|
Pluck Amuck!
by Kevin Mickel
(aka HKUriah@AOL.com)
Plucky came out of his dressing room wearing his Batduck suit
and signaled that he was ready to start the animation. When nothing happened, he
looked up with annoyance and called out, "Hey up there! Let's get this show on the
road, okay?"
In response to his call, the scenery suddenly brightened,
indicating that whoever the animator was had turned on the light over the drawing
table. Plucky looked around with satisfaction. "Thanks," he called
upwards. "Here I go."
After a brief pause, Plucky leapt in front of a dark alleyway
scene and shouted, "Stop right there, you criminal scum! For I, Batduck, am
here to put an end to your evil ways!"
A quick look at his surroundings told Plucky that his quarry was
no where in sight. Seeing that alleyway came to a dead end only a few yards to his
right, he dashed off to the left shouting, "It'll do you no good to run! Sooner
or later, I'll catch you and..."
Plucky stopped when he realized that he'd run out of background.
He was standing in front of a stark white nothingness. "Criminal
scum?" he asked tentatively. "Where did you..."
Plucky suddenly realized that there was something very familiar
about his circumstances. Pulling off his Batduck costume, he looked upwards and
called out, "Forget it, Buster! I'm not playing along. There's no way you're
gonna do to me what Bugs did to Daffy! You listening, Buster? Just call it off
and..."
"You talking to me, Plucky?" asked Buster as he walked
into the picture frame.
Plucky's jaw dropped to his feet when he saw Buster standing only
a few paces away from him. Fitting his jaw back into place, he asked sheepishly,
"Bus-ter?"
"That's me, Plucky old pal. Whattaya want?"
"Uhm, well..." Plucky's mind was racing, and he
was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. "Buster," he said at last,
"if you're down here, then who's," and he paused for just a second, pointed
upwards and whispered, "up there?"
"Up where?" asked Buster with confusion. Then,
seeing the look on Plucky's face, which was a mixture of fear, annoyance, curiosity, and
more fear, he added, "Oh, up THERE. You wanna know who's animating this
thing."
"Well, yeah."
"Sorry, pal. No can tell. I promised."
As Buster said this, a paintbrush appeared and created a small
black oval near Buster's feet. "Well, Plucky, I gotta go. If I was you,
I'd be careful," and he dove down into the newly created rabbit hole.
"Buster, wait!" cried Plucky, and he tried to dive down
into the hole after him.
Before he could get down it though, the paintbrush reappeared and
transformed the rabbit hole into an anvil, which Plucky's head struck with a resounding,
"KLANG!"
Plucky slowly oozed off the anvil and stood up groggily.
"Ow!" he said as he felt the lump on the top of his head. "That
hurts!"
As soon as he said this, the eraser head of a pencil appeared and
careful erased the bump on his head.
"Thanks a lot," said Plucky, his voice dripping
with sarcasm. Now that the pain was gone, he felt more courage. "Just who
do you think you are?" he shouted up at the animator. "This is supposed to
be MY project film. Who are you to..."
Plucky shut up when he realized that he was standing under an
enormous anvil shaped shadow. Plucky's expression was suddenly filled with
terror. "Uhm, I mean," he said with a lot of respect, and more than a
little fear, "what do you want me to do in this picture, Boss?"
The shadow over Plucky's head vanished, and the paintbrush
reappeared to create the deck of a battleship at sea. It then slopped over Plucky
and put him in a sailor suit. A sailor suit that looked suspiciously like the one
worn by another famous duck from a different studio.
"Oh no you don't!" shouted Plucky when he saw what he
had on. "This is forbidden!" Pulling out his contract with Warner
Brothers, he pointed at a specific clause and said, "See? It says right here
that I never wear a sailor suit. So come on, fix it!"
The eraser came down and quickly removed the uniform, leaving
Plucky standing there in nothing but his feathers. "Hey!" he shouted with
alarm as he dropped into a defensive crouch. "Where's my T-shirt?"
The paintbrush returned and put an oversize sweatshirt on
him. The tail hung down to his feet and the sleeves trailed off out of the frame.
