"The Earth is safe! I did it, GIR! Now let's go destroy it." —Zim from the hysterical NickToon Invader Zim

Chapter 11

The End (aka "The Inevitable Conclusion")

A swelling orchestral theme. The blindingly bright lights glaring off the lenses of hundreds of cameras, film and still. The deep red carpet, the elegant podium with a microphone perched on it, the rows upon rows of spectators inside the grand ceremonial dome-shaped building.

And, quite possibly the most important feature of all, the great gold disc that the Brain was now holding in his trembling pink palms.

"An' so," spoke a formally-dressed man with gray hair, largish ears and a melancholy look to his eyes, who shall forthwith be referred to as "Mr. President" to avoid any lingering lawsuits, "I declare Mr. Sherlock Brain the official Savior of the Human Race™, as well as The Greatest Detective To Ever Live™ an' a pretty darn nice guy."

Cheers erupted throughout the huge crowd while the Brain beamed victoriously, standing on a high stool set by the podium and still fully outfitted in his Sherlockian clothes. Behind him, Pinky blew his nose rather forcefully, wiping his eyes and wringing both fists in joy.

Across from them on the stage, Foyle and the rest of the Amblin University staff rose to their feet, dressed in their finest clothes and applauding vigorously. Professor Columbus had even managed to scare up a tuxedo for the occasion, and, though it was a bit wrinkled, at least it wasn't covered with oil stains.

"Because of your astute powers of observation, and your admirable bravery," Foyle began, bending down and placing a laurel around the Brain—since it was several times bigger than the mouse, the best he could do was put it down on the stool to frame him—,"that platoon of automatons was halted in time to prevent any casualties, as well as any further damage to the school."

This last article contained a hint of sarcasm; half of the campus had been utterly demolished, and it was only by virtue of a federal grant that they'd be operating again within a period of ten years. However, the saving of lives always seemed more impressive than the saving of buildings, so Sherlock Brain was still heralded as a hero.

"Thank you very much, sir," Brain acknowledged with forced modesty, bowing his head a little while his crooked tail twitched impatiently. "But, truly, I was only doing what any other superintelligent lab mouse would in my position."

OK, some forced modesty.

The Amblin staff returned to their seats accompanied by even louder applause, and Hercule Yakko, Wakko, Dot and Duck Twacy stepped up to the podium. Twacy had his hands stuck deep within his trademark trenchcoat, glaring at the Brain with fire in his eyes. "THAT THSHOULD BE ME UP THERE, BUB!" he thspat, pointing an accusatory finger at the diminutive mouse, then whirling around to face the audience. "Me! ME!! I'M THE GREATESTHT DETEC-A-TIVE IN THE WORLD! THSHOWER ME WITH GLORY!"

And so they did. In the form of tomatoes.

While an indignantly cussing Duck Twacy was hauled out of the building by security, Hercule Yakko and company trounced up to the podium, fully clad in brightly-colored lederhosen. Wakko immediately extended his hand, of which the Brain could only grasp a forefinger, and they did their best to achieve some form of handshake. "Heeey, nice work on savin' the world!"

Dot sidled sneakily up to the stool, placing her hand beside her mouth and speaking in a low voice. "We're still mad about you leaving Animaniacs, though."

The Brain pretended not to know what she was talking about, and soon he completely forgot about it as Hercule Yakko brought up a more pressing matter. "Ehhhhhh...and what was that thing the gerbil was talking about?" he prompted slyly, making sure to speak directly into the microphone in as loud a voice as he could. "Something about you trying to take over the world?"

All eyes and ears were on the Brain now, and he began to sweat nervously. This wasn't helped when Pinky decided to step in for him, stretching onto his tiptoes to be better picked up by the mic. "Ohhhh, that's wha' we do every night! Y'see, first Brain asks if I'm ponderin' what he's ponderin', an'—"

"AHEM!" interrupted Brain, surreptitiously stomping on Pinky's foot and flashing a wide, nervous smile to try and cover up this action. "What Dr. Pinkston means, of course, is that we, eh, usually play a BOARD GAME where the object is to take over the world. Heh...we, um, used to play against Snowball, and apparently he's still mad that he always, uh, lost." Mopping his forehead with his deerstalker, Brain decided that a swift change of the subject would be fortuitous at this point. "SO! What did befall Snowball, at any rate?"

