From: cheezstk@hotmail.com Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 07:36:11 GMT Subject: NEW: Honey, I Shrunk the Gunmen (1/1) Title: Honey, I Shrunk the Gunmen Author: cheezstk E-Mail Address: cheezstk@hotmail.com Rating: R (a mild R) for swearing and a little violence Category: TH Spoilers: Nope Summary: Mini!Gunmen! After being accidentally miniaturized, the boys face the trials and tribulations of their new diminutive stature. Special guest appearance by a mean and nasty rat. (No, it's not named Alex, but it might be a relative.) Feedback: Will be cherished and worshipped and will live in its own little feedback shrine forever (well, in its own little folder anyway). Please feed me! Distribution statement: Go for it. I'd appreciate an email, though Disclaimer: The Lone Gunmen, Mulder, & Scully belong to CC, 1013, and FOX; not to me. I'm not making any money off this, and no infringement is intended. Notes: There's really a story here this time! Many thanks to Amanda, for the beta, and to Tim, for inspiring this silliness. Honey, I Shrunk the Gunmen by cheezstk xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Fuck you." "Fuck *you*. It's your fault we're in this mess, Doo-hickey." "*My* fault? Bullshit! You're the one who fucking zapped us into elves, you stupid punk!" "Like you weren't an elf already, Poo-lickey. I'm surprised you didn't disappear completely." Byers glanced up from where he was sitting dejectedly on the edge on Langly's keyboard, shook his head sadly, and went back to holding his face in his hands. "Goddamit, Langly, I'm warning you..." "You'll what? Sprinkle me with pixie dust?" He snorted with derision. "Or are you just pissed because some parts of you were so minuscule to begin with they *did* disappear?" That was too much; Langly had gone too far. Frohike lunged at Langly and shoved him in the chest. The lanky little geek stumbled backwards, tripped over his mouse, and went sprawling in a tumble of arms and legs and blond hair. Fortunately, he landed on the soft mousepad, and nothing was injured except for his pride. Langly sprang back up, eyes blazing behind his horn-rims, ready to start swinging. "Guys! Stop it!" Byers jumped up and stepped between his two friends, keeping them apart. A familiar position in an unusual situation. "Squabbling isn't going to solve anything. We need to stay calm and just think. There has to be a way to undo this." Langly shot Frohike a dirty look, adjusted his glasses, and thought for a moment. "Well, if I could rewire around the power supply, maybe I could reverse the polarity of the..." "No freakin' way! Damnit Langly, it was your tinkering around with that thing that did this to us in the first place. There's no way in hell I'm going to let you even *think* about touching it again." "It was you who brought the damn thing home to begin with, Fro-icky. Remember what you said? 'Oooh, I have this great lead on this top secret military project.' And, 'Ooooh, I have a secret contact bringing me some equipment he stole from the university, but it's really part of this project and he wants us to analyze it and...'" "Guys." Byers interrupted in an irritatingly calm voice. "Stop it. It's a moot point anyway. Look at where we are, and look where the equipment is." Three little heads swung around to look where Byers was pointing. They considered the massive pile of tubes and wires that looked like a prop from a low budget sixties sci-fi movie. Massive being the key word--if they had stood next to it, the generator-sized contraption would have seemed as tall as a skyscraper. Or at least an overgrown condominium. Then they looked back (in tandem, of course) to assess their current locale, on the table next to Langly's computer. At the gargantuan, IMAX-sized monitor. At the grocery-cart-sized mouse Langly had tumbled over. At the keyboard. And finally, at the impassable, Grand Canyon drop to the floor that separated them from the equipment that had been the cause of their problems. Frohike took a nervous step back from the edge of the table. "Shit." "This sucks royal green donkey dick." "Oh shit!" The other two Gunmen gaped at Byers. There was terror in his eyes and his face had gone as white as correction fluid. They slowly turned around to look at what had spooked him, and froze in fear. There was a big hairy rat on the table. Its nose twitched menacingly