Welcome to the third and last part of the Chubby Head Trilogy! Today we focus on their first plot. I needed to upload this before the reboot. I hope it doesn't have any story about shoes or their first plots; canon has ruined my fics before :c
Given that the characters are still technically children, they may appear a little bit OOC, especially Brain. Keep in mind this story takes place right when his insecurities and repression are starting to take shape inside his little mind.
Also a quick note, ergot's components can be used to make some hallucinogenic drugs :3
The title of this fic is not a typo, it's a reference to a song by Tv on the Radio.
Enjoy!
"Do you remember the dancing plague of 1518? research suggests it was caused by a mix of hallucinogenic rye bread and mass hysteria. Their rye was contaminated with Ergot, a group of fungi of the genus Claviceps…"
Sometimes he wondered, how could such a dinky creature have such a deep voice? The tiny mouse was like two weeks old, he'd been intelligent for a week, and yet he had the voice and lexicon of an adult Canadian man. Go figure. Poit.
Despite this, he was probably Pinky's favorite mouse in the whole world! And the only other mouse he knew so far. He had just been relocated to the same cage, and Pinky was so happy to have a roommate! And a smarty-pants at that! Even if, zort, well... he didn't wear pants.
Maybe he could wear pants! Like tweed pants! Or those clown pants with funny shapes on them! He already had a red nose, narf! Maybe his new cage mate was a clown! He always used so many funny words with that deep voice of his! Like hysteria, or rye!
He didn't like that much the other rodent in the room, a golden colored hamster. He seemed bored and angry about everything. Right now, he sat nonchalantly outside the cage, listening, unimpressed, to the tiny chubby head mouse, who spoke with enthusiasm about rye (Haha, rye. Narf)
"I know about the dancing plague, we read about it together. Get to the point already!" The golden hamster's voice was even worse. His accent was so old and British! Why was he even British? Weren't they in California?
Of course he was considering his own Cockney accent, but at least he had a normal squeaky voice, like any other baby mouse.
If mice could normally talk, obviously.
Wait, he was getting distracted. The plan! Always the plan! Though he never knew exactly about the plan, or what the word "plan" actually meant, but when the other two talked about the plan, they'd laugh together, draw together, have fun together….
That's all he wanted, really, but they never let him tag along. So he would play on his wheel all alone, until he'd forget the reason he was sad in the first place.
He drove his attention back to the other two rodents on the opposite side of the cage.
The chubby head mouse was all fidgety. Oh, he wanted to impress Snowball so bad! He even asked his annoying cagemate for his crayons, and his plans had pretty colors. Irrelevant to science, perhaps, but maybe if Snowball found them aesthetically pleasing, they'd be friends again, like they were before the Gene Splicer made the hamster more intelligent than him, and well aware of that.
But if he proved his mousy worth, Snowball and him could rule the world together!
That was all he wanted, genuinely: to prove himself to Snowball and the world, in that precise order.
"Well, I was pondering, if we could isolate those hallucinogenic compounds so they can be absorbed subcutaneously, then we could put them inside shoes that we could sell the masses, making them susceptible to involuntary movement, eventually driving them to such an exhaustion point, they'll hand us over the world!" The tiny mouse celebrated. He turned the page of his giant notebook, where he had drawn a red shoe.
He was really proud of that drawing; he'd worked especially hard on it, putting special care to make it look really shiny. But the golden hamster clicked his tongue, the mouse's confidence deflating more with each click. Maybe his plan wasn't good enough.
"So, dancing shoes. You plan to take over the world with dancing shoes. Is that correct?" Snowball asked, in that sweet but condescending tone he used so frequently, ever since they had gone through the Gene Splicer.
That sweet condescension never failed to make his stomach churn.
"You… don't like it?" the chubby head mouse asked after a while. Even his cagemate was staring at them from a distance, sitting on his wheel with a faint look of concern on his face. Impossible, Snowball had told him his new cagemate wasn't smart enough to understand what was going on.
