Advance of the Fool

From his hospital bed, Roy Mustang scolds Riza Hawkeye for surrendering to despair against Lust and reminds her that a soldier under his command has to cling to the will to live. Sharing a room with the injured Jean Havoc irritates him further. Puzzling over why the homunculi have left them alive, Mustang and his people compare notes and slowly recognize that the enemy has planted itself deep inside the State Military, with ties reaching the Fuhrer himself. At the homunculi's lair, an enraged Envy confronts King Bradley over letting Mustang walk away, and Bradley explains the colonel is being preserved as a sacrifice tied to the Gate.

Edward Elric and Alphonse trace the transmutation array beneath Laboratory 3 and find it forms a vast ring around Central, implicating Central Command and the leadership. Havoc, now paralyzed for good, leaves active duty to run his family's store, and Breda is dispatched to hunt for Tim Marcoh only to find the man's home ransacked and empty. To flush out both Scar and the homunculi who cannot afford to let the brothers die, Ed makes himself a local celebrity through helpful alchemy, then springs the trap when Scar appears. Mustang and Hawkeye feed false sighting reports to divert the military police while the fight unfolds. Ling and Lan Fan track Gluttony by his Qi, but Bradley reveals his lethal speed, cutting Lan Fan down and breaking her mask as Ling cries out.

The installment reworks several beats from the source manga. Lan Fan's role in guarding Mustang's group is trimmed so that she simply remains with Ling, and the order in which the Elrics visit the hospital is changed. In the English dub, Edward jokingly calls himself a friendly neighborhood State Alchemist, a nod toward Spider-Man. Breda's search for Marcoh in the Nameless Village is heavily condensed, dropping the manga sequence where Envy impersonated Breda to abduct the doctor before the genuine Breda arrived.