You can probably tell where exactly I gave up in trying to make this one my usual writing style.

Of course, the fight was over by the time Zak could get there with Fiskerton. All that was left was a trashed living-room, two parents with matching I'm-disappointed-in-you looks, and a cleanup job.

"Pretty bold of Van Rook to try hitting us at home," he said after a few minutes, picking a few books up from near where a bookshelf had been blown to bits. "Were they after something?"

"If this is you trying to change the subject, it's not going to work." Drew gave him a pointed look. "You're still in trouble, mister."

"Hey, I'm just trying to be part of the team here!"

"Zak, you're not part of the team, you're our son. And I don't think bringing you into fistfights with mercenaries is going to win us any parent-of-the-year awards."

Seeing that that point wasn't going to go anywhere, Zak switched tactics. "Dad, c'mon, talk to her! You're the one that told me to test my abilities!"

"Well, that's true," Doc started, only to stop short at the withering look Drew gave him. "But I'm one-hundred percent with your mother on this one."

Plan C, then, specifically when "There's a fine line between adventure and danger, and we're trying to keep you on the safe side of that line," was heard.

They both winced hard when Zak held up a very specific picture frame. "The Kalmykian snakes were different," Doc added quickly. "We didn't know they exploded."

"Yeah, but I handled it!" Zak protested. "I'm not saying I want to look for trouble, I just want to do what you guys do! Y'know, fight the bad guys and save the world?"

Drew raised one brow. "You know you're eleven?"

"Yeah, but I finally got my first feathers last month, remember?" He disabled his hologram-bracelet and extended one wing for emphasis.

There was another thing about him that came out of the left field, aside from his cryptid powers. His mom's feathers were nearly entirely an iridescent silvery-white, the only other color being irregular spots of reddish brown on the anterior side that ranged in size from blotches to freckles, like someone had flicked a paintbrush at her.

His dad's were a metallic-looking dark gray for the most part, with his primaries and secondaries ridged with black and the coverts with tan.

And Zak's own? Jet-black, fading to white on the primaries and secondaries, all while streaked with orange. They had no idea where the third color had come from, or why those same streaks were fluorescent.

Drew looked like she was about to say something else, but a high-pitched buzzing sound that meant they had a high-priority call waiting stopped that short. "We'll talk about this later," Doc said, turning to start toward the control room.

Zak followed, hearing his mom's indignant "Talk about—he's eleven!"

Was it a win? Maybe.

"Hologram," his dad reminded, prompting the boy to turn it back on before letting the call through.

"Oh thank heaven you're all okay," was the first thing Dr. Grey said, clearly relieved. Her usually-neat reddish-blonde hair was a mess, and Zak could make out burns on her face, on top of the detail that she normally wouldn't be in cold-weather gear when talking to them, unless she was outside for some weird reason.

"Miranda? What happened?" Drew asked.

"Argost's beastly stooge, that's what happened," was the growled response.

Doc's expression went pinched. "Are you alright?"

"Nothing more than a mild concussion, I assure you—but he took my piece of the stone!"

"What?!" both Zak's parents exclaimed, before Drew's eyes darkened. "Van Rook," she growled. "That's what he was after!"

Miranda paled over the screen. "You too? Did he get it?"

"No, our piece is safe," Drew reassured. "What about Henry?"

"I've been trying to reach him, but he hasn't answered."

Confused, Zak turned to look back at Fiskerton, mouthing Stone? The unspoken question got a shrug in response.

"I'll pull up a satellite image," Doc said, going to the keyboard. There was a pause. Then, "Zak, why do we have nineteen episodes of V.V. Argost's Weird World recorded?"

…crud. That was what he forgot to close out last night. "Uh, research? Know thy enemy?"

"It's saved under favorites," his mom said flatly.

"W-Well, maybe research is my favorite."

"There aren't any satellites near Henry's lab right now." Doc looked away from the computer. "We'll have to check it out in person."

"Be careful."

"Hey, it's us you're talking about," Zak said.

Dr. Grey made a face. "You're taking him along with—?"

"No I did not say—" Drew started.

"Sorry Dr. Grey but we gotta go!" Zak hit the button to end the call before whirling on his heel, dashing for the door. "C'mon people, it's action time!"

Dr. Cheveyo's observatory was one of the few labs that Zak wasn't really familiar with, but he was pretty sure that half-destroyed and in flames wasn't how it was supposed to look.

