A/N: To quickly recap the polls in case of new readers (and because all poll data has been removed from previous chapters so no one thinks they're still open), here are the 3 results in short form.

The result of the first poll (on the details readers wanted me to give on the other Amestrains' lives) was, "Give details on key players, but general data on the others."

Because enough people voted for more general development options in the first poll, the second asked for the top four picks of people they want to see scenes with. The higher the final vote on each, the more scenes they're likely to have which aren't necessarily key points in the story line. The final result was: 1st: (tied) Izumi and Mustang; 2nd: Mei; 3rd: (tied) Hawkeye and Amal/Scar; 4th: Winry; 5th: (tied) Kamil and Fuery; 0 votes: Liam/Mick/another Gaian.

The final poll was a flop and removed from FFN.

Anyone with questions or a late vote, please let me know!

Ishbala?

Amal held the device called a 'PHS' in his hand as he stared at it with a mix of distrust, amazement, and confusion. He had seen, even used, telephones at times, but those made sense to him, as they had wires—obvious, visible wires—to transmit data from one end of the call to the other. These new phones, the hand-held and portable systems, had no wires, they just—transferred through thin air with no direct links. How wasn't even the issue—it was unnatural, easily as much as any alchemy he'd ever seen.

Or so said his Ishbalan heritage and training.

It bothered him.

Then again, so did every damned thing he'd seen since they'd set foot in this new world, from the 'pyreflies', as Fullmetal—Eden, he reminded himself—had called them, to the steel and concrete plate hovering a hundred and fifty meters above the Slums in Midgar. The monsters—which he'd found out were significantly different from animals after meeting a metal, house-like monster, then ending up with a small, black cat (1) sitting on his shoulder for most of a day—were another issue he had. And the Mako, the drugs which used it, the slave trade, and a thousand other things.

Lifting his other hand to look at the card he held in it, he assessed what this 'ID' meant. Identification cards were common—had been for a long time, even in Amestris—but now were also mandatory because of a major attack on Midgar which the blond State Alchemist had told him about. It let him travel unhindered, other than into very specific Shinra zones, and it let him get access to things his employers wanted him to have access to—combat equipment, food, a residence. He'd been surprised to find out there were four Sectors in the city which were intended as housing, often temporary, for people like mercenaries, who, by nature on Gaia, tended to travel a lot. With the ID he now had, he could use any of those, and even let others stay with him at them.

With that card, he'd been given another one, a bank card, which now worked everywhere in the world, even Wutai. It was where his employers would deposit his funds to, and where he could freely take money out from, either through the card directly or by going to a gil exchange office and taking cash out. The mercenary housing buildings apparently had machines in them which would also let people take cash out, leading him to think mercenaries used a great deal of cash on a regular basis, rather than their cards. With both Tseng and Lazard, the Directors of the Turks and SOLDIER, having assigned him a few regular tasks and deposited some money on the card for him, he'd be using it soon.

What was it with pale-skinned people and wanting to run on faith that something existed without tangible proof? The gil on his card didn't 'exist', it was a figment of his—and everyone's—imagination, and it was only because some machine, a 'computer', said the money existed that he could use it. The link, whatever link it was, between the PHS's was the same to him. Not to mention, white men (and some women) seemed to largely desire power above all else, and combining the 'fictional money' with that desire for power suddenly caused a lot of President's Shinra's behavior to appear 'logical'. After a fashion, anyway. If one's only goal was to own anything, or at least something, else sentient.

In fact, the only thing tangible which Eden had explained to him was 'Minerva' and Chaos and Omega Theory. He'd spent that portion of the Alchemist's data mentally comparing Minerva to Ishbala and finding an absurd number of parallels—enough that he could safely say they were definitely the same kind of being, if not the same being. Why had Ishbala forsaken them? Eden's data had given him to understand that Ishbala hadn't, but Ishbala, like Minerva, wasn't an omnipotent being, and there were limits to what any one being could do to help if people insisted on being destructive fools. He felt ashamed for his people as a whole for ever claiming Ishbala had forsaken them. If their deity had, none of them would have survived to cultivate their people and beliefs.

