A/N: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the next part of this Jungle AU story. This is where the plot and fun really pick up, including an appearance by a familiar OC of mine, so let's not waste too much time and just get right into it.

Again, this story contains a lot of mature situational humor, so if you don't like that kinda stuff, just ignore this story's existence. That said, those of you who are, interested, read on!

Oh, and this chapter contains a minor crossover, featuring a character from the film "Early Man" (which I have not seen, but TCC put him in the outline, so I felt obligated to keep him). There will be a few other small crossovers throughout the story, but they're not really prominent so I don't feel the need to move this story to the crossovers section. Just FYI.

Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim, Early Man, or any canonical characters from either, just the OCs who appear in this story.

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

As Dib regained consciousness the next morning, he immediately wished that he hadn't, as he experienced the worst hangover of his life. His head was pounding so hard that it felt like it was going to split in half. And it certainly didn't help any that he was lying on something a lot harder than a bed or couch or even the floor of his tree house; had he ended up falling asleep outside?

"Ugh, the party must have gotten out of hand. Again," Dib managed to think through the immense headache, "I really need to learn to say 'no' when the girls talk me into drinking contests… whatever, I'm just going to lie down here for a while. Everyone can just walk over me for all I care-"

"Get off the road, you idiot!" someone suddenly yelled. Instinctively bolting upright at the loud intrusion, Dib turned to face its source and yelped, jumping out of the way just in time to avoid being run over by a cart. The cart's driver didn't even slow it down, just throwing a few choice insults at Dib over his shoulder as he continued on his way.

Although his head was still throbbing, Dib could still think clearly enough that he quickly got off the road he'd been lying on in case anymore carts came by, and then looked around to take stock of his situation. And as he did, he realized how bad that situation was.

"Where the hell am I?" he asked aloud, seeing that he was most definitely not in his own village, nor any of the neighboring villages that he'd visited over the years. In fact, it looked nothing like any village he'd ever seen before — rather than just being dirt, the roads were lined with paved stones, and instead of wood all the buildings towering around him were made out of carved rock and metal. And even more bizarrely, he realized belatedly, that cart that had almost hit him had been moving on its own! There hadn't been any animals in front of it dragging it along, just an odd mishmash of metal tubes.

Literally the only thing Dib saw in all this that was even remotely familiar was the people he could see further down the street in either direction, already going about their business for the day. More specifically, the fact that he could see just well enough through the early morning light to make out that they were all wearing the same leopard skin loincloths and bikinis worn everywhere else. Unbeknownst to Dib, this was because the local despot had been bribed by the Leopard Trappers and Skinners Guild to enforce this standardized fashion and therefore protect their monopoly on clothing. But that has no bearing on the plot, so let's move on.

"Well, that's reassuring, I guess, knowing that some things never change. Hundreds of leopards will always die so that people can have loin… cloths…" Dib said, trailing off as he instinctively reached down to tug on his own loincloth for emphasis, only to touch bare skin instead. Eyes widening slightly in anticipatory concern, he looked down and saw to his horror that his loincloth was gone — and worse, rather than the "elephant trunk" he'd mysteriously acquired a short time ago, he saw instead the "pine needle and two sesame seeds" he'd been cursed with for so long and had hoped he'd never see again.

With his still splitting headache fogging his mind up, it took a shocked Dib longer than it should have to properly process the fact that he was in a strange place, naked and effectively emasculated. When he finally did, however, he gave a strangled yelp and quickly covered his once again teeny-weeny with his hands (humiliation only growing as it registered that even one hand was overkill for that now), before running off in a panic.

Not even caring where he was going, Dib bolted down the road, desperate to find some kind of proper cover. Thankfully it was still early, the sun just barely peeking over the horizon, so not only was there barely anyone out but it was too dark for the few who were to properly see him from a distance. But that wouldn't last for long, and unless he wanted to find out firsthand what this strange place's legal punishment for public nudity was, he needed to find clothing now.

Eyes darting frantically around him as he ran, Dib saw an alleyway coming up, and he quickly ducked into it. Looking around his new haven, he gave a massive sigh of relief as he saw a large number of loincloths hanging from clotheslines running between the two buildings. Telling himself that it wasn't really theft since he was desperate, and that the owners presumably had others so it wouldn't matter to them if one went missing, he reached towards the nearest loincloth… and to his shock, as soon as he touched it, there was a small flash of blue light and it turned to dust in his hands.

