"Hinji? Hey, Hinji! Yoohoo!"

The Shoyru blinked as his friend hopped around in front of him, waving her large Cybunny paws.

"Wha- what? Sorry, Mixi. I guess I was daydreaming," he said.

"I can tell that," Mixi replied, exasperated. "I was just asking if you wanted to visit the Faerie Weapon Shop next? Hey – Hinji!" The Cybunny clapped her paws in front of his face.

"Sorry!" Hinji said, snapping out of his reverie again. "Hey, Mixi... look at all those clouds! Have you ever wondered what would happen if we could keep on flying?"

"Um... I assume we'd end up in space and eventually hit the Space Station," the faerie Cybunny replied wryly. "Say, Hinji, if you're going to be a daydreamer, could you at least be more romantic about it? Daring quests? Mysterious treasures?"

"Let's fly!" the Shoyru exclaimed, as if he hadn't heard her at all.

"The stuff in the shops isn’t going to wait around for us to show up and buy it, you know..." the Cybunny began.

"Aww, it'll just be like a little walk, only upward," the Shoyru insisted. "Come on!"

"All right, all right," Mixi conceded. After all, this would allow her to stretch her wings a little. With a leap, both of them flew up into the air, soaring joyously upward through the clouds.

"See, this isn't so bad, is it?" Hinji said with a smile five minutes later, as they swooped among the little puffy white clouds.

"I suppose, but we shou- OUCH!" Mixi cried. She looked up, only to feel the anger on her face melt into surprise. For there, perched on a tiny cloud, much, much higher than Faerieland, was a little lonely building...

"The Hidden Tower?" he suggested.

"Can't be," argued Mixi. "Does that look like a tower to you?"

Hinji didn't respond. His eyes were glazed over slightly. Mixi rolled her eyes; the Shoyru's bad habit of daydreaming was getting worse by the second.

"Neopia to Hinji." She raised her voice. "Do you copy, Hinji?"

"Hmm... what?" he asked, turning to her and snapping back to reality in a split second.

"I said that this place is too small to be the Hidden Tower. More like the Hidden Garden Shed."

"Oh," Hinji responded. "Do you want to go inside and check it out?"

Mixi glanced back to the ground. All those shops... but Hinji was glancing at her expectantly. "I don't know," she said hesitantly. "We came to go shopping."

"But this is an adventure," the Shoyru protested. "You can go shopping any old time, but how many times in your life will you find a mysterious building to go into?"

"Fine," Mixi sighed. "But if everything's sold out when we get back, I'm blaming you."

Hinji shrugged and glided toward the cloud. Mixi followed suit. When she got there, the Shoyru was just opening the door. Without sparing a glance elsewhere, they stepped forward into the darkness...

"What is it?" Mixi asked quietly, as the two Neopets stared at the rather large object in the centre of the room. She could barely be heard over the sound of huffing and puffing and the churning of gears that the mysterious machine was producing. It was a strange contraption, seeming to bleed from the roof of the building toward the floor, where it tapered like a needle. A large cloud of rainbow-coloured steam hovered near the ceiling.

"I don't know," Hinji replied. He frowned rather distantly.

Mixi was getting rather excited. This was actually something interesting. She hadn't been expecting that. "Let's take a look around," she suggested. "Then we can go back down and finally do some shopping."

The two Neopets moved closer, circling the machine on either side. It seemed to be made of bits and bobs from all sorts of places. Springs, gears, what looked to be the remains of an old sink... Mixi thought she even glimpsed a Petpet moving around somewhere in there.

"Huh," Hinji murmured, spying what looked to be an odd piece of fabric stuck between two gears. Reaching over, he grabbed it between his fingers and gave an experimental tug. The fabric came loose with a tear, and he brought it up to his nose for closer inspection.

"No! What have you done?!" a voice suddenly cried from behind them, and Hinji realised that what he'd thought was another shutter was in fact a door. The harried-looking Neopet who had emerged from it was staring at him in horror.

"Hinji?" Mixi said softly. Then they both cringed in surprise as a loud alarm began to sound. Rainbow-steam billowed from the machine at an enormous rate as the contraption seemed to move faster and faster. Springs and wires erupted erratically forth, and soon all three Neopets were ducking for cover and coughing in discomfort.

