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5. Fullmetal Alchemist: "Tell Me"



Edward Elrik walked into a small clearing. He pulled his white gloves over his hands more, sighing. A gust of chilling wind blew, blowing his long, red jacket and braded ponytail. Ed’s big, black shoes seemed to vanish in the darkness of the night.
“Finally...” he thought scanning the clearing with his brown eyes, “a place I can practice.”
He walked into the middle where three stones were. They were set up like steps going up into the pitch-black sky. Ed sat on the smallest and sighed once more.
“It’s so dark...” he thought, looking up at the full moon, “even with the moon... I didn’t think it was going to take that long to find someplace.”
Then he remembered Winery yelling at him that morning to get back by dinner. His stomach growled hungrily to prove it was far past that. He couldn’t help but not care. Something about it there was peaceful. Edward closed his eyes and leaned back on the medium rock.
After a few minutes, a deep male’s voice whispered in his ear softly, “That’s no fun. Do not just sit there waiting for it. You want to live don’t’ you?”
Ed’s eyes opened wide in surprise. He hadn’t heard a soul approach. Without thinking, he quickly clapped his hands and slammed his palms into the ground. Some kind of circle with strange symbols appeared under his hands, glowing bright blue. The light disappeared just as fast as it had came, followed by a loud grumble under the ground.
“Eat rock.” Ed joked, standing up and turning around toward the stranger.
He saw the, once medium rock, grow out of the ground like a giant snake, shoot up into the air and slam head first into the ground as he planned, but no sign of anyone. There were soft chuckled of amusement coming from right behind Edward.
“I’m not a mortal such as yourself,” the same voice stated, “I’m special...”
Ed quickly turned around to find the voice had come from a tall, thin, brown haired teen. His pale skin was clear from the moon’s soft light. His outfit was simple enough. Only a black, torn up t-shirt and a pear of hole covered jeans. The man crossed his arms, slightly irritated by Ed not responding. Edward just frowned in annoyance. Such a perfect place messed up by people like him.
“I have no business with you,” Ed said, rolling his eyes at the man, “so get lost.”
“But I have business with you,” the man declared, grinning to show two large, white fangs.
Ed took a step back in surprise. He hadn’t seen that coming. Taking advantage of Ed’s lack of focus, the guy appeared out of nowhere behind him. Just the thought of all that blood pumping through Ed made his hunger grow. He tilted his head to the side, getting ready to aim for his throat. Ed wanted... needed to move but couldn’t. Something was holding him there. He could barely talk.
“Wha-what are y-you?” he stuttered, doing everything he could to move. No luck.
“You don’t know?” the man asked as if he cared, “I’m a-“
However, he was suddenly interrupted by a loud BANG that came from the direction of the forest. A bullet shot through the air with perfect accuracy. It slashed through the man’s jaw in a blink of an eye. He flew through the air from the impact and landed in a heap on the grassy floor.
“vampire.” another voice finished the man’s sentence. This time it was a female.
A tall figure walked out of the forest toward Edward. She looked to be about 17 but it was hard to tell for she wore a long, black trench coat. It was double buttoned from the hips up to her large collar. The rest of the way down was open so you could see her blood red pants. On the chest, there was a giant metal cross. She held a huge silver gun at her side.
“Who the heck are you people!” Ed yelled, finally able to move, “what are you blabbing about vampires? They don’t’ exist!”
The woman raised a thin eyebrow, for the first time looking at Ed with her ocean blue eyes.
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6. Fullmetal Alchemist: "Blood"

Mustang understood what it meant to be bleeding to death. How your body worked, or, rather, ceased to work. Blood rushed to a wound to try and heal it, to put platelets through it to clot it, but all too often in the military, wounds were just too deep, shredding through layers upon layers of delicate flesh and organs, breaking any chance at life, or they were simply too wide for the body, leaving huge tracts of skin gone, or openings in arteries too big to be closed in time. He understood what the body did, how it only poured more blood than you’d swear you’d have ever seen through a hole that didn’t even look all that bad, when all it needed to be doing was cutting off supply to just that one little vein.

