The Archivist waited in the shadows. This was nothing new. The Archivist was always in the shadows, beyond the corner, mere mist in the fog. She was patient, silent, and she observed. She did all of this because it was her job, and her job was very important. She'd been tracking a dangerous creature. Something unique in all creation. This creature was powerful, clever, and unstoppable. It left a wake of destruction and chaos, and the Archivist had taken note. She'd followed the clues across space and across time. The hints were small, but the Archivist was smart, efficient. She'd tracked the creature to this exact place, this exact time. Such a quiet place. A relaxation spot, exquisitely beautiful, where people would come to escape the worries of an ordinary life. How unfortunate it all was. They had no idea the kind of monster lurking in their midst. The Archivist had been there mere hours, and while she had faith in her abilities, she knew they were going to be harshly tested. The creature could be anywhere nearby. It could be lurking in darker shadows, behind more distant corners. It could be-
"Just give us back the damn cat!"
"No! You will not take Roger's freedom!"
It was there! The creature was out in the open, currently being chased by two members of the royal guard, and holding a...cat? The Archivist shook her head. It was no matter. She needed to capture the creature before the guards had the chance. They had no idea what they were dealing with, the dangers they were about to subject themselves to. The Archivist gathered her equipment, and stepped into the light. There was work to be done.
"Here comes trouble," Prentice sighed, and there trouble was. Trouble was Jenny, running towards him, out of breath, holding a cat. Prentice sat his book aside and rose from the beach chair on which he'd been lounging. He had a fear, though he tried not to think too hard about it, that his holiday was about to come to an end. "What have you been up to?" he asked as Jenny came to a stop in front of him. "I thought you were go-karting."
"What? Oh, right. Well, I was go-karting and now I'm not. Don't worry about it," Jenny said. Prentice worried about it.
"Why do you have a cat?" he asked, allowing a hint of disapproval to color his tone.
"This is Roger. He's a friend of mine. Listen, how fast can we pack up and get out of here?"
"Well, I know it won't take you long to pack. My things are a bit more spread out, so it'll take me about ten minutes, five if I hurry. Then we just need to get to our ship and-" Prentice stopped. He crossed his arms. "Jenny, what have you done this time?"
"Nothing!"
Prentice didn't say anything. He didn't need to.
"Fine then, a few things," Jenny said with a wince. "But it won't be a problem as long as we leave. Quickly."
That was about the best Prentice could hope for. After all, this was Jenny. There could have been far worse trouble than a hasty end to a nice vacation.
"Alright then. Just lose the cat and we'll get out of here."
"His name's Roger, and he's coming with us," Jenny responded, and Prentice glared.
Under chapter 16, subsection #4a of the Time Agency's approved field manual, the removal of life forms from their indigenous time zones was forbidden without direct approval by a senior officer. Prentice had just finished reading the footnotes of the very same subsection. Subsections were very important to Prentice. He was not about to disregard them for a cat called Roger, except for the fact that he was. But that was later. Right now, he said
"Absolutely not!"
Jenny pouted. Roger meowed. Prentice couldn't believe his life had come to this. Five minutes later (Prentice had hurried), they had their things packed up and were walking quickly to the docking bay where they'd left their spaceship.
An interesting note about Prentice is that he values safety nearly as much as rules. So, whilst most Time Agents are happy to brave the dangers of vortex travel without the aid of a capsule, Prentice is not. He had long ago fixed his vortex manipulator into a sturdy, though rather bulky and unappealing, spaceship. Now when Prentice had first started travelling with Jenny, he had prepared himself for a long, possibly quite heated argument that he was very likely to lose. Jenny certainly seemed to do things her way, disregarding the sane way, but Prentice was not about let her add one more unnecessary risk to the lifestyle of hers that was already a disaster in waiting. He had documents. Papers, figures, even the odd anecdotal evidence for color about how dangerous unprotected vortex travel could be. He'd compiled these into a speech, which he had written down on a stack of notecards, and had got as far as,
"Jenny, I really feel we shouldn't keep our vortex manipulators on when we travel-"
Before Jenny had interrupted him by saying,
"That's a brilliant idea!"
