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CHAPTER 11:

THE SPIRAL OF CONFLICT

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Envy didn't understand why he was still able to understand that there was nothing but utter ebony imbibing all of his perception in the first place.

But he'd save figuring out how he was still alive for another time.

His b-stard of a father had at last acknowledged him and, even though nothing could atone for what Hohenheim had done to him, he'd still let Envy torture him for around two weeks before willingly and actively initiating the agonizing and gruesomely brutal death Envy had dreamed of giving him for over four centuries.

Yes, Envy had known that that had meant that he'd been about to die, but if he had accomplished the revenge that he'd lived for for over four centuries and had taken Hohenheim to the grave with him, he hadn't cared.

As long as he'd avenged his over four centuries of torment, and brought about the reason that he'd taken every next breath for so many centuries and decades of constant endless and ceaseless agony and pain and hatred and abandonment and betrayal and despair, it hadn't mattered what had happened to him.

Envy's vengeance on his late father was at long last full wrought.

The children who Hohenheim had replaced him with, and everything that they'd fought for, were still alive and intact, but for reasons that Envy didn't understand, now that Hohenheim was at last dead after Envy had tortured him for around two weeks; he was so tired and drained that he didn't even feel that interested in finding a way to escape what was obviously the Gate and complete his revenge by torturing both of them to death for good this time, and then murdering everyone and everything else who they had fought for in at least Amestris, and perhaps both Earths.

So why was he still alive, albeit apparently somehow inside the Gate in a different way than the other Homunculi were, and imprisoned in darkness where sooner or later, one of the other Homunculi in the Gate was going to start whining about having no true body and being trapped here and grate on Envy's nerves in the process, and Envy was going to start wishing that he really had died?

And, for that matter, why wasn't he fully satisfied that he'd tortured Hohenheim to death as excruciatingly and lingeringly agonizingly over the course of around two weeks and then finished him off as savagely and gruesomely as possible, and why did he feel a small amount let down and discomfited?

And why did he actually feel tired and discouraged at the concept of continuing his vengeance by murdering Edward a second time, and Alphonse this time as well, and then everyone and everything who they'd fought for in Amestris, or both worlds; as though, now that Hohenheim had died and Envy had at long last avenged himself on the person who had tortured him so much for over four centuries, he actually didn't want to continue taking vengeance, and he was fine with no longer causing Edward and Alphonse any further problems as long as they stayed out of his life from now on?

The monster was tattered flesh and bone chips and blood inside the Gate now.

Why wasn't Envy fully satisfied now that Hohenheim was dead?

It must be because Hohenheim hadn't actually fought back, and that he'd actively initiated his death and turned himself over to the Thule Society so Envy could begin torturing him until he died.

But thinking about how the b-stard hadn't fought back, and had even actively brought his torture and death just caused the discomfort to grow a little worse.

But why?

"You're right about the answer," an emotionless voice that Envy couldn't place spoke from somewhere that Envy couldn't identify.

Envy started, but for whatever reason, his dragon form still didn't brush up against any other Homunculi.

"You're correct that it's because Hohenheim of Light didn't fight back, and just turned himself over to you and then actively brought his death at your hands about himself.

"You would feel satisfied with having accomplished your revenge if he'd fought back and not helped his death along, and you and no one but you had been the one to torture him to death as painfully as you could think of.

"But an alchemist who has his own issues with Hohenheim sympathizes with the chance for true vengeance that you've lost, and transmuted me as a Homunculus of Hohenheim, and even ordered me to assimilate all of his remains in the Gate as Wrath assimilated Edward Elric's limbs; that I might duel you to the death and fight my hardest in the process, in order that you can fully achieve your revenge."

Envy jolted violently, at the Homunculus' identity and body and at how he was somehow very likely talking to Envy outside of the Gate.

But for a reason that Envy didn't understand, rather than the familiar hatred that had directed almost all of his life surging up to consume all of his being once more, all he could remember was how warm Hohenheim's hands had felt on his draconian face, almost as though they were caressing his face, as he'd struggled his hardest to pull Envy's mouth closed over his body.

Envy pushed it away.

He was just too defensive in anticipation of the brats in the Gate yowling about their imprisonment and lack of a body. It was nothing more than that.

And he hadn't had that many issues with Sloth, so he had little to no reason to have that many with this worm.

