A/N: I was surprised when I recieved an e-mail... recently, from a certain someone about how I put them into a story.

To that certain someone I'd like to make the following statement:

"Yep."

Also, my writing su- I think that my writing is great. I will NOT say my Writing sucks anymore. Yes. My writing is my own unique style, and draws on my own imaginations.

Like I hadn't learned that already!

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- Project RE: B0 -

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Previously:

- In the wake of past weeks having strange dreams of Romance with Francis "Frankie" Foster, Mr. Herriman, head of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, attempted to push all of that utter ridiculousness aside, and just have a normal day for once.

But "normal" wasn't in the agenda. 2 visitors ended up meeting Mr. Herriman at separate periods: Falconlobo, an outlandish and insane female imaginary friend terrorized his office before running away- via crashing out of the house by window. Then just when he thought things would go back to normal, a strange young man calling himself "Dualsphere" shows up out of nowhere (And from what he claims, he was "looking" for Falconlobo) and attacks Mr. Herriman before the Imaginary can respond in any way. Dualsphere casually kills Mr. Herriman in a matter of minutes before he disappears. Mr. Herriman is left alone, beyond the help of anyone in the house, bleeding to death. -

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(unknown)

He sat on his back and watched his favourite show, one that involved animals. three animals were troublemakers, but they didn't look like they were making any trouble. The others sometimes resented the three, simply because they didn't know how to have any fun.

One of the adults on the show disliked the fun-makers. They were just free-spirited and happy. They were so "out there" that they could have awesome adventures without even trying. Surely they were the "good" guys, and some other characters were the "Bad" guys. The "Bad" guys tried ruining the fun of the good ones. Somehow he wished the bad guys would actually win for once; the "bad" guys, however, weren't necessarily bad.

That kind of thinking existed in the crazed fantasies of the millions of fanatics and "spiritually" enlightened people worldwide.

They were just numb and irritated by the "good" guys; being there longer than the "Good" Guys, they had no idea what fun was like. It wasn't their fault. They were resigned. It brought a smile to his lips to think they accepted that was the way things were, in fact, with the absence of the "Good", you couldn't categorize the "Bad" as you think. There would be no differences - no shitty variations, and no principles of "Good" and "Evil". But no. There had to be a change. There had to be a dividing line.

It was another evening and all he could do was imagine what it would be like to waver behind both of those boundaries. What it would be like when sitting on that fence would gradually cause one to become that fence itself. And what it would be like to break that line.


"... and it's mandatory you keep all traces of "Nature" outside the camp. It's The uh, Scoutmaster's orders. But other than that you'll love it here."

"I don't mind. I think this is pretty cool."

"Well, that's good. You make fast friends with the Campers in no time!"

Seems like he's taking this pretty well, Slinkman decided. But it was going to some time before the Scoutmaster's Assistant could wrap his gelatinous head around the odd ethic of that name- "Maion Paschar"? Is he Asian or something overseas? That's a pretty big distance!

"Okay, and here we are."

They were standing in front of cabin, which Slinkman told him was the "Jelly Cabin". And from Maion's perspective, it looked sillier than its' name implied.

"This is jelly Cabin?" Maion asked. "Looks silly."

"Well your cabinmates will be just as uh," Slinkman paused, trying to find the right words. "Eccentric," he finished. "Let's go meet them."

Slinkman opened the door and the both of them, just as the three cabinmates inside stopped bouncing up and down on their beds.

"Slinkman!" They exclaimed excitedly. "You wanna play with us? We're playing "Elevator"!"

Slinkman laughed, and others faced relaxed. He shook his head. "No, I came by with the new camper."

Once it was out, Lazlo and the other two Jellies ceased "Elevator". All three crowded around the new camper excitedly. Since Raj was the most capable with expression, he greeted him first. "Hello, new fellow Camper! We never got the chance to say hello to you, this is absolutely cool that you're going to be bunking with us!"

"New Friend, new friend!" Clam chimed in, jumping up and down. The Wolf looked startled enough that he stepped back. "Oh... yeah. You're those guys, right? Jelly Bean?"

"Yeah!" said Lazlo, who was very happy to have a new cabinmate. "We're the Jelly Beans! I'm Lazlo!"

"And I am Raj!" Raj introduced himself. "You seem like the incredibly trustworthy type. Welcome to Jelly Cabin! And this is our friend, Clam!"

Raj threw the attention of Maion to Clam who stood off silently, which Raj thought was a little odd for some reason. Clam hestitantly stepped forward and offered an fvggggggbvaintroductory, "Hi!"

Maion's expression didn't seem to change. "Oh, wow. Well, nice to meet you, Mr. Clam."

Everyone present was surprised at such formality, and Lazlo let out a hardy laugh. "Oh, you don't have to call any of us "Mister"!"

"Sounds like something an Adult would say..." Raj said shortly, when his imagination piqued. "Hey... are you from an incredibly rich family?"

Maion stared a Raj with a weird look. "Nnn-no....?" he said tersely. "N-no, I'm not. We're uh... middle class."

"Well, come on! You can tell us all about you, while we play some games! You know how to play Elevator!"

Maion's face brightened, though he was still unsure. "I... guess that sounds like fun?"

Wow, they are getting along pretty nicely, Slinkman thought. "You know, Jelly Cabin," Slinkman said to Maion out loud, "... IS known for coming up with some crazy activities..."

"Yeah I know," the wolf said hastily. "I didn't get to say anything to you guys. Because I was too busy... being yelled at to keep nature outside the camp."

Slinkman's eyes narrowed a little nervously and he directed the conversation's focus. "Uh, say, since this little guy is going to be your fourth bunkmate, a new bed was in advance." They all saw that he was right. There was another bunk sitting in the bottom corner, near the large closet. Maion looked around uninterestedly. "Is there anything fun to do around here?" He said.


"...Maion Paschar? What kind of stupid name is that!?" said an angry Edward Platypus to his two bunkmates, Chip and Skip. Things were status quo as far the two's typical response of: "Sounds like Sun Land." "I bet he's into kung fu."

"What?" Edward roared back, now fuming with more rage than he could handle. He wasn't aware that maybe it was jealousy at work. Or, if he was, he didn't care. "That makes it all the more worse! I get stuck with you TWO dunderheads, and Lazlo and his little "Band" get a...."


"... Karate MASTER!?" Slinkman burst out screaming at his superior, nearly falling out of his seat. "Sir, how'd you come up with that idea?"

Lumpus waved a disappointed finger at Slinkman like a parent waves a finger when disciplining their child. "He's Asian, and he has a WEIRD name! That's all the proof I need. I'm NOT going to let some raggamuffin, SNOT-nosed little brat one up me."

Slinkman was sure there was something stupid about what Lumpus said, but kept his consul for his lack of backbone. As it turned out, the entire camp was already aflame with gossip about Maion Paschar; the banana slug was surprised news traveled this fast. "Sir," he started. "How could a kid know Karate? And why exactly are you making a big deal out of this?"

"In all my years of being Scoutmaster..." Lumpus began his tirade pacing worrisomely around his desk, "I have never seen a Camper with focus, dedication, and emphasis on enforcing all the rules I have set up, to keep this place working like a well-oiled machine."

Slinkman blinked. "Doesn't that sound like something Commander Hoo-hah would say, sir?"

"Well, he is an amazing motivational speaker," Lumpus added quietly. "In fact, I would like to say that I'm a true model after his own-!"

"Wait, that's EXACTLY what Commander Hoo-hah said, sir. He used that speech at the last Camp conference in 1995, talking about the Grand Poombah," Slinkman reminded him, setting off another of Lumpus's deflated stares.

"That's not important!" Lumpus retorted. Slinkman rolled his eyes and said, "Okay, and where's this leading?"

"Don't you GET it, YOU spineless Slug!?"

"Uh, no, sir. No, I don't," Slinkman flatly answered. Lumpus ignored him and went on to say, "The campers follow the rules; the Scoutmaster makes the rules; the campers follow the Scoutmasters' rules..." "You already said that, sir-" Slinkman put in. "So, I'M a Rhetoric freak!" "You uh, don't know what that means, sir," Slinkman said. "The Campers..." Lumpus repeated, with even bigger emphasis, "... make ME look good!"

"... in front of the Commander, sir?" Slinkman began to understand.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, him too, but mostly my spotless tracking record! That single gravitational element that the very foundation of Camp Kidney is balanced over! As I encourage said laws of conference and administration over campers, the said Campers support my policy to enforce said laws that I quote UNQUOTE put into effect in order to establish boundaries and enact legitimate rights that extend so far as keeping them in accordance with standards and regulations!"

Slinkman was lost... again. "... What?"

Lumpus slammed both hands on his desk. "THEY screwing up, makes ME look good!"

Slinkman simply sat there, stunned- he was now at the tipping point of confusion; he was little afraid if he said anything his head was going to explode. "So... your whole argument is that the Campers make you look good, because they would mess up, and make you enact your rules over them, sir?"

Lumpus nodded. "Yep."

"But you've never actually enacted any of your rules."

"Exactly!"

"Sir, you're going around in circles. I-I don't get anything of what you're saying."

"That's EXACTLY what they want you to think, Slinkman," Lumpus snidely explained to his superior as he saddled buddy-buddy style to his assistant, officially lost miles away out of whatever Lumpus was trying to say. "See," he explained, "The way that kid talks, when I told him to keep nature OUT, he didn't yell! He's too well behaved! If that kid is all focused like those you see on T.V., then the other campers will follow his example. If they follow his example, the Camp will run itself into the ground!"

"It already has sir," Slinkman said with squished mouth and face, but Lumpus didn't hear him.

"... And if they do it following my rules, I'll be held responsible and they'll kick me out of the Camp Scoutmaster's secret national cult, the Grand Legumes!!"

This was by far, the most dumbfounding thing Slinkman heard out of his superior's mouth so far; but on the other hand he heard crazier- Lumpus had proven in a short time that he was an impulsive liar. In other words, Lumpus was looking for a very flimsy reason to suppress a camper that in Lumpus' opinion, posed a "threat". He wasn't sure what to think. "Sir, I don't see that camper as being a threat. He looks... well, uh, innocent."

Lumpus responded to this with an irritated scoff. "Oh-HO-HO-HO!!! Big things come in small packages, Slinkman! He's MAGIC! A Curse! He's a magical being! That explains everything Slinkman!"

As much as he wanted to know what exactly he meant by that, he had more important matters to worry about. More importantly, there was nothing magic about Maion. "Okay, sir, if you say so. Moving along... "

"THINK about it Slinkman!"

"Yes, sir. Now about this Camp Activity you planned for next week..."

"Activity!?" Lumpus sounded incredulous. "I didn't plan any activity!"

"You did. You met with with Jane Doe-" but he was interrupted, as Lumpus's mouth curved into a very out-of-character smirk at the thought of Jane Doe. "Jane... Oh, Jane... Doooooee...." he droned in a dreamy, lovesick voice.

"And Ms. Mucus."

There was a sound like something deflating in the room. That was Lumpus's fantasy, in the wake of hearing that repulsive, threatening set of letters. "Oh... now I remember. Great." He didn't sound as excited.

"And Commander Hoo-hah," Slinkman finished.

If possible, Lumpus's good cheer went into a blip, somewhere in the empty cavern of his moral fiber. "You decided on a hosting a big competitive event to uh, quote "Get the blood pumping and all the bean and squirrels jumping" unquote, and..."

Lumpus raised an eyebrow, but he was already losing interest. "...And the plan was to get the Beans and Squirrels to exercise and practice teamwork," Slinkman finished.

"Okay... and I'd actually care about this, why?"

Slinkman sighed and said, "Jane Doe-"

"Jaaaaane Dooooooooe!" Lumpus sang in romantic haze. Then this action halted abruptly as he took on a more serious look, and said to his assistant, "Slinkman? I want you prepare the uh... um..."

Slinkman was unsure if he should finish it, but he did anyway; it was his job. " 'Contest', sir?"

"Yeah, that! So... where are we on that?"

"The preparations are already made, sir. They've been made for about..." Slinkman puased, and then checked the watch on his right wrist. "... 3 weeks, 5 days, 8 hours, 28 minutes and 2 seconds."

"Oh. Oh!" Lumpus stammered out in half-hearted approval. He didn't think much about Slinkman's on-top advance planning, but he honestly didn't care as long as he could get some shuteye. "Good then. Uh, very good! Dismissed." Making an ungraceful rise from his chair, he walked towards the door scratching his back, saying in a grouchy tone, "I'm gonna take a nap. If anyone bothers me, see that they get probation."

Slinkman looked hardly surprised at the response, but he certainly looked incredulous. "B-but sir, aren't you supposed to be chaperoning the Boat racing contest?" "Eh, you handle it."

SLAM

Slinkman sighed. Then he heard Lumpus' voice from behind the door yelling, "Time to work up some mantle for the lovely Miss Doe!!"



"DOE! REI! MI! FA! SO! LA! TI! DOOO! TI La So fa me rei do!" Raj sang, going up at an amazingly high pitch before going down to his regular pitch in crescendo. On the side of his bed, Clam was playing on an intricately handmade xylophone- with perfect-sized mallets.

"All right, Raj!" cheered Lazlo, who waited for his turn. "Nice singing!"

Caught up in a half-delusional imagination of being cheered by an amplified cheer of thousands of people (with marshmallow crafted camera poleroids and Marshmallow limousines), Raj said, "Please. Please, no autographs, my adoring fans. Just Marshmallows."

Maion was sitting on his bed watching, looking confused. "Umm... what's going on?" he asked.

"Oh, well, Raj likes Marshmallows," explained Lazlo, happy to know that their new cabinmate was pretty interested in wanting to know more about them. "Cause Marshmallows are pretty sweet! Oh, and when you roast them over an open Camp fire, they get all Gooey and sweet! Raj can't get enough of them!"

"Is that some kind of implication of a negative kind?" Raj eyed his simian friend a little suspiciously.

"Marshmallow fiend, remember?" Clam said out of nowhere. "Mashmallow Monster." Then a pause, as his mischievous grin widened. "Marsh-ster, uh, no, Marshmallow-ster!"

This set Lazlo off, bursting into laughter. "A-hahaha! I remember! He got all gooey and white and even scared off those Squirrels!"

