Tiny Toon Adventures:
"Comedy Rules"
Rated T for gratuitous cartoon villainy.
.
Disclaimer: "Tiny Toon Adventures," Tiny Toon Adventures characters, names, and all related indicia are trademarks of Warner Bros. Inc.
.
Predator
"Uh, Babs," Buster finally caught up with his best friend and co-star. "You had a bowl of sugar this morning for breakfast didn't you?"
"Duh! Yeah, why?" Babs bounced lightly about the hall.
"Don't you think that," Buster jerked a thumb back over his shoulder towards Calamity's lab, "was a little . . . uh, harsh?"
"Oh, pul-eeze. Don't tell me that you're jealous!?" Babs tugged lightly on one long, blue ear.
"What? Of course n . . .." Buster paused. An idea struck the blue and white bunny on how to possibly divert a conflict between his friends and classmates. "That is, yeah. Yeah, maybe I am."
Shirley piped in. "Of Calamity? Oh, like get crucial or some junk."
Babs patted Buster's furry white cheek. "Oh, Buster, you're so cute when you're jealous."
"Of course, we all know that ducks have the most dashing good looks." Plucky smoothed down his white tank top and brushed back his green head feathers. "If you're going to get jealous of someone, get jealous of me."
"Weell," Fifi started. She glanced between Hamton standing shyly beside her and Furrball who was getting books out of his locker. The ragged, blue alley cat caught his already bandaged tail in his locker door and screeched. Fifi's eyes drew back the way they had come. Calamity was cute, in a quiet, nerdy sort of way. No, not nerdy, that was part of the problem. Intellectual. There! that was what Calamity was. The purple skunk-ette knew how sensitive matters of the heart could be. "Maybe wee should not have challaanged vous to kees Calamity. Vous might have hurt hees feelings, non?"
"Nyah, it was just a joke. You know how his kind are." Shaking off the incident, Babs briefly spun into a Dizzy Devil costume, stumping around and incoherently garbling like the small, purple Tasmainian devil before spinning back. "Calamity took it like a predator."
"That's what I'm afraid of." Buster muttered as he followed his friends to class.
Scene Ripples with a Time Advancement.
At the end of the school day, the library door opened a few inches to allow Bookworm out into the hall. The small inchworm worked his way up the side of a locker. Before the library door completely closed, two white lab mice dashed in. The Loo's library had the best science section around, due no doubt to the coyote inventors that worked and studied there. Though their home was in the Acme Labs, Pinky and the Brain often came to the Looniversity library for research. Well, the Brain did anyway. Pinky came just to look at the picture books.
The tiny green worm squinched his round glasses further up on his nose and continued to inch his way across the tops of the lockers lining the Looniversity hall. Bookworm found that traveling the 'high road' was much saver for one of his minuscule stature. At least up here he wouldn't get stepped on. But even up here wasn't totally safe.
"Hah! Your mine now! After school SNACK TIME." The loud, obnoxious voice came from a surprisingly small pink, girl canary. Sweetie Pie darted down her beak to snatch up Bookworm, but fouled with the school clock on the wall when its face suddenly popped open.
Springing out of the clock like the cuckoo bird in a cuckoo clock, Gogo Dodo sprang out to announce an important upcoming school event. The green and blue dodo bird with a pink umbrella cockscomb also attended the Looniversity, commuting in from Wackyland; though he was rarely ever seen actually attending any classes. "If you're planning on skipping school tomorrow and missing the April Fool's Day contest, you're COO COO, COO COO!!"
With Sweetie Pie out of the way, Bookworm squelched under a thick cord cutting across the locker tops, careful to avoid the nearby pulley. It was just another average day at the Acme Looniversity.
Calamity pulled tight on the kite string ripcord and added a spritz of oil to the main pulley. Having already put the morning's disaster behind him, the young genius worked on his next trap. It was a simple one rigged in front of the little roadrunner's locker. Well, simple for him anyway. For it to have a high enough comedic quotient to be really humorous, it had to have a certain Goldberg-ian complexity to it. In fact, the main component of it was a simple jump rope that he'd gotten from the gym and had elongated in his lab. The jump rope lay in a loop on the floor, the tail of which going up to the ceiling, through a series of pulleys and tied with a bow onto a 16 ton weight that was precariously perched atop the row of lockers lining the hall.
To avoid the same triggering failure of the morning, the small coyote used a manual trigger for this trap. The kite string was attached to his own open locker door. The grey canid snickered as he reviewed his blueprints one more time. All he had to do was wait until Little Beeper stopped at his locker to get his books, then close his own locker door to trip the trigger. The weight would fall, pulling the jump rope attached to it through the pulleys causing the loop on the floor to tighten around the pesky roadrunner's legs and hoist him upside down off the floor, rendering Beeper his helpless prey. The young genius rubbed his forepaws eagerly together. Calamity double checked the angles, he certainly didn't want the weight to crash down on top of him when he triggered the trap, and snickered again.
