The Stray Dog

Winry and Sheska reach Resembool, where a stranger from their train mistakes Winry for her late mother and sends the girls fleeing. At home, Pinako recognizes the man as Hohenheim, the Elrics' long-absent father. Out in the desert, Ed and Al run as branded fugitives, unable to return to a military led by homunculi, and their argument accidentally triggers the Stone lodged within Al, briefly opening the Gate. Realizing that touching his brother drains the Stone and could erase Al's body entirely, Ed decides they must risk Resembool to retrieve something crucial for their fight against the homunculi.

At the ruins of Reole, the wounded survivors of Scar's array are loaded onto a train, among them the badly maimed Archer, and Bradley arrives to pin the city's destruction on the Elrics, accusing them of conspiring with Scar and causing a thousand deaths while shielding Archer's recklessness. Mustang volunteers to bring the brothers in, and his unit sets out with Armstrong, unaware that aboard another train Bradley meets Gluttony and Sloth and confines Lust for letting the Elrics escape. In Resembool, Ross and Brosh arrive to explain the fugitive order, and the group tries to intercept the boys along the river. A tense standoff leaves Havoc and Fuery accidentally wounded when Havoc's gun ricochets, and the Elrics flee after transmuting Falman and Breda's uniforms into balloons. Hawkeye disables Winry and Sheska's bike and takes them as leverage, and when the search closes in, Ed floods the ground to smother Mustang's flames, only for Mustang to borrow Havoc's matches and combine his fire with Armstrong's alchemy to corner the brothers. Faced with Winry's plea, Mustang admits he was the one who carried out her parents' execution on military orders during the Ishvalan war, then vowed never to obey such commands again, a resolve that drove him to seek the office of Führer and to take this mission to understand why the boys ran.

This 2003 entry follows the aftermath of Reole and the Elrics' new status as hunted outlaws, weaving together Hohenheim's return, the homunculi's internal reckoning with Lust, and Mustang's long-buried guilt over the Rockbells. It sets the stage for the reunion between the brothers and their father in the episodes ahead.