No Sense in Bothering the Other Protagonists

by clearwaterchild

Ed slammed his fists on the table. "We will get to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, dammit, and we will take the Philosopher's Stone and get our bodies back!"

"No!" Edward Elric wailed in anguish as he ruffled frantically through the research notes he and Al had spent so much time decoding. "This...this can't be..." Three, nearly four years of searching had left him with this one hope, and now... "The Philosopher's Stone is made using human lives as a component..."

Ed looked over at Al, at the suit of armor that held the soul of his younger brother. It pained Al, Ed knew, to exist in a giant, empty metal body that could not feel or emote. The Philosopher's Stone was their only hope of returning Al to a body that could feel a warm embrace or spread happiness with a cheerful smile. There had to, had to, be another way. There just had to be.

The Gate pulsed.

"A school that teaches alchemy, eh?"

After months of continuing their search for an alternate way to create a Philosopher's Stone, Ed and Al found themselves deep underground in a secret library. Books that probably dated back nearly four hundred years lined the shelves of these old, musty bookshelves; but it seemed that one strangely new-looking book had been sitting out, open on a table, as though it had been waiting for them. The book advertised the location of one already completed Philosopher's Stone that had been transported to the other side of the Gate, to what was said to be the most secure holding place in either world: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Strange name and odd wording ("witchcraft"? "wizardry"? Had the Ishvalans taken over the world on the other side of the Gate or something?) aside, the castle looked formidable, cut off from the outside world not only by a lake and a cliff but also by some sort of hypnosis that rendered the entire area invisible to those unfamiliar with or hostile to the practice of alchemy (again, what was it about the other side of the Gate that made people so wary of alchemy? They even went so far as to call it "magic").

"It's what we've been looking for, Al," breathed Ed. "There it is, just on the other side of the Gate. Your body, and my arm and leg."

"Actually," Al reminded him, "at this point in the anime timeline your arm and leg are in our world, being used by a homunculus who has taken the form of our dear teacher's dead child. But," he mused, rubbing his chin and glancing around the underground library, "we probably don't know that yet and probably never will, since..."

"Al," Ed interrupted. "This is it. This Hogwarts school has what we're looking for. All we have to do is go in and get it."

"Right," Al agreed, breaking from his musings and snapping back to reality. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Let me see that book." Ed handed it over, and Al began flipping through the pages. "Ah, it's a book on the history of alchemy. Remember when we used to spend hours and hours in Dad's library poring over books like these? Hey, it's pretty recent, too, it's even got...hey, wait a second." Al flipped to the inside front cover of the book. "Ed, maybe you should take a look at this..."

Al turned the book toward Ed, one armored finger pointing at the copyright date. "Eh? This can't be possible. They must have made some mistake in printing, that's all."

Al shook his head. "It's definitely not a mistake. The history appears to go way past our time. Maybe we're not completely in sync with the world on the other side of the Gate, then."

"No way." Ed grabbed the book from Al's hands. "There's absolutely no way we could be that far off between the two worlds. A gap of, say, seven years or so I could completely understand; that wouldn't require any explanation at all, but if this book really was printed in 1991, we've got some serious work on our hands." He rubbed his hands together and stood up, searching the bookshelves for more research material. "We'll have to use the Gate to go through the space-time continuum and get to the future."

As Ed flipped through numerous books at an astonishing pace, Al sat still looking confused. "How will we do that, Brother?"

"Easy. We just use our alchemy to make the world on the other side of the Gate move at the speed of light, so it will go back in time until 1991 on that side is synchronized with 1914 on our side."

Al scratched his head. "Err...come again?"

Ed sighed, laid a large sheet of paper out on the table, and pulled out a pen. "All we have to do," he explained, drawing a large rectangle in the middle marked "GATE" and a conveyor belt on either side of it marked "OURS" and "THEIRS," "is use alchemy to grab hold of their time and pull it backward, so a future time in their world is all sync-ed up with the present time in our world. Alchemy is science, after all."

