Daria could feel the effects of a pizza-fed adolescence as she sprinted toward the car, shaking her pursuers by a grandiose distance of one yard. Turning the ignition, she could see the old man trotting behind her, at the complete mercy of the wave of grey following. To her horror, that was no metaphor; they had lined up in a sort of vertical phalanx, crashing and crawling cohesively amid the unkept grass. She waited for them to spill over onto the pavement-what was some mouse blood on her tires for her safety? She didn't have to wait; with disbelieving eyes, she witnessed at least a thousand more emerge from the street in front of her. Strangely, Heinz was nowhere to be seen. Better the lack of a vehicular manslaughter charge for her. She was now surrounded by a veritable sea of mice. But it was it to be conquered? Daria had no time for questions.

She floored it.

Instant roadkill feels pretty smooth, she thought. How am I gliding over so many carcasses? The Beetle slowed to a halt, conveniently in the same direction as the mice moving by her. Great. I'm not running over them. They're running under me. The car moved ahead at a snail's pace, like a funeral barge to the bonfire. Somehow, she felt that comparison was much too apt. But, if impending death was awaiting her, she was going to have some fun with it.

She rolled down the passenger side window. "I for one welcome our new mouse overlords," she called.

"Do you?" a high voice answered back.

"GAH!" she cried, looking back to her left. Heinz Heilbronner was standing up against the driver's side window. Accordingly, a shed door lay open in the distance. That probably explained the hacksaw in his hand...shit.

"Oh, you will welcome us." It was coming from Heilbronner, but not. The red irises in his eyes lit up with the temerity of a cacodemon. "For the thousand years of you humans' existence, us mice have been crushed, gassed, shot..." His gaze, if it were really his, shifted to the three carriers in the passenger seat, and narrowed to the cats within. "...and hunted. I see you have some of the culprits there. Perhaps you could do us mice a solid. It'll make your extermination a bit easier, save you the pain of seeing you and the rest of your species crushed. Hand them over. Easy through that open window, huh?"

That window went up. "What makes you think you'd win if you killed all the cats around here? You'd still be cat meat in any other town."

"We're not going after cats in the long run. We're going after you. There are about ten thousand times our number in this one town, and we're carrying a goddamn Volkswagen. Once we pave the streets with your blood, people will take notice. Important people.Government people. More importantly, killable people. It's not a long way to D. C. from Lawndale, you know. But enough for exposition. How about some FORCE?"

Daria jerked back in her seat as he thrust the hacksaw through the driver's side window. He smiled leerily at her, as if he were about to grant her one imported straight from Glasgow. Hack! Hack! As she was carted slowly forward, he started to cut vertically down the window. So much for keeping his MO hidden, she mused. Wait, what would happen if I tried this? She took hold of the gear shift and put it firmly in reverse. Worth a try. She pounded on the gas, and she tore out of the mice's grip. Or most of them-Heinz's possessor cut into the Beetle's front trunk, slipping a hand into the hole as he supported himself on the side of her car. Of course, she thought, putting the car in drive. The mice were starting to file backwards, much faster than before. They lined the street now, but not the driveways, or the lawns for that matter. She laid waste to about thirty garden gnomes as she raced across the lawns, bypassing the horde at a good sixty miles an hour.

Where to go? A police station sounds good-no, they'll use that chance to off the bureaucracy. No emergency services. "Heinz" was starting to cut across the top of the window. Okay, I'm halfway to death at the hands of animals whose skulls are smaller than my pubic bone. Where do I go? Where do I g- An empty truck partially blocked the road ahead. She stepped on the brake, but still side-swiped it, the passenger side of her car grating against the truck's cab. The noise was brutal, like a laryngitic hobo flossing his teeth with sheet metal, but not the impact; only the outside was touched. She finally stalled. Something looked weird in her rear-view mirror, though. Strange, the mice stopped at that noise. Even the ones not directly behind the car. She set the car into high gear and started again. I have to find somewhere where that kind of noise gets emitted on a regular basis. She sped down a back road and headed for the other side of the city. I think I know.

