Created Human

Maes Hughes orders Armstrong, Brosh, and Ross to probe the fifth laboratory while keeping the Elrics' activities from Mustang for now. Below ground, Scar's fight with Lust and Gluttony leaves him wounded and dropped into the sealed chamber that once held Greed. Lust pins Alphonse with her spear-like fingers as Gluttony devours part of his armor. In the red water room, Edward grasps that the site was built for a massive experiment in human transmutation, and Shou Tucker admits Marcoh set the place up. Encouraged by the trapped souls of the Slicer brothers, Ed prepares to attempt the forbidden work, unaware that Envy is hiding among convicts disguised as the dead Basque Grand.

Zolf J. Kimblee triggers a huge explosion that drops the prisoners down to Ed's level, forcing the boy to realize he nearly transmuted living people. Ed unmasks Envy by attacking him, and Envy beats him savagely before Lust intervenes. Lust confesses the homunculi want the Stone so she can become human, and Envy snarls that homunculi are born rather than created, hinting at a hidden hand behind Marcoh, Tucker, Mugear, and Cornello alike. When Ed refuses, Lust threatens Alphonse's blood seal, and Ed relents to save his brother. Scar bursts in, shattering the red water tanks, and stray red water floods Ed with runaway alchemy. Ross's embrace cancels the rebound, knocking him out, and Armstrong carries both brothers to safety as the homunculi slip away.

The episode draws on the manga chapter Fullmetal Body. Screenwriter Sho Aikawa considered Ed's moral struggle the emotional core of the story, warning that a mishandled version would have made the boy seem passive and blind to reality. Aikawa also read Ross's embrace as a sign that Ed had chosen correctly and as a marker of his growth to that point. The wiki cross-references the loosely parallel Laboratory 5 material in the 2009 series.