Sloth and Jelly

     “Underling!” he shouted.

     “Yes, master?” asked the underling, quivering in fear. Sloth had vaporized his last three underlings for not warming his borovan properly. Hence why this underling was a mutant Kacheek, and not snow pets like the last three. The former inhabitants of Terror Mountain were good minions, but mediocre underlings.

     “Fetch the prisoners.”

     The underling hurried off, and returned soon afterwards with the prisoners, a faerie Gelert and a Darigan Grarrl. The two had been captured soon after Sloth had conquered Neopia. The annual mind control lab event had been the largest ever, but there were still Neopians that refused to go. Most of them were faeries, but Lord Darigan still had a grudge against Sloth and had refused to allow his minions to be ruled by Sloth.

     “Do you know why you’re here?” asked Sloth, grinning evilly.

     “Y-yes, mister Sloth sir. We’re here because we didn’t get our minds cont-”

     “SILENCE!”

     The prisoners whimpered. They had heard the screams of the previous prisoners. They had also saw several ghost pets leaving the room soon afterwards.

     “You are here… because I have decided to give you a chance to live. Or… one of you to live.”

     The two prisoners stared at each other. They hadn’t heard about a chance to redeem themselves in the holding cells.

     “We want to live! Please don’t feed us to the squids!” said the Gelert.

     “Or the snowbeasts!” pleaded the Grarrl.

     “I have decided to let you both live because I am in a good mood. There is only one task you must do for me… You must-”

     Suddenly, Sloth was cut off by an alarm.

     “It seems that there is an attack on Krawk Island by the Resistance,” said the underling.

     Sloth smiled. The Resistance was one of his cleverer ideas. By giving supplies to the very pets that were trying to overthrow him, he was able to both have fresh foes to squash and prisoners to use as an example to the people he ruled.

     “Let them attack. I never liked those pirates anyway…”

     Sloth turned back to the prisoners.

     “Anyway, I want the two of you to search for Jelly World. It’s the one land I haven’t been able to locate yet. So go and locate it, and I’ll let you go free.”

     “But… Jelly World doesn’t exist!” said the Gelert.

     “Wrong answer.” Sloth smiled and pushed a button on his throne, causing a trap door to open. The trap door lead to a pit full of unpointy spikes, so the prisoner would think that Sloth wanted them dead, but there was also an exit to the outside in it. The trap changed every week, and Sloth enjoyed having people think he wanted them dead. In reality, they were his playthings, and he enjoyed toying with them greatly.

     “Heh. That makes me laugh every time,” he said, and then turned to the Grarrl. “So, would you like to join your friend, or would you like to search for Jelly World?”

     “Jelly World! Jelly World!”

     “Excellent.”

     The Grarrl was escorted out, and Sloth returned to his throne, where he had been reading the newly renamed Slothian Times. As usual, all of the articles were praising him. The comics displayed his defeats of Jhudora, the Meepits, and the Space faerie, as usual. None of the articles were any interesting to him. After all, he had been there when those events had happened, and no retelling of those stories was as good. Sloth then opened a copy of a smaller, dirtier newspaper titled “The Freedom Herald”. This newspaper contained stories of life outside Sloth’s empire, and those stories interested Sloth greatly. He hummed contently while he read his favorite comic, Kacheek Adventures.

     “What trouble will that wacky Kacheek get into this time?” Sloth thought. The plot never changed—the Kacheek saw a statue of Sloth and destroyed it in various ways—but it was a nice break from the Slothian Times. The Freedom Herald was acquired from the printing presses directly—after all, Sloth was the one that donated them to the Resistance.

     As soon as he finished reading the newspaper, Sloth was bored again.

     “If only I hadn’t conquered Neopia already. Then I’d have something to do,” he muttered to himself.

     “Then why don’t you un-conquer it?” asked the underling. That was another reason why Sloth liked this underling. Having a giant brain meant he occasionally had good ideas. Not as clever as Sloth’s ideas, but still good.

     “Underling, that’s a good idea. But there’s one flaw in your plan—so many people are being mind controlled that I can’t un-conquer Neopia, even if I wanted to.”

     “Then why don’t you go back in time and stop yourself from conquering it?”

     Sloth scowled. His previous time travel experiments hadn’t worked well, and the underling knew it. Or at least, the previous underling had… this one probably hadn’t heard of those. The time machine itself worked fine, but there wasn’t enough power for it. Sloth had considered using faerie magic, but all magic was already going to the Soup Faerie and the Healing Springs to benefit the Resistance. If only there were some sort of alternative energy source… Various other experiments had revealed that the only material that could create enough power would be jelly, but there wasn’t enough in all of Neopia to work. Unless…

     “Eureka! I will create Jelly World!” shouted Sloth. After all, he had enough neopoints to finance it. That was one of the benefits of being the Supreme Overlord of all of Neopia. He had taken all the neopoints so everyone could eat at the Soup Kitchen, before he had funded the Resistance. But he still had enough neopoints for his plan to work.

     “But… Jelly World doesn’t exist…” mumbled the underling.

     “Not yet, but if enough jelly is gathered in one place, a chain reaction should occur, causing jelly to spontaneously appear. Then I can use that jelly to power my time machine, go back in time, and stop myself from conquering Neopia!”

     “If you say so, sir…”

     A week later, all of the jelly in Neopia had been gathered on the dark side of Kreludor. Sloth had even added a few chemicals for good measure that he had heard caused spontaneous growth of jelly. And then he waited…

     “Sir, the Resistance has liberated Faerieland! Don’t you think something should be done?” inquired the underling. The underling was also Sloth’s second in command, so he knew that if Sloth didn’t return from his mission, then Neopia would belong to him… or at least, what Sloth still ruled.

     “I don’t care. Even if they were to conquer all of Neopia, I wouldn’t stop them. This way, at least I’ll have a planet to conquer again…”

     “Sir, I don’t think you’ve really thought this through…”

     “SILENCE! I haven’t gone back in time yet! I am still your overlord, and you will obey me!”

     “Fine, fine…”

     The next day, the jelly began to glow. Then, it grew… and grew… and grew some more. By midnight, enough had grown to power the time machine. So Sloth turned it on and waited for it to power up.

     Two hours later, it was done. Sloth stepped through the portal, and didn’t return.

     The underling smiled. With Sloth gone, Neopia was his.

     “What do you want to do now, sir?” asked Sloth’s former third in command, and the new underling.

     “I think… I will crush the Resistance. Then, I will turn Terror Mountain back into ice. I want to go skiing.”

     On the other side of the portal, Sloth smiled. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and Neopia was no longer his. It was the best day ever.

The End

Author’s note: Jelly World doesn’t exist—Sloth went back in time to before he created it.