A/N: This short story takes place after the 2nd chapter of my main DM fanfiction story "Trial Of Commitment". And it's one of the rare scenes where Danger Mouse has yet to meet Shirakage Mouse before the end of Chapter 4.
Chapter 2.3: Professor Squawkencluck and Her Idiot Agent
Professor Squawkencluck breathed a huge sigh of content once she returned to her lab at Danger HQ. She had just met one of the most brilliant scientists at her old college earlier in the afternoon, enjoying the blissful happy reverie consuming her. Meeting the talented Prof. Shirakage Mouse felt like a dream to her...except for the fact that she brought back proof from Said dream into her real life again.
Yes, Squawkencluck may have dumped Danger Mouse's Crumples the Clown doll into her new BFF's possession without explaining everything to her idol/colleague. Yes, Danger Mouse will go mad and tear up the whole of London searching for that horrid doll of his. But receiving the Japanese Tailed female white mouse boffin's phone number, Friend Request on Snoutbook and Spamchops, and a sample of her newly created secret perfume formula was so worth it to her.
The female chicken boffin wished she could milk in her day of witnessing Shirakage Mouse working in King's College's chemistry lab for a little bit longer. But alas, she had to return back to work. After all, it would only be a matter of hours until Danger Mouse discovers what will be missing from his bedroom tonight.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"23:00 hours: Danger Mouse screams his lungs out before bed upstairs.
"Midnight: I ignore Danger Mouse's constant panicking over his missing Crumples doll and head home to my flat for the night.
"07:15 hours: I wake up to hear car alarms going off in my neighborhood and Danger Mouse yelling out in frustrated anger on the streets.
"09:45 hours: Head to HQ for work."
Professor Squawkencluck turned away from her personal daily scheduling blog and sighed heavily. It hadn't been 24 hours yet, and already Danger Mouse was doing exactly what she thought he'd do. The violent explosions and screams from outside the building were loud enough to penetrate through HQ's walls.
Danger Mouse's rampaging search for his doll was going to leave a scar on the city the longer he remained in the dark about where and who had it. The exasperated boffin didn't want to have to deal with that idiot agent's attitude, if he should pop in the lab by lunchtime. The best she could do for the next couple of hours was to make a list of how many of her gadgets Danger Mouse had destroyed since today's chaotic morning.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
By Noon, Prof. Squawkencluck officially went on break, but remained in her lab to spray a bit of Prof. Shirakage Mouse's new special perfume sample on her neck and shoulders.
However, she barely left her work table when Colonel K's hologram lit up near her head.
"Professor! What the blazes have you been doing all morning!?" The chinchilla in blue cried frantically at her. "DM will be returning to HQ any minute now during our lunch break! Why haven't you helped him search for his missing Crumples doll!?"
Squawkencluck managed to stare at her boss with a poker faced gaze just as Penfold entered the lab, panting breathlessly from his brief jog. The little hamster in specks ran up to her, his small head several meters below the Colonel's holographic image.
"It's no use, Colonel," Penfold reported disappointingly. "I just couldn't keep up with The Chief once he zoomed off from Arkwright Asylum to the British Museum. He's hit almost every of our villains' hot spot areas, and none of them seemed to possess any knowledge of where his Crumples doll has gone."
"Well, I should be the last person Danger Mouse interrogates," the Professor replied to the male rodents with disinterest. "You all know I'm afraid of that hideous clown doll."
Penfold sniffed the air delicately. "Cor! You smell nice, Professor," he commented in a perky tone. "Are you wearing a new brand of perfume?"
Squawkencluck smirked, relieved that the conversation ran off topic. "Yes, I bumped into a new colleague of mine yesterday, who's now working at King's College. And she agreed to share her new exclusive perfume sample with me."
Penfold's smile widened. "Well, it does smell very lovely on you. It reminds me of a kind of Arctic wildflower which I somehow can't seem to recall by name."
The clearing of the Colonel's throat was heard, officially ending their pleasant sidetracked chat. "This is no time for discussing about boffins sharing perfume, Penfold," he reminded the two coworkers in specks. "Look here, you two. Whenever Danger Mouse loses his Crumples the Clown doll, he behaves as angrily as a child getting cut off from her WiFi network!
"If DM returns to HQ without succeeding in finding his precious doll, we'll all be doomed to suffer his wrath! We have to hurry before..."
The electronic lab doors suddenly slid upwards, interrupting Colonel K and causing all 3 of them to grimace in fear towards the glaring mouse in white.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Danger Mouse had been up all night searching for his beloved Crumples doll. Without that clown doll in his bedroom, nothing was alright in the world anymore. When the morning rays lit up the horizon earlier, he had ransacked Danger HQ completely, but there was still no sign of his prize.
As the daybreak grew brighter in the sky, Danger Mouse's frustration got the better of him, and he went wildly mad in the streets. His Crumples the clown doll meant a lot to him; it was extremely rare and old, considering he'd owned it since his 6th birthday.
Danger Mouse's overzealous obsession in getting his doll back led him to intrude through public areas and private homes, giving the startled people no warning or mannered interruptions to announce his reasons for disturbing them.
In just a matter of hours between 07:08 and 11:59, DM had searched nearly every spot in London until his stomach growled annoyingly for a lunch break. Breathing heavily from exhaustion and anger, DM stomped back to HQ to meet up with the Professor, Colonel K and Penfold.
Short tempered adrenaline was still racing through his huffed breaths as he encountered all 3 of his most trusted friends in Prof. Squawkencluck's lab. All eyes were locked on him when the garage like door rose upwards, looking quite intimidated by his presence.
