Another thing I did, but unlike my other story ideas, I actually finished this one! This one I got the idea for after watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit for the first time in ages, and I ended up searching various sites for more info. At one point, I ended up on a forum dedicated to the Weasel characters. On this forum were countless stories people had written that had resurrected the characters and rehabilitated them. One story had them all living together in some old house, and the idea caught my eye, so I drew up a design for a house that looked both Victorian and Cartoony at the same time, as if a group of randoms had just taken over an old house.
Before long, I decided to give the idea of resurrecting the characters a shot and try and write my own fic to resurrect them, and add some other stuff (like finding a way to save that poor Toon shoe!).
Story rated PG for a few scenes with Greasy (the general consensus on the other message board was that he was a sleaze, so I added a few jokes involving him). Have a read and see what you think of it (I wrote this fairly quickly, and I think some parts could probably do with some tweaking).
(Darn! This message board has more or less destroyed the original formatting.)
Chapter One: Return To ToonTown
Far above Toontown, always slightly visible in the sky, regardless of the weather, was a small white cloud that, at first, seemed no different from any other cloud in the sky, but, upon closer inspection, was covered in thousands of tiny, floating Toon spirits. This was Cloud Nine, and it was inhabited by the ghosts of Toons who had accidentally killed themselves in their duties as perpetual comedians. Maybe they’d put one too many sticks of dynamite in the same room as themselves, or fallen into a trap set for their nemesis, or even choked on their own laughter. It was a little known fact that Toons occasionally perished as the result of a joke gone wrong. However, death for Toons wasn’t necessarily everlasting, as a small group of weasels were about to find out.
*
On an upper part of Cloud Nine, three weasels lay across various seats in a cumulus amphitheatre, each with tired expressions on their faces. Dancing across the stage below, an overweight weasel wearing a striped shirt and shoes with untied laces looked eagerly up at them.
“Guys, watch this!” he shouted.
He proceeded to do several complicated somersaults around the amphitheatre. Not so impressive, considering that he was aided by his angelic wings. The three weasels in the stands ignored him. “How long do you think he’s going to keep this up?” one of them said to his neighbour; a blue weasel.
“No idea,” the blue weasel said. “This is the fiftieth time he’s done this stupid trick, and it was never that exciting to begin with.”
In the seat in front of him, a crazy-looking weasel awkwardly bound in a straight-jacket, the last of their group, put his finger to his lips and made a hushing noise, clearly enraptured by the display going on below him.
The blue weasel sulkily went silent, and brushed some ash off his shirt. He was determinedly sucking on several barely smoking stumps of paper; all that remained of the cigarettes he had arrived with. Above him, the first weasel, who wore a zoot suit and hat, picked at the puffy ground with a knife he had pulled from his pocket. Each weasel was clothed in the same item they had been wearing when they died, except now every item was bleached a pure white; a side-effect of their ghostly status. A long time ago, they, and their leader, Smart Ass, had made up the members of the Toon Patrol, until they had met their fate as a result of working with the shady Judge Doom, and their leader had been dissolved in a vat of the caustic substance, Dip.
These weasels were the only Toons in the immense, nearly empty ampitheatre, save for the clan of hyenas dozing two rows back.
The weasel on stage finished his somersaulting and bowed to the mostly empty rows of seats.
The blue weasel moved in his seat. “That’s it. I’ve seen enough of Stupid’s crazy antics to last a lifetime. I’m getting out of here.”
He got to his feet. “Well? Greasy? Psycho? Are either of you coming with me?”
The straight-jacketed weasel paid no attention to him, but Greasy, the zoot-suited weasel, suddenly chuckled from his seat.
“Hold on, Wheezy,” he said. “I think Stupid’s act is about to improve.”
Wheezy looked at him with disdain, as he pointed towards the stage. Below them, Stupid, blowing kisses to an imaginary audience, was moving ever closer to the edge of the stage. Wheezy sat back down to watch the easily-guessable outcome.
Sure enough, Stupid didn’t see the edge, and with a yelp, plummeted towards the ground and fell on his face. The weasels in the stands immediately burst into laughter, falling from their seats and rolling on the floor. Stupid dizzily picked himself off the floor. “That wasn’t funny, guys,” he said, swaying from side to side.
Wheezy cackled. “Yeah, you’re right. That wasn’t funny. It was hilarious!”
He and the other weasels laughed even harder. The hyenas next to them were roused by the sound of laughter, and turned to see what the commotion was. Hyenas normally found anything funny, but seeing Stupid stumble across the stage was the comedic equivalent of gold. Before long, the entire hall was echoing with the laughter of the ghostly Toons.
