"What will be your pleasure my dears?" asked the waiter as he served the dangerous dating duo
"Coffee. Leave the pot" a bored Danger Mouse replied.
"I'll just have a Rice Crispy cake and some soup for starters" Dawn requested.
As the waiter headed off to take their orders, Dawn franticly looked through her diary.
"Don't forget to remember" DM remarked in a thinly disguised Swedish voice, referencing an obscure Bee Gees classic.
"Just a couple of reminders, there's a great little venue just by the harbour where they're holding singing auditions, I made a list of all the dates where they're known to be holding them, I'll be trying out for them, the gig is good for at least three months, a tidy sum of money in it too"
"You don't seem to that hard up for cash" DM observed.
"It's the opportunities that interest me" said Dawn.
Danger Mouse stretched his arms out as another yawn overtook him, he then leaned over and gave Dawn a telling look.
"Do I still interest you?" he said.
"Very" said Dawn, tickling his nose with her fingers, "And don't worry, I'm sleeping on the inside too, this place was so much more lively earlier"
"Yeah, blame the music" Danger Mouse said, spotting the two Magpie singers entertaining the audience.
"I swear one of them is singing like the last remnants of her private little world came unglued"
"Think it's always this sort of way?" asked Dawn.
"The world collapsing around our ears? Depends on how well this date goes" DM joked.
"I'll level with you, I'm here to work" Dawn revealed.
"Yes, but it's my dream to do business with you" Danger Mouse replied.
"So when are your friends coming?" she asked.
Danger Mouse looked at his watch, glimpsing Penfold and Squawk approaching their location on a video screen.
The coffee soon came for DM.
"I'm afraid there's only one main special on the menu today, largely in part due to unaccommodating kitchen problems" revealed the Waiter, "I'm sure you can understand"
"No, no, we're fine" Danger Mouse replied, and started sipping from the pot
"So...what else do you dream about?" Dawn asked
DM put down the coffee jar.
Now he was interested.
Penfold and Squawkencluck found a lot to talk about in the back of the taxi as it sat amongst many others that were currently victims of a traffic gridlock.
"All I'm saying is not a lot of restaurants have been up to my particular standards the last couple of years" Squawk insisted
"Such as?" a curious Penfold asked
"Well, when I was in America, Subway was excellent, until they disposed of that five buck footlong deal" she continued
"Burger King for me" Penfold added, eager to one up his date, "Once they changed the recipe on their nug..."
Penfold caught himself.
What an idiot he thought.
Of all the things to bring up to a chicken, you use nuggets
"Never mind" Penfold replied.
"I'm sure they're not that bad" Squawk replied.
"Well, if you fancy random Churros, curly fries, and the choice of spicy burgers they're not all that bad...especially the chic..."
Penfold was close to slapping himself for nearly name-dropping anything that had to do with compacted poultry in light of who he was taking to lunch.
"Why couldn't those crooked bidder have picked TGI Fridays for their auction?" Squawk pondered to herself as she took out her compact mirror and applied more lipstick to her ruby-laced beak. Penfold, slightly transfixed by the luxurious imagery, eventually followed that with a freshly inspired bit of information.
"I insisted we stop going there after they stopped serving the French dip sandwich" Penfold told her, "He was sort of tempted to go back himself, but the one nearest to HQ shut down some time ago"
"I'd rather have went somewhere in the morning...Taco Bell maybe. Their breakfast is excellent. Mind you, I don't know if they still serve their volcanic Burritos" Squawk mused.
"My aunt's youngest was a waiter at Olive Garden. Very bland food and service there, but she always heard her son was one of the better waiters there" Penfold revealed.
"Oh I would love to work in those places, I'd make sure it was no place that served chicken nuggets. Such an illegal practise, they have to all be made in countries that legalize slaughter of innocent chicks too. If I was sitting next to anyone who liked to scoff them down for lunch, I'd have them for lunch"
Penfold permitted himself an unnerving gulp.
"KFC changed their cooking oil" he muttered...a part of him cursed himself for even letting it slip from his lips, but he couldn't help it. Whenever he felt like he had something to say, he was obligated to just let the words loose.
Fortunately, Squawk didn't hear him, so he opted now to change the subject.
As the traffic jam came to a gradual end, and the taxi began moving along, Penfold asked Squawk what she fancied to eat when they finally got to their destination.
"I don't know...I feel like I could just go with a sesame bun, just for the seeds" she answered.
"Still thinking of dream meshing, are is the little chick just going to settle on seeds and let us grown ups eat the meal then?" Penfold joked.
Squawk smiled at him.
Meanwhile, DM was opening up to Dawn about a dream he had most recently.
