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Today was just like most other days for Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. The three wanted to have some fun, so they escaped the water tower. However, every time they left the tower, Ralph T. Guard was on their backs, and today was no exception. The Warners ran as fast as they could to escape Ralph. When the trio thought they’d won, suddenly, they bumped into a brick wall.
“Uh oh!” Wakko said, “a dead end!”
The Warners dusted themselves off when Wakko noticed a large, imposing shadow approaching them, a net lifted above his head. Yakko and Dot heard Wakko gasp and turned around.
“What’s wrong, baby bro?” Yakko asked.
Wakko lifted his arm and pointed at Ralph, slowly walking towards them with his net. Dot started to laugh, while Yakko pulled Wakko close to him. Both of Dot’s brothers glared at her.
“Shut up, Dot!” Wakko yelled, “he scared me!”
“Ralph?” Dot asked.
Dot kept laughing as Ralph kept approaching the Warners. Eventually, Ralph crept close enough to the siblings that he had trapped them.
“Duh, I gotcha now!” Ralph exclaimed.
Yakko and Dot stared at the bulky security guard and gulped. Yakko pulled Dot in, while Wakko’s frown turned into a smug grin.
“Are you chicken, Dot?” he asked.
“Come on, you two,” Yakko began, “we don’t have time for this right now!”
“What do we do?” Dot asked.
Yakko winked at Dot and gave a whistle. Ralph turned his head, trying to find out where the sound came from. When he looked back at the wall, the Warners had disappeared. Ralph ran off to find them. The Warners couldn’t see Ralph, but Wakko served as a lookout, constantly turning his head to see if Ralph was chasing them. After a few minutes of running, when Wakko turned his head, he saw Ralph, teeth clenched and face red.
“Ralph’s coming!” Wakko shouted.
“Don’t worry!” Yakko replied, “I have a plan!”
“What’s your plan?” Dot asked.
As Ralph got even closer, Yakko gulped.
“We need to split up!” he shouted.
“How’s that gonna help us?!” Dot asked.
“If we split up,” Yakko explained, “Ralph will have to find all of us in different places, and if he finds one of us, the other two of us can gang up on him!”
“You know what? Let’s do it!”
“Remember guys, if Ralph catches you, scream very loudly so we can find you. Got that?”
“Got it!” Wakko exclaimed.
With that, the Warners ran off in different directions. Wakko took a left, Dot took a right, and Yakko kept running straight. Ralph stopped in his tracks, watching all the Warners run off, and scratched his head. However, once he noticed Yakko getting further and further away from him, he decided to focus on catching Yakko. When Yakko noticed that Ralph was going after him, he ran as fast as he could. He eventually lost Ralph, but he kept running just in case. Suddenly, Yakko slammed into a wall and fell to the ground. This wasn’t a brick wall like the last one, but it still hurt. Yakko rubbed his face for a bit before standing up and backing away. He noticed that the wall he bumped into was part of a two-story house. It was light yellow in color, and it appeared to be well-kept.
Yakko walked around the nice house’s exterior. He didn’t see any cars near it, or any signs that anyone lived there. He looked around, both for Ralph as well as any other people, before prying open a window and climbing inside the house. Worried that Ralph might see him from inside, he decided to hide underneath a rectangular coffee table. The table was long enough to completely hide him, but Yakko curled up underneath it anyways. A part of him wanted to cause some chaos, but even though he had only been inside the house for a few seconds, he already loved it, and didn’t want it to go to waste.
While Yakko was hiding, he heard the sound of an acoustic guitar playing a sweet, romantic melody. He didn’t pay much attention to what hearing that sound meant; he just enjoyed the sound of it. Then, he heard footsteps. It was at this moment that Yakko realized that he didn’t enter an abandoned house; he broke into somebody else’s. He started to tremble as the sound of the footsteps as well as the sound of the guitar got louder. What was he going to do? He couldn’t call Wakko and Dot for help because they would think that Ralph got him, even though that wasn’t the case, not to mention that they were probably far away. After a bit of thinking, Yakko decided to stay as quiet as he could under the table. He closed his eyes and didn’t move.
Yakko noticed the guitar playing had stopped, and he heard someone walking around the table. He tried his best to ignore the sound. Eventually, the person walking around noticed Yakko’s slacks, and he got on his knees, looked underneath the table, and found Yakko.
“Hello?” he asked in a French accent.
Yakko opened his eyes and saw what appeared to be a frog. He had large eyes and green skin, and was wearing a dark green jacket over a white shirt. He had a treble clef on his left cheek, and Yakko couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Uhhhh, nice tattoo?” Yakko said.
“Oh!” the frog exclaimed, “why, thank you!”
Yakko sighed in relief. He was still nervous, especially now that he knew whose house he broke into by mistake, but this frog seemed friendly.
“Why don’t you come out from under there?” Cleff asked, “there isn’t much room down there.”
Yakko came out from under the table, stood up, and dusted off his slacks, smiling at the frog.
“So,” the frog asked, “who are you?”
“Yakko,” Yakko answered, “Yakko Warner.”
“Oh, I’ve never heard a name like that before!” Cleff exclaimed, “My name is Cleff! Cleff Lillipad.”
“I’ve never heard a name quite like yours either!” Yakko replied.
