Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 29: Ascending the Perilous Peak
Somewhere in the vicinity of ten-thirty p.m., a tiny figure picked its stumbling way across the railroad bridge that ran over the Toontown entrance tunnel. Tinkerbell was so used to flying that she had grown rather clumsy on the ground, but the Villains almost certainly had someone watching the gates, who would have noticed a flying pixie. A walking pixie was hardly any less conspicuous at night, but on the advice of the Dalmatian puppies, she had coated her body in soot (nasty, greasy stuff from the old-fashioned oil lanterns in the Toontown Firehouse—she would almost rather have been caught), and her golden light was muted. As long as she didn't venture anywhere too dark, she wouldn't stand out…and as long as she didn't go too near a bright light, she wouldn't cast a noticeable shadow. She was perfectly camouflaged for her reconnaissance mission.
That was all it was for the time being: observe and report. One of the first things she observed was the group camped out in front of "it's a small world," in a location that enabled them to keep an eye on the Toontown gates and the Pixie Crown at the same time. She recognized Captain Hook instantly, and his pirate crew, including Mr. Smee, only a split second later. It took her a moment to remember that the other well-dressed, dark-haired man was Governor Ratcliffe. The whole party was bristling with weaponry: an average of two blades or guns for each member. The Villains weren't taking any chances.
She crouched low and followed the railroad tracks for perhaps twenty feet, until she was off the trestle and out of their direct line of sight. Only then did she take to the air and cross over to the Promenade. Once there, she climbed to a height of about fifteen feet, just above the area lampposts, so that anyone looking up would be dazzled by the lights and unable to spot her. At the same time, it gave her a view over the tops of most of the nearby structures, so that she could see a much wider swath of Fantasyland. She flew out over the Storybookland canals, where the sight lines were even better.
Everything seemed quiet. Tinkerbell turned carefully in the air, looking throughout the area, and saw no trace of the Villains or their captives. But they had to be around somewhere—Fantasyland was a power base the Villains had been longing to get their hands on for decades, and anyway the rest of the park was still crawling with Dispirations (although if the reports were to be believed, they were not as dangerous anymore as they had been). They must, she realized, have set up operations indoors somewhere. It would have to be someplace with plenty of room for both the Villains themselves and the characters they had captured. And there would have to be standing water, for Ursula.
The obvious suddenly occurred to her, and her eyes were drawn eastward, all the way across Fantasyland to the largest structure in the area: the towering, rugged, snow-capped Matterhorn. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made—the peak's many ice caverns were plenty large, and with their low temperatures and softly glowing ice crystals, held the sort of eerie grandeur that would be pleasing to a wicked, megalomaniacal personality. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of it at the outset.
But there was only one way to be sure, and Tinkerbell hadn't been assigned a guessing mission…
She didn't enter the mountain at its middle altitudes, where the largest caverns were and thus the Villains were most likely to be. That was just good sense; if she sought them out directly, there was an even chance they would spot her as well (or first!) and she would get caught herself. Instead, she aimed slightly higher, to the dwelling place of one who would know if there were any intruders in his domain whether he had actually seen them or not.
Harold the Abominable Snowman was not, by and large, a friendly monster. The word abominable was in there for a reason. But if approached respectfully, that is to say with the right amount of cowering in awe of his might, he could be…reasonable. And he liked Tinkerbell, or at least was less reflexively hostile toward her than toward most, perhaps because she was too small to eat and too quick to be worth the effort of trying to smash against a frozen wall.
Shivering with both cold and trepidation, Tink fluttered into the darkness of the snowman's lair. The soot was starting to wear off in patches, and her luminous body threw blotches of dim yellowish light on the glossy ice walls. She called to Harold once—and cringed as the acoustics of the chamber magnified her bell-like voice into an echoing jangle. If the Villains were inside the mountain there was no way they would fail to hear it…but fortunately it was similar to the natural sounds often heard within the peak, when the howling alpine winds came through and vibrated the ice crystals.