"Sorry I didn't have time to clean up," was the dry-sounding remark from the astronomer when he saw them come out of the airship. "I wasn't expecting guests."

"Looks like you got the worst of it," Doc said sympathetically. "Who was it?"

"Argost himself," Henry replied briskly.

Zak wasn't expecting to hear that. "Wait, Argost was here?" he asked, voice brightening a bit.

"Yes, and he blew up my lab. How cool for me."

Right, bad guy. Of course his favorite TV star had to be a bad guy.

"He didn't get your stone piece, did he?" Drew asked.

Henry sighed. "Unfortunately."

"Then it's starting again," Doc said darkly.

"Okay, could someone tell me what's going on here?" Zak cut in, throwing his arms up a bit. "What's starting again? And what's this stone you keep talking about?"

His parents proceeded to do that thing that was basically them having a silent debate that probably should've taken an hour but really went by in just a few seconds, before his mom said "The Kur Stone. Supposedly, it's the key to finding the beast called Kur by many ancient legends, primarily Sumerian ones, but there's been implications of it having been around the globe. According to legend, whoever can control the cryptid Kur can control the world—and the best shot at finding Kur is the stone."

"Your mother and I led the team that discovered the stone," Doc picked up where Drew left off. "At first, we didn't even know what we had, but somebody else did."

"Argost?" Zak guessed.

His dad nodded. "He disguised himself as part of our team and created a diversion. By the time we found out, he was gone, and so was the stone.

"We managed to track him down at Weird World, and went in with a team of fifty. But by the time we left that house of horrors…" Doc let out a breath, expression momentarily darkening. "There were only seven of us left."

It took a moment for that implication to click in Zak's head. "Wait, so all those old colleagues you guys said aren't around anymore, they're—?"

"Yeah," Drew confirmed quietly. "Argost escaped, but we had the stone. And given that we knew what it was then, we decided that Kur was one secret that needed to stay secret. We split the stone into three pieces, each left with a different scientist."

"But they didn't stay split up," Zak blurted. "Argost has two of them back, and you guys have the only one left?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"Then what are we standing around here for?! We have to get back home before Argost gets there!"

"Zak, Zak—it's fine. Our piece of the stone isn't even at home," Drew reassured. "We found a safe place in the Amazon river basin years ago."

"What?" Dr. Cheveyo exclaimed, getting Zak to start a bit. He'd been so quiet through the whole thing that the boy had forgotten he was there. "You left it unguarded this entire time?"

"Give us some credit here, Henry. I didn't say it was unguarded."

"No—he's right, mom. If Argost knew where to get the other two, what if he already got our piece?" Zak asked. "Why do we even have a super-fast airship if we only ever go cruising speed?" He looked over his shoulder. "Fisk, back me up here?"

"Huh?" Fiskerton looked over from where he'd been trying to start a cleanup attempt.

"Wh'—you weren't even listening, were you?"

"Zak, it's fine," Doc intervened, sounding calmly exasperated. "Even if Argost knew where to look—"

"No, we have to go get it!" Henry interrupted. "Find some other way to keep it safe!"

"It is safe!" Drew sounded not-so-calmly exasperated. "And Henry, I really don't think you're in any shape for a trip to Manaus!"

"This isn't just your decision! The whole world is affected by—ack!" He broke off with a startled cry when Komodo pounced on him from behind.

Komodo's only response to the three-way reprimanding he got was to growl at Henry. Or more specifically, something on Henry. "Uh, mom?" Zak started slowly, pointing at what looked like a miniature manta ray with a scorpion's tail. "What's…uh?"

"A neural parasite." His mom's voice had gone tight. "It feeds on electrical impulses from the brain. Typically just causes sluggish reflexes, but if anyone knows how to tap into its brainwaves…"

"He just heard all of that, didn't he Henry?" Doc asked.

"I…I'm sorry. I tried to warn you—ghk!" He broke off with a choked sound, briefly convulsing, before rising stiffly to his feet.

"H-Henry, are you—?" Drew started, only to be cut off.

"Greetings and bienvenue, Saturdays," the astronomer said, but his eyes looked too glassy right now, and his voice sounded too wrong. Too hollow, wrong intonations, too much like it was a completely different person talking…and Zak knew only one person who gave greetings like that.

"No, no that's—that's impossible," Drew stammered slightly. "The parasite doesn't transmit both ways—"

"Impossible? Only one with a tragically limited imagination would use such a vulgar word," not-Henry-definitely-Argost sneered, the expression only half-matching and looking wrong. "We deal with cryptids, my dear—we live in a world of impossible.

