Sloth

Sloth towers over everyone as the bulkiest of the Homunculi, setting aside Envy's monstrous true shape, built like an enormous slab of muscle in plain black pants, dark shoes, and straps crossing his chest. Long, stringy black hair hangs past a face marked by pointed teeth and a single blank white eye sketched with a scribbled outline. The red conduit shared by his siblings runs down the right side of his frame, from the empty socket where his right eye should sit all the way to that palm, and heavy chains usually dangle from his wrists. He wears a near-constant scowl, softening into a smile only when the tunnel is done and again at the moment of his death.

Of all his siblings, Sloth is the plainest and easiest to read, a creature who fully lives out his namesake vice and craves only rest and stillness. Even with his life on the line he drags his feet into combat because fighting is simply too much bother, and he grumbles that the mere act of being alive is a chore. Despite the whining he never disobeys Father or the other Homunculi, proving his laziness never keeps him from his duty. Slow of thought and short on strategy, he shows little feeling beyond discontent, flaring into real anger only when someone blocks him from his work and, by extension, his sleep. Unusually for a Homunculus, he never voices contempt for humans or much pride in his own kind.

Introduced well into the story, Sloth is set to work carving a colossal transmutation circle under Amestris, the array meant to convert the whole nation into a Philosopher's Stone. A run-in with the Elric brothers at Fort Briggs briefly stalls him, yet he returns to the task and completes it. His physical gifts are the greatest of any sibling: strength enough to tear through rock and steel and to crush a body by accident, hide that shrugs off bullets and barely flinches at a rocket, and above all a staggering speed that makes his charges nearly impossible to see or dodge. He calls himself the fastest Homunculus, though his clumsiness, poor aim, and inability to check his own momentum blunt that edge.

Once the tunnel is finished he serves as Father's bodyguard, dozing near the throne until he is sent against Major General Olivier Armstrong after she seizes a corrupt Central general. A carelessly aimed ambush accidentally kills the hostage before he engages the general herself. The drawn-out clash draws in her brother Alex along with Izumi Curtis and her husband Sig, and Sloth's regeneration, oddly sluggish compared with his kin, cannot keep pace with the punishment. Alex finally drives him onto an earthen spike, and as he crumbles apart he accepts the end with a smile, judging even living too much effort. He is the fourth Homunculus to fall for good.