The entire revitalization station went silent as Mickey Mouse, Proto Man, and Pepsiman — and, oh, yeah, Deadpool — warped into the room. Mickey could feel the awkwardness wash over the folks in the room. Almost like they’d been talkin’ about him behind his back, or somethin’.
Things in here were… starkly different than they’d been on the island. White walls reflected oppressive fluorescent lights, illuminating several bacta tanks and a few small, uncomfy-lookin' cots draped over with purple blankets. Doctors and nurses stood by a few of the most recently deceased and revived contestants, but their attention had decidedly shifted towards the pint-sized figure, the spandex-clad merc, and two cyborgs that had just appeared before them with a resounding
pop. Normally, the intensity of their gazes might’ve burned a hole in Mickey, but right now, he had other shiz to worry about.
“What?” he squeaked, looking squarely at each of them in succession. “Didn’t think a nice little mouse could win a murder island competition, fellas?”
“
That’s right, Mick,” Deadpool clapped him on the back. “
You tell ‘em.”
The mouse looked up at the mercenary. “Shut the fuck up before I kill you, too.”
Deadpool’s eyes went wide. (
Like the Pikachu meme, y’know? Okay, fine, I know, this post is about Mickey. I’ll leave him alone just this once.) The doctors and nurses averted their eyes, and Mickey turned his own gaze straight forward.
At the other end of the room, a pair of swinging double doors awaited him. He dropped the Ultima Weapon to the ground with a
clang, pushing off Pepsiman and Blues and starting to hobble that direction. His crushed legs threatened to buckle beneath him as he limped toward the exit, and his stomach ached and gushed blood where Toga had run him through with one of her machetes. He faltered a bit, falling to a knee, saved from totally falling out by the gentle hands of one of the many medical professionals rushing to his side.
“Mr. Mouse,” Dr. Swift smiled. “Congratulations. Let me help you to a bed—”
“
No,” Mickey scowled, shrugging off the good doctor’s help and surging forward.
Dr. Swift started to protest, but right at that moment, the double doors swung open. Mickey paused, looking up to see a young man with a tight, ginger man-bun holding one of them ajar, a tablet in his other hand. Kevin looked down at the mouse with a grin, chuckling just a little bit even as the keyblade master struggled to stand.
“They said you were persistent,” he observed, “but this is quite beyond.”
“Where is he?” Mickey spat.
“Waiting for you, of course,” Kevin pushed the door open a little bit wider and gestured down the hallway with his tablet hand. “Right this way, Mickey Mouse.”
***
The conference room was dark. Karl swirled a bit in his office chair, making a mental note to get more sconces. It wasn’t just the lighting, though; the purple runner may have added a pop of color to the deep charcoal boardroom table, but the thing still resembled something out of a brutalist science fiction film. The huge, blue light of the screen — where the producer had just finished watching Toga and her husband reunite in stabby matrimony — cast a pale, eerie glow over the entire proceedings.
He hated that he hadn't realized just how sinister everything looked before now. The mouse was going to have a field day with the decor, to be sure.
“Sir?” Kevin’s voice rang out, right on cue. Karl spun around.
Mickey Mouse felt all the air leave his lungs as he laid eyes on him. This wasn’t their first meeting, of course, but it felt the most… pivotal. After going through the ringer four separate times and living with this man’s particular brand, literally, of trauma for nine years, the mouse king and the king of broadcast butchery were finally…
…face-to-face.
Karl waved Kevin away without looking at him. Mickey, too, didn’t remove his eyes from the television producer as his trusted assistant shuffled out the door behind the mouse. The purple-suited producer stood up, smiling at the mouse as he placed his hands on the long table between them.
“
Grand Champion,” he boomed. “I have to say, it fits
shockingly well.” His eyes fell to the mouse king’s wobbling knees. “Have a seat, please. You’re sure you don’t want my people to fix you up before we chat?”
Mickey scowled deeper. “No.”
“Well,” Karl chuckled, “you’re going to have a hard time
arresting me in your condition.”
The mouse took a tentative step forward, and limped toward the table. He reached out with one of his hands, turning one of the spinny chairs in his direction just enough so that he could clamber up into it. He plopped down on the seat, whirling back toward Karl Jak, his busted-up legs hanging down, still a good foot at least between the bottoms of his yellow shoes and the floor. Karl watched with some interest as the pint-sized hero struggled to get himself into that final position, and then, once the mouse seemed set, he slid back into his seat, as well, and rolled himself up to the table.
