Original idea and song by Over Master
Story by Ack Sed
Makie and the Brain
Makie (sitting before a small cage placed on her nightstand): "Tell me, Brain-sama... What are we going to do tonight?"
Mouse in the cage: "The same thing we do every night, Makie... Try to take over the world!"
Makie and the Brain
They're Makie and the Brain
Yes, Makie and the Brain
One is a genius, the other's just plain
He is egomaniacal, she's very nice
Their series have been spliced
They're wacky
They're Makie and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
Before each night is done
Their plan will be unfurled
By the dawning of the sun
They'll take over the world
They're Makie and the Brain
Yes, Makie and the Brain
Their twilight campaign
Is easy to explain
To prove their lousy worth
They'll overthrow the Earth
They're wacky
They're Makie and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain - KAWAII!
THE TOKYO TITCHYCLYSM
Chapter 1
In retrospect, she shouldn't have given him the magic pill. Before this he'd just been her pet mouse - now he was so... bossy. She sort of sympathised. If she'd been made super-smart, a couple of inches tall and confined to a cage, she'd be a little ticked off too.
But his plans...
"Tonight, we shall set into motion a plan so deviously subtle, yet so daring, that my name shall be spoken with awe forever more!"
Makie sighed. "All right Brain. Can you help me with my homework again? Ooh, I rhymed!"
Brain glared at Makie. "Of all the owners I could have had, it had to be you. You are not taking me seriously!"
"I am, I am! It's just I reeeally need to pass this maths test and you're so smart that it'd only take a minute..." Smart or not, flattery always got somewhere with him.
"I suppose I ''could'' spare the small amount of time it would take to demolish your teacher's pretensions of grandeur. Very well! Open my cage and hand me my pencil!"
Makie unlatched the cage door to let Brain jump out onto the bed as she took out her homework. The first time he'd walked upright, she'd thought he was doing a trick just for her, and had squeed and clapped excitedly. The shock of hearing him say, "I am NOT your performing dog." had ended that. (It was still cute.)
The Brain (as he'd insisted upon being called ever since) took the proffered pencil stub and began muttering over her homework. "Quadratic equations - your teachers are even more moronic than I suspected. Calculus and trigonometry are true tools! But here is how it goes..." Makie tried her best to follow along as he explained. The others in 2-A wondered why she had so much time for gym - it was like her homework did itself lately.
The dreaded homework was seen to within fifteen minutes. Now for the other part, the part that exhausted her and was the real reason for her erratic grades. The way he explained it, a world under him did seem nice, and he wasn't malicious, not like Haruna could be... it was just she couldn't see how a mouse could rule the world. She kept this to herself.
The Brain began to pace across the bedspread. "Makie! What is the current price for a square metre of land in downtown Tokyo?"
"Uum... a lot?"
"Indeed, Makie, it is 'a lot', but not as much as you would think, after the real-estate bubble. According to my calculations, it is due to rise appreciably with the new influx of second generation Japanese returning to set up business in their home country. If I buy it, they will take advantage of the cheap land, their businesses will flourish and drive up prices, then I shall sell it off to the highest bidder and utilise the money to make the first step on my path to WORLD DOMINATION! Are you with me?"
"Yes Brain!", said Makie, carried along by his enthusiasm. "Only... I don't have the money to buy land, and I'm not sure a 14-year-old girl can own property legally."
"Bah - a mere trifle. Never fear, for this is the most brilliant part. In order to acquire enough yen to buy land in Tokyo and corner the market in the most lucrative real estate area in the world, I shall steal the Tokyo Tower!"
Oh boy.
OoOoOo
Even sneaking out of the door, bundled up in her darkest hoodie and grey jogging bottoms, was making Makie's heart pound so loudly she was sure the guard on duty downstairs could hear it, and she wasn't even in the university labs yet. Hinata-san always fell asleep around this time, but she could be merciless if you were caught after curfew; in her opinion, the only reason any girl would want to sneak out was to meet a BOY.
Makie wondered if she could get away with telling her the truth: working towards a better tomorrow by helping a superintelligent mouse steal and ransom the Tokyo Tower. She didn't quite believe it herself.
She looked over the plan in the glow of the emergency lights.
1. Sneak into Hakase's lab and 'borrow' necessary components.
2. £*%$
3. PROFIT
"Ah, Brain-sama," she whispered, "I'm not so sure I understand this plan."
The Brain poked his head out from under her hood. "Why? I have simplified it to a level that even your intellect can comprehend. Besides, the second step is simply too complicated to summarise. It is your job to convey me there so I can begin my work."
She sighed (quietly) and leaned over the banister with a little mirror to confirm that Hinata-san was asleep. Lucky! Her heartbeat dropped to something approaching normality. She swung over the banister and hung by her fingertips, dropping down from the first floor and landing on the heavy carpet with barely a thump. They approached the front desk, where Brain scuttled across to the security system and tapped in the code; it blinked off. Brain ran up her arm and into her hood again.