"Hmph," was all Raj had to say. "I'd call it an unfortunate turn of events."

"Nah," Maion said. "Sounds more like you liked Marshmallows so much, you actually become one... kind of hard to believe, actually."

"How would you know!?" Raj responded savagely. "You weren't in my shoes, I wear only one, two pairs tops!" And to prove his point, he pulled out from behind his back a pair of cherry-red slippers, and then pointed down towards his black shoes. "And," he continued, "It was a gooey mess, but I wasn't totally upset!"

"But you were stuck when we found you," Lazlo put in, sounding worried. "We felt we were too hard on you, and we wanted to help! After all, we're marshmallow buddies, aren't we?" At this Raj's face softened, then widened to a grin. "That is absolutely true, Lazlo! Marshmallow buddies!"

"But Marshmallows are..." Maion suddenly put in. "sticky... "

Raj nodded. "Yeah, I know, I was messing with a Squirrel Scouts Automated Marshmallow dispensing machine and..." he trailed off as he started twiddling with his thumbs. "Things got out of hand."

"So it was inconvenient for you."

"Inconvenient, yes, cause that was a whole lot of Marshmallow wasted..." Raj agreed sadly.

"No, I mean that you got stuck to a tree, and you couldn't move, and once you figured it out it was too late." Maion's face seemed to darken, but nobody noticed.

"Uh, it wasn't that big a deal," Raj told him.

"Ah, who cares if it was inconven- in-covent- uh, duh, in cognit- that thing you said. Cause Raj is safe! And soooooo-" Lazlo began to sing, signaling Clam to start banging over the wood xylophone. "The Jelly Bean Trio is-!"

"-Required to play volleyball out by the lake," interrupted Slinkman, who just entered. "Jelly Cabin, you and the Fava Bean Cabin have the Volley Ball Courts up until 12:00."

"Perfect timing!" said the upbeat simian. "We were going ask Maion if he wanted to play Volleyball with us." Then he turned to the wolf, who looked very surprised. "You wanna come?" Lazlo extended his hand in a friendly invite. Maion smiled. "Sure. Sounds great, I love playing Volleyball," he said.


"ACKPTH!!!" yelled the frustrated Edward, tossing dirt from his face. "Quit tossing dirt around the cabin you morons!"

The cabin sported a huge hole, right in the center. The badge-clad Skip rose his head and said, "Sorry, Edward," for the thousandth time. "We're digging up our secret Watermelon stash."

"Shut up, idiots!" Edward yelled. Skip meekly replied, "Yes sir." "I'm trying to figure out what to do! "

This was a little confusing for Skip. Usually he never knew what to do, so Edward would tell him and his brother what to do instead. "About what?" Skip asked, a little out of character, Ed noticed. Chip was still whole-body deep in digging into the dirt. But Ed was too busy sitting on his bed to notice. "About that kid," Edward said after a minute's silence. "-dish!?" Skip said, thinking that Edward was pausing. Now that it was out, he thought that Edward was talking about McMuseli's "Serving" a year ago. "I agree, that Kiddish won't stay down! It's like he just pulled it out of the toliet or something."

Chip overheard them talking and said from 1 feet below, "It tastes kind of like that slop we ate last year that tasted like it came out of the toliet!" His voice sounded muffled, but he was underneath a lot of dirt.

"That's because it was something that came out of the toliet he gave us last year, Dummiehead!" Skip rebuked his brother. "You're dummier," the agitated vermin yelled back out of the hole. Edward let out a sigh and said to both, "No. I wasn't TALKING about FOOD. I meant kid!"

"But Edward we're ALL kids," Skip stupidly replied.

"Yeah I know that already," said Edward, not in any mood to keep talking about... whatever they were talking about. And it was strange, listening to Skip say something that was actually sensible. "I'm talking about that Maion kid."

"Oh yeah. He seems nice," Chip said, still digging away.

"No, it's NOT nice!" Ed yelled furiously.

"Why are you making a big deal out of it?" Skip asked, suddenly forgetting that he was supposed to be digging, a first. Between the two of them, Skip was one atom in brain "smarter" than his brother, but they were equally dense.

Edward turned to give him a strange look, a little suspicious as to why he asked that. He answered sternly, "Cause it is a big deal. I just don't know how! Jelly Cabin gets a FOURTH scout, and Pinto Cabin gets... JACK!" Ed couldn't stop grinding his teeth furiously.

Chip's head shot out of the dirt screaming, "Jack!? Who's Jack! Is there a Jack!? Jaaaack," he started calling out in a concerned voice. "JAAAAAAACK." "Where's Jack, Edward?" the badge-clad dung beetle yelled at Edward, making him slap his head in agitation.

Having been forced to tolerate Lazlo and Camp Kidney in one package was torture more than anything Edward could dream, though it paled with dealing with his brothers daily. The natural karma favoured one but never the other; it stung him to know that no matter what hit, good luck was in Lazlo's favour, whereas nothing fell into Ed's lap. Really, nothing.

Ed didn't have a lot to fear with bad luck. He thought it was fine; he embraced that like a sword hilt. It's just that Bad Luck had it bad for weedily, big-brained rule beaters like Samson, and he didn't register as a threat. So maybe it did fall into Edward's favor: Ed could deal with sitting to the side on watching others being set up and then have the ground taken from their feet. It was just his nature to enjoy it; but he can't fully enjoy it. Not if things like certain cretins, certain imaginative, fortunate, and freethinking morons, kept ruining it. But Edward didn't think much of it; at least, he tried. He tried really, really hard. He just spent most of his time just trying to avoid Lazlo.

So where did this Maion fit? Even his name told Edward something about him nobody else was catching wise to. He obviously didn't look like he'd fit with the Jelly Cabin trio. From the first moment everyone saw him in the mess hall, it was clear from looking at his eyes, those, lucid, empty eyes, that he had an apathetic disposition, despite looking so accommodating to his surroundings. In fact, Edward wondered, if given the chance, someone like that wouldn't so much as care what the rest of them did. He made no attempt to complain or make a holler or act about the Camp's... inferior disgusting in any way like Lazlo and the Jellies. He was definitely a solitary wolf, Edward gathered. He was like him; a black sheep out of a flock of absent-minded white ones. There was, quote-unquote, no "wool over his eyes".

In any case, this was something Edward just couldn't ignore; he was going to talk to him, when he was alone, without the presence of the Jellies. "Well," he said to no one, since both the Dung Beetle Brothers were already well off into another of their poorly-timed periods of no knowledge, "I'm gonna find out what's going on. Edward T. Platypus AIN'T GONNA sit back and let..."


"... You HAVE game, Clam!"

SMACK! the white ball hurled over the stretched safety net, then fell over. Clam, donning the most serious look you could imagine, was moving around with the tenacity of a spider. "BALL!" he yelled, cupping his fist into one hand, and then...

SMACK!

The ball came flying back, a little to fast for Raj to catch. Raj couldn't reach so he yelled, "Hey, Maion! It's yours!"

"He's really good at this..." On the side, the two loons, Dave and Ping-Pong were watching the game eating candy they (allegedly) stole a couple of years back. Saving really did have its benefits. "Yeah. For a Wolf. I mean, it's like he's played Volleyball since he was a microscopic cell," Ping-Pong said back to his brother.

Maion was standing henched over in the background like a bush, waiting his turn. He was messing around with his standard Bean Scout Hat... which felt a little dusty. "Hey, Raj is thing some kind of "hand-me-down" or what?!" he asked Raj. He didn't have time for the question to be answered, now that he saw the ball coming. The orange-brownish small wolf had been given short instructions beforehand on how to play from Lazlo. "Like this, Mr. Lazlo!?"

"Yeah!" the monkey retorted.

SMACK!

The ball came flying back to Clam.

"And he's REALLY polite. That's kind of creepy," Dave said in an afterthought. Both loons were on guard because there was this common perception that a lot of wolves were, well, untrustworthy. "Hey, uh, Maion? Is it true that you've played Volleyball in Japan?!" Dave was eager to know.

Maion stood up straight and said to the loons. "For the last time, no! You've been asking me that 20 times total today. I don't actually come from Japan. My dad's, well, Japanese, but I was born in America." It was starting to get annoying. Raj had already informed Maion about the Loons and their advanced intelligence. Maion could've been fooled: asking 20 questions didn't sound very smart.

"Okay, Maion, it's coming back over to you!" Raj yelled. "Huh?" Maion stared up and saw the ball coming, and his face took a serious loop.

"Yeah, it's coming to you, so hit it!" Lazlo yelled from the other side, sporting as Clam's team-mate. Maion was getting along pretty well, and they were having awesome fun. The loons were watching in eager interest, having already lost a game to Lazlo and Clam.

"NNNGH!" SMACK!

Right when he hit it, he turned back to the loons and said, "Stop distracting me, already! It's kind of... inconvenient."

"Huh?" Both brothers went, feeling a little offended. They didn't say anything particularly offending, but they decided it'd best to walk away from it. So they did.

Sure enough, Maion did hit the ball. Too hard, actually. The ball soared with velocity into the wild blue- er, YELLOW, before falling...

Towards the exact spot where a certain Guinea pig shouldn't have been standing. Samson had a bullseye view of the incoming meteor hurtling towards his glasses and... SMACK! "... merf..."

"S-Sampson!" all 3 cried. Lazlo ran over. "Woah, we didn't even know you were standing there!"

"Oh my gosh! I'm so, so sorry!"

"Oh it is alright," said Raj. "He gets hit in the face with a ball, a lot."

Sampson got up and adjusted his glasses. He looked unaffected, like getting hit in the face never really happened. But he was still shook up about it. "Hey guys," he finally said, once he was up. Then he saw Maion. "Hey, you're that wolf kid!" he exclaimed.

Maion sounded sheepish. "Uh, sure? I'm Maion. Sorry we couldn't meet personally, I mean, I was just rushed to my cabin."

"That's right!" Lazlo guffawed, slapping his forehead. "He's our newest member of Jelly Cabin!" accented by Clam's "Member! Member!"

"Amazing. You guys get a new bunkmate?" Samson said dismally. "How cool is that?"

"Cool... what?" Lazlo asked. He didn't know what the guinea pig meant. Samson pushed back his glasses and continued. "Uh, I mean that you get another friend to hang out with."

"Ah, oh yeah!" Raj suddenly yelled, siding up against Sampson. "This is Samspon, Maion. He's extremely talkative, and smells mostly of cheap cleaning products!"

"N-No I don't! And I'll have you know," Sampson snidely corrected Raj, "That all of my cleaning products are 4392% effective and sensitive to my ultra-sensitive skin conditions!"

Maion blinked. He didn't understand a word of that. But to be polite, he rose his hand anyway. "Uh... nice to meet you- HEY!" Maion jumped back in shock. So did the Jellies: turned out Sampson was holding in his pocket a miniature can of spray that he immediately dispensed on the orange-brown wolf's hand.

"Samspon? What did you DO!?" screamed Raj. Samspon blinked, like nothing was wrong. "Used disinfectant spray. You were playing with a very, very dirty ball! Do you understand how many germs can on a single object at ANY particular point of time?"

"Dude, all I wanted was to just shake your hand. I understand Cleanliness and all, but really," Maion complained. "I get ENOUGH of that in the east."

Nobody bothered asking whether this was rhetorical, but Lazlo let out a disgrunted, headspun, "Uh....?"

"1,892,736," said Clam, who hardly dared speaking at all during the entire weird moment. Sampson regarded him. "Uh... Exactly. Oddly enough, that's right. I mean I have Asthma, you know."

Maion felt some sympathy. "Wow... sorry about that."

Sampson let out a nasally laugh. "Nah, It's alright. Speaking of which, that ball you guys were playing with was carrying..." Sampson paused out of dramatic habit and let out a hysterical gasp. "GERMS!!" and before you could say, "Tomato Scouts", was off in a cloud of dust. All four Jelly Cabin Bean Scouts stood out by the tennis courts alone, staring after him. Maion scratched his head in a bewildered way.

"Um... Okay. That was weird. Where was he headed?" he asked Raj.

Raj answered dully, "Back to his cabin for his cleaning and medical supplies so he can clean himself." This was supported by Lazlo cheerful "Yeah, he's really good with that, cause he knows all about medical stuff!"

"Don't have to be a psychic to know what he's going to be when he grows up," Raj said quietly.

"Aw, he'll be okay. He's Samspon! He's..." Lazlo slowed down, trying to find something positive to say in his defense. "He's got glasses!"

"So... Farsighted?" Maion queried.

"Huh?" Lazlo said. Maion turned his head towards Clam, who shook his head. "No. Nearsighted."

"So did you like playing Volleyball anyway, Maion?" Lazlo asked.

Maion looked distracted, staring after Sampson's cabin. "Eh, what's that?" Lazlo asked again. "Oh. Well, volleyball is nice, but you know what'd be really fun? Fighting."

"Fighting?" the three Jellies simultaneously burst out yelling. "We don't do any fighting or yelling like that!" Lazlo laughed. "We just like exploring and trying out new things."

"Not like angry yelling! I mean, you know, having duels and playing around with a sword and stuff," Maion explained. His eyes sparked with fire as he continued. "Playing battles with others, comparing weapons..."

"You have a very creepy idea of having fun..." Raj said quietly. "Creepy," Clam repeated.

"Oh come on!" Maion scoffed. "Think about it! It'd be like playing to a modern kind of medieval ages! It'd be awesome! Competitions, prizes..."

"But people would be getting hurt!" Lazlo countered.

"No! They won't! Because it'd be like... they'd have invisible shields around them like an aura, or, oooh, and they'd take out things like potions and cast magic and..."

"Hold on. Why are we even talking about this?" Raj asked, not seeing the point of the conversation. "I thought we were talking about... you know, the glasses kid?"

"I've seen lots of pictures about medieval combat. Books are too complicated," Maion grimaced, and Raj found himself in agreement. "Oh you bet! But, the way you describe it, it feels kind of like you're just describing a crazy video game."

Maion seemed a little nervous but Lazlo backed him up. "That is a pretty crazy imagination! You know what'd else be crazy? A flying Banana Ice cream sundae!"

"Or," Raj added, "A BIG, super-sweet, talking Marshmallow!"

