"I am a criminal boss! I do not 'cook.'"

ReRob was now a quasi-cyborg, over three hundred fifty pounds of flesh, metal, plastic, and ceramic, and was now hovering over the northbound lane of I-290, thinking "Neat!"

Ben succeeded, surprisingly, in a stylish skid-to-a-halt-with-left-side-banked-and-left-foot-planted stop, grinned, and announced in his finest Sports-Event-Announcer-Voice, "And for MegaZone's incredible dismount: a 9, a 9.6, a 9.9, a 4.2 from the Bulgarian judge, and a 9.6! That's good enough to move him on to the gold medal round. He would've had an even better score, but he took a couple of extra steps on that landing, and it cost him in the final standings. Thank you for playing `How the fuck do I drive this thing?'!"

“Wow, you answered all my questions kinda. I should start asking tougher ones.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Now I have to. Why is the sky blue? How does plumbing work? How old are you? How exactly do they make steel? Do you ever get vertigo? What color is aubergine? How come they have so many names for beige? Why am I tied up? Why is that vein on your forehead sticking out like that? Do you always grind your teeth so hard? What kind of name is Vaaltos anyway?”

“Will you shut up!”

“Not until you answer all of my questions.”

“But I can’t even remember all of them!” Vaaltos sounded desperate.

“Don’t care, want answers.”

“I think I’m going to keep you in a cage, suspended from the ceiling,” Vaaltos mused.

“Oh joy,” Zeld muttered. “Have I mentioned lately that I hate you?”

Being as that one of the phrases in the job description of a State Alchemist is "Officer of the Peace", and that alchemists are supposed to work for the good of society, the oficer thought, when he walked into the middle of a barfight, that he should help to subdue the fighters. He did so, and, indeed, succeeded.

Until one of the assailants called this officer an insignificant string-bean of a dwarf. The officer would like to note at this point that, though he is sometimes unjustly accused of magnifying insults to his height beyond all fact, Lancelot has independently confirmed that those were the exact words used, more or less.

He thinks that the slurred word sounded more like "stunted" than "string-bean". We have agreed to disagree on this minor detail.

And, as was reasonably predictable, the police finally showed up and arrested us all.

The officer had thought he was merely saying that all State Alchemists were assholes, a comment he had little problem with, but as he listened more closely, he realized that Demosthenes might be advocating the overthrow of the government. Or he might just really think all squirrels are totalitarian Communists. It was an extended metaphor, it was hard to tell.

But anyway. Having discovered that Demosthenes is, in fact, a revolutionary agitater, this officer set about the second part of what he kind of figured his mission was, i.e. seeing if he was doing any alchemy. Or his superior could have said "embroidery", but "alchemy" makes more sense. How exactly the officer was supposed to find this out, he wasn't quite sure.

This officer was actually somewhat impressed that Demosthenes had managed to figure it out this quickly; it generally takes people a lot longer. The officer complimented Demosthenes on this.

"I thought you'd be-- taller," Demosthenes said. "And more metal."

This officer threw a vase at him.

It occured to the officer at this point that he should probably write his report before he attempted to turn it in. This took him several minutes, as he seemed, strangely, to keep getting into involved conversations with random strangers. One of these strangers, he discovered to his astonishment, happened to be his superior's aunt. When his commanding officer's aunt discovered that this officer worked for her nephew, she requested information as to my superior's activities (apparently my commanding officer is not nearly as talkative with his relatives as he is with anyone who doesn't give a damn what he's doing). This officer volunteered every detail he knew that was not classified.

"It may sound like the tale of an old man, Fullmetal," Mustang said, "but you really are quite fortunate. I suppose I was, too-- that he retired. We threw a party. I really did hate that man. Every time I came into the office, he'd have this-- this domineering, self-righteous, lazily arrogant little--"

"Smirk?"

"Yes!"

Mustang paused. Looked at the boys more closely. Al seemed to be stifling a laugh, and Ed was giving him a very small, restrained, evil smile that should have sent him to prison for gross insubordination. But Mustang was more mature than that.

Personally, I’ve always thought that the villains the senshi face just need some counseling. Obviously they’re all psychotics if they think they can conquer a whole planet with only a handful of forces. I know they have dark magical powers. But so do we.

We call them Nuclear Bombs.

"You still have some of your pokemon?" Brock asked.

Ash enlarged the pokeball before saying, "All my old ones are still with Professor Oak. I never retrieved them because of that whole, everyone thinking I'm dead thing."