Mickey, being animated, was immune to fire, but you probably guessed that already.
Kurt seemed to know this as well, for as the mouse screamed, writhing from a strange combination of real and animated flames, the man kicked Mickey in the chest, stomping him to the floor.
The Minnies, upon turning their weapons on the aging film star, suddenly realized they were only holding the Nerf collection.
You see, like any good villain, the mouse talked overlong, and while he jabbered, rather fascinatingly, about his life's story, Misty and Sleez had used their cartoon powers to do the old switcheroo. They pelted Mr. Russell with foam darts.
Kurt marched over the prone mouse body, rushed to the middle of the chamber, and gave Mickey's real body a liberal dose of fire.
Funny thing, expansion. A door that's normal in the winter will sometimes swell and refuse to open in the summer, and a glass of water, frozen in dry ice, will break when dropped in a pot of boiling water.
When Walt expanded, it was amazing.
It was like someone shoved an M80 inside a Cornish game hen and lit the fuse. Walt's head, limbs, and frozen gizzards went flying everywhere.
"Ciao, Mickey Mouse!" Kurt spat.
A moment later, the rumbling earthquake got stronger, and the mausoleum compartments started cracking open.
I saw a rotting foot kicking open one of the broken concrete seals. A growling dog snout, one that was mostly bone, nosed open another.
"We need to go," Kurt said. "Unless you'd like to perform Thriller."
I chuckled. "I admit that does sound fun..."
The man picked up Miley Cyrus, throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, running out into the castle courtyard.
I hadn't paid much attention to this detail, but there was a smaller door near the giant one, behind one of the giant torches. We all ran through this door, hurrying down a crumbling stone spiral staircase identical to the one they show on every Tales From the Crypt episode.
After crossing through what appeared to be the actual Cryptkeeper set, we entered a white corridor, and I flinched, fearing another laser fry slicer.
"Relax," Kurt said, unzipping a dufflebag he'd been carrying with his other arm. "This room is safe. The ones past her, those are the ones you should really worry about."
Atthe end of this room, we neared a wall, covered with a grid crisscrossed with neatly arranged asterisk patterns.
Kurt stared at his watch for an entire minute, then marched ahead.
The wall abruptly slid away, and he was climbing into a large cube shaped room.
"Hurry!" he shouted to me and my companions. "It'll move soon!"
And so I jumped in.
The room was a perfect cube, the same length along the walls, floor and ceiling, and each of those surfaces was patterned with the same looking grid/asterisk design, backlit by a pale eerie light.
At dead center of the roof, floor, and all four walls, there was a square opening, through which you could either climb, drop, or even jump, if you could manage to jump high enough to go up.
"Hey!" I said. "I've seen this movie! You've got through it by using prime numbers, right?"
"No," Kurt answered. "I actually got through it by throwing plush toys and Googling the score to When You Wish Upon A Star." He pointed to a music note on the wall.
"If you know the pattern," I said. "Why do you need the stuffed toys?"
"Cel phone reception is shit down here. I'm lucky to get two bars."
I stared into the bag. "Still, it looks like you've got a few left..."
Looking depressed, he said, "I came here with six bags."
With those inspiring words, he dug out a plush version of that crab from Little Mermaid, hurling it through one of the openings.
The moment the toy went through, I saw a thousand razor tipped metal rods shoot out of the walls, slicing Sebastian into a cloud of cotton stuffing and ripped fabric.
Kurt glanced at the opening to his left, then looked at the opening to the right before turning around and facing the direction we came in.
He pointed. "That way."
"But that's the way we came in!" I protested.
"I know," he said with a tone of resignation.
A second later, we were staring at a wall.
No more entrance.
The room had moved.
We were now trapped in Hypercube.
"Please tell me your phone is still charged."