But as she wandered through, her shoes scraping gainst all the grasses, she stopped @ 1 spot, her eye catching something. She bent down, dug through her pack, & then set down a checkered orange blouse.

As she hastened ‘way, looking all round her in search for tree-embedded cameras, she thought, I just have to hope nobody notices. Luckily this block is so littered…

Under said blouse grew in the shade the babe o’ the Pale Soother, a breed o’ healing-sap-excreting tree key to Wasabi Woods’s medical system–& which was mostly decimated now by the invading forces o’ Worcestershire Woods.

“I don’t see it anywhere.” Humberto was ’bout to cry.

“It’s there. Keep looking, lazy,” Pia said ‘hind a wide grin.

But Humberto spun all round the tree 7 times & still saw nothing but the same random patterns o’ bumps & crevices.

“I’m going to tell mom.” Humberto’s face flushed with anger.

Pia threw her head back & blew on her hair. “Fine. Look here.”

She bent down & pointed @ a root. Humberto craned his head to look.

“I don’t see anything.”

“¿Are you blind? It says `Basil'”

“That’s no fair. It’s not fault you can’t write worth crap.”

Before Pia had a chance to reply, Humberto was already running back inside to retrieve his loosened from Pia’s hiding place in the kitchen Basil bottle.

My tooth fairy wish is safe now, he thought.

But he thought wrong…

Every year the Crown held an event wherein your majesty King Crimson would have a strawberry cream pie thrown @ his face as a show o’ humility before our Lord, the Sun, while the rest o’ the year would be spent living luxuriously off the public as usual.

What King Crimson didn’t take into consideration was that this year the baker o’ the pie, Henry Blackstone, was an anarchist & hid a heavy spike ball inside the pie.

& that was whence originated the name o’ the recipe, “Royal Blood Pie”–O yeah, & I guess capitalism might’ve been smashed in some manner after that, too, just for the hell o’ it.

¿& why don’t you want to drive into that truck?

He wasn’t sure whence the voice came–but it came. His ears could clearly hear it.

That didn’t mean he had to listen to it, though.

‘Twas a dry street in a desert sun, though the street wasn’t deserted, but filled with buildings & summer crowds.

Though he didn’t know whence came the voice, he knew what it was. & he knew ’twas safer to ignore it–e’en though he had to admit the itchiness o’ his fingers o’er the steering wheel to swing rightward into that damn truck that ne’er went ‘way.

But he had vital business in which to attend: he had a nephew to save.

The wildlife grouped themselves not by species, nor by family nor order, but by a complex algorithm involving a mix o’ those & nonbiological stats, such as skill classes & name orders.

All o’ this was done by the calculator. They didn’t have time to mentally configure it themselves. They had a war to fight.

They trusted the computer. A’least they said they did. Everyone’s stomach was too queasy to be too skeptical.

Bad things happened to those with too much skepticism.

But as they all marched through the bushes & boughs, hoping their baggy camo suits actually worked, the Worcestershire Military thought secretly ’bout how they just hoped this’d end soon.

Sweat snaked down his veins as the drums pounded through the dark room with flashing circle lights.

¡Question!

The condor is a part o’ this biological family.

He tried to keep his teeth from chattering.

“¿What is this?”

Our smile widened to the size o’ my cheeks. Brows thickened.

Correct.

“¡Ahhhh!”

Our wings spread, & then we dive in o’er him, our shadows locking onto him like an opposite spotlight before our feathers do.

Bum buda bum buda bum buda bum…

¡Tune in ‘gain, flesh men!

The stars were out, though ’twas gray. Windy. A gust.

I held a mug o’ iced cola in my lap, though ’twas cold, though ’twas still summer. I could hear the ice cubes clack as they knocked gainst each other o’er the swinging, surrounded in a dry sea infested with yellow sharp-fin grass–‘cept ’twas gray now. But I remembered from the sunny days that ‘hind that gray was yellow.

Though the air was flooding with wind, I took a deep breath. My hair & the shark fins couldn’t decide whether to sway left or right. I pulled out o’ my jacket pocket a bottle o’ pentobarbital.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymo’…” I murmured.

“¿Are you sure it’s not dire?”

The doctor sat back on the table with her hands spread farther back.

“I’m sure.”

As she said this, her ears buzzed with tiny words after she’d typed onto her smartphone, “¡Stop scraping her throat already!”

“We can’t help it–you don’t see how tight these passages are.”

“¿How far are you? ¿You still haven’t fou–?

“O…”

“¿You see it?”

“I think. It’s rainbow, ¿right?”

“That’s it.”

But then the voices fizzled out to static, shocking the doctor so much that she jumped to her feet.

The patient looked up. “¿What is it?”

The doctor paused, looking @ the patient calmly.

“Nothing for you to worry ’bout.”

Li’l did any o’ them realize the chomp plant plaque that guarded the rainbow pearl in the patient’s throat.

The crowds were still gasping.

¡Close your mouths!

‘Twas the dingiest trick, too: Queen was just ‘head o’ Ace & just ’bout to reach the finish flame wheel when a string so thin you could only see it by the way it glinted in the sunlight stretched just before them. They had no time to steer ‘way from it–& they ran into it with a force so sharp, it chopped off their heads with the sound o’ jingling keys, splattering blood all o’er in puddles.

Henceforth, every year that day the race would start with a ceremony o’ painting the path red in Queen & Ace’s honors.

You probably think I defeated the giant by sneaking a bomb into a cupcake & tricking him into eating it. Don’t lie: we can all see the prompt smiling just below. It’s the obvious outcome, the obvious plot.

But that’s not what happened. A bomb was involved, but it wasn’t what smote the giant. ‘Twas actually by bomb that the giant threatened me, which was why I had to trip him into the volcano through a complex mechanism involving hard wire & his precious golden-egg-laying MP3 on a string.

As for the subject o’ cupcakes: we both were professional cupcake bakers, but I beat him in the last World Cup. He seemed to be unable to tolerate 2nd place & rather than improve his practice, he seemed to take mo’ vicious steps. Such a shame.