Envy went to meet the homunculus it had created during its next vacation two weeks later. It came to refer to the new homunculus as "child", mostly because it wanted to call the homunculus something, but the child took a lot of time thinking up a name for itself. Because of its much smaller mass, the child was more susceptible to cold, so Envy helped it catch a few large animals and skin them for some warming furs. It also promised to bring it some clothing the next time.
As Envy soon found out, having a family member was not what it had expected. Then again, it had not really expected anything since it had concentrated so much on the actual creation of the new homunculus and thinking about what others might think of it once they found out it too had a family, even if it was never going to let anyone know about that. That made it ponder why in the world it had even thought so much about what others might think.
The child itself was somewhat boring – kind of like Sloth. However, it did not doze off at random, even though it did like to sleep more than Envy. Despite its apparent simplicity, it was far from seeming dumb and Envy suspected that it was actually rather smart. Envy thought that the reason why it seemed boring was because it did not have any experiences to talk about. It did not have Envy's experiences or even all of Envy's knowledge. The knowledge the child lacked was rather random, so Envy could only come to the conclusion that the information transfer had not happened properly. What few experiences the child did have of imitating a rock, a bush, a lynx and other animals were amazingly dull to Envy. Of course, Envy had done the same when it had been young, so it could hardly fault the child for the elementary experiments. The child performed its studying of the surroundings while Envy was gone, and Envy was glad that the child did not seem to mind being left alone in the forest.
The child was much calmer than Envy, and Envy could not understand why. Envy figured that the child was probably better that way, since otherwise it could have been similar to Greed and they would have clashed with each other.
Back in Fort Briggs, Envy continued its work.
In the middle of November, just after it had returned from its vacation, there was an unusually long and cold blizzard. The Fort endured the weather, but Envy was slightly worried whether the child would be all right in such a storm. However, it thought that the storm probably did not reach all the way to the place where the child was staying.
Once the storm abated, a problem surfaced: in one of the top sections of the Fort, the pressure in the clean water pipes decreased dramatically and the inspectors and plumbers were very frustrated because they could not figure out what was wrong.
The low pressure problem had been present for two days when Envy and Shrike were completing a shift of ventilation shaft inspection in that particular section.
"I bet some moron has just forgotten to open a bloody valve or something. What I don't get is why it takes them so long to find which valve is closed," complained Envy.
"I hope that's what is wrong... It would be really bad if some pipe were broken and the water had been going into the Fort's structures or something."
"Can that seriously happen?"
"I hope not. I think there are safety measures to prevent that, but I know at least two places where that would happen if water got into a ventilation shaft."
"Geez. Can't you fix that?"
"It's... it's complicated. The pipes go into the mountain and there's no way to do much anything to them. Of course, water also can't get into those pipes, at least by any natural means, because water doesn't flow upwards."
"Boring!"
The two arrived at the other end of the maintenance tunnel.
"You didn't see any problems, right?" asked Shrike.
"No."
Shrike started opening the hatch, and Envy looked around. It eyed the water pipes that were right below the ventilation shafts. In this tunnel, there were six water pipes: two for cold clean water, two for hot clean water and two for waste water. Envy let the light from its torch run the length of the pipes in the immediate vicinity, and it saw something interesting some metres away.
"Hmm." It started walking toward the spot and saw that the two cold clean water pipes were joined with a short connective pipe. It looked at the connection curiously and then pressed its ear against the pipes, first the upper and then the lower. While water was definitely flowing in the lower one, in the upper one water was flowing either very slowly or not at all. There was a small lever on the connective pipe, and it was closed.
Envy could not believe the problem had really been as simple as it had thought. It twisted the lever, allowing the water to flow between the two pipes. Envy smiled smugly to itself and returned to Shrike. He had managed to get the hatch off.
"Was there something wrong?"
"Yeah, but I took care of it," it said with some arrogance.
"Oh. Um, good."
They left for the maintenance office of mandatory machinery but ran into a group of soldiers and water circulation maintainers near the water distribution centre of the section. They were discussing enthusiastically how the pressure problem had been solved, and Envy felt an urge to brag to them. It told Shrike to go ahead and take their equipment with him. Meanwhile, it stayed behind and explained its brilliant solution to the water circulation maintainers.
