Two Peas in a Pod (winry)

[dowisetrepla]

Klara had finally perfected the way to get groceries ('groceries' being just bread, cheese, and jam) without getting the evil eyes from the vendors. She just had to keep herself from speaking a word instead of letting on from her accented Amestrian that she was a Drachman. With a polite smile and hand gestures, the vendors just assumed that she was a very shy person - a wrong assumption, but a disarming one that so far had worked.

A few of them did recognize her from before and gave her terrible scowls and, in the case of the old woman selling dairy product, a hiss. It really was too bad, because the old woman's cheese was, hostilities aside, very delicious. Klara quickly ducked and avoided eye contact as she recognized one of the vendors who threw his tomatoes at her two weeks ago. And she wasn't even shopping for vegetables!

Taking a peek and seeing that the man selling vegetables were too busy haggling with a customer, Klara hastily turned and found herself face to face with an unpleasant-looking man with an even more unpleasant expression.

"Well, well. If it isn't the Drachman whore." He said with a scowl, which made Klara cringe rather than outraged as she should've been. "Still showing your face here after sneaking off to do some spying for your backwater country?" The man was loud enough to get attention from people nearby. Unfortunately for Klara, it appeared that they only caught the words "Drachman" and "Spying".

"I am not a spy." Klara said firmly, thinking that a polite smile and hand gestures wasn't going to resolve this anyway. "Just leave me be."

"I don't think so, Drachman. I think what I should do is call the authorities and have you locked up for thieving." The man's expression was becoming more and more unpleasant.

"What are you talking about? I have not stolen anything from you!"

"Who are they going to believe, me or you?" Good point. Part of Klara's brain that wasn't completely panicking thought grudgingly. She was probably going to be let out in a couple of days, but that meant dealing with those Amestrian interrogators. Again. And they'll force her to talk about her family. And she's going to cry. Again. And then they'll push her more, and... It was going to be horrible. Again.

Why did I move to Amestris again?

[pie4me]

Winry Rockbell was out shopping for some new supplies that weren't available in her hometown of Resembool. New screws, metals caps, tools, and other mechanic gear were able to be found everywhere here! She loved this place. It was like a big city to her, compared to the small town she usually lived in otherwise. Suddenly her ears picked up a sound of unpleasantness coming from a few vendors down from where she was standing. She froze. Her dark blue mini-skirt and white shirt made her look a lot younger than she really was, but Winry was strong and quick. When people called her a kid they did not realize just how much she had seen and done in her lifetime. They wouldn't be calling me a kid if they knew exactly what I've gone through, she often thought.

Winry slung her pack over her shoulder and turned the way the noise of voices were coming from, beginning to run down the street until she came closer to the man and the girl. The first of his words just made her angry, the next sentences made her furious. That poor girl hadn't done anything to him! She was just from a different place and that was what made him so mad at her! How stupid was that? Winry could barely contain herself as she tapped the man on the shoulder. He swiveled to face her, obviously annoyed.

"Yeah, what is it, girlie?"

Without even replying, Winry reached into her bag and took out her trusty wrench. His eyes widened as she raised it into the air and brought it down against his jaw. With a loud 'oof' he spun almost in a full circle and then collapsed on the ground - completely knocked out. Winry looked satisfied for a split second. Then the realization that she had just done something worthy of being sued made her look a little bit downfallen, but not enough to clench her entire triumph. Suddenly someone grabbed her on the shoulder and shook her slightly. She turned to face another vendor, an innocent but slightly worried smile on her face.

"Winry? Is that you? What the heck are you doing, defending that good for nothing girl!?" The vendor asked, furious. Winry recognized him since she often visited to stop by for parts. Her face clouded and then she clenched her teeth together.

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING GOOD FOR NOTHING!? Say that to her face, you idiot!" She shouted. Winry swung her wrench again with expert ease, rendering that man unconscious too. She didn't stop for long, grabbing the red haired girls' hand and yanking to try and drag her along. "Come on! We gotta get out of here before someone recognizes both you and! Explain in a minute, okay?"

