Operation Exchange
is a fanfic by Wind-Waker on Spacebattles Dot Com, and is a crossover between Fullmetal Alchemist and Spy X Family. It is also available on Archive of our Own here.
Agent Twilight the Creta intelligence organization WISE has been assigned to Operation STRIX, with the objective being to determine the Amestrian military's plan for Spring 1915. Unfortunately for him, getting a fake wife and daughter will be the easiest part of handling the alchemical plot he is about to unravel.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The Shopkeeper has more personal reasons to be leading the Garden here - he's Ishvalan, and part of his desire to limit conflict is regret over what happened with his homeland and his inability to mitigate the violence, as he has accepted he couldn't have prevented the conflict, but still feels he could have limited it.
- Adaptational Badass: Anya's powers here aren't just telepathy, but a fully opened Gate of Truth, implying that she could use alchemy if she tried.
- Adaptational Context Change: While Anya's grades are still barely acceptable, unlike in canon she actually is capable of excelling in science, mathematics, and alchemy due to the experiments the Homunculi ran on her, alongside forcing her to study. Instead, she's deliberately doing bad on those subjects because she knows the Homunculi are hunting her for her fully opened Gate of Truth.
- Adaptational Intelligence: As opposed to being supremely Book Dumb in canon, Anya is a prodigy in mathematics and science due to the experiments conducted on her. Ironically, she makes a point of deliberately doing bad on them because she knows the Homunculi are looking for her.
- Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Anya only tries to befriend Damian in canon because it would help Lloyd. Here, she's implied to become his friend because she stood up for him when Selim bullied him.
- Adaptational Wimp: Twilight gets hit with this, through no fault of his own - while Twilight is still a very skilled agent, his opposites in Amestris are already investigating something even crazier than Operation STRIX, so they're more inclined to notice the flaws in his arguments. Additionally, having the story set in a setting near WWI/WWII means he can't rely upon as many tricks as he has in his home series. And that's not getting into the literally superhuman foes The Conspiracy has on their side. The author has also noted that, outside the more broadly comedic context of Spy X Family, Twilight is actually deadlier in a fight, but can’t pull of some of his more Rule of Funny feats, like creating an entire (bad) episode of cartoon in a single day.
- Always Second Best: Damian has a chip on his shoulder about his family being this. His father is the most powerful member of the elected government - but since Amestris is a military dictatorship, said government only has as much power as Bradley feels like letting it have. His older brother had been the youngest State Alchemist in history at fifteen (beating Mustang's record of twenty) - until Edward Elric blew his record out of the water at age twelve. Damien himself was only able to get second on the alchemy section of his enrollment exams at Eden Academy (behind Anya, though he doesn't know this).
- Book Dumb: Downplayed - Lloyd is very astute, but has no real skill in even the theory of alchemy. Ironically, this is the one bit of learning Anya already knows due to the experiments she underwent in Lab 5 giving her a fully opened Gate of Truth.
- Call-Back: In Chapter 9, the Gardener explains his gardening philosophy to Yor: cut off any branches that could potentially damage the plants, but otherwise let them grow as they will rather than try to cut them into perfectly symmetrical shapes. Later, when Yor visits a public park with Anya, she finds the overly-maintained, symmetrically-cut plants dissatisfying.
- Canon Welding:
- Operation STRIX's goal has been changed from finding out the truth about Donovan Desmond to learning what Amestris is planning for mid-Spring 1915 - AKA the Promised Day.
- The organization that created Anya here is the Homunculi, with Anya being the product of Lab 5.
- It's heavily implied that this universe's version of the Westalis-Ostania war, the Creta-Amestris war, was one of the blood crests needed to turn Amestris into a country-sized transmutation circle. Wrath eventually confirms this to Twilight .
- Crossover Relatives: As revealed in Anya's first day of School, Bill Watkins is an Armstrong, being the son of one of Alexander and Olivier's unnamed sisters.
- Death by Adaptation:
- Barry the Chopper dies significantly earlier than in canon, with Yor offing him well before his original body can.
- Frankie is killed by Bradley while Loid rescues Hughes from Envy .
Word of God confirms this to be a case of Equivalent Exchange - saving a character from their canon death requires someone else to take their place.
- Dramatic Irony: The very nature of The Conspiracy regarding the Promised Day means that the Spy X Family cast is missing boatloads of information that the readers are well aware of.
- WISE assumes that whatever Amestris is planning for Spring 1915 relates to war with Creta. The actual plan is apocalyptic in nature, but is intended to be contained within Amestris.
- Shopkeeper believes that the Ishvalan War was the result of building tensions boiling over and explicitly rules out the possibility it was caused by some conspiracy.
- Loid is paranoid about Amestris figuring out who he is and coming after him. The Homunculi are interested in him and his fake family, but not because of him - Lust recognizes Anya as one of their failed test subjects.