"What?" Dib blurted in disbelief. He grabbed for another loincloth, only for the same thing to happen, again and again as he quickly made his way through nearly the entire supply of clothes on display.

It wouldn't be until much later — after his hangover cleared up and he regained his memories of the night before — that Dib would realize that this was Tak's magic at work, making sure he stayed naked until he returned to the village. Right now, all he could focus on was his panicked desire to get something to cover his "shortcoming" up with, growing more frantic as each chance literally slipped through his fingers. And before long, almost every single loincloth had disappeared, and Dib was reaching towards the highest cord which was holding up the last remaining loincloth, in the mad hope that this one wouldn't disintegrate like the others had.

"Come on, come on," he muttered as he kept jumping up to grab at the cord. Finally getting ahold of it, he let gravity drag him back to the ground and take the cord with him. Barely noticing as he bumped into some trashcans and knocked them over as he hit the ground, Dib grabbed for the loincloth, only for it to turn to dust just like all the others.

"Damnit! Why is this happening?!" Dib snapped in a mixture of frustrated anger and panicked desperation.

"Hey, what's all that noise?" a voice suddenly called from outside the alley, "Otis, is that you? I swear, if you're urinating back there again you old drunk, I'm sticking you in the public stocks for a week!"

Dib paled at the sound of the voice, and approaching footsteps. He couldn't be seen like this!

It should be noted that, despite the bad situation his poor judgement had put him in, Dib's enhanced good luck was still in effect. Normally, he wouldn't have gotten out of sight in time before the approaching City Guard patrolman entered the alley, saw him, and chased him down to arrest him for indecent exposure, leading to his public humiliation in the stocks. Now, though, his luck was about to save him, albeit it in a roundabout way…

Running down the alley in the opposite direction from the voice, Dib was too blinded by panic to realize he still had a firm grip on the clothesline. Already stretched heavily by Dib dragging it to the ground, it didn't take long for it to reach its limit. And since Dib was still holding it when it stopped moving, it pulled him to a sudden stop, jerking him off his feet. As he fell towards the ground, now no longer weighing down the cord, physics kicked in-

SPROING

-And the cord snapped back, carrying Dib with it. Then, as it hit the apex of its snapback, he lost his grip, and was thus sent flying through the air, disappearing from view just as the guard entered the alley. Looking around the empty alley, the guard decided that the ruckus he'd heard was probably just a stray cat knocking over those cans and running off; this not being in his job description to worry about, he shrugged it off and walked away.

As for Dib, he'd been launched so violently by the cord that it was like being shot out of a catapult, sending him far above the rooftops and zooming across the settlement, towards the large tower in the middle of it all.

XXXXXXX

Now, to understand the situation Dib was about to land in the middle of, one needs to know a little about where he was. How just another small, nameless jungle village had been transformed into what people from a more technologically-advanced world would recognize as a fairly large city, now known as the grand metropolis of New Age-opolis (the committee that had been in charge of naming the place was currently awaiting execution for doing such a poor job). And just how had it managed to leap centuries ahead of the rest of the world's technological level?

The dark truth at the heart of these questions was that an unholy alliance had been struck between a local human and the forces of demon kind. One that had seen a deity struck down, and their power repurposed to uplift this little corner of the world into a higher state of civilization. And the core of this uplifting effort was in a chamber sitting at the very top of the tower Dib was currently heading towards, the place that pumped the lifeblood of this city.

Literally, as a matter of fact. There was a giant heart suspended in the middle of a large network of pipes and copper wires, constantly beating away and pumping out divine blood that was then directed out into the plumbing system running throughout the city. It was this mystic fluid that powered the machines that kept the lights on, kept the buildings warm in winter and cool in summer, that provided the fuel used to operate the animal-less carts, and which created the artificial meats that made those who ate them stronger and smarter… at the cost of also making them more docile and obedient. Which was just fine in the eyes of those responsible for this situation.

One of those people was currently standing on a balcony overlooking the central chamber, blue eyes alight with glee as they took it all in. This was the Demon Queen Miyuki, supreme ruler of all demons, and the mastermind behind this scheme.

"Ah, this is truly a thing of beauty," she said with a smile.

