Let me know in a review what you thought! What do you think will happen next? I crave them reviews and my heart jumps into my throat every time I get one :D

Oh, BTW. This whole story is told from Danny's POV.

After the War of the Cryptids (the cryptid uprising I mentioned earlier), the Saturdays relocated to Mount Rushmore. While they were rounding up all the misplaced cryptids the war caused, Sanctum came along and turned it into Zone 1. Current day Zone 2 was a 5-mile radius around some ancient Aztec Temple. Given that Amity Park's was only a month ago, I doubted there'd been more than 4 Zone Shifts. Yeah, they gave the actual remodeling a term, too. Don't ask me why.

Zak laid down next to me on his bed, arms up and behind his head. I envied how relaxed he looked, like he had nothing dragging him down, no one or no thing he wished would just disappear.

He took a look at my phone. "Wow, 257 replays in the last month? You must really like that song. Kinda a weird name, if you asked me."

"Huh? Yeah." I'd only clearly heard the last part of what he said, but my brain filled the rest in after I slid my headphones down to my neck.

On my phone screen was a plain black square for album art, and a single word as the title. Memory.

"So, were you always a chimera?"

I figured I'd oblige to Zak's question. Maybe talking about it would help me sort this whole mess. "I had an accident with a ghost portal, and I woke up a ghost. I didn't have any sort of control over my powers, and they just kinda started springing up, turning me invisible without warning, etcetera. I didn't even think I was human anymore until I eventually changed back."

"Dude, that's awesome! I wish I could turn invisible! By invisible, do you mean pass through walls invisible, or camouflage invisible?"

How can you be so cheerful all the time? "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"You ask too many questions. Ask away, although I may choose not to answer."

Why you… "How can you be so cheerful all the time? I'm assuming you're not the stereotypical high schooler, being a Secret Scientist, and all."

I felt Zak's mood shift from joy to sorrow, and I wished I could've taken the question back.

He got up and sat at the edge of the bed kinda like Jazz did every morning, except Zak turned his face out of sight. "You wouldn't know because you haven't seen my powers, but I'm actually half-cryptid. There's the part of me that's Zak, and then there's the part that's the first ever dragon: Kur. Kur was a cryptid who could control other cryptids, and rampaged across the world for years without opposition. Kur was thought to be dead, until we found out I was Kur."

"How'd you find out," I asked.

"About my powers?"

I didn't care about how he'd found out about his powers, but I let him keep talking. It was the least I could do after making him sit through my explanation.

"We were out a mission investigating Dawuwaqa, the Fijian shark god. We found it, and it tried to eat Fisk. I got angry, and my powers awakened and calmed the shark down. We didn't know I was Kur until a year ago, though, when a Kur detecting artifact glowed in my presence."

Sam and Tucker tried to understand what it was like to live in my world, but never fully could. They weren't half-monster: half the very thing their parents despised. No one was. No one could relate to me. Or so we thought, until now.

"I'm surprised that big of a burden hasn't crushed you, yet." I realized I was being kind of a jerk, but I wasn't having the best of days, and wasn't really thinking things through.

"I used to be terrified of what I could do. Almost everyone, including me, thought I was destined for great evil. After we won the War, I thought I lost my powers, and I was overjoyed. A few months later, they came back, and it was hell all over again."

He took in another breath and answered my earlier question. "I'm always upbeat because of the seriousness. It helps me forget how serious it actually is. It makes me feel better. When you joke about it, you don't panic, you make less mistakes, and when the time comes, you're able to do what you have to do."

I guess that's kinda what I've been doing all along with the puns. Now that I think about it, that was my defense mechanism, stopping me from acknowledging that I was fighting for my life. Then again, my opponents were the Box Ghost, or Johnny 13. "That's a load of bull."

Finally, Zak turned his face towards me, and I saw the smile I was secretly hoping was there all along. "Yeah, I thought you'd say that. Fly me up to the top floor."

I was tired of competing with Zak, so I just did as he said. My eyes flashed green, I grabbed him by his armpits, and flew up towards the ceiling. Zak seemed a little tense, which was understandable, since this was probably his first time flying through solid objects. I know I was when I first got my powers.