Welcome back! No, your eyes aren't decieving you, that really is the title therer. So you know what's going to happen. So, I've invited one of the Cauldron Born to do the disclaimer.

Cauldron Born: ".............."

We're waiting.

Cauldron Born: "............."

Okay, this is going nowhere, I'll just do this myself. I don't own Kingdom Hearts, Disney, Square Enix, or anything else. Just my plot and O.C.s. On with the show...

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Chapter 46: Cauldron Born

"That sounds a lot like the Horned King." Bariss said.

They were sitting in Jack's house. His study was large, and the walls were covered by book cases, filled with a wide variety of books (though most were unpleasant to read). There were a few tables in the room, on which rested a few 'interesting' items. These included a shrunken head, and a bottle of something with a horrible smell. There were a few traces of Jack's Christmas obsession. There was a bit of tinsel hanging around the room, and a book of Christmas carols sat in a chair.

It was an odd combination in the same room. There were a few burned out Christmas lights wrapped around an electric chair. Everyone was careful to stay away from it, as it was still plugged in.

Sora thought for a moment, and Donald voiced his thoughts. "What does he want in a graveyard?"

Jack tapped his bony finger to his chin in thought. "Well... We did bury Oogie Boogie there. A piece of him, anyway."

Sora's head shot up. "Do you think he wants to bring Oogie back again? Like Maleficent did?"

"I don't see how he could. We burned the sack, and buried his brain-bug."

"He's very powerful." Bariss said. "You'd be surprised what he can do if he has the opportunity."

Jack shot up from his chair, with a set look on his face. "Let's check the graveyard, maybe we'll find a trace of him there."

He led the way out of the house, and the rest filed up behind him.

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"So you want my help?" Oogie's shadow on the moon asked. "Well, normally I'd jump at the chance, but there's one little problem I can see with that... I don't have a BODY!"

"Not a problem." The Horned King responded with a wave of his hand. "That can –and will- be easily remedied."

"Hmmmm..." The shadow paused for thought. "Alright, I'll do it. On one condition."

"Very well. Name it."

"I want control of this world myself, and revenge on the bone-head that put me in the grave!" The shadow on the moon (which only he could see) looked enraged at the very thought of Jack Skellington.

The Horned King nodded. "Fair enough. We have an accord, Oogie Boogie."

"Perfect! The deal is struck! So, where do we start?"

"I believe you're familiar with a Doctor Finkelstein. He currently has a project in the works that should be just what you need..."

"Oooh, I'm liking the sound of this."

Suddenly, another voice cut into the conversation. "Mister Oogie!"

The Horned King spun around, his hand outstretched to cast a spell should the newcomer prove to be a threat. As it turned out, there were three of them. Three small children dressed in trick-or-treating costumes. One devil, one witch, and one skeleton.

Lock, Shock, and Barrel were standing by the iron gates leading to the graveyard. They jumped at the sight of the Horned King ready to incinerate them.

"Relax, partner." Oogie said. "These are a few acquaintances of mine. Why don't we see if we can put 'em to work? It'd be better than vaporizing 'em."

The Horned King pondered this for a moment, and nodded. "You three, come here."

The trio tentatively stepped toward the undead creature. "We have a job for you."

"Is it bad?" Lock asked.

"Oh yes. Very, very bad."

Oogie laughed.

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Sora, Jack, and the rest walked into the graveyard, eyes scanning the area for anything out of the ordinary (besides the obvious). Not a tombstone was out of place.

"We put it back here." Jack said, pointing to a tiny, nondescript headstone that was easily missed. He walked right over to it and bent down to get a better look at the grave. "Oh no..."

Sora peeked over his shoulder to see what was up. He saw a tiny hole in the ground before the grave. The Horned King had dug up the beetle's body.

"What could this mean?"

"That we've got trouble." Sora said. He mostly said this because there were now Heartless in the graveyard. Shadows were charging toward them, accompanied by White Knights, Trick Ghosts, Graveyards, and Ghouls.