"Yes it is," said the human man sitting on a chair nearby. He was bald, with a pointy nose, wearing a purple robe, a maroon cape, and a bronze-colored sash around his waist; also, he was for some reason rubbing bronze coins against his face with a look of total ecstasy. This was Lord Nooth, the demons' collaborator who had helped them come to power and build all this.

Miyuki rolled her eyes at Nooth's actions. Recruiting his aid in trapping and killing the light god Mulungu, and then cannibalizing the deity's body to make this vast machinery possible, had been necessary to take over this area and build the city, as he was the only one her infiltrators believed would be willing to help them do it in exchange for being the human face of their regime. But he was extremely irritating, not just from his dull-wittedness, but with the blatantly self-absorbed, greedy nature he didn't even try to hide around others. And it was really getting on her nerves, especially his odd obsession with bronze — seriously, they had tons of silver and gold lying around, why was he so fixated on the least valuable precious metal?

"Still, without him acting as the mortal conduit for the ritual, we never would have pulled this off and pushed the balance of things in demon kind's favor. So I should just learn to live with it," Miyuki mused in her thoughts, before shaking it off. Turning to the third person in the room, she said, "Skoodge, take a letter."

"Yes, my Queen," the short, chubby demon said, holding up a sheet of paper and a pen, ready to take her dictation.

"Red and Purple, things are going ahead of schedule. In accordance with my contract with Nooth," she said, pausing to look at the glowing document lying atop a nearby table, "Soon we will have this city under our total control and turn it into a breeding farm and worship center. Nooth will feed us with the flesh of the surrounding human lands he'll soon conquer for us, as well as that of prisoners and dissidents here in the city, while also making demonology the official religion, outlawing all others. We will feed off their vices, worship, and sacrifice. A new age of demon supremacy is rapidly approaching, and-"

CRASH

It was at this point that Dib crashed through the skylight roof of the tower and into the chamber. Falling with a scream, he slammed into a pipe hard enough to break it free of its mooring, sending it spinning around and spewing divine ichor everywhere. This included onto Miyuki and the table containing her contract with Nooth; she screamed as contact with the holy substance caused her and the contract to burst into blue flames before crumbling into dust. Meanwhile Dib, who had been desperately clinging to the pipe for dear life, lost his grip from its spinning and fell again, conveniently landing in the aqueduct the pipe had been feeding into, the current of the fluids filling it quickly grabbing ahold of him and carrying him out of the room, heading towards another part of the city.

Skoodge and Nooth were left standing there, totally stunned, looking at the wrecked pipe and Miyuki's scorched remains.

"…Well, that just happened," Nooth said in bewilderment after a few moments. Then he glanced at where his contract used to be, and a smirk formed on his face as an idea occurred to him. While not nearly as bright as he liked to think he was, he could be quite cunning when an opportunity to get his way presented itself, and there was one right here.

Skoodge, who was still staring slack-jawed at what was left of his Queen, yelped as he was suddenly grabbed by the collar and lifted up to be face-to-face with a maniacally grinning Nooth.

"Well, chubby, it looks like the deal's off," he said, pointing to the destroyed contract, "Go tell whoever's in charge of your people now that Miyuki's dead that if they want this contract renewed, they need to send me bronze! Tons of it! I want to be able to fill a room with it and swim in it like a duck!"

"Why would a duck swim in bronze?" Skoodge asked, utterly confused by the analogy.

"Never mind that! Now go!" Nooth shouted, tossing Skoodge aside. The fat demon hit the floor, then quickly scrambled to his feet before vanishing in a swirl of red smoke. Watching him disappear, Nooth laughed at the thought of the riches that would soon be his.

And all the while, he was oblivious to the pipe Dib had knocked loose continuing to swing around, banging into and damaging more and more of the machinery…

XXXXXXX

While Nooth was stabbing his demonic partners in the back, Dib was shooting at high speed across the city through a series of pipes and aqueducts. Despite the circumstances of how he'd ended up here, he couldn't help but find the unique experience to be an immense amount of fun.

"This is awesome!" Dib thought, "If I could replicate this and have people do something similar for fun… I could be even richer!"

