Meepits vs Feepits... Vs Dr. Sloth: Part Nine

Fyora gazed around Dr. Sloth’s private room in amazement. The whole room seemed to be in chaos, especially his sock drawer, which had been pulled out and the socks thrown everywhere. The high security door no longer did anything to protect the room and Dr. Sloth was nowhere in sight.

     “Hardly to be expected,” commented the Space Faerie, as if reading her thoughts. “Perhaps there was no bomb and it was just a threat to get him out of his room so that someone could steal something from him. He might turn up soon, you never know.”

     “I doubt it,” answered Queen Fyora thoughtfully. “Did you notice there were no guards when we came in? That is highly unusual. I suspect Dr. Sloth, his assistants and the guards are all wherever this bomb is, trying to deactivate it. I know that you do not like Dr. Sloth, and I can’t say I like him either, but we really should help him deactivate that bomb if we can. We can’t let the whole Space Station be blown up!”

     The Space Faerie sighed. It pained her to be helping her enemy, but she knew Fyora was right. Thousands of innocent neopets on the Space Station could suffer if the bomb went off and it wouldn’t exactly be convenient to have pieces of Space Station just floating around space forever. Some of those pieces might even be blasted onto Neopia below which would be even worse, because it would mean injuries and far too much paper work. They headed back out the room as fast as possible, not even thinking to check the room to see if anyone was hiding in there.

     As soon as they were gone, Roger, Charles and Lieutenant Matthew looked at each other fearfully.

     “A bomb, in the Space Station?”

     “Going to blow it ALL up?!”

     “Time to go, I think!”

     At this sensible suggestion, all three meepits pulled a teleportation device out of their shoe, pressed the button and vanished.

     “Great!” exclaimed Charles, picking himself heavily up from where he had landed. “These teleports only work ONE WAY!”

     Roger groaned, rolled over and tried to get up. “This is ridiculous! Why didn’t Alex give us something to get back?”

     “Where are we now?” asked Lieutenant Matthew, looking around him. It was clear they were still in the Space Station, just a different part of it. Just in front of them was a large painting, but it was half swung open. When he walked closer, he realised it must be a secret passage.

     Without speaking, all three meepits slipped inside to follow the passage, although they had no idea what they would find at the other end.

     ---

     “Ten minutes left!”

     George and Helga stared at each other in fear, both wondering the same thing. Should they go and deactivate the bomb? If they didn’t, the bomb would probably go off and they would all be blown up, but if they did, they would probably be arrested by Dr. Sloth after.

     “I think the best idea would be for us to go back down the secret passage,” whispered George. Although they were pretending to ignore the feepits, Daisy, Lily, Alex and King Sloth were listening intently.

     “Great idea!” exclaimed Helga and without even making sure nobody was looking she made a dash for the door. George followed close behind her but just as they were opening the door, three meepits dashed in from the other side. They all crashed into each other and fell down, dazed.

     “Psst! Get up and hide, Queen Fyora and the Space Faerie have just entered the room!”

     The hurried whisper from Daisy made them all jump up again in a hurry, and both the meepits and the feepits crouched hidden behind the geranium pot once more. It was a tight squeeze with so many of them there, but thankfully it was a large pot and everybody else in the room was too distracted to notice the pot now had a few ears and two meepit tails.

     Dr. Sloth was now even too distracted to notice that his great enemy, the Space Faerie, was in the room, although some of the guards noticed and tried in vain to hold her back. She and Fyora brushed straight past the guards and ran over to Ralph, who had carefully removed the sticks of dynamite and was now working on deactivating the bomb. Donna was standing next to him, looking fearfully at her watch.

     “Nine minutes,” she called out just as the faeries reached them.

     From behind their geranium pot, the meepits and feepits glanced at each other, temporarily united in the face of such danger. They all wanted to make a dash for the back door again, but annoyingly enough a guard had decided to keep an eye on it, even though he was not expecting to see anything.