"Or a Talking Marshmallow riding a flying Banana Ice Cream sundae wielding... a pair of Ninja's Nun-chucks... made out of liquorice!" Lazlo said.

"Cherry," Clam put in. "Hey yeah!" Maion agreed, catching the idea. "Cherry-flavoured ninja nun-chucks! Sounds dangerous..." he trailed off, only to be finished by Lazlo. "But delicious." All four burst out laughing like there was no tomorrow. But they eventually stopped, and became silent. Raj suddenly remembered trying to explain Sampson.

Raj scoffed and nudged Maion in the shoulder. "But Sampson? You should see all the ugly disgusting scabs on his back!!" Maion burst out laughing. "S-Seriously?" "They are like, the size of Crutons!!" Then all four burst out laughing, which ended with Maion saying to himself, "ahahaha... that'd be more funnier if I actually knew what Crutons were." Then he let out a sigh, his expression suddenly falling. "Is he always like that?"

The four campers, now definitely in good cheer started back towards the main settlement of Camp Kidney, while Lazlo continued. "He's really... um... " His mind ran into a blank, which Raj promptly fulfilled. "disgusting?"

"No!" Lazlo denied.

"A Nerd?"

"No!"

"Generic?"

"N- What?"

"He's ALWAYS talking about his incredible thousand year-old diseases that seem to ebb at his every little fiber on his grotesque skin," Raj said with a shudder. "Oh, Gaia."

"I'm a little lost here," Maion said, confused. "Like, I don't know... dead in confusion. Sampson's plaqued eternally by diseases?"

All three nodded, while at the same time, they were standing at the door to the mess hall. Lazlo stared up at a sign written on the door while reiterated, "Huh? E-ternally? Of course! What did you think I was saying this whole time?" Maion shrugged, but Raj didn't think it any less of him. "It's no big deal really," Raj laughed off the subject, as did Clam. Raj stopped laughing when he saw Maion's face darken; scary.

"But, wait, Raj. that'd be kind of inconvenient for him, wouldn't it?"

"Huh?" went Raj. "What do you mean?"

"I mean if he's diseased, then he can't have any real fun... like Volleyball!"

"Aw, he plays it as well as everybody else," Raj said. "Don't see a problem."

"But it'd be inconvenient for him!!" Maion repeated, putting a lot of odd emphasis on inconvenient. But this was lost on Raj. He didn't see what was so important. "Uh... okay?"

"No, it's not okay. Because it'd be more convenient if he was actually better in health!" Maion continued. Raj raised an eyebrow and stared at Clam, who was equally lost. Meanwhile, Lazlo was reading a poster on top of the Mess Hall door. " 'Hiking trip at three o' clock...' " At which his face brightened excitedly. Having been neutral to everything else, Lazlo didn't notice the other three until Raj noticed Lazlo reading the poster. "Hiking trip! Oh, I've got to get my hiking gear ready!"

"But Raj, it's only 12:00. We've got plenty of time to get ready," Lazlo noted.

"But I need to make sure my camping set 1 is precisely identical to my camping set 2 so I don't get those mixed up when I take the Camping set 1 with me on the hiking trip!" The explanation was tedious enough that it would've been hard for anybody to get the two mixed up.

Lazlo was on the other hand, euphoric. "Don't worry Raj! You won't need it to enjoy the splendor of nature! Climbing the rocky mountains and digging through dirt, unearthing all kinds of cool stuff like dinosaur bones or treasure?"

"... Aren't the dung Beetles interested with stuff like that?" Raj asked after a moment's silence.

Lazlo didn't have an answer prepared but noticed something off with the scene; they were down to three. "Hey. Where's Maion?"

"Left for Sampson's cabin," Clam answered in a second.

Both Raj and Lazlo stared at each other, perplexed. Why would he do something like that?


Samspon put the cap back on the visine, then kissed it affectionately. "Ahh..." he went. "You always know best, my Eyeball Buddy. The same goes for the rest of you, my sweet, sweet, Astma Buddy, Foot Fungus buddy, nasal allergy buddy, and let's not forget you, too, Skin Rash Buddy!" This affectionate reply went to the rest of his "Health Buddies", a collection of medical treatment and outbreak-preventing spray bottles.

Maybe he didn't have much in the way of real friends whom he could talk to, confide in, trust, but Sampson had "People", if not inanimate objects, that he knew 100% he could count on, right when he needed them the most. The sad fact was he still pined for the real thing.

He really liked... well, he preferred real friends. Sadly, the closest he had was inanimate objects and a... caveman. It was kind of lame and socially isolating. Sampson thought he was used to it, thought that not having the luxury of gaining as many friends as someone like... someone like Lazlo, wasn't a big deal. But that was life; maybe some kind of natural order he wasn't supposed to disturb.

KNOCK KNOCK

"Who is it?" Sampson swiveled around to see somebody standing at the door. As he walked over and opened it, he saw it was Maion. "Oh, hey! Um, whatcha want, Maion?"

"Well..." Maion started sheepishly, taken aback by Sampson's good-natured greeting. "I can make you feel better. From your Asthma."

Lazlo, Raj, and Clam weren't too far behind. Sampson didn't know what the wolf was talking about. But the sentiment made Sampson realize that... this person actually might want to be his friend! "What you mean like a medicine or a pill? Nice try, but those won't work." He laughed his nasally laugh again, which Maion tried his best not to find annoying. "Hey, you seem like a very nice, interested person! Would you like to see some of my "Health Buddies"?"

"Uh... Health Buddies?"

Lazlo, Raj, and Clam walked in, right as Sampson started pulling out various bottles. "Yep! See check it out! This is my Asthma Buddy, this is my Foot Fungus buddy, which is definitely going to come in handy when we go on that hiking trip today! Can never BE TOO careful..." Sampson paused, then continued pointing out his treatment products, "And this is Nasal Allergy Buddy..." Maion could see how gross Raj described it, as the guinea pig administered the mouth piece to his lips and started vacuuming in air. He did this for several minutes.

"And this is my skin rash buddy!" Samson showed him the last bottle, which was as generic as the others. It didn't take much thinking for Maion to know what "Skin Rash Buddy" was used for; he cringed. It was the most revolting thing he thought of!

"I... t-COUGH-AKE it that "Skin Rash Buddy" is used for..."

"Yeppers!"

"That is most certainly the case," said Raj from behind. He and the other two jellies didn't say anything since arriving, just to watch Maion's reaction at Sampson. Maion cringed some more, while Sampson greeted the Jellies a little unpleasantly. "Guys? There's too many people in this room, one of you has to..."

"It's GROOOOOOooooooooooOSS!!" Maion exclaimed loudly. But the loud proclamation came out in a loud howl. A loud piercing howl that made everybody inside the cabin jump like a snake bit them, and made Sampson's glasses break; which wasn't surprising.

Once everything became silent again, Lazlo let out an astonished, "Woah..."

Raj didn't take the fact Maion was a wolf as seriously as he did now- and he was lost in awe. "Y-You're really a wolf!" he gasped.

"I know that. What? Did you think I couldn't howl? My Dad taught me that!"

All three jellies were bursting with excitement as they stared at each other. "Cooool!!!" they cried simultaneously. "Anyways, sorry about... that."

Sampson knew he was talking about the glasses, which were cracked in the center and giving vision about as multiformed as a fly. But he replaced them with a spare pair in record time. "You don't have to apologize, my glasses break all the time," Sampson let out with a laugh. "But what did you mean when you said you can make me "feel better" from my Asthma?"

This caught the others attention. "You know something that can cure Asthma? Hard to believe," Raj said, curious. "How are you going to do it?"

Maion turned around and grinned sheepishly. Ironic. "OH! Well... "

"Well, what?" Lazlo gladly asked, eager.

Maion didn't give him a straight answer. Clam was bouncing up and down excitedly, eager to see what Maion was going to do. Before anybody else said anything, Maion kneeled down, grabbed Sampson's hand, and closed his eyes.

Sampson looked confused... and disturbed. "Uh..."

"Lazlo, do you think he's a little... crazy?" Raj whispered to Lazlo.

Lazlo was too caught up in his over-imaginative excitement to fully comprehend. "I don't know, he's not, what do you mean?"

"Well," said Raj, "I mean he gets all caught up whenever talking about "inconveniences" and stuff and... is he going to give Sampson a knighthood?"

Guffawing, Lazlo responded with, "I don't know about the other stuff, but a knighthood would be so cool!"

"Historia Regum Britanniae," Clam said quietly.

Everyone's eyes were wide open with shock, right when something sparkled blue around Maion's and Sampson's hand. Sampson was especially frightened and threatened to scream, but Maion, uneasily calm himself, said, "Uh, d-don't move, it's almost over."

FLASH!

The flash faded, ending the blue spark. Sampson opened both his eyes like he just shut out the ending of a bad movie he watched. "Can you breathe easier now?" Maion finally asked, exhausted. The whole experience nearly took his breath.

Sampson was afraid ask; but a pleasant surprise came that made him forget how afraid he was- he sniffed... and his nose felt clear. A smile crossed his mouth when he felt no rash or anything on his body for the first time (It was a major shocker), and the palms of his hands didn't have any sweat on them. They felt... fresh; like he had just used disinfecting gel... He felt incredibly new. Like S.M.I.T.S had blessed him.

Sampson, though happy, was now speechless, and remained on the floor.

Raj was the first to say what everybody was thinking exactly at the same time: "Are you... magic?"

Maion was going to say, but got interrupted by Lazlo's, "Woooooooooow!!! You're REALLY MAG-!" Maion, looked frantic and flew over, covering the giant banana mouth with one hand. He had a surprisingly firm grip. "Don't say it, all right?"

Maion did take the hand off, but Lazlo proceeded it say it anyway. Maion flew over again to cover the mouth with a hand, till the simian got the general idea. It was quite the shock; all 4 campers present had seen what Maion did. Once Maion thought for sure he could be trusted, he pulled the hand away... only to get tackled by an excited Clam, beaming brightly enough to power a car. "Get OFF of me!" the solitary wolf screamed.

Sampson asked, in a strange moment of awe and terror (terror was his default response to almost any situation), "H-how'd you do that!?"

Maion blushed. Really hard. Now that his secret was out, he knew he couldn't conceal it. Raj, Lazlo, and Clam were also staring at him in point-blank excitement, heavily interested. "Maybe I shouldn't have done it..." he groaned.


(Outside)

A certain Platypus walked away from the same cabin, grinding both his teeth like a saw into wood. His new intent was relaying what he'd just seen with the other campers, and get the word out as soon as possible... then he got a better idea. Camp Kidney's newspapers had an unnatural knack for getting around, and a certain couple of loons could vouch for that claim...

Edward's mouth kept hanging open in as great disbelief as Sampson's. But he hadn't the time to continue; he needed to get away fast. But... he just couldn't believe it. Jelly Cabin had been dumped with a solitary wolf... that had magical powers.

Fine, yes, Edward never actually believed in it, (or anything), and he tried pretending that it was just some cheap magic trick like he saw magicians put on with cards, but he'd seen what happened to Sampson.

"Unbelievable; I get two dung beetles... and they get a freaking magic wolf!?" he groaned. "This is SO unfair!" He shook both fists with jealous at the air, but still kept his voice down so that nobody would hear him.


(Meanwhile in Jelly Cabin, 5 min. later)

Maion sat on his bed, feeling nervous. Literally, he was twiddling his thumbs. He didn't know how exactly he was going to go about explaining anything to the Jellies, now encircled around his bed like a chain.

"But why won't you tell us? Have you always been magic?" Raj asked.

"Are you a fairy, or a pixie? Or maybe... A Superhero?" The way Lazlo asked it seemed more likely. Clam burst out screaming, "Hero, Hero!"

"Uh-!"

"Or you must be some kind of super-cool wizard/superhero antihero!" he burst out yelling, twinkles in his eyes.

Maion was going to protest, if not for the last word Lazlo used. "I- What?!"

Raj began next. "Or surely you must be-!?"

"GUYS!" Maion yelled. "Slow down already! You're making my head spin!!"

Lazlo gasped in aghast excitement. "You can make HEADS spin!?"

Maion badly needed them to listen so he could explain, but Lazlo's over-active imagination was getting out of hand. "Now I'm not sure if that's a good idea."


(meanwhile)

Slinkman's head threatened to spin off its base- if not for his usual calm and fast-thinking attitude. "Uh, sir, you sure that's a good idea?"

"It's TOTALLY a great idea!" the Scoutmaster snapped back at his assisstant, brandishing a balled up fist with one hand, and dangling a phone in the other. "I'm gonna get the story straight from the horse's mouth! Dah... I mean, well, you know, I'm gonna feed the story to the horse's mouth... or something," He said this with such cockiness that Slinkman thought he might have gone insane.... well, more insane.

"Don't you mean Wildebeest's Mouth?" Slinkman timidly corrected him. Again, Lumpus was infuriated with being corrected: "Whatever! But he's such a big fan of those darned Tomato Scouts! I bet he's a Tomato Scout!"

"... you mean, Commander Hoo-hah, sir?" "NOO!! That little WOLF brat!"

Slinkman blinked once, then checked his clip board. "Uh... I don't think he's a-!"

"Read the form again, Slinkman."

He didn't have much choice, so he sighed and proceeded anyway. "According to this... doesn't look like there's a lot to say about Maion. He's a wolf from Japan, and any of his past connections with Camp Kidney in the Prickly Pines area in Arkansas does not exist. Or never did, because this is his first time being at Camp Kidney." He paused; he knew he stressed 'First time', because obvious Lumpus couldn't reigister in his head, or he was simply refusing it point blank. "And for the last time sir, the only way that a Tomato Scout is stated to that title is if he'd been originally a bean scout."

Lumpus settled down and looked unusually perplexed; but he wasn't beaten. There was no way he'd submitted to some stupid logic. "Still, the way he looked at me when you brought him in here!! He's got the eyes of a tomato scout!"

"I have records that prove he's not formerly a Tomato Scout," Slinkman said, and to prove his point, he pulled them out from behind. He had just finished making them. Not convinced in the slightest, Lumpus began dialling his superior commanding officer's phone number anyway.

