Product of a Broken Mind

(The Illustrious Crackpot)

"It's quite simple, Pinky," enunciated the stout mouse, stepping over to a chart conveniently propped against the wall beside him and whipping out a pointer. "What is the single underlying dream of every person in this country?"

"Oooh! Oooh! Narf!" the other mouse cried, waving his hand in the air. "Ta' be employed by Donald Trump!"

Normally Brain would've rolled his eyes and reached for the nearest blunt object, but instead he cocked his head curiously. "Strangely enough, that's not far from the mark," he stated, pointing at a series of stick figure drawings on the chart. "No, Pinky, it's to be on American Idol. As such, the layman reveres those who compete on the show—and the winner, of course, the REAL American Idol, receives the most adulation." He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Pinky was getting all this, then resumed. "So, using my clearly superior vocal chords, I shall


Suddenly there's a popping noise, and my screen goes black. I jump in my seat, then stand up and glance downwards. As I suspected, feet planted firmly apart on the floor and holding my PowerBook's plug in his hands is a short, large-headed mouse with bloodshot eyes.

"That should curtail your pitiful career," Brain states gloomily, glowering back at me with a greater force than my own as he marches away with my power cord. I sigh huffily at him, then wait until he's out of earshot before inserting my laptop's battery drive and quietly starting a new story.


Brain hefted the yellow bar into the air, irritably blowing suds at his taller companion. "SOAP, Pinky!" he exclaimed. "People slip on SOAP in the shower! People don't slip on Jell-o when they're bathing!"

Pinky was quiet for a moment. "I do."

This response earned him a soapy thwack across the head, the aftermath of which unfortunately caused Brain to slip on the countertop himself. His hairless pink feet scrabbled desperately against the tile in an attempt to regain his balance, but at long last he made a ridiculously graceful flip onto his back. As was natural, this started Pinky to giggling, even as Brain tried valiantly to affect nonchalance.

"Laugh if you wish, Pinky," he grumbled, his tail twitching embarrassedly, "but that is the premise of our next plot. If we can get everyone in the world to slip on a bar of soap at the same time, the resultant chaos will leave the entire human populace incapacitated long enough for us to establish ourselves as world rulers!"

Pinky straightened excitedly, scooping up a handful of suds and stuffing it in his ears. "E-GAD, that's BRILLIANT, Brain! But how're we


"What'cha doin'?"

I jump again, my head snapping up to see a lanky white mouse with protrudant top teeth poking his head around the side of my screen. "Shhh!" I hiss, glancing desperately over my shoulder for any sign of the Brain. Then I turn back to Pinky, muttering, "Writing a fanfic."

He cocks his head politely. "Hmm?"

I glance over my shoulder again, then whisper slightly louder, "Writing a fanfic."

I wait to see if it's worked this time, but Pinky shakes his head sadly. "Can't hear you."

As soon as I'm desperate enough to shout, I suddenly realize the gag I've just been pulled into and draw back. Thinking quickly, I instead type the words "Writing a fanfic" on the screen and point to them. Pinky's eyes light up as he understands, and he clambers onto the keyboard, pushing some \';pollkiujuyht65 keys as he does so and stands in front of the screen, rubbing his chin and sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. I myself lean back in my chair and sigh, grateful that I hadn't actually yelled. That would've gotten Brain's attention for sure.

"LET'S SEE," Pinky suddenly proclaims rather loudly, and I sit bolt upright. "QUOTATION MARKS, W-R-I-T-I-N-G, SPACE, A, SPACE, F-A-NNNNNNNN-F-I-C, OTHER QUOTATION MARKS. I GET IT! YOU'RE WRITIN' A FANFIC!!"

I groan and bury my head in my hands as Brain storms (horrible pun) into the room as loudly as a two-inch-tall mouse can. I half-expect him to say "What's all this then?", but, being a less vocal type around me (as he's realized that I have an unnatural obsession with his voice), he merely clambers onto the desk, grabs my battery drive and tugs that out too. While this action causes him to inadvertently fall the three feet back to the floor with the drive on top of him, an action that would normally leave me in hysterics for several hours, I'm staring too despondently at my blank screen to even notice.

(Pinky, of course, points out that plot hole to me "How c'd you write about it if you didn't know it was happenin'?", but that's easily explained. As always, my knowledge of the toon laws of physics stated that such a thing must invariably happen due to Brain's position on the table and the amount of force he was using to remove the drive. Q.E.D.)

