The two walked out into the living area together where Pinako, Winry, and Rose were already eating sandwiches and chatting. It was a typical as lunch got in the Rockbell home. Rose bounced her baby on her knee making soft cooing noises at it as it giggled. When she wasn't doing chores, her attention rarely wavered from the child. Havoc glanced over at Al as his gaze fell on the baby. He smirked as he watched Al, and shrugged his shoulders. Instead of the child, his eyes fell on Rose herself. She was shy and pretty, kind of like Catherine Armstrong. Actually, that brought up memories he'd rather not remember… He pushed the thoughts out of his mind and took the seat next to her anyway, but kept an eye on Al across the table. He grabbed a few sandwiches from the pile in the middle of the table and made small talk with the improvised family for a few minutes. When the food ran low Rose got up to make more, leaving the baby in Havoc's care against her better judgement. He bounced it awkwardly on his knee, and it started to cry. Al, looking concerned, came over and, in a desperate attempt to console it, started playing patty-cake with it. The baby giggled a little, but still had a pained look on its face. Havoc, doing his best to hide his confusion, put the baby over his shoulder and patted it on its back. It coughed, hiccupped… and there was nothing Havoc could do to hide his disgust. He pulled the baby off his shoulder and held it at arm's length from himself, over the table. It dribbled. Winry hid her face in her hands to disguise her giggling, but it soon turned to outright laughter.

"Oh, yuck!" Havoc attempted to glare at the baby, but all it did was giggle and smile back at him. He gave Al a pathetic look, begging for some kind of help – anything at all. Al smiled and clapped his hands together, then touched Havoc's shoulder where the baby had spit up. The wetness disappeared in the blue glow. Al then moved to clean the baby itself. He put his hands over the baby's bib, but when the reaction started, a strange blue glow started to show through underneath; a strange light in the shape of an array. Havoc gave Al a questioning look.

"I thought you were kidding…"

The rest of the table stared in silence as Al curiously lifted up the baby's shirt.

"No way…" he trailed off. Rose walked into the room carrying a plate of sandwiches cut into fourths as Al touched the array. A look of horror crossed her face, and the tray fell to the ground in slow motion. The entire world seemed to snap back away from Al and Havoc, or maybe they were pulled away instead. The baby was gone. Back in the living room, Rose screamed as the child fell onto the table, landing on Havoc's plate and upsetting a glass of water. Winry and Pinako were too shocked to react as Rose ran to take the baby off the table. She barely seemed to notice that Al and Havoc had disappeared.

Alphonse and Havoc stood together in a blindingly white room, facing nothing, then facing the looming image of the gate. It stood slightly open, and a white mist seemed to be blowing around inside. This time there were no tiny black hands scrabbling for a grip on anything they could take. Even without them, the gate's presence was still unsettling, even menacing. Havoc stood in front of it, straight and still, staring into the doors. Al took a step towards it, hands outstretched. Havoc placed a hand on his shoulder, holding him back.

"Niisan…" Al's words echoed back to him in a language he didn't know.

"Is this…?"

There was a flash of light. Suddenly energy seemed to be flowing into the gate rather than out of it. Behind the doors the two could see scenes play out, and suddenly they were a part of them, impartial observers both existing and not existing. Straight ahead a short blond walked down the street with a slight limp, carrying a suitcase. Al gasped and called out to him, but it made no sound. His father watched from the door as he left, a resigned and knowing smile lingering as the boy walked off down the street. He went back inside. Another flash.

Trees, an entire forest of them. They were floating above, and two men below made their way through the branches of the trees at an unnatural speed. They were searching for something. From a distance they were hard to follow. Their clothes blended in with the colours of the forest as they moved, and there was something about them that made the eyes tend to look elsewhere. They moved like shadows, heading towards a village of light oranges and browns set behind a mountain where the benevolent faces of stone giants stared down. The two ninjas stopped for a moment, and one set fire to something the other was holding in front of him. The taller of the two cuffed him on the head, and they moved on. As they disappeared into the trees, there was another flash.

An entire army marched through the streets of a city, totally uniform, saluting their leader as they passed. They were so completely in step that the sound of their boots hitting the concrete could be heard even over the crowd. Flash. A different city now, or perhaps the same. I didn't matter. This one was in ruins. Fires burned on the horizon. War raged all around. Flash. An entire city disappears in a few seconds under the shadow of a giant burning cloud.

Flash – back to the forest again. It was comparatively calm, but still war waged. A giant mythical monster stood in a cloud of red, poised to destroy the village in front of it. A brave few stood before it making a last stand against it, posturing and threatening despite obviously being at a disadvantage. The best swished its tails and roared.

Flash.

They were in a dark room lit only by candles, standing in the middle of a chalk circle surrounded by pale blond men in black robes. A few of them gasped when they appeared. These people could see them, though they were still not completely out of the gate. It was as if they were staring out into the room from within the gate while being in the room itself as well. A pair of eyes looked down at Al, and recognition showed behind them. He pulled down his hood.

"Alphonse!"

"F… father?" Al stammered, still trying to take the situation in. Havoc glanced around the room. The men around the circle had stopped their chant at the man's exclamation. Al reached out from the gate towards Hohenhime.

