A/N from Crackpot: Well, I for one am surprised to be back here in this category quite so soon...I hadn't expected to return for a year or more. But here I am again, collaborating with fellow author Cacaxa on this new multi-chapter fic. And, since I have decided that I harbor an intense dislike of most of my older Pinky and the Brain fanfics, this'll be my chance to redeem myself before going back on break.

As mentioned previously, this is a collabfic—I'll be writing the odd-numbered chapters, starting with this one, and Cacaxa will be working on the evens. So updates will be sporadic depending on how long we take on our respective chapters...

On another note, I apologize for the inaccuracies of the scientific information in this chapter. I had no time/desire to do extensive research á la Don Rosa, so I stretched the truth and made up a lot of stuff to fill in the gaps in my own knowledge and to make the events in the story seem somewhat plausible. If you happen to have any sort of cursory/in-depth knowledge on these subjects and/or happen to be a rocket scientist, please forgive me.

When Mice Were Men

(by The Illustrious Crackpot and Cacaxa)

Chapter 1: The Best-Laid Plans...

Zzzt zzt. Zzzzt crackle snap. Zzt.

The incandescent yellow letters on top of the laboratory flickered on and off, emitting sparks with every exchange. Normally this would be a cause for concern, as passersby wondered whether or not a fuse had been blown or if something had gone wrong with the power lines or all manner of problems; however, at the same moment that the letters would blink off, another, brighter light would flash from that very same rooftop, blinding all who looked at it. Then it would be gone, and the display would light up again as if nothing had ever happened.

Zzzzzt. Zzzt zzzzzzzzt.

"Oooooooooooh!" hiccuped a nasally voice from the roof of the lab, punctuated by a short "Narf!". Strangely enough, the voice emanated from a small white lab mouse, thin and scruffy, who was staring at the night sky with blurrily unfocused eyes. "Lookit all the pretty colors, Brain! My gosh, it's like watchin' Pink Floyd!"

There was a pause, and the display flickered back on, spelling out the name "ACME LABS" in capital letters. Just in front of them, a shorter, stouter mouse glowered over at his companion, clasping an electrical plug nearly half his size as he lifted a pair of improvised bottlecap goggles from his face.

"Pinky, I thought I told you not to stare directly at the light."

Pinky blinked slowly, turning his head in the general direction of the other mouse. "What light, Brain?"

Brain rolled his eyes, then forced the plug back into an outlet on the side of the rooftop display. Once more securing the goggles over his eyes, he turned back to the small, boxlike device that the cord was attached to and pressed a switch on it.

ZZZZZZT!

"Ohhhhhh, THAT light!" squeaked Pinky excitedly, his already-clouded eyes beginning to tear up. "Hahaha—ouch!"

Deciding to ignore the taller mouse, Brain instead continued fiddling with the device, adjusting wires, tightening screws with a Philip's-head and muttering irritably to himself.

"...not enough output, the frequency requires adjustment, power drain far too high for practical purposes—tch!" Unplugging the device again, Brain glanced at a small digital alarm clock seated on the roof near him. "And only a short while until midnight...everything would have to go wrong at the last minute!" He bent back down to the machine, scrutinizing its interior. "Clearly that must be rearranged, and those...those...I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those...and over there..."

This monologue was of very little interest to Pinky, who had long ago learned to tune out his companion whenever he started getting all "technical". So he decided to try and entertain himself, something that he was usually very good at doing. But mere moments later, though spots were still pirouetting in front of his eyes, Pinky had grown bored with watching them, and suddenly he decided to satisfy his intellectual curiosity by posing the hardest question he could think of.

"Brain, who is this mysterious muffin man that everyone seems to know?"

His mutterings unexpectedly cut off, Brain turned to stare at Pinky. "...What?"

Pinky started humming quietly, as though having completely forgotten about ever posing a question. After a moment, though, he looked back up and grinned radiantly at his slightly aggravated companion. "What'cha doin', Brain?"

Brain shook his head slowly, letting out a sigh. "Tell me, Pinky," he began, crossing his arms and leaning against the box-shaped machine, "does your mind retain any knowledge, or do you have enough trouble remembering how to breathe?"

The personal offense so cleverly concealed in that witty repartee whistled straight past the tall mouse. "Well, you do have to admit that that is a hard one."

Sighing again, the Brain rubbed his temples as though steeling himself to an incredibly monotonous task. "Look, Pinky, I'm going to try to make this simple for you. Are you paying attention?" Pinky nodded, long tail wagging like a dog's. "Good. Now, tonight, we are going to take over the world"—here Brain pointed to his contraption—"using this ingenious machine of my own humble invention."