He was smart enough, and he was sad that the golden mouse rejected the drawings. Tiny chubby head was so polite when he borrowed his crayons! Poit.
"I mean, for a common mouse, I guess it's fine" Snowball shrugged "My dear… what was your name again? The one you chose"
"I am the Brain! Remember? Because I'm really smart now, and it attracts the ladies" Brain explained (and no, it never attracted any lady). The hamster raised his eyebrows.
"Oh I see you picked an ironic name. That's cute"
"It's not meant to-" Brain started
"I mean, if you want to take over the world with dancing shoes, you might as well take that moron of a cagemate you have and try it with him" Snowball snickered at such tomfoolery, but no one followed. Brain looked defeated
From a distance, Pinky told his only friend in the cage (a paperclip) that the golden hamster had a terrible sense of humor.
"You know what? Let's do that! I'll give you a chance, my ironically named friend, and let you try and execute that ludicrous plan of yours, with a little help from… your friend"
They both turned towards Brain's cagemate, who was spastically shouting nonsense words (Narf! Poit! Zort! Egad!). Brain frowned, Snowball smiled.
"With… him? Are you sure about that?" Brain asked
"A world leader must be resourceful." Snowball declared solemnly "Tell you what, if you manage to deliver me the world before tomorrow night, I'll let you be… Vice President of external affairs with Kuwait. Are you up to the challenge?"
Brain gasped, that was even better than being the Official Flusher of the Royal Toilet!
"YES, always! I'll do it! I won't let you down!"
Snowball gave him a rather nasty smile and walked away, making the mental note of wandering every now and then, just to see them fail miserably. Oh, suddenly a dull day had turned so interesting...
Once the hamster was gone, Brain turned to see his cagemate, who was scratching the insides of his ears with his paperclip friend. Somehow, the paperclip went from his right ear through his left ear, sending fun tickles down his spine, giving him the chortles.
"As I imagined, there's nothing but a void inside" Brain told no one in particular, before clearing his throat. His cagemate stopped his important affair and stared at him
"Oh, hi Coccyx!"
"Almost, but you're still a few body parts below. It's The Brain" the shorter mouse said "What are you doing?"
"Well, if I hit myself in my head, I see stars! So I asked Vincent to see if I had a galaxy within me, narf! But he says there's nothing inside!"
"Vincent is correct. You're…" what was his absurd little name? Another body part, he had accidentally named him... "Pinky, right?" The other mouse clapped and cheered. He remembered! And it was such a lovely name! Zort!
"Very well… Pinky. I assume you overheard my current situation, so I won't repeat myself. We need to take over the world, so I can prove Snowball I can rule by his side. We'll be making some dancing shoes that will make people dance nonstop, and when they're all exhausted, they won't mind if we take over the world!" He paused "Snowball and I" he added, lest the taller mouse get any weird ideas.
"Egad Cortex, brilliant!" Pinky clapped, and Brain ignored his misnaming because, well…
Snowball never thought his plans were brilliant.
"Really? You don't think it's dumb?" He asked, hopefully, his pink eyes shining bright as Christmas lights.
"Dumb? pffff" Pinky leaned against a pile of books, trying to look cool. Of course, he lost balance, pushing the books off the counter, causing a chain reaction that ended with a thimble covering his eyes
"Your plan is so brilliant, it blinded me! Vincent! Help!" Pinky shouted. Brain uncovered his cagemate's eyes and smacked him in the head with the paper clip.
Sometimes Snowball did that, and it felt good to be on the superior side for once. But instead of feeling humiliated, Pinky just laughed.
"There are the pretty stars again! Zort!" He sat on the floor and shook his head "There's only one problem, Knee: how are we gonna sell shoes inside our cage?"
Brain opened his mouth to at least correct his misnaming, but no sound came out. Snowball told him he wasn't smart enough to open his own cage. And Snowball was smarter, so maybe he knew best? He sometimes pondered just how true that was, but whenever he questioned the hamster, he'd play the victim; talk about how since they were alone in the universe, they had to stick together and be nicer to each other. Even though niceness in their relationship was usually a one way street.