     “I hope that agent of Dr. Sloth’s can deactivate the bomb!” whispered Helga.

     “Yes, if he can’t we might have to. I was never expecting it to actually go this far!” replied George, terrified. The meepits all stared in surprise.

     “YOU put the bomb in here?” demanded King Sloth, slowly turning from pink to red in rage and fear.

     “And the dynamite?” added Lieutenant Matthew, visibly shaking.

     “Eight minutes!” called out Donna from the other side of the room, while Ralph worked furiously on the bomb with a small screwdriver he had pulled out of his collection of gadgets.

     “Yes, we did. But we expected Dr. Sloth to give in to our demands before it was too late. Now even if he chose to, he would not be able to find us!”

     King Sloth glared at them, furious. “This is all your fault then! Typical of feepits to stuff everything up like this!”

     The other meepits all nodded in agreement, some adding threats of their own.

     “If we ever get out of here, we will make you regret this!”

     “Well, if we don’t get out of here they will regret it anyway.”

     “We regret it now!” snapped George, furious at being insulted by the meepits and realising that he and Helga were hopelessly outnumbered if it came to a fight. He also realised that the meepits were right; it was the fault of the feepits that they were possibly all about to be blown out of the Space Station. Pride and stubbornness made him defend himself, though. “And don’t think you can threaten us! At least we have the guts and intelligence to come up with a plan like this!”

     “Intelligence?” asked Alex, for some reason seeming much calmer than any of the others. “If any of you had any intelligence you would realise that the bomb itself is probably not very powerful if the feepits had added dynamite as well.”

     “Seven minutes!”

     “Your point being?” demanded Daisy.

     “My point being the bomb would only be powerful enough to blow up the geraniums for a few meters around it and all we need to worry about is pieces of flying pot!”

     Everyone, including the feepits, relaxed visibly at this logic, although they would all still rather the bomb be deactivated before it had a chance to prove Alex right or wrong. Roger wiped the sweat of his forehead.

     “Oh, and it could start a fire,” added Alex as an afterthought.

     ---

     “Three minutes!”

     “Cut that wire!” yelled Dr. Sloth, panicking and pointing to a random wire in the bomb.

     The Space Faerie instantly looked alarmed. “No, don’t cut that wire!” she called out loudly to Ralph, even though she was standing almost right next to him.

     “Maybe you could try that one!” suggested Fyora, trying to look like she knew something about bombs even though she hadn’t the faintest idea what was really going on.

     “Would you all kindly SHUT UP!” demanded Ralph, trying to concentrate but so distracted that he didn’t care about being rude. Fyora and the Space Faerie stared in surprise when they heard his squeaky voice. “None of you know what me does about bombs, so just lemme deactivate it in peace, K?”

     Donna glanced at her watch, as she had nothing better to do. “Two minutes and thirty seconds!”

     Ralph ignored her and went on with the bomb. It had not been set up well, and as a result the wiring was very unstructured and difficult to work out. He did realise that without the dynamite the bomb would not be very effective, but felt it would be a waste of his breath if he tried to point it out. Dr. Sloth was so worried he wouldn’t listen anyway.

     “Hurry up, Ralph!” called out Dr. Sloth, absolutely beside himself with fear that the bomb would go off and destroy his geranium garden. He was not concerned about what else it could blow up, but the prospect of having many years work on a garden destroyed in a single second terrified him.

     “Two minutes!”

     “I AM hurrying!” snapped Ralph, just as impatient with Dr. Sloth and Dr. Sloth was with him. “Look, why don’t you take all the guards back outside? They are just getting in my way here. And while you are at it, take those sticks of dynamite. They won’t blow up, but I don’t want them near the bomb.”

     Relieved at having something to do, Dr. Sloth didn’t even question the fact that Ralph was ordering him around. He just did as he was told, ordering the guards out and then taking the dynamite out himself. When he came back inside, it was just in time to hear Donna call out:

     “THIRTY SECONDS!”

To be continued...