   "Weasels!" She screamed, as the furry swarm clambered over her coverlet and nibbled on her nose. "I told Jon Jon to close the door". Throwing aside the covers, pillows and squealing mink, she stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door. Sebbo: A showering ermine shrieked in alarm. "Occupied! Occupied!" it cried shrilly. "Can't you see I'm taking a shower here?" "So what?" she answered. "Weasels don't wear clothes, anyway." "Oh, yeah," it admitted guiltily. "I forgot..." Seizing the rhetorical high ground, she thundered, "NOW GET OUT OF MY BATHROOM!" "Let me just rinse off the shampoo first." She glowered as it scrubbed away under the flowing water. "Why I otter..." she mumbled. Hacksaw: "Yes?" She stopped at the voice. It was deeper, and yet playful. She turned slowly to the right. It wore a small top hat, white tie and tails, and little spats on its otherwise unadorned, yet adorable paws. It was an otter. It was THE otter. "What," she started, barely able to contain her rage, "are you doing he..." "I came to inquire as to the status of my charges. My I take it from your expression that things are not going so well? Did Sir Jon fail to keep charge?" "Keep charge? He's barely in charge of himself? Who the hell are you?" "Oh, dear, I see. These are my, uh, students, if you will. The school location was compromised, and Sir Jon saved me and several other of the faculty. Her Majesty was very impressed." "Her Majesty? Queen Elizabeth?" "No," the otter looked cross. "I dare say most humans would not deal with us. Their minds are too closed to even note the intelligence of most of their own kind, much less the remainder of the animal kingdom. No, I'm speaking of QueenOppat. She is our Queen." "Wait, didn't I see you at the zoo?" "To you it's a zoo, to us it's the U.N. Plus, it's a nice place to rest in between missions." Rich "I'm so confused." Could this be some some sort of strange, weasel induced hallucination? Post traumatic nose-nibbling disorder? She had known all along that John's pervy weasel-fancying would lead to trouble, but she had never imagined this. "Ah, allow me to explain a bit further. You've been aware of your husband John's weasel predilection for some time now, yes?" The Otter would have been right at home introducing Masterpiece Theater. "Did it ever occur to you to wonder what he was doing with all of those weasels?" "I tried not to think about it." As long as he kept them out of the bedroom. That had been their deal from the very beginning. Why, oh why had the weasels picked today of all days to come barging in? "He has been working for our organization for years." "You mean..." "Yes, his life with you is just a cover for his true identity. His real name is Sir John Mowat, Associate Director of Weasel Training at ErMine." "ERMINE?" It sounded like something from a 1960's BBC spy serial. She couldn't believe this was really happening. Maybe she was still asleep? "Yes, we are a bit of an underground operation, you might say." Sebbo: "Is it one of those annoying acronyms?" "Annoying, Madam?!" said the overdressed otter indignantly. "Why ERMINE is none other than the Emergency Response Mustelid er... ah... Dash it, I never could remember what it stood for!" "Hm. And you are...?" "Yves Immanuel Otter, MWP, at your service, madam." He bowed ever so slightly. "I know I'm going to regret this, but--'MWP'?" "Mustelid Without Portfolio. By appointment of Her Majesty." "So what's this urgent mission?" she asked. "It has come to the attention of our most gracious Queen," the dapper otter announced, "that people are increasingly employing the excereable phrase 'not that big of a deal' in conversation. I have been assigned to wipe out this scourge." "You're on a commando mission to improve people's English usage? I don't see how you're going to manage that. And anyway--it's not that--" "I wouldn't say that if I were you," interrupted Otter. "I can probably restrain myself, but I can't speak for my elite squad of ruthless GrammarWeasels." "Yeah, you'd better watch it," warned the bathroom's dripping original inhabitant, wrestling vainly with the blowdrier. "Say, how do you turn this thing on?" But his question was to go unanswered, for at that very moment, the skylight shattered, and a pair of MerriamWebster descriptive grammarians leapt in, waving submachine guns and screaming their bloodcurdling battle cry: "English as she is spoke!" Hacksaw: April was stunned for a second, but upon seeing the MW SpecOps getting roofing tar on her bathroom rug, and scaring the still damp ermine, who was, while annoying, still quite cute, her mind snapped, and animal instinct took hold, fueled by 13 years of college work in literature. "English as she is spoke? Aaaargh, what are you idiots doing here!?" she screamed as she picked up her Websters Unabridged, second edition. The operatives, code named Strunk and White, were stopped momentarily by the sight of the hallowed tome. This was their undoing,as April, who was not a sentimentalist, and had a newer edition in her office, used it to bludgeon Strunk. Meanwhile, the damp ermine sprang into action, and with typical weasel intensity went after White. In a flash it had broken through the leather of the jump boots, and found purchase on soft grammarian flesh. "Ooooooow! That smarts. Let off or I'll bust a cap on you," White yelled.
