Bonding Memories

Scar recovers from his Laboratory 5 wounds in an Ishvalan camp tended by the boy Rick and his older brother Leo. A band of mercenaries, among them the reborn Barry the Chopper, storms the settlement bent on wiping out its people, their leader wielding an alchemy-powered pack. Meanwhile a grieving Alphonse wanders Central in the rain, replaying his fight with Edward and wondering whether even his memories of their mother are false. He crosses paths with Rick and Leo as they flee a shopkeeper, recognizes them as Ishvalans, and is led down to the refugees' new hideout in the sewers, where he and Scar face one another yet again.

When Rick goes back for the locket he dropped, the mercenaries track him, get their orders from the Fuhrer's secretary Juliet Douglas, and abduct him. Al and Scar work together to raid the mercenary hideout, and along the way Leo confesses he watched their mother die during the Ishval war, keeping the memory buried ever since. Ed and Winry arrive as Barry corners Al, and with his brother's support Al fends the killer off, declaring he does not hate Ed for binding his soul to armor. Scar defeats the mercenary leader, and Barry is destroyed when his blood seal reacts violently with the alchemy pack. A stray blade strikes Rick but is stopped by the locket, which springs open to reveal eye-disease pills, proof their nearsighted mother had been searching for them the day she died. Leo lets go of his resentment as Douglas quietly murders the surviving leader.

Some material is adapted from the manga chapter Fullmetal Heart. A continuity oddity is noted: the right arm Scar blew off Barry's armor three episodes earlier is somehow intact again here, raising questions about how a vintage suit could be repaired without alchemy when Ed must painstakingly mend Al himself. Before parting, Scar answers Al's earlier question, telling him he is human because of the tears that cannot be seen in his eyes, and refuses to confirm any rumor of a Philosopher's Stone made in Ishval.