Chapter Text
Temari is a desert kid, she always will be. That being said, there’s a difference between Suna and the Wastes. Suna is gentle rolling dunes, sun-baked land, and carefully marked wells of cool groundwater. The Wastes, on the other hand, is infinite scorching hills, dried-up canteens, and blistering heat driving you out of your own goddamn mind. The desert is merciless, and should you fall, it is unforgiving in its promise to suck you dry.
They’ve managed to get maybe fifteen clicks into the Wastes, and Temari is already feeling the sort of dizzying insanity that’s only brought on by the very worst of her brother’s antics. And she’s not even doing this mission alone or with a capable and obedient squad, oh no. Because guess exactly who she’s been lumped with?
Gaara stares solemnly into the distance while Kankurou doesn’t even have the decency to halt his ridiculous rambles.
Temari inhales deeply.
Suffice it to say, by the time they bump into the foul-mouthed blond gremlin, it’s no wonder she’s already steaming.
Their first meeting with Edward Elric begins with a whole lot of cursing.
Gaara hears him first, or senses him through his sand maybe, going silent and then looking contemplatively over the dunes. He abruptly changes direction, and Temari is left to exchange looks with Kankurou who only shrugs back at her. They blindly follow after him.
That’s when they hear him. He’s loud, swearing up a storm and clearly exerting a lot of energy to express his displeasure, an unwise thing to do in the middle of the Wastes. Still, it’s not Temari’s problem. It’s not like she’s going to bother reprimanding him.
They catch sight of him soon after that, which is when things get weird. He’s short, really short, but he has the sort of face where it’s difficult to immediately judge his age. Probably younger than Gaara by at least a year or two, but she’s not sure. His long blond hair gives him pretty standard Wind features, but the golden eyes throw her for a loop. Not many people have gold eyes, certainly not civilians.
Because he’s not a shinobi. She can tell that immediately. For one, she’s never seen him before, and while she doesn’t have a perfect memory, she’s still sharp enough to recognize most of Suna’s ninja force. This guy is an unknown. What’s more, he doesn’t act like any shinobi she’s ever seen. Too loud, making a ruckus and stomping around, without any sign of the inherent gracefulness and deadliness that most shinobi cultivate. Her mind flickers towards another loud-mouthed blond-haired shinobi, but she shies away from making that connection.
No hitai-ate either, and no gear or weapons. No survival equipment of any sort, which is not only strange, but downright suicidal for anyone attempting to travel the desert.
All these details add up to one downright weird picture. And… he’s currently brandishing a metal arm up into the air as if attempting to commune with the gods, so there’s also that.
“Elric telepathy activate!” He screeches, flailing the arm wildly around, before he catches sight of their group. His face flushes bright red.
What the hell.
“What are you doing?” Temari asks flatly.
She starts to approach, and the flailing is abruptly cut off, the arm falling softly onto the sand. The boy’s eyes narrow.
“What does it look like?” He snaps.
At her side, Kankurou snorts. “Like you’re trying to perform some sort of interpretive dance for the sand spirits.”
“As if you are attempting telepathy,” Gaara says at the same time. He squints. “Is it working?”
“You never know when your psychic abilities could awaken!” He blusters, even as the flush deepens. “I was trying to commune with my brother!”
“With a metal arm,” Kankurou says skeptically.
“It’s–“ he scowls. “Shut up!”
Kankurou snickers. “Hey Temari, what do you think, next time we’re separated we can try it out—“
Gaara simply stares at her intently.
Temari does her very best to fight off the incoming headache. “You two, shut up.”
“Temariiii,” her idiot brother whines.
“I did not say anything,” her youngest brother informs her.
“I can hear you thinking.” She silently revels in the fact that she can express exasperation towards her youngest brother. Two years ago, she would never have dared to speak up against him.
Gaara’s eyes widen in wonder. “It worked?”
This time, the blond’s the one to cackle.
“You can shut up too,” she snaps.
The cackling dies down. Carefully, he picks up the fallen metal arm and straps it onto his back. Then he tromps over towards their group, heavy black boots creating deep impressions in the sand. He opens his mouth and Temari braces herself for more swearing, or an attack of some kind–
“So, you three got eaten as well, huh?”
