A/N: Thankyou, Pianogirl123 and, er, She Of the Pants, for your reviews. They were very much appreciated. And yes, I wanted a bit of lightness – I mean, it's FMA.

If I get sporked for this, I'll blame one or both of you.

Anyway, like I said, all I really want is notes on characterisation – and also, whether my OC is a Sue or not. (if so, I'll end up on That Community anyway, but… well, it's nice to be told in advance. XD)

Disclaimer: I don't own FMA, but I do own my OC (who is, incidentally, male.)

Sleeping Dogs

"Good evening, Colonel," Ed said into the phone as Al unpacked the suitcase onto the bed behind him. Glancing up, Al could see that his brother was smirking; he turned away again and pulled a suspiciously mouldy-looking pair of socks from the case, regarded them for a moment, and tossed them onto the floor.

"Fullmetal," Roy replied. Although his voice was garbled by the phone lines, Ed could hear that he was straining to maintain some sort of civility. "It's been a while."

"I've missed you," Ed grinned. "It's not healthy, not having someone to hate – that's repression, it can cause all sorts of problems."

"You should have called earlier," Roy said, "god knows what damage being repressed has done to you. It might have stunted your growth." The smile vanished off Ed's face, and there was a terse moment of silence, before Roy growled, "Fullmetal, where the hell are you?"

"No idea," Ed said breezily, "we got kicked off our train and now we're in some ghost town in the middle of nowhere. Not only that, but all the trains have been cancelled, so we won't be getting back to Central any time soon." Hearing Roy bite back a sharp comment of some sort on the other end of the line, Ed grinned. "Isn't it a shame? It's a nice town, though. It doesn't have a name and the entire population's married its first cousin, but it's a nice town. We can check it for suspicious activity if you want."

"I'd much prefer," Roy said, clearly trying not to snap and scream down the phone at him, "if you tried to get back here as quickly as possible. If you tell us where you are, we can send someone to pick you up – but we're tired of wasting resources on you, Elric."

Sitting on the bed with his weight making a great pit in the mattress, Al nonchalantly twisted the head of his armour off. He checked it over briefly, and saw that there were seams of rust around the screws; he kneeled on the floor, scratched another circle, and placed the helmet in the middle of it, unbothered by the absurdity of such a thing.

"I am a resource."

A high-pitched sound like the whine of a microphone, and the escaping energy of the transmutation turned to bright light which hit the shadows and instantly faded. Al picked up his head, which was now gleaming like new, and twisted it back onto his shoulders. With a creak of steel on steel, he flexed to ensure it was secure and sat back down, eyeing the mouldy socks on the floor with some suspicion.

"What was that?" Roy asked. "Who's transmuting?"

"My brother's just polishing his head," Ed said, "to make sure his brain hasn't gone rusty."

"I don't have a brain, brother," Al reminded him.

"Anyway," Ed told Roy, brow furrowed as he tried to remember the journey, during which he had been too busy eating to really notice what was happening outside the window, "we're about halfway along the eastern railway, the one that cuts through Aquroya. Landscape features include… uh… trees, and grass. And scary old women."

"I see."

Ed heard a female voice say something in the background, and Roy curtly relayed what Ed had just told him. A moment later, he added, "this town… is it called Kanets?"

"I don't know what it's called," Ed said.

"Kanets is halfway along the railroad," he heard Riza Hawkeye say, the words muffled by distance. "I've never been there, but it's apparently just an old industrial village – it had a population of ninety four last census, and it would have decreased rather than increased since then. But it's still on all the maps, we'd only take about six hours to get there, if we sent a driver during the day."

"Thankyou, Lieutenant," Roy said. "Fullmetal, we'll be sending a driver to pick you up tomorrow morning, they should be there at 9 a.m. sharp. Stay in the hotel and make sure you're packed, you'll be driven straight to the next station… don't go anywhere, for god's sake, or there'll be midget pie on the menu when you get back."

"Yes sir," Ed said meekly. "I will remain perfectly stationary so as not to provoke the great Roy Mustang… overbearing lecherous piece of pig's arse that he is," he whispered, just loud enough that Roy could hear it.

"Speaking of which," Roy said coolly, "the library floor has been infested by some sort of rotten-smelling mould and must be cleaned out. We could get an alchemist in to do it, but I'd much rather that someone with plenty of free time on their hands – like you, Fullmetal – worked on it. And of course, you can't dodge your duty when you're right under my nose, so it'll be an interesting few days for you when you come back…"

Before Ed could say anything more, the Colonel hung up with a disdainful click.

