"Dr. Vasquez! Hey!" Jude shouted as he made his way through some dense brown brush. "Give me your attention! Give it to ME!" But then Jude was cut short, for as he came out from the brush, he joined in a circle of his fellow tourists – Raquel, Arnaud, Gawn, Yulie, and Scythe – who were all silenced, as if in a Holy presence, around a great beast. An enormous creature, this hairy bovine lay on the ground, breathing heavily. It appeared to be a like a giant Yak, a four legged mammal at least eight feet at the shoulder, where massive horns sprouted out, being of ridiculous length. The bulk of its body was hidden under a long, shaggy coat of brown hair, falling from the spine to its giant hooves. The head of the creature was covered in shorter hair, where its brown eyes were half opened and its snout runny. It mouth was open and its purple tongue sliding out, panting for breath. Standing near was what appeared to be a veterinarian, or one would jump to the conclusion, for she was a tall blonde beautiful woman with glasses and a baseball cap with the 'Filgaia Park' logo. She wore a blue jumpsuit, which was unbuttoned all the way down to the belt, showing off her fair skin and excellent cleavage. She wore plastic gloves and wiped her brow as Jude came near. "It's ok, come on over, little boy (though technically you guys shouldn't have left the car, or hopped the fence, or dodged the spider mines…)"

"What's a giant yak doing here?" Gawn asked as he chewed some gum rather obnoxiously yet again.

"Hey, what's with the gum?" Raquel looked to the mathematician.

The previously described mathematician turned to her and placed on his sunglasses. "Err, a what do ya mean, ahar?"

"You're always chewing either gum or a noodle. Are you trying to kick a habit or something?" Raquel asked.

"It's a um, uh, a um, character trait. Makes me stand out." Gawn replied.

"I think the pretty cow is a Guardian!" Yulie giggled as Jude nodded. "It should have bows."

Arnaud leaned against the creatures shrinking and expanding side, rising and falling with every breath. "Oh, Zeldukes was my favorite when I was a kid, and I can see she's just as beautiful in real life as I always thought she was!" Arnaud closed his eyes and then had a musical montage of him and the Zeldukes prancing through flower filled meadows on a sunny day.

I Think I Love You – Partridge Family

I'm sleeping
And right in the middle of a good dream
like all at once I wake up
From something that keeps knocking at my brain
Before I go insane
I hold my pillow to my head
And spring up in my bed
Screaming out the words I dread:
"I think I love you!" (I think I love you)

This morning, I woke up with this feeling
I didn't know how to deal with
And so I just decided to myself
I'd hide it to myself
And never talk about it
And didn't I go and shout it
When you walked into my room.
"I think I love you!" (I think I love you)

I think I love you
So what am I so afraid of?
I'm afraid that I'm not sure of
A love there is no cure for
I think I love you
Isn't that what life is made of?
Though it worries me to say
I've never felt this way

Believe me
You really don't have to worry
I only want to make you happy
And if you say,
hey, go away, I will
But I think better still
I ought to stay around and love you
Do you think I have a case?
Let me ask you to your face:
Do you think you love me?
I think I love you!

Raquel sighed and grumbled. "Oh it wasn't just two women down here that he went running for, but two!"

"Yea, and one of 'em's a great big sick cow." Scythe scratched his head. "Hey, this thing is sick! Insurance Premiums! What kind of H.O.V does this thing have?"

Farmel stretched, placing her hands behind her back and elbows in the air, exposing her chest as much as possible without streaking, easily gaining the attention of Gawn, Scythe, and Jude. Arnaud was too busy in La La Land with the Zeldukes. "Oh the poor thing, if it only had a higher defense. I'd do anything if it had a higher resistance." She sat down in the grass and looked sad, pulling out a handkerchief, but dropped it. "Oops, tee hee."

Yulie and Raquel sighed. Its pretty bad when ignorant child monster Yulie even knows what's going on. The three boys paying attention scrambled for it, but Jude (!) came out first, and handed the pink lace bordered handkerchief to the woman. "Here you go ma'am, hee hee." He blushed immensely. "We can all live peacefully together, so why don't you and me be friends."

"Thanks little boy." Farmel took it as Scythe and Gawn growled at the boy. She stood up again and turned around and reached for her the toes of her boots, exposing her posterior to the tourist group. "The Zeldukes seems to be coming down with the same symptoms every two weeks. It must be some of this grass down here she's eating."

Raquel, Yulie, and now an eight-foot tall golem in a trench coat all sighed. The golem, Asgard, looked up and clenched his massive fists in frustration. "And she's supposed to be an Asgard!"

Raquel stepped forward, between the panting men and their teaser. She crossed her arms across her own chest and tapped Farmel, bringing them both to the same eye level. "What's the symptoms? I'm a Paleobotanist, I know something about plants."

