A Crossover fan fiction by Masked Bard, which links The Great Mouse Detective with An American Tail, and a sequel to Basil's American Tail.
A year has passed since Basil's battle with Ratigan atop Big Ben, and the Flavershams have moved to the American West to put that horror behind them. However, once arriving in Green River, Olivia's father is kidnapped once again. Can Olivia hone her detective skills to find him? Luckily, she'll get a little help from one Fievel Mousekewitz, setting the two of them off on a journey that will include many old friends and foes alike.
The novel-length, 30-chapter undertaking can be read on DeviantArt here
, or on FanFiction.Net here . The third part of the trilogy, The Great Mouse Reporter is also available on both sites.
This work provides examples of:
- Abandoned Mine: Jebediah's gold mine just outside of Green River. Hiram Flaversham and Wylie Burp are imprisoned there, the former being forced to build a robotic duplicate of Ratigan and the latter forced to dig up gold. The final showdown takes place there.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Tony comes to this conclusion about Tanya when talking to Vartan, sensing her crush on Ratigan. However, once Tanya discovers just how bad Ratigan is, she quickly renounces him and joins Nellie and Basil as an undercover spy.
- Alternate Universe Fic: In order to get Fievel and Olivia to be the same age, the events in The Great Mouse Detective had to be moved to 1889 rather than 1897, while the story itself takes place in 1890. Plus, it happens four years after everything that transpired in Basil's American Tail. Otherwise all of the movies happened as normal, besides Nellie rejecting Reed Daley's proposal at the end of Mystery of the Night Monster because of Basil, and some semblance of the events in "The Lost Mother Lode" episode of Fievel's American Tails having also taken place.
- An Arm and a Leg: Olivia semi-accidentally lops off one of Chula's legs with a tomahawk. Though extremely painful, he does have seven legs left. However, he walks with a limp for the rest of the story.
- Batman Gambit: Basil ingeniously uses Cat R. Waul's obsession with Tanya's voice to shatter his and Ratigan's alliance and buy enough time to save everyone from Ratigan's trap, knowing that when Ratigan actually gets serious about executing Tanya as a hostage, Waul will stop him.
- Battle Couple: Olivia and Fievel when they try to rescue Hiram Flaversham and Wylie Burp. Later in the climax, Basil and Nellie fight Ratigan together in the mine shaft.
- Beta Couple: Basil and Nellie, as they're only a secondary focus in this story.
- Birdcaged: This trope is used in two instances.
- After Professor Ratigan falls into Cat R. Waul's sandwich in the prologue, he falls unconscious and later wakes up caged in a birdcage, aboard a ship sailing to America and face to face with Waul who's ready to suggest partnership.
- After Olivia and Fievel's second rescue attempt of Hiram and Wylie fails, they're locked up in one of the birdcages of the gold mine. Chula explains that their original purpose was to keep birds around to die in toxic gas leaks in order to warn humans in time.
- Birds of a Feather: Olivia grows to like Fievel more and more as it dawns on her how similar they are with their vulnerabilities and adventurousness.
- Brats with Slingshots: Fievel uses a slingshot to shoot Fidget in the head and make him fall when the bat is trailing Fievel, Olivia and Tiger, carrying Chula at the same time.
- The Brute: One-Eye, the big one-eyed cat from Waul's gang, serves as this for Waul and Ratigan.
- But Now I Must Go: Basil gets on a train to return to London at the end, and Nellie, after waiting for four years, joins him.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Olivia has two small moments of being this well before she and Fievel become a couple. The first instance is when Fievel and Nellie recall their past experiences, making Olivia wish that she had known Fievel as long as Nelly has. The other instance is when Olivia learns from Fievel about Cholena and tries to (unsuccessfully) make Fievel jealous by telling him of her past precocious crush on Basil.
- Crossover Couple: Has with Olivia and Fievel, and returning from the prequel, Basil and Nellie.
- Detectives Follow Footprints:
- Olivia employs this technique after her father's disappearance and finds footprints left by a peg-legged creature (Fidget). The trail ends in the spot where the bat took wing.
- Basil does the same weeks later in the river area and finds footprints that prove that Fievel and Olivia survived their forced whitewater rafting.
