Zoey had slumped over what had become her usual chair in the headmistress's office. The Kyrii headmistress was meticulously – and yet erroneously! - counting the eight detention slips Miss Thuman had told Zoey to deliver.

"Eleven detentions, Zoey?" the headmistress sighed. "Must you always get into trouble?"

"But Mrs Niara!" Zoey protested. "I didn't get eleven detentions! I got eight!"

"I counted eleven," Mrs Niara said sharply. "You may count them yourself if you feel my years as a Maths teacher were wasted."

Zoey groaned, but obliged. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight... um, nine, ten..." she blinked. "There are eleven," she stated. "But there were only eight when I was walking down the corridor!"

Mrs Niara stared at Zoey. "Well, there are eleven now, aren't there, Zoey?" she asked contemptuously.

"Yes, miss..." Zoey sighed dejectedly. "So now I have to go to eleven detentions, huh?"

Mrs Niara nodded. "So, Zoey... we can start today or tomorrow. Do you have any detentions already lined up this afternoon?"

"No," Zoey answered glumly.

Mrs Niara smiled. "Then we'll start them this afternoon, Zoey – five o'clock? How's that?"

"I have four-dimensional trigonometry at five o'clock," Zoey protested. "Mr Hainley'd go crazy if I skipped four-dimensional trigonometry for a detention... again..."

"Ah. Well, how's six o'clock, then?"

Zoey sighed. "Fine. I suppose." Well, added her thoughts, it was before detention got added to it.

"Then we'll have you in the detention all at six o'clock, Zoey. Sharp."

"Yes, Mrs Niara."

Zoey then heaved herself off the black chair, grabbed her schoolbag, and headed off to low-gravity physical endurance class.

Tigger idly stared at the books he'd been assigned to shelve. He placed The History of the Neopian Economy, volume 1: the Basics onto the shelf, moved on to The History of the Neopian Economy, volume 2: History of the Neopoint, struggled as he shifted the incredibly heavy The History of the Neopian Economy, volume 3: History of the Dubloon, its Exchange Rate, and why Krawk Islanders Believe it is Superior to the Neopoint, and then shelved the other ninety-two volumes into the three shelves they took up. There was only one other book on the trolley now, an odd scientific book named Realistic Simulation Developing. Looking cautiously both ways for that narky librarian, he opened the book roughly in the middle, quickly flicked half the pages to get to the start of the book, and read.

Jess sat on a stool in the corner, watching the pirates eating their slushy messy porridge, and spilling it everywhere. She was incredibly tempted to ask if they'd had a little too much to drink the night before, but the slap she'd get afterwards would make asking the question a trifle stupid, and definitely not worth it.

"Oi! You... servant girl!"

Jess looked up, staring at the angry-looking Eyrie. "Mm?" she asked. "Oh great and powerful Eyriebeard, what pressures you to speak to a humble serving girl?" she added sarcastically. As per usual, none of the pirates got it. The Eyrie, in fact, looked as though his ego had been thoroughly boosted by Jess's sarcastic comment.

"What do you call this muck, eh?"

Jess smiled. "Oh, I call it the disgusting mess you people make me cook every morning. You, on the other hand, call it breakfast?"

"Oh." Eyriebeard stared at his breakfast, and loaded some onto his wing. He then hurled it at his neighbour, Skeithbeard, who contrary to his name did not have a beard.

Skeithbeard was furious. "Ye breakfast-hurling idiot!" he shouted. "Cannae thee 'preciate good food?"

Eyriebeard snorted. "This isn't food!" he cried. "It's liquid with lumps of wheat thrown in!"

Skeithbeard, in retaliation, threw some porridge at Eyriebeard. Then, of course, the Captain strode in.

"You imbeciles!" he cried. "Food is sparse on long sea journeys... you're well aware of that."

Both Eyriebeard and Skeithbeard nodded – very, very quickly.

"So why, pray tell, are you flinging food about it?"

Eyriebeard gulped. "It's yucky," he complained. "She's not a very good cook."