Arnaud immediately came to his knees behind Raquel, clasped his hands together, and looked up at his girlfriend. "PLEASE! I'm begging, you, cure her! You have to!"

Farmel placed a finger to her cheek and looked up, the glasses on her nose falling off. "Well, she seems to be having tummy aches and being overall lazy."

Yulie patted the Zeldukes side. "Ah, poor moo moo cow. I hope your tummy aches get better."

Raquel stepped over to the stricken cattle and squatted besides its head. She reached into her pockets and pulled out some plastic gloves (cus, y'know, she always has those) and threw them on. Raquel then proceeded to procure a bit of plant material from the guardians tongue. She peered at it a bit, a disgusted look on her face. Everyone else stared at the scene intensely, wondering what the good doctor would come up with. "Do peppy acorns grow around here?"

Farmel had to think again, coming up with yet another sexy pose, before she could answer. "Oh yea, they grow around here. We know their toxic, but she still might eat em anyway. Stupid guardian."

"Wait, Peppy acorns are toxic?" Arnaud asked, becoming panicked. "B-but we eat Peppy acorns all the time! Oh my Gawd! I think I'm going to be sick!"

"Toxic to guardians, Arnaud!" Raquel turned to the blonde boy.

"Well, uh, how -how do you know what the, um, Zeldukes is eating? You don't, because, um, it's a new ecosystem, and, uh, there's no way to tell how it'll react. And that's chaos theory, my friend. Impressed?" Gawn nudged Farmel, who gave a polite smile.

"Well, there's one way we could find out." Arnaud stood up. "But where are we going to find cropolite at this hour?"

"Cropolite?" Scythe asked. "Look, I hope this doesn't take long, we should probably be getting back soon." But no one was listening to what Scythe had to say. Poor Scythe. Sad Face.

"Well, I guess I'll have to check its droppings." Racquel stood up and walked off a bit.

"Droppings? Like as in…" Gawn gulped.

"Cropolite." Arnuad finished Gawns sentence as he followed the girl with the know.

DUNANANANANANANANA NAAAAA! After a transition sequence consisting of a determined Raquel's face spinning around to some trumpet fanfare, we find her kneeling in some brush under an ever-darkening sky. Her arms were elbows deep within a tower of animal droppings. Zeldukes droppings. But this tower wasn't alone, no; it was a field of four-foot high shit towers, some steaming, some crumbling, and all brown and overall smelly. Gawn made himself known as he stepped into the Poop City and lowered his sunglasses, gazing at the tower in front of Raquel. "That's one big pile of shit, crap, number two, poop, turds, uh, uh, other synonyms for shit."

"Oh so now we've come to toilet humor. One moment your saving the world and teaching the lessons of companionship and youth, the next your doing poop jokes…" Arnaud sighed as he stepped into the area to.

"Hey, um, why are you checking the crap Raquel? I'm sure the vets already done, uh, that." Gawn asked.

Raquel heaved with her might to pull her arms loose from the pile, holding in her gloved hands a small bit of plant material. "Because the vet over there probably has no clue what she's talking about." She stood up and looked at the treasure she had just uncovered.

"What did you find? A satellite phone? Maybe we can use it to call the mainland!" Arnaud made a reference that nobody got.

Raquel shook her head. "It's a piece of a peppy acorn. Just as I thought." Raquel began to take off her gloves as she walked back to the Zeldukes.

Gawn chewed on his gum and looked over to Arnaud. "She's, um, a bit of the straight man in this comedy…"

Arnaud adjusted his collar and made suit after his girlfriend. "You have no idea…"

As the trio returned to the sick Zeldukes, they found Yulie and Jude asleep, lying in the grass near a smiling Farmel, showing off as much cleavage as she did earlier. "Well, what did you find out?" She asked the returning paleobotanist.

"That I should be getting paid for doing your job." Raquel replied.

"Ooh." Gawn smiled. "Cat fight!"

"I don't remember going near poop being part of my job." Farmel thought. "But treating sick animals is! Just let me grab the right needle." She started going through her bag of tonics.

Arnaud noticed the dozing child monsters and scratched his blonde head. "Hey, how'd you get the monsters to go to sleep?"

"Oh I used a little of this." Farmel giggled as she held up some anesthetics.

"That's just something we'll leave out of the report." Scythe cleared his throat. Just then, the darkening skies let loose a horrific clap of thunder, one to shake the very bones of men! A flicker of lightning and drops of rain falling to the brush shortly followed it. "Speaking of reports, I highly recommend we get back to the vehicles! We don't need to file a suit against tourist struck by lightning!"

