(Author's Note: Okay... so I'm having a bit of trouble with writer's block on the ending, so updates might slow down here soon in some kind of effort to budget the chapters until the end. Also, in the final edit of this, there's actually another chapter between this one and the last one that clears up a lot of random loose ends, but I didn't get it done and probably won't get it done until after I write out the ending... Plus, it's getting sort of hard to update regularly so close to Christmas. That's about the end of my excuses, though. Oh, and in many ways I consider a large part of this chapter to basically be cheating. But.. well, it's the only way things will work out in the end. Hehehe. There, excuses done (but there are still no words for how much I hate QuickEdit). On with the chapter!)

Havoc followed Hughes down the street. He'd given up on wearing Roy's shoes and switched back to his tennis shoes, but he felt ridiculous. He hoped that the shoe store was nearby despite Roy's sarcastic warnings about the shopkeeper. A few blocks later they arrived in front of the little storefront, but Havoc had already given up on the shoes and was walking barefoot, feeling that people were less likely to stare at someone who was barefoot. Though the shop was usually an enigma for anyone who didn't need it themselves, Hughes always seemed to be able to find it easily. Havoc wasn't sure what to expect as he walked in the door. The place smelled musty, but it didn't look threatening or even all that strange. There were just boxes upon boxes of shoes, and an old lady behind the counter. Her smirk was a little unnerving, but that was it. She pulled out three boxes from under the counter and ushered Havoc to the small bench in the centre of the room, handing him the shoes to try on. The first two pairs were close, but didn't quite fit. The third did, however. Havoc was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. The lady hadn't said a word since he'd come in. She'd just kept smirking at him. True, that was a little weird, and she seemed to be studying him, but normally something as trivial as a leering old woman wouldn't bother Roy so much. He put on the new shoes and paced around the room, getting a better feel for them. When he sat down at the bench again, the lady leaned over and whispered something to him in a language Hughes didn't understand. Havoc looked vaguely startled to hear the language and paused a moment before responding.

"Diese sind fein, Ich nehme sie."

The shopkeeper's smile widened into an almost manic grin.

"Beautiful! Your accent sounds almost… French," she smiled, switching back to a language more native to Konoha. "I've been waiting for you. I should have known you'd come last, even if it is out of the proper order. You're the only one that can see it, and being too early would spoil the show. Ah, thank goodness for your mother. Her lot was strange, certainly, but if it weren't for them we'd all be doomed."

Havoc did his best not to openly gawk at her. She sounded like she was just picking out random sentences to sound mysterious. It was easy to make connections with vague prophecies, but the fact that she knew his mother was French startled him. His mother's side of the family hadn't called themselves French since they'd emigrated from France more than a hundred years ago. He remembered his mother's stories about their emigration, too. She hadn't been there, but it lived on as a sort of family myth that naturally no one believed any longer; after all there was no place called France. It had been during a revolution in France - La Révolution, with two capital letters. Her family had decided to escape using some strange dessert called "Pierre Rouge." Supposedly their goal was to create something so delicious, it would sweep whoever ate it away to another world. He'd always been amused by the name. It had also been the name of his uncle and one of his cousins. For a crackpot story, it definitely pervaded the family, but they'd always been known for their strange occult ideas. It was part of the reason Havoc had joined the military; at least they had some discipline and, well, sanity. But now this was just getting creepy. He tried to ignore the woman as she got more and more into her story, waving her arms and almost dancing around the room.

"Mmm, it's because she taught you, you see! Otherwise you'd never notice that this is all in a different language," she practically giggled, and continued in an almost singsong tone, turning part of her attention to Hughes. "Ah, and don't worry about his training, Sir Nigredo. The lovely thing about those that can hear the different tongues for what they are is that they have a talent here. Une puissance pour comprendre la vérité et les mensonges. Parce que vous voyez les deux au même temps, vous pouvez manipuler que les autres peuvent voir. La vérité et la réalité sont à vous." She smiled at Havoc again. "Think about it."

"Um… thank you. Merci." Havoc managed to smile back at her, trying to keep his brain from following the ridiculous links his mind was busy making. Hughes paid for the shoes and they walked out. As they left, the lady bowed to them and smiled. A friendly smile this time, like they were people she had always known.

"If you need me, he knows how to find me. All you need to do is remember my name. Kamino Mekanikaru. Mei for short."

