The Moon

An angry goose pecked at Pizza Steve's rear end. Pizza Steve ran from it as it squawked at him, trying to eat him.

"Aah! Uncle G! Ah! Uncle G! Waah!" Pizza Steve yelped frantically.

Uncle Grandpa RV

Mr. Gus stared into the mirror in his room. The dinosaur in the mirror stared back. Both of them looked immensely stressed.

"It's okay, Mr. Gus," he muttered to himself. "It's gonna be alright. Who cares if you haven't seen another dinosaur in sixty-five million years? Or that you spent so much time alone, or that you were only a child when–"

Mr. Gus broke off and took a few deep breaths. He stared into the mirror.

And remembered.

Earth
65,298,122 years ago

"Mama, look at what I can do!"

A young Mr. Gus balanced on his tail and made a silly face. His mother, nibbling on some nearby grass, just rolled her eyes.

"That's nice, dear," she said absentmindedly.

"Now look at this, Mama!" the young Mr. Gus said, balancing on his tongue.

Mr. Gus's mother spared a glance backward and chuckled. "That's nice, dear, but remember, you don't get dessert until after you finish your vegetables."

"Aw, mom!" Mr. Gus complained.

"Now if you want to grow up big and strong, you have to eat your dinner, remember?" Mr. Gus's mother admonished him.

Mr. Gus sighed but stopped showing off and began nibbling at some grass as well. He quickly ate his way through the patch of grass in front of him before standing up.

"I finished my dinner, mama!" he said. "Is it time for dessert?"

His mother smiled. "Of course, my darling child. Then an hour of playtime, and then time for bed, alright?"

Mr. Gus nodded happily. "Thanks, mama!"

Earth

"...and they all lived happily ever after."

Mr. Gus's mother closed the storybook and laid a hand on her sleepy child's head. "Sweet dreams," she whispered to him.

"Night, mama," Mr. Gus said sleepily as he rolled over in his bed. Mr. Gus's mother smiled and walked out of the room, turning out the lights as she went. Within minutes, Mr. Gus was asleep.

That night, an earthquake occurred and the house caved in. Mr. Gus was hit with a stray piece of rubble and went into a coma. Everyone else in the house made it out alive and unharmed, but Mr. Gus had to go to the hospital.

Earth
65,298,121 years ago

A meteor struck the earth, causing cataclysmic explosions and forever altering the course of evolution.

Earth
65,298,119 years ago

Mr. Gus woke up covered in dust.

Mr. Gus sneezed several times and shivered, shaking much of the dust off. He looked around and found himself in a strange bed in a deserted hospital.

"Hello?" he called out nervously. "Mama?"

Mr. Gus scanned the hospital room nervously. He tried to push himself out of bed but found himself almost unable to move.

"What happened?" he asked, confused. "Mama? Mama, where are you! MOM!"

No response came. Mr. Gus's eyes watered, and he began to cry.

When Mr. Gus had cried himself out, he tried to move again. This time, he was able to roll over onto his side. After taking a break to pant, Mr. Gus put as much effort as possible into getting himself to roll over again. Although his atrophied muscles screamed at him, he was able to roll over again, toppling over the side of the bed.

Mr. Gus hit the floor hard and groaned from pain. Lifting his head, he stared at the wall.

Mr. Gus spent the next hour barely moving on the floor as he strained to turn himself towards the door. Once he was pointed at it, he began putting as much effort as he could into moving towards the door.

Before he got even halfway there, he blacked out again.

Earth

When Mr. Gus woke up again, he found pain shooting through every nerve of his body. He groaned but began trying to move again, this time forwards toward the doorway. After a long stretch of effort, he finally found himself out in the hallway.

Mr. Gus groaned as he looked from side to side. The closest way out was the stairwell twenty feet away, but for an already exhausted Mr. Gus, it might as well have been a mile.

Mr. Gus shut his eyes and thought about going to sleep. Before he could give up, though, his eyes popped open. Filled with new resolve, he forced his body to move, spending hours crawling towards the stairwell. When he finally reached it, he managed to stick his head and shoulders over the edge.

It was then that gravity took over, and Mr. Gus began sliding forward. He realized what was about to happen too late to stop it even if his muscles weren't out of commission. Mr. Gus fell down the stairs, bounced off the wall on the end, and fell down the rest of the stairs.

