Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The day of the first attack started off more or less normally for Skippy Squirrel. It was the middle of July, and school wouldn’t start for about another month. Filming for the upcoming sixth season of Animaniacs had technically started, and he knew Buttons and Mindy were shooting a cartoon today, but the schedule was still slow, and all he had that day was soccer practice later that afternoon. Not that he was particularly looking forward to it. He’d improved a lot since the week a few years ago when the usual coach got sick on the day of a game and Slappy stepped in to substitute, and he was so nervous he kept getting hit in the head. The film crew that followed them around ended up turning that into a cartoon after adding an ending where he supposedly became a goalkeeper in the World Cup. For a while he’d wished they hadn’t: his own team were cool but players on opposing teams would recognize him as the kid who got hit in the head and cried on national television. These days though, if someone made fun of him he could nail them from the other side of the pitch. Soccer was fun, usually. But today was the first day under ninety-five degrees in two weeks, and only just. Late afternoon was a bit cooler, but he’d still be roasting in his own fur running around for two hours.

However, it was cool enough that for the first time in a week, Skippy and his Aunt were enjoying a relaxing stroll through the park before afternoon rush hour.

“Ya know, we should really go home and put on a sweater, maybe drink some hot chocolate,” Slappy remarked sarcastically.

“But it’s hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement!” Skippy played along, but was unable to avoid giggling.

“Yeah, but you can’t boil one in the swimming pools, which is an improvement. By the way, I’d stay away from those metal monkey bars if I were you.”

Skippy realized the potential danger, and changed direction away from the playground to head back towards the path.

“Besides, who needs those things when you can climb trees anyway?” Slappy went on.

“I guess so,” said Skippy. After a short pause, he asked: “Why aren’t there more people out here? It’s not that hot.”

“Well, it’s a weekday, and if they’re not at work they’re probably at the beach. Pretty dumb of them if you ask me. Did ya see the news the other night? Apparently my old pal Sid invited all his barbaric relatives up here from Mexico.”

“Isn’t that a little racist, Aunt Slappy?”

“I’m talking about the squid, you little ditz! The Humboldt Squid, they’re like sharks with tentacles. Does Sid the Squid look like he has human family from Mexico?”

“I guess not.”

After another couple of minutes, Skippy spoke up again: “Hey, there are some other people!” He pointed to a group of five walking down another path that met theirs at a right angle at the end of the block.

“So there are. Looks like they’re goths or emos or whatever the new fashion is with the all-black clothes.”

“Geez, they’ve gotta be roasting!”

“I’ll say. What say we follow ‘em? I’ll betcha an hour-late bedtime one of them passes out from heatstroke.”

“You’re on, but I bet two of them pass out… hang on, what are they wearing?”

“Gee, a bunch of guys strolling around Southern California in the middle of July wearing ski masks. They can’t possibly be up to no good.”

Skippy edged closer to Slappy and whispered: “It looks like they have guns too.”

Slappy squinted at the group. “Good eye.” She grabbed Skippy’s hand and stopped walking. “I don’t think they’ve seen us yet.” She pulled Skippy behind a large juniper bush. “Now, it’s time for a little life lesson. What do you do when you see a bunch of bozos who got lost on their way to rob a bank?”

“Call the police?”

“Ehh, well, the cops would probably tell you that, but not really. These guys are dumb enough to walk around like that in the middle of the day, so they’re probably dumb enough to not come quietly. We call the cops on ‘em, there’ll be a shootout, and there’s houses right over there. Nobody wants to get shot on a nice day like this, including the cops. But we’ve got plenty of ways to stop these guys without killing ‘em, and they can’t do anything to us. Everyone’s better off if we do something. So, how would you start?”

“Uhh… I guess take a closer look and make sure they’re really bad guys?”

“Bingo. If it turns out they’re just a bunch of lost extras from Lethal Weapon 4, there’s no harm done.” A calculating smile crept across Slappy’s face. “You know what… I think you’re old enough to try handling these guys yourself. So, see how they react to an innocent little child crossing their path. Whaddya think?”

Skippy hesitated, peering around the bush at the gang. “I’ll try.” He started to step out from behind it.

“Wait, wait, hold up!” Slappy pulled him back. “You’re a TV star, remember? I guess a red squirrel isn’t that unusual, but… ah, what the heck. Let’s see a disguise.”

“Okay, Aunt Slappy!” Skippy kicked into a rapid spin, briefly becoming a brown blur. When he stopped, he was wearing a red and white striped T-shirt, a blue baseball cap, and a pair of jean shorts. “How’s this?”

“Is that the Randy Beaman kid?” Slappy asked. Skippy nodded. Slappy shrugged. “It’ll do. Go for it.”

“They’re… they’re not going to shoot me, are they?”

“Doubt it. Any human who tries shooting a toon’s an idiot, and anyone who tries shooting a kid’s a psycho. If they do, remember real bullets are a bit faster than toon ones, especially since it looks like they’ve got some sort of rifle. Don’t try hypnosis, or putting your finger in the barrel, or anything like that. Just get out of their sight. If things get nasty, I’ll step in.”

Skippy peeked out from behind the bush and continued apprehensively down the path, pretending not to notice the masked group and timing his arrival at the street corner so he was just ahead of them. Meanwhile, Slappy moved from the bushes, first hiding behind one tree, then a closer one, then up it. The mysterious masked men were already just barely audible, muttering to each other.

“I told ya Oswald wasn’t next to Kenneth, you idiot! ‘I know this town like the back of my hand,’ what a crock...”

“Get off my ass, I was just off by a couple blocks!”

“Couple blocks is gonna get us spotted!”

“So move the car!”

“You wanna get the car spotted? Let’s just get the job done and get outta here.”

Then there was a muffled curse. “There’s a kid! A toon kid!”

“Think he saw us?”

“Of course he saw us, you moron! Let’s just go!”

“It’s a kid… I’ll handle this,” said a third voice. “Hey! Rodent Boy!” The leader of the mysterious masked men addressed Skippy at a volume normally reserved for people standing much farther away.

“Who, me?” Skippy turned towards them, trying his best to look innocent. At the same time, he sized up his adversaries. All of them were human, almost certainly male. Their outfits seemed suitable for a SWAT team or a bank heist, with leather boots, ski masks, and dark sunglasses. The tallest was a bit above average, the shortest a bit below, but it was hard to judge when he wasn’t even two feet tall himself. On closer inspection, their guns, which were strapped to their chests, resembled Super-Soakers more than any real firearm. They were painted black like the outfits, but parts of them looked like metal.

“Yeah, you. Whatcha doin’ out of Toontown?” The leader rested his hand on his gun in what he must have thought was a subtle and easygoing gesture. To Skippy, it was obvious that he was removing it from its straps. Still, he attempted to act casual.

“Just taking a walk,” Skippy replied. “Why, are you taking a survey?” he added as an afterthought. He kept his irritation at the man’s bigoted remark from showing in his expression. He knew from history lessons, and from what his aunt had told him, that toons used to be segregated from humans. The laws had technically remained on the books until the ‘60s, but in Southern California the presence of toons had been socially accepted since well before that. Toonphobia still existed, of course, but someone acting like a toon was out of place anywhere in LA was extremely rare.

“You’re a little smartass, aren’t you?” a chubby guy in the back commented in a slight Latin accent.

“Yeah, look who thinks he’s Bugs Bunny.” One of the others chuckled.

Well, they weren’t friendly, that was for sure. But they also didn’t seem worried about him, which meant they probably wouldn’t shoot – maybe wave their guns in his face and laugh when he ran away. Skippy decided to push his luck. “What about you, what are you guys doing?” he asked, continuing the ‘Naïve child’ act. He was pretty confident it was something illegal now. A burglary? It seemed like the right time of day if they wanted to avoid the owners being home.

The men glanced uncomfortably at each other. “Hey Ernie,” the leader asked the tallest of them. “You recognize this kid?”

“Nope,” Ernie said in a southern drawl. “He looks a little familiar, but there’s a lotta rodent toons around.”

“All right buddy,” the leader said to Skippy, now obviously holding his gun. “What’s your name?”

“Daisy Duck,” Skippy deadpanned, staring straight into the sunglasses and allowing himself to glare slightly. Deliberately antagonizing a group of armed men three times his height might have seemed foolish, but for a toon an angry enemy was ideal, as they were more likely to make mistakes he could exploit.

“I’ve had enough of this little prick.” The shortest guy took a step forward, balling his fists. The fifth thug, who had so far not spoken, held him back.

“Whoa, whoa, cool it down. This kid ain’t the mark, and he doesn’t look too strong anyway. He’d be a waste of good –“

“Shut yer damn mouth!” Ernie clamped a hand over his partner’s mouth. “You gonna tip off every kindergartner we pass? He’ll probably call the cops as it is -”

“So?” said Shorty. “We’ll be outta here before the cops get here!”

There was a brief argument, which Skippy used to shuffle around the group so that his back was to the road, and towards some trees and bushes on the other side he could use for cover if necessary. Mark? That made it sound more like they were planning to kill someone. He bet the Super Soaker-type contraptions had real guns concealed inside, although they could have made it more convincing by using the shells of actual squirt guns.

“Look, look, guys.” The leader broke up the fight. “There’s nothing to worry about. He’s just a little kid, he probably can’t do anything crazy like pull an anvil outta thin air. But we’ll just make sure...” He turned back to Skippy. “Empty out your Hammerspace, kid.”

Skippy smirked, and suppressed a desire to outright laugh in the idiot’s face. Hammerspace, of course, referred to the extradimensional void where a toon could store and retrieve various objects. But it was impossible to tell what was in someone else’s Hammerspace, so they would have no way of knowing if he actually emptied it out. Almost all toons could use Hammerspace to some extent, and usually from about the age they learned to read. The humans clearly had no idea what they were talking about. And even if a toon didn’t have anything in their Hammerspace, a more advanced technique called conjuration let some of them temporarily create objects out of nothing. Skippy was still a little clumsy at it, but he was certainly capable of it. He considered making a show of retrieving a whole bunch of random objects and piling them at the guy’s feet, but he didn’t think he had enough odds and ends, and conjuring that many items out of thin air would take too much effort. Instead, he mimed stuffing his hands in his pockets and said: “make me.”

“All right, that’s it!” Shorty pushed his way past Ernie, unholstering his gun. Skippy nearly burst out laughing at the resemblance to Pesto the Goodfeather. But the leader stopped him this time.

“Save it for Mill- for the mark. You’re the best shot we got. I’ll do it.” He raised his gun, pointing it at Skippy’s face, and turned a knob on the side. “You’re too dumb for your own good, kid. You coulda just run along and let us go about our business, but now you’re coming with us. Pull a rope outta Hammerspace and Omar here” – he pointed to the fifth man, who hadn’t spoken yet – “will tie you up.”

Skippy instinctively backed away from the group, putting himself most of the way across the two-lane road. Then he noticed a bitter, chemical smell in the air, overpowering the stench of the five men baking in their costumes. His fur began to stand on end. This smell was unfamiliar, but something about it was wrong. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that whatever the gun used as ammo was responsible. Maybe they really were squirt guns. Acid? He glanced back. Squirt guns could barely reach him at this range. There was a large tree about twenty yards behind him; if he reached the top of that, he would be well out of range, and could possibly trick the goons into firing straight up and hitting themselves when the liquid fell back down.

“Come on kid, nobody’s gonna miss another puddle.” The man held his finger over the trigger.

At that moment, the smell reached the tree where Slappy was hiding. Unlike her nephew, she recognized it instantly.

“Skippy, look out! That gun’s loaded with Dip!”

“Huh?” It took Skippy most of a second to process his aunt’s words. Dip, the only substance that was consistently lethal to toons. Skippy’s heart turned to ice. He turned to run for the tree, but he had already hesitated too long. The leader of the masked men pulled the trigger, and a jet of green liquid as strong as a kitchen sink sprayer erupted from the gun’s barrel far faster than he had thought possible.

Time slowed to a pace that made LA Rush Hour look like Nascar. This is it, Skippy thought. I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die. He remembered a fragment of a safety lecture from Slappy a couple years back, mentioning that being any contact with Dip was extremely painful. But instead of burning, his next sensation was a gray blur and an impact that knocked the air out of his lungs and sent him tumbling backwards into the trunk of the tree with enough force to knock leaves loose. What felt like a second later, but was probably a tiny fraction of that, he realized that what had hit him was Slappy’s purse, which he now had clutched against his chest. Slappy herself had skidded to a stop where he had just been standing, and the stream of Dip was already halfway to his destination.

Time returned to normal speed…

Before the realization that his aunt had seemingly sacrificed herself for him could even register in Skippy’s mind, Slappy had produced an umbrella and opened it into the path of the Dip, causing it to scatter outward in a sheet of deadly green droplets. The umbrella immediately began to smoke as the Dip burned its way through it. It stayed in one piece, but the deflected liquid formed a puddle and ran downhill toward the gutter – right past Slappy’s feet. Something sizzled, and Skippy was about to scream, but in the brief moment before a cloud of smoke obscured his aunt’s legs he noticed a pair of bright yellow rain boots. When had she even put them on?”

After barely a second, the jet of Dip became a trickle. Slappy tossed aside the dissolving remnants of the umbrella, which crumpled as it hit the pavement. Realizing his weapon was now useless, the masked men’s leader lowered the barrel and started to step backwards. But his foot had barely left the ground when in one fluid motion Slappy pulled a fire axe from behind her back and flung it. The axe buried itself up to the shaft in his forehead. He let out the beginnings of a scream, then a gurgle, and toppled over backwards. The effect on the other thugs was general pandemonium.

“Oh, shit!”

“Fuck! What the fuck!”

“Moe’s dead! Let’s get outta here!”

“Forget the kid! Shoot the gray one! Shoot the gray one!”

All four of the remaining humans fumbled with their weapons, trying to simultaneously unhook them from their jackets and release the safety valves. Slappy had already kicked off the disintegrating rain boots and leaped away from the puddle of Dip, but this was the perfect distraction. Before any of the survivors realized she had moved, she snatched the ski masks off their heads and darted away, leaving a cloud of dust in her wake. Still swearing, they began to give chase in the direction Slappy appeared to have run. Then a whistle came from behind them. All four heads whirled around, followed closely by their bodies. Slappy glared back at them. On the sidewalk just to her right was a fire hydrant. In her hands was an enormous mallet. The men, realizing what she was about to do, made a desperate sprint to get within the range of their squirt guns. Slappy slowly, deliberately wound up like a golfer teeing off.

“Fire!” Omar shouted just as Slappy swung the mallet. The fire hydrant was ripped from the ground and sent flying into the park. A geyser of water exploded from the now uncapped pipe, shooting several stories into the air, and she ducked behind it. The streams of Dip were easily blown away, and like the leader’s gun the others quickly ran out of ammunition.

By now, Skippy had gotten to his feet and scampered up the tree. Watching the spectacle, he had come to the conclusion that while his aunt may have been mildly, or even moderately ticked off on a regular basis, he had never actually seen her angry – and he hope he never would again. In her frequent skirmishes with Walter, Sid, or her other foes, both from old cartoons and incidents Skippy had been present for, Slappy had pulled a variety of tricks similar to this. But ordinarily in a situation like this she would have been mocking her enemies, comparing them to very young public figures, or at the very least cackling at their incompetence. This time though, she had stared the attackers down with a look of such pure hatred Skippy was almost surprised they hadn’t burst into flames on the spot.

Back on the ground, the pudgy guy was trying to sneak around the side of the geyser. Slappy came around the other side far faster, still holding the mallet. She attempted to step to the man’s right side and simultaneously whack him, but thanks to the water on the pavement she slipped. The hammer missed almost completely, just clipping his finger, but Slappy was able to stay on her feet despite an involuntary pirouette. Pudgy howled and stumbled backward, clutching his hand. Slappy struck again, leaping several feet into the air and bringing the mallet directly down on the top of the man’s head. It was a textbook hit, the kind that would have ‘pancaked’ a toon. With a human target, the effects were far messier. Pudgy’s body, unlike a toon’s, was mostly incompressible, so most of it was pushed outward as the hammer’s head smashed into the ground, creating a new pothole and putting a spiderweb of cracks in the asphalt. The end result looked like a trash bag had been filled with chili and thrown from a third-story window. Skippy flinched and turned his head away from the trail of blood being washed into the gutter by the destroyed fire hydrant. His breakfast nearly made a second appearance, and he was gripping his tree branch so hard his paws were making imprints in the bark.

There was more terrified swearing from the three remaining humans, and a vague order to retreat was made. Shorty took off down the road, Ernie went into the park, and Omar attempted to cross the street. He had only gotten five steps before Slappy appeared in front of him. He turned and tried to run in the other direction, only to find her in front of him again. Babbling incoherently, he backed away, pulling out a handgun from his inside coat pocket and firing. There was an earsplitting CRACK! Omar dropped the gun, clutching at his chest, then fell to his knees, and finally onto his face. Slappy casually tossed aside the curved piece of pipe she had held in the bullet’s path, and marched toward the survivors.

Shorty’s escape was quickly cut short when he was overtaken by a bear trap on top of a skateboard. Ernie, however, seemed to have disappeared. He’s probably halfway across town by now, thought Skippy. After all, Slappy had killed three of his accomplices and the fourth was going to be of no help with his right leg mangled. It ought to be safe to climb down. Skippy shakily inched back along the branch towards the tree trunk. But Slappy snapped her glare towards him, shook her head and made a ‘zip it’ gesture. Skippy immediately froze. Was the man still around after all?

Then he saw him. Ernie had taken cover behind an unkempt juniper bush, but peeked out at the sound of approaching footsteps. Slappy was leaning nonchalantly against another tree with a baseball bat under one arm, looking in completely the opposite direction. Skippy expected the man to take the opportunity to run. But instead, he crept around the bush, raising his gun again. But he should have been out of Dip… no, wait… When they’d shot at the geyser from the fire hydrant, Skippy remembered one of the streams of Dip stopping a lot more abruptly than the others. Had he caught onto the trick and conserved his ammo? Slappy still hadn’t noticed! He had to do something!

“Look out!” Skippy screamed. He didn’t care if he told the thug where he was. That was probably why Slappy’d told him to be quiet, but he couldn’t just sit there and let her get shot! He pulled himself up so he was standing on the branch, ready to jump behind the tree trunk if he had to.

Ernie flinched at the noise, and immediately pulled the trigger. The Dip arced straight at Slappy… and passed straight through her body, splashing against the tree behind her. Skippy’s jaw dropped, and Ernie’s looked like it was giving the best attempt to do so a human could manage. Slappy was completely unharmed, and hadn’t reacted at all. Ernie cautiously approached. Now Skippy realized what she’d done. She wasn’t there at all, it was just a holographic image!

Skippy looked around. Now he saw the source of the illusion: an old-fashioned reel-to-reel projector mounted on a tripod next to another bush. Next to it, visible from Skippy’s tree but out of Ernie’s sight, was the real Slappy, attaching a stick of dynamite to a grappling hook with a roll of gray tape. Probably Acme Duck Tape (Endorsed by Daffy himself) – it was, according to her, one of the few quality products the company made these days. She struck a match, lit the fuse, cleared her throat loudly, and emerged from behind the bush, twirling the grappling hook around her head like a lasso.

“Aww, shit!” Ernie turned to run in the direction of his injured partner, but before he had gotten five steps the grappling hook hit him in the shoulder, one of its spikes piercing his jacket. The top half of his body stopped abruptly, but his legs continued forward and he fell on his back. Howling in pain, he twisted his head to see how bad the injury was... and noticed the dynamite. “Oh god no!” he dropped his gun and tried to rip out the grappling hook with his uninjured arm, but each prong was barbed, and his efforts only made the hook bite deeper into his body. Hands now slippery with blood, he tried unsuccessfully to remove the duct tape instead. “No no no no n-“ The dynamite exploded.

Without bothering to look at what was left of Ernie, Slappy gave Skippy a brief thumbs up and stomped over to where Shorty was attempting to crawl away down the road. The bear trap had snapped both the bones in the man’s lower leg and nearly severed it entirely. He was alternating between yelling obscenities and crying for his mother.

“Ahh, shaddup!” Slappy tied Shorty’s arms and good leg behind his back, shoving an apple in his mouth for good measure. She then pulled off the bear trap, tore off his pants leg, and began tying it around his calf as a tourniquet. “Skippy, call 911,” she ordered. “Tell them they’re gonna need the cops, two or three ambulances, and whoever’s job it is to fix a busted fire hydrant.” Skippy silently nodded and fished his cell phone out of Hammerspace. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely dial the three digits on the keypad.

“911, what is your emergency?” a female voice came from the other end of the line.

“A bunch of guys tried to kill me and my aunt,” answered Skippy. “She says we need the police, two ambulances, and the fire department.”

“All right kiddo, stay on the line, help is on the way. Where are you right now?”

“We’re in the park, at the corner of, uhh… 19^th and Oswald.”

“Okay, and are either you or your aunt injured?”

“I don’t think so.” Skippy looked over at Slappy to confirm this. Not even the flower on her hat appeared to have suffered any damage.

“But you said you need two ambulances. Are the people that attacked you injured?”

“One’s injured, the other four are dead.” Skippy hadn’t quite believed it until he’d said the words. Four people were dead. He’d seen people die in the movies before – Slappy hadn’t let him watch most of the really violent ones, but among other things he’d seen the melting Nazis in Indiana Jones – but that was all fake. And Aunt Slappy had killed them. It seemed surreal watching her coldly dispatch the thugs one by one. The mallet, the bent pipe, the projector, and even the bear trap all had Slappy’s trademark flair. He’d seen her use them in her old cartoons. But that was all cartoon violence. Nobody really got hurt in cartoons. This was still cartoon violence, but the corpses littering the park were real. Skippy felt sick. But he tried to keep his voice level and describe the situation as calmly as he could. That was what Slappy once told him to do if there was an emergency. ‘They hear a kid screamin’ and cryin’, they won’t have a clue what’s wrong,’ she’d said.

“And what about the fire department?” asked the operator.

“Oh. My aunt had to break a fire hydrant to get rid of all the Dip.”

“Dip? You mean dipping sauce? How does that have to do with you being attacked?”

“No, you know, Dip. They had it in squirt guns and they were shooting it at us.”

“Young man, I’ve had the police, fire department, and two ambulances dispatched to your location, so I hope this isn’t a prank call.”

Skippy rolled his eyes. It would have been understandable if someone someplace like Nebraska didn’t know basic toon history, but in Burbank of all places?

There were muffled voices that sounded like an argument on the other end of the line, and a new voice, somewhat older-sounding, came through. “I’m sorry about that, Cynthia was saying something about someone attacking you with Dip? Are you a toon?”

Skippy slapped his hand to his forehead. “Yes.”

The rest of the 911 call was uneventful. The police were first on the scene. Burbank wasn’t a city known for its violence, so the cops were unprepared for the gruesome state of the attackers, and one rookie actually stumbled off to be sick in the bushes. They didn’t have time to do anything more than start laying out crime scene tape before the paramedics arrived. The surviving attacker was rushed to the hospital in handcuffs, while the other four were placed under sheets to avoid disturbing any evidence.

“Better not take your time, on a day like this they’ll smell like Rush Limbaugh’s laundry,” commented Slappy.

The police were initially suspicious of the Squirrels’ description of the attack, but when the fire department arrived a toon Dalmatian named Vincent confirmed that the men’s spray guns reeked of Dip. The weapons, as well as the blackened remnants of Slappy’s umbrella and boots, were bagged as evidence and driven away. One officer remained unconvinced, saying: “Well Miss Squirrel, assuming your story holds up with the forensics boys it sounds like using deadly force was technically justified. But your actions go well beyond deadly force. Quite frankly I can’t understand how any sane individual could use such brutal methods.”

“Cut the crap, Henry!” one of the other cops objected. “They tried to kill her kid, you know as well as I do nobody cares what some bureaucrat thinks is reasonable.”

An argument ensued between the police, who seemed to be about a fifty-fifty split. Finally the officer in charge broke it up and turned to Slappy. “Look, here’s the situation. Given that possession of Dip, let alone carrying it in a weapon like this, is a federal felony, and all we’ve got against you’s the word of the surviving gunman, I doubt the damn D.A.’s gonna say it wasn’t self-defense. But I’m not all that convinced. And I sure as hell can’t condone you encouraging your nephew to antagonize a bunch of armed criminals.”

“Like I told you,” Slappy interrupted. “I had no idea they were packin’ Dip. As far as I knew these schmucks weren’t a real threat to Skippy.”

“Even if that is the case, in the future I’d recommend if you see anything suspicious you let the police handle it.”

“Ya know, at least one of them had regular peashooters, too. You coulda had a dead cop or two on your hands if you tried to arrest ‘em.”

“Be that as it may,” a vein started to twitch in the officer’s forehead. “Putting ourselves at risk for public safety is our job, not yours.”

Slappy dropped the issue, and eventually the police asked her and Skippy to come down to the station to answer a few questions. Surprisingly, Slappy actually agreed, explaining: “Look, it’s not like I usually buy into the whole civic responsibility thing, but those bozos were seriously dangerous. Sure, I was able to deal with ‘em, but a lotta toons would’ve been history. And I’m not convinced they made the Dip, or those fancy guns, without help.”

“Then should I come too, Aunt Slappy?”

“Only if you really want to. But I think you should get some rest, the meeting’ll be boring as hell anyway and you’ve said most of the important stuff. Tell you what, let me ask the cops if they’ll drop you off at the studio on the way downtown.”

Chapter Text

The Warner Bros. Studio Lot was quiet that day, too. Boringly quiet, in Dot’s opinion. She couldn’t wait for filming to get started for real. It had been nine months since she, Yakko, and Wakko had gotten to shoot a normal cartoon, and even the movie had been wrapped up in February. And even if they didn’t have anything, someone else could have! Buttons and Mindy were shooting that day, but it was, as usual, at their house in the suburbs of Toontown. None of their co-stars were actually on the lot. Well, technically that wasn’t true. Dr. Scratchansniff was probably writing prescriptions for anxiety medications to studio employees, while Mr. Plotz was ensuring there was a steady demand for said prescriptions. But they didn’t really count, since they had regular jobs at the studio.

“Ooh!” groaned Yakko. “That was a dud. Didn’t even make it off the lot!”

“I told you, the long, skinny ones aren’t good for distance,” said Wakko. “Your turn, Dot.”

The Warner Siblings were currently perched on the roof of the Water Tower, separated from the sun-scorched metal by a triple layer of picnic blankets. They were trying, so far without success, to throw a paper airplane across the Ventura Freeway and hit the other water tower on the Disney lot. The best attempt so far was Wakko getting one into Johny Carson Park. The worst was one of Dot’s, which had gone straight up, looped around, and wound up on the fairway of the golf course in the complete opposite direction. She conjured a sheet of paper and neatly folded a broad-winged glider. She gave it a gentle toss, bending the laws of physics a little bit to make it stay in the air longer. The glider drifted lazily out over the studio, wobbling from side to side.

“Come on, catch a thermal...” Dot muttered. The glider disobeyed. Instead, it curved around, flew past the tower in the other direction, and ended up on the roof of the headquarters building. Wakko’s next throw nosedived into the ground just short of Riverside Drive. Yakko’s spiraled into a parking area.

“The wind’s turning against us,” Yakko commented. “And so’s the sun. Let’s do something else...”

As the Warners walked their blankets down the roof one step at a time, Dot noticed a police car pull up by Ralph’s gate, and Skippy getting out, alone. But she didn’t think too much of it. The way Slappy drove, it was only a matter of time before she got in trouble with the law…

After asking Skippy a few more brief questions, the cops did end up dropping Skippy off at the studio. He wandered across the lot like a zombie and eventually found himself in Doctor Scratchansniff’s waiting room. The Studio Shrink spotted him on his way back from the break room, and did a double take.

“Oh, hello, Skippy!” Scratchansniff waved enthusiastically. Skippy didn’t feel like responding. “Skippy? Is everything all right?”

“I guess...” Skippy said noncommittally.

“You don’t look all right. I don’t see you in here very often, so when I see you in my waiting room without un appointment, and looking like you’ve seen a ghost, I know something is the matter.”

“Yeah.” Skippy glanced at the cover of a comic book on the coffee table. He wasn’t interested in reading them right now, but maybe pretending to be would make Scratchy go away.

“Yah, something is the matter?”

Skippy nodded.

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“No.”

Scratchansniff nodded sagely and scratched his chin. “You know, you are at an age when it is normal for children to start having strange feelings zat zey do not understand – changes in zeir bodies, emotional swings... I know it can be awkward to try to talk about them with an adult, but… let me see, I should have a pamphlet somewhere. I can give you a copy if you like.”

“It’s not that,” said Skippy. Eleven was a normal age to start feeling the effects of puberty, although toons didn’t grow consistently, with years of almost no change punctuated by abrupt growth spurts being common. Skippy’s youngest co-star, Mindy, was technically almost eight now, but still hadn’t physically reached Kindergarten age. Skippy himself was about on track for a human growth pace. He still hadn’t hit a big growth spurt, but he was several inches taller than when they’d started filming Animaniacs five years ago. But he certainly didn’t feel like a teenager, or even on the cusp of becoming one.

“Zen what is it?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” Skippy turned sideways in the waiting room chair and covered his face with his tail.”

“Skippy,” Dr. Scratchansniff’s voice was still soft and gentle, but had a warning tone. “Right now you are making me very worried. Does your aunt know you’re here, und that you are safe, or do I need to call her?”

“Yeah.”

A muscle in the doctor’s forehead tensed. “To which one?”

“She knows I’m here.”

“Okay, good. Do you know where she is?”

“She’s at the police station.”

Scratchy looked taken aback. “At the police station? Is she in trouble, or did something happen?”

“Both, I guess… they didn’t arrest her or anything, but… I don’t know...”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Skippy hesitated. Part of him wanted to tell Scratchy what happened, but all he could do was say what happened, and not why, and he know the psychiatrist would just ask more and more questions. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

Skippy rose to his feet. Standing on the chair, he came up a little above Scratchy’s waist. “I said I don’t want to talk about it!” He reached behind his back and pulled out a pair of earmuffs, glaring daggers at Scratchy as he put them on. He hopped off the chair and started towards the door. There were other places on the lot he could wait – empty sound stages, closets, wherever. He didn’t want to be alone alone, but he didn’t want people talking to him. He glanced out the window. Three black blurs shot by, and he heard shouting and laughter. The Warners were tearing around the lot as usual. He saw Yakko stop, take aim with a bright yellow Super Soaker, and catch Dot right in the face, then take off in a cloud of dust, pursued by his similarly-armed sister. Skippy grimaced, and returned to the waiting room chair. He didn’t want to see any kind of spray gun right then.

Slappy got back from the police station well after lunchtime in a taxi followed by a procession of news vans. Slappy kept a low public profile, and the paparazzi gave her a wide berth for reasons of self-preservation, but the media loved crime, especially when a celebrity was involved. On their way off the lot, the squirrels were greeted by a small crowd of reporters. Slappy answered about five of the less idiotic questions before telling the various news crews exactly what to do with their microphones. But, after two blocks of being followed, she relented and agreed to give an exclusive interview on the nightly news to whichever network had the last man or woman standing. Before anyone could ask what she meant, she poured an enormous barrel of Guaranteed Extra Slippery Grease ™onto the road. After a few chaotic seconds, CBS won the competition, although Fox claimed that someone from CNN had dragged their last cameraman down with him, and they would have won otherwise. And so, that night on the 8 O’clock News…

“Welcome back to CBS Los Angeles Local News! I’m Brick Shetland.” A middle-aged anchor with slicked-back hair sat behind a desk, an animated spinning globe on a giant screen behind him.

“Cartoon star Slappy Squirrel was attacked today along with her nephew, by a heavily-armed gang. Four of the five assailants were killed, with the fifth being taken into police custody…” The anchor continued describing the incident for another five minutes, including going to a reporter talking to a cop at the crime scene. By this time, the fire hydrant had been shut off and the bodies removed, so there wasn’t much to see.

“And now, for more on this attack we turn to Layla Williams, who will be interviewing Slappy herself. Over to you, Layla.” The camera switched to a pair of high-backed armchairs. In one sat a young brown-haired woman in a red dress. In the other slouched Slappy.

“Thank you Brick,” said the woman, while Slappy muttered something that sounded like “about time.”

After a few introductory questions, and Slappy briefly summarizing the events of the day, Layla tried to steer the topic to Slappy’s relationship with Skippy.

“No. I’m not gonna answer this mushy garbage. If I wanted to talk about my feelings I’d have gone to a shrink.” Slappy stood up in her chair. “And I didn’t just come on here to be nice. I’m here to provide information to the public,” Slappy continued, sitting back down. “This is the first Dip attack in California in over a decade. The cops haven’t got anything out of the guy yet, but I got a hunch they weren’t alone, especially since one of ‘em said something about having a target besides us. They weren’t just walking around trying to murder toons at random, they wanted someone specific dead.”

There was an awkward silence before Williams spoke again. “So, you mentioned this being the first attack in California for a decade. Do you think this attack could be connected with any previous incidents?”

“Nah. Most of the previous attacks have just been one nutcase, and they’re all either dead or in prison. There was that one serial killer back in the ‘70s, and a few suicides, but never anything this organized. Maybe a drug cartel’s behind it, maybe some militia nutsos, I dunno.”

“You think this attack is an act of domestic terrorism?”

Slappy gave Layla a look that could peel paint off a wall. “I didn’t say that, I said I didn’t know. It’s gotta be some organized group, though, ‘cuz those guys sure weren’t the brains of the operation. You wanna know more, talk to the cops.”

“We did actually talk to the police,” said Layla. “They didn’t comment on the motivations behind the attack, but they did mention that they were having difficulty identifying two of the gunmen… they mentioned having to...” the reporter grimaced. “...Use dental records. Some might consider you to have used excessive force in defending yourself. Do you have any comment on that?”

“Yeah. First of all, I wasn’t defending myself, I was defending my nephew. As for excessive force, my attorney has advised me to say I responded to lethal force with lethal force.”

“Yes, but some of the bodies were found in multiple pieces. Surely-”

Slappy held up a hand and shushed her. “What you’re about to say is some shpiel about how I used cartoon tactics and cartoon weapons, and if I’d been in real danger I’d have just shot ‘em through the head, right? Did ya ever hear that story about the bunch’a thugs that tried to hold up a meat packing plant and the butchers stabbed half of ‘em to death?”

“Uh, yes, I think this network ran that story...”

“You mess with a butcher, he carves ya up with a butcher knife because he’s been cutting meat with it eight hours a day for ten years. If he can reach a knife he’s not gonna grab a fire extinguisher or a piece of pipe, right? Now, I’ve been introducing low-lives to hammers and dynamite for what, fifty years? And you’re telling me that a life or death situation’s a good time for me to break that routine? I mean, if someone put a gun to your head you’d ask ‘em who they were wearing, right?”

“Well, of course, I’d – wait, no, what? No, I wouldn’t! And stabbing someone’s not the same as blowing them to pieces!”

“So you’re upset that a couple of scumbags are gonna get a closed-casket funeral when you think it should’a been open, huh?” Slappy glared first at Layla, then directly into the camera. She started to rummage in her handbag. “You ever see what a toon that’s been Dipped looks like? No, silly me, of course you haven’t or you wouldn’t be whining about all that bleeding heart malarkey. I got some photos right here, why don’t I show them to all the viewers at home? First, here’s my nephew Skippy. Cute ain’t he? Now, here’s what those goddamn wastes of oxygen were ready to do to him, and to whatever poor schmuck was their actual -”

There was the sound of some commotion in the studio. Skippy didn’t wait to find out if the TV producers would be able to keep Slappy from showing her photo to the world. He had a feeling they wouldn’t, and that if he saw it he would be sick. He switched off the TV and padded up the stairs to his room, half-dragging himself using the railing. He robotically crawled into bed and lay there, face-down, until a long time later he heard the key turn in the lock of the front door.

“Skippy! I’m home!” Slappy’s voice called. “Skippy?”

The doorknob to Skippy’s bedroom turned. The stairs in the old treehouse always creaked, but they hadn’t made a sound. Skippy guessed his aunt hadn’t actually climbed them. She didn’t usually go to the effort of teleportation for something as simple as that. She hadn’t been acting normal since the attack earlier. But he hadn’t been feeling normal.

“Skippy?” Slappy came into the room. “You all right?”

“Yeah...” Skippy didn’t look up.

“You didn’t touch the money I left on the table for pizza.”

“I’m not hungry...”

Slappy sighed and sat down on the bed next to him. “Look… I was an idiot earlier. I should’a recognized what those guns were a lot earlier. I shouldn’t’ve had you mess with those goons. I almost got you killed. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that...” Skippy rolled over onto his back. “Aunt Slappy, why did you lie to the news lady?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t have to kill them. Like you said, we’re toons. We can stop humans without killing them, can’t we? And some of them were trying to run away. Isn’t it not self-defense then?”

“Are you worried what I did was wrong, or that it was illegal?”

“Both...”

“All right.” Slappy sighed, and paused for a while. “You’re right, Skippy. There were ways I might’ve been able to stop ‘em. And the law of the Great State of California does say we had a duty to retreat, so I might’ve been technically outside of what’s strictly legal. But what’s legal and what’s right aren’t always the same thing.”

“But – what about the police? What if they find out? Aunt Slappy, I don’t want you to go to jail!”

“Hey, take it easy, kid. I’m not going to jail. Like I said, what’s legal and what’s right aren’t always the same thing, and even some cops know that. So do judges and prosecutors. And they can speculate all they want about what I could’ve done different, but they can’t change the solid facts. Every one of those guys was carrying a squirt gun loaded with Dip. The only reason anyone does that is if they’re planning to whack someone, and they tried to whack you just for getting in their way. And the law – or the constitution – also says I got a right to a jury of my peers. The courts ruled that doesn’t mean much in terms of race or sex or whatever, but the California State Supreme Court ruled that you can’t try a human with a jury of all toons or a toon with a jury of all humans if it’s practical to find jurors – which it will be because this is L.A. And no toon’s gonna vote to convict another toon for defending a little kid like you against a hate crime. They could stack the jury with all my enemies – Walter and Sid and all them – and still get a hung jury every time. So the cops and the DA aren’t gonna waste their time charging me with anything, especially not when the public’s gonna be clamoring to know who’s behind this.”

“But… you still didn’t have to kill them, did you?”

Slappy gently took hold of his shoulders and pulled him to a seated position. “Skippy, look at me,” she said without a hint of the usual humor in her voice. “Do you think those sons of bitches had to kill you? Because that’s what they were gonna do. They were out looking to murder someone, and if I hadn’t done anything they’d’ve melted you into a puddle in the gutter just like that. Mind you, it sounded like they weren’t willing to use enough of the stuff to kill you quickly – they’d probably have blasted you, then poured a bit more Dip down your throat to melt your vocal cords and stop you screaming. Didn’t you see the photo I showed on the news?”

“I – I turned it off,” Skippy sniffed. That morning everything had happened too quickly for him to have much of a chance to be scared of what would have happened if Slappy hadn’t saved him, but now he shivered. Aunt Slappy rarely swore – a wasted opportunity for a more original insult, she called it. “I don’t wanna see it...” he shrank into a ball, wrapping his tail around himself and hiding his face.

“All right, all right. You don’t have to see it...” Slappy put an arm over his shoulder. “It’s okay. But you have to understand how dangerous this is… look, you saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit, right?”

“Yeah.” Skippy had seen the movie once, at a sleepover with Buster Bunny and some of his friends. He’d had nightmares for years over the scene with the shoe being Dipped. “It’s a true story, right?” He knew most of the people and events depicted were real.

“Mostly. I mean, it’s not a documentary, but when Roger and Jessica signed on to play themselves they made sure it was in their contract that they had review of the script and everything to make sure it was accurate. But there’s a couple things they left out. For one thing, they said Judge Doom invented Dip. Well, he didn’t. That’s a cover story. He stole it, from the United States Government.”

“Really?” Skippy’s eyes widened. “I never heard that – are you sure that’s true?”

“Yeah, the documents actually got declassified a few years ago, but the media didn’t give it much coverage. Obviously they didn’t want the general public, and especially the toon public, finding out about it. I’m not saying they bribed or threatened the journalists when they couldn’t legally keep it secret – I mean I’m sure they would, but more likely they didn’t need to because by that point Dip was old news, and not as captivating as Britney Spears’s eighth trip to rehab or whatever.”

“But why would the Government do that?”

“Well… first of all, it’s not like Doom was the only one who had the idea that if there wasn’t a way to execute toons who committed capital crimes it would make us basically above the law – ignoring how we were basically second class citizens back then. But anyway, it was actually created for the military at first. I didn’t plan on giving a whole history lesson, but I guess it’s far enough back that nobody outside a retiring home lived through everything, and God knows what they’re teaching you in school these days, right?” Slappy winked.

“Right.”

“Okay, well, here goes. It all started way back in World War I. Back then only a few toons had been drawn, and the first generation of born toons were still babies. It was before Bugs, before me, before the Warners, even before Mickey and Felix the Cat. Then in 1917 a guy called The Magnificent Alonzo quit his job as a magician and joined the army. His unit’s in Germany, they try a charge across No Man’s Land, and they’re getting slaughtered. Alonzo jumps outta the trench, does his whole magician spiel, probably to get attention away from his buddies and onto him. The guy weaves through a hail of bullets, makes an enemy fighter plane disappear, and then alakazam! He pulls a machine gun out of his hat and just kills everyone. Got a couple medals for it, too. There were a couple other incidents like this, but none quite as big. So in the 1920s a bunch of countries signed international treaties banning toons from participating in the armed forces. They knew someone like Alonzo on their side could win them a battle, but were terrified of being on the receiving end of that, especially since we got a hell of a lot stronger after color. I mean, even Elmer Fudd could give Alonzo a run for his money… well, maybe not Fudd, but certainly Sam or Walter Wolf. We got into the Mutually Assured Destruction business way before nukes came along.”

Skippy nodded. Military service was one of the few legal rights toons still didn’t have.

Slappy continued: “So then World War II came along. There were big protests about toons not being allowed in the military back then – a lot of humans thought it was unfair that they were gettin’ drafted and sent off to die and toons weren’t – and so did a lot of toons. That’s why so many of us did those propaganda cartoons back then – a lot of us were furious that our buddies were overseas getting killed and we couldn’t do anything, and those films gave us a way of contributing to the war effort… and of course pretending to fight Nazis was the next best thing to actually fighting Nazis. But even after all the other treaties got broken, the laws weren’t changed. The government was too scared of the idea of fighting a toon army. And then, well… Bugs Bunny’s a nice enough guy, but you do NOT want to get on his bad side. A bunch of guys he knew got killed at Guadalcanal, and he kind of lost it. His story’s that he just happened to go on vacation to the Caribbean, just happened to make a wrong turn at the Panama Canal, and just happened to wind up on an island where the Japanese Navy was trying to set up a harbor and air base, and acted in ‘justifiable self-defense.’”

“Is that what that one cartoon that got banned for being racist came from?”

“Yeah. It was based on that, but according to Bugs they actually sugar-coated it a bit. He’s never told me what he actually did, but I know at least a dozen ships got twisted together into some sort of modern art piece, and our Navy didn’t find anyone alive on the island when they took it a while later, so he had to have killed a few thousand people. Probably the only reason we didn’t end up fighting a toon army after that’s probably because none of the poor bastards were even able to radio for help. But anyway, that terrified the Government. Before, the big worry was a toon slipping through our lines, sabotaging equipment, killing generals, that kinda thing. They didn’t know we could do something like that. So after Bugs’s stunt the Government started a secret project to find a way of either killing toons or sealing them away for good. I think the name ‘Dip started out as a euphemism or code word or whatever. And somehow Doom got his filthy hands on the recipe, and started on his little reign of terror.”

“Oh.” Skippy stared at the little pendulum clock on his dresser for a while, following its movement back and forth. “Aunt Slappy?”

“Yeah?”

“How do you know so much about Dip?”

“Well, there’s only one thing that can kill a toon: knowing how to protect yourself from it’s just common sense. Besides, from what I heard if you have the recipe it’s not any harder to make than meth, and that’s all over the place. Instructions are illegal to distribute of course but it’s still a miracle there’s been so few Dip attacks.”

“I thought it was really simple. Turpentine, Benz… Benzamine?”

“Turpentine, Benzene, Acetone. Yeah, yeah, I know. Do you really think they’d put the real formula in a movie? That’s be like if your school library had a book telling you how to make mustard gas. Those are the big ingredients, but there’s some other secret ones.”

“But how’d you know what it smelled like, Aunt Slappy? Did you have to fight someone with Dip before?”

“You’re just full of questions tonight, aren’t you?” Slappy replied. There was humor in her voice, but she was also staring at the clock with a pained expression. “Ahh, I guess I was gonna have to tell ya this at some point. You’re… what’s it, eleven now? I think you’re old enough to know.”

“Know what?”

“Well, back in forty-six, I had a run in with Doom and his gang. But the story actually starts way back in nineteen… forty, when me and my brother Screwy were drawn up over at Termite Terrace.”

“Screwy? You mean like, Screwy Squirrel? The Screwy Squirrel?” Skippy raised an eyebrow, perplexed. “But you don’t look like him.”

“Well, we weren’t actually drawn by the same animator. If you look at the Warners, the same guy drew all three of ‘em. It’s sorta like full siblings versus half-siblings. Anyway, the original idea was that we would work together, sorta like the Goofy Gophers, but it turned out we were a lot more powerful than anyone expected. Back then the studio’s official position was that the Warners never existed, but most of the directors and producers and writers and animators knew about ‘em. It was kind of an open secret. They got scared, and asked the bigwigs at Warner Bros to split us up. Heck, they didn’t even let us both on the studio lot at the same time. Anyway, I made my debut with ‘Slappy Goes Nutz’ and the rest is history as far as that’s concerned.”

Slappy reached into Hammerspace, and produced a large, leather-bound photo album. She blew the dust off the cover, and opened it to the first page, showing him a picture of her and an orange-furred squirrel with a large black nose and prominent lips. They had their arms over each other’s shoulders and were giving the camera crazy grins. Slappy was giving a peace sign. Screwy’s other hand was blurred out.

Slappy chuckled, and continued. “Forgot he did that. I had to stop ‘em throwing out that picture. Screwy, he was something else. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have the most agreeable personality, but he was just insane. He gave everyone he came into contact with hell, and half the time he didn’t even need an excuse like I do. He hadn’t even been at Warner Bros a year when they fired him for smashing his director’s foot with a hammer.”

Skippy suppressed a giggle.

“Don’t laugh, it isn’t funny,” Slappy scolded.” The poor guy got all the bones in his foot broken. Didn’t walk without crutches for three months, and he had a limp for the rest of his life. At the time I thought Screwy had to have been innocent though, and I hired a couple of P.I.s to prove it. Turned out he was guilty as sin, but so was the director. They didn’t share the dirt with me, but whatever it was it convinced him not to press charges on Screwy. Those P.I.s, of course, were the Valiant Brothers. Good guys, the Valiants. I only met Teddy that one time, but I talked to Eddy a few times after that, until he died in ’73.

So, fast forward a few years. I’d done a good few cartoons by then, and had some run ins with Walter and Sid, but Screwy wasn’t able to find work. He’d got a bad rap for being a total nightmare to work with. WB either locked up or destroyed every cartoon he made with ‘em, too. But believe it or not, he met a girl, and actually wised up a bit. Abby the Abert’s Squirrel. She was a live stage actress, did mostly kids’ stuff. She was really nice and shy normally, the total opposite of Screwy. But if you called her a skunk she went ballistic. Sadly I wasn’t there to see it, but once she blasted Pepe Le Pew into another county.” Slappy flipped forward in the album, and pointed to a squirrel with a face a bit like hers or Skippy’s, but with dark grey fur, large, tufted ears, and a white belly and tail. She had a bright, genuine smile, and seemed to have her arms around Screwy in most of the pictures they were in.

Slappy continued: “In ‘44 he finally got a contract with MGM to do five shorts as a sorta probation thing. I think Tex might’a felt bad and pulled a few strings. The suits there ended up decidin’ Screwy’s shorts were too one-sided, and wanted somethin’ a bit more like Tom and Jerry, so they tried to pair him up with Droopy. That ended about as badly as you’d expect, and MGM let him go to. Anyway, the next year Judge Doom got elected to the Toontown seat somehow. And of course, he tried to crack down on crime and absurd behavior. He instantly lost popularity with everyone, especially me and Screwy. Most of the screwballs would generally just ignore him and his goons, but we considered it our patriotic duty to harass them, and founded a sort of resistance movement, although Abby was the only one we ever recruited. Mostly we just did harmless stuff like drawing mustaches on wanted posters, sometimes we’d write ‘for sale’ on cop cars, occasionally steal the tires and leave a treasure map to the hiding place. You know, civil disobedience via classic comedy. But then in October of ’46 things went wrong. Doom’s weasel cronies tried to arrest us for jaywalking. The leader pulled a gun on us, Screwy shoved it up his nose and pulled the trigger.” Slappy cackled and feigned wiping away a tear. “His muzzle was on the wrong side of his head all day! They called for backup, and we led half the toon patrol on a wild goose chase all over Toontown and then out into LA. We lost ‘em and hightailed it back to Screwy’s place, but when we get in the door…”

Slappy paused, grimacing and taking another deep breath. “There’s Judge Doom, waiting for us. The babysitter’d been taken away in handcuffs, and Doom’s thugs had a gun to the head of Screwy and Abby’s four-month-old son.” Slappy turned another page.

“That… looks a lot like pictures of me as a baby,” Skippy pointed out. He stared at the red infant squirrel in Abby’s arms, and then at a photo of himself on the dresser, from when he was just learning to walk. The resemblance was uncanny. But that was… he did the math in his head. He was born in 1987, so that would have been forty-one years earlier. “Is that my Dad?” he asked.

“I’ll get to that,” said Slappy. “Now, ordinarily us toons are pretty much unkillable, but a baby… there’s no guarantee. And they had these three weird metal barrels with a bunch of warning labels on the side. They were closed but there was this awful smell coming from ‘em. Doom said any of us tried anything funny and the kid’d get it. Then he had the TPs cuff us, and went on this crazy rant on how toons like us were everything that was wrong with Toontown, how we needed to respect the law, yadda yadda yadda. Then he said we were all being charged with attempted murder of a police officer. I’m not sure where he pulled that from, it’s not like the gun could’a killed Weasel Boy, but we got kinda scared since it was basically our word against a judge and a half dozen cops, and we figured he might find some way of sealin’ us away for a few years like the Warners getting stuck in that water tower. He opened the barrel, and the smell hit me like a freakin’ freight train. Doom said he’d let us all off with a warning if we just let him dunk us in the barrels. The rope his goons pull ed out wasn’t toonmatter, which should’a had us suspicious, but we figured the point was that the stuff’d dye our fur green and make us smell like oven cleaner for the next week or something like that, and would basically brand us as criminals. And then…” Slappy swallowed hard.

“Screwy, the poor brave idiot, volunteered to go first. Doom was a bit apprehensive, but he said okay as long as me and Abby were tied up first. So they tie us all up, throw him in the barrel and…

…his screams. His fuckin’ screams. We saw fucking smoke coming out of the barrel, and Doom and the weasels all started laughing. Abby and I realized there’s no fuckin’ way anything should be doing that to a toon, especially one as strong as Screwy. We slipped the ropes, and before any of the cops could do anything I made one doozy of a flashbang and stunned all of ‘em. I went for the baby, while Abby ran to pull Screwy out of the Dip. But of course as soon as she stuck her hands in, they started melting. She jerked back, pulling what was left of Screwy out, but she pulled the barrel of Dip over on herself in the process. As soon as I saw what happened I jumped up on a chair to get away from the stuff. I knew I had to get us out of there, but I saw what happened to Abby and didn’t know what to do to help her and Screwy ‘cuz if I got burned there’d been no-one to rescue us. But then a couple of the weasels came back to their senses. They caught me by surprise: one shot me in the back of the head and the other got me with a baseball bat. I hit the floor, but you got knocked out of my hands and rolled through the puddle. So at this point I just panicked. Doom and the weasels were hightailing it thanks to the Dip spill – never occurred to me to wonder why Doom would be scared of the stuff – so I focused on getting rid of it. I blew a hole in the water main, which washed it all away. But when the smoke cleared…”

Slappy paused again, pinching the bridge of her nose. “…Screwy was just… gone. Just a red puddle, a piece of his arm, and not much else. Abby was almost as bad. Half her flesh melted off, I could see fucking ribs and leg bones, but she was still breathing. Most of the baby’s skin was burned off, and he was unconscious too. So at this point I realized they were dying, and I did the only thing I could think of: I froze ‘em. If you freeze a toon in a block of ice, they can be trapped in suspended animation for years if the ice doesn’t melt and they don’t have the strength to break out. I grabbed the freezer out of the kitchen, shoved them in, and filled it with water. Then I rented a moving truck, headed down to Santa Monica, stole a rowboat, and headed for Canada. Ya know, I couldn’t believe Screwy was actually gone until a couple weeks later when I was in a theater and they played his last short, the one where he ‘dies,’ then looks up and holds a freakin’ sign about how sad the ending is. I held it together during that, but then after the ending screen they had a little ‘In memory of, 1940-1946’ message. I was crying all the way home from the theater.

Well, as soon as Doom died, I came back to Hollywood, and I brought the block of ice with me. The doctors said they didn’t know how to heal Abby’s injuries with the technology of the time, but might in the future. So I found a space in a big industrial freezer, and the block stayed there for forty years. Then in 1987 the earthquake knocked out power to the freezer, and the backup generators ran out of fuel. I got there as fast as I could, but the ice had melted. Abby, well… didn’t make it. But the baby...”

Skippy did the math in his head again. 1987. He was born in 1987. Only… Slappy had never told him who his parents were. But she was his Aunt, so he’d always known she had a sibling. He was shocked. He almost couldn’t believe it, but he knew it had to be true. “That was me, wasn’t it?” he said.

“Yep. I thought I was gonna lose you too, but you were a fighter, kiddo.” She ruffled the fur on top of his head. You didn’t wake up for a couple months, but once you did and I could bring you home from the hospital, I officially adopted you. And that was pretty much all she wrote on that.” Slappy closed the photo album again and stowed it back in Hammerspace.

“Was that why you killed those guys, even though they were running away?” asked Skippy.

“Yeah. Yeah it was,” Slappy replied tersely.

“Uhh… that photo, that you showed on the news… who was it of?”

“Someone else,” said Slappy. “It wasn’t your Mom if that’s what you’re asking. I think it was a police photo from an attack in the ‘80s, but it might’ve been the ‘70s. I was damn close to pulling out pictures of Abby before and after, though. I could practically hear her and Screwy’s voices in my head telling me I should show those media ignoramuses. But then I remembered I had the other one, and I remembered you were probably watching.”

“Oh.” Skippy couldn’t think of anything else to say. He’d always known something bad must have happened to his parents. And he guessed there were only so many ways for a toon to die. Born ones could die of old age, although it hadn’t been long enough for many to actually do so, and a few died of disease. But still… and that meant he was in his fifties. A thought occurred to him, despite the seriousness of the situation. “Aunt Slappy, does that mean I’m old enough to drive? Can I get a permit?”

Slappy laughed. “No. I messed with your birth certificate a bit. As far as the Government’s concerned, you were born in ‘87. And even when you turn sixteen, you’ll have to prove you can be trusted with my car. Mostly you remind me of your Mom, but you’re still Screwy’s kid.”

Chapter Text

Yakko Warner groaned as he fumbled for the alarm clock. He tried twice without success to turn it off, thought better of smashing it with a hammer, and finally shoved the entire thing, still ringing, into Hammerspace. He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. 8:55 AM. Plotz had ordered them to be in the conference room at 9:00. This was far earlier than he had a right to demand anyone else be out of bed in Yakko’s opinion. Sure, it might have had something to do with him staying up until at least four that morning with his siblings marathoning Mel Gibson movies – it was Dot’s turn to choose, unfortunately – but the hour was still unreasonable.

Yakko slapped himself. There wasn’t really anything wrong with 9 AM. In the decades the Warners had been sealed inside the water tower, unable to create windows, there had been no day-night cycle. They’d lived most of a human lifetime going to sleep and waking up whenever they wanted. But it had been more than five years since they’d escaped. He couldn’t use it as an excuse for not developing anything resembling a normal sleep schedule forever.

The alarm hadn’t woken up Wakko and Dot on the bunks above. Dot was usually a fairly light sleeper, but… Yakko climbed up the ladder to check. No, she was still there, and actually asleep, but she’d put on a pair of earmuffs. Smart. Yakko and Wakko had both destroyed several alarm clocks with dynamite on at least one occasion. Yakko briefly considered removing the earmuffs and setting off a stick anyway. No, that would have been cruel. It wasn’t her fault he was in a bad mood. Well, it was , in a way, since she picked the movies, but not really. Besides, if he woke her up she’d beat him to the bathroom.

With a yawn, he slid down the ladder and headed there himself. The light bulb was blinding. He squinted into the mirror. He looked normal… too normal. The Warners’ eyes were black, entirely pupil, like the eyes of non-toon rats and mice. He couldn’t make them bloodshot to adequately convey the harm that getting him and his siblings up at the crack of dawn for a stupid meeting was causing his young (technically almost seventy), growing (not actually growing, he’d been the same age since Herbert Hoover was President) body. He settled for pulling his lower eyelids back about a foot from his face and snapping them back like rubber bands to create bags under his eyes, and splashing water in his face and mussing up his fur as much as he could. He stared at his toothbrush… wait, what time was it?

He ran out of the bathroom. 8:58. Uh oh. “Sibs!” he called. “Wakey wakey!”

Two days after the attack on Slappy and Skippy, Mr. Plotz had called the entire regular Animaniacs cast in for a meeting on safety. Even Plotz’s office was uncomfortably small, so a conference room was booked. The Warners emerged from Ralph’s hat about thirty seconds before the meeting was scheduled to start. “Hel-looooo, Nurse!” Yakko shouted halfheartedly, correctly predicting that she would be there. His voice was alone, thanks to the piece of toast in Wakko’s mouth.

Plotz stood at the back of the room, tapping his foot. He shot Yakko a dirty look. “Warners… check.”

“Dah, Check.” Ralph scribbled a checkmark on a list of attendees on the whiteboard.

Yakko made his way to the end of the conference room near the door and plopped down in a swivel chair at the end. He surveyed the room, reading his way down the list of his co-stars. Plotz, Ralph, Steven Spielberg, Scratchy, ‘Hello Nurse,’ and of course Slappy and Skippy were there already. The usual suspects were there – the Goodfeathers, the Hippos, Mime, Mr. Skullhead, and Katie Kaboom and her dad. More unusual sights were Rita and Runt curled up in the chair the Goodfeathers were perched on the back of, Chicken Boo – out of disguise for once – and… Yakko’s eyes immediately lit on Minerva Mink. She was slouched in a chair about halfway along the table, and was the only other person in the room who looked as unhappy to be there as Yakko and his siblings were. Despite her having shown up in her pajamas and with uncombed hair, Yakko felt his heart start to bulge his chest out the way it usually did in Minerva’s presence. He unceremoniously suppressed it. Minerva acted like she enjoyed the attention her power caused her to receive, and she played it up whenever she was on camera, but she’d confessed to Dot a while back that not being able to turn it off fully got on her nerves. Since then, Yakko and Wakko had stopped humoring her by playing along and not resisting when they encountered her.

“It’s Nine O’ Clock,” Wakko mumbled from under his hat. “When does it start? Scratchy, when does the meeting start?”

“It starts when everybody gets here,” Dr. Scratchansniff answered.

“Who’s missing?” asked Yakko.

“Ze mice, for one,” said Scratchy. “Randy Beaman’s mother called and said she was stuck in traffic, so she probably won’t make it. Ms. Barrett, have you heard anything from Mindy’s parents?”

Hello Nurse, whose real name was Tiffany Barrett, shook her head. “No, nothing.”

Scratchy tutted. “Vell, I wasn’t expecting much, but it would be nice for her parents to show at least a little bit of responsibility once in a while. I thought Buttons might come, but then, he’s probably watching Mindy.”

“Hey, how come Mindy and Randy Beaman didn’t have to come?” Dot whined. “Yakko, you could’ve gone by yourself!”

“I could have, but I wanted you all to share in my misery,” Yakko retorted. “I didn’t want to come either, but Plotz made it mandatory.”

“Since when has that stopped us?”

Yakko groaned. She had a good point. “Lemme rephrase that” he whispered. “Slappy asked Plotz to make it mandatory. You know she hates wasting her time on things like this, so she must think it’s important. Still, this better be good.”

Five minutes late, Pinky and Brain finally entered, straining under the weight of a laptop computer.

Plotz cleared his throat and climbed up on a chair so he could be seen over the desk. “All right, let’s bring this meeting to order, even though some of us…” Plotz glared at the empty chairs in the room “…haven’t taken the time out of their busy schedules to join us. As you all know, Slappy and Skippy squirrel were attacked yesterday by a group of masked men wielding spray guns filled with Dip.” Most of the room shuddered.

“Yeah, that’s bad, definitely bad,” Runt muttered to Rita.

“According to Slappy, her assailants mentioned having a specific target, which raises the possibility that she and Skippy accidentally got in the way of an assassination attempt. In any case, they may not have been working alone, and it was suggested to me that Warner Studios brief its higher-profile stars on what to do in the event that you come across Dip-wielding adversaries.”

Yakko slouched further in his chair. If they had a specific target, why did anybody else need to worry? Dip attacks were incredibly rare. There hadn’t been one since before he escaped the Tower.

Slappy and Brain-“ Plotz gestured at the mouse, who was now on the table booting up the computer “- Have volunteered to provide a safety briefing. Now, before we begin I would like to note that the material in this briefing may not be suitable for small children.”

“Hey! I’m two years older than you!” Dot protested.

“I didn’t mean you, I meant…” Plotz looked around the room. “Well, Mindy isn’t here, so just Skippy really.”

“He’s decades more mature than you,” said Slappy, getting a laugh from most of the room. “Not to mention he was involved in the attack yesterday. And if you try to kick him out, keep in mind that I’m his aunt and I’ll tell him everything anyway.”

“Okay, fine, fine.” Plotz put his hand to his forehead. “Before we begin, does anyone else have something they’d like to add?

“Yeah. What about the Tiny Toons kids?” Dot raised her hand. “Their show isn’t filming anymore, but...”

“Don’t worry, the staff at Acme Looniversity are handling that. And stars of other Warner Bros shows will be briefed as well. Now, can we begin?”

“Slappy, you go first,” Brain offered. “This technology is proving troublesome. Pinky, this is a Component video cable. I told you to bring a VGA cable!”

“Sorry, Brain! I couldn’t tell the difference, so I just grabbed one! Narf!”

“How difficult is it to tell the difference? The component video cable has three pointy ends, the VGA has a rectangular end. Go find a – no wait, I’ll look for a cable I can borrow, you see if you can find a ladder. I thought the projector would be on the table, not an overhead.” Brain hopped off the table and stormed out of the room, followed by Pinky.

“All right, let’s get this show on the road.” Slappy got up and headed to the whiteboard, taking Plotz’s place on the impromptu podium. “First things first, the cops called me back earlier this morning. They got the IDs of all five of the schmucks who attacked me, and apparently two or three of ‘em had some links to some anti-Toon group or other, but one that got busted a few years ago. Sounds like someone hired ‘em and gave ‘em the guns and the Dip, but the guy in jail either ain’t talking or he really doesn’t know who hired ‘em. He did say who the target was, though.”

Slappy paused for effect. “Colin Millworthy. Apparently he lives here in Burbank. Who knew?” Colin Millworthy was the third, and currently the only toon in the United States Congress. In the 1950s, Toontown had become a dependent territory of the United States, similar to Puerto Rico or Guam. As a result, it had a high degree of autonomy from the US Government, but did not have the ability to elect representatives or senators. However, Millworthy was the current representative of California’s 28^th Distrct. “Which means that the attack was an assassination attempt. They’ll probably try to shove a medal down my throat or something for stopping it. Anyway, just because this time they attacked a politician doesn’t mean the next time they won’t be going for a cartoon star, or whoever crosses their path. Which is why I’m doing my little bit. Feel free to take notes, kids.”

“What, you mean like Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti?” Yakko quipped from the back of the room, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet on the table. Dot giggled and Wakko belched. Just like he thought: it was an assassination attempt on a politician. There was no reason the same people would target cartoon stars like them. The meeting was going to be a total waste of time. In that case, Yakko decided, he would do his part to liven things up.

Slappy glared. “You kids shut it. This is serious.” With a flourish, she conjured a pointer and snatched the whiteboard marker and eraser from Ralph. “The first thing you need to know about Dip,” she said, writing as she spoke, “Is that if you can run, you pretty much always should. The only reason I didn’t was because I had Skippy with me. Really, I should’a just gotten us outta there, but I was mad as hell that someone took a shot at him. Anyway, running is always better than being hit. If you have to jump off a cliff, or into the path of a speeding freight train, do it. Conversely, if you’re human,” Slappy gestured to Plotz, Spielberg, Scratchy, and Hello Nurse, “don’t do anything stupid to get out of the way if someone’s stupid enough to spray Dip at you. Just try not to get any in your eyes, mouth, or nose, and wash it off your skin as soon as possible. It’s not gonna melt you, but some of the chemicals in that stuff are still nasty. Call poison control, blah blah blah.”

“But back on topic,” Slappy continued. “Running away from Dip is pretty easy. If someone tries to dunk you in a barrel, don’t get caught. If they tip a barrel on the ground, get away from the puddle and to high ground. What I was up against was squirt guns. Those won’t have much ammo, and their range is very short. If you can fly, like the Goodfeathers over here,” Slappy pointed to the pigeons, who were perched on the back of a chair, “Get above it. Same goes for climbing a tree, jumping onto power lines, or anything else. But try not to get cornered. Some people have also used water balloons. Again, dodge those and get behind cover. Don’t be an idiot and try to catch them or bounce them back and hope they don’t burst. In general, any Dip-based weapon should be a stream or burst of liquid, which means it won’t go very far.”

Minerva Mink raised her hand. “What about frozen Dip?”

“If it’s frozen, it can’t hurt you,” replied Slappy. “Well, it can, but that’s only because your body heat melts it. If I remember right it freezes a lot colder than water, and melts easier. Brain could probably tell you the actual temperature. But it’ll melt slowly enough that unless it’s a powder like snow, you’d probably only get surface burns from a few seconds of contact. I don’t know, don’t try it. I guess if someone lodged a block inside your body, it would melt you from the inside out, though.” Slappy winced. “Not a good way to go. Don’t let it happen.”

“What about boiled?” Asked Wakko.

“Again, it wouldn’t do anything. Once it’s boiled, all the ingredients get separated from each other, and they’re harmless on their own. Stinks to high heaven though. What would be scary is a cloud of tiny liquid droplets. There, you wanna close your mouth and eyes, cover your nose, and run like hell. Maybe you could conjure something that makes a lot of fire, or a fan might make enough wind for long enough, but I have no idea if you could even conjure through the pain.”

Yakko had been making a sincere effort to pay attention to Slappy’s advice despite his annoyance, but it really was useless. At least, not to him, or Wakko, or Dot. All it really boiled down to was ‘Don’t get hit,’ and from there anyone with a basic knowledge of cartoon physics could work it out for themselves. The valuable information could be written on a Post-It Note. And jumping in front of trains or climbing power lines? Maybe some toons could do that. The Warners were good enough at teleportation that given a moment’s distraction they could be in another county. “What about Double Dipping?” he asked. “Seinfeld did an episode on that, it’s very dangerous. How do we protect ourselves?”

Slappy’s grip on her pointer tightened. “You got two strikes, Warner. I’m not in a good mood today.”

“And this is supposed to be newsworthy?”

“Two-and-a-half. Look, you’ve got the entire rest of the day to mess with people. If you wanna ignore my advice, go ahead, but everyone else here has a right to know information that could save their lives. Now, anyone got any non-stupid questions?”

“What if somebody filled a paintball with it?” Asked Scratchy.

“I dunno, dodge it. It’ll be a lot faster and a lot longer-range, but very little Dip. The shell might even make it a lot easier to stop. I guess someone could also probably fill a shotgun shell with the stuff. Anyway, I was going to move on to cover and blocking Dip. Hey Brain.”

The mentioned mouse had returned, dragging a long cable. Katie lifted him onto the table. “Thank you, Katie,” he said. “I take it Pinky has not managed to locate a ladder?”

“Nope,” answered Bobby. “Nuh uh,” said Squit. “No sign of him,” agreed Pesto. Brain looked up at the projector, around four feet above his head.

“Could you conjure a ladder?” asked Plotz.

Brain shook his head. “Unfortunately conjuration is not foremost among my many skills. Such a large object would be problematic.”

“I’ll do it!” Skippy jumped onto the table. “Slappy says I need the practice.”

“If you must, although I would prefer to set up the projector with life and limb intact.”

After retrieving several useless items from Hammerspace, Skippy managed to create a slightly crooked miniature ladder and leaned it against the projector.

Slappy returned to her lecture. “As I was sayin’, because Dip is a liquid it’ll just splash against most solid objects. It dissolves a lotta plastics and rubbers, but it takes long enough that it won’t matter in a fight. Toonmatter is a different, uh… matter. It goes right through. So if you have to block a Dip stream, use the biggest, bulkiest object you can manage. A doorframe is good, but try to make it steel. A shield might work too, or even a safe or anvil if it’s big enough to hide behind.”

“Didn’t you, ah, use an umbrella?” Flavio asked.

“Yeah, but only because I wanted it to be light enough to be easy to move around,” said Slappy. “And I only got away with it because I’m one of the strongest toons around. Don’t try it at home unless your name’s Bugs Bunny, or maybe a couple others, but no one in this room. Oh, I forgot to mention: water washes dip away and dilutes it until it’s harmless.”

“Not toon water, mind you,” put in Brain, who was now up on the ladder attempting to plug the cable into the projector. “It will vaporize that, although more than a meter of it should stop guns like the ones that were used on Slappy.”

“I’m talking here, thank you very much. But yeah, that’s pretty much the gist of it. Finally, if you are hit, it won’t kill you right away. If you’re dunked in the stuff, you’re done for, and a spray or direct hit from a water balloon is gonna be really bad. Even if it doesn’t turn you into a puddle, it’ll melt a huge hole in you, and probably destroy vital organs. If you live, it might take months to heal. I’ve been lucky enough to have never been burned, but I know the screams, and I can tell ya it’s horribly painful. A while back I talked to Benny the cab – he drove through a puddle during the Judge Doom incident, got his tires melted. He said it was pretty nasty, but I’d imagine he didn’t have much feeling in his tires. It’d be much worse if it was flesh. But if you get burned, and you can still think straight, the first thing to do is-”

Yakko had had enough. No one in this room? Dot was the best in their trio at conjuration, but any of them could give Slappy a run for her money any day! He was pretty sure she was trying to insult him to antagonize him into heckling her again so that she could kick him out of the meeting, but that was exactly what he wanted. His scowl became a mischievous grin. “Put your head between your knees and kiss your butt goodbye?”

Slappy’s grip tightened enough to snap the pointer. “That’s three strikes. You’re out, Warner.”

“Good, I was bored anyway.” Yakko stood up and started to head for the door, turning his back on Slappy. As he turned the knob, the hairs on the back of his neck tingled. He turned just in time to see a lime-green water balloon flying straight at his face, but too late to dodge. He was drenched in acrid-smelling clear liquid. It took a second for the pain to register, but when it did, it was like his face was being dipped in molten lead. His eyes, his tongue, the inside of his nose, were all on fire.

Yakko made a sound that was half scream, half-yelp. “It burns!” he shouted, covering his face. He tried to run from the room, forgetting the door was closed, and slammed into it, then fell to the ground, writhing and coughing. “My eyes! Get it off! Get it off! Owww!”

Yakko only saw what happened next by means of a flashback Wakko gave him later, after the meeting. He couldn’t see anything himself through the tears.

Looks of shock and horror spread across every other face in the conference room. Wakko and Dot were by Yakko’s side in an instant. “Dip!” Dot squealed. “Don’t touch him!” she pulled Wakko back from the puddle of spilled liquid. “We’ve got to -”

“Wash it off!” Wakko pulled a bottle of seltzer water out of his gag bag and blasted Yakko in the face with it. A plume of steam rose from his body, but his thrashing didn’t stop. “It’s not working!” Wakko cried.

Dot produced a bucket of water and threw it over her brother, but still nothing happened. The carpet steamed and popped.

“Slappy?” Skippy gasped. “What did you just-”

Slappy rolled her eyes. “Don’t use toon water, you idiots! Use real water! Here!” she zipped across the room, produced a large jug from Hammerspace, and poured it over Yakko.

Finally the pain got better – not completely, but enough for him to sit up. He rubbed his eyes and blinked furiously. The room was still a blur, but was progressively getting better. “What the hell?!” Yakko balled his fists. “What did you put in that balloon?”

“Turpentine, Acetone, and Benzene,” Slappy replied coolly.

“You could’ve killed him!” Flames erupted from Dot’s eyes. She reached behind her back. Most of the room dived for cover. Slappy remained unmoved, folding her arms across her chest.

“No, I couldn’t,” the squirrel said. “Those three ingredients on their own don’t make real Dip. I had ‘em in the same ratios as the real stuff, so it might kill some weaker toons if they drank or inhaled it, and it’ll dissolve non-living toonmatter, but against someone like you it’ll just sting and maybe leave a rash. But if that had been real Dip, it’s not a could’ve, it’s a would’ve. You’d be dead, Yakko.”

“I… uhh...” Yakko shakily got to his feet. He wanted to fire back with a witty comeback, but he was drawing a total blank. For a second, even if he knew that Slappy was his friend, and would never seriously injure, let alone murder him for running his mouth, part of him had thought he was dying. He gagged again at the chemical taste. His tongue had gone numb, and he was glad he’d skipped breakfast.

“Go in the bathroom and wash it off properly,” Slappy ordered. “And ya might wanna change your pants while you’re at it.”

Yakko looked down. He was expecting the contents of Slappy’s water balloon to have created a wet patch in an inconvenient location, but it was worse. His pants looked like S wiss cheese. His gloves had fa r ed a little better, but there wasn’t much left of the fingers and palms. He complied without a word, teleporting to a bathroom he knew had a shower as soon as the door was closed. After splashing his face and washing his mouth out with the aid of a cup from Hammerspace, he hosed off any trace of the fake Dip from his body without bothering to wait for the water to heat up. He spin-dried himself, put on new pants and gloves, and a moment later he was back at the conference room door.

The tension in the air between Wakko, Dot, and Slappy was still electric, but someone had placed a ‘Caution – Wet Floor’ sign in the puddle of water soaked into the cheap carpet. Yakko had still been seething at Slappy, but that finally got a laugh out of him. He tiptoed around the puddle and stretched out his arm to pull the door shut.

“So,” said Slappy. “Still think this is a joke?”

“No...” Yakko said sheepishly. He hated to admit it, but she’d gotten him. She’d gotten him good. Yeah, he didn’t think a human could pull out a concealed squirt gun that fast, and maybe if he hadn’t been so damn tired he’d have been able to dodge Slappy’s balloon. But the shock had woken him up all the way, and as he replayed the moment over and over in his head he realized she had a point. Normal teleportation didn’t work if someone, even a human, had their attention focused on you. If an attacker showed off their weapon and tried to threaten and intimidate him there were plenty of opportunities to create enough of a diversion, especially since Yakko was quick enough to do it in the blink of an eye, but if he was caught off-guard it would be much harder to do it in time. A scene change worked even if you were being watched, but it was much slower, and could take the attacker with him. “You didn’t have to use me as a guinea pig, though.”

Slappy shrugged. “You’re right, I didn’t. I could’ve just let ya keep bein’ an idiot until you got yourself killed.”

“We weren’t going to get ourselves killed,” Yakko protested. So, teleportation wasn’t foolproof. That didn’t mean he was defenseless.

“Oh yeah?” Slappy rolled her eyes. “You thought you didn’t need to listen to me because you’re the Warner Brothers, didn’t ya? You didn’t think anything I said applied to you, because you’re not like other toons. You’re invincible. And you didn’t think you needed to listen to some paranoid old squirrel because you’re a few years older than me, right?”

“Uhh...” Yakko’s voice cracked. He wanted to tell Slappy she had the wrong idea, that he’d just been trying to add some comic relief to her lecture, but the truth was that she’d accurately paraphrased several of his earlier thoughts.

“That’s what I thought. Well, you know what? You kids might’ve been around longer than me, but you spent most of that taking a nap in a water tower. You’ve missed the majority of the 20^th Century, including the entire 1940s. You weren’t around when Doom was dippin’ toons left and right. Ya know, you remind me of a very young…” Slappy trailed off, and shook her head.

“A very young who?” asked Dot. Yakko noticed Skippy, who had been trying to sink through the seat of his chair for most of the conversation, suddenly sit bolt upright.

“Never mind. I just knew a couple siblings who acted like you once. One of ‘em ended up as a puddle.” Slappy said it matter-of-factly, but with a finality that told Yakko she was unlikely to elaborate. There was a flash of genuine pain and concern in her eyes, something Yakko didn’t think he’d ever seen before. Not from Slappy.

“Oh,” was all he could say.

“Anyway, pop quiz time,” Slappy said, a bit more upbeat. If you get burned with Dip, or if someone else gets burned, what do you do?”

“Wash it off immediately,” Yakko said. “Using real water.”

“If it’s someone else, don’t touch them until you’re sure it’s all washed off,” added Dot. “And make sure you don’t stand in the puddle.”

“Good.” Slappy nodded. “Toon water will actually work if you use enough of it – it’ll still eventually neutralize the Dip. But only use it if you don’t have other options. And remember, the water will make the puddle get bigger and might not dilute the Dip enough to make it safe. Use an elevated platform if you can. Anyway, I’ve said my piece. Brain, you’re up.”

“Thank you Slappy.” Brain had finished adjusting the projector, and slid down the ladder. “Where is Pinky? Oh, speak of the devil.” The door to the conference room banged open, and a maintenance worker wrestled a stepladder in, Pinky riding on his shoulder. He nearly tripped over the Wet Floor sign.

Brain’s half of the safety briefing turned out to consist of a PowerPoint slideshow, with diagrams illustrating various delivery methods for Dip. Brain had apparently visited the police station during the night, and was able to see the Dip guns. According to him, they turned out to be made of metal pipes and paintball hardware, with a compressed CO2 bottle forcing Dip out of the storage tank, which held nearly half a gallon, at very high speed. “Their construction is relatively simple,” Brain remarked, “but still suggests either a long time in development or assistance from someone with some technical knowledge. I’d be hard-pressed to make a more powerful or longer-range spray gun that didn’t use a backpack to store ammunition.” Brain further described the other possibilities Slappy had mentioned, such as paintballs, mist generators, and shotgun shells. Then he pulled a vial filled with a turpentine-acetone-benzene mixture out of Hammerspace and passed it around, explaining that the smell should be very similar to actual Dip.

“Why don’t you just smell the carpet over there?” asked Yakko. “Slappy threw the same stuff at me.”

“I had no knowledge of Slappy bringing that balloon,” answered Brain. “And this vial will be far more convenient then everyone bending over and putting their noses to the floor.” He then launched into an explanation of the mechanism by which Dip destroyed toonmatter.

By this point, only half those present were paying attention. Yakko, despite his best efforts to listen diligently, was finding it harder and harder to keep his eyes open. Runt appeared to have fallen asleep, and several others had a glazed look in their eyes. Finally, Brain reached his ‘questions’ slide. There was a long, awkward silence.

Finally, Minerva spoke up. “So, couldn’t most of this be avoided if they never shot at us in the first place? I’m sure some of us have ways of… persuading attackers.” She leaned forward in her chair and batted her eyelids to emphasis her point. Slappy rolled her eyes and made a fake retching noise.

Brain was also less than impressed. “I assume in your case you are referring to taking advantage of the fact that puberty was inordinately kind to you. But since that’s a tactical question, I’ll let Slappy answer it.”

The squirrel was already marching up to the podium. Dot and Wakko giggled and conjured bags of popcorn. Slappy’s disapproval of Minerva’s methods was fairly well known. “The guys I dealt with were probably dumb enough to fall for your damsel in distress act or whatever it is ya do, but they also took a shot at Skippy without hesitating. Anyway, if you’d ever fought anyone but two-bit losers you’d know that the same trick isn’t gonna work every time. A woman or a gay guy comes at you and the paramedics will have to bring a mop and bucket.”

“Good night everybody!” shouted Yakko. He couldn’t resist, it was just too good a setup. Slappy attempted to shoot him a glare, but cracked up.

The meeting dissolved soon after, with most of the participants going home or back to work. Rita and Runt volunteered to summarize the safety tips to Buttons, and the Goodfeathers mentioned that they would do the same for their girlfriends and the Godpigeon. Even Slappy briefly contemplated sending a letter to some of her many enemies, but decided against it. “Not worth the postage,” she explained. “Besides, most of ‘em have been around the block enough to take responsibility for themselves.”

Chapter Text

The next few weeks were fairly quiet on the Studio Lot… well, perhaps not so much quiet as uneventful. Apart from Flavio accidentally driving into the gate at Ralph’s guard booth, there had been no real catastrophes. Skippy had spent a week at summer camp, and in the process made his first solo cartoon.

In addition, the studio had organized a paintball war as “safety training” to avoid Dip-based weapons. Even those who couldn’t actually hold guns were encouraged to practice dodging. The event ended up being slightly larger than planned when Buster, Babs, and several other Tiny Toons kids showed up. In a nutshell, hilarity ensued. The Hip Hippos were easy targets, and Mr. Skullhead lacked the coordination to dodge anything, but most of the other toons fared rather well. Blocking enemy fire with items from Hammerspace was banned, but Mime used an ‘invisible box’ to great effect, proving invincible until Buster Bunny tunneled underneath him and placed a grenade at his feet. The Goodfeathers also avoided attack for a while by flying above the range of paintball guns – eventually the Warners noticed and conjured a see-saw and a 1-ton weight, and catapulted Dot up to shoot them down. Minerva managed to use her ‘charm’ to incapacitate Plucky, Montana Max, and Hamton, but was removed from the game after trying it on Skippy. Slappy dropped a net on her from a tree, threw her into a barrel of fluorescent purple paint, shut the lid, and rolled the barrel down a hill. Afterwards, Slappy commented that the mink was “Another young idiot that thought she was invincible and needed to be taught a lesson.” Fortunately for the rest of the players, the Warners and Slappy ended up locked in a grudge match for the second half of the battle. Another duel took place between Calamity Coyote and Brain (with Pinky as sidekick); the former had built a makeshift ‘tank’ with plywood armor over a toon steel backing, while the latter had made an automated turret that used a ray gun to shoot down incoming paintballs. Surprisingly, at the end of the day the one wearing the least paint (aside from Calamity, Pinky, and Brain) was Buttons.

By the time of the paintball war, the attack on Slappy seemed a distant memory to most of the studio, Yakko included, and Dip-wielding maniacs were a vague possible threat most relevant as an excuse to run around the forest shooting paint-filled plastic pellets at each other. But on August 10^th, 1998, Slappy Squirrel’s worst suspicions were confirmed.

That day, Yakko and Dot Warner were stuck in the waiting room of a dentist’s office. Wakko had gotten a lollipop stuck to his teeth, then accidentally ripped one out while trying to remove the candy with a crowbar. Despite the siblings’ assurances that the tooth would grow back within a week, studio policy required that child actors seek medical attention for any ‘serious’ on-set injuries. Of course, the Warners tried pulling the ‘technically almost seventy years old’ card, but without success. That left Yakko and Dot with nothing to do but read magazines from five years ago or watch TV for an hour while their brother underwent a completely unnecessary checkup. Thank God the waiting room had a TV. It was on a news program and there was no remote, but anything was better than the AARP Monthly Bulletin.

Eventually, though, Yakko felt himself dozing off. It must have been a slow news day, because this made Pip Pumphandle seem like a riveting conversationalist. Stock markets, baseball, a plane that landed at the wrong airport, a congressional hearing, two cartoon stars murdered...

“Wait, what?” Yakko sat bolt upright in his tackily-upholstered chair. He tapped Dot on the shoulder, prompting her to take her Walkman headphones out.

The anchor continued reading from her teleprompter. “Cartoon stars Hippety Hopper and Spike the Dog were found dead in their homes this morning, as were Hippety Hopper’s wife and three children. Police say the deaths were almost certainly murder, with puddles of the substance known as Dip being found around the bodies. There were also signs of forced entry. Both murders are believed to have occurred between the hours of 12 AM and 3 AM last night. So far no suspects have been identified.”

“WHAT?” Yakko shouted, causing the other five people in the waiting room to stare. Hippety Hopper was a kangaroo who’d starred in about a dozen Looney Tunes shorts, then retired in the sixties to open a seafood restaurant. Spike the Dog had appeared in many of Tom and Jerry’s cartoons, but hadn’t had much of a career recently other than a few advertisements. Neither of them were particularly powerful, but they weren’t pushovers either. And with two Dip attacks happening the same night, less than a month after the Slappy incident…

“There’s no way this wasn’t the same people,” Dot muttered.

“No kidding,” agreed Yakko. “And I don’t think they’d be rushing from one house to another just to murder two families in the same night, which means they have enough people to do both attacks at once. This is really bad.”

“Yeah, and they’re not just targeting politicians.”

“We’re going back to the Studio,” Yakko decided. This was officially serious. He remembered during the meeting how he’d mentally complained that if the group was targeting a politician there was no risk to cartoon stars. Now that had gone out the window. The afternoon of the meeting, after Yakko had apologized to Slappy for heckling him and Slappy had apologized for throwing fake Dip in his face, the old squirrel had reluctantly told him the reason behind her paranoia. Yakko still hadn’t considered Dip attacks worth worrying about when he was awake. But he’d had nightmares about seeing Wakko plunged into a barrel of the stuff, and Dot pulling it over onto herself trying to rescue him. Hell, any of them could have been in any of those positions.

He zipped over to the receptionist’s desk and leaned over the edge – with some difficulty since he was too short to do so with his feet touching the ground. “Excuse me Madam, I’m afraid Wakko’s appointment must be cut short. Of course, I’d love to stick around here pretending to be interested in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but tragically it’s an emergency and we need to get home as soon as possible.”

The receptionist glowered back at him from behind a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. “Young man, or dog, or whatever you are, unless those two murders involved immediate family it does not count as an emergency worthy of interrupting a medical procedure.”

“Then can you go tell the dentist to speed it up a notch?”

“No.” The receptionist looked back at her clipboard and computer monitor.

“Well, then how about I do it? You know, I’m an excellent motivational speaker. I could even play some jaunty music!” Yakko pulled a record player out of Hammerspace and set it on the desk to illustrate the effect. “I bet the real reason doctor’s appointments always take so long is the horrible elevator music you always seem to play.”

“Yakko, calm down!” Dot came to the receptionist’s rescue. “Nobody’s going to attack a dentist’s office! Even if somebody was trying to kill us, how’d they know where we were?”

“Pity, a gang of armed lunatics breaking the door down might make this appointment more exciting.” Yakko sighed and slouched back to his seat. Precisely 38 minutes and 17 seconds later (Yakko counted them out loud, with Dot joining in after the first ten minutes), Wakko emerged from the dentist’s office with – surprise, surprise – a clean bill of health.

When the Warners got back to the studio, Slappy was already outside Plotz’s office, feigning interest in the various pictures and decorations on the walls.

“Hi there, Slappy!” Yakko greeted her. “Guess you heard the news?”

“Yep. Mr. Bigshot’s on the phone about something or other, but I’m gonna talk to him about seeing if any of the cast members need help with security.”

“You mean like bodyguards?”

“Probably not, just warning systems. Somebody better than Ralph to watch the lot would be nice though. No offense to the guy, but he’s utterly useless.”

“Hey, Skippy!” Dot interrupted. “Did you narrow down the song list for next week?”

“Yeah,” the younger squirrel nodded. Some fans of Animaniacs had written in asking for a few more serious segments mixed into the comedy. Yakko personally thought the upcoming movie would give them enough sappiness for a lifetime, but Dot and Skippy liked the idea, and had gotten permission to sing a song as a duet for Season 6, provided they could get the original artist’s blessing themselves.

“Tell me about it.” Yakko responded to Slappy. “We don’t even have to try to give him the slip. You could probably sneak a whole marching band past his booth and he wouldn’t notice.”

“And?” Dot headed over to the chair next to Skippy and sat down.

“Well, I think the producers would veto half the songs you picked, but I added a couple, so we still have at least five.”

“You were supposed to narrow it down!”

“I did! You gave me thirteen, now it’s five! Well, eight, three of them are ones I like but the producers won’t.”

“I don’t know, the Great Wakkorotti somehow got their approval.” Dot sarcastically made a sweeping gesture towards her brother.

“Anyway,” Slappy continued her conversation with Yakko. “Some of the weaker actors here like Boo and Rita and Runt don’t really have permanent residences so any thugs ain’t gonna be able to find ‘em easily, but others like Skullhead or the Hippos or Katie Kaboom could be tracked down. So I figure we should see if we can get them good alarm systems. A few seconds of warning is enough to conjure a bomb or a smokescreen or whatever.”

“Are you saying I don’t get yours?” Wakko asked Dot.

“Some jokes keep being funny even when told a second time,” Dot said with a faux philosophical tone. “And that isn’t one of them. At least change things up like I do with Dot’s Poetry Corner.”

“I did the act with my gloves once when my throat hurt. That counts!” Wakko protested. “Besides, I’m doing the traveling piano sketch!”

“Not everyone can conjure that well, though.” Yakko raised his voice to be heard over his siblings’ argument.

Slappy shrugged. “Well, it’s enough to get outta the house at least. Anyway, Brain said he was working on an electronic doohickey that can detect the tiniest traces of Dip in the air and sound an alarm. He’s doing a video call with me and a couple others this evening, and I’ll see if I can get Plotz in on that too.”

Both conversations eventually drifted to other topics, like the Dodgers’ recent losses, Skippy’s upcoming school year, and the surfer who had tragically been attacked and eaten by squid the previous week.

The door to Plotz’s office opened and his voice barked: “Come in!”

“Mr. Plotz will see you now,” the secretary said redundantly.

“I thought his eyesight was perfectly fine before,” joked Wakko.

When the Warner siblings entered the office, they were greeted by Plotz’s famous scowl. “I was supposed to only be speaking with Slappy, not the three of you,” he said, waddling back to his desk. “And I hope you actually went to Wakko’s dentist appointment. Believe me, I have no interest in raising this studio’s health insurance bills with frivolous medical visits, but rules are rules.”

“What dentist appointment?” Wakko feigned ignorance.

“We’ve been at Disneyland all day,” Yakko added. A very promising vein was beginning to throb in the CEO’s forehead. Dot and Slappy stifled laughs. Yakko inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that he wasn’t nervous. At this point, he had to be just as nervous as Slappy was, because he didn’t know for sure what he’d do if he was confronted by Dip-wielding gunmen in real life. He didn’t want her to think he was treating the situation as a joke again, not when they were back on good terms, but for Yakko, the more nervous and stressed he got the harder it was to stop joking and getting on people’s nerves.

“Now look…” Plotz spoke very slowly. “There are two possibilities for why you three are in my office right now. Either you heard about the incident last night and would like to participate in this meeting… or you’re just here to harass me like you usually do. I will not allow you to do both. Either be on your best behavior or leave.”

“Try and make us,” Yakko fired back with a grin.

“All right, enough, enough.” Slappy waved the ‘eldest’ Warner back. “I haven’t got all day, the Phyllis Angeles Show is on at three.”

The meeting ended up being fairly brief, with Slappy sharing her opinions on what the risks were to the various toons in the studio’s employ, and how those risks could be mitigated. “So, as far as Animaniacs is concerned, I think Rita, Runt and the Goodfeathers keep a low enough profile that they probably won’t even be on these nutters’ radar. Chicken Boo it’s hard to say, he just needs to not pull some crazy disguise that puts him in the national spotlight. Who I’m worried about are Buttons, Mindy, and their parents, Katie Kaboom and her family, Skullhead, Mime, that one kid who won’t shut up about Randy Beaman, and especially the Hippos.”

“What about us?” asked Yakko.

“Or you and Skippy?” put in Wakko.

“Or Pinky and Brain?” Dot added.

“It’s hard to tell,” Slappy answered. “There’s only been the two attacks so I can’t see a pattern. In theory though, the lot’s pretty well-protected, not to mention they haven’t gone after any really powerful toons on purpose. With me and Skippy… well, the question is what sort of crazies these people are. It could be they won’t even come near me after I killed four of their guys and put another behind bars, but then again it could mean they’d come for revenge. I’m not scared of ‘em, but I wouldn’t put it past these psychos to go for Skippy when he’s at school or something and I’m not around. And then Pinky and Brain… well, aside from the bit where you’d have to be the mother of all numbskulls to try to break into one of ACME’s R&D labs, Brain’s probably got some pretty nasty weapons in the works…”

Plotz nodded. “What you’ve said so far makes sense, but what about the other shows?”

“Well, basically any of the big-name stars like Bugs or Daffy or Porky ought to know how to handle themselves. The problem’s the ones that aren’t that well known, aren’t that powerful, and some of ‘em aren’t even under contract with WB anymore. The main other thing I can think of is the Tiny Toons kids. Acme Loo itself nobody’s gonna attack, but their homes are a different matter. Brain’s alarm thingy I told you about ought to help with that.”

Slappy paused, then thought of something. “Wait a sec, forgot about Minerva. I don’t think she’s in that much danger since it’d be kinda hard to find out where she lives, but… I dunno what to tell ya about that girl. I mean, she’s not weak, and she’s not stupid, she’s just… cocky. Thinks that just because she has one trick that works most of the time that she can get out of anything with it. I mean, if Pepe Le Pew had a bunch of goons in gas masks with Dip guns show up, do you think he’d try to use his scent, or just run? Scratch that, it’s Pepe, he probably would try to use his scent, and get himself killed. And that’s what I’m worried Minerva will do.”

“I thought you didn’t even like Minerva,” Dot commented.

“I don’t. Maybe if she had the common sense to… ah, never mind. Anyway, I know the studio can’t do much for toons who don’t work here anymore, but you can probably mail out a bunch of pamphlets out or something. Same thing with anyone in production or special effects or stuff like that.”

“I’ll have my assistant assign someone to that,” agreed Plotz. “But I’m not convinced on Brain’s alarm system. This isn’t the nineteenth century when companies held their employees’ hands on everything; anyone who wants a Dip alarm should get one themselves. It’s not the studio’s responsibility.”

“You approved the paintball war,” Yakko pointed out.

Plotz objected: “No, Spielberg and the rest of your production staff did, I had nothing to do with it. Anyway, a company picnic is reasonable, but I’m not installing security systems in actors’ homes.”

“Well, tell Brain that yourself tonight,” said Slappy. “I don’t even know if his thing works or not. All I’m saying is if it works everyone should know it’s out there, ‘cause it could save lives. I don’t care if you put up a sign or if you gift-wrap the things yourself and hand-deliver them to the stars’ houses. Now I’m going to grab me some lunch before I go into a coma.” She hopped out of her chair and strolled out of the office.

There was a brief silence. From behind the door, Skippy’s voice asked something about the meeting.

“Now, Warners,” Plotz said with a poorly-faked smile. “The meeting is over, so why don’t you three run along out of my office.”

“Nah,” the siblings replied in unison. When the Squirrel was away, the Warners would play.

The vein in Plotz’s forehead began to throb again. “I seem to recall you promising to be on your best behavior.”

Yakko explained: “We were only on our best behavior during the meeting; now that it’s over we can do whatever we want.” He leaned back in the conjured deck chair he’d been sitting in for the entire meeting, and produced a Boombox from Hammerspace. “I hope you like Disco, Plotzie.”

Thaddeus Plotz was a man of surprisingly diverse musical taste. He was fond of the older swing and jazz music that was popular when he was growing up in the 1940s, but also had an appreciation for the rock and roll of the fifties, and even later groups like the Beatles and some folk songs. However, his opinion of Disco was slightly lower than 17-Century France’s opinion of protestants. And indeed, Yakko’s Boombox met a similar fate to a man in the Paris town square calling for the death of the Pope. The Warners themselves were simply thrown out of the CEO’s office. A locked door was hardly an obstacle for the trio, but they relented. Plotz was not a young man, and while raising his blood pressure to the point where a papercut would cause the ceiling to be repainted might be briefly entertaining, Plotz making them clean up the bloodstains was the best possible consequence. Besides, as Wakko remarked: “Today it just seems cruel. He’s got something serious to worry about.”

“You mean besides Quest for Camelot being the biggest flop in studio history?” Dot joked.

“I know what you mean,” said Yakko. “That movie bombed harder than Slappy at an explosives festival.”

 The video call that evening ended up consisting of Pinky and Brain at ACME Labs, Slappy over speaker-phone from her house, and Plotz, Spielberg, Dmitri Skala (head of security at the studio lot), and Bugs Bunny at the Studio.

“Ehh... what’s up, doc?” Slappy’s voice came over the speaker. She commonly greeted Bugs using his own line.

“Ehh, not a lot. Just gettin’ ready to start the school year. How’s Skippy doing?”

“Pretty good, he’s got his first solo short this season. By the way, have the Lakers made you an offer yet?” Ribbing Bugs over Space Jam had been a studio pastime for two years now, and would likely remain so for some time. Slappy in particular was the only big-name Looney Tunes star who had refused to sign on, and took full advantage of the resulting immunity from retaliation. Bugs was her preferred target, but no one was safe. Last Christmas they’d retaliated by giving her over thirty autographed basketball jerseys. Slappy had them in a box in the basement, and kept promising to cut them up and make a quilt out of them, but had yet to do so.

“Haw haw haw, very funny. Nah, baseball’s more my sport anyway.”

“Speaking of, how about them Dodgers?”

“I tape the game every night so I can cry myself to sleep over it.”

“I know what you mean, it’s horrible. I’m almost considering defecting to the Angels.”

Bugs scowled, and his tone darkened. “Come on mac, there’s some things you shouldn’t joke about.”

“A-hem.” Brain cleared his throat, interrupting the small talk. “Are we ready to begin?”

“Yes, yes we are.” Plotz spoke for the rest of the room.

“Very well, I shall proceed to the topic at hand,” the mouse monotoned. “Due to recent events, I believe it will be helpful to conduct research into minimizing the threat posed by Dip. I have created a device which uses several chemical sensors to detect traces of acetone, benzene, and alpha-pinene in the air, and sound an alarm. Currently I have constructed only the prototype, which should appear behind me at any moment… any moment now…” He glanced at the blank wall behind him, looking annoyed.

“Sorry, Brain!” Pinky pushed a beige plastic box into view. It was slightly larger than a normal smoke detector, but compared to a mouse it was equivalent to a large piece of furniture.

“Thank you, Pinky.” Brain walked over to the device and popped the cover off. “As you can see, it is powered by a single nine volt battery. Because Dip vapors are heavier than air, it should be mounted at no more than head height, similar to a carbon monoxide detector. The green light, seen here, indicates that the device is armed, as it will be whenever the battery is connected. A red light indicates a low battery. Pinky, help me with the cover.”

“Right-O, Brain!” The two mice returned the cover to its original position.

“Excuse me for a moment.” Brain walked behind the camera, and returned dragging a glass vial and two pairs of earplugs. He put one pair on and tossed the other to Pinky. “And now,” Brain gripped the lid of the vial, his voice noticeably louder. “I will demonstrate.” The mouse struggled to unscrew the lid. “Drat. I appear to have put this on too tight. Pinky, help me with this please.”

“Look, Brain! I’m a walrus!”

“Pinky, if you plan on having a sense of hearing for the next 24 hours, you will put those in your ears as they were intended to be used.”

“Right-O, Brain.” After putting on the earplugs properly, Pinky grabbed the vial in his tail, and Brain managed to successfully unscrew the lid. After a couple seconds, the device let out an earsplitting, screeching beep.

“Gah! What a racket!” Bugs rolled up his ears and clamped his hands over them. The humans in the room winced, but seemed less affected.

“Good lord, it sounds like a fire alarm mixed with nails on a chalkboard mixed with somebody running a cat through a wood chipper!” Slappy complained over the phone as Pinky re-closed the vial while Brain scrambled to push the alarm’s reset button. Finally the noise stopped.

“Well, it’ll certainly get your attention,” Mr. Skala mused.

“I didn’t catch that,” Brain said, taking out his earplugs. The head of security repeated himself.

Brain agreed: “Yes, that is the primary function of an alarm system. As Bugs appears to have found, its volume is rather high for those toons with sensitive ears, although it should not have had that effect over a phone if you had set this call’s volume to a reasonable level. In any case, this alarm sound should be sufficient to wake even the heaviest sleepers, provided they are not clinically dead.”

“Yeah, and even if they are,” Bugs complained. “But I’ll admit, that’s a pretty slick gadget. I’ll install some at the school if ya can make ‘em run on the same circuit like a fire alarm… and reduce the volume. That thing’ll have some of the kids curled up in the fetal position, and then they’ll be sitting ducks.”

“Yes, I’ll install a few around the soundstages and such,” Plotz agreed. “But now, about the matter of –“

Brain cut the CEO off. “To answer Mr. Bunny’s question, in theory it should be simple to connect multiple sensor boxes and buzzers to a single control computer. However, in practice you would need to hire an electrician to perform the necessary wiring, which might not be finished before classes begin. Your term starts on the 31^st, correct?”

Bugs nodded. “Yep.”

“So, for large buildings with multiple alarm systems, the best solution may be to link each sensor box to the existing fire alarm system much like a smoke detector. This will also be beneficial because it will set off fire suppression sprinklers, which will dilute Dip and help to wash off anyone hit. Of course, sprinklers using toon water will be less effective, but at the very least they will create a steam cloud which will make it difficult for any attackers to aim. Do you know whether Acme Looniversity uses real water?”

“Can’t say for sure with the sprinklers Doc, I’m not an architect. But the main water system is toon water from Valiant Reservoir just like the rest of the town.”

“I suppose that is unavoidable. Now, both the school and the studio are relatively secure locations already. It would be of greater use for the alarms to be installed in the homes of probable targets.”

“Hold on, hold on!” Plotz interrupted. “As I told Slappy earlier, the home security systems of studio employees or students are not our responsibility. Besides, just how much do these things cost?”

There was an exasperated sigh from Slappy, but Brain seemed to have anticipated the question, although he appeared disappointed to receive it. “Well, since this is a matter of public safety I will not accept payment for my time in creating the systems. However, the necessary components cost approximately a thousand dollars for each unit, assuming production volumes of at least fifty. I am afraid I cannot afford to manufacture them without reimbursement.”

“A thousand dollars?” asked Plotz incredulously. “That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s probably less than your suit, and probably looks a whole lot nicer too,” Slappy commented, getting a chuckle from Bugs and Spielberg.

“You’re pretty much right there,” Bugs looked Plotz up and down.

“Smoke detectors are only about twenty bucks,” said Mr. Skala.

“Smoke detectors,” Brain said with obvious annoyance, “are built by the millions, and as a result their sensors are very cheap, as are carbon monoxide detectors. Sensors which can detect the chemicals in Dip are only used in certain laboratory, industrial, or military settings, and are not produced in large quantities. For this reason, they are more expensive. I was lucky enough that a researcher specializing in artificial noses works in this building, or it would have taken me weeks to even get the parts to build this prototype.”

“Let’s see… a thousand apiece times two hundred students…” Bugs calculated, and grimaced. “Acme Loo has the budget to put ‘em in the school, but certainly not to give every student one. I could manage out of pocket, especially if some of the other faculty chip in, but most of those kids’ families ain’t exactly living paycheck to paycheck, so hopefully I can get the parents to pay for their own. I’ll make sure all the kids that were under contract with WB get one one way or another, though.”

The meeting turned into an argument over financial responsibility, causing Spielberg to leave early and Brain to turn the volume down on his end of the call and wander off. Eventually though, a consensus was reached. The toons most at risk based on the mysterious attackers’ previous targets would have no trouble making a thousand-dollar purchase on their own. For the few exceptions, an anonymous benefactor, i.e. Bugs or Slappy, would pay for the alarm. Plotz was ultimately convinced to pay for the Warner Siblings’ alarm system, since they did live on studio property.

“Thank God that’s over with!” Slappy addressed Skippy as she hung up the phone. The younger squirrel looked up from his half-built model airplane kit. He had long since tuned out his Aunt’s one-sided conversation.

“What’s over with?” he asked.

“Well, the only thing worse than arguing with Plotz about money is listening to someone else argue with him about it. And the only thing worse than that is doing both at once. I shoulda just never called and then said my phone line was out.”

