Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 27: Move Correctly, Do Not Die
It had been a good game. But it couldn't last forever. There was too much else that it was possible to do, and to her childlike logic that meant she was obligated to try them all. She nodded a farewell to her new friends, flew down from the trackway, and began exploring. Her instincts told her to be stealthy, lest her erstwhile captors find her and take her back to that musty place where there was nothing for her to do once she had looked at all the shiny things and smelled all the books. So she did her best to stay under and behind things, and to keep to the edges of open spaces and take advantage of any low-growing foliage she encountered.
It suddenly occurred to her, as she crouched behind an excitingly smelly metal canister and waited for the man with the long metal stick to pass by, that she was on an adventure. The thought made her almost giddy with delight, and she stifled a yip of happy surprise that would have given away her position. But then she paused to think about the new realization. (An amazing process, thinking—taking things she was currently perceiving, and things she remembered, and shaking them about until they turned into something completely new in her mind.) If she was on an adventure, did that make her a hero? And if she was a hero, shouldn't she do something about it? Like find some villains to fight? If so, how would she know what to look for?
She decided to do what had worked well for her so far, and let her surroundings inform her. And they did.
The scene on the drawbridge was so chaotic that Minnie finally had to take a page from the Book of Daisy and holler at everyone to be QUIET. It worked, if only because they were all so shocked to hear a noise like that coming out of the usually demure mouse. She suddenly found that all eyes were on her. And there were an awful lot of them.
"Um…" she stammered. "Um…" Beside and slightly behind her, Daisy smacked her own forehead.
Something small and brassy hopped to the front of the gathering. "Pardonnez-moi, Mademoiselle Minnie," said Lumière the candelabra, "but where is Mickey Mouse? We all expected it would be he who rescued us."
Suddenly it all snapped into place. Minnie straightened up. "He's not here," she said. "We're almost certain he got trapped in the Temple of Mara when Daisy and I moved time forward just now. Pluto, Donald, and Goofy are in there too. And before we do much of anything else, we're going to go in there and get them. But we'll need help." Her gaze swept across the gathering and she began naming recruits. "Aladdin…Jack Skellington…Timon and Pumbaa…are you up for it?"
"You bet!" said Aladdin. "I've never said no to an adventure before, and I'm not about to start now!"
"Sounds delightful!" said Jack. "I've never been to the Temple of Mara before, but I hear it's my kind of place!"
"Sure thing!" said Timon from his perch atop his warthog pal. "We're starving!"
"Perfect," said Minnie. "As for the rest of you, if you don't know how to fight or are under, say, sixteen years old—"
"Or the equivalent for your species," Daisy put in.
"Right, or that—if you're in one of those categories, head up to 'it's a small world' and stay put inside the show building. But if you're an adult and can handle yourself in a fight, we need you patrolling the park. Find someone who's already doing it and they'll explain why. Everybody got that?"
They largely didn't, but Minnie's tone had made it clear that she wasn't sticking around to answer questions. Fortunately, the few characters who had stayed behind in the Castle courtyard were coming out to take the reins. The Good Fairies took charge of the noncombatants and began herding them into Fantasyland, while Scrooge and Lady Kluck started talking up the fighters and explaining the patrol system. Within a few minutes, Minnie, Daisy, and their designated team were the only ones left in front of the Castle.
Plus one.
"Well, go on," said Minnie to the straggler.
"No. I'm going with you," said Max Goof, doing his best to puff out his skinny adolescent chest.
Minnie was afraid of this. "Nothing doing, young man. You're staying at Small World with the other kids."
"My dad's in there," Max insisted. "I wanna help."
Minnie threw a pleading look to Daisy, who merely shrugged. "I don't know…" the mouse stalled.
"Aw, let him come," said Aladdin. "So he's a little young. I was half his age when I snuck into the guard outpost and stole…well, maybe we can save that story for later. My point is, everyone has to start somewhere."
"Well said!" Jack agreed with an expansive gesture.
"Okay, fine," said Minnie, "but I'm only saying yes because I'm in too much of a hurry to argue with you."