"No! Stop!" Hohenhime stepped into the middle of the circle, and the room was gone, replaced by the white nothingness in front of the gate. He now stood facing the two of them. "It's not often we make it all the way to the gate… How were you so close by?"

The best Al could do was shrug. Havoc did his best to cover for his confusion, knowing that the Elrics were easily distracted into discussing their theoretical ideas.

"What's going on?"

"My current hypothesis is that when we get near the gate, we temporarily reverse the flow of energy between the worlds, drawing the people who happen to be close to the gate through." Hohenhime couldn't hide his excitement; this was obviously a big breakthrough for him, in more ways than one. "You must have been remarkably close to the gate to get pulled into it. And you were lucky enough to catch me when I was expecting it. Last time… last time caught me completely off guard. They were looking for something, or someone, and I couldn't help them at all. Oh, Edward would be so glad to hear about this… I had never really been brave enough to hope that the Thule society would get close through their research, let alone actually find you here. But here I am. And here you are! What were you doing?"

Al finally regained his voice. His jump from confusion to acceptance had been remarkably quick. Havoc was still trying to get a grasp on what was going on.

"It's really sort of weird to try to explain… I was just cleaning up after Rose's baby…"

"Rose? With the… Oh no... Not the one Dante..." he sighed. "She would leave loose ends lying around like that. That was how she sent me through the gate; with that poor child. In any person where the link between body and soul is weak, the gate can be summoned more easily. Using that idea, she drew an array onto the baby that could easily react to any kind of alchemy and summon someone to the gate… I see." Hohenhime nodded. "Surely you've also been researching the gate?"

"Yes, to get back to…"

"He's here. Or at least, he was. He went to research rockets." There was a hint of disapproval, or maybe amusement in his voice. "He didn't believe in what the Thule Society was doing."

"So…"

"No, I don't know where he is right now. But don't go through the gate if you find him. You'll have to pull him through yourself. Alchemy as you're used to it doesn't work here. When people in this world discovered ether, they immediately tried to turn its use to making lead into gold and creating the philosopher's stone. They skipped all the steps in between, and were never able to complete the theory. Since they were not using the power here, our home began to draw power out of this world through the gate, probably around 400 years ago, making our alchemy more powerful. I imagine some people here have made it through the gate on their own, but not many and I doubt it was on purpose. As far as I can tell, no one here researches things to an end that isn't greed or power. Our alchemy is pointed more towards material things though, which makes me wonder if there isn't also a third world connected through the gate that focuses its power on nonmaterial things…"

"I think we saw it…" Al nodded. Havoc continued to stare at the two in a sort of shock. This was beyond what he could understand, but he latched onto one small detail that connected in his mind.

"So then, what if people fell through that way, too?"

Hohenhime questioned, finally seeming to notice Havoc. "Wait… you? You've been here before. About a month ago…"

This was one of the few things Havoc could be sure about.

"Umm, no. I haven't."

"Oh, you haven't? Then… right. I wondered… this is important, then. As long as the other one wasn't just your counterpart…" He offered his hand to Havoc. "I am Hohenhime Elric. You'll see me again soon, so don't forget who I am. You… weren't with Al before. Where is Lt. Colonel Mustang, you worked for him, right?"

"He's a Brigadier General now… or, was…"

"I see..." Hohenhime paused a moment, weighing out the possibilities. "He died, then?"

Havoc paused, wondering what Hohenhime could be getting at.

"Yes."

"Ah! Yes! Excellent! That explains everything!" Hohenhime's sudden show of excitement made Havoc want to hit him, but he somehow restrained himself. "Then it's true! There is a third world!"

This time it was Al's turn to look confused.

"A third?"

"Yes! It would be hard to get to, but it must be there… Beautiful! This makes so much more sense now! We've never seen it, because unless there was a lot of power from the gate already being drawn at the same time in one world, energy would never jump across rather than down."

"Across? Down?"

"My theory is that the connection, if there are really three worlds, is that they are connected in a sort of triangle. The two more powerful worlds draw on the power of the world I'm in now, but not often from each other. It's strange… it's like the gate provides us a clue with the homunculus…" Hohenhime began to fade backwards towards the gate. A panicked look crossed his eyes. "Oh no... They're erasing the circle. I told them never to do that! Why would they…"

"Wait, what?" Al shouted after him, but he was gone. The doors of the gate opened again, and there was another flash.

They stood outside under a dark night sky. They could both see and not see the same blond they'd seen earlier as he left his father. They watched as he strapped himself into the cockpit of a large winged machine with its nose pointed towards the sky. He pushed a button, and fire erupted from the back. The pair wondered briefly if it was a new form of alchemical power, but something told them otherwise. The machine pointed straight up, aiming at a glittering star. It pushed up through the sky somewhat unsteadily, but it held its trajectory and slowly accelerated into the sky. The red light streaming away was an amazing sight. A few people stood on the ground, waving upwards as it faded from sight. There was another flash, this one red and from the direction of the rocket. The people on the ground gasped, and a wave of force travelled outwards. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Havoc felt the impact and was thrown backwards through the open doors of the gate, black and menacing this time, full once again with the bright eyes and reaching hands of the children that provided its guard against trespassers. They pulled him backwards into its depths. He called out to Alphonse, but he too had disappeared, straight backwards from where he'd stood before.