"Hey, Carl, can you hold this wire for me?" Sheen gestured at a blue wire he'd managed to pull out from behind where the lichen had fell. Carl moved to oblige, but dropped the wire almost immediately after he made contact with it.

"Ouch! Sheen, that hurt!"

"What hurt?"

"The wire! It shocked me. That wasn't funny!"

Sheen grabbed the wire and held it experimentally, studying it. "Doesn't hurt me. Maybe it just doesn't like you."

"Sheen, your hair's standing up...it's spikier than usual."

"Huh," Sheen put a hand to his hair. "Oh, right! I'm being shocked right now!"

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"No, I haven't been able to feel shocks for the past half a year – not after all that shocky candy Jimmy made that one time."

"I saw you get shocked after that!"

"Not after I'd eaten it all. I finished it months ago. So now I don't feel shocks. ...but I do have a blue taste in my mouth." Sheen yanked again at the wire again. This time, the wall seemed to crack above the hole. He tugged at it once more, and the crack grew. "Well, it's all we got..."

"Has anyone checked in on the side kicks?" King Goobot asked, putting his metal hands together. He and the newly reformed League of Villains sat around a long table with Goobot at its head. He'd only re-banded the group a few months ago, but he'd made some new additions as well.

"Nope."

"No."

"Nu-huh."

"I thought that was your job!"

Goobot sighed at the reactions from around the table (and two from on top of the table). "Very well, we'll worry about that later. Is the robot still contained?"

Meldar leaned back from his chair. "I told you I took care of it. He can't even move, much less give any help to the jelly bags."

"Marvelous!" Goobot declared.

"Yo, Calamitous!" Baby Eddie interrupted. "When's Gorgeous gonna show up?"

"She's on her uh..." Calamitous's voice suddenly got very quiet. "Her uh...honey moon with the Junk Man."

"Sheesh, eww. Forget I asked!"

"Gentlemen, if we can attend to more pressing matters," Eustace Strych attempted to get the meeting back on track. "I still believe Neutron's dog should be handed over to me. And what are we waiting for with Neutron, anyway? Can't we just come to some agreement regarding his demise?"

"No! He has to be made to suffer!" Meldar slammed a fist against the table. "First he loses everything, then we kill him."

"I agree, but why are we waiting to long to make a move?" Eddie asked. "I mean, we've got the simpletons, we've got the dog and we've got Jimmy. What are we waiting on, an engraved invitation?"

"We're waiting on the girls," Grandma Taters said serenely, before her voice darkened and eyes started to glow. "Especially that little blonde one that got in my way!"

"Why didn't we just grab Cynthia and Elizabeth to begin with?" Eustace asked.

"They weren't at the lab that day," Goobot explained. "And that was supposed to be the nanobots job!"

"Hey," the orange N-1 nanobot griped, "I had everything under control. ...Until he messed it all up!" he pointed at the other nanobot.

"I did nothing of the sort!"

"Please, we checked the logs," Eddie interrupted. "You were both so busy arguing over the captain's chair in that new nanosaucer I made you that you didn't notice the girls were gone already."

"Why don't we just go get them now?" Calamitous suggested.

"Because we didn't get them all at once," Goobot explained. "By the time we realized that someone" he glared at both nanobots, "Had failed their mission, the town was already aware of the disappearance of Neutron and his two dimwits. It would be risky to grab them now."

"Besides," Meldar continued were Goobot left off. "the girls will be on their way to us if they're able."

"So?" Eustace asked. "Are we just waiting for them to thwart us?"

"No. Either they'll make it up here," Meldar held one hand out, "or they can't find a way here at all. So either they have no way to rescue the other jellybags or..." he brought his hands together. "They come running to aid and we squash them, too. And make Jimmy watch."

"You are deliciously evil!" Goobot clapped his appreciation. "And definitely a welcome addition to our team! You know, Intergalactic Showdown was my favorite show."

"Yeah, mine too," Meldar said darkly. "And I'll be bringing it back and making sure Earth is the first planet destroyed."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Calamitous interrupted. "For one, I still live on Earth..."

"And all my nice things are there!" Eustace chimed in.

"Fine, fine. We get rid of Jimmy, you two get your stuff packed but then I'm destroying Earth."

"Are you sure you won't consider a rampaging chicken god?" Ooblar finally piped up. "Much more artistic than just blowing a planet up."

"But not nearly as final."

It was a good thing Libby was in shape, or she'd be huffing and puffing about now. After getting the lab back up, Cindy had suddenly insisted they dash back to Sheen, then Carl, then Jimmy's house to gather clothes for the boys as well as to pack the hyper cube with food and drinks from Libby and then Cindy's kitchen.

"Can't we slow down? We haven't even seen if Vox knows where the boys are!"