Pinky paused, ears stiffening as he stared at the machine. "...Isn't that our VCR?"

Brain cleared his throat awkwardly, shifting his gaze. "Wellllll...yes, Pinky, that is the VCR, I suppose...but with some major modifications to it, you understand!" He gestured emphatically to make his point. "See? I put a satellite dish on it!"

"Hmmmmmmm...nope." Pinky shook his head from side to side, singularly unimpressed. "You've gotta do better'n that, Brain. Cable guys do that ALLLLLLLL the time."

Shoulders hunching reflexively, Brain tried desperately to repair his bruised ego. "O-of course, that's not the only thing I've done to it! I've modified the guide rollers, altered the locations of the loading poles, added some..." He trailed off, noticing the glazed look in his companion's eyes, and decided to switch gears while he still had Pinky's attention. "At any rate, it is no longer a VCR, but something more! Something so powerful, so incredible that it will irrevocably change the course of the entire WORLD!"

Pinky gasped, springing bolt upright. "Oh, BRAIN!" he cried breathlessly, clasping his hands together in overwhelming exuberance. "You've invented TIVO!"

A pause.

"Well," Brain remarked dryly, "at least that unsolicited advertisement might put a quick buck in our pockets."

Shaking his head, he picked a piece of chalk off the ground and kneeled down, scratching out some primitive-looking sketches on the surface of the roof. "Perhaps this might work better with a visual aid..."

Pinky immediately sat up straighter. "OOOOOH! 'Re ya gonna sing, Brain?"

"No."

"Awwwwwwwwww...pleeeeeeeeeeeeease?"

"NO."

Pinky waited impatiently, bouncing lightly up and down where he sat, and after a while he sucked in a deep breath. "PLEEEE—"

The discussion ended when Pinky suddenly found his mouth full of chalk.

"Now pay attention, Pinky," Brain instructed, ignoring the coughing, choking and spitting going on just above him. He pointed to the first of his artistic failures, a stick figure with an incredibly large head and two big ears sticking out of it. It had a sad expression, and the sloppy crown drawn on the top of its head had been crossed out. "I'm sure that I will regret asking you this, but why do you think it is that we have never once managed to take over the world?"

Still rubbing his throat, Pinky tried, "A successful plot formula?"

"...Perhaps I should confine these to merely rhetorical questions." Brain shook his head, wondering how he put up with it each and every night. "No, Pinky. More than that." He pointed at the next picture, which was a vaguely human-looking stick figure standing next to a very small mouse-shaped one. "It's because we are mere mice attempting to take over the world of humans. Although these self-proclaimed homo sapiens can easily be convinced that we are of their own kind—clearly an argument against the power of evolution—the difference in species is all too apparent, preventing us from ever attaining true success."

He looked up and stared at Pinky expectantly. Pinky blinked back.

"Well?" demanded Brain tersely. "Don't you agree?"

His answer came in the form of a slow blink. "I think I understood about one out of every...ummm..." Pinky scratched his head. "How many words long was that, Brain?"

Very calmly, without even flinching, Brain picked up his screwdriver and clocked Pinky over the head with it. He waited patiently until Pinky appeared to have fully recovered, and then deigned to give his companion the condensed version. "We can't take over the world because they're humans and we're mice."

After taking a short moment to fully ponder over the new information, Pinky nodded vigorously, indicating that he could, in fact, understand that concept. "Ah'right, sure, I c'n agree with that, yeah..." He hiccuped very slightly. "Zort!"

There was another long pause.

"Aren't you going to ask me how we're going to get around that?" Brain asked at length.

Pinky shrugged. "I figured you'd get to that eventu'lly."

Rather than waste time arguing, Brain pointed at the next drawing, which showed the large-headed mouse figure holding up a box that looked not unlike the VCR-turned-diabolical-invention. "Using our VC—" He coughed self-consciously. "Er, using my invention, we shall transcend this species barrier, breaking down the walls so that WE can become rulers of the superior species!"

Gasping excitedly to the point of hyperventilation, Pinky jumped up, nearly dancing in place. "WE'RE GONNA RULE THE KLINGONS?!"

"NO, you simpleton!" Grabbing Pinky by the tail, Brain yanked him back to the ground, and, by grasping the top of the taller mouse's skull, he forced Pinky's attention towards the drawing just next to the "mouse-holding-the-box"—a stick figure human beside an arrow pointing towards another stick-mouse. "Mice are the superior species! We must turn all the humans in the world into mice! Their societies will crumble! They'll be helpless and confused, unable to comprehend their new, superior state of being!"

