A/N: We're on the home stretch, folks, but this isn't the end quite yet.

"Yakko, where've you been?" a voice hissed in the darkness as soon as Yakko entered the hotel room. "It's almost sunrise!"

"Babs!" Yakko stumbled through the darkness until he found her sitting on the couch. He collapsed beside her and pulled her into a hug. "Sorry I was gone so long, but it was worth it; I think I've found what I was looking for!"

"Couldn't you have left a note or something?"

Yakko shook his head and got up to fix himself a drink. "No, because I knew you'd come for me, and I couldn't risk that."

In the darkness, Babs raised an eyebrow. "Where exactly were you that you couldn't tell me?"

"I broke into the Boomtown Library," Yakko said as he downed a gulp of his drink.

"You broke into a library?"

"Yep! But don't worry." He pulled the page from the book out of his pocket and grinned. "I got what I needed. Did you find Harpo?"

"Yeah," Babs said, still reeling from the shock of the usually straight-edged Yakko breaking and entering. "He's asleep in the other room."

Yakko crossed the room and looked out the window, watching the first glints of sunrise on the horizon. "I hope by the end of the day he'll…he'll forgive me for all of this."

"We'll see." Babs stood up and stretched. "Now that I know you're alive and haven't been dragged off into the wilds of the Caribbean, I can catch a few hours sleep before we head down to the police station." Yakko nodded and watched her go off to the bedroom.

A little while later, he wandered into Harpo's room to find him wide awake and staring at the ceiling, hands behind his head. He didn't even look over at his uncle as he entered the room and sat down on a chair next to the bed.

"Harpo?" Yakko whispered. Harpo didn't respond. Yakko sighed. "So I have to ask you something. I think I've found a way to get everyone out of trouble, but I need for you to answer an important question first." Harpo slowly looked over at him. Yakko reached forward and clasped the small spoon-ladle necklace in his hand, looking at his nephew seriously. "Did you get this off of the wreck you looted?"

Harpo said nothing.

"This is important, Harpo."

Still, nothing.

"Harpo. If you want Wakko, Babs, and the rest of them out of jail and walking down the street as free people by tonight, you need to answer my question."

Harpo sat up and his lips trembled slightly. "Y-Yeah," he stammered finally. "Yeah, I got it off the wreck. Why? Am I gonna get in more trouble for it? Are they?"

Yakko's face broke into a grin. "No, buddy. I think you might have just saved everyone. Come on and get up. We've got four toons and a human to save."

Babs, Yakko and Harpo were at the police station in minutes, just as the Boomtown lawyer Maccy showed up. Yakko and Babs politely introduced themselves but didn't feel the need to make small talk as they all entered into the station and waited for the clerk to hand over some paperwork.

"Well, let's stop wasting time and get this over with," Maccy said in a business-like way as he laid his briefcase down on the counter. The clerk nodded and disappeared behind the heavy wooden door that separated the lobby from the cell block, and returned a moment later with Wakko, Dot, Scooby, Red and Buster in tow. Buster averted his gaze and hoped Babs didn't notice him. She, however, was too busy frantically looking over the marked passage of the book page Yakko had brought with him, and had to admit it was a brilliant loophole.

"You all are going to be charged with destroying an underwater cultural resource. Boomtown is sorry for the delay," the clerk drawled uncaringly as he began to stamp some official looking documents. "And unless the lawyers representing you want to contest the arrest, then – "

"We do," Yakko interjected strongly. "And we have proof that what these six were doing was not simply looting a wreck."

"What are you talking about?" Maccy practically cried, impatient to get this formality over with. "They were caught in the act of looting! There's nothing you or your counterpart can say to contest that! There's nothing you can produce to say that they are not guilty!"

Yakko smirked. "Wrong."

He strode over to his nephew and plucked Harpo's necklace clean from his neck, holding it up to the light. "What would you say this is, Mr. Maccy?"

Maccy shrugged. "Dunno. Looks like a spoon without a handle."

"Right you are. Can you guess at the age?"

Again, the opposing lawyer shrugged. "Looks sort of corroded. I guess it's old. Look, what's the point of all this?" He glanced impatiently at his wristwatch. "I've got breakfast with the mayor of Boomtown in fifteen minutes. If you've got something to say, just say it."

Yakko began to pace, once again back in his natural habitat. "All right then, it's this: under submerged cultural resource laws for international waters, international law stipulates that if an object of cultural value is removed from a shipwreck site, the shipwreck site becomes the legal property of the person who took the object. This spoon ladle – which you yourself identified as both a spoon-ladle and an antique item – was, in fact, plucked from the site by none other than Charles Warner, standing right here." With this, Yakko pointed to Harpo as he finished his speech. "Thus, Mr. Maccy, the six of these people have not only committed absolutely no crime by pulling gold off of the wreck, the shipwreck and all objects within it are the sole and legal property of this kid standing right here. You can't hold him by any legal right, and so it is completely Mr. Warner's decision whether he wants these five – " he pointed to Scooby, Red, Dot, Wakko and Buster, " – to be charged with looting his wreck." Yakko turned to Harpo. "Well, Harpo? Do you want to press charges?"

Harpo, still stunned by the revelation that not only was he not in any trouble, but that he actually owned the wreck of the Charlotte, nevertheless shook himself from his shock and immediately shook his head no. "Absolutely not!" he thundered. "I want them all released immediately! If they aren't, then I'm going to press charges on the Boomtown authorities, and I already know that the two best lawyers in California will be representing me!" Harpo gave Yakko the first genuine grin in four months, silently thanking him for getting them all out of this situation. Yakko grinned back, happier than he'd felt in years.

"Well, you heard Mr. Warner!" Babs said hastily, shooing Maccy out of the way while she ripped up the charge sheets the clerk had been holding out to him. "Release these five immediately, or face prosecution. I'm still not afraid to bring you to the witness stand to defend why you held a minor, especially a minor who was legally innocent the entire time."

The clerk, though red in the face, clenched his teeth and did his best at a smile. "Well, it seems there's been an error," he said in a quaking voice. "Good thing your lawyers knew their stuff."

"I knew he could do it!" Wakko whispered. The handcuffs were unlocked and the five on one side of the room were reunited with the three on the other.

"Dammit," Maccy muttered as he shut his briefcase. But to the rest he only scoffed, "Like Boomtown really cares about one little wreck! We've got a few more important things to do!"

"Yeah, like trying not to get puked on by someone with a carnival hangover when you're on the way to breakfast with the mayor," Harpo laughed at the small man, who only threw him a dirty look as he exited the building and left their lives forever.

"Just get out of here!" the clerk shouted. "It's carnival, for Chrissakes! Go on, get out! Biggest party of the year and you're all standing around! Go on, get out of here…"

"Well, it's time to do what we do best," Wakko said, rubbing his hands together and grinning. "Let's party!"