Hi! Me again! You guys probably didn't think you'd see me again so soon, but I think my creative bug finally came back… and about time, too! My senior design project was so long ago, even I thought I'd come back to writing sooner than that. Oh, well. Here's the next exciting installment of "Fullmetal Detective"!

(I don't own any parts of Fullmetal Alchemist or Detective Conan)

Chapter 10: Resisting the Compulsion

Ai and Conan couldn't believe their ears. Edward hadn't given them any reason yet to think he was lying to them, and so the truth was becoming increasingly stranger than any sort of fictitious story he could have fed them.

"So… how old are you," the scientist asked.

"Eighteen, just like you two.* Geez, would you cut it out? I'm not lying! The man in that picture is my father, and I was there the day it was taken."

"But it was taken in the 1930's," Conan reasoned. "If you were there, how did you get here?"

"I already told you. I had been trying to get home. A few months after that picture was taken, I drove my propeller plane over a waterfall, landed without it in front of The Gate, and was unceremoniously dropped into Baker Park. I'm sorry I can't prove it to you, but my personal timeline didn't change during the incident – I am the same now as I was before I left Germany." He sighed at the frustration of having to re-explain things to the two people with whom he felt he could really be himself. "This is why I never tried to emphasize any sort of truth in what I was telling my friends in Germany. They wouldn't have believed me any more than you two do."

"Why was he helping her?" Conan asked, veering away from one sensitive topic in favor of another one.

"I never quite understood that part. By that time, he already knew about the stone's key ingredient. For all I know, he might have just not cared. He used to apologize to me sometimes for leaving so soon after Al was born, but I could tell he never meant it. His research meant more to him than anything else. I inherited a little of that mentality, and it makes me sick – I, myself, once came close to making a stone for the homonculi… luckily, Al was there to stop me." He stopped abruptly, and looked back and forth between them. "I'm sorry, you guys asked about my father and I changed the subject."

"That's okay, we can tell it's a tough subject for you."

"No, I'm just bitter. What he did to himself was much worse than what my brother and I did." He stared silently at his hands while the other two waited for him to continue.

Half a minute passed before he resumed in a barely audible voice: "I never found out how old he really was. After he met my mother, he stopped using the stone to transfer his soul from one body to the next."

Ai's eyes widened, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

"What?" Conan asked.

"You heard me correctly. He was looking for the key to immortality, but he never found it because he always had an imperfect stone!"

"Do you know how to make a complete stone?"

"No. Even though I've gone before the Gate of Truth several times, on purpose or otherwise, that knowledge is nowhere to be found. I'm guessing my father was aware of that too, so he decided to use imitation stones while he searched for the real one."

Ai finally rediscovered her voice. "Based on what you've already told us, something must have happened when your father switched bodies…"

"Yeah. Souls bind best to the bodies they're born into. I was really lucky when I bound Al's soul to that suit of armor… but from what I understand, each time my father changed bodies, he caused a slowly increasing amount of damage to both his soul and the body he was moving into."

"All in the name of immortality…the perpetual Fountain of Youth…"

"Is it possible he switched bodies again after you came here?" Conan asked, unsuccessfully attempting to be subtle.

"You're wondering if he's hiding somewhere? I don't think so… he claimed that he didn't love anyone as much as he loved my mom. After she died, I think he resolved to live the rest of his life as she knew him. Not only that, but he once showed me a little of the physical damage on his body. He told me that he didn't want to keep going like that."

"Well, hold on to the viewer for a couple days," Conan suggested. "You can use it to see how the search has been going."

"No! I already told you I don't want to go down that path again!"

"Haibara has spent a lot of time working on a chemical cure, with only limited success, so we're open to other alternatives. What do you suggest?" He lashed out, barely keeping hold of his temper.

The alchemist sighed. "I don't know. I haven't been at this as long as you guys have."

Conan stuck to his resolve. "Just hold on to the viewer. As a man of science, I thought you'd want to have all the information in front of you."

Ed stood up, taking the machine from the other boy. "Thanks, but don't expect to be able to change my mind." He walked out the door, closing it a little harder than he intended and rousing Kogoro from his slumber.

The older detective lifted his head and opened his eyes part way. When he saw nothing out of the ordinary, he lowered his head back to the desk and fell back to sleep.

"Now what?" Ai asked.

"I want to meet Kaitou KID face-to-face. The only problem is that we don't know who he really is… but I can try to work on that. In the mean time, you should go walk with Ed and make sure he doesn't get lost on the way home."

"Okay, see you later, then. Good Luck."

"You too."

She stood up, then, and left. Conan went upstairs and crawled into bed.

Ai wasn't worried about Ed getting lost. He'd already been in Tokyo for a few months, so something was wrong if he didn't know his way between the detective agency and Dr Agasa's house. She started making her way home, and found the alchemist only a couple blocks away. He was walking slowly, with his head tilted down. She called out his name as she approached, and noticed the tell-tale signs of someone trying to hide something, when his head shot up and she heard the distinct sound of plastic hitting plastic.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," he replied. "I wasn't expecting this stuff to turn up again. Before I went to Germany, I thought this search was the means to achieving my purpose in life. I didn't know what to do as I started learning more and more of the truth. When I went to Germany, I learned science from the perspective traditionally accepted in this world, trying to stay as far as I could from alchemy and anything related to the Stone. Obviously, that didn't work."

She glanced sideways at him as they walked. "Don't you feel better, knowing that you could converse equally well with an alchemist as with someone who studies natural chemistry?"

"I guess… but it's starting to feel like I'm destined to be the one to find the true Philosopher's Stone. I don't want to, and I'm not interested in helping anyone who tries…"

"That doesn't mean you have to stop studying. I think I would want to know how the search has been going, if I was in your shoes."

"I don't want to… but I don't think I can help the compulsion I feel."

"Are you sure you'll be alright?"

"No. I do think you're wrong, though. It will help me to just leave it behind, and continue pursuing other possibilities."

Ai didn't say anything else after that. She knew that if she tried, she would have to explain Conan's plan, and she wasn't sure how the alchemist would take it.

Ed also walked silently, lost among his memories.

The next day, in the "Features" section of the newspaper, there was an article about a new collection being exhibited at the art museum. The key piece in the showcase was a simple but elegant tiara encrusted with a smattering of small diamonds. What caught Kuroba Kaito's attention, though, was the medium-sized oval ruby located front and center on the small crown.

Nakamori Aoko watched him set the paper down on his desk. "What's got you so excited this morning?" she asked. Instead of giving her a real answer, he pointed to the accompanying photo, while his eyes continued to follow the words across the page. She leaned over to look at the picture. "Oooh, pretty."

"Yeah, and this probably isn't the last time we'll see it in the paper."

She tilted her head so she could look him in the eyes. "Do you know something I don't?"

Kaito played innocent, as usual. "Of course not, idiot. They just made such a point of publicizing it, that it seems like a prime target for Kaitou KID."

"I'm gonna tell my father you said that. We'll see who gets the last laugh this time!" She was about to incite a physical attack on her friend, when the teacher entered the room to begin class.

Ran came home that afternoon and extracted the mail from the mailbox before going inside to greet her father. She noticed that one of the envelopes only had her father's name on it, with no return address or postal markings. She immediately knew what it meant.

End Chapter 10

A/N: I love my readers! Although… I can't tell if it's that you're all really smart, or if I make things way too obvious (or perhaps both… /smile/ ). Anyway, I already started in on the next chapter, which I think will finally include the segment I wrote way back towards the beginning (omg… has it really been that long ago?). Yay!

On another note, I'd like to thank Fyliwion and her story "Where Phantoms Tread", and for allowing me to use the idea of the possibility that Pandora and the Philosopher's Stone are one and the same.

*Conan and Ai never actually got around to telling Ed how old they are, he just made an estimate based roughly on his own age and his observations.