"No... NO!" Kipo cried, frustrated. Her hand was on the wolf, desperately trying to force it into the cavern, but it was like the tiny figure had turned to stone and rooted itself to the table. It wouldn't budge. "No, go help them, please! Why aren't you-?"

"It's made out of WOOD!" Gale finally snapped. "The heat would kill it. It still has some sense of self preservation!"

"I..." Kipo gulped, still worried, but she laid back anyway. The strained note in Gale's voice got to her in a way that she didn't think he was lying. "Is there anything we can do?"

Gale hummed. "I already answered this."

Kipo groaned. "So, there's nothing we can do but watch?! But I want to help-."

"I told you, there's nothing," Gale snapped, somewhat impatiently. "We-."

Suddenly, the room they were in shock violently, and the light shining from the screen on the desk went out.

"What the-?" Kipo said, and Gale growled.

"He's found us," Gale huffed, as he stood up (well, his eyes went higher, at least), but as he did, he seemed to stop, thinking. "Hm... actually..."

Gale sat down again, and his eyes closed. Around them, the room continued to shake violently, and suddenly, it tipped to the left, sending Kipo down to the floor and sliding to the wall. She collided with it painfully, because she even knew what was happening, and let out a cry of surprise.

Gale didn't even give her a glance, and when he spoke, it was calmly, despite everything going on. "Well, since your up, go to the window, I want to see who's attacking us."

"I thought it was that God?" Kipo called out, before a much more important question occurred to her. "Wait, what window?"

"If it was the God we'd be dead already," Gale answered smoothly. "And it's the window behind the desk, obviously."

Kipo's brow furrowed, but when she looked, the window was there, just as Gale said. Kipo blinked at it. It hadn't been there before, Kipo was certain was it.

The house suddenly groaned, loudly, and tilted to the other side. Kipo's face hit the floor, and just like before, she slid across the floor to the other wall. However, this time she was at least somewhat prepared. She shifted her right arm to her jaguar form and dug her claws into the wooden floor, effectively stopping her slide.

Kipo could hear Gale's scoff of disapproval, but he didn't say anything other than: "Just remember, you should probably get to the window sooner rather than later."

"I know, I'm going," Kipo said, and relinquished her grip on the floor. This time, her slide was a lot more controlled, and she dropped down to the floor (er, wall). But using it like a floor, she made her way to the desk, still in the same place it was before, despite the rooms tilting. In fact, Kipo seemed to be the only one it even effected.

Kipo shook her head. How often did this happen to Gale, for him to bolt down everything in the small cabin (not that there actually was much, and it seemed to come and go as it please)? He and this God must meet a lot for him to take this precautions... actually, speaking of which, what was even happening? Was the little cabin actually tilted on its side?

Now with a mystery in front of her, Kipo scaled the wall (... technically the floor) up to the window, and opened the two dark brown curtains in front of her, making sure not to get her claws tangled. Then, she looked outside the cabin, eager to get a peek of what was happening.

However, she didn't actually see anything. Outside the door was covered in a deep, impenetrable mist of rain, the same rain Kipo had been hearing ever since she stepped into the cabin. Kipo squinted, but she couldn't make out anything there, not even the buildings of the town that she came from. It was completely grey, an utter void.

"Well, what is it?" Gale asked her, some of his annoyance leaking through. Kipo frowned.

"I, well... there's nothing there-," Kipo started, but suddenly, something dark hit the window. Kipo flinched away, and nearly fell from her spot on the floor. There was... a thing... Kipo wasn't sure how to describe it, because it was horribly disfigured from squashing on the window like a bug. But in the black mass of... whatever that thing had been, Kipo could see teeth, human-like teeth, and eyes. They looked at her, even though Kipo was certain that thing couldn't be alive anymore.

"Hey, you still didn't-!" Gale shouted, and it snapped Kipo out of her horror.

"It's dead!" Kipo yelled back. "It-It crashed into the window!"

"Crashed into the window, huh..." Gale muttered to himself. "Oh, a flyboy. I see. Alright, hang on, I suppose."

