School was finally out, and summer vacation had begun!

Leslie and company, of course, decided to celebrate in style by traipsing down to Mystery Island for the weekend and getting in Mrs. Kouryunno's way. At least, that's how she put it. But she agreed to put up with as many girls as she could fit in the house - for two nights only!

Not that there was any shortage of space; Ji's father was making a fair amount of money as a Gadsgadsgame operator and repairman (not to mention his expertise at the game itself), and the family NeoHome was growing quickly. And Kara Lynn said she had room; she was earning a pretty good living from NeggSweeper and had space in her own NeoHome for a few sleeping bags.

Everyone who needed to made arrangements for their pets to be taken care of; Luname was also spending the weekend at a friend's house, and the friend's father assured Leslie that Luname would be well taken care of.

Which is how the Sailor NeoPets came to be on Mystery Island...

Sloth still sounded a bit dubious as he replied, "I suppose there's no harm in it. You may as well head down to the beach for a few days. But you're on your own in terms of getting there; it's too far for me to teleport you from here."

Abbie rolled her eyes. "Look, Slothman, you can't fool me. I happen to have checked our positional database - we're in range of Mystery Island now."

Sloth did a few mental calculations. "No; the time you saw was on Mystery Island time. You're thinking Neopia Central time. It'll be seven hours until we can get you there."

This was a complete bluff on Sloth's part. But the alternative was to let Abbie get away with correcting him, which simply wouldn't do.

"I'll be asleep then," groaned the semiblonde.

"So you have a day to pack," the evil genius concluded.

"I already did," Abbie countered. "But, as you obviously wouldn't know, a girl can never be too ready for the beach." This was a bluff also. But the alternative would be to accept Sloth's advice, which simply wouldn't do. Abbie pranced haughtily off.

"Mom, be quiet," replied Ji in her usual unsubtle manner. "Aikouka, Tammy, Mel, you guys are packing into the guest bedroom. Naomi and Mel: it's a double bed - can I talk you into coinhabiting it while the others get on the floor?"

"No problem," replied Melony. "My pets fall asleep in my bed all the time; this'll be more or less the same." Her older sister delivered a sharp elbow into Mel's side. "Ow!"

Ji ignored them. "Jody, Tori, Aviva, you all get the living room - that's here. You can fight over the sofa. Beware, though; it glows in the dark." She didn't smile at this, but several of her visitors did, and Venus and Starlee giggled.

"Leslie and Kami, you two can unroll your sleeping bags in my room. Brooke, Zoe, Venus, you get the TV room downstairs. Ko-Kira and Starlee, you two are being shunted off to Kara Lynn's house. Zelda, you're in the garage."

"Hey!" cried the brunette indignantly.

"I'm kidding. Duh. You get the TV room too." Zelda nodded, mollified, and at Ji's beckon the fifteen girls poured into the house.

"Can we go to the beach now?" Venus pleaded just before she entered the TV room.

"All in good time," replied Ji's mother. "You need to get unpacked first. Otherwise you'll never get around to it."

Melony, Zelda, Zoe, Starlee, Brooke, Tammy, Aikouka, Kami, Venus, and Jody all ran straight for the water. Leslie, Aviva, Tori, Ko-Kira, and Kara Lynn opted to start working on a massive sand castle project. Ji headed for the surfboards-only section of ocean, and Naomi stretched out on a towel to work on her tan.

There were, as usual, more pets on the beach than owners; Kara Lynn's Buzz, Artemis, and Ji's Shoyru, Shoylana, joined that number, diving in and out of the waves.

An hour passed out beyond the breakers.

"I'm bored," remarked Starlee. "I want to go in for a while."

"I'll come with you," Aikouka agreed. Melony also opted to come in. Brooke and Tammy weren't even listening; they were racing each other with Jody playing referee. Venus and Kami were having a blast; the former had spent a lot of time on Mystery Island and the latter had once lived there, so they knew just how to have fun in the water.

The trio swam inland. "I didn't think we were this far out!" a surprised Starlee remarked after a while.

Aikouka caught a wave and was propelled inward. "Show-off," grumbled Melony.

The brunette had also been fortunate enough to choose a one-piece suit of exactly the right shade of teal: it looked great with her skin and would probably set off a tan nicely. Melony, in her black one-piece with white trim and the Official Moehog Fan Guild logo printed on the front, resented Aikouka's shopping luck. (Starlee, in a mauve tankini, was happy with her choice.)

Finally they washed up on the beach. Melony looked around. "Where did everybody go?"

"Ohmigosh," exclaimed Aikouka, "we're lost!" Indeed, they were clearly on a different beach. Rather than extending back a hundred feet and then becoming NeoHomes, it went back fifteen or twenty feet and then was replaced by lush jungle.

"We can't be lost. We were in the same place the whole time!" Starlee protested.

"There could've been an undercurrent," noted Melony. "And we never looked at the shore. Plus we were pretty far out..."

Aikouka looked out across the horizon. "The others are still out there. We'd better keep track of where they are - so we know which way we've been drifting."

"Now I'm all wet and salty," grumbled Starlee. "There is sand in my suit! I want a shower."

"Anybody know what time it is?" asked Melony.

"No..." Aikouka looked up at the sun, but it was no help.

"Then we're stuck - all we can really do is wait for them to come in," Melony groaned.

"Guys, we're on an island!" exclaimed Starlee suddenly. "Can't we just walk around the shoreline until we find out where our ferry landed?"

"Mystery Island is pretty big, though," replied Aikouka. "And we don't know how far we drifted, or which way; we could end up walking for miles."

