Lan Fan

Lan Fan is a lean, muscular young woman with a surprisingly curvaceous build, her black hair falling to her back and usually gathered in a bun while loose bangs frame her dark brown eyes. On duty she wears a black soldier's uniform layered under body armor, with fingerless gloves and forearm guards studded with small spikes across the knuckles. For missions she conceals her face behind a red-and-white mask marked with the yin half of the yin-yang symbol, its counterpart worn by Fu. After she loses her left arm in battle, she gains a gunmetal-grey combat automail replacement, its shoulder shielded by steel plating styled after Xingese armor and its forearm fitted with a wound spike strip and a long blade jutting from the elbow.

Masked and on the job, Lan Fan projects the image of a cold, efficient killer who wastes no words, a deeply serious warrior bound by unwavering loyalty to her master and her clan. Like Edward, she flares up easily when provoked, especially over any slight to the young prince, and that temper can override her judgment and blunt her normally razor-sharp fighting. Unmasked in Ling's company, a softer and shyer side emerges. She frets constantly over his wandering, keeps watch wherever he goes, and considers her whole purpose to be his sake, treating uselessness to him as the worst pain she can imagine and accepting any hardship to further his aims. For all her chill, she can voice real gratitude, though the manga shows she struggles with plain courtesies like saying thank you, particularly to anyone she ranks beneath Ling.

Her bond with Ling is the axis of her character, a duty passed down her bloodline for generations that she embraces well past mere obligation, admitting to Van Hohenheim that the prince is "very special" to her. With her grandfather Fu she keeps a strictly professional face on missions, yet her love for the old man is plain in how she grieves and apologizes to him; when she finally confronts Wrath, who killed him, she asks not for vengeance but whether he ever truly loved anyone. During her recovery, Doctor Knox serves as both caretaker and reality check, treating her as a wounded teenager rather than a soldier and helping her, and himself, begin to heal.

Lan Fan is a formidable fighter, equally dangerous armed or barehanded and versed in martial arts that let her overwhelm even a seasoned combatant like Edward and press inhuman foes like the Homunculi. Her most distinctive gift is the ability to sense chi, which sharpens her edge in a fight and lets her pick out the Homunculi, whose life energy reads as warped by the many souls crammed inside them. She favors kunai and is fond of explosives, and her combat automail, with its long elbow blade, turns her deadlier still. Wielding it, she was able to hack at Gluttony repeatedly and nearly finish the Homunculus off before he could respond.