Episode 18: Marcoh's Notes (2003 series)

On the night before Edward, Alphonse, and Major Armstrong return to Central City from Resembool, Lust is searching the National Central Library for Dr. Marcoh's research notes. Watching in secret, Scar notices her resemblance to his brother's fiancee just as she notices him with Gluttony moving in behind Scar. Lust makes it clear that she can't have Scar interfere with the Elric's quest, and signals Gluttony to attack forcing Scar to fight him off with his destructive alchemy. The next day the Elrics and Armstrong leave the train station greeted by Armstrong's subordinates Maria Ross and Denny Brosh to relieve Armstrong of his duty to protect the Elrics while he reports to Central Command, though they mistake Al as the Fullmetal Alchemist. Despite not wanting the bodyguards, Ed learns that it is due to Scar back in Central again. Just as the Elrics leave, Ross mentions the information to Armstrong that the Elrics quickly find out that the Library has burnt down. At Central Command, after he annoys Roy Mustang over the phone about Elicia, Maes Hughes confirms that Scar was involved with the Library's destruction due to eyewitnesses and his blood stained clothes found right by the river, but suspects there were other people involved due to the evidence pointing to signs of a struggle. Hughes also mentions that with Basque Grand dead, Roy has a good chance of being transferred back to Central Command, warning him of dealing with potential enemies as well as gathering as many supporters as he can. Going to another library, Ed discovered few books survived the fire with nothing that can help him, and the head librarian can't find anything by Tim Marcoh in their records. When the head librarian mentions that she and the worker with her were the only ones on staff at the National Central Library, Ed recalls that another girl worked there when he visited three years ago. Recognizing this person as Sheska, the head librarian mentions she was fired not too long ago, and was a bookworm.

Arriving at Sheska's house, the group finds a mountain load of books and Sheska buried underneath them, forcing the four of them to dig her out. Sheska is able to confirm Marcoh's material was in the library but with it destroyed, Ed is back to square one and tries to rebuild the entire library and books from alchemy, but a windstorm ruins the plan scattering the ruined book pages. Sheska reveals she can reproduce the material thanks to her photographic memory taking three days to reproduce Marcoh's large research material. Ed leaves Ross and Brosh to pay off Sheska while he returns to Central Library to look over the material.

Despite it looking like a cookbook, Ed believes it to be encoded to avoid for the material to fall in the wrong hands. Spending a large amount of time working on the decoding, the Elrics are visited by Hughes. While talking about the security measures on dealing with Scar, once Hughes mentions the difficulties he is having due to numerous court files stored at the National Central Library destroyed, Ed recommends Sheska to him to reproduce the files. Sheska agrees with this due to Al's encouragement. Hughes leaves promising additional security the following day addressing Maria Ross's concerns by privately stating their job is to watch over the Elrics as they uncover something only they can do.

While in a coma, Scar recalls his encounter with Lust and Gluttony. After failing to destroy Gluttony with his destructive alchemy, suffering a chest injury, Scar blew off Gluttony's hand to break free and dodged Lust's attack. Recognizing them as Homunculus, Scar watches as the candles dropped by Lust start a fire and he uses his alchemy in a large attack to escape. Scar wakes up in an Ishvalan Refugee Camp and greeted by a boy named Rick who recognizes him as an Ishvalan. Rick takes Scar to his grandfather who recognizes him from the wanted posters, pointing out they would never sell out a fellow Ishvalan and reveals there are other Refugee camps scattered throughout the land. As the days go by, waiting for Ed to finish his research, Maria Ross overhears Ed as he finished the research and horrifically discovered the truth about the Philosopher's Store requiring the sacrifice of live human beings for it to be made. Scar is ready to leave the camp since he felt no reason to stay for betraying the way of God and Rick is admiring Scar's tattoo. Scar says he got it from his brother as a gift.

Episode Notes

 * Instead of Lust being solely responsible for the National Central Library's destruction, Lust and Gluttony's battle with Scar in the library was meant to replace their first encounter with him in the sewers that occurred in the manga and 2009 anime, with only the basic plot and Scar's bloody jacket being found by the military to remain unchanged in this version.
 * The mention of Roy Mustang being transferred back to Central and Scar's recovery in the Ishvalan refugee camp took place after the Laboratory 5 arc in the original manga storyline.