Hercule Yakko rubbed his chin, still grinning widely over the Brain's previous predicament, and deliberated before giving his answer. "Aaaaaahhh...there weren't any small enough cells in Guantanamo, so we just stuck him in a pet shop instead. It seemed kinda appropriate."

This, at least, Brain couldn't help but laugh hysterically at. But he quickly coughed and pretended he hadn't, as this wasn't exactly the behavior expected of someone who's being congratulated for saving the world. Pinky was able to giggle freely, however, as nearly everyone present had already decided that he was just an idiot.

Seeing as they'd fulfilled their duty, Yakko, Wakko and Dot skipped back to their seats, sitting neatly on them in an extremely coordinated fashion and then proceeding to make faces at everyone unlucky enough to glance in their direction.

By now, everyone was clamoring for a speech from the Brain. They wanted to hear the great Sherlock Brain speak, to tell them...something, whether it was a reflection upon the whole saving-the-world process, or a dissertation on cottage cheese, or even his memoirs, which would doubtless seem very boring to everyone except the old Kids' WB crowd. It didn't really matter what he said, as long as they liked it.

And Brain knew exactly what it was that he was going to say.

"Greetings, men and women of the world," he began, enunciating as clearly as he could. The microphone was graciously removed from the podium and placed on the stool beside him, allowing his voice to be picked up more easily. Brain cleared his throat, trying to ignore the encouraging noises that Pinky was making behind him. "As you well know, I am Sherlock Brain."

This statement was greeted by cheers from all assembled in the vast dome. Of course he was Sherlock Brain! That was who they'd come to see, and they were having a marvelous time. As well, if that was all he really had to say, they could go home that much sooner.

Brain coughed again and tapped the microphone, a little fed up with all the ceremony. He wanted to be ruler of the world as soon as possible. "Yes, yes, thank you. I fully appreciate your adulation. In fact, I appreciate all of you, and wish to protect you from further threats such as the one posed so recently by Snowball."

Another loud cheer, and several whistles. The world's population liked being appreciated, and they liked having someone to look out against bad guys so they wouldn't have to do anything about actually saving themselves. In fact, they liked this idea so much that they didn't notice the thin note of disgust buried within the Brain's intonation of the sentence. Of course he didn't like them. He just wanted to rule them.

"However, as I'm sure that you have all noticed, I possess a mind many times more powerful than those of most other living creatures." A pause. "Except perhaps that of Ken Jennings." With that slightly obscure joke out of the way, Brain went on. "As such, it might 'occasionally' be difficult to comprehend all that I'm in the process of doing as I toil on a case. So I must ask for your combined faith in me, to trust to MY discretion, so that I may better take ov—protect the world!"

The crowd was practically eating out of his hands. After all, he'd just told them that he liked them, and they were all too eager to go for a deal that ensured their safety at the lowest cost.

"SHERLOCK BRAIN!" they chanted. "SHERLOCK BRAIN! SHERLOCK BRAIN!"

"YAAAAAAAAY, BIG-HEADY GUY!" cheered Pinky, who had apparently forgotten everything in his life up to that moment. "YOU C'N DO IT!"

Raising his fists triumphantly (and trying to resist the urge to whack Pinky with one of them), Brain faced the crowd. "WELL, WORLD?!" he boomed. "DO YOU DECLARE YOUR UNDYING ALLEGIANCE TO SHERLOCK BRAIN, THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE?!"

"The WHAT?"

