No hamsters were harmed in the execution of this plan!

Phew!

My Goodness!

That was close!

It’s Debbie Shorttail here, we have made it inside the Temporal Experimentation lab! There are 8 of us here, Me (of course) Brian Russetcoat, Simon Swifttail, Peter Paddlefoot, Zsofia Smoothcoat, and Penny Paddlepaws for the otter contingent and Cedric 1 and Herbert the essential hamsters!

Thank goodness we made it in here and the chaps all got out of those wierd quantum pockets in on piece! No one even ate any of the snacks, Peter says he actually quite fancied an an anchovy wrap before he went in there but it is so odd in there that eating didn’t seem like the sensible thing to do! And that’s coming from the chap who is so used to the time wheel transport that he once ate at least some of a sandwich in transit!

Oh yes right, I am supposed to be telling you the tale of how we all got in here! I am a bit all over the place after all the dashing about!

There wasn’t actually supposed to be that much dashing about on our part but it did and up quite dashy!

The plan all kicked off when we heard some growling and yowling caused by Horace the Wildcat jumping crossly into the hamster enclosure and chasing them about! Quite coincidentally breaking the pen wall in the process! Its an improvised pen, the Hamsters are actually valuable members of staff around here we don’t tend to pen up the staff, but seemingly the OIA don’t trust them so thought it best to keep them all together!

Anyway there was a lot of growling and squeaking and hamsters scurrying around chased and antagonised by an apparently cross wildcat! Luckily Olivia and Lucy had done a fine job of briefing everyone on this part of the plan so no hamsters were hurt or in any danger at any point!

This calamitous distraction was our cue to make our way along the corridor to the Temporal lab, we went the indirect route so as not to cause suspicion and had to make seemingly inconsequential conversation as we went! That is not easy with Brian at the best of times but we did our best. We had to pretend while we did this that we weren’t towing unsteady quantum pocket balloons with our tails!

It was all going according to plan when we nonchalantly rounded a corner and were nearly bowled down by two OIA guards heading into the hamster rounding up fray! We fully expected this meeting of course but what no one anticipated was the instability brought about by wobbly quantum pockets! As we scattered out of the way of the OIA, Penny managed to scatter herself right into the swimlane! Swimlanes are not normally tricky for an otter, but it was one of the faster flowing swimlanes and Penny had a rather unruly item tied to her tail which was preventing her from orienting herself let alone swimming!

She let out an extremely non nonchalant squeak and was swept along by the flow while spinning wildly and paddling her paws around trying to stabilise her and her quantum pocket! Brian and I immediately turned tail and attempted to follow but one of the OIA chaps had noticed the commotion and grabbed my shoulder preventing my escape!

“what is going on here?” He said, “why is young Penny Paddlepaws flailing like that?”

“eeep!” I said, to buy myself a little thinking time “I am not sure I am allowed to tell you!”

This didn’t go over that well to be honest

“She has been experimenting with quantum instability, and today is the water trial. We are supposed to be helping and it doesn’t seem to be going well”

I looked at the OIA chap then shot a worried glance over my shoulder to where Brian was attempting to right Penny wile trying to make it look like he wasn’t struggling with his own balloon!

“I need to go!” I said with as much authority as I could muster up, “and so do you, aren’t there hamsters on the loose!?”

With that I headed off in the direction of Brian and Penny as fast as I could, all the time trying to resit the temptation to look back over my shoulder!

Miraculously this worked, the OIA guards headed off the way they were going and Brian and I managed to fish penny out of the swimlane. With that, all pretence of composure and nonchalance deserted us and we hurtled to the Temporal Lab as fast as otterly possible!

Thankfully Cedric and Herbert had carried out their part of the plan and scurried through the pipe ways into the Temporal Lab to make sure the doors were open when we arrived! We threw open the door, piled inside and deadlocked it from the inside!

We were quite agitated at this point and scurried around the lab checking that all the levers and buttons were un harmed. It was a good couple of minutes before we remembered that we needed to let the guys out of the quantum pockets!

Thankfully noone was harmed! Simon, however was quite damp! It turns out that Quantum pockets are not entirely waterproof, at least not when subjected to repeated frantic dunkings! And, as I said before, miraculously all of our snacks were un eaten!

They are not going to remain that way however, there is a snail patty over there with my name on it!