Xelqued ran breathlessly through the corridors of Space Station V, knowing fairly well that he was going to be late for his Neopian Study class. His extra pairs of ears flew behind him as he ran for it, dashing through the crowds of his fellow alien Aishas.
“Hey! Watch it!”
“Where’dya think your goin’?!”
“No Running!”
But he ignored them all. He knew very well that Professor Zexuel would be very angry with him if he was any later than he already was. He just ran by, panting, until he suddenly tried to stop, but skidded, down the hall, past the open door of his classroom, watching as his classmates turned their heads and laughed at him, he fell flat on his stomach and started spinning.
“Woooaaaahhh…..AHH!!” Xelqued slammed, head-first, into a pane of glass, hearing a crowd letting up shrieks of surprise. The glass didn’t break, but he was positive his skull did. Rubbing his head, he opened his eyes to see a few thousand glass rooms and one purple animal in each room, running around looking positively spooked. When his eyes finally focused, he could only see one room, and one little thing running scared. He sat up and stared, stunned at the creature. He had never seen anything like it, long purple ears, a long tail with a strange shape at the end, big black eyes, a little nose…
Finally, he noticed everything else. The silence. He turned his head to see thousands of Alien Aishas of every color, all adults, staring him down in fury and shock. The crowd parted as a larger green Alien Aisha came forward. Xelqued, cornered between the Aisha and the pane of glass, had no where to run. He looked up meekly into the stern eyes of the Commander.
“Xelqued.” an overly cold voice greeted him.
Xelqued just squeaked a reply. He knew, as well as any other Alien Aisha on Space Station V, that the Commander was in command of everything, from a war raging on the station to…
“…One… little… wayward… Aisha…” Commander grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, forcing Xelqued to face him. “Have you any notion boy, any small idea what you could have just done?!” He emphasized that last word by shaking Xelqued fiercely. Xelqued shook his head.
“You could have just killed us all.” Commander dropped him to the floor, and started pacing, refusing to look at the little Aisha. “Had you have ever thought…” he turned. “…That we would be holding an experiment in this very room? Had you had a notion that perhaps we may have been holding poison chemicals in this room, and you may have shattered the glass with your large head and small brain, bringing us all a painful DEATH?!” Commander stared coldly at him. “What, boy, made you think you could run in the hallways of our beloved Space Station V?”
Xelqued finally got the power to talk restored into him. “I was late for my classes, sir; I didn’t want-“
“You didn’t want. You didn’t want, did you? Well, what if I was to tell you WE DIDN’T WANT ANY AILEN AISHA CHILDREN RUNNING THROUGH OUR HALLS?” He turned to the glass room, where the little animal was shaking thoroughly. “And, not only to that, you scared our experiment. She may have a mental disorder now. Look.”
And Xelqued looked. It was true; the animal looked scared to death. “I’m sorry sir.”
“You had better be sorry. For all she must be going through now, you had better be sorry.” A strange grin crossed the commander’s face. “And so you will be the one in to soothe her.”
Xelqued’s ears shot up. “Soothe her?! But sir, what if it is blood thirsty?” The commander laughed simply.
“Well that is a chance we’ll just have to take, now isn’t it?” He leaned over so he could whisper something into one of Xelqued’s ears. “Now, I wonder why you didn’t consider that before you came bursting in here?”
Xelqued stomped towards the door of the room, which opened to him. Taking a deep breath, he took his first few steps in. Looking at his surroundings, he could see trees and bushes that he hadn’t seen before through the looking glass. The glass was one way only, and some things that didn’t matter wouldn’t be seen through it. He felt the grass beneath his paws, and could smell the flowers around. He let loose a light sneeze, and then quickly tried to stifle it, but it was too late. The monster had to know that he was there now, as the sound seemed to be magnified 10 times to his own ears. He stood, unmoving, begging that it wouldn’t come charging and attack. He couldn’t hear anything, silence all around. He waited for a minute, looking forward and on either side as much as he could, then with a sigh, he turned to leave and found himself face to face with a pair of very large black eyes.
“AAAHH!!!!” he screamed, jumping back.
“AAAHH!!!!” the creature replied, it’s voice light and slightly squeaky. It was blocking the door! It was preventing his escape! He ran as fast as he could towards the surrounding trees, trying to hide. He ran faster than he had run before when he was late, much faster. He was practically flying through the green that seemed to be closing in, choking him. Finally, when he couldn’t run anymore, he hid behind a tree, shaking. After sitting with his back to the tree for a few minutes trying to catch his breath, he turned his head to see if the monster had followed him. But once again, there were no signs of it anywhere. He looked behind him this time, making sure that it wasn’t there, staring at him, ready to scare him out of his wits again. It took him another few minutes to see the purple and tan head poking out from behind another tree, shaking.
He had scared it. Amazing as it was, he had truly scared it more than it had scared him. Now that he looked, even he could see the cuteness of the large scared eyes, the beauty in it’s sleek, shaking body, the interesting feel of it’s long, draped ears. He stepped out from behind the tree, and the head disappeared with a squeak. Every step he took towards that tree brought another squeak of protest, until he was right in front of it. He cleared his throat.