Edward’s body writhed underneath him as he tried to hold him still. He understood it to be dying, yes, he understood the science, how Ed would be disoriented now with the drowning, the pain, the shock. Without enough blood cells to carry the oxygen, his head would spin and his body heave from sucking in lungfulls of air, only to get not even enough to keep his mind afloat. With pain, he grimaced, shook, whimpered through the spazmed breaths, but shock, shock did all that and more. When there ceased to be enough blood in the veins for even the organs to function, the body shut down, the mind flowing with it, and quickly, quickly but painfully, the world ceased to be.

He understood it all as he watched it; yes, he understood it very well. Hot as he felt it, but cold, so very cold, to Edward. But nothing could prepare a man for the face that looked up at him, not necessarily seeing him. What he was seeing was agonizing pain, defeat, surprise, pain, regret, a life gone missing, a body failing, yet struggling to keep up, and so much, much more violent stabs of nerve-wrecking pain.

Blood coated his gloved fingers, sticky and instantly absorbed down to skin, despite the fact that more flowed over it like a river. Each beat of Fullmetal’s heart, and more would spill down. Pour down from a life struggling with all its might to survive as all its fluid came out; just a body, jerking and hiccuping in its last moments of existence as a breathing being, and knowing probably only cold because all the burning, searing heat was diluging from his precious workings. Made so finely and now so shredded. What he could see on his face, fading emotions as Ed’s consciousness got pulled away was simply fear and regret. Ed never could let go of the regret, his chances not quite yet realized, taken, but he simply couldn’t push away his return to a tiny child in this moment, immobilized by fear, but that was his body, his body that was doing that, not him.

Not his soul.

His soul was in pain. His soul was hurting. It was falling because it was so overwhelmed with every last experience of life coming at it in the span of a few moments’ time. He couldn’t let it happen, not like this, to a child. There’d be no sleep, in the rest of his life. There’d be nothing, with blonde hair spilled out on his lap, but cold.

A snap. Cauterizing. Painful. Horrible. But a last resort to save a man’s life, and it was worth it. Unless, as he watched Ed jerk a final time as the flames went into his body and dug into his jagged tear, he made no more difference than to have that soul’s last moments be nothing more than searing hot flames. He’d heard flames hurt worse and longer than freezes.

A bubble of blood came out of Ed’s mouth. His eyes were glossy and grey. Mustang had no idea if he’d killed him, if he’d taken that last spark of breath from Ed’s soul. But he still picked his legs up and carried his fallen soldier home.
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7. Fullmetal Alchemist: "Never Gamble with More Than You Can Afford to Lose"



It was good advice that Sergeant Major Fuery never failed to ignore. But then, this particular betting pool had been running for so long, tossing his paycheck in had become habit. More often than not, he ended up starving for the next month because of it. At least until First Lieutenant Hawkeye took pity on him, and bought him dinner. Mind you, she never came right out and announced she would do it, he’d just suddenly find take-out in front of him, and not a word was said.

The times he did win, the pot was shared between other people in the office. It was hard for it not to be, there were only two people being bet on.

Who would get the girl this time? Havoc or Mustang? Fuery always bet on Havoc; more out of loyalty to his friend, than any real belief that the Second Lieutenant would emerge victorious. Which was why Fuery tended to starve most of the time.

It really was a sucker bet most of the time. Havoc didn’t stand a chance against his commanding officer. Colonel Roy Mustang had cultivated exactly the right image and attitude that the women seemed to like most. He had rank, power, the Alchemist Mystique, and he had those hooded eyes that made him exotic and mysterious. It made the women want to figure out what made him tick.

Jean Havoc, on the other hand, was open, and easy to figure out most of the time. He was like the boy-next-door. If the boy next door lived on the wrong side of the tracks, that is.

Havoc’s luck wasn’t always bad, though. With the exception of that one really bad spell, where even Major Armstrong’s sister rejected the guy, he didn’t always do so badly. Of course, most of those women, Mustang had little interest in. Fuery sometimes wondered if the Colonel just made some small effort because it was expected that he’d at least try.

It had always been either-or in this pool. Mustang or Havoc.