For the sake of preserving his deception, names, faces, and places had been changed to best protect his identity.
But you readers need not be left so much left in the dark.
Standing before DM in this dream, cutting him off from an enthusiastic crowd of public well wishers and cheerleaders, his friends chief amongst them, was a large crater.
"Help" echoed forth a familiar croaky voice from inside of the crater.
"Toad in the hole" DM said, extending his arm to pull his hated nemesis, Baron Greenback, out.
"Ah Danger Mouse, it appears I am in your debt" said Greenback.
"What on Earth are you doing here?" said DM.
"Virus in the data" Greenback replied, "But just what has the data arranged for itself here?"
"I've got this whole thing figured out, look at me here, this is me figuring it out"
Greenback looked out at the field, the cheerleaders, the ecstatic colonel who continued to fire shot after shot of the pistol in the air, repeating the same sentence.
"On your marks, go", "On your marks, go"
"You've not paid much attention to the smaller details...they serve one function, not several" criticized Greenback.
"Should they?" DM asked.
"You don't learn anything in the mindset of the singular, you need to make something more of the whole" advised Greenback, he then took to examine his surroundings.
"I recognize these grounds...the Academy was it not? Your alma mater?"
"Yes" DM confirmed.
"I've read the files"
"No you didn't" DM remarked, a brief hysterical hiccup under his breath betraying his emotional armour, giving away signs of awkwardness
"Of course I did, why else would I be in here? We have to advance the next phase of the conversation somehow white wonder" Greenback replied.
"My files are confidential" DM insisted.
"And yet you're choosing to turn the pages on an open book. Turning them to me."
"Why would I do that?" DM asked.
"Think it through Danger Mouse...you suspect something more than a simple bit of awkward social mingling will occur at this auction you're going to. Something that takes your game to the next level. You suspect my hand in it, so you're trying to put your suspicions on show" Greenback continued.
"And what do my school days have to do with it?"
"You tell me. Why 66?" Greenback asked.
Danger Mouse reeled back.
"66?"
"Your target number of sprint laps is sixty-six. Why 66?"
Danger Mouse sighed.
"I took a test here. I was late for my P.E session, didn't bother bringing my sports gear, so I had to sit out a marathon sprint across the circuit. This circuit"
"What did you do in the meantime?" Greenback asked
"I...was given a paper...a survey...it was a challenge...how much of our mind can be made up on issues based on simple word play. It was the public option of a world health care issue. Forty-four percent accepted the public option if it said the health care plan was government funded, and a higher percentage accepted it if it said it was a government administered plan similar to Medicare"
"That number being 66" said Greenback.
"I...was one of the forty-four that accepted the first option" admitted Danger Mouse.
"Loyal to the government at the risk of being behind on the popular vote, it sounds like an awfully cruel test from a P.E teacher"
"All our teachers had dual roles back then, saved on the budget. Even the Canteen ladies taught Modern Studies while they served you a chip bun" DM continued.
"So you trust the government enough to plant these words in your mind...these seeds?" Greenback added.
"Oh don't start the seed thing with me, I've already figured that bit out"
"So the number is what you'll figure out now? Why so keen to be amongst the 66 percent?"
"Words mean something. Search enough and you find a solution to everything, even something that hasn't been solved yet" DM continued.
"And what would that be?" Greenback said.
DM slowly turned to him, and raised one eyebrow.
"My impending murder" DM revealed.
And with that, DM snapped his eye open, finding himself curled up in a meditative position on his bedroom floor.
He got up and looked out through the window. Bright and loud Fireworks illuminated the dank curtain of night.
New Year had arrived.
The new day had dawned.
In his mind, the word 'seed' persisted, but the word meant nothing, he had pinpointed a superior word in the soup of the survey, something that would enable him to have the upper hand.
All he needed now was the right remedy.
And to that he turned to not one word, not two, but several, what had caused him great delay on the track in the real world.
He was stopped. Stopped dead.
Over and over again in his head those words would persist.
Dead in his tracks
Dead in his tracks
Dead in his tracks
The answer to averting his fate lay in them.
Dawn could sense a lot had been taken out of him by this confession, so much so that she could now be very sure of a suspicion she'd been able to detect since the date began.
Danger Mouse tensed up, took heavy intakes of breath, stared at the darkened skies and the striking illumination of the city outside the windows of the Humble Grape.
He felt a small tug on his shoulder, he turned around, Dawn looked him straight in the I-Patch, she lifted it up, and looked at the scar than had been concealed within. She stroked it gently.
"My Dangerous friend" she said, the tone of voice laced with feelings of fleeting pity, great concern, and through it all, absolute joy