#he keeps popping up on my dash in that stupid movie with that stupid fighter guy

[ndcgalitzine]

it doesn't matter how ripped Jake Gyllenhaal gets... I will never find him hot 🙈

[kitkat1003]

The End

‘The final episode has aired.  The movie has been filmed. They’re done.  And Yakko has never been more terrified.

(Or, the author thinks about the implications of the word “reanimated”, the use of a grave in the new intro as a place for the Warners to pop out of, the fact that the Warners had 0 clue about the last 22 years, and the abrupt nature of the 1993 show’s finale)

@asilcorner the ending got me shook

Quick note, uh, I don’t usually put trigger warnings, but this a pretty distressing fic, I think moreso than my usual?  So like....buckle up.

They’re running as the slideshow rolls, as the other characters disappear one by one.  The studio isn’t expecting the side characters to come back, so they can go on with their lives, however boring they are without filming, but them?  The Warners are, evidently, too chaotic and unpredictable to be allowed to stick around.  And since keeping them locked up in the water tower didn’t really work, and the idea of a reboot or even a continuation seems slim to none, they’re being....

What did the executives say?  Oh, right.  Put down.

“C’mon, c’mon!” Yakko yells behind him.  He has longer legs, so he can run faster, and his siblings are lagging.  He can hear the guards coming closer-it’s been outsourced, it’s not Ralph or Dr.Scratchansniff or Hello Nurse, it’s large men in scary outfits and nets and tasers and batons-and so he slows down, grabs his siblings by the scruffs of their necks, and keeps running.

“They’re gonna kill us!” Dot all but shrieks, and he can feel her terror, and he’s just as scared.  He doesn’t know how this whole suspended animation thing goes, but it sounds a lot like death and he doesn’t like it one bit.

“Not on my watch,” he replies, hoping he sounds braver and more sure than he is.

Wakko tosses a few sticks of dynamite over his shoulder to slow their chasers down, and they weave through the studio towards the exit and out into the city.  If they lay low for a few days, they can sneak back into their tower and hole up there for as long as they need.  They’ve gotten used to it.  It’s home.  They can stay.  It’ll be fine.

Wakko whimpers, quietly.  He’s curled up as tight as he can, knees hidden in his sweater as Yakko holds him close.  Dot is much the same.  Her flower has lost its petals in the mad dash to escape, but she doesn’t bother to complain.

Yakko can hardly breathe, he’s been running so fast, but adrenaline keeps him going.  He can’t let them get his siblings, he can’t let his siblings get taken, get hurt.  He’s their big brother.

“It’s gonna be okay,” He gasps out between breaths, between strides.  “We got ‘em beat.  They’ve never messed with the Warners before, they can’t handle us,” The world can’t, that’s why they’re being thrown away, permanently.

“Uh, I don’t think the dynamite worked,” Wakko pipes up, and Yakko hazards a look behind him and nearly trips in terror.  They’re so close!  

“Try some more!  I can’t reach into my hammerspace right now!” Wakko throws road tacks, the ones that stop cars, and he throws oil and a match, and grease, but the apparent task force hired just gets through obstacle after obstacle as if it were nothing.

Yakko gives them the what for, ducking around a corner at the last second to look like he was going towards another corner, and he doesn’t even allow himself to breathe, so quiet it’s chilling, but he hears a shuffle from the side away from the street they were running on.

“Gotcha,” He hears, and Dot screams, and they’re somehow in the alleyway, and he runs across the street with utter abandon, too scared to think, and suddenly they’re at a dead end.

“Shoot-uh-I-,” He can see the men running across the street after them, and so he jumps, aiming for the rooftop.

He gets yanked down by his tail, and lets out a cry of pain, kicking the hand off of him as all three of them tumble to the asphalt and he loses purchase of his sibs.  He scrambles to his feet, pushing Wakko and Dot behind him and facing the monsters that have been hired to hurt his family with a growl.  His tail aches.  

Yakko isn’t a fighter, not by a mile.  He isn’t that strong, isn’t that talented, in that regard.  He has his words, but that isn’t useful right now.  

He pulls out a mallet, the largest one he can muster, and holds it up high.