And anyway, it had the desired effect. Almost at once, the gloom was lit up by a pair of glowing red eyes, and a savage growl rattled the air. Take by surprise despite herself, Tinkerbell backpedaled in mid-air until she glanced off a wall and fell to the cavern floor. There was a crunching sound, followed by a bloom of soft bluish light, and the pixie looked up to see Harold bending over her, inspecting her by the glow of a crystal he held in his paw like a candle. She stood, brushing frost from her dress, and gave him a demure wave. He grunted a noncommittal greeting and turned away to jam the crystal in a crack in the wall. Then the two got down to business.
Even though neither of them could speak in a manner comprehensible to humans, as beings of myth and legend they understood one another well enough. Harold confirmed that indeed, there were intruders present, with powerful magic, which was why he hadn't confronted them. Beyond that, he couldn't tell her anything.
She thanked him briefly and flew off to investigate, relying on her own uneven luminosity to light her way in the dark upper caverns. It was a poor way to navigate, and slow, and after a few fruitless minutes she had to alight on an ice stalagmite and vibrate her wings at top speed in order to generate a little warmth. As she was so doing (and breathing into her cupped hands and rubbing her arms), she became aware of muted voices. She glanced around and spotted a blue-green glow coming from around a bend in the tunnel, and went at once to the spot. The light was coming from a fissure in the floor. It was only an inch or so wide, and though Tink could have squeezed through it, she realized right away that there was no need. Peering through the crack, she had a perfect view of the crystal-lit chamber beneath her.
She had found the Villains' base of operations, all right—several of them were gathered around a deluxe souvenir map of Disneyland which they had spread over a sort of ice plateau rising from the floor, apparently dividing up the park amongst themselves. A few sections of the map had already been outlined in red ink and stuck with a little flag bearing someone's face or personal emblem, and the rest was currently being argued over—not loudly (loud noises inside the mountain never ended well), but with a certain droning intensity. Tink listened in anyway, hoping to gather some information from their debate, but for several minutes all she heard was carping and smugness. Then someone brought up lawyers, and she was on the verge of taking off to do more exploring when a dreadful noise broke out. It sounded like a pack of dogs howling from somewhere nearby, and she surmised that was exactly what it was. The cavern shook with the reverberation, and a few slender icicles and crystals pattered down from the ceiling.
"Confound it, Scar!" Ursula snapped from the luxury of a glacial meltwater pool as the sound died away. "Can't those mangy beasts of yours keep the prisoners quiet?"
"More ice broke this time," growled Gaston. "At this rate, they'll shatter the cages."
"I already told you, that's not possible," scoffed Madam Mim. "The only way to break my double-reinforced enchantments is with a big burst of magic fire from inside, and even if the fairies somehow got loose—which they can't—they'd have to come through here in order to get to the dungeon."
Tink decided she'd seen and heard enough. With a little exclamation of satisfaction, she took to the air again and made her way out of the mountain, streaking back through Fantasyland at high speed.
She hadn't gone entirely unnoticed, however. Her little jingle had been just loud enough to be heard, but not so loud as to be bounced around by the ice and have its direction masked. By the time Cruella DeVil reached the part of the cavern underneath her spy-fissure, thrust the end of her cigarette holder up through the crack, and swiped it back and forth, Tink was long gone. But when she brought it back down, there was something golden and glittering clinging to the tip of the cigarette, rendering the smoke shimmery and fragrant, and the whole thing felt noticeably lighter than normal.
"Well, well," she said, holding it out so that the others could see the trace of pixie dust before the cigarette's smoldering consumed it. "It seems we've had a minor infestation."
"Red tide!" Ursula swore. "Those idiots guarding the gates have flubbed it!"
"Pompous blowhards are always a bad risk," Gaston opined, not even noticing the irony. "Battle stations?"
"No, not yet," said Jafar, rising from his seat in the corner of the cavern. "Obviously the goody-two-shoes are planning something. They probably think they're very clever. Why not let them believe they've succeeded at first? If they think they are winning, they will become complacent…even easier for us to defeat. And it will give us time to prepare a special surprise for them. It shouldn't be too difficult here…on the top of a mountain."
With that, he indulged himself in some maniacal laughter. Most of the others present joined in—otherwise, what would be the point of being a Villain?
Six more times had the smiling clock tower performed its show since Tinkerbell's survey. It was midnight, and a thin mist was condensing out of the cooling air, giving a halo to every light source and blurring the edges of anything viewed from a distance.