"Eleven years, you've kept my prize from me. Eleven years of tracking down each of you miserable so-called scientists, and then discerning which of you had the pieces of the Kur Stone."

Fiskerton growled, taking a step forward, prompting Zak to step in front of him. "Fisk, no! Dr. Cheveyo's still in there somewhere; we can't hurt him!"

"Sweet little boy," Argost purred, the tone by itself making him shudder involuntarily. "I've waited eleven years for this. Why would I let anyone else do the hurting?"

It occurred to him that heat-haze wasn't usually pale-green in color, or smell like sulfur.

"The Al-Kaseem firecracker beetle was given a highly-flammable defensive spray. All it takes…is a spark." On the last word, a rock was sent flying with a kick.

"Everyone get down!" Doc shouted.

Right as Zak hit the dirt, the air around them all exploded, everything around them getting uncomfortably hot for a few moments—and the next minute or so was maybe the most useless minute of his life, right after the Kalmykian snake incident, in that he was boxed in by both his parents and Fiskerton, while they fought off beetles, which eventually stopped exploding and started…gathering.

But that's a last-ditch nest-defense attempt, why would they—?!

"Zak run!" his mom yelled right next to him. One of the nice things about having some avian instincts was that their subconscious fight-or-flight response was a little twitchier than normal people, which meant they all had some nice reaction times when they needed it.

That didn't really help when it came to the counter of them being on a plateau six-thousand feet up with nowhere to run in the first place. And being hollow-boned meant that they were sent flying a lot easier than normal people.

So it was for the second time within the past twenty-four hours that Zak found himself being carried by one of his parents. "When am I gonna be able to start practicing again?" he asked, not-really-glaring.

"Probably not for another two or three months, honey," Drew replied, at least looking apologetic this time.

"Aww…"

"Henry took the worst of that blast, but he'll just be walking away with some new scars," Dr. Odele was saying. Both Doc and Drew sighed in relief. Then he switched the subject tracks. "Argost must be on his way to Manaus already."

"We're already en-route," Doc said.

"It's going to be dangerous. Why don't you leave Zak with me until you secure the stone piece?"

"As much as I'd like to—"

"Wait, what?!" Zak cut in. "We get the biggest mission of my life, and you're gonna leave me with Odele?" Zak honestly didn't have anything against the meteorologist, but the guy lived on a tiny island in the Atlantic. Not much to do there!

"Zak—"

"Is this still about that thing with the toriko? I told you Fisk dared me to go into its nest!" Fisk made an indignant exclamation in the background.

"Zak, you're coming!"

"I—wait, really?" His mom also said the last two words at the same time.

Doc looked sideways at her. "I don't like it either Drew, but we might need him. The tapire-iaura, remember?"

Drew frowned, but didn't say anything.

"If you think that is for the best, then good luck," Odele said, ending the call.

Zak, meanwhile, tried to remember what cryptid that was for a few moments, ultimately getting a blank. "Um, what were those ones again?"

"One of the most dangerous cryptids in South America," his mom replied. "They're amphibious, predatory, and fearless; exactly why we chose a very specific spot along the Amazon river."

"So you'll need my powers to hold them off," he guessed. "Yeah, I can do that.

"And me?" Fisk asked, looking a little put-out.

"Don't worry Fisk, I'm sure you're an important part of this mission too," Zak reassured.

"Absolutely," Drew agreed after a moment.

"I'm honestly hoping we won't have to use your abilities here Zak, but just in case…there's something I've been working on for you."

Zak had decided he liked the Claw pretty quick. Especially after it had made actually beating is dad in a sparring match possible.

Then the whole airship had shaken, with his mom giving the clarification that they'd found Argost—or rather, he'd seen them first.

Fun fact about the Saturday airship: it could withstand category-three hurricane winds.

Not-so-fun fact: it wasn't made with dogfights in mind. And missiles had a bit of a different impact style than hurricane winds.

So there was only one thing left to do, really.

…so long as he could convince Fisk to go along with it, because he was pretty sure "Ycantflyet" meant exactly what it sounded like.

"Yeah, and I'm not trying to fly, I just have to glide enough so that I get onto Argost's ship," Zak clarified, putting in the code to open the side door in the hangar bay. "And I'm gonna need a hammer throw to get some speed at the start. Once I'm there, me and the Claw will do the rest."