“Stay back,” he can feel Dot and Wakko trembling, they’re clinging to his legs.  The men are wreathed in shadows so he can’t see their faces, and it adds to the mounting fear and helplessness.  “Or-Or I’ll use this!”

They come closer.  Yakko’s hands shake.

“I’m warning you!” He shouts, stronger than he feels.  “Not one more step!” 

They come closer.  He swings.

An a cuff clicks around his wrist, and the mallet vanishes.

“What-,” and he’s yanked forward, held back as they close in on Wakko and Dot.  “No!  Let go!” He kicks and writhes, but he can’t get anything to appear.  The cuff on his wrist hums a noxious green, and he stares at it for a second before continuing to struggle.

“Toon power cancelling cuffs,” The apparent leader says, from behind him.  “We don’t use em too often because they don’t work for forever, since you can’t really stop a toon from being a toon for too long, but they’ll work long enough for this job.”

“NO!” Yakko screams.  Wakko is swinging a bat around, pushing Dot behind him despite her protests.  She pulls out a weapon too, her mace, and holds it in trembling hands.

“Don’t take them-just take me!  I’ll go quiet, they can hide out in the water tower!  They’ll be good, please, no one will know!  You can say you lost them, you can-please-don’t!” He’s begging.  He can’t let this happen to them.  It doesn’t matter if it’s him, they’re what matters.  He needs them to be safe.

“Yakko, shut up!” Dot shouts back, and she sounds furious.  Her glare softens with fear as she glances between the many adults looming over them.

They’re outnumbered.  Their eldest has been caught.  Wakko keeps swinging.

The men trip grab the bat in one hand and yank Wakko forward, and he stumbles and falls.  They pick him up by his ears and slap a cuff on him, and while Wakko continues to kick and squirm but not being able to access your toon powers is draining.  Yakko is tired, but he refuses to quit now.

“Dot, run!” He shouts, but she looks like a deer in the headlights, frozen and surrounded. She swings the mace and lets go, jumping up as the men stumble back from it, but halfway up they hit her with something.  A rubber bullet?  For a moment, he thinks she was actually shot, but there’s no blood even when she screams and drops to the ground.

“Stop!” Yakko and Wakko shout, but they cuff her before she even has a chance to get up, and they throw her over their shoulder.

“We got them,” Someone says into a walkie talkie.  Yakko kicks them where it hurts, and scrambles to grab his sibs again, biting and scratching.  “Permission to terminate?”

Something in Yakko snaps, and suddenly he can’t think.  The thoughts and world have gone into slow motion, images like flashes that he doesn’t have the time to decipher.  He’s moving fast, but it feels so slow.

He doesn’t hear the answer.  He’s running towards blue and red, and pink, and there’s a hand on his shoulder and he’s screaming their names and they’re all crying and there’s a pinch on his neck as something pierces through skin and then-

Nothing.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He wakes up with a scream on his lips and is enveloped into a hug before he’s fully conscious.

“It’s okay, I’m so sorry, it’s okay,” He knows that voice.  Clarity is slow coming, but Yakko can sparse that out.

“Spielberg?” he manages.  His mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton balls, and his vision comes into focus on a much older Steven Spielberg.

“Yakko, I’m sorry,” he says.  “I wanted them to keep you in the tower, but they were resolute.  The best I could get was suspended animation,” He gestures to the room they’re in, and Yakko sees two toon sized tubes filled with some kind of liquid, with his siblings in them.  They look different.  Remodeled.  He looks down at himself.  The art style has changed.  They’ve changed.  How?

“What...?” He can’t find the words.  Not yet.  They’re coming back to him slowly.

“It’s death...but not quite.  I was hoping for a reboot.  You guys are getting your show back!” he smiles at Yakko, like he expects Yakko to be overjoyed, but Yakko just stares.

Suspended Animation.  Death, but not quite.

He let his siblings get this.

“I’m telling you, because I figured these two would take it better from you than me,” Spielberg points a thumb at Wakko and Dot.  “I’ll wake them up now for your reunion.”

And Yakko wants to cry.  He wants to rage.  He wants to tell Steven, the execs, everyone, to stick it where the sun don’t shine  Like Hell is he doing their stupid reboot, he hates them.

