Having been brought to Briggs, Winry switches out Ed’s automail arm, and he takes the chance to warn her not to trust Kimblee. This causes Winry to recall how Kimblee had told her earlier that his unit was the one who recovered her parents’ remains. In the process of thinking about Ishbal, Ed remembers how Hawkeye had guessed that he liked Winry, and he starts to get nervous around her. Afterward, Winry goes to look at the automail workshop, and Kimblee wants to talk work with Ed. Olivier meanwhile tells her men that she’s taking sole responsibility for what happened to Raven, and Buccaneer leads a group of men into the tunnel to look for the missing team. Buccaneer’s group is eventually able to find a pair of desperate survivors who babble about a shadow coming. Unbeknownst to them, a dark force does approach them, but it retreats at the last second.

At around this same time, over in Central, Hawkeye is delivering some documents to King Bradley’s residence. It turns out that King Bradley is not there, but Selim is, and Hawkeye is surprised when his mother mentions that he’s adopted from a distant relative of King Bradley’s. Hawkeye knows that something is up because King Bradley shouldn’t have any relatives, and it all comes to a head when she’s confronted by Selim as she’s walking off the residence grounds. Selim ends up revealing that he’s Pride, the first Homunculus, and he offers to let Hawkeye join them. Since Hawkeye realizes that they just want pawns, Pride makes it look like he’s going to kill her and slices her cheek, but Hawkeye points out that there’s no meaning in killing a hostage. Pride thus backs off and disappears, however he warns that he’ll always be watching from the shadows.

Back at Briggs, Kimblee passes along to Ed three tasks from King Bradley: finding Scar, finding Marcoh, and doing the same thing here that was done at Ishbal. Ed tries to protest against this last task and questions if Kimblee knows what the Homunculus are up to, but Kimblee is well aware and wants to see if human or Homunculus will win. Kimblee feels that someone like him surviving means that the world has selected him, and he decides to tempt Ed with a Philosopher’s Stone reward. Ed has no choice but to accept the tasks, but he asks to talk to Al and Winry first. When Winry realizes that she’s really a hostage, she starts to feel that she’s a burden on Ed and Al again, but after Ed decides go after Scar first and Al explains to her that they’re actually looking for May Chang, she decides to go along as an automail mechanic.

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