Yeah, I know. I don't normally put the author's note up here. But I believe an explanation is in order. This is the ACTUAL chapter 14. The last part of the former one was written under the influence of a new job at 5:00am, going to bed at midnight two nights in a row (and getting up at 4:00), PMS, having two lab reports due at the same time, freaking out about midterms, feeling emotionally drained and psychologically strained, and large amounts of chocolate-almond-caramel ice cream.

Seriously. I'm not exaggerating at all. This was all happening at the same time. So the ending of the last one was what my mind thinks is funny at times like that. Yeah. Now you know why I write fanfiction instead of going on dates! ;

Anyway, here's the real one with the ending slightly more...normal?

(By the way, if you reeeeeeeeeeeally want to read the other one, tell me and I'll send it to you or post it somehow or something.)

Chapter 14—Listen to the Worlimegs

Two seconds. That was all it took. Two measly little seconds. One second Dean was laughing, the next he was lying on the floor. One minute all was well, the next—well, not so much.

BANG!

The door to Dean's apartment flew open. Ed whirled to face the assailants, anger and shock evident on his face. They killed Dean! How could they!

"Expeliarmus!"

"Expeliarmus!"

Luna was running into the living room from the kitchen and was hit twice with red light. Ed roared as she was lifted off the ground from the force of the spell and crashed into the wall. Dean! Luna! Ed's hands were already in his pockets when he felt a small prick on the side of his neck.

"Do it and I'll blow your head off," said a female voice of a witch with her wand at his neck.

Ed took his hands out of his pockets. They were coated in silver powder. If he could just find time to clap—

"Scourgify." The assailants all wore dark hooded cloaks rimmed in white and Ed couldn't see their faces, but this was a male's voice. "Sapius antimotor."

Ed could feel his muscles seizing up and felt a deadening in his metal limbs. Ah. So they had learned something from the last time.

One of the others that hadn't spoken yet Petrified Luna as she struggled to get to her feet. The other walked over to Dean and turned over his lifeless body.

"Note, I think we may have used too much cream of doxy tongues in the tracking set-up," he said conversationally.

The woman behind Ed peered over his head. Which was annoying. Why the heck was he so short?! "Shoot. I told you we put too much in."

The man named Note put his hood down, and Ed was finally able to see the man that seemed to be in charge of his second—or was it his third?—capture.

Great, thought Ed, if he turns out to BE like Colonel Mustang as well as LOOK like him, then this whole thing is really going to suck.

Not that it didn't already.

Note's de-cloaking seemed to be a cue for the rest of them. There were two other men, one with blonde hair the other with brown. They had rather non-descript, easily forgettable faces. The wand was removed from Ed's neck and a red-haired woman stepped out from behind Ed. She was quite pretty, Ed noted, but seemed to have a sort of professional air about her. The fact that she wasn't wearing high heels gave him a big heads up that she meant business.

"Charlotte, did you bring the antidote?" Wait. Antidote? Then Dean was just poisoned, he wasn't dead?

"I have it right here."

Ed watched as she pulled a small bottle full of red liquid out of her cloak. Note tipped the bottle slightly over Dean's open mouth. A drop fell onto his lips and slowly ran into his mouth. Dean swallowed and Ed would have sighed in relief if he could have.

"Petrificus totalus."

Shoot. Dean was Ed's last hope for getting out. These wizards seemed to know what they were doing a lot better than the last batch.

Note stood up and gave the red liquid back to Charlotte. He turned, and Ed braced himself.

"You're the Fullmetal Alchemist." Ed was glad his face was frozen, otherwise his jaw would have dropped to the floor.

"Unfreeze his face, Charlotte."

"Yes, sir." Charlotte muttered a spell and feeling rushed back into Ed's face.

"How do you know who I am?" Ed demanded.

Note sat on the couch and Ed's eyes followed him. "My name is Howard Note and I'm the head of the Office of Passage. These are my co-workers, Bill Williamson and Tom Hatch, and our secretary, Charlotte Troffs. We're here to help."

Ed snorted. "Yeah, right. Attacking us really makes me feel 'helped.' Besides, what's the Office of Passage?"

"The Office of Passage deals with traveling between worlds, finding Gates to other worlds, finding out information about different universes, and trying to find ways to get between them."

Ed's breath caught in his throat. "Have you found any ways to get between universes?"

Note grinned. "I'm the one asking the questions, Fullmetal. The first thing I want to know is how you came to be here."

