"Come on, Arsenic!" Pico called from the top of the tree, "It's fun!"

Arsenic looked up at her brother, swinging from branch to branch and climbing like a monkey. There'd been no trees at the orphanage that she grew up in but she'd seen pictures in books of children climbing trees. She'd dreamed of doing it herself, climbing higher and higher, until she could touch clouds.

Now she was actually here, she wasn't so keen.

"I don't want to!" She called back to her brother who was pretending to shoot her with a stick.

"You're scared!"

"No I'm not! I'm not scared of no things!"

Pico jumped down from the high branch he was on. He fell face first into the dirt and laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. Arsenic looked at the fresh cut now bleeding from his leg.

"Come on! It's easy!"

"No, it's not, you've cut yourself."

"That's part of the fun!" Pico shrugged.

"You're mad."

"No, I'm not."

"You are. You're a mad chicken."

Pico began to laugh again and made chicken noises, running round Arsenic in a circle. She ignored him and looked back up to the tree, wishing she could climb it too. She'd only been adopted by the Suarez family two months ago, but Pico had instantly taken to her as both a sister and a friend. She had so much fun with him when he wasn't at school and he was so proud of her, going into school and showing off about his cool sister.

"I'll teach you!" He exclaimed looking at his sister, "You have your farm boots on, right? You'll be fine!"

Arsenic looked down at the big black, chunky boots Granny Aniseed had made for her specially. They were her prized possession and wore them every day. They looked somewhat out of place with the lilac summer dress her mother insisted she wore, but Arsenic never took them off.

Pico ran up to the tree and jumped, latching onto the lowest branch. He hauled himself up and sat there, nearly, waving his scuffed legs in the air. Arsenic stood at the bottom of the tree, knowing full well there was no chance she could do that.

Her brother noticed her apprehension and leant over the branch, an outstretching his hand to his nervous sister.

Arsenic ran up and jumped as high as she could, grabbing Pico's hand and gripping onto the trunk with her boots. Pico pulled and Arsenic pushed and they found themselves on the branch together.

"That was great!" Pico yelled, "We should do that over a cliff like action heroes!"

"What now?" She asked, looking up at the rest of the tree, spots of pink sky poking out between the gaps in branches and leaves.

"This is the super fun part! You just climb!" Pico enthused. He began to grab onto branches and pull himself up, disappearing quickly into the mass of greenery, "Don't worry! It's easy!"

Taking his word for it, Arsenic followed suit, nervously and slowly, holding tightly onto the branches she found and scrambling after her brother.

Eventually she found him sat on a thick branch at the top, making a hat out of leaves. He placed it gently on his sister's head.

"Dad says he's going to build me a treehouse up here one day! With a big ladder. Then we can come up here all the time and be tree heroes!"

Pico didn't talk much about Ember. He completely idolised him and was always beyond excited when he knew his dad would be coming home. Ember was a space traveller of much regard in their village of Rwanda Umushanana and was always flying round the the solar system in his custom rockets. He would bring back new and exciting things from other planets, one of them being Arsenic, actually. Whilst doing repairs on an orphanage on a strange planet, he'd been disgusted at the terrible conditions and abuse going on and took every child to safer places to seek adoption. Apart from her. Ember had taken a liking to Arsenic and from then on, she'd been a member of the Suarez family.

"Tree heroes?"

"Yeah! Like how dad is a space hero, I can be a tree hero! I can't go to space yet but I can go up this tree. So I'll have to be a tree hero instead."

Pico pushed back the branches to reveal a beautiful view. The bright white sun shining in the pink sky, the red rocks and mountains that surrounded their village, and the burning red rivers of fire that bubbles away, the sun shining magically of it, rippling against the flame.

To some people, Raven could be likened to traditional descriptions of Hell. Arsenic thought it was beautiful. Pico noticed Arsenic's wide eyes as she took the view in.

"Yeah, Razen's pretty cool but I want to go to the other planets! I want to run round the jungle on Gren and fight monsters and ghosts and gorillas! And then go to Puffoon and punch a tornado! Then, I'll fly to Cassia and save a village from a big sea monster! And then, and then, my robot army that I built on Erd can help me and also bake me cookies!"

Arsenic watched as Pico described this, flailing his arms about and making explosion noises. He turned to his sister excitedly.

"We should go play adventures right now!" He yelled, before putting on a scared face, "Arsenic! There's an invisible sea monster over there attacking the water village! We have to fight it!"

And Pico leapt out of tree, falling on his face again, but ran off regardless. Arsenic followed suit and spent the rest of the day playing with her brother.

Arsenic was still stood at the bay window when Hyde and Lassi awoke. She'd spent all night staring into space, literally this time. The thought of her brother being out there alone in all that terrified her, yet it wouldn't leave her head. Pico could handle himself fine and, true, he'd probably dreamt about space adventures everyday since they were 8, but her mind was sick with worry.

Hyde joined her at the window and squinted.

"This doesn't look like the wind planet. If anything, this looks like the water planet!" He exclaimed, before turning sharply to the silver robot, "Neumann! We told you the wind planet."

"Apologies, Master Hyde. Due to the limitations of the navigational system, this was the only available destination."

"Whatta load of bull dodders," Lassi grumbled, "Looks like this rocket goes where, it wants, not where we want it to go."

Arsenic stared out at the planet they were about to land on.

"Hyde, you're good at planet geography, aren't you?"

"Yeah," he replied, as he sat down applying sunscreen to himself.

"Is Cassia very cold?"

"No it's actually quite hot. All of the elemental planets are, due to their close proximity to the sun and the intense energy they have inside them."

"Okay, great," Arsenic responded, nervously, "Is there chunks of ice in the Cassian sea?"

"No, way. It's all salt water, so it would have to be freezing to form any ice here."

"One more. Is there an ice planet?"

"There hasn't been one discovered. Why?"

Lassi opened the door of the rocket to reveal they had landed upon a small, bobbing plate of ice, in the middle of the sea. Hundreds of other ice chunks bobbed alongside them. Hyde put his sun lotion on the side, mouth agape.

"What the heck is this?" He exclaimed, "This can't be Cassia, can it?"

"Neumann!" Lassi called out, "Are we on Cassia?"

"Yes, Master Poop Nugget. We are currently on the water planet, Cassia."

Lassi chuckled at her name change but quickly stopped as she looked back upon the scene that faced them. Arsenic shivered.

"I've never been anywhere this cold."

Hyde looked at her clothes. Her white lacy bardot left her shoulders and midriff on show, whilst her skirt didn't cover the front of her legs.

"You aren't exactly dressed for it. Those boots will come in handy for getting through that snow though."

Gingerly, Lassi stepped out onto the ice plate and peered towards the horizon.

"If we can get to the snow! Look how far away we are."

"Oh, great!" Hyde yelled back, sarcastically, "I'll try and get Neumann to land us somewhere else. Maybe the second-most inconvenient place, seeing as this is probably the first."

Lassi watched as Arsenic slowly left the rocket and stood outside with her on the ice plate. She wrapped a furry paw around her shivering friend and looked out towards the mainland. Then, another bobbing ice plate nearby caught her eye.

She began to do her wind spell, pulling all the other ice chunks towards them to create a bridge. Hyde popped his head out at all the noise.

"What are you two doing now?" He shouted.

Lassi finished and gestured to the bridge she'd created with a triumphant smile. He sighed.

"It doesn't look sturdy but it's the best we've got. Apparently Neumann is too cold to fly anywhere."

Holding each other tightly, the three slowly made their way across the bridge, feeling the ice nearly give way with every step. Every slight bob or tilt sent their stomachs lurching, the idea of plummeting into the frozen waters too horrible to even think about. After what seemed like hours, they made it to the mainland.

They were on a beach, each grain of sand a minuscule ice cube, with the cliffs around them iced in snow. Coral was frozen in place, frost encasing it where it grew. A small campfire roared by the cliffs, a small otter cosied up to it, the flames doing nothing to impact the frozen wasteland it burned in.

"W-wow! Visitors!" The otter exclaimed, "Welcome to Cassia! I'm Peter !"

"Peter?" Hyde muttered "What a strange name."

"Hello, Peter," Arsenic smiled, completely ignoring Hyde, "It's very cold today."

"Today?" The otter laughed, "Try months! I don't remember the last time I saw the sun."

The three teens looked at each other as the otter continued laughing.

"Wow," Hyde said flatly, "That sounds...bad."

"Ha, yeah, it does. We are all counting down the days until we freeze to death at this point. But still! Life goes on. Not for us, but, you know…other people."

"Well, have fun doing that. What a fun reminder into how fickle Mother Nature can be. Lassi, Arsenic, come on."

They walked away hurriedly, leaving Peter sitting cheerfully by his fire.

"What a strange little otter," Lassi mused. Hyde huffed.

"He has very clearly lost it and we should leave him far behind. We need to find a village and buy some warmer clothes for certain people who think a crop top is good adventure wear."

"To be fair, I didn't realise I was going on an adventure. Lassi just sort of went off and I followed."

Lassi laughed heartily at the memory. Arsenic went into her skirt pocket and pulled out Boggart, who was shivering. She cupped him into her hands and blew hot air softly. The toad blinked appreciatively and was carefully put back into the pocket.

They continued on, the cold air whipping at any bare skin that was out, the snow pushing against every step. Hyde took his bare arms out of his sleeves and put them inside of his shirt, the empty sleeves flapping wildly. Lassi took off her orange poncho and gave it to Arsenic, her yellow and orange robes already giving some protection against the cold. Hyde spotted something in the distance.

"Look! It's an academy rocket!"

The three attempted to run to it, but due to the snow, ended up doing a fast-paced waddle. The rocket was deep in the snow, nearly already covered in it. Lassi opened the frozen door and peeked inside to find no provisions or clue to who had crashed it here.

"Well," Hyde frowned, "At least we know someone is here." Secretly, he was praying it to be one of his brothers. He cared deeply for all his friends, but the fear for his brothers was immense.

Continuing, into the snowy wasteland that was before them, each step was becoming harder to take than the last. Eventually, they came to a small set of steps, carved out of the rocky wall around them. As they walked up, Lassi tripped over something half-buried in snow, letting out a scream.

"Ahh! My little foot!"

"Oh, no. It's not lucky anymore," Hyde smirked, kneeling into the snow to see what she'd tripped on. Then, it was his turn to scream. The two girls looked to see him holding a headless robotic body.

"It's Mokka!"