“On a serious note,” Karl started, tilting his head down to look at his Grand Champion, “I would be remiss if I didn’t congratulate you. Whatever your… plans are, now, you’ve played my game and you’ve won. Kevin’s already set things in motion to wire your winnings to you, along with a little extra from Friend of the Show, Victor Wolfe. And, if it means anything to you, Mickey, you have earned my respect.”
“It does, actually,” Mickey piped up rather quickly. Karl raised a perfectly-plucked, if a little darkly filled-in, eyebrow.
“Oh?” he said, inquisitively.
“I can’t imagine you have many… relationships like this,” the mouse noted, lifting a gloved hand and gesturing to the two of them. “Like us.”
“No, you’re right,” Karl laughed, a little too jovially. “I’m not overly rich with little heroes who want to see me brought to justice.”
“Not that,” Mickey shook his head. “I meant relationships with
real people.”
Karl stopped, his chortling fading rather quickly. Mickey shifted forward and leaned on the table, folding his hands together. He stared at the producer with the intensity of a nearly one hundred-year-old mouse about to lecture a just-under-two-decades old television producer, because, well… that was exactly what was about to freakin’ happen.
“You do a beautiful job every year,” the mouse mused, “shapin’ this Comet into exactly what you need it to be. One year, there’s huge freakin’ armies. Another, big scary monsters and giant robots. It’s impressive, really, pal, and I don’t wanna discount that. I’m very impressed by your… wildly nonsensical level of power. It’s some crazy shiz, fella.”
Karl pursed his lips. A ‘but’ had to be coming.
“But,” Mickey continued, his lips starting to curl ever so slightly into a small smirk, “I clocked somethin’ this year. Somethin’ that had never really struck me before.”
Behind the Arbiter, the television screen flickered to a map of the island. The mouse king looked up at it, and couldn’t help but smile. What perfect freakin’ timing. He lifted a finger, trembly as it was, and pointed; Karl turned over his shoulder, looking at the image.
“That’s the same island as the first time, right?”
Karl glanced back at Mickey, but said nothing.
“I know it is,” the mouse nodded, starting to giggle. “I’d recognize that goshdarn clinic anywhere. It makes me laugh, Karl, because y'see, now I
get it. This whole show that you put on every year? It’s all
fake. Nothing about it is real, except the people you rope into playing. The grass we walked on, the sky we see, the death and torture we have to go through? You make all of it! With your stupid little ‘
Arbiter powers,’ or huge reservoir of whatever that energy stuff was before. You wave your hands and everything comes to life, right? The island, the flashy little prizes, even the fellas who work here, right?”
Mickey scoffed. “You’ve got
all that power,” he leaned back and crossed his arms, in awe, “and
this is what you choose to do with it?”
“You must have not been watching the past few years,” Karl sneered. “Syntech and Dante’s Abyss have been at the forefront of the fight against the Unmade. We’ve been using our technology and our platform—”
The mouse held up a hand. “Save it,” he snarked. “I know what you’ve been up to, and I’m happy about it. But I’m not happy about the way you did it. Tryin’ to save the universe, but still blasting death and destruction all over peoples’ TV screens while you do it, all the time? Come on, fella, you can only pretend to be so
noble when that’s your biz.”
Karl straightened his back, adjusting his violet coat. The lecture was beginning to wear thin.
“But that’s not even why I’m here,” Mickey said.
“Then what is it you
are here for, mouse?” Karl grit his teeth.
Mickey grinned. “I asked myself, y’know,” he replied, “while I was drinkin’ my strawberry smoothie, watching that lighthouse crumble to the ground. I asked myself why you did this. Why you use your power like
this. And then, when Blues jumped in front of me and took that laser sword, it hit me. When I teleported back to the school and Gilly was yellin’ at me? I mean, come on, bud. How were the pieces not going to fall into place?”
Karl’s scowl deepened.
“I mean,” Mickey leaned forward again, snidely, “is
Kevin even real? Or did you make him, too?”
Mickey did not remove his gaze from Karl Jak. He stared at him, feeling, for a moment, some fleeting sense of victory. He knew it was fleeting, of course; Karl Jak was an Arbiter, somehow. Even if he’d been fully recovered from his injuries — even if he’d still wielded the might of the Proto Mouse — the mouse king knew there wasn’t a chance in heck he’d have been able to take the man in a one-on-one, fair fight. And he
always fought fair.
Still, though, something about seeing the producer squirm ever so slightly brought an immense amount of warmth to his heart. He supposed that came from a smidge of vindictiveness, left behind by the mousebot when they’d left. Mickey had not liked the way the Proto Mouse handled… well, anything, and especially the way they viewed justice. He’d watched from behind the recesses of the would-be hero robot’s deepest thoughts as they, again and again, mistook vengeance for justice. Mistook punishment for justice. Mistook their own deep well of
hatred for justice.