Havoc mentally translated the name, and smiled. He wondered if she'd named herself that, or if the world really had a sense of humour.

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Roy sat at his desk, staring out the window. He'd adopted a corner of Hughes' living room as his own for studying. He'd amassed a few books, but most of them were just there to be books. Ninjas rarely wrote down their theories on chakra, and when they did they weren't very informative. He even had a copy of Icha Icha Paradise he'd borrowed from Kakashi stashed away in one of the drawers, but he'd only read through it once. Ninjas, he found, were depressingly bad writers, though he felt oddly compelled now to see the movie. He'd imagined that the book maybe had some sort of brainwashing technique written into it, then told himself he was being ridiculous and put it away.

He stared at the scribbling in his notebook. It all boiled down to some very unusual theories, but since he knew he had to have eventually figured it out, he had to start somewhere. Though, he reminded himself, Havoc hadn't mentioned how old they were when Hohenhime saw them. Hohenhime… he laughed to himself. He never thought that he'd find himself taking much of his research seriously. When he had known him briefly in Amestris he'd already been researching about the gate, though no one recognized it for what it was. However, at the time it seemed that most of his theories boiled down to chanting around a circle in black hooded robes, whimsical silliness - nothing that looked like serious science. Because he was a bit eccentric though, not many people recognized the significance of Hohenhime's research. They mostly focused on his earlier works in human transmutation. That had been what Roy had gone to see him about, after the Ishbar war. Hohenhime had only given half-baked theories on it when he'd asked directly, though, and his actual research was impossible to decode. Thinking back on it, perhaps Hohenhime had intended for people to think he was a little strange. What better way to keep people away from the powerful and dangerous parts of his research? Look where it'd gotten him. If it wasn't for him and that Dante person, they wouldn't be scattered across three different worlds. He sighed. The mental justification for what he was about to do didn't quite match up, but he pushed the chair back and stood up from the desk anyway. He slipped on his shoes at the door and walked out, then disappeared onto the roofs of Konoha.

He returned about fifteen minutes later with a small specimen in hand and set to work. Maybe, if he was lucky, he could get everything set up before Hughes and Havoc even returned home. After practicing a few more arrays on the paper at his desk, he picked up a marker and sketched the array onto the specimen. He patted it and put it back down on the ground, then turned back to his papers. There was nothing more he could do on this particular front until the two of them returned, so he pulled the stone from his pocket. They were running later than he'd thought.

He turned the stone over in his hand, inspecting it. No matter which way he turned it, the colours inside remained in exactly the same positions. If he moved it up and down though, they shifted slightly. It was like a sort of compass. But what good did that do, if it didn't actually tell him anything about what it was pointing towards? Setting it on the desk, he poked at it with the pencil, tapped it with the eraser, spun it around. On a whim, he picked it up and tasted it. It was breaking a major rule of science ("Don't taste your experiment, no matter how good it smells…" This was also his excuse for never cooking), but for some reason it seemed like a good idea. It tasted like a normal stone would, however, and there was no change in its colours. Well, if all else failed…

He wiped the stone and set it down on his desk again in the centre of one of the circles he'd drawn in his notebook. He tried activating the array around it, and though it didn't summon the gate as it was intended to, the stone's colour changed to a bluer shade while he supplied energy to the array. As soon as he pulled his hands away however, it returned to its original colours. Raising an eyebrow at the strange little stone, he tried a jutsu on it. This time, it changed to red for a moment before fading back to its default state. So, perhaps it detected the type of power… Roy sat back in his seat and stared at it. There was a lot of fun he could have learning about something like this.

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Havoc stood against the wall of the closest thing Konoha had to a general store. He held two cartons of cigarettes possessively to his chest with his left hand while he held his cigarette with his right. The lady behind the counter (who was, thankfully, nothing at all like Mei) had been shocked. No one, she said, had cleaned them out so thoroughly since Asuma had given up on his last attempt at quitting, and that had been years ago. Hughes stood next to him, several bags of groceries and various other items they'd gathered throughout the day sitting at his feet. Havoc took a long drag from the cigarette, then slowly let the smoke drift back out of his mouth.

"Hmm… they taste sort of different here," he took another drag. "But I guess the effect is the same."

Hughes sniffed the air.

"Are you sure you should be smoking those?"