Prentice almost dropped his notecards.
"R-Really? You're agreeing with me. Why would you agree with me? I haven't even told you about how unprotected vortex travel is associated with higher levels of-"
"Keeping a vortex manipulator on you makes things too easy," said Jenny. "Get into trouble, you can just zap right out of it. Where's the fun in that?"
"Um, yes, well, that's not really the point I was-"
"Prentice."
"Yes?"
"I'm agreeing with you. Can't you just be happy about that? It happens so rarely."
It really does. So Prentice got his way, and soon, both his and Jenny's vortex manipulators were locked away safely in the ship.
"Don't you think the ship needs a name?" Jenny had said after seeing it.
"It's not a pet. It's a machine. It does a job, that's all. It doesn't need a name," said Prentice.
"We should call her Sasha."
"No. Absolutely-"
"Brilliant? I'm glad you think so. Now how do you feel about painting her purple?"
"You can't do that, it would completely nullify its cloaking capabilities!"
"So we'll have to think about it then."
"We're not painting it purple, and I'm not calling it Sasha!"
Several weeks later was when Jenny and Prentice were running away from royal guards in an attempt to rescue a cat called Roger.
"Where did you leave Sasha?" Prentice asked as they approached the docking bay.
"Um…"
Prentice stopped as suddenly as if he'd walked into a brick wall.
"Jenny," he said, fixing her with a pleading gaze. "Tell me you remember where you docked Sasha."
"It'll come to me. You know, this wouldn't happen if you'd let me paint her purple."
"You there! Just stop! We only want the cat!"
Two men dressed in purple and gold sequined uniforms and wearing matching alpine hats were running towards Prentice and Jenny, stunning staffs at the ready. They were the royal guards, and they were not pleased that the simple task of finding the queen's lost cat had turned into a desperate footrace through the whole of the ocean resort. Jenny and Prentice began running in the opposite direction, but were stopped in their tracks when a figure in a long brown robe stepped into their path holding a gun.
"Nobody move," came a deep feminine voice from beneath the figure's hood.
Jenny stopped. Then Prentice. Then the guards. Then Roger meowed.
"That's a good question," Jenny replied. She called out to the figure, "Who are you?"
To which the Archivist responded, "The Archivist. And you're coming with me before you hurt anyone else."
Jenny didn't know what that meant. She looked around. They were surrounded, Archivist on one side, guards on the other. All of three of them were armed while she and Prentice had two duffel bags and a cat between them. There was only one thing she could do. Jenny thought.
A second later, and Roger leapt from Jenny's arms and landed straight on the Archivists outstretched gun.
"What the—get off!" the Archivist said, letting off a series of shots. All of them hit the ground as Roger kept tight hold of her arm, forcing the gun downwards.
The next second, the guards, who were under strict orders that nothing should happen to harm Roger, had pushed past Prentice and Jenny and were tackling the Archivist to the ground. As the three wrestled with each other, Roger wriggled his way free and hopped back into Jenny's arms.
Prentice and Jenny wasted no time. They were off, running in the direction Jenny was pretty sure she had left Sasha, probably.
"Jenny, who the hell was that?" Prentice asked once they were a good deal away from the action.
"The Archivist, apparently. Don't you ever listen?"
"What's an archivist doing chasing after you with a gun?"
"Don't know. Lots of people chase after me with guns. It's not like we stop to chat.
Meanwhile, in a palace not far away, Her Majesty Grenda, Queen of Zoop, and Protector of its Many Moons, was crossing her arms.
"How exactly does a cat escape my royal guards?"
One such royal guard, standing at attention, his hands shaking behind his back, gulped as Grenda continued to glare at him.
"Well, your Majesty. It would seem that your cat had, um, help."
Grenda's mood was already bad, but this sunk it even further.
"The resistance," she said.
"It's possible. We're looking into it, ma'am."
Grenda rose from her thrown. "Once you find those responsible, have them locked away and tried for treason. It's time we make an example of those who challenge me."
"Didn't we do that last week? That woman who said your head looked like a shriveled-"
"Clearly the message hasn't sunk in yet! Stop questioning me, and get it done!"
