Magic Doll

By Yellow Mask

Disclaimer: I do not own FMA.

AN: Looking back the Philosopher's Secret, I realised I could have done so many more interesting things with the concept of Winry having the Philosopher's Stone in her blood. I'm not going to delete or totally re-write the story (mainly because I know how much it irritates me when that happens to a story I really like), so I decided to simply write another.

This is set in the anime, about a year after the movie. And as per usual, this chapter was beta-ed by LaughingAstarael.

Chapter 1

The Man Of Gold

"I did it," the man gasped, blood bubbling between his lips and dribbling down his chin, staining the white hospital blanket. "I don't care what you do to me now...I did it..."

Roy Mustang gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to strike the man across the face. Alton was dying anyway, but Roy had thought the promise of clemency on the remote (very, very remote) chance he lived would persuade him to cooperate.

Would persuade him to tell them where Winry was.

Lieutenant Colonel Alton had been under suspicion for illegal alchemy experiments for some time. For at least a year, the faux Philosopher's Stones had been steadily disappearing from the military stores, and there were some rumours that they were going straight to Alton's private laboratory. Nothing substantial enough to warrant a full-blown investigation, but enough to prompt the brass into making some subtle inquiries, during which they discovered that some children had been disappearing in the Lieutenant Colonel's neighbourhood.

Considering it was also Gracia and Elysia's neighbourhood, Roy had decided to investigate himself, using his own time and his own resources. He hadn't found any definitive link between the kidnappings and Alton...until Gracia rang one day, worried sick, saying that Winry had been coming to visit them, but was nearly five hours late. And considering she'd had a brief phone call that morning from the Rockbell girl telling Gracia she was on her way...the woman had thought it best to alert the authorities.

Both Roy and Riza had spun through Central like a hurricane, trying to determine what had happened to Winry and half hoping it was all some big mistake. Once Sheska had found out what they were doing, she had insisted on helping them.

They'd found out that Winry had indeed made it to Central; she'd disembarked right on time...but what had happened afterwards was a mystery.

It was Sheska who had unearthed the police report that finally gave them their lucky break. A market grocer had seen a struggle taking place in a small back alley, involving a man suspiciously close to Alton's description, an unconscious child, and a blonde woman. The grocer related that the woman had apparently been trying to take the child from the man, and it was her shrieks of 'kidnap' that had brought the grocer running in the first place.

But his intervention had come too late. The man had managed to club the woman over the head with a piece of piping, and had loaded both the woman and the child into a van and driven away. The grocer, of course, had called the police.

At first, the police had been working with the initial assumption that the woman abducted had been the child's mother, until they re-interviewed the grocer and he admitted that the blonde didn't look old enough to have a ten year old child. The tool kit found at the scene with the name 'Winry Rockbell' scratched onto the inside of the lid told them just who the woman had been.

And the grocer's description of the man was enough to warrant a full investigation of Alton.

When the military had stormed the laboratory, they'd found shelves of research material – each document referring to a man of gold – and the missing children. Some were alive and healthy, apart from being terrified and traumatised, but most...weren't.

They'd found Alton in a basement-like room, bare of any trappings or materials save a large transmutation circle which had been cut into the centre of the floor, lines so deep and even they were more like troughs.

Alton had been sprawled in the middle of the circle, coughing blood, his eyes alight with a manically triumphant gleam. Most of the missing children had been positioned at critical points around the circle, all dead, and all with no obvious cause of death.

Of Winry, there had been so sign, save for a bloodied scalpel and a section of pale cloth that looked as though it had been cut from the back of a shirt.

They also hadn't found any trace of the fake Philosopher's Stones.

Alton had been taken to the hospital, where the doctors found he'd had several organs removed, though how it had happened they had no idea. There was no outward injury, no mark of any kind...but his liver, kidneys, spleen, and part of his digestive tract had been exorcised from his body.

The doctors weren't optimistic about his survival.

Roy and Riza had been left to figure out what had happened to Winry. Some of the children had testified that they saw Alton take 'the pretty lady' into the basement just a few hours before the military stormed in...but what had happened after that was anyone's guess.

The cut clothing suggested sexual assault, but the square of fabric was just that...a square of fabric. It had been cut very precisely, not torn away in haste and struggle, more to expose a certain section of the body to...work on...rather than remove it all.

And considering that square of fabric and come from the back of the shirt, Roy felt this indicated Alton had done something to Winry, something they couldn't guess at yet.

"I did it..." the dying man repeated. "I did it..."

Roy frowned. His first impulse was to dismiss the words as the rambling of a crazed maniac...but he couldn't help but wonder if there was something more.

"What did you do?" he found himself asking, unconsciously leaning closer.

"The golden man..." Alton breathed. "I did it. I knew I'd succeeded...saw it in her face before it took her..."

