"…by a runt like…you…" Envy rasped, reaching into their throat to grasp for the blood red stone embedded in the center of their being, scrabbling for an end to their joke of an existence on their own terms.
*snap*
Fire. Envy was in hell, but not the one they had sought, as brining flame engulfed their tiny, worm like form.
"Mustang!" envy heard Fullmetal shout, just before their tiny eardrum melted into fatty slurry, and then the fire was gone, snuffed out by a familiar sensation of silent, oxygen-less isolation.
Envy's eye heels and looked out on the world form the inside of a jar, once again. From the other side, Envy locked their single eyed gaze with Mustangs, just before the lid twisted above them, and the fire wielding alchemist dropped the jar in the pocket of his coat.
Envy let out a tearless sob of despair and tried to fold its tiny body in on itself, but by accidents or design, mustang had dumped them in a vessel to narrow to allow them to move far enough to get the stone out and end this.
And once again, Envy's world became a jar.
Later there was shouting, muffled sounds of battle as the jar tossed about in the dark pocket of the Mustangs coat, Envy not understanding what was happening, but judging by the fact that Mustang kept moving, and not dying horribly, her "side" wasn't winning.
Later, they felt the coat shift, lose the steadying weight of its wearer, and stop moving; Envy perked up- had Mustang fallen? No, the sensation of movement hadn't been right for that. They heard muffled voices on the other side, calm. Reassured.
Envy's world still didn't move. The calm voices continued to chat indecipherably the outside of the thick jar and equally thick cloth of the coat pocket that held them, droning on for what felt like an eternity; envy had the sinking, despairing feeling that they'd forgotten about them. If they were still out there, if Mustang hadn't fallen, that most likely meant that Fullmetal had won.
Which meant…they didn't matter anymore. Why not leave them in a jar?
Envy sobbed again, resting their tiny, bulbous head on the cool glass of the jar.
Sometime later, a white gloved hand plucked them out of the coat pocket, and as Envy blinked their eye on the harsh sudden glow of electric lights, they found Edward Elric's eyes gazing back at them.
There was shouting, they still couldn't make out what they were yelling about, but Fullmetal was yelling something at the Colonel, pointing at Envy, who wondered if the young alchemist was pleading their case are arguing for their death. Shortly it became clear that whichever the case was, Fullmetal hadn't gotten his way; after setting Envy's jar down on Mustangs desk, he slammed his silver state alchemists watch down right next to it and stormed off, stopped short of the door by a shout from mustang who had scooped the watch up and tossed it back to Edward, before pointing at the door and shouting one final, curt command. The Fullmetal Alchemist snatched the watch out of the air, gave Envy a last, sorrowful look, and walked out of the office, not bothering to close the door behind him.
"I guess he was on my side in this after all." Envy thought as they watched Edward disappear down the long hallways outside Mustangs office.
The knowledge that little could be worse than the jar gave her some small comfort as Mustang picked them up and placed them in his desk drawer.
As it turned out, there was a great deal that could be worse than the jar.
Time lost all meaning to them, their world shrank even further, to just the darkness of the desk drawer, shut out of light, sound and air.
Eventually there was light; Envy shut their eye against the harsh illumination after what felt like lifetime in gloom, and then their enclosed world tumbled in a sudden flurry of motion; Mustang had rolled them across his desk.
Envy opened their eye, and a crowd of humans in white lab coats over blue unforms was looking down at them.
An older woman with steely gray hair smirked and reached down, nodding at Mustang as dropped the trapped homunculus into a leather valise that sat on the colonel's desk.
Envy guesses they had been sold to the militaries research department- and wondered what cost Mustang had gotten for them?
Envy hoped he'd been cheated.
They eventually left the jar- and were dropped down into an alchemical circle. Envy's world became pain. The tiny being felt electric and alchemical currents pulse around her, ripping through their body as the circle closed.
After what felt like an eternity, Envy felt her limp, barely feeling body being scooped up, and then she was back in their jar.
It went on like this months, Envy barely able track the date with quick glances at the scientists notes, half glimpsed as the white coated human brought them form the tube to the experiment table, coursing electricity through them, dropping them into jars of acid, watching as they dissolved only to be healed by that damned stone, over and over, scalpels flashing under the dim light of the laboratory as they cut envy's little limbs off, one by one, timing the resulting regenerations as if one limb may be different than another, acting as if that mattered worth a damn- they did it again and again, death after slow death, and envy felt the stone drain inside of them, hope rearing its ugly head in their half broken mind as Envy desperately prayed that the next experiment would be the one that finally drained it, and all of this would stop;
The next time they left the jar, the scientists fed them. More specifically, they fed the stone.