"But sir, Commander Hoo-hah is on Vacation!" Slinkman pleaded desperately with him. "I don't he'd be too thrilled at the idea of being called away from his Vacation. You barely have gotten by with enough credits on your resume! Do you have any idea what he might do to you?" Slinkman found this ironic. He really had no way of knowing what Hoo-hah was capable of, and Lumpus was walking a thin tightrope. "Ugh. We've got to monitor the beans on that hiking trip, we don't have time for this!"

Whether through sheer ignorant stupidity or reckless bravery, Lumpus continued dialling the number. "I don't see how Court-ordered Anger Management sessions is a vacation, Slinkman," he mocked his assistant in voice. "And I don't like nature anyway! I wasn't planning on going!"

Slinkman got tired and simply had about as much as he could take. "Okay, fine. I'll be going to get ready then."

"Dismissed."

Slinkman walked out and the close the door, muttering, "I really don't know..."


"I don't know. Really."

Lazlo's expression fell. "Huh? You don't? How?"

"I mean it. I don't know where I got these powers from."

Raj and Clam gasped and stared at each other. "Woah... for reals?"

"Yep," Maion said, sounding like it was no big deal. The clock on Raj's nightstand kept ticking on. Maion darted passive eyes towards it. Raj had neat things. "I've never told my parents. At all, actually. My mother's a fanatic, and my dad a big ol' yeller. Like he yells, you know, a lot."

Lazlo gasped, for more than just the one reason- it seemed like Maion was now really opening himself up. And at the same time, he felt some sympathy for the wolf. "Uh, what do you mean by "fanatic"?"

"Yeah, how do you mean?" Raj asked as well. "It's not important," Maion said tersely. "They wanted me to be here. To make friends, they said. I couldn't trust them."

Then he turned away, a frown creeping across his features. All three Jelly Beans looked depressed. That was a horrible thing to say about your parents! They were the people who... asked the stork to deliver you, who protected and taught you! The people who sent you to schools to get bullied around and to be made a complete idiot out of by the cranky old bat in math class! Parents were people who express love.

In light of that, Lazlo's expression suddenly went serious. "I don't buy that. I don't buy that, for one second."

Maion, caught up in his thoughts, stared at Lazlo.


"We don't buy that for one second, Edward!" Ping-Pong didn't bother looking up at Edward, because he was so knee-deep and focused into his typewritter, knocking away the last-half of a front-pager - about Scoutmaster Lumpus's latest new "Minimal Toliet Paper" policy. But he sighed- they really needed something that would catch their subscribers' attention, not this. This was about as interesting as Camp Kidney can get.

Which ironically explained the absence of paper in the supplies closet lately, Ping-Pong remembered. But what was Edward going on about something magic?

"But you got to believe me! I SAW it with my OWN TWO EYES!"

Dave was operating their personal steam-powered press. "The whole camp has been buzzing with chatter about him lately," he said to Edward. "But what made come up with such a ridiculous story like that? Do you have any proof?"

Honestly he had none, as he realized with horror when raising his hand and then subsequently lowering it. The hostile platypus was so dead set on exposing what he'd just seen, proving what Maion really was (For all intents and purposes, the closest thing to threatening in Ed's book was demon), that he'd been negligent in producing substantial evidence. But wait... there might have been proof yet! Edward let out his revelation with a grin. "Actually I-"

SLAM!

"DO feel a lot better in health, fellow cabinmates!" Sampson came in with a proud stride, with a look of incredible confidence. He took in a massive gulp of air. The lanky loon at the typewriter couldn't help but drop his mouth open in amazement. "Sampson, you okay!?"

"Guys, you'll NEVER believe what happened to me! I can tolerate dirty things! I can SMELL bad stuff! I'm completely allergy free!!... I thought I heard Edward in here. Where is he?" Sampson looked about and then saw that... the platypus was reduced to a papery thinness. Right behind the door. "Oh, uh, sorry about that, Edward," Sampson apologized while shutting the door.

Ping-pong was finding what he just heard as hard to believe as his brother did. "What are you talking about? And make sure you don't accidentally tread ALL over the newspapers with your nasty letter-writing ink like last time!"

"I'm CURED!!" Sampson gladly exclaimed.

"Of your insanity?" Dave said, though it was meant as a joke.

Sampson shook his head furiously. "NO!

Sampson's eyes bulged with joy as he said, "I'm SERIOUS!! Check this out!" To prove his point, he removed his hat and then pulled out something that would've made anybody vomit: It was a small jar with a jelly-like red substance inside, opaque and thick. Without waiting for anybody to ask, he pulled off the lid.

Dave and brother's faces had gone the wrong shape, their faces and their nostrils filled with disgust. In fact, Ping-pong threatened to throw up; horrible thing too, since he couldn't afford to lose yet another typewritter. Edward's beak had equally sunken in sheer horror, as he discovered the identity of the substance Sampson carelessly brought out in the open. "Is that... Chef McMuseli's Downhome Deep DISH TOMATO SOUP!? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND!?"

Dave was thinking the exact same thing, considering how Sampson was smiling like an idiot. Now the putrid odor, newly released from the jar, was swarming the entire cabin like a fog. Ping-pong covered his nose and grunted. "Why do you keep that around anyway!?"

"It used to be because I needed a good aroma therapy," Sampson answered. "But not anymore! Watch!" to prove his point even further, Sampson stiffened up, and sucked in a massive current of air through both nostrils. "Ahhhhh... fresh air."

All three present blinked unbelievingly.

"And McMuseli's Deep Dish Tomato Soup smells great!... well, not so much great as it does taste terrible. You know, I actually had to have my stomach pumped from even inhaling the putrid scent of his cooking! But... not anymore!"

As less believable the story sounded, Ping-pong just continued staring at the serene guinea pig. He looked mighty enough to withstand just about any kind of foul odor, leaving the two bewildered loons in awe. They were now convinced it had to have been some miracle; and at the same time, Dave remembered Edward's story. He asked Sampson, "How? How exactly did you get better?"

Sampson's face went stunned. "Oh uh, well... it was uh... Maion. Yeah, Maion cured me!" Then Sampson's proud grin dissolved into a spaced-out "O". "He held my hand... and all sorts of sparkly blue stuff started appearing around my hand! The next minute, I could smell again!"

Ping-pong didn't know what to think; standing before him and his brother was the least tolerable camper in history, claiming he was disease free... and he more than proved it with the horrible concoction... and it was a wolf that did it... wolves, a completely untrustworthy animal...

This was the story they were looking for.

Edward jumped out and pointed a sharp finger. "THERE'S your PROOF, RIGHT HERE, OUT IN THE OPEN!!" he screamed.


(Jelly Bean Cabin)

Lazlo was pointing at himself in the chest. "It's right here, not out in the open."

"What?" Maion didn't understand.

"Heart," Lazlo answered. "Of course your parents care! They should! They do! They care about you enough to not leave you alone! Camp Kidney is the coolest place ever, and they sent you here, knowing that you can make friends."

Raj stood off to the side scratching his head. "Wait, how would you know that's what parents think?"

"I'm not really sure if I can make friends," Maion said quietly. "I mean, what kind of friends would stand by me knowing I can do... this?" On that note, Maion's hands were wrapped in a thick mist of red, that turned into a pair of small orbs once he opened up both palms. Off on the side, Raj stared wide-eyed and cringed a little: learning that one of his friends was magic was still a starting revelation he hadn't adjusted to yet.

Lazlo stepped over to Maion's side and said, "It doesn't matter a bit! We're your friends! Magic won't ever change that! We like you!"

Maion seemed especially touched; Raj was nodding at him and smiling. Clam had been sitting on the bed and fell asleep. "Oh... well... "

"It's okay, you can let it all out," Lazlo said, smiling.

"What you mean cry?" he snapped, though there was a hint he really thought about doing so. "I'm not gonna... I'm not gonna!"

"That's what I said the first time it happened," said Raj.

"Thank you so very much!" Maion cried. Clam popped up from behind and yelled, "Friends!" making Maion laugh a little as he rubbed both eyes out. "Wow. You're really weird, you know that?" Maion laughed. Clam's grin grew bigger.

"I don't think Friendship is gonna dissolve because of some magic you can do," Lazlo said. "It doesn't make you any different! In fact, it really makes you special, because of all the helpful things you can do for other people!"

Maion widened his eyes in surprise. "Really? I've never thought about using my powers like that before..."

"Woah," said Raj. "Talk about a brain thump."

"Sure! With your powers, you can help just about anyone! You could even be like a SUPERHERO!"

Clam started jumping on his bed chanting, "SUPERHERO!! SUPERHERO!!"

Maion tried imagining wearing a costume, but no image seemed to fit perfectly in his mind. ".... I don't know about that. I-I don't think I'd work well with a costume. Can't I just help others by being myself?"

This seemed to take the wind out of Lazlo's imaginary sails. "Oh... well I guess you could..."

At that moment the conversation was interrupted by a loud whirring noise outside. Loud enough to actually make Jelly Cabin shake on it's supporting beams. All for campers were shaking with terror... and because the cabin was vibrating. Clam fell off Maion's bunk on his head. Raj was thrown on his back and clutching onto one of his bunk bed's legs. "W-w-w-w-wWHAT IN GAIA'S name IS THAT!?"

Barely able to retain some stability, Lazlo ran towards the door and clutch the handle. He flung it open, and, accompanied by Maion, Raj, and Clam, treked outside.

There wasn't anything particularly standing out in view. Then Lazlo turned his head to see three figures on motor-scooters flying past. The simian recognized them immediately... especially because he realized they were surrounded. They were litterally on top of them by the time it dawned on them. The four campers fell on the ground. "Squirrel Scouts!"

Maion didn't know what he meant. "What?"

Raj, who did know exactly what he meant, screamed in horror. "SQUIRREL SCOOOOUTS!"

The pig-tailed mongoose manned (Or girled, not sure which one) the leading motor-scooter. "What's up, homs?"

"Hey, patsy!" was all Lazlo could say, since he didn't know how (or what) to respond to Patsy's odd greeting.

"So... whacha doing?" Patsy asked with such a curl in her tone, Lazlo's confidence was dented in seconds. "Oh you know, hanging around! What are you doing?"

Gretchen turned off hers, and then looked down sneeringly on the four, pushing her nose against Clam's. "Playing with our super cool Camp Motor-Scooters, IDIOT! What does it LOOK like?"

"Wow... sweet!" Lazlo was caught breathless. "C-can we try them?" Raj asked politely through a stuttering voice.

Gretchen burst out yelling, "PFFT, NO!" And the squirrels all started laughing. Nina started spinning her motor-scooter skillfully. "Why don't you boys don't ride your own motor-scooters?"

Sadly, Raj said, "No, we don't have any- wait a minute, haven't you guys done this before?"

"Done WHAT?" Gretchen snarled.

Raj was afraid of speaking any further, but managed to stutter, "Y-You know, r-r-ride int-t-t-t-t-to the camp with your s-s-ss--s-ss-s-s-supercool motorbikes and-!!"

"Motor-scooters," Nina gladly corrected him. She stared back at Patsy. "And yeah, we did do this before, technically. That was before we started bragging about we own our things, and heh-heh, uh, you don't have anything to own, till you technically noted how you have a camp nurse, which technically doesn't register as a something we're of shortcoming in, since a nurse is an organic being, and things such as motor-scooters are inorganic."

Nina's explanation was too complicated for Raj to properly respond. "Uh... what?"

Gretchen bowed down close to Raj's ear. "IT'S NOT THE SAME THING!" "AAAAAAH!!" THUMP!

Maion hadn't a clue what was going on, but he realized when it was that people were being made fun of. Gretchen kept going on. "We just like to brag how we're better than you anyway, so I don't see the point of-!"

"It's NOT NICE!" Maion stood up on both his feet at Gretchen. "I don't know WHO you girls are, but just because we don't have COOL stuff doesn't mean we're... ACK!?" Nobody bothered to tell Maion that Gretchen didn't like being yelled at. A scaly green hand shot out and grabbed the wolf by the neck. "Who the HECK ARE YOU!? Think it wise to yell, especially at a girl!? Don't you know the name Gretchen, toughest of the Squirrels?!"

That silenced Maion at once. Being a wolf didn't count a lot against an alligator with amazingly sharp teeth. Deadly sharp teeth.

Nina raised her glasses like they had suddenly become stuffy. "...Hm!?"

"So... Lazlooo," Patsy called back the attention of her love interest (even if he didn't actually know it yet). "Are you... going to win the competition next week?"

"Competition...?" Lazlo wondered. "You mean like another fun outing with everyone?"

"C-competition?" Raj screamed, "W-who said anything about a competition!?"

"Don't you know, there's going to be a contest next week Wednesday," Patsy informed them. "Doesn't your Scoutmaster tell you anything? We're going. How about you...?"

Raj bit his lip; he never did like competitions, mostly because all the effort put in by the Squirrels trounced them every year anyway. Raj was dead afraid of girls; they were a completely different breed all their own. He hoped Lazlo wasn't going to say "yes" at all- "Ah, I actually don't think we can-!"

"Sure, Patsy, we're definitely going," said the simian, blissfullly unaware of Raj's hopeless stare.

Patsy giggled. "Oh, that's good to know. Who's this...?" this was directed at Maion.

"He's our new friend and cabinmate! this is Maion Paschar!!"

A weird fell right as Gretchen finally released the wolf from his grip and screamed incredulously, "Maion Paschar!? What kind of stupid name is that!?" Clam popped up and blurted, "He's Asian."

Gretchen folded her hands and snarled, "Pfft, he doesn't even have narrow eyes. All Asians have them."

"What?!" Maion snapped at her. "That's a horrible thing to say. I don't have narrow eyes, and even if I DID, I DON'T- I DON'T-!" getting worked at the smiling Gretchen, Maion's powers were automatically channelling forth on their own. Both Lazlo and Clam immediately noticed- unfortunately, so did Nina, who gasped; she kept silent waiting to see what happened. Lazlo sided up over and grabbed Maion's hand, shaking his head. Maion calmed down immediately. "You're just mean!" Maion blurted out.

Gretchen thought she'd have died of laughter. And she almost did, flopping on her back and rolling on the ground, giving into the raucous fits of guffaws tickling her insides. Everyone's mouths dropped open stunned.

