I HATE STUART LITTLE

Written by Vladicoff

Chapter VI: Epilogue

For the first time in this long night of battle, Ratigan saw fear in Stuart Little's eyes. The white mouse drew back, his body still convulsing lightly, the vortex of smoke having dissipated and drifted away.

'I-I thought you were gone-,' Stuart Little stammered. Biggie Cheese waddled forward and put a hand up to his lips, shushing the mouse.

'Silence, little one,' he said. The little one was silenced. Biggie Cheese rose slowly into the air until he was face-to-face with Stuart Little. The latter shrank back, the energy in his body thrashing violently now, neither able to be contained in this wounded form nor able to burst forth. The newcomer calmly reached his hand into Stuart Little's chest as a thick reggae track could be heard, emanating from the fabric of existence itself. In a swift motion, Biggie Cheese ripped the green-yellow ring from Stuart Little's innards, causing the mouse to crumple in on himself, skin sloughing off and bones crumbling as he toppled into a pile of ash and dust on the cobblestones.

The reggae rat, holding that ring in one hand, reached under his hat with the other and pulled out a swirling orb of that same chartreuse hue. Blowing softly into the orb, he cast a gust of icy cold wind, which within moments had smothered the fires and driven out the smoke of the boulevard, clearing a path to the Ile-de-la-Cité. He slowly descended back to the ground, and helped Ratigan to his feet with his tail.

'You all right to walk, mon?' he asked. At the professor's nod, he continued. 'Make your way back to the central square. Dr Dawson can fix up that arm of yours. I will meet you there after I have taken care of this little calamity.'

He clambered back onto his cloud and flew off, blowing into his orb and putting out the remaining fires of the city. Ratigan limped his way past the smouldering husks of Paris, to the square where Dawson was tending to the wounded. The good doctor ran to him, dressing the wound and applying ointments and gauze to his other, lesser - yet still profusely bleeding and oozing - injuries.

Now that he had a few minutes to sit down and rest, Ratigan's mind reeled and his body shivered as his adrenaline rush plummeted. It was a good while before he was able to sit up and breathe normally, though his legs refused to let him stand. As Dawnson plodded from casualty to casualty, saving those he could and saying a prayer for those he couldn't, the professor made an odd observation. No longer veiled by oppressive clouds of smoke, the moon was quite beautiful, as were the stars. He'd never appreciated them before, at least not like this. He found himself enraptured, and felt like he could gaze up at the firmament for the rest of his life.

After some time - perhaps it was an hour, or just a few minutes, or maybe most of the night had passed - his attention was brought back to earth by the arrival of Biggie Cheese, accompanied by a faint, lilting rhythm that seemed to come from the very sky.

'My apologies, mons. There was quite a lotto fire to be puttin out,' he said, still holding the orb in one hand and the ring in the other. Dr Dawnson hurried over. Biggie Cheese sat crosslegged on the ground in front of Ratigan, and gestured for the doctor to join them.

'I haven't seen either of you since the Great War. If I had known then what I know now, I would not have left so mysteriously. I apologise.'

He took a deep sigh, and placed the chartreuse objects on the ground, where they shone gently in the moon-light.

'During the war, as you're well aware, there was a desperate arms-race. Anything to break the stalemate. That much is known. What few rodents know, however, is the role of rings such as this one in the conflict. Several were uncovered in caches, in Breslau. Several of us tried to harness their power. Most failed in the attempt. Only Stuart Little and I were able to.'

'Breslau,' interrupted Ratigan. 'That was the last city to be wiped out before Dresden. So these rings were what broke the trenched impasse?'

'Indirectly. General González, who as Stuart Little's most senior officer bore witness to the rings' tremendous destructive powers, decided to put rodent-kind's survival ahead of his oath of loyalty to his commander. He stole Stuart Little's rings and fled in the night to my headquarters. That turned the tide of the war. Within days the ruins of Breslau were taken, and Stuart Little was chased to Dresden, where he put up a final act of cruelty before surrendering.'

He took another deep breath before continuing.

'General González perished in battle, as did all who knew of the rings but me - and Stuart Little, who was sent off into his exile. I do not know how much knowledge he had - if he knew what the rings truly were. I myself only learned through experiments I conducted in secret in my camp, as the peace was being drawn up. I learned that each ring,' he held the ring aloft, 'was but a fragment of a larger jewel.' He held up the orb. 'In the wider cosmos they are known as Kamajewels, and there are four.'

Biggie Cheese shoved the ring into the orb, which absorbed it readily.

'To wield even a fragment takes exceptional will and internal strength. To split and recombine a jewel with ease takes years. It is the power of these jewels, and their fragments, to magnify: one who is vicious will grow more destructive, one who is soothing will gain the power to heal, existing abilities will become more pronounced. The larger the fragment, the more intense the magnification; if Stuart Little had managed to get his paws on an entire Kamajewel, he could perhaps have even manifested his evil into flesh and spawned some mockery of life…'

The grizzled reggae rat looked each of his interlocutors in the eye in turn before continuing.

'Noticing the affinity each fragment had for its fellows, and fearing the consequences of them falling into the wrong hands, I set out at once to collect each piece and complete this jewel. It was only after embarking on this journey through the worlds that I learned of the existence of three others, and of much else besides.'

'What about the old Major's ring?' asked Dawson. 'Was that a fragment you overlooked?'

'Not at all, mon. I was not as sure a traveller then as I am now, so I left a single ring in the Major's hands, to anchor me to this dimension in case I were to lose my way. So long as I still possessed my jewel and attuned to it, I would find myself drawn, even if faintly, back to earth. I chose the old Major to hold onto it for two reasons: one, his steadfast honour; two, his complete lack of knowledge of what it was I was entrusting him with. A loyal but dullheaded fellow. It seems my gamble proved right, and he never attempted to learn what it was he was holding. Though to my eternal shame, I became so lost in fascination with the things I had learned that I did not come back to earth for years even after coming to the answers I sought.'

'Why did you come back, at the time that you did?' ventured Ratigan.

'Because I learned of something else, something I had heard only rumours of in my travels. I was already meandering my way back here, slowly travelling, irresponsibly delaying my return, when I picked up signals that a different jewel - a Protajewel - had been active in Paris. Protajewels are mysterious things - I myself do not fully understand them - and so I hurried back posthaste.'

He stood up, and looked over the charred remains of the city square as faint light began to dawn on the horizon.

'I must get going. My task is far from over. Here,' he separated two fragments from his Kamajewel, and effortlessly bent them into rings. 'Take these, and wield them cautiously. Learn how to use them. As for me, I must depart on some greater work. Catch you all on the flipside.'

Biggie Cheese waddled away, summoning his flying cloud as he did so. With a friendly wave to his fellow rodents, he set off into the sky.

Professor Ratigan heaved a heavy sigh, and set off with Dawson to find a place to sleep.

THE END