Wirt let out a yell and skirted as far away from the edge as possible. Kipo jumped up, backing into a defensive position. But Adam didn't worry about any of that. He didn't seem to be worried about the millions of legs scratching at the bark of the tree, instead rushing forward with a yell.

"Adam!" Kipo cried.

"What's he doing?!" Wirt yelled.

Adam ignored them both as he rushed forward, raising his knife with a yell. Kipo and Wirt watched in shock.

"D-Do you really think he can fight them?!" Wirt asked.

Kipo shrugged. "I don't know, but we need to help him," Kipo told him. Wirt's eyes widened.

"What are we supposed to-wait," Wirt paused staring at Kipo. "Didn't you say you can turn into a giant jaguar?"

"Well... usually," Kipo admitted. "I haven't been able to it for-!"

Kipo jumped, knocking her head against the ceiling as she was suddenly cut off by a yell outside.

"Right!" Kipo suddenly remembered. "Not the time! Come on, Wirt!"

Kipo ran out of the room, not waiting for Wirt to follow. Wirt watched her go with wide eyes, before shaking himself and following behind, albeit more slowly and cautiously. When he got to the end of the branch, he sucked in a breath.

The space in between the trees was filled with small, almost toddler sized creatures, with shiny, black skin. They were bipedal, but it looked like they had four skinny, long arms that ended off in a point instead of in hands. From their heads protruded two antennae.

And there were so many of them. Wirt couldn't even see the floor, there were so many of them. They all crawled over one another is a desperate frenzy to get to Kipo and Adam, who laid at the center. It looked like they were drowning in a sea of metallic black.

Kipo jumped forward, grabbing the back of his cap and once again stopping him from turning into dead meat at the end of one of the creature's pointy legs. Adam swung his knife, and Kipo winced as it cut through the creature's armour, pouring out blobs of green blood. But the carcass of that creature was soon lost I the waves of the million other creatures, all desperately surging towards them.

"Adam, what are you doing?!" Kipo cried.

"Can't you see?!" Adam huffed, from both annoyance and exhaustion. "I'm fighting these things!"

Kipo looked around nervously, trying to shove the jaw of a creature away from her, but it latched onto her wrist. Kipo let out a yell, but before she could pry the thing off of her, Adam turned around and stabbed it in its big head. Kipo winced as the creature turned limp, sliding of her arm. She had a lot of big red wounds on her wrist now from the creature's attack, but she couldn't worry about that now. She and Adam needed to get out of here.

"Adam, there's too many of them!" Kipo yelled.

As if to try to prove her wrong, Adam swung his knife in a wide arc, destroying three of the ants at once. But three really didn't mean much in the face of a million. Kipo scowled. How could she convince him that they needed to get out of there?

"Kipo!"

Kipo jumped at the sound of her name, looking up to find Wirt calling out to her, while standing on the branch of a tree. "Kipo, up here!"

Kipo brightened. She quickly turned around, grabbing the back of Adam's cape. She didn't like it, but force was necessary if she was going to get Adam to a safe place.

"What are you-hey!" Adam cried. He struggled, but Kipo's skinny packed a surprising amount of strength. "Stop, I can take them!"

"I really doubt that!" Kipo argued. "Sorry, Adam, but I really don't think you can really fight... all of this! We need to get out of here! Look, up there!"

Adam looked around Kipo awkwardly, because the way she was dragging him he was walking backwards, and peered at Wirt. "We're going to climb a tree?!"

Kipo was slightly taken aback by the anger in his voice. "What? Yes?"

"They can climb, too, you know!" Adam yelled. Kipo nearly tripped over her own feet.

"What?!"

But by that time, they were already in front of the tree Wirt was in, so they both gave each a 'well, we're already here' look, and they started climbing the tree as fast as they could. Almost immediately, the creatures were on their heels.

A symphony of snapping and scrabbling followed Adam and Kipo as they raced up the tree, and Wirt, who at first had a face of triumph, was starting to look worried, and then pure terrified. Kipo remembered once that Wirt had said he wasn't very good at climbing, and she wondered if she and Adam had just led a bunch of these murderous creatures up to their friend.

Kipo looked around. She needed to do something. What had attracted the creatures in the first place. Despite not hesitating when he went to attack them, Kipo doubted that Adam met up with these things on a regular basis. He must have done something differently this time to draw them in.