“Uh… excuse me?” He asked, his voice trying to be gentile though it was shaking. The head came back out.
“Who’re you?” The voice still just as scared sounding, very girlish. It could speak Alien Aisha! Amazing discovery, he praised himself.
“Uhmm… my name is Xelqued.” He stood as tall as he could, knowing that the animal would be his size no matter what. “Did I scare you?”
She blinked. “Well…” she straightened up as well. “I wasn’t scared at all, not like you were of me! Honestly, I’ve never seen an Aisha RUN that fast!” She looked up at his extra ears. “or any extra terrestrial Aisha, for that matter.” Her tail flicked back and forth as she studied him. She walked around him in circles, looking at him from every angle, until he finally had enough of it.
“So… um… what’s your name?”
She straightened again and sat in front of him, looking very regal indeed. “I don’t have a name. They call me Experiment Z.”
He pondered this for a minute. “May I call you Zee?”
“Of course. And may I call you Xel?”
“I suppose there’s no harm in that.”
She suddenly snickered. “You were running awfully fast, you know.”
“I wasn’t scared!”
“No, before that I mean. When you woke me up. What on…” she looked at her surroundings. “What on…”
“…Space Station V?” he added helpfully.
“What on Space Station V were you running from?”
“Actually…” he said meekly, amazed that an experiment that looked so much like a baby was having a conversation with him, or attempting to. “I was late for one of my classes. I woke up late this morning and I didn’t really mean to miss it, but…”
She nodded understandingly. “I see. Is your instructor hard?”
“Well, not as hard on me as the Commander is.”
“Ah. That old four-ears? Hard? It’s very easy to get around him.” She snickered, loosing all politeness. “He’s absolutely mad, I tell you. What a mood ring!”
Xelqued looked nervously toward the black glass.
“Oh don’t worry. He can’t hear us; I’ve tried to get him to listen. He acts like I’m a baby putting on a circus every time though.” She flicked back her ears. “Honestly. Do I look like a baby to you?”
Xelqued studied her. “Actually, have you had the chance to look at yourself lately?”
“Look at myself? Of course I can’t. I am myself.”
“I mean, in a mirror or something.” Xelqued raised one eyebrow. “Where are you from?”
She shrugged it off. “I dunno. I just remember some metal, and silvery stuff, and water, and then coming here. Nothin’ doin’.”
That only confused him further. Suddenly, he heard a bell being sounded. He jumped and looked around, defending himself. Zee laughed.
“Lunchtime! I’m starving, really I am.” She ran and seated herself at the door, waiting. It opened, sure enough, and another green Aisha which Xelqued recognized as Vertunax, who was a scientist, waved him out, putting some food on the floor for Zee. She instantly began eating at the little pellets, looking very happy.
“Come on out, Xelqued, I think you’ve had enough.”




Part 2: Dream meets Zee

Xelqued woke up the next morning with a knocking at his quarter’s door.
“Xel! Get up you bum, we’re gonna be late for class again!” Xel jumped up and looked at his V clock. Yes, he was going to be late. He mad a dash for the door and it opened to reveal a young green Gelert. She just sat there, looking very tired.
“Dream! Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?!” DarkDigitalDream shrugged.
“Didn’t really feel like it. Lets get a move on, you promised me you’d show me this thing!” That took a minute to register into Xelqued’s brain.
“You woke me up early on a Saturday?!”
Dream gave a triumphant grin. “You need to keep a calendar, my abnormal friend. Now lets get moving, you promised!” She waved a paw in his face. “But, I shoulda’ guessed you’d break a promise. Alien Aisha can’t be trusted…”
Xelqued snorted. “Alright, let’s go. But you can’t tell anyone I let you see her, understand me? It’ll ruin everything. I won’t get to talk with her, and then I might be dismembered.” To be dismembered as an Alien Aisha meant that you would be disowned, apart and alone from your people. “Alright, alright, fine, fine. So tell me again, what is this thing?” Dream asked as they started walking toward the corridor.
“She, it’s a she. She doesn’t have any real name, everyone calls her Experiment Z, so I just call her Zee. She’s so weird looking! She has long ears and a really long tail and-“
“And you think having a long tail and long ears is WEIRD?!” Dream shook her head, letting her long ears fly around, and then wagged her tail.
“No, it’s different from yours. Yours are cool, her’s are just sort of… weird.”
“Have you ever seen yourself? Nothing’s weird, pal, nothing.”
Xelqued looked around a few times, turning through different corridors. “She’s in here somewhere….” Finally, he came upon a completely silent room, which he entered. There, sleeping on top of air (Probably on a log or in a tree) was Zee. She was curled up into a ball and barely recognizable because she was covered with her ears. Her tail twitched lightly as they entered. Dream stared at her, stunned.
“Whoa.”
