-Prison Asteroid K-37, Xenon Sector, 2:00 Turo Standard Time

Day in, day out, the past three months at Prison Asteroid K-37 had proven nothing short of monotonous. As it turned out, a life sentence for terrorism and illegal genetic experimentation earned one nothing less than a cramped cell in the most secure part of the asteroid, leaving Dr. Jumba Jookiba with nothing to do but fritter away the hours away in his cell and wait for the one hour he could go wander around a concrete pit. And even then, his reputation as "the scientist who played God" preceded him, earning him nothing but glares from entirely foolish or inane questions from the mostly foolish.

At least I'm not in restraint disk, he'd tried to tell himself several times. Not that it helped. He'd tried to figure out a way to break out, but no dice-his cell was completely devoid of anything but a bed and a rudimentary bathroom system, and unless he figured out how to contort his body enough to fit down a sewage pipe he wasn't going anywhere. Of course, 626 could have, but seeing as the traitorous bastard was the entire reason he was wasting away here that wasn't an option. In short, Jumba was on the verge of accepting that he would just have to sit tight and rot for the next five decades or so.

It was as he was thinking this over that his cell door opened. A guard entered with a loaf of bread, looking rather nervous.

"Bread? At two in the morning?" Jumba chuckled. "Is my stay in these fine accommodations about to come to an end?"

The guard didn't respond, and continued to look as though he wanted to be on the other side of the universe.

"Eh, we shall see." Sure enough, baked into the middle of the bread was a key. To the cell? Jumba thought. He held it up, examined it, and as he did noticed that the guard was now shaking. "Now I expect that you're worried that you're about to die?"

The only response was a frightened squeak.

Jumba got up and patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, my friend. After all, corpses raise questions. Questions I would like to avoid." The guard emitted a noise so high-pitched that Jumba was surprised he could actually hear it. The Kweltikwan gave the poor sap a reassuring smile, and then jabbed the key into his throat. "Of course, knocking you out is entirely different story." He then slid the key into the door and was on his merry way down the hall.

He had been on the move for about ten minutes before the alarms sounded. Smiling, he wedged himself into an alcove in the wall and waited. If he wanted to go further, it would be best to have a weapon.

Sure enough, within a few minutes a patrol wandered by. And nicely armed with guns I designed, I might add.

"Howell, make sure to watch the back," the leader was saying as they walked by Jumba's hiding place. "Alli, take the left side. Nellar, take the right."

So Nellar it was, then. As the quartet passed by Jumba sprung out, grabbing Nellar and snapping her neck. As she fell to the floor Jumba yanked her plasma gun out of her hand and immediately fired it at the leader.

To their credit, Alli and Howell immediately spun around and trained their weapons on the escaped prisoner. "Drop the weapon and get on the ground!" Howell barked.

Jumba smirked. "And why would I do that?"

"I said: drop. your. weapon."

Jumba lowered his stolen weapon a fraction of an inch. "You know, I designed these weapons, back in Galaxy Defense days." The two guards stood firm, unsure of where he was going with this. "Of course, there was always one flaw that I was never able to fix in their design." He smiled. "But maybe you managed to?" Before the two guards could react Jumba fired a quick shot at his target.

Upon making contact with the power pack about midway down Alli's gun, the plasma exploded. Jumba gazed at the crater where the two soldiers had been and continued speaking as though it were nothing more than a lesson. "I guess not. Unfortunately, for whatever reason the plasma reacts to any contact with emitter fluid by exploding. Perhaps it has something to do with the supercharged nature of the plasma?"

Alli and Howell, or rather the charred remnants of their bodysuits, had no response.

"Feh, I suppose it doesn't really matter." Jumba rounded the next corner, and saw that whoever was in control of security had activated the patrol droids. He ducked back out of sight, thinking. The trick with the plasma shot wouldn't work on these; they would still explode, but it would be a normal machine explosion instead of the more dramatic reaction he'd used earlier.

What to do? Think, Jumba, think. He looked back around the corner and saw that a couple of the patrol droids were coming this way. I need solution now! Jumba took stock of his surroundings. In this hallway there was no way to simply dodge past them, and the fact that the prison had entered lockdown meant that all the cells were sealed behind bulletproof doors. Maybe I can get one to destroy other? It bore thinking about. He looked around the corner again. Was there any way to maneuver the first one so that it would be in the sights of the second?

As he looked, he noticed that the one in front was clearly a leader of sorts-the other always followed directly behind it, but only after a few milliseconds of delay. Presumably this arrangement would end if they needed to properly line up against a prisoner, but before then there was likely a short window where he could trick the back one into firing against the first.

Thinking fast, he noticed that the visual processors on the patrol droids were both located on the upper portion of the central processor. As such, he guessed, there was probably a gap in their field lower down. Would a very low throw work, perhaps? Something that would slip in the gap of the leader but not the follower? Yes. That should work. But what to throw? And how to parlay that into the friendly fire he needed.

The solution came to him. My shirt! Of course! Jumba ripped off the ridiculous prison shirt they'd saddled him with the moment he set foot on the asteroid, balled it up, and used the sleeves to tie it together. Then, trying to ignore the sudden awareness of his body size, Jumba hurled it against the floor.

As he'd hoped, the simple processor in the backup unit registered the shirt as an enemy and fired, splashing the leader with some of the payload. Then, in a move that was both unexpected and gloriously welcome, the leader registered the splash as a hostile attack and began firing back at the follower, which then registered that as an attack…

Needless to say, Jumba continued on without further issue from the two patrol droids.

Finally, finally, Jumba stole into the hangar, where to his delight he saw the two-person manta shuttle from his lab waiting. He crossed to it, hopped in the passenger seat, and turned to the pilot.

"I see that you got the motion controls working." Jumba laughed at the absurd sight of a small rodent buckled into the drivers seat so high up that he wasn't even actually in the seat so much as suspended above it.

"Shut up, you four-eyed-fatso. These seats need adjusting."

"Is nice to see you too, Dr. Hämsterviel."

The shuttle took off and made it into hyperdrive, Dr. Hämsterviel activated the autopilot and turned to the escaped prisoner. "Now then, shall we go back to your lab and start experimenting on some experiments?"

Jumba grinned. "Certainly. After all, we need to make a new 626."