He doesn’t hate often, but he’s certain here.

“Will they remember...?” Will they remember dying like I do, he doesn’t say.  Spielberg shrugs.

“Don’t know.”

They will.  Wakko is going to cry and Dot won’t be able to sleep for a week, and Yakko will hold them close and apologize a million times, and he’ll have to stop them from tearing the studio apart because he knows it’ll bring them right back here.  

They’ll remember.

But he doesn’t know that yet, so instead he says.

“So, how’s the reboot working?” As Spielberg turns on the machine to let Wakko and Dot out, and he pretends to listen as the director replies.

[naromoreau]

“Fly ‘em high, do or die”

Written for the JokerWeek2018 here  on tumblr. The idea came out of @rvtstudent ​ and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. So here it is, Joker pre-normandy and a crossover with the movie Top Gun.

Thanks to @juleshawke ​ and @alyssalenko ​ my wonderful friends and betas who share the Joker passion with me. Shout out to @starsandskies ​ for hosting the week!

______________________________

“Joker, you just did an incredibly brave thing, and stupid as hell.” Old Badger’s forehead was damp with sweat, veins popping out on his temples, a beet-red flush crawling up his neck and Joker could’ve sworn his eyes were about to burst out of his skull.  “Your orders were to land your ship!”

Before he could speak, Steve tried to intervene. “Sir, Cougar froze, he--”

“I’m not talking to you, Cortez!” Commander Holloway paced around them, his head yanking from left to right, sweeping the room with his words and saliva. “What in the hell did you think you were doing, Joker?”

“Just wanna serve the Alliance, be the best fighter pilot in the Navy, sir!” He squared up his shoulders as best as he could, gripping the handles of his crutches tighter, trying to ignore the radiating anger from Commander Holloway, standing just inches away from him.

“Don’t screw around with me, son. You’re a hell of a pilot, maybe too good for your own damn good. I’d love to bust your crippled ass, but I can’t. I've got a major problem here.” Joker blinked under his cap trying to keep the persistent drops of sweat off his lashes. Although routine, the drill had left him spent, Cougar’s fear and despair had hit him right in gut, mirroring his own doubts. Next to him Steve stared blankly at the wall, hands behind his back, brow knitted expecting the avalanche of fury from the Old Badger to swiftly find him too.

Commander Holloway sat on his desk and flash them a pointed look, the veins in his neck stood out like cords. “I gotta send somebody from this school to Admiral Hackett.”  He felt Steve’s eyes piercing his skull like a blaster gun. “I gotta do something here. I still can’t believe it.” The Commander winced, his hand curled like the paw of an animal, a predator about to rip them apart. Joker didn’t flinch. “Cougar was my number one, and now- I gotta give you your dream shot. I’m gonna send you up against the best. You two characters are going to Top Gun and for five weeks you’re gonna fly against the best fighter pilots humanity has to offer.”

Joker batted his lashes, his heart thundering in his chest, a heavy pounding that had him deaf to any other sound. His perfect soldier demeanor cracked when a smile broke, dashing white shining through his lips. Steve shifted on his feet and sighed, heavily, making Joker think he hadn’t breathed at all since they entered Holloway’s office.  

“But just one thing,” the Badger threatened, hovering over them in a way that surprised Joker since the man was several inches shorter than them, “you screw up just this much, you’ll be flying a cargo shuttle full of varren shit out of Omega.”

“Yes, sir!”

His legs started to quiver, and he knew his shins couldn’t hold much longer, but it’d be a cold day in hell if he allowed the Badger see him show any sign of weakness; not when he finally was scratching heaven with sweaty fingers. Holloway paused, hands on his hips, shooting them a last vitriolic glance.

“That’s all.”

They retreated out of that dark hole as if they were escaping, a weird scenario lightened by the grins they both had carved in their faces. Steve opened the door, allowing him to go out first, but before he lifted his crutches from the ground Holloway’s voice snapped their attention back at him.

“Good luck, gentlemen.”

“Thank you, sir.” Their answer came at unison, heads nodding before they finally stepped through the door.

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