as it stalked towards them. The rat was covered in matted brown fur, and had dark, sinister eyes. It looked mean. It looked hungry. It was the size of a pony. The Gunmen stared at the rat. The rat bared its teeth. And all hell proceeded to break loose. The three men sprang in three different directions as the rat rushed them. Unfortunately for Langly, he tried to spring backwards, and once again fell on his backside, this time landing on the keyboard. The rat was on him in an instant, trying to catch one of his flailing limbs in its teeth. With Langly's panicked struggling, it had some difficulty. He managed to make it as far as the Alt key before the rat crunched down on his leg. Langly let out an anguished scream, just as their fight hit an unhappy combination of keys and the computer made an indignant beep. This startled the rat long enough that it let go of Langly's leg for a moment. He was able to scrabble away from the rat, off the keyboard entirely. With a crazed and hungry glare in its eyes, the rat gathered itself for another attack. And was broadsided by a furious bundle of leather and tiny combat boots. Yelling and cursing, Frohike punched and kicked wildly at the rodent. "You fucking rat die you evil shit motherfucker leave him the fuck alone fucker I'll kick your rat ass!!!" Frohike managed to grab the rat's neck in a wrestling hold. The rat hissed and tossed its head around, trying to dislodge its new opponent. Frohike lost his footing, and somehow he ended up on the rodent's back, momentarily riding it like a bucking bronco. Unfortunately, Frohike didn't make a very good cowboy, and the rat threw him almost immediately. He landed hard, the wind knocked out of him. The rat leapt forward and grabbed him around the waist with its teeth. It picked him up, and tried to shake him like, well, like a terrier with a rat. Frohike was too big for it to do that, though, and he kept punching it about the face as well. It bit down harder, causing him to yelp with pain. Their struggling had taken them to the edge of the desk. Frohike managed to grab on to the rat's ear and give it a hard yank. The rat had had enough of this annoyance, and proceeded to toss its adversary over the edge of the table. "Frohike! Nooooo!" The rat's attention turned back to the hollering Langly. Wounded prey was a better bet. It stalked closer, pausing to lap at the blood he'd tracked over the edge of the keyboard. Suddenly, there was a cry of rage as Byers appeared out of nowhere and charged at the rat with a pencil: a knight in shining business-wear. Startled, the rat twitched away, and the makeshift lance only grazed its side. The rat squeaked its wrath at Byers, and tried to turn back to its injured quarry. Thinking quickly, Byers dropped his unwieldy spear, whipped off his suit jacket, and waved it in the rat's face like a matador. It turned away from Langly and snapped at Byers. He danced away, and flapped his jacket at the rat again, drawing it away from Langly. Byers was terrified, but he didn't falter as he performed his dangerous bullfight. He managed to entice the rodent a couple of feet away, but he was nearing the other edge of the table. The rat was closing in and there was nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, Langly pulled himself back across the keyboard, blood from his leg smearing across the keys. With great difficulty, he maneuvered himself over to the arrow keys. He glanced up at the giant monitor, and began to press the up arrow over and over again. A lot of gibberish had been entered from all the fighting, but he'd remembered what he'd been doing just before the accident, right before Frohike had told him to turn it the fuck off. Finally, the right command. Wincing at the pain in his leg, Langly leaned over and fell on the enter key. And the deafening sound of "I Wanna Be Sedated" filled the Lone Gunmen HQ. Langly had managed to play the MP3 he'd been listening to. At very high volume. Byers tossed his jacket over the distracted rat's head, and landed a solid kick square on its nose with one well-polished shoe. The rat, frightened at the horrible ruckus and frustrated at all the trouble they'd been causing it, finally gave up. With an exasperated squeak, it leapt off the table and scampered away in search of easier prey. Byers ran back over to where his friend lie crumpled on the keyboard. "Are you all