Envy recognized the circles, saw the humans trussed up in them, vaguely recognizing loyalists of their brother, and then the array flared to life, and they began screaming, souls flying out of their bodies as they died shrieking in agony and filled Envy's stone at the same time, just enough to bring them back from the blessed edge of death they'd been teetering on, keeping them alive and filling them with enough strength they felt their body growing, their mock human form painfully erupting around them, swallowing the worm of their weakest form as part of the wiggling mass that congealed into the shape they had come to regard as their true self.
Envy grasped her long, tendril like spikes of hir in her hands and screamed as they heard the scientists excitedly talking around them, just as a second array flared to life, filling them with pain and agony as the world closed into darkness once again.
The next time they awoke, it was in another sacrificial circle, this time ringed with sobbing children, well dressed at one point, now filthy and terrified as they clung to each other in a laboratory deep in the underbelly of Central
"No." Envy thought; in absolute hypocrisy; they'd killed children with their own hands. But that was for the Great Plan, for father…to save their own neck form the lava…this…this was…the array flared to life and Envy screamed louder than the children.
They had just enough time to transform to the beast, the monster of their most powerful form, ready to strike out at their tormentors, when the control array flared into life again, coursing them with alchemy fueled electricity, turning every fiber of their being with stabbing agony, Envy slipping back into her small human form to try and escape the agony, just before everything went black.
It went on like this, and on, and on.
The militaries research department holding them in some kind of stasis, dragging them out to test the limits of the stone, of their homunculi abilities or whatever the hell it was they wanted too; over and over.
The hatred of humans that dwelled in them would have been fanned to a frenzy, if it wasn't for the endless parade of screaming victims that they use to feed the stone in Envy's chest, keeping them alive through every vile procedure. Men, women, children, old and young. They were cleaning house of the conspirators- many who Envy had recruited themselves -and their families, and cleaning out the prisons and any other undesirables the new regime came across, thrown down in the pit to feed the monster.
"Please I don't want them to do this." Envy almost begged each screaming face that came to them, but instead they raged and cursed at the fiends in lab coats, demanding to know what they hoped to learn that they hadn't already.
The experiments continued. The sacrifices kept up, and Envy's hatred died in a flood tide of suffering and pain, dozens upon dozens of screaming new souls poured into the stone hat bound them to this world, with Envy losing count of the time they'd tried to tear it out, to end this, to save his suffering and that of the seemingly endless well of sacrifices the military provided the scientists.
One day, the scientists in lab coats were replaced with soldiers in black uniforms Envy didn't recognize.
That was when the interrogations started.
The scientists, it turned out, hadn't gone far, as the electrified containment circles that the new secret police used to fry them every time Envy gave an answer they didn't like had to be powered by someone…
At first, Envy spat bile and fury back to answer every inquiry, holding strong, refusing to give the black uniformed men anything, holding out for no other reason than sheer stubbornness; but after the sixth time they'd dragged them into the containment circle filled interrogation chamber, the homunculus simply broke.
They gave up names- over half of whom had already been culled. The other half went to the scientists, and then to Envy in the sacrificial pits the scientists had built for them.
It was almost a relief when a grinning scientist came to thank them for their "cooperation" and that their prison sentence would start immediately; Envy had gazed blankly back as they hauled in a short, round container, and they had only started to scream as the scientists hauled them to their feet after pouring electricity form the containment circle into their body to stun them long enough to stuff them into the human sized jar, slamming a heavy metal lid on the top and latching it shut.
Envy beat uselessly at the side of the container as a thick, viscous liquid was pumped in through the heavy hatch at the top, trying to transmute into the beast, but as they did so, alchemical circles of a design they had never seen flared to life, halting their alchemy in its tracks, locking them in their human form as the strange liquid filled the container, covering their head as they took one last reflexive gulp of oxygen.
Enby watched through the murky, amber colored liquid as a state alchemist they had never seen before stepped forward clapped their hand together, and, in a pulse of energy, time seemed to slow, than stop and for a panicked second Envy wondered if they were going to be left frozen in this state forever, just before darkness took them.
When they were awoken next, the scientists had their blue uniforms cut in a new way- and they told Envy its was now the year 1967, by the Amestrian calendar. They took Envy out of the jar, and helped them clean up, and took them to a lovely cabin the state had built for them in the woods near the Drachma border with a nice view and said it was theirs, that they would be free to stay there with limited supervision, almost free in fact…provided that Envy came to work for military intelligence against Drachma, Amestris' Northern rival.
