Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 13: High-Tech Chase

The Wicked Fairy Maleficent was displeased. This made her even more dangerous to be around than usual, which was why Diabolo had retired to his perch in the aerie, to wait for her bad humor to be resolved. Strangely enough, her anger expressed itself not as a raging, white-hot tantrum as it usually did, but as a chilly, even-toned reprimand for her defeated servants.

"You have failed," she told the Dispirations as they huddled on the stone floor of her lair, a horde of small creatures once more. Many of them had abandoned their aquatic bodies, which were ill suited to existence out of the water, and reverted to being patches of mist and shadow. "Surely, with as many of you as there are, it should have been no difficult task to destroy our enemies? Yet, even united, you could not fulfill this duty. Was I a fool to put my trust in you?" They writhed under her icy disapproval, discovering for the first time the gnawing, leaden emotion of guilt. She was the mistress who had given them the closest thing to life that they could ever hope to possess, and they had failed her!

"Still," said Maleficent more gently, "the mission was not a total fiasco. You may not have succeeded in annihilating our foes, but you did separate their leader from the others, which will surely hinder them. Indeed, I am not at all certain it is even possible for Mickey Mouse to be killed, so perhaps this is the best we could reasonably have hoped for on a first attempt. I shall give you another chance.

"But know this: I will not tolerate ineffectual tactics such as those you employed in the Submarine Lagoon. We have the advantage of numbers, but that does not mean that numbers alone will suffice to overwhelm our adversaries. We must be cunning as well. We must observe before striking and use their weaknesses against them. Remember this as you go about your task."

With that, she re-opened the portal between her sanctuary and Disneyland, and watched as the Dispirations eagerly poured through, anxious to return to the place that nurtured them into a sort of reality. Then she settled onto her throne and sighed with satisfaction. The road to victory never did run smooth.

Diabolo ventured into the room, and she held out her hand for him to alight on. He landed instead on the arm of the throne, cawed peevishly, and preened the feathers under one wing.

"It is different with them," she explained. "They are proving to be more intelligent than I thought at first, but they still have animalistic reactions…no offense to you, of course, my pet. If I ranted and raved at them, I might lose their allegiance. I must make sure that they still wish to please me. They're like children, really."

Diabolo looked up suddenly and bristled, croaking deep in his throat.

"What is it, pet?"

"Maleficent! I got a bone to pick with you!"

Maleficent rose from her throne in one swift, smooth motion as a dumpy figure strode stiffly into the chamber. "You!" she exclaimed. "How did you get in here?"

"That's for me to know and you to wonder!" the newcomer smirked in a sing-song voice. "Maybe if you didn't sit there so high-and-mighty all the time, thinking you're the be-all and end-all of black magic, it wouldn't surprise you so much when someone else pulls out a few tricks and gets the better of you for a change!"

Maleficent glowered down at the visitor. "I really haven't the time for this, Mim."

"HA!" Madam Mim exploded, thrusting one stubby finger in the other witch's face. "Haven't the time, indeed! By my reckoning, you've got forty years of extra time…which you bought at my expense! Did you think nobody would call you on it?"

"Cease this foolish hysteria," Maleficent sniffed. "I've paid the price for my own miscalculation. In any case, you have little enough to complain about now. Remove yourself from my premises at once, before I remove you."

"Don't you threaten me, Hornhead!" Mim snapped. "I'm not going anywhere until I hear from you that I'm not going to wind up a disembodied nothing floating in the middle of nowhere again!"

"Of that, at least, I can assure you. Now leave me in peace." The Wicked Fairy lowered herself to her throne again and made a gesture of dismissal.

"Not just yet, Maleficent," said Mim, calming down marginally. "You've never been Miss Sally Sociable, but you've been even more scarce than usual of late, and now this scheme of yours has most of us caught in the crossfire. Some people might say you're turning on all of us, not just the goody-two-shoes!"

"There is no honor among thieves," Maleficent noted sagely, "and no camaraderie among villains. Or did you somehow think we were all members of one big, happy, evil family? Surely even someone of your…mental peculiarities can recognize the absurdity of such a notion."

"They don't call me Mad Madam Mim for nothin'!" Mim said proudly. "So, whaddya say? Partners?"

Maleficent's pale face went even paler with rage as she stood once more. "Presumptuous idiot!" she shrieked, summoning a blast of wind to tumble the other sorceress head over heels. "As if I could gain any advantage by allying with you!" She panted with fury while Mim blinked wide eyes. "Enough. You have found the end of my patience—you will leave. Immediately!"

Madam Mim rose to her feet, straightened her skirts, and made one last indignant "Hmph!" before stalking out the way she had come in.

Someone was waiting for her. "Well, darling?"

"She didn't go for it. Oh, well. Her loss, really."

"Well, isn't that a pity shame? I suppose it's Plan B, then. Let's round up the gang."

Maleficent, meanwhile, hunched on her throne, seething. She disliked losing control like that, but that Mim had a real gift for igniting her temper. What a disgraceful excuse for villainy!

The Wicked Fairy was forced to wonder, however: just how did she get into the lair?


"The first thing we need," Donald said authoritatively, "is a plan."

"Do we have any leads?" asked Daisy. "It would help if we had some idea of where to start looking, at least."

"If there are any clues," Goofy noted glumly, "they're probably at the bottom of the ocean that the Submarine Lagoon turned into."

"We definitely shouldn't go back there!" Donald declared. "Maybe…" He rubbed his under-beak thoughtfully. "Maybe we should use the Sorcerer's Hat! I bet it knows how to find Mickey, and now that we know where it is—"

"Oh, Donald, please don't start," Minnie groaned. "I know you've always wanted to try out the Hat, but it's pretty low of you to use this as an excuse."

"No, Minnie, I was serious! I wouldn't betray Mickey like that!"

"Well," she said, mollified, "it wouldn't work anyway. Only Mickey can open that box. Even I can't do it—he once tried sitting there and telling the lock that it was okay to open for me, but it didn't work." She smiled fondly. "I think we should go straight to Merlin. Maybe his clairvoyance—"

She was interrupted by a burst of frantic barking from Pluto, and a jarring clang as the Rocket Crown fell from his jaws to the pavement.

"Pluto!" Daisy scolded him, going after the rolling crown. "Be careful with that!"

"What's wrong, boy?" asked Minnie.

Pluto whimpered and pawed at her dress and, lacking hands, used his ears to point emphatically toward the exit of the Submarine Lagoon's artificial cave. The water there was rippling ominously and seemed to throw shadows, rather than reflected sunlight, on the surfaces around it.

"Uh-oh!" Goofy shouted sharply. "I think those…things are back!"

"Where? I don't see any—" Daisy began, but broke off when spots of strangeness, like heat-shimmer made solid, began emerging from the trembling water and advancing up the sides of the lagoon basin, growing more defined as they went. Their movement was slow, almost languid, but they gave the impression of being capable of much greater speed—like panthers choosing, for the moment, to be lazy about how they stalked their prey. "Oh, dear," Daisy finished in a deceptively calm voice.

Instinctively, the five of them drew together in a tight cluster, Daisy clutching the Rocket Crown to her chest. It would have been better for them if they had run at once: the barely-visible enemies swarmed up out of the water by the hundreds and moved with increasing swiftness around them, cutting off avenues of escape. Some of them had fixed forms by now, resembling small, vaguely insectoid robots or mechanical drones.

"Come on! This way!" Donald commanded suddenly, waving the other members of the party toward the moving ramp that led up to the Monorail station. A few of the machine-creatures darted to intercept them, but he kicked them out of the way and led the group up the incline, with the rest of the enemy in hot pursuit.

By a stroke of luck, there was a sleek train parked at the station, its doors open and welcoming. "I'll take this one!" said Minnie as they piled into the driver's car. She had logged a few hours operating the Disneyland Monorail on occasion, mostly with Mickey leaning out the window waving to excited onlookers, and the procedures came back to her as she positioned herself in the driver's seat. Yes, there was the speed control, and the horn, and—

"Minnie! Close the doors!" Daisy squawked.

"Oh! Right!" said Minnie, her hands sweeping across the dashboard. She found the right switch and listened with satisfaction as the many doors along the length of the train hissed shut, enclosing them in a comfortable, climate-controlled cabin. At once, there was a clatter as the vanguard of the robots caught up with them and bounced off the steel and glass of the train's exterior. Minnie sounded two short blasts on the horn—proper protocol dies hard—before starting the Monorail moving, accelerating quickly as it pulled away from the station.

Goofy squashed his face against a windowpane in order to get a look behind them. "They're followin' us!" he exclaimed, doing his best to point without opening the window.

"What, they can fly now?" demanded Daisy, squeezing in next to him to get her own look.

"Some of 'em," Goofy clarified. "Some of 'em are just runnin' really fast!"

The majority of the little automatons had sprouted metallic wings or helicopter blades in order to engage pursuit, but the remainder seemed to have no problem keeping up by scuttling along the Monorail track behind the train, their jointed legs flashing in the sunlight.

"Let's see them follow this!" Minnie said with uncharacteristic grit in her voice. The Monorail's normal cruising speed on the straightaway portions of the track is around thirty miles per hour, but it is capable of significantly higher velocities, and Minnie took the opportunity to prove it, cranking up the acceleration and leaving the swarm far behind. Only a few of the flyers managed to keep pace.

The Monorail raced along Disneyland's eastern boundary, approaching the expanse of the old parking lot, empty (of course) of cars but otherwise looking much as they remembered it. More of the things chasing them were catching up, but, oddly, they made no move to attack, instead flanking the train like, of all things, an honor guard. Seen up close, they didn't resemble bugs nearly as much as they had seemed to at a hurried glance—they were boxier than any living thing, their movements less nuanced. A few even had wheels.

Donald's eyes grew wide as he realized something.

"Minnie, we're about to leave the park."

"Of course we are," she said curtly. "That's where the track goes."

"Are you sure about that?" he asked. "I'm thinking about what Uncle Ludwig showed us…"

Minnie stared aghast at Donald as the implication sank in. If Disneyland was disconnecting from reality, there might not even be an outside to go to! But at the speed they were moving, there was no chance of stopping before they crossed that line. "I guess we're about to find out," Minnie said, pursing her lips.

The Monorail rocketed out of the confines of the park.

Instantly, the parking lot vanished, replaced by an endless sea of swirling colors: the same they had witnessed on Professor von Drake's Cosmoscope monitor, and again in lieu of the blue sky over Tomorrowland. The Monorail train itself remained unchanged, as did the track, but the supporting pylons faded beneath it into the multihued haze. Disneyland was no longer visible behind them. They were completely immersed in the unfathomable brilliance, which looked just the same on all sides, and no matter how far into the distance they focused their gaze.

Donald and Daisy clutched at each other in awe. Goofy, deciding they had the right idea, wrapped his long arms around Pluto, who made a tiny noise somewhere between a whimper and a growl. Minnie bit her lip and continued driving, refusing to falter in her control of the vehicle.

The robots were still maintaining pace with the train, if anything keeping even closer to it, as though afraid of being lost in the shifting iridescence. Still they did not make any move to attack, and the riders in the Monorail were forced to wonder why. Did they realize that their targets were unreachable as long as they were inside the car; were they waiting for an opportune moment to strike? They hadn't seemed that calculating when they had been sea creatures.

Just ahead, the track curved to the right in a ninety-degree turn at what should have been the outer corner of the parking lot. "Hang on tight!" said Minnie, braking just enough for safety's sake before the train zoomed around the bend. The curve was smooth, but they were all pressed sharply to the left until the track straightened out again.

Most of the drones followed, but one didn't make the turn in time and went careening off into the color-spangled void. But instead of merely shrinking away with distance, or fading out of view as though being swallowed by a mist, the thing…disintegrated. Like a drop of ink in a bowl of water, it blurred around the edges before expanding into a cloud of constituent particles that spread out and became thinner and soon melded completely into the surrounding shimmer of hues.

"Oh, my goodness! Minnie, did you see that?" Daisy gasped.

"I'm a little busy driving," Minnie replied tensely. "Why, what happened?"

"One of those little robots missed the turn, and when it got too far away from the track, it just dissolved!"

"Hm," Minnie noted. "That gives me an idea. Hold on, everyone." With that, she floored the accelerator. They were on the portion of the track that ran straight along the full width of the parking lot, and the Monorail was free to reach its top speed of seventy miles per hour. The robots matched it after a brief moment, which surprised no one. But the next right turn loomed ahead.

"Minnie? Shouldn't we slow down a little?" asked Donald.

"Nope," the mouse replied. "Brace yourselves!"

The train whizzed around the bend, throwing the passengers to the side. A few more machines sailed off into the sea of color and dissipated, but most of them avoided this fate by clinging to the Monorail with magnets or suction cups or powerful mechanical claws.

Now they were approaching the one other station on the Monorail's circuit, the drop-off for the Disneyland Hotel. The station hovered over and around the track, suspended in the shifting brilliance with no visible means of support…for the hotel itself was absent. This, however, was just one more oddity among all the strangeness, and they hardly noticed it for itself. Their attention was diverted by the robots on the outside of the train, several of which had begun trying to break in. From the windowpanes came a grinding squeal, not very loud but so penetrating that it set every tooth on edge, as the mechanical creatures applied steel blades to the glass.

Goofy, outrageously, opened one of the windows in order to reach out and swat at the little automatons. "Stop it! Go away! Shoo!" he ordered them.

"Goofy!" Donald and Daisy bellowed in tandem. Donald grabbed the back of Goofy's vest and bodily hauled him back inside and away from the window, while Daisy closed it.

"What is wrong with you?" Daisy hissed at the surprised dog.

Before Goofy could respond, they were all shunted to the side again as the Monorail rounded the next corner. Now they were traveling in a broad easterly curve along what ought to have been Disneyland's southern border. Though practically on top of the park, still all they could see on the left side of the train was the same swirl of color…and the ominous shapes of the encroaching robots. One of them was slicing neatly through the glass with a barium-green laser beam.

"We gotta get rid of 'em somehow!" Goofy opined.

"Well, you won't do us any good by falling out the window!" Daisy pointed out. "You saw what happened to those things when they got too far away from the track; who knows what—"

She was interrupted by a clink as the laser-wielding robot finished its job and a clean-edged circle of glass fell into the car. It was followed a moment later by the machine itself, which immediately targeted Daisy and the Rocket Crown still in her hands. She screamed as it sprang at her, grasping with its numerous mechanical limbs. In very short order, the others either discovered the hole in the window and used it or broke their own way in, and the cabin became a melee zone.

In some ways, the robots were less aggressive than the sea creatures had been; they seemed bent on restraining or distracting the characters long enough to take the crown, rather than on doing them physical harm. But there were close to a dozen of them, all steel and moving parts, and in the confines of the Monorail car, it seemed inevitable that someone was going to get hurt.

The priorities were clear: protect the Rocket Crown, and protect the driver. Goofy took up the latter cause, situating himself right behind Minnie's seat and flailing wildly at any robots that came too near. The others had the significantly more difficult task of guarding the crown.

"Don't worry, Minnie! I gotcha covered!" Goofy crowed.

"What we need is—ow!—a weapon of some kind!" Daisy complained, ducking laser fire and yanking the crown out of the reach of a robot that got too close.

"Like what?" Donald asked, smacking away a flying automaton with his hat. Ironically, the emphasis on safety that had gone into the Monorail's design had left them without any object to pick up in self-defense. Except…Pluto, snapping at one of the drones as it flew around the car like an exceptionally large and well-armored housefly, bumped into the wall-mounted fire extinguisher and knocked it to the floor.

"Like that!" Daisy exclaimed, pointing, though Donald was already diving for it. He performed an awkward somersault as he hit the floor and came up already aiming the nozzle at the nearest of the robots. He sprayed the attacking machines with foaming chemicals until the device was empty, disabling several of them, then used the spent canister as a club to beat down the rest.

"Take that!" he said triumphantly, just before slipping in the flame-retardant froth and landing hard on his tail. It was at that point that the train reached the point of re-entry into Disneyland proper, and much to everyone's relief, the sea of shifting hues faded back into the familiar image of the park. Their relief didn't last long, however—now they were running parallel to the outbound track, less than ten feet away and still teeming with the robots that hadn't been able to keep up. Many of these took the opportunity to jump the gap and swarmed into the lead car as quickly as they could get to the cut and broken windowpanes. And now the ride was bumpier than ever as the train rocketed around the winding S-curves of the "sightseeing" portion of the track, and the slippery foam from the fire extinguisher made merely standing upright a tricky proposition, let alone fighting.

And as if all that weren't bad enough, there was a stir of activity at the Monorail station that proved, on closer examination, to be a much larger horde of robots getting into position to attack the train as it arrived. Some of them seemed to have taken a lesson from the sea creatures and combined their forms into bigger, more fearsomely armed machines. Even if they could handle the ones inside the cabin, the Monorail would be shredded right out from under them!

"What do we do?" Goofy whimpered.

"We'll have to bail out!" said Minnie. "On my signal, everyone jump!" She glared hard out of the bubble dome at the front of the car for a long moment, while the train swept through the northeastern quarter of Fantasyland, her hands hovering over the control panel. Then, just as it rounded the Matterhorn and the mountain's bulk obscured the station from view, she opened the doors on both sides and shouted, "Now!" and all five of them dove out of the speeding train. Driverless, the Monorail immediately powered down and coasted to a stop, coming to rest just as it reached the platform.

Sprawled on her back on the hard ground of the parade route, aching in at least nine different places, Minnie groaned and opened her eyes. What she saw was feet: the oversized, well broken-in shoes of Goofy, who had landed dangling over the edge of a tent awning near the Alice in Wonderland dark ride. Then she saw a large, friendly red tongue in the instant before Pluto hopefully licked her face. Despite herself, she giggled.

"Don't worry, Pluto. I'm all right," she said, heaving herself into a sitting position. "How about the rest of you? Is everyone okay?"

"Everything's fine up here!" Goofy said merrily before sliding the rest of the way off the awning and collapsing in a tangled heap.

Daisy came staggering over from the direction of the Alice in Wonderland dark ride, moaning melodramatically. "That," she emoted, "was the worst Monorail ride in the history of…of monorails!" She paused, looking around. "Where's Donald?"

A burst of infuriated quacking from somewhere in the middle distance, oddly muffled, answered her question. The four of them glanced about, scanning every part of the immediate area, before something caught their attention by tumbling down the lower slopes of the Matterhorn and crashing into the juniper hedges at the bottom.

They hurried over to investigate. A frightening specter rose out of the bushes, shaggy and green and making a great deal of raucous noise that was, fortunately, still muffled, because some of it was almost certainly swearing. Donald's webbed feet stuck out of the bottom of the snarl of evergreen branches—not only of the juniper, but also of alpine fir and blue spruce. There were even a few twigs of aspen stuck in the mess.

The rest of them had jumped out of the right side of the Monorail. Donald had, it seemed, jumped out of the left side, toward the Matterhorn…and hit every tree and shrub planted on its crags on the way down. With a burst of vocalization and a great wrench of his arms, he freed himself from the tangle of greenery, though the veneer of flame-retardant chemicals ensured that quite a few loose needles and leaves remaining sticking to him. He was a quite a sight, standing in the planter with his arms held rigidly away from his sides, snorting with indignation and speckled with plant matter.

"Donald?" Daisy asked cautiously. "Are you okay?"

Donald's posture sagged. "Oh…hi, Daisy," he said with a sheepish wave. Then he flopped over forward, the past couple of hours taking their toll at last.

"Gawrsh," Goofy observed.


The massed Dispirations swarmed the Monorail as it slid up to the station, hacking and slicing at its chromed shell…only to find that their targets were no longer on board. The only occupants of the train were a number of their own kin, which had entered the trailing cars just before Minnie had closed the doors at the beginning of the trek. These now wobbled out of the vehicle as though disoriented, wondering what to make of the experience they had just undergone.

They weren't conscious enough to realize it yet, but they had just discovered something of monumental importance.


The images were jumbled, illogical—castles and clocks and crowns, and a great black dragon arising to enclose them all in her grasping claws. Mickey knew on some level that he was dreaming, but he wasn't quite lucid enough to take command of the dream or wake up on his own.

"Mickey?"

"Who's there?" he said, in the dream.

"Mickey, wake up!"

Mickey opened his eyes. A huge dark blob in the center of his field of vision gradually resolved into the creased face of Walt Disney, gazing down at him with an expression that was both amused and bewildered.

"Walt?" Mickey mumbled.

"Mickey, what are you doing here?"

"Uh…catching forty winks?" Mickey guessed. A more detailed explanation would have to wait until he remembered just where "here" was. Mickey sat up, rubbing his eyes. His mind was unusually clear for having just woken up, and in rapid succession he recalled the Submarine Lagoon, the attacking creatures—Dispirations, they were called—Oswald, and then the fleeting impressions as he was dropped back into the real world. I'm in Walt's apartment over the Firehouse, he realized.

"Forty winks," Walt repeated, sighing. "Mickey, I don't mind if you drop in up here for a nap once in a while, but I wish you'd ask me first. I was planning to have a snooze myself."

"Sorry," Mickey chuckled guiltily, his eyes coming to rest on Walt's wry face. Suddenly he gasped, feeling like the bed was dropping out from under him. Because all at once, it hit him: it was 1965. From Mickey's perspective, Walt had aged ten years overnight…and was nearing the end of his life. This was it—his last chance to take advantage of the gift Maleficent had accidentally given him when she turned time back in the park.

"Is something wrong?" asked Walt, just as he had asked back in 1955, when his appearance on the Mark Twain had shocked Mickey. He probably didn't even remember asking back then; it was ten years ago to him.

"K-kind of," Mickey replied.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Mickey opened his mouth to refuse, but immediately thought better of it. "Yes," he said. "I do." He paused for three instants, took a deep breath, and told Walt exactly what was going on. Every bit. It didn't take him as long as he anticipated.

When he finished, Walt was silent for a long moment. Then he said, in perfect seriousness, "Mickey, are you pulling my leg?"

"No!" Mickey replied, taken aback. "It's all true! I know it's far-fetched, but you gotta believe me!"

"I do believe you, Mickey. If nothing else, what you just told me is too crazy to be made up. I can't figure out what to let sink in first." He looked pensively pleased.

Mickey settled down. "You're not as upset as I thought you'd be."

"Upset? Why would I be upset? I now know that my park is going to last for at least forty more years, getting bigger and better as it goes." He raised a hand to stop Mickey's forming protest before it could start. "I know you'll get this thing with Maleficent sorted out. I have every confidence in you."

"And what about the other stuff? You know, the stuff about…you…personally?"

Walt smiled until his eyes were almost lost amid the crows' feet. "None of us lasts forever, Mickey…except you, maybe. No one can say I haven't left my mark. This place, and you and everyone else in the Disney Family—you're my immortality. I don't need the other kind. It would be nice to get to see it all, of course, but I have no regrets." He set a comforting hand on Mickey's shoulder. "Now why don't you get back out there and save the magic. I'm still waiting to use that bed, you know."

Mickey found that he was smiling despite himself. Walt Disney was one of those people whose every mood was infectious. "You got it, old pal," he said. Reinvigorated, he sprang up off the bed and started for the exit.

"Oh, Mickey!" Walt called after him. "One more thing, if you don't mind."

"What is it, Walt?"

"If you're from the 21st Century, you'll be able to tell me…how close were we? With Tomorrowland, I mean."

Mickey grinned. "Honestly? We were way off."

Walt made a thoughtful frown, nodding in understanding. "It's a good thing we've got that remodel coming up, then. Anyway, I'll see you around. Go make me proud."

To Be Continued…

A/N: First of all, a huge apology from me for taking so long to post this chapter. I blame mild writer's block. And a persistent bug between my ears that forced me to work on my Avatar fanfic "Excerpts From the Diary of Princess Ursa" instead. And the holiday season. And life in general. But here it is! I hope, once again, that it was worth the wait.

In a stunningly pathetic attempt to make up for my tardiness, here's a little something extra: a rundown of my inspirations and information sources in writing this fanfic.

For starters, Disneyland itself has been my first and foremost source of inspiration. Obviously, I wouldn't have imagined or started writing this story in the first place if I didn't have a lifelong love of the park! Even now, with an Annual Pass that allows me to visit at least once a month, I discover something new about the place every time I go. Disneyland's capacity to surprise me, even after all these years and even with as much as I already know about it, constitutes magic in the purest sense of the word.

Mickey's Mouseworks and Mickey's House of Mouse, and to a lesser extent other recent productions starring the Sensational Six, have been instrumental in providing me with their "modern" personalities and mannerisms. Mickey Mouse is timeless, but far from static—his character has evolved in little ways over the decades, and I wanted him and his pals to be up to date.

The Kingdom Hearts video game series was another huge inspiration for characterization. I think I can safely say that this franchise has revitalized the Disney canon for the current crop of teens and twenty-somethings, and reminded us all that Mickey is more than just America's Nice Guy—he has the potential to be a true dramatic action hero as well! As well, some people have said the Dispirations remind them of the Heartless. There are only so many ways of portraying hordes of mindless evil minions, so some similarities were inevitable…but I'd be lying if I said the resemblance was entirely coincidental! On a more general note, the epic scope of the story and overall mood of adventure can be traced to my impressions of KH. After all, I did originally envision the fic as a premise for a Disneyland-based video game. The soundtracks for Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II are my music of choice when it comes to setting the mood for writing action sequences and big flowery descriptions of mystical phenomena.

Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors, and I have tried to evoke something of his style in crafting a plotline where there's a lot more going on than meets the eye at first and every detail matters and all the separate themes and threads tie together by the end. I've also tried to tap into his unique brand of verbal humor in a few places, but Disneyland isn't the Discworld and it's usually harder to make such humor fit than it's worth.

The books of David Koenig are an invaluable resource for any die-hard fan of Disneyland who wants to see what lies behind the magic. He has three Disney books out: Mouse Tales, More Mouse Tales, and Mouse Under Glass. The last one focuses on Disney's animated movies, but there are tidbits about the theme parks in there too. All three books are objective, no-nonsense examinations of the Disney empire by a fan who truly loves the product, warts and all.

Disneyland Then, Now, and Forever is another fabulous book for the Disney researcher. Produced for the 50th Anniversary, it is a celebration of the history and evolution of the park, complete with gobs of photos that I doubt I could have done without in portraying the Disneyland of the past. Speaking of photos, the most recent edition of The Disneyland Detective by Kendra Trahan includes some absolutely spectacular full-color photos of the five crowns, for those of you who weren't able to see them in person.

The Disney Dossiers are another source I use for characterization. This very new book contains "files" on dozens of well-known—and not so well-known—Disney characters, grouped along themes such as "Royalty," "Nice Cats" (contrasted with "Nasty Cats") and "Extra-Evil Villains." It's given me a few ideas for character cameos to include, and generally helped me sort out this huge Disney crossover situation I've created.

Finally, I've used the satellite photos at GoogleMaps to get a bird's-eye view of Disneyland whenever I've needed one—such as when trying to remember exactly how the Monorail track is laid out.

Thanks for being so patient, readers! I love you all!

Karalora