Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood S2E3: “Struggle of the Fool”

At long last, it's time for more Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Mustang, Hawkeye, and the Elric brothers are all in Father's captivity now, with Scar and May Chang having narrowly escaped. Off in his secluded mountain hermitage, Hohenheim seems to have felt a disturbance in the wog, and may end up coming to rescue his sons now that he's worked through some budget-saving and filler-y inner doubts. Onward!

Envy is back in her preferred humanoid form, leading Edward and Alphonse to their new accommodations. She doesn't look very happy about the situation, despite her usual tendency to gloat when she has someone in her power. The escape of Scar and May is probably weighing on her, along with Gluttony needing reconstruction after running his battery down.

I'm curious about what that's going to look like, in terms of the new Gluttony. Will he still have the gluttonizer/pocket dimension thing, since that was a failed experiment? Will he look the same and have the same personality? Greed kept most of his personality intact, but it may be different when the philosopher's stone core itself is depleted.

She leads them into an elevator, and it brings them up into the capital building. Father's office is almost exactly under Wrath's, it seems. I wonder what would have happened if MacDougle had succeeded at crushing the capital building? Would that have been enough weight and force to destroy the facility hidden beneath it? That wouldn't have killed Father, of course, but it might have set back his plans considerably if it destroyed enough important stuff. She leads them out, now resembling a generic-looking Amestrian officer, and brings them to a shower. Presumably, Father doesn't want them getting sick while they're awaiting sacrifice.

They wonder aloud about how much of the military is in on the conspiracy, at least to some extent. Just Wrath? The top generals? All of the non-posthumous generals? This conversation actually makes me wonder if this might be a vulnerability in Father's system. If the four-star equivalents at least and all of the generals at most are selected from the membership of this small, secretive cult, then they're probably not going to be nearly as good at actually commanding armies as the neighboring countries'. If a peer power were to go all-out against Amestris right now, I'm not sure if Father could repel the invasion without exposing himself. And the new intro suggests that we'll be seeing the fortified northern border that faces Amestris' most powerful rival sometime soon...hmm.

On the bright side, Edward tries to cheer himself and Alphonse up by saying, they're another major step closer to restoring Alphonse's body. His body IS alive and intact in the spirit world, and it (or Alphonse's higher soul speaking through it, at least. Either way, it probably knew what it was talking about) implied that it CAN leave again if it's reunited with its soul. So, theoretically, if Edward repeats his pseudo-teleportation spell and has Alphonse step through after him just like Yao and Envy did before, Alphonse should be able to come out the other side in a malnourished-but-functional organic body.

Of course, to do that they'll either need to sacrifice some more limbs, or use a philosopher's stone. Edward might not have enough of the former to spare, and there are both practical and moral issues with the latter. Also, I'm not sure if they can use any alchemy at all right at this moment anyway. Have they left the area of effect of that anti-alchemy thing Father used yet, if it's still active? It was strongly implied that he used that to suppress alchemy within an area rather than casting it on them specifically, since he was surprised that the alkahestrists could do their thing when they entered the room slightly later.

Speaking of alkahestrists, pandarat seems to have abandoned his in favor of Alphonse once again.

Edward clearly skipped biology class to study more alchemy.

Alphonse explains that pandarat is just one of the things he smuggled away from Father's bunker. Inside of his chest he...WAIT WHAT????

I...

Oh. Right. When Scar knocked his helmet off under the cover of that steam cloud, and then Alphonse grumpily got up and said "I wish he'd tell me he was going to do that," rather than something like "what the hell did he do that for?" And Scar had just said that he could escape himself, but that he didn't think he could bring May with him. She climbed in his neck hole before the steam cleared.

I guess it was a coin-toss as far as whether or not Father has a ki-sensing ability of his own that would see through this. But a coin toss was better than certain capture, and it turns out that he doesn't.

Nice work, guys. Not only did you save May and allow Scar to escape unimpeded, but you also have a secret trump card. Since alkahestry isn't effected by Father's Disjunction, they can break out of captivity any time they feel like it, regardless of alchemy-suppression.