Arnaud and Gawn nodded while Raquel shook the sleeping children, awakening them to the oncoming storm. "You guys go on ahead, I'll think I'll stay with Farmel here."

"Ooh, I like where this is going." Gawn smiled like an idiot.

"Well, normally I only allow men, but I'm bi, so I'll do it." Farmel replied.

Raquel rolled her eyes. "Just to make sure she doesn't kill the Zeldukes by being an idiot!"

"Right, that's exactly what I thought." Arnaud nodded as Scythe grabbed the whiny kids and headed back through the brush. "You sure about this?"

"I'll be fine. I'll see you guys when I get back." Raquel waved.

The rain began to come down harder and reluctantly, Arnaud went back to the explorers, following Gawn was holding his jacket over his head and pretending to be Batman. Farmel giggled some more. "I love slumber parties. We're going to have so much fun!"

Raquel began to doubt her actions…

--

Back at the control center, everything was a mess. The many hundreds of Filgaia Park employees were about to leave the island, departing on a ship withstanding the storm of the century. The only people that were left were four men, biding their time in the control room. There was a very depressed Hauser, which was odd, for Hauser seemingly only had one expression on his face (unless it was one of those out of character moments he'd been having where he laughed or smiled.), Augst, who had begun to run dry on tea and hadn't a moment alone to try and put his monocle back on (and was visibly showing the symptoms of withdrawal.), Balgaine, who still sat back in spot, listening to conversations because the storm had cut off the satellite feed to his boxing match, and Tony, who was secretly plotting away at his desk across the room.

"Two no shows and one sick Zeldukes." Hauser sighed. "And a storm that will cut my tour in half. Oh, why didn't I build in Gaura Bobelo?"

Augst turned to him. "Because the property taxes in Guara Bobelo are outrageous, especially for theme parks! And with live animals? I say old bean, you're better off with a few rainy spots every now and then!" Augst reached for his saucer and cup, but realized it was empty.

"If we did settle in Guara Bobelo, I'd have a free ticket to the blood sport, not having to watch it on Satellite like some damn pussy." Balgaine growled. "Or at least set the guardians loose and watch the oncoming chaos."

"Even the Lucieds?" Hauser asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Fug no." Balgaine shook his head. "I wouldn't even kid about that. Those mother fuggers stay in their pens or I chop em up real nice."

"I say, you know what else they have in Gaura Bobelo? Disney World." Augst mentioned.

"You is a damn pussy." Balgaine sighed in disapproval.

Meanwhile, during this pointless conversation, Tony had been ease dropping. He nervously looked over the top of his monitor and then shrank down to where he had a video window of a security camera playing. It looked rather nasty out near the docks, and some poor man, large with a rain poncho clinging to his muscular body was withstanding both a wall of sea water and rain as he chatted on a pay phone. He was apparently talking to Tony on a mic. Tony gulped and wiped his brow. "You gotta give me fifteen more minutes, Hugo, I need more time! Keep the boat there, I'll swim to it if I have to!" the mere idea of Tony swimming through hurricane level waves made men laugh.

"I'll see what I can do, but no promises, kapeesh! The captain says he's gonna whack me real good if I don't get us out on time, my wife will wake up with a horse head in her bed, y'know what ahm saying?" Hugo replied before hanging up the phone.

Tony looked over the rim of his computer again, where the three do-gooders were still having pointless conversation. He swallowed and stood up. "Does anybody want a Ambroisa or something?" He received three odd looks. "Uh, cus I'm heading down that way, been eating too many, uh, things, and decided I'd get an Ambroisa to help clear it up." The three continued their mindless chatter. "Oh, um, the systems started defragging now, I figured now was as good a time as ever to do it, so um, if the system starts lagging or being overall non responsive, that's ok, it'll pick right back up in five. Um, the fences… might blink on or off, no big deal really, they'll be good to go to, so, just leave everything alone." He received three half hearted nods of people who really weren't listening. Tony licked his lips and turned back to his work station, bringing up a window on his screen that looked eerily like a mac and pointed his evil ball mouse to a large button that read 'EXECUTE'. He synched up his watch and clicked both the watch and the mouse at the same instance, both coming down to fifteen minutes. Once the time appeared on the screen, Tony jumped up and booked out of there…

--

Having booked out of the control room, and the rest of the compound being virtually devoid of all intelligent life (Tony included), Tony found it easy to run down the lengths of halls to the first security door guarding the runes. This could have been a problem if security was on detail, but because they were on the boat and because Hauser, Augst, and Balgaine weren't paying attention, he found it quite simple. The fat man worked his ways to the laboratory entrance and pressed himself against the wall and checked his watch. "Five, four, three, two, one!" As soon as his count down ended, the power blinked out, turning off the camera on the opposite side of the door and unlocking it as well. Tony quickly opened it and ran inside, but there were several more traps that awaited him. And thus he made his way through underground tunnels, avoiding nasty spiked fences that came crashing down the way at timed intervals, rusty ladders, snow covered mind fields, and infra red halls (he had to use the cigarettes he brought in his stomach to see them!). He also had to outrun a giant rock boulder, work his way through trash chutes, avoid fire being spewed at timed intervals through a waste management facility ala Judge Dread, solve some ridiculous puzzles Alhazad had left over from some time ago, complete a dungeon, fight a boss, and choose the correct cup before making it to the rune chamber. And to think what it would be like if he hadn't executed his program!

