Roo: Hey, TTE's writing more! Holy crap!

Antiroo: Well, anything's better than MSTing our eyes out.

Ech: Hey, where'd Vampira and Pascaroo go?

Platypous: I hope they went to get me more pudding...

Wex: Shut up about the pudding already. We've got a story coming up right now!

Antiech: I'd like to say that nothing but the story idea and some of the characters belong to TTE. Others belong to Insomniac/Vivendi Universal.

---

A quiet chime from Elora's mantlepiece clock woke her from her sleep. "Ooh," she said, groaning. "I guess I must've dosed off..." Getting up slowly to stretch, Elora heard a piece of glass shatter. She gasped, and checked under the table. Surely enough, the photograph she had on her lap when she fell asleep had fallen off and broken on the floor. "Great. Just great. As if it wasn't bad enough that Spyro's not here, I go and break the frame he gave me." She thought for a minute. "Aw well. Not like I can't fix it." She walked over and set it down on her work desk, where she had set up a few things the Professor had taught her how to make over the years. Among them was a small wooden faun toy, a bobblehead Spyro (she had bought that herself), and a clock, which read...

"12:30!" Elora shouted out, Well, maybe I should get myself to bed... After all, I do want to wake up early tomorrow. Turning off the lights in her living area, Elora headed to her bedroom to sleep, or so she thought.

Now wearing a green nightgown, Elora was lying on her bed trying to sleep. Come on, sleep! Why can't I just say a word and I'll fall asleep? She heaved a sigh and looked over at the clock. 1:15, she thought, Thank goodness I asked the Professor for the next few days off, I'd be awake in five hours if I didn't.

She sat still for nearly half an hour, sleep still not coming to her. I wonder where Spyro is... she thought, beginning to let her mind wander. Maybe he's busy defending the Dragon Realms. Come to think of it, I've never been there. I could ask Professor to send me there with the crystal, but would he be awake at this hour? Elora looked back at the clock. 1:47 AM. "Of course he'd be awake now!"

Elora had hopped in the shower shortly after formulating her plan to see Spyro again. She slowly massaged her scalp to clean it as thoroughly as possible, using the shampoo Spyro said smelled the best in her hair. "Modified with draconol extract" the bottle said on the label. No wonder he likes the smell. It's like catnip is to Hunter. Elora stood under the faucet to clean out the soap now, and again thought of Spyro. She imagined herself with him, sitting under one of the many waterfalls of the Artisan world. Perfection, she thought. Seeing that there was no more shampoo in her hair to rinse out, Elora turned off the water. She now stepped out of the shower and walked to her room, drying herself off while wrapping the towel around her, to prevent perverts from seeing her. Out of her clothes, she picked her favorite green tank top and put it on. I bet Spyro's gonna be surprised when he sees me. With one last check-up on everything in the house, Elora walked out, towards the Professor's laboratory in the Forgotten Realms.

---

It was a beautiful night; all across the realms Elora walked she saw not a cloud in the sky. What she did see, however, was her favorite constellation, Eldris. She had first learned of it when she was very young, and had just started a grade-school tutoring class with the Professor and Hunter. She was heiress to the throne of Avalar, but doubted anyone knew that. When Spyro had asked her where her name came from, she had lied to him, saying it was from the ancient Avalarian language of Dofuta, where it was known as Il-ra, meaning reward. Though the fact that Il-ra meant reward was true, her name came from elsewhere, really meaning "the bearer of the crown."

Of course, Elora's eyes shifted in the sky to her favorite part of the constellation, right in the middle of the seven stars of Eldris. It was a small blob of light with the naked eye, but Elora knew better than to say it was a star. "You see that, Hunter, Elora? That's the Solana galaxy, 150 billion miles from here," the Professor's voice came in her head. She immediately remembered her response to that, "Professor, do you think that there could be someone in the Solana galaxy looking back at us now?" "That's the fun part about it, my dear," Professor answered her in her mind, "We don't know yet whether there are others out beyond our galaxy." Sighing, Elora smiled up at the galaxy high in the sky. If there was someone, she wanted at least to look friendly.

