Disclaimer: I do not own Labyrinth or any of Jim's Henson's wonderful characters.

Chapter 4

Autographs Anyone?

"I wish the goblins would come and take you away… right now."

"King! King!" a goblin came running in the throne room. "A summons!"

Jareth stood up and changed his clothing into his black armor with a throw of a crystal. "Take the child," he ordered. "I will deal with the wisher."

Jareth didn't always grace the wisher with his presence, but today he was in a particularly bad mood having just discovered Sarah had another boyfriend, and he felt the need to scare the shit out of someone. With a poof of glitter, he disappeared and dramatically reappeared in front of the wisher. Which turned out to be in an amusement park.

Jareth frowned as he saw all the people bustling about, including someone dressed as a mouse. This mouse character was then followed by a duck and a dog. Sometimes the Goblin King didn't understand humans at all.

The wisher was a young boy about twelve years old. He was holding onto a now-empty stroller beside a bench.

When the boy saw the Goblin King, he frowned, "Who are you supposed to be?"

"I am the Goblin King," Jareth sneered.

"I've never heard of you before." The boy frowned in concentration.

"Really? Such a pity."

The boy glared at him before saying, "Excuse me. I have to go look for my brother." He gestured to the empty stroller.

As the boy walked down the street, Jareth called out to him, "You won't find him here." The Goblin King didn't seem to notice all the people stopping and staring at him.

The boy turned around. "You know where he is?"

"Don't you remember? You asked that the child be taken – I took him."

"Where? Give him back!" The boy's face was now turning red with rage. He looked around Jareth as if he expected his little brother to pop out from behind the Goblin King at any moment.

Jareth gestured to a door that was once the entrance to a candy shop but was now acting as a portal to the Labyrinth. "He's there, in my castle. Do you –" Jareth was cut off by a tugging on his cape.

He looked down to see a young girl in a pink dress pulling on his cape and staring up at him with wide eyes. She was holding an ice cream in one hand, and Jareth was pleased to note that his armor was now smeared with the rainbow-colored stuff.

"Mister? Can I get your autograph?" She held out a small book with the mouse character on the cover of it and a pen with a hopeful look in her eyes.

The Goblin King looked up and saw who he assumed were the girl's parents smiling proudly at their daughter for having the courage to ask him that question. Jareth, on the other hand, was completely baffled.

Wordlessly, he took the pen and flipped open the book. He saw names like Mickey Mouse and Cinderella. Was it normal for little girls to go around asking for people's signatures?

Jareth scribbled "The Goblin King" on a blank page and handed the book back. The little girl grinned happily up at him. Then he turned back to the boy who looked like he was about to burst out laughing. Not the reaction Jareth had been aiming for.

"Wait!" a man called – the girl's father, Jareth thought. "We need a picture!" He pulled out a camera and gestured for the Goblin King and the girl to get closer together. The girl grabbed onto Jareth's leg, smearing more of her ice cream on his tights (and Jareth was especially fond of those particular tights…), and smiled at the camera. The camera clicked, and the parents ushered the girl away. The photo would later turn out with a happy young girl and a flabbergasted Goblin King.

A line began to form with people asking for the Goblin King's autograph followed by a group photo. After the third person, Jareth recovered his head and extracted himself, marching over to the boy who was now clutching his sides as he laughed.

Grabbing the boy's arm he dragged the boy through the portal and closed it behind him. They were now on the wind-swept hill – the same place that Sarah had begun her journey.

"You have thirteen hours in which to solve the Labyrinth before your baby brother becomes one of us – forever," Jareth growled before disappearing back to his throne room.

The baby the goblins had collected was sitting in the pit in the middle of the room, laughing as a goblin fought to get a cotton candy stick (presumably stolen from the amusement park) out of his nose.

Pooling himself gracefully on his throne, he summoned a crystal and threw it up so that when it landed, it changed his clothes out of the ice cream-stained armor he wore now. That was the last time he was ever appearing to a wisher. Unless that wisher happened to be one very fiery, stubborn, beautiful girl named Sarah…

Summoning another crystal, the Goblin King looked into it to see the boy attempting to climb over the outside wall to the Labyrinth. Jareth guessed it would take him at least three hours to even get into the Labyrinth and then he would never make it to the castle. That meant Jareth would have to figure out what to do with the burping creature now sitting in his throne room.

Without a conscious thought, the image in the crystal changed to one of Sarah. She was in her apartment standing in front of her bathroom mirror and brushing on some light make-up. So she had another date tonight. Well wasn't that just peachy?

Jareth averted his gaze as she changed into a small black dress – there would be other times to get to know the more forbidden areas of her body, and he had no desire to do so through a crystal.

Then the doorbell rang, and Sarah was opening the door to a young man, maybe in his mid-twenties, who was smiling at her. To Jareth's anger, she smiled back. And she actually looked pleased to see him.

No, Jareth thought. This would not do at all. He thought it was time this mortal learned a lesson about dating his Sarah.

John led the way down the apartment stairs, holding Sarah's hand the entire time. Outside, the air was cool and there was a soft breeze that played with Sarah's long, ebony hair. John's Porsche was illegally parked at the curb, but no one had come to tow it yet.

John walked around to the driver's side of the car without bothering to open the passenger's door for Sarah. Sarah frowned at this but stepped into the car anyway.

John had managed to get his spare set of keys from his house so that he could still drive his precious car. The engine rumbled to life, and then the car was roaring down the road at a speed far above the legal limit.

