"What did you write in your lesson notes, Rappy?" Bubbles said as she lounged on a sofa in one of those communal areas of the school that existed on all floors.

No one was sure how many floors there were at Miss Plazenby's as the main building was built on the slopes of Mount Syzywyg and the undulating land combined with a sprawling superstructure meant that a first floor could become the second floor after a few yards depending on the lie of the land below. A few steps up in a staggered corridor would sometimes create a half floor in between two others, creating a confusing nomenclature and the school maps needed to be in three dimensions just to make sense of some locations.

This particular common room, stuffed with soft furniture, framed paintings on stone walls and arches in a multi-leveled ceiling that suggested the floors above were a crazy mismatch, was currently believed to be on the first floor and was often frequented by third year pupils naturally enough.

"I wrote," Princess Rapture replied from her own cushioned perch in a window alcove, "sea water is extremely salty but quite unintelligent. Is it not more dense that pure water?"

"Yes! I'm going to write that too. Icebergs are always made from pure water, frozen rain and stuff, so they float about rather than sink to the bottom in sea water. Sounds like we might have learnt something from that short lesson of Miss Venacula's."

"Did she try the sponge thing on you lot?" came a casual query from a third year girl who was weaving through the carpeted space to a favourite armchair near a bookcase, her expression that of bemusement at finding firsties in her familiar haunt.

"Indeed she did," Rappy replied courteously. "She evidently tried to enhance the effect of her experiment by teasing the salty particles with a sense of cooperation. I think they may have rebelled." Coming from the Highly Romantic Winkel of Xenia the heiress of the House Saxotiern was used to her father King Zolid having his throne threatened by various baronial uprisings.

"They escaped!" Bubbles chortled and then resumed scribbling notes on all things salty.

"Well," the other girl said, settling into her armchair. "Sounds a bit extreme. Usually the strange sponge thing is dipped in the water and comes up coated in a frost of salt crystals far exceeding the amount we all were obliged to watch her dissolve in the solution. The idea was to show how much salt can be hidden even in what appears a clear liquid. Size of molecules, refraction and densities were all supposed to come into play."

"Well," Bubbles imitated the third year, "ours exploded, took out the lights and then we all ran for it, fearing some hideous salt monster rising up from the desk and devouring everyone, then the school, Frangea and finally the world. Luckily it stopped after devouring the sponge, I think. Anyone seen the chemistry mistress since?"

"I got a nose bleed," Princess Rapture helpfully observed.

"Go see nurse," the older girl suggested as more third years began wandering in.

"I'll take her," Bubbles jumped up and grabbed the girl's elbow as she stared at the ceiling. "I know where it is, having been that way like a hundred times for plasters." The red-headed Frangea girl was notorious for getting herself into scrapes and often needed patching up by the indulgent medical staff.

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Thus they departed down some steps, along two corridors and down more steps for the nurse's room was on a lower floor.

"You may stop tugging me now," the princess suggested, no longer looking up.

"The bleeding's stopped?"

"Mm," the girl nodded. "Something you said worried me," she added, looking around. "Did Miss Venacula get out of the laboratory safely?"

"Not heard otherwise," Bubbles shrugged, unconcerned.

"Still it would be good to check."

"That's right at the top of the school," Bubbles protested.

"But her office is down near the cellars," Princess Rapture explained. "I checked the map just before my, um, nosebleed. We're not far."

Thus they pursued their winding path along somewhat empty stone corridors with shadowy shadows and gloomy spaces to a door marked Petulia Venacula. Knock. Enter. And so they did.

At first it appeared no one was in residence but the mistress suddenly appeared from an inner room muttering to herself and holding a rather large messy book which she thumped on a table. She was still wearing her lab goggles so that when she realised she had visitors a piercing gaze transfixed the two girls who stood before her.

"Ah, survivors," she said.

"We were thinking the same thing, miss," Rappy responded in that regal way of hers. "That you had thankfully survived this morning's, um, incident."

"This morning's, um, incident, as you so curious describe the matter has been exercising by brain cells somewhat," came the slightly sarcastic rejoinder. "Lost the blooming intuitive sponge. They're rare you know. Only grow in a few places on Winkel World. Really difficult to catch. Meditia's great lake has the best, especially in the Dodge and Hide Beds of the south east bay." She thumbed through the book a moment, muttering to herself again and then paused. "Yes?" she said sharply, realising the girls were still there watching her.

Bubbles pointed to a corner of the gloomy room, a particularly neglected corner with discarded equipment and packaging from supplies for the laboratory.

"Is that the sponge you mean?" she said and something small, dark and round seemed to duck under cover as she indicated it, sensing it had been spotted.

"Mouse!" Princess Rapture shrieked and threw herself in the arms of a startled Bubbles, who promptly collapsed under the weight.

"Don't talk nonsense girl," Miss Venacula said, peering forward. "No mice in Plazenby's. Not for fifty years or more. Cats got them all, every last one. Took out half the cream cakes in the kitchen as well before we shipped them off too. Has to be something else." She seemed so curious about the matter that she almost clambered over her desk to investigate the corner where Bubbles had spotted the something else scurrying away.

Meanwhile the redhead was disentangling herself from her startled friend with a growl of annoyance.

"Rappy, you come from a land of death spiders and vicious snowball fights and you're scared of a mouse? What gives?"

"Nose bleed," came a pinched nose response.

"Something else," came an exasperated response from the chemistry mistress. She had picked up a broom as she stalked the jumbled mess in the corner and struck up several threatening poses while the two girls picked themselves off the dusty floor. Then there was a shout, a sudden swoop of the broom and an explosion of dust that made everyone cough a moment.

"Got it - cough!" Miss Venacula said.

"Poor thing!" Rappy tried to say while pinching her nose and not coughing. She settled for eye watering as if she weeped at the announced demise of the something else that was not a mouse.

"Where - cough! - is it?" Bubbles asked, expecting to see a body.

"That's just it," the teacher said and coughed twice. "It disintegrated as soon as I hit the thing. Nothing left but clouds of dust. Oh my. Can't be," she then added and returned to her book to flick more hurriedly through its rough cut pages.

"Cough you found?" Bubbles said, sort of.

"Eep," Princess Rapture seconded the query.

"The intuitive sponge, or rather - cough! - its children." She slammed the book imperiously. "We might have a problem. How brilliant!" she added ominously.