Alice clutched her chest and fell to her knees. The other 4 women were in similar pain. The walls of the shop creaked and groaned under the teeming mass of heartless. They pressed in against the building and the glass windows began to crack. The fading colors of the barrier inverted and returned to clear once more. The girls were left on the floor gasping for air.
"I can't," said Snow. She collapsed onto the floor and rolled onto her back. "It's too much. I can't get up."
"We can do this. Together." Areal reached down and grabbed Snow's hand. Aurora leaned against the table, breathing heavily, and sweat visible on her brow. Alice remained on her hands and knees with her face hidden by her hair. Jasmine struggled to her feet then fell back down to take a seat on the smaller couch.
"How are you even standing?" asked Jasmine. The eyes of the room turned to the red haired princess.
"You get used to pressure when you can touch the bottom of the sea. I guess that's what's helping me stand," replied Ariel. Snow squeezed her hand in thanks and took a seat next to Jasmine.
"I need a minute," said Alice. "Just one minute where the world isn't ending around me so I can think. Can you give me just that?" She stood up defiantly. Her hand slapped the window. The crack grew even deeper. "How about it? One full minute."
"Alice," Ariel's hand squeezed her shoulder gently.
"No! Shut up!" The crack spread out from Alice's hand and into the other windows. Light leaked out through the cracks as the barrier shifted from clear to red. The dim red light filled every corner of the room. The entire room held its breath.
Jasmine pulled the young girl into an embrace. Light returned to the room. Aurora let out a breath she didn't know she had held. Alice burst into tears. Her sobbing did not stop with Jasmine's touch, but it quieted down as the dark skinned woman petted the length of her hair.
"Is it ok to cry now? I've been holding it in," said Snow White.
There were no clocks in the shop. The silence was only broken by the occasional cry or whimper. Aurora attempted to pick up the keyblade, but it stayed firmly rooted to the ground just outside the yellow circle. Each of them took a turn trying to pick it up. It budged for no one. It remained like a grave maker for the final key blade wielder to visit Traverse Town.
"Jasmine, can I speak to you upstairs?" asked Aurora. The corners of Jasmine's eyes tightened at being called out in front of the rest of the girls, but knowing how difficult Aurora could be, she decided it wasn't worth fighting her on this point.
With the two women upstairs, Snow leaned towards Ariel and asked softy, "Do you think they are going to escape?"
"Without us?" Alice's face turned from despondent to panicked.
"We are the princesses of heart. No one is going to escape alone. This barrier proves that we are stronger together," said Ariel.
"Right. Of course." Snow rubbed her cheek where Aurora had struck her earlier. "This place is kind of a mess. Maybe it'll look better after I clean it up."
The couch was stained in blood from Belle. A trail leading back to the door had dried into the wood. The log that had ended Belle's life still lay beside her. A pile of sick remained from where Alice had come down the ladder and thrown up. A pile of ash covered the save point where Kairi and 2 moogles disintegrated.
Upstairs
"Which one?"
"I thought you might know," said Aurora. Time might have stopped in the room for Kairi's conversation, but Aurora believed she might be the only one who overheard what was said. The other girls had not given any indication that they noticed the frozen world. She laid it all out for Jasmine once they were upstairs. "There isn't much here. It has to be one of the girls."
"One of the princesses of heart corrupted the world?" asked Jasmine.
"Are we even sure each of us is a Princess of Heart?" Aurora asked in return. "Alice wasn't even a princess in her world. It can't be Belle or Kairi. They are both gone."
"We were all rescued by Sora before Kairi brought us back here."
"Answer my question," Pressed Aurora. "It has to be Snow White. Who's your pick?"
"Of the girls left? My only guess would be..."
Downstairs
"No way," said Ariel.
"I'm telling the truth! They were living cards that walked and talked. They had a queen, who was not a card, and a court. That land was completely mad. I was underground, but everything was bright as day. Nothing made sense there."
"That sounds so exciting," said Ariel.
"The queen wanted me dead," sighed Alice.
"You too? Sounds like my step mother," said Snow White.
Both girls looked surprised. Snow dipped a torn rag in a bucket she had filled with water from the wash room. Like the rest of the shop, only a shell of what should be there was actually in the closet, but that was enough for her to start cleaning. The rag had come from the bed sheet. No one was going to sleep.
"A magic mirror convinced her that I would grow up to be the 'fairest of them all' so she tried to abandon me in the woods. When that didn't work she poisoned my food. She's kind of a bitch."
"Fairest?" asked Alice.
"Where I come from that means, beautiful," answered Snow White.
"You are fairly good at running your mouth," Aurora said once she had stepped down from the ladder. "So at least you have that."
"You are very beautiful," said Alice. Ariel nodded. Snow looked up from the floor with a smile. Her face was flushed from the exertion of trying to get the blood off the floor. Her fingers hurt from the scrubbing, but the dried pool remained soaked into the floor. She found a small bit of wood flooring that stuck out from the rest and dug at it with her fingernail. Her finger nail peeled back and skittered across the floor. She drew her hand to her chest it in pain.
"Are you alright?" Asked Jasmine. She picked up one of the rags and twisted the water out of it. She stopped just before dunking it in the bucket to wash it off. It was perfectly clean already. Jasmine wrapped the rag around Snow White's finger. "Put some pressure on it."
"I remember," snapped Snow. "You all said the same thing to Belle, but look at her! She's dead!"
"It's just one finger," said Alice. "No one has ever died from that."
"Well," Aurora unconsciously rubbed a finger along her lower lip, "you should be ok as long as you weren't cursed. Have you made any witches or faeries mad recently?"
"What does Maleficent qualify as?" asked Snow.
"Stop teasing the poor girl," said Jasmine. Her hand squeezed harder over the rag, seeing the red blossom out over the torn white bed sheet. It slowed down only under pressure, but it didn't show any sign of stopping.
"The floor won't budge," said Snow White. "I thought I was cleaning it, but nothing was coming off. So I tried breaking off a splinter. When the splinter didn't budge I tried putting as much force into it as I could. I didn't think," Snow was cut off.
"There's a surprise. Snow White didn't think," jabbed Aurora.
"Aurora!" Jasmine and Alice shouted in unison.
"Stop defending her. She has to be corruption. She's like a doll that you can't fix, and just like a doll there's nothing between her ears." Aurora held up a hand as bits of frost started swirling around her fingertips. "Step away from her, Jasmine."
"You said we would wait to be sure," Jasmine held fast in her position even as the rag in her hand soaked through with blood of Snow White.
"Stop! Something is very wrong here. Things keep happening that make no sense!" Cried Alice.
"I'll explain everything after I ice the corruption. Blizzard!"
Jasmine pulled Snow out of the way of the killer cold spell and to the floor. The fire place extinguished with a burst of steam. The room filled with a mist of sweaty soot blinding most of the girls. Jasmine's grip on Snow White slipped when the girl pulled away from the dark skinned princess.
"What happened?" coughed Alice.
"Snow! Don't" Cried Ariel.
"Bliz-" the spell was muffled mid-sentence.
Through the thickening black fog, a loud crack reverberated against the table, then all the movement stopped. The item shop shuddered under the sound of a deep rumbling horn. The barrier cycled once more and when it returned to clear the sound of heartless banging against the walls and windows was now audible. The remaining three women struggled to breathe as black closed in around them.