“Didn’t I tell you she looked weird?”
“I was just gonna say she looks cool…”
Zee opened one eye and looked up. When she saw Xelqued, she wagged her tail lightly, but her ears perked up suspiciously when she saw Dream. She waved a paw and yawned, showing off her little teeth. Xelqued carefully opened the door and began to make his way inside, motioning for Dream to follow him.
“Morning, Zee.”
“Hiya Xel. What’r you doin’ back so soon, get in trouble again?”
“No, not really. I wanted you to meet my friend, Dream.”
Dream took a step forward and let out a paw for Zee to shake, but Zee did nothing. She just studied Dream as she had done Xelqued the day before. Finally, to break the tension, Xelqued pulled a mirror out from behind his back. “I brought you something.”
Zee stared at it for a second. “What IS that?”
“It’s a mirror. You use it to look at yourself.”
Zee snorted. “Aha. Whoever made it must be very self-centered.”
Xelqued blinked. “I’m not really sure. But I asked you about it before, remember? Now you can see what you look like.”
Zee took the mirror lightly and looked into it for a few seconds, then she exploded in laughter. “That isn’t me! That’s a baby!”
“Actually, it sort of is you. Look…” Xelqued sat down next to Zee and held up the mirror, now it showed both their faces. Zee waved at her reflection, which waved back.
“That thing is really weird.” Zee finally decided.
Dream watched her. “Where did you come from?”
Zee turned and jumped, as if she was seeing Dream for the first time. “I don’t know.”
Dream raised an eyebrow at the rather jumpy pet.
Zee grinned at her and pointed to Xelqued. “Do you get in as much trouble as this guy does?”
Dream looked at Xelqued and began snickering. “Are you crazy? He’s lucky he hasn’t been dismembered yet.”
Xelqued frowned. “Lucky? The Commander is lucky to have ME.”
Zee began giggling. “Old four ears…”
Dream grinned at Xelqued. “Xel, I like this girl. She’s very-“ But she didn’t get to finish, because about then Xelqued heard a very light bell going off, signaling someone to come and feed Zee.
Xelqued grabbed one of Dream’s paws. “We gotta go Zee, we’ll come talk to you later!” He ran off.
“Bye bye, Xellie!”
A minute or so later, Dream wrenched her paw from Xelqued’s grasp. “What was that for? I wanted to talk to her, she’s cool.”
“Keep your voice down!” Xelqued hissed. “We aren’t supposed to be in this branch, y’know. Someone’s coming any minute now to get Zee her breakfast; if we got caught in there we’d be knee-hauled by the Commander!”
About then, they heard the pat, pat, pat, pat of someone coming down the hall. Xelqued looked back and forth franticly, visions of being knee-hauled coming to mind. Dream poked him and pointed to a long coat hanging up. “Uh… Xel? Let’s have a costume party.”
Vertunax came walking into the hall suddenly and stopped solid when she saw a very strange shape. An Alien Aisha in a long coat? How odd! The Aisha nodded to her and began walking down the hall in the opposite direction. She watched it go. Something about it confused her, perhaps it was how it’s tail was so very long, how it’s head was yellow, but it’s body was green. Or maybe the way it was walking, every few seconds she heard it whispering to itself that it wasn’t walking the right way. She shrugged it off and went to feed Experiment Z.



Part 3: The Myriad


“Where’ve ya been, Xel?”
“Yeah, man, we’ve been looking for another Gormball player!”
Xelqued trotted up to the rest of the group of Alien Aisha. “Gormball? I was going to go work on something…”
“Probably going to work on getting some friends, looser?” A dark blue Aisha stepped out from the rest. Xelqued stared coldly at him.
“I happen to have more friends than you do, Derik.” Xelqued replied simply.
“That’s Derix IV to you, ungrateful snot.” Derix began walking circles around Xelqued. “News has it that you’ve been paying surprise visits to the scientists, have you? Annoying them to no extent.”
“Actually, I’ve made a discovery about…”
“Their experiment? Probably that it breathes… is that it, Scientist boy?”
Xelqued took a step toward Derix, but Dream grabbed his collar and pulled him back.
“Let it go. Don’t bother wasting your energy fighting with him.” She whispered to him. He nodded.
“I’m going to go work on…”
“Your myriad?” Derix laughed. “You know that thing will never work, it’s a worthless piece of junk, just like your brain!”
Xelqued turned to Derix. “Now, let me see. Your head has swelled to 20 times the size of your brain, and so we should call that head squared by ten. That means that your brain must be…. About the size of a redwood seed, which is about a centimeter.” He sighed. “I must say, I wonder what it’s like to have a brain of that size.” Then he turned and walked towards his quarters, looking into Derix’s reflection in his headgear, his face was a look of shock. Xelqued snickered. Dream trotted up beside him.
"That Derix is such a jerk. I'm tellin' ya, he really gets on my nerves."
"YOU haven't had to put up with him since you were a baby." Xelqued grumbled. "He's been bugging me since before he could talk."
