Notes: This is nothing but a bit of silliness I wrote a few weeks ago, and posted to a blog. It is also nothing but a direct… uh, homage to, or parody of the "Free Jim From the Shed!" scene in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It contains no sex, slash or het. There are two direct quotes in the snippet: one is a quote from the novel, the other is a quote from the Ghostbusters movie. Strange, I know. ;0) Despite the fact that it could possibly an homage or parody, this fic is merely cute and fun, nothing more. Okay. I think I've said all that needs to be said. Thanks to Clare Chew for the title! Woo woo!

Napoleon was visibly offended when he saw the cell he and Illya were to be held in while the Thrush agents interrogated them or tortured them or tried to ransom them off or brainwash them. He took two steps into the bare cell, straightened in surprised indignation, and gave a little "Oh!" of anger.

Illya glanced at him. The Thrush guard frowned at them both as he locked the cell door.

"What is it, Napoleon?" Illya said.

"Look at this cell!" Napoleon gestured angrily, indicating the three bare concrete walls, the single high window, the flimsy cell door, with its wall of widely spaced bars.

Illya looked. "Yes, what about it?" he said.

"It's just… insulting, is what it is!" Napoleon put his hands on his hips. "It wouldn't take more than five minutes to escape from here!" He turned and glared at the perplexed-looking Thrush guard. "Just who do you think we are, anyway?"

"Um," said the guard. "Men from U.N.C.L.E.?"

"Exactly." Napoleon raised a condescending brow. "We're U.N.C.L.E. agents. But you seem to be taking us for amateurs."

"Oh, Napoleon," Illya said, sighing. He sat against a wall and put his chin in his hand. Now they'd done it. Napoleon was on a tear. Now there was nothing to do but sit back and ride it out.

"Um," said the guard, clearly nervous now, eyeing Napoleon like he was slightly deranged. "What do you mean?"

"Well, just look!" Napoleon threw out his hand at the cell. "Look at that window over there!"

The guard dutifully looked.

"See it?"

The guard dutifully nodded, looking confused.

"Now. How big would you say that window is?" Napoleon asked.

"Um," said the guard.

"It's two feet square," Illya said, still with his chin in his hand.

"That's right, it's two feet square," Napoleon said. The guard nodded. "That's more than enough space for Illya here and me to wriggle out of. And look! It has no bars!"

"No, it sure doesn't," said the guard. "No bars at all."

"And is it wired to explode if we touch it?" Napoleon asked.

"Um, no."

"And is there a pit of sharpened stakes on the other side for us to fall into if we crawl through the window?"

"Um, no," the guard said.

"So all we'd have to do is boost one of us up to the window, then pull the other up after him, and we'd be out of the cell in two seconds!" Napoleon concluded triumphantly.

"Uh, I guess," said the guard, scratching his head. He looked glum. "But maybe we'd shoot you once you got out," he said helpfully, brightening a little.

"Pah," said Napoleon, dismissively. "We'd knock a guard out and gets his weapons and be free of here in no time."

"Oh." The guard looked glum again. Illya felt bad for him.

"And look at the bars to this cell!" Napoleon continued, kicking a bar for emphasis. "They're insultingly wide-spaced! Why, Illya could slither through those bars in a heartbeat, he's so thin and lithe!"

"True," said Illya.

"Oh," said the guard, looking glummer than ever. "Darn."

"Not to mention this feeble little contraption you call a lock!" Napoleon jiggled the lock through the bars. "It would take mere moments for us to pick this thing and stroll out of this cell as easy as you please!"

The guard looked at Illya for verification.

"True," said Illya. The guard's shoulders slumped. He was crestfallen.

"No, no, no," Napoleon concluded, "there's nothing more to be said for it. This is a shoddy, shoddy piece of Thrush work, I have to say."

"True," said Illya, chin still in hand.

"Why, it wouldn't make any more talk than breaking into a soap factory," Napoleon said, and Illya smiled briefly.

"No, I guess not," the guard said, glumly.

"Well," said Napoleon, and Illya could tell he was hatching an elaborate plan in his head. "We'll just have to fix the problems, that's all. Shouldn't be hard to make it proper."

The guard's shoulders stopped slumping. "Really?"

"Of course, of course." Napoleon shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked on his heels a little, deep in thought. "Now. Any proper prison cell needs, before anything else, chains on the walls to dangle the prisoners from."

