Oneshot Fic and one-shot pic!
A couple of things for the fandom tonight. First--this is something I noticed while driving home from an appointment one night. The next time I went by, I had to stop and take a picture.
It's hard to see in the picture without doing some fairly drastic fill-light effects, but EdRoy Court just happens to be a little residential dead-end street that springs off of...
Edwards Road.
Title: Satisfaction Guaranteed
Rating: G, maybe PG-13, tops
Characters: Roy, Maes, Riza (no pairing)
Summary: You can try to make a perfect world...
"Satisfaction Guaranteed"
He should have known better. Roy Mustang stuck his hands in his pockets and allowed himself a rueful grin as Maes Hughes regaled the storekeeper with extravagant stories of every move his five-month-old daughter had yet made. The smiling woman cheerfully looked at the pictures and egged Hughes on-after all, the pile of toys and books meant for little Elysia grew by about thirty Cenz a minute. Roy shook his head and drifted down an aisle of brightly-painted books. Had he thought about it, he'd have remembered this toy store and suggested that the two of them walk back from lunch on another route-or even call Headquarters for a ride. At the rate he was going, Maes Hughes was going to bankrupt himself before his daughter had her first birthday.
He scanned the titles of the books and inspected the toy soldiers, patted the head of a plush-covered rocking horse-and heard something strange, contrasting with Hughes' enthusiastic narration of Elysia's first smile. Roy followed the soft click-click-click, and found its source in the side window of the store.
A miniature locomotive only a little longer than Roy's hand was pulling an equally-diminutive train around a tight oval of track that barely fit in the display window. The clicking sound came from the metal wheels rushing over the tracks. Several dolls, most of them giants who could easily straddle the locomotive, stood or sat beside the rails, their hands posed to wave at the train chasing its tail.
“Clever little thing, isn't it?” The voice came from all too close, and Roy jumped. The graying man at his elbow smiled, his eyes bright. He nodded at the train. “Those are brand-new. We've only had them for a few weeks. That one's been running nonstop since it arrived-would you like a closer look?”
He knew it was a sales pitch, but Roy found himself nodding anyway.
*~*~*~*~*
“Come on, Roy, tell me what's in the box.” Hughes shifted the load of boxes and bags in his arms and craned his neck to look at the paper-wrapped box under Roy's arm.
“Just something that caught my eye.”
“What, a junior chemistry set?”
“No, a do-it-yourself spy kit,” Roy answered lightly. “Complete with phone tap, lockpicks, and decoder ring.”
“I hope it's a current decoder ring-we change them every week, you know,” Hughes teased.
“Satisfaction guaranteed or my money back,” Roy answered. Despite Hughes' cajoling, and the inquiring looks of his staff when he laid the box on his desk, Roy refused to be drawn out.
*~*~*~*~*
Click-click-click-click-click. The train ran around the tracks on Roy's living room floor. He watched it with his hand on the knob that controlled its speed, and felt his brows knitting. “Satisfaction guaranteed,” he murmured. He turned off the power and lifted the locomotive, rubbing a finger over the bright red paint on the molded-tin boiler. He sat there on the floor, turning the locomotive around and around in his hands, then placed it carefully back at the head of its train on the tracks, and set it in motion again, chasing its tail around and around the circle of miniature track.
He left it running all night.
*~*~*~*~*
He still wasn't quite satisfied. Roy Mustang set the locomotive down on the rails and frowned at it. It now sported a coat of businesslike black paint and an engineer and fireman-molded by alchemy from cheap tin soldiers and then painted-but it still wasn't right. The wheels-something was wrong with the wheels. The rods were too simple, just little strips of metal that rattled against the wheels while the electric motor inside did the work. Roy had seen men standing on narrow platforms along the sides of locomotive boilers-the platform was there, sort of, but the sturdy iron railing wasn't. Nor were there steps for the engine crew to climb to get into the cab of the little machine.
Two days later, Lieutenant-Colonel Maes Hughes looked up in surprise as Colonel Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist and ladies' man par excellence, aimed a brand-new camera at him and said, “Hold still, Hughes.”
*~*~*~*~*
Maes Hughes was nothing if not persistent-some would say nosy. It made him good at his job. It also made it all but impossible to keep a secret from him. Not that Roy was trying especially hard. So when Hughes appeared on his doorstep with a bag of cookies fresh from Gracia's kitchen and a long cardboard tube tucked under one arm, Roy let him in without hesitation.