However, that thought was interrupted as he passed over a section of the aqueduct that wasn't as structurally sound as the rest. While only a minute difference, it was just enough that the added weight of a nearly full grown human like Dib on top of all the water already running along it proved too much for it to hold. Which meant that went that weight hit it-

CRACK

-it gave way, collapsing under Dib. He didn't even have a chance to register what was happening before he was falling through the new hole in the bottom of the aqueduct, once more falling through open air. He screamed as he fell, only for it to turn into a surprised yelp as he hit a canopy set up over the front of one building, which acted like a trampoline and sent him flying back up again. He tumbled through the air, before landing on the roof of a building. And thanks to his luck, he landed smack in the middle of some bushes in a rooftop garden; still an uncomfortable landing, but a lot better than hitting stone or metal.

Groaning, Dib untangled himself from the bush enough to get back on his feet, and started looking himself over. Aside from a few bruises here and there, there didn't appear to be any real damage from any of the impacts he'd taken.

"Huh, guess my luck's turning around again," he mused.

"Hey!" a voice suddenly snapped from nearby, "What did you do to my garden-?! …Oh boy, that's not good. Are you okay?"

Turning to face the speaker, Dib blushed as he saw a very beautiful girl about his age standing a few feet away. Her hair was done up in two ponytails, one on either side of her head, the left one with a green streak dyed into it while the right had a red one. She also had a very well developed figure, which was shown off tantalizingly well by a somewhat oddly-shaped bikini that appeared to be made of some kind of leather instead of leopard fur…

"Wait a minute," Dib thought, the analytical part of his mind managing to break through the sudden rush of hormones and make him take a closer look at that bikini. And to his shock, he realized that the reason it looked so odd was that it was made of snakes, a dozen of them intertwined around each other to cover everything she wanted covered. And even more shocking, they appeared to be live snakes, since he could clearly see several of them blinking their eyes.

"Hey!" the girl snapped again, "My eyes are up here! And we don't have time for you to be ogling me!"

"S-sorry!" Dib stammered, blushing again as he realized what he was doing, and as he suddenly became much more self-conscious of his nudity. He still had problems with that even when around his harem (except when drunk, of course), so finding himself like this in front a stranger, let alone one who was an attractive girl… well, he was very glad that his lower body was still covered by the bush he'd landed in, so she couldn't see anything.

"I, uh, I didn't mean to stare," he said quickly, trying to compose himself, "But, uh, I've never seen someone wear live snakes before, is all."

"Yeah, well I'm a snake charmer," the girl explained, "I harvest their toxins as part of my tonic business, so I like to have them close at all times."

"Oh, that's interesting," Dib said, trying to keep the conversation going so he wouldn't have to get out of the bush, "I'm Dib, by the way."

"Viera. Nice to meet you," she replied, "Now, seriously, get out of that bush, right now."

"Hey, you know, this is a pretty great garden you've got here," Dib said instead of moving, acting as if he hadn't heard her. Viera rolled her eyes, her preexisting annoyance at Dib for damaging part of her garden only growing as he ignored her attempts to move him. Admittedly, judging by how he was crouching and (seemingly subconsciously) pressing down on the section of foliage in front of his crotch for further cover, she had a pretty good reason why he was so hesitant to move.

Biting back a snicker at the boy's predicament, Viera forced herself to focus on the serious matter at hand. She grew a lot of different flowers and herbs in this garden, to provide her with more materials to make tonics and potions with alongside what she harvested from her snakes, and a lot of them were dangerous if one was exposed directly to large amounts of them. Case in point, the bush Dib had landed in. She had to get him out of it and to her lab downstairs before the effects kicked in and did him harm.

Of course, while morally obligated to help him out, she was still upset that he had crushed part of her garden (sure, it looked like it had been an accident, but it would still put a dent in her budget), and she wanted a little payback for it. Combined with the fact that he was doing his best to ignore her attempts to get him out of the bush, and her patience was quickly running out.

As Dib once again deflected her urging to move with more small talk, Viera finally decided to take a different approach. With a slight tap to the head of one of her snakes, making sure it was one not covering anything too private, she gave it a few discrete hand gestures it had been trained to understand. In response, the snake untangled itself from the others, detached from Viera, and once on the ground started sliding towards Dib, who hadn't noticed its movements.

"-And this is really a great view, isn't it?" Dib asked, gesturing to the city around them with the hand not working to further conceal himself. In response, Viera sighed, then gave him a slight smirk.

"Well, you can't say I didn't try to do this the easy way," she said.