"Tobacco is tobacco, Hughes." Havoc remarked with the weight of a philosophical statement. "It's probably just grown differently here."

"Hmm…"

Havoc leaned back and closed his eyes halfway. He seemed to concentrate on something for a second, then turned his attention back to his cigarette. Hughes watched as two odd chimera creatures hopped by. They stopped in front of him and stared.

"Hen desu, yo?" the shorter one said.

"Oui, il est bizarre," the taller replied, staring up at Hughes. "Regarde à-t-il. Il pense que nous n'existons pas." The two gave Hughes one last look, then seemed to poof out of existence. Hughes glanced over at Havoc.

"That's not nice, you know."

"What's that? I'm the one smoking here, I don't think it's fair that you're the one having hallucinations."

Hughes shook his head.

"I can't believe you took what Mei had to say to heart so easily. If she had told Roy anything useful the first time he saw her, he never would have believed her."

"What about the second time?"

"He won't tell anyone what she said." Hughes shifted his weight to his other foot. "Why did you believe her?"

"As far as I know, no one but my mother's family speaks French in Amestris. As far as I know it's a dead language where they actually came from, and nearly dead at home. To hear it here was just too surreal."

"But you caught on so quickly."

"Yeah… I don't know. I guess it just sort of makes sense. I don't think about it too much, because I know if I do, it'll get too complicated. I don't know how Roy deals with all of it."

Hughes shrugged.

"We should probably head back."

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The two arrived at the apartment again a few minutes later. Roy still sat at his desk, staring down at his papers. When they pushed the door open, however, he quickly threw some of them back into his desk and kicked something underneath. It made a small "mew" noise. Hughes paused on his way to the kitchen counter with an armful of groceries.

"What was that?"

Havoc walked over and looked under the desk.

"Roy, I thought you were a dog person."

Roy looked down under the desk at the kitten. It rolled over on its back and purred. Roy petted it with his foot, though the move looked more like he was trying to hide something.

"I am. I wouldn't do this to a dog."

Hughes looked concerned and walked over. He bent down and pulled the kitten out from under his desk. Roy leaned back in his chair and looked up at the two of them. He watched Hughes trace over the array painted onto its stomach.

"What the heck?"

"What? Do you expect me to use an actual baby? This is the closest I can get."

"So this is how you plan to open the gate?"

"Well, I know the concept works. It's just the application that's a problem. First of all I don't know how the power flow works in this world, so I'm going to assume that it doesn't flow directly back to Central or else Al probably would have found a way to contact us by now. I think we'll have to communicate through Hohenhime. I hope he's listening."

Havoc stared at Roy as he rambled off his theory.

"You know, it's so easy to forget how much of a geek you are."

Roy grabbed the kitten from Hughes and shoved it into Havoc's hands.

"Hold this."

Roy clapped his hands together and pressed his right hand against the array on the kitten. It glowed a light blue, but nothing else seemed to happen. Roy looked up at Havoc, vaguely confused.

"Havoc, try to think of how you got to the gate last time."

Havoc for a moment considered trying to trick Roy, since he didn't yet know about his sudden talent for genjutsu. The moment the thought crossed his mind, however, he felt himself kicked forward. The two found themselves standing in front of the gate again. The kitten Havoc was holding began to squirm and claw. He turned and looked at Mustang expectantly. Roy shrugged, and Havoc let the kitten go. The gate remained. He took a step closer, then turned back to Havoc.

"Did Hohenhime mention where he was?"

"No."

Roy paused for a moment, considering this, then looked back again at Havoc. He didn't seem to like to look away from the gate for long, almost entranced by it, drawn in by its power.

"Havoc, I'm going to try something stupid. Please pull me back if I wander too far in."