[dowisetrepla]

There were a lot of thoughts running around in Klara's head. Parts of it were still screaming 'I'm going to jail! They'll think I'm an accomplice!', while another part thought 'there weren't any bloodstains on her wrench, right? ... right?' But mostly, she was still processing what had happened. And thinking that she was starting to run out of breath.

"Wait! Wait!" Klara exclaimed as she let go of the girl's hand and panted with her eye closed. She could still see the girl, though through colors that she could never explain to others. The Triglava hummed as it recalibrated itself to adjust to the darker lighting of... the alley that they were apparently in. Huh, I did not notice that at all...

After panting while bending over for a moment, Klara recounted what had happened. She was being harassed by some mean vendor, then he and the other man were hit over the head by the girl over there. Then she grabbed her hands, and told her to start running. Which meant...

"T-thank you." Klara said, stuttering over her word as her lungs protested that they needed few more minutes to recover. "I did not know what to do when you helped me-" Klara opened her left eye and saw that... the girl was an Amestrian. Blond hair, blue eyes. The months of harassment and nasty looks must have taken a toll on Klara, as she instinctively took a step back.

Oh, come on. She helped me just then, remember? By... knocking out two people with a wrench? Klara chided herself in her head.

[pie4me]

Winry turned when the girl pleaded for her to 'wait'. The very first thing that caught Win's eye was not Klara's bright flame red hair, it was the piece of machinery over one of her eyes. Winry barely registered any of the thanks that the girl was giving her. Instead she just looked almost hungry, like she wanted to grab the mechanical piece and start dissecting it right then and there. Ignoring all other thanks from the girl, Winry pointed to the automail. "What is that!? Did you make it yourself? Its beautifully crafted... and those lenses... wow... and how about how it fits right to your face without slipping off, even when we were running? Wonderful! I love it!"

She reached out as if to yank it off, but restrained herself and let her arm hang back to her side. Edward and Alphonse - back when Al had been a big metal giant - would always come to her for repairs and servicing when they were out saving the world from evil beings and such. She always loved working on them both, but nothing like this had ever come to Resembool. Winry wondered a lot of the time how she could re-make glasses so that they were more like this. Better fashioned for the eyes and face. If she could just get a hold of that automail piece - just to look it over - then the plans she had been drawing out back home could finally become finished if she found out something she didn't already know!

"Don't be afraid!" Winry assured the girl as she saw Klara backing away slowly. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. I would just really like to look at that thing on your eye. I'm a mechanic, actually, from Resembool. Nothing much ever comes our way so I don't get the chance to look over new equipment. I would be really... really grateful if you would let me... take a look at it?"

She knew Klara had no reason to trust her besides the fact that Winry had just saved her skin. But it was worth a shot to ask and if Klara said no - well then so be it. Nothing was so important to Winry that she would let a Drachma girl be scared just because something on her own face was interesting. No no. She would let Klara decide to trust her and if she didn't that was her choice, not Winry's.

[dowisetrepla]

The increased brightness that the Triglava chose to portray the Amestrian girl told Klara that her knight (so to speak)... with a shining wrench was very excited. She was a mechanic, and she was very excited... about Klara's Triglava?

"I..." Klara was stunned. Aside from her mother and grandfather, she had never met someone who was so enthusiastic about automail as herself.

"Of course you can!" Klara exclaimed. "Actually, these are not lenses, they're just transparent protective shell for the mechanisms inside without interfering with the vision. The lenses are underneath, and they actually need to be infused with other chemicals during the melting process for it to be fully functional. The calibrating process is very tedious, I am sure you are too aware, but-" Klara stopped herself. "I am sorry. I am being very rude. I did not even introduce myself to you. My name is Klara Alexandrovna Krasnyeva." She smiled gratefully, thinking that this was probably the first conversation she had in Amestris that didn't involve either a hiss or the piercing eyes of an interrogator.