Dream went silent for a few minutes. She had come up into space with her family, but when her ship got shot at, the impact killed both her parents. Surprisingly, Dream, who was a baby, had survived and was found with a strange blue-green aurora surrounding her, lying on the ground, a gash in her head. She had come, ever since then, to live on Space Station V with the Alien Aisha, who took her in because she was very smart for her age.
“You’ve got a point.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d better get moving too, I’m gonna go look some stuff up in the library…” Dream took a few steps away from his door.
“Alright, I’ll see you later then.”
“See ya.” She began trotting down the next corridor. Xelqued sighed and opened his own door. He looked around his room, a small bed, a table cluttered with books and pieces of metal, pictures on the wall of him and his family, a picture of his baby sister, Gallalaiha, a little green Aisha. Stretching, he went and picked up a particular piece of metal. It didn’t really seem to have much point to it yet. Someday, I’m going to meet up with the Faerie Queen. And I’m going to get artifacts, with them I’ll take parts of each and keep building my myriad… and it’s going to be great. I’ll show them, I’ll show all of them, I really can be a scientist, and I can be a captain too… Xelqued thought, picking up a screwdriver and he began working on his beloved Myriad.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


Later that night, Xelqued went into the library, cloak on his back from the cold of the night Station. The doors opened, seeming almost grateful that someone was going through them so late, but in the same way, the shut on his tail, as if scolding him for being up so late. Rubbing at his tail, he kept walking through the mountains of books, finally getting to the right section: Unordinary Science. He turned and began searching for something, anything, that would help him with his Myriad. Turning again, he found himself in the very heart of the library, and there was Dream, pawing through a book dubbed “Birth of Science.”
“Hey,” he said quietly, making her jump. “What’cha doin’?”
She stretched a bit, and then pointed to a page of the book; it showed a being in a test tube. “Looking up about Zee.” Xelqued looked at the book.
“What does that have to do with Zee?”
“Didn’t you notice?” Dreams eyes went wide. “She’s an experiment. She was born like an experiment, not normal, in a test tube.” She pointed to another picture, which was a sketch of the inside of a test tube. “There’s the silvery stuff she mentioned to you, and the glass, and the grey all around. It was in a test tube, that was her first real image. I think that she’s actually a lot younger than she lets on, our age in mind, but in body she’s not exactly the same, or the scientists made her look the same forever, or something.” She went back to the book. “I would have thought you would guess that.” Xelqued was silent for a minute.
“Wait. Wait. So, what you’re saying is that Zee… isn’t natural?”
“Consider her like a robot.”
“Robot?” Xelqued shook his head. “She isn’t like a robot. She’s my friend.”
“Well, your friend is pretty much a clone.” Dream looked back down into the book and added hastily, “That’s what the book implies, anyway. Personally, I think that Zee’s a great person. Really she is. Only, it’s sort of strange. You know, considering she won’t be around for very long…”
“Whaddaya mean, she won’t be around very long?” Xelqued snapped.
“Well, she’s an experiment, she’s unnatural, she’ll be used for awhile to be experimented on, you know, tests and such. Then all of them, the scientists, they’ll get rid of her.” Dream looked up from the book gravely. “You’ve seen them do it. They used to experiment on worms and then on snails, and then petpets… now they’re moving up in the evolutionary ladder. Xel, if she keeps cooperating like this, they’ll be done with her in a little over a month.”
Xelqued swallowed loudly. “Uh… how will they… “get rid of her?””
Dream went a bit pale and coughed. “Well, the way they got rid of the others. They either threw them out into space until they ran out of oxygen, they threw them from a high place, splitting them…” she began rounding the ways of torture on her paws. “Then there was throwing lots of debris on them, or putting them in a pool of piranhas, or suffocation by either letting all the air out of her room, or by turning up the heat much too high for her to handle, drugging her…”
Xelqued was the pale one now. “EXCUSE ME?!”
“Shut up! You want us to get caught in here way after midnight?”
“I can’t let them do that to her!”
Dream bit her lip. “We don’t really have much choice, y’know? I mean, we’re just kids, what are we going to do to stop it…?”
Xelqued pounded a fist onto the table. “We’re GOING to stop it! You’re Zee’s friend too, aren’t you?” Dream nodded reluctantly. “You don’t want to see her die either, do you?!”
“No, but what can we-“
Xelqued’s eyes glittered oddly. “We could make something that could help, we could somehow do some mind control on them, or… we could break her out.”
Dream pondered this for a minute. “Well, we can’t do mind control. No way. But… breaking her out sounds good. As for making something, we definitely have the time. But what can we make?”
Xelqued grinned. “I do have the myriad…”
“The MYRIAD?! Xel, buddy, listen, I know that you love that thing more than anything else in the world, y’know, but hey, I don’t know if it can make anything yet…”
“Excuse me? I’m the captain of this project.”
“YOU’RE the captain? Excuse ME, if I hadn’t TOLD you that this was going to happen-“
“But I have the myriad! And I can make the plans to break her out!”
