Small, But Efficient

lawnmowerelf

Rating: PG

Pairing: none

Spoilers: none

Disclaimer: The last time I checked, my name wasn't Kripke. Therefore, I own none of this, more's the pity.

Summary: When Sam is altered during one of his and Dean's cases, it falls to another group of do-gooders to help him.

Small, But Efficient

Sam groaned as he slowly returned to consciousness. His head was pounding in time with his pulse, and it was making him slightly nauseous, though at least it wasn't the sharp, spiking pain that accompanied a vision. Then he sighed in relief when someone placed a cool, damp cloth over his still-closed eyes and at least some of the pain slowly ebbed away.

Once he could focus on something other than the pain he tried to remember just what had lead to his current circumstances, and grimaced when he couldn't. He knew that he and Dean had been investigating the disappearance of several people in a small town in New York, that they had gone to the park that people had been disappearing from, and then nothing.

"Hey, you're awake. How are you feeling?"

The voice was feminine and completely unfamiliar, which meant that it wasn't Dean. She sounded friendly, whoever she was, but in Sam's experience that didn't really mean much of anything. The friendly-sounding ones were often the most dangerous. He kept his muscles loose and ready for action, just in case, and reached up to slowly pull the damp cloth off of his face.

"It feels like I was run over by a truck. What happened, and where's Dean?"

He could almost hear her shrug. "I'm not really sure. You were just lying on the ground unconscious when Monty found you, and there wasn't anyone else anywhere around." She paused, and he felt the bed dip when she sat down next to him. "Who's Dean?"

"My brother." Sam finally forced his eyes open, trying to ignore the way the light seemed to stab directly into his brain and looked around. An instant later, he screamed. And after a quick glance down at his blanket-covered body, the scream got louder.

Instead of normal human skin, his entire body was now covered in brown fur and a strange wiggling from the general vicinity of his ass told him that he was now in possession of a short but fairly active tail. He couldn't be sure without doing a much more thorough inspection than he thought he could take at the moment, but Sam was fairly certain that he was now some sort of rodent.

His rescuer, who had jumped back in fright at his sudden scream, was a mouse. At least, Sam was pretty sure she was a mouse, even though he had never actually seen a mouse with a head full of blonde hair before, let alone one who wore coveralls and had a pair of goggles perched on top of her head.

He flinched when she started to move closer and jerked the blanket up to his chin, his breathing coming in rapid pants. He was hallucinating; that was the only answer. Closing his eyes tightly, Sam began to mutter every Latin prayer he could think of under his breath on the off chance that his hallucinations were due to some sort of demonic intervention, though he had to admit that he wasn't expecting it to do much of anything.

"Easy there. We're not going to hurt you. You're safe here, I promise."

Sam cracked his eyes open again at that, and wasn't all that surprised to see that nothing had changed. His rescuer, who was slowly approaching the bed with her hands extended, was still a mouse and he was still some sort of furry rodent with an all-too-active tail.

Dean was never going to let him live it down. Ever.

He took a deep breath, trying to figure out the best way to get to the bottom of his current predicament. "Um, this may sound a little odd, but when you found me, did I look like this?"

The mouse frowned a bit at that, but nodded. "Uh huh. Why, aren't you supposed to look like this?"

Sam had to bite back a slightly hysterical laugh. "Well, you see, before I woke up here I was human. And now I'm kind of not."

The mouse's eyes widened. "Golly, no wonder you were so panicked when you woke up. Don't worry, we'll do whatever we can to help you. After all, that's what we do."

Before Sam could say anything else another mouse walked into the room, a small housefly wearing a red t-shirt following in his wake. "Gadget, love, how's our visitor doing?" He glanced over at Sam, breaking into a wide grin. "Well, what do you know? You're awake."

"Monty, this is..." Gadget paused, then blushed. "Golly, I just realized I don't even know your name yet."

"Sam. My name's Sam."

She smiled. "Monty, this is Sam, and I think he's our next case. He says that he's supposed to be human."

Monty's head jerked back to stare at him, and Sam had to fight the urge to pull the blanket back up to his chin. "Well, now. We've seen some strange things before, Gadget, but this one takes the cheesecake."

"Um, if you can help me track down my brother he can probably help with the getting me back to human bit." Sam shrugged when both of them turned to stare at him. "Dealing with really strange things is kind of what we do."

Before they could reply to that the door burst open and two chipmunks barreled into the room, tussling and arguing. Sam simply watched them for a moment, and had to fight back a smile when Monty stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle causing both fighting chipmunks to freeze in their tracks.

Gadget just shook her head at them with a disappointed frown. "Boys, now is this any way to make a good first impression on our guest? You two should be ashamed of yourselves acting this way."

Both of them ducked their heads, hands behind their backs and shoulders slumped. "Sorry, Gadget." They even apologized in unison.

She nodded with a small smile. "That's better." She gestures towards Sam, who gave the two a shaky smile and a wave. "Now, this is Sam, and we're going to help him find his brother. Sam, this is Chip and Dale."

Chip, the one in the brown bomber jacket, flashed him a competent smile that reminded Sam a bit of Dean. "Of course we'll help you find your brother, Sam. Helping people is what we do."

Dale nodded, looking rather like an excited puppy in a red Hawaiian shirt. "You betcha. We're good at finding people, too."

Sam sighed, shifting slightly on the couch and twisting the blanket. "That's good, since my brother is a people-type person, at least the last time I saw him he was." He grimaced at his apparent inability to say anything coherent. "Dean is human, like I used to be."

Chip frowned. "You used to be human? How did you manage to become a chipmunk then?"

Sam shrugged. "I'm not really sure. Dean and I came here to investigate some missing people, but I'm starting to think that maybe instead of being killed or kidnapped they might have been transformed like I was. Either way, this is the sort of thing that Dean and I do, so once we find him hopefully he can help figure out how to change me back."

Chip and Dale turned to look at each other, seemingly having an entire conversation silently before they both shrugged. Then Chip turned back to him, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "Well, it's probably the weirdest case we've ever had, but we'll do our best to help you find your brother."

"Thanks. He's probably going crazy looking for me." Sam tried not to think about how frantic Dean probably was, wondering if something evil had snatched him or worse, killed him. And Sam tried not to wonder if Dean had tried calling their father yet, and if he had, whether John had bothered to answer this time.

And he really tried not to think about just how hard Dean was going to laugh at him when Sam finally found him again.