A loud "Beep, beep!" sounded behind him; never failing to startle, the small coyote rocketed head first into the ceiling. Spiderweb cracks ran out from the impact site. A three count later, Calamity crashed down again amid a small shower of plaster to land flat on the floor. He bounded to his feet, his muzzle pulled back into a snarl, ready to give chase to his nemesis.
But it wasn't Little Beeper.
"I just can't help myself!" Dressed as a clown, complete with large floppy shoes and red plastic nose, Babs stood before the little coyote with a bulb-style bicycle horn. She beeped it again. The pink bunny doubled over with laughter and could barely spin-change back into her school clothes.
Calamity's jaw dropped. He just stared in disbelief at Acme Loo's most popular girl . . . along with at least half of the students crowding the hallway. The other half of the student body tittered nervously. The janitor, Pete Puma, paused in sweeping down the hall with his oversize broom and tilted up the bill of his cap for a better look. Shock froze Little Beeper at his locker. Even Furrball who had the misfortune of falling into Elmyra's life-crushing hug stopped his struggles. As for the school yutz, the girl with the blue and white pleated dress with a small skull in her hair bow stood dumbfounded, her mouth dropping slack jawed into an "O" of surprise. Sensing a story, Merry Melody, the cute, dark complected journalist for the school news, whipped out a small notepad and pencil.
To involve oneself in another's act to aid in the hilarity or to even up an overwhelmed, innocent foil . . . though the little red roadrunner could truly be considered neither overwhelmed nor completely innocent . . . was one thing. But to interfere in someone else's comedy sketch just to steal the spotlight was . . . was just . . . Bad Comedy!
The small grey coyote picked up his jaw from the floor and tightened it into a scowl as the pink bunny pushed her way through the crowd for her and her cronies to continue down the hall. "Stand aside, Comedy Queen, coming through!"
Shoved aside, Little Beeper stumbled back from his locker. And despite his recent efforts to break from the villainous habit, Calamity's eyes hardened. Enough was ENOUGH! The coyote's territorial instinct flared up. No one pushed his prey around . . . except him! If the pink powderpuff wanted a war, he'd give Babs a war. Various and sundry toons back away . . . even Little Beeper. Monty's whispered cajoling as well as all of the lessons that Yosemite Sam pounded into him during his Villainous Classes came back to Calamity. He slammed shut his locker door, which now had a sign on it quoting Bugs Bunny.
[Of course, you realize]
[THIS MEANS WAR!]
Scurrying back out of the library, Pinky and the Brain paused to watch the young coyote's invention. It was a piece of art in motion.
The trigger tripped. Down went the weight. Snap went the jump rope. And up went Babs dangling by her large, pink furry feet. The doe bunny's bicycle horn dropped to the floor with a weak squeak as it bounced on its bulb to land near the coyote's pink sports shoes.
Calamity shook his head and snorted as the pink bunny shrieked in surprise. He held up a sign.
[Figures.]
Little Beeper came up behind his predator also shaking his head. The one trap that didn't backfire on Calamity and it ONLY caught a RABBIT. For once, his canid partner wasn't the aggressor. The little red and orange roadrunner studied the trap, deciding how he would have defeated it just in case Calamity tried using it again some time.
"Get me down from here!" Babs demanded.
[As You Wish.]
Calamity's sign was written upside down for the pink bunny's convenience. Shirley tilted her head so that she could read the sign. The loon was impressed. This was actually pretty high grade signing . . . like someone trying to freehand write upside down and backwards on a paper.
The grey coyote calmly pinched the loose end of the jump rope between forefinger and thumb and tugged, undoing the bow that secured it in place. He held the cord there for the space of a beat, then deliberately released it. The jump rope, free from its mooring, zinged through the pulleys and Babs crashed head first to the floor.
Stiff as a board, the pink bunny tipped over, then sat up, rubbing her aching head and watching multiple images of her concerned friends swirl around her. When they finally resolved into Fifi, Hampton, Shirley, Plucky, and Buster, she grabbed the blue bunny's hand and hauled herself up with it.
"Ow!" Buster compared his arms together. The one that Babs yanked on was considerably longer than the other. Plucky pumped on one of his buddy's blue ears to ratchet the arm back to its proper length.
Moving silently, Little Beeper shifted behind the bedraggled pink star of Tiny Toons. But before he could beep at her for ruining his chase scene, Calamity pinched the little roadrunner's beak shut with one hand while at the same time holding up the bicycle horn in his other. "Beep! Beep!"
With another shriek, Babs hit the ceiling where she repeated almost exactly Calamity's performance of earlier when she had startled him with the same bike horn.
"Why you little . . . little . . . grrrr!" but Babs couldn't think of anything bad enough to call the canine villain. "I'll teach you to add Insult to Injury!"
"Eh, actually, Babs, that was more like Injury to Insult instead of the other way around." Buster remarked, trying to add a note of levity to the situation.
"Well, Injury to Injury to Insult actually," Plucky quipped. The little green duck's smug expression morphed into a shout of pain as Shirley zapped his tail feathers with her psychic ability for adding fuel to Babs' already fiery temper.
"Or, more accurately, Injury to Injury to Injury to Insult. If you count being trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey as the insult, while impacting the ceiling once and the floor twice as the injuries." Hampton offered helpfully. Then the small, pink pig's eyes glazed over as the delectable thought of food sidetracked him.
"ENOUGH ALREADY!" Babs shouted. Her friends' comments weren't helping. Babs' pink fur was frazzled and red, her fists were balled straight down by her sides and steam was pouring from her ears. She had a horrific grimace on her face.
Fifi gasped. The violet skunk-ette brought both hand paws to her mouth, horrified.
"Uh, Babsy? Maybe we should just get to class . . .." Buster tried to calm the explosive situation. Literally. Especially as Calamity was now pulling out sticks of lighted dynamite from his body pocket. Looking between the two, it was actually hard to tell which was the predator, the coyote or the pink bunny.
"No dynamite in the halls! No Dynamite in the Halls!" Pete Puma dropped his janitor broom and raced for the principal's office, leaving a trail of dust behind him. Buster took a fleeting glance after the puma and tugged on Babs' arm.
"Oh no, I'm not leaving until I give that little hairball a piece of my mind!" Babs stomped past Furrball and several other furred students who were all looking around to see if she meant them.
[Give me a piece of your mind?]
[ Are you sure that is wise? ]
A sly smirk touched the grey coyote's muzzle and his eyes narrowed in cunning. Calamity spun his sign around to show the back, which also had words on it.
[You seem to have little enough of it as it is.]
"Ooooooh!" The collected students murmured while the nonspeaking toons that comprised the silent minority gasped. Calamity had been working on his 'speaking' skills. He spun the sign around a third time; the words had changed yet again.
[I do so hate going into a battle of wits]
[ against an unarmed opponent. ]
The pink bunny sputtered, but no coherent words came out. Instead of a snappy comeback, Babs was well on her way to blowing her top. A small volcano formed on top of her head between her long pink ears.
"All right, enough already!" Bugs Bunny deftly snatched the young coyote's sticks of dynamite and pinched off the lighted fuses. Startled, Calamity dropped his sign which disintegrated as it hit the floor. It vanished along with his thought.
The Looniversity principle was deeply shocked to see that his two troublemakers were none other than Babs Bunny and Calamity Coyote. He expected as much from Barbara Ann Bunny, as principle he had to deal with the pink doe bunny's rampant humor on a semi-regular basis. But Calamity? The young genius rarely caused Bugs any trouble outside the somewhat habitual lab explosions and malfunctioning traps. The tall grey rabbit would have never figured those two as adversaries. He'd have to consult with the Dean of Hard Knocks, Wile E. Coyote, about his protégé. "Save it for da April's Fool Day competition tomorrow, kids."
During all this, Montana Max sidled up close for a 'ringside' view. The spoiled, rich brat stood with his fists jammed in his expensive suit coat pockets rocking from heels to toes. Monty muttered, apparently to himself, though Plucky Duck clearly heard him. "Now that's a fight even I'd pay to see."
"That's right, folks! Step right up and place your bets!" In addition to his usual white T-shirt, Plucky also donned a booking agent's cap and carried a money tray with betting ledger. "Don't miss out on the comedic battle of the decade!"
"Uh, Plucky?" Hampton J. Pig was practically run down as much of the student body rushed over to place their bets with his entrepreneurial friend. "Are you sure this is such a good idea?"
"Are you kidding?" Plucky paused a moment in taking bets to fling a comradely arm around the pig. "The defending Queen of Comedy against the Silent Challenger! Just think of it!! Hammy, I tell ya, we'll make a killing off this."
"K-k-killing?" Hampton stuttered, even more unsure about the upcoming competition than before. He WAS thinking about it.
Watching the betting taking place, the Brain suddenly smiled. The stout lab mouse grabbed his lanky partner and headed for the door.
"Come, Pinky. We must raise some capital." The Brain rubbed his small pink forepaws together in anticipation. If he could utilize the youngster's inventions, his own vast intellect would be freed up for more important world domination plans. But he would need the money if he were to employ the grey coyote's inventiveness for his own efforts of global takeover.
"Oh, oh! are we going to the state capital or the national capitol, Brain?" Pinky leaped up and down in an idiotic dance of delight at the prospect of going sightseeing with his pal, Brain, "I'll need to get my camera!"
"Money, Pinky, 'capital' as in money!" Brain's voice raised as he tried to cut through Pinky's excitement and reach the taller mouse's nominal intellect.
"The money capital?" Pinky asked, scratching his head in confusion. "You mean Wall Street?"
"No! . . ." then the Brain paused, a cunning look entering his small beady eyes. "But that's not an entirely bad idea! Perhaps I can set up a dummy corporation and get a bailout!"
Popping out of his clock yet again, Gogo Dodo hopped down, landing between Babs and Calamity. The small green dodo bird was dressed in an umpire's cap and vest. "We'll be following Comedy Rules for this no holds comedic battle!" (Gogo morphed into a ruler.) "No folding," (a paper thin Gogo folded up into an origami dodo bird) "spindling," (The origami dodo twisted up into a tube.) "or mutilat-tilat-tilating! . . . without proper comedic license."
A very mutilated Gogo finally popped back into some semblance of his normal state as he continued to lay down the rules for the April Fool's Day competition. "Points will be awarded for ingenuity and enhanced hilarity." (Gogo spiked out in numbers points, looking somewhat like a green and blue cactus.) "Points will be deducted for repeat gags and quips . . . unless it's a running gag or comedic give and take." (The dodo cactus smoothed back into a normal Gogo . . . well, what passed for normal for the wacky bird anyway.) "The contest ends if Calamity eats Babs, or Babs KOs Calamity by 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon." Gogo produced a very large mallet, whacking himself over the head. He shattered into a multitude of little Gogos that subsequently danced away.
"Until tomorrow then." Accepting the official challenge, Babs smiled sweetly at the coyote and patted his scruffy cheek. Her smile then turned sinister and she whispered into Calamity's grey coyote ear. "I'm gonna blast your tail clear into next week!"
"But, . . . but Babs!" Buster grabbed his girlfriend's arm and pulled her around to face him. "What about our private tradition of tomfoolery? You and I always take the April Fools Day contest by storm."
Buster found himself suddenly under a small black rain cloud shooting small lightning bolts aimed at his tail. When that comedic gag failed to reach Babs, he blew the cloud away with a large fan and continued his persuasive argument.
As Buster tried to reason with his comedically competitive friend, Monty continued whispering in Plucky's ear. The school villain had worked out the plot during his mentoring session with Yosemite Sam. Working the Stars of Tiny Toons to manipulate them into provoking his 'wayward' henchman into attacking was sheer, villainous genius. If he could provoke Calamity enough with Babs' stupid April Fools Day challenge, the foolish coyote would go after the rabbits himself. Plus, if he worked it right, he wouldn't even have to pay the sap to do it! And Plucky was the perfect foil for the job. "Ya know, duck, getting Babs to accept this kind of dare is making Buster jealous. When they kiss and make up, Shirley just might clue into the 'romantical vibes' and go for you."
"Hey, you're right!" Blinded by his lust for money from the betting and the prospect of dating the cutest loon in the Looniversity, Plucky didn't even consider that it was Montana Max making the suggestion.
Lightly blowing off Buster's concerns, Babs waved a hand airily. "Relax! I got it handled. I'll knock out Calamity first thing in the morning and then we can go on with 'business as usual.'"
"But Babsy! Cal could eat you alive!" Buster's voice cracked slightly. The blue bunny knew that toon swallowing wasn't typically fatal, but it was reportedly a very uncomfortable experience.
"Not a chance, Buster. All that little fuzz-ball has is pratfalls and malfunctioning traps. I have spin-change impersonations, jokes, gags, melodrama, and just plain humor galore! There's no way I can lose!" Babs's laugh bordered on hysteria. "I got da Moxie!"
Suddenly Babs turned all sweet again. "Now come on. The last one to Weenie Burger is buying!"
"You tell 'em, Babs! You'll win this hands down!" Plucky cheered on his pink rabbit friend. In an aside he continued, "and you'll make me rich!"
"Plucky," Buster said with a tone of intense disapproval.
"What?!" Plucky demanded as Buster gave him a death glare for encouraging the whole thing. "You know what they say: There's nothing like a good, clean fight!"
"Yeah, and this is shaping up to be NOTHING like a good, clean fight." A troubled Buster Bunny hopped after his friends.
Montana Max rolled on the floor laughing long after the crowd broke up and everyone left for the day. The rabbits were in for it now, and if not . . . well then, a little pain went a long way in getting henchmen in line. Either way, he won. And best of all, it wasn't costing him a dime.
Fade Out on Montana Max's gap toothed smirk.
.
A/N Guest appearance from Pinky and the Brain of "Animaniacs," trademarks of Warner Bros. Inc.
Another A/N The formatting for the silent toon signs is off as this site has 'extra spaces' control issues, sorry.