"Yes!" said Max, punching the air. "I mean…thanks, Minnie. This means a lot."
"Stick close with the rest of us and don't do anything stupid," said Daisy. "I don't want to have to tell your father that the first thing we did as soon as you got back was to endanger your life. Got it?"
"Yes'm," Max said obediently.
"Can we get a move on here?" said Timon. "I thought you said you were in a hurry."
"I did," said Minnie. "Let's go."
"And maybe on the way," Jack put in as they set out toward Adventureland, "you could explain exactly what's going on."
It wasn't not knowing where Donald and Goofy were that had Mickey worried—Pluto was already taking care of that, sniffing constantly in an effort to locate their trail. It was not knowing how they were that was the problem. It was not knowing whether they had met up with one of the temple's many horrors, or how they were faring against it if they had.
He had only tried calling their names once. The reverberation of the noise had been quite startling, and he realized that he was likely to attract entirely the wrong sort of attention if he did it again. So he left it up to Pluto to do what he did third-best (right after barking and making a mess of the house).
By and by, the dog picked up a trace of scent, and with a joyful bark, began pulling Mickey through the musty corridors, past rat-infested refuse heaps and glowing braziers, until they crashed into something that toppled over with a familiar yelp.
"Goofy?" Mickey said while he recovered his bearings. "Is that you?"
"Mickey!" was the overjoyed reply, accompanied by a suffocating hug. "Boy, am I glad to see you! And you too, Pluto!"
"I'm glad to see you too, Goofy," said Mickey. "Now we just have to find Donald, and then—"
"Uh, about Donald…" Goofy interrupted. "You'd better come and see."
"You found him already? Is he all right?"
"I think so, but…well, it's a bit of a sitchee-ation."
Mickey and Pluto followed Goofy to where Donald was. The lower half of him anyway, webbed feet kicking wildly. He was stuck in a wall, struggling and screaming more unintelligibly than usual.
"How did this happen?" asked Mickey.
"Beats me. I found him like this. I tried pulling him out, but he's really stuck hard!"
"Well, maybe it just needs one more pair of hands," Mickey suggested. "Donald, if you can understand me, we're going to try to get you out of there!" Then he took hold of one foot, Goofy took hold of the other, and the two of them yanked…to no avail. They tried again, bracing their feet, and about an inch of Donald's midsection came free, but no more. Then Pluto joined in, seizing Donald's tail feathers in his teeth, the three of them hauled together, and with a sound like a champagne bottle being opened, the duck burst out of the wall. All four characters landed in a tangle on the opposite side of the corridor.
Gasping and coughing, Donald spit out a fair quantity of rock dust, plus one or two small cockroaches. "Thanks, fellas," he wheezed.
"Any time," said Mickey. After a pause, he continued. "So…how'd you manage this one?"
Donald scowled. "It wasn't my fault. The temple started coming up, and the next thing I knew, I was beak-first in the wall!"
"I guess it doesn't matter," said Mickey. "Now that we're all together, we can work on finding our way out of this place."
"That shouldn't be too hard," said Goofy. "We've all been on the ride lotsa times."
"Not like this," Donald muttered.
"Donald's right," said Mickey. "We need to be prepared for anything."
"Well, gawrsh," said Goofy. "How'll we ever find our way out if everything's changed?"
"I don't think everything will have changed," Mickey replied. "So far, when the rides have turned real, they've still followed basically the same layout, right? So if we can get to something we recognize as being part of the track, at least it'll be something to go on. We just have to hope we don't run into…well, you know. Pretty much anything."
The other three shuddered in agreement.
"Okay then! Let's get to it!" They set off through the gloom.
