Dane tapped on the corner of the glass, pointing to an image of Jessica, still clad in her Vampirella costume, dragging along a young blonde woman, her hands bound in extension cords.

"That lady that's tied up...she looks...oddly familiar..." Dane said. "It's on the tip of my tongue."

"Yeah," I said. "Actually, I think that's her slogan."

"Miley Friggin' Cyrus!"

"She looks like she's in trouble," Cleo cried in alarm.

I shook my head and smiled. "Probably. But if we leave her alone, I think it'll improve the quality of her music."

Cleo scowled at me.

"What," I said. "I've learned my lesson about being a hero. No good deed goes unpunished." Then, to placate her, I added, "This isn't a magic portal. It's a mirror. Plus, my ex girlfriend - Let's say I'm kind of skeptical about what damage she can do."

Amanda gave me a scolding look, but I only had to say "Spiderman" to make her understand.

Riffraff clapped his paws, rubbing them together. "All right, slave. What's for supper?"

[0000]

Jessica

[000000]

As I expected, my fingers went right through the glass when I touched it.

"Wait," Misty said. "We need equipment."

MB clapped his hands, and Fat Cat, despite his obesity, darted out of the room like the Road Runner, leaving a cloud shaped like himself behind. He returned a second later with a black bag, the kind doctors carry around.

Misty took it. "Thank you. But I need some special tools of my own."

She turned to face her boyfriend. "Sleez?"

The butler had been rather quiet since his bubble had arrived at Master Blaster's place. Of course, he never was much on conversation. "Mmyes?"

"Could you fetch my things, honey?"

Sleezington grinned, probably because he wasn't being talked to like a butler. "Yes, ma'am."

He zipped out of the room.

"Soy Lecithin," Misty said to me with a smile.

I stared at her. "Excuse me?"

"You haven't named your baby yet. I just thought..."

I laughed. "No. I don't think so."

"Moon Unit."

I shook my head no.

"Freedom?"

I sighed. "Actually, I was leaning towards `Isosceles.'"

"What a wonderful name!" she exclaimed.

"Isosceles?" Chad repeated, looking a bit unsettled.

I nodded. "We're just talking. What do you think? Founding father of mathematics, philosopher..."

His ears drooped. "I was thinking we could maybe call him Chip."

"There's already a chipmunk with that name," I said. "Plus, if I need to shout at him for being a brat, you two will get confused."

He frowned. "I didn't think about that."

I opened my mouth to say something, but he spoke first. "One of my dearest and closest friends was named Chip. The man was fatally injured on the day the Asgarth attacked Duckberg. As he lay dying under a pile of debris, he spoke to me his last words.

"He said, `Chad, promise to me something. Promise that you will name your firstborn son after me. But use my Shi'ar tribal name, Owamu Alawamia.

"He also made me promise to marry his unsightly girlfriend and raise his children." He frowned. "Let's just call him Isosceles."

Sleez swooped back in with a giant bug thing. It looked like a cockroach with a luggage handle for an antenna.

"Christmas gift from my sister," Misty explained. "It's really well made."

She cracked open the bug's shell, showing me a wide assortment of tools and weaponry mired in gooey bug intestines.

Then she pointed something that looked like a hair drier at me. "It's called an `Icer.' We can use this to immobilize targets."

I smirked. "Can it also style my hair?"

She stared at me. "Have you been talking to my sister?"

I shook my head.

Misty slammed the bug shut, offering me the handle.

Shrugging, I delegated the task to Chad. "Can we go now?"

Misty grabbed Master Blaster's tablet computer. "Yes. Let's go. And I want you to answer a few questions as we do."

I swallowed. "Agreed, but I reserve the right to not answer if it gets too personal."

Misty didn't look too happy about that, but didn't argue.

We marched through the mirror.

The place on the other side resembled an access tunnel beneath Hoover Dam, except with noise pollution. A long concrete tube, branching off several yards down the line.

I would have hoped that employees got to be exempt from hearing show tunes 24-7, but, in addition to the muffled garbage being pumped into the tourists up top, a pair of Mickey shaped speakers barfed out the theme song to Toy Story, interrupted at the halfway point by the following announcement: "Are you merely a Disney staff member, or are you doing all you can to make this the happiest place on earth? Look in the mirror and ask yourself: Have I delivered a smile today? Check your smile at the nearest Staff Smile Station."

I heard another minute of You've Got A Friend In Me, then:

"Before you swear, ask yourself, are children listening?...Mickey knows. Each occurrence will be deducted from your regular paycheck. You have been warned."

I always suspected Disneyland was a self governed entity, complete with courts, law enforcement, and an abridged form of the Constitution. Recordings like this proved my initial assumption that they intended to secede from the Union and become their own country.

I sighed. "Do you have a gun?"

Misty pulled one out of the cockroach, blowing the Mickey speaker to pieces.

The noise didn't stop. A second Mickey head a yard down was playing Be Our Guest, and another past that, and another, for what looked like miles.

I was thankful that Everything Is Awesome was not yet a Disney property. I would have blown my brains out.

A plastic Donald watched us from the wall. His beak moved towards us, slowly nodding up and down, I guess to get a good look.