A hush fell over the audience as a thin brown mouse, maybe half an inch taller than Pinky, emerged from beneath a seat in the front row. He scurried up the leg of the stool the shocked Brain was standing on, and, though the new mouse had a Disney logo covering his face for copyright protection, it was quite clear who he was based on his auburn coat-cape and the matching deerstalker perched on his head.

"I beg your pardon!" spat the mouse in a distinctly British-accented voice, towering over the Brain and poking a finger into his chest. "My name is Basil of Baker Street, and only I am 'THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE™'! I'm suing you for copyright infringement!"

"I-it was unintentional!" Brain stammered, backing up towards Pinky for support. This was never a good idea, a fact that was proven yet again as Pinky merely continued playing with his umbrella. "I-it just slipped out, I can't understand why I didn't catch it..."

Basil furrowed his brow in anger, or he would have if you could have seen it past the concealing insignia. "As soon as my lawyer arrives—"

"He shall be required to deal with mine," interrupted a smooth voice, not totally unlike Basil's or even Professor Foyle's. An extremely fat man with a bushy black beard stepped out in front of the podium, startling nearly everyone in the building as he removed his beard and a large pillow stuck inside his white collared shirt. Instead of the fat man there was now an extremely thin one, with high cheekbones and dark hair, immaculately dressed in a suit and tie. He stuck a clay pipe into his mouth but didn't light it for societally-friendly reasons. "For you are both infringing upon my copyright. I am SHERLOCK HOLMES."

"Sure it's not Basil Rathbone?" interrupted Pinky, rubbing the back of his neck confusedly. "Poit!"

Once again he was ignored.

"Violating your copyright?" scoffed The Great Mouse Detective, crossing his arms. "You're within the public domain!"

"Are you inclined to wager upon that?" Holmes countered.

And, before anybody had quite figured out what was going on, the two were in a fistfight. Yes, a six-foot-tall literary character from the late nineteenth century was in a fistfight with a four-and-a-half-inches-tall animated rodent from the mid-eighties. On international television.

This was clearly going to impede Brain's plans.

"Cease, gentlemen!" he pleaded in a strained voice, trying to shout over the din as the two began a lively wrestle. (It was at the same time funny and pathetic that Holmes was without the upper hand.) "Please!" Brain turned to the security guards. "SEPARATE THEM! I HAVEN'T FINISHED!"

The security guards didn't hear a word he said, as they'd just tugged on huge T-shirts with the legend "WWF RULEZ!" emblazoned across the front, and they were cheering and pumping their fists. Totally at a loss for words, the Brain turned back to face the audience—

They too were similarly attired, hooting raucously as the action heated up in front of the podium and placing bets on the winner. Even Mr. President himself and the staff of Amblin University were among the revelers, waving pennants and screaming utterly ridiculous phrases at the top of their lungs. Columbus himself fully sprinted down to the stage, pulling an inflatable wrestling ring he'd just happened to have in his pocket and beginning to blow it up as Professors Phance and Cream managed to guide the fray inside the roped boundary.

"WAIT!" Brain called, grabbing the microphone and broadcasting the appeal across the entire expanse of the dome. "LISTEN TO ME!"

Several members of the audience did look up, but they didn't have very pleasant expression on their faces. "Hey, who's the shorty bustin' up the action?" demanded a lady with a large brown bouffant hairdo.

"BOO! GET HIM OFF THE STAGE!"

"SCRAM, YA LITTLE RUNT!"

Several of the spectators had now started to advance on him, cracking their knuckles menacingly. "You can't do this to me!" protested Brain, trying to back away. "I'm Sherlock Brain! I saved the world!" Desperate, he took in a deep breath and yelled at the top of his lungs. "SECURITY!!"

This time they heard him, forcing their way through the mob and pushing people back into their seats. Then they grabbed Brain by the tail, carried him to the door and calmly kicked him straight out of the building.