"Will that work?"

"How do we know it's not gonna work?" he asked in response, raising his voice so Fisk could hear him over the wind, while grabbing onto the edge of the airship's stabilizer wing so that he wouldn't get blown clean off the ship.

At that, Fisk just gave him a look he recognized as his equivalent of their mom's "stupid idea, don't try it" look, visible even through the pseudo-foggy look nictitating membrane gave everything. "Hey, you still owe me for what happened on Fiji! You'd still be cursed if it wasn't for—whoa!"

The airship suddenly tilted sideways, getting them both to slide back through the open doorway. Following that was a concussive explosion that preceded a weightless feeling that Zak assumed meant they'd just been shot down, and were therefore falling.

That assumption was proven correct when the next thing he knew, he was picking himself off the metal floor, head throbbing. To the side, he heard Fiskerton groan, to which he mumbled an agreement to before getting to his feet, going to push the door open.

The first thing that hit him was the humidity, and the second thing was the cacophony of birds and bugs that made up the generic rainforest atmosphere, this particular one South American-style.

"Mom? Dad?" he called, pausing to wait for a response. It didn't take long for Doc to call back, from toward the bow of the airship.

Drew ran over as soon as she saw them, with a rushed "Are you both alright—are you hurt?" while looking them over, going so far as to feel for his wings.

"Mom, we're fine," Zak protested, backing up. Then he saw the incoming-scolding look.

"What were you thinking?" his mom exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "Are you legally insane?"

"I wasn't—" he started, stopping upon realizing something. "Wait, you banked the airship on purpose then, didn't you?"

"I can't believe you would try a stunt that stupid!" Drew went on, confirming it.

"I can't believe you messed up my stupid stunt!" he shot back, groaning in exasperation while turning to glare toward the trees instead. "Why does it always have to be you guys being the heroes? You never even give me a chance!"

There was a pause, before he heard his dad saying something too quiet for him to really catch, followed by, "Father-son bonding time."

Half of Zak just wanted to pretend he didn't hear, but the other half knew that that'd really just prove the opposite of what he was trying to get them to see. So he followed his dad to a shaded spot, where there were a few rocks clean enough to sit on.

"I'm not going to ask why you'd try something like that, because I think I already know the answer," Doc started. "I know there's a lot going on, and you haven't been able to do much—"

"Because you guys aren't letting me even try," Zak mumbled.

"But it's going to come eventually. Hopefully not until you're ready for it. Zak, have you ever wondered why you have your cryptid powers?"

He looked up at his dad confusedly, not having expected that question, before answering "Sometimes. Honestly, I thought I'd have something like you or mom, but…"

"And so did we, now that you mention it—but that's beside the point. Your mother has a theory: in a lot of ancient stories and folklores, there's a balance. Or, in terms I'm more comfortable with, there's an action that has an equal and opposite reaction.

"When we found the Kur Stone eleven years ago, we brought the potential for great evil into the world. But that's also the year you were born."

Zak frowned. "I don't get it," he said slowly. "What does Kur have to do with me?"

"In what surviving stories there are of Kur, it was implied that it could control other cryptids, or at least command them."

And then it clicked. "Like my powers."

Doc nodded. "Exactly. If Argost finds Kur, and manages to control it, he'd have the power to raise an army of cryptids. And what could possibly stand up to that?"

"…my powers."

"Equal and opposite," Doc confirmed.

Zak stayed quiet for a few moments, taking it all in. "So I should just let you guys know when I'm ready to save the world, right?"

"Truthfully, your mother and I are hoping it never comes to that, because that's a lot of pressure to put on an eleven-year-old boy. But like I said…it's only a theory." He winked, before adding "Try to keep your ego in check, alright?" while ruffling Zak's hair.

"Doc?" Drew called suddenly, voice wavering and tone nothing short of startled. "You're going to want to see this!"

Both of them took off back toward where the airship had gone down in a run. The first thing Zak saw was Fisk waving his arms and staring up, seconded by Komodo growling and snapping.

The third thing was the detail of his mom currently engaged in a sort of aerial dodging contest with a…pterodactyl? It looked like a pterodactyl, mostly teal-green with black wing membranes and a lighter-green crest of feathers on its head, notably having a crested beak.

"Hang on guys, let me just—" he started, moving to get the Claw ready, but the moment he took his eyes off the pterodactyl it lunged at him instead.

