Nervz of Steel

Mom Says:

Even while Agent Octavian was contemplating the difficulties of extricating himself from the bank’s sub-basement, he was perfecting his plan. Yes, it felt like a whole week had passed since the bank workers had called him an infernal mouse (and sloppily too, he noticed: their speech balloons hadn’t even included the umlaut over the O in Höllenmaus!). Yet in fact only seconds had passed.

His thoughts, zipping through his extraordinarily evolved feline brain, went something like this:

Proposition 1: If he spoke in the broken German the LingwaTron gave him, they’d know he was a foreigner pretending to be German.

Proposition 2: If he spoke in English, they’d catch his American accent.

Solution: He would speak in broken French. Then they’d be really confused.

Quick as lightning, his claws flashed across the LingwaTron’s buttons. The screen stuttered its message and he spoke what he read:

“Mais oui! Je suis le souris de l’inferne! Je viens pour le purpose de…un moment, si’l vous plait…de snatcher votre chaussures et les porter a l’inferne, où je vais…un moment, s’il vous plait…où je vais il faut recharger la batterie. Ah! Merde du chien!”

The Lichtenstinian workers raced around the room. Octavian zipped under tables and behind metal drums, thinking that maybe his first life was about to be up, but then—

suddenly, and without warning—

the lights went out!