Kipo, Tulip and Mira sat in silence, each with their own cup of hot steaming cocoa in their hands. The sun in front of them was almost down, and as it sank, it coloured the sky in front of the girls a beautiful canvas of red, orange and pink. It was a lot nicer looking at it with friends and hot chocolate, rather then completely alone with only a useless old book for company.

Tulip let out a sigh, catching the attention of the other two. "You know, as awful as this... 'involuntary camping' is, it would probably be worse without hot chocolate."

"Well, that's just obvious," Mira laughed, taking a sip. "This place is taking some liberties with the fantasy front. Like, first, everything is made of wood, and there's not a machine in sight, and then there's a bag of modern hot chocolate in the kitchen, as well as modern sinks and whatever."

Kipo hummed as she sipped her cocoa. She remembered something Wirt had said earlier, about the buildings in the town.

"These buildings mostly resemble middle age English buildings," he'd noted to himself at the time, frowning at the scenery. "But those were made mostly of stone, because building wood buildings in a time where you got most of your heat from fire was stupid. Do these things have fireplaces?"

Kipo had listened in, agreeing with him, despite the fact that she had no clue what he was talking about. But he couldn't be wrong, especially with how confident he sounded (which was a bit of a rarity, from Wirt). Kipo trusted him.

But now she found herself remembering those words, especially two of them, as she gazed into the chocolaty brown of her drink. "Was there hot chocolate, in the middle ages?"

Kipo looked up to find Mira and Tulip glancing at each other. For a minute, no one spoke, thinking that over. After some time, it was clear than none of them exactly knew the answer to that.

Eventually, Mira shrugged. "Who knows?" she said, nonchalantly. "Even if there was, it probably wouldn't taste like this. Normal chocolate is actually pretty bitter, I think, and this has got, like, probably a half a million cups of sugar in this."

"You're right," Tulip agreed, but she sipped her drink with a sour look in her face. "Ugh. That question is going to bother me for weeks, though."

"You could try looking it up in the library!" Kipo offered cheerfully, but before she even finished, she realized how silly that was.

Tulip played with her hair, thinking over what Kipo said. "Would something like that really be in there?"

'Probably not,' Kipo thought; history, or anything like that, was not a topic she'd come across often in there. But that didn't mean it wasn't there, so out loud she said: "I'm not sure; I'll help you look!"

Tulip smiled over to her, and Kipo returned it with a playful grin.

"Well, even if there was hot chocolate in the middle ages, there definitely wasn't... whatever Kai found," Mira said, referring to the very strange contraption Dib had uncovered earlier. He'd apparently dug it up while searching for paranormal creatures (why he was looking for paranormal creatures in the dirt was still a bit of a mystery), and for the first couple of weeks or so, he'd kept it a (not very well hidden) secret from the rest of the town. It was only after he'd realized that it wasn't some sort of high-tech alien weapon or surveillance device that he disappointedly handed it over, especially after it became clear that it wasn't exactly his area of expertise. But, a little bit surprisingly, it was Kai's.

So now the super weird thing was resting in Kai's room, and when she walked past his house, she could hear him tinkering at it. Unfortunately, though, last she checked, he hadn't really made any progress.

Well, at least he was having fun.

Actually, speaking of Kai...

"Has Kai been out of his room lately?" she asked, turning around to look at the houses. It was a little hard to pick out Kai's residence, as they could only see part of them from where they were, but Mabel's overly decorated rainbow house made it a little bit easier. "I feel like I haven't seen him today."

Mira and Tulip looked back as well, and Mira winced.

"Oh, you're right..." Tulip noted, trailing off awkwardly. "Should we go check on him?"

Kipo stood up, shaking her now empty cup. "I can," she offered. "I'm finished, anyway. I can bring him some food and a drink, too."

"You sure?" Mira asked, but she didn't exactly sound like she was trying to stop Kipo. When Kipo nodded reassuringly, she smiled. "Okay, cool. I think he likes a waterier ratio in his hot chocolate, by the way."

Both Kipo and Tulip gave Mira bewildered looks. "What?"

