Unlikely things to get through your letterbox:
Colonel Roy Mustang was just moving in to his new apartment in Central. It had been very recently vacated and he was still getting some of the post for the previous occupant. As a result, when he looked through the pile in his letterbox each morning, the result was a mixed bag; not only did he have the questionable letters for his predecessor, who seemed to have as many girlfriends in a week as Havoc did in a month – many at the same time – but he also got so much advertising.
Admittedly, yes, neither he nor, apparently, the previous resident had had enough time to do some of the more time-consuming household chores, but he still felt a little blow to his pride as a homeowner when he pulled out the following advert.
Have you seen this dog?
At first, he thought it was a desperate plea for help finding a lost yet loved pet.
No? Perhaps your windows are too dirty! Bob Heaven, window cleaner.
Okay, plus one for creative advertising, minus several thousand for the insult.
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Around the time of the Midwinter Feast, advertisements were pouring thick and fast through the letterboxes of the residents of Lt. Colonel Hughes's block of flats. They ranged from adverts for children's toys to… offers aimed at single men. Maes lifted the pile out the small metal cage below the slit that prevented his little angel from getting the post and shredding it before taking it through to the kitchen table. There, he sat down while his beautiful wife made breakfast for the three of them and sorted through the various letters, parcels and advertisements. As he reached one, an almost-smirk touched his lips.
Need a room clearing? Call me – I'll come round and fart in it!
Clearly, some people enjoyed their friends and family visits about as much as a visit to a particularly sadistic dentist.
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Lieutenant Hawkeye had battled her way through a depressingly low number of boxes – could her life really be packed up in so few pieces? – to search through her post for anything from what remained of her family or from the few close enough friends in the East to write to her.
There was a greater volume of post than she had had in the Eastern sector, but as she began to flick through the wodge of paper, she soon saw why. Over half of it was adverts for services, goods, events, shops and other such things. She set the pile down and made Black Hayate's breakfast, as he made it his mission to be in her way as much as possible until she fed him. Once that was done, and she was eating her own food, she reached over with the hand not holding her toast to finish sorting the pile. About three quarters of the way through, she stopped.
Are you looking for a dog-walking service? Then call Ace Kebabs, 318-318
If she found whoever put that through her letterbox, bullets would fly.
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The delivery boy had trudged through miles of snow to reach Briggs Fortress, as he had every Friday. He was the lowest-ranked employee of Pizza House and, as was expected, he had been given the arduous task of delivering the weekly Friday treat to the soldiers.
The teen, face still speckled with acne, shivered as he thought of all of the horror stories told about Olivier Armstrong, the diamond-hard leader of Briggs. Legend had it that she bathed in the tears of pain shed by suitors and drank wine mixed with the blood of Cretan spies.
He stumbled through a last snowdrift and rapped on the door. The man he had overheard another soldier call Buccaneer loomed in the opened doorway. Swallowing past the sudden lump in his throat, the boy checked one last time that the alchemic array that kept the pizzas hot was working.
"P-pizza delivery…" his voice cracked to a pitch that had him sounding like he was ten again.
Without saying a word, the mountain of muscle and automail steel took the pizzas and placed the small amount of cenz into the teen's hand.
'Buy one get one free for Friday' did not work out as well as the owners had hoped.
The following Saturday, Briggs received a flyer from Pizza House.
Pizza! Buy one, pay full price.
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Living in such an out-of-the-way place as Resembool, anyone or anything new was the cause for much talk. When the citizens of the small town began to have strange letters through their doors or, for those without letterboxes, underneath the doors, it was understandable that tongues would wag.
Trisha Elric, still trying to fend off her boys' questions about where their father went, got potentially the most disturbing of them.
Do you know what's in your attic? It's me; I've been in there since the Midwinter Feast
It turned out in the end that it was one of the few teens of the town who had accepted a drunken dare from his friends.
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Cars were becoming a more and more common sight around Central. There was a large range from the utility vehicles used by merchants to the armoured vehicles used for transporting soldiers and weapons to the toys for the rich. Along with this upsurge in numbers that saw horses and cars at about equal numbers, there was a corresponding increase in corporations using this popularity to make money.
One fad amongst the young men using cars to pick up girls was to have stickers on the rear bumper of their car. Of course, worried parents soon inspired a new series of stickers that would enable them to keep a close eye on how their much-loved son or daughter was doing.
Hence why Roy Mustang, Military Academy Student, was now pulling out a small black and white flyer from his morning's post.
How's my driving? Call 0-100-crashed-into-your-house
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Heymans Breda was still only half-way through unpacking all of his boxes after the move from Eastern to Central. He gave himself a time limit and set to unpacking at least three boxes a day, in between military duties and basic human needs.
It was a week since he had been transferred, and he was on his way to work. He noted the envelopes in the little wire cage on the inside of his letterbox, but would wait until his working day was done. So, after a day that had few differences to his days in Eastern, he returned home.
Among the plain envelopes, there was a glossy leaflet.
Looking for an undertaker? Why not call Ace Kebabs on 318-318
If that was a joke, it was not a funny one.
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In the time of unrest following the Promised Day and everyone in the country simultaneously dying and then returning to life, many facets of life took their sweet time to return to normal.
One of these facets was the post office. The postmen, timid when dealing with Den on a good day, had become infinitely worse. Pinako sighed as she answered the door, only to see the back of an Amestrian Mail uniform headed over the hill at speed.
Again.
She snatched up the slip wedged in between the door jamb and the door itself.
Amestrian mail parcel delivery. We called, you were in, so we ran away before you could answer.
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Shoddy workmanship was the bane of Kain Fuery's life. If he had ten cenz for every set that fell to pieces only weeks after being mended or upgraded, then he would be a rich man. As it was, he just hurried along behind the, to his mind, 'lesser' workmen and picked up the pieces they left various delicate items of equipment in.
He had almost cried once, seeing what a pig's ear some hooligan had made of a state-of-the-art radio set that he would have, if not killed, then at least permanently maimed for.
As the second youngest member of the team, and the least intimidating in stature, looks and attitude, he was the one tasked with fetching the post for the group. Anyone asking Major Elric would have probably lost at least an arm to the, ahem, temperamental young alchemist.
He looked through the pile of envelopes and such, only to find that a piece of junk mail had slipped past the normally eagle-eyed staff manning the post stations of the base.
Radio problems? Let me come round and swear at it.
It was an insult to any practitioner of the finely tuned art of keeping military technology happy.