And then came the last drawing—that same large-headed, large-eared mouse as the one in the first picture, but wearing a happy expression, and no "X" through his crown.

"Don't you see, Pinky?" Brain went on more softly as he let go of Pinky's head, sounding very choked up with emotion. "They will elect us as their leaders. Freely. Of their own volition. Because only we will be able to show them how they should live, what they should do—Pinky, they will hang on to our every WORD!"

"...Uhhhhhhhhh-huhhhhhhhhhhh." Pinky nodded slowly, a familiarly blank expression creeping back onto his face. He still wasn't entirely sure what Brain was talking about, but clearly it made Brain happy, so he supposed that that was good enough for him. "But, um, how're we gonna do that—" he asked, pointing to the "man into mouse" picture, "—with that?" He indicated the machine.

Straightening up and clasping his hands together, Brain sucked in a deep breath, strutting very proudly over to his invention. "My revolutionary Atomic Vibrational Regulator, Pinky," he began reverentially, placing a hand upon the satellite dish, "works in ways too complex for your pitifully small mind to contemplate, so it would be pointless to describe its functions to you." And yet, in characteristic fashion, he did so anyways. "To put it simply, using the satellite dish as its medium, this VC—ahem, this machine will emit a vibrational frequency—a 'sound wave', in layman's terms—that can only be 'heard' at an atomic level. Upon encountering this vibration, atoms with certain specified characteristics will change into atoms with different characteristics, and, if done properly, will change entire organisms into an entirely different species of life!" Here Brain's triumphant expression bordered on outright smugness, and he patted the Atomic Vibrational Regulator proprietarily. "Unless I am incorrect in my calculations (an extremely improbable circumstance, if I do say so myself), then the frequency I have wired my Regulator to emit is one that will, once utterly perfected, transform all of Burbank into a colony of rodents rather than men!"

Privately, Pinky wondered if Brain would make up his mind and decide whether they were going to turn the people into mice or into rodents. But he didn't say as much out loud; he was very proud of himself for understanding quite as much of the explanation as he had, and didn't want to spoil it by being hit over the head again. Instead, he inquired curiously, "So all we gotta do is push a button an' everyone'll change?"

Brain rubbed his chin, either deep in contemplation or trying to convey the impression that he was. "...Nnnno, not quite, Pinky. The frequency produced by the machine isn't nearly powerful enough to completely alter the target atoms under normal circumstances; instead, we must strike when they are completely defenseless if we are to have any chance at success."

Leaning back, he pointed up at the sky, where a small, reddish star winked down at them. "Do you see that star up there, Pinky? That's a neutron star, which was formed by a recent supernova. Every so often it will emit radio waves—"

("FM or AM?" Pinky interrupted. "Does it get NPR?")

"—in pulses, which will only reach the Earth at select times. When this occurs, the resultant magnetic field will scramble atoms' own magnetic fields for the duration of a single second." Brain patted the machine again. "If the Atomic Vibrational Regulator is activated during that crucial second..."

He trailed off, unable to express the triumph that would be attained during that fateful moment.

Pinky cocked his head to the side, tiny gears whirling in his mind, and something started to nag at him. But he figured that it was just that peanut butter sandwich he'd eaten for lunch—it always took a while for food to settle in his stomach, especially if he'd found it in that jar-thingy labeled "Mold Samples". "When's this 'specific second', Brain?"

"Exactly at midnight," replied the Brain, still drifting in his whimsical fantasies. "And these conditions won't occur again for another three months."

"Exactly at midnight," Pinky repeated for good measure. "So we take over the world at midnight."

A wide, gleaming, slightly diabolical smile slipped across Brain's face. "Yes."

"Riiiiiiiiiiight at midnight."

"YES!"

Pinky let his attention wander over to the digital alarm clock, which blinked out the numbers "11:59:27". "Well then, you'd better get a move on, hadn't you?"

Brain's head snapped up as his daydreams dissolved, and a look of pure, cold horror exploded onto his face. "What?"

Seemingly unfazed, Pinky just continued to watch the clock, tail swishing placidly from side to side. "I mean, seein' as we've only got thirty seconds and all."

Silence reigned for a moment as the information registered in both of their minds. Then:

"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!"

Brain began dashing wildly across the rooftop, gathering up odd tools and practically throwing himself at the machine in an attempt to finish the work in time. Pinky began dashing wildly across the rooftop as well, though this was more of an act of sheer panic than an attempt to do anything constructive. Giant, blinding sparks lit up the night again.

Twenty seconds.

Fifteen.

