"Remember your Youth!" Were the words that immediately greeted Akira and Kiki, upon first entering the Ivory Quarter, as they continued walking alongside the Dragon Monk Caravan: scrawled across a dismally faded party banner with hanging streamers, stretched between two lamp posts set on either side of a polished, yellow brick walkway.
Kiki tilted her head, perplexed.
"Isn't this like the—"
"No, it isn't," Akira cut back sharply. "Wrong alternate universe. Way wrong."
"...Wizard of Oz…"
In any case, this particular yellow brick path took them directly through the swarming midst of an ocean of grey fog, impenetrable in its thickness beyond just a few meters. Across a sprawling, dewy green lawn, between rows of nostalgic sweet-smelling cherry blossom trees in full bloom. Through an open gate along a red brick wall, with a sign whose words were too faded to read.
