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Under ordinary circumstances, having Daffy Duck on your side meant that you'd doomed yourself to the losing side. And indeed, the main office had already dealt with an entire afternoon of no discernible progress before the duck had shown up with unrelated opinions about everything from the FastPass system to the arrangement of staplers.
Mickey was the highest authority in the office, and he wasn't particularly adept at interrupting someone who wouldn't shut up. As such, Daffy had the room's focus and showed no signs of letting it go. Three minutes in, the chipmunks dragged over one of the largest binder clips the office had on hand and motioned to Mickey that they were more than prepared to snap it shut on the visitor's beak. The mouse gave them a horrified look, which eliminated the easy solution. The munks shrugged and left it to their boss to come up with a backup plan.
Mickey tried to make eye-contact with Porky for assistance, but the pig had spent the better part of his career learning the art of passive resignation. He turned to Sylvester next who gave him the 'just wait' index finger gesture. Mickey mouthed "For what?" but the cat only gave him a comforting nod.
As much of an obstacle as Daffy was being, he was inherently charismatic about it. So much that nobody realized they were hearing the loud clack of approaching heels on the hallway floor until Madame Medusa burst into the office. "Where is Oswald?" she bellowed.
The intrusion stopped Daffy mid-sentence. But before he could say 'oh no she didn't' Mickey dove into the lull. "Well, see, the thing is, Madame Medusa, Oswald hasn't, you know, come back yet-"
"Then he's out! Give me the rat's contract now!"
"He's not a rat," Mickey muttered; one of the few times he'd taken offence to a comment.
Goofy chimed in. "Gawrsh Miss Medusa, you know tha' rules. Ya can't fire someone if ya can't find 'em."
"You have one minute to put Oswald's contract in my hand-"
"Or what?" snapped Daffy. "You heard the dingo! A rule is a rule! And you can't change a rule without changing the rulebook! Every rulebook will tell you that!"
She tried turning her attention back to Mickey, oblivious to the reality that you might interrupt Daffy, and you might ignore him, but nobody ever managed to do both. "What is this idiot saying?"
The duck jumped up in her face now. "I'll tell you what this idiot is saying, Wanda Wiggins! YOU have one minute to put the rulebook in MY hand or YOU'RE out of here! Done! Finished! Kaput! Capiche! Kapow! Capote!" He'd gotten her attention, and was only just realizing he didn't want it. "Wow lady, that is some ten yard stare you've got."
Under ordinary circumstances, Daffy was a liability. But these were not ordinary circumstances. In that moment, Madame Medusa's newfound fury with Daffy superseded her intention to oust Oswald.
Nobody in the office did anything but watch as she dragged the duck down the hallway she'd just come from. "By the way, that's a stupid rule!" Daffy called just before he disappeared out of sight.
"How did you know?" Mickey asked Sylvester.
"I didn't know that would happen, but theeth thingth alwayth have a rhythm." The cat clapped his hands together, ready for action. "You care if we play through?"
"Gosh, I don't you what you can do to help."
Sylvester smiled. "Probably nothing. But it doethn't look like we can make it worth."
"Worth?" Mickey repeated. "Oh, worse! I'm really sorry."
"Nothing to be thorry about. Doeth the thimulation have any thchematicth?"
"Schematics? The hard drives have the pre-production, and Oswald's diagrams are in his office. But for some reason we can't get into the program itself."
"Well let'th have Porky go through the hard drive, and Wile E. look through Othwald'th offith. If you're okay with that."
"And what you need me to do?" asked Speedy Gonzales.
"You make thure we all thtay on the thame page."
"Si señor gato."
Rival studios never had any personal tension between them, but the addition of a corporate layer added a massive and complex legal slate to the mix. Mickey knew he was putting more on the line than he ever had before by agreeing to this alliance. But people were in danger. And whether or not the business side would deem them worth the risk, the mouse truly believed they should.
"I guess that will be okay," he said. "I don't know what you'll find that we haven't."
