Author: Meltha

Rating: PG

Feedback: Yes, thank you.

Spoilers: not really for anything

Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and . If you're interested, please let me know.

Summary:

Author's Note: Written for Yuletide 2008 for Sonya. A special thank you to my beta, MJules.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters presented in this work of non-profit fiction. All characters are the property of their individual owners. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.

Sixty Years in a Water Tower

Clang! With a deafening crash, the door of the Warner Brothers water tower shut, leaving three sad-faced and sniffly cartoon dogs… cats… short-necked giraffes without spots… ehm, cute things… staring with enormous eyes as the security guard welded them inside.

"You know what, Wakko?" Yakko said solemnly.

"What?" his brother replied.

"I'm starting to think it wasn't such a great prank to tell Max to cast Mickey Rooney as Puck," he said.

"Aw, pshaw," Dot said, waving them both off with a daintily gloved hand. "Quit taking it so seriously. Really, I mean, how mad can they be?"

"Warners!" came a loud echo from outside, sounding like someone was using a police megaphone. "You are not to leave that water tower under any circumstances! Ever! At any time!"

The two boys glanced at their sister with undisguised accusation.

"Okay, okay, so they're mad," she said, her lip going pouty. "But they can't possibly stay mad! I mean, I'm cute! Super cute! Cuter than cute!"

"Did you actually see Rooney running around in that diaper and screaming at the top of his lungs?" Wakko said.

"Sis, Shakespeare has been dead over three hundred years and he still showed up at the opening night to demand his name get taken off the credits," Yakko added. "Man, was he stinky."

"Yeah, but the whole part when Bette Davis whacked off his head and started doing the 'Ah Yorick! I knew him well, Horatio,' bit was sort of worth the smell," Wakko said. "She's a hoot. He really didn't seem pleased, though. Spoil sport."

Dot looked helplessly at the pair of them, her eyes swiveling back and forth guiltily.

"Fine!" she finally said. "We're doomed! I get it already!"

The three of them sighed in unison, then sat down on the cold metal floor.

"Yakko?" Wakko said.

"What?"

"I'm bored," he said.

"We've been locked up less than five minutes!" Yakko nearly screamed.

"Actually, I thought I did pretty well holding out this long," he said glumly. "What are we going to do in here?"

"Well," Dot said cheerfully, "we've got the radio, and the encyclopedia, and lots and lots of time to plot massive, terrifying, satisfying, insane, borderline-homicidal revenge!"

Her wide smile was soon mirrored by the other two.

"Okay, so who wants to play Go Fish?" Yakko asked, getting out a deck of cards.

Roughly ten years passed…

"Wakko?" Dot asked, boredom dripping from her words.

"Yeah?"

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Growing my toenails," he said, staring at the ceiling. "How about you?"

"Meditating on the sound of a tree falling in a forest when no one's around," she said.

"Really? What noise does that make?" he said, vaguely interested.

"I'm trying to decide between the 'William Tell Overture' and 'snap, crackle, pop,'" she said. "How about you Yakko? Yakko? Yakko?"

"Hmm?" he said, looking up from his writing desk.

"Whatcha writing, big brother?" she asked listlessly.

"A sequel to War and Peace, but this is loads better than the original. Right now, I'm working on a car chase… only with yaks," he said, scribbling away.

"Uh-huh," Dot said. "That's nice."

Suddenly, a resounding tapping echoed through the water tower, sending the three Warners scurrying towards a small crack in the door.

"Eh, kids! Anybody up for some more backlot gossip?"

"Slappy!" they chorused together.

"Is Max dead yet?" Dot asked sweetly.

"That's a terrible thing to say," Wakko corrected her, then added, "Has Max been run over by a herd of rabid hippos yet?"

"Nah, but things have been so quiet around here, you'd never know. The censors told me last week I can't even hit Walter Wolf over the head with my purse anymore," Slappy said in disgusted disbelief. "Apparently, it's both violent and un-American."

"So what'd you do?" Yakko asked.

"Clocked him with a copy of the Constitution instead," she said. "It made little liberty bells circle his head. Hey, I got some people for you to meet, a couple new kids in the business."

"Hwellwo," said an odd, high-pitched voice. "I'm Tweetie, and dis is my pal Sylvestwa."

"Sheesh, will ya jussht let me shpeek for myshelf!" said someone else.

"You know," Dot's voice came from inside the giant tin can, "what with talkies taking over, I really thought they'd hire somebody to do a little speech therapy around here."

"Are you shaying dere's shomething funny about my voish?" asked "Sylvestwa" angrily.

"Not really," Dot said. "Compared to Foghorn Leghorn, you're a regular Winston Churchill. Sorry, I'm just a little techy, what with not having seen the light of day in years. You know how it gets."

"I hear ya, kiddo," Slappy said. "We'd spring ya if we could, but they're watchin' us like Betty Grable watches her dye job. Anything I can get for ya?"

"A hacksaw?" Dot suggested.

"Nice try, but no," Slappy said with a chuckle.

"I'd like an atlas," Wakko said. "I'm trying to get all the state capitals down."

"What good would that possibly do ya?" Slappy said with a shrug. "You really want to visit Juneau?"

"You never know," he said. "It could come in handy some day."

Roughly ten more years passed…

"For the last time, I cannot kidnap Elvis for you!" Slappy said firmly.

"Pleeeease?" Dot said pitifully. "He's so dreamy! Almost as dreamy as Howdy Doody!"

"You really have been locked up too long," Slappy said, shaking her head. "Look, kid, you're asking the impossible. Besides, he looks like the type to get tubby after a while."

