Summary:
Ling attaches a makeshift splint to Ed’s broken wrist as they prepare to escape from within the Gluttony. It took Ed a little while to piece things together, but now that he saw these pieces to the ruins of Xerxes, he concluded that they were using Gluttony’s failed portal to hide the evidence of exactly what happened at Xerxes. .>King Bradley begins to explain to Roy that he doesn’t remember his own parents, much less his own name, that he was raised as a candidate to become the next Führer. Working in a group, they developed many different skills: swordsmanship, martial arts, militaristic combat, etc. They studied leadership skills and even anthropology. Once they reached a certain age, it was time for them to test their bodies by injecting the Philosopher’s Stone. Those who couldn’t stand it ended up as victims, and now it was Bradley’s turn to test his own body. As it kept killing itself, it kept regenerating until it eventually conquered the stone and adapted to it, so he was named the new leader of the land and given his new name, “King Bradley” he was left with a single soul. and feeling angry.Roy wondered if Bradley could just live as a human and not a homunculus, Bradley completely disagreed that he had outgrown his humanity and as much as the humans were proud of their humanity so were the Homunculi. Bradley even reminded Roy that the woman he killed had her pride intact even after she died.Gluttony and Al finally made it when Gluttony opened the door to reveal the one who had been lurking underground all this time, the father.Inside Gluttony, Envy gathered all the remaining pieces into the ruins of Xerxes. Ed began to explain that it was part of a mural he had seen as they walked through the ruins, but upon further investigation concluded that it was a field for human transmutation. But unlike performing the transmutation on the dead, they would have to perform it on themselves to go through the portal and return to the other side. When they asked what would happen if something went wrong, Ed explained that the transmutation would backfire on the user, in this case himself. Before Ed began, he redrew what he saw in the mural in the ruins on the floor, then explained that the symbol for God was upside down, meaning “to throw god to the ground with one’s own hands to make it a perfect existence” and that the lion he swallowed the sun or “philosopher’s stone”.Through this deduction, Ed concluded that the Homunculi sacrificed the city of Xerxes to make the Philosopher’s Stone. Envy tells him that he will tell Ed more if they can get out, and then he gives Ed his Philosopher’s Stone. Ed identified the bodies that spawned from Envy’s true form as the former humans of Xerxes. Ed then told Ling if anything was to happen to him to tell everyone what the Homunculi were planning to do to this country. In return, Ling told him that it was not his country, but that important people were waiting for him, so he should go back and tell them himself. As Ed apologized to the souls that remained in Enva’s body and began to use the Philosopher’s Stone, Ling remembered that his hands joined like this in transmutation reminded him of what it felt like to pray. The portal was successfully opened and Ed now had to guide his body through the portal to be whole when he got to the other side.Unbeknownst to Ed, when he came to him, he was not only facing the portal in front of him, but the portal behind him as well. At that moment, he saw Al’s body sitting in front of the second portal, looking frail and weak. Ed ran furiously to try and bring Al’s soul with him, which he was denied because he wasn’t Al’s body. Ed responds with a heartfelt promise to get him back into his body soon. From there, Ed, Ling, and Envy suddenly exploded from inside the Gluttony. When Ed discovers that they have come into contact with Al in the armor, it is concluded that they have made it back to the real world.After getting over the fear of never seeing each other again, they make up and make sure they’re okay. Ed turns around to try and figure out where they even are when his father approaches them and reveals the biggest surprise of all, his face looks all too identical to Van Hohenheim.