Now – as Adrienne’s search engine glided down to where Wiz was standing – Dot could tell her best friend wasn’t AT ALL pleased. He kept looking round at himself and making his worried whining noise... but sort of backwards…

Bump-bump!

The search engine had landed. Dot jumped out and ran over to where Wizzie was standing. Only - was it Wizzie at all?

All over his body, where his fur had been brown before it was coloured cream; and where it had been cream it was brown! Dot could tell straight away because there was a brown feathery bit at the end of Wizzie’s tail – now it was cream; the brown patch over his left eye had also turned cream; his ears were cream and his face was brown, like his chest and tummy; and strangest of all, the bit in the middle of his eyes, the pupil, was white, and the bit round them, brown! His teeth were pink and his mouth was white and finally, instead of sweeping backwards in its usual silky way, all his fur was pointing forwards!!

He looked a mess. Dot felt herself getting VERY cross at the thought of the wicked Blackshanks the Baron who’d done this to her lovely Wiz.

But the biggest surprise was still to come, as Wizzie opened his mouth to speak.

“DOT! Thank goodness you’re here!” he said. “WHAT has happened to me?”

Only he didn’t. He actually went:

“?em ot deneppah sah TAHW” and… “!ereh er’uoy ssendoog knahT !TOD”

Wizzie was speaking backwards! He really had been completely inverted by the Baron – turned back to front!!

Dot gasped and felt slightly sick – and crosser than ever. Of course she couldn’t understand a word of what Wiz had said just at that moment, but we can ‘cos we’re clever. Oh all right – we can work it out because we can see it.

Mr Mouse was his usual helpful self. “The kid’s flipped!” he said, chuckling. “Knew it’d happen one day!”

“Oh shut up Mr Mouse!” said Dot angrily. She turned round to Adrienne – who, she was amazed to see, looked completely relaxed!

“Ça va!” said Adrienne (which means “That’s OK!” – just as well Dot didn’t understand, or she would REALLY have lost her cool with the little red squirrel!) “We can sort zis out, no problem! We just de-invert ‘im – turn ‘im back again!”

From her pocket she took a little machine like a mobile phone - except that on the top of it, near where you put your ear, it had something like one of those little umbrellas grown-ups put in drinks called ‘cocktails’. (Why do they do that? And why do they call them cocktails? Doh!)

Adrienne tapped in a code and pointed the little umbrella at Wiz. It started to whirl round and round, faster and faster, making a kind of singing noise and sparkling with blue and green lights.

But then suddenly it stopped. Adrienne frowned.

“Zut! Not so good!” she said.

It wasn’t! Wizzie was still all the wrong way round. He whined again. “!ESAELP – toD siht fo tuo em teG” he said anxiously. What he was trying to say of course was: “Get me out of this Dot – PLEASE!”

Adrienne looked at Dot, not relaxed any more. “Dot…” she said. “Zis means… ze Information Inverters ‘ave found a new operating code. Peste! So…  we ‘ave to find Blackshanks ze Baron to make him turn Wizzie back. Or ‘e will stay like that – forever!”

Dot felt herself go cold. And for once, even Mr Mouse had nothing to say.

“But” said Adrienne more hopefully ”we ‘ave one zing zat will ‘elp us. Blackshanks cannot stop himself from –“

“CRAAACK! CRAAACK!”

What in the name of the Net was that?!