Chapter 18: Into the Kingdom

The imps and I spent a solid ten seconds in a swirling vortex that reminded me of the portals I traveled through before, and after those seconds were done, we found ourselves hovering in midair before we fell down to the ground in a pile. My glasses fell off again and hit a cobblestone path, but thankfully, they didn't break against the stone. The imps, who have landed on top of me when we landed, rolled off of me in groans of pain.

"That's one way to teleport." I said as I shakingly stood back up and put my glasses back on. "You boys good?"

"We're okay." Pain moaned when he shook his head in dizziness.

Panic rubbed his head, but then gazed in amazement at where we had landed. "Holy Styx…"

I looked and stood up as I saw what was in front of us. Main Street U.S.A, Magic Kingdom, and right in its center was the main attraction of all main attractions: The Disney Castle, in all its glory. It almost felt too good to be true as I stared in awe at the castle, it was more beautiful than I ever pictured.

"Boys, welcome to the Magic Kingdom!" I presented the imps to the kingdom. "This is where we'll find Mickey."

"Let's hope so." Panic said as he grabbed the book.

"Race ya to the castle!" Pain betted.

"You're on!" I grinned as the three of us engaged in a race all the way to the castle.

Lucky for us, the streets were pretty empty, so nobody cared as we all raced each other just to get to the entry of the castle. The imps even turned into horses at one point just to try to get the advantage, but I -being street-smarter- climbed up on a fire escape on one of the buildings and jumped from rooftop to rooftop to out beat them. When that worked, I climbed down and made a beeline straight for the castle.

But just when things felt like they were going right for me, I must've slipped on a loose cobblestone or something, because the next thing I knew, I tripped and fell into a water fountain that rested just inches away from the castle doors. Soaking me to the bone as a way of karma getting back at me for sort of cheating in that race. The imps thankfully noticed, shapeshifted back to normal, and came rushing towards me to see if I was hurt or not. I lifted up my soaked hair and glared at them as I spat the water out of my mouth. Mentally telling them that neither one of them should tell this to Mickey when we find him.

"Little ma'am, are you alright?" a voice asked me.

The three of us looked over and saw someone had spotted us by -and in my case in- the fountain. It was Goofy, all decked out in his Kingdom Hearts guard uniform too. He must be a member of the castle guard in this world too.

"I'm okay, thanks." I told him as he helped me out of the fountain, but no sooner than he helped me up than he slipped over and fell into the water fountain himself.

"You okay?" Pain asked Goofy as we pulled him up.

"Yep! Just fine." Goofy laughed. "Thank you for helpin' me up."

"You're welcome." I told him.

"So, what brings you three to the Magic Kingdom?" he asked the three of us.

"We need to speak to the king." I told him. "It's a long story, but we think he could help us."

"Well, follow me, I'll take ya right to him!" Goofy offered. "We haven't had a visitor in a while!"

"Thank you." I smiled as the imps and I followed him.

"Hey, what about you guys?" Panic asked the important question as he pointed at Goofy and I. "You're soaking wet."

"Don't worry." Goofy assured him. "The castle door's got built-in hair dryers for somethin' like this!"

We went and kept following him, and right when we reached the castle door's two large hair dryers came out of two large holes in the walls and blew warm air on us. Not only drying off Goofy and I, but also doing wonders for my hair too. It never looked or felt so fluffy. As soon as the hair dryers were done and went back into their hiding spots, the doors to the castle opened up, and the four of us walked inside and got to see just how big and beautiful it was on the inside.

"Whoa, this place is huge!" Pain said in awe as we walked into the main hallway of the castle.

"Glad ya like it." Goofy said. "This place has been 'round here for almost a whole century!"

"It's so fancy." Panic said with starry eyes at the castle décor.

I agreed with him on that. I always dreamed about walking into the Disney Castle, just to see what it would feel like to be inside something so magnificent, and here I was. Really inside it, really feeling lucky enough to experience something this amazing. I wished my dad, younger brother, and friends back home were with me to see it too, so we could all experience it together.

"But everyone's getting mad and blaming me for canceling it, but it wasn't even my idea!"

I stopped walking at the sound of a voice coming from behind a closed door. I knew I should've stayed with Goofy and the imps, but something told me that I had to know what was going on. Curse my morbid sense of curiosity. So, I went over to the door when the others weren't looking and cracked it open. Inside, I saw Mickey looking sad as he was talking to someone in a glowing orb of light. A bothered king is usually not a good sign, but a downtrodden king was an even worse sign.