A sudden jolt made him look up to see the train pulling up to the station in the Sector 7 Slums. Rising and putting his ID and PHS in his pockets, he moved over to the door and stepped off in a throng of other people once the conductor had opened the door. His first destination was the mercenary shop in Wall Market, as he'd refused any gear directly from the Turks and SOLDIER. They had been remarkably agreeable to that, instead directing him to the shop he was headed to now. Wall Market was also one of the mercenary residences he could use if he so chose, and one of the places Tseng had wanted him to handle criminal activity generally involving inanimate goods shipments.

Of his tasks, only that one wasn't handling monsters while the other three were, two of those from Lazard and the last from Tseng. Those sent him to the no-man's-land between the Slum Sectors 3 and 4, 4 and 5, and 5 and 6. Lazard had told him Slum Sectors 3, 4, and 5 were contaminated by a leak in Reactor 4 which the engineers hadn't been able to deal with until it had already caused a great deal of damage there, leading to repeated mass outbreaks of monsters in 3 and 4, with some of that spilling over into 5. Tseng had been decidedly candid in requesting that he keep no-man's-land between 5 and 6 clear so the Wutain's 'friend in the Slums' would be a little safer as she went about her day in that area.

He had also found it decidedly ironic how the mercenary residences had been arranged in the city. The one in Wall Market had been convenient enough, but the other Slum-based housing was across from that in Sector 2, and the two on the Upper Plate were in Sectors 4 and 8. Why was there mercenary housing on the Upper Plate when they weren't needed there for anything?

Looking up, he saw the obviously unfinished bottom of the Upper Plate above him, causing a subconscious shudder to run through his body. If that were ever to fall...

Upon first seeing the city, he'd been about ready to start yelling, "Demons! Heathens! Destroyers!" He'd only refrained at seeing the amazed, curious sparkle in Mei's eyes as she admired the sheer ingenuity it would have taken to build such a city. It didn't change the fact that his first reaction had been that he was walking into a nest of evil.

His first impression also hadn't changed since then.

Midgar was a nest of evil, despite the small points of light in all the darkness there. More than once, he'd wondered if the perpetual darkening of the sky, day or night, had more to do with the mindsets of the people living in Midgar rather than with what Midgar physically was or some natural reaction to, say, the Mako drain.

It didn't take him long to reach Wall Market or find the shop he'd been told was there. Like any shop, it had wares set out for people to browse, so he checked the items for ones he wanted to use. There was a sword he was familiar with, a short sword with a curved blade in a style similar to a shamshir, combat gloves, the Materia he'd been encouraged to take—currently only Gravity, Earth, and Restore were of interest to him, and he recalled the need to not touch them directly—and several types of 'armor'. How something which only covered your wrist could give you physical defense, he had no idea, but a minor test of one showed it worked, so he chose one of those, too.

With his card, he was able to purchase them without issue, and immediately strapped them on so he could go start his requested clearing in the no-man's-land areas of Midgar. The nearest to him was the area between Sectors 5 and 6, so he began there, using what he knew of alkahestry to work out how Materia functioned as he went. It didn't take him long to realize how close to Amestrian alchemy the 'spells' were, and that Materia had been given to people by Minerva...That effectively meant his new Ishbala encouraged people to change their environments through means Ishbalans had always taken as unnatural.

...Did that mean they had misinterpreted Ishbala's message in regards to alchemy? Had the message been to be cautious and not use it in the extreme, rather than to shun it entirely?

As he stopped and sat down near a dilapidated building resembling a 'Church', he pondered the question of what Minerva's message was versus what Ishbala's had been, and thought it was possible the Priests had interpreted the message incorrectly. It was entirely possible that 'caution' had become 'fear of change', 'fear of the unknown', and it wouldn't have been unreasonable. He only had less fear of alchemy because of his own experiences with using it himself, but the rest of his people, save a very small number, had never bothered to learn about it, fostering fear rather than understanding.

Suddenly, a fifteen-year-old girl in a white and blue striped dress and with brown hair passed by, smiling and waving to him as she went to the Church and stepped inside. He raised a brow slightly and rose to follow her, knowing it was rare for ordinary civilians without weapons to enter no-man's-land, yet here was this girl...

Inside the Church, he quietly stepped up to roughly the middle of the main aisle, watching as the girl tended the flowers growing against all logic in the mud left behind where the floor had broken. The statue past the hole depicted a woman in clothing like a cross between a priest's robe and a warrior's armor, but it had no color.

