Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood S2E8: “Ice Queen”

That title is a little too on the nose. It's got to be a surprise double-entendre or something.


It turns out that not everyone at Fort Briggs is onboard with the weird clannishness of General Armstrong and her officers. Their medic, who the brothers are taken to, is refreshingly normal. She explains that Edward's automail did indeed fail due to the intense cold during that unlucky snowstorm, and that he's lucky it didn't give him frostbite before they got him inside.

Edward's continual failure to plan around these environmental hazards is starting to make him look kinda dumb. I get that from he's from a region with a very mild climate, but still you'd think he'd have learned to read up on environmental effects on automail after his desert misadventure, yeah? He should really just learn a transmutation that can heat and/or cool things, with how much this has been happening.

The medic explains that automail and other intricate machinery that's meant to be exposed to the elements up here is made from a nonstandard alloy that holds up better to cold. This is also why Edward couldn't transmute Captain Buccaneer's (*snerk*) gunsaw arm; he was targeting the wrong type of material.

This makes me wonder how much Edward knows about geology, come to think of it. We've seen him use earth and stone quite a lot, on pretty short notice, in some very different environments. If he needs to know at least the main elemental constituents of the rock he's using, then Izumi would have had to teach him quite a bit of geochemistry before he could reliably copy her earthbending spells.

Speaking of our pirate fri...

Wait a minute. "Captain Buccaneer." And he has a device called a Crocodile that replaces one of his forearms.

Very funny, Arakawa. -_-

Anyway, Captain Hook comes in as well so the doc can help get Alphonse's stupid helmet out of his claws. He's surprised to learn that Edward really is a State Alchemist (and thus an effective army rank of Major) as he claimed, and that therefore the doc is in the clear telling him this much about their border defenses. Still, he takes it as well as you can expect from someone who's just had to fight them over a dumb misunderstanding.

The doc tells Edward that he ought to get his automail engineer up here to adapt one of their local models for his use, if he plans to be operating out of Fort Briggs for any length of time. Just as the doc has gotten Alphonse's head free and tricked Edward into paying 100 cens for a cup of shitty coffee (note: a cup of bad coffee costing 29% as much as an intercity payphone call is unreasonable), General Armstrong arrives as well.

She briefly, as if feeling obliged, asks them how her brother's doing, but then quickly gets annoyed at the subject when they answer in more than two words. Notably, she stares at a photo of the medic's family that's sitting on the desk when she asks about this, in a way that suggests that either their families are intertwined somehow, or just that she's got some weird issues about "family" as a concept in general. Probably the latter, going by her behavior thus far. She then asks them what they're doing here, and why Alphonse is a robot.

They're reluctant to answer. Presumably because they don't know how much they can say without bringing down the wrath of...erm...Wrath...down on their heads.

Unsurprisingly, she's not satisfied with that answer. The doctor encouragingly tells the brothers not to worry; almost everyone here has something that would get them court-martialed if anyone else around here cared.

...

On one hand, I can see why the Amestrians might send otherwise competent people with personality issues up here. You need soldiers who know what they're doing, and also ones who want to be away from society and who you don't want around at HQ.

On the other hand, there's an obvious weakness being created here. If I were in charge of the Drachman CIA equivalent, I'd be doing my best to turn these misfits.

...

Anyway, Armstrong seems to NOT actually know what Alphonse is, which is a good sign. She might be feigning ignorance, of course, but so far she seems like she's probably clean at least as far as Father's conspiracy goes.

The brothers quickly whisper back and forth. and decide to tell her half the truth. They're up here looking for May, because alkahestry can possibly restore their bodies. They just leave out the part where they're also looking for her because alkahestry might be the key to defeating the evil wizard whose henchmen control the nation and are holding their loved ones hostage.

Of course, with that omission, the brothers' story makes them look pretty damned incompetent (they let May slip through their fingers back in Central despite having the full cooperation of the local garrison and without there being a dangerous third party involved. And this whole story is being told to her in light of their earlier botched human transmutation attempt), and Armstrong berates them for such. She says she wouldn't permit a pair of fuckups like them to stay in her fortress unless she was forced to. However, she finds herself forced to, because she's had an interest in alkahestry herself for a long time, and has been frustrated by the regime's unwillingness to pursue that avenue of research.

Can she even do that? Just unilaterally start her own military research and development project without so much as informing Central? Well, she seems to think she can, or at least is pretending to.