Sampson, sticking his sample of Chef McMuseli's horrible Tomato Soup back in his hat with one hand, and carrying various newspapers in the other, happened to be walking by, trying really hard not to acknowledge the crazy scene. "Just keeps getting weirder," he muttered.

"Wow, Lazlo that's great," Patsy said to the simian. "You've got 4 cabinmates in your cabin, now, just like us!"

"Four?" the simian, albino-skinned rhino, pachyderm, and wolf said simultaneously. "What do you mean, four?"

"I bet you'd like to know," said Nina, adjusting her glasses. Raj was still quivering but he stammered, "W-What do you mean by that?"

Gretchen jumped back on her Motor-scooter once she finally got back her balance. "Let's get out of here! I'm not standing around here to take any more lip from a stupid magic wolf!"

All four mouths of Jelly Cabin fell open; Maion was especially in shock- how in the world did they...?!

"I-I'm not anything like that!" he desperately lied. It didn't work; proof of that was in Gretchen shoving a bundle of grey sheets in his face. Angry at Gretchen, Maion took one look at the paper and staggered back, appalled. "Lazlo look at this!"

Patsy saw this as a convenient cue to leave, and the three triplets of Acorn Flats zoomed through the gate. At the same time, Slinkman was seen revving up the bus and rounding up all the beans. "... All right, now everyone get on the bus!"

"Sweet Krashnu, it's already time to go?" Raj was yelling. "Come on, guys!"

Clam followed, but Lazlo was reading the headline of the newspaper Maion got as they went. His expression matched Maion's horrible frown. " 'Sneaky Wolf steals Guinea Pig's diseases and flees'," he read separately, each syllable and letter like a dagger stabbing him in the back- it hurt worse than he thought of, having his new friend's secret exposed so early.


(Later)

"My secret's... exposed..." Maion said with monosyllabic prose. "How?"

"I swear I didn't say anything!" Lazlo pleaded. "But I really don't like the idea of fleas stealing! They're just as important to life!"

Maion believed him, but he looked too exhausted to bother saying anything. Raj popped up from the behind seat. Clam was siting in the opposite window side, sleeping. "News seems to travel around... really fast." With that, the pachyderm darted daggers in Sampson's direction on the far side of the bus. The nasally guinea pig could only give a narcissistic and shaky smile, shrinking further back in. "Um... sorry."

POINK!

"Hey!!" Maion burst out screaming. An angry pointing finger jabbed him in the nose, and the arm belonged to Edward. " *GASP* DEMON!!"

"Edward that's not nice! He's a pixie!!"

Maion shot daggers at Lazlo, who couldn't tell what he did wrong. "Everyone SIT DOWN!" Slinkman yelled from the front of the bus; it was difficult driving a bus and playing mediator at the same time.

Edward rolled eyes and continued glaring disdainfully at the wolf anyway. "This is STUPID! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC!! AND EVEN IF THEY'RE WAS, HOW DID JELLY CABIN GET a Wolf that HAS IT!?" He screeched, saliva flying out of his mouth. Lazlo looked unaffected, while appeared angry.

One of Slinkman's eyestalks whirred around and he sternly demanded, "EDWARD! SIT DOWN! NOW!"

This prompted Ed to growl and sit down; all of the campers were staring at Lazlo and company, particularly Maion. They all had newspapers. As usual, Sat in a window seat next to the cramp twins- EH, the Dung Brothers. The smell eminating from their bodies were no less revolting today. Skip sat at the farthest end of the seat, carrying one of the Loon brother's newspapers, and glancing both at it and around at Maion several times. "He don't look magic. OOOOH!!" "What?" went Chip. "I bet he's like a Half-Elf-half-Wolf-Half-spaghetti!!" "Spaghetti!? What does spaghetti have to do with anything!?" "SHUT UP, IDIOTS!" Ed burst out yelling.

"Technically, how exactly did you come to manifest the powers to cure Sampson of a medically-proven incurable illness?" the tall lanky loon asked the wolf, leaning his tall neck into Maion's face. The orange-brown wolf looked perturbed, and he certainly wasn't going to answer any questions. "That's kind of rude. How did you know about that?"

Dave narrowed his eyes to slits, dangling the pencil and pad. "We're asking the questions. Now, question one, are you, or have you ever been a wizard, a colt, a dashinshire, or a ottoman?"

Maion shot a dirty glare. "I don't need to tell you anything- wait, what?"

"Have you ever been a Genie?" Dave asked.

"I don't even own a lamp," Maion said.

"How about a midget!?" Ping-pong asked, standing right in front Maion.

"NO, and Midget's are really small, smaller than me!"

"Midgets ARE cool," said Chip.

"OOH, MY turn!" KNOCK "Urk!" CRASH! "Hey, fellas, can I shake hands with the super cool wolf dude?" It was the large, bulky southern blue walrus, Harold. Lazlo smiled, while Raj rolled eyes and bit his lip. "Harold!" they both said at the same time. "What's up, Harold?" Lazlo asked. "Hey, guys, good to see you again!" came Harold's cheerful beam.

Raj dully explained, "You usually 'see' us all the time around the camp."

"Dat' true too! Hey, can I shake his hand in that thing you got?"

Lazlo was curious to know what Harold meant, so he persisted. "What do ya mean?"

"The friendship thing! H-Hey can I be ya'll's friend too!?"

On the other side of the bus and in the back, the Lemmings yelled, "Stop being so loud!"

Maion wasn't sure how to respond, but the blue Walrus seemed nice enough. "Uh... sure, I guess?" he chuckled nervously as he reached out to shake the cold hand. It felt incredibly cold! Maion whipped his hand back. "Yeesh! Are you from Cananda or Iceland!?"

Harold looked a little opinionated and started to say, "Well, actually I'm-!"

Maion's expression went blank, and he said in a monotone voice, "From. North. Pole."

"Hey, yeah!" Harold burst out laughing. "That's right! Heh-heh, well good ta meet ya! Laters!"

BUMP!

The bus ended up hitting a bump on the road, making all the campers jump and go, "Woaah!" once Harold left, Lazlo grinned and said, "Isn't that amazing, you already gained another friend, even if everybody knows about your magical powers!"

Maion's grin back to Lazlo's was uneasy. "Yeah... but, I really didn't have any idea where that Harold person- who is he?"

"He's a vague background minor character," Raj said sternly in the behind bench. He then resumed his position of staring at the window, away from they crazy large pool of drool done by an exhausted sleeping Clam. "Uh, wait. What?"

"Don't mind Raj, he's just a really good friend, is all," the simian explained with a grin and nod. Maion accepted the answer. "Oh, okay. Listen, Lazlo," he added in a whisper. Maion was staring down at his hands like they were merely those belonging to a stranger. "I don't... feel so well... "


(Scene Change; Camp Kidney - Scoutmaster Lumpus' office)

"... He's WHAT!?" The infamous military tactician roared out of his seat, once Lumpus finished his long-winded and ridiculous-sounding report about Camp Kidney's latest "attraction". It didn't really seem to matter if he was only 1 foot away, beyond a mahogany table. The mere presence of his commander officer and official head of the Tomato Scouts, Ex-Sargent Reuben Thewatt Hoo-hah was more than enough to chill the pitiful Scoutmaster Lumpus to his bones.

"Ab-ah-ah-ah-ah-w-w-w-w-wwel- we- we- well I MEAN to say that-!!" the apathetic moose tried really hard to stutter out of his mouth. But nothing coherent came.

"You make ME, the overseer AND Tomato Scout Commander, drop my scheduled sessions for that DARN-TOOTED, court-ordered ANGER-management sessions, because you want to show me some RIDICULOUS NEWSTORY about some STUPID camper having "magical" POWERS, which is obvious NOT REAL!?"

"And futhermore, Scoutmaster, he is NOT a Tomato Scout! I don't have any recollection of any scouts named "Maion" among the few 50 that make it to Tomato Rank!" Hoo-hah barked.

Lumpus gulped hard; that shot that little paranoia out of the window. This was it, Lumpus knew, he was going to get whacked. "It's in newspapers! It HAS to be true! And I can prove it!" Scoutmaster Lumpus grabbed his mike, yelling into it, "Slinkman! Bring that little whachamacallit in my office RIGHT NOW!"

He was so sure of himself, Scoutmaster Lumpus actually swelled up his chest, as much his pride as well; he decided to lean up against the wall for a few minutes, certain that Slinkman would bring the rotten "whatchamacallit" into his office so he could have him deported.

Several minutes passed and nothing happened; and Commander Hoo-hah was looking impatient. Sweat began to run down the narrow cheekbone of the agitated moose, who annoyed kept thinking, Where is that darned Slug?

Hoo-hah tapped the floor impatiently with his foot. "Where's your assistant, Lumpus!? And where is this scout?!"

Not wanting to suffer the wrath of having his office smashed up (Again), Lumpus tried calming the man down, "N-no, it's f-Fine! He's coming! He probably just went on a HIKE a-and-!"

Then he froze as he remembered; Slinkman had been saying some nonsense about how he was going to take the Campers for a hike and visit the that stupid geyser... and as it turned out, the bus was gone by the time that Commander Hoo-hah arrived... the stodgy, clueless moose realized his mistake in cold horror. Oh, fantastic. Now there was nothing left to do but bite the bullet.

"Um, they... m-may have... m-may h-hahave gone for a... hike... "

"You DON'T have your Campers ready!? What kind of Facility are YOU running!!"

Lumpus was reduced to a gibbering wreck; his voice was reaching a high pitch. "M-maybe they'll be... back?"

Hoo-hah smiled evily. "Really!?" he inquired.

"Y-yeah! Uh, uh!" darting his eyes back and forth across the one window room, Lumpus desperate searched for an adequate distraction- big enough to occupy the gargantuan wildebeest's time and stave off his festering impatience. "Why don't we just go to town and check the uh... um, military surplus warehouses they have?"

Hoo-hah didn't know what he meant. "What are you talking about? There AIN'T no military surplus store! And I DON'T have the time!"

Lumpus almost lost his temper, and nearly burst out screaming, "Oh come on, you're not exactly keen on those stupid Court-ordered anger-management classes! You like beating up people more than "managing anger"!" Realizing too late the mistake he made, the stubborn moose prepared for the worst; until he saw that Hoo-hah was actually considering his words with thoughtful reflection. "Say," he began. "You got a pretty good head on ya, Lumpus!"

At this response, Lumpus' mouth dropped open, big enough to let out a fly; he was having a hard time taking in what was the most incredible, impossible 360* in history. "We can visit a hardware store. I LOVE using metallic, gritty, angry tools when building something BIG...and MANLY... like a house, or a storage shed!"

The response was an orchestra of stutters; Hoo-hah didn't seem to notice, to caught up in the idea of an added extension shed to his Garage. Just the simple image of perfect woodcraft, excellent angling, and secure bolting started making the easily-aggravated wildebeest drool with excitement. "Waddya say, Lumpus? Let's go down to "Tamie's Hardware" down in Prickly Pines and see what they have?!"

Lumpus wasn't sure if saying "Yes" would've been a good answer; then again, it didn't look like he had a say in it anyway. Before he knew what hit him, Hoo-hah snatched the moose excitedly by the neck like a over-eager child dragging his mom to a carnival. They were already outside, and Hoo-hah snatched out his keys to his jeeps ignition. Hoo-hah slammed a foot on the gas pedal, and they were out of the camp in seconds.


Leaning on the fence that kept all visitations away from the infamous inactive geyser, Clam was yawning out of his own inactivity for the past half-hour. Lazlo, Clam, Raj, Sampson, and the Two loons were were grouped around the shy wolf, watching the geyser. All the other campers brought along were either hanging near the bus, or near the visitations restroom. The best feeling for Raj was that there weren't any girls around.

"So... why are we here?" Maion said exhausted. The one-mile hike to the geyser was more than enough to take one's breath away.

"I think we're here to see the geyser," said Lazlo.

"Um, usually geysers don't erupt till... some point," Ping-Pong interjected. "You think Slinkman knows...?"

Slinkman was preoccupied with the giant plague placed near the geyser reading, "World's Greatest Geyser... It is here that-" And he trailed off, continuing to stare doubtfully at the plaque.

"No," Dave answered his brother.

A moment of silence passed; close on the other side of the geyser were the Dung beetles and Edward, who ignored their usual stupidity. Today they were playing with their toy needle-gun dispenser, which Edward had personally given to them to keep them quiet. Maion suddenly said, "Lazlo?"

"Hmm?"

"Nobody thinks that me being able to do magic is weird... or frightening?"

Lazlo fell silent.

"Too strange to ask?"

"Uh, no."

"Oh, big deal!" Raj burst out laughing as he walked over. "Do you honestly think you're the first magical thing to fall into our laps?"

Maion didn't know what to say. "Uh... yeah? I'm not...?"

"Well I guess we've already had weird instances of odd supernatural happenings?" Lazlo said. "Really...?" said Maion. "Like what...?"

Lazlo's gaze darted away while he tried to thinking. "Well... "

(Insert A Poofy Cloud flashback sequence of various supernatural happenings, such as the Volcano Incident, The Tusk Wizard, Sampson's caveman, the Cheese Aliens, The comet, Edward's Birthday, The Dig for Dinosaur Bones, The Mail Incident, and the switch of fortune (Bad Luck Be A Camper Tonight) )

Maion fell silent, looking aghast. "You can't be serious," he said. "A Tusk Wizard? That's just weird!"

"Weird?" Sampson input, but Dave casually brushed him off. "Kind of like "Not easy to talk about". Nobody's actually impressed that you're "magic" or whatever. Lucky for you that you are."

Lazlo who still kept thinking, said, "Wait, guys, there's S.M.I.T.S!" "S.M.I.T.S!!" Clam burst out screaming. "Who?" Maion asked. "You know," Lazlo continued. "The "Scout-Master In The Sky"! He's magical!"

"Lazlo, shut up!" Sampson cried. Then he ducked behind him, darting suspcious eyes at the sky and ground. "You don't KNOW what kind of powers you're dealing with!"

"You mean Maion?" "NOOO," the guinea pig snapped back. "I MEAN Smits!"

Maion looked hardly surprised, since he didn't appreciate Sampson's babbling of his secret earlier. "Will someone explain this to me?"

"SMITS is the reason I can barely get through a day, except that it comes with-!"

SMACK!