Sylvester leaned in and lowered his voice. "There'th thomething I need to talk to you about privately."
Mickey's office phone was ringing when he and Sylvester stepped through the door. The incoming caller's I.D. was the red phone booth in the guest area; the one where only top tiered staff knew the code to dial out from. "I'm sorry. I gotta take this."
The cat took a seat in one of the comfortable chairs and watched the world's most successful studio mascot awkwardly fumble his was through a mostly one-sided conversation. His responses were a series of yesses, I sees, and keep me posteds, while he forcibly kept his Disney smile firmly in place. The stress in his eyes told a more accurate picture. Sylvester made a mental note that it might be profitable to challenge the studio VIP's to a poker game somewhere down the road.
The mouse hung up the phone and did his best to pretend everything was all right. "So, whatcha got?"
Sylvester grinned. As far back as the Schlesinger days, the Looney Tunes founders had gazed up at the Disney legacy with a resigned envy. Not so much that it ever reached the toxic levels that Daffy had for Bugs, but the weekend gatherings had been home to many a playful imagining of what it might feel like if for one moment they could one-up the Mouse House. Sylvester would be the first to ever one-up the actual mouse.
He gestured to the phone. "Othwald okay?"
Mickey tripped over a response somewhere between yes and no. "How did you-"
Sylvester produced an office folder, placing it on Mickey's desk but temporarily ignoring it. "Full dithclothure," he said. "We love you guyth. We love your optimithm and your perpetual belief that thingth will alwayth work out. We're not here to preth-th an advantage, or upthet your balanthe. You want to protect your rabbit, we want to pretherve ourth."
"And we really appreciate that. But you guys being here really might make things worse."
"Of courth it will!" WB was nothing if not proud of the chaos they tended to cause. "You need worth."
Mickey shook his head. "Not much worse."
The cat was right about him trying to protect Oswald. In light of Madame Medusa's recent tirade, Mickey hadn't wanted to admit he'd even spoken with Oswald, much less had any idea where he was. But both studios would lose if they weren't able to resolve the issue with the simulator.
"Okay," he decided. "The virtual island runs on this kind of..." How was he going to explain it?
"Adaptive programming?" Sylvester offered.
"Yeah, we all remember TRON. Oswald thinks it's reading Bugs as a virus."
"Incompatibility?"
"Something like that. He's going to test the theory using some of the old Innoventions tech."
"You think he can create an anti-viruth?"
Mickey jolted at the thought. "No! He'd never do that!"
"Could it fixth the problem?"
"It would destroy Bugs! That wouldn't fix anything!" It was a little disturbing how nonchalant Sylvester was at repeating the suggestion that it would in fact solve the Disney Studio's side of the problem. "Are you sayin' Oswald would do that?"
"Are you thaying he wouldn't?"
"He'd never dream of it!"
"My point exthactly." He slid the office folder over to Mickey. "None of you know how to think like an antagonitht."
Mickey opened the folder to find the formal invitation that Bugs had received in the mail to join Oswald's project. On Disney stationary. Mickey stared at it in disbelief. "He was invited?"
"You tell me. We found that in hith houthe."
"This can't be right."
"No. It can't." Sylvester leaned back in his chair. "I think you need uth."
"I think so too."
Jasmine was already scouring the debris of wooden planks piled against the outer edge of a small cave mouth when Frollo finally reached her location. The dust was still rising from the explosion. "Kronk!" the self-titled princess shouted.
An incoherent muffle came from within the rubbish. What had the idiot charged into? It looked like the remains of a storage facility; no doubt useless after the catastrophe.
Jasmine was now on the far side of the pile where Kronk's hand protruded. She took it in her fingers, feeling for a steady pulse. "Kronk?"
A few tones of his voice made it through labyrinth of splinters. "Somebody lose a cannonball?"
"We're going to get you out of there," Jasmine promised with nothing to back up her claim. She surveyed the rubble, presumably looking for the best way to leverage the upper weight. Frollo shook his head.
"Just leave the fool-"
"He saved your life," she scolded him, like he was some kind of infant.