"But Brother," Al protested weakly, "wouldn't moving the world on the other side of the Gate back in time..."

"Don't worry, Al," Ed said. "It'll be very difficult, and our chances of succeeding are slim to none, especially given that we will encounter some sort of significant difficulty that throws all of our plans off and forces us to improvise. We'll also be breaking laws, not just of the State but also of physics, chemistry, and especially alchemy. Any normal alchemist would likely have everything stripped away from them before they died a terrible, painful, and humiliating death.

"But we, Al, are not normal alchemists. We are the sympathetic protagonists, and our world view and beliefs are superior to anyone else's. Therefore, we will triumph over the Gate, and any wrongdoings we have committed will be forgiven because we're chasing our dream of seeing each other whole again." Ed slammed his fists on the table. "We will get to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, dammit, and we will take the Philosopher's Stone and get our bodies back!"

"Well," said Al, sounding more than a little shaken up, "we made it here." He breathed a sigh of relief. "That was some alchemy you did back there, Brother. I'd never have thought to transmute my body into a machine that could fly. How'd you come up with that, anyway? How is a flying hunk of metal even possible?"

"I don't know."

"You used alchemy to make a machine without knowing how it works. Huh. One-upping the Wright brothers, that's just how we alchemists roll."

"Alchemy is a mysterious science, Al. But anyway."

"Anyway." Al looked up at the castle. Ed did the same and shivered. In person and in the crepuscule, it looked a lot more foreboding than it had in the picture. "In any case, now that we're here, how are we getting in?"

Ed thought for a second. "The students are all wearing uniforms, so I could blend in if I could get my hands on one, or at least study one long enough that I could transmute my clothes to look like the uniform...I could even dye my hair green again."

"Actually," Al reminded him, "at this point in the anime timeline you haven't dyed your hair green yet. Why did you dye it green, anyway?" Al was silent for a moment. "It looks like their clothes are completely covered by black robes. I'm sure you could get away with just doing that. On the other hand..." Al looked down at his armor, "how am I getting in?"

"Hm." Ed had to think a little longer on that one, but finally the solution came to him. "It'll be a little complex. We'll wait here and try to come up with a way to smuggle you into the castle. Then I'll see something by means of an incredibly contrived coincidence and stop mid-sentence to gawk and point. We'll look at each other and laugh about how simple the answer actually was, and we'll get into the castle in time for Dumbledore to say that thing he says about the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side."

Al looked crestfallen, or about as crestfallen as an empty suit of armor could look. "I was hoping we'd have time to catch the Sorting..."

"We wouldn't have been able to do that anyway," said Ed. "We wouldn't be recognized by anybody, so we'd have a hard time fitting in with the students, especially given the fact that I don't actually have a uniform." He sat back and looked up at the darkening sky. "Now, time to wait for that contrived coincidence."

"Right."

By some manner of unlikely, extremely forced circumstances, Ed and Al made it up to the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side before the feast ended. The entire castle was left surprisingly unguarded on this first night, perhaps because it was expected that anyone out to steal the Philosopher's Stone from this particular endroit would be forced by the plot to take an entire school year to do it. Thus, unsurprisingly, the best night to steal anything from the castle was this first night, when the plot demanded exposition as opposed to conflict.

Unfortunately, the heist got off to a rather rocky start as Ed and Al found themselves immediately faced with a locked door.

"Curses, it's locked." Ed clapped his hands together and slammed them noiselessly against the door. The electric blue light characteristic of alchemy fizzled around the door, but when Ed tried to open the door, he couldn't. "Huh?"

"Let me try, Brother," said Al, drawing a transmutation circle on the door. He pressed his metal hands to the array, and the wood of the door rotted away. "We can just break through the door now, and when we're through, we can rebuild it, so it'll look like we were never here."