"Bastard," he muttered, and Al looked up questioningly. "Well, it looks like we'll be stuck scrubbing floors when we get back to Central, so we might as well enjoy it while we can. How much money do we have?"

"Enough," Al replied, splashing gold coins onto the floor. Kneeling, Ed began to scoop them up, depositing them in his pockets – they jingled as they came into contact with the automail, the sound muffled by the layers of cloth – and after counting twenty, more than enough for food, dumped the rest back in his suitcase. As he snapped it shut and locked it, he explained the situation to Al, who managed to look displeased with the mould situation without actually showing any expression.

"We can just use alchemy, can't we?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Ed said, getting to his feet again. His automail never seemed to go rusty, possibly because it wasn't antique like his brother's; of course, the automail mechanics had stopped using iron as automail for that very reason, it rusted too easily. "I mean, we'd have to transmute the entire library, and I don't think Muskrat would like it if we transmuted century-old books into, I don't know, woodchips or something."

"At least I can't smell it," Al said, rather cheerfully although there was a hint of melancholy in his voice. "How about I clean it out while you go study?"

"I wouldn't make you do that." Ed's tone was a little reproachful. "Hey, we've got hours before the dogs on wheels turn up to collect us, we'll think about it when we get back to Central." He cupped his hands around the candle in the corner – it was an austere sort of room, with two beds, a table with a candle on it, and little else – and blew it out, plunging the room into absolute darkness, but for the violet points of light that were Alphonse's eyes. They hadn't really been prepared to spend too much money on a hotel room, considering that they had been on the tracks for three weeks and their funding was running out; even as he blew the flame out, Ed wondered how he would be able to coerce an appropriate military figure into giving them more. Maybe Maes Hughes would be sympathetic, although most of his energy lately had been devoted to retelling the tale of how he had found Elysia attempting to draw something that he was certain had been a transmutation circle…

…over, and over, and over.

"Wait for me," Al called, jumping up and running after his brother. "Ed, wait! I can't walk as fast as you, I've got artificial arthritis! I'm creaking, brother!"

Laughing, they both took off down the street, casting a golden dust-cloud behind them and ignoring the askance looks they received from the hotel staff. For once, they weren't dogs of the military or tireless hunters of the Philosopher's Stone; they were just a pair of kids looking to have some fun.

There was just the faintest hint of pallor in the sky, although the sun had set no more than half an hour before; the year was drawing toward winter, and the days were getting shorter. Surrounded by the cheering throng, Ed shivered and tugged his crimson cloak tighter around his narrow shoulders as a particularly icy breeze whistled through him. Beside him, Al's metal skin was cold, but of course the latter couldn't feel it.

The cheering was obliterated by a tidal wave of whispers and then silence as a pair of caped figures stepped up onto the stage. Al looked down and noticed that Ed, too proud to ask for help, was jumping up and down to see the stage; ignoring his brother's protests, Al swept Ed up and held him playfully in midair as he wriggled and hissed to be let down. Eventually, Ed stopped moving and hung there resignedly, and Al set him down on the ground again.

"Maybe it would be easier," Al whispered, "if we moved a bit closer to the stage? You're the genius, you should be thinking of these things."

"My store of vast knowledge is theoretical, not practical," Ed retorted as they pushed through the crowd, trying not to dislodge too many small, excited children en route. Heads turned as Alphonse made his way through and he was the butt of many bewildered expressions; although he greeted several of these cheerfully, Ed heard him sigh as they finally reached the front. Before them, the two cloaked "magicians" – alchemists, Ed thought disdainfully – were standing silently, a few feet apart on the stage. Leaning forward to see them better, he could just see the chalk lines of a transmutation circle that seemed to cover most of the platform, as well as behind the curtain and backstage. How very sneaky of them.

A small, grey cat, painfully thin and with eyes vast and pale, wound through the feet of the crowd. Alphonse noticed it, ducking and weaving as the heavy boots and sandals came within hair-widths of its frail, wide-eared head; he bent with a rasp of metal and scooped it into his arms without a moment's hesitation. It took this considerably better than Ed had, immediately curling up and seeming to watch the stage as well as his leather-clad fingers stroked its silky fur.

Ed noticed this and tried not to roll his eyes. "You and your cats."

"Me and my cats," Al agreed.

The taller of the two figures on the stage turned to the shorter and spoke sharply to them. Al strained to hear – Ed was distracted temporarily by a mobile seller offering fresh-baked buns and some strange sort of sausage made from corn at an absurdly low price – but all he could hear was the snippet "for god's sake, look like you're doing something this time or people won't believe it. And don't look at me."

"Okay," the smaller figure replied.

