Footsteps of a Comrade-in-Arms

Sixteenth in the Brotherhood run, this installment moves the story to the capital as Edward, Alphonse, and Winry arrive by rail. What begins as a routine stop to share fresh leads with an ally turns into a reckoning, because the military has been quietly hiding the fate of Maes Hughes. Edward pieces together that the man was killed, and that the trail runs back to his own request for help.

Fu and Lan Fan shadow Edward during the journey while searching for their missing prince, and Ling, wandering the streets, collapses from hunger only to be hauled off by police once he admits he crossed over from Xing. At a hidden apartment, Havoc drops off supplies for Falman and the restless Barry, mentions his new girlfriend, and keeps the arrangement quiet on Mustang's orders. Inside Central Command, an intruder wearing another officer's face coaxes details out of Sheska about the colonel digging through the Hughes case files, then slips away as Envy. When the brothers ask after Hughes, Mustang covers with a story about retirement, but a stunned Maria Ross lets slip that the man was killed soon after Edward left the city. Blaming himself for pulling his friend into the Laboratory 5 inquiry, Edward goes to the Hughes home, where Gracia refuses to let him quit and asks that the loss not be wasted. Meanwhile the homunculi weigh how to rein Mustang back in, and Havoc, flowers in hand, meets his sweetheart Solaris without knowing she is Lust.

The episode reworks material from chapters 34 through 36 of the manga. Its title card layers Alex Louis Armstrong's gauntlet sigil over a plain circle. Lan Fan appears with an intact mask despite its destruction one episode earlier; the manga credits Alphonse with rebuilding it, while the adaptation hints she simply swapped in a spare. A train conversation in which the group learns Ling is only fifteen, a revelation that stings the shorter Edward, is dropped here. The route by which the trio discovers the death also shifts, since on the page all three read about it and about Ross being suspected, whereas the anime splits the news between Ross and Gracia, and the printed Ross never even speaks with the brothers.