Natural Disasters Edition II: Hrithik Saves Greater New Jersey

The worst of the storm is over, anyway, and Alfredo has rescinded the evacuation order.  The Wild Republic is now emerging from the closet.  They appear to be no worse for the wear, but they're all a bit cranky.  Being crammed into close quarters like that was evidently an experience:

• Rusty complained most of the time because he wanted to watch the storm.
• The kittens got bored and sang a lot of 'One Hundred Bottles of Beer' whenever Jasper's attention was diverted.
• Cami and Angel Joe were pretty terrified the whole time.
• The Wild Parliamentary Monarchy delegates, plus Seleucus, Leprosy, and Desmond, spent the entire time having a spirited intellectual discourse on the nature of reality, which everyone else felt wasn't really in keeping with the gravity of the situation.
• Omri spent the entire storm trampling all over everyone in an effort to find Alfredo's clipboard, which (it was later revealed) Parsley was sitting on.
• Quixley, deprived of his usual dosage of caffeine, was pretty grouchy the whole time.  You can't really blame him, I guess, because he was worried that he'd have to configure the computer system all over again.
• Nicky fainted, but he got better.

By far the most notable happenstance, however, is that Hrithik insisted on meditating the entire time, because he was convinced that in this way he could keep the destruction outside to a minimum.  Naturally this began to wear on everyone else's nerves almost immediately, but with his Jeopardy! track record, no one could really make a compelling case against him.  Zebulon probably could have, but Zebulon, either in a show of Team Malagasy solidarity or because he's crazy, decided to take Hrithik's side.  Team Malagasy has pull, I'm telling you.

Now, of course, Hrithik is claiming sole credit for the fact that the entire eastern coast of the United States hasn't disappeared Atlantis-style beneath the waves, despite the fact that even the most alarming of the pre-storm predictions had not mentioned this as a possibility.

Oh - one other thing.  Sleepyhead managed to sleep through the entire hurricane, and quite possibly never noticed himself being evacuated to the closet at all.  Apparently this how giant pandas respond to natural disasters.