Long delay, I know, but I decided to come back to this because it's surprisingly fun to write.

Chapter Four
Freaky Cowboy President

"You are absolutely coming to the rally," Winry said, grabbing Ed's arm as Ed tried to inch past her to get out of the hallway and into the parking lot—relative safety. "Come on!" she added with a grin, pulling him back. "Where's your school spirit?"

"I left it in Germany," Ed replied, glaring at her and then glaring at Al, who was watching the scene with amusement from a safe distance. "Come on. Roy said he's gonna name all the new students and make them stand up. And he promised he was going to introduce me." He yanked at his arm again, ineffectually; Winry had a supernaturally strong grip.

"Roy?" Winry raised her eyebrows. "Roy Mustang? You mean it's the first day of class and you've already made friends with the student council president?"

Ed frowned. When she put it that way, it was almost impressive. "More like, he forced his way into my life and made friends with me," he corrected ill-humoredly. "He was in my calculus class. And then he dragged me to his table at lunch, with his weirdo friends."

"Ling and Envy?" Winry asked dryly.

"Yeah." Ed still found it strange that Winry knew just about everyone at her school, though he supposed it made sense in a way. Central High was pretty small, after all. (His school in Resembool was also small, but Ed simply hadn't cared enough to learn the names of more than a handful of people.)

Winry grinned. "He has weird friends, and then he has his student council friends, who are all pretty cool," she told him. Al was listening with an interested expression, still keeping his distance in case Ed—or Winry—tried to grab him too.

"I don't care about what kind of friends Roy Mustang has," Ed griped, yanking at his arm again. Still no luck. "I just don't want him to introduce me to the stupid assembly."

"But you'll be with your brother!" Winry pointed out with an overly cheerful grin, stepping to the side and grabbing Al by the arm too, even as he tried to sidle out of reach. Unlike Ed, Al reacted to his capture with a sigh of resignation.

"No," Ed said firmly. "I'm not joking, Winry. I don't want to do this."

Something in his voice must have finally gotten across the fact that he was absolutely, one hundred percent serious, because Winry turned and actually gave him her full attention, her grip loosening slightly on his arm. "Oh," she said, looking a little hurt.

"Ed..." Al said, using that You're not being a very nice person warning tone.

Fuck, Ed thought. He hadn't come to Dublith just to get paraded around like an exotic German zoo animal in front of the entire school. But it's only an assembly, said the little voice in his head that always responded way too quickly and easily to Al's warning looks.

"Fine, okay, fine, let's go," Ed said, and was relieved to see Winry and Al break into identical smiles. He led the way into the gym at a quick march. Might as well get this over with. How bad could it be?

Answer: extremely bad. Frankly, awful.

First there were all the usual back to school speeches. Ms. Elointon, the principal, talked about building a supportive learning community, anti-bullying initiatives, blah blah blah. Ed could deal with that. And then Roy gave a speech saying how he was so glad to be elected Student Council president for the second year in a row, how he was planning to follow through on all his campaign promises, something about better food in the cafeteria, et cetera. Ed could deal with that, too.

But then Roy looked right at him and said, "And now, before I give a hearty Gryphon welcome to our freshmen, I'd like to welcome all our transfer and exchange students. And I have a list!" He flourished a white piece of paper.

Oh God, Ed thought.

"I'd like to invite you all to come down to the front when your name is called. We've got front row seats especially for you up here—" Roy gestured to a row of empty chairs behind him "—so you won't miss a minute of our great welcome rally."

"You've got to be kidding me," Ed said in a flat voice, loud enough that a few people in the rows in front of him turned around to see who had spoken.

Winry looked a little horrified. "This is new!" she whispered to Ed and Al. "He's never done this before!"

Great. Then Ed was going to participate in one of Roy Mustang's experiments.

"This year we have one transfer student becoming part of the class of 2015," Roy said. "Please welcome Ran Mao, who just moved to Dublith from Los Angeles." Polite applause. A dark-haired girl with a heart-shaped face stood from the bleachers and moved down to the front, shaking Roy's hand before taking a seat on the dais.

"No way, no way, I'm not doing this," Ed said in a low voice, but Al squeezed his arm and gave him that warning be nice look.

"And we also have one exchange student in our senior class," Roy continued. "Please welcome Rosalina Vasquez of Barranquilla, Colombia." South America, huh? Ed's interest surmounted is growing panic for a few moments as he watched a brown-haired, olive-skinned girl make her way down the bleachers. Her bangs were dyed pink. Cute.

But then Ed snapped back to reality when Roy announced, "Thanks to the State Alchemy exchange program, which is sponsored by the federal government to help make closer ties with the European Union, we have two exchange students from Resembool, Germany, who will be joining us for a few months this year. Edward Elric will be part of the junior class, and his brother, Alphonse Elric, will be joining the freshmen."

Al stood up and dragged Ed with him, all the way down the bleachers and up onto the dais. Ed nearly tripped stepping up onto the makeshift stage. Characteristically, Al ignored it, but Ed definitely saw Roy Mustang give him the tiniest of smirks.

"I have just met you and I hate you," he announced in a low voice as Roy shook his hand. Roy's smirk only widened.

