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THE PEOPLE'S ALCHEMIST, HUSBAND OF THE "PEOPLE'S PRESIDENT", ACTUALLY A PEOPLE PIMP?
That’s the question on everyone’s minds, only days after the ongoing declassification of military operations under Fuhrer-President King Bradley uncovered shocking revelations about the conduct of Major Edward Elric. While it is certainly no secret or scandal that Major Elric served under his now-husband President Roy Mustang during his time in the military, this correspondence casts their unconventional relationship once again into a concerning light. Was how they behaved towards each other in those years unprofessional? Were they engaged in a romantic relationship before Major Elric was of age? These papers don’t answer those questions, which have already been dissected at length by the public and this very publication.
What these papers do is raise an entirely new set of questions.
For those readers unwilling or unable to decipher Major Elric’s scrawl - attributable to the automail replacement of his dominant hand - we will offer the first official transcription. For everyone who’s already wrested meaning out of the chicken scratch, you’ll want to skip down to page 5…
“Holy fucking shit,” Ed says. He hadn’t been accosted by paparazzi the second he’d opened the door that morning. As such, he’d collected the newspaper and the mail, put it all down on the kitchen table, made himself breakfast, and only once luxuriously settled in had read the front page. “Holy fucking shit.”
Automatically, he glances at the place where Roy leaves his keys. Absurd to do, when he knows that Roy’s been gone for hours. They’d had a long weekend together, one of the ones where they were only to be interrupted with official business for emergencies. Over the ten years Roy had spent as President, winning 2 elections with a 3rd coming up this fall, they’d had ample time to define what exactly was an ‘emergency’.
Ed is thinking this might be an example of a redefining moment.
Colonel Bastard,
I delight in informing you that reading this field report is going to give you heart palpitations. Sit down now. I’m serious. Have you read that new study that says the taller you are the worse it is for your long term heart health? It’s just correlations, nothing conclusive, but I’ve seen you clutching at your chest when you see my name in the papers. Sit the fuck down.
First things first: I finished the mission. It was easy. Dunno why you even had to send me, you could have sent like, fucking anyone. This shit is beneath me. It took me ten minutes to catch the moron making fool’s gold and passing it off as currency. It took me five more minutes to realize that he wasn’t doing it for himself.
Goddamn money laundering.
So I pass the guy over to the local military police since the alchemy portion is officially cared for and they can goddamn well figure out which crime he was ineptly laundering for. I mind my own business, just how you’d want me to, and I go back to the hotel and Al.
It’s just that sometimes - SOMETIMES - you can’t predict everything. Okay? I don’t CAUSE you these problems on purpose. And you better believe that, because if I was doing it on purpose it would be a lot fuckin cooler.
So I’m walking down the street and I just HAPPEN to see this guy beating the shit out of a woman. What was I supposed to do? I beat the shit out of him and told him not to do it again. And I wouldn’t have even had to include this, except when I got a good look at the lady, turned out she was more of a lady of the evening than a capital L lady if you get my drift. You should, you certainly hang out with enough of ‘em.
Let’s call her Kara.
After some very serious nerves, Kara tells me there’s this charming local tradition where by beating the shit out of the man who owns her - OWNS? HER?! - I now own her. And every other woman he owned.
I swear to God I tried to give her that card. The one you told me to give any particular ladies I might run into. But nooooooo. Instead she takes me back to this horrible little hole in the wall she and the other women have been living in. Shows me their kids. Starts pulling out family heirlooms and explaining how their religion is tied to a big ass river in the area. Did not want to hear about how God is fake, and I’m pretty sure she was 10 seconds from trying to own herself and everyone else in the building when I pushed her on it. If you get my drift.
(She punched me in the face. Hard.)
Anyways long story short I got three to take the stupid card. Another twenty or so who refused it and demanded I take responsibility for my actions. Which like, what the fuck, right? I managed to work out a way more reasonable contract for everyone involved, but if I’d discarded them entirely they would be vulnerable to whatever asshole wanted to pick them up.
The good news is that I liberated 20 or so women and they now more or less own themselves! The bad news is that I’m their pimp now if anyone comes asking, and I am also the pimp of anyone they manage to recruit. Might have to make more trips to the area in the future, just to make sure it stays that way until they can hire their own protection and stuff. They’ve agreed to at least write to the address on the card and ask for advice.
I’m really hoping you sat down. Shock can be a terrible strain on the elderly’s hearts.
While this may at first glance seem like a heartwarming - or a blood pressure raising - and typical tale of our formerly teenage hero, it becomes something much darker in the recent context. President Roy Mustang has been notably supportive of sex workers his entire political career, personally drafting some of the most progressive bills to ensure the safety of some of our most vulnerable and oft-ignored laborers. The report, typical of reports filed by Major Elric, fails to provide important details as to the exact arrangement he reached with these women. To hear him tell it, it’s as if they practically held him down and forced him to ‘own’ them…
Many years ago…
“You can’t force me to own you!” Ed yelled, waving his arms around desperately. He was absolutely sure his point wasn’t getting through. “What the hell is wrong with you all?”
He was simultaneously glad he’d never gotten back to Al at the hotel and extremely annoyed he had to try and make reasonable arguments without his brother there to make them for him.
“You ever see a couch left out on the street for anyone to take? You think I wanna be that couch? I’m not saying you have to take a substantial amount of our earnings, but you have to take something or everyone will know that we’re lying!” it’s not the woman he saved who is yelling at him. Another one, Trisha.
She doesn’t look a lot like his mother, but having the name in common is probably why he can’t quite bear to leave them on bad terms. She couldn’t have known why he was weak to her in particular, but she was exploiting it ruthlessly.
“What about,” he thought quickly. “Money can be exchanged for goods and services, right? But you guys only offer services.”
“Oh,” Trisha said, immediately catching on.
“Any goods that you make? I get one hundred percent of the profit. No negotiations on this, and I’ll be stopping by regularly,” Ed glared at Trisha mock-warningly. “To make sure I’m getting my proper amount of the money.”
“Will that include things made on our own time? Some of the girls make little things, jewelry, jams.”
“No, no, just. Anything specifically to do with my… my brand,” Ed shrugged. “As long as my name isn’t on it in such a way that it directly refers to me being your pimp, I don’t care. But I get everything out of what’s built off of my own reputation, you hear?”
Trisha mockingly gives a shiver of fear right back. “Oh yes sir, of course I do.”
In the present…
Ed finally sets down the newspaper, his head spinning. He’d honestly forgotten entirely about those women. Back then, he’d done so many things. Saved so many people. Racked up so many mild concussions.
There are only two pieces of mail today, one parcel and a small envelope, bundled together with string. The sender isn’t Trisha, but it’s from the right area. It had been twenty years, more, since he was there. He doubts Trisha is still in the business, and if she is, he really doubts she still goes by that name. He manages to get the envelope open without damaging the contents, but it’s a close call.
It contains a check. A really, really large check.
The memo line reads ‘promotional t-shirts’.
With a sense of dawning inevitability, Ed opens the parcel. Inside is a t-shirt.
the FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST was my PIMP
[A stylized cartoon of Ed as he looks now but dressed as he was best known in his teens, wearing leather pants and a deep scarlet cloak. They made him taller than he was in reality, or perhaps the women around him very short. They are buxom, and scantily clad.]
and all I got was THIS T-SHIRT.