Mickey wasn’t going to make that mistake. He pitched himself forward, and began to climb onto the table. Karl shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking quizzically at the mouse as he slowly rose to his feet. Atop the charcoal gray slab, the slightly-hunched keyblade master stood eye-to-eye with the seated Karl Jak.
“You came from somewhere else, right?” Mickey asked, genuinely curious. “Before the old place?”
Karl sighed. “Yes,” he nodded. “I did.”
“Me too,” the mouse king said.
“I… I know,” Karl frowned.
The mouse sucked in a deep breath through his nose. He felt a bit strained as he did so, but nevertheless, he exhaled it for several moments, pushing himself towards the next thing he had to say, the next question he needed to ask. “You haven’t found a way back, I guess?”
Karl looked up, meeting Mickey’s gaze. “No,” he shook his head. “No, I haven’t. I haven’t even tried, to be quite honest.”
“Bad memories?” the mouse inquired, though he already knew the answer.
Karl averted his gaze for a moment. He didn’t like to think about this.
“You could say that,” he said simply.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the mouse king frowned.
Karl scoffed a bit. For the first time in nine years, his snarky, sleazy demeanor faltered just a bit, and the mouse king could see the lines on his face. The weariness, the age, the loneliness of being
Karl Jak — the man who had everything, but also nothing, all at once.
“I don’t think we
can go back,” Mickey shrugged. “Don’t think we’re meant to. We’re here, now. This is our home. Everything about those places — the old place, our original universes — they’ve made us who we are today, but they’re gone. I loved them so much, while I was there. I loved every single person I met, every single Prime and Secondary and duck and dog. Every hero and villain, I loved 'em all. But they’re in our past, y’know? And our futures are just… well, pal, it's lookin' like our futures are just
each other.”
He looked deep into Karl Jak’s eyes, then took a step forward. Each drag of his nearly-destroyed legs was labored, and long, and his arduous trek across the table took at least sixty seconds, if not more. But at the end, he stood right before Karl, inches away from him. He lifted his arms, leaned forward, and fell into him, burying his tear-streaked face in the shoulder of the man’s purple jacket. He wrapped his tiny little arms around the man’s neck and squeezed him, hugging him tight. Karl sat for a moment, a little stunned, before lifting up one of his arms and placing a perfectly-manicured hand on the mouse’s bloody back. It was… a little bit disgusting — both the blood and the overt display of sentimentality — but something told him now was not the moment to push the mouse away.
“I’m sorry,” Mickey muttered, mumbling into the fabric of the purple coat. “I get lonely, too. I miss my home, too.”
After another brief moment, Mickey Mouse pulled away from the hug. He turned, crossing back across the table and sliding off onto the floor carefully, slowly. "It means a lot to me," he said as he made his way down, "to have earned your respect. Because I know there's not many other people that respect would matter to."
His feet hit the floor. "It matters to me, Karl. It really does."
The sound of the hustle and bustle of the world outside the conference room began to buzz from underneath the door, and innately, Mickey knew the galaxy had just watched the end of the finale. Karl, too, perked up a bit, hearing the commotion.
“I’d like for this to stop,” Mickey stated matter-of-factly, without looking at the producer. “I’d like for you to take your energy, your power, and put it somewhere else. Put it towards
helping people, instead of gettin' them all excited that I blasted a hole in a teenage girl. I think there is a good person inside you, Karl. I think there’s a person who really
loves this place, and wants to do what’s best for it. Of course… I think there’s a good person inside all of us. I think you should quit this business and try and find him.”
Karl leaned back in his chair. “We’ll see, mouse,” he nodded. “I’ll take your career advice under advisement.”
Mickey chuckled. “That’s all I can ask, I s’pose.”
He struggled towards the door. The journey took for freakin’ ever, but after several shuffling steps and a shaky climb up a short staircase, his gloved hand was on the handle. He squeezed it tight, knowing that on the other side, his time with Dante’s Abyss was,
finally, over. It took him much effort and several seconds to turn the knob and pull the door open, and when he did, light spilled over him from the corridor outside. It was only now, in this moment, that the mouse king noticed just how
dark the boardroom was — not exactly a peak design choice if Jak was aiming for something other than ‘sinister corporate executive.’
“Mickey,” Karl called. The mouse glanced back over his shoulder, and the man smirked, lifting one of those eyebrows again.
“To the next adventure?”
Mickey Mouse rolled his eyes. “You aren’t allowed to say that, pal.”
Then he slipped out the door and slammed it behind him, and once again, Karl Jak was alone.
