Jess sighed irritably as she realised she had no brilliant plan. Blanche would have a brilliant plan, but Blanche would be smart enough to remember what Jess wasn't wearing that day.

Oh well.

"Hey, Blanche!" she grinned as she ran up to the Faerie Uni.

"Mum, why are you wearing jeans?"

Jess shrugged the question aside. "What would you do if a certain evil villain named Doctor Frank Sloth decided to kidnap millions of Neopians and create android duplicates of them and use the android duplicates to massacre the entire planet on approximately July 15 at 7:30 in the morning?"

Blanche stared at Jess. "I hope that's hypothetical."

"Well, it won't be at 7:30am July 15, but you can call it hypothetical now if you ignore the fact he's already suspended about a million and a half or two million Neopians."

"That's not hypothetical."

Jess sighed. "Just tell me what you'd do, please."

"Why?"

"Because I need to do it."

Blanche sighed. "Firstly, you need to find these people in suspension."

"Ah. I tried that already."

"And what happened." It wasn't a question, strangely enough.

"Sloth caught me."

Blanche rolled her eyes. "Then what?"

"Hm?"

"Did he punish you?" Blanche asked in a mildly irritated tone.

"Oh, yes," Jess mumbled softly, expressing a sudden desire to stare at her feet.

"What did he do?"

"Pain," Jess mumbled. "Mind-blowing, horrible pain."

"When was this?"

"About..." Jess paused in thought. "July 15, I should think. At nine in the morning or so."

"It's still June, mum."

"Now, don't you start imitating Zoe," Jess warned. "You read that book on time travel. You should know it's theoretically possible."

"But still," Blanche protested.

"Look, doesn't it explain the different clothes?"

Blanche shrugged uneasily. "I suppose."

"Good girl." Jess beamed. "So what was your brilliant plan?"

"Brilliant plan?" Blanche stared blankly at her owner.

"To defeat Sloth," Jess reminded Blanche.

"Oh." Blanche paused in thought. "You should reanimate the people in suspended animation."

"There are millions of them," Jess protested.

Blanche grinned a grin of her own. "I have another brilliant plan," she declared. "Write an article."

"A... what?"

"Write an article. It is what you do, isn't it?"

"Not for two years," came the unenthusiastic response. "Besides, what exactly do I write?"

"Jessica Louise Smith," Blanche said sternly, "you are going to write that article and get it published."

"But Snowflake never likes my ideas."

"Mum!"

"Fine, fine," she agreed reluctantly. "I'll need a pen and a notepad."

"I have them," Blanche retrieved the required items from a small backpack. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go!"

Jess sighed. "Aren't you coming with me?"

"Why should I?" Blanche asked, puzzled.

"To prove it's not just a brilliant scheme to kill me," Jess smiled. Blanche rolled her eyes.

"Fine," Blanche agreed, equally reluctantly. "To the top floor it is."

Jess was at least a little smarter than the last journalist who tried to discover Sloth's master plan, and hid in a nearby alcove.

"I can't hear anything," she hissed at her Uni.

"My plan wasn't flawless," Blanche hissed back.

"Why are we here, anyway? I know the plan. I saw what it did."

"To confirm the facts," Blanche retorted in a particularly loud hiss. "What kind of reporter are you, anyway?"

"A reporter who hasn't been a reporter for two years."

"Only twenty-two months, actually."

"Twenty-two months is only to you? Now be be quiet." Jess pressed her ear against the wall hopefully, but it remained obstinately silent. Then she had a flash of inspiration. "Blanche, do you have anything you can hit people over the head with and knock them unconscious?"

Blanche was puzzled. "Like a baseball bat."

"Well, like that. But hopefully smaller."

Blanche thought about this request a while. "No."

Jess shrugged. "I'll have to use my arm then," she whispered, walking right up next to the door. Then she bellowed. "Oh, Sloth!"

The door immediately opened, and Jess brought her left arm straight into the back of Sloth's neck. Sloth fell to the floor in shock more than anything else, and Jess and Blanche leapt speedily into the office behind the green scientist. With a swift punch of the control, the door was firmly closed and locked.

"How do you propose we get out?" Blanche asked. Jess shrugged.

"Air vent," she suggested. "Come on, look at all the highly confidential papers lying around. It's time to take notes. And look at this!" She grinned triumphantly at a large machine.

"That makes coffee, mum."

"Well, I prefer space coffee to space tea. Now let's get to work." She rubbed her hands with glee at the stacks of paperwork. She took one off the top of a random pile and read out loud. It was a stupid plan about creating solution-less levels of Sewerage Surfer so the streets of Neopia would be flooded with sewerage.

"Great," Jess muttered sarcastically. "Next pile, I think."