right, Langly?" "Forget me, Frohike went over the edge!" "Oh no. Frohike!" Horrified, Byers raced over to the edge of the desk. He looked over, expecting the worst--to see the crushed form of Frohike lying on the floor, miles below. "I'm down here, Byers. Help me up!" The little man (littler than usual, even) was hanging from one of the cables that had been strung underneath the edge of the table. He'd managed to hook one arm over it, but the staples holding the wire in place were starting to come loose. Byers threw himself down on the desk to get better leverage, and grabbed Frohike's wrist. After a bit of ungraceful struggling, they managed to pull him back up. "Are you all right?" Byers gasped. "Are you hurt? You're bleeding." "Yeah man, are you okay?" Langly piped in from where he was lying. "Looked like that thing got a good a bite out of you, too." Shaken by the whole experience, Frohike looked down at his torso. There were indeed several gashes along his sides, and a fair amount of blood. With Byers' help, he poked around gingerly, and determined that the bites weren't too deep. "Looks like my vest kept it from biting me too deep." He investigated the ragged bite marks in the thick, fur-lined leather. "And you were giving me shit about it, Langly. Let's take a look at you. Looks like it got you good, little buddy. You're bleeding all over the place." Frohike stumped over to inspect Langly's injured leg. "Ow. Fuck. That hurts." "Quit whining. I almost went over the edge of the world." "Too bad you didn't. You just had to come back and torment me, huh?" "Wouldn't miss it for the world, punk-ass." They grinned at each other as Byers started to rip his jacket apart to make makeshift bandages. After they'd patched themselves up as much as possible and calmed down a bit, they once again pondered their situation. "So, we can't reach the device, and we don't know if it would help if we could." "I could..." "Doesn't matter anyway." "We need to get some help. You two need medical attention as soon as possible, and we need somebody who can help us get back to, um, our appropriate proportions." "So let's call the dynamic duo." "Aw fuck. We should have done that to begin with." "Uh, guys? There's a slight problem with that plan. Look where the phone is." They all turned to look at the telephone, light years away, hanging on the opposite wall. "Shit." "Shit." *sigh* They shared a frustrated and despairing look. "So now what? We just sit here and starve or wait for Mickey Mouse to come back and finish us off?" Byers scratched his beard. Frohike stared daggers at the phone. "Well? What now?" Suddenly, Frohike smacked himself in the forehead. He started laughing. "We're a bunch of frickin' idiots." "Care to share the joke, Frohike?" "We're sitting on a fucking computer. We can just drop our favorite FBI agents an email, and say hey, hightail it over here and unshrinkify us." Byers and Langly shared a chastened look, and Byers also smacked himself in the forehead. Langly snorted, and said, "You better not write your *favorite* FBI agent, Frohike. There's no way in hell she'd ever believe this." "She'd think we'd been hitting the wacky meds again." Byers decisively said, "Mulder it is, then," and strode over to the keyboard. He hopped up on the keys, and began to type, jumping awkwardly from key to key. Not unlike Tom Hanks playing the piano. The other Gunmen watched this odd sight, too exhausted to laugh. Byers was muttering to himself as he typed, something that sounded suspiciously like, "If they'd only clean up after themselves once in awhile, we wouldn't *have* rats." Frohike glanced at Langly. "You're the one always leaving pizza boxes laying around." Langly glanced at Frohike. "And you're the one who never cleans up after making breakfast." "Punk-ass kid." "Crusty old fart." Frohike chuckled, and sat back to wait for Mulder and Scully to show up and make an X-File out of them. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More notes: I am not sure that this is normal behavior for 'Rattus norvegicus,' or 'Rattus rattus' or any species of rodent. It did seem awfully determined. Perhaps it was really a Hybrid Alien Terminator Ratdroid(TM), complete with cybernetic recording devices embedded in its ribs, which was really sent by the shadow government to spy on the Lone Gunmen, and... Or maybe it was just really, really hungry.