“Eaten?” Gaara repeats. His voice is nearly inflectionless, but Temari knows her little brother now. That’s the tone of voice he uses when he’s utterly baffled.
He crosses his arms. “Eaten, chomped, sucked through the eye portal, whatever. Damnit, I can’t believe I got done in by that Gluttony bastard! And you three are the only ones I’ve seen out here. Have you seen anyone else? Maybe a squinty guy with a smug grin on his face?”
“Who are you?” Gaara asks. Temari is wondering that herself.
He rubs the back of his head. “Uh, you might have heard of me. Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist?”
Temari stares blankly back at the self-proclaimed Fullmetal Alchemist.
“I have not heard of you,” Gaara tells him.
He huffs. “Well, who are you?”
“You haven’t heard of him?” Kankurou mocks. “It’s Sabaku no Gaara. Ichibi jinchuuriki, next in line for Kazekage... Ring any bells?”
The boy jerks his head away sharply, scowling. “I’ve never heard of any of that. I guess it doesn’t matter though, if we’ve really been eaten.”
“You keep going on about that,” Temari says cooly. “Being eaten. What exactly do you mean by that, Edward?”
The blond looks up, golden eyes fixing on hers. “Being sucked into Gluttony’s stomach portal, of course. What else would I mean? And you can call me Ed.”
Temari wonders if this boy is actually insane. Maybe the sweltering heat and lack of fluids have given him some sort of solar madness. Because or else why would he imagine that they’ve all been eaten, of all things?
Kankurou laughs sarcastically. “Right. We’ve all been eaten. So what is this? The Pure Lands?” He gestures around at the wide expanse of desert. “It doesn’t exactly look like what all the scriptures talk about.”
It’s not like Temari spends a lot of time imagining what the Pure Lands might look like. She’s far more focused on, you know, actually surviving. But if they were to resemble anything from the Elemental Nations, she would dearly hope it wasn’t the Wastes.
Ed stares at them. “So you’re saying you weren’t eaten? You’ve never had any unexpected encounters with a really big homunculus?”
“There was no eating,” Gaara confirms.
The boy throws his hands up. “Then where the hell am I?”
“You’re in the Wastes,” Kankurou says flatly. “You know, the endless desert nobody ever tries to cross?”
“The desert?” Ed looks around wildly, as if the surrounding ever-present sand had just sprung into being. “You mean like, where Xerxes was? The desert on the way to Xing?”
Temari pinches the bridge of her nose. She has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. “The Wastes, as in the place at the far edge of Wind Country. Somewhere you definitely shouldn’t be without proper supplies and good navigation.”
“Wind Country? Where’s that? Where’s Amestris?”
Temari hasn’t memorized every small town around here, but she would think a name like Amestris would be pretty recognizable. Something’s wrong here. Besides, how can you not recognize an entire country?
“I have not heard of such a place,” Gaara tells him. He pauses. “Is it really true that you have come here due to being… eaten?”
Temari sighs in exasperation. “It doesn’t work like that, Gaara.”
“I was eaten!” Ed protests. “Well, kind of. More like, sucked into Gluttony’s belly through a giant eye… portal… thingy…” He trails off in thought. “And now I’m here. Huh.”
“You were sucked through a portal,” Temari repeats. That sounds like a jutsu of some kind. Maybe fuinjutsu? There are known records of space-time seals, even though there are very few of them, with most being heavily classified.
Kankurou’s eyes light up, and Temari just knows he’s about to say something either a) stupid, or b) unbelievably nerdy. “A portal, huh. Like those stories about getting sucked into the Summons Realm or like in the old play, the Tale of Guren, where the protagonist trips into a different dimension!”
Ah. Temari had been too optimistic, foolishly discounting option c) all of the above.
Or maybe not.
“A different dimension…” Ed says slowly. “A different realm– that’s it! I should have known from the eye. Gluttony’s stomach must be some sort of gate that passes outside Truth’s domain into this in-between realm.”
Temari stares at him wide-eyed. She’s not sure what to think anymore. Kankurou does the same, before his expression morphs into something a tad more gleeful.
“You’re actually from a different dimension? Wait, you’re from someplace called Amestris?”