"Good idea," said Ed, soundlessly crashing through the rotted wood. "Boy is it dark in here. I'm glad we put that hole in the door; now there's at least a little light. Where's that Stone..."

There was another flash of blue light as Al recreated the door; from the light, Ed saw the corner of what looked like a trapdoor built into the floor. "Al," he exclaimed, "the Stone is through that trapdoor!"

"Right...hey, what's that noise?"

Both brothers stopped moving and listened to the low growling sound that had suddenly started. "Sounds like a ride-on lawn mower," Ed remarked. But it wasn't a ride-on lawn mower; it was a giant three-headed dog that was grumpy from being woken up by two well-intentioned criminals looking to steal the MacGuffin from the plot of another story in order to use it to accomplish their own goal of cheating God and giving the Gate the finger.

"That," said Al, "is definitely not a ride-on lawn mower."

"No," said Ed, "it isn't."

And then Ed's cell phone rang unexpectedly.

Kimi ga tabidatsu hi wa...

"Ack!" exclaimed Al. "Your ringtone is the Winry ending? Seriously?"

"I kind of liked it," replied Ed, searching his pockets for the phone. "Okay, now if I could just get the phone out...these leather pants are kind of tight..."

"Yeah, they do seem rather impractical, especially when you're fighting all the time. That and your phone's huge. Cell phones in the early nineties, just ugh...wait, how'd you even get a custom ringtone on that dinosaur?"

Ed began squeezing his pocket in the hope that he could propel the cell phone out, as the volume got louder and louder. "Lemme see if I can just set this to silent..."

"No, wait. Keep it ringing. Play it again if you have to; just don't stop the music." He gestured toward the three-headed beast, from which the riding lawn-mower sound had been replaced with the sound of a really tall and fat guy snoring through a megaphone. "I think your ringtone put it to sleep. It'd put anyone to sleep, so that's not surprising..."

Ed scrambled to pull the monster's paws off of the trapdoor. "Okay, let's go. Hold it open for me while I jump."

Al pulled open the trapdoor, and Ed prepared to jump. Just as he was about to jump into the pit, however, Al's metal arm barred him from moving. "Don't," he said. "What if it's a really long jump? What if it's an endless pit? What if you just fall and fall and don't ever hit the ground? Maybe I should go first..."

"Don't be silly, Al. I'm a main character. I can't die until at least the penultimate episode of the series." And so he jumped, and fell down, and down, and down, and landed on something soft with a sound not unlike FLUMP, but a little less like a scrawny eleven-year-old falling into a giant plant. "It's fine, Al, there's something here to break our fall!"

"Okay," said Al, his voice echoing off the walls of the room under the trapdoor. There was a clanking as Al jumped, then a thunk as the door slammed shut. Al's gasp echoed as he too fell for a long time. The sound of his body hitting the soft thing was more like PMFFFFclank. "What...is this?"

"Some sort of plant, I guess," said Ed. "Not sure how to get to the Stone from here, but we'll find a w-" and here he was cut off because a tendril of the plant snaked around his neck. "Wh-" He immediately began struggling, realizing suddenly that the plant had wrapped itself around his limbs as well.

"Ed!" Al shrieked, attempting to pull the plant away from his own body to get to Ed. A tendril wrapped itself around Al's shoulder and into the empty body cavity, probably coming dangerously close to the blood seal. Al froze up and began sinking.

"Al!" Ed struggled faster, and as he did, the creepers of the plant tightened and squeezed around his limbs. Slowly and painfully, he brought his hands together and transmuted his right arm into a blade. For a brief moment after the blue light of alchemy flashed, the plant seemed to relax its hold, but then Ed began hacking at it, and it only grasped tighter. "Al!" He transmuted his arm into a longer blade, a cannon, and a clawed grabber, but with every transmutation, the plant loosened slightly and then tightened again.

From a point deep within the plant came Al's voice. "It's shrinking back from the light! We need light!"

