Grabbing a roll of duct tape from the hammer space behind my back, I gleefully duct taped the Breaker’s mouth shut just in case we’d hear any unwanted chin music out of him.

I saw the Repairman give me a funny look as he and Stupid were both picking up the lumps that made up the Breaker and plop them around the wheelchair.

“Greasy! Psycho!,” I barked, “don’t just sit there with your thumbs up your asses. Go and find us some small boxes to cart this chump away!”

Wheezy produced several small boxes from his own hammer space and held them up to me. “Why’d you have those behind your back?” I growled.

“Figured we’d need them, so I found them.”, he replied, to which I said as I smacked them out of his hand, “Go find them again! Those are cheap over. I’ll be doing most of the work with arresting this guy! Least you three can do is get us better boxes!”

With that, I helped Stupid and the Repairman use a putty knife to scrape the remaining lumps of clay off of the floor.

-Smartass

The Breaker gave a muffled sigh as where his mouth would be was taped up. Both he and the Repairman idly wondered why this would matter, but the gesture seemed to be good enough for Toons.

As the other weasels looked for better boxes, the Repairman went over and grabbed the cheap ones. Hey, they could come in handy…

He turned to Smartass.

"Hey, if you don’t mind me asking,” he asked, out of idle curiosity, “What do you get out of all this?”

“Damn right. You don’t appreciate what we’ve done for you. We got this guy locked up and out of your nonexistent hair. We ain’t such bad guys when we wanna be. Assuming we get something out of it too. But let’s ship this guy out of here! We’ll need your help.”
-Smartass

"Well, all right,” the Repairman said.

He pulled out a couple of latex gloves and let his pseudo-hands fill them, until he could pass off as someone who had fingers. Didn’t want any of that clay stuck in him.

After a few experimental finger flexes, he picked up the Breaker’s face, with little protest. Not knowing where to put him, he just righted the wheelchair and stuck him there.

“You may have!”, I shot back, getting nearly face to face with the repairman, “but that don’t mean we can’t be trusted. We got a job to do! Believe me, we’d love to rough him up a bit to teach him a lesson, but we gotta obey the law! We finally have our shit together, and we don’t wanna mess it up.”

“Toons like you are part of the problem,” snarled Greasy. “You don’t know what it really means to be a weasel. It’s not all stealing eggs and laughing at misfortune and roughing toons up. It’s a brotherhood. And we bust our asses keeping you guys safe when we could easily be part of the criminal underworld. Why? Because somebody’s gotta!”

Wheezy chimed in, “And you were only a fake weasel for about five minutes. Try walking a mile in our shoes! But we have to rise up and prove that we’re more than just the stereotype. But you just judge us at face value instead of how we are. Why should we even bother to arrest this guy? We should just let him screw up your work because /plainly/ you- and all the other toons in this miserable town- don’t appreciate the hard work that goes into making this town the painted, cheerful hellhole it is!”

-Smartass

"Y-yeah, well–” the Repairman stammered, having trouble keeping up with all this. “You think I meant–? You mentioned Di—!”

He sighed. He knew, on some level, it was true. Even sculpted, he was a pale imitation at best.

He wondered how much had to do with the past and how much had to do with the fact they were weasels. In either case, he realized, their actions didn’t reflect what he had been expecting. Harsh, sure, but so were a lot of non-weasel Toon cops. Didn’t mean the Patrol was the same one from decades ago.

“…” he finally said.

He cleared his throat, and tried again.

“…I’m sorry,” he said, bowing his head. “Y-you’re right. You could’ve resolved this job a lot faster if what I thought was true, but… I wouldn’t be here then.”

He sighed.

“…Thank you.”

The Breaker rolled his eye-holes.

“Yeah, yeah, enough of this sap, can you just can me and get it over with?”

“Oh please!,” I rolled my eyes. “We only wanna stop this guy. We want this mess to be over with!”

“We just wanna make sure you can do YOUR job,” said Greasy, “so we can do ours.” “Besides… We can’t dip him. We’d lose our jobs and he can’t be dipped anyway. ” -Smartass

Neither the Repairman nor the Breaker really knew what would happen if the Breaker touched Dip, but neither was willing to find out.

Still, the Repairman realized, there wasn’t much he could do, other than maybe visit the Breaker from time to time to make sure he was doing okay.

"All right,” he sighed, taping the remote back together, “if you’re just going to arrest him, that’s fine.”

He turned to the weasels.

“But how can I trust that?” he asked, pointing to his own noggin. “I’ve seen how you guys think!”

“This guy could easily escape if we put him in jail, though!” I protested. “There’s gotta be some way to keep him from breaking out.”

Greasy reached behind his back and pulled out a dunce-style cap labeled “thinking cap” and slipped it on over his fedora.

“Jefe, if I may, ” he began, before I cut him off. “What the hell is that?” I said, pointing at his cap.

“It’s a thinking cap!” He said, defensively crossing his arms and facing away from me. “I use it to think of ideas! How else do you think I got us out of jail when Pepe LePew pressed charges for almost causing him to crash into a cologne shop?”

“That…was…a good plan….but take it off. We’re too gangster-y for visual gags and prop comedy.”

Greasy reluctantly snatched the cap off his head. “As I was saying…..he’s made of clay or something, so we can’t Dip him…what if we just kept him in lumps like he is now so he can’t re form, and then formally arrest the lumps of clay?”

“Or,” said Psycho, “we could just toss him in the kiln like I’ve been saying!”

“Where do you even know to find a kiln??”, Demanded Greasy. “We’re TOONS! Not sad old people making pots in Florida retirement homes!”

“I know a guy who knows a guy who owes me favors!” Shot back Psycho.

“Let’s just go with Greasy’s idea and cuff the clay!” I shouted, trying to restore order.

-Smartass

The Repairman and the Breaker simultaneously sighed in slight disappointment that prop gags weren’t allowed. And then both recoiled at the reveal that Dip was apparently an option.

The Repairman didn’t really process any of the discussion after that until the leader shouted they could just arrest him.

"What, so you can try Dipping him later?” he asked, sarcastically. “Uh-uh. You can go now; I think I can handle this.”

He glared at the weasels as he headed upstairs, giving an “I’m watching you” gesture. After a moment, the sound of TV static could be heard, and the Repairman came back down with a remote.

“All right,” he said, snapping the remote in half, “enjoy your daytime TV.”

“Nega…..Minnie?” I asked incredulously. “What……is that…..I mean………”

Stupid just blurted out “HUH?!”

“Yeah!” Piped up Greasy. “What he said!” said Wheezy

“I would of expected Nega-Mickey! Not Nega-Minnie…..is she really that evil? Got that whole "mythic bitch” thing going on that cause of how the normal Minnie is super good and whatnot?“ I asked.

Psycho cut in, "Uh….question!! If she’s really bad, does that mean the Nega-Us is super good? Did we already have this conversation or am I thinking of something else??? I don’t know, man! Don’t look at me! Everything in my head is screaming!!”

“Um…..” I began, “let’s….lets get back on topic here. Repairman,” I asked, spinning around towards the 4th Wall Repairman, Esq. questioningly, “You’ve been a constant in this sh–show….do you know what’s going on around here??”

-Smartass

”…I’ve never seen your counterparts,“ the Repairman politely answered, "but, uh, yeah, Nega-Minnie is as bad as you think…”

He cringed as the Breaker gave a thumbs-up. He quietly brought in his cart and began working on the crack.

“Look, you can go and find your Nega-counterparts if you want. I don’t think you should, though,” he said, glaring at the Breaker. “It doesn’t turn out well.”

He shook his head.

“Anyway, I want this over as much as you do, so can we just cuff the guy and leave?”

The Breaker shrugged. Hey, it was free entertainment, and he could still break the Wall if he felt like it from behind bars.

“Who’s ‘she’?” I thundered, sounding disturbingly like a jealous girlfriend, “who are you working for??”

Greasy flicked open his switchblade. “Don’t make us get physical, you lump!”

We all moved around him, weapons brandished. “Come on! Tell us!”, I barked.

-Smartass

"Look,” The Breaker said, raising his hands defensively, “I just wanted my job to be easier, and she gave me the idea!”

He coughed.

“I’m not saying anymore until I get a lawyer!”

The Repairman rolled his eyes and pulled a briefcase from behind his back.

He nudged the Toon Patrol aside and opened the briefcase so only the Breaker could see the contents. The Breaker’s pseudo-eyes widened as he gasped.

“All right, you got me,” he said excitedly, reaching for the briefcase, “it was Nega-Minnie.”

After a moment’s pause, he looked at the camera.

“Bit of an anticlimax, wasn’t it?”

The Repairman winced, but said nothing.

Well this was new information. This idiot framed his counterpart just for the hell of it? What a lame villain! Doing evil deeds with nothing to really gain?

“Your plan totally backfired on you, chump!”, sneered Wheezy. “you thought he’d lose his job? Thought that’d get the law on his tail? No…we actually need his help. I think Toontown would have imploded long ago if it wasn’t for him!”

I had to agree that we needed him, but the fact that he was stammering obviously indicated that he was hiding something.

My eyes narrowed, and I asked “What are you not telling us, you palooka?”
-Smartass

The Repairman couldn’t help but be flattered by Wheezy’s insistence at how useful he was. Still, he had to disagree; knowing the Breaker, he would try something like this to make his breaks easier to keep.

Even so, they were the cops, so he didn’t protest any more than an eye roll.

The Breaker made a quick glance at the camera and shrugged. The Repairman winced, but still said nothing.

"Ah, y-y’know,” the Breaker started. “Just wanted to make sure I never had to do my job again. Man, she made it seem like such a good idea at the time…”

I snorted, rolling my eyes and crossing my arms.

“Make it snappy! We don’t got all day for questioning!” I barked, before pulling him beside, and whispering, “You tried. You get a precipitation trophy like them millennials get. You were….” I sighed, not used to complementing nobody, “a good actor. Let’s just not do this again. Ever.”

Roughly shoving the blob towards the Breaker, I stood by the boys. Greasy fidgeted with his tie, Stupid and Psycho were bickering. About what, that’s anybody’s guess and to be honest I didn’t give a damn. Wheezy lit up his….one hundred and third? Yeah…his 103rd cigarette of the day.

I looked on, bemused as the Repairman had to stoop down, as well as someone his shape can stoop, to question the Breaker about who was paying him.
-Smartass

The Repairman listened patiently to the weasel.

"What do you mean, ‘actor…’?” he muttered.

Aloud he said, “Agreed. Let’s not do this again.”

When he finally got to ask, the Breaker stammered and looked from side to side.

“Who paid me? Oh, um…er…”

He sighed.

“Yeah, no one,” he admitted. “I just thought my job’d be easier with you out of the picture.”

The small part of the Repairman that was still weasel wanted to return the compliment, but he thought better of it. He just shook his head and turned to the actual weasels.

“…Can I go now…?”