"And that's relevant because?"
"It makes him better than you!"
He rolled his eyes. "Decreeing value based on circumstance now?"
"Yes. And if you want to stop being dead weight you could try to help me loosen one of these beams."
"Have you ever done any actual...princessing?"
Jasmine began a careful climb of the heap, doing her best not to shift any added pressure onto where she thought Kronk was. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Sacrifice-"
"Zip it Frollo!" He shot her a look, but she didn't have time for a staring contest. Jasmine crawled behind the most vertical support and propped her feet against it. "There's sacrifice and there's abandonment. The difference is convenience."
Frollo snorted. Let her highness waste her energy trying to topple the scaffolding. The cave mouth had drawn his attention. There were steps. Carved into the stone, but undoubtedly by human hands. He couldn't make out more than a few yards into the darkness, but a thought occurred to him. If the entrance had been protected by a countermeasure and Kronk had already set it off, whatever lay down there was now unguarded.
"You may want to move, Frollo," Jasmine called. "This is coming down."
"Gladly," he sneered.
This moment would forever be burned into Daffy's memory as the backdrop for his guest spot on "This is Your Life". In a matter of ninety seconds, he'd gotten himself evicted from the Disney premises; a place to which he'd not only been invited, but granted security clearance. But it wasn't a simple eviction. He'd been forced to wait outside the lobby for twenty minutes while security took its sweet time completing the procedure. He found himself sharing a bench with a droopy eared quadruped in an otherwise empty hallway; the quote "Welcome to the happiest place on earth" painted in bright colors on the wall across from him.
"Well this can't get any more poetic," he muttered to his benchmate. Only after a moment of eye contact did Daffy realize who the donkey was. He buried his head. "Egad."
"Have that effect," said Eeyore.
Daffy sighed. "I don't imagine you're being thrown out too."
"Nope. Appointment moved. Have to wait," Eeyore responded with a full rest stop between each sentence.
"I bet you're a delight on the late night talk show circuit."
"Wouldn't know. Never asked."
"You and me both pal."
Daffy thought he might try to sneak into Guest Relations to let them know that the character meet and greets were not exceeding his expectations. Here at the happiest place- why did they decide to call it that? Who was ever made happy having to draw from their 401K just to afford entrance to the parking lot? Was that happiness? Negotiating through a literal pileup of rented strollers, ungrateful gremlins, and hordes of seagulls straight out of Hitchcock's casting agency? It was a joke, and someone else was telling it.
Termite Terrace. That was the happiest place Daffy had ever been a part of. No expectations. No corporate contracts. Just chaos unhindered. "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery"; that was a picture he wished would never end. Apparently dreams did come true, just not for very long.
Abruptly he turned back to Eeyore, visibly surprising the donkey. "Let me ask you something. You worked your way into cultural iconography, right?"
"Just kind of happened. Probably be forgotten."
"Yeah, I get it, gloom, no pride, trope namer. But as long as generations of the entertained continue to exist, you're theoretically immortal."
"Suppose so."
"Day to day, how do you live with it? The general unpleasantness of being who you're destined to be?"
"Focus on what matters. Some times you make a difference. Someone else is a little happier, because you're you. And that's enough."
"I think," Daffy professed, "that you just bummed me out."
"Have that effect," said Eeyore. "It's who I am."
Daffy sat in silence. He couldn't fathom finding any comfort in the happiness of others. He knew it was selfish, but that's who he was. He was selfish. Always had been. There was no way around it.
It's who I am. He repeated the donkey's words in his own head. That's who Daffy Duck is. I'm incorrigible. I'm not someone who does what he's told. I don't cooperate. I don't play by the rules. And above all I don't WAIT for security to eject me.
One glance at the unobstructed corridor from whence he'd come was all the motivation he needed to take to his scrawny legs. He patted the donkey on the head. "Don't ever change." And without another word, he was gone.
Eeyore grumbled to himself. "I think I just unleashed a monster."
Continue to Chapter Twenty-One.
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