There were only two differences that Kipo knew off: there where more people, which also meant more eggs. It had to be one of those two things that drew the creatures in. Or both. Kipo really hoped it was both.

But the fact of the matter remained: if the creatures were after them, they couldn't do anything. But if they were after the eggs...

"Adam!" Kipo called. Adam jumped, surprised by the sudden call. He looked over to Kipo with a perplex look.

"What?!"

"You need to throw out the eggs!" Kipo told him. "These creatures, I think they're attracted to them!"

"What?!" Adam called. "That doesn't make any sense! I always get eggs!"

So, Kipo was right. This wasn't a common occurrence.

"Well, you got more than usual this time, right?" Kipo pointed out. "So, the scent must be stronger than usual! Throw them away! Hurry!"

Thankfully, Adam didn't think twice. He paused his climbing to reach into his satchel, bringing some of the eggs that he'd previously collected. Without hesitation, he threw the eggs over the heads of the creatures onto the ground, where the eggs cracked and splattered. Something wiggled out of the eggs and Kipo turned away, wincing. The shattered eggs attracted some of the creatures, but not all of them. Kipo and Adam had to scramble up the tree quickly to escape their quickly approaching pursuers.

"You need to throw away more of them!" Kipo called. Adam, though looking disgruntled, nodded, and once again reached into his satchel. But before he could throw them, Kipo called out to him again.

"Can you throw them... I don't know, lighter?" Kipo called. Adam started, perhaps startled at the odd suggestion, and the eggs slipped out of grasp. They bounced off the creature's head and shatter on the ground below. Thankfully, they did their job anyway, and more of the creatures were distracted. But still, not all of them.

Kipo and Adam hurried up the tree again, closer to Wirt, who really looked like he was regretting his decision to climb up a tree. Kipo tried to give him a thumbs up while also trying to climb up the bark as fast as she could.

"What did you want me to do?" Adam asked her, his breath heavy from their desperate escape. "Before? What were you asking me?"

"When the eggs shattered, I saw something wiggling out of them," Kipo explained, but when she looked over to Adam, he still looked lost. "I just don't want you to hurt them..."

Adam's brow furrowed. "You were going to eat them..."

"Only because I didn't know there were creatures in there!" Kipo cried. Suddenly her eyes widened. "Wait, did you-?"

"No, I didn't know either," Adam huffed. "But whatever."

Kipo's mouth fell open. "What?! You're still going to eat it?!"

Adam shrugged. "Why not? It's easy to get, and it doesn't taste awful..."

"We'll find better food," Kipo told him. "I'd feel guilty about eating something like that..."

"You're a vegan?" Adam asked. Kipo blinked at him.

"A what?"

Adam shook his head, instead turning around and grabbing yet more eggs. "Last two," he told Kipo, before he lightly tossed them away. Kipo watched as they went up in an arc and then plummeted to the ground.

"I'm sure they're fine," she said, before once again hurrying up the tree. Kipo's plan almost worked, because the three of them didn't have an army after them anymore. Unfortunately, there were still two of those creepy things hot on their trail. Kipo and Adam climbed up onto the branch Wirt was on as Wirt slowly backed away.

Adam and Kipo followed in his footsteps as the creatures also climbed over the edge, starting towards them. They crawled along the ground, twisting their bodies oddly.

Adam took out his knife again. "Only two of them. This should be easy now..."

"Huh?" Kipo asked, looking around just in time to see Adam lunged forward. The creature backed away, raising two of its legs. "Adam, no!"

Kipo lunged forward, once again grabbing his back. "Stop, don't!"

Adam coughed, stumbling backwards, away from the creatures. "What the hell?! Why'd you do that!?"

"You can't kill them, Adam!" Kipo cried.

"Wha-Why not?!" Adam yelled back.

"Two wrongs don't make a right, Adam!" Kipo told him.

"It'll only be one wrong if I kill them first!" Adam argued.

"You can't kill them, it's wrong!" Kipo argued.

"It doesn't matter, they're just... I don't know..." Adam and Kipo looked over to the creatures, how should they describe them?

"Um... they are getting closer!" Wirt pointed out. "S-Should we run away?"

"We can't, they'll just follow us!" Adam huffed. "But, fine, if we can't kill them, then what?"