I gave him the finger.

Misty shot him. Glass, plastic and sparking wires showered down from the mounting bracket.

"Where's this spike located?" I asked.

Misty pushed some buttons on the computer, then frowned. "It's below something called Epcot, in the Merry Mausoleum."

I giggled. "Merry Mausoleum?"

She shrugged. "I'm just reading from the screen. Your guess is as good as mine."

Strange to see a cartoon character who didn't know anything about Disney. I suppose it makes sense, though. The average American doesn't know who James Madison is. (I'd say George Washington, but there were pioneers in the field of comics and animation before Walt came up with his mouse).

"Okay. Which way?"

She consulted the screen. "You should go straight down this tunnel, and turn right a mile down."

Oh. Before anyone actually takes out a map and a ruler, keep in mind that I'm typing this on a cel phone, after all this stuff happened, and even if I have remembered it all correctly, I was never very good with numbers.

Sorry to disappoint anyone who can tell me the exact distance in centimeters between Captain Pickard's bedroom, Spot's litter box, and the length of their tiny penis.

Anyways, we walked.

And walked.

"So," Misty said. "You said I needed to research, in order to unleash my Inner Bitch. You, being the girlfriend...ex girlfriend, should be the foremost authority on the subject. Am I correct?"

I shrugged. "I've been stalking him, off and on, for about a decade, so I guess you could say that."

"So...what makes him hurt the most? What really gets under his skin?"

I stopped walking. "One word. Money."

She froze, staring at me. "I don't understand."

"He's a tax guy. He never misses a day of work. I'm pretty sure his car is paid off, and I think he didn't want to sleep with me because he saw me as a gold digger. The guy obsesses about money. If you want to hit him where it hurts, attack his wallet."

After walking a little further, I added, as an afterthought, "Just don't tell him it was my idea, okay? I still think he's..."

I cast a nervous glance at Chad.

"...A good American citizen."

Chad smiled and nodded, possibly because he wasn't as bright as I originally thought.

Hearing a strange noise a quarter mile down, I stopped to investigate.

The sound came from a machine shop. Some sort of tool room for the repair of animatronic things and their displays. It looked like a morgue for dismembered Disney characters.

It was a young little thing in a tiny pink jacket and silver shorts. I heard noises coming out of those surgically perfect lips, noises that could possibly be construed as music. "I crack my panties for you..."

She poured cherry syrup on a circular saw blade. "Oh baby..."

She licked the flat harmless side of the blade, singing, "I crack my panties for you..."

I kept waiting for her to lick the blade's teeth, but she apparently did have some self preservation instinct inside that walnut sized brain of hers.

"Who is this, Ms. Buckthorn?" Misty whispered.

"Fanny Fontana. She performs a sideshow act."

Misty checked her computer, then whipped out the hair drier.

Miley was pouring Hershey's Chocolate on a Black and Decker hand drill when she collapsed on the floor with an ice mark on the back of her blonde head.

"Sideshow act," Misty announced. "Check."

We tied Miley up in extension cord.

Hearing the chirp of one of those cel phone walkie talkies, I popped my head out the doorway and saw a group of security guards with mouse insignia uniforms stomping down the corridor. "We'd better get out of here, Misty."

"We have weapons, Ms. Buckthorn."

"Perhaps. But stealth is less expensive."

Misty put one hand on her hip. "What do you suggest?"

"Hide."

I pulled Chad and the baby behind a work table surrounded by decapitated plastic Disney characters, along the back wall.

"Psst!" Misty said, pointing to a generic cartoony backdrop designed for showcasing automatons.

A second later, she, Sleez and our equipment were two dimensional. I tried to climb in and take Chad with me, but my boyfriend kept falling back out.

The security team, hearing the commotion, stopped by the room, looking in.

A headless Ratatouille toppled over, giving away our position. They stormed through the door to investigate.

An overweight Samoan woman, a muscular black guy with pink lipstick and mascara, and a narrow redhead woman with a butch haircut.

By the time they entered the room, I had Chad and the baby stuffed inside Baloo from The Jungle Book, and I...

...I almost made it to the backdrop.

At first, they just stared at me, crouched behind the work table.

I stood up and sang Moon of Alabama at the top of my lungs, kind of a song and dance number, except I really hadn't rehearsed.

Oh, and I licked the chocolate off the drill, to maybe, possibly convince them I was someone else. We had, in fact, hidden Miley under a big plastic Gay Pride banner, so...

The routine worked for a moment, but then the guards stepped aside and I saw Mickey.

As in, the real Mickey Mouse.

Not a woman in costume.

He was actually animated.

The mouse pulled out a laser pistol, pointing it at me. "You will accompany us to DPD Headquarters. Failure to comply will result in your execution."

I picked up Goofy's severed leg, waving it around like a ball bat. "You don't scare me. If a doodle kills me, I'll become a hundred percent doodle forever."

"I think not."

Mickey armed his laser gun. "This weapon will erase any doodle I point at. And one of these guards is carrying a very real handgun. Between the two, I think I'll be able to redecorate the walls with brains, or something, if you fail to cooperate."