Number of words: 2,430
Published date: October 14, 2012
Began chapter: October 9, 2012
Finished chapter: October 13, 2012
Chapter 11: Teacher
"Just what is all this supposed to be?"
Greed stood at the table, staring in mild disbelief at the huge stack of books piled up in Pride- no, Selim's "study room."
The room was as nice as every other room in the mansion: big windows, a few paintings, thick and sturdy table, gilding along the top and bottom of the walls, floor covered in an expensive-looking blue rug. And neatly tucked into the far corner, a large, shiny black grand piano. Ah, this was the life! How had they ever put up with that cold and gloomy lair underneath Central? Surely Pops could have created an equally comfortable home for them if he'd wanted to. Even though Greed could only remember having lived there for the short span of his second life, it amazed him to think that he must have put up with it in his first life at least for a while.
Selim rolled his eyes at him cheekily. "They're my textbooks, Greed. Duh."
Edward was picking through the bookcase, fingers playing along the spines of each book as he muttered under his breath.
"We left off on the post-transition metals, and that was a while ago, so we'll probably need a refresher on corrosion and oxidation… Let's see, where did that go…? Ah, here it is: Charnock's Seed of Metals." He pulled one of the books off the shelf and set it down on the already impressive stack on the table, then stood back, rubbing his chin and eyes scanning the shelf. "I thought there was a copy of Quintessence as well… Hmm…"
It wasn't as if Greed was interested in Selim's alchemy training. Certainly not! He was just bored, and Ed had asked him to be Selim's fighting teacher, and Greed had innocently asked about Selim's study schedule, and Selim had been eager to drag him up to the room and show off how much he was learning, and why was it that smart kids bragged about how much work they did when Greed was quite happy to brag that he didn't have any work to do? Damn preppy kids had no idea how useless their knowledge was in the real world! Street smarts were far more useful.
Well, if he was going to train the brat, at least he'd have plenty of time to teach him the most basic of street smarts: dirty fighting. Sand in the eyes, blows to the groin, going for the throat, pulling hair, biting, the whole nine yards. If the kid held their lives in his hands, Greed was not going to let him be caught unable to protect himself.
He lifted the textbook from the stack, hefted it, set it down and shifted through some of the others.
"'Principles of Spheres'? 'A Beginner's Guide to Algebra'? 'The Complete Encyclopaedia of Amestris's History'? 'Basic Geography'?" He felt a headache coming on and he didn't even have to read them! He raised an eyebrow at Selim incredulously. "These aren't all alchemy, are they?"
"Nu-uh," Selim responded, shaking his head from where he stood perched on the desk's chair. "Those are my school textbooks."
"School? You go to school?" he asked. "First I've heard of that. Is it summer vacation or something?" But Selim, already distracted by one of the books, either didn't hear Greed's question or didn't consider it worth answering, and Ed was so intently focused on his own task that he definitely hadn't heard him.
He glanced over at Ms. Bradley, who had joined them for no particular reason that Greed knew of. (He assumed she had nothing better to do with her time either.) She gave him a sheepish look, as if embarrassed by the rude lack of response on her son and Edward's part.
"Selim is home schooled," she explained. "John was discreet about it, but he hinted that the military would be more… comfortable, I suppose, or accommodating… if I kept him out of the public school system. We didn't think to change his name until it was too late, and for someone my age to be raising him... Well, the coincidences might bring up difficult questions with his teachers and whatnot, so this just seemed like a safer choice. And even though the military doesn't know that he remembers everything, it's much nicer for Selim to learn like this. He's so smart, it'd be a shame to hold him back just so that he matches his 'age' compared to other children."
She spared a moment to smile proudly at her son, though Selim didn't see it. The kid had managed to pull Ed from the bookcase, and the two were leaning over a textbook, discussing electrotivity or negativogy or something like that; he wasn't really listening.
"John's arranged for special accommodations; the military handles the paperwork, and Selim goes in to take tests every few weeks. He has assignments and reports and such to complete as well. He's already doing work a few years above his peer group, and there was some concern over that, but Edward and Alphonse had already started teaching him alchemy at that point and they vouched for his… amnesia. What with history, geography, mathematics, Xingese, alchemy – That pretty much covers all of the sciences just by itself! – and his extra piano and violin lessons, he likes to keep a fairly structured schedule."
