The next two weeks were relatively calm. It provided a breather for Boz, who was glad to have some peace and quiet, even if he knew it could not last for long. He hadn't heard from Brady and Boomer in over three hours, which was suspicious. Even if Boz didn't seek out the kings, they usually could be heard doing something around the castle. A period of silence that lasted three hours was rare.

Boz was starting to get worried.

He climbed the stairs – so much easier without crutches – and soon entered the top floor, where the kings' bedroom was. Where they would hopefully be. The kings were indeed in there, and Boz didn't know what to think.

Boomer was reading the Great Book. Actually reading it. In the meantime, Brady paced around the room, holding an ice pack to his butt. Something had happened, and Boz had no idea what it was and today, he didn't really want to know. They were so preoccupied with their own problems, they hadn't noticed Boz had walked into the room.

"I'm starting to see spots!" Brady said. "And my butt's cold."

"You're holding an ice-pack on it," Boomer responded calmly, barely looking up from the book.

"Oh no," Brady whined. "Now the bite's affecting my brain." He moved the ice pack from his butt to his head.

Boz sighed. He was going to regret this, wasn't he?

"What is affecting your brain?" Boz asked, announcing his presence to the brothers. They weren't even surprised anymore when Boz spoke – they'd gotten so used to his quiet entrance that they didn't jump up in fear when they heard him speak.

"Brady got stung by a Waka Waka," Boomer answered, again casually. His eyes were still glued to the book – Boz realized what Boomer was trying to look up, but which must be taking quite some time.

"How does that even happen?" Boz wondered out loud, looking specifically at Brady. "I thought you were scared of them."

"We're not scared," Brady argued – there was no denying it, the entire island already knew the kings bravely ran away from these bugs when they first landed. Still, Brady tried to keep up the façade. "They're just… really, really fast."

"Okay," Boz said. He didn't want to dig any deeper. He glanced at the Great Book. Boomer was trying, but he wasn't truly moving forward with anything.

"You might want to move more to the back, that's where all the W articles start."

"Thanks, Boz!" Boomer said. He turned more and more pages, skipping some he would have paused on if Boz wasn't watching. At long last, they made it to the 'W' section of the book, and by then it would not take too long to find the right article.

"Here it is, Waka Waka bug!" Boomer announced. Brady immediately rushed to Boomer's side and even took the book from his brother. He read the sections out loud as he saw the words on the page.

"A single sting is not fatal," Brady read. "That's pretty good! But it will cause six consecutive symptoms." Brady listed the six consecutive symptoms, one more ridiculous than the other. Boz had firsthand experience when a friend got stung by a Mindan Waka Waka. They were all over the Kalooki Isles, and Boz was glad to have never been stung before.

When Brady lifted his head and looked to his side, he expected Boomer to be there. He wasn't – instead, Boomer stood to the side, away from Brady.

Brady frowned. "Why are you standing over there?"

"You gave me chickenpox, you are not giving me pumpkin head," Boomer said. Boz wondered briefly what chickenpox was, but then realized it must be a contagious mainland illness. Luckily, a Waka Waka sting wasn't contagious. If only Boomer would realize…

Brady decided to ignore the comment and focused on the book again.

"Okay, to get cured, you must be stung a second time." Brady looked up with a pained expression. "Hasn't my butt been through enough?"

Boz shook his head. if that was the cure, then it needed to happen. Brady probably didn't want to go through the symptoms and frankly, Boz didn't want to see it either.

In any case, the brothers had the brilliant idea to keep this whole ordeal a secret. If Brady was stung a second time, nobody needed to know that this even happened. Even Boz would not say anything – not because it might make people think less of the kings and it would embarrass them (as Brady and Boomer thought) but because it wasn't relevant at all.

Unfortunately, and rather comedically, Mason and Mikayla walked into the room and looked accusatory at the brothers.

"Your majesties, we just found out," Mason said. Boz almost laughed out loud – the timing could not have been better. But how and when did they find out about Brady being stung?

The question was also on Brady's mind, and its primal instinct was to turn on his brother.

"Big mouth!" Brady said and he glared at Boomer.

"When did I tell them?" Boomer defended himself.

"The kids at the wi-fi tree said your aunt and uncle were taking you home," Mason said.

Boz's eyes widened.

"What?" He turned to the boys. "When were you gonna tell me?"

