Bonus Chapter: The Second Lieutenant Goes to Battle!

The chapter begins with Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc marveling at what a country boy like himself is doing inside the grand Armstrong Manor, then jumps back to explain how he got there. Havoc had turned up to work heartbroken after his girlfriend left him for being too devoted to his job. Alex Louis Armstrong laments the loss, and Mustang chides that a real man should manage work and romance without trouble, then suggests Alex find the glum lieutenant a new match, at which the Major volunteers his own sister. When Alex boasts that she shares his features, Havoc conjures a hideous mental picture of an Alex-like woman and bolts for the door, but Mustang halts him, arguing that pairing off with a distinguished family like the Armstrongs would set a country boy on the road to fortune, and orders him to go through with the date while Havoc grumbles about how much Mustang is enjoying his misery.

Back in the present, Havoc endures a tedious lecture on family history from the clan's head, Philip Gargantos Armstrong, and is briefly relieved when Alex's mother enters looking ordinary, until he realizes she stands as tall as her son. Cathrine Elle Armstrong is then coaxed out of her shyness, and Havoc, braced for another Alex look-alike, is instead stunned by the young woman's beauty. Told they resemble one another only in the distinctive Armstrong eyelashes, he shrugs it off and asks about her hobbies, swooning when she mentions playing the piano, then reeling when she adds that she also enjoys hoisting the instrument with her bare hands. Thoroughly charmed, Havoc asks her out, but Cathrine turns him down flat, saying she will only date a man as strong as her brother. Crushed, Havoc spends a week weeping in bed, and when Hawkeye remarks on his absence, Mustang muses on how hard it is to build a relationship between a man and a woman, baffling her.

The chapter accompanied Volume 7, released in Japan on March 22, 2004, and in the United States on May 16, 2006, and carries the alternate English title Go For Broke Lieutenant. It gives Cathrine and much of the Armstrong family their unofficial first appearance, and later canon reveals Alex has two other sisters, Amue and Strongine, who strongly resemble the hulking mental image Havoc had feared. Per Philip, the Armstrongs have served Amestris for 180 years. The story was adapted into parts of Episode 37 of the 2003 anime series.