Grumbling furiously under his breath, Brain peeled himself off the sidewalk some fifty feet from the dome-shaped building and dusted himself off, batting at one of his ears until the bones snapped back into their correct places. He groaned and rubbed his skull, then, noticing his deerstalker cap lying on the pavement nearby, gave it the most disgusted look he had ever given to anything on the face of the planet, and he was quite possibly the overlord of disgusted looks. Then, with a grimace, Brain removed his entire Holmes costume, dropping it unceremoniously down a drainpipe. He had been so close. SO CLOSE.

Perhaps this was a fanfiction after all.

Gritting his teeth angrily, Brain started down the road to Acme Labs in preparation for some vengeance. "Pinky," he began scathingly, "do you know what I'm going to do to that 'Illustrious—"

A double-take. Pinky wasn't there.

Brain scurried about in a panic for a moment, trying desperately to spot his companion, then with a start his superior mind kicked into gear and he instead glared at the dome-shaped building with his flighty sidekick still inside. "PINKY!"

Within a moment, the door to the domelike building flew open and the security guards reemerged, this time giving the boot to a taller mouse wearing a false mustache, who flew through the air with hysterical laughter and landed with a splat beside the Brain.

"Hi, Brain! Troz!" he giggled, pushing himself to his feet and doing a stationary jig for good measure. "Oh my, that was fun-fun silly-willy! I mean, flyin' through the air like that?" He twirled his miraculously unbroken umbrella in a flight of whimsy. "Isn't life grand?"

Brain just gave him a withering look, then, with a slight sigh, started gruffly off in the general direction of Acme Labs. "I suppose that's what I get for holding my inauguration as ruler of the world in a roller-skating rink," he muttered. "Cursed spelling bees, it was the only available building...but ah well. Come, Pinky, we must return to the lab to prepare for tomorrow night."

The taller mouse fell into step behind him, still staring enthralled up at his umbrella as he opened and closed it. "Why, Brain? What're we gonna do tomorrow night?"

The Brain grimaced, forcing out the distasteful last remark. "Elementary, my dear Pinky." Then, in his normal booming tones: "TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"

"They're Pinky,

They're Pinky and the

Brain Brain Brain Brai—"

"AND STOP SINGING!"


Epilogue

Inside a small, badly-lit pet shop somewhere on the outskirts of Burbank, a hamster in his cage was brooding. "Ohhh, you'll pay for this, Brain," he seethed, bloodshot eyes narrowing in hatred. If only that worthless, self-absorbed little rodent hadn't succeeded in angering him to the point of irrationality, then he might have been ruler of the world right now. Instead, he was sitting on top of a pile of rotting, moldy straw beneath a leaky water bottle, and the smell was already starting to get to him.

At least, he mused, it was a reasonably secure headquarters. No one would suspect a hamster in a seedy pet store of thinking up plans for global domination. After all, he could avoid adoption quite easily, for, even as handsome (in his own mind) a creature as he was, nobody would buy a hamster who bit.

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!" squealed a high-pitched girl's voice from somewhere behind Snowball. He whirled around in shock to see a pale-skinned young girl with bouncy red Shirley Temple curls peering into his cage with wide eyes. "LOOKIT THE FUNNY FUZZY-HEAD! HE'S SUCH A CUTE LITTLE FURRY-BURRY AMINAL!" The girl started to dance around excitedly, clasping her hands together and knocking violently into every cage in her immediate area. "I WILL HUG HIM AN' SQUEEZE HIM AN' LOVE HIM 'TILL HE'S JUST AN ITTY-BITTY PILE OF BONES!"

It was then that Snowball noticed that the seemingly harmless decoration set in her blue-green bow was a hamster skull, and even through his golden fur he paled considerably.

"Oh dear."

THE END


With an exhilarated cry, I post the final chapter of my long-delayed masterpiece on and close "Internet Explorer". Yes. YES!! (I feel like the Brain by this point, though I very sadly am unable to imitate his voice as well as I'd like.) AT LAST IT'S OVER!!

"CRACKPOT!!

...Not QUITE over.

Poking my head innocently out of the bathroom, I respond, "Yeah?"