Mira shrugged. "Rich people," she said, which really didn't explain anything at all, but Kipo kept what she said in mind as she left her two friends. The sun was getting rather low now, and the streets were dark as Kipo walked over to what they sometimes referred to as the 'hangout spot'. It was kind of like a community center, with a big, spacious kitchen that, according to Mira, was completely stocked when they found it, and was mysteriously restocked every night. There had been multiple stake outs, by either Dipper, Kipo and Dib, but so far, they've somehow found literally nothing. How that was even possible, Kipo didn't know, but after the fifth stakeout night and nothing to show for it, the three just decided to take a break for now, and to brainstorm another, hopefully more successful idea.

There was also a large room in there, with a lot of tables, that looked like it could probably fit all of Kipo's burrow, and maybe one of the Mute groups. Kipo liked that room, because the walls were painted with brightly coloured pictures of people playing in a grassy field together. Some of them were flying kites, some were playing with a ball, some of them were eating... it was cool, even though they didn't use it often. The room was just a little too big to be of use to eight people.

Kipo was almost in the building now, which looked kind of like a sort of very large wood tavern, complete with always lit lanterns on the outside. There was a chimney, too, but they never used it, because as Wirt said... that would be kind of dumb.

As Kipo hurried up the steps into the building, she took a slight pause to observe the garden around the steps. Like the fields, they seemed to be self sufficient, and once, Kipo had once found the leaves wet, despite no one watering them, and the fact that it had never rained. There was a book about the specific flowers and plants in the library, and Kipo recognized corianders, aloe (those would probably come in handy if they got any burns), zinnias, tarragons, yarrow, tansy, snapdragon and gardenia as she walked past, and into the building, taking a sharp left into the kitchen. However, to her surprise, she wasn't alone.

"Hey!" Something quickly threw itself in front of her, and Kipo jumped back with a cry of surprise. A second later, she realized it was only Mabel, but Mabel didn't give her anytime to gather her thoughts. "What's up?! You never guess what I found: hot chocolate! I decided to make it into a sandwich!"

It took a couple seconds for Kipo to first register what Mabel said, and then connect her words to the two slices of dripping, brown stained bread in front of her.

"Uh..." Kipo didn't exactly know what to say. "You decided to make a hot chocolate sandwich?"

"That's what I said!" Mabel answered, always cheerful. "Wanna try it?"

"Sure!" Kipo replied enthusiastically, and without really thinking. But before the word were even completely past her lips, Mabel was forcing the sandwich at her, forcing Kipo to take a bite of the mess. Her mouth registered the taste before her brain did and she gagged, taking a step back.

"Urm... uhm..." Kipo stopped trying to force herself to speak, and instead focused on not letting anything that was in her mouth out of her mouth. Wincing, she swallowed the grainy, wet bread down. "Um... well, that was..."

Mabel didn't seem put off by Kipo's less than cheerful reaction. "Bad?" she asked, setting the sandwich to the side. She shrugged when Kipo reluctantly nodded. "Well, that's fine. Sometimes art just can't taste good, trust me. I've never once found a painting that actually tasted good..."

Mabel trailed off, and for a minute Kipo worriedly wondered how many paintings Mabel had tasted, and how she was still alive. But she didn't get to wonder long before Mabel was talking again, though mostly to herself.

"Probably just needs a little more spice... or I could just go full in and use paint, but no one would eat it then..." Mabel just shook her head, suddenly looking determined. "Well, then, it'll just had to be The Sandwich that No One Eats."

"What exactly are you trying to do?" Kipo asked, nearly down. Hopefully Mabel didn't use all the bread... oh, good, there were two pieces left.

"Making art," Mabel told her, and, yeah, Kipo supposed that was kind of obvious.

"Oh." Kipo put out two slices of bread. From what she could remember, Kai liked tomatoes, so she grabbed two of those, and started cutting them up. "What kind of art?"

"Well, originally, it was just a sandwich," Mabel explained, seemingly forgetting about the sandwich for a minute as she completely turned to Kipo. "But then I got the brilliant ideal to combine a sandwich with the hot chocolate I found I the counter! There wasn't a blender to liquify the bread, though, so I just tried pouring the hot chocolate on it to see if that would work. It kinda did, but now it's not very good, so I'm just going to paint it now."

