Disclaimer: Don't own Tin Man, don't own Tin Man, don't own Tin Man…Tin Man…Tin Man…don't own the Beetles song or the 'Cool Runnings' line I altered either.

Author's Note: Why yes, I am alive, thank you for asking nightdrive23, Dragonlady80906 and Megan McAlistair. While review pokes are generally quite effective, nothing works a guilt trip quite like a specialized PM asking if I am even still breathing. Um, sorry about that folks. Brain-Brain finally decided to stage that revolt it's been threatening for years. After the near constant pressure it's been under since January, the effectual gray matter melting during the recent heat wave (I am never moving to the tropics, can't stand the heat), the constant bombardment of new tasks, and the usual last minute project info dump, it was not impressed when my response to its "please stop doing those high pressure data crams" was "thanks for the great slideshow presentation, now release the stories! (and I did most of the reading over a week in advance, you had plenty of time to assimilate the pertinent facts)" I got a little bit of time off, and boy has Brain-Brain gone on vacation, I've been dragging this story out of it a paragraph or so at a time for over a week now. Does it not understand how far behind Muse we have now fallen? Sigh. It probably would have helped if this narrator wasn't so hard to keep on target…

...

Synapses were such funny things. The meeting of axon terminal and dendrite branch, the microscopic chemical switchboard in the propagation of the electric signal, the ultra-tiny cracks in the nervous system, far too miniscule for any zipper to close, over which neurotransmitters were fired across like so many tin men and their little dogs, too…what? Neurotinmen? That couldn't be right. That couldn't be right. That couldn't….

Crackle.

…be right. Brains and tin men didn't go together: the heartless always tried to shoot the brainy. Synapses were a junction between cells where tiny molecules passed electrochemical messages from one neuron to the next, relaying information to and from the central nervous system via excitatory or inhibitory outputs. Often multiply signals would meet within a dendrite, the pooling of input from alternate sources affecting the resultant output: sometimes the combination of synapses amplified the ensuing signal, sometimes they deadened it…

…and sometimes they argued.

This was not Glitch's fault, he didn't care what Ambrose said about people who played with levers that had been clearly marked 'Do Not Touch' – everybody knew that you put a sign like that on a toggle and the first thing anyone wants to do is pull it, if only to see what would happen. And Glitch hadn't had the slightest hand in the building of the underwater car…except for suggesting that they could borrow a few parts from the Otherside cruiser – just for a little while – so that they could show DG when she got back from the Northern Island (it would cheer her up, she hadn't liked the icy palace since she'd died there)…and he might have mentioned that a little air conditioning would be a nice comfort for the passengers…and adding a radio for communication purposes was just common sense…but other than that, the headcase had butted out just like the advisor had told him to, so you see, it really wasn't Glitch's fault. And if Cain managed to claw his way out through the thick metal door and make his way to the surface of the lake despite all odds currently against him (it was his specialty after all), the zipperhead intended to tell him exactly that.

And maybe if Glitch was really lucky the Tin Man would only shoot him in the left side of the brain, too.

Think, think, thinkthinkthinkthink…

Crackle. "Submarine to surface, submarine to surface..." a voice announced from somewhere near the Royal Advisor's elbow. Glitch looked at the radio with suspicion. Like he was falling for that, he didn't care what Ambrose said about them using the device not ten minutes ago, DG had been very clear on the subject: do not trust disembodied voices. He always remembered what the youngest princess told him, even when Ambrose was being a headache – like right now – so there was no way he was going to answer…

"…please come in."

…oh, well, if they were going to be polite about it. "Hello?" the headcase inquired tentatively.

"Glitch, how's our rescue plan going?" the disembodied one demanded.

Mysterious voices requesting aid were a bad sign, and it's not like he had the time to go making up rescue plans for everyone, he had Ambrose's mess to clean up after all. Still, it didn't hurt to listen – the voice did seem remotely familiar – Glitch supposed he could always hang up if turned out to be a wicked witch. "Do I know you?" he asked warily.

There was a momentary pause during which Ambrose let out a mental shriek of frustration and attempted a hostile takeover of the cerebral cortex. Which they really didn't have time for right now…

"Zipperhead!" the voice stated with restrained exasperation, "Remember us, the people you dropped to the bottom of the lake in the metal tub you built?"

Okay, now Glitch was completely confused. Only Cain called him zipperhead and that was decidedly not the Tin Man talking. It was far too masculine to be a princess and the only other person he'd ever dropped to the bottom of a lake was…

"Oh, Gulch! Hi!" the zipperhead replied cheerfully, happy to have solved their little identity dilemma. What was Ambrose getting so huffy about? Glitch liked Gulch; he was a decent fellow, never hit too hard when clearing up a synaptical tangle. Bit twitchy, though; every time DG looked to be getting herself in trouble his shoulders twitched like mad. Of course, every time DG was in trouble Cain jumped so the Othersider wasn't as twitchy as all that…on the other hand, whenever someone was after Azkadellia, Cain twitched and Gulch jumped, so maybe it was a lawman thing. Or was it that Gulch jumped and Cain shot someone? Which would mean that Cain was still the twitchier fellow unless…

"Yes, Glitch," Gulch huffed through the radio, "now have you figured out how to get us back to the surface?"