Envy had pretended to think it over for five days before telling them to go screw themselves.
The men in black returned- they had swapped their silver trimmed black uniforms for black suits, as it turned out. But the torturous alchemical circles and pain remained the same, but this time Envy hadn't broken, and had almost exhausted themselves trying to trans-mutate into the beast, desperate to take envy one the suits with them to hell.
It hadn't worked. They'd gone back into the jar, frozen in place by that same alchemist who was now a gray-haired old man who smiled at Envy as the homunculus raised their right hand at them in the jar with their middle finger up at the world outside.
The third time they were awoken, no one had bothered to speak to them, one scientist simply hauling them out f the liquid by their tendril like hair while another pushed a heavy metal spike covered in alchemical runes into their chest.
Envy had shrieked in pain, barely awake, and then they'd felt a sudden infusion into their stone, pouring from the end of the spike the scientists were twisting into their chest and straight into that damned stone that still stubbornly kept the homunculus alive.
And then it was back into the tank, a new alchemist had come to freeze the liquid, although this one hadn't bene quite as skilled as his predecessor, leaving Envy still barely conscious, still able to feel the random infusion of souls into the stone, each one shrieking with the agony they'd departed their lives in. The homunculus grew to understand that they were in a state laboratory specializing in human experimentation, with the failed results being killed off to be collected and fed to them via that spike driven into their chest, to keep them alive indefinitely.
The fourth, and last, time Envy woke from the liquid prison, everything was silent.
At first.
As the homunculus recovered their sense, they became aware of shouting, yelling in Amestrian and in what she momentarily realized was Drachman.
And behind it all, a steady droning klaxon of an alarm.
Envy realized they were sprawled on a cold, metal floor, their container sitting above them, its heavy glass shattered and the container itself leaning at a crazy angle, partially torn from the floor.
Envy coughed, spitting up some of the suspension solution they had been submerged in that had gotten into their mouth.
The yelling in Amestrian got louder, while the Drachman yelling grew accusatory.
The klaxons droned on.
Envy still couldn't quite make out what anyone was saying, but after a moment they were able to roll unto their stomach, and then weakly come up to their hands and knees, shaking their head to clear it as the world came into focus.
They found themselves gazing down at the heavy metal grating of the floor. After spitting up another stream of the amber covered liquid that had filled the containment tube, they scrunched their eyes shut and looked up at rest of the room.
It was a laboratory, probably once an orderly place, now scattered with papers, equipment that envy didn't recognize, a few chairs overturned and desks at odd angles, all bathed in a harsh electric light from small spotlights mounted on the wall, while the heavier looking banks of light fixtures on the ceiling were all strangely dark.
"For gods' sake shoot it!" someone shouted in Amestrian. Envys slit eyed gaze quickly swept over to the speaker, finally able to understand the continuing shouting match in two languages that had been going on while they came to tehri senses.
"Fuck you, Chain-Dog! What the fuck have you been doing to that guy!" a accented voice roared back in bad Amestrian.
Envy sat back on their knees, looking up to find six of the familiar, hated white coated- no uniforms under them, now – Military scientists and a group of…soldiers they guessed. They wore uniforms and carried weapon like nothing Envy had seen; the uniforms were a jagged tiger striped pattern of grays, greens and browns, the soldiers faces were half covered with black masks, they wore odd, rounded head gear that it took the homunculus a moment to realise were helmets, a modernized version of the war hats and greats helms they had seen in museums in central.
As Envy carefully analyzed the strange troops, they set a hand on top of metal table near where they had fallen, and shakily pulled themselves to their feet.
"Dammit, that isn't a person, that's a homunculus!" the Amestrain scientist shouted.
"What the fuck even is a homunculus? You fucking Amerstrians and your science experiments!" The Drachman yelled back, but Envy saw some of the other soldiers, armed with strange, stubby black rifles mounted with some kind of electric lights underneath were fanning out to cover the Homunculus, one of them sliding a metal object out of the heavy, pocketed vest he wore- similar to his comrades, who were all equipped with the heavy vests and equipment belts, worn over black, reticulated armor that looked nothing more like a particularly heavy weave of cloth on their chests, thighs and shoulders.
One the strangle armed and armored Drachman soldiers who had their weapon trained on Envy turned to the one yelling at the scientists and shouted- Envy was surprised to hear the soldiers feminine voice, apparently women wear allowed to fight in the Drachman army in whatever year this was – "Sergeant Alkochik! I don't like this one, her eyes are…"
Envy had recovered enough to shift.