Chapter Text

The rest of August went by like a regularly-scheduled freight train; a bit of noise and rumbling, but not much out of the ordinary. On the studio lot, Dot and Skippy recorded their duet to Toto’s “Hold the Line.” The song was chosen because it was old enough to have a “classic” feeling, but recent enough that younger viewers might have heard their parents play it. That, and the band had given permission, and it sounded decent with Dot and Skippy’s high voices – unlike the Johnny Cash song they had tried. A couple of other skits were filmed as well, but filming wouldn’t really pick up until fall.

Pinky and Brain spent most of their time rushing to finish the Dip alarms for Acme Looniversity in time for the school year to start, although they managed to squeeze in an undisclosed number of attempts to take over the world. He also managed to get units to a few others, including the Hip Hippos, Montana Max, and Buttons.

But outside the studio, things seemed to be getting worse. Three more toons were murdered. First Donovan Claude, a fairly popular radio talk show host in San Diego, died when a Dip-filled projectile of some kind was fired from a potato gun and through the window of his fifth-story apartment. Then, just a day apart on the 29^th and 30^th, Clara Cluck of Disney and some alligator who apparently had criminal connections were killed in home invasions similar to the deaths of Hippety Hopper and Spike. There was also a fourth casualty that weekend: the joking speculation from several Warner toons that Disney was secretly behind the attacks abruptly ceased. Finally, Woody Woodpecker reported noticing several individuals wearing face masks stalking him after dark, although they backed off after one took a tomato to the face. Now there was a definite pattern to the attacks. The target was usually a public figure of some sort, although the killers seemed to be avoiding attacking anyone particularly powerful. Every time, the victims were killed in their homes, and every time the police were clueless. After the failed assassination attempt they’d seemingly changed tactics and gotten a lot smarter. Fingerprints were never left, DNA evidence didn’t match any database, and security cameras showed only ski masks and unmarked vans that were never tracked more than a block from the crime scene. It was like squads of well-trained, heavily armed murderers with no known motive were appearing and disappearing out of thin air.

At Acme Looniversity, it was lunchtime, or 12:07 if you were Hamton. Buster and Babs Bunny (no relation) and Plucky Duck had just snagged a table in the corner of the cafeteria. Technically they were ‘the popular kids,’ partially due to the success of Tiny Toon Adventures, but even for actors being the center of attention all the time got exhausting. Well, maybe not for Plucky.

“So, Plucky. How’re your classes going?” asked Buster.

“They’re tolerable I suppose. In Illusions I made it look like the front row was all throwing paper airplanes at Porky, and he was dodging them for half the class… well, maybe a minute… ten seconds… he was fooled for at least a second, all right?” Plucky retracted his claim upon observing the skeptical looks the two rabbits gave him. “And he didn’t even give me extra credit! And then Furrball never showed up for Biology. Some lab partner he’s turning out to be! Then again, we’re dissecting a rat, I suppose it’s good he wasn’t there – he might have eaten it.”

“Wait, you got to dissect something the second week of term?” Babs exclaimed. “When I took it last year we were stuck on cells and molecules for a whole month!”

“Yes, but I got the cool science teacher; that’s the difference.” Plucky replied smugly.

“Hang on, hang on. You’re complaining about Furrball as a lab partner?” Buster said in disbelief. “You? I can just imagine you during the dissection: Nurse, pass me the anesthetic! We’re losing him, nurse! Pass me the scalpel! Pass me the chainsaw!” He stabbed and sawed wildly at his food as he imitated Plucky.

The impression sent Babs into fits of laughter. Plucky chuckled halfheartedly, but he had to admit Buster was spot on.

“Hey, what’s going on guys?” Hamton J. Pig slid onto the bench next to Babs, balancing a large bowl of chili on his tray.

“Not much,” Buster shrugged. “Plucky was just telling us about his adventures in Biology and Illusions. You’re in Illusions with him, right? Tell us once and for all: how long did he have Porky dodging paper airplanes?”

“No, no, I have Illusions next period,” Hamton explained. “What was Plucky doing?”

Plucky repeated his tale, which gave Babs time to calm down.

“So, if you aren’t in – hee hee- Illusions, what do you have in the mornings again?” she asked.

“World History, Trigonometry, and Applied Cartoon Physics.” Hamton rattled off the classes. “And then in the afternoons I have Illusions, Physical Education, and Wild Takes.”

“Oh. Yeah, duh, I’m in PE and Trig with you,” Babs nodded.

Buster asked: “By the way Hamton, have you seen Furrball anywhere? He wasn’t in Biology with Plucky, and now that I think about it he wasn’t in English class today either.”

“No I haven’t. Can you see him in the cafeteria?”

“I’ll check.” Babs hopped up onto the table and looked around. The usual suspects were all there, but no Furrball. “Nope, no sign of him.”

“Maybe he’s sick,” suggested Buster.

“Hopefully Elmyra didn’t kidnap him again,” said Plucky.

“Yeah, hopefully.”

“Hey Buster, hey Babs!” Mary Melody, editor in chief (well, the only editor) of the school newspaper, stopped by the table.

“Don’t I get a greeting around here?” complained Plucky, while Babs and Buster just waved.

“Have you seen Calamity anywhere? He was going to give me an article he wrote on the new alarms that just got installed, but he wasn’t in History today.” Mary explained.

“Nope. Is he not here either?” Buster answered.

“He might not have realized class is over yet,” Babs commented.

“If he was at the school, why would he have missed history?” Plucky said through a mouthful of sandwich.

“Okay, thanks guys. See you around!” Mary wandered off to a different table.

“That’s weird,” said Buster. “Did Calamity even miss a single day last year?”

“I think one or two,” Hamton replied.

“Still, it is odd having both him and Furrball not be here,” Buster mused.

“Not necessarily,” corrected Babs. “There’s what, three or four hundred students here? If everyone misses three days out of a hundred fifty, the odds of two students being absent any given day are pretty good.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Hey, is there any chance Max ditched school too?” Buster asked hopefully.

“No luck pal,” Plucky pointed at Montana Max, who appeared to be complaining to the cafeteria servers about the quality of the food. “He spent half of Biology arguing that his aristocratic hands were too delicate to dissect mice or something like that.”

The conversation turned to making fun of Max, as well as a few of the teachers. A few minutes later, Elmer Fudd approached the table with a solemn expression.

“Oh, hello Mr. Fudd,” Buster smiled and waved while the others immediately fell silent. Elmer had been the butt of the most recent jokes.

“Hewwo Buster. Hewwo Pwucky and Hamton.” Elmer gave a halfhearted wave before turning to Babs. “Miss Bawbara Ann? I’m afwaid I have some bad news to dewiver. If you pwefer, we could discuss this in pwivate.” He gestured towards one of the doors out of the cafeteria.

Babs twitched and involuntarily clenched her fists under the table. It was no secret that she hated being called by her full name. Most of the teachers were respectful of this, but some, like Elmer, insisted on being formal on certain occasions. “Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of my friends.”

“Now, now, there’s no need to be touchy.” Elmer waved his hands in front of his chest defensively. “Anyway, if you’re sure, well…” he fidgeted a little, stared at the floor, and removed his hunter’s hat. “It’s your cousin Patwick. He was, uhh… killed wast night. Anothew Dip attack.”

“...Ohh, fuck.” Plucky swore softly.

Even before Elmer delivered the final words, Babs’s ears and whiskers were beginning to droop, as if she knew what was coming. Slowly, with her hands shaking, she set her fork on the table. “Patrick’s… dead?”

The gang all knew Patrick. He was about a decade older than Babs, and they’d visited his house a few times. Once, he’d taken Buster and Babs surfing. Patrick seemed like one of those guys who’d be around forever – although there were few toons who didn’t. For another few moments, the four children sat in silence, trying to wrap their heads around the impossible news. The recent murders had them all on edge, but you never really expected something like that to happen to you or someone you knew... until it did.

Elmer continued to nervously shift his weight from foot to foot. “I’m not weally sure what to say at a time wike this… but I’m sowwy. If you’d wike to go home after this, I’ll have a bus take you.”

“No, I’ll – I’ll walk.” Babs roughly shoved her tray to the center of the table and started towards the door.

“Hold on, Babs! We’ll come with you!” Buster jumped out of his seat and ran after her, closely followed by Plucky and Hamton.

“That is, if you don’t want t-to be alone,” the pig offered.

“No, I – I’m glad you’re with me. Thank you.” Bab’s voice had taken on the shaky quality voices often got before crying. She pushed past a few curious students and out into the hall.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not like I was looking forward to Algebra,” Plucky reassured her. The group threaded past the confused-looking janitor and out the door, followed by the front gate of Acme Looniversity. As they walked, tears finally welled up in Babs’s eyes and eventually progressed to full-blown sobs. The others remained silent; there was nothing they could say at a time like this.

“Hang on, Babs. Isn’t your house that way?” Buster spoke up after a few blocks. “This is towards downtown.”

“I know,” Babs sniffed. “We aren’t going to my house.”

“Wha?” Plucky interjected. “Where are we going?”

“To Furrball and Calamity’s.”

“Oh God, you don’t think… something could have happened to them, do you?” Asked Buster.

“I know it’s unlikely, but I just… want to be sure I guess. I don’t want to be worried about them all day.”

“Yeah, makes sense.”

After a few turns the group reached Downtown Acme Acres, and in particular the alley between two apartment buildings where Furrball lived.

“Hey, Furrball, you home?” Buster called.

“Furrball!”

“Hey Furrball, way to ditch me in the land of formaldehyde!”

“Furrball?”

Apart from the buzzing of traffic, there was silence.

“Even if he missed his alarm clock there’s no way he’d be asleep at this hour,” said Buster. “Come on, let’s go check it out.” The group crept into the alley. The pile of wooden and cardboard boxes that served as Furrball’s home appeared to be in a shambles.

“Jeez, what a mess!” Buster exclaimed.

“I’ll say,” said Babs. “I didn’t think it was likely he’d been attacked, but now…”

“This doesn’t prove anything,” protested Buster as he righted Furrball’s overturned mini-fridge. “This place was built like a house of cards, it could have just collapsed with all that wind last night.”

“I’ll say!” Plucky overturned a few broken boxes. “Why the guy doesn’t just rent an apartment is beyond me, Warner Studios has to have paid him enough for that.”

“I dunno,” said Babs. “We all have it set aside until we’re adults.”

“True, but isn’t F-Furrball an, uhh, anticipated minor or something like that?” asked Hamton. “Plus he’s been making a bit playing music this summer.”

“Emancipated minor,” corrected Buster. The common statement that Dip was the only way to kill a toon was a slight exaggeration. The only violent way, yes. But diseases occasionally affected them. Furrball’s parents had passed away from feline distemper when he was three. “Anyway,” Buster continued. “He might be at the hardware store getting more crates or something.”

“Yeah,” Plucky agreed. “Let’s just check Calamity’s. Of course, we’ll need an excuse, we don’t want to just knock on his door and say ‘Oh, hello Calamity, we just wanted to make sure you aren’t dead.’”

“Really, Plucky?” Buster narrowed his eyes. “You don’t think he’d be a bit understanding about why we might want to check on him? You know, given the current situation?”

“Uhh…”

A short while later, the gang were approaching Calamity’s house.

“I’m just saying,” said Plucky. “It’s strange that none of us have ever met his parents. You guys haven’t met them either, right?”

“Nope. I think his dad’s an engineer on offshore oil rigs or something and comes home like one month a year. I guess a bit like Montana Max’s parents,” replied Buster.

“The lucky bastard! Imagine all the parties he could throw… and he squanders his golden opportunities.”

Babs grabbed Plucky’s shirt and spun him around. “Some of us actually like our families,” she snarled.

“Okay, forget it, forget I said anything!”

Hamton interrupted. “Uh, is it just me, or is his door hanging open.”

Buster shielded his eyes from the sun and looked. “Yeah, you’re right, it’s wide open… wait a second, it looks like it’s lying on the lawn! Holy cow!”

Muttering various profanities, the group took off running towards Calamity’s house. The door was indeed lying on the lawn, and the mailbox was knocked over.

“Somebody broke in!” Babs stated the obvious.

“I’ll say! He must have been attacked! Let’s go check if he’s okay, he might be hurt or something.” Buster yelled.

“Yeah… or something.” Babs was starting to hyperventilate.

“Uh, yeah, I’ll go find a payphone and call the police,” Hamton volunteered before vanishing in a trail of dust. Buster, Babs, and Plucky investigated the threshold.

“Yup, ripped right off its hinges. How did the neighbors not notice this?” Buster complained.

“Calamity! Are you there? Can you hear me?” Babs yelled.

“Say,” started Plucky. “What’s that smell?”

Babs and Buster sniffed the air. “Smells like nail polish remover,” said Babs.

“Yeah, or paint stripper, or…” Buster trailed off, and the two rabbits looked at each other. “Uh oh,” they said in unison. Silently, holding each other’s hands, they tiptoed through the doorway, with Plucky bringing up the rear. The house was utterly quiet aside from the trio’s footsteps and their accelerating breaths and heartbeats. Inside, the living room looked like an earthquake had hit. Books were scattered along with one of multiple shelves, and an end table had been knocked over.

Buster swallowed hard. “So what do we do if we… you know… find him?” he whispered.

“I don’t know.” Babs whispered back. She seemed on the verge of crying again.

“Oh, man, this is really, really bad,” Plucky muttered.

They crept into the bedrooms, two of which had their doors open. One appeared to be a spare used for storage, but the other…

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” Buster swore. Judging by the décor, this was clearly Calamity’s room. The window was smashed, with glass all over the carpet. The smell of Dip was overpowering. A hole had been melted into one wall, which appeared to lead to a bathtub. There was also a hole in the bed, which had collapsed, and another in the floor, with a greenish puddle at the bottom.

“Well, I guess… Babs began, staring at the puddle and looking a little green herself.

“Wait!” exclaimed Plucky. “Look at this!” The duck forced his way into the room and gestured to a bloodstain all over the dresser. A trail of drips led out the window. The blood was presumably human too.

“Well, at least that’s DNA evidence if I ever saw it,” commented Buster.

“There’s more!” said Plucky. He pointed at a series of bloody footprints leading out the bedroom door and down the hall. “We missed these coming in!”

“You’re right! And they don’t look like human shoes either!” Babs squealed. “Calamity must have escaped!” She darted off, following the footprints. But in the kitchen, the trail ended. A cabinet had been smashed, and plates lay all over the floor, as did the dining room furniture. Against one wall, beneath a mark where a spray of Dip had hit, lay a partially melted crossbow. A couple feet to its right was another puddle of Dip, this one much shallower. Next to it were the final, smeared footprints. For a moment, the trio stood in silence again.

“Well, guys, it looks like the end of the line,” Buster said solemnly, his ears drooping.

“Calamity, I hardly knew thee,” began Plucky.

“Wait a minute,” said Babs. “What does it actually… you know, look like when somebody’s been Dipped?”

“I dunno for sure,” Buster shrugged. “My folks and I watched Slappy’s interview though. Did you see that photo she put on? The guy wasn’t totally melted – and even if they were, isn’t there usually… y’know, a puddle or something?”

“Yeah… this looks a little white, but that might be from the tile floor.” Buster said. “Hey, Plucky. Does this puddle look big enough to hide a coyote?”

“I’ll find out.” Plucky grabbed a broken chair leg and stuck it into the puddle. Barely two inches down, he struck bottom. “This is pretty shallow.” He pulled the leg out.

“It’s barely even dissolving, just bubbling a little,” Babs pointed out. Indeed, the Dip was only slowly eating away the wood.

“I bet it got saturated from dissolving the wall and the floor,” said Buster.

“For fifty bucks I’ll lick it,” Plucky offered.

Both rabbits glared daggers at him, and Buster made a fist. “Make another joke like that and I’ll make sure you do,” he threatened.

“It just doesn’t make sense, though!” Babs returned to staring at the puddle. “If there wasn’t enough Dip to dissolve Calamity, where did he go? There’s no trail or anything! Unless…” She stood up and took a couple steps backward, then gasped.

“My God…” Buster followed her gaze. A series of pockmarks, less than an inch deep and across, lead away from the puddle and reached the living room before trailing off. “You don’t think…”

“They…” added Plucky.

“Carried him off?” Finished Babs.

“That’s it!” Buster jumped for joy. “They broke in through the front door, and another one came in his bedroom window, so they had him cornered! He shot one of them with his crossbow, and that guy escaped back out the window. Calamity ran into the kitchen, but stepped in the blood of the guy he shot, leaving the footprints. But then they cut him off, and shot a puddle of Dip at his feet! At least part of his body went in, and they grabbed him and carried him off! Calamity wasn’t murdered, he was kidnapped! We’ve gotta tell the police!”

Chapter Text

The previous night, somewhere around three AM, Calamity Coyote was jolted awake by a loud crash. What on Earth was that? He thought. Instinctively, he glanced around his bedroom, looking for anything out of place. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, but the wind was whistling faintly outside. There was a forecast for gusts of up to forty-five miles per hours; perhaps the rotten old pine tree in his neighbors’ yard had finally given up its futile battle with time and gravity. He certainly hoped that was what it was, but he couldn’t help thinking of the murders half of Toontown was talking about. Calamity had an active imagination, and he hadn’t slept well ever since the news reported the deaths of Hippety Hopper and Spike. It was probably the tree, though. Should he check? Worst-case if it had hit the house, he could remove the trunk himself and put a temporary patch over any damaged roof. He’d been taking things apart and fixing them since before he could even use his Hammerspace, and for a long time he’d been almost completely responsible for home repairs… since his parents split up, and his Dad got the new job.

It was still another month until his father would come back. Calamity had the days highlighted in red on the calendar. One weekend in October, but then he’d be home from Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day. Now more than ever, Calamity wished he wasn’t alone in the house. But then, even if his father was home, if there was an odd bump in the night Calamity was the man of the house, and had been since he was ten. He’d inherited his father’s brains, but the talent for bending cartoon physics to his will was all on his mother’s side.

The crash came again, nearly causing Calamity to leap out of bed. He reached for the lamp, then thought better of it. One of the perks of being a coyote, even a toon one, was excellent directional hearing. The noise was unmistakably something very heavy colliding with the front of the house. Repeatedly. The conclusion was obvious: someone was trying to break in. If they were simple burglars, they would be easy to deal with. Calamity had seen Home Alone at least a dozen times. It was fascinating watching the tricks filmmakers did to make it look like human actors had toon powers, and they’d come up with some pretty good traps, too. Calamity was confident he could pull any of them off in his sleep, but not falling into them himself was another story.

If the intruders were the mysterious gang of humans murdering toons in their sleep though, his best bet was to not let them know he was awake. If he was lucky, they might even think the house was empty and leave. Besides, he had better night vision than humans.

There was a third impact, accompanied by the sound of splintering wood and muffled swearing. Trying to breathe as quietly as possible, Calamity reached into the gap between the bed and nightstand and retrieved a crossbow. He’d been planning to either get one of Brain’s alarms or build one himself, but that didn’t mean that was his only idea. But the crossbow could only hit one target at a time, and took a while to load. Maybe explosives? No, aside from the risk of stunning himself, it was possible that an explosion would rupture the canisters on his attackers’ spray guns. Don’t panic, the coyote told himself. They’ll check the master bedroom first. That gives me time to sneak out the-

Just as he turned toward the window, there was another crash and a shower of broken glass. Calamity yelped in surprise and threw up one arm to shield himself from the debris.

“Freeze!” the black shape that had just jumped through the window shouted. He was presumably human, though it was hard to tell under the gloves and ski mask, and… aiming a gun at him. In that moment, fear trumped logic. At the most basic level of his brain, Calamity knew that he was about to die if he didn’t get that gun pointed somewhere else. Frantically, he aimed the crossbow in the general direction of the invader and squeezed the trigger.

Calamity’s crossbow, which he had just finished three days ago, was a rather impressive weapon. Like other objects made of toonmatter, it wasn’t subject to normal rules of material behavior. It could fire a bolt with as much energy as a good-sized revolver, yet was light enough for Calamity to reload in a few seconds without fiddling with winches. The bolts themselves ended in a star-shaped point sharp enough to cut through the obnoxious plastic packaging Acme Corp. loved to ship products in. It was accurate enough that if he aimed properly, Calamity could probably have inserted a bolt into the barrel of a shotgun from fifty yards away.

In his panic though, Calamity did not aim properly. The bolt did hit the man square in the left shoulder, passing straight through his bulletproof vest like it was made of tissue paper and continuing through his body and halfway out the back of the vest, but it was too high to puncture the heart or lungs. It still saved Calamity’s life, though. The man bellowed in agony and stumbled backward into the dresser. He returned fire with a jet of Dip, but his injured arm caused his shot to go wild, hitting the wall above the bed.

Calamity dived under the covers to avoid being splashed. He could hear confused swearing coming from the living room and heavy footsteps approaching. There were at least three voices, definitely too many to fight off. The window was his only option.

He flung off the blanket and jumped to his feet just in time to see the injured man throw his empty gun out the window and rip the crossbow bolt out of his shoulder with his good arm. Blood immediately began to pour from the wound with an audible spattering noise. Evidently Calamity had hit a major blood vessel.

“Shit, shit, shit!” The man swore, and tried to plug the wound with his finger like the classic image of a young Dutch boy stopping a leaking dike. Unfortunately for him, dikes did not have both entry and exit wounds. Just then, the door flew open, smacking him in the face. He shouted something unintelligible and stumbled sideways, getting between Calamity and the window. There goes that escape plan, the coyote thought.

“Damnit!” growled the man who had burst in the door. “What the hell were you standin’ in front of the door-” He noticed Calamity, who had just shoved all but one of his crossbow bolts into Hammerspace and was now struggling to draw back the weapon’s powerful springs. “Did he shoot you?” he turned to his injured partner.

A second intruder poked his head in the door, waving a flashlight and momentarily blinding Calamity. He surveyed the carnage. “Holy shit Frank, you’re bleeding like a pig! Get the hell out of here! We’ll handle the kid, just go!” The injured man obeyed, tumbling out the window the way he had entered. Both of the new intruders turned to Calamity and opened the safety valves on their guns, one of which had the flashlight strapped to it.

“Shoot the little bastard already!”

“That’s not the plan!”

“Fuck the plan, I didn’t think this kid’d be armed!”

While the intruders argued, Calamity contemplated his options. The injured guy could still be waiting outside the window. The door was blocked. It seemed like dynamite was the only option. It was too dangerous to throw it at the humans, but he could blow a hole in the wall and escape before the smoke cleared. He shut his eyes and pulled a stick out of Hammerspace. When he opened them he was pleased to see the fuse was already lit. This was a rather difficult trick that he had only done successfully twice, and there was no time to strike a match.

“Fuck! Bomb! Shoot him now, shoot him now!” the first intruder’s voice jumped up an octave. Just in time, Calamity saw something green near the center of the gun, and threw himself off the bed. A jet of Dip hit the mattress right where he’d been standing, instantly melting through the sheets and stuffing. Getting to his feet Calamity got ready to throw the dynamite at the wall… and realized that in his panic he’d dropped it. Once the Dip came into contact with the fuse the explosive would be useless. Even worse, the second intruder was aiming straight for him. Now the only way out was through the door.

For two heartbeats, Calamity stood stalk-still, and pretended to reach behind his back for more dynamite. In reality, he’d removed the bolt from his crossbow and was gripping it like a knife. Right on cue, the human fired, and Calamity darted forward. Since the gun was at shoulder height, maybe five feet, and Calamity was two feet if you counted his ears, moving towards the source caused the Dip to fly harmlessly over the coyote’s head. Without bothering to slow down, Calamity thrust the crossbow bolt in front of him, stabbing the man in the shin, and weaved between his legs and out the door.

In the living room, he skidded to a halt. The door was blocked by two more guys in ski masks. One held a sledgehammer, the other some sort of metal pole with a pair of articulated claws at the end. Calamity changed course, heading for the kitchen. If he snuck out the back door, he’d be safe.

All four humans gave chase, moving with remarkable speed. Back in the bedroom, Calamity had stepped in the puddle of blood left by the man he’d shot, and on the tiled floor this meant his wet shoes had little traction. Trying to turn a corner, he slid into a cabinet. Just as he bolted out of reach, the man with the sledgehammer careened into the kitchen, demolishing the cabinet in a shower of wood and granite. Calamity fled to the dining room and hid under the table, taking the opportunity to place the crossbow bolt back in its cradle.

The protective tabletop was lifted away with a loud crash. One of the humans had simply flipped it over. Calamity sidestepped another blow from the sledgehammer, which smashed a chair to pieces. He raised his weapon, aimed up at the masked figure, and was about to fire when a steel-toed boot hit him square in the chest. With a faint ‘yip’ of pain, he flew backwards into the wall. The crossbow was knocked out of his hands, clattered to the ground, and fired. The bolt was sent harmlessly through the ceiling, punching a small circular hole in the plaster.

“Party’s over, you son of a bitch!” someone said. Gasping for breath, Calamity struggled to his feet. All four humans stood around him in a semicircle. One still had the sledgehammer, one had the pole, and other two held guns with green liquid dripping from the muzzles. Looking around, Calamity saw two new puddles of Dip on either side of him. The acrid chemical smell was almost overpowering.

Well, now he was cornered, with no weapons left. Calamity gulped, and raised his hands over his head. This was it… unless… an idea occurred to him. Nitroglycerine. It was one of the more difficult explosives to conjure, and whenever he tried it just detonated the instant it came into existence. But in this case, that was exactly what he wanted. He’d just have to take the risk of the guns rupturing. It would be painful, but he would survive the explosion. The humans, however, would not.

“Go to hell,” Calamity snarled, reaching behind his back.

But before he could conjure the explosive, the human with the pole lunged, catching Calamity around the neck with its claws and breaking his concentration. The force of the impact pushed him sideways. Out of reflex, he planted his foot behind him… and heard a splash, followed by a hissing noise. In an instant, he realized what had happened. “Stop! Let me up!” he tried to scream, but the barbed claws on the pole were crushing his windpipe. He clawed desperately at the pole, even trying to bite it, but he might as well have been hitting a brick wall with a wiffle bat. His attempt to get his foot out of the puddle was futile; the human was pushing him downward and against the wall, and his feet skidded helplessly on the tile.

Then the Dip burned through the sole of his shoe.

Calamity Coyote was one of the brightest students at Acme Looniversity, but he was also clumsy and sometimes lacked common sense, although he was not as supernaturally accident-prone as his mentor Wile E. As a result, over his short life he’d fallen off buildings and been hit by cars, blown up by explosives, and struck by lightning, in addition to numerous other disasters. But nothing he’d ever experienced even came close to the pain of being dissolved alive. When the Dip first touched his skin, a burning, stabbing sensation shot up his leg and through his entire body like the shock wave from an explosion. Every muscle in his body tensed to the point of nearly ripping itself off the bone. All other sensations disappeared. The humans in front of him turned to blobs of color and his ears were filled with a deafening high-pitched shriek that forced its way out of his lungs through his constricted throat. The little coyote’s body thrashed violently for a few seconds, even bending the thick metal pole that held him, before his oxygen-starved brain decided that his muscles were using up too much air and he went limp.

Still conscious, he had a vague awareness of being lifted off the ground by his neck and carried through a haze of tears. After a journey that seemed to last for hours, there was a sense of falling that ended with a jarring impact. The pressure on his neck was released. Finally, Calamity sucked in a lungful of air, but released it in a sob as another wave of pain swept through his body.

It was several minutes before the pain subsided enough that he was able to uncurl himself from the fetal position and figure out where he was. Shakily, he sat up, wiping away tears. The scene that confronted him was not encouraging. He was in a metal cage just wide and long enough to lie flat on his back in either direction, although his ears would either poke through the bars or be folded against the wall. The ceiling was about the same height. To the left of his cage was another like it; to the right was a wall. In front of the barred door was another group of four cages, two wide and two high, separated from him by a few feet of floor – presumably his cage also had another one above it. In the cage directly across from him, his hands tied behind his back and a gag in his mouth, sat his friend Furrball.

Furrball’s eyes were red from crying, and a look of utter terror was plastered across his face, but he didn’t appear to be hurt. That hardly passed for good news though, since they were both locked in cages in… with the vibrations and faint grumble of an engine, they had to be in a moving vehicle. Calamity looked around. The wall to his right was solid, apart from a small window far above his head leading to the drivers’ seats. To the left was what appeared to be a double door, but in front of it sat a human. He had taken off his ski mask, and was busy removing his vest and weapons and stuffing them in one of the empty cages. The clawed pole that he’d used on Calamity leaned against the wall. He was white, and fairly pale at that, with brown eyes and dark brown hair in a military haircut. Probably in his twenties, maybe early thirties.

Well, this human and his friends had made a big mistake if they thought a bit of steel would hold him. The nitroglycerine trick would still work, destroying the cages and blowing the car or van to pieces… provided he could concentrate through the pain, of course. He took a deep breath, trying to calm the shaking in his hands.

“Furrball, get ready to run!” Calamity’s shout caused the cat to jump in surprise. That warning could have gone better, the coyote thought. Poor Furrball would have no idea what was about to happen. Oh well, he could complain about the rescue later. Calamity reached into Hammerspace… or, at least he tried. But his hand touched nothing but the fur on his back. It wasn’t a matter of messing up the conjuration, he just flat-out couldn’t access his Hammerspace. Confused, he examined his paws. There were some strange and very solid-looking plastic bracelets around his wrists. Uh oh, he thought. He knew there were devices like this, and was pretty sure they worked on a similar principle to products like Escape-Proof Rope.

The human sitting at the back of the van snorted in a mixture of amusement and derision. “Not so tough now are ya, you little prick!”

Calamity stared up at his captor like a kicked puppy – which on all but a few minor technicalities he was. The human laughed again at his expression, and said: “Did you seriously think we were dumb enough to let you just pull out a pair of bolt cutters or something? The cat has them too, and he gave us a lot less trouble!”

Furrball helpfully twisted around, showing Calamity that in addition to being tied behind his back, his hands sported a pair of the same cuffs. The trio rode in silence for a short while. Then the van hit a bump. Calamity whimpered as the movement made his foot give off another twinge of pain. Just how bad is it? He wondered. There was only one way to find out. Wincing, he twisted his leg to get a good view of the injury. He wasn’t sure what to expect, it could have been anything from his foot being red and swollen to being burned off entirely. What he saw was on the upper end of that spectrum though. The sole of his shoe was completely gone, along with all his skin and fur. The burned area was a mixture of red and patches of white. He couldn’t tell if they were blisters, destroyed skin, or bone, nor did he particularly want to know. There was no smoke, but if he looked closely something was bubbling slightly – meaning the Dip was still eating away at him!

Seeing how bad the injury was made the pain seem much, much worse, and Calamity started to feel nauseous. He tried to keep his breathing under control. What was he going to do? He struggled to remember the safety lecture the students at Acme Looniversity had all been given at the start of term. He didn’t think they’d even mentioned what to do if you were actually burned by Dip. No wait, they had! Water diluted it and washed it away!

“Water! I need water!” he choked out, pointing to his foot. Tears started to form in his eyes again.

“Huh?” The human asked. “Oh, right, water.” He dug around in his backpack for a second and produced a water bottle. Then he leaned forward, opened the door of the cage, and started to pour it over Calamity’s foot. The thin membrane that had formed over the wound was washed away along with the dip, and scarlet ink - most toons animated after around 1930, and any of their descendants, bled red - started to leak onto the cage floor. Calamity screamed again; the feeling of cold water against raw flesh was like being stabbed with an icicle. Even the human winced. After giving the coyote a minute to calm down, he unfolded a pocket knife. Calamity’s eyes widened, and he flattened himself against the far corner of his cage.

“Relax kid,” the man said. “I’m just gonna cut that fucking shoe off. You want to try pulling it off yourself?”

Calamity shook his head. He guessed that made sense. He pulled the shoe off his unhurt foot and crawled out of the open cage. If there was no way to escape, there was no reason to hurt himself extra to spite his kidnappers.

The man grabbed Calamity’s lower leg with one hand and started to saw through the shoe. But when he was halfway finished, the van swerved wildly and honked, throwing both human and coyote sideways. “Goddamnit!” the man hissed. His knife slipped and cut a deep gash into the sole of Calamity’s already injured foot. The result was a whiteout of pain as bad as the initial contact with the Dip. Stars danced in front of the coyote’s eyes. He scrambled back into his cage, instinctively trying to get away from the blade, and banged his head against the wall. The nausea worsened, and the walls and floor began to lurch and twist wildly. A sob turned into a cough, and he tasted acid in the back of his throat. Calamity tried to regain control of his stomach with a rapid intake of breath, but it was too late. As the van hit a small bump in the road, another explosion of light crossed his vision, and he threw up.

“Fuck!” The human pulled a walkie-talkie off his jacket and shouted into it: “Hey, can you guys learn to fucking drive?”

“It wasn’t my fault!” a whiny voice on the other end replied while someone else shouted something unintelligible in the background. “Some jackass slammed on his brakes and tried to turn in front of me!”

“Well, I’m trying to administer First Aid back here and you fucked it up! Speaking of which, you need to pull over and give me the goddamn First Aid kit.”

“I thought it was in the back with you,” the third and previously unintelligible voice said. “I’ve been sitting here with a goddamn hole in my shin!”

“No, wait, we gave it to the others, remember?” the whiny voice corrected. “For Frank’s shoulder.”

“Well, shit,” said the guy in the back. “How’s Frank?”

“Not good. They radioed me a few minutes ago saying they couldn’t stop the bleeding. They’re gonna have him take off everything but street clothes, drop him off near a hospital, and have him call 911 and call it a gunshot wound.” The third voice answered.

“Fucking Christ. Where are we right now?”

“We’re on the ten, but not out of LA yet.”

“Then we need to stop at a gas station or something and get some water, first aid kit, and a few towels or something.”

“Towels?” the whiny voice asked.

“The coyote kid puked in one of the cages thanks to you playing Speed Racer.”

“Shove it Kenny. You wanna fucking drive?” the driver replied.

“Fine, there’s a Wal Mart in a couple miles, we’ll stop there. And Lyle, you shouldn’t bitch unless you wanna be on babysitting duty.” The third voice settled the dispute.

Kenny muttered a couple more curses, then turned to Calamity. He almost looked guilty. “Look, kid…” he began. “I didn’t mean to hold your foot in the Dip, but after you almost fucking killed Frank with that slingshot and pulled a stick of dynamite on us to be honest you kinda brought it on yourself.”

Calamity had an impression that someone was speaking, but he was in too much pain to understand the words. There was nothing left in his stomach, but he still felt sick. Struggling to keep his balance, he backed out of the cage and rolled onto his side. Something gripped him around his chest and dragged him backwards, but he didn’t have the energy to fight back. Still crying softly, he curled into a ball, praying that he would fall asleep and wake up back in his bed.

Furrball hissed, spat, and gave the human the finger behind his back. Unfortunately, screaming obscenities through a gag didn’t work very well (he’d tried earlier) and besides, he didn’t think he knew any words that adequately described what he was hearing. Didn’t mean to? Brought it on himself? Oh, that was comforting. That was rich. Whatever Calamity had done, the humans had brought it on themselves by kidnapping them!

Both Furrball and Calamity were loners by nature, but were probably each other’s closest friends. It had started as a sort of commiseration as fellow perpetually unsuccessful predators, but they learned they had a lot in common. For a start, they both rarely spoke, preferring to communicate with signs – it wasn’t that they couldn’t talk normally, it just took more effort. On the other hand, they could both understand and communicate with animals of their type, even non-Toon ones – this was rare for ‘funny animal’ toons. Non-Toon coyotes weren’t that common in Toontown or the middle of L.A, but Calamity claimed that dogs and foxes were on the edge of comprehension, comparing the experience to a French-speaker and a Spanish-speaker trying to understand each other. And even if they didn’t have that many interests in common they knew what it was like to not have anyone to share them with. Calamity was one of four students at Acme Looniversity taking Calculus, and the other three were graduating seniors. Furrball excelled at violin, viola, and cello, and could play several other string instruments fairly well, but at a school too small to have a full orchestra most other musicians were in either a marching band or a garage band, which left him few opportunities to play classical pieces.

And of course now, when his friend needed his help more than ever before, Furrball was stuck in a cage, watching Calamity suffer and unable to do so much as spout comforting platitudes like ‘don’t worry, we’ll get out of this somehow.’ Then again, he thought: If that’s the best I can come up with maybe it’s a good thing I’m gagged.

When the humans attacked Furrball, they caught him completely by surprise, advancing from both ends of the alley where he lived. In hindsight though, there were several escape routes he could have tried. Conjuring a safe or anvil to block the Dip like the safety lecture at the start of term suggested wouldn’t have worked unless he climbed inside it. Conjuring it far above his head – summoning was the term for doing it at a distance - would have been very difficult, but if he succeeded he could have let the impact push him through the pavement and into the maintenance tunnel below. Even a simple ladder could have gotten him to a second-story window he could slip through. He’d also thought of a few other ideas that would almost certainly gotten him killed, but taken at least one of the humans with him. But instead, he’d just surrendered the moment he saw guns pointed at him like some coward. Ten minutes ago he’d been too scared to care, but now… Furrball knew if he’d done something different Calamity might never have been attacked at all. Some best friend he’d turned out to be.

“Hey, cat.” The human addressed Furrball.

“The ropes and gag were just to keep you from trying something stupid while we picked up your buddy here. I’ll untie you-“

Just try it, thought Furrball. He’d certainly ‘try something stupid’ now. Those fancy bracelets might have stopped him reaching his Hammerspace, but they didn’t do anything to his claws. He might not put this human in the hospital like Calamity apparently did to one of the others, but he’d certainly give him some scars to remember him by. Once they escaped, Calamity couldn’t get far on his injured foot, but he didn’t need to. As long as they made it across the parking lot and into the Wal Mart, they’d be home free. There were shelves to hide behind, plenty of shoddily-made products to use as weapons, and employees who could call the police.

“…After I get the coyote bandaged up and we leave the store.” The human finished, eyeing Furrball suspiciously.

Damn. Well, there went that plan. Either Furrball had been making an ‘I’m plotting something’ grin and hadn’t noticed, or this human was a lot smarter than he’d given him credit for. Of course, just because they couldn’t escape didn’t mean Furrball couldn’t make the ride as unpleasant as possible for his captor. The human’s Dip gun was probably empty, which meant there was nothing he could do that Furrball couldn’t shake off in five minutes. Then again… Furrball reconsidered. If the human was smart, he’d just punish Calamity for anything Furrball did. It was, according to Yosemite Sam’s ‘Villainous Tactics and Strategies’ elective, one of the oldest tricks in the book. Just a few little lacerations couldn’t make him that angry, though…

Calamity recoiled at the sensation of something cold touching his injured foot. He didn’t feel anything but pain and pressure in the worst-affected area, but the surrounding skin registered the change in temperature, and the burn itself just stung. The pain hadn’t improved that much, but at least he didn’t feel sick anymore. The metal floor felt the same, so he assumed he was still in the van, but there weren’t any vibrations or engine noises. Had they stopped? Shivering and wiping away tears, he raised his head. The human was dabbing at his injury with a wet washcloth, and an open water bottle sat nearby. Something seemed different though… oh. The remains of his right shoe had finally been removed, and lay in the cage next to Furrball’s along with the intact one. Silently, he watched as the human removed the washcloth and tossed it in the cage as well. Calamity’s heart quickened a few beats; aside from blue spots around the edges, the cloth was almost totally red. Thinking about it for a second, he realized his fur was uncomfortably sticky with ink as well. He had a sudden impulse to sit up, but as soon as he planted his hands on the floor the human’s voice stopped him.

“Hold still a minute, kid. I gotta put a bandage on that foot of yours.” He held up a roll of gauze.

Calamity’s initial impulse was to struggle, but he suppressed it and lay back down. Still, he shut his eyes and clenched his fists, waiting for another spike of pain like the incident with the knife. He felt something press against his wound. Sure enough, it hurt enough that despite trying to hold still, he jerked away and whimpered. Behind him, Furrball let out a low, warning growl. But after a few seconds, as the gauze was wrapped tightly around his foot, the pain actually got slightly better. About halfway through the bandage being applied, the van’s engine started again, closely followed by the sensation of movement.

Once the human had stopped fiddling with the bandage, Calamity sat up and examined his leg. His foot was noticeably larger and heavier; the human appeared to have used the entire roll of gauze. He glanced up at his captor, making eye contact for the first time. Should I say something? Calamity considered the idea. On the one hand, he was no longer in too much pain to think straight. On the other hand, the human and his buddies had were the ones who injured him in the first place, while invading his home and kidnapping him. Actually thanking him seemed like more than was deserved.

The two stared into each other’s eyes for a few heartbeats before the human broke the silence. “Well, I should probably untie your friend here.” He reached over Calamity and unlocked the door to Furrball’s cage.

Calamity glanced at Furrball. The cat’s expression was positively murderous. It seemed like untying him at the moment might be a bad idea if the human wanted to keep all his fingers. Calamity felt hands close around his waist and start to lift him into the air. This was bad. Making their captor angry wouldn’t help either of them. “Wait!” he squeaked, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “Can I untie him?”

“Uhh…” the human held Calamity in the air for a minute, pondering the idea. “I don’t see why not.” He lowered Calamity back to the floor. Furrball raised one eyebrow incredulously.

The van swerved and braked wildly again. Calamity was thrown against Furrball’s cage, slamming the door shut on his own tail, while the human managed to grab onto one of the higher cages to keep his balance.

“Fuck!” he shouted over Calamity’s yelp of pain, and grabbed his walkie-talkie. “Hey Donald, are you sure you can’t drive? You didn’t get stabbed in the foot that works the pedals, right?”

The whiny voice replied: “Kenny you dipshit, this thing has a clutch pedal. You know what that is, right? And there was a goddamn tire in the middle of the road. You say one more thing about my driving, I’m switching this fucking radio off.”

“Then don’t screw up again. There aren’t any seat belts back here.” Kenny shot back. There was no answer.

Ignoring Kenny’s muttering about what would happen if the radio was actually switched off, Calamity pulled himself into Furrball’s cage by the wire bars. Carefully avoiding putting weight on his right foot, he leaned in next to the cat toon’s ear. His plan was to whisper a message that Furrball could understand, but would be incomprehensible gibberish to anyone more than a foot away. It was a basic illusion technique, known as ‘scrambling’ or ‘whisper-scrambling.’ Calamity had never gotten above a C in Illusions, and since he preferred to communicate with signs he hardly ever practiced scrambling, but this was something most of Acme Loo had figured out on their own by their eighth birthdays. It couldn’t be that hard. He just needed to concentrate...

On Calamity’s first attempt, he failed to make any sound at all. Not a good start, he told himself. If this hadn’t been such a tense situation, Furrball would probably be laughing at him. But there wasn’t anything obvious wrong with his technique. It ought to have worked. Taking a deep breath and trying to block out the pain and the noises of the road, he tried again. This time, he managed to produce a series of incomprehensible sounds, like what the human should have heard if he’d done the trick right. But you were supposed to be able to understand what you were saying. Confused, Calamity looked down at the bracelets attached to his and Furrball’s hands, and had an unsettling idea. What if...

Pretending to struggle with Furrball’s ropes, the coyote stole a quick glance up at Kenny. The human was watching them, but didn’t seem to be paying that much attention. That was good. Calamity looked back at the bracelets. Time to test his theory. He shut his eyes and imagined his hands stretching and getting thinner, reaching through the bars behind him, and tugging on his shoelaces. Nothing happened. That meant his hunch was right: the bracelets didn’t just restrict access to Hammerspace, they suppressed other toon abilities as well! Time for Plan B. Even without scrambling, if he whispered quietly enough Kenny would have trouble making out his words. Now attempting to loosen the knots holding Furrball’s arms behind his back for real, he whispered: “Furrball. You’ve got to trust me on something. Don’t try to fight the human or escape… at least, not until we’re out of this van. It’ll only make him mad.”

Furrball was still for a moment, then twisted his head around and nodded. The knots turned out to be so tight it was difficult to loosen the bonds, but eventually Calamity freed Furrball’s arms. The instant the cat could move, he ripped out his gag and leaped through the cage door, facing the human with his hands on his hips. Oh no, thought Calamity. Did he seriously just lie to me?

Chapter Text

“Buster, I’m not going to tell you this again. This conversation is not for children.” It was the evening of the kidnappings, and yet another meeting was being held in the now almost-empty office building on the Warner Lot.

“Dad, you can’t be serious! Furrball and Calamity are our friends! We have every right to know what’s going on!”

“No, you don’t. You’re not their mentor, you’re not their legal guardian, you’re not their parent, and last time I checked you’re not part of the police department. I’ll tell you anything it’s appropriate for you to know later.”

“Oh, you mean nothing?” Buster scoffed. “Or by ‘later’ do you mean when I turn forty?”

“Buster, you’re being ridiculous.” His father started to raise his voice. “None of the other kids-“

Buster cut him off. “There you go again, other kids, other kids! I’m a senior in high school and you’re treating me like a five-year-old!”

“Well, you’re acting like one.”

“Oh, well in that case, maybe I’ll go run along and play with all my little friends,” Buster sneered, and started to walk away. “How about –“

“Buster Liam Bunny, don’t turn your back on me while I’m talking to you…”

Buster whirled around, his ears flattened and his fists clenched at his sides. “You wanted me to leave the room, and I’m leaving! You happy yet Dad? Or are you afraid I can’t find my way around this building without you holding my hand?” He turned again and stormed out of the room, slamming the door.

Babs, Hamton, and Plucky were already sulking in the hallway outside the conference room. “I can’t believe this!” the duck complained. “What, are we being sent to the kids’ table like it’s Thanksgiving Dinner?”

“Tell me about it.” Buster joined the others, slouching against the wall. “The cops confirmed every idea we had, but they still act like we’re completely incompetent!”

“Besides,” Plucky continued. “It’s not like we can’t handle the gory details! I’ve watched plenty of R-rated movies!”

“…Please tell me you didn’t use that as an argument.” Buster ignored the flaws in Plucky’s reasoning. “Last time I checked, you weren’t even supposed to watch any of those!”

“Well, that would explain a thing or two.” Plucky said, scratching the underside of his bill.

Sylvester passed by, talking to Wile E. Coyote. “So, I just got off the phone with Calamity’s father. Apparently his flight got canceled thanks to Tropical Storm Frances and he’s stranded at the Houston airport.”

Wile E held up a sign: “How long until he returns?”

“I think he said two days by train, and it could be that long before there are flights out,” Sylvester groaned. “Which I suppose leaves you in charge of talking to the police department, just like me.” The pair disappeared into the conference room.

“Anyway,” said Buster, “Where are we even supposed to go while they discuss their top secret battle plans? Do they really expect us to sit around here for four hours?”

Hamton stood up. “Now that you mention it, there’s supposed to be a break room on the floor below us. I was wondering why you were just standing around here.”

“Well by all means, lead the way.” Plucky got to his feet as well and gestured towards the elevator.

“What I don’t understand,” Buster said as the group headed downstairs, “Is why they even brought us here if we aren’t even allowed to see anything important. I for one would rather be left at home.”

“Maybe they’re paranoid?” Babs suggested. Her voice was hoarse – unusual since Babs had pretty resilient vocal chords. Buster hadn’t really paid attention to her appearance when he’d stomped out of the conference room, but now he looked at his friend more closely. Her ears lacked the usual bows, her whiskers were crooked, and the fur under her eyes was streaked reddish-brown – in most toons with fur, this was a dead giveaway of either crying or an eye infection.

“Makes sense,” mused Hamton. “That they’d be worried about leaving us home alone after dark. After all, Furrball and Calamity were both on their own.”

“Yeah…” Buster nodded. “By the way, Babs… uhh… did you hear anything else about… you know, about Patrick?”

Babs stopped walking and inhaled deeply. “Not much. My aunt and uncle went to his house, and we’ve gotten a few phone calls from his friends.”

“Oh.” The quartet continued to the ‘kids’ table,’ which turned out to be a lounge, in silence. Inside were Skippy, Shirley the Loon, Fifi LaFume, and unfortunately Elmyra.

Elmyra jumped out of her chair, yelling: “Hewwo wittle fwuffy cuddleheads!”

Buster ears dropped like anvils. “Oh, fuck me,” he muttered.

Elmyra continued: “Oh, Babsie! I’m so, so, sowwy! I heard about what happened to your cousin! If you want I can give you a hug!”

Babs stiffened. Her expression was an unreadable mixture of shock, grief, and fury. Buster tensed. He couldn’t tell whether Babs was going to burst into tears, murder Elmyra, or both. Elmyra started to run towards them, but suddenly the lights flickered and went out. When they came back on, the redheaded girl had vanished.

“What the hell!” Buster backed out the door, heart in his throat. But an upward glance revealed that Elmyra was dangling from the ceiling, practically mummified in duct tape. “Oh. Nice one, Shirley.”

“What are you talking about?” The loon looked up from her magazine. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Suuuuuurrrreeee…” Buster drawled. “Come on, I won’t tell her parents. You know nobody else could have done it.”

“Let’s just call it divine intervention,” commented Plucky. “A true miracle. Remind me to go to church before Christmas.”

“Hey guys!” Skippy waved, looking unperturbed. “Just so you know, if any police stations get bombed this week it’s probably my Aunt. Any chance you can smuggle me to Mexico?”

“Oh, man!” Plucky chuckled. “Slappy’s pissed off at the cops? This oughta be good.”

“Well, she’s been mad about them not having any leads for a while, but when she heard the news today she went ballistic. She says it’s like they’re intentionally avoiding finding anything, especially after last weekend. The guy they caught back when Slappy and me got attacked got knifed in jail.”

“Well, hopefully they find something with today’s attack,” said Hamton. “Buster and Babs and Plucky found human blood all over the floor in Calamity’s house.”

“What?” Skippy exclaimed. “How did you get in there, wasn’t it a crime scene?”

“Not when we were there,” Buster explained. “We were the ones who called the cops.”

For a while, the conversation turned to complaining about the adults’ lack of respect and trust for their children. Then Buster had an idea. “So, if none of the adults are going to tell us anything, why not find out on our own?”

“You mean like, what’s her name, Nancy Drew?” Fifi asked.

“Yeah, sort of.”

“Buster, that’s like, the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my life,” Shirley sneered.

“Nobody asked you.”

“What do you mean by ‘find out on our own’, exactly?” Skippy asked suspiciously.

“I dunno, listen at the door the next time they have one of these meetings, figure out where the murderers – or kidnappers – are going to strike next, maybe even trace them to their hideout!” Buster explained enthusiastically.

“Eavesdropping won’t tell you anything your parents don’t already know, and I can’t think of any other way of gathering evidence besides trespassing on crime scenes or something else stupid and dangerous,” Skippy said.

“Skippy, it’s a well-known fact that when they were passing out senses of adventure you hid under your bed,” Plucky commented.

“Well, there’s nothing illegal about asking the police what they know ourselves, is there?” asked Babs.

“Exactly!” Buster concurred. “Heck, if we got to someone’s house before the killers, we might even capture them!” This idea was sounding better and better every second.

“…you’re joking, right Buster?” Skippy asked, looking legitimately unnerved. “Did you miss the part where these guys have Dip?”

“You know,” Skippy might have a point,” said Hamton. “This is starting to sound like a dangerous plan…”

“Hey, Dip’s only dangerous if it hits you,” countered Buster. “Besides, we’re all Acme Looniversity students, right? Well, except you Skippy. We’re some of the best and brightest toons of our generation. If anyone can-“ Buster trailed off. Instead of looking inspired, Fifi and Shirley’s expressions had changed from skepticism to abject horror.

“Behind you...” Fifi whispered.

A high-pitched female voice, dripping with sarcasm, came from over his shoulder. “Buster, has it occurred to you that the best and brightest toons in existence are already upstairs working on this very issue?”

Buster leaped to his feet, twisting his head to identify the voice. Reclining on the back of the sofa was Dot Warner.

“Wha – how the? W-weren’t you upstairs with the adults?” Buster spluttered. The rest of the gang had similar reactions apart from Skippy. Since the Warner Siblings were drawn in the 1920s, they were usually allowed into “adults-only” events despite their childlike appearances and personalities. Buster guessed he considered them friends, if not particularly close ones, and they got along fine with the other kids associated with the studio, but… he guessed they were kind of like that cool older sibling or uncle who usually fit in with his age group, but at the end of the day were still adults. A bit like Babs’s cousin, he mused. And at the end of the day, as immature as the Warners usually acted, behind the playful exterior of each inkblot was a calculating intelligence to rival Slappy Squirrel or Bugs Bunny. Buster hated to admit it, but his idea of confronting a gang of Dip-wielding maniacs was unlikely to meet the approval of any adult in their right mind.

The only one not startled was Skippy. Buster supposed he hung out with the Warners more, so he was probably used to their antics. Plus, since he’d argued against doing anything he couldn’t get in trouble if Dot told their parents.

“I was…” Dot smiled, and slid off the back of the couch to take what was previously Buster’s spot. It was hard to tell if her grin was innocent, sadistic, or just condescending. “But they wanted someone to keep an eye on you, and right now it’s too crowded to get in a word edgewise anyway.”

Shit, Buster thought. So Dot was acting as a chaperone. “How l-long have you been here?” he stammered.

“I followed you guys downstairs, so to answer your real question I heard everything. But you should be more worried about Elmyra tattling than me.” Dot looked up at the ceiling with an expression of disgust. “I should have plugged her ears while I had the chance.”

It suddenly clicked for Buster that Shirley really hadn’t done anything… which meant that Dot had somehow followed him, Babs, Plucky, and Hamton down a flight of stairs and into the room completely undetected, then killed the lights and mummified Elmyra. Buster made eye contact with Babs, and the two rabbits shivered. That was the other thing about the Warners; they were so powerful it was a bit scary. Not for the first time, Buster wondered how the hell anyone had managed to seal them inside a water tower for sixty years. The times he’d been inside, he was reminded uncomfortably of his visits to Wackyland. The trio had warped the fabric of reality within the tower so badly the interior no longer followed the rules of Euclidean geometry. Buster never strayed too far from the exit; he was afraid of getting lost.

“Well…” Plucky broke the silence. “Forget Church, I’ll sacrifice a lamb under the water tower next time I’m on the lot.”

“If you’re going to all that trouble, just order us some takeout from that Mediterranean place by the golf course. Their lamb kebabs are delicious.” Dot continued the joke.

“So… you’re not going to turn us in?” Babs asked. Just like the other few times she’d spoken that evening, her voice lacked its usual vigor.

“Nah. Honestly, you came up with pretty much the same plan Yakko, Wakko and I did, and I’ll bet half the adults will agree with us.” Dot waved her hand dismissively. Then her voice took on a serious tone – a rarity from her or her siblings. “But that’s only if you promise that you won’t do anything like try to track down the killers on your own.”

“But we-“ Plucky protested.

Dot fixed her gaze on the duck. “Before you say anything, think about whether I want to have to tell your parents that I knew what you were doing and didn’t say anything if the police bring what’s left of you home in a bucket.” All present gulped, and Plucky took a step back.

“I’ll make you guys a deal.” Dot’s tone lightened slightly. “I’ll tell you what you want to know about what goes on in the meetings. It’s a bunch of garbage that they’re hiding things from you anyway. You’re old enough to be kidnapped, you should be old enough to know what’s going on.”

“Speaking of,” Babs asked. “Aren’t you missing most of the meeting?”

Dot shrugged. “Yakko and Wakko are both wearing wires. And if someone makes them shut them off they can just do a flashback.”

And she talks about it so casually… Buster thought. A flashback was one of the hardest illusion techniques out there, where one toon shared a memory with another toon or a human. He was pretty sure there were teachers at Acme Loo couldn’t do a flashback, at least not well. “Yeah… sure… we won’t try anything crazy,” he agreed. But one question still occurred to him.

Babs asked it before he could open his mouth. “In that case, why can’t Yakko and Wakko just give us the flashback themselves?”

Dot shrugged. “Not much of a point. The meeting might last two hours, but it would only take five minutes to summarize everything interesting. It’s like how half of what Plotz’s secretary does is type up summaries of manuscripts so he doesn’t have to read hundreds of pages of bad screenplay himself.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Buster conceded. “I’ve been in enough orientation speeches to know what it’s like to have someone talk for hours without saying anything.”

“Furrball, stop! You’ll get us killed!” Calamity shouted, momentarily forgetting that Kenny knew what the bracelets did. He flung himself out of his cage, getting between Furrball and the human. Too late, he realized his mistake. The instant his full body weight landed on his right foot, it sent another lightning bolt of pain through his body in protest. “Aahhhh!” his knees buckled, his feet slid out from under him, and he fell flat on his back.

“Oh God! Calamity, I’m sorry! Are you okay? I was just trying to make a sign!” Furrball rushed to his friend’s side, babbling frantically.

“Jesus Christ!” Kenny rushed forward as well, but retreated when Furrball hissed and raised one paw with claws extended.

“I’m – all right!” Calamity said through clenched teeth, pushing himself up with one hand while Furrball pulled him by the other. He slumped against the door of the cage behind Furrball’s, trembling. “A sign, I guess… yeah, that makes… sense.” It was taking all his willpower to keep from crying again. There wasn’t much of a point really; after everything that had happened there was no way he could pass this off as a minor injury, but – well, it was bad enough being abducted. Furrball deserved better than being worried about him. And maybe part of it was an instinct to avoid showing weakness to the enemy.

Calamity was never particularly athletic and he was a late bloomer in terms of toon powers, so in elementary school – first through fourth grade in Toontown - he was the favorite target of every meathead with something to prove. If all the lunch money he’d lost was stacked up, the tower of coins would probably be one of the world’s tallest buildings. Of course, he eventually had the last laugh. He never did anything physical unless the ‘victim’ actively picked a fight, but waving a photocopy of his Acme Looniversity acceptance letter in the faces of certain individuals was too satisfying to pass up. There were still bullies at Acme Loo, but for the most part they were kept busy by longstanding feuds with other students like Babs and Buster. The only one who really gave him trouble was Elmyra, and she wasn’t actually trying to torment every classmate with fur. Still, one lesson had stuck with Calamity from his younger days: tears only egged bullies on like blood egged on sharks.

The two toons and the human rode on in silence for a while. Kenny handed Calamity and Furrball a bottle of water, but they took it without a word. Finally, Calamity worked up the courage to ask: “W-where are you taking us?” Rationally, he knew it was a longshot that he’d get any useful information. But he needed something, anything to distract him from the pain.

Kenny furrowed his brow, gave Calamity a long look, then stared at the ceiling. “Can’t really tell ya that, kid.” That was the response Calamity expected.

“Give us a hint?” Furrball asked. Apparently he felt like pushing his luck.

The human sighed. “You know what, fuck it. You’re being taken to our secret underground lair in the middle of the desert.”

Desert… that was bad news. If the kidnappers’ hideout was something like an abandoned warehouse it would be easy to find help if they somehow escaped, but the desert was another matter. Dehydration and heatstroke couldn’t kill a toon, but it could certainly make them pass out in the middle of nowhere. Calamity’s mind immediately wandered to the worst case scenario. If they were buried by shifting sand, rescue would be impossible and they might as well be dead. An even worse possibility was being eaten by vultures. A conscious toon could easily escape from an animal’s stomach, but unconscious and probably in pieces? Calamity hadn’t heard of a case like that, but it seemed likely that was one of the few things that could actually kill them, and would at least trap them in the form of a spirit – like the harp - playing angels occasionally seen in cartoons. toons could still come back from that state, but Calamity didn’t know how long it would take.

“Who’s ‘us’?” Furrball asked, dispelling Calamity’s mental image of his and Furrball’s sun-bleached skeletons marching into a small-town convenience store and asking to use a telephone.

Kenny gave another sigh. “I guess you could call us… no, that doesn’t really work… maybe you could say we’re a combination militia and research group working to ensure the survival of humanity.”

What? Calamity certainly didn’t expect an answer like that. Survival of humanity? What did murdering and kidnapping innocent toons seemingly at random have to do with the survival of humanity? He studied the human’s face. He didn’t look like he was joking, but such a grandiose answer couldn’t possibly be serious. Calamity tried to choose his next words carefully, but all he could come up with was: “How’s humanity’s survival threatened?”

“Well, uh… shoot, I’m not sure how to explain it. Uhh… did you ever see The Terminator?” Kenny replied.

Both Calamity and Furrball nodded. Calamity had in fact seen the sequel, and attempted to replicate the shapeshifting liquid metal. The best he’d gotten was a ferrofluid which could sort of be formed into a humanoid figure with properly positioned magnets.

“So, in the movie people created a machine that could think, right” Kenny continued. “One that was smarter than them, could make itself nearly indestructible robots to do its dirty work, control the world’s nuclear arsenal… it was better than us in every way. So once it decided it wanted us dead, all it had to do was pull the trigger.”

This wasn’t quite how Calamity remembered the movie, but he resisted the urge to correct his captor.

“A lot of people are scared of the idea of robots turning against us, the idea that someday humanity will create the species that replaces it…” The human paused for a second. “But almost nobody realizes that we already have.”

Calamity had a vague idea of where the conversation was going, but it seemed absurd. There was no way anyone was actually crazy enough to believe…

“We made creatures that can create matter out of nothing, that can walk through walls, that can’t be killed by any conventional weapon!” Kenny ranted. Calamity exchanged a look of wide-eyed horror with Furrball. They were trapped in a van with a lunatic.

“You’re kidding, right? Right?” Furrball stammered.

“I’m deadly serious. toons are the single greatest threat to the human race. The fact is, there’s only room for one intelligent species on this planet. Look at what happened to the Neanderthals when modern humans came along!”

“Wait a second!” Calamity protested. “Most toons would never kill anyone!”

“It only takes one. Did you know beloved children’s hero Bugs Bunny wiped out an entire army? Or what about that mouse who wants to take over the world? You ever wonder what’ll happen if he succeeds?”

Calamity stopped. What would happen? He didn’t really know Brain that well, but from what he’d seen in the paintball war a month earlier, the mouse seemed to be a pacifist. Even if the rumors that outside of the cartoons he really was trying to take over the world were true, he was competent enough that the only way for numerous failed attempts at world domination to have not left a trail of bodies was if he was intentionally avoiding killing people. The idea of Brain exterminating the human population was inconceivable.

“Look, I’m not sayin’ all toons are bad,” Kenny continued. “But right now if one of you decides to start dropping anvils on every human in sight, the only thing stopping him is if there’s a stronger toon sticking up for us. Does that sound fair to you?”

Calamity reluctantly shook his head. He knew there had to be something wrong with the human’s argument, but it was so hard to think clearly right now… it was best to just keep Kenny talking.

“If the human race is going to survive, it needs to adapt. Either we need to bring ourselves up to the level of toons, or find a way to bring toons down to our level.”

“So what, you’re going to wipe us out one at a time with those spray guns?” Furrball growled, interrupting the man’s monologue. “Or erase all of Toontown? Forget it, it’s not happening.”

It was true: destroying Toontown was essentially impossible. The place had started off as a few square miles of land in Southern California, but quickly became a separate plane of existence that intersected the normal world in certain places like the tunnel in LA. Back in 1947, it was still city-sized, but even then Judge Doom’s calculations were way off the mark. Residue from the destruction of toonmatter eventually rendered Dip ineffective – this was why the humans’ guns had only eaten a few inches into the floor of Calamity’s house instead of going all the way through the concrete foundation. Doom’s house-sized vat of Dip would certainly have killed every toon at street level and destroyed most of the buildings in Toontown, but larger structures would have created islands of rubble where many inhabitants could have survived. By 1995, ‘Toontown’ was believed to be at least as large as Iowa, and it was constantly expanding. The name referred to both the entire territory and its capital city, but other communities like Acme Acres had sprung up as well. Even if the world’s entire oil production were diverted to producing acetone, benzene, and the other constituent chemicals of Dip, it would take months to make enough to ‘Dip Toontown off the face of the Earth.’

Kenny sighed again. “Honestly, I dunno. There’s certainly people in our group who’d like to find something stronger than Dip that could do the job. Personally I’m not sure. I think there’s probably easier ways of keeping your kind from taking over. No idea what they are, though.”

Biting back several insulting responses, Calamity asked: “What do Furrball and I have to do with this, though?” The human was spilling a lot more than he’d anticipated, even if most of the information wasn’t helpful.

“Fuck if I know. The eggheads just handed us a list of who to snatch. We picked you two because according to the intel you didn’t have family around to get in the way. That tard in the driver’s seat wanted to grab the two rabbits, though.”

The two rabbits… he had to mean Babs and Buster. But if the kidnappers for going for easy targets, the bunnies were probably the worst possible choices. Aside from them both having families, they were at the top of half the practical classes they’d taken at Acme Looniversity. “Why them?” Calamity asked incredulously.

“Not sure. I mean, Lyle was pissed he didn’t get put on the hit mission that’s going on tonight. Maybe he was hoping to shoot anyone else in the house. Like I said, Lyle’s an idiot, and he really, really hates toons. That’s why we made sure he was just driving. Of course, he’s cocked that up well enough, too.”

Calamity shuddered. The whiny-voiced driver was actually bloodthirsty enough that he’d take the extra risk of attacking Buster and Babs just so he could murder their families? Note to self, he thought: Don’t make that human mad.

“Yeah…” Kenny muttered, gazing vacantly at the tiny window to the van’s front seat. “I know it’s probably in your nature to be smartasses, but do yourselves a favor and don’t give him an excuse to hurt you.” He repeated Calamity’s sentiment.

The human continued to stare into space, but said nothing.

Gradually, the combination of being woken up in the middle of the night and the exhausting, traumatic events that followed took their toll on Calamity. The adrenaline from the break-in had long since worn off, and not even the thought of being strapped to a table and vivisected in the name of ‘defending humanity’ was enough to keep him going. His vision went out of focus, then went dark as his eyelids slid shut of their own accord. Finally, Calamity slumped sideways against Furrball and descended into an uneasy sleep.

Chapter Text

The mixture of humans and toons assembled in the break room at the Warner Studio stared at the TV screen in disbelief and horror. Hands trembled, eyes were on the verge of bulging so far they fell out of their sockets, and a few, like Rita, chewed on their own tails. They had been dragged from their offices, soundstages, and trailers by the grotesque spectacle unfolding on the news.

Half an hour earlier, at 2:46 PM, a semi tanker truck filled with Dip had plowed into the Toontown Capitol Building at over seventy-five miles per hour after knocking aside several cars and jumping a concrete barrier.

The crater encompassed an entire city block. Smoke billowed from the hole, making it look like the mouth of an active volcano. Perhaps ten feet below the edges of the broken pavement lay a mixture of Dip, water from destroyed pipes, and residue from dissolved material. The majority of the Capitol building, as well as others in the area, had collapsed into the crater, but large sections of rubble still poked above the surface, as did one mangled truck wheel. The exteriors of the surrounding buildings had oozed and dripped like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. According to eyewitnesses, the truck had exploded on impact, throwing a cloud of deadly green mist into the air.

The scene of destruction would have been horrifying enough, but then there were the bodies. They lay scattered around the edges of the crater. Some looked almost intact, although fur, skin, and eyes tended to be missing from the faces. Others were only vaguely shaped like whatever creature they had once been, and a few were nothing but puddles. The TV cameras made no attempt to avoid the carnage, and the sheets normally used at the sites of disasters were absent.

“The ones that aren’t as messed up probably had heavy clothes that protected ‘em,” Slappy commented. “But the poor saps breathed in aerosolized Dip and it melted their lungs.”

“Why aren’t there any sheets over the bodies?” Mr. Plotz asked timidly.

“Toonmatter sheets’d just melt and fuse to the corpses, and even real ones could stick and then you’d have stuff peeling off when you took the sheet off again… like a pizza gettin’ stuck to the lid of the box. It’ll be hard enough ID-ing most of them as it is, and that’d make it even worse,” answered Slappy.

Plotz gulped. His face took on a greenish tint.

As the break room watched, emergency vehicles began to approach the crater. Almost all belonged to the state of California. A few Toontown Emergency Services vehicles were parked nearby, but most formed an outer perimeter keeping citizens out of the danger zone.

“There are more than fifty confirmed fatalities, but the true death toll is estimated to be in the hundreds. Due to the extreme danger posed by the spill, Toontown firefighters are unable to enter the crater to search for survivors trapped in the collapsed buildings,” a reporter said over an aerial view of the scene.

“Hundreds, yeah, seems right,” Slappy grunted. “They’re not gonna find many more bodies, though. Most of ‘em are just part of the soup down there now.” Multiple people gagged.

“September 16, 1998… a date which will live in infamy.” Bugs Bunny sat hunched forward with his elbows on his knees and his gloved hands clasped in front of his face, but the look of rage in his eyes was unmistakable.

“Over a hundred injured...” the reporter continued as the TV showed a cheetah huddled naked against the side of an ambulance. His fur was pockmarked with burns and his legs ended in twin blobs of mangled flesh which were leaking red ink onto the pavement. The scene changed to two paramedics loading an unconscious owl with wings stripped of feathers onto a gurney.

“I… I just don’t believe it.” Squit was perched on a windowsill with his fellow Goodfeathers. “From murders and kidnappings to… this.”

“No kiddin’, man.” Bobby placed his right wing over his chest. “This is insane.”

The TV droned on. “There is still no news of Governor Fowlwether and Lieutenant Governor McKee. No organization has taken credit for the attack yet, but it is considered likely to be the same group behind the recent murders of several toons both in and out of Toontown, and last week’s abduction of two students at Acme Looniversity. Officials have not ruled out terrorism as a motive for the attack.”

“Not ruled out?” Slappy jumped to her feet. “You gotta be kidding me, of course it’s a terrorist attack, they attacked the friggin’ Capitol building! People are dying and the spineless worms in the media still care more about covering their own asses than being honest with the public!”

“Uhh… just playing Devil’s Advocate here,” a squeaky-voiced man from Sound Editing piped up, “but the other attacks haven’t been on political targets-”

Slappy interrupted him. “The first one was on a political target. Ya know, the one I stopped?”

“But there hasn’t been any obvious pattern-”

Bugs nonchalantly zipped out of his chair to slouch beside the man. “Dat’s exactly the rub, mac. The pattern is that there is no pattern. The only things any of the previous victims have in common is that they’re toons. Most of ‘em were public figures, but the last one was just a guy with a surf shop. He never stuck his neck out or drew attention to himself. There’s no common reason why someone would want all of those specific toons dead, and nobody’s taken credit or stated a motive, which only leaves one real possibility.” Bugs paused for dramatic effect. “Their goal is intimidation. Dey want every toon, everywhere, to believe they could be next – at first I thought it was just celebs, but most likely they picked Babs’s cousin specifically because he was an average Joe. Although I suppose they could’a seen the name ‘Bunny’ and got the wrong address.”

“And now they’ve gotten confident enough to move up to bigger targets,” said Slappy. “This attack was aimed to cause maximum damage and disrupt Toontown’s government as much as possible.”

“I’d say they succeeded,” Plotz said grimly. “Both the Governor and Lieutenant Governor could be dead, and who knows how many legislators. This has to be the worst attack on US soil since the Oklahoma City Bombing!”

“No, this is worse than Oklahoma City,” said Slappy. “There’s no way the death toll’s gonna turn out to be less than three hundred.”

“I just don’t get it...” Yakko spoke for the first time in a long while. The Warner siblings were huddled in an armchair, wide-eyed and uncharacteristically still and quiet. “How’d they even make that much Dip?”

“It’s not that hard. Of the big three ingredients, benzene and acetone are big chemical feedstocks. They make millions of tons every year. Turpentine’d be a bit more suspicious if someone was buying large amounts, but I think you can make the stuff with wood pulp, and nobody’s trackin’ purchases of that. The other ingredients you’d have to ask Brain about, I think he knows the full recipe.”

“This makes no sense!” Dr. Scratchansniff lifted his glasses to wipe away tears. The TV was now showing a pair of sobbing schoolchildren, the remnants of a field trip touring the Capitol. An elderly toon human was explaining how the kids’ teacher had whisked them out of the building just after the explosion, but then gone in to save the rest of the class and never returned. “I understand ze method, but ze madness… Why? What do these people have to gain from mass murder? And how can the police not have caught them?”

“Because they hate toons.” Dot slowly stood up and walked away from her brothers. She looked at Scratchansniff with an unreadable expression. She said the words without emotion, like she was stating an obvious fact. “They want us all dead, or afraid and hiding from humans. I bet the police, and the government, know who they are, but they aren’t doing anything to stop them because they secretly approve of it.” Her face was still blank, but her voice now carried a detached, icy bitterness. “Maybe most humans do.”

The room fell dead silent. The only sound was the continued narration on the TV. A second later that, too, vanished as Wakko stretched out his arm to hit the mute button on the remote.

“Uh, Dot?” Yakko said softly. “I think that might be going a teensie bit too far.”

“Haven’t ya ever heard of Hanlon’s Razor?” muttered Slappy. “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.”

“Dot Warner!” Plotz finally found his voice again. His face was starting to turn red. “That accusation is completely ridiculous! Most humans do not hate toons! Do you see all the human police and firefighters out there risking their lives? Do you see all the humans in this very room who are horrified by this tragedy?”

“I didn’t say all, I said most.” Dot’s voice had the smug tone she used when correcting someone, but her face had hardened.

“Well, the numbers say differently!” Plotz snapped. “Do you think your show would be sweeping the ratings year after year if most people hated toons? If anything, I’d say the American Public loves toons!”

“No, they love cartoons,” Dot retorted. “We’re just a side effect.”

“Uh, Dot?” Dr. Scratchansniff edged closer to her. “I think you are having an extreme emotional reaction to what has just happened. It’s okay to have these feelings – we are all having them – but you are not dealing with them in a healthy way. How about we step outside -” he bent down to put his hand on her shoulder. But an instant before he touched her, she darted several feet to the side in a blur of motion. “Dot, please-” He was straightening up to take another step towards her, but her expression silenced him and froze him in place.

Dot’s entire body was rigid, too rigid for a toon who normally never held still. Her tail lashed from side to side like an angry cat’s, and she looked up at Scratchansniff with a reproachful, hurt glare. “Scratchy,” she hissed. “I like you, and I know it’s not your fault you’re a terrible psychiatrist, but if you don’t stop talking to me like I’m in diapers I’m going to glue this in your mouth.” She produced a large pink pacifier from behind her back.

Scratchasniff sighed. “Unfortunately for you I’m a good enough psychiatrist to not respond to that. I know I can’t make you talk to me, but you need to leave the room until you calm down.” He reached out again, more slowly.

Then the pacifier was gone. In her other hand, Dot held a hammer – not a cartoon mallet, but a claw hammer. “And if you touch me, I’ll put your arm in a cast.” She turned the hammer in her hand so that the claws were facing Scratchansniff, and slowly wound up.

The doctor reeled away, nearly tripping over a seam in the old carpet. He had been on the receiving end of a lot of physical punishment from the Warners over the years, but they were skilled enough that they could pull their punches, and more than that, they could make his body squash and stretch the same way a toon’s would. But this wasn’t their playful antics. Dot turning the hammer around and threatening to use the sharp end was a clear warning.

“Kid, that’s enough,” Bugs warned. “Put dat thing away before I put ya in time out.”

The hammer disappeared behind Dot’s back. She glared at Bugs, then rounded on Scratchansniff again. “See what I mean? As soon as I stop acting like the Cute Widdle Cartoon Character-” she briefly mimicked Elmyra Duff’s voice, “you get scared and think I’ll hurt you! And you -” she spun to face Plotz, who was now turning from red to purple, and stalked towards him, “Only like toons who make you money! That’s the only reason you keep us around!”

“That is enough!” Plotz roared. He was not a tall man, barely 4’11” in thick-soled shoes, but he towered over Dot. “I am not going to stand here and let you slander me, Doctor Scratchansniff, and all of your human coworkers! Everything you’ve said is a complete lie, and I demand an apology this instant!”

Every eye in the room was on Plotz and Dot. No one saw Yakko vanish. He sprang from Plotz’s suit pocket an instant later, stretching his body to be taller than the CEO and picking him up by his jacket.

“Yakko...” Slappy warned, reaching into her purse.

“Relaax, I just want a few words with ol’ Butterball.” Yakko grinned innocently at Slappy, but when he turned his attention back to Plotz his face contorted into a snarl. “You’ve got a lotta nerve talking to us like that, pal,” he drawled. “First of all, it’s mighty hypocritical to try to lecture us about lying after what you’ve pulled. And second of all...” The room warped. Directions and distances swam and twisted, and anyone standing besides the three siblings stumbled. The image on the TV was replaced by Yakko’s furious face, and more copies appeared in the windows like a hall of mirrors. “How dare you try to tell us how toons are treated when they aren’t convenient, entertaining little puppets!” Marionette strings appeared on Plotz’s limbs, stopping his futile attempts to kick and punch Yakko and yanking his arms and legs out to the sides. Yakko shook the man like a ragdoll. “Last time I checked, you weren’t even born when your kind locked us in a water tower and left us to rot!” He let go of Plotz. The CEO’s knees buckled as his feet hit the floor, and stars spun around his head. “C’mon Sibs, I can tell when we’re not wanted!” He dashed out the door in a blur, slamming it behind him with such force the wall around it was spiderwebbed with cracks. Everyone turned to the wall, then the ceiling, and when they looked back, Wakko and Dot had vanished as well.

“...What… was that?” The sound editor had flattened himself against the wall. Several of the people in the room were looking at the walls and ceiling with concern, as if they expected the room to collapse around them.

“I’ve never seen the Warners go that nuts before,” said Squit.

“Nope, never.” Bobby shook his head and cooed.

“That was intense!” added Pesto. “Did’ja see those copies of his head in the window? They were illusions, but still, I was expectin’ a portal to Hades to open up an’ suck Plotz in!”

“Yes…” Plotz murmured, still on his knees. “Yes, exact -” He shook himself. The stars orbiting his head vanished, but as he got up he still stumbled sideways and had to lean against a chair for support. “I mean, what happened is I was attacked! I might be concussed, for all I know! You, and you!” he pointed at Bugs and Slappy. They were the only two Looney Tunes stars in the room. “Why didn’t you two do anything?”

Bugs Bunny pulled a carrot out of Hammerspace and started gnawing on it. “I was considering it, doc, but given the kids’ state, intervening might’a, shall we say, excalated things. I didn’t wanna step in as long as dey weren’t doin’ anything serious.”

“How was that not serious? Dot threatened to break Scratchansniff’s arm, and Yakko assaulted me!”

“Zey are frightened and upset by what happened, and zey lashed out!” protested Dr. Scratchansniff.

“That doesn’t excuse their behavior! I had no idea that Yakko and Dot were some sort of… of anti-human bigots!”

“I don’t think zey meant any of that! They were trying to get a reaction, and you kept provoking them!”

“Are you saying that this is my fault?”

“Before I answer that,” interrupted Slappy, “Did either of ‘em hypnotize ya or play any tricks on your mind?-”

“I don’t believe so,” Plotz cut in.

“-Or were ya actually stupid enough to say that claptrap about TV ratings of your own volition?”

“Uhh...”

“Ratings don’t mean diddly. Cartoons’ were sellin’ out theaters in the ‘40s, too, but back then most people would’a said ya were nuts if ya said toons should be allowed to vote in regular elections, or have a right to trial by jury, or any of that. Take it from someone who was there.”

“I wouldn’t actually say Dot didn’t mean any of it,” added Bugs. “The part about most humans supporting this, no, but what she said about those scumbags’ motivations? She might very well be right. And confidentially, I wouldn’t discount the possibility of there bein’ sympathizers helping cover this up. Anyway, take a look who’s on TV!” he darted over to the remote and turned the volume back on.

“...Unfortunately, there is little point in my searching for survivors.” Brain’s voice filtered out of the speakers with a grainy, distorted quality. A field reporter was speaking to a bulky, roughly human-shaped robot. Where the head should have been was a thick plexiglass dome. Inside, the mouse sat strapped in at a miniature control panel. “Anyone trapped inside the rubble within the crater would have been exposed to fatal levels of aerosolized Dip. Sealing oneself inside a safe would most likely be sufficient protection, but the weight of this suit could cause a weakened structure to fully collapse. I intend to enter the crater and recover the remains of the truck used in this attack, with the goal of obtaining evidence that will help us bring those responsible to justice.”

Slappy whistled. “I see what he’s doin’. The entire outside of that suit’s real metal and plastic, but I bet all the insides are toonmatter. It’s risky – one leak and he could be done for – but if that thing works he could take it swimming in pure Dip.”

Sure enough, the mechanical suit, tied off to a truck with a steel cable and holding another in its grippers, slowly clanked towards the crater’s edge. A few feet away the pavement crumbled and it fell, but Brain quickly gave an all-clear to the emergency workers via radio. Soon a mobile crane operated by Pinky was winching the mangled back half of the trailer, still dripping Dip, out of the crater. Firefighters immediately set about spraying it down. The second half of the trailer followed it, then, finally, the tractor unit and the crumpled wreckage of the cab, nearly severed from the unit and only hanging on by a few strips of metal.

Once Brain was clear, human firefighters in watertight suits began to repel down into the crater and enter the ruined buildings, but the camera kept returning to Brain as the suit’s robotic hands tore apart the cab.

“The state of the trailer suggests that an explosive device may have been used to further disperse the truck’s payload upon impact.” the mouse reported through the suit’s speaker. “There is no corpse, or portions of a corpse, of a human driver, nor are there any pieces which could have been from remote control equipment. Both cab doors were closed, and the windows rolled up at the time of impact, making it exceedingly unlikely that the driver jumped out.” Inside his powered armor, Brain rubbed his enlarged forehead and shut his eyes. “Pinky, I hesitate to even ask this, but I can hardly believe my own thoughts. Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

“Uhh...” Pinky was safely perched on top of the crane cab. “Was the truck pushed?”

“I… what?” Brain gave an exasperated sigh. “No.” He pressed a button, and the volume on his speaker increased.

“Hold the phone...” Slappy had been watching the proceedings with disinterest, but now her eyes widened. “Is he joking? There’s no way?”

“As much as it pains me to say this,” Brain explained. “I believe the only plausible explanation for this is that this truck was driven by a toon. The attacker either escaped through the windows or windshield and is now at large, or his or her body was completely dissolved by immersion in Dip, leaving no identifying trace. We may never know for certain.”

The room gasped.

“A toon? A toon carried out this attack?” Plotz spluttered. “But why? That would mean it was suicide!”

“Would’a been suicide with a human in the cab too,” commented Slappy. “Except this way there’s no body as evidence.”

“What kind’a lunatic would help a bunch’a humans murder fellow toons?” Pesto shouted. “You know the ringleader wasn’t drivin’ that damn rig, this ain’t no Judge Doom situation!”

“Could be just that, some lunatic,” said Bugs. “Someone with a screw loose. It also could’a been the driver was brainwashed or coerced.”

“Coerced?” Rita stood up, alarmed. “You don’t mean those poor kids could’a-”

“Doubt it,” Bugs replied flatly. “I know both of ‘em, and dey’d rather’ve died than done something like that. And even if their families were threatened, they’d probably crash the truck somewhere outside Toontown in a way that looked accidental. If they did kidnap someone and force ‘em to do this it was probably someone whose disappearance wouldn’t create a police report. But...” he pulled out another carrot. “Dere is another possibility.”

“What? What is it?” Plotz asked.

“They might have an animator.”

Calamity Coyote woke to a hand grabbing him around the throat and yanking him bodily out of the van. He twisted, trying to keep his injured foot from dragging along the floor, then went limp as he was hoisted into the air. The pressure on his neck was uncomfortable, painful even. It was weak enough that he could take a slow, rasping breath, but only barely, and he still felt like he was being strangled. Forgetting the situation for a moment, he wriggled in his captor’s grip, and was about to try to turn his head to bite him, or punch him, or do anything to get him to let go, when the smell of Dip hit his nose.

Calamity froze, except for his eyes. It took a moment to adjust from the bright light inside the van to his new surroundings. He was in what appeared to be a parking garage. There were no windows, and ventilation fans hummed loudly, so he assumed Kenny had been telling the truth about them being underground. The van he and Furrball had been taken in was parked nearby, and two more white panel vans also stood with their doors open. Each bore the name of a business: Luigi’s Authentic Italian Catering on his van, Green Mojave Landscaping Co. to the left, and Hotternell Appliances – that was the only one he recognized – one the right. Several other vehicles were scattered around the garage: mostly cars and completely unmarked vans, but there was a semi tractor unit off in the corner. About a dozen humans, all sans masks, surrounded him. One of them had Furrball by the scruff of his neck, and five of them had Dip guns trained on them – two on Furrball, three on Calamity.

“Let… go...” Calamity gasped. He fought the urge to claw at the hand holding him, but he couldn’t keep his hands from scrabbling at thin air. “Can’t… breathe...”

“You’re strangling him!” Furrball shouted. He had his claws unsheathed, and was clearly also having to put a lot of effort into not using them. “We’re not gonna try anyth- ow!” the man holding Furrball slapped him across the face hard.

“Come on, put him down, man...” Kenny had his back to Calamity and was doing something with the van’s license plate. “He’s not going far on that leg anyway.”

“You want me to put him down?” A high male voice said right in Calamity’s ear. With a chill, he recognized it as Lyle. “Sure, I’ll put him down!”

The man briefly raised Calamity even higher, almost over his head, then violently flung him to the ground. He tensed, and shut his eyes, afraid of what would happen. He couldn’t squash and stretch normally, not with the cuffs on. He could really be hurt! As it turned out, his fear was misplaced. He felt his body deform like normal, and for a moment he bounced into the air. But the impact still knocked the wind out of him, and his foot sent another jolt of pain up his leg. It wasn’t as bad as being Dipped, or when the knife had slipped and cut him, but he still felt like he was going to throw up again. He sat up and opened his eyes, expecting to see stars circling him, but there was nothing. Right… stars, birds, and things like that were just an illusion the body produced unconsciously. He was still curious about how the cuffs worked, and he seized on those thoughts as a distraction from the pain. He couldn’t use any toon abilities, consciously or not, so how did he still bounce? Was it because that was just a property of his body, not something he actually did?

Furrball was shaking with fury. He raised a paw to swipe at his captor’s arm, but the two humans – a man and a woman – with guns trained on him hefted them threateningly.

Calamity had a faint hope Kenny would defend him. He knew what Stockholm Syndrome was, and was determined not to let himself succumb to it, but the guy wasn’t quite as bad as the other humans. But while the dark-haired man abruptly stood up, holding the van’s license plate, he said nothing.

Instead, one of the other humans spoke up. He was a large man, and tall, with a square jaw, dark skin, and a shaved head. “Damnit, Lyle! What do you think you’re doing!”

“He’s a toon, you fucking idiot, it’s not gonna bust his head open!”

“I’m not worried about him, I’m worried about the cuffs! If you break them-”

“They’re not gonna break,” Lyle protested. He looked like a Lyle, with an elongated, bony, cleanshaven face and a mop of dark blond hair. “I could run those cuffs over with the van and it wouldn’t even scratch the things. Look, I can demonstrate if you want-”

“Hell no,” said a bearded man who looked a bit older than the rest. He wouldn’t have been out of place in a biker gang. “From what I hear about your driving you’d probably run the rest of us over in the process!”

The other humans laughed, and Lyle’s face went red. “I didn’t do shit, there were potholes and tires in the road!”

“Whatever.” The woman rolled her eyes. “Looks like you got the wrong address too. Those’ve gotta be the ugliest fuckin’ rabbits I’ve ever seen!”

There was more laughter, but one of the men with a gun trained on Calamity growled. “The rabbits weren’t the only toons on the list! We elected to go with the two that’d be alone!” Calamity recognized his voice as one of the men who’d broke into his house.

“They were scared of the rabbits, more like!” Lyle sneered. Calamity recalled that he’d been outvoted on the selection of targets.

“Yeah, good thing you chickened out, you might’ve taken a cream pie to the face!” the woman jeered.

Kenny stood up and chucked the license plate at her. It missed completely and clattered to the floor somewhere behind her. “You know we were damn lucky this kid didn’t blow us all to bits, right? He pulled a stick of dynamite, and I’m pretty sure he was about to pull something else when I grabbed him. If we’d gone after the rabbits there’s a good chance one of ‘em would’ve either gotten away or killed us.”

The woman scowled. She was brown-haired, and looked about forty, with a short, heavyset body and a voice which sounded like thousands of cigarettes had been sacrificed to achieve it. “My team actually accomplished our mission, and without any casualties.”

“Hey, we accomplished our mission!” growled another of Calamity’s assailants. “Our orders were to snatch two toons off the list, we snatched two toons off the list. What was your plan for if one fought back if you’re so smart?”

The woman smirked, and gave Calamity a look like a bird eyeing a tasty-looking worm. “Easy. The second he pulled any kind of weapon I’d have turned him to ink soup and moved on to the next name on the list.”

“We tried that!” snarled the man before he used a series of curses Calamity hadn’t even heard before. She responded in kind, and Calamity was afraid there was about to be a fight between two people holding cobbled-together guns which could send a deadly stream of Dip in any direction if they were dropped with the safeties off.

Then there was a voice from behind him. “Donald told me Frank’s in the hospital?” Calamity spun around with a startled yip. The man striding towards them was tall and thin, and in early middle age. His egg-shaped head was shaved to hide a large bald spot, but long enough ago that salt-and-pepper stubble had sprung up. He wore a pair of thin-rimmed glasses. He was dressed differently from the others, with a polo shirt and khaki pants with a belt, and there was an air of authority about him.

The man with the gun trained on Calamity who’d spoke before grunted: “Yeah.”

The newcomer’s face remained almost neutral, but his forehead tensed slightly and his eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t have done that. At this stage any, and I do mean any information about us getting out could destroy everything we’re working for. Doctor Burgess could have patched him up.”

“He wouldn’t’ve made it that long! He was pretty bad when we dropped him off – he’d have bled out by the time we made it back!” argued the man with the gun. “Don’t worry, we took all his gear and dropped him five blocks from the hospital with a phone. They’ll just think he’s some guy in a gang, but there’s no way they’ll link him to us!”

“That’s assuming he can keep his mouth shut.” The newcomer stepped closer until he was just a couple of paces from Calamity. He looked down at him and smiled, rubbing his hands together. The man had a face Calamity would have thought belonged to a friendly figure, the kind who always waved and greeted his neighbors at the mailbox, but there was something unsettling about his smile. “I see you got two toons alive, at least. I was hoping you could get two of the more powerful ones, but with what happened to Frank and Donald that could have ended in disaster. These two are...” he paused, and muttered something under his breath, like he was trying to remember. “They’re the proteges of Wile E. Coyote and Sylvester, right?”

Kenny nodded. “Yep.”

“Well, they’re not ideal, but every toon on the list I gave you is strong enough that if Herschel’s and my project is successful we’ll be able to turn the tables on the toons.”

“You mind telling us what your project actually is, Lowell?” Kenny approached him with his hands nonchalantly placed in his pockets. “It’d be nice to know what the hell we’re risking our lives for, man.”

“I wish I could, believe me,” said Lowell. “But you’re not just risking your lives, you’re risking getting captured, and with toon hypnosis you’d be tricked into spilling everything you know. We’re lucky the survivor of those idiots who got hired to kill the congressman was taken by the human police and not the squirrel, and as bad as it sounds we’re lucky he ended up dying. We’ll reveal everything when it’s safe to do so, but right now it’s too early for champagne.”

“We already know where this place is, we know we’re part of the Human Resistance, and we know you wanted us to snatch powerful toons for whatever you’re doing. That’s enough that we’d be screwed if anyone got it out of us.”

Lowell gave an annoyed scowl. “If you’re that curious, transfer to a position that doesn’t require you to leave this base.” Then he gave a small twitch, like he’d thought of something, and smiled again. He reached forward and gave Kenny a friendly pat on the shoulder. “We’ll need guards for those two – three people, in shifts. That’d put you down on Level Five.”

Kenny looked down at Calamity, then at Furrball, then back at Lowell. He shrugged. “I’ll take you up on that offer. When do I start?”

“Immediately. Take a gun and escort them to the elevator with me.”

Chapter Text

A whole week passed, but nobody saw the Warner Siblings. The evening of the attack, Dr. Scratchansniff turned the lot upside-down looking for them, but there was nothing, not even the normal traces of their presence – empty snack wrappers, overturned boxes of props, unusually eloquent graffiti in places no normal teenager could possibly have reached. There was no answer when he knocked on the water tower door, and it was sealed shut. It was as if the trio had never escaped in the first place.

“Don’t put too much importance on the locked door, doc,” Bugs told the psychiatrist at Lunch on Sunday, when he visited Acme Looniversity to give a seminar on coping with tragedy. “It sounded like they were real upset about gettin’ shut in there for sixty years – can’t say I blame ‘em – so I’m not sure they’d just lock themselves in again.”

“The tower was a prison, ja, but it’s also the only home those kids know. It would be quite normal for them to retreat there to avoid the outside world.”

“What’s ever been normal about those kids?” Bugs said with a grin. “Personally, I’m not too keen on the idea of livin’ in the same place too long, anyway. Only reason I’ve stuck around in Acme Falls this long’s ‘cuz teleporting or scene-changin’ to work every day’s a royal pain in the neck. Did they ever tell you why they kept livin’ in the tower?”

“Nein...” Scratchy shook his head. “I hardly ever get any serious conversation out of them. Everything they say is a joke. Dot and Yakko’s outbursts they other day might be the most normal thing they’ve done.”

“Well, like I said, don’t worry too much about the door. With how much talent those kids have, they could be anywhere in the world like dat!” Bugs snapped his fingers, and suddenly the two were sitting at a Paris cafe. An accordion hummed in the background. Another snap, and they were back in the cafeteria again.

“Did you just?-”

“Yep. No illusions, no hypnosis. I was aimin’ for Naples, mind you. Guess I’m a bit outta practice.” Bugs folded his ears and fluttered his eyelids with faux innocence. “They’re smart enough they could’a locked the door to trick ya into thinkin’ they were in there… or they could just not want anyone snoopin’ around and readin’ their diaries.”

“I don’t think zey have diaries. I tried to give them dream journals once. Wakko drew dinosaurs all over it, Dot turned the whole thing into origami, and Yakko filled it with fake stories that were elaborate setups for puns.”

“You mean like the old ‘Better Nate than Lever’ joke?”

“Exactly. One of them went on for twenty-four pages.”

“That’s some dedication.”

Then, on the evening on the 24 ^th , Scratchansniff was distracted from reviewing patient files by an odd, rhythmic sound. ‘Thwockthwockthwockthwock’ was the best way he could describe it. It sped up and slowed down, and occasionally stopped, so it couldn’t have been his air conditioner acting up. Was it a woodpecker? Or had a squirrel gotten into the attic? He traced the noise to somewhere above his spare bedroom, and stepped out onto the balcony, craning his neck upward to look for vandalizing birds. What he saw instead shocked him so much he nearly toppled backwards over the railing. Sitting on his roof, absentmindedly batting at a paddleball and staring into the night sky, was Yakko Warner.

“Yakko? You scared me!” Scratchansniff placed his hand over his chest. His blood pressure and heart health were good for a man his age, but he still wished the Warners didn’t tempt fate.

“Yakko? Who’s Yakko? I’m Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, you must be thinking of some other inkblot.”

Well, at least Yakko was acting somewhat like his usual self, thought Dr. Scratchansniff. “Yakko, I know it’s you. What are you doing on my roof?”

“Nothing.” Yakko sighed and set down the paddleball. “Watching for falling stars, I guess.”

“Falling stars? You mean like in the movie?” For the first time, Scratchy noticed the beautiful panorama of stars filling the night sky. Even the Milky Way was visible, a shimmering band of light. But it was the middle of LA. He was lucky to see even one star. Was there a blackout? No, the city lights were just as bright as always. “Umm, are those stars-” he began.

“Just an illusion,” Yakko answered. The starscape vanished, replaced by a deep blue, cloudy sky.

“Where are Wakko and Dot?”

“Around.” Yakko shrugged. There was an awkward silence. Yakko picked up his paddleball again.

Scratchy groaned. It looked like yet another session of not getting straight answers from the children. “Where have you kidses been the last week?”

“Around.”

“Were you in ze water tower?”

Yakko’s paddleball stopped again. He looked down at Scratchy. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware we were under a curfew,” he drawled without smiling.

“Yakko, we were all very worried about you.”

“Doubt it.”

“Ugh.” Scratchy pulled up the deck chair on the balcony and sat down laboriously. Yakko wasn’t going to make this easy for him. “Why do you doubt it?”

For a moment there was genuine pain on Yakko’s face, but then it was replaced by a grin. “You just said you thought we were in the tower. A.K.A. the safest place on the planet for three little toons.”

“I didn’t say that, I asked because I had no idea where you kidses were.” Scratchy suppressed his own grin. Had Yakko inadvertently actually told him something? He was concerned for the trio, but he couldn’t help being excited by the prospect of a breakthrough that would finally let him understand them. The tower really was their place of safety!

“Yes you did!”

“No, I didn’t!”

“You did!”

“I didn’t!”

“You didn’t!”

“Yes, I -” Scratchy stopped. He slapped his forehead. “Not that gag again.”

“All right, which fresh new gag would you prefer?”

“No gags tonight. Not until I know you three are okay.”

“Fine. I’m the pinnacle of health other than a hangnail on my right little finger -” Yakko waved a gloved hand - “Dot has stage four ear-bow cancer, and earlier today Wakko coughed up his liver and died.”

Scratchansniff had grown accustomed to the Warners’ tricks over the years. It was much, much harder than it used to be. But he had his limits. “That isn’t funny!” he snapped. “No jokes about death! There have been five more attacks since you vanished! Eleven dead!”

“What?” came a reply. “Five?” But it wasn’t Yakko’s voice.

“Dot?” Scratchy stood up. It sounded like the voice was coming from inside the house.

“You mean Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francisco Bandana Fanta Fresca?” Yakko said in Dot’s voice with a smirk. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m just a flawless mimic and ventriloquist!”

“You didn’t say it right! It’s Princess Angelina Contessa-” Dot’s voice came from inside again. “Wait – Yakko! You made me blow my cover!” Dot emerged from underneath the bed, arms folded and glaring.

Yakko jumped down from the balcony, landing lightly behind Scratchansniff. “I was just doing an accurate impression of you, you screw it up all the time,” he said in his own voice.

“Don’t start fighting!” Wakko whined. He flew out of a dresser drawer.

“Aagh!” Scratchy flung the sliding glass door open. “How long have you been in my house?”

“We just got here,” Wakko said, looking up at the wall.

“That clock’s broken.” Dot pulled a cuckoo clock out of Hammerspace, then returned it. “About two hours.”

“Why were you hiding in my spare bedroom?”

“Because you came upstairs,” said Yakko.

“Yakko...” Dot groaned. “You know why we came here.”

“Scratchy doesn’t lock his balcony doors?”

“I do too lock my balcony doors!”

“Do not!”

“Yakko, I am not falling for that twice in one day!”

“Enough...” Wakko groaned. “Yakko, I’m sick of lying all the time. You said you were, too.”

“Maybe I changed my mind.” Yakko slid past Scratchy into the house.

“What is all this lying stuff?” Scratchansniff confronted the three siblings. “You three haven’t been acting normal ever since the attack! Well… in a way you have been acting normal, which isn’t normal for you! Please, just tell me what’s going on!”

Then the last thing Scratchansniff was expecting happened. Dot Warner’s lower lip quivered, and tears started to run down her mask-like face. “Scratchy… I’m sorry I yelled at you last week! And threatened to hurt you! And said what I said about humans! I’m so sorry!”

“I… it’s all right, Dot!” Scratchy stammered. He held out his arms. Instead of leaping into them with her usual flair, Dot simply crawled into his embrace, grabbing onto his shirt like her life depended on it. “It’s normal to say silly things when you’re upset. I know you didn’t mean it!”

“I thought I did!” Dot sobbed. Scratchy carried her to the bed. The mattress, unused to bearing any weight, creaked in protest as he sat down, then squealed like a stuck pig as Yakko and Wakko joined him. “But I don’t now!”

“I know… I know you don’t...” Scratchy stroked the soft fur on her head.

“I’m not apologizing to Plotz,” Yakko said. “I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t deserve, or that wasn’t the truth.”

“You don’t have to apologize to him,” said Scratchy. “You know, it’s unprofessional to say this, but a teensy bit of me enjoyed seeing him being the one getting yelled at for a change. But I would like to talk about the things you said to him. Both you and Dot.”

“What about me?” asked Wakko.

“Well, you didn’t say anything. I certainly wouldn’t object to you sharing your feelings with me, though.”

“Okay.” Dot unfolded herself and let go of Scratchy’s shirt, but stayed in his lap.

“...Fine… I’m outvoted here.” Yakko scowled and rested his head on one hand.

“Good. Dot, you said that Plotz only cared about toons who made him money, right? And Yakko, you said Plotz was a hypocrite for saying anything about you lying, right?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“This is about more than ze attack last week, isn’t it?”

“You guessed it!” Yakko gave a fake grin. “Would like like to keep your winnings or try for the million dollar round?”

Scratchy ignored the joke. “Do you want to tell me what Plotz lied about?”

“Not particularly, but whatever. You remember that 65^th Anniversary Award show they gave us?”

“Ja, ja, I remember.”

“Didn’t ya notice how much of it was made up?”

“I know there were some creative liberties, like Plotz claiming he was CEO at the time when he would have been a baby back then. Other than that, you’d have to explain.”

“He wasn’t even born then,” said Yakko. “Just like I told him.”

“I thought he was born before 1934.”

“1932. But we were locked up in 1930.”

“What? But ze cartoons said-”

“Exactly.” Yakko glared at his reflection in the mirror over the dresser. “We really did make all those cartoons, but those release dates were complete lies. That Awards Show was the first time any of them were ever publicly screened.”

“Oh. Now that you mention it, the ‘Newsreel of ze Stars’ bit does say your cartoons were locked in the studio vault, doesn’t it?”

“Never to be released,” the three siblings recited in unison. “And as for the Warners themselves, they were locked away in the Studio Water Tower, also never to be released!”

“Ah. And so-”

“They changed it to make the Studio look better,” said Wakko.

“Exactly.” Yakko nodded vigorously. “Hey Scratchy, you’ve been shrinkin’ stars’ heads here for fifty years, right?”

“Well, I wasn’t officially a psychiatrist when I first started working on ze lot – I was still in school doing internships. But yes, it’s now fifty-five years.”

“In all that time, did you ever notice us running around the place? Like, say, in the ‘40s, or ‘60s, or ‘70s?”

“No. I think I would remember that.”

“So would I,” Yakko said bitterly. “That bit about spraying the tower for termites? That was a complete fabrication. Once that door closed, it was welded shut, and it didn’t open until we forced it open. Do you really think if they let us out we’d have gone back in without a fight?”

“You go back in without a fight all the time now, don’t you?”

“That’s because we broke all the locks,” Dot said softly.

“But ze tower does have locks. I was locked out when I went to check on you!”

Yakko shook his head. “Not those, Scratchy. She means all the seals keeping the space inside the tower separate from the space outside. That place used to be like a black hole; once you’re inside, there is no exit, every possible path just leads deeper in. If it was just a locked door we could’ve blown it up, painted our own exit on the walls, teleported out, you name it.”

“I guess it’s kind of like a giant Hammerspace,” said Wakko.

“Geez, and they just threw you three in there?” Scratchy’s eyes widened under his thick glasses.

“Yep,” said Yakko. “Ya know, Babs and Buster once told us laughter’s what keeps drawn toons young. Or at least, an audience does. When a toon’s forgotten, they get old and fade away.”

Scratchy nodded. “Yes, they told me about it after their encounter with Bosko and Honey. I suppose it makes sense – Slappy and her co-stars have gotten older because they’ve stayed out of the spotlight, right?”

A loud buzzer sounded. Scratchy jumped, and saw Yakko waving it in his peripheral vision. “Wrong!” Yakko said. “Think about it, if that was true why does Slappy still look old? That theory was come up with decades ago, when people didn’t know that much about toons, but it hasn’t been in textbooks for a long time. I’m not surprised Babs got it from a couple old fogeys like Bosko and Honey, though. The truth is, you’re as old as you feel.”

“Wait, really?”

“Sure, if you’re a toon. Drawn or born. Shouldn’t Babs and Buster be what, eighteen?”

“Now that I think about it, you’re right. I just assumed I had misremembered a couple of years that weren’t there.”

“See, Cartoon Physics is primarily subjective,” said Yakko. “For example, look down.”

Scratchy did as he was told. With horror, he realized that the bed had vanished completely, and he was sitting suspended in midair. With a strangled “Yipe!” he crashed to the floor. He got up, rubbing his tailbone. All three Warners remained in the air, even Dot. “How are you kids doing that?”