Midnight. In tradition and folklore, the most powerful time for Evil.
For that very reason, the plan had drawn some protests. But as Basil pointed out, the perfect time to make their move was the moment when the Villains least expected them to. And as Jack Skellington pointed out, the Villains weren't the only ones who drew strength from the infinite blackness of the deepest part of the night, when the fog is settling on the land and the only sounds to be heard are the mournful calls of owls and wolves and the pounding of your own heart, and witches hold their eldritch rites on lonely—they finally managed to shut him up.
And as Mickey pointed out, in the summer, Disneyland was usually open until midnight. The Fantasyland they were planning to take back was a shadow built from the memories of people scrambling to get in line for the last ride of the day, and then trudging back wearily through an area that was still well-lit, ringing with music, and competently overseen by Cast Members. It wouldn't be dark and eerie enough to favor the Villains until at least an hour after midnight (and not at all, if there were enough Grad Nite memories influencing the place).
With nothing important happening (that they were aware of) and a cheerful little clock strike display every fifteen minutes, the guards' alertness was flagging. But rustling noises from the hedge behind the right side of the ride façade, near the parade gate snapped them to attention. Hook motioned for silence, and then for the others to follow him. They crept closer to the source of the sound, and heard faint voices—high-pitched yet rasping.
"That's not a bowhead, that's a sheepshank!"
"I followed the instructions in the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook!"
"You followed the wrong ones, then."
"Quiet, guys! They'll hear us!"
A moment later, three round, white-feathered heads popped out of the foliage, followed by the associated bodies, and Donald Duck's adventuresome nephews crawled out of the hedge via a gap so small that they probably wouldn't be able to use it if they aged another year. Huey was toting a coil of rope with a grapnel at one end, Dewey carried the aforementioned guidebook, and Louie had tucked under one arm something many-pointed that gleamed gold even in the multi-colored artificial lights of the area.
Hook stood over them menacingly, twirling his mustache with his hook and holding his rapier so that they were forced to stare up the blade. "Hello there, lads," he said in mockingly unctuous tones. The pirates closed in.
The duckling triplets didn't lose their wits for an instant. They immediately began screaming their heads off and tried to bolt, but they were too efficiently surrounded. In a matter of minutes, they had been tied up with their own rope and relieved of their other possessions, particularly the crown. While three pirates ranging in size from medium to burly held them still, and responded with smirking stoicism to their struggles, Hook draped the glittering prize over his hook and held it well up out of what would have been their reach had their hands been free.
"I'll say this," he said. "I could almost admire Mickey Mouse's brazenness, sending such tender youngsters on his all-important errand. I almost hate to disappoint him. Gents, Smee, take these charming little knee-grazers to the mountain and see that they're properly locked up. And let our colleagues know the Sea King's crown is now in our possession."
"Aye-aye, Cap'n," Smee said with a salute. "But, er, what shall I tell them you're doing in the meantime?"
"Tell them the rest of the crew and I—and our dear associate the Governor, of course—are awaiting the inevitable follow-up to this ill-fated venture. When the imps fail to return, someone's bound to investigate, and then they as well shall fall into our grasp."
"Aye-aye, Cap'n!" Smee said again. He and the assigned crew members began leading the whimpering ducklings off toward the Matterhorn.
"I say there, Hook," said Ratcliffe. "That was masterfully done just now. You are a credit to the profession of privateer."
"Yes, indeed," Hook said with excusable pride. He lowered his left arm and admired the crown dangling on his hook.
"Lovely," Ratcliffe agreed, running his fingers lightly over the buttery surface. "It's a pity we have to use it to undo Maleficent's meddling, instead of keeping it as…" He trailed off, frowning suddenly, and squinted at the metal of the crown, which had wrinkled slightly under his fingertips.
Hook noticed it too. "Odds bodkins," he exclaimed. He transferred the crown to his hand and prodded the warped spot with his hook, noting with horror that the gold lifted away. It was only foil, covering a cheap tin cartoon prop. "A ruse," he said numbly. Then, rising to a scream: "It was a bleeding trick! Those little brats let themselves get caught!" He flung the fake crown down into the canal.