"What?" Dib asked, blinking in confusion… then he yelped as Viera's snake bit him on the ass. In a panic from the surprise and mild pain, he instinctively jumped up and out of the bush, hands clasping the bite mark. It was only when he heard Viera giggling did he realize he was now fully exposed; flushing a bright red, he quickly moved his hands to his crotch, though it was too late at this point.

"Heh, using both hands is kinda overkill, isn't it?" Viera asked playfully, causing Dib's blush to grow and leaving him stammering incoherently. Giggling some more at his reaction for a moment, she composed herself and said, "Sorry, sorry, I know it's not really funny. Come on, let's get you inside and we can get you cured."

"Cured?" Dib echoed, confusion at that statement momentarily overriding the humiliation.

"Yeah, I mean, of all the parts of my garden you could have landed in, you had the bad luck to hit the Dysmorphium bush," she said. Seeing Dib's confused look, she clarified, "Most people call it the rather unoriginal name of 'Shrinky Dink' because of what it does to people's genitals."

"Oh! Uh, yeah, guess that's my luck," Dib said, chuckling weakly and glad that Viera had no way of knowing that he had already been shrunken before landing in the bush. Nor could she be aware that even if he hadn't been, the bush wouldn't have affected him anyway — as part of calming his concerns after revealing her true nature, Tak had given him magical protection from most poisons, toxins, and anything else in the natural world that would have an adverse biological effect on him.

All of which was, as Dib had ironically noted, his luck at play. Not only was he protected from the Dysmorphium's effects, but by landing in it he now had Viera thinking his predicament was partially her fault for even having the bush in the first place; without that guilt, then between her anger at him crushing part of her garden and her knee-jerk assumption that he was a streaking pervert, she would have tossed him off the roof to receive serious injury by hitting the ground below.

"Me personally, I don't like that name — not just because it's stupid, but because it doesn't even come close to addressing all the other symptoms, which are a lot more serious," Viera continued, before shrugging, "But don't worry, those take longer to kick in. We just need to get downstairs to my lab, and in about 20 or 30 minutes I should be able to whip up an antidote for you."

"Thank you," Dib said honestly, and hopeful that whatever cure she cooked up would actually undo his shrinkage despite having a different cause than she thought, "Er, by the way, do you have anything I can borrow to cover up with?"

"Little late for that, isn't it?" Viera asked with a teasing smirk. As Dib blushed and spluttered some more, she rolled her eyes, "Okay, joking over. But all I can offer is one of my snakes, so if you're not comfortable with that, too bad."

Dib followed Viera's pointing finger and saw the snake that had bitten him, having emerged from the bush at some point and now staring blankly at him. Dib returned the stare for several moments, trying to comprehend the thought of wearing a live animal, before finally sighing and accepting the inevitable.

"Fine, let's just get this over with," he said. Viera nodded and made some more hand gestures to the snake, which slithered over to Dib, who shuddered as he felt it start curling around his leg in order to climb up to his waist. Once it got there, it started wrapping itself around him to act as a makeshift loin cloth… and then there was a flash of blue light as Dib's drunken contract with Tak kicked in, determined to deny him cover of any kind.

The snake hissed in pain and practically leapt off of Dib's body, bolting back into the foliage as it slithered away from him as fast as it could. And that wasn't all, for when the mystic energy from the contract discharged, the rest of the snakes all sensed it as well. Startled by the sudden burst of magic, they all panicked and likewise bolted for cover, not caring that they were taking their mistress' own cover with them as they left.

By the time Viera realized what was happening, every single snake had left her body and disappeared into the surrounding plants. Caught totally off guard by this unexpected turn of events, she could only stand there, frozen in shock as her face turned red as a tomato. It was only when she happened to glance at Dib and saw him staring slack-jawed at her, with it being clear even in his shrunken state that he was enjoying the sight, that she snapped out of it. Squealing in mortification, she wrapped her arms around herself and hunched over, in a desperate and far-too-late attempt at concealment.

"Stop looking at me and find those snakes!" she snarled in indignation, too humiliated and flustered to even try and think about how her snakes had been scared off.

"S-sorry!" Dib replied, voice cracking in embarrassment as he quickly averted his gaze.

For the next few minutes, the pair searched desperately through the various bushes and plant patches for the snakes, while also trying very hard not to look at each other. Unfortunately, they didn't find a single one, though they did find a number of drainage pipes, which explained where the snakes had gone.

"Great, that's just wonderful," Viera muttered darkly.

"Um, you do have more snakes in your home downstairs, right?" Dib asked awkwardly, "Can't we just run down there and get more?"

"Yes I do, but no we can't," Viera said, "One of those snakes had my keys."

"…What?"

"I paid a shaman to enchant my snakes," Viera explained with a sigh, "Now if they swallow anything that's not edible to them, it just sits in their stomachs rather than getting digested. It makes them convenient for carrying around stuff without using bags. And that includes the keys for both my rooms, and the door to this roof."

"Wait… you mean we're stuck up here?!" Dib exclaimed.

"Until the janitor comes tomorrow morning for the daily trash check," Viera said with a groan, "And won't that be a fun conversation."

"I don't suppose we could use some of these plants to make clothes with?" Dib suggested, gesturing to their surroundings with a nod of his head.

"Are you kidding me?" Viera snapped, "Do you have any idea how much this garden costs? I can't afford to just tear up some of the plants for anything other than using them for ingredients!"

"So we're both stuck naked up here until someone lets us into the building. At which point they'll see that we're naked. Terrific," Dib grumbled.

"Yeah, well, you might as well just accept it and get comfortable, we're not going anywhere," Viera muttered, sitting down so that a bush blocked everything but her head from Dib's view. Seeing this, Dib quickly did likewise, sitting down on the other side of the bush so that she couldn't see below his neck either.

As the two of them sat there in an awkward silence, Dib mentally pondered how his luck could have gotten bad enough to land him in this situation, completely unaware that his luck was still good in a roundabout way. After all, had they managed to get down to Viera's lab, she would have, in the course of studying and trying to cure Dib, discovered the protection he had from Tak; determining it to be demonic in nature, and having just met Dib, she would have gone with her initial reaction and immediately killed him, assuming him to be one of the demon spies who had infiltrated the city ever since Nooth had come to power.

As it was, the two were now stuck together on that roof for the foreseeable future. Realizing this and fidgeting uncomfortably, Dib decided to try and make the most of the situation; embarrassing though the situation was, it did give him a chance to talk with an interesting and pretty girl.

"So," he said, "How long have you been making potions for a living?"

"Seriously? Again with the small talk?" Viera asked flatly.

"We got anything else to do while waiting up here for someone to let us down?" Dib asked, "Either we just sit here awkwardly the whole time, or we get to know each other. We might as well do that instead."

Under normal circumstances, Viera would have been able to think of something better to do, namely trying to figure out just what had scared her snakes enough for them all to run off like that. Fortunately for Dib, however, the humiliation of their current predicament was a more than sufficient enough distraction for her to forget about that for now.

So, resigning herself to the situation, she sighed and took up the conversational thread. This was going to be a long 24 hours…

Meanwhile, with Gaz

While Dib had spent the whole night passed out in a drunken stupor on the streets of New Age-opolis, Gaz had spent that time hauling her newfound wealth through the jungle, searching for any sign of civilization where she could start spending it on a lavish new lifestyle. Anansi, meanwhile, did his level best to keep her confined to the depths of the jungle, manipulating her bad luck to block her path with fallen trees or landslides, to try and direct her into walking in circles or running into dead ends like quicksand pits or rivers moving too rapidly to cross. Unfortunately for him, Yurugu's own trickster powers present in Gaz's form nullified his influence somewhat, limiting what he could do.

And so it was that, around the same time Dib was meeting Viera, Gaz finally stumbled out of the jungle and into a fairly large village, practically a small town.

"Finally," she muttered angrily, stomach rumbling as she readjusted her bag of loot over her shoulders, "Okay, first thing's first. Find someplace in this dump where I can get something to eat. Then I can figure out my next step."

Stomping down the village's main road, Gaz noticed that everyone she passed was stopping whatever they were doing to turn and stare at her. Figuring they were just admiring how awesome she looked in her pilfered gold bikini (and just happy that for once people were staring without pointing and laughing), Gaz shrugged and ignored it… and all the while was oblivious to the wisps of black smoke breaking off from her bikini with each step. These wisps shot through the air and hit each person she passed, whose eyes started to glow faintly green as Yurugu's power possessed them, leaving them to stare blankly after Gaz as she walked on towards the marketplace.

"Hey, you!" Gaz called out to a man standing next to a collection of racks holding various pieces of meat dangling over a fire-pit. He blinked as he heard her and turned to face her, raising an eyebrow at the sight of a young woman, carrying a large sack and wearing a metal bikini that looked like it cost more than everything in the village put together, approaching him with a cross look on her face.

"May I help you, Miss?" he asked.

"Give me the biggest piece of meat you've got," she demanded. The meat vendor opened his mouth to start haggling a price, but before he could say anything, one of the smoke wisps shot out and hit him, freezing him in place as his eyes took on the green glow.

"Well?" Gaz snapped, after a few moments of the vendor staring blankly, having not noticed the smoke hit him nor the glow now present in his eyes. Her voice snapped him out of his stupor, and he shook his head before looking at her with a strange expression she couldn't quite place.

"Yes, of course, right away!" he said. Turning to the racks, he quickly grabbed ahold of the largest piece of meat on display, a haunch of some kind that was nearly the size of Gaz's head, and held it out to her. Stomach grumbling at the sight, she dropped her bag of loot and snatched the meat out of his hands, hunger making her abandon any decorum and devour it so quickly that it was a miracle her bad luck didn't make her choke on it.

After only a minute, she had finished her meal, then blushed as she realized both that she'd just eaten so childishly messily in front of someone, and that the vendor was still staring at her. Clearing her throat to force away the mild embarrassment, she picked her sack back up and opened it to start sorting through the coins in it.

"Right. So, how much for that?" she asked.

"Oh, there's no charge, Glorious One," the vendor replied earnestly.

"What?" Gaz asked, blinking at both the response and how cheerfully it was delivered.

"Clearly one as magnificent as you must be a goddess come forth from the jungle to bless us all with your presence, and therefore it would be a sin to invoke payment from you," the vendor said, before dropping to his knees and raising his hands above his head, "Praise be to your eminence!"

"Praise be to her!" a chorus of voices called out from behind Gaz. She jumped in surprise and spun around to face the source of the sound, and found to her confusion that the dozens of people she'd passed on the way through the village were now assembled before her, all of them likewise on their knees and hands raised in the air as they all gazed reverently at her.

"…Is this some kind of joke?" Gaz demanded, unable to wrap her head what was happening.

"It's no joke, Glorious One. We all exist to humbly serve your divine majesty," the vendor declared solemnly, "Merely say it, and your wish will be our demand!"

"Oh yeah? Then hit yourself in the face with that rock," Gaz said, pointing to a large rock near the vendor's feet… and then to her shock, the man didn't even hesitate to pick the rock up and smash it into his face hard enough that it shattered, all with a smile that stayed in place even as he collapsed with blood running from his broken nose and with teeth falling out of his mouth.

"Shall we all pelt ourselves with rocks too, Glorious One?" someone called out from the crowd, while Gaz stared slack-jawed at what had just happened.

"Wha…? What is… why would…?" she stuttered, trying to comprehend what she was witnessing.

"Obviously, they're just seeing your natural superiority," Yurugu's voice whispered in her ear, "Dib's not here to turn everyone against you, so things are simply resorting to their natural order."

"Yeah, yeah that's right," Gaz muttered, not noticing that the voice in her head wasn't her own, "I'm awesome, everyone's supposed to do what I say. I just forgot that because of how long it's been since that happened."

"What are your commands, Glorious One?" someone else in the crowd asked. Looking at the crowd gazing adoringly at her, Gaz rubbed her chin in thought, before speaking.

"Go bring me everything valuable in this worthless little town," she ordered, "And tell all the other villagers that they work for me now too, or else!"

"All hail Her Divine Majesty!" the crowd chorused, before getting to their feet and running off to obey Gaz's orders, leaving her smirking as she watched them go.

"Yeah, I could get used to this," she said, eyes starting to glow with Yurugu's green light and a noticeable reverb entering her voice.

On the divine plane, Anansi gulped as he watched Yurugu's influence spreading. This was only going to get worse before it got better…

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

A/N: And there's Part 2 done.

Anyone who's up to date on New Adventures will be aware that I've started shipping Dib/Viera there. In that particular case, it'll be a long-term process, which will probably take a while to properly flesh out (and which I'll probably write poorly, given my prior attempts at shipping, honestly). But here, as per TCC's outline, I'm able to approach the pairing in a whole different light, which is fun.

Anyway, not much else to say beyond that, and to once again remind everyone to take care of themselves out there in these troubling times.

Until next time, please review!