"Um...no," the headcase admitted hesitantly, truth be told he'd gotten a little distracted when Ambrose had started laying blame for endangering half the Royal Family – he wasn't the one that failed to consider the limited air supply under water when building his Otherside doohickey until after he'd dropped them to the bottom of the lake…oh, right, "and, uh," Glitch thought he'd best mention, "you might want to not breath so much."

"Princess Azkadellia shrunk Cain and DG," Gulch reported hastily.

Ambrose abruptly stopped vying for control. "Really?" the headcase uttered in surprise. The cop sounded a touch desperate, no wonder, too, if the eldest princess was suffering a relapse. "I thought she'd stopped doing that." – they'd melted the witch and everything – then again... "It will help though. Maybe she should shrink everyone," Glitch decided happily, they'd have plenty of oxygen that way, "Now go away a minute, Ambrose and I are in the middle of stressing the synapses."

The radio went obediently silent. That was better, now Glitch could at long last finish a thought. It was going to be a difficult task, he was lacking the most pertinent data, in fact there was no way he was going to make a determination as to who was twitchier until he saw under which circumstances Gulch would shoot someone…what? Oh right, it was the other thought he was supposed to be finishing. Though how he was supposed to find a way to get DG and company out of a submarine he didn't design, Glitch didn't know. He'd told Ambrose keeping the pilot's cabin completely separate was a bad idea, he didn't care what the Royal Advisor said about minimizing distractions for the one who'd be driving the thing – the fellow was obsessed with eliminating all possible disturbances for some reason – and if it had been up to Glitch the thing would have been yellow. DG had a thing for yellow underwater cars; she'd made up a song for it and everything:

We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine, we all live in a yellow submarine…

…oh hey, that wasn't a glitch; he just couldn't remember any more of the lyrics.

How do you get four people out of a sealed tube in the bottom of a lake? Could they swim out? Not now Ambrose, I'm consulting the synapses. Actually he was borrowing the left hemisphere of their brain and he could do that easier without the interference of the Royal Advisor. Glitch considered the differential pressures within and without the submarine capsule, and estimated the weight of water currently sitting on the contraption and concluded that not even an angry Tin Man could muscle the door open. Especially since he'd been shrunk. Ha! Tiny Cain, he'd like to see the Tin Man try and boss him around now…then again, maybe not…

Okay, so they couldn't swim out, maybe…what do you mean you already did that calculation? Well if Ambrose had already considered and discarded the notion of having them swim to safety, he could have at least had the courtesy to at least say so. Lives were on the line here, people at the bottom of the lake, they didn't have time to…

…hey, maybe they could swim out! Glitch meandered into the logic centers of the brain in search of the Royal Advisor's mathematical prowess…

Whack.

…and was immediately sent stumbling back as the headcase's right hand suddenly smacked him right across the face. Ow. Okay, so maybe they'd already done that calculation before….twelve times…didn't mean Ambrose had to…there were better ways to…Glitch caught a movement out the corner of his eye. Oh no you don't, the zipperhead howled across the frontal lobe and flung his left hand forth in retaliation.

Whack!

Whack! Whack!

Whackwhackwhackwhack! Whack, whaaack!

Oooh, nice rhythm!

WHACK!

Whoops, he thought, flailing his arms desperately as Ambrose last strike almost succeeding knocking them of the dock.

Well that was mature, Glitch asserted as he succeeding in righting them with a superb, if unwitnessed, balance dance. Ambrose had clearly been spending too much time around Cain if violence was his first solution. And wasn't there something important they were supposed to be doing…hey, what does this do?

"Ow," Glitch muttered as the right hand figured out what the left was doing and hastily slapped it away from the most intriguing lever…

Ambrose took advantage of Glitch's preoccupation – there was even an enticing sign reading 'Do Not Touch' – to mount another bid for control. Which was really quite rude of him, there was no need to shove, Glitch had no trouble ceding control for DG's sake. And really, it made sense for the person who designed the troublesome contraption to get in on the planning, to get in on the planning, to get in on the planning…

The fingers of the Royal Advisor's right hand curled into claws as if he was considering strangling himself, then Ambrose shook himself resolutely and reached for the radio to…

"Glitch are you..."

...scream like a little girl and flee into the deepest reaches of the medulla oblongata as the voice of the dread Princess Azkadellia drifted from the radio to haunt him. Glitch didn't know what his problem was, Azkadee hadn't ripped out their brain.

Her Alchemist had.