In a flash of crackling red energy, the beast was born into the laboratory, its bulk crushing furniture and lab equipment, despite Envy attempting to fit the transformation to the smaller space they occupied.
The beast that was Envy peeled its reptilian gums back from its horse like teeth and grinned, its frenzied, mismatched eyes swinging with its huge, dinosaur like head- as well as the massive of faces, torsos, heads, and eyes that dotted its body, all taking in the gaggle of stunned humans as it braced itself three pairs of legs and muscled arms that ended in massive, clawed hands.
Envy laughed, the heads, faces and mouth on its body joining in, a symphony of disharmonious cackling,
"Finally!" Envy shouted.
The Drachman soldier who had been yelling at the scientist took one look at the monster before grabbing ahold of the pudgy researcher and shoving him at Envy, roaring "Out now!" at his soldiers while bringing up his carbine to fire a burst of bullets- not at Envy, but at the other Amestrians, forcing them to take cover, "Go!" he shouted, as the mottled uniformed soldiers dashed for the double doors out of the lab, leaving the scientists behind as the sergeant followed his men out of the room.
Envy, after snatching the scientists the Drachman had used to distract him up in his jaws, bisecting the screaming man with his deceptively sharp teeth, savoring the copper taste of his blood as tossed the chunked remains of the man against the opposite wall of the lab before lunging forth to snatch another with his front set of arms, rending the squealing woman to pieces even as his jaw sank into the torso of another, his body death-rolling through the room like a massive croc as he crushed three more under his bulks, smearing blood and viscera across his body while the last scientist stood frozen in place, to horrified to move even as Envy almost daintily wrapped his long, malformed tongue around her body.
She started to scream when the mouths of the freakish faces that dotted Envy's tongue began chewing, though.
Envy dashed for the doors, even as the horrified woman began to desperately fight them as they slowly swallowed her alive, biting her legs off just before their tongue dragged her still writhing feet into their mouth.
Envy had spotted the researcher patent leather shoes and knew from experience that that particular material would give them indigestion.
The monstrous homunculus laughed with glee as they spotted the last soldier dash around the corner, pleased that they had caught the fleeing Drachmans just in time.
Moving at impossible speed down the narrow corridor, Envy darted after them, smashing into the wall at the far end of the corridor as the hastily transmuted their body to wrap around the tight turn, their long, clawed hands gouging the ceiling as they spun and propelled themselves after the troops with a wild roar, savoring being on the hunt after years of forced, torturous servitude and imprisonment.
The trailing soldier suddenly spun and brought that strange rifle up to his shoulder, hammering out a magazine of stinging bullets across Envy's shoulder, making the homunculus shout in surprise and pain before roaring back their defiance- and then something exploded with a muted *crump*just before the ground at their feet burst into an explosion, peppering them with white hot metal fragments and debris.
Envy flinched, just before the pain drove them into an absolute frenzy and they propelled their monstrous form forward twice as fast as before, catching up to the Drachman soldier so fast they began to hear them shouting at each other, able to understand their language as well was any other spoken in this world;
"…the fuck? The fuck is that thing?"
"Fucking 682! It's fucking 682! We are so fucked!"
"Anatoly what the monkey fuck are you on about?!"
"Will you idiots shut the fuck up, the stairs are around the corner! Move it!"
Envy screamed I triumph as they rounded the last corner, only to hear a shout of; "RPG out!" from one of the Drachmans, and the homunculus had just enough to wonder what that was before they spotted a fiery plume erupt by a door down the hallway, which trailed straight towards them behind the shoulder fired rocket one of the troopers had just let loose at them.
The weapon connected with them just below their right shoulder blade, with the high explosive warhead cooking off right on impact.
Envy wailed as a smoking bloody crater was blown out of their body, scattering bits of their monstrous form back down the corridors behind them and across the ceiling. The agonized homunculus darted back, giving the retreating Drachmans a head start up the stair way on other side of the door the rocket gunner had been waiting by, but Envy was quickly back at their heels, their body rapidly healing the damage as they crashed his through the door way and into the -unfortunately for the Drachmans -roomy stairway on the other side. Trans-mutating once again to fit the tight corridors, they oriented themselves straight up and began clawing up the sides of the staircase, pulleying themselves up the open, square space in the middle, roaring in fury as the Drachmans started to pause, one at a time, to fire their weapons straight down at them, occasionally even dropping grenades which peppered Envy with fragments as they exploded almost straight in their face, and in one cursed moment one of the soldiers stuck a hand held machine gun over the edge and drained of an entire belt of ammunition into his left arms, almost sawing the appendage off with the high caliber billets its spewed out as Envy roared their hatred back up a them, while at the time fondly reminiscing about the times when automatic weapons had been bulky, tripod mounted things that single soldiers couldn't empty at them at will.
