C'thulhu paused his rummaging around in the material plane. There was another infestation of fleshy beings. They were even wailing the old sports chant.  “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh C'thulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”  The Great Old One didn’t understand why they did that, sure he had been nostalgic for the old team for a while, but everyone grows up.  

The Elder God regarded the newest fans narrowly, these things couldn’t possibly have ever witnessed a round of gtha’fgan, he wondered if they even understood how a mglw’nafh was scored. 

The Atlanteans who had amused C'thulhu and Dagon with gtha’fgan had ceased to be entertaining and been destroyed millennia ago, if he remembered correctly.  The things doing the chanting now weren’t even related to that race, probably weren’t even the same species. 

C'thulhu considered squashing this infestation as he had the previous one that had chanted at him, and considered the material sphere to see how much effort it would take.  After a timeless moment of observation he was appalled. 

C'thulhu’s tendrils writhed in disgust.  The material sphere had been useful, created to as a way to generate useful substances that did better if they had corporeal existence.  However C'thulhu had gotten into gardening for a while and had used one of the worlds to grow plants.  It had been soothing, a fun hobby.  Only the plants had gotten out of balance, C'thulhu had been entertained by the continent-spanning super fires, but had eventually realized that the fires would probably destroy his nice little garden if he didn’t so something to sequester all that free oxygen the plants were emitting. 

After that realization C'thulhu had asked Dagon for some help, and the sibling of the Dread One had created animals to use up the oxygen than had been building up to problematic levels.  To C'thulhu’s surprise the animals had made the garden even more interesting, and he’d had a good time for a while playing with the creatures, and seeing what he could evolve them to do. 

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After a while however he’d lost interest and gotten caught up in other things.  C'thulhu really hadn’t been back to the material plan to check on things very often lately, but in the last eon or so the animals had gotten out of hand and were getting irritating.

The things seemed to have developed something vaguely like sentience, not real multi-plane-spanning cognition, but an almost functional facsimile thereof.  The Atlanteans had actually been sort of fun, and C'thulhu had been willing to try to explain gtha’fgan to them and even sponsor their attempt at a team, but this was ridiculous.  Now it seemed like every time he looked into the physical world the weird monkeys were chanting at him. 

That had been mildly annoying, but it seemed that since the last time C'thulhu had looked in the little creatures had taken over, and serious messed with his garden.  Just because he’d been neglecting it didn’t mean that they could go and change it to their liking. 

C'thulhu wondered if maybe it was time to fumigate the whole planet, get the flesh levels down to something more tolerable. . . or maybe get rid of all of the animals entirely.

This time it seemed like in addition to making major structural changes to the layout of the garden, the apes had even dug into the petrochemicals it had taken C'thulhu ages to build up.

The Great Old One looked around a little more.  It was definitely time to do something about the flesh infestation.  He’d pruned them back a few times before, but the problem was that if he left any, they just came back again.  If he got rid of them all he’d have to go back to pruning the garden himself. . . but the super fires had actually been fun. 

C'thulhu settled his tendrils, he knew that Dagon was weirdly attached to some of the flesh things, they’d have to discuss that, but it was still C'thulhu’s garden after all. 

He left the material plane making plans.  C'thulhu wouldn’t be back right away, but when he had a century or so he was going to deal with the hairless monkeys for good.  If he had to get rid of every animal with more than one cell again, that would be fine. 

C'thulhu’s wings twitched, and he thought in the direction of the chanting ring of apes, “Enjoy your time, what is left of it.”

The Elder God slid away from the material plan temporarily to consult with his siblings.  Ph’nglui mglw’nafh, indeed.