"Drop it!" came a new voice from the doorway. Charlotte: "Mhifoe!! Thank God you are here!" yelled White. Mumbling, the damp Ermine loosed his grip on White's ankle. "Mhifoe?! Jon Jon can you explain any of this?" "Uhm April, Mhifoe is MY, uh, code name." "I suppose this is also an acronym, and what does that mean?" "My hovercraft is full of eels" he replied sheepishly. Hacksaw: "What kind of codename is that", April said, glaring at him. "Very hard to guess, mainly." "Mhifoe, let's waste these clowns and get on with the mission!" yelled White again, waving his gun around. "White, stop it. Who told you to come through the skylight? I asked you to meet me here, not engage the enemy here." "But this is obviously a safe house for these weasels!" he wailed. "White, this is MY house. This is my wife. And these are my students. Put aside your petty vocation, we have bigger fish to fry. What I have to tell both you and the weasels makes both of your standing missions, in fact," he looked sharply at Otter, "No big deal." The Otter tensed, and then spluttered, "What could be more important than an order from our Queen!" "This!" Jon Jon held out a newspaper for all to see. White, the Otter, the somewhat less damp ermine, and April all gasped with horror. (Gavin:) For emblazoned across the front page of the section were the words "CELTS SELL TIX! SEASON’S SALES ON THE REBOUND!" As the initial shock gave way to puzzled expressions, My Hovercrat, AKA Jon Jon, glanced, himself, at the paper he was holding. "Oops, I appear to have brought the wrong section…", he said, distractedly, opening up the paper to the next page.... "I wonder how the Red Sox are…" That was the last straw for our overly beweaseled heroine. With lightning quick reflexes, April grabbed a small bottle from the vanity case and holding it aloft, announced "That’s enough! Jon Jon, I think I’ve been quite patient for all these years, but if you don’t drop that paper and tell me what’s going on, I swear I will not hesitate to spray you, COPIOUSLY, with this bottle of RALPH perfume!" "Sheez, give me a break, it’s not like you discovered I was the secretive leader of a band of grammar weasels… no strike that… but, you understand, it’s just that…" As Jon Jon rambled she began counting, slowly, accentuating each number with a tiny spritz of RALPH "Three… <sptzzz> Two….<spfft> ". Jon Jon’s too-often weasel gnawed head finally kicked into gear half way through "One…". "Oh, right! The one thing that could be more important than an order from the queen!" "Yes, yes, it’s an order FOR the queen of course!… She’s feeling a mite peckish, and could really go for some nice raw herring…" "One half…" "Only it might be a bit difficult to get the herring to her, being as she’s gone missing!" Hacksaw: There was collective gasp, followed by some coughing, due to the small cloud of not very pleasent perfume in the air. "The Queen is missing!? Where were her guards?!" Y.I. Otter spluttered. Jon Jon shook his head, "She had sent them to look after the snack she had been promised. When they came back to report, she was gone. "We must go to the palace at once!" The Otter yelled. White, now holding his gnawed ankle asked, "What has this to do with Webster's Mhifoe, and what are you doing consorting with the enemy!?" "First of all, White, you know as well as anyone that I am a liason between the two camps. We're allies, even if we have disagreements. As to your first question..." Jon Jon held up a book of matches. Even April got a cross look when she saw the design: A picture of Cardinal Richelieu with "af" lightly superimposed over the picture. White's jaw dropped. "Why, those frog eating surrender monkeys! I'm with you, Mhifoe." The weasels sprang into action upon hearing of their foe. April helped out by drying the ermine, and carrying boxes of writhing weaselage to the car. (They protested, pointing out that they were capable of driving the car, as a team, so walking to it shouldn't be a problem. Jon Jon pointed out that the neighbors would certainly remember seeing several dozen weasels teaming up to open a car door, and stealth was