Ratchet muttered something to himself about how familiar the whole situation felt to him, as his fingers began groping through the slats on the door, hoping to slip the lock free. It was one thing to play along while there was still the all-too-real possibility of ending up lynched, but damned if he was going to stay an effective prisoner in some little girl's laundry hole without a fight.

"Come on, just a little to the . . . there!" Ratchet smirked as he pushed the pin out, and the door became loose. With a smile on his face, he swung the door open, before stepping out and adjusting his velvet-lined jacket. "Now that we've got that sorted, maybe I can actually get a look around this place."

Ratchet started to walk around the room, taking note of various objects in the room; he stopped at a mirror to adjust his jacket again, taking his time now to grin inwardly at his appearance, even if nothing else about this place got a good response out of him. But soon his attention went towards the nearby computer, and Ratchet crawled up the chair to stand up in it, looking down at the computer.

"Hey, Computer, tell me about time travel theories, will you?" Ratchet spoke up, waiting for the computer to return a response. None came, and a few seconds later, Ratchet frowned. "Come on, do I need to ask for your name first? Tell me about time travel!"

Ratchet slammed a hand down on the desk, tripping up the keyboard, which caused the screen to flicker to life and show Ratchet a desktop. "What the . . . Aw, man, you're not telling me I have to use a W.I.M.P. Interface!"

Ratchet frowned, pulling out what looked to be a stylus poking out of the desk near the screen, prodding the screen to what looked like the first useful icon, pulling up a window that he expanded out, before blinking at the screen. He tapped the first few grayed-out icons, before noticing he was looking at a screen that was mostly white except for a few images and a long field in the middle of the screen.

Ratchet looked at it once more, raising an eyebrow, but then began to tap on the field, and then the keyboard, wincing at the odd symbols on the screen. It looked familiar, but not enough . . . He couldn't read the screen at all. The symbols on the keyboard looked familiar to him, but that was it.

Ratchet sighed, glaring at the screen. He didn't get it . . . He was able to talk here just fine. How could the local language here be so different from what he knew? Then again, 500 years was plenty of time for things to have evolved into the form he currently understood — in other words, just enough to make him illiterate.

Ratchet blinked, then sat down as he realized — he needed his literacy to use most of his other skills that supposedly made him 'different' from the other slaves here. Without being able to read, let alone code write, he wouldn't be able to do much of anything here that would let him organize maps or orchestrate plans . . . hell, he wouldn't even be able to read the local news!

Ratchet sighed, burying his face in one hand. "I miss Clank . . ."

"Who's Clank?"

Ratchet spun around in his seat, looking through the chair's pegs to see Anastasia standing in the doorway, wearing a knee-length chiffon dress and leaning up against the door frame. He blinked, with all sorts of alarms going off in his head. "Nothing. I said nothing."

"You mentioned a 'Clank'. I'm not deaf, after all." Anastasia spoke, walking forward. "Speaking of stupidity . . . weren't you supposed to be locked in the laundry hold?"

"It was dark in there." Ratchet remarked, trying to make it sound as innocent as possible. "That's not the point."

"I'll be the judge of that . . ." Anastasia smirked, putting a hand on Ratchet's shoulder, before looking at the screen. "What are you trying to get on the StarNet for?"

Ratchet winced, getting the feeling he should've been more careful. "I just found it . . ."

"And not doing a good job of it." She sat down in the chair, propping Ratchet up in her lap. "What's 'Slip Halo', anyway?"

"I was that far off?" Ratchet's ears shot up. "Damn it . . ."

Anastasia looked at the screen, then down at Ratchet, and she shrugged. "That's pretty good typing. You know, for a beginner."

Ratchet looked up to her, than at the screen. "Considering I can't read any of it, I'll take that as a compliment."

"Of course you can't. I'm surprised you even got this far." She shot back at him. "You're a critter. "

"Take that back!" Ratchet shot at her, his hair on end. Nobody got away with calling him a damned 'critter', least of all some arrogant lizard like-.

She blinked at him. "What? Did I say something?"

Ratchet glared at her, then calmed down; even if it was racist of her, she didn't realize just 'how' bad it was, and all things considered, she did still save his life earlier today; maybe it was just . . . to be expected of people here. "Don't use that word around me, okay?"

"What w-? . . . Oh." Anastasia sat back, holding Ratchet up at arm's length. "I wasn't trying to be mean with it."

"Still hurt." Ratchet sighed, glancing back at the screen. "Wish I could read it, though . . ."

"It'd be useless to try." The girl shrugged, looking back at the screen. "Your brain's just not wired for that kind of higher-level thinking."