An almost detached part of Envys mind still listened to the shouts from the retreating squad of Drachman infantry;
"…reloading."
"By the Good God how much can that thing take?"
"Frag out!" -Envy especially learned to hate that call-
"RPG!" Envy knew to dodge this time, and they did so just in time, with the rocket skidding by them close enough to singe their flash with its burning trail,
And finally, after what felt like eternity,
"That's the surface, guys! Up! Up! Quick!" the sergeant yelled, "You assholes had better…" his shouts were cut off by an exploding grenade, the last as it turned out, as the last soldier ducked through a wide doorway at the end of the stairwell, with Envy hot on her heels, crashing straight through the door, ripping it off its hinges as, in another flash of red alchemical light, they transmuted themselves to grow even larger, letting their full bulk grow as their body grew even larger and more horrifying, with wordlessly screaming heads and naked torsos sprouting like horrifying tumors across their flesh as the monstrous homunculus screamed in final triumph as they felt the first rays of the blessed sun warm their body…and then their euphoric triumph came to a crashing halt as they found themselves in a wide, ruined courtyard, faced with a semicircle of bulky, armored, vehicles with the gaping maws of their guns pointed straight at them.
Envy froze, as a swarm of Drachman soldiers clambered up unto the ruins behind the vehicles and leveled their weapons at them, the menacing automatic guns seeming comically small next to the brutish weapons on the vehicles.
Envy turned to dart back down the stairwell, but sudden up draft brought with it the hellish stench of chemicals, mildew and rotted flesh that had flooded their nostrils since Mustang had sold the, freezing them in place with a vice of nightmare memories. Try as they might, they could not go back down into the underground laboratories, even when faced with a wall of Drachman guns.
Determining to sell themselves as dearly as they could, the beast reared back around and tried to lunge forward but a sudden, crashing roar stopped them dead in their tracks as one of the tank cannons blasted to life, sending a shell straight into one of Envys back legs, knocking them off their feet even as the high explosive anti-tank round did as it was designed- the initial warhead burned a hole in the humconculus' leg, while the follow up charge pumped liquid hot metal straight into the breach.
The shell was designed to butcher the crews inside of armored vehicles, and Envys hide was just thick enough for the effects to be replicated with their body; but instead of the interior of an armored fighting vehicle, the molten metal and explosive power went straight into their flesh.
Envy shrieked in agony as pain like nothing they had ever felt overwhelmed their senses, their concentration gone, they had just enough control to transform into their human form to try and hide from the pain, hoping the smaller body would mean less agony- their hypothesis proved true, after a fashion, as pain burned in their hips and leg even in this form, causing them to sink unto their knees as they clutched the spot where the shell had torn through them, bracing themselves with their other arm as they drew in short, ragged gasps of air they didn't really need, but they desperately used the familiar forced activity to steady themselves, distancing them from the pain of the shells impact.
They felt the stone drain in the as their body healed itself- and just as quickly, they felt that spike embedded in their chest throb as it drew in the soul energy of someone- by their agonized wails, most likely the lingering auras of the scientists Envy had killed.
The homunculus froze as a mechanical grinding filled the still air of the rubble choked courtyard.
They slowly sank back on their knees to find the still smoking barrel of the tank that shot them lining itself up for another shot.
Envy panicked, and did the only thing they could think of to forestall the agony that dwelled in that massive gun barrel.
They threw up their hands and shouted,
"I surrender! I surrender!" the barrel adjusted slightly, "Fuck you, I give up! Please don't shoot, for fucks sake! I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING DIE AGAIN…"
Silence.
Envy hadn't realized they had closed their eyes, and as they slowly cracked them open, they found a Drachman soldier walking towards them, masked and armored like the others, but this one had his eyes hidden behind a strange, tinted pair of goggles and his armor bore an elaborate symbol of rank on the chest piece.
Envy watched him get closer, almost within arm's length, before squatting down and pulling up his goggles to reveal the narrowed eyes underneath, their golden irises holding Envy in cautious regard for a few moments before the officer took a bottle of water out of his equipment vest and slid it over to Envy,
"Your surrender is accepted." He stated flatly, in perfect Amestrian.