A/N: So, three things—one, I've finally figured out the ending. Two, that means that the rest of this fic will be uploaded by the end of October. And three, the full version, including the oneshots, is also getting uploaded to AO3, and I'd suggest reading it there if you can. The formatting's better and I've cleaned up a few things. There will be one more story chapter and an epilogue; please look forward to them, and forgive me for letting this thing lapse.

As always, thanks goes to miladyRanger for her impeccable beta-ing. We also published a story together on our miladyFeather account today; I suggest you go check it out!

The amount of body horror in this chapter is pretty much a standard amount for FMA but in written form, and so you might want a warning for it anyway. Also, FMA continues not to be mine.

Chapter 24: Under Terrible Pressure and Everything

"I don't think this place is turning out to be that great an experience for me. I mean I work under terrible pressure and everything and there's a lot of death and destruction and stuff but outside of that I don't think I'm really getting much out of it." -Radar O'Reilly, M*A*S*H

If it weren't for the fact that Ed's admission pass for the jeep ride was a couple of broken ribs, Pierce would have been downright jealous of the midget. A half-hour of trudging down dusty roads was not doing anything good for his morale. Not that he'd had any to begin with.

The only thing keeping him from going crazy right now was the pleasure of knowing that the MPs and various other gun-carrying members of Uncle Sam's Korean Performance Troupe (otherwise known as the U.S. Army) were currently convinced that Henry and Frank had a snap inspection planned for the trip home.

All it had taken was one loud, staged conversation between him and Trapper, plus a few whispered-in-someone-specific's-hearing-range ones, to spread the rumor all over camp. Everyone had quickly gotten themselves as regulation as possible—which meant everyone was in formation and all the guns were cleaned and loaded. And while Pierce did not like the guns, and personally thought this whole war thing would be a lot less messy without them, he had less of an objection to them being fired at someone who they wouldn't permanently injure, much less kill. Most importantly, though, everyone was on high alert—not the kind that gave them twitchy trigger fingers either, but the kind that would get them ready to notice anything unusual. Like, say, a shapeshifting homunculus with ornamental grass for hair.

That was pretty much their only hope, too, since Ed was unconscious in a jeep on top of Klinger's suitcase, and the other five Amestrians were spread out through the formation. Mustang had warned him to keep within sight of Breda, but a couple of the MPs had clustered around the man, and were still talking very loudly about betting pools. Breda hadn't managed to shake them yet, either, and Pierce was pretty sure they were blocking Breda's view of him.

Leaves rustled, and Pierce jumped. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Trapper stiffen.

He immediately turned his gaze on the edges of the path, but saw nothing there. Probably, he was just letting all of the excitement get to him.

Pierce glanced at Trapper and watched as his typical smile edged its way back onto his face. He'd probably had the same thought. They really weren't cut out for this stuff, he supposed. Hopefully, soon, Mustang would have it under control and they could go back to things they were cut out for—like making sure that Ed's ribs healed right.

"So, did the pipsqueak yell at you after you came back from the Gate?" Envy's voice asked, sandpaper-rough in his ear, as a hand closed around Pierce's upper arm.

Pierce was too civilian not to scream, but had enough brains in his head to at least cover his mouth as soon as he realized he was doing it. The resulting sound probably passed for a particularly nasty sneeze to just about everyone except Trapper, who turned to him, wide-eyed.

Pierce was too busy trying to start breathing again to make any sort of subtle signal, so he just gasped out, "Envy" and jabbed his thumb backwards.

"Well?" Envy prompted. "And don't wait for help. I look exactly like Lieutenant Dish right now, and the real one is all the way at the back of the formation. To everyone else except you and your friend, it looks like the two of us are flirting again."

Pierce hastily replayed Envy's words in his head. "Did the pipsqueak yell at you after you came back from the Gate?" Pierce repeated mentally. Wait, that's right, he still thinks I went through!

"I'm surprised you didn't hear him," Pierce said quickly. "Thought he was loud enough to hear from Seoul."

"I wasn't paying much attention," Envy said, nonchalant. "So, what'd it take?"

"That's not your business," Pierce said, locking eyes with Trapper and jerking his head backwards. He quickly mouthed "Mustang" and hoped that Trapper caught his meaning.

"It's not like I really care," Envy said. "Just curious, you know. After all, if it's anything too important, I should know before I take you back to Amestris with me."

Trapper had slowed down, and Pierce was quickly losing sight of him. If he kept walking that slowly, Mustang would catch up with him in a few minutes. All Pierce had to do was stall. And that, he could handle.

"You're not taking me anywhere," Pierce said. "I let the army bring me here against my will, and look how it turned out. No way I'm going anywhere else I don't want to."

"You seem to think you have a choice," Envy observed.

"What are you going to do if I refuse?" Pierce countered. "You can't threaten to kill me. You need me, now. And doesn't that just make us sound like a crappy love song."

"I can't actually kill you," Envy agreed. "But you don't exactly need to be in one piece, either. I wonder how good a surgeon you'd be after I broke all of your fingers?"

Pierce almost couldn't push down the wave of panic that engulfed him at that thought. Forcing his voice to be light, he said, "At least I'd be out of the Army."

"And you hate the army," Envy said, his voice edged. "You'd probably love it if I killed all of these stupid dogs of the military right here."

"N-no, don't!" Pierce yelped reflexively, even as he realized his mistake.

"So that's your weakness," Envy said. "I'll make you a deal. You come quietly, and they all live."

Pierce was about to give in—but then he had a thought.

"Wait, how would you kill them all at once, anyway?" he asked. "There's only one of you, and they're armed, trained, and spread out. Some of them would escape."

"What, you think I'm naturally this tiny?" Envy said. "My true form would have no problem wiping out a group twice this size."

"True form?" Pierce repeated, a plan forming in his mind. If he was "tiny" now, he must be much bigger in that form. Bigger, and more noticeable, and probably freaky enough to scare the rest of the M*A*S*H personnel away from what Pierce was certain would be a fight.

They were in the middle of the freaking forest, no American camps or Korean villages in sight. The only collateral damage would be trees. If there had to be a fight, they might as well have it here.

"Prove it," he said, and grinned as he felt Envy's hand fall away from his arm.

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Mustang's first warning that something was wrong was the sight of Trapper's pale, curly hair, only a few rows ahead of him in the formation.

"Trapper?" he called. "Weren't you supposed to be up in the middle with Hawkeye?" he asked, faintly annoyed. Breda was supposed to be watching them—the poor man would be panicking. He really hoped this wasn't Trapper and Pierce's idea of a joke.

Then Trapper turned around, his expression tight with worry, and Mustang's annoyance disappeared, replaced by urgency and an undercurrent of fear.

"He found Pierce," Trapper said shortly.

Mustang was about to ask "Who?" when he realized the answer on his own. Envy. They'd underestimated him.

"He looks like Lieutenant Dish at the moment," Trapper added. "Real pretty nurse, looks a little like Hot Lips? Everyone else probably thinks this is just some kinda weird flirting."

Mustang cursed softly and quickened his pace, pushing past various other personnel as he followed Trapper to where Pierce was. He really hoped Trapper actually remembered. This formation seemed tiny to him, but he was used to marching in combat divisions, which tended to be much bigger than this.

"Colonel Mustang, Captain MacIntyre, what are you doing?" Margaret asked shrilly, as Mustang belatedly realized he'd nearly knocked her over in his scramble to get to Pierce.

"Hawkeye's in trouble," Trapper said without pausing.

Not dissuaded, Margaret followed them, asking, "What kind of trouble?"

"Mustang's with me, what kind do you think?" Trapper snapped.

"Oh!" Margaret exclaimed. "I'm coming with you!"

Mustang didn't protest. There wasn't time for that, now. Pierce was for all intents and purposes a civilian; he couldn't handle himself against Envy…

Then, an unmistakable crackle of electricity filled the air. Mustang watched as a hulking form rose up from within a whirlwind of blue sparks, its eyes red as blood.

"This is that true form you were so curious about," Envy said, his voice sounding like multiple voices speaking at once.

"I knew he'd think of something," Trapper said proudly.

Mustang immediately felt ashamed that he'd ever doubted Pierce.

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Klinger couldn't help being excited, not when they were on the way back to the normal camp site. It wasn't that he wanted to be there—no siree, he still wanted out of the Army—but at least at the camp he could be pretty sure that his silks wouldn't be ruined by the damp. If he was going to dress as a woman, he was going to do it well.

Besides, he didn't even have to march this time. He got to drive a Jeep, and he wasn't stuck riding with Radar and his comics obsession this time, either. Instead, Warrant Officer Falman was in the passenger's seat, and was currently helping him put together a system for predicting the winner of the next World Series, in between scanning the jungle for—well, he didn't know what. The Amestrians seemed to be expecting trouble, though what kind, he didn't know.

Hopefully, it wouldn't be anything too bad. Whatever had already happened, it had gotten Ed pretty beaten up, and landed him a ride in the back of Klinger's Jeep. Honestly, Ed didn't look like he'd last through much more trouble.

"So, how high does the pitcher's strikeout average have to be?" he asked.

"Well, ideally—" Falman broke off as crackling, like the sound of a broken PA system, filled the air, followed by lot of screaming.

Klinger quickly glanced behind him, and caught a glimpse something really freaking huge—like, building-sized huge—and surrounded by electricity. People were running away from it and Klinger liked the way they thought.