Stupid finally managed to clear his head, and he sulkily turned and started to walk towards the exit; eyes closed, with his head in the air, determinedly ignoring the jeering of his relatives. Unfortunately, this meant that he couldn’t see two feet in front of him, and he proceeded to trip over his untied shoelaces. Any human would have simply fallen over, but Stupid, being a Toon, went flying out of control across the room, bouncing from cloudy wall to cloudy wall. In their seats, the weasels and the hyenas laughed even harder. This was the funniest thing they’d seen in ages!
But Stupid didn’t stop bouncing. Yelling in fear, he proceeded to go flying over and out one side of the amphitheatre, landing and tumbling across the surface of Cloud Nine. That stopped the weasel’s laughter. Although Stupid couldn’t hurt himself, he could get lost out there. Cloud Nine was a big place, one you didn’t want to get lost in.
Leaving the giggling hyenas behind, the three weasels rushed out of the amphitheatre and outside, following their comrade, now rolling along the cloudy floor, and picking up speed as he continued to tumble down.
Stupid! Hold on!” Greasy yelled, as he and the others gave chase, running through room after room, never quite managing to catch up.
Still running, Wheezy shouted at the straight-jacketed weasel. “Psycho, quick, stop him!”
The weasel nodded, saluting, and immediately took flight, soaring past his friends and Stupid, before halting in mid-air and landing several feet in the path of the tumbling weasel, arms outstretched, in a foolish attempt to halt the progress of the much larger weasel.
Stupid, ridiculously dizzy by this point, didn’t see Psycho standing in his way, and barrelled right over him, squashing him flat, and continuing down the hallway. Wheezy hit his face with his hand, cursing, but continued to run, peeling Psycho off the ground as he passed him.
Stupid continued to roll, vanishing into a vast area of foggy mist that obscured everything in the distance. The three weasels had no choice but to follow him into it, with no idea as to where they were heading in the slightest.
A crashing noise echoed from somewhere ahead of them. Wheezy called to the others. “Sounds like he’s stopped!”
They abruptly emerged on the other side of the mist, and the weasels found they were heading at full speed towards a large, cracked marble pillar, that Stupid’s head was embedded in.
Greasy and Wheezy both yelled as, unable to stop in time, they collided with the pillar, which came crashing down, burying the three of them. Psycho calmly slid to a halt, giggling at the display of rampant destruction.
Wheezy pulled himself out from under the pillar, grumbling. Stupid followed after him, pulling an unconscious Greasy out with him. Wheezy turned on Stupid.
“You idiot! The next time you lose control of your own feet, we’re not going to try to rescue you!”
Stupid didn’t hear him, and simply smiled goofily as a large piece of falling masonry shattered itself on his head. He started looking around the room. “Guys, where are we?”
Wheezy looked at their surroundings. They hadn’t been here before. They were standing in a large hall, filled with archways that stretched across the open ceiling, one of which was a part of the pillar that they had all crashed into.
A groan behind them signified that Greasy was awake. He groggily rose to his feet, muttering about his head. Ignoring his complaints, Wheezy started walking back in the general direction they had come from. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
The other weasels got up, and began to follow him, when they suddenly saw that they were not alone. A tiny Toon possum carrying a large staff stood in the middle of the room, watching their every move. Normally, the weasels would have moved on without another thought, but the way the possum was staring at them was unsettling, as if he had been waiting for them. Greasy, still holding his head, glared in the strange Toon’s direction. “What are you looking at, possum?”
“Nothing,” the possum stated, ignoring the obvious hostility. “Are you here for the morning rush?”
“What?” Greasy said, confused. “What morning rush?”
The possum continued. “THE morning rush. The Toontown express. The return trip. Are you here for it or not?”
The other weasels were now listening carefully. What was that he’d said? Wheezy spoke up.
“Return trip? You mean…to Toontown?”
“Yes,” the possum said,
Wheezy looked at the tiny possum with suspicion. Was this some kind of trick? He stepped closer.
“Who are you?” he said, leaning towards the diminutive possum.
“I’m the gatekeeper,” he said, with no change in tone. “Dealing with returning Toons is my job. Now tell me, Are you, or are you not here for the morning rush?”
Wheezy was about to ask more, but Greasy interrupted him.
“So, we can go back?”
“Yes,” the possum repeated.
“Really?” Greasy said. “I mean, our records aren’t going to stop us from going back, or anything like that?”
“Why?” the gatekeeper said, bored. “Did you do something cruel and evil down there?”
Greasy gulped and shakily continued. “Uh…well, we might have…err…worked for somebody not so nice, and been…uh…perfectly happy to go along with his evil plans of mass destruction?”
The gatekeeper’s expression wasn’t changed by this; he didn’t even blink. “And that’s an issue because…”
“Well, a lot of innocent Toons could have been hurt,” Greasy stated.
“And Toontown would have been destroyed too,” Wheezy pointed out.
“Kaboom!” Psycho added, a little enthusiastically.
The gatekeeper remained as unshaken as ever, if a little frustrated at their constant excuses.