The Ghoul Heartless looked like floating, semi-transparent violet ghosts. They had glowing yellow eyes peering out from under the mass of violet. They also had bony skeleton hands that were detached from the main body, floating in front of them. On top of each of the hands was a small Heartless emblem.

The group jumped into action immediately. Sora brought the Keyblade down on the first Shadow, and dodged away from a purple-tinted fireball a Ghoul shot at him. He shot a shard of ice at it, destroying it. He spun around and impaled a White Knight. It continued to try and claw at him, until he ripped the Keyblade out its side.

Jack leapt over Sora, and landed in front of a pair of Trick Ghosts. Both of his hands became engulfed in fire. He stuck them out, and plunged them into their chests. They caught fire, and he grabbed them by their top throats. He tossed one at a White Knight in front of Kairi, and smashed the other into a Shadow at his feet.

Riku called up his Guardian. It smashed the Shadows in front of him into paste. Riku spun around and cleaved a Ghoul in two. He fired Dawn energy at a group of Heartless running into the graveyard. They exploded, nearly ripping the iron gate off its hinges. He rushed at a Graveyard with the Guardian right behind him. The Guardian pried its lid open, and Riku shot blasts of Dawn inside before it could attack them.

Donald dove away from a White Knight's ferocious slash. He crashed into a tombstone, but lept to his feet just as the Heartless dug it's claws into the headstone. Donald ignited the tip of his staff, as it was trying to pull itself free. He smashed it into it's head, incinerating it. He turned and used the spare energy to take out another three coming toward him.

Yuffie threw her shuriken at a Ghoul, cutting right through it. As it came back to it's owner, it beheaded two Trick Ghosts. She caught it with one hand, and stabbed through the face of a Shadow behind her. She ran forward, leaping easily over a large headstone. She rolled forward and struck a White Knight below the chin. Three Shadows jumped on top of her, but she vanished in a puff of smoke, and was suddenly standing over them. She took them out with three clean swipes of a dagger.

Goofy leapt into the air, and landed on top of a Shadow, crushing it beneath his shield. He jumped back up and slammed it into a White Knight, sending it stumbling backwards. He followed with another hard bash in its face. He spun around, and threw the shield like a discus. It cut through seven Heartless before flying back to him.

Nehrut's blade sliced through three Heartless. He jumped into the air, and brought it down hard on another, cutting it vertically in half. He blasted a few of them backwards into the face of a tomb. Dust and dirt fell from the ceiling from the impact. He cut down another one horizontally, and twisted around to knock a Graveyard backwards, to where it landed on its lid, unable to open it back up.

Axel leapt into the air, and unleashed fire on the Heartless, burning a dozen of them. He landed and blocked a Ghoul's weaker fire with his chakrams. He tossed one at the offending Heartless, and the other one to the one next to it. They came back to him, and he threw them both at a Graveyard just as it opened up.

Mickey cut the legs out from under a White Knight. He jumped over the dying Heartless and brought Kingdom Crown down on another one. He spun around in a circle with his blade horizontal, destroying the Shadows rushing at him with claws slicing. He leapt into the air and plunged his blade into the ground, light energy shot outwards, eliminating four more.

Kairi blasted a group of Heartless with fire, and dodged to the side to avoid return fire from two Trick Ghosts. She quickly closed the distance between them, and destroyed them both with one strike. She ducked under a flashing claw, and cut the Heartless in half. She jumped through the area it had occupied and destroyed three more with a thunderbolt.

With only five Heartless left in the graveyard, Bariss cracked her whip and wrapped it around the legs of the two remaining White Knights, pulling them towards her. Her sai flashed, taking them both out at once. She then threw her blade, destroying the last Shadow. She jumped high into the air, and her whip took out the fourth. When she landed, she picked up her sai and stabbed in between the eyes of the last one.

Once that had happened, the graveyard returned almost immediately to its eerie peacefulness.

"Hey, we didn't cause as much property damage as I thought we would." Nehrut said, examining a headstone with fresh claw marks on it. Then he looked at his own new claws, and realized that he had, in fact, done that by accident.

