Chapter 3, The Predicament

"A time machine?!" Larxene exploded. "Are you shitting me?"

"I wish I was!" Vexen snapped. "I wish I was just 'shitting you,' but I'm not! We are stuck in the past with no means of getting out!"

"C'mon, it can't be that bad, right?" Demyx reasoned. "We just need to start a fire and it'll work, right?"

"The boy is right!" Vexen put his arm around Demyx's shoulder. "We just need the right amount of heat, and we'll be back in the present in no time!" His face paled. "Then again, if it's a heat by year quotient, and Axel's fire took us back thousands of years, then we'd need a fire just as strong as that."

They thought in a deep, pensive silence.

Larxene was the first to have an idea. "How about a forest fire?"

"You psychopath!" Vexen lashed out. "That…could work." He turned to Demyx. "Quickly! Get some firewood!"

"But what about the animals and stuff?" Demyx countered. "They don't deserve to die!"

"And we don't deserve to die in a prehistoric wasteland but here we are!"

"But aren't there time travel rules? Like, what if we kill something and we forever alter the course of history?"

"No, no. I don't think that's how it works. You see, in our timeline, this was already meant to happen, which means the timeline will unfold regardless of what we do here."

"So it doesn't matter what we do here?"

"I suppose it matters, Demyx. The point is…"

"Will you two SHUT UP?!" Larxene interrupted the lovers' spat, placing herself between them. "We are starting a forest fire and that's that!"

"No!" Demyx protested. "I refuse."

"Oh, what is this hippie nonsense?" Vexen demanded.

"I'm serious. Like, look. Look at how cute those guys are." Demyx pointed to the canopy, where a family of lemurs was perched, looking down on them. "Do you really want to kill them?"

"It depends," Larxene considered. "If they're good to eat…"

"Look, Demyx," Vexen lectured his colleague. "There's no room for this sentimentality in the Organization. How you have any left in you is a study for another day." Tightly grasping the gummi, he explained slowly, "The reality is we need to heat this up, otherwise we'll be trapped here forever. Do you want that?"

"I guess not," Demyx admitted.

"Good. Then let's get starOHHHH MERICIFUL HADES!" In an instant, the family of lemurs attacked Vexen, crawling over his body and clawing him. "OHHHH GOD! HELP ME!"

Larxene and Demyx stood in speechless horror as Vexen was assaulted by these primitive apes. Finally, Demyx snapped out of it. "I get it! I think they think that gummi is a fruit, like a mango or something…I think."

Vexen slapped a lemur off of him, crying in pain. "Is that what this is?! Hm?!" He shed the lemurs off him once and for all, leaving the scientist a lacerated mess. "You will not steal this from me, you hear me?! I am man, and you are nothing but primitive animals!" The lemurs crawled back, seemingly intimidated. "Aha! You fear me! As you should!" He raised the gummi high above his head to further frighten the animals. "Here, I am a GOD!"

A pterodactyl suddenly snatched the gummi, Vexen with it. He shrieked to match the occasion.

Larxene and Demyx stood in shock for a solid thirty seconds.

"Well," Larxene spoke up. "He's gone."

"It's not too late!" Demyx replied. "C'mon!" They gave chase after the pterodactyl, which was flying over the green plains ahead of them, quickly scaling down the cliff.

Meanwhile, high in the sky, Vexen was in combat with the flying reptile. "Unhand me, you beast! Unhand me!"

"Vexen!" Demyx called after him. "Hang on!"

"Get me off this crazy thing!" Vexen screamed. But it was to no avail, as his cloak tore and he fell to the ground far beneath him.

"What do we do?" Zexion panicked, hands wringing through his hair. "What do we do what do we do what do we do?"

"Oh my God. I vaporized them," Axel said in disbelief. "Huh. I guess I should have asked what this was about before lighting anything on fire. Oops."

"Oops?" Zexion pivoted on his feet, dismayed. "That's all you can come up with? 'Oops'? We just killed three coworkers and that's an 'oopsy'?"

"To an extent, yeah. I guess it is."

"Oh God, oh God, oh God. I warned him, y'know. I warned him not to do this and he didn't listen."

"Calm down, Zexion. We'll figure this out. Let me just think," Axel tried to search his brain for answers. "We just need to cover this up, that's all."

"Cover what up?"

Zexion and Axel yelped at the sight of Lexaeus in the doorway.

"Oh. Lexaeus," Zexion cleared his throat and straightened his posture. "How are you doing?"

"Fine. Heard some ruckus. Thought I'd check it out."

"Oh, it's just Zexion and I having one of our trademark arguments," Axel assured the giant.

"About what?"

"Kantian philosophy," Zexion blurted out. Axel slowly turned to Zexion with a look that read of disgust, offense, and anger.

"I see," Lexaeus nodded. "Do you know where Vexen is?"

"Vexen?" Axel's voice cracked, so he erupted into a fit of coughing.

Zexion picked up the slack. "I don't know. We went here to discuss Kant b-because Vexen's got a lot of books here and Axel…well, you know Axel. We disagreed and he scorched the whole room."

"Hence the smoke," Axel pitched in. "I don't know what it is, but Cant really steams me."

"Kant."

"Kant."

Lexaeus looked from one suspicious figure to the other. "So you're covering up…arson."

"Yep!" Axel said. "You know what the penalty is for that. Two days of community service. And I've done my time if you know what I'm saying."

