The Warners were unusually careful and reverent as they carried their family's paintings back down the stairs. This was a long staircase, so carrying these large paintings in their heavy gilded frames was not easy.
The staircase had a landing, and the Warners stopped there to take a short break.
"Our ancestors should have built an elevator for this place," Dot said wearily.
"That might make it too easy for invaders," Yakko said. "I bet our ancestors figured no intruders would want to go up all of these stairs."
Yakko remembered walking down these stairs with his siblings when they were little, having grown tired of waiting for their mother to come back for them. The stairs seemed even bigger when Yakko was younger, and maybe a bit scary, too. Little four-year-old Wakko's solution was to face backwards the rest of the way down, which the other two had copied.
Meanwhile, in the present, Dot looked at the portrait of herself and her brothers as little kids.
"Aw, I was always cute! And I guess you guys were cute, too...in your own way. How did Mom and Dad get us to stay still long enough for us to be painted?"
"By bribing us with ice cream," Yakko said, his voice a mix of amused and tired. "Mom thought it seemed a bit too much like bribery, but it worked. That's ort of like how they got Wakko to learn how to walk: Dad gave him half a piece of candy and put the other half on the other side of the room so that Wakko would go get it."
Speaking of Wakko, Yakko and Dot expected Wakko to remark that he would like some ice cream and candy, but he didn't. He actually looked quite pensive, staring at the portrait of the whole family.
"What happens now?" Wakko asked after a long silence. "What do we do?"
"We go the rest of the way downstairs," Yakko said.
"I meant with the story," Wakko clarified.
"If I know story structure," Dot said, "then I think the scene with us going to the tower was the climax-"
Yakko said, "Goodnight, everybody!" while Dot pretended not to hear that. Boys, go fig.
"-and this is the falling action," Dot finished. "This is the part where the loose ends are supposed to get tied up."
At the mention of "falling", a bored Wakko couldn't resist pushing a giant button to make the rest of the staircase turn into a slide. A cliche, perhaps, but one the Warners liked.
"This is more of a sliding action," Yakko joked weakly, though Wakko and Dot were laughing and whooping too loudly to hear what he had said.
It was a fun ride, though it inevitably ended. When the Warners reached the bottom of the staircase-turned-slide, they continued to laugh for a while. Having lived in depressing and semi-Dickensian circumstances for much of their lives, the siblings tried to find as many reasons for fun as possible.
And the kids were about to find another opportunity for something fun: they heard voices nearby, voices that the Warners recognized as belonging to the guards. Some life returned to Yakko's tired eyes, along with a He glanced at the family portrait and got an idea.
"Want to play a little joke?" Yakko whispered. Wakko and Dot eagerly clapped their hands together and nodded.
The guards in question were the Captain and a random guy. They stopped in their tracks when they saw the portrait of the royal Warner family, seemingly hanging from mid-air.
Really, the portrait was being held on a fishing line that was almost invisible in the darkness, with the Warners hiding just out of sight.
This was a trick the kids had learned from their mother, one that Yakko and Wakko vaguely remembered. Mom used to like doing fake seances on Halloween, in which she would pretend to contact the spirits of her parents.
Both of the guards screamed at the top of their lungs.
"WHOA, MAN!" the Captain shouted. "THE PAINTINGS REALLY ARE HAUNTED!"
The Warners wondered if they had gone too far with this joke, so they decided to reveal themselves. They appeared in front of the guards as they ran in the other direction, which only seemed to scare the guards more. They jumped into the air and ended up clinging to the rafters for a moment, before dropping back onto the floor.
"Not cool, man," the Captain muttered, looking like he might throw up.
"Yeah, that spring thaw's come early this year," Yakko quipped. "Getting pretty warm out."
Yakko still wasn't inclined to be fully sympathetic to the guards.
"What did you mean by the paintings really being haunted?" Dot asked.
"Ask him," the Captain said, pointing at the other guard. "I was still in Ticktockia when Salazar invaded Warnerstock, man. Didn't become Captain 'til way later. Long story."