“You’re Toons. It’s what you do.”
“But shouldn’t we…”
“No.” he said, rapidly losing his patience.
“But-“
“NO!” the gatekeeper shouted, before storming off to another part of the hall.
Greasy turned and looked at the others in confusion.
“Man, what was that guy’s problem?”
*
At the other end of the hall, the gatekeeper put his head in his hands. How could these weasels have forgotten such a fundamental part of Toon logic? And why was he the one who always had to deal with the difficult Toons? Toons weren’t perfect; it was a well known fact! Sure, some Toons did the odd evil deed, or swore vengeance on another Toon, or planned to destroy the world, but that was just how Toons lived, and there was always a limit as to how far they’d go! A Toon robber stealing from a bank was no big deal; it was his job, and no-one begrudged him for it.
Of course, the possum thought, that “Doom” character had gone way over the line, and by the sound of it, he’d gotten exactly what he deserved in the end. But that was a different subject. The gatekeeper got back up, brushed some dirt off his robes, in an attempt to look calm, and turned back to face the weasels.
“Alright, there’s just one last thing I’ll need to check before I can let you leave. You are part of a series, right?
The zoot-suited weasel stared at him in confusion. “What?”
The gatekeeper repeated himself. “Are you part of a series? You know, a cartoon?” The weasel still didn’t understand, and by the look of it, neither did his companions, who all looked at one another, in case one of them understood what he meant. The gatekeeper gritted his teeth, and started again.
“Are you somebody’s enemy? Are you the villains of a cartoon who need to be back for the next episode?”
The weasels just stared ahead, as clueless as ever. The gatekeeper banged his head against his staff. That was it. He didn’t care anymore.
“Never mind. Come on then, follow me,” he said, gesturing towards a large stone archway in the distance. The four weasels hovered after him, following him through the archway to a tiny, unremarkable room.
Upon entering, one of the weasels looked around the room and remarked, “There’s nothing in here!”
The gatekeeper smiled. This was the part of his job that made dealing with difficult Toons worth it. “No, not yet,” he said, and pulled a golden lever on the archway.
Immediately, a large golden elevator emerged from the cloudy floor in the centre of the room, and the four weasels leapt back in shock. The two doors swung open with a loud “Ding!” noise, and the gatekeeper gestured forwards. “Well, there you go. Just take the elevator, and you’ll be home soon enough.
The four weasels hesitantly shuffled towards the open doorway, and prepared to enter. One weasel, the one wearing the zoot suit, stopped short, and peered into the elevator. There was no booth, only a shaft that went straight down, as far as he could see.
“Uh…I think your elevator’s broken,” He called back. “There’s no-“
Before he could finish, the gatekeeper pushed him down the shaft, where he fell screaming, until he disappeared into the clouds below. His comrades looked down the shaft after him as he plummeted, then turned and looked in fear at the gatekeeper, who now moved towards them with a vicious intent visible in his eyes.
The blue weasel didn’t move fast enough, and he was the next down the shaft. The large one simply stared at the gatekeeper in fear, and attempted to back away, tripping over his own shoelaces, and tumbling after the first two.
The last weasel left; the one in the straight-jacket, didn’t even wait for him to come any closer. He simply giggled madly and leapt into the elevator shaft, hands held over his head like an Olympic diver as he plummeted after his cohorts.
The gatekeeper chuckled to himself and went back to his desk. Toons weren’t perfect, and he wasn’t any different!
*
Greasy, the zoot-suited weasel, screamed in terror. His angelic wings had vanished the instant he’d been pushed through the elevator doors, and he saw no way of slowing his fall. Judging by the panicked yelling above him; or laughter, in Psycho’s case, the others weasels were also falling through the air with him.
The high-rise towers of Toontown loomed dangerously closer to them, as they fell closer and closer to earth. Greasy put up his hands, instinctively, to shield himself, and that was when he noticed something strange. The right sleeve of his jacket had gone green, the colour it had been before he’d died. Colour! He looked at his left sleeve, more colour was flowing into his clothing as he fell further. He stared at his arms in a mixture of glee and confusion, and was about to shout out gleefully, when he reached ground and crashed through hard pavement; the force of his impact leaving a small crater behind.
After a few minutes of lying there, waiting for feeling to return to his face, Greasy slowly forced himself to get up. He looked around where he had landed. It was a dark alley, littered with the trash and vermin common to a dingy street in any city. But the Sun in the sky above him had a goofy look on its face, there were several suspicious-looking “Acme” boxes sticking out of a nearby dustbin, and the colours of the buildings either side of him were too extravagant to be of any human city. Greasy couldn’t believe it. It…it had worked! They were back in Toontown!
