A/N: Because I like doing song fics, I should announce for the record that I do not own Maroon 5's song, "Must Get Out". I'm just inspired by a DM reboot episode for my story ideas.

Chapter 7: An Exchange of Secrets Between Girls

"JEOPARDY MOUSE IS SHIRAKAGE'S COUSIN!?" Danger Mouse exclaimed in utter disbelief. "I thought Shirakage was Japanese!"

"Calm down, DM," Colonel K said firmly. "She and Jeopardy Mouse are legally related due to her adoption records, signed by Oliver Camel and Jewel Mouse, JM's uncle and auntie. Shirakage's biological parents were killed in an earthquake while she was still an infant. And both Oliver and Jewel just happened to be on holiday in a nearby Japanese village during the tragedy."

The fuming one eyed mouse simmered down from K's explanation. Dumbfounded shock etched across his face, followed by a morbid expression.

However, I didn't need the sympathetic empathy. "Don't feel so bad for my loss, Nezu-Chan." I told him gently. "My foster parents whom I had known my entire life are nice people too. I'm sure my real parents would have been happy that I was being raised by foreigners who had passed through their neighborhood earlier before they died."

Reluctantly, he nodded towards my point. But then his brow furrowed. "Hang on. That's the second time I heard you address me with that weird name."

I remained stoic and unmoved by his realization. "You mean when I call you 'Nezu-San' or 'Nezu-Chan'."

"Yes, that," he confirmed with a narrowed eye.

I smiled with a sheepish shrug. "That's my nickname for you. I came up with it while I was residing with a home stay family in Japan during an exchanged school year before college. An elderly white boar told me the story of seeing your flying car in the sky above his neighborhood the day before my birth.

"He said that that was the last time he had heard of you. You saved the Earth from becoming a victim of the Intergalactic 147 of a Snooker game, and then you vanished."

Distress and confusion was clearly all over my expression and tone, leaving my hosts concerned about the astute statements of history. But I relaxed slightly.

"I'm sorry. I guess there are a lot of secrets about you that I'm not meant to uncover," I said softly. "Penfold-San had already told me the same answer before Greenback kidnapped me."

DM simply smiled. "That's quite alright, Shirakage. Any civilian would be curious to discover all of their unanswered questions to the Greatest Secret Agents in history. Although, I am surprised as to why you feel very strongly over my absence."

He didn't have to know the truth. And it shouldn't be any of my business to learn how the Danger Mouse before me had changed from my past life's human childhood memories of his older incarnation.

"If the answers that I seek from your life remains under the classified jurisdiction of your HQ," I said simply. "Then my personal reasons for understanding the truth should also stay locked away to my knowledge alone."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"So let me get this straight, Shirakage," Squawkencluck began while we were working on our own projects in her lab. "Before Colonel K disconnected his transmission, he ordered you not to visit Mandy's Store of Human Antiques, because of Danger Mouse being banned there where as he's guarding you 24/7. And you're choosing not to speak to the both of them again?" She laughed at my story. "I can't believe you're actually this cross with them over an antique store run by former convicted criminals! Let me guess: Mandy and her followers won't let you in if Danger Mouse is with you, right?"

I scowled quietly as I continued to adjust the wiring in a small battery compartment of my free time gadget. "I'd be banished for life from there myself if my respected feline acquaintances conclude to a misunderstanding that their favorite customer was dating their most hated enemy in Britain."

I could sense my colleague smiling from across the room as she spoke. "So, Danger Mouse has got a huge crush on you. What's so bad about it?"

"Other than the fact that he won't let my American cousin, Jeopardy Mouse stop him from pursuing me, and that I have a friendly relationship with her [much to his dismay], I'm finding it impossible to regain my independent single life." I explained icily.

We continued working in silence for several minutes. As I was screwing the bolts that covered the microchips of my project, Squawkencluck was finishing up her own experiment around the chemistry beakers and computer. She wouldn't tell me what she was doing until later. After a series of electronic tones from her tablet, she broke the silence.

"You know, my grandfather once worked for the British Secret Service with Colonel K thirty years ago."