Once they've showered and dressed, Envy brings them to Wrath's little tea-room, where he's having...well, either he's having another private conversation with Mustang, or they've been talking for 36 straight hours, so it's probably the first one. Wrath quietly lets Mustang fill them in on the situation before he invites the boys to take a seat.

The Elrics and Mustang all silently have the same thought. If it's just them and Wrath alone in this room, then he must be confident he can beat all three of them singlehanded. Alphonse is probably the least surprised by this, since he saw at least part of Wrath's duel with Greed. I'll also take this as an indication that their alchemy is no longer being suppressed; if it was, then Wrath wouldn't have to be all that exceptional (by haemonculus standards) to take the lot of them.

Wrath tells the boys that he warned them that they should act as if the entire military is their enemy and keep their heads low, and that now the consequences are their own fault. A cough comes from inside Alphonse, and then Alphonse tries to pretend that he affects a cough sometimes as some weird personality tick. I...don't think Wrath is going to fall for that. Edward quickly calls attention away from that by asking Wrath if his Father is planning to kill or melt the entire population of Amestris, and if what he has in mind for the "sacrifices" is even worse. Wrath doesn't answer. Edward then figures out that the state alchemist system with its in-person interview is designed to identify sacrifice candidates, and he throws his badge across the table in disgust.

Wrath complains about Edward getting blood on his table (the badge is still soaked in it), and then starts an idle conversation about Winry, including her current location and social group, which he knows all the details of. Then, unusually direct for Wrath, he tells Edward that he keeps that badge, and Winry keeps her head.

Edward and Mustang both seem surprised at this declaration. Is Wrath really implying that he's going to let them go free?

Edward says that the reason he became a dog of the military was to get access to resources that might lead to restoring Alphonse's body, and Alphonse insists that that's all they ever really were trying to do (not true, but a good lie for this situation). Wrath says that he really doesn't care one way or the other about that as long as they stop making trouble. Mustang, looking surprised, says that he will also keep his badge and uniform if Wrath is willing to make the same deal with him and let him "continue pursuing his own ambitions." Wrath says that he is. I feel like there was some subtext exchanged here that I missed. Wrath then dismisses them. Mustang asks him if he's the one who killed Hughes, and Wrath simply says "no" while refusing to tell which haemonculus actually did it. Mustang satisfies himself with this for now.

As they're turning to leave, though, Wrath tells Alphonse to hang on a moment. When he stops, Wrath comes up behind him and stabs him right through the torso. Edward and Alphonse both gasp in horror. Then, Wrath pulls his sword - which notably has no blood on it whatsoever, nor has any come spilling out of Alphonse's armor joints like the last time this happened - and tells Alphonse he can go on ahead now.

WAY TO GO, WRATH! YOU ARE NOW MY FAVORITE BESIDES ARMSTRONG!

Well. I sure hope Pride fell for that, if she really is watching. 

Okay now, so, out of six remaining Sins, one of them is - if not exactly on the protagonists' side - at least seeking to undermine Father, and one more of them might potentially also be depending on what's going with Greed and/or Yao. Alright! If they play their cards right, this fight could be very winnable after all.

The three of them leave the room, and immediately have a cathartic breakdown of panic and hyperventilation. Sounds about right. None of them mention anything about how Wrath seems to be helping them, but I'd be very surprised if Mustang at least didn't pick up on it. But yeah, this wouldn't be the safest place to talk about it, so that might not mean anything. Once they (and May, hiding in Alphonse's leg) have recovered, the brothers ask Mustang if he has any spare change. He's understandably confused by this, but hands them some coins, and they go speeding away out of the building. Wonder what's going on with that? Mustang has better things to do with his own time than wonder about it, though, as he goes outside to see if Hawkeye is around.

He runs into Armstrong, wearing a very serious expression, who asks Mustang in an unusually cold, quiet voice why he looks so freaked out.

Yeah, I don't think that's actually Armstrong.

A moment later, Hawkeye comes out of the cranny she'd been hiding in. Okay, I'm pretty sure that there are two humans and one Envy in this little meeting, but I'm not sure which of them it is. Hawkeye says that she's just coming back from the bathroom, which is a weird thing for the show to have happen here just for no reason, so I'm suspicious. Could be a red herring, of course.