"We were going to, but…" Brady's hand drifted to his aching butt. Something got in the way of telling Boz that their family was coming to pick them up. Or maybe they didn't want to tell Boz at all. Which wasn't out of character, but Boz had expected to be at a level of trust where they would confide in him that this was going to happen. Maybe he was just lucky to walk in on them discussing the Waka Waka sting. Maybe he wasn't meant to know at all.

"We cannot let that happen," Mikayla said. "The islands just got new kings. They'd be heartbroken."

Plus, the next in line was Lanny, and the islanders would prefer stupid but noble over an evil troll.

But somehow, Brady found a way to twist what Mikayla said.

"You're an islander. Message received."

Boz sighed. This was going to be a long day.

The entire palace was preparing for the coming of Bill and Nancy. Even Lanny prepared – not to welcome them, but to show them how unsafe this island could be. Lanny had to prepare way less than anyone else, as Kinkow was a naturally dangerous place. Half the island was referred to as the Dark Side. Half of the guards' preparation should be countering whatever Lanny was doing.

Something else they should focus on was finding Brady and Boomer. When Boz tried to talk to them in their room, they were already gone. Off to the jungle to find a Waka Waka bug to piss off. With a bit of luck, it would sting Brady again and then Boz wouldn't have to worry about that while Bill and Nancy visited.

Boz walked down the hallway to check the armory when he heard a voice behind him.

"Boz!"

He turned around; there was Mikayla, a worried look on her face. "Have you seen Brady and Boomer? I can't find them anywhere."

"They're probably in the jungle somewhere," Boz said truthfully. Probably, because he had no idea where the kings were at the moment. For all he knew, they could have exited the jungle and tried to be back home before their aunt and uncle arrived.

Mikayla nodded once. "Probably."

Boz was about to walk to the armory when Mikayla stopped him again. She was more worried than Boz had realized, and he waited for whatever she wanted to say.

"Are they leaving today?"

A question not entirely unexpected, but still something Boz did not have an answer ready for.

Boz shook his head. "I don't think so—"

"Don't think so?" Mikayla wondered.

Brady and Boomer could not have left before Boz arrived; Brady only left twelve hours before Boz came to Kinkow. But Boz couldn't be sure about today, or if they left for even a little while. He thought he'd brought notes, but he grabbed the wrong pieces of paper and he'd brought some recipes to the past. Still, even without notes, he thought he was doing pretty well.

"Everything should be fine," Boz said. "I don't think they're leaving today, but we might still need to work hard. My aunt can be stubborn and once she's made up her mind— she needs to see how safe it is here, how competent Brady and Boomer are before she'll leave well enough alone." Mikayla had been staring at him wordlessly, her worry slightly overshadowed by a weird, questioning look in her eyes.

"What?"

"It's still weird that you're their brother."

Boz nodded. "Yeah, I know." He could barely believe he was their brother – but he was also eight years older, and he didn't feel as connected to the brothers as he had felt to Boomer. It was weird to feel like he was an older brother, maybe even an only child who needed to babysit the kids.

It was weird to realize this – he never truly thought about it. He'd been too busy keeping Brady and Boomer out of trouble or training to become a guard. It suddenly sank in, a lonely feeling washing over him.

But that didn't mean he was going to be alone.

Mahuma came into the hallway and walked towards the two.

"Boz," he said, "the kings want to see you."

He left the hallway – he had only come to inform Boz the kings needed him. That meant they were in their room. They were home safe, and Mikayla let out a breath. She probably wished the kings would tell her where they were going, so she could provide sufficient protection. It would take them years to learn that, as Boz took years to learn that.

"You'd better go," Mikayla told him. "Tell me what they say."

Boz nodded. "I'll let you know."

Looks like he wasn't going to the armory after all. He was instead going to the highest point in the castle, to see the kings and hear what they wanted from him. At least they were safe and sound.

When Boz walked into the room, he had assumed their mission had been successful. Instead, he could not look past Brady's massive butt right as Boomer made a comment about it.

Brady turned around. "My butt is not that big!"

He smashed the vase. It fell to the ground. Nobody paid attention to the magical vase, however, as Boz had walked into the room and Brady glared at him. The bubble butt seemed to bring out his highest insecurities.

"Didn't you get stung a second time?" Boz wondered.

"No, we're leaving to do so," Boomer said.

Then what have they been doing in the meantime?

"Why did you call me over?" Boz then asked. His gaze was drawn to Brady's butt – it had something to do with this, surely. It could not be anything but the bubble butt, the Waka Waka sting, and whatever they have been doing in the meantime.