Ed transmuted his arm into a flashlight. Almost instantly the plant loosened its hold completely and the two brothers dropped down to the floor below.

"That was close," said Ed, rubbing his neck where he was sure there were red marks. "I'm going to have bruises all over, and not just from the squeezy plant thing. That fall was rough. We must be miles under the castle."

"That's an exaggeration," said Al. "If we really were miles under the castle, we'd reach terminal velocity and be falling so fast you'd probably be dead or seriously injured. I'd hate to think what a fall like that would do to a smaller child..."

"Who're you callin' so short people mistake him for a young child and try to convince him that stupid things like magic exist when I really know that there isn't anything in the world but science?"

"I didn't say anything like that."

Ed looked down the dark stone hallway that was the only way forward, glad he had a flashlight with him. The walls were rough and wet, and there was a constant dripping sound that echoed in the hallway. The passageway sloped downward, and the stone floors were slippery, so Ed and Al had to be careful not to slip and fall on their butts.

As they traveled through the passageway, Ed began hearing a sort of hissing sound, like the sound of a large snake from really far away. As he got closer to the light at the end of the passageway, it stopped sounding like a hiss and more like the fluttering of a lot of wings.

Ed and Al stepped into a large chamber, at the other side of which was a heavy wooden door.

"Gee, where have we seen an obstacle like this before," Ed muttered, transmuting his flashlight back into a hand and clapping his hands together. The wood rotted away, and Ed and Al walked straight through. "Wonder what that fluttering sound was all about."

Immediately it was dark again. Just as Ed was considering transmuting himself another flashlight, the place became flooded in light, and he found himself standing on the edge of a gigantic chessboard, populated with giant chess pieces.

"Huh?"

Al looked at the setup. "It looks like we have to play our way to the other side; see, there's the door."

Ed looked. Indeed, there was a door on the other side. He groaned. "Where's Johnny Yong Bosch when you need him?"

"He was in Episode 35, you know," Al commented. "But we never got to meet him because he died at the end of that episode, and besides, in the anime timeline, we haven't-"

"Screw the anime timeline, I have green hair! On more than one occasion; remember that one ending where my hair is lime green? Okay, let's play chess."

"Let me call the moves, Brother," said Al uncertainly. "You've never been a good strategist. White should go first...maybe we have to activate it somehow?"

Ed clapped his hands together and tried to use alchemy to solve the problem. It didn't work, for the second time that day. "Maybe there's a code word. Match start! Or...something." He tried a number of other possible activation code words and phrases, but to no avail. "Okay, that idea went over like...like...something that doesn't go over very well."

Al answered, "That simile turned back on itself as fast as...as...as a thing that turns back on itself really quickly." He turned back to the chessboard. "Maybe it's not an activation word. Maybe it's something we have to do. Brother, take the position of one of the chess pieces. I'll do the same. We'll play our way to the other side."

"Just to the other side? No 'checkmate' business?"

"Nope," said Al. "If we're on the other side, those chess pieces won't be able to block our path. Of course, a win would also be nice. Whichever comes first, I guess."

Ed frowned. "We're going to win, Al. Here, you take the position of that bishop. I'll be a knight." Immediately upon his saying this, said bishop and knight exited the chessboard. "Great, now we can start."

A white pawn moved forward two squares, and the chess game began. Alphonse began moving pieces with the kind of uncertainty in his voice that one only gets when one believes something is too easy. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, from Ed's point of view, so he didn't understand why Al was so nervous. Wasn't "this is easy...too easy" far too cliché by now to be used? Ed thought yes.

That is, until black lost their other knight. Ed watched in horror as, instead of simply taking the place of the captured knight and moving the black piece off the board, the white bishop smashed the black knight to pieces before taking its square.

"What kind of stupid deadly chess game is this?" Ed squawked. He looked over at Al, who was experiencing some sort of color failure as he shakily returned to commanding the black pieces.

