"Sir?" Nothing but silence. "Your Excellency?" Zektor tried nudging him a little harder; still nothing. "Ehm, Overlord?"

-Go away; I'm sleeping.-

With an inarticulate noise of surprise, which to Zektor's chagrin sounded like a demented cross between a grunt and a sneeze, the Hyper Zoanoid leapt back from the bed like he'd just been burned. It wasn't that the Ninth Zoalord had just used telepathy to speak to him; hell, he'd gotten comfortable with the concept after so long. That wasn't the reason that Zektor was so freaked.

No, the reason that Zektor was freaking out was because the voice in his head – Lord Mirabilis' telepathic voice, there was no doubt about it – had sounded young. Really young, like maybe six or seven. But that couldn't be right, since the guy in the bed in front of him was obviously older than twenty-five. That was just weird. Maybe he'd been imagining things. Zektor decided to hope for that.

"Your Excellency, it's morning, you know. Shouldn't you be up by now?"

-Go away, stupid-head! Call my dad or something; I wanna sleep!-

Physically shutting his gaping mouth with his left hand, Zektor stared at the Zoalord. Lord Mirabilis. Chronos Africa's new Overlord and Zoalord overseer, was either a really good actor, a certifiable eccentric, or… the last option was too weird to even think about. Touching Lord Mirabilis' upturned right shoulder again, Zektor shook him gently.

The next thing he knew, Zektor felt a soft kind of impact on his head. Catching sight of Lord Mirabilis' right hand, Zektor blinked. I just got beaned… with a plush toy?! Sure enough, there was a stuffed tiger – the very same old and worn plush tiger that he'd deposited on the guy's nightstand only last night, in fact – clutched in Lord Mirabilis' right hand. Watching as the still mostly asleep Chronos Overlord rolled onto his other side and pulled the blankets up over himself again, Zektor blinked.

Still severely freaked out by the Lord Mirabilis' childlike voice and manner – this level of quirkiness wasn't something the Hyper Zoanoid had been prepared to deal with at all – he took a deep breath to fortify himself. Quirky or not, Lord Mirabilis was supposed to be up and working by now. Whatever else Zektor's job might entail from this point forward, it looked like the first thing he'd have to do was to get Lord Mirabilis up and dressed.

The Zoalord had a fair bit of work ahead if he was going to whip the humans in the base into shape after the recent change in management. The Zoanoids would be loyal to him, as he was their new commanding Zoalord, after all, but the humans might need a little… persuasion. Hell, humans always needed that bit of extra working-over before they'd decide to follow a new guy, especially in the kind of management-level position that Lord Mirabilis was going to be in.

So, the first order of business was to get the Zoalord out of bed and cleaned up. Then he could get dressed in the new uniform that had been shipped out to the Genesis Foundation just for him. The one in the box on top of the stack, since the one on the bottom contained his battle uniform, and that thing was reserved for meetings with the other Zoalords. All of these things would have to wait until Zektor actually got the guy out of bed, though, and something told Zektor that that would take some time.

"Hey, not that I want to be a bother or anything," Zektor said, fully aware of this guy's power to blow him across the room with a single thought. Well, that and… other, less pleasant things. "I think you should be getting up now."

That little gem of wisdom nearly got Zektor smacked on the head by the Zoalord's little plush toy again, but this time the Hyper Zoanoid was fast enough to avoid it. He was also fast enough to grab the Zoalord's wrist. Keeping his grip when Lord Mirabilis was trying to fight him off, or at least smacking him with that damned plush toy of his, was a different story.

"Guys! I could really use some help in here!" Zektor shouted.

Lord Mirabilis' office was close enough to his room that the other members of Team Five wouldn't have that much trouble hearing him, and Zektor just hoped they'd come quickly. The Zoalord had opened his eyes, but that only seemed to be to help him aim better since he was still beating Zektor about the head and shoulders with that goddamned toy. The other guys were inside the room just as Zektor had started seriously considering the merits of bodily tackling the Zoalord and wrestling him out of bed.