"Just... stop them from killing us!" Kipo said. "Knock them out!"

"Like those action movies where the rating is still 'PG'?" Adam asked. Kipo looked over to him.

"I... don't know," Kipo said. Adam shook his head.

"Let's just go already!" he yelled, and surged forward with his knife. But to Kipo's relief, he cracked the blunt end on one of the creature's skulls instead of the sharp end. The creature crumbled easily.

Kipo raced forward, and she managed to knock out the other creature out in one hit. Adam looked more than a little surprised, and Kipo wasn't sure why.

"Um... is something wrong?" Kipo asked.

"You just knock out that creature with one hand," Adam pointed out. Kipo frowned.

"Yeah... you did, too, didn't you?" Kipo said.

"With this!" Adam cried, waving his knife around. "Not with my bare hand."

"Oh," Kipo realized. A grin split across her face. "Well, I wouldn't really call it a bear hand, more of a cat hand, if you know what I mean...."

Adam and Wirt gave her a blank look.

Kipo grinned shakily. Well, you know, because jaguars are cats... and bare... and bear, sound the same... And I can change into a jaguar and not a bear.... Come on."

Adam shook his head, crossing his arms. "It wasn't really that funny," he told her.

Kipo turned to Wirt, still hopeful. Wirt shrugged. "Er... I don't know, I kind of thought it was clever..."

Kipo pumped her fist up, cheering. Adam sighed.

"You're both wrong," he said, turning around, Kipo watched as he took his shoe and nudged the creatures of the branch. They fell down and landed with a loud thump and a lot of annoyed chattering from their friends. Kipo hoped they'd be okay. Adam peered over the edge of the branch.

"We should leave soon," he noted. "I don't think we're on their radar anymore, so we don't have to worry about them following us."

Wirt peered down as well. "So, we can just... climb down?"

Kipo heard the chorus of snapping and gashing underneath them and shuddered. "That's probably not a great idea."

Wirt looked relieved. Kipo looked around carefully at their surroundings. The branch they were on was wide, so wide that it almost looked like an airplane runway, and even though the branch was curved, it hardly felt like it. "There's a way to traverse through the branches, right?" she asked Adam. "Like you were doing with the dragonfly thing?"

Kipo suddenly paused. Hold on. The last thing was a dragonfly, sort of, these things almost looked like ants... there seemed to be an uncomfortable theme to this forest.

However, Adam didn't seem to notice Kipo's sudden realization. "There kind of is," he told them. "But it's kind of more of a maze up here."

Kipo shook herself out of her thoughts. "We can do it," she assured them. "And we can look for food on the way, too!"

As if on cue, Kipo's nose started twitching, and she felt her stomach growl. She grinned.

"I know just where to find some," she told Adam and Wirt, before turning and hurrying along the branch. "Here, follow me! It smells really good, trust me!"

Adam and Wirt stared at their quickly disappearing friend.

"S-She can smell something?" Wirt asked, skeptical.

"Part cat," Adam guessed. Wirt's eyes widened as he nodded in realization.

"Oh, yeah." Wirt rubbed his arm self consciously. "I keep forgetting that..."

Adam gave him a puzzled look. "How? She's pink?"

Wirt went red and he shrugged. "I-I don't know! It just never seemed important before."

Adam stared at him for a second, and then sighed. "O-kay, I guess. You know, if you were any weirder, I would be thinking that you're part of the game, too, but I'm really not sure."

"Part of the..." Wirt frowned. Adam still believed that? This looked way too realistic to be a game. Not enough pixels.

"I guess having my memories taken away last time helped a little bit, because I wasn't constantly wondering what was real or not," Adam continued, either ignoring or not noticing Wirt's confusion. "Maybe she is real and her skin is just a glitch. But the powers and the backstory are kind of weird. I don't even have my powers anymore."

Powers? Glitches? Backstory? Just what was Adam even talking about?

"Well, I'm glad she's here, at least," Adam said. "With Kipo's powers, I think this game's going to get a little easier."

Before Wirt could properly think of a response to that, Kipo raced back to them, as if she'd heard her name. She was frowning at them, not looking so much as angry, but rather, confused.

"You two are coming, right?" Kipo asked impatiently. Adam nodded at her.

"Yeah," he answered, stepping forward. "Lead the way."