The woman who would go on to provide Wonder Woman’s secret identity, get married, raise two daughters, become a widow, and adopt him, and show him the very photographs which would inspire his trip to the past … this woman was now, back in the past, a teenaged girl who was even now laughing at the helplessness of his situation, which she was willingly going to inflict.

It didn’t matter in the long run. The Time Pool would rescue him from her stomach, he figured, unaware of the fact that it had in fact once saved Mouse Man from a permanent outcome in the stomach of the Doris/Giganta of a previous timeline. Mouse Lad would make the most of his time in her exciting mouth, and then he would be pulled back to his own time.

The only drawback would be that he could not explain his presence to a girl who would assume that she had eaten him, if he were to return to the past for another visit.

“When?” he asked shyly.

“Sunday morning. My dormitory friend will be collected by her new foster parents tomorrow, and everyone else sleeps in,” said Diana, “You’ve less than two days to go.”

She smiled with mirth and suddenly put out her tongue and licked him. It felt magnificent.

“Well that was nice actually,” he said.

“Enjoy it while you can,” said Diana, “It’ll be a lot nicer for me on Sunday.”

On the Saturday night, Diana rested him on the cupboard top between her bed and the window, which was open on such a warm night. They talked for a while, and then she gave him some folded clothing to sleep on and fell asleep herself. The sun arose at 5:30am and he noticed that a piece of paper had appeared on the cupboard top beside him. He read what had been written:

“Mouse Lad,

A major fault has developed in the Time Pool. We can still get a fix on you, but can’t bring anything back from the past until we get the Atom in to help fix the machine. Thankfully it still sends objects into the past. Hence we were able to explain the situation to you with this note. You’ll just have to wait in the 1930s until we can get the machine going again. Sorry for the inconvenience, but we’re sure you’re enjoying the company you’re in,

Wonder Woman and Mouse Man.”

Mouse Lad was flabbergasted. It meant that when Diana began gulping him down her throat, he would not be retrieved by the Time Pool. What could he do?

The window was opened, but for him, the distance to the garden bed outside was like the height of a skyscraper building. To Diana, the window ledge only came up to below her waist.

Then an idea struck him. Mouse Lad managed to grip all four corners of the paper, and then jumped out of the window, using the paper like a parachute. It carried him slowly down to the ground without injury. He ran through the flower bed, and then began the long run across the lawn. When he reached the bushes where he had first been found by Diana on the day of the baseball game, he looked back and saw Diana stepping out of the window

She had awoken, and would be after him in no time.

He backed into the bushes, and saw Diana crossing the lawn in a fraction of the time that it had taken him. His mind flashed back to the sight of her in her school sports outfit running towards him when the ball had landed behind him. This time she was crossing the lawn in her night dress, which looked far more dainty and feminine. Yet this time she was coming to catch him and swallow him.

“You wouldn’t even make it to the other side of those bushes,” she giggled, “Here I come to catch you and eat you all up!”

Mouse Lad backed away, making use of any cover he could, as she stepped confidently into the bushes and searched until she found him. Laughing high above, she towered in front of him and bent down to grab him.

“I’ve got you, little Mouse boy,” she giggled, lifting him up in front of her face.

“Please don’t fully eat me,” he said, “We can have more fun and happiness together.”

“I’m going to have more fun and happiness when I have you in my tummy,” laughed Diana.

Eventually the Time Pool would be repaired. If he could only stall her.

“Could we wait until the holidays and then make a special occasion of the gobbling event?” he asked her.

“I don’t think so,” said Diana, “I’m not going to give you weeks to make more attempts to escape.”

“Couldn’t you put me in a cage or hide me in your drawer and lock it?” asked Mouse Lad.

“Why are you so keen to delay the inevitable?” asked Diana, “Wouldn’t you be better off to get it over with now?”

“I’d have more time with you, and the holidays would give you more time to take me somewhere special to eat me,” aid Mouse Lad.

“Today is Sunday, and I have the dormitory to myself. It’s the best holiday I could hope for,” said Diana, “You might as well stop trying to talk me into delaying it, Mouse Lad. It’s not going to work.”

Diana took him to a garden tap, washed the boy and her hands, and then set him astride on her shoulder. She was serious and amused at the same time, as she strode confidently back to the window and climbed into the room. She looked elegant and grand as she sat on the edge of the bed and turned her head to kiss him one last time.

Then she placed him gently on the bed beside her well dressed legs. He looked up at her lovely face and thought of the life that she would go on to lead after this. He had already seen and heard much about it from her older self and the photographs. She had a wonderful life ahead of her, and she was going to gobble him down without the slightest concern.

“One day you’ll have children of your own!” he said, “You might even have a boy just like me. How can you do this?”

“I’ll show you,” she said, and picked him up and held him in her finger and thumb, dangling him over her outstretched sparkling tongue.

“You know that’s not what I meant by the question,” said Mouse Lad.

“Hadn’t you better look where you’re going, instead of at my eyes?” she said, noticing that he had turned up to meet her eyes with his petition for mercy.

He obeyed her, gazing at the marvelous exciting tongue which was stretched out just below him, staring beyond into her wide open mouth and the dark throat beyond.

“I hope you know I’m still in love with you,” he said.

“You’re so cute,” she said, “And so delicious!”

He had been looking forward to being eaten up until the moment when he had read Wonder Woman’s and Mouse Man’s note from the future. As a parachute it had almost saved him. Maybe it could still save him!

“I dropped a piece of paper outside. It’s how I got down,” said Mouse Lad, “It will tell you something vital, effectively hint at something vital about your own future.”

She put him down, looked out the window, leaned out and retrieved the message and read it.

“You’re from the future? What year?”

“1983,” said Mouse Lad, “I was adopted from this orphanage in 1975 and raised by your future self for eight years, until you died.”

“But there are no boys here,” said Diana.

“There will be in the late fifties,” said Mouse Lad, “I recalled the photos of you from this time, as shown to me by your older self, fell in love with you and came back to see you.”

“So I’ll be dead by the time you travel back then,” said Diana.

“Yes.”

“Then even my older self has nothing to lose if I eat you now,” said Diana, “I’ll look forward to meeting your younger self in my later years. I won’t give anything away. Now down you go.”

“No! Please!” said Mouse Lad, as she slid him onto her awaiting tongue and into her laughing throat.

He felt her gulping with pleasure, as he was carried down further and further into the teenage tummy of a young woman whose happy future was already a matter of history to him.

Suddenly he found himself back on the Time Pool platform, with Wonder Woman and Mouse Man looking at him.

“But you said it would take months to fix the machine,” said Mouse Lad.

“It did,” said Wonder Woman, as she used the machine again, and retrieved the tell tale sheet of paper from the past as well.

“That didn’t stop us from still setting the machine to find you and retrieve you from the time you were in,” said Mouse Man, “It was my idea. We thought we’d spare you the wait. After all, Wonder Woman is your foster mother now.”

He had done all that worrying for nothing, but he still felt that he could not return to the teenaged Diana Prince again. For one thing, it would be too risky if anything more serious happened to the Time Pool. Another fault might make rescue from Diana’s tummy completely impossible forever. Besides that, from her point of view, she had eaten him once. It would be better to leave her to live out the remaining years leading up to her marriage.

Mouse Man restored his size, but he could always be reduced again and travel back to meet other pretty single women in the past.