The water circulation maintainers were sceptical of Envy's solution, especially since the time of the fix seemed to be off – they thought they had noticed the pressure changing back to normal before Envy turned the lever. Finally Envy just took them to the place where it had found the closed pipe.
The water circulation maintainers examined the pipes and the interconnection, complained that the pipes were deficiently labelled and sent two people to the nearby maintenance tunnels to find out the correct labels. They also found out that the pressure and flow sensors in the tunnel were malfunctioning. After they had managed to replace the sensors, they tried closing and opening the connective pipe and found out that the pressure was better when the pipe was open, but it did not account for the complete normalisation of the pressure.
Envy left the scene, happy that it had solved such a simple problem while no human had managed to do anything – even if it had only happened to run across the closed pipe by luck.
After going to grab something to eat, Envy headed for its shift of standing guard on the top of the Fort. Ever since Envy had let Second Lieutenant Russell know that it could see in the dark, it had been assigned to stand watch during the night and bad weather. The night did not bother Envy, but it did not like the cold storms. Nonetheless, standing watch in a storm and in the night also had a good side because then people bothered it less.
This time Envy had an evening shift. The previous storm had ended over a day ago, but a new one had brewed just before Envy's shift and the weather seemed to just get worse and worse by the minute. Envy sighed but went to its post.
After just an hour, it noticed a figure approaching it. It saw soon enough that the person was Armstrong, and she was accompanied by Rodney and some other soldier who had a shift of standing guard.
"So, I hear you solved the water pressure problem in sector 12-C," she said icily. She spoke loudly to be heard over the storm.
"Yeah, I did!" said Envy happily. "Such a simple solution. Those plumbers sure were stupid to miss that."
"I suppose next you will claim that you didn't know they both were NOT clean water pipes and that your intention was not killing anyone in the Fort?"
Envy had not expected that. "...What?"
"You connected a clean water pipe to a pipe that had only superficially cleaned waste water! Be glad that it was discovered quickly and that the worst that managed to happen was a few sudden cases of severe stomach flu. Otherwise I would have to dispose of you."
"What? What?! Are you freaking kidding me?! A pipe CONNECTED the pipes of clean water and waste water?! How in hell can that even have – –"
"And I'll give a taste of what you could expect," said Armstrong calmly, speaking over Envy and not caring at all that Envy was not listening. She stepped aside, and Rodney promptly threw a bucket of liquid on Envy. Envy had not even paid enough attention to him to notice that he had been carrying a bucket.
Envy's clothes absorbed most of the liquid, but some of it made contact with Envy's skin and especially its face. The liquid evaporated very quickly and combined with the rising storm, it drained heat from Envy's body so effectively that its face and some parts of its body froze and cracked. Its left hand fell right off as it tried to bend it at the wrist. "Aaaaahhh! What the hell!? Aaargh!" It stumbled backward and the movement made more of its body crack. Parts of its clothing tore and broke as well.
Armstrong continued speaking while Envy groaned and regenerated. "I have no idea what that connective pipe was doing there and whoever did put it there was a thundering idiot! Nevertheless, EVERYONE ELSE in the Fort would have had the sense to first tell the water circulation maintainers about it and not take matters into their own hands! Did you not think about the consequences of your actions at all? The waste water is dangerous, deadly even. People could have died, and it's still possible that those who became sick will."
"Ow! Ow! You humans are so stupid! Imbeciles!" screamed Envy. "If I had thought for a second that there would even exist a pipe that connected clean and waste water, I'd be nearly as stupid as you things!"
"And even if both the pipes had been clean water pipes, you didn't happen to think of, say, that the pressure differences in the pipes could have caused a rupture in one of them when you opened the valve?"
"What?! WHYYYYY IS THAT CONNECTIVE PIPE THERE, I just ask!" shouted Envy furiously. By now, it had fully regenerated again, though some of its clothes were still frozen.
For a moment, Envy and Armstrong just stared at each other, Envy pretty much ready to jump at her throat and she waiting until it was calm enough to listen. "The next time you cause a big and convenient 'accident', I will make a grotesque ice statue out of you. I cannot tolerate these kinds of mistakes from you. Do you understand?"
