Jess didn't even bother to open her eyes when she woke up. She could tell that she was lying down, and also that she'd been knocked unconscious.
"I have to stop doing that," she said aloud, sitting up at the same time. "Maybe being knocked unconscious once, or possibly twice, would be fine. But four times. That's a little too much. With the ray gun thing. From the pain. From that stupid drug. And now, from..." she thought. "Whatever it was."
"Carbon dioxide," came a helpful voice.
"Right," Jess said. "So that's once with a stun gun, twice from pain, thrice from the memory-inducing drug, and four from carbon dioxide." She paused slightly. "I think opening my eyes would be a sensible thing to do about now." She decided to take her own excellent advice and saw an incredibly grumpy Blanche sitting in front of her. "What's wrong, Blanche?"
"Well, we've been taken prisoner by Sloth," Blanche replied. "That's hardly cause for celebration."
Jess waved a hand. "I've been taken prisoner by Sloth so many times in the last two days that it doesn't really bother me any more."
"That hardly makes it less bothersome," Blanche said grumpily. "What do you plan on doing, eh?"
"I'll write my article!" Jess beamed, reaching into her pocket for her notepad and pen. "Excellent. Sloth didn't confiscate anything..."
And so Jess set to work, dithering about various phrases and spellings, and persuading her Uni to let her have the chair. Several hours later, she grinned triumphantly as her masterpiece – an article of nearly 1,500 words – was finished.
"Great, mum," Blanche remarked acidly. "Now what?"
A still-grinning Jess looked up. "Sorry?"
"It's not like there's a mailbox or a Neopian Times office block in here. And I hardly think Sloth will let you submit articles to the Times about his dastardly plans," Blanche reasoned.
"Oh, you always have to take the fun out of everything," Jess chided.
"I'm right though, aren't I?" Blanche asked smugly.
"I suppose," Jess grumbled. Then she screamed loudly.
"What is it, mum?" Blanche asked worriedly. Jess smiled.
"Practising my screaming," she admitted sheepishly, following that statement up with another scream.
Blanche was rather irritated now, and her ears hurt. "What," she said angrily, "is the use in that?"
"Well, logically," Jess began, "some one will hear us scream. Even in space, someone has to hear us scream."
"Yeah. Me," Blanche stated somewhat unfairly. "You're bursting my eardrums."
Jess shrugged. "Sorry." She screamed again.
"Would you stop doing that?" Blanche demanded angrily. "As far as I was aware, the idea wasn't to annoy me."
"Exactly. It's supposed to annoy someone who can open the door."
"Oh, brilliant, mum," Blanche scoffed.
"What? I haven't got anything better to do." Jess decided another scream was in order, and so screamed another one. Blanche rolled her eyes.
"Go ahead," Blanche said. "I'll just go mad. I don't mind."
"Excellent," Jess grinned, screaming again. Blanche wondered what she'd gotten herself into.
Several minutes' worth of screaming later, an intensely annoyed Sloth stormed into the room. Jess smiled politely.
"Hi," she said. "Dropped in for a nice chat?"
"Which one of you was screaming?"
Blanche immediately pointed at Jess.
"There's loyalty for you," an apparently miffed Jess said.
"You won't change history, you know," Sloth said smugly, waving his ray gun around vaguely.
"How did you know about that?" Jess asked. "I would have thought it'd be immediately apparent only to your later self..."
"I am my later self," Sloth said. "I used my gun to follow you. There are two Sloths here, also."
"What's he talking about?" Blanche hissed at Jess. "Follow you from where?"
"The sixty-first century," Jess replied, not bothering to hiss. "The eighty-first in my time. He," she said, pointing Sloth accusingly, "tricked the entire population of Neopia into believing he saved it from the androids he let loose."
"I didn't trick them into anything," Sloth declared. "I did save Neopia from the androids. After letting them run around for a few days, of course."
Blanche looked from Jess to Sloth and back to Jess rather uncertainly. "This is confusing," she complained. "So basically, on Swimming 15 Sloth'll release a couple of millions of androids into the streets of Neopia for a few days, they kill everyone, Sloth deactivates them, six thousand years later he's honoured as a hero?"
"That's pretty much it, yeah," Jess nodded.
"And you can't stop me!" Sloth laughed maniacally. "Nothing in -"
"And don't you dare say 'nothing in the world can stop me now'," Jess chided.
"Why not?" Sloth asked. "You are in no position to order anything."
"Because," Jess declared, standing up, "whenever anyone says 'nothing in the world can stop me now' it's usually when someone stops them. To save yourself from being horribly humiliated, I suggest you never say it."
"I don't see why you'd care if I were horribly humiliated or not," Sloth said suspiciously to the girl who was now apparently using him as a wall to lean against.
"Ah, well, it never looks quite as good if you defeat an utterly humiliated villain," Jess grinned in a manner that made Sloth sure he was right in being suspicious. "It always looks so much better if you beat them in their prime." She suddenly began to lean harder on the towering green scientist. "I don't feel so well," she complained.
"Ahm, well, off my cloak!"
Jess obeyed this instruction, however not on purpose, and whipped past Sloth's arm on her way to the floor.
Blanche jumped up in alarm. "What did you do?" she demanded at Sloth accusingly.
"For once, I didn't do anything," Sloth declared, holding both hands in the air as a surrendering gesture. Almost. As much as a captor can display to captives.
"A virus," Blanche muttered. "Your cloak has a virus on it!"
"It does not!" Sloth protested adamantly. "I keep my cloak completely clean!"
"Sure you do," Blanche remarked acidly. "Go!"
"I'm your captor!" Sloth protested. "You can't tell me when to go!"
"Go! Go! Go!" Blanche began to shout, landing blow after blow on the scientist with her hooves.
"Just so you know," Sloth declared, "I decided to go. See you, prisoners!" After a failed attempt at an evil laugh, Sloth left the room and the door closed behind him.
"Oh, mum," Blanche whimpered, "what's he done to you?"
Then Jess did a highly surprising thing. She sat up to reveal Sloth's ray gun.
"The advantages of having shoplifting as a subject at school," she declared proudly. "It's all about distraction. I knew you'd fulfil that role for me."
"What if I hadn't?" Blanche asked.
"Well, there was always a backup plan if that happened."
"Which was?"
"Shoot and run like crazy."
Blanche laughed. "Your backup plans are always so well thought-out. Anyway, aren't we going?"
"Going?" Jess asked. "Oh, of course."
Blanche nodded and walked towards the door, only to be halted.
"What do you think you're doing?" Jess asked. "That door's locked."
"But you said we could go," Blanche protested.
"Ah. Well," Jess said, "this gun travels in space as well as time. Or rather, it can teleport people in space as well as time. The gun's usually rather left behind."
"Ah," Blanche replied. "So are you going to teleport me out of here?"
"Naturally," Jess smiled. "Now, where was I in mid-afternoon on June 19?" She paused in thought. "The café," she declared proudly, "drinking tea."
She quickly adjusted the controls and fired at Blanche. Blanche faded away, and then Jess took a glance at the bright red machine.
"Now, obviously I can't use it on myself again," Jess told herself quite confidently, "so I'll just set the controls to laser and I'll be right." She adjusted a knob and started firing in a steady beam at the door, cutting a large circle into it for her to climb through.
"Now, Jess Smith," Jess told herself after climbing through the hole she'd just made, "time to find Sloth's office."