Greed's jaw dropped at the list.
"Isn't that, like, child abuse or something?"
"Child... abuse?" she repeated in confusion. "I'm not forcing Selim in any of his studies. He set his workload all on his own." She leaned over towards him and held up a hand to whisper conspiratorially, "I think he's hoping to beat Edward's record."
"What record?" Greed asked.
"His title as youngest State Alchemist. Edward joined the military when he was twelve, and I suspect Selim is pushing himself so hard so that he can beat that number."
Greed didn't know his older brother all that well, but it seemed like something Pride'd try to do. He chuckled lightly at her suggestion that it was a competition to him, then shrugged and replied, "Well, anything's possible. No reason why he can't manage to pull it off."
He fell silent for a moment, then turned back to her as he realized something.
"And you're okay with that?"
She didn't understand what he was implying immediately, so he elaborated.
"A child as State Alchemist? Pretty sure Ed only got away with that 'cause he's so skilled and he didn't have parents to say he couldn't. I mean, I'm hardly an expert on how mothers think, but I kind of expected you to be against something like that."
Ms. Bradley's green eyes went introspective for a moment and her hands unconsciously clasped her purple shawl, fidgeting with the fringe as she searched for the right words. She kept her voice low, clearly not wanting Selim to hear them now.
"... It's true, I'd prefer it if his aspirations weren't quite so... extraordinary. And if he succeeds, I won't be able to see him very often. But he's always wanted to become a State Alchemist, and now that the State Alchemy program has been revised, there wouldn't be any risk of him being called into combat. I'd still worry, of course; I'm his mother, after all! But I want him to be happy, and if this is what he wants, I'll do my best to support him."
Greed nodded vaguely. He couldn't say he was as familiar with wanting to help others get what they wanted (when compared to simply wanting what he wanted), but it was a desire all the same, so he could kind of see where she was coming from.
Wait a minute; she said history, geography, mathematics, and-
He began to paw through the stack of books again, ignoring Ed and Selim's looks of irritation at having their concentration broken. After just barely managing to catch one of the piles before the whole thing fell to the floor (He re-stacked it hastily so that it would probably fall right back over onto the next person who touched it.), he found what he was looking for:
A Xingese drill book.
He flipped it open, looked at what he assumed were lines of Xingese characters copied in Selim's small and neat handwriting. It was all gibberish to him, of course.
"Hey, kid," he said, holding the book up so Selim could see. "This is Xingese, right? You're studying Xingese?"
"Yeeaah?" Selim drew out his response, obviously not certain what Greed was getting at.
"Do you still have your beginner's books, or whatever they're called?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"I want to look at them."
"Why? Do you want to study Xingese too?"
Greed shrugged as if he didn't really care either way. "Well, you know, if I wanna' get to Xing eventually, I might as well pick up some stuff beforehand, right?"
Ed looked impressed by the thought. "That's a good idea. You should go and talk to Al about it. He's the expert when it comes to Xing; I know nothing about the language. Or the culture. There were just so many other things going on at the time that Ling never had the chance to tell me about his country, and he left immediately after the final fight. Then again..." Ed paused and grinned at him jokingly. "You could very well know more than me, since you were stuck with him for so long. He can't have remained silent the entire time. Did he ever shut up? I mean, I like Ling and he's a great guy to have watching your back, but talk about never taking a hint! Once he decided I was his friend, I couldn't make him get lost no matter how hard I tried. And you couldn't get rid of him! He must've been really annoying, huh?"
Greed crossed his arms over his chest and frowned.
"Definitely in the beginning, but actually, he wasn't all that bad. Once he figured out that I wasn't interested in trading the world for a puny country, he pretty much stopped pestering me except for food. I think he settled on some kind of weird martial arts meditation or something; he stayed silent most of the time. And if I was bored and tried to strike up a conversation, he always managed to steer it in a direction where he'd be able to ask about our plans and secrets. Crafty brat." He chuckled to himself briefly. "Not that he ever tricked me, but still, he definitely took his position seriously."
