I'd like to take this moment to say a few things. First, I'd like to thank all you excellent, splendid reviewers that have reed and reviewed quite a few of my stories up to this point. You know who you are. I very much appreciate your time and effort to read and comment about my tales, it makes everything all the more worthwhile. Secondly, super credit to Kiyohiko Azuma for making all this writing I do possible in the first place, I have him to blame for my obsession! But that's a good thing. Thirdly, I might as well fill up space with another, uninterrupted reading from Kaorin's journal.

(ahem)

May 17th

Sakaki-sama...the weekend reprieve from viewing your glorious form has left me wanting more. Today I recieved that gift as I watched you stare out the window...what I would give to enter your thought if only for a moment. Do you think of me, Sakaki-sama? I think of you. You never leave my thoughts. Forever you shall stay in my heart. FOrever shall you be my one true love. Sakaki-sama, one day you will be mine and mine only. One day I will tell you how I feel, how my heart and body long for you. One day I will show you the true meaning of love.

Kaorin: (busts in from the basement) DEATH AWAITS YOU!

Jay: Olaf...please show this girl her room. (walks off as a massive Norwegian pro wrestler wrangles Kaorin into her room and locks her inside.)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hmm...", Osaka shifted her gaze to look at the portal from another angle. From where she was sitting it seemed to her as if the opening was slowly enlarging over the past fifteen minutes. Not much enlargement but it was indeed spreading across the floor.

A knock at the door broke her from her contemplations.

(For anyone who was wondering: Contemplation #1: The portal was opened not by mathematics but by Chiyo's dastardly pigtails! Contemplation #2: Leaving her behind was part of the pigtails plans to extract information from her after her friends were all lost in another world. Contemplation #3: The opening seems to be getting larger...hmmm)

"I have some snacks for you all if you'd like", said the slightly muffled voice of Chiyo's father from behind the door.

"Uh...uh...Don't come in!", Osaka answered hurredly.

"Is something the matter?", he asked.

"N..no. Umm..I'm naked! Don't come in!", she had thought of the first bright idea that had popped into her head.

"What? Where are the others?", Chiyo's father asked.

"They went out to umm...look for worms...", Osaka lied.

Chiyo's father turned and walked off, shaking his head, yet with a smile on his face.

"Those girls are wierd."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yomi and Chiyo suddenly found themselves surrounded by acres of sand. In the fading sunlight it looked at first to be a totally desolate land.

"Oh my...", said Chiyo, letting her gaze wander.

"Might this really be the place?", Yomi asked no one in particular.

"I hope so...You did think like Tomo didn't you?", Chiyo asked expectantly.

"Of course! It's easier than you would think after knowing her for so long.", saying this brought on a fresh wave of anxiety in the girl. Inwardly, she was truly terrified for her best friend.

"So...if you were Tomo where would you go?", Chiyo asked, scanning the horizon.

Yomi shaded her eyes from the still-bright sun and gazed into the distance.

"I think I can see towers.", she said.

"Where?", Chiyo asked excitedly, jumping up and down which almost made Yomi want to hug her for being 'so damn cute!'

"Off in the distance there. You can see them as shadows against the sun.", she said, pointing at the pinnacle towers.

"Ah! I see it!", Chiyo exclaimed. "Maybe we should head there? Tomo would have probably headed to that city right?"

"We can only hope.", Yomi sighed as they began their trek.

One hundred miles away the assembled forces of one Macedonian regent had turned their sights upon Persepolis.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kaorin and Kagura fell onto ground, hard, unforgiving ground.

"Damn, rough landing.", Kagura pointed out as she stood up in the rather cool air of the environment on the other side of the portal.

"Wow...could this really be where Sakaki-san is?", kaorin questioned, observing the pine forest a short ways away and the snow-capped mountain crags in the distance.

"Why wouldn't it be?", Kagura said smoothly. "You thought cool, didn't you?"

"Of course I did! No one knows how to think like Sakaki-san better than me!", Kaorin raged defensively.

"Yea, whatever.", Kagura waved off the protesting girl. "Where do you think she could have gone?"

"Hmm...if I were Sakaki-san I would...", Kaorin whispered as she turned 180 degrees before noticing a definate sign of life.

"Look behind those trees!", she shouted, pointing above a copse of firs.

Where she pointed smoke rose from behind the trees and wafted away on the breeze.

"Smoke?", Kagura said jauntily.

"Yes! Like a campfire!", said Kaorin, her excitement making the words merge together to be almost unintelligable.

"Hey! You might be right!", Kagura said, slapping Kaorin on the back enough to almost make her lose her footing.

The two girls quickly stepped across the short tundra grass and entered the small forest.

"Dark in here...", Kagura commented.

"Just keep going straight.", Kaorin commanded.

"Yea, yea, but..", Kagura stopped speaking and turned ninty degrees to stand at the ready.

"What?", Kaorin asked.

"I thought I just saw someone."

"Where?"

"Standing behind that log.", Kagura said, pointing to a mossy downed tree.

"Your...imagination can play tricks on you in a place as creepy as this.", Kaorin said, becoming anxious and developing an invoulentary shiver.

"Yeah...",Kagura agreed, not wanting to think about the alternatives.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As quoted in the Mathematica Obscura:

"With the formulas written in this tome, one can, with enough willpower, sever the barrier between the physical world and that of the others. Yet a warning still applies. When one breaks the fragile barrier, the uncontrolled tear is at the mercy of the unforgiving tides of the universe. So, I warn thee, do not open the path between worlds. The flow of time itself is disrupted. Two time passages cannot exist on the same material plane. Thus spells the doom of worlds."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------