Okay, I changed the name because I changed the plot slightly. Not dramatically, just enough that the name didn't quite correspond to what's happening/going to happen. No underwater stuff: we're moving to outer space stuff instead.

By the way, it's not mine. I stole it from Eoin Colfer, though I really think he should just give all the rights to me and let me finish it because he's well on his way to destroying the entire series. I also stole a line from Lion in Winter, a play my friend is in. Thanks, Issy, by the way.

Trouble watched, face screwed up in agony, as Sool opened a little door in the machine and withdrew a small glass box. Inside it danced thousands of blue sparks, sparks that should have been inside his body.

He didn't understand. He had run out of magic before, used all of it. Julius had yelled at him on that particular occasion. His pride may have been injured, but no more than that. Many fairies, like Mulch Diggums, had lost the ability to do magic entirely, and it didn't seem to affect them. Maybe it was losing it all at once, or maybe it was that it had been stolen from him, but he felt it missing. It was as if a hole had opened up in his body, and it hurt like a tangible wound.

Sool placed the box in a padded bag, picked up a syringe from the counter, and lifted Trouble's hand. He tried to fight it, but he had no energy. Sool jabbed it into the vein in his arm.

He winced as the syringe withdrew his blood, but at least he wasn't being poisoned. As soon as Sool had placed the blood in a small test tube and stopped it with a rubber cork, he tossed Trouble a sleeveless black tunic.

"Put it on," he commanded.

Trouble sat up and pulled it over his head. Sool put his blood sample in the bag with the glass case, zipped it up, and yelled for one of his henchfairies to come get it. Three of them poured into the room. One picked up the bag, and one picked up a pair of cuffs and snapped them over Trouble's wrists. Sool muttered something to them, and they grabbed Trouble's shoulders and pulled him off the table. His legs nearly crumpled beneath him, but he managed to retain his feet.

"Take him to the shuttle," Sool commanded. "Move, Kelp."

Trouble felt the barrel of a gun poke into his back. He moved.

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Holly had been awakened and groggily led outside into the fresh air. It was nearly three in the morning, judging by the position of the moon, and they were on a barren expanse of land that was bordered by the sea on one side and a range of rocky mountains on the other. The only signs that anyone had been there were a huge twelfth-century castle—in which they had been imprisoned—and what looked like an alien spaceship from the Mudmen movies parked outside. It was as big around as the Roman Coliseum and at least three stories high. It was huge.

"Wow," Holly said blearily to her captors as they led her up to it. "Where're we going?"

One of them, another gnome covered in tattoos and with violently pink hair, shrugged. "They don't tell us anything," he said bitterly.

"Oh."

As they approached the thing that looked like a spaceship, a walkway opened from the bottom with a pneumatic hiss. Just like the Mudmen movies.

They took her onboard. It looked so much like something out of Star Wars that she half expected to see Han Solo and Chewbacca sitting at a console, typing in commands. However, instead of Han and Chewie, she found Opal Koboi.

Koboi grinned maliciously as they escorted her to a sort of cell that looked more like a janitorial closet than anything. After taking off the handcuffs, they locked her in and turned off the light.

Holly, cursing that she couldn't see anything, felt around for someway to escape. But of course, her captor was Koboi. There was no escape.

It felt like hours before she heard anything other than a soft hum that seemed to come from all around her. Footsteps were approaching her cell.

"Oi!" she shouted, pounding on the door. "I gotta use the—"

The door was flung open, knocking her back into the cell. Two other fairies, silhouetted by the light outside shoved a third handcuffed form in after her and slammed the door once more.

"Captain?" said a soft voice from the other side of the cell.

"Trouble," she breathed. She felt her way over until she practically walked into him.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Holly was fine, and she started to say so, but she heard something in his voice that hadn't been there the last time she'd heard it. Pain.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "What did they do?"

Her eyes had adjusted to the dark; she could see his dim outline shaking its head. He remained silent.

She reached out and touched his forehead; it was hot and sweaty. "What did she do to you?" she demanded. "Tell me, Major, or—with all due respect—I'll punch your face in."

Trouble chuckled wanly. "You sound like Julius."

"I am like Julius," she informed him. "And you know what he did whenever someone didn't do as he said."

"Looked as though he were about to have a heart attack? Somehow, Holly, I can't see you earning the nickname 'Beetroot.'"

"I'm flattered. Now, I'm not kidding. What happened?"

"I… Holly, I don't know. Sool had a machine that pressed against my chest and sucked all my magic out. I've been out of magic before, and it hasn't felt anything like this. I feel horrible."

Holly was blindly trying various number combinations for Trouble's handcuffs, but to no avail. Apparently Koboi had learned her lesson from the last time she had tried to kill Holly and Artemis. She paused when he finished. "He took your magic? Why?"

Trouble shook his head slowly. "What if she's figured out someway to become… omnipotent?"

Holly scowled, though Trouble couldn't see it in the dark of the closet. "She hasn't."

His back tensed as he leaned over and pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the wall. "I don't know. Sool seemed pretty confident that she had."

Holly let out a low growl. "Then I'm going to wipe that confident smirk off his face and convince him that she hasn't. With my fist."

Trouble smiled. "You'd better not die, Captain," he told her dryly. "If nothing else, you make us laugh."

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The People had made one excursion into space. In 44 B.C., they had developed a shuttle that would reach to the edge of the solar system. Unfortunately, the Mudmen had spotted the launching and thought it to be a bad omen. They took it to mean that Julius Caesar would be a bad ruler of Rome, and consequently, they stabbed him to death. The People had abandoned their dreams of space after that.

"Can you make it work?" Artemis asked, gazing at the image that had popped up on the computer screen.

"Not since Julius Caesar looked down in bewilderment to see his best friend's sword sticking out of his gut and asked 'You too, Brutus?' has there been a stupider question," Foaly answered, grinning. "Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen. We're in for one heck of a ride."