It happened quickly, and everything blended together in a blur. The House, destroyed, the gigantic dragon, fighting to get through the trees, Bipo, Wirt and Kipo running away... but with every step Kipo and Wirt took, more air was forced from their lungs, and more fog pushed into their lungs.

Wirt fell first, falling onto his hands and knees and feeling like he was coughing his guts up. Kipo must have heard it, and paused. And then she fell down.

It wasn't long before they could even stay on their knees anymore, and they fall completely to the ground.

From behind them, they could hear the dragon roaring from behind them, but the sound was fuzzy, like they were hearing with cotton stuffed into their ears. Kipo heard a snap and wondered what it was.

Eventually, both their lines of thought, of terror and confusion, trailed off, and everything went dark.

When Kipo opened her eyes again, she was surprised to find herself in a different place then where she usually woke up. Where'd all these trees come from? Kipo tried to blink away the pink haze in her eyes, and rubbed her face. Something was on there.

Suddenly, Kipo sat up as everything quickly came rushing back. Gasping at air (which she HAD, apparently), Kipo felt at her face. There was something wet and floppy on it, like someone had laid a banana peel on her face. Kipo felt around. Someone had tied it in a knot behind her head. Kipo blinked.

Shakily standing up, Kipo looked around her surroundings, finding Bipo, sleeping peacefully. They didn't seem to have a problem with the lack of air around. The forest they were in was silent, other then far away buzzing and animal calls. The dragon that was chasing them was gone.

Then Kipo found Wirt, who was also asleep, though much less peacefully. His breathing was sporadic, but, at least, he was breathing. There was a dark pink flower with long petals tied around his face, which seemed to be helping him breath. Kipo felt along her face. It must be the same thing.

Kipo knelt down next to Wirt, shaking him.

"Wirt," Kipo hissed. She could talk pretty easily, actually, the flower was big enough to encompass all her lip movements. "Wirt!"

Wirt awoke with a start, looking around wildly before feeling around his face, tugging at the flower.

"Don't, don't!" Kipo warned him quickly. "It's helping you breathe!"

Wirt started at her, and then apparently remembered passing out, because he lowered his hands.

"W-What's going on!?" Wirt asked. "Where's the-?!"

Wirt cut himself off, looking around as if the dragon was just going to pop in at anytime.

"Either it flew away, or we lost it" Kipo explained. She looked around the forest. The trees weren't pressed especially close together, but that dragon was enormous. "I think we're safe here. Can you stand?"

Wirt nodded, and Kipo helped him up. He was also quite shaky at first. Suddenly, Wirt grimaced.

"It's hot," he noted. Kipo started, and then pulled at her collar. She was sweating pretty hard.

"Huh," she said. "You're right. I hadn't noticed."

Kipo and Wirt shrugged off their respective makeshift coats, and Kipo wrinkled her nose at the state of their dress. The hadn't been able to clean up when it was extremely cold, and now, three days later, it was clear that they needed to take a bath or something like that. Kipo made a note of it.

Bipo yawned, and Wirt jumped. "Oh..." he said, disgruntled. "I guess Bipo's still here... I guess."

"Yep!" Kipo answered cheerfully. But soon, her smile shifted into a frown. "I don't think we can go back, Wirt."

Wirt gave her a look of surprise. "To The House? Why not?"

"Well, we have to search for your brother, for one," Kipo told him, holding up a finger. "And two, well, it was kind of completely destroyed by the... bone dragon..."

Kipo trailed off as the memories came flooding back. Regal...

Wirt coughed awkwardly; not quite sure what he should do in this situation. Kipo looked utterly destroyed, but Wirt wasn't the most comforting person.

"I'm-I'm sorry... about Regal," he began nervously, and then shut his mouth. That was a terrible way to comfort a person.

Luckily, it seemed to be just enough. Kipo shook herself out, and turned to Wirt.

"It's alright," Kipo told him, trying to keep her smile up. "Regal... he helped us escape, right? If he hadn't...I-."

Kipo paused gathering her thoughts. "We couldn't have escaped if he hadn't done what he did. Let's focus on that."

Wirt didn't know what to say, so he nodded instead.

"Right..." Wirt looked around awkwardly. "So... we're looking for Greg, right?"