"What for, do you suppose?" asked Ratcliffe.
"Nothing good for us, I'll be bound," said Hook. He rounded on what remained of his crew. "Well? What are you waiting for, you scurvy dogs? Go after them! Stop them before those miniature menaces get inside the mountain!" The pirates sprang into action so hastily that they did a fair bit of crashing into each other and accidentally discharging their firearms before they managed to get moving in the proper direction.
"Not going with them?" asked Ratcliffe.
"Of course not, Governor. That's just what the goody-two-shoes would like, isn't it? You and I dashing off like rabbits, leaving the area unguarded…no, we're going to stay right here in case they try something else."
"You mean something like this?" said a sprightly voice above and behind. Both men whirled around and glanced up just in time to be swiftly attacked. A lithe, dark shape dropped onto Hook, knocking him off his feet and winding him, while masses of silvery strands cascaded from the spires of the clock tower, wrapping around Ratcliffe and binding him hand, foot, and mouth.
As the confusion of that initial instant passed, Hook found that he was being pinned by a snarling black panther, and Ratcliffe made a muffled noise of alarm as a very tall, extremely thin figure in a pinstriped suit sprang down from the clock tower and landed before him. Its face was a bare, round skull, and its fleshless fingers gripped a large spider.
"Bravo!" Jack Skellington told Bagheera. "A most efficient takedown. Now, if you please."
Bagheera eased off the petrified pirate captain, and Jack hauled him to his feet. Then, placing one bone hand on Hook's head, he spun him around rapidly, squeezing the spider like a pastry bag so that streamers of silk squirted out. Soon Hook was as thoroughly trussed up as Ratcliffe.
"Well done," said Bagheera. "You're a strange one, all right, but very good at what you do."
"Why, thank you!" said Jack Skellington, releasing the spider with a gentle pat. "And you, sir, are as dreadful as the Black Hound and twice as silent!"
"If that's meant to be a compliment, then I accept it," said Bagheera with a chuckle. He turned about and padded down the landscaped slope of the Topiary Garden to the loading area for the ride, then made his way back to the walkways and from there to the gates of Toontown. "It's safe," he reported.
The gates were pushed open a few feet, and more characters emerged from their besiegement: Cinderella and Prince Charming, the Lost Boys, Snow White and the two uncaptured Dwarfs, Aurora (or possibly Briar Rose, since like the other Princesses she had changed into her common dress for the mission), Belle, Alice, the alley cats, and bringing up the rear, the Sensational Six. Most of them were armed—Charming with a military saber, the Dwarfs with their usual pickaxes, the Lost Boys with clubs and slingshots, and the girls with an assortment of fireplace irons, heavy cookware, sporting gear, and other implements from Minnie's house, plus an honest-to-goodness scimitar which Belle had found in the prop warehouse while picking up the decoy crown.
"This is it, folks," said Mickey. "In fifteen minutes, we're going for it, so try to get the ball rolling by then. If you have to split up, make sure there's at least three in each group, and don't confront any of the magical types directly. Good luck!"
"We won't let you down, chief!" averred Slightly, AKA Foxy, who as the tallest of the Lost Boys tended to act as their de facto leader whenever Peter wasn't around.
"Come on," said Belle. "The sooner we get there, the more time we'll have to act." She went into a light jog up the Small World Promenade, and the others in the makeshift war party followed.
Mickey, meanwhile, led his five compatriots around to the right side of the "it's a small world" ride façade and gazed up at the Pixie Crown, rubbing his chin.
"I think it'll work," said Minnie. "We just need to be careful about how we stack ourselves."
Several feet away, Captain Hook mumbled something indistinct into his spider silk gag. "What's that? Got something to say?" Jack taunted, hooking a finger in the silk and shifting it so the pirate could speak.
"You just think you're so clever, don't you?" Hook said to Mickey. "Well, just you wait and see. We've still got some nasty surprises in—mmff!"
Jack let the gag slip back into place. "I think we've heard just about enough from the peanut gallery," he said.
"Villains," Donald jeered. "They're all talk."