His thoughts were interrupted by an increasing giggling noise, as Psycho fell out of the sky and landed on him, pinning him back on the ground. As Greasy groaned under the weight of his colleague, Psycho leapt off his back and started to bounce around the alley in excitement. Clearly he was happy to be back, Greasy thought, cautiously preparing to get up again. Wheezy promptly landed on top of Greasy. He barely had any time to apologise before Stupid plummeted onto both of them.
Upon landing, Stupid, sensing he was sitting somewhere he shouldn’t be, cautiously got up and moved to one side, revealing the crushed bodies of Wheezy and Greasy.
But they were Toons, and it would take more than an overweight weasel falling out of the sky to do them in.
Wheezy picked himself off the pavement and dusted his shirt off. He, like the others, had noticed the return of colour to their clothes, and was now frantically checking his surroundings, to make sure it was all real.
He suddenly shouted out; he had found a half-empty packet of cigarettes in a nearby bin. Wheezy spat the soggy stubs of his own cigarettes at the ground, and grabbed three fresh ones. Before long, the air around him was once again polluted with the same sickly smoke that had surrounded him years ago.
Greasy gave up trying to pick himself off the pavement, and just lay there. Stupid and Psycho were leaping happily from dumpster to dumpster, more than happy to be back amongst the living.
Wheezy, hacking and coughing from the smoke, walked over to where Greasy lay, and proceeded to pull him out of the crater. “Well, I guess that mad possum was telling the truth then.”
Greasy just groaned. Wheezy leaned him against a wall, and walked towards the edge of the alleyway to see exactly where in Toontown they had landed.
Walking into the light of the Toontown sun, he almost dropped the cigarettes he was smoking. The city that lay before him was completely different from the one he and his colleagues had left behind.
He leapt back into the alley, breathless with fright. Psycho and Stupid noticed this, and walked over to him.
“What’s wrong, Wheezy?” Stupid inquired.
Wheezy couldn’t find the words to describe what he was thinking, so he pointed instead. Psycho and Stupid looked past him at the world outside, before recoiling in shock. The buildings outside were all monolithic glass towers, reaching up towards the sky. The Toons that ran from place to place were like none they had ever seen before. Strange vehicles zipped across the road that lay before them. Stupid was greatly unnerved, and he had grown up in the middle of Toontown, and thus was used to some of the crazier things the town would throw his way; sometimes even literally.
Psycho and Stupid both looked at Wheezy with questioning looks on their faces, clearly hoping there was an explanation for the change to their old home. Wheezy simply stared ahead. “How many years have we been gone?”
“Hey guys,” Greasy called, awkwardly sidling over to them with a newspaper in his hand. “Look what I found.”
He handed the paper to Wheezy, before collapsing against Stupid’s shoulder. Wheezy looked at the cover. The title story was nothing of interest, just something about some unfamiliar director and a new Toon movie. But the date printed on the corner of the page was the thing that shocked them. At least sixty years had passed since the Toon Patrol had met their ends in the Acme factory.
“Sixty…sixty years?” Wheezy barely uttered. The others frantically looked over at the paper, not believing it. Greasy, by now well enough to comprehend what was going on, looked at the outside alleyway urgently, as if to confirm what they had been dreading.
“Is…is nothing out there the same?” he managed to say.
Wheezy pocketing the newspaper and shrugged. He hadn’t really looked at the new city for long enough to tell. Standing close to each other, so they had no chance of getting lost, the four weasels made their way to the edge of the alleyway, scanning the view that lay before them. Every building was different. They didn’t see one Toon that looked familiar.
When, all of a sudden, Psycho started eagerly pointing towards something in the distance. Only one of the buildings in the street remained the same today as it had in their time. The Toontown Precinct.
Seemingly their only hope, all four weasels dashed across the street, narrowly missing being hit by a strange car of some sort, stopping on the steps of the building to catch their breath. Stupid spoke first. “What do we do now?”
Wheezy looked at the familiar doors before them. ”The officers inside should have a map or something,” he said. “I’ll go get it”.
Wheezy got up and went to open the door. Greasy suddenly leapt up after him.
“Wait! Stop!” he shouted, pulling Wheezy away from the door. Before Wheezy could ask him why he’d stopped him entering, Greasy snatched a lit cigarette from Wheezy’s mouth, and stamped it out on the pavement.
“Hey!” Wheezy shouted in anger. “What was that for?”
Greasy didn’t say anything, but proceeded to rub the burnt end of the cigarette against his face, until he had an ashy moustache.
Psycho broke down in hysterics, and Stupid started guffawing, saying “What’d you do that for?”
Wheezy frowned at Greasy, and added “You’d better have a good explanation for what you’re doing or I’ll I knock your freaking lights out!”
Greasy hushed the others “The last time we were here, we were working for Doom! If we go in there looking like this, they’ll arrest us! We need disguises of some sort.”
Wheezy continued to stare angrily at Greasy, but he knew he was right. “What should we do then?”