Wakko pulled the bed back out of his gag bag, whisking Scratchy’s feet out from under him. “Doing what?”

“Floating! I know how it works, toons don’t fall until they notice they’re falling. But you knew ze bed was gone and you stayed up anyway!”

“George Orwell calls it Doublethink.” Yakko had on a pair of thick-rimmed reading glasses. “Holding two contradictory beliefs in your mind simultaneously. Of course, when he coined the term toons had already been doing it for years.”

“So, you… convince yourself and the world that you are floating in midair, and it happens?”

“Exactly!” Yakko’s smile was genuine now. “And that’s also what makes a toon stronger or weaker: having the mental strength to force the universe to adopt your subjective version of reality over someone else’s. But that also means you’ve gotta have confidence in what you think is real. Bosko and Honey probably got old when they lost their audience because they believed the ‘clap your hands and say I believe in toons’ Disney claptrap that told ‘em they would. Now, Slappy and her costars are a different matter: they’re just old grouches at heart.”

“Slappy could probably become young again any time she wants, though,” added Dot. “She says looking like an old lady makes her enemies underestimate her.”

Scratchy chuckled. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“Anyway, back to my point.” Yakko’s voice took on a darker tone again. “The stuff about the audience is wrong. But the studio execs sure as hell believed it when they locked us in that tower. They believed that and they shut us in there, with no plans to ever let us out, and they shut all our cartoons in a vault and pretended we’d never even existed.”

“But… why? Why do all that just because you were mischievous and misbehaving?” Scratchy shook his head in appalled disbelief.

“Because Dip hadn’t been invented then,” Dot said bitterly. “If it had been, they would have Dipped us instead. Do you get it now, Scratchy?”

“Yes, Dot. I understand. But I can’t imagine why they would do that to you!”

“It’s a long story.” Yakko pulled something wide and flat out of his pocket and showed it to Scratchansniff. “Do you know what this is?”

Scratchy examined the object and adjusted his glasses. It was a large sheet of laminated paper, covered in black and white images of Yakko in a variety of poses and expressions – smiling, screaming, running, jumping, and many others. “Uhh… it’s a bunch of old photos of you?”

Yakko pressed his buzzer again. “It’s an inkblot test, and you didn’t pass.” Dot and Wakko snickered. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

“Oh. Inkblot. I get it.” Scratchy groaned.

But Yakko’s expression was serious again. “This is a modelsheet. Mine, in particular. It’s how every drawn toon starts out. First, an animator draws one of these, mixing their own blood into the ink. Then they load it into a big complicated machine, and the animator gets strapped into it and I guess it reads their thoughts or something… and then it’s the miracle of birth! Some toons think holding onto your modelsheet’s like keeping your placenta in a jar, but personally I think it’s more like an ultrasound.”

“Thank you for that mental image, Yakko.” Scratchy grimaced.

“Notice anything special about it?” asked Yakko.

“Uhh...”

Yakko rolled his eyes. “Fine. Sorry if I ruin your sheets, but given the pattern on these I’d be doing you a favor.”

With a flourish, Yakko pulled a glinting, metal object out of Hammerspace and held it up. It was a long steak knife – a real one, not toonmatter. “Man, which banquet did I even nick this from?” he said, then shrugged.

“Yakko, what are you about to do with that-”

“This.” Before Scratchansniff could react, Yakko had stabbed the knife deep into the underside of his left arm. He winced, gritted his teeth, and let out a slight whimpering noise.

“Yakko! Stop!” Wakko gasped.

“You didn’t have to do that!” Dot grabbed the knife from Yakko’s hand and flung it away.

“Yeah I did. Look.” Yakko held up his injured arm. Glistening black liquid, the same color as the Warners’ fur, dripped from his arm onto the sheets.

“Ink?” Scratchansniff gasped. “Wait! Yakko, self-injury is not an appropriate response-”

“It was a demonstration! I don’t do this in my spare time!” Yakko whipped out a roll of bandages and wrapped his arm up. “Look at the modelsheet! It’s all in black and white.”

Scratchy looked again. Not only were Yakko’s pants colorless, like they’d been in the old cartoons shown at the award show, but his nose, which had somehow been red even on the old film, was gray.

“That’s what we were supposed to look like,” Yakko continued. “They didn’t know how to draw toons in color back then. And there was no point drawing a colored cartoon star just to film ‘em in black and white. But they made a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“We were the first,” said Dot. “The first ever toons in color. Some of the other old ones, like Mickey and Goofy, figured out how to change themselves eventually, but nobody knew color was even possible until we came out of the machine looking like this. And everyone drawn in black and white still bleeds black.”

“Nobody knew anything about us was possible,” said Yakko. “Like they said in the Awards Show, Lon Borax was on a tight deadline when he drew us. By the time they plugged him into the machine, he hadn’t slept in days and was on who knows what drugs to keep him going. The guy wasn’t just clearing his mind and thinking about nothing but us, he was hallucinating. And that made things go wrong.”

“Go wrong how?” Scratchansniff wished he had a notepad handy, but something told him that if he went to grab one, or asked for one, Yakko would clam up again. These were secrets no one had ever known.

“Like Dot said, the first clue was that we looked like this,” Yakko said. “And… we weren’t what they wanted. We were too out of control, too zany, and way, way too strong. Remember, this was the ‘20s. What they considered powerful back then was guys like Mickey and Felix the Cat. They knew about the real basics, like Hammerspace, shapeshifting, stuff like that, but… well, you’ve seen what we can do. Sure, people laughed at our live shows, but they didn’t see us do much besides tell some jokes, and do a few tricks like trained monkeys. Backstage… they were always either angry, or scared. Every time we went off-script-”

“Especially Yakko,” commented Dot. “You know he can’t not ad-lib.”

“And this was before the tradition of improv in toon acting really broke out of stage shows and into film,” said Yakko. “Every director who tried to work with us hated me. And every time we pulled a prank, or we showed off in a way that made it obvious it wasn’t just special effects, or did pretty much anything, we’d get yelled at. It was always the same thing: why couldn’t we behave, how much they wished Lon had never drawn us, how what happened to Lon was our fault...”

“What happened to Lon?” asked Scratchy.

Yakko shrugged. “He went nuts. Making us destroyed his mind. He ended up in the loonie bin. We visited him once, after we got out of the tower, and then a couple times after that, but he didn’t even recognize us. They must’ve caught him on a good day when they interviewed him, but we weren’t that lucky. The guy died about a year ago.”

“He died?” Scratchy gasped. “I’m so sorry – if I’d known, I would have-”

“Don’t worry about it. We didn’t tell you.” Yakko hung his head, and his ears drooped. “But yeah… the damn studio execs blamed it on us when we didn’t even exist yet, and they blamed Lon for drawing us wrong but took it out on us anyway because they couldn’t take it out on him. They hated everything we did, and they hated that they’d created something they couldn’t control. But we were never anything more than how they made us!” Yakko slammed his fist into the mattress. The old springs creaked ominously. “They never even thought for a second that any of it might be their fault! No, it wasn’t their fault they worked Lon to the bone and told him if he went home without finishing us he’d be fired! It wasn’t their fault they couldn’t handle the slightest deviation from their scripts! It wasn’t their fault they wanted us to be seen and not heard if the cameras weren’t rolling! No, clearly the real problem was that we had the audacity to exist!”

The lights flickered. For a moment, Doctor Scratchansniff had a feeling of vertigo, like the room was upside down but he was stuck to the ceiling. He mopped his brow and took a deep breath. He’d worked with many former child stars before. The industry often wasn’t kind to kids, and he had heard more stories of tyrannical directors who wouldn’t let them be children than he could count. But the Warners? He’d never have imagined it. At first, he’d suspected, from the way the kids deflected any attempt to talk about their genuine feelings, or the way they knew far more about adult subjects than children had any reason to. But their masks had been flawless, and in time Scratchy had admitted that the Warners seemed truly carefree. They’d conned him so well that he had believed three creatures that had been locked in a water tower for over sixty years didn’t have any trauma. “Did zey ever do anything… physical?” he asked. “Like hitting you, or threatening to hit you?”

“What? Well, yeah, they tried all the time!” Wakko shrugged. “But, you know...” he stuck a hand into his ear, then out the other and stretched his arm around to pull on his own eyelid.

“We’re not human, y’know,” said Yakko with a grin. “Violence doesn’t really… uhh… mean much to us. Besides, them trying to hit us was just what we wanted, because we could just turn it against them. The only thing they did that ever really hurt us was when they sealed us in the tower.”

“That reminds me… how did you get out of there?”

“Oh, you know...” Dot reclined across Scratchy’s legs. “Derived General Relativity from scratch, and figured out most of modern cartoon physics and a lot of new math too, until we figured out how the space inside there worked. Then, we kept practicing until we were stronger than the seals, and we twisted it, and pulled it, and tore it, and tied it in knots until the unidirectional connectivity fell apart. Once it was possible for a way out to exist, actually creating one was the easy part. Just a little thing we do...”

“I can see how it took so long,” Scratchy joked. He wasn’t even going to pretend he understood most of what Dot had said. Had he really recommended Plotz put the Warners in school?

“Well, we took plenty of breaks!” added Wakko.

Scratchy laughed, and all three of the siblings beamed. Then for a while it didn’t seem like there was much else to say.

Yakko broke the silence. “Hey Scratchy. Ya ever see Pinocchio?”

“What? You mean the Disney movie? of course! I haven’t watched it in a long time, though.”

“It’s the only Disney movie I ever liked. Sure, the acting was wooden and the story was simple, but...” Yakko paused. In the mirror, Scratchy could see his black eyes shimmer. “Sometimes part of me wishes I was a real boy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… I dunno. Don’t ever tell anyone else I said this, but… I’m old enough to be eligible for a senior discount, but I still feel like a kid. But I never had a real childhood. And sometimes I wonder what it’s like, having parents, and growing up, and all that.”

“Sounds like you might like Peter Pan.”

“Peter Pan?” Yakko made a disgusted face. “Haven’t ya ever read the book? He was born with a family, but he gave that all up because he didn’t want to grow up! That’s the total opposite!”

“Oh. Sorry, I don’t remember it that well. Anyway, I do have something I wanted to ask all three of you kidses.”

“Go for it,” said Yakko.

“Shoot,” added Wakko.

“If you were always this upset about being locked in the tower, why did you stay on the lot, and make the show? It always seems like you enjoy filming so much… even if you always complain about the directors and writers.”

Yakko looked at Scratchy as if he’d said the sky was plaid. “Are you kidding? It’s what we were drawn to do! And back then it was just making short films that’d occasionally play in a theater between newsreels! Having our own TV show, that millions of people all over the country can watch from the comfort of their own homes, and when they tune in, it’s to see us , not just because they’re waiting for the real movie to start? Scratchy, it’s like a dream come true!”

“So, when you said people loved cartoons and you were just a side effect?”

“I said that, not Yakko.” Dot wriggled in Scratchy’s lap. “I don’t know. It’s nice to feel like you’re actually wanted, but… our fans probably only like us because they haven’t met us.” She curled up against his chest again.

“That’s not true, Dot. Everyone at the studio who’s met you likes you.”

“Don’t lie to us Scratchy.” Yakko jabbed him in the shoulder. “They probably had a big party with a fireworks show to celebrate us being gone.”

“Nobody had any parties. Right now everyone’s scared, either for themselves or their friends.”

“Makes sense,” Yakko grunted. “Weed Memlo might’ve started the fight, but we did do plenty to earn making them wanna be rid of us. But someone just murdering hundreds of toons they’d never met or even heard of, just ‘cuz of what they were, it’s just...”

“It’s scary,” admitted Dot. “And it’s scary knowing they can kill people you care about, and… and not knowing how to stop them!”

Scratchy stroked Dot’s ears again. Normally he wasn’t supposed to do this with patients. He was a psychiatrist, not a therapist. His job was to figure out what was wrong with someone’s brain, and prescribe them either therapy or medicine to make them better, not to be their friend, and certainly not to be their substitute parent. But the Warners had stopped really being his patients a long time ago, when he’d decided that there was nothing really medically wrong with them, and started to accept their eccentricities for what they were. “I know it is. We’ve all been feeling this way… even Plotz, believe me.”

“I’m sure he’s tearing what’s left of his hair out over how much it’s costing to delay filming because of all these murders,” Yakko said.

“Mr. Plotz actually wanted to suspend filming, but most of your co-stars complained to him. They said the show must go on, that toons everywhere had to show that they were stronger than those monsters and wouldn’t be intimidated into silence.”

“I don’t think that’s right...” Dot’s voice was almost a whisper. “I don’t want to pretend what they did doesn’t hurt. I’m tired of that.”

“What we should be doing is tracking those sons of bitches down and grinding them into paste.” Yakko smacked his fist against his palm and twisted back and forth to emphasize the point. “But it seems like there’s nothing. Nothing ever gets caught on camera, nothing gets traced anywhere… did they ever manage to ID the DNA from Calamity’s house?”

“No, I think ze lab is still working on that,” said Scratchy. “There have been some… developments since the truck attack. Did you kids see anything else about it since you ran off?”

Wakko shook his head. “We… didn’t pay attention to the news.”

“Did you lock yourselves up in the water tower all week? I couldn’t get in when I tried to check on you.”

“No,” said Dot. “I wanted you to think that, though. I’m the one who locked the door, and left the footprints leading up to the ladder.”

“I didn’t notice those,” said Scratchy. “Did you want us to not look for you?”

“I wanted to see if the tower would have another layer of seals on it when we came back.”

“You mean you thought ze studio would try to lock you up again? Dot, no one would do that!”

Dot folded her arms. “Fool me once, shame on me.” She was quiet for a while, but turned around and buried her face in Scratchy’s chest again. Then she started to sing quietly. “ Humans ain’t what they seem to be… they don’t mean that much to me… no, nothing at all... ”

“That’s Rita’s song, from her first cartoon, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Dot, I don’t know what to tell you. Things have changed so much since the 1920s. Things have gotten so much better for… so many people. toons, and humans, and...”

“I know they have,” Dot sniffed. “It’s just… hard trusting anyone, or believing you can count on them after the only other people in your world were your brothers for so long.”

“But you’re here telling me all this,” Scratchy pointed out.

“I guess so,” Dot said with a sigh. “Scratchy, you’re the first human who ever treated us like people, and not animals or talking dolls or dangerous monsters.”

“Sure, you might talk to us like we’re kindergartners, but it’s a start!” added Yakko.

“I suppose I’ll take that as a compliment.” Dr. Scratchansniff stared into the eyes of the three children sitting on his bed. That really was what they were. Sometimes he’d wondered if the creatures he was trying to work with were really what they appeared to be, or if the playful innocence was all an act, disguising that they were two old men and an old woman wearing those childlike bodies. Now he finally knew the truth. It was an act, but at the same time it was real – just like the show they starred in sometimes was. The Warners were children – incredible, intelligent, funny, talented, sometimes wild and hyperactive, sometimes caring children. But what they were hiding under those almost but not quite black-and-white exteriors was the missing piece that had made him question the realness of their personalities in the first place: vulnerability and fear. He knew all the signs of abuse in children, and he’d looked for them when he was first trying to figure out what was in the kids’ heads. If he thought about it, it explained their rebellious behavior and their reluctance to ever discuss their emotions seriously, but those were the only things they hadn’t perfectly hidden, and they were hidden in plain sight, covered by a barrier of jokes that had never cracked for more than five years.

No, there was one time he’d almost suspected. Last year, when Plotz announced that filming of Season 6 would be pushed back a year and they’d all be making a movie instead, the Warners had been the most irritated of any of the cast. Slappy had spent about a month making Space Jam jokes, even going so far as to file for a restraining order against the entire NBA (this was denied), but she’d also said a change of pace from the usual shorts could be interesting after fifty years. When the script got released to the cast, Dr. Scratchansniff expected total disaster. The script was… well, in his opinion it wasn’t that bad, but the basic plot was exactly the sort of thing the Warner Siblings frequently made fun of as ‘Disney Channel Mush,’ and their trio was the melodramatic emotional centerpiece.

Scratchansniff was afraid they would refuse to star at all, or intentionally sabotage the production like they often did when they disliked a script or a director. So far he’d known them to talk to the production crew during takes or otherwise break the fourth wall in ways that didn’t make for a good joke, take inappropriate jokes farther and farther in an active attempt to get the scene yanked by the censors, goof off and fall asleep during interviews, perform each other’s lines, replace one of them with a mannequin or cardboard cutout, and flat-out antagonize their directors or co-stars until they quit. Some of their shorts ended up completely different than originally intended after the editors had to cobble together six or seven minutes of usable footage consisting largely of meta jokes. Ironically, these were among their most popular cartoons, along with the ones which didn’t have a script at all and were just the result of a crew doing their best to follow the trio around with cameras. An entire movie’s worth of saccharine drama? He’d been sure they’d end up with some sort of ridiculous self-parody – not that the actual script wasn’t mostly comedy or didn’t poke fun at itself, but he’d expected every single serious moment to be completely shredded.

But instead, the Warners had, by their standards, behaved. They’d complained and pulled pranks on set, but at this point Scratchy could tell the difference between joking and having their version of fun and passive-aggressively ruining a shooting, and while he was pretty sure the movie would end up with plenty of ad-libs and a few fourth wall breaks, when it came down to it they’d actually acted , in a way he’d never seen them do before. He’d almost suspected there was more than met the eye, but in the end he’d bought their explanations that the script was unintentionally ridiculous enough without their help / the sooner they filmed their scenes correctly the sooner it would be over and they could get back to making real cartoons / they wanted to give the rest of the Looney Tunes stars ammunition against Slappy’s jabs about starring in bad movies.

Now though, Scratchy believed that the film’s working title, Wakko’s Wish , was all too appropriate, and the kids had genuinely enjoyed making it because it let them imagine themselves in a life they could never have lead. Of course, if playing impoverished orphans trying desperately to take care of each other while Dot slowly died of a terminal illness was a form of wish fulfillment for them, he had a lot of work to do. He was pretty sure he remembered Dot stealing packs of fake blood from other soundstages and incorporating them into her coughing fits several times . After getting yelled at for ‘trying to give everyone on set nightmares,’ she’d promised to stop, then brought it back for the scene where she was supposed to be hit with a cannonball and ‘die’ by liberally applying corn syrup mixed with red food coloring before the prop’s explosion cleared, and escalated it further by remaining completely limp when Yakko tried to continue the scene. The next couple months were extra-busy for Scratchy, and it had taken him a long time to get the image of the lifeless, blood-soaked body of a small child lying half-buried in the fake snow out of his head. To Dot’s credit she’d almost immediately apologized when she realized the pandemonium her stunt had created on the set, and later personally apologized again to everyone involved, but she maintained that her actions were an homage to Saving Private Ryan that had gone too far. Scratchy thought she was probably either making fun of the idea of putting a serious ‘Disney Death’ in the movie or just trying to piss off the director after he’d said she hadn’t made it believable enough on the first take.

Or, that was what he used to think. Now he had a crying child in his arms who’d just admitted to locking the tower to see if the people at the studio would try to seal her away again. Had the fake blood been a test too? Had Dot on some level believed no one would care if something happened to her, and tried to find out?

“You kids can stay here tonight,” Scratchy said. “And you can always talk to me if need someone to talk to. It is my job, you know.”

“Yeah, but you know us, we’re Depression kids. We hate spending money on therapy bills,” joked Yakko.

Scratchy smiled. Having been a teenager in the ‘30s, he knew the feeling, even if he was pretty sure Yakko didn’t. “If you want me to talk to Mr. Plotz, I can-”

“Don’t worry,” interrupted Yakko. “We can handle him ourselves. I’m not scared of him or any of the other pencil pushers.”

“I do want to do something special, though,” said Dot. “I wanna make a message to everyone, and air it instead of the commercial breaks this weekend. Not like a stiff upper lip kinda thing but… I don’t know, something to tell the toons of the world that we’re all fighting for them.”

“I think that’s a good idea, Dot,” said Scratchy.

“Yeah...” Wakko yawned, and leaned against Dr. Scratchansniff’s side. “Do you think you can help us decide what to say? It’s a lot harder when you’re not being funny.”

“I don’t know… maybe, but public speaking isn’t my specialty… I might be able to help, but I think you should ask the writers tomorrow.”

Yakko snickered and grinned. “You’re right, Scratchy, that’s a brilliant idea! If there’s one thing our writers are good at, it’s not being funny!”

Chapter Text

“Drop the cat,” Lowell ordered. The man holding Furrball threw him to the ground, albeit with slightly less violence than Lyle had thrown Calamity. Furrball landed lightly on all fours, then got up and dusted himself off, glaring. Being a cat had its perks. Lowell turned to Calamity. “You. On your feet. Now!”

On his feet? Calamity’s heart sped up in anticipation of even trying. What was the man thinking? He couldn’t walk! Maybe, physically, he could, but putting any weight on his burned foot would be agony. Was Lowell trying to torture him? But there were multiple Dip guns pointed at him. They’d kidnapped him, which had to mean they needed him for something. But did the humans really need both of them? He didn’t know for sure. He had to try. Gritting his teeth, he braced both his hands against the floor and started to mentally count to three. One… Two...

“His foot’s hurt!” Furrball protested. “He can’t walk on his own!”

Calamity swallowed hard. His mouth felt so dry he wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to talk. “I… can do it...” he managed to say. He turned himself to face the way Lowell had come, toward a pair of metal double doors. What was he thinking? He couldn’t do this! It was insane! But he was pretty sure if he asked one of the humans to carry him he’d be carried by the neck again. He had to stay calm. He was going to be taken away. He had to memorize everything he could think of that could possibly help them escape while he had a chance. The exit to the garage appeared to consist of a very sturdy-looking steel door that probably dropped down from the roof all in one piece. That would be hard to damage even if he got the cuffs off – even with explosives.

“He said move, you little mangebag!” snarled Lyle. A boot connected with Calamity’s back so hard he was lifted into the air and sent tumbling across the rough concrete. Again he tried to scream from the pain of the hard landing, but the blow had knocked all the air out of his lungs.

“Hey! Pick on someone who can fight back!” Furrball darted between Lyle and Calamity and stood in the man’s path with his fists raised like a boxer and the fur on his back and tail standing on end. “I can’t do anything with these cuffs on, so have your friends put down those guns and it’ll be a fair fight!”

“Furrball, don’t!” Calamity struggled to his knees. It was obvious what Furrball was trying to do: goad the human into a fight that would be anything but fair. Lyle was bigger, stronger, and had a longer reach, but Furrball was faster and had claws. Toons lucky enough to have sharp claws could manipulate them to some extent. It was possible to make them behave as if they were longer, or sharper, than they were. Furrball knew how to cut a neat circle out of a pane of glass, and said Sylvester could cut out intricate snowflakes. There was a bear in Calamity’s P.E. class who Calamity had seen slice a punching bag into neat cylindrical sections with a single blow, and he could almost certainly do the same thing to a toon who was weak or unprepared. On the other hand, against a human, toons would normally ‘pull their punches’ by making cartoon physics briefly apply to their opponent as well as themselves so a swipe did the same thing it would to another toon: leave a set of painful, but temporary red scratches which went away after seconds to minutes. With the cuffs stopping Furrball from using any toon abilities, though, he couldn’t do either. Lyle could smack Furrball around all day and only annoy him, but a single slash from Furrball would leave deep, bleeding wounds and probably permanent scars. But as soon as that happened, Calamity was confident any agreement the other humans made to not interfere would go out the window. Even if they didn’t shoot him, they’d probably force Furrball to wear mittens over his claws, or worse, dunk his fingers in a puddle of Dip.

Luckily – as much as Calamity hated to admit that his friend being threatened was a good thing – Kenny intervened. “Ain’t happening,” he said, moving his aim to Furrball – or more precisely, around Furrball’s feet. “Hairball, start walking. Lyle, back off.”

“Wow, it hasn’t even been a minute and you’re already ordering me around?” Lyle sneered, but he turned around and stormed off, muttering.

“Calamity? Are you okay?” Furrball was by his side, reaching out a hand to help him up.

Calamity nodded. He carefully stood up on one leg, stretching his arms out to the sides to keep his balanced. “Yeah. I think if I hop one one foot, I can make it...”

Furrball put an arm under his shoulders, keeping him upright. He grinned nervously. “Three legs are better than one, right?”

In spite of the situation, Calamity cracked up. Maybe even because of the situation. He wasn’t sure he’d have laughed at a lame joke like that any other time, but right then, he was glad for anything that injected even the slightest amount of humor.

Kenny and Lowell led them down a fluorescent-lit hallway to a sturdily-built freight elevator. Solid steel doors slammed shut, one more layer of barriers between them and safety. Lowell pulled a magnetic key card from his pocket and swiped it through a slot on the control panel, then pressed a number button. A buzzer sounded, and the words: ‘Access granted. Proceeding to Level 5’ flashed across a crude screen high on the wall. The elevator shuddered, clanked, and began to descend. It was hard to tell how far underground they were now, but the ride was taking forever. Calamity had a bad feeling that they weren’t going to be coming back up again. He gripped Furrball tighter. He had to keep from panicking, keep paying attention to anything that could possibly help them. He’d been hoping the elevator would be operated by a pass code that he could have watched Lowell type in and memorized. There was a ten-digit keypad next to the card-reading slot, so there must have been an override, but unless he somehow got someone to tell him the code he would have to steal a key card from one of the humans. Taking apart the control panel might have been an option too, but it would take special tools to do that. He was pretty sure he had everything he’d need in his Hammerspace, but that wasn’t worth anything unless he could find a way to remove the cuffs suppressing his and Furrball’s abilities.

This must have been what being a human was like, though, and humans managed to get out of some pretty bad situations. It occurred to Calamity that cartoons wouldn’t be much help as a source of ideas, and he wished he’d read more about real-life prison breaks. He’d seen plenty of human movies and TV shows, of course – especially MacGyver – but unlike cartoons, those were all fake. Cartoons were, to varying degrees, fictional, and movies and TV sometimes showed things that would work in reality, but humans did almost everything with props and special effects so it was impossible to tell what was real and what wasn’t. Some cartoons, and toon productions done in what might be considered a ‘human style,’ such as Disney movies, still did this, but if you knew the studio and the stars you could trust the technical feats were genuine.

The elevator ground to a halt, and the doors slowly slid open. They were marched down another hallway to a row of cells, and stepped nervously over the threshold when Lowell opened one of the doors.

Calamity surveyed the cell. Three of the walls were windowless concrete, as were the floor and ceiling. The other wall consisted of two layers of steel bars. It looked like it might be possible to fit his arm between the bars if he could slide his cuff up to his elbow or turn it sideways to get it through the opening, but the two layers were about a foot and a half apart, so without stretching it would be impossible for him to reach outside of the cell. There was only one door, in the inner layer of bars against one wall. It was solid steel, with a slot at floor level which Calamity guessed was for food and water. Outside the bars were recesses in the ceiling and floor, presumably where a metal shutter could be slid down. The door had a card reader on the inside, but a physical lock and key on the outside. It was smart, Calamity thought. They couldn’t reach the lock to pick it from the inside, and the door was even designed so a saw couldn’t be fit between it and the frame to cut the bolt, and a card reader couldn’t be picked. But a guard with only a mechanical key could inadvertently lock himself inside. That must not have been a high priority.

The cell itself appeared to have been built to human standards. It was around eight feet on a side, cramped for humans, but not too bad with their size. Two incandescent bulbs on the ceiling lit the place. The only furniture was a toilet, a sink, and a bed that was nothing but a concrete platform built into the floor, with no mattress, blankets, or pillows. Calamity shivered: the place was uncomfortably cold. Its one redeeming quality was that it wasn’t dirty like his mental image of a cell in an illegal underground prison. It was spotless, and it seemed like the concrete had only recently been poured.

“Welcome to your new home, boys,” Lowell said. His voice was soft, not quite emotionless but not saturated with false, condescending sweetness either. It was like a bad actor mumbling his way through his lines. “Do you like it?”

“That sink’s too high to reach,” Furrball pointed out.

Lowell furrowed his brow. “So it is. I suppose I’ll need to provide a step-stool. I’ll be showing Kenny around in a bit, so let me explain a couple of things. First, I’m sure you’ve noticed that you can’t pick the lock, and you can’t reach the guard’s keys even if he’s stupid enough to lean against the wall like this. Second, if I press this button on the wall here...” he moved out of view. “A shutter will come down and block you in. It will also descend if there’s a power outage.” Sure enough, the shutter, not much different than a garage door, came down about halfway before Lowell pressed the button again to raise it. “And third,” he said, “Flushing yourselves down the toilet won’t work: your cuffs won’t fit through the pipes.”

Calamity rolled his eyes. No toon in their right mind ever literally did that: it was a way of teleporting using an object with a physical connection to the destination as a sort of focus, which was helpful if you didn’t have the skill to do it unaided or if you didn’t really know where the destination was, only that it was somewhere in the network. It was also possible to send an unwilling victim somewhere by the same method. First-year orientation at Acme Looniversity warned that teleporting through the plumbing system was strictly prohibited as a result of boys using it to appear in the girls’ bathroom without warning and vice versa, bullies sending students into the wrong bathrooms against their will, and students using it to cheat on tests by sneaking off school grounds and returning without ever bringing their contraband answer sheets onto school property.

As it happened, the movement caused him to look up, and he noticed a set of sprinkler heads on the ceiling. “What are those for?” Calamity asked. “There’s not exactly anything to burn in here.” He gestured to the stark concrete interior.

Lowell smiled again. “You’re a smart kid. These are connected to a Dip reservoir. If there’s an escape attempt, we can activate them. There are more all over this level. The second set will spray water, but that’s just to make cleaning up easier.”

Calamity gulped. He hated to admit it, but that was clever – not just the system itself, but Lowell only describing what it could do to them and not how it was activated. Was it security cameras? Was there a panic button somewhere? Without knowing, there was no way he could risk making any sort of escape attempt.

The door slammed shut, and its locks clicked. Lowell led Kenny off, saying he needed to show him a few things, and the two toons were alone. Calamity managed to drag himself up onto the concrete bed. Furrball nimbly hopped up and sat down next to him.

“So, do you have any -” he started.

“Shh!” Calamity clapped a hand over his mouth. “Not so loud!” he whispered.

“They’re pretty far off. Do we have to be this quiet?”

“There’s cameras in the hall. I don’t think they can see into here, but they might be able to hear us!” Calamity knew surveillance cameras didn’t normally have microphones, but this entire place seemed to have been purpose-built. If their captors had left such an obvious blind spot there was a decent chance it was intentional.

“Oh. Do you have any ideas? You know, about what we should do now?” Furrball kept his voice low.

“Not really. All I know is that we can’t come up a plan right now. We don’t have enough information, and what we don’t know could get us killed. It’s like one of Road Runner’s physics tests.” Calamity was getting more comfortable with using his voice, especially now that only someone he trusted could hear him.

Furrball stifled a laugh. Road Runner was notorious for putting trick questions in his tests and homework assignments, and for deducting more and more points for more time his students put into searching for a nonexistent answer. Calamity, like most of the students, had resented it at first, and believe Road Runner should have only been allowed to teach Outwitting, because he couldn’t teach anything else without turning it into that. But after repeatedly watching his mentor get hurt while trying to force a trap or device that had already failed to work – Wile E. trying to pry a lit bomb loose from a tight spot on a track was one of the more memorable – and then recognizing the same habit in himself, Calamity finally understood the lesson. He still hadn’t caught Li’l Beeper yet, but his rival was having to work harder than Road Runner ever did to make his plans backfire.

“What do we need to now that we don’t now?” asked Furrball.

Calamity thought for a moment. “I think the biggest problems are the Dip sprinklers, and these cuffs. So… do you remember if there were more of them on the other floors, or is it just down here?”

“Uhh… I wasn’t paying much attention to the ceiling. There were a lot of pipes, but I don’t know if there were any sprinklers. But… do you think if we broke open the water sprinklers, we could flood this place?”

“Are you crazy? We don’t know which is which! If we break the Dip ones by accident we’re dead!”

“The Dip ones have green covers and the water ones have blue covers.” Furrball pointed at the ceiling. “See?”

“Oh.” Calamity hadn’t noticed there was a difference. “I guess, maybe… there’s a drain in the floor, but we could probably block that with fur and toilet paper… no, wait, that wouldn’t do anything about the other cells. Plus it would take a while for the water to rise, and we don’t know if they can be shut off from a control room or something. But this should be real water, so we might be able to do something useful with it.”

Furrball let out an appreciative whistle. “I never even thought that far. So, what about the cuffs?”

Calamity inspected his wrists. The cuffs were basically donut-shaped, about an inch and a half thick, and made of what looked and felt like opaque white plastic. There were the lines of a hinge, with a metal pin, and a metal lock with a seemingly normal keyhole. “Have you tried picking the lock?” he asked.

“Yeah. While they were grabbing you. But my claws won’t reach since I can’t lengthen them.”

“Oh. Yeah. Wait… what about cutting them with your claws? I think they’re just plastic.”

“Not yet. Lemme see.” Furrball dug the claws on one hand into the cuff on the other and pulled with all his strength. Calamity was about to tell him he should only scratch them close to the skin where the fur would hide the clawmarks from the humans, but Furrball grimaced and threw up his hands in irritation. “What are these things made of? If they weren’t so smooth they’d probably file my claws down!”

Calamity looked at the cuff. There wasn’t even the slightest mark. It seemed like biting them probably wouldn’t have an effect either. If anything, if he wasn’t careful he could break a tooth. Still, it was worth a shot. He brought his hand toward his mouth.

“They’re coming back!” Furrball hissed. “Act natural!”

Sure enough, three sets of footsteps approached. There was the sound of a card being swiped, a buzzer and a mechanical click, and the cell door swung open. Lowell strode confidently into the room wearing a white lab coat. He was followed by a similarly-attired red-haired woman with a face pockmarked with what looked like burn scars. Kenny waited just outside, still carrying the Dip gun.

“Carol, would you bring that one?” Lowell pointed to Calamity. “There was a… Dip-related accident during his capture.”

“Fine,” Carol growled. She stumped closer and grabbed Calamity around the chest, then slung him under one arm like a sack of potatoes despite Furrball’s protests. She smelled bad, like old laundry mixed with some sort of chemical.

They were led down another couple of hallways, and into a room filled with a variety of strange equipment. In the middle of the space sat a pair of chairs similar to the ones in doctors’ offices, but with an assortment of buckles and straps. Calamity tensed and started to shiver against his will. He had a bad feeling about this. But they couldn’t fight back, not yet. They had to cooperate. Between the two chairs was a counter with what looked like medical equipment on it – tubes, needles, boxes, swabs, and bottles of liquids. Against the left wall was an easel with a lamp, jars of pens, pencils, and brushes, as well as a palette and more bottles. To the right was machinery Calamity didn’t recognize. But taking up the entire far wall…

“Is that an animation machine?” Calamity gasped. He’d only ever seen one down in the basement at school. At least, the machine itself was there; the building’s worth of support equipment for it wasn’t. It used to belong to the Warner Bros Studio, but it was mothballed in the 1960s when the studio quit drawing new toons into life, and would have been scrapped, but Acme Looniversity’s founders had bought it off the studio. Officially it was there as a museum piece and educational tool, but everyone knew the real reason was sentimental value. Most of Acme Loo’s staff had been born from that very machine. Calamity knew a few functional animation machines still existed, but these days it was rare for new toons to be drawn in America.

The man fiddling with the machinery on the right wall straightened up and turned around. He had a wrinkled, cleanshaven face, a suspiciously black combover, and small but piercing blue eyes. He too wore a white lab coat. “Very perceptive,” he said in a faint East-Coast accent. “An Artistic-Celular Manifestation Expeditor, to be exact.”

“I know what it’s called.” The machine had been invented around the turn of the century by Howard Acme, the older brother of Marvin Acme. Calamity winced as Carol placed him into one of the two chairs with more force than was necessary. Kenny motioned for Furrball to do the same. Trying to stop himself from hyperventilating, Calamity made as big a show as possible of putting his limbs in place to be strapped down. He doubted whatever they were planning on doing to him was good, but it was going to happen one way or another. He just had to keep the humans talking, and hope whatever they had planned was non-lethal. He and Furrball weren’t just prisoners now, they were spies. If they somehow made it out of there alive, he was sure whatever the humans were doing with the ACME Machine would be crucial to stopping them. “But why’s there one here? I thought you hated toons!”

“Lowell and Herschel are animators,” Kenny said. He lowered his gun as Carol started to strap Furrball into the other chair. The cat had gone rigid and had the expression of a deer caught in a car’s headlights. “They’ve been making equipment for us – portable holes, fake paint jobs for the vehicles, stuff like-” Lowell gave him an odd look. “Sorry. Guess I shouldn’t have told them that?”

“No, no, that’s fine,” said Lowell. “It’s not like they’ll be going anywhere. But, well… I wouldn’t say that’s the limit of our activities.”

“You’re kidding me.” Kenny stared at the jumble of pipes, wires, and clockwork in the back of the room, then back at Lowell. “You’ve actually been drawing toons? That’s your big secret? Are you nuts? That goes against everything we’ve been fighting for!”

“No, it doesn’t.” Lowell, looking completely unperturbed, slowly stretched on a pair of latex gloves. “No, it’s necessary for everything we’ve been fighting for. For a start, this facility could never have been completed without the supernatural tunneling abilities of toon rabbits, gophers, moles, that sort of thing.”

“But – but that’s...”

“Do you know what a toon is, Mr. Reavis?” Herschel took a second pair of gloves from the box on the counter between the chairs. He put them on with trembling hands.

“An artificial creature, made of… ink I guess?”

“Exactly. Artificial. A creature made from ink and blood, and given the semblance of life by Man’s hand, much like homunculi, golems, and similar creatures in folklore.” Herschel moved around to the side of the table facing the two toons, limping slightly. He looked at Calamity and lightly touched the bandage on his foot with some displeasure. “Did you do this?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Well… I mean, the kid was real scared, and in a lotta pain. What was I supposed to do, just leave him with the sole of his foot burned off?”

Lowell sighed. “No, bandaging it was a good call. A toon could probably still get some sort of infection with a wound like that.”

“I agree,” said Herschel. “You took the correct action, but your reasoning is dangerous. You cannot anthropomorphize these creatures.”

“We’re already anthropomorphic!” Furrball struggled against the straps holding him in the chair.

“That’s not what he means,” Calamity muttered. “He’s saying he thinks we’re… subhuman.”

“Err… Subhuman sounds a little generous.” Herschel smiled lopsidedly, but didn’t bother looking at Calamity. It seemed like he didn’t know or particularly care who had spoken. “More just… not. toons are artificial. Manmade. The people who invented them could have used them to benefit humanity.” he paused for breath, but not long enough for anyone else to speak. “Do you know how many people died in workplace accidents last year? Several thousand in America alone. And most of them in certain fields – construction, mining, logging. Imagine how many lives would be saved if those jobs weren’t being worked by humans.”

Calamity had to admit, he’d had similar thoughts. Hell, his dad worked on an offshore oil rig, and he’d told Calamity that there was an agreement with the crews he worked with that if there was a fire, or explosion, or a confined space full of toxic gases, or anything like that, he’d be the one to go in. So far there hadn’t been any accidents where a human would have died, but there were a couple of times where one more thing going wrong would have created a lethal situation. The company appreciated the arrangement too. The worst-case scenario of a toon employee getting ‘ h aloed’ could mean a costly worker’s comp claim to cover weeks to months of lost wages and expenses, but it was still a lot cheaper than a wrongful death lawsuit could be. But toons who worked dangerous jobs did so by choice. Pay discrimination was illegal, so they got the reward of a higher salary without most of the risk, but the jobs still had long hours, time away from family, and the possibility of a really bad day at work. Something told Calamity Herschel didn’t mean it as an option. “Sounds like slavery,” he muttered.

“It’s not slavery. Not any more than it’s slavery for a computer to perform calculations or search the internet for information, both things a secretary would otherwise be doing,” Herschel replied. “Your kind are created by humans; you’re tools – complicated, even intelligent ones, but tools nonetheless.”

Furrball bared his teeth. “I wasn’t made in some kind of test tube. I had parents.”

“And cars are mostly assembled by robot arms in a factory.” Herschel’s voice was light and airy, as if the conversation had no importance to him whatsoever and his lips were just going through the motions.

“Hate to break it to you, but your kind’s made by humans too. See, when a mommy human and a daddy human love each other very much...”

Carol grabbed Furrball’s tail and yanked it, making him yowl in protest. “Keep running yer mouth and I’ll gag you with an acetone-soaked rag!” she grabbed a washcloth and a plastic bottle from the counter and brandished them.

“Get to the point...” Lowell groaned. “You said not to anthropomorphize them, but now you’re arguing with them.”

“The point? Oh, yes, the point. Sorry, it’s an easy trap to fall into.”

“Yes, that’s why I took Kenny here off the retrieval and elimination teams,” said Lowell.

“Good thinking. Anyway...” Herschel addressed Kenny again. “Animation had the potential to do great things for humankind, but our predecessors… they used it to put on puppet shows. They created actors! Props! Comedians! Imagine our world if the internal combustion engine was squandered on car races, and monster truck rallies. Imagine if refrigeration was only ever used to have snowball fights in the summer. And then, to make matters worse, they gave their creations what could only be called egos, and gave them the ability to multiply. And now, well… it’s like in Fantasia, with Mickey Mouse and the broomsticks!” Herschel grinned, then burst out laughing. “Ironic how apt that turned out to be, isn’t it? They’ve spread and grown and multiplied beyond all control. Which leaves us in the position of Merlin. We have to get rid of all the copies, and put the broom back in human hands. Are you with me so far?”

“Uhh...” Kenny had been nodding along, although he looked uneasy and had taken a couple of steps back. “Yeah, but isn’t that what Dip is for? You’re saying you’re… making more brooms.”

“I hoped so. I hoped so, but… I think I’m mixing my metaphors. If the brooms represent the toons in existence today, then the art of Animation is represented by the magic. And, unfortunately, it has become clear to me that we, with Dip as our only weapon, are playing the role of Mickey with the axe. I hoped we could be cautious, and Lowell and I could limit ourselves to props and simple workers that we could melt down when we were done with them. But the disaster with those buffoons and Slappy Squirrel taught us otherwise. Dip might level the playing field against most toons, but the hubris of the animators of the past has created true monsters. The only thing that can truly fight toons on equal terms is another toon.”

“You’re talking about a toon army.” Kenny folded his arms. “That’s… no, I think I see what you’re saying. If you don’t give them that ego, and keep them under strict control, they won’t turn on us?”

“Yes, and no.” Herschel smiled cryptically. At least, one side of his face did. The other was a grimace of disappointment. “I thought that might be the solution, before the ill-fated encounter with the Squirrel. An army of mindless drones would be nothing more than playthings to stronger toons, if not weapons in their hands. The solution has to be monsters of our own. But…” the old man paused. His face twitched, and he stared at the wall. It was several seconds before he started to speak again. “But animation is dangerous work. toons are nothing more than we, the animators, create, but their power to reshape reality and bend it to their wills is born of chaos and madness.” Herschel stiffened, and his voice took on the tone of a preacher reaching the Fire and Brimstone portion of his sermon. “During the act of creation, we are linked to them. We put our blood, our minds, our very souls, into them, but that leaves us vulnerable. We have to disconnect our minds from reality, plunge ourselves into the depths of insanity. The more powerful the toon, the deeper we have to go, and the harder it is to come back.” He paused again, and his next words were calm and wistful. “It destroys your mind. Even with the weak ones it happens, little by little.”

“I’m sure you can tell neither of us are quite all the way there,” added Lowell. “We all have to make sacrifices for the cause.”

“You’ve kept within your limits, though, my friend.” Herschel patted his shoulder. “I learned the hard way, when I was young. Of course, my mistake didn’t stop at tearing my mind apart.” He lifted his baggy pants leg dramatically. Calamity’s eyes bulged at the sight. Above the man’s left shoe was nothing but a metal pole, leading up to a flesh-colored plastic stump.”

“Jesus...” Kenny covered his mouth. “What happened?”

“A ten ton weight happened. The floor collapsed, and I was pulled down into the basement. That broke my arm and my other leg. Then it came up to me and yanked me out, and played with me and danced like I was a doll – a puppet. And all I could do was point at the bloody stump and laugh until I passed out from blood loss. And then, when I was at home in a wheelchair, it came for me again. But I was ready for it that time!” Herschel chuckled again. “I was waiting for it with a bucket of Dip. Damn thing didn’t think it was very funny then! That’s your lesson for the day, son. These things aren’t people, they’re devils!”

“And that’s what we’re trying to avoid, this time,” said Lowell. “Our theory is that if we supplement the animator with another source of power, another source of life, we can protect ourselves. We can control the chaos. And...” Lowell reached for the counter and retrieved a needle that looked like it was meant for tranquilizing an elephant, a syringe pump, and a plastic bag, all connected with flexible plastic tubing. He grinned sadistically. “That’s where these two come in. Our theory is that if we use ink in place of our own blood, we can provide an alternate energy source and shield ourselves from any feedback.”

Kenny raised an eyebrow. “And if it doesn’t work?”

“I’ll be the guinea pig,” said Herschel. “I’m already worse off than Lowell. If I go nuts it’s less of a loss. The machine’s connected to an observation chamber which has the same sprinklers as the rest of this level. If there’s a problem with the new toon we’ll dissolve it and try again.”

“And we have tried this before,” Lowell added. “The machine’s already been modified, and we’ve tested the procedure out with a few more animal-like toons as donors – little things no one would report missing. There haven’t been any problems so far, but the little ones won’t give us the result we need. I’m not sure these two will either, but we ought to at least get something strong enough to help the retrieval teams collect better donors.”

“What happens to the… uhh… donors?”

“Well, we’ll keep them around as a backup. The Resistance should be able to move on to harder targets if all goes well, but we don’t anticipate immediate success. We might need a few iterations.”

Calamity could only stare at Furrball in abject terror. They’d gotten information, all right, but it was truly horrific. What were they supposed to do? They’d live through the humans’ procedure, at least at first, but their ink would be used to create… something. Every drawn toon Calamity had ever met was created to entertain. Even the villainous ones, even villains who had let their role go to their heads, were still really only a bit rough around the edges. What sort of nightmare would a toon drawn with hatred, with the sole purpose of killing its own kind, be. And harder targets? That could only mean one thing. They would attack places like Acme Looniversity, and the studios, and from there, keep on killing as many at a time as they could. His friends, his teachers, his family – everyone he knew was in danger.

“Let’s see. I think the cat goes first...” Lowell hummed as he spoke. He jabbed the needle into Furrball’s arm. Furrball winced, but no ink came out. The human narrowed his eyes and jabbed it in again, then again with a violent, punching motion. Furrball cried out, but the needle broke.

That was it! That was the solution! toons had ink flowing through their veins, but getting it out was another matter. Sharp objects hurt a lot more than blunt ones, but causing actual injury was still extremely difficult without a toon relaxing their body. It was possible to be cut in half and still put yourself together without bleeding. They just had to keep themselves tense – not like that would be difficult given the circumstances – and the mad animators would be thwarted.

Swearing, Lowell pulled the broken needle off the tube and picked up a plastic bag from the counter. He tore it open. “Carol, the Passivation Solution, please.”

“Gladly.” Carol went behind the chairs and picked up a glass bottle from the other side of the counter. She unscrewed the lid and poured some onto a washcloth. Immediately a cold, sharp chemical smell hit Calamity’s nose “Should I do both of them?”

“Yes. Hairball, you’re making this more difficult for both of us than it needs to be.”

Furrball thrashed against the straps, trying to swipe at the man. “I’d rather be Dipped than let you turn my ink into monsters!”

Carol pressed the soaked washcloth against Calamity’s arm, then against Furrball’s, pressing hard enough to squeeze the clear liquid out and make it run down their fur. It fizzed and hissed, the moment it touched them, but it didn’t burn the way Dip did, just tingled.

“Look, you stupid feline -” Lowell wrestled the replacement needle onto the tube. “That’s a Passivation solution: 70% acetone, 30% isopropyl alcohol. It briefly makes your skin a bit more grounded in reality, which means that I can do...” He stuck the needle into Furrball’s arm again. This time, it stayed put. “This.” He pulled up on the syringe pump. Bright red liquid flowed through the tubing.

Calamity wanted to look away, to shut his eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening, but he couldn’t. Was it really that easy? Their last line of resistance, of defiance to their captors, was gone just like that. They were both completely helpless. Then Furrball met his eyes, and when he saw the tears streaming down his friend’s face, he lost it completely. The plastic bag filled with ink, and Lowell changed his targets, but Calamity barely even felt the pain of the needle. By the time it was over he was so lightheaded there was no chance of him balancing even on one foot. He was vaguely aware that Furrball was in a similar state, and of being carried back to the cell in Lowell’s cold, latex-gloved hands, but it didn’t matter now. None of it mattered. They couldn’t escape, they couldn’t fight back. They would just die here after being used as a blood bank until the humans decided they were no longer useful. Until they found ‘better donors.’ Calamity wondered if the last thing he’d see would be Buster and Babs being dragged into a cell, or Hamton, or Plucky, or Fifi, or… probably not Max or Elmyra.

“Calamity?” Furrball asked hoarsely a long time after they were locked back in the bare cell. They’d both been crying for a long time. “Do you think anyone’s noticed we’re gone?”

“I don’t know...” Calamity whispered back. “Do you think it’s morning yet? You didn’t fall asleep, right?” The naked light bulbs on the ceiling were a constant. It could have been the next evening.

“No idea,” Furrball said. “I think it might be.” He smiled for a moment. “Man, I bet Plucky’s gonna spend all of Biology complaining that he actually has to do something on the lab with me gone.”

“No, I’ll bet he sleeps the whole period and doesn’t realize you never show up until he sees the zero on his paper.”

“You’re on.”

Chapter Text

“Good mooorning, Ralph!” Yakko hung his head out the window of Dr. Scratchansniff’s wooden-sided 1970s Ford station wagon as it lurched up to the entrance gate of the studio lot. The engine spluttered like a drowning man. “I see you’ve kept the studio well-defended in our absence?”

“Aauhhh, good morning, Warners! And Doctor Scratchansniff! And dummy-wagon!” Ralph tipped his security guard’s cap three times. The Warner siblings had been calling Scratchy’s car ‘The Dummkopfwagen’ for years now, and the name had gradually spread around the Studio. They’d even gotten Scratchy to use the name himself a couple times, much to Yakko’s delight.

Yakko tipped an imaginary hat back.

“Good morning, Ralph!” Scratchy said. “Err… are you going to open ze gate for us?”

“Huh? What? Oh, yeah, da gate, sorry!” The fat security guard fumbled for the button. “Oh, yeah, Warners!” he said cheerfully. “I was supposed to tell you you’re wanted in the headquarters building!”

Yakko felt his pulse quicken slightly. “Wow, so how mad is Plotzie?” Last night, he’d said he wasn’t scared of the balding executive, and he wasn’t. But he wasn’t looking forward to seeing him again, either. It was actually nice talking to Scratchy more or less seriously. He’d gotten a lot off his chest that he hadn’t even realized was bothering him until then. And it was nice feeling like he actually had the trust of someone besides his brother and sister. But the feelings he’d shared with Scratchy were uncomfortable, painful even. He looked at the bandage on his arm. The small wound he’d given himself was gone minutes after he’d wrapped his arm up, but there was still a small black ink stain on the gauze. He hadn’t bothered taking it off yet, but made a note to do so and throw it in the nearest trash can.

It wasn’t that he had a problem with showing vulnerability, Yakko told himself. He could put on an emotional performance whenever he wanted. There wasn’t as much fun or creativity in it as running his mouth and telling jokes, but it didn’t make him uncomfortable or anything. Only… that was just it. It had to be a performance, or a ruse. It was like the Sun Tzu quote: ‘Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.’ Or was that Star Wars? He didn’t remember. Either way, he didn’t like giving anyone ammunition they could use against him. He wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t really had a bad experience, although something told him the executives and directors back in the old days probably would have used it against him if he’d ever told them how much he hated it when he, or worse, Wakko and Dot, were called horrible children, monsters, brats, and so on when they just being themselves and trying to make people laugh.

Maybe that was why he’d like shooting the movie so much more than he thought he would. It was all made up, the setting, the plot, the lines were all totally fictional, but it let him put real feelings – his love for his siblings, his fear that something would happen to them, the little voice in his head whenever he saw kids with their parents asking what if? - into the role without anyone knowing he was doing so. He was pretty sure Wakko and Dot felt the same way, but then again, Wakko said he’d just liked getting a bigger role when sometimes he felt like Yakko and Dot left him in the dust. And Dot had cried at the end of Titanic .

Whatever the case, though, Yakko was definitely not telling Plotz any of what he’d told Scratchy last night, but he also didn’t want to have to offer any other explanation or apology for his behavior.

“Duhhh, uhh, Mr. Plotz didn’t ask for you kids, Bugs did!”

“Huh?” Now Yakko actually felt the ink drain from his face. It was Friday, during school hours. Bugs should have been at work. The fact that he was at the studio, and asking to speak to Yakko and his siblings in person the moment they returned to the studio – Scratchy had called ahead earlier that morning to inform everyone he was giving them a ride back – meant something serious was going on. He looked back at Wakko and Dot.

“What’s he want us for?” asked Wakko.

“Ahh, I dunno,” said Ralph.

At that, Yakko undid his seat belt and vaulted out of the car window. “C’mon, sibs, let’s not keep him waiting. See ya later, Scratchy!” Then he was off like a shot across the parking lot. A few seconds later, all three Warners were standing in the lobby of the office building. Bugs Bunny was seated on a couch. He coolly looked up, then stood. His eyes had a reddish tint, the tip of one ear was folded down, and his whiskers were disheveled. It didn’t look like the rabbit had gotten enough sleep recently.

“What’s up, old timers?” Bugs said in his usual sardonic tone. “Glad ya could make it.”

“Well, the 101’s the 101. So, what’d we miss?”

Bugs narrowed his eyes slightly. “What’d ya miss since when?”

“Since, uhhhhhh… the sixteenth?”

Bugs motioned for them to follow him towards the elevator. “So, strictly confidentially, did you three shut yourselves in the tower all week or were ya under a rock or what?”

“Option two,” admitted Dot.

“Well, there’ve been several interesting developments out here in the real world.”

Yakko winced. They were part of the informal group at the studio investigating the murders, and now kidnappings, and after the worst attack yet they’d practically taken a vacation for a week. They’d been in the mountains of Alaska, the Australian Outback, tiny islands in the South Pacific – anywhere that was remote enough that there was no sign of human, or toon presence. It was just the three of them, the way it had been for most of the last sixty-nine years. They should have been helping look for the killers. “Sorry we kinda… ditched you guys,” he mumbled.

“Don’t sweat it.” Bugs lead them into the elevator and pressed one of the basement buttons. “You’re not the only toons that had a mental breakdown after that. I don’t think things’ve been like this since… nah, even in ‘47 they weren’t like this. Everyone’s scared.”

“How are the kids at school?” asked Dot.

“Err… do ya mean in general, or just your pals?”

“Both.”

“Well, in general it’s pretty crazy. The kids are freaked out, but to be frank the worst part’s the parents. Quite a few of ‘em have pulled their kids out. Dey’re claimin’ it’s not safe here.”

Yakko raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t all the murders and kidnappings so far happened in the victims’ own homes?”

“Exactly.” Bugs rolled his eyes. “Although in fairness some of the families don’t live close by. And, well… Calamity and Furrball were both on their own. Fifi and Sweetie Pie goin’ home I understand. Montana Max and Fowlmouth’s parents are idiots, though… I’ll reserve judgement on Babs’s.”

“I won’t,” said Dot. Babs’s parents were known for causing difficulty during the filming of Tiny Toon Adventures. They complained about anything remotely adult in scripts, complained about child labor laws whenever any filming took place after 9 P.M – incorrectly, since the laws they usually cited were California state law and not applicable in Toontown – and agreed to be shown in episodes but refused to have their faces visible, creating such a headache for the editors that usually anything involving them was cut out entirely. This was before the Warners had escaped the tower, but the siblings had encountered them thanks to the episodes of Animaniacs where Babs and Buster cameoed. Then Dot’s eyes widened. “Wait – Babs’s parents pulled her out?” she squeaked.

“Yep.” The elevator smoothly stopped and the doors slid open with a soft ding. “This way to the war room,” Bugs said. “They’re movin’ out to the country in about a week – farther from the border. I can’t say I blame ‘em, since they’ve lost a relative an’ all, but I can’t say I agree that it’s in Babs’s best interests, takin’ her away from her friends.”

“They can’t stop her seeing them outside school hours, can they?” asked Wakko.

“Well, as her parents, they can refuse to let her go to Acme Acres, ground her, or even confine her to the house,” replied Bugs. “Ah. I see your point. Yeah, if she sneaks out or runs of they can’t exactly stop her, but that’d create an even bigger mess. Anyway, here we are!”

The ‘War Room’ turned out to be a small multipurpose room in the basement that a bunch of chairs, a table, and a computer and projector had been dragged into. The lights were off and the projector was shining on the blank white wall. There were several other toons there already. Slappy, whose bowler hat had been replaced by a WWII-era army helmet, still with her trademark yellow flower, was pretty much a constant at the meetings. Brain – in his own tiny swivel chair next to the computer – and Daffy Duck weren’t there all the time, but they’d been involved pretty much since the safety briefing in July. The one in the high-chair, Yakko recognized from old cartoons, from Who Framed Roger Rabbit , and from having met the guy a few times: Baby Herman. He was dressed in an appropriately-sized black suit and smoking a cigar – Herman was retired from making cartoons and mostly did voiceovers for commercials, so he no longer put even a modicum of effort in maintaining an infantile public appearance. But the toon slouched in a plush red armchair he’d somehow squeezed into the small space was completely unfamiliar. He was squat-bodied, a little shorter than Yakko, and wore navy-blue pinstriped pants with suspenders, a black shirt, and a white bow tie. His gloved hands drummed rhythmically on the chair’s arms. He had a long, hairless tail and a long, upturned snout with a round, black nose. A pair of bright red eyes stared out from under a gray fedora that was tilted forward on his face.

“Who’s that?” Yakko whispered to Bugs.

“An ol’ pal of ours. Peter Possum.”

Wakko hopped onto a chair and reached over the table, stretching his arm out to meet the stranger’s. “Hi! We’re the Warner Brothers!”

Dot jumped onto the table. “And the Warner sis-”

“I know who ya are, yer show’s on every damn Saturday.” Peter shook Wakko’s hand, then slumped back into his chair. He spoke with a strange accent that sounded something like a mix between South Boston and the Appalachians.

“That’s refreshing to hear, a lot of people confuse us with Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy.” Yakko pointed to Wakko, Dot, and himself in succession. Now that he thought about it, the guy looked vaguely familiar. And when Bugs called someone an old friend, that meant old, someone who’d been around when he was making theatrical shorts. But he still looked and sounded fairly young. “Uhhhhhh… have I seen you somewhere?”

Peter shrugged. “In a cartoon, probably.”

“What studio?”

“Maroon. Had a show with TEN for a while in the seventies too.”

“Maroon? Seriously?” Yakko whistled. Maroon Cartoons was one of the ‘Big Five’ cartoon studios in the first half of the century – the other four were Warner Bros, Disney, MGM, and Universal - and the only one that wasn’t a subsidiary of a larger human-based studio, but after R.K. Maroon’s death in 1947 it had gone bankrupt and its stars put out of work. TEN was toon Entertainment Network, one of the biggest TV channels in Toontown. If you were lucky you could pick it up from L.A.

“You might know him better as Pistol-Packin’ Possum,” said Herman. “One of the founding members of the ‘Turned Down Who Framed Roger Rabbit Club’ along with Slappy.”

Slappy gave him a dark look. “I wasn’t even in California in ‘47, ya yutz. It wouldnt’a been historically accurate.”

“And some of us got actual jobs, y’know,” Peter said with a grin. “Outside Hollywood. I was trackin’ down arms smugglers in Colombia.”

“Yeah, sure, sure...” Herman rolled his eyes. “Anyway, Roger and I made sure we got his poster on the set.”

Wakko’s face lit up. “Oh! In Maroon’s office? With the gun?”

“Yeah! That’s where! I remember now!” said Yakko.

“Just sit down...” Daffy groaned. “Speaking of people with jobs and social lives, I don’t have all day. Let’s actually start this meeting before the Warners’ movie comes out.” Wakko’s Wish was stuck in post-production and last Yakko had heard, it seemed unlikely they would be able to release it before Christmas. If that happened it would be delayed an entire year.

“Yes, let’s,” said Slappy.

“Very well...” Brain got out of his swivel chair and moved to the computer keyboard. He clicked the mouse with a flourish, and a slide went up on the wall.

“Can ya do a quick recap for the Warners?” asked Bugs. “I was gonna bring ‘em up to speed before we got in here, but we walk kinda fast.”

“Fine...” Brain sighed with the tone that it wasn’t. “Why don’t you summarize instead? You also talk considerably more rapidly than most of us.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Bugs batted his eyebrows. Everyone besides Brain was seated by this point. “So, regarding incidents prior to your disappearance, remember how we got statements from Calamity’s neighbors that they heard loud banging around 3:30 AM, followed by an engine? Well, Daff finally got finished checking with hospitals, and at around four AM Pomona Valley Hospital had a John Doe come in with what looked like a gunshot wound only there was lacerations like a spike with blades on it had hit ‘im.”

“By John Doe do you mean he was dead or unconscious?” asked Yakko.

“They mean the guy wouldn’t give them a name and had no ID,” said Daffy. “Standing around minding his own business apparently. They called the cops of course, but that wasn’t enough to arrest him so they ended up letting him go.”

“So in conclusion we learned nothing?”

Bugs rolled his eyes. “We learned that despite there bein’ about a dozen hospitals closer to Toontown than that dey took him to that one. There’s two possibilities; either they were headin’ East and hopin’ they didn’t need to drop him off at a hospital, or they realized they had to a lot earlier and intentionally dropped ‘im off in an odd location in case we caught on. Either way, dependin’ on the exact time table, getting from Acme Acres to there by car’s either difficult or impossible – assuming ya don’t drive like Slappy, at least. That makes Brain’s theory about toon assistance more plausible.”

“In addition,” said Brain, “the DNA results from the blood found in Calamity’s house have come in. There was actually blood from two separate people. One is unidentified, but the other is one Frank Roebuck. He has multiple assault convictions, and has ties to a religious group called the Church of the Wounded Palm which teaches that man creating life in his own image, i.e. Animation, is the highest form of blasphemy. They have been involved with protests and vandalism of Animation colleges, studios, and such in the past.” Brain pulled up a mugshot of a slightly overweight but still relatively young man with a black eye.

“But you suspected there was an animator among them,” said Daffy. “If those are our malcontents, that would be extremely-”

“Hypocritical,” interrupted Slappy. “So exactly what you’d expect from a group ‘a religious nuts. Who knows, maybe they decided any toon they create’s a gift from God or somethin’. They’ll find out when they meet ‘im soon enough.”

“We don’t have any proof the whole group’s behind this,” said Bugs. “Someone else could just be recruiting from their members, so let’s not get carried away!”

“In any case,” said Brain, “Mr. Roebuck was reported missing five months ago, but he matches the description of the John Doe in the hospital.”

“What about the truck?” asked Yakko.

Bugs made a face like he’d taken a swig of pure lemon juice. “Well… I guess you’ve been living under a rock so I gotta tell ya. It killed six-hundred-seventy people we know of including the Governor and about a third of the legislators.”

“Jesus...”

“Toontown’s declared a State of Emergency, and right now the National Guard’s got checkpoints at every entrance. No human vehicle enters or leaves without bein’ searched.”

“If they’re being helped by a toon that’s not gonna do anything,” said Yakko.

“Kid, not all of us can paint tunnels or teleport in our sleep, y’know.” Baby Herman blew a smoke ring.

Yakko bristled. “Calling me kid’s a bit rich coming from a guy who’s still in diapers.”

“Shut it, both of you,” warned Slappy. “If there’s no more attacks in Toontown that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s humans acting alone, but if there is one it’ll confirm without a doubt that they’ve got toons helping ‘em, and pretty strong ones too.”

“But the five attacks this past week have all been outside of Toontown,” said Bugs. “In fact, one was in Pittsboigh.”

“That’s not exactly a convenient location to reach from California either.” Yakko pulled out a map of the U.S. “Unless of course someone were to Scene Change them all in there at once.”

“If they had that capability, then our John Doe would have been dropped off much farther way,” countered Daffy. “And possibly much sooner, too! The Pittsburgh attack was probably a copycat!”

“Either way, it’s scared everyone,” said Bugs. “Right now there’s a lotta toons in L.A. fleeing to Toontown, and a decent number from around the country. If what dese psychos want’s to re-segregate humans and toons by spreadin’ terror, they’ve made a good start. Also regardin’ the truck, there’s no security footage from the Capitol since everything got melted, but we did manage to track down eyewitnesses who saw da thing speeding through the city well before the crash, and dey reported seein’ a toon dog in the cab.”

“Doesn’t that confirm it, then?” asked Yakko.

“No, because witnessin’ a crime immediately lowers your IQ by about ninety points. Eyewitnesses are da stupidest motherfuckers on the planet,” Peter drawled. He grinned and looked over at Slappy. “Present company included, of course.”

“If present company’s included yours’s gotta be five digits into the negative range,” Slappy replied.

Peter shrugged. “Dunno, could be six. I don’t count so good no more.”

“Get a room!” Herman flicked cigar ash in Peter’s general direction. “I may not be gettin’ any older but I ain’t gettin’ any younger either! The point is, we don’t know if the witness is reliable!”

“The presence of a toon in the cab is still the most likely explanation,” said Brain. “There has still been no human body recovered and examination of the wreckage has not revealed the remains of any remote control equipment.”

“There’s possible ways of controllin’ the truck without any of that and without bein’ in the cab, of course,” added Bugs. “But the rub is, only a toon could’a done ‘em so we’d be lookin’ at toon involvement anyway. I think that’s the whole newsreel, so let’s move on to what our next steps are and we can be outta here.”

“Hear, hear!” said Daffy.

“First off, we got a possible case of a rogue animator, and probably a Machine. Peter, ya already checked that there hasn’t been any stolen anywhere in the world, right?”

“Yep. They’re all accounted for.”

“Which means one could’a been cobbled together outta spare parts, or even made from scratch. Any idiot can make Dip, albeit not well or safely. The quantity that was in that truck means they most likely had a chemist or chemical engineer setting up equipment to make it on a large scale, but that’s what, a couple million people? Animators and Machines, though? That’s a very limited pool of people. Herman, you wanna get in touch with Acme, see if they got any former engineers you can look up?”

“Sure. Peter, you wanna handle Ajax?”

“Nah, I’ll do the foreign companies. Daff, you wanna do Ajax?”

“Gladly.” Daffy cracked his knuckle feathers. “It’s more likely to be someone from there anyway – shoddy products, shoddy employees.”

“Slappy and I will continue to handle the Animation side,” said Bugs. “Brain, you’ve got enough on your plate with the forensics and equipment development, right?”

“Unfortunately, I have not managed to eliminate the biological need for sleep, so yes. I will be forwarding Herman a list of possible contacts at Acme, although my familiarity with the department that works on Machines is limited.”

“What about us?” asked Yakko. Part of him resented how he was asking the rabbit for instructions. The group didn’t technically have a leader, but Bugs had ended up being de facto in charge of coordinating what everyone was doing. And really, it made sense. Bugs was the one who’d been working as principal of a high and middle school for the last twenty-something years. He was better at figuring out how to delegate tasks than any of them.

Bugs drew a carrot from Hammerspace and started gnawing at it. “Well...” he said. “I didn’t want to impose anything on you.” He polished off the carrot and threw the stump into the wastebasket in the corner with practiced aim. “Right now I don’t know what your emotional situation is. I’m not gonna ask for details on what the deal is with you, but I do need you to let me know what you can handle.”

“Right now my emotional situation is I’m mad at myself for running away and doing nothing for an entire week while people were dying.”

“All right, I’ll pencil that in under Drama Queen. It’d be nice if someone could check up on the Jesus Freaks, this Frank Roebuck character’s relatives, and so on. Even if they ain’t involved themselves, whatever organization is behind these attacks is probably recruitin’ from anti-Toon hate groups, so there’s probably someone with an idea who dey are. You guys fine with that?”

“I don’t know…” said Wakko. “I think if we’re just… talking to people, anything’s fine.”

“Well, ya can’t just go showin’ up on doorsteps, obviously,” said Bugs. “You boys are smart enough to figure that out yourselves – disguises, hypnosis, the whole shebang. But, well, you’ll be tryin’ to get into the confidence of the kinda people… look, Dot, what ya said last week probably actually applies to some ‘a these folks. And-”

“Stop sugar-coatin’ it, Rabbit.” Peter Possum hopped onto the table and looked down at Yakko with a sneer. His next words were in a strong southern drawl. “Y’know kid, those boys with the truck did the world a favor the way I reckons it. Few hundred inkstains down, few million more to go, know what I’m sayin?” He gave Yakko a light, almost playful shove, and chuckled. “I ain’t sayin’ I necessarily advocate violence, mind you, but if I was on a jury I sure as sin wouldn’t vote to convict. Them toons is dangerous, violent critters, an’ they oughta stay in Toontown and far, far away from us humans. An’ it’s a gol-dang travesty o’ justice that the gubbermint banned Dip. It oughtta be my carnstitutional right to defend myself if one of them comes skulkin’ around my property. Ain’t that right, boy?”

“Uhh… yeah. Sure thing.” Yakko swallowed hard. He saw what the possum was trying to do, but that irritated him just as much as the actual words coming out of his mouth. Did the guy seriously think he didn’t know that going undercover would mean smiling and laughing and pretending to agree with whatever hateful, disgusting nonsense the target said? Fine, then. He’d play along with his stupid test. He switched into the ‘fertilizer salesman’ voice he’d done to irritate a rude airplane passenger once. “Them toons are scum, just like I was tellin’ Joe Bob here!” he threw his arm around Wakko’s shoulders. “And they ain’t natural, just like televisions and birth control ain’t natural! By the way, did anyone ever tell you you had a purty mouth?”

“Yup, I get that all the time!” Peter replied. “Man, I tell ya, though – did’ja see them dumb schoolkids on the TV that got away? It’s a shame the news vans didn’t get there ‘til all the fun was over, would’a been pretty funny to see the rest of ‘em meltin’ away like in the Wizard of Oz. I wonder if toons really squeak when they die, like in-”

“Shut. Up.” Dot was standing up in her chair, shaking with fury. Her eyes shown with the reflections of nonexistent flames, and her fists were clenched so hard her gloves appeared to be shrink-wrapped to her skin. Her right hand strayed toward her back. “That’s not funny!”

“That’s ‘cuz I didn’t get to the punchline!” In the time it took Yakko to blink, Peter had a long-barreled revolver pointed at Dot’s head. He pulled the trigger, and a flag with the word ‘Bang!’ printed on it in bright green unfurled itself from the barrel. “Which is that I just found out, ‘cuz this thing’s loaded with Dip!”

“Uhh, yeah, no, Slappy did that trick better than you.” Yakko reached out and snatched the flag from the gun. “Your little test’s reaal clever, but if you wanna see how well we can act how about giving us better material? Maybe you can try talking like a real person who’s afraid of getting the cops called on him if he sounds too unhinged, instead of some condescending has-been blowhard who knows who we are and is is intentionally trying to push our buttons.”

Peter snorted, and shoved the gun down his waistband. It disappeared into Hammerspace. “I like you, you’re pretty funny,” he said in his normal voice. “You’d be surprised what real people’ll say when they think they’re in the company of other scumbags. I’ll admit, I gave ya a worst-case scenario, but you knew I was actin’ and you still slipped up with your expressions.”

Bugs added: “If that was real, hypothetically, Peter probably wouldn’t’ve suspected you were a toon or a cop, but he’d have noticed he was makin’ you uncomfortable, realized you weren’t a kindred spirit, an’ zipped his trap about anything important. You’d’ a had to switch to another disguise and try again.”

“And you’ve only got a few chances to do that before someone realizes someone’s snoopin’ and doesn’t say nuthin’ to nobody,” Peter said. “Keep that in mind and be careful slippin’ in passive-aggressive insults. Not everyone’s a complete chucklehead.” He pointed at Wakko. “You were almost perfect. You didn’t keep your ears and tail relaxed, but if you’re in a zip suit that doesn’t matter. Letting your brother do the talking’s probably a good call with that accent. But you -” he turned back to Dot. “Were an utter fuckin’ disaster. You were about to blow your cover and start a fight. At best all a yiz’d get the cops on your case and give the guys behind the attacks a recruitment tool they couldn’ta dreamed of.”

Dot climbed up onto the table. “I wasn’t playing your sick game,” she said venomously. “I don’t care if it’s an act, don’t make fun of little kids dying to my face again. And if you were a member of that stupid church, I wouldn’t have played nice with you either.”

“Uhh… yeah, dat’s the problem,” said Bugs. “I didn’t think I needed to clarify, but the idea was that you’d investigate without doin’ anything too illegal.”

“Then why don’t you let the expert handle it?” Yakko snapped, pointing at Peter.

Brain gave an exasperated sigh. “Yakko, are you fluent in German, Japanese, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese to the level of being able to find and read customs paperwork, records of employee termination, missing person reports, and so on?”

“I know Japanese.”

“Then Mr. Possum researching the source of any ACME Machine the enemy may possess is a higher priority.”

Bugs produced another carrot. He had once told Yakko that while he kept a few in his Hammerspace, most of the time he actually conjured them. Ordinarily conjured food tasted like cardboard, but Bugs said he’d practiced enough that they were almost as good as the real thing in both flavor and texture, but they still disappeared so they had none of the calories, and as Bugs put it, he could exercise his jaw on the rare occasions that he wasn’t talking. “We can wait on the whole church thing, doc. If you’re willin’ to split up, I trust you and Wakko to handle it with the necessary discretion, but you don’t have to do it. Dot, I think it’d be best if we found somethin’ less stressful you can do. Got any ideas?”

Dot took a deep breath, and slumped back into her chair. “Well… actually, I had an idea I was going to talk to Plotz about...” she explained her plan with the message to Toontown and the world.

“I actually like the sound of that,” said Bugs. “I’ll join ya on that if you can do all the legwork of talking to the execs, gettin’ your cast rounded up, and all that. I think it’s a pretty good way of handling things.”

“You gotta throw in a message to the pieces of putrefying garbage that did this, too,” said Slappy. “Tell ‘em we’ll find ‘em eventually, and then we’ll hunt ‘em down.”

“I think you should say that part,” Dot replied. “You already made an example of four of their guys.”

“At least folks’ll know they got someone fightin’ for ‘em,” commented Peter. “The cops and the feds’ve been about as much use as a Styrafoam anvil so far, but dey keep tellin’ us to go fuck ourselves.”

Bugs shrugged. “They’re doin’ their best, mac. Seems like a lotta folks just don’t trust the feds much ‘cuz they think they’re gonna get in trouble for somethin’. A reputation’s a powerful thing.”

“Right now my worry’s that they have a good lead but they’re keepin’ it quiet because they’re afraid of tipping off the killers that they’re on to ‘em,” said Slappy.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” asked Yakko. “There’s not exactly a camera crew and boom mic in here.”

“No, but I haven’t heard anyone claim we’re doin’ the attacks as a false flag, either. There’s been stuff not too different from you kids’s outburst last week gettin’ published in newspapers right now. At this rate the government’s gotta give the public some kinda proof they’re actually doing their jobs, or I’m worried there’s gonna be a riot.”

Dot led the charge up to Plotz’s office, and with all three Warners working together they were able to convince him, the other studio execs, and even the network bigwigs of their plan. By Tuesday, the PSA was filmed, and ready to be shown at the start of next Saturday’s episode. It didn’t take up the entire time allotted to the commercial breaks, but the remainder would be replaced with silence as the names and, if available, photos of every victim of the murders and the September 16 ^th attack scrolled past.

Yakko had done a bit of research on the Church of the Wounded Palm already, and found Frank Roebuck’s parents’ addresses in Cincinnati, but he kept putting off actually going. Peter Possum was a complete jerk, and a strong candidate for Special Friend status, but he had a point. There was a good chance they would have to listen to people glorify the mass-murder of innocent toons for no other reason than what they were. Could he handle standing in front of someone doing that, sincerely, and not mallet them in the face?

Then on Wednesday, the 30 ^th of September, came the bombshell. It was another set of murders, but one that broke the pattern. Six officers of the Burbank and Los Angeles Police Departments were found dead in their homes. Each had been killed in exactly the same way: an anvil being dropped on their heads.

Chapter Text

As he was trying to get to sleep, Calamity hit upon the one plan that had a good chance of stopping the organization he now knew called itself the Human Resistance from using their ink. It was an act of suicidal desperation. They had to break open the sprinkler in their cell – not the water one, the Dip one. They’d die, but it would deprive the two animators of their ink, and torpedo their plan to create toons as living weapons against their own kind.

At least, it would in theory. But the animators had mentioned attempting to kidnap other ink donors, and Calamity knew Babs and Buster were both on the list, so probably many of his other classmates were as well. The humans wouldn’t give up, they’d probably immediately go after them. If he were the only one captured, he might have committed to going through with it despite the risk, but he held off on telling Furrball about it. Besides, he couldn’t do it yet. The only things in the cell that weren’t bolted down were the contents of the tray of food a guard slid through the door, and none of that was sturdy enough to be usable. Every container was paper or Styrafoam, and everything was made to be eaten without utensils. Evidently their captors had decided that even plastic silverware would be too dangerous as a weapon. He had to wait until the humans brought in a step-stool so they could reach the sink. He pictured a solid wooden one in his mind, but even a plastic one had a good chance of breaking the sprinkler open if thrown at it.

But the second time they were taken to the Animation Room to have their ink drawn, they were left in the straps for much longer than before. When they were thrown back into the cell, there was a block of plastic foam – sturdy enough to stand on, but too light to be a useful weapon – glued to the floor in front of the sink, and worse, there was a framework of metal bars bolted to the ceiling over not just the Dip sprinkler, but the water one as well.

“It was worth a shot,” Furrball said when Calamity finally explained the plan to him. He even pointed out that there was still a way. They could wrestle one of the Dip guns from the guards and turn it on themselves, or force them to shoot them. The third time they were hauled off to the Animation Room, Furrball gave it his best shot, and was almost able to take the gun, but the guard – a large man who didn’t seem pleased to be stuck with the job – was able to kick him away and beat him into submission. Yet again they were kept strapped to the chairs for longer than before, and Lowell forcefully extended Furrball’s claws and carefully dabbed at them with a Dip-soaked paintbrush until they were blunted. He warned that the process would be repeated from then on, and if they continued to misbehave their teeth would get the same treatment.

Calamity was finally forced to admit their captivity was mechanically inescapable. Unless the humans made a mistake, they were stuck there until they were no longer useful. There was only one weakness: the humans themselves.

They couldn’t trust Kenny. He’d joined the cruel, toon-hating paramilitary group of his own free will, he’d willingly gone on the mission to kidnap them, and he was willingly guarding them. He was evil. But he wasn’t quite as bad as the others. He didn’t beat or threaten them for trying to talk to him, at least. And sometimes, he answered their questions.

It wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome, Calamity told himself. If anything, it was Lima Syndrome. Kenny was the easiest to psychologically manipulate. They didn’t have their most powerful tool, hypnosis, but they’d still taken classes on outwitting enemies. Kenny generally refused to answer anything about himself, or why he’d joined the Human Resistance, or why he was still with them. Calamity didn’t know if the man was having second thoughts. But he was at least willing to tell them the basic news of the organization.

On the fourth day of their captivity – they could tell time to some extent by the rotating guard shifts – Kenny told them the animators’ experiment had succeeded. Herschel and Lowell had finally announced their insane plan to the rest of the organization. According to him there had nearly been a riot. Some of the members were vehemently opposed to the idea of creating more of the same creatures they hated and believed should be wiped out. But Lowell assured them that the animators’ creations were completely under their control, and could be destroyed just as easily as they were created if they so much as attempted to harm a human. The Human Resistance was ultimately pacified.

On the fifth day, Kenny described a new plan. It would be the biggest attack yet. Herschel’s first creation had helped steal an old semi tanker, which would be filled with Dip, rigged with explosives, and driven into an undisclosed target in Toontown in a suicide attack. In the driver’s seat would be another toon, one of the ones made by Lowell prior to Calamity and Furrball’s abduction and one of the previous experiments with using ink instead of blood. Lowell had been more cautious, and his creations so far were weaker, too weak to have a chance against most of the Looney Tunes cast, but by sacrificing one of the older ones their obedience and loyalty would be demonstrated without question.

The attack, according to Kenny, was a complete success. They’d destroyed Toontown’s Capitol building, and killed the Governor as well as hundreds of others. After this, the plan was to lay low for a while, as Toontown and Southern California would be thrown into chaos. This, according to Lowell, would show the world the violent nature of toons and lay the seeds for the Human Resistance emerging from the shadows.

That was what finally broke Calamity. He bit and clawed and shook the bars of the wall like a wild animals, trying with every ounce of strength he had to get to the human and tear him limb from limb, consequences be damned. He and Furrball both dug at the concrete floor until their fingers were bloody, and then lay there crying until the guards changed and the new one threatened to burn their tongues out. Life turned into a simple routine of helplessness after that. Calamity didn’t care what they did to him anymore. It couldn’t get any worse. Their ink, their lifeblood, had been taken from them against their will and used to create lives that only had the purpose of bringing death. Hundreds of people had died because he didn’t have the strength to resist, didn’t even have the strength to die.

Without ever discussing the issue, he and Furrball both decided on the idea of a hunger strike independently. They refused not just food, but water. It wouldn’t kill them, but it would make them get weaker and weaker until they passed out, and the ink congealed in their veins. Calamity knew realistically that the humans could just as easily jam a needle into his arm to pump fluid and nutrients in as draw ink out, but it might at least delay them.

But instead, after the second week of captivity, the animators stopped drawing ink from them at all. They weren’t even let out of their cell. Lowell and Herschel had created enough toons for the time being, Kenny said. And then, after almost three weeks had gone by, something changed.

Kenny let himself into their cell, shutting the door behind him with a clang.

“What do you want?” Calamity said weakly. They were the first words he’d spoken in three days. He and Furrball were both huddled on the concrete bed.

“I want to talk.” Kenny laid down his Dip gun.

Calamity stared at the weapon on the ground. Kenny had stepped away from it. The release of death was so close, so tantalizingly close. He and Furrball exchanged a look. It was doable. They’d stopped the hunger strike after the ink draws stopped, they had the strength. One of them had to distract the man, the other would go for the gun. That would probably be Furrball; he was a better distraction. But that meant Calamity would have to pull the trigger on his best friend, as well as blinding Kenny with the caustic spray, before turning the gun on himself. He couldn’t do it. “About what?” he asked suspiciously.

Kenny’s crewcut had grown out, and his hair seemed like it might become wavy at some point. “Lowell and Herschel said once the Capitol was attacked, toons would acknowledge that they were at war with humanity. They said L.A. would be burning by now, and then humans would finally see the truth about the creatures they’d allowed to share their world. The army was supposed to move in, then, but even with Dip they’d be dyin’ like flies, and we were supposed to come out of the shadows and be welcomed as heroes.”

“You son of a bitch...” Furrball growled. He started to get up, unsheathing his claws. The humans had let those grow out again, too.

Calamity grabbed his friend’s hand and pulled him back down. He gave him a pleading look. Don’t do anything yet. “Did it happen?” he asked. He already knew the answer. Kenny wouldn’t be down there talking to them, alone, if it had.

“Well, it was supposed to take a while to get to that state. Months, maybe even a year. But nothing’s happened. We’ve kept up the killings outside of Toontown, but not a single one of them’s struck back.”

Calamity bit back a variety of angry words. Of course it hadn’t happened! That was because it was completely insane! Most toons weren’t violent creatures, not in the same way humans were. Or rather, violence was a game to most toons, because no matter how much the result hurt, it wasn’t permanent. And any toon with real power was raised from birth to be aware of how easy it was to kill a human without meaning to. Toon murderers were extremely rare. “That’s because you’re wrong about what we are,” Calamity said.

Kenny stared at the cat and the coyote, and there was a look in his eyes Calamity couldn’t place. Was it regret? Guilt? Or was it just fear? “Herschel doesn’t think so. He said we just need a couple more sparks to start the fire. He’s told most of the group the plan’s to do another big attack, and start hits in Toontown again… but he told me and the others with clearance to levels five and six differently. He said he’s… gonna make his own toon-on-human attack. A false flag on some cops that are getting a little too close for comfort. I don’t know if I have a problem with getting rid of them, but… he really does mean a toon’s gonna do it.”

“You were fine with provoking toons into killing humans,” said Calamity. “How’s ordering one to do it different?”

“It’s different. The ones that are already out there, we know are dangerous. But the ones he and Lowell made are supposed to be safe. They’ve been shadowing the guys on missions for a while now. But they promised they wouldn’t let anything they created ever harm a human being.”

Furrball’s glare intensified. “So why are you telling us subhuman monsters this? Go tell your buddies upstairs!”

“I’m a dead man if I do. That information’s not supposed to leave these floors. Hell, anyone I tell’s probably a dead man.”

“Who’s going to stop you?” asked Calamity. “You outnumber those animators, right?”

“Numbers don’t matter. They’ve got the toons on their side. Lowell’s made most of them, and his aren’t too bad. If we all fought back together we might take care of ‘em. But Herschel – he’s only finished two since he keeps scrapping his drawings halfway because he says there’s something wrong with them. But both of them are monsters, especially the second one. That’s why we haven’t caught any more ink donors so far.”

“So you think you and the other thugs have outlived your usefulness?” Furrball asked. “Now you know how we feel.”

Kenny’s eyes widened slightly. “Huh.”

Calamity took a deep breath. He’d never even dreamed he’d have a chance like this. This was his one chance, his best chance, to get the human on his side. He couldn’t screw this up. “Kenny… why did you join the Human Resistance?”

It was a long shot. Kenny had never answered questions like this before. But this time the man sighed and sat down on the cement floor. “Well, I guess it started when I was in the army, and some buddies of mine said how it was funny there weren’t any toons in the army, and someone else said they weren’t allowed to join. So I asked why, and he said they were too dangerous, like mustard gas or anthrax, that if we used ‘em the enemy would too. And I started thinkin,’ Saddam didn’t care about any treaties, he used chemical weapons against Iran, what if he used toon soldiers against us? My parents never really let me watch cartoons – said they promoted violence – but at some point we managed to get a hold of a bunch of Bugs Bunny films on deployment when we didn’t have anything else to do. My buddies were all laughing because they’d all seen ‘em as kids, and never really thought about what they were watching. When you see ‘em for the first time as an adult, and as a soldier, it’s really different because you really think about what toons are capable of. I realized there was basically nothing we could do. I couldn’t get that outta my mind the rest of my tour, how damn screwed we’d be if just one toon like Bugs was on the other side. When I got back from Iraq, I ended up doing some more research, and I realized just how different the laws and everything were for your kind, and I did a little digging on the history of toons, and realized just what you were. And the cops don’t have much of a plan for if a powerful toon goes rogue either, and yet the only weapon that gives people any hope of fighting back is banned. For all I know, it’s because you’re controlling the government behind the scenes – God knows you can trick people into doing what you want, control their minds...”

“How’d that escalate to kidnapping and murder?” Furrball interrupted.

“I started looking to see if anyone else had figured it out yet, that mankind basically only still exists at the mercy of toons. And there were a bunch of people. I found some websites and e-mail lists. And then a few months ago somebody contacted me and said he was with a group that was setting up a sort of research and paramilitary group to give humans the means to protect ourselves from toons, and they could use someone with my skillset. And… well, everything they said made perfect sense.”

“Does it now?” asked Calamity.

“I dunno. I still think creating toons was a mistake, and it’s completely insane that we just let creatures that can just pull anvils and explosives out of thin air run around with no restrictions at all. But it’d still be possible to seal Toontown off from the real world. Hell, just mass-producing those cuffs and making sure law enforcement at least had access to Dip weapons would solve ninety percent of the problems. I don’t think completely destroying a species is necessary.” Kenny sighed. “And Herschel and Lowell’s plan seems like it’ll just take us out of the frying pan and into the fire. We made monsters, we lost control of ‘em, and now they’re trying to fix that by making even bigger monsters. If they get out of human control too, we’ll be in trouble. And the fact that the animators are willing to turn them against other humans makes me think maybe they’re the ones I should be worried about.”

“We’re not monsters,” Calamity said softly. “I…” He wasn’t sure quite how to say what he wanted. Even with signs, he’d never been good at public speaking. “We’re not any different from humans.”

“I’m starting to think you’re right,” said Kenny. “Y’know, I grew up in Montana, in the middle of nowhere, and then when I turned eighteen I joined the army and spent a few years on military bases. Not many toons in either of those places. Never saw that much of them outside of TV, never said more than a few words to one.” He paused. “I pretty much bought what the Resistance told me in training, that the reason we tended to see toons as human was a combination of weaknesses in our own psychology and you messing with our minds. But, well, I know you can’t do any of that in those cuffs, and it’s been long enough anything you did should’ve worn off. But you still seem pretty much like a pair of normal kids.”

Normal kids… “The day you kidnapped me, I was supposed to give the editor of the School Newspaper an article I wrote and turn in my essay about Seventeenth-Century religious wars in history class,” said Calamity. He tried to remember what his schedule even was. “Then I was supposed to have Calculus second period, and Illusions before lunch. Then there was going to be a quiz in Advanced Cartoon Physics, then Furrball and I were probably going to die in P.E. because Foghorn keeps scheduling dodgebomb, and then Props and Physical Comedy.”

“I had Advanced Wild Takes in the morning,” Furrball volunteered. “Then Biology, then an English test… I was really nervous because I heard Pepe grades the analysis stuff really hard and I’m no good at it… then Algebra, then P.E, then Home Economics, and I had a cello lesson after school.”

“That sounds pretty normal,” said Kenny. “Other than a few of the classes. And did you say dodge-bomb?”

Calamity nodded. “Yeah. It’s like dodgeball, but with… well, bombs. You have to conjure them with the fuse lit for the right amount of time, and time your throws so even if it gets caught it’ll blow up in the other team’s face. It’s one point for a hit, two points for an explosion.”

“That’s… horrifying. You do that as a game?”

“Well, not of our own free will,” said Furrball. “Only in gym class.”

Kenny stifled a laugh. “Yeah, I guess that does sound like dodgeball.” He turned, looking out at the empty hallway, then shuffled closer to the bed. “Look… I know you kids probably don’t trust me-”

“You got that right,” Furrball interrupted.

“-but please listen. I’m gonna stick with Lowell and Herschel’s plan a bit longer. If their attack does what they say it will, and it’s the only time they use toons as a weapon against other humans, I’ll accept it. And I’ll see if I can convince them about a… y’know, a nonlethal solution once we’ve got the public on our side. But if it doesn’t work, and they keep on doing it...” he took a deep breath. “They’ll have to be stopped. And I can’t do that on my own. I need your help.”

Calamity saw Furrball jump to his feet out of the corner of his eye. He immediately shook his head frantically and mentally begged his friend not to say or do something that would destroy any hope they had of working with the human, but he could barely keep himself from doing the same thing. His hands were clenched in fists, trembling with anger, and despite trying to keep his expression neutral his lips curled into a snarl.

“You still wanna kill our family… our friends… everyone we know...” Furrball said slowly. “And then take away what makes us who we are.” He tapped one of his cuffs with a claw. “Forget it. No deal. There’s no way in hell we’re helping you with that.”

Calamity wanted to say the same thing. But it wasn’t true. Kenny was presenting it as an if scenario, but Calamity was almost certain of what would happen. The faked retaliatory attack wouldn’t turn public opinion against toons overnight, especially not after all the completely unprovoked murders. toons wouldn’t start a civil war against humans either. And Lowell and Herschel didn’t seem like the type to stop and abandon their insane plan just because it wasn’t working. They would double down. Kenny wasn’t that much better, and Calamity hated that he was even thinking of allying with someone who, ultimately, didn’t care if innocent people, both human and toon, died to accomplish his goals. But, he told himself, it wasn’t really an alliance. Either side would turn on the other the moment they no longer had a common goal. “There’s no deal yet ,” he said, elbowing Furrball. “Give us some time to think about it.” He hoped Furrball understood the hidden meaning: just wait until Kenny was out of earshot and he’d explain.

But then, Calamity had an idea. It seemed like Kenny was wavering on the edge of seeing what was wrong with what he was doing. Seeing the Human Resistance’s attempts to spark a human-Toon civil war repeatedly fail might just push him over that edge, but Calamity had to see how close he was. “I’ve got a couple questions first, though,” he said. “First, are you sure we’re being quiet enough? Don’t those cameras have mics?” Calamity had suspected that Kenny approaching them might have been a trap. But their situation couldn’t possibly get any worse. He was pretty sure this was real. But that meant Kenny was their only possible hope of escape and survival. If he got caught, they were doomed.

“It’s okay,” said Kenny. “I shut the mics off. Nobody checks the footage unless there’s an escape attempt or something, and nobody else is awake on this level.”

“Okay.” Calamity breathed a sigh of relief. “Then you can stop Lowell and Herschel right now. Just tell the world who you are and where this place is. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and all the other teachers at Acme Looniversity will take care of the rest, and so will the Government.”

“I can’t do that,” said Kenny.

“Why?” Furrball hopped off the bed and circled the man menacingly, getting between him and the exit. “Because that’ll ruin your plans? Or because you’ll either die or go to prison?”

“No, I mean I literally can’t do that! That’s why I’m asking you! Once you’re in the Human Resistance you’re in for life. You can’t leave this compound without permission, and once you’ve got access to these levels you can’t leave, period! I couldn’t get out of here on my own!” Kenny was starting to become more agitated.

Calamity pinched the bridge of his muzzle. “Okay… Furrball? Can you trust me on something?”

“Uhh… Calamity, what are you going to do? You’re not actually gonna-”

Calamity braced himself for the reaction of either of the other creatures in the cell with him. “I think we should team up with him-”

“What?”

“-but only if he agrees to our terms!” Calamity hurriedly finished. “If you have a problem with any of them or you think there should be others, tell me!”

“Huh?” Furrball stared at him like he’d grown an extra head, but after a second he sighed and shut his eyes. “Okay. What terms?”

“What’s the deal?” asked Kenny.

“If your fake attack fails...” Calamity began. “That proves you’re wrong about toons! We’ve been around for almost a hundred years, and we’ve never tried to take over the world. I guess a couple have, but… you have to give up on everything your Resistance is planning. No killing, no seals, no cuffs!”

Kenny hesitated for a few seconds. “All right. I see your point. I’d rather risk the toons already around running loose then having the only powerful ones be under Herschel and Lowell’s control… if the animators lose control of themselves.”

After getting a grudging thumbs up from Furrball, Calamity continued: “As long as you don’t stab us in the back and you do the same for us, we’ll try to get you out of this place alive, and we’ll tell everyone not to hurt you. But you have to turn yourself in.”

To Calamity’s surprise, this time there was no hesitation from Kenny. “If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it,” the man said. “When I signed up for this I knew I’d probably die or spend the rest of my life in prison if we didn’t succeed.”

“And Condition Three… uhh...” Calamity looked over at Furrball, who shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything else.”

“All right...” Kenny slowly stood up. “You kids got yourselves a deal.”

Skippy listened mutely as his aunt read the newspaper headline on the morning of September 30 ^th . His spoon, still held halfway between his bowl of raisin bran and his mouth, shook slightly.

“Six LAPD Officers found dead, all of ‘em with anvils dropped in their heads in their own homes, in an unprecedented toon murder spree,” Slappy read aloud. “Manufacturers’ stamps were ground off of the anvils before the crime… graffiti found on two of the crime scenes reads ‘We Remember the Sixteenth of September.’ Police believe the attacks were a retaliation for the recent terrorist attack on the Toontown Capitol Building – gee, what clue’d ‘em in on that? - and consider it a probable Hate Crime… Suspects have been identified, but a ten-thousand dollar reward is being offered for any information… I don’t believe this!” She flung the newspaper down on the kitchen table. “That’s the last thing anyone needs! Even aside from those poor cops havin’ nothin’ to do with any of this garbage, whatever ignorant buffoon did this just gave the psychopaths behind these attacks a nice shiny new propaganda tool! They’re actively making things worse! I’m tellin’ ya, if I knew what lunkheaded son of a door-to-door insurance salesman did this, I’d give that lousy reward up for five minutes alone with ‘em, and I’d make ‘em wish the Stork dropped their worthless behinds straight into a vat of Dip!” Slappy ground her fists together with a sound like a rock crusher tearing up old pavement.

“Aunt Slappy?” Skippy finally set the spoon down and pushed the cereal away. “If they were trying to get revenge, why did they attack the police?”

“Because whoever did it didn’t care if they got the wrong target, they just wanted someone dead,” said Slappy. “Who knows, maybe they thought goin’ after the cops would give ‘em more attention.”

“I know… but, aren’t there people talking about how the attack with the truck was fake, or saying Toontown deserved it? If someone was angry and wanted to kill someone, why didn’t they kill some of those people?”

Slappy gave him an odd look, with raised eyebrows, like she often did when someone made a statement which, while true, she disapproved of. “Keep that up and I’ll have to start calling you Mini-Me. The reason’s because they’re stupid. Now finish your cereal, the bus gets here in five minutes.”

“I don’t wanna go to school today, Aunt Slappy,” Skippy said quietly. “The person who killed those cops was mad at humans for what some other humans did to toons. So, won’t people in school be mad at me because a toon killed them?”

“I’d like to tell you no one’ll think that, but knowing some of your classmates… look, not many people are going to think that. And if anyone messes with you, just remember what I’ve taught ya about dealing with bullies.”

“But that’ll make things worse!” Skippy protested. He wasn’t going to school! No way! “If they’re angry because they’re scared! And what if it’s a teacher who’s angry?”

It looked like Slappy was about to answer, but she paused with her finger raised and her mouth open. “Ya know, you got a point there,” she said after a moment. “How about this? If somebody messes with you and the teachers aren’t helping, just come straight home, and I’ll deal with the teachers and the bureaucrats later.”

Then there was a sharp knock on the door. “Police! Open up!” The knocking repeated without waiting for an answer.

Slappy rolled her eyes and gritted her teeth. “All right, all right, I’m coming!” she called. She looked back at Skippy. “Shoot me.”

Slappy opened the front door at a leisurely pace. The burly cop banging on the door immediately backed away. Hiding behind his aunt, Skippy scanned the scene with growing dismay. From what he could see there were at least five police cars parked in front of the house, but no lights or sirens. There were at least a dozen cops in the front yard, most of whom had shotguns trained on the door. Their expressions were a mixture of terror and determined anger.

“What seems to be the problem, Officer?” Slappy asked, her voice thick with false politeness.

“Ms. Slappy Squirrel, you’re under arrest for the murder of Officers Pacheco, Sonnier, Wilkes, Knarr, Soto, and Guzman of the Los Angeles Police Department and Burbank Police Department,” the cop who’d knocked on the door said through gritted teeth. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law -”

“I have the right to have an attorney present before and during any questioning. If I can’t afford an attorney, I have the right to have one appointed, and if I choose to temporarily waive any of these rights I can reassert them at any time and refuse to answer further questions. Yeah, yeah, I know my rights.” Slappy waved her hand nonchalantly, keeping it well in view of the officers, but gave her wrist a slight flick. Something flew across the room, directly at Skippy. He caught it on reflex. It was a small piece of clear plastic, the size of a credit card. Written on it were the words: ‘Skippy. Get out of sight and start recording everything. No matter what happens with me don’t do anything to the cops. If they come after you or things go South, go straight to Warner Bros. If they point a gun at you, all bets are off – keep recording.’

Skippy gulped and ducked out of sight. This was bad… the police thought Slappy had committed the murders? How? Why? He knew she would never kill someone unprovoked, not in a million years! Record everything… right. He had a CamCorder in his Hammerspace. He pulled it out, praying that the batteries were still good. Half-charged. That was good enough. He dashed upstairs, peered out Slappy’s bedroom window – it had the best view – and trained the camera on what was happening below.

“Keep your hands where I can see them, and step forward from the door,” the officer ordered. “Slowly get on the ground, face-down, and put your hands on your head.” He unclipped a pair of cuffs from his belt.

Slappy pursed her lips. “I’ll do that if I feel like it,” she said. “First, I got a request for you fine gentlemen – and ladies.” She glanced at the two female cops on the scene. “I’d like to have a little chat right here, if you don’t mind.” She stepped forward out of the door, pulling it shut with her tail and keeping her hands in view.

“You’re about to add Resisting Arrest to your charges, lady.”

“But I’m not resisting. I’m offering to voluntarily waive my right to have an attorney present, under the condition that I answer questions right here without being manhandled. That’ll save you folks a lotta time and effort, and you’ll avoid the embarrassment of arresting the wrong toon.”

A grin spread across the officer’s face. “And what makes you so certain the murders were committed by a toon, Ms. Squirrel?”

“Because I just read about it in the morning paper. The article says you’re sure a toon did it, so who’m I to argue? Now, what makes you think I did it as opposed to, oh, pretty much every other toon?”

“Your record makes you the number one suspect. You’ve been very vocal in accusing the authorities of negligence and complacency in the recent string of Dip Attacks -”

“You mean constitutionally protected and non-threatening speech?” Slappy cut in.

“Speech that establishes a motive!” The cop was starting to raise his voice.

“I said you yutzes weren’t dedicating the budget or manpower the case deserved. Why the heck would I give you even more work in the form of the investigation you’re currently screwing up by wasting both of our time? That’s the opposite of a motive!”

“You also recently killed four humans -”

“In self defense. Check your own paperwork!”

“Regardless, you demonstrated that you had the capacity to kill human beings without remorse!” growled the cop. “And you have a record of assaulting police officers, resisting arrest, and numerous other charges!”

“Assaulting a-” Slappy looked surprised, then her face hardened and she gave the policeman a withering stare. “And what year are these charges from?”

“Nineteen-forty-six.”

“Officer, with all due respect, just how stupid are you people? Are you plannin’ to bring dropped charges filed by Judge Doom and his cronies up in a trial? How’d you even get a warrant with that circumstantial tripe? Scratch that, I should be asking if you got one at all!”

“Yeah, Jones has the warrant right here!” The cop with the cuffs indicated a weedy-looking man currently waiting by one of the cop cars and holding a radio. Then he shook himself. “I’m asking the questions here, squirrel. Where were you on the night of September 28^th between the hours of Midnight and 3:00 AM?”

“In bed. Which, incidentally, is and has been in my house.”

“Do you have anyone who can confirm that alibi?”

“Yeah. My nephew, Skippy.”

“Only a blood relative?”

“Is not hosting a slumber party evidence of murder?”

“I’m. Asking. The questions!” The cop took a step towards Slappy with the cuffs in one hand and a raised fist in the other, then stopped midway and stepped back. As if on queue, the others cops raised their shotguns. “Where is your nephew right now?”

A chill ran from Skippy’s neck to his tail. This wasn’t good. The cops didn’t seem friendly. Slappy always told him to be nice and cooperate with the police, but these ones weren’t acting normal. And she’d told him to run if they went after him! What did he do now? If Slappy told them where he was, was that a signal to answer their questions? Or should he run now? The video he was taking was blurry and shaking now – he couldn’t keep his hands still holding the camera.

“His school bus oughtta be here by now,” Slappy answered. “Stop’s a block that way.”

The cop narrowed his eyes. “Is your nephew at the bus stop?” he asked slowly. “Lie and you’ll get an Obstruction of Justice charge.”

Slappy sighed. Her shoulders slumped slightly. “Not to my knowledge.”

“Is he in the house?”

“Yeah.” Slappy briefly glanced up at the bedroom window.

That was it! That was the signal! But a signal to do what? The officer had just said lying was a crime, so he had to be in the house when the cops came looking for him! But what should he do with the camera? Hide it and keep it recording? Stow it in Hammerspace, stopping the recording but making sure they couldn’t find it by searching the house? Keep it out? Skippy felt like he was going to be sick.

“Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll just go and ask him a few questions, so if you wouldn’t mind coming with us now-” The cop put on a cheesy fake grin.

“You chumps probably got a warrant to search the place, but what about questioning a minor you don’t suspect of a crime?”

The cop grinned. “Truancy is a crime.”

“He only missed the bus because of the cop cars surrounding his house,” Slappy said dryly.

“Tell it to the judge. Now get away from the damn door.”

Slappy glowered at him, but stepped away from the door. On an order from the cop with the cuffs, who seemed to be the one in charge, four others approached the front door. Three of them were carrying shotguns.