"Hey Zipperhead," the comforting, if harried, tones of Officer Gulch demanded, "Zipperhead are you there?"

At least he thought it was the Othersider, better check, "Do I..."

"If you even think of finishing that sentence," Gulch warned, sounding oddly growly for such peaceable fellow – Cain really was a bad influence around here, "I am going to throttle you when I get out of here. Listen up Glitch, is there any way a man shrunk down to say three inches could make it through the parts of this rust bucket and into the pilot's chair?"

Glitch blinked. Practical applications of wicked witch possession? He was going to have to upgrade Ambrose's intelligence estimate on the Othersider. But could it work… "Yes! Give me a second to grab the schematic." There ought to be a guild's worth around, Ambrose having decided that since burning blueprints didn't stop anyone from stealing his designs anyhow, no sense encouraging anyone to go after the source again.

Correct plan discovered – three times – cop apparently shrunk to correct navigation height, the headcase thought they'd started off quite well. As the eldest princess was acting as relay, Ambrose stayed conveniently out of the proceedings, and the Othersider had sufficient mechanical knowledge to follow his instructions without translational difficulties. The only problem…

"Go now, go now, go now…"

…was that Gulch wasn't too fond of the idea of traversing the pistons. Couldn't blame him, really, Glitch didn't like the idea of having his brains smashed out any more than the next person…

"Go now, go now…"

"Glitch!"

…What? "Go now, go now, go now…" This really wasn't a good time for the princess to interrupt him, delicate works in progress - maybe Ambrose had a point about reducing distractions – oh hey Ambrose, didn't expect to see you here…

"STOP!"

During the ominous silence that followed Glitch decided it might be best to let Ambrose take things from here, he seemed to have things under control. Providing the policeman hadn't just been crushed by the mechanical workings of their submarine that is…

"Glitch," the unexpectedly dangerous sounding voice of Officer Gulch stole through the headcase's cognitive processes some unknown interval later – time got a bit funny when you weren't the one in control – rousing Glitch from the corner of the brain he'd hidden in.

"Oh good, you made it!" the zipperhead said brightly as Ambrose tried to add the next direction, "Now..."

"Glitch," the cop repeated, ice leaking into his voice.

Ambrose decided he didn't want to hang around for this. "Uh, yeah?" Glitch asked hesitantly, excepting when Azkadellia was in the room, it was never a good sign when the Royal Advisor headed for the hindbrain.

"What the hell did you do to my cruiser?" Gulch bellowed through the speaker.

"..." Ambrose was a smart, smart fellow.

"I said you could study my car. Study. I did not say you could use it for spare parts!"

Oh right. "I was planning on putting them back," Glitch explained reasonably, "it's just that I didn't have anything better on hand to use in order to get it done to show DG today." Gulch liked DG right? Wanted to see her happy? So there should be no reason he'd get mad when the headcase's intentions were pure…

"Just tell me how to get to the surface, Zipperhead," stated the unmollified tones of Officer Gulch.

…okay, so maybe he was in a little trouble, but surely the cop would have calmed down by the time they'd managed to guide the water car back to the surface…

Good thing they hadn't painted it yellow after all, because when Gulch would have scraped half the deco off inexpertly bringing the machine to dock. The cop was out of the pilot's chair and hitting the wooden planks of the quay with a wince and a rueful glance at his bare and bloodied left foot before hastening to release the hatch currently imprisoning the eldest princess.

Azkadellia did not look impressed.

…surely DG would protect him…

"Az-z-z, h-how d-do y-ou ch-change th-th-the w-weather in-n-n y-your p-prison-n-n?" the Crown Princess struggled to say around her chattering teeth not five minutes later. The poor doll was soaked to the bone, so was the Tin Man for that matter.

"Oh dear," said Glitch, they really ought to see if they could find some blankets. And some muglug…

Four pairs of furious eyes turned his way.

"You have until I get her somewhere warm," Cain ground out. The headcase had the uneasy notion that the Tin Man was thinking of serving his heart up on a moritanium platter.

"Oh he doesn't have that long," countered Azkadellia. With perhaps a side dish of brains…

"I have a gun right here," offered Gulch. Glitch really didn't think the O.Z. needed to be introduced to prairie oysters…

DG made an unsuccessful grab for the revolver that generally dealt wholesale slaughter onto all that opposed it…

Ambrose came screaming out of the deeper regions of the brainstem. Run, run, run, run…

Had Glitch mentioned what a smart fellow the Royal Advisor was? Good survival instincts, brain ripping fiascos excluded that is. Run away, run away, run away…

Run through forest, run through stream…

…feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, look out all, it's running time…

…why was he running again? It was good exercise, good for you, Gulch said so. That and good food, like muglug. Glitch wondered if the Othersider had ever had muglug, he was feeling oddly hungry so maybe he should go back and ask him. No reason not to.

Was that Cain's fist?