"In just a minute, we still need to..." Cindy lost her train of thought. "Ok, we have clothes, food, I packed sleeping bags, toothbrushes, toothpaste..."

"We need to make sure we are even going to be able to get to them! We're getting ahead of ourselves again."

"You're right," Cindy finally stopped moving around. The girls were back at Jimmy's lab, both staring at the front rather than taking the steps to move into the clubhouse entrance. "What if this doesn't work?"

"It's going to."

"All right," Cindy pulled Jimmy's hair from her pocket and scanned it. "Here we go."

"DNA match confirmed. Welcome, Jimmy." Vox announced as Cindy and Libby entered. "Meltdown contained and lab scrubbed."

"Meltdown?" Cindy repeated. "Shouldn't there have been some sort of damage or leak from a meltdown?"

"Well, she said the place was scrubbed."

"But who would have scrubbed it? It shouldn't have given that message if Jimmy has come in after the meltdown happened. And there's nothing here that seems like it could have been recently contained. Everything's just sort of out in the open."

"Mystery for another day, Cind."

"I guess," Cindy sat down at Jimmy's computer and started typing.

New message received! Flashed on the screen. Cindy opened it and wasn't surprised to see that it was her message with the simple note 'testing' on it. "Vox? Uh...could you find Jimmy?"

"No match for 'Jimmy' in search parameters."

"How about Sheen?" Libby suggested.

"Subject Sheen Estevez...tracking..."

"Of course Neutron wouldn't have a way to track himself. I just hope the guys are all together, then." Cindy waited impatiently for Vox to turn up a match. A giant X appeared on the screen.

"Subject Estevez out of range."

"Darn it!" Libby crossed her arms, trying to think. "What about Goddard? Vox! Could you track Goddard?"

"Attempting to locate Goddard..."

Cindy considered it. "I guess that's probably a better shot. Goddard should have the kind of equipment that will actually pick up the signal. ...If we're lucky."

"Goddard located," The X on the screen suddenly transformed into a star map. "Goddard located on Planet Primus."

"Primus? I've never heard of Primus..." Cindy pondered it aloud. "Vox, do you have any information on Primus?"

"Primus is the home world of the Prime Networkians. Primary industry was previously network television, specifically Intergalactic Showdown. Current industry...ranching."

"Ranching?" Libby blinked in confusion, but Cindy was back to pacing.

"So that means Meldar Prime has to be involved in all of this."

"Girls?" It was the second time that day that Mrs. Neutron had snuck up on the girls, but this time had their hearts pounding even worse. Cindy thought hers was going to jump out of her chest. "How did you manage to get in here?"

"Luck, mostly," Libby explained.

"Mrs. Neutron...we have to get them back."

"I'm going with you."

"How?" Cindy said reasonably. Libby tried to inch herself away from the conversation. It wasn't really like Cindy to talk back to grown ups, especially not ones as kind as Judy Neutron.

"What do you mean how?! My son is up there!"

"I mean how," Cindy repeated. "Sure, we can take the space car that Jimmy got from Intergalactic Showdown and you'd fit in there with us, but then what? We don't know how much space we'll need for this, Mrs. Neutron."

"Your parents will never forgive me if I let you go into this yourselves. If we lost you two as well!"

Libby sucked in a deep breath to keep herself from gasping – she'd just noticed that Cindy had the shrink ray hidden behind her back. "I know that's true, Mrs. Neutron. But I also know that if you come with us things will be harder. I've set the computer up for transmission so you can keep checking in on us."

"I am going with you girls!"

"No," Cindy said sadly, "you're not. I'm sorry about this," she aimed the shrink ray and fired, shrinking Mrs. Neutron down to the size of a mouse. "This will wear off in an hour. I'm sorry again," Cindy placed Mrs. Neutron on the computer keyboard. "But we really do need someone to be here on Earth as a contact in case things get rough, and you're the only adult that can handle all the technical stuff. ...Bye."

"You are going to be so grounded when she tells your mom," Libby shook her head. "I can't believe you just shrunk her!"

"I wasn't lying, we do need a contact here in case we need support or need an alert or if Jimmy somehow finds his way home!"

"I know you weren't lying, girl, but I still feel bad about that. Let's just get out of here before she's back to size. Do we have everything we need?"

Cindy sighed. "Probably not. We're about to fly off into the unknown to a planet that one of our worst enemies is from and the only weapons we have, Neutron made. This is probably the stupidest thing we've ever done."

Libby shrugged. "Yep." Libby threw her things into the Intergalactic Showdown car. Most of hers and Cindy's things were packed in the hyper cube, but she had been unwilling to put food in there for hygienic concerns and she wanted easier access to her phone, computer and mp3 player than the hyper cube afforded.

"Okay," Cindy got comfortable behind the wheel. "Vox, open roof!" the computer obliged and Cindy started the engine. "All right...let's light this candle!"