Current mood:	omg woobity
Entry tags:	fic, fmalchemist, getbackers, miscfic

MORE DRABBLES, HAHAHA! (FMA, GB, Digimon 02)
OMFG, I LIVE. @________@

Life has kicked my ASS recently, so I've fallen a bit behind, I do apologize. T_T But to everyone who's requested drabbles, I AM still working on them. :X As is evidenced by posting right now, ahaha GO ME. @__@ [wobbles]

Soldier [requested by siriusjazz; Havoc and Hawkeye and understandings]

*****

"I think I'll buy a farm in the east, when I retire," Havoc says around his cigarette.

Liza looks at him, narrow. Neither of them flinch when a bullet ricochetes against a brick corner. She launches herself from the wall, fires twice, and then plasters herself back against relative safety.

"Second Lieutenant," she says, "now is not the time to discuss retirement plans."

"No, think about it," he says. "It'd be great. I could sit on my porch and smoke all day, and all I'd have to shoot were birds that got too close to the corn."

From somewhere down the street, people are shouting. The alleyway is just wide enough to accommodate the two of them, if they stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Liza is hidden behind a stack of boxes; Havoc crouches behind a few old garbage cans.

They've been separated from Colonel Mustang for fifteen minutes now. Liza can feel each second ticking like heartbeats in her skin.

Normally, she would trust he could take care of himself--but it has rained recently in East City, and the air is heavy with the smell of damp. It is not impossible for him to create sparks in this weather, but it is significantly more difficult.

Liza's commander is a smart man, but also good at underestimating the odds. With his official transfer to Central so close at hand, everything must be carefully planned out, so that he will not have any tarnish upon his name.

It's not that Liza doesn't trust him to be careful: it's simply that she knows him well enough to realize he is thinking of other, closer things.

She reloads her gun. Havoc nibbles on the end of his cigarette, eyeing her. His own gun is held loosely at his side; he doesn't seem concerned at all. Liza frowns at him. He only raises an eyebrow back.

Gunfire spatters the wall; a fragment of brick zing past her face. Liza leans forward enough to fire once, then jerks back as a bullet whizzes dangerously close to her ear. Havoc still appears unconcerned, and rises to his feet, daring to light his cigarette. She resists the urge to grind her teeth, a bad habit that sometimes still lingers from childhood, and turns to him.

"Second Lieutenant Havoc," she says, "if you don't mind helping me--"

Abruptly, he turns towards her, flips up his gun, aims. There is a split second of shock, during which no human, however well-trained a soldier, can react.

Then he pulls the trigger, and the bullet flies past her. It makes a thick meaty sound, rather than anything sharp or shattering; Liza moves instinctively, and watches the body of the man behind her slump to the ground. When he collapses, his hand opens, and the knife within spills out.

He wears the uniform of a Blue Brigade sympathizer, and blood is spreading darkly across his shoulder and back. She thinks, surprised, that she did not realize he was quite so close.

Liza looks at him, then looks up at Havoc.

Havoc smirks at her, and lets his gun drop back to rest. "What?" he asks. "I pay attention too."

She is tempted to snap. Instead, she plucks the cigarette from him and grinds it sharply under her heel. When he scowls at her, she only shrugs.

"Cigarettes only make you that much shorter of breath," she says. "On three, we're going to run. If Colonel Mustang has any sense, he'll head back to headquarters--"

"But hell, knowing him, he probably went back to deal with them himself." Havoc gives the ruined cigarette a mournful look, and sighs. "Time to go save him again?"

Liza considers this, and offers him the smallest of smiles. "Exactly."

"On three, then, right?" He leans back against the wall, and she sees how his face shifts, changes: there *is* a soldier underneath that, she thinks.

She presses to her side as well, listening carefully. Men are grumbling beyond the mouth of the alleyway, and she checks her gun. There are just enough shots left, if he helps her. She looks to him, catches his eye, and nods.

"One--"

"--Two!--"

"--THREE!"

~end~

----------------------------

Words Without [requested by enishi_sama; Juubei and Kadsuki sap]

*****

*"It's a nice flower, Juubei."*

"Ah, Ane-ja--"

"I won't tell Mother that you've raided her gardens for this."*

There are two components to Kadsuki's name: flowers, and the moon. One is much easier to get than the other; for this Juubei has compromised. The multiple layers of petal glow silver-white, even in the noonday sun, and he walks slowly to prevent it from swaying and bruising.

He finds Kadsuki practicing in the gardens. The sound of the koto is strange and lovely, falling notes in the still air. There is a surety and grace to Kadsuki's hands that could wrap the world in clean bright sound.

When he steps forward, he lets his sandals grate against the gravel. Kadsuki lifts his head and nods to him, solemn, and allows him to approach without a word. Juubei sits a short distance away, turning so that the flower is hidden from Kadsuki's line of vision.

After the piece is over, and there is a stretched moment of thoughtful silence, Kadsuki says, "I did not know you were coming, today." Underneath that, he says, *I wish you would tell me, so I could look forward to it.*

*I wanted to see you, and so I came,* Juubei starts to say, and cuts himself off. That will not do.

He holds out the flower.