"You can come in and sit down, you know," the girl said without looking at him, still working on the flowers. She sounded amused.

"...You knew," he said after blinking in surprise.

"Knew what?" she asked innocently.

That annoyed him. Normally, he had little need to talk, but it seemed she was going to force him to explain himself. After a moment, he relented and said, "That I was here."

"Of course," she agreed warmly. "I didn't think anyone else would have come in here after I saw you sitting outside."

If she hadn't had a response which showed her logic and observational skills, he would have been a lot more worried about her well-being. Even amongst Ishbalans, who treated their women very well compared to most, a woman wandering alone and weaponless still wasn't completely safe. The only reason he really hesitated to openly question her judgment was because she somehow—had an aura like one of his own people's priests or warrior-priests, and he'd been one of the latter, once upon a long time ago.

However, she was still only a fifteen-year-old girl, so he asked, "And what would you have done if I'd meant to harm you?"

"Oh, that," she said, for the first time looking up at him, green gaze amused. "I have a Fire Materia on me, and there are about—five people watching us right now who wouldn't hesitate to kill you if you actually tried to hurt me. The only reason they haven't shown themselves is because I'm not showing signs of confusion or distress."

"...That matters so much to them?" he blinked.

"I'm a good judge of character," she grinned, turning back to the flowers. "And Minerva is very happy you're here, too, so I don't have a reason to be worried."

"...Minerva, the entity Eden told me about?" he asked cautiously. "Or a person?"

She turned to look at him, gaze surprised, but then she grinned. "Oh, so you're another of the people from Eden's home! Did he tell you anything about me, or did you just manage to come here by chance?"

For a moment, he just stared at her curious gaze, then heaved a heavy sigh and sagged onto the nearest pew.

Before he could even formulate a thought or response, another tired sigh followed his, making the girl wave at someone in the direction of the doors as he turned to see who was there. An eighteen-year-old woman in mostly green clothes stood there, looking as tired as he suddenly felt, then paced towards them until she could sit in the pew across the main aisle from where Amal had sat down.

The girl was obviously familiar with the new arrival, as she greeted, "Hello, Felicia! I thought you were just in 'watch mode' today?"

"Shut up. I'm tired. Go back to your flowers," Felicia replied, closing her eyes.

With a giggle, the girl said, "After Eden's friend answers me."

After a silence, Amal directed at the older woman, "Is she always like this?"

"Pretty much," Felicia agreed without opening her eyes. "She's a demanding little creature, and Odin forbid you don't jump to obey her when she wants something. On the other hand, she worms her way into your heart just by meeting with you, and just accepts you for who you are with very little complaint about anything. And let's not get started on the number of people we'd have never trusted but now do thanks in great part to her. Annoying brat." The words made the girl giggle.

"I didn't ask for you to become my protectors, you know. Only my brothers are supposed to be my protectors," the younger girl replied in amusement.

"Brothers?" Amal found he had to ask. There were others like her running around?

"She means Tseng and Eden," Felicia supplied.

For a moment, Amal's brain stalled as it tried to keep up with the host of realizations that data had provided. "Tseng sent me to clean up this area of monsters to protect her," he said flatly.

"Oh, is that why you're here?" the older woman asked candidly, eyes still closed as her expression turned amused. "That guy never ceases to amaze me. Wutain or not, he's something else when it comes to his loyalties. Her name's Aeris, by the way. She's Tseng's sister in all but blood. Eden's, too, now."

"Hey..." the girl cut in, her tone whining. "You still haven't answered me!"

As he looked at her pouting expression and Felicia gave an amused snort, he realized her version of 'puppy-dog eyes' took that description to a whole new level. Even Mei hadn't been so effective at it, and he found himself caving in and going back to her original question. "Eden was more worried about making sure I had a stable job than about introducing me to people around town. What I know about Minerva is because there were certain things he had discovered and needed to tell me about. So no, he hadn't spoken with me about you. Of course, he and I were—acquaintances at best, not friends, so I'd never have expected him to tell me about you," he told her.

"Oh, okay," she agreed cheerfully, turning back to the flowers.

A few moments later, as he watched—a flower which had been a small bud suddenly bloomed, and he sat back in amazement.

She was a Priest of Ishbala. Or, more accurately, of Minerva.