The guard nodded eagerly. "Right, right! Like in the movies!"

"Exactly. That's the proper way to do it."

"Don't forget manacles," Illya added from his seat on the floor.

"Yes, the manacles. Those are imperative." Napoleon stroked his chin thoughtfully and went to studying. "So you need to get some chains and manacles."

"Yes sir," the guard said, and pulled out a little pad of paper and a pencil and began writing industriously.

"Now. When you've got us chained to the wall, you have to go to the other side of that wall, where the window is, and dig a nice deep, wide pit, and line it with sharpened stakes."

"Bamboo stakes are best to use," Illya added.

"Yes, bamboo. Only the best evil geniuses use them."

The guard nodded, writing busily.

"Or, if you can't find bamboo stakes," Napoleon said, pacing a little as he warmed up to the idea, "you could just fill the pit full of water and put little piranhas in it. That would be a nice alternative."

"Piranhas, right," said the guard, scribbling away. "P-i-r-h-a-n-n-a-h." He looked up. "Is that two aitches or one?"

"One," said Illya, absent-mindedly.

"Now, once we're chained to the wall, we'll have to have some sort of knife nearby with which to saw our hands off." Napoleon stood and mused a little.

Illya lifted his chin from his hand and looked askance at Napoleon. "To saw our hands off with!" he exclaimed.

Napoleon threw him an impatient look. "Of course, Illya, we'll need to cut our hands off to get out of the manacles."

Illya shook his head. "Are you insane? What would we want to cut our hands off for?"

Napoleon gave him a scathing look. "Some of the best authorities have done it, Illya. I'm surprised at you. That's what they all do, to make it a proper escape, and that's what we should do. It's the only correct way to get out of the handcuffs."

"Proper… authorities…" the guard muttered, writing away.

"That's just ridiculous, Napoleon," Illya said, sitting up. "And I'm not doing it."

Napoleon looked at him pityingly. "I guess since you're from Godless Communist Russia, you wouldn't know any better," he said sorrowfully, "but I have to tell you, there's no better way of getting free than cutting your hand off. And it's even better if you gnaw it off with your own teeth."

Illya crossed his arms and scowled at Napoleon. "There's no way I'm gnawing my hand off, Napoleon, no matter how many of the best people do it!"

"Well." Napoleon stood for a moment, considering. "Fine. I suppose we could just slice through the cuffs with a cobbled-together laser. That's almost as good, if not quite American."

"Fine," said Illya, and uncrossed his arms.

"Cobbled… laser…" the guard said, writing frantically.

"Now. This is almost a perfect escape!" Napoleon rubbed his hands together excitedly. "The only things else we'd need is some sort of hand-made pen, to write messages on the wall with our blood with, but I guess we can just use our fingers for that."

"How will you be able to write anything if you've gnawed your hands off to get out of the manacles?" the guard asked in perplexity, paused in his dictation.

"Oh, we voted that out," said Napoleon, distractedly. "We'll use a laser made from chewed-up gum and tin cans instead."

"All right," the guard said, and began writing again.

"Well!" Napoleon said, grinning broadly. "That looks to be about it! The perfect escape! What do you think, Illya?" He walked to the wall where, through the bars, the guard was still writing in his little note pad.

Illya considered a moment. "No TNT? No dynamite?"

"Nah. No finesse to that."

Illya thought about that, then nodded decisively. "Excellent plan, Napoleon. I second it."

"Good!" Napoleon turned to the guard, reached a hand through the bars, grabbed the guard's collar, and jerked back, hard. The guard's head smacked into the metal bars with a clanging noise, and he gave a little yelp of distress before sliding to the floor, unconscious. Napoleon squatted down, dipped his hand into the guard's pocket, withdrew a key, and unlocked the cell door, smiling smugly all the way.

The door swung open.

"Well now, that wasn't such a chore, now was it?" Napoleon asked, giving Illya an audacious grin. Illya sighed.

"But it's not proper," Illya said, as he stepped over the prone guard, out of the cell. "Won't your romantic sensibilities be horribly offended?"

"I'll live," Napoleon said.

"That's good to hear." Illya tossed him a look.

"Peasant," Napoleon replied, and strode after him down the hall, whistling as he went.

The End

Note on the format: am experimenting with putting fic in tables to see if that pleases my silly aesthete soul any more than the traditional way. Hate the format? Tell me so.