Nodding curtly, their companion – who, to judge by the voice, was a man – moved off until they had vanished behind the turquoise-coloured velvet curtain. Al watched this exchange curiously; nobody else seemed to notice it, and the next moment Ed tripped over the foot of the woman behind and smeared tomato sauce all over Al's breastplate. Transferring the cat to the other hand – it didn't seem to mind – Al removed his apron and wiped the sauce off, accepting Ed's composite apology and shifting of blame to the woman's shoe.

With a hum of electricity, the lights faded, leaving no light at all but for the spotlight that pooled silvery around the small creature on the stage. Lifting their face to the audience, they flipped their hood back, revealing themselves to be a child with wide eyes and a thin, almost gaunt face. From his vantage point near Al's shoulder – he was standing on a chair, making him only an inch or two taller than most of the rest of the audience – Ed whispered "is that a boy or a girl?"

"I… don't know… but it's pretty young," Al commented, stroking the happy cat. Behind the alchemist he could see a large cube of something translucent and vaguely bluish, which he immediately identified as being a block of ice.

"Bet it's a sham," Ed muttered, and his brother elbowed him.

"Don't be so cynical, Ed!"

"Hello everybody," said the child of still indeterminate gender, and they smiled as a ripple of greeting came back to them. Without another word, they knelt on the stage and bowed their head, slapping both hands on the ground; the crowd began to huddle closer, necks craning to see, and Ed snorted at their eagerness.

There was a sound like a kettle boiling, a shrill, glinting hiss, and a flash of white light that threw the profiles of the people standing around into harsh relief, the shadows on their faces showing blacker than midnight. People began to mutter excitedly, and suddenly there was a crack and the roar of fire; the young alchemist stood up, dusting their hands off on their trousers, while behind them a ring of flames began to dance in ribbons of gold and scarlet.

Another pause, and the rapid-fire sound of applause. Grinning, the child snapped their fingers, and the flames went out with a ferocious hissing. Water spread rapidly from a point behind them and dripped of the edges of the stage; young audience members stretched their hands out to catch the droplets, in the hope, presumably, that partaking of such magical water would grant them miraculous powers.

"I have the power of creation," the child proclaimed, the words obviously learnt by rote, "and the power to make whole that which was broken! If you have anything that needs fixing, bring it up and see my magic at work!"

Ed rolled his eyes as a handful of people surged forward, each holding a bag which seemed to contain their broken possessions. Apparently, the kid's act was well-known in these parts; how could nobody in this village have heard of alchemy, though? It was madness.

At a gesture from the alchemist, they lined up at the side of the stage – nine of them, Ed counted, all with expressions of rather absurd hope on their faces. Bending, the child took something from the leader of the line – a middle-aged woman in a flowered dress, the bottom of which was yellowish with dust – and held it out for the audience to see: a crystal bowl, broken into three uneven pieces, the meagre light sparking like the drops of water on its sharp edges. Turning and kneeling, the child threw the pieces into the centre of the stage, and there was a crack as they shattered further; as the woman cried out in protest, more light splashed around the chamber and this false magician presented a beautifully carved and complete crystal bowl, glittering like the ice that had been melted a few minutes earlier, back to her with great flair.

The crowd broke into applause, and they continued to cheer and clap as the child, a huge grin upon their thin face, transmuted back to their former glory three goblets, a marble statuette, what appeared to be a broken violin, a flute-like instrument so bent out of shape that it looked as if someone had twisted it in its entirety, several articles of broken golden jewellery, a cracked hand-mirror and, quite impressively, a pocket watch. This last article was buckled and limp when they were given it, the glass face crushed – when they returned it a moment later, it was whole, gleaming, and ticking healthily.

One by one, the smiling patrons returned to their seats, cradling their restored possessions like rescued children. Snorting, Ed muttered impotently about the stupidity of some folk.

"Brother, it's helping them," Al reminded him.

"But they're falling for it," Ed protested, and stopped as he realised that a deathly silence had fallen on the entire carnival ground. Looking back toward the stage, he saw that the final "customer" had stepped up to the child. A haggard young man, his fairish hair hung lank around his face; when he glanced at the audience, the Elric brothers saw that his skin was so pale as to be almost blue, and there were circles the colours of bruises beneath his desperate eyes. As he presented his bundle, Ed and Al gasped in unison, despite themselves.

It was a dead dog.

Grey-furred and enormous, it hung limply in the man's arms, and Al wondered briefly how he could have lugged it all the way up there; although there was a great hole in its side through which its white ribs could be just seen, it was thickly muscled and looked like it weighed more than its gaunt owner. He caught a glimpse of disgust and what looked like anxiety on the child's face as he took the dead animal, staggering under its weight.