Sampson couldn't finish after getting hit square in the face with a... soccer ball. The force sent the poor guinea pig flying all way near a grove of trees.

"That's real divine punishment there, baby," Ping-pong laughed uproariously.

"Uh..." Maion began sounding afraid, as he backed slowly away. "Wait. Where'd the ball come from?!"

"Don't worry, this sort of always happens to Sampson, nobody else," Dave explained. "We know that it's scientifically possible that it could be some form of divine sentience."

"You mean like a "god" or something?" Maion said doubtfully. "That's not possible."

"Sure it is!" Lazlo said cheerfully. "I met S.M.I.T.S once. He gave me back the good luck he had mistakenly given to Sampson."

"And what was he like?" asked Maion a little more seriously. "What did he look like?"

Lazlo looked a little worried, seeing how serious Maion acted. The two loons, pachyderm and even the albino pigmy rhino, were closely watching. "Oh, well, he wore Scoutmaster Shorts, sandals, black socks, and he sounded like... like..."

Sampson jumped up and ran back over, yelling, "He sounded like Joe Meerkat, the famous T.V. actor Sensation!" And to prove his point he even pulled out a large magazine that had a large, and very obnoxious-looking meerkat with red hair, doing a ridiculous pointing gesture with his finger. "And Magazines never lie; it's through these I can advance my sense of doom. Also, this magazine smacked me in the face when I was riding my bike. Which means it came from S.M.I.T.S!"

Maion's expression sharpened to such an extreme degree. On the other side, Edward could see it plain as day, and his expression was as in much surprise as Lazlo, wondering what happened. "You're... you're just basing such trivial facts that you might have only encountered through hallucenation. You automatically assume that things like material items come of divine origin? You think that will make things better? Are you THAT completely stupid?" Lazlo was beginning to get scared. He was yelling at Sampson like he really was angry. Even worse- Maion's nostrils tensed up, his teeth even began to show. This felt almost wrong; was this really the same curious and shy wolf they were talking to several minutes ago?

The harsh silence was broken by two events; Maion's face immediately straightened out as he realized with shame how he was frightening the other campers, and Sampson was a prime example he broke down and began crying.

"Dude," Raj said. "What is up with you? You're acting completely weird!"

Maion's mind ran to blanks at each turn. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean-!"

"It's not nice to call people names," Lazlo told him. "Why would you-!?"

"I'm sorry! I don't think any of you are stupid!!"

A moment of awkward silence followed, till Dave said, "Okay, I'm filing this under weird." Maion cried, "No! I really am sorry!"

"You shouldn't say that to us, you should at least say that to Sampson," Raj said.

Maion scratched his head. "Sampson, I'm really sorry about what I said. I didn't mean it, alright? I don't think you're stupid!"

Sampson immediately straightened up and turned about face. "Yo-y-you actually mean it?" Maion smiled. "I do! Yeah, forget what I said!" To prove his point, he extended his hand out to shake Sampson's. Sampson would've preferred a hug, but he gladly accepted the handshake, and the apology.

Smiling, Lazlo wasn't sure of what to make about Maion's personality, but he came near and also shook his hand, happy with the outcome. "Isn't that better? Everyone gets a chance to make up and be friends again!"

"Fine, that's all fair and good, but, I don't change my beliefs for anyone," Maion told him.

Raj was still shaken. "You're just so... mature."

"Yeah," Ping-pong agreed, because Raj had actually said something that gave away an acurate description of the wolf. "I was thinking the same thing!"

"I don't get it," Lazlo said quietly.

" "Mature" people," Sampson said, rubbing his nose. "A-Are like adults, Lazlo."

"Adults!? But he's a kid, like you and me; why are you so much like an adult?"

Maion frowned. "You guys ask a lot of questions. I guess that's probably the way I am." Maion was staring at the geyser. "I'd like to know a little more about you, instead."

"Huh?!" went Lazlo. "About me!?"

"Yeah," Maion said, turning to face him. "Not like how knowing that Sampson was raised by a pair of squid creatures."

Samspon dropped his mouth open, not recalling ever telling Maion anything about that. "H-HOW did-!? But you've never seen-!? MERP!!"

"You already knew about Sampson's parents!?" Ping-Pong cried, forcing Dave to say with shudder, "Nobody actually wants to know about Sampsons parents." As if to prove this fact, Clam let out a disgusted "Yuck."

Lazlo turned to look at Maion. "Hey, do your parents know Sampson's parents? Maybe met them?"

"No," Maion answered flatly. "What happened, was, the moment I happened to shake Sampson's hand, I automatically knew. His phobias, that thing he has with Storm clouds, and some crush he has on an owl girl named Alm-"

"Hey, hey-hey!!" Sampson interrupted him, cheeks burning red, furious and embarrassed that his private thoughts and feelings he painstakingly kept to himself... even if nobody bothered to ask. "I didn't say you could say ANYTHING about my personal life!!! Who are you!?"

Maion looked definitely regretful for saying so. "I'm sorry, again, Sampson. I didn't mean to! I just immediately knew. Like, the same way a bird would know how to fly. Your thoughts, memories, and feelings... they came flooding into me the moment I shook your hand."

Even angry as he was right now, Sampson was now becoming freaked out by Maion's increasingly odd personaility. "You're just getting weirder; that magic is going to your head."

"This is getting really... um... I don't know," Raj said to Lazlo, who didn't seem to hear him. "Maion what's going on here?" he asked him, his voice sounding surprisingly shaky.

"Nuts to that!" Edward burst out of nowhere, surprising everybody. He snuck over, unnoticed with the Dung Beetles. "Why don't you try using that awesome power of yours and making the Geyser pop to life?"

"You really think he can do that?" Lazlo asked, getting slowly excited.

"Don't be stupid. If his magic can step up from curing others and siphoning memories, then maybe it can do more than that," Edward said.

The Loons looked suspiciously at him. "Keeps getting weirder," they said simultaneously in a freaked out voice.

"That's my line!" Sampson yelled.

Ping-pong suddenly recalled something he knew he had to bring up. "Hold on, all that stuff you said. You're just taking lines out of that Adventure magic movie we watched last ye-!"

"I am NOT!!" Edward fiercely countered. He knew he was right. He did sort of love watching movies since the whole "Birthday" incident. "Yeah, you do! That was the line that Lizard used against the fly warrior of Gorgon Six!" Ping-pong said.

"Hey, have you ever seen movies like that, Maion?" Lazlo asked the wolf, who simply responded, in the same nonsyllabic voice, "No. Well, maybe a few, but all there was to watch were a bunch of history movies and-!"

"Woah," Chip said. "Sounds like it was a boring childhood." "Eh, could've been worse."

Edward saw the conversation jumping out, so again he prodded the wolf. "Hey, wolf! You should try making the Geyser pump!"

Now Maion stared incredulously at the platypus. "How do you expect me to do that?"

"You're magic aren't you?" "Not the same thing." "Your powers must be getting stronger, I can tell!" Edward reached into his pocket and pulled out a license, which once was out in the open, now stunned everybody, particularly Sampson. "You're part of the Wizards and Lizards Dungeons and Dunces Games Club!? I thought they were exclusive!!" The card even had a golden sheen; Edward was carrying a gold-plated card. "It's even GOLD-plated!" Sampson stood still in awe. "I'm a certified member."

"You mean," Lazlo said, "you joined a club for fun and friendship?"

"Pffft," Edward scoffed at the lowly simians' ignorance. "Yeah, right. I signed up for this cause I wanted to be better than everybody else in camp that wasn't a member! And also cause ladies dig card-carrying men!"

"But Edward, why would you sign up for something you didn't actually believe in?" Ping-pong asked.

"Cause ratting on nerds is more easier when I'm on their territory! And also cause I'm a card game master. Haven't you ever played "Yu-gi-owl", the supercool trading card game?"

Everybody just shook their heads like they heard a completely foreign language. "Man you guys are just lame. Well spending 2 years studying a gigantic book called "Magic: The Real, and the Fake", wasn't wasted at all for me! I just... didn't actually think someone like you would show up in Camp Kidney! Why would your parents send you here? I don't get it!"

Maion looked at Lazlo. "To make friends," he answered.

"So you're just like the rest of them! You're nuthin' but a pea-brained chowderhead!"

Maion didn't appreciate that, but as angry at the platypus as he was, he still didn't believe in using force on others; instead, he surprised everybody by turning the other cheek and shot eyes at the inactive geyser. He started doing something, which nobody knew until a few minutes later was straining. "WHAT are you doing?" Edward screamed at him. Maion ignored him. Maion's teeth began to show; he didn't have an idea what he was doing, but he knew he had powers, and he was trying his hardest to manifest them. I'm gonna make this HAPPEN. I'm gonna make... that... agh... agh... geyser... burst!

At that moment, it seemed like the world was shaking. Raj fell right on his belly at the same time as Sampson, most of the other campers, like Lazlo and Clam, remained steady. "W-w-w-w-w-w-w-what i-in the world is happening n-n-now!?"

Lazlo was trying not to sound afraid; but he could see that something of a strange light suddenly enveloped Maion like the small glow of a lantern. "Ma-AI-on!?"

Slinkman still hadn't noticed any of what happened on side of the plague, but he did notice when the Earthquake hit. "What the Bean is going on around here?" Having nowhere else to look, he pointed at the sign and yelled, "Why d-did I think co-co-c-coming back he-e-he-here was a guh-guh-guh-good idea!?"

"STOP THAT!" Edward screeched at the top of his lungs. "STOP DOING THAT!"

Not because Ed had ordered it, but Maion ceased holding both arms in the air, and so did the light quake. It stopped completely; the wind even ceased it's occasional light gusts through the area and there were no birds to be seen in the trees.

BURST!!

All the campers let out a piercing yell that scared the only adult in their party, Slinkman, out of his wits. He then ran over, and cried horrified, "Are you kids o- Woah!"

The geyser erupted with a giant fountain of water, and everyone had to stand back in order to keep from getting wet. "Old faithful... " the banana slug whispered breathlessly. "She actually erupted this time! I was... starting to think it would never..."

"Mr. Slinkman!?" came a panicking voice. Everyone darted in the direction of a shaky and very perturbed Harold Walrus running over with Sam the stork and Sagitarius Goat. "There was a loud earthquake and we were wondering if everyone was-!"

"I already know!" Slinkman snapped. He then turned his attention to the respective parties of Jelly, Pinto and Fava Bean Cabins. "Are guys alright? That quake came out of nowhere!"

"We're all right, Mr. Slinkman!" the trio of Jelly Bean chirped. "W-Whatever we're... okay!" "We're all right!" Edward the Dung Beetles reported, standing at attention. "Technically undamaged." "MERP! My shorts are riding high! It's like having a weggie!!" were the Fava Bean members' responses.

Maion also nodded; everyone was eerily quiet about what happened. Slinkman sighed in relief. "Thank goodness. For a second I thought something horrible happened."

"I think it actually did 'something horrible happened'," Chip informed Slinkman.

Slinkman perked up to attention and gasped. "What?! What is it!?"

"We lost our favourite pointy toy stick," said Skip.

Slinkman wasn't sure what they were talking about. "Huh...? 'pointy toy stick'...?" His expression grew stern. "Hold ON, you don't mean...! What have I told you two about bringing that along!?"

Maion whispered to Lazlo, "What's...?"

Lazlo couldn't answer, but Edward sidled up to the other wolf's ear. "It's a long sharp twig branch they sharpened to... poke at things. By the way, dude, that was insane! You made the geyser burst!"

Slinkman took over the two dung beetles over to look for their "toy" while the Fava, Jelly, and Pinto stared at the strange Maion with amazement... and worry. He suddenly looked dizzy. Raj cried, "You really can do magic! That was amazing! ... but also kind of scary..."

"I really didn't believe I could do that," Maion said, feeling his composure shaken. Then he turned to Edward and said in a mocking voice, " 'Bet I can't make a Geyser implode?' Give me a break."

"You MUST be some kind of Wizard," Dave interjected. "No, he's a warlock!" Ping-pong corrected his brother.

Lazlo confronted the two loons. "Guys, don't fight! Besides, Warlocks are good people too!" "Wait," Raj retorted. "What makes you say that?"

"Well," Lazlo said quietly, "I read Warlocks are bad, but that can't be right, I mean they just need a friend and then they can use their powers to make pancakes for the entire town of sleepyville!"

"Yeah," Edward agreed, albeit sarcastically. "... and I bet you were also dropped on your head as a baby."

"Woah... Hey, how'd you know that, Edward?" the simian asked him good-naturedly. "Are you magic like Maion, too?"

Edward dropped his mouth open, unable to say anything. Lazlo looked a little perplexed. "Uh... Edward- ah, Maion, you alright?"

Maion was stumbling backward a little like he was getting sick. "N-No I'm fine... I think."

Edward let out a snide laugh. "Overloaded, much?"

"What?" Maion asked. Ping-Pong immediately knew what Edward meant and was planning on saying so, but Sampson popped out of nowhere and said, "Making something big like a geyser erupt was too much for Maion, since he hasn't developed his power fully."

All three jellies scratched their heads, but Maion stared incredulously at Sampson and asked, "How'd you know I've never attempted anything big with my powers, that I've just started on my own two feet?"

"Cause all the wizards and warlocks I've read in my fiction-adventures storybooks at home usually never have full control at all," said the guinea pig.

"Well I'm not... I-I'm not a wizard, I'm a wolf... with magical powers..." Maion said, clutching his head agitatedly. "Ah, oh man, you might actually be right."

"Ha! told ya!" Sampson bragged, immediately silenced by Edward. "Button your lip, nerd!" "I'm NOT a nerd!" "You wear glasses, you have diseases, used to, and you have an unnatural pair of shoes that lets you steal McMuseli's candy." "Ooooh, Edward, you said you wouldn't say anything about my Orthopaedic Shoes!!"

Edward and Sampson kept arguing, while Lazlo, Raj, and Clam noticed Maion's condition getting worse. "Maion!" they all cried simultaneously. Ping-pong squinted his eyes. "His hands are glowing intensely, just like before. I'm not liking the looks of this- Slinkman's coming back!"

Lazlo and Jellies got in front of Maion to prevent Slinkman from seeing his unnatural "hand coloring". Slinkman had a depressed look on his face. "Everyone gather around- what's going on here?"