Tony looked at his watch. Ten minutes to go! Damn, he was quick for a heavy set man! He quickly fumbled for the fake toy hammer and popped one end, revealing several equip slots for runes. Smiling an evil, dastardly smile, Tony opened up the cryogenic freezing tanks, revealing slabs of rocks, perfectly frozen in their original frozen form. Ah! The magic of reproductions! There were at least a dozen runes for each species, indicating that at a slight glance, no one would notice if one was gone! He snatched up a few, not caring for the names they were under, such as Denogenos, Iona Paula, Dan Dariam, and Solus Emsu, to name a few. The runes were quite small, and thus easily fit into the hammer. Once the hammer could fit no more, Tony made off through the plot teleportation device that took him right outside the Visitor Center and next to his jeep. He snickered.

--

It was dark out now, night fall I'm sure, and rain was coming down by the bucket load. The two explorers, with one person less, came driving up the trail, about to pass the great big Equitess paddock. Arnaud sat in the car next to Gawn, who just wouldn't shut up. "The functions are sitting in a bar, chatting (how fast they go to zero at infinity etc.). Suddenly, one cries "Beware! Derivation is coming!" All immediately hide themselves under the tables, only the exponential sits calmly on the chair.
The derivation comes in, sees a function and says "Hey, you don't fear me?"
"No, I'am e to x", says the exponential self-confidently.
"Well" replies the derivation "but who says I differentiate along x?" Gawn replaced his gum with his noodle. "See, now that's funny."

Arnaud sighed. "God, they had better get a radio installed when this park opens." Arnaud leaned over the dash board. At that very moment, the lights in the car went out, the really out dated CD ROM based touch screen information pad went out, and the cars came to a halt. The headlights, being item number 152 on todays glitch list, were still on, illuminating the car filled with children and lawyers in front of them, which also stopped. "God damnit, what I touch?"

"I dunno." Gawn chewed his noodle. "Try doing what you did before. Maybe it'll come back on."

Arnaud did just that, leaning against the dash board again, but nothing happened. "I hate machines. I blew up a monitor yesterday by touching it."

"Well don't get any ideas while I'm in the car." Gawn raised an eyebrow. "Try turning the key a little harder. That might, uh, do it."

Arnaud tried to squeeze himself between the dead robot and the ignition. Upon inspection, Arnaud realized what he should have guessed already, that there was no key. "There's no key to turn!"

"Uh, um, man you really did it this time, uh." Gawn looked around the car, thinking. "Should we get out and take a look under the hood?"

"In this rain?" Arnaud was shocked. "I'm sure Hauser will realize we're not there and do something about it. Guess we should just sit back and relax."

"What about the kids?" Gawn asked.

"What about them? I don't care what happens to the child monsters." Arnaud scowled.

"What if they get scared?" Gawn pondered.

"What's there to be scared of? It's just a little hiccup in the power. Besides, they got Scythe there."

"Exactly. Leaving children with a lawyer with no power? That's a little cruel. You should go see if there alright."

"Me! Why me?"

"Because I'm comfortable!" Gawn leaned back in his seat. "You're already up there. GO on, shoo!"

Arnaud mumbled many things as he opened the door into the typhoon…

-- -

Augst peered at the screen. It was displaying all sorts of emergency protocols and windows, displaying the perimeter fences in bright red and yellow blinking colors. Never a good sign. "I say, what the devil is going on here!" Augst said a little frightened.

"What do you mean?" Hauser walked over and looked over Augst' shoulders.

"Fences are failing all over the park. I take back my little quippet about what could go wrong earlier." Augst scanned the screen, trying to think of what to do.

"Well fat man said the fences might do that for five minutes or so." Balgaine added as he got up. "Where are the cars now?"

"Umm…" Augst slid to another computer and typed in a few commands. "In front of the Equitess paddock. It looks as if they've stopped."

"What about the phones? Are those mother fuggers workin?" Balgaine was getting antsy. "Please tell me we have land lines!"

Augst picked up a phone near by. "Dead."

Hauser narrowed his brow. "Find Tony. Check Shadow Moses Island!"

-- -