I like this story!

Even I am exited as I wrote this chapter. It has more action.

Hope you share my feelings!

Enjoy!

Heavenly Brothers

Ch.4 Found out?

It's been six months since the Elric Brothers came to train at Dublith under the guidance of Izumi Curtis. Their mornings started out with sparing practice. Ed and Al faced each other and Al always won. Once a mouth they would face Teacher two on one, she was always the one and always kicked their butts. She could help them to an extent but if she overexerted herself, she would start to cough up blood. It was a scary sight to watch. The brothers would be covered in burses at the end of the day but they seemed to disappear over night. Izumi just thought that they were tough little kids. After sparing practice they ate lunch. After lunch they worked on alchemy.

Their alchemy training consisted of identifying and recreating alchemy circles, learning the right alchemy circles to use in different situations, and the law of equivalent exchange. She drilled them every witch way. She pushed them so hard once Al wings grew out of the strain of his body. Good thing Izumi had her back turned, Al stoped them half way then forced them back in and then fell unconscious. Izumi thought it was from the training and dismissed them for the day. It didn't take energy to grow and retract their wings but if they stopped the wings before they are all the way out and then retract them, it strained their body a lot.

Ed and Al's wings started to get cramped up from the lack of use. They brought them out whenever they could, usually in the bathroom or in their room late at night. They haven't flown for a long time, not since they left Resembool. Soon Ed couldn't take it anymore.

One night a he lay awake with his wings stretched out. This particular night the brothers decided to sleep with their wings out, so Ed took the floor while Al lay in the bed. Ed was starred at the ceiling and head on a pillow taken from the bed. They never really worried about Teacher or Sig coming in and seeing their wings in the morning because the boys always got up before them.

"Hey, Al, you still awake?" Ed whispered.

"Yah, Brother, I am." Al whispered back.

Ed propped himself up with one elbow and asked Al in an exited whisper. "Hay, Al, do you what to go flying?"

"But Brother! It was ok back in Resembool cause we lived outside of the town where no one could see us, but here the buildings are so close together someone is bound to see us!" Al said in an urgent whisper.

"Yah I know," Ed said looking out the window, "that's why we're going back to that lake we spent that month at."

"I don't want to go back to that island!"

"We don't have to land on the island, we can just fly over it. No one lives near it so no one can see us!" Ed smiled at his genius plain.

Al thought it over, smiled, and then nodded. "And the only person who could see us would be that masked man and I doubt he will tell any one." He joked.

The got ready to go, they put on warm clothes because it had snowed a few days prior. They decided that they wouldn't take any snacks or water because they would just make a ruckus in the kitchen and wake Teacher.

They jumped out their window glad that it was a one story house. The window had faced the backyard so they didn't have to risk going through the front yard. There were already many foot prints in the snow due to their sparing practices so they didn't have to worry about teacher being suspicious that there were foot pints leading acrossed the yard into the ally. The streets had been plowed and the sidewalks had little to no snow on them. It was easy to get out of the town and it was just a little ways to the lake.

As they got closer to the lake the houses seemed to disappear. By the time they got to the edge of the lake the last house they passed was about a five minute walk back down the road. Ed started to take off his coat when Al stopped him by putting a hand on his shoulder.

"What is it, Al?"

"Brother there is a house on the other side of the lake." Al pointed out a dark shape on the opposite shore.

"It looks like no one lives in it or they all are asleep. Besides if we stay near this side of the lake they probably won't see us." Ed reassured his brother.

Al seemed satisfied and started taking off his coat and shirt, Ed did the same. They had ripped many shirts and pajamas growing their wings. Soon both brothers looked at each other smiling, they both had been wanting to fly for awhile. At the same time their wings sprouted out of their backs, shooting out like rockets. Each of their wings was about six feet long maybe more, which gave them each the wingspan of over twelve feet.

They took off by jumping as hard as they could and flapping their powerful wings at the same time. The feeling was amazing to be back up in the air after so long. Ed laughed out in joy. He looked back to see Al flying in a figure eight. His smile grew wider.