"Can't ya just keep it going? Just for a few more episodes so everyone's happy?" Mickey tried to reason with the orb.

"You know the rules:" a distorted voice spoke from the orb. "If it doesn't fit…"

""Then out with it"." Mickey sighed reluctantly. "But-"

"Trust me, this is the best call to make." the voice told him before vanishing into thin air.

Mickey gave another sad sigh and stared at the ground. I guess being king of Disney also meant making big decisions with some mystical orb who was very strict about certain things, and definitely didn't care about how Mickey would feel after those decisions were carried out.

"Geez, that guy sounded like a jerk." I stated.

Mickey agreed with a sad sigh, not realizing that I was in the room with him. "I don't like most of the ideas he tells me about, but I go through with them to help protect my kingdom. I don't want him to hurt my people, in any of the worlds."

"You do what you're not proud of to make everyone else happy." I summed up his problem, something that felt a little too familiar on my account.

"Something like that." he said.

Mickey looked up at the mirror and saw our reflections looking back. He gave a small gasp when he realized that he really wasn't alone in the room and turned to me.

"Oh, -ha- I didn't mean to be rude." Mickey said with a small laugh as he held out a hand. "Name's Mickey Mouse."

"Frankie Cole, good to meet you." I shook his hand.

"I don't think I've ever seen you in any of the worlds here. Where you from?" he asked me.

"Actually, I'm glad I ran into you." I began to tell him. "You see, I-"

"Mickey!"

The two of us looked, and saw someone run past the room, but do a double take and look back in. It was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and he looked like he was very worried about something.

"Oh, there you are!" he said in relief as he came into the room.

"Frankie, this is my brother Oswald." Mickey introduced me to Oswald. "Oswald, this is Frankie."

"Hello." I greeted Oswald.

"Nice to meet you." Oswald said before turning his attention back to Mickey. "Look, bro, something's happened. A bunch of fellas are talking with Yen Sid: It's real urgent!"

Mickey gave him a nod and began to follow Oswald out of the room. Only stopping for a brief moment to turn back to me.

"You don't mind coming, do you?" Mickey asked me.

"No, of course not." I said. "If anything, I might be able to help. I'm pretty good at helping people."

"Oh, boy!" Mickey smiled as he and I followed after Oswald. "It'll be great to have an extra set of hands!"

Later

Oswald led Mickey and I towards a large room, where a cluster of people were in there all shouting and worrying about something pretty important, but it was hard to tell what exactly they were talking about. In the front of the room, I saw the wizard Yen Sid sitting at a desk, silently taking in all the chaos as if it wasn't bothering him at all, while one Donald Duck -also in his Kingdom Hearts get-up- was trying his best to calm down the crowd. Mickey and I entered the room, where I spotted Pain and Panic waiting on me in there. And when I stood next to them, I got to hear what all this commotion was about as Mickey went and stood next to Yen Sid.

"It's the worst possible thing to happen!" I heard Merlin shout out.

"We need to find her and warn her!" another voice cried out.

"Everybody calm down!" Donald yelled at the crowd. "One at a time for Master Yen Sid!"

"What is all this about?" Mickey agreed with his own question.

A familiar voice spoke up. "Well, your majesty, magician supreme, I got word from a friend that-"

"Genie?" I questioned when I recognized who was talking.

Genie turned towards me and grinned largely when he saw me. "Frankie!"

The next thing I knew, he flew over to me and the imps and gave us a great, big hug. I missed him too, but I didn't think he'd miss us that much from being back in Agrabah. Even the imps were confused with all the affection, although I'm pretty sure those two aren't used to any form affection.

"Oh, thank Heavens," another voice said. "She's safe."

Genie looked over at someone and placed the imps and I down. To my surprise, it was the three good fairies -now back in their more magical attire than their peasant disguises, but that's not what was making me feel confused. What confused me was that I had only seen them an hour ago, and I know for a fact that Aurora's story hadn't ended after that. Something was up, and something was telling me that with all these worried people here, it wasn't a good thing.

"Flora? Fauna? Merryweather?" I addressed the three. "What's going on?"

"That you can ask him." Merlin interjected as he pointed his staff at someone.

I looked over where Merlin was pointing at and saw a small bird perch that sat next to Yen Sid's desk, but who I saw on that perch both surprised me and made me nearly boil over with rage. Although, the rage was more annoyed than furious when I saw Iago.