"Then how about James Dean?" she asked pathetically. "Or Marlon Brando? Ooooh, they're so cuuuute! Like meeeee! Only with facial hair… and if either of you boys says anything, I'll pop you."

"I knew I shouldn't have got you those Hollywood fan magazines," Slappy said.

"But they're so educational!" Dot insisted. "How could I have lived without knowing all about the way Doris Day plucks her eyebrows!"

"The intellectual future of the country is doomed," Slappy said, smiling wryly as she heard the three of them launch into a hearty chorus from HMS Pinafore as she left.

Roughly ten more years passed…

"I'm telling you, Wakko, this guy has stolen your shtick!" Yakko said, pointing at the radio.

"No, I don't sound like those fellows at all," he said, listening to yet another interview with the Beatles.

"You're John's auditory twin!" Yakko insisted. "Hey, why don't you try singing something, and then maybe the studio will let us out so we can play to crowds of thousands of teenage girls in miniskirts?"

"Hellloooooo, girls!" Wakko said enthusiastically, then cleared his throat. "Okay, I'll give it a go, mate."

"This oughta be interesting," said Dot as she filed her nails and made yet more notes on her list of Ways to Blow Up the Studio Without Ever Leaving the Water Tower.

Wakko closed his eyes in concentration, then opened his mouth. Immediately, a belch of gargantuan proportions rattled the whole water tower.

"Say, that's not bad!" Yakko said approvingly. "Can you do the alphabet?"

"I can try!" Wakko agreed enthusiastically.

"You know," Dot said to no one as Wakko began practicing his way through the first few letters, Yakko cheering him on, "boys really are strange and alien life forms. Still, it's better than that time they decided to create the mural out of bellybutton lint."

She glanced up at the perfect replica of the Mona Lisa that was currently shuddering in the wake of Wakko's Wagnerian burps.

"Actually, on second thought, this is worse," she said, putting aside her list and instead starting to sew her six-hundredth pink skirt. "Why couldn't I have been locked up with Ringo?"

Roughly ten more years passed…

"What rhymes with Spanish Sahara?" Yakko asked, scratching his head.

"Banish aloe vera?" Wakko suggested. "I want pasta primavera?"

"Uh… mannish mascara?" Dot put in.

"Hmm… maybe. I kinda like the mascara one. Maybe I can get David Bowie to sing this thing," Yakko said, scribbling away.

"You do know that one's not even a country anymore, right?" Dot said.

"It isn't?" Yakko said, his ears drooping. "Gosh darn it, it's taken me close to thirty years to get this stupid song right, and now they have to go and start swapping countries' names around! The nerve!"

"Hey, it could be worse," Wakko said sympathetically. "We could be stuck out there with disco."

All three shuddered in horror.

"Of course, on the plus side, Nixon is really dreamy," Dot said, her eyes turning into little stars.

Wakko and Yakko looked at one another in worry.

"Maybe we shouldn't have stolen that pin-up she had of Arnold Horshack," Wakko said.

Roughly ten more years passed…

"But it's abso-Smurf-ly necessary that we hide from Gargamel in there!" came a gratingly high-pitched voice.

"Abso-what-ly?" Yakko said, raising an eyebrow.

"Look, Smurf it already, will ya! Open the door and let us the Smurf in before he Smurfs us and we wind up completely Smurfed!" said yet another high-pitched voice, and at least ninety-nine others seemed to be agreeing loudly. "Just Smurf us already!"

"You want us to… Smurf you?" Wakko said uncertainly.

Immediately, Yakko blew a kiss and said, "Good night, everybody!"

"Look, even if we wanted to let you in, we couldn't," Dot said. "We're locked in."

"Aw, Smurf it!" said the lead voice, and hundreds of little feet could be heard clambering down the water tower.

"Cartoons have gotten a lot stranger since we were on the outside," Yakko said.

"At least music is nice and normal again, though," Dot said, flipping on her headphones and bopping her head enthusiastically to the latest Weird Al song.

Roughly ten years later…

"We have got to get out of this place!" Yakko said, pulling on his ears until his head started spinning like a clock on his neck. "There's only so much I can take!"

"Yeah," Wakko said desperately. "I've been seized with a sudden desire to wear pants!"

Dot stopped her pacing from one side of the water tower to the other (which had, naturally, created a deep gully in the floor) and stared at the ceiling, thinking hard.

"We've tried TNT, acid, drawing a hole in the side of the tower, and even the old saw in the cake gag," Dot said, "and nada."

"There's gotta be a way!" Yakko said, punching the door.

Then he stared at it in disbelief.

"Uh, guys?" he said awkwardly.

"Yeah?" Dot and Wakko said together.

"Look," he said, pointing to a very small sign just under the door handle.

Dot looked at Wakko. Wakko looked at Yakko. Yakko looked at a soccer ball he'd drawn a face on and named Wilson.

"Pull?" Dot said, her voice rising hysterically. "Are you telling me we've been locked in here for sixty years just because we've been pushing a pull door?"

"Possibly," Wakko said. "Let's give it a go, shall we?"

"One… two…," Yakko said, then as he said "three!" he pulled the door.

With a rusty creak, the hinges swung open, revealing Burbank, California, in all its shining, smoggy glory.

"Does everyone else feel really stupid?" Wakko said, blinking at the light.

"Just a teensy bit," Dot said, then an innocent smile lit up her face. "Anyone up for causing complete havoc and mayhem followed by taking over the country and then possibly the known universe?"

"After you, Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fanna Bo Besca the Third," Yakko said, and the three Warners were off in a blur of chaotic insanity.