"How's it look Al?"

"The coast is clear Brother."

"Excellent! You coming Winry?"

"You guys go on ahead, I'm gonna see if I can get this pulley to stop catching."

"Alright, we'll meet you back here when we're done. Let's go, Al."

There were certain advantages to living in a military base, Ed mused as he stepped out of the tiny door he'd made in the pantry wall. One was that there was always a good amount of food on hand, and the majority of it was non-perishables. The humans probably weren't as happy about that, but non-perishables were great for borrowing. You could get a bunch of stuff at once and not worry about it going bad for a while, and the fewer borrowing trips you had to make the better.

Ed and Al hurried over to the section of wall just in front of the shelves. Al made it there first, since he had been scoping the room. The short haired boy set down his electric lamp and took a piece of chalk out of his pocket. He started drawing an transmutation array on the wall, and finished it just as Ed arrived. Both boys paused, listening carefully for any sign that someone had entered the kitchen or cafeteria, but it was silent. The boys nodded to each other, and Al placed his hands onto the array.

The chalk markings lit up, sparking and crackling. The sparks traveled up the wall and ridges extended from wood, creating foot and hand holds. Once the process was complete the boys started climbing. They got off on the first shelf.

"Yes! Someone refilled the cereal container; that'll make things easier." Ed declared happily. Al smiled and nodded in agreement, and they started prying the plastic box open. They could have transmuted an opening, but when they were outside of the walls they tried limit their alchemy use. Bright flashes tended to draw unwanted attention.

'Alchemy does help with plenty of other things though.' Ed thought to himself as they worked on getting the plastic bag open. He hadn't met a whole lot of other borrowers in his life, but so far his father, brother, and himself were the only ones he knew that used alchemy. Of course, most borrowers didn't grow up in a library; that had definitely helped them learn. Other borrowers probably didn't have a father that went out of his way to study alchemy either. That had helped too, as much as Edward hated to admit it.

They stuffed Al's large back pack about half full with cereal, and Ed's half full with some rice that was on the same shelf. They had to leave some space for the dried fruit that was kept on the next shelf; Granny Pinako wouldn't stand for it if they came back with only grains.

As convenient as it was to have access to things like dried fruit, Ed sometimes missed fresh fruits and vegetables. The borrowers that had lived in the librarian's garden had been eager to trade,so the Elrics and Rockbells used to have easy access to fresh food. Ed didn't realize how good that stuff was until they came here and had to do without.

Ed didn't complain. Well, he didn't complain much anyway. When it came to borrowing practicality always beat out pleasure.

The boys gathered the fruit and grabbed a few hand fulls of herbs and spices, which they put into the little pouches sewn into their back packs. Packs now full, the brothers climbed back down. Ed activated the array this time; the sparks flew and the ridges disappeared. Not a single trace of their ladder was left when the light faded. For good measure, Ed used his sleeve to wipe away the array until it was just a white smudge on the wall.

They went back to the door they had entered through and found Winry still hunched over the pulley that helped them travel between floors. Her long blonde hair dangled in front of her lantern, making shadows dance within the wall.

"Did you fix it?" Al asked. Winry looked up and gave him a winning smile.

"Yep! It just needed a little maintenance and grease. It should work like a dream now."

"You sure?" Ed asked. "Because I think my ass is still a little bruised from the last time you messed with the pulleys."

"That was months ago and it happened ONE TIME! Let it go already!"

"I thought when it came to pulleys we were supposed to hold on." Ed replied with a smirk. Winry growled and was about to start yelling at him, but Al interrupted.

"Guys! Don't fight while we're in the middle of borrowing. Save it for when we get home."

There were a couple of places they'd built that could be called 'home'. That way if some part of the base became dangerous to live in they could relocate to another section of wall until things calmed down. Right now they using one that was in the corner of an office belonging to a 'Colonel Mustang'. The one thing that all the homes had in common was that they had been thoroughly sound proofed. Apparently, yelling had become a very important part of Ed and Winry's relationship. Plus, Ed tended to yell at Pinako's taunts, and occasionally at Al. Maybe being able to yell was just important to Ed in general.

"Alright, alright, you've got a point Al. Still, I think Winry should go first."

"Fine, I will." Winry said with a sniff. She stood up and walked past the pair, latching the rope to her belt. "Since Ed is too much of a scaredy-cat to test it out."

"What!?" Ed whirled around, but Winry was already hopping off the edge. The pulley worked as well as she said it would, and Winry was quickly lowered toward the basement.

"You just wait till I get down there! I'll show you whose scared!" Ed ranted into the darkness. As soon as the rope went slack he was at the crank, pulling the rope back up to them. Al shook his head, but was smiling slightly as he grabbed Winry's forgotten lantern. Ed found the end of the rope, latched it to his belt, and started his descent; all while muttering under his breath. While Al waited his turn he used an alchemy array, carved into the inside of the wall, to dissolve their door to the pantry. He turned the handles on both his and Winry's lanterns, making them shine brighter for a few brief moments. Then he followed his brother.

Another good thing about the military was that they liked precise measurements and easy inventory. So when the researchers that worked in the basement ended up with bits of material that were too small or hard to categorize they were usually tossed aside. Which made them prime picking for the borrower children.

Winry got first pick of the scrap metal of course. She could always tell which bits would be the most useful for her mechanical projects. The boys picked up whatever else might be of use, which was practically everything since they were able to use alchemy. It had taken them a while to fashion a frying pan that cooked things evenly, but they'd eventually come up with one that met Granny Pinako's approval.

Ed made a door just above a tall bookshelf behind the first office's desk. Winry took out a large metal hook and a rope from her pack. She fastened the two of them together, then stuck the metal hook into a crack in the wood. She lowered herself down to the next shelf, then the next, until she was just above the seat of the office chair. As usual, the alchemist who used this office left his chair sitting backwards; facing away from his desk and towards the shelf. Winry left the rope, took a running start, and leaped off the shelf. She had just enough momentum to get her to the edge of the chair's seat. She let out a small 'oomph' as she hit the wooden surface.

Winry recovered quickly and made her way to the back of the chair. As she was doing all this, Ed and Al had been making their own way down the side of the book case. Their destination was the floor, where all the large arrays would be drawn. Because large arrays meant chalk or charcoal, and the Elric boys could always use more of that.

Winry arrived at the chair's back, and wasted no time shimmying up the wooden spindles. Eventually, she'd climbed high enough that the spindle rose above the desk's surface. After that, she simply had to slide around to the other side and let go. Winry took a few moments to catch her breath once her feet hit the desk. Being a borrower certainly forced you to keep in good shape!

The girl looked over the crowded desk with an eager smile. This guy was a slob and she loved it! He always had bits and pieces of random materials littering his desk, probably from old projects. If he didn't have the initiative to keep his space clean then he was practicality asking for little things to get lost. After a few moments of looking around Winry let out an excited squeal. She grabbed a long piece of metal and ran over to the edge of the desk. The boys looked up at her from the floor.

"Oh my gosh, this is just what I need! Ed, Al, let's take this!"

"I think that's a little too big for us to borrow Winry." Al said, eyeing the oddly shaped piece of metal. It was taller than Winry herself, and looked like something out of the library's 'modern art' section.

"Yeah, and it's up on his desk too. If he was using it as a paperweight or something he might miss it."

"Oh come on, he always has weird stuff lying around. And it would be perfect for-"

"Just pick something else would ya? You're gonna get us caught if we take stuff like that."

"Me? If anyone is going to get us caught it's going to be you!"

It was an old argument between the two of them. Al didn't even bother to scold them for it, knowing it was a lost cause. Winry insisted that Ed was more likely to get them caught, because of his yelling and habit of people watching. Ed insisted that watching the humans was just a good safety precaution, making sure their habits didn't change. Ed then made the counterargument that Winry would lead the humans to them, because she couldn't resist 'the perfect find' no matter how risky borrowing it would be. Winry would say that humans weren't as observant as Ed gave them credit for, and Ed pointed out that soldiers were a lot more paranoid than librarians. And so on and so forth, all the way home where Pinako was waiting for them.

In the end though, it was a moot argument. Because the first one to be spotted by a human was neither Winry nor Ed.

It was Al.

A.N.

Not much action happening in this first chapter, but I wanted to get a few things set up first. The next chapter will have a bit more excitement in it. In the meantime, please let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!

A few things to note:

The kids are in their mid teens, with Ed and Winry being 14 and Al being 13.

Trisha Elric and Sara and Urey Rockbell are dead, though not for the same reasons as their canon counterparts. This will be explored in later chapters.

Ed and Al never attempted human transmutation in this story, so they can't transmute just by clapping their hands together.

While the government is still corrupt, it's not corrupt because of Dwarf-in-the-flask or Homunculi or anything like that. It's just regular corruption.