Their path didn't stay gloomy for long, however. After about ten minutes of trekking through the winding corridors, the air began to feel warm, and the sulfur smell became stronger. Then the tunnel became suffused with a dim scarlet glow. Then they rounded a corner and walked right into a wave of heat so intense that it nearly bowled them over, while a sudden field of light seared their dark-adapted eyes. As their vision adjusted, they found themselves overlooking a lake of incandescent, bubbling lava, which comprised most of the floor of the huge cave gallery they had just entered. A forest of exotic rock formations rose around and even through the molten pool—stalagmites and arches and massive columns and sheets of stone that appeared to have been poured over the walls and other available surfaces. Across the fiery expanse, the crags were carved into the image of a mighty face, half of it only a skull, the empty eye socket spurting flame where volatile gas vented through fissures in the rock. From their point of view, the face was partially obscured by the ropes and planks of a suspension bridge that crossed the cavern perpendicular to their course, far up out of their reach. But they didn't have to see all of it to recognize it at once.
"Well," Mickey said after a moment, his voice sounding odd due to the heat-warped air, "at least we know where we are."
"I think there's a path over here," said Goofy.
They struck out to the left, following a rugged, narrow trail that skirted the lava, closely enough in places that they could feel the little puffs of vapor every time a bubble burst. The heat wafting off the molten rock was oppressive. After several dozen yards, it joined up with a broader trackway, large enough to accommodate a vehicle, that slanted up to the right along the contour of a sloping ledge cut into the cave wall, and down to the left unto the subbasements of the temple.
"It's the truck road!" Donald said. "We're as good as out of here!"
"Cool your jets, Donald," said Mickey. "We need to decide which way to go. Let's see…assuming nothing about the layout of this place has changed too much, left will take us down into the rat caves, and right will take us up into the Shrine of Skulls, and then…" He trailed off, slowly turning to meet the eyes of the others. Their horrified expressions suggested that they were envisioning the same thing he was—green scales and dripping fangs the size of butcher knives.
"So. Left?" he said.
"Left!" Donald and Goofy chorused, with Pluto adding a similarly inflected bark.
The immediate disadvantage of the way they chose was that it was dark. (Chilly too, once they left the roasting influence of the lava pit behind them.) They stumbled for a few minutes, bumping into the tunnel sides and each other, before Mickey managed to find a match in his pocket and light it with a flick of his thumb. The few seconds of light enabled them to make out the rough-hewn walls of the tunnel, threaded through with basalt veins and massive tree roots. Then the match burned down, Mickey dropped it, and they were enveloped in darkness again. They picked their way along by feel (and in Pluto's case by smell), shuffling their feet to avoid stepping on any rats that might be present…or sharp rocks, or anything else unpleasant to step on. A few chinks in the ceiling let in trickles of silvery light from an unknown source, but they were too small to provide any real illumination beyond the incongruously bright strips where they landed.
Finally, however, the group came to the end of the dark span. The tunnel ahead of them was broad, straight, and adequately lit. It was also lined on both sides with bas-relief carvings of skeletal warriors raising wicked-looking khandas and spears. Slender bamboo pipes protruded slightly from between their gaping teeth, hinting at the trap. Mickey and the others came to an abrupt halt.
"I don't like this," said Mickey. "I don't think we can outrun the darts."
"Do we really have a choice?" said Donald.
"Well," Mickey reasoned, "we could always go back the other way and try to sneak past Fluffy. In fact, even if she's awake, our odds might be better with her than with these things. At least there's only one of her. What do you guys say?"
Donald found a pebble on the ground nearby and tossed it inquisitively into the tunnel. It didn't even have time to land before a volley of poison-tipped darts whipped out of the mouths of the carved warriors and knocked it out of the air, leaving little smears of deadliness on its surface. "That's enough for me," said Donald. "Let's go back."
Once again they groped and hobbled their way through the darkness. At one point, Goofy let out a holler as a large rat skittered across his foot.
"You okay," asked Mickey.
"I think so," Goofy quavered. "Ever feel like there's somethin' awful sneakin' up behind you where you can't see it, and then somethin' awful happens right in front of you? I feel like that's about to happen now, even though I know it probably isn't."
"You know what I think we could use right about now?" said Mickey in a puckish tone. He waited a beat before answering the question. "A Keyblade."
"No kidding," said Donald.