"We… can't. Drat." he sighed. Defeated before even getting a chance to try. There was no way in hell Snowball would even let him be Vice Minister of Toilet Affairs. "I don't know how Snowball turns clips into keys, he won't teach me"
"You can't learn on your own?" Pinky asked. After all, his chubby head meant he knew lots of things, didn't it?
"Snowball doesn't want me to learn" Brain sighed and Pinky poited quietly.
"Do you do everything Snowball tells you to?" Despite the defiant question, there was no malice in the taller mouse's voice; if anything, mild amusement. "Well, that's too bad, isn't it? Vincent is a lot more flexible" He fiddled with the clip for a moment "Look! he's a duck now! Quack! Narf" He giggled.
The mishandled paperclip looked more like a… slightly bent paperclip than a duck. Still, the smaller mouse ripped it away from his hands before he even managed a second "quack"
"Gimme that." He grumbled, manipulating the iron clip "And if it concerns you, I do not do everything Snowball tells me to. I have my own autonomy. And it is I, The Brain, the one who'll take over the world!"
Having said this, he used the paperclip to open the cage, his ears twitching with the wonderful sound it made when it finally opened.
"And then hand it over to Snowball." he shrugged "We're associates, after all. Come, Pinky, we have a whole day ahead of us!"
The facts were these: They needed to buy a good supply of rye, look for the fungi that contaminated rye (ergot, called it Brain and Pinky took it as a temporary funny word. Ergot. Haha), extract its components, apply those to insoles and put those insoles inside shoes, so they could activate the components through a remote control. Easy peasy. And the first step on this plan was….
To get across the room, towards the phone on the other side.
Neither of them had been outside the cage that long, at least on their own. Brain was always behind Snowball, and Pinky…. well he didn't need to go out of the cage that much. He was happy with his wheel and Vincent and Mrs. Dryer Lint.
Brain looked around, looking for a way to get there easily. They were atop a relatively tall cabinet, and no drawer was open, so it was harder to climb down, and also he needed as much time as possible for the rest of the phases of this plan. So he planned quickly, taking a sheet from a notebook and folding it with precision.
"Come Pinky; we'll get there by air. Calculating the strength of that draft from the open window, my weight of [Redacted] and your mass of… how much do you weigh?"
"Oh, Bone, you can't just ask those things to a Lady!" Pinky faked indignance, flipping his hand
"I don't see any lady around here." The smaller mouse deadpanned, ignoring the indignant huff from his cagemate "So let's say you're like 2.75 grams. Using linear scales and whole numbers of metric units for length, area, volume and capacity, weight, angle, temperature, and time, we should be able to blah blah blah, big word, blah blah blah, really long and funny word..."
The fancy funny words weren't registering inside Pinky's head, but the intonation and rhythm felt almost like a song! And a sigh escaped him, so deep he felt dizzily out of air for a while. Oh, this chubby head sure was something! (besides, y'know, a funny looking mouse). He wasn't sure what was going on, but it felt nice.
"Come Pinky" The mouse said, holding his waist and pulling him along; even better "We'll fly!"
The two tiny mice jumped atop the paper plane, and a draft threw them off the counter.
For a moment, they soared.
Pinky took out Vincent so he wouldn't miss the fun.
"Look Vincent! They all look like tiny mice from here!" He said, pointing at their rodent neighbors on their cages
"They are tiny mice, Pinky, they're- Wait, I didn't take Vincent's weight into consideration!" Brain cried, and the moment he said so, the plane plummeted down
"Oh, what locomotion!" Pinky giggled as they fell with a soft thud (they were tiny, after all)
"This is a pain that will surely linger" Brain muttered, his face planted against the ground.