Even today. It was payday, and the pool was open. There was a new waitress down at the local tavern they all liked to unwind at, and the odds were running 5 to 1 in Mustang’s favor. Rumour had it, that she was quite intelligent, and had a lot more attitude than the average woman in the secretarial pool. Fuery had even heard that she’d bounced General Hakuro out one night, when he got a little too grabby.

Of course, he’d missed it that night. It was another month of starving for Sergeant Major Cain Fuery.

This time though, there were side bets going on, as well. It wasn’t just who’d get the girl that night, but how soon, who got bounced, and if a fight would actually break out. Seemed that the new waitress caught Mustang’s eye because of her brains, Havoc’s because of her feisty nature, and both of them were practically drooling over the fact that the woman’s body just screamed ‘sex’. Those two were going to compete hard tonight.

For the past week, Fuery had listened to office gossip, picked out the salient points, and tallied them up. And it was with a bit of reluctance, and a lot of guilt that this time, he decided not to bet on Havoc.

“Fuery, are you out of your mind?” Breda asked when he placed his bet.

Hawkeye raised a brow and crossed her arms. “Cain, maybe you should rethink that bet. You know you can’t win it.”

Fuery grinned, and blushed a little. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I think it’s the right choice.”

The Lieutenant sighed, and shook her head. “If you insist. But fair warning, if you lose, I’m not feeding you this month.”

“Yes Sir. I understand,” Fuery said as he pulled on his coat. He was eagerly looking forward to tonight. Not only was Mustang footing the bill for the entire office (and Fuery was famished), but it was a celebration, as well. The Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric, was reaching the age of majority.

Of course, that little tidbit was cause for a whole other set of side bets; namely, just how many beers it would take before the diminutive alchemist would have to be poured into a cab to take him home. Then there was the bet that he’d not even get the first beer down before he was bounced for going ballistic on someone for making a ‘short’ joke.

The whole office went as a group; off the base, and down the road to the tavern. They trudged through the melting slush of an unseasonably warm winter day, under dark, heavy clouds. It was too warm to snow again, and they all figured it was going to rain buckets before the night was through.

Mustang had reserved the private dining room, and had even ordered the meal. All of Ed’s favorites, of course. Well, not all of them; that would probably clear the kitchen of any food they had, but a lot of his favorites. The hostess had led them all in, and it was all set up very nicely, which was in sharp contrast to the casual atmosphere of the main room. They had barely gotten set down, when the waitress came to take their drink orders. Fuery was hardly surprised that it was the waitress in question. In fact, he was fairly certain the Colonel had requested her specifically.

Both Havoc and Mustang started out strong, too. He had to give them points for smoothness. But the waitress wasn’t taking the bait from either of them… yet. Of course, the evening had just started. Fuery knew that neither man had pulled out the big guns yet.

Along about 30 minutes later, the group was beginning to wonder where the guest of honor was, and bets were made on whether he’d gotten so engrossed in research at the library, that he just plain forgot. The Central Library wouldn’t close for another hour, though, and it was decided that if Fullmetal didn’t show up soon after that, a search party would be sent to fetch him. He was not going to be allowed to miss his eighteenth birthday.

The waitress had returned with more drinks, and to ask if she should get the cook to start dinner. The Colonel told her to give it 30 more minutes. At that moment, though, the hostess came in with a look somewhere between outrage, and hilarity, and mentioned there was someone who claimed to know them, and that he was supposed to be there. But, she added, he didn’t look old enough.

No one needed any more details than that to know that their guest of honor had finally arrived.

The hostess stepped out, and returned a moment later with Edward in tow. The boy… well, man; legally now… was fit to be tied, and it was only with very tightly controlled restraint that he didn’t explode right then and there.

As soon as she stepped out, however, he grabbed the front of Mustang’s shirt and growled, “You think next time you could pick a place where I won’t get carded?”

The waitress came up behind him, and set a drink on the table. Fuery could see the spark of mischief in her eyes, as she said, “You mean someplace other than the kiddie park will let you in without asking for ID?”

