I'm not too happy with this chapter. I decided it was time to introduce some conflict / a story arc, and I feel this could have been done better. This is where I call in the excuse that I'm really just writing this for fun because I felt the concept needed to be done.

If I ever end up rewriting this to be a well-thought, seriously written story, this is definitely one of those things I will further develop.

I changed the name of the story, because I feel it fits perfectly: "Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning."

x-x-x

Carmine [kahr-min, -mahyn]
noun

1. A crimson or purplish-red color
2. A crimson pigment obtained from cochineal

(from Dictionary . com)

x-x-x

Alphonse Elric

Patrol was never fun. Sure, it was one of the only times they were allowed out of Headquarters … but it was dangerous. There was always a high possibility of getting bit or scratched by a Chim, and that was not an experience that anyone enjoyed.

No, Alphonse Elric preferred staying inside the abandoned hotel. Even though it couldn't be considered anything close to safe, it was at least dry … which was more than what could be said about the teen's current position – walking through a wet, empty alley armed with a heavy metal staff.

A sharp hiss sounded to his right, and the younger Elric looked to where his older brother's face was contorted into a grimace. Al immediately recanted his thoughts. For all he was miserable, Edward was miserable and in pain. Al had never had to deal with automail limbs, but after almost two and a half years of living with his brother, he knew it wasn't a walk in the park.

"Perhaps we should be heading back?" He asked this hesitantly a few moments later, even though he knew what his brother's answer would be.

"No," came the expected answer, "I'm fine. They're counting on us, right? We can't let them down just because a little rain."

Sometimes, Al thought his brother was too stubborn for his own good.

"Okay," he said. "We just have this block to finish anyway, and then we can get back to where it's dry!"

The evening patrol was usually the calmest of all the excursions into East City. Even with the mutated genes, Chims usually followed the general behavioral patterns of humans. Like humans, Chims were diurnal and therefore much more sluggish in the evening and nighttime than the rest of the day. That being said, the patrol would sometimes run across an owl or a bat Chim, whose genetic material caused it to be just the opposite.

The purpose of the evening patrol was to dispatch the Chims that were hovering around their base so that in the morning, there was time to wake up and get into position to defend the hotel. Al didn't know if it actually worked or not, but it seemed to be a good idea in theory. The further away the Chims were, the more time it would take for them to get to the hotel. It also allowed the supply run team to get out in the morning without much problem.

There were currently three other teams out on patrol with the Elric duo. While Edward and Alphonse had gone south, Elizabeth and Rebecca had taken the east side, Jean and Heymans had taken the north, and Maria and Denny had gone west. It was a system that allowed for almost the entire perimeter to be cleared in the least amount of time.

Sometimes, Al couldn't help but think it was all too orderly, that things went a little too smoothly. After the utter chaos that had been the year and a half or so that he, Edward, and Winry had been on the road, the relatively safe atmosphere of Eastern HQ was a little unnerving. It had been six months now, and he still felt as if something could go wrong at any minute.

"KYAAAAH!"

A loud, high-pitched squeal cut across the rain-splattered city, jerking Alphonse from his thoughts, and it was only a few seconds later that both the Elric brothers were running in the direction of the noise. They had nearly finished their route, and they should have been heading back by now … but they couldn't just leave someone who was in trouble. In the dog-eat-dog world that society had become, the Elrics had always found themselves helping the littler dogs rather than eating them.

The two soaked boys skidded to a halt in the middle of the next street over, looking for anything that could point them to the source of the noise. They stopped, waited … and listened.

Woof! Woof … grrrowl.

Alphonse exchanged a look with his older brother. Speaking of dogs, the creatures were extremely valuable in the fight against Chims. There were two back at Headquarters – faithful Den, whom had followed the three from Resembool, and Black Hayate, Elizabeth's husky. Chimaerism didn't seem to affect them in the same way it did humans – they would get sick for a few days, but otherwise be perfectly fine.

And they hated Chims.

Ed and Al took off once more, and it wasn't long before they found the source of the noise. In the back of a dead-end alley stood a little girl, crying and flattened against the brick wall while a large white dog growled at the three advancing Chims. If the Elrics had been but a minute later … Al didn't want to think about it.

He shifted his grip on his staff, and Edward pulled his sleeve back to reveal the knife he attached to his prosthetic arm whist on patrol. In the split second before they foolishly charged the Chimaeras, Alphonse thought it to be a wonder Winry hadn't killed his brother yet for mistreating her engineering.

It didn't take them long to dispatch the Chims. With them distracted, the brothers managed to take two of them out before they even realized what was happening. That left it at two-on-one as the third Chim turned to fight … and it wasn't much of a fight.

The girl quivered before them, and blue eyes stared through brown bangs. Realizing that the two of them must look a fright covered in Chim blood, Al understood why Edward crouched down before approaching her. They'd look less menacing down at her level.

"Hi," Edward said, "I'm Edward, and this is my little brother Alphonse. We're here to help you, okay?"

The girl nodded quickly, but didn't relax a muscle. She was on alert still, almost like a cornered animal. Briefly, Al wondered why she was out here all on her own. He didn't want to think about the most obvious answer – that her parents had both been turned.

"What's your name?" the younger Elric asked the girl, crouching so that he was next to his brother once more.

"N-Nina," she said. "A-and that's A-Alexander."

"Nina," Edward repeated as the girl continued to shiver, "you're chilled to the bone." Before the girl could say anything else, he had shrugged off his worn red jacket and placed it over her shoulders. It too was wet, but it had to be better than nothing.

Before they could ask any more questions, though, Al knew that they had to get out of the confined alleyway and into the open. In the years since leaving Resembool, one thing the Elrics had driven into their minds was to always leave at least two openings – preferably three. And in the alley, there was only the one.

"Come on, Brother. We need to get her out of here."

Thankfully, Nina followed the two teens without much protest. They had saved her life, after all, and she seemed to be a very trusting girl. Alexander followed closely behind Edward, nudging into his flesh hand every now and again. If they weren't in such a desperate situation, Al could have laughed at how quickly the big white dog had taken a liking to his brother.

"Do you have any family?" Edward asked the girl once they were out in the main street.

Alphonse dreaded the answer – why else would a four-year-old girl be out in the streets on her own in these conditions? Therefore, he was pleasantly surprised when the girl nodded affirmatively.

"My daddy," she said affectionately, but then her face fell slightly. "He usually saves me … but lately, he's been paying more attention to the creatures than me."

"We should take them back to Headquarters," Al told his brother quietly, watching as the girl and her dog wandered a few paces in front of them. "Her dad too, if we find him. No one should be out here on their own." He wouldn't admit it, but Nina's words had made him uneasy.

Edward nodded in quiet agreement. "She was so young," he said wistfully. "She couldn't have been much more than a year old when everything was shot to hell." Looking to Al, he sighed. "This life is the only one she's ever known."

Alphonse took his eyes off the pair in front of them. "In a way, though … isn't it better that way? Not being able to remember how things used to be?"

Edward too stared at the girl in the oversized red coat. "I don't know," he said, and Al pretended not to notice the little hitch in his voice.

Before them, Nina inhaled loudly and then squealed. The Elrics immediately readied their respective weapons, ready for a fight. They relaxed at her next comprehensible word.

"DADDY!"

Noise … noise was not a good thing. The Elrics winced in tandem, immediately scanning the area for any attention the cries may have attracted before jogging to catch up with their newest friend. When they did, they saw the man whom they assumed to be the girl's father jogging up in the opposite direction. The man swept his daughter up into a hug amidst her shrieks of joy, and then looked at the two teens after putting her back down.

"Thank you for rescuing Nina," he said gratefully, shifting her behind him protectively. "I heard her scream, but I was … held up." The Chim gunk covering his hands was enough explanation for the boys. The man looked to be in his early forties. He didn't look strong or fierce, but the gunk covering his hands and the blood spattered across his glasses suggested otherwise. It was impossible to judge people just by their appearance nowadays.

"I'm Shou Tucker," he told the brothers. "I would greet you properly, but …" he gestured vaguely with one blood-covered hand.

The Elrics introduced themselves for the second time that evening, disregarding the gruesome appearance of the man. The exchange was awkward, to say the least. It wasn't often that the boys ran into someone who wasn't part of the closely-knit group back at Headquarters, and Edward had never been an overly social person to begin with.

"Do you have somewhere to stay?" Tucker asked the boys, "Our house isn't far outside the city. No one should be stuck out in this weather."

Both boys turned him down. "Actually," Al said, "we were going to ask you if you wanted to come with us. We're living with a group of people about a mile from here, and –" he didn't get to finish asking his question before the man turned down the offer.

"Oh, no. Nina and I get along just fine," he said, stroking his daughter's dark, wet hair. "It's been different, since her mother died, but we're doing well. Thank you for the offer, but no thank you."

Nina shivered against her father's leg, and he picked her up once more. "In fact," he continued, "we should probably be getting home, and you should be as well." Carefully, he removed Edward's jacket from her trembling form and handed it back to its owner.

"Come, Alexander," he commanded, and the interesting trio walked away from the stunned Elric brothers.

"He was right," Alphonse said to Edward, "we should be going back. Everyone is probably really worried by now."

"Yeah," the older blond replied distractedly.

"Brother?"

Edward shook his head. "It's nothing. We should report this to that flame bastard though – he and Elizabeth should know there are others nearby."

They all but flat-out ran back to Headquarters, aware of the panic their absence had caused. Once they were back inside, where it was warm – and dry – the two of them were immediately hustled toward the fires that had been built in the converted decorative fireplaces. They couldn't risk getting sick – without easy access to medicines and other such things, even a cold could become something deadly.

What Al wouldn't give for a hot shower … but the water that remained in the system wasn't safe after three years of contamination. For a while after the first outbreaks, everything still worked – there were still enough people working at the water and power plants. Now, now there was no one.

Any water that was used in HQ was pre-boiled, which killed most of the contaminants.

It wasn't long after his hair had dried and he had stopped shivering that Roy approached them, with Elizabeth on his right side and Winry flanking his left. When she saw them, Winry immediately dashed forward and started worrying over Edward's metal. Al watched as his brother pretended to be disgruntled, but eventually gave in.

"What happened? The other patrols were back half an hour ago," Roy asked them, sitting down on one of the extra armchairs in what used to be the first-floor lounge.

"There are others living nearby," Edward answered simply, for once not instigating an argument against the older teen.

"Tell me everything," the commander of Headquarters – well, commanded.

Alphonse sighed. This was going to be a long conversation, he could already tell.

x-x-x

I'm hoping to wrap this arc up in the next chapter. I know I'm rushing it, but … ehn.

So the question is: Do you want the next chapter Edward-centric, even though I just wrote one of his chapters, or should I do it as someone else? (I'm thinking if it's not Edward, it will be Roy)

Please, I would appreciate more feedback than I'm getting. I'm getting maybe 3 reviews a chapter, and there are almost 200 of you who have read this. It's a little off-putting.

I'm not gonna do a 'this many reviews before I update' because that's just desperate. But if you have any input or feedback whatsoever, I would really love to hear it.

x-x-x

karmahope . tumblr . com