Chapter three- You can take the toon out of the town...
Any fan of the warner's mid nineties cartoon series could tell you that the C.E.O was one Thaddius Plotz, a small and rather angry man. Only those clued in on the reality of the Warner series could tell you that Plotz, like the Warners themselves, was actually alive. Only those closest to him could tell you he retired soon after the series finished shooting, but pretty much anyone could tell you why. However, refusing to learn from his father's mistakes, Thaddeus Plotz II, a young man of similar height and similar temperment to his father, worked his own way to becoming C.E.O. Gaining much interest from the three warner siblings. Unfortunately, Thaddeus Plotz II wasn't as harmless as his father, and seemed far more vehement. This, of course, made the Warners want to tease him even more.
Plotz junior was sat in his high backed leather chair behind a large mahogany desk. He leafed through a few papers, mouth set in a thin, hard line. A buzz from the intercom cut through his work.
"The Warner children are here to see you, sir."
"In broad daylight?" He fumed, looking around anxiously. "Has anyone seen them?"
"No, sir." His nasal secretary replied.
"Well hurry up and bring them in. Better a contained tornado out of sight..." He muttered, running his hands through his hair. He looked around his office. He'd just gotten it clean and organised, and now he was forced to let the little freaks loose in his haven of hard work.
He reached for the drawer by his left knee, where he remembered placing his stress ball. His handle stopped just short of the drawer, though. Oh no, he'd seen their tricks. He knew when he opened that drawer, they'd bound out.
"Oh no..." He muttered, shaking his head and grabbing the sellotape off his desk and erratically coverring the drawer in tape. Stepping back, he smiled briefly. But wait... there were other drawers... and wouldn't it be just like them to leap out of them just as he relaxed? Just as he began hastily tapingevery gap in the highly varnished desk, he heard a cough from the doorway. The secretary stood at the open door, with the Warners, all looking at him as if he'd rushed up to them and offered a lunch of deep fried wombat. He froze, and looked at his desk. After an agonising silence, he cleared his throat and gestured to the chairs in front of the desk.
"Well, sit down, let's get this over with."
The Warners all smirked as they walked over to his desk, eyeing the big patches of sellotape. For a while, no one said anything, what with him trying to regain his composure and the Warners just trying not to laugh. Eventually, Dot piped up.
"You know, that's going to leave some ugly marks on your drawers, mister."
The Warners all fell about laughing, and Plotz silently fumed.
"What do you kids want?"
"To be reassured someone's been filming the past five minutes..." Muttered Wakko, between chuckles.
"I'm a very busy man..."
"No doubt, you probably have to go out and buy more tape." Yakko grinned, wiping a tear of laughter from his eye. "Alright, it's this. Our dear sibling here," He rested his hand on Wakko's shoulder, "has managed to win a short story competition. We dont know how either, but stranger things have happened."
"There's going to be a prize giving ceremony and everything!" Dot smiled, bouncing up and down in her seat.
"Oh..." Plotz wasn't sure what to say about that. "Well... good job... Wakko, is it?"
"Is it what?" Wakko cocked his head to one side, tongue hanging out the corner of his mouth.
"Ehh... Anyway..." Yakko eyed his younger sibling suspisciously, before carrying on. "Theres just one teensy problem. It's in London. England to be precise."
"Oh..." Plotz didnt like the sound of where this was going.
"So that's where you come in, junior." Yakko smiled, hopping onto his desk.
"My name isn't junior." He growled, slowly beginning to fume again.
"Well we can't very well call you Jnr like it says on your name plaque." Dot shook her head. "It's hard to pronounce something with no vowels."
"Yeah, what happened there, did Pat run out?" Yakko grinned as the C.E.O. turned a deeper shade of red. "Anyway, the competitions organised us tickets and accomodation and everything. We just need your word and a willing chaperone."
"Please mr junior?" Dot smiled one of her cuter smiles, to be met by one of Plotz' angrier faces.
"My name..." he hissed. "Is not Junior. My name is Thaddeus."
"Don't be ridiculous, boy." Wakko muttered, sounding suprizingly like Sean Connery. "We named the dog Thaddeus..."
"So whaddaya say, my good man?" Yakko smiled his most winning smile. "We even have a prospective chaperone lined up, you just have to nod consent and we'd"
"A willing chaperone?" He snorted in disbelief. "Who would volunteer to spend more time with you miscreants?"
"Someone who doesn't use words like miscreants..." Dot muttered, before regaining cute-mode. "Verity Faye, the Toon Relations manager."
"Ha!" He threw back his head and laughed. "You must be mad. Even if I was close to considering letting you go, which I'm not, she's far too vital and you're far too scandalous. The public can't and don't need to know about the Toon Town gateway. That was the one piece of information my father gave me. If it's a trade secret, it's secret for a reason."
And with that, Thaddeus spun in his chair, turning his back on the shocked Warner siblings.
"Go back to your dingy little tower and don't bother me any more." He growled, annoyed at being interrupted. "Maybe you can write to the people at the competition or something, but it's not my problem."
The Warners, shocked and put out, trooped out of his office.
"Good luck getting that sellotape off, Bozo..." Yakko managed to shoot at him, before leaving the room.
They headed back towards the Toon Town gate, to tell Verity they had been unsuccessful in their persuasions, when Wakko was once again knocked on his rear by a passing toon.
"Ow!" He muttered, looking up at the large, and quite scary toon. The offending toon stood about six or seven feet tall, and looked kind of like a shark in a hawaiian shirt. Wakko groaned. Fish-face. Which meant that somewhere nearby...
"Hey, watch where you're going, dog-boy." The small hawaiian girl ran up to Wakko, after her large friend.
"Ex-queeze me? Who should watch where they're going?" Yakko was quick to pick up on the bratty girl's presence. She seemed like such a sweety on her tv show, but like most toons, since the series ended she'd turned a little bitter. Human toons were the worst for it. "Chum-brains here walked into him!"
"Tcha. Yeah right." She flipped back her long dark hair, and shot them all an evil eye. "Gan-gan's a gentle giant."
"Go take your blue thing and head back to disney, pukeahontas." Wakko growled. That wasn't fair. He quite liked Stitch, actually, but the kid really wound him up.
"Is there a problem?" The big fish-guy boomed, crouching down over them.
"Not at all, gona-"
"Yakko, you know the rules!" Verity ran over, still clutching her clipboard, no doubt to see what the hold up was. "No rudes. Unless you have an MTV contract. But that's punishment in itself. Now what's the problem here?"
"Verity!" The hawaiian brat whined, so much cattier in real life. Real toon life... Wakko shrugged. Delving into logic never helped these situations, and the girl was giving him a headache as it was. "Verity, they're being mean to me! They're insulting me and my cousins..."
"Give it up doll." Dot shook her head, annoyed at everyone's bickering. "It's not cute anymore."
"Oh, like you'd know a thing about cute, fuzz-face." The girl snapped, causing everyone in a ten foot radius to stop what they were doing and look very slowly at Dot.
Dot had gone very still. Her eyes narrowed. Her lip curled back, revealing a set of brilliant white teeth.
"Say that again, sweetie?" There was a forced calm to her voice that her brothers knew indicated a good time to run and hide.
"It's just that you could almost be considered cute..." The girl looked at her fingers casually.
Yakko looked at Wakko. Did she have a death wish? The girl took a deep breath and continued, ice clear in her voice.
"You could be considered cute, if you didn't have jowel to jowel carpeting."
Wakko edged hurriedly away from Dot, gazing helplessly at Yakko. It appeared she did have a death wish.
"Face it, you're a has-been, Dottie."
There was a deathly silence following this latest remark. Everyone slowly backed away, even Gantu the fish faced giant. Eventually only the two little girls were left, staring at each other. Still, deathly silence.
Then, there was terrible, deathly noise.
Dot launched herself at the little hawaiian girl, who was valiantly (and a little reluctantly) protected by her big blue buddy, whoDot leapt into by mistake, and bounced off of. Of course, Lilo ran screaming from the fury of Dot, followed by the seven foot Gantu and the blue furry Stitch.
"We gotta follow them!" Wakko yelled, leaping up and down.
"Why?" Yakko looked at his brother. A brave attempt to save and protect their younger sister? Or to contain her from harming an arrogant, yet ultmately innocent girl?
"Cos it looks like fun!"
That sounded more likely. Agreeing, He and Wakko chased after the screaming group, who were in turn followed by a near hysterical Verity. In the hurry and confusion, no one noticed that it was around this time of day the studio tours were wandering round. Or that, on this particular day, due to a new soundstage being opened solely for a highly anticipated new TV show, the tour would be full of showbiz reporters. With cameras.
As Dot finally managed to take a flying leap at Lilo and take her down, she looked at the frightened Disney toon.
"No one calls me Dottie!" She shrieked. "And I am cute! I am I am I am!"
Just before Dot performed the Warner trademark "mallet and anvil" routine, Verity managed to catch up with them, along with the others, and hold her back. Lilo scrambled to her feet.
"You're a nasty little-"
"Hey! The no rudes rule goes for everyone!"
"Natunga pa rubee..."
"Even if they're not english!"
"Yeah ya blue goober!"
"Ha, he's got you there, trog."
"Gantu, who's side are you on?"
And so the argument developed into people yelling at each other, not entirley sure what they were yelling at or about, just that they needed to be louder than everyone else. Wakko had no real beef with anyone, but decided to join in yelling anyway. Except, not wanting to be outdone, he pulled a comically oversized loudspeaker from his Gag Bag and yelled into it, making several of the toons fly into walls. They bounced back, of course, and Yakko proceeded to threaten Wakko to a TNT duel. It may have been cliche, but it was fun.
"Oh my..."
"Are they..cartoons?"
"What is this, some kind of set up?"
The mutters from the tour, along with the panicked tour guide's own amplified voice, cut through the toons' argument. They all looked guiltily up at the tour bus. How were they going to get out of this one?