Alphonse objects to this plan of hers, and says that alkahestry is primarily medical and shouldn't be weaponized. She calls him an even bigger idiot than she previously thought, and...well, it pains me to say it Al, but she's kind of right. Alkahestry might have a greater medical focus, but you've also seen combat applications that western alchemy can't do (he and Edward were both surprised and impressed by May's ranged transmutation darts, for instance). Granted, Armstrong attributes Alphonse's misgivings to him being a sheltered national guard-equivalent who hasn't been exposed to the constant threats from beyond the borders rather than him literally being a kid, but given his appearance she might have trouble internalizing the latter even if they told her.

She tells them she's going to hunt May herself, and keep them in the fort where they can continue providing information without getting their incompetent selves in the way. And also make them work or else they don't get fed. Um...can she do that? I guess she might have enough power over the chain of command to deputize State Alchemists if they're in her jurisdiction anyway. Or maybe she can't, technically, but doesn't care. She is coming across as the wannabe-dictator of her own little kingdom, so she might just not give a damn about military regulations that don't benefit her.

She has her adjutant, a goggle-wearing fellow named Major Miles, escort the brothers to their new...um...whatever she's having them do, while she and Captain Hook head off in their own direction. Hook comments that, for all his skepticism, these two do seem pretty tough for their age. He can tell that they've seen battle, and done alright for themselves in it. She says that they're still way too soft for State Alchemists, and that she knows they're still hiding some things that they really shouldn't be from her.

Meanwhile, Miles escorts the brothers in the other direction. They try to make smalltalk with him, to no avail. Finally, Edward asks him what his big scary secret is, if everyone around here has one. It's only fair if he tells them, since he was in the room when they explained Alphonse's situation. That finally gets Miles to turn around. He removes his goggles, and reveals red eyes to complement his dark skin and pale hair.

Huh. A traitor?

He turns around and glares at them, icily and hatefully, and tells them that Amestrians wiped out his entire family and culture.

The boys hesitate a moment. Then, Edward tells him good riddance, he never met an Ishvalan who didn't try to kill him, and that they brought it on themselves.

Alphonse is shocked at what Edward just said. However, Edward seems to have been sharper than him on the uptake in this particular social interaction. An Ishvalan who actually feels that way certainly wouldn't be an officer in the Amestrian army, taking orders and living alongside Amestrians and other, more willing, ethnic additions. Miles pretty much has to be fucking with them, and Edward just has zero patience for it right now.

Sure enough, Miles responds with a laugh, and finally starts being friendly now that they've shown some backbone.

Fort Briggs is a really weird place.

Miles explains that he's only one quarter Ishvalan, and that he didn't have that much to do with that part of his family growing up. It was sort of a fluke that he ended up looking more physically Ishvalan than even his halfbreed parent, and one that got him into plenty of uncomfortable situations once the conflict started.

He managed to avoid discharge like the full-blooded Ishvalans and most multiracials, but he was still reassigned up here to Fort Briggs when the hostilities broke out to keep him far from the conflict area. His distinctly Ishvalan features nonetheless led to a lot of friction with his fellow soldiers, though, which meant he was surprised when General Armstrong made him her adjutant. She told him that she needed a symbol of Greater Amestrian unity at her side to keep her fortress harmonious and focused on potential Drachman opportunism during this time of civil war, and Miles' mixed race makes him suitable for this. Interesting: whether or not she's actually idealistic in this way, she ends up at the same place out of simple pragmatic leadership. When Miles asked her if she was sure of his loyalties herself, she just pulled a sword on him and said that if he's planning treachery, he should just come at her right now and get it over with.

Armstrong bluntness. Alex got it in his fists. Olivier, in her everything.

Miles tells the brothers that as far as he could tell, she was legitimately offering him a one-on-one duel, without intending to order the other soldiers to intervene. He developed a lot of respect for her on that day. Still, he wears his snow goggles even indoors most of the time, just so his red eyes don't constantly draw attention from hardliner anti-Ishvallan recruits.

As he speaks, he brings them out onto a walkway where the de-icing crew hasn't been doing their job. Does that mean they don't get fed? Maybe. He's nonchalant about the hazardously large icicle that comes loose and nearly falls on Edward, simply complementing his luck and reflexes and saying that those make him more likely to survive here. O...kay, whatever positive qualities she might have, Olivier Armstrong is still running some crazy survivalist cult up here. Granted, that also may have predated her. Either way, Fort Briggs is a messed up place. Miles tells the Elrics that they're going to be supplemental de-icers while they're here, and hands them some long-handled picks.