Cleff held his hand out for a handshake, and Yakko took it. The feeling of the handshake calmed Yakko down a little bit, but he was still nervous about how he would react to him being in the house. He took a deep breath.
“Hey,” Yakko began, “I’m sorry I broke into your house. I thought this place was abandoned.”
“Oh, it’s fine!” Cleff replied, “just as long as you didn’t come to steal anything or hurt anyone.”
“Nah,” Yakko said, “just to hide from Ralph.”
“Who?”
“Ya know, Ralph T. Guard? Tall, fat, dumb, Warner Bros. security guard?”
“Never heard of him.”
“I can explain. May I sit down?”
Cleff nodded, and Yakko took a seat on the sofa. Cleff sat next to him and set his guitar down as Yakko cleared his throat.
“So,” Yakko began, “I’m a cartoon character.”
Yakko then pulled a photograph of Wakko and Dot out of hammerspace and showed it to Cleff. He smiled at the picture.
“These are my little siblings, Wakko and Dot,” Yakko said, “the three of us used to be in cartoons back in the old days, but at some point, people decided that our cartoons didn’t make any sense and we got locked up in the Warner Bros. water tower.”
“That’s horrible!” Cleff put a hand on his chest.
“Yeah, it sucks,” Yakko replied, “but the tower’s our home. But just because the tower’s our home doesn’t mean we want to be locked in there all the time. Unfortunately for us, Warner Bros. does. Ralph’s always chasing us because of that.”
“He sounds like a miserable man.”
“He’s kind of miserable from what I know about him, but he’s just following orders. Ya see, the CEO, Thaddeus Plotz, he’s the one telling him to chase us around.”
Cleff leaned back and his eyes widened.
“Why would he do such a thing?” Cleff asked.
“I’m not sure myself,” Yakko replied, “it’s just the way he is.”
“He sounds even more miserable than that Ralph fellow does!” Cleff said.
“Trust me, he is.”
Yakko giggled, but Cleff didn’t laugh with him. The room grew awkwardly silent. Yakko needed to find something to talk about quick, but he didn’t know what to say, a new feeling for him. Normally, he’d just come up with a witty reply, but he just didn’t feel like a quip would fit the situation right now. Yakko let his eyes wander around the room when he noticed Cleff’s guitar.
“Say,” Yakko began, “was that you playing guitar earlier?”
“It was!” Cleff replied, “I play in my spare time.”
“It sounded really good!” Yakko exclaimed, “you’re a great musician!”
“Merci! I’m working on a song, actually!”
“You composed that?”
“Sure did!”
“Well, it sounded awesome!”
“Aww, thank you!”
“Hey, no prob, Cleff!”
Then, Yakko felt butterflies in his stomach. Being around Cleff gave Yakko a strange feeling. It was almost like the happiness he felt when he was around Wakko and Dot, but more unfamiliar and exciting. Was this... friendship? Not counting Wakko and Dot, Yakko had never had a friend before, but he loved the thought of having a friend, and he loved the feeling of being around one even more.
“You know something?” Cleff asked.
“Yeah?” Yakko replied.
“I like you!” Cleff said.
“Whaddya mean?”
“I want to hang out with you more!”
Yakko’s jaw dropped a little and his eyes lit up. Cleff nervously looked at him.
“I mean,” Cleff began, “you seem really nice, and I bet you have a lot of friends, so if you don’t want to-”
“Actually,” Yakko interrupted, “aside from Wakko and Dot... I don’t have any friends.”
“Oh! Well, would you like to be my friend?”
Yakko nodded eagerly, took Cleff’s hand, and started to rapidly shake it. Cleff giggled as Yakko did this.
“Jeez, Yakko!” he said, “calm down!”
“’Calm down’?” Yakko replied, “I have a friend!”
Cleff giggled again, and he and Yakko went back to talking. They had conversations about all sorts of things: their life experiences, their relatives, and all the crazy people that they’ve met over the years. Every once in a while, Yakko would tell a joke in the middle of a story he was telling, and every single time, Cleff would start laughing like a hyena. The two continued to chat as the sun started to set. When Cleff looked at the clock on his wall, he gasped.
“We’ve been talking for that long?” he asked.
“You know what they say,” Yakko replied, “time flies when you’re having fun. It flies when I’m spending time with my little siblings too. Anyways, I gotta find Wakko and Dot and get back home.”
“Well,” Cleff said, “I hope I see you soon, Yakko! Please introduce me to your brother and sister some time!”
“I will!”
With that, Yakko left Cleff’s house, this time using the front door, but not before waving Cleff goodbye. When he shut the door, he started walking around the movie lot, looking for his siblings.
“Yakko?” a voice that sounded like Wakko called.
“Yakko, where are you?” another voice that sounded like Dot called.
“I’m coming!” Yakko shouted.
Yakko started running towards the sound of the voices, and it only took him a few seconds to find his siblings. The three rushed to hug each other.
“Where were you?” Wakko asked.
“Uhhhh, it’s a long story,” Yakko said.
“Must’ve been,” Dot remarked, “we were looking for you for a while!”
“Alright,” Yakko replied, “I’ll tell you.”
Yakko then began to explain what he was up to. The yellow house, him mistaking it for being abandoned, and Cleff, his new best friend. Wakko and Dot smiled as Yakko told the story, and Yakko couldn’t be any happier.