Until the jungle suddenly disappeared and turned into a blazing desert. The campy-dino-critter, not used to living within a story made up by such cracked pots, decided it had had enough of all this strangeness and downright silliness that it promptly wrote itself out of existence. Shan and the Big Giant Head paused for a moment to reflect.

The moment lasted for about three days. At the end of the massive time of reflection they realized that the story they were living in was more than a little off based.
"What we need" Shan said, "is a decent sort of plot or goal or something."
"True, true." Said the Big Giant Head.
"Because without some overarching goal I don't think we're going to have a good time."
"Well, dear Shan." Said the head. "I think there might be a problem with that."
"Oh?"
"Yes, you see, your character can't really handle any sort of true goal or quest. The problem is that your character is so painfully impotent that the last few sentences you just spoke are way above your ability. You should never have been able to make such coherent thoughts."
"Ah, but you are forgetting our previous three days of reflection. I saved every scrap of coherency from the last three days and am using them now."
"Ah, interesting. How long will they last?" Asked the head.
"Just another minute or two, which is why it is so important to get a simple, decent quest now, before the authors decide to do something silly to us again."
"Are you such silly isn't the best way to go?" Asked the head.
"I've been silly all my existence. I just wonder what it would be like to be...other than silly...or..."
"What's wrong?"
Shan paused for a full minute. "Thoughts...is...slow..." He sputtered.
The head realized at this point that Shan's momentarily out-of-character experience was at an end. He then designated himself the head head and headed into the desert.

Dunes rose and fell over the horizon like waves on a mighty, yellow sea. The sun was hot and high in the sky, a burning torch of painful fire among a cool lake of blue. Shan vomited.

The authors sat for a long while in a defensive position, erasers in hand, until one of them realized that the addition of a gnat might solve the entire problem. He inserted the gnat on the western hemisphere of the Giant Head (which should probably be known simply as GH, or Big G, or something of that ilk) and gave it the dual personality of a distraught pterodactyl who has just learned all of her young were killed and a Camptosaurus who was responsible for this killing. No joke here folks, look it up on wikipedia. The Camptosaurus exists! I believe it was camping out under a massive rock spire, until mom went for her usual morning flight. Beware the Camptosaurus! In any case, this gnat (who actually has a bone structure similar to the Camptosaurus and the flighty desires of a pterodactyl) began leaping about on the world which was Big G's head. Indeed Campy was really irritating the two characters of this beloved story to such a point that they decided it would be best for Shan to jump on Big G's head, and hunt him with the plunger. Shan chased Campy for an hour until...

As anyone with a disproportionately large head knows, someone who laughs at your large melon is a real pain in the neck (pun intended). So this massive head with a tiny stalk of a body was quickly filled with rage. He tried to rush up to Shan and smack him in the face, but his tiny arms couldn't reach him. He tried kicking, but it had the same effect. Shan watched all this and laughed all the louder. Finally the Big Giant Head (for that was his name) got an idea that actually could cause some damage. He pulled about a pound of phlegm from the back of his throat and spat on Shan.

Shan was struck and stuck to the ground. The mucusy goo acted as an adhesive and itched horribly. It was pretty gross.
"Oh big giant head man!" He called out. "Your forgiveness I implore! It wasn't my fault about the bleach!"
"I saw you open the bottle and pour it out!" Said the angry head. "Who's fault could it have been if not yours?"
"It was the authors, I swear it. I never wanted to do that. I think that the uncreative fool couldn't think of anything that actually fit with my character so he didn't bother thinking about it at all and made me dump the bleach and left the mess to the next author. I swear I didn't mean to."
"Who are these authors you speak of?" Asked the head.
"Men, three men who delight in tormenting me. I know not where they come from nor why they pull my strings, but they are the source of all my ailments and struggles in life. Cursed authors!" Shan spat.
"My, my, my." Said the head. "This is a sad story of yours. These author-folks certainly sound like villains. We should put a stop to their madness before you pour more bleach on someone."
"So take my hand, dear head, and travel with me. Together we will find the three authors and kick their combined asses."

The moment he dumped the liquid however, Shan recoiled in horror. What on earth was he doing? Everybody knows that the eye is one of the more sensitive places on the body and to pour an entire bottle of corrosive liquid on one could only lead to more severe consequences.

And sure enough, before Shan could even eek out an apology to the eye, a soul-obliterating roar erupted from the ground under his feet. The ground began to shake and tremble and Shan did the only thing that one could do under the circumstance, namely, run in wild circles while waving his plunger towards the heavens, hoping against hope that some distant god would see him and grant him the ability to wield the forces of lighting.

But it turns out that the lighting god was out running an errand at that moment and Shan succeded only in alerting the god of unfortunate accidents, who placed a root directly where he was running. And so he lay there in the dirt, whimpering to himself as the gigantic head began to emerge from the topsoil.