"You guys should be almost done filming for the sequel, right?" said Mickey.
Donald made a grunt of annoyance. "I hope so. It's already been over four hundred hours on set with that Sora twerp."
"I don't think he's a twerp," said Mickey. "He's a nice kid, just a little overwhelmed by the stardom."
"Aw, you know Donald," said Goofy. "He doesn't like anyone who gets higher billing than him. But what about you, Mickey? You said you got a bigger part this time around, but we've hardly seen you on the set."
"There have been a lot of scheduling conflicts; you know how it is. The tech guys are gonna manipulate some footage to get me in more of the scenes with you guys." By then, they had reached the lava chamber again and begun the trek along the upward slope of the truck road. They passed under the mighty suspension bridge, curved around the burning lake and gradually climbed past the half-skeletal face of the dread god Mara in the rock formations, into the adjacent chamber.
Here the walls were decorated with hundreds of human skulls in heaps and stacks. Some of them were sheared off at the top to make lamp bowls, in which twisted wicks of unidentifiable substance floated in grease that was all too identifiable. At the far side of the space, a steep slope, slick with mud, was the only alternate exit. They scaled it carefully, listening for the telltale whisper of scales gliding over stone. And they heard it…but not of a magnitude worth getting alarmed over.
The next cavern was covered with snakes. They were painted on the walls and sculpted into the pillars. Mostly, though, they were alive and wriggling—slithering over the ground, stretching to climb a heap of rubble, lying coiled in a cranny to rest. With the only illumination a dim reddish glow from the distant lava pit, the visibility was terrible, and the snakes appeared mostly as a churning impression on the surface of the cavern floor, accented here and there by rows of white or yellow bands that caught what little light there was, seeming to glow. The noise of their movements and their slow, reptilian breathing made a constant susurration.
Mickey was very very glad that he did not suffer from herpetophobia. But not as glad as he was that only the small, relatively harmless snakes seemed to be out and about. One let out a hiss when he put his foot a little too close to it, and he saw twinkling fangs, but it was content to let him go with the warning. However, something in the background was still hissing…
A few moments later, the group suddenly felt like they were being watched—no, stalked. Some change in the air currents alerted them to a looming presence just behind them…and they turned just as the giant green cobra, as long as a commuter bus and much more venomous, was spreading her hood and rearing back to strike.
They screamed and scattered, letting Fluffy plow nose-first into the ground where they had just been standing. She recovered quickly, shaking her huge head, and then began casting about for her prey, tasting the air with her forked tongue. The one she found first was Donald, trembling behind a half-toppled column. She pulled a coil of her body to box him in and began rearing up, fangs at the ready.
Mickey stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled piercingly. "Hey!" he shouted, waving his arms. "Over here, Scaly!" There was no reaction from Fluffy, and the mouse rather belated remembered that snakes are deaf. "Goofy, we gotta—" he said, but the dog was already picking up a chunk of shattered stone. He wound up and fast-balled it at Fluffy's head, landing a solid hit on her spread hood. She whipped away from Donald with a hiss of rage and turned her attention to the offender.
"Wuh-oh!" Goofy yelped as Fluffy began lashing toward him. He sprang up and started running, legs pumping fruitlessly in midair until he came back down and his feet found purchase on the ground. He got moving just a step ahead of the snake.
"Pluto! Sic!" Mickey commanded. The dog scrambled after Fluffy, lunged, and caught the tip of her tail between his teeth. She didn't even seem to notice, yanking him along while she pursued Goofy.
Donald emerged from his cubbyhole and joined Mickey. "If you are hiding a Keyblade anywhere, now would be the perfect time to bring it out," he said.
"No such luck," said Mickey, breaking into a light jog. "Follow me."
He led Donald to a cobra statue with a severely cracked and weathered base, located within a quick dash of the chamber's exit. Fluffy was pursuing Goofy in semi-random loops around the Snake Temple, her predatory intensity incongruous with his rubbery, flailing desperation—sooner or later, they were bound to pass by the statue. Mickey put his shoulder to the flaking stone and shoved, and the carved coils shifted ever so slightly.