He sneered.

"You sing old songs, phony," he responded.

"Sorry, but I've gotten what I want, and I no longer feel like dancing to someone's tune.

"I'm not happy that I'm stuck here, but Hohenheim himself is a flaccid corpse hanging off of your own mishmash of a twisted body, so I'm fully willing to just wait for another crackpot who is too full of himself or herself to give me two limbs, or a body, of my own, and then bid good riddance to this place and start looking into how to become a human once more."

"Even if that means, if you work with us, you'll be in a better position to deceive us into dancing to your tune as well, and giving you humanity?" the poser who believed that he was actually similar to Hohenheim, and that Envy actually cared about that, responded in the same emotionless tone.

"An even better choice would be an alchemist who doesn't even know that I'm doing it, thank you very much," Envy shot back.

"Even when that alchemist is the person who you were based on, and who you should have enough memories of his life to know your father abandoned and betrayed in even worse ways than he abandoned and betrayed you?" the Homunculus questioned back.

Envy felt his mouth drop open, and to his disgust, his stomach actually churned.

But it meant nothing what Hohenheim had done to another Elric outside of whether or not Envy could exploit it to hurt that Elric.

"I could care less," Envy responded, with a vicious and savage vehemence that was much more fervent than Envy had intended it to be.

But this Homunculus must just be getting on Envy's nerves after he'd had peace and quiet for so long.

Because Viator was the one Elric who Envy could actually feel a little – a little – sorry for, that he was still alive, and going through adversity of his own, meant even less to Envy than Edward's and Alphonse's births and happiness and how close they'd come to fulfilling their dreams and Edward's resurrection.

"Viator can rot the same way that Hohenheim and Dante did, or die by Edward's or Alphonse's hands if he's stupid enough to try to turn them into pawns himself, as long as he doesn't get in my way whenever I get out of here.

"Besides, as you admit, he'd just be stringing me along while I was returning the favor, so why on either Earth would I want to waste any time with him?"

"So you're willing to abandon him the same way that Hohenheim abandoned you," the Homunculus spoke back.

Envy snorted derisively.

He was just imagining that he felt a little sick to his stomach at what the Homunculus had just said.

"I made my living turning guilt trips and emotional blackmail into fine art for over four hundred years," Envy sneered in derision.

"Blither blather like that won't convince me of anything."

"Very well, then," the Homunculus responded.

"But keep in mind that he is playing Edward and Alphonse as pawns in the same way that Dante did, and so, if you maneuver us back while we maneuver you, you'll get another chance to take revenge against them.

"If you don't use us as your own pawns to become a human while we use you as ours, you'll lose your sole chance at Hohenheim making light of your centuries of sorrow and agony by not fighting back and assisting you in murdering him."

"I still bit him into bloody bits," Envy raised and lowered his serpentine body behind his head in an approximation of a shrug.

"So who says that I'm that interested in going after the pipsqueak and the husk of armor any longer?"

That question did not sound at all sincere.

It did not.

"Because, if you don't, Hohenheim will have had the last laugh in the end by assisting you in torturing him to death after all that he did to you.

"And if you don't see your vengeance through to its fullest extent by continuing your crusade against Edward and Alphonse, and everyone and everything that they strove for as well, until you've fully avenged what your father did to you upon them and who and what they struggled for, Hohenheim will have had the last laugh by having still gotten something out of what he did to you.

"Do you truly want Hohenheim to have the last laugh over you in any way at all?"

The familiar hatred and fury did surge then, although, for whatever reason, it was a lot weaker than it had been before Envy had discovered that Hohenheim had given himself over to the Thule Society and Envy specifically so Envy could torture him to death.

Envy still wanted to argue, as even what the other Homunculus had just said hadn't caused the hatred and rage to rise enough for Envy to feel like giving up his well deserved peace and quiet.

But, as much as Envy didn't want to acknowledge it, the other Homunculus had a point.

Envy was not going to let that b-stard one up him in any way, in the end.

Especially not after Envy had at last given him what he deserved, and Hohenheim had even tried to make a mockery of that.

"Fine, have it your way," Envy snarled in furious resignation.

"But keep in mind that, as you yourself admitted, there will be as many catches to Viator and you and anyone else researching whatever you're sticking your noses in gaining my assistance with your research as there will be catches for me aiding you.

