Angel wasn't from this world, so she had no way of knowing the state of this country. And if she wanted to survive, then the best way was to get information.

Like she told the Gatekeeper, knowledge was useless unless you knew how to use it. And power? She had never needed power to get things done.

Seeing the truth for what it was had more use to her.

Fortunately there was an opening in the library...so long as she didn't end up a total bibliophile like the previous librarian, more interested in reading than doing her job.

Angel found the library soothing, and she was allowed to bring out books...within reason. Since she was too young to enlist in the military (the bare minimum was fifteen, and that was if the parents agreed...and legal guardians didn't count), she had to take a civilian job.

She would have become an alchemist, but hearing some of the homeless talk about them, that was probably not a good idea. She had no desire to become a "Dog of the Military".

There was only one alchemist in the military that seemed to even bother following their creed of "Alchemist, be thou for the people".

If she ever met this Edward Elric, she'd shake his hand for being the only decent person in the ranks of the military alchemists. Though a close second was Roy Mustang, but that was pushing it. She had personal bias because he might be her real father.

"Welcome to the first branch of the Central Library," said Angel, with a fake smile. She was good at faking her smiles by now.

They had put her in the front as a greeter when they weren't having her shelve books. She was pretty, friendly, and after a week's worth of training was able to direct patrons to wherever they needed to get to with minimal help.

However there were certain people she refused to have anything to do with. They just gave off a bad feeling.

Case in point, the Iron Fist general himself.

Five seconds of being around him made her skin crawl. He was the sort who wouldn't hesitate to murder infants just because of an order.

She had to deal with him in order to get security clearance into the library. She just had the bad luck of choosing a day he happened to be in Central to apply for clearance.

"Welcome to the library! How may I help... Aren't you a little young to be in here?" asked Angel. The blond couldn't be taller than her, and she suffered from malnourishment growing up because of her 'family' not even bothering to feed her.

The blond scowled, before he pulled out a familiar watch.

She blinked. He didn't give her the same vibe as all the other alchemists that came here, so she cautiously asked "Are you the Full Metal Alchemist, Edward Elric?"

The blond blinked.

"You're not going to make any short jokes now are you?"

"I won't make any about you if you don't make any comments about a girl being able to kick your ass. If I hear one more bad pick-up line, I'm going to strangle someone," she replied. She had had to teach a few soldiers and one alchemist a lesson about grabbing her ass.

And the best part was that they couldn't go complaining about it to their superiors because a teenaged civilian girl had been the one to pound their face into the pavement.

"Deal."

"So if you're here, then does that mean your brother is outside waiting for you?"

Ed blinked.

"Al's outside."

"You do realize that civilians can enter the library if they have a military family member with them when they come in, and have a staff member watching them, right?"

Ed looked like he wanted to bang his head against something hard.

"You can go bring your brother in, and I'll watch him while you get whatever books you were interested in reading or checking out," offered Angel.

Ed walked out, and had to do a double take.

"Is that an owl?"

Angel heard him, and she whistled sharply. The white bird flew off Al's armored hand and onto hers.

"What. The. Hell."

"Hedwig. Though if she's here, then..." Angel looked around, and used a different whistle. A large brown and black dog bounded up to her and sat.

"You have a bird and a dog?"

"A snow owl and a German Sheppard," she corrected, "Also known as Hedwig and Mystic."

Ed looked at the dog warily. The last time he met a girl with a dog, she ended up turned into a monster and then killed.

"Is he friendly?"

"To a point. At least as long as I feed and care for him anyway. Thank whatever god supposedly exists for veterinarians who know how to neuter animals," said Angel.

"What's neuter mean?" asked Ed. Angel smirked, before she whispered it in his ear. He winced.

"Seriously?"

"I love Mystic, but there is no way I'm dealing with him getting territorial just because he's still got those. He's much calmer now, and I bet that blond woman with the crazy superior would love to do the same to him."

"Blond woman with the crazy superior?"

"Riza something. Her superior kept flirting with me until I told him my age," said Angel smugly.

Ed choked.

"Why would Colonel Mustang back off if you told him your age?"

"The age-limit for 'relations' in Ametris is 16. I turn fifteen in a few weeks, so he was basically hitting on an underage girl," said Angel smugly.

"Wait, you're my age?" said Ed.

"I'm fifteen, female and I like alchemy. So what?"

"It's just that normally girls don't really like reading science."

"I like logic," she corrected. "Science just happens to go hand in hand with it."

Magic was completely illogical, and most of those who had it eventually became complete idiots. Alchemy was full of science and equations, and most of the really good alchemists were able to understand basic physics. Or at the very least understand half of the science behind Doctor Who and other sci-fi related series.

She had high hopes she might be able to get a working light saber using magic, alchemy and science. And considering she was a huge fan of Star Wars, she couldn't wait to see if it was possible.

"Tell you what, you get whatever books you were after and I'll treat you two to lunch. Though if half the rumors I've heard about your brother are true, he'll be sharing his with Mystic."

"You're not freaked out about..."

"Seen too many weird things in my life to care about an empty suit of armor acting like a phylactery. Especially since I also heard your brother is a total sweetheart," said Angel, winking at said armor. If Al were human, he would definitely be blushing right not.

Ed had to admit, compared to all the other girls he had experience with (in his own age bracket anyway), he liked Angel best. She was not only pretty...not that he really noticed appearance...she also had a basic understanding of alchemy and didn't mind expanding it. She asked intelligent questions and actually understood his answers.

In return she shared some of her special books. She had always liked science.

Oddly enough, they were translated into the language here.

"So...what exactly brought you to Ametris?" asked Alphonse.

"My mom came here almost sixteen years ago and might have had...well, she spent the night with a very young, handsome captain here... before she went back to her husband. She wasn't sure if anything happened or not because she had apparently gotten very drunk that night, but she wanted to make sure I knew that my dad might not be my dad. So I came here, to see if she was right."

Ed worked that out in his head.

"Wouldn't you mom be upset about you coming all this way though?"

"My mom and her husband were murdered when I was fifteen months old. She died protecting me," said Angel.

Ed winced.

"Sorry. We lost our mom too."

"Normally I'd be stuck with my legal guardian, but I'd rather take a chance with someone I don't even know than stay there another minute. So how exactly did your brother end up in a suit of armor in the first place?"

Ed winced again.

"We tried to bring our mom back. Instead Al lost his body and I lost my leg. Then I lost an arm binding him to the armor."

"Yeah, but how? Could you walk me through the steps? I might know why you failed so spectacularly," said Angel, honestly curious.

"You're not interested in bringing someone back are you?"

"I know better. Bringing the dead back never works, because they always resent you for it. The only time the dead come back is if they don't pass on in the first place and stay around as ghosts. I'm just curious what your methods were," said Angel flatly.

Ed blinked, before he gave her the bare bones of what he had done. It wasn't until he told her about adding their blood that she held up a hand.

"Wait, wait, wait. You were trying to bring your mother back. So why on earth did you add your blood and not hers?"

"What?"

Angel pinched her nose.

"You honestly thought you could substitute your blood for hers."

Seeing Ed's interest, Angel sighed.

"Well first off even if it had worked, it wouldn't have been your mother. It would have been some demented love child combining you and your brother's DNA."

"What's DNA?" asked Alphonse.

Angel looked at her watch, then at the brothers.

"Do you have time tonight? I can explain the bare bones of DNA...among other things. In any case I can tell you right now that adding your blood to the mix wouldn't have worked in the first place," said Angel.

Ed, who was a bit of a science otaku, gave her the address of the house they were staying in.

Finally, some concrete answers to why it had backfired so badly on them!

Angel showed up with some books and what appeared to be blank notebook paper and colored pens.

