Note: This prologue was hastily added after I had finished the story, because I wanted to introduce the character of Lumbar Spine very early on. He appears again near the end and I thought it'd be good to have the reader meet him early on. Some might think it's lame that he got introduced now, and only appears again near the end. But oh well, "it seeeeeemed like a good idea, at! the! time!" Seriously now...

Prologue: The nemesis

Long, long ago in a strange land full of rodents and other assorted creatures, a hulking figure made a rather scary sight. He didn’t realise he was hulking, let alone scary. But he would soon come to realise that that was his lot in life – to frighten those he came into contact with.

I will not reveal this hulking figure’s name just yet, for that will come later in the story. But for now we’ll say that he started out as an all right bloke, but bitter events in his life got him real bitter indeed, and he turned out to be more of an evil bloke than anything. Poor guy.

We’d be able to feel sorrier for him, if indeed he was deserving of it. After all, he’s committed quite a few crimes over the years.

He got himself into a significant bit of trouble, all because he fell in love.

He fell in love with the sister of one of the baddest cops in Mouseratten, the town our hulking figure liked to call home. The Raines family had lived in Mouseratten for centuries, and Aubergine and her copper sister Rodentia were just the latest generation to be born. Aubergine Raines was a truly beautiful lady rat, but she just happened to have the craziest, meanest and most over-protective older sister in the land. Rodentia herself was extremely biased, which of course meant that she didn’t think our hulking figure was good enough for her sister.

This ‘disagreement’ led to all sorts of terrible shenanigans, and although the Raines sisters ended up estranged – yep, you heard me! Estranged, and they’re that way to this day! – Rodentia really did want only the best for her sister.

And now let’s talk about the sister herself: Miss Aubergine Raines. She barely knew that our hulking figure existed. She slighted him without even realising she was doing it, for she had found love with another person – a fellow named Geelong. Geelong was a Frenchrat who’d forged a special friendship with…wait for it…our hulking figure!! Yes, the two had met years before and had really hit it off.

“In ze Franch,” Geelong would pontificate, “it iz a motch different business. I am sure you can imagine. And I vould call you Loombair Spine, to say ze least.”

A lot of people had no idea why the two of them hit it off so well, considering their extremely different backgrounds. But they did, and then along came Miss Aubergine Raines, and she had no idea of the damage she reaped.

In the end, after numerous struggles, bitch fights and other things, Aubergine Raines actually escaped all blame in the matter. The vendetta our hulking figure had out was in fact against her sister, who had created the worst of the problem in the first place.

Rodentia had a nemesis, and she knew it. But she moved to a new town, to get away from her enemies as well as to escape her own sister, and many years passed. It seemed to Rodentia that times had changed, and old feelings had died down.

It seemed to Rodentia that she had managed to start over, and would be able to lead a safe and happy life away from her bitter past.

It was interesting, then, that she should choose law enforcement as her profession. And the area in which she worked was the farthest from safe that one could imagine.

She might’ve continued to fool herself for a long time, hoping that her enemies had forgotten her. But she always had an itch between her shoulders, or in some other place she couldn’t easily scratch. She just had a feeling that someday it would all come to a head.

Almost subconsciously, she was waiting for that day.