Mr. Gus landed at the bottom of the stairwell, unconscious.

Earth

Mr. Gus's head buzzed with a splitting headache. Mr. Gus squinted as he tried to make sense of the world in front of him, then shut his eyes. The world was silent except for the sound of trickling water.

Mr. Gus's eyes jolted open. He managed to get them to focus, and spotted a fountain in the middle of the lobby, still operating at a low level. Water bubbled out of the top and fell into the pool below.

Mr. Gus tried to stand up again and was still unable to do so. Instead, he crawled forward, inch by inch, until he finally reached the fountain. Once there, he managed to lift his head and drop it into the water.

Mr. Gus drank as deeply as he could before lifting his head out of the water and rolling over. He panted heavily as the water settled itself in him. It was only then that he realized how dehydrated he'd been.

Mr. Gus coughed sickly and then plunged his head into the water again. He took another deep drink and then pulled his head out. He wriggled away from the fountain and lay on the floor in the fetal position.

Slowly, Mr. Gus fell asleep.

Earth
65,298,118 years ago

After a year, Mr. Gus had regained enough muscle that he could walk normally. His makeshift physical therapy had strengthened him, and he was ready take on the world.

The only problem was that the world around him was dead.

Uncle Grandpa RV
Sometime in the early 21st century

Mr. Gus blinked and snapped out of his trance. He stared at himself in the mirror.

"No," he breathed. "That's all in the past." He took a deep breath. "It doesn't matter. I don't need to know why my family abandoned me. Why everyone...left..."

Mr. Gus broke down cried silently for a few minutes. When his tears stopped flowing, he wiped his eyes and turned away from the mirror.

In the mirror, a young dinosaur watched as an adult version of him stepped out the door of his room in the RV.

Uncle Grandpa RV

"Okay, are we all ready to go?" Mr. Gus asked the gathered group in front of him.

Frankenstein nodded. "Graah."

Giant Realistic Flying Tiger growled her assent.

"Let's get on with it, Mr. G.," Pizza Steve said.

"Right," Mr. Gus said. He turned to the robot operating the time machine. "Tiny Miracle, you're gonna take care of business here, right?"

Tiny Miracle unspooled another arm and used it to salute. "You can count on me, Mr. Gus!"

"Alright," Mr. Gus said.

"Wait," a voice behind the group said. They turned to look at him.

Crispin put down the lampshade he was holding. "Guys, I've known Uncle Grandpa for a long time, and he always knows what he's doing. Trust me, he may be weird and probably insane, but if he wants you to go back in time, it's probably for your own good. Good luck, guys, and stay safe."

"We will, Crispin," Mr. Gus promised.

"Yeah, totally," Pizza Steve said.

"Graah," Frankenstein added.

Giant Realistic Flying Tiger roared.

"Okay!" Tiny Miracle said. "The time machine's coordinates are clocked in!"

Mr. Gus nodded. "Let's go."

Earth
65,298,121 years ago

When the group stepped through the portal they found themselves in a time that was definitely not their own. The world had gotten hotter, and there were a lot of bugs. Besides that, the plants were odd-looking, many of them ones that none of them had ever seen before.

None of them except Mr. Gus, that is. As Mr. Gus stared out at the landscape of his childhood, he sniffled. He tried to hold back tears as he looked at a world that had somehow left him, but his vision started to blur. He tightly clenched his eyes shut.

"Hey, Mr. Gus, what's wrong?" a familiar voice asked.

Mr. Gus's eyes shot open. He turned around and found himself face to face with the caring smile of Uncle Grandpa.

"What's got you down, buddy?" Uncle Grandpa asked.

"Uncle Grandpa!" Mr. Gus blurted out. "What are you doing here?"

"What do you mean?" Uncle Grandpa asked.

Mr. Gus finally looked behind Uncle Grandpa. There was a huge single-file line of dinosaurs stretching for miles and being periodically checked by a bunch of Uncle Grandpas. The endpoint of the line was a giant tear in the space-time continuum.

Mr. Gus's jaw dropped, as did the jaws of his compatriots.

"What is that?" Pizza Steve asked, disturbed.

"Oh, that?" Uncle Grandpa said. "It's a rip in the space-time continuum."

"Graah?" Frankenstein asked.