Iago, upon seeing me, sank his feathered head down and gave a nervous smile. "Heh, nice to see you again."

I turned to Genie with an annoyed look as I pointed a thumb at Iago. "What's he doing here?"

"Huh, figured you'd be madder." Iago said.

"At what? Your master trying to sweet-talk me into ruling my world or the fact that he tried to drown me and Aladdin?" I asked him as I stormed up to him.

"Actually, you finding out about the spell swap." he stated.

"What spell swap?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"

All voices were silent until Genie came towards me with a worried look on his face.

"When I had that premonition telling me that I needed to go back to Agrabah, it led me back to Al, then a whole bunch of stuff happened." he explained to me before his tone got more nervous. "Turns out that while I was there, Iago, here, told me that during your last encounter with Jafar, he swapped the spell you had."

I felt my jaw drop and my eyes pop. "WHAT?!"

"It was just a copy of the spell you burned." Genie continued. "Jafar snatched the real one when you weren't looking."

"You mean to tell me that you spent six days thinking that you actually destroyed the spell?" Iago asked me.

"How long has everyone else known?!" I retorted back at the parrot.

I couldn't believe what I had heard. Jafar was clever enough to not only steal the spell, but to create an exact copy of it and made me think that I had destroyed the original copy in an attempt to prevent him from taking over my world? This was bad. Scratch that -of all the worst possible things that could ever happen, this was THE worst possible thing! I can't believe I was so stupid and not think that Jafar would do something like that!

"Genie told us as quickly as he could." Yen Sid told me. "But by the time we went to see it for ourselves, Jafar had survived a battle he wasn't meant to, and he and the others were already making preparations to take over your world."

"Others?" I repeated. I did not like the sound of that.

"Yes." Flora added in a worrisome way. "Oh, I'm afraid to tell you that Jafar has recruited several other villains to join him on his conquest."

She then swirled a circle with her wand and showed everyone a visual of the new crew Jafar now had after stealing the spell: Maleficent -now freed from her iron chains, Ursula, and Hades. That last villain struck fear into two people in the room, one of them completely mortified that Hades was now free from his imprisonment in the River Styx.

"No, no, no, no!" Panic started to hyperventilate. "How did he get out?!"

Pain did his best to calm his partner down. "Panic, calm down-"

Panic grabbed onto Pain in fear. "If he finds out we ditched him and joined Frankie-"

"Hades is not going to find out!"

All heads turned to me. This wasn't their problem to deal with, and the serious look on my face said it all.

"I'm going back to my world to stop them and put them back where they belong." I said before I told them my plan. "You all were never a part of my world, so I suggest you all stay while I handle my fight."

"What?" several shocked voices asked me.

"You mean you're gonna face all those villains by yourself?" Iago asked me as if I was crazy. "Are you nuts?!"

"I'm the one they want." I told him. "I'm not putting anyone else in danger because of me."

"But you can't fight them alone." Mickey tried to reason with me, but I was firm in my decision.

"Listen, I get that you all want to help, but where I'm from, people fear and hate what they don't understand." I told them all the dangers my world had in hopes it'd convince them not to follow me. "The instant they see you guys, it won't just be the villains we'd have to worry about."

"What is it with you and wanting to keep us safe?" Pain asked me.

"Somebody's gotta do it." I told him.

"I will accompany you," Merlin told me. "I have something that can contain the villains long enough to get them back to their worlds."

He dug into a pocket in his robes and pulled out a crystal ball in a small golden pedestal. I recognized it from those times my dad and I would watch those old Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom playthrough videos on YouTube. This was the Crystal of the Magic Kingdom: the only thing powerful enough to not only defeat the villains, but powerful enough to trap them inside the crystal ball.

"Okay." I approved of Merlin accompanying me on my new quest.

"Here," Donald said as he handed me a piece of paper. "Jafar isn't the only one with a spell to the Live Action World."

"Thank you." I told him.

"Travel safely," Yen Sid told Merlin and I. "And may you be victorious in your battle."

Merlin and I gave him a silent nod, but just before I could read the spell to activate the portal home, I felt someone tug on my pants cuff. I looked down and saw the imps look up at me with worried faces.

"You'll be back, right?" Panic asked me.

"We'll see." I answered unsurely.

Merlin placed a hand on my shoulder, and I began to read the spell once again. When that all-too familiar swirling vortex of color appeared in the floor of the council room, Merlin and I jumped through. Ready to return to my world, ready to trap the villains, and I was ready to fight off those villains in well-deserved rematches and win.