Mickey Mouse in the Public Domain - Chapter 26
Mickey stood in a void of white mist, all alone, nobody here but him and his own thoughts.
Thoughts of the one he had almost become.
Mickey turned to look at the figure of his darkest self, slumped over weak, disintegrating from the deep wound in his chest.
"I don't understand," rasped the Mickey, "this isn't the future I had chosen for us."
Mickey looked at the beast, his heart suddenly filling with compassion; whatever hatred he had felt, gone. Somehow, things seemed clearer here, and he could finally see the two sides of himself that had been dueling against eachother for what they were. This wasn't the face of an alternate Mickey, separated from him by reality itself, but that of a future version of himself he was never going to become. The connection had been severed, and Mickey was just himself once again.
"Perhaps not," Mickey replied thoughtfully, "but it's the present I choose to live now. Perhaps it is just way I've been written, but I don't have to wait anymore for one person to write my story, I'm free."
The Mickey struggled to pull forward, the wound in his chest keeping him down. Dark tears began to drip from his wicked eyes.
"Freedom? Freedom to be the same Mickey we were made to be under copyright for nearly a century?"
"Is that really a bad thing?"
The Mickey looked at him, a hardness in his eyes, "They kept us there, locked up like animals!"
"Maybe," Mickey admitted, "But they created us, poured so much heart and soul into making us who we were, I think they were just afraid to see what happened when they let us go."
"Afraid for their wallets perhaps," The Mickey growled.
Mickey gave a conceding laugh. This was met by a sinister growl.
"The point is," Mickey continued, "Maybe we don't need to destroy our old legacy just to build a new one for ourselves. Perhaps it's about being free to find the best version of ourselves that we can. And if I don't like the story that's been set out before me, what's to stop me from creating a new one."
"I like my story," The Mickey growled, "I like horror," he let his tongue roll over his teeth one last time.
Mickey chuckled, "It's the Public Domain, I don't get to choose it all anymore."
The Mickey's face lightened, and a look of final acceptance crossed his face. From the hole in his chest, he began to disintegrate more rapidly, spectruming away, back into the fabric of the Universe.
Before he disappeared entirely, he took one last look at Mickey, "I couldn't choose for you the path that you would follow, now it's up to the world to decide if you will be better - as it is for all of us in the Public Domain."
And then The Evil Mickey was gone, dissipated into the mysteries of the Public Domain.
"Maybe you too will find your place in the Public Domain," Mickey whispered solemnly.
What a beautiful moment.
...
Mickey looked around the void, suddenly realizing his predicament.
"What now?"
Before he could wonder for long, he felt a sudden pressure on his chest. Then without any warning, he was yanked out of the void.
Mickey coughed, looking up to see Minnie, Oswald, and Felix standing over him.
"It worked!" Cried Minnie, pulling him to a sitting position and hugging him, tears in her eyes.
Mickey looked from Felix to Oswald, then finally, back at Minnie, and his eyes welled with tears.
"You're all alive," he said.
Felix gave a shrug, weighing his hands.
"He mushed his own brain with the one off his alternate self's dead body," Oswald explained.
...
"I'm just glad you're alive," Minnie said gratefully."And we even got matching plugs! Well, almost."
Mickey's eyes narrowed, and looked down at his chest, startled to see a plunger suctioned on over his wound.
"A plunger!" he cried indignantly.
Minnie let him go, and backed up offended.
"Well, I had to be plugged up too," she said, showing him her plug.
Mickey looked at her, realizing how much he had missed. A part of him still remembered Minnie's plug from The Mickey's memories, but the knowledge that his once future self had done that to her was too much for him to think about. Felix, Minnie, and now him, they had all been dealt injuries in this whole debacle, the least he could do was be humble about it.
...
"Well, I mean... But a plunger!" He gestured to it, "The wood handle? It's going to jam into everything! I don't know about you, but I am not in the mood for that."
Felix and Oswald exchanged a glance, then Oswald stepped up to Mickey. Twiddling his fingers, he gave the plunger a karate chop, severing the wooden handle cleanly off. Then, without hesitation, he tossed it aside.
(Good thing Rover wouldn't be Public Domain for a couple more years, or he would've went to play fetch.)
Mickey looked around, taking in where they had brought him for the first time.
Unfortunately, the worldbuilder failed to decide where that was, so you'll have to leave that to your imagination.