Izumi Curtis

Izumi Curtis (イズミ・カーティス, Izumi Kātisu?), (née Harnet) is a skilled martial artist and alchemist living in the southern Amestrian town of Dublith where - with her husband Sig Curtis - she runs a butcher shop. Though she doesn't usually take on students, Izumi accepted Edward and Alphonse Elric's plea to accept them as her apprentices and instructed them in alchemical theory and practice for six months.

Although Izumi takes apparent pride in being a housewife and introduces herself as such to anyone who asks, her petite and sexy exterior belies a fearsome disposition such that Ed and Al become terrified at the mere thought of her. She is prone to swift acts of violence and is often seen doling out physical harm, though most acts of overexertion on her part are followed by a regurgitation of blood linked to an internal injury from a failed Human Transmutation several years before. As a result of this, she is one of the few characters able to perform alchemy without the aid of a Transmutation Circle. Izumi is among the strongest women (and indeed characters) in the series.

She also appears to enjoy travel (a trait she may have passed on to Edward), as many of her appearances in the series find her journeying outside her hometown. She even announces herself as a "traveling housewife".

Appearance
Izumi has black hair with dreadlocks branching off of it, blue/black eyes and a Flamel tattoo on the left side of her collarbone, the design of which appears to be her personal crest. In the 2003 anime series and the manga, the Flamel is red, but the 2009 anime depicts it as being a shade of blue. Ed would later use this design to some degree, as his personal crest as well.

Background
She agreed to train Elrics to hone their alchemical abilities after their mother died, through an unorthodox regiment of philosophy, martial arts, and survival techniques. Her methods are derived from her own alchemy training: in the anime she was taught by Dante, whereas in the manga she was forced to survive in the northern region surrounding Briggs Fortress for a month. She thinks of the Elrics as her own sons, and although she severs her student-teacher ties with them after learning of their attempts with human transmutation as well as Ed's joining the State Military though she continues to do all she can to help them.

Sometime before the start of the series, Izumi had a son with her husband Sig Curtis. The child died soon afterwards, and Izumi tried and failed to revive it through human transmutation (an act that created Wrath in the anime). Although the failed attempt took some of her internal organs, such that she could never again give birth and coughs up blood when she gets too worked up, Izumi could thereafter perform alchemy without a transmutation circle. Throughout the anime she tries to get close to Wrath to repent for his creation. She dies between the end of the anime and Conqueror of Shamballa, but during the movie her spirit reunites with Wrath in the afterlife. In the manga, because she was able to survive a failed human transmutation, she attracts the attention of the State Military. As she and her husband travel around Amestris to keep out of the military's clutches, they meet Ed and Al's father Hohenheim. He rearranges her insides to ease the blood flow, and then gets her to help collaborate in bringing down the State Military.

Anime
In the anime, Izumi's attempt to revive her dead baby resulted in the birth of Homunculus Wrath, and most of the anime episodes featuring her concentrate on her attempts to make Wrath accept her. In Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa, it is revealed that she died at some point of the two year gap.

Manga
According to the Fullmetal Alchemist Perfect Guide 2 Gaiden manga: In the year 1897, when Izumi was 18, she ventured to northern Amestris near Briggs in order to learn alchemy as an apprentice to the famed alchemist Silver Steiner. She was told that she would not be accepted as Steiner's apprentice unless she survived for one month alone on the fearsome Mt. Briggs with nothing but a machete. She braved the elements, nearly dying several times from the extreme cold, wild animal attacks and assaults from Briggs Mountain Patrol (who assumed that she was a Drachman Spy) and discovered the philosophy "One is All, All is One" from her experiences there. Though she was never captured, the rumor of a mysterious mountain woman raiding Fort Briggs for supplies would continue to circulate for nearly twenty years. After the month was up, she ventured back into town and declared to Steiner that she was now fit to be his alchemy apprentice. It was at this point that the man told her that he was, in fact, Gold Steiner - the older brother of the alchemist Silver Steiner (who had died several years before) - and that he was known for hand-to-hand combat techniques, knowing nothing of alchemy. Izumi, in fury, assaulted him and knocked him unconscious, setting out to continue her alchemy training on her own. It may be inferred from this that Izumi Harnet is a self-taught alchemist.

Trivia

 * She is the only person Ed and Al are afraid of, to the point of freaking out at the thought of her.