forward after Roy. Ed easily slipped away from the two men. He ran past Envy to look out the window and saw Hohenheim standing out in the street, looking up at the house. Ed froze, unsure of what to do. Jean was suddenly behind him, bumping the alchemist in his haste to see what Ed was looking at.
"Holy shit! Colonel, Hohenheim's right there in the street."
Roy's expression took on a trapped look and he glanced back and forth from Envy to the window.
"Does he see you?" he asked Jean.
"Yeah. He's staring at us."
Roy thought carefully. He wanted to officially arrest Hohenheim, but what could he charge him with? He'd slapped Ed and threatened him back at the office, but the only witnesses were Roy's own subordinates. It was enough to arrest Hohenheim, but not to keep him in military custody for very long. Accusing him of conspiracy against the military and performing taboo transmutations was a much more permanent option, but there was a good chance that by doing so, Roy would open a veritable Pandora's Box. There was still no telling how many in the military knew about the homonculi and supported them.
"You're taking too long!" Ed complained, "Let's just tie him up in here. No one will care of he turns up missing," he added darkly.
"You don't know that, Ed. We have to think before we take action," Roy returned.
Ed snorted. "He's walking away now. By the time you're done thinking, he'll be in Drachma."
"Impeccable timing as usual, Ed. I really appreciate your brilliant commentary right now."
"Anything for you, Mustang." Ed indicated his displeasure with the use of Roy's surname as he headed out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Roy and Jean anxiously began to follow, neither trusting Ed to handle the situation by himself.
Jean was promptly sent back upstairs to fetch and guard Al.
"Hey! Hohenheim!" Ed ran up behind the blond man, shouting to get his attention. Hohenheim turned, his expression mildly surprised, as if he'd expected Ed to just let him go. Ed smacked his hands together to transmute, but as soon as Hohenheim's hands were bound in wire, a red flash shot out from one of the man's palms, disintegrating the wires and binding Ed's arms to his sides and his legs to the ground.
Roy jumped forward, fingers and gloves at the ready, but Hohenheim ignored him, addressing Edward instead.
"Are you going to turn yourself in, Edward?"
"Hell, no! I want you to turn yourself in!" Ed struggled against his confines, growing frustrated very quickly and snapping to Roy, "A little help here!"
"Get out yourself or be patient." Roy snapped his fingers, an explosion next to Hohenheim causing him to stagger. Ed recognized Roy's tactic of trying to scare Hohenheim into at-least partial submission. It didn't look like it was working, though. The blond was continuing to stagger from the force of Roy's explosions, but his face remained still, his expression one of deep annoyance. Ed managed to wrestle his hands together, ridding himself of Hohenheim's binding. He stepped up next to Roy and elbowed him petulously. "Just hit him already! Stop messing around!"
Roy's mouth dropped open and he paused in his attack to turn to Ed.
"I'm not going to hurt him that badly! Do you want me to kill him?" It was plain from Roy's tone that he didn't expect Ed to say yes. Which is exactly what the little blond FullMetal Alchemist did.
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(1) I went on one of those, "I know there must be a perfect word for this," dictionary hunts and came up with attrition:
n. 1. Wearing away by friction. 2. Gradual wearing down of strength and morale by harassment.
Hmm... I think the dictionary at my school had a slightly different definition. I found it as a synonym for apologetic...But you get the idea. I realized when I went back to type this that I had already forgotten what it meant, which probably meant it was not a wisely used word (No-DUH, I'd never seen it before XP) and I thought perhaps if I put a definition here, no one would be angry at having to find their own dictionary. Although there is always Wiki, but...
Finally! Another chapter up! Sorry for the wait, R&R!