Roy Mustang

About Roy Mustang

Roy Mustang is the Flame Alchemist, a colonel who can create fire with a snap of his fingers and who quietly plans to become Führer so he can change Amestris from within. Cool and calculating in public, he is driven by guilt from the Ishval war and by fierce loyalty to his subordinates. His long game against the Homunculi, played from inside the military itself, makes him one of the brothers' most important allies.

Appearance

Mustang is a tall, lean officer in his late twenties with black hair, dark eyes and a habitually relaxed, half-lidded expression that makes him look lazier than he is. He wears the blue Amestris military uniform, and in combat adds his signature white ignition-cloth gloves, each embroidered with a flame transmutation circle on the palm. Rain is his one comic weakness: soaked gloves cannot spark, leaving the Flame Alchemist, as Hawkeye puts it, useless on rainy days. When he drops the lazy act, his stare is cold enough to silence a room.

Personality

In public Mustang plays the charming, ambitious ladies' man, a mask that makes rivals underestimate him. In private he is driven, calculating and carrying heavy guilt from the Ishval war, where his flame alchemy was used as a weapon of extermination. He protects his subordinates fiercely and plays a very long game, building a network of loyal officers to support his rise to Führer, not for power's sake, but to answer for Ishval and remake the country. Beneath the ambition is real warmth: his team is the family he chose, and he will burn the world down before he lets it be taken from him.

Background & Story

Roy Mustang learned alchemy from Master Berthold Hawkeye, whose research into flame alchemy he inherited, and joined the military academy young, befriending Maes Hughes along the way. Sent to the Ishval civil war as the Flame Alchemist, he was ordered to burn a city district by district, an experience that left him determined that no soldier should ever be used that way again. Now a colonel at Eastern Command and later Central, he recruited the young Edward Elric into the State Alchemist programme and keeps a protective eye on the brothers. Publicly he climbs the ranks; privately he investigates the same shadows the Elrics keep running into, moving his people like chess pieces toward the top of Amestris.

Powers & Abilities

• Flame Alchemy: Mustang alters the oxygen concentration in the air and ignites it, producing anything from a precise spark to a huge rolling fireball, the most destructive alchemy in the military.
• Ignition Gloves: His gloves are woven from ignition cloth and embroidered with his transmutation circle, so a snap of his fingers supplies the spark his flame alchemy needs.

Key Relationships

• Riza Hawkeye: His lieutenant, aide and conscience, the person he trusts most in the world, who carries his father's research and has sworn to keep him honest.
• Maes Hughes: His best friend since the academy and his secret source of intelligence from Central, their friendship is the emotional core of Mustang's unit.
• Edward Elric: The young alchemist he recruited and now protects from a distance, even as Edward loudly refuses to act like a subordinate.
• King Bradley: The Führer he serves in public, and the summit of the military system Mustang intends to one day replace.

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