There was also a big red capital T in the middle of it.
Plucky could only roll his eyes. "YOU KNOW BETTER THAN
THAT!!!!" he shouted.
The eraser appeared and quickly obliterated everything.
"Well," asked Plucky's disembodied voice, "where am I?"
With a flurry of color and motion, the paintbrush created the
interior of a simple suburban home. Once it was complete, it put Plucky in the scene
on the left hand side. Once that was done, the brush hovered in the middle of the
screen like it was about to add something more, but it seemed hesitant.
"Hmm," said Plucky as he looked around.
"This doesn't seem so bad." Glancing then at the brush, he looked up and
asked, "So what are you waiting for? What are you gonna add?"
Very casually, the paintbrush created two more ducks, who looked
and were dressed exactly like Plucky, except that one of them was wearing a black T-shirt
and the other a grey one.. "Huh?" he asked. "What's going on?":
"Hi, Plucky-," started one the one in the black shirt.
"-how's it goin'?" finished the one in grey.
Both of their voices were identical to Plucky's, who suddenly
looked very angry. "What is this?" he demanded. "I am the one
and only Plucky Duck! You can't go and make duplicates of me!"
"Duplicates? We're not-"
"-your duplicates. We're your brothers."
"Sure. You're Plucky, I'm Ducky,-
"-and I'm Wucky."
A look of horror formed on Plucky's face.
"Waitaminute!" he said with alarm. "Plucky, Ducky and Wucky?
Are you-"
"-saying that we're Daffy-"
"-Duck's nephews from now on!"
"NOOOOO!!!!!!" screamed Plucky with all his being.
"To that," said Daffy Duck as he suddenly walked into
the room, "I must whole heartedly agree!" and he tossed a huge bomb into the
room. "Mother..." whispered Plucky weakly as the bomb
landed at his feet.
KAAABLAAAAMMMMM!!!!!!!!
Plucky stood alone, covered with black soot, in front of a stark
white background. Daffy, the house, and his "brothers" were all
gone. His expression was dazed, and he stood completely motionless.
"Gaahgsh," he managed to vocalize.
Shaking himself back to awareness and dusting off the soot,
Plucky glared upwards at his unknown animator and shouted. "All right, that
does it! I'll take no more of this!! Go ahead and drop your anvils!!! I
DON"T CARE ANYMORE!!!!"
In response to that, an enormous anvil fell down and squashed
Plucky beneath it, leaving only his beak sticking out from under the edge of it.
"Who are you?!?" he demanded in a weak voice.
The paintbrush reappeared to slowly paint an open doorframe
around the anvil before slowly pushing it closed.
Sitting at the animator's desk, Shirley the Loon put down the
brush, stretched and said, "Like, that'll teach him to get fresh with me when we're
out on a date, or some junk."
THE END
Somebody once said something to the effect that imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery. Mr. Jones, if by some miracle you happen to see this, I hope you are
flattered.
Believe it or not, this basic idea has been in head for a long time. Even before
I read TTBS Moment #17, "Amuck Time," by Jonathan Woodward. I'm not
ripping you off Jon. Honest.
Moral of the story; Plucky needs to be nicer to Shirley.
Very special thanks to the following people, who were kind enough to look over the
first draft of this story, and then point out everything that was wrong so I could fix it,
and then for making some suggestions about how to do various things differently, some of
which I even followed. Rebecca Littlehales (Esbeckras@AOL.com), Mike Cote
(Mikote@AOL.com), Kim McFarland (Negaduck9@AOL.com), John Friedrich (Nefaria@AOL.com) and,
Morgan Ingersoll (GROMIT927@AOL.com).
My fellow Toonsters, let me make one thing perfectly clear; the gag about Plucky, Ducky
and Wucky is a refence to Donald Duck's three nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, who appeared
in his old theatrical shorts and in Carl Barks's brilliant comic book stories. It is
in no way shape or form a reference to that rip off of the aforementioned works of art
known as "DuckTales." There, I feel better now.
The next credit, in one form or another, is in all of my stories.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it.
"Parting is such sweet sorrow."
|