It would have made him feel a lot better—up until Lord Mirabilis inevitably splattered him across one or more of the walls. And maybe some of the ceiling, too, depending on just how pissed he was. And Zektor happened to like living, thanks, and he wanted to continue doing so for as long as he could, so that meant no body slamming his new Zoalord and dragging him out of bed no matter how annoying it was to deal with him right now.

Once the other members of Team Five had come into the room, Zektor breathed a sigh of sheer relief. They would at least be able to give him something to distract Lord Mirabilis with while he tried to get that plush toy away from him, or else talk some sense into the Zoalord.

"Zektor? Hey, you sounded really… What the hell's he doing?" Gaster asked, stopped short by the sight of Zektor and Lord Mirabilis wrestling over a stuffed toy.

"Trying to hit me over the head with a stuffed tiger," Zektor grumbled. "Can you guys stop gawking and help me?"

"Uh, sure," Darzerb said, voice wobbling as he obviously worked to suppress chuckles. "We'll be right with you, boss."

Zektor shot an annoyed look at the largest of his teammates. "If you think this is so funny, then why don't you get over here and help me, rhino-butt? Then you'll get some real laughs!" The fact that Lord Mirabilis had started laughing wasn't lost on him, and that only pissed Zektor off more.

"Keep your pants on, boss-bug. I'll give you a hand," Darzerb said, still fighting chuckles.

Lord Mirabilis wasn't even bothering to do that much, and to top it off he was laughing outright, which was starting to annoy Zektor less when he realized that the Zoalord wouldn't be hitting him with that plush toy if he was kept busy laughing. So Zektor decided to take the opportunity that the Zoalord had unintentionally presented him with. Grabbing the little plush toy out of Lord Mirabilis' slackened grip, Zektor backed away just as Lord Mirabilis' head turned in his direction.

"Hey, you give that back!" the Zoalord shouted, obviously incensed.

"Not until you promise not to hit me with it anymore," Zektor said, folding his arms and knowing full well that Lord Mirabilis would be able to make him give it back with a single thought.

Though the Zoalord didn't seem inclined to do that, which surprised Zektor since he'd thought that would be the first thing Lord Mirabilis would do, given how fond he seemed to be of that thing. Lord Mirabilis was leveling a particularly scathing glare at him, though, which might mean that the Zoalord didn't think it was worth the trouble of getting into Zektor's head and making him give up the toy. Or it might have meant something else. What that something else was, though, Zektor wasn't really sure.

"Hey," Zektor heard Darzerb say, leaning in toward the bed that Lord Mirabilis still hadn't gotten out of. "Why don't you get up, and then we can go have some breakfast? I'll even make waffles."

Zektor was just about to roll his eyes and tell Darzerb that he was being a moron – offering waffles to get a Zoalord out of bed had to be the dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas – when Lord Mirabilis' eyes lit up and he seemed to forget that Zektor even existed.

"Really? You mean it?"

"Yeah, sound good?" Darzerb asked, and Zektor had to work to keep himself from gawking.

"Yeah! It sounds great!"

Lord Mirabilis looked – and sounded – really enthused by the idea, leaving Zektor to wonder just when he'd ended up in the zone of Things That Did Not Make Sense. Lord Mirabilis was the Ninth Zoalord, and while that was one of the lower ranks, the guy was still one of the Chronos Overlords. Chronos Overlords did not get so excited over something so mundane as waffles. So why was Lord Mirabilis, who was a Chronos Overlord, hopping out of bed like someone had just given him a shot of adrenaline?

And, why the hell was their new Zoalord hugging Darzerb's arm?! From the look on his face, Darzerb wasn't any less confused by Lord Mirabilis' actions than Zektor himself, which oddly enough made the leader of Team Five feel a bit better about his situation. At least he wasn't the only one getting confused and slightly freaked out by their new Zoalord's bizarre antics. Lord Mirabilis didn't seem to care that every member of Team Five was currently staring at him as if he had just sprouted various new limbs. In that way, he was just like any other Zoalord.