In the background, Ms. Bradley sighed and huffed and put her hands on her hips in a mock display of annoyance. All three boys looked at her.
"What's up?" Greed asked.
"Oh, it's nothing," she replied, smiling lightly to show that she wasn't really being serious. "Just another conversation that I couldn't completely follow."
Greed laughed at that.
"Sorry, Ma'am, but that's something you're just going to have to get used to!"
"I'm sorry, Mother, but it's really better that you don't-"
"I know, dear. I know," she reassured Selim.
Ed sighed, discreetly turning the conversation back to Ling.
"I'm running out of excuses for not visiting him. Now that the trains are running, having an automail leg doesn't cut it anymore. Roy's been teasing that I'm going to start a war between Xing and Amestris if I don't accept his invitations soon, and Al's been saying that the last thing I want to do is force Ling to come here instead. Apparently the fact that I haven't jumped at the Emperor's beck and call yet is scandalous enough in and of itself! The way Al puts it, the people of Xing think I'm some kind of uncouth, ill-mannered country bumpkin with no manners at all!"
"Then they're right on the mark, huh?"
"Hey!"
Greed laughed again and waved off Ed's indignation, leaving to find Alphonse and ask about Xingese lessons. It couldn't be that tough a language to learn. Right?
He stood corrected.
Man, did he stand corrected!
Alphonse hadn't even gotten to the actual lessons yet, and Greed already felt overwhelmed.
Al had been delighted when he heard Greed's request. An obvious passion for the country, its culture and language and people, shone in Al's eyes as he set out Selim's old Xingese books at the dining room table. He began to explain that before Greed could even think of starting to form sentences, he had to learn how to pronounce things, how to distinguish between a hundred or so characters that were essential to the language, how to use the all-important dictionary, how to properly write the characters, how they didn't write their sentences in the same direction and they didn't use the same punctuation, and... Gah, I didn't sign up for this! I thought it would be- Well, okay, not easy per se, but certainly not this complicated!
It felt weird to have two conflicting desires.
Greed wanted to learn Xingese, or at least enough of it to impress Ling.
He also didn't want to put in a whole lot of effort in doing so.
It had been exceedingly rare for him to come to an impasse as far as his avarice was concerned, and Greed wasn't really sure how to reconcile this dilemma. He tried for a shortcut-
"Hey, Al, I'm sure it's better to learn this the long way, but isn't there some kind of quick and dirty phrasebook that would give me the basics?"
"No, trust me, you don't want to go that route. If you don't know the basics, the phrasebook will have you butchering the language so badly Ling will have no choice but to kick you out of the country."
-but with that option gone, it looked like it would simply be impossible for him to have it both ways.
He listened to Al's eager instructions for his 'lesson plan', trying not to let his eyes glaze over at the avalanche of information, but when Al handed him the first few drill books and the dictionary and the beginner's guide and a few other "useful" volumes to round off the pile, Greed quickly took the load up to his room, dumped it on the desk, stared at it for a moment, and then shrugged.
Well, Ling's already really good at our language anyway, he thought. It probably won't make any real difference if I learn it.
Being lazy: One.
Impressing Ling: Zero.
Oh well. He'd never claimed to be good at delayed gratification anyway!
Author's Notes:
Charnock: Thomas Charnock was an English alchemist and occultist. I found his name while randomly searching for scientific alchemy references. The books are made-up. Eventually I may go back and change the fake alchemy references to be real (for our world), but I'd rather not waste so much time researching such facts at the moment.
Xingese: I'm going with the idea that Xing has its own language (both written and spoken). We know for sure that they have a different writing system (from the note that informs Lan Fan that Ling got the Philosopher's Stone). It is less certain if their spoken language is different, for considering the lack of contact between the two countries, Ling, Lan Fan, Fu, and May all seem flawlessly proficient in speaking Amestrian/English. I don't know how to explain their proficiency except with the idea that they must have spent a lot of time preparing to travel to Amestris, rather than traveling to the country on a whim. Perhaps special language training is given to the Emperor's heirs and the heirs' attendants thanks to their elevated status in the kingdom. In any event, I believe that the canon Xingese characters are exceptions and that ordinary, common citizens do not speak a language that Amestrians would understand.
