"Varian?" A voice called. Varian slowly opened his eyes. Hiro was standing above him. Varian sat up and rubbed his head.
"What happened?" He asked.
"We crashed," Hiro said. He gestured to Callum and Wilbur, recovering by the edge of the wreckage. "You got knocked out. The rest of us are fine. It's going to take a while to fix the machine."
"Okay," Varian said. He looked around. They seemed to have crashed at the base of some huge maple tree, feet away from a cliff. Lucky we didn't crash off the cliff, Varian thought.
Callum stood up. "I know this place," he said. "This is my dimension!"
"Are you sure?" Hiro asked.
"Absolutely," Callum said. "Rayla and I climbed up this tree to get down the cliff."
"...What?" Hiro said.
Callum opened his mouth to reply, but a loud buzzing noise started. Another rip, Varian thought. He looked over the edge of the cliff. The sound was coming from a large purple portal down at the bottom. Something slipped through and the portal disappeared. Varian stared at who the portal had spit out.
"Uh...guys?" Varian said. "I think that's Red Fedora Woman."
Wilbur snapped his head up. "Where?" He asked.
Varian pointed. Wilbur came over and looked down the cliff. Among the grass and trees at the base was a large machine and—a woman in a red fedora.
"It's Red Fedora Woman!" Wilbur said. The woman started the machine and it started flying above the trees. "She's getting away! Quick, Callum, how do we get down?"
"I was about to tell you that," Callum said. "Climb up the tree, sit on a whirligig seed, and you get down the cliff." He looked up the long trunk. "It's grown since we were last here. Come on, everybody." He grabbed a knot on the trunk and started climbing. The others looked at each other and shrugged, then climbed after him.
When they reached the top of the tree, they all sat down on the platform of a large seed almost 10 feet across.
"Wow," Hiro said. "What sort of dimension is this? The giant-plants dimension?"
"I don't know, " Callum said. "It's just...Xadia. Katolis. The world. Anyway, anybody got anything sharp? I need to cut the seed off so we can get going." He gestured at the stem of the seed.
The boys looked at each other. Nobody had anything. Callum sighed.
"Fine," he said. He jump-climbed his way back down to the wreckage and grabbed a stiff metal rod that was split along the side.
When he got back up the tree, he started hacking at the stem with the makeshift sword.
"Need help?" Hiro asked. Callum was breathing hard.
"Sure," Callum said. He surrendered the sword and sat down.
"Last cut," Hiro announced after a while.
"Everyone hold onto something!" Callum yelled. Varian grabbed onto the edge of the seed and shut his eyes. Hiro made the last cut, and the seed started plummeting down. The wind rushed through Varian's hair. Wilbur's screaming was lost in the noise of the wind. The seed spun around and around until it finally stopped abruptly. Varian opened his eyes. They were on the ground
"We made it!" Hiro said.
Wilbur was still screaming.
"We're on the ground," Callum said to Wilbur. "It's okay."
Wilbur slowly got up and looked around. "Oh," he said. After a quick moment, he took the lead, like nothing had happened.
"Thank you for the transportation, Callum. Now, the Red Fedora Woman went that way. We must hurry!" He ran off into the woods.
The others shrugged and started running after him.