Under his sod, surrounded on all sides by damp, rich dirt, Niles could hear Papa Company talking up above:
"Maybe they doubled back into the woods, sir."
"Don't be a nimbus. I would have seen them."
"Maybe they spontaneously combusted, sir."
"I wish."
"Maybe they're up in that elm tree, sir."
"Maybe they doubled back into the woods and you didn't see them, sir."
"Maybe they're in the pond, sir."
"…"
"And they're breathing through snorkels. Or straws. Sir."
"Yeah! Or they're wearing scuba gear, sir!"
"Sir, they could have gotten into a bathysphere that they had parked by the pond, just waiting."
"What's a bathysphere?"
"It's like a submarine."
"Well, why didn't you just say submarine, Mudflap? Bathysphere!"
"Ooh! Sir! Maybe they turned into swans!"
"What?"
"Swans. Those swans, sir!"
"There are two of them, sir!"
"They're not wizards, you nimbuses. They're pranksters. They go to my school. A couple nimbuses who call themselves the Terrible Twos."
Underground, Niles rolled his eyes and corrected Josh: "The Terrible Two." He said it so softly that only an earthworm, who was crawling near his face, could have heard him, if earthworms had ears, which they don't. They don't have eyes either. Niles wondered whether earthworms had mouths, and especially whether they had teeth, and he hoped they didn't, because now the earthworm was crawling on his face. This kind of stuff happens when you're hiding out below the earth.
Anyway, back to Josh:
"They got away from us. But we'll find them. They've been hanging out in the woods all summer. We'll track them down. We will retake our flag. And we will have our revenge. We will prank them like you wouldn't believe. We will throw sticks at their heads. We will poke them with the sharp parts of these medals. We will fill a sock with oranges and thwomp them. We will prank those pranksters so hard they will never want to prank again."