"Now you've done it, you trespassers!" The mysterious Neopet said angrily as sparks zoomed overhead. "Hoodlums! Vandals! You've broken my weather machine!"

Hinji and Mixi exchanged bewildered expressions. Outside the strange little building, the clouds began to gather...

"No, no, no," muttered the Neopet, a Zafara, fluffing his thin grey hair with nervous hands. "This cannot be happening, this cannot be happening... just breathe and you'll wake up."

The machine had stopped creating its familiar huffing and puffing sound, reverting to a more high-pitched squeal, grating and unpleasant, like nails across a blackboard. Its busy cogs and gears were now moving completely out of rhythm, some moving faster than ever before, some slower, some stopping and starting dramatically, and some halting their progress altogether. There were problems elsewhere, too; great bellows hissing out of life, fires fizzling to a stop, and metal sheets bulging to such a point that hundreds of tiny nuts and bolts began to fly hither and thither.

"Mixi," said Hinji, staring at the contraption in awe of its sudden demise. "We'd better get out of this place. Right now."

"But what about him?" replied his friend, gesturing toward the old Zafara, who was now standing in the middle of the floor with his eyes screwed up and shut tight. Every so often, he muttered something reassuring to himself under his breath.

"I'm sure he knows what he's doing," answered Hinji. "Let's just leave him to his job, eh?"

The Cybunny rolled her eyes. "You're just saying that because you don't want to take the responsibility."

"What?" gasped Hinji in mock incredulity. "I would never think of such a thing."

In spite of the worrying situation, Mixi allowed herself a little chuckle. But only for a moment; soon, her features were grim once again. "Come on," she said flatly. "We'd better take our friend and leave."

They scrambled over to the Zafara, who was still blabbing insanely to himself and trying to pretend that it was all a dream. They took his bony arms and tried to drag him away, but he dug his heels firmly into the ground, and they could go no farther.

He opened his eyes with a flutter and let out a little wail as he saw Hinji and Mixi on either side of him. "You don't exist!" he yelped, his breathing heavy, his brow furrowed. "You're both just figments of my imagination, a terrible dream. I will wake up, I will! And then, you will be gone. I will be safe..."

Hinji pinched him. The Zafara yelped.

"Could you feel that? If you could, that means this isn't a dream. This is real, and we need to get out now, before this place goes up in smoke," he explained.

For a moment, the Neopet was silent. And then, all of a sudden, he fell to his knees.

"The end of Neopia is nigh!" he shrieked.

As if in answer, the last faint wisp of rainbow smoke faded into the air. The machine was now still, broken.

And outside the window, things had taken a turn for the worse...

Mixi was shaking violently. "T-this is horrible!"

Hinji made a funny squeaking noise. "How do we make it stop?"

They instinctively turned to the Zafara, who was rocking back and forth, moaning.

"Well?"

The Zafara sobbed. "I don’t know…"

Mixi's panic transformed into anger. "What do you mean you don't know?"

"Mixi-" Hinji said quietly.

"After all, this is your machine, you should know how to make it work!"

"Mixi-"

"If you don't know how to fix this thing, then what do we do?"

"MIXI!"

She rolled her eyes and turned to her friend. "For the love of Fyora, what is it, Hinji?"

The Shoyru raised a trembling hand and pointed to a swirling mass of clouds. "Look."

Mixi stared at the spot, her eyes widening in horror. The clouds and formed a dark funnel, and from the funnel a tail of swirling clouds descended, twisting and turning as it did so.

A tornado…

Mixi watched in complete terror as the wispy string of cloud fell to the city, preparing to wreak even more panic.

"Oh my…" she croaked.

Hinji was shaking so violently now, he could barely keep himself up. "I-It's not over."

She followed the Shoyru's gaze and a choked gasp came from her throat. High in the sky, another twister was forming. And this one was headed straight toward them…

"We have to leave!" he said, his hands sweating, his eyes glued to the approaching twister.

"We can't!" Mixi said hysterically. "Can you see that, can you hear that? We'd be walking to our deaths!"