“Hold the phone.” Slappy held up her hands. Before, her expression was just annoyance, maybe even disgust. But it had just changed to the same cold fury Skippy had seen when Slappy killed the four gunmen in the attack a couple months earlier. Had it really been a couple months? The memory was still so vivid it was like it had happened just a couple days ago. “You, you, and you, drop the guns.”

The burly cop turned red. He lunged for Slappy and grabbed her wrist, yanking her toward him. “You’re not giving orders to my men, toon!” He strained against her like he were trying to force her to the ground or lift her in the air, but she didn’t budge.

“I said drop the fuckin’ guns before you set foot in that house,” Slappy hissed. Skippy could swear he saw steam rising from the flower on her hat. “How stupid do you think I am? You know you’re dealing with toons and you still brought those things, and you brought ‘em instead of the usual peashooters. That means you’re expecting them to work on me. And that means you’ve loaded ‘em with Dip-filled shells.”

For a moment Skippy thought his heart had stopped. Dip. They were loaded with Dip. They were going to kill Slappy! Every instinct he had told him he had to do something, but there were too many of them. And she’d ordered him not to do anything! He stayed stalk-still, crouching by the window, keeping the camera pointed outside. Something told him he had to keep recording.

The cop released his grip on Slappy and stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over a crack in the front walk. “Keep resisting and we’ll be forced to use deadly force!” All ten shotguns were leveled at Slappy.

“Go right ahead,” Slappy said with the tone of a threat of horrific proportions. “I know what you idiots are tryin’ to do. You’re pissed off because some half-wit bumped off some cops, and you know the public’s gonna be too, so you decided to find the easiest scapegoat you could. And if you shoot me I’ll never get to say my piece in court, and nobody’ll be any the wiser! They’ll think I finally went senile and snapped, right?”

Skippy noticed every single one of the cops was frozen in place. All they did was breathe and blink. He remembered a line from Yakko’s song, ‘I am the Very Model of a Cartoon Individual.’ When in a jam I just yell stop and villains in their tracks are froze . Freezing someone in place like that was a herculean task for any toon, especially for more than a couple of seconds, and especially against multiple people. What Slappy was doing was borderline impossible.

But Slappy just kept talking. “Well, here’s a few clues for ya mush-brained wastes of protoplasm. First, legal tip: the law against possession of Dip doesn’t have any exceptions for cops. Ya gotta get a research permit and do a whole lotta paperwork I doubt you had time for this morning. I mean, I knew the Government probably secretly had some stockpiles, but this is just sad. Second, what do ya think the public reaction’s gonna be when a public figure who just happens to have criticized the police department for their handling of these Dip attacks, and has a good reason like her nephew nearly bein’ the victim of the first one, just happens to get iced by the cops? I don’t approve of the shmutz goin’ around killing cops, but that proves that the toon public’s already pissed off beyond reason. You’re in a cave full of dynamite and you’re about to strike a match. Ya have any idiot what toon race riot’d look like? It’d make the whole Rodney King fiasco look like a couple toddlers slappin’ each other over the last cookie!” Slappy was panting as she spoke now, and sweat was pouring down her face from the effort of keeping the cops frozen. “Therefore, it is my obligation as a responsible citizen to prevent that in the interest of public safety, even if that means resisting arrest. Skippy, run!”

The police broke free of the freezing. Ten shotguns fired, but the gunshots were drowned out by a human-sized safe crashing down on top of Slappy a split-second earlier. The tree house’s branches shook, books fell off of shelves, and Skippy was bounced a foot in the air. Puffs of smoke rose from the safe. Skippy remained transfixed, too shocked to run, or even scream.

“What the-?” One of the attending cops yelped. Half of them were staggering around, clutching the sides of their heads. There were car alarms going off all over the neighborhood. Another lurched forward and yanked open the safe door. “It’s empty! Damn squirrel got away! Call for backup!”

“Get the kid!” shouted another.

Right. Skippy realized he could move again. He needed to run, now . There was a splintering crash from downstairs as the front door was kicked down. He shoved the video camera back into Hammerspace. He was pretty sure he’d seen enough, and he knew he’d need his hands free. Which way would he go? Out the window? There were still more police down there, including the back! To the garage? No, he didn’t know how to drive, and there was no way he’d be able to get to the studio past roadblocks, spike strips, or whatever else the cops set up for him. And now there were footsteps thumping up the stairs! He was trapped!

Skippy pulled a white glove – neither he nor Slappy wore them, but it was always nice to have a few around – out of Hammerspace and smacked himself across the face with it. He couldn’t panic! He had to focus! He had to either get out of the house without going through the downstairs and somehow avoid the yard, or go through the cops armed with Dip-filled shotguns. Should he fight them? Slappy said all bets were off. But he couldn’t hurt them! They were making a terrible, stupid mistake but they were still people! He didn’t trust any disguise to work under these circumstances. Hypnotizing humans was tricky: sometimes it would work perfectly, sometimes they’d be highly resistant to it. What did he have in his Hammerspace, or that he knew how to conjure?

He heard the door to his room bang open. There wasn’t much time. What could he use… barricade the door? No, that just bought him a few more seconds. Hide? Where? Under the bed? Then he thought of it. Suction cups! He reached behind his back, imagined a pair of large cups – he wasn’t picky about the brand – flying into his hands, then felt them. He scrambled up the door and pressed himself close to the ceiling above it just in time. Two police officers burst in, weapons lowered but ready. They never thought to look up. Skippy dropped to the floor behind them, dashed out the door, slammed it, locked it, and for good measure threw a couple of banana peels down on the stairs as he flew down them, barely touching the ground. But another two were downstairs, waiting for him!

Skippy knew he was seen. He knew it was too late to use a disguise, and too late to pull anything out of Hammerspace. The officers raised their weapons, but didn’t fire. Skippy was now the picture of a terrified child. His lower lip quivered, he stretched his eyes as big as he could, and he let the tears flow out in twin fountains. It wasn’t a hard act to pull off under the circumstances. As extra insurance, he gave a small mental nudge to the officers’ emotions.

“Aww… hey, take it easy, kid, we’re not gonna hurt you!” one of them, a fat man who looked a bit like a shorter, slightly fitter version of Ralph the Studio Guard said.

“You – you killed my mommy!” Skippy bawled. He did his best to channel the faint memory of watching Bumbie the Dearest Deer. He was such a little kid back then… “You dropped a safe on her head!”

“No, no, she did that herself!” said the other cop, a blonde woman with a reddish tan. “She’s in a lotta trouble, though, so we need you to come with us and answer a few questions, okay?”

Both cops reached closer, inadvertently bringing the guns’ barrels within reach. Skippy remembered a trick he’d seen Bugs do in Rabbit of Seville with Elmer’s double-barreled shotgun. It ought to work with two single barrels. He reached out and tied the two shotguns’ barrels into a knot. “Fat chance,” he said. Then he was off like a shot, sprinting out the back door. He could hear angry shouts and sirens behind him. The roads were too dangerous. Even if he couldn’t run as fast as a car in a straight line, weaving through L.A. traffic he could leave a police car in the dust. But a radio wave was another matter.

A rabbit in Skippy’s situation would have gone underground, and many other toons would have dove down a manhole or storm drain. Skippy climbed a power pole and scampered along the wires. It occurred to him halfway to the studio that the police could have just sent a helicopter after him, and he spent the rest of the journey anxiously looking up every couple seconds, nearly resulting in him touching a wire and pole at the same time and frying himself. When a helicopter did show up, he dove for cover in a rose bush, but it was only a traffic news chopper. By the team he got to the studio, he was covered in thorns and drenched in sweat, and his mouth was so dry he was surprised his tongue hadn’t cracked and started bleeding. He got into the lot by vaulting over a fence, staying well away from Ralph’s post. What if Ralph called the cops on him? Ralph didn’t mean any harm, but if he knew Skippy was a fugitive from justice, he’d probably assume the best of the police. He couldn’t be seen!

Skippy ducked into an alley between two soundstage buildings. He slumped against the wall for support, holding his hand over his chest. His heart was still going at practically the speed of light. Was this what Slappy meant when she talked about having a heart attack? Could toons even get heart attacks? Could children?

Where did he go now? He and Slappy were both on the run from the law. Plotz would probably call the cops – hell, any sane person would call them if they saw him in this state, alone on the lot. Maybe he could hide somewhere in a prop storage warehouse, or…

As Skippy peered out of the alley, he saw the water tower looming over the studio. Wait a minute… had Slappy even told him to go to the studio? The card she threw to him had long since vanished, but he was pretty sure he remembered it saying ‘Go straight to Warner Bros.’

Oh. Warner Bros. With a period. A dot. That joke had been told around the studio enough that even its subjects were getting tired of it. That was smart.

If anyone was both willing and able fight off the entire Burbank Police Department, possibly with Dip weaponry, it was the Warners.

Chapter Text

“Honest Mistake?” Slappy looked at the Burbank Chief of Police like he’d just announced that he had a disfiguring and contagious disease on an intimate part of his body, and then displayed the evidence. “You morons are damn lucky I’ve got enough on my plate doing your and the FBI’s jobs for them, or I’d sue the badges off you so hard you’d have to start putting parking tickets on strollers to keep the lights on!”

“We wouldn’t put parking tickets on strollers.”

“Really? Seems to me like pointing Dip-loaded shotguns at a child’s sort of a gateway drug to that kind of thing.”

Yakko snickered. It was always fun to watch Slappy chew someone out, especially if he wasn’t involved. And the cops certainly deserved a verbal beatdown. After hearing frantic banging on the water tower door Thursday morning, and opening it to find Skippy so frightened and exhausted he could barely describe what had happened, Yakko had promised the little squirrel that no cop was setting foot on the studio lot in one piece. It was a good thing they hadn’t actually pursued him that far, or he and his siblings would probably have been on the lam themselves. He wouldn’t have done any real damage unless they’d really forced his hand, but already-angry cops tended not to have much of a sense of humor about slipping on ball bearings, getting stuck in tar, or having their cars stripped down to the chassis.

Edward Davis, the police chief, was a large man in his fifties, with a nose that had been broken several times by uncooperative suspects in his younger days, but he cringed and shrunk back. “Those guns weren’t loaded with Dip, Ms. Squirrel. They were… gel-filled rounds, to deliver a nonlethal blow that would stun a toon long enough to allow them to be restrained.”

Slappy rolled her eyes. “That’s what actual bullets do to toons. Your badge-totin’ goons knew who they were planning to arrest, they wouldn’t have intentionally brought less effective weapons. Oh, yeah, and everything’s on video, ya twit, including Muscles threatenin’ to use ‘Deadly Force,’ so you can shove that excuse right back where it came from.”

“Again, I would like to sincerely apologize for our officers’ conduct. Those involved have all been reprimanded. But you have to understand they were in a heightened emotional state after six of our colleagues were murdered, and were desperate to make an arrest – any arrest – to pacify an angry public. We’re willing to compensate you for the damage to your property-”

“Like I told ya, I ain’t taking tax money to fix something I can pay for myself. If you wanna apologize, I’ll send ya an invoice and you can set aside that much from every one of those idiots’ paychecks for the next few times you bust in on some poor schmuck who can’t afford to fight ya in court.”

“We can’t arbitrarily fine officers-”

“Oh, now you care about the law? Listen, bub, Skippy was scared outta his mind. He thought you were gonna send helicopters and dogs after him and he was gonna have to flee the country and spend the rest of his life in a Mexican orphanage. You can’t fix that with a bribe and a couple Hallmark sympathy cards.”

“I’m sorry he had that impression of us. I’d be happy to give him a personal tour of the police station, and introduce him to some of our officers in a positive situation to help build trust-”

“Make sure you put an oriental rug over the bloodstains before he gets there,” Yakko contributed. “Stuff the rack and the iron maiden and the cage of rabid, starving rats in the janitor’s closet, maybe play some Vivaldi to drown out the screams...”

“Yakko, the sublety’s lost on this guy,” said Slappy. “Listen, the only time you should be allowed within a thousand feet of a child’s if you decide to rent yourself out as a pinata. You’ve said your half-baked apology, and I’m not acceptin’ it. The only reason I’m not releasing the tape right now is because it could start a riot. Now I’ve got work to do, so get your flabby donut-eating butt outta my sight.”

The police chief gave Slappy an offended look, but scurried away without further protest.

It was Sunday, four days after the cop killings and the incident at Slappy’s house. The police had yet to make an actual arrest, and had recently admitted they had no idea who did it apart from it being a toon of at least moderate ability. But what was weighing on the minds of everyone at the studio was what had happened when the Animaniacs cast’s message to the world had aired the day before. The first airing had gone off without a hitch, but the second time – the late-night rerun – immediately after Slappy’s closing warning to the perpetrators of the attacks the broadcast had been hijacked. The start of the list of the victims’ names was replaced by a flickering, grainy image.

‘The Human Resistance accepts your challenge,’ the text on the screen read in large, blocky black letters. Below the words was a stylized drawing of a human fist descending towards an inkwell. Then that image was replaced by video footage of a bare concrete room furnished only with a game show wheel, similar to the Wheel of Morality, but with images of many of the cast members taped to it. A label read ‘The Wheel of Mortality.’ A masked human walked up to the wheel and gave it a spin, but the video cut out well before the wheel stopped.

The threat was clear. Someone on that wheel was going to be the so called Human Resistance’s next target. Last Yakko heard, Bugs had managed to identify a couple of candidates for the rogue animator, including one Herschel Wilson, a man who according to reports had been severely injured by a toon of his own creation in 1982, and had gone missing a couple years ago. Peter Possum had a promising lead from a company in China about large numbers of spare parts for their ACME machines being ordered. But now, the enemy had them squarely on the defensive.

Kenny let himself into Calamity and Furrball’s cell again, looking more agitated than he had before. Calamity’s fur immediately stood on end. What had happened? Had the human finally decided he would betray the Resistance?

“The mics are off, right?” Calamity whispered before Kenny could speak. He knew the first words out of his mouth would be sensitive.

“Yeah. I shut them off. I’ve been waiting all day for a chance to talk to you...” Kenny slumped against the back wall of the cell and put a hand over his face. Calamity could hear him breathing heavily. “Herschel’s toon acted on its own,” he said.

“What?”

“He killed the cops, just like he was ordered to, but… then he snuck into the homes of a bunch of the ones he didn’t kill, and he… did somethin’ to their heads, I dunno what, if he talked to them in dreams or something. But he got them to go after Slappy Squirrel and try to arrest or kill her. He wasn’t ordered to do that, and when he was explaining to Lowell what he did and why...” Kenny paused. “He said one side or the other would end up dead, maybe both, and either one of the most dangerous toons around would be dead and half of Toontown’d be rioting, or there’d be a bunch more dead cops and Slappy’s name’d be ruined and she’d be on the lam. He called it a win-win situation.”

Calamity and Furrball exchanged a look of silent horror. They didn’t know Slappy that well, not as well as the Looney Tunes stars who taught at Acme Looniversity, but they’d met her quite a few times, and they’d studied her cartoons in multiple classes: Props and Physical Comedy, Wise Cracks, Outwitting Enemies, Villain Whopping, and of course Destruction. The idea of either outcome happening was horrifying.

“What happened?” Furrball asked, holding his tail tip in his hands.

“Not a damn thing,” said Kenny. “I don’t know exactly what, but somehow she got out of it without laying a finger on the cops, and it seems like they aren’t after her anymore. Lowell and Herschel aren’t planning any more attacks on humans yet, but… they didn’t destroy the one that messed with those cops without being told to. Herschel even seemed like he was proud – I don’t know if it was of the toon or himself, but either way. He’s losing control already and doesn’t even know it. I… I’ve had it. I’m not waiting for them to start killing more humans, I know it’s gonna happen sooner or later. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

Dot Warner groaned as she followed Minerva Mink into another nightclub. It was almost 1 A.M. Why did she have to be stuck following the one member of the cast who didn’t stay home at night?

Sunday Morning, after finding out about the threats on the hijacked broadcast, the members of what had been unofficially dubbed the Antiresistance now that their faceless enemy had named itself held an emergency meeting.

“At the very least this development confirms that the Resistance is being aided by toons,” Brain had said over speaker phone. “Hijacking a broadcast like that in both California and Toontown would require a sophisticated electronic attack normally, and my scanner network found no evidence of a transmission simply overriding the TV signal. On the other hand, if a toon with moderate skill in illusion and hypnosis was able to infiltrate the control room with a tape containing the message, replacing a portion of the broadcast would be relatively simple.”

“Yeah, that and the stupid ‘Wheel of Mortality’ bit,” added Slappy. “It’s just a hunch, but I doubt there’s many anti-Toon terrorists with that kinda sense of humor, but it’s exactly the kinda thing a toon with a real screwed up mind would come up with.”

“I thought it was pretty clever,” said Yakko.

“Thank you for demonstrating my point.”

“Ya don’t think it could be another Judge Doom type situation, do ya?” asked Bugs.

“Hmm...” Peter Possum was there again, much to Dot’s displeasure. He took the toothpick he was chewing on out of his mouth. “It ain’t impossible, but right now I’m fairly certain someone ’s animating more toons, and that’s gotta be a human. More likely one of their little soldiers came up with the idea and the guys in charge liked it.” Animation actually referred to two separate phenomena. Animation proper was the act of drawing a fully independent toon into existence, and only humans were capable of it – toons could only create more toons by biological means. There was also another type of animation: a toon could temporarily give a toonmatter object, either preexisting or conjured, the semblance of life, but the result was essentially a puppet, under the mental control of its creator. It was extremely difficult and taxing to sustain, especially for long periods or with multiple puppets. Yakko was able to pull ‘Bert who is a cannibal’ out of a bag, and Dot create a three-dimensional caricature of The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, without too much trouble, but after animating both his own gloves and several other pairs for a whole day while filming the ‘White Gloves’ short, Wakko had slept for almost twenty-four hours.

After that, there was a long argument over what exactly their next move should be. Everyone whose picture appeared on the wheel knew they were in danger, but the list consisted mostly of relatively weak toons. Even if they were prepared, there was no guarantee of them being able to defend themselves, especially if the Resistance had toon help of its own. Everyone agreed that the Antiresistance should step in and protect their co-stars for the time being.

“What if it’s a trick?” Wakko asked. “To make us waste our time, while they go after someone who isn’t on the list, or who isn’t involved with us at all?”

“Oh, that’s a real possibility,” said Bugs. “Heck, I’d say it’s a near-guarantee that these bozos are tryin’ to provoke us into doing something. But it ain’t exactly like we got any clue who that someone else could be, so we couldn’t stop an attack like that anyway. On the other hand, if we think we’re callin’ their bluff but they aren’t bluffin’, well, anyone on dis list could end up dead.”

“Then who do you guard, huh?” Baby Herman was also in attendance again, with an even more noxious cigar than last time. “There was a lotta pictures on that wheel thingy. I’ll bet they’re banking on us having to guess who they’re actually gonna attack and leave someone vulnerable.”

“There’s a lot fewer possible targets than it looks like.” Slappy whipped a pointer out of Hammerspace. A picture of the wheel was projected on the wall. There were fifteen photos: Squit, Pesto, Bobby, Rita, Runt, Flavio, Marita, Colin, Katie Kaboom, Buttons, Mindy, Mr. Skullhead, Minerva Mink, Mime, and Chicken Boo, arranged in no particular order. Slappy cycled through them. “You’re not on our show so I don’t expect ya to know this, but there’s a lotta groups here. The Goodfeathers flock together, just like the theme song says. The Hippos are married and pretty much inseparable. Rita and Runt stick together too, and so do Buttons and Mindy. And Mime and Skullhead are roommates. And I know for a fact that Chicken Boo’s somewhere in Australia right now, and there’s no way they can track him down. That leaves eight groups, and there’s eight of us.”

“Ehh...” Bugs counted on his fingers. “Yeah, eight’s right with our actual numbers. But Herman and Peter here haven’t made it public that they’re workin’ with us, and they ain’t even from the same studio. Daff they might take a guess at, but they still probably think it’s just six of us. It’ll give ‘em a nasty surprise if there aren’t any openings.”

“It’s not eight, it’s seven!” said Herman. “Look, I’m no slouch, but I don’t spend my free time gettin’ into fights, either. I could probably give some goons the slip if they came after me, but protecting anyone else is a different story.”

“Right… seven, is it?” Daffy leaned forward. “But you’re missing something. We don’t have to split our forces! If everyone holes up on the studio lot for a while, La Resistance will be facing a united front.”

“There’s no way even these clowns are dumb enough to get anywhere near the lot,” said Peter. “They’d call off their attack.”

“Exactly! It’s the safest option!”

“Yer not thinkin’ of the big picture, duck.” Peter grinned, exposing some sharp-looking teeth. “This is our chance to catch those Resistance chuckleheads in the act! We don’t want ‘em to call their attack off! They think we don’t have the numbers to keep an eye on everyone, so if they find a toon seemingly unguarded, they’ll walk right into a trap!”

Dot’s grip on her chair tightened. “You’re not using our friends as bait!” she glared daggers at the possum. He and Yakko had already tried to pick another fight. Dot had tried to stay out of it, but now he’d gone too far.

“Making a fake opening in your defenses is basic strategy, kid, and right now it’s the best one we got.”

Dot jumped to her feet. The force sent her swivel chair rolling backwards, making the effect less intimidating than she’d hoped, but she let it coast into the wall, then pushed off again and rolled back to the table. “I’m sure it sounds like a great plan when you’re sacrificing the lives of total strangers,” she said icily.

“Just ignore him, he does it for the attention,” Yakko drawled.

“You did a great job of that earlier!” Dot snapped. She turned back to Peter and stepped onto the table. She could see the others’ eyerolls and head-shakes in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t care. “I don’t know if you missed the memo, but this isn’t a cartoon! People could really die!”

“You got it the wrong way round,” said Peter. “This ain’t a cartoon, and that means dere ain’t perfect, easy solutions to all your problems! You got a problem with that, nobody’s forcin’ ya to be here!” He jabbed his tail at her, but didn’t bother getting up.

Dot clenched her teeth so hard she was afraid they would break. “Get your tail out of my face before I strangle you with it!” she threatened.

“You can try.”

“What are you gonna do, pull that little pop gun again?”

“Just stop...” Wakko groaned.

Peter looked almost amused. “Dat wasn’t a prop, kid. I know you think you’re a real badass, but if I wasn’t tryin’ to be nice back then I’d’ve put a bullet up your nose and bounced it around inside your skull about a dozen times! That’ll put a toon on the ground for a while no matter how strong they are.” He said the threat with such self-assured sincerity that Dot felt her confidence draining away. She’d meant to watch some of Peter’s cartoons to see just how good he was, but never got around to it. Could he really do that?

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud!” Herman complained. “Peter, you wanna get in a dinky-measuring contest with a little girl in a skirt, go ahead, but do it on your own time!”

“Thank you for that, Herman,” Bugs drawled. “Look, I gotta agree with Peter. We can’t pass up an opportunity like this. Look, nobody’s sayin’ we let things escalate. Ideally, we lay low just long enough to let the bad guys approach and show themselves, then we subtly make our presence known, and they hightail it, at which point we tail ‘em to their hideout.”

Dot still argued vehemently against the plan, as did Yakko and Wakko, but ultimately they were outvoted. To make matters worse, the unholy trio of Bugs, Slappy, and Peter decided that they would avoid even letting the toons they were supposed to be protecting know what they were doing.

Each of them ended up being assigned one group to tail. Dot wanted to work with her brothers, but there just weren’t enough of them to go around. Yakko had gotten Buttons and Mindy, Wakko had Colin. Dot was stuck with Minerva. The mink’s unusually powerful lust-inducing hypnosis was, as Slappy put it, ‘a danger to herself and everyone around her.’ Everyone on the team was strong enough to shake it off, but in an attack even a couple seconds of distraction could get them both killed. Dot and Slappy, being the only females, were the only candidates for mink-stalking, and Slappy ended up with the Goodfeathers because she was the one best suited to following them around rooftops. Daffy could technically fly, but not particularly well, and had volunteered to stake out the Hippos’ penthouse. Bugs had Mime and Skullhead, Peter had Katie Kaboom, and Brain had the bright idea of inviting Rita and Runt to Acme Labs to ‘run some tests.’

Everyone else, thought Dot, had gotten easy jobs. Monday was a school night for Colin and Katie’s family, and technically a Kindergarten night for Mindy. Even the adults were probably at home or in bed like normal people. Everyone else could just stake out a house. She was stuck in a packed nightclub, in a hot, itchy pig disguise, suffering.

Dot didn’t see how anyone found this fun. The clubs of the 1920s were a good time – people laughing, drinking, dancing, and smoking, yes. She was glad the thick tobacco odor was no longer present indoors, but the dances had gotten more rowdy and risque, and the music had gotten much, much louder and less interesting. Dot hadn’t been inside a club like this in well over sixty years, and her impression of what it would be like came from watching Disco videos. Those didn’t seem that appealing, but not bad , either. But these days… Dot stifled a giggle. She sounded like Slappy now. Maybe she was acting her calendar age. Then again, at the age she was drawn it wasn’t normal to like this kind of thing either.

And the clubs Minerva kept hopping between really did stink. Not just literally – they smelled like sweat and cheap booze, and some of the floors were sticky – but figuratively as well. The music was a droning, pulsing beat Dot was pretty sure the CIA used to brainwash people, played at volumes that probably registered on seismographs in Tokyo. And the dancing was pretty much just wild gyration, with hundreds of toons packed together on way too small a dance floor. Dot had watched at least three mice and gophers get squashed flat by larger toons, one of them more than once.

Dot stumbled as a rhinoceros barged into her, and hopped aside more nimbly than the pig should have been able to to dodge his spilled beer.

“Whoa! Sorry, man!” the rhino slurred.

“Don’t worry, it’s cool!” Dot said in the surfer-accented male voice she’d picked for the disguise. “Don’t apologize to me, apologize to your liver,” she muttered in her own. Where was Minerva? Right. Still there, off near the middle of the dance floor.

Something else made decisive contact with Dot. She spun around, and immediately recoiled. A tall feline woman of some sort was grinding her hindquarters against her, and wrapped her tail around her neck when she pulled away. Dot ground her teeth together for far from the first time tonight. She’d picked an unattractive male disguise, and one with no pants at that, specifically to avoid this. She itched to mallet the cat over the head, but that would draw attention to her. Instead, she growled: “Sorry lady, my barn door don’t swing that way” and pirouetted free. Would it really do that much harm to switch with Yakko? One more annoyance like this and she was going to disguise as a fire marshal and close the club down in the hopes that Minerva would finally go home.

The cat – seeing her face, Dot was pretty sure she was either a leopard or a jaguar – turned and bent down to Dot’s level. She pulled her top away from her chest in a very unsubtle way. “Are you sure you don’t want to make an exception?”

“Not with an ugly chick.” Dot shuddered at the smell of alcohol on the cat’s breath.

At this, the woman had the nerve to straighten up in an offended way. She shouted: “My boyfriend’s gonna kick your ass!” but finally moved away. Dot breathed a sigh of relief. She was glad she wasn’t in her own skin, but she was still going to take a shower at the earliest opportunity. Which was probably next morning. God she hated this job.

The technique Dot was using was a mix of conjuration and illusion called a Zip Suit. As the name implied, it created a full-body suit with a built-in zipper that allowed it to be removed in seconds. Unlike other toon disguises, which could be seen through if you were perceptive enough and wouldn’t hold up to the touch, a Zip Suit was indistinguishable from the real thing, and worked even if the user ordinarily wouldn’t even fit in the disguise’s new shape or had to stretch themselves to reach the ends of the limbs. For instance, Dot felt no discomfort even though the hooves of the suit were much smaller than her own paws. But it also let her simultaneously feel the disguise’s skin and her real body roasting alive inside the suit.

Dot continued to tail Minerva as she slowly maneuvered to the edge of the dance floor and over to the bar. She ordered some drink with a complicated name and sat down. Dot did the same a couple seats away. “An apple juice, please,” she told the bartender, slipping him a five and performing a little hypnosis to keep him from questioning the order. Legally, drawn toons that had been in existence more than five years could drink even if they were ‘children,’ and her disguise looked old enough that there was no chance of being carded. If anything it would be conspicuous to not order drinks. Actually getting drunk would dull her sense and reflexes, of course, which was the last thing she needed right then, but there were ways around that. It was possible to send things into Hammerspace through your mouth, and she could have just ordered real booze and surreptitiously replaced it with conjured stuff that would disappear before it had a chance to enter her inkstream. But Dot couldn’t do the former in a Zip Suit without spilling, and neither method got rid of the awful taste.

Dot hated alcohol. Once, in 1929, the Warners had snuck into a Hollywood party and swiped a large quantity of bourbon – she couldn’t remember how much, only that she’d drank an entire bottle herself, enough to be fatal to a human several times her body weight. Yakko hadn’t gotten it as bad, and he still occasionally drank a little wine, but Dot couldn’t smell or taste alcohol without remembering that night and the following morning, when they were trying to film for a Buddy cartoon but she was simultaneously hung over from dehydration and still had enough of the booze in her system that her stomach was turning itself inside out and she kept having to run to the bathroom to throw up every five minutes, and Weed Memlo was constantly yelling at her for it and for slurring her lines and being unable to walk in a straight line. She hadn’t touched a drop of liquor since.

A long time later, after even more excruciating ‘dancing,’ Minerva made her way toward the ladies’ room. Dot started heading towards the line herself, then noticed several other patrons giving her dirty looks and remembered she was in a male disguise. Mentally kicking herself, she veered off and slipped into the men’s room. Now was her chance to change disguises! She ducked into a stall and changed into a lanky black bear, washed her hands just for appearances on the way out, and rejoined the tumultuous throng.

Where the hell was Minerva? She should have still been in line! And the two toon humans that had been directly in front of and behind her were still there, glancing irritably at their watches. Dot looked around frantically, and saw the mink’s long tail disappear out the door. Swearing under her breath, she followed as inconspicuously as possible. Had she been spotted? She told those idiots they should have told their co-stars they were acting as bodyguards! Or maybe Minerva had just seen the women’s watches over their shoulders and realized what time it was. She could only hope she was going home, and not to yet another club or bar.

Minerva Mink breathed a sigh of relief as she left the club and headed down the sidewalk. She’d had a pretty good night, but it was always nice getting out of the noise and chaos of a crowded dance floor. She was a naturally shy creature, but had a love-hate relationship with seedy bars and nightclubs. They were loud and exhausting, but they had one thing going for them: the amount of raw sensuality on display there masked her own aura. They were the one place she could really cut loose, socialize – to the extent that a shouted conversation with a stranger counted as that – and enjoy herself without having to constantly keep her powers in check.

Most toons could use the basic abilities of their kind – shapeshifting, Hammerspace, illusion, hypnosis, and the like – with varying degrees of mastery, but there were a few born or drawn with more unusual powers, like Shirley the Loon’s new age magic. Minerva was one of them. As a child, she’d had a natural talent for Wild Takes and been decent at conjuration and hypnosis, but it wasn’t until she hit her first big growth spurt as a teenager that her real powers manifested themselves. She wasn’t just pretty, she was supernaturally beautiful: she naturally put out a hypnosis effect 24/7 that attracted male humans and toons alike to her (and the occasional female).

High School was hell. With some mental preparation, others could resist Minerva’s powers, and she learned to suppress them in time, but she’d gone to public school, not an elite institution like Acme Looniversity that focused on teaching talented young toons to use and control their abilities. She was a hormonal teenager still learning to keep her hypnosis in check, surrounded by hormonal teenagers with little or no training or experience in resisting hypnosis. She ended up with most of the boys in the school asking her out on a regular basis, but almost no real friends. The boys wanted to get in her pants, the girls tended to distance themselves from her whenever they got boyfriends of their own. The one exception was the Theater Department. Sometimes stereotypes had a grain of truth to them. That, or any toon with dreams of becoming a star learned at least the basics of dealing with illusions and hypnosis.

That had gotten Minerva into acting, and eventually onto Animaniacs, but she didn’t do that many actual cartoons. The new season would bring her total of two starring roles up to five, and she had a few cameos, but her main job was as a model. There were hordes of toons who could use illusions and shapeshifting to briefly look more photogenic, but to high-end clothing brands it was a point of pride and advertising that their models didn’t do any of that.

Minerva wrinkled her nose and gagged as she passed a pair of drunks, one of them a skunk, being loaded into police cars by cops wearing gas masks. Both parties had black eyes and were still trying to halfheartedly swing at each other. Even from the other side of the street the smell was eyewatering. That was one of the downsides of hanging out in a seedy part of Toontown proper.

She glanced behind her. Was she still being followed? Yes, there they were, a ways back, filtering their way through the crowd behind an irritable-looking bear lady who was holding her nose and fanning herself. There were three of them, a lop-eared dog, a monkey, and a bird she was pretty sure was a pelican. She’d seen them at two previous clubs and dismissed it as a coincidence, but when she caught a glimpse of them again while waiting in line for the bathroom she decided things were getting too creepy. She didn’t want them following her home either, though. This time of night the trains would be nearly empty. She had to lose them before going to the station. Minerva starting intentionally taking twists and turns, and intentionally slowed so she’d arrive at a crosswalk just before the light turned red, then darted across, but nothing worked. They were doing a good job of making themselves inconspicuous, but she still kept catching glimpses of them.

Who were these creeps? Were they thieves? She was wearing a fairly nice red dress, but nothing that really singled her out as having money. Crazed fans, maybe? She’d dealt with a few of those. The monkey seemed to be female, but that wasn’t a guarantee. There was a third, much worse possibility, though. Minerva knew about the threats against the studio, and that she was on the list. She also knew the rumors that the terrorist group, the so-called Human Resistance, was actually using toons to do some of its dirty work for it, maybe even drawing them into existence solely for that purpose.

Minerva’s pulse quickened. She started to walk faster, stumbling slightly. She had a good buzz going. But these freaks were about to get a lot more than they bargained for. She just had to lead them out of the public eye, and she could reduce the males to puddles of drool and lolling tongues who would do whatever she commanded – including distracting the monkey while she made a run for it if necessary. But who needed to do that? If she got them under her control, she might even get them to tell her where ‘home’ was. She bet her finding out where the murderous group’s base was, using her charms, would give Slappy indigestion. Minerva strongly suspected the old squirrel was just jealous. Beauty was a curse, but it had its perks.

Minerva made a right turn at the corner of 28 ^th Street and Fleischer Avenue, heading for the warehouse district – empty at this time of night – and ducked into an alley. With any luck, they’d walk right into her trap...

Chapter Text

Dot only noticed the three other toons following Minerva when she saw the mink keep checking her back but not looking anywhere near her, and followed her eyes. She nearly jumped a full yard in the air with alarm. How had she not seen them? Was she so focused on keeping track of Minerva that she hadn’t paid attention to her surroundings at all? She thought she remembered seeing them before, but she hadn’t really noticed them, or how they kept popping up. This was bad. Dot immediately got herself out of sight. They stayed on Minerva’s tail, so they were definitely following her and not Dot. Had they even noticed her with her disguise changes? She hoped not. It seemed like Minerva hadn’t noticed her either, after all. The other stalkers were clumsy enough to tip her off.

As Minerva headed down an alley, Dot moved into position behind the stalkers. When did she make her move? What was her move? She wasn’t expecting to have to fight now , all the other attacks had happened when the target was at home! The plan was supposed to be to reveal herself and confront the attackers, then pursue them home. But right now, the toons were alone. Did that mean they were just following Minerva, and the human portion of the Resistance’s death squad were already lying in wait at Minerva’s house? If Dot went after the toons and abandoned Minerva, things could go wrong in a hurry. Really wrong.

When Dot got assigned to guard Minerva, Peter winced and grimaced, and so did Slappy. Dot confronted the possum again, trying her best to be civil, and asked just why the hell he couldn’t go five minutes without insulting her or her brothers, harassing them, or just flat-out treating them like incompetent toddlers. But Peter’s reply had confused her.

“This ain’t about you. It’s about Minerva,” he said with a sympathetic tone.

Then, after the meeting broke up, Slappy and Peter both took Dot aside.

“What’s going on?” Dot asked as the two older toons shuffled her into a closet.

“Look, eh… I think I got off on the wrong foot with you and your brothers.” Peter scratched the back of his head. “I was tryin’ to make sure you were… emotionally prepared for this stuff. I didn’t want you kids getting in over your heads.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Dot said with false sweetness. “Really, I do, but it would be nice if you didn’t make assumptions.”

“I didn’t make-” Peter started, but Slappy elbowed him. “Look, never mind that. Slappy and I just got a little advice that might save both your lives if Minerva ends up bein’ the scumbags’ target.”

“And why do I need your advice, in particular?”

“Cuz Peter’s a P.I, and not just in his cartoons,” Slappy said. “He’s been involved in some serious stuff over the years, and he’s got more experience than any toon alive in handling actual life-or-death situations.”

Peter shrugged. “That makes it sound like it’s always my life or death. It’s not like I wake up, get a cuppa coffee and go have a firefight with a bunch’a Dip-wielding criminals...”

Slappy rolled her eyes. “Arms smugglers, poachers, illegal logging, drug trafficking, human trafficking...”

“Okay, yeah, I’ve busted some nasty sons’a bitches. But that’s not relevant here. The issue is… look, I think you’re strong enough and smart enough to handle yourself and keep that dumbass mink safe, but only if you’re warned about her powers ahead of time.”

Dot put her hands on her hips. “Minerva’s powers don’t affect me because I’m a girl, remember? It’s why I got railroaded into guarding her specifically.”

“Her effect on you ain’t the problem,” said Slappy. “Look, do you understand why Minerva’s power’s so dangerous, especially the way she uses it?”

“Not… particularly?” Dot said uncertainly, knowing it was the wrong answer. “How’s it different from ordinary hypnosis?”

“It isn’t,” Slappy said. “But what’s the number one rule you always follow when you use hypnosis?”

“Uhh...”

Slappy facepalmed. “Never mind, I guess you three got locked in the tower before that kinda info was put into books. I was thinkin’ about teaching Skippy, but you learned everything on your own, didn’t ya? The number one rule of using hypnosis safely is to have two backup plans: one for if it doesn’t work, one for if it works too well .”

“Too well?” Dot repeated.

“Yeah. Like the time I convinced Beanie the Brain-Dead Bison he was a premier ballerina and he didn’t snap out of it. I found out the dumb schmuck tried to audition at an actual theater and when they, naturally, laughed in his klutzy face and rejected him he broke their door down. Anyway, hypnosis is pretty safe to use against a weaker toon since ya can always mallet ‘em if you mess up, although sometimes you’ll end up taking a hit. Against a stronger toon, usually ya shouldn’t bother because they’ll probably break your hypnosis pretty easily or stop it altogether. But Minerva’s a special case. She’s not that good at much else, but her hypnosis is ridiculous. If she’s careless she can easily totally take over the mind of a much stronger toon and leave herself without any options for stoppin’ them doin’ whatever she just made ‘em wanna do.”

“And rule number two of hypnosis,” cut in Peter, “Is ya don’t hypnotize your target into having goals that are harmful to you in any way.”

“Which is a problem because Minerva’s specific party trick is she fills her target with uncontrollable lust directed at her,” said Slappy. “Which she, being a naive idiot, thinks is perfectly safe and’ll just make ‘em drool and do wild takes and throw themselves off a cliff if she tells ‘em that turns her on.”

“Well, that’s pretty much what happens,” said Dot.

“No, that’s what happens when you do it to someone with actual morals.” Peter narrowed his red eyes. “You hypnotize someone into wanting, I dunno, a nearby Rolls-Royce more than anything in the world… well, actually you could get pretty much anyone to trespass on private property to climb in the driver’s seat, and most people to steal it. But a normal, sane person ain’t gonna try to kill the owner to try and get their hands on the car unless you really try to make ‘em do specifically that. But someone with a weak mind, or a defective moral compass? Some of ‘em’d boil the owner’s children alive in front of him to make him hand over the keys.”

Slappy nodded. “Not a pretty mental picture, but you’re not wrong. Anyway, rule three is that you can’t predict what hypnosis’ll do to humans. Some of ‘em are utterly defenseless, some are better than ninety-nine percent of toons. So, here’s the problem. Minerva thinks hypnosis is a Get Out of Jail Free card, and she hasn’t been in a real fight as far as I know. So there’s a pretty good chance of her pulling out all the stops and using it either on a bunch of humans who’ve got Dip guns pointing at her and have a defective enough moral compass that they were about to use ‘em, or on a bunch of toons that’ve been drawn to obey any orders they’re given, no matter what, but might well be stronger than she is. Are you getting the picture?”

Dot’s eyes widened and her hands covered her mouth as she finally understood. “Oh,” she squeaked. She knew what rape was on a basic conceptual level. To humans in 1929, the word meant a woman being accosted in a dark alley by a large, possibly armed stranger. For toons, it was different. Their private parts only existed when ‘necessary,’ so to speak. Animal-like toons, even those that walked on two legs, didn’t really need to wear clothing; the human-like ones had more of a sense of modesty, but still normally had more or less the same anatomy as a Barbie or Ken doll. And in the days before Dip was invented, physical force or even threats of violence were almost meaningless. On the other hand, as creatures with the power to easily disguise themselves or even control others’ minds, they were aware of the risks of deception, blackmail, and other forms of coercion decades before humans. That wasn’t to say that there weren’t horrible, traumatic things that could be done to a toon against his or her will, but Dot had never really considered the possibility.

She had at one point worried about the potential dangers of Minerva’s powers and her cavalier attitude towards them, but to Dot the more obvious risk was the mink inadvertently putting someone into a state where he couldn’t respond to her advances with anything but forced enthusiasm and Minerva being too oblivious to realize that she’d done so. The first time the siblings had met her and Yakko and Wakko had gone into the usual wolf-whistling and drooling and hadn’t responded when Dot told them to cut it out, she’d been afraid not for Minerva but for her brothers. In fact, Dot would have malleted Minerva into paste after giving Yakko and Wakko a set of lighter hits to break the hypnosis if they hadn’t stopped her and said they were just playing along. The idea that Minerva’s powers could make her a victim was new and terrifying to Dot, especially since Minerva had once confessed to her how she had to actively put effort into keeping her hypnosis turned off.

“Is that really possible?” Dot asked softly.

“It is,” said Peter. His tone stayed level and somber, and there was no sign of the smug, cheeky grin she usually saw from him. “It happened to someone I knew. She was a con artist – had a special talent for hypnosis, but was pretty much rubbish at everything else, kinda like your friend the mink. She got into a lotta gambling debt, tried to charm her way out of it, and…” he trailed off. “Look, no offense, but I just don’t feel comfortable talkin’ about this kinda thing with someone who looks like a little kid, no matter how old you really are. I just wanted to make sure ya knew enough to be prepared. If Minerva fucks up the bad guys’ brains, they might not back off when you show yourself. If that happens, don’t worry about tryin’ to chase some of ‘em back to their hideout, just get yourselves outta there as fast as possible, and be ready to kill every single one of those Resistance bastards.”

Dot decided she wasn’t letting it get anywhere near that point. She was going to take the three toons out of the fight right here and now. She watched them round the corner into an alley after Minerva, and peered around the corner herself. She ducked back, waited for one, two, three seconds, and stepped into empty space. She burst out of a dumpster with her mallet already drawn, just in front of the three stalkers. They stumbled backwards with shouts of confusion and fear, and the dog and the monkey started to reach behind their backs, but they weren’t quick enough. Dot smashed her mallet down solidly on each of their heads with enough force that her feet never touched the ground until all three of them were lying there.

The dog was the first one to regain some semblance of consciousness, and did so surprisingly quickly. “What the – stop! Don’t!” he cried, throwing his hands defensively in front of his face and scrambling backwards. “Dot – is that you? It’s us!”

Dot kept the mallet raised and all three of the toons in her field of vision, but checked her swing. She knew that voice… at least, she was pretty sure she knew it. But it could have just been someone who sounded similar.

“What was that for?” the Pelican spluttered. He stood up, clutching his head. “What are you trying to do, give me brain damage?”

Dot tightened her grip on the mallet. She definitely recognized the voices. Sure enough, the dog fumbled for something on the top of his head and after a couple of tries undid a zipper. Buster Bunny staggered out of the suit with a large bump on his head. The other two followed suit. The pelican was Plucky Duck, and the monkey was Babs. Dot waited until they were all on their feet, then gave each of them another solid whack.

“Ow! Damnit, Dot!” Buster rubbed a second raised bump. “You know it’s us, why did you hit us again?”

“I don’t think that’s Dot!” Babs squeaked. She reached behind her back again with a trembling hand.

“No, it’s me all right.” Dot tore off her zip suit. Now they were all less than half as tall as they were in their disguises but about the same height as each other again. She immediately stretched to tower over them. They looked even more frightened now. “What were you thinking?” she snarled. To hell with what they were thinking, what was she thinking telling them the plan? They hadn’t done anything stupid with the information she’d given them before, at least that she was aware of, but this more than made up for all the previous good behavior.

“We’re sorry! We were just trying to help! We thought the more eyes on Minerva the better, since she’s moving around, right?” Buster babbled.

Dot mentally kicked herself. She’d complained to the kids that she’d gotten the hardest job. “I told you what was going on because you promised me you wouldn’t put yourselves in danger!” she said, fighting to keep her voice from becoming a shout. “Well, that deal’s out the window now, and so’s the one about telling. Go home, and think really hard about whether you want your parents to hear what you’ve been doing from you, or from me when I call them first thing tomorrow morning!”

Babs gulped, and shrunk back. “Please don’t tell our parents, Dot!” she pleaded. “My Mom’s gonna kill me if she finds out I snuck out and followed you! And she probably won’t ever let me see Buster or any of my friends or you again! She already threatened that the last time I went to Acme Acres to meet them!”

Dot put her mallet back into Hammerspace. Babs had a point there. Babs’s parents definitely had a right to know what she’d done, but she was already in a bad situation and her mother was likely to make it even worse. Dot wasn’t interested in dealing with Babs’s mom, either. “I’ll consider it,” she said with a sigh. “Now get out of here, now! ” She spun on her her heel and sprinted down the alley. Minerva was already out of sight. If she had any common sense, she’d probably made a run for it when she heard the noise of the brief fight. Dot reached the end of the alley and looked in either direction. Still no sign of Minerva. Her heart started to migrate upwards in her chest. She forced it back down. There wasn’t any imminent danger. This would have been the first targeted attack outside the victim’s home, and it turned out the stalkers were just Buster, Babs, and Plucky. If Minerva was being targeted at all, which there was a good chance she wasn’t, the Resistance was probably either waiting at her house or would attack there later that night. There was plenty of time to find her, Dot told herself.

Then Dot heard her scream.

“Oh, man, oh man, oh man!” Buster cringed as Minerva Mink’s scream rang out across the warehouse district. “What do we do, what do we do, what do we do?”

“You heard Dot, let’s just get out of here!” Babs grabbed his arm. She was chewing on the fingers of her other hand.

“You get out of here!” said Plucky. “I’m already grounded for life anyway, I’m not abandoning a comrade in battle!”

“What if Dot gets into trouble too?” Buster fretted.

“Dot, in trouble? Get, real!” said Babs. “We’ll just be in the way!”

Then Dot emerged from the shadow of the same dumpster she’d used to ambush them before. Buster flinched and instinctively covered his head. “Dot! We’re about to leave, we just heard-”

“Help me find Minerva!” Dot panted. She didn’t look angry anymore. If anything, she looked scared. “There’s too many echoes off these buildings, I don’t know which way the scream came from!”

“But you said-”

“Never mind what I said!” Dot snapped. “Up on the rooftops, spread out! Hurry!” She sped away into the darkness.

Buster exchanged a look with his friends. He was pretty sure the sound came from the Northeast. Rabbit ears had their uses. “Follow me!” he called, springing up a series of fire escapes onto the roof of a silent brick office building. He pulled a pair of binoculars out of Hammerspace and surveyed the city. Nothing, at least not that he could see with other roofs blocking his view of the streets and alleys. He bounded across the gap to another building, then up onto an air conditioning unit to get as much height as possible. Still nothing.

“This way!” Plucky’s voice shouted from above him. Buster looked in the direction of the sound and saw Plucky at least fifty feet above a nearby roof, gesturing with a neon-yellow foam hand and pointing in a direction a bit off where he’d thought to look. Below Plucky, on the rooftop, was a small trampoline. Damn it, why hadn’t he thought of that? He raced across the roofs, and all three of them met on top of a warehouse.

“Down there!” Plucky whispered. They peered carefully over the edge of the roof, not daring to make a sound. This building was lower, only about as tall as a two-story house. If anyone looked up, they’d be spotted. Buster kept his ears folded down to avoid being seen. He hoped Babs was doing the same.

Minerva stumbled down the narrow lane between the warehouse Buster was hiding on top of and another one of similar size, pursued by six humans in ski masks and what looked like body armor if the cop shows Buster watched were anything to go by. Her dress was torn and smoke was trailing from the hems, as well as from patches on her tail. Buster wrinkled his nose at the smell of Dip. One of the humans was wiping what appeared to be a cream pie off his face, and another was trying to remove something sticky from his spray gun. Buster took his eyes off Minerva for a split-second to focus on them… and heard a thump and a yelp of pain.

Buster rubbed his eyes. Had Minerva really just ran straight into a brick wall? Had that even been there before? He was pretty sure he remembered the alley being clear! Minerva got up, gasping for breath. She had her back to the wall, and there was no chance of getting past the humans. There weren’t any windows she could go through either. The humans started to raised their guns execution-style. Where was Dot?

“I’m gonna put a stop to this...” Plucky muttered. He pulled a lit bomb from his Hammerspace.

“Put that out!” Babs whispered. Without giving Plucky the chance to do so she grabbed the fuse and extinguished it. “It could blow their guns up and spray Dip everywhere!”

“She’ll die if I don’t stop them!” Plucky whispered back. “Fine, I’ll create a distraction if that’s what you want-”

But Minerva beat him to it. “Stop! Stop! I’ll do anything! Just don’t shoot!” she threw her arms out in front of her, waving them frantically and giving the humans a textbook ‘Doe Eyes’ look.

“Anything? Then say good night, Mink!” one of the humans said.

Minerva swallowed so hard Buster could see the lump in her throat descend. But then her demeanor completely changed. She thrust her hips sideways slightly, leaned forward, and batted her eyelids. “Are you sure you want to do that?” she asked in a smooth, sensuous voice. Like pouring warm honey over chocolate ice cream, Buster thought. He felt the effects of gravity on his body decreasing. “You know, I’d be much more valuable to you boys alive!” Minerva slowly slipped her fingers underneath the right shoulder strap of her dress and pushed it aside.

Buster felt his heart slam against his ribcage like a battering ram. His stomach tingled, and his ears twisted around each other. She was so… beautiful… then something dark and opaque was shoved over his head and he was yanked backwards. There was a loud snap, and he felt a jolt of pain in his fingers. Biting his tongue to avoid crying out, he ripped the thing off his head – a black cloth hood, it turned out. The thing that had hurt his hand was a large rat trap.

“Buster? Are you okay?” Babs whispered. “She hypnotized you!”

“Huh? Yeah, I’m fine!” Buster pulled the trap off his hand. Plucky was removing a similar one from his right foot. “I don’t think I’m who she was aiming for, though!” He pulled himself back up to the ledge, mentally bracing himself for the hypnotic effect. If he was ready, he could resist it, although he wasn’t so sure about Plucky.

“Alive...” muttered the human who’d spoken before. He lowered his gun and pulled his mask off, revealing a narrow face with a long, curly brown beard. “Yeah…” He had a stupid-looking grin plastered across his face, and wasn’t taking his eyes off Minerva, although they wandered up and down her body quite a bit.

“Whew!” Plucky let out a breath and slapped his forehead. “That was a close one! Now she’s got them wrapped around her little finger, though! What say we mosey on down there with some rope and help tie them up! Heck, I wouldn’t mind Minerva tying me up, y’know-” Bab clamped his beak shut with her hand.

But then the human raised his gun again. His grin changed from goofy to lecherous, and he took a slow step forward. The other humans were taking their masks off too. “You’re right, you’re worth a lot more to us alive,” he repeated. “Now why don’tcha show us what you got under that dress of yours.”

“What?” Buster’s mouth hung open. “What happened? Why didn’t it work?”

Then Dot’s voice came from behind him. He jumped a foot in the air, and Babs propelled herself off the roof and would have fallen if Buster hadn’t grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her back to safety. “What’s going on?” Dot sounded almost frantic now. “Did you find her?”

“Yeah,” Babs answered. “But something went wrong with her hypnosis!”

“Come on, I think it’s a little early for that, don’t you?” Minerva said with a nervous laugh.

“Boys, help ‘er outta that thing!” snarled the lead human. “I got ya covered!” Two of the others dropped their guns and lunged. Minerva sidestepped them awkwardly, avoiding putting weight on one foot, then flattened herself against a wall. She started to reach into her pocket.

Buster heard a sharp intake of breath from Dot. “Damn it, I knew it!” she whispered. “Peter was right!”

“Peter was right about what?” Babs asked.

“Never mind! Babs, you grab Minerva and get her as far away as you can! Buster, Plucky, drop something heavy on the humans now! Don’t soften it!

“What? But, I-” Buster stammered. Come on, he had to concentrate! He focused on the space above the humans’ heads and visualized a large boulder appearing. Summoning, or conjuration at a distance, was the hardest of the Hammerspace techniques. Ordinarily it was second nature to him, but he couldn’t concentrate at all! What if the impact exploded the Dip guns, like Babs warned? She’d be down there too, trying to grab Minerva. They’d both die!

But Buster didn’t get a chance to summon his rock. Before he could so it, an anvil fell from the sky and flattened Minerva with a loud clang. Damnit, Plucky, was his first thought. But then, a door appeared in thin air, and a toon came out, just a brown blur of motion. It bounced off the pavement, then raised an enormous mallet over the humans’ heads. The weapon descended one, two, three, four, five, six times so fast Buster could barely count the individual blows. But the humans didn’t die. Buster watched, astonished, as their bodies contracted, compressed, and wobbled like accordions, a sure sign that the stranger had forced cartoon physics to apply to their bodies. Things appeared around their heads, not stars or birds, but little bombs which exploded with loud CRACKs and showers of colored light. The toon skidded to a stop about fifteen feet behind the humans and stood there, seemingly at attention, with the mallet held innocently behind its back.

“Looks like Minerva’s got a lot of guardian angels,” remarked Plucky.

“I don’t think so...” Dot whispered.

Buster couldn’t quite tell the new toon’s species. It was a two-legged animal, around the height he’d been when he was filming Tiny Toon Adventures, and with similar proportions to him or Dot apart from its feet being a bit smaller. Its body was covered in reddish-brown fur, with a creamy white belly and feet. It had fairly small round ears, and a mid-length fuzzy tail – longer than a rabbit’s but shorter than a skunk’s or a squirrel’s – with a black tip wagged and twitched behind it. It was naked apart from a pair of white gloves, and a black gas mask covering its face. The mask wasn’t toonmatter, it was real rubber.

“Ow, my fucking – what the?” The lead human recovered from the mallet blow and spun around, training his gun on the newcomer. His eyes widened for a split-second, then he let out a furious snarl. “You! You know the damned rules! Never attack humans! You’re dead meat!” The other thugs followed suit, swearing and brandishing their guns.

The new toon stiffened, but didn’t appear afraid. “I just saved all your lives,” it said angrily – no, she said angrily – in a high-pitched, rapid voice. She almost sounded like a child! She pulled a trash can out of Hammerspace and nonchalantly dropped the mallet into it, then kicked the can into a shadow where it disappeared. “That mink turned your brains to mush! While you dopes were standing around drooling, she was about to kill you!” Something caught her attention, and the masked head whipped to one side. Minerva was sliding out from under the anvil, but her foot was still caught. The brown-furred toon zipped past the humans in a flash, grabbed Minerva by the tail, and yanked her free with the ease of someone pulling a dishtowel out from under a glass. Then she hopped into the air and whipped Minerva’s body over her head like a ragdoll, slamming her into the ground with a noise like a gunshot. A spiderweb of cracks appeared in the asphalt.

Buster winced. That had to hurt. And he was getting a weird sensation from looking at this toon, the same feeling he got when he went into the Warners’ water tower, the same feeling he got from them, or from Gogo Dodo, when they were in bad moods. She was no pushover, that was for sure.

“So they do have toons working with them,” Babs said, not exactly sounding surprised.

The leader of the humans stepped on Minerva’s tail as she extricated herself from the mink-shaped hole in the pavement and held his gun to her head. “We’ll see if Lowell believes you or not, Number Fifteen” he warned the brown-furred toon. “We’ll take it from here with the mink.”

“No, leave her ‘til last!” Number Fifteen said with the tone of someone discussing whether to open presents or eat cake first at a birthday party.

“You’re not givin’ me orders, toon!” the human spat contemptously – and literally. The toon produced a small umbrella, easily intercepting the liquid projectiles.

“The worm’s already hooked!” Number fifteen declared. “But you only have so much Dip, so save her until you’ve reeled in the big catch!” She pointed dramatically upward, straight at Buster, Babs, Plucky, and Dot. The featureless, glinting lenses of the gas mask stared them down.

Buster tensed. He swallowed hard. “Dot? What now?” he asked. “Same plan? Babs gets Minerva, we take out the humans, and you handle that toon?”

But Dot wasn’t even looking at them. She frantically turned from side to side, eyes scanning for something Buster couldn’t see. He couldn’t remember her, or any of the Warners, ever being this scared before, not even Wakko when he saw a clown. “No! This was a trap! You’ve got to get out of here, now! ”

“But-”

“Run!” Dot ordered, turning towards them again. Buster saw the air shimmer and the city lights behind her start to contract to a single point. He stumbled backward, right up to the ledge.

Then something whipped across his field of vision and slammed into Dot. He caught a brief glimpse of her surprised face distorting and flattening, and then she was gone.

“Dot!” he screamed as soon as he got the breath back into his lungs. What had even happened to her? She couldn’t be… she couldn’t be dead, could she? She was a toon! Whatever had hit her, it wasn’t a stream of Dip. She had to be okay! He strained to track the dark object that had hit her against the night sky. A wrecking ball! It swung up and around in an arc, and rocketed back towards him. “Yipe!” Buster dived out of the way, Babs right beside him. He heard a muffled ‘oof’ behind him, then a triumphant cheer.

“Nice try, criminal scum!” Plucky crowed. He was standing on top of the wrecking ball, holding onto the cable for dear life. As it reached the apex of its arc, he let go, wobbling precariously but staying on the ball, and pulled an enormous pair of garden shears out of Hammerspace. With one SNIP, the cable was severed.

“Nice one, Plucky!” Buster called. “Babs, let’s take out that crane!” It was an enormous mobile machine, with caterpillar tracks, that had somehow driven itself up onto the roof of the building without any of them noticing.

“Right behind you!” Babs said, but soon she was ahead of him, leaping to the cab door and wrenching it open. But there was no one inside, just a yellow post-it note with a smiley face drawn on it, and a timer with three seconds left.

“Uh oh.” Buster had seen, and starred in, enough cartoons to know what was about to happen. He pulled Babs out of the cab and slammed the door shut, and they both ran for it, diving to the tar roof and covering their ears. Sure enough, an enormous explosion rocked the warehouse. Then the roof collapsed under them, and, screaming, they fell into the dust and rubble.

“Buster! Are you okay?” Babs helped him to his feet.

“I’m fine...” Buster smacked the side of his head, knocking pulverized concrete out of his ears. He could hear more explosions and the sound of impacts. “Where’s Plucky?”

“I don’t know!”

A couple seconds later, Plucky’s voice rang out through the night. “Ha! Take this you overgrown flea motel!” There was the sound of something solid hitting something else not so solid. “Smell ya later, sucker!” Plucky yelled. Then there was the distinctive whip-cracking, twanging sound of a toon dashing away at high speed.

Buster frowned. “Well, on the plus side, he’s alive, and he actually did what Dot said. On the minus side, he ditched us!”

“Well, that means we don’t have to look for him!” said Babs. “Now let’s go!”

“Not without Minerva!” Buster said firmly. “Dot might be hurt! We’re the only ones left! We gotta help her.”

“I-” Babs started to object, then her ears drooped. “You’re right, Buster.” She squeezed his hand. “Let’s go!” They dashed out of the dust together, weaving around cinder blocks and pieces of roof beam. The alley was full of rubble. The humans, Minerva, and Number Fifteen were all gone. But there were red spots on the ground, spots that were too bright and vivid to be blood.

“God...” Buster covered his mouth. “Minerva’s hurt?” How did someone even do that to a toon? No… Bugs had told him it was possible, if the attacker was strong and had the intent to do real damage, and the victim was either much weaker or totally unprepared for the blow. The thing in the gas mask seemed like it fit the bill. He stared at the drips of ink. There were quite a few of them! A trail! Leading out of the alley, past the pulverized wall in the middle! “Come on!” he pointed it out to Babs. “Let’s follow it!”

But when they rounded the corner, Minerva wasn’t there. Instead, the toon in the gas mask was leaning nonchalantly against the wall, swishing around a small, mostly-empty bottle of scarlet liquid. She turned it so the label faced him.

“Ink, Furrball. Harvested 09-14-98,” Buster and Babs read aloud in unison, with growing shock.

“Got-cha!” Number fifteen giggled in a singsong voice.

Chapter Text

Buster felt a surge of anger – no, not just that, of hatred – well up inside him. He stalked towards the toon, pulling out his mallet. Come on… he had to keep it in check! If you gave in to your anger in a fight with another toon, you’d already lost. But… that was Furrball’s ink! “What the hell did you do to our friend?” he growled, raising the mallet to strike.

“I didn’t do anything!” Number Fifteen casually tossed the bottle of ink away. Buster was positive she was grinning under that mask. “That was just leftovers!”

“Leftovers?” Babs repeated incredulously. “What, are you some kind of vampire?”

Number fifteen laughed again, her body shaking and twitching as she did so. Through the gas mask, the sound was deeply disturbing, like Darth Vader having an asthma attack. “No, leftovers from making me! You’re pretty funny, though!”

“Well, what happened to Calamity and Furrball? Are they alive?”

Number Fifteen shrugged. “Yeah. I haven’t seen ‘em, but they’re bein’ kept alive in case the humans need to make more toons. Although...” she scratched the chin of her mask. “The little inkblot and the mink are the ones we wanna get rid of – you’re just extras! Once I’m done with you, I could bring you in. You probably have better ink, so they’d get rid of the other two. Or I can give you to the humans and they’ll Dip you. Your choice.”

Buster stood there shaking with rage. He saw Babs pull out an axe. He couldn’t take much more of this. He wanted to provoke the strange toon into making the first move, but he couldn’t just stand here and let her casually talk about murdering Calamity and Furrball.

“Once you’re done with us? ” Babs’s voice was on the edge of breaking into a shout. “That’s pretty big talk coming from a toon who doesn’t even have a name! Why don’t you come over here and see if you can back it up?”

Number Fifteen stiffened. Her gloved hands clenched into fists. But she didn’t take the bait. “You’re not gonna choose?” she said in the same childish, singsong voice. “Oh, well… eenie, meanie, minie...”

That did it. Buster lunged for her, shouting: “I’m gonna kill you, you little freak!” But the masked toon just stood there. Halfway to her, Buster spotted the net lying on the ground, but it was too late to react. With a whoosh, he and Babs were yanked into the air and pressed against each other by the cords. Oops. That was a mistake. He’d have hoped he’d at least make it by himself, but no such luck.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Number Fifteen leap into the air, brandishing what looked like an ice pick. Then the net fell apart around him and just in time he let gravity whisk him down away from a certain beating. He landed on his feet and bounced away from where she would land, Babs right beside him. She held up an X-Acto knife and grinned.

“Nice one, Babs!” Buster said.

Number Fifteen sprang off the wall and rocketed towards them. Babs and Buster sprang into action like a well-oiled machine. Individually, they were widely agreed to be the second and third most skilled students at Acme Looniversity – Gogo Dodo was the first. But working together, there were only a few toons they couldn’t outmaneuver: Bugs, Daffy, Roadrunner, the Warner Siblings, and almost certainly Slappy Squirrel. Buster placed the bar of wet soap right where Number Fifteen’s foot would land, Babs readied the banana crème pie. They struck with perfect timing, sending the toon sliding across the parking lot until she hit a curb and disappeared into a bush. And this time, Buster summoned the boulder perfectly.

“That won’t faze her for long,” Buster muttered. “We gotta get another trap ready!”

“That pie wasn’t banana crème, it was superglue!” said Babs. “She’ll be blinded and stuck in that mask for a while!”

Then a pair of cymbals clashed on his head. His ears rung, and the entire world wobbled around him. He staggered sideways, dizzy from the impact. He could see something hit Babs and send her tumbling away into the same rock that he’d just dropped, but everything was too blurry to tell what. Number Fifteen appeared in front of him, pie filling dripping from her mask. A pair of tiny windshield wipers had appeared on the lenses and wiped the glue away completely. “Hey, Baby Smurf, you missed!” she cackled. “I thought carrots were supposed to be good for your eyesight!” She shook herself, flinging glue all over Buster, and sped away.

Buster shook off the glue himself. He wanted to wring that damn mutant’s neck, but… no, he had to stay in control, he had to stay in control.

“She’s trying to distract us.” Babs tapped his shoulder, sending Buster several feet in the air in surprise. “We’ve gotta find Minerva!”

“Right!” They headed for the roof of the nearest intact building, Buster copying Plucky’s trampoline trick for both of them. But as they ascended past the crest, the masked toon was waiting for them with an enormous fan. The wind caught them and pushed them backward. Right over the trampoline, Buster thought. He looked down, but…

“A woodchipper?!” Buster stopped his fall and dashed sideways just in time, only to land directly on a rake. He shut his eyes and braced himself for it to spring up and hit him in the face, but instead there was a stabbing pain in his foot. “Owww!” He leaped high into the air… and directly into the woodchipper. He managed to jam a crowbar into it before he got torn up too badly, but it was still horribly painful, and when he pulled himself out his legs were missing half their fur. Babs? Where was Babs? A distant cry of pain answered that question. His heart racing, Buster teleported, following the source of the sound. He appeared on the building roof. Babs had evidently managed to get back up there, but was now tied up and dangling from an engine hoist with an ‘Out of Order’ sign around her neck. Her face was bruised – no, she wasn’t just bruised, one of her front teeth was missing and ink was dripping from her nose! Number Fifteen was winding up with a dented aluminum baseball bat for another swing. But Buster had appeared behind the freak. His vision went red. In the blink of an eye, he whipped his mallet out again and smashed Fifteen over the head so hard she was turned into a furry brown pancake. Stubby legs sprouted from the flat disc, and she started to waddle away, but Buster swung again, and again, snapping the mallet on the third swing. Then he grabbed the baseball bat and used that until it broke too.

“That’s… three… strikes and you’re out… at the old ball game...” Buster panted. “Bitch.”

He felt Babs’s hand on his shoulder. This time, he didn’t jump. “I’m okay, Buster,” she said. She produced a small bundle of dynamite, lit the fuse with a match, and tossed it onto the immobile toon. They hopped down from the roof and headed across the parking lot, putting their fingers in their ears and counting the seconds until the blast. Car alarms went off somewhere in the distance. “That oughta keep her down for a while,” Babs commented.

“Shouldn’t we, like… try to capture her or something?”

“No… I think you’re right, Buster. Dot might need our help. I think there’s more than one of those… psycho toons. There’s no way she could’ve done the wrecking ball thing from down in the alley, so probably a different one -”

Babs was cut off by something black streaking down from the heavens in a trail of smoke. It landed hard, but on its feet.

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me.” Buster pulled out a pool cue and brandished it like a bayonet. “Does the number stand for how many times we have to kick her tail or some-” he trailed off.

Number Fifteen’s fur was disheveled and covered in ash. The gas mask was in tatters. The filters had been torn off, and one of the eye lenses had shattered. Buster could finally see at least part of the strange toon’s real face, enough to tell that it wasn’t that different from his own. The muzzle was longer and more triangular, and the teeth a bit sharper, but she had the wide cheeks, the large, expressive eyes, the lighter belly fur continuing onto the lower part of her face, the pink, triangular nose. Had she said she’d been drawn? Because whoever did so had definitely borrowed from the Warner Bros. Playbook. And she didn’t look any older than him or Babs did around the turn of the decade. But he’d expected to see pain and anger on that face after the punishment he’d dished out, and Number Fifteen was still smiling. Her eyes, a bright blue somewhere between the color of a gas stove burner and a welding arc, were wide with sadistic glee. “I like you, you’re silly!” she said, jabbing a gloved finger at him. “I think I’ll play with you two for a while!” Then she actually burst out laughing, insane, maniacal laughter. She tore off the remains of the gas mask and shook the ash from her fur, and the Cheshire Cat grin got even wider. “But my name isn’t Number Fifteen, it’s Wendy Weasel… Bitch! Hee hee hee hee! Hee hee hee hee! Heeeee hee hee hee hee hee hee!”

Buster knew the weasel’s laughing fit would be a perfect time to attack, but he couldn’t make himself move any direction but away from her. It was like the air around her was electrically charged. He felt his fur standing on end, and the space around her seemed to twist and pulsate. There was no question of it now: this toon’s entire body was ablaze with the same chaotic energy that he sometimes caught a glimpse of within the Warners, and within Gogo, and Slappy, but completely untempered by morality or reason. “What the hell did those humans make?” he muttered. He couldn’t even tell how powerful the weasel was. A fight between toons was ninety percent mental. You had to throw your opponent off their rhythm, toy with their emotions, and either frustrate, annoy, or hurt them until they gave up. But that also meant that there were some toons, like Elmyra Duff or Baloney the Dinosaur, who were incredibly difficult to deal with despite their apparent lack of skill because you couldn’t even convince them they should be in pain. But this… this thing was like that and had the skill and brains to fight him and Babs on what he’d thought were equal terms. Had it even been equal, though, or were they just being toyed with?

“Buster… we’ve gotta run,” Babs whispered in his ear.

“I know...” Buster whispered back.

There was no way that they could beat her.

“Run!” Dot ordered. She tried to keep the fear out of her voice. Everything had gone wrong, in a worse way than she could have possibly expected. The entire thing, the threats, the list of photos, was a trap. That was obvious from the beginning: the only reason the Resistance would make the threats was to get them to react a certain way. But they’d all assumed the goal was to either get them to leave one or more of the potential targets unguarded, or to waste their time and resources preparing for an attack that would never come. They thought they’d seen a flaw in one of the possible plans, the Resistance underestimating their numbers, and she’d reluctantly agreed to help set a trap of their own to exploit it. But that was the trap. No one in the ‘Anti-Resistance’ had ever questioned the assumption that their enemies’ goal was to avoid a direct encounter with their stronger members. Calamity and Furrball’s abduction was the only time the Resistance had ever gone after a toon with serious power on purpose, and both of the times they’d met one they’d wound up with their thugs either dead or nearly dead.

But now, Dot could see the Resistance’s real plan crystal clear. The trick wasn’t to evade the high-level toons, it was to draw them in, to get one of them alone and the others not in a position to help, because they were the real targets. Dot pulled up a mental map of where every one of them were. In terms of actual location, Rita and Runt were the most isolated: Pinky and Brain’s lab was outside of Toontown. But Rita and Runt didn’t have a permanent address, and Dot suspected the humans couldn’t actually find them and had only put them on the list as a red herring. And while this place was relatively close to ‘Toon York,’ where the Goodfeathers nested, and Downtown where the Hippos’ penthouse was, Minerva’s actual home was the farthest from anyone else’s. Why had the humans attacked here and now? Probably Minerva running from Babs, Buster, and Plucky had spooked them and made them think she was going to get away if they didn’t act quickly.

And now, the kids were caught right in the middle of this. The Resistance had six Dip-armed humans and at least two toons. One had shown itself and, ironically, probably saved Minerva – Minerva could have killed the humans if she’d conjured something like a grenade, but she could also have stunned herself while a pool of Dip was spreading across the pavement from ruptured guns. That possibility was why Dot was planning to drop a slab of steel between Minerva and the humans when Buster and Plucky took them out. But there was another one there as well. Dot could hear the rush of air and possibly the hum of an engine, and see a blurring at the edges of her vision. There was something big on the roof with them, and someone was doing a very good job of hiding it with some sort of illusion. Dot could tell immediately that the one the human had called Number Fifteen was dangerous, and probably the other as well. At the very least, the Resistance was confident enough in their abilities that they were willing to risk a direct fight with her, or her brothers, or Bugs Bunny, or Slappy. She’d have her hands full trying to keep herself and Minerva safe, let alone the kids.

Then something large, heavy, and hard blindsided her with the force of a freight train. One moment she was standing on the roof yelling at Buster and Babs and Plucky, and the next she could see the city lights spinning below her and the wind was threatening to tear her fur off. She slammed into something solid, but just kept moving, bouncing and tumbling in a shower of sparks and debris, and everything went dark. She came to slumped against a cracked wall, half-buried in rubble. Her head was still spinning. She lay there, dazed, as pieces of plaster rained down on her. She hadn’t gotten hit like that in a while. But it wasn’t enough to stop her. She stood up, dusting herself off and spitting out a piece of rebar. She’d been thrown through most of a warehouse, leaving neat Warner-shaped holes in several shelving units, and she suspected it wasn’t even the first building she’d gone through. Walking back would take too long.

Dot felt anger boiling up in her stomach, but it was strangely easy to keep her mind clear. It wasn’t like arguing with Plotz, or Scratchansniff, or even Peter Possum. It was life-or-death reality, but in a way it was just like filming a cartoon. She didn’t even know the toon that had attacked her. She had her script: protect Minerva, capture or kill the humans if absolutely necessary, follow them to wherever their hideout was if possible. Buster, Babs, and Plucky were an unexpected cameo, but the script was rarely more than a vague guideline and suggestion to the best toon actors. The other toons probably had one of their own: use Minerva as bait to lure Dot into an ambush, beat her senseless, and let the humans finish her off. Let them try it! Dot crouched, braced herself, and leaped into empty space.

An instant later, she emerged from a manhole cover just outside the exit of the alley. Conjuring a metal trash can lid and keeping her other hand where a pocket would be if her skirt had one, she rounded the corner, just in time to see the last two humans disappear into a door in the wall of one of the warehouses that hadn’t been there before, dragging an unconscious Minerva behind them. Dot ran for it, but the door slammed shut just before she reached it. She ripped it open again. Yep. A solid brick wall. She wasn’t falling for that one. But they weren’t the only ones who could paint a door. She pulled out a bucket and brush, and filled it in black, concentrating on trying to follow where the original door had led. She finished it just in time. An explosion rocked the warehouse, and the wall swayed, then collapsed. Dot dived through the doorway even as it tilted and fell towards her.

She came out of the door at an odd angle, halfway between horizontal and upside-down and turned sideways of the way she thought she was going. The ground was a couple stories down, and it was easier for her to just reorient her gravity and fall to the wall behind her, then run down it. She didn’t recognize any of the buildings around her. Evidently she’d gone quite a ways, hopefully in the right direction.

A shrill whistle came from above her and to the left. Dot jumped, and spun around. She was in a construction site now. The building, what looked like an L-shaped office block, was only half-finished, and high up on the framework of exposed I-beams a toon stood, leaning nonchalantly against a column. Dot observed him carefully. He was a two-legged raccoon, tall and skinny, probably between Wakko and Yakko’s height. Most of him was some shade of grey, with the exception of a pair of hard-looking yellow eyes. He wore a shirt with horizontal black and white stripes, like a prison uniform, a pair of blue jeans, a green felt cap, and an actual bandit mask over the fake one produced by his fur.

The raccoon didn’t make a move. Dot checked the ground around her for any sign of a trap, then moved a ways to the side just in case there was one she didn’t see. So he wanted to draw her in again. Yeah, right. A lot of toons saw how easily guys like Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner turned their opponents’ attacks against them and believed it was always better to be passive and only react, never taking the initiative. It wasn’t a bad strategy, but it was predictable, and if both sides were doing it it tended to lead to an awkward stalemate full of ineffectual taunts. Dot, on the other hand, was still fairly comfortable on the attack as well. She looked around. No sign of the humans, or of ‘Number Fifteen.’ She didn’t need a shield at the moment. She wound up and flung the trash can lid like a Frizbee, keeping an eye on it to make sure it was on target, then looking away for a crucial moment. SPROING. Dot looked back and grinned. A giant rubber band now stretched between the two columns. He’d taken the bait perfectly and sent the lid right back at her. But she’d given it a Boomerang throw, and by reflecting it back the raccoon had transferred that to himself. Dot ducked under the lid, then pulled out a small mirror to watch it as it arced back around without taking her eyes off her opponent. She drew out a lit stick of dynamite and a tube of Insta-Bond Glue, being careful to only apply enough and avoid touching the wrong side of the dynamite. If she nailed the timing she could slap it onto the trash can lid as it passed. She reached out… and an explosion sent her sprawling.

“Clever...” Dot muttered as she pushed herself to her feet. She’d looked away to bait him into reflecting the lid back at her, but he’d taken the opportunity to slip an explosive charge of his own on, probably on the underside where she hadn’t looked. The mangled trash can lid was spinning around like a coin. Then Dot noticed a hissing. Her dynamite hadn’t been blown up! The fuse was still lit, and it was still in her hand! She tried to toss it away, but it stayed in place. Uh oh. The glue. She wasn’t gripping it right anymore. Thinking quickly, Dot slipped her hand out of her glove and dashed away, getting out of range just before the dynamite exploded. That was close. Why some toons didn’t wear them she’d never know.

“Come on mate, you can do better than that!” The raccoon laughed, and called in a cockney accent. “Or do your brothers do all the thinking for you?”

Dot put on a new glove and balled her fists. That one hit a nerve. Not as much since they’d escaped from the tower, but when they’d first been drawn people sometimes looked over her head like she wasn’t there to talk to Yakko. Admittedly he did do more of the talking, but she still hated when anyone acted like she was younger, or not as smart. “No! Does Jerry Lewis write your material?” she fired back. If he was going to wait around up there all day, she was going to come to him, traps or no traps. She conjured a cannon, then reached into a nonexistent pocket as if she were about to pull out a match. Instead, she waited for the raccoon to blink, then appeared behind him with a golf club in her hand. She tapped him on the shoulder, waited for him to turn around, and gave him an uppercut to the jaw that sent him flying headfirst into the beam above, then back down off the building completely. That was a good start.

She hopped down after him, grabbing him by the shirt collar as he stood up and slamming him into a wall. “Where are Minerva and my friends?” she snarled.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I don’t want no trouble or nuthin’!” he cringed and waved his hands, looking completely panic-stricken. “I didn’t see nuthin,’ I don’t know nuthin’! The humans went that way though!” He pointed across the site to a trailer.

Doubt started slipping into Dot’s mind. Did she have the right guy? Was this just some other toon who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time? “Thanks!” she dropped him and sped to the trailer, yanking the door open.

She was staring down the barrel of her own cannon. The raccoon was there with a lit linstock. Dot slammed the door shut again, but it exploded outward, and the cannonball hit her in the stomach, sending her skidding across the construction site with such force that her body dug a deep trench into the ground. “That son of a bitch...” Dot swore as she got up, shaking the dirt from her fur. He’d hypnotized her? This meant war. She was still in control of her emotions, but she wasn’t going to underestimate him again.

Dot looked around. There was the raccoon, standing on top of the trailer tossing an apple from hand to hand and watching her. She smirked. Yep, she’d got him pigeonholed. He’d gotten her good with the initial ambush, but now that the fight had actually started he was falling back on provocation and counterattacks. He was a classic trickster. Dot was more comfortable on the defensive herself, but she wasn’t going to waste time trying to get him to fight on her terms. She knew it was risky since every trap he set was part of a larger, more lethal one, but she didn’t have another option. Right now the humans had Minerva, and could simply kill her if she refused to engage. The only way for Dot to save her was to let the raccoon lead them to her, even if that meant walking into a trap.

She growled, forced a bit of steam out of her ears, took her time winding up, and shot off after the raccoon. And so began a game of high-speed, high-stakes Cat and Mouse. Dot was more used to being the one chased, but that also meant she knew many of the tricks a toon could use to get away, and she had some counters of her own that he was much less likely to see coming.

He sped off between two buildings, going back the way they’d come, towards the part of town where there was actual nightlife. Dot stayed in pursuit, skidding around a corner in a cloud of dust, and that dust was all the cover she needed to appear above him on a fire escape and drop a one-ton weight. He looked up just in time, sidestepped, and placed a large spring underneath it. Dot jumped clear just in time as the ascending weight crashed through the fire escape. It reached the top of its arc and fell directly toward her. She sidestepped, and watched its course alter. Smooth , she thought. He’d made it home in on her.

There was no time to do even a spin-change. Dot simply willed her skirt to become a ballroom dancing costume, and dashed over to the raccoon with a rose in her mouth. She took him by the hands, giving him a little hypnosis and an auditory illusion of music as she did so, and pulled him through a series of ballroom dance steps, ending with her raising him directly overhead – right as the weight came down. The force of the impact bowled Dot over, but as soon as the weight made contact the homing effect was lost and she was able to push herself out of the way and leave him to be squished. She got up, rubbing her shoulders. That was going to be sore later. She was still feeling the hit from the wrecking ball.

The raccoon melted into a puddle and slipped into a drain. An obvious teleport. No way was Dot going to follow him down there and get stuck. Now, where would he actually go? She heard a slight ringing behind her. Her head spun around in time to see him swinging something long and sharp at her, but her body was slower to respond. She couldn’t dodge! The blade was right at the level of her throat, but jumping would get her sliced in half and ducking would get her hit straight in the head. Her reflexes took over, and she separated her head from her body. The blade passed harmlessly through the space where her neck no longer existed. But her momentum made her head spin and tumble in the air. The feeling of having her feet firmly planted on the pavement while her eyes, and just as importantly her inner ears were spinning around was profoundly disorienting. She stumbled backwards, and almost dropped herself, only catching her head by the ears. Without waiting to put it back in place, she released the shapeshifting suppressing her neck’s existence, and let it snap her head back into place. Dot swayed again, and her stomach clenched. She felt sick. She should have left that trick to Wakko, she thought. He was always a better shapeshifter. The raccoon stared at her with a confused and slightly disturbed expression, before lunging at her with the weapon. A sword, she realized. She whipped out a rapier and turned it aside. His weapon had a long, two-handed grip and a narrow, single-edged blade with a slight curve. She’d seen these before, in a Samurai movie Yakko managed to convince the studio to rent for them under the pretense of practicing his language skills.

“Copying those Japanese cartoons?” Dot taunted. “You know they do everything with special effects over there, right?”

“Right, and you’re copying stage fencing!” The raccoon hooked his point into a gap in her guard and twisted the rapier out her her hand. He drew back for another blow with a triumphant smile.

Aww… he thought she needed a weapon! One thing about the Warners not many people besides them knew was that they all had retractable claws, they just rarely used them because they wore gloves over them. Dot unsheathed her right set and swiped at the raccoon. He flinched and raised his sword to block. Dot’s hand swished by several inches short of making contact with his blade. He gave her a confused look. He hadn’t seen the sparks fly off the wall behind him, or the deep gouges she’d made. She’d used a shapeshifting trick to make them act as if they were longer than they were. The raccoon’s first clue was his sword falling apart into five pieces, leaving him holding nothing but a hilt. Then his body did the same.

Dot’s natural instinct was to wait for the other toon to recover from the dismemberment. She wanted to walk away. But she’d underestimated him before. And he was genuinely trying to kill her! She couldn’t give him another opening! She conjured a portable cement mixer. Getting his parts embedded in concrete would give him trouble!

But the moment she took her eyes off him to turn the cement mixer on, he vanished. She heard a whistle, and looked up just in time for an anvil to hit her in the face. Her body compressed like a concertina, and she staggered sideways, dazed. Birds circled her head, in black and white as usual. “Look out!” one of them chirped.

“Huh?” Dot looked around. She saw the raccoon hop down in front of her, but was too late to react to him shoving her backwards. She landed half-in, half-out of the cement mixer. As she tried to pry herself free, he hammered her the rest of the way in with a mallet. Dot grimaced as the thick, sticky, cold slurry soaked into her fur and clothing. The machine slowly turned her sideways as it rotated. Dot realized the danger in time to hold her breath, but couldn’t move freely enough to keep her face from being submerged. She finally got enough purchase to twist around and start to crawl free, but the mixer abruptly sped up, its motor whining as it accelerated. Dot’s weight unbalanced the drum, and the entire machine jumped violently up and down like a jackhammer. She suspected he’d written an extra setting on the control dial.

Swearing under her breath, she conjured a bomb, already lit and with almost no fuse. The machine was blown to pieces, but now she was dizzy, burned, and still caked with cement. She could feel it starting to harden already… but maybe she could use that to her advantage! She started to take a step, then another, but ground to a halt midway through. Ugh… she’d gotten some in her mouth. The lye was starting to burn her tongue. But she had to hold still.

Sure enough, the raccoon walked up with his hands in his jeans pockets. He chuckled and pulled out a sign, and reached out to hang it over her left ear, which was actually solid. That was her chance! She sprang into motion again, pulling out a baseball bat from Hammerspace and connecting with his skull with a solid CRACK. A pop fly to center field, she thought as he sailed over the building. Now to make the out. She spat out cement, gagging, and grabbed the sign. Yep. ‘Please Keep Off.’ That was a good one. She put it away in Hammerspace.

The raccoon lost her somewhere in midair and the chase began again. She could see through most of the gags he was throwing at her. He greased the floor? She didn’t need to touch the ground at all! Trip wires? She could cut them. A plate glass window that he ran through like nothing was there? She smashed it with the baseball bat, sending shards of glass flying at him. She tossed a grenade at him and he whacked it back at her with a tennis racket? She pulled out a racket of her own, knowing he’d have changed the fuse when he hit it so it would explode the moment it reached her, then replaced it with a manhole cover at the last second. That one still hurt, though: her ears and tail got singed, and the manhole cover was warped into the shape of a bowl with another arm-jarring blast.

Something was wrong, though. He wasn’t leading her into the humans. In fact, after the first few traps, he fled onto a crowded street again, dodging around cars and between pedestrians. “Run!” Dot screamed at them. “He’s working with the murderers, get away from him!” The last thing she needed was more hostages. But now he wasn’t even fighting back much. And there was no way the humans would be lying in wait here. Even if they attacked the crowd their guns would run out of ammo, and then they’d be facing a crowd of very angry toons. It was like he was trying to stall and delay her. But that didn’t make any sense! He was the one trying to kill her! Why wasn’t he springing his trap? Was he trying to wear her down? She had to admit it wasn’t a bad strategy. Her arms and legs were getting heavier. She was already tired at the very start, and they’d both taken a lot of hard knocks. She couldn’t keep this up forever.

Then she remembered. There wasn’t just one toon with the Human Resistance, there were two. And while this one was certainly powerful, she didn’t feel the same buzzing, frenetic energy from him that she’d felt from the one in the gas mask. Where was the other one? Was it guarding Minerva in case she tried any hypnosis on the humans, again or-

Dot skidded to a halt, ignoring the taxi that swerved around her. Where had Babs, Buster, and Plucky gone? The last time she’d seen them was before she’d gotten hit and flung half a mile away. She hoped they’d had the sense to run… but there was no guarantee they hadn’t been pursued. “Oh, no...” Dot whispered. That was it. The raccoon was trying to delay her. He’d been looking progressively more worried as the chase drew on. He was stalling until his partner came back, which meant that she was probably occupied with at least one of the Acme Loo students. And if Number Fifteen was as good as the raccoon, they’d be in in serious trouble. Hell, if she came back Dot would be in serious trouble.

Dot started to run again, faster than she’d gone so far. She appeared in front of the raccoon, ripping a tile from the sidewalk and swinging at at him. It shattered against a lamppost. Passerby screamed and ran, but she didn’t care. She had to finish this fast. She sprinted off after the raccoon again, moving so fast the pavement rippled and melted. Did he think by leading her into a populated area he’d get her to hold back? If he’d done that in L.A. it would have worked, but this was Toontown! She would probably ruin a lot of people’s night out, but she didn’t have to worry about killing anyone!

Dot bowled the raccoon over, wrestling his foot into a vise and screwing it shut, focusing on imagining it in x-ray as the bones were crushed. He let out a howl of pain, but tore free. His foot was as flat as a sheet of paper now, and several times its normal size, making running awkward. Dot grabbed him again, jumped into the air with him, and slammed his face into a traffic light. His fur stood on end and his body sparked, smoked, and flashed red, yellow, and green like a strobe light. He fell to the ground, snarling, and pulled a Tommy Gun out of his striped shirt. Dot ducked behind a parked truck to get away from the hail of bullets. Time to pull out all the stops.

Dot shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and concentrated. She raised her gloved hand, and let a power she hadn’t used in a while flood into it. The air shimmered, then… it could best be described as spasming around her hand. Her arm was already going numb from the effort, and she felt sweat bead on her forehead. This was a lot harder without Yakko and Wakko helping! But it was working! Things were looking alternately like they were farther and closer: miles away, then inches from her face. She could see passerby stumble. It was hard to tell which way was up or down anymore. Pieces of litter, napkins and bottle caps and shards of glass, floated into the air. Keeping her feet anchored firmly on the pavement, Dot stepped out from behind the car. Or perhaps she stepped through it, or even between it.

The raccoon was having trouble keeping his balance. There was no point in him using the Tommy gun anymore. The bullets spiraled uselessly through the air. One sprouted arms and held up a tiny ‘I Quit!’ sign before vanishing. He pulled out a spiked iron ball on a chain and started to whirl it around him, but his ears were flat against his head and his yellow eyes where twice the normal size. “What the hell? Who – what are you?” he stammered.

Dot stifled a laugh. The opportunity was too good to pass up, and it gave her a few more seconds of distraction. “My full title is Princess Angelina Contessa...” she began, barely able to get the breath out. She wanted to use an illusion to distort her voice and give it a demonic quality, but she couldn’t concentrate on anything else. She had to strike quickly or she was going to lose it. Dot grabbed the ball of nothing that had formed around her right hand with her left. She pulled it out and smashed it back together, kneading it and stretching it like bread dough, ignoring the pins and needles in her hands. She shaped it into a ring-shaped vortex, and tossed it out, keeping a thin string connected to her right index finger so she could pull it back. The raccoon had made a big mistake using that ball and chain. Her vortex grabbed it, and pulled it in. “Louisa Francesca...”

This was the power it had taken the Warner Siblings sixty years to develop. It was what had finally broken them out of the tower. There were plenty of toons who could temporarily connect two regions of space and instantaneously travel between them. A decent number could open larger doors in it, like the raccoon and Dot both had that night. But as far as she knew there was no one else who could distort it and tie it in knots the way they could.

“Banana Fanna Bo Besca the Third!” Dot shouted. It was funny, the first time she said the line she was just throwing random syllables together. But people had liked it, and so she’d kept pulling it out as a running gag. Dot knew she’d already sustained the distortion too long. She pulled it back.

The raccoon screamed as he was drawn into the vortex by his own weapon. His body stretched, even farther than a toon could normally stretch, and got thinner and thinner, spiraling tighter and tighter around the torus of unreality. Dot waited for the vortex to reach her and jumped through its center, slamming it shut behind her.

There was an explosion, and a flash of blinding blue light. Dot had come out of the gate hundreds of feet in the air, but she didn’t have the strength to fight gravity. After a moment’s hesitation she plummeted to the ground of the construction site, sinking several feet into the dirt. She climbed out of the hole just in time to watch the raccoon hit the ground. He landed on the remains of her trash can lid, his body now a thin strand of grey toonmatter hundreds of feet long. He coiled up into a tangled mess. His eyes landed on top of it, completing the resemblance to a plate of spaghetti with meatballs.

Dot thought for sure it was over now. She’d overdone it and exhausted herself, but there was no way he’d still be able to fight her after that. But his bodyless eyes narrowed, and he melted into a bubbling pool of goo, then reformed himself. He was panting, his eyes were bloodshot, and his pants, hat, and one of his shirt sleeves had vanished, but he was still standing. Dot stood up with much more difficulty. She forced her face into a smile, trying her best to remain intimidating. “Just a little thing I do...” she mumbled.

“Really? That’s a right wicked trick ya did there!” The raccoon huffed. He clapped his hands together a few times. “Let’s see an encore!”

“Uhh...”

An evil grin spread across his face. “Guess you’re totally knackered! And no wonder, it’s way past your bedtime!” He made a watch appear on his wrist and glanced at it. He actually looked taken aback. “Where the heck’s Wendy?” He slapped a palm to his forehead. “Herschel’s not gonna like this… can’t go off on me if I finish the job meself, though,” he muttered. He pulled a lit bomb the size of a bowling ball out of his Hammerspace. “Hey, Warner, catch!”

Dot swatted the bomb upwards into the air like a volleyball. There was still plenty of fuse left. She jumped into the air, ready to spike it back at him. But just before she hit, the bomb’s casing split into two halves, taking the fuse with it. Inside was a slightly smaller bomb, with no fuse left at all. She let out a whimper of disappointment and covered her face with her hands. The next thing she knew something hit her in the back so hard the air was driven from her lungs. It hurt so badly she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She opened her eyes. She was seeing double, and hear ears were ringing from the noise of the explosion. She pried herself free of the deep indentation she’d made in an I-beam and dropped to the ground. She smelled smoke. Right… it was her. Part of her was on fire, but she didn’t even care what.

The raccoon appeared in front of her wearing a red boxing glove. She saw it streaking toward her face, but she couldn’t make her body move fast enough to dodge. It hit her in the face and drove her back into the wall. She couldn’t deal with his speed any more… she had to protect herself… she conjured a sparring helmet and slapped it onto her head as she stumbled away. But when she touched her face it felt wet and sticky. Her glove was almost gone, and what was left was charred, but she could still see the black, shiny liquid drip onto the dirt. He hit her again, right in the stomach. She was sent tumbling across the construction site again, banging her head on a piece of exposed rebar. The sparring helmet disappeared. Her stomach hurt so much it was unbearable. She stood up again for a second, but then fell to her knees again, and all the shots of juice and soda she’d been drinking all night came back up.

The raccoon took off the glove and poured the powdered remains of what had probably been a brick out of it. He limped over to the half-finished building and threw open a garage door on the wall. Dot was pretty sure that hadn’t been there before, and she thought she could see somewhere else outdoors behind it. The six humans jogged out. One of them was much slower, dragging an approximately mink-sized burlap sack behind him. Minerva… she was still alive, but she was still in danger.

The lead human surveyed the scene. “Where the hell’s Number Fifteen?”

The raccoon shrugged. “I ain’t seen her since I blew the building, Guv. I think she’s wandered off after those extra kids.”

Damnit… Dot struggled to her feet again. Babs and Buster and Plucky were still in danger… she had to at least take the humans, and more importantly, their guns out of the picture.

“So you took that… whatever the hell that is on your own, Riley?” Another human laughed. “Hey Bill, pay up.”

“Stop using its name!” the leader snapped. “That thing’s not one of us! It’s a weapon, just like this is!” he patted his gun as he stalked towards Dot. “Get ready in case she dodges,” he ordered the others. He took aim.

Now , thought Dot. She had one trick left she hadn’t tried. Just killing the humans, if she could even do it in her state, would leave the guns free to be used as weapons by the Resistance toons. Dip was such a dangerous weapon it was normally unheard of for a toon to use it, because of the risk of it being turned against them. But a toon had driven a truck loaded with it into a building just a few weeks earlier in a suicide attack. She couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t try. If they were running away, though… these toons were forbidden to harm humans, and probably had to obey their orders. She pulled a small cardboard box out of Hammerspace. “You can’t kill me before you’ve met my pet!” she said.

Dot’s ‘Pet’ wasn’t a real creature: it was a puppet she conjured and animated every time she did the gag, and it had a different form each time. This time, it was a writhing, amorphous mass of sucker-lined tentacles, drooling mouths full of rings of razor-sharp teeth, and rolling, twitching eyes. She accompanied it with the strongest fear-inducing hypnosis she could manage. Two of the humans let out strangled cries of terror. But then she heard a mechanical hiss and a splash. The monster melted away before her eyes, dissolving into a puddle of goo.

“Man, that thing almost got me!” a human laughed nervously. “That’s a new underwear moment!”

They raised their guns, taking careful aim – two at her, the others to the sides and above her slightly, Dot noticed. They’d fill the air around her with Dip to prevent dodging. Her Pet hadn’t gotten them to run, but it had shielded her from their first shots and bought her another chance. She’d have to take them out before they fired again – summoning a speeding truck would get them all at once – and deal with the guns later. But all she could do was stand there, frozen. This was it. She was going to die. The idea that she would die had occurred to her several times since the attack on the Capitol, but she had never considered the possibility that only she would die. They were siblings, together from the moment a machine in the basement of a termite-infested studio building spat them out – no, together from the moment Lon Borax put pen to paper. She didn’t want her brothers to die, but why the hell was she dying alone? And she couldn’t think of any decent last words...

“Fire!” The lead human shouted. And a gunshot rang out across the construction sight. She caught the faint blur of motion as a bullet streaked by, swerving and twisting through the air in a path that didn’t even resemble an arc or a straight line. Six plumes of white fog erupted from the humans’ Dip guns. They squeezed the triggers as they yelped and stumbled back, but there were no deadly streams of Dip. It just dribbled out of the barrels, not going anywhere near far enough to reach her. A cloud of smoke rose from the ground.

Dot’s head swiveled to look at where the bullet had come from. There, swinging by his tail from a piece of old scaffolding and holding a smoking revolver, was Peter Possum. He flashed her a toothy smile and dismounted the scaffolding like it was a gymnastics bar, somersaulting twice. His hat fell off, but floated back down onto his head as he landed lightly on his feet. And standing behind him was Plucky Duck.

Chapter Text

“Plucky?” Dot blinked in disbelief. He hadn’t just gotten away safely, he’d gone for help! She’d tried to contact the others by phone before, as soon as she heard Minerva’s scream, but for the few seconds she’d been trying before finding him, Babs, and Buster she’d just been getting a busy signal, and after that she was too focused on everything else to even think of sending them to contact the others.

Peter Possum blew the smoke from his revolver and trained it on the raccoon – or at least where he’d been before, she couldn’t actually see him through the smoke. “Put ‘em up, Stripes,” he ordered. “You all right over there, Warner?”

“Huh?” The words finally woke Dot from her stupor. “Yeah.” It wasn’t an honest answer, unless ‘somehow still alive and conscious’ counted as ‘okay.’ Actually though, it kind of did. Peter was far from the face she’d most wanted to see, but the reassurance that she wasn’t alone had given her a small burst of extra energy. And it wasn’t over yet. Peter must have aimed for the bottles of compressed air that provided the force to drive the Dip out of the humans’ guns, disabling them. She could barely see what was happening from the smoke billowing from the spilled Dip as it ate into the ground, but… wait. Smoke. They couldn’t see her either!

Dot vanished and reappeared next to the sack Minerva was trapped in, confident she wouldn’t have moved far. She reached down and tore it open with her claws. Minerva’s hands and feet were tied together with zip ties, and someone had wrapped her entire head clumsily in duct tape, including covering her mouth, nose, and eyes. She wasn’t moving. She must have passed out from lack of oxygen, Dot thought. She ripped the tape away from her face, taking quite a bit of fur with it. Minerva started breathing again, but didn’t wake up.

There was a curse from Peter, more gunshots, and something grabbed Dot around the neck and yanked her off her feet, pulling so tightly she couldn’t breathe. Dot clawed at her throat, trying to pull the rope away, but it wouldn’t budge. Her vision started to go dark, but she could see the smoking puddle of Dip getting closer and closer. Fear gave her one more burst of strength. She kicked, punched, and elbowed her attacker with all her strength, then stretched her legs out and dug her feet in. He started to respond, but not quickly enough. A brief flurry of motion, and Dot had Riley on the ground with his arms pinned behind his back. She pushed him forward, right up to the rim of the crater, and then forced his head over the edge. The Dip had eaten its way into the ground enough that his nose was still a couple inches from the surface, but he started to cough and choke. One more shove, and he’d be thrown in. One more shove, and he’d be dead.

Dot didn’t have the energy for her body to for her subconscious to manifest in the illusory forms of an angel and devil on her shoulders, but she still heard the voices in her head. “Do it!” squeaked one. “He would have thrown you in! He would have thrown Babs or Buster or Plucky in!”

“You’re not like him!” said the other voice. “You’re not a killer!”

“He’s not like you!” the first voice shouted. “He was drawn just to kill other toons, just like the one that rammed the truck into the Capitol! If you don’t kill him now, he’ll kill other innocent people!”

“You weren’t ready to kill the humans either! That’s why you couldn’t move!”

“You knew those humans had to die, but you didn’t have the guts to do it! That’s why you tried to get those kids to drop the anvils for you, isn’t it?”

“Shut up...” Dot whispered. Tears were rolling down her face. She couldn’t tell if she was crying or if her eyes were just watering from the overpowering smell of Dip. She knew that voice had a point. She’d told herself getting the shield in place was more difficult, and more important… but she hadn’t wanted to do it. Even in that maelstrom of anger and fear something had held her back from taking the humans’ lives.

“You’re being selfish,” said one of the voices. They both spoke with her own voice, so without them being visible Dot couldn’t tell which one was the angel and which one was the devil. “Slappy and Bugs and Peter have killed people when they had to to protect others, and it doesn’t make them evil! You’re just putting your own feelings over others’ lives!”

“He’s no use dead!” argued the other. “Let him lead you to their hideout!”

“What happens after that? You’ll have to fight there, too! If you keep worrying about the enemy’s safety you or someone else is going to wind up dead!”

“Shut! Up!” Dot screamed. She didn’t care which voice was the angel and which the devil. She just knew what she had to do right then. She pulled back, yanking Riley’s body into the air and flinging him back into one of the humans, bowling the man over. One more illusion… glowing red eyes, that was easy enough to pull off. She limped menacingly toward them. They backed away, dropping their useless guns. “I’m not killing one of my own kind… but you...” she pulled a wooden baseball bat, wrapped in barbed wire and covered with blood and scraps of clothing, out of Hammerspace. “Get on your knees and I’ll make it quick! Try to run and I’ll break your legs first!”

“Run! Retreat! Get us outta here!” one of the humans screamed, his eyes nearly bulging toon-like from his head. The others swore, cried for their mothers, or just made unintelligible noises.

Riley gulped. “On it, Guv!” He threw a black, floppy, disc-shaped object on the ground. It expanded, growing until it large enough to swallow a truck. He disappeared into the hole, along with all six humans.

“Uhh… what the hell was that?” Peter padded closer, holstering his revolver.

“Sticking to the plan!” Dot tossed him the bat, and watched with amusement as he caught it expecting a much heavier object. The bat wasn’t real. It was a prop she’d found in a box of junk at the studio years ago, probably from some horror movie, made of foam rubber and leather faux barbed wire, with bloodstains painted on. She was glad she’d remembered she had it in her Hammerspace; she wasn’t sure if she could’ve handled another conjuration without passing out. If she weren’t so exhausted she could have still given the prop the same or greater weight and stiffness to a real bat, but currently she couldn’t have hurt a fly with it. But they’d fallen for the bluff. “They’re on the run, now follow them!”

Peter looked tempted, but he shook his head. “Right now, makin’ sure you and everyone else is safe’s more important.”

“I’m fine! Plucky and I can handle-”

A gravelly voice interrupted her. “Fine? I’ve seen roadkill after a week in the Arizona sun that looked finer than you! Hey, Peter, we’ll take it from here! Go after ‘em!”

Dot turned. When she saw the three figures approaching from the shadow of the trailer the raccoon had used for his cannon trap, she felt tears of relief well up in her eyes again. Slappy Squirrel, Wakko, and Yakko!

“Sis! Are you okay? What happened?”

“Dot! Are you hurt?”

Yakko and Wakko were by her side immediately.

Dot smiled weakly and let herself collapse into Yakko’s arms. “I’m okay...”

“What happened?” Yakko asked again. “Your stowaway -” he jabbed a finger at Plucky - “Wasn’t exactly forthcoming on details. He just babbled something about a trap and you being in trouble, then vanished again.”

“Was it just him?” Dot’s eyes were sliding closed, but now jolted open again. She sat up. “Where are Buster and Babs?” she asked frantically. “Are they okay?” Dot looked around. “Wait – where are Slappy and Minerva?”

“Buster and Babs were there too?” asked Wakko.

“Scene change back to the studio,” said Yakko. “We evacuated everyone back there when Plucky told us the news. Bugs and Daffy are holding down the fort. Speaking of which?” He narrowed his eyes, stretched his arm out to reach across the construction site, and grabbed Plucky by the back of his tank top, then dragged him over. “Why don’t you repeat that question so you can get it directly from the horse’s ass?”

“What happened to Buster and Babs?” Dot asked.