Edward sputtered and spun, as he said, “WHO’RE YOU CALLING SO SMA—“ And that was when he came nose to chest with her. His eyes widened in an attempt to take in all the cleavage spilling out over the top of her bodice, and the furious blush crawled up from his neck to his face, even turning the part in his hair bright red.

Snickers were heard all around, as she leaned down, and his eyes followed the descent of that generous cleavage. She chucked him under the chin, and tilted his face up. “My eyes are up here, handsome,” she said.

Fullmetal, who had never been at a loss for words in his life, could only manage a squeak.

The evening had officially begun, and it was off to a rousing start.

The food was plentiful, the drinks flowed, and the flirting was intense between Mustang and Havoc. But the waitress seemed impervious to their attempts. She was warm and friendly, and flirted back, but it wasn’t serious. She seemed more interested in listening to their stories. Fullmetal’s, in particular.

Eventually, it was discovered, that she was dabbling in a little alchemy, herself, when Breda complained good-naturedly that his beer mug wasn’t frosted. She fingered the condensation on the mug, and drew a simple transmutation circle. Then she touched it, and the glass became frosty as if it had just been taken off the ice.

Mustang cocked a brow. “I didn’t know you knew any alchemy,” he said.

She smirked. “Why should you? I’m just waiting tables here, Colonel.” That was when she explained she was working there to pay her way through university, and her major was actually agricultural alchemy.

From that moment, the conversation was dominated by Mustang and Fullmetal, as they discussed theories and practices with her. She kept up with both of them magnificently, and even managed to get into a heated debate with Edward on some obscure theory.

It was clear she was looking for ways to get under the boy’s skin too, as she would shoot off little barbs that would lightly insult his school of thought. Amazingly enough… or perhaps it was the mellowing that a few good beers could cause, he took it all in stride, and got off a few well-aimed rounds of his own.

That is, until she said, “Oh, please! You’re so far off on that, you need to stand on a stool to reach the right point.”

Fullmetal jumped to his feet, and balled his fists stiffly at his sides. “WHO’RE YOU CALLING SO SMALL HE HAS TO STAND ON A LADDER TO SEE OVER THE EDGE OF A BOOK?”

She just calmly raised a brow, and said, “Careful there. You don’t want to hurt yourself.” Then she leaned in close, and pinned him with an intense look. “And you definitely don’t want me to hurt you.”

Fuery wondered if he was the only one who thought there were several different levels to that threat.

Edward shook a finger at her, and opened his mouth, but no sound game out. He closed his eyes, and pinched his nose, then tried again. Still, nothing came out.

For the second time that night, the waitress had rendered him speechless. It was impressive, and would be a moment to go down in history.

Eventually, the barkeep had to come in and roust them all out. The tavern had closed an hour before, and they were the last people left.

As they all gathered in the foyer to don their coats, the waitress came in, grabbed her own, and stopped to look at Edward. “I understand today is your birthday, Mr. Fullmetal Alchemist.”

He froze with one arm in the sleeve of his red coat, and looked at her oddly. “Yeah. What about it?”

She smiled and said, “Well, I think you deserve a gift. After all, you only turn eighteen once.”

A hint of red touched his cheeks, and he said, “Heh. Thanks. But it’s okay.”

“Nonsense.” She leaned down, and planted a kiss on his lips. This was no light peck, but a rather long one. When she let him back up for air, he was stunned, but the expected knee-buckling didn’t occur. Instead, a wicked grin crawled slowly across his face.

The rain suddenly decided to come down in sheets, and Breda said, “Damn, it’s not fit for man, nor beast out there.”

Edward glanced out the door, then back at the waitress. “It’s pretty late. Should you be walking home by yourself?”

She smiled warmly and said, “Are you offering to walk me home, Edward Elric?”

He blushed furiously, and ducked his head. An instant later, he looked back up at her with a little more confidence, and said, “Yeah. If you’d like.”

“I’d like that very much. Thank you.”

They pulled their hoods up, and then Edward offered her his arm in a most gentlemanly manner. Then they were gone.

The rest of the group just stared.

Except for Cain Fuery, who grinned because he was going to be eating very well this month.