Ed clamped his mouth shut. Unless forced to by that stupid truth potion, there was no way he was going to tell these wizards anything about anything. He could feel Dean's and Luna's eyes on him. He wouldn't let them down.

Bill sat beside his boss and pulled out a few file folders from his cloak. "Why don't we start with what we already know so you don't tell us that stuff. We already know your real name is Edward Elric. You are known as the Fullmetal Alchemist and have been getting more well known as the People's Alchemist. Your mother died when you were very young of an undisclosed sickness. Your brother's name is Alphonse Elric. He is younger than you. The both of you are very good at alchemy. You became a state alchemist so you could have access to the state library and could research on the Philosopher's stone."

Ed's eyes widened. How did they know all this?

Bill continued, "The reason for this research is unknown, but it is thought that it has something to do with the reason your brother always wears armor and why you have metal limbs. Oh, and the metal limbs were made by your childhood neighbors, the Rockbells."

The room was silent. Ed looked at the battered file folder in Bill's hand. How? How did they know all that? This world wasn't his, this universe wasn't his, and yet they knew almost as much about him as everyone in his old world did. How? He looked at Note.

"Well, it seems you know pretty much everything. I don't have anything else to tell you." Ed was glad his voice didn't shake.

Note smiled, and Ed was reminded of Colonel Mustang when he was about to try to weasel information out of someone. " 'Pretty much everything,' Ed. Not everything. So answer my question. How did you get here?"

Ed glared at him. "I don't know—how did you get here?"

Note raised an eyebrow coolly, but Ed was sensing some annoyance. Good. "I'll ask again: How did you get here?"

"Well, this guy came up to me and offered to sell me a watch from inside his coat, but when he opened his coat he was completely naked and I was so traumatized by the experience I passed out and when I came to I was lying in a field full of wild Yartinokies."

"That's not cute, Fullmetal."

"I know you're not, but what am I?"

"I don't know—seven?"

Ed clenched his teeth. "Don't call me short."

"But I didn't call you…" Note grinned. Evilly. "Bill, add that to the file. He doesn't like being called short."

Bill laughed and created a piece of parchment and a quill out of thin air. "The…Fullmetal…Alchemist…doesn't…like…being…called…short." He spoke as he scribbled the information.

Ed glared. They were just goading him. They didn't matter. Not at all. Show them you're better than they are. Breathe. In. Out. Calm.

"Shortie," muttered Tom.

That was it. Ed was about to explode when Charlotte interjected.

"Shut up, all of you." She turned to Ed. "Sorry about that, Edward. Despite the way my idiotic colleagues have been acting, we really do want to help you. We'd like to help you get back to your world, but in order for us to do that we need to know how you got here."

Ed grinned at the pretty red-head. "Call me Ed, please."

She smiled back. "Of course, Ed. Now, will you let us help you?"

"Please do," said Tom. "We haven't had this much to do since Bill thought he found the Bearer of the Subtle Knife at a muggle Renaissance Festival in Maine."

"Shut up, Tom," said Bill. "He was missing the right fingers!"

"Yeah," said Note sarcastically, "nobody besides the Bearer of the Subtle Knife can be missing a few fingers."

At which point Ed got completely confused and Luna burst out laughing harder than Ed had ever heard or seen. So, the petrifying curse had worn off, had it?

"That's funny!" exclaimed Luna. She got to her feet. "Ed, Ed, I think we should listen to them. The Worlimeg Rosa gave me isn't going off, so it means we can trust them!"

Ed sighed. "Luna…"

She looked at him and smiled innocently. "Mmhmm?"

It would probably be useless to try to explain to her that sometimes you didn't want to put all of your faith in a creature given to you by a Pyrovlar. "Fine." Just because he agreed to it didn't mean that he would trust them.

"Wonderful." Note held out his hand to Ed. "I look forward to working with you."

There was a pause.

"You know, even if you don't like me you should at least shake my hand."

"You know, I would, except there's this spell on me that's preventing me from moving." Ed's tone didn't need to add the implied 'idiot' at the end.

"Ah. Charlotte, would you do the honors?"

Charlotte unfroze Ed and Dean, and the two boys reluctantly shook Note's hand.

"And now we're all friends!" said Luna happily.

"Right," said Ed.

"Right," said Dean.

And they exchanged a glance that anything but agreed.

"So, how did you get here?"