"Why must you persist in your obsession?!" Brain demands once he's shoved the drive off of him and has gotten reasonably back to his feet. "Your horrible travesty 'The Brain VS the Claw Machine' was nine chapters long! A normal individual would have lost interest in the whole affair before its completion!!"

I recover enough to use my normal comeback for such situations. "As you and the world's marketing executives should agree, Brain, I'm not normal. If I was normal and corresponded with the general population demographics, Palisades Toys wouldn't have gone out of business and more people would agree that the third Harry Potter movie was a piece of trash." I turn back to staring despondently at my computer. "And plus, you forget about my occasional bursts of concentration. I managed to write all three hundred and fifty pages of 'A Very Muppets Mystery' in only three months (not that anyone READS it, of course, and those who do read it refuse to tell me what they think...). Now, though, I haven't got the attention span to write too much of anything." I sigh. "This's just my three-month checkup so Welshrose knows I'm still alive and reasonably literate."

Not even deigning to ask who "Welshrose" is, Brain shoots me another angry glare and, clumsily hefting the battery drive over his shoulder, stomps away with it, Pinky following close behind after a sharp word. Apparently Brain thinks he's totally incapacitated me, or else he would've booted me out of the lab right there and then.

Waiting until the mousy footsteps have receded, I suddenly scramble into a swivel chair sitting in the corner and propel myself in front of a large desktop computer which Brain had apparently forgotten about. I stretch once for good measure, flexing my fingers, then quietly start it up and open another text document.


The shorter mouse reached over and plugged the power cable into the wall, causing a giant screen to crackle into life above the two.

"THIS is what we shall use, Pinky!" announced the Brain, forced to shout above the sounds of the machinery. "The T-67 Plasma Screen Set!"

"Naaaaaaaaarf," Pinky exhaled, shielding his eyes as he leaned backwards to look up at the immensity of the television. "Does Frank know you've got your OWN two-thousand-inch TV?"

Making a grumbling sound, Brain grabbed a nearby pile of "Weird Al" Yankovic CDs and smashed the lot over Pinky's head, thereby disabling his companion and also managing to destroy the music which had caused the previous comment. Wobbling dizzily, Pinky blinked a few times, chuckling as he stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, and then looked back over at the Brain. "What're we gonna use it for, Brain?"

As partial explanation, Brain reached into a nearby drawer and removed a slim DVD case, on the cover of which was printed the legend The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Seeing as Pinky still didn't understand, though, the hyperintelligent mouse posed a question in an attempt to get Pinky to figure it out for himself. "Do you know what this is, Pinky?"

Scratching his head ponderously and twitching his tail back and forth, Pinky finally snapped his fingers. "A really confusin' movie! Zort!

"Precisely," Brain agreed instantaneously, a development so unexpected that Pinky promptly lost his balance and landed flat on his back. Brain ignored this, instead beginning to gesture dramatically. "Not ONLY a monstrously confusing movie, Pinky, but a monstrously confusing movie directed by a man named Terry Gilliam, KNOWN for directing monstrously confusing movies. I mean, even I, the smartest being on this world, couldn't comprehend the ending of Time Bandits!" He whirled about sharply to face Pinky, who was by now sitting up again. "Using several T-67 models, I shall broadcast a continuous marathon of Terry Gilliam movies across the world. The populace will be thrown into such hideous confusion that it will be easy for me to wrangle legitimate leadership out of the various world ru


The screen of this computer then goes black, which startles me. I look around for any sign of a short albino lab mouse, but I can't spot him. However, after pressing the "Power" button multiple times, the computer won't go back online. Brain must have disabled it from a remote location. Fortuitously, though, the next room is full of computers, so I head in there and sit down at the first one I see.


"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"

The taller mouse taps his chin, looking for all the world like he's immersed in comprehending a quantum physics equation. "I THINK so, Brain," he manages, "but


This computer dies too. Not even bothering to try turning it on again, I instead leap directly for the next computer.


"This is excruciatingly painful," muttered the Brain from beneath a large high-heeled shoe. Pinky, of course, began laughing.

"Gee Brain, I never thought you'd be such a—Troz—HEEL!" he guffawed as


...As the screen goes black, apparently. I hurl myself to the next computer.


"The same thing we do every night, Pinky—TRY TO TAKE OVER THE


Bloop. NEXT!


"The same thing we do every night, Pinky—TRY


Bleeeeeoop. MOVE DOWN!