Then he was up in the air, but it wasn't one of his parents carrying him. "H-Hey, let go!" Trying to twist out of its grip didn't do any good, though it obviously hadn't expected him to smack it with a holographically-hidden wing.

Or for his mom to slam into it.

Which also conveniently got the pterodactyl to drop him. Or not-so conveniently, given that they were mid-air. Zak only had the chance to get his own wings half-unfurled before he hit tree branches, there only being a few that snapped before he was caught by one big enough to not break.

Okay, need to work on my reaction time for that, he thought, shaking his head a bit, before getting the Claw ready and climbing up to the highest intact branch that he knew would be able to hold him.

He knew he had to act fast the moment he saw sunlight reflecting off the fire-sword. He connected to the pterodactyl a lot faster than the frog, at least; she abruptly dropped a few feet, right out of the way of a sideways slash that probably would've gotten one of her wings. "Mom it's okay, I'm fine!" he shouted up before climbing down the tree.

The pterodactyl made a quiet purr-type sound at seeing him this time, keeping her head ducked. Zak was under the impression that it was her way of apologizing. "Hey, no hard feelings," he said, reaching out to pet her. Something else caught his eye while he was at it.

"I don't see anything like this in the cryptozoology databases," Doc said, half to himself. "Could be a holdout from the prehistoric era."

Drew came down seconds later. "Zak, stop petting that thing—you know the rule with things that attack us unprovoked!"

"But she wasn't unprovoked! See, we crashed right through her nest!" He pointed at the sad remnants of insect-stripped tree bark and broken twigs lying by a tree that had more than probably been felled by the airship's crash-landing. "She probably thought we were attacking her first."

Drew's face fell slightly at seeing that, but a low rumbling sound halted any further conversation, not to mention spooking the pterodactyl into flying away with a screech. Argost's warplane circled above slowly, and Zak was left feeling like they were being taunted.

Doc was probably thinking the same, given the low growl from him. "Let's go. We have to get there before he does."

"Hold on, we're not seriously gonna walk there, are we?" Zak asked, running after his parents. "Wouldn't it be faster if we flew?"

"Uh, one, only your father and I can do that right now, remember?" Drew glanced back at him without stopping. "And two, we do not want Argost of all people to know about us being able to do that."

"Who's to say he hasn't seen other people like us already though?" Zak countered. True, other bird-people haven't ever been mentioned on Weird World—the closest thing was the Owlman purportedly somewhere in England, it was something they hadn't found yet—but maybe there was an episode he hadn't gotten around to seeing yet.

"We're walking, and that's final."

While Zak absolutely loved the fact that he'd been around the world before he'd even turned ten, taking an hour-long hike through a jungle wasn't really his most favorite thing, especially when the humidity was high enough to have him sweating buckets.

When they reached the muddy sandbar where the stone piece was, things were going great.

And then Argost surprised them with Devonian Annelids.

Getting knocked out by oversized bloodsucking centipedes wasn't fun. Neither was waking up bound overkill-tightly by vines, or having Argost sic a pack of tapire-iaura on them.

There had really only been one thing for him to do there—and though the tapire-iaura were borderline starving, they hadn't been expecting for him to talk to them with his thoughts. (Mom told him not to but it had been too late by that point.)

It hadn't been that hard to convince the pack's leader to claw through the vines for him, either, wasting no time in grabbing the Claw.

…then he found out that Munya was apparently some spider mutant. That had been gross to witness. Also gross was the feeling of having mud stuck in his feathers, after getting flung through the air.

It wasn't hard to get Argost to drop the Kur Stone, at least, with a lucky shot with the Claw. Then it was a game of keep-away…which was ended the moment he almost killed the pterodactyl with Mongolian death-worm venom.

Doc said that saving the newly-dubbed Zon was the right choice, but hearing (read: eavesdropping on) the initially low-toned and then borderline-frantic conversation between his parents and the other Secret Scientists later that night…

Zak couldn't help but wonder just what his parents might've been leaving out when they'd explained about the Kur Stone to him.

"Munya? It seems as though we may have to keep an eye on the Saturdays." Argost hummed to himself as he recalled one…oddity, he'd noticed. Of the feats Devonian Annelids were capable of, floating was not one of them.

As with the Amazonian Creeping Vine—they did not wrap around thin air, and yet that was exactly what they seemed to have been doing.

There had been something behind each of them. Hidden, yes, but most certainly there.

"Just what secret are they still hiding?" he mused, as Munya placed the three stone pieces in front of him.