This had been a marvelous picnic day! Uuughh had been able to enjoy the great outdoors, something he didn’t get to do on Earth nearly often enough, since a huge purple giant would be recognized or at least cause alarm anywhere in the world. (Until recently, he had spent most of the days of his life so far feeling confined in a US government facility until the Pocket Protectors had walked away from working for the government. The new Pocket Protector HQ had been designed with Uuughh and his needs in mind, so that was better.) Additionally, he had gotten to hang out with his best friends and play games. Now, there was a real fight, not just a training match! Uuughh felt like he was in Heaven.

The most massive member of the Pocket Protectors braced himself for the moment the ferocious yellow creature would emerge from the crater that had been created when Uuughh had slammed it into the ground. On the other side of the crater, blocking any access the creature might have to the rest of the non-flying Pocket Protectors as they retreated to the Qwai Gate was the team’s other heavy hitter brawler type, taller though not more massive than Uuughh, Amizara. Above, Knightshade hovered like a dark shadow in his black shadowstuff armor, his hands raised in a ready position.

In the crater, the creature roared its frustration and fury. It leapt to the side of the crater and began using its claws, equally suitable for both combat and digging, to pull itself up and out of its confinement. Uuughh grinned wide in anticipation. He hoped that Amizara and Knightshade would let him handle most of the work.

Inside, the big man felt restless. While William Savant had made sure that the new Pocket Protectors HQ had a huge outdoor area so that Uuughh would not be confined underground twenty-four hours a day as he had been as a ward of the US government, and that had alleviated the giant’s restlessness for awhile, the relief hadn’t lasted and Uuughh himself didn’t know why. The gentle, kind-hearted goliath had felt more and more like he just wanted to punch something, a lot, repeatedly. This was really starting to bother him, since he knew these feelings were uncharacteristic of himself. He knew that by rights, he should be feeling happier than ever. All of the Pocket Protectors loved him and were his family. He was no longer treated with indifference, scientific detachment, or fear as the government workers at the government facility had sometimes treated him. Uuughh didn’t know what was going on inside his emotional world, but he relished the chance to finally brawl with something.

Uuughh stepped up to the edge of the crater to meet the flower creature as it reached the top. Just as the two behemoths were about to begin an exchange of blows, Uuughh saw the creature’s eyes roll back into its head, before Uuughh could have the satisfaction of landing a hit. Uuughh had been looking into the creature’s eyes at that moment. It seemed like someone had just flipped a lightswitch off in the creature’s head. The beast’s whole body fell backwards right back down the distance to the bottom of the crater that the creature had just ascended a moment before, hitting the bottom with enough force to stir up a small dust cloud down there.

Uuughh was incredibly disappointed that the battle would apparently not continue. As he heard the characteristic crackling roar of the activation of a Qwai Gate, he looked up. Amizara, swords out, was still guarding the retreat of the others through the Gate. Knightshade above, ascended higher to watch the horizon for threats and to take one last look around before they left. Suddenly, in a blur Velocity Girl was beside Uuughh, having carried William along with her. The team’s brain trust member had brought one of his briefcase field analysis kits with him.

William smiled in the kind, gentle way he always used with Uuughh. William always made Uuughh feel good. All of the Pocket Protectors did. In William’s case, William always seemed, in his interactions with Uuughh, not like a patronizing parent or adult authority figure, but rather like a stable and friendly older sibling, just a little bit older, but not too much older, than Uughh’s own childlike mentality.

“Can you take me down there, please?” Will asked. “You can guard me in case it wakes up.”

“Sure.”

Uuughh scooped up Will in one enormous arm and lowered the two of them into the crater. At the bottom, the creature was motionless. Will opened his analysis kit and got to work. He even managed to find some needles that would pierce the creatures tough flesh to draw fluid samples from the beast. These samples were deposited in a couple of portable instruments from within the briefcase. While they waited briefly for the readings to finalize, Uuughh suppressed a shudder, remembering all the lab tests that had been run on him during his childhood in the government facility.

“It looks like this creature’s own body shut itself down as a metabolic failsafe,” Will concluded as he packed up his analysis kit and reached for Uuughh to scoop him up again. “On Earth, predators like cheetahs instinctively know, when they are chasing antelope, at what distance to stop running if they have failed to catch their prey by then. If they were to continue to run after their prey past that point, their bodies would expend more energy than would be returned by eating the antelope. It looks like this creature woke from a hibernation with a biological need to feed immediately. Since it didn’t, it’s fallen into a torpid state until some future stimulus might wake it up again.”

“Torpid?” Uuughh was confused.

“You know what people with low blood sugar are like when they don’t eat? This creature needed to eat right away when it woke up. Since it didn’t, its body crashed.”

“Oohhhh,” Uuughh mused. “Well, we could have given it a sandwich from the picnic food if it hadn’t been so mean. That’s what we do for people who have low blood sugar on Earth.”

William smiled. “It’s a predator, buddy. I don’t think it would have appreciated a peanut butter sandwich.”

In one leap, Uuughh got the two of them out of the crater. In a few more leaps, they were next to the Qwai Gate, ready to go through, Amizara standing there, ready to be the last one after them.

As Uuughh stepped through, returning to Earth, he commented, “Well then, it could have been a ham sandwich. I would have shared.”