A. N: Hello All and welcome to the 18th story post of mine on this particular site. It's Mickey and Minnie's Birthday today, 85 and they're still going strong! This story is just one of two birthday bits for the mice. This one is obviously Mickey's and the other that is Minnie's will be in Story Bites All About the Mice.

Disclaimer: Disney owns almost all. The ones that are mine are The Ace of Spades and Manfred Mouse.

It was his Birthday today, and just about everyone knew it except probably the most important person in his life. Now, Mickey really couldn't blame her, she's been very busy with the Bowtique and has barely had any free time of her own anyway. Their relationship has been on hold because of that Bowtique, which he also had to figure out on his own the hard way. After the Bowtique in town opened, he would call her to ask if she had any time for a date...she never did call back, and he had assumed correctly that it was because she was so busy with the Bowtique. And because she was so busy, he knew he'd only be in the way if he visited her during work hours. Mickey never complained though, he figured he was getting a silent payback from her for all the times HE put their relationship on hold because he was off on an adventure somewhere.

However, it had quickly become obvious that THAT was not even the case...

Through Donald's still steady and ongoing relationship with Daisy, Mickey had learned that Minnie rarely took a day off from work, and in fact doesn't recall ever seeing Minnie take a day off deliberately. Therefore, Minnie's problem was made clear...She was a workaholic. Mickey however was still skeptical, after all this was Minnie Mouse they were talking about. She was well known for her organization and planning skills and knows when enough was enough.

So Mickey made a bet. If she didn't remember his Birthday without any helpful and direct reminders from their friends (Daisy made sure to keep Clarabelle in line on this one), then he'd accept that she had indeed become a workaholic. Of course, he had a funny feeling that she wouldn't remember but for other reasons so he bet on that alone really, and he'd give bonus points to anyone who got a picture of the look on her face when she finally did remember.

In any case, all he had to do now was wait, since the bet lasted until seven o'clock that night. He didn't really want to celebrate his birthday with a party this year anyway. He just wanted to go about his normal daily business, which included catching a bad guy or two for the police, since he was a part-time private eye detective and all.

"Mornin', Casey! Anythin' new that I can work on?" Mickey greeted cheerfully as he entered the police station.

"Mornin' Mick! Yeah, the Chief's got a doozy for ya, so good luck with it. Oh, and Happy Birthday, but I still think she's gonna remember in time!" Casey replied, referring to the bet. The entire police station was on board with it, and they all thought she was going to remember before the end of the day.

"Thanks, but I doubt it!" He chuckled back and knocked before he entered Chief O'Hara's office. "Mornin', Chief. Heard ya got a good one fer me."

"Oh, Good Mornin' Mickey me boy-o! Yes, I've got quite the brain teaser for ye. Oh, and happy birthday, lad."

"Thanks. So whatchya got?"

"Another jewel robbery, with our usual lady suspect, but the evidence shows that it might not actually be her this time and she's being framed." The Chief explained as he gave Mickey the file that had pictures of the evidence and what little police report there actually was. The lady suspect in question was known only as the Ace of Spades and she was an international jewel thief that Mickey had encountered while he was on vacation with his brother, Oswald, in Italy. She followed Mickey home and became one of the cases he had to work on every now and then, though he's never managed to capture her, he's at least managed to get whatever was stolen, back.

"What make ya say tha-! Oh." He stopped himself mid-sentence because the Chief was right, there was no way it could have been her given the evidence. The in-your-face note to the police with the included signature was the same but just about everything about it was all wrong and just so obviously not her. The hand writing wasn't hers, she wrote in cursive and what was there on the note was chicken scratch. Then, there was no usual mention that if she is to be captured she would prefer the Ace of Hearts to be the one to capture her. The Ace of Hearts was her little nickname for Mickey and every letter she left for the police to find had that message in it, for her to not leave that particular message in her letter was unheard of. Finally, there was the spade shaped hole in the cut glass at the scene of the crime. It wasn't the spade like the one on playing cards, it was a spade, like a small shovel used for gardening.

It wasn't unheard of for a crook of the same name to pop up, it happened a lot if the original that the police were used to dealing with didn't get much media publicity in the papers or local TV. The Ace of Spades herself definitely didn't get much publicity, but she was still an active member in the criminal world. After all, she worked with the notorious Phantom Blot once. So whoever was framing her like this was either a newbie as a criminal, trying to frame Spade on purpose, and/or was mocking her and her thieving habits. Mickey's money was split between the first option and the third option.

"Yeah, we're assuming the suspect is male because of the chicken scratch handwritin'. An' because it just seems like he's mocking her style, we can't figure out what his true motive is, so we'd like ye to track 'im down and bring 'im into custody." The Chief continued. "He seems to be pretty quick too. He's already robbed nine jewelry stores in two nights."