Any other day, Daria would have had the civility to park in the driveway, but something about the madman (madmouse?) cutting away at the last side of her window denied her the ability. She drove onto the lawn of Casa Lane, parked passenger-side first against the stair, and leaped out, piling the carriers onto the stoop with her.

"Trent!" she called, knocking wildly. Heinz had taken notice, and was starting to move the car away, with help from the mice, who were starting to crowd upon the lawn behind him. "Open the hell up!"

Trent came to the door. "Hey, Daria. What brings you here ag-the hell?"

"Will explain in a moment," she muttered, ushering herself and the cats in. She checked the door again and grimaced; it was starting to buckle slightly. Damn hinge. "OK, long story short, I have to press my body weight against this door to prevent us from dying a horrible death, but just do what I'm about to tell you."

"Yeah," he motioned, absent-mindedly alarmed.

"Is that physically possible...?"

"JUST FREAKING GUN IT! Turn it up to eleven or something. Start playing and singing any Nickelback song in your repertoire. Got it?"

He nodded and descended into the basement. She could feel pounding against the door, could hear the unnerving chattering that species held so dear. A hacksaw emerged from the door above her head, then slid back out. "Trent, sometime today would be ni-" She was deafened by a cascade of badly tuned guitar chords, followed by Trent's over-amplified voice-a solid two on the Richter scale. He was reaching the second verse of "Photograph" (and both unfortunately and luckily for her, was singing it in the original key) when she decided to take a look through the newly-formed hacksaw hole in the door, against her better judgement. The car was far out of the way, but "Heinz" and the mice were dead still, the scratchy sound rattling through them to the point of paralysis.

Daria opened the carriers onto the porch. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Go out there and assert your dominance over those easily snatchable mice on the lawn there." The cats pounced upon them with glee.

Three hours later, Casa Lane's front lawn looked like it had seen the Charge of the Ultra-Light Brigade, a fact supported by the three cats' very distended bellies. The "music" was still sounding from within the house. Heinz was still standing still. Daria walked up to him and noticed the tail sticking out of his ear. She gingerly pulled out the mouse attached to it, larger than the rest. The red in Heinz's eyes disappeared, and he dropped to the ground, utterly tired from the trip. The extreme amount of crabgrass cushioned his fall. Daria took the mouse into the house and placed it inside the carrier (which was unoccupied; those cats weren't going anywhere soon).

"Trent!" she shouted. "That's enough!" The noise stopped. He paced upstairs and followed her to the carrier.

"I will not be silenced!" the mouse shouted out. "Are you listening to me?"

"Talking mouse," Trent said. "Not even Jerry could do that."

"Can't say that about the slapstick violence," replied Daria. "Hold on. Mr. Heilbronner!"

Heinz was rubbing his forehead as he lay on the ground. He eyed the field of blood and bones and flesh and scowled. "I'm sorry for what I did! It wasn't me, it was the-" He saw Daria standing above him. "Oh. They're gone, right? Are they gone?"

"The evidence is around you," she said. "Let's get you home."

"Is there any way I can repay you?"

She shrugged. "A good eighteen hours of sleep will be enough." He walked to the car as Daria and Trent made way for the carrier.

"So what are you going to report?" he asked.

"Uh...I never thought I'd say this, but I hate to deceive the public. But I'll just go with 'lack of evidence' for now."

"And this guy?" he asked, pointing at the mouse.

"I demand release at once!" it cried.

"Oh, don't worry, you," responded Daria, a smirk tracing its way across her face. "You'll be released. I just get to choose where."

A strange package arrived at the Taylor household. "Brian," said Steve, "it's for you."

Brian opened it in his room. Inside was a box, containing a mouse of what seemed to him as grade-A caliber. Attached to its tail was a note:

Dear Brian,

This is the mouse that killed your sister. I need not say more.

Daria

For the first time in his life, Brian experienced a strange feeling of conflict as he searched for the Bowie knife in his drawer.

THE END

Author's Note: So...yeah. In case you didn't spot it, this story was based off a gag in "A Tree Grows in Lawndale", involving the Lawndale Shopper, and more precisely, its editor (an eighty-year-old man who had to be rescued from his roof due to screaming mice "chasing him"). You can see where I came from there. Thanks for reading!