"Look," Brady said, "this is what you need to do…"

The kings, in their current form, were lazy creatures. So when Boomer came with the idea that Boz would carry their stuff, Brady agreed immediately.

Now, half an hour later, Boz dropped the bag filled with coconut lotion and cheese fingers on the jungle ground. This was a prime location for Waka Wakas to be buzzing around and hopefully, one was going to be tempted to sting Brady. On top of that, while Boomer prepared his brother for the sting with the lotion and cheese fingers, Boz had to find one and shout it out to the kings.

This wasn't going to end well. While they were right that this place had a lot of Waka Wakas, it was also an old Tarantula graveyard, a single pile of stones marking the location as such. If they disturbed the grave, the Tarantulas would at best attack the castle and at worst go to war. The latter option seemed more plausible if they knew the kings knocked it over.

Boz shook his head. He shouldn't think about it. he should be looking for a Waka Waka. Such as the one that flew around nearby and saw Boz as a threat. Boz held up his hands.

"I come in peace," Boz buzzed. The bug stopped mid-air – Boz wondered what was going on inside that bughead. While he could still communicate with animals, he could not look into their mind or control them.

"I'm Boz," he carefully continued. "I learned to buzz your buzzing across the water." The Waka Waka Buzzes was such a narrow language with a limited vocabulary, but he had to make it work if he wanted to communicate with this specific bug. "A human there, with nice smells, wants to be stung. Can you sting him?"

For a moment, the bug stared at him, and Boz wondered if he'd made his intentions clear enough. Then, the answer came.

"I will sting the human."

Boz nodded and thanked him. The Waka Waka bug flew off, in the direction of the kings.

It was a mess over there – one Boz observed from a safe distance. They tied Brady to a tree – the bubble butt had gone –, so he couldn't run, while Boomer ate cheese fingers. The bug tried to sting Brady, who did not want to be stung and was very uncooperative. The bug must have assumed Boomer was the one who wanted to be stung and went after him. If this wasn't bad enough, Boomer pulled a racket out of the bag Boz had been carrying and wildly swung it to scare away the Waka Waka.

Boomer hit the Tarantula grave marking.

All blood drained from Boz's cheeks. This was the worst-case scenario. The stones had fallen, the Waka Waka flew away; this was the worst possible outcome. Boz rushed towards them, eyes only on the fallen formation of stones as his mind raced. What could he do?

"Boom, look, a balloon!" Brady said as Boz groaned – could this get any worse? "It's Nancy and Bill. They must've got a tailwind, man, they're here early. And I didn't get stung. What are we gonna do?"

"You could help me reassemble this," Boz said. He sat down on his knees and tried furiously to rebuild the grave markings. But he had no knowledge of these kinds of rituals and even one mistake could indicate someone had tampered with it – which was another reason to attack the castle.

The kings were no help. They watched Boz for a while and then resumed their own conversation.

"We got bubble butt just fine," Boomer said. "I'm sure they'll barely notice your garbage breath."

Brady frowned. "I don't think that was the next symptom."

"It isn't," Boz said, his eyes on the rocks. Every time he had piled it up higher than three rocks, his newly constructed formation fell. "It's elephant ear."

The brothers nodded, recognizing the term, though Brady was also terrified of what that entailed and just how big it would be. It wouldn't be surprising if, after today, Brady was going to have nightmares about his own body being out of proportion, with the bubble butt and elephant ear.

Brady and Boomer agreed to go home. They needed to clean Brady up before Bill and Nancy set foot on the island or saw Brady like that. Bill and Nancy were used to their nephew's shenanigans, but if Nancy saw Brady covered in coconut lotion and cheese fingers, she might just drag them both to the balloon by their ears and demand they take off immediately. The threat was real.

As was this other threat, from a source Boz desperately tried to appease.

There was no use. He wasn't going to be able to rebuild it in time, and even when rebuilt, the Tarantulas might see the difference. They were going to cause trouble today, right when Bill and Nancy arrive to inspect how safe it was on Kinkow for their boys.

Lanny wasn't involved in any of this, but that kid just got extremely lucky with this series of unfortunate events, and he'd be over the moon if he found out.

Boz stood up and reluctantly left the unfinished pile behind, to run after the kings. At least the Tarantulas would see that someone tried to fix it. Boz feared even that wouldn't be enough – the Tarantulas took every chance they got to attack the castle, and this was thrown right into their lap.

Boz could not foresee how this was going to end well.