"The process of dismantling my Triglava is actually very complicated," and horrendously painful, Klara thought, "but I have the detailed schematics in my workshop - ah, yes! I have a workshop here! You must come! I have-" She looked down and saw that she managed to buy bread and jam before things got ugly. "I have... tea." Klara said meekly. Perhaps she was being too presumptuous. "Would you like to go and look at my workshop?"

[pie4me]

"Protective shell!?" Winry repeated, her voice higher than necessary with excitement. She really wanted to touch it... so badly. She nodded her head up and down at every statement, loving the detailed explanation and filing away every bit of information into the recesses of her mechanic-loving mind. "Incredible... I've never seen anything like it."

That was the truth. While Winry may have had tons of experiences with automail and other such mechanical devices, this was new to her. It seemed highly advanced and yet... simple enough, at least to Winry. "Oh I see..." And now that she looked closer, she really could see how it would be sort of hard to dismantle. Not to mention painful in every sense of the word. If it was really attached directly over Klara's eye then it wouldn't exactly be easy going to rip it off.

So Winry settled for the workshop idea. "Sounds wonderful to me!" she exclaimed. As they walked, the mechanic glanced over curiously at Klara, trying to decide how to word her next question. "You aren't from around here... I guess... and it seems as if you were having a pretty hard time of it back there. That guy was a jerk."

And so was everyone else, in my opinion.

"If anyone messes with you again you're free to call me! I'm staying nearby for a while."

I can't wait to see that workshop of hers.

[dowisetrepla]

Klara was excited, to say the least, to finally have met an Amestrian who was nice, wasn't yelling or hissing at her, and into automail as much as she was. In fact, this... Did she say her name? She searched through her memory, and remembered that one of the vendors harassing her (the one who threw a junk metal at her two weeks ago and barely missed, in fact) called her W-... W-... Oo... Ooi... Vinry? Of all the consonants in the Amestrian language, it had to be a 'W'. I probably should ask her to clear it up first though...

Before Klara could ask, however, Vinry spoke up first about the vendors.

"I would be very grateful, but please do not worry too much. It has never been that intense before." Klara was beginning to think that perhaps name exchange was not an appropriate thing to do between strangers in Amestrian culture. She's not offended, right? She looked over and thought that Vinry looked, if anything else, curious and excited. Klara's new... acquaintance must have been really eager to see her workshop. Speaking of workshop...

Klara stopped in front of her workshop, with the tinted windows that simply said "Automail Repairs and Design". She would have loved to put her family name in honor of her grandfather... but she wasn't sure she could afford to repair the windows every other week. Reaching out to the small red door, Klara unlocked it and opened, all the while thinking about whether to ask Vinry if her name really was Vinry. She could be my first friend in Amestris... But what do I call her if I don't ask her for her name? "Well, here we are. Come on in."

The workshop was a slightly cramped (or cozy, as Klara preferred to think) place with numerous Drachman automails on display. The Drachman designs were already very different from the Amestris ones, but Klara was using the Krasnyev-Morozov designs that were also very different from the standard Drachman fare. The models on the left were much smoother and orbicular, with leather sheathings and covers that would have created an illusion that the wearer was merely wearing something over his or her limbs rather than anything mechanical. They clearly focused on a more organic utility and aesthetics. On the right, however, were their antithesis. They didn't even have hand parts, but bulky rectangular prisms with various marks that indicated that there were tools within. The indigo-colored ones were labeled 'industrial', while the yellow and pink colored ones were labeled 'domestic'.

Beyond the display was a simple counter, and beyond that lied Klara's workplace filled with Amestrian automails that were all ripped apart for her to study. On the side was a chalkboard detailing the mechanisms and the physics of the Amestrian automails, but Klara already knew that some of the equations that she managed to derive after weeks of studying them firsthand were wrong. There was also a movable chalkboard filled to the edge with complex equations, an ongoing attempt on Klara's part to figure out just what her grandfather was working on in his notes.

"It's a little messy..." Klara hesitated, "I am very sorry, but I did not catch your name." She asked gingerly, wondering if she was committing a terrible cultural faux pas.