To Kipo's horror the house turned again, but not back to the floor. It rolled the other way, towards the ceiling, and as it did, Kipo's claws started slipping out of the gorges in the ground, and in a panic Kipo pushed up from the floor to the desk. Her (now human) hands gripped onto the desk handle, and she held onto it with all her strength. But she must have jostled it, because it started opening, dipping under her weight. Quickly, Kipo scrambled to the desk, climbing into the space underneath it.

Kipo held her breath, but the desk held. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Are you okay?" Gale asked her, and he sounded smug. Kipo rolled her eyes.

"I'm alright," she said. "Just... bruised. Um..."

"We'll get sorted in a moment," Gale told her, less snarkily than he usually was. Apparently, her getting hurt put him in a good mood. "We're just moving."

"Moving?" Kipo asked, frowning. That didn't sound right. "The house is?"

"...Really?" Gale replied. Kipo could practically feel his disappointed look on her, even if she couldn't see him, and vise versa. Kipo sighed. She supposed she hadn't seen the cabin before the storm anyway.

"Nevermind, nevermind," Kipo sighed.

Gale seemed ready to say something else, but the house shook before he could form the words. Kipo grit her teeth, and tried not to yell out as she was banged around in her little shelter.

Gale let out an annoyed growl. "Just be quiet and let me concentrate," he said. "I'll get us out of here and to someplace safer. Your friends need to hurry up. There's no where we can go that he can't follow."

Kipo didn't bother replying to that, but she's pretty sure that's what he wanted anyway. Instead, she turned her attention to the desk. She hadn't thought she would get in again, so Kipo knew she couldn't squander this opportunity.

Kipo took out her knife, glad it didn't fall out, and took out her knife, sticking it into the drawer and feeling the lock give away easily under it.

Kipo made sure to open the thing up slowly, but even with how cautious she was, something slipped out, nearly falling to the floor, before Kipo desperately grabbed it out of the air.

"What are you doing back there?" Gale yelled. "Be quiet!"

"I know, I'm sorry!" Kipo called back, and luckily, Gale didn't bother saying anything back.

Kipo took what she had caught from the air, gently pushing the drawer back shut. She studied the little object in her hands, at first not one hundred percent sure what she was looking at. It was... a little book, she realized, a very crumpled up and dirty little, leather-bound book that Kipo could tell at a glance needed to be handled with care. As softly as she could, she opened it up to the first page.

It was unreadable. The book, a journal (was it Gale's?), perhaps, looked like it had been drowned one too many times then it could handle, and most of the ink had bled together. Kipo sighed, a little frustrated, but she slowly flipped through the rest of the book anyway, just to check. Most of it was as she thought, with some of the pages stained with black ink and others completely torn up or crumpled.

However, some pages were preserved in a way that Kipo could sort of read them, but those pages were the most delicate of all, and Kipo had to be careful to scarcely breath on it, or it would tear.

With immense difficulty, Kipo read.

[Illedable] told me that the trees here grew quickly and suddenly once, and then never grew again. The same trees I'm seeing now will be the same ones that someone 4,000 years ago will see. It'll be exactly the same in the future as it is right now. Strange, huh?

I wonder why no more trees with grow. Hurricane said that that might be his friends fault.

The rest of the page was torn off, and though it continued on the page after it, Kipo couldn't make out more than a couple words that meant nothing on their own. Kipo continued on.

The next legible page was a little bit away, and it didn't have much.

Piranha doesn't seem to know what will kill a person and what won't, because she won't stop forcing me into these dangerous situations for 'fun'. I don't know how much fun she's having, because she never seems to enjoy these games. Still, when she tells me, she seems enthusiastic.

I feel safe, though. One time, I almost fell into a river of lava when we were lava surfing. Piranha saved though, though it looked like she wanted to throw me into the lava.

Kipo frowned at the page. The context for the page was completely gone, so she probably couldn't make a judgement. Instead, Kipo just wondered. Since the notebook seemed to have been filled out to the end, it was clear that Piranha never actually killed the writer, so maybe that was a point in her favour.