"That was fun fun silly willy, Appendix! You sure know how to get places! Not the telephone, but places!" Pinky quickly stood up and peeled his cagemate off the floor, laughing, but Brain didn't laugh along.
"You don't need to be sarcastic, Pinky" he said, with an angry pout on his face
"I wasn't being spastic. This is spastic: Narf! Poit! Zort!" he twitched with each nonsensical word
"Sarcastic, I meant…" Brain sighed "I know this was a failed attempt. Snowball is right, we should-"
Give up, he wanted to say, but the other mouse interrupted him
"Walk to the phone? Zort! Well, that would be better, wouldn't it?" Pinky spoke with a surprisingly gentle tone that probably no one had ever used with him before and he pondered why that made his eyes itch a little.
He looked down, otherwise he'd be ridiculed for showing feelings during a Plan, but to his surprise, the other mouse patted his head gently and offered him a smile that was equal parts extremely stupid and extremely kind. His eyes itched even worse.
"We can't give up! I know you'll take us out of here! And we'll sell lovely shoes and dance the night away like Cinderella!" The other mouse rolled his eyes, finally regaining control of himself thanks to that idiotic statement.
"I believe in you" Pinky declared simply, as if it was a universal truth, like gravity.
It made his stomach churn again, but this time in a nice way. It also made his seventeen facial muscles flex slightly, involuntarily making him smile, at least for a fraction of a second, before he corrected himself.
And it was good that they didn't give up, since getting to the phone didn't take as long as he anticipated. Pinky was in a better physical condition than he was, so he agreed to ride on the taller mouse's back, for the sake of the plan. The Plan, always the Plan, Brain reminded Pinky.
All he needed now was... to know what the word "plan" actually meant! Zort!
But so far, this was exactly what he wanted, to spend time with Chubby Head! This was so much fun! First, Chubby Head let him in charge of the phone, but his phone rights were terminated when he started gossipping with the secretaries of rye dealers. Then he was left in charge of separating the black seeds from the others, but he started eating them and laughing when the walls melted around him like chocolate; he was quickly terminated from that chore as well.
So in the end, he was relegated to designing the shoes and creating their disguises to go and sell them. That's when he had the most fun! That's all he wanted! To draw funny pictures, and to be next to Chubby Head who'd think out loud, and use his funny silly words, and say "YES!" every once in a while, and smile. He barely ever smiled. And Pinky made the mental note to make him smile as much as possible.
Hurray! A porpoise! Narf!
"Excellent Pinky! The modified Xerox machine is finally replicating our patented shoes! Do you know what that means?"
"We can't print in Magenta because we're out of Blue?"
"No. It means we're almost over, and there's still a couple of hours of sunlight for us to go and sell the shoes! Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so, Glottis, but where am I gonna get a pool big enough for my porpoise?"
"Wha-?" Brain exhaled "Pinky… no. This means we gotta get ready for our next phase! And stop calling me other body parts that are not The Brain"
"Right-O, Tonsil!" Pinky said, skipping a little bit, following his cagemate towards the lab exit.
A few minutes later, the two mice left, carrying a wagon filled with shoe boxes; Pinky dressed as a tiny version of Jackie Kennedy in her pink suit, and the Brain looking like a sleazy car dealer with tweed pants.
By the time both mice walked towards the street, a third rodent, the golden hamster, decided to sneak into their room, to check out on the couple of nitwits, maybe gloat a little bit. He was flabbergasted to find the cage open, the phone disconnected, crayons all over the place, leather scraps, and rye seeds everywhere.
"How the heck did they manage-?" He wondered out loud, rage boiling inside. He grabbed the first intelligent animal he found, a bored-looking gerbil with a paddleball, and slammed him against the bars of the cage
"You! Did you see two mice leaving their cage?!" He asked. The gerbil yawned
"Yeah, why?"
"Describe them!"
"Well, one was tall and the other one had a head… how to describe it?"
"Like a transgenic albino melon?" Snowball hissed. The gerbil chuckled
"Yeah! Like a transgi- a melon! Good description there, buddy"
Snowball tightened his grip until the gerbil squealed a little.