- Falsely Reformed Villain: Cat R. Waul claims to Green River's mice that he has seen the error of his ways after the events of Fievel Goes West and become a vegetarian like Tiger. He's able to convince the majority of them with the support of the conniving Ratigan, the captured Wylie Burp's public promotion of him to the sheriff and his "tokens of atonement".
- Foreshadowing: When Fievel and Olivia first escape from Jebediah's gold mine, One-Eye shouts after them that now "they are up the creek without a paddle".
- Funetik Aksent: Olivia's Scottish accent, as well as several other characters.
- Furry Confusion: Olivia experiences some
Fridge Logic when noting that Wylie Burp is bipedal, wears clothes and can talk, while back in London Toby the dog could do none of these things. - God in Human Form: Though it is cat instead of human in this instance, Mousehicans believe Tiger to be the reincarnation of the Great Orange One, a catlike god who saved Mousehicans from a great cataclysm and promised to return to protect the mice from evil.
- Gut Feeling: After Fievel and Olivia's alleged accident, Tanya is unable to banish from her heart the feeling that her brother is alive, even when she's still under the charm of Waul and Ratigan. Mama is very sceptical of this feeling, but Papa has learned to consider it to be possibly correct. Before Tanya encounters Fievel again, Nellie and Basil both assure that her bond with her brother is probably strong enough to make her feeling correct.
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted when Olivia and Fievel are armed by helpful Mousehicans with a tomahawk and a bow when they go to Jebediah's gold mine in order to rescue Hiram. Fievel figures that due to his experience with a slingshot, he would make better use of the bow, leaving for Olivia the tomahawk.
- Hand Gagging:
- Fievel does this to Olivia when she tries to voice her objections to the crowd that has been successfully captivated by Ratigan and Cat R. Waul's lies because they have nothing to prove their objections with.
- Later, Fievel has to do this to Olivia again when they're gathering information in Jebediah's gold mine. Unfortunately, the effort comes a little too late.
- He Knows Too Much: Olivia and Fievel know right from the beginning that Ratigan and Cat R. Waul are up to no good when they appear publicly in Green River. The villains are aware of this and offer a truce for the children: they can go on about their lives as long as they remain silent. However, when the children continue snooping around, they discover that Wylie Burp and Hiram are held captive at Jebediah's gold mine. When Ratigan and Waul are informed of this, they decide to silence the children permanently.
- I Kiss Your Hand: When Olivia and Fievel confess their feelings for each other, she says that they have to get her father's acceptance before they can be a couple and kiss. She still figures that hand-kissing is appropriate enough and lets Fievel do that to her.
- Inevitable Waterfall: As part of Ratigan and Waul's concealed murder attempt, Fievel and Olivia are trapped on Fievel's raft and sent down the Green River without oars. As they go down the rapids, Fievel is too stunned to do anything due to his resurfaced bad memories about being swept to the Atlantic Ocean, forcing Olivia to keep them from hitting the rocks all by herself. Fortunately, they survive the fifteen feet high waterfall (which would still be fifty feet for small creatures like them). When Basil investigates the place and finds proof that the children survived, he concludes that their small size and light weight allowed them to avoid hitting the rocks below the water.
- Kid Detective: Olivia aspires to become a great detective like Basil, and she puts to good use what she learned from him in her quest to find her father.
- Landslide Election: Ratigan is run against Fidget for mayor, with Fidget purposely making himself look bad.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Ratigan and Waul's plan to kill Fievel and Olivia is to send them down the Green River on Fievel's raft without oars, and then claim that they tried to rescue the children but failed.
- Never Found the Body: After Ratigan's fall from Big Ben. And indeed, after the story's climax as well.
- The Nicknamer: Tony Toponi, who has a nickname for everyone, calling Olivia "Livvie".
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: Ratigan survived the fall from Big Ben by landing in Cat R. Waul's sandwich.
- "Not So Different" Remark: When Basil has Ratigan at gunpoint but doesn't shoot, Ratigan deduces the reason to be this trope.For a moment, to the both of them everything else seemed to go silent, two enemies in a deadlock. As if they were the only two mice on Earth. All Basil had to do to end their little game once and for all was to pull the trigger. What was stopping him? Ratigan suddenly grinned, as Basil remained stoic. Ratigan knew why Basil couldn't shoot him. It was the same reason Ratigan wouldn't be able to shoot Basil if the tables were turned. No, dying like that was too good for Ratigan, in Basil's eyes. It needed to be more climactic, more poetic. There needed to be an artistry to it. Ratigan understood. He knew Basil did too. Even falling from Big Ben hadn't done either of them justice. That's why they were alive.