Meanwhile, the brothers ran off to a payphone to use that change they borrowed to call Winry. I guess the only free phone options for them would be military ones, fair enough.

Winry's pattern recognition has led her astray.

Edward asks her if she's okay, and if she's noticed any shady and/or uniformed individuals watching her. She says no, and her tone of voice is more playful at first, though by the end of the conversation she picks up on Edward being serious about this. She assures him that she's fine, and thanks him for calling. When they hang up, Edward breathes a sigh of relief that nothing's happened to her yet.

Which is when we learn that however much or little control Yao still has, Greed has inherited his aptitude for shoving his face into the Elrics' private conversations out of nowhere.

"It's that kind of desperation that they're going to take advantage of." They, not us. Comforting. Anyway, he says he has a message for them from Yao, written in blood on a strip of cloth. It was a request he made before giving in and letting Greed take over his body; he wants them to give it to Ninjette. Edward asks him what it says, and Greed says that he has no idea; he can't read Xingese either. Then he heads back to the capital building, leaving the brothers to just take his word for it that he's not going to track them to their safehouse and then kill everyone.

Cut to Scar, apparently still finding is way out of the outer corridors of Father's lair. As he punches a few last chimeras to death, he wonders who Father is, and why he's been causing conflicts like the one that destroyed his country. He didn't get any answers out of him, and he's clearly going to need a lot more firepower if he wants their next encounter to go differently. He hears a voice from below, and looks down through a vent in the floor to see Doctor Marcoh in his cell. The doctor is calling for help and offering medical aid in return, so Scar breaks off the grate and drops down to see who this guy is and what he wants. Doctor Marcoh starts to ask for news from the outside world, but then he recognizes Scar by his description in the news.

Okay then. Let's see if Marcoh survives this. I suspect he's going to confess to having experimented on Ishvalan captives or something, and then we'll see how much Scar is willing to forgive at this point.

...Marcoh starts laughing, drops to his knees, tugs on Scar's robes, and loudly proclaims himself to be one of the butchers of Ishval. I don't know that that's actually true; he doesn't seem like the fighty kind of alchemist, so I think at most he might have used some Ishvalan POWS to make protostone. But, it's pretty clear that he just wants to deny himself to Father, and that he thinks suicide by Scar has the best chances of success out of the available options. Let's see if Scar falls for it.

Cut from there to...a house?...oh, it's Doctor Whatsisname the coroner. Alphonse brings May to him because he doesn't know any other doctors in Central I guess, and he doesn't want the government-run hospitals to deal with her. Doctor Whatsisname isn't thrilled about yet another surprise patient in his house, but apparently he was the only option. A one-armed Ninjette comes into the room just then, which gives Alphonse a chance to relay the Xingese message that Greed relayed.

I'm not sure where Edward is, while this is happening. He's probably around here someplace, but where?

Anyway, Alphonse assures Ninjette that Yao is alive (not sure if this counts as lying or not...), and, visibly relieved, she reads the message.

All it says is that he got the stone. Ninjette cries tears of joy about this, and asks Alphonse where Yao is with the stone. Alphonse looks nervous as he considers how to drop the other shoe here. Cut to where Yao and several thousand other damned souls are tumbling through Greed's circulatory system as he sits on the roof of the capital building. Wrath soon joins him, and the two begin chatting.

It took me a moment to remember that Greed and Wrath really don't know each other at all. I'm assuming that Father left a few core memories in Greed to make him loyal to him and able to speak/read Amestrian and so forth, but even the previous version of Greed only knew Wrath as an enemy for a few hours, and vice versa. So, these two brothers are really just getting to know one another.

Also, perching on tall rooftops to survey the land was always a signature Yao trait. The fact that Greed is doing this too suggests that even if they aren't sharing control, he's at least inherited quite a bit of Yao's personality and mannerisms.

And...oh, damn. When Wrath makes a disparaging comment about humans, Greed angrily rebukes him in Yao's voice. Wrath's reaction is unlike any emotion we've seen him express until now.

Not even when he found out that his sister was dead (and that, by implication, he and the others might be in danger too) did Wrath show anything like fear or shock. He's showing them here, though.