Ten.

Nine, eight, seven, six—

Brain threw the screwdriver to the side helplessly, delving back into the inner workings of the machine. "There's no time! We simply have to start it up!"

—five, four, three—

Pinky's ears stiffened, and, making a massive U-turn, he started to run back to the machine. "I'LL TURN IT ON, BRAIN!"

—two, one—

Two white forms collided, tumbling over each other and into the Atomic Vibrational Regulator itself. Somehow, somebody's small pink hand slammed onto the switch, holding it down for the duration of a single second.

Zero.

The world exploded in light.

Slowly, very slowly, the Brain let out a groan. He started to move, then recoiled sharply as a pounding pain made itself known on the inside of his skull. Groaning again, he slumped back to the ground, triggering fresh waves of agonizing drumming.

That was one of the disadvantages of having a genetically-enhanced mind: bigger brain means bigger migraines.

Kneading his forehead with his fingertips, Brain slowly and shakily rose to a crouch. He tried opening his eyes a crack, but all he could see was smoke. Where had it come from?

And, as he shivered with a passing breeze, why was he so cold?

He staggered backwards slightly, and his foot hit something, which clattered away from him. Stooping—and trying to ignore the throbbing in his temples as he did so—Brain fumbled around in the obscurity and eventually managed to pick the object up.

It was the Atomic Vibrational Regulator—not that one could tell very easily. The VCR component was twisted and misshapen, with its inner workings spilling out even as he handled it, and the satellite dish was nowhere to be found. Not only that, but the cord that had allowed it to drain electricity from the rooftop display had snapped, dangling limply and shooting off sparks at random intervals. Thick smoke was pouring out of the video slot on the machine, and Brain had to hold it away from him to keep from coughing.

"Curses..." he muttered, "I knew I should have made it out of something more resilient! But those fool scientists, keeping us running through those mazes all evening...don't they know that we have more important things to do, like TAKING OVER THE WORLD?!"

There was a spluttering noise from somewhere else on the rooftop, and Brain stiffened immediately until a Cockney-accented voice choked out, "Brain? Izzat you?"

"Pinky!" Brain started to wave the smoke away, covering his eyes to keep them from tearing—then, all of a sudden, he stopped. By waving the smoke away, he was holding the (former) Atomic Vibrational Regulator with only one hand. That should have been absolutely impossible—he'd always had to use both hands to carry it, and even then he'd had to have Pinky on the other side to help him get it off the ground.

And why did it seem so much...smaller?

Without warning, the spluttering coughs became louder, and Brain looked up just in time to see a patch of smoke start to clear just a few yards in front of him. Then all his senses went on the alert—that was a human standing on the roof! What if he'd heard their plan, or witnessed them implementing it?! They would be ruined, outed as talking lab mice, experimented on even more mercilessly to find out where the gene-splicing had gone right...or even incarcerated as threats to global security!

Brain quickly ducked behind the giant ACME LABS sign, the lights of which had gone dull from the massive power failure. Cautiously, he peeped out through a gap in the "B", searching for any sign of Pinky. He found none, but most of the rooftop was still covered in smoke, so the little mouse might already have found his own hiding spot...

Slowly, suspiciously, Brain turned his gaze to the human, trying to gauge whether or not he was a threat. It was hard to tell—he was tall, thin, and a bit gawky, like a teenager, but his face (what little of it could be seen behind the hands shielding it) didn't look particularly young or particularly old. What was even stranger was his hair, a tousled, messy mop of silvery-white. Was it even possible for anyone to have that sort of hair color?

"Pinky, where are you?" mumbled Brain, his grip tightening on the edge of the "B". He shivered again, put the Atomic Vibrational Regulator on the ground and started to rub his hands together quietly.

And stopped.

The giant "B"...he had been looking through the upper hole in it. The upper hole, which was several feet off the ground. Which he clearly was still standing on.

He looked down at his hands. They were a pale peach, not a pink. And the peach didn't end at his wrists like it was supposed to.

A scuffling sound caught his attention, and the Brain looked up to see the strange human stumbling blindly towards his hiding spot. On instinct, Brain crouched down, trying to stay out of sight—but the human wasn't even looking at him. He had removed his hands from in front of his face, since most of the smoke had dissipated, and now Brain could see his features clearly. Could see the overly-large, bulbous nose, and the two tombstone teeth protruding from his upper lip. And when the human opened his eyes, they were large and oblong—and tinted blue.

"Pinky...?" Brain breathed quietly.

The human straightened slightly, looking around. Then his gaze met Brain's, and he jumped.

"Narf...?"