paramount.) At the palace, Jon Jon left loose the weasels, and waited for other clues to turn up. The first to report was none other that the showering ermine, Ervin. (gavin) Meanwhile, deep beneath the interlocking etoiles that are the rues and boulevardes of Paris, Queen Oppat strains against the velvety grip of a dream of rolling in vats of pickled anchovies, and claws her way, painfully, to consciousness. Her mind seems exceptionally foggy. Though the lure of another mouthful of Orphean anchovies would normally hold sway, something about the usually metaphorical "clawing painfully" seems a bit too real this time, and her waking mind is prodded into action to figure it out. Odd how her paws do hurt a bit… odd how she doesn’t seem to be able to move them much… odd how much the castle smells like a garlic cream sauce today…. "So… Petite Reine… you awake from your reves," purrs a voice above her that manages to be smooth, gruff and nasal all at once, "reveillez, reveillez to what will be Our greatest dream… and your worst nightmare." Suddenly wide awake, Muscelina Oppat III wrestled uselessly with the heavy leather straps holding her, as her darting eyes took in the coils and pipes of some horrific machine surrounding her, its burnished metal surfaces reflecting a hundred baleful red indicator lights and the pale green glow of computer monitors. And grinning above her, its cruel eyes glinting in the dim, eerie lighting, a goateed and mustachioed face that she had hoped never to see again, that her agents said belonged to a man long dead…. She manages to hold back a scream, and instead, her mouth as dry as starch packing peanuts, croaks out "You…" "Oui, ma reine, ils sont Nous, Francois Loius Xavier Richelieu IX. As you can see, your MHIFOE and all his scampering stoats have somewhat exaggerated their claims of Our demise." Drawing closer, his goatee brushing her whiskers, his eyes mere inches from her own, he hissed "Mais, your imminent demise, ma qu-een, is not an exaggeration." Then, with a sweep of his ring-encrusted, superbly manicured hand to indicate the surrounding machinery, he purred "Surely, you recognize the Neural Vocabulatory Exigencer, the pride of your own language scientists, a glorious device to facilitate learning of the qu-een’s own Anglish. You might also note some ingeneous modifications that We have made to its design. For instance, you can see that We have reversed the polarity… now, rather than place words into the mind it will erase them, forever, from minds that once held them." "You fiend, you’ll never get away with this!," said the queen, riening in her instinct to bite his hand, "my subjects, indeed all of the English speaking world, will hunt you down and bring you to justice for each neuron you might displace on my Royal person." "Ah, if you’ll but let me continue, you’ll see that We don’t need to worry about that. Remember that for the original Exigencer to function it required a link between a ‘teacher’ and a ‘subject’. The words known by the teacher were copied to the mind of the subject. Well, you Muscelina, will be the teacher, not the subject. And, with the polarity reversed, words will be erased, rather than copied. Even though, We confess, We will derive great pleasure from watching as your mind is erased, it is not for a personal vendetta that you were chosen for this role. It is because you, alone in the world, hold in your head ALL of the existing English words. Your vocabulary is complete. Thus, with you as teacher, I can erase the entire English language from anyone’s mind. It is only as a pleasant side-effect that your mind, also, will be erased." Fixing her eyes on his, she said "You soiled codpiece! You deserve to have the full extent of that vocabulary unleashed on you with a carving knife! I will restrain myself, however, long enough to have you tell me just WHO you plan to use this thing on." He giggled in French, and pointed "Notice this conduit here? It leads up to a powerful transmitter high atop the Tour Eifel. And, We have placed booster transmitters all thoughout le Monde. For, you see, it is not one subject that will be effected, but ALL subjects, chaque personne dans tout le Monde will have each petit mot of your vile Anglish erased from his cretinous head! No more ‘hots dogs’ or ‘hamburgers’ to corrupt the pure essence of le langue Francais! The filthy plague that is the English language will be erased forever from the World, and every Brit, American and Aussie stooge, smug in his surety that he never need learn anything but ‘the Lord’s own English’ will be left a mute, senseless idiot! And you, qu-eenie, will be the key to the obliteration of your beloved toungue! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!" |