"It can't do that," Ed growled, "that's life alchemy." How hadn't they noticed the dead thing before? It was huge.

"But it's not human transmutation," Al whispered.

"It doesn't matter, it's still creating life. And it won't be able to do it anyway, you just watch."

The patron mumbled something to the child, who turned toward the audience.

"This… this is, er, his daughter's dog," they stuttered. "She's… she's dying… and the dog's the only thing keeping her… the only thing keeping her alive."

"Please bring him back," the man pleaded, his voice loud enough that Ed and Al could hear it, "I can't lose her too. Please, I just want a second chance… there was a wolf, I couldn't stop it, it was starving… it was eating him… Sally loves that dog, she'll die if she loses him."

"I'll… I'll try, sir," the child said, and kneeling on the floor, sent the dog spilling in a great tangle of hair, blood and stiffened limbs onto the wooden floorboards, in the centre of where the Elric brothers presumed the transmutation circle would be. Now the audience was completely quiet, but for a small handful of sobbing children who had been obviously affected by the sight. The man stood slumped, his eyes burning with faint hope, as the child clapped their hands onto the floor again, bowing their head and this time closing their eyes.

Whiter than a dead baby's bones the light beamed out this time, and Ed had to cover his eyes; Al, unaffected by it, watched transfixed as the child glanced behind the curtain to where the other caped figure was also crouching with their hands on the ground. Suddenly, Al put all the pieces of the puzzle together and realised that the child was just the avatar; it was their older companion who was doing the alchemy. He was about to tell Ed this when the light grew until it was almost painful for him, as physically impossible as it was; the sound of rushing wind started and abruptly stopped again, and the light died. All around, people uncovered their eyes, muttering to each other fearfully.

All the whispering stopped, however, as something began to whimper.

Raising its head, the dog writhed slightly on the floor and gazed toward the still-kneeling alchemist with a mute appeal in its eyes. It moved, sliding on the floor; then its claws began to scrabble on the hard wood, and it got to its feet, swaying there unsteadily. Silently, its owner bent down and held his hands out before the awestruck audience; still uncertain on its feet, the dog limped toward him and finally rested its muzzle in his hands.

"Oh my god," Al whispered. There was nothing else that could be said.

"But that's impossible," Ed cried, standing up. Heads turned and people stared; the child turned also, looking back at him from wide, fearful eyes. "You don't make life with alchemy! Where's the exchange? What did you exchange?"

All around, people hissed at him to shut up.

"It's a life for a life," Ed shouted at the stage, and the child stood up and began to back away. Suddenly, they turned and ran offstage, ducking behind the curtain.

"You're crazy," a voice called from behind them, and Al winced, setting the frightened cat down on the ground; it raced away like a streak of scrawny lightning. "Get lost, I paid good money for this show!"

"You paid to watch alchemy?" Ed demanded, turning on the protester. "Not only alchemy, but alchemy that disregards all the basic laws?"

It was amazing, Al thought in hindsight, how quickly guards can appear when trouble is raised. A mere moment after that, his brother was snatched up by a pair of distressingly brawny men who looked to have come from nowhere; although Ed could have obliterated them alchemically in an instant, he was understandably leery about practising such things in public, and instead contented himself with shouting at the guards what must have sounded to them like gibberish, about human transmutation and life alchemy and equivalent exchange and destroying the world, damn it!

Al trudged after them silently as they dragged his brother off through the angry people. As they flung Ed through the gates, he took the chance and meekly apologised to one of them; a moment later he found himself also flying through the air, slamming into the dust with a crash and missing Ed by inches.

"Nobody likes us," he noticed.

"D-damn that kid," Ed growled, standing up again. He would have surely darted back into the crowd and possibly gotten himself killed, but Al nonchalantly reached out and, grabbing his collar, restrained him from going on a crusade for the upholding of alchemical law.

"If you want to beat the fear of alchemy into it," Al advised his brother, wondering if he should sit on him to stop him from attacking the child, "you need to be subtle about it." He stood up, dragging Ed with him as he crossed the road. "There's a back entrance. Why don't you go confront it backstage?"

Calming down, Ed shook himself and looked down the deserted road that lead to the brightly-lit auditorium speculatively. Glancing at Al, he grinned, although he was obviously shaken by the whole experience. Al looked back at him; he had that look in his golden eyes that said clearly that he was going over the entire plan of attack in his head, as Ed was wont to do.

"I'll take the kid," Ed said finally, "and you take the guards."

A/N: (begs for reviews) Even flames are welcome!