"John!" Sarah yelled. "Slow down! Are you trying to kill us?" She grabbed the door handle as the car took a sharp left.

John smiled at her. "I thought you like fast, baby."

Sarah glared at him. "John, slow this car down right now or I will –"

"Will what?" he taunted.

"-tell Mr. Stauffer (their boss) that you're the one who's been stealing the unicorn figurines off his desk." Sarah smirked triumphantly.

John blanched. "You wouldn't." His tone was angry and disbelieving, but his foot let up on the gas.

"You know I would, baby."

John growled, but lowered the speed to what was legally acceptable. A couple minutes later, they pulled up in front of a tiny Italian restaurant. It was situated on the corner of the street across from a man-made pond with a fountain in its center. Sarah stepped out of the car and thanked the waiter who held the front door open for them. Maybe chivalry wasn't completely dead. John grabbed her hand again as they walked to a tiny table in the corner of the room. Sarah read over the menu while a waitress brought over two glasses of red wine.

John was still holding her hand when he said, "Sarah, I just wanted to tell you –"

SCREECH! "What the-?" A man with an accordion stood beside the table as he attempted to play a song. Either that was his goal or he was trying to make the whole restaurant deaf.

The man took a deep breath and began to play the accordion again. Sarah wasn't sure what song he was trying to play, but it came out sounding like Jingle Bells.

John and Sarah glanced at each other at the same time, and then Sarah rested her face in her hands and tried to block out the noise.

John sighed. This was not how he planned the date to start.

Herald was crouched under the table where Sarah and John were sitting. King said terrorize John and that's what Herald planned to do. He held a fork in one hand and was trying to remember the best place to stab someone. Was it the leg? Or kidneys? Where were the kidneys? The little goblin couldn't remember…

Just then another man stepped in front of the table and started moving an instrument back and forth so that it made a loud screeching sound.

Argh! Herald covered his ears. Did Kingy want him to attack this guy too? He'd certainly deserve it…

Herald saw the tablecloth resting over the table and decided it would be more effective at blocking out the noise than his hands. Grabbing the cloth, he yanked it down over his rather large ears. The cloth did little to block out the noise of the accordion or the sound of glass breaking as it flew off the table.

Sarah felt a tugging sensation under her elbows that were resting (most un-ladylike) on the table before the tablecloth disappeared off the table, followed by the two wine glasses that had been on top of it.

Sarah was able to jump back and avoid being splashed with her wine as it went flying, but John was not so fortunate. A string of swear words left his mouth as his white shirt was stained with red Pinot Noir.

To his credit, the man with the accordion barely even paused as the glasses went flying before resuming his song. Herald, on the other hand, screamed - startled, jumped up and hit his head on the table, and then proceeded to flail his arms widely so that the fork that was still in his hand stabbed something. That something happened to be John's foot.

"Ahhhhh!" John yelled. "What the hell was that?" He leapt up, causing the table to flip over into the man playing the accordion, knocking him over, which finally stopped the music.

John bent over and yanked a fork out of his foot. He held it up. "Why the heck is this is my foot?" Sarah didn't answer him as she tried to get the table off the man. John didn't see the little creature running out of the restaurant, but Sarah did.

Jareth sat in the front seat of a Porsche as he tried to figure out how to get the car to start. He was holding the keys a goblin had stolen from Sarah's boyfriend that morning. At last he found where the key was meant to be inserted, and the car rumbled to life.

The Goblin King allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk.

Shifted the car into gear, he slammed on the pedal, and the car jerked backward. Whoops. Wrong direction. Trying a different gear, Jareth stepped on the pedal again. This time the car moved forward. As he pressed harder on the pedal, the car drove into a pond. Jareth would have preferred to drop it into the Bog of Eternal Stench, but he thought it would make a much more interesting yard piece in front of the Italian restaurant where it could be seen…

John had had quite enough. He stormed out of the restaurant fully prepared to take his car and race back to his home. His best shirt had been ruined and he had just been stabbed in the foot by – apparently – a ghost or some sort of invisible creature. He had almost made it to the parking lot when, being the gracious boyfriend he was, remembered he should likely wait for his girlfriend. He turned around and impatiently waited for Sarah to walk over. No matter how beautiful Sarah was (and, God, she was beautiful in that short black dress and with her long black hair and emerald green eyes…), John was not prepared to go on another date with her like this one. No girl was worth getting stabbed in the foot.

When Sarah had caught up to him, John turned on heel and strode to the space where he parked his car. Only it wasn't there. John whipped his head around looking for it, and upon not seeing it anywhere in the lot, turned and glared at Sarah as if she had something to do with its disappearance.

Sarah merely pointed to a yellow trunk sticking up out of the pond in the front of the restaurant. The keys John had been holding clinked softly on the ground, and his mouth dropped open in horror.

In the middle of the pond, the fountain gurgled happily as though it were laughing at him.

I'm not particularly happy with the way this chapter turned out, so maybe I'll go back and edit it later, but, for now, I'm tired of working on it.

Just in case you couldn't figure it out, the amusement park Jareth was at was Disney World, so people were thinking that Jareth was someone dressed up as a movie character (which he sort of is...).

I feel like I've been getting way off track from my original plot (maybe I should change what the summary says…), but writing about things going on Aboveground is just so much fun. :) *smirks* But at least I added Jareth into this chapter! Woohoo!

Please review and tell me what you think! If you catch any errors, please tell me so I can fix them because I only briefly looked over this chapter – summer has made me lazy.

That's all until chapter five, goblins! Enjoy!