Wirt's brow furrowed as his lips pursed out in a pout. Kipo and Adam noticed, but they were laughing way too hard to care. Even Bipo looked a little amused.
"It wasn't... it wasn't that funny... guys," Wirt huffed, crossing his arms. He was walking behind Adam and Kipo a little bit as they followed the rest of the bugs. Class had apparently ended, and now they were headed off to who knows where. But right now, Kipo and Adam were much more preoccupied with Wirt.
"It WAS that funny!" Adam snorted. "That wasp put you in the Bad Child corner for your crimes against the classroom, Wirt."
"I was only talking!" Wirt protested, his face stained red.
"You don't talk in class, Wirt!" Kipo teased, giggling. "But if you want us to stop laughing, we definitely will."
Wirt stared at her for a couple seconds, and that's all it took for Kipo's stifled giggling to erupt in full blown laughter again. She was laughing so hard that she could almost feel tears running down her cheeks, and she had to stop, leaning against the wall for balance. Wirt sighed, and he and Adam paused. Bipo, apparently tired from their five minutes of walking, flopped down on the floor and started snoring. Kipo knew the feeling, the wasp had provided them with fruit throughout the day, so now Kipo was feeling stuffed, full and tired. She wished she could fell asleep, too.
"Oh, come on," Adam groaned, but his annoyance was overshadowed by the corners of his mouth quirking up in amusement. "We can't lose them."
Kipo nodded, and took a couple breathes. She shakily stood up straight again, but she still felt like she could start laughing at any second.
"Um... so why are we following the bugs again?" Wirt asked, staring after the disappearing crowd of bugs. The four of them started off before the bugs could go completely out of sight.
"Cause... we're students now?" Adam told him. "Come on, Wirt, you already got in trouble for talking in class, are you going to try and get in trouble for wandering next?!"
Wirt sighed while Kipo tried to hide her laugh with a cough.
"It's probably better to follow them for now, because they're probably going out of this place to go home," Kipo explained, more serious this time, but she still couldn't resist another joke. "Besides, we don't want to be a troublemaker like you, Wirt."
Another sigh, and Adam chortled.
"What if they're not leaving, though?" Wirt asked. Adam and Kipo paused, surprised.
"Huh?" Kipo asked. "But it's the end of the day, they have to go home for the night."
"Miss Langtree's school was a boarding school," Wirt told them. "What if this is a boarding school, too?"
Adam sucked in a breath, the possibility seeming to worry him, but Kipo still looked confused.
"A boarding school?" she repeated. "What's that?"
"A school where the students live at the school," Adam huffed. "Dammit, you might be right about that... That'd be a problem for us."
"Live at the school... they can still leave, though, right?" Kipo asked, confused.
"Um..." Adam and Wirt exchanged a look. It was clear neither of them had really been to a boarding school. "I don't think so?"
"I think you have to get permission first," Wirt added uncertainly. The bugs were long gone now, but that wasn't exactly their biggest problem anymore.
"Oh," Kipo didn't look any less confused.
"Unfortunately, we can't even communicate to the wasp, let alone get permission to leave," Adam said. "We're going to have to sneak out."
"Past the wasp?" Wirt asked. "How are we going to do that?"
"Shouldn't be too hard," Adam raised his knife.
Kipo quickly knocked it down. "No! We're not using that. Come on, Adam, the wasp is just a teacher."
Adam huffed, but he didn't argue, putting away his knife, quietly. Kipo relaxed.
"Alright," Kipo said. She took a deep breath, sniffing the air. "The wasp is over there, so we should probably start looking over that way."
"Wait, you can smell it?" Wirt asked. He sounded nervous.
"Yeah, all bugs let off certain smells," Kipo told them. "I think it's part of how they communicate, other then those weird clicking."
Adam winced. "So that means...?"
"That I can smell you?" Kipo finished. "Er...yeah, but don't worry, I'm used to it."
Despite her reassurance, Adam and Wirt quickly stepped back.
Kipo gave them a puzzled look. "Uh..."
Before she could say anything, though, Adam started off down the tunnel. "We should... just start going."
"Probably," Kipo agreed, nudging Bipo with her foot, after an irritated warble, Bipo obediently got up, following the humans as they hurried through the tunnels. But they didn't get far before odd things started happening in the air around them.
Kipo squinted, waving a hand in front of her face. Eventually, she had to speak up. "Hey guys? Do you notice that the pink fog is getting... thicker?"
Wirt and Adam looked around. The walls, the torches, Bipo, even the three of them seemed to have turned pink. Adam tried to brush it away, but it didn't seem to do a thing.
"What the....?" He asked. "What's going on?"
"I don't-," Kipo suddenly cut herself off, straightening up. "Hey, somethings coming!"
Adam and Wirt turned to her quickly, alarmed looks on their faces.
"The wasp?!" Adam asked, but Kipo shook her head, taking another sniff.
"No, not them..." she frowned. "It's familiar, but I can't tell..."
Adam grabbed her arm before she could finish. "It probably doesn't matter. We need to hide either way!"
Kipo nodded, and the three of them hurried around a corner, hiding inside another tunnel. It wasn't a good hiding spot, they'd be found out immediately if the thing decided to turn left, but there weren't too many places to hide in the smooth walls of the tunnel.
Kipo felt Bipo bump into her feet, and she shuffled around to make room. Then she heard it.
A slow, nervous clicking like footsteps echoed throughout the tunnel, and when Kipo looked around the corner, she was surprised to find the ant from earlier slowly crawly through the tunnel. Was it trying to be cautious, or sneaky?
Kipo felt Adam peek around her shoulder. He frowned at the ant.
"Is that... the same ant?" Adam asked, his eyebrows furrowing. Kipo squinted.
"I... think so..."
Wirt took a look as well. "It still has the aphid," he pointed out.
Adam frowned. "It's weird, isn't it?" he asked. "These creatures don't seem affected by the fog at..."
Suddenly, the rest of Adam's sentence trailed off, forgotten. Apparently, he'd spoken too soon.
The ant suddenly paused, the antennae moving around sporadically. Kipo had thought the ant was shaking due to nervous, but as the fog curled around it, Kipo realized she had been mistaken.
As the smoke curled into the ant's mouth and into its body, the clicking growing increasingly agitated.
Kipo was moving before she realized what she was doing, coming out of her tunnel and hurrying up to the ant.
"Kipo!" Adam shouted, but they were both far too late.
Suddenly, the desperate clicking stopped, and something fell to the ground at Kipo's feet. When she backed away, she was horrified to find the ant's pincers by her feet.
"What the...?" Adam sounded as horrified as Kipo felt. "What-."
Suddenly, a low moan cut through the air, one filled to the brim with pain and agony. Kipo and Adam felt themselves backing away against their will.
"What...What is that?" Adam cried. "Is that... did the ant make that sound?!"
Unfortunately, he got his answer right away. A face pushed the fog, the mouth open in a silent scream. The face had pupils in its bug-lensed and a very human mouth on its triangle head. The ant had been mutated past recognition.
"What the hell?!" Adam quickly got out his knife, slashing it against the bugs face, stopping its lunge towards them. The ant let out a scream as it fell to the ground.
"Adam!" Kipo scold, turning to glare at him, but she didn't get to say anything else before she was pulled to her feet.
"Come on, we have to go!" Adam yelled. Kipo wrenched her arm out of his hold.
"No, we have to-OW!" Kipo stumbled as something painfully latched onto her ankle. She glanced down to find the tiny aphid, sporting human teeth that were far to big for it, biting into her ankle.
Adam knelt down, stabbing it into the ground. Kipo watched in horror as he then raised the knife, shaking the corpse off of it. "We have to go!" he shouted at Kipo. "Whatever happened to that ant, clearly turned it against us! Let's go!"
Before Kipo could get her bearings, Adam pulled her along roughly. Kipo only got a small glance back, and her eyes only met the pupils of the ant once before she was shoved along. The ant hadn't gotten up.
"Over here!"
Kipo looked around to find Bipo and Wirt under a spotlight made from a hole in the ceiling. Wirt was jumping up and down, trying to reach it, but it was just out of his reach.
"We need to..." Wirt didn't seem quite sure what he needed to do, but likely, Adam did. Letting go of Kipo, he knelt down, trying to lift Wirt up to the hole.
"Huh? What?!" Wirt cried, nearly toppling down.
"Sorry, sorry," Adam huffed, but he didn't stop. Kipo hesitated for only a moment before stepping forward, helping to lift Wirt up at out of the hole. They heard Wirt scrambled around for a second before he finally got his grip, pulling himself up.
"Thanks," Adam grunted, and Kipo nodded before offering him her hand.