"And finally," he said, turning back to the microphone as Al dragged Ed to a seat, "we have three new additions to our sophomore class. The first is an exchange student all the way from Taipei, Taiwan. Everyone, please welcome—"

Ed stopped listening. Instead, he focused on suppressing the urge to get up from his chair and walk out of the assembly room. This was ridiculous, he thought, and the impression only increased when Roy announced the Central High cheerleaders would be performing for them. And then the drill team. And then the marching band, with a rousing and only slightly off-key rendition of the school song.

He couldn't believe Central High even had a song. Or that people were expected to know the words. Was everyone really singing? As Ed scanned the bleachers with disgusted curiosity, he couldn't help working to pick out some familiar faces. There was Noah of the Equestrian Club, and there was Roy's friend Ling who had eaten his lunch.

Suddenly, movement caught his eye near the gym door. He looked over to see someone—high ponytail, thin face—peeking in. Their eyes met for a second, then Envy turned and walked away.

Lucky bastard, Ed thought, skipping this stupid pep rally. He wished Winry had let him do the same.

Winry, apparently, wished the same thing, because she came to get them as soon as the students were dismissed for the afternoon. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry," she said, taking Ed and Al both by the arms and towing them bodily through the crowd. (Ed didn't mind—much. At least it meant he wouldn't have to find his own way back to the parking lot.) "I had no idea he would do that to you guys."

She looked like she actually felt bad about it too. Ed was tempted to scoff at her apology, but decided to play it cool. Al's warning look was definitely a major factor in that decision. "Don't worry about it," he replied. "I'm blaming Roy."

Well, he decided to play it sort of cool, anyway. He had his limits.

"He seems funny," Al pointed out, ever the optimist.

"Yeah, so maybe he'll laugh when I punch him in the— I'm kidding," Ed said. They had made it out of the gym area and onto the courtyard in front of the school, where there were markedly fewer people, and where Al was able to give him an extremely effective look. "Seriously, I'm kidding."

Mostly.

"The drill team was really good," Al said. Ed knew him well enough to know the enthusiasm was relatively fake and that Al was just making a desperate attempt to change the subject, but unsurprisingly, it worked.

"Aren't they great?" Winry asked with an enthusiastic smile. "My friend Paninya's on the team. You haven't met her yet, but you will."

"Cool song choice, too," Al added, warming to the conversation. Ed had a different opinion about Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off", but contrary to popular opinion he did know when to keep his mouth shut. Like now. So he let Winry and Al make small talk about the drill team on the way through the parking lot.

At least we're getting out of here early, he thought to himself, because if I—

"Edward! Um, Elric!"

Ed, Winry, and Al all turn at the sound of someone calling his name, and Ed is surprised—well, shocked is probably a better word for it—to see Envy hurrying towards him.

"What?" Ed asked. Envy had hardly talked to him throughout lunch, left early, and didn't even come to the rally. For a second, Ed worried that Envy was coming for a fight. But he was in Dublith now, not Resembool.

"Um," Envy said. His voice was a little breathless, like he'd jogged to catch up to them. "Sorry for that. For Roy, I mean. I didn't—sometimes he gets a little carried away. He's been planning that all summer. The introduction thing, I mean. I told him it was a jerk move, but—yeah." He shifted from foot to foot.

"Right," Ed replied for lack of anything better to say. If it was Roy's idea, why did Envy feel like he had to apologize? Unless he was lying, and it had been his idea all along, and now he was trying to make Roy look bad... But, Ed reminded himself, that explanation was not only paranoid but also made no sense.

"Yeah. Uh." Envy looked from Ed to Winry to Al, then back to Ed. "That's it. Bye." And then he turned on his heel and hurried off.

"What," Ed said after a moment, when Envy had disappeared between cars. He turned to Winry. "That's not... is he always like that?"

But Winry looked just as surprised as him. "I don't know," she said. "I mean, no, I don't think so, because he never talks to anyone but Ling and Roy. I always thought, I dunno, he'd be more of a jerk than... that."

"Maybe he's just shy," Al suggested. He looked the least surprised out of the three of them, but then again, Ed reminded himself, that was the first time he'd even seen Envy.

"Maybe he's still a jerk and just hides it really well," Ed pointed out. That was more likely. Otherwise, why would he hang out with Roy Mustang, the freaky cowboy president who was shaping up to be the unofficial King of Jerks at Central High?

"Uh-huh," Al said skeptically even as Winry replied, "That wouldn't be surprising. If he does anything actually mean to you, though, let me know. I'm part of the anti-bullying initiative." She grinned at him.

Seriously? Ed thought, though why he was still surprised by this sort of thing, he had no idea. Apparently everyone at Central High was involved, in some way or another, with some kind of extracurricular activity. Where did they get so much school spirit, when back in Resembool Ed could hardly get enough 'school spirit' to get out of bed in the morning? Must be something in the water, he told himself. Out loud, he said, "Right, okay. Let's go home. I'm starving."

Winry laughed and allowed him to change the subject. "But it was pizza day," she said. "It's everyone's favorite."

"Then I'm afraid what you all are used to on normal school days," Al said, his tone a little ominous, from Winry's other side.

So there! Ed crowed inwardly, as he always did when Al agreed with him about disliking something. If it was bad enough that Al would say something about it, well. For all that Roy annoyed him already, if he made good on his promise to get better food in the cafeteria, maybe Ed would tolerate him. A little bit.

Maybe.