"Are you sure that you won't regret it?"

"We're willing to find that out for ourselves, one way or another," the other Homunculus replied, still without any emotion in his voice.

What was this uptight phony's problem?

But Envy would have plenty of time to find that out at his leisure later, and take great pleasure out of turning it against the other Homunculus for his own objectives.

"Suit yourselves," Envy responded.

"So what's the first catch?

"What do you want me to do so you'll get me out of here?"

"Alphonse Elric has a friend on the Thule Society's side of the Gate who works for a military of her own, and although that military employs alchemists and has had dealings with Homunculi of its own," Envy's eyebrows rose at the knowledge that he'd been wrong about how alchemy didn't work on the other side of the Gate, "It has yet to become acquainted with your unique brand of Homunculi battle tactics."

The other Homunculus still sounded emotionless.

"We'd like for you to acquaint them with it, specifically a military alchemist known as Shosei Sakaguchi."

That didn't bother Envy that much.

Watching someone squirm in anguish as Envy got under his or her skin by pretending to be someone he or she knew never failed to entertain Envy an incredible amount.

"After that, do you recall Maes Hughes, and his wife and daughter, Gracia and Elicia?" the other Homunculus continued.

This actually interested Envy, and he experienced eagerness rise.

"The busybody who I assumed the appearance of who the pipsqueak believed that, if he didn't feel guilty that he'd gotten him killed, toughening it up would allow him to beat me?" Envy queried in a mixture of amusement and irritation.

"Do tell."

Over the next minutes, as the other Homunculus told Envy what he was to do in first Amestris, and then the other Earth, even though he still didn't identify himself or how he was talking to Envy inside the Gate, or tell Envy how he was going to get him out of it; Envy felt a smile appear on his face, and increasingly grow.

Then blue coursed over the night around him, and the next thing that Envy knew, the night had parted into a line of familiar light gold, and two doors parted to reveal the stairs leading down from the stone edifice of the Gate in front of it.

Envy shifted into his preferred form and transmuted three of Maes Hughes' military knives out of the sides of his left arm and detached them from his body.

Then he reached back with his left hand into his shirt sleeve to grasp them and walked down the stairs.

The next second, the gold disappeared, and he was standing on the walkway leading up to the house where Maes' bereaved family lived in the early morning Sunlight.

Envy moved the knives to clutch them in his left fingers and shifted his body into the form of Maes Hughes himself, and then he smirked in anticipation of what he was about to do and walked up to the front door.

He raised his hand and knocked, and he waited until he heard footsteps.

Then he altered his voice box into a little girl's voice.

"This is Tabitha," he spoke, identifying himself as the best friend of Elicia's who the other Homunculus had given him the name of, and the details of her voice.

"I'm sorry if my voice sounds weird, but Mom and Dad caught a bad cold, so they asked me to come here to talk to Elicia and you, Gracia, about whether or not you have any medicine that you can afford to lend to us.

"Can I come in?"

Then he shifted his voice box back to Maes Hughes', positioned the knives, and waited.

After a number of more seconds, the short woman with the light brown hair who Envy knew to be Gracia opened the door, Elicia standing at her right side with her light brown hair in pigtails, both females still wearing their pajamas.

Gracia stiffened, while Elicia's jaw dropped wide and her eyes flew open.

"I've come home back to the two of you; Elicia, my stratospherically adorable daughter; Gracia, my love."

Then Envy, still as Maes, smirked with vicious, savage, predatory triumph and hurled one knife through Elicia's right upper arm at the shoulder with all of his Homunculus' enhanced strength, severing it cleanly in an eruption of sanguine.

Then he hurled the other into her left thigh with similar strength, severing it in a similar detonation of crimson at such an angle that Elicia fell with her face looking up at Gracia, so she could clearly see what he was about to do.

After this, Envy hurled the last knife at Gracia's neck with enough strength to sever her windpipe and the artery in her neck, but not her neck itself.

She fell onto her back, where Elicia would now need to watch her asphyxiate to death without oxygen and from drowning in her own blood.

Envy smirked with further vicious, savage triumph, and looked down at Elicia with a look of as much hatred and fury as he could summon up.