They start chipping at the icicles. Edward has trouble reaching them, which really just makes me wonder why either of them are bothering with swinging the stupid picks when they could just play whack-an-icicle with rectractable spikes or the like. Or just zap icicles into bits directly; we've seen Edward transmute snow before, so other frozen water structures should be doable right?

Anyway, they're surprised to be approached by Falman, the sidekick of Mustang's who he had Barrysitting back before Wrath sent him north.

He apparently got bumped on up to Briggs from Northern Command. Probably because the last de-icing guy accidentally locked himself out and was left for the wolves due to having proven himself unfit for survival. They ask him why someone with the rank of lieutenant would be breaking icicles, and he shamefully explains that he's off of his career track up here.

The brothers snicker here. Was there some kind of subplot about Falman's career ambitions? I don't remember anything like that. This feels like another vestigial scene from a subplot that Brotherhood dropped from the manga but inexplicably kept a few random bits of.

I'm having more and more trouble deciding if this show's quality is entirely in spite of Bones' adaptation work, or just mostly in spite of it.

After they clear some ice away and they confirm that Mustang and Hawkeye are still okay as far as they know, Falman gives them a bit of a tour. Apparently, Armstrong has her own R&D department up here, where she researches and manufacturers weapon designs independently, and purely for Fort Briggs use.

...

Okay, yeah., she's planning a coup. If not intentionally, then at least in effect when Central inevitably orders her to do or not do something that rubs her the wrong way and she just shifts over to using her own infrastructure entirely.

It's not surprising that there'd be more than one officer independently planning shit, in a military dictatorship with a hierarchy of regional overseers. Amestris is, in effect, a sort of non-hereditary feudal kingdom, with the provincial generals corresponding to dukes and people like Olivier being counts. Feudal societies are notorious for their infighting and uprisings, so.

I wonder if Father foresaw this being an issue. and (if so) if it was something he planned for or tried to prevent?

...

Before going up to the R&D level (assuming they'll be allowed), Falman brings Edward and Alphonse down to the boiler sublevel, where some crewmen are tending the furnaces and pipes. It's nice and hot down here, as evidenced by the local soldiers wearing short sleeves, which seems a pleasant change for the brothers.

As they look around, an odd rumbling noise comes from the machines. A moment later, the technicians realize that the rumbling isn't coming from within the boilers, but from deep underneath them. Like something moving under the fortress and its infrastructure.

Uh oh that music. It just started playing the "something gruesome and supernatural is about to attack" theme. Oh god what now?

Yeah no I don't think this is Drachma, wrong music for something that mundane. Also, very odd time for them to be invading, a few years AFTER the big civil war that distracted the Amestrian forces. Cut to underground where...

Ohhhh. Well, hello there!

We knew he was digging through a pile of rocks somewhere. According to Lust, "keeping him busy" was a necessity. So, I guess they had him digging a tunnel under the Briggs Mountains all this time.

There are also broken chains hanging from his wrists. Hmm.

Maybe they were having him dig a tunnel under the border for the Amestrians to find and blame on Drachma, thus providing casus belli for the war Father needs to bite off that last chunk of mountains? Or, perhaps, they were actually digging the tunnel for the Drachmans to find, knowing that they won't be able to resist an opportunity like this? Either way, having him dig up through the floor of Fort Briggs seems like a pretty bad idea as far as the whole "keeping Sin Inc a secret" thing is concerned, and Sloth doesn't really seem convincing as a Drachman supersoldier or the like, so I'm going to assume that this was not the original plan and that the broken manacles are another symptom of things going off the rails.

Though in that case, him coming up through the floor of Fort Briggs right when the brothers happen to be visiting seems an awfully big coincidence. Maybe Father figured out what they're doing with regards to May and alkahestry, and unchained Sloth (although, at that kind of distance...not sure if plausible) and sent him on a new course? No, there'd be way less convoluted and disruptive ways of stopping the Elrics.

Sloth breaks his way up through the floor and the brothers and Falman recognize the ouroborous on his shoulder.