"Here," she said, and Adam took it. Kipo lifted him up, and Wirt took his hands, helping him up and out of the hole.
"Here, Kipo!" Adam called, holding out his hand. Wirt did as well, but was Kipo imagining that split second of hesitation?
Well, he wasn't the only one hesitating. Kipo could hear the ant cries bouncing off the walls as it wailed in pain. Could she really just leave it alone? Kipo didn't know.
Thankfully, a brush on her leg gave her the perfect answer. Kipo looked down just as Bipo disappeared into the fog. Hadn't Bipo gone up already?!
"I'll be right back," Kipo promised Adam and Wirt, before she rushed off after Bipo, ignoring Adam and Wirt's calls. She hurried through the fog, right on Bipo's trail.
Bipo stopped right beside the crumbled form of the ant, and Kipo winced as she saw it squirm and wither in pain. Had the fog done this horrible thing? Kipo wished she knew what to do to help it, at least a little bit.
Quickly, she shoved off her jacket, laying it on the ant. The ant stared up at her with all of it's pupils. It looked confused.
"I'm sorry," Kipo told it, wincing. Why couldn't she help more...?
"I-I....mmm." The ant's mouth moved, and it almost seemed to try and mimic what Kipo was saying. Kipo's eyes widened. Was... was the ant trying to speak?!
"KIPO!" Adam's voice suddenly echoed throughout the tunnel, and Kipo grimaced. Soon enough, he was going to come down here again and pull her away himself, wasn't he?
"I-I'm sorry," Kipo repeated. She didn't know what to say, but before she could get bogged down with worry and anguish, she got up, scooping Bipo up in her arms. She turned away quickly, hurrying back to the hole.
"Here!" Kipo shouted, shoving up Bipo to Adam and Wirt. Just in time, apparently, because Adam looked just about ready to crawl down.
"Finally!" Adam huffed, lowering his hand. Wirt did as well, and Kipo didn't even hesitate this time, she jumped up, latching onto their hands, and she let them pull her up into the forest once again.
They didn't move for a long time. Kipo found herself frozen with the guilt of leaving the ant behind in pain, Adam was too angry to move, and Wirt didn't know what to do. So, the three of them laid on the hard, dirt ground in silence.
Eventually, Kipo had to move. She raised her arms, rubbing at her bare arms. It was colder without her jacket up here.
"...So," Kipo started awkwardly, and that was all they needed for the dam to break.
"Why the heck did you do that?!" Adam yelled, sitting up. Kipo sat up, too.
"I... I had to go get Bipo!" Kipo argued. "We can't just leave them behind!"
"Then what did you so long?!" Adam shot back. "There's no way Bipo just suddenly became a master of evasion!"
"Well... yeah, they didn't..." Kipo admitted. "It... was hard to see, ok? But I got the out as fast as I could. Besides, we're all fine, so..."
Adam's lip curled, but he didn't argue. He seemed to agree, somewhat, with what Kipo was saying. Adam turned away with a huff. "Whatever," he sneered. "Let's just... find out where we are and how to get home already."
Kipo nodded, standing up as well. Wirt eventually followed suit, but Adam didn't really seem to be waiting for them. He started through the forest, his movements hard and angry. Kipo frowned. She supposed she did kind of worry them a bit...
"Adam?" Kipo called out softly. "I'm sorry I made you worry. I just thought... well, never mind. I'm sorry."
Adam turned back to glare out her, but he didn't seem as completely angry as he did before. "Whatever," he muttered, but despite the harsh way he said it, he seemed to relax. "It doesn't really matter anyway."
That was odd. Kipo supposed she didn't really know this guy, but she'd have thought that he wasn't quite the type of person to brush stuff like this off so casually. Not that Kipo thought he was unforgiving, but Adam certainly was stubborn.
Well, perhaps he just trusted her now. Or maybe he still assumed Kipo was just a fictional character, so it didn't matter to him.
Kipo was going to go with her first guess. But before she could say anything, Adam continued.
"I'm just tired," he told her. "It's been a long day, and I can't wait to go back to the bar and just sle-."
Suddenly, Adam froze, and Kipo had to backpedal so she didn't hit him. Behind her, Wirt let out an 'oof' as she bumped into him.
Kipo quickly apologized, and then looked around Adam to find out what the hold up was. Her eyes went wide as she stared up into the pink burning inferno of fire that blocked their path.
"Oh, you HAVE to be kidding me," Adam growled.