Lyra

Lyra appears solely in the 2003 anime. She is a young woman who relies on a pendant etched with a small transmutation circle, the tool through which she channels her alchemy. Beyond that medallion she is defined less by her looks than by the roles she plays, first as an enforcer and later as an apprentice.

Ambitious but easily led astray, Lyra dreams of earning State Alchemist status and serving her country, though at first she pursues that goal through blind loyalty to a corrupt master. Losing to Edward forces a reckoning, and she comes to admire him not for his rank but for how he turns alchemy toward helping ordinary people, reshaping her outlook and softening her into a gentler person who owns up to her past mistakes.

Lyra enters the story as the top subordinate of Yoki, who prizes her potent alchemy enough to make her his personal bodyguard and enforcer, and even has her wait on him and Edward at his mansion. Her weapon is a necklace-borne transmutation circle that compresses air into liquid and flashes it back to gas, hurling it outward with force enough to level buildings. After Edward beats her, she recognizes the error of serving Yoki and, three years on, becomes a pupil of Dante to sharpen her craft and follow Edward's example. When the Elrics run into her again at Dante's estate, she apologizes and credits them with her change of heart. She is knocked out when Greed's chimeras seize Alphonse, and is later seen mending the dishes they smashed. The aging Dante, however, uses the Philosopher's Stone to swap bodies with Lyra and then kills her to bury the secret, after which Lyra's stolen form serves as the face of the series' chief villain. A parallel-world version of her briefly pours tea for Edward and Fritz Lang in the film Conqueror of Shamballa.