There are many things he could say, he knows; he has studied poetry with his medical texts, trained in the arts of courting conversation as well as fighting. But, he thinks he does not yet know enough about Kadsuki to write about him properly, only that his name has two components, and that his hair, clean, smells like the warmth of summer.

Given enough time, perhaps, he could find the right words. But there is just this moment, the two of them under the dappled shade--and the flower in his hand is as beautiful as any poem he might compose.

Kadsuki lifts his head and looks steadily at Juubei. Even as full minutes tick past, Juubei realizes he is not afraid: these are his feelings, and they have bloomed fully regardless of Kadsuki's acceptance. It is better to put them into the open, he thinks, than to fail his chosen master because of his own uncertainty.

And then Kadsuki smiles. The sun is not in Kadsuki's name at all, but there is a brilliance in him that could put it to shame.

"Thank you," he says.

~end~

----------------------------

Smile [requested by sakurazuka_jae; Makubex and Ginji]

*****

From birth, it sometimes felt, Makubex had dealt with power.

The old pharmacist taught him computers, and from there the entire world opened under his fingertips. By nine, there was not a single machine that he could not coax its secrets from.

In the Mugenjou, age is relative: anyone is old enough to fight and to die, so to be one of Raitei Amano Ginji's Four Kings at eleven didn't seem peculiar to him at all.

Sakura, however, and Kadsuki-kun both--they protested his joining the VOLTS entirely. Even Shido, more attuned to animals than humans, frowned when Ginji-san brought him to be introduced. Their eyes, trained by the outside world, only saw his skinny body and thin features; their ears, likewise, only heard the wavering high pitch of his voice.

Ginji-san kept his hand on his shoulder the entire time, and faced down their protests without wavering. Each time he flinched, that hand would squeeze once, reassuring. He let the waves of their arguments wash over and around him, and then fade away before he said, very quietly, that none of them know how to use computers, or even own such things; those are disadvantages they cannot afford to have.

In the end, Raitei's words won. Even Sakura and Kadsuki-kun didn't look surprised as they filtered out. Emishi even smiled at him, briefly, before dashing off in Shido's wake.

"Ginji-san," he asked, when they were all gone, "why?"

And Ginji-san, Raitei, master and savior of Lower Town, just smiled at him. There was sadness in that expression, older and more worn and closer to the raw person underneath than Makubex had ever seen.

"I was thirteen," was all he said. He glanced at the door that Teshimine Takeru took, and added, "That's not such a big gap, in here."

Makubex watched him walk away after that, and said nothing. Even among the younger inhabitants of Lower Town, there were few that didn't know the story of Raitei's awakening. The streets that buckled and tore under the force of his rage remained completely deserted, even years later.

Two years wasn't such a gap, he thought, trying out the weight of it. And it made perfect sense to him, which he thought it might. Sakura and Kadsuki-kun, anyone else from the outside, might argue that two years meant the difference between an adult and a child.

*But we're children, all of us, the moment we step outside,* he thought. *Even Sakura, even Kadsuki-kun. Even Ginji-san.* And that last thought was what felt alien to him, disjointed and out of place. No one who smiled like that should be considered a child.

And a year later, when Midou Ban walked into the Mugenjou alone and walked out again with Amano Ginji at his heels, he still remembered that smile.

~end~

----------------------------

Study Session [requested by tsaiko; Ken and Daisuke and studyfluff]

*****

"It's impossible," Daisuke groaned.

Ken simply scooted one chair over without looking up. From the corner of one eye, he saw movement as Daisuke dropped his backpack on the table, and tried not to wince as he imagined the textbooks inside being banged around. It was afternoon, and Saturday classes were over; and from the look of things, Daisuke had gotten on the train straight after being let out.

Ken weighed his options. He knew better, but kindness was partly about politeness, too. Either that, or pasting some sort of target to his forehead--which Daisuke *had* done once, and managed about three blackmail photos before Ken woke up and wrestled him down.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Math," Daisuke said, in a voice that dripped impending doom. "It makes *no* sense. I'll fail the entrance exams, and then I won't make it into high school--and *then* I'll be stuck doing something dumb, like running a ramen stand for all the rest of my life."

Ken finally looked at him, expression wry. "Daisuke, you've not even looked at your book since you sat down."

"That's okay." Daisuke folded his arms on his backpack, then thunked his head down atop them. "I didn't get it in class, either."

"... should I ask how long you stayed awake *during* class, then?"

Daisuke held up one hand, fingers in a V.

Ken sighed and closed his own book, pushing it aside. He held out a hand, and waited until Daisuke lifted his head to blink at it.

"I'll help you," Ken said. "Let me see the book."

"Really?" Daisuke straightened fully, with an ear-to-ear grin. "Thanks! Anyone ever told you that you're the best?"

"You knew I was going to offer," Ken said, flat-eyed, still holding out his hand. "Don't try playing innocent with me, Motomiya."

"Eheh--that obvious, huh?" Daisuke rubbed the back of his neck, still grinning.

"Transparent." Ken leaned forward and tugged the backpack out from under Daisuke's folded arms. It took a moment of wrestling, and then Daisuke leaned back, radiating smugness as Ken began to dig around inside.

"Aha, here we go," said Ken, who pointedly refrained from commenting on the wadded-up and badly-wrinkled uniform coat stuffed in at the top of the bag. "Right, show me where you are, and let's get started."

--end--