She was someone he could, and would, protect, a Priest surviving in this darkness, bringing desperately-needed light to temper it. As a Warrior-priest, he'd been trained to protect, especially civilians and the Priests, but he'd never actually thought he'd find another true Priest after the war...

Then a small, strange creature came poking around him and Felicia, then made its way over to the girl working on the flowers, where—it began helping her. It just felt like some sort of spirit entity, and he sighed faintly again as he realized he'd never known a Priest so powerful.

That left him puzzling over how he would keep an eye on Mei while taking care of this young Priest...

SH

Kamil dragged a chair over and sat down beside Riza as she sat in a desk chair she'd pulled over to the window in the Turks' main office to closely examine the sniper rifle Tseng had shown her. "How goes the examination?" he asked her in amusement, knowing how important guns were to those who used them—even to him when he had been in the Amestrian Military.

"I've never seen a folding sniper rifle before," she replied absently, tone showing her awe at the weapon. "I'd have thought it would sacrifice stability and shooting capability to do that, as it would mean the barrel has weak points twice along its length. Instead, the development strengthens the barrel and has no effect on stability."

The man's brows rose at the data, and he asked, "So some of their technological advancements are truly more advanced than we realized by what weapons we could get our hands on before?"

"Effectively," she agreed, then looked up at him. "Do you realize one of my major reasons for joining the Turks is because Ed needs someone to watch over him?" she asked in amusement. He blinked, and she went on, "But now, I also think I really did make the right choice for myself, too, because even though the Infantry also has snipers, their rifles are nothing like the quality the Turks get."

"Good guns make all the difference, don't they?" a new voice asked cheerfully from the other side of the desk Riza's chair had been pulled over from. The two newest Turks looked up to see Freyra and a small, blond woman standing there, both looking amused.

"Freyra and Emma," Kamil said with a nod at them. Emma nodded in reply as Freyra gave a wave.

Riza had to give a small smile as she said, "At this point, I can't deny that. I hadn't thought it would matter so much, but in the end—it does."

"Because a Turk's life often depends on the quality of their weapons," Emma said with a nod, also looking amused. "So, Tseng called you Riha, right?"

"That's right," Riza agreed.

Kamil raised a brow as his lips twitched in amusement and he commented, "I feel like going 'yee-haw' now."

The named Riha gave him an amused look as Freyra howled with laughter and Emma chuckled. The older blond woman said, "Admittedly, I had the same initial reaction. Until he showed me what the other likely options were. Of them, Riha is probably the best one."

"Not to be a party-pooper, but I have a question for you," Emma put in suddenly. The two new Turks looked up at her curiously, so she said, "Our age of adulthood is fourteen, and we rarely legally end up with someone younger in a combat role. The only 'legal' one I know about is Sephiroth, but he was raised in the labs for his position, he's not someone off the streets. What were you thinking when you hired a twelve-year-old to be a soldier?"

Riha sighed and said, "I can't vouch for what Bradley—our military leader—was thinking when he agreed, but I know what Roy and the others of us under his command were thinking. Yes, Ed's skills were too impressive to go to waste and if we'd waited, someone else could have taken him—that may have been Bradley's major reasoning. Ours was that the Edward we found when he was eleven was broken—until he was given something to focus on and reach for, a chance to undo the damage he'd done to his brother and himself.

"Roy had intended to be the one to keep him from collapsing, and the offer of the military resources did that—it gave Ed somewhere he could go, and a way to do something he couldn't have otherwise. Don't think for a moment we were trying to make him into a soldier or leave him unattended, because we didn't. Roy kept very close tabs on him and made sure he had help when he needed it. But, Edward has a bad habit of hoarding his troubles rather than sharing them, so there was only so much he would allow us to do for him."

Emma's gaze had gone from sharp to thoughtful to understanding as Riha had spoken, but before the younger woman could say anything, a voice put in, "That's good to know." Everyone looked in the direction the voice had come from to see that Tseng had recently come back from dropping Kain off with someone in the Urban Development Department. "I know myself how hard it is to take burdens off him, but there had still been many concerns about the life he lived with you. We're hardly paradigms of virtue, but some of the things he's told us haven't left us with a very—kind view of how you handled things."