"Salazar went through a lot of Captains," the other guard explained quietly. "Anyway, Salazar ordered us to get rid of all of the paintings of your family, but we couldn't get rid of these ones." He pointed to the family portrait, which Yakko now held, and the Warners' baby portrait, which both Wakko and Dot held up. "We tried throwing them out, and we tried to burn them, and we tried to shred them, but they always reappeared on the walls the next day. That's why we locked the paintings up. Out of sight, out of mind, you know?"
"I don't know whether to find that funny or creepy," Yakko said dryly.
Speaking of creepy, the Warners and the guards suddenly heard more and something strange came out of the shadows: it looked like a puppet version of King William (at least, the Warners guessed that the puppet was supposed to be their father, as it was a horrible likeness).
"I am the ghost of King William! I will expel all Ticktockians from my kingdom! My death shall be avenged!"
The Warners were not fooled, especially when the supposed ghost exclaimed "NARF!" and an angry voice hissed, "Quiet, Pinky!" The Warners all exchanged "Can you believe this?" looks, and then Dot whispered something to Yakko, who smirked.
"Pinky, Brain, we know it's you," Yakko said.
Wakko and Dot grabbed the fake ghost and pulled on it, bringing Pinky and the Brain down from the rafters (along with the megaphone Brain had been holding).
"Drat," Brain grumbled. "I suppose Pinky's inane interjections gave us away?"
"Nah," Dot said, "I just knew you'd show up in this story at some point."
"And you don't sound a thing like our real dad," Yakko added.
"You obviously haven't seen the flashbacks," Wakko said cheerfully.
Pinky and the Brain suddenly found themselves facing the guards' guns.
"It's okay, they're friends of ours," Yakko said. "We go way back."
Brain actually considered the Warners more acquaintances than friends, but if it kept him and Pinky out of a dungeon (and alive), Brain wasn't about to contradict Yakko.
The guards backed off, though they continued to eye the mice warily.
"I just got an idea," Yakko told Brain. "Want to hear it? Even if you don't, I'll tell you anyway."
Brain shrugged.
"Whatever your idea is, I suppose it can't be any more ridiculous than Pinky's idea involving the Easy-Bake Oven."
"But I knew a witch would never fit in an Easy-Bake Oven," Pinky said.
"He gets it!" Wakko said happily to Dot, who rolled her eyes.
"I would rather put a nice cake in an Easy-Bake Oven, anyway," Pinky went on, so he and Wakko started talking about cake.
The saying was true, Brain thought. Strange minds do think alike.
"Okay, here's my idea," Yakko said. "How'd you like to be our Prime Minister?"
Brain blinked, hardly believing what he'd just heard.
"This isn't one of your practical jokes?"
"Would we lie?" Dot asked innocently, with all three Warners suddenly gaining halos and angel wings.
"Believe it or not, I'm serious," Yakko went on. "We can't run a country. We're just kids."
"Well...I suppose I would be amenable to that," Brain said, and when the Warners just blinked at him, Brain sighed and said, "That means 'yes'."
"Terrific," Yakko said. "You can start on Monday."
Pinky tapped Brain's shoulder. "Brain, does this mean our plan worked?"
"It would seem so," Brain said. "Not in the way I intended, but..."
"Good," Pinky said. "I have to get some rest before my date with Pharfignewton tomorrow morning! Zort!"
"Pharfignewton's a horse," Dot sweetly explained to the puzzled guards. "Pinky and I sometimes fed her together."
"A mouse dating a horse?" the Captain said in bemusement. "That's weird, man."
Yakko shrugged.
"Dad used to say "Live and let live'...or was that a Paul McCartney song? Oh well, it's still good advice."
Dot took Yakko aside and asked, "Do you think it was a good idea to make Brain our Prime Minister?"
"Don't worry, sis, I'm not stupid," Yakko said lightly. "I also happen to know a few things about stories and their formulas, and I know that the formula for Pinky and the Brain will doom them to perpetual failure in their attempts at world domination."
Wakko, who had overheard this, just stared blankly, but Dot said, "Okay, good enough for me!"