I stopped tightening the last bolt and turned with full interest. "Your 'grandfather'…?"

She nodded with pride. "He knew Danger Mouse and Penfold very well. Despite my parents being chickens, my grandfather was a German speaking mole; yet married into a family of chickens later on in his life. My grandfather, Professor Heinrich Von Squawkencluck, is the father of my mother.

"Penfold told me that you've been confused as to how a lot of us has remained unchanged in the past 23 years. My grandfather took the sole responsibility for the cause of their temporary suspended animation period. But he is now under the same circumstances himself, after having a family of his own; watching his only granddaughter grow up to take over his position in the Secret Service; and finally, releasing his colleagues from their digital holiday in the Matrix."

She sighed nostalgically for a moment. "Grandfather would have never expected that his suspended animation pods would alter the personalities and voices of his subjects if he had stayed conscious long enough to watch them reawaken."

"Oh," I said softly in awe before wondering out loud, "But why did he do it?"

Squawkencluck winked at me. "That, Shirakage, is a trade secret between Secret Service boffins like me and the Danger Agents. Sorry, but this is all I can share with you as a fellow scientist."

I pondered on the matter thoughtfully, then nodded. "I understand, Professor. And thank you."

"No problem," she beamed. "By the way," she walked up to me and held out a spray bottle of my perfume allergen. "You can have this back now, Prof."

I blinked in confusion for a moment before she continued. "I lessened the severity of the allergen's effects in your formula. While you were on your phone with your parents earlier after Jeopardy Mouse left, Danger Mouse insisted that I should find a solution to make this fragrance more habitable to his sinuses." Squawkencluck smiled wryly with sheepish bewilderment in her gaze. "Shirakage, DM wants you to keep this as the perfume you had originally created for yourself."

I stared at the offer before me with hesitance and surprise. "Have you tested this on him yet?" I asked warily.

Another confirmed nod from her. "Yeah. He still sneezes from time to time to the smell. But at least he's not wheezing or suffering from an asthma attack. It just tickles his nose at a tiny, persistent pace."

A few milliseconds of uncertainty seemed to have evaporated from me, and I graciously accepted my friend's gift. "Ok. Thanks again, Professor. You're really brilliant."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

For a few minutes of fun time in my colleague's lab, Squawkencluck and I were admiring the beat to a hologram video program that I had just finished earlier. When I activated the small compact sphere, a holographic image of the anthropomorphic animal incarnations of the American music band, Maroon 5, were on a live concert stage.

I had also programmed the device to view the image of a live audience on the ground below the elevated stage. We were surrounded by the holographic mosh pit of fans, while illuminating lights lit up the darkened laboratory room. As for the band members themselves, they were cosplaying as Danger Mouse, Penfold and Colonel K as they sang the following song in the running program….

"I've been the needle and the thread,

Wearing figure eight and circles around your head.

I try to laugh but cry instead,

Patiently wait to hear the words you've never said.

"Fumbling through your dresser drawer,

Forgot what I was looking for,

Try to guide me in the right direction.

Making use of all this time,

Keeping everything inside,

Close my eyes and listen to you cry…

"I'm lifting you up,

I'm letting you down,

I'm dancing till dawn,

I'm fooling around.

I'm not giving up,

I'm making your love,

This city's made us crazy and we must get out."

Squawkencluck failed to tell me that there were cameras planted in the corners of her lab.

"'This is not goodbye,' she said.

'It's just time for me to rest my head'.

She does not walk, she runs instead…

Down these jagged streets and into my bed.

"When I was fumbling through your dresser drawer,

Forgot what I was looking for,

Try to guide me in the right direction.

Making use of all this time,

Keeping everything inside,

Close my eyes and listen to you cry….

"I'm lifting you up,

I'm letting you down,

I'm dancing till dawn,

I'm fooling around,

I'm not giving up,

I'm making your love,

This city's made us crazy and we must get out….

"There's only so much I can do for you…

After all of the things that you've put me through…."

As the program's song, "Must Get Out" started to repeat the chorus, it hadn't occurred to me that our entire dancing time was being watched by a monocular white mouse and his best friend.