After a while of loopty-loops and just stretching their wings, Ed had an idea.

"Hay Al!" he yelled acrossed the space between them waving at him to come over.

"What Brother?" Al asked once he was in talking distance.

"How bout we spar while flying?" Ed asked his little brother.

Al stared for a moment then a big smile came onto his face.

"That sounds fun!"

"Well duh, that's why I suggested it" Ed said. "We got flying down like pros and our fighting is improving. I think we could fight in the air just fine."

"Sure!" Al replied smile growing.

They hovered about eight feet away from each other right in the middle of the lake. The island was right below them. They were about thirty feet up. They just flapped their wings to keep from falling to the ground. They stayed at the same height watching each other to see which one to move first.

Al made the first move, charging at Ed with a few powerful strokes of his pure white wings. Ed blocked the punch and aimed a kick to his brother's side. Al sank fast causing Ed to miss. Then from were he ended up, Al took off again upper cutting Ed from underneath. Ed was forced backwards a few feet but he righted himself and flew toward Al bringing back his fist then connecting it with Al stomach. Al doubled over but didn't fall from the sky. Ed took this chance and brought his leg down on Al's back just above where his wings were coming out of his back. When Al recovered the fighting continued. After a intense battle of dodging and powerful blows, Ed came out the victor.

"Haha, I finally one for once!" Ed said grabbing his right arm and flexing his muscles. "Maybe fighting in the air is my talent!"

"Maybe, Brother." Al looked happily at Ed as he celebrated. As they caught their breathes Al asked, "Do you think we should be getting back now, it's getting awfully late?"

"Yah, why not, we should come back here tomorrow."

"Sure, it was so fun to fly again." Al said as they landed where they left their clothes.

The snow had lost its brilliant white color when the boys compared it to their wings, now it was more of a dull white almost gray. They retracted their wings and grabbed their clothes putting them on. By the time they got back to the house it was a few hours past midnight. They had fallen asleep fast, both dreaming of flying through the sky with each other.

The Elrics had made flying at the lake an activity they enjoyed almost every night. The times when they didn't go out to the lake were if they were too tired from the days training or if it was storming out. The strong winds were suicide for the young angels and their wings got to heavy to lift the boys up if they got wet.

In the months that followed Ed and Al started to notice a few new 'powers'.

One day while sparing in the backyard, Al got real mad at Ed for some reason or another and nailed Ed in the face with a punch. Instead of flying back a few feet, Ed was sent a few blocks over, and when Ed got back he punched Al back, sending him flying over blocks too.

Both had super strength. Teacher had been inside and missed the whole thing. In the days that followed the boys struggled to learn how to control their new found strength, they even told Teacher they didn't want to fight her like they always did to test their skills. They were afraid they might hurt her. She just took it as they didn't want their butts kicked.

A few other powers surfaced as the weeks continued.

Al woke up invisible one morning and Ed's hand disappeared in the shower. That was an interesting day. Their body parts kept on disappearing and reappearing all day long. Teacher, Sig, and Mason had almost caught them a number of times. Mason had been unloading a delivery and the brothers were helping. Ed turned around to ask Al a question but ended up pushing Al behind a crate. Al's head had disappeared and they couldn't let Mason see. A few minutes later Al's head was back and they helped unload the rest of the delivery without incident. Dinner was real fun for the bothers, as you could imagine they ate fast and got out of there quick before anything bigger than their fingers disappeared.

Then after they finally got the hang of invisibility, other than a missing toe or two, another power showed up.

Ed was leaning against the side of the house to catch his breath after a particularly rough spar with Al and half his arm sank into the wall. Startled, he tried to pull it out but it was stuck. Al noticed Ed struggling so he walked over to see what was wrong. He saw Ed's arm and gasped, he looked around to make sure no one was around and moved to help his brother.

Pulling at it proved to be a waste of time other than hurting Ed. Al's plan to cut off Ed's arm was quickly denied by the trapped blond. Asking Teacher was out of the question because she would ask how he got stuck and they couldn't say it was alchemy for it would be classified as human transmutation and that wouldn't be believable. Al asked how he had did it in the first place and Ed said he didn't know.

