Sloey the mousebabe and Gubbio the molebabe were running down one of the hallways in the Abbey, pretending to be Crystal Gems. Sloey had the ping-pong ball taped to her forehead again, and Gubbio had the magnet around his neck.

Suddenly the ball fell off Sloey's head onto the floor and rolled down the hall into the guest bedroom where the real Crystal Gems were staying. Sloey ran after it.

Gubbio followed her but stopped when he reached the doorway. "Hurr, us'ns prob'ly shouldn't be in here. This room belongs to ee Crystal Gems."

"Dats wot we are, isn't it?" Sloey said.

"Yeah, but that's only play-loike. Oi'm sure ee real gemfolk wouldn't loike us messing with their stuff. Bo urr no."

But Sloey had found Pearl's bag on the dresser and was rifling through it. She pulled out a thing that looked like a gun. This was a "replicator" and it could make copies of things. "Hmm, wonder wot dis does?"

She pointed it at the ping-pong ball, which was lying on the floor by one of the beds. She zapped the ball with the replicator and another identical ball appeared next to it. Sloey laughed and clapped her paws. She started making more copies of the ball until the floor was littered with them. "Hahaha, look wot I can do, Gubbio!"

Gubbio shook his head in dismay. "Gurt seasons! You'm gonna get in so much trouble, Sloey!"

Sloey put her paws on her hips. "Don't call me Sloey. Da name's Pearl, remember?"

"Well, if'n it cums to that, moi name is surposed to be Magnetario roight naow, not Gubbio!"

"Yeah, well, dat's a dumb name. Magnets aren't gems!"

"Technically purls bain't gems noither since they cum from oysters, not from ee ground…"

But Sloey had lost interest in the argument. She dropped the replicator gun on the ground and started rifling through Pearl's bag again. This time she took out a mirror, the same magical mirror that Pearl and Garnet had used to find Tammo and Amethyst earlier. But Sloey didn't realize what it was. She thought it was a ping-pong paddle. So, she picked up one of the many balls lying on the floor and threw it up in the air. As it came back down, she hefted the mirror and swung it.

CRACK!

The ball hit the mirror and the glass shattered. Sloey shrieked and dropped the broken mirror on the ground.

Gubbio covered his eyes. "Burr, you'm in fur it now!"

Pearl appeared behind Gubbio in the doorway. "What's going on in here?" Then she saw the smashed mirror. "What have you done?"

Gubbio pointed his velvety paw at Sloey. "Sloey breaked yore mirror. Now she'm gonna have seven seasons bad luck!"

"Oh no!" Pearl made a dash for the mirror, but when she entered the room, she slipped on the ping-pong balls that were lying everywhere and fell over.

A beam of light shot up out of the shards of the mirror and solidified into the form of a Gem! She was blue and had a lapis lazuli gemstone on her back.

Once she'd regained her physical form, the Gem that had emerged from the mirror made a break for it. She jumped over Pearl's prostrate body, pushed past the two Dibbuns, and zoomed out the door.

She ran down the hall, not looking where she was going, and collided with Tammo, who was going the opposite way. They both fell to the floor.

Tammo sat up. "I beg your pardon… I say! Are you another Gem? What are you doing here? What's your name?"

The blue Gem sat up too. "Lapis Lazuli."

"Lapis Lazuli," Tammo repeated. "That's a pretty name. My name's Tammo."

"Is everyone who looks like you called a Tammo?" she asked.

Tammo laughed. "Oh, no. Some are called Henry or George or Robert or John or all sorts of other things."

Pearl came rushing up. "Hold it right there!" she shouted. Hearing her, Lapis Lazuli jumped up and started running again. She headed for the stairs, but when she saw Garnet and Amethyst coming up them, Lapis ducked into the nearest bedroom and threw herself out the window.

Tammo and the other Gems hurried into the bedroom. They saw the open window and rushed to it. They looked down and saw Lapis running across the grounds below.

Garnet groaned. "We've gotta catch her before she gets away!"

"Why do we have to catch her?" Tammo asked. "Who the deuce is she?"

Pearl sighed. "Tammo, Lapis Lazuli was one of the Gems who fought for the Diamonds during the war."

"Well, how did she get here?" Tammo questioned.

"No time for talk," Garnet interrupted. "We've gotta get outside before she escapes."

The four of them turned and ran out into the hallway, down the staircase, and into Great Hall. The animals in Great Hall scrambled to get out of their way. Friar Butty called, "Hey there, why are you in such a hurry?" but the Gems didn't answer. They ran across the Great Hall to the door that led outside and dashed through it.

"This way!" Garnet said and she led them around the side of the Abbey to where the pond was. They found Lapis Lazuli standing by the edge of the pond.

Lapis raised her hands, making the water in the pond form itself into a huge arm. Then she made it slam down onto the Gems, pinning them to the ground. "You…" she said. "You knew I was in there, and you didn't do anything!"

"I didn't know you were in there," Tammo said. He had not been caught by the giant arm; he was the only one of the four still on his feet. "In where? What are you talking about?"

"I've been trapped in that mirror for 6,000 years!" Lapis raged.

"What mirror?" Tammo said. "You don't mean the one Pearl used to track us down, do you?"

"I'm through talking," Lapis said. "I'm out of here!"

And she lifted the watery arm off the Gems and lowered it back into the pond. Then she waved her hands in the air and the water in the pond started to swirl around into a liquid tornado, which rose up into the air.

Animals came running up from all directions, attracted by all the commotion. "Hey, who's stealin' our water?" Shad the otter cried irately.

Lapis stepped into the watery funnel and the whole thing lifted up into the sky, fish and all. All the water floated over the main Abbey building and out through the damaged north wall. There was nothing left of the pond but a big hole in the ground, much to everybeast's dismay.

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Rinkul the ferret was the last surviving member of the band of Rapscallions who had ambushed Tammo, Amethyst, and Joshy back in Chapter 3. Right now, he was lurking in the trees just outside of Redwall, spying on the Abbey. He had spent the past few days wandering lost in the forest after the rest of his party was killed by the Flower Monsters. Then, this morning, he had stumbled upon Redwall. He could hardly believe his luck. He had discovered the location of the very Abbey his master Damug Warfang sought to conquer! He knew that if he returned to Damug with this information, Damug would be sure to make him an officer. He hid himself in a hollow tree and spent the next few hours staring out at the Abbey, trying to see if he could learn anything else about it. To him, the hologram wall that Pearl had created looked just like a normal wall. He couldn't tell it was fake.

After not noticing anything remarkable for a while, he was about to give up and head back to the Rapscallion camp, when he suddenly saw Lapis come bursting out through the hologram wall! Rinkul gaped. He didn't know what was going on, but he realized one thing. If somebeast could just pass through the wall like that, then the wall obviously wasn't real. It was just an illusion.

He wriggled out of the tree and dashed off into the forest.

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"What will we do now?" Abbess Tansy cried. "We got all our drinking water from that pond!"

"And our fish," Skipper added.

"Don't worry," said Garnet. "Tammo, Pearl, Amethyst and I will go after her and bring your water back."

"I want to go with you!" Pasque said.

"Me too!" said Joshy. "I think a wizard will come in handy in this situation."