Y is for Yahoo

"A person who is very rude, loud, or stupid"

It had been a long, long day for Colonel Klink, filled with walking as he tried to escape vigilantes, smugglers, and the public in general. Towards the end of the day, he took breaks more often to sit down and rest his feet, but he was determined that no matter how tired or hungry or thirsty he was, he would get his monocle back. And so he kept walking towards the empty room he slept in the last night.

And so he made his way back to Gotham City, well aware that the clothes he took from the smugglers were unusual looking. He was willing to put up with it for the sake of his disguise, but then he noticed that the people he passed were paying more attention to him than they were before. Clearly the disguise backfired on him. He would have to do something about that.

As he was wondering what to do, he looked up and saw a shop just in front of him. It was clear how it would be useful in that moment, but he still grimaced a bit at the thought of actually using it. He was not in the habit of going to pawn shops, even if this would be a good place to sell the gold for some actual American money. He would prefer to do business at somewhere more upscale, but he supposed that this place was less likely to have security guards who would recognize him.

Klink gently pushed open the door, frowning when he heard a bell announce his presence. None of the shops in Hammelburg resorted to that. The shopkeepers all paid attention to the people who walked into their stores. But Klink pushed away his unease and glanced around the place. Clothing seemed to be in one particular area, so he walked towards it, looking through it until he found an acceptable suit that looked about his size. It was in remarkably good condition compared to everything else in this place, so he decided to be thankful for that and go ahead and buy it.

The man sitting behind the desk looked at him suspiciously as he approached, but something told Klink that this man looked at everyone that way, so he was not too intimidated. Not trusting his accent, Klink simply set the suit on the counter in front of the man.

"That'll be twenty-five bucks, ya old prospector." This man clearly was not even trying to be polite.

But Klink just sighed and pulled out the pouch of gold. He had no idea how much American money was worth, but thankfully he had been around enough Americans to know that "bucks" was slang for dollars.

The man picked up the pouch of gold and looked inside. He whistled appreciatively and dumped it out on the counter, thumbing through it in a way that made Klink just know that the man was about to cheat him.

"I'll give ya fifty for the gold. That means you get the suit and twenty-five whole smackeroos to go with it."

Klink nodded, insulted that the man thought he couldn't do basic math, but needing the suit and possibly the extra money. He took both and then raised the suit in a questioning manner, hoping the man would get the idea that he wanted a place to change into it without him having to speak.

"What, ya deaf or somethin'? Mute? German spy who don't want me to hear the accent?"

Klink shook his head, and motioned towards his throat, not really sure what he was trying to say.

"Ah, sore throat then. Well, you can change in the back room, but don't go out the front door. I wouldn't want ya to scare off customers by coughing or something, ya old coot."

Klink went into the back room, liking the man at the counter less and less. Thankfully this room seemed decently clean, so he had no trouble changing into the suit. But just when he tried to leave again, the man yelled at him.

"Hey, what did I tell ya about goin' out the front door? There's a perfectly good back door you can use right through there." Klink went towards the back door, but as he was leaving, he heard the man mutter something about "dumb prospectin' yay-hoos," and he was quite sure it was not a compliment. He was more than glad to get out of there, and thankfully, once he was in an actual suit, very few people looked at him oddly.

By the time he was anywhere near the gargoyle building again, it was already long after dark, and Klink was ready for the day to be over. He went inside and climbed, again, all the way to the fifteenth floor. He walked down the hallway, looking down all the while to make sure that his monocle was not underfoot, but he did not see it. As cautious as he was the night before when he first found the room, he still remembered exactly which door it was—the fourth on the left—and sure enough, the door was unlocked, just as he left it.

But when Klink opened the door, he was surprised to see it clean and fully furnished, and there was a lady sitting there, staring directly at him.

Shortly after Klink walked inside the newly-furnished apartment building, General Burkhalter stood in a run-down laboratory with Gestapo men pointing guns at him. He gave them a glare, hoping they would realize who he was and let him go, but they did not seem interested in doing anything other than arresting him. The three scientists were also there, intermittedly looking between him and their lab mice. Burkhalter still thought they were fools for thinking that the mice had somehow been duplicated, but he was no longer in a position to tell them so. What could have possibly duplicated the mice? Aliens?

The Gestapo men were still holding him at gunpoint, but they seemed to be debating what to do with him.

"We need to take him back with us. He blew up Major Hochstetter!"

"But what if it wasn't him? What if the real criminal is going to return to the scene of the crime, but we already left?"

"Very well, you can stay and watch the place, but I need to take this one back to headquarters for interrogation."

At that, Burkhalter would have gulped, but he did not want to show any weakness. Suddenly there was a bright flash, and Burkhalter, as surprised as he was by it, took his chance and fled the room. Even if those women were still outside, facing them would be better than facing the Gestapo.

Marya was driving her car, plotting her next move. She knew that Robert and Edward were not Colonel Hogan, and she knew that it was Colonel Hogan who was the genius at coming up with plans to harass the Germans, but she also knew that she could pull off some amazing things with these two duplicates, especially now that they had transferred their devotions to her. There were some very good benefits to being the owner of the copy machine that duplicated them, after all.

Still, with how upset Hogan had been, she decided that it would be better to head somewhere else for a while he focused on fixing Tubby III for her. Perhaps Berlin would be a good place to set these two loose.

But as she drove, she got a strange feeling, and an alert sounded in her car. Something was happening to Tubby III. She frowned, but before she could do anything about it, a bright flash of light came out of nowhere and she slammed on the brakes.

In Stalag XIII, Hogan was getting tired of trying to make up stories to tell Gruber. He could tell that he was on very thin ice, but he at least had Schultz's (actually true this time) testimony that the kidnapping was all Marya's idea. He made sure Schultz said nothing about Edward's existence, and thankfully Robert had never been officially recorded as a prisoner, so there was no reason to list him as an escaped prisoner either.

But just as he was trying to convince Gruber yet again that he did not help his "brother" escape, there was a bright flash of light, and Hogan had a sudden blinding headache.