"Presumably, I still would want to do it in an air-tight and secure place. Just to be sure."

"Can't be too careful when you're dealing with hard vacuum," he agrees. 

"Exactly. And even the tests inside the planet atmosphere are going to be remarkable. We should be able to find multiple continents inside a week."

"Yeah, hey, maybe we'll find people, finally," he says, a bit of that optimism coming back. 

"Imagine, going somewhere where I can say that I am definitely not a good chunk of the population."

"Wild," he says with a laugh, "I bet in most places you'd be the only you in the population. Or maybe one of two, if we're talking other worlds."

"To be honest, one is already too much. Good thing there is a lot of me going around to take care of all of him."

"You know you love me."

"Sorry, to interrupt all the love, but let's go back to experimenting."

They figure out other Tobir's portals in the following months. When it closes on something, the portal spits out anything trapped in it to a random direction. And Tobir figures out some filtering configurations, enough, that they open a few high above the planet to look "down" the planet and draw maps. They find continents, they reach and create outposts far and wide. They collect samples. And they don't really find other people, but they don't lose hope. The closest thing to a sign of civilization are crystals replicating wildlife much like the ones that create the Origin's island clones.

It turns out that Tobir's crystals' have a distance limit based on size, so they work on creating a large crystal for interplanetary travel. The research group dedicated to this is doing their best to be very careful about the whole project.

Which isn't to say that they are not using the crystals. Most people that are allowed to access to them are Henries, but a lot of outposts are permanently connected now. People can come and go from the Origin and Waterfall islands freely, and there is even portals to the same places inside the island. Tama takes to monitor the "Portal station" that they set up as a hub for people to have a place to come and go.

Roaja deeply appreciates that she no longer needs to walk upstairs.

They have two more Milliway encounters, both happening in portal-less outposts. Ironically, the first one in an outpost that is even visible from the higher points on Origin island, which was why they didn't bother to set up a permanent portal there. That gives them three refugees, one of which is an alt of Percy, the peryton from the critter world. During the second encounter, they manage to go back to the second Percy world and retrieve more than thirty refugees, saving them from the monsters that have taken over that Earth.

Maybe they could have saved more people, but the people involved didn't want to risk it.

The refugees are proportionally traumatized, and require extra work to acclimatize to their world of no monsters and no famine.

Buuuut, on a more positive note! Kenta finally manages to make his own empowered crystal. They fit the Gabe variety of "physical protection".

And on even more important news, the twins' birthday is coming up!

Yup! And those mysterious powers which were never fully explained. Their mom didn't tell Uncle Remi much about them, so he hasn't had much to tell the twins about them, either. It'll be an adventure!

But first, they have to deal with an adventure of a different sort. Because their powers come on their fourth-sixteenth birthday, which falls in early summer on this planet. And before summer? Spring.

One morning a couple days into said season, Heri and Kenta wake up to find Tobir missing from their bed. 

Heri notices this a few moments after waking up. He starts looking around.

Everything looks normal! Aside from these blankets which have fallen most of the way off the bed and been tucked part-way under it, as though someone had rolled off and under the bed and dragged them along. 

Heri looks under the bed.

There's some more blankets there, arranged in a person-sized lump. If there's a person under them, their head is covered, and they're not making much noise. 

"Tobir?" Heri tugs on the blankets.

The blankets curl in tighter, "Nope, not Tobir, no one's here, just a bunch of blankets-" Tobir's voice is a bit muffled by the blankets, but it sounds a bit high, and maybe a bit panicky. 

"Uh, what?" He nudges Kenta. "Are you hurt?"

"Who is hurt?"

He groans, dramatically. "I'm fine, don't c- don't look under here, just... just ignore me." 

Kenta looks under the bed.

"Oh, you're springing."

"..."

If silences could communicate the words 'kill me now', Tobir's silence would be screaming it. 

"...I'm just going to stay here for the rest of spring," he informs them.