Chapter Text
They’re running as the slideshow rolls, as the other characters disappear one by one. The studio isn’t expecting the side characters to come back, so they can go on with their lives, however boring they are without filming, but them? The Warners are, evidently, too chaotic and unpredictable to be allowed to stick around. And since keeping them locked up in the water tower didn’t really work, and the idea of a reboot or even a continuation seems slim to none, they’re being....
What did the executives say? Oh, right. Put down.
“C’mon, c’mon!” Yakko yells behind him. He has longer legs, so he can run faster, and his siblings are lagging. He can hear the guards coming closer-it’s been outsourced, it’s not Ralph or Dr.Scratchansniff or Hello Nurse, it’s large men in scary outfits and nets and tasers and batons-and so he slows down, grabs his siblings by the scruffs of their necks, and keeps running.
“They’re gonna kill us!” Dot all but shrieks, and he can feel her terror, and he’s just as scared. He doesn’t know how this whole suspended animation thing goes, but it sounds a lot like death and he doesn’t like it one bit.
“Not on my watch,” he replies, hoping he sounds braver and more sure than he is.
Wakko tosses a few sticks of dynamite over his shoulder to slow their chasers down, and they weave through the studio towards the exit and out into the city. If they lay low for a few days, they can sneak back into their tower and hole up there for as long as they need. They’ve gotten used to it. It’s home. They can stay. It’ll be fine.
Wakko whimpers, quietly. He’s curled up as tight as he can, knees hidden in his sweater as Yakko holds him close. Dot is much the same. Her flower has lost its petals in the mad dash to escape, but she doesn’t bother to complain.
Yakko can hardly breathe, he’s been running so fast, but adrenaline keeps him going. He can’t let them get his siblings, he can’t let his siblings get taken, get hurt. He’s their big brother.
“It’s gonna be okay,” He gasps out between breaths, between strides. “We got ‘em beat. They’ve never messed with the Warners before, they can’t handle us,” The world can’t, that’s why they’re being thrown away, permanently.
“Uh, I don’t think the dynamite worked,” Wakko pipes up, and Yakko hazards a look behind him and nearly trips in terror. They’re so close!
“Try some more! I can’t reach into my hammerspace right now!” Wakko throws road tacks, the ones that stop cars, and he throws oil and a match, and grease, but the apparent task force hired just gets through obstacle after obstacle as if it were nothing.
Yakko gives them the what for, ducking around a corner at the last second to look like he was going towards another corner, and he doesn’t even allow himself to breathe, so quiet it’s chilling, but he hears a shuffle from the side away from the street they were running on.
“Gotcha,” He hears, and Dot screams, and they’re somehow in the alleyway, and he runs across the street with utter abandon, too scared to think, and suddenly they’re at a dead end.
“Shoot-uh-I-,” He can see the men running across the street after them, and so he jumps, aiming for the rooftop.
He gets yanked down by his tail, and lets out a cry of pain, kicking the hand off of him as all three of them tumble to the asphalt and he loses purchase of his sibs. He scrambles to his feet, pushing Wakko and Dot behind him and facing the monsters that have been hired to hurt his family with a growl. His tail aches.
Yakko isn’t a fighter, not by a mile. He isn’t that strong, isn’t that talented, in that regard. He has his words, but that isn’t useful right now.
He pulls out a mallet, the largest one he can muster, and holds it up high.
“Stay back,” he can feel Dot and Wakko trembling, they’re clinging to his legs. The men are wreathed in shadows so he can’t see their faces, and it adds to the mounting fear and helplessness. “Or-Or I’ll use this!”
They come closer. Yakko’s hands shake.
“I’m warning you!” He shouts, stronger than he feels. “Not one more step!”
They come closer. He swings.
An a cuff clicks around his wrist, and the mallet vanishes.
“What-,” and he’s yanked forward, held back as they close in on Wakko and Dot. “No! Let go!” He kicks and writhes, but he can’t get anything to appear. The cuff on his wrist hums a noxious green, and he stares at it for a second before continuing to struggle.
“Toon power cancelling cuffs,” The apparent leader says, from behind him. “We don’t use em too often because they don’t work for forever, since you can’t really stop a toon from being a toon for too long, but they’ll work long enough for this job.”
“NO!” Yakko screams. Wakko is swinging a bat around, pushing Dot behind him despite her protests. She pulls out a weapon too, her mace, and holds it in trembling hands.
“Don’t take them-just take me! I’ll go quiet, they can hide out in the water tower! They’ll be good, please, no one will know! You can say you lost them, you can-please-don’t!” He’s begging. He can’t let this happen to them. It doesn’t matter if it’s him, they’re what matters. He needs them to be safe.
“Yakko, shut up!” Dot shouts back, and she sounds furious. Her glare softens with fear as she glances between the many adults looming over them.
They’re outnumbered. Their eldest has been caught. Wakko keeps swinging.
The men trip grab the bat in one hand and yank Wakko forward, and he stumbles and falls. They pick him up by his ears and slap a cuff on him, and while Wakko continues to kick and squirm but not being able to access your toon powers is draining. Yakko is tired, but he refuses to quit now.
“Dot, run!” He shouts, but she looks like a deer in the headlights, frozen and surrounded. She swings the mace and lets go, jumping up as the men stumble back from it, but halfway up they hit her with something. A rubber bullet? For a moment, he thinks she was actually shot, but there’s no blood even when she screams and drops to the ground.
“Stop!” Yakko and Wakko shout, but they cuff her before she even has a chance to get up, and they throw her over their shoulder.
“We got them,” Someone says into a walkie talkie. Yakko kicks them where it hurts, and scrambles to grab his sibs again, biting and scratching. “Permission to terminate?”
Something in Yakko snaps, and suddenly he can’t think. The thoughts and world have gone into slow motion, images like flashes that he doesn’t have the time to decipher. He’s moving fast, but it feels so slow.
He doesn’t hear the answer. He’s running towards blue and red, and pink, and there’s a hand on his shoulder and he’s screaming their names and they’re all crying and there’s a pinch on his neck as something pierces through skin and then-
Nothing.
He wakes up with a scream on his lips and is enveloped into a hug before he’s fully conscious.
“It’s okay, I’m so sorry, it’s okay,” He knows that voice. Clarity is slow coming, but Yakko can sparse that out.
“Spielberg?” he manages. His mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton balls, and his vision comes into focus on a much older Steven Spielberg.
“Yakko, I’m sorry,” he says. “I wanted them to keep you in the tower, but they were resolute. The best I could get was suspended animation,” He gestures to the room they’re in, and Yakko sees two toon sized tubes filled with some kind of liquid, with his siblings in them. They look different. Remodeled. He looks down at himself. The art style has changed. They’ve changed. How?
“What...?” He can’t find the words. Not yet. They’re coming back to him slowly.
“It’s death...but not quite. I was hoping for a reboot. You guys are getting your show back!” he smiles at Yakko, like he expects Yakko to be overjoyed, but Yakko just stares.
Suspended Animation. Death, but not quite.
He let his siblings get this.
“I’m telling you, because I figured these two would take it better from you than me,” Spielberg points a thumb at Wakko and Dot. “I’ll wake them up now for your reunion.”
And Yakko wants to cry. He wants to rage. He wants to tell Steven, the execs, everyone, to stick it where the sun don’t shine Like Hell is he doing their stupid reboot, he hates them.
He doesn’t hate often, but he’s certain here.
“Will they remember...?” Will they remember dying like I do, he doesn’t say. Spielberg shrugs.
“Don’t know.”
They will. Wakko is going to cry and Dot won’t be able to sleep for a week, and Yakko will hold them close and apologize a million times, and he’ll have to stop them from tearing the studio apart because he knows it’ll bring them right back here.
They’ll remember.
But he doesn’t know that yet, so instead he says.
“So, how’s the reboot working?” As Spielberg turns on the machine to let Wakko and Dot out, and he pretends to listen as the director replies.