However, the head appeared to be the only thing that had emerged. Oh it was an imposing head to be sure, at least 30 feet across and covered in mud, but it was just that, a head, and seldom do people become injured by disembodied heads. I'm sure they do sometimes, but for this to happen, the head would have to be able to spit venom or posess the ability to shoot laser beams from their eyes. . .this particular giant was unable to do either.

So Shan stood there marvelling as the giant head spluttered out obcenities in his general direction. Now, instead of being scared, he was becoming increasingly interested and eventully decided to have a walk around the head to see if he could find a body to go with it.

As he paced around to the rear of the head, Shan saw something that made him suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter. The head indeed had a body. . .but it was no more than 4 feet tall!

"I see." Said Shan, affording himself a little chuckle. "I know how you feel." He chuckled again. "I see you." He was doubled over now, laughing hysterically. The two eyes made massive and impatient rolls.

After about five minutes Shan was himself again, though it would have been better if he were someone else. He stood and looked at the two massive eyes and tried to figure out what to do. He noticed that the eye he had uncovered was a little dirty, so he took out the small bottle of bleach he kept with him.

Suddenly the power in the author's house went out. Knowing there was little time left the author caused Shan to dump his bleach on the dirty eye and save his work, lest his less-than-competent batteries die.

Shan's back was to the massive, winking eye-lid, so at first he didn't notice it (being intent on the indescribable creature). Suddenly, Shan heard a faint, whirring noise, and felt goosebumps rise on his skin. Turning his head over his right shoulder, Shan finally saw the great eye-lid, and jumped with terror from his seat. His heart shot his blood through his body at triple the normal speed, and he ran behind a nearby tree for cover. Sweat had soaked through the back of his shirt, and he had to wipe his brow more than once before he had calmed down enough to think. In time, Shan wandered back over to the eye-lid, and realized that it didn't pose much of a threat. He attempted to communicate with the eye, but of course it didn't have ears, and was not very good at reading such tiny lips. Shan attempted to communicate with the eye for about twenty minutes, opening his mouth as wide as he could to show the shape of the words. In the end though, Shan became very frustrated, and the eye resorted to sharp movements to the right (from Shan's perspective). Then it dawned on him. Why was there only one eyeball? "I suppose," he thought, "that if it is a strange enough thing for me to find an eye this big, and stuck in the ground, there may be things that only have one eye." On further speculation he decided to try asking the massive eye. Once he had its attention, he repeatedly pointed to his own eyes, alternating between pointing at one then the other, and pointing at both at the same time. The eye squinted to take in the sight, and one might speculate that, had it at some time possessed an eyebrow, it would be raised in expression of curiosity. In response to Shan the eye continued jerking the pupil to the right. In turn Shan pointed to the right. The eye blinked furiously. Shan pointed again. Furious blinking. Point. Blink. Shan walked three or four paces to the right of the eye and felt the ground with the plunger stick; It was very soft, like mud (except less wet). He jabbed the pole as far as he could into the mud (about one foot) and hit something. He looked over at the massive eye-ball, but it had not seemed to notice. He moved over a foot closer to the eye and jabbed again, hitting nothing. He moved to the other side of his first attempt, and (being tired and a good deal muddy by now) threw the pole into the ground once more. It almost disappeared from his hand (being an extremely long plunger of five feet, for those extra messy days). The eye spasmed and blinked with the furious vigor and hate that it had shown when it had first seen Shan.

Shan began shovelling as best he could with the plunger stick. Mostly it churned up the ground so he could get his hands on the moist soil and move it away. He worked for well over three hours without stopping, and having found nothing continued to work on and off for another three hours, taking breaks whever possible. By this point Shan was beginning to wonder if there was an entire giant buried beneath the forest, and was puzzled about why he hadn't hit a nose, or any other body part. By the end of the six hours though, he had his answer. He was attempting to pry a very stubborn rock from the bottom of this now gaping hole, when he realized that it was writhing. He cleared away the dirt from around the rock, and found that it was indeed the other eye.

The creature his attention was fixed on was rather hard to describe. So hard, in fact, that I'll not bother trying to describe it. I understand this may prove frustrating for many readers, but such frustrations are ill-founded. In fact, when an author declines to fully describe something it is a bit of a bonus for a reader because he (or she) is given the opportunity to come up with a mental picture of this creature without being hampered by any pre-described notions about it. So please, dear reader, do your best to picture a creature that cannot be accurately described. Picture it, but do not devote too much time to it, because it actually has little to do with this story.

Shan's attention was completely fixed on this strange, linguistically elusive critter. For a moment everything else he had ever considered in his life ceased to be important. Only this funny little thingy of an animal mattered. It was unfortunate that he placed so much attention on the creature, he soon found out. For the blue rock that he chose to sat near eventually turned out to be no rock at all, but a giant eyelid (scary, eh?)!