"The same thing we do eve


WHEEEEEEEEooooooooooooohm. CLEAN CUP, CLEAN CU—wait, wrong story.


"The same thi


Whoooooooooooooooblup. Shuffle shuffle.


"The


It's getting rather monotonous by now, and, even as I'm about to make my futile attempt on the next computer, that one shuts off before I even sit down. And the computer after that, and the computer after that. To sum it up, within ten seconds every computer in the room has been shut down.

Well, all of them except one.

Sitting in the corner and looking like one of the huge full-room processors of the fifties is a giant computer, with numerous flashing lights and buttons all over it and wires poking out of the sides. It looks excessively powerful, like the sort of stuff that the government uses to plan the outcomes of military strategies—in short, the sort of machine that wreak all sorts of havoc in the wrong hands.

So, characteristically, I walk over and open a text document.


"Gee Brain, whaddaya wanna do tonigh


Suddenly I hear a rumbling sound, and I look up in sudden alarm. The monitor of the giant computer is shaking and spitting out steam, sparks flying everywhere. Instinctively I duck down beneath a laboratory swivel chair, trying to think happy thoughts. Unfortunately I'm too good at this, as my memory drifts over to the Pinky and the Brain episode "Brain Acres" and I start laughing hysterically as the supercomputer, in effect, blows up.

Immediately afterwards I hear that weird swishy sound of automatic doors opening, and I straighten up just in time to look sheepishly at the pair of mice dashing into the room.

"MY COMPUTER!" Brain cries, his bloodshot eyes wide as he runs over to the remains of the giant processor. Then, of course, he begins once more to glare at me. "You fiend! This computer was running a very intricate calculation that would have, when finished, provided me with the framework to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"

"Was it calculating the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?!" I chorus with Pinky, a fact which (when realized) causes us both to start laughing dementedly.

"It might as well have been," Brain shoots back, his fists clenching and unclenching as he fixes me with a look of pure and utter loathing. "After this computer discovered the true rate of the environmental decomposition due to global warming, I could have cowed Al Gore into submission! The world would have bowed before me!" Now he looks like he wants to sob with frustration, but would never admit it. "You ruined my PERFECT PLAN! That computer was IRREPLACEABLE! And you had to destroy my ultimate scheme because you wanted to write a FANFICTION!"

Suddenly my eyes light up. "Saaaaaay...that'd be a good idea for a FANF—"

I'm unable to complete my sentence, as a mechanical arm descends from the ceiling and grabs me by the back of my collar, whisking me over to the door where a mechanical foot follows through and literally kicks me out of the lab. I grumble, wincing at the pain in the affected area, and, grabbing my laptop, I limp away. Ehhhhh, it was a lost cause. I'll have to torment Brain some other night.

Suddenly I stop in my tracks, glancing up at the sky. Well, there is something else that I can write...


The short anthropomorphic platypus is at the end of his rope now, practically begging. "Go away. PLEASE!"

I don't even look up from my (miraculously re-powered) G3, even though splinters are digging into my knees from where I'm crouched on the tough wooden floor of the cabin. "It's just one fanfic, Edward!" I reply, typing furiously. "At least, to start with. Now, what should Lazlo do to you here?..."

Edward grabs me by the shoulders, shaking me back and forth vigorously. "GET THE HECK AWAY FROM ME!" he demands desperately, looking over my shoulder in an attempt to see how he can turn the computer off. Then his eyes widen. "Holy—DID LAZLO JUST HUG ME?!" His hands now relocate themselves to my neck. "WHAT THE HECK IS YOUR PROBLEM?!"

As can be expected, I'm very loudly cussed out and further throttled and soon become part of the Great Canon in the Sky. So, of course, this fic and any subsequent others are posted telepathically through the Pentagon computers.

...I'm pretty sure there was supposed to be a moral to this story, but I—Oh! Oh, yes! It's all right to aggravate mice because they'd have to break out heavy machinery to hurt you, but leave platypi alone because they're bigger and generally more angry. Yep, that's the moral. Either that or don't write fanfiction—who'm I kidding, that'd never be a good moral for a story. Unless Brain or Edward was writing it. Hehm...

(This story brought to you by the Board of Emotional Health, who would like to disclaim that, despite what "The Illustrious Crackpot" sounds like, the author was not abusing any illegal substances while writing this story. It's the sad truth, but Crackpot is like this naturally.)

(This story also brought to you by Edward Platypus, who suddenly feels spiritually fulfilled.)