"If we stay here, we'll be blown to smithereens before long. At least... at least if we leave, maybe we can reach land before it gets worse!"

A lawn chair crashed into a dusty window, smashing the glass. The roar of the wind was now ten times more deafening, sending gears and springs from the broken weather machine flying. The wind was powerful, drawing them closer to the wrecked window, even though the frail Zafara clutched onto the floor with all his might.

"It's too dangerous," Mixi said faintly. "I'm not leaving. It's too dangerous. I can't leave; it feels safer inside this place than out in the sky in the middle of a tornado storm!"

"Are you insane, Mixi? You can't stay here!" Hinji insisted, his voice barely a whisper above the scream of the wind and the wails of the Zafara.

"No, I'm staying."

Suddenly, there was a loud crack, and the door of the small building blew open, flying from its hinges off into the storm. The strength of the wind sucked them out the open entrance and soon the three Neopets were swirling in the tornado...

The raging wind crackled and whipped at every part of their bodies, leaving a cold throbbing pain behind. The wind only got more powerful and wicked, until it felt as if the whole of Neopia would be sucked into the funnel cloud. All of them were dizzy and nauseous. Their surroundings had turned into a blurred mush of gray and the small flying colours of objects that had been in the way of the tornado. And as for an option of escape, it seemed hopeless.

Hinji, thinking he had swirled around for the hundredth time, found it highly difficult to breathe. It felt as if this tornado were sucking every breath of air from his burning lungs, as if that extra air would power it even more in its path of destruction.

He heard no screaming from Mixi, and alarm took over as he tried to see the Cybunny. "Mixi!" he tried to shout over the howling wind.

A barely audible shrill voice yelled, "Hinji! I'm here! Help!" The Shoyru looked behind him, and he caught sight of the Cybunny who tried to flap her wings and catch up to him. "We have to get out of here!" They clutched tightly to each other's arms, the wind trying to devour and buffet them until there was nothing left.

Hinji gritted his teeth, trying to block out the sound of the growing wind. If they ever hoped to get out alive, then they definitely had to find a way out.

Suddenly and instinctively, Mixi and Hinji stuck their arms out and caught the old Zafara by a frail arm as he whirled past.

"Listen!" Hinji shouted. "You have to help us find a way out!"

The Zafara looked up at the horrified friends, shaking his head violently. "No! This is all fake! You aren't there! You're just supposed to be a terrible nightmare!"

"Snap out of it!" Mixi placed a firm grip on his shoulder with her free hand, fighting the urge to shake him like a Neocola can. "This is real! We're real! You can't keep pretending life is a dream!"

The Zafara's eyes widened; Mixi's words seemed to be reaching him, but only a little, so she continued. "If you ever want something done, then you must figure out a way to do it yourself, not wish it away and think everything's going to be okay! You have a life to live, just like us! So open your eyes and help save Faerieland!"

He gave a shuddering sigh, the paranoia dimming in his eyes like a melting candle. "Perhaps you're right," he whispered. He closed his eyes with deep thought. He had been quiet for so long, Mixi and Hinji thought he had been knocked unconscious. Finally, his eyes popped open, and now they shone with certainty. Gesturing for the friends to lean in as close as possible -- the wind suddenly seeming invisible -- he called, "I have an idea. Listen well, as I can only say this once..."

"What is the 'Hole'?" Mixi asked.

The Zafara shrugged. "It's not really a hole, actually. But it's some sort of doorway that allows all the bad weather to come in. Created by faeries, wouldn't you know, doing all their blasted experiments with magic. But the point is, the weather machine was created to seal the hole -- most of the time. You get the occasional runaway storm and such, but for the most part--"

"So, all we have to do is seal up the Hole again!" Hinji crowed. "Do you have any glue? Needle and thread?"

"Yes, I was just getting to that part," the Zafara said grumpily. "We do just need to seal the Hole. But we'll need powerful magic like the type that created it -- I'm afraid glue won't do a thing."

"What about super-strong glue?" Hinji's eyes were wide and earnest; he didn't sound like he was joking.

"No."

Mixi shook her head. "Look, maybe we can have this conversation after we've figured out where this Hole is," she pointed out.

