When Life Gives You Lemons

Chapter 18- Agent Rossi-Topolino

Chapter 18- Agent Rossi-Topolino

Even though Fudge wasn't going to be infiltrating the meeting like Mater was, Finn decided that she needed some weapons too in order to defend herself if necessary. Plus, with her stalker (though she didn't believe that she was still alive, but there was still the tracking device), Fudge agreed that that probably wouldn't be a bad idea. The weird thing was, though, Finn didn't seem to question the fact that she and Mater didn't have any weapons. If they really were spies, wouldn't they have weapons?

So, Finn gave her a gun. A real gun! The girl couldn't believe that there was an actual gun in her hand! She'd seen plenty of guns over at Sarge's back home, but he never let her touch any of them. In fact, back home, she wasn't even allowed to play with toy guns because her family insisted that real guns were not toys and she should never pretend that they are (when she and Mater played secret agents, she got around that rule by having a freeze ray). Now, she had a real one of her own!

"Wow..." Fudge wasn't sure if she was excited at all or not, but she was definitely nervous more than anything. So, she added, "I'm not so sure about this..."

"Well, you need to be able to defend yourself, should you get into trouble", Finn informed her solemnly.

"I've never used a gun before!" Fudge protested and she didn't like the idea of getting into that kind of trouble. Still, it could happen. And at that moment, it seemed more likely than ever. It was terrifying.

Finn looked slightly surprised to learn this, but he shook it off. "There is a training facility on board", he told her. "You can have some practise if you like while you wait for Holley to finish with your watch."

Holley was creating a watch for Fudge that had a computer and heads-up display like Holley had as well as a recording device, a magnet (the magnets Fudge used to sit on cars' hoods were tucked away in her lost luggage) and Chrysler knew what else. It wasn't done yet, so now, she had to kill some time.

Again, Fudge decided that practising with the gun was a good idea (if she had to have one). So, she followed Finn into a dark room covered by blue tiles. There were also dummies that looked like both cars and humans piled up in the corner, various weapons and machines hanging from the ceiling as part of an intense obstacle course and several targets like in archery with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of holes in them.

"Wow!" Fudge repeated, impressed by the sight of everything.

"Sometimes, we run simulations in here, so agents can have experience real missions and train for them", Finn explained.

"Awesome!" Fudge declared.

"Well, unfortunately, we don't have time for that right now", he reported ruefully. "For now, we need to focus on your shooting."

"Okay." Fudge peeled off her jacket and tossed it aside.

Giving a seriously uncoordinated eleven-year-old a gun, Fudge thought, reaching for a pair of human-sized safety goggles and protective earmuffs from a rack nearby and pulling them on. What could possibly go wrong?

She took a deep breath, pulling the trigger back nervously. "Okay... Here we go..."

When she let go of the trigger, there was an almighty bang, making Fudge nearly jump right out of her skin. She missed the target by a mile.

Finn said nothing. Just gave a, "Hmmm..." But Fudge could tell what that meant. She obviously had some work to do.

"Finn?" came Stephenson's voice after about ten minutes. "We've arrived in Porto Corsa. We're about five minutes from the station."

"Thank you, Stephenson", Finn replied before turning back to the human girl. "Let me see you try this again", he instructed her.

During the ten minutes she'd spent practising, Fudge had gotten quite a few shots on the target, but none actually in the centre. The human girl was just surprised to get on the target (as previously stated, she was extremely uncoordinated and she had poor hand-eye coordination). Besides, she didn't want to hurt anybody and would probably get too scared to use it on someone, so Fudge figured that at the very most, she'd use the gun for warning shots.

However, she could only guess that that wouldn't be good enough for Finn, so Fudge didn't tell him that. She just checked to see if the gun was loaded, which was something Finn made sure she got used to, and fired at the target again. She still didn't like the loud noise that the gun made when it was fired, but Fudge had no choice but to suck it up and keep going. She still failed to hit the centre of the target, but Finn decided that it would have to do for now. So, Fudge grabbed her jacket, put it on, tucking the gun inside of it and followed Finn.

"Is my watch ready?" Fudge quizzed Holley once the four of them regrouped.

"Yes it is", the magenta sports car replied, handing her a silver watch. It just looked like a regular watch, displaying the time. "I'll quickly show you how to use it."

Holley explained that it had a facial recognition scan feature, so Fudge just had to stare at the watch in order for it to open up.

"Whoa!" Fudge exclaimed as she witnessed a screen light up with options of what she could do with the watch right where the time should be.

The options were record, communicate (the watch had a built-in radio) and heads-up display. If she brought up the heads-up display, not only did wider range of option come up, but a keyboard came out of the side of the watch. It was small enough to be discreet, but big enough to type on. Some of the other features included a knife, a breathing apparatus to be used underwater, a magnet and a grappling hook like Finn's.

"This is really cool!" Fudge declared, grinning, once she felt like she had the hang of using it. The good thing about the watch was that it was really high-tech, but at the same time, really simple to use.

"We think it might be useful for you to have", Finn informed the eleven-year-old. "If necessary, we might ask you to do some research."

Fudge nodded slowly. That didn't sound so terrible. It wasn't like she was going on the front line... But Mater is, Fudge reminded herself. She just hoped he'd be okay.

That was when they noticed that the spy train was slowing down.

"End of the line!" Stephenson called once he'd come to a complete stop.

"Thank you, Stephenson!"

As they all filed off the train, Fudge began to feel nervous. Well, even more nervous than she did before. This was it. They were about to really get involved in international espionage. She couldn't believe that this was really about to happen.

"Oh, God!" she whispered to herself.

Here we go!