"Greg?" Kipo repeated, before a look of realization crossed over her face. "Oh! Your brother! Right, I guess I should've, uh, known that by now..."

Kipo laughed, ad Wirt had to laughed too. "I-I should've told you."

"It's okay, at least I know now," Kipo told him. "And we need a place to start looking for your brother. I say that we start we whoever put these plants on our faces."

Wirt looked surprised. "I thought the plants just did that themselves."

Kipo felt at the knot on the back of her head. "That could be true," she said. "But I think that it's more likely that somebody else did it."

Wirt looked embarrassed. "Uh, yeah, you're right."

Kipo nodded, and then turned around, staring up and around the trees. Well, now that they had a direction to go, but they had no idea what to do with it.

"Hm," Kipo turned around again, kneeling down next to Bipo. "Bipo, did you see anything?"

Bipo tilted their head at her. Kipo shrugged.

"M-Maybe you can climb the trees again?" Wirt offered, pointing. Kipo glanced up.

"Yeah... that's a great idea!" Kipo cheered. She hurried over to a tree. This one seemed slightly easier to climb. "Good job, Wirt!"

Wirt flushed and shrugged modestly. "But you won't go up so high this time, right? Not after last time..."

Kipo grinned. "Don't worry, I learned my lesson. Besides, I don't think I'll need to."

Wirt nodded, and Kipo turned back to her task. This tree was easier to climb than the old one, much more handholds, and they weren't too thick or too thin. Kipo never had to really think about her route, like she would if she was actually rock climbing. Kipo went up quickly (almost as quick as Regal, Kipo thought once, but she shoved that thought away quickly), but she had to stop before it got too cold. It was almost like climbing a mountain.

Kipo turned around, sitting on a branch, and looking out into the forest. Kipo hasn't see a view like this in ages, ever since she'd been living with the timber cats.

Kipo lightly smile to herself, but she quickly shook herself before she was too distracted. After all, she still had a job to do.

Scanning the forest floor (and the trees around them, because if she could climb the trees, then why couldn't anyone else?), Kipo looked for any hint of a person, or anything that looked like it could have given Kipo and Wirt the flowers.

Kipo saw something flying through the air so fast it was nothing more than a blur. She saw something poke a tiny head through the dirt. She even saw something climbing on the tree right beside her, something with six sharp limbs, six eyes and a mouth with two hair fangs. It looked like a cross between a timber cat and a tarantula, and it was twice as big as Kipo was.

Kipo said hi, and the thing warbled something back. For a moment, she wondered if that was the thing that was kind enough to give them the flowers, but she threw that thought away quickly. The thing didn't have thumbs.

Kipo was almost going to give up, she'd been gone a long time and Wirt must be getting worried at this point, when suddenly, she saw a flash of red out of the corner of her eye. Kipo turned quickly, and her eyes widened. She only got a glimpse of the persons face before they were gone, running away through the tree branches.

Kipo didn't stick around for long either. She was racing down the tree, her excitement almost making her fumble several times. Wirt gave her an alarm look when she got down to him.

"What is it?" Wirt asked quickly. "What's wrong-?!"

"There's a person!" Kipo cried, grabbing Wirt. "A person! I saw them!"

Wirt's mouth dropped open. "A person?" he asked. "My brother?"

"Uh..." Kipo thought for a minute. "He had brown hair that was like... this..."

Kipo took her bangs, making them point up. "He was kind of far away, but I think he had darker skin-."

"Oh..." Wirt's face fell. "That's not him. Probably. I really don't think so."

Kipo looked at him sympathetically. "Hey, don't worry," Kipo said. "We can ask him where your brother is."

"Will he know where my brother is?" Wirt looked skeptical.

"We'll find out!" Kipo cheered. She grabbed Wirt's hand. "Let's go!"

Before Wirt could say anything (Kipo doubted he had any objections anyway) Kipo pulled him along, first to collect Bipo (who gave an annoyed huff before standing up and following her), and then deeper into the forest, in the direction of their mysterious new friend.

"How do we know that he's... you know... not dangerous?" Wirt asked, effectively cut Kipo off. Kipo looked back at him. The three of them had somehow formed into a single file line, from most enthusiastic to the least. They'd nearly lost Bipo six times because they kept falling asleep.

"How so?" Kipo asked. Wirt shrugged.