"I did this to the two of you because you let me die," Envy said in Maes' voice with unrestrained hateful fury that was both as cold as possible and as fervent as possible.

"I hate both of you with everything that I've been and know, and I always will.

"So you can now suffer or die as I did.

"Be sure to tell Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, and Roy Mustang what I just said to you the next time that you see him."

Elicia looked as though she was barely aware of what was going on, her face drawn and slack with complete, inexpressible horror and agony and terror and anguish.

Gracia reached desperately and weakly over to take Elicia's free hand, but Elicia didn't even move, and Envy didn't even know if she'd registered that it had happened.

Gracia opened her mouth, but then her body contorted violently and she violently hacked up crimson.

Envy knew that, if someone had seen what he had just done, or saw Gracia's and Elicia's bodies very soon, a doctor or nurse had a small chance of reaching Gracia in time to save her life.

But Envy didn't have much time left to spend in Central, or he wouldn't be able to make it to the other side of the Gate before it vanished from this material universe.

And even if Gracia lived through this, nearly killing her should be sufficient.

So Envy stepped over Elicia's crippled, ruined body and her sightless, fragmented mind and Gracia's dying body and sprinted for the kitchen as fast as he could, not bothering to close the door.

He shifted to Riza Hawkeye's form and raced to pick up the nearest phone, and then he dialed Brigadier General Roy Mustang's current number, and extension, and code into it.

A few seconds later, Roy Mustang picked it up, and Envy smirked in further savage triumph.

"Gracia?" Roy questioned in uncertainty.

"Elicia?

"Do you know what time it is?"

"It was time for me, Envy, the murderer of Maes Hughes while in the form of his wife, Gracia, to use Tabitha's voice to trick Elicia into opening the door," Envy spoke with smug, condescendingly triumph in Riza's voice.

Envy heard nothing but a harsh inhalation of shock from the other end of the line.

"Then, before they did, I took Maes' form, and when they opened it and were off guard at seeing me, I took Elicia's right arm off with one of Maes' knives, and then her left leg off with another.

"So she's now bleeding from the same stumps the Fullmetal pipsqueak once did.

"And because you stopped believing in a militant Amestris and started believing in a peaceful and tolerant one, no soldiers were in a position to protect them.

"You just let Elicia become another Edward Elric because you gave up on a warring Amestris for an Amestris of acceptance and kindness, and you just let it happen the same way that her father died at the hands of the person who murdered her father.

"And then you just let her watch me, still in Maes' form, throw the last knife into Gracia's throat, so she's now watching Gracia asphyxiate to death, as well.

"And then I just told them that I was doing it due to how much I hated them as much as possible because they let me die.

"This is what giving up on war and death for peace and tolerance does, Brigadier General…

"Excuse me… Colonel, Roy Mustang, sir.

"What happened to Elicia and Gracia is thus all your fault.

"I'm so glad to have served under you for so many years, Colonel Roy Mustang, and been your friend for so many years when you were my father's apprentice in Flame Alchemy, sir.

"And I'll always love you with all of my heart and soul for what you just let happen to Elicia and Gracia because you abandoned death and war for peace and kindness.

"I didn't die when Hohenheim transmuted me by order of Shosei Sakaguchi, Great Warrior Chief of the Asian Sector of the Alchemist Army from the Earth from which the Fullmetal pipsqueak returned yesterday.

"He brought an alchemist with him who we believe to be a danger to the safety of the people who we established ourselves to protect, so he deployed me here to cripple Elicia and murder Gracia as a declaration of full-scale war by the Alchemist Army against Amestris.

"Have fun protecting Amestris from a worldwide army of alchemists when you've let Amestris' military become a rabble of misty-eyed rainbow chasers."

Then Envy hung up the phone and smirked in further savage triumph at how he knew the pipsqueak and his younger brother would feel about everything that Envy had just said and done when they found out about it.

For an unknown reason, however, the smile felt a little sick.

Envy knew that he was just disoriented from having returned to the Sunlight after having spent so long in total darkness, so his illness didn't bother him as much as how at last taking vengeance on Hohenheim, or any of the other ludicrous things that he appeared to have felt or said or done, had.

He shifted back to Maes' body and sprinted back out of the house, knowing that he didn't have the time to see if Elicia had recovered from what Envy had just done or Gracia was dead yet, and reached the location where he'd left the Gate.