"NINE?! But that's just about impossible fer one fella to do on his own, especially with all the jewelry shops in town being so far apart from each other!" Mickey exclaimed in disbelief. Chief O'Hara nodded solemnly in response.

"We can't figure that part out either, but we suspect he must have an accomplice or two with prewritten notes for them to leave behind, because each shop had one. And before ye ask about the cameras, the culprit new about those too and somehow managed to put them on loop with nothing much to see. We could tell they were on loop because at least one car passed by every ten minutes to keep it looking normal. Now I've got just about everyone on the force who's not doing another case, working on this one, But I think its best you help us this one since ye've got that strange association with the real Ace of Spades. Think ye can manage? I hate askin' ye to do something this tricky on yer birthday, but ye know how it is..."

"Nah, don't worry about it. Sure I'll take this case, I think it's the perfect thing ta pop up on my Birthday. I wouldn't have it any other way." He gave the case file back to the Chief and shook his hand and then left his office. He was halfway to the Police station's entrance when the Chief called after him.

"Oh, and one more thing Mickey!"

"Yeah?" Mickey asked as he turned around.

"I still think she's going to remember before it's too late." O'Hara chided with a sly smile. Mickey snickered.

"Oh yeah? You and the rest of the force think that an' yer all gonna owe me ten bucks when seven o'clock hits, an' she still hasn't remembered until my cousin Manfred tells her with video camera in hand to capture the glorious moment of realization." With that, the very determined mouse strode proudly out of the station dead set on what he knew was going to happen with the bet and to get ready to catch a crook. After Mickey was well out of ear shot, Casey couldn't help but say "Well, since it's gonna be video taped, I hope he shows it to us when its all said and done." Everyone in the station chuckled.

Mickey had no problem solving the case as he had easily found the real Ace of Spades and asked if she had heard about the impersonator's robberies. Evidently she had heard and was none too pleased that the culprit was obviously mocking her. Luckily she was peeved enough to have followed the culprit and was more than happy to show Mickey the way so he could throw the guy and his partners in crime in jail. Spade let him consider her helping him out as her present to him for his birthday and wisely chose to be on his side of thinking that Minnie wasn't going to remember his birthday before seven.

The culprit's hideout was a little bit out of town so it took an hour or so to get to the hideout, waiting another half an hour or so for the police to arrive, since Mickey called them when he got to the hideout, and it took him under 30 minutes to subdue the crooks. Then another hour or so to get back to town, so eventually it was almost seven o'clock. The moment Mickey's been waiting for all day. Daisy had him on speed dial in case she did remember sooner than anticipated, but she never called him.

Mickey called his cousin Manfred to head on down to the Bowtique with the video camera to get ready to record the glorious moment. Down the white furred mouse went trying to keep from chuckling the whole way there and yet, he managed to keep his composure by the time he reached the door to avoid suspicion from the lady mouse in question.

"Oh, hello there Manfred! Its nice to see you. What's with the camera?" Minnie greeted then questioned curiously. The camera wasn't turned on so she assumed he was just picking up a bowtie real quick before he went off to capture whatever it was on camera.

"Oh, just something to document a very momentous occasion that only happens once in a lifetime," he replied honestly. A quick glance at the clock told him to count down, "In three...two...one." He turned on the camera...

"Seven o'clock an' she still hasn't remembered!" Cuckooloca cried out as she came out of her cuckoo clock house right on the hour. She then landed on Manfred's head to get a good view of Minnie with the already confused look on her face at what Cuckooloca said.

" 'Hasn't remembered'? I haven't remembered what?" Minnie asked cautiously. Manfred just raised the camera at eye level and it was pointed at her.

"Why today of course!" Daisy said casually cheerful. "You haven't made a single mention of having any special plans for today... or would it be tonight?"

"Tonight, definitely," Manfred answered for the duck. "He made sure this bet lasted long enough so when it ended, there wouldn't be any time left to just randomly set up something. But we'll catch him tomorrow as payback for sure."

"What is going on?" Minnie asked with a hint of frustration, they were vague enough that she couldn't possibly guess what she had forgotten.

"Before we answer that directly...What's today's date?" Manfred asked with a very sly smirk. Minnie hesitated. Whatever it was that she had forgotten had to do with today, but as far as she could remember there wasn't anything special about today...unless.

"November 16th?" She guessed. She hadn't been keeping track of the days all that much this month which wasn't good...

"Oh, honey you need to check your calender more often, 'cause it's Monday and it says it's the 18th of November." He stifled a chuckle as he maintained to keep the camera still so it could accurately capture the look on her face. Which slowly went from confused to absolutely mortified at having forgotten the most important person in her life's birthday.

