The Arrogant Palm of a Small Human

Eighteenth in the Brotherhood series, this chapter pulls Edward away from Central under the pretext of automail work and marches him through the desert to the dead city of Xerxes. The detour reveals that Ross was never truly executed, unpacks Mustang's elaborate scheme to save her, and ties the ancient ruins to the shared roots of alchemy and its eastern cousin, alkahestry. It closes on a wound closer to home, as Edward hears how Winry's parents died.

Leaving the station, Edward presses Armstrong for the colonel's true orders and meets Breda, also out of uniform, while back in Central a window-climbing Ling finally explains the situation to Alphonse and Winry. Guided by a man named Han, the group crosses the desert to Xerxes, where a heat-stricken Edward recovers and trades legends with Fu about a traveler from the east and one from the west, figures whose journeys seeded the arts of Amestris and Xing. The reunion turns emotional when Ross appears unharmed, and a flashback lays out how Mustang, spotting the frame-up in the newspaper, staged her death with a doctored corpse, burned away her prison bracelet, and had Havoc spirit her into a disposal chute. Breda reveals Edward was kept ignorant only because his temper would have wrecked the ruse, and that the plot is bait for the puppet masters behind the military. In Central, Barry's decaying human body storms Falman's apartment until Havoc and a sniping Hawkeye drive it off, and it confesses to being Barry's true form, now carrying the mind of a lab rat. At the ruins Edward is jumped by Ishvalans, but an elder named Shan calls them off and recounts how an Amestrian doctor couple treated the wounded during the civil war. Realizing these were Urey and Sara Rockbell, Edward asks how they died and learns their killer was an Ishvalan priest he recognizes as Scar. Meanwhile Gluttony corners Hawkeye and shrugs off her gunfire by regenerating instantly.

The episode borrows from three chapters, including the one that shares its title. Breda's account of the rescue arrives earlier and trimmer than on the page, where Ross's survival is not revealed until after Mustang kills Lust, and several comic phone exchanges between the colonel and Barry are cut, among them Barry knocking Falman out. May Chang and her pet Shao May can be glimpsed studying a map of Resembool in the background, and an early scene of the desert party first meeting Han in a Resembool coffee shop is dropped.