A Modern Fairytale....

Once upon a time there was a boy who had a shiny silver bike he loved very much. It wasn't really his bike, it belonged to a friend of his who had gone away for a long time and the boy wasn't sure if his friend was ever coming back. So he used to ride it to sometimes on special occasions.

One day when he was out riding it he locked it up using a magic cable that a clever friend had made for him. But some bad people cut his magic cable and stole his shiny silver bike. He decided the magic cable wasn't worth a pinch of shit.

The boy was very sad.

Sometime later another of the boy's friends found his silver bike for sale on a special place in cyberspace dedicated to buying and selling things, stolen and some not. The boy's friend like to look at this special place all the time. He was getting treatment for it but it hadn't worked. The boy and his friend were very excited when they found the silver bike. It had the boys special little marks on it and everything.

The boy decided to go and tell a policeman what had happened so he could get the silver bike back and they could lock up the bad people. The policeman was a very nice man but he explained that he could not do much because even though the boy knew all his special marks on the bike, the people selling the bike would lie and say that they had not stolen it, and would pretend that they did not even know it was stolen. The boy understood, but was very sad.

So the boy asked Special Agents #683 and #267 to help him get back his silver bike and punish the bad people. They were excited to help.

The Special Agents decided other needed a good plan. They would pretend to buy the bike, and then when they went to collect the bike and pay the robbers they would confront them with the evidence of their evil doings. The robbers would realise the jig was up, and hand over the silver bike, see the error of their ways and slink away…never to rob again.

It was a good plan.

So the boy went home and took all his money out of his piggybank and gave it to the Special Agents so they could pretend to buy the bike. But the robbers were smart and wanted to meet in a park in a bad part of town after dark, but the Special Agents were smarter and called their bluff.   No address, no sale. Because they wanted the boy's money very much, they agreed.

When the two agents went to the robber's hideout they drove around the area a few times to look for hidden thieves in the bushes, and they photographed all the car registrations in the street. Just in case. They were very smart agents.

They decided that only one agent should go in and assess the situation. The other agent would hide in the car, and ring the first one after 5 minutes and if the first one said 'green apples' he knew there was a man down and he would have to come in with guns blazing. If everything was going well the first agent would say 'lemon sorbet'.

The first agent was worried that it would be hard to work these terms into the conversation, but the second agent reassured him that these words worked every time. The first agent was very doubtful.

The first agent, who was very brave, marched into the lair and confronted robbers in their den. He was not fooled by their plausible lies about how they'd acquired his bike. He saw right through their facade of tragic wretchedness. Dismissing their story as a tissue of lies, he told them to fetch the bike so he could confront them with the proof of their misdeeds. Realising they'd been outsmarted, they reluctantly went deep into their den to bring out the bike.

It was not the boys bike.

The Special Agents decided to buy the bike anyway, and to never mention it again.

And they all lived happily everafter.