Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Mickey
It was a Thursday afternoon. Picnic day.
Mickey whistled to himself as he packed food into his old, worn picnic basket from the refrigerator. Minnie would be waiting for him at the park, he was certain, after she finished her performance at EPCOT.
The thought of the uber-modern park made Mickey’s right ear flinch slightly. He grimaced. As of late, Disney had been going off the rails. There hadn’t been a sale sheet without red ink on it in the past five years. The company was visibly on the verge of collapse, and Disney was only staying alive via its live-action remakes and unnecessary sequels.
Mickey had gently set the wheel of cheese inside the picnic basket when he saw an old photograph on the kitchen counter. It had been taken about twenty years ago, when he had been one of the only living characters at the parks.
The photo itself had a monochromatic filter over it, making it seem older than it really was. In it, Mickey was center stage with a microphone, singing an old theme song from times forgotten. To the back was Goofy and Donald, acting as background dancers to the aged scene.
A smile crossed Mickey’s face. He was long past his performing days, but the thought of being able to, once again, take center stage at the park still tickled his brain every now and then. The thought of all that praise and attention…it beckoned to him the same way an owner beckoned to his dog.
Mickey, conscious of the narcissism present in that thought, quickly shoved it to the bottom of his mind. His only focus this afternoon was to enjoy the picnic he and Minnie had planned. With a shaky inhale, and deep breath out, Mickey walked to the front door. He opened it by the handle and shut it behind him. The old door groaned at its being disturbed, but it obliged nonetheless.
Mickey gazed upon his neighborhood. ToonTown, at its beginning, had been relatively small. However, with the growing company came a growing population. Just a few weeks ago, the long vacant house across the street had finally been moved into. The new owners seldom came out of it, and rumor had it that they planned to turn it into a haunted mansion.
Mickey walked along the brick pavement of the road, whistling to himself. Several passersby, whether they were flirting with their partners or arguing about the price of a hot dog, turned to stare at him as he strided on the road. Mickey had been used to the staring for a while now. However, he did not feel very comfortable with said stares. For all the awe he knew was in those eyes, he also sensed fear behind them. The thought that someone would be afraid of him, of all people, had always concerned Mickey. He tried to shake off the uneasy feeling that had come over him and kept on walking.
It took him about five minutes to reach the town park, where he saw many couples also enjoying their afternoons off. Some were sitting by the lake, while others were also enjoying picnics of their own.
And there, by the old oak tree, was Minnie with a red blanket on the damp grass, smiling.
Mickey smiled and approached her. It had initially taken a long while before Mickey had fallen in love with her, during the old days of the park. However, spending time with Minnie, he found she was a reliable source of comfort and certainty in the times of change and chaos that seemed all too familiar nowadays. Her warm smile could bring him out of his worst mood.
Mickey sat down beside her and opened the picnic basket. “How was the stage?” Mickey asked cheerfully.
Minnie put a hand to her forehead. “Oh, it was fun! It made me feel alive again. But now I have this old headache to deal with…”
Mickey cast a worried look at her. “Is it bad?” he asked. “If it’s too much for you, I could run to the house and get you some Tylenol.”
Minnie smiled at him, taking her hand off her forehead. “No, no. Don’t worry about it, Mickey. I’m sure it’ll go away with some time and water.”
Mickey sheepishly smiled. He knew it wasn’t only the pressures of show business that troubled her. Pluto, their dog, had recently wandered from the park and had been hit by a passing bus. Minnie, while she hid the grief well, still had cracks that needed to be sealed from that sad event.
A metallic-sounding chirp from the lakeside caught Mickey’s attention. He turned around to see two robots (by the looks of it) who were also enjoying a picnic. One of them was square and stout, with treads for legs and glass eyes. The other was sleeker in design, being pure white and resembling an egg, if you zoned out enough.
“What are those things?” asked Mickey. “I’ve never seen them around here before.”
Minnie slightly bristled at Mickey referring to the robots as ‘things’. “They’re two robots who are new to the town,” said Minnie. “They used to live in Galaxy’s Edge. You know, the place where Mando works.”
Mickey snorted distastefully. He had hated Mando ever since he had gained some form of authority in the park. His policies and rules up there were, as Mickey had pointed out multiple times, bound to bring the park to destruction, if Iger and his reruns didn’t first.
“Why on earth would those Newpols want to move down here? They had everything they could want back at the Edge,” Mickey grimaced.
Minnie sat up sharply and glared at her husband. “Mickey!” she barked. “How could you say that?!”
“I’m not trying to ‘discriminate’ against them, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Mickey said. “They want new policies, don’t they? That’s why we call them ‘Newpols’. Alright?”
Minnie continued to glare at Mickey for a moment before she sighed and bit into her grilled cheese sandwich. Her gaze towards the grass aroused suspicion in him.
“There’s something you’re not telling me about those two, isn’t there?” Mickey accused, jabbing his thumb towards where the couple was sitting.
Minnie sighed. “The two of them, WALL-E and EVA…they’re…both ‘in-between’ genders”
Mickey bristled and growled under his breath. The “In-Between” concept of gender had never sat right with him. In his mind, there were only two ways; male or female. That’s how it had always been, and how it should’ve continued to be.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the two mice. Mickey, feeling a mix of anger with guilt at ruining the picnic, stared off into the now starting-to-set sun.
It was at that moment when Mickey felt a strange feeling course through him. He couldn’t describe it exactly, but there was something he could easily sense in it.
Coldness.
With a shudder of both fear and sudden chills, Mickey turned his gaze to focus directly on the sun, trying to block out the dread that had surged through him. That emotion…it had felt frozen to the core but…it was powerful . There was something else behind it, something strange and foreign.
As Mickey sat there on the grass, he saw a shape in the stars that had just now started to appear in the night sky.
It was a syringe.
Mickey, filled with a sense of deja vu, quickly returned his gaze to the grass, his mind abuzz with thoughts he wished he wasn’t having.