Ed concentrated on his arm, slowly he was able to pull it out. The boys jumped up and down for getting Ed free until Al sank to his knees into the ground. They had gained the power to move through solid objects. The two seemed to get their powers on the same days, they suspected that was because the got their wings on the same day.

The powers they had before included their wings, great vision and hearing, and healing abilities that worked on other people as well as themselves. Now to add to the list they had super strength, invisibility, and they could move through stuff. They practiced alchemy during the day and their angel powers during the night at the lake. They never landed on the island if they could avoid it.

Their night training evolved from light sparing to heated battles using their powers. They would go invisible to sneak up on each other and the power of fazing through stuff to dodge attacks. The brothers could use their super strength against each other because their bodies could take it. Soon they could use the newfound powers like second nature. They reframed from using them during the day while training with Teacher, just incase she saw anything.

Ed's anger exploded once when Teacher commented on his fighting. He jumped around and did flips to dodge or if she threw him. She said it was probably easy for him to do such 'tricks' due to his small size. Al had to use his strength to hold him back because Ed was totally willing to smash her face in with his super strength.

They soon found themselves totally exhausted from training both night and day. They had free days on Sunday to rest, but they rather cheek out the town on those days. They never went to church since their mother died. Even though they knew heaven and God were real, they won't religious in the slightest. The Elrics kept up with their training schedule because they needed to learn alchemy and how to control their powers.

A while after they started this training schedule there came a day neither of them wanted to leave bed for alchemy training that day. They knew they were in for one from Teacher, but they just couldn't move.

Izumi's POV

Around ten a.m. Izumi grew impatient with her two pupils. She kicked down the unlocked door and walked in. Both boys where huddled in the bed they shared looking at their teacher scared out of their minds. The bed was just big enough for them to share it.

"And why aren't you boys up yet!" she headed to the side of the bed.

"Ahhh, w-we don't-" Al started but was cut off.

"You don't want to train today, is that it?" she yelled now standing right beside the bed.

She reached out for Ed to pull him up by the front of the shirt. No doubt this was his idea. But she stopped as she saw the two boy's faces. Both their cheeks were tinted red and there was sweat on their foreheads. She leaned in and put her had on Ed's forehead. He cringed back thinking she was going to hurt him, but looked up at her when she just put her hand on his brow.

"You have a fever." She stated then cheeked Al's temperature too. "You do too, Al."

The boys looked at each other then back at their teacher. She noticed both of their eyes were dull.

"Well, I guess I can't punish you for being sick." She said turning to leave the room. "I'll get Sig to fix the door."

She came back with a glass thermometer and a bowl of water with two washcloths in it. Izumi wrung the washcloths out and stuck one on each of the boy's foreheads. She also took their temperatures, Al's was around a hundred and Ed's around a hundred and three. She called the doctor because she never dealt with sick children before. He came around noon and checked the boys. Sig had fixed the door by then.

"It looks like it could be a normal cold or… it could be over exhaustion." The doctor said looking at the two boys sitting at the edge of the bed. "These are your student's, correct?"

"Yes, they came about a year and a half ago." Izumi said.

"Well, Izumi I know how you can be with your 'training', so I give you this advice, let up on them if you are making them train like you usually do. They do show signs of over exhaustion." The doctor said turning to her.

"Yes, I guess I have been pushing them a lot lately." She said. Sig was right behind her so he squeezed her shoulders to tell her it wasn't all her fault.

"By the way, I've been meaning to ask you how are those new pills helping you?" the doctor asked.

"Oh, they're working fine!" she said with a smile.

"That's great." He looked back at the boys. "Make sure these kids get plenty of rest… and a hot bath isn't a bad idea either." He said back to the Curtises.

"Ok, we'll watch over them don't you worry." Sig said hands still on his wife's shoulders.

They showed the doctor out after he said the boys will be fine in a couple of days of rest. When went back to the boy's room, Ed and Al were still sitting on the edge of the bed. When Izumi walked in Ed looked up then at the floor.