"Uh, well, I mean... we don't know who this person is..." Wirt pointed out awkwardly. "What if they're like... part of a cult?"

Kipo's eyes widened. "A cult?"

"O-Or, you know, he could just be violent or something," Wirt backtracked quickly. "Not necessarily part of a cult..."

"I guess we'll just have to take our chances," Kipo said. "Besides, he was nice enough to give us these."

Kipo pointed to their flowers, and Wirt's hands flew to his, as if he'd forgotten that it was there.

"Oh... yeah," Wirt coughed awkwardly. "T-That's a good point, I'll stop talking."

"No, you don't have to!" Kipo said quickly, surprising Wirt. "I mean, it's easy to have a conversation if we're both talking, right?"

"Right?" Wirt repeated. "Oh, right! Yeah... definitely. Maybe. I'm, uh... not the best conversationalist. Er, uh, you've... probably noticed."

"You're not that bad," Kipo laughed, assuring him. "I like talking to you."

"You do?!"

"There's no need to sound so shocked, Wirt," Kipo said. Suddenly, she frowned. "But you have a point, I guess-."

"Huh?"

"-I really don't know much about you, Wirt," Kipo thought out loud.

"I- I think that was the opposite of my point, actually-."

"I don't know anything other than your last time in the Unknown," Kipo continued. "So, um... what do you like to do for fun, Wirt?"

Wirt's eyes immediately widened in alarm. "Nothing." He said it so fast that Kipo barely caught it.

"Nothing?" she repeated. Wirt's mouth pressed into an uncomfortable line.

"That's ri-ght," Wirt said. Kipo ignored the voice crack for his shake.

Kipo stared at him for a minute. "I like playing guitar in my free time. And I like learning about astrology."

"That's nice."

Kipo stared some more. Wirt stared back.

"Okay," Kipo said.

"Okay," Wirt said back. And that was the end of the conversation.

The trees around them had somehow grown even taller than the ones in the clearing, and Kipo couldn't see any of the green anymore. It would be fun to climb these trees, though Kipo was certain that she'd never be able to reach the top. Kipo didn't even know trees could get this high.

"Kipo?" Wirt asked, tentatively.

Kipo spun around. "Yeah?"

"Do you..." Wirt tilted his head, trying to listen. "Do you hear that?"

Kipo tilted her head, like Wirt was doing. She blinked when a small buzzing noise filled the air.

"I think I hear it," she told Wirt. "And now that I'm listening, I also hear-"

"RUN!"

Both Kipo and Wirt nearly jumped out of their skin, looking around wilding. Kipo grabbed Wirt's arm, pointing up. When Wirt raised his eyes, he saw a boy around his age, running along a branch the seize of an airplane runway.

The boy met their stairs with a glare.

"What are you doing?!" he shouted at them, making them both jump again. They watched as he waved backwards. "RUN!"

From behind the boy came a blue blur, so fast that Kipo and Wirt didn't even register it before the boy was dodging it, running zig zag as the blur moved in what seemed like every direction around him, up, down, forwards, backwards, but the boy seemed to be keeping ahead of it. He carried something in his hands, and every time the green blur met with him, he held up the long object and sent the thing flying away with a flash of gold.

Eventually, the boy managed to get a particularly strong strike against the thing, sending it flying off towards the ground. There was a loud snapping down, and the thing bounced off the dirt and slid to a stop at Kipo and Wirt's feet, a long, green trail making it's progress.

Kipo and Wirt gasped.

The thing wasn't anything either of them had seen before; it was like a dragonfly, but bigger, and with more human proportions. It had hips and a torso, but its head was more like an insect, with insect eyes and an incest mouth, with insect fangs.

But when Kipo looked closer, it also had greenish human teeth.

Kipo stopped looking so closely. The rest of its body was horrible as well, with its arms and legs bent in awkward ways, like they were broken (the worst part was that they were probably supposed to be that way), and instead of hands its limbs ended it a long sword like thing. It had purple armor over it's body, but Kipo couldn't tell if it was attached, or if this creature put them on like that. Whatever it was, it had something like hair, or maybe spikes on it. Kipo didn't want to touch it to find out.

And then there was its wings. Dragonfly wings, sitting, and sometimes twitching on it's back. Kipo blinked. She couldn't stop staring.

Then, suddenly, the creature struck.