- Omniglot: When Basil speaks Armenian with Vartan, Nellie asks how many languages he can speak. His answer is thirty-seven (though he admits that his Swahili is rusty).
- The One Who Wears Shoes: Olivia, who briefly wonders how Fievel can run around barefoot outside without hurting himself.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: This is Ratigan's view on Basil, and the reason Fidget warned Chula when the spider wondered if they could simply kill Basil themselves and bring his body to Ratigan.
- Original Character: Vartan Mookian, Nellie Brie's Armenian assistant.
- Passing the Torch: Wylie Burp is captured by the bad guys and forced to publicly resign his post as the sheriff to Cat R. Waul as part of the scheme to win the trust of Green River's mice. After he's freed, he decides to truly pass the torch and makes Tiger the new sheriff as originally promised.
- Pet the Dog: As noted in canon, Waul absolutely adores Tanya's voice. Enough to stop Ratigan from killing her in the climax.
- Precocious Crush: Olivia used to have this on Basil after he helped her.
- Premature Eulogy: Ratigan gives one at Olivia and Fievel's funeral. Of course, they're still alive.
- Prematurely Marked Graves: Both Olivia and Fievel are provided with these by Ratigan and Waul.
- Produce Pelting: Fidget gets this treatment during the above mentioned Landslide Election against Ratigan. Later Ratigan himself is on the receiving end of this when his and Waul's masquerades are finally exposed.
- Rollercoaster Mine: Jebediah's mine, which is one of the few elements in the fanfic taken from Fievel's American Tails. The climax takes place in a mine cart going down the mine shaft.
- Sadistic Choice: Ratigan's trap for Basil in the end clinches on him having to choose saving either Nellie or Fievel and Vartan, and not having enough time to save them all.
- Saloon Owner: Miss Kitty has been the benevolent version of this trope since the events of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West as the opposite of the villainous example of Cat R. Waul. However, once Waul returns to Green River, he retakes the ownership of the saloon from Miss Kitty by using his legal claim to it.
- Say My Name: The last scene with Ratigan involves him shouting Basil's name right before the mine cart he's in falls into a chasm.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: At one point, Tanya accuses Fievel of being Olivia's boyfriend, leading him to deny it out of embarrassment (as he's not Olivia's boyfriend at that point).
- Ship Sinking: Nellie and Reed Daley (a canon pairing), as well as Tanya and Waul (a semi-popular fan pairing).
- Sleazy Politician: Ratigan becomes one in the scheme to be elected as Green River's mayor and from there work his way up the political ladder to the president.
- Smitten Teenage Girl: Tanya, who develops a bit of a crush on Ratigan at first, until she sees Waul eating a mouse and overhears that they "killed" her brother and Olivia.
- Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass: While having to spend nights in the desert, Olivia uses this trick with her magnifying glass to ignite campfires for her and Fievel, having learned it from Basil.
- Unhand Them, Villain!: Basil tells Ratigan to let his captives go, which given the design of Ratigan's trap would be a very bad idea.
- Villain Team-Up: Happens in the prologue between Cat R. Waul and Professor Padraic Ratigan.
- Villains With Good Publicity: Cat R. Waul and Professor Padraic Ratigan win together the trust of nearly the entire Green River's population. They do this by Ratigan using his anonymity in America and charm to convince that Waul has reformed and become a vegetarian like Tiger, and forcing the captured Wylie Burp to publicly support them and make Waul a new sheriff. Of course, the entire masquerade is shattered near the end by the combined efforts of the heroes.
- Widow's Weeds: Tanya when attending the funeral of (still-living) Fievel and Olivia.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Ratigan decides to feed one of the three orphans to Waul to make it easier for Waul to continue keeping up his vegetarian act, reasoning that the orphans are perfectly expandable at that point. As Waul eats the fat orphan Roc, Tanya happens to witness this unnoticed and realizes how evil Waul and Ratigan are.