Hughes' eyes immediately picked out the miniature train, now sitting on the kitchen table and surrounded by photographs, paintbrushes and bits of scrap metal and wire. “I knew you weren't just immersed in alchemical research.” He beamed and set the bag down on the counter beside the coffeemaker. “I was right about what you've been up to, too.”
“I hope you've been actually doing your job as well as interrogating people about my activities,” Roy said mildly. “Coffee?” He took the coffee beans from a cupboard and poured a handful into the grinder.
“You could at least pretend to be impressed, Roy.”
“You're a highly-ranking officer with the resources of the entire Investigations branch to draw on-and I wasn't trying to cover my tracks,” Roy answered with a twitch of his eyebrow as he ground the beans.
“You've been taking pictures of tracks all over town-and every train that runs over them.” Hughes waved at the pictures on the table. “I've had some phone conversations that would have been hilarious if I'd been talking to people other than two police chiefs and General Madera.”
“Your boss wanted to know why you were sneaking around after me?”
“No, my boss wanted to know what I knew about your plans to blow up the Central train station using alchemy.” Hughes flopped into a chair and waved at the locomotive and train cars on the table. “Fortunately, by that time I already knew about this and could tell the General you'd just taken an interest in trains. He thinks you're working on ways to improve boiler design, by the way.”
“I suppose I could look into that,” Roy took his coffee carafe from the dish strainer and ran fresh water into it.
“I brought just what you need to get started,” Hughes grinned. He took the lid off the cardboard tube, then pulled a thick sheaf of rolled papers from it. “I picked them up this morning-the copy charges are on your account, by the way.”
Roy didn't protest. He'd been thinking of commissioning copies of locomotive blueprints anyway.
*~*~*~*~*
It had been three weeks. Three weeks since Roy Mustang had hand-delivered Gracia Hughes' first widow's pension check. Gracia was functioning, with the help of her parents.
Roy wasn't.
“Colonel?” Riza Hawkeye shouldered open the door to the bungalow, let Hayate squeeze past her feet, then shoved the door closed with one foot. She strode into the kitchen and set the grocery bags on the table. There were dishes sitting in the sink and dried-up grounds in Roy's prized vacuum-brew coffeepot. Riza took a step into the short hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom. “Roy?” No answer. Hawkeye's mouth set in a firm line. “Hayate-find him.” Her well-trained pet wagged his tail, then marched straight back into the kitchen, pawed the cellar door, then sat down and barked. Riza looked, and noticed that though the cellar door was closed, the bolt was off. She opened the door, and Hayate bounded down the steps. Riza followed, her stomach twisting. “Roy Mustang, answer me.”
“Here.” His voice was more of a croak than his usual smooth baritone.
She followed the sound. “Sir, I--” She made the turn around the stairwell and stopped.
They sat on rough shelves, most of them filmed in shadows and dust. Nonetheless, color and texture beckoned. She gently raised a hand and brushed away the dust with a fingertip. The minor cleaning revealed tiny, evenly spaced rivets marching along the cab of the miniature locomotive. A light touch set the bell to ringing. The steam engine sat on perfectly-scaled track, with its tender and a full train of passenger cars behind it. An engineer and fireman stood in the cab, feeding and guiding the machine, while waiters carried loaded trays to passengers in the dining car, a little girl pressed her face to the window of a coach car, and a pair of lovebirds stole a kiss on the platform at the end of the train.
Inches from the locomotive's headlamp stood a model of a farmhouse, with a farmer and a boy leading a pair of draft horses with dappled coats toward a harrow. A younger boy and girl chased squawking, flapping chickens around the farmyard, while the farmer's wife hung the wash to dry. The next shelf down featured an entire miniature circus, with acrobats and tightrope walkers and a lion tamer holding a hoop for one of his dangerous charges to leap through. There was an audience of painstakingly crafted people and a circus band complete with shining brass instruments.
“Roy...” Riza let her eyes travel along the shelves. Sailing ships with full crews on the decks and in the rigging. A school with rows of students at their desks and a teacher writing out a math lesson on a chalkboard. A busy city street full of shoppers and merchants. A river plied by boats and a few children with fishing poles.
“It helps clear my head,” he said in an exhausted dry rasp. “Most of the time.”
