Jaci Dawn

Aric found himself face to face with a house mouse. Dish and Dylan crowded behind him, and Dylan flashed his flashlight into the mouse’s face. It covered its eyes with a paw, and beyond it, in the remaining light of the flashlight, the trio could make out a crowd of regular mice.
“We go the other way,” Dish whispered over Dylan’s shoulder. “If we back up, maybe they’ll just go down the hole and leave us be.”
“Where’s Ella when we need her?” Aric moaned. He was, for once, completely unarmed.
“Put that infernal light down,” a shrill voice scolded. “I can’t see with it in my eyes.”
“Maybe we don’t need Ella. I understood that perfectly,” Dylan stated. He lowered the flashlight.
The mouse scrutinized them. “You would stand out less if you didn’t wear clothes.”
“Yeah, but we’d be naked,” Dish shot back. “Come on guys, back up.”
“Hey, I know who they are!” Another voice, much younger sounding and female, piped up from behind the forward mouse. “That’s Aric Peabody.”
Aric blinked. “Who are you?”
“Missy Beaman,” the voice went all shy.
“I am Miss Sophy. Now, would you kindly lead me to where Mr. Nagasaki is waiting? And turn the flashlight off.”
“Yes. Yes, ma’am.”
The flashlight went off. The teen mice turned around and led Miss Sophy, and whoever was with her, toward the hole in the wall that led into the still-dark governor’s office. They found Richard, Gran, Kyle, and the girls waiting by the foot of the big mirror.
Ella ran forward and hugged Aric and Dish at the same time. “It sounded horrid down there! Did the rats really attack again?”
Richard bowed to Miss Sophy. “You made it!”
She bowed back, and told him, “I must say, I never thought of reducing ourselves to mice and wearing our human clothing. It must be quite awkward to be so anthropomorphized.”
“Not at all. Pockets have come in quite handy, as well as flashlights.”
“It was how Deke changed us,” Aric muttered, defensively.
If she heard him, Miss Sophy ignored him. “How many are there of you, did you say, Mr. Nagasaki? You look somewhat less than a dozen.”
“Aw, yes. We had an unfortunate scrape with a cat on our way here. Three of ours went off to do battle with the cat. And you? Ten, you said?”
“How did you know to come here as mice?”
“Who all is with you?”
“Gran the man, is that you?”
The questions shot out as mice overcame their initial shyness and manners were lost altogether in the small reunion. Miss Sophy and Richard commanded silence after a few short moments of hugs, high fives, fist bumps, and gleefully exchanged names.
“We have wasted too much time,” Richard said. “We must get our implements of war, and take up our stations before someone comes into the office to work.”
“Right. Hide those poison pills.”
“Scissors, staplers, anything we can use.”
“Zip ties!” Madison had been carrying them on her back like a backpack.
The mice jumped into action.
“I really fail to see the usefulness of clothing,” Miss Sophy reiterated.
“Aric carried the paperclips in his pockets. The paperclips saved us when the rats attacked.” Dish replied. He was trotting by with an armful of rubber bands.
“What do you intend to do with those, Dustin?” She snapped.
“Rubber band gun. I just have to figure out where to launch them from.” Dish passed his load up to Gran, who scrambled up the face of a bookshelf.
“There’s a couple bronze statues up here that I think we can use,” Gran replied.
Dish ran back for more rubber bands.
Aric showed the little mice (for many of them turned out to be fifth and sixth-graders) how to bend the larger paperclips into little spears and where to hide them in the room. “Your role is to try to stay out of the way,” he explained. “But if one of us gets into trouble, you run out and poke and run back away as fast as you can. Be really annoying.”
Mike and Tito grinned at each other, “We can do that!” They started arming them selves with paperclips.
“We don’t want to hurt the governor. But we need to zip tie him to his chair, and we need to keep him from yelling for his secretary.” Madison showed the younger girls how to work zip ties while Billie searched the desk for packing tape or something similar.
At last, everything was as ready as they could make it. The light from the window told them it was nearing daylight, and they needed to hide. Gran and Dish cowered behind the bronze statues of long horn cattle and elk, making themselves as flat as they could. The younger boys and Dylan hid on either side of the room, behind a credenza and a small bookshelf. The girls hid behind books on the lowest level of the large bookshelf, while Madison and Billie hid behind the books on the next shelf up, a red packing tape dispenser between them. Aric hauled a box of push pins up to the top of a large painting with an ornate frame he could set them on, and hide on by laying as flat as possible. Missy joined him. Aric watched the mousehole from his vantage point, hoping that at any moment, his best friend would swagger through with Natalie and Horace, Richard and Miss Sophy took up positions on either side of the door.
Ella, armed with the still-bloody letter opener, and a pair of scissors, lay flat on the floor behind the large mirror. Her heart was thumping so hard and so loud that she thought surely someone would hear her when they walked into the room. She tried to calm her breathing as she mentally cheered herself on.