The way to the Matterhorn was clear. Donald's nephews had waited until the second group of pirates ran up, shouting semi-incoherently, before slipping out of their trick rope and running away, leading the entire crew on a merry chase that ended with half the pirates dumped in the Submarine Lagoon, the other half in the Motorboat Lagoon, and Smee locked in a maintenance shed built into the side of the mountain. When the invasion party reached the chalet-like structure that housed the queue bullpen, they found the mischievous triplets already waiting for them, perusing the chapter on mountaineering in the reclaimed Junior Woodchuck Guidebook.
"You won't need that, you know," Cinderella informed them while passing over some spare weapons. "We're going to take the stairs next to the lift."
"It never hurts to be prepared," Dewey said virtuously.
The party approached the cave entrance at the foot of the mountain, stepping gingerly over the paired tracks as they curled together to run parallel up the chainlift inside. It was pitch-black inside, the better to set the mood for the ride, but Donald's nephews had brought chemical glowsticks with them for just that reason, and the pirates, incompetently, hadn't bothered to search their pockets. They cracked and shook them as the party entered the cave, producing red, blue, and green light to illuminate the concrete stairs next to the lift.
"Oh, dear," Alice sighed, noting how very long the climb was. But they couldn't take a bobsled without alerting the Villains to their presence, so they were stuck hiking.
They climbed steadily, the stronger characters lending a frequent hand to the weaker ones, and the climate gradually changed from the cool humidity of an Anaheim summer night to the harsh, windy chill of the upper Alps. They passed a gap in the cavern wall, where dim bluish light showed snow falling in torrents—inside the mountain. Shivering with cold now as well as apprehension, they pressed on, and after a few more minutes, made it to the top of the slope.
It would have been dark here as well, without the soft radiance of the glowsticks, multiplied by bouncing off and diffusing through the icy coatings on the cavern walls.
"So what now?" asked Aurora. "Find the prisoners?"
"Remember Tinkerbell's report," said Prince Charming. "The fairies and the Genie are being held separately from each other, and the only route from one to the other is through the Villains' own quarters."
"That's what they think," said Bashful, hoisting his pickaxe, and then turning bright ride and trying to hide in his beard when his outburst got everyone looking at him.
"That would certainly do the trick, but it make too much noise," said Belle. "It looks like our strategy is going to depend on which of those two rooms we can access from here."
"Leave that to us, sister," said O'Malley. The alley cats spread out, venturing into the various tunnels that branched off from their current location and carefully sniffing the frigid air. It was Scat Cat who caught the scent, or rather, scents—a few dozen mingled odors of people they all knew well. He made a whistling hiss through his teeth to call the rest of the group, and they set off down the corridor with more purpose. It wasn't long before they began to hear muffled conversation, and shortly after that, they rounded a bend and found light spilling into the tunnel from ahead.
Donald's nephews dropped to their hands and knees and crawled ahead to investigate. They discovered a broad but low-ceilinged chamber, faintly illuminated with glowing crystals and crowded with dome-shaped, doorless cages seemingly drawn from the ice. Each cage was occupied by one to three familiar figures, most of them huddled up in response to the cold, many of them shivering. Some of them had additionally been put in chains—ice chains. At the opposite end of the cavern was another tunnel, presumably leading to the main conference chamber where the bulk of the Villains were.
Disgusted and outraged, the boys scrambled back to the group and described what they had seen in whispering tones. "But how'll we get 'em out with no magic?" Louie concluded.
"We'll have to somehow draw the Villains out of both the prison area and their conference room," said Cinderella, "so that some of us can get through to look for the fairies and the Genie. Once we manage to free them, the rest should be smooth sailing."
"We'll need to create a disturbance in the prison," said Belle. "Something obnoxious enough to get all the Villains to come running. Then we can retreat back to the branching tunnels, break into groups, and try to separate the Villains and keep them busy long enough for one group to make their move."
"Leave the first part to us," said Huey.
"And the last part to us," offered Snow White, holding up Aurora's hand.
"Let's do it," said Charming.
