It's best to take a step back and truly appreciate your accomplishments before they come crashing down.

Tim and Jake stood in the doorway to Jake's bedroom and silently surveyed the small wooden city they'd built together. For a moment, they both imagined the people that might live in Jaketown, how proud they might be to live there, and how ignorant they were to the terror that they would all face this evening.

Tim looked at his watch. "6:45," he said. "Most folks are probably home from work now, eating dinner with their families or watching TV."

Jake shook his head. "Except for the folks going to the ball game downtown." He pointed to the small, natural-finished, smooth-sanded hardwood stadium near the city's center. "Sell out crowd tonight, I think."

"That's right. I forgot about that. The Jaketown Awesomenauts versus..."

"The Olivialand Dumbbutts," Jake reminded him. "It's the seventh game of the World Series. Winner takes all tonight."

Tim put his hands on his hips and exhaled hard. "Woof. That game's gonna be a doozy." He placed his hand on Jake's shoulder and looked down at his son. The two shared a smile before Tim continued. "It's a shame we'll never find out who wins."

Jake nodded, then carefully walked over to the far corner of his room and readied his father's handheld camcorder. After taking a few seconds to capture the beauty of their sixty-piece precision-cut experiment in city planning, he looked up at Tim and said, "Release Godz-Ella."

"RAAAAWWWR!" Tiny Ella jumped into the doorway wearing a dinosaur costume, loomed large above the city blocks below for a moment, and then began to smash, stomp, and decimate everything in her path.

Tim smiled and watched as the carnage unfolded. 'This,' he thought to himself, 'is why I had kids.'

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