"I'm not your buddy. I demand you to tell me where they went."
"They left the lab" Snowball released him, and leapt towards the window. He had just missed them. A feral growl escaped him, his fist hitting the glass. There was no way Brain would conquer the world first!
But as his eyes darted across the room, he noticed one childish crayon drawing of a chubby mouse with hearts and rainbows, and that relaxed him a little, let him release the breath he had been holding.
The idiot was with him. There was no way the idiot could contribute to Brain's plan, which was already idiotic in and on itself.
Still, he put on a small raincoat and exited the lab, deciding to follow the two mice, just in case they got too far ahead of him.
0-0-0
The Brain didn't need any idiotic mouse to ruin his plans, he was perfectly capable of ruining them himself, thank you very much.
They had finally arrived to the suburbs, and knocked on their first door.
"Now look, Pinky, I'll blind these ignorant creatures with science! They'll buy anything from us!"
"Egad, Spleen, brilliant!"
"Brain, Pinky! B-r-a-i-n!" He slapped the other mouse with each letter "I honestly doubt your mental capacity is so infimum that-" The door opened and he cleared his throat, his smile big and artificial.
"Evening, sir!" He greeted. The man who opened the door wore a dirty shirt and didn't look friendly at all, but Brain didn't relent.
"I'm not interested in any religion" The man said flatly.
Brain chuckled and nudged Pinky, who laughed so hard he wheezed and fell to the ground, and Brain had to kick him discreetly to make him stop.
"We're not interested in enrolling you into any cult, sir, we wanted to talk to you about the benefits of dance! Did you know dancing is the best medicine? A study in the New England Journal of Medicine by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine discovered that dance can decidedly improve brain health! Yes! The study investigated the effect leisure activities had on the risk of dementia in the elderly-"
"Are you calling me crazy?" The man on the other side yelled.
"Unless you are considered elderly, which I don't think…"
"Oh, so you're calling me old and crazy! That's enough! You knock on my door unannounced, you try to suck me into some freaky religion of tiny albino people…" The man continued ranting, and Pinky pulled Brain's arm.
"Uhm…. Bladder?" he whispered.
"Quiet, Pinky. And it's The Brain"
"I think we're not welcome here. Poit, can't we try another door?"
"Don't be silly, Pinky, we just need to manipulate this nincompoop-"
"Nincompoop? Your grandmother was a nincompoop!" The man yelled and slammed the door on their faces before Brain even had the chance to tell him he never met his grandmother. So sad.
They didn't have better luck with the other doors they rang. Most of them didn't even have time to listen to that article by the New England Journal of Medicine! Impossible! How could they be so uninterested in their own bodies?
But he insisted, door after door. By the twentieth time, he didn't even realize when the door was slammed against his face. By the twentieth first, somehow he managed to enrage the woman on the other side so much (he just wanted her to know that dancing was a scientifically proven method for fat loss!) that she kicked him, and he landed on her cacti. Ouch.
Pinky ran after him, carefully removing the spines from his chubby head.
"This pain will linger, that's a fact" Brain sighed, while Pinky rubbed his head with a handkerchief.
"She was such a meanie! Zort! But fear not, Cerebrum, I'm sure the twentieth second time's the charm! Maybe if I knock on her door, and try to reason with her-"
After having twenty one doors slammed in his face, Brain was in no mood for Pinky's shenanigans.
"BRAIN, PINKY, BRAIN! Is that too difficult to say?! Is the concept of a simple bisyllabic word that hard to grasp?! Or do you have trouble identifying the only organ you DON'T HAVE?! PINKY! I DEMAND YOUR ATTENTION WHILE I'M BERATING YOU!"
"Sorry Br...onchus, I was too busy selling that lovely lady our shoes. What did you say?"
The tiny mouse growled, and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him violently
"MY NAME IS- wait what?"