The triplets crept once again to the makeshift dungeon. The prisoners closest to the entry point spotted them, but Huey instantly gestured for silence and they managed not to react. The voices they had heard earlier didn't belong to the prisoners, but to the hyenas guarding them, or at least pretending to guard them while engaging in their usual wisecracking-cum-bickering banter at the far end of the cavern. They didn't come close to noticing the three ducklings as they skirted the perimeter of the cavern until the reached the large cage housing the Beast, who had been not only chained but muzzled, and looked absolutely despondent. With his slouched bulk screening them from the view of the hyenas, the boys began hammering on the bars of the cage with a fireplace poker and a rolling pin, gently at first but with gradually increasing force.
"Hey! What's that noise?" came Banzai's voice. "You prisoners better not be tryin' to escape again!"
Louie wound back the poker as though preparing to hit a home run and struck the cage full force, ringing it like a huge cathedral bell. The sound filled the entire space, setting up sympathetic vibrations in the other cages so that within seconds, it was all one mass of droning, chiming sound.
The Tramp caught Pongo's eye, and the both of them deliberately did what comes naturally to a dog faced with that level of noised: they howled. Most of the other dogs present joined in, and the Beast, perking up, growled through his muzzle and rattled his frozen chains.
By this time, of course, the hyenas were investigating the cause of the turmoil. They trotted among the cages, barking orders at the dogs to shut up and reciting any number of threatening clichés. Finally Shenzi stuck her nose behind the Beast's cage…only to have Dewey smack it with the rolling pin. Then the boys split up and began threading their way through the dungeon, yelling at the top of their lungs and hammering on the cages some more, each with a hyena in pursuit. The dogs kept howling, and soon most of the other prisoners got the idea and added their voices to the cacophony. Icicles shattered by the dozen, pelting the scene with freezing shards. No one would have thought it could possibly get any louder, until an earsplitting report from a firearm ripped through the cavern.
Everyone fell silent. The hyenas skidded to a halt. In the mouth of the entry tunnel opposite where the triplets had come in, Gaston stood, blowing the smoke off the barrel of his musket. "What's going on in here?" he said, not very loudly but certainly menacingly, enunciating each word. Behind him stood his fellow Villains, all wearing expressions somewhere on the spectrum from annoyance to rage.
"It weren't our fault!" Shenzi protested. "Those bratty little ducks—Chewy and Stewie, or whatever their names are—they came in here and started poundin' on stuff!"
"Yeah!" Banzai agreed. "Poundin' and yellin' and gettin' everyone else to yell too! Right, Ed?"
Ed nodded frantically.
"Little ducks," Scar repeated, slinking forward.
"That's what I said!" said Shenzi.
"So where are they now?" asked Scar.
The hyenas whirled around, whipping their heads from side to side in search of the triplets, who had slipped away in the immediate aftermath of Gaston's gunshot.
"They musta done a runner out the back way!" said Banzai. "We should go after 'em!"
"It's a virtual maze in there," Cruella DeVil pointed it. "It would take all of us."
"Then that's what we do," said Scar. "We can't afford to let them run around up here. They might interrupt the spell. Come on, all of you. Including you three," he said with a lethal glare at the hyenas.
"But what about the prisoners?" asked Banzai.
"They'll keep," said Scar.
On that note, the Villains trooped out of the dungeon and into the poorly lit passage beyond. There was no sign of the triplets. The Villains very quickly decided to split up and spread throughout the tangle of tunnels, cutting off every possible avenue of escape for the ducklings. Only Cruella, who least relished meeting them in a semi-dark cavern ("Shin-kickers if I ever saw any!"), stayed behind to give the alarm in case the boys somehow managed to evade everyone else and double back toward the prison.
So it was the vain furrier, distractedly smoking and suffering the discomfort of being largely motionless in a cold place (her lush mink coat was designed for style, not substance), who suddenly became aware of light footsteps pattering up the tunnel toward her. She hurriedly flicked her gold-plated cigarette lighter in order to see who it was, but succeeded only in partially blinding herself with the sudden flare of light. The next thing she knew, she was knocked flat on her back and half-winded, and as her vision returned, she found herself looking into the jug-eared, baby-toothed face of Dopey the dwarf. He blew a huge raspberry before someone with a high-pitched voice whispered "Come on!" and gently pulled him away.
"Ugh," Cruella said. It was the best she could do for an alarm until she got her breath back and her ears stopped ringing.
