Kipo took one final sniff and nodded to herself. Yep, this was the place for sure. She turned triumphantly to her two companions, pointing down to a large bush below the. Like a huge bush. Like... the size of a small mall. But Kipo didn't have time to unpack that right now, her stomach was growling.

"It's down there," she told Wirt and Adam. "I can smell it. Food."

Well, technically that wasn't the only thing that Kipo was smelling down there. She could smell a lot of smells coming from the bush, some good, some bad, some downright horrible, but also, the heavenly scent of sweet fruit. Kipo was licking her lips just thinking about it.

But Wirt and Adam didn't seem to share her enthusiasm. To Kipo's surprise, they both stared at her, their eyes wide and their mouths agape in shock.

"Uh... is something wrong?" Kipo asked, a little self consciously. What had gotten into them?

"Um..." Adam's hand jerked up, as if he both wanted to and didn't want to move at the same time. He tapped his nose. "Er.. something happened to... your nose..."

Kipo blinked, raising her fingers to where Adam was motioning to, and then both her hands flew to her face. Instead of the smooth, pointy nose Kipo usually had, the texture was velvety and flat.

"Oh!" Kipo gasped. She'd turned her human nose into a jaguar nose without realizing it. "Oops. Herbs in!"

Kipo lowered her hands. Her nose was back to normal. Adam and Wirt stared.

"O-Oh," Wirt said, sounding startled. "You really can turn into a jaguar... I guess."

Kipo shrugged. "I mean, usually, though I've been a bit nervous to try it recently, because what if I change and then can't change back?"

"That can happen?" Adam asked, squinting at her. "You can change into a jaguar and not be able to change back, ever?"

Kipo nodded. "And I'll lose my identity, who I am. But hey! Now that I'm not so lonely anymore, maybe it'll work better!"

Wirt blinked at her. He didn't really seem eager for her to turn into a mega jaguar. "So you're going to do it? Right now?"

Kipo opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, her stomach rumbled painfully. Kipo patted her belly, wincing. The hunger pains were starting to get painful now. "Well, no. Maybe after I eat."

Wirt gulped.

The three of them turned around, once again staring down at the gigantic bush. Kipo wondered what kind of fruit it had. Now that she'd changed her nose, she couldn't quite differentiate between every single smell, but the fruit still smelled enticing.

From where the three of them were, they were overlooking the bush, but not by much. A couple feet, at most. If the leaves had been made out of slightly sturdier material, Kipo was sure they could just hope down onto it with no problem. But Kipo was sure if they did that, all they accomplice is falling off the bush and falling down to the ground, which they'd probably not survive.

So Kipo was surprised when Adam immediately jumped down.

"Adam!" Kipo gasped, but instead of falling through the leaves like she expected, he landed lightly on the leaf. Adam stood up quickly, staring expectantly at Wirt and Kipo.

Wirt and Kipo exchanged a looked, and Kipo shrugged. She hopped down to a leaf beside Adam. It wobbled a little bit, but it held firmly under Kipo's weight. After a second, Wirt hopped down as well. He teetered, but Kipo quickly grabbed his arm before he could lose his balance.

"Are you okay?" Kipo asked, concerned. Wirt frowned, looking nervous.

"Um... how long has it been since we last eaten?" Wirt asked. Kipo blinked, thinking back.

"It was... yesterday, right?" Kipo asked furrowing her brow. And then her eyes widened. "Unless it wasn't... there's really no way to figure out how long we were asleep, I guess."

Wirt held his stomach. His face was a little green. "I'm starting to feel a little sick..."

Now that Kipo thought about it, her hunger was starting to become a little unbearable as well. She tried to ignore it. "Just hold it together a little longer, Wirt! The food is right there!"

"Um... don't be so sure," Adam cut in.

Kipo and Wirt turned to find him laying on his stomach, looking through a square hole in the leaf. Beside him laid a green, square piece of the leaf. He must have cut a hole in the leaf with his knife.

A growl ripped through her stomach, and Kipo was painfully reminded of Adam's words. "Wait, what?" she asked. "What do you mean?"

"Come look."

Wirt and Kipo complied easily, kneeling next to Adam as he moved aside, letting them look into the hole he made. What Kipo and Wirt saw made them gasp.