Havoc nodded as Roy walked forward to the partially-opened doors of the gate. He took a breath, closed his eyes, and stepped halfway inside. The laughing children were once again ominously missing. Roy called out into the blankness in front of him, his mind searching over what it could grasp of the things behind the door. There had to be some clue about Hohenhime's whereabouts. There! He caught it for a second: the fleeting image of a group of solemn men standing around a circle, chanting. He almost smiled. The very epitome of Hohenhime's strange research. He held his hand out towards the image and grabbed at it. A hand from behind him reached in and pulled back, but he kept his hand closed. Suddenly, he and Havoc stood in the centre of a large array, facing Hohenhime. The circle of men seemed to move erratically. Sometimes forward, sometimes backwards. Hohenhime looked up at them from under his hood and stared. He looked absolutely shocked, like the last thing he had expected to see other than the gate was the gate with actual people in it. Several of the people standing around the circle pulled their hoods closer and averted their eyes, continuing their chant as the scene seemed to come into focus. Hohenhime stepped forward, but remained at the edge of the circle staring at them. A faint bit of recognition showed in his eyes when he looked at Roy, but he was unable to make any connection as to who he really was. Roy stepped out towards them, but Havoc held him back, pointing to the line on the ground where the white light of the gate merged with the grey floor of the room. If he crossed that line, he would probably be lost again. A few of the men around them started to mumble something about gods or demons, and Hohenhime shook his head and pulled back his hood. He still remained behind the chalk line, but he made the effort to communicate.

"Hello?" he tried. "Do you speak English?"

Roy stared at him.

"Of course we speak English. What do you think?" Hohenhime looked the two of them up and down again, and the murmuring in the background intensified. Hohenhime scolded them in a language foreign to Roy's ears, but somehow he found he was able to understand it, and he doubted it was only because of the context. He wondered if this was yet another way the gate was able to affect people.

"I'm sorry. I've never seen anyone dressed the way you are, I had no idea what language you might speak."

Roy looked down at his clothes and smirked. He'd forgotten how oddly he was dressed. He shrugged at Hohenhime. Suddenly he and Havoc heard voices behind them. Somehow the gate hadn't taken them away completely, and they could still hear Hughes telling someone else in the apartment to stay back. Roy started to say something, when the shouting behind them became louder.

"Yamero yo!" Hughes shouted, and for a second he and a second person appeared before the gate, then just as quickly Roy and Havoc found themselves back at the apartment. Roy stared at Hughes as he yelled at Genma for interrupting them. Genma shrugged, saying that he'd just been curious about what was going on. Apparently he had just picked up the cat and was playing with it. It was good to know that someone could be brought back quickly by using the kitten, though. Roy said nothing as the other three talked further. He was half thinking of the trip through the gate, and now half transfixed by their conversation. He wondered how he'd never heard it as a different language before, though obviously he'd been speaking it himself for months now. After a while, Genma resumed his strange staring at Havoc. Havoc glared at him.

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"Sorry," finally Genma decided to give an answer. "I feel like I know you from somewhere." He turned to leave and tapped the key he'd left on the kitchen table. Obviously he and Hughes had been talking about something else before Genma had interrupted them at the gate. "Hughes, please make sure you take care of that, okay?"

Havoc rolled his eyes as Genma left, but waited until the door had closed and he was sure that Genma was far enough away before he started complaining.

"What on earth is with him?"

"Don't mind him Havoc. He doesn't want to admit it, but I think he's somehow fit you into the prophecy Mei gave him."

"Oh…"

"Don't believe everything she tells people, though. I think she was just trying to make him feel better." Roy shook his head and pushed his hair out of his face in frustration. The conversation had changed smoothly back into English after Genma had left. "Oh, by the way Roy, I think Havoc can help us out here more than we thought."

"Oh?"

"Apparently Mei explained genjutsu to him, but half of it was in French."

"Mei did?" Roy paused for a moment and stared at Havoc. "Wait, French?"

"My mom…"

"Oh, right. I didn't know you spoke that too, though."

"I knew."

"But you know everything about my staff, Hughes. It's like you stalk them."

"Only their files."

"Anyway, Havoc, care to demonstrate this newfound skill for us? I can't believe someone actually took her seriously their first time there… and that she said something useful to you on your first visit. Something is definitely foul in the air."

Havoc ignored Roy's scepticism and closed his eyes again for a moment. Around Roy and Hughes the walls of the apartment seemed to shimmer and change. Suddenly, they were back in Central, all three in their uniforms, their new ranks proudly shown on their epaulettes. The office was slightly different, more stately and refined; the office of a high-ranking military officer in peaceful times. It felt real for a moment, and then it was gone again. No one said a word, but Roy nodded and smiled a sad smile at Havoc. There was no question why Havoc had chosen to show them this. They were all more than a little homesick. This wasn't how it was supposed to end, with everyone scattered around these alternate worlds; there was something more important waiting for them elsewhere. Roy swore then that he'd get them all back home, that they'd make sure things had a proper ending.