"Ah -- yes -- that's right. Well, as for the location of the Hole... it's right above our heads..."

Mixi clapped both paws over her mouth even as she spun in the middle of the storm. "That's -- that's monstrous!"

"Yes," said the Zafara over the roar of the storm. "The Hole in the Air. Rain and wind have their place in the world -- but only evil weather comes from that opening. It will do no good."

As the three Neopets watched, the tornadoes drifted closer and closer to Faerieland.

"We have to do something," Mixi said. "Or it will destroy our home!"

"There's nothing we can do!" the Zafara moaned. "Only the Weather Machine -- "

"No," Hinji said in his usual dreamy way. Then, to the surprise of the other two, he began to flap upward, fighting the strong winds as he approached the Hole in the Air.

"What are you doing?" Mixi demanded. "Get away from it!"

"The storms have to come from somewhere," Hinji said, still flying upward. "If we could put something in that place that would counteract all the foul weather..."

Mixi flapped after him, tugging at his foot. "But you don't have anything...!"

"Yes, I do," Hinji said. He thrust his hand toward her. Clutched between his fingers was the scrap of cloth he had torn from the machine. On it was printed...

Mixi's anguished yell was swept away by the wind. Huge raindrops fell in front of her, blurring her vision, but she could just make out the figure of Hinji, reaching up to throw the cloth toward the Hole.

For a moment, the scrap of fabric floated almost lazily in the swirling winds. Stunned, Mixi and the old Zafara watched, Mixi still tightly gripping his arm. Time seemed to stand still as the piece of cloth with its glittering sun flew toward the Hole, steadily and calmly, as though it knew its purpose. Hinji hung, one arm outstretched, fingers open in the act of releasing the cloth.

The Hole suddenly lurched and contracted, its ugly bruised-looking purple-black centre sucking in on itself, sparkling with crackles of lightning. Then the fabric reached it. The sun seemed to wink at the Neopets for a brief second, before it was sucked in.

The explosion was so huge that Hinji was blasted backward, straight into Mixi. The Zafara cried out weakly as Mixi's paw released his, and he began to fall. Hinji grabbed for him just in time, catching him by his tail. The three hung there for a moment as the wind and lightning whipped all around them.

Mixi rubbed her rain-filled eyes and looked toward the Hole anxiously. It was writhing and shaking, strips of blue and black tearing off like bits of cloud or smoke and drifting away. From the midst of it, she could see the sun sparkling cheerfully. And then a roaring sound alerted Mixi, who dove to the side, dragging Hinji and the Zafara, just in time, as the tornado spiraled past them in a cacophony of horrible noises. It was sucked straight into the last of the Hole, which was now no larger than the end of a pin.

And then it was gone. The sky was blue and peaceful once more, the sun shining peacefully. A relieved Beekadoodle fluttered past them, filling the air with a ragged cheeping.

"That was some shopping trip," Mixi muttered as the trio landed with a thump on the ground. Relieved-looking Neopets and faeries hurried by them, going back to their business, and they heard one grey Acara mutter: "I thought we really would be blown away. I tell you, it was a tornado."

Hinji extracted himself from the tangle of limbs and stood up. The Shoyru was grinning.

"See, Mixi?" he said. "I told you we'd have an adventure." Mixi sat up with a groan and rolled her eyes. Next to her, the Zafara sat up, looking dazed.

"Young lady and gentleman," he said hoarsely. "You've saved Faerieland, I believe. And I never introduced myself properly: I'm Helf." He held out one paw to Mixi, who shook it warmly. Hinji was bouncing up and down, not the least bit dreamy. Mixi grinned at her friend, and asked the Zafara, "What will you do now that your Weather Machine is destroyed? I'm sorry for that."

"Not to worry," Helf said, waving a paw dismissively. "I didn't actually solve the problem with it, I merely cured the symptoms. But I do love inventing, and I must thank you, for you've allowed me to go back to my former life. I own a little shop here, you see, and sell bits and pieces I make up. You're free to visit any time."

Hinji nodded enthusiastically, then turned to Mixi. "Hey, Mixi, what do you say about doing that shopping now?"

The End