Mabel clapped her hands as she spoke. "It sounds complicated, but that's just the creative process in action, you see."

Kipo didn't, but she nodded anyway. "That's cool," Kipo told her with a smile. She looked around. The sandwich was finished, so now all she had to so was the drink... "Hey, is there any hot chocolate left?"

Mabel wordlessly motioned to the sandwich that was dripping onto the floor and Kipo winced. "I'll just make something else," she said as she turned to the tea box.

When Kipo knocked against the big wooden doors of Kai's home, it echoed loudly, far too loudly, through the shadowy streets, bouncing off of every surface. It made Kipo paranoid, what if there were people trying to sleep? She should try to be quieter.

She looked back over to the door. Was Kai asleep? Kipo frowned. He probably shouldn't go to sleep on an empty stomach... with that in mind, Kipo let herself in, making sure to shut the door quietly behind her before she called out.

"Kai?" The house was quiet, but not too quiet. When Kipo pricked up her ears, her mute-enhanced picked up the sounds of tinkering and clicking. So, he was working in the basement, then. Not every house had a basement, but Kai was specifically given one because his working on machinery was way too loud for a normal house.

Smiling to herself, Kipo stepped through the house, down the stairs and paused by the door to the little room Kai liked working in. He was in there for days at a time now, and everyone else had been getting worried about him, but so far, none of them had been able to help him out.

Was it bad that he decided to stay in there all day? Kipo, Mira and the rest of them tried to keep him company as much as possible, so was that enough? Was it healthy? Was it good enough? Kipo didn't know, and the books in the library wouldn't say... and there wasn't anyone else they could ask.

Kipo huffed, shaking out her head. No... no, there wasn't time to think about all that. All she could do was her best, right? Kipo shook out her thoughts, and raised her fist to knock on the door.

"Kai?" Kipo called softly, and to her relief, the noises behind the door halted.

After a couple seconds, she heard another soft voice call out. "Kipo? Uh... come in."

Relieved, Kipo pushed open the door, finding Kai exactly where she found him the last couple of times: hunched over the desk that they'd struggled to put down here, the odd machine in the middle of the floor, collecting dust, and a specific part of them machine that had been taken apart and strewn over Kai's desk. His plan was to study the machine in parts, apparently.

Kai moved aside the metal and trinkets, and Kipo set the plate of food and the cup of tea in front of him. "I hope green tea is alright," she said. "Someone seemed to have a lot of tea, so we're out of everything else. Also, Mabel took all the hot chocolate."

Kai's eyes widened. "We have hot chocolate?"

Kipo grinned. "Yeah! Isn't it great?!"

"Yeah..." Kai blinked. "Is it good?"

Kipo thought back. "Not when it's mixed with bread..." she replied, cringing at the thought. "...But, yeah! Me, Mira and Tulip thought so."

Kai nodded, taking a bite of his sandwich. "Oh."

Kipo gave him a smile. "I'll give you same tomorrow."

"Thanks."

For a couple seconds, the conversation trailed off as Kai chewed his food, and Kipo looked around the room for any other conversation starters. Her eyes, as usual, landed on the machine.

"Did you make any progress on the machine today?" she asks. It was by no means an original question, but she didn't quite know what else to say.

Kai's eyes shifted to the machine and he chewed thoughtfully. "...No," he eventually told her. "I'm starting to think this really isn't anything."

Kipo gazed at the machine. She really didn't know anything about machinery like that, so if that's what he thought, then she supposed he was probably right. "If you say so... What are you doing?"

Kai looked up from the pieces in front of him, which he had started working on again. "...What?"

Kipo tilted her head at him. "I thought you said that wasn't anything?"

Kai looked from the pieces in front of him to Kipo and then back. He shrugged. "I don't know... I just... what else am I supposed to do?"

Kipo had a lot of things to say about that. A lot of things. 'You could pick up another hobby!', ''You could come with me and Anne and Fei Fei!', 'You could go with Mira and Tulip!', but in the end, were any of those things the right thing to say? Would those things help Kai, or would they hurt him more...? In the end, Kipo didn't know, so she didn't say anything at all.