"Mickey's Birthday is...today?" She asked as she was stunned stupid, starting to breathe heavily. As Manfred said, it was too late to randomly throw a party without planning anything or having time to bake a cake or put up decorations. So his birthday party had to be rescheduled for some other time...most likely tomorrow.

"That's right, sweetheart. But don't worry so much over having forgotten it okay? Mickey expected that you'd forget and wanted this to be a little lesson for you to take a break from work every now and then, alright? Not having any days off from work isn't healthy. And if it makes you feel any better, Mickey doesn't entirely deserve a birthday party right now anyway," Manfred explained calmly to soothe her worries.

"W-what do you mean?" The lady mouse asked, still on the verge of tears for having forgotten such an important day.

"Mickey made a huge bet based on whether or not you'd remember his birthday. And since you didn't, everyone on the police force, and myself included, owes him ten bucks." He then turned the camera so it would face him. "There you have it, Mickers. You win, but you also have to accept the fact that she is indeed a workaholic. Happy Birthday, Jackass!" With that he promptly turned off the camera, and then turned to Daisy for a quick favor. "Page him, it'll make him get down here faster."

Daisy merely pushed a single button on her pager and in came the Birthday Boy right on cue. In actuality, he was hiding across the street waiting for the right moment, and when Daisy paged him, he knew that was his cue. He felt bad for humiliating Minnie like this, even if it was for her own good and making sure she learned her lesson about her working habits.

"Hiya, Minnie," Mickey waved meekly. "Sorry it had ta be like this fer ya ta find out about how much ya've been over workin' but it was fer yer own good, honest!" He walked right over to her and hugged her. She started to tear up, not being able to help that she got so emotional with having forgotten his birthday completely and now here he was out of the blue, and... Oh~! She honestly didn't know how he could ever forgive her for forgetting in the first place, and yet he was still being nice to her and playing it cool as if his own birthday didn't even matter to him. Ooh, he could be so frustrating sometimes! She buried her face in his chest as a feeble attempt to keep him from seeing her start to cry. It didn't work because he could feel his chest dampen with moisture. "Hey, Min, it's okay, really." He said in a soothing whisper, hoping to calm her into stopping her tears. "I didn't want a birthday party this year anyway. It's no big deal, so don't worry about it okay? C'mon, Min, big girls don't cry in baseball." He then kissed her forehead to see if that would work, but then he just kept on kissing different parts of her head to soothe her.

"I know, but I'm just so sorry I forgot your birthday that I can't help it!" She wailed, though it was muffled since her face was still buried in his chest.

"Minnie, it's okay. Manfred is right, I don't deserve a birthday party this year anyway. In fact, I've been such a bad boy this year I don't even deserve a Christmas present." He cooed his guilt in a slightly not-really-sorry tone. She pulled back a bit at this.

"What? What do you mean?" She asked completely perplexed. She couldn't recall a single bad thing he's done this year aside from this bet with everybody on whether or not she'd remember his birthday.

"Well, let's see, besides this ginormous bet that's already gonna make me rich since everyone honestly thought ya were gonna remember...There's the incident with my broken arm from two moths ago, was in the hospital fer a couple weeks and made sure ya never knew about it. Then there's my little drunken adventure with the guys down in Mexico, from that I ain't drinkin' tequila ever again...Uh, and a bunch of other minor but bad things that I promise to never do again unless for some reason I absolutely have to...Need I say more?"

"No I get it..." She grabbed his left ear and yanked it so he was uncomfortably at eye level with her. "Next time you break your arm and wind up in the hospital I better be informed about it, and I'm only gonna let the Mexico trip slide only because you've seemed to have learned your lesson form that one but otherwise, do I make myself clear?" She growled at him through clenched teeth.

"Crystal," Mickey muttered back in pain from the really tight grip she had on his ear. She didn't let go but she loosened her grip just a little so she was no longer hurting him and then proceeded to drag him with her to the back room.

"Now if you'll excuse us, we have some catching up to do," She announced over her shoulder, taking Mickey, who was giving everyone two thumbs up for a sign that everything was going to be a-okay, right along with her.

"Okay, we'll leave you two alone to do that," Daisy replied.

"Aw, man, I should've kept recording that was comedy gold Mickey had coming out of his mouth," Manfred complained.

"Don't worry about it Manny, there's always the next time Mickey does something stupid," Cuckooloca suggested. "By the way, what did he want for his birthday cake this year if we really do throw a party for him tomorrow?"

"He decided to throw everyone off and go for red velvet this time," Manfred replied.

"Wow, he's got great tastes," Daisy remarked as she and Manfred walked out of the shop to head to their respecive homes. Cuckooloca stayed behind because her home is in the Bowtique so she turned on her little radio to tune out Mickey and Minnie's major make-out session.

And all was right with the world once more.