“They're...exquisite.” Riza ran a fingertip down the mane of a prancing horse with a smilingly complacent Xingese prince on his back, then turned to look into the haunted face of the man who'd built them. Her commanding officer, a State Alchemist whose power couldn't bring back the friend he'd lost. “But now it's time to come upstairs and have something to eat.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“What does that have to do with it?” She slipped into the role because he needed her to. “You need to eat.”
“I don't need a nanny, Hawkeye.”
“I wasn't offering to find you one, Colonel. You've been sitting down here long enough-you need to take a shower, have a good meal, and get back to work.”
“That's what Elysia said. That her daddy had work to do.” Roy Mustang was far too good at controlling his face to let any more tears escape, but there was a dangerously broken note to his words.
“He did. Now that work's fallen on the rest of us. Are you going to help or let everything you and he worked for crumble?”
He lowered his chin almost to his chest, took a deep breath, and got to his feet. Hawkeye had seen him do it before, but it was still eerie to watch. In that single breath, the grieving man was set aside and the ambitious, arrogant career military officer took his place. He turned off the lights over his workbench with a quick snap of a switch. “You can brief me while I make a sandwich, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” She followed him up the stairs, leaving the perfect models to wait on their dark shelves.
End
Author's Note: This fic came about because my inner child has suddenly reasserted her fascination with model railroads--specifically steam locomotives. I told kashicat about it, and showed her some of the truly magnificent models one can find while trolling the Net (run a Google search on "live steam locomotive" or "garden railroad"--look, Ed, a locomotive just your size!), and since FMA can be applied to just about anything, she and I got to talking about model-building vis a vis Roy--and eventually decided we'd each write a ficlet involving Roy building models, and see what we each did with it. This is what I wrote, with credit to kashicat as the beta on it. Commentary always welcome!
EDIT: And here is kashicat's fic! I got a kick out of some of the differences and similarities, be sure to weigh in and air your opinion! I'm hoping to talk kashicat into doing this again sooner or later--topics, anyone?
Oh, and just as a point of interest--I wasn't sure what sort of coffeepots were in use in the Teens and Twenties, so I looked it up...and for the record, this is what Roy is using to brew coffee in this fic. It seemed appropriate for him.
It's hard to see in the picture without doing some fairly drastic fill-light effects, but EdRoy Court just happens to be a little residential dead-end street that springs off of...
Edwards Road.
Title: Satisfaction Guaranteed
Rating: G, maybe PG-13, tops
Characters: Roy, Maes, Riza (no pairing)
Summary: You can try to make a perfect world...
"Satisfaction Guaranteed"
He should have known better. Roy Mustang stuck his hands in his pockets and allowed himself a rueful grin as Maes Hughes regaled the storekeeper with extravagant stories of every move his five-month-old daughter had yet made. The smiling woman cheerfully looked at the pictures and egged Hughes on-after all, the pile of toys and books meant for little Elysia grew by about thirty Cenz a minute. Roy shook his head and drifted down an aisle of brightly-painted books. Had he thought about it, he'd have remembered this toy store and suggested that the two of them walk back from lunch on another route-or even call Headquarters for a ride. At the rate he was going, Maes Hughes was going to bankrupt himself before his daughter had her first birthday.
He scanned the titles of the books and inspected the toy soldiers, patted the head of a plush-covered rocking horse-and heard something strange, contrasting with Hughes' enthusiastic narration of Elysia's first smile. Roy followed the soft click-click-click, and found its source in the side window of the store.
A miniature locomotive only a little longer than Roy's hand was pulling an equally-diminutive train around a tight oval of track that barely fit in the display window. The clicking sound came from the metal wheels rushing over the tracks. Several dolls, most of them giants who could easily straddle the locomotive, stood or sat beside the rails, their hands posed to wave at the train chasing its tail.
“Clever little thing, isn't it?” The voice came from all too close, and Roy jumped. The graying man at his elbow smiled, his eyes bright. He nodded at the train. “Those are brand-new. We've only had them for a few weeks. That one's been running nonstop since it arrived-would you like a closer look?”
He knew it was a sales pitch, but Roy found himself nodding anyway.
*~*~*~*~*
“Come on, Roy, tell me what's in the box.” Hughes shifted the load of boxes and bags in his arms and craned his neck to look at the paper-wrapped box under Roy's arm.