“Alien Aisha always have to be on the top of EVERYTHING, don’t they?!”
“Look, if I’m going to prove ANYTHING to either Derix, Zee, OR the Commander, I need to be a captain first. And you don’t need to prove anything!”
Dream looked him square in the eye and suddenly started laughing. “You don’t LIKE Zee, do you?”
“LIKE HER?!”
“Well your trying to prove something to her you said.”
Xelqued scoffed. “Yeah, prove that I’m smarter than she thinks I am!”
“I don’t believe you!” Dream said in a singsong voice.
“Hey, leave me alone, alright? I’m trying to prove that I can be The Commander someday. And besides, Zee’s my friend, I’m not going to let her die.”
“Oh, just a friend is she?”
“Shut up. Lets go, we have to get planning.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know how Zee cooperates with them. They could be done with her in less than a month.”
“Your kidding, right?”
“No. C’mon, we don’t have much time!”




Part 4: The Necklace

“Well, well! It looks like Scientist Boy came back to our humble classroom?” Derix said, grinning coldly as Xelqued was walking the classroom a week later.
“Shut your mouth, Derix.” Xelqued said, even colder than Derix’s smile, as he shoved the Aisha off his desk and sat down. Derix hit the floor and snarled.
“Oooh, I’m scared. Really I am,” he said sarcastically. “Little Scientist is learning Tai-Bo?”
“I said shut UP, Derix.” Xelqued snarled back.
“Maybe if you could-“
“Derix, if you don’t shut your mouth, I’m going to rip out your jaw, take it to Neopia, and bury it into the ground.” Dream spat, bracing for a battle. “But that, of course, would have to be after I hunt you down and rip you to shreds…”
Derix gulped. “You wouldn’t dare touch me, you stupid Gelert.” He hissed.
“Oh, yes I would. Like a game of cat and mouse, only now it would be a game of dog and cat. Wouldn’t you say, Xel?”
Xelqued nodded. “We could cause a nuclear explosion in the remainder of his brain, Dream. Can’t let that happen, he won’t know how to run then, and that would ruin all the fun.”
Dream sighed. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“Coming from the two who have been making friends with a clone...” Derix mumbled. In an instant, Xelqued was at his throat.
“Don’t… you… call… Zee… a… clone… UNDERSTAND ME?!” he hissed, one paw on Derix’s throat. Derix grinned.
“I believe that would be… proof, wouldn’t it? I’m sure my father would absolutely love to hear that… him being second to the commander, and I know that the commander would love to hear about how you’ve been sneaking to visit your new girlfriend in the middle of the night…”
“I HAVEN’T BEEN SNEAKING TO SEE ZEE!” Xelqued yelled, then, realizing something else, mumbled, “And she’s not my girlfriend either.”
Derix laughed. “I’m sure she’s not. So what’s that?” He pointed to some sort of a chain hanging from his backpack. He ripped it out and laughed even harder, showing everyone the round, rainbow swirling thing hanging from the golden necklace. “A present for his girlfriend, most likely!” He moved it back and forth, just out of Xelqued’s reach. “Or maybe you just thought it would look good on yourself? A piece of junk made by your piece of junk Myriad? Well, of course it’ll look good, but-“
Derix didn’t notice Dream until she had raised her paw and smacked him on the back of his head very hard. He fell, face first, onto Xelqued’s desk, unconscious. Xelqued picked up the necklace nervously and stuck it back into his backpack. He and Dream made sure to tread on Derix’s tail as they walked out of the room.
“I hate him.” Dream snarled. “I absolutely hate him. No one is supposed to touch that thing, and no one bugs you about Zee being your girlfriend… except me. NO ONE!”
“She isn’t my girlfriend! Don’t get on my nerves, we’ve already got enough to deal with without Derix and you bugging me.”
“Well I’m sure she wouldn’t say no to being your girlfriend.” Dream and Xelqued were still arguing by the time they reached the door. The strange chain was dangling from his backpack as Xelqued pressed the key to open the door to the room.
“I said shut up.” The doors to Zee’s room opened, and suddenly, both children froze. There were scientists in there! And the commander!
“Ah, Xelqued. DarkDigitalDream. How nice to see you both again.” The commander said. They could see Zee waving from behind the glass, but stopping when she noticed someone watching. “We’re working with your friend right now, it won’t take long.”
“Experimenting on her, you mean.” Xelqued snapped.
“Excuse me, we are conducting scientific-“
“Experiments. Your experimenting on her, and I’d like to let you know that she has a brain and knows very well what your doing.” Zee tilted her head in confusion, watching Xelqued’s every move.
“Of course she does. But she hasn’t made so much as one syllable to tell us she doesn’t like it, now have you?” the Commander poked the glass, which Zee pawed at. Commander laughed. “What a smart creature she is. Much smarter than those Greebles we had last week. Intellect beyond all our other…” he turned to Xelqued. “…Specimens. If only she could talk, what would she say?”