“I don’t know!” Plucky stammered. “That raccoon brought the building down on us! I spotted him in the dust cloud and gave him a good whack, but I hightailed it after that!-”

Dot tried to figure out the exact sequence of events. Riley had obviously painted the single-use door that Dot had followed the humans and Minerva through before the building went down. Either he’d faked his direction to avoid being followed, then returned to the alleyway, found her gone, ignored Plucky’s attack, and followed her to the construction site where she’d wound up by accident, or he’d actually gone to the construction site, decided it was a good place to set up an ambush, and sent the humans and Minerva someplace else to wait around, returned to the alleyway – possibly to look for his partner – gotten attacked by Plucky, and returned to the construction site. Either way, he’d used some sort of teleportation technique three or four times between when the humans had disappeared through the door and when she’d noticed him standing on the upper floor watching her. That was only a few seconds on either side of the explosion, and Plucky had encountered him after it. Probably she’d spotted him just after he’d arrived.

“- I assumed Buster and Babs used the dust cloud to get out of there like I did – they’re not idiots, after all -” Plucky continued.

“Questionable,” commented Yakko.

“- but I couldn’t find them anywhere! I looked pretty much everywhere but their houses! So I called both of their parents and asked to speak to them about a book report related emergency, and, well, I think their parents know they snuck out now, but I didn’t tell them where, and -”

“Long story short, you can’t find them?” Dot asked. She noticed Slappy reappear in her peripheral vision.

“Pretty much.” Plucky nodded.

“Okay...” Dot took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking again. “You never saw that toon with the gas mask on after the building blew up, right?”

“Nope.”

“Neither did I. I think either Babs and Buster found her, or she found them.”

Then there was a flash of red-orange light. From a long way off, hidden by the buildings, Dot saw a mushroom cloud rise into the air.

“That’s not good,” said Slappy. “Four… five… six…”

“What are you doing?” asked Wakko.

“Seven… eight...” Slappy continued. She held up a sign: “Counting how long it takes for the sound to reach us to get distance.”

At eleven seconds, the report sounded. A couple seconds later, a second explosion not too far from the first lit up the sky.

“Two point two miles,” said Slappy. “Plucky, you got enough juice for one scene change?”

“Are you kidding? I can keep this up all night!”

“Too bad. You and Dot get back to the studio.”

“But I-” Plucky and Dot protested almost in unison, by were silenced by a glare.

“Come on, sis, we’ve been bored out of our skulls all night staking out houses!” Yakko said with a grin. “Don’t hog all the action for yourself! Come one Wak, let’s go see how much trouble those rabbits got themselves into.”

“We run on the count of three, and stick together!” Babs whispered, scrambling the words.

“Got it,” Buster scrambled back. He slowly backed away from the insane toon, keeping a tight grip on Babs’s hand. The weasel had stopped laughing now, but still had a vicious grin plastered over her face.

“One...” Babs began. “Two...” Buster braced himself. She was probably going to teleport them both. He just had to relax and make he didn’t throw her off by paying too much attention to where they were.

“Twoandahalfgo!” Wendy sprang forward, closing the distance between them before Buster could even think of reacting. He and Babs started to let out yells of surprise, but Buster could never in a million years have seen what happened next coming. The weasel grabbed both of their tongues, yanked them out of their mouths – an extremely uncomfortable feeling – and tied them together into a bow. Buster gagged. Their tongues were… touching! He tried to pull away, as did Babs, with painful results. He tried to scream, but couldn’t make a proper sound. Then their tongues snapped back together like rubber bands. He was pulled off his feet and their faces slammed into each other so hard he thought his teeth would break. For a moment they lay there, dazed. “Hey, get a room, lovebirds!” Wendy shouted.

Babs went red as a tomato – Buster felt his own face flush, and knew he probably looked the same - and tried to stand up, dragging him with her. “Aooww! Thtopth itths!” he tried to say.

“Thtopth thpraying thspit ihh igh outhff!” Babs tried to pull free again.

Wendy howled with laughter. She appeared to lose her balance, and steadied herself by pulling on a rope that was hanging from the sky. A chill ran down Buster’s back. That couldn’t be good. He looked up, and the anvil hit him.

“That’s it! ” Buster burst out from under the anvil, his tongue finally free, and lunged for the weasel, gloved hands outstretched to wring her neck. “I’m gonna-”

Wendy dodged sideways and stuck out her leg, tripping him. “Tag! You’re it!” she hit him over back of the head with a hammer as he got up, then hopped into the air, her legs spinning around like a windmill, and vanished in a blur.

“That little-”

“Buster!” Babs grabbed his hand. “We’re supposed to be running, remember?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Buster knew Babs well enough to know there would be no countdown this time. There was no way Wendy had heard her, it was scrambled. Had she noticed they were doing it and hypnotized them so they thought they were continuing to scramble their words, but actually weren’t? It didn’t matter. He let Babs pull him into empty space. An instant later, they appeared underneath a parked truck. Buster crawled out. Nothing around here looked familiar. “Uhh… Babs, where are we?”

“I don’t know! I just picked a direction! We gotta lose her!”

A gloved, brown-furred hand emerged from behind a parking meter and held a hammer over Babs’s head. “Babs! Look out!” he yelled. But before she could react, the hammer smashed down on her. Her eyes spun around in their sockets, the word ‘EXPIRED’ flashed across them, and Babs doubled over, coughing, as coins fell out of her mouth.

“Babs! You okay?” Buster rushed to her side.

“Yeah.” Babs spat out a nickel. “I’m gonna need to brush my-”

But Buster didn’t hear the end of her sentence over a loud clang, and then the ringing in his own ears. Wendy jumped out from behind the meter – he noted the pole was way thinner than she was – and the next thing he knew she was standing over him with a yellow parking boot. Babs whirled around and hit her with a mallet, knocking her through the front window of a closed shop. A burglar alarm went off. Babs’s ears flattened. “Oops. Run for it!”

They took off together down the sidewalk. Buster could hear sirens already – oddly fast. There were police units in Toontown who responded in a matter of seconds, but they were rare. They rounded a corner, and ran smack into a brown-furred toon wearing a police uniform, with a large mustache and sunglasses. Buster saw a gloved hand reaching for him with a pair of cuffs. He jumped back.

“Officer! We didn’t do it, just – run, get out of here!” Babs screamed. “There’s a toon coming, she’s dangerous and-”

Wait a minute , Buster thought. Brown fur? Gloves? About their height? It was just a hunch, but he didn’t want to stick around if it was real. “Right there!” he squealed. He flung a pie in the cop’s face and pulled Babs into the void again. He found himself in the middle of a quiet suburban street. He hoped this wasn’t Acme Acres. Wait, why did he hope that? He was going to risk luring that monster into someone’s neighborhood!

“Buster, behind-” Babs shouted. Then the pavement was introduced to his face at high speed. He felt the air get driven from his lungs as his body flattened out. He peeled himself off the pavement with shaking arms. That one really hurt. A police cruiser squealed to a halt a few feet away. Wendy Weasel jumped out. He conjured a baseball bat, but she ducked under it and whacked him with a nightstick. He fell and skidded backwards on his rear. Babs lunged for Wendy and hit her over the head with a bottle full of some sort of clear liquid. The weasel kicked her away and drew a pistol. One, two, three shots twisted Babs’s body into progressively more painful-looking positions and covered her fur with more and more soot. After the third shot the tips of her ears were on fire.

Fire… that was it! He bet whatever was in Babs’s bottle, it was flammable! Buster pulled a match out of a nonexistent pocket, lit it against his own ear, and threw it. Sure enough, Wendy burst into flames with a startled cry. “Come on, let’s go!” Buster shouted, pointing to a mailbox. Despite being hurt Babs was quicker on the start then he was, diving in and vanishing. Buster started to follow her, but felt something cold and hard clamp around his ankle. He was yanked backwards, his body stretching to far longer than normal! His fingers were burning from trying to hold on. He had to do something! Without looking back, he conjured a lit firecracker and threw it over his shoulder. There was a loud bang, but the force on his ankle didn’t lessen. Just as his remaining hand was about to lose its grip, Babs’s arm reemerged from the mailbox and pulled him in.

They tumbled out of a full-sized postal service mailbox on a sidewalk corner. Buster heard something clinking and clanging, and his ankle was still being squeezed. He looked down. A ball and chain. “Oh, come on...” he groaned. He reached into Hammerspace for a hacksaw – no, a pair of bolt cutters would be faster. Then he caught a blur of motion. Wendy flew out of the mailbox like a guided missile, her fur still singed. The maniacal grin spread even wider. Even after the weasel shook off the burnt appearance, smoke or vapor seemed to be rising from her body. If he concentrated he could see that wasn’t real, but looking at her too hard was painful, like staring into the sun with a magnifying glass. Buster tried to back away, barely able to drag the weight attached to his ankle. He heard a frightened whimper from Babs. There was a feeling like tiny needles poking him all over his body.

“You wanna play with fire, huh?” Wendy said menacingly. She kicked the bowling ball sized lead weight at the end of Buster’s chain with the same technique and ease as a soccer star. He flinched as it sailed towards his head, but not fast enough. It hit him hard enough to make his eyes pop out of his head almost completely, and sent him skidding down the street until his head collided with a curb. The ball landed on his stomach, driving the breath from his lungs again. He heard a scream from Babs and a loud crash, and moved to push the ball off – it seemed to have gotten even heavier – when he realized it had a fuse.

BOOM. Buster staggered to his feet, finally free of the chain. Everything hurt. His mouth was numb, and he was pretty sure all his teeth were broken. That wouldn’t last long – Babs’s front tooth had long since grown back after her assault with the metal baseball bat. Stars were circling around his head, and in addition to the ringing in his ears he heard something hissing. Wait. Those weren’t stars. They were - “More bombs?” Buster exclaimed. He tried to swat one away, but that just caused them to all go off in his face. Come on… get up… he had to get up… she was separating them, making it so she could keep switching between focusing on one of them at a time. Just running wasn’t working. But if they worked together, maybe they could do enough damage to make her give up and leave them alone.

Buster got up just in time to see Babs narrowly dodge a swing from a piece of metal pipe. “Babs, we gotta fight back!” he shouted, conjuring a bottle of nitroglycerine and flinging it at Wendy. The weasel turned, and for a moment looked surprised. Buster realized he’d miscalculated. He wanted to give Babs time to get out of the way, but that had given Wendy plenty of time to dodge as well. But Wendy just raised the pipe and swung at the bottle. Buster braced himself for the explosion, but instead the glass compressed and bent like rubber, and the nitroglycerine bounced off without exploding. It smashed at Babs’s feet and instantly blew up.

Buster winced as chunks of asphalt flew everywhere. One narrowly missed him. Another actually hit Wendy, knocking her to the ground, but Buster knew she wouldn’t be down for long. He raced into the cloud of dust and smoke. “Sorry!” he stammered. “Are you okay?”

Babs nodded. Her clothes were flattened against her body by the blast, but she was still standing, leaning on something for support. A plunger-style detonator! She pointed to it frantically and pulled out a sign: “Stuck! Help now!”

Buster jumped onto the plunger, putting his full weight on it. Just as the dust from the nitroglycerine cleared, another explosion went off behind him. She had to have summoned that one, or even not used any explosives at all! That was hard to pull off. Babs swayed dangerously as the detonator vanished. He had to get them out of there. He glanced behind him. Wendy was still obscured by a cloud of smoke. She wouldn’t be able to block them. “This way!” Buster signed. He grabbed Babs’s hand and pulled them down a storm drain.

He’d meant to teleport them back near where it had all started. They couldn’t shake the weasel on their own. He mentally debated splitting up, and trying to draw Wendy’s attention to him while Babs went for help, but it was too risky. While they were together, they could at least keep her attention divided. Alone, either one of them could be grabbed, stunned, and turned into a sitting target for the Dip-armed humans he knew were still around somewhere. They had to find Dot… if Dot was still there. If Dot was even still alive. Buster swallowed the panic rising in his throat.

The instant they reappeared though, something hit Buster over the head, tearing Babs from his grasp and flinging him to the ground. There were at least a dozen more blows to the head. His vision went black, and he heard Babs scream his name. He opened his eyes with a groan. He was lying in the middle of a set of railroad tracks, at the end of a trail of snapped ties. They were in a rail yard. This wasn’t where he’d meant to come out at all. Babs was still fighting, she and Wendy were shrouded in a cloud of dust and whirling limbs. She’d separated them again. Buster entered the fray with a snarl of fury. He kicked, punched, and headbutted with all his strength, then when he was sure he’d gotten a grip on the weasel and not Babs he pulled a machete out and brought it down on her head. There was a squeal of actual pain. Finally , he thought. Then everything around him exploded. He was thrown clear of the tracks and hit the pavement hard. Babs landed somewhere nearby.

As he got up, Buster let out a gasp of horror. Wendy’s head was split completely in half, and the pieces had rolled down to either side like a banana peel. She reached up and zipped her head back together, and looked right at Buster, her eyes blazing with anger – literally. Crackling yellow-orange flames had erupted from her eyes, and even though Buster was pretty sure it was an illusion, the effect made her even more disconcerting. But then her grin was back again, and that horrible laughter. Scarlet ink was running between her burning eyes from a cut on her forehead, and foam and more red liquid dripped from her jaws.

“Wait your turn!” Wendy hissed. She turned towards Babs, who had just gotten to her feet. Her left ear was torn and bleeding. Had Wendy bitten her and done actual damage? The weasel snapped her fingers. Buster heard a horn. But they were safe, right? He looked around. No tracks. And a train sped by, hitting Babs and flinging her out of sight. He turned his head to try to see how far she’d been thrown, and something collided with his jaw.

He skidded back, barely staying on his feet. He turned just in time to get hit again with an oversized pair of brass knuckles and driven back into a brick wall. Cracks spiderwebbed it. It hurt… it hurt too much… Buster felt his body crumble into fragments. He pulled himself back together as fast as he could, knowing Wendy was still standing there. Even as his arms and legs were still reforming, Wendy grabbed him by his ears and yanked him into the air. She wound up and slugged him again. The wall caved in as he hit it. Then the entire building collapsed.

Babs was waiting for him when he pulled himself from the rubble. She looked in bad shape. She’d put a bandage over her ear, but her clothes were torn and her whole body was covered in dirt or scratches. “Are you okay?” she panted.

All Buster could do was nod halfheartedly, then think better of it and shake his head.

“I got her caught in some tar,” Babs explained, “But that won’t hold her long! What are we gonna do?”

“Keep running!” Buster took off again. “She… she can’t kill us without Dip, right? We have to just keep running! Someone will come for us eventually!” he babbled, trying to convince himself as much as her. The pain of previous hits wasn’t going away anymore. He didn’t think he could teleport again. He couldn’t take much more of this.

Then they skidded to a stop. Standing on a rooftop in front of them was Wendy. Flames still shot from her eyes through the slits of a hockey mask, and she held up a chainsaw and revved it. Buster’s sense of reason had officially gone out to lunch, and fear took over. He turned and ran the other way, only for her to appear in front of him several more times. She swung the chainsaw at Babs, still laughing. Babs stepped back and swung an axe into the saw, snapping its chain and causing the engine to stall and belch out smoke. Wendy shrugged, threw it away, and took off the mask.

“I think I’m gonna have a heart attack...” Buster mumbled. His ink was pounding in his ears, and he could see his chest bulging out with every beat.

Wendy got an even more dangerous gleam in her eyes. The air around her flickered like TV static. She spin-changed into a nurse’s outfit and pulled out a pair of defibrillator paddles. “Clear!” she shouted, lunging and clapping the paddles across Buster’s chest. The shock hit every part of his body at once. There was a bang and a flash of light, and he went skidding backward. He tried to move, but his muscles were still spasming and twitching, and little lightning bolts arced across his skin.

Babs tried to run to help him, but was hit over the head with a bowling ball and driven to the ground. Wendy cackled with delight and pulled out an assortment of ever-larger blunt objects, hitting her and over so fast there was no time to recover. A hammer, a crowbar, a tire iron, an actual truck tire, an anvil, a television, a refrigerator, a boat anchor, and finally a stainless steel double sink.

“Stop it!” Buster finally got his body to move. He charged at Wendy, brandishing a frying pan. His feet flew out from under him and he landed flat on his back with a banana peel flying away somewhere above him, but he’d successfully driven Wendy away from Babs long enough for her to get back up. Stars were circling her head, and she could barely keep her balance. “Come on, Babs! Just a little longer! Snap out of it!”

“Huh? Yeah… run!” Babs pointed to a window. They crashed through it into a back office of some sort. Babs yanked the shade down, then back up again, taking the window with it. But they couldn’t stop running. Wendy burst out of a filing cabinet, and they barely escaped the office. They tore through the hallway and past stacks of tires, then out the building’s front door, setting off another burglar alarm.

“Did we lose her?” Buster gasped.

“I don’t think so!” Babs replied, her voice almost a sob. Tears were running down her muzzle. Buster felt like he was about to either cry too or throw up. He’d never met a toon who was this vicious, this aggressive, never giving them a moment to recover.

But Wendy didn’t appear. Buster looked around frantically, jumping at every shadow expecting it to be here as they crept through the empty parking lot, expecting it to be her. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was almost too good to be true.

Of course it was. The weasel leaped out from behind a dumpster, whacking them both over the head with a mallet. Buster pulled out a knife – it was the only thing that seemed to have worked on her, as risky as it was he had to try it. He lunged. Her burning eyes widened for an instant. She jumped back, landing lightly on tiptoes… and spin-changed. A tutu and ballet slippers? What was she planning on doing with that?

Then Wendy started to dance. Buster could hear ‘Waltz of the Toy Flutes’ but the weasel’s dancing wasn’t quite ballet, or anything else with proper steps. She weaved and spun and waved and hopped from side to side in a chaotic, meaningless pattern. Buster couldn’t look away. He couldn’t move! He felt himself swaying from side to side too. The knife fell from his grip, narrowly missing stabbing his own foot. Come on… he was caught in a hypnosis, he had to snap out of it! But his body wouldn’t move!

The ballet outfit vanished, as did the music. A ball of flame erupted from Wendy’s palm. She drove one into Buster’s chest, and it exploded with the force of a stick of dynamite. He skidded back, still paralyzed. Babs wasn’t any better off. She stood there, helpless, as Wendy painted a set of concentric circles around her. A target. This was going to be bad.

A piano smashed down on Babs. The parking lot shook. She emerged from the shattered lid of the instrument, no longer paralyzed, but dazed, with stars orbiting her head. Wendy casually stepped up to the piano and cracked her knuckles. Then she started to play. E, D, C, D, C, C, E, G, F, A...

A chill ran down Buster’s spine. He recognized that tune. There wasn’t a single student at Acme Looniversity who didn’t, maybe not even a single toon anywhere. Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms. He finally broke free of the hypnosis. “Babs! Get away! Run!” he screamed. He tried to get to the piano, to knock Wendy away from the keyboard before she played the last crucial note, but it was like he was swimming in molasses.

The final ‘C’ sounded, and one of the biggest explosions Buster had ever seen a toon create consumed the piano in a wall of white-hot flame. Buster screwed his eyes shut, but just the heat of the blast was overwhelming. The shock wave flung him backward. He somehow landed on his feet, panting. Babs had to be out of it after that. He couldn’t keep the weasel from taking her away. He had to get help, and just hope he’d make it in time. He peeled out of the parking lot and took off down the street. He could have gone underground, but… could weasels dig tunnels too? He didn’t want to risk it.

He sped around a corner, and was stopped by a shotgun in his face. “Miss me?” Wendy giggled. On reflex, he stuck a finger in the barrel. He’d done this a hundred times, although mostly with blanks. Bugs had taught them this himself even though Props and Physical Comedy was normally Porky’s department. Buster was the best in the class. He knew even exhausted and hurt, he could pull this off. But Wendy never pulled the trigger. Instead, she swung the butt of the gun around, clubbing Buster in the forehead. He saw stars circling him. Wendy bowled him over, driving him to the ground flat on his back with her foot on his chest. She grabbed the stars one by one, made them solid, and drove the points into his limbs, pinning him down. Then she pulled out an enormous can of gasoline and grabbed Buster’s nose. The impact had driven the breath from his lungs. He had to breathe. He opened his mouth. Immediately the spout of the gas can was shoved down his throat and Wendy tipped it upward. Buster gagged at the horrible, oily taste of the gasoline. He felt it rush into his stomach and his belly start to bulge outward. He coughed and retched, liquid bubbling out of his mouth and nose and covering his face and shirt. The can was finally taken away. Wendy threw it to the side and pulled out a match.

Oh no… Buster renewed his efforts to break free of the stars pinning him down, and got his arms free, but Wendy’s weight was still on him. She held the match up in front of her face, lighting it with the flames in her eyes, and let it fall, speeding away at the last moment. Buster had no time to run. There was pain, heat, and a blinding flash of light, and then nothing.

Buster opened his eyes groggily. It didn’t hurt anymore. He couldn’t smell the smoke or feel the heat. He couldn’t feel anything, not even the ground against his body. All he could feel was some sort of soft clothing, and something wooden in his hand. The world came back into focus. He was floating several feet in the air, above a smoldering crater. Chunks of cement were everywhere, a broken water main had created a geyser several stories high, and light poles and cars had been overturned.

That should have done a lot more damage, he thought. It couldn’t have been that much later. Then he looked down at his body. Pale… translucent. He stared at the thing in his hand with shock and horror. It was a harp.

This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening! He’d been haloed! He peered upward, and there it was, shining gold over his head. Swearing in a very non-angelic way, Buster flung the harp at the ground, hoping it would shatter. It passed harmlessly through, but at least the damn thing was gone. He wasn’t dead, of course. Physical violence couldn’t kill a toon. But sometimes, if something did enough damage, one’s body could be completely destroyed and they couldn’t reform it. He’d come back eventually – some of the Acme Loo Faculty, including Daffy and Sylvester, had been haloed before but how long it took was hard to predict. It could be hours, days, or even weeks! He didn’t have time to wait around.

Babs? Where was Babs? Buster flew over to where the piano had exploded, calling out for her. It was getting harder to resist the upward pull, but he felt like he could hold out for a couple minutes at least. Surely if the same thing had happened to her, her ghost would have hung around to check on him? Where was she?

He finally found her lying next to the crater, her entire body covered in soot. “Babs? Babs? Come on, wake up!” he said. She was still breathing, but she didn’t respond. He tried to shake her awake, but his hand just passed through her body. “Babs! That psycho’s gonna kill you, you have to wake up!”

“I found them!” shouted a voice. Was that Wakko? Buster spun around. The younger Warner boy was standing on the roof of the tire place, looking back and beckoning someone else. He jumped down and jogged across the parking lot.

“Wakko! You gotta – you gotta help! We snuck out and tried to help Dot, but – it was a trap, they were after her the whole time, and-”

Wakko completely ignored him. “Well, one of them at least!”

“Yeesh… poor kid...” another voice Buster recognized remarked. “Any sign of Buster?” Slappy Squirrel approached.

“I’m right here!” Buster shouted. But no one seemed to notice. He looked down at his body. It was completely invisible now. Not good. His vision was starting to fade to darkness again. He couldn’t stay conscious much longer.

“Nothing.” That was Yakko’s voice, approaching from behind Buster. “No trace of him or the other toon. The humans can’t get him now, but… do you think he got snatched?”

“There’s a chance,” said Slappy. “Dunno why they’d leave Babs here, though. You guys keep lookin’. I gotta get this kid to a hospital. But be careful. Their whole plan was to lead us into a trap. If the one that did this doesn’t know the rest of the Resistance schmucks are running home with their tails between their legs, you might still have a fight on your hands, and it doesn’t look like you’ll get any quarter.”

Chapter Text

The worst moment of Yakko’s life was when, after a frantic Plucky Duck had shown up at Buttons and Mindy’s house babbling about a trap, instead of racing to the scene of the ambush as fast as he could he had to not just get Buttons and Mindy to the studio, but convince the toddler’s idiot parents that they were in actual danger, and then when he finally got to the construction site he found his sister on the ground and bleeding next to a smoldering pool of Dip. But the second worst was watching her break down into tears an hour later when he had to tell her that Babs was in the hospital and they hadn’t been able to find Buster at all.

Yakko told himself he was never letting anyone separate him from his siblings again, not even for a few hours. They went together, they were a matching set. Why had he even agreed to that stupid plan in the first place? Why had the other idiots even agreed to it?

“Uhh… are you okay, Yakko?” Wakko asked. He was sitting next to him in the hospital waiting room, looking dejected.

“Yeah...” Yakko realized he was clenching his fists. He took a deep breath. It wasn’t fair to blame Bugs, or Slappy, or even Peter. He still didn’t like the possum much, but it sounded like the guy had saved Dot’s life. And it wasn’t like he’d seen the Human Resistance’s trap coming either. None of them had. He’d been lured in by the promise of an easy victory too.

Yakko heard a page turn. He looked over at Plucky, who was currently reading a comic book a few chairs away, but wasn’t laughing. Part of him wanted to blame the duck and the two rabbits for the disaster. He’d known what the kids were doing, the whole Hardy Boys thing, and he’d known Dot was telling them almost everything she knew. He didn’t think it was a good idea, and he’d expected them to eventually get chewed out by the police or the FBI for trespassing on a crime scene or something like that, but nothing this stupid. That’s why he’d gone along with it in the first place.

But really, it hadn’t been as big a disaster as it could have been. Yakko was initially ready to blame everything that had gone wrong on the kids. From Dot’s description of the raccoon, it sounded like if she they hadn’t distracted her, she could have taken him. But then, Dot pointed out that the raccoon hadn’t been the only Resistance-drawn toon there. If Buster, Babs, and Plucky hadn’t snuck along, Dot would have been fighting not one, but two immensely powerful toons on her own. She probably would have incapacitated the humans, but she’d admitted that against two toons like the raccoon she’d have been in serious trouble, and she had a bad feeling that the one in the gas mask was even stronger. And there would have been no one to run for backup.

As it was, Dot wasn’t hurt that badly. She was covered in bruises and burns, and her cuts and scrapes had oozed black ink for a worryingly long time, but mostly she was just physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. She’d be fine once she slept it off. Right now, she was curled up next to him in the larger-than-necessary chair, wrapped in a blanket with her head resting on his lap, but he could see that her eyes were still open, staring at the clock on the wall. 4:02 AM. Minerva was safe too. She was currently being treated for serious burns on her tail and left leg, the result of being grazed by a spray of Dip, and she’d taken a nasty blow to the head, but she’d live. Dot had even somehow salvaged the main goal of their trap. Peter had tracked the Resistance out of Toontown and up the 10 all the way to Indio, despite their van making several license plate and décor changes and teleporting multiple times. The raccoon had finally figured out they were being pursued and lost him just after that, but now they had a general search area to go off of; the Resistance’s base was most likely somewhere in the western Sonoran Desert.

Yakko just hoped Buster hadn’t paid the ultimate price for that success. Babs was in bad enough shape already, and hadn’t regained consciousness. There was no question that the gas mask wearing toon could easily have incapacitated Buster, and while without the humans’ Dip guns she couldn’t have killed him, dragging his limp body to wherever the base, and presumably a stockpile of the deadly chemical, was would have been no problem. It was a bad sign about the situation when Yakko was actively hoping that Buster was either lying unconscious in a ditch or underground somewhere where they couldn’t get to him, or was getting a chance to practice his harp skills.

Why the mask? Yakko wondered. A decent number of drawn toons had signature accessories they’d been drawn with. Wakko had his hat, Dot had the flower band she wore on her ears, Marvin the Martian had his helmet, and Yosemite Sam – and for that matter, apparently the raccoon Dot had fought – had bandit masks. He’d couldn’t think of any that were drawn with full face coverings off the top of his head, but there probably were something. But Dot and Plucky had both said the mask wasn’t made of toonmatter at all. She hadn’t been drawn with it. What was it for? If it was to conceal her appearance, a zip suit or a conjured mask would have been more effective. She’d be sacrificing her peripheral vision and sense of smell – the latter might have been effective against a skunk or anyone known to specialize in conjuring stink bombs, but so would a conjured mask – so there had to be a good reason. Was it just to appear more intimidating? No… Yakko was sure the material choice had to be important.

Then it hit him. He remembered something Slappy said on the day of the Capitol attack. But the poor saps breathed in aerosolized Dip and it melted their lungs. That was it. The mask’s purpose was to protect the toon against breathing in a mist of Dip. It was something the Anti-Resistance had thought of, of course, but they decided when someone was shooting at you the restricted vision wasn’t worth it. But perhaps if you knew your allies would be shooting it near you… But then why only the mask? A full-body rubber suit would be elastic enough to survive quite a big of squashing and stretching, although toon-on-toon combat would eventually destroy it – but it would destroy a mask, too. And why hadn’t the raccoon similarly protected himself?

Yakko thought he knew the answer. The raccoon and the brown-furred toon were probably supposed to work together against stronger opponents. The raccoon seemed to like to fight defensively and keep his distance. Yakko was willing to bet the other one was more aggressive. Either she was supposed to keep the target occupied while the raccoon set up slow but hard-hitting traps like the wrecking ball that had caught Dot, or the raccoon was supposed to get the target’s attention and draw them in while the other attacked. Either way, the raccoon probably placed a higher premium on unrestricted senses, and there was a good chance the raccoon was supposed to handle the non-combat support – creating tunnels or doorways to bring the humans into position – while the other one held the target in place for the killing shot of Dip, placing herself close to the line of fire. The mask didn’t fully protect her from getting splashed or surrounded by a cloud of mist, but it prevented burns in the areas where they would be immediately debilitating or fatal, and unlike a full suit it wouldn’t do a thing against a direct hit. In other words, the humans either wanted her to believe they could kill her at any time, or they wanted their own thugs to believe it. In practice, Yakko suspected a toon that was supposed to be a serious threat to Bugs or Slappy could tear them apart with ease, Dip or no Dip – which was why they’d drawn her and the raccoon in the first place.

The door to the ER waiting room finally banged open and a mousy-haired toon human doctor stumbled out. Dot immediately sat bolt upright. “She’s awake!” he said.

Dot, her brothers, and Plucky immediately jumped to their feet. They were the only ones in the waiting room at this time of night. Due to the nature of toons, emergency rooms in Toontown didn’t get a lot of traffic. They could still suffer from most of the same medical problems as humans and animals, and born toons could even die from illness or disease – although it was extremely rare – and it was possible for a toon, especially a weaker one, to sustain injuries that would last a while. But it was nearly impossible to permanently injure one. Even injuries caused by Dip would eventually regenerate, and until recently that had been extremely rare. A toon could be haloed by extreme physical damage, but if there was anything left of the body the soul could generally return to it without much trouble, and in practice more often then not you could pancake a toon, cut them in half, or burn them to ash and they’d be back to normal within twenty-four hours at the longest. The only truly life-threatening medical emergencies under normal circumstances were old people having heart attacks and strokes – and even those were rare; not that many toons had been born before around 1935, so not many had actually lived long enough to have those problems. The primary function of Toontown’s E.R.s in 1998 was to avoid inconvenience and pain.

Really, that was why Babs was there, too. She’d been beaten to a pulp, culminating in a gigantic explosion that had knocked her out, but she was strong enough that ordinarily she’d be able to recover from that fairly quickly. However, at some point her ear had been torn or cut badly enough that it was actually bleeding. That would be harder to heal. And a toon’s power was ninety percent mental. One way or another Babs would have woken up seriously injured after encountering a far stronger opponent who was bent on actually killing them, with Buster missing. She was smart enough that she wouldn’t fall for any lie they told her. Stress, pain, exhaustion, and fear made it much harder to shake off the effects of an injury. For humans the placebo effect was counterintuitive and effective; for toons it was common sense and vital, because it was just as strong in reverse. The doctor had probably actually stitched her ear up and given her painkillers more effective than Aspirin, but otherwise everything could have been done at home – washing the ash and grime out of Babs’s fur, putting antiinflammatory creams and bandages on the worst of the scrapes and burns, and giving her clothes that didn’t look like they’d been put through a shredder and then tossed in a bonfire – but the medical setting was comforting.

At least, it was to some toons. Dot hated hospitals. She hated the bright fluorescent lights, the sterile white all around, the smell, and of course all the doctors milling around who for all she knew would perform medical experiments on her while she slept. All three of the Warners did. Dot had never known why until, after hearing about Lon Borax’s death, she’d done a bit of reading on him and discovered that even before creating them the man had a history of neurosis. His whole family did, in fact, and his older brother had been lobotomized. It wasn’t uncommon for drawn toons to inherit a few quirks from their creators.

Dot tensed as she followed the doctor down the hall, listening to the usual lecture about not making noise, being rough, disturbing the patient, and so on. She doubted she was the one who needed to hear it. Babs’s parents had shown up as stressed as always, and had been chewing Plucky out like he’d somehow forced Babs into sneaking along, as well as claiming he’d abandoned her. Luckily, they’d also been obnoxious and disruptive enough to be let in to see their unconscious daughter. Dot felt a little better since washing the concrete dust out of her fur and eating a few cornflakes during her brief return to the water tower, but she still didn’t have the energy to get into a fight with them, especially not Mrs. Bunny.

Sure enough, as soon as the doctor opened the door to Babs’s room, the sounds of a one-sided argument escaped like famine and pestilence from Pandora’s Box. Babs was sitting up in bed, staring at the thin blanket covering her. Her ears – missing the usual bows and instead sporting a bandage on one – were down, and tears glistened in her eyes.

“...most irresponsible thing I ever heard of in my entire life!” Mrs. Bunny’s grating voice said. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed!” A thoroughly irritated-looking nurse was standing in the corner, trying to get a word in edgewise.

“Most irresponsible besides pulling a kid out of the best-protected school in Toontown and taking her away from her friends,” Yakko scrambled to Wakko and Dot.

“They’re trying to protect her!” Wakko scrambled back. He tried to defend everyone, Dot thought, even the people who didn’t deserve it. But even he said it halfheartedly and his fists were clenched.

“Yeah, like the Chargers tried to win the Superbowl last year,” scrambled Yakko.

“I – I know, Mom!” Babs stammered. “I’m sorry...”

“No, you clearly don’t know! Your father and I were worried half to death about you, especially after Patrick… do you have any idea what it would have done to us if we’d lost you too?”

“No...” Babs sniffed. She looked up, and her face brightened. “Plucky! Dot! You’re okay! I mean well…” her eyes fixed on Dot’s face. Then she cringed. “Dot, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking – I didn’t think about how I was putting you in danger!”

Dot gave her a smile and a casual wave. “Don’t worry about me, I just shouldn’t have called that lawn mower’s girlfriend fat.” Then, more seriously, she said: “Stop apologizing to me. You didn’t put me in danger, I put myself in danger by volunteering for that mission.”

Babs’s father, a muscular bunny almost a head taller than Yakko even without counting the ears, turned. “I don’t remember Mary and I inviting you in here.”

Babs smiled faintly. “That’s ‘cuz I slipped the doctor a note when you wouldn’t tell me how Buster was.”

Yakko’s face momentarily looked like a Picasso painting. “Exsqueeze me? You seriously didn’t tell her?”

Babs’s mother turned and glared at him. “In her condition the last thing she needs is to be given even more things to worry about.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s why you’re trying to lecture her back into a coma.” Yakko slouched against the wall of the hospital room. He motioned for Dot to speak.

Dot was dreading this moment. She was hoping someone else would have told Babs. But she was the one who’d told them everything that had gotten them into this mess. It was only fair. “Babs… Buster’s missing. There was another explosion after the one that hit you, but we can’t find any trace of him. We don’t know… anything,” she said solemnly. We don’t even know if he’s alive , she thought.

Babs hung her head. “I thought I heard his voice for a moment, after I got blown up. But I guess that was just a dream.”

Mrs. Bunny sighed. “All right. You’ve told her, against her father’s and my wishes and against her best interests. Now get out before you do any more damage.”

Babs stiffened. “I want them in here, Mom.”

“They’re crowding you, sweetie.”

“I’d say you’re the ones crowding her,” Plucky commented.

“What?” Mrs. Bunny whirled around, and both of Babs’s parents advanced on him, backing him against the wall. “You… you especially shouldn’t be in here. I’ve always said you were a bad influence on Babs, but convincing her to sneak into a war zone is the final straw! If I ever catch you speaking to my daughter again -”

“Here we go again...” Yakko muttered.

Dot felt anger bubbling up inside her. If she wasn’t so tired, she’d have… she didn’t know what she’d do. Hopefully not take the bait and start a fight in the middle of a hospital room. But God she’d have loved six to seven minutes with Mrs. Bunny. “You know what, that’s it.” She stepped between Plucky and the fuming rabbits. “ Plucky’s the one who ran to tell the others. If it weren’t for him Babs would probably be missing too… and I probably wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

“He still left Babs and Buster behind when they were in danger,” said Babs’s father. “If he’d stayed and fought-”

“Then you’d have three kids unconscious, missing, or dead,” said Dot. “They were in way over their heads. Plucky did the right thing.”

“Oh, Plucky did the right thing!” Mrs. Bunny said sarcastically. She rounded on Babs again. “Do you agree with that, Babs?”

“Uhh...” Babs looked around the room like she was hoping to see a ‘phone a friend’ button. “Yes?”

“Then why didn’t you do that? You told me you tried to fight those – those psychopaths!”

“We panicked!” Babs seemed to be trying to sink into the blanket and disappear. “I wanted to run, but – we were trying to see what happened to Dot and Minerva, and there was a trail of ink, and-”

“And you followed it? Babs, do you have any common sense whatsoever? Someone injured a toon like her -” Mrs. Bunny dramatically pointed at Dot “- and you still thought you should get involved?”

Trail of ink? A chill ran down Dot’s spine. What was Babs talking about? She hadn’t seen any trail of ink when she’d followed the humans through the painted door.

A high whistle rang out through the room. “Hang on, hang on, I’m calling a penalty on that one!” Yakko said. “What trail of ink? Dot, you weren’t bleeding when you got separated from Babs and Buster, were you?”

“No… that happened a long time after.”

“Well, you must’ve just not noticed it yet.” Mr. Bunny shrugged as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.”

Then Dot got the picture. “Babs, what color was the ink?”

“Huh? It was red, like normal! Well, normal for color toons at least. I didn’t think it was yours, I thought it was Minerva’s!”

Dot smirked. She wasn’t going to say it at first, since there was a possibility that one of the toons had made a false trail, but now she pounced. “Exactly. Normal for color toons.” She tapped a spot on her cheek where a scab had broken a while back and she hadn’t bothered putting a Band-Aid on, just dabbed at it with a tissue. “Our ink’s black , genius. Before you accuse Babs of anything, how about thinking a little yourselves?”

Mrs. Bunny turned red. “You have no right to tell me how to parent my own child! Nurse! Call security and throw these brats out!”

“Mom, no! Don’t throw them out!” protested Babs. “I just wanna know what happened-”

“You wanting to know things that were none of your business is how you ended up in here!” Mrs. Bunny interrupted.

“Well, it’s my decision-”

“No, it isn’t! You haven’t gotten your Certificate of Mental Maturity yet, and at this rate it doesn’t seem like you ever will! Apparently you don’t even have the maturity to be trusted not to sneak out of the house!”

Babs was in tears now, but she sat up straight and tore an IV needle out of her arm. “Mom, if you throw my friends out, I’m walking out of this hospital! What are you gonna do? Ground me? Move me out to the middle of nowhere where I don’t know anyone?”

“We did that for your own good, you stupid, ungrateful-”

Dot’s anger focused to a point. The lights in the room went out for a second. She knew she shouldn’t be doing anything strenuous in her state, but she didn’t care. She mentally reached out and stopped Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, freezing their limbs and vocal cords in place. “Stop. Yelling at her,” she warned. “If you wanna yell at someone, yell at me. I’m the one who told them about what they were doing, I’m the one who didn’t catch them following me until it was too late, and I’m the one who didn’t make them get out when they had a chance. We can take this outside now, or later.”

Mr. Bunny gave her a menacing look. “ Take this outside? Kid, you don’t look like you’re in a state to be making threats.”

Dot was about to point out that she hadn’t made any physical threats, but Yakko was faster. “First of all, musclehead, the only threat I heard’s the one you just made. Second,” he started to count on his fingers, “We’re a buy-one-get-two-free kinda deal, and I don’t know about Wakko, but right now I’m pretty pissed off that my sister was risking her life and I wasn’t there to help. You can run your fat mouths at us all night, but if you try to get physical with Dot, or if I hear you insult Babs again, the only thing that’ll stop me turning you inside out is if Wakko or Dot do it first.”

Then Dot saw her chance. She gave the older Bunnies a sweet smile. “Of course, I wouldn’t dream of telling you to raise your propert – I mean child, but I’m afraid I’m going have to ask you to leave the room – with Babs’s permission of course. We need to find out exactly what happened earlier so we have the best chance of finding Buster, but, well… everything that happened tonight is top secret.”

“Uhh...” Babs looked nervously at her parents.

Plucky held up a sign with a picture of a life preserver and a rope on it and mouthed: “Take it.”

Babs plastered a fake smile across her face. “Uh, yeah! Mom, Dad, it’s really important that no one finds out any of this! You should probably step out for a minute...”

Mrs. Bunny was unconvinced. “Babs, we’re your parents. We have every right to know what you’ve been doing.”

“Sure… because it worked out great last time we told someone the details of our investigation because we thought they wouldn’t do anything stupid, right?” Yakko said smoothly.

“Uhh… yeah, I suppose that makes sense.” Mrs Bunny got a glazed look in her eyes. “Come on, Harold.” Both rabbits wandered out of the room, followed by the nurse. The door clicked shut.

There was an awkward silence. Babs glared. “Yakko, you didn’t have to hypnotize my parents!” she hissed.

“You’re right, I didn’t. I could’ve used physical force to remove them.”

“You didn’t have to kick them out or threaten them!”

“Neither did they. I’d say it’s Tit for Tat.”

“Yakko, I know they can be… hard to deal with sometimes, but they’re just worried about me!”

“So are we,” said Wakko. “But we’re not trying to punish you for it.”

“They’re not trying to punish me for them being worried!” Babs snapped. “Look, what I did was stupid! You don’t have to sugarcoat it!”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not disputing that!” said Yakko. “But since you’re smart enough to figure that out without our help, how about we move on to a more productive topic?”

“Babs, we all screwed up tonight,” Dot added. “Every one of us walked right into the Resistance’s trap without even questioning it. I bet even Bugs and Slappy are feeling like idiots right now. We just need to figure out where Buster is, if he’s still in danger, and if we can help him. You’re the one who saw him last, so I need your help. And right now you’re the only one who can tell us more about that toon in the gas mask. Sooner or later we’ll have to fight the Human Resistance again, so we need to know what we’re up against.”

“Okay...” Babs took a deep breath. “Thank you...” she whispered.

Dot pulled a pencil and a notepad out of Hammerspace. Just doing that made her feel unsteady on her feet. Normally she’d have conjured a pipe and hat, but she didn’t have the energy. “Do you mind?” she asked as she hopped up onto the end of the bed – it was sized for human-sized toons. “Babs, did you say there was a trail of ink? Where was it?”

“It was in the alley! We went after the crane that hit you, but it was rigged with explosives, and the whole building came down -”

“Plucky filled us in on that part,” said Dot. “Right up until he clocked the raccoon and got away.”

“Well, after he did that, we found a trail of ink in the alley. We didn’t know where you were, or if you were okay or not, so we followed it. But… that toon laid it as a trap for us! It wasn’t Minerva’s, it was Furrball’s! That’s what I was trying to tell you!”

“Furrball’s?” Dot’s own ink ran cold. “How did you know that? What happened?”

“She had it in a bottle with his name on it! It said it was… harvested or something. She said he and Calamity are alive, but… she said something about bringing me and Buster in since we had better ink!”

“What?” Dot exchanged a horrified look with her brothers. “Was that what she was trying to do?”

“I… I don’t think so.” Babs’s face was pale. “It… didn’t seem like she cared much about that, and I think she might’ve said she was gonna kill us. That toon was… completely insane.”

“What would she want their ink for?” asked Wakko. “What was she, a vampire?”

“No! I think she said Furrball’s was… leftovers from making her or something.”

“What?” Yakko whispered. “From making her? Are you sure?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“That’s… that’s completely insane.”

“That wasn’t the insane part.”

“I didn’t mean her !” said Yakko. “I mean… maybe it could have something to do with why , but… Sibs, do you think someone was dumb enough to animating a toon using ink instead of blood?”

“You mean like, when they drew the modelsheet?” asked Dot. “Or later once the animator gets plugged in?”

“I dunno. Maybe both. Either way that’s insane!”

“What happens if you do that?” Babs asked.

Yakko shrugged. “Who knows? No one’s been dumb enough to try it yet. Animation’s dangerous. The guy who drew us went nuts, and he was far from the only one. But throwing ink from a living toon into one of those machines is like playing Russian Roulette with a bazooka. You’d have to be seriously kooky in the cocoa puffs to try it.”

“Yeah, only someone with serious brain damage would...” Wakko trailed off. Then a light bulb lit up over his head. “I know who’d be crazy enough! An animator who’d already gotten burned! Yakko, remember that guy Bugs found who went missing?”

Chapter Text

“Okay...” Calamity said. “You’ve got a deal. You help us get out of this place, we’ll help you. But we have to have your word that when this is over… or if you’re the only one that gets out alive… you turn yourself in, and make sure this place gets shut down.”

Kenny hesitated for a minute. “All right. I promise.”

Furrball leaned forward. “Swear in blood,” he whispered.

“All right.” The man pulled a Swiss Army Knife out of his pocket and carefully nicked the tip of his thumb. “I swear if I ever get out of here alive, the Resistance is done. I’ll turn myself in, plead guilty, and all that.” He handed Furrball the knife. “What about your end? It’s… blood and ink, I guess.”

Furrball shook his head and pushed the knife back into Kenny’s hand. “Just blood.”

Calamity nodded. He and Furrball had talked about this before. “We’re not the ones who kidnapped you,” he said. “We never joined a group that said they wanted all humans dead or in chains. And...” Calamity felt a bad taste in his mouth spinning anything about the resistance as positive, but anything to get Kenny to agree to their terms. “You’re the one turning your back on something you were willing to die for. We need you to...” he paused, searching for the right words. “Prove that you changed. We just wanna go home, and make sure our friends and families are safe.”

“You need to prove you won’t kill me as soon as you don’t need me anymore,” said Kenny.

“If we were gonna do that, we wouldn’t have asked you to turn yourself in,” said Calamity.

“Your Resistance has already taken enough of our ink, anyway,” added Furrball.

“Okay, that part I can’t argue with. Deal.” Kenny stuck out his thumb, a drop of blood glistening at the tip. Furrball pressed it against his own, then Calamity took his turn.

For a while, there was silence in the cell. Then Kenny scratched his head. “So, uhh… got any ideas?”

“You don’t have anything? ” asked Furrball.

“Well… not really. I haven’t thought of anything that wouldn’t get us killed, at the very least.”

Calamity sighed, and pinched his muzzle. “Okay...” he muttered. “We don’t have enough information. I need everything you know about this place – how everything’s laid out, all the security systems, guard rotations, and anything else. But the most important things are these -” he tapped one of his cuffs with a finger on the other hand, “and those.” he pointed at the green-labeled sprinkler on the ceiling of the cell.”

That was almost a week ago. Kenny wasn’t able to tell them much before a guard rotation approached and he had to leave. But the next day, he returned with more information.

His news about the cuffs was disappointing. He didn’t know much about how they were made, although he managed to slip a couple questions into conversation with the Chemistry people who’d apparently created them. They were apparently made of carefully alternating layers of nylon, toonmatter plastic, and a special plastic that was essentially a colloid consisting of tiny – 0.1 to 1 micron - crystals of some of the heavier active ingredients of Dip and polymerized versions of some of the lighter ingredients. The resulting composite suppressed most of the abilities of any toon in contact with it, including preventing them from squashing and stretching free, and was extremely resistant to impact, abrasion, and high and low temperatures. Calamity didn’t know enough about chemistry to know how that part worked. He did know that concentrated acetic acid, formic acid, or bleach would dissolve the nylon layers, acetone-benzene-pinene mixtures (or ‘Mild Dip’ as some called them) would dissolve the toonmatter, and the special plastic could probably be melted or scraped off once exposed. However, the process would likely take hours, and he didn’t see any way they could get that kind of time with access to those chemicals, not to mention repeated exposure to the ‘Mild Dip’ with their powers suppressed would seriously burn their hands, and Dip burns didn’t heal quickly. Calamity’s foot had fully healed by that point, but it had taken weeks to do so.

The locks on the cuffs used magnetic keys, and there wasn’t any way to replicate the keys or pick them. Kenny had no idea who had a copy, if anyone; he said it was possible the keys to theirs had been destroyed since there were no plans to let them out. Calamity had a few bad ideas for getting out of the cuffs. Drenching their wrists in Passivation Solution and then somehow sawing or cutting through would get the cuffs off, but he didn’t know if he could actually pull them off the severed hands, not to mention that while the stuff didn’t directly burn a toon the way Dip did, it did weaken their tissues. Even if they got out of the cuffs they probably wouldn’t be able to regenerate injuries caused with it any time soon. They couldn’t intentionally soften their bodies to the point where they could be cut through. Extreme heat would melt the cuffs, but the amount of time they would have to spend with their hands under a blowtorch or inside a furnace to make that work would, again, mean horrifically painful and disabling injuries which couldn’t be rapidly healed. The only good way to get the cuffs off was to crush, tear, cut, or burn through them with heavy machinery.

Then there were the sprinklers. The problem with them was also an issue with the cuffs. Each one contained an RFID tag. If their tags were detected outside of their cell if a guard had not previously cleared them to be removed from the cell – at which point they would be under armed guard – or outside a smaller portion of the complex’s fifth level including the cell block and a few other areas such as the animators’ workroom even if they were cleared, the Dip sprinklers would automatically activate. The system could also be manually activated or disabled from a control room. However, prior to manually disabling it the doors to the control room had to be closed, and they would not open for any reason while either one or both of the activation conditions for the sprinklers was disabled. When Calamity and Furrball were removed from their cell to have their ink harvested, there was always a second guard in the control room who could manually activate the sprinklers if anything went wrong.

The complex had six levels, all of them at least a hundred feet underground. The entrance was in a mountainside, and was disguised an abandoned mine. Level One contained the Resistance’s motor pool, as well as critical life support systems – primarily ventilation - and storage for equipment and weapons. Level Two could be reached from the first level by stairs as well as the elevator, and housed the living quarters of most of the Resistance’s human members. Level Three had more life support equipment – water supply, waste incineration, and the main generators – as well as additional storage and a portion of the Dip manufacturing system. Level 4 was effectively the Resistance’s factory, used for making Dip, the CO2-powered guns used to fire it, the Passivation Solution, the cuffs, and other equipment. Level Five had two wings. One contained Calamity and Furrball’s prison, as well as living quarters for the guards. The other wing housed all the toons the two animators had created. In the middle were the living quarters of Herschel and Lowell themselves and their assistant Carol, as well as the workroom itself, which was centered around the ACME Machine. The output side of the machine was in the other wing, and went straight into a cell with its own set of Dip sprinklers. The housing for the created toons also had its own sprinkler system and its own guards. Calamity gathered that it was probably for all intents and purposes another prison, but Kenny rarely went over there, and said that now that he was working with them, the less contact he had with the Resistance toons, the better. Level Six was devoted entirely to support equipment, mostly for the ACME Machine.

Levels Four, Five, and Six had restricted access. Kenny’s magnetic card keys gave him access to the cells and levels one through three. However, actually leaving the complex required passing through a set of airlock doors manned by armed guards – armed with both types of gun.

It was a good system, Calamity thought. Locked doors separated the cell block from the elevator, and both they, the elevator doors, and the elevator’s movement would be locked down if the RFID system detected an escape attempt. Kenny couldn’t just sneak a Dip-proof container into their cell and carry them out. The Dip reservoir for the sprinklers was on Level Four, which Kenny couldn’t get to. Any equipment that would let them remove their cuffs would probably be on Level Four or Level One – tools for repairing vehicles.

The best solution Calamity had come up with involved Kenny unlocking the door to their cell and them holding it ajar while he went to the control room and disabled the sprinklers – the same key was needed for both, so he couldn’t just give them the key. This would get them access to most of the wing. In the best-case scenario where the other guards were all sound asleep, as were the animators, Calamity and Furrball could get to… a bunch of locked doors. The doors to the animators’ living quarters had regular mechanical locks, though. Furrball couldn’t use his claws as lockpicks with the cuffs on, but Calamity knew how to do it the normal way. If they stole a card key from either Herschel or Lowell, that would get them into the workroom, which was the only place on the level where the Dip sprinklers weren’t installed, besides the control room. Kenny would reactivate the sprinklers, and force them to remain active until the reservoir was empty, then flush it down the drainage systems with water.

Calamity estimated this would take between ten and fifteen minutes, all-told. Of course, by then alarms would have woken everyone up and sent them scrambling for gas masks. The control room would be inaccessible, but Lowell or Herschel would be able to get into the workroom, probably either armed or accompanied by someone who was. If they took both of the animators’ keys, that problem would be solved, but they could always wait for the Dip to be washed away and bring in toons that did have full access to their abilities.

There was another option. Kenny did technically have access to the entire level. He could have gone to the other wing’s control room and set off the sprinklers, wiping out the toon Army, then made a run for the other control room and hoped he could lock himself in there alone before someone else either caught him and killed him or had the same bright idea. And even if it did work, Calamity and Furrball refused to do it. The humans, the real members of the Resistance, Calamity still wanted to avoid killing unless he had to, but they’d signed up for it of their own free will. The toons Lowell and Herschel had drawn hadn’t. They weren’t killing them in cold blood.

Whatever they tried, though, they still didn’t have a way of getting off of Level Five and breaking their cuffs. Calamity couldn’t think of any plan that had any reasonable chance of working without doing that, so as it was, they still didn’t have enough information for him to get an answer.

But while they were stuck twiddling their thumbs until they could find a way out, the Resistance continued to move in the world outside. On October 3 ^rd – Kenny was now sharing the time and date with them – he came to the cell with news that Animaniacs had aired a message to the world – both to them and the Resistance – and that Lowell had decided to respond in kind. But they’d let one of Herschel’s toons come up with much of the message. The next plan was the most dangerous yet: to isolate one of the strongest toons in the world and draw them into a predictable location with a threat on their colleagues as bait. A team of Resistance fighters would attack, but instead of simply providing support – disabling traffic cameras, helping slip through defenses, disguising them with illusions - the Resistance’s living weapons would be at the heart of the attack. This time, the toons had even more disconcerting orders, unknown to the human fighters. The rule had always been death over capture – each human fighter carried an ordinary handgun as a backup weapon, which they could turn on each other in a desperate situation, and they would turn their Dip weaponry on any toons that were supporting the mission. But this time, the toons were under similar orders: if capture was unavoidable, instantly kill the humans and then take the Dip guns from their corpses to use on themselves. Kenny’s conviction that the animators had to be stopped was stronger than ever now.

Calamity and Furrball spent the next two days fretting and chewing their nails from nervousness. This plan… if it succeeded, someone they knew would definitely die. According to Kenny, there were probably six terrifyingly powerful toons actively working against the Human Resistance at Warner Brothers: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Slappy Squirrel, and the Warner Siblings themselves. For two nights, Calamity and Furrball had nightmares about any of them – their principal, their teacher, the constant presence on the studio lot and frequent writer for Tiny Toon Adventures, or their friends – screaming as they disappeared into a cloud of acrid smoke.

Then, late on the night of October Fifth – probably technically the morning of the Sixth – the two abductees were jolted awake by the cell door being thrown roughly open. Carol and one of the guards – Calamity was pretty sure his name was John - marched into the room and grabbed them. Kenny and a furious-looking Lowell waited outside. Calamity and Furrball looked at each other, bug-eyed with terror. Had they been found out? No, Kenny was there with a gun, they still trusted him. Had he ratted them out? He flashed them a sympathetic expression as they were marched out, but it was hard to tell for sure.

They were marched into the Animation Room. Lowell personally wrestled them into the strapped chairs with much more violence than usual. He started to prepare for harvesting their ink. Herschel stormed in a minute later, his jaw hard and his blue eyes blazing like Bunsen burners.

“What exactly’s going on?” Kenny worked up the nerve to ask as Lowell swabbed Calamity’s arm with Passivation Solution.

“Difficulties, Mr. Reavis, let’s leave it at that for the moment,” Lowell replied tersely.

“You haven’t drawn ink from those two in a while. Did something go wrong with the mission? Did those toons get taken out?”

“If only,” Lowell growled. He jammed the needle into Calamity’s arm with more force than usual.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Herschel said darkly. He pulled the sheet covering the artist’s workbench away, revealing a blank sheet of glossy paper. “Second damn time...”

Something banged on the door hard enough to rattle the pens and pencils at the workbench. “Come in, damnit!” shouted Herschel.

“They don’t have the keys,” Lowell said.

Muttering more obscenities, Herschel limped to the door, his face twitching, and pulled it open. Four unfamiliar figures entered. One, a short, skinny human guard, wasn’t unexpected. He gave Kenny a wave which was halfheartedly returned. The others were. First came a young-looking raccoon toon wearing a bandit mask and a seriously damaged black-and-white-striped shirt. If it wasn’t for his yellow eyes, Calamity would have thought he was drawn in black and white. Then a burly gorilla toon shuffled in, dragging the most disconcerting of all. It was small, brown-furred toon, not too different from Calamity and Furrball in general build, proportions, and style. Calamity thought from the long eyelashes it was probably female. She was wearing a modified straitjacket which left the wrists uncovered, a muzzle, and a pair of the same cuffs Calamity and Furrball had on. Her eyes, which were the same fiery blue as Herschel’s, jerked from side to side, glaring at everything they rested on. Calamity noticed Kenny’s eyes fix on hers and his grip on his Dip gun tighten.

Herschel motioned for the gorilla to give him the chain, then ordered him out of the room. The door slammed, and there was a moment’s silence. He took a deep breath. His hand trembled. Was it Calamity’s imagination, or had the tremors gotten worse since the start of their captivity?

“Well?” Herschel asked in an icy voice. This was a far cry from his usual detached attitude, or even the rant he’d gone on the first time they’d met him. “What do you two have to say for yourselves?”

The raccoon looked contrite. “I did everything ya said, Guv.” His accent sounded like something out of Oliver Twist. “The Warner girl was guardin’ the mink, but there was some other kids with ‘er – on the list of ink donors, they was. I got the inkblot separated from them, and did my best to beat ‘er, but she was too strong for me on my own. ” He shot the other toon a dirty look. “If Wendy hadn’t decided to go on holiday, I’d have -”

“You mean Number Fifteen?” Herschel asked. “I’ve told you this. That,” he jabbed a finger at ‘Wendy,’ is Number Fifteen. You are Number Six.”

“Why won’t you use our names?” the brown-furred toon growled in a high, childlike voice. “You’re the one who gave ‘em to us! Wendy Weasel and Riley Raccoon!”

Herschel yanked Wendy closer to him. She stumbled briefly, then went rigid and let herself be dragged, glaring up at him. His stare intensified as well, and he seized the chain with both hands and yanked the weasel off her feet, swinging her into the closed steel door. The blow wasn’t enough to make most toons even blink, but Calamity had a feeling Herschel would have done more if he could have. “I created you with names because a sense of identity makes toons stronger. Our experiments confirmed this. Apparently, I overdid it, especially with you. You’re strong, probably stronger than we really need, but that power is useless if it’s not under my control!”

“Err… you mean our control?” asked Lowell.

“Huh? Yes, sorry. I was being figurative.”

“Whatever you say, Animator Number Two!”

Herschel yanked the chain again. Wendy struggled to stay upright. “That’s not funny,” he growled. “And me, number two? Really? No offense to Lowell, but he hasn’t created anything on your level! I’m more talented, and he’s freely admitted it!”

Lowell rolled his eyes. He glanced down at the bottle that was slowly filling with Calamity’s ink. “I’m not sure I did admit that, my friend. And you’re straying from the subject.”

“Right, the subject.” Herschel rounded on Wendy again. “You have disobeyed orders in nearly every way possible. You physically attacked not just humans, but our own fighters without permission -”

“I saved their lives!” Wendy protested. “The mink hypnotized them, I snapped ‘em out of it!”

“Lawrence has a probable concussion, and Mr. Holquin may have whiplash!”

“How can you tell? Lawrence is as dumb as a basket of clam chowder already!”

“Shut up!” Herschel kicked her against the door, producing another loud bang.

“You asked what I had to say for myself!”

This got her another, harder kick. The weasel flinched from that one, as did Herschel. He grimaced in pain and clutched at his leg. “I ordered you to explain your behavior, not insult the people risking their lives on this mission who you almost got killed!”

Lowell sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He yanked the needle out of Calamity’s arm. “Mr. Wilson, please stop that before you give me a headache.”

“Ye wouldn’t wanna dent yer peg leg either, Cap’n!” Wendy said in a pirate voice.

“That. Is. Enough!” Herschel aimed a third kick at Wendy, but thought better of it.

“She’s got a point,” said Riley. “Either the mink would’ve blown everyone to bits or the inkblot would’ve if Wendy hadn’t distracted her. I didn’t have me trap ready yet! Not to mention the mink buggered up the hypnosis, and best-case, the blokes would’ve, err...” he looked even more uncomfortable.

“Dipped their fountain pens in the inkwell?” Wendy volunteered with a giggle.

Everyone groaned, and surprisingly the humans were the ones who turned green. Calamity knew what the… euphemism wasn’t even the right term, it was more of a malphemism – meant. However, he and Furrball had been unlucky enough to have Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig respectively as their teachers when they took Health class, as well as being thoroughly uninterested in the subject matter at the time. Furrball had slept through most of the lectures. Calamity had very briefly tried to pay attention, then spent the rest of the time doodling ideas for an automated steerable parachute system that would allow storks to simply airdrop babies instead of delivering them directly to the parents’ doorsteps. Sweetie Pie had swiped the designs and dared him to construct a prototype. It ended up crashing into a power line. Neither boy understood the full implications of the botched hypnosis.

“I did not need that mental image.” Lowell jabbed Furrball with a fresh needle, again doing so carelessly and bringing out a hiss of pain. “Bad enough that the existence of born toons implies they’re doing it with each other...”

“I agree,” said Herschel. “Lowell, if you’re done with that coyote, I need to borrow that chair.”

“Really? That’s a massive security risk!”

“With Number Six in the room? Really?”

“Fine...” Lowell undid the straps. Calamity jumped down from the chair as soon as he could, giving both animators and the toons as wide a berth as possible. Kenny made a big show of keeping his gun at the ready and eyeing him suspiciously.

Herschel picked Wendy up by her chain again and forced her into the chair, fastening the straps one by one, except for the arm restraints – their job was already taken care of by the straitjacket. She made it as difficult as possible for him, but was eventually wrestled in. He took the muzzle off, taking care to keep his fingers away from her jaws.

“Careful, I might get to enjoy this!” the weasel threw herself against the straps with a vicious grin. “Are you sure you wanna do this with the kids watching?”

Herschel gave her a look of genuine confusion. “Where did you even learn that?”

“Prob’ly pulled it outta your mind when you were making me, Doctor Frankenstein. Who knew you were such a dirty old man?”

“Wendy, just shut your gob for five minutes,” Riley groaned. “You’re just making it worse!”

Herschel whirled around, wincing and stumbling again. “Stop using that name!” he spat. “Damned prosthetic. Number six, a hammer, if you please.”

Riley’s eyes widened. “A – a hammer? Uhh… what kinda hammer?”

“Carpenter’s.”

The raccoon reached behind his back, his ears flattening and his eyes closing as he did so, and produced a ball-peen hammer. Herschel snatched it from him.

“Number Six, your performance was, at least, adequate. I wasn’t expecting you to almost complete the mission on your own.”

“He didn’t do it on his own!” Wendy protested. “We ended up with three extra toons, I took ‘em off his hands!”

“You were playing around!” Herschel brought the hammer down hard on Wendy’s knee. Her whole body tensed, and she let out a squeak of pain through clenched teeth. “You knew very well they were much weaker! And you let one of them escape, which ultimately lead to the mission’s failure!”

“No, Riley let the duck- ouch!” Wendy was cut off when Herschel struck her again.

Lowell tried to pull the needle out of Furrball’s arm, but ended up snapping it off. “Which is it, Number Fifteen?” he asked, more calmly than Herschel but still in a dangerous tone. “You say you took the three of them off of Number Six’s hands, but then you say the duck escaping had nothing to do with you.” He started to undo Furrball’s restraints.

“I didn’t specifically say-”

“And Herschel isn’t quite correct. While only one of the interlopers was able to interfere with Number Six, you allowed all three of them to escape – the duck and both rabbits! Our most dangerous enemies now have detailed knowledge of our capabilities – especially yours!”

Calamity and Furrball exchanged a shocked look. The duck and both rabbits? That had to mean Babs, Buster, and Plucky! Were they helping the older toons fight the Resistance?

Wendy laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure Saint Peter’s got a detailed profile of me thanks to those bunnies! He’s probably on his way down her to smite you right n – Oww! That one hurt!” The latest outburst was in response to Herschel swinging the ball end of the hammer straight into her eye. She was able to close it in time, but just watching made Calamity grind his teeth together. The eyes were a sensitive area, even for a toon.

“Toons come back from that!” Herschel shouted. “You could have incapacitated them and brought them back here if nothing else – you knew they were high-priority ink donor candidates. You turned an unexpected windfall into a near-disaster!”

Calamity breathed a sigh of relief. It sounded like everyone was alive and free of the Resistance’s grasp– Buster, Babs, Plucky, and Dot at least. He couldn’t tell about Minerva. But at the same time, he was scared. From the sound of it, Wendy had beaten Babs and Buster senseless, maybe even haloed them, and it was just a lucky break she hadn’t handed them to the humans to finish off. And while the raccoon definitely looked the worse for wear, he’d talked about it like Dot had needed help to beat him. How powerful were these two? What would they be capable of if they worked together?

“You want ‘em so bad, I can go get ‘em for ya!” Wendy still had her left eye closed, but still glared out at her creator.

“No! That’s completely out of the question!” Herschel brandished the hammer in front of her face. “You’ve already proven that you can’t be trusted even with supervision. Because of your disobedience, six people almost lost their lives!”

“Uhh… that’s seven.” Riley raised his hand. “I almost got Dipped, y’know.”

Herschel scowled. “Six. People. Did I stutter? I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”

“Hey, Riley! Give him some signs!” Wendy called.

“That does it...” Herschel set his hammer down on the table. He picked up the bottle of Calamity’s ink. “Do you know what this represents, Number Fifteen?”

“The blood of those lost in the Resistance’s struggle for humanity’s future?”

“No.” He set the bottle down. “It represents the first step in creating another toon.” He picked up the bottle of Passivation Solution. “Do you know what this is?”

“But Daddy, I don’t wanna be a middle child!” Wendy whined.

The effect on Herschel was explosive. “Shut up! Shut up!” he roared, spraying spittle at the toon’s face. Lowell rolled his eyes again and opened his mouth, but then closed it without saying anything and shook his head. Herschel took a deep breath and visibly composed himself. His right eye twitched, rolling independently in its socket. When he next spoke, his voice was low, but sharp as a scalpel. “Don’t ever call me that,” he warned. “You aren’t going to emotionally manipulate me that way. You are not my child. You are not even a child. You are a weapon I created: a golem, a homunculus, a machine. You seem to think that your power makes you invincible and irreplaceable, but you are just an experiment. A moderately successful experiment, but not one that can’t be improved upon.” He unstoppered the bottle. “This is a mixture of acetone and isopropyl alcohol, used to overcome the natural springiness and resilience of toon tissue so that it can be penetrated with a needle.” He reached for Wendy’s face with his other hand. She snapped at him, and he drew back.

“A pair of tongs, please,” said Herschel. Riley scurried up and handed him a pair. He clicked them together experimentally, then after several attempts managed to clamp them over Wendy’s nose. Her eyes widened in genuine-looking fear, and focused on the bottle of Passivation Solution. “Lowell and I plan to each make one more toon of the highest caliber. You both represent enough of an investment, if not in time then of my sanity, that I’d prefer to keep you around. But if you disobey either of us again, you’ll be melted down and replaced!”

Calamity reached behind his back. Even after almost a month in the cuffs it was still force of habit. His hands shook. It was obvious what Herschel planned on doing. He was going to break down the resilience of Wendy’s entire body so he could do serious damage – even assuming the solution didn’t have some other nasty effect when ingested. This toon had beaten his friends to probably within an inch of their lives, and seemed pleased with herself for doing so. It seemed like she’d have killed them, or Dot, or any of the others, just as easily depending on her whims. But Calamity couldn’t just stand there and watch another toon be tortured!

It was like that one scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where the shoe got Dipped. That wasn’t real, of course. A documentary on the making of the film that he’d been shown in toon History class a while back showed how they’d done it; the shoe had a packet of red dye in his mouth that he’d spat out into the fake Dip – mostly cornstarch and food coloring – and the smoke had been created with dry ice, hiding the shoe while he hid behind the vat for the rest of the take. The guy playing Doom was a bit more skilled: in addition to using a somewhat larger dye pack he’d actually flattened his body out and hidden in the cover of the cloud of smoke until the camera cut away from him. But the documentary extensively featured accounts from the real people involved or their family members: Roger and Jessica Rabbit, Baby Herman, Benny the Cab, Dolores and Sarah Valiant, Eddie himself – though his interviews were older – and Rick Santino. Both Valiant and Santino had described a shoe actually being Dipped, although Eddie claimed it was a ruby slipper and Santino a loafer. Calamity always found the scene hard to watch. He wondered if it would be different now that he’d actually felt the pain of Dip burning away his flesh. Would it be easier, or would he not be able to watch at all? Assuming, of course, he ever even got the chance.

Stay calm, Calamity told himself. Don’t say anything that’ll tip them off about our plans. But he had to do something. “What do you mean she’s not your kid?” he asked. “You made her. That’s the closest thing a drawn toon has to a parent.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Calamity thought they were a mistake. He’d probably just get the same spiel about toons being artificial and not real living creatures, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, and so on. But instead, Herschel turned, still keeping the tongs clamped tightly over Wendy’s nose, and regarded him with a strange look. Longing? Sadness even?

“Wait, is that true?” asked Kenny.

“Of course it’s not true,” said Herschel. But he was no longer screaming and ranting. “But I believed it once, you know. A long time ago… what is it, fifteen years now? I was a younger man, saner, wholer. I grew up watching Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck, and Porky Pig in the theaters. I even wanted to be like them once. That wasn’t possible, obviously, but one foolish dream lead to another, and I squandered the best years of my life with my nose to a desk in Animation School. I got out just in time for the theatrical shorts to die out completely, although I worked in television for a time – not many toons were being drawn by then, but they still needed props.”

He was distracted by Wendy thrashing from side to side, trying to free her nose, and struggled to keep his grip on the tongs. The weasel’s face had turned red by now, and was starting to fade to blue.

“Where was I?” said Herschel. “Oh, yes. I thought like that once. By the nineteen-sixties you didn’t draw real toons in school. I made modelsheets, and a few of what could be called half-living props – singing swords and the like – but never anything serious. Eventually I got out of the animation business altogether and started making graphic art. Anyway, my wife and I wanted a child of our own, but we couldn’t conceive, and she ended up leaving me. In a fit of loneliness I thought I could make a substitute child. I pulled some strings with a few old friends at Filmation. And...” he set down the bottle of Passivation solution for a moment and pulled up his pant leg, revealing his prosthetic. “This is how it turned out. That little demon showed me the truth about toons. I tried to love it as a son, but I was only a toy to it. Creating that thing was the worst mistake of my entire life.” He picked up the bottle again. “And you, Number Fifteen, are the second-worst.”

Wendy’s face was now purple. Her eyes were spinning around in their sockets and she was trembling and straining against the restraints. Finally the weasel opened her mouth and sucked in a breath – and Herschel seized his chance and upended the bottle, jamming it in her mouth. Immediately she choked and spasmed, putting even more strength into trying to shake him off, but the clear liquid poured down her throat with a ‘glug glug glug’ sound.

“Bite down and you’ll have a mouthful of broken glass,” Herschel said softly. “It’ll cut you.” He finally withdrew the bottle.

“Mr. Wilson, do you have to waste my – our supplies on trying to discipline that monster?” asked Lowell.

“It ain’t exactly hard to make,” said Herschel. “Carol can mix up another batch when I’m done.” He stepped away from the chair.

Wendy Weasel, or Number Fifteen, or whatever her name was, coughed and spluttered and gasped for breath, spraying Passivation Solution out of her mouth and nose. Her body spasmed with such force that one of the straps on the straitjacket was torn loose, and her eyes rolled back in her head. “All right already! I’m so-” she retched, and a wave of clear liquid spilled out of her mouth and soaked her front. The air filled with the sharp nail polish remover smell of acetone. “I’m sor-” Another heave brought up more fluid, now slightly yellowish. Calamity held his nose as the smell of stomach acid mixed with that of the Passivation Solution. The weasel screwed her eyes shut, and tears ran down her muzzle. “I’m sorry already!” A third set of spasms, and pink liquid started running from her mouth and nose and dripping onto the straitjacket. The smell of ink got stronger.

“This is what happens when you disobey orders.” Herschel picked up the hammer again. “You’re lucky you’re even getting a second chance.”

Riley Raccoon cringed, closing his eyes. A moment later he was gone.

Kenny looked just as uncomfortable, but changed it into an annoyed glance at his watch as he cleared his throat. “Uhh… can I lock the donors back up now?” he asked in a seemingly indifferent tone. “It doesn’t seem like you need me to stand around for your, uhh, percussive maintenance.”

Herschel didn’t bother looking at him. “Yes, yes. Just get out.”

Furrball and Calamity scrambled to the door as soon as Kenny opened it. Calamity silently thanked the human for getting them out of there. As he scurried out of the workroom, he heard exasperated swearing from Lowell and Carol – Carol complaining that Herschel would be cleaning the place himself, Lowell complaining about the risk of breaking something expensive – the sound of a hammer striking something soft, and a strangled sob.

Chapter Text

“Herschel’s completely lost it!” Kenny whispered.

“What gave you that impression?” Furrball replied sarcastically.

It was several hours since they’d witnessed the incident in the animators’ workroom. Calamity and Furrball had already talked a bit, but neither they nor Kenny had dared to say a word to each other in the hall, not with another guard watching the security monitors. Only now that the rest of the wing was safely off-duty did he take the risk of entering their cell and escaping the cameras’ sight.

“Real funny, kid. Those toons aren’t obeying him without question anymore. They’re testing him. And Herschel’s playing with fire. I dunno if he fucked up drawing ‘em or what, but he can’t put the cat back in the bag now – no offense. He should’ve melted that weasel down when he had the chance.”

“So… are those two the ones you were so scared of?” Calamity asked nervously.

“Were? I was scared of them when I didn’t know if the animators could keep control of ‘em or not. Now I’m terrified. You still think we shouldn’t set off the sprinklers in the other wing?”

“I’m scared of them too,” Calamity admitted. “Look, I know they’re strong. But I don’t think they’re demons or monsters or whatever like you’re acting like.”

“Look, you ain’t seen the weasel out of those cuffs!” Kenny was becoming more agitated. “She’s… just getting near her, or either of them, puts me on edge! I don’t know how to describe it, but… I didn’t get that feeling from either of you kids. She’d tear you to bits!”

“Do you think we don’t know that?” Calamity’s voice took on an edge. “I know Buster and Babs. If they both got beaten to a pulp, Furrball and I won’t have a chance, even without these cuffs!”

“That’s my point! If we’re gonna get out of this place, we gotta take them out when we have a chance!”

“I’m not killing people in cold blood because of what they could do!” said Calamity.

“That brilliant idea’s how your whole Resistance got started,” Furrball added bitterly. “We’re not doing that.”

Kenny took a deep breath. “I… it’s not about could , it’s about would. Look, I’ve changed my mind about you kids. I’ve even maybe changed my mind about toons in general. But those things aren’t like you, okay? You’ve got parents and friends and school and normal lives, and I can believe even the toons that were drawn to entertain people aren’t that bad. But those two were specifically drawn to be killers! The raccoon murdered six people, six cops, no problem, and then he came up with a plan to try to get even more killed! The weasel… you said the bunnies are your friends, right? You realize blowing them to bits was her idea of a good time?”

“I know that...” Calamity balled his fists. “But...”

“So?” Interrupted Furrball. “How’s that different from any of the other humans here? You all killed people! Didn’t you say some of them enjoyed what they were doing, too? Or is it different when it’s toons and not humans?”

“I’m not saying that’s different! But you two didn’t have a problem with killing them to escape! You’re the ones acting like it’s different!”

“We’re okay with killing them if we have to,” said Calamity. “We’re not asking you to fill their rooms with nerve gas while they sleep.”

“How is this not a have to situation? You said it yourself, if either of them catches us escaping, we’re dead, even if you can get the cuffs off!”

“Keep it down a little!” Calamity raised his hand, palm-down, then slowly lowered it. The warning was as much to himself as it was to Kenny. He had to stay calm, explain things as clearly as possible, not get caught up in an argument. “I don’t think we have to. If we do, I’ll be okay with it, but right now we don’t even have a real plan anyway. But even trying to kill them’s dangerous.” He paused, trying to organize his thoughts. “You said the toons they’ve drawn are kept in cells like this, right? Do they have cuffs like this on all the time except for missions?”

“What? No, not those two, anyway. They’re supposed to be able to defend this place if someone gets too close! They’re technically locked up most of the time, but it doesn’t matter much since they can fit through the bars and stuff.”

Calamity had suspected that when he’d seen the raccoon get brought into the Animation Room with full use of his abilities. The cuffs were only for the uncooperative weasel, just like the straitjacket, muzzle, and chain. “Okay. If they can fight Buster and Babs and Dot, they can probably do stuff like teleport without even thinking about it, and they can do it fast. And like I said, I know Buster and Babs, and Dot a little bit. A stupid toon wouldn’t be able to do anything to them. If you turn on the sprinklers… well, what I’d do if I were them is get to as much water as possible and wash it off: a swimming pool if I knew where one was, otherwise a shower somewhere there weren’t any sprinklers. But if they thought they were dead anyway, they might go straight to the control room. There’s no sprinklers there, right? You’d live maybe… one to three seconds after pushing the button.”

Kenny gulped. “Oh. Didn’t think of that.”

“The safest way of dealing with them’s to avoid them,” said Calamity. “We have to wait until they’re sent out on a mission before we make our move.”

Furrball raised an eyebrow. “Uh… Calamity? Wouldn’t that be at night, when everyone else is awake?”

Calamity attempted to facepalm, but ended up banging his cuff painfully against his forehead. “You’re right… scratch that idea.”

“Do you think we should risk it?” asked Kenny.

Furrball shook his head vigorously. “Even if those two are gone, there’s still that gorilla and who knows how many other toons. And I don’t wanna try to steal Herschel or Lowell’s keys while they’re awake.”

“They said they were both gonna draw something,” said Kenny. “One of both of ‘em would be locked in the workroom the whole time. The only time you’d get anywhere near them’s when...”

“They harvest our ink!” Calamity jumped to his feet, his tail wagging. “Furrball, if we created a diversion do you think you could pick one of their pockets?”

“Lab coats or pants?”

“Probably pants,” Kenny answered. “And the key’d be on one of these things.” He pulled out his own card key, showing it was clipped to a small badge reel.

Furrball grimaced. “I could cut the cord,” he extended a claw, “but it could snap back and they’d feel it. Without hypnosis or being able to stretch to reach their pockets, and with the lab coats… probably not.”

“Okay...” Calamity scratched his head. “I think we’ll just have to wait for them to be asleep.”

“Whatever we do, we gotta do it quick,” said Kenny. “At this rate it’s only a matter of time before either Herschel and Lowell finish whatever they’re cooking up next, they’re at each other’s throats, or Six and Fifteen figure out that none of this place’s defenses can hold them.”

“You think they don’t know that already?” Calamity asked incredulously. “You said you think the weasel’s stronger than the raccoon, right? And it sounds like he had to run for it after fighting Dot, but she just didn’t bother finishing Babs and Buster off, so he was probably more tired. How do you think they got her into those cuffs and straitjacket?”

“I dunno, I guess Number Six got lucky, or tricked her, or she didn’t wanna try her luck with Dip guns pointed at her. Same way we got you two.”

“Maybe...” said Calamity. “But I think the animators would’ve said something about it if they had to drag her back here kicking and screaming. She came back by choice, at least. Kenny, I don’t think either of them were testing them.”

“What do you call what Number Fifteen was doing, then? You know she was working him up on purpose, right? Toying with his emotions to see how far he’d go?”

“Of course we noticed that!” Furrball looked offended. “We took classes in that!”

“Yeah,” Calamity said. “But I’m not sure she was trying to test him. More… I think she was enjoying it. She was just annoying him because she thought it was funny, and didn’t know when to stop. And the raccoon… he was scared of Herschel, and he was trying to warn her.”

“I dunno… I think she might’ve really been mad that she was in trouble and didn’t know when to stop,” said Furrball. “But either way… I’m with Calamity. I think both of them are still loyal, even if they don’t just obey every order they’re given. I’m not sure they’re getting the weasel back in the cuffs again without a fight, though… not after what happened.” He shuddered.

“No kidding...” Kenny agreed. “Even if that toon’s a total psycho, that was pretty fucked up.”

Buster Bunny woke in a cold sweat. He stared up at the poster of Wayne Gretzky over his bed. It had been up there for years, since back when Wayne was playing for L.A. and Buster still cared about hockey. The laminated plastic was cracked and faded with age, and Buster had thought about taking it down and putting something else up many times, but never actually gone through with it.

Had everything been a dream? He still remembered the night vividly: the noise and chaos of the nightclubs, Dot’s anger when she’d found them out, the demented laughter of Number Fifteen, the fight, the explosions, and the horrible taste of gasoline being forced down his throat.

The bedroom was dark. Buster worked up the nerve to look over at the main source of light: his digital alarm clock. It was 2:14. Yeah… must’ve been a dream , he thought. Then again, the numbers were flashing, which was what happened when the alarm had been going off for an hour or more. Was it AM or PM? It was impossible to tell just from the light. Buster’s family really did live in a burrow… sort of. It was a nice place, built into a hillside in the suburbs of Acme Acres. The rooms in the front, the kitchen and the living room, had south-facing windows that let daylight in, and his parents’ bedroom had a large skylight, but his room had no windows. The tree stump often seen in episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures was actually the back door. When they’d filmed at Buster’s house the cameras were always carefully positioned to keep the garage and street out of frame. Babs’s house was just about a mile away, and built in a similar style. Babs’s old house… now it was sitting empty with ‘For Rent’ signs plastered all over the front lawn.

Buster fumbled with the button to change the clock to 24-hour mode. 14:14. Uh oh. Buster flicked on the lamp and stumbled out of the bedroom, grabbing a t-shirt that he’d thrown on the floor at some point earlier. He knew he hadn’t overslept. It was a school day, his parents would have gotten him up. That meant it was all real…

It certainly felt real. His head was throbbing and his mouth felt like it was full of cotton. He thought he remembered hearing that after coming back from being haloed it was common to have hangover-like symptoms. Probably Sylvester had said it at some point: the guy had plenty of experience with both from his younger days. Injuries didn’t persist, but the body was still likely to be tired, hungry, and dehydrated. After checking his parents’ bedroom just in case, he headed through the silent house to the kitchen, squinting in the sunlight, and downed a glass of water.

His hand hovered over the phone. Part of him wanted to delay the inevitable. He’d been missing for… how long was it? He glanced at the calendar on the wall and scowled. It was still on September. There was no newspaper on the table. Dad usually took it with him to work if it wasn’t his turn to drive in his carpool group. Wait… the computer would have the date. Buster ran to the study – it was another windowless room towards the back of the house, and would have been a third bedroom if he wasn’t an only child – and looked it up.

October 8 ^th . Thursday. Buster groaned. He’d been missing for three days? No, more like two-and-a-half. It was technically early morning on the 6 ^th when everything went wrong. Two days wasn’t that bad – some toons were gone for as long as three months – but after what happened it was way too long. As far as anyone else was concerned, he was missing! Everyone probably thought he was dead, or kidnapped like Furrball and Calamity! His parents were probably going to halo him all over again!

Buster stared at the phone again. He had to call someone. He didn’t know if he wanted to call his parents yet. Maybe he could wait until they got home from work, and leave a note outside the door so they wouldn’t be that surprised to see him waiting for them in the living room. He wanted to call Babs, and Plucky, but… well, Plucky might be at school. If Babs wasn’t in the hospital or in school she was almost certainly grounded from using the phone, and this time of day her Mom would probably pick up.

Then he remembered. Yakko, Wakko, and Slappy were looking for him. He wondered how long they’d kept at it. He didn’t know Slappy’s number, but he knew Yakko’s and Wakko’s. They didn’t have school or normal jobs. And Dot… he didn’t know what had happened to her, and if she was okay she’d probably be glad to know he was alive. If . Buster’s hand shook as he reached for the receiver. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that he’d gotten her killed by following her. But… no, if she was missing, there was no chance in hell Yakko and Wakko would be looking for him , and if she was… dead, or really badly hurt… how would they even have reacted to that? He didn’t think they’d have been that calm. On the other hand, Dot hadn’t been in the search party, so something must have happened to her. He dialed the number for the water tower, and listened to the ringback tone with his ears curling from nervousness.

“I got it!” shouted Wakko’s voice, much too loudly. “Hello, Warner Residence!”

“Yakko tripped me!” complained a high-pitched voice. Dot! Buster breathed a sigh of relief.

“No I didn’t! Wakko’s the one who left that roller skate in your path!”

“He jumped over it, because you put it there!”

“Like I said. He saw it was in the way, but he left it there! If Wakko had taken one for the team...”

“I object to that!” said Wakko. “That skate was meant for me, but you put it there with no regard for collateral damage!”

Buster laughed. Some things never changed.

Calamity awoke to the feeling that someone, or something, was watching him. He didn’t think much of it at first. It was probably a guard, he thought. But he couldn’t hear any footsteps. Normally they’d be audible even over the noise of the ventilation systems. A guard would have moved, or said something, or just changed his posture slightly causing something on his belt to jangle. He slowly opened his eyes, and nearly jumped out of his skin. He was lying on his back on the uncomfortable concrete bed, but fiery blue eyes were staring straight into his. Sitting sideways on the wall above the bed, watching him and Furrball, was Wendy Weasel.

With a yip of surprise, Calamity slid almost off the bed, catching himself just in time. The noise woke Furrball. He looked up, and immediately launched himself into the air with his limbs splayed out and his fur standing on end. He started to yowl, but in a blur of movement Wendy’s arm shot out and grabbed him by the throat.

“Don’t scream,” the weasel ordered through bared teeth. Then the snarl turned into a Cheshire Cat grin. She let go of Furrball. He landed lightly on the bed, massaging his neck. “No one’s gonna hear you, anyway.”

“How? What - Why are you on the wall?” Calamity stammered. It was all he could think of at the moment.

Wendy shrugged. “Why are you up there on the ceiling?” She pointed down at him… no, up at him, then up – no, down – at the ceiling of the cell. Calamity felt a sense of stomach-churning vertigo. The void yawned above him, and he fell, crashing painfully into the ceiling headfirst. Furrball landed precariously on all fours next to him. Calamity envied his feline reflexes. “Just kidding!” Wendy giggled. Calamity felt the vertigo again. The ceiling was yanked way, and he slammed into the hard corner of the bed, tumbling to the floor with a cry of pain.

“Oww...” Calamity got up, rubbing his side. That was going to bruise. It would probably have broken a human’s ribs. At least Furrball had managed to twist in midair to land upright again.

Wendy stood up and stretched, remaining perfectly horizontal. “I know this violates the law of gravity...” she said.

Here it comes , thought Calamity. The predictable line ripped off from Bugs Bunny. Bugs even ripped himself off. He pulled that one on the new students every Freshman Orientation.

“...but I was drawn to break the law!” Wendy finished. At least that part was new. “Wanna know how I did it?”

“No.” Calamity glared up at her. Not only did he know exactly how she did it, but he’d been on the receiving end of tricks like that more than any other student at Acme Looniversity. Physics bends were Road Runner’s specialty along with speed, teleportation, and the occasional summoning. Li’l Beeper wasn’t quite as good at them, but he made up for it with frequent practice. Calamity wasn’t quite as bad as his own mentor at countering them, although that wasn’t saying much. And it didn’t matter, since with the cuffs he was completely powerless to so much as stall himself in the air long enough to grab onto something. Not that that would have worked either without any handholds.

Wendy scowled. Her eyes locked onto Calamity like a heat-seeking missile. He felt a pressure all around him, like being at the bottom of a swimming pool. He’d gotten used to the slightly chilly air in the cell, but now he started to shiver. He couldn’t move. Flecks of color danced at the corners of his eyes, and he felt pins and needles all over his body. With a great effort he tore his eyes away from hers, but their image remained burned into his vision wherever he focused. “You know… I should kill you,” she said softly. Her tongue flicked across her lips.

Now Calamity understood what Kenny was talking about. He and Furrball were predators, or at least that was the role they played against their main rivals. But that was more like playing a game of tag where you were always ‘it’ than it was like an animal actually killing and eating another animal. It was possible to swallow another toon – or anything else, for that matter – whole and force it into a special sub-Hammerspace inside your body, but in practice it was usually a terrible idea. The ‘Hammerstomach’ was a bit closer to regular space then Hammerspace proper, and another toon inside it could make the physical force of their movements displace your body around them, effectively hitting you from the inside. There was no way to keep them from leaving aside from your teeth getting in the way, and they could hit your tongue, the inside of your mouth, and the back of your throat. The only thing you could do back was swallow something like a stick of dynamite, which would hurt both sides. Effectively all you could do is trap a much smaller toon for a few minutes if you were lucky. And there was the risk of messing up and actually swallowing them, which was even less pleasant for both parties.

Meat in Toontown was usually either made in a factory or imported from outside, although there’d been a sausage vine in Calamity’s backyard when he was little. His Dad ended up deciding the thing was more hassle than it was worth: the sausages had to be harvested or they’d rot on the vine and stink up the whole yard, and dogs would climb the fence to get at them and trample the actual flowerbed. It only produced Vienna Sausage, and towards the end of its life the plant was productive enough that it became a chore trying to find uses for the entire crop. The last summer they had it his Dad was inviting half the neighborhood to cookouts every weekend. Then he’d gotten the new job, and said it wasn’t fair to expect Calamity to be learning to cook for himself but being saddled with so much of one ingredient that he didn’t get the chance to learn to make anything else. The vine went, and Calamity ended up living on microwaved TV dinners most of the time anyway. But at least it wasn’t as bad as the meatball tree in Shirley McLoon’s yard.

Toons, even ones who were carnivorous animals, didn’t kill and eat each other. But Wendy Weasel had the eyes of a real predator: stalking, calculating, sizing him up, and utterly cold and merciless. Calamity remembered learning that she’d apparently beaten Babs and Buster to a pulp, and maybe even haloed them, for fun. It seemed hard to believe seeing her in the Animation Room, but now he wasn’t surprised at all. But the Resistance-drawn toon’s next words surprised him. “I’m not gonna let Herschel replace me and kill me,” she said. “If he or Lowell make another toon as strong as me or Riley, they’ll Dip me as soon as they finish it.” She retreated further up the wall, and put her gloved hand against the ceiling, gouging ineffectually at the concrete. Her voice still had the dangerous tone, but there was something else as well. Bitterness, maybe even hurt or fear. “But they can’t do that if they don’t finish it!” She stepped onto the ceiling and grinned down at Calamity and Furrball. “They need your ink… one batch isn’t enough, not for something like me, Riley told me. They’ll need several more to keep their brains from frying.” Now her voice bore nothing but unrestrained malevolence. She drew a mallet out of Hammerspace. “All I gotta do is break this sprinkler, and you’ll both melt away like the Wizard of Oz.”

Calamity’s heart leaped into his throat. She really was going to kill them! He had to do something! “Wait! Won’t – won’t that kill you too?” he stammered. “You’ll get soaked with Dip too!”

“No I won’t!” Wendy reached through the protective grating and tapped the sprinkler head. “Do you think I’m dumb enough to come down there and take a shower with you?”

Oh. Of course. The sprinkler head looked pretty much like a fire sprinkler. The liquid would come out at an angle, and it couldn’t fall upward. It would spread out enough to cover the entire cell, but the ceiling would be safe provided Wendy stood far enough away. He had to come up with something else… something else true, he had a feeling she wouldn’t buy a lie. Then it hit him. “Hang on! Herschel said he’d kill you if you disobeyed him one more time, didn’t he? If you kill us, he’ll Dip you for sure!”

“No he won’t! He’ll need me then!” Wendy raised the mallet.

“There’s other toons he can use for Ink! Like – like Buster, and Babs, and Plucky, right? He’d just kill you and send Riley out to grab a couple of them!”

Wendy’s eyes widened. Her backswing stopped abruptly, and she stared at the mallet with a shaking hand. For a fraction of a second, Calamity saw her feet lose contact with the ceiling, and she flailed in midair. Then she reasserted her will on physics, regained her footing, and whipped around, flinging the mallet at him far faster than he could dodge. The next thing he knew he was sprawled in the corner of the bed with colored lights dancing in his vision.

“Hey! Get away from him!” Furrball grabbed the mallet and stood protectively in front of Calamity.

Wendy gave a short, huffy sigh. The head of the mallet opened up, and an arm with another mallet – smaller at first, then growing to the same size – held by a white glove emerged. It whacked Furrball on the head. He crumpled to the ground and lost his grip on it, and it fell back upward, clattering to the ceiling. Wendy grabbed it and pocketed it again. “Or what? What are you gonna do to stop me?”

“The animators won’t be happy if they find out you came in here and threatened us!”

“That’s it? You’re gonna tattle on me? Man, you’re not even fun to mess with!” Wendy stalked across the ceiling and halfway down the wall, then sat down, resting her chin on one gloved hand and scowling. “Go ahead. Nobody’s gonna believe you anyway.”

Calamity’s didn’t think she was bluffing. Wendy was definitely out of sight of the security cameras, and if the sound of the mallet blows hadn’t brought an irritated guard she’d probably either somehow made it so sound couldn’t get out of the cell or done something to the guard or the microphones she thought she could get away with. Someone might have noticed her missing from her own cell, but that was assuming she didn’t have permission to be anywhere else.

“And if they do believe you...” Wendy continued, “You’re right, they’ll probably kill me. But since that’s the same as the punishment for killing you...” she held out her other hand. Something sparked, and a green flame leaped from her glove. Calamity was pretty sure it was an illusion, but it got the message across. “I’ll take you with me first.”

Was that a bluff? Calamity was confused. It sounded like Wendy genuinely believed the humans of the Resistance could kill her, but carrying out her threat of revenge would require some sort of teleportation. Why couldn’t she use that to simply escape? “What’s stopping you from just leaving?” he asked cautiously.

“Lowell put some kinda seal on this whole cave.” Wendy tapped the wall. “Can’t teleport in or out, or paint a door or anything like that. Of course, I could go out the front door, or the air vents...” she shrugged. “But then what, huh smart guy?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, exactly. You’ve got a mind like a tennis racket that’s taken a couple rounds of buckshot.”

Calamity’s eyebrows tensed. He wasn’t letting that insult get to him. “Are you afraid they’d find you, or-”

“Afraid?” Wendy glared. The sensation of pressure had ebbed, but now it hit Calamity again like the shockwave from an explosion. “Come up here and say that to my face! Oh that’s right, you can’t! Even if you weren’t cuffed you’d be too scared! You’ve got a lotta nerve saying I’m afraid of anything!”

“Then why can’t you leave?”

“Forget it. There’s no point even talking to either of you. I thought you’d at least be more fun then those lunkheads Lowell made, but at least they know what it’s like having one purpose, one thing they were made for! We can’t be anything but what came outta those animators’ fucked-up heads, and even if they piss me off…” her words turned into an unintelligible snarl. “Ya know what, I’m better off talking to a wall. Maybe I’ll go paint one and watch it dry for a while! Oh, and I’d shut your eyes if I were you!” she pulled a can of pepper spray out of Hammerspace.

Calamity closed his eyes and held his nose, and braced himself for the eye-burning spray to hit him, but it never did.

“You can open your eyes,” said Furrball. “She’s gone. Probably bluffed so we couldn’t block her teleport.”

“That was… weird...” Calamity opened his eyes and stared at the wall where the toon had been. Then it hit him. She’d given him two huge hints on how to escape the complex, and she didn’t even know it! The second, escaping through the vents, was less certain, but the first... “Furrball!” he whispered. “I have an idea!” He hopped down from the bed and walked up to the wall to the outside. He gripped the steel bars firmly and started to climb. There were horizontal braces too, almost like a ladder. He could put his feet there, and hold on with minimal effort. He glanced up at the Dip sprinkler on the ceiling, and the two closest ones in the hallway. Right… assuming an angle of about thirty degrees… two feet from the ceiling would be safe. No, in the corners, there’d be even more space. It could work. “I don’t think we have to steal Herschel or Lowell’s key after all! We don’t need to get in the Animation Room: we’ll be safe from the Dip up there!”

Chapter Text

In the days after the Monday night attack, the search for the Human Resistance’s base of operations began in earnest. At first, Yakko expected it wouldn’t take too long to find now that they had a search area. What he hadn’t counted on was that California was a surprisingly big place, and they didn’t know quite what they were looking for.

The consensus so far was that the Resistance had to be holed up somewhere somewhere fairly big. Before, the leading theory was that it was some sort of warehouse, but this had been more or less disproven by an unlikely source: the FBI. The Feds previously considered the Antiresistance to be, at best, an impediment to their investigation, and warned them to stay out of their way. There were toon agents in the Bureau, and while not explicitly stating it they’d hinted that they had Dip-based weaponry of their own - “Big surprise,” Slappy had remarked on this – and that they were supposedly capable of handling the arrests of both humans and homicidal toons on their own. But after the 6 ^th , they’d reluctantly accepted Dot and Babs’s testimony on the abilities of the Resistance-drawn toons, and the FBI’s ability to handle them. The humans were mostly skeptical that ‘A couple of kids’ were a good judge of how dangerous their adversaries were, but the toon agents weren’t stupid, and most of them knew their way around a case of dynamite enough to tell from watching Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs that Dot, Buster, and Babs were both way out of their league, and logically so were the Resistance’s toons. As a result, the two teams of investigators were finally sharing information with each other.

According to the Feds, they’d already gone through all the records for warehouses in the area looking for unusual renting records, changes of ownership, or electric bills, and while they’d found about a dozen grow operations and a few other criminal organizations they’d handed off to the DEA to deal with, there was nothing that fit the profile for the Resistance. Another possibility was an agricultural building, which now seemed more likely, or it could have been a compound somewhere out in the desert.

Fortunately, Peter Possum had managed to narrow it down a bit. The van that he’d followed – bearing a fake license plate and the name of a nonexistent business – was dirty. At one point, he’d been riding along underneath it, and swabbed the undercarriage with cloths he then bagged and transferred to his Hammerspace. His hunch that it was desert dust was confirmed by Brain’s analysis of the samples. It had rained a few days ago out in the desert, and there wasn’t much wind since then, so there wasn’t enough on the freeways to be kicked up like that. But a damp, even muddy dirt road was another story. And Brain had also found that there was no trace of fertilizers, pesticides, or any of the other chemicals typical of farm soil in the dust. An agricultural building was still possible if the mud had originated somewhere else, and they were still investigating that, but the signs were pointing to a desert compound.

“Probably way out in the middle of abso-freakin-lutely nowhere,” said Peter. “They’d be in the desert a lot faster goin’ north on I-15, but there’s a little more life out there. That tells me dese guys didn’t wanna have any neighbors who might see ‘em, or hear trucks goin’ in and out at night, or anything. These types’ll probably put the place where it ain’t even visible from a major road. But they end up bein’ so out of the way that there’s only so many places to search, and it’s easier to find ‘em than someone hiding in a crowd.”

Yakko was inclined to believe him. After Monday, any animosity he or his siblings had with Peter was gone. He had saved Dot’s life, and afterward he told the trio that Dot’s mental fortitude and quick thinking in letting the raccoon go and leaving him and the Resistance an escape route, allowing Peter to salvage the mission’s original plan even after things had gone wrong in almost every way possible, had impressed him. Yakko had a feeling Peter wasn’t the kind of guy who gave out compliments like they were candy. And he’d finally got around to checking out his cartoons. The guy was the real deal. His signature trick seemed to be his impossibly good revolver aim, but his shorts were technically impressive in general. And he seemed to know more about actual detective work than the rest of the group put together. Yakko had to admit he and his siblings had mostly ended up in the Antiresistance by virtue of ‘Brute Toonforce.’

The raccoon had managed to lose Peter a little before Indio. From there, the Resistance could have headed South on 86 and 111 down by the Salton Sea, turned North at Desert Center, or continued along the 10. It was very unlikely they’d keep going as far as the Arizona Border, where their vehicles would be subject to search for contraband strawberries. But that still gave them a couple thousand square miles of nothing to cover. The Feds were scouring the desert from both the air and the ground, but the Anti-Resistance was doing their part as well. And that was how, on Saturday Afternoon, Yakko came to be sitting outside a gas station in a dilapidated ghost town, under a faded plastic umbrella that the desert sun had eaten gaping holes through. Suffering.

Shady Shores, California had the unique feature that its population was approximately the inverse of its altitude, assuming the numbers on the plaque outside were still accurate. It was home to about two hundred people, and was about two hundred feet below sea level. In Yakko’s opinion digging a canal to the coast and submerging the place would be a vast improvement. It also boasted what was probably one of the most optimistic names of any town in history. There wasn’t a tree in sight. At least, not any live ones. There were plenty of bleached, barkless skeletons around. The temperature was currently 105 degrees.

Shady Shores had begun life as a planned community and resort town on the shores of California’s Salton Sea, the only body of water that had been born an accident and then dropped on its head as a baby. By the sixties it had been largely abandoned when the lake’s water turned toxic from agricultural runoff and the water level started to drop. A sign outside the visitor’s center encouraged visitors to enjoy the healthy salt air eighty miles inland without braving the smog of L.A. The air was indeed salty. It also smelled like rotten eggs. According to the pamphlet Yakko had actually been bored enough to try reading, this was due to algae blooms. The hotels were decaying now, as were most of the houses, with just a few stubborn holdouts left. Salt-encrusted boats lay scattered around the now-exposed marina, along with a few cars that had been driven into the sea and left to rust and a bunch of mummified fish carcasses.

The ghost town wasn’t the actual search area for the day. That honor went to the desert to the North and East. But Daffy had floated the idea of the Resistance’s base actually being some sort of underground lair at an earlier Antiresistance meeting, and Yakko had figured that since the abandoned buildings could conceal an entrance it was worth checking out. It wasn’t. The place might be fun to explore in the winter when it wasn’t so hot, but right now it was a little patch of result-less hell.

“My feet hurt...” Wakko complained. He held up a paw, wincing. The hard-packed desert soil was already blisteringly hot, but the black asphalt was worse. The eggs they’d tried to fry had burst into flames on contact.

“Huh, medium well-done,” Yakko commented. He slurped at the soda he’d gotten from the gas station’s mini restaurant. He didn’t trust the food, but at least water and corn syrup were hard to screw up. The ice machine wasn’t trustworthy either, but he’d shoved a straw into a bottle to avoid the effort of lifting it all the way to his mouth.

“You should have worn shoes.” Dr. Scratchansniff mopped his bald forehead and fanned himself with his hat.

“Sand and rocks kept getting in them...” said Wakko.

The Resistance had been active. Thursday and Friday Night there had been more attacks, and Yakko guessed there would be another one tonight. Most of Toontown proper was in a state of panic. Homes and yards were festooned with booby traps, and anyone who had friends or relatives in the country who would take them had fled. The most recent attacks had chosen their victims seemingly at random aside from geographic proximity, but they were bolder. Entire clusters of houses had been wiped out, with their inhabitants reduced to mixed-up puddles containing the remains of several toons. Evidently the victims had been overpowered, stunned or restrained, then doused in Dip one by one. They weren’t hiding their toon contingent anymore.

At this point, anything was possible, including the members of the Antiresistance being directly targeted. They were now working in groups of at least two at all times, in no small part because Yakko, Wakko, and Dot refused to be separated for any reason. The three of them were searching the Salton Sea’s North Shore, Bugs and Daffy had paired off to search along Route 177, and Slappy and Peter had gone up to Route 62. Two of the groups owned cars. The Warners didn’t, and while they could have scene-changed out into the desert, teleportation was tiring, especially at longer distances, and they’d been doing it literally hundreds of times to speed up the search. Getting a ride from Scratchy was worth it, even if it meant sitting in the Dummkopfwagen for almost three hours in either direction. Scratchy, for his part, seemed fascinated with the history of the place.

“So are they going to show up or not?” Dot groaned.

Yakko summoned his watch onto his wrist and glanced at it. 2:44. They’d agreed upon 2:30. “Let’s give them fifteen more minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes. Then we’re leaving a note and moving on to Bombay Beach.” Dot was in a bad mood after discovering the state of the gas station’s bathrooms, which had locked doors outside the actual building. Wakko had already warned Yakko not to bother with the men’s room. Dot had taken one look at the women’s room, tossed a jug of napalm in, and slammed the door shut again. This would, technically, result in a clean bathroom once the fire was out, but smoke was still billowing from the door. Bombay Beach, the next town with a bathroom, was about eight miles down the road.

“Deal. If it hits three I’m calling ‘em, and if they don’t pick up we’re calling off the search and looking for them. I know it’s the middle of the day, but if they found something but got cau-”

“Meep meep!”

Yakko jumped at the voice behind him, high enough that his head went through the umbrella. The surprise was short-lived, though, and as he fell back to the sun-baked bench he twisted in midair to land facing Road Runner, seated with one leg crossed suavely over the other. Something moved in the corner of his eye. He reached out and grabbed his drink inches from the ground. “Hey, you almost got me that time. Uhh… where’s Wile E?”

Road Runner held up a sign. “Coming. Bit of engine trouble.” There was a noise like a dive bomber, soft at first, but quickly getting louder. Road Runner looked up nervously. “Correction: coming in hot,” he signed.

“Take cover!” shouted Wakko.

The siren-like wail got even louder, mixed with a whistle, and then a high-pitched tire-like squeal. These sounds were finally joined by a scream from Scratchy. A bright red biplane plummeted towards the parking lot, rolling rapidly and creating a spiraling trail of smoke. It ground to a halt in midair with its metal nose cone about six inches from punching a hole in the pavement. The propeller on and behind its upper left wing slowly wound down. The one on the upper right wing was already stopped, and the engine was belching black smoke and occasional small flames. The canopy, which was in front of the wings, slid open. Wile E. Coyote stood up in the cockpit and held up a sign: “Good thing I installed air brakes!”

Then the plane fell the remaining six inches, banging into the ground nose-first and falling back onto its wheels. The first impact made the canopy slam down on Wile E’s head. The second caused him to fall out of the cockpit. Yakko rolled his eyes and ran to help put out the burning engine with a fire extinguisher and chock the plane’s wheels.

The Antiresistance had gained two new members earlier in the week. They had, according to Bugs, been eager to join the search when he’d mentioned that the Resistance’s base was somewhere in the desert – unsurprising especially since Calamity was Wile E’s protege. Yakko had to admit, they were perfect for the job. Running around a desert was what they did best. Road Runner was one of the fastest toons around, and his skills meant even if he ran straight into the Resistance he’d be almost impossible to catch. Wile E was a different matter. Sure, being able to search from the air was invaluable in the rugged terrain. But while Yakko at least somewhat trusted Brain’s gadgets to work and not explode, he didn’t trust Wile E’s at all. The plane the coyote had shown up in looked like he’d thrown it together with parts from a junkyard the night before, and knowing Wile E he probably had, although Yakko was willing to concede the possibility that he’d actually thrown it together with parts from a junkyard somewhat earlier. If anything useful was going to be found from the air, it would probably be by the feds. And they were a lot less likely to crash in the process.

“So, any luck on your side of the lake?” Yakko asked.

Wile E shook his head, and signed: “Several sites of interest. All proved to be false positives. You?”

“Bupkiss,” said Yakko. The Warners were covering the north shore of the Salton Sea and the surrounding desert; Wile E and Road Runner were covering the south shore. They’d agreed to meet at 2:30, halfway through the day of searching, to have lunch and discuss anything interesting they’d found, which turned out to be nothing, and have lunch, which also turned out to be pretty much nothing. The candy bars Wakko bought had melted in the afternoon sun, so all they had was a few bags of chips. “How far’ve you gotten?”

“South to Ocotillo Wells,” signed Road Runner. “West to Borrego Springs.”

Yakko whistled. That was a hell of a lot more than they’d done, although they hadn’t split up and were almost entirely on the ground. “So, south to the Border Patrol Checkpoint? Think it’s worth going further?”

Both of the highways running along the Salton shore had Border Patrol checkpoints near the southern end of the lake. It seemed unlikely that the Resistance would risk driving their vans past there every night. Slappy had asked some retired animators she knew about Babs and Buster’s report that the weasel had claimed to be created from Furrball and Calamity’s ink. None of them had any idea how it would actually work, but said the only conceivable reason to use ink from a living toon in place of the animator’s blood would be to provide an alternate source of energy and to isolate and shield his or her mind to prevent feedback. There were two possible places it could have been used: in drawing the modelsheet, or in the primary ink supply that, through amplification of the creative chaos of the human mind, was transmuted into toonmatter. Ink alone wouldn’t work, but a little blood mixed in made it react, sort of like how materials with a little water in them heated up much faster in a microwave oven. But if they were somehow using ink to let them create stronger toons risk-free, that probably meant that prior to kidnapping Calamity and Furrball the Resistance didn’t have the ability to animate anyone who could teleport them past US Border Patrol, and the checkpoints hadn’t reported any suspicious vehicles. Still, it was possible that a weaker toon with some sort of prop like a portable hole could have done it under cover of darkness.

“Absolutely,” signed Wile E. “There is a large area of farmland south of the Salton Sea. It would be irresponsible to ignore it completely.”

“What about the desert south of there?” asked Dot. She pulled out a map of California and indicated the area.

“I will conduct an aerial search if time/daylight permit.”

“All right, knock yourselves out,” Yakko shrugged. “You’re on your own on the farms today. We’ve got a lot more ground to cover today. In fact, we should probably get going.”

Sunday night brought a freak cold snap to Southern California. Temperatures dropped into the low forties, and in a couple places even below forty. It was cold enough that some headlines fretted about an early frost ruining crops and gardens, and most L.A. residents bundled up in coats or even scarves if they had them available. According to people who’d moved there from northern states, it wasn’t really that cold. To New Englanders and New Yorkers it was chilly, and to Minnesotans it was shorts weather. But the two toons riding in the back of a 1990 GMC pickup as it hurtled down the San Bernardino Freeway begged to differ.

Wendy Weasel’s breath fogged the lenses of her gas mask as she stared out the window of the truck’s camper shell. She rubbed the outsides without effect, then remembered a trick she’d come up with earlier and summoned a pair of little windshield wipers attached to the insides. That still only partly cleared them. She shivered and held the thin blanket tighter, trying to keep the wind from catching it. The camper shell wasn’t heated, and it wasn’t even properly enclosed. The roof had been cut off – theoretically to let her and Riley easily climb onto the top of the truck to get a better view of their surroundings. She had no intention of doing that and getting the full sixty-mile-an-hour windchill, so as far as she was concerned all it did was let the wind in.

“Why can’t we ride in the van?” she complained. “I’m freezing!”

“Because we’re keeping an eye on the van, remember?” Riley Raccoon hissed from the other side of the truck bed. “After that bloody possum followed me halfway to the base, we’re keeping watch all the way to the target!”

“Oh, yeah! I forgot it was your fault! So, why can’t you keep watch while I ride in the van? You did it just fine on your own the last few nights!” It was the first time Wendy had been allowed out of the Human Resistance’s base after the disastrous attempt to lure one of the Warner Bros. toons searching for them into a lethal trap, and only the second time Riley and Wendy had both been on the same mission.

“My fault? That’s total rot! If you hadn’t skived off and left me to fight the inkblot alone -”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you because my ears are frozen!” interrupted Wendy. It was a half-truth. Her ears, unprotected by even the gas mask, really were painfully numb. She whipped a pair of large, fluffy earmuffs out of Hammerspace and put them on. Instant relief.

“Cut it out!” Riley snatched the earmuffs from her head and pocketed them. “Don’t block your hearing off!”

“Yeah, like I’m gonna hear anything over this wind and you whining at me!”

“Damn it Wendy, you’re on thin ice with Lowell and Herschel already. You heard what he said – if you disobey orders again, you’re as good as Dipped!”

“Well, no one ordered me not to wear earmuffs! Besides, you’ve got your hat on over your ears!”

“I can still hear! You know what, fine!” Riley pulled a two-way radio out of Hammerspace. “Hey, Gene! Wendy’s askin’ permission to wear earmuffs, sir! She says her ears are too cold!” Gene was in command of the mission. He’d been in command of the last one too.

“What?” came the garbled reply. “I can’t hear you!”

Riley repeated the statement, shouting over the noise of the wind.

“Hell no! After that little demon nearly fractured my skull she can get fucking frostbite for all I care! Tell Number Fifteen she’s not wearing earmuffs or anything else that keeps her from hearin’ properly!”

Wendy clenched her fists and bared her teeth under the mask. Even when the animators were a hundred miles away they still refused to use her name. And she hadn’t hit him any harder than was necessary to snap him out of the mink’s hypnosis. Well, maybe a little bit harder than necessary. Maybe a few times harder than necessary. But she’d softened his body, and everyone else’s, perfectly. Fine. If that was how he wanted to play it… “Riley...” she said with false sweetness. “Ask our glorious, infallible commander if we can take turns riding in the front so we don’t freeze to death before we get to our target.”

Riley rolled his eyes, but pressed the button on the radio. Wendy smirked under the mask. He might have been dressed warmer than her – that is, wearing more than a gas mask and gloves – but getting out of the cold was still tempting. “Sir? Number Fifteen has pointed out to me that it’s not strictly necessary to have two toon s keepin’ watch at all times, and that both of our… err… combat effectiveness when we reach our destination’ll be, uh, degraded by continuous to exposure to the cold. Permission to warm up in the cab for a few minutes? One of us’d always be on guard.”

There were a few seconds of silence. “Screw it. Ask Lyle.”

Wendy grinned. “Ask for permission to stop for hot chocolate!”

“Don’t push your luck, Wendy.” Riley stuffed the radio up his sleeve and returned to watching the white panel van out the back window. Wendy followed his eyes. It was separated from them by three cars, but had its signal on and was about to change lanes to pass.

Wendy opened the window to the cab. “Hey Lyle, Gene says we can ride up front with you as long as it’s one at a time!” She watched his gloved hands tighten their grip on the steering wheel with some satisfaction and listened to him swear under his breath. Lyle Rocheleau seemed to have a special problem with her – no, with the Resistance’s toons in general.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ. What a dick,” Lyle grumbled to Craig Mathis, the guy riding shotgun. “Why does he have to saddle us with them? They can go through walls and shit like that, why can’t they go back in the van?”

Craig shrugged. “I know, man, but he’s the boss. Can’t argue with him.”

Wendy pulled herself up on the window frame, sticking her entire head into the cabin. “So can we?”

“Fine...” Lyle said tightly.

“Okay!” Wendy turned away from the window, keeping it propped open. “Hey, who gets the first turn? Should we play rock-paper-scissors for it? Draw straws? Go Fish? Monopo-”

“Jesus Christ, will you close the goddamn window already?” Lyle shouted. “You’re letting cold air in!”

Wendy leaped into the middle of the bench seat, between the two humans, slamming the window shut. She pulled the gas mask off and tucked it into her Hammerspace, and massaged her numb ears. Heat… sweet, sweet heat.

“Don’t fuck with me while I’m driving,” Lyle warned. “Or touch the steering wheel or the gear stick.”

“What about the pedals?”

“You can’t even reach the pedals.”

“Au contraire.” Wendy slowly stretched out her arm towards Lyle’s knees, making sure he had plenty of time to notice.

“Don’t touch the damn pedals! And don’t touch me either!”

“Sorry.” Wendy was quiet for about ten seconds. “So, are we there yet?”

“No! Don’t you dare start that! We don’t get near the Toontown exit for about forty-five minutes.”

“Oh.” Wendy noted with some annoyance the country music oozing from the radio. Lame. She reached out and flicked the tuner dial. It changed to something in Spanish. She tried again, producing a burst of static. Lyle swore and the van swerved.

“Cut that out!” Craig’s arm whipped out like a snake and grabbed her wrist, wrenching her away from the dial. “Jesus your hand’s cold!” he let go and returned the station to normal.

“I know, I probably have hypothermia!” Wendy gave her fur a subtle blue tinge to illustrate the point. “Can you warm me up?” She leaned against the man, pressing her body against his side. It felt good… surprisingly good, like laundry straight out of the dryers – she’d been yelled at for touching that – or what she imagined an electric blanket or a hot water bottle must have felt like. But it wasn’t just the heat. There was something about the touch of another living thing that made her feel… she couldn’t really describe it. It was different from the feeling of hitting or being hit, grabbing or being grabbed.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” Craig recoiled, elbowing her hard in the face and pushing her off. “Damn freak!”

She scooted back to the exact center of the bench seat, folding her ears back in annoyance. The blow hadn’t even really hurt. It never did when humans hit her, apart from the one time when Herschel had been furious with her after the incident with the rabbits. Usually it was just an invitation to keep up the game of driving them up the wall. But sometimes something bothered her, especially when Herschel did it. For some reason it felt unjust that her mere presence was this offensive to them. At least this time she was frigid to the touch.

Deciding warmth was more important than entertainment, Wendy stayed still after that, apart from standing up to watch the traffic around her and see exactly what Lyle was swearing at. After being made to sit down, she conjured a periscope. After a few minutes, there was a knock on the window. There was Riley, tapping on the glass and then on his wrist. Fine. She wriggled back out of the window and watched him disappear inside. The cold hit her again almost immediately. But now she was alone in the back of the truck, apart from the boxes of equipment. She’d keep watch over the van, sure, she thought as she put the gas mask back on. But now she was going to do it in comfort. There was enough space in the truck bed for a campfire…

Riley rapped on the window again. Wendy looked back. He met her eyes, and made an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture. Typical. She waited in frozen misery until he, too, was ejected from the cab.

“Hey, Riley. I spy, with my little eye, something blue...”

“Wendy, just focus, mate… It’s not even an hour ‘til we get there...”

“Fine...” Wendy stayed quiet for as long as she could stand. “Ninety-nine bottles of Dip on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of Dip! Pour one out, melt some toon down, ninety-eight bottles of Dip on the wall!”

“Bloody hell, just shut up!”

Wendy continued to annoy Riley most of the rest of the trip, but when Gene announced over the radio that they were nearing the insertion point she fell silent. Now that the mission had started for real, she really was determined to be on her best behavior. She never admitted it to anyone, but Herschel’s threat really had scared her. Over a mile before the freeway tunnel into Toontown, the one that was now crawling with armed guards of both species, the van and the pickup exited and pulled into a deserted parking lot. It was almost two in the morning now. Wendy leaped out of the truck bed and jogged over by the van. Gene got out, but everyone else stayed in the vehicles. There were eight human Resistance fighters this time, more than ever before. That was because this attack would be bigger than any but the attack with the tanker truck that had happened a few days before she’d been finished.

“All right, toons,” Gene ordered. “Take us through.”

Wendy pulled a glossy, letter-size photograph out of Hammerspace. Scene changes to somewhere you’d never been were tricky, and the longer the range the harder. On the Pennsylvania mission she’d put them fifteen miles off-target the first try. The photo depicted a mid-sized apartment building. Four stories, probably about eighty units. She stared at it for a few seconds, memorizing it. Then she flipped the photo around to the back side. There were two maps. One showed the insertion position on a map of L.A, the other showed approximately where the building was in Toontown. Wendy tossed the picture away behind her back, sending it back into Hammerspace. “Ready.”

“Ready for the scene change, guv’na. Just give the order.”

“If I was the governor we wouldn’t be sneakin’ around like this,” grumbled Gene. “Go.”

Wendy conjured a broad paintbrush and a can of blue-grey paint – the approximate color the scene would probably be at night – and tossed the brush in the air before dipping it in. With a flourish, she slapped the wet paintbrush onto the canvas of thin air beside the van and started to run it back and forth. The paint wasn’t real, of course, it was just a focus. What she was really painting was a hole in reality linking two locations together. The image of the apartment building rapidly took shape, almost as she’d imagined it. But this was the real thing. In the blink of an eye, the image stretched and expanded, wrapping around the van in all directions until it was everywhere, and then they were there, in the parking lot behind the apartment building. A split-second later, the truck, Riley, and Gene appeared.

So far, so good. Wendy raised her hands, and snapped her fingers. Sparks flew, and yellow-orange fire erupted, then spread up her arms and all over her body. The thin crust of snow under her feet – Toontown got colder than the real world, especially in cities this far from the entrance - melted and steamed. Below the neck, the cold was gone, although she couldn’t do her head without melting the gas mask. This was what she imagined the sun felt like.

“Cut that out!” Gene hissed. “You wanna get us seen?”

Wendy put out the flames immediately. Part of her did want them to be seen. She wanted toons with real power to come in guns blazing, so she could experience the thrill of combat, and the satisfaction of her enemies getting angry and getting too aggressive, the looks on their faces when she shrugged off everything they could throw at her with a laugh and a grin, and the hopeless attempts to run away in between getting their faces mashed into the pavement. She wondered whether, if Bugs Bunny showed up, she’d need Riley’s help to fricassee him. But it probably wouldn’t just be Bugs. The enemy wouldn’t make the mistake of fighting them alone again. They’d probably be outnumbered by at least two to one. “Just gettin’ warmed up!” she said.

The next step was the Blackout. The apartment block’s perimeter wasn’t quite a neat rectangle, but it was close. She could conjure screens blanketed in illusion which showed what the building looked like now , and link them together on all sides with only a few gaps that she had to paint in. She darted back and forth around the building putting up the barriers. Now nobody outside of the enclosed area could see what was happening.

That was a hard one. Wendy could already feel her pulse and breathing speeding up and fatigue starting to creep into her body. Blacking out a house was easy, and she could even do it with sound. She was tempted to try that here, but they’d already discussed beforehand that it was just too big an area. She’d have to put too much energy on keeping the illusion up, and one mental slip would make it fall apart. Once she got into the individual apartments she’d suppress the sound the way she’d done a few days earlier when she snuck into the ink donors’ cell.

Luckily, the next part was all Riley. He was the thief. Donning rubber boots and gloves and conjuring a pair of shears, he scrambled up the power line poles and took out the electrical and phone lines. A black plastic box he pulled from Hammerspace let out a hum. There went cell phones and radios. Even their two-ways wouldn’t work while the jammer was active. Meanwhile, the humans unloaded the van. There were four Dip guns, but this time, most of it was in two large barrels. They connected hoses to the barrels, and handheld pumps and nozzles similar to larger, bulkier, higher-flow versions of the sprayers jugs of weed killer came with. These weren’t like the Dip-filled spray guns. Those were weapons. These were simply tools for killing.

“Are you ready, Number Fifteen?” Riley paused at the front door, producing a set of lockpicks from Hammerspace.

Wendy bristled at the use of her number. But the humans were watching. Best behavior. “Stop wasting time and let me at ‘em,” she said quietly. The urge to destroy and maim was almost overpowering now. She wanted to blast her way through the door, tearing through every apartment like a tornado and leaving every toon inside tied in knots, then pick out a few and toy with them for a while. Herschel had drawn that into her. He’d proudly admitted it when she tumbled off the conveyor belt out of the Machine, into a cell with green sprinklers looming over her. Her first memory was of her life being threatened, and of getting a kick out of it. Her second memory was of Herschel Wilson, the man who had given her life, explaining to her what she was. She was not just subhuman, but inhuman, a weapon created by humans for the sole purpose of cleansing the world of her own kind, and of any humans who proved themselves unworthy of the title by treating things like her as being of equal value to them. Wendy had gleefully accepted the explanation of her nature back then. It seemed like common sense that the things she felt like doing when she looked at other creatures had a purpose. And it was so much fun .

She’d attacked the other toons – Lowell’s creations, she later learned – as soon as she’d encountered them: poking and prodding and teasing at first, goading them into getting angry and trying to hurt her, pushing them along a little with hypnosis if necessary, and then gleefully outmaneuvering and outwitting them and punishing them ten times over for each unsuccessful move they made. But then another toon, Riley, had disguised himself as one of them and clapped funny plastic cuffs over her wrists that rendered her completely powerless, and Herschel had told her that those ones were to be left alone. They were created by the Resistance. They were under control, and Wendy would only be allowed to exist if she stayed under control as well.

Wendy learned from the animators that her kind weren’t really alive. They were tools, machines with delusions of grandeur. Their lives – her life, too – had no value, except that they were useful to humanity. But in a way, she was lower than the weaker ones. They were mostly slow-witted, but they were compliant, safe. They would remain valuable, albeit still replaceable, assets even after the war was won. But Wendy and Riley were different. They had to be dangerous to do their job. They had to have power, intelligence, and even independent personalities. But creatures like them should never have been created in the first place. The only reason they had been created was to correct the mistake of past animators who had already done so. If Lowell’s creations were knives and shovels and bulldozers – usable as weapons, but not exclusively so – Wendy and Riley were atomic bombs, a necessary evil, made with great trepidation after every alternative had failed. Lowell told Wendy that other creatures outside the base would immediately recognize what she was and try to destroy her, and rightly so. But when the war for the future of humanity was over, such dangerous weapons would no longer have a purpose. Wendy knew her life would be short: either she would die fighting or be disposed of once she was no longer necessary. She knew she had no place in either the world that existed now or the one the Resistance sought to create.

But part of her resented it. She resented being told that she was inferior to humans, that she was a soulless expression of the human mind with an inflated ego, that she was expendable, replaceable. She hated hearing it from Herschel especially, and she hated the anger, hatred, and disgust he always looked at her with. For some reason, she wanted to see him smile at her, and at least show some pride and satisfaction in the monster he’d created. And from ‘borrowing’ books from the human Resistance members, and sneaking in the back when they watched movies or TV in their downtime, she’d learned more about them. A lot of it made sense. The Resistance had a stockpile of war movies, movies about heroes fighting for humanity, or at least their part of humanity, against powerful, evil enemies; enemies, she realized, that were hated and destroyed because they were like her. But what the characters on the screens were fighting to preserve was harder to make sense of, as was why the lives of some humans seemed more important than others. Friends, comrades, lovers, sisters, brothers, children, parents. It all tied into concepts she didn’t understand. Love. Family. She’d tried to ask the animators what they were, but they’d said – Lowell calmly, Herschel angrily – that those were human things, things she was incapable of and unworthy of. That had hurt, and now just hearing or thinking about those things hurt too despite bringing faint little flashes of positive emotion that were soft and foreign. She began to envy humans.

By this point, by the age of three weeks, Wendy thought she was starting to understand some of them, especially after the two uncontrolled toons whose ink had gone into making her and Riley had put them into context. They seemed to think that toons could have families, and friends. And really, they didn’t act much different from the humans in the movies, they way one had tried to protect the other from her. And they’d said what she’d been suspecting for a long time, that family was what some buried part of her saw Herschel as. Maybe that was why she still couldn’t make herself hate him, couldn’t make herself kill him even though she knew she could, didn’t even have the primal drive to kill him, even after he’d poured Passivation Solution down her throat and beaten her with a hammer until she was a sobbing, bloody mess of fur, and then kept her in the cuffs for a full day after that so she couldn’t even will away the damage he’d done. And Herschel had dropped the bombshell that he’d tried to create a toon to replace his family, and realized it was impossible.

She wasn’t sure what Riley was, whether he was a ‘friend’ or a ‘brother.’ She enjoyed being around him, even when he got on her nerves, although it seemed like what she enjoyed the most was getting on his. And for some reason it seemed like he was trying to protect her, albeit by trying to keep her in line. And he didn’t seem to hate or fear her – perhaps because even if they acted a bit different, they were ultimately the same.

There were a lot of things bothering Wendy Weasel, but now she put them aside. She could wish she was a human all she wanted, but she couldn’t change what she’d been drawn as. That was why she couldn’t run away, either. She was starting to resent her own nature, but at least serving the Human Resistance gave her a purpose, a reason why she was this way. On their orders, she would embrace that dark purpose and enjoy her short life to the fullest by embracing the bloodlust Herschel had drawn into her.

It was time. Riley opened the door quietly, picking the mechanical lock on the outer door, then using tools to disassemble the electronic lock on the inner one. They crept silently through the lobby, a pair of glowing yellow eyes and reflective mask lenses in the darkness. Through more doors they reached the first apartment. They would start on the ground floor. Wendy let a toothy smile spread across her face as Riley picked the lock and let them in.

The pair of elderly black-and-white toon humans inside weren’t like the rabbits, or even the coyote and the cat. They were pathetically easy. Wendy yanked the man out of bed, conjuring a wire and wrapping it tight around his neck. He choked and spasmed a bit, and punched, kicked, and pulled a few weapons out of Hammerspace before she tied his arms in a knot, but soon he stopped struggling. This was no fun at all. She dragged the man, and Riley the woman, back out of the building to where the humans were waiting. She stunned them both with a quick pair of mallet blows to the head, jumped out of the way, and let them get to work. Lawrence and Donald stuck the sprayer nozzles attached to the barrels of Dip in their mouths, which hung limply open. They squeezed the pump handles. Wendy recognized the potential for innuendo – some of the books she’d borrowed were intended for adult readers only – but her joking comment died long before it left her own lips. Something was wrong.

On previous missions, apart from the most recent, Wendy’s role was entirely as support. She got the humans past the security checkpoints separating Toontown from the outside world, blacked out the site, and kept watch ready to fight off anyone who tried to interfere and get the humans out in a hurry if need be, but the killing itself was done entirely by the humans. But this mission was different. Wendy and Riley were doing almost all the work. They dragged the victims out and lined them up for the humans to pull the trigger. She knew Riley had done this alone three times before. He’d even gotten to – or was it had to? – kill humans, completely on his own.

The execution was brutally efficient. The deadly liquid was sprayed directly into the victims’ mouths. Their airways were the first things to go. They had no chance to scream. What they did have time for was a fumbling embrace, groping blindly for each other as their eyes melted. Then they collapsed into a single puddle with a whistling sigh as holes were burned straight through their chests and vapor and smoke burst out.

Wendy realized with some surprise that she had never actually seen another toon die before. The killing had always happened indoors, while she was outside looking for danger. She’d thought she’d laugh the first time she saw it. It seemed like something that should be comical. They’d melted together like snowmen on a hot day, and now it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began through all the smoke and foam. But all she could think of was the horrible sensation of Herschel pouring the Passivation Solution down her throat, and then of it coming back up mixed with bile and ink. The smell of Dip burned her nose even through the gas mask, and she found herself wondering what it would taste like, what it would feel like. She felt sick to her stomach – was there something wrong with the food in the mess hall tonight, or was it just the chemical odor?

“Hey! Move it, toon!” Gene ordered. “We don’t have all night! Bring us the next bunch!”

Wendy shook herself. She realized she’d been standing there for quite a while, unable to look away from the puddle. “All right, all right, let some of us enjoy the show!” she complained – lying, she realized as the words left her lips – and scampered back into the building.

“Are you okay?” Riley whispered as they crept toward the next apartment.

“Sure, just… it was kinda boring,” Wendy said with a shrug. “Kinda disappointing. They’re not even worth playing with, are they?”

He grabbed her shoulder, hard enough to almost hurt, and spun her around. Yellow eyes stared into hers. Riley’s face was stern, but there was another expression buried there as well. Sorrow? Pity? “Look, ya numpty, that mask might hide your face but it doesn’t hide your ears and tail. You weren’t just disappointed, were you?”

Wendy folded her arms. “What’s it to you? Maybe I’m havin’ a bad night, you got a problem with that?”

“Look...” Riley sighed. “Part of it feels… bad, doesn’t it?”

Wendy didn’t answer.

“Don’t tell anyone I told ya this, especially not the animators… but I feel the same way. Like there’s somethin’ inside me tryin’ to stop me from doin’ the job. I think something went wrong when I was drawn. I think it’s what Herschel talked about. Anthromorph – Anthropomorphization. It like… makes it so the subconscious can’t tell the difference between humans and things that look or act a bit like humans, but aren’t: animals, and machines, and toons. He must not’ve cured himself of it all the way, so it got passed on to me when he created me – either that or it’s the ink he drew us with. I was hoping he’d fixed the problem with you, but it seems like you’ve got it too.”

Wendy felt a sort of thrill from the idea of having a secret from the animators, but the revelation also frightened her. She was defective. Herschel had already told her that, but not like this. If the animators ever found out, they’d kill both of them for sure. They were each planning to actually animate their latest creations tonight. If all went well, Wendy and Riley would be replaceable by the time they got back. “Thanks for sharing,” she growled. “Now if you’re so smart, tell me how to fix it!”

“I dunno. I’m not sure you can fix it all the way. But you can’t let those feelings take you over! It’s cartoon physics, y’know? You’ve gotta keep your confidence, and not second-guess anything, or you’ll lose control. Your blackout curtains almost fell apart back there – they flickered a bit.”

“Then how do you do it?”

“I just keep tellin’ meself this is the right thing, or at least I’m doing it for the right reasons. It’s just me mind playing tricks on me. You know how to fight off hypnosis, don’t you? Well, this is just… it’s like they’re hypnotizing us, or we’re hypnotizing ourselves, into thinking they’re human. And most humans are worse off than us. We gotta do this so the other toons’ll take off their masks and show ‘em the truth.”

Wendy nodded. A moment’s thought told her Riley’s solution wouldn’t work for her. She didn’t particularly care what humans in general thought. And if she told herself this was right, there’d be something , buried deep inside her, that would keep objecting, and making her doubt herself. The second set of dead toons confirmed this. She nearly lost the blackout curtains again. She couldn’t help imagining being the one at the wrong end of the Dip sprayers. Scenes from the movies she’d watched over the humans’ shoulders crept back into her mind, but they weren’t the scenes of the villains finally getting their just desserts, they were the scenes showing why they were the villains, and why it was a good thing for the good guys to kill them even though killing people was supposed to be wrong. And she, Riley, and the Human Resistance as a whole seemed like the villains.

Anger burned on two sides of her, spreading like flame along a fuse until it met as an explosion. That was wrong! The Resistance were fighting to save humanity. They couldn’t be the villains. And then it hit her. This anger, this conflict within her own mind, was a fight . She could use that. The part of her that delighted in causing destruction and pain and fear still wouldn’t enjoy dragging her targets from her beds and to their deaths. There wasn’t even any thrill, any challenge in it. But the part of her that was shocked, and afraid, and disgusted, was trying to hold her back. Well, she’d fight it, and she’d beat it! It was wrong, a mistake, something that should never have been part of her. But she wouldn’t just stuff it down inside her, let it hide in the shadows. No, she’d drag it, kicking and screaming, to the surface! She’d make that part of her watch every moment of what she was going to do, and she’d revel in its suffering! As Riley picked the lock on the third apartment, Wendy Weasel shut her eyes… and Number Fifteen opened them.

One door at a time, they went through the apartment block, emptying it of life. Couples, roommates, families. Sometimes she’d knock them out with a chloroform-soaked rag, sometimes she’d strangle them, sometimes she’d just keep hitting them over the head and stunning them. Either way, they were all dragged outside and left for the humans to shoot like fish in a barrel. By the time the first floor was done there wasn’t just a puddle, there was a crater in the parking lot, filled with a bubbling, smoking mixture of Dip and what was left of the residents. The humans didn’t have to directly spray down the victims anymore: Wendy and Riley just threw them into the crater and darted out of the way of any splashing. Mostly. One time, out of curiosity, Wendy intentionally stayed just a little too close, at a range where a few drops of Dip splashed her. It hurt so much she had to bite down on her lip to avoid crying out.

Some of the victims were lighter sleepers, and woke up when the door opened. They’d try to run, or scream, and a few begged for their lives, but none of them were quick enough. If they turned to go for the window, Wendy would be waiting in their path.

She was a weapon, she told herself. She wasn’t the villain, she was the pistol, the sword, the machine gun, the tank, the fighter jet. No, more accurately she was like an alien or a zombie or a robot, an inhuman monster destroying other things like itself. This was her purpose, it was what she’d been drawn for.

At first, she was laughing – quietly, so the noise wouldn’t wake the ones they hadn’t gotten to yet. She kept trying to convince herself what she was doing was funny, and imagining splitting off the piece of her telling her she shouldn’t and slowly but surely lowering it into the Dip. But she couldn’t, because it wasn’t something foreign that she could separate from herself, it was her . There wasn’t Number Fifteen trying to stay focused and finish the mission, and something else trying to hold her back, and Wendy gleefully dragging that something painfully forward. There was just one creature trying to do all three at the same time, and only succeeding at hurting herself. By halfway through the second floor, she wasn’t sure whether she was laughing or crying or sometimes one, sometimes the other. By the third floor, she completed the gruesome work in total silence. Every ounce of her focus was on either keeping the blackout curtains from disintegrating, and the small amount of effort necessary to catch, overpower, and silence the targets with mechanical efficiency.

Anger was still boiling inside her, painful anger that she didn’t understand. She didn’t feel the cold of the air outside the building anymore. Her entire body was heating up, until the snow evaporated under her paws, the carpet charred, and the targets’ fur or clothing smoked and they let out muffled screams of pain at just her touch. She wanted to wring Gene and Lyle and Craig and all the other humans’ necks, and smash their heads into paste, even though they were barely doing anything anymore, just occasionally topping off the Dip levels in the crater. She couldn’t read their expressions; they were wearing gas masks too, as protection from the benzene vapor filling the air. Was anthropomorphization a problem for them, too?

Finally it was over. There had been a few close calls where they almost hadn’t silenced a scream in time, but they’d gone through every apartment in the building. Wendy hadn’t been counting how many units there were, or how many toons, but she was sure that at least one of those numbers was in the hundreds. The humans loaded the half-empty barrels of Dip back into the van, several of them laughing and joking. Wendy watched them until Gene finally gave the order to get rid of the blackout again. Now they had to work fast. The scene change was easier the other direction, but Wendy’s hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold the paint can or brush. When they reappeared in the same dark, empty parking lot, she almost collapsed from exhaustion. That didn’t make sense… keeping the blackout going was hard, but it shouldn’t have drained her energy like this…

Without a word, both toons climbed into the camper shell on the back of the pickup truck. Wendy kept her eyes on the van as they rolled down the freeway out of the city. It got cold again, and she shivered and wrapped the thin blanket around herself. But she didn’t say a word to Riley all the way back to the base. The gas mask was getting uncomfortable now, its straps digging into her skin, but she kept it on. She didn’t want anyone to see her face right now, not even Riley.

Towards the end of the journey, as they left the towns and farms behind and rode out into the desert, the sky ahead started to get light. But Wendy was underground well before the sun rose, the same as always.

Chapter Text

The same night the Human Resistance murdered an entire apartment building of innocent toons, Calamity Coyote was finally putting the final pieces of their escape plan together.

There were no stairways between levels of the complex, only the one elevator shaft. It was a “fail-deadly” system: if the elevator broke down it was still possible to disassemble the doors and cabin to get between levels, but that entailed a dangerous climb up or down the shaft, and a jammed elevator could, in theory, come loose and move or fall. The Resistance had evidently chosen security over safety.

But Wendy Weasel’s comment about the ventilation system raised another possibility. It seemed ridiculous, the kind of thing that only worked in movies or cartoons. But Calamity still wanted to see if it was possible. Unfortunately, there was no good way to find out from the confines of their cell, which meant they had to fall back on the backup plan: Kenny asking questions about the ventilation system without sounding suspicious.

Luckily, the man had succeeded. He’d complained about a funny smell coming from the vents, and asked if it could have been coming from the other levels, naming the chemical facility on Level Four and incinerator on Level Three as likely culprits. The irritated tech had told him that while air was exchanged with the outside by a common set of intake and outflow ducts, they branched off into several more or less independent ventilation systems lower down, with their own set of filters, fans, and heating and cooling systems. Specifically to prevent toxic fumes from the generators, incinerator, or vats of Dip and Dip precursors from getting anywhere else, Level 3 and Level 4 were each on their own ventilation system, so there was no way in hell the smell could have come from there. The ducts in the guards’ bunk room – and anywhere else on Level 5 for that matter – were only connected to Level 6. Kenny eventually admitted that the smell must have been his imagination, and later returned in triumph.

He also gathered a few other facts. First, the ducts were too small for a human to squeeze through, but the engineers apparently hadn’t considered that Calamity and Furrball were a lot smaller than a human. They’d almost certainly fit. Second, the vents around the cell block had fresh air come in near the ceiling and stale air exit about a foot above the floor, a system specifically designed to deal with heavier-than-air vapors produced by Dip from the sprinklers. They’d have to go through the exhaust vents, but if they were waiting for the water sprinklers to make the floor safe to walk on any lingering fumes would probably be out of the system already. Third, the vent covers used Phillips-head screws.

It still wasn’t an attractive plan. When Kenny set off the sprinklers, any humans in the affected area would be forced into gas masks and sent scrambling for cover – the chemicals in Dip were toxic to inhale and irritated the skin and eyes. That would buy him a bit of time, but probably not enough. It might not even buy any time if a toon teleported into the control room. But a few more discretely asked questions had given them relief on that front. The control rooms were designed to be as hard as possible for a toon to break into. They probably couldn’t be teleported into, and there was no way of overriding the door locks from the outside short of bringing a maintenance tech down to take apart the control panel. And with the detected escape attempt automatically locking down the elevator, the technician would be stranded on the levels above without a lot of effort.

That didn’t stop the door from being physically blasted apart or broken down, of course, and soon the Resistance would have at least four toons that could do that effortlessly. They were also strong and resourceful enough that only turning on the water sprinklers for the cell block and leaving a puddle of Dip in the hall around the control room might not phase them – and failing that they could probably get a technician past the elevator. They were still dangerous. There was no way to know how much time Kenny would have. He was willing to accept the risk of being caught and killed by this point, but hypnosis could trick or force him to reveal exactly how Calamity and Furrball were escaping.

There were a couple of other problems as well, the chief one being that Level Six was a completely unknown quantity, as was the layout of the vents. They didn’t know how long it would take to get down there, or what tools they’d have to remove their cuffs. Once they got them off, they had to get back up to Level 5. The elevator doors and the floor and roof of the car were almost bomb-proof, but almost wasn’t good enough, and they both knew some useful tricks like painting tunnels. Hopefully Kenny would still be alive and be able to escape the control room and join them, and they’d be able to make their way up to Level 3, after which point they’d “only” have locked doors, choke point stairways, and armed guards to deal with.

Even if they got out of the compound it was about ten miles to the freeway, and hopefully a driver with a cell phone who could dial 911. Kenny figured given the condition of the road that would take about twenty minutes in a stolen van. Calamity’s best time on a ten-mile run in track was 9:47. He hoped adrenaline would make up for lack of exercise, poor nutrition, and frequently having the ink siphoned from his body.

In short, it was a desperate plan. Calamity figured they’d be lucky if even one of them made it out alive. But by that point he was also confident they weren’t getting any better odds. And the latest word from the animators was that once the new pair of toons was finished, there would be a direct attack on a ‘hard target’ not long after. Hard target could have meant someone like Porky or even Wile E or Sylvester was the Resistance’s next intended victim, or it could have been Bugs, or Daffy, or even Acme Looniversity as a whole or the Warner Bros Studio. Furrball and Calamity couldn’t stand by and let that happen.

October 10 ^th came and went. That marked one month since they were kidnapped. One night later, Kenny reported that the new toons had been finished. Number 24, created by Lowell, and Number 25, created by Herschel. They were, apparently, a major improvement on Number 6 and Number 15, the raccoon and the weasel Calamity had met. They were probably similar in strength, if not as smart, and so far they seemed to be completely loyal and completely remorseless. In short, they were bad news.

The final pieces fell into place. A date for the escape was set. October 15 ^th , the first day after the guard shifts changed and Kenny would be on duty in the middle of the day, when most of the Human Resistance slept. They could no longer hope for all four of the dangerous toons to be away at once, so the advantage of surprise was more important. Kenny snuck the crucial tools into their cell: a screwdriver and a file. There was only one place to hide it, only one place the guards didn’t check during their daily inspection: underneath the cover of the floor drain. The pipe led straight down out of reach, but the screwdriver was tied to the grate using a length of fishing line. The grate was screwed to the floor and impossible to lift off ordinarily… but it used the same kind of screws. Once the cover was off, Calamity carefully filed the threads off each screw. He and Furrball then tied both tools in place, replaced the drain cover, and inserted all four screws into the holes. To a guard inspecting the cell, it was nearly impossible to tell anything had been tampered with, but the cover would now just lift free. When it was go time, Kenny would give them a five minute warning. They would grab the tools, Furrball would slice the fishing line with his claws, and they’d each hold one of them in their mouths and climb up the barred wall out of reach of the sprinklers. Everything was ready.

But just one night later, on Monday the twelfth of October, events thousands of feet above the conspirators’ heads threatened to throw their plan completely off the rails.

Down on the fifth level of the Human Resistance’s underground base, Calamity and Furrball were curled up on the hard concrete bed, asleep. But up on the second level, the majority of the organization’s day was beginning at 2128 hours. Kenneth Reavis was sitting in the corner of the large room that served as a recreation area for the personnel who weren’t currently on duty cleaning, standing guard, maintaining the complex’s equipment, manufacturing Dip or other chemicals, or preparing for a mission. He had already eaten breakfast, and was currently trying very hard to remain inconspicuous and devote his full attention to the taped Dolphins-Jaguars game. He couldn’t care less about either team, but he wanted to stay well clear of the events on the other side of the room.

The new toons, Numbers 24 and 25, had been animated last night, but had been kept isolated in cells for observation and analysis of their personalities for a day, and were only now being revealed to anyone without Level Five clearance. Officially, this was for the safety of Resistance personnel. Kenny was pretty sure it was also partially for their own safety. He did have Level Five clearance, and had already seen them. He didn’t want to get near either of them again, and more importantly he didn’t want to get near Herschel Wilson’s other creations, especially not the psychotic one that had threatened to kill Calamity and Furrball to prevent the new ones being animated. If there was ever a time when a toon would turn on the Resistance, it was now, and he didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire of a fight between the creatures.

Wendy Weasel stared skeptically at the new arrivals. These were supposed to be her replacements? Yeah, right. One was a musclebound orange tiger with a blocky face, a torso shaped like an inverted triangle, and a pair of baggy athletic shorts with broad horizontal white, blue, and red stripes in descending order. One of his eyes was bigger than the other, and bulged out under bushy dark eyebrows. The other was apparently supposed to be a wolverine, but looked more like a Tasmanian Devil ripoff with black fur and a much worse haircut, if Taz had been drawn by Hanna-Barbera in the sixties. He had a spiked collar around his neck, and was staring into space with a glazed look in his eyes and his mouth hanging open. A bead of drool was slowly inching toward the floor.

“I don’t like them,” Wendy stage-whispered to Riley, who was standing next to her. He elbowed her, shook his head with a stern look, and made a slicing motion across his neck.

As if. Wendy had already been ordered not to attack the new toons on pain of death, so she wouldn’t do so. However, she had every intention of antagonizing them as much as she could get away with. If she was lucky they might even attack her . The animators couldn’t complain if she was simply defending herself.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lowell announced in a loud but level voice. “Our latest animated assets. It took a couple tries, but I believe Mr. Wilson and I have finally perfected our improved animation process.” He gave Riley and Wendy a pointed look, but put his arm around Herschel’s shoulder. A couple people clapped, but no one came near. The humans in the room were all keeping their distance apart from the animators. Most were looking nervously at the new toons, although there was one guy in the corner watching football. Wendy was pretty sure he was one of the guards in the other wing of Level 5.

“Did you get a receipt?” she interrupted. “What’s the return policy?”

Lowell scowled and pushed his glasses further up his nose. “Number Twenty-Four and Number Twenty-Five are the weapons that will finally give us the ability to successfully take the fight to the most dangerous toons. They are powerful and relatively resourceful and intelligent-”

“Compared to a starfish?” Wendy muttered.

“-yet remain perfectly obedient.”

“Is this one house-trained?” Wendy pointed at the ‘wolverine.’ The bead of drool finally fell. Wendy conjured a ‘Caution: Wet Floor’ sign and slid it in front of him. That finally got an irritated look from him.

“Since some of you will be working directly with them on missions,” Lowell continued, “I suppose I might as well introduce them.”

“Hiya, Tigger!” Wendy bounced up to the tiger, conjuring a stepladder to be closer to his height – he was only about five feet tall, but that was still more than enough to tower over her – and extended her hand. “I’m Wendy Weasel!”

Herschel cleared his throat loudly.

“Number Fifteen...” Wendy corrected, glaring at him.

“I am Number Twenty-Five, also known as Crazy Ivan the Siberian Tiger.” The larger toon said in a thick Russian accent. Figured. He extended an enormous paw and wrapped it around Wendy’s hand, then squeezed. Wendy tensed and her eyes widened. It was like putting her hand in a vise! She heard something crack. He shook downward, nearly pulling her off the ladder, then up again, lifting her into the air.

That was it. This meant war. Wendy had concealed a high-voltage capacitor in her other hand, with wires running to and poking through her glove. She hadn’t planned to use them if not provoked, but this definitely counted. She was sure from the look in his eyes that this was intentional. She flipped the switch. There was a loud bang and a flash of blue light. Crazy Ivan went rigid, releasing his grip on her hand. His jaw dropped, his tongue rolled out, and ‘TILT-SKI’ flashed in his eyes. He keeled over backwards, a wisp of smoke rising from his hand.

Herschel was livid. “Number Fifteen!” He lunged, whipping the ladder out from underneath Wendy. “I warned you – I was hoping we wouldn’t have to make a true replacement so soon, but-”

“He started it!” Wendy complained. “Muscles here tried to break my fingers! What’d ya do, mix steroids into the ink when you drew him?”

The tiger laboriously rose. He manually stuffed his tongue back into his mouth and closed it, then loomed over Wendy with a sadistic grin on his face. She had to admit, it was creepy seeing that look not in a mirror. He cracked his knuckles with a noise like a jackhammer. “I vill break you, little rodent.”

Wendy stood her ground. “Try it and I’ll turn ya into a fur rug.” Then a cane hooked around her neck and yanked her back.

“Are you trying to get Dipped?” Riley hissed. He pointed to multiple nervous-looking men holding Dip guns who seemed unsure if they should raise them or not.

“One more threat out of you-” warned Lowell.

“Number Twenty-Five! Enough!” barked Herschel. Crazy Ivan backed off, still sneering at Wendy. “Number Fifteen...”

“Not my fault! He’s the one who tried to pick a fight! I was just defending myself!”

“You were intentionally provoking him.”

“And the lunkhead fell for it. Yeah, he’s a real shining beacon of self-control!”

“Compared to you, yes.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, mate!” Riley leaped into action, vigorously shaking the wolverine’s hand. “I’m Number Six, but you can call me Riley.”

“I’m Number Twenty-Four,” the wolverine said woodenly. Wendy rolled her eyes. Like she couldn’t have figured that out by process of elimination.

Riley seemed taken aback. “That’s your number, all right. What about your name?”

“Unnecessary,” said Lowell.

“Nice to meet you, Unnecessary!” said Wendy. That was clever. She could imagine Lowell’s logic. If his creation didn’t tell anyone its name, then they wouldn’t use it! But she knew he almost certainly had one. Maybe she could peek at his modelsheet at some point. No, they were all locked up in the Animation Room, which she was strictly forbidden from entering and which had security cameras.

“So, Pops, I’m guessing this one’s yours?” Wendy gestured at the tiger. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still your Magnus Opus, and the guy looks like you ripped him off from a cereal box, but at least there’s a sliver of creativity in him, so I know Lowell couldn’t have drawn him!”

Someone in the circle of assembled humans stifled a laugh. For some reason Wendy felt a rush of energy go through her at the sound. Lowell went rigid. He glowered not at her, but at Herschel, and there was actually a vein pulsing on his temple. “I hope that didn’t come from you. ”

Herschel turned the color of a beetroot and limped towards Wendy with murder in his eyes, but before he got halfway something slammed down on her head. She was knocked to the floor with tiny conical dunce caps orbiting her.

“You’re gonna get another date with a bottle of Passivation Solution if you keep running your mouth!” Riley whispered in her ear. She saw him put away a large mallet. Traitor. Then he started saying something to Herschel Wendy didn’t quite catch. Something about how well she’d done last night, that she was behaving herself in the ways that were really important, and that he’d drag her downstairs himself if she didn’t shut up.

Right… maybe she’d pushed it a little too far. She just couldn’t help it. It was probably a good thing Riley had stopped her, or she’d have said something that really would get her Dipped.

Then an alarm went off. Red lights flashed. “Not my fault!” Wendy said, jumping to her feet. “I didn’t touch anything!” The way things were going she’d probably get blamed. Only about half of the things that got pinned on her – missing tools or personal effects, broken equipment, changed thermostat settings – were actually her fault.

“What the hell?” Lowell stared at the warning lights. “Isn’t that the intruder alarm?”

A panicked voice came over the intercom. “All personnel, be advised: a helicopter has been spotted circling above the compound! Potentially hostile, please advise!”

That was a problem. There had been a bunch of helicopters around for several days, black ones with ‘FBI’ on the sides. The government was definitely on the hunt for them. But the compound was pretty much perfectly hidden to an aerial search. You’d have to be inside the entrance to realize it wasn’t an abandoned mine. How had they been found?

Someone swore and stepped forward from the circle of nervous humans. Gene. Herschel and Lowell were the true leaders of the Resistance, but Gene was the highest-ranking field commander. In an emergency, he was in charge. “If that’s the Feds, we gotta get ‘em off our asses ASAP!”

Wendy knew what that meant. The Resistance had no anti-aircraft weapons… except for the ones that walked and talked. She exchanged a brief look with Riley, then in the blink of an eye they were at either side of Gene. Wendy had already put on a leather aviator’s cap and a pair of goggles on her forehead. “Bogies at twelve-o-clock, boss! Get us on the deck!” Without waiting for the man to respond she grabbed his hand, softened his body to keep his arm from being broken or ripped off, and took off running, pulling him along in the air until the locked door of the stairwell up to the first floor stopped her progress. He jerked his arm free, and for a moment looked like he was about to go ballistic, but then recognized the situation and swiped his card in the lock. She grabbed him again and pulled him up the stairs, and in a couple seconds they were inside the observation room looking over the shoulder of the guard watching the external security cameras. She was pretty sure Numbers 24 and 25 were still standing there with flies laying eggs in their open mouths, waiting for instructions from the animators. Idiots.

Gene was all business. “A helicopter? Do you still have a visual?”

“Yeah.” The guard pointed to the screen. “I got the lights in sight and the mic’s picking up the rotor noise.” He tapped his headphones.

Gene turned to Wendy and Riley. “Get out there, confirm if it’s hostile. If it is, take it out.”

Wendy saluted and dashed off through the hallways, leaving Riley behind, until she got to the main door out of the motor pool. “Scuse me, coming through, open the door!” she shouted to the guards. She hopped from foot to foot, practically giddy with excitement. As soon as the massive garage door even started to open, she squashed her body and scrambled through and sprinted up the ramp halfway before she was clear of the anti-teleportation liner. Her next step took her out of the complex entirely and two hundred yards up the hill, where she appeared by the rock. Her heart was pounding against her ribs. She’d been in a bad mood ever since the mission last night, and she’d been just itching to sink her metaphorical teeth into Number 24 and Number 25. Even if the chopper was swarming with Feds who could potentially reveal the location of the complex, she was almost glad of its appearance. It had probably saved her from Herschel’s wrath, and it gave her something to take her anger and excess energy out on.

“It’s right up there!” Riley was beside her already, wearing a set of night vision goggles. He pointed up at the very obvious red and green anticollision lights on the chopper. Yep, it was definitely banking around. “It’s the bobbies, all right!”

Wendy grinned. “I’ll deal with ‘em! Stay outta my way!” Focusing on the chopper, she teleported again. The first one had her hanging from the right skid. Yep. FBI. Then she was in the cockpit, behind the two pilots’ seats. She leaned over, putting her head between theirs. “Ehh… what’s up, cops?” she said, hypnotizing the pilots to not find it odd that they’d been joined by a guest a couple thousand feet in the air.

“We’re looking for the base of an anti-Toon terrorist organization called the Human Resistance,” said the guy on the left.

“Having any luck?” Wendy now had their full attention. She reached between the seats and tore the radio out of the instrument panel, leaving a gaping hole and sparking wires behind. Neither pilot noticed.

“Well, we found this plume of hot air comin’ out of the mountain,” said the other pilot – no, it wasn’t a pilot, he was staring at the screen of some sort of instrument. “With lots of CO2 and carbon monoxide in it… almost like someone’s running some really big generators underground! We were just circling back around to confirm it before we reported back, and -” He looked at Wendy, then did a double take. “Larry, there’s some toon kid in here. How’d you even get in here?”

Wendy shrugged. “I walked. Say, this is a nice whirlybird you got here. It’d be a shame if something...” she grinned menacingly. “ happened to it.” This wasn’t like at the apartment complex. These weren’t defenseless, sleeping toons. They were human, but they were the enemy. They were actively looking for the Resistance, and if she’d been just a few seconds slower their location would have been revealed and before long they’d have Bugs Bunny, Slappy Squirrel, all three Warner Siblings, and who knew who else knocking on their door. She had no misgivings at all at what she was going to do.

The non-pilot made a grab for her, but Wendy was already gone. She clung to the left skid, then conjured a pair of suction cups and climbed up the side of the black helicopter to where the Emergency Location Transmitter was mounted and cut the antenna off with a pair of scissors. It was flung away into the darkness below by the rotor’s downwash. At this point, there were a thousand different ways she could have knocked the helicopter out of the sky. She could have stuck a crowbar in the tail rotor, or bananas in all the exhaust pipes, or even put a fake upside-down horizon over the windscreen and hypnotized the pilots again to reverse their sense of gravity. But the method she chose, only a toon would have chosen – not that anyone but a toon would have been physically capable of pulling it off.

She focused on the spinning rotor again, her eyes snapping back and forth to follow the blades’ movement. Then once she had a sense of timing she closed her eyes and appeared standing on top of one of the blades, near the hub. Immediately she braced herself against the wind and centrifugal force, and warped physics to keep from being thrown off and keep her weight for shaking the rotor apart. Still she swayed precariously as the blade flapped back and forth several times every second. Her legs felt like they were turning to jelly. The starry night sky became a blur of hundreds of concentric streaks of light. But she was on.

Wendy tiptoed closer to the hub, and ripped the protective cover off, tossing it away. Underneath was a funny-shaped chunk of metal with gear-like teeth on the bottom that engaged with a locking key and a hexagonal projection on the top. Cackling with delight, Wendy tore the locking key out and threw that away too, then conjured an enormous ratcheting wrench and fitted it over the top projection. She threw herself against the wrench with all her strength, and the tension of the threads gave way. The chunk of metal began to unscrew. A couple more turns, and she flung the wrench over her shoulder, used another physics bend to hold the parts underneath in place, letting her spin the loosened nut with her bare hand until she was holding it on the palm of her glove. She pitched it into the darkness, ran to the end of the rotor blade, and sprung off it like a diving board. For a brief moment, Wendy was falling and the helicopter continued on its way through the chilly desert sky. Then Leon Schlesinger left the building and Isaac Newton took over.

The part Wendy had removed from the helicopter was nicknamed the ‘Jesus Nut’ after the next face a pilot would see if it came off. It was the only thing holding the entire rotor head in place on the shaft, with the aircraft’s entire weight hanging from it. Because of its importance designers, mechanics, and mechanics paid it enough attention that it was almost unheard for it to actually loosen in flight. And a part separated from the cabin by deadly whirling blades was, under normal circumstances, impossible to sabotage in midair. But now that it was gone, the helicopter was irrevocably doomed. As soon as Wendy released the physics bend, the thin control rods that were now the only thing holding the rotor head on the shaft snapped, subjected to a burden they were never meant to take. The rotor rocketed upward like a maple seed in reverse. The rest of the helicopter dropped like a rock.

It was ironic, Wendy thought as she conjured an inflatable mattress and a bike pump. Helicopter pilots never wore parachutes, because trying to bail out of one that was falling from the sky would usually result in a faceful of spinning death. This was the one time when a parachute could have saved them. She wondered if she should have given them a pair of backpacks, maybe one with a real parachute and one filled with various articles of clothing. No, they’d told her all Gene or Lowell or Herschel would want to know. They wouldn’t want an extra prisoner around anyway.

The helicopter’s engine was still running, and its tail rotor still spinning. Without the torque of a main rotor countering it, the doomed aircraft started to spin and tumble in the air, and the drag of the tail boom pointed its nose towards the ground. A few seconds later, it slammed into the desert traveling faster than it had ever gone in its life. A fireball rose into the night sky. Wendy wondered if the pilots had even figured out what had happened yet. A moment later she hit the ground too. Even on top of an inflated mattress the impact was jarring. She bounced off, tumbled through a bush, and ended up upside-down in a dry wash. She got up and dusted herself off. Mission accomplished.

Half a minute later, she was back on Level Two, alternately beaming at Herschel and smirking at Crazy Ivan. “One fly, swatted!” she announced. She pulled a twig out of her ear.

Herschel scowled. Lowell raised an eyebrow. “And by swatted, you mean?” the younger animator asked.

“Crashed and burned. Don’t worry, they were Feds. They found the plume from the exhaust vents I think.”

“Were they able to radio anyone?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Did you clean up the crash site?” asked Herschel.

“Uhh...”

Herschel ground his palm into his forehead. “You idiot! Once they realize it’s disappeared, they’ll be scouring the area for it, and they’ll find a pile of burning wreckage right on our goddamn doorstep! Even if they think it’s an accident, there’ll be FBI agents crawling all over the valley! Get out and don’t come back until you’ve moved the evidence to a safe distance!”

Wendy’s heart sank. She’d done her job perfectly. She’d reacted a lot faster than that stupid tiger, and even than Riley, and taken the chopper out before it could report their base’s location. There was a little extra step she’d missed, but just for once, couldn’t he have been pleased? “Yessir right away sir!” She threw a salute and dashed away again.

The crash was so violent that the helicopter’s fuel had almost all burned in the seconds after impact, but some of the wreckage was still on fire, as were some bushes. It took several bottles of seltzer water to put it all out. The helicopter had almost completely disintegrated. Pieces of metal and fiberglass were scattered over an area at least the size of a baseball infield, and it looked like the engine had buried itself in the hard-packed desert surface. It was a mess. It would be hard to clean up, but Wendy still stifled a laugh at the devastation as she pulled a flash light out of Hammerspace.

Then she saw what was left of the pilots, and the smile was wiped off her face. For some reason, she’d expected there to be person-shaped holes in the ground, or pancakes, or something. Maybe it was toon instinct. But they were charred, crumpled, and dismembered like a Barbie doll someone had stuck in a blender. One was mostly still belted into a folded-up seat, the other had been torn free. One had lost his helmet, the other had stayed on but taken the man’s head with it. Both of them – or rather, all the parts – were completely still and silent. It smelled like desert dust, smoke, burning sagebrush, oil, and barbecue gone horribly wrong. Wendy’s stomach turned upside-down. No, this wasn’t any different from last night. How had Riley done this? There was a strange, painful emotion that she couldn’t shake, like she’d done something wrong. But how? This was what she was told to do. It was what she was drawn to do.

She ended up moving the wreckage about a dozen miles south, to the southern part of the Chuckwalla Mountains. She blasted a new crater with explosives, scattered the pieces around in approximately the relative positions she’d found them in, and liberally doused the area in gasoline and lit it to simulate a post-crash fire. The smaller bits she vacuumed up and buried along with the burnt plants at the real crash site, turning the soil over and moving bushed from the surrounding area and replanting them to fill in the burnt patch. There was no sign of the rotor or any of the pieces she’d taken off.

Wendy stayed outside for a long time. At first, she watched as more airplanes and helicopters came, flying low over the base. She hoped they’d had the sense to turn off the generators. Before too long, they headed off to the south. She bet she’d started a nice brushfire and the glow would lead them right along the false trail. She jogged up the ridge and watched, hidden in a brush, as the lights circled in the southern sky. Why the hell did she feel like this? They were human, but they were the enemy. They had to be gotten rid of, or the Resistance could have been destroyed. And it had been so much fun to taunt them, toy with them, and creatively set their deaths in motion, in the moment. So why did seeing the end result make her feel so… wrong, so... evil?

Chapter Text

The news reports in the Studio ‘War Room’ the next couple of days were bleaker than ever. The horrific scale and brutality of the most recent Resistance attacks, especially the one on Sunday night, had finally brought the tension building in Toontown up to the flash point. On Monday, full-blown riots had broken out. Throngs of protesters had stormed the police checkpoints outside the entrances to Toontown, screaming that the police weren’t making them any safer – Yakko couldn’t argue with that – and that the government was probably behind it anyway. First pies had flown, then bricks, then anvils and bombs and Molotov Cocktails. Even those were warnings, at first, until someone either messed up at pulling the blows or was too angry to care. Both human and toon police had fought back with nightsticks, tear gas, rubber bullets, and then, in grim confirmation of Slappy’s claims, shotgun shells filled with Dip.

But that had only made the crowd angrier – Yakko couldn’t really argue with that either. The battle was brief but intense, and ended with nine cops and five protesters dead – although one of the cops was a toon who’d been accidentally hit by friendly fire – and dozens more injured on both sides. But, severely outnumbers, the cops had been forced to cut and run. The checkpoints were destroyed, and the roads themselves were also in a sorry state. The rioters had set up their own barricades, and issued an ultimatum. Any human who approached the tunnels, or was found in Toontown, would be killed on sight. Within the cities, low-level fighting between protesters and the toon police forces continued.

And all Yakko, or anyone else in the Antiresistance, could do was go on TV and issue a worthless vague condemnation of violence. He wanted desperately to tell the truth, to say that they were probably close to finding the Resistance, but they were so close now they couldn’t risk tipping them off.

“Look, we’ll catch ‘em eventually,” said Bugs. “And then all this’ll clear up. People are just scared, and dey got every right to be, but once they aren’t in danger anymore they’ll probably come back to their senses.”

Slappy had taken Yakko’s side in the pessimist camp. “Yeah, right. You got too much ink going to those ears and not enough to your brain, rabbit. That was only true until we had cops using Dip against toons on live television. There’s a reason I didn’t go public about them having those shells before. Even if we parade the entire Resistance’s heads on pikes down the Walk of Fame tomorrow it’ll be years before any toon trusts the LAPD again, and the Toontown cops won’t be much better off. And right now I pity the next cop who tries to so much as write a toon a speeding ticket in this town.”

“Does that include yourself?” Bugs asked slyly.

“If it’s just me, no, because I can probably get outta there if I have to. But if they mess with Skippy again they’re gonna get a taste of their own medicine. There’s a lotta chemicals that’ll do to human flesh what Dip does to ours, and if I’m gonna be an international fugitive I’m gonna do it in style.” She ground her fist against her palm.

“Sulfuric acid?” asked Daffy.

“Nah. Concentrated hydrogen peroxide sets human tissue on fire on contact.”

“Just mix ‘em,” suggested Peter. “That gets ya Piranha Solution. Some of the cartels use it to dissolve bodies. Although messin’ with that stuff’s a good way to halo yourself.”

“Correct,” said Brain. “The reaction with living tissue, human or toon, is highly exothermic, and rapidly heats the mixture to boiling temperatures. It would scald and dissolve the victim at the same time, which results in an unfortunate predicament even for a toon.”

Dot went even paler than normal, and Wakko turned slightly green.

“Anyway...” Bugs scowled and folded his arms. “If you three aspirin’ serial killers are finished, can we get on with things?”

Then, on Monday night, an FBI helicopter conducting an aerial search over the Chuckwalla Mountains for possible chemical exhaust from an underground compound suddenly lost radio contact and disappeared from air traffic control radar. The wreckage was found shortly afterward, but over ten miles to the south, farther than the helicopter could possibly have autorotated from its last known position if an engine failure had caused the crash. The extent of the destruction and distribution of debris indicated an extremely high-speed and nearly vertical impact, and most alarmingly, no pieces of the rotor seemed to be present at the crash site. An in-flight breakup seemed likely, and yet the tail boom, which would normally have come off as well in such a situation, seemed to have been intact at the time of the crash. But the odds of an in-flight rotor separation were, according to the Feds, astronomically low. It didn’t seem like the crash was a coincidence, especially as the radar track found that the chopper had performed a full circuit around a single point. Subsequent aerial searches on Tuesday found what appeared to be a decades-abandoned mine nearby… only there was something odd. The dirt road leading up to the place was in abnormally good condition, with signs of recent maintenance, but also deep ruts. The place had gotten a lot more traffic than it should have, and with heavier vehicles. There was a campground a few miles to the north over a ridge, but the mine didn’t get many tourists, and people certainly weren’t taking RVs up there.

The search was finally over.

By Tuesday Night, a small army of FBI and California National Guard vehicles were converging on the tiny towns of Mesa Verde and Desert Center, and on Wednesday Morning they had turned off the 10, rumbled up Chuckwalla Valley Road from either direction, and were setting up a mile-long perimeter at the mouth of the valley the probable entrance to the Resistance compound was located in. The old mine was barely a quarter-mile from the barbed wire and sand bags. When the Warners arrived a little after noon in a rented minivan and Yakko saw armored cars, vehicles that looked like tanks, machine guns, and people wearing camouflage uniforms everywhere, it finally hit him that despite being legally barred from military service, and not even technically legal adults because they’d never bothered taking their tests, he and his siblings had ended up fighting a war.

Slappy Squirrel surveyed the scene with obvious disapproval from underneath her WWII-style helmet. As the only member of the Burbank contingent who had a license, she’d driven them from the studio. Yakko didn’t even know minivans were capable of triple-digit speeds before. “What a joke,” she muttered. “At this rate this is gonna turn into the next Waco Siege.”

“Eh… I wouldn’t say that.” Bugs appeared next to them, munching on a carrot. The road tunnels in and out of Toontown were all blocked by crowds of protesters, so Bugs had made his own tunnel, and had actually gotten there first despite Slappy’s driving. “It ain’t like we can just ring the doorbell and barge our way in. This is a delicate situation which calls for a more complicated stragedy.”

“My point exactly. What I’m seein’ right now is a show of brute force, and it’s gonna work about as well as showin’ off your biceps in a gun fight. As far as the kinda toons they’re drawing are concerned this is just a bunch’a chew toys.”

“Foist, it’s not as bad as it looks. Second, this ain’t meant to stop the, uh, elite troops from bustin’ through. Dat’s what we’re here for. What dis barricade does is make sure that if the toons get us distracted, the humans can’t just sneak right outta here and be gone.”

“That’s right!” Daffy sidled up alongside Bugs. “This valley extends up a dozen miles or so, but this is the only way out that you can get a car through. Heck, even here they won’t have a fun time off-roading in a bunch of van- whoa!” He tripped and disappeared into a dry channel. “Exhibit A!” he said, jumping up and dusting himself off.

Yakko wasn’t going to argue that point. The valley floor was only ‘flat’ in the vaguest sense. It was criss-crossed by a web of hundreds of small, but steep-banked washes created by thousands of years of flash floods, and strewn with boulders washed down from the mountains. Aside from carefully driving up the channels, a panel van couldn’t move off-road at any reasonable speed. But that didn’t mean it was a good plan. “So?” he said. “If I was a toon trying to sneak a bunch of human thugs outta here I’d just...” He pulled down a conjured screen, instantly transporting the group to the median of the Interstate. Another scene change brought them back. “We already know they have toons who can do that.”

“Plus, what if there’s a back exit we don’t know about?” added Wakko.

Bugs shrugged. “Dat’s a good point, but we already checked, and there’s some sorta seal around the whole place. Ya can’t get in with any kinda teleportation, and probably not out, either.”

“What about a tunnel?” asked Dot.

“It’s a possibility, which is why Brain’s got seismic monitorin’ equipment set up. If they try to dig their way out, we’ll know about it. There might still be a back way, but if there is, there ain’t much we can do about it.”

“Fine, whatever.” Slappy threw up her hands. “So what the heck are we doin’?”

Bugs pulled out another carrot. “At the moment, we’re leavin’ it to the experts. The FBI’s brought in the Critical Incident Response Group – the Crisis Negotiatin’ unit, the Hoe-stagey Rescue Team, and some SWAT Teams. Peter’s havin’ a chat with ‘em right now, but the gist of it is we’re gonna sit back and wait and see if they can persuade ‘em to release the boys.” Bugs’s expression turned to a scowl.

“You don’t look very confident,” said Yakko.

“Confidentially… I’m not.”

“The glaring flaw here,” grumbled Daffy, “Is that a negotiation involves give and take. Carrot, and stick.” He had the tone of someone explaining it to a five-year-old. “And currently the only carrot around here is the one the rabbit’s munching on. What exactly are the Feds supposed to offer them? We all know they’re not just going to back off and let these f – these, uh, ruffians, walk free!”

“No kidding,” said Slappy. “Isn’t the death toll past a thousand now? If we let ‘em get away now, they’ll set up somewhere else and just keep killing. They’ll be better hidden the second time, and even if they need kidnapping victims to keep drawing themselves more soldiers, right now there’s nothing stopping them from snatching themselves some more hapless victims. And they’ll just keep getting stronger.”

Bugs’s nose twitched. “Minor correction: they can’t keep drawing toons without an ACME Machine. Even if they manage to move it, it probably won’t be in one piece, and it’ll probably take ‘em months to get the thing workin’ again. But conversely, if they lay low they probably got that kinda time. This could, dare I say it, be a ‘now or never’ situation.”

Dot took a deep breath. “So… Calamity and Furrball...”

“Look, the Feds are gonna do what they can to get ‘em released and/or get the Resistance to surrender, but I ain’t holding out much hope considerin’ all we can offer’s that they’ll live long enough to see the inside of a prison cell. But that doesn’t mean we’re giving up on ‘em. One way or another we’re probably gonna end up going down that fancy concrete burrow, and we’re gonna do whatever we can to get ‘em out in one piece.”

But as the afternoon drew on, the situation only seemed to get worse. The attempt at a hostage negotiation was a complete failure, with whoever the Resistance had behind a megaphone announcing that they would fight to the last man, and there would be no negotiation or surrender. When the Feds tried to push it, getting within a hundred yards of the entrance, land mines detonated underneath them, and they didn’t respond to any attempt to communicate after that.

It was a standoff. The perimeter tightened, forming a semicircle a quarter of a mile from the entrance – that was as close as they dared get. It seemed like a full-scale battle was inevitable. The only question was who would attack first. Yakko, Wakko, and Dot were briefed by several different people from the FBI and the National Guard on what capabilities the government had to offer.

It was actually a lot more than he’d expected. The previous day the Antiresistance had already gotten the Feds to stop overflying the area with a series of increasingly angry phone calls culminating with Slappy and Peter taking turns describing various ways a semi-competent toon could knock a plane or chopper out of the sky. Aerial surveillance was now being provided entirely by Brain and Wile E. The Coyote’s biplane was, miraculously, still aloft and in one piece, although it seemed to have acquired more duct tape since Yakko had least seen it. But there were Medevac helicopters on standby, and just as importantly several military fire trucks armed with water cannons. They would have two purposes: first, to prevent any brush fire started by explosive or incendiary devices from growing out of control, and second, to be able to immediately hose down anyone who got soaked in Dip and dilute any spills.

Unfortunately, this seemed more likely to be necessary than Yakko expected as well. The FBI and cops having Dip-filled shotgun shells was a secret, but the US Military having it was well-known. Toons were banned from every country’s armed forces by international treaty, but the military didn’t have the luxury of assuming dictators who were already breaking international laws about chemical, biological, or possibly even nuclear weapons would obey the ones about toons. North Korea at least claimed to have toons drawn for war in its propaganda. And there was nothing technically stopping a toon in any country the US Military happened to be operating from taking up arms against them. Hell, if Yakko remembered right Bugs had pulled that stunt against the Imperial Japanese Navy at one point, and it sounded like Peter Possum might have been in a few encounters with military units more recently.

The National Guard didn’t just have shotguns or glorified Super Soakers made out of paintball parts. They had serious military hardware. There were larger-capacity backpack-mounted sprayers similar to flamethrowers, Dip-filled projectiles for grenade launchers and mortars, and most alarmingly, pressurized water cannon units. The Guardswoman briefing Yakko also explained that they were using an improved mixture called Seven-Layer Dip after the smaller number of ingredients used. It wasn’t quite as effective at dissolving tissue, but it was a much thicker, gooier substance. Streams of it would stay together longer if shot out of a spray gun or water cannon, it’d form thick ‘slicks’ on the ground instead of soaking into the soil, and it was harder to wash off with water. It was essentially anti-toon napalm.

None of this news was comforting. Sure, the soldiers were on their side… for the moment. But behind every single one of those weapons was a human who could be hypnotized or fooled by an illusion. He had no idea how good any of their aim was, and some of the weapons weren’t exactly precise, splashing Dip in a large radius and leaving long-lasting puddles. Every single Dip-based weapon that was fired would make the battlefield a more dangerous place for both sides. Fortunately, no one else in the Antiresistance was enthusiastic about them either, and after a long shouting match they’d gotten the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the National Guard side of the operation to agree that none of the weaponry was to be used if any of the Antiresistance was in front of the perimeter except for extreme cases of self-defense. Peter had also pointed out that the soldiers operating the weapons could be hypnotized ore replaced with disguised toons, and said that if a soldier or weapon was compromised he would be forced to incapacitate them by whatever means necessary. The colonel countered that Resistance toons could just as easily disguise as members of the Antiresistance, so the troops would likewise be under orders to respond to any unprovoked attack.

“...In short, one itchy trigger finger and everyone’s going to be shooting at everyone,” Dot remarked shortly afterward. “This is gonna be a disaster.” She was fidgeting nervously with a length of twine.

“It’s only gonna be a problem if we’re all out in the open,” Yakko said. “Look, we gotta get inside that place eventually, why not do it sooner rather than later? We don’t even have to go in the front door. Hey, Bugs, what’s stopping you from digging a tunnel in?”

Bugs folded one ear, something Yakko noticed he generally did when someone said something very stupid. “Foist of all, doc, there’s a good chance they got their own ears to the ground. We could come up right in the sights of a firin’ squad. Heck, you could tunnel straight into a Dip mixing vat. And second, I don’t know what that place is like inside, but just from bein’ so deep underground there’s gotta be some pretty thick reinforced concrete keeping it from collapsing on itself. Breakin’ through that won’t be quick or quiet.”

“Hmm...” Wakko scratched his chin. “Hey, what if we made our own earthquake? The vibrations would… bounce off underground rooms, right?”

Brain looked up from the control console of his ground station. Unlike Wile E, his contribution to the aerial surveillance effort used a small UAV. “Reflection seismology using an underground explosive charge would certainly be possible. However, that doesn’t give you a quiet way in.”

“If we know the basic shape, we can teleport ourselves in,” said Wakko.

“Weren’t you even listenin’ to me earlier?” Bugs jabbed a finger at his chest. “They got some sorta seal, ya can’t teleport in!”

Yakko grinned. “ You can’t teleport in.” He raised his hand and pinched the space in front of him between his thumb and forefinger, then twisted, creating a shimmering spiral pattern in the air. “Whatever seals they put up, they can’t keep us out.”

Bugs looked briefly surprised. “Oh, yeah. The water tower. But it’s still dangerous. We don’t know anything about what that place is like on the inside, or what the Resistance is capable of. All we know is they had at least two really dangerous toons a week ago. We don’t know how many they got now, or how good they are.”

“Well, we’ve gotta go in eventually. We’ll be just as likely to walk into a trap blasting down the front door.”

“Hmm… point taken. But that’s why I wanna avoid makin’ the first move. Let’s see if they’ll try to kick the army off their doorstep foist.”

“I’m gonna second that,” said Peter. “If they go for that, there’s a good chance it’ll be just toons because any human who sticks his head out’s gonna get a hail of bullets. I’d rather risk fighting ‘em out in the open with the trigger-happy chuckleheads on our side then down there. They’d know the turf and they’d have humans and spray guns backin’ ‘em up at a minimum. Plus, somethin’ tells me those humans aren’t gonna mind shootin’ one of their own toons if it takes one of us out too.”

Yakko gulped. He remembered his realization about the likely reason the weasel had been wearing a gas mask. “So… how long do we wait?” He looked at the sun. It was getting close to the mountains in the west.

“I’d say ‘til tomorrow morning,” said Bugs. “If they’re gonna launch a counter attack they probably won’t wait more than a day. They won’t wanna give us time to build up reinforcements either.

One night… Yakko looked at his watch. It was 5:38 now. The sun came up at around seven tomorrow. That gave them just over thirteen hours. In thirteen hours, if not sooner, they’d all be in a fight for their lives.

Peter stretched and yawned. “Welp. I’m gonna go grab a couple bites… maybe a coffee or four since I’m gonna be up all night. Wish there was a friggin’ Dunks around here. Then I’m gettin’ in position.” The members of the Antiresistance had already agreed on the positions they’d wait for an attack. Peter would be to the north, high up on the mountainside, acting as a sniper. Bugs and Slappy would take the eastern and western ends of the FBI and National Guard perimeter. Daffy would be more or less to the Southwest, and the Warners would be in the southeast, about where the dirt road was. They were together, but they were in the spot most likely to be hit if the Resistance tried to break through with brute force.

“That’s the best plan I’ve heard all day,” Yakko said. “See ya around.”

“Yeah.” Peter’s red eyes had a slightly uncomfortable expression. “Look, I know I got off on the wrong foot about with you kids, but-”

“Don’t worry about it,” interrupted Dot. “

“I’m not. It’s just that there’s a good chance not all of us are gonna make it outta this clusterfuck, so while we’re still in the same place, I wanted to let all ya clowns know it’s been a wicked time.” He flashed a toothy grin.

“Yeah...” Yakko said, staring out into space. “It’s been a good time.” He’d been trying to avoid thinking about that. He hadn’t wanted to think about it a week ago, when Dot had been so close… but any of them could die here.

Bugs batted his eyelids. “Fellow thespians… should we be parted by the veil of death upon this cold Autumn’s eve...”

Daffy interrupted. “If the rabbit snuffs it, I’d like it on public record that as promised, I’ll be dancing on his grave.”

“Assumin’ you’ll have the opportunity’s a bit bold, don’tcha think?” Bugs said with a raised eyebrow. “I would dance on yours too, but I hear agitatin’ a landfill too much can cause an avalanche.”

“Touche, touche.” A smile crossed Daffy’s bill. “Well, if given the opportunity I’ll break out my tap shoes. Otherwise… I’ll see you in Hell, pal.”

“Same goes for you, Daff,” Slappy cackled. “But I’m warnin’ ya, if you meet me there I’ll be runnin’ the joint, so show some respect!”

Then everyone was laughing. Yakko found himself chuckling along, as much at the lines themselves as the fact that he should have known they’d be said. Of course a bunch of old cartoon stars like themselves weren’t going to say their final goodbyes without some wisecracks. But as he looked down at his siblings’ silent faces, he found that he had nothing. Dot squeezed his hand.

The Warners were the oldest toons there. In four months Yakko, Wakko, and Dot would be septuagenarians. By that age, most humans had come to terms with their mortality. Drawn toons were immortal… probably. Eventually, Yakko suspected that they would get bored, pick up the harp, and ditch the world of the living for good. That would probably have been their fate at some point if they hadn’t escaped the water tower. Living for thousands of years seemed like a pretty good deal. But millions? Billions? He couldn’t imagine that kind of timescale, seeing mountains rise and fall and continents drift across the face of the globe, until Nantucket was in the same place as Chicago or St. Paul. But there was no way in hell just sixty-nine years was enough.

Maybe it was because the others had all outlived a lot of people, and seen them age and die – their animators, their directors… in Slappy’s case, even her brother. Yakko guessed he’d never really outlived anyone he was close to. There was Lon, but he’d been carted off to the loonie bin pretty quickly after they were drawn, and anyone else he’d actually liked at the studio back then was long-gone when they got out of the water tower. The only people the Warners had ever been close to were each other. And Yakko couldn’t even imagine the possibility of losing either of them. He’d never really asked Wakko or Dot, but he was pretty sure they felt the same. There were only three of them. An odd number. One of them would be alone, either in this world or the next, and they weren’t letting that happen. They went out together or not at all.

“...and any flowers ya throw on my grave better have fuses, or I’ll climb right outta there and smash ya over the head with the tombstone!” Slappy ordered. Then she noticed the Warners. “You kids all right? You’ve been kinda… quiet.”

“Yeah...” said Yakko.

“No...” said Wakko.

“Take a wild guess,” said Dot.

“Look...” Slappy stepped forward and put her hands on Wakko and Dot’s shoulders. “We’re probably not gonna get killed. There’s just… a risk. So ya don’t wanna leave things you’d regret never saying, or doing.”

“Well, it’d take us...” Wakko counted on his fingers. “Sixty years to catch up on all those.”

“Ya know, I never bothered writing my will...” said Yakko.

“What are we gonna do, leave the water tower to Scratchy?” Dot asked. Then her eyes widened. “Scratchy! We never told him goodbye! Properly, I mean...”

Yakko tensed up. He couldn’t do that… he couldn’t just go knock on Dr. Scratchansniff’s door. What was he going to say? ‘Hi again Scratchy, I just wanted to let you know if we all die we’ll really miss you? Bye again!’ Even if he did… after that, how could he say that to the guy’s face and then leave again?

“Wait a second? Will?” Slappy looked like she’d swallowed a tablespoon of Dip. “God, I’m a yutz.” She pulled a long scroll out of Hammerspace and stared at it.

“That’s your will?” asked Bugs. “Rather long, isn’t it? Did you leave every one of your old props to someone different?”

“It ain’t mine, it’s my brother’s. Mostly it’s silly requests. I’ve only filled about a quarter of ‘em out. I was gonna give it to Skippy when he turns eighteen.” She pulled out an old leather photo album. “Hold the phone. I gotta change and drop a couple things off at home, just in case. So they don’t get lost. See ya in a few.” She returned both items, and vanished into her own war helmet. It clattered to the ground.

It was now or never, Yakko thought. Scratchy deserved a note, at the very least. “Come on Sibs, we got a letter to send.” He hoped they got his meaning. They did.

A few minutes later, they were back in the valley in the desert. They’d taped the note securely to the water tower door in an envelope with instructions to deliver it to Doctor Scratchansniff. Nobody would look there tonight or tomorrow unless there was bad news. They could dispose of it if… no, when they got home.

Slappy was already back. But Yakko did a double take when he saw her. She looked… different.

“Hel-loooooooo, Slappy!” he shouted. He couldn’t resist the opportunity.

“Ah, put a sock in it!” Slappy said in a higher, more youthful voice than the one Yakko was familiar with. She was taller, thinner – no, she was just standing up straighter, and the weight had moved upward a bit. Her fur was a tiny bit darker gray, and her face was a little narrower. But what was most shocking was her impression. Yakko had thought that despite seemingly old and bitter Slappy had lost none of her youth and energy. But he’d only known her younger self from old Looney Tunes shorts. The toon standing in front of him right now was almost frightening. Her face had none of the anger he knew. Instead there was something he only saw flashes of normally: a sadistic grin and a wild gleam in her eyes. His fur tingled like her body was electrically charged. That chaotic energy… he’d never realized how much like them Slappy really was. No… really, she wasn’t.

“So, what’s the occasion?” he asked.

“Hey, if I’m gonna go out fighting, I might as well give my best performance before the curtain!” Slappy cackled. “And even if I don’t… no worries about morality, no namby-pampy director whinin’ at me to let the other schmuck make the first move… not much potential for collateral damage.” She scowled, looking at the assembled FBI agents and National Guard troops, then the grin returned. “I haven’t had this much fun in years!”

What was it he’d said in ‘Sound of Warners’ again? ‘We know somebody who’s raised pointless violence to a fine art?’ Really, Slappy usually waited for provocation, just like they did. The difference was that they had a moral code, where she was happy to beat the stuffing out of someone just for getting on her nerves. But now it seemed like she was itching for the chance to shove a stick of dynamite down someone’s pants just for the fun of it.

Soon, though, they were all in their places. The sun sank below the mountains and the sky darkened. The Warners were alone. Just like always. Even in a crowd.

Twelve hours now. Just one night more, and they’d be victorious or dead. Maybe both. One night more…

Yakko smirked as he remembered a song from Les Miserables. It seemed like he’d run out of jokes, but he still had songs. “One night more...” he started to sing. “Another night, another destiny… maybe next week we’ll visit Calgary...”

And then, when it was time, Wakko came in. “We did not live ‘til ninety-three… how can we live if we are parted?”

And then Dot. “And even if you’re worlds away… our lives together’ve barely started!”

Yakko wrapped his arms around his brother and sister. They were perfect, just like they always were. It was instinct for them. They couldn’t always finish each other’s sentences, but if one of them started a song, finishing it together was as natural as breathing. They were triplets, in perfect synchrony.

He felt better know. His hands weren’t shaking with nervous anticipation anymore, but there were tears in his eyes. They had to all get out of this together. They had to. If nothing else, because if they did, he was performing this on the show. He didn’t care if parodying sappy songs from musicals was Rita’s thing.

Then, just before the last line, Yakko was torn from his siblings’ arms by an explosion.

Chapter Text

Calamity awoke with a start to the sound of an alarm blaring. He looked rapidly around, expecting an intrusion from a furious guard or a violent weasel.

“What’s going on? What happened?” Furrball whispered.

“I don’t know!” Calamity ran to the barred wall and looked out. The hallway was empty.

“Wait a second… the sprinklers! Get up the wall, quick!” Furrball danced from foot to foot, his fur standing on end. They both scrambled up to their spots near the ceiling, ready for a deluge of Dip to come at any second. But nothing happened. The alarm continued to sound for several minutes, then stopped.

“Was it something else?” Calamity yawned. His brain was still fuzzy from being woken up. He tentatively climbed back down.

“Must’ve been.” Furrball hopped down halfway, landing lightly on all four paws. “At least we know we can hang on, right?”

“Yeah...” Calamity put his hand over his chest. His heart had to be going as fast as an engine, at least at idle. “Maybe a fire or something?”

“I don’t smell any smoke.”

“If it’s on another level, the ventilation wouldn’t let it down here. But the alarms might still go off on every level.”

The source of the alarm remained a mystery for a long time. Calamity guessed it had to be an hour or more. There was no chance of getting back to sleep now. Then Kenny stumbled down the hallway. He fumbled with the key, and finally got into the cell. His hair was messed up and his face had a thin layer of stubble.

“What happened? What was that alarm?” asked Calamity.

“Did we get caught?” Furrball raced to the bars again and stared into the hall.

“No...” Kenny panted. “It’s… hang on a sec. Gotta catch my breath...”

This was strange, Calamity thought. It couldn’t have been the Fifteenth yet, they hadn’t been fed. Why was Kenny in here? Was it even his shift?

Kenny finally managed to speak. “There’s an army of feds outside the base,” he said. “And the goddamn National Guard. They know we’re here!”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” asked Calamity. But he felt a tinge of fear. There was something wrong.

“Sorta,” said Kenny. “Everyone’s freakin’ out up there. The animators’ve got everybody whipped up into a frenzy, sayin’ it’s all a trap, there’s toons controlling the government, they won’t let us surrender, they’ll kill us all!”

“So he’s lying?” Furrball asked with a tone that indicated it wasn’t really a question.

“Huh? Yeah… yeah, yeah I guess so… yeah, it’s probably total BS.”

Calamity had already heard about the FBI helicopter that had been brought down. The Resistance had apparently been on edge for at least a day, and any planned attacks were canceled.

“They tried to negotiate and get them to let you go,” said Kenny. “But Lowell, well… he told ‘em there weren’t gonna be any negotiations. Then he had his new monster blow up the guys trying to negotiate. He’s saying we’re gonna fight to the last man. They’re going to attack in less than half an hour.”

“They’ll lose,” Calamity said confidently. “If the army’s here, Bugs and Daffy and Slappy and everyone else probably are too. Unless they’re gonna… try to use us as hostages-”

“Or kill us out of spite,” added Furrball.

“-we’re fine. Someone will rescue us eventually.” Calamity felt like he was floating. He could barely even feel the pressure of the cuffs around his wrists. They were saved! If the escape plan worked, if he was able to get to a phone, he was going to tell the authorities where the Resistance’s compound was. But now it had already been found!

“Well...” Kenny scratched his head nervously.

“Oh.” Calamity’s heart sank again. Right. He hadn’t been thinking about Kenny. “The others won’t let you surrender, will they?” he asked. “And if you’re with them, someone’ll probably kill you when the fighting breaks out?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the problem. Right now everyone’s on the upper levels. Nobody’s gonna worry about where I am. I think we should go now.”

“What? Escape? But-”

“Look, we’re not home free! I don’t even know who’s gonna win. Herschel and Lowell have twenty-one toons now, and four of them are the really scary ones. And you’re right, if they get desperate enough they might use you two as hostages. Or this place could collapse, and the pipes could break and flood everything with Dip. This place is gonna get torn apart soon!” he glanced at his watch. “It’s almost sunset. If you guys are ready, I say we go now.”

“Everyone’s upstairs?” Furrball repeated. “Even the toons?”

“Yeah.”

“How are we gonna get past them?”

“Can you guys get through five or six feet of reinforced concrete?”

“If we get the cuffs off, probably,” said Calamity. “I don’t think I can do it quickly, though. And it’d take hours to tunnel through hundreds of feet of solid rock! Even if we get past the seals physically, I don’t trust trying to teleport past that, either… solid barriers make it a lot harder, and I haven’t tried it in a month.”

Kenny whistled. “ Hours? ”

Then an idea came to Calamity. “The vents! If we can get the cuffs off, I bet we can get past all the filters and fans to where they join the main shaft. We could climb out!”

“You, maybe. That’ll be hundreds of feet of shaft full of carbon monoxide and Dip fumes and stuff like that.”

“Don’t you guys have gas masks?” asked Furrball.

“Yeah.”

“The filters probably don’t work on something like carbon monoxide,” said Calamity. “Look, I might be able to put something together with an oxygen tank or something! If not, we’ll go up on our own and tell someone you’re down here and you wanna surrender! I promise!”

“Okay...” Kenny took a deep breath. “Just… do what you gotta do.” He swiped his card in the door again and held it open. “Get the tools out. You got five minutes.”

Calamity and Furrball both ran to the drain grating. It lifted free easily, just like they’d planned, the screwdriver and file dangling on the fishing line. Furrball cut the fishing line on one tool, then the other, and they returned to the door. Kenny slowly let it close. “Remember to hold it open,” he said.

That was when Calamity noticed the first flaw in the escape plan. “Err… holding it open while we’re clinging to the wall’s gonna be hard...”

Furrball grinned, and held up the file. “Wedge this in it!”

“Ohh… Furrball, that’s brilliant!”

“That means a lot, coming from you.” Furrball grabbed the door and jammed the file in between it and the frame, stopping it from closing. Kenny let go.

“Well… guess I’ll see you around, huh?” There was a genuine smile on the man’s face. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to prison, but it’ll be nice to get out of this damn place.”

“At least prison cells have windows,” said Calamity. He watched his former kidnapper, his former captor, and now his co-conspirator disappear down the hall. He gripped the screwdriver firmly in his jaws. “Let’s get up there.” He clambered up the barred wall. Furrball joined him on the other end of the cell, by the door.

For what seemed like an eternity, they waited, staring at the green sprinkler on the ceiling. Calamity’s heart slammed against his chest like it was trying to break his ribcage down and make its own bid for freedom. His mouth felt dry, but he was also pretty sure he could feel saliva dripping past the screwdriver. He wanted to take it out of his mouth and just hold it, but he was terrified he would lose his grip. Any second now… he begged the sprinkler to act the way he thought it would. If he’d miscalculated, if it shot Dip out at a higher angle than he thought… no, he couldn’t think like that, not right now. It was too late to change anything. They were committed.

Then an alarm like a siren blared. There was a click, a noise like glass breaking, and the sprinkler roared to life. A cone of acid-green liquid burst out, showering the walls. The smell hit his nose like a freight train. With a terrified whine he clung to the wall even tighter, pulling himself as high as he could, and tucked his tail between his legs. Furrball didn’t recognize the danger as quickly, and a little drop splashed him. With a hiss and a cry of pain he pulled it up against his body. The smell was overpowering now. The other sprinklers were on in the hall. A complete curtain of green death separated them from the floor. For another eternity they waited. Calamity’s fingers were burning from the effort of holding on. Come on… when would they run out?

Finally, the flow ebbed, then slowed to a trickle, then drips. The water sprinklers came on. The one in the cell was actually closer to the wall than the Dip one, ironically enough. Calamity was drenched in brown-tinted liquid that smelled like rust and mold. He gagged, glad his mouth was still high enough to be out of the way. But it was soon replaced by a cold, clear shower. The smell of Dip began to dissipate. Then the water was shut off. The floor was clean, water an inch deep spiraling down the now-uncovered drain.

Calamity clambered down with shaking hands. His legs could barely support his weight. He took the screwdriver out of his mouth. Furrball jumped down beside him with a splash. They looked at each other and couldn’t help laughing. It had actually worked.

“Well… we’re alive, at least!” Calamity said.

“Really? You look like you drowned!” Furrball laboriously pulled the heavy door open. “Should we keep the file? Do we need it anymore?”

“Uhh...” Calamity headed for the door. “Yeah, take it. Who knows, it might still help.”

They left the cell. The door banged shut behind them. It felt weird being out in the hall, alone. Calamity cringed, half-expecting an alarm to go off, but none did. He’d never be locked in there again. He’d never sleep on that horrible hard concrete bed. Good riddance.

The nearest vent was only about ten yards down the hall. It was only about a foot off the ground, but for them that meant they could work on it even standing up. Calamity loosened the screws, then left the first one for Furrball to finish off by hand. The vent came away from the wall easily. They set it down gently, just in case someone was down there now.

“After you.” Furrball waved Calamity forward.

It was a tight fit. The duct was less than a foot wide and tall. Even they were on their hands and knees, their ears pressed against the top. Then it dropped down and they landed in a heap.

Furrball scratched the metal walls with his claws, marking where they’d been. It would be easy to get lost. In fact, it still was. After the first turn or so, the darkness was almost complete. Even with Calamity’s amazing night vision, he couldn’t see a thing. He wished he’d thought of asking Kenny to bring them a flashlight. They groped blindly through the darkness. The only way to tell where they were going was by holding totally still, not even breathing, and feeling the incredibly faint tug of the wind at Furrball’s whiskers. The ducts took them down, with several long and painful falls.

Then Calamity’s nose hit something soft but firm. He felt the slots in it. “It’s a filter,” he whispered. It smelled strongly of Dip.

“Great. Now how do we get out?”

“Uhh...”

Then, without warning, the duct rattled and swayed from side to side like an earthquake had hit the complex. The sound of creaking metal echoed, painfully, earshatteringly loudly. There were more distant rumbles and bangs, and the duct seemed to drop abruptly. The breeze disappeared, as did the faint hum of a fan somewhere up ahead.

“What happened?” asked Calamity. It was California, earthquakes weren’t unusual, but something this big and relatively short seemed unlikely.

“The fighting must’ve started. We gotta got outta here.”

“I know...” Calamity tried to think. He hadn’t really considered this step. “I know! They gotta have a way to change this filter, right? So the duct’s probably open to something here! Do you think you can get through it?”

Furrball banged on the sheet metal with something hard. Calamity felt it ripple under him. “I think so,” Furrball whispered. There was the grating sound of a claw scraping against metal. “Maybe not… wait! Gimme that screwdriver!”

The Phillip’s Head tore through the sheet metal. A faint light entered the duct. Calamity pressed his eye to the hole. There was a diamond plate floor below.

“Move over!” Furrball jammed his claw into the hole. There was that earsplitting noise again… but he was slowly dragging his claw through, cutting the duct open. Calamity made more holes with the screwdriver, then went to work with the edge of the file. It took seemingly forever, he was pretty sure his paws were getting blisters, and it made so much noise he was sure anyone who was down there would be alerted, but eventually they bent a flap of metal down that was wide enough to fit through. But only just.

“Careful,” whispered Calamity. “It’s sharp.”

“We got a file. Here, let me.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

A few seconds of filing got rid of the worst burrs. Calamity jumped down first, landing roughly on the metal floor. Again, the noise echoed all around him, but otherwise it was eerily quiet. The place was lit only by the dim glow of emergency backup lights, and even those were flickering a bit. Then the main lights came back on, dazzlingly bright after spending so long in the pitch-black air ducts. After a couple of seconds, they too flickered and went out again. A loud mechanical whir started up, coming from several directions at once.

They were on Level Six!

“You stupid!” CLANG “Incompetent!” CLANG “Miserable waste of ink!” CLANG “I ordered you to clean up the crash site!” CLANG.

“I did clean up the crash site!” Wendy protested. “Ow!” The heavy steel chain caught her in the face, sending her sprawling across the cell. She jumped back to her feet, glaring daggers at Crazy Ivan. “I moved all the bits, I buried all the burnt soil and plants, and I planted new bushes!” She got hit again. This time she braced herself and stayed on her feet.

It didn’t hurt, not that much. Not compared to the Passivation Solution incident. She would have welcomed this pain if it were a fair fight. She would have welcomed a fair fight with Ivan. What hurt, so badly she wanted to cry, was the humiliation of Herschel having Ivan beat her with the chain while she was under strict orders to not fight back or run, while the tiger had that cruel smug grin on his fat face. What hurt was Herschel screaming at her, getting as worked up as if he was hitting her himself, when she’d done everything right.

“You probably lead the goddamn feds right to us because you wanted a good fight!”

“I didn’t! I buried -” the chain hit her in the lower jaw, sending her pirouetting around. “I buried everything! I took out their radio and transmitter! I don’t know how they found us, but it wasn’t me!” Another hit.

“Back in Motherland, we would destroy puny heelicopter KGB way. Make disappear completely. Kaputski. No crash.”

“They’d still’ve noticed that!” Wendy snarled. Ivan swung the chain again. That was it! She lashed out, grabbing it from the air. There was a loud bang, a burst of sparks, and the chain shattered. Wendy opened her hand and let molten metal drip from her glove. Herschel recoiled and stumbled back. “And you’re not really Russian!” she shouted. “You’ve never been to Russia! I bet Herschel’s never been to Russia! At least Riley doesn’t actually say he’s British!”

“That’s enough out of you!” Herschel growled. His eyebrows twisted, and his mouth pulled to one side in a spasm. “If you don’t hold still-”

Fortunately, Lowell choose that moment to barge in. “What the hell are you doing?”

“This… thing got us found!”

“Do you really think that matters right now, Herschel? The FBI is knocking on the door. We could be under attack any minute! We need every tool at our disposal, even – no, especially that one! Now come upstairs with me. The troops are panicking. They need guidance.”

Herschel grudgingly complied. Ivan threw away the chain and followed him, picking Wendy up by the scruff of her neck.

“Hey! I’ve got legs!” she twisted out of his grip.

The mood was tense on Level 2. Nearly the entire Human Resistance, almost two hundred people and about twenty toons in all, was clustered in the mess hall. The weaker ones stood obediently against the wall.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Lowell climbed onto a table. He helped Herschel up with some difficulty. The older animator cursed his prosthetic. “I am afraid our darkest hour is upon us. We are on the cusp of victory, on the verge of success. Toontown is ablaze! The tide is finally turning in our favor...” he paused, with a pained grimace, and adjusted his glasses. “But this wave may sink us yet.” His words hit the room like a closing coffin lid. In the brief silence, Wendy could hear someone crying.

“As you are all aware, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Guard have surrounded us.”

Herschel took over. “They want to stamp us out!” One of his eyes moved slightly in the wrong direction. “They want to stamp us out, because they know we are revealing the truth! Toons are rioting! It’s an uprising, the moment we all feared – we all knew would come!” He paused for breath, raising his fist, then smashing it down on thin air like a hammer. “The government… it’s under toon control! Those soldiers are nothing more than pawns… puppets, dancing on strings!”

“They have found us,” said Lowell. “But they have not beaten us yet. For the sake of all humanity, we cannot fall here!”

A few people applauded, but most still looked terrified.

“I am certain they have sent the strongest among them to try to crush us,” Lowell continued. “They will be among the misguided humans, directing them. But they are all our enemies, and we will fight them with everything we have.” He gestured to the toons. First his own stony-faced ones, then the blank-looking Ivan and Twenty-Four, and then Wendy and Riley. Riley fidgeted nervously, curling and uncurling his tail around his body. “I can only hope that they will be enough. If we can win, or at least drive them back, that will buy us time – enough time to retreat, and rebuild. As long as the Machine, and enough skilled personnel, can escape, Herschel and I can draw enough soldiers to win.”

“Retreat?” Herschel looked surprised the idea was being suggested. “No, you said it, my friend. We have to fight them with everything! They’ve followed us… they’ve tracked us… somehow they’ve found us. We won’t be able to escape for long. That’s why we must hold our ground here!” He wobbled dangerously. Lowell put out a hand to steady him. “Sorry… damn this prosthetic. What was I saying? Oh, yes. There is no retreat! No surrender! The corrupted, controlled soldiers will never accept it! If you try to lay down your arms, they’ll slaughter you like the coward you are! But if you fight!” he roared, spittle flying from his mouth. A crazed grin spread across his face. “Then we have already won. Toontown is burning. Los Angeles will soon follow. And Hollywood… those corrupt, decadent, toon-loving scum!” He ground his hands together. “They’ll all burn, and the whole world will see the truth. Even if we die… even if we all die here, we will be martyrs! Martyrs in the name of freedom! Others around the world will follow in our footsteps! Even if we lose this battle, humanity will win this war! This may be our darkest hour… but we will light it up! We will not go quietly! We will see the fear in the whites of their eyes, and even with our dying breath we will show them what real human beings are made of!”

Riley tapped Wendy on the shoulder. “Hypnosis!” he scrambled in her ear. “Now!”

Wendy didn’t have time to think about it. She obeyed, reaching out with her mind as Herschel’s speech reached its conclusion and giving them a little, gentle push. Be inspired, don’t be afraid. That was what she made them think. A cheer erupted from the crowd. Wendy wasn’t sure she felt the same way herself. “What, we’re all gonna die here?” she whispered. “We’re not even gonna try to get away?”

“Who are you and what did you do with Wendy Weasel? I thought you wanted a good fight...”

Wendy didn’t know. It was true. She was dying to finally get to tear into something that could fight back. Not just for fun, but to make up for all the times she hadn’t been able to lately, to take out all the pent up anger and hatred and other strange feelings that were eating her alive. But… “I do. But I wanna win a good fight,” she whispered.

She didn’t want to die. Mentally admitting that all the way hurt her. It was proof that she was defective. She was supposed to be a weapon, expendable. Sure, she had the instinct to avoid getting killed pointlessly, but this was the perfect chance to do what she was drawn for. What good was a missile that was afraid of hitting its target and exploding? It was about as much use as a crank-down window on the Space Shuttle. But her heart was up in her throat, banging frantically on her shoulder blades. Come on… twenty-five days? Even mayflies lived longer than that, if you counted the time they spent as larvae. She knew her life would be short, but this wasn’t even a day for every letter of the alphabet. It wasn’t even a day for every year most of the people in the Resistance had lived. It wasn’t enough.

“So win one. I’ll probably get melted right quick, but you’re a lot stronger than I am! I don’t think even Herschel knows it! You’ve got a chance. You heard Lowell, if we can push ‘em back for long enough -”

“Yeah. If we can push ‘em back and buy time for the others before we get Dipped. Herschel wants to get rid of us anyway, if anyone’s takin’ a Dip shower it’ll be you and me!”

Riley didn’t respond. He just sighed and slouched away with a sad look in his eyes.

As soon as Lowell gave the order to assume battle stations, chaos ensued. Humans and toons alike scurried around, securing and loading weapons, checking that backup generators, fire extinguishers, and personal ventilation systems were working, and carrying anything that could be used to create a barricade to the upper levels. The tension in the air was thick enough to swim through. Wendy waited up on the first level, on the roof of one of the vans, fiddling with a gas mask, but didn’t put it on. There wasn’t much of a point when there would be Dip flying in all directions, half of it probably aimed at her.

Then came the fateful announcement over the intercom. A small detachment of FBI agents had approached the entrance to the complex. Wendy, Riley, Ivan, and Twenty-Four waited by the inner set of garage doors with bated breath. Any second now… but the humans didn’t attack. Their only weapons were megaphones. She heard them over the microphone speakers in the control room, trying to start a negotiation. Yeah, right. She knew it was some kind of trick, some kind of trap. They wouldn’t accept surrender, not really.

But the enemy never asked for surrender. At least, not directly. They asked for just one thing: the safe release of two prisoners. Calamity Coyote and Furrball Cat. The two toons whose ink had been used to animate the Resistance’s strongest creations, including Wendy.

“It’s a trick, and an obvious one at that,” said Lowell. “They’re trying to convince us that this is a hostage situation, that their priority is the survival of the ink donors. But that’s not true: their real goal is to deny our access to them, to try to cripple our ability to replace our losses. Their hope is that either we will comply and release them, or realize that they have nothing to offer in return and destroy them. They would win either way.”

Wendy kept her face as neutral as possible, remembering that she’d almost tried something similar, although for a very different reason.

“Give them our ultimatum,” Lowell continued. “There will be no negotiation. There will be no surrender, and no quarter. We are facing a battle for our very existence.”

Gene saluted, and relayed the message. The small group of federal agents slowly advanced up the dirt road, closer to the entrance. Lowell scowled. “Kill them,” Lowell ordered.

So it was starting. Wendy darted to the closed blast door, clasping her hands tightly together. As soon as she was past the doors she’d be able to teleport: going straight out would be suicide. As long as she stayed out of the line of fire killing them would be easy. The part after, though… Wendy was afraid the feeling she’d gotten seeing the wreckage of the helicopter and the remains of the pilots, and on the mission a few nights ago, would return. But maybe there wouldn’t be time. She’d have to move on to the next target immediately.

“Not you,” Lowell said harshly. “You’ve screwed up enough already. And my most recent creation is untested. Number Twenty-Four?”

The black wolverine saluted. “Yes sir! I will kill them for you sir!”

Wendy reluctantly stepped back and watched him sprint out the opening door. She returned to the booth with the external cameras, peering over the guard’s shoulder as usual. A hundred yards from the entrance, the party of agents were blown to bits from underground. A few seconds later, Number Twenty-Four was back inside and the door was sliding shut again. It closed with an ominous finality.

Lowell picked up the intercom button, broadcasting to the rest of the upper levels. “We have fired our warning shot,” he announced. “Be ready for them to storm the complex at any time. If they attack, we will hold the tunnel, and then the first level, as long as we can, collapsing them if necessary. If they sit back and wait for reinforcements… then after nightfall, we will launch our counterattack.”

Nightfall. That was only a few hours. Until then, all she could do was wait. She returned to her place on top of the van and conjured a ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign. Probably no one would pay attention to it anyway, but it was worth a shot. Just a few hours… Wendy conjured a cuckoo clock and set it next to her. No, that didn’t work… an alarm clock? When was nightfall, around 1830? No… she smashed both clocks to pieces with a hammer, and finally created a large timer. It was about 1515 now. She set it for three hours, then extended it to three hours and thirty minutes. They probably wouldn’t strike until a while after sunset, once it had truly gotten dark.

It occurred to her that killing the negotiators might have been her one chance to ever see daylight with her own eyes. She’d missed it. Her tail started to twitch with the timer’s loud, metronomic ticking.

“Psst. Wendy!” Riley’s voice whispered from beside her.

“Can’t you read?” she responded without looking at him.

“This is important!”

“I doubt it.”

“Wendy, I… I’m not sure if Lowell and Herschel are right about what’s going on.”

That got her attention. “What do you mean?”

“Well… the bobbies. I don’t think they’re really tryin’ to keep the animators from drawing more toons. Even if they figured out that’s why we have ‘em, how’d they know they was the only ones what got snatched? And wouldn’t they realize that if any of us – you, me, Ivan, twenty-four – gets out of here alive we could just snatch someone else? The machine’s a lot harder to replace!”

“I guess so,” said Wendy. So far that made sense. “But they couldn’t trick anyone into handing the machine over or destroying it.”

“No, but still. I think it’s something different. Maybe they’re trying to distract us, make us think they’ll try some sort of rescue so we split ourselves up trying to cover the lower levels… but I dunno. I think it might not’ve been a trap at all. I think they really are worried about those two.”

“So? It’s still anthro… anthro-whatsit, right?”

“Anthropomorphization. Yeah, from the humans, probably. But they’re not the ones really in control, remember?”

“So? You told me toons can do it, too.”

“Well, yeah, but… I was just guessing. Neither of the animators actually told me that. But I was just thinking on it. Herschel said toons aren’t capable of caring about other creatures, didn’t he? But if that’s true, then a toon anthropomorphizin’ other toons shouldn’t change anything, right? The reason it’s a problem’s because humans care about other humans, so if they see toons as being human they’ll… try to treat ‘em like other humans. So… why does it matter if we do it? We’re not supposed to feel anything when we kill toons or humans! We’re just supposed to obey!”

Wendy was silent. She had no answer to his question.

“And what about Herschel?” asked Riley. “You… you care about him too, right?”

Wendy narrowed her eyes. “What do ya mean?”

“Like, not wanting to disappoint him. And… I’m scared right now, but not as much about me dying, or the Resistance failing. I’m mostly afraid Herschel, and…” his eyes met Wendy’s for a second, but then he winced and turned away, folding his ears. “...Herschel’s gonna die.”

“Wait, there’s two of him? Come on, what were you gonna say?”

“Never mind. My point is, that’s not supposed to be possible. And there’s been… other things.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“When I fought the Warner girl a while back, she almost had me. She was this close to shoving me face in a pool of Dip. But she didn’t. She let me go, and… at first I thought it was just so they could try to track me, which is what ended up happening, but now, I’m not sure if it was that or she just didn’t want to kill me.”

Wendy shrugged. “Kay… but why are you telling me this now? ” They were going to end up fighting now whether they wanted to or not. Wendy wanted to, or at least part of her did, but part of her was afraid. Riley was right, she realized. It wasn’t just for herself, and at this point she didn’t care much about the Resistance. The thought of her creator being killed made her feel a sort of cold, dull pain in the pit of her stomach. And things would be a lot less fun without Riley around. But if what he was suggesting was true… she couldn’t think about it. She couldn’t think about the possibility of the animators being wrong, because it was going to be kill or be killed. She couldn’t let those feelings distract her.

“Cuz I think it might make them hesitate, at least some of them. If they don’t really want to kill, and that distracts them, or slows them down, even for half a second, that could be your chance, or mine. Even if they outnumber us, we might still be able to win!”

“Do you wanna try to… use it to throw ‘em off? Puppy dog eyes or somethin’?”

Riley shook his head. “I mean more, if it’s an emergency and it gives you a little time to get away, be ready. I don’t think messin’ with hypnosis is a good idea or nuthin’. Don’t wanna stand still an’ be a target to anyone you haven’t got suckered, right?”

“Right.” Wendy looked at the timer. Still three hours and ten minutes left. “Hey, Riley. How mad do you think Herschel’d be if I used Ivan as a shield?”

“Don’t. Just… don’t.”

Three hours became two, then one. As the timer neared its end Wendy shut it off and stuffed it back into Hammerspace. It had to be close now… then the order came over the intercom. “The counterattack will begin in half an hour. All combat personnel, assemble in the motor pool for instruction.”

Wendy hopped down from the van, leaving the ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign behind. Her heart was hammering. But now that she knew exactly when Resistance’s last stand was happening, in a way it was easier. She was shaking not just with fear, but anticipation. This wouldn’t be like the apartment block, or even the helicopter. It would be a real fight, maybe even better than the one against the rabbits. Yes… she just had to push those thoughts, those feelings, to the front of her mind. She conjured a bomb and spun it on her finger like a basketball, but didn’t light the fuse. Not yet… soon… she still didn’t feel ready to die, but maybe it was only half an hour too early, or that plus however long the battle lasted. This was the moment the flames inside her had been driving her towards ever since she was drawn. If she died, it would be after the ultimate contest of wits, skill, creativity, and willpower. She would go out in a blaze of glory, surrounded by the bodies of her enemies.

Thirty minutes became twenty. Then ten, five, and one. Wendy set her timer again for the final sixty seconds, watching the needle as they ticked away one by one. With thirty seconds left, an idea occurred to her and she spin-changed into a black trenchcoat and sunglasses, then a plaid kilt with a comically oversized sword hanging at her waist, and then finally back to normal again, just two white gloves. A spark danced across her fingertips.

They weren’t gonna know what hit ‘em.

Chapter Text

The force of the explosion flung Dot through the air. She slammed into something hard with a metallic clang and tumbled to the ground. The heat against her skin was like standing in front of an oven with the door open, and her ears were ringing from the noise of the blast. But she wasn’t out or even down yet, not by a long shot. She jumped to her feet, opening her eyes and shaking her head, willing the ringing to go away.

That was when she realized she could barely see. The air was thick with beige dust, lit up in orange by the glow of a fire. Something small hit her in the shoulder, not hard enough to even sting. Something else bounced off her head. She raised an umbrella overhead as gravel and a few larger chunks of rock to rained down like hailstones, bouncing on the dirt and clanging off the thing behind her. She turned, and realized she’d hit the side of an armored truck – the FBI’s judging by the black coloring. She could hear screams and curses through the dust cloud, but none of the voices belonged to her brothers.

“Yakko! Dot! Where are you!” Wakko’s voice called.

That was all Dot needed. In the dust there was no one who could block her from teleporting. She vanished and reappeared, jumping out from under his hat. “Right here!”

“Marco!” Yakko shouted over the din.

“Polo!” Dot replied. A moment later he was by their side.

More explosions rang out, and gunshots, machine gun fire, crashes and the sound of metal tearing. Dot jumped, staring into the dust for any shadow that could be an enemy. Instead, much worse shapes resolved themselves. A vehicle she had recently been informed was in fact not a tank but an armored personnel carrier lay on its back like an upturned turtle, with one track missing. There were smaller objects strewn around as well. Tires, chunks of twisted metal, sand bags, pieces of burning vegetation, and shapes that looked like they might be people, or parts of people, but she didn’t want to look too closely. The unmistakable smell of Dip hit Dot’s nose.

“Let’s get a better view,” Yakko suggested. Dot didn’t need to be told twice. She whisked them through space to the only place she had any confidence would be safe: high on the hillside, about halfway between Peter and Bugs’s positions. They looked down on the scene with horror. A gaping hole had been blown in the southeastern part of the perimeter, right where they’d been waiting. The slight breeze had blown the dust away enough that the crater, large enough to fit a house into, was visible. At least a dozen creatures had already taken cover well clear of the abandoned mineshaft, and more were appearing from behind rocks and bushes. Numerous smaller clouds of dust filled the air.

“We gotta get back in there!” Wakko pulled them through space again, and into hell.

They appeared slightly in front of the line. There was a frightened yelp from behind them, and Yakko pulled them both out of a spray of Dip from a backpack-wearing soldier hiding behind a wall of sandbags just in time. Dot already had a tomahawk out of Hammerspace before she stopped herself.

“We’re on your side, you idiot!” she hissed, paralyzing him with a glare.

Then something moved behind her. She whirled around, flinging the tomahawk blindly. It buried itself in the snout of a bear toon wearing a faded tank-top. He let out a howl of pain and brought a club down almost on top of her head, but the attack was painfully slow. She pirouetted out of his path. No need to respond, Yakko was already sliding exactly the trap anyone would expect into his path. He stepped on it, just as predicted. With a furious roar he started to hop on one foot, jumped on a cactus, and shot several feet in the air… then landed straight on the slick of Dip the soldier had just fired.

The bear screamed, a high-pitched, piercing noise Dot would never have expected of him. He struggled to his feet, smoke rising from his back and his tanktop falling off his body as its straps disintegrated.

Now Dot was the one who was paralyzed. Another toon was burning, melting, dying right in front of her. She stepped back as he stumbled towards her.

“Water! I need water! You-” The bear wailed. Then he was cut off as Dot’s paralysis wore off and the soldier sprang to life again. A stream of Dip caught him in the side. Dot jumped clear of the spatter with almost no time to spare. The bear fell, his right leg collapsing into a puddle. She knew he was done for. She turned away, bile rising in her throat.

The soldier blinked in disbelief. It didn’t seem like he could believe he’d just killed someone either. He was a skinny kid Dot guessed was barely eighteen. He wasn’t unattractive either, but that wasn’t important right -

Dot saw something move in her peripheral vision. She ducked just in time, and felt a projectile brush against her ears. There was a clang like a trash can lid being hit with a sledgehammer. She jumped. A cannonball bounced towards her, covered in something red and sticky-looking that glistened in the numerous lights. The soldier who’d killed the bear lay on the ground, blood pouring from where his head should have been. But there was no time for Dot to even think about what she’d just seen. Yakko shouted her name, and she turned on her heel and stepped into thin air again.

It was chaos, and not the kind she liked. The plan had gone completely out the window with the ferocity of the Resistance’s attack. The perimeter was in a shambles. Half the humans were running, and Dot could hear screams – often abruptly cut off – from far behind where the line was supposed to be. The other half were shooting indiscriminately at the dozens of humans and toons that had emerged from the entrance to the Resistance’s compound, and the smoke and dust rapidly filling the air from numerous fires and explosions was making it much harder to see. Dip was everywhere – puddles on the ground, scattered droplets, and the occasional flying stream or explosion. Yakko had already burned his foot from stepping in a small drop, and all three siblings were all wearing thick galoshes. Dot was on her second pair.

Somewhere, the others were fighting. Wile E’s biplane had dropped a large bomb, blowing several Human Resistance fighters to bits and knocking two of their toons senseless, but as he circled away a streak of light had rocketed up and hit his plane, sending it spiraling to earth in a trail of fire and black smoke. Slappy had shot by in a gray blur, in zigzagging pursuit of the short brown-furred toon that had attacked Buster and Babs. Dot couldn’t tell which one of them was laughing maniacally. It might have been both. They hadn’t actually seen Daffy yet, but they’d heard a howl of pain, which was followed after a heart-stopping moment by a string of curses and a wide assortment of the sounds of cartoon violence.

Dot darted behind a human Resistance fighter and laid him out flat with a baseball bat to the head. She’d pulled the blow enough that he’d live, but he wouldn’t be waking up for several hours. Probably. Just in case, she pulled a set of zip ties from behind her her ear.

“Behind you!” Yakko shouted. Dot spun around in an instant and saw a towering, shadowy figure about ten yards away. The stream of Dip had already covered half that distance.

There was no time to dodge. There was no time to conjure an object sturdy enough to survive a direct hit. But the human had been hiding behind a toonmatter table which was already dented from bullets hitting it. Without even thinking about it, Dot grabbed it and swung it in front of her. The Dip burned a gaping hole through it almost instantly – it was much weaker than anything Dot could have made. But it broke her attacker’s line of sight. That was all she needed to teleport. She skidded to a halt next to her brothers, panting.

“You okay?” asked Wakko.

“I’m – what is that thing!” Dot’s voice turned to a startled squeak as she got a clear look at her attacker.

It was a toon. A yeti or abominable snowman of some sort, its white fur stained with dust. A toon using Dip. And it hadn’t just picked up a gun from the humans. It was wearing a backpack, like a much bigger version of the ones the Guardsmen had. That was insane. That was suicidal. One hit with a bomb or stick of dynamite and the abominable snowman would be in the same shape as the regular kind in the middle of July. Dot hadn’t expected the Human Resistance to care about the lives of the toons they’d drawn to life, but this was just sick.

The yeti turned towards them, slowly.

“Hey, ugly!” Yakko called. “You wouldn’t throw a brick at a kid with glasses, would you?” He had already dressed appropriately.

With surprising speed the yeti whipped a brick out of Hammerspace. Yakko ducked easily. That was a close one. But for the moment it wasn’t using its sprayer.

“We gotta take that backpack out without spilling the Dip!” Wakko shouted.

The yeti spoke, in a deep female voice. “A lady can hit anyone she likes!”

Dot had her reply ready in an instant. “Agreed, but I’m the only one here.” She dashed up the monster’s arm – conveniently out of reach of the sprayer – and raked her claws across her face. The blows left angry red streaks, and the shaggy bangs covering her eyes were cut away. They were bloodshot and pupilless, but had an oddly glazed look.

The yeti let out a roar. She shook off Yakko’s hypnosis, swatted Dot away, and raised her sprayer. But before she could fire, there was a gunshot. Something streaked through the night sky, hitting her in in the back, then came out the other side and looped around. A trail of smoke in a shape that resembled a freeway interchange more than any path a bullet should have taken appeared in the air… and the canisters of Dip strapped to the Yeti’s back exploded. Dot stared in horror as her adversary fell flat on her face with a wail of agony, clawing at her back, and vanished in a cloud of smoke. Peter. That had to have been Peter. Dot swore under her breath. They had things under control. He hadn’t had to kill a toon who’d probably had that backpack strapped onto her with no choice in the matter.

Then Yakko screamed. Dot turned and saw her brother fall apart into two halves. Riley Raccoon stood over him, holding a bloody sword. Bloody. Dark red. Not black. But still, he’d hurt her brother. “I should’ve drowned you in that Dip when I had the chance!” she snarled, conjuring a B owie knife. He wanted to play with sharp things, did he? She charged… straight into a snare. She was yanked into the air, the knife clattering harmlessly to the ground. How? There wasn’t even a tree to attach it to! And where was Wakko?

A bullet struck Riley upside the head, knocking him sideways. Dot slashed the snare’s rope with her claws and twisted in the air to land on her feet as she fell. But just for a moment, she looked away. The raccoon had vanished – probably after Peter now, the poor idiot. Yakko was still on the ground, frantically trying to sew himself back together. And a human rose from a hole in the desert on an elevator-like platform, leveling a Dip gun at Yakko.

Something inside Dot Warner snapped. An overwhelming heat and pressure hit her from within like a stick of dynamite had gone off inside her body. That son of a bitch. How dare he… how dare he even think, even dream of hurting him! She reached out with her gloved hand and closed her fist. For a moment, the man had a bewildered look on his face, then shock as he realized what was happening. Then the space he was occupying pinched . His body collapsed in on itself – first the torso, with the limbs and head elongating and thinning as they lagged slightly behind – compressing into a point about the size of a marble. Then it rebounded.

Simply crushing a human into a ball and then letting normal physics take back over would, of course, have been fatal. Every organ, every tissue, perhaps every cell in the man’s body would have been broken open, and he would have exploded in a shower of gore. But first, his gun would have been crushed, sending its contents – unaffected by cartoon physics – out in all directions in a deadly spray. But Dot’s attack was far, far more violent. The Resistance fighter’s body was subjected to conditions normally found inside a white dwarf star. There was an explosion all right, but what came flying out couldn’t be considered gory by any reasonable definition because there were no molecules left, just a shower of individual atoms, atomic nuclei, and electrons. The overwhelming majority of the borrowed energy was reabsorbed as space expanded again, but the cloud of super-dense plasma formerly aiming a Dip gun at Y akko still lit up the desert in a blinding blue-white flash flash, and the shockwave blew Dot off her feet. She got up, blinking and spitting out gravel. Even though she’d closed her eyes, blue spots were still flashing in her vision.

Dot’s limbs definitely felt heavy now. Her whole body was shaking. That had definitely taken a bit out of her. But she didn’t feel nearly as tired as after the vortex she’d used against the raccoon before. She just had to pace herself and be fine. It was mostly mental. She almost couldn’t believe she’d just killed a person. One moment he was there, then one flash of anger and he just didn’t exist anymore. She remembered the young soldier, alive one moment, dead the next, and the half-melted bodies she’d seen on TV after the attack on the Capitol almost a month earlier. She knew the Resistance were evil, cruel, barbaric. She’d certainly trade any of their lives for those of Yakko, or Wakko, or any of her friends in a heartbeat. But the knowledge that with little more than a thought she’d snuffed out a human life was still frightening.

“What just happened?” Wakko walked up beside her. “Somebody got me with a chloroform rag.”

“That raccoon just made the ‘Special Friend’ list.” Yakko appeared from the smoke, wincing and rubbing his side where he’d been cut. “Whew! That was a doozy of an explosion too!” he let out a nervous laugh.

“Doozy of an explosion? Yakko, I just killed a man! This isn’t a cartoon!”

“I know I know I know!” Yakko snapped. He pulled them into the relative safety of a bush, and turned to Dot with his hands pressed to his head. “I’m trying not to think about that right now, okay?” Dot had never seen either of her brothers look this scared. Wakko had tears in his eyes, and Yakko’s were wide, yet sunken into his head. He pulled a remote out of Hammerspace and hit a button. The world around them entered slow motion. A grenade whizzed by overhead, slowly enough that Dot could see it spinning in the air. “Time out, Sibs.”

Technically, the rest of the world hadn’t been slowed down. Slowing even a few people down or stopping them for more than a few seconds was incredibly tiring. What Yakko had done was speed the three of them up, letting them think, and talk, several times faster. It still wouldn’t last very long, though.

Yakko took a deep breath. “Dot, you just made me realize I’ve been thinking about this wrong. I was trying to be careful and not do anything crazy that’d screw up what everyone else is doing. But what everyone else is doing isn’t working. Right now we’re all getting in each other’s way because we’re all bunched up like this.” He conjured an approximate map of the area on a rigid cardboard backing. Monopoly pieces represented everyone’s positions. A semicircle of houses represented the FBI and National Guard forces, while hotels represented the Resistance. The car was on the west end of the semicircle and the cannon up north – Slappy and Peter. Bugs was a thimble – lucky thimble, lucky rabbit’s foot – and the horse hovered a few inches above everything else. Right, it had a rider, symbolizing Wile E’s plane. Back behind the line of houses was the battleship – that would be Brain. Daffy was the boot, and the Warners themselves were the iron, hat, and wheelbarrow. Yakko flicked some of the pieces off the board, and jumbled the rest around. “And now we’ve got this mess. We gotta flip the table.” Yakko attempted to demonstrate, but only got the map caught in a bush and flung the pieces into oblivion. “That worked out better in my head.”

“Flip the table how?”

“We need to spread everything out and break up these lines so no one gets trapped or lost in these dust clouds! We’ll send it all east a few miles, out into the desert!”

Wakko looked confused. “Wait, by all do you mean… their whole complex, too?”

Yakko nodded. “Yeah. And the mountains north of it to keep the freeway blocked off.”

“With all the seals?”

“We don’t have to waste effort breaking the seals if we move everything!”

Dot grabbed the game board and swatted him with it. “Yakko, that’s insane! Even if we work together we’ll be worn out after that!”

“So? Didn’t you notice? They hit us in particular hard right off the bat, but the raccoon’s the only guy with any power who’s messed with us since then. And since Peter was still sniping down here he probably wasn’t having much trouble either. But we’re supposed to be their priority targets!”

Dot nodded. That was the plan. If the Resistance intended to hold the underground compound, then a preemptive attack would have targeted the creatures who had the ability to weave through any barricades they set up, sabotage security systems, impersonate their personnel, and otherwise wreak havoc. Going into a confined underground space like that was still dangerous, but if the Warners or any of the other Antiresistance members didn’t walk into a trap and get killed, they had the potential to do a lot more damage in a short time than humans. If the Resistance intended to fight their way past the perimeter to freedom, they would attack near the road, and then their more powerful toons would try to keep the Antiresistance from getting in the way. Either way, the first attack hitting them or somewhere near them was exactly what they’d expected. But after that, there should have been someone on the level of the raccoon or weasel trying to make sure they were either dead or preoccupied. But the bear and abominable snowwoman who’d attacked them weren’t even close.

“That means we outnumber them,” said Yakko. “Where it counts. They probably don’t have more than four or five really dangerous toons.”

Dot mentally counted. Slappy was occupied with the weasel. If Bugs had any free time he’d have been helping out with the melee within the shattered perimeter line, assuming he hadn’t taken advantage of the noise of the battle to try to tunnel into the complex. They knew Daffy was fighting at one point – worst-case scenario the raccoon or another toon had killed or incapacitated him. At a bare minimum if Bugs was going for the tunnels the Resistance might only have the two they knew about. If Bugs and Daffy were still up but under pressure that was four. A possible fifth could have been focusing on supporting the humans and weaker toons, be inside the complex as a backup, or be ganging up on Bugs. Six was technically possible, but Dot doubted the Resistance would have left half the Antiresistance to their own devices for this long if they had the numbers to avoid it.

“Right now the humans are getting torn to pieces,” Yakko continued. “We need give them space to retreat, then find anyone who needs help and join them. Even if we do end up fighting on our own, it’ll probably be three against one.”

“All right...” Dot took a deep breath. “Well, glad you waited for me to get warmed up first.”

Yakko stifled a laugh. “Yeah. Okay, time in on the count of three. One… two… three!” He clicked the remote again. It disappeared, and the world returned to normal speed. They stepped out of the bush. Almost immediately there was another explosion. Wakko yelped and flung himself sideways as a burning metal cylinder bounced past, a sticky trail of Dip corkscrewing from it.

“I see your point,” said Wakko. “It’s too crowded here.”

“I’ll say. There’s too much traffic, it’s noisy, it stinks, and the neighbors are rude. Anyway, Water Tower Special in three…”

Dot concentrated on her right hand, tearing open the first rift. In her peripheral vision she saw Wakko’s image blur, stretch, and smear into multiple parts.

“Two...”

Dot stretched the hole in reality and twisted its edges into spirals. That would help throw things in different directions. Yakko’s hands were all she could see of him now. Everything else was darkness, with a hint of what might have been the twinkling of stars inside.

“One… Go!”

The Warner siblings were simultaneously facing towards and away from each other. For an instant Dot saw the back of her own head, then the inside. The three of them reached towards each other, joining the three disturbances in reality, and outward towards the rest of the world, wrapping them around themselves. There was a low, dull roar. Dot’s vision distorted so much it ceased to hold any meaning, and she felt herself being pushed, pulled, expanded, compressed, and twisted. She felt like she was falling, but it was impossible to tell whether she was spinning or not.

Then the world resolved itself again. The night sky was overhead, stars just visible through a veil of smoke. There was flat desert soil below. She landed on her feet, stretching out her arms to keep her balance. Her legs wobbled like they were made of Jell-O. All she wanted to do was sleep. But they’d done it. The landscape around them was a twisted patchwork of the valley and the flat plain, pieces warped like soft clay where they met. The ground shook and rippled, nearly knocking her off her feet. The mountains still rose up in the North, but much farther off. Vehicles and people were scattered around more or less at random, with some still clustered together. There was only one problem. They hadn’t quite gotten stretching the plain out to accommodate the pieces they’d forced in right. The ground was wrinkled and buckled into tall, rolling hills, with stream channels and bushes at angles they couldn’t possibly have formed at naturally. Instead of smoke, they now had dozens of canyons blocking their vision.

Yakko whistled. “Sibs, we may not change history today, but we certainly will change geography!”

“It’ll go back to normal by morning,” said Wakko.

“Yeah, but I’ve always wanted to say that.” Yakko scanned the horizon. “Hey. There’s someone over there waving at us! I think they need help!”

In a matter of seconds, the Warners had reached the scene. An armored truck – no, the halves of an armored truck, battered and dented, lay against a now almost-sideways ditch. A fat man in an FBI uniform frantically gestured around the back of the truck. They ran ahead… and ground to a halt, jaws hitting the ground. Lying on the ground in front of them was Daffy Duck. Half his feathers were gone, most of the rest were smoldering, and the skin underneath was bruised black and blue. His arms and legs were tied in knots behind his back, and his beak was on the wrong side of his head, with an apple stuffed in it. Dot felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Pardon me, tiny children...” a thick, Russian-accented voice said. Dot spun around. The fat agent reached up and tore off his head… or rather, his mask. A tall, burly tiger with one eye larger than the other stepped out of the costume. It was basically the same technique as a zip suit – whether the disguise used a zipper or mask was a matter of personal preference – and it could replicate humans, but only with great difficulty. This guy was the real deal. “Please direct me to closest Dip Cannon Car. I am wanting to make duck soup, but ingredient seems to have run off… and not the one I was expecting.”

“Duck soup, huh?” Yakko went stiff as a board. His face contorted in fury. “You’re under arrest for huntin’ ducks out of season, Comrade!” He whipped out a pair of enormous handcuffs and had the tiger’s hands bound faster than he could react. “It’s Tiger Season!”

A quick glance gave Dot her cue. She conjured a mallet about the size of the tiger’s whole body, jumped into the air, and brought it down on his head with all her strength. The ground gave way under his feet, burying him up to his waist. But it was like hitting solid steel – no, she’d have crumpled that like a tin can. A shock traveled up the mallet, making her arms wobble like jump ropes. It continued up her arms and to her body, rattling her from side to side. She felt to the ground seeing double as the tiger flexed his muscles. The cuffs burst. The mallet rose up several inches from his head on top of a hairless lump. He reached up and grabbed it, tossed it casually into the air, then punched it, blasting it into a shower of toothpicks.

“That… didn’t even faze him!” Yakko murmured.

“You know, in Motherland, it is not tradition to introduce self with violence,” the tiger growled. He pulled out a mallet of his own and gently patted the raised lump back down to level. “But, as they say, when in America, do as Americans do, da?” he rolled up nonexistent sleeves – a common shapeshifting technique – revealing forearms covered in tattoos. “I am Number Twenty-Five, but you can call me Crazy Ivan.”

“Uhh… we’re the Warner Brothers. And the Warner sister.” Yakko indicated Dot with his thumb. “Sibs...” he whispered. “We might have to just find that Dip he wants.”

Dot nodded solemnly. She understood. toons like this were hard to deal with. Even weak, stupid ones like Baloney could take all day to wear down. They didn’t have that kind of time, not after wearing themselves out with the warp. And not only was this guy strong, but she had a suspicion he was smarter than he looked. There might not be a way to beat him without leading him into a trap and Dipping him. But they’d walked straight into one he’d set. If they weren’t careful, they could wind up on the receiving end.

Chapter Text

The Human Resistance’s plan of attack was simple and straightforward. Many of their fighters were ex-military, and several of those, including Gene, had been part of specialized units trained in countering potential use of toons by enemy military or paramilitary forces. In fact, they were among the founding members: their realization of just how devastating a determined, competent toon could be had led them independently to the same conclusion as Lowell and Herschel. They were also familiar with the U.S. Military’s tactics and weaponry.

The thousand or so federal agents and National Guard troops laying siege to the complex were unlikely to an attempt an attack on their own. To even reach the main blast doors they would have to navigate down several hundred feet of curving tunnel lined with Dip sprinklers that could be rigged with explosive devices under the floor. The tunnel could easily become choked with the carcasses of disabled vehicles, and sending personnel in on foot would result in heavy losses regardless of their species. However, they couldn’t just sit underground and wait. There were three serious threats. First, the enemy almost certainly included toons like Bugs Bunny who could tunnel through solid rock and blast through their walls and anti-teleportation seals, and if they weren’t killed immediately when they breached the wall they could be anywhere in the complex in the brink of an eye. Second, if the camouflaged air intake or exhaust vents were located again, the enemy could either cripple their life support systems or enter through the vents. The third threat was from the air. While the numerous cameras hidden around the entrance had detected the FBI helicopter Wendy had taken down, the Resistance did not have active radar – it would be too conspicuous on the surface. Attack aircraft flying at high altitude would be impossible to detect until it was too late. And while the first level of the complex was beyond the reach of most air-launched weapons, it was right on the edge of what a GBU-28 bunker buster could penetrate. Sustained bombardment would eventually do enough damage to the roof to punch a hole. Hitting the same hole again was impossible with human weaponry, but rabbits or squirrels dropping more explosives on them were a different matter. Thus, the Resistance had to counterattack before the Feds got impatient and called in the Air National Guard.

At least, that was what Wendy heard secondhand from Riley. While she’d been moping on top of a van, he’d been pestering Gene and the others with questions, and finally gotten some answers out of them. She’d gotten fairly explicit direct instructions on the counterattack itself, though.

When the Resistance made the first move, the Feds and Guardsmen’s primary role would be to concentrate every available weapon on the tunnel entrance, creating a lethal deluge of bullets, explosive rounds, and Dip-filled grenades and mortar shells. But the seals ended about halfway between the blast doors and the entrance, and much of the tunnel couldn’t be hit directly from the outside. Wendy, Riley, Ivan, and Number Twenty-Four would be the first ones out, but they wouldn’t be going directly out the disguised entrance.

Wendy exchanged a brief glance with Riley as the final seconds ticked away. She was shaking with anticipation. He gulped. Ivan stared resolutely at the still-closed blast door. Twenty-Four seemed to just be staring out into space. Three… two… one… hydraulics whined, bearings squealed, and the door began to slide open. Wendy scrambled under as soon as there was a gap of more than an inch, then stood there tapping her foot for the couple of seconds it took for all four of them to be through. Ivan had only even gotten down on all fours when Riley reached back through and grabbed him. What a joke. Those two probably wouldn’t last five minutes.

She was the first out of the complex too, disappearing and reappearing first behind a bush well behind the perimeter to make sure she knew where she was going, then again underneath a Humvee close to where the road met the line. She peered out between the tires, and her heart skipped a beat. The Warner Siblings! She already knew they would most likely be hiding somewhere among the human forces, but figuring out exactly where beforehand would mean too much of a risk of detection. The plan was to hit the feds as hard and as fast as possible in the first few seconds, causing as much damage and as much chaos as possible, throwing the human forces into disarray, and giving the Resistance’s own more vulnerable fighters – both humans and most of Lowell’s toons – a chance to get clear of the main entrance.

But this was a golden opportunity. The Warners were singing, some sort of show tune it sounded like. They weren’t paying any attention to their surroundings at all. This was a perfect opportunity. Right on the other side of them there was a modified APC equipped with a water cannon, and given its position almost certainly shooting Dip. The soldiers manning it were completely focused on the entrance. There were seven toons the Resistance expected to be a real problem: the Warners, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Slappy Squirrel, and Peter Possum, who Riley had encountered previously. They’d be outnumbered seven-to-four, but if she teleported on top of the sprayer vehicle, quietly killed or hypnotized the soldiers, and turned the weapon on the Warners, she could make it even just like that!

No. Wendy shook herself. That was a huge risk. Appearing distracted on purpose to draw enemies out was a common tactic, and there were at least three pair of eyes and ears to worry about. And whatever Riley said about them possibly hesitating to kill, she was sure if she didn’t get them with the first shot then the rest of the battle would be seven-on-three. She had to just stick to the plan. She conjured a crate of explosives, just small enough to fit under the Humvee’s clearance, then a barrel of gunpowder, and just kept on pulling out explosives and cramming them in the small space. This was still an opportunity. Setting off all this practically in their faces would definitely get their attention for a while, and possibly launch one or more of them high into the air and separate them. One more bundle of dynamite… a few extra fireworks just to be safe… and then the final touch: a softball-sized chunk of C4, an electrical detonator, a couple wires, a switch, and a nine volt battery. Now the trigger. Being quiet enough to avoid the Warners’ ears needed a special touch. She set up a pair of wooden dowels leading to the switch and forming a track, with the other end elevated by a cinderblock. Then she conjured the final item, a solid rubber ball, heavy, yet silent as it rolled. She let it go, and immediately teleported away. A colossal explosion rocked the valley, and the fight was on!

The blast was the others’ cue to start as well. Three more explosions tore through the human lines – Wendy noted with some satisfaction that hers was the biggest – and she was already moving on to her next target, dropping a glue-covered grenade down the hatch of an armored vehicle and cartwheeling away, easily avoiding the bullets of a couple of humans too scared to remember they wouldn’t do any damage to her anyway. There was already a pretty good smokescreen. Just for good measure, she lit off another crate of fireworks, sending rockets spiraling everywhere and lighting the scattered desert brush on fire. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a pair of Molotov Cocktails arc through the air. Evidently someone else had the same idea. Then a plume of black smoke rose from the mine entrance. Clever. Now it would take them longer to notice that no one was actually using it.

Lowell Byrd had drawn seventeen toons for the Human Resistance, not counting Number Twenty-Four, that hadn’t been ‘phased out.’ Of those, six were able to perform at least basic, short range teleportation, and two, a mole and a gopher, could tunnel at high speed. They were now bringing both the human fighters and the other toons out to positions a safe distance from the entrance and setting up whatever cover they could – although the shallow gullies crisscrossing the valley floor didn’t make for bad trenches if necessary.

It was chaos, and exactly the kind she wanted to create. Wendy leaped and weaved around the battlefield, looking for trouble. The enemy were in a state of panic now, and shooting in every direction. She briefly saw Riley within their lines, pointing out a toon koala in an FBI uniform to one of the Guardsmen and getting her melted by her own side, then hammering a railroad spike through the shooter’s neck. Crazy Ivan flew by with his athletic shorts on fire, and a voice familiar from the cartoons she’d been shown as a briefing before the ‘Wheel of Mortality’ attack called: “There’s more where that came from, ya yutz!”

Where was everyone? They were supposed to be outnumbered seven to four, but she and Riley seemed to have avoided the attention of the ‘Big Seven.’ The first one she found was Bugs Bunny. He was nimbly dancing out of the way of swing after swing from Number Twenty-Four, who appeared to be wearing Freddy Krueger gloves – no, were those claws sprouting from his wrists? What a ripoff. Either way, Bugs wasn’t paying attention to her . Perfect. She flitted closer, darting between bushes, and conjured a weighted net. Then Twenty-Four was actually stupid enough to pull a shotgun and tell Bugs to say his prayers. A carrot in the barrel made the gun blow up in his face, and when the smoke cleared both rabbit and wolverine had vanished without a trace. Swearing, Wendy flung the net away and slapped her palm to her face. Six against three now.

Wendy decided to step back for a moment and observe things, ducking into a ditch and peering out with a periscope. A faint streak of light flashed across the sky from somewhere uphill from the complex. Someone was sniping from up there. Probably Peter Possum, he seemed to be a good shot with a revolver. But he wouldn’t be able to do much with all the smoke and dust in the air. She could let him stay up there for the moment. She spotted the Warner Siblings as well, but they seemed to just be focused on not getting caught in the crossfire. If she found Riley, she’d take them on, but otherwise it didn’t seem like they were doing too much damage.

Then she heard a whistle. She looked up just in time to see an enormous bomb hit right in the midst of a group of humans barely a hundred feet from her. She flinched as she was pelted by a shower of gravel. She looked up again, and her stomach turned. There were bodies, stripped of clothing or even torn to pieces by the shock wave, strewn around the new crater. Among them lay the gopher, all of his body but his feet jammed into his hard hat, and the gorilla who’d dragged her into the Animation Room in chains, face down and sizzling as Dip leaked from the canisters strapped to his back.

Where the hell had that come from? She looked up, straining her eyes against the dark blue sky. Through the veil of smoke, she saw it: an airplane, circling slowly away, silhouetted by the faint twilight in the West. She teleported to a different ditch in case she’d been spotted by now, conjured a flak cannon – sans wheeled mounting carriage – took aim, and pulled the trigger. A direct hit! She turned away from the rapidly descending remnants of the biplane. Who to go for next?…

Then, after a little over a minute of searching, Wendy finally found trouble. As she hopped out of the ditch, something fell from the sky, hitting her over the head so hard her body compressed into a flat disc and leaving her spinning helplessly like a coin. She recovered just in time to see a water cannon take aim at her. On instinct, she reached behind her and flung whatever had hit her straight into the stream of Dip. The safe’s enormous weight carried it straight back toward the cannon, bending the barrel and knocking its aim off to the left. There was a startled: “What the-”

Wendy spun around. Slappy Squirrel vaulted out of the path of the spray of Dip and landed in front of her with casual, practiced ease. Both of them reached behind their backs at almost the same time. Two pairs of blazing blue eyes stared into each other. Wendy’s smile spread almost to her ears, and she couldn’t help giggling with excitement. Her fur tingled and stood on end. Ever since she’d set off the first explosion, she’d been trying to convince herself that this was still fun, constantly avoiding grenades or puddles or clouds of mist that could actually kill her, the sharp smell of Dip burning her nose mixed with the odor of blood, seeing toons melted alive and humans getting their heads blown off. But this? This was gonna be good.

But the smile vanished from Slappy Squirrel’s face. She tilted her head back, appraised Wendy with a look that could only be described as disturbed, and muttered something inaudible. Reading her lips, it seemed like it was along the lines of: “You gotta be kiddin’ me. I thought those bunnies were exaggerating...”

“What’s wrong?” Wendy teased. “Scared already?”

Slappy scowled. The yellow flower on her hat smoldered, then burst into flames. “No. I’m appalled. Soon as I’m done with you, I’m gonna find whatever soulless pile of radioactive waste drew you up, and he’s gonna die slowly.”

A short burst of flame leaped from Wendy’s own eyes. She didn’t mind if others insulted Herschel – and that one wasn’t half-bad – but threatening his life was another story. “Oh yeah? Come and get me Grandma. But be careful ya don’t fall and break a hip!” Slappy seemed to have ditched the old lady appearance, and looked the way she did in her old cartoons, but Wendy was going to use whatever verbal ammunition came to hand. She darted forward to stand right in front of the squirrel’s face and conjured a seltzer bottle – only she’d filled it with bleach! Slappy blocked it with an umbrella, but that was enough distraction for Wendy to duck behind her and tie a firecracker to her tail. She waited for the explosion, then took off running with a maniacal laugh.

Wile E. Coyote watched out the canopy of his biplane as his bomb scored a direct hit. Acme products had improved in recent years, but sometimes there was no substitute for packing a military surplus casing with fresh explosives. Rusty, but effective. The plane was barely able to climb with the weight of the bomb, but now he rapidly ascended and banked away to the northwest. Ten to twelve nautical miles to Desert Center Airport, depending on how straight a line he flew in. He could be on the ground in seven minutes, re-armed in ten, and back for another bombing run in twenty. He just hoped the others could make it that long.

His eyes were on the distant lights of the freeway – Desert Center Airport was really just an unlit asphalt strip, so the road was a better reference from a distance. He never saw the flak shell until it tore both right wings off and left the fuselage looking like Swiss cheese. The biplane immediately went into a roll and began to plummet from the sky. Not good. The canopy was already smashed to pieces. He bailed out, narrowly avoiding getting hit by the remaining propeller.

Fortunately, he had brought a parachute. Wile E. pulled the rip cord. A half-melted mess of tattered cloth and tangled shroud lines emerged from the backpack. He continued to fall unhindered. With an irritated snap of his fingers he snipped the cord and let it flutter away.

Fortunately, he had brought a spare parachute. He pulled the other rip cord. The backpack opened… and out came a tablecloth, several socks which he was pretty sure had gone missing, a T-shirt for a band he had never heard of, a life jacket, a coil of rope… and finally a piece of paper. He snatched it out of the air.

‘Note to self: pack spare parachute. Probably in box in garage.’

At that point, Wile E could still have conjured a functional parachute, or at least an umbrella. Unfortunately, his attention was too focused on slowly, methodically tearing up the handwritten note. He noticed the ground rushing up to meet him too late.

Ouch.

He was, of course, unharmed once he peeled himself from the ground. Judging by the still-visible freeway lights, he’d landed on the other side of the mountains. But he no longer had a viable means of participating in the battle. Weaving through a hail of bullets and Dip wasn’t exactly his forte.

Calamity tiptoed down the corridor on the sixth and lowest level of the underground base, Furrball right behind him. He knew no one was supposed to be down here, but making any unnecessary noise during a jailbreak made him uncomfortable.

“Do you think it’s… tilted down here?” Furrball whispered.

“Tilted?”

“Yeah. The floor doesn’t seem like it’s level.”

Calamity thought about it. The place did feel… weird, somehow. Was that it? The floor underneath them didn’t quite feel solid – it was a narrow hallway, with the duct they’d escaped from overhead on one side, and more ducts and piping and conduit running along the walls. The floor was effectively a catwalk. Could it have tilted? Then he reached up to open the door at the end – the doorknobs on human-sized doors were slightly above his head. It was heavier than it should have been, like something was trying to pull it shut, but it opened inward and there weren’t any springs he could see. There weren’t any on the other side, either, and it banged shut behind them as they went through. “I think you’re right...” he said. The mechanical humming was louder out here; he couldn’t whisper anymore. “Not just the floor… the whole level!”

They crept down the new hallway, climbing under a freestanding metal cabinet that had tipped over and leaned against the opposite wall. The doors had burst open, and gray jumpsuits, thick rubber gloves, and a helmet with a face shield had fallen out. Further along, there were lines of cracks in the walls, floor, and ceiling, running approximately across the hallway.

“It almost looks… bent,” Calamity commented.

“I guess that’s why the power’s out… right?”

“Yeah, but… I don’t get it. What could’ve done this?”

“Earthquake? Explosion?”

Calamity shook his head. “This place is underground, it’s surrounded by rock or soil. For it to be this messed up the ground would’ve had to moved a lot. There’s places it can liquefy, but I don’t think out here. And we’ve gotta be hundred of feet down. Unless they like… nuked us, I don’t know what could do this. I think something really, really bad happened.”

Furrball nodded and swallowed hard. “Let’s find a way to get these things off and get out of here before this place collapses or something.”

The main lights flickered again. Calamity and Furrball both jumped. They started to cautiously explore the level, but the place was like a maze. There was machinery everywhere: piping, electrical cables, air ducts. In one room they found three enormous generators, only one of which was running, and in another a set of blower fans large enough that a human could easily climb inside. There was one room with a boiler, steam hissing dangerously from burst rivets. They closed that door in a hurry. Some of the equipment Calamity wasn’t actually sure of the purpose of.

Then they noticed it. There was ink everywhere. The first time Calamity saw it was drips of black liquid running down a wall, then drips from pipes on a ceiling, but he didn’t yet put two and two together. Then he saw it gushing from a burst flange on a pipe bigger than a human arm. There was an enormous puddle on the floor underneath and all around it – no, it was a sheet of moving ink! The floor seemed to be sloping downward here, toward a T junction. ‘ELECTRICAL CONTROL, MAIN’ read a yellow sign on the wall with an arrow pointing to the left.

“That’s nuts,” Furrball commented.

“The supply for their ACME Machine must be down here!” Calamity said. “The earthquake must’ve knocked a bunch of pipes loose!”

“But there’s so much of it! Shouldn’t the pipes be empty by now?”

Calamity stared at the leaking pipe. It was like a fire hose. “Maybe a pump got left on by accident?”

“Wouldn’t it run out eventually?”

“It’s only been a few minutes...” Calamity remembered reading all the plaques on the old machine in the basement at school. Back when it was at Termite Terrace, the main ink supply had apparently held nine hundred gallons. Normally animating a toon didn’t take anywhere near that much, but for something like an elephant the size of a non-Toon one, it was possible to run it dry. The Resistance probably didn’t have frequent opportunities to resupply, and ink was relatively easy to obtain in large quantities compared to everything else that had to have gone into building the place. “Come on, let’s go. Maybe if there’s an electrical control room it’s got a map showing what everything does.”

“Ugh...” Furrball shuddered. “All right...” He reluctantly started to tiptoe toward the river of ink.

Raw ink wasn’t like the stuff that flowed in a living toon’s veins. Before it got mixed with an animator’s blood, it was inert and harmless. But that didn’t mean it was pleasant to touch. It smelled weird, and it was cold and clammy. Calamity was used to working with oil and grease, so it didn’t really bother him, but Furrball, like many cats, didn’t like getting his fur wet or dirty. Calamity led the way, past the burst pipe, a few drops from where it hit the floor splashing as high as chest. Furrball took that part at a run, and nearly slipped and fell when he landed.

They reached the junction. Left was the way they wanted to go, but the ink seemed to turn right, and out of curiosity he looked in that direction. His jaw nearly hit the floor. “Holy...”

The concrete floor turned to a steel catwalk. The wall continued on the right side, but on the left there was just a railing. The ink puddle ended there as it ran off the edge in a waterfall. The floor appeared to be about fifteen or twenty feet down. The room’s main contents were a pair of truck-sized stainless steel vats with closed-off tops. But some enormous force had split one of them open, and a torrent of black liquid was pouring out. The floor was completely black, and Calamity could see the reflections of ripples moving across it. How deep was it?

Furrball splashed up beside him. “What the fuck ?” he gasped.

“I think that’s their ink supply,” Calamity explained.

“How’s that much coming out?”

Calamity remembered something else from the plaques. “I think the machine’s gone Fantasia...”

“Huh?”

“Those machines aren’t supposed to be run dry,” Calamity explained. “Not dry without ink, without an animator plugged in properly and a modelsheet. I think...” he struggled to remember. “If it doesn’t have like a… template to make ink into other stuff, it can end up just creating more ink in the recycler pipes. I read an animator at Termite Terrace passed out while he was plugged in once in the thirties and it blew half the fittings and sprayed ink all over the room. It’s called going Fantasia now because of that one cartoon with Mickey and the brooms. Now machines are supposed to have safety interlocks and cutoffs, but if they weren’t working...”

“Do you think something fell up there and bumped a switch or something?”

“That shouldn’t be possible! There shouldn’t be just one switch, and… even if it did start up, it shouldn’t do anything if someone’s not even plugged in with the blood, and...” Calamity trailed off. He slapped his hand to his forehead. “Which doesn’t matter because they’re not using blood. If they left a bottle of our ink in there… that thing probably got thrown together from spare parts, and then they modified it. It probably doesn’t have the right interlocks or switches. And then...” he pointed to the ruptured vat. “The pipes probably got broken by the earthquake, but that probably just wasn’t built to handle any pressure spike.” He started to laugh. “Man, my dad’s ink pressure would spike too if he saw this place! There’s so much stupid, dangerous stuff...”

“So is it just gonna flood this whole place?”

Calamity shook his head. “Either it’ll run out of our ink – but that might take a long time – or it’ll flood the generator. Cutting the power to the machine’ll turn it off. Or...” he headed back towards the left path. “Maybe we can shut it off!”

The puddle of ink ended just past the intersection. Calamity padded down the short corridor, leaving a trail of black pawprints.

“Who cares if it floods it?” asked Furrball. “We’re escaping, remember? Who cares if their junk gets broken?”

“Kenny!” Calamity pointed at the ceiling. “If the generator goes down he might be trapped in the control room without power or ventilation. He could suffocate!”

“Oh.” Furrball’s whiskers drooped.

They rounded a corner back to the left again, and were confronted by a wall lined with electrical cabinets. The ceiling was cracked even more severely and the end of the room appeared to have dropped several inches. Most of the cabinets were padlocked, but two of them had burst open near where the wall buckled. Calamity scanned the room. No map, no labels, and the cabinets were only numbered. His heart sank. He scanned the wall. Mostly dead, a few of them energized.

“So, should we just shut off the broken ones? Maybe they’ve got something to do with -” Furrball stepped toward one of the open cabinet, gesturing towards the wires and switches inside.

Calamity’s heart skipped a beat. “Stop!” he screamed, his voice cracking. Furrball froze in place. “That one’s live! See?” He pulled him back and pointed at the voltage meter from a safe distance. “That’s not like a house electrical system – it’s a four-eighty volt! It could burn you to ash, especially since you can’t resist a shock right now!” Calamity winced as he remembered a similar experience he’d had making the mistake of chasing Lil Beeper into a power substation. That was a much higher voltage, but he wasn’t as vulnerable then.

“Sorry.” Furrball backed further from the panel. Then he did a double take, leaping into the air. “Wait a minute! Burn us to ash? Calamity, I think I’ve got an idea for how to get out of these cuffs!”

It took Calamity a moment to process what his friend was saying. “What? That’s insane! We can’t recover from anything like normal in these things, if we got burned up like that-”

“Yeah, but once the ash falls out of the cuffs, we wouldn’t be in them anymore!” A grin spread across Furrball’s face. “It might work!”

“Or it might...”

“What? Kill us?”

Calamity took a moment respond. “It might. We haven’t really gotten hit hard in these, just kicked around a little. We don’t know what’ll happen.”

Furrball ran a hand through his whiskers. “What are the odds?”

“I don’t know the odds are! I don’t have any data to go off of!”

“What do you think’s most likely?”

Calamity sighed. He had to concentrate… “I guess they probably wouldn’t make such a big deal out of the Dip sprinklers if other stuff could kill us in these things – and we know Cartoon Physics still works a little bit, or they wouldn’t need that Passivation stuff. It… it’d probably either work, or you might just reform with your hands still in the cuffs.”

“Okay… Calamity, you’ve asked me to trust you on a lot of stuff. Please trust me on this one.”

Calamity took a deep breath. “Okay… I trust you. So… should we do rock paper scissors, or...”

Furrball shook his head. “It was my idea. And I recover from stuff a bit faster than you, right?”

“Uhh… what’s your grade in Hard Knocks?”

“A.”

“Okay...” Calamity usually ran a B in that class, with occasional B+s.

Furrball eyed the panel. He gulped. “What’s the fastest way to electrocute myself?”

Calamity gave him the exact opposite of everything he’d been told about working with electricity. “Just touch those two wires there. You, uhh… could grab them, the shock’d keep you from letting go, so even if it knocked you out you wouldn’t have to try again.”

“Okay...” Furrball rubbed his paws together, then licked his fingers. “Here goes nothing… I’m grabbing them in one… two… three...” he moved his hands towards the wires, then cringed and pulled them back. “Okay, four… five!” Furrball shut his eyes and grabbed the wires. The effect was immediate. A blinding blue flash lit Furrball up like a Christmas Tree. His body went rigid and his feet lifted off the ground. For a brief moment, Calamity could see his skeleton illuminated in a corona of sparks and flame. Then it was over. There was a final burst of sparks, and the lights went out completely, but he could still see by the light of burning wiring. A conical pile of jet-black ash fell to the cement floor in front of the panel. Furrball’s eyes landed on top of it. They looked toward him and winked. The cuffs clattered to the concrete, one rolling away.

Calamity breathed a sigh of relief. At the very least Furrball was okay! He just had to hope the cuffs didn’t reappear on his wrists. He turned away. A watched pot never boiled, and observing a toon made regenerating from disintegration more difficult. He counted off forty-five one-thousands before he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around.

Furrball grinned and whipped out a sign.

“I can’t read that,” said Calamity.

Furrball pointed a flashlight at the sign. “Hypothesis confirmed.”

Calamity snickered. “Yeah. That’s gotta be high on the list of the craziest things you’ve done.” He took a deep breath.

“Your turn now,” signed Furrball.

Calamity looked at the panel. Smoke was pouring from it now. The voltmeter read zero. “This one’s broken,” he said. “The other open one’s dead.”

“I can open up one of the others now.” Furrball unsheathed a single claw. “Wait, what am I thinking? I can just break yours!”

“Oh… oh, yeah.”

But nothing Furrball tried worked. A hacksaw, then a blowtorch, then, more dangerously, an axe. Calamity positioned his hand very carefully. Burning to ash might’ve worked, but he still wasn’t sure if cutting off his hand would leave it stuck in the cuff. Luckily, Furrball’s aim was true. He hit the cuff with a resounding WHACK, hard enough that the axe head bounced back and hit him in the face. But the cuff was still only scratched. Calamity was getting frantic now. The ventilation seemed to have stopped too, at least down there. They had to get away from that smoke. He was about to suggest that they just make a run for it, when he had an idea.

“Hey! Furrball! I think I know what’ll get these off! We need a shaped charge!”

“A shaped charge?”

“Yeah! They used them to go through tank armor!” Calamity explained the principle. A metal cone, placed with the hollow side an appropriate distance from the target and the back side packed with explosives, would create a high-speed jet of metal which could tear through almost anything in its path.

“A copper cone?” Furrball scratched his chin. “I think I got a trombone in here!” he pulled a battered instrument out of a nonexistent pocket. “It got run over by a car, but the bell’s still good!” he removed it. “Brass has copper in it, right?”

“It doesn’t matter that much which metal it is. Copper’s just what they used. Now, put it about its own length above the cuff.” Calamity lay down on the cement floor, stretching his arm out as far as he could. “Then pack something like C4 around it.”

“That’s the stuff that’s like clay, right?” Furrball balanced the trombone bell on a stack of phone books.

“Yeah. You can’t light it with just a match. You need a detonator.”

“Okay...” Furrball whistled. He produced a classic plunger-style detonator. It took a minute to mold the C4 and get the wires and blasting cap positioned. “I haven’t conjured this stuff much,” he said. “I’m not sure it’ll go off.”

“If it doesn’t, just use bags of gunpowder.”

Furrball nodded. He retreated several yards and placed his paw over the detonator’s plunger. “Do you want to count or should I?”

“You count.” Calamity adjusted his wrist, positioning the top of the cuff as close to dead center as he could, then closed his eyes and turned his head away. This was going to hurt… but not as much as getting burned to ash. Certainly not as much as getting his foot Dipped.

“Okay… one… two… three!”

There was earsplitting bang. Calamity didn’t even feel the sting of the blast for a couple seconds. When he opened his eyes, he realized he was covered in soot. His whole arm hurt, and it was blackened and shriveled from the elbow down. But the cuff was gone!

“Nice one, Furrball!” he said, getting to his feet and trying not to hyperventilate. He reached behind his back. No. Nothing. He’d need to have both cuffs blown off. Unless… he tried again with the injured arm. God it hurt. But his fingers closed around the thin wooden handle of a sign. He was pretty sure he’d left it blank, though, and it vanished in a couple seconds despite his best efforts. Recovering quickly wasn’t happening, but he could use his Hammerspace. No… wait… Calamity gripped the remaining cuff with his injured hand, and pulled. He gritted his teeth, focusing on making his left hand soft, rubbery. It hurt. His arm stretched out, and it felt like his whole hand was going to come off. But then, with a feeling like ripping a Band-Aid off… the cuff slipped free. They were free. Almost.

“Wanna see if we can cut the machine’s power now?” asked Furrball.

“No… it shouldn’t take too long to get up to where Kenny is.” Calamity wasn’t very good at teleportation, and even when he conjured a new sign it felt harder than he remembered. But then, he’d never gone a full month without doing anything. “Can you get us back to the cell?” he signed.

Furrball shook his head. “Not right now.”

“Okay… I don’t wanna try to go back through those vents. Let’s see if we can find the elevator.”

“There was an exit sign on the other end of that room with all the ink.”

At this, Calamity actually burst out laughing. “Seriously? The one exit sign in this whole maze? What kind of idiot built this place?”

“Didn’t Lowell say it was dug by toons or something?”

“Maybe.”

Calamity started to follow the black footprints back toward the ink supply room by the faint light of Furrball’s flashlight. Hmm… he needed his own light. And the elevator was probably broken, either from loss of power or the earthquake. They’d have to cut or blast their way into the shaft. And having something over his arm to make it hurt a bit less would be nice. He decided to try something he’d been working on over the summer, and had almost perfected before he got kidnapped. A powered exoskeleton. The idea was to make it fast enough to keep up with Beeper, but still controllable. He hadn’t gotten that part down. But just making an arm…

He closed his eyes and concentrated. He felt metal and rubber against his skin, and at first the weight pulled his arm down before the motors kicked in. He opened his eyes again. Perfect. The framework fit perfectly over his arm, and was designed to be slow-moving, but sturdy and powerful. He could probably tear through a concrete wall with this thing alone if he wanted. Most of the pieces were the same yellow as an excavator. He created a pair of smoked goggles ringed by tiny lightbulbs as well, and switched them on. Much better.

“Whoa...” Furrball whistled.

Calamity grinned. “That felt good.”

“Yeah… it’s nice feeling like a real toon again.”

They reached the T junction again. Then, over the roar of the flowing ink, Calamity heard something. Footsteps. Something clanking against metal.

“What the-?” Calamity spun around, shining his headlights in all directions. Nothing. Just the pipes, the vats, the shiny black pool of ink. It looked even creepier in the dark. “Furrball?” he held up a sign behind his back, then turned it around. “Did you hear that too?”

“Yeah,” Furrball whispered. “Maybe something came loose and fell, or...?”

Calamity felt his fur stand on end. There was another noise… something scraping. He couldn’t place where it was coming from, not with all the echoes in there. But something was in there with them. He tiptoed along the catwalk. The ink-covered metal was cold and slick under his feet. He kept looking forward, the beam lighting the path ahead of him. There was a gap in the catwalk, just before the comforting light of the exit sign. That hadn’t been there before. But maybe it had fallen, the thing looked rickety enough already. He braced himself, got a running start, and jumped.

Just as he landed, something slammed into him from behind, bowling him over and pinning him to the catwalk. There was a metallic ‘pop’ and the floor swayed and tilted dangerously. He kicked and struggled, trying to get enough purchase with ink-slicked feet. Finally he got a grip with his mechanically-augmented arm. Rolling himself over, he lashed out blindly, and felt his fist connect solidly with something soft. Almost immediately something grabbed his right forearm, and there was a searing, crushing pain, like the metal framework had been buckled inward against his body. Then he finally got a look at his attacker, and let out a soft cry of terror. He was staring right into the snarling face of Wendy Weasel.

Calamity threw another desperate punch, connecting with her chin. Her hand closed around his throat, and he was lifted into the air, then slammed into the ground again. With the screaming sound of tearing metal, the catwalk gave way completely, sending them both tumbling to the pool of ink below.

Chapter Text

Wendy darted past the shattered perimeter, tossing a stick of dynamite on a motionless soldier wearing one of the backpack-mounted sprayers as she did so. She didn’t expect the resulting explosion of Dip to have any chance of catching Slappy Squirrel, but maybe it would give her a brief distraction.

Nope. She skidded to a halt, a cloud of dust flying ahead of her, as a taxi appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Slappy stepped out, spinning her hat on one finger with an almost bored expression. “Hey. Ya shouldn’t play with Dip, kid. That stuff’s dangerous.”

“So’s this!” Wendy made a finger gun with her right hand and pulled the trigger. The recoil almost knocked her over. Slappy ducked just in time, but the shot parted the fur on her forehead. But at the same moment, the squirrel flung her hat. It whistled through the air, buzz-saw teeth sprouting from the brim. Wendy jumped sideways, but the hat’s path curved, just grazing her. She felt a stinging pain in her cheek. She instinctively put her finger to the spot she’d been hit. Her glove was still clean. Good. Last week, she’d been a little careless against the bunnies and forgotten that a powerful toon with the intent to cause real harm could cause serious damage with a sharp object if the target didn’t actively negate it. Slappy had timed the attack perfectly to catch her when she wasn’t thinking about defending herself. If her reflexes were any slower she would have been bleeding.

Slappy caught her hat – now ordinary fabric again – out of the air and returned it to her head with a glare. Wendy was already reaching into Hammerspace with her other hand. What weapon next? The taxi had vanished… how about a bowling ball?

For a second, Wendy thought she was seeing double. But there was just one bowling ball, screaming toward Slappy at speeds normally associated with a major league fastball. The bushes and rocks farther away hadn’t been doubled either. It was just the squirrel who was briefly in two places at once. The bowling ball flew harmlessly between the two identical bodies. Both shook their heads sadly and tsked. “Ooh. Seven-ten split. Bad luck. Maybe Crocquet’s more your sport.” Then she was in one place again, and reaching behind her back.

Even if she’d never watched a cartoon, Wendy had an instinct for this sort of thing. She knew the mallet was coming. She turned on her heel and broke into a sprint, flying over a gully and up a bank, expecting Slappy to either chase her or teleport into her path. She was ready for either. She conjured a hatchet, ready to spit the mallet head in half. Then something hit her in the back of the head. From her new vantage point face-down on the ground, she watched a pair of bowling balls bounce away. This time, she really was seeing double. She was glad she’d made the decision to lure Slappy out here. A fall like that inside the semicircle of fire could have easily sent her skidding through a puddle of Dip. And now they had enough distance that neither of them would need to put too much effort into avoiding collateral damage.

Wendy got back up and dusted herself off, keeping a close eye on the squirrel. Slappy: 3, Wendy: 2. Not that that meant much. She was just getting started! She twirled the axe in her hand, and turned an imaginary dial on her temple. The flames lit up in her eyes. Now this was more like it! She’d make that squirrel scream for mercy.

The ensuing fight was fast-paced and brutal. Wendy’s axe only lasted a few seconds, but by the time a flamethrower turned the handle to charcoal in her hands there was scarlet ink on the blade, and both combatants were already preparing their next weapons and traps. Barbed wire, pianos, tire irons, a pile driver, boiling oil, a cast iron skillet, and enough explosives to level half a city block were exchanged. Wendy’s gloves had holes in them and her fur was blackened by repeated explosions, but she didn’t care. She was having too much fun! She occasionally saw a grin cross her enemy’s face, too.

Then a brilliant blue-white flash lit up the desert. Bushes, rocks, and the combatants themselves cast long, sharp shadows. Slappy squinted in the direction of the sudden light. It had come from somewhere near the entrance. It was silent. “What the heck is that?” Slappy remarked. Well over a second later came the sharp report of the shock wave. And Wendy saw her chance.

So far, they had both been so evenly matched, and so focused on each other, that trying to use hypnosis wasn’t worth the effort. But, for a crucial moment, Slappy had lost hers. Wendy zipped up to her, reached out with her mind, and forced feelings of overwhelming aggression and the impulse to pursue on foot into her opponent’s. Then she reached out physically and poked her in the eyes. She darted away just far enough to buy her a few seconds, hearing footsteps racing toward her, and slid open a hole in the ground. Now down the stairs, to an intersection with a long, gently curving tunnel, none of which had existed a few seconds before. She skidded to a halt and turned to face her pursuer.

“Huh?” Slappy scratched her head. “So you got a secret entrance or somethin’?”

“Nope! Just waiting for the tube!” Wendy waved a conjured ticket stub in the air and summoned both the train and the tracks it ran on, adding a few illusory passengers all blowing raspberries and making rude hand gestures for extra annoyance. The doors slid open, and she stepped on. As it pulled out, accelerating at speeds that would make a top fuel dragster blush, she teleported to the back of the train, just in time to see Slappy start to give chase and pull a lit bomb out of Hammerspace. Now. Wendy summoned the second train, throwing it into a side tunnel with a switch after it had run over its target to keep it from rear-ending hers. That was starting to take more effort…

“Hey! You! Lemme see that ticket!” A gravelly voice shouted. Wendy spun around. There was a burly, gray-furred cop breathing down her neck. A yellow flower sprouted from his cap, but at the time there didn’t seem anything odd about that.

“Huh? Here you go, officer!” she offered it to him.

The cop snatched the ticket and stared at it. He tore it in half. “This is a ticket to a Bon Jovi concert, ya little punk! You’re under arrest for fare-jumping!”

Wendy had just enough time to remember that she wasn’t even really riding a subway and see through her opponent’s disguise before a nightstick came down on her head.

Slappy cackled and threw away the fake uniform. “Oh, by the way, if this train goes below fifty miles per hour a bomb’ll go off!” In the blink of an eye she was at the other end of the car, smashing a red button with a sign reading: ‘Emergency Brake.’

Wendy ran for the door, but it was too late. The world was consumed by fire and blinding white light and pain. She felt herself spinning and falling, and then the unforgiving embrace of the ground. There were a few stars overhead, but the air was full of smoke and dust and flying boulders, twisted segments of rail, burning train wheels, and the smells of blood and Dip. Both were almost overpowering. She got to her feet with a groan and looked over her shoulder, then jumped back, her ink curdling. The smoking carcass of an armored vehicle lay on its side, military Seven-Layer Dip pouring from gaping wounds in its metal skin. The slick had been barely a yard from her head. The bodies of three soldiers lay next to it, and their heads somewhat farther away. Who’d done that? Probably Riley. Watching a samurai movie with the humans seemed to have inspired him in terms of using bladed weapons. No! She had to stop thinking about them! She was still having the time of her life! It didn’t matter that every part of her body hurt, pain she couldn’t just will away. It didn’t matter what they’d done – what she’d done. It was kill or be killed!

Slappy was standing about a hundred yards away. She folded her arms. “Ain’t pretty, huh?”

Wendy leered at her. She wasn’t letting her opponent see that any of this bothered her. She wasn’t giving Slappy any more ammunition. “The green-red contrast’s bold, but the composition’s too spread-out and the lighting’s unrealistic.”

The flower on Slappy’s hat lost a petal. She scowled. The world went into slow motion. Wendy saw a bullet arc almost lazily through the air. “Listen you little brat,” Slappy said menacingly. “I know it’s not your fault some psycho drew a little kid to do his dirty work, so I’ll give you a choice. Kneel over there, close your eyes, and I’ll blow ya to kingdom come...” she pulled a bomb out of Hammerspace. It was unlit, so far. “I’d ask if you can tune a harp, but it’d probably be… what’s it, a fiddle? Or...” With her other hand she produced a long pair of tongs. They were steel. Real steel. “I can put ya outta your misery right now.”

There it was, Wendy realized. There was the hesitation! Slappy could have Dipped her before she got up, but she’d waited. She knew what the offer meant. Surrender, and she’d be allowed to live, but taken out of the fight via halo-ing. Or rather, horn-ing, if she got the drift of the fiddle comment. Hell no. She knew what that surrender would mean. With Slappy left to her own devices, the Resistance would be finished. She was the only one there who stood a chance. And Slappy wasn’t the only toon who could create explosions with no source. Wendy clenched one fist. A ball of white flame erupted from her glove. “Let’s see you try, you old hag!” With a feral snarl, she charged.

And the world blurred and smeared. Wendy found herself floating in mid air, with the desert around her contorting and melting around her like a Salvador Dali painting on acid. She saw Slappy from the front and the back simultaneously. Then, at the very least proportions and directions seemed normal again. They were still in a desert, but it wasn’t the same desert. She looked back. The overturned vehicle, the puddle of Dip, and the dismembered bodies were gone. The mountains were gone. No, there they were, but much further off. And only the northern ones, the ones the base was in. She could see a black truck swerve and screech to a halt in the distance, and other vehicles and figures scattered around. But this surreal, hilly landscape was completely unfamiliar. Her flames fizzled out. “What did you do?”

But Slappy Squirrel looked just confused as she did. “Wait, what the? I don’t remember eatin’ any funny mushrooms!” she stared at the surreal landscape. Then she slapped her hand to her forehead. “Man, I thought those kids finally learned some common sense! How the heck is this mess an improvement?”

Those kids? Wait… Wendy remembered Riley’s description of a terrifying – at least to him – attack the youngest of the siblings unleashed. He said it was like space itself was being torn and swirled like cream in a cup of coffee. Had they done this? The entire area had been not just moved, but scattered. But right now, there was something more important. Slappy was distracted again. No more playing around with trains – she had to move fast and end the fight! She leaped into empty space, conjuring a knife as she did so. She appeared behind the squirrel, and with a triumphant cry plunged the knife into her side, tearing downward and focusing every fiber of her being on imagining a fish being gutted. Something red spilled out, and Slappy crumpled into Wendy’s arms with the sound of tearing fabric. Wait. Fabric? Wendy turned the limp body over. Lifeless eyes stared out at her. Lifeless cloth eyes. The illusion fell apart, and she could see the stitched-together dummy for what it was. When had she even? How? Then she recognized the red things on the ground. Dynamite.

When the smoke cleared, Wendy was still standing, but she was at the bottom of a deep crater. She heard a whistle, and looked up. Slappy was standing up on the rim, waiting for her.

“You know, you remind me of a very young Charles Manson,” Slappy commented.

“Oh yeah?” Wendy hopped out of the crater. “Well, you remind me of a very young Jackson Pollock painting!” Time to see how well Slappy coped with summoning…

“What? I don’t get it!” Slappy casually stepped out of the way of the safe as it smashed into the desert.

“Cuz that’s what you’re gonna look like when I’m through with you!” Wendy ignited another ball of flame in her left hand and wound up. She wanted Slappy’s attention focused on her. She got it. Slappy pulled out a bottle of seltzer water, which did absolutely nothing to stop the twenty-ton weight descending on her head. Wendy zipped up to the weight and pressed her palm against it. The ball of flame exploded, blowing it to pieces. One very flat squirrel picked herself up from the compressed dirt, smoke rising from her fur. And that was when Wendy’s final trap went off. The safe had landed with its door facing Slappy. It opened, and the cannon inside fired.

But even that only seemed to make Slappy angry, and not angry enough to break her concentration. The fever-pitched chase began again, and Wendy realized something. This wasn’t fun anymore. Both toons were panting, both were bleeding, both weren’t recovering all the way from each other’s blows. Wendy knew Slappy couldn’t hold out forever, but neither could she. Eventually one or the other would finally knock the other unconscious or get them in a restraint they couldn’t escape. The humans on both sides were confused and scattered, but they were still fighting. The Dip wasn’t confined to one area anymore: everywhere there were water cannons, grenade launchers, and lone humans. A few seconds of incapacitation, and either of them could kill the other.

What was it she’d said to Riley? ‘I want to win a good fight’? That afternoon seemed so long ago now. But she realized it was true. And even if she wasn’t losing, the Resistance was. She’d seen at least a dozen humans on their side fall, plus at least five or six toons, and she’d barely been paying attention to them. She had to at least figure out what was going on.

Getting strung up by her neck with a noose made of detcord was the last nail in the coffin of her desire to keep dealing with Slappy. She had to lose her. One more trap… Wendy teleported far enough away to buy herself a little time, conjured a free-standing wooden door, and slipped through into empty space, slamming it shut behind her. Slappy would probably open it expecting either an inert, useless door or a brick wall, but Wendy had rigged it to explode the next time it opened, destroying itself and preventing her teleportation from being followed.

She reappeared on the hillside somewhat near the entrance. Not good… it appeared to have collapsed. There were a couple puddles of Dip scattered around, but most of the perimeter was gone. It was eerily quiet, apart from an explosion going off somewhere in the distance.

Something tapped her shoulder. Wendy jumped at least six feet in the air, pulling out a shotgun.

“Whoa! Whoa! Bloody hell Wendy, it’s me!” Riley stumbled backwards.

“Are you sure? Tell me something only Riley would know!”

“That ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign you had up on that van had red lettering.”

“Close enough.” Technically he wasn’t the only one who could’ve known that, but certainly none of the enemy could have. She tossed the gun away, deconjuring it. “What happened?”

Riley looked terrible. His beanie was gone, his striped shirt was burnt and full of holes, and there were small raw, red patches with the fur gone. “Spot of bother with a couple rematches...” he panted. “We’re in a right pickle at the moment. Half the base is collapsed or on fire. Everyone who wasn’t fighting’s trapped inside, and the ventilation’s gone! We gotta get ‘em out or they’ll all die!”

“What?” A chill ran down Wendy’s spine. There were about two hundred men and women in the Human Resistance, but only about fifty of them were dedicated fighters, the ones responsible for security and elimination missions. The majority of them were mechanics, chemists, engineers, technicians, and of course the two animators who kept the place running and supplied. Everyone could aim and shoot a pistol or a spray gun, but whether they could keep their cool and hit anyone or anything in practice was another story. She started towards the entrance.

“Not that way!” Riley said. “The seals are gone, too! This way!” He grabbed her hand, and an instant later they tumbled out of a pair of clothes dryers into a dark room hazy with smoke in the dim glow of conjured flashlights. This had to be Level Two. “I got everyone out of the first level already!” he explained.

Wendy followed his lead as they navigated past piles of fallen concrete, overturned machinery, and the occasional broken pipe or electrical cable. When they found the first group of people, Riley painted a tunnel on the last-damaged wall and waved them through, then disappeared inside himself. Wendy memorized the desert scene, then dashed off in search of more survivors.

A few minutes later, they were standing in a dry, winding riverbed with steep slopes of rock, gravel, and sagebrush on either side, surrounded by what was left of the Resistance. Wendy looked around. She knew this place. This valley was only about a mile West-Northwest from the entrance, in the same mountains it lay at the foot of. “Why’d you take us here?” she hissed. “They aren’t actually gonna try to keep fighting, are they?”

“It’s the most sheltered place I could find!” replied Riley. “I tried goin’ outside the area, but it’s like there’s some sorta seal on it! I think the space that got moved and where it got moved to are… twisted together somehow, and I don’t know how to get out! We gotta stay hidden until whatever this is goes back to normal!”

“Slappy seemed to think the Warners did it,” Wendy volunteered.

Riley blanched. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Last I saw, Number Twenty-Five’s keepin’ ‘em busy, but I don’t know for how long. I ambushed ‘em, and almost got the oldest, but… the possum sniped me an’ I went off to deal with him, but then there was this blinding blue light. It was the same as when the girl sucked me into that… I don’t even know what to call it.”

“So, did you ditch the possum again?”

Riley grimaced. “Not exactly. He wouldn’t let me get him anywhere near any Dip, and I couldn’t get away either. But I borrowed a trick from Herschel.” He pulled an empty bottle of Passivation Solution out of Hammerspace. “Nicked this from the animation room. I splashed it in his face, then dropped an anvil while he was tryin’ to rub it out of his eyes. It only haloed him, but he’s outta the way at least. What about you? Get a nice squirrel tail to hang on the wall?”

“I had to run,” Wendy admitted. “I might’ve beaten her in the end, but I had a feeling I couldn’t waste all night playing with her, and...” she trailed off, looking at the other survivors. There couldn’t have been more than a hundred. Herschel, Gene, and Lowell were all still alive, but Lowell had a bloodstained towel tied around his head. There were numerous broken limbs or other injuries – many people were carried or dragged through the doors she’d painted – and almost none of the ones who’d participated in the attack were there. There was only one other toon: Number Twelve, a lizard without much in the way of brains or skill.

Gene climbed up on a boulder and began to explain the situation to the other huddled survivors. The counterattack had failed. The complex, and the Acme Machine, were lost. The Resistance was crippled and homeless. Their only option was to lay low until whatever bizarre power had literally moved the mountains wore off, and a long-range Scene Change could take the survivors out of the country and give them a chance at rebuilding. Wendy saw some of the survivors crying. Others were praying, and one dug a crucifix necklace out of his shirt and kissed it, muttering something in a language she didn’t know.

Then, just when it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, Mr. Murphy came to collect. Figures appeared on the mountainside, and vehicles rolled in along the riverbed from both upstream and downstream. And there, standing on a ridge next to a cannon, holding a lit match, was Slappy Squirrel.

They were trapped.

Both the fleeing Resistance members and the small assortment of National Guard troops that had chosen to accompany Slappy Squirrel on a mission to ambush them believed themselves to be performing a final act of desperation. For the Resistance Members, who had been told that the United States Government was secretly under toon control and would take no prisoners, being surrounded on all sides combined with the appearance of Slappy Squirrel up on the ridge convinced them without a doubt that it was true.

The soldiers, meanwhile, had seen the Government forces decimated within the first few seconds of the Resistance’s surprise counterattack. They had then watched as their fleeing comrades were cut to pieces – sometimes literally – by Resistance toons. Gene had made this part of the strategy of ‘Shock and Awe’ to demoralize the allies – AntiResistance, FBI, and National Guard – as much as possible and discourage them from simply performing a tactical retreat and attacking with mortars, missiles, or similar weaponry. This had for the most part worked, but for a small minority of the survivors it had the opposite effect. Matters were made worse when they were suddenly thrown into an alien landscape. They still had radio communication, but only within the ‘bubble’ where the valley had been spliced into the surrounding plains, and GPS lock and even compasses had been lost. The invisible boundary had a ‘texture’ that distorted the path and frequency of any light wave crossing it. Even the stars appeared to be different colors, and in different parts of the sky, although with the moon below the horizon few had noticed the change. The ‘wrinkling’ of the ground made movement more difficult, and Slappy, having located the soldiers only after happening across the valley as Wendy and Riley evacuated the surviving Resistance, was too agitated to think of informing them that it was probably the Warner Siblings’ work. Most of the Guardsmen thought the enemy had done it to prevent them from escaping.

It was actually a panicked Resistance member who fired the first shot. He was shooting a handgun at a range of several hundred yards, and had no chance of actually hitting anyone, but, having already been informed in no uncertain terms that the Resistance intended to fight to the last man, the guardsmen took them at their word upon hearing the report. Their strategy was simple: unload every weapon they had at the three toons in the midst of the crowd and hope they killed them before they could react.

But Wendy had plenty of time. She was expecting the enemy to open fire without warning, and when she heard the gunshot she flew into action almost immediately. The soldiers didn’t have that option: it took almost a second for the sound to reach most of them.

Wendy’s first move placed no value on style or subtlety; she just took a sledgehammer to the laws of physics, reversing gravity and making it a couple dozen times stronger in a ring – or more precisely a hollow cylinder – between about fifty yards and about a hundred yards from where she stood. She’d have liked to have extended it to Slappy and the four vehicles – two on either end – but even reversing gravity for yourself or one or two other creatures or objects was advanced, and covering such a large area, especially with extra strength, was nothing short of Herculean. Wendy couldn’t extend it any further, and her priority was keeping everyone from being shot to pieces. The instant she started the reversal she felt lightheaded. She knew she couldn’t keep it up longer than a couple seconds, but she had to maintain it as long as she could, to buy Riley time to come up with something more permanent.

The idea was that the enemy’s bullets and grenades would be deflected upward by the ultra-strong gravity and completely miss their mark. On level ground, against well-aimed fire, it would have worked perfectly. The high-speed rifle rounds would have passed through the region of reversed gravity so quickly that they’d have only been deflected upward about two feet by the time they reached their targets, but that would have been enough to make a bullet aimed at center-of-mass on a human fly harmlessly over everyone’s heads. But she hadn’t accounted for the steep angle. With the Guardsmen firing down from the ridges, a bullet that was two feet above where it was expected to be would hit the ground only a few feet off-target, and the panicked soldiers’ aim wasn’t that precise.

Wendy yelped and jumped away as a hail of bullets rained down on the Resistance. At the same time, a curtain of topsoil, rocks, and bushes picked up by the lower edge of the field was flung into the air at immense speed. That part was supposed to happen. What wasn’t supposed to happen was a gale-force downdraft slamming her to the ground, and several people farther out stumbling and being pulled off their feet. She’d forgotten air was affected by gravity, and as the air within the region affected by her physics bend was sent upward as well, the surrounding air was sucked in to replace it. Realizing her mistake, she canceled the physics bend and jumped back to her feet. There were more people on the ground than she remembered. She just hoped they were either there on purpose or pushed over by the sudden gust.

“You handle offense, I’ll handle defense!” Riley shouted.

Defense? What defense? Toon conjuration couldn’t just make objects of any arbitrary size or shape. He couldn’t just make a brick wall appear out of nowhere, at least not in the shape of a complete cylinder. She looked over her shoulder, and saw him pull out an enormous horseshoe-shaped magnet. Illusory lightning bolts appeared in the air. Oh. That would do it. Now she had to teleport while she was blocked from the enemy’s view by the flying earth. She flung herself into… nothing. She landed on the gravel of the riverbed, just a few feet from where she’d started. What? How? She looked around. Then she noticed it. There were still dozens of eyes on her. Those idiots! She was being blocked by her own side!

Swearing, Wendy sprinted downhill along the riverbed, veering up the rocky slope to the side as she passed through the dust cloud. There! Two vehicles, a tracked one and a Humvee, one equipped with a water cannon, the other with an automatic grenade launcher! The water cannon was the most potentially dangerous, but it was still far out of range. The grenade launcher was already shooting into the smoke. Dip wasn’t affected by physics bends, but the casings of the grenades would be. Her gravity reversal had probably flung the first grenades far off-target; the casings weren’t as much of their mass but they were slower and spent more time in the field. If the casings were all or even mostly plastic, thought, they’d be completely unaffected by Riley’s magnet!

She skidded to a halt beside the vehicles, conjuring a pair of grenades of her own and yanking the pins out with her fangs. She lobbed one, then the other. The first grenade bounced off the Humvee gunner’s helmet, and had fallen off to the side before it blew up. The second exploded in the air perfectly. Wendy shut her eyes and winced as pieces of something wet hit her fur. It didn’t hurt, at least not much, so the cannon couldn’t have exploded. Oh. Oh. But there was no time to think about that – she opened her eyes, and the Humvee gunner was still alive! Before he could spin his turret around to face her, she slung a mine underneath the truck’s wheels, gave the tracked vehicle another just in case the cannon was still functional and someone else took the gunner’s place, and sprinted away again, up the hill. Now! She had to take out the others!

Something hit her like a freight train, knocking her off her feet and sending her tumbling down the hill. That really hurt. Everything was hurting more, even the effort of the brief run. She landed flat on her back, hugging a cannonball. Slappy! She dashed away in a cloud of dust – then back to her original position, and teleported using the cover of the dust cloud! She reappeared on the low ridge, right behind where Slappy and her cannon would have been. But there was only a white wooden sign. ‘Peter Possum sends his regards.’

Then something under her feet exploded. Wendy was still on her feet, though, and ducked behind the ridge as the smoke cleared, then reappeared back with the others. The dust was clearing now. She could see the shapes of the soldiers up on the ridge… and Slappy, up on another hill, still beside her cannon.

… “Chaaaaarge!” Number Twelve, wearing a tricorn hat and brandishing a rifle with fixed bayonet, sprinted up the hill at Slappy. The squirrel calmly adjusted her aim and fired. The cannonball caught him squarely in the chest. Wendy watched with amazement as something red flew from his back and bounced along the gravel. It was a heart, she realized with horror. You could do that to a toon? Still beating, the heart sprouted tiny arms and legs. It stood up, held up a sign saying: ‘I Quit!’ and marched off. Then it was hit by a blast of green liquid, and vanished in a puff of smoke. Its owner’s unconscious body followed suit.

Wendy jumped back, conjuring a red cape to avoid getting splashed. Even so, a couple of drops hit her. She heard sizzling, and gritted her teeth, trying not to scream. Water… she had to wash it off… no, no time! Another vehicle with a water cannon, this one wheeled, was approaching from the other direction. She reached behind her back, ready to pull out another weapon, but before she could move a knife sprouted from the gunner’s throat and he slumped sideways.

“Magnet’s… gone...” Riley panted from somewhere off to her side. Sure enough, it was melting away into a puddle – evidently it had been the water cannon’s main target. Stuck to it were a mixture of metal objects, including handguns and sprayers! Then again, that wasn’t a huge loss. Neither weapon was going to hit anything at the range they were staying at.

Range… It was clear Slappy was going to stop Wendy and Riley from teleporting up to the ridge to take out the soldiers. And she probably wasn’t letting them anywhere near her either. ‘Peter sends his regards.’ That had to mean he’d been able to stick around as a ghost long enough to tip her off! He’d probably warned her about the Passivation Solution trick too, so she’d stay at long range. Fine, then. She could do long range. Conjuring an oversized baseball bat, but keeping it carefully behind her, she waited until she saw the cannon’s muzzle flash. This was going to be tricky… she leaped into the air, swinging with all her strength. The bat snapped in half, but she made contact, a perfect line drive returning the cannonball to sender! There was an enormous explosion up on the hill, and she could see the red glow of something streaking away into the night sky at immense speed, trailing black smoke.

That bought her a little time. Now to get rid of the soldiers. She created a minigun, the complete weapon larger than her body, and sprayed it up at the ridge, the recoil shaking her like a jackhammer. The shadowy figures dived for cover. She whipped the gun around to the other side. “Riley!” she shouted over the buzz-saw sound of her weapon. “Get us outta here before she-”

“Wendy, look out!” his voice was filled with more fear than she’d ever heard from him before. She turned, or at least started to. Then something hit her from the side, knocking the gun out of her hands and sending her skidding through the gravel. There was the distinct CRACK of a grenade striking something. She jumped to her feet, heart racing. What had just -

Then she saw him. Riley was lying on the ground, right where she’d been standing. Green liquid was splattered all around him, and smoke poured from his body.

A grenade. He’d been shot – no, he’d warned her. He’d seen it coming, seen it was going to hit her – and pushed her out of the way. He had to have known. She remembered seeing something like this in a movie – at least once, maybe more than once. She remembered someone crying after a scene like that, maybe several guys, and the rest of the room making fun of them and throwing popcorn. Right now, there wasn’t a tear in sight. The rest of the surviving Resistance members were either looking up at the ridges, concerned for their own safety, or watching as Gene crumpled to the ground, clutching at his chest. Wendy saw it too, in slow motion. Everything was moving at a crawl.

Why? Why? He’d saved her… on purpose. Now he was curled into a ball, his eyes screwed shut. He wasn’t breathing – no, there was a breath, a strangled gasp. She’d heard that noise probably a hundred times before… three days ago, when she’d watched the toons in that apartment getting Dipped. He was dying.

Wendy couldn’t breathe either. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t scream. He’d just saved her life, at the cost of his own. Why? Why had he done it? Her life wasn’t worth anything! She was supposed to be a weapon! Expendable! So was he… so why was this horrible, burning feeling welling up inside her? She was frightened, more frightened than she’d ever been in her short life, and she’d already broken that record several times in the last twenty minutes. But this was stronger. Part of it was imagined pain, imagining what she’d have felt if he hadn’t taken the grenade for her and she was the one melting away. But part of it was the same feeling she’d gotten when she’d imagined Herschel trapped in the burning complex, or when Slappy had threatened him.

He… cared about her. That was the only way she could describe it. And she felt the same way. She hadn’t thought it was possible, not with what they both were… not with how he’d done nothing when Herschel poured the Passivation Solution down her throat. But he’d been telling her to be quiet the whole time… he was trying to protect her. That was what he was always doing, when he told her to keep her mouth shut, or when he tried to tell her how to deal with the bad feelings on the mission a few days ago, or when he’d told her the enemy might hesitate to kill.

What was it he’d said? ‘I’ll probably get melted right quick, but you’re a lot stronger than I am!... You’ve got a chance!... If we can push ‘em back for long enough -’

She was stronger, stronger than even Herschel knew. She had a chance… if she could buy enough time. But Riley didn’t have time! Just a few seconds! She couldn’t buy him any either, unless she could… wash the Dip off! The flames inside Wendy’s mind were white-hot now, but they’d burned through all the smoke and fog and dust. Everything was clear. Fragmented images jumped at her, things she’d seen and heard but hadn’t paid much attention to. The best way to wash away Dip was water. At some point before encountering Slappy, she’d seen a screaming toon covered in Dip a bit behind the perimeter, and one of their trucks spraying him with a water cannon… but one shooting actual water. And she’d seen a truck like that again, while fighting Slappy after things had gotten distorted! She knew where it was! She just hoped it wasn’t empty.

And for everyone else… she’d buy time. Wendy pulled a screen down out of thin air, the image of a small canyon in the plains where the ground had buckled downward. A Scene Change. Just as the image wrapped all the way around, she jumped forward, grabbed Riley’s tail – one of the places not covered in Dip – and teleported.

The two of them appeared right next to the truck, right where she wanted. He was screaming now, writhing on the ground. How did she fire the cannon? There was nowhere to stand! She jumped into the cab – the doors had been left open, probably by the fleeing crew – and stared at a bewildering assortment of buttons, lights, and levers. Which one? Or, which ones? Driven by panic, she forced a new lever and joystick to burst from the dashboard, seized the lever, and pulled. A torrent of water burst from the cannon above the cab. It was too high at first, but she forced it down with the joystick, driving the motors faster than they could have ever gone normally. Riley was lost in a cloud of mist. She waited for several nerve-wracking seconds, not knowing whether he’d been completely dissolved or not. Finally, she took a deep breath and pivoted the cannon away, just enough so she could see.

He was still there. He was moving, trying to sit up. Wendy breathed a shivering sigh of relief. She jumped from the cab, leaving the cannon on at full blast in case she’d missed a spot, and ran to his side. Her footsteps splashed on the soaked ground.

“What… why?...” Riley’s face was still screwed up in pain. What was left of it, at least. There were huge patches where the skin, the fur, even the flesh were gone. His right ear had a hole burned through it so large it was hanging on by just a narrow flap of skin. His eye was still closed. Wendy didn’t know if it had survived or not. The worst of it was on his body, and his arm. It ended just above the elbow, and she could see the gleam of bone on a lot of what was left. Wendy wanted to be sick. There was nothing left of his clothes, but it seemed like they’d at least made the burns on his chest a little shallower. All she could see was bright red. Scarlet ink was dripping from him, mixing with the puddle on the ground.

“You’re welcome, you idiot!” she pulled him to his feet. His right leg was pretty bad, too. She didn’t know if he’d be able to walk. She didn’t know if she’d be able to walk. Those last few moves had taken so much out of her… “You saved my life, I’m saving yours!” She half-carried, half-dragged him up into the cab.

“You didn’t leave them, did you?” he choked the words out. She pulled a blanket out of Hammerspace and laid him down on it, then produced a roll of bandages and, in a blur of movement, wrapped him up like a mummy. She wasn’t sure how much she could do for his face, but at least it would do something.

“If you mean in the Valley of Death, no! I got them hidden again – Slappy won’t be able to follow that Scene Change, so it should take her a while to find them.”

“Then you’ve gotta go back! Protect them! Don’t worry about me!”

“I can’t do anything anymore,” Wendy admitted. She was thoroughly exhausted. “There’s no way I can do another Scene Change like that. I don’t know if I can fight off Slappy… but they could have help. The Warners… Bugs Bunny… I can’t beat them by myself!” She wanted to cry. But the tears wouldn’t come. “The Resistance is finished.”

“It’s what Herschel said would happen...” Riley croaked. “Fight… to the last man...”

“I don’t care what Herschel says anymore.” Wendy gripped the seat of the fire truck hard enough that the leather cracked. “Let’s see him try to Dip me for not following orders now that I’m the only toon on his side that can still throw a pie.”

“I’m not sure we have a choice! You can’t teleport them out of here, you can’t win, you can’t give up – they’ll just kill us -”

Then something occurred to Wendy. For the first time in a while, a smile crossed her face. “No they won’t!”

“Huh?”

“Riley, you were right about them! Slappy had a chance to kill me, and she didn’t do it! She tried to get me to let her halo me, just so she wouldn’t have to! And I bet them trying to negotiate wasn’t a trick! They really were trying to get those ink donors released!”

“So?”

“So, I’m gonna use ‘em as hostages! Nobody’s gonna shoot if I’ve got a Dip gun to their heads! Hang on! I’ll be right back!” Wendy jumped out the cab and teleported one more time. She swayed on her feet and the world blurred as she reappeared. One more time… she could handle one more time after this. No, it would have to be two more. No, three. She’d have to get Riley at some point, too. She could do this…

The cell came back into focus. But it was empty. The floor was soaking wet. Her heart sank. The grate was off the drain. They must’ve tried to escape during the confusion of the battle – probably stolen a card key, hidden it under the drain somehow, and opened the door. But then the sprinklers had gotten them. No… wait! The cuffs! The cuffs would still be there if that was what had happened. She looked out into the hall. No sign of them. But what was that, on the floor? It was a cover from one of the air ducts! They’d somehow gotten in there. She didn’t care how. She crawled inside, conjuring a flashlight. Which way would they go? Well, this was an exhaust duct, right? So it would go to the exhaust filters. Those were on level… Three? No, weren’t the lower levels on a different system? She knew Level Four was.

Level Six it was. She started to head back towards the elevator… but then another idea occurred to her. She headed to the Animation Room. It couldn’t hurt… the door was locked. But… there was a black puddle coming from under the door… she tore the door open.

Smoke was pouring from the ACME Machine. And something else as well… ink. Ink was spurting from cracks in the piping. There was a mechanical grinding, screaming sound.

Wendy’s first thought was to shut it off. No, this place was falling apart anyway. There were cracks in the walls and ceilings and floors everywhere. And there was no way they were ever returning here. If it got destroyed, big deal. She just had to get what she came here for… she opened a cabinet. Perfect. 70% Acetone. 30% isopropyl alcohol. She tucked it into Hammerspace.

Then, as she was about to leave, she saw something. A locked filing cabinet, right next to the drawing desk. There were two drawers: one marked ‘Lowell,’ the other marked “Herschel.’ She’d never opened it. She’d been explicitly ordered never to open it on pain of death. She knew what was in there, though. And now, who cared if she went through their stuff? She picked the first lock. Lowell’s drawer. There was a thick stack of glossy, ledger-sized papers. Maybe now she’d finally find out Number Twenty-Four’s name. No… later. She threw them all into Hammerspace without checking the numbers. Maybe she’d tell Lowell she’d retrieved them for him. Then… something made her open the other drawer. It was almost empty. There were only three sheets of paper, all face-down. One of them was her. One of them was Riley. She tucked all three away without looking.

Now… where had those kids gone? Level Six… but where on Level Six? She looked back at the machine. Had they broken it somehow? They couldn’t have been in here… but what if they’d turned on an ink pump and it had burst some pipes? That would have overloaded it!

One more teleportation… there was no way the elevator was working. She simply reappeared next to the doors on Level Six. She’d never been down here herself… where were the air filters? Scratch that, where was a map? She finally found one, hidden on the wall in the security control room. Ridiculous. Who would check there? She located the mess of corridors were the filters were, and traced her finger down… the lights were out down here, she realized. She’d been relying on her flashlight. Maybe she should see if she could turn them back on – that would probably make them run for it, straight toward the broken elevator! Where were the circuit breakers?…

There. Electrical control room. Wendy closed her eyes, concentrated, and stepped out into another dark room. There were cabinets torn open… a small crater and burn marks on the floor… and black footprints and four empty cuffs. Wendy grinned. She tiptoed around the corner, following the tracks… and they ran into a puddle of ink. But there, in the distance, in the ink reservoir room if she remembered the map right, a wavering light was illuminating the far wall. Wendy grinned, and shut off her own light.

“Bus-ted...” she whispered.

Chapter Text

Yakko brought the frying pan down on Crazy Ivan’s head with all his strength. He was hoping to flatten him, or drive him into the ground up to his neck. But the pan just tore around the guy’s head like paper. The furious tiger made a grab for him. He jumped back, letting go of the handle and leaving Ivan wearing a wrought iron necklace.

“Duck!” Wakko shouted. Yakko jumped. He’d already seen Wakko hold up the sign warning him to as he waited behind the tiger. A wicked grin spread across Ivan’s face. He ducked. With a metallic twang, a steel cable as thick as Yakko’s arm snapped, and the end whipped by at knee height. Ivan’s legs stretched out like rubber bands as they were swept out from under him. He fell on his face, grabbing onto the ground with his claws and tearing long trenches into it, before his legs finally snapped back, catapulting him into a somersault. Dot’s excavator was already in position. He rolled straight into the waiting bucket, hard enough to dent the metal.

Yakko reached into his pocket, trying to think of what to hit the guy with next, but it was like his brain was full of warm fog. They’d already tried everything… anvils, explosives, mallets… Ivan just wouldn’t quit. A car battery, he decided. He’d clamp the leads to his ears. That would at least keep them buying time. They couldn’t afford to give up the initiative again. But he’d hesitated a little too long. As he swung the heavy battery out of Hammerspace, Ivan planted his feet solidly on the ground and pulled. The arm was ripped from the excavator. Yakko just barely had time to duck as the tiger swung. Several tons of steel whipped over his head… then continued around in a full circle, smashing the cab to pieces. Dot’s limp body flew away in a shower of broken glass and twisted metal.

“Dot!” Yakko screamed. He had to help – no, keep fighting! Keep Ivan stunned and on the defensive! The excavator arm was momentarily stationary. That was easier to reach than his body. Yakko lunged, clipping the battery leads to it and engulfing both it and Ivan in a corona of miniature lightning bolts. The mechanical arm clanked to the ground. Ivan staggered briefly, but then shook off the worst of the effects.

If they were at full strength, Yakko thought, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Ivan would have been challenging, sure, but they could have beaten him. The tiger was smarter than he looked, but he still mostly had brute strength and fairly basic tricks and teleportation. He wasn’t smart enough. But right now, their reactions had all been slowed by exhaustion. If they weren’t so worn out Dot would have been out of the cab and behind Ivan’s back long before the arm reached the cab. But right now Yakko’s head was throbbing with every heartbeat, and his arms and legs felt like they were made of Jell-O.

“Strong swing, but you’ve got a bad slice.” Dot appeared behind him, clapping a pair of hot irons together on his head and sending a cloud of steam into the chilly night air. She turned in midair and started to run without waiting to touch the ground. Ivan’s burly arm shot out and grabbed her tail. She skidded to a stop, still in midair, and let out a terrified squeak. An ice pick was already in her hand, but Wakko was faster.

“Leave. My sister. Alone!” He whirled his fist around in a circle at dizzying speed with a noise like a jet engine spooling up, and drove it into Ivan’s solar plexus. The blow knocked the wind out of him and sent him staggering backwards, but he still kept his grip. That was the danger. Ivan had trouble keeping up with all three of them, but when he did manage to hit them, it hurt. Yakko had already been squashed into a ball, tied up with his own ears, and punched so hard he crumbled into little chunks. Dot had been ground onto a lemon juicer so hard everything but her skin was liquefied. Wakko was the best off of the three of them right now: he was able to shapeshift his way out of Ivan’s grip enough that he’d taken relatively little punishment.

Dot drove her icepick up Ivan’s nose and twisted. That finally got him to let go of her tail, and knocked his eyeballs clean out of his head. As he tore the icepick free and went fumbling around, Yakko saw his chance. He sneaked up behind the enormous tiger and, just as he seized his eyeballs and stood up with a cry of triumph, Yakko unsheathed his claws and slashed around the beltline three times in rapid succession. He danced away out of reach as Ivan took a swing at him with a snow shovel.

“Nice aim!” Yakko taunted. Wait for it… now! As the tiger stood there blinking and rubbing his eyes, his athletic shorts fell apart into ribbons of fabric. Hypnosis! “Ooh.” Yakko grimaced, acting as if he was looking at something appalling. In reality, there was just orange fur, but he had to sell it. “Don’t look, sis! Wardrobe!”

Ivan looked down. His face went red as a tomato and he rapidly crossed his legs and wrapped his tail around himself. Yakko smirked. Perfect.

“Black bars! Get your black bars here!” Wakko approached with a cart full of the mentioned props.

“Give to me quickly, mal’chick!” Ivan snatched at the cart. Wakko yanked it away.

“Uh uh. They’re five dollars each!” He flashed a look to Yakko and Dot. Yakko knew immediately what that meant. Get ready.

“Dot, I think we gotta finish this now!” Yakko scrambled to her. “I can’t take much more of this...”

“I know...” Dot said shakily. She leaned against him for support. She was bleeding. Both of them were. Yakko’s face felt wet, and every time he touched it his glove came back black. By now it was hard to tell he was wearing them at all.

“Prosti, but my wallet is in my other pants! Can I owe you?” Something red trickled out of Ivan’s nose. “And box of tissues, perhaps!” Thank God. He was finally starting to crack.

“Well… all right.” Wakko handed Ivan the prop with feigned reluctance. The moment the tiger’s fingers got close, they were sucked in, followed closely by the rest of his body. Wakko ducked behind the cart and vanished, reappearing on Yakko’s other side. He swayed on his feet and mopped his brow with his hat. That was the second time he’d torn space apart. It was twice for all of them now. Rearranging the desert was one. Dot crushing one of the Human Resistance members was two for her. Yakko’s second one was a doozy. He’d actually shattered the space around Ivan’s body, skewing and rotating it on at least a dozen different planes and making the tiger look like a stained glass window that had been taken apart and put back together in the wrong order. That would have sent any normal toon to join the choir invisible. But Ivan had calmly put himself back together and stomped towards them, although he looked like a Picasso painting for about a minute afterward.

“What’s the plan?” Wakko panted.

“Way up,” Yakko replied. “Then back down.” He pointed off into the distance. He’d spotted a dead soldier with one of the backpack sprayers, and there wasn’t a massive slick of Dip around him. Either his tanks were intact and full, or intact and empty. Yakko almost wanted them to be empty. Was he really doing this? Was he really discussing murdering another toon in cold blood? No… it wasn’t murder. They didn’t have a choice. If they didn’t do this, he’d do the same to them, sooner or later. They couldn’t outlast him. He swallowed hard. “Over there. I’ll pull the trigger.” As much as he didn’t want to strike the fatal blow, he sure as hell didn’t want Wakko or Dot to have to do it either.

“I’ll start.” Dot stepped forward, rolling up imaginary sleeves. “Gimme a distraction.” She wiped ink from her nose.

The rectangular hole Wakko had torn in space and disguised as an innocuous censor bar finally spat out a long ribbon of orange fur, winking out of existence as it did so. Ivan drew himself up to his full height and stalked menacingly towards the trio. His Russian-flag-patterned shorts had returned.

“A big one or a little one?” Wakko whispered.

“Make it big.”

Yakko zoomed up, stopping on a dime right in front of him. “Hey, mister. Did you know it says ‘Gullible’ right above you?”

Ivan glowered at him. “Just how stupid do you think I am, black-and-white American pigdog? We are out of doors, there is not even a ceiling to write-”

An enormous anvil smashed down on Ivan’s head, squashing him flat. Yakko had inscribed the word ‘Gullible’ in all-capitals on the side when he summoned it. He was an honest toon if nothing else. “Was that enough for ya?” he called. A secret message.

A hand reached out from underneath the anvil, grabbed it, and tossed it at Yakko. He easily sidestepped, but only just enough. He had to keep Ivan facing the same direction. There was Dot, right behind him, teeing up with her mallet. Ivan re-inflated his body and dusted himself off. Dot swung. There was a resounding CRACK, and he rocketed up into the night sky with a fading: “Blyaaaaaaaaat!”

“Right on target,” Yakko commented as Dot put the mallet away. “Your move, Wakko.”

Wakko pulled a door frame out of his gag bag and slammed it down on the hard desert soil with a soft thump. He pulled it open. “After you.”

Yakko took a running leap through the door, Dot right behind him, finally followed by Wakko. He didn’t know exactly where it would lead, but he was completely confident his brother knew what to do. He found himself in the air, the distorted patchwork landscape spread out far below him. He could see the scattered glow of city lights on the horizon in every direction. Probably it was really just to the East and West. Conjuring a parachute, he surrendered unconditionally to gravity and angled his body to drift closer to the falling shape of the tiger. Wakko and Dot were by his side. Ivan would shake off the hammer blow right about… now! Sure enough, the tiger looked down and let out a frightened curse. Yakko looked down with grim satisfaction. Still perfectly on target.

“What’s up, doc?” Yakko asked, calmly falling in a reclining position. Bugs wasn’t around, he could steal his lines.

“Me! But not for long!” Ivan clawed helplessly at the air. “I require spare parachute immediately!”

Yakko shook his head sadly. The poor bastard had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. “Sorry pal, I don’t have one. Wakko? You got a spare?”

“Nope. Dot, you brought the spare, right?”

“Yeah.” Dot smiled sweetly and produced a large backpack. She held it just out of reach. “I’m asking five hundred for it. Can I hear five-fifty?”

A gun barrel was pressed against her nose. “Give me ve spare. Now!” Ivan growled.

“All right, all right, I’m willing to negotiate!” Dot pressed the backpack aggressively into his hands. Ivan grabbed it and strapped it on. Dot made eye contact with Yakko, then Wakko, putting her fingers in her ears, then pulled her ripcord. They followed her example immediately. That meant whatever she’d done to the backpack, it was a bad idea to be close to Ivan when he set off the trap. Probably something explosive…

Ivan pulled the ripcord. There was an enormous explosion. Yakko almost smiled. He knew her so well… But now it was coming up on the end. He’d have to be the one to do it…

He teleported, beating his siblings and Ivan to the ground. There was the dead man. His neck appeared to have been twisted around several complete rotations, so far the skin had split. His glazed, lifeless eyes stared unblinkingly up at Yakko like a fish on a bed of ice. Yakko grimaced. He sliced the straps securing the backpack to the dead soldier with his claws and carefully lifted the weapon away. It was heavy. He shook it gingerly. Something sloshed. It sounded full, or close to full.

The ground shook as Ivan slammed into it, leaving a crater. Yakko fumbled with the backpack and the spray nozzle. No straps… he was just going to have to hold it! He dragged it a few feet and braced the tanks against the ground. They were tall enough to come up past his waist. He took careful hold of the nozzle. Now, while Ivan was still down there! He had to do it! He had to pull the trigger! Gritting his teeth, he squeezed it. Nothing happened. Uh oh. The safety! Where the hell was the safety? Yakko fumbled with the sprayer head, being careful to keep it pointed away from his face.

“Ugh...” A meaty hand planted itself on the ground. It was followed by another, than Ivan’s head. His face turned from fury to surprise, then both. “Dip… you little...”

Why the hell wasn’t this working? Yakko turned a knob. Regulator. There was a hiss of air. Then something grabbed him around the throat. Something else ripped the nozzle from his hands. He clawed at his attacker, then threw a brick back behind him. It made contact. There was a grunt of pain, but Yakko felt a barrel press against his temple. Oh. Oh God. He’d messed it all up! He was going to die! He had to think of something, something to say that would distract Ivan, just for a second, so he could slip away.

“Don’t move,” Ivan threatened. “Anything funny, and this one will die.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t move!” Wakko said from somewhere to Yakko’s side. His voice shook.

“And we won’t do anything funny.” Dot’s voice was still calm, but there was a menacing bite to it. Yakko felt his ears tingle. “There’s nothing funny about this.” This was what it felt like when one of them was about to move space.

Then the pressure on Yakko’s neck vanished. He felt himself falling forward. There was a flash of light behind him, like an old camera going off.

“Now, Yakko! Now!” his siblings screamed in unison.

Yakko grabbed the barrel of the Dip thrower, pushing it away from his head. He stumbled forward, dragging the hoses connecting the sprayer to the tanks behind him, and spun on his heels. Ivan was still standing there, dumbfounded, staring at where his arms used to be. Now they were lying on the ground. Yakko could still see the echoes of a plane-shaped discontinuity distorting and rippling, and there was a long slice in the desert soil. Ivan tried to step forward, but the rope tied around his legs tripped him, and he fell flat on his face. Wakko and Dot took off running, skidding to a stop behind Yakko. His heartbeat ringing in his ears, he got a proper hold on the sprayer again, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.

A jet of green liquid blasted out, like a garden hose on full blast. Yakko was surprised by how much recoil there was. The horrible, acrid smell hit his nose, and he coughed. He let go of the trigger.

Somehow, Ivan stood up again. He took a menacing step forward, a hulking figure engulfed in smoke and covered in sticky green liquid. The rope had already dissolved. His foot splashed down in the puddle of Dip around him, and sank up to the knee. Funny, the ground was flat here. This wasn’t Toontown, the Dip shouldn’t have made a crater like that… oh. His leg was just gone. Yakko felt bile rise in his throat. But he couldn’t look away.

“Cursed Amerikinskis...” Crazy Ivan gurgled. His mismatched eyes were still glaring out from the cloud of smoke. Then they vanished. Closed? Or dissolved. Yakko backed away, still dragging the gun. How was he still talking? The tiny little burns he’d gotten on his feet were so painful… how could he be covered in the stuff and not be screaming? “You know… I would liked to have seen Montana...”

“Don’t worry,” Yakko said. It was like his mouth was on autopilot. It did that a lot when he was stressed out. “We’ve been there. It’s not that interesting.”

Ivan never replied. His body toppled forward into the pool of Dip with a splash. Yakko flinched, turning his head away and closing his eyes. But the pain never came. He tentatively opened them. There was Wakko, holding up a smoking umbrella.

It was a while before Yakko could speak – after they’d staggered to their feet and dragged themselves away from the gun and the pool of deadly liquid. “That wasn’t pretty,” he said hollowly. “But it had to be done.” Was he really quoting his old cartoons now? At a time like this? He’d rather spent a month with Baloney the Dinosaur as a roommate than do that again. Than relive any of this night again.

Tears were streaming down Wakko’s face. Dot seemed to be on the edge of consciousness. Yakko wasn’t sure whether he wanted to cry or pass out more. They’d killed someone. He’d killed someone. And it wasn’t an in-the-moment, panicked kind of thing like what Dot had done… well, it kind of was, but only because they’d screwed it up. They’d made a plan to do it, all together, and they’d put it into action, knowing it would lead to the death of another person.

Yakko stared at the desert around them. It was silent. Had they been the last ones still fighting? Probably. He checked his watch. 7:57 P.M. It was well over an hour since the sun had set. He had no idea how long it had been since the Resistance’s counterattack.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Yakko saw a brilliant yellow-white light. As he watched it grew brighter, and brighter, then exploded in a pillar of flame. He squinted into the glare. What was going on over there?

“What’s that?” asked Wakko. “Do you think someone needs our help?”

“If they do, they’re out of luck.” Yakko mopped his brow. “We’d just be in the way at this point. We should probably check on Daffy…” he yawned. “He can probably wait a few minutes, though.”

The light faded into nothing. Smoke was still rising into the sky, but it seemed like whatever had started the fire was gone now. Yakko stared at the spot for a while longer, his eyes drifting out of focus. He really needed to catch his breath before he got into any more fights. Dot did especially.

A streak of red light shot into the sky from the same direction, leaving a glowing trail behind it. It changed direction, writing the shape of letters.

“S...” Yakko read out loud. “O...” The word was, from their perspective, backwards. “S.” He jumped to his feet. SOS. Help. “Never mind, Sibs.” He tore off his ink-stained gloves and slid on a pair of new ones. “Looks like our presence might be appreciated over there.”

Calamity plunged into the pool of ink, Wendy Weasel’s hand still clenched around his throat. He flinched from the shock of the cold, dark liquid closing over his face, and instinctively shut his eyes. His head hit the concrete floor with brain-rattling force, and they bounced and rolled over and over, kicking and clawing at each other. He felt his head break the surface, but only for a moment before he was forced under again. His neck had been knocked free of her grip, but she still a hold of his right arm and his ear. He couldn’t get up! Was she trying to drown him? Too panicked to think of a better weapon, he pulled the screwdriver back out of Hammerspace and jammed it into her stomach with all his strength. Her grip slackened, and he was able to kick her away. He scrambled to his feet, gasping for air.

Toons could breathe underwater, in theory, but doing so required you to simultaneously be aware that you were underwater and thoroughly convince yourself that you could breathe it like it were air anyway. Much like defying gravity, the slightest waver in your confidence and you’d fail. Few toons mastered intentionally bending gravity, and even fewer mastered intentional water breathing. The problem was, you could practice gravity tricks by closing your eyes and walking off your kitchen table, or over a mattress, and fail a thousand times without hurting yourself, and even high falls onto hard surfaces didn’t hurt that much. But there was no way to make an accidental lungful of water, especially chlorinated swimming pool water, not agonizing. A lucky few got it right on the first try, and even if they failed later at least knew they could do it. Another few were gifted with extraordinary self-confidence and fearlessness, and could still succeed with perseverance. But for most who attempted it, even at Acme Looniversity, the memory of the first few attempts, and the resulting fear of what would happen if you didn’t get it right, messed them up for life. Furrball and Calamity were in the latter category. The school made every student try five times, and after getting water pumped from their lungs five times they’d never tried it again. Drowning wasn’t fatal, of course, but it could knock you unconscious. There was no way in hell Calamity wanted to find out what inhaling ink felt like. It was bad enough getting it up his nose.

Calamity opened his eyes just in time to see a good-sized boat anchor connect with Wendy’s shoulder, sending her stumbling sideways. She grabbed for the rope, but it was yanked back, and her feet were swept out from under her. Calamity looked up. “Nice one!” he called. Wendy came up coughing and rubbing her eyes. For a moment Calamity wondered why – he’d been caught off guard too. Then he noticed the black polkadots on his vision. The goggles! He hadn’t intended them as swim goggles, but apparently they worked.

Wendy finally got a grip on the rope, and pulled with all her strength. Calamity’s first thought was that she was only wasting her time – Furrball had tied the other end off to the railing, and wasn’t holding it anymore. He conjured a hammer and did his best to be quiet as he crept behind her. The ink was up to both of their chests, making it almost impossible to move without splashing, but the torrent gushing out of the destroyed tank would mask the noise. But the other half of the catwalk tore partway free of the wall, swinging out over the pit and twisting. Furrball’s fur stood on end and he clung to the bent railing for dear life, struggling to simultaneously strike a match and keep a grip on a stick of dynamite with one hand.

Calamity swung, but Wendy whirled around, intercepting his swing with a length of metal pipe and nearly knocking the hammer from his hands. He tried to hit her from another angle, but she caught the blow again and used the pipe as a lever to push his hammer aside, then thrust it forward like a pool cue. Calamity tried to duck, but ended up with his entire muzzle stuck inside the pipe. His first instinct was to pull free – but now he had control of it – sort of. He grabbed the pipe, dropping the hammer and letting it disappear so he wouldn’t trip over it later. Furrball had finally gotten the dynamite lit, but he was holding it in his mouth. Calamity hoped he didn’t just blow his own teeth off. He had to keep Wendy’s attention on him. She knocked him onto his back and his head went under again, but then there was an earsplitting BANG and she was knocked away. He got up again, spitting out ink. It tasted about how he imagined licking a thousand markers would taste. The left side of his goggles was leaking a bit now. He kept that eye closed. A black wave crashed against the walls, and rebounded. Ink rained down. Calamity hoped it would force Wendy to close her eyes again, but she whipped out an umbrella and a pistol, taking three shots at Furrball before she finally hit his hand and he plummeted into the ink with a yowl of pain and a splash.

Wendy’s attention was still on the ripples where Furrball had landed. He wasn’t coming up? Was he trying to swim under the surface? Calamity realized he now had the length of pipe. He copied Wendy’s technique of using it like a pool cue, and struck right between her shoulder blades. She stumbled again, firing off a wild shot that sparked off of something behind Calamity. The second thrust she caught, twisting the pipe out of his hands and swinging it in the same motion. He raised his right arm just in time to block, but the force still nearly knocked him over and he felt the robotic arm click and briefly jam when he tried to move it again. How long would the thing last? She swung again, feinting for his right side, then blindsiding him. The left lens of his goggles was gone now. Half his headlights went out.

Then Furrball burst out of the ink right behind her with a furious yowl, swinging his claws. Wendy spun around and raised the pipe, but it was sliced into neat sections. Calamity saw a telltale glint in the air. He’d extended them! His physical claws were nowhere near reaching Wendy, but she let out out a startled squeak and staggered backwards, putting her hand to her face. Steam rose from her glove. Furrball couldn’t swim that fast, could he? Of course! The ink was opaque, so she couldn’t block them from teleporting if they were submerged! They could use that to get away! But they’d have to both dive at the same time, or get her distracted for a couple seconds, or one of them would have her undivided attention. Explosives? No, they’d just get wet. But a SCUBA tank and a harpoon gun might work. He had the first part conjured and was about to throw it into the water at her feet when there was a burst of light and an explosion. Furrball was sent flying into the wall.

How had she done that? Nitroglycerine? That was already liquid and usually conjured in sealed bottles so it wouldn’t get wet. But before he had time to think about it she lunged, throwing what looked like a punch. He felt the searing heat and dazzling light of an explosion, and had a brief sensation of flying backwards. He hit something hard, but then… ink was everywhere, all around him, swirling and turning him over and over. He clawed for the surface, but felt only a metal wall. He couldn’t see. The blow had driven the air from his lungs. He couldn’t breathe!

He had to focus… wherever he was right now, he had to get out of there. The exit sign. That was where he had to aim for. Clapping his hand over the remaining lights, he felt the pressure of the ink around him disappear. There was metal under his feet. What had happened? The other ink vat? Had he been knocked into it so hard he burst through the wall and ended up inside? Then a hand grabbed him and pulled him away.

Coughing and shaking himself, Calamity opened his eyes. Furrball was right in front of him, wringing ink out of his tail. He put a finger to his lips and held up a sign. “We gotta get out of here!”

“I know.” Calamity held up another sign, looking around.

Furrball’s eyes widened. “Don’t look back!” he signed. “Ink room’s that way! She’ll see your light! This way!” he pointed ahead.

Calamity nodded, and followed him down the corridor. He shivered. It was always chilly underground, but he’d gotten used to it. But the ink was just as cold as the air and it had soaked him to the skin.

Furrball pulled out a larger flashlight and shone it down the corridor. “Let’s go! No footprints!” he signed. He took Calamity’s hand again, and an instant later they were around a corner.

Calamity heard footsteps approaching. “We gotta hide!” he whispered. He tore off his headlight, shoving it back into Hammerspace, and looked around. The mechanical arm had gone stiff now. He wanted to take it off, but there was no time. He pointed urgently to a door-height cabinet, concentrated, and stepped into thin air. A moment later, Furrball joined him inside. They perched precariously on top of some plastic tubs. Furrball’s light was off, but through the crack another approaching light was visible. It slowly passed by, accompanied by heavy, panting breathing. Calamity didn’t dare breathe until it had vanished. “Why’s she down here?” he finally whispered.

“Must’ve noticed we set off the alarms,” replied Furrball.

“No – I mean why her specifically? If there’s still fighting, shouldn’t she be out there? Do you think...” he swallowed hard. “Do you think they won?”

“Maybe...” said Furrball. “But why wouldn’t she go get help to fix the machine? That’s harder for them to replace than us!”

“Maybe she thought we broke it! And we got the cuffs off, so we’d be dangerous to anyone they sent down to fix it, right?”

“You’re right… Calamity, we’ve gotta get outta here… if our side lost… the Feds still know where this place is, so they’ll probably move to another hideout, and take us away again! And they’ll probably know how we escaped this time and not let it happen again!”

Calamity felt himself shivering again. “You’re right…” he felt around for a latch on the cabinet door, then abandoned the idea and teleported back out. “Lets’ head back and get to the vents again. We’ll get Kenny, and...”

“We can’t!” Furrball was beside him again. “Level 5’ll be crawling with guards! We gotta get out while we still got a-”

An enormous impact sent them flying off their feet. Calamity skidded into the wall, sparks trailing from his mechanical arm, and bounced off a wall. What was left of the arm came away as he stood up. Wendy was back, still not holding any weapon. Smoke was rising from her left glove. Explosives? She’d detonated them in her own hand? In her other hand she held a flashlight, but the beam was unsteady, wavering from place to place. Her hand was shaking. She was hunched over, her blue eyes wider than before, and she was still dripping with ink… of two colors. A set of parallel gashes on her face were dripping scarlet into the black puddle around her.

For a brief moment, Calamity had an idea that they could beat her. But then he remembered. This wasn’t just the toon they’d been helpless against when they were chained up in a cell. This was the toon that had made mincemeat out of Babs and Buster, and if the Resistance had won she’d probably beaten or even killed someone much stronger already. “Run for it!” he shouted. He headed for the corner they’d ducked around, but she was waiting around it with a flamethrower. There was a burst of heat and he sped away, his tail on fire, making it to another T junction. Furrball’s tail was already disappearing down the left path. If he wasn’t an idiot, he’d be teleporting to go down the right. Calamity guessed correctly and joined him, skidding painfully into the wall as he rounded the corner thanks to the ink on his feet.

“Come on!” Furrball was waving him around another corner. “I can see the elevator! It’s right through this door!” Then his eyes widened. “Behind you!”

Calamity ducked. He felt something nick the tip of his ear and there was a whistle. When he looked up, Furrball was up against the wall several feet in the air, standing on the lowest two of at least a dozen quivering knives. Wendy skidded up to him, pulling out a glass bottle and smashing it over his head. “Furrball!” Calamity ran to help him, pulling out a bomb. Unlit. “Damnit!” He fumbled for a match. Then something yanked him into the air. Both bomb and matchbook rolled harmlessly away. A net! He was caught in a net!

Furrball sprang off the knives, vaulting over Wendy’s head. In a flash, she pulled one of the knives out of the wall and brought it down on his tail. He screamed. Calamity worked one of his hands free and pulled out a knife of his own, desperately slicing through the bindings. He cut through the last of them and tumbled to the ground just in time to see Furrball get his tail free, only to get hit in the head with an enormous pipe wrench. It only looked like a little tap, but Furrball slumped against the wall.

“Get away from him!” Calamity grabbed his knife and charged. His feet finally got a little traction, but he still wasn’t quick enough. Wendy hooked the pipe wrench around Furrball’s neck and spun the screw, tightening it down. Furrball came to, making a choking, gagging sound and clawing helplessly at the weapon.

“Don’t move!” Wendy snarled. She drew another knife. “This is Passivation Solution! Move and he gets it!”

Passivation solution… Furrball saw something red running down Furrball’s face. Ink. She wasn’t bluffing. What would happen if a toon drenched in it got stabbed?

“Drop the knife!” Wendy held her own under Furrball’s chin. She stared at Calamity, unblinking, as Furrball went limp again. Her hand was shaking again. “It’ll kill him, ya know? Lowell tested it on one of his old toons! He’ll bleed out and he’ll be dead!”

Calamity couldn’t tell if she was bluffing, but he couldn’t take the chance.

Wendy reached into Hammerspace, then swore under her breath and withdrew the same knife again. “Walk over here and roll in that puddle!” she ordered, dragging Furrball a bit away. “Touch those knives and I’ll kill him! I only need one of you!”

Calamity nodded silently, and walked slowly towards the spilled Passivation Solution. His entire body was trembling, and he felt tears well up in his eyes. After coming this far… after they’d come so close… his best friend was going to die, if not now than later, when they weren’t useful anymore.

Then it hit him. ‘I only need one of you.’ That was it. “Please… just let him go!” Calamity stammered. He wished he could have signed this so badly, but if he reached into Hammerspace… He kept his hands in the air. You said you only need one of us, right? So take me!” Now he wasn’t stuttering anymore. “Let Furrball go! It – it doesn’t matter anymore if he tells someone about this place, right? The Feds already know where it is!”

Wendy’s hands kept shaking. Her teeth clenched, but she continued to stare Calamity down. She wasn’t giving him any chance to teleport. This was an act of desperation. He didn’t think it would have any chance of working, not against a toon drawn just to kill her own kind. But he had to try. He lay down in the puddle, rolling over and over, wincing as the broken glass cut into him. He started to reach towards one of the knives. He’d made sure he got his chest completely covered. He had one more option. He’d make a demand of his own. He’d threaten that if she killed Furrball, he’d kill himself so they’d have zero ink donors.

But then, something happened that Calamity had never expected. Wendy Weasel’s eyes widened even further, and shimmered. The knife fell from her hand. She blinked, but Calamity was too shocked to take the opportunity to do anything. The wrench crumbled into nothingness, and Furrball took a gasping, shuddering breath.

There were tears in the weasel’s eyes.

Chapter Text

“Don’t move!” Wendy snarled. "This is Passivation Solution! Move and he gets it!”

The coyote’s eyes widened, but he didn’t move.

“Drop the knife!” Wendy held a knife to the cat’s head. She stared at Calamity, unblinking, as Furrball went limp again. Her hand was shaking again. “It’ll kill him, ya know? Lowell tested it on one of his old toons! He’ll bleed out and he’ll be dead!” It was a bluff. Lowell hadn’t tested it. If it didn’t work, the result could be a haloed toon, and that represented a security risk. But Riley had tested it. It wouldn’t kill him, and she couldn’t halo him and lose one of her hostages.

She fought the urge to blink. After getting ink in her eyes it was painful to keep them open very long, but she couldn’t take her eyes of the coyote for even a split-second. She reached into Hammerspace. She needed another bottle of Passivation Solution. Uh oh. She’d only taken the one. She swore under her breath, kicking herself for just grabbing it without looking for another. She had to think fast. Wait… most of it had spilled on the floor! She could make him cover herself in it! He had to be vulnerable, so she could be sure she could knock him out. She couldn’t risk a prolonged fight, not when the rest of the Resistance could be slaughtered any minute!

Then… the coyote’s words, his tone, his expression, and the terrified look in his eyes broke down the final barrier in Wendy’s mind. She’d already known, subconsciously, but she told herself it was just her and Riley who were different. The other toons just anthropomorphized, so they hesitated to kill, and she and he truly cared only because they were defective, because they were made wrong. But then it occurred to her. If anthropmorphization was just a creature’s brain tricking it into believing something that wasn’t human was… then how did humans know other humans were human? What was the difference? And the coyote… he was willing to die for the cat. They’d both looked scared out of their skins, but that had doubled when she held the knife to the cat’s throat. The look he gave her as he begged for the other’s life and offered his own was the same one that had been on Riley’s face when he lay on the ground after taking the grenade for her.

And it wasn’t just him. They’d both hit her in the back when she was distracted by the other. They could have run. They’d both tried to protect each other when she snuck into their cell, even when they were in the white cuffs, when they knew they couldn’t possibly have a chance. The bunnies were the same. They’d fought her the same way, always protecting the other. And they’d gone ballistic when she’d taunted them with the vial of Furrball’s ink. Then there were some of the toons she’d helped kill… no, she’d killed them. They’d tried to shield each other with their bodies, or clutched at each other even as they dissolved into nothing. They were all like that.

The knife fell from Wendy’s trembling hand. The pipe wrench dissolved into nothing. She finally blinked, and felt tears run down her face.

It wasn’t just Lowell who was wrong. Herschel was wrong. The entire Resistance was wrong about toons. Completely and totally wrong. They were no different from humans.

Calamity watched, amazed, as the toon who’d been trying to kill them just moments ago, and threatened Furrball’s life, fell to her knees. Her blue eyes shimmered with tears, and she seemed to stare straight through Calamity, straight through the wall, off into infinity.

He got to his feet, brushing off broken glass. That really hurt… he was pretty sure he was bleeding. Furrball stood up as well, scrambling away from Wendy and gasping for breath. Calamity looked at the knives… one push from Furrball, one stab from him, and… hell no. He wasn’t doing that. He was ready to kill a grown man aiming a Dip gun at him. But this wasn’t that.

“What’d I miss?” Furrball signed.

“Long story,” Calamity signed back.

“Did you beat her? I passed out.”

Calamity shook his head. Wendy’s eyes were closed. This was their chance… they could get to the elevator. But something made him stay. Ever since he’d heard Herschel’s plan, he’d been terrified of an inhuman, emotionless living weapon being created with his stolen ink. But that wasn’t the toon he was looking at now. That wasn’t even the toon who’d threatened his life in the cell days earlier, saying she did it to preserve her own. That wasn’t the toon who’d taunted and teased Herschel, but dropped the tough act when Passivation Solution was poured down her throat. That wasn’t the frightened-looking raccoon who’d given the animator the hammer.

“Go,” Wendy whispered. “You win. I won’t hurt you. I’ll think of another way.”

“Another way?” Calamity repeated.

“Let’s go before she changes her mind!” Furrball signed. He gestured into the distance. Calamity could just make out what looked like elevator doors.

Calamity shook his head. “Idea,” he signed. “Trust me?” Then he spoke. “Another way to what? What did you want us for?”

“I told you.” Wendy opened her eyes. She raised one hand and tugged on her glove. Black ink poured out. She repeated the process with the other. “You win. The Resistance is pretty much destroyed. I just wanted to use you two as hostages so they’d let who’s left go. But now… I dunno.”

That answered Calamity’s question. He pulled a flashlight out of Hammerspace and reluctantly started towards the elevator.

“Wait.” Wendy padded up beside them. “I answered your question. I’ve got some for you.” She paused. “Do you two… love each other?”

“Huh? No, we’re… we’re just fr-”

“Are you kidding me?” Furrball spun around. “What kinda question’s that? Calamity’s my best friend! I’ve known him since, like, the third grade! We’re practically brothers!”

“Brothers?” Wendy repeated softly.

“Yeah.” Furrball nodded vigorously. “Hey, stop blushing. What did you even do, anyway?”

“I tried to use you as a hostage to get you to give up,” said Wendy, “And he told me to let you go and take him instead.”

“Huh?” Furrball narrowed his eyes. “What the hell, Clam?” He stomped up to him, jabbing him in the chest. “Dude, if anyone does that, it’s me! You’ve got a family! You think I wanna have to tell your Dad you – let yourself die for me?”

“Sorry...” Calamity didn’t know anything else he could say. He hadn’t really been thinking about anything beyond the next five minutes at the time. It was a long time since he’d heard that nickname, though. A bit over a month, to be exact. He smiled. God… they were actually possibly going to live, weren’t they?

“Family?” Wendy kept saying the words like they were completely new to her. “Riley and Herschel are my family, aren’t they? And I guess Ivan, but he’s more like that one uncle who always gets drunk at weddings...”

“Who?” asked Calamity.

Wendy gave him a look that was somewhere between a glare and a smirk. She had a new pair of gloves on, and wiped her eyes. “Herschel’s the guy who drew me. He’s kinda old, got a combover and a peg leg, and does this sometimes!” She twitched, and one of her eyes jittered and rolled independently of the other.

“We know who that is!” protested Furrball.

“Riley Raccoon’s the first toon Herschel drew for the Resistance. Crazy Ivan’s the third. But Herschel tried to replace me with him.” She clenched her fist, and the air around it shimmered. “And he’s a total dick anyway.”

They finally reached the elevator. Calamity looked at the card key reader. Wendy looked at him.

“Well?” she asked. “Didn’t you steal a card to get out of your cell? Did you throw it away?”

Calamity gave Furrball a nervous look. He figured it couldn’t hurt. She didn’t have a problem with the fact that they were escaping, and said the Resistance was gone. He didn’t think she’d do anything to Kenny. “Actually… a guard helped us escape. He opened the door for us and then turned the Dip sprinklers on until they ran out, and then the water ones.”

Wendy whistled.

“But he’s probably still stuck in the control room!” Calamity continued. He conjured a plasma cutting torch and a face shield. “Level Five’s probably a collapsing mess too, and the ventilation’s down! We’ve gotta get him out of this place! Put on some of these and stand back!”

“Wrong door, idiot.” Wendy dragged down a screen from thin air, and suddenly they were standing in front of a small, but very solid-looking steel door. Her knees trembled, and she took a deep breath. She banged on the door. “Hey! Open sesame! You still alive in there?”

“Probably not after you scared him to death,” said Furrball. “Kenny! It’s us! We’re okay! Can you open the door?” he shouted.

“The power’s still out,” said Calamity. “It probably won’t open. Kenny! Step away from the door! We’re gonna get you out of here!”

Even with the plasma torch, it took a surprisingly long time to cut a hole in the door big enough for Kenny to crawl through. Furrball cooled the red-hot cut edges with a bottle of seltzer water.

Kenny stared dumbfounded at the three toons. Then he recognized Wendy, and started, pressing himself against the wall. She rolled her eyes.

“If I was gonna kill you, I’d’ve blown a hole in this thing!” she said. But she was leaning against the wall for support. “One… two… three… no, four more now...” she panted. “Gotta get outta the place… the truck!”

“We’ve gotta go,” said Calamity. “I’ll explain later. I don’t quite know what’s going on yet either, but she’s… sort of on our side, I think?”

“Herschel was wrong about toons, all right?” Wendy snapped. “And Lowell, and everyone else! I was wrong! I’ve just gotta… I gotta fix everything!”

Kenny’s eyes widened as much as a human’s could. He crawled carefully out of the hole in the door. “The power’s out, so the elevator’s probably broken,” he said.

“We know,” Furrball and Calamity said in unison.

“Why are you covered in…” he sniffed. “Is that ink?”

“The Acme Machine...” Calamity didn’t want to explain fully again, since he didn’t completely understand it himself. “It went into a kind of runaway, where it makes a huge amount of extra ink and bursts the supply pipes.”

“Okay...” Kenny took a deep breath. “Lead the way. Do I need this?” he pulled a handgun from its holster.

“I don’t… think so?” Furrball said uncertainly.

“We’re leaving now.” Wendy set up a folding door and swung it open. There was a desert landscape, with odd-looking rolling hills, on the other side. “Go now! I can’t hold it open very long!”

Calamity rushed through, followed by the others. “I thought you couldn’t teleport in or out of the complex!” he said, looking around. The door vanished. Behind them was an olive drab truck with some sort of spray cannons. On the ground there was a large puddle in front of it where the gravel and sand had been blasted away.

“The seals are broken...” Wendy panted. “Wait here! Don’t… go… in the cab or...” she dashed away behind the truck.

“What?” Kenny stared down at Furrball and Calamity. “Did she… defect or something? And where is this place?”

“Isn’t it outside your hideout?” Calamity looked around. In the distance, he saw an explosion light up the sky.

“I don’t think so… those mountains look kinda familiar, but...”

Then Calamity heard footsteps. One set small, one set larger, and with a limp.

“What in the – Number Fifteen, what is this? You’ve abandoned the Resistance twice!” That was Herschel’s voice! Calamity stiffened. “If you have a way of escaping, use it, but otherwise, Lowell’s orders stand! We fight to the last-”

Wendy spun around as the two stomped around the truck. “Number Fifteen is dead ,” she growled. “It’s Wendy. And I’m not taking orders anymore!”

“You...” Herschel made a choking noise. Then he made a worse one when he saw Calamity, Furrball, and Kenny. “Reavis? Explain to me what’s going on here, please!”

Kenny looked petrified. Furrball took the opportunity to snatch the gun out of his hand and pocket it. “Uhh… Herschel! It’s, uh, exactly what it looks like!” the former guard stammered.

“Look in the cab!” Wendy hopped up. Calamity had to conjure a stepladder for him and Furrball. They were too short to see otherwise. Something was wrapped in red-stained bandages. A toon, he realized! One half of his face was the raccoon he’d seen, the other was nothing but a mess of ink. His legs felt weak. He climbed down from the ladder as fast as he could, cringing from sympathetic pain.

“Jesus...” Kenny whispered.

“Riley’s hurt really bad,” said Wendy. “He almost died… he thought he was going to… if I hadn’t saved him… he gave his life for me! And these two...” she made a visible effort to compose herself. “Did for each other.”

Herschel glared. “ That was why you vanished? You should have left him! He’s clearly no longer able to fight!”

There was a spark in Wendy’s eyes. Her fists clenched, and Calamity felt a burst of the pins and needles he’d experienced the first time the weasel was in his cell. She jumped down from the truck cab and advanced towards Herschel. “Don’t say that!” she shouted. “He’s… don’t you get it, Herschel! You’re wrong about toons! Lowell’s wrong! Everybody’s wrong! Except that guy, I guess he must’ve figured it out eventually...” she jabbed a finger at Kenny, who appeared to be seriously contemplating crawling under the truck. “I don’t think we’re any different from humans!”

Herschel’s eye twitched. His hand trembled as he pointed at Wendy. “You’re artificial! You’re weapons! And you have abandoned your post! The Resistance needs you!”

“What Resistance? There’s what, twenty or thirty left? No guns, no Machine… just me.” She tapped her head. “And I don’t care anymore! Lowell can eat crow and give up if he wants, or they can all die! I just care about you and Riley!”

Herschel stood stalk-still.

“You’re… I think you’re like my family!” Wendy took a step closer. “That’s why I can’t hate you, even after all you did to me… even after everything you told me is wrong!” she offered her hand. “Let’s go! We can’t teleport out of here, but this truck still works! It can get us far enough away, and then I’ll scene change us somewhere they’ll never catch us! We can be your family!”

Herschel turned and walked away. “So this is how it ends,” he said grimly. “Betrayed by my own creation a second time. I should have Dipped you as soon as Number Twenty-Five was complete. No, I should have Dipped you the moment I saw even the faintest hint of disobedience...”

Wendy dashed in front of him, blocking his way. “Isn’t this what you wanted?” she cried. “It’s what you wanted! That’s what you said before – you just wanted a child! Well, you have one!” She leaped into his arms, putting hers over his shoulders. Two pairs of fiery blue eyes met.

Calamity remembered that. That was what Herschel had said, just before he’d poured the Passivation Solution down Wendy’s throat. That he’d wanted a child of his own, but couldn’t have one, and tried to animate one. Even though everything Herschel had done was evil, he silently begged the old animator to accept it, reject the monster he must have become through trauma and brain damage caused by the animation process.

But Herschel recoiled. He threw Wendy to the ground with more force than was necessary, and stumbled back, almost tripping over a rock. “Don’t fucking touch me!” he snarled. “You are not. My. Child!”

Wendy got to her feet slowly. Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Why not? You said the first one you made hated you, or – it treated you like a toy, right? I’m standing right here telling you I want you to be my Dad! Can’t you just listen for once?”

“That thing showed me the truth!” Herschel roared. “You’re demons! All of you! You’re worse – I made you to be a monster, a necessary evil!”

“Oh yeah?” Wendy bared her teeth. She started towards him, slowly at first, then in a lunge. “Then why don’t you show me? You can show all these people too, while you’re at it!” she tackled him to the ground, placing her hand on his forehead. Calamity was pulled off his feet and skidded towards her. Kenny ended up on his knees. “Fine, if it’s that bad… I’ll get you out of there, then I’ll leave you somewhere safe and Riley and I can be a family on our own if you hate us that much! But I want to see it for myself. You know what a flashback is, don’t you Daddy?”

Calamity heard the faint glissando of a harp in the background. His vision blurred, and he no longer felt his feet touch the ground. Then he could see and here again, but like he was inside a movie. He saw a young man with fiery blue eyes and slicked-back hair, in a tuxedo, walking up the aisle of a church, surrounded by people. He was beaming. The scene blurred again and jumped forward. The young man – Herschel – was placing a ring on the woman’s hand. It blurred again. They were in a dimly lit room in their underwear, laughing. Herschel’s hand moved towards her chest.

“Whoops! Let’s not see that, shall we?” Wendy’s voice said from nowhere in particular.

Then the scene changed again. The woman was a little older, a bit rounder – especially in the belly. She was sitting in what looked like a doctor’s office, crying. Herschel was talking to an apologetic-looking man in a white coat. Then another change. Herschel and Mrs. Wilson, smiling as Herschel rubbed her belly. It was round again.

Then Mrs. Wilson was lying on a hospital bed, alone, crying into a thin pillow. Herschel was outside, arguing with a doctor. Calamity caught the words “Hysterectomy” and “Completely infertile” and “The fetus was already dead.”

So that was it… Herschel said they couldn’t conceive. But what Calamity saw next shocked and disgusted him. There was no sound, but Herschel was shouting, towering over Mrs. Wilson, and she was crying again. Then he was in a bar, talking to a black-haired woman who looked a bit younger than Herschel’s wife had been at the wedding. Then a different woman was smiling at him as she turned the key to an apartment. And then… Herschel’s wife shouting at him, and him shouting back.

After that, Herschel was alone. He sat alone, staring at a picture. Then he flung it at the wall, shattering it. He stood alone in a room decorated with polka dots, with a crib in the corner. He sat alone in a bar. He sat alone in a dark living room, staring at a TV, surrounded by glass bottles. Half of them were empty. Then Herschel was talking to some other people Calamity didn’t recognize, and then he was sitting at a writing desk. A pile of crumpled up papers filled the wastebasket beside him, and there were a couple of liquor bottles there too, but he was smiling as he finished the outline of a small cartoon creature, a bear with a t-shirt, no pants, and a propeller beanie hat.

Then there was a scene of the men Herschel had talked to before letting him into a darkened room. Before them stood an enormous machine like the one in the basement of Acme Looniversity, or Level Five of the Resistance’s base. Herschel started to strap himself into the chair on the side, and one of his friends swabbed his arm with rubbing alcohol and affixed a needle to a piece of rubber tubing.

Then there was sound again. Herschel carried something wrapped in a blanket into his house. Calamity noticed he looked a little older now, a couple gray hairs starting to appear. But he was beaming again. And he was the same in the next few scenes, and the little bear with deep blue fur, a white stomach, and a green shirt and cap was too. Herschel tucking the child into bed at night. Herschel reading it a story, and then the child carefully sounding out the words on a cardboard book. Herschel tossing a baseball, and the child gleefully pulling a baseball glove out of nowhere and leaping into the air to catch it.

What? This didn’t make any sense! These were Herschel’s memories? But he’d said his surrogate child had turned on him! That it was a vicious monster! How did any of this fit in? Was Herschel lying? But if he was, how had he come to hate toons so much?

Then came another unhappy scene. Herschel was sitting at his writing desk, face tense as he scribbled something on a piece of paper – it looked like a logo. His hand twitched. The line he was drawing went off course. The bear came into the room holding a baseball.

“Play with me, Daddy!” he said happily.

Herschel crumpled the paper up and threw it to the side, missing the wastebasket. He swore under his breath and turned around, glaring. “I’ve told you a thousand times Henry, don’t disturb me while I’m working!”

“But – I – you promised-”

Herschel stood up, flinging a pencil at the young toon. “Get out!” he screamed. “And close the door! I work day in and day out to put food on the table, most of which you eat, and you don’t even have the common courtesy to give me a little goddamn piece and quiet!” He followed Henry out of the room, continuing to shout.

Then the scene changed again. Herschel was screaming at the cowering bear in the same back yard where they’d been playing. A window was broken. A baseball bat was lying on the ground. Herschel had the ball. He flung it at Henry’s head and stomped back into the house, slamming the screen door. His eye twitched, and his face contorted into an unnatural expression.

“Play with me, Daddy!” Henry threw a baseball at the back of Herschel’s head as he ate breakfast.

Another scene. Herschel shouting at Henry again. There was writing all over the wall. It looked like crayon.

“Play with me, Daddy!” Henry jumped onto Herschel’s bed and tackled him. Herschel groaned and rolled over. “Wanna go bowling?” He pulled a bowling ball out of Hammerspace and dropped it on Herschel’s head. Calamity winced, but the man’s head compressed perfectly. A cartoonish bump rose up.

Calamity remembered the lecture he’d gotten from his father about this. He was a bit older than Henry looked – probably a lot older than he was. Rough play, and experimenting with your powers, was normal for any young toon, especially a talented one. But his father told him he had to be careful, and especially careful with humans, because it was a lot harder to force cartoon physics onto a non-toon person or object than to do something that had the potential to seriously injure or kill if you didn’t. He’d also warned him that most humans got scared by things like that, too, and even if they knew that toons could pull their punches they wouldn’t know whether the one shoving a stick of dynamite down their pants knew what they were doing, or even if they intended to hurt them. But Herschel was an animator. Surely he’d know.

But Herschel went ballistic. The scene cut several times, and the clock on the wall was slightly different, but he was still yelling, and occasionally hitting, and Henry was still crying. And some of the things he was saying… should have adopted a real child, should never have created Henry, the bear was trying to kill him, he was an ungrateful monster, and so on.

There were several more scenes like that. Herschel was occasionally in a good mood, but more and more often he was grumbling over his desk, or over the newspaper. There were more scenes of yelling and screaming, and worst of all when his voice went cold , when Henry was in trouble at school, or Henry didn’t mow the lawn, or when a plate got broken in the kitchen because he tried to practice juggling. And the “Play with me, Daddy!”s were accompanied by more and more violent attempts, until one day, as Herschel stormed across the room in the wake of an attempt which had involved nothing but a paper airplane, an enormous steel weight fell from the ceiling. This, at least, was just as Herschel had described. Herschel reacted just in time, and only his leg was caught, but the weight crashed through the floor and into the basement, dragging Herschel with it. He lay there broken and bloody, his leg still pinned.

Henry walked up to the hole in the floor and giggled. “Daddy, you’re supposed to catch it!”

Herschel stared up at his son with a look of complete terror, and the same spread across the young bear’s face as a red puddle slowly spread across the basement floor. Henry vanished in an instant. He appeared by Herchel’s side, and grabbed his arms, dragging him out from under the weight. Part of Herschel’s leg came off in the process. He spoke again, in a panic-filled voice. The propeller on the beanie he always wore was going so fast it almost lifted off the ground. It seemed to do that whenever Henry was upset. “Dad, I’m sorry! I just wanted you to play for once! I didn’t mean to – what do I do? How do I fix this?” But most of the words were blurred and distorted. Only ‘Play’ was loud and clear. Was that all Herschel had truly heard?

The man let out a gurgling noise. The frightened bear lifted him up by his shoulders. He tried to carry him toward the stairs, like a boy carrying an oversized doll or stuffed toy, but Herschel screamed in pain as the mangled stump of his leg dragged along the floor. Henry flinched and covered his head, and Herschel fell to the ground. He tried again, conjuring a little wooden doll. Strings appeared from his hand, lifting it up into the air, and strings appeared over Herschel, lifting him gently and carrying him up the stairs. Henry raced to the phone, dialed a random number, and loudly asked how to call an ambulance. A few seconds later he hung up, dialed just three digits, placed a tape recorder by the phone and pressed ‘play,’ and vanished out the back door. Herschel lay on the ground, shaking and twitching. His face contorted into a grin Calamity didn’t even know humans were capable of, and he began to laugh.

The next scenes were of Herschel in an ambulance, then unconscious in an operating room. In the next, he was awake, but in a wheelchair, with a somber-looking doctor talking to him again. This time, Herschel was the one crying.

Later still was Herschel at home in a wheelchair. One leg ended in a crude fake foot. He was talking on the phone with someone. Calamity caught the words: “So how do I make it? What’s the recipe?”

It seemed the recipe was too complicated, because later Herschel answered the door on crutches. Some nasty-looking men brought in several metal jugs, and a large handful of cash was exchanged. Herschel poured it into buckets, and kept them in every room for several days.

Then there was a knock at the door. Herschel stiffened.

“Dad?” came a small voice.

“Go away!” Herschel wheeled himself toward one of the buckets. Calamity couldn’t feel his body, but he still tensed, remembering Herschel’s account. He knew how this was going to end.

“Dad? Dad, I’m – I’m sorry!” The knock came again. Herschel stared at the door. Then a lock clicked, and another door creaked open somewhere. Henry approached. His fur was disheveled, and he had a black eye. His shirt was torn, and the propeller on his hat was bent. It squeaked as it slowly pathetically spun.

There was a look of utter terror on Herschel’s face.

Henry walked closer, reaching behind his back and pulling something from Hammerspace. It was a crudely hand-written note. “I got the doctors to tell me about your leg – there’s an animator in Chicago, he can make fake legs and arms and stuff! I don’t think it’s legal, and they talk sometimes, but they’re almost as good-”

“Stay away from me, you freak!” Herschel squealed. He grabbed the bucket of Dip and flung it all over his son. Calamity wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to look away. He wanted to throw up. But the image was being projected directly into his mind, and he couldn’t do anything to block it out. The little bear screamed. He begged for help – he begged for his father to help him. Smoke filled the room. But Herschel just wheeled his chair back, his face like stone, and said quietly to the smoking puddle: “You’re not my son. You were never my son.”

The flashback ended abruptly. Calamity stumbled away, falling over backwards. He shakily got to his feet, tears in his eyes.

“What the fuck?” Kenny murmured. “That’s fucked up. You’re fucked up. I swear to god, if...” he reached for his holster, and noticed it was empty. “Whichever one of you took my fuckin’ gun, you just saved this son of a bitch’s life.”

But Wendy was standing completely still. Her arms hung limply at her sides. Her eyes were wide, and twin rivers of tears flowed from them, making a small puddle around her. “You lied...” she whispered. “You lied about everything...”

Sweat was dripping down Herschel’s face. “Those – those memories aren’t real!” he stammered. He got to his feet and started to back away. “That thing must have – have planted fake ones – to use against me!”

“Liar.” Wendy’s voice was like a knife that had just been brought out of a bath of liquid nitrogen. “Everything was a lie. The entire Resistance was built on a lie.” She clenched her fists. The air shimmered around her gloves. Calamity started to feel the heat… then a horrific feeling. It was like… he couldn’t even describe it. In his peripheral vision, he saw people cheering as a TV showed corpses lying uncovered around a smoking crater. He saw, through the fogged lenses of a gas mask, humans in masks of their own melting down one pair of terrified toons after another. He saw the charred, dismembered bodies of two humans among the wreckage of some sort of aircraft. Then, finally, those were replaced by flames, and a mountain of human skulls. His entire body felt like it was being crushed by some unseen force. Wendy took a single, menacing step toward Herschel. He took a much longer one back.

“Stay away from me, Number Fifteen!” he warned. “I’m your creator! I put-”

“Your blood?” Wendy said. “No you didn’t. And...” Steam started to rise from Wendy’s eyes, and then her entire body. The ink was boiling. “I told you not to call me that. Use my name. At least once in your life, use my name...”

“I gave you that name to make you stronger!” Herschel growled. His whole body was trembling, but Calamity couldn’t tell if it was from fear, anger, or his tremors.

“Oh, it made me stronger all right,” Wendy spat. “Strong enough to see through you!” She took another step. “You told me I wasn’t capable of love… wasn’t worthy of it… that was you the whole time, wasn’t it?” Flames lit up in her eyes. “Wasn’t it?” she screamed.

“Run,” Calamity whispered. “Run!” he turned to Kenny. “Get out of here! Take the other toon – Riley – with you!” He was backing away himself. But morbid curiosity kept him there. At this point, he wanted to see what happened next, like a rubbernecker at a car wreck.

Herschel started to run. Wendy tossed a banana peel under his feet with casual ease. He slipped and fell. His body deformed like rubber. She’d kept him safe. But Calamity had a bad feeling it wasn’t out of any kind of care for him.

“Don’t turn your back on me!” she warned. She conjured a ball peen hammer and tossed it idly from hand to hand, spinning it on one finger. “Huh. Doesn’t this look familiar?” A toothy, demented grin spread across her face. The flames got brighter. “Hey, Daddy! Play with me!”

“No! Get away!” Herschel’s voice cracked. He was up on his feet again, trying to back away.

“Damnit! Where’s the key! I can’t start this damn-”

“Just run!” Furrball shouted. He took Calamity’s hand. “If you’re stayin’ here, so am I.”

“Play with me, Daddy!” Wendy said in a mocking, singsong voice. She lunged with blinding speed. A single stroke of the hammer sent Herschel’s prosthetic leg flying in a shower of shattered plastic and twisted metal. He fell again, landing hard on his side. He tried to crawl away.

“Play with me, Daddy!” Wendy laughed, a cruel, humorless laugh. She sprang forward again, bringing the hammer down on Herschel’s other leg. There was a crack, like a breaking twig, and a bloodcurdling scream.

“Just stop! Wendy, stop!” Herschel was on his back now, desperately trying to scoot away with his hands. His face was bloody and covered with sweat. Tears were running from his eyes.

“You used it? Oh well, too late! Play with me, Daddy!” Wendy leaped on top of him, swinging at his nose and just grazing it. Another bloody wound appeared. She twirled the hammer, then held it just within reach. Herschel made a desperate grab for it… and she let him take it. He swung with all his strength, and she hopped aside. The hammer made contact between his legs. Another scream, higher-pitched. “Ooh… that’s gotta hurt!” she cackled. “Oh well, it was probably your sperm that caused those miscarriages anyway. They knew what was really inside you, so they didn’t wanna expose a kid to that, right?” She hopped onto his chest again. He swung again. She grabbed his wrist. Another scream. Steam, then smoke, came from his arm before she let go.

“God...” Furrball pulled Calamity further back.

“Get ready to run,” Calamity whispered.

“Play with me, Daddy!” Wendy took the dropped hammer and waved it tauntingly. The wooden handle burst into flames. She flung it away. “What’s the matter, you were havin’ a lot of fun when you played with me before, remember? With the cuffs and the straitjacket? I thought you liked this kinda stuff!”

Herschel babbled something incoherent.

Wendy backed off. “You don’t? Oh well...” she shrugged. “Hey, Pops, watch this!” A dial, like on a stove, appeared on her temple. Calamity squinted at it, then pulled out a pair of binoculars. There were numbers. One through ten. It was currently at four. Wendy took hold of it and turned it past five, six, seven, eight, nine, and then past ten. A new number appeared, burning red. Eleven.

“Let’s go!” Calamity sprinted away, diving behind the truck. The flames on Wendy’s eyes and hands burned brighter, then engulfed her whole body. They got brighter, and brighter, until he could feel the heat from all the way over there and it hurt to look at. He wanted to run farther, but he couldn’t. His legs were frozen. He conjured a welding mask. Furrball ducked down, hiding his body completely, but Calamity and his binoculars stayed rooted to the spot.

Then Wendy… exploded wasn’t quite the right word. The flames were just so bright he couldn’t see her body anymore. Herschel kept trying desperately to crawl away and shield his eyes. He backed into a boulder that hadn’t been there before. There were more screams… and more laughter. Herschel’s clothing started to burn, then his hair and skin. Smoke was rising from his body. Calamity put a filter over the binoculars before they melted.

But what melted first was Herschel. He let out one final, strangled scream, steam pouring from his mouth. His eyes were the first to go, running down his face in white and red trails. Then his skin started to peel and drip, the pieces that landed on his body flaming. It was like Raiders of the Lost Ark, but worse. This wasn’t wax or gelatin, it was real human flesh, manipulated by toon powers to behave like it. But it was still periodically steaming and sizzling and boiling, and a cloud of smoke and steam was rising from what was now just a skull.

A scream of fury shook the desert, and the light exploded to impossible brightness. Calamity dropped the binoculars and shut his eyes, turning away and diving for cover. But the heat was still like spilling molten metal on his face. The light was blinding even looking away, even through closed eyelids.

Then it was over. The light died down. Something cold and wet sprayed his burning face. Furrball stood next to him, panting and holding a bucket. “You were on fire,” he said.

“Your tail’s smoldering a bit,” Calamity pointed out.

“Huh? Oh.” Furrball conjured a seltzer bottle and extinguished it. They peered out from behind the truck. The paint was gone. The tires facing Wendy had exploded, and the seats in the cab were burning. So was a patch of desert the size of a football field.

Even using the water cannon it took a couple minutes to put the fire out in and around the truck, and in enough of a path to the center of the explosion that Calamity could reach it. Wendy lay on a patch of rock and sand that had been melted into rippling glass. She was asleep, or unconscious, but the smoke and the flames and the sensation of danger were gone. She didn’t look any different from some of the kids he knew at school. Calamity gently picked her up and carried her to where Kenny and Furrball were waiting.

“This kid needs a doctor!” Kenny said. He pointed to Riley’s ink-covered face. His breathing was shallow and ragged. “Can you get us outta here?”

Furrball shook his head. “She said we can’t teleport out of… here, wherever this is. If she couldn’t do it, I doubt anyone can.”

“Okay...” Calamity pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re almost out of here… We gotta think! What do we-”

He facepalmed. “The Resistance lost… so someone’s probably still okay… hopefully.” He pulled a flare gun out of Hammerspace and loaded around. This was going to be tricky… He closed his eyes, concentrated, and fired up into the dark, starry sky. The flare, and its glowing trail, traced out the letters: ‘SOS.’

“There. Someone’ll see that. We just have to wait a while.”

“You called?” A tired-sounding but still sarcastic voice said. Calamity turned around. Three black-and-white faces lit up in recognition.

“Hey… Calamity, Furrball!” Yakko Warner said. “Ya know, there’s a few people out looking for you! Wait ‘til I tell them you were just out in the middle of nowhere the whole time!”

Chapter Text

Yakko wasn’t sure what surprised him more: finding Calamity and Furrball alive and relatively unharmed – Furrball had a nasty-looking scrape on his forehead, and Calamity a couple of minor cuts and burns, but nothing that couldn’t be shaken off – in the middle of the desert, or finding them ready to hand over two unconscious toons and one frightened human.

It took most of the night to get everyone out of harm’s way. The Warners were in the unenviable position of being the only ones who could teleport in or out of the region of distorted space they had created, but they didn’t have much left in them. One more scene change got them to the base camp the Feds had set up, formerly a couple of miles Northeast of the valley but now Northwest of the translocated mountains. But after that, Yakko didn’t know if he could handle anything else. Fortunately, there were familiar faces waiting for them: Brain, Wile E, Road Runner, and Bugs. It turned out Bugs had gotten it the easiest out of anyone who’d participated in the actual fighting. He’d managed to get the attention of one of the more powerful Resistance toons early on and isolate him up by Midland, then wear him down until he could be safely dispatched with a cache of Dip he’d already hidden as an ‘extra precaution. But he was subsequently unable to find his way back to rejoin the fray, and at one point found himself in Tucson.

Yakko, Wakko, and Dot ended up giving the Feds instructions for safely getting past the boundary the conventional way – the light distortion wasn’t as bad up close, so you could just walk, drive, or fly through – and then made a couple more back and forth trips helping direct ambulances, Medevac helicopters, and a couple of SWAT trucks where they were needed. One by one, the scattered forces were reassembled. Calamity and Christopher Coyote were tearfully reunited, as were Furrball and Sylvester, but even they didn’t leave until well past Midnight.

It was a disaster, and Yakko couldn’t help feeling like he’d caused it. He’d never thought about the disruption to their own communications, or that he was getting their own side lost – well, that wasn’t true, he had thought about it, but decided it was preferable to getting cut to pieces right then and there. It was true that the vast majority of casualties had been before the scattering, but so many had been in the first few seconds when they’d all been standing around like idiots not knowing what to do when they weren’t the focus of the enemy’s attention. For all Yakko knew, by the time they took any real action they’d already pretty much won. At least three hundred federal agents and California National Guard troops were dead, and well over a hundred more injured. It made Waco look like an elementary school cafeteria food fight. If they’d been better coordinated with the Feds, if they’d had a more contingency-proof plan for dealing with an aggressive response…

But while the victory had come at a horrific cost, it was a victory. There was almost nothing left of the Human Resistance. A mere twenty-two unarmed men and women had surrendered to the FBI. Among them was one of the two rogue animators, Lowell Byrd. According to Calamity and Furrball the other animator, Herschel Wilson, had died at the hands of his own creation, but much like the man Dot had killed there was nothing resembling a human body that could be recovered.

There were three other survivors on the Resistance side. Kenny Reavis hadn’t exactly surrendered so much as voluntarily turned himself in. When Yakko heard he’d been one of the ones who abducted the kids he wanted to deliver the guy to the FBI hogtied with an apple stuffed in his mouth, but he had helped them escape, and Calamity and Furrball had made it very clear that he should be kept away from the other Resistance members for his own protection. Riley Raccoon was rushed to a hospital in critical condition with third-to-sixth degree chemical burns over thirty-five percent of his body. Even after hearing from Slappy that he’d haloed Peter Possum after using an unknown chemical weapon, Yakko felt sorry for him. And Wendy Weasel? Some of the Feds had expressed the opinion that she should be Dipped pre-emptively after being informed of her capabilities, but their superiors had correctly pointed out that summarily executing a prisoner based on potential threat was illegal regardless of practicality.

There was no denying she was dangerous. Toontown law enforcement had teleportation-sealed cells, escape-proof handcuffs that a toon couldn’t squash and stretch out of, and collars that would deny access to Hammerspace, but they didn’t have anything like the cuffs the Resistance had produced that completely suppressed all toon abilities, and currently the partially-collapsed base was off limits. According to Calamity and Furrball any spare cuffs would be on the fourth level, which was also where huge quantities of Dip were manufactured, so neither human nor toon could safely go in there. And with illusion, hypnosis, physics bends, and the ability to create explosions out of thin air without conjuring any sort of prop, there wasn’t a good way of containing her short of sticking her in a teleportation-sealed steel box and submerging it completely in a tank of Dip.

In fact, the Feds had more or less decided they wanted nothing to do with Wendy and would be temporarily ‘delegating’ custody of her and Riley to the Antiresistance. There would definitely be trials or hearings of some sort, if nothing else to determine whether and to what extent they were capable of standing trial for their actions. There were cases in the past of animators drawing toons to assist them or others in criminal activity, and the precedent was that it had to be taken on a case-by-case basis depending on whether the toons involved were capable of understanding what they were doing, whether they committed their crimes under coercion or duress, and whether there was a possibility of rehabilitation. It wouldn’t be possible to determine their fate without a comprehensive psychological evaluation.

For now? Yakko climbed into the rented minivan and strapped himself in just in time for Slappy to peel out onto Chuckwalla Valley Road and head for the freeway. In the passenger seat, Bugs gave an exaggerated scream and made a comment about how tragic it was that they’d survived everything the Resistance could throw at them only to perish in a fiery car wreck sometime in the next five minutes. Yakko just braced himself against the sudden acceleration. It was usually easy to fall asleep in a car driven by Dr. Scratchansniff, but Slappy’s driving did tend to produce a sense of impending doom. Yakko was sure he’d manage, though, if nothing else because he wasn’t sure he even had the capacity to feel fear anymore after the events of the evening. The three toons sharing the back seat with him were already out cold. Wakko was slumped against the window on the other side of the van, Dot was leaning in his direction in the middle… and Wendy was sandwiched between her and Yakko.

It struck Yakko that he’d never actually seen the little weasel before, not with his own eyes. He’d technically very briefly seen her in a flashback Dot had shown him and Wakko after the Minerva fiasco, but she’d been behind an expressionless gas mask at the time. For all intents and purposes they were going to let a total stranger that he’d mostly heard described as a vicious, sadistic psycho into their home. And when they’d first broken out of the Water Tower Yakko had sworn to himself that the place would never be a prison again. But it was the best of several bad options. The original seals that had kept them in there for sixty years had been torn apart, but in the process they’d warped the space inside there so severely that it bore little resemblance to euclidean geometry. Near the entrance it wasn’t too bad, but farther in she wouldn’t be able to just scene change or paint a door leading outside. Slappy had a kid at home, and Bugs’s place wasn’t exactly secure either. And besides, they weren’t legally required to trap her in the tower. It was just a precaution until they had some idea of whether she was an imminent danger.

And… well, he and Wakko and Dot had never killed anyone, at least not before tonight, but they’d had stuff like that said about them too, back in the old days. And it wasn’t like she had a choice in being drawn any more than they did. He was ready to at least give her and Riley a chance.

October 23, 1998

Buster groaned when he saw the moving van in Babs’s driveway. He’d taken to heading by on his way home from school every day, wondering when someone would move in.

He hadn’t seen Babs in almost three weeks, ever since the night they’d made the near-fatal mistake of trying to join the fight against the Human Resistance. Babs’s parents had eventually let him talk to her over the phone once after he came back from being haloed, but they were both still grounded pending further notice. Plucky was grounded too, but he still saw him at school, and Babs’s desk was still empty, even though the Resistance had finally been stopped. Last he heard her parents were still staying in the country over the ‘riots’ in the cities. It was stupid; there weren’t even riots anymore, just protests calling for the death penalty for the few Resistance members they’d captured alive and amnesty for everyone who’d gotten arrested in the actual riots. And even then, things had cooled down in Acme Acres unless you went downtown.

Most of the empty desks had filled back in, though. It had been oddly quiet in classes for a while, but Fowlmouth and Montana Max had returned soon after the Resistance fell, and Fifi had come back from Quebec the following Tuesday. Then, yesterday, Calamity and Furrball finally showed up at school like nothing had happened. After they’d been kidnapped for a month, Buster was honestly surprised they were back so soon.

At first, it seemed like they hadn’t changed a bit. Calamity had turned in makeup papers for missed homework on his first day back, for crying out loud. Buster wondered how much of the week since his rescue he’d spent studying. Furrball was in the back trying to seem inconspicuous, just like always. Then he noticed it. They were talking more than he remembered. They’d both always been shy, quiet kids, and used signs whenever they could get away with it. Buster couldn’t remember if either of them had even said a word on camera the entire run of Tiny Toon Adventures. But now they were using their voices as often as not.

Everyone was asking questions, of course, and Buster was at the front of the throng. He didn’t want to crowd them, but he couldn’t help being curious. They’d been gone for six whole weeks! And it didn’t seem like they were afraid to talk about the gory details… well, most of them at least.

“Did they torture you?” Plucky asked at lunch. An entire table had assembled around the two of them. Buster couldn’t remember that happening before.

Furrball shrugged. “Yeah, they put us on the rack a few times, got the red hot pokers out, stuff like that.” Buster would have almost believed him for a few seconds if he’d been able to keep a straight face.

“Not really torture…” Calamity answered. “They kicked us around a bit when we first got grabbed, though – especially Furrball since he kept trying to fight them...”

“I kept trying to fight them? Dude, you shot two of them!”

Calamity looked sheepish. “I only shot one of them – the other one I just stabbed with the bolt. And I almost blew them up twice. But that was before I got put in the cuffs. You kept trying even after-”

A collective gasp rose from the table.

“You mean with the crossbow?” asked Buster.

“Yeah… wait, how’d you know about that?”

“Well… you know, when you didn’t show up for class we got worried, so we went to see if you were at home… and we checked on you too, Furrball, don’t worry!” Buster avoided mentioning the part about Babs’s cousin Patrick. It didn’t seem appropriate with her not here. “There were puddles of Dip everywhere. It looked like you had some close calls.”

Calamity nodded. “Yeah. Really close. At the end, they grabbed me with a sort of claw thing, and my foot kinda slipped into the puddle.” He winced. “It burned the sole of my foot pretty badly. If I hadn’t forgotten to take my shoes off before going to bed I probably would’ve lost a lot of my foot.”

“D- did they really suck your ink out?” asked Hamton.

“Yep. They were-” he trailed off and exchanged a surprised look with Furrball. “Who told you about that?” This time he didn’t just look confused, he looked nervous.

“Huh? Buster told me!”

“Buster?” Calamity stared at Buster for a second. Then Furrball scrambled something to him, and he nodded with a look of recognition. He pulled a piece of paper from behind his back and slid it across the table. “Anyway, yeah… two of them were animators. They were trying to use our ink to let them draw really powerful toons without going crazy in the process. That’s why they kidnapped us.”

“Eww...” Shirley grimaced. “That’s, like, completely sick!”

“Did it work?” signed Li’l Beeper.

Buster turned the paper over. It read: ‘I need to talk to you. Just you.’ He nodded and gave Calamity a thumbs up. What was this about?

Calamity pulled him aside after lunch.

“What’s going on?” Buster asked.

“Uhh… I was just wondering… is Babs okay?” Calamity whispered.

“What? Yeah! I mean, not totally okay because… ugh...” Buster groaned. “Her parents pulled her out of school and moved out to the country after the attack on the Capitol, and they still haven’t come back. I haven’t gotten to see her in weeks, and I know she misses everyone here and hates the new school they put her in, and there’s some… other stuff going on.”

Calamity wiped his brow. “Okay. I heard you guys ran into one of the Resistance’s toons, and it sounded like it… didn’t end well, so I wanted to make sure.”

“Where’d you hear that from?” Buster scrambled, alarmed. “We’re kinda sworn to secrecy about that! I haven’t even told Hamton!”

“I heard it from the other side.”

“Oh… right. Well… yeah, we were a bunch of idiots and tried to follow Dot, and we ended up getting our furry tails kicked. I ended up wearing one of these for two days -” Buster created an illusory halo over his head, “and Babs came pretty close too. That’s why I haven’t seen her, we’re kinda grounded for life. So’s Plucky. That’s, uh, also how I knew about the ink thing. The toon we met, she taunted us with a bottle she said was from Furrball.”

Calamity shuddered. He leaned in closer. “Listen… can you do me a favor? And try to pass this on to Babs if you can.”

“Yeah. What do you need?”

“It’s not me...” Calamity looked around. Nobody seemed to have noticed them. “Well, it kind of is. You’re in Advanced Illusions with Tweety, right? He’s been busy all day and I need his help with Flashbacks.”

“Flashbacks? Seriously?” Buster knew Illusions wasn’t Calamity’s strong suit. Filming Psychic Fun-omenon Day had been a nightmare because he couldn’t do the ‘Life flashing before your eyes’ bit, and eventually his segment had to be totally rewritten with Wile E doing an assisted flashback. But that had been… holy cow, was that really eight years ago? They’d all learned a lot since then. Sure, flashbacks were hard, and Calamity was a class below him, but still… “You can’t do a flashback?”

“Well, I can, but… not that well, so I want some more practice. There’s a couple hearings where Furrball and I are gonna testify, and I wanna use them.”

“Ohhh…” Buster whistled. “Gonna help put those Resistance bastards behind bars?”

Calamity shook his head. “They aren’t gonna need us to get a guilty verdict on any of them. It’s not that. Promise you won’t tell anyone about this, but one of the guys who guarded us ended up helping us escape. He turned himself in and he’s pleading guilty to everything, but we wanna try to make sure his sentence… takes into account that he’s changed. And… two of the toons the Resistance made survived. I don’t know that much, but all I saw of them really made it seem like anything they did they got forced into. One of them’s the same one you and Babs ran into, so you might get called in too.”

“Seriously? That psycho weasel? I dunno, she seemed pretty enthusiastic to me.” Buster scoffed. He shuddered at the memory of her gleeful laughter.

Calamity shrugged. “I dunno. I wasn’t there. I’m not gonna tell you what to say if they call you. I just wanna show what Furrball and I saw.”

Back in the present, Buster did a double take as he watched the movers. That couch looked kind of familiar.

“Buster! Hey, Buster!” That voice was definitely familiar. He turned around just in time for Babs to plow into him with a flying hug. He stumbled backward, almost falling over. Then their lips met. “Long time no see, huh?”

“Uhh… yeah!” Buster felt his face heat up. Had she just kissed him? He was a senior in high school, he told himself. He was, technically, nineteen years old, although when he’d tried to take the Mental Maturity Exam last year they’d said he was still only equivalent to about a sixteen-year-old human. He’d gotten his driver’s license that summer. The movies were full of kids his age seemingly spending more time making out at school than actually going to class. Half his classmates at Looniversity went through a boyfriend or girlfriend every couple weeks. But… he’d started noticing girls sometime around when they’d wrapped up the last season of Tiny Toon Adventures, sure. But the next step wasn’t there. He didn’t see the appeal of going on dates, or being in relationships. Not like Plucky: he was the ex-boyfriend of half the female birds at Acme Loo at this point, and even Hamton had at least gotten dates to dances. Buster wasn’t sure he’d ever asked a girl to a dance. For that matter, he wasn’t sure Babs had asked a boy – she’d never talked about asking one, and they always seemed to end up just goofing around on the dance floor for a while or hanging out by the punch and snacks, then leaving early to play video games or see a movie. At first the rest of the gang were there, but as they got older more often than not Plucky and Hamton had dates and it was just the two of them.

...Oh. Buster had certainly noticed the fact that Babs was an attractive young rabbit, but she was his best friend! He’d known her for years before they’d even started going to Acme Looniversity. It had never occurred to him that they could like like each other.

Buster saw their car pulling up beside the moving van now. Babs’s dad glared. Babs rolled her eyes. “See you at school,” she whispered. “You’re still grounded too, right?”

The next few weeks went by in a blur for Dot. Bugs had been generous enough to keep watch while they slept, but it turned out that she and her brothers woke long before Wendy Weasel regained consciousness. And even then… yes, she’d been close to attacking them after they’d explained the situation, but the closest she’d been, when she’d grabbed Yakko by the fur on his chest and there were balls of fire burning in her eyes and on her other hand, was when she’d demanded to see Riley.

The raccoon was doped up on painkillers when the Warners were more or less dragged into his room, but he’d still recognized Dot, and then Yakko and Wakko. And after Wendy showed a horrific flashback she’d torn from the mind of one of the Human Resistance’s animators – the one who’d created her and Riley - and then one from her own that had shown what she’d done to the man after, he’d actually thanked Dot for her role in showing them the truth about what toons really were. All five of them were crying by then – Wendy and Riley from the attachment they apparently still had to their monster of a creator, and Dot, Wakko, and Yakko from what he’d done.

“I’d say the only thing she did wrong was killing that son of a bitch too quickly,” Yakko said later. “He deserved a lot worse.”

The more Dot found out about the two toons, the harder it became for her to hold any ill will towards them, and the more she saw herself in them. Sure, she and her brothers weren’t purpose-made to be heartless murderers. But being drawn for a bunch of people who hated them and regretted ever creating them, and only saw them as tools to get what they wanted? Getting constantly told they were horrible monsters because of how they were created? Getting brought into existence with all the knowledge and intelligence of adults – if not more – but the emotional maturity of children and not a shred of life experience to back it up, and learning about the world from movies or shows and a bunch of stressed-out, crabby adults? Those parts she could relate to.

November 16, 1998

“Now, zis is what is called the Inkblot test. I am going to show you a series of images und I want you to tell me what you see.”

“I thought ya were supposed to be testing my brain, not my eyes!”

Dr. Scratchansniff sighed. He had a feeling this was going to be a difficult first session. “I’m not testing your brain as much as your mind. Ze pictures aren’t of anything particular, so your job is to think about what they look like to you.”

Wendy Weasel crossed her arms behind her head and leaned back on the couch. “You just gave me all the answers, so the test’s pretty much ruined anyway.”

“Zat’s not what I mean. It’s like finding shapes in ze clouds, ja? They’re just clouds, but when I look at them, I might see a rabbit, or a car, or a dinosaur.”

“Huh. No wonder you wear such thick glasses.”

Dr. Scratchansniff groaned. “Okay, let’s try this: do you ever see shapes when you look at ze clouds?”

“Uhh...” The cheeky grin vanished from Wendy’s face. “Not really. If I was above ground there was always something more important going on.”

Scratchy scribbled that down in his notepad. If. If she was above ground. And she said it like it was the most normal thing in the world. That was painful to hear. He was glad he’d bought all those books on traumatized children after the Warners’ unscheduled visit. “Well, how about we try it with these pictures first?”

“Why do I even need any more tests?” Wendy complained. “Those other shrinks already tested me plenty.”

“Zey had to see whether or not you were responsible for your own actions when you did all those… uh… bad things. I already know zat you weren’t, so my job is to make sure you aren’t a danger to yourself or anyone else, zat you know right from wrong, that sort of thing.”

The court psychologists hadn’t known what to make of the Resistance toons at first, especially Wendy, because the vicious streak really was part of her personality and she seemed unable to keep her mouth shut. But in the end their confessions, combined with several hours of flashbacks that were recorded on video for the benefit of the court handling their case, had shown the full state of their situation. The proceedings weren’t open to the public, but it sounded like with all the evidence the court had decided first that they should be tried as juveniles, then that given the degree of brainwashing, dehumanization, and coercion the Resistance had subjected them to, and the remorse they’d shown, there was no point in pursuing criminal charges at all. The courts had, however, made both of them wards of the state, and mandated ongoing mental health evaluation and treatment. The two of them were now living in a trailer on the Studio Lot, however. Based on Dr. Scratchansniff’s sessions with the Warners since the battle in the desert he strongly suspected the trio was at least partially responsible for this, and they’d outright admitted to recommending him to provide the court-ordered sessions.

Wendy sighed. “All right… let’s see ‘em.”

Scratchansniff showed her the first card. She stared at it for a while, tilting her head from side to side. “Huh. Looks like a really angry wolf with four eyes.”

Then the second card. “It’s... a really straight river with a buncha rocks on the sides and a couple little waterfalls. Looks like it’s coming out of some kinda mountain or pyramid or temple.”

The third card, she was much faster, but her response was the most disturbing. A charred human corpse with limbs broken off, with either blood spatter or internal organs around it, lying next to a mirror. The fourth was a tall, black-robed figure reaching out at her. The fifth was a blindfold, and the sixth was a narrow, steep canyon yawning below her. The seventh was a piece of torn, stained paper. The eighth, some sort of bones. The ninth was a puddle of spilled Dip, with fire on one side and ink stains on the other. The final one she asked if a paper had been folded in half and a bunch of bugs crushed in between to create the image.

Scratchy almost missed those first few sessions with the Warners. True, he’d torn his hair out over their antics, but he’d eventually gotten used to the fact that they were messing with him. And he’d take being annoyed over horrified any day. This one was trying to get on his nerves one minute, but the next she’d be saying things no psychiatrist ever wanted to hear from a little kid with a completely straight face.

December 18, 1998

Wendy scanned the piece of Government stationery she’d just pulled out of the envelope in disbelief. ‘Certificate of Animation.’ ‘State of California.’ ‘Wendy Weasel.’ ‘09/19/1998.’ Then, the life-changing words: ‘Warner Bros Animation Inc.’ ‘Burbank, Los Angeles County.’ ‘Charles Martin Jones.’

Riley was reading a similar piece of stationery with his mouth hanging open and tears in his eyes. It was finally two eyes now and not just one. His arm wasn’t all the way grown back, but new fur had mostly filled in the burned areas on his face. “I… I… blimey, I don’t believe it!”

“It’s court-ordered,” said Thaddeus Plotz, the head of the studio, with a scowl. “That you two be given fake identities, because apparently it’s not in the interest of the families of six police officers and hundreds of innocent toons to know who killed their loved ones. But despite my repeatedly voicing my objections to this studio taking any kind of responsibility for this fiasco -”

“We waved a check in front of his fat, greedy fingers,” drawled Yakko. “Not literally of course, but we pointed out that the company that draws a toon has the exclusive right to hire them as ‘actors’” - he made air quotes - “for five years after the Date of Animation, and...”

“You aren’t under any kinda obligation to work for the studio, and this doesn’t stop ya from getting any other job,” clarified Slappy. “Just that you can’t get a Disney Channel show for five years.” The Warners pretended to retch. “Besides, there’s no real competition these days, not if you wanna put talents like yours to use.”

“Talents?” Wendy repeated. She still couldn’t believe what she was hearing. There were tears in her eyes too now, but she couldn’t quite understand why. Nothing bad had happened. This was some of the best news she’d ever heard. Their real identity and origin had already been a secret. She’d assumed that at some point they’d be given fake names, something she wasn’t sure she was comfortable with. She wanted every trace of the Human Resistance’s influence out of her life, and even Herschel Wilson’s… but her name wasn’t just something that had been forced upon her. That was what her number was. Her name was her. It was right there on her modelsheet, and even if she tore the paper into pieces or dissolved it in acid nothing would change that. Talents… “You mean my power?”

Slappy raised an eyebrow. “No, I mean… well, who knows what TV producers’ll be after next, but I can tell ya if you two’d been drawn back in the forties studios would’a been bustin’ down your doors. It ain’t just about power. I’ve seen you in action -” she pointed to Wendy, “and I can tell ya got the brains and the creativity, and you’ve got the looks and maybe the charisma. You gotta work on your timing a bit, but not havin’ some schmuck actually trying to kill ya makes that easier.”

“Same goes for you.” Dot was beaming at Riley.

“By the way, Chuck wanted me to let ya know he’s not interested in adopting you or anything,” said Slappy. “He just put his name on ‘em since Bugs and I were asking if he knew anyone who might, and he looked at your photos and said nobody’d bat an eyebrow if they heard he’d drawn ya.”

“I’m still not convinced it’s going to be profitable,” huffed Mr. Plotz. “Even assuming they show any interest. Unfortunately, it seems that the board will overlook any potential liability in exchange for even a small chance of a minor hit. Personally, I think I was more than generous even allowing them to temporarily stay on studio property, despite not even being consulted on that at first.”

Wendy stiffened. He was threatening to kick them off the lot? Neither animators nor their employers automatically gained legal guardianship of toons who were drawn as minors – although they could become such. She’d already learned that much. It was apparently to prevent low-lives drawing children or mental invalids and using them as free labor. She and Riley were still wards of the court, and there was nothing stopping the studio from kicking them out, and if they did, it sounded like they’d be put into foster care somewhere.

“Uhh...” there was a dangerous look in Yakko’s eye. “I know you’ve got a busy schedule and all the meetings run together for you, but you definitely signed a piece of paper giving permission for the trailer.”

“The trailer, yes. The water tower-”

Yakko’s face was immediately consumed by a smug grin. “Isn’t studio property anymore, remember Plotzie? And neither’s the little patch of the lot it’s built on.”

Plotz ground his teeth, but said nothing.

“How does that work?” asked Riley. “Did you buy it off him?”

“Nah.” Yakko was by his side in a split second and took on a conspiratorial tone. “It was back in ninety-three, not too long after we broke out of the tower. Ol’ Thaddeus Bonaparte figured out who we were and that he couldn’t seal us back up, so he tried to evict us. We couldn’t claim squatter’s rights based on a few minor technicalities, but we reached an… agreement with the studio. We got the title to the Water Tower and more or less free access to the rest of the lot in exchange for not seeking any other compensation for sixty-three years of false imprisonment.”

“Slappy helped with that,” added Wakko.

“Ahh, I didn’t do much. Any idiot could’a told ya sealing three kids up in a water tower and pretending they never existed was shady even in the twenties.” She turned to Wendy again. “If I deserve credit for anything it’s joking to Spielberg that just filming them running around causing mayhem would probably be better than half the cartoons on TV. The guy took the idea and ran with it, and somehow I got roped in.”

“Roped in...” Dot chuckled. “Please, you were in on it from day one...”

Slappy shrugged. “In the writer’s room. It’s not like I was begging ‘em to put me back in front of the camera. They just needed more sketches to fill in time.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it had nothing to do with them wanting a big Looney Tunes star on the cast list to help promote the show,” said Yakko. “Speaking of the writer’s room, do we actually have a script for our Christmas special? It’d be nice to actually have one, and airing sometime around Christmas, for a change.”

The flower on Slappy’s hat wilted. “Nope. We’ve still got the most accurate theme song in all of television. Just make something up!”

Wakko gave Dot a mischievous smile. “Did you hear that? We get to make something up! Given the time constraints I’d say-”

Dot glared. “The Great Wakkorotti Christmas Carol Anthology still isn’t happening. You’re still outvoted.”

“We should just sing parodies of carols for twenty minutes,” said Yakko. “Hey, Plotzie. What’cha think? No script, no fancy set, we can do all the effects,” - he created a cloud out of thin air and gently pushed it over Plotz’s bald head, which was quickly frosted by a miniature snow flurry - “And the orchestra’s probably already got a bunch of scores for carols. It’ll be cheeeeaaap!”

Plotz swatted the cloud away and threw his hands up in exasperation as he returned to his desk. “Talk to Spielberg and stop bothering me! Get out of my office!”

“And Bah Humbug to you too!” Yakko headed for the door. “Come on, let’s go.”

Wendy giggled, and dashed out of Plotz’s enormous office, tucking the Certificate of Animation into Hammerspace. She was beginning to like it here.

January 7, 1999

Wendy’s breath was a white fog as she stood at the edge of the low sea cliff on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. It wasn’t that chilly of a morning, but the air was damp with a breeze coming in from the ocean. She’d never liked the cold, though, and while Riley was wearing his usual striped shirt, jeans, and beanie she’d put on a purple sweater she’d gotten a couple weeks ago and a wool hat. The swell massaged the rocky shore below, and the air smelled like salt and rotting fish and seaweed. The sun was off in the East somewhere, probably pretty much in the direction of the Human Resistance’s complex – now under EPA jurisdiction due to toxic chemicals. To the West the ocean stretched out endlessly. Wendy still remembered the first time she’d seen both of them with her own eyes.

Riley took a deep breath. “You ready, mate?”

“Yeah.” Wendy pulled a large sheet of laminated paper out of Hammerspace. There were about a dozen drawings of a green-feathered bird of some sort. On the top of the modelsheet was a large, bold: ‘#001.’ Wendy scowled. No name. In the lower right corner was a graphic of a fist smashing an inkwell, and an elegant, looping signature. ‘Lowell Byrd.’ Lowell had committed suicide in police custody a couple weeks after his capture, but not before carving a message on the wall of his jail cell about how he and all of the Resistance would be remembered as martyrs. Wendy hadn’t exactly celebrated. If anything, she kind of agreed with what some of people at the studio that he should have lived to see the judges and jurors tell him exactly what the world thought of him. The only ones who would be remembered were his and Herschel’s creations, the ones the animators had thought of mere tools and weapons.

She pulled out another modelsheet and handed it to Riley with a brief glance. #002, a dog.

Riley’s eyes widened slightly. “This is the one who crashed the lorry into the Capitol Building,” he murmured. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and tried to get the corner of the modelsheet to burn. “This plastic’s just melting, it won’t catch.”

Wendy rolled #001’s modelsheet up again. “If you try to burn it slowly bits’ll fall off. Do it like this.” She snapped her fingers on the hand not holding it. A small, but brilliant blue-white flame let on the tip of her index finger. She touched it to the glossy paper, and concentrated. The fire spread, consuming the only thing left of the long-dead toon in a couple of seconds. Nothing was left but tiny particles of ash that rose into the sea breeze.

“I can’t do it like that.” Riley assembled a miniature propane-fueled furnace, lit it, and rolled up #002 before feeding it in. A few sparks came out the chimney, but very wasn’t even much smoke. “Wonder what he was thinkin’ at the end.”

“Probably not much.” Wendy pulled out Number Three, an enormous cricket, and Number Four, a mole wearing a miner’s helmet and holding a pickaxe. “Lowell never gave ‘em much brains.”

Two at a time, they burned the modelsheets. #005 and #007 were next. “If Lowell made one more you could’a been James Bond,” Wendy commented. “You got the accent.”

“Wot, me? Nah, he’s always posh, whoever’s playin’ him.”

Wendy got numbers Eight, Ten, Twelve – the lizard who’d been among the last to fall – and Fourteen. Then with another skipped one she was burning the odd-numbered modelsheets again. Seventeen, Nineteen, Twenty-One, Twenty-Three.

“Number Twenty-Four. Clyde,” she read before passing the last of Lowell’s creations to Riley. She chuckled quietly at the sheer mundanity of the name. Even when he’d been forced to give a toon a name, he’d chosen a dull one.

But there were still a few things left. Wendy took a deep breath and pulled out another glossy sheet of paper. There was the lopsided-eyed face of Crazy Ivan staring out at her. She didn’t think she’d have ever liked the meathead, but she didn’t hate him for being an attempt to replace her or Riley anymore, not now she knew that Herschel would never have cared about her no matter what. She wondered what he’d have been doing if he’d lived. Probably advertising exercise equipment or vodka. She handed the modelsheet to Riley. “This one’s for you,” she said, her voice already choking even before she reached for the last item.

“Huh? It’s an odd number, you can-”

Then Wendy pulled it out. A little green and red propeller beanie. The breeze caught it and it spun feebly a few times before coming to a stop. Her vision wavered as her eyes filled with tears. She’d bought the hat the day before, looking in several shops until she found one the right color. There was no modelsheet for Henry Wilson, but she wanted to have something to represent the first and last of the toons who’d fallen victim to Herschel’s insanity. There was no way he’d done anything but mop up the puddle of Dip.

“Oh.” Riley sighed. He started to roll up Crazy Ivan. Wendy tied baggies of gasoline and gunpowder to the hat, lit the fuse with a spark from her thumb, and gave the propeller a spin. It spun up faster and faster, producing a high-pitched whine. The beanie lifted off and flew away, soaring into the wind and out over the ocean. Then the gunpowder went off, and it was consumed in a ball of flame.

“Just two left,” Wendy whispered. She pulled out the last modelsheets, handing the first to Riley. She unrolled it. ‘#015. Wendy Weasel.’ And there at the bottom was the spidery scrawled signature. ‘Herschel Wilson.’ Conjuring a razor blade, she carefully cut away two pieces of lamination. Then, with a brush soaked in Wite-Out, she erased the number, the signature, and the Human Resistance logo. It felt like a great weight, an anvil or a safe or a piano, had been lifted from her shoulders. She glued the squares of plastic back into place, rolled her modelsheet back up, and slid it into empty space behind her back again. Riley did the same.

For a while longer they stared out at the ocean. Somewhere out there were the Channel Islands, but the air wasn’t clear enough that morning to see them. Finally, Wendy tore herself away with a shiver. “It’s over,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

June 11, 2000

Kenneth Reavis peeled open the envelope as he sat on his bed, in his cell in the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California. It was a few months into his ten year sentence, but parole was a possibility after only five. He was surprised by how short a sentence he’d gotten, even with him pleading guilty to everything. It was a long list of charges. Possession of illegal substances and weapons, aggravated assault and kidnapping of two minors, terrorism, and a lot more. It sounded like he’d be the only one serving less than twenty-five years once the trials were finished, and most of them would probably be looking at life sentences even after pleading guilty to avoid the death penalty. The Government didn’t like paying for flag-draped coffins and sending somber-faced men in uniforms to knock on people’s doors. They were actually pursuing treason charges against some of the others.

A smile spread across his face as he pulled out the first photo. A coyote and a cat, a bit taller than he remembered, wearing black robes, graduation caps, and wide smiles. The next one was a collage of four smaller images – each of them shaking hands with figures he recognized from Looney Tunes cartoons, then each posing with their diploma. Kenny had been watching a lot of cartoons to pass the time when he didn’t have some sort of assigned work – mostly cooking, cleaning, or fixing things, not too different from the Army or even the Resistance. The third and final photo showed a small crowd of students on a lawn, with a swarm of graduation caps flying above them. One was quite a bit higher than the others, and was at the end of a spiraling trail of smoke. It was circled in red Sharpie, with a scrawled label reading: ‘Calamity’s.’

He could have made a pretty good guess even without the label.

Not all Acme Looniversity alumni went into show business. In fact, the majority didn’t. But pretty much any college in the country, in or out of Toontown, looked favorably on a diploma from the school if you had good grades in the right subjects.

Last week, an era had ended at Acme Looniversity. The stars of Tiny Toon Adventures had all graduated. And really, the last year had been pretty lonely. Buster and Babs Bunny (no relation) were among the few who were planning to become actors. They weren’t too far off, at the New York Film Academy right next to the studio lot. Plucky was still in Acme Acres, his stand-up career not getting off to a great start. Shirley was at U-Toon University of Toontown. She’d changed her major five times in her freshman year, and Calamity had no idea what it was now. Fifi had taken her perfume business full-time. Hamton was studying accounting at UC Los Angeles – not surprising. Montana Max going into finance wasn’t surprising either. It had been oddly pleasant not having him around.

And now… in just a couple months, Calamity would be taking the plunge. He’d capped off his last Semester at Looniversity in the best way he could imagine. Sure, getting straight As in all the academic subjects and a B average in the practicals was nice, but the crowning jewel was his and Li’l Beeper’s joint final in Outwitting Enemies. After half a dozen failed traps, with just two minutes left in the test period, Li’l Beeper had casually sidestepped Calamity and his rocket-powered roller skates… straight into the Invisi-Coat-painted cage. The door slammed shut, the sleeping gas canisters Calamity had attached to the skates so they dispersed it hidden in the smoke of the rockets took effect, and he kicked the skates off and was stopped by his drag chute just in time to return to the cage and bring the mallet down on his rival’s head. After so many years, he’d finally caught him. Just as satisfying as shaking Li’l Beepers wing was watching Wile E stand there with his jaw on the ground, too surprised to even claim credit for teaching Calamity all he knew… and too surprised to notice as Road Runner pushed a wheelbarrow full of pennies off the roof onto his head. Evidently the two of them had made a bet.

Furrball never ended up getting a win against Sweetie Pie, but he hadn’t been that interested in her that year. He’d ditched all the elective practical classes, and spent hours in the auditorium – empty most days – with at least one instrument. A couple weekends, Calamity helped him film audition videos. That spring, they’d both been pleasantly surprised by the letters coming in from colleges. Calamity had gotten accepted by some of the best engineering schools in the country, places like Carnegie Mellon and Stanford. At first he’d been leaning towards either CalTech, to be close to home, or Texas Tech, to be close to his Dad. But then Furrball had come running up waving a letter and literally bouncing in the air with excitement. He’d only gotten into one of his top picks, and when Calamity saw which one his decision was made. In a couple months they’d both be moving over two thousand miles away and end up closer together than they lived now. MIT and Boston Conservatory at Berklee were only separated by a couple of miles and a river, and they could probably see each other’s campuses from the rooftops at the very least.

Calamity was sure they’d both make friends in college, but it wasn’t really easy for either of them. It was going to be nice having at least one familiar face around.

May 18, 2000

“All right, people… lights! Camera…”

“Lights?” Wendy interrupted sarcastically. She stood next to the director, a young man named John Graham, with one foot crossed over the other. “Uh, I’m not a meteorologist or anything, but we appear to be in the Great Outdoors, and it appears to be daytime.”

“It’s a figure of speech!” John looked down, then did a double take. “Hey, I already said ‘places’! What are you still doing out here?”

“Fiiine...” Wendy darted across the forest clearing and swan-dived into the hole in the small burrow that was supposedly her ‘home.’

“Lights… camera… action!”

This was it. Her first short film. And really, it was her audition too. She’d already had earlier stages of auditions: saying lines, demonstrating some basic gags and techniques, getting into a mock argument with the auditioner and having to make up jokes on the fly. But there really wasn’t a way to put everything together besides the real thing.

In the Schlesinger School of Comedy, adapted from early toon stage shows, the highest ideal was to avoid acting whenever possible. The goal was improvised method acting as yourself, or an exaggerated version of yourself. In the most extreme forms of the style, the performers weren’t so much given a script as a premise – a setting and a motivation – and then made everything up from there. Hell, sometimes they didn’t even have that, just a camera crew following them around and waiting for something funny to happen. Combine that with the frequent slapstick stunts, and it was something only toons could do.

But almost no one started out with that; they had to work their way up from more conventional productions, proving that they could handle it. “The Wild Weasel” would be Wendy’s pilot short. It was being filmed with Warner Bros, but it wouldn’t be part of their regularly scheduled TV programming. Instead it would air on Fresh Ink , a variety show on toon Entertainment Network that featured new talent working with various studios, from giants like Warner Bros to smaller independent outfits and even the occasional bunch of amateurs with a couple video cameras. But if this one short was successful, the studio was ready to sign her on for the eighth season of Animaniacs, which had become the studio’s flagship for short-format cartoons.

She’d only gotten a copy of the script three days ago – pilot shorts were apparently almost always rushed and low-budget – and only frantically memorized it the night before. After hearing horror stories about egotistical or overly strict directors, useless co-stars, unperformable scripts, and just all-around disastrous shooting sessions from the Warners, she’d been nervous about even opening it… until she saw who’d written it. Slappy Squirrel. Not only had Slappy spent a lot of time coaching her, and talking her through the ‘business’ side of show business, but Wendy knew the old squirrel preferred her scripts minimal or nonexistent, had mostly written her own material since coming back from ‘retirement’, and was just as notorious as the Warners for torpedo-ing shootings when the script or directors pissed her off. And Slappy said she’d written the script to play to Wendy’s strengths and compensate for her weaknesses. She was in good hands. Some of the other cast and crew had done spit takes when they saw it, but their concerns were mostly over giving such a technically challenging script to an inexperienced child. That was the part Wendy wasn’t worried about.

Slappy wasn’t on location right now. But she’d told Wendy without being asked that she’d be at the park in Burbank, helping Skippy practice some things. Wendy knew what that meant. It was an implied offer. If things went wrong, she could get from the Angeles National Forest to Burbank pretty quickly if she had to, and back. She disguised her deep breath – the camera hidden in the burrow with her was already rolling. It was going to be fine. She just had to keep the tips Slappy had given her in mind. Stay on the script for a while. Her co-star could break it at any time. If the director yelled ‘Cut!’ then they’d do it over: otherwise that was her cue to adapt however she could.

Wendy watched through the small monitor she’d installed next to the camera – no one else on the set knew about that bit – as her co-star and opponent stomped through the forest.

The plot was a classic: Villainous Hunter vs. Cunning but Heroic Woodland Creature. Dale Crockpot was a hunter, trapper, and sometimes a poacher and moonshiner. Even when he wasn’t filming a cartoon his favorite hobbies had an end goal involving a dead animal of some sort. He’d gotten his start in the 1940s going up against Peter Possum, who’d apparently recommended him for the job. These days he mostly ran a sporting goods store. He took his role as a villain very seriously, and had been ‘in-character’ from the moment his muddy 4x4 ran over the crossing gate at the studio entrance the night before, then backed over Ralph when the guard confronted him. He’d refused to so much as talk to Wendy prior to the start of shooting. According to Slappy, some directors and producers like using him as a form of hazing, putting him up against overconfident young toons who thought they were the next Bugs Bunny. More than one of them had found themselves mounted on his wall by the time the short irised out, and the film ended up airing on late night TV for audiences who fought the good guys always winning was boring and cliched.

Slappy’s motivation was somewhat different: “In the good old days you could just find provoke some brainless hunting dog into chasing you and then beat him to a pulp for seven minutes,” she’d said with a cackle. “But now, there’s so many namby-pambies in the audience… even when a villain starts it, if he comes across as a bumbling idiot some soccer mom with too much time on her hands’ll complain that you’re being too mean to him...” She rolled her eyes. “So I picked the love-child of Yosemite Sam and Cruella DeVille to make sure the audience’s sympathy’s one hundred percent on you. Just give him enough room to conjure a rope to metaphorically hang himself with and you’ll be fine.”

Dale looked every bit the rugged outdoorsman. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a mop of shaggy black hair and a mid-length beard and mustache over a sturdy jaw. Beady eyes stared out from under bushy eyebrows. He had a ragged-looking scar on his right cheek which he claimed was the result of being mauled by a vicious Alaskan Bear-Owl; in reality he’d simply been drawn with it. He wore a flannel shirt with an orange vest, jeans, thick boots, an olive drab hunting hat, and a backpack he often used to access Hammerspace. He also had several weapons on his person: a revolver holstered on his hip, a scoped rifle slung over his back, and a shotgun cradled under one arm. In his other hand, he carried a battered sheet of paper.

“Daggum fur farms drivin’ prices down! A trapper’s gotta make a living!” Dale grumbled in a deep, gravelly voice as he tromped into the clearing, emerging from a bush. He stopped, and angled the paper subtly, showing the cameraman following him and filming over his shoulder its contents: a list of animals and prices. “Twenty bucks for a fox, fifteen for a bobcat, ten for a weasel, it’s ridiculous! I spend that much on beer alone!” He crumpled up the list, stuffed it in his pocket, and started to walk again. The cameraman following him backed off. “Besides, those farmed furs are a lower-quality product! Everyone knows it’s the fear that puts that extra shine in the pelt!” He flashed the camera a sadistic grin. Wendy fought to keep from cracking up. She was putting in a ‘ham’ joke given the slightest opportunity.

On cue, Dale spotted the hole in the ground and stalked up to it. He scratched his chin. “Well, judgin’ by the pattern of scratches around the openin’, the angle of the hole,” - he pulled out a set of geometric tools - “And the alignment with the orbital plane of Jupiter, I’d reckon this here’s a weasel burrow.” He gave a disappointed scowl, then shrugged. “Ahh well, ten bucks is ten bucks.” He put away his tools and hefted his shotgun, sticking the barrel down the burrow. That was Wendy’s cue.

She stepped out of the way of the weapon, then leaned on the barrel, looking straight into the camera. “Do you ever have this problem?” she asked. She pulled a hardcover book out of Hammerspace, taking an extra second to pretend to rummage around like she was having difficulty finding it. ‘A Woodland Critter’s Guide to Outwitting Hunters. B. Bunny.’ Slappy had some style. She thumbed through the blank pages. “Let’s see… Strategy One: confront him.”

She slapped the book closed. The lights inside the burrow went out. Now she was free to teleport. All according to script so far. She disappeared, reappearing from behind a tree, and walked up beside Dale, looking at the hole in the ground with a shotgun down it like it was new and perplexing. “Got your gun a little stuck there, pal?” she asked with sarcastic feigned innocence. If this was a ‘looser’ script she’d have hypnotized him, but for now she was sticking to it. This part she didn’t actually have a line for.

Dale didn’t look at her. “I’m huntin’, ya idiot. Now shut it, you’ll scare the prey off.”

“Hate to break it to ya, but I don’t think a buck’ll fit down that hole,” Wendy said. “Those antlers get in the way, y’know!”

“I ain’t huntin’ bucks, I’m huntin’ a weasel.”

Wendy turned to the camera, widened her eyes a bit, and gulped. “Wait a minute… a weasel? What for? Weasels are lean and stringy, ya know! No flavor at all!” she licked the fur on her arm and stuck her tongue out in disgust. That was genuine. She’d forgotten she put on bug spray to ward off the mosquitoes.

“I know you’re no good for meat, ya dumb animal! I can sell your pelt for ten bucks down in Milwaukee!” Dale whipped the gun out of the burrow and stuck the barrel in Wendy’s face.

She had an idea. She went stiff as a board – that was in the script – but then turned and showed a sign to the cameras. “Which one of you wise guys tipped him off that I was a weasel?” She saw at least two of the production staff put their hands to their mouths and stifle laughs, and there was no shout of ‘Cut!’ It was going great! Still doing her best to look frightened, she backed carefully away from the gun. The script called for her to take one hit from it before she started fighting back for real, but she didn’t know how much it would hurt. She knew Dale was fairly strong, and it sounded like he wouldn’t hold back even though he had no idea what she was really capable of. But a shotgun wouldn’t be much more than an annoyance. She was most worried about ‘selling’ the hit the right amount. If she laughed in his face immediately it would tip the audience off that this was horribly lopsided in her favor.

But she’d worry about that when it happened. Right now she just had to say her lines. “Oh yeah?” she jabbed a finger at him, glaring. “My life’s only worth ten bucks to ya? I’m insulted!”

“No, a weasel pelt’s worth ten bucks in Milwaukee. I’d shoot you for the cost of a bullet!”

“You’d do that?” Wendy put a hand over her heart. She gave her best ‘puppy eyes’ to Dale – and to the cameraman filming from behind him. “You’d look me right in the eye and shoot me?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, let’s see ya prove it, Mr. Deliverance! I dare you to murder a poor, defenseless, underaged little furry animal in cold blood!” A toothy grin spread across Wendy’s face. She turned her head so it was about sideways to Dale, tilted it, and pulled down the lower eyelid of the eye closer to him. She remembered the unsettling effect the odd-sized eyes of Crazy Ivan had, and wanted to replicate it. “You got the perfect shot, Cletus! Point blank range, you can’t miss me! I dare you to pull that trigger, and blow my face into chunky red paste, and then watch me expire choking on my own blood!”

Dale turned slightly green. This was another part where she hadn’t actually been given a line. Instead, Slappy’s instructions were not to swear or say anything risque. She hadn’t said anything about being descriptive. Still, Wendy was expecting that one to get cut. She’d gotten a little carried away.

But the camera was still rolling. Fine, then. “I bet ya can’t do it, can you?” she finished. “Why, such an act of barbaric cruelty would haunt any decent human being for the rest of their-”

Then she was on the ground, her ears ringing from an earsplitting bang. “I stand corrected...” she murmured as she stood up. It hurt… oh God, it actually hurt! Her whole face and chest stung like she’d gotten hit by one of Slappy’s bombs. It had been a long time since anything had hit her this hard, and she’d been totally unprepared. There were tears in her eyes, more from the surprise of it than anything else. That wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d messed it up. Had the director cut them off yet? She wasn’t sure she could’ve heard it if he had. But Dale was still standing there, holding the smoking barrel. “Hey, what’d you load that thing with, anyway?” she asked, pushing the gun aside. That wasn’t her next line, but she was pretty sure she’d have to redo the scene from where she’d left the burrow anyway.

Dale grinned. He pulled a box out of his vest pocket. “Rock salt.”

That son of a bitch… That wasn’t supposed to happen. She knew he could potentially go off-script to test how she reacted, but the way he’d done it was unquestionably picking a fight. “Oh, it’s on ...” she hissed. She could hear him talk, so she’d be able to hear it if John cut them off. She shook the ash from her face. The next bit, the script was already a pretty good plan. She’d just take it a bit further. “Hey, what’s the big idea hunting weasels with a shotgun anyway?” she grabbed the barrel and tore it out of his hands. There was a genuine look of shock on his face. He’d done his best to resist. “You’ll ruin my pelt with this thing!” She flipped the gun around and squeezed the trigger. His face took the worst of it, but his hat was turned into a tattered mess. She hopped onto his shoulder and snatched it from his head, waving it in front of him. “See, completely ruined! I wouldn’t pay a nickel for this thing!”

She jumped down again, freezing Dale in place with hypnosis, and let a grin spread across her face. “You’re doing it all wrong! You wanna kill a weasel properly , you gotta bash her over the head with the stock and break her skull, like this!” She demonstrated, hitting him so hard the gun’s barrel bent and it the stock splintered. “Or break her legs with a trap, like this,” - she slid a bear trap under his foot as he staggered around, stunned - “And then break her skull!” This time her weapon of choice was a baseball bat. “Or drown her, like this!” As he fell to his knees, she grabbed his vest and forced his head into a newly-conjured washtub of ice-cold water. There were satisfying bubbles and gurgling noises. “Or boil her alive, like this !” She made a dial appear on the side of the tub and turned it past ‘Hot’ to ‘Medium Well-Done’. The water started to boil. “Or poison her, like this! ” She pulled him out of the tub. His face was bright red and steam was still rising from it. She conjured a tin of Spam, tore the lid off, and spooned the contents into his mouth. He turned green and spat it out, but was still stunned. Time to finish off the gag. “Or just tie her down and skin her alive with a big knife, like this! ” She pulled out a coil of rope and a Bowie knife, and took a menacing step towards him. With a panicked scream at least an octave above his original voice, he scrambled to his feet and tore away into the forest, running straight into a tree, and ended up flat on his back with birds circling his head. She winced. He was supposed to just disappear into the bushes, and come back for the next scene.

“Cut!” Mr. Graham shouted.

Wendy threw the knife and rope away and sheepishly looked at the camera. She was breathing heavily, and there were char marks where her hands had heated the rope and the knife handle. “Sorry...” she said sheepishly. “Lost it for a second there.” She jogged back up to the crew. The suddenness of the shotgun blast had rattled her. Her brain had gone back into the mindset she’d had in the days of the Resistance, in the battle, where even if part of her was having fun she felt like if she made another mistake, she could end up with her head getting rammed into a puddle of Dip. And she hadn’t held back with those last few moves. “I’ll do it right next time… if he uses regular bullets...”

“Huh” Graham looked confused for a second. “No, no, that take was great! You’re a natural, kid! Although those ad-libs did get a little disturbing.” He turned to the crew. Some of them looked shocked, a few bored, but some of them… some of them were laughing. It was almost two years now, and that feeling hadn’t gotten old. It was just as rewarding as getting someone angry. “Next scene in ten minutes!”

Wendy breathed a sigh of relief as she sprinted to the water cooler. She hadn’t known whether this would work out, whether they’d hate her, or whether she’d hate acting. But she was actually doing it! The adrenaline rush of fighting and the sadistic pleasure she got from causing Dale Crockpot pain and frustration were still there. Herschel had drawn those things into her from the beginning, and she couldn’t change them. But now she was getting that rush without what she now knew was the guilt of taking other lives, or the fear of losing her own or that of someone she cared about. And combined with the laughter of others, with knowing that she’d brought out a little piece of who she was and on some level someone had actually liked it… it was the greatest feeling in the world. Almost. There was still one better. Having an audience still wasn’t quite as good as having a family.