Shadow of Alchemy

A Shadow of Destiny/Memories FMA Crossover

A/N- Woooooot! I finally finished this chapter! The first half has been sitting on my computer for ages, but I finished it! Happy Belated Halloween!

Chapter 3: One Big Happy Family?

Homunculus was confused. For the first time ever, he had been summoned as a female. And he was alone, no master with ridiculous notions of immortality or power. He also had a headache. Whatever it had been that slammed into him trying to take his body, a spirit of some sort he -or was it she?- was certain. Homunculus scowled and crossed her, she had decided to stick to female pronouns for the time being, arms under her breasts and glared. Luckily she wasn't too different if her reflection in the broken glass was anything to go by.

Pitch black hair, milk-cream complexion, and brilliant red eyes. Yes, he -she!- was still the dijin known as Homunculus. The dijin closed her eyes briefly and did a mental check of her body and power, and her mind boggled. Where were the inane imbalances?! Why was her power waiting at her fingertips, yet split in two directions? Why was the spirit nagging of that thing still hanging around in her head? Most importantly, "Why the hell do I have a digestive track? Why do I have any internal organs at all?!" Homunculus screeched.

As a dijin, Homunculus had never needed to eat. In all his incarnations when summoned the body had been physically weak and nothing more than a thin shell to contain and control his power. Any damage to the body and that power would come spilling out in an uncontrollable torrent leaving only the core intact. The core being what humans called the 'philosopher's stone'.

Homunculus had just begun to ponder why she now had organs that appeared to function, if at a different level than true mortals, when one of the children re-appeared outside her pentagon prison. He was staring as if in shock, and missing a leg.

"You, ah, Edward?" The dijin questioned, confused as a rush of information billowed up into her mind. She could remember tucking him in at night, reading him stories, watching him use the thrice damned pentagons to make things. Such a strange use of pentagrams.

Gold eyes, a totally unnatural color for a human, stared up at her. Edwards face scrunched in pain as he crawled forward over the delicate chalk markings and into her prison. "I-I'm sorry Mother. They took Al. They took my leg." He was crying, calling to her, asking for comfort and guidance.

That annoying gnat of a spirit remnant tittered in her mind, and in a rush of annoyance Homunculus realized half her power was directed at the bleeding mortal on the ground. My master is a child? How... strange. The Trisha look alike knelt down and ran her fingers through golden hair. She smiled disarmingly and cooed to the boy.

"Do you want your leg back, Edward?"

Confusion filled the boy, but he latched onto her touch like a drowning man. "A-Al! I want Al!" His frantic crying startled up again. "I want Al back! Why does this have to happen?! Can't I have both of you?"

Homunculus stood, red eyes boring into gold. "So you wish for your brother?"

"Yes! Of course! Why are saying it like that, Mother?"

The dijin grinned. Such a simple request, one that used hardly any strength. "Very well. I can give you Alphonse." Homunculus held two fingers before her and began chanting rapidly, feeling a rush as her power came easily. The body was so much better than anything before!

Red light gathered at her fingertips and she traced arcane symbols in the air as something like a pentagram, but not, formed on the floor and glowed with ruddy power. Alphonse Elric's nude corpse appeared. "I suppose the soul didn't make it." Homunculus remarked off handedly, not really caring that though she followed the letter of the wish, she missed the spirit of it. She had a habit of messing them up to spite her summoners.

The creature's humor went unheard as the boy looked at the body in amazement, then at her, and back to the body. He was muttering to himself and reaching for a knife. Homunculus would have left if not for the interesting mark the boy had begun carving into his brothers chest. Is he trying to perform alchemy on a dead human? Preposterous!

Red eyes widened as the knife sliced through blood and bone, and once again the boys vanished. "How... curious." Half her power was once again hers to command, the other still tied through the stupid geis to some unknown master. The master who started to look more and more like the dead brother. If I can't fulfill the geis I'll be stuck back as the stone and that stupid spirit will have a chance to take this… MY body.

Annoyance festered within her. The twice bound dijin examined the pentagram and boredom crept in. Her power stretched as tendrils searching for the weak link in her prison, and found it. The blood from the golden-eyed boy had leaked over the chalk, which would have normally allowed her a small gap she could work around. Normally. As her magic essence touched the blood, of which the strongest and most ancient magic's utilized, sick understanding dawned.

Homunculus stepped over the bloody bridge and out of the circle as her power and the latent alchemic process converged to light up the basement. The spirit locked within whispered at her, laughing, for the same blood that lay pooled on the floor was running through her new veins like a freight train. She was bound to those children in ways not even a centuries old djinn could understand.

With a motion of her hand Homunculus cut power to the transmutation and watched as the reactions settled down. A suit of armor was half-sunken into the floor, some books had become blank, others unreadable as dye covered the pages, and parts of the ground had come up like liquid before freezing. The new alchemy was strange, and gooseflesh formed on her arms. It was no match for her, but when mixed…

The children.

