The jungle was on fire. Not smoldering, not sparking — fucking burning.

“Ohshitohshitohshitohshit,” Russell panted, purple leggings swishing, flip-flops slapping the ground with a panicked rhythm. His eyes were wide, darting around like a kid who’d just stuffed a lit cherry bomb in the neighbor’s mailbox. He glanced a quick look back as he ran.

The jungle wasn’t just burning; it was exploding. What started as a ground fire had become a full-blown apocalypse — trees toppling in clouds of ember, sparks shooting like bottle rockets, smoke rising with a fury. And the whole thing never stopped chasing after Russell.

“Look at what you did!” Tumzy shouted through painted lips. Tucked into the crook of Russell’s elbow like a panda-shaped football, Tumzy kept yelling, her voice cutting through the chaos as Russell ran. “Big time fire guy, you crazy! Big big crazy!”

“Shut up, you didn’t see shit,” he said through a whispered pant. Russell might’ve been the reason this all started — key word, might — but as he sprinted away from the inferno, one thing was crystal clear: if he made it out of this alive, he wasn’t paying for a damn thing. He still had a lawsuit to file. And if anyone deserved the blame, it was goddamn Jerry Riggs!

“Run faster, faster, crazy guy!” Tumzy cheered, her painted grin beaming up at him.

No shit, I have to run. Thanks for the survival tip.

“Yo!” Russell yelled, ignoring her. “YOOOO!” His voice cracked, raw and desperate, half a plea for help, half a long-shot Hail Mary. Maybe, just maybe, Shoji — the island’s mythical streaker — would hear him and swoop in to save the day. Shoji, who knew of a boat somewhere on this hellhole. His boat.

Russell needed him. Which meant he needed to keep running.

So further he ran, and further fucking still. Ahead of him, the jungle offered no path, just a green labyrinth that forced him to make quick, desperate decisions on the fly. Squeeze through here, hop over that, duck under whatever was ready to take his head off. It was his own scuffed version of an endless runner game, where only a high score meant he got to stay alive. It wasn’t easy, especially not for an out-of-shape guy in furry leggings and stolen flip-flops. As hard as he pressed himself, the fire was always at his back. It grew quicker, bigger, meaner, and Russell, with every step, only got slower.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the flames spreading wider, unfurling like a noose so it could cinch tight around him. He needed something, anything, to keep going. Otherwise, he was cooked.

“Drinking up, water slut!” Tumzy’s voice chimed in, the words echoing the busted wisdom painted on her belly. Finally, some advice worth listening to.

“Come on, come on!” he screamed, unscrewing Tumzy’s top as he ran. He slammed the opening against his mouth, water rushing down his throat, soaking his beard, his chest. He probably quenched the dirt more than his own thirst, but it was enough. Or so he hoped.

Russell trudged on through the wilderness, yanking his leggings high to give his feet some room to move. At some point, it felt like he’d leveled up in his jungle running game because the obstacles were getting nastier. Duck under the vines that look like snakes, dodge this falling tree, dive headfirst through the massive spider web because, honestly, what else could he do? No matter how fast or clever he thought he was, the flames kept closing in.

“Don’t get fired!” he yelled at himself. It was a mantra that had kept him going through countless summer days, cooking alive inside one mascot suit or another, knowing full well that if he passed out, they’d can him and replace him before he even hit the ground. It worked back then, and it was working now, though “fired” had taken on a much more literal meaning.

Fueled by that mindset, Tumzy’s cheery one-liners, and a little water sloshing around in his gut, he gradually gained some distance from the flames — not a lot, but enough to grab a lungful of air, though even that was half smoke and all bad news. The fucking smoke, man, thicker by the second, closing in like a suffocating fog. And as his visibility began to dwindle, the sounds of the jungle became louder. Burning or not, it was still alive. And it was pissed.

