A Snake Falls to Earth

Nina is home alone with Tightrope while her father helps her grandmother prepare for the storm. A stranger begins banging on the alley door; scared, Nina hides in her room. Peering outside her window, she sees several complete strangers with a hawk (Oli and his friends, aside from Brightest, are all in their false human forms). Nina goes downstairs to see what the strangers want but is interrupted by the coyote sisters flinging the door open despite its locks. The animal traits of each animal person’s false form aren’t hidden, which shocks Nina. Oli asks her to help them.

The narrative returns to Oli and his friends’ ascent of the fourth peak. Brightest hasn’t returned from delivering the message to the bears, making Oli nervous. Zale summons the mountain’s bighorn sheep with a drum. The sheep are the protectors of the mountain and agree to escort the group to the summit. The sheep take them to the bighorn sheep originator, a massive bighorn sheep who looks more like a statue than an actual animal. The group rides on the back of the originator to the peak, where Brightest joins them. Brightest tells the group Mockingbird has followed them (Brightest). The group makes it to the summit, where they wait for the pseudosun to reach the proper position and then fall upward into its gravitational pull.

Oli and his friends fall onto Nina’s grandma’s property. Earth is indistinguishable from the Reflecting World except for the sky and the warmth of the sun.

Back in the present at the family bookstore, Nina sits down and talks with the animal people. She wants to bring them to see her grandmother and father. After the animal people explain their situation, they learn that a hurricane that hit Louisiana destroyed the last sanctuary for Dallas toads. After Nina explains that another hurricane is threatening her grandmother, the animal people promise to help. Likewise, Nina promises to help them save Ami and the Dallas toads.

Nina hatches a plan to raise money to save the toads. Nina takes the animal people into the city to an abandoned, supposedly haunted tunnel behind a shopping center. Nina plans to record a skit: Risk, Reign, and herself will pose as friends coming to investigate the tunnel, and Oli and Brightest (in their true forms as a cottonmouth and cooper’s hawk) will burst out of the bushes and fight one another. Due to the monetization of the St0ryte11er app, Nina can send in a video to a top-tier content creator (her favorite and most popular being a creator named Thou Own Dave) and get half of the proceeds the video generates. The group records the video, but Nina is skeptical the video will go viral; Oli isn’t intimidating enough. As Nina plans what to do next, a grizzly bear rushes from the tunnel.

Nina’s camera is still recording as the bear rushes out of the tunnel. The group believes a regular Earth bear is attacking them. The animal people use their supernatural reflexes and coordination as friends to subdue the bear before realizing it is the bounty hunter Oli previously encountered.

Nina thinks the video is better than her planned one. Oli, due to the strong sense of smell snakes possess, knows the bear’s scent is off and suspects it is Mockingbird; he shares this with Brightest, who promises to keep an eye on the bear. The group, along with the disguised Mockingbird, returns to Nina’s house to upload the video and hope for the best.

Nina struggles with the potential consequences of uploading the bear attack video. She worries that the video going viral may inspire copycats and panic about bear attacks. Nina decides the good outweighs the bad and uploads the video. She plans on using half the proceeds to help the Dallas toads and the other half to help her family. While she is locked in her room and struggling with her moral dilemma, Mockingbird shatters a window downstairs and escapes.

While Nina is in her room, Oli confronts Mockingbird about her real identity. She reveals to the group that they never had a chance of the grizzly bear detectives taking on their case. Mockingbird insists that, despite appearances, she loves the group of friends and will continue to help (or possibly hinder) them. She insinuates that she may harm Oli, who is the only one who can smell her ruses, before leaving by breaking a window in Nina’s living room.

The animal people watch videos from Thou Own Dave while they wait for Nina. The group watches Dave throw confetti down to contestants, who need to find one particular piece to win money. The video gives the group a taste of what the inside of houses for the ultra-rich look like. The animal people can’t imagine what one person does with all that space. Two contestants have found the special piece of confetti and seem like they are going to fight over it. The video culminates in Dave making arbitrary rules on the spot to create more entertainment for his audience.