"You do remember, of course, that we were going to go to Meridell today?" Blanche asked casually, all her excitement having dissipated a while ago. Unseen by Blanche, of course, Tigger frowned.

"I think so," he replied, completely, totally and utterly confused anyway. "Zoey and I were fighting about it. Maybe. Well, I think."

"You're right," Blanche affirmed, laughing. "You and Zoey were fighting. You wanted to go to Krawk Island instead, you know."

"I do know," Tigger poked his tongue out, even though Blanche never knew because of the total darkness.

"Good," Blanche responded, chuckling slightly. "So Zoey won the argument, of course, but the plane to Meridell wasn't going to arrive for hours yet, so Alexa showed us a shortcut of hers."

"Oh yeah!" Tigger exclaimed. "I remember that bit. That lousy plane took forever, and it still never showed up."

Blanche laughed again. "Uh, yeah – that's why we didn't wait for it and took the shortcut instead, Tig."

"Land ho!" cried a random pirate. "We're at a suitable range to come ashore now, Cap'n."

"Of course," the Captain stated. "Get all men off the ship, and get plenty of those crates."

"Aye aye, sir," the random pirate replied – he sounded a little like Shoyrubeard, or maybe Cybunnybeard – Jess couldn't tell.

Jess didn't have any idea where the ship was. She was below deck, an a dark, grimy, stinky-smelling room, hands handcuffed behind her, so she was stuck around a convenient pole. A trapdoor above her opened, and the sunlight made her wince. Flotsambeard – ah, so that's who the voice had belonged to! - waddled down the stairs, collected two crates, and somehow shifted them upstairs again.

"Hello?" she asked him, in as rude and attention-demanded a tone as she could summon. "I've been stuck down here since breakfast time. Aren't you going to let me go back above deck?"

Flotsambeard didn't even really deign to reply, unless you happen to think that him shaking his head was replying, of course.

Jess sighed as Flotsambeard closed the trapdoor, rather much louder than she thought was really necessary. Her leg was terribly cramped. Well, she'd been sitting down for hours – of course it was cramped! She hoped she could find some pain killers upstairs – assuming, of course, that she was let upstairs.

After a few minutes of careful listening, Jess managed to discern that the crew were going to pillage some poor town or another. Jess idly hoped it was Geraptiku, to give those stupid pirates their comeuppance. The Gerapikans might have been dead skeletons and spirits, but they sure were freaky as well.

Jess frowned suddenly. What on Earth – or, rather, Neopia – was Geraptiku? It sounded freaky, sure – like a newly-discovered town in the Haunted Woods, or maybe an ancient tropical civilisation, on Mystery Island, or Krawk Island perhaps. Or maybe Geraptiku was a completely different planet altogether – why couldn't she remember? Or, maybe the question was why did she remember in the first place?

Maybe, her imagination said, someone's been playing around with your timeline.

Jess then laughed at her imagination. Aloud. Silly thing it was, too.

The trapdoor opened sharply, with a loud bang as it hit the wooden decking. "What are you laughing about?" snapped the dark, long-haired Captain. "You've no right to laugh! You are a prisoner."

Jess coughed, and ceased to laugh abruptly. "I was just reminiscing," she lied. "After all, it's not like there's much else -"

The trapdoor closed just as loudly, with a perfectly sharp thwap. Well, maybe the Captain was in a bad mood. No, scratch that – maybe he was in a worse mood than usual. He was, after all, always in a permanently bad mood.

"Alexa's shortcut was a tunnel, remember," Blanche explained, still enshrouded by the perfect pitch blackness of the room. "It was one she'd dug in that month where Zoey 'quit' Neopia."

"Oh... I remember that month," Tigger said idly. "Mum was sort of... kind of bored in that month, wasn't she Blanche?"

"Um, duh, Tigger," Blanche rolled her eyes, and something in her voice made Tigger able to tell despite the fact he definitely couldn't see her eyes. "But anyway, we all entered the tunnel, and of course, something went wrong only a few minutes in."

"Something always goes wrong only a few minutes in," Tigger decided, remembering that football game they – his siblings, along with Alexa – had played once.