"So do you prefer Wait or What? Narf, that's odd, I thought your name was Brain!" He chuckled "Oh, Waitwhat, that lady who kicked you out was actually so kind! Her name is Sophie, and she hopes the dancing shoes will help light up the spark! I told her a Zippo or a match would do the trick, but still she bought two pairs for her and her husband. Here!" He offered the money to the tiny mouse, who grabbed it with shiny Christmasy eyes, releasing him.
"Say, what were you getting so fussy about?" Pinky asked, fixing his wig
"Nevermind all that." he said, a diabolical grin growing over his face. Finally, he released all of the gloating that would probably choke him if he stayed quiet for a minute longer
"Alas, Pinky! All we need to do now is sell more of these, and soon the world will be OURS!" He gloated "Snowball's and mine!" he added, though this time he began to wonder if Snowball really deserved the credit for something that, in all honesty, was more Pinky's and his own doing.
He took out a tiny control from his pocket and showed it with a histrionic hand flip, then he ran towards a window and peeked through, followed by the taller mouse
"Let's test this. When I press this button, the hallucinogenic components of ergot will release and they'll start dancing uncontrollably! Once we make sure this works, we'll sell the rest, and collective hysteria will do its part, giving us the chance to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"
"Oh, goody! We're gonna have the best party ever! And we'll twirl and waltz 'til we collapse! Zort!" he clapped, draping to the floor, and the other mouse rolled his eyes
"We're not gonna be dancing, Pinky. It's them who will. In the meantime, we'll take over the world! I already told you" He explained, and pushed the button.
"I know, but I thought we wouldn't wanna miss all the fun, so I replaced our shoes for the dancematic ones!" Pinky said nonchalantly "See? Super comfy, just like I told that nice lady!" He flaunted the dainty red shoes he was wearing, and he might as well have told the other mouse he was selling him to the Rockefeller family to be their baby (Goo).
"You did WHAT?!"
"Well, you said you had a pain that would linger, and you told that other guy that dancing was the best medicine, so I thought you needed some of that medicine for your chubby head!"
"Pinky! Why didn't you tell me before I pressed the button?!"
"Poit! Well, Brain, you didn't ask" the mouse in drag replied with a shrug, as if it was obvious.
Brain stared at his own shoes, too stunned to notice his cagemate had finally said his name correctly.
"This is terrible! Do you know what this means?"
"That you should have listened to your ballet teacher Mrs. Agapov when she told you your sissones needed more work?"
"You can't blame me for my short stubby legs. No, Pinky! This means that in a matter of seconds I'll lose the Earth, Snowball's respect and my own dignity. And the worst part: I'm gonna get blisters!"
The response to this was a shocked "naaarf". Brain sighed, the oppressive feeling of defeat pushing his ears down.
"So what do we do now?" Pinky asked
"There's really nothing to do, Pinky, just dance our failed plan away. We will lose control of our hind legs in 5...4...3...2...1…"
"Happy new year! Zort!" The taller mouse embraced him, and he pushed away.
It started slow, with a subtle tapping of his feet. Then, a faint wobble. Desperate to regain control of his body, Brain fell to the floor, and looked at his feet shaking uncontrollably, making the task of removing those damned shoes a rather impossible one.
But Brain was as stubborn as his head was chubby. So he tried. Oh my god, did he try. He tried to remove the shoes. All the while, Pinky twirled elegantly around him, like he was a maypole and Pinky the May Queen.
Feeling more frustrated by the second, he sat over his feet, hoping his weight would overpower the involuntary movement, but soon the rhythm and vibrations traveled through him, to the point where his shoulders started shimming to a mambo only he could hear. He let out a tiny "Nyaah!" and stared at his cagemate in despair.
"Pinky, what do we do now? We're gonna dance till we die!"
The other mouse smiled at him, in the middle of an elaborate sissone (which he did perfectly, by the way, and in high heels. Show-off.)
"The way I see it, Brain, there's nothing to do! Poit! Just… dance!" He cheered, and offered his paw to his desperate partner, who shook invisible maracas with a contrited expression.
Brain looked at his cage mate, then at his feet, then at his partner again. He had failed, that was as certain as the Sun. Snowball was right, he was a failure.
But then again… it had been fun. Honestly, it was the most fun he had ever since his genes got spliced.
So he took his partner's expecting paw.
"Ah, what the heck. Let's dance." He sighed, and his partner cheered, quickly pulling him inside a tight embrace and a mix of tango and waltz (A "wango", Pinky called it. Or was it a "taltz"? Poit).
Boy, did they dance. If you had seen through the window, and you happened to live in Burbank, California, you might have seen them. Two white mice in tiny clothes, dancing the night away, to a rhythm only they could hear. And, like Pinky said, it was Fun, fun silly willy! Narf!
0-0-0
He was awake, but he didn't feel like opening his eyes yet. The familiar scent of his cage mate (his friend?), and a tinge of sweat were usual, the unusual bit being that he was very much cuddling with the other mouse, something he hadn't done since he was normal. Even worse, he was the little spoon. The Brain didn't deserve to be the little spoon! Because when you're the little spoon, you're not in control; the big spoon could leave you, steal your blanket, become an obstacle on your way to the toilet. So it's better to always be the big spoon.
Then again, he was too tired to turn and overpower the really warm big spoon surrounding him. His legs and hind paws were killing him, what happened last night?
After a while, he remembered collapsing in the street. He danced for almost 8 hours straight, hadn't he? Did they really dance? Did that happen? Or was it a dream?
Even with his eyes closed, he could feel the morning sun around him. The morning sun and Pinky, and he wasn't moving away from the other mouse embrace because he was still studying his surroundings, not because he enjoyed the other one's warmth or scent, dear Newton, no.
He opened his eyes, at last. He was inside his cage. His cagemate, who snored tiny narfs, was still in drag, his dress a little torn on the seams. A faint memory of breakdancing through a rose bush came to him, and as he sat, he discovered tiny scratches all over him and Pinky.
Their paws were bare, the shoes nowhere to be found.
"Pinky" he called his… associate "Pinky, did you take us home last night?"
"Troz…. No, tell Cher I'm too busy feeding the hose to the duck" his cagemate answered very helpfully, still asleep.
"No, Brain" a different voice came from above him, and someone loomed over the mice "That was me." Snowball interjected, both hands under his back, with his usual disapproving look.
Brain jumped away from the other mouse. Ridiculous, they were only sleeping. Still, knowing it was an absurd reaction didn't do much for the blush rising to his ears
"Snowball! I- It's not what you think! I-"
"Oh, my dearest Brain, I was worried sick!" Snowball said in a tone that was both sweet and dangerous "It was I who found you guys, unconscious on the street. I had to take you home, heaven knows what could have happened to you"
Brain frowned. He had a faint memory of being carefully cradled, and whoever carried him home was swaying lightly, bobbling with each step. Someone tall? Like… Pinky. But maybe that had been a dream, and it had been Snowball all along who took them home. His memories of the event were hazy.
Brain brushed his fur, as if Pinky's scent would wash from him that way. Pinky didn't mind, he was still asleep, muttering something about Pippi Longstocking.
"This is all my fault!" Snowball lamented "I thought you were smart enough to handle yourself on your own, but I was obviously mistaken"
"What? I was handling myself good enough!" Brain started "The plan failed because…"
"Oh well, it's obvious we both made mistakes here. I believed you could do this, and you… well, you were yourself, and that's enough of a mistake" The hamster sighed and turned away "Anyway, I hope you learnt a good lesson: only with me you'll manage to take over the world. Come on, my dear, let's plan for tomorrow night" He walked towards the door of the cage, and his blood froze with a single word:
"No."
He turned around, slowly. The tiny mouse stood in front of him, decisively, his hands folded over his chest, though to be fair, this was done less to appear intimidating and more because his hands were shaking.
"Beg your pardon?"
"You heard me. I'm not gonna be your associate anymore. From now on, it is Pinky and I who'll try to take over the world" He said, not believing the words coming out of his mouth himself.
He expected anger, even violence. But to his surprise, the hamster snickered.
"Oh, really Brain? Is this a joke, or just one of your ridiculous ideas? Oh, wait, those might as well be synonyms."
"I'm not joking" Brain said, hoping the hamster wouldn't notice the crack on his voice.
"Don't make me laugh. You really expect me to believe you'll associate with that moron and somehow that will get you closer to world domination?"
"Are you having trouble understanding my words? Do you need me to bring you a thesaurus?" Brain asked contemptuously, trying very hard not to shake. "Which is not a dinosaur species, mind you, it's a rather large book that-"
"You two won't last a minute out there" Snowball hissed, grabbing the fur of Brain's chest and lifting him to his level "Listen to me, Brain: You'll never get the world with that nincompoop."
"Neither will you without me, Snowball, but at least I'll have fun trying" Brain pushed the hamster away, loosening Snowball's grip over his fur, landing on his feet. Snowball slammed him against the wall, his arm pressed over Brain's throat.
"Listen up, you ambitious pest: if you ever get close to world domination, which I highly doubt, I want you to have the certainty that I will be there and, my dearest Brain, I will- make- you- fall" Snowball threatened, releasing him, and stomped away from the cage.
Brain gasped for air a few times before brushing his fur in a pretense of nonchalance.
He didn't realize the magnitude of what he had done until he turned to Pinky, who was very much awake; staring at him in horror, his paws covering his mouth.
"Pinky! How much did you hear?" He asked the taller mouse
"I heard some birds, and then some footsteps and-"
"Of our fight, Pinky."
"Oh. Everything. Poit." He winced and anxiously dusted his dress "Brain, you didn't abandon your weird and smarty pants friend for… me, did ya?"
"As a matter of fact, I... did" Brain replied, and only then realized what he had done. His eyes darted towards the door, with the sudden urge to run towards Snowball, apologize, ask for mercy… But then he looked at his cagemate's horrified stare and quickly disguised his own fear with a mask of confidence.
The Plan, always the Plan. The plan at the moment was… to reassure Pinky. His own feelings could be swept under the rug.
Pinky chuckled, but it wasn't a fun chuckle, it was rather anxious. He fidgeted with his tail.
"Braaaaain, but he's smart! And I'm… narf." He said, pointing to himself with a defeated sigh and for a moment he looked so blue, a more affectionate mouse would have hugged him.
But Brain's affection manifested in a different way.
"He might be smarter, but I am The Brain! We don't need him, Pinky. With my intellect and your…. moral support, I'm sure we'll do just fine. We'll figure it out together. Now, take off that dress and let's prepare for tomorrow night"
"Why, Brain? what are we gonna do tomorrow night?" He gasped in his usual enthusiasm "Sing all the world's countries to the tune of the Jarabe Tapatío?"
"Wha- no, Pinky! We'll do the same thing we did yesterday, and probably not one day more: Try to take over the world!"
They're Pinky, they're Pinky and the Neo-cortex, frontal lobe, Brainstem, Hippocampus, neural node, Right hemisphere….
The Brain!
You can pinpoint the exact moment when Pinky falls in love, lol. But this is not a shipping fic. Obviously. Also also, if you were wondering if Snowball ever caught up to them, he didn't. By the time he arrived to the suburbs, they were already dancing. He got rid of the rest of the shoes, tho.
Jarabe Tapatío is the real name of the Mexican Hat Dance. The more you know.
Pinky scratching his ears with the paperclip is a reference to Roger Rabbit doing the same thing with a... handsaw I think? And a sissone is an elegant jump in ballet, that you need long legs (and no heels) to execute.
So this is it. I won't say I'll never write again, because I always contradict myself. But this Trilogy is officially over.
Thanks for reading!