Geronimo Stilton: INTERPOL-Trouble In France: An Old Enemy Returns

An Odd Discovery

Little Tails Junior High, New Mouse City
Thursday - March 20, 2014
0804 hours

It was the first day of spring for year 2014. The snow had melted, the trees and grass in the city were once again green as they should be and the flowers had bloomed in the gardens of my estate and everywhere else in the city. The sun shone over the buildings and fields, and the warm rays gave everyone a sense of relief after enduring a harsh winter.

And...I forgot to introduce myself again. My name is Danial Arif, a 14-year-old cyborg orphan, Malaysian multibillionaire, former junior iOS software designer, video games developer, full-time Interpol Junior Special Agent, and a junior special correspondent for New Mouse City's famouse newspaper, The Rodent's Gazette. I'm also the first human to ever reside in the city. What makes me a cyborg is that there's a microchip implanted in my brain that lets me control electronics remotely by changing brain signals to radio signals. And it used to aid me use the Force. (Did I ever tell you that I was a Jedi?)

At the moment, I walked down the hallway of the school after taking a ride in one of my autonomous cars, passing by lockers and other students as I carried a woodland camouflaged-saddlebag on the way to my locker, which neighbored to the lockers of my best friends, Benjamin and Pandora.

(Record scratch) What am I doing at school, you ask? Okay, here's how it went. I realized that I needed a form of certification to prove that I am educated when I grow up, and the only way to get it was to go back to school and earn a diploma, which is a few years from now. I registered myself to attend the school where my two best friends go to, Little Tails Junior High. (In Geronimo's books, it's called Little Tails Academy.) This automatically makes me the first human to go to that school. I started going to school somewhere in February, and the past several weeks have been good. Just a few minor setbacks like the school bully, Punk Rat bothering Benjamin, but I will be the one to fend them off. Plus, I was sitting in the same grade as Benjamin and Pandora, eighth grade.

As I was saying, I made a left with a squeak emitting from the sole of my Converse sneakers, and saw my two friends at their lockers on the left, with Pandora gathering her books for science class and Benjamin leaning against a red locker with an open book in his paw, biting on a pen and looking concentrated. They noticed me enter the hall and waved hello, and so I raised my hand up and waved back. A little fact, they've grown a bit taller now and started to look like true teenagers, and so was I. Each of them are now as tall as my eyes, and I was now 5 feet 4 inches.

"Pandora! Benjamin!" I called out from along the hall as I made my way to them.

"Danny! How're you doing?" Benjamin greeted. By then, I already got to them. He was still on his green book.

"Just fine," I answered. I peeked at his book. "Is that the science homework from yesterday?"

"Yeah..." he squeaked, continuing to bite on his pen. "There's one more question to answer. What do you think will oxygen do to a glowing splinter?"

Easily thought out, I helped him answered the question. "Well, essentially, oxygen helps in combustion. So I'd say that the glowing splinter would ignite on fire."

"Huh, didn't thought of that before. Thanks!" he said. He proceeded to write down what I had explained.

Meanwhile, Pandora had just finished gathering her books and closed up her locker. I assumed that she noticed my new style. "Hey! you buttoned your shirt! It makes you look slim," she complemented. It was true, I had never buttoned my plaid shirts after what happened to my family in 2011.

"Really? Thanks, but this isn't new. I used to where like this when I was twelve," I explained.

"You still look cool, though," Benjamin added.