A moment passed until DM's sleep deprived eye narrowed angrily at them and he trudged irritably towards the trio. His friends remained rigid in place...before the rumbling of Danger Mouse's stomach relieved much of the tension around them.
"Good heavens, DM," Colonel K said to the groggy mouse agent with concern. "You look like Hell. I believe it's best that you take some much needed time off to recover your physical stamina."
"I'm fine, Sir," Danger Mouse replied edgily, towering over K's hologram and turned his gaze towards Prof. Squawkencluck. "I just need to have a serious chat with the Professor."
He leaned in testily towards the chicken boffin. As he did so, he got a whiff of an intoxicating, floral scented perfume. It caused a harsh prickling behind his eye and in his sinuses. He retreated back a bit and silently stifled a pair of held back sneezes, which thankfully none of his friends seemed to notice.
Squawkencluck rolled her eyes, leaned in towards DM and poked her feathered finger to his nose. "Don't you start questioning me again, Danger Mouse," she huffed firmly.
DM shoved her finger from his snout, rubbing discreetly at it before accusing her heatedly. "But you're the only one who could have tampered with HQ's security cameras for any room in the building."
"And I've told you that I would never go near your horrible clown doll!"
"I don't believe you!" His sinuses were definitely starting to burn. DM turned to the side stifling, not quite silently, another pair of sneezes. "Hsht! Hnxt!"
"Bless you," Penfold said politely.
"Snf. Thank you, Penfold," he sniffed with a small smirk to his friend before resuming his angry argument with Squawk. "Professor, that Crumples doll was the only toy immune to Dawn's Tiara during the mission when her teddy, Mr. Snuggles used it to animate everyone else's toys and rebel against their owners.
"I want him back now!"
"Why can't you just get a new one, Mouse!?" Squawkencluck shouted, her rage growing by the second.
"He's the last one in existence! My Crumples is an irreplaceable treasure to me, like the Used dolls of the former Danger Mouse, a.k.a. My predecessor and father!" Much to his annoyance, he was forced to stifle another set of sneezes, which were becoming more insistently forceful. "Hnnxt! Hnnxxt! Snf. Excuse me."
"Bless you," Penfold said to DM again. "Chief, I think that all nighter you pulled in the last several hours has weakened your health a bit."
Danger Mouse shook off a slight wave of dizziness and glanced sternly at the concerned hamster. "I'm alright, Penfold. Really. Stop fussing over me."
"Oh, please," Squawkencluck scoffed softly to Penfold. "Danger Mouse looks to be in the kind of shape where a gentle shove would make him collapse to the floor."
DM was about to defend himself loudly to her when his breath caught suddenly, and he was just able to twist to the side and barely contain a small fit. "Hah Haasccht! Hsscht! Hnnxxt!"
"God bless you, DM," Colonel K said sharply with alarm.
Professor Squawkencluck raised her brow, expressing a mixture of both curiosity and suspicion towards the idiot secret agent's symptoms. "Interesting..." she murmured.
"Are you alright, Chief?" Penfold asked DM out of concern.
Danger Mouse took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his large red nose. "Sorry, everyone. Snf. It seems something in the air is disagreeing with me." He swallowed hard and tried to clear his increasingly itchy throat, which unfortunately caused him to start coughing.
"I'll go fetch him a glass of water from my lab's sink," the Professor stated to a panicking Penfold. "You help him sit down by the table."
"Right, Professor," Penfold nodded and guided the poorly agent towards one of the white chairs near her microscope and blood analyzer machine. "Steady on, Chief."
DM rubbed his twitchy, runny nose and sniffled tiredly with brief sighs in between sniffs. "Snffle. Ugh. Snf. I'm sorry, Penfold," he looked down upon his worried friend. "But I don't understand... I wasn't sneezing at all, or this badly, today until now. And I..." he gulped and buried down a secret of his with a lie. "And I know that I don't have any allergies."
Danger Mouse shut his right eye out of exhaustion as the Professor approached him with a glass of water. "Here, Danger Mouse." When she extended her arm out under DM's snout, the floral scent on her wrist suddenly caused his sinuses to twinge in protest and more aggressively again.
"Aaaahhh...snff!" Danger Mouse gasped out a miserable moan, startling Prof. Squawkencluck enough to retract her arm from her patient.
DM's friends gaped at him as he raised his handkerchief to his face, allowing himself to release the building sneezes behind his nose. "HahhTSCHH! Hashhtchh! HahhAHHtscchh! HahhhASCHAHhh! HahhATSSHHhh!"
"My God," Colonel K sounded distinctly concerned. "Professor, what's going on with him!?"
"Well, sir, it seems Danger Mouse is having a severe allergic reaction to this exclusive new perfume sample of mine which I had told you and Penfold about earlier." Squawkencluck narrowed her confirmed gaze while taking steps towards DM and back again several times.
The closer she approached the sneezy agent, tears began to fill his good eye, and his face scrunched up as the floral scent made his face feel like it was on fire.
"Haaahhh..." Danger Mouse then resumed sneezing more desperately than ever. "Hashhtchh! Hashhtchh! HahtSCHH! HahhAHHtscchh! HahhhASCHAHhh! HahhATSSHH! HahhTSCHH!"
"Oh, crumbs!" Penfold whimpered as his best friend continued to sneeze on and off. "He's getting worse, Professor!"
The female chicken boffin stared at her perfumed feathered wrists. "I need to wash this off before Danger Mouse goes into a state of apoplexy. Penfold, have him breath through my medical oxygen mask with a small dose of anesthesia.
"He's been under enough stress for too long without sleep, so he needs to get some rest."
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx