SC: Woot, woot! Chapter fifteen! Only… let me see…three more chapters before it's finished! If I don't deviate from my plan that is…
Disclaimer: I don't own The Nightmare Before Christmas. If I did, I'd probably be rich and not out looking for a job.
--
Chapter 15
True Intentions
"Mom? What are you doing?" Aubrey questioned as Sally started toward the door.
Sally smiled at her over her shoulder. "If Jack thinks that I'm just going to sit here and do nothing, he has another thing coming." She walked over to the door and slipped through the barely wide enough crack. "Stay here." Her voice floated back into the room.
Shock frowned. "We really should listen to Sally…"
"No we shouldn't." Lock corrected. "Because we have a serious revenge complex, remember?"
Barrel laughed. "Right!"
"Well let's go then." Lock said, walking toward the door. The other three got up and followed him out.
"Which way did they go?" Aubrey questioned, huddling close to Lock. Without a tracker spell, the dungeons were just creepy. Shock blushed and looked over at Barrel as Lock grabbed Aubrey's hand and conjured up a tracker spell, smiling over at her. The younger boy was conveniently looking everywhere but the couple in front of him and Shock.
"Dnif em Jack." Lock muttered. The tracker set off, and the four followed.
"This seems to be becoming a habit." Shock muttered.
Lock looked over his shoulder. "What do you mean?"
"Us, having to track down Jack. Wasn't it normally the other way around?"
Barrel laughed. "You have a point there."
Aubrey tilted her head to the side, frowning. "Do you guys hear that?"
"Sounds like a fight." Lock muttered.
"You would know." Shock chuckled. Lock glared at her before braking sharply. "What?"
"The tracker spell's confused."
Aubrey's eyes widened. "He sent out a dummy!"
"A what?" Barrel questioned.
"A dummy." Shock repeated. "It's a duplicate of someone's magical signature, which is what the tracker spell searches for. Jack made one to throw us off."
"Why do you think we sent it after him and not Sally? She doesn't have a magical signature." Shock sighed and waved her hand over Lock's tracker. It stopped zipping between directions and held still.
"Well, at least we still have light." Aubrey said before grimaced slightly.
"What's wrong?" Lock asked.
Aubrey shook her head. "I'm still so tired… like I don't have any energy."
Shock frowned as well. "That shouldn't be happening."
"Lecture us later, oh-mighty-ones." Barrel said sarcastically. "Let's go; follow the sound of fist fighting!"
-Lock's POV-
It didn't take long for the four of us to find Jack on the first floor, and it didn't take long for all of us to get very confused. Jack was fighting what appeared to be Vanessa, only… way older. "What the…" I murmured. Aubrey's grip on my hand tightened as Jack's fist connected with Vanessa's face and there was a very audible 'crack'. Vanessa fell to the ground, clutching her nose and moaning.
"Dad!" Aubrey let go of my hand and ran over to Jack.
Jack looked surprised to see us. "Aubrey? I thought I told you to- oh, never mind." He sighed. He looked over at us. "Is everyone all right?"
"For the moment, Jacky." We all looked over to the throne room doors to see Raphael walk out.
"Aubrey." Jack nodded toward us. She ran back over to me, and I gripped her hand tightly.
Vanessa looked up through her fingers before scrambling over to her father. "I lost, daddy. I'm sorry!" She sobbed at his feet. Raphael pulled her up, shushing her calmly.
"Don't worry about it sweetheart. You've done everything I needed." He smiled at her and a sick squelching reached our ears.
"D-daddy…?" Vanessa gasped before cups of blood poured out of her mouth. She fell to the ground, motionless. Raphael's front was covered in blood, and in his hand he held a bloody sphere, randomly flecked with pieces of Vanessa's insides. I felt my stomach churn violently. That was disgusting enough, but to do it to your own daughter?!
Raphael flicked bits of the gore off of the object in his hand. "Messy little business, isn't it Jack?" He questioned.
Jack gasped. "Raphael… please tell me that's not what I think it is!"
He grinned at Jack. "Oh, but it is, Jacky. The Skellington Key to the Living World!" He held it up triumphantly, leering over at Aubrey. "And now for the last piece."
Aubrey let out a cry of pain and fell to her knees. "No!" I yelled, charging at Raphael. His fist made a firm connection with my gut, and I doubled over. Pain laced through the side of my chest as he kicked me, sending me sliding halfway across the room.
"Aubrey!" Shock shrieked, and I managed to look over. Aubrey had fallen to the floor, and she wasn't moving. I ignored the pain in my side and my gut and scrambled over. Aubrey's eyes were dull and glassy, and there was a hole in the middle of her chest, where her heart should have been. Not a bloody hole, like what Vanessa was sporting, just… a hole.
The orb in Raphael's hand pulsed brightly, shining with a light that froze and burned at the same time. "It is complete!" He cackled.
Jack ran at him, fire consuming both arms up to his elbow. "Don't you dare!" But Raphael had already put his hand to his mouth, swallowing the key. Energy literally battered all of us, sending us shooting another few yards across the floor. When the light died down, I saw that everyone, including me, was chained against the wall.
Well, everyone except Aubrey and Vanessa.
"Raphael…" Jack growled from somewhere to my left. "You bastard!"
There was a smack, which I assumed meant Jack had just gotten hit. "Watch your language, Jack. I'm in charge now."
"You killed your own daughters!" Jack yelled.
"What is family in the quest for power?"
"Monster!" Shock yelled next to me.
Raphael walked over to her, and his hand closed around her windpipe. "What did you call me, child?" He hissed.
"Leave her alone!" Barrel ordered from my other side. Raphael looked over at him, then, after a moment, released Shock. She gasped for air, sucking it greedily into her lungs.
"Why, Raphael? Why kill Aubrey and Vanessa? Why give them the key if all you were going to do is take it back from them?!" Jack yelled.
The bastard actually had the nerve to smile, like this was the question he'd been waiting Jack to ask. "Ah, simple, really. You see, Jacky, after I had the key in my possession, I knew that Cay and Jacob would have to be sacrificed in order for me to get away. So, I double-crossed them. It was one of my worse plans, true, because I neglected to realize that they would do the same to me by ratting me out to your mother."
Raphael turned away from us, clasping his hands behind his back. "I remember it so vividly; fleeing through the Hinterlands in terror, praying that I could get away, maybe get back to the Tree House and regroup."
"The Tree House?" Shock, Barrel, and I gasped.
He looked at us over his shoulder, grinning madly. "What, did you three think that you were the original pranksters of Halloween Town? No, no, no. Cay, Jacob, and I were the first Boogie's Boys, before old Oogie Boogie came into play. We worked for the first, the true Boogeyman."
"I always knew that he put you three up to it." Jack muttered.
Raphael laughed, like this was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Him? Oh Jack, Jack, Jack! Do your really think for one moment that that idiotic shadow could've dreamed up that plan? No, it was I who planned the entire thing." He smirked. "Your mommy always told you that she was the one who killed him, didn't she? Well, mommy dearest lied. I'd killed him weeks before, relaying fake messages and plots and schemes to Cay and Jacob. And the best part was that they actually believed me."
"But why, Raphael? Why do all of this?!" Jack shouted.
"Why, Jack? For the absolute power, of course!" He laughed, throwing his head back. "I made a door in the Hinterlands and slipped through to the Living World. I had only planned on hiding out there until I could master the key's power and return to dethrone the Skellingtons and take over. But…" He trailed off.
My eyes fell on Aubrey and Vanessa. "Things didn't go as planned." I muttered, not really conscious of what I was saying.
Raphael's eyes closed. "No. My plan was proceeding perfectly, but then I met Rachel. I forgot everything that I'd planned, my schemes, my plots, everything. We started a family.
"That's when I realized it. If I still had the key at Halloween, the one night where the entire town was free to roam the Living World, I would be found, and quickly. I had to place it into a living vessel. One that would be able to mask the key's power. I chose my newborn son, Ryan. But it didn't take long for me to see that the sheer power of the key was killing him. He grew ill, and I took the key back.
"After a few years, I tried a different method, giving the key while the baby was still in the womb. Rachel's pregnancy had… complications, nearly killing her and the baby. Emily was born as though she was asleep. Her eyes were closed, and she wouldn't scream like most babies. I took the key back."
Raphael was silent for a moment. "It was then that I realized that the key was just too much for any one living person to handle. I needed more than one host. So, when Rachel found out she was having twins, I did the same as I had for Emily, only splitting the key into two separate pieces.
"It worked, but not as I expected." His gaze drifted over the two motionless bodies. "Vanessa was stillborn. Aubrey was born healthy, but she physically looked as if she had been long dead. I knew that Vanessa, as a mere infant spirit, would not survive long. I had to act, and quickly. I used the magic I had left to send her soul to Halloween Town, bypassing judgment. Then, I used a warping spell to make her body grow at two times the normal rate.
"I hoped that, somehow, Vanessa would learn to use the key's powers on her own, and manage to find us. But three years later, I realized how foolish this notion was. Oogie Boogie, who seemed to have somehow inherited the residual memories of his predecessor, took revenge on me. I had promised him a key, and he was going to hold me to it. That explosion would have only killed Aubrey, had I not forced her and Emily out of the car. Instead, it killed me.
"Or so everyone thought. I wasn't really dead, but the living body I had created to house my soul was. I returned to Halloween Town. Imagine my surprise when I found Vanessa waiting for me. She somehow recognized me as her father." He paused, his gaze boring holes into the wall beside us. "Her body is twenty-five years old, but her mind has not matured any farther than the age of twelve, thirteen at most. That is my fault, I suppose."
He actually sounded like he felt guilty for doing this to them, for a moment. "But after growing so rapidly, Vanessa's body was weak. She needed a new host. This is where Aubrey's friend, Sandy, came into play. After so much time with Aubrey, some of the key's power must have affected her. When she died, she was sent to my doorstep. Immediately, I began to try to use her for my experiments. I successfully transferred her soul into a blank homunculus with a spell on it to control her.
"But that's where everything went wrong. Sandy's body wouldn't take to Vanessa's soul, and it backfired, ravaging her real body. I had to improvise, quickly, or Vanessa, and her half of the key, would die. Of course, by now, I had remembered all of my old plans and dreams and had begun forming new ones, and Vanessa was a vital part of these plots. So, I transferred her soul into a mirror, and eventually, into a homunculus that she could control, but only part of the time because of her weakened state." He turned and grinned at us. "Everything else simply fell into place."
I growled. I had heard enough, and boy was I pissed. A strange pulsing started in the middle of my forehead, and it spread all over my body. I gritted my teeth painfully as it began to feel as though fire was flowing through my veins.
Then something wet tricked down my arm. I looked up to see that the chains holding my wrists were melting. I concentrated harder on that pulse. The chains practically liquefied, and I dropped to the ground. Reaching up I grabbed Shock and Barrel's chains, melting them as well. Raphael, whose back was still turned, hadn't noticed us yet.
Glancing at my friends, a wordless agreement passed between us:
This bastard was dead.
The three of us charged, and we managed to hit him once, obliterating his shirt with a combination of my fire, Shock's magic, and Barrel's pure brute strength. But that's about all we managed to do. The skin underneath the cloth had remained unmarred, and Raphael was pissed. With a nod of his head, he sent Shock flying into Barrel and into me if I hadn't ducked.
I jumped up to charge him again, but quickly found a hand wrapped around my throat. I ripped at Raphael's fingers, stopping when he tightened his grip. He locked his eyes with mine, a snarl on his lips. "I should just kill you now, boy." He hissed. "But I have a world to take over, so it will have to wait.
What happened next is a little blurry. What I do know is that Raphael tossed me into a wall (not the one he'd used Shock to smack Barrel into) and a burning pain laced through my head and back before I blacked out completely.
When I came to, Shock and Barrel were getting Sally and Jack down. I tried to sit up, to help them, but I had barely twitched my finger and it felt like a hundred swords were cutting into my back. I let out a cry of pain, which diverted all attention to where I was laying. "Lock!" Shock and Barrel yelled, and I heard them run over.
Then Shock gasped, and I knew something was very wrong. "What?" I rasped, and then winced. My throat hurt. A lot.
"Lock… I think Raphael broke something… a lot of somethings…" That's when I realized that she was talking about my back. "Barrel, help me turn him over." I felt two pairs of hands begin to lift me, and I let out another scream of pain. The hands disappeared.
I heard light footsteps and realized that Jack and Sally had come over. "Oh no…" Sally whispered.
"Shock, can you do anything?"
"No… this is nowhere near as bad as anything I've ever done, not even Aubrey after Oogie tried to kill her. I could see the wounds then… if I tried to heal Lock, even if I had enough energy, I could fix something wrong and make it worse." She paused. "But Barrel might be able to."
"What?" Barrel asked her, surprised. "Shock, I can't use magic."
"Barrel, you're the best white magic user I've ever seen. If you can't do this, no one can." I think that, had I opened my eyes, I would've probably gagged, so I kept them shut.
"All right…" Barrel said hesitantly. I felt his hands on my chest and heard him mutter, "Laeh." Warmth fell over my body, and the pain in my back and head faded away. Barrel pulled his hands back and I felt Jack lift me up, back onto my feet. I looked at the wall that I was lying beside to see a five inch hole in it.
I grinned down at Barrel, who seemed a little shell-shocked. "Well, looks like we've got ourselves a mage, eh Shock?" After realizing that this was a compliment, Barrel grinned.
"Lock, Shock, Barrel." Jack said sternly. Our joking demeanors fell like dead flies and we turned to him. "I'm going after Raphael."
"We're going with you." I said before he had a chance to protest.
Shock walked up next to me. "Yeah. Aubrey was- is- our friend."
"Besides," Barrel added as he appeared at my other side, "We'd just follow after you anyway."
Jack smiled at us, proudly if I wasn't seeing things, and turned to Sally. "Sally…"
She smiled. "I know Jack. I'll be all right here. Go get him." I had to look away as they kissed, an ache passing through my chest. Shock put a hand on my shoulder. "We're going get him, Lock. And then we're going to fix up Aubrey."
Barrel put his hand on my other shoulder. "Trick or treaters stick together forever, right?"
I couldn't help grinning at them both. "Right." We turned to the hole Raphael had blasted in the wall. "Let's get this bastard."
--
SC: Okay, this shouldn't have taken this long, but I'm having a serious TNBC writer's block. I need to go watch the movie again, because I haven't done it in months. And play Oogie's Revenge. Anyway, R&R please! Two before I'll start writing the next chapter! Or update Welcome to Your So Called Insanity, whichever comes first.
Ja ne
SC