"Okay," he said. "This'll work. Donald, c'mere and gimme a hand." As the duck joined him in leaning against the sculpture, Mickey called out to Goofy, urging him to change course and lead Fluffy in their direction.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Donald muttered.
The sounds of the chase drew closer—whether by accident or design, Goofy was following Mickey's instructions. "Now!" said Mickey, throwing his weight against the statue. Donald did the same, and the heavy mass of stone began to tilt, slowly at first, making a loud grinding noise as it picked up speed. Finally, with a tremendous din, its base crumbled altogether and it tipped over, raising a cloud of dust that set Mickey and Donald coughing as they fell flat.
Gradually, the haze cleared, revealing Goofy tentatively prodding Fluffy's snout with his shoe. The great serpent was pinned underneath the broken statue, stunned. Pluto was just scrambling over the rubble.
"Well, whaddaya know?" said Mickey. "That worked better than I thought it would."
"Let's get out of here before she escapes," said Donald. The snake, a tough creature, was already coming back to her senses and starting to muscle her way out of the trap.
The four of them scampered out of the Snake Temple and into familiar territory. They were back in the cavern with the lava pit, this time high above it on the rickety suspension bridge. The heat rising off the molten rock was hardly any less intense for the distance, and the bridge quivered under their feet. On the bright side, they had an excellent view of the carving of Mara's face…although it was possible that this meant it had an excellent view of them.
Behind them, Fluffy freed herself from the statue and glared after them, hissing with discontentment. But she made no move to follow them, instead slithering back into the comfortable depths of her own territory. They heaved sighs of relief and continued, through the boiling, sulfurous air.
They were so anxious to reach the cool, dark cavern at the opposite end of the bridge that they forgot what to expect. Their senses were dulled by the red-orange glare and powerful odor of the lava, and so they were well inside the cave before they started to become aware of their situation.
The darkness was literally crawling. A whisper like distant surf suffused the cavern, along with an oily, vaguely rank smell. The four characters froze, suddenly aware of where they were, and braced themselves for the sensation of hundreds of tiny, chitinous limbs crawling over their feet and up their legs. It didn't come, though the faint sound continued unabated, and Mickey struck a match again.
The bugs were there, all right: giant jungle ants, glistening black emperor scorpions, pincer-jawed beetles, sinuous centipedes, spiders of every description, and even albino cockroaches of positively Carboniferous proportions. They scuttled about the cave walls so thickly that not a trace of stone was visible, just a roiling mass of shiny arthropod bodies…leaving the floor entirely clear of them.
Before Mickey and the others had time to wonder what that might mean, the bugs noticed the light and, in the manner of their kind, were attracted to it. They poured down from the walls and across the ground like a sheet of liquid wax, closing in around the four frightened characters so quickly that escape was impossible. Mickey threw the only potential weapon he had—the lit match—but it burned out in midair, leaving them in the darkness once again, with only the increasing noise of the bugs' many feet to indicate that they were still oncoming.
Mickey hastily dug in his pocket for another match, but found only small change and lint. Something squirmed up his shoe and around his ankle, sending a shiver up his spine as though his skin was a chalkboard and someone was slowly drawing their fingernails across it. He kicked the air in order to fling it off, just as another bug landed on his head. Something about the second bug's weight and the pattern of movement made by its feet said scorpion, and in his fright Mickey lost his balance and fell. The swarm engulfed him.
Then there was a roar, and an explosion of light, and a jumble of voices and horrible crunching sounds, and most of the bugs skittered back off him. He was pulled to his feet.
"Quick, get in!" said a familiar voice, and someone helped him climb into some kind of vehicle, and then brushed away the remaining bugs. Nearby, more familiar voices were whooping and hollering with glee.
He took in the changed situation. He was sitting in one of the ride's modified Jeeps with seating for twelve. Minnie was at the wheel, gunning the car through the cavern in short bursts, while Daisy and Max Goof (!) helped the others climb aboard and Aladdin and Jack Skellington (!!!) defended the car from the bugs. The whooping and hollering, he saw in the glare of the headlights, came from Timon and Pumbaa, who were plowing through the horde, snacking as they went, clearing a path.