Roy stiffened, but kept silent, sensing that Alton might say more if his monologue was uninterrupted.

"Shouldn't have tried with the children," he rasped. "Should have known...bodies still developing...unstable...couldn't hold...fuel, not vessels..."

A horrible, sickening thought began taking form in Roy's mind. He practically bolted from the hospital, ignoring Alton as the man slipped back into unconsciousness.

He needed to see Alton's notes.

-xxx-

"Any luck so far, sir?" Riza asked.

"I think I know what the man of gold refers to," Roy said, his eyes flicking back and forth between Alton's notes and a thick reference book open on his desk.

"What?"

"Gold is referred to as the immortal metal," he lectured. "Because it doesn't rust. So, by that reasoning, the man of gold seems to refer to a man who's immortal...unless you consider that the ability to make gold and to make someone immortal are both qualities attributed to the Philosopher's Stone."

Riza blinked, the only sign of her shock. "You think Alton was trying to create a Philosopher's Stone?"

"Not just a Philosopher's Stone...a living Philosopher's Stone. He was trying to find a way to contain all the alchemical energy of a Philosopher's Stone into a living human body instead of an inanimate substance."

"Why would anyone want to do something like that?"

"Think of the military potential," Roy mused. "If you could perform it multiple times...you could have an army of people with near unlimited alchemical power who didn't even need to use circles and could ignore Equivalent Exchange."

Riza shivered a little. "Do you think he succeeded?"

"He says he did. Granted, his word isn't worth much...but it explains a lot." Roy sighed, scratching idly at his eyepatch strap. "He took the fake stones from the military stores to use as a base medium. He probably originally intended to use the children to create his so-called 'golden man', but when Winry interfered with one of his kidnappings, I think he saw another way."

The Flame Alchemist rubbed his hand over his mouth as though to get rid of something distasteful. "I think those children on the transmutation circle...I think he used them – used their souls – to complete the Philosopher's Stone. He wouldn't have needed the substance of their bodies – that was already present in the false stones. But the soul was the only part he didn't have."

"So you think he...?"

"I think he used the children as...as fuel...but he used Winry as the centrepoint; the body that would become a living Philosopher's Stone."

Riza hesitated for a moment. "Do you think he...do you think he really succeeded?"

"My first impulse is to say 'no'," Roy admitted. "But there's nothing else that makes sense. It explains why the children died, it explains why the false stones are missing; because their energy went into something else..."

"But I thought a true Philosopher's Stone took hundreds of lives," Riza pointed out.

"Yes, but I don't know what would happen if you used false stones as a base. False stones themselves are incredibly powerful, and records indicate Alton probably stole dozens, maybe hundreds...if we assume most of them went towards this final experiment, they may be capable of producing a true Philosopher's Stone with only a small number of souls used to combine them."

"So why didn't it work when he tried it with...with the other children?"

"Children's bodies are still developing, growing...they're unstable, not to mention that their physical constitution is much weaker than an adult's. It's likely they simply didn't have the strength to survive the transmutation...but Winry is nineteen, has largely stopped growing, and is in the prime of her life and physical health."

Riza's lips thinned, and she addressed the crux of the matter. "Then what happened to Winry?"

Roy shook his head. "That's where it becomes little more than educated guesses. I think we can safely say that he didn't deliberately murder her, if only because he needed her for his experiments. And several of the surviving children testify that Winry was alive a few hours before we came, and since Alton's...condition...somehow occurred in those few, unaccounted for, hours, I doubt he had the chance to dispose of a body."

"So if she's not dead...where is she? If she escaped she would have contacted someone."

"It may seem a little far-fetched...but considering the fact that she took a severe blow to the head, memory loss may be a factor."

"But even so, there are missing posters of her all over Central. Someone would have said something by now."

Roy paused, turning the scenario over in his mind. Alton's insistence that he'd succeeded before 'it took her'. His inexplicable missing organs, Winry's disappearance...

"If he was trying to create a living Philosopher's Stone..." he said slowly. "He would have been performing human transmutation...and that would have opened the Gate."

Again, Riza gave a stunned blink. "I thought...I thought it had been closed."

"I closed the direct portal," Roy agreed. "But not the Gate itself. And as outlandish as this theory sounds...it does explain a lot. Why Alton said 'it took her'...why his organs were removed – the Gate probably took them as payment – and why Winry seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth."

Riza swallowed. "So if the Gate took her...does that mean she's in that...that other world?"

While the idea of Winry ending up in the same world as Ed and Al was certainly appealing, Roy knew they had to look at what little they knew of the Gate. "It's a possibility...but it's also possible that the Gate simply consumed her."

Riza considered the concept, her eyes sad. "We'll never know, will we?"

"No," Roy nodded. "We probably never will."