Jess stared at the Captain, who in return glared at her. "If we had more porridge I could make it better," she protested.

"I hear you complaining!" the Captain shouted. "No one complains on my ship!"

"Uhh... she did," Techobeard piped up, to find himself the victim of another of the Captain's famous withering stares.

"I hired you to be a good servant!" he shouted.

"Oh, that's what you call it!" Jess laughed idiotically. "I thought it was called slave labour – or, at least, that's what my dictionary said. Whether dictionaries are right or not is another matter entirely -"

"Insubordination!" the Captain declared.

"I'm a slave, dumbo. Do you think I'm going to be all nice and kind and sweet and have amnesia in all issues pertaining to slavery?"

"Of course not," the Captain snapped. "I expect you to know what will keep you alive."

Jess pulled a funny face that involved her nose wrinkling and one side of her mouth going up.

"Anyway," the still fuming Captain said, "we're going to be landing on land today."

"Wow..." breathed the crew.

"I wasn't aware you could land on the ocean," Jess said glibly.

The Captain glared at Jess furiously. "All right – to the cellar!"

The Mutant Techo knew everything. Faeries, he decided, for all their amusing traits and blatant Superiority Syndome, are absolute rubbish at conversing top-secret things secretly. I mean, they'd basically shouted out that they were going to kill him, blah blah blah...

But he still didn't quite know who he was. He remembered his family – down to that annoying airheaded Brown Uni – but he couldn't pin any names to them.

Something, he decided, was blatantly wrong. No memory in the world could remember everything perfectly except names. He even remembered that preteen brunette girl calling him and his siblings to dinner, but his memory had conveniently blanked out all the names. His memory literally played: "hey, you guys! Dinner's ready... Hello? ...? Dinner's on the TABLE, YOU KNOW!"

But faulty memories could be dealt with later. First, he'd have to make something up, just to head off a completely undeserved death penalty.

Canda suddenly breezed into the room, all smiles and daintiness. "Had a nice sleep?" she enquired, showing off her perfectly aligned, brilliant white teeth.

"Um... yes," the Techo answered.

Canda nodded, and made a Lime Faerie Bubble appear out of thin air. "For you," she smiled. The Techo accepted the bubble, but didn't eat it. Just because Canda's smile was so large it was a weapon of mass blindness did not mean the bubble wasn't poisoned. Or drugged. Or something.

"Do you remember anything about your identity yet?" Canda asked sweetly.

"We-ell..." the Techo decided to start with the truth, and then make things up. "I remember... my family. I've got a human mum, see, and she's kind of mental and overly cheerful and too glib for her own good and she likes scarves and tea and running around aimlessly and... um, run-on sentences." Canda's eyebrow was raised, but at least he hadn't killed him yet. "Then there's my brother. He's a Baby Kougra... and very playful... and active... and not very smart," he surmised. "Then I have two sisters. There's a smart Silver Lupe, and a Brown Uni who is the vainest thing in all Neopia, barring Vira of course."

"What about their names?" Canda pressed, her voice still as sickly sweet as undiluted sugar.

"Oh, yes." The Techo forced a laugh. "Mum's is... err, Stacey... and... my brother's is Jake... and my nice sister's is Lucy... and, um, my airheaded sister's name is... Rebecca."

Canda coughed slightly. "And what of your name, Techo? What do I call you?"

"John," the Techo answered without hesitation.

"Ah," Canda nodded. "Very nice name, I suppose."

"Thanks," the Techo answered, inwardly suspecting his ploy hadn't quite worked out.

Well, Faerieland wasn't made of clouds for nothing.

It was dark. Zoey walked along the street of Neopia Central dejectedly, trying to both hug herself for warmth and not hug herself for comfort. It was raining, of course. It always rains at the most inappropriate times – just as it always rains at any random time there happens to be heavy rainclouds about.

Zoey's thin shawl were just not enough protection against the cold or the rain, but her jacket would have hurt beyond belief – they would have hurt so much it killed, to exaggerate mildly.

