Bite of the Ant

At Fort Briggs, the invading Drachman army crumbles under the fortress artillery, and its commander dies cursing Kimblee for a betrayal that never came, moments before the alchemist strolls calmly onto the smoking field to finish what he started. Far to the south in the Ishvalan refuge of Asbec, May Chang struggles to explain the Dragon's Pulse to a baffled Alphonse, while Scar, Winry, and Yoki quietly earn their welcome among the villagers sheltering them.

The calm breaks when Zampano leads a disguised Envy toward Tim Marcoh. The doctor and the chimeras have rigged the snow into an ambush, with alkahestry glyphs buried by May erupting into ice spears keyed to wound only a homunculus. Envy balloons into his monstrous shape, yet Jerso, Zampano, Scar, and May wear him down, and Marcoh ends it by turning the array tattooed on his palm against the creature's Philosopher's Stone. A surge of light reaches all the way to the village, and once it fades, Envy has been reduced to a squirming green slug, powerless and seething.

Caged inside a jar, Envy lets slip that Edward has disappeared following a mine collapse at Baschool. The group then scatters: Alphonse heads for Reole to wreck the underground tunnel and plant a reverse transmutation circle, Scar and Marcoh set off to reshape Amestris from within, and May carries the imprisoned homunculus back toward Xing. In Dublith, a grieving Bido stows away beneath a military car, bent on reaching Central and finding the Greed he once followed. At headquarters, Olivier Armstrong reunites coldly with her brother Alex before General Gardner walks her into a hidden vault, where the true purpose of the ban on human transmutation stands revealed as rows of Mannequin Soldiers.

Marcoh detonates the array on his hand against Envy's core, collapsing the homunculus into a tiny slug that the chimeras seal in a jar. Under pressure, Envy reveals that Edward vanished when the Baschool mine caved in, prompting the party to break apart and chase their own goals. Scar hands the jarred prisoner to May and urges her home to Xing for her clan's sake, while Alphonse sets his course for Reole. General Gardner tells Olivier that the third law of State Alchemy exists to keep rival armies from being grown, then unveils the Mannequin Soldier legion.

The installment draws on the manga chapters The Dwarf in the Flask, Bug Bite, and The Prodigal Father Returns, and its title card bears the array inked on Marcoh's palm. The adaptation reworks the Drachman commander's death, killing him during the shelling before he can meet Kimblee, whereas the manga stages a brief exchange between the two. Bido's backstory also shifts, since he is shown here having hidden at the scene of his comrades' slaughter rather than merely hearing of Bradley's involvement. The title likely echoes a line from an ancient Amarna letter about a struck ant biting the hand that struck it.