“She can!” Xelqued snarled. “And she doesn’t like what your doing to her.”
“She can’t, we hear nothing from her all day.”
“Didn’t you NOTICE that you put up SOUND PROOF GLASS?” Dream spoke up suddenly, glaring at the Commander.
“Yeah. Y’know, if you let her out then maybe…”
The commander’s eyes clouded over. “Then we would be done with the experiments faster…” He turned to the cluster of scientists behind him. “Vertunax! Put a leash on Experiment Z and take her out. We’re going to have a little chat…” The scientists cheered, but Xelqued stood with his mouth open.
“A leash?! You’re treating her as if she’s an animal or something!”
“Well she isn’t exactly an Alien Aisha, now is she, boy?” Commander turned back to Xelqued with a snarl. “I tire of your talking out of line. Silence.”
“No!”
“I SAID BE QUIET!” the commander roared.
“Hey!” a very familiar girlish voice chorused. “Don’t tell my friend to be quiet, four-ears!” Everyone turned and sure enough, there was Zee, sitting calmly on the hard floor, staring straight at the Commander. For a minute there was silence, but then the muttering started sounding.
“She can talk!”
“It’s a miracle!”
“These experiments should be done by the end of this week!”
“Xelqued is a friend of hers!”
“She spoke against Arlhox!”
“Amazing, look at the brain waves!”
“We’ll have a new species yet!”
“Wow…” Zee looked at the scientists, then pointed to them while watching Xelqued. “They talk a lot, don’t they, Xellie?”
“Xellie?”
“Fantastic!”
“She has a pet name for her friend!”
“She thinks like us!”
The Commander just stared. “You really… can talk?” “A’ course I can talk, Commander-ness!” Zee sat tall and proud. “And let me tell ya…” she pointed to the leash. “This thing is tight! Get it offa me!”
“Do as she says.” The Commander ordered. Vertunax just stared. “I said do as she says!” The leash was off in a manner of seconds. Zee rubbed her neck with a sigh. “Man that was getting annoying.” She sat next to Xelqued and Dream. “Hows it shakin, you two? Did'cha bring me another book or somethin' today?”
"Uh... well..." Xelqued said, stunned that his friend would talk out against the commander and everyone like that. Then again, she didn't know any better.
"Ex-nai on the ooks-bai, Zee..."
Zee snickered. "Nice pig laten, ream-Dai."
Dream grinned proudly. "Thanks."
"You've been bringing her BOOKS?!" The Commander suddenly roared. "No WONDER she learned to talk! You two have been bringing her books!" He instantly picked up Xelqued and began shaking him. "She's absolutaly useless now!"
"I thought I told you to leave my friend alone, four-ears!" Zee suddenly snapped. The Commander stared down at her in shock.
"Four-Ears?"
"Yeah, you heard me. Now put Xellie down before you feel agonizing pain." She smiled, showing off her teeth. "See these? I can bite down pretty hard with these. Now let him go." The Commander let Xelqued go, practicly dropping him to the ground.
"He's been taking you out of line with him, hasn't he? My poor poor Zafra..."
"ZAFRA?! What kind of a name is THAT?!"
"It's your name, lovely."
"No it's not! My name is Zee, when did it get changed?"
"Well, we decided that you would be called Zafra the day after you met... um... "Xellie" for the first time."
"Well my name was Zee first. Xellie calls me Zee, so my name is Zee. Don't you ever THINK of changing it, pal."
"Lay off the Xellie, alright Zee?" Xelqued sighed. "You said you were going to call me Xel. Not Xellie." Zee smiled a sweet smile at him.
"Well I happen to like Xellie better." he sighed.
"Girls..."
The Commander sighed. "Well, we have no more use of her now. We'll just have to start another similar experiment, and maybe if we're lucky, it will be a male..." He motioned for Vertunax to put Zee's leash back on her, but Zee danced out of reach.
"Na na na! Come get me!" She sang.
"Zee, no, don't..." Xelqued started, grabbing her paw. "Don't provoke them, it could get really nasty..." Zee looked at him for a few seconds, her eyes going soft, then suddenly whipping her head around as Vertunax tried again to put on the leash. Xelqued pulled Zee just out of Vertunax's reach once again, and she sighed.
"Look, Xelqued, don't make my job any harder than it already is."
"Then leave Zee alone. She hasn't done anything."
"She is an EXPERIMENT, Xelqued. We can always use another..." The Commander started. He was holding a needle and taking steps toward the three of them. Dream let loose a gasp.
"They're going to put her to sleep, Xel..." all three took a step back, and suddenly, the ship started shaking as if something had hit it.
"Wooah!" Xel yelped. Zee was suddenly clinging to him, and he felt his face grow hot.
"Whats going on, Xellie?"
"I... I have no idea..." he replied, shaking.




Part 5: The Spark of Madness


The commander suddenly dashed towards the main bridge of the Station, dropping the needle.