The eye opened and looked at Shan. Shan didn't really notice, busy as he was trying to describe the indescribable critter (silly boy). For a while the eye just looked. It had malice in its eye, but it lacked the power to do anything about that malice, being only an eye after all. It tried winking angrily at Shan, but it had no affect. It tried throwing rocks at Shan, but gave up as soon as it realized it had no arms. It almost tried to come up with an elaborate plan to capture and eat Shan, but gave up after decided it possessed neither the brain with which to plan nor the mouth with which to eat. So it mostly just sat there, winking in utter anger and frustration.

When Shan scoured the island in search of materials for an ultimate weapon, he didn't pay very much attention to the fact that other sentient beings could be on the island too. In the shallow recesses of his mind, right below the general concept thinking, but on the other side of the fiery concept called analyzing, rested the dull, much-abused concept of memory. For you see, Shan's memory had had a rough little existence. It was born in a weak sort of way, which is to say that its conception is rooted in fairly painful and bizzare circumstances. Literally. His first memory was of his entire body being covered in gooey Hythranian boogers after he and a few of his friends had upset a Hythran nest. The strange thing about Hythranian boogers are that they sting like hot chili's and immediately erase any and all previous memories from one's brain.

(In recent years scientists studying the Hythranian biomolecular structure developed a way to reverse engineer the function of the organ responsible for producing the gooey boogers, effectively restoring lost memory. This was eagerly marketed to the elderly and with great effect. However, there has been an astonishing number of complaints and lawsuits against pharmeceutical companies who manufacture Mem-X who demand a refund or a drug which reverses Mem-X's effects. The basic nature of the complaint is that they really didn't want to remember as many things as the drug allowed them to. [In some rare instances Mem-X has been known to draw from the brain memories at pre-conscious periods, such as circumcision])

Needless to say the painful re-beginning of Shan's memory was a significant factor in its currently sub-par performance. The other significant factor is the regular abuse his memory receives from the concepts Perception and Will; mostly it is just Will. These two things, coupled with frequent visits from Mr. Forgetful of Doubting Lane, are the main contributions to the current state of Shan's memory. So it is not suprising when, having called to memory for aid to determine whether there were any significant life forms on the island, Shan was given a blank stare followed by a brief eye-brow raised about a quarter-of-an-inch above the eye.

So he treked off across the island once more, having decided (quite shrewdly I think) to leave the sand where it lay, apply the itching powder to his ailing scalp, and call out in general statements of "Hello there!" by means of the rubber plunger head. After several hours, Shan sat down by a blue rock in the middle of the deepest part of the forest. His eye was drawn to a tiny creature climbing a tree two yards away.

Marvelling at this newfound life, the first thing Shan did was to reach in his green pants and pull out his blackberry which, miraculously, had survived the incineration. There was only one thing on this crazy island that was for sure. . .he needed to check his schhhedule (with the sch pronouced shh, as in shhheep.)

"Hmm," he said aloud to himself. "According to this electronical planning device(or EPD), the first thing I have to do is fashion a rather large weapon with which I can unleash particularly devasting critical attacks against my foes," Shan said the words slowly to himself, making sure to enunciate. "Perhaps if I scrounge around long enough I can come up with the materials needed to make one, with which I could quite possibly become the deadliest person on this island."

Shan spent the next few days looking everywhere for the perfect ingredients. However, at the end of it, all he had managed to come up with was the following items: Lots of Sand, Gold-bond medicated itching powder, and the rubber part of an old toilet plunger. He also found some twigs. . .but they weren't dry enough to be fatal.

At that moment, Shan came to the painstaking realization that the only thing he could make with these ingredients was a weapon of minor annoyance. .capable of unleashing only very unworthy attacks.

He needed to find a friend. .fast.

From the ashes

In a forest island surrounded by a deep river was a massive pile of ashes. There was nothing very special about the ashes. You couldn't tell by looking what the ashes had been back when it had been anything at all. You would not have been able to tell there was a Jedi named Shan (pronounced Shane) who wielded a light-katana and had crazy adventures. You would not have been able to see any of his adventures because his makers had decided to burn him and his friends away, never to be seen again.

But years went by and the authors stopped checking the pile of ash. They stopped wondering if it would ever be rebuilt. Of course nothing could come from the ashes, the reasoned. But they were, all of them, deceived.

The pile heaved and shook. Groans deeper than the earth whispered from the pile. Slowly it took shape. The tiny pieces of ash joined together and were changed at the sub-atomic level. Burnt leather became skin tissue. Charred cloth morphed into hair follicles. Dead batteries changed into eyes - deep green eyes like the wood after a rain. A form stood, clothed in a simple vest and green trousers. He stretched like a man awaking from a long sleep. He looked around at his surroundings, satisfied and pleased to be alive and no longer an inanimate pile of ash. Life was just about to begin.