The tunnels were dark and wet. The lights above were flickering low. The corridors seemed even more eerie and abandoned than the last time the group was there.
Hello Nurse, Scratchansniff, Slappy, and Brain strode along, the sounds of their footsteps echoing down the halls. The silence was deafening as they squeezed their way through the hollowed out steam train prop that partially blocked the way.
"Do you remember which way to go?" Hello Nurse glanced over at the white mouse currently hitching a ride on her shoulder.
"I believe we will continue going straight." Brain said, "Then we shall make a few turns around a corner, a left, a right, straight, do a loop, then another right, followed by another left, backtrack, loop, straight, and we shall enter the laboratory. Do you understand?"
Hello Nurse was awkwardly silent for a moment, "Erm... You may have to remind us when we get there."
They walked in silence. Scratchansniff sniffed the air before sneezing, breaking the quiet of the underground tunnels.
"Ugh!" He groaned, "What is that awful scent?!"
The others sniffed the air and found themselves gagging. The air reeked of something rotting.
"Holy smokes, what smells like something died?!" Slappy demanded.
"Quiet!" Brain called out, "Do you hear that? That odd... Scraping noise?"
They fell silent and didn't move a muscle. From the right was a darkened corridor, completely pitch black and impossible to see. The strange sound seemed to be coming from there and was slowly approaching them.
"Does anyone have a flashlight?" Brain asked, "That is the most unusual sound and I must find out what it is."
"I have one on my phone, hold on." Hello Nurse said. She pulled her phone from her purse and turned the flashlight on, shining it down the pitch black corridor. The light illuminated something that they hadn't noticed before.
Something... Humanoid...?
It took a moment to process what they were seeing, but the terror set in when they realized just what they were looking at. A humanoid figure was crawling along the ground, moving with a single toon arm that seemed to be the only limb operable on its entire body. The other arm was a limp skeleton arm, with only a few traces of rotting muscle left. Its face was half rotted off, sickly green and eaten away by years of decay and maggots, with a single empty eye socket and a flickering blue toon eye. Its human jaw hung limply from the toon half of its face, barely holding on by a single strip of stretchy black flesh. Its entire back half was missing, but its spine was still intact, hanging out of its torso and scraping against the stone floor. Whatever it was smelled absolutely rancid, like a dead body mixed with stale old ink and paint.
"What... Is that?!" Scratchansniff yelped.
The thing lifted its partially decaying head, turning its one good eye to stare directly at them. It let loose a noise that was somewhere between a human scream and a bizarre, cartoony spring noise. Just then, the sound of radio static played through the tunnel before a familiar voice crackled through the noise and echoed down the halls.
"Helloooo nurses!" The unmistakable voice of Yakko Warner greeted in an all too friendly way, "I see you've decided to come and mess with my plans, huh? Well too bad, cause you won't get far with these guys roaming the tunnels. I decided to make some of my failures of past work useful! You like 'em?"
"Wait, these guys?" Hello Nurse asked in a panic, "There's more?!"
"Well, even with a genius such as myself," Yakko stated, "There's bound to be failures of any kind in all fields of scientific research. Ain't that right, Mr. Try to Take Over the World?"
"Shut up!" Brain snarled to the speakers, "You think you're clever for using failed experiments to stop us? How so when their bodies are falling to pieces and they can barely move?"
Yakko chuckled, the laughs echoing down the corridors menacingly, "Oh, you think they're all built like Mr. Spine here?"
Scratchansniff let out a frightened yelp and pointed to the corridor to the left of them, "L-l-look!"
They turned the flashlight to see another humanoid figure, roughly the size of a full grown man. This one was missing its arms and left leg, but still had an intact right toon leg that it hobbled and hopped along on. Its body was raked with scratches and mangled with stitches and scalpel marks. It was missing both eyes, so all that could be seen staring back were two black eye sockets, bleeding ink and decades old Warnerium. Its toon jaw seemed unhinged, with far too many teeth for even a toon to have.
"It's another one of them freaks!" Slappy shouted, "They got us on both sides!"
Yakko cackled, only barely drowning out the gurgling sounds of the failed experiments, "Have fun you pests! And remember, if my failed experiments don't kill you," He paused, as he seemed to lean in close to his microphone and breathe heavily on it, "I will."
The speakers faded to static. The two creatures on either sides of the group let lose unnatural roars. The spine one scrambled forward, surprisingly fast for having only one functioning arm. The hopping one hopped forward, each landing making a disgusting crunching noise of flesh and bone barely holding itself together.
"Go!" Brain commanded, "Go go go! NOW!"
They took off down the corridor directly ahead. The creatures gave chase. They were much faster than their decrepit, broken down appearance suggested and were able to keep up only a few steps behind.
"What should we do?!" Scratchansniff asked, his voice shaky with panic.
"We need to use the antidote!" Hello Nurse exclaimed as she drew the dart gun.
"But we can't waste them on these abominations!" Brain insisted, "We need them for whatever the Warner children may be planning!"
"Then what do you suggest we do?!" Hello Nurse demanded.
Scratchansniff checked behind them and gasped, "What is Ms. Squirrel doing?!"
They stopped and saw Slappy standing between them and the two failed experiments, holding her mallet high. She glanced over her shoulder at them and gave a small grin.
"You punks go on ahead!" She said, "I'll take care of these freak shows. You figure out how to get Skippy and the others back to normal!"
"But Ms. Squirrel-!" Hello Nurse called for her.
"I said scram!" The old squirrel interrupted. She took a stick of dynamite from her purse, lit it, and threw it into the space between her and the rest of the group. Hello Nurse, Scratchansniff, and Brain dove for cover as the stick went off, the explosion echoing loudly down the corridor.
When the dust cleared, the tunnel was blocked off. Only the muffled sounds of Slappy fighting the failed experiments could be heard, before they slowly faded away as the fighting carried on down the corridor.
"Slappy...! She sacrificed herself!" Scratchansniff cried.
Hello Nurse shook her head, "Goodness, we got to help her!"
"But how?! She blocked the tunnel!"
"Those creatures could hurt her badly! She's already injured!"
Brain groaned loudly, "Could you two stop being sentimental for five minutes?! She gave us time to get the laboratory! Now quit your blathering and move! We're running out of time!"
Hello Nurse and Scratchansniff seemed apprehensive, but decided to keep moving. They picked themselves up and started running down the corridors, hoping they'd never see the horrific failed experiments again.
Yakko placed a collection of tools down on an operating table; his hacksaw, his syringe, scalpels, pliers, and so many others he had used to modify people's bodies over the years. The container of Plotz's blood sitting next to the tools sloshed around sickeningly. He was watching his sibling's bodies quietly breathe and shift under the sheets. They'd be ready to go within half an hour. With the failed experiments distracting the pesky nurse and psychiatrist, he now had time to do his last surgery.
Yakko set up a mirror directly in front of him and cleaned it carefully. He took a crumpled up piece of paper from his coat pocket and hung it on the top of the mirror. It was a model sheet, a very specific one; one that had been with his toonification surgeries since the very beginning twenty years ago with Ralph's toonification.
The dead blue eyes and pale yellow face of the model sheet stared back at Yakko, seeming to judge him harshly for what he was about to do.
He took off his left glove and rolled up his sleeve. A small, whiteish scar showed through the pitch black fur where he had taken the very first sample of Warnerium from his own body. He grabbed his trusty hacksaw from the table and stared at the shine of the blade. It reflected the worry in his face, but also his determination to go through with this.
Yakko took a deep breath...
...and plunged the saw into his own arm.