- As in canon, Loid wants Anya to get high marks on her schoolwork. He's unaware, though, that Anya is deliberately underachieving on one of the subjects she does know - Alchemy - because the Homunculi want whoever does perfect on the alchemical portion of the exams as a potential sacrifice.
- In an example befalling the Homunculi, they all assume that Anya was a failure because she never manifested alchemical powers. Not only did she end up with Telepathy, but it turns out her Gate did open, and Truth took nothing from her because he recognizes that she is too young to understand why opening the gate in the first place is bad.
- Pride assumes that Damian is the one who got a perfect score on the alchemy portions of the Eden admissions after seeing him reading an alchemy book. In fact, he actually writes off Anya as his target (to her immense relief) because she looks dense.
- Equivalent Exchange: Present as always in Fullmetal Alchemist - the author's notes explicitly state that something can only be gained if something of equal value is lost. While Hughes is Spared by the Adaptation, Franky has to take his place.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Truth always demands a price if someone attempts human transmutation, even if they were forced to do so. The one exception to this is Anya, who was apparently forced to commit something along these lines before she was five years old, and which left her with a permanently opened Gate of Truth. Anya paid no price for this, implicitly because Truth recognizes that she was forced to cross the line at an age where she lacks the mental capacity to understand why the line exists in the first place.
- Twilight has no qualms about abandoning anyone he was in some kind of relationship with after completing a mission. He makes an exception for Anya after learning that she was raised to be a Human Sacrifice, explicitly planning to take her with him to Creta once Operation STRIX is completed.
- Hero Antagonist: Downplayed, as with the narrative as a whole he’s still a protagonist, but Maes Hughes serves as an antagonist for Lloyd early on due to being an intelligence officer that has opposed Lloyd’s organization for years and is now grilling Lloyd whenever he can.
- In Spite of a Nail: Anya still punches the son of her father's main target on her father's spy operation on her first day of school. In this case it is Selim who gets punched because Anya was defending Damien, who Selim was bullying. This leads Damian to acquire his crush on Anya, as per canon.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Pride ends up throughly humiliated when he bullies Damian because the words he chose reflected badly on Wrath/Bradley. He ends up being forced to write that he won't be a bully on a chalk board one hundred times.
- Loophole Abuse: An entirely unintended example, but Lab 5 figured out a way to have an alchemist unlock the Gate of Truth without sacrificing anything to Truth - force someone to do it who isn't old enough to comprehend morality.
- Mundane Utility: Bradley uses his Master Swordsman skills to cut and serve a cake in the blink of an eye, which serves double duty of showing off to the civilians in the room while also discreetly threatening everyone else.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Lust burning down the Central Library to conceal Marcoh's research on Philosopher's Stones also destroys all the Eden Academy records stored there, after the other homunculi learn that someone got a perfect score on the alchemy exam (and thus is a potential sacrifice), but before they could look through the files to figure out who.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Loid does care for Anya and Yor, but Twilight still plans to leave them after Operation STRIX is completed. After learning that Anya was involved in the Fifth Laboratory and was intended to be used to create a Philosopher's stone, though, Twilight immediately makes plans to take Anya with him once the mission is complete.
- Roy realizes that Hughes is in very deep trouble when his friend calls him and doesn't spend several minutes gushing about his wife and child.
- Outside-Context Problem: The Conspiracy run by the Homunculi is this to Loid and WISE, because they are an Outside-Genre Foe - they're a fantasy Apocalypse Cult who just happen to be opposed by the protagonist of a Spy Fiction story. Notably, his entire plan to avoid scrutiny by the government was ruined through no fault of his own because Lust recognized Anya as a survivor from Lab 5 and has already informed Father about this.
- Outside-Genre Foe: Anything related to Alchemy is this for the Spy X Family cast - with the exception of Anya and to a lesser degree Yor and Yuri, they're mostly realistic characters from a Spy Fiction setting, while Alchemists use what is best described as magic, and the Homunculi are flat-out superhuman. Loid's encounters with Scar and the Homunuculi highlight this, as all he can really do is futilely shoot at them or run.
- Psychic Radar: Anya's telepathy allows her to instantly identify the homunculi because their Philosopher's Stones make them dozens or hundreds of minds (most of them extremely unhappy about their present circumstances) in one body. Wrath, naturally, does not have this affect, though she has identified him as a Homunculus by listening to Pride’s thoughts.
- Rule of Symbolism: As in canon, Truth exacts a price from whoever performs human transmutation based on why they performed said act, even if they were forced to. Anya lost nothing to them because she isn't at the intellectual age to understand the consequences of said action.
- Wham Episode:
- Chapter 28 - The Fifth Laboratory. Twilight infiltrates the Fifth Laboratory concurrently with the Elrics, and before he is forced to retreat, finds out that Anya was a former test subject there.
- Chapter 31 - Equivalent Exchange. Just as Envy is about to kill Hughes, Loid intervenes and manages to rescue his neighbor. Unfortunately for Twilight, though, Bradley finds Frankie and has him dealt with.