“You can’t be serious,” Temari says.
“It’s true!” Ed argues. “It has to be–” His words cut off with a strangled yelp.
From far above them, a shadow looms wide. In mere seconds, it seems to grow, casting sudden shade over their faces–
“Look out!” Kankouro yells.
They all leap backwards. Temari propels chakra into her legs as she launches herself away, landing lightly on the balls of her feet. The multiple trees, on the other hand, do not.
Giant plumes of dusty sand billow up around them from the site of the thunderous crash.
Gaara’s sand dome cautiously peels back to reveal her wide-eyed brother. Ed steps out from behind some sort of strange looking earth wall he had managed to put up. It looks more like solid rock than the standard mud wall, and it’s intricately constructed with solidly built stone tiers and ornate curling vines. She’s never seen a jutsu quite like it before.
She raises an eyebrow. “Fancy.”
Ed puffs out his chest.
Gaara takes in the oddly designed wall. His sand shifts as patterned swirls tentatively creep across the surface of his dome. He peers hopefully at Temari.
Her brother was a mass murderer who used to literally bathe in people’s blood. How can he be this cute?
“Yours is nice too,” she assures him, and Gaara perks up.
More dust is kicked up as Kankurou makes his way back over towards them. “It’s… trees,” he states disbelievingly. “We almost just got crushed by a bunch of trees.” His tone quickly becomes irate. “Who decided to chuck trees at us? Not even the tree-hugging Leaf maniacs do things like that.”
“I told you,” Ed’s tone drips with impatience. “It’s the gate! Gluttony must have eaten them. How else do you explain trees dropping on our heads like that? But never mind that.” He rounds on Gaara accusingly. “You didn’t say you were an alchemist! What was that? How’d you do that transmutation? I didn’t see you using any circles.” His eyes dart around as if searching for something.
Gaara frowns. “I do not use any circles.”
“Then how do you do it? You didn’t clap your hands either, so unless you already are the circle–”
“Alternate dimension things,” Kankurou says knowingly. “We’re not alchemists, we’re shinobi. You must use some different type of system.”
Ed nods furiously. “We’re just outside Truth’s domain, or inside a different section, maybe– Everyone’s born with a gate, but maybe you aren’t, you use another form of energy… How exactly are you reshaping your sand?”
Gaara blinks up at him, and Temari already knows he’s going to regret asking.
“It is due to the one-tailed demon sealed within me that I have my abilities.”
To Temari’s surprise, Ed doesn’t falter, but he does start gesticulating more aggressively. “What the heck does that mean? Explain to me what type of energy you’re using. There has to be some form of conversion, right? So how are you channelling it?”
“Look,” Temari says, trying to bring the subject back on track. “You can research all you want on your own time. But right now, we’re on a mission, and it looks like you might hold the answers to what’s been happening recently.”
“A mission?” Ed squints at her suspiciously. “What mission?”
“We’ve been investigating the mysterious appearance of objects in the Wastes.” Kankurou informs him. “There’s been strange metal objects, ordinary things like trash cans or lamp posts, and even corpses. They’ve been appearing all over the Wastes for a while now. But the most concerning–“ Temari catches his eye, tilting her head fractionally sideways, and her brother smoothly changes tracks– “are the deep pools of blood popping up in the dunes.”
Best not to tell him about the missing shinobi just yet. He may not look like much, but Temari gets the feeling that there’s more to this kid than meets the eye. And a good shinobi never ignores their instincts.
“Those are definitely all the things Gluttony has eaten,” Ed says pensively. He shudders. “He usually eats people, but it seems like he’ll eat just about anything. He must have gobbled up some of the trees during our fight.”
So what about the missing shinobi then? Temari purses her lips and scours the dunes once more. It figures it couldn’t be that easy.
“Let’s keep looking,” she orders. “Maybe we’ll find another clue.”
“Wait a second, I still need to get back!” Ed leaps up, pushing into her space. “My brother’s still fighting him, and I have to go check in on Colonel Bastard too!”
Temari stands her ground. “You can’t use your alchemy to cross back over?”
Ed grits his teeth. “Alchemy is a science, you can’t just make random portals– wait…” He pivots suddenly on his feet. “I have to go check–”
“What is it?” Gaara asks.
Ed is moving now, racing back across the dunes, and Temari locks eyes with her brothers before they all turn to follow him. “I thought I saw something back there, but I wasn’t sure… But it makes sense! If you get here by passing through a gate…”
They pass by some strange objects. A large metallic contraption with a strange boxy frame and oddly constructed wheels. Splintered wood, worn down stone posts… Ed leads them past it all, before eventually coming to a halt at the foot of a large stone tablet half buried in the sand.
“I knew I recognized it!” He kneels down to brush off the base.
Kankurou’s eyes gleam as he takes in the double-headed dragon with the ruby eye, surrounded by swirling scripture. “What’s this? Symbolism of some kind, but what does it mean?” He looks down at Ed eagerly.
Ed scowls at the tablet. “The dragon symbolizes the perfect being, and this is definitely a replica of the tablet at Xerxes, but there’s something missing. Where’s the sun?” He points accusingly at the missing semi-circular chunk at the top of the cracked stone.
The writing is incomprehensible. It’s in no language that Temari has ever seen before. She kneels down by the tablet as well, fingers prodding the smooth grooves and brushing over the fragments indicating that something has been pried out. “Whatever used to be here, someone has clearly taken it.”
Ed throws his hands up. “I can’t do a transmutation without a transmutation circle! We need the sun!” He flails his arms towards the other side of the tablet. “And there’s a whole missing chunk on the left side as well. I could guess what it’s supposed to be, but I’m not sure– I need to find the missing pieces!”
Gaara tips his head curiously. “What will you use them for?”
“I can get back by reopening the gate,” Ed says. “I need to use human transmutation. But I’m not going to use the type I know, I’ll have to transmute myself. I need the circle to do it, but the pieces are missing!”
Gaara nods, examining the nearby indentations in the sand. “Perhaps someone thought it looked interesting and took it to resell. There are thieves and unscrupulous merchants around these parts. It appears as if they were headed northeast.”
Ed furiously clenches one hand into a tight fist. “Some jerk went and stole my circle!”
There are a lot of things here that Temari doesn't quite understand, but the words ‘human transmutation’ stand out over the rest. She doesn’t like the sound of those words.
“I see,” she says cooly. “Well, we wouldn’t want to leave you by yourself, but there are some other things we still need to look into. I wish you luck.”
“What?” Ed bristles. “But… I need to get back to Al! How am I gonna get my circle back?”
Temari gestures at the obvious tracks enhanced by the humming traces of leftover energy.
He stares at the ground. Glances back up at her. “What?”
“We’re busy people, you know,” Kankurou jeers. He’s doing his best to appear cool and unaffected, but his hand is also twitching like he’s itching for more play-worthy excitement, so he’s not fooling her. “We have better things to do than babysit.”
There’s a sharp intake of air–
“Babysit?! Who are you calling a little baby who’s too small to even feed himself a single pea!!”
Temari tries to lean back unobtrusively from the sudden blast of sound.
Gaara frowns in confusion. “You cannot eat peas?”
Literal steam seems to billow out of Ed’s ears before he takes a single enormous breath, and then lets it gust out heavily.
“Fine, let’s try something else. If you help me locate the tablets, then I’ll be able to get back to my world and deal with Gluttony. Once we take him out, then all this junk will stop appearing in your desert. That’s both our problems solved. Equivalent exchange.”
Kankurou tips his head. “Equivalent exchange, huh?”
“I accept,” Gaara declares. “We will aid you in finding your tablets, and in return, you will ensure the Wastes are returned to their former state. We will depart now.” He turns in the direction of the tracks before hesitating, glancing over at Temari and Kankurou. “That is… if you wish to.”
A smile flickers across Temari’s lips. It’s not at seeing him so unsure. It’s from the joy of knowing that their youngest brother cares about their opinions now, that he won’t overpower them and force them to obey out of fear. He’s still a leader, that won’t change, but he’ll ask them about things and actually listen. It’s amazing how far he’s come.
“Let’s go, then,” she says softly.
Kankurou’s eyes lighten. “Yeah, lead the way, future Kazekage!”