"Hey, check it out, Pumbaa! They have scorpions!" said Timon. He selected one and bit into it with a cringe of anticipation. "Wow, that's got a kick!" Pumbaa was sucking up trails of ants and spiders like a vacuum cleaner with tusks. Soon they had made it through the cavern, and the two animals scrambled aboard the car. The downside was that they were traveling through the temple along the normal ride route, which meant that the four rescuees found themselves back on the bridge, heading toward the Snake Temple.
"Uh, Minnie?" said Mickey, hopping a row of seats in order to take the one next to her. "We've already been this way, and Fluffy's pretty mad at us."
"Well, I'm not about to try turning around here," said Minnie as the bridge rocked and creaked under the weight of the Jeep. "Guys, did you hear that?"
"We're on it!" said Aladdin, standing cautiously at the side of the vehicle and readying a lethal-looking khopesh. Jack adopted a combat-ready crouch on the other side. Minnie hit the gas, and the car careened through the Snake Temple at speed, headlights flashing in time with the growls of the engine. Fluffy slithered out of a hole in the wall and charged the vehicle, hood already spread, but stopped at the sight of Jack Skellington with his bony fingers curled to strike, possibly mistaking him for one of the temple's rightful inhabitants. Then they were through, and the Jeep was bouncing down the muddy incline into the Shrine of Skulls. The turbulence shook Max loose from his seat, and Goofy nearly fell out himself in the effort of keeping his son onboard. Only with some very deft handling was Minnie able to keep the car on the path.
They left the Shrine of Skulls and headed down the slope parallel to the edge of the lava pit. It was definitely bubbling more ferociously than it had been earlier—the temple was waking up and taking exception to the intrusion. There was a savage roar that seemed to come from every part of the ceiling and walls, and the road trembled. A huge bubble of lava burst, sending incandescent lumps of molten rock flying narrowly over their heads.
"Minnie, get us out of here!" Daisy yelled.
"I am!" said Minnie as the Jeep plunged into the dark subbasement tunnels. "What do you think I'm doing? This thing only goes—"
"Watch it there!" said Jack, neatly plucking a pouncing rat out of the air. "Aw…he's a cute little fella, isn't he?"
"Are you nuts? Get that germy thing outa here!" said Max, swatting the rat out of Jack's hand. In the next moment, a dozen more rats jumped into the car from an overhanging branch, and everyone not currently occupied with driving spent a squeamish moment clearing them all out. By the time they were done, Minnie was slowing the car as it pulled up to the mouth of the poison dart corridor.
"Uh-oh," said Donald, slouching in his seat. "Remember the pebble?"
"What pebble?" said Daisy, an instant before Minnie hit the gas. The tires squealed, the vehicle jerked into motion, and then it was just a matter of speed and luck. Darts peppered the air, pinging off the sides of the vehicle and missing the passengers by millimeters. Aladdin managed to parry a few with his khopesh, while Jack used himself as a humanoid shield, since being dead already, he couldn't be harmed by them. After the longest ten seconds of their collective lives (and unlife), they made it through.
"Way to go, Minnie!" said Mickey. "Nice work on the defense too, guys."
"We're not home free yet, you know," Minnie pointed out, barely slowing at all as the tunnel curved right and slanted slightly upward. The ceiling was higher here than in the previous areas, and a pair of smooth stone ridges protruded from the walls about halfway up, like rails…which was exactly what they were.
"Oh, that is clever!" said Jack as the rails' cargo shifted out of equilibrium and began rolling down toward them. That cargo was, of course, a multi-ton stone sphere roughly ten feet across.
"Is it clever to get squashed flat as a pancake?" Max squeaked.
"If it is, then call me an idiot!" said Timon.