The light golden around it, and the open Gate itself, appeared about and in front of Envy, and this time he shifted into his draconian semblance and slithered into it.

Shades of different colors of golden spiraled around him as Envy moved at high speeds through the thick strands and light of the Truth beyond the Gate, and he assumed a combat stance and readied himself for how painful this was about to be, and how many times he was very likely about to suffer one or more fatal wounds.

A number of seconds later, he was standing in what he knew was the Alchemy-Powered Laboratory Buso Renkin of the Secret Base in the Japan that Edward Elric and Alphonse Elric had visited yesterday, facing a group of Alchemist Army technicians in laboratory trappings in a large chamber with ivory metal tiling and silver equipment Envy had never seen before.

They responded to his appearance out of nowhere with varying degrees of surprise, and one quickly picked up a phone.

"My name is Brigadier General Roy Mustang of the nation of Amestris from Shamballa, and I'm a State Alchemist from Amestris who transmuted himself into a Homunculus in protest of how your ineffectuality allowed the living Philosopher's Stone Kazuki Muto to sneak into our proud military State as an illegal alien," Envy spoke in the Japanese that he'd taught himself when investigating Professor Haushofer and the Thule Society.

"So I'm about to level this military base as an Amestrian declaration of full-scale war against all of the Alchemist Army officers and soldiers stationed here, and all of the Alchemist Army all over this parallel Earth.

"You're welcome to do your best to stop me."

"All hands, go to stage one battle stations!" the technician on the phone called into it. "We have a Homunculus infiltrator in the primary command center!"

"You're delaying the inevitable," Envy sneered.

Wasting no time, knowing that the military base was about to be disassembled into a kakugane to allow Sakaguchi, the Warrior Chiefs, and the Alchemist Warriors here faster access to him with their Buso Renkins, he slithered forward at the technician, leaned down, and opened his maw over his whole body to bite him into shards and swallow him.

"Next, please," Envy told the other technicians mockingly.

He turned his head to survey the room behind him, but before he could, it started coming apart into fragments, and he had just enough time to see a long silver desk of a structure he was also unfamiliar with and a large aquarium tank on the wall past it before they all separated into unidentifiable pieces.

Envy twisted back around to wait as the Buso Renkin of the Secret Base continued to disintegrate, and when enough of it vanished, he sneered condescendingly at the sight of a gigantic mostly silver suit of armor with a blue cape most likely about sixty feet tall facing him with a gigantic silver suit with a wide brimmed hat around it.

An adult male in a dark blue military uniform, obviously the Alchemist Army military uniform, with dark unkempt red hair, sat on a large sphere of swirling flames hovering in the air to its right; while an adolescent male with light gray hair with two chakrams on his hands and a widely built adult male with a simply designed spear with a cross tip and black hair in a long ponytail stood in a ready position on its left, both of them in the same uniform.

A large number of flying craft with what looked like windmills on their tops, and with what appeared to be artillery turrets positioned at various locations on the vehicles, were rising in an encircling formation around them, though not so high that they could be easily spotted above the edges of the forested mountain valley now becoming revealed around them.

"This is Shosei Sakaguchi, the Great Warrior Chief of the Alchemist Army's Asian Sector," a mostly calm, but partially irritated and angry, voice spoke from inside the vast suit of armor.

"The Alchemist Army has no desire to go to war with an entire nation, but your presence here within what used to be the Alchemy-Powered Laboratory, and within Japan itself, is a threat to the people of this nation and the rest of us who we cannot discount.

"Surrender to our custody at once, or we will open fire."

"If I intended to surrender to your custody, I wouldn't have penetrated your fancy shiny Buso Renkin in the first place," Envy sneered even more condescendingly.

"If you actually think that I don't know how to beat a suit of armor, no matter how big, after all my experience contending with Alphonse Elric in one form or another, I advise you to snap one of that suit's hands off patting the rest of it on the back."

"Perhaps you could defeat the Buster Baron itself, and perhaps not," Shosei responded, his voice mostly unruffled at the knowledge that Envy knew what Buso Renkin was, or Envy's response.

The Alchemy-Powered Laboratory combined into a silver kakugane in the hands of another Alchemist Warrior in the same garb to Envy's left, a male with short brown hair, and he turned to race in the direction of other technicians who were pulling back towards the shelter of the flying craft.