“Just something that caught my eye.”
“What, a junior chemistry set?”
“No, a do-it-yourself spy kit,” Roy answered lightly. “Complete with phone tap, lockpicks, and decoder ring.”
“I hope it's a current decoder ring-we change them every week, you know,” Hughes teased.
“Satisfaction guaranteed or my money back,” Roy answered. Despite Hughes' cajoling, and the inquiring looks of his staff when he laid the box on his desk, Roy refused to be drawn out.
*~*~*~*~*
Click-click-click-click-click. The train ran around the tracks on Roy's living room floor. He watched it with his hand on the knob that controlled its speed, and felt his brows knitting. “Satisfaction guaranteed,” he murmured. He turned off the power and lifted the locomotive, rubbing a finger over the bright red paint on the molded-tin boiler. He sat there on the floor, turning the locomotive around and around in his hands, then placed it carefully back at the head of its train on the tracks, and set it in motion again, chasing its tail around and around the circle of miniature track.
He left it running all night.
*~*~*~*~*
He still wasn't quite satisfied. Roy Mustang set the locomotive down on the rails and frowned at it. It now sported a coat of businesslike black paint and an engineer and fireman-molded by alchemy from cheap tin soldiers and then painted-but it still wasn't right. The wheels-something was wrong with the wheels. The rods were too simple, just little strips of metal that rattled against the wheels while the electric motor inside did the work. Roy had seen men standing on narrow platforms along the sides of locomotive boilers-the platform was there, sort of, but the sturdy iron railing wasn't. Nor were there steps for the engine crew to climb to get into the cab of the little machine.
Two days later, Lieutenant-Colonel Maes Hughes looked up in surprise as Colonel Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist and ladies' man par excellence, aimed a brand-new camera at him and said, “Hold still, Hughes.”
*~*~*~*~*
Maes Hughes was nothing if not persistent-some would say nosy. It made him good at his job. It also made it all but impossible to keep a secret from him. Not that Roy was trying especially hard. So when Hughes appeared on his doorstep with a bag of cookies fresh from Gracia's kitchen and a long cardboard tube tucked under one arm, Roy let him in without hesitation.
Hughes' eyes immediately picked out the miniature train, now sitting on the kitchen table and surrounded by photographs, paintbrushes and bits of scrap metal and wire. “I knew you weren't just immersed in alchemical research.” He beamed and set the bag down on the counter beside the coffeemaker. “I was right about what you've been up to, too.”
“I hope you've been actually doing your job as well as interrogating people about my activities,” Roy said mildly. “Coffee?” He took the coffee beans from a cupboard and poured a handful into the grinder.
“You could at least pretend to be impressed, Roy.”
“You're a highly-ranking officer with the resources of the entire Investigations branch to draw on-and I wasn't trying to cover my tracks,” Roy answered with a twitch of his eyebrow as he ground the beans.
“You've been taking pictures of tracks all over town-and every train that runs over them.” Hughes waved at the pictures on the table. “I've had some phone conversations that would have been hilarious if I'd been talking to people other than two police chiefs and General Madera.”
“Your boss wanted to know why you were sneaking around after me?”
“No, my boss wanted to know what I knew about your plans to blow up the Central train station using alchemy.” Hughes flopped into a chair and waved at the locomotive and train cars on the table. “Fortunately, by that time I already knew about this and could tell the General you'd just taken an interest in trains. He thinks you're working on ways to improve boiler design, by the way.”
“I suppose I could look into that,” Roy took his coffee carafe from the dish strainer and ran fresh water into it.
“I brought just what you need to get started,” Hughes grinned. He took the lid off the cardboard tube, then pulled a thick sheaf of rolled papers from it. “I picked them up this morning-the copy charges are on your account, by the way.”
Roy didn't protest. He'd been thinking of commissioning copies of locomotive blueprints anyway.
*~*~*~*~*
It had been three weeks. Three weeks since Roy Mustang had hand-delivered Gracia Hughes' first widow's pension check. Gracia was functioning, with the help of her parents.
Roy wasn't.