Cut to Olivier Armstrong's office. She's just received word that Kimblee arrived in the nearby town of Briggs and is in the hospital with severe injuries. He's asking to speak with her, though, which strikes her as extremely weird.

Not just because Kimblee's sequence of actions seems odd, but also because he's been turned loose in the first place. Fort Briggs might be tolerant of dark pasts and dirty secrets, but "killing your superior officers for no reason" is one that obviously isn't going to score any points with a superior officer.

As she muses on this bizarre turn of events, she hears crashing sounds from below, and is updated on the even more bizarre turn of events down in the boiler level. She rallies the troops and heads down.

Back at the breach, Edward asks the haemonculus if the Father sent him after them. Sloth has no idea who any of them are, and doesn't seem to be planning to attack. In fact, he's just mumbling to himself over how terrible it was having to do all that digging, and seems about to fall asleep standing up.

It looks like he's another one like Gluttony. Simpleminded and probably not that dangerous if left to his own devices. And, as with Gluttony, it's really too bad that there's probably no way to let him continue living without perpetuating the suffering of however many Xerxians he has in his battery.

I also think I know what Lust meant by them having to keep him busy. I get the impression that if you actually let him go to sleep, it might take a lot of work - up to and including very advanced alchemy - to wake him up again.

Also, now that we can see him clearly juxtaposed against humans, he's way bigger than I realized at first. At least ten feet tall, if not more. Easily the biggest haemonculus besides Envy in her fleshspider form.

Unfortunately, while Edward and Alphonse are trying to figure out why Sloth is here if not to mess with them or hunt Scar and May and the work crew are just watching in stunned silence, Captain Hook arrives and fires a warning shot into Edward's automail leg.

Okay, to be fair to Captain Hook: while it wouldn't take long for the locals to determine that Sloth isn't a Drachman supersoldier experiment, it would take longer than a few seconds. And, in the few seconds that he's seen Sloth and the Elrics interact without being close enough to hear what they're saying, Drachman Trojan Horse op seems more likely than anything else.

At least, within the context of the almost religious anti-Drachma paranoia that seems to be part of Fort Brigg's messed up institutional culture. They don't seem to take any problem or threat all that seriously unless it smells of Drachman schemes. I wonder if this is because the Drachmans really have been probing at the defenses recently, or just a psychotic combination of Amestrian propaganda and Fort Briggs' native madness. We haven't heard anything about Drachma ourselves yet that didn't come from an unreliable source, so there's no telling how aggressive they actually are.

They try to explain that they don't actually know Sloth, they just think they might know what he is, when Sloth allays Captain Hook's suspicions on his own by throwing a giant piece of metal piping at the brothers. In his own words, he wanted to walk across this big room, and the pipe was in his way. It's sort of implicit that the brothers' shouting was also bothering him. Anyway, they evade the thrown object, and Sloth ambles on across the boiler room while wondering aloud if he's still supposed to be digging or not. Naturally, this is when the newly arrived soldiers start opening fire. And, of course, the bullets have no effect on a haemonculus.

Actually...hmm, this might just be lazy animation, but it looked like the bullets actually bounced off of him. No momentary bulletholes that close themselves in red lightning, like the usual for haemonculi. He may have some kind of extra toughness power or built-in armor along the lines of Greed. Again, it could also just be lazy animation, we didn't get any close-ups of him being shot.

Anyway, he accidentally stumbles into a cargo lift that takes him up toward the development level a floor above, ignoring bullets and knocking things out of his way as he goes.

Armstrong arrives with more reinforcements just as he's shambling into the R&D department. She shoots him with an incendiary shell, which doesn't provoke any more of a response than the bullets. She orders all non-combatants to retreat to the upper levels, and to shut off the alarms and not radio out yet; she doesn't want the Drachmans to know they have an emergency.

Hmm. Could be that she's figured out that Sloth isn't a Drachman creation and she just doesn't want them to think they have an opportunity to take advantage of. Could be that she suspects he IS Drachman, and just doesn't want them to know that their new weapon has successfully breached the fortress yet. Either way, good call.

...

On the topic of Drachman listening posts that could hear the alarms...we haven't seen any other fortifications within sight of Fort Briggs, have we? It could be that the Drachman side of the border is just too dismally mountainous to keep a fortress of their own there up against the Amestrian one. The name and geography of this country are giving me some vaguely Fantasy Russia vibes, so a defense-in-depth strategy would only be fitting.

