Chapter 10 True Nature
Envy grabbed forthe Rumullitaben with both paws unsheathed, but the alien attached its talons onto Envy's limbs. The alien scrabbled all over the Homunculus's body, gouging Envy with its claws. Envy snarled at the pain: even with the flexibility of a cat, he couldn't capture the thing- at least not like this.
"Elisa," Envy's voice was no longer human, "Take the Doctor and go. Don't look back." He then addressed his opponent as he began rippling energy over his body, teeth bared. "I wouldn't show this to someone as low as you normally, but if you killed the Doctor…"
The Rumullitaben screamed as he was wrenched from his perch hanging off Envy's throat. When it hit the floor Envy slammed a hand-like paw on its chest.
"Somebody!" "I love you." "Mommy, Daddy…" "Help me…" "…at me…" "Don't go…" "You bastard!" "…look at…" "Why? Oh God…" "Thank you." "Don't look… don't look… don't look at… me…"
"Don't. Look. AT. ME! DON'T LOOK AT ME, WORM! DON'T LOOK AT ME!"
The alien was petrified. Envy glared at him through his eight pupils and the numerous grasping and gaping bodies that covered his own. Hundreds of human bodies, writhing, weeping, pleading, dying, dying, dying…
"This is my true form… I won't let you live after seeing me… no one will know what I am like…" His lips parted in a sneer, strong white teeth flashed light in the alien's eyes. Through the open maw reached out a tongue swarming with more desperate bodies. Envy wrapped it around the alien as the bodies pulled his victim further into his mouth.
"Stop it! Envy! Don't do it!"
Envy flinched. "Eh?" He turned his great body to face the human. "Elisa… I told you to run. WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN?" 'How can she stand he sight of me!' He screamed in his head.
"Stop killing, Envy. You're going to kill again. You'll never learn to be a better person if you don't try to act like one."
Envy roared and charged until his muzzle was only inches before Elisa, his tongue with its captive hanging out to the side. "DO YOU SEE WHAT I AM? I AM NOTHING IF NOT TO BE REVILED!" She hadn't moved an inch. 'She's not afraid? Why?' Envy's tail coiled and rolled behind him; he was exhaling through his nostrils, blasting hot air onto Elisa, blowing her hair astray.
"You've never tried," she stated simply. The Rumullitaben whimpered, struggling against the malformed bodies.
"Tried?" Envy said as if the word was foreign. The seven pupils of his left eye, once so focused on the companion, now scattered at the thought. "What's the point, Human? I was created to be a monster- you're just being a dreaming idiot."
"Where you created to be a Time Lord?"
Envy was speechless. He drew his head back, as if to spurn the idea. "Sh-shut up," he said finally.
Elisa was about to respond when the Doctor groaned and came around. "Envy," he said, "don't eat him- it's not polite." The Doctor pushed himself up.
"Uhh…" Envy lowered his head to the ground, releasing his hold with his tongue but trapped the Rumullitaben in one pair of forelegs. He slowly turned his eyes to the Doctor, who stood before Envy, hands in pockets and weight shifted forward. "You knew this is me?"
"I knew for longer than you've been alive."
Envy drew his head back, jaw agape, and blinked. A shiver ran down him. He felt afraid of the Doctor again. 'The Doctor knew,' the Doctor knew, and he still took him in. Envy was supposed to spend his life being the one left behind, and yet– there the Doctor was, patiently waiting for Envy to be ready. The Doctor could have chosen any of his siblings: Lust, or Greed, or even Wraith, but it was he instead– the It– that stood before this man who defied the fates and defeated gods. "I don't understand," he whispered, "why?"
"I think you already know the answer, Envy." The Doctor regarded his apprentice with a hopeful look.
Envy froze for a moment before his haunches collapsed, his head bowed and eyes lidded. His hair fell over him like a veil. When Envy regarded the Doctor again, his monstrous face had such a look of relief and thanks that it almost looked human again.
"So, is that what you are, ugly?" the Rumullitaben dared to muse. "Nothing but a bully with an inferiority complex."
There was a moment where all that could be heard was the whirring of distant machines. Envy's usual demeanor returned. "Don't get smart, worm. This is my planet you're trying to kill. And don't call me that." Envy finished with a squeeze.
"Alright," the Doctor intervened. "Back on track now. I don't suppose we could get any info from you? Who's hiring? Why? Method of payment? Where they are now?"
"No money, no info."
"How about this then?" Envy said, increasing his grip on the alien. "We can't pay, but we can help your family save on the expenses of your funeral you won't have because you supplied us with what we need to know."
"That's not…"
"Not directly a form of payment, no," Envy said, dragging his slathering tongue across the alien's body. "But this can either be a cost to your loved ones, or an opportunity for… further investment."
"It's… to be a… place to destroy evidence," it offered.
"So it's a mafia or some corrupt organization. Only thing able to finance something like this," the Doctor reasoned. "Anything else?"
"Try… big authority figures."
"Okay, thank you. Let him go, Envy."
Envy looked a little surprised, but obeyed. The alien scuttled away down the corridor, looking awkward running on arms too long and legs too short.