"I'm sorry," Ed said which made Izumi stop and stare.

"What do you mean, Ed? I'm the one who was pushing you to hard." She said nervously.

Ed kept staring at the floor. "No it is our fault not being able to keep up with your training." He looked nervously from the floor to her then back to the floor, shifting a little. "And... Al and I… have been… training at night at the lake."

Izumi was taken back at Ed's words. "W-what?"

Ed looked up at her and tried to smile. "At night we go down to the lake outside of town and practice by our selves."

Izumi and Sig looked at the boys in surprise. She had secretly been impressed at the rate the boys were learning at but finding out that they had been sneaking off at night to train was just overwhelming. Ed looked back down at his feet and the smile faded.

"We just wanted to get better at…" his voice left off.

"When did you start doing this?" She asked anger rising in her voice, but it was anger at herself not at the boys. Ed flinched thinking it was them she was angry at.

"We started about six months after we started training here." Ed muttered the answer.

"A year? You've been sneaking out that long?" this time she was surprised, she had thought that the answer was going to be a few weeks or so, not a year.

"Yah, we would leave when we were sure you were asleep around ten or eleven. Then we would train for a while and come back around two." Ed explained in a calm voice with a hint of sadness in it. "Isn't that right, Al?" he turned to his brother who had been quiet this whole time.

"Mm-hmm" he nodded his head looking up from the floor to Ed. His eyes were watery.

"But you two got up every morning at six! That gave you only four hours of sleep a night!" Izumi was beside herself that she hadn't notice the boys' exhaustion before.

"I'm sorry…" Ed said again.

"No it is my fault. I made you think that you needed to train extra. I'm sorry." She walked up to the brothers and hugged both of them. Ed and Al looked at her in surprise like she was a dog that just started talking.

Just then, Al started to fidget and shake uncontrollably. Izumi let go and stared. Ed looked at his brother scared.

"Al, are you alright?" he asked.

Al jumped up and ran into the hallway to the bathroom. He slammed the door and you could hear the click of the lock. Ed was the first one out of the room and to the bathroom door. He pounded on it.

"Alphonse, are you ok?"

The door unlocked and cracked open. Al's arm came out and dragged Ed in. The door closed and locked again. Izumi and Sig ran up to the door.

"Ed, Al, what's going on?" Izumi asked through the door. The boys voices were low murmurs be hind the door.

"Everything is fine!" Ed frantic voice was heard.

Ed's POV

On the other side of the door Al was swaying clutching his head. Al had said his wings were growing but it felt different then normal, he couldn't stop them. Pain coursed trough him once he finished telling Ed this. He let out a yelp of pain as his right wing shot out with lightning speed. This was one thing that told Ed something was seriously wrong other than the pain Al was in. Both wings always came out at the same time, and never one at a time. There was more banging at the door.

"Ed, let us in! Al needs help!" It was Sig.

Al gave another yelp and his left wing shot out hitting the mirror cabinet above the sink shattering it into a million pieces. Some of it cut Al's wing and the rest cut Ed who was closer to the mirror. Ed shielded his face but his arms got cut up instead.

"What was that? Let us in darn you or I'll kick down the door." Izumi yelled making Ed panic more.

"Al, can you hide your wings?" Ed asked but Al shook his head.

They couldn't see Al's wings! They would call the military and take them away. They could take him but he wouldn't let them take Al! Ed looked franticly around the small bathroom. The window above the tub was about an inch from the ceiling and was only about five inches wide, they could never fit though their even without wings.

The bath tub! He could put Al in it and draw the curtain so they didn't see him!

"Al, Can you hear me? Get into the tub!" Ed told his brother grabbing Al's arm guiding him to the tub.

As the first kick hit the door Al clamored into the tub. Teacher was going to get in here no matter what. Ed had just pulled the curtain closed when the door came off its hinges. Ed starred up in horror as Teacher waked in.

Cliffhanger!

What will happen? Are they going to be found out?

Dying Heart Alchemist