"In our defense, the 'Eden' we knew was childish, temperamental, and explosive," Riha replied dryly. "If you said he was being 'short-sighted', he would beat you to a pulp while going on about how you'd said 'he was so small an ant was bigger' or some such, and he rarely obeyed any sort of order, even logical ones to keep him safe. He was young, and even after everything he'd already been through in his short life, he hadn't begun to mature until the reality of the situation we were facing had sunk in. It took Winry being the captive of one of our enemies to accomplish the first real improvement in his maturity level. He may have matured sooner if Maes had lived..." She drifted off a bit sadly at the last, still missing the man who had been so much a part of their lives.

Silence followed the words for a few minutes, until Tseng gave a small sigh and told her, "There may be some truth to that, and I'm rather thankful he's been as mature as he has since he's been here. I can safely say I wouldn't want to have to deal with the 'Eden' you're describing—I'd have probably shot him myself, or turned him over to Reno for 'training'."

"Oh, that's awful!" Freyra gasped in horror. "You can't do that to him!"

Tseng waved her off as he headed for his office. "I said 'if he'd been like that'. He hasn't been. In the meantime, Reno is still the one handling him while he's cleaning house for us, only because he won't challenge Reno and Reno can't be conned."

Emma snorted. "Our poor littlest brother, being left to Reno's 'care'."

"Hey, shaddap!" Reno scowled from the door, making everyone jump and look at him in surprise. "I ain't bein' an ass to him, yo! I even make sure the kid eats an' sleeps and frickin' stops workin' when he's done for the day!"

"Speaking of, why aren't you with him?" Tseng asked dryly, checking the time.

"Had ta get him another marker while he's eatin' a snack, yo," Reno replied, quickly going to his desk to get said marker, then heading out of the room again.

"...What happened to the first one?" Freyra asked in confusion.

"Eden probably broke it in his frustration," Riha answered in amusement. Her gaze then went back to the sniper rifle as she stroked the barrel in a motion which could only be called 'lovingly'. Kamil blinked at the images the oddly lewd action called to mind as Freyra grinned and Emma gave an amused huff. Tseng just blinked and turned to go into his office—he couldn't have seen the actual action from where he stood.

Since it seemed the discussion was done for the moment, Kamil moved the chair back to its place and moved over to the desk he'd been assigned as he eyed the folders on it for a moment before sitting. Rather than opening the folders right away, he sat back to think a bit about how much his life—all of theirs—had changed.

He'd been wary of the city at first, not liking all of the implications behind it. While he didn't hold the same intensive belief in all of the cultural aspects of the Ishbalans, it had been obvious the city they were entering was as corrupt as Central. He'd been fine staying with the kids largely because he'd seen traces of the slave trade on their introductory walk in the Slums, something he'd dealt with several times at the border of Amestris and Drachma. By default, if Mustang hadn't allocated someone to watch over the kids, he would have offered himself and his men. And the slave trade was only one of the big problems with Midgar.

Having met Eden and gotten the whole story from him changed things, a lot of them. The logic behind 'the Planet' and even behind the Ishbalan religion had begun to make sense in a way and context they hadn't before, and the new data had significantly changed his view of what was needed and who his allies were. It was entirely true that the Turks were the only ones who really stood a chance at making those changes, and that they had a viable method—they were already moving things along quickly, and without pacing themselves, they could create as many problems as they were solving. It was also nice to no longer have to watch over their kids, as others were doing so for them—that fact gave the adults the time and the ability to work on saving the world so the kids would have one to grow up in.

All-in-all, changes aside, with them being unable to go home, moving forward was really the only viable option, and Eden had managed to use his incredible luck to make sure they would be able to.

He smiled faintly as he opened the top folder in front of him and saw the same kind of chicken-scratch Eden wrote with, only marginally neater than he was used to seeing it. Maybe things really wouldn't be so bad, and Tseng was shaping up to be surprisingly skilled and capable—much like a younger General Armstrong just coming into her power.

That was something he'd be able to respect in time, and he was grateful for it.

Notes:

(1) Even this cat isn't an OC—this is Blackie, the black cat once belonging to a boy named Evan Townshend in the FFVII light novels "Lateral Biography Turks: The Kids are Alright." Apparently around the time Evan would be 10 (right now), Blackie 'went on his own adventure,' so I'm having Blackie decide he likes Amal in this altered version of Blackie's 'adventure', which wouldn't have happened in the original. There's actually a REASON Blackie likes him, though. Any guesses?