Even from fifteen feet away I can feel the weight of the Brain's furious glare, and my shoulders hunch up a little. Though I still manage to type all this up before casually returning to the table whereupon the two mice are perched. Pinky is still in his Watson attire, very reasonably more interested in his umbrella than in me, but Brain's pure outrage is kind of hard to ignore.

"WHY DO YOU DERIVE SUCH PLEASURE FROM TORMENTING ME?!" he demands in a half-pleading voice. A much as he hates to admit it, when I hold the computer, I hold the power. "YOU'LL NEVER SEE A PENNY OF PROFIT! NOR WILL YOU ACCOMPLISH ANY GREATER GOALS!!"

"Not true," I reply—honestly, for once. I open up my PowerBook again, bring up a certain webpage and then hold my laptop out to the Brain, though not too close in case he feels violent. "The gratification comes from the reviewers, whose praise I don't really deserve but feeds my ego anyways. (Thanks, guys!) And the fact that I FINALLY delivered the story I promised to Welshrose so long ago."

Here Brain makes some choice remarks which many of the readers would find personally offensive, so I ignore him and type up this explanatory paragraph instead.

"But it WAS fun, Brain," Pinky interrupts absently, still staring at his umbrella. In fact, he stares at it so intently that he doesn't realize that he's leaning backwards and so falls with a WHUMF onto his back. "'Cept that part with Snowball...'at was a li'l scary. Poit!

An expression of either pity or agreement crosses Brain's face, but he soon replaces it with more indignance. "And what about that 'foreign language' nonsense?! That made absolutely no sense and contributed little to the plot—WHAT THERE WAS OF ANY!"

This is an empty jibe. Even I, my own biggest critic, know that there WAS, in fact, a plot. "I got most of those from an incredibly entertaining book titled The Insult Dictionary. They're for another contest. ...Even though no one ever entered that first one. Anyhow, if anyone can translate at least three of those statements, or one plus Pinky's outburst in chapter 3 (which you'd have to sound out phonetically and actually speak the language to know, I think), then they win their choice of a cameo in one of my upcoming fanfics or a request for a drawing on my webpage, which can be found by clicking the 'homepage' button on my FFN profile."

Pinky's attention has actually left his umbrella by now, and he's now studying my computer instead. "It's AMAZIN' how fast you typed that whole thing up."

Brain's eye twitches. "I don't care HOW fast you type!" he snaps, shaking a fist threateningly at me. "I ORDER YOU TO DESIST WRITING FANFICTIONS ABOUT US!!"

"You'll get your wish...for a while." I sigh, deciding that putting my laptop down on another table is much more comfortable than balancing it on my knee. "I'm taking a break from the 'Pinky and the Brain' category. Unless I come up with some nifty ideas for oneshots." My expression becomes mischiveous á la Yakko Warner. "Y'know, I've got this whole loooong list at home of story ideas for you two..."

Apparently Brain thinks he can sensibly talk me out of this—and apparently he "don't know me vewy well, do he?". "Crackpot," he begins through gritted teeth, "these rambles are utterly pointless, no matter HOW much gratification you receive from 'reviewers'. There is absolutely no reason that ANY of us should partake in fanfictions. EVER. AGAIN."

I shrug, then gesture at a calendar and clock off in a corner. "But Brain, you just did months' worth of work executing a plan in the space of one night."

("Really more like 'in the space of nine months', though," Pinky remarks, breaking the fourth wall of the fourth wall, but thankfully Brain doesn't hear him.)

"And now you know that becoming the next Sherlock Holmes wouldn't help you to ACTUALLY take over the world," I continue. "So I really saved you time!"

Brain's eyes widen, and his ears twitch a little. "I—" he begins, then snaps out of it. "IT IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE! REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THIS PROPERTY!"

Uninterested in being physically kicked out again, I retrieve my Thin Man movie and hurry out of the lab, managing to type up this paragraph as I do so. I can leave 'em alone for a while. It'll catch them off-guard for when I return.

THANKS FOR READING, EVERYONE!