Ed growled under his breath. Note hadn't dropped the question even though they were all sprawled in his apartment. Dean's wasn't really conducive to getting acquainted—it was too small and too dirty. Note's was marginally cleaner, but that was only because he had room to spread his junk around.

"I'd like to know too, Ed." Ed looked over at Luna, who had her Spectrespecs dangling around her neck and a yogurt spoon dangling from her mouth. Ed felt his insides start to melt the same way they always did when Al tried to sneak a kitten home. He sighed. He really should have let Al keep at least one.

"I transmutated myself here."

Silence, broken by Tom. "You're kidding, right?"

Ed shook his head.

Tom whistled.

Note seemed puzzled. "But why? From all of what I've heard, your world seemed fine. A little war-torn, but then so is this one. Why did you want to come here?"

Ed looked away from the quizzical looks. "I didn't want to come here. I didn't even know where I was going. But I had to…um…get out of my world."

"Why?" asked Note.

Ed looked at him, stone faced. "That's really none of your business."

"But it might help! Every detail is crucial when trying to construct an inter-world portal!"

"I think you should drop it," said Luna. Which surprised everyone, including Ed. She was the only one he had told his entire story to, and evidently she understood that she needed to keep that confidential. Ed felt suddenly grateful to whatever had landed him in Luna's mother's cemetery.

"Why didn't you just transmutate yourself back, then?" asked Charlotte.

"Transmutation doesn't work the same here. I have to use this powder, and there's interference from your magic. I would need a completely different circle to account for all the differences, and I don't know where to start."

Dean placed the pictures they had found in front of the members of the Office of Passage. "We think if we can find some Crumple-Horned Snorkacks they might be able to help. We found these in relation to them and we think that if we find enough things like this we may be able put them together and create a different transmutation circle in order to get Ed home."

Note looked at the pictures. "This is really good stuff, guys."

Dean nodded. "The only problem is we don't know exactly what and how to put them together. If we could find the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks they would be able to tell us, but we don't know where to find them."

"Hmm." Note rubbed his chin. He looked at his coworkers. "Do we have any leads on their location?"

"No, sir," replied Charlotte. "There were a few leads a while back in relation to the Bermuda Triangle, but nothing substantial was ever discovered."

"Yeah, I remember that."

"The Bermuda Triangle?" Dean interjected.

Bill nodded. "We think there might be a portal of some sort there—you know, people and things keep disappearing. We sent a recon crew there a few years back but they came up with nothing."

Ed glanced at him. "A recon crew? There are more of you?"

Tom rolled his eyes. "Are you kidding? We're the laughing stock of the entire Ministry of Magic. No one wants to work in the Office of Passage unless they've had some sort of experience with different worlds."

"You've all had experience with other worlds?"

Note shrugged. "More or less. Charlotte's father was the previous head of the Office. I got stuck Between Apparating and found out a few things there that sparked my interest. Bill is muggle-born and has always enjoyed reading fantasy books, which apply directly to this line of work. Tom comes from a family of dream interpreters, which is crucial to our success."

Ed tried to look like he understood what Note was talking about.

Dean didn't really even try. "So I kind of get why fantasy books apply, but dreams? What does that have to do with anything? And the darkness Between Apparating?"

Note smiled. Ed was beginning to notice that whenever Note smiled, he felt stupid. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. "Everything comes from alternate universes. Dreams, imagination, ideas—they reach our minds through tiny channels into other worlds that leak into ours constantly. Every book tells one of their stories. When the mind is sleeping, pieces of parallel worlds can reach into our minds easier. That's why most dreams are so random. A dream interpreter can put those pieces together."

Ed was starting to understand. "So where do Crumple-Horned Snorkacks fit into all of this?"

"They are the universe hoppers. They have every piece to every puzzle in every universe. They could definitely send you home."

"And that's why we're trying to find them!" shouted Luna. Everyone jumped and looked at her. She twirled around with her hand over her head. Suddenly Luna leaped straight up with a yell, making everyone else jump again, and pointed in a random direction. "Let's go that way!"

And Ed found himself grabbed rather painfully by the arm and marched off to discover the strange world of wizards, Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, and Luna Lovegood.

Hopefully he could keep his sanity intact.

It wasn't likely.

This was kind of an explanation chapter as well, but the plot is getting going again! I'm going to be progressing the plot a little more next chapter. Yay!

Thanks for all the reviews! I love you all!

churu

PS. Cheesecake ice cream is even better than chocolate-almond-caramel. Just so you know.