The reason I'm wondering about this is that, assuming that Father DOES need to annex that little chunk of mountains to complete his macroglyph, how much of a no-man's-land wilderness is it already? If it's an uninhabited wasteland that Drachma only controls on paper, then seizing it should be a simple matter that might not even provoke much response.

So, either the Drachmans have a lot more stuff just out of sight of Fort Briggs, or I was wrong about what Father needs to do for his ritual. Whatever the case though, he must still need SOMETHING done in this general vicinity, or he wouldn't have had Sloth tunneling here.

...

Since they're in the R&D level, Armstrong decides to try and throw some of her experimental and probably unofficial/not-technically-legal new weapons at him. Her first choice is a small, compact tank with minimal armor and a very long-barreled cannon that she and a couple of soldiers climb into; these vehicles haven't been fully tested yet, but the engineer in charge of them is confident. She orders the fuses on the shells removed before she maneuvers one of the tanks into firing position.

Ohhhh. Very high-impact shells. Small and lightly armored chassis. Olivier Armstrong and her people have just been inventing tank destroyers, haven't they?

They hit Sloth right in the neck with a disarmed antitank shell. An armed antitank shell would probably work better, but considering that they're indoors I can't really blame Armstrong for deciding against that. Anyway, it doesn't do any serious damage, but unlike the bullets it causes visible damage that he visibly has to heal.

That's confirmation that he does have some kind of special toughness ability on top of the standard haemonculus regeneration. Anything that hits less hard than artillery won't inflict damage in the first place. Not as hardcore as Greed's carbon nanoarmor, but on the other hand he doesn't need to activate it, which makes it arguably better.

Sloth grumbles that pain is also exhausting. As more shells land, knocking him back and forcing him to heal some more minor injuries, he sighs that it looks like he has to "go back to work." This reminds me a lot of when Ling and Co surprise-attacked Gluttony, and he looked back and forth between them while repeating "enemy" to himself as if remembering some standing instructions. So, like Gluttony, Sloth has been used in combat operations before, and also like Gluttony he doesn't understand it as combat as opposed to just "another thing I'm supposed to do in X and Y circumstances."

He starts throwing debris around, which nearly kills some technicians before Edward's timely arrival blocks it. Edward also gets Armstrong's attention and tells her that just doing damage to this thing isn't going to work, he'll just keep regenerating.

She asks him how he knows this. He, visibly pained, tells her that he can't say. He's still worried about word getting back to Central and resulting in Winry's death, which...well, to be fair, there's quite a few people within earshot, and any of them could be informants for the Amestrian secret police or whatever. And, of course, Armstrong could just be doing a really good job of playing innocent herself; she might not be one of the four stars who make up Father's inner cult, but Edward already knows that at least one regional general has been offered partial induction, so she *could* still be an enemy.

She asks him why he can't tell. He tells her he can't answer that either. She asks him who ordered him not to tell her. His response is the same. She infers that he's been ordered to keep silent by someone who outranks her. She tries asking more relevant questions, like "what is this thing made of" and "is it Drachman," which Edward is more forthcoming about ("mostly just organic matter, probably" and "most likely not," respectively). Then, one last question.

Edward just says he doesn't want anyone here to get hurt or killed, which pleases her well enough for now. The episode ends with her getting out of the way of Sloth's rampage, and calling for a large volume of tank fuel to be brought over. Edward tells her that that probably won't work either, but she just says that she's not planning to burn him with it.

I'm guessing she's going to try and freeze him inside of a block of diesel ice or something. Anyway, that's it for now.


I'm not sure what to make of Sloth happening to stumble into Fort Briggs by accident just now of all times, but it may yet prove to NOT be a coincidence, so there's that. That's all seven Sins that we've now met face to face, and Sloth may honestly be the most sympathetic of the lot. They're still going to have to fight him, though, via Armstrong's freezing plan or otherwise.

Anyway, very focused episode, with a bunch of character introductions loaded into the first half and then an action-packed second half. Both pretty well done, aside from a couple moments that felt like they might have suffered from adaptation issues. Olivier Armstrong is slowly becoming a more interesting character as she shows new sides to herself. I'm still fifty/fifty on whether she's responsible for Fort Briggs' bizarre culture, or just the latest commander to fall victim to it herself.

Overall, pretty good ep.