Birds shrieked high above, monkeys howled like little demons, and somewhere out there, squealing boars bulldozed through their burning turf. He couldn’t see any of it — the smoke was thickening by the second, and stopping wasn’t an option. No time to think, no room for mistakes — just keep moving, or die.

Die. The word clung to him like the smoke in his lungs. He’d exposed the Gamemaster’s game, called out the actors, survived the early trials. But this fire? This wasn’t part of the script. This was all on him. The inferno didn’t care if he was the so-called “main character.” And for all the chaos the Gamemaster could cook up, even they might not be able to save him from his own colossal fuck-up. No grand plan, no hidden lesson — just Russell and his knack for destruction. If this firestorm killed him, he’d have no one to blame but himself. And Jerry Riggs.

But through the choking haze of smoke, as he ran, a flicker of hope caught his eye — a glint of gold off to his right. Not far, just off the never-ending obstacle course he was running. He tracked it as he moved, his legs never slowing.

Gold. He’d seen that color only once today, and now, in the middle of all this chaos, here it was again. The crab. That same one-clawed menace, leading his loyal posse up the trunk of a tree. They climbed steadily, moving up to the canopy above, escaping the inferno raging below. Everything else blurred — smoke, flames, the pounding of his own pulse — but there was no mistaking who he saw.

“Crotch Gob—” Russell tried to call out, but the words were slammed back down his throat.

THUNK! PUH! WHAM!

The low-hanging branch hit him square across the chest, knocking him flat on his ass at the speed of a rubberband coming to rest. Tumzy went flying, and Russell slammed into the dirt, the breath blasted out of him.

Flat on his back, staring up at the canopy, he wheezed out the only thing he could manage.

“FUFUUFFFCCK!”

Like an upturned turtle, Russell flailed to turn over. But gravity had other ideas, pinning him deeper into the dirt. He tried to breathe, tried to suck in air, but his lungs were rebooting. Eyes bulging, helpless, he stared up at the canopy, where shadows darted between the dancing branches — critters of all sorts fleeing the flames. Beyond the leafy ceiling, the dusk sky bled through in patches, streaked with something darker, something mean. Russell could’ve sworn he heard a low rumble, something too big, too angry to be any animal.

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“Tumzaaahhh,” Russell wheezed, his voice barely there. He groped around blindly, fumbling for Tumzy in the dirt.

Tumzy, in her usual infuriating way, picked the worst possible time to shut up. Russell wasn’t sure if that was some cryptic signal he was too oxygen-starved to grasp. Was he safe? Or was this it? Was the game finally over, the credits about to roll? The fire roared closer, heat pressing against his hand as he clawed at the dirt, groping for his panda pal. Embers drifted in the air around him, glowing red and slow, not in any hurry but clear with their message: we’re comin, baby.

Fuck that. If he was going to die, it wouldn’t be on his back like some helpless idiot. Gritting his teeth, Russell forced every muscle he had to listen, rolling himself over despite the cramps screaming at him to stop. He landed on his stomach like a beached seal, wheezing and spent.

Once his head stopped spinning, Tumzy came into focus. She wasn’t far. With not a breath to spare, he army-crawled through the dirt and scooped her up. If he’d had air in his lungs, he’d have chewed her out for going silent on him now of all times. But there wasn’t any air, just that familiar fire in his throat, and a straight view of the Crotch Goblin’s tree dead ahead.

Russell could still see him, just barely — the golden bastard, leading his army of red and orange crabs higher into the branches, disappearing into the thick, drooping leaves, each one the size of a surfboard. They spread out like a giant’s umbrella, protecting the crabs from the flames below — at least for now. Maybe the Crotch Goblin really did know something that Russell didn’t, just like he’d suspected way back on the beach. It wasn’t too late to rejoin their caravan. Hell, he could climb too. He’d scaled more fences than most in his day, breaking into places or out of them, depending on how the night before had ended.