"No one move! I'm going to check this out."
Everyone let loose a sigh once he was gone. “That guy is such a jerk, even more than Derix. Seriously.” Dream sighed. Then she snickered at Xelqued, who was blushing now that Zee was hugging him.
“Derix who?” Zee let go of Xelqued, who let loose a breath he was holding that whole time.
“Derix is a nobody brat that I just so happen to despise.” Xelqued snapped. The very name Derix made him angry.
“Now that isn’t very nice. You didn’t even let me meet your friend…” Everyone turned their heads to see Derix, rubbing the back of his head and looking at Xelqued with a look of utter loathing on his face. He turned to Zee. “My name is Derix IV. And you must be Scientist boy’s girlfriend…” Zee suddenly broke into a fit of giggles at that, making Xelqued go even more red. Even Dream started laughing at her friend now, but when she saw his face, she stopped and muttered a sorry.
“Not his girlfriend!” Zee laughed. “Defiantly not his girlfriend. We’re just friends is all.”
“Of course you are…” Derix looked at Xelqued. “You never told me how attractive your friend was, scientist boy.” Xelqued glared back.
“Leave her alone, Derix.”
“I was coming, in fact, to ask The Captain how he was doing with his experiment. You know, with her? I would ask my father, but I really did want to know…” Derix grinned coldly. “…He is currently flying this ship today, so he probably wouldn’t know, now would he? And I heard that your girlfriend was smart enough that they would be finished with her soon.”
"Finished with me?" Zee shot a look at Xelqued and Dream.
“Oh of course, miss,” Derix said politely. “I didn’t think they would tell you, honestly, I didn’t think you’d know until it was too late.”
“Know what?” Xelqued and Dream didn’t want to tell her about it, not yet anyway. They just told her that something big was coming, and she would need to be ready for it. That’s when they started to bring her books to read, so that she would be ready.
“I don’t understand,” Zee shook her head and turned to her friends. “What are they going to do?”
“Well… um…” Xelqued started. “Y'know, to kill someone is really bad… do you remember how we told you to get ready for something?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well… this isn’t really a good time to tell you this. But they,” he waved a paw towards the scientists. “They think that you’re just an experiment. They don’t think you mean anything, they can always get something else to work on. So… they were planning on getting rid of you afterwards, by killing you… and starting something else…” Xelqued hung his head as Zee searched him with haunting, terrified, confused eyes. He pointed to the needle on the floor. “That’s filled with a sort of poison stuff. It makes you sleep… and then it kills you when your asleep…” Zee’s jaw dropped.
“You knew about this?!” She suddenly yelped, her voice so high it was barely audible.
“We were trying to stop it before something happened to you, Zee. Xel didn’t tell you because he was… I dunno, scared that somehow you’d take it the wrong way and something would go wrong, you’d give us away or-“
“You thought I was really that stupid?” Zee’s eyes looked so full of pain now that Xelqued couldn’t stare to look or not to look at her anymore, he just shut his eyes tighter and waited for everything to stop spinning. He didn’t hear much of what had happened after that, but he could defiantly tell that Dream was suddenly yelling at Zee. He finally opened one eye and saw Zee backing away very slowly, tears in her eyes as she turned and dashed off.
“Zee!” He called after her, when she didn’t reply, he started off to find her.
“Xel where’ya goin?!” Dream yelled.
“She could seriously get hurt out there, she’s never been outside of her bubble before!”
“Am I really supposed to care?! Xel, did you even hear a WORD we were saying?!” She, too, turned and began running. “Xel? Are you listening to me? Don’t go after her, do you understand me?” But he could barely hear her, because he had finally caught sight of Zee running, and he was chasing faster than ever after her. They turned corridor after corridor, through room after room, practicly knocking over Aisha who were staring after the strange purple creature running their halls. He lost sight of her once more, and suddenly, he slammed, head first again, into something very hard. It didn’t shatter, but the blow knocked the air out of him. He tried to take deep breaths, and he shut his eyes. When he opened them, he could see Dream standing over him.
“Xel, why’d you stop? Whats the matter, if you’re trying to not let her get away…”
“Hit… something…” he choked. “Hit a wall… can’t see straight… I feel weird, Dream…” Everything was dimming, turning purple, turning blue, going back to normal, dimming, purple, blue, normal, dimming… dimming… He only caught voices speaking in bits and pieces.
“She’s changed completely! It’s as if… as if something lit a fire inside of her, like she’s suddenly going crazy!” Silence.
“Xelqued… he was a good boy deep down inside, is he going to be alright?”
“Perhaps. But this ‘wall’ that he said he had hit appears to have changed his mind waves.” A door opened. Xelqued opened one eye, then winced and closed it again, the pain was too gruesome.
“What’s going on here?” The commander’s booming voice echoed in his mind. “We should be attending to Zafra! She’s running wild on the ship, and we’ve just gotten a message from someone named Sloth… apparently he’s more mad than either Xelqued or Zafra are. He said he was going to take Space Station V!”