He took this as his cue to step on the gas, but before he could, he heard Hawkeye—the pretty Amestrian one who'd look gorgeous in his blue silk ball gown, not the doctor—yell, "Turn around!"

He glanced backward and saw her, hanging off of the back of the Jeep with her gun in her hand.

"What?" he asked.

"We need to go towards it!" she shouted.

"And people think I'm crazy!" Klinger yelled back. "No way I'm going towards that thing!"

"That's an order!" she shouted, and sounded so serious that Klinger forgot that he wasn't in her chain of command.

By the time he remembered, he'd already turned and they were only yards from—well, whatever on Earth that thing even was. It looked sort of like what you dreamed of after fourteen hours of assisting in surgery followed by a bender at Rosie's bar.

So, it was sort of like a gigantic, big-enough-to-crush-his-apartment-building-in-Toledo mutt, except that it was somehow made of zombie people with no eyes. And they kept coming out of his skin and then being absorbed back into it and—okay, really, he needed to stop trying to describe it and hit the brakes before he crashed the Jeep into whatever it was.

"What is that?" Falman asked, taking the words right out of Klinger's mouth. At least that meant that someone else was seeing it. Klinger took that as a good sign. It meant he still wasn't actually a nutcase.

Riza's answer was something that sounded like "NV." Klinger had no idea what that might stand for, but Falman clearly did.

He nodded and then jumped out of the Jeep, gun at the ready. Riza followed him, and the two headed for the monster, which didn't seem like such a great idea to Klinger, but, hey, maybe that was why he wasn't getting promoted.

"Can I go now?" Klinger asked, foot inching towards the gas.

"Stay here," Riza yelled back. "We might need Ed."

Klinger looked at the sleeping kid, and then back up at the monster. That did not make any sense at all, and his only guess at what she might mean, he didn't like. Member of the military or not, Ed was a kid, and not even a healthy one at the moment. Unless Riza wanted him dead, Klinger couldn't understand why she would want him anywhere near the thing. And if Klinger had actually had any guts, he'd have said so. But for better or worse, Klinger was rather proud of his life-prolonging cowardice and thus kept his mouth shut, probably saving Riza the trouble of threatening him.

The monster spoke in stereo—and, first off, it speaking was way too weird for Klinger on its own, never mind that the thing sounded like ten voices at once when it did so. It said something about this being its "true form" and then, someone else replied.

Klinger glanced towards the source of that voice, and then snorted. It just figured that Pierce, of all of them, would get mixed up in this crap.

Behind him, Ed stirred.

"Morning, kid," Klinger said cheerfully, trying to ignore the mayhem around them and the screams filling the air.

"Wha's goin' on?" Ed slurred drowsily, rubbing his eyes.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Klinger said. "Maybe better."

"Huh?" Ed asked, sitting up gingerly and looking around. His eyes locked on the monster. "What the h*** is that?"

"Uh, the Lieutenant called it N.V.?" Klinger said, uncertain.

Ed swore with feeling.

"Would you mind telling me what's going on?" Klinger asked. "'Cause your friends didn't really stick around to explain."

"Want the short version?"

"Sure."

"We're screwed. That thing is probably gonna kill everyone here, and your best chance of surviving is sticking to me, because it has orders not to kill me."

"Orders? Who the h*** gives that thing orders?" Klinger managed.

"I've got no idea, but I really don't want to meet them."

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"Ed has a valid point," Mustang said. "How are you getting Pierce back?"

For just a second, Envy paused, and the expression that passed over its face—well, even if it was on a really freaky dog, Pierce could recognize uncertainty.

"That's it!" Pierce exclaimed. "You can't go back either, can you?"

"Of course I can!" Envy's echoing voice returned, as its tail twitched back and forth like an irritated cat's.

"I don't believe you," Pierce challenged. "Show me."

"Why would I?" Envy huffed. "I've got nothing to prove to you."

"Maybe not to me," Pierce said. "But that master of yours, whoever he is? You probably should've proved something to him."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that he wouldn't have sent you here unless he didn't want you there."

"I'm here as part of the plan!"

"Or he's just keeping you out of the way."

"If he wanted me out of the way he would have killed me."

"And doesn't that speak volumes about your job security. How does this plan of his even benefit you?"

"I can't tell you that!"

"Because it's a secret or because you don't actually know?" Pierce asked, grinning. He was doing it. He was under the thing's skin. If he pushed just a bit more…

"Shut up, worm!" Envy shouted.

"Ed says he has an offer!" Klinger shouted, breaking Pierce's concentration. "He says he knows how to get you back! It's, um, how'd he say it, equitable exchange!" He paused. "I mean, equivalent exchange!"

The kid had an idea. Pierce wasn't sure if he should be relieved or terrified. Maybe both at once would be best.

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