"But the Buster Baron can amplify the Buso Renkin of other Alchemist Warriors currently in its cockpit to the same scale that the Buster Baron itself combats at, and it's currently doing so to the Buso Renkin of a Warrior Chief within one of its shoulder cockpits.

"Furthermore, I have two more Alchemist Warriors in that cockpit, and three others in the opposing cockpit, one of whom wields a combined kakugane that can create a flight capable submarine with multiple variations."

Envy raised his eyebrows at the knowledge that the people here had figured out how to enable a submarine to fly.

"And the Alchemist Warrior with the spear standing at my left wields a Buso Renkin that enables him to recover from almost any injury better than any Homunculus can, at least Homunculi that don't originate from Shamballa.

"In addition, all of the helicopters around us belong to a single Buso Renkin with a virtually endless stock of missiles. Further, the helicopters themselves are just half of a force that also includes aircraft carriers than can fire a similar all but boundless stock, and we can deploy one or two of those aircraft carriers in a valley this small at any time."

Envy didn't know what missiles were, but the context was clear enough.

"Lastly, while the Alchemist Warriors before you, including myself, were most ready to respond to the alarm that was raised, we have a few other Alchemist Warriors stationed here who will be able to reach their kakugane and join this battle in short order.

"Any attempt to oppose us will prove futile.

"I advise you to surrender while you possess the ability to do so.

"This will be your final warning to."

"Do you plan to use me to try to lure Alphonse Elric into a trap if you defeat me?" Envy asked in amusement, knowing full well what the answer already was.

To Envy's surprise, there was actually an unexpected amount of eagerness inside him at the knowledge that, if he lost this battle or was unable to escape, he might see Alphonse once more soon, perhaps even later today.

He must be more eager to rub in what he'd done to Elicia and Gracia in Alphonse's face than he'd believed.

He didn't intend to lose this battle, however.

He couldn't be recovered from this Earth by whatever method had been used to free him from the Gate or anything similar. So he wouldn't get to meet whatever Homunculus had said that he'd fight Envy in his late father's form, or Gluttony once he was recovered as well, any time soon.

Envy experienced an unexpected pang of hurt at the knowledge that, because Wrath himself hadn't formed a Gate, Wrath was dead.

But defeating the Alchemist Warriors here, or at least escaping, mattered.

Not Wrath's death.

Envy had better things to do than spend time in a cell in some alchemically transmuted military base, and Koushaku Chouno sounded like he'd provide Envy no end of fun trading barbs if Envy could locate Atlas and join up with the two of them.

Since when had he cared what happened to any of the other Homunculi that much?

"We both know the answer to that," Shosei replied, not rising to the bait.

"Then I'll gain a lot more entertainment by taking the lot of you on," Envy responded.

"So do me a favor and shut up and bring it."

Thus saying, he slithered directly at the Alchemist Warrior with the spear, doubting that he could kill him or incapacitate him in a lasting way, but gambling that striking at someone who he most likely couldn't take down permanently would catch the other Alchemist Warriors off guard.

The two chakrams launched off of the younger male at his side, but Envy just ignored them as they arced around and cut into his tail to try to pin it to the ground beneath, though he kept in mind that the younger male knew how to fight strategically.

Unsurprisingly, the older male just raised his spear before his head.

So he was caught by surprise when Envy clamped his jaws down on it, and then whipped it in a circle in his mouth to fling the older male at the sphere of flames as hard as he could, releasing the spear as he did so as not to slow down the male's flight.

The red-haired soldier atop the sphere of flames rolled his eyes, and they dissipated to reveal what looked like a vertical giant bullet beneath it, which the black-haired soldier twisted his spear around to strike and rebound off of to land on his feet.

"This is taking absurdity to a whole new level," the red-haired soldier commented.

"You're outnumbered and outmatched, and if you push us too hard, we're just going to kill you.

"Stop wasting your time."

The next second, the flying craft that Shosei had named helicopters all unleashed smaller giant bullets that must be missiles, and the two Alchemist Warriors on the ground pulled back so the red-haired Alchemist Warrior could launch his own missile, or whatever other kind of giant bullet it was, down at Envy.

The enormous suit of armor cocked its fist back to strike as soon as the missiles and the other bullet contraption impacted.