As the game went on, suddenly winning seemed a lot less possible than it had earlier. Under Al's command, black lost more pieces than Ed really felt comfortable with. Al still looked a little uneasy from the shock of the first piece they'd lost.

"Come on, Al!" Ed shouted. "We can't let these stupid white bastards get us down any longer! Throughout this game they've just been beating us down, refusing to let us get ahead, using violence to scare us into submission; and it's working on you. Don't let it. See the arrogance in the faces of those white pieces; they're smug, complacent. They think they're better than we are just 'cause they're winning. I'll bet you're tired of the beatdown, tired and angry. So come on! Fight back! Fight against the oppression!"

"I would," Al replied quietly, "if I didn't know how things turned out for the last group of people who fought back." Al stopped, then looked at the board. Ed followed his gaze, trying to think what Al could be planning. "You know, Brother," he said suddenly, "you're right. We can still win; we just have to be a little smarter."

"That's the spirit."

Al went back to ordering the pieces around with a new confidence and vigor, playing out some strategy he'd managed to come up with in a matter of seconds. Fairly soon after that, white had lost just as many pieces as black, and it seemed that either side could claim the victory. If the white queen could be taken out of the way, Ed was sure that he could move forward and checkmate the king, but there were no pieces able to move into the queen's path besides...

"Just as planned," Al grinned, and made his move, somehow emulating both Light Yagami and Lelouch Lamperouge simultaneously.

The white queen struck him down with a deafening clang and threw him off the board. Al hit the wall and collapsed to the floor as Ed watched with a growing suspicion about the whole chess game.

"It's designed for a team of people," he said, watching as Al stood up and dusted himself off, a small dent in the right shoulder of his armor. "This game is designed, and the white pieces' A.I. are designed, so that any team of people entering here has to sacrifice a teammate in order to gain access to the other side. It's equivalent exchange."

"Yup," said Al cheerfully. "Luckily for us I figured that out when I did, otherwise I'd be sacrificing you."

Ed shivered a little. "You wouldn't."

"We need that Stone."

Ed sighed and moved up and across. "Checkmate."

At once the white pieces moved aside, and Ed and Al walked across the room to the door on the other side.

"That's odd," said Al. "Do you hear that?"

Ed shook his head. "Is it that weird fluttering sound again? We never did figure out what that one was about, did we?"

"No," said Al. "It's more like a creaking..." Ed got an immediate bad feeling. "To be honest, it sounds like a one-wheeled..." Here Al trailed off, leaving Ed wondering whether he should dread the next trial or...

"A one-wheeled what?" he prompted.

"Brother," said Al, "you're not going to believe this, but it's a one-wheeled haystack."

"A one-wheeled...haystack." Ed paused, then, "What sort of ridiculous obstacle is a one-wheeled haystack? What could possibly be so ominous about a haystack on wheels-no, not wheels, one wheel-that it needs to be kept so far in this stupid cave-thing that people looking for the Stone have to battle it or tackle it or whatever to it in order to get across into the other thing just to get to the goddamned Stone! I am so done with all of this nonsense, I swear!" He opened the door. It was completely dark, save for a bluish glow in the corner.

"Just kidding," said Al. "It's only a troll."

"Ah," said Ed. "So we can just go past without really worrying about anything."

"Yup," Al replied. "We need to wrap this story up, anyway. If we stay here too long, it's possible the plot happening here will start catching up with us, and we definitely don't want to stay in this world past the exposition."

"Isn't pretty much this entire book exposition? I mean, yeah, there are a few side conflicts, a red herring, and a Find The MacGuffin at the end, but overall, isn't this book mostly there to assimilate the reader into the wonderful world of Harry Potter?"

"Hm, point taken. Anyway, there's the door. Let's leave; it smells like stale pizza crusts and the tears of social outcasts who use their loneliness and daddy issues to fuel their lashings-out against the world in here."

Ed agreed. For some reason, Al's description of the room reminded him of something...or maybe someone...but he decided to dismiss this in favor of, "Wait, how do you know what it smells like in here?"

"I can guess."

Ed took that to be a fairly acceptable answer and didn't question it as he and Al opened the door into the next room.

"Bottles of stuff," he noted; and there were indeed bottles of stuff on a table in the room.

That didn't look particularly bad either, so Ed and Al walked through the doorway. Immediately upon their stepping into the room, a fire roared up and blocked the exit.

"That's not ordinary fire either," said Al. "It's purple." This was a true statement, though the flames Ed was looking at were black and had sprung up to block the way forward. This strangely-colored fire was definitely serious business, Ed decided, because it was an ugly unnatural color. Normal fire was not dangerous at all, but making it purple or black was a good way to color-code it to mean, "don't even try walking through me, because you won't survive."

"Hey, check it out," said Ed, grabbing a piece of paper off the table. "There's some sort of awful poem written on it."

"I think it's a puzzle," said Al. "You have to drink one of the liquidy-things in one of the bottles to get through the black flames. It's some sort of logic thing."

"Hey, Al," said Ed, "Buffy called. She wants her patterns of speech back."

"You're one to talk, Brother," replied Al. "So, how about that logic puzzle?"

Ed read it through once, then again. "Oh, come on," he said. "Is this seriously the final puzzle? An eleven-year-old could do this one in no time flat. It's that tiny bottle right there. Ah, only enough for one person. Again, this puzzle seems designed to break up a team. What, do they expect that a group of villains coming around to steal the Stone will actually care that they have to leave team members behind? This must be a trial designed for the protagonists. Anyway, I'll go get the Stone." Ed grabbed the smallest bottle and drank the liquid. It felt like ice going down, probably to counter the heat of the black fire, even though there was obviously no such thing as convection for these particular flames.

"What do I do?" asked Al. "Do I just stay here, then?"

"The one in the rounded bottle will get you back through the- oh. Uh..." Ed hadn't really thought this one through. Apparently this trial was not designed for empty suits of armor. "I guess...stay there until I get the Stone and get back. Then we'll see."

"Okay..."

With his entire body feeling like ice water was flooding it, Ed stepped through the black flames and found himself in yet another chamber, this time fully lit with creepy torches full of regular fire. As Ed looked around, he realized that of course the chamber had to be well-lit; otherwise, how effective would the gigantic mirror be? He wasn't entirely sure of the mirror's use, and it didn't seem to be another obstacle, since there was no door and, quite probably, no next chamber. Granted, there was no Stone, no safe, no locked box, no treasure chest, no cake, etc. Ed decided he'd better further inspect that mirror, since it seemed to be his only clue as to where the Stone might be.

"The Mirror of Erised," he read. "Huh. And then this writing...definitely looks like it's supposed to be viewed in a mirror. But...it's on a mirror. That seems kind of useless, unless you can read backwards..." Ed stole a passing glance at his reflection, expecting to see his reflection.

Instead, he saw himself and Al, holding a crimson rock that could only be the Philosopher's Stone. He saw himself using the Stone to make Al whole again, to bring back the body of his little brother. He saw Al patting his arms to make sure they were real, smiling when he knew they were, looking at his own reflection and realizing that people would finally, finally treat him like a kid again. He saw himself, no longer a cripple, with two good legs of his own to stand on, finally. He saw everything he wanted to see, happening in this mirror.

But he didn't see the Philosopher's Stone anywhere in the room. So...

"It must be in the mirror," he muttered to himself. "It's got to be in the mirror, or behind the mirror, or...or in my reflection." He clapped his hands together, trying to use alchemy to get through the mirror to get the Philosopher's Stone, to achieve the end he so dearly wanted, but for the third time that day, alchemy was useless.

Ed tried, and tried, and tried again to get the Stone out of the mirror, until there was nothing he hadn't tried aside from breaking apart the entire thing, but to no avail.

"Stupid goddamn fucking stupid bastard mirror! Crazy unfair stupid annoying useless goddamn mirror! Why show me this? Why why why why why why? I have to do this; I have to get that Stone!" He beat on the mirror with his left hand. "Why won't you give me the stupid Stone?"

"Encountering a few problems, are we?" came a sickeningly smooth, falsely sweet, disgustingly familiar voice. "Well well well, looks like alchemy won't solve all the Fullmetal Shortass's problems, now will it?" Envy stepped, completely unharmed, from behind the black flames and sauntered up to Ed. "What's this? A mirror, and the Stone's inside, huh? Thanks for the tip, Pipsqueak."

Ed stood, somewhat bewildered, partially annoyed, definitely furious, with trace amounts of 15 other emotions, as Envy blew a kiss into the mirror. "How'd you get here?"

"What do you mean, how'd I get here? You brought me here, Shorty; you opened the Gate. Too bad you couldn't figure out how to bend the space part of space-time, or else maybe you'd have bypassed all those nasty little chambers and passageways. I, on the other hand, got through just fine."

"You still missed your mark." Ed's mind raced as he worked through the details. "You took the place of the troll in the second to last room." It wasn't a question; Envy's smirk told him beyond a doubt that he was right. "But how'd you-"

"I've been around for four centuries, Bean Boy. I know every trick in the book. Do you know how easy it is, then, to troll a troll? But anyway. I guess you were having trouble getting the Stone out of this mirror. Shows you what you want, I guess...the one thing you want most of all. And then refuses to let you have it. Cruel mirror, huh. I like it."

Ed grit his teeth. "You know how to get the Stone out of the mirror, don't you," he growled. "Tell me!"

"Looks like it's a magical mirror. You might try working a little magic, as it's called in this world."

"I'm not going to use 'magic'," Ed ejaculated loudly. "For one thing, it's called alchemy, and it's not magic, it's science. For another, alchemy doesn't work on this goddamned mirror and you damn well know it. Tell me how to get the Philosopher's Stone!"

Envy cackled virulently. "Tell me what you see," he hissed, "when you look into that mirror. Do you see your dear brother becoming real again? A real, live, warm human, and not the cold, empty armor you made him into when you tried to transmute your mommy? Do you see him not resenting you for the forbidden alchemy you forced him to perform?"

"Shut up!" Ed shouted hotly, as Envy cracked a wanton smile and waggled his fingers at his reflection in the mirror. "What do you see?"

"Hm," Envy mused, "a boy." He gazed into the mirror pensively and said nothing more.

"A...boy." Ed coughed wetly, unsure how to take this statement. Of course Envy saw a boy in the mirror; the question was, what else did he see? Not that Ed particularly cared what sort of sick and twisted things the bastard wanted most of all-the question was a deflection, after all, and an obvious one at that-but Envy's answer was asinine and frustrating in its simplicity.

Envy seemed to be teasing Ed with his long pause. "A boy...around eighteen, with golden hair and eyes." The homunculus's expression glazed over just slightly. "with a father who actually bothered staying around and a life that has a possibility of ending painlessly..."

Ed thought back to what Al had said earlier, about the heavy smell that permeated the room, and how familiar Al's description had sounded. "Really?" he asked thickly.

Envy looked over, a contemptuously dumbfounded expression crossing his face. "No, you idiot," he said, his fingers playing over a suspicious bulge in his shorts. "I see a boy with long green hair, black clothes..." he reached his long, deft fingers into his shorts and pulled out the pulsating red stone that Ed desired so shamelessly, "and the Philosopher's Stone."

"How'd you- Give me that!" Ed demanded, and lunged at Envy with intense fervor.

Envy dodged lithely and brought the Stone to his mouth. His tongue flicked expertly over its surface. "You know how easy it'd be for me to swallow this whole?" He took the Philosopher's Stone all the way into his mouth and hummed. "Then you'd never see it, ever again."

