There was one person Jess thought who could possibly help her.

"Jhuidah!" Jess yelled, running towards Jhuidah and a surprised female teenager at the Cooking Pot – it was, after all, well and truly morning by now.

Jhuidah remembered Pango's advice: do not fight the evil.

Sounded like ridiculous advice.

"Yes?" Jhuidah inquired patiently.

"I think I need your help," Jess told the Faerie.

"Like, later," the teenager said. "In case you, like, didn't get it, the Faerie is totally busy."

Jess rolled her eyes at the obviously self-obsessed American. "This is important," Jess complained.

"Like, it's so not as important as my Blooky!" the teenager insisted.

"Yes it is!" Jess yelled. "It involves the destruction of everything on this island – everything! Including your Blooky, and the Cooking Pot it was created in!"

"Whatever," the teenager said. "I was here first."

Jess stubbornly stood her ground. "When faced with ultimate destruction, sane people do not say 'whatever'!"

"Whatever," the teenager repeated.

Jhuidah, keen to defuse the situation, said, "Lynne, your Blooky's finished already."

Lynne smiled and took a three-eyed blue thing that in every other way resembled an Angelpuss out of the pot. "See how it pays to be patient?" she asked Jess smugly before strolling away, strange petpet in her arms.

"So," Jhuidah said. "What is it?"

Jess took a breath. "What do you know about Mumbo Pango?" she asked quietly.

Jhuidah seemed taken aback by the question. "I would have thought you'd know a lot by yourself," she stated.

Jess shook her head. "Not really," she admitted. "I read the monolith near a cave somewhere to the east, and that's about it..."

"Which monolith?" Jhuidah enquired. "What did it say?"

Jess related everything she remembered to the short Island Faerie, who nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe you are right," she suggested. "However, I haven't heard of this Cult you talked of."

Jess was a little disheartened by this. "Haven't you?" she asked desperately.

Jhuidah shook her head. "Why do you want to know?" she asked. "How will it help you?"

"I've just got a feeling," Jess told the Faerie. "There's something I have to prevent, right? And I just think that thing I have to prevent is..." Jess's voice trailed off – almost absent-mindedly, as if she continued the sentence in her head but forgot to put them to her lips.

"The resurrection of Mumbo Pango?" Jhuidah suggested helpfully. "I can take you to the Island Mystic, if you like. I cannot help, but he... he, maybe..."

Jess smiled. "I do know the way," Jess reminded her. "I've been travelling to this planet for nearly three years."

"It is not that," Jhuidah smiled. "If he knows about this Cult of Mumbo, and if it is as powerful as you say, he would not be offering information to those he knows nothing about."

"So you're going to convince him to let me help," Jess deduced aloud.

"Yes," Jhuidah agreed. "It is the least I can do."

"Excellent," Jess smiled. "Now, put an away sign in front of your pot and let's go."

If the Island Mystic had been startled by his counterpart Faerie and a seemingly very self-assured pre-teenager bound into his hut and ask for information regarding the Cult of Mumbo, it had been nothing compared to his shock when the self-assured pre-teenager was able to briefly scan the language of the Ancient Cocos. Even he couldn't read the Ancient Cocos' language that fast – it should have taken more than a little concentration...

Jess analysed various scrolls while she drank a cup of tea. It would have suited the mood more if it were night, she thought, but it was barely nine in the morning. Her search had been centred mainly on previous attempts to resurrect Mumbo Pango, if there had been any – which she soon found there hadn't.

"Odd," she had murmured at the time. "That Mumbo would wait until a specific time..."

The Island Mystic, having been in the front region of the hut giving fortunes to hopeful avatar-earners and fervent horoscope-believers, had been mostly unaware of Jess's historical research, contenting himself with the knowledge that she was breezing through paragraphs he himself had not translated – which isn't a very easy thing to content yourself with, when you think about it.

It was well after one in the afternoon – and well after a lunatic avatar-collector ran into her part of the hut she was borrowing to demand the Island Mystic's avatar – when Jess finally stumbled across something important. Or, at least, something she thought was important.

It was made in 12,000BN, or so the scroll said, during what previous scrolls had described as the heyday of the Cult – when it was running rampage and terrifying hundreds of hapless law-abiding Cocos. It was made according to Mumbo's instruction, the paper assuring Jess that every nut and every slab of metal had been laid to the precise millimetre Mumbo desired.

It was a device – again helmet-shaped – that would recall Mumbo to Mystery Island. Jess gathered the scroll was designed for Cult eyes only, since it detailed exactly how it intended to achieve that.

Being a helmet, the device was apparently intended to fit over someone's head. 'Why?' was the question. The scroll read that it would not recall Mumbo to reality directly – it would instead bring him back through an intermediary, another, by way of destroying their mind and letting Mumbo inhabit their body. Every memory gone, every trace of mind abandoned – replaced instead by Mumbo's.

The only good news seemed that Mumbo would be reduced to the powers of that particular poor soul – god he may be, but as the inhabitant of another's body it would be rather like transplanting the mind of a Cybunny into a Graarl and then calling the Graarl a Cybunny. Rather gruesome, yes, but it served as a suitable analogy.

But Blanche! Blanche was a Faerie! A Faerie Uni, yes, but a Faerie nonetheless – she had powers she herself had wisely chosen not to use, but with her mind destroyed – admittedly a horrible thought left at that, but that would be foolish – and Mumbo in control!

All right, so Blanche wasn't an especially powerful Faerie – just your average, bog-standard sort of Faerie, much like Fuhnah, Psellia, Maelstra, Iyana and hell, even Jhudora – but she was a Faerie nonetheless. Fyora had as much dominion over her as she did over Illusen, Taelia and other Faeries of other worlds. Imagine what Mumbo could do with that sort of connection!

Jess took a breath as she realised her thoughts were getting out of hand. This was really no worse than that misadventure with Sloth's android – for a start, she'd been mucking around in time that time. This time, she had the power of the bracelet.

The bracelet. The previously despised bracelet. The one Jess had even forgotten about before trying to calm herself down.

Then another thought crossed her mind – why was she trying to calm down? Her youngest pet, her smartest pet, her most powerful pet, the pet who argued with her about what they should do most frequently was about to be destroyed forever, her body in use by an insane, evil Coco god!

Steve and Bob – mostly Steve, of course – had a large cowl and were busily making final adjustments to the 12,000 year old piece of technology. Looking at it, you'd laugh once you remembered the stage the Cocos had regressed to by the day!

"Yo, dude, is it done yet?" Bob frowned as he held a large hammer to his head.

Steve sighed. "I suppose. Yes, yes..." After a brief examination, he turned to Bob. "Summon the Cult of Mumbo, Bob. His return must be triumphant!"

Bob continued his stunned frown. "How do I know who's in the Cult again?"

Steve pointed exasperatedly at a piece of paper lying on a nearby dusty table. "Everyone on that list," he explained.

Bob counted. "There are only seventeen people," he told Steve, as if this were a reason why he shouldn't summon them – but it was, in fact, an idle comment.

"Yes, Bob," Steve rolled his eyes. "Now summon them!" As Bob stepped over the threshold of the room with the long corridor outside, he added, "with the phone!"