"Oh." Starlee thought about this. Then she announced, "Um, I have to go to the bathroom...should I just go in the forest?"

"You could always use the ocean," remarked Aikouka. "Lots of animals do anyway..."

Starlee shook her head. "I mean . . . y'know . . . number two."

"...oh. Then yeah, go ahead," said Melony, waving Starlee towards the trees. "We'll wait right here for you."

It had been about ten minutes by Aikouka's reckoning, and Starlee still wasn't back from her little excursion. "Oh, all right," said Melony finally. "Let's go find her. But if we get lost-"

"She's probably already lost," countered Aikouka, dragging Melony across the sand towards the thick forest. "Come on!"

So Jody, Venus, Brooke, and even, reluctantly, Tammy started heading towards the beach. "We're farther out than I realized," Tammy noticed after a minute.

"You know what?" said Jody as they reached the shore. "I don't think this is our beach."

"Why?" asked Kami after looking around for a moment.

"Well...there are less people, I don't see Ji or any of them, and there are some little huts - selling drinks and things, I think - that weren't on our beach. I don't even see Aikouka, Starlee, or Melony..."

"There must be a pretty strong current going," theorized Tammy. "I didn't even think about it - and we were so far out, I couldn't've kept an eye on the beach anyway..." Of course, Tammy hadn't worn her glasses out into the waves.

The five reached the water's edge and walked up onto the shore. It wasn't nearly as crowded as their beach had been, and nobody gave the bewildered-looking group a second glance. Nobody except...

"Hey Venus," whispered Kami. "That guy over there is checking you out."

All heads turned so that they could see the fairly attractive young man without seeming to be looking. "His friend's looking at somebody beyond us," murmured Kami, and the girls' glances shifted to see who had caught the other guy's eye.

Abbie was lounging on a beach chair, and looking very good in a black and orange bikini that set off her deep tan.

Five wet, sandy, salty, lost teens traipsed over to their longtime nemesis. "All right," said Jody firmly, automatically taking charge, "what are YOU doing here?"

Abbie didn't even glance in their direction. "Getting a tan, of course," she said from behind closed eyelids. "And once the sun goes down I'll be at a hair salon getting a new 'do. The pale orange looks so washed-out in summer! I'd let you come to the salon with me, but, frankly, you're not popular enough to be seen with me in the evening."

"Why you - you're not popular at ALL anymore!" seethed Brooke. "You're DEAD as far as our school is concerned!"

"And I'm one of the most popular girls anyhow!" Jody protested.

"Guys, guys, stop! It doesn't matter!" Venus tried to calm the pair down. "Don't let her get to you."

"Yeah - YOU know what's true, and SHE knows YOU know, so why tell her?" asked Tammy.

"We'll have our eyes on you," Kami told Abbie warningly, "so don't try anything."

"You're lost, aren't you?" asked Abbie.

"Did you even swim?!" cried Zoe in disbelief when she found all of them dry.

"I swam a little," Leslie admitted. Her dark hair and darker suit made her skin seem paler than usual and weirdly fragile. "Tori and Ko-Kira and Aviva and I. Ko-Kira freaked some people out, I think."

"We stayed near shore," Aviva admitted. Zelda looked oddly at the tall brunette for a moment, remembering her Maraquan past, but said nothing.

"So where are the rest of you flotsams?" quipped Tori.

"They drifted a little ways," explained Zoe. "Zoo escapee here and I lost track of them."

"Zoo escapee? I like that!" laughed Ji.

Zelda bristled. "That's what I call her," she informed everyone snappishly.

"I don't see them," said Kara Lynn, which got everybody's attention. The genetic experiment was looking out over the water, but even her 40/20 vision couldn't pick out the absent members of their party.

"Maybe they drifted farther than you can see," Leslie suggested.

"We could call them..." Naomi paused. "They wouldn't have their communicators with them, would they? Never mind."

Suddenly Leslie felt something pulling at her elbow. She looked down to see CuteArtemis. "Yes, Artemis? What is it?"

"Me 'n Shoylana can look!" piped up the little blue Buzz. "Me 'n Shoylana are fast. We can go find them!" The cream Shoyru nodded agreement.

"I don't see why not," Ji said before Leslie could reply. "Kara Lynn, would you be okay with that?" The periwinkle-haired girl nodded. "Okay, go ahead. Be careful."

"Wait!" exclaimed Zelda as the two pets spread their wings. "Here." She pulled a spare communicator from her bag. "I keep these handy in case we meet someone new. Keep in touch," she told Shoylana, handing it over.

"I shall," came the soft reply before the two pets flew off.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Abbie. "You nave no clue where this is. Well, I'm feeling generous today; maybe I'll tell you. Or maybe not."

"Give it up, Abbie," snapped Brooke. "We know exactly how to get back."

"We do" asked Venus. Tammy hurriedly shushed the blonde, but it was too late: Abbie had already heard. "You're more lost than I realized," she snickered. "I've changed my mind. If you want to know where you are, there'll be a price."

"What is it?" asked Kami curiously.

Abbie opened her eyes and looked up at them. "Your henshin pens."

A twig snapped behind them and both girls froze. "Who's there?" asked Aikouka shakily.

Nobody answered. Then, suddenly, Melony let out a little scream and pointed to a nearby fern. A hideously ugly face was concealed behind it, staring straight at them.

"There are more!" cried Aikouka. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she spotted at least six others. They were camouflaged extremely well.

Some invisible signal must have passed between them, because all the creatures leapt forward at once...