"Anyway," Blanche continued, interrupting Tigger's train of thought, "we were just walking along and all of a sudden, Mum heard a noise, do you remember?"

"Um..."

"She walked ahead into the darkness, you know, and just disappeared. Like that. We ran forward, and she wasn't there at all."

"Of course," Tigger said slowly. "Yeah, I remember that."

"I'm very disappointed with you, Alexa," Alexa's boss said sternly. He was a lemony green Graarl with a small grey beard, and a large grey moustache, and sported rather stupid-looking hairy grey eyebrows. "We are a serious business, as you should know, and you've just stripped us of money we should rightfully be able to make."

"You just don't get it!" Alexa protested hopelessly. "It was a Dung Mote. Look at my hoof – it's filthy! Filthy, I tell you! I need a bath, a scrubbing brush, a manicure..."

"You're more than welcome to bathe outside working hours," her boss told her. "I'm very sorry, Miss Li, but we are going to have to prosecute you."

Alexa groaned. "I'm exhausted enough," she protested. "I have a fourteen-hour working day, thanks to you. Did you know there's an illness you can get by repeating the same movements day in, day out? People working in factories often get it, and so do -"

"You are changing the subject," her boss informed Alexa accusingly.

"Sorry, sir."

"You are not even sorry," the Graarl told Alexa acidly. "If there's something I like even worse than robbing me of profit – well, or maybe that's like nearly as little as robbing me of profit – it's employees who lie to me, Miss Li," he informed the Uni savagely. "Do you have an apology to make?"

Alexa coughed. "No sir," she confessed.

"Well, at least that's the truth," the Graarl boss mused before angrily turning on his employee. "Why do you do it, Alexa – what drives you, what motivates you? Do you wake up in the morning and say, 'I think I'll breath the law today'? Tell me, Miss Li, be totally honest!"

Alexa took a step back subconsciously. "Well," she said, thinking about the question. "It might have something to do with the fact that this is slave labour."

"Oh, not that again," the boss groaned. "I've had quite enough of employees who make that complaint, you know – I'm thoroughly sick of it!"

"We're not even employees!" Alexa argued fiercely. "We're not paid, and we have to live right next to the caves. We're not allowed more than a mile away from the premises without at least four armed guards, and permission signed in triplicate by you, and all these anonymous stockholders, which rarely ever happens because those stockholders are obviously very pro-slavery..."

"That's enough!" the Graarl shrieked with all the force of a category four cyclone. "Would more pay satisfy you, you little... ahem... anyway, do you want three meals a day? Do you really expect three meals a day?"

"Uh, yes?" Alexa replied. "Isn't that a little obvious, you idiot? According to the Fair and Noble Treatment of Prisoners, category four subsection D, rule 19 amendment iii, prisoners must be given the required amount of -"

"Prisoners?" the Graarl snorted. "You're more than welcome to depart at any time you want, you foolish thing..."

"Well, I would be, wouldn't I, to depart?" Alexa demanded, on a furious roll. "I'd get shot at, you... uh..." Alexa stared at her boss and coughed. "The point being, I have to work here – or die. That's not being a prisoner, you think? What is prisonership, then... do I have to be taken captive in the middle of a war?" she demanded fiercely, striking her boss's desk with her relatively clean hoof.

"That's quite enough!" her boss raged, standing up and roaring at the Uni with all the strength of a category five cyclone. "Out of my office right now, my girl – I'll deal with you later!"

Two androids, different in appearance to the red and green cylindrical beast, came up to Alexa and grabbed both her front hooves, to drag her away.

"I informed Zoey that I thought an intermittent matter transmitter might be responsible for mum's disappearance," Blanche was telling her brother. "Considering our lack of sunlight, I thought it must have been powered by a rather strong relay network system, which prompted me to consider what they were doing in Alexa's cave."

"Mmhmm," Tigger replied without enthusiasm, wondering why Blanche had suddenly started technobabbling like a maniac. "And then Zoey decided to wait for the... thingy... to turn back on."

"Precisely, Tigger. It was aussiejewel who decided it was a waste of time, and so everyone except Zoey moved on."

"Ah," Tigger nodded. "And we never found Zoey after that, did we?"

"No," Blanche affirmed. "No, it was just us pets after that..."