Lexaeus remained silent. Zexion did his best to hide his shaking leg or rapid breathing. He prayed desperately that he'd take the bait.

"So you don't know where Vexen is?"

"Nope!" Axel said, though Zexion's curiosity got the best of him. "Why do you ask?" Axel stared daggers at Zexion.

"Vexen's suspended from all Organization activity," Lexaeus clarified. "He can't leave the castle grounds. If he were to leave, it'd be treason and possibly, depending on his intentions, desertion."

"Oh. And what's the penalty for desertion?" Axel asked, laughing nervously. "A three week suspension? Ha ha. Ha. Ha." He swallowed.

"Death."

"Oh," Axel nodded. "Well, he's around here somewhere. Keep looking, Five."

"I will," Lexaeus turned to leave before adding, "Need I remind you the penalty for being the accomplice to desertion?"

Zexion wiped some sweat from his brow, feeling a bit dizzy from his nerves. "It's not community service, is it?"

"It's also death. Have a good day." And with that, Lexaeus left the room.

Once he did, a burden was lifted off both of their chests, Axel steadying himself on the bed and Zexion staggering back against the bookcase.

"We're dead," Axel gasped out. "We lost Vexen."

"No. We killed him."

"And two other people."

"Oh God."

"Oh God."

Then, with a beautiful fortune, an idea came to Zexion. "Wait! I have an idea!"

Vexen struggled to wake up. Everything was blurry. Nothing seemed real. All he could make out was a figure, silhouetted in the sunlight. No…it couldn't be.

"Holy crap! Larxene, he's alive!"

It wasn't.

"Oh. Dammit." Vexen wasn't fully conscious, though he could see Larxene handing the boy some munny, perhaps out of some perverse bet.

"I'm alive," Vexen slurred. "I'm alive." He gingerly got to his feet with the help of his comrades. "What happened?"

"That dino-bird picked you up and flew you around for like, a mile. And we chased you, and you kept screaming, and we kept chasing, and then it let you go or you let it go, I dunno. And you fell and we came here…" A lemur leaped onto Demyx's head, shrieking, prompting Vexen to do the same. "Oh, and this guy came along for the ride and he's seems pretty cool."

"I'm the Love Monkey!" The creature shrieked.

"Good God," Vexen cried in horror. "It talks."

"Oh yeah, it talks," Demyx nonchalantly added. "It keeps saying that same thing, though. I haven't thought too much about it."

"Of course you haven't," Vexen replied, cracking his back.

"I'm the Love Monkey!"

"We know!" Vexen screamed at the animal.

"I tried to kill it," Larxene assured Vexen. "But Demyx wouldn't let me."

"You're a bunch of children, you know that?!" Vexen rotated his shoulder to see if it still worked right. "Bickering and fighting over stupid matters such as ape-murder." He paused. "You should have killed it."

"That doesn't matter now!" Larxene changed the subject. "What about the…the thing?"

Vexen narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what she meant. "You mean the gummi?"

"I'm not saying that."

"Coward. Don't worry. It's right…" Vexen patted his cloak but much to his surprise, the gummi was in none of his many zippers. "Oh. Oh no."

"What? What is it?"

"The filthy bird. He stole it! Right from my grasp!"

Demyx stroked his chin. "Hm. She might have been mistaken the gummi…for an egg."

"Oh, just like the lemurs mistook the gummi for a mango, is that it?"

The lemur jumped on Demyx's head not once, not twice, but thrice, pointing excitedly behind Vexen. "I'm the Love Monkey!"

Demyx looked at where the Love Monkey was pointing. "See? She's at that nest over there!"

Vexen turned around and saw the Love Monkey was indeed right. "That's the beast, alright. We must hurry, before they eat the gummi or…or…" He wiped some sweat, coated on his forehead. "It's getting pretty hot."

"Yeah," Larxene wiped her brow as well. "That's weird."

"And look!" Demyx pointed at the sky. "'The sun's getting all red."

"The sun's getting all…by God!" Vexen turned to his colleagues. "I know when we are!"

"We get it! Dinosaur times!" Larxene said, exasperated.

"Yes, but the specific dinosaur time!" Vexen said frantically. "This is the Cretaceous Era. Worse so, it's the end of the Cretaceous Era! Which means soon, very soon, a massive bolide will descend from the heavens."

"Bo-what?" Demyx asked, confused.

"A meteor. A ginormous meteor. It'll crash down onto the planet and eliminate nearly every living thing here, very likely including us!"

"Oh, just our luck," Larxene buried her face in her hands.

"What's worse, I don't know how much heat that gummi can take before it vanishes into another time period, leaving us to die here!"

"Oh, how can get this any worse?" Demyx lamented.

"I'm the Love Monkey!"

"What is it, Love Monkey?" The musician asked, concerned.

"I'm the Love Monkey!" He pointed towards the horizon, where there was a creature, charging at them from the distance. A very large creature, in fact. So large, it might actually truly be…

"A tyrannosaurus rex!" Vexen yelped, white as a ghost. "Runnnnnnnnnnn!"

And so the trio ran towards the pterodactyl nest with the time crunches of time crunches on their backs, not to mention the gangster of all dinosaurs. How will they get out of this one?

"I'm the Love Monkey!"

A/N: I only remember one line from the movie Dinosaur. You can guess what it is.