"Well, that gives us a good place to start, let's see what's been on the news lately." They found a control room and routed a few computers to the net. What they found was a number of Amestris officials who had no connections to the area where the LHC was being constructed advocating the project, calling it "a glorious feat of human ingenuity, and the beacon to their mastery of the universe's mysteries." There were also questions raised over the design of the LHC in the scientific community, who were reassured by their colleagues in a manner that sounded suspiciously placating.
"I bet if you jumped off a fifty story building onto them all piled together, you'd land safely, if you don't mind all that squish," Envy commented. He could be very superficial at times.
"Envy, is it really that difficult to not say things that aren't insulting?" Elisa chastised.
Envy gave her a sad face, went over and hugged her. "I like you, you're snuggly-warm."
"Envy-"
"Snuggly-warm."
Elisa sighed.
"Snuggly," Envy mumbled.
"Well, we struck it lucky anyhoo," the Doctor said, choosing to ignore his companions' exchange. "They're all coming for a tour."
The officials all came in a caravan of vehicles. They came with high hopes and good cheer, complementing the progress being made. The Doctor, Envy and Elisa casually joined the group with the cover of university professor and his interns.
Elisa nudged over to Envy and pointed one woman out. "She seems to be pretty knowledgeable about colliders for a nutritionist," she told Envy in an undertone.
"Well, maybe it's her fall-back career."
"What do you mean?"
"Look at her," Envy said. "She doesn't look like she'd make a stellar nutritionist." Elisa stomped on Envy's foot and ground her heel in. "Ow! I'm just saying-" he complained.
The Doctor gave them a quick glare, telling them to pay attention.
"Well, this looks like it all going well. Let's continue," the woman, Berta Voust said. "Oh, pardon me, I've not been eating as I should," she said in response to her out-gassing.
Envy quirked his eyebrow at Elisa. Elisa elbowed Envy in the side.
"They're all like that: I'm telling you I'm not what's wrong here," Envy muttered as they followed the group.
In time, they all sat down for lunch, giving the trio a chance to get to know the visitors better. Envy used his alias (Evan Holmes), on the assumption that there might still be whispers of his family's failed plot remaining in the government's lore. It had only been ninety years since the Homunculi's fall. He had gotten into conversing with young burly major from Briggs.
"In my opinion, the LHC should have been in the north," Envy said. "It has a bedrock of basalt, so much that it actually increases the gravitational pull of the Earth in that area." He remembered the changes to the tunnel that arose over it- even though Sloth could have dug through it, it would have put them behind schedule. "Good for increasing the masses of particles. It's also another radiation shield."
"Yeah, that's true," the major said. He checked his pocket watch. "Well, better get going."
"Bye, then." Envy chewed on his ham sandwich and considered what he saw. A State Alchemist… that could mean any number of things. He failed to notice Elisa and Voust going together to the ladies' room. He ticked off the possibilities in his head. 'One, he's a traitor; two, that the alien was a competent alchemist; or three, the alien could overtake a State Alchemist.' None seemed to be preferable. He had no idea how the Doctor would do in a fight with a State Alchemist. Sure, the Doctor was clever, but you also need speed and power to work against them. Elisa would be hopeless. As for himself, he grimaced. He had to keep his identity as a Homunculus hidden as long as possible- once an alchemist knows what to do, well, Envy had his share of experience regarding that.
Envy blinked back the sensations that his memory surfaced unexpectedly. His body recoiled from the pain of having his eyes and tongue incinerated. Then there was the time Marcoh destroyed Envy's philosopher's stone. It felt like an electric current ripping his body to pieces. Envy's stomach quivered and the blood drained from his face. He had to get out of there.
Standing up as calmly as he could, he made his way to the drinking fountain*. It was nestled in a nook between the two restrooms. As he drank the barely cold, iron-flavored water, rinsing his aching throat, he became aware of the noise on the other side of the wall. He heard a muffled "Shit!" and he looked up, still pale.
Out of the door scrambled Elisa. A rough spear pierced the door near her shin. Adrenaline rushed, Elisa stomped on the talon, breaking it. What lay on the other side of the door hollered angrily. Elisa snatched up the talon.
"Elisa-" Envy gasped. Her left arm had been gouged with a raggedy, finger-long laceration. They heard the rest of the group hurry to the sound of the din. "Come on!" Envy grabbed right where Elisa's wound was and pulled her out of the side hallway.
They found that only the one disguised as the major had come to face them. "You- you- you're monsters!" Elisa snapped, as she clutched the talon to her chest. Envy turned to see the she-alien emerge from the hallway.
"That's only a matter of perspective, dear," the she-alien said. "You call our business a travesty when you trounce around with that prejudice brat you have there." Standing well over Elisa and Envy, the green monster blinked its glassy eyes in its swollen head.
"Call it a hunch, insect," Envy swaggered, setting one hand on his hip, facing the female alien. "So tell us about yourselves. Are you here to erase the evidence of the crimes you commit, or hide the proof that freaks like you ever existed?"
"You're too brash, boy," the State Alchemist said. He reached up to his forehead, pinched some invisible tab, and began to pull to the side. The path he traced shone forth a blue light, and in the end, another alien emerged. After a bit of a struggle to get itself out of the disguise, the skin fallen to the floor like an empty potato-sack. "Because you're part of the evidence."
*A wholly unnatural name for a bubbler if you ask me. The word "bubbler" in the dictionary, so there.