"Uh, nothing!" the leader of the Jellies nervously laughed. "We were just uh... um..."

"Waiting!" Raj burst out yelling. Clam even agreed through a nod.

Slinkman blinked before deciding that nothing suspicious seemed out of place. "Okay, well I've got bad news. Turns out that a certain pair of campers' favourite and clearly dangerous toy has flown out of their hands during that quake, and it unexpectedly made a small puncture in the right front tire on the bus. And we used the replacement dummy tire last time, so we can't use it again."

"Wait," Ping-pong began. "Why exactly can't we use the dummy tire again? Is it because it would be a financial strain on the Camp budget?"

"Um..." Slinkman trailed off. (Insert poofy cloud flashback sequence of Lumpus threatening to salt Slinkman) "Yeah, you could say it like that."

"You know, you could always use these two dummies for tires," Edward sarcastically suggested; though both vermin were as usual unaware that friend was actually talking about them. Slinkman made no heed and said, "Knock it off, Edward. Now everyone get on the bus! We're going to Prickly Pines to get a new tire."

This incited a loud holler of excitement from the campers. Slinkman went to start up the bus and again motioned for all the campers to get on immediately.

The Fava and Pinto Beans gathered around the Jelly cabins with satisfied and mistified smiles. "Because of you, now we get an extended trip to Prickly Pines!" Sampson exclaimed. "This. IS. Awesome!... you okay?"

Maion heard the guinea pig, but he certainly didn't feel like was okay. His head was burning up. "I... I'm not, I am, I don't know. Maybe you're right."

"We need to get on the bus!" Raj cried. Lazlo wondered how they were going to get Maion and his glowing hands past Slinkman. "I think I have an idea. Slinkman!" he called out, grabbing the banana slug's attention. Slinkman was writing on his clipboard and yelled back, "Is it important?"

"Um... uh, maybe you should check the bus bumpers too!" It wasn't a terrible excuse, but that seemed to be the only thing that came to Lazlo mind at once. "It could be dented!"

"What?" Slinkman wondered what the simian was talking about- till he did give it some thought. "Oh! You may have a point!" he then left the door muttering, "Don't know what those Dung Beetles are capable of..."

Once he cleared, Lazlo gave the signal and Raj and Clam rushed a brooding Maion up the bus steps, behind several other campers. Then once Edward and the Pinto Beans were on board, Lazlo jumped on as Slinkman returned. It actually took him several minutes before getting behind the wheel, and turning the bus around in the direction of Prickly Pines. He wondered worriedly why Lazlo told him something like that, but the banana slug decided that since nothing was dangerously out of place, it didn't really matter.


(meanwhile)

"...AND that is why things MEN say don't really matter," Ms. Mucus finished. Another successful seminar near the lake, which was more like a pep rally for the upcoming "Tournament". Needless to say, it was going better than expected. Nina was sitting among them between Honey and another squirrel taking notes. "So what's say we get ready for another 400 push-ups to getting ready for the tournament!" Ms. Doe was busy setting things up for a picnic, completely oblivious to the day's events.

"We're back!" The 5 squirrels and Mucus swiveled around to see Patsy and Gretchen walking to where they were, with sodas in tow.

"Hey!" Nina called out to her friends.

"Hey," both Patsy and Gretchen said. Patsy finished off her soda and then asked, "Where's Jensine?"

A dark female dog popped up from the far left. "Present!" She was holding a newspaper. "Did you guys want to talk to me about the Newspaper?"

Before they got a chance to answer, Ms. Doe suddenly ran onto the scene, stopping to catch her breath. "Jensine! Dear, I'm so sorry, I forgot to tell you thanks again for offering to help me clean up mine and Ms. Mucus' dorm!"

"Certainly," the dark canine answered coolly.

"And you did such a wonderful job setting up the tables for this weeks' dinner!"

"Absolutely."

"And dear, going around and setting all of our girls' clocks back to this afternoon so that they'd ring at the pricise moment in tomorrow morning was... I guess a nice gesture!"

"Hold on!" Honey suddenly popped up. "We all have keys to our personal cabins! How'd she get in to set up our clocks!?"

Ms. Mucus leered over the angry lioness and huffed. "I gave her the master key. She's very trustworthy and focused unlike some camprettes around here!" Honey immediately shrunk down in shame.

Ms. Mucus regarded Jensine again. "She's been here for like, what? 8 Hours, and already she's demonstrated the grace, poise and fortitude like I've never seen! It's as if she was raised in the military herself! I've never heard of a girl scout focused enough to care about protocol!" Ms. Mucus hated admitting that herself; but it was true that she was struck amazed by her performance.

"Ohhohohoho, how lovely! Isn't that interesting?" Ms. Doe cheerfully added.

The complected dark canine shrugged and gave off a very nervous smile. "Uh... thanks I guess?"

"She's not all that great..." Gretchen sneered, though nobody heard her.

Patsy stepped forward and said, "Uh, Headmistress Doe? Can we take Jensine and Nina away for a few minutes?"

"Sure but remember, today is 'Tasteful Taco Night'! Don't be late!"


Patsy closed the door just as Gretchen sat on her bed. Permeating the air like a mist was the lemony scent of pine cones, and Nina's chemcial set that sat to the right of the large mirror. The adequately sized white bed sat near the window, where Jensine was standing, still clutching onto the newspaper. The sun's rays were pouring down through the window, casting her shadow over the bed.

"So... you've been saying the more you use your powers, the more stronger you get?" Nina began.

"I don't believe in magic," Gretchen said. "I still say it's a some cheap magic card trick! How can you be so SURE it's the real deal!?"

"What!? But she even showed us herself!" Nina rebuked the alligator. "She could make an icecube appear right out of thin air!"

Patsy sat on the bed and watched her new cabinmate just staring at the crystallite substance. Patsy wasn't in disbelief like Gretchen, but she didn't hold that against her. Patsy held some beliefs and others she would not give up her focus unless the proof showed itself. Magic was a blip on her radar, but something not to be ignored - not when the evidence was right in front of her. In that newspaper.

Gretchen folded her arms. "I still think we should've told the Head and Ms. Mucus."

Patsy stubbornly said, "And I said we promised Jensine that we'd keep this secret!"

Jensine didn't pay attention to them, but she did hold out her hand and focued hard. floating right above the palm was a cold mist that condensed, and froze in place, becoming a cube. She frowned. Nina bounded over like an scientific fanatic, both eyes bulging out in sheer incredible excitement; she kept examining and re-examining that hand and palm. "Maion has powers like me."

"I KNEW it!" Nina burst out screaming, still bouncing up and down excitedly.

"And what makes you so sure that a bean scout has 'magical powers'!?" Gretchen asked, though mockingly emphasizing 'magical powers'. "It can't actually be possible, I mean come on, even if "magic" exists, how did it end up happening to fall into the Bean Scouts' hands almost at the exact same time as Jensine!?"

"That we can just chalk up to crazy coincidence," Nina brushed her off. "I'm more interested in knowing how."

Patsy was next to speak. "We've got to make sure that nobody else finds this out. Hey, Jensine?" "Huh?" "The way you say his name, it sounds like you know him personally."

Jensine grinned widely and said, "You've got a point. I think I've gotten used to just doing this with my hand," she indicated the icecube in her hand, while the other three stared at her, mouths open wide. "And I don't mind doing it around you guys. And what Nina said earlier must be true. I can actually sense a lot of odd things- I can feel Maion if I concentrate hard enough. And you're absolutely right; I do sort of know him. Personally. He's nice, but also kind of a jerk. I didn't know that he had powers like me, till just this very moment. Which is kind of weird since he's my nephew."

A long silence passed before Patsy dared to speak. "That... was unexpected," her voice sounded a little shaken.

"This is a whole bunch of STUPID!" Gretchen yelled. "How can a Wolf be your NEPHEW and have magical powers?"

Jensine made the ice cube melt in her hand, before lowering it and laying back on the bed. Patsy got off and leaned against the door. "Well, as far as I know, my mother told me she had a sister who traded off her last name of 'Castiel' for 'Paschar' when she married. I spent time with him when we were babies, and he was very solitary since he was born part wolf. So I didn't bother with him."

Nina adjusted her glasses. "You seem pretty calm about all of this."

"I don't care," Jensine said, rising up to stare at them. "But if he wants to be a jerk all of his life, then whatever, it's not my problem."

"And Lazlo's actually hanging out with somebody like that," the pink-haired mongoose shuddered. But the mere thought of Lazlo, his cheerful positivity, his board banana smile and lean frame, it was sending her heart into a soft dance.

Jensine eyed her a teasingly. "You have a crush on Lazlo, but he can't recuperate those exact feelings back to you, isn't that the case?"

Patsy's face burst open into shades of deep red as she was reduced to near-gibbering. "H-how'd you know anything about that?! And it's not true!!"

"I did for some time since you shook my hand. When I first arrived."

Nina was almost speechless. "Memory tapping with physical contact!? Your power really is Phenomenal!!"

Grertchen stared doubtfully at all three. "Okay, seriously, now you guys are scaring me. What is ANY of this going to mean for that Tournament?"

Jensine didn't think much about that; Patsy and Nina already explained it to her earlier when Gretchen left to talk with Ms. Mucus, an object of real admiration to the rough-skinned alligator. As they said, it was a series of harmless, and relatively plain activities that tested the mettle of the two gender-sensitive camps- and that there was nothing to worry about because the Squirrels usually won every time. So Jensine went back to their earlier talk.

"You know, even if Maion didn't like it at all, I actually wanted to watch out for him. I care about his well-being. I just hope he's not going to abuse his powers like a complete moron."

"Pfft, fat chance," Gretchen scoffed. Jensine eyed all three.

"Technically, the bean scouts came into possession of a Temperature altering machine that according to my calculations, fell off an airplane about a year ago. It was the hottest day of the year, and by some odd luck Jelly Cabin possessed it for a time. And they went crazy with it, not sharing it and even gaining on the Scoutmaster," said Nina.

"Huh!?" Jensine gawked. "Then how did you guys-!?"

"We have circulated air conditioning," Patsy said plainly, to which Nina added, "And an indoor pool!"

"Aside from that," Gretchen said, "Beans Scouts mess up almost everything they do. Bet your Maion will do the same."

"Gretchen!" Nina yelled. "I don't believe that's true. Jensine seems to have control over her powers. Oh, this is so exciting! The tournament's going to be totally interesting!"

Jensine nodded, then stared up at the ceiling. Her expression wandered into a sorrowful gaze. "You know, Maion may never have realized it, but I cared enough about defending him, to the point that I didn't actually feel like just a niece in his eyes. I guess... I feel more like his sister."

Another weird silence fell, during which Gretchen leaned over and whispered to Nina, "Serious headcase." Nina shot angry eyes at her, but both heard Patsy gasp. They both turned back toward Jensine, who looked as terribly pale as she sounded.

"Already a whole day and Maion's about to screw up..."


"Maion...? Maion, hey! Hey!"

"Woah! We've just hit a sharp bump!" Slinkman yelled from the front. "Everyone settle down!"

The sun was close to sunset, its rays falling through the thin window pane glass on the camp bus. The Fava and Jelly Beans were gathered almost in the same place near the back. Maion was lying horizontally on a wide back seat between Lazlo and Raj. His breaths came in shallow gasps. "You alright!? You don't look well."

Ping-Pong shook his head. "I think he's exhausted. Really exhausted."

"Hey, I had a cure for it!" Sampson argued, without actually having a reason to. "But I left it home by accident! oooooh, I really dropped the ball this time." Edward was also watching via over the seat bench close to the middle, not so green with envy for earlier. "Maybe he just needs water or something," Dave said.

Maion could hardly turn his head. "I'm... fine.... Lazlo?"

"Hmm...?" "I asked you earlier if I could... hold your hand right? Let me hold it."

"Why are thinking about 'Frienship Shakes' at a time like this?" Raj narrowed his eyes. "Raj that's not it. I..." Lazlo felt even deeper sympathy; and he wasn't to turn down his friend's request. "Sure. But... your hands have been glowing really brightly for some time now, is that safe?" Without actually knowning why, Lazlo did grab his hand. The sickly face of the wolf stiffened incredibly, like his entire being reacted to such a strong and threatening presence.

Nothing happened, so Lazlo began getting frantic. "Raj, Clam, come on, take his hand also!" Clam didn't wait a second more; he considered Maion his friend; Raj was shaking all over, but he stuck his hand in there as well. "I don't know what this is supposed to do!"

"... Is something supposed to happen?" Sampson said. "He looks not alive."

The words had a bad effect on everyone around, who began to feel afraid of Maion lying there. The face of the wolf began to loosen up; he didn't look any calmer, but it was slightly relieved- but then it spiralled into a drastic switch to a serious face. "Clam's family is middle american, poor. I see this; Raj came from India. That, and he immediately assumed Clam was some regular bus boy."

"O-kay, why are you saying this?" Raj asked, but Maion was almost a far cry from his voice. Maion kept going with, "And... Lazlo."

"Are looking at my past?" Lazlo was filled with excitement. "What are you seeing?"

"Fruit. Lots of fruit. All kinds! Like bananas, apples, oranges, grapes, and raspberries. Your parents moved you here to America, all the way from... Brazil."

Lazlo gasped. He knew exactly what was in his past, so it was supposed to help alleviate his... condition, right?

At the front of the bus, Slinkman kept nervously glancing at his watch every five minutes, a bad habit, he knew, because it should've been the road. They were already coming up on Camp Kidney. How'd it get this late already? Prickly Pines isn't too far away. Well, at least the campers aren't being noisy... huh. That's odd.

Maion found the strength to sit up straight; but his hands didn't stop glowing, making Dave say, "Okay, can you tell me what's up with your hands?! You look like you have a mini-explosion going on in each!"

Maion looked jet-lagged and the tone of voice was slow. "I really... don't know- I think, making the geyser burst open was too much for me to handle."

"You shouldn't have done it," Sampson told him. "If you knew it was going to turn out that way."

"I know but, I really wanted to prove I could..."

"Hold on!" Lazlo burst out yelling. "You don't have to prove anything, we like you nonetheless! Haven't we told you before?" "Like!" "Thanks, Clam."

