Fanfiction: Overqualified (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Drabble: Overqualified
Fandom: FMA (manga version)
Character(s): Winry
Pairing(s): None.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Warnings: None.
A/N: Bets on whether post-homunculus-conspiracy Amestris isn't going to have some problems re-adjusting to a peacetime economy? Crossposted from nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, winrylovers, fma_gen, fma_writers and fma_fiction). Concrit welcomed with a spared dime.
Dedication: For evil_little_dog. Knock 'em dead on Thursday! (Er ... you know what I mean.)

---

      Job-hunting during a recession makes most people desperate; Winry Rockbell just gets cranky. So it's inevitable that when yet another sweaty-palmed male chauvinist leers at her and suggests he might be able to find her an opening, if she proves ... qualified ... she pulls a wrench on him.

      "How about this?" she asks sweetly. "You give me the job because I'm a qualified engineer, and I won't crush your ugly supraorbital foramen."

      Fortunately Granny wires the bail money without question, so Ed and Al need never hear about Mr. Sweaty Palms. One attempt at human transmutation is enough for a lifetime.

---

[Acknowledgments: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix). Copyright for these properties is held by Arakawa Hiromu and Square Enix. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[misoka-strife.livejournal.com]

xD How cute! Very well written.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm inundated with plotbunnies at the moment; this one helpfully was only one hundred words long. :-)

[littleduchess.livejournal.com]

Much love. You just know Winry's been through that conversation so many times.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Ain't that the truth. It was only a matter of time before she snapped ...

[raja815.livejournal.com]

Very cute! And truthful. XD

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Never yet happened to me, thank goodness. All of my bosses have been cool. (And as far as I know, none of them read this blog, so I have nothing to gain by admitting it. :-)

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

Bwahahah! That was so funny I laughed till I cried. I'll be a desperate job hunter instead of cranky any day. At least I won't get thrown in jail over it. XD

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Bwahahah! That was so funny I laughed till I cried.

Excellent! Everything else I'm working on right now is so angsty, it was refreshing to spend a few minutes giggling (and striking a blow for women's lib :-).

I'll be a desperate job hunter instead of cranky any day. At least I won't get thrown in jail over it. XD

I'll take cranky myself -- jail beats the casting couch any day of the week. At least you can get bailed out of jail. ;-)

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

YAY!!!! I love this. *beams*

I wonder if I have a little wrench I can take with me on my interview...just for safety's sake, of course.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Especially if you're going to wear that slinky black thing and your witch boots. :-)

[syolen.livejournal.com]

This made me laugh, I just love the closing line!

Winry would definitely have faced more than one "Mr. Sweaty Palms", poor girl...

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

This made me laugh, I just love the closing line!

Thanks! The end was the hardest part to pare down and get right, even though I started with the "Granny wires the bail money without question" bit first, and worked my way back up to the beginning.

Winry would definitely have faced more than one "Mr. Sweaty Palms", poor girl...

I don't doubt it. Ed will never know how much all those lumps on his head contributed to her safety.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

giggles. oh I don't blame you (remembers many a Mr. Sweaty Palm who thought I went through med school just to serve...um under them, in their practice)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Ewww. (I thought briefly about having Winry aim the wrench ... elsewhere ... but decided against that. I'm surprised nobody's called me on "supraorbital foramen" yet. :-)

[dreamer1789.livejournal.com]

Funny & sweet girl power. ^^ I can really see Pinako bailing her out deadpan. She might even secretly be proud: about time she showed that some of Pinako's genes got passed on. ;)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I suspect Pinako bails her out so readily because she remembers an incident or two from her own career and considers her granddaughter's reaction a model of professional restraint. :-)

[lilacfield.livejournal.com]

I like the execution of this :) and the idea that Ed and Al might have been incensed enough to perform another human transmutation.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I like the execution of this :) and the idea that Ed and Al might have been incensed enough to perform another human transmutation.

Into a turnip. Or possibly a radish. :-) Yeah, some things it's better that the boys never hear about.

[amorphic.livejournal.com]

Haha, I love this! I can totally see this happening in canon. Short and sweet! ^^

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I love writing drabbles; they're so well-suited to fanfiction, because you can assume the reader has all the backstory and just concentrate on depicting the moment.

[leydhen.livejournal.com]

I love it!!!!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! (Slightly less obscure vocabulary this time ... except for "supraorbital foramen," but maybe everybody studies the bones of the head in school these days.)

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why, but this reminds me of soccer conditioning with the boys team in the summer...

Delightful. If anyone can hang with the boys, it's Winry.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why, but this reminds me of soccer conditioning with the boys team in the summer...

I must admit that I'm not sure why, either. :-)

Delightful. If anyone can hang with the boys, it's Winry.

Heh. Once she gets her own shop, Mr. Sweaty Palms had better watch out ...

[dustbunny105.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, what a fun drabble! Excellent piece and a joy to read, I could totally see this happening.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I enjoy writing Winry. She gets to heave a wrench in the longer 'fic I'm working on right now, too, but in a situation that's far more fraught. This was just pure fun.

[lyrangalia]

Very cute. I love the look of the Rockbell women without the Elric men intruding. Given how much Ed angsts about protecting them, it's easy to forget sometimes that the Rockbells are very capable of taking care of themselves (in mundane, non-homunculi situations).

*leaves carrots for plotbunnies*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear! It's one of the great things about this story, IMO; when the women end up in the damsel-in-distress position, it's usually because they're genuinely out of their depth (which depth has been shown to be quite, uh, deep).

Highly appropriate icon, btw.

*leaves carrots for plotbunnies*

Sigh. Zuko wants to know why Mai doesn't want to hold the baby, now ...

[star-x-faery.livejournal.com]

LOL poor Winry! So true.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I had no idea this was going to resonate with so many people. The new feminism: know your stuff and carry a big wrench. :-)

[helliongoddess.livejournal.com]

ROFL-- This was great! I admire all masters of drabbles and short fics, I can never seem to do anything brief. This was just wonderful, every word perfectly chosen and wonderful images, ones that will stay with me.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I admire all masters of drabbles and short fics, I can never seem to do anything brief.

Heh. I admire the longfic writers, because I can't seem to finish anything on that scale. (Someday, someday, that Al-in-Xing novel will at least get outlined.

This was just wonderful, every word perfectly chosen and wonderful images, ones that will stay with me.

Phew. Excellent. I do love working in the small forms; I'm a word-person, at base, so sitting down making a little change in the meter here and choosing a slightly different grammatical form over there and working out the most vivid and least-cliched word choice throughout makes me as happy as a clam in mud. If, er, clams could write ...

[elf-wannabe88.livejournal.com]

That's awesome! Cute, funny, so very Winry, and in such a small package! (Sentence fragment FTW!)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I figured I might as well get some use out of all the bad economic news on the radio. :-)

(Sentence fragment FTW!)

Sentence fragment?

[citharadraconis.livejournal.com]

Haha! Winry to the life. Excellent drabble.

One li'l typo: might be able find her.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Whoops -- fixed (fortunately I had a stray "that" I could trade for the "to" and maintain the 100-word limit). Thanks!

[terracottabones.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHA! So funny.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

[grin] MCPs, beware the wrench!