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Cross-dressing /krôs ˈ dres-i ŋ / gerund- the act or practice of wearing clothing designed for the opposite sex.
It was a cold, clear fall morning. The sun shone anemically on the mountain pass as a covered wagon came lumbering along the road, pulled by a pair of unremarkable chestnuts. A blond man in a wide-brimmed straw hat held the reins. A woman, presumably his wife, sat on the seat right beside him, wearing a long cotton dress and an ugly flowered bonnet that concealed her face.
Just as the wagon came around the final bend, five armed horsemen burst from their hiding places in the surrounding woods. As the driver tried to calm his frightened team, the men on horseback drew their weapons and blocked the road.
“Beggin’ your pardon for interrupting your morning drive, folks,” said one man silkily. He appeared to be the leader of the small gang. “But I do believe you’re carryin’ something o’ mine.”
“Nothing in this wagon belongs to you!” the driver of the wagon retorted. Though his words were defiant, his voice quavered a little. His wife said nothing, just shifted her weight and kept her head down.
The bandits laughed.
“Well, now, that don’t seem very friendly,” the gang leader chortled.
“Did you think we wouldn’t notice you’d changed the route? Or that you hadn’t given us our cut?” said another of the bandits.
“Now, since you’ve made us come a-lookin’ for you,” the leader continued. “Not only will we takin’ our usual share, but we’ll also be takin’ away everything else you’ve got in that there wagon. And then,” he added, leering. “I think maybe you’re gonna give me a little one-on-one time with the missus.”
“Oh, I think you might want to reconsider that,” the driver said in a changed voice. With one hand, he reached up to push his straw hat back from his face. “My little woman here’s a dreadfully ugly creature.”
The woman turned to her husband and swatted his arm.
“How can you say that, darling!” ‘she’ said in a distinctly male voice. “How can you shame me in front of all these people?”
“Hey, if I could make you prettier, I would,” the driver said with a shrug.
“You brute! You are not the man I married!” his ‘wife’ said, finally pulling the ugly bonnet off his head. As his face was revealed, one of the bandits gasped. He recognized that man...that face!
“Boss,” he hissed urgently. “That man, in the dress, that’s...”
And then suddenly the blond driver had a gun in each hand, and the black-haired man in the dress was pulling on a pair of white gloves and smirking.
“You’re all under arrest, obviously,” he said, holding up a silver watch.
“State alchemist?” one of the bandits gasped.
“That’s right. And by order of the Fuhrer, you’re under arrest for extortion and grand theft and larceny and whatever else the warrant said. I didn’t actually read the whole thing. Now, you can come nice and quiet, without any trouble, or—”
“Take ‘em!” the bandit leader cried, raising his gun.
But before any of his men could react, a blonde woman leaned around the back of the wagon and shot the leader in the wrist. The man screamed and dropped his weapon, clutching his bleeding arm.
“Or we can resort to bloodshed,” the man in the dress finished nonchalantly. “That was just a warning shot, gentlemen. I assure you, the Lieutenant here can and will shoot all five of you dead before you can even think about drawing your weapons. You may want to reevaluate your plans.”
The four uninjured men glanced at each other. Their leader moaned pitifully, cradling his wrist to his chest.
“Please don’t bother running away,” the woman added, a single pistol in her hands. The blond driver still had his guns trained on the group as well, and the man in the dress just smirked down at them. “My accuracy drops significantly when the targets are moving. You may end up permanently disfigured rather than merely dead.”
“She shot a man in the jaw once. Lost the lower mandible, but lived long enough to serve his fifteen years,” the driver said, grinning. “Not a pretty sight. Had to wear a mask all the time cuz he scared the other prisoners.”
As one, the gang of bandits dropped their weapons.
“Excellent. Havoc, would you do the honors? Hawkeye and I will watch your back,” the man in the dress said, casually snapping his fingers. Instantaneously, a ball of fire exploded at the feet of the leader, who had been inching his boot toward his fallen gun.
“Sure thing, Colonel Mustang,” Havoc said, swinging himself down from the wagon and striding forward with a pair of handcuffs.
The trip back down the mountain was uneventful, especially because they’d left Lieutenant Hawkeye in the back of the wagon to stand guard over the prisoners. The transfer of custody went smoothly as well, although more than a few of the soldiers stared at the oddly-dressed Colonel as he passed.
“Explain to me again why Lieutenant Hawkeye wasn’t in the dress?” Mustang’s counterpart asked. A lean, dark haired woman in her thirties, Colonel Fox was obviously trying to keep a straight face as she took in the younger man’s clothing.
“Tactics!” Mustang explained, unashamed. “She’s my best shot. Helluva sniper; you should see her in action. Anyway, I needed her in the back, unobserved and with an unobstructed viewpoint, so she could keep all of them in her sights in case they tried anything. Which they did.”
Colonel Fox dipped her head in acknowledgement.
“Can’t argue with results,” she said lightly. Probably best not to argue with a State Alchemist, anyway, she decided. Those guys were all a little…quirky.
Behind them, the sullen bandits watched the exchange from behind the bars of the holding cell.
“Sure he just doesn’t like cross-dressing?” one of the prisoners whispered to another. “I mean, he didn’t have to be wearing a dress at all…we didn’t even know the man’s wife came along on his delivery routes.”
The two prisoners turned to look at the Colonel, who had moved to stand beside the terrifying blonde sniper.
“I can’t see why you don’t like wearing them, Lieutenant,” he was saying, smoothing a hand down the skirt of his dress. “There’s this whole…air flow. It’s kinda nice!”
“Just…please go put on some pants, sir,” she replied wearily.
As the Colonel laughed, the two prisoners looked at each other again.
“Or maybe he’s just bat-shit crazy,” the second man suggested, just as Havoc passed by their cell. He grinned at them.
“Oh, you guys have no idea.”