Greed then speaks in his own voice, and laughs at how Yao is still always waiting for a chance to come out. It's not clear if he's being serious, or if that whole thing was just him pranking Wrath. Either way, Wrath excuses himself, and we jump back over to Mustang and Hawkeye. They're driving Armstrong somewhere, and filling him in on all that they've learned (which doesn't include what the Elrics discovered in their encounters with Gluttony, Envy, and Father, but that's still a lot), particularly the confirmation on the Great Gazoo being one of the seven deadlies.

Armstrong kind of bluescreens for a moment, and then starts crying. A flashback occurs, of a pre-mustache version of himself taking part in the Ishval campaign. After finding the corpse of a child he or one of his squadmates just killed, he drops to his knees and begs his commanding officer to halt their advance. This can't be right. Also, this scene has full color, so I guess it's only part of Ishval that's under the monochrome curse. Or maybe it's a seasonal thing.

Armstrong refused to continue, and his commander requisitioned a replacement alchemist and sent Armstrong home in disgrace. Armstrong wasn't discharged from the military, but his career as an officer has been on ice ever since.

What has weighed on him ever since then is that whatever combination of cowardice, nationalism, and perceived honor it was that he felt, it prevented him from trying to do anything to stop the genocide. He saw obvious, immense evil being committed, and the best he could bring himself to do was just walk away and try to pretend it never happened. And now, it turns out that all the reasons he had to NOT switch sides and help the Ishvalans were lies. He wasn't fighting for his country. No one who's anyone in the Amestrian army was, or is. And yet, he's stayed a member of that organization and served that regime ever since.

Armstrong has no choice now. The only way he can redeem himself is by taking the fight to the haemonculi. It might be too late for the Ishvallans, but it's not too late for the next potential victims, or the ones after that.

Hawkeye asks Mustang if he has any idea what to do next, and Mustang tells them that he told Wrath that he plans to "continue following his own ambitions no matter what," and that Wrath seemed okay with that so long as he doesn't make any fuss. Alright, then! All that subtextual communication that he and Armstrong passed back and forth throughout the first season wasn't for nothing, and Mustang picked up what Wrath was putting down (whether or not Edward and Alphonse also did remains to be seen). Wrath didn't tell him anything specific about Father when sharing his backstory, but he made it clear that he and his siblings are the creations and minions of someone else. Wrath presumably knew about Mustang's ambition to become the ruler of Amestris. And, he gave his tacit approval to Mustang continuing his plots to replace the current ruler. Just, he can't cause any trouble or call any attention to himself while doing so. He's got to keep everything completely hidden until he can move directly against Father, or Wrath will have no choice but to make good on his threats.

Mustang remarks that he feels better than he has in years. After everything he's done in his career, fighting real monsters is the only thing that can make him sure he isn't one himself.

Back at Dr. Whatsisname's house, Alphonse has finished telling Ninjette about Yao's fate. As expected, she's more hopeful about his prospects for recovery than Alphonse is.

She says she wants an automail arm right now, ASAP, presumably for some zany rescue plan. Alphonse starts to say he'll see what he can do, but then May wanders into the room, and Alphonse makes the mistake of saying her name aloud. An instant gimp-knife-fight erupts as the two injured Xingites try to kill each other.

The Changs and Lings aren't just rivals as I suspected before. They're outright enemies. And, as I likewise suspected, May is in fact a princess, though from the dialogue it's not clear if she's a daughter of the emperor himself or just of the Chang chief's. Either way, the Changs must be really, really poor for a princess of theirs to have been raised in those conditions, or else noble children are deliberately made to grow up among commonfolk to teach them humility or whatever. Also, I'm still wondering why she doesn't have any bodyguards of her own, even if they're not up to the caliber of the Ling ninjas.

Alphonse tries to get them to back down. It doesn't work very well.

They're only forced down from a fight to the death when the doctor comes in and threatens to infect them both with a bioweapon if they don't get back to their beds this instant.

Remember, this guy said that he dissected burned corpses for medical research purposes during the Ishval campaign. That's not quiiiiiite the same as doing Unit 731 style bacteriological research, but...it also opens the door to that possibility. And if he was involved in something like that, then he may well be serious. He legitimately comes across as scary when he's making this threat. Damn.