Envy glared at Armstrong, its face tight, eyes hateful and teeth showing. It said nothing, but eventually straightened itself and stood in a relatively neutral pose.
"Have I made myself clear?" asked Armstrong again.
Envy still said nothing, but now it turned its face away and looked into the storm. After only a short while, it started walking and went past Armstrong, Rodney and the third soldier. Its frozen clothes cracked and cut its skin a little. "Ow! Darn it," it muttered. It headed back inside. Once inside, Envy went into a corridor where there was no one to see it and started taking its clothes off but shapeshifted so that it still looked like it did have a uniform.
Armstrong and Rodney followed it.
"I hate you all! I just wanted to help, and this is what I get!" exclaimed Envy in a hostile manner as it threw the frozen pieces of clothing around. They had warmed up enough so that they did not crack more upon impact.
"I would appreciate your help if you did not make things worse by trying," replied Armstrong in a scathing tone. "I accept your claim that you didn't know what you were doing. If I believed that you intentionally tried to kill us, you would be dead now."
Envy felt needlessly offended. Did she really think she could have killed it? Hurt, sure, but not killed. That was preposterous. "Why'd you even have to throw that liquid stuff on me? If you had done it to some puny humans, you'd have killed or at the least seriously maimed them!"
"You're not a human and you would not have reacted to anything less. Would you even have listened if I said something like 'Bad Envy, please don't do that again?'" she asked and seemed frustrated. "If any of those who got sick die, I'm going to put you in the brig for a few weeks to discipline you. I expect no protests about that. None," she gritted and glared at Envy very harshly. "Next time, think at least twice before you take such rash actions."
"That connective pipe should NOT EXIST!" screamed Envy and threw its trousers at Armstrong. She stepped aside without really putting any effort to it and let the clothes hit her on the shoulder. Envy stared at her with contempt. "Give me some stupid authorisation paper or something so I can get a new bloody uniform and go back up there to count all those moronic snowflakes," it said and held out its hand.
Armstrong looked at it very disdainfully but then nodded at Rodney. Rodney took off his gloves and retrieved some paper and a pen from his pockets. He wrote the note and placed it on Envy's hand crudely.
Envy wanted to tell them that it would never, under any circumstance, try to help anyone again. However, it swallowed the words and merely stomped away after collecting the broken clothes and squeezing the note in its hand. It probably left a few dents on the metal floor, but it really did not care at the moment.
When it reached the equipment office, Envy was glad that Pommern was not there. At night time, there were only two privates working in the storage and they took their time gathering Envy's equipment. Of course, Envy was in no hurry to return to its duties. Once the privates had given it all it needed, it went and took the broken uniform to its room. Maybe Shrike could fix it with alchemy and then Envy would have two outfits.
The following week Envy was extremely irritable, spoke very little, stayed away from everyone and otherwise tried to be as boring as possible. However, being like that got on its nerves, so as soon as it had not heard comments about the connective pipe for a while, it gradually got back to normal. Shrike decidedly kept very quiet about the issue. The people who had gotten ill because of the tainted water got better.
Shrike fixed Envy's old uniform. Envy considered taking the clothes to the child but decided that doing that would be too conspicuous. Instead, it snatched one of the old furry overcoats that the ventilation maintainers used since no one kept too keen an eye on them. It brought the coat to the child on its next vacation.
While Envy was reading more about transmuting extraordinary materials, it pondered what had went wrong when it had split its Philosopher's Stone and how it could have performed the operation so that it would not have lost any of the Stone's energy. The book naturally had nothing on performing transmutations on Philosopher's Stone and Envy knew it, but it still found the lack of information on the Philosopher's Stone annoying.
Then Envy finally realised that it could have practised making Philosopher's Stone by using animals, and practised the splitting transmutation by using the Stone of animals. It was so happy about its realisation that it felt like skipping around, but at the same time it was angry with itself for not having thought of the idea before making the new homunculus.
Author's note: The event in this chapter was pretty much taken from real life, so if it seems silly, you can blame reality! There's a Wikipedia article called "Nokia water supply contamination" about the case. Here it was known as Nokian vesikriisi (Nokia's water crisis).