Arrivederci 🔪

XI

After a few minutes, Fred and Prudence calmed down. "Damn, Ledger. You can fool people very well. I believe this now," Prudence chuckled. 

Ledger: "I didn't fool you. We built this highway ourselves, only I have access to it. This highway is 5980.322 kilometers long, it took fourteen months to build it,"

Prudence: "Only fourteen months?! You've got to be kidding me!!"

Ledger: "Baby, remember this: I have advanced technology that the real world doesn't have! Nobody must know about this!"

Prudence: "I'll tell the whole world!"

Ledger smirked. "You will not,"

Fred decided to interrupt his sister: "Ledger, could you tell us a little about yourself? Like your biography?"

Ledger smiled: "I sure can do that. I'm from Marquette, Michigan..."

"What?! You're kidding! You're from Michigan as well?" gasped Fred.

-"Of course! I lived in Marquette for eighteen years! I graduated with a 4.5 grade point average and a 1600 ACT score, so I got into Harvard University in Massachusetts. There, I studied programming, engineering, technology. I met Rhett there as well,"

Rhett honked his horn. "Oh yeah!! And do you know what happened when we met?"

Ledger clapped his hands: "We became best friends and found out that we both have unbelievable capabilities. Rhett and I graduated college with the highest grades. I bought an apartment in Manhattan and decided to take Rhett along with me. We became roommates, and decided to open a secret business,"

While Fred and Prudence were listening to Ledger's story, Riel-ne has already destroyed a fourth of Naples. "One hundred seventy-six people were killed," Vincenzo told his mother, who was wrapped in a blanket. "The temperature will drop by six degrees every day. It's already negative ten degrees, which was the coldest temperature recorded in the history of Naples. This monster is impossible to destroy," the man on the radio cried.

"Ledger, we need to hurry up!!" panicked Prudence. "Otherwise Riel-ne will kill Dan! My only goal in this mission is to save him!"

"Rhett, do you mind speeding up?" ordered Ledger, and Rhett started pulling out his cell phone. "It's time for the extreme turbo x9000! Ledger, are you ready?!" yelled Rhett in excitement. Ledger nodded. Rhett tapped the turbo button on his phone. "Here we go!!!!" he shouted, as the car's acceleration increased rapidly. "We're at the speed of a plane now!" smiled Rhett, and tapped the button again. The acceleration started to increase twice more. "Rhett, make this cab go more rapid! We can't waste any time!!"

Rhett repeatedly stabbed the button. Fred and Prudence were screaming. "Sta 'zitto!!" shouted Ledger, covering his ears, and the Cardwells halted. "What's 'sta 'zitto'?" asked Fred. Ledger rubbed his face. "It means 'shut up' in Italian. Trust me, I know a load of languages,"

"Seriously?! What languages do you know?!" gasped Prudence, who enjoyed talks about foreign languages.

Ledger took a deep breath. "So many questions...all right, I'll tell you. I know English obviously, I can speak in British, Canadian and Australian accents as well, Spanish, French, German, Romanian, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Russian, Belarusian, Portuguese, Yakut, Ukrainian, Greek, Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Filipino, Arabic, Icelandic, Hungarian, Persian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Uzbek, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Serbian, Estonian, Latvian, Slovenian, Swahili, I can as well read Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Biblical Hebrew, Latin, and Hindi,"

Prudence: "Where and how the hell did you learn all these languages?! And where did you find time to learn them?!"

-"Oh, dear Prudence, it's a secret, I'm telling you. I have so many unique abilities that you don't even know normal humans can do,"
"Ledger's a genius, sis," smiled Rhett.
After a while, the highway ended, and a sign saying 'Benvenuta a Italia' appeared. "How could this happen?! We were driving for less than an hour and a half!!" gasped Fred, when Prudence mouthed "advanced technology" to him.
Minutes later, the cab drove into Naples, Ledger showed the passports to the man at the frontier, and he was let into the country. "Remember Prudence and Fred: do not stop! If you stop, you lose!" Reminded Ledger, when a behemoth tail slapped the ground right in front of Rhett's cab. A loud macaw scream echoed in the distance. "It's Riel-ne!" gasped Prudence, "Fred, let's go!!"

When Prudence got out of the cab, the cold air hit her. It was freezing, the temperature was a lot lower than it was during the winter in southern Michigan. "Good luck!!" shouted Ledger as Prudence ran away from the cab, closer to Riel-ne, followed by Fred.