Zoey was on her way home after detention. How terrible detention was. She dared herself to roll up her sleeve and just stare at her lower arm. It was a dare she took up. Her arm was red and bruised and had welts in it – all at the same time. Zoey smiled miserably at the one bruise she'd procured on her wrist, the one she'd gotten for slapping the detention master.

Her detention had also been extended by half an hour – it was now seven-thirty.

Zoey looked up at she heard a vehicle trundling down the highway. She would have caught a bus home, but after seven-thirty the only buses in service were long distance buses – Neopia Central to Brightvale, Sakhmet City to the Haunted Woods, that kind of thing. And besides which, she'd left her purse at school, in her schoolbag, because she had no pockets and it would have really killed to wear a school bag on the two-hour walk home.

The vehicle trundling down the highway was a long-distance bus, and with a sort of surprise Zoey noticed that she was near the Neopia Central stop for the Neopia Central-Meridell bus route.

Her pulse quickened. Almost on a whim, she ran to the bus stop, ignoring the terrible agony her leg was giving her, and she stuck her arm out. The bus slowed and stopped for her.

She was going to Meridell.

Alexa was once more working at that absolutely irritating wall, with its non-tangible motes and blah-blah this and blah-blah that...

Oh dear, she was working herself up. She could tell by the fact that her aim was becoming erratic, and her hammer had just missed the wall and instead hit her own hoof. Alexa bit her tongue to stop her crying out.

"You there, Uni – what's the pause for?"

Alexa turned to see an ugly robot that had been designed for someone with a love of teal, carrot-red, and cylinders.

"I just hit my hoof with my hammer," she snapped.

"How terrible for you," the android drawled, its voice positively dripping with sarcasm and disdain. "Back to work, Uni."

Alexa turned around in fury, hammering away with increased vigour at the wall. "How terrible for you," she sneered, once sure the android was out of hearing range. "Back to work, Uni... EWWW!"

She jumped back from the wall in disgust as a stinky brown substance oozed over her hoof.

"EWW!" she repeated. "That's a – a Dung Mote!"

The android came back. "You have found a mote?" it demanded coldly, asking the question in such a way that it barely registered as a question.

"Yes," Alexa replied. "And look at my hoof, you... just look at it! I need a bath now... no, a shower..."

The android snorted with disdain, despite its obvious roboticness, and handed Alexa a container. "Shovel your mote into this," it ordered. "Place it behind you, and continue work."

"With what?" Alexa asked. "My hammer?"

"No, Uni," the android bleated. "With your hoof."

Alexa stared at the wall, which was now oozing disgusting-smelling brown slime, and got her hammer out and absolutely pumelled the area. The mote was apparently obliterated, landing all over people within a five-metre radius of Alexa.

"UNI!" the android shouted angrily. "What did you do?"

Alexa looked tearfully down at her dung-splattered self. "I smashed the mote," Alexa confessed.

"You have wasted profit!" the android announced.

"I didn't even have any profit... how could I waste it?"

"I shall take you to the boss," the android announced. "Follow me, Uni – you have quite a bit of explaining to do."

Alexa gulped and nodded. Then she followed.

aussiejewel groaned as she heard another bowl of slushy mess pushed through the cat-flap in the door. If it was lunchtime, like it would be if she hadn't slept through any meals, she'd be having sloppy casserole. At dinner time, she'd probably have more sloppy casserole – or the variant, an absolutely identical-looking curry, the hottest sort no one could stand and some prankster probably invented one day when he was bored. Or maybe he had the foresight to know that inventing the curry would make aussiejewel mad, which would give her jailers a laugh.

"Meurgh," aussiejewel muttered indistinctly, crawling out of her totally unhygienic bed. She ended up rolling off it onto the floor, after which she sat up with a massive headache.

She dragged herself along to her food, and wrinkled her nose in disgust as the cheesy, browny, liquidy "meal" that assaulted her optic nerves.