"Well, we know that the Horned King is here," Mickey deduced, "And that he's probably planning something with Oogie Boogie's 'body.' But where do we go from here? We have no leads."

As fate would have it, the perfect lead presented itself at that moment. From the direction of Moonlight Hill came the three familiar figures of Lock, Shock, and Barrel. They were laughing their heads off, which usually meant that they were up to no good. They ran in the direction of the Hinterlands, not noticing Jack or the off-worlders hiding behind a lot of graves.

From the gates they had come through came a terrifying person. He was wearing a red cloaked hood with a rim of brown fur around the neck. His face was skeletal, and he had antlers growing from the top of his head. His eyes were glowing red.

"That's the fellow I told you about." Jack whispered to Sora.

"That's the Horned King alright." Bariss confirmed. "What is he doing?"

The Horned King had stopped, and was waving his hands in the air. A black cauldron appeared in front of him with a flash, already filled with bubbling, blood-red liquid. He took a strange powder from an inside pocket of his robes, and emptied it into the cauldron. It let off a brief flash.

"Arise my messengers of the dead!" The Horned King summoned. "Your time has arrived."

The effect of his words was terrifying. The cauldron began to shake, and a huge column of gold fire and red smoke exploded from it. The fiery shape of a skull appeared above the cauldron, leering out at its surroundings. A surge of lightning shot from the cauldron up at it, and it quickly lost its shape and sank into the cauldron.

In contrast to the horrifying light show moments before, now an eerie, greenish mist seeped from the cauldron, slowly and silently spreading to cover the whole graveyard.

"Arise, Cauldron Born."

The ground seemed to shake, as all around them, the truly dead beings came to life. Mounds of earth parted, and bony hands reached out above the ground. Headstones cracked, tombs fell open. Out of their graves came dozens of undead creatures.

Most were humanoid; some had rags that had once been clothes hanging from their bones. Most of them were only bones, though there were a number with patches of skin remaining. All of them held weapons, as if they had been buried with them.

They marched toward the Horned King, paying absolutely no attention to the group. Sora lost count of them around eighty. They stopped in front of their master.

He looked them all over, and nodded in satisfaction. "You'll do. Your orders are to storm Halloween Town. Lay waste to anything in your path. With the exception of a few. Three small children in masks will run into the town after you. They are not to be harmed, and you will provide them aid if they request it."

"Also, if you encounter any of four beings using a Keyblade, try to capture them alive. Anyone, or anything else, can be destroyed with the exception of the laboratory in town."

"Now go!"

The Cauldron Born stomped off toward the town with absolutely no noise apart from their footsteps. Once most of them had left, the Horned King smiled horribly, and looked directly at the tomb that Sora and the others were hiding behind. "You may want to stop them, before they do too much damage."

So he knew we were here.

The party of eleven leapt from their hiding places and pointed their weapons at him. The creature simply smiled wider and disappeared in a burst of fire and red smoke, in similar fashion to Hades and Maleficent.

Jack turned to them with a grave expression. "We have to stop those creatures before they destroy everything!"

"Right. Let's split up. Some of us will go after those pranksters, and the rest of us will protect Halloween Town."

After a moment of deliberation, it was decided that Donald, Goofy, and Axel would go to the Hinterlands and deal with Lock, Shock, and Barrel. The rest would take one of Jack's shortcuts to Halloween Town, and get the civilians someplace safe before the Cauldron Born arrived.

"Be careful." Sora warned Axel before he left after Donald and Goofy. "They're a lot more dangerous than they look."

"Relax, man. It's three little kids against a knight, wizard, and ex-Nobody. How bad can they be?" He gave him a mock salute before running toward the Hinterlands.

"Bad." Sora said to his departing back.

"I wonder how many cuts and bruises he'll have when he gets back." Roxas wondered.

Sora mentally nodded and walked into the crypt Jack opened for them. It was part of a large, underground tunnel system that honeycombed all of Halloween Town and a great deal beyond.

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The answer to Roxas's question? Well, you'll find out soon enough.

Hope you've enjoyed this, and next chapter, you're in for a pleasant surprise!

Please review!