The first thing he realized was that he was not in Test Tube's laboratory. The second thing he realized was that he had actually been unconscious for some time. Or rather, powered off.

MePhone4 automatically ran a systems check to see if anything was wrong. Screen, check. Internal timer, functioning as normal. 95% of other applications, perfect. The only three things not working - and he tested them - were his newly installed quick-travel app, his ability to generate anything from nothing, and his WiFi/cellular connection. Wherever he was, it had cut him off from the outside world.

Speaking of which, where was he?

MePhone finally sat up and looked around. He was in a small, white room. That was it. No door, no windows, no furniture whatsoever, and no visible light source. A cold trickle of dread slid down his side. Unfortunately, he now knew exactly where he was.

A sudden burst of feedback from some hidden speaker made him jump. An uncomfortably familiar voice cleared its throat. "Is this thing on?"

MePhone clenched his fists. "Cobs."

"Ah, so you can hear me. Well, welcome back to the MeCloud, MePhone4. It has been quite a while since your last visit."

"How did you get me here again?"

"So curious! It's wonderful to see you still as inquisitive as the day I created you."

"Just answer the question."

"I have no obligation to." Cobs sighed. "But, as my only alternative at the moment is to do boring troubleshooting, I suppose I might as well. You're not going anywhere, anyway, so there's no harm to it."

"HOW-"

"Yes, yes, calm down. You see, last night, I abducted a certain porcelain friend of yours to-"

"Toilet?" MePhone interrupted. "Why? And he's NOT my friend."

A blip of static came through - another frustrated sigh. "What is it with you mechanical minds? You ask a question, and then when I begin to answer, you very rudely interrupt me. As I was saying, I took Toilet into custody recently with the help of a new creation of mine. The idea was to use him as bait. For you. But, after a little questionnaire and some truth serum, he spilled the fact that you despise him - in addition to spilling quite a lot of toilet water - so I decided to take matters into my own hands."

"Truth serum?" MePhone was horrified. On the mainland, truth serum had been outlawed long ago for the extremely painful side effects that it caused in the users. "You... you monster! Toilet may be the most annoying object on earth, but even I wouldn't do that to him!"

"At least we can agree on the matter of him being, to put it mildly, 'annoying.'" Some shuffling of papers could be heard. "To continue, it was a simple matter to tweak your teleportation application slightly, once I realized earlier today that you had downloaded and used it. All you had to do was activate it again, and voila - instantaneous capture. Quite an ingenious plan, if I do say so myself."

MePhone could picture the smug look on Cobs' face perfectly. "My contestants will come for me, you know. And Four, too - oh, man." It was his turn to smile smugly. "If Four ever gets to you, you'll wish you'd never been born. At the risk of sounding extremely cliche, you're not going to get away with this!"

He could almost hear the corn's smile grow wider. "Oh, but I will, dear creation. Or have you forgotten that literally nobody else in the world knows where you are right now?"

Before MePhone could come up with a snappy reply, he heard the speaker turn off with a click. He realized that Cobs was, unfortunately, correct. Nobody in either universe knew his location, and he also realized that they might not look for him. He knew he wasn't very well-liked. Furthermore, a third realization hit, about how Test Tube's portal wasn't working - Four was trapped in his own universe, and so were about thirty other objects that he could really use.

Despaired, he banged his head against the wall, and something fell out of his weird pocket dimension that all objects seem to have, clattering to the floor. Glancing down, he saw that it was none other than his portable cell phone sitting there. MePhone stared at it for a moment, uncomprehendingly. There was no way Cobs hadn't forgotten to also disable that, right?

It was worth a shot. Quickly, he grabbed the device , turned it on, and went straight to the phone app. Surprisingly, there was cell service. MePhone had to force himself not to laugh. How ironic.

Going to his contacts, he tapped on one of the first names that appeared. "Come on, come on..." he muttered as the device rang.

Someone picked up. "Hello?" a squeaky voice said.

"Balloon!" MePhone cried. "Oh thank Cobs. Wait, no, scratch that. Cobs has kidnapped me and imprisoned me in the MeCloud! You need to come rescue me and get-"

Click. "H-hello?" He'd never thought the sound of a dial tone could be so terrifying.

The speaker in the room soundlessly turned on again. "MePhone, MePhone, MePhone." Cobs clicked his tongue a few time. "Did you really think I wouldn't monitor any calls that happen on my WiFi network?"

MePhone threw his now-useless device against the wall in frustration. "My, my. I think you need to calm down some," his captor said. A panel in one of the walls opened up, and a robotic arm shot out and restrained MePhone. He struggled, but to no avail. Although he couldn't see it, a second arm extended from the ceiling and pressed down on his power button, holding hard.

An option appeared on his screen. Slide to power off, it said.

The finger swiped.

--------------------

"Hello? MePhone??" Balloon said into his speaker. But all he got was an ominous dial tone.

"WHAT DID HE CALL ABOUT?" Yellow Face asked as the red, rubbery airhead ended the call.

Balloon scratched his head and turned to the rest of Team 5 (plus Clock), who had all been wandering in the direction of Hotel OJ together. "If I heard him correctly, then Steve Cobs abducted him."

"Cobs!?" Baseball and Suitcase exclaimed.

"Yeah, apparently he took him to the MeCloud." Balloon pointed into the sky roughly southwest, and everyone turned to see something massive floating far, far up and away from where they were standing. "But that doesn't really make sense. From what I remember when we went there in episode 8, Cobs seemed like an alright enough guy... a little eccentric, though."

"Who's 'Steve Cobs?'" wondered Marker.

Baseball and Suitcase exchanged glances. "We can explain later," Baseball said. "But if Cobs has MePhone, then he's is definitely in danger, and we need to go save him."

"But how?" Balloony asked. "That iCloud thing-"

"MeCloud."

"-is really far away in the sky. And we don't have any fliers here!"

"What about the Grand Slams' hot air balloon we used to get up there the first time?" Suitcase asked. "Is that still around somewhere?"

Balloon snapped his fingers. "It is! MePhone gave it to OJ after the Bright Lights replaced his battery. He'll let us borrow it, no problem!"

"Great! Then let's go!" Baseball almost turned around, then hesitated, looking at the objects in their group who were from Goiky. "Uh, do you guys want to come along? We might need some extra pairs of hands."

Leafy raised hers excitedly. "I'll go! I'm always happy to lend both my helping hands to anyone who needs them."

"Me, too!" Pin said. Soon, everyone had agreed to join the rescue party - even Fanny. "Awesome!" Balloon cried. "Then let's go save MePhone!"

--------------------

Cobs waited until he was sure that MePhone4 had fully shut down before looking away from the camera feed and at the nearest MePod. "How much of that call went through?" he demanded sharply.

The MePod removed the earbuds it had on. "Enough, sir. Balloon knows that MePhone is here now, and that you took him."

He cursed under his breath. "Okay then. There's not much we can do at the moment. A lot of systems are still down after last night's fiasco, but it's not like we have any weapons on the outside of the cloud, anyway."

He thumped his fist into the palm of his other hand. "We'll have to wait for him to come to us. Update everyone's orders: stop working on all cloud systems except for the vital ones and prepare for the possible arrival of several objects. Cover any entrances into the cloud except the front door. I'll greet them myself. And make sure that annoying Toilet stays in his room until we've got this under control. Shouldn't be too hard, as he's still recovering from the truth serum this morning."

"Yes, sir!" The MePod suddenly went still as it updated its brethren with the new instructions.

Cobs pulled up a cast picture from Inanimate Insanity 2 on his laptop screen and studied it carefully. "Hmm. What a motley group of objects. I'd like to see this bunch try and get past me."