Maion sheepishly frowned upon hearing this. "Ah... you're right, but I wasn't thinking at all."

"Big surprise," Edward said through closed teeth, from behind his seat. " 'Hangs out with Jelly Cabin' for almost an entire day...'"

Raj was still afraid for another reason, "What is with the glowing in your hands? Explain that!" The aura around the hands jumped another bright leg, visible enough to be seen from the bus. Maion groaned sadly.

"I don't know. Something's going to happen. I can't tell what it is!"

Ping-Pong's face fell as he kept looking back to the front of the bus, and then towards Maion like a dear caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. "How IS it that Slinkman doesn't notice this happening!?" he gawked. Whatever he thought, now some of the other minor campers sitting in the front began to notice. "His magic is probably unpredictable."

"This is... some kind of trick right? Right!?" The floor of the bus began to rumble, and the light was getting more intense with each second. Every second the faces of the Fava Beans, Pinto, and Jellies were filled with a confusing mix of awe, amazement, and horror, not knowing what it was they were looking at, not certain if it was something they should've stopped. It was obvious this was no trick, and it was really happening.

They all expected the worst till the light died out as quickly as it had appeared. The simian was paralyzed still, shaking his knees.

"What the-!?" He was staring wide-eyed at something he was carrying. "When did we get these?!"

The simian saw that Maion's hands were still glowing, but not as brightly as before. Maion settled down more peacefully than ever, looking strongly at ease. But that wasn't what snatched the spider-monkey's attention in cold sweat; Lazlo didn't remember ever packing a pair of two strange-looking swords in each furry grip.

They were all spidery; with very sharp tips at the edge. The sun sneaked an appearance at it, exposing its' deep bronze color. Lazlo's overwhelming fear was shadowed strongly by confusion, having no idea where these came from.

The others had a vaguely similar reaction upon snapping out of their shock-like trance. Somehow, most of them, The Fava Bean, Pinto, and Raj were... holding weapons also, different ones.

Sampson, who'd fallen on the floor, shook out of his gaze, his glasses nearly diving off his nose. "W-What... just happened!? Huh!?" Sampson had a book lying across his knees, which was oddly fixed to a wooden staff. Ping-Pong and Dave snapped out of a trance to find each holding a very strange pair of folding fans. Raj was surprised, and frightened by the sight of a regular-looking sword with an average sheen in his left hand; Clam didn't have anything in his hand. Edward had fallen out of his seat, close to Lazlo, and he was carrying a much broader, bigger sword. All the other campers who'd seen that incredible flash of light were also carrying something like Lazlo and his friends.

"What's going on back there!?" Slinkman yelled from the front of the bus. To their surprise, he had seen the bright flash. The bus less than a mile away from the seaside city. "What was that large flash!?" still driving and still focusing on the road, Slinkman couldn't do anything to go back there and check just yet; they needed to get a spare tire.

Quickthinking as usual, Edward didn't take long in analyzing the situation and then thinking up a solution. "NOTHING! We're playing... with Sampson's flashlights!" It was a sound excuse, flawless; Sampson was afraid of the dark and his parents sent him two "Triple DC-powered Flashlights" last summer. Those particular flashlights were bright enough, and powerful enough, to burn through a tent prop.

That seemed to satisfy as an excuse. Slinkman knew well enough about Sampson's flashlights and yelled back, "Fine, but keep those off, they're distracting!"

Ping-Pong didn't have a lot of time to feel dismayed about what happened enough as he did for Edward's excuse, "Unbelievable. Nice, Ed."

"Raj? You okay?" Raj stared down at his unexpected trinket in confusion. "Uh, Lazlo? How long have I been holding this?" he held up the sword. "I don't remember bringing this with me from India..."

"Don't you Indians usually use Spears?" Sampson asked, to which Raj's response was, "What is THAT supposed to mean you formerly-disease ridden pig?... and in my country we use traditional swords, the Scimitars, duh."

"For-GET ABOUT THAT! What about what Sampson has?" Dave pointed out the strange book on the neatly crafted leg of wood Sampson was absent-mindedly holding.

Sampson felt multiple eyes on him, including Edward who noted, "Hold on, it's floating just above that stick. Wait, it's floating!?"

"That's physically impossible," Ping-Pong noted. He stared at his brother, dumbfounded by their odd prizes.

"Hold on! What about EDWARD's giant sword!?" the attention-starved guinea pig yelled at Edward, who was carrying something exactly like what Sampson described. "Have you always had that Ed-?" Lazlo began, but was brutally cut off by Edward's, "NO, I didn't! I own more cooler stuff than this! Eyah!" he threw down the sword, which made a clang sound on the floor. But on impulse he suddenly grasped the hilt again, not knowing why.

"And where'd you get those... huh, Lazlo!?" Edward sneered at the simian, who didn't perceive the remark as being sneer at all. Lazlo was still holding onto both weapons and said, "I don't... know, but... these are kind of cool..."

"See?" Raj rushed to his defense. "Lazlo doesn't- what did you say?! You think they're cool, what would make you say that?"

"I don't know, but... they are!"

Raj was finding it hard to believe. "Do you know who gave it to you??"

Lazlo simply hunched both shoulders, though the realization came frighteningly quickly as he stared towards a vacant-eyed wolf. "Did... you do this, Maion?"

Maion didn't wait a second to respond. "I did. But... my magic was unpredictable. I didn't know what was going to happen, I swear. I used it so many times and... and..." he trailed off.

"That's... SUPERCOOL!" Lazlo said. Maion jumped like he'd been bitten by a snake. "Wuh- what?" "You gave us weapons because you were thinking about your imagination! And then..." Lazlo visualized with estatic fancy, as the surrounding campers mouths fell open, "You wished for it to happen! You may not have realized it, but you were wishing so strongly that your magical powers have answered your star-lit wish, and without your knowledge have made it happen! That must be it!"

"Um..." Maion distantly said; he wasn't sure just how much credibility was in Lazlo's argument. Raj and Clam, who were the most faithful to Lazlo as friends, recognized when truth was right before them. Edward, narrowing his eyes to dagger slits, hissed, "You actually believe all that malarky you just said?"

"My... imagination? From earlier, when we talked in the camp? Are you really sure about that? It couldn't have been!"

"I'm positive! You wanted us to have these as gifts!"

"I really think you've just lost it, Lazlo," said Dave, "That can't be right."

"And what ARE these!?" Ping-pong barked while dangling the pair of bizzare-looking Fans that he'd been holding this entire time. "Early Etruscan treasure? This thing looks so ancient... but like in a brand new way. They have spikes on it and I've been told my our mommy not to play around with spikes!"

"And I don't think my parents would approve of me coming home with a... floating Book-on-a-stick," Sampson interjected. "It looks old and cheap and it's got..." Sampson inspected the stick closely; it had very elegant grafts on its' edges, with a resilient brown sheen. Sampson felt a little shaky from even holding it. "Weird spiky edges on it. Hey, why'd you give me this anyway? What is this...?"

Maion's expression lingered over to Sampson. "That's a Grimoire," He said suddenly, like was merely mentioning the time of day. "You have one, because... you're obviously not a fighter."

Ignoring the strangeness of the situation, Sampson was horribly offended by those words, seeing as how everybody knew that to be true. "That's not funny!"

Edward threatened to burst out in laughter - and so were the others. "Oh yeah. Yeah it is," the platypus said, "You're the wimpiest camper in Camp Kidney! You would get a book! It totally fits-!"

"But you can make it up by casting magic like me, with the spells in there," Maion interrupted.

Edward stood in shock whereas Sampson's face strongly brightened. "WHAT!?" "Ooooh! I've got to try!" "No! Not with Slinkman on the bus!" Raj said. "Pfft, No." Edward pointed towards the front. "We've been inside Prickly Pines." He rolled his eyes. "Next to the auto-repairs shop, I might add. Slinkman's been gone."

Sampson combed through pages, eager to try something, anything out; it was just like something out of a nerdy wizards game he played at home. Glasses fogging up with terrible impatience, Sampson made out the first words on the page he laid big eyes on. "Uh... Fire!... Nothing's happening."

"You have to concentrate," Maion explained. "Concentrate really hard, and you can make it happen." Sampson didn't need a lot of coddling, and calmed. He breathed, before whispering, "Fi-!!!" Everyone gasped as the flames broiled to life. Then Sampson closed the book before the spell could actually burn widly- they were on a bus, in a closed space, and Sampson couldn't risk it. Both Dave and Ping-pong said simultaneously, "That was-!!"

"The COOLEST thing I'd ever seen!" Edward yelled, trying to snatch away Sampson's book. "Let me try!" But whatever was planned, the moment Ed snatched away the book, it flashed out of his hand and back towards Sampson's. The only thing that was aggravating was simply knowing that for the first time, when Edward snatched something from a weak and helpless guinea pig, it didn't just remain in his hand like before. "What GIVES!?" He burst out screaming at Maion.

"Ah... well... the weapon belongs to Sampson," Maion said, "It's his personal keepsake now, and he can't be rid of it. And Ping-pong and Dave? Those pair of fans of yours... can also cast magic."

Dave was unable to say anything at all, but Ping-pong doubtfully said, "Are you just making all of this up!? There is NO way that can be-!"

"I'm not," Maion said. "M-Maybe my power did act on its' own and made these weapons, but I seem to be growing more aware about the way its' working. I just somehow, already know what they're capable of. And... You saw Sampson causing magic, didn't you? Your weapons can cause status effects. Cause direct harm to health. You're Macabre Dancers."

Another awkward silence fell, followed by Sampon's, "Just keeps getting weirder."

Edward opened his mouth in defeat, but Lazlo yelled excitedly, "Isn't that neat, Sampson? You're actually a warlock!"

"And also... your class is something I wanna call Twin Blade," Maion said suddenly, stunning everybody. Lazlo let out a gasp and stared at his given weapons. He was still relatively clueless, having not a wit about what to do with them. "But uh... I don't get it." Maion, recovering a greater deal of strength, got down from the seat. He looked at the windows; everyone did, they could easily see that it was nightime, not only that but they had also arrived in Prickly Pines. "You know, I feel strangely better," he said. "Ah!"

Pretty much all the campers had arrived at the back of the bus; Slinkman could be seen in the shop adjacent to the bus.

"Fellas! FELLAS!" came the familiar Southern cry from the odd Walrus Maion had the pleasure to "meet" earlier, Harold. He was also carrying something of a weapon - a long smooth staff. "Check it out! I have a magicky weapon too!"

"As do I!" said another camper, holding up another Grimoire. More campers flocked around, till it got too crowded, Raj tried worming his way out to not be in the line, and Clam followed- that was the case, till he saw another camper carrying a weapon he almost didn't recognize.

"ALL right!" Edward fumed, cramped up in one corner of his seat, while trying to keep Maion in his sight. "What is GOING on!? Why are you doing this?"

Maion looked tired. "I really can't... tell, myself, but I want to call Harold as the first Harvest Cleric. He cures people."

"Neat!" Harold said. "But hey, what about Goat? He's got a weird-looking weapon thingy too!" With his immense strength, Harold easily pulled out a very generic and embarrassed looking bean scout carrying a large sword... with a barrel and gun trigger fixed to it.

"It looks kind of like a gun," said Chip, who remained silent the entire time.

It's like the one I have. But that isn't possible! The sight of that particular weapon startled Clam badly; he still remembered the bayonet he was secretly harboring from his friends, underneath his bunk, back at the camp. His thoughts chilled. Is Maion really...?

"It's a bayonet," Maion said. "I don't know if this is the case, but, I gave Goat one because I just felt he wouldn't handle magic as easily, but he can't attack at close range; this is a... compensation. He's now a Steam Gunner." This caused an uproar of cheers and jeers, but many of the campers were really tired. And the day, which had already ended, did not cease being any stranger than it was.

"Raj, I gave you a sword and-"

"Um excuse me, but this is TOTALLY nuts! I'm a very peaceful pachyderm! I wouldn't know how to fight."

"Raj," Maion interrupted him. "Do you dislike your camp being beaten by the Squirrels every year?"

Everyone just dropped open their mouths; Maion said a lot of strange things that were just off-kilter. "W-what is that supposed to mean!?" Maion put more force in his voice. "What I'm saying, is... I just realized that this could be the opportunity we're looking for. Campers!" He said this to refer to all. "I just got... the coolest idea! Maybe instead of mud puddles and things like tightropes and pine-coning sitting-!"

At the mention of such an, many of the campers cringed in terror. Maion continued. "I thought that we could hold a friendly tournament... with weapons like Blademasters, like Raj... and magic, and all sorts of cool things! We could actually win against the squirrels!"

"I like the "Friendly" part," Lazlo grinned. "That does sound like fun... but, I like the old competitions better, there wasn't anything wrong with them, right?"

Nobody answered. Edward was next to speak, his right hand shaking while still grasping the large blade, mouth foaming literally with excitement. "You're really something Maion. I honestly pegged you for a featherbrained Jelly Bean, but... you're more than that. Yeah, forget those dumb old-fashioned stupid challenges- I really do want to do this. I'm sick of losing to those squirrels all time." Edward stammered in his speech, but he really caught Maion's eye. "And I'm sick of our Camp being lame! For the first time, we actually have something they don't! Weapons... power... and magical wolf! This is the real thing! Who's WITH me!?"

It might have been the buried resentment he had, or simply that he was playing upon the beans, but the things he said stirred a strange feeling among them. They knew he was right, and though they didn't like to admit it, they knew they're was nothing cool about their Camp, nothing that would make them stand out as prominently as Acorn Flats.

But this felt like a chance in a lifetime; a rare arrowhead in the stream; a change in fate. Maybe Maion's arrival, and strange events of the entire day were only a mere coincidence, a chance they'd never have gotten.

One by one, all the campers minus the 3 jellies rose fists into the air like a flock of sheep. They raised a loud cheer, with Edward leading them.

The Jellies watched in a bit of disarray, whereas Maion cheered on with the rest. Clam looked in Maion's direction, to see that Maion was looking unusually happy.

-

A/N: I don't know where to start. This was a monster of a chapter.

There were a number directions this could have gone, but I'm running out of time to do something, and I was sort of out of ideas. Also, the stuff that happens in this story is just stuff I'm pulling out of my ass.

So... laters!