He dragged himself toward the tree, not outrunning the fire anymore, just crawling alongside it as it spread. The world around him was so loud — deafening — he couldn’t even hear his own coughing. The heat bore down on him, every movement harder than the last. By the time he reached the tree’s massive base, the fire was licking at its doorstep.

“G-get… up,” he said to himself, each word broken by spastic, shallow breaths.

He tried, and tried again, but he simply couldn’t. His breath still hadn’t caught up with him, and the truth hit like a frying pan to the back of his head: climbing wasn’t happening. His lungs were shot, his strength gone.

Maybe if he had a little more POWER. Maybe if he had more NERVE. Maybe if he hadn’t smoked so many damn cigarettes all his life.

But he didn’t. And he had.

This was it. In the smoldering aftermath, the Gamemaster would find him here — Russell Murphy, the “main character”, curled up at the base of a blackened tree, clutching the melted remains of a panda water bottle. It’d make for one hell of an obituary.

He slid back against the trunk, pulling Tumzy close to his chest. Together, they watched the wall of flames roll in. In what he figured would be his final act of defiance, Russell shot his arm out and raised a middle finger to the fire.

“Kiss… my… ASS!” he rasped, as the inferno opened its whipping arms to embrace him.

Then something cold smacked his outstretched arm — a drop of water from the canopy above. Tiny, but enough to jolt him. Startled, he sucked in his first full gasp of air since hitting the dirt. Before he could process it, another drop hit. Then another.

At the same time, the flames seemed to stutter, hesitating to come any closer.

The rain started slow. Beneath the sanctuary of the tree’s broad leaves, Russell only caught a few meager drops of what grew into a full-on deluge. Water poured through the canopy, crashing down all around him. It drummed against the leaves, Tumzy’s plastic body, and the screen of his device, building into a chaotic, pounding rhythm that filled the jungle.

With Tumzy on his lap, Russell sat and watched as the rain hammered down, swelling into a relentless downpour. The water attacked from the heavens above, beating the fire back until the inferno grew no further. Here and there, the flames still burned, stubborn as hell, but they were boxed in now, losing ground to the rain.

Russell, legs like noodles and head pounding, leaned his back harder into the trunk. He sucked in a shallow breath, then managed a faint, shaky smile. Somehow, he was alive.

----------------------------------------

The heavy rains had come fast, did their job, and moved on, leaving nothing but a light drizzle to duke it out with the remaining flames. Before the rain disappeared completely, Russell rolled out from under the tree and let it hit him full on, washing over him like a second chance. It sank deeper than just his skin — body and soul, he felt it pull him back into action. Lying there on the soaked, smoldering jungle floor, he finally took his first full breath in what felt like hours. Then, with legs wobbling like a newborn calf, Russell got to his feet for a better look.

The jungle around him was wrecked. Fires had carved wide scars through the once-dense green, leaving wide, smoldering gaps littered with the charred corpses of fallen trees. Smoke clung to the air, thick but dying. The sun was gone now, but the jungle was aglow with patches of flickering flames and glimmering embers, lit up like the world’s worst red-light district.

Russell leaned against a half-burned tree, chest heaving as he pieced together the last few minutes of chaos. It was mostly a blur of running, ducking, and a lot of swearing. The end result? A felony-level case of arson. He didn’t know much about acreage, but if he did, he’d know the amount of damage here would’ve made Smokey the Bear lose his mind and start eating children. Forget lumber mills and urban sprawl; all it took was Russell, a piece of flint, and some dry leaves to show what real deforestation looked like. Jesus.

“Remember,” he muttered to Tumzy, giving her a little pat. “You didn’t see shit.”

Hopefully, all of the Gamemaster’s hidden cameras had melted in the fire, leaving no evidence to connect him to any of this. No videos, no proof. As for witnesses, the only one he could think of was the Crotch Goblin, not that he would be saying much. He was a crab, not a rat.

