With your permission, may I please introduce: Milly Mouse ...

Mouse watched the front door for some time, waiting for evening to fall.  She did her best work at night, after all.
The thugs on the front door thought they were bang up to an elephant, in their gas pipes and handlebars; standing there eyeing off the folk that passed them on the street like they were something more important.

Sure, they'd kick the living shit out of Mouse if they caught her, no doubts about that.  But they'd have to catch her first, and she was willing to lay a shilling that they wouldn't even know she was inside.  Then, she'd back slang it, leaving none the wiser.

She was patient, was Mouse.  And she waited easily as darkness fell upon the city, and the lamp-lighters came on past, firing up their little gas-powered suns.
Some people would say that the best time to move is in the pervasive darkness before the 'lighters did their thing.  But Mouse knew better:  movement in the darkness drew attention.  But once the lamps were flickering, and the shadows dancing, people grew accustomed to darting movements upon their periphery, and got used to ignoring them.

Mouse's first ally was the carriage coming down the lane; and with a swift bound, grab and swing, she landed agile on its roof.
And from there, she made the lung as it passed the upper balcony above the toff's heads', grabbing hold of the railing there and using her weight and momentum to swing up enough to roll onto the balcony itself.

Laying silently a moment, to ensure no calls of alarm from below, she moved gracefully to the french doors.  Her hand, without need of her looking (or even thinking) slipped the lock-picks from her pocket.
That was one thing she liked about working for the Agency: the tools.   These lock-picks would get her a pretty penny from any alleyway in town, if she had any reason to part with them.
And the goggles!  She slipped them down off her forehead, and waited for the mojo to kick in ... allowing her to see in the darkness like it was nothin' but a cloudy day.

And as her tools tickled the door into relenting to her touch, Mouse slipped inside ... quietly as, well, a Mouse.

**********************************

Emily St Lyon arrived in London at the age of 9 with parents emigrating from the Provencial regiones of France; her father having been offered an impressive new job.
However, when Emily ('Milly') was 10, a brutal home robbery ended with her parents dead, the house on fire, and Milly hiding in a nearby alleyway, crying.

Since then, she had nobody; and grew up on the streets living by her own wits and the skills of survival that she quickly learned.

Eight years later, she was an accomplished street rat and pick-pocket; with a decent reputation among her fellows, and having earned the name 'Mouse' for her skills of stealth and intrusion.

When she accidentally picked the wrong pocket, she drew the attention of xxx, who needed 'that notebook back immediately'; it being full of essential clues to a case the agent was working.

The Agency tried it's best to find and apprehend Milly, to no avail.  In fact, it was Milly who turned the tables on them, and tracked their agent back to xxx headquarters; into which she intruded to find out more about these people chasing her.

It was within that she was taken into Agency custody.
But rather than brutalise her, the Agency recognised her for the skills she had, and the resource she could be.  And so they made her the proverbial offer that she couldn't refuse.
... and that was how they employed Milly Mouse.  Her fist assignment, actually, was to help that agent finish that investigation.

Since then, Mouse has remained a respected, if rather unconventional, Agent for xxx.


{Milly has never been good with machines: probably never will be.  And she'd prefer to run than fight, and spy than parlay.  But if the agency needs something investigated that requires stealth, skulduggery and street smarts, there are few agents that can compare with Milly}