However, it's not like Kipo knew her, so she supposed she wouldn't know. She moved on to a page were the last half was missing but the second half was still readable.

Star seemed pretty interested in where I came from, and I'm happy talking about it. I drew it in a picture, and Star said it's like nothing she's ever seen. It's a little strange, though, because Alligator said there used to be a lot of stuff like that. I don't know why either of them would lie about that, not like Sn[illegible}

It seems there's a mystery here, but I'm not sure I want to solve it. Anyway, I put my drawing of my home here: it's my family's apartment :)

The picture was long gone, unsurprisingly, but what got Kipo's attention was the wording of 'apartment'. Kipo studied the page more closely. Was Gale, if this was his diary at all, from another world as well? How long has he been here? And the people he was mentioning, Star, Alligator, Hurricane... were they also from different worlds, too? Kipo frowned at the notebook. How old was it? Where had Gale been from originally? What happened to his friends?

Kipo gulped. And why wasn't he ever able to get out?

Kipo started flipping through the book again, but before she could find anything else, gravity suddenly shifted. Before she really knew what was happening, she was suddenly in a crumbled mess on the ceiling (floor?) with her head throbbing.

"...Ow?" Kipo said, not because she really meant it, but because it felt like something she should say when she's in pain.

"Oh, right," Gale said, and Kipo could hear the smirk in his voice. "We're here now."

Groaning, Kipo picked herself up her the floor and out from under the desk, discretely hiding the notebook in her pocket (and really hoping the knife didn't cut it). When Kipo looked around, she saw that she was the most dishevelled thing here. Even Gale looked fine, but she couldn't really see him anyway.

"I suppose I should have warned you," Gale said, but Kipo was almost completely certain he was lying. She stepped forward (it was painful) and slipped back into her seat while he watched, looking pleased with himself. As Kipo settled, Gale switched on the screen. On her pocket, Kipo could feel the weight of the notebook in her pocket. And briefly wondered if she should ask Gale about it. But before she could really decide, the screen came to life as static.

Kipo and Gale stared at it. It hadn't down this before.

"What is this?" Kipo asked, and her panic was starting to creep back into her stomach. "Where are Kris and Norman?"

Gale didn't answer, he only continued glaring at the screen, and Kipo felt that he was just as confused as she was.

"Hm... They went beyond where I can see them," he eventually answered. Kipo frowned at him.

"What?"

"...There's only so far my... technology can reach," Gale explained, though he didn't sound happy about it. "And your friends just went beyond it."

"This never happened before," Kipo pointed out, and before Gale could roll his eyes and say something sarcastic, she continued. "What if they need our help? Isn't there anything you can do? Any item or tool?"

"If your friends went further into the mountain, there's nothing we can do to help, because we can't even find them," Gale remarked dryly. "Besides, there's not much we can do with our paper and wood against lava. We'll have to move on."

"But-," Kipo started, but Gale glared at her, clearly impatient.

"We literally can't do a thing for them, so instead of sitting her and twiddling our thumbs, we should move. On," Gale huffed. Kipo shook her head.

"That's not it," Kipo said. She narrowed her eyes at the static on the screen. "Why isn't it... paused? It was every other time."

"Oh... that." Kipo watched as Gale seemed to deflate at her question. Clearly, he hadn't expected her to ask. "Well... when I was getting the house away from the flyboys, time got a little... screwed up. I wasn't concentrating. I also never did actually pause it, the screen just stopped."

"Oh," Kipo said, slumping back. She'd forgotten that.

"I couldn't do anything," Gale defended.

"Oh," Kipo said again.

"...Shall we move on?" Gale asked her. Kipo hesitated. There was a pit of worry forming in her stomach, but even though it felt wrong and like a betrayal, Kipo nodded anyway. There was nothing she could do. Probably.

Slowly, Kipo nodded.

The screen flickered back to life, now showing Kai, Mira and Tulip.