"Why yes, that is the entire dinosaur population of Earth that's going through it," Uncle Grandpa said. "Thanks for noticing, Frankenstein."

Giant Realistic Flying Tiger roared.

"Of course I'm not sending them to the future!" Uncle Grandpa said. He paused. "Although that would be pretty cool..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Mr. Gus exclaimed. "What is going on here?"

"Oh, I'm just sending the dinosaurs to the silent planet so they don't get crushed by the giant meteor heading towards Earth," Uncle Grandpa said. "Here, take the express route."

Uncle Grandpa opened another, smaller hole in the fabric of time and space and ushered the group through it.

The Moon

The rip opened ten feet over a moon, and the group fell through. They all climbed to their feet rubbing their heads.

"Ugh," Pizza Steve moaned. "Did we really have to open up above the–" He lowered his sunglasses and looked around. "What the! We're on the MOON?"

Mr. Gus looked around. "Sure looks like it, little slice," he confirmed.

"Well that's just great," Pizza Steve muttered. "And I thought we were gonna–huh?" He noticed a space goose staring at him hungrily. "Hey, goose, what's going on?"

The goose squawked at him. Pizza Steve began to sweat.

"Ah, no, goose, you don't want to eat me," Pizza Steve said nervously. "I'm, uh, I'm not good for gooses? I'll mess up your foie gras?"

The goose tried to bite him. Pizza Steve yelped and ran away from the goose. The goose gave chase, pecking at his rear end.

"Aah! Uncle G! Ah! Uncle G! Waah!" Pizza Steve yelped frantically.

Seconds later, Uncle Grandpa fell out of the sky and onto the moon. He picked himself up and dusted himself off. He looked around, saw Pizza Steve getting chased by the goose, and laughed.

"Aw, c'mon, Raul!" Uncle Grandpa called, still laughing. "Stop chasing my friend Pizza Steve!"

Raul delivered one last peck towards Pizza Steve's backside and then waddled back to Uncle Grandpa. Uncle Grandpa smiled as he petted the goose on its head.

"Okay, Uncle Grandpa, I want to know what's going on!" Mr. Gus said. "Are you telling me that the reason I grew up alone was because you sent all the other dinosaurs to another planet?"

Uncle Grandpa gasped. "Mr. Gus! You were alive back then?"

"Of course I was alive back then!" Mr. Gus yelled. "I'm a dinosaur!"

"Wow," Uncle Grandpa said. "You're even older than me! Anyway, I guess? I dunno. Did you know that a giant meteor wiped out all dinosaurs on Earth?"

"Uh, yes, I did know that!" Mr. Gus retorted. "I thought that was why I was all alone!"

"I thought this was a tragedy because dinosaurs are so cool!" Uncle Grandpa continued to explain. "So I decided to go back in time, to right before the meteor hit, and send all the dinosaurs to the silent planet!"

"They why didn't you send me with them?" Mr. Gus wailed.

"Uh, gee, I dunno," Uncle Grandpa said. "I thought I got everybody. Except the people in hospitals that were deemed to be too injured to safely move off the planet in time. Were you in a hospital?"

"No, I wasn't in a–"

Mr. Gus stopped as he remembered waking up in the hospital.

"How did I end up there?" he asked softly, on the verge of tears.

"I dunno, Mr. Gus," Uncle Grandpa said, putting a comforting arm around the dinosaur's shoulders.

"Graah," Frankenstein said, putting a hand on Mr. Gus's shoulders.

Giant Realistic Flying Tiger roared and brushed up against Mr. Gus's legs.

"Wait, hold on," Pizza Steve said. "Are you telling me you sent a bunch of dinosaurs to that planet?"

Pizza Steve pointed to the planet above them. Uncle Grandpa nodded.

"Yep!"

"So why'd you have to get kidnapped to do that?" Pizza Steve asked.

"You know, that's a long story," Uncle Grandpa said. "I'll explain it to you and some other people at the same time. But first..."

Uncle Grandpa opened another rift and stepped through. He stuck his head back out and beckoned for his friends to join him.

They stepped into the rift.

The story continues and concludes in "Open Your Eyes," posted under Cartoon X-Overs. Or you could visit my user page and work from there. Either way, the story in this fic as well as the ones in the other three Open Your Eyes fics come to a conclusion in "Open Your Eyes."

Thanks for reading!