The Problem With Originals

Warning! While it does become a romance, there is a lot of serious issues embedded inside this one. The word abortion will show up (though none takes place), there is prejudice, psychological issues, and moral dilemmas. If at anytime you want to quit reading, please feel free to quit reading.

"It was the cheese! The cheese did it, it was the cheese! Put the cheese in here!"

Prologue:

Present Day

Jasper the rat looked up from his book as he noticed his new roomate. "Welcome to RddoubleC."

"RD double C? Rodents Dogs and Crazy Cats?" The mouse looked all around himself. "I don't belong here, I'm not crazy. I'm not, I'm not a crazy mouse. I keep telling everyone the truth." The mouse rubbed his hands together over and over. "It's the cheese. It pestered me and it would never me alone. All the time, telling me it wanted to be green. It wanted to be green. I may have painted all of them I could find green, but I only did it because it wouldn't leave me alone. That lousy Limburger, that swiny swiss cheese and that monster of muenster!"

"Uh huh." Jasper just waved his hand casually. "Whatever kid, everyone in this place is crazy. Here, you'll fit right in." He placed his book down. "The sooner you confess you don't hear the voices in your head, even though you do, the faster you'll be out. Trust me, you don't wanna hang around. There are some real psychos in here. So, what's your name?"

"Lesta," Lesta said as he kept rubbing his hands together. "I've never been here, usually they put me in a general asylum."

"They're getting full," Jasper explained. "Ever since them warners took over, the place is crawling with too many crazies these days." He stood up. "You don't have many neighbors right now and there's not a lot to do except spinning in wheels, drinking from water spouts and telling stories." He pointed directly below their cage. "That's Kat. He's a cat, and he knows he's a cat but he's convinced that the world thinks he's a dog."

"I know you all think I'm crazy, but I'm a cat, I am a cat!" Kat yelled as he shook his cage.

Jasper pointed to his left. "That over there is Gary. He's an agoraphobic Schizophrenic. He's only in his right mind when he's caged up."

"I wonder what's going on in the world today?" Gary turned a page on his newspaper.

"Get me out! I'm not crazy, I do not belong here! Please someone, help me! Help me!"

"Who's that screaming?" Lesta looked toward his bottom right. There was a huge cage, much bigger than theirs.

"Ooh, that there is the legendary Yakko Warner and his girl Aroma," Jasper said.

Lesta gasped and backed up in his cage. "There's an original warner in here?!"

"Like I said, places are packed," Lesta reminded him. "They're so dangerous that they want a small isolated place to watch out for them better. You be careful around them, Lesta. You're about a level one, and you should be a three to even speak to them too long. They can drive you crazy."

"I'm not crazy, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!"

Aroma glared at Yakko Warner with eyes full of hatred. "I wish I never met you!"

Yakko Warner just laid back on his bedding. "Would you just get down and let someone else holler for a little while? Try taking turns, Honey."

"Don't you honey me, don't you honey me!" Aroma jumped down and went to the opposite side. "You say that and bees associate honey with pollen and flowers, and my name is Aroma, and I know you are trying to get them to attack me." She pointed to her head. "I'm not crazy, I know exactly what you are doing." She screamed again and shook the cage. "I'm not crazy!"

"Whoah." Lesta stepped back. "They don't seem like a happy couple. Not even a happy insane couple."

"Well, they ain't." Jasper replied. "Actually, it's pretty sad. That there used to be a sweet girl named Aroma Therapy, fully sane and functional they say. She just got messed up with the wrong guy at the wrong time."

"Yakko Warner." Lesta shivered. "I've heard stories about him and the other originals. Is it true that they're the ones responsible for creating all the warners?"

"Yep." Jasper looked over at Aroma. "You can try to talk to her when she isn't having fits of rage, but she is really out of it more than half the time these days. None of her stories match up. Yakko Warner did some kind of number on her, worst I'd ever seen."

"Yakko Warner did some kind of number on her, worst I'd ever seen."

Yakko listened to the echoing words of Jasper as he laid quietly on the bedding. A place for mice was not exactly ideal for him, and he could bust out whenever he wanted to, but Aroma was a different issue. He had to stay because she really did need help. Driving others psychotic was what the Warner Brothers were known for, and he did mean to make her a little silly in the head, but he hadn't meant for this to happen.

Aroma couldn't remember details, got scared of things that weren't there, had total fits of rage along with total sessions of nothing but sadness and depression. Even climbing the walls and screaming to the top of her lungs. Aroma had become 100% nuts.

"Where did my glass of water go?" Aroma glared at Yakko. "Did you steal my water? I had a glass of orange juice sitting right there. No, no right there. No, no it was to my right." Aroma pointed to her right. "Now it's not there. So you stole it, didn't you? You stole my orange juice? No, you stole my water. Why did you make me think I had orange juice again? It wouldn't be permitted in this place. Oranges are dangerous." She formed a ball with her hands. "Round and orange, so dangerous. Fall. You could fall and die. More dangerous than a gun. They should outlaw oranges." She smiled at Yakko. "Do you like orange juice?"

And it was all his fault. It wasn't always easy hearing her breakdown mentally because he had liked her at one time. She was fun, and really fun to tease. The teasing had gone too far though and he told Wakko and Dot that he just couldn't leave her like that. He would stay in RcdoubleD until she was within her right mind again. Then that was it, the deal was settled and they'd never see her again.

He had wondered for days on end at first how he even accomplished it. She just snapped like a brittle autumn leaf falling to the ground. Her mind had gone and hadn't come back.

Oh, geez. He just wanted to get her back a little. Just a little revenge. Not this much. She had a strong mind, and she knew their tricks.

If he had known just how fragile her mind had been, there was no way he would have even started playing with her . . .

Chapter One: How they got Technicolor.

1953: Warner Brothers Studio

"Feast your eyes on the one, the only, cartoon maker!" A scientist fixed his glasses just right. "No longer do we have to spend countless money on artist's pay to have them create." He pointed to the hole. "It pierces and scans the data of one cartoon. Then it uses the premade gallons of ink inside to make cartoons like the scanned one, with a pinch of dissimilarity to keep them from being clones of each other. For every trait, there could be ten variations of a trait, so for a whole single cartoon, you could make thousands of clones." He wiggled his fingers in excitement. "In essence, it is the latest perfect invention. 50/50 male and female, with males being fixed. No relationships or kids, the cheapest ink around, just money money money. Only what the studio wants, the studio gets." Oh yes, he knew what the studio wanted to hear.

"This will revolutionize the cartoon industry!" The studio chairman held onto his vest proudly. The studio had just bought the invention and was so far pleased with it. "First sound, now color, and now duplicating control. We can pay one animator for the price of a hundred animators."

"The colors are already inserted as well with sound." The first scientist waved his arm proudly. "The greatest invention known, this prototype will do wonders to the cartoon genres. Nothing can-" The scientist gasped. "Oh no, they've escaped!" He pointed to the top of the machine.

Yakko, Wakko and Dot all smiled down at the scientists. Dot held a sign in her hand that read 'Hi there!-' She turned the sign around for the rest. 'Did you miss me?'

Wakko bent down and looked at the machine, clearly curious about it.

"No. No, no, no. Kiddie cartoons come down, please?" The scientist whined but it was too late. Wakko had shoved his finger in the hole.

Wakko pulled out his finger and started to cry, silently, but enough that the ground was getting covered in tears. He held up a sign with his uninjured hand. 'OWIE!'

"Stop the machine," the studio chairman yelled as he pulled his hair out. "Stop it, stop it, stop it!"

"I can't, it cannot be stopped without destroying it once a cartoon has been scanned." The scientist stared at the numbers on the computer data. "Ten already created. 20 already created. 40 already, 80 already, 160, 240, 480, 960, 1920, 3840! There are too many copies!"

"Smash the machine before they are created!" The studio chairman yelled. Cartoons that looked and acted like the warners were not needed in the studio at all!

"They already are, they're trapped and squished." The scientist pulled some levers on them. "I already stopped it as soon as I could, it just takes a second to actually stop. In a second. Just a second. Got it." The machine stopped. He read the final number. "30,000."

"30,000 cartoons are stuck in there?" The chairman asked as he stared at the machine.

Yakko, Wakko and Dot jumped down, all holding up one sign. 'Tight fit.'

"You! You, you, you escaped from the water tower again?!" The chairman was pissed. "The greatest invention will now massacre my poor city. Thirty thousand new cartoons like Wakko Warner!"

'I have lots of brothers and sisters.' Wakko smiled as he held up his sign.

'Correction.' Yakko flipped his sign over. 'Not your ink, they scanned you.'

'You've got cartoons just like you.' Dot held up her sign. 'Just as cool!'

"Do something, do anything. Thirty thousand cartoons cannot stay in there for long," The chairman yelled.

The scientist punched in some numbers. "Okay." He moved away from his device and waved goodbye to it. "I placed a failsafe in it, just in case. It's off to outer space. Goodbye my precious prototype, the father of future creations."

"The father of nothing. This never existed and will never exist again," the chairman said as the machine took off like a rocket out of the room. "There are no extra variable copies of Wakko Warner. The studio knows nothing."

Yakko, Wakko and Dot all held up a huge sign together. 'Ahem?'

"Loose end. Dammit." The chairman covered his eyes. "What do you want to keep quiet about this, Warners?"

Dot held up her sign. 'I want a colored pink skirt, a yellow flower, and a cute red nose!'

Wakko held up his sign. 'I want to be able to burp and sing!'

Yakko held up two signs. He raised the left one higher. 'I want to be able to talk.' He raised the right one higher. 'So that I can finally express'. He flipped the signs over. He raised the left one higher. 'my true knowledge of the English language.' He raised the right one higher. 'as well as other languages and' He flipped his signs again. He raised the left one higher. 'to share what I know faster instead of constantly.' He raised the right one higher. 'flipping signs.'

The silent black and white cartoons wanted color and sound? Only selected famous cartoons that were black and white were given those abilities now. Then again, the studio could not afford in this day and age for any bad news to come out about them. Creating thirty thousand essentially 'warners' and blasting them off to somewhere in space? No, that did not sound good. "Fine," the chairman agreed. "Afterwards, you are going back to the tower. Don't say or flip a sign at anyone telling them what happened or you'll regret it."

The guys just held up one big sign. 'The Warner Brothers in Technicolor!'

'and the Warner Sister' Dot had written on her own sign.