Stopping only to change her slippers for her second-best trainers from her pack, she opened the door and slipped out.
Down in the university campus, Makie nonchalantly leaned against the wall beside the door of the engineering lab, as if resting from a run. Only someone who was looking for it would notice the flash of white as it scrabbled up the wall and into the ventilation shaft. Makie jogged off round the corner then hid in one of the bushes.
Ten minutes of waiting nervously was rewarded by a buzz as the door opened and the security camera light winking out.
It was eerie inside, the dim sodium glow of the street lights outside bathing everything in an orange hue that only served to deepen the shadows.
Therefore it was quite understandable that Makie would shriek when she felt tiny little claws touch her ankle and start clambering up.
"AAAmmmph", said she, clapping her hand over her own mouth.
"SSSHH!", hissed the Brain (for it was he), climbing up to her shoulder. "Let us hope your woollen-headed incompetence has not alerted the security guard."
They waited, listening for any approaching footsteps and subsequent trouble. Nothing.
The Brain and Makie breathed a sigh of relief. "Fortune smiles upon us for once. This way!", he said, pointing down the corridor. She followed obediently.
OoOoOo
Deep in the tangled chaos of Hakase's personal lab, an otherwise normal red-haired Japanese schoolgirl was assisting a small white figure half the height of a pencil in twisting the arm of particle physics till it gave them its lunch money.
At least that's how he explained it. To Makie it looked like he was soldering a random assortment of circuit boards into a handheld vacuum cleaner.
The Brain had surveyed the laboratory with something approaching awe, exclaiming "Where have you been all my life!" before he could catch himself. Setting to work, he'd begun directing Makie to fetch him parts from the drawers, to hold this, or solder that when he needed more strength (there were already a couple of burns straight through the sleeve of her hoodie, dammit).
"Rare-earth ring modulator" he said, holding out a paw.
"Uhh... uh..." Searching for a specific part in the wire and capacitor haystack was an exercise in futility by the light of the single work lamp. She spun around, weathervane-style, hoping her bewilderment was obvious enough to warrant divine inspiration or a hint from Brain-sama - whichever came first.
"Fifth drawer, green clear-fronted cabinet, above my head", recited Brain.
Not for the first time Makie wondered at exactly how smart Brain-sama was. She dug out a little metal doughnut wired to a board and handed it down.
"Thank you. Almost... finished... there!" He soldered the last connection into place and stood back to survey his work.
"Yayy, Brain! Err... what is it?"
Gesturing towards the finished article, he proclaimed, "Can't you see? THIS is a Graviton Emitter with a Lossless Ratio-preserving Dimensional Trap and I, I have succeeded in minaturising it!"
"You still haven't told me what it does, Brain."
The Brain looked disgruntled. "Your education leaves everything to be desired. Simply, it blah word dimensionally chatter chatter jargon to create doodle bunk yah and reversibly shrink any solid object with science words."
Makie hadn't understood half of that, but she had caught 'shrink'. "Oh I get it! It's a shrink ray!"
The Brain sighed. "Yes, if you wanted to reduce this to the level of flying saucers made of paper plates, it is indeed 'a shrink ray'." Makie had the impression he was waiting for her to ask, so...
"Can I see if it works?"
Offended (though not really) he said, "Of course it works! Help me stand it in this vice, and aim it at that chair."
Makie lifted it into the vice; the Brain inserted the battery pack, set the switch on the body to 'Suck' and hit the power.
Capacitors whined, then a yellow beam shot out of the nozzle and struck the chair; with a pop of inrushing air, it shrunk down to doll-house size.
"YES! Now witness the firepower of this fully-armed and operational battlestation!", cried the Brain.
"What?"
Embarrassed, he looked down at his feet. "Er... *cough*... I, er, always wanted... to say that."
Makie giggled. It was kind of cute to see him act all abashed.
Recovering his poise, he directed Makie to remove the GELRDT ("Okay, how do I work the Gerrdut... Gelurdoot... can't we call it a shrink ray, Brain-sama?" "...Fine.") from the vice and try to restore the shrunken chair.
Makie flipped it to 'Blow', aimed and fired. With a crack/whoosh, it grew to its original proportions. "Hooray! Hail Il Palazzo!"
The Brain looked confused.
"Hehehe - I felt like joining in."
"Er, well... thank you. Now come, child! We must get back to the room and prepare for stage two before the ogre of the dormitory awakens!"
Makie put the shrink ray into her pack while Brain climbed to her shoulder. "Hinata-san isn't an ogre, she's nice! Just a little... protective, that's all."
"If you say so. I still say her cat runs off because she tries to eat him."
"Brain-samaa..."
They hurried out of the building and back to the dorm, bickering all the way.
This not-serious-at-all story grew out of a thread game to come up with 101 ideas for Negima fics. It's been on the back burner for quite a while - I'm posting in the hope it'll motivate me to finish it. :-) The feel of it is deliberately closer to PATB than Negima, as it's a lot simpler to mentally translate moving cartoons to text than a visually crowded manga page. Plus, it's funnier.