It was... a strange sight, to say the least, like the type of sight that would be seen in a fever dream, or a particularly odd 'symbolic' art piece.

To Kipo, it resembled a marketplace filled with creatures of all sorts and sizes, some just dots and other's the size of the long necks that almost reached all the way up to them. They were rushing around the branches and leaves of the bush, sometimes sideways, or even upside down. They're only a couple stationary creatures, but they were still moving quickly, their multiple limbs, sometimes two, sometimes twenty, moving around quickly.

To Wirt, the scene was like a highway, with the creatures moving around in a blur, in what looked like 'lanes', though it almost seemed like there were multiple lanes per branch and leaf. Wirt watched as the creatures shuffled in from the bottom of the bush, zoom around through the branches, and then exit the other side. Despite looking chaotic, and being so fast that Wirt could barely make out the creatures, he could still tell there was a type of order to it. The creatures made sure to stay in their own lanes, and the chaos flowed smoothly.

"You smelled food in there?" Adam asked Kipo, not exactly sounding mean, just skeptical.

Kipo looked closely, nodding. "Yeah, actually." Kipo took a deep inhale, and pointed to a specific place. "Over there."

Wirt squinted. "I-I don't... oh, now I see it...? Wait, those are fruits?"

Kipo took another sniff. "If my nose is anything to go by, then yes!"

"B-But can you smell if their... poisonous?" Wirt asked, but it didn't really look like he cared too much.

Kipo backed up, and swung her legs around into the hole. Wirt quickly got out of the way. "There's no way to know if we don't go and find out for ourselves! Come on!"

"What? Wait, shouldn't we, you know, come up with a sort of plan first?" Wirt asked quickly.

"A plan?" Adam repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, yeah... look how many... things are down there," Wirt pointed out. "I don't think it's a good idea to go down there..."

"...Without some sort of disguise, right?" Kipo finished Wirt's sentence, which really didn't need to be finished at all.

"What?" Wirt asked.

"What kind of disguise would let you fit in with... them...?" Adam demanded.

Kipo thought for a second, and then focused on her forearms, saying 'Herbs out!' under her breath. To Adam and Wirt's shock, they suddenly changed, growing larger, more purple and... furrier.

"Hey, it worked!" Kipo cheered. "Now, I just really hope I can change back."

"What worked?" Adam asked. "Now you just look like Popeye..."

Kipo didn't know how to take that. "Thanks!" Kipo beamed at Adam.

"Are you really planning to go in, just like that?" Adam continued. "You don't look like a bug at all."

"A bug-oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense," Kipo thought out loud. Apparently, this forest had a lot of different bug creatures. Kipo nodded to herself. "And, yes, this... was how I was planning to go in. Why?"

"I just said why, you don't look like a bug at all!" Adam huffed. Kipo blinked, then looked down at herself. After a bit of thought, her legs transformed into cheetah legs, though both her legs were covered under her pants. Kipo lifted the bottoms of her pants up, peering at her new purple fur.

She looked up for Adam's approval. "Better?"

Adam looked tired. "Are you just going to walk like that throughout the book?"

That would have been hilarious, but Kipo shook her head. She let go of her pant leg. "What else should I do then?"

Adam shrugged, but Wirt stepped forward.

"Um... what about you wear a... leaf coat?" Wirt offered, but he trailed off at the end. Adam frowned, but Kipo lit up.

"Oh, you mean like those coats we wore at The House?" The corner's of Kipo's mouth perked up. "The coats we made of the couch?"

"What?!"

Wirt nodded to Kipo, and then turned to Adam. "We made a coat out of a couch."

Adam lifted an eyebrow. That really didn't explain anything at all, but Adam didn't seem like he really wanted to know anyway. "Alright," he said. "A leaf coat?"

Wirt shrugged. "I mean, you know... there are stick bug things down there, right? I just thought..."

Finally, Adam seemed to get it.

A short five minute arts and crafts flurry later, Kipo was fully dressed up in her stick bug costume. It was nothing too much, in fact, it wasn't even a coat. It was nothing more than a glorified blanket stuck to Kipo's back and arms with whatever the three of them could find. There was grass, the veins of a leaf, and even some sap that Kipo wasn't exactly thrilled to put on her arms. But the costume was done, and Kipo was sure it would work, despite Adam's saying otherwise.

