Yamato gives Barry a slightly wry look in response, as if to go 'there, I was diplomatic, happy now, you oversized Jiminy Cricket knock-off?' Which is, in fairness, a lot of information to try to convey in a single look.

"I was kinda hoping that would taste like beef too," Jyou admits, eyeing the beer? bottle. "... Yamato's going to want to stock it on the raft now."

"Beer doesn't go rancid as quickly as water," Yamato mutters.

"None of us are over the drinking age, Ishida!"

A few more steps, and they emerge out of the rainforest, and into a landscape that could very easily pass as post-apocalyptic. It's a desert, swelteringly hot, with yellowish-brown sands -- save for numerous large, gear-shaped markings of glittering black sand. Perhaps stranger is that there are thousands upon thousands of telephone poles embedded in the sand, charred black and bent at angles, with cables dangling loosely.

Not too far off, though, is Mount Panorama, a structure of three concentric donut shapes stacked on top of each other and covered with trees and greenery. From here, it doesn't look that large, despite the fact that when viewed from the cliffs earlier in the trip, it must have been four or five times bigger.