“Colonel?” Riza Hawkeye shouldered open the door to the bungalow, let Hayate squeeze past her feet, then shoved the door closed with one foot. She strode into the kitchen and set the grocery bags on the table. There were dishes sitting in the sink and dried-up grounds in Roy's prized vacuum-brew coffeepot. Riza took a step into the short hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom. “Roy?” No answer. Hawkeye's mouth set in a firm line. “Hayate-find him.” Her well-trained pet wagged his tail, then marched straight back into the kitchen, pawed the cellar door, then sat down and barked. Riza looked, and noticed that though the cellar door was closed, the bolt was off. She opened the door, and Hayate bounded down the steps. Riza followed, her stomach twisting. “Roy Mustang, answer me.”
“Here.” His voice was more of a croak than his usual smooth baritone.
She followed the sound. “Sir, I--” She made the turn around the stairwell and stopped.
They sat on rough shelves, most of them filmed in shadows and dust. Nonetheless, color and texture beckoned. She gently raised a hand and brushed away the dust with a fingertip. The minor cleaning revealed tiny, evenly spaced rivets marching along the cab of the miniature locomotive. A light touch set the bell to ringing. The steam engine sat on perfectly-scaled track, with its tender and a full train of passenger cars behind it. An engineer and fireman stood in the cab, feeding and guiding the machine, while waiters carried loaded trays to passengers in the dining car, a little girl pressed her face to the window of a coach car, and a pair of lovebirds stole a kiss on the platform at the end of the train.
Inches from the locomotive's headlamp stood a model of a farmhouse, with a farmer and a boy leading a pair of draft horses with dappled coats toward a harrow. A younger boy and girl chased squawking, flapping chickens around the farmyard, while the farmer's wife hung the wash to dry. The next shelf down featured an entire miniature circus, with acrobats and tightrope walkers and a lion tamer holding a hoop for one of his dangerous charges to leap through. There was an audience of painstakingly crafted people and a circus band complete with shining brass instruments.
“Roy...” Riza let her eyes travel along the shelves. Sailing ships with full crews on the decks and in the rigging. A school with rows of students at their desks and a teacher writing out a math lesson on a chalkboard. A busy city street full of shoppers and merchants. A river plied by boats and a few children with fishing poles.
“It helps clear my head,” he said in an exhausted dry rasp. “Most of the time.”
“They're...exquisite.” Riza ran a fingertip down the mane of a prancing horse with a smilingly complacent Xingese prince on his back, then turned to look into the haunted face of the man who'd built them. Her commanding officer, a State Alchemist whose power couldn't bring back the friend he'd lost. “But now it's time to come upstairs and have something to eat.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“What does that have to do with it?” She slipped into the role because he needed her to. “You need to eat.”
“I don't need a nanny, Hawkeye.”
“I wasn't offering to find you one, Colonel. You've been sitting down here long enough-you need to take a shower, have a good meal, and get back to work.”
“That's what Elysia said. That her daddy had work to do.” Roy Mustang was far too good at controlling his face to let any more tears escape, but there was a dangerously broken note to his words.
“He did. Now that work's fallen on the rest of us. Are you going to help or let everything you and he worked for crumble?”
He lowered his chin almost to his chest, took a deep breath, and got to his feet. Hawkeye had seen him do it before, but it was still eerie to watch. In that single breath, the grieving man was set aside and the ambitious, arrogant career military officer took his place. He turned off the lights over his workbench with a quick snap of a switch. “You can brief me while I make a sandwich, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” She followed him up the stairs, leaving the perfect models to wait on their dark shelves.
End
Author's Note: This fic came about because my inner child has suddenly reasserted her fascination with model railroads--specifically steam locomotives. I told kashicat about it, and showed her some of the truly magnificent models one can find while trolling the Net (run a Google search on "live steam locomotive" or "garden railroad"--look, Ed, a locomotive just your size!), and since FMA can be applied to just about anything, she and I got to talking about model-building vis a vis Roy--and eventually decided we'd each write a ficlet involving Roy building models, and see what we each did with it. This is what I wrote, with credit to kashicat as the beta on it. Commentary always welcome!
EDIT: And here is kashicat's fic! I got a kick out of some of the differences and similarities, be sure to weigh in and air your opinion! I'm hoping to talk kashicat into doing this again sooner or later--topics, anyone?
Oh, and just as a point of interest--I wasn't sure what sort of coffeepots were in use in the Teens and Twenties, so I looked it up...and for the record, this is what Roy is using to brew coffee in this fic. It seemed appropriate for him.