Ahead of her, the Professor's lab loomed. It seemed as if the lights were off, but she never knew with the Professor. He might just have the shades closed. Elora walked up to the lab door slowly and knocked. No answer. She knocked again, a little harder. Come on, be here. "Professor?" He still didn't answer. "I guess he's too asleep to hear..." Dejected, Elora walked away, before realizing something. "He keeps a key underneath the mat! Of course!" She lifted it up, and sure enough, the key was underneath. Elora used it to unlock the door, and then opened it slowly.

"Hello?" her voice echoed through the dark, empty lab. "Professor?" There was no answer still. Like the true genius he was, the Professor had put the light switch on the other side of the lab, far from the door. Elora carefully walked in, using the little light from the many Avalarian moons to guide herself across the room. There were wires on the floor, she remembered, and she had to avoid them. Since there were computers on standby nearby, the dim light from their monitors could guide her, so she closed the door slowly behind her. Don't trip on the wires... she thought to herself. Stepping slowly, her hooves echoed loudly on the lab's metal floor. Jeez. I try to be quiet and I'm just louder. Elora dodged one bundle of wires, if she remembered right, they were the wires to the lab's main computer. Well, at least that's the biggest one done with. She kept up her pace, making sure she didn't trip on the stray small wires between the larger bundles. When she got back, she thought, she was definitely going to clean up around the place, if only for her own sake. While she was lost in thought of it, she kept walking, not watching where she was, and tripped over a wire.

Elora fell to the ground with a loud THUD, knocking over one of the Professor's many experiments right onto Elora's back, pinning her to the ground. She looked back at it, to see what it was. The Power Crystal! Elora frantically tried to get up before the gem could unleash any of its power in the lab, like Ripto had made it do before. She began to kick back at it, trying to get it off of herself, and accidentally kicked a switch on the base. The machine it was switched to whirred to life, giving Elora a very bad feeling.

"The electrodes will, for lack of a better word, electrify the Power Crystal," Elora remembered the Professor saying earlier that day. She closed her eyes, knowing all too well that if it worked, she would probably perish. "Ancient Elders," Elora prayed silently, "Please, accept me into your realm." The electricity crackled around the edges of the crystal, and Elora shut her eyes tightly. This is it, she thought, a tear sliding down her cheek. I'll never see Spyro again.

Suddenly, though she expected it, the electricity surged through Elora's body, making her feel like every one of her cells was on fire. She screamed in horror as she felt the burn, and all of a sudden, all was cool...

Elora opened her eyes. She saw nothing but blackness around her. "Where am I...?" she muttered in the empty space. She felt like she was falling, was that what it was like to die? She closed her eyes again. I hope Spyro's okay... she thought, and another tear slid down her cheek.

Back in the Professor's lab, Agent 9 picked up the Power Crystal's stand. "Ohh," the Professor groaned. "What could've happened?"

Agent 9 replied in his normal, yet unusually hyper voice for this time of morning, "Maybe some rhynocs snuck in and tried to blow up the lab! I'll shoot 'em up!" Professor shook his head. "No, no..." he sighed. "Remind me to call Spyro in the morning, maybe he can sort this out." The Professor turned to leave his lab, not knowing that his latest creation had actually worked.

---

Meanwhile, far from Avalar, in orbit around a distant planet known as Anthropia, a silver-colored ship rested. Though in the Anthropian sun it shone beautifully, its owner's heart was not nearly as pure.

"Mistress!" a bluish-silver furred kangaroo, who was working on the controls, yelled out. "The Green Shard has moved, Mistress!"

"What!" hissed a vicious female voice. Banging on the controls, she stood up as the kangaroo looked back. Her deep red eyes shone in the light of the computer screens. "Bring it up on the main screen!"

The blue kangaroo obeyed, pressing a few buttons to bring the picture up. It showed the locations of the three shards of the Medallion of Power, the red and blue portions being in the same location, the ship, and the green one moving at a very accelerated place to a specific point on the universal map. The female voice laughed, and the owner stepped out of the shadows. "Pascaroo," the vampiric echidna said, "Set our course for the Solana galaxy."

---

Roo: Dammit, TTE just gave away our location!

Platypous: And he didn't give me any pudding!

Ech: So that's where they are... How come we haven't been in anything yet?

Antiroo: Better ask that question at a later time, the chapter's ending soon!

P.A.: Well, hey, review. TTE appreciates all of them, and the next chapter should be sometime soon.