Once the Xingese blood feud has been put on temporary hold, Alphonse follows the doctor downstairs and cleans up a little of his disaster zone of a living room in gratitude. He finds a photo of the man's ex-wife and son, and manages to covince him to tell his story. We don't get to hear that story yet though, as it's time to see what Edward's been doing all this time. The answer is "fixing things."

Either the city officials didn't get around to repairing all the battle damage from the battles with Scar and the haemonculi the other day yet, or something else has happened since. Some citizens thank Edward as he rebuilds their storefronts and bannisters (while redecorating in his inimitable style). According to them, some local alchemists tried to fix it a few hours ago, and their alchemy just didn't function at all.

Edward realizes the implications of this pretty quickly. It wasn't just the capital building that Father's antimagic field engulfed. It was the entire neighborhood around it, and possibly much more. Seems like overkill for dealing with two alchemists who were no match for him to begin with, so I'm thinking he can't choose how big the area of effect is. The most likely explanation is that he used Central's macroglyph to create the effect, which would mean that alchemy stopped working throughout the whole city for that hour or so. If so, then that might hint at a way to beat him; lure him out of Central, and he won't be able to use his most powerful abilities. The less likely explanation is that Father shut off alchemy all throughout the entire world just to subdue Edward and Alphonse a little faster, which...well, in that case he wouldn't have to plot and scheme for godhood because he already has it, so yeah, probably not that.

The episode ends with Edward musing to himself about alchemy, alkahestry, Father, and the philosopher's stone. Alkahestry is clearly more different from western alchemy than Edward realized, and the enemy has proven itself at least somewhat vulnerable. He also thinks back to what Envy told him, about the screaming Xerxian faces in her body just being echoes without actual consciousness or intelligence, and wonders if he can actually let himself believe that. Did he kill those spirits when he used Envy's core to escape Gluttony's belly? Has he broken his conviction to never take a human life, even if it was arguably the merciful thing to do in that situation?

Either way, alkahestry seems like the way forward. Both for defeating the haemonculi, and for restoring Alphonse without having to burn any more human souls. He needs to have a long conversation with May, and ideally with Scar if he can find him again. Also, he realizes he still has Hawkeye's pistol, and that he should return it.

He might not be sure if he's killed humans or not at this point, but he's clearly not warm to the prospect of doing so again if he can help it. End epi...oh wait, there's a stinger! After the shojo-esque credits starring Winry, we see Father sitting on his Gigerpunk throne thing. Okay, is he actually a ghostly white color, or is that just the lighting? He looks somewhat more Hohenheim-colored whenever he's in motion away from his throne, but we still haven't seen him in proper light, so he might actually be sort of "faded" compared to Hohenheim. Maybe he got struck by Ishvalan lightning or something. Anyway, he's parthenogenerating a new Gluttony.

how is babby formed? how homunclus get preginet?

I thought making a new haemonculus would have been a bit more hands-on of a process. But then, comparing Wrath verses NuGreed's creation scenes, it seems like Father's research might always start out with scientists clustered around lab tables, and always end with him being able to create something out of his own body or with a snap of his fingers. If that's true for this as well, then he might have once needed chemicals and operating tables and ritual chants to grow a Gluttony-style haemonculus, but no longer. My comparison of him to the queen of a social insect colony is looking more and more spot on.

Also, the sappy ending theme continues to play over this, which is funny. It keeps playing even as we cut back to Dr. Marcoh's cell, where he confesses (and probably exaggerates) his crimes to Scar, and begs to be killed for them. The music finally cuts out as Scar grabs him by the face and tells him to share everything he knows about Father's nature, methods, and motives, and if he's satisfied he'll kill him. Actual end.

This episode calls for more analysis than I can fit into a few paragraphs. It looks like I'm going to be doing another special post, like I did for "All Is One, One Is All." This will also touch on some of the same ideas I'd planned to cover in my season one review, so I'll take the opportunity to use some of that material as well; expect it tonight or tomorrow. I'll call this one of my make-up posts for last week, and post this week's own third review on Saturday.