Chapter 4: Two Times The Toony
I. The Scent of Defeat
Minoru 'Grape Juice' Mineta's eyes sparkled with anticipation as he ran into one of the abandoned buildings found in 'Urban Area 2' of the training grounds. The goal of the match couldn't have been any more perfect in his eyes: either he captured his opponent, or vice-versa. To him, the best part was that he'd be up against one of the ACME Looniversity girls, to the point where as soon as his name announced and he heard a hint that his opponent was a girl, he immediately dashed off towards the site of the match. (When he was far enough out of sight, some of his classmates began making a couple of bets regarding the match's outcome.)
As Mineta searched the corridors within the building for his opponent, he hoped that he'd be up against one of the female ACME teachers or an upperclassman, with big, full features, a beauty only Tex Avery could've drawn. He checked room after room after room, only to find nothing each time. He then began to notice something particular...
"It's quiet in here..." he stated, invoking a very tired cliché as he narrowed his eyes. "...Too quiet." As he ascended the stairs to the next floor, there was still no sign of anyone, just a hint of a foul odor. In fact, the odor, he noticed, was starting to grow stronger and stronger...
"Ooh-la-la, what a cute little boy!" a French-sounding voice purred from out of nowhere, causing Mineta to pause with a start. "And I love ze colour of your attire-it iz quite complimentary to moi, non? Almost like we were made for each other..."
Mineta slowly turned around and found, to his horror, a purple-furred female skunk who was about his age and size, wearing a small pink bow in the left side of her hair. No wonder the odor smelled most foul!
"*GASP!*" Mineta started to say, only for something to quickly occur to him. "Wait, what're the right words for this?" He quickly brought out a pocket-sized Japanese-to-French dictionary and flipped through its pages until he found some appropriate phrases. "Ah, here we go." He then put the book away before resuming his fearful stance. "Sacré bleu! Le Pew!" he exclaimed as he quickly tried to cover his mouth and nose.
"Oh nononono, you refer to my mentor," the girl skunk said as she quickly inched closer to Mineta until she caught him in a vice grip of an embrace. "I am called Fifi la Fume. As my mentor says, 'iz better to make love more zan war', non? What say we forget zis match and get to know one another...?"
Desperately, Mineta (holding his breath) tried to throw some of his trademark sticky purple spheres; unfortunately, he did so in a panic, causing him to lose his balance and send him (and Fifi) tumbling to the floor, which they became stuck to because of the spheres.
"It appears you really have fallen for moi, non?" Fifi posed seductively. Mineta, turning blue the more he held his breath, finally gave up the ghost and passed out.
Out on the sidelines, the result was confirmed for all to see.
"Mineta is out cold!" Present Mic announced.
"Th-th-th-th-the score now s-s-s-s-stands tied b-b-b-between both schools," Porky added.
In the peanut gallery, a bit of conversation was going on regarding the outcome of the match.
"Looks like your pal Grape Juice totally wound up in a real grape jam," Shirley McLoon, an ACME student who was a white-feathered duck wearing a pink turtleneck with a matching bow in her long blonde hair, stated in a pun-derful manner.
"Ha! That he did, girlfriend, that he did," an amused Momo 'Creati' Yaoyorozu agreed with a nod, as she and certain other U.A. girls eyed certain U.A. guys with small, smug smirks on their faces. "Pay up, boys!" Yaoyorozu ordered as she, Kyoka 'Earphone Jack' Jiro, Ashido, and Uraraka each held an open hand out. The boys groused and grumbled a bit before reluctantly handing over their agreed-upon yen to the girls.
II. Uravity's Ducks in a Row, to the Max!
Fifteen minutes later, the next match was underway, as Uraraka found herself pacing near the edge of one of the lake areas of the training grounds. The goal of the match was for her to immobilize her opponent or knock them out (and vice-versa), though the catch was she had no idea who her adversary would be, due to a last-minute decision to make their identity a surprise. Hopefully, she thought, whoever she'd face wasn't as overpowered or prone to violence, at least not like what went down in Koda's match. Still, she hated not knowing what she'd be in for. She was brought out of her thinking when she heard a rustling of reeds in the lake, which drew her attention to them.
"Ahhhh-HA!" a new voice exclaimed. "There you are!" Suddenly, a green-feathered duck wearing a white tank top and a white headband jumped out from the reeds and landed at the water's edge, assuming a variety of martial arts stances. "It's only fair to warn you, Gravi-girl-"
"That's 'Uravity'," Uraraka corrected him.
"-that I, Plucky Duck, am well-versed in the arts of Swamp-Jitsu, Wet-Fu, and Walla-Walla Wrestling! So, if you want to surrender and avoid the indignity of being defeated by yours truly, I'll be glad to-"
Before he finished his spiel, Uraraka simply walked up to him, touched him on the forehead with her fingertip, and sent him floating with a slight push towards the center of the lake, much to his surprise. When he reached the center, Uraraka touched her fingertip again, and Plucky fell into the water unceremoniously.
"Well, guess that's that then," she said to herself as she turned to walk away...only to be confronted by a figure dressed in a gray outfit with a black cape, gloves, boots, and pointy-eared cowl; the figure also had a yellow utility belt and a yellow oval with a bat-shaped symbol in the center of his chest. It didn't take long for Uraraka to figure out who was under the cowl, if the beak sticking out from his face was any indicator.
"All right, you wanna do 'hero vs. hero' now, huh?" Plucky said as he flared his cape out and upwards in an attempt at intimidation. "In that case, prepare to face the terror that flaps in the-"
"Different franchise, and parent company for that matter *ribbit*," Tsuyu pointed out as she suddenly popped up underneath a lily pad in the lake, before just as swiftly diving back down.
Deflated for a brief moment, Plucky continued with a slight alteration to his spiel. "Prepare to face the Dark Knight, the Caped Crusader-BATDUCK!"
Uraraka, unfazed yet mildly annoyed, touched Plucky's utility belt with her fingertip, causing the bat-garbed waterfowl to float upwards.
"HEY! What gives?!" he exclaimed, stretching his neck so he was still eye-level with her while the rest of him floated higher. "You call yourself a superhero?!" It was then that he joined the rest of himself at his current altitude. After doing some quick trajectory calculations, Uraraka then touched her fingertip and released Plucky from his present state of weightlessness...and watched as he was promptly brought back down to earth in another part of the area.
A few minutes later, Uraraka found herself sitting by the lake, wondering why the buzzer hadn't sounded off. Again she was brought out of her train of thought when Plucky reappeared next to her, this time wearing a blue outfit with matching mask, a white cape and matching gloves, and a pair of red boots with a white stripe at the top of the cuff on each; in the center of the chest area was a red 'T' over a white circle.
"You may have beaten me as Batduck," Plucky began as he pointed dramatically upward, "but you won't beat me as...the Toxic Revenger! Enemy of all who threaten mother nature, whether by polluting-"
While Plucky kept yammering on, Uraraka, now really annoyed by the duck's antics, stood up from where she sat, touched a large fallen log, and floated it just above the unaware Plucky.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhh shaddup!" Uraraka blared as she proceeded to drop the log on Plucky. She then turned to glare at the monitor drone recording the match. "All right, what's the big idea? Why hasn't the point been awarded? I beat my opponent-"
"Actually, toots," a new voice began to say, disrupting Uraraka's mood at the moment, "that moron of a mallard ain't your opponent." Uraraka turned to the source of the voice and found herself face-to-face with a brown-haired, smug-faced human boy wearing a green t-shirt under a gray blazer with matching slacks and black shoes. "I am."
"Who-?" Uraraka asked.
"The name's Max-Montana Max," the boy said as he thrust a business card into her hands, while Plucky inched his head out from underneath the log. "I hired beaky boy to keep ya busy while I bribed my way into getting a look at your files, just so I could find your weakness..." Max then addressed the perplexed Plucky. "Watch and learn!" Max then proceeded to reach into his pocket...and somehow pulled out of it an enormous bag full of wads of crisp yen, right in Uraraka's view. "Also hit up the currency exchange while I was at it."
"Ah-bu...buuuuh..." Uraraka uttered as she stood there, stunned, unable to articulate what she was thinking upon seeing the bag of money. (Which was something along the lines of "Moo-lah-la!") Given how she came from a somewhat poor household, she was bound to react in this manner whenever encountering an example of actual, honest-to-goodness luxury. Because of this, Uraraka was effectively frozen on the spot, as seen by the monitor drone.
"Ur-r-r-r-raraka is un-n-n-n-nable to m-m-m-m-move!" Porky's voice declared through the drone's speaker.
"*Sigh* Point goes to ACME Looniversity," a disappointed Present Mic added. "The score is now U.A. 2-ACME Looniversity 3."
"Oh, that's preposterous!" Plucky exclaimed as he pulled himself out fully from under the log. "It should be impossible for you to win, not when the mighty Toxic Reveng-" Before Plucky could go any further, Max reached into his other pocket and pulled out another big bag of money, this time full of U.S. dollars. "Ah-bu...buuuh..." Plucky uttered much in the same way as Uraraka, joining her in a state of currency-induced immobility. Like his mentor Daffy Duck, Plucky may have been, among other things, a coward...but he was a greedy little coward...
Out at the sidelines, Uraraka's classmates were in disbelief over what went down.
"Now that is just playing dirty!" an irritated Iida stated. "How is bribery not against the rules here?!"
"Sorry to say, that's just the way Max is," Hamton J. Pig, another ACME student and Plucky's best friend, answered with a shrug. "To him, no matter the opponent, money's always the solution."
To be continued...
**Author's Note(s)**
Plucky, as Batduck, nearly utters one of the signature catchphrases of the title character from Disney's Darkwing Duck. The description about him being a 'greedy little coward' is based on the last line said by his mentor Daffy in the 1957 Looney Tunes short "Ducking the Devil". Uraraka's line before she drops the log on Plucky has been said in many a Looney Tunes short, usually before someone hits another person on the head (with Foghorn Leghorn being on the receiving end of this gag the most).
