I need a lock of hair.

The itch in Elara's crotch had been incessant for weeks now. It was worse than the week after she'd got the piercing, while drunk, at Garth's Tattoos and Piercings in Abergavenny. Three weeks before the experiment. She'd gone back to Garth's and he'd just laughed and given her a tube of antiseptic cream, offering to rub it in. Dirty bastard. She'd used it - and it had helped - but she couldn't get another tube now. She couldn't get anything normal now. Not even a regular cup of tea to calm down - due to the fact that she was now gods knows light-years across the known - and bloody unknown - universe. Or she'd gone mad. Maybe that was it? She gave into her urge and pinched and scratched through her heavily soiled jeans. A moment of blissful satisfaction. Maybe it was a fungal infection this time? That would figure. Percy's brown pointed quills preened in an excited wave beside her, as the pair peeped over the upturned cargo crate, observing the spectacle. The larger mushroom monster - for want of a better word - was tossing pods around while Zare tried to wrestle it with his spindly, floaty, deadly, arachnid martial arts way. She wondered how he floated, and had asked him, but it didn't make sense to her and it made no sense to him why she couldn't simply understand it. "I think he's got the upper hand," Percy whispered. "Which hand? He has, like, four or six... I'm never sure which are feet and which are hands," Elara said in her thick Welsh Valley's accent. "Should we help him?" "Gosh no, Dr. Finch! He'd kill us. Or the Xahechaphod would. We'd just be a liability. But look at the condensates forming on the piping! There's going to be so much for me to do here! It's amazing!" She looked to the gleaming brass pipes, positively dripping with Percy's beloved pursuit, as they ached and heaved, the strains of the encounter obviously weighing heavily on the ships fragile heart. It was a strange thing, the ship. Nothing like a spaceship on Earth, with their rockets and stages and capsules and what not, skimming the edge of Earth's gravity well, maybe making it to the moon and back. Science and physics and normal. No. It was more a living thing of brass and wood. Well, she thought of it as wood, but it was probably something else. And it had feelings and emotions. You could tell by how it sighed, or how the pistons and mechanisms whirred or merely twitched. It reacted to their mood's too. The mushroom thing swung one of it's mighty mycelial appendages and sent Zare crashing through another container, splinters and cargo exploding out. Percy gasped and ran for the door, heroically leaving Elara to stare - mouth agape - as the beast stomped towards her. She reached for the condensate applicator, drawing it in a fumbling motion and pointing it. Just then she started to feel a twinge in her pants, then a positive thrumming vibration - not unlike the sensation that had dragged her here when her experiment went awry. Her knees and thighs starting to shake. "Oh gosh..." she stammered, blushing into the face of her impending death. As she was about to peak - and likely be devoured, or decomposed, or whatever, by the mushroom thing - a blinding blitz of etherial somata quanta knocked both her and the mycelium nightmare back. A shaggy haired human figure stumbled forward from the flash, falling to her knees, one hand on her groin the other holding herself up off the ground, panting, red-faced. Her coat - the long purple velvet coat of a captain, not Elara's grey Specialist coat, flowed to the floor around her. "Phew! I... think I squirted this time," she exclaimed in a tangy thick Valley's accent, as she scrambled to rise and stagger towards Elara, falling into her arms and kissing her passionately, before pulling back a little repulsed. "Sorry. Bit over come. Intense," she pants. "That's not going to work, Babs. Stand back." Taking the applicator from Elara, she ejects the vial and plugs in a glowing caramel obsidian one from her pocket. In a smooth motion she turns, stepping boldly forward and sprayed the mushroomed abomination. The thing roared archaic mushroomian rage, then shrank, rapidly retracting into a sort of puffball, much as it had been before Percy had tried to extract its condensate. She ejected the vial, pocketing it, and handed the applicator back. "Now. I need a lock of hair - mine's been contaminated - and there's no other human in the Nebula," she said, as if this was explanation enough. Elara gawked at herself. "I have gone mad." "No you haven't. Not yet. But you will." The figure stepped towards her, pulling out a pair of scissors, and squinted at Elara's hair for a second before just pulling it hard and cutting off a handful. "Ow! You fucking bitch!" "Oh, give over. It grows back. This should be enough. Don't tell Zare I was here, or he'll think you're under attack or something. I've got to get back." She turned a dial on the wrist mounted device, as Elara watched and struggled to find something to say. "How... did you know that would work? Did you come back to change history?" "What? No! Don't be ridiculous. When I was you, I saw what she did and just did that. I've been carrying that bloody vial for ages. Oh, right here it is." She rummages in her pocket, and places the vial carefully into Elara's hand, folding her fingers around it. "Anyway. Enjoy the quantum vibrations, this is going to be a good one," the older self said with a wink. Then she stepped into a writhing mass of particles, as Elara's eyes went wide and she fell to her knees, mouth wide open, panting. "Oh gosh..." When she could finally breathe normally again, she looked up to see Zare's spindly arachnid form starting down at her. She patted herself down and tried to stand normally. Luckily Percy wasn't here to see the pool of condensate she'd made when the vibrations had been at their peak. "Are you alright Dr. Finch? You defeated the creature. I'm impressed. Is this a human post battle celebration?" "No! I wasn't doing anything! And... I... yes... I suppose I did defeat it... but... I think I need a little lie down now, Zare."