I don't know where this came from XD Envy and Ed don't even interact, it's just homunculus weirdness and a cameo from Ed at the end, but I just got the idea and had to write it.

Also, Envy and Greed. Ed and Roy. OH MY GOD HOW HAVE I NOT NOTICED THIS BEFORE. (Hero of the People is going to play with this so much.)

I've started rewatching the first anime and I realized that the brothers do find out what the homunculi are at Lab 5. (I'd forgotten just how much happens there in the first anime :P) So a few of my earlier oneshots in this collection are slightly incorrect…sorry! Just call 'em AUs, I guess.

Pen-Name-Kitsune-Chan: Unsurprisingly, that's where I got the idea. And sometimes a little bit of disjointed-ness goes a long way in communicating someone's mental state. Thank you for reviewing – and I'm super glad you liked it ^^

41. Little Mysteries

"What've you got there, big brother?"

"I told you not to call me that, brat." Envy pushed the inquisitive homunculus away, but Wrath wasn't so easily deterred. Leaping up onto the back of the sofa, he leant over Envy's shoulder, 'accidentally' flicking his thick mat of black hair into the older being's face.

"Get the fuck off of me!"

"Nooo, I want to see! And Mommy says not to swear –"

Envy grabbed the roots of Wrath's hair right by the scalp and flipped the homunculus head-first into the floor. There was a satisfying 'squelch' of blood and brain matter, and then with a flicker of white sparks, Wrath was glaring upside-down at his attacker.

"That hurt."

"Pity you aren't human, it woulda shut you up for good." Envy examined his treasure again. It was small and metal, hardly larger than the pad of his finger with eight equal sides and a hole in the middle. It looked vaguely familiar, but Envy had stopped paying attention to much in the world about three hundred years back.

He sighed. He'd have to ask somebody about his little mystery.

"Hey Sloth."

"Mm?" The tall woman looked up from the basin of water she'd been staring into. "Yes, Envy?" Her eyes were dull and bored.

He held up his treasure. "What's this?"

She barely looked. "I don't know. Go ask Lust."

"Hey, Lust!"

"Yes, Envy?" She was cleaning blood off of one of her claws – Envy wondered whose this time.

He held it up again. "I found this. What is it?"

"I have not the foggiest idea. It might be a torture device." She grinned at the last one, and he reciprocated.

"Hmm, maybe. How would it work?"

Unfortunately, after about half an hour of trying to figure it out, they couldn't think of a single way to use it as a torture device…except perhaps determining what exactly it was.

"Hey! Asshole!"

Greed rubbed his head where the rock had struck. "Watch it, monsterface."

"I have a question for you."

"What, you need something from me?" Greed began to laugh, and steam began to billow from Envy's ears.

"Shut up, you useless excuse for a homunculus! I need you to tell me what this is."

Greed jumped from the tree, landing in front of the smaller figure, and then plucked the small piece of metal neatly from his fingers, ignoring the scowl of protest he got in return. "Heh. Whatcha gonna do for me in return…ugly?"

Envy snatched it back. "Nothing."

"Oh well then. What a pity. Gotta…bolt." With a snigger that sounded rather suspicious, Greed left.

Envy strongly considered beating his 'little brother's' head in.

"Hey, Gluttony, do you know what…stop drooling on me. Okay. Never mind."

Dante was cackling very loudly when Envy creaked open the door to her study…and there was a lot of red light. He decided to give it a pass.

Fuhrer King Bradley didn't get unscheduled appointments often – no, that was wrong. People did not walk into his office without an appointment, or at least a knock.

So of course his first impulse was to draw his sword and put it at the intruder's neck.

"Cool it, Pr – er, Fuhrer." The man closed the door behind him and morphed back into his preferred form. "Just me."

Pride sheathed his sword. "You know it's dangerous to visit me here."

"I know, I know, I get it," said the eternal teenager with a voice and expression that rather hinted that he didn't, "but you're my last chance!"

Pride raised an eyebrow. When it failed to garner any response, he mentally cursed and raised the other one.

Envy opened his palm, where the piece of metal lay. "What the hell is this? No one else knows."

"That?" He tried to hide his incredulity. "It's a bolt."

"A…a what?"

Pride didn't get to see Envy nonplussed very often. He tried not to show his glee too much. "A bolt. It's used to secure nuts –"

"What?"

"It's a piece of mechanical hardware!" he nearly yelled. It was so, so easy to forget that Envy was supposedly the oldest of them…although now that he thought about it, that might be the precise problem.

"Oh." Envy looked it at again, and then back up at Pride, disappointment clear. "Like, in automail and stuff?"

He nodded.

"That's all?"

Pride nodded again.

"Dammit. Lust and I were hoping it was a torture device."

Pride shook his head. "It's what would hold them together."

Envy definitely perked up at that – and then froze. "Hold on, did you say bolt?"

"Yes, it's a bolt."

Envy's hand closed into a fist around his little treasure. "I need to go murder Greed a couple times," he forced out through gritted teeth.

"EDWARD!"

Ed stuck his flesh pinky into his ear and twisted it around a few times with a bored expression. "What now, Winry?"

"I thought this was just routine maintenance! You didn't tell me you'd BROKEN it!"

"I didn't…I think?"

Winry rapped him smartly on the head with her wrench. "You're missing a BOLT!"

Ed rubbed his head. "What, really? Is that important?"

"Yes! You're lucky the entire thing didn't fall apart!" Winry sighed. "How did you even manage to just lose one bolt and not notice?"

The shorter blond shrugged as well as he could. "Just one of life's little mysteries, I guess."

That line, of course, earned him another whack with the wrench.