He looked back on the Crotch Goblin’s tree, taking it all in from a few paces back.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

The tree was untouched — maybe scorched here and there, but healthy as could be. The leaves had pushed the rain down around itself, sealing itself off from the burning scourge. The flames hadn’t stopped at the tree, they’d gone around it, burning for another twenty yards before the rains launched its counter-offensive. Russell wouldn’t have made it another twenty yards. The tree had saved him. More specifically, Crotch Goblin had saved him.

“Thanks dude,” Russell called up into the tree, hoping his old rival was up there. “You still tried to pinch my dick off, but this goes a long way. Just like my dick.”

A few hours ago, when dehydration was doing the thinking for him, he’d convinced himself those crabs were the key to his salvation. And they had been, just not by means of a boat. He could only hope the Crotch Goblin and his crew didn’t cook inside their shells. Sure, a crab boil would’ve been nice, but cooking the Crotch Goblin? No way. That wasn’t how this story ended. If anything, the evidence suggested the one-clawed fucker didn’t want Russell cooked either. They’d settle things one day, like true warriors — probably in hell.

He looked out again at the mess he’d made. Steam rose in twisting coils from the soaked jungle floor, the ghosts of fallen trees drifting off to whatever passed for the jungle’s afterlife. The birds were silent, the rest of the animals too, leaving an eerie quiet over the place. A smoking graveyard, littered with steaming, leafy remains. The upside to burning down half a jungle is that it was sure to get noticed. What’s an arsonist if not an attention seeker? If Shoji was out there, no way he’d missed this.

“Hellooo!” Russell shouted, his voice still raw. “Shojiiii!”

He called out a few more times before he noticed something moving in the charred wastes.

Through the red haze of smoldering fires, a figure appeared, deep in the distance, moving slow through the wreckage, wrapped in smoke and steam. The flicker of the flames made it hard to pin down its shape, a shadowy form that refused to come into focus. But there was someone there — no doubt. Shoji. It had to be.

The figure stopped, standing still among the glowing embers like it was surveying the destruction, maybe searching for something. Russell waved, his arms flailing as he called out again.

“Yo! Shoji! Over here!”

No response, but the figure was looking at him — he could feel it. Russell waved harder, throwing on a big, goofy grin. If Shoji was worried that Russell held a grudge over the rock-throwing incident, he wanted to make it clear that was all water under the bridge. Bygones, and all that shit. Let’s just get to that boat and get the fuck outta here.

“Hey, buddy!” Russell called, his voice turning forced and friendly, bordering on fake.

The figure moved, cautious but deliberate, each step pushing through the smoke like ghastly curtains being drawn back. And with every step, Russell’s grin shrank a little more, his enthusiastic wave slowing until his arm just hung there frozen in the air. Waving at this thing suddenly felt like the dumbest move he’d ever made — and this was a man who just burned down half a jungle.

The figure wasn’t Shoji. Not even close.

“Buzz?” Russell called out, voice faltering. But he knew it wasn’t Buzz either. Buzz was “big” in the polite way — code for someone who needed to lose a few pounds. This thing was big in a way that made “big” feel inadequate. A linebacker? A lumberjack? No. Bigger. Each step made its body sway, rocking back and forth, like it was so stacked, it could barely keep itself upright.

As it broke through the last of the smoke, it stopped, standing about a basketball court away. That’s when Russell got the full picture. Black hair, matted and thick, a hulking body of muscle.

“Oh, shit,” Russell breathed, clutching Tumzy tight.

He was staring at a gorilla, and the gorilla was staring right back at him. Framed by the smoke and dying flames, it looked like a beast out of hell, coming to drag Russell down to the depths. And with arms like those, massive cannons hung low, pulsing with raw power, it could drag him anywhere it damn well pleased. They slammed into the embers as the beast brought itself onto all-fours.

“Are you a good boy?” Russell asked with the fear of God in his voice.

The gorilla roared, then charged.