“Take the Station? Who is this Sloth?”
“I have no idea.” The Commander’s voice had suddenly gone down. “But we’ve been hit by rockets of some kind. The Station can’t hold out very long, it wasn’t built a warship.”
“We’ll have to leave?! But… but Commander…”
“We have no choice. We must tend to Zafra, though, she has suddenly driven herself into screaming at everyone that gets near her, and we need to get everyone out of here!”
Everything turned black. Xel was having strange dreams, he could see Dream in them, and Zee? What was going on? There was Derix, and his sister, then his sister and another strange aisha who was making toys... and suddenly he could hear again.
"This is horrible... what are we going to DO?!"
"We have to get this ship to Neopia, I suppose. My ship, my wonderful ship... that Sloth monster has stolen my ship... I do hope Zafra got out all right, though..."
“Are you JOKING?! ZEE?! What about Xel?!” Dream. Good old Dream… Xelqued thought. She’s a good friend. Very good friend… isn’t she? No, that can’t be right. Dream… is Dream my enemy? No, that isn’t right either. Xelqued was suddenly very confused. Too many thoughts clouding his head, too much.
“Yes, Xelqued,” He could hear the deep voice snarling. “I can’t believe he’s done this. Zafra has gone mad, and she appears to be the one sending messages to Sloth. No one else would dare…”
“But what about Derix III?!?! He’s just as stupid as-“
“SILENCE! Dream, you have caused just as much trouble as Xelqued has!”
“I WILL NOT BE QUIET!” There was a strange sound, and then silence.
“You… you blasted girl… just as foolhardy as your parents. Get out of here now.” The deep voice was sounding furious, very hurt. Xelqued opened his eyes and blinked, finally calming the red, all the hues of silver and green and red were calming down now, He could see the Commander staggering over something. A green Gelert was snarling in fury, finally turning and running through the door.
Suddenly, Xelqued turned his head and saw a very strange thing.
“Xellie…” a silvery smoke had emerged. “Xellie, you lied to me.” He squinted, trying to find out what the smoke was. It was so familiar, purple, long ears, a long tail.
“Zee…” he choked, sitting up.
“Xelqued! You’re awake!”
“Xellie, you lied. You let me down, Xellie… why’d ya have to lie to me?” Zee spoke, her voice soft and reassuring as always, only now with a very cold look to it.
“Xelqued, no, you need to sit down. You can’t stand up like that.”
“Zee, why are you so weird lookin’?”
“You let me down, Xellie. You really let me down. I couldn’t stop it, it was the strangest feeling I ever had… everything went red, and I couldn’t see anything, until I saw these little ship things leaving the Station... I looked out the window and I saw one more leave and I felt this heat and then..." Zee smiled a very strange smile. "And here I am."
"But, Zee, how did you get off.... we aren't on the station... what..."
"No, boy, we aren't on the Station. It was taken by Sloth and partly blown up. Because of your foolishness..."
"...Xellie, you lied to me. You and Dream lied."
"We never lied to you, we told you as much as we could..."
"It wasn't enough Xellie. I'm gonna miss you."
"What? Zee...?" Suddenly, Zee looked at him, looked at something he had grasped in his paw. She took it gently, it was the rainbow necklace he had ment for her. She put it around her neck and suddenly, it, too, had changed.
"Xelqued, listen to me! Who are you talking to?! Zee isn't here."
Xelqued straightened up and suddenly, Zee was talking steps back toward the window, a black circle with white spots on it. And she was gone.
"Commander! Arlhox, You won't believe it, we've searched everywhere... but we can't find your experiment..."
"You didn't find Zafra?!"
"She didn't get off sir."
The next thing Xelqued could see was the Commander's face, turned straight at him, tight with fury. "Dismemberment, Xelqued..." he snarled. And everything went black.





Epilouge
LATER...
Xelqued stared out into the woods suddenly, Galla looking at him.
"What's tha matter, big brother?"
"How many times," he snarled, "have I told you NOT to talk that way?" He turned his attention back to the woods.
"Now, that isn't very nice..." As Xel stared, a purple zafara suddenly stepped out of the woods. He hadn't noticed her there before, and she didn't seem to be staring at anyone but him. Her eyes flickered to Dream, but then back to him.
Something stirred deep inside of him. Like a dream he had forgotten, he could suddenly see those eyes, those big black eyes, sparkling as she giggled, holding onto a rainbow necklace that was a gift... Blinking, Xel turned his head away, shaken. What had made him feel a sudden pain towards the zafara? Why did she make him feel so strange? Why did she seem so familiar...?

"Zee?" The name ment nothing, but somehow, it stirred deep in the three hearts, that of DarkDigitalDream, the green gelert, of Xelqued, the ailen aisha, and of OobabixgurloO, otherwise known as Tamue, and made them all wonder...
Why does my heart reach for them? I haven't cared for anyone like that since... I can't remember when. When I heart that letter, 'Z,' something seemed to break inside of me...