She picked a spoon up and ate a mouthful. It was ice cold – or rather, nearly ice cold, since ice by definition is a solid, and this mucky excuse of a sauce was definitely not a solid. In fact, it had the consistency of the skin milk gets when it's been hot, and then cooled down without being stirred or shifted.

After a few mouthfuls, aussiejewel's stomach was beginning to protest, so aussiejewel gave up with her food, and retreated back to her filthy bed. The back of her mouth had a terrible taste in it, one aussiejewel hoped she could sleep off.

After all, she slept everything off.

"Sister," the imperial Light Faerie whispered loudly, in her trademark ethereal, deathly voice. "How does the Techo fare?"

"He remembers some things," Canda replied, stepping a step closer towards her superior. "However, he still does not remember his name. He has lied to me."

"He has identified himself John," the Light Faerie nodded wisely.

"Indeed, Sister," Canda breathed her reply as though she were a much wiser Air Faerie than she really was. Then she added cautiously, "is lying not worse than stupidity?"

"No," the Light Faerie stated, suddenly jarring with the ethereal tones she had been using previously. "Lying is a far more serious crime than stupidity, Sister."

"Then it is possible that we must take care of him," Canda suggested slyly.

"It is entirely possible," the Light Faerie said, continuing to speak in a quite normal tone, or at least compared to her ethereal ones. "It is so entirely possible, Sister, that it is definite. It is exactly what we will do."

Canda smiled vaguely and curtsied. "As you wish, Sister," she murmured, then proceeding to stroll lazily down the palace corridors, often turning in such odd ways that she ended up walking 360°. She did eventually get to the Techo's room, however, and briefly pausing to collect a wonderfully sweet smile on her face, turned the door handle and walked inside.

Her smile rapidly dissipated, and was even more rapidly replaced by a terrible scowl. The Techo was not there, and the window was wide open. The room was filled with Faerieland's characteristic sweet, mild breeze, indicating that the window had been open at least quite a few minutes.

Tigger had been standing on his now empty trolley, trying to prise a window near the ceiling of the library open. It'd been remarkably lucky that the librarian hadn't come for him yet, although several customers had given him funny looks.

"What're you doing?" a Baby Aisha had asked curiously. "Why do you have a crowbar?"

"I'm escaping," he informed the Baby Aisha gently.

"Why don't you use the door?" the Aisha had asked, wide-eyed.

He had then had to tell her that there were guards either side of that door on both sides of the wall, and that he didn't have a chance of getting through alive.

And then he remembered that it didn't matter anyway, and so he dived off the trolley and ran right through the door, ignoring the bewildered stares of the inside guards. The outside guards weren't so unprepared though, and promptly shot him down.

Blanche heard the sudden increase in speed of someone's breathing. In the pitch blackness, she couldn't tell who it was.

"Who's that?" she asked reasonably, frightened all the while.

She heard a familiar Kougra growl.

"Tigger!" Blanche exclaimed excitedly. "Tigger, I - don't know where we are," she admitted lamely. "I've been incapacitated, I think, and... it's so..."

"Whussis'n meh head?" Tigger asked slurrily, trying to sit up. "Who you..."

"Tigger... I'm... Blanche..."

Tigger, unbeknownst to Blanche, blinked. His dazed head cleared too. "Blanche!" he exclaimed excitedly. "How do you get this stupid helmet off, it's driving me insane..."

Blanche laughed. "There's a switch on the left side," she informed her brother. "It'll come off once you've flicked that."

"Oh," Tigger replied. "Yay... that got it." He then paused. "Where are we?" he asked.

"I've no idea," Blanche assured Tigger. "It's not like I can tell through vision, either."

"Good point," Tigger said. "How did we get here, then?"

"Do you remember the tunnels?" Blanche asked, sighing.

"Tunnels?" Tigger frowned. "What tunnels?"

"You don't remember the tunnels."

"I just told you, no. What tunnels?"

Blanche sighed again. "I'll have to tell you, won't I?"