Semi-Evil Assistant #4

     Erik, more commonly known as the Mad Scientist, was getting frantic. This was not a normal state of mind for him. Usually he was collected, self confident, and readily evil; today he was purely anxious. He had actually gone to the length of closing up the lab ray for the day, just so that he could spend his time searching instead of zapping pets.

     You see, Erik had lost his petpet.

     The Scorchio was currently running around his laboratory at top speed, knocking over test tubes and jumping over delicate experiments as he searched for his petpet. He could not possibly run his lab without a proper assistant! And to make it worse, he didn't have enough neopoints stocked away to buy another kookith. Not after the first three had run away.

     Besides, this kookith was special.

     "I don't know what's gotten into you!" Erik shouted, hoping that Semi-Evil Assistant #4 might hear him and come out from wherever he was hiding. "First you stole my spare lab coat, and now you've run away! What have I ever done to you to deserve this?"

     Erik paused in his mad chase, considering that question. Well, he had started zapping Semi-Evil Assistant #4 recently with the lab ray, just as another experiment. But it wasn't like anything all that bad had happened to the petpet! He had just gotten slightly red-eyed… and grown a shock of gray hair the other day…

     Erik shook his head sadly as he looked over the room once more. He'd searched everywhere in his lab, and the pounding on his door was getting more insistent. Foolish neopets. Couldn't they read? He had put an 'OUT OF ORDER' sign on his door, but did they care? No. They just wanted to be zapped. Either that or their owners desperately wanted to zap them.

     Growling, he decided to just tell them to go away, just this once. Maybe he could go out shopping later and get an abominable snowball instead, but he had always liked kookiths. They were so potentially evil… and yellow. He happened to like yellow. Heaving a loud and very dramatic sigh, the scientist stalked over to his door and pulled it open, his lab coat fluttering around him.

     "Can't you read? The ray's clo-"

     Erik stared up. And up some more. Oh yes, he remembered this guy. He was a very big, very tall shadow Eyrie who was very involved in the Battledome and liked fighting very much. He was one of the few pets who actually liked being zapped by the ray, and came every day, no matter what the outcome. The Eyrie glared down at Erik and then pushed past him, thudding his way over to the lab ray. A snow kookith ran behind him, making Erik cringe. Yet another reminder of his lost petpet.

     "I don't care if th' ray's closed. I needa zap, t'give me good stats." The Eyrie glared over at Erik, who was still staring at him. Well, maybe he could make one exception. "C'mon, doc. Make sure I get som' good attack points!"

     Erik muttered unhappily as he moved over to his controls, silently wishing that the ray would bring this burly Eyrie down to level 1. Maybe then he could kick the annoying creature out of his lab. It would serve him right. Didn't he know the difference between a doctor and a scientist?

     Neither of them noticed when the Eyrie's snow kookith wandered over to a hole in the wall, nor when it was suddenly pulled through by a pair of stubby yellow arms.

     Erik flipped on a few switches and flipped off a few others, then rested a claw on a huge, red button. Contrary to what some people thought, the controls had nothing to do with the actual outcome of the zap. He just liked messing around with them for show. "Alright, I'm going to turn the ray on now!"

     As he pushed the button, a flash of green light erupted from the hole in the wall. Erik gasped. The hole! He had forgotten to look through there! True, there was nothing back there but some old machinery and a bunch of old boxes, but Semi-Evil Assistant #4 could have tried to hide back there. The scientist stumbled away from his controls, ran to the wall, and stuck his head through the hole.

     "WHAT ON NEOPIA!"

     Erik couldn't believe his eyes. There in front of him was a miniature version of his own lab, complete with a tiny lab ray made of Achyfi cans and cardboard boxes. The ray was smoking at the tip and was pointed at what appeared to be a pile of soot, and controlling the ray was…

     "SEMI-EVIL ASSISTANT #4!" Erik shouted gleefully, trying to crawl through the hole. Unfortunately, nothing but his head could fit through, and he was stuck. He could do nothing but watch and marvel as his petpet, oblivious to his audience, swept up the soot with a miniature broom and started pushing it towards his head - towards the hole. Before Erik could say a word, he was being pulled back out of the hole by his tail. Once he had finally popped out and landed on his backside, he realized that he was being shouted at angrily.

     "WHAT DID YOU DO?" Erik blinked. Where had that tiny Flotsam come from? "I won't stand for this! I want you to change me back into my proper form, right this instant! I won't stand being a, a-"

     "Pink Flotsam?"

     The pink Flotsam, formerly the humongous Eyrie, huffed at him. He did not seem pleased. "Don't you act so smug! And change me back, NOW!"

     "Sorry, that's impossible," Erik murmured in a slight daze. Things were happening much too quickly for his mind to grasp it all. "Only one zap a day, that'll keep the doctor away. Heh. Keep the doctor away, get it?" He emitted a tiny giggle, an extremely strange but-still-evil sound.

     The tiny Flotsam blinked at him, and then scowled. "I should have known that you'd gotten the title 'Mad' from somewhere. Fine! I don't need you! I'll just get my own lab ray. Come on, Blizzard, we're going home." The Flotsam paused, staring in shock as a strange kookith pushed a pile of soot with eyes through the hole, then scrambled back beyond the wall. "Blizzard? WHAT HAPPENED?"

     Erik couldn't help it. He started laughing maniacally as the Flotsam gaped at his kookith-turned-pile of soot, pausing every now and then to gasp in a deep breath of air. By the time he had managed to get his evil laughter under control, the pink Flotsam was gone. The lab ray scientist crawled over to the hole and looked through it again, grinning evilly at his kookith.

     "Semi-Evil Assistant #4, I am most proud of you! Come on out, you can help me plot some new evil experiments! In fact, I'll promote you. You can be Evil Assistant #4 now!" Erik frowned. Evil Assistant #4 seemed to be ignoring him as he turned the tiny ray around until it faced the hole in the wall - and him.

     "Evil Assistant #4? What are you doing? What? No - no don't - ARGH!"

The End