What she didn't realize, at least at first, was that it was the tunnels that were ringing…with the sound of Villains being clobbered, or just missing being clobbered. Gaston was the first one down, after running afoul of Cinderella's frying pan in the dark. The clanging sound of the strike carried far in the acoustics of the ice caverns, and then it was more-or-less chaos as the Villains in their ones and twos ran into groups of heroes in their threes and fours. Shere Khan found that in a match between a tiger and a clowder of alley cats, the former only has an advantage when there is room enough for him to maneuver. Belle and Alice, armed with the scimitar and a nine-iron respectively, tag-teamed anyone they came across, shearing off locks of hair and smashing fingers and toes. The Lost Boys constantly met up and split off three-and-three again, changing the arrangements each time so that no Villain could ever be certain which three they would meet (although the Raccoon Twins always stayed together).
The most frustrating thing of all for the Villains was that their original targets—Huey, Dewey, and Louie—were nowhere to be found. They had already exited the mountain and were hurrying back to Toontown.
The turmoil lasted several minutes before the Villains finally managed to retreat and regroup at Cruella's position. She had only just recovered enough to sit up, and it took two people telling her before she caught on that they were in fact up against over a dozen heroic characters.
"This is unbearable!" Scar growled. One eye was swelling and purpling and his mane looked like someone had taken a pair of dull hedge trimmers to it. "As much as I loathe to admit this, we need backup—magical backup. The spell will have to wait! Someone get up there and—"
"Calm yourself, Scar; that will not be necessary," said a new voice. The frazzled Villains looked up to see Jafar striding toward them from the direction of the dungeon, his lips pressed together in a smug smile. Ursula was with him, easily hauling herself arm-over-arm along the icy floor. So was Madam Mim, her arms piled with the Genie's lamp and four fist-sized magical baubles, each containing the shrunken, imprisoned form of one of the fairies.
"It's done, then?" said Scar.
"Oh, yes," Jafar replied, holding his cobra-headed staff out so that the rest of them could see the pale yellowish light in its eyes. "It should begin taking effect any moment now—we'd best be well away from here before then."
"And then there's this little development," said Ursula, rolling over onto her side and curling her tentacles forward. Four of them were wrapped around the weakly struggling forms of Snow White, Aurora, and the two Dwarfs.
"We found them trying to steal their magical friends back," said Mim. "We were wondering how they got past you."
"Cruella," Gaston said condescendingly, "you were supposed to warn us if anyone slipped by."
"They assaulted me! It's not like the rest of you have fared any better against the others!" She addressed the three magicians, anticipating their questions. "Yes, apparently there are others in here somewhere, and they've learned to fight dirty."
"Well, we'll soon have them out where we can see them," said Ursula. She gave the two Princesses in her clutches a little squeeze, eliciting a pair of faint whimpers. "Go on, sweethearts. Call for help. It was a nice try at being brave, but we all know neither of you is the type."
"All right, that's enough," said Cinderella, stepping out of one of the side passages with her frying pan held like a weaponized baseball bat. Prince Charming was right behind her, saber at the ready, and the rest of the rescue team emerged from the other side passages. "Let them go—in fact, let all our friends go—or we can have this out right here and now."
"My goodness," said Ursula. "Just look at all the Princesses acting too big for their petticoats."
"My lovely, you are in no position whatsoever to be making demands," said Jafar. "Your doom is on its way even as we speak and every moment only brings it closer."
"We heard," said Belle. "Are you sure you want to waste time fighting us? Wouldn't it be safer all around if you just gave us what we want?"
"Oh please," said Mim, momentarily shifting her grip on the imprisoned fairies and Genie so that she could make a dismissive gesture with one hand. "You're no match for us."
"We got past the pirates, didn't we?" Charming pointed out. It was a lie of omission, but he said it so sincerely, making careful eye contact with a few of the more dominant Villains, that it had the desired effect. They put two and two together.
"The crown!" Scar suddenly burst out, his hackles raising. "It's unguarded!"
"Blast it all, you're right!" said Ursula. "The spell will be worthless if Mickey just hits the reset button! Very well, kids, have it your way. Rescue your pathetic little friends…for all the good it will do them or you." She released her captives roughly and began slithering back the way she had come. The other Villains followed suit, Mim more-or-less throwing the lamp and baubles at the good guys before she turned on her heel and jogged away.