Her head whipped around as the glowing gate blinked back into existence and deposited the small boys. Homunculus watched in fascination and her mouth went dry as a soul was locked into the body she had created. It was the one thing she could not do –soul magic- and all the golden eyed boy paid for it was an arm.

My baby! Please… he's going…death… the woman's spirit called frantically, demanding that Homunculus do something.


"B-Brother?" Alphonse blinked and looked around. His body felt weird, like everything had been asleep and was just now waking up. What were we doing?

"Al? Y-You're alright…" Edward breathed in relief, lightheaded from blood loss. Dust was getting into his wounds, but infection was the last thing on his mind in the eerie new landscape of the basement. "You're back. Mom's back. We're a family again."

"Mother?!" Alphonse shrieked partly in fear for his brothers life and partly in surprise that it worked. He tore his eyes from his brothers missing appendages and found the pale figure that they had spent three months working on. For a split second he was afraid. Two glowing red eyes peered from the shadows at them, but there was no malice.

As if in a daze she stepped forward, and Alphonse felt his fear turn to confusion, acceptance, and finally understanding. Mother's hair was darker than he remembered, now an almost pitch black, and her skin was a color that he knew would never take a tan. She was smaller, skinnier, but her build was close enough despite the more angular features in her face. It was like their mother had only gone to the fairy realm, ate the fruit, and returned to them with a harsh beauty.

But then she smiled, and it was the identical to the ones engraved on his memory. The way her lips pressed together and curled up, the sparkle in her eyes; it was just like their real mom was there and any misgivings Alphonse had were buried, never to be explored again. Tears welled up in his eyes. "M-Mother." Ed had said she wouldn't be perfect, she was a homunculus after all, but she would be good enough. "Ed's dying."

Al couldn't read her thoughts as she approached, somehow he wasn't embarrassed about either of their naked states, but she had an aura of confidence that soothed him. "He is, isn't he." The red of her eyes faded a bit before returning even stronger. "He needs a doctor, isn't Pinako a doctor?"

"Y-Yeah! Why didn't I think of that, but I can't carry him!"

Amusement sparkled in her eyes as she crouched down and picked up Ed; he had passed out only a few seconds before. "You wish me to get him to Pinako's?"

"Yeah!"


Homunculus watched the two boys from the shadows, drinking in the scene. Her blood was in the younger boy's body, too, and he was also her master. He still had a wish, and the spirit was insistent she help them though her cries were becoming more broken and distant as time passed.

Homunculus smiled in pleasure. If the spirit of the woman had remained outside her body, the dijin would have had quite the formidable opponent. Formless and inexhaustible spirits could bide their time and ravage the world however they saw fit for eternity, but once contained so was their power. Some were locked to places, others to things or people, but this Trisha had made the mistake of trying to enter and take control of her. It was child's play for the being to break her apart and section her off, eventually absorbing the spirits essence and dominating it.

"He needs a doctor, isn't Pinako a doctor?" She asked the younger boy absently. Memories were integrating. Her eyes detected the fine lines of association between them, the blood magic. She couldn't act against them, but she didn't have to act for them. Let him bleed to death, I've already kept my end of the bargain. He means nothing to me.

"…I can't carry him!"

Something unknown and unwanted twisted inside. Homunculus would have written it off as simply a particularity of the new body, but it persisted. She moved to pick up the unconscious boy with ease, and felt a vindictive satisfaction. She would have to thank them, the body was not weak and if she had to guess stronger than most. "You wish me to get him to Pinako's?"

"Yeah!" Brown eyes stared out with hope and admiration.

Check mate. Homunculus mounted the stairs and swore to herself that she didn't care for the children, really, it was just the blood magic that tied them. Once she fulfilled the younger boy's wish she would leave.

The unknown twisted again. Once she made sure he was okay and going to make a full recovery, she would decide what to do.


Old lady Pinako was sitting by the kitchen window, her newest edition of Mechanics Monthly in her lap, smoking her pipe. Winry had already gone to bed and Den was with her, probably covered in grease. Pinako grinned at a particularly witty interview and turned the page, her chair creaked as she rocked back.

Thwock Thwock.

The matriarch of the Rockbell's looked up curiously, decided it was only her going senile, and returned to the periodical.

The second time the knocks reverberated through the house a strange urgency accompanied them, and Pinako hopped out of her chair and headed for the front door. She turned the knob, ready to give a dressing down to the idiot that came calling so late, and froze.

"Trisha." The name was barely whispered, but the pipe fell to the floor bringing them all back to reality. Pinako swallowed. It didn't matter and ghosts could wait, she saw the problem and didn't need to be told. "Take him to room 3."

Alphonse, naked except for an overlarge shirt that looked thrown on last minute, hurried in after the strange apparition.

END.

A/N- And Yea, it would be Full Metal Alchemist without, well, Full Metal. This time around though, Ed's not going to be obsessed with fixing his body. He got a new mommy and his brother out of it, after all. There may have been spelling mistakes/grammer errors in this one, I was in a hurry. If so point them out and I'll fix 'um.