As he scanned the empty halls, Juan could hear something walk towards him. Then, a voice spoke.
>Agent Echo?
>Uh, call me Juan. Juan el Ratón.
>Don't be daft. Your code name is Agent Echo.
Suddenly, in front of Juan, out of the dark stepped a tan gerbil. This was Philip Vargas, aka Agent Foxtrot, a fellow Top Secret agent that seemed to have been killed in a freak explosion during a mission in Saigon in 1975, at the peak of the Vietnam War. Philip wore the exact same outfit as Juan, who was in a state of shock.
>Philip.
>The son of the lord has risen from the dead. What's wrong? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
>How did you survive?
>It's not a question of how, but of why. Why did we overthrow all those dictators and suppress all those Communist and Fascist uprisings, only to come home to "Sorry, pal. The game has changed"?
>We both chose this path. We were practically cousins.
>Of course. Juan el Ratón, the Great American Mystery Mouse, loved by the First World, feared by the Second World and loathed by all evil.
>I had faith in you.
>Faith. Such a keen thought.
>And you know as well as I do the trouble that losing a crush brings.
>Once again, you've proven yourself right. While your crush made the long journey to holy matrimony, I was stuck facing love after love. I even tried being gay before finding that the only furson I truly love is...myself.
>Hence Narcissus; a Greek mythological character who became obsessed with a reflection of himself in a pool of water.
>Except mine wasn't triggered by water, but you, having set the bomb to detonate in just four minutes instead of eight.
>Well, I don't know whether to feel sorry for you or not.
>You don't need to. After all, you did have the States as your primary concern. Barring love, of course. This is where we part ways, John.
A blunt object strikes Juan's head.
>In the name of the States.