"So you were going to explain what DNA is," said Ed.

"DNA, or deoxyribonucliec acid is basically the genetic blueprint of anything living."

(A/N: thank god for dictionaries...XP)

Seeing she had Ed and Al's full attention, she handed Ed one of her biology books and opened up one of the blank notebooks she had brought.

"According to science, each human has 26 strands of DNA. 13 of which come from each parent that contributed it's genetic markers. For example which of your parents had blond hair?"

"Our dad. Mom had brown," said Ed.

"So you got more of your father's genetics than your mother. Now each human more or less gets random genetic markings from their parents...though there are anomalies that have more than twenty six. The reason you couldn't bring your mother back to life using your blood is because she has different genetic markings in her DNA. Everyone has a unique marking."

"But you just said we had half of hers!" said Al.

Angel took two pens. One was red, the other was blue.

"Okay, let me put this another way. Imagine this is your father's DNA and this is your mother's. Let's pretend this is Ed's DNA."

Angel drew thirteen lines each of red and blue ink. She made the blue slightly darker as she mixed them up at what appeared to be a random order.

"Now, were you a brunette or a blond like Ed?"

"He had brown hair like mom's," said Ed.

She drew another graph, this time with the red being slightly darker than the blue.

"Now, pretend the first one is Ed and the second one is Al. If everyone has a unique genetic sequence that is only theirs, do you think it would be possible for someone to use Alphonse's DNA to make a double of Ed? Without a lot of scientific equipment and far too much time on their hands?" she asked them.

Ed shook his head.

"At the base level they're the same, but the mixture is too different to separate the two using straight alchemy. While the result would be our brother, it wouldn't be either one of us," said Ed. She had used some pretty simplified terms, but the gist of what she was trying to explain got through.

"Now while it would be possible to separate the blood into plasma and red blood cells, it still wouldn't have helped because your genetic markers are still too different. And that's not going into the fact that the other half of your genetics belong to someone else," said Angel. "Your experiment might have worked if you had used your mother's DNA, but that's questioning whether or not she would have wanted to come back in a fake body to begin with. Souls are tricky like that."

"How do you know all this stuff?"

"Where I come from, this is basic biology. Here's another interesting fact. While in the womb, all children have the base code for females. It's only when the father introduces the 'Y' chromosome that the fetus is turned into a boy."

"Y chromosome?" said Ed, perking up.

Angel had a feeling she would have to explain this. Hence why she brought a blank notebook with her.

"The accepted pattern for females is an 'XX' chromosome, which is why some people like to call a group of girls the 'double X brigade'. The pattern for males, however, is called 'XY'. Now, in the womb, the standard for the fetus is female, or XX. At a certain stage, the father's genetic material can either add the 'Y' chromosome, thus creating a boy, or deny the extra chromosome and thus keeping the infant female."

Angel made sure to use visual aids to make it easier.

"Coincidentally all this is in the book I handed to you earlier. It's a high school biology book, but it still has the basics. I have an advanced biology book somewhere, but haven't been able to find where I put it."

Al took one look at Ed's face, then mock-sighed.

"He's not going to put that book down until he's finished it."

"I have more from where I came from, if he's ever that interested. I've always liked science so I made sure to stock up on books when I had the chance."

Science always came easier to her for some reason. So when she had unlimited access to her trust vault, and very little adult supervision, she used that as her chance to load up on as many science, chemistry, physics and biology books she could get her hands on. Fortunately she had bought an extra trunk solely for her 'muggle' books, which had been shrunk and stayed in her bag the entire time. So Ron never saw them...or destroyed them.

She also had a standing subscription to several science magazines to a P.O. box that she'd had to put on hold, and several every back issue she could find. She wouldn't lack for decent reading material.

And that was before she got into her even larger sci-fi/fantasy collection. Both the regular and the 'adult-only' ones.

If Ed was this hooked on a boring biology book, she couldn't wait to get him hooked on sci-fi.