Wirt, meanwhile, wished good Halloween costumes in his world were so easy to make.

"Just a quick in and out, right?" Adam said. "Just to get the fruit?"

"That's right," Kipo nodded confidently. "Trust me, I can go really fast with my jaguar legs."

"Well, that's good." Adam looked down through their hole. "But we'll be ready anyway."

"Try not to interrupt the lanes," Wirt cut in, and Kipo and Adam gave him a puzzled look. Wirt frowned, his face going red. Before either of them could ask what he had meant, Wirt rubbed his arm, looking away.

"Uh... never mind," he mumbled, and Kipo didn't have the heart to press him.

"Alright," Kipo said, straightening her shoulders. "I'll be right back."

With one final nod to Adam and Wirt, Kipo started to the edge, sliding down the leaves as a sort of slide down to the ground. She landed with a loud thud, but the bugs running in and out of the leaves beside her didn't even give her a glance. That was probably good.

Kipo took a deep breath, turning to the bugs and squaring her shoulders. Maybe Wirt had been onto something, they did look surprisingly like a line.

The line was going by surprisingly fast, even faster than what Kipo had been seeing before. But there was no going back, they really did need to get some food, and quickly. Kneeling into a sprinter's stance, Kipo grit her teeth, tensing the muscles in her legs.

Then, she started off. She wondered how this looked to Wirt and Adam.

Kipo quickly got in line, trying to both blend in seamlessly and to stay away from the bugs at the same time. But that was practically impossible, all the bugs were squished in together with barely any room to go anywhere from where the mass was going. Thankfully, despite the bumps and jostles, Kipo's costume stayed together.

Kipo's eyes widened as she passed through the leaves on the outside of the bush, finding herself in a new world, one that looked far different than what she'd seen from above. When she looked up, she could see the hole they made, a tiny prick of light shiny down on her.

But that was very quickly forgotten about when Kipo saw the rest of the strange place she'd found herself.

It was almost like a painting. An odd, surreal painting that held no regard for physics or reason, like the ones with the upside down staircases that led to nowhere or the walkways that somehow went in two places at once. And it was only made odder by the creatures walking around. Kipo almost felt that she had found herself on an odd alien planet, and when Kipo looked closely, she thought she could pick out culture and mannerisms in the bugs around her. It reminded her of the place she'd been trying to build with the mutes at home, a large, peaceful expanse with creatures of all shapes and sizes.

It made Kipo grin. This was so cool.

Kipo's stomach suddenly rumbled, a good reminder for why she was here. She shook herself. She was doing a good job of blending in, but she couldn't forget why she was here in the first place.

Kipo inhaled deeply, closing her eyes and trying to pick out that sweet smell again. It had been easier up above this strange crowd, but when she focused, Kipo could mostly pick it out.

Kipo opened her eyes again. The fruits were pretty close, just a little bit to her left. Kipo took a deep breath. She could almost taste them, and they tasted delicious.

Suddenly, something jostled her from behind, almost sending Kipo tumbling to the ground. An aggravated chattering came from behind her, and a sharp stink filled Kipo's nose. She winced, getting up quickly. She didn't quite know what any of that meant, but probably not anything good. Kipo hurried forward, hoping that whatever creature she'd annoyed would forget about her.

Well, at the very least, Kipo had learned an important lesson: don't stop.

Kipo looked around carefully. At this rate, she'd be out of the bush before she could make her move. She needed a route to get to the fruits... somewhere hopefully close by...

There!

Kipo hurried to her left, joining the mass of bugs going to the left, towards the fruit. It was far easier than she had thought, but she supposed it made sense for it to be easy. The way these bugs were moving resembled a river current. If Kipo moved with the current, she could make her way through the bush easily.

The fruits were in her sight now: a large pile of oval, purple fruits with red dots scattered over them that reminded Kipo of strawberries. Kipo watched as the line of bugs went past it, most of them grabbing fruits as they hurried by. Kipo ginned, following in their example, reaching for a fruit...

But she didn't even manage to get her hands on it before an explosion sounded.