So Envy slithered beneath its legs and coiled up as all of the missiles burst into a cacophony of flames, and the gigantic bullet that the red-haired Alchemist Warrior had unleashed detonated into an enormous conflagration of incredible diameter and height, so hot that it actually charred many of the thick scales of Envy's serpentine figure black all the way down to the insides even though Envy was outside of its range.

The next second, the suit outside the armor detached from it and inverted, and closed around Envy.

"Allow us to remind you, Brigadier General Roy Mustang of Amestris, or whoever you truly are, that it's a military truism that you need to know your enemy to win a battle," Shosei spoke once more.

"One of the very last maneuvers that you should have made was to position yourself where the Silver Skin Reverse could catch you with ease, particularly at the Buster Baron's scale.

"This battle has ended."

Envy snorted dismissively.

"I'd like to see you keep saying that when I reverse it right into your smart mouth."

He contorted his body to free himself–

–And the surfaces around it then closed around Envy so tightly that he could barely shift any of his muscles.

Envy snarled in irritation, pushing away a rush of worry that he might actually be at a genuine disadvantage now, and slithered directly forwards.

The Silver Skin Reverse closed around him so tightly that he couldn't even move forward.

The rush of worry altered into a surge of blinding hatred and fury and rage and anger as Envy realized the specific reason why Shosei believed that the battle was over.

Envy briefly entertained seeing if he could figure out whether the Homunculus who had convinced him to come here had known that he stood little chance of defeating the Alchemist Warriors here, or whether he'd honestly intended for Envy to link up with Atlas.

But he'd ponder that some other time.

What mattered now was making it clear to Shosei, and the rest of the Alchemist Warriors here, commissioned and noncommissioned, that he wasn't going to just stay silent and accept his defeat and capture.

Another voice spoke up, belonging to another adult male.

"If you know Alphonse Elric and have any ties of friendship to him, you should know that it will be for Alphonse's benefit if he tries to save you, whether or not he succeeds or falls into our trap," the person spoke in tones of genuine worry.

For an unknown reason, the younger male clenched both of his hands into such tight fists that the nails of all of his fingers drew blood from both palms, and he appeared so terrified that he was almost unable to breathe.

Envy smirked viciously and savagely at him, hoping that it was because Alphonse had caused problems for someone who he knew and was close to, and the younger Alchemist Warrior was very worried about this person.

"A new friend of his who he made here yesterday, Tokiko Tsumura, might have died right before him while protecting him."

At the knowledge that Alphonse might have gone through the same thing that he had when Envy had murdered the pipsqueak, something sick and stomach distorting and icy and cold rose to consume Envy.

Envy's draconian mouth fell slack at the knowledge of what it was.

There was no way whatsoever at all in any fashion, form, shape, and way.

He had never actually truly cared about the pipsqueak and the husk of armor for all these years for a single instant, while having been too blinded by his hatred for Hohenheim to have been aware that he did.

He was very scared and was sympathizing with Al

phonse because the knowledge that he might have watched another person who he cared about die, or at least be badly hurt, reminded Envy of the husk of armor defeating him and undoing his murder of Ed

ward through emotional and mental torture.

He did not, never had, and would not care about the pipsqueak and the husk of armor, whether Hohenheim's blood flowed in their veins or not.

No matter what, always and forever, eternally, at all costs.

But Envy had over four centuries of experience toying with people's emotions not to know what terror and sympathy and concern and worry were, and where they originated from.

Envy was no longer able to think of anything to say so he wouldn't become a prisoner quietly, as the silver and ivory of the Alchemist Warrior military base Buso Renkin started to reassemble around them; and the Buster Baron walked backwards from where it had stood over him at the same time, reached down with two hands to pick him up, and hoisted him over its right shoulder.

.

"I have no use for these bodies… these shells. I… I am the true Cecil!"-Dark Knight

"Grh… waaagh!"-Cecil Harvey

"The final flame? Enough, you shell!"-Dark Knight

"Ce… cil!"-Golbez

"! ! !"-Cecil Harvey

"You dare to believe this atones for anything? For terrorizing the entire world!?"-Dark Knight

"I… I am sorry… Forgive me… Cecil…"-Golbez

"You dare to believe this atones for throwing me aside!?"-Dark Knight

FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS