1ST DECEMBER 2009

I look nothing like myself.

More like I've come out of some japanese anime about cute schoolgirls.
My face is manga-like (in fact, everything is), and I have light brown dyed hair.

I'm sitting in a large room with walls that are slate dark turqiose in colour.
The sofas in the room are black and made of leather, there's a glass art to my right of two large goldfish swimming around each other (chinese style) and to my left is an artificial waterfall with more glass as the background. The room is dim, with the settee surrounding yet another glass coffee table and a flat black tv playing some sort of programme that I can't quite make out.

I'm sitting on the sofa that's to the right of the tv, while all around me on the sofa directly facing the tv and the sofa to the left of the tv are others who I don't recognise. Behind the sofa that directly faces the tv stands two men, leaning against yet another glass wall and looking detached from the rest of us. One man reminds me of Shiki from a game called "Togainu no Chi", while the other has black shoulder-length hair and glasses that make him look like a school teacher. Everyone else appears to be female.

I later learn that we have all been assembled to take part in a special assignment given to us by a person whom I never get to see or hear. We all split into two groups, the first called Monet and the second called Shate. Despite the groupings, I end up being paired up with the one who looks like Shiki (so i will use this name to refer to him). Shiki has a motorcycle which we mount to go around on our assignment. Apparently in this "world", there are large floating spheres which look like gold glitter floating in clusters in the air, that help to keep the Earth's balance stable and prevents it from falling apart. Due to some irregular circumstance, the spheres had been scattered all over the city (which spans the size of Los Angeles) and our job was to hunt down each sphere and collect it so that they could be returned to the place that they had to be returned to.

Shiki and I managed to find one easily, as it was awkwardly floating in the middle of a pavement near a burger joint. However, as time passed it became increasingly difficult to track the spheres down, especially since we had no proper tracking devices whatsoever to aid us in our search, and also the fact that the sun was going down fast, and we would lose light. We decided to return to the place with the strange living room to rest and regroup, and there we met again with the man who looked like a school teacher.

The next time we set out, I went with the school teacher, and we used yet another motorcycle. We wear going around a quiet place that looked a lot like a park, with roads to separate the small fields of grass on our left and right. It was already the twilight hour, and we did not manage to find any spheres. Just then, School Teacher received a phone call from another teammate who sounded urgent. Apparently she was being attacked by a rival team trying to prevent us from collecting spheres. We drove at an alarmingly fast speed, only to reach a large dome resting in sand that strangely resembled a large open-air dome like the ones that would appear in Rome. Inside, however, there was no real danger. Instead, we saw a large gaming arcade full of the usual games, and our other teammates who were just standing around.

On a random note, we decided to play a canoeing game that they had, most like the one I had played when I was a child in real life. We never managed to even start the game however, as before i knew it the games disappeared, and we were already making our way back out of the dome (what a sucky dream :[ )

School Teacher was nowhere to be seen when I came out of the tunnel connecting the dome to the outside, despite the fact that we had walked back through the tunnel together. Without hesitation, I mounted the motorcycle that was still there, and proceeded to look for more spheres. I came to know of a hint of the location of one of the spheres, and also of the fact that I posessed an artifact that could allow me to travel back and forth in time. This, I decided, would come in very handy since I was given a deadline of just two weeks to hunt out all the spheres. I followed the hint given for the sphere, and came to a house on a hill that was white and reminded me of those gothic manors that had long been abandoned. It was a smallish manor that did not seem very intimidating. The place where a door should have been was empty, allowing me to see the gray, deteriorating interior of the estate that was clearly collecting cobwebs and new "residents". The grounds were brown in colour, with nothing but barren space and dry, cracked crevices. It would have been easy to enter the grounds, if not for the fact that surrounding the entire estate was a white construction fence which also conveniently boarded up the front gate. The only possible way seemed to be by the side of the building where a bit of the old fence still poked through and even had a hole through it.

Though I knew i should have gone for the hole, something in my mind was deterring me from progressing. It was neither fear nor disinterest, but rather a feeling that I should not make my move. Just then, the rumbling of another motorcycle was heard, and another woman zoomed up the hill and stopped right next to me. She was another teammate who I had seen at the gaming arcade. She had tanned skin, with clear green eyes, long flame red hair tied into a ponytail that made her look like a female ninja, and...elf ears? Her stature was strong, toned, and she clearly showed this by wearing a sleeveless red top and khaki coloured shorts, and knife pouch hanging loosely by her waist.

"Only one way to get there," she told me in a strong, deep voice that made her seem like an amazon woman, "what should we do?"

I pondered her question for a moment, not sure myself as to what action I had to take. Just then, my special item came into mind, and I decided to use that despite knowing what would happen. From the bag slung to the right of my body I produced a round sphere-like object that could neither be described as white nor silver which shone with unearthly radiance.

"We'll use this, " I exclaimed to her, in a voice so confident that I surprised myself.

I threw the semi translucent sphere in front of me, and instantly it stopped only a few metres from my face and continued to float without any aid. I started to give instructions of what time and date I wanted to move to (though i had no memory of ever knowing how to operate the device) then turned to the amazon woman and extended my left hand.

"Are you ready?" I asked, smiling at her with the intent of gaining her trust.

She nodded in response, and grabbed my hand firmly. I looked back toward the spheric device which was now shining with a force that caused me to shield my eyes. My surroundings gradually become brighter and brighter. until everyone shone with a golden-white light, and we became entirely absorbed into it.

In less than a second, the surroundings reverted back to that of worldy significance, and I found myself standing on what appeared to be a sheltered highway. The amazon woman and I were facing a billboard that had "drive safely" posters pinned on it. It was still nighttime, but the atmosphere had changed completely. The highway was filled not with vehicles, but with people. Thousands of people. all walking in one direction down the highway. Everyone was dressed in normal clothes, but some were moving on machines that appeared to be scooters but were too small and too large at the same time. I was utterly confused, the amazon woman just continued to stare at the throng of people passing by. In an attempt to gather the situation together, I walked up to a group of three boys aged around 17 years of age, and tapped the one with the green shirt. His shirt was sweaty and warm, strange as the air was cool and rather breezy.

"We're all heading to Meccha," he told me, and pointed to a large lit up board far in the distance in the direction that the people were walking to.

I tried to ask more, but it was so noisy and there were so many people that before I knew it, the boys had moved too far away from the billboard for me to keep talking to them. I still needed to stick to amazon woman in order for us to return to the past.

The past?

The date. I needed to find the date. I scanned the area for a newspaper stand of some sort. Just then, i saw amazon lady silently looking at something that was pinned to the billboard. It was a newspaper article. She was pointing silently to the date of the article, obviously pinned up no earlier than 3 hours ago. My eyes widened in shock, I realised we had travelled too far ahead. What puzzled me was how so many things in the world could change so much just because of the disalignment of the spheres. I knew we needed to return to the other day at the manor to rectify things. I looked for my time-travel sphere.

It wasn't in my bag.