Alex Louis Armstrong

Few figures in the series are harder to lose in a crowd than Armstrong, whose height of 212 centimeters and slab-like build put him head and shoulders above almost everyone he meets. Decades of eager training have sculpted his frame into dense, sharply defined muscle, and a single flex is enough to shred his uniform and leave him bare-chested, a state he tends to welcome.

A lone curl of blond hair loops down over his otherwise bald scalp, matching the family's fair coloring, while a bushy handlebar mustache conceals his mouth and draws the eye toward a firm, cleft jaw. His browless face can read as fearsome, yet the blue eyes above it, ringed by unusually long lashes, stay gentle and warm.

Despite a build that suggests menace, Armstrong is astonishingly gentle and wears his feelings openly, dissolving into tears of grief, sympathy, or delight at the slightest prompt. He throws himself into helping anyone in trouble and frets over friends and subordinates, though his bone-crushing embraces often leave their recipients worse off. Loud, theatrical speeches and grand gestures come naturally to him, and he fusses over younger people like Edward, insisting they eat, rest, and exercise so they grow strong. Convinced his own physique is a masterpiece, he strips off his shirt at almost any excuse, whether to work, fight, comfort someone, or simply boast.

He guards his family's honor fiercely and believes the military should exist to serve ordinary citizens, so he treats his superiors with courtesy and shields the vulnerable in battle. The loss of any life, friend or foe, wounds him deeply, and his refusal to kill has quietly cost him promotions over the years. Sharp-eyed as well as kind, he was the first to deduce that the scarred killer stalking State Alchemists was himself relying on alchemy. His inability to carry out the atrocities of the Ishval campaign left a lasting shame, less for failing his orders than for staying silent about their cruelty, and he now strives to redeem that silence by vowing never to flee a righteous fight again.

A jack of many trades, Armstrong claims mastery over pursuits as varied as portrait drawing, tracking, distance running, and splitting wood, always crediting each talent to generations of Armstrong tradition. In a straight fight he is a punishing hand-to-hand combatant who has traded blows on even terms with dangerous opponents such as Scar and the chimera Roa. His strength and durability border on the superhuman: he shrugs off impacts that would cripple most people, drives his fists through solid walls, and shifts heavy objects with ease, yet for all his bulk he moves with startling speed and balance. His fighting style leans on boxing, quick footwork paired with heavy, precise punches.

What truly sets him apart is a form of combat alchemy handed down through his bloodline. Wearing metal gauntlets etched with transmutation circles, he triggers reactions by striking objects, apparently channeling the force of each blow into the transmutation itself, which lets him raise stone spikes, walls, and barriers at blistering speed. Those spikes proved sharp enough to pierce the homunculus Sloth, whom bullets, rockets, and tank shells barely scratched, and he can also blast loose stone forward like artillery. His gauntlets carry lines from Schiller's Ode to Joy, and among his proudest distinctions is standing as one of the rare State Alchemists to survive a head-on duel with Scar.