"Hold onto your teeth, everybody!" said Minnie, flooring the gas pedal. The engine sputtered as it tried to haul the car up the incline at top speed. There was no way they were going to make it to the top before the boulder dropped off the rails and smashed them like the bugs they had faced only moments before. Then there was a noise like a small explosion, and the engine roared, and the Jeep surged up the hill, and then down into a hidden corkscrew tunnel. The boulder dropped, missing the vehicle by less than a foot, and they all heard the thunderous crash behind them as Minnie yanked the wheel. One skidding, squealing moment later, she finally let the Jeep coast to a halt beside the foot of a vertical shaft, where the pulverized remains of the sphere were still settling and sending up puffs of dust.
Minnie set the handbrake and climbed out of the car.
"Where are you going?" said Daisy.
"I," said Minnie loftily, "am walking the rest of the way."
"Sounds good to me," said Aladdin, hopping to the ground. "I'm not used to these contraptions anyway—I prefer Carpet."
"I guess we'll all walk," said Mickey. "We're past the danger now." He caught up to his girlfriend. "That was amazing, Minnie! Where did you learn to drive like that?"
Minnie looked at him as though he had grown a second head. "Mickey, I live in Southern California. The Temple of Mara has got nothin' on the Hollywood Freeway."
The image in the bubble constantly wavered and distorted with the motion of the water, which didn't help matters.
"This is pointless," Captain Hook growled. "We're never going to find out anything this way. We need a view of the land."
Ursula rolled over and gave him a withering glance. "What I need," she said, "is some quiet. It's not easy to perform this kind of spell without my cauldron, you know."
"What are they doing, anyway?" asked Madam Mim, squeezing to the front of the group of Villains gathered around Ursula's luxury aquarium tank to watch her far-seeing spell. "It's gone all murky."
"They're finding a good vantage point," Ursula explained. "The moat was a miss; I admit it…but it connects to almost every other body of water in the park. They just have to find a spot where they can see without being seen and that has a view of the Castle."
"Can't you give them any instructions?" asked Scar between licks of his paw. He and Shere Khan had re-settled their mutual pecking order…for the time being.
"Sorry, furball, the communication is one-way only."
The bubble brightened. A new image resolved: a panoramic view of the Plaza Hub, with Sleeping Beauty Castle to the left side and the Tomorrowland entrance straight ahead. The view was from a very low angle, maybe even slightly below ground level, but all the structures were clearly recognizable.
"Ah! Perfect!" said Ursula.
"Huh," Mim mused. "Where are they?"
"There was a lot of crowding as the Villains pressed forward, squinting at the bubble as though it would suddenly develop an inset map with a little circle labeled YOU ARE HERE.
Cruella turned to one side and started tracing lines and circles in the air with her cigarette smoke. "Oh, I see! It's the pond at the Frontierland gate!"
"So now what?" asked Scar, deliberately falling over onto his side with a muted whump.
"Now we wait," said Ursula. "As soon as Mickey Mouse gets back to the Castle from wherever he's been, we'll know. Then we can make our move."
"Far be it from me to criticize a colleague," Captain Hook lied, examining the shine on his hook with a detached air, "but why wait? Wouldn't it make more sense to strike while the mouse is away…so to speak?"
"Not," the Sea Witch said abruptly, "if we want all the fishes in the net at the same time."
Wicked laughter ensued.
To Be Continued…
A/N: Argh, sorry about the delay. It's been pretty crazy lately. I hope it was worth the wait!
On the other hand, I make no apology whatsoever for the Kingdom Hearts reference. I've been wanting to do that for a while, to add some flavor to the characters' "actor" personas, and I figured this was a good occasion for it.
In case you're wondering, the snake on the Indy ride really is called Fluffy. It's probably actually supposed to be male, but I thought it would be funnier if Mickey and the gang knew it as a female. I don't know whether the adjacent part of the ride is really called the Shrine of Skulls, but it seems like it would be, doesn't it?
It occurs to me that I'm having Minnie do a lot of crazy driving. First the Monorail, then the Atommobile, and now the Jeep. Well, why not? Everyone needs a niche.
—Karalora