"Pull the other one, it's got bells on it." Ratchet muttered to himself.

"What's that mean?"

Ratchet looked up at her. "Trust me when I say my mind's just as capable, if not more so, than your own."

Anastasia crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. "Then why can't you read?"

"Why can't you write something I can read?" Ratchet raised an eyebrow of his own. "Just because I don't know what that means yet doesn't mean I'm an imbecile!"

"Fine, then." Anastasia shrugged. "Find a way to prove you're smarter than the average Lombax."

"Well for starters, I . . . ergh . . ." Ratchet started to speak, then realized he hadn't completely thought this through. What should he admit to, knowing how to snipe a man's head at fifty yards? They'd probably lynch him again. "Er, there's also . . . hm."How to build a starship from scratch? The odds we good that he'd mess up whatever time continuum let him come here in the first place if he tried it. "Surely you can understand . . . eh . . .."Anything else . . . seeing how he couldn't even figure out the computer's interface, maybe his definition of 'intelligence' wasn't about to jell here like it should.

The girl chuckled, amused. "Slug in the throat?"

"Something like that." Ratchet admitted, one hand behind him on the desk. "You have to believe me, though . . . I mean, listen to me. Surely I don't talk like any of the others in this place."

"Hmm." She picked Ratchet up, using two claws to pry his mouth open as she peered down his throat. "Well, I'll give you that, K12. I'm not sure if it makes any difference . . . but you do talk nicer."

Ratchet nodded, then yelped as he found himself being manhandled by Anastasia in the next moment, as she grabbed a length of ribbon with one hand and held his wrists behind him with the other. The reaction was instantaneous and immediate, as Anastasia quickly received a foot to the snout, allowing Ratchet to roll free, grabbing the ribbon and getting into a brief tug of war with Anastasia, which remained brief because she soon pounced him, pinning Ratchet to the floor.

"Just hold still!" Anastasia shouted up. "How else am I supposed to practice on your hair?"

"My hair's fine as-!" Ratchet shouted back, then blinked. "Hold up; why the hell would you want to mess with my hair? Surely a girl from a family like this already has a servant for that, or at least doesn't need to tie people down to practice . . ."

Anastasia mewled slightly in the back of her throat, then sat down. "I don't let the other slaves near my hair anymore . . . they can't do it right. They always pull too tight and rip out these giant mats . . ."

"Mind if I try?" Ratchet held up a hand, sitting up from his position on the floor. "I think I'd rather be the hair puller than the pullee, after all."

She thought about it for a moment, then pulled up the chair from her desk for Ratchet to stand on, while Anastasia sat on the floor, her head just in reach once Ratchet climbed on the chair again. She handed the Lombax two brushes, a comb, and a pair of barrettes, before turning her back to Ratchet. "Don't try anything stupid, now . . ."

"Said like I have a whole lot of options." Ratchet remarked, picking up one of the wider brush heads as he started to work on Anastasia's hair. It reminded him of Sasha's hair somehow — mostly in the dark, coffee-bean-brown color, but it was enough resemblance to get him to calm down, to start working through the mane, and to forget, at least for a moment, that he was in the wrong time for him at all.

Ratchet continued to work, losing track of time until he noticed that he'd run out of hair to work on. He blinked, running his hand across one patch of tidy french braids, as though he didn't believe his own luck. One barrette later to keep them in place, and he was done, setting aside his tools and sitting back in the chair, before smiling just a bit as he tapped her shoulder and pointed to the mirror.

"What did you-! Oh my . . ." Anastasia's eyes went wide as she looked at her hair. "That's . . . that's perfect, actually. I've never seen myself with my hair like that. Where'd you learn to work so well?"

"I've gotten used to organizing messy wire racks." Ratchet shrugged. "As for your hair, the main issue seems to be just keeping it from tangling. If you can manage not to go a couple days without making sure it's been rinsed and combed though, you should be fine."

"Either way, I'm impressed." She smiled at him, before glancing out the window. "Goddess! It's close to dinner already. We better get down there before there's too many questions."

Ratchet nodded, then blinked. "Er . . . am I coming with you?"

"Well, if you'd hold still long enough, you'd have noticed that the ribbon has multiple uses . . ." She spoke up, holding the ribbon again. "Now, seriously, hold still."

"All right . . ." Ratchet rolled his eyes, pulling away in reflex as she lassoed him with a slipknot, until she had fashioned a strange collar and leash around Ratchet's neck, punctuated by a slightly poofy bow. "I hope you appreciate I wouldn't put up with this for just anybody."

"Come on, K12. It's bad form to keep the rest of the house waiting." She smirked, pulling him along. "Right now, your lies are as cute as the rest of you."