I know what to do. I can do this. Mom and Dad and everyone needs us to do this. The Yokai doesn’t suspect. He doesn’t know I can see his true self. I can do this.
The clock on the governor’s wall ticked slowly forward. The girls on the first shelf fell asleep, despite their best efforts to stay awake. The boys behind the furniture were restless, and kept crawling forward to peer out, despite Dylan’s threats. Madison nodded off, and caught herself.
7:30 on the dot, they heard the door to the secretary’s office open. The footsteps on the carpet were light and feminine. The secretary moved around the office, opening blinds and putting on a pot of coffee, the aroma of which drifted under the door and into the sharp noses of the waiting mice. Her chair squeaked when she sat down in it, and the computer powered on. The next time the secretary got up was to pour herself a cup of coffee. The mug she carried clinked against the coaster on her desk. She started typing and clicking the computer mouse, sounding busy.
The governor arrived shortly after 8:00. He exchanged a word with the secretary as he poured himself a cup of coffee (or maybe she poured it for him). He opened his office door, turned back to the secretary, and said, “News conference at One. Please hold all my calls until then. And tell that weasel, Fred, to be up here by nine a.m., sharp.”
He closed the door. He took off his outer coat and hung it on the coat tree in the corner after setting his cup of coffee on the desk, then walked over to look at himself in the mirror. He muttered at the reflection, “I look as old as I feel. This had better work to get my charm back. I don’t know how much I trust Fred, anymore.”
He finally sat down and opened up his lap top.
Billie and Madison came out of hiding, and climbed the back of the chair quietly, holding the packing tape between them. They waited, but the younger girls were still napping.
Tito was the closest. He dashed out from behind the credenza and made for the book shelf. He jumped onto the books and dove behind them just as the governor turned his chair.
“Huh. Thought I saw a mouse. Memo to self: have Mrs. Rice order an exterminator.” He turned back, with Billie and Madison hanging on tightly.
Tito shook the girls awake and grabbed a zip tie himself. “Arms first, he whispered, Then feet. We need to time this perfectly.”
Embarrassed, the girls gathered the zip ties between them and teamed up. The arm teams went out first, staying directly behind the governor’s chair. The feet team readied themselves.
Each arm team consisted of two mice: one with the fastener end, and the other with the tip. They would have to move quickly: jump up onto the chair where the fastener mouse would hold steady. The tip mouse had to scurry up and over the governor’s arm, and jump down with the tip to run through the fastener. Both mice would then pull the zip tie tight while Billie and Madison raced around the governor’s head to tape his mouth shut. The feet team had to tie the governor’s legs tight. This was the trickiest part of the plan, and if anything could go wrong…
Tito and the other team leader, a girl name Chloe, nodded at each other. They led the charge up the side of the chair and executed a perfect jump over the governor’s resting arms, connecting with their partners at almost the same moment. Zip! the ties were pulled, and they dove off of the chair.
“Wha?!” The governor started to yell, but Madison scrambled around his face, her hands and feet pummeling along across his chin, while she pulled the clear packing tape around and pressed it against his face, silencing him. Billie used her teeth to cut the tape and pressed down the other side of the tape. The red roll dropped to the floor and clattered.
The secretary paused in her typing. “Everything all right, Governor?”
The governor tried to stand up with his chair. Tito grabbed the zip tie end from one of the girls and raced forward, jumping onto the left shoe. Madison grabbed the other end and raced around the back side of the governor’s right leg. He kicked her, and she rolled under the chair. Dylan rushed forward and pulled her out of harm’s way just as the rolled on the chair came down where she had landed. Billie raced in and picked up the fastener end. Chloe led the girls with their zip ties, and the ends met. It took a group effort to pull the ties tight, and Tito was kicked upward, into the corner of the desk. He fell and did not move.
“Oh!” Miss Sophy ran forward, but not before Kyle appeared from his hiding place and lifted the still mouse away to the safety of the mouse hole. Miss Sophy followed them through the hole.
Richard left his post and jumped up onto the governor’s desk. He walked past the cup of coffee and bowed to the balding man who was now tied to his own chair and muffled with clear packing tape. “We regret to do this to you, but you must know you have been under a very evil spell. We are here to protect you and to release you from the evil that has been done. Cooperate, and you will not be harmed.”
The governor’s eyes bulged, whether from fear or anger, Richard could not tell. “Turn him around, so his back is to the door,” he told Billie and the girls.
Outside the office, the secretary had resumed her typing. She shook her head, and glanced at the clock. 8:35. Time for a second cup of coffee before Fred arrived. She considered getting a cup for the governor, but he hadn’t been very nice the past week, and she decided against it. Let him get his own cuppa.