Chapter 20: The Claw:
World of Toys – Elevator Shaft:
"Guys, hurry!" Sora called out as he dodged another blow from the massive (from a toy's perspective anyway) Heartless that had materialized on the roof of the elevator car in response to Al's greed. He, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy were keeping the demon busy while Buzz and the others attempted to rescue Woody, Jessie, and Bullseye from the suitcase. After entering Al's Toy Barn, Kairi and the others had managed to find their way to the rotund owner's office at the back of the store with only minimal trouble. Buzz had almost woken up another Buzz Lightyear toy by accident when he tried to look at the new model which had a light-up utility belt. Thankfully, Goofy kept him on task and averted a potential case of mistaken identity. From there, they'd stowed away in Al's bag when he returned to his apartment to begin packing the Woody's Roundup Collection for his flight to Japan.
Now, as the warriors from another world fought to keep the Heartless off their backs, the toys raced to free their friend from his suitcase prison before Al reached the ground floor. Between the two Keyblade wielders and Donald's magic, the Heartless was soon defeated. Unfortunately, they were too late. By the time Slinky managed to get the suitcase open, they had already reached the first level of the building. Stinky Pete yanked Woody back inside as Al exited the elevator and walked briskly towards his car. Thinking quickly, Mr. Potato Head threw his plastic bowler hat like a discus, jamming the front doors before they could swing closed again. With the doors held open for them, the heroes sprinted out the door towards the curb, arriving just in time to watch Al drive away towards the airport.
"How are we gonna get him now?" Rex asked defeatedly. Mr. Potato Head looked around the parking lot.
"Pizza anyone?" the plastic vegetable suggested as the gang looked over to find a vacant pizza delivery truck parked a few spots over.
"Go! Go! Go!" Buzz shouted as he urged everyone into the van. While nobody liked the idea that they were basically committing grand theft auto, in the group's defense, the toys were only borrowing it and asking the pizza delivery guy for a ride would simply make him panic at the sight of toys coming to life. They were running out of time and it was the only way to make it there in time. So with no other option, they piled into the truck. As soon as he jumped inside, Buzz began barking out orders. "Slinky, Donald, and Goofy, take the pedals. Rex, Kairi, and Sora, you navigate. Hamm and Potato, operate the levers and knobs." As the group scrambled into their assigned positions, Rex noticed three little green squeeze toy aliens hanging from the roof of the truck by a string, evidently as a toy order with the meal.
"Strangers," one of them said. "From the outside." Sora noticed Buzz's mumbled "Oh no," and assumed that Buzz had encountered these kinds of toys before and this behavior was probably typical of them. Well every toy's got their own personality, he thought to himself. Who am I to judge one way or another? Stinky Pete being the obvious and unsaid exception to that idea, given that he was actively opposing Woody's attempts to go home to Andy. Rex frantically announced that Al was at a red light.
"Maximum power, Slink!" Buzz called out. The springy dog slammed his front paw on the gas pedal as hard as he physically could. When the car refused to move, Kairi jumped down and kicked the gear shift into Drive. And with that, the Pizza Planet Delivery Truck sped out of the parking lot just as the traffic light turned green. The race was on! It was a frantic ride with Rex, Sora, and Kairi frantically calling out directions while the rest of the group bar Slinky and Buzz stumbled and tumbled around as the commandeered truck swerved in between lanes as they hurried to catch up with Al. In all the chaos, the squeeze toy aliens came loose from the roof of the vehicle, and Mr. Potato Head barely managed to haul them back inside through the open window. They were too busy focusing to outright laugh, but Sora and Kairi both giggled when the aliens declared that they were eternally greatful to the plastic potato for saving their lives. Clearly that would be amusing for a while.
They reached the airport right behind Al and swiftly devised a plan to smuggle themselves inside to rescue Woody without attracting attention to themselves. Using a disposable pet carrier left near the curb, they made their way inside as quickly as they could. Despite a near miss at being discovered when a little girl approached their cover, only for Slinky to spontaneously start "barking" to scare her off, they made it inside the baggage check in area. Despite Buzz's instructions that they just needed to find Als's suitcase, the amount of bags was staