Light streamed onto the crates as Stupid lifted open the large warehouse door that was the entrance to storeroom fifteen. The weasels slipped inside. Most of the boxes that filled this room were Acme products, no doubt taken from the factory following Doom's death. Some of them had been opened, and evidence of their use littered the room. A quartet of swords sang in one corner, while two huge magnets were embedded in the left wall of the storeroom. To the side of this, the weasels found what they had been looking for; their old paddy-wagon. What the bulldog had told them was true; all their stuff had been impounded with it. Stupid had found his old baseball bat with the nail through it in a nearby box, much to his delight, and Psycho had been re-united with his razor blade, which he was now waving dangerously around the room.
Wheezy and Greasy had pre-occupied themselves with finding the keys to the cab. Greasy looked in the window of the car, and saw they were gone. Worse, the door was locked. Greasy attempted to pick the lock, without much success.
Watching Greasy's failed attempts in anger, Wheezy was about to storm back to the officer and demand he show them where it was, but a happy yell behind him signalled that Psycho had got the back doors open. Psycho's head suddenly appeared over the door, leering menacingly at Wheezy. Wheezy, somewhat unnerved by this, slowly started heading towards a crate for safety, when Psycho suddenly dropped something shiny at his feet. "Keys," he said, and disappeared into the back of the car, giggling madly. He was quickly followed by Stupid, who leapt in the back after him.
Wheezy cursed himself for being so nervous, and picked up the keys. A click sounded nearby.
"Hah! Wheezy, I've unlocked the door!" Greasy triumphantly pronounced from alongside the driver's door.
Wheezy threw the keys at him. "Nice job." Greasy began cursing under his breath, as Wheezy opened the door and sat in the driver's seat. A thought came to him. He popped open the glove compartment, and, sure enough, inside were the three spare packets he'd always kept in the cab. He smiled and lit himself three, before choking and spitting tar on the storeroom floor.
"Hey guys, come and look at this!" Stupid's voice suddenly echoed from inside the car. Greasy turned to look at the back of the car, and then zipped over to the rear doors to see what Stupid was shouting about.
Inside the truck, Stupid and Psycho were standing around a small grey box with a screen on one end. A long cable ran out of the back, connected to another cable that trailed off to an unseen outlet somewhere in the storeroom. Must be a machine of some sort, Greasy thought to himself. He climbed up beside Stupid and Psycho, so he could get a better look at the strange box. "So, what does it do?" he asked.
Stupid looked at him, a large grin on his face. "Just watch this," he said happily, and he pressed a button on the side. The box flickered into life, and a picture of a dancing Toon cat appeared on the screen. Greasy was dumbfounded. This tiny box was showing entire cartoons to him and the others! Psycho happily copied the dance of the cat, as Greasy and Stupid stared into the dim glow coming from the screen.
"How do you suppose it got here?" Stupid wondered aloud. Greasy wasn't sure himself. Someone must have tossed it inside the car ages back. Probably the same person who'd played with the various Acme products in the storeroom.
The slider on the back wall immediately moved to one side, and Wheezy's face was visible from the driver's seat.
"What's making that noise? Greasy, what are you doing back there?"
"Look at this, Wheezy. It's like a portable theatre," Greasy said, lifting the mysterious box up for him to see. Wheezy was unfazed by the image.
"Whatever. When you're finished mucking around back there, get up here. I need you to read the map for me." The panel slid shut, leaving them in silence.
Greasy leaned down to the box and pressed the tiny power button. The pictures disappeared from the screen. Psycho and Stupid looked somewhat sad that they'd lost their new toy. Greasy looked at them, and then said "We'll take it with us, and set it up when we're home."
Stupid grinned. Psycho pulled the cable free from its long connector, and clutched the box to him like it was a child of his. His work done, Greasy leapt from the back of the car and shut the two doors.
He hurriedly headed for the cab, but in his haste, failed to see the pile of magazines in front of him, and skidded across the floor, falling flat on his face. "Who's the idiot who left this old rubbish lying around?" he shouted furiously, looking back at the mess of papers now scattered around the room.
Anger quickly turned to glee, once Greasy saw that the "rubbish" he'd tripped over was really a lewd magazine collection. He hastily gathered all of them, until, from the cab, Wheezy shouted for him to hurry up.
He leapt into the passenger seat with the magazines placed on the seat beside him. Wheezy frowned at him.
"What are those?"
Greasy grinned weakly. "Magazines. I…found them."
Wheezy groaned, knowing Greasy well enough to guess what the magazines probably contained. "We're too busy for that."
He grabbed the magazines from Greasy, who protested angrily, and threw each one of them into the back, via the slider. "You can read those when we're finished with our work. We're on duty, remember?" he smirked.
Greasy grumbled, and sulked in his seat. "Just drive."
Wheezy shifted the car into gear, and speedily reversed out of the storeroom and onto the street.
In an older area of Toontown, the old Toon Patrol paddy-wagon sped down street after street without any particular destination in mind; its drivers more concerned with familiarising themselves with the city streets. Despite a slow start, the recently re-instated Toon Patrol had accomplished much in their three hours as Toontown police officers. So far, they had spent the last few hours driving around town, handing out parking tickets, and chasing down the odd speeders, but mostly trying to solve the many problems that lay before them.
One had been solved fairly quickly; the problem of where they were going to sleep. The police bulldog had told them via police radio that their old house on the outskirts of town had been confiscated along with the rest of their stuff and was presently abandoned, save for the odd squatter, and they were welcome to move back in. They had been briefly cheered by this good news, but their spirits had dropped soon after, as it still did nothing to solve their biggest issue; who would be the leader now?
Initially, they had attempted to pick a new leader from among themselves, but it hadn't ended well. Greasy had insisted he be leader, but his actions when they attempted to return a woman's stolen purse had resulted in the rest of his team hastily dragging him into the paddy wagon and claiming he was mentally unstable. Wheezy had taken over from there, but after a few minutes of Greasy driving in circles while he sat back and smoked, he had realised that he had no idea of what they should do next. Finally, Psycho had given leadership a shot, in a not very well-thought-out situation. After they had caught up with the paddy-wagon and forced Psycho out and into the back of the car, they quickly decided that giving Stupid a chance to lead wouldn't end well, and stopped there. No matter how hard they'd tried to deny it, nothing could change the fact that none of them were leaders at heart. Smart Ass had been the right boss for them, and as far as they knew, he was nothing more than a Dip stain on the floor of the Acme Factory.
They had decided to get back to their work, claiming they would think things over later, mainly as an excuse to drop the subject. Greasy had resumed his position as acting leader of the Toon Patrol, and presently sat to Wheezy's right, staring off into space. He was allegedly planning their next move, but Wheezy knew from experience that he was more likely thinking about the lewd magazines in the back of the car.
Wheezy returned his attention to the road ahead, and steered down an alleyway shortcut. Halfway down it, Greasy perked up.
"Isn't this the road Valiant and the rabbit broad fled down when we came after them?" he abruptly said, staring out a window.
Wheezy looked again. "Yeah, it is. Doom had followed them, in an attempt to head them off, but they got the better of him." He spat one of his cigarettes out the window, and continued down the dark alley, emerging in a bright street in central Toontown. A nagging thought came to Wheezy's mind. Something about Doom…
He signalled to his cohort. "Greasy."
Greasy stopped staring out the window and faced him. "What?"
"What did that cop say when we first walked in?" Wheezy asked. "Doom came back?"
"Something like that." Greasy muttered, turning back to the window. "He said he bribed some animators or something."
"Shows how much we mattered, then. Doom comes back from the dead and doesn't even give us a second thought." Wheezy spat. "I suppose we're better off without him."
Beside him, Greasy hadn't heard a word Wheezy had said. He was staring ahead, with a thoughtful expression on his face. Noticing his lack of response, Wheezy turned to face him. "Greasy?"
"I've got a plan. Pull over." Greasy suddenly said.
"What?" Wheezy grumbled.
"Pull over!"
Wheezy wasn't the best of drivers, and in his attempts to stop, he just missed crashing into a tree, which, to his luck, leapt away at the last minute.
Once the car came to a standstill, Greasy leapt out of the drivers cab and walked to the back of the car, where he wrenched open the doors.
"C'mon everybody, let's get to work."
Stupid got up from his seat. "What are we gonna do now, Greasy?"
"I was wondering that myself." Wheezy said, as he arrived from the front of the car. "What is this plan of yours?"
Greasy smiled. "Remember what that cop said about Doom? He came back, because somebody drew him again!"
The weasels stared at Greasy, not understanding.
Greasy continued. "Doom got dipped, just like Smart Ass. If someone could bring Doom back, then we should be able to bring back the boss!"
The others stared at him in shock. Could they really resurrect their old leader? Wheezy stepped forwards.
"How are we gonna re-draw him? We're no human animators!"
"I know, but it's not like we have any other ideas, do we?" Greasy insisted. "And besides, it's worth a shot, isn't it?"
"Yeah!" Stupid shouted, clapping his hands. Beside him, Psycho nodded enthusiastically. Wheezy tossed one of his cigarettes aside. "Alright then. How should we do this?"
Greasy looked at the supplies lying in the back of the car. "We'll need some paint, and some paper, plus a picture of the boss."
Wheezy flicked some dust off his shirt. "They'll be easy enough to find."
Greasy smirked. "Let's get to work then."
And so it had begun. Wheezy and Stupid had successfully obtained art supplies from a Toontown Gallery, and Psycho had stolen the photo of Smart Ass from the Toontown Precinct, much to the confusion of the bulldog officer. They quickly got to work, parking the paddy-wagon in an empty street where they wouldn't be disturbed, and each got to work painting their boss's likeness from the picture in front of them, and their own memories. After a while, despite their enthusiasm, they hadn't gotten too far. Stupid hadn't managed to draw anything more than a simple stick figure in pink. Psycho's picture wasn't much better, except he'd also drawn lots of insanely smiling figures surrounding the pink-clad weasel.
Upon seeing each other's drawings, Stupid and Psycho both broke down in laughter, prompting Wheezy to knock their heads together in an attempt to calm them down.
Greasy's picture had started off well, but somewhere along the line he'd gotten distracted and accidentally stopped drawing a picture of his boss, and instead the image of a centrefold from the truck, with the result being, interesting, to say the least.
Wheezy's picture looked the most like Smart Ass, but the smoke and ashes from his many cigarettes had wrecked the picture to the point where Smart Ass looked like he'd just survived the Great Chicago Fire. Still, they all knew that his was the best picture out of all of theirs, and so they'd just have to make do.
"Right, let's do it then," Greasy said, pocketing his own picture.
A brief silence followed, each weasel staring at the tobacco-stained image lying on the ground before them. Stupid broke the silence. "Uh, how does a drawing bring Smart Ass back anyway?
Despite the fact that none of them had said anything, it didn't change the fact that all of them had been thinking it. "Maybe we're using the wrong paint," Greasy said.
"Well then, I guess there's nothing we can do then, is there?" Wheezy stood up in anger and turned away, lighting up another cigarette to join the four he was already smoking. Greasy sat down in the street and stared at the pavement. Next to him, Stupid continued to look at the picture.
"I wonder how the movie-makers make Toons," Stupid mused.
"Well, we'll never know. It's not like we know any cartoonists" Greasy mumbled.
"Why would we need to? The studio's just over there", Stupid insisted, pointing to one side.
Greasy and Wheezy both looked up. Visible in the distance was the wall that separated Toontown from Downtown Los Angeles. Even further back, just barely visible was the shape of a familiar building, silhouetted by the setting sun; Maroon Cartoon Studios.
Wheezy, looking towards the distant building, remarked "That just might be the smartest thing you've ever said, Stupid," who goofily smiled in response. Greasy got to his feet. "What do you say, hombres, are we up to a little 'investigative' work?"
The weasels all smiled and laughed evilly. It had been a while since they'd had a chance to put their talents to good use.