"Hey, Envy," Ed said, "J.K. Rowling called. She wants her innuendo back."

Envy's mouth dropped open in mock astonishment. "You started it, Shortass!" he ejaculated loudly.

Ed growled and transmuted his right arm into a blade, then moved to attack again.

"Not a chance," said Envy, and grabbed Ed by the hair and slammed the side of his head against the floor, knocking him out instantly. Even though the majority of this story was exposition, it would still be a good idea to get out of the chamber without getting caught by minor characters. "Now, what should I do with you..."

Envy really had no problem with leaving the Elric brothers here to rot, but unfortunately, should a group of eleven-year-olds come down here chasing a villain in search of the MacGuffin, finding a couple of teenaged alchemists might prove detrimental to the story. As it was, taking the Philosopher's Stone would likely change fuck-all about the story; the whole purpose of the protagonist getting it was making it so the villain couldn't, after all. So, reluctantly, Envy hoisted an unconscious Edward Elric on his shoulder and returned back through the black flames, taking one last furtive look at the golden-haired, golden-eyed eighteen-year-old boy in the mirror.

"What did you do to him?" the walking tin can asked once Envy was within earshot.

Envy rolled his eyes. "Open the Gate," he ordered. "We've got to go back to Amestris."

"What'd you do with the Philosopher's Stone?"

Envy dropped Ed onto the ground and crossed his arms. "I don't like your accusatory tone. Your darling little brother couldn't get his mismatched little hands on it. I could. So, I have it and he doesn't." He smiled sweetly.

"Wh- what? Why not?"

"I'm starting to get tired of your questions. Long story short, if you want to use the Stone for your own benefit, there's no fucking way you're getting it. Now, if you'll help me haul him back to our world..."

"You knocked him out!"

"I'm saving his life. Now get us all out of here, you annoying hunk of metal."

Alphonse continued to protest, pulling the short shit closer to him and distancing himself from Envy. "I'm not allowing you back through the Gate."

"None of us can stay in this world. I can't get back on my own. You know, you could save time, effort, and the rest of this scene if you'd just quietly agree to let me come."

"If I'm letting you come, I will be anything but quiet about it," countered Al.

The banter continued for as long the scene would allow, and then Envy uttered the magic words: "It's essential to the plot."

And, because Alphonse Elric understood as well as any genre savvy individual did that when something was essential to the plot, it had to be done, he drew the array and brought Edward and Envy back through the Gate.

Ed woke up to a crushing headache and a frustratingly repetitive fingertip poking the side of his face.

"Shorty. Pipsqueak. Grain of rice. Bug Boy. Hey. Wake. Up. Already."

Ed shot up and wrapped his hands around Envy's neck. "What. Did you do. With the Philosopher's Stone."

"Brother..." Al said.

When Envy didn't respond, Ed squeezed more tightly. "I'll kill you until there's nothing left of you; where did you put it?"

"Ack," said Envy.

"Brother..." Al warned.

Ed began shaking Envy by the neck, infuriated by the constant smirk on the homunculus's visage. "What the hell did you do with the goddamned Stone, you bastard?"

"Brother!" Al shouted, moving forward to pry Ed's fingers away from Envy's neck.

"You know, Shorty," said Envy, "that actually kind of hurt a little." He rubbed his neck. "If I didn't have healing powers, I might actually have a bruise. But back to your question. I lost it when we came back to this world. Looks like the Gate has a cruel sense of humor. Who knew."

And with that, Envy used Ed's stunned silence and Al's understanding of the way the world must work to make a quick escape.

"Looks like we'll just have to find another way, Brother," said Al defeatedly. "Oh, and J.K. Rowling called again. This time she wants all her clunky adverbs back."

And with that, the two brothers continued on with the original plot, never speaking of this incident again.