Carabas

FMA. I/Mustang left the military a while ago; right now I'm looking out a door at the rain. I see a memory of similarly looking out another doorway at the rain, standing at the door to a balcony on a tall tower, and then retreating back inside to adjust my plans. In the present, I put on a hat with a wide, floppy brim and head out into the rain.

As I'm walking up a mountain road in that rain, I pass an old man driving his truck down the road. We wave to each other like we do every day. I'm thinking, as a soldier who was for all intents and purposes an embodiment of fire, I was useless in the rain, so it held a different significance. But as a person - I'm thinking of both me and the old man in the truck - you just put on a hat and go to work, rain or not.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm in the same mountain range from yesterday, traveling alone at the moment, standing just inside the entrance to a cave. I've come to a very old friend to ask him for his help. He's not happy to see me. He's sitting in a sort of stone throne and saying slowly, emphasizing every word, "I am not well."

I can see that. He wears this silver circlet that sort of glows, a contrast to his dark hair and coat; looking at how faint that glow is, I'm thinking that there's barely anything left of him. Nonetheless, there's enough of him left to do what I need done.

Near Dark-based, I'm enjoying watching Diamondback as this motel desk clerk tries to fight her off. She's just come around behind the counter, and she takes out her knife and stabs the desk clerk straight through the back of the hand, pinning his hand to the desk.

FMA-based, Ed's automail arm's bothering him while he's staying in a sort of underground village, and he's talking to Al. I'm briefly wondering why Al has a human body at this point in time, but then I remember that he retrieved his body very early in their journey, and then spent the rest of the time trying to retrieve something along the lines of his mind or memories or soul.

I've just entered into some wealthy household, and the lady of the house is greeting me. She uses formal greetings that trick me into responding in a way that formally declares us to be on friendly terms. By doing this, she's effectively prevented me from being able to bring up past grievances. This is very irritating. I'm thinking about how this way of manipulating words is something that she taught her husband, and it's the main thing that allowed him to make his fortune - that and the skill of building false walls that she also taught him, both things that she learned in her time working for a kind of illusionist or something similar, before she married. As I'm thinking about this I'm seeing an image of a false wall in their house which they use to spy on visitors, and then a scene of her visiting the court of a nobleman. She's raising a glass and saying "To the ruler of the land, Sho Haoon!" Calling him the ruler of the land is sort of overstating things - it's a position that's in question. She's been flattering him a great deal in order to get what she wants.

Fragments, one involving finding an old sketchbook with an image of a character I haven't drawn (or thought about) in years; another involving a song called Sleepwalker.

A man and a woman in an old abandoned house, the woman's become possessed by the spirit of her ancestor who'd lived there. She says she's hungry, which I, 3rd person observer, am certain is a lead-in to her doing something unnecessarily creepy. She catches a rat and starts chewing on it. I mentally compare it to evil overlords using skulls as building material, too over-the-top and nonsensical to actually be creepy. The possessing spirit knows this man, and she's saying to him, "I will say, however, this is the first time I've seen you in anything but pain." When she says that, he thinks briefly of a relationship he has with someone, but he says, "Come on, be serious -" He then deliberately misremembers her name, trying to downplay the authority she has over him.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

FMA-based, Al is on some huge vehicle, like a train but so large it has a deck like a ship. An old man wearing armor and automail is introducing him to what appears to be a little girl, introducing her as a 'mechanist' who works on the human soul, something that's commonplace here, and which Al's been researching and is excited to finally get a look at. There's a good chance that she's not human but some kind of automaton, that's often the case for mechanists; Al isn't aware of this. She's thinking the same thing about Al, she expects the inside of his armor to be full of bolts and springs.

The old man who'd introduced the two of them gets his automail caught in some piece of machinery, which is dangerous. Al and someone else, a large man, work together to free him, but in the process the machinery pierces a hole through Al's armor, allowing the little girl to see inside and realize it's empty. Al is very self-conscious about this, but the girl's thinking something about how impressed she is that "he'll continue investigating the secrets he was investigating, not the secrets of his body" - the research he's been doing has no bearing on his own problem.

Ed is on a different train. Kimblee, a prisoner, is being transported in the same car, it's a car for military personnel, and Kimblee's saying something about whether (something happens) or (something else happens), he just doesn't care; this annoys Ed. He gets off the train and heads for a stadium where he's supposed to meet Mustang, and he's supposed to make it look like it's a coincidence that they both happen to be there, since they're being watched.

3rd person, Julia's fighting something from a distance and thinking that at this rate she'll run out of supplies. She's thinking about trying to start a dialogue.

Loosely FMA-based: I/Mustang am skimming a file Julia/Hawkeye wrote, something private or at least not intended for me to read. The text's very small and I don't bother reading it in detail, but it has to do with problems she saw in the military. There's photos with it, mostly pictures of us and someone else who'd joined up with us when we were younger; the last picture is of our whole unit on a train, out of uniform. Unlike the text, they're all positive images.

On that train, when that last photo was taken. I'm waking up and realizing me and Winry fell asleep sitting up, she's wound up leaning against me, the table in front of us is covered in papers, diagrams, there's a bowl of something next to me that's gone cold. Switches to 3rd person, showing us and the rest of the unit, some other people who've been working with us, and Julia/Hawkeye sitting a little apart. She's looking around at all of us and feeling fond but conflicted: she's always had to stay a little aloof, because she can't let us find out she's working against us.