"We have to hurry," said Cinderella, scrambling to gather up the baubles, which bounced and rolled like giant glass marbles. "How did Tinkerbell say to open the cages?"
"Magic fire from inside," said Belle. "Best if we have all of them." She caught up with the Genie's lamp, seized it, and rubbed it.
After that, things were fairly simple. The Genie dissolved the baubles and freed the four fairies, and all five of them headed straight for the dungeon and went over it methodically, shrinking down to enter the cages one by one and burst them. But even before they had finished, a faint rumble had begun, seemingly centered in the uppermost part of the mountain. By the time all the characters had been freed, it was noticeably stronger, though no louder. But it impressed upon all of them the urgency of escaping.
The Genie enabled that, by transforming into a sleek, multi-car bobsled, big enough for all of them to ride in. The spiraling trip down the slopes of the Matterhorn was a harrowing one, all the more so because of the flashes of movement that were visible near the mountain's peak whenever they were on an exterior section of track. All they could do was hope that, whatever was going on up there, it would indeed be brought to an end automatically when Mickey placed the Pixie Crown.
In point of fact, Mickey didn't have the crown yet. Reaching the upper portion of the "it's a small world" façade proved to be more difficult than the Sensational Six had expected. They had no climbing gear, and the façade wasn't really meant to bear extra weight anyway. So they had attempted to reach the Pixie Crown by building a not-exactly human tower out of themselves. It was precarious work, and therefore slow—Pluto formed the base, and Goofy stood on his back, followed in order by Donald, Daisy, Minnie, and finally Mickey, trying to keep hold of Triton's crown while climbing an increasingly unstable stack of his friends.
He had just made it, and was standing on Minnie's upraised hands and reaching out to touch Triton's crown to the Pixie Crown, when the Villains arrived. "Oh, no, you don't!" shouted Ursula as she surfaced in the "it's a small world" canal. Almost on instinct, she enchanted the water to be mobile and sent a wave crashing into Pluto, toppling the whole tower. "We've come too far to lose to your pathetic tricks now, mouse!"
Mickey hit the ground hard and lost his grip on Triton's crown. It rolled away, out of his reach, until Gaston stopped it with a booted foot. "And that is, as they say," he said, reaching down to pick it up, "chick mate."
"That's checkmate, you illiterate slob," Jafar muttered.
"No," Mickey said, dazed from the fall but rising shakily to his feet. "You can't have it. We've come too far to lose to you!"
"Nonetheless," said Jafar, "you have lost. Behold!" He gestured with his staff toward the top of the Matterhorn, which was visibly shuddering by now, sending tremors through the ground. The snow on the peak crumbled away, leaving only a bare black mountain.
Then the blackness opened up, and became a pair of immense leathery wings. A horned head lifted, dead black against the hazy night sky, and a pair of eyes like cracks in the side of an active volcano opened.
With a sound like the brass section of an orchestra, the black god Chernabog bellowed his triumph.
To Be Continued…
A/N: If you don't know already, Google "Warren Spector Epic Mickey" and prepare to see some of the most amazing, disturbing, utterly fascinating images ever drawn for the consumption of Disney fans. If this game gets made, and is anything like the concept art promises, it will make Kingdom Hearts look like Disney Princess Enchanted Journey.
Sorry this chapter took so long. I had it almost finished, and then I realized that a lot about it didn't make sense and rewrote it. Mostly this meant rearranging certain sections, and switching up which characters did certain things, so it wasn't a rewrite from scratch. It still probably tacked a few weeks onto the process. Such is the price we all pay for premium Karalora fanfiction quality. But man, was it ever fun to take the immediate focus off Mickey and crew for most of the chapter and write interaction between bunches of other characters instead. I know there are a lot of characters I left out, but trying to include them all would have been just too much.
As one last note, those of you with deviantArt accounts may be interested a new club I've founded there, the Armchair Imagineers Club. It's a community just for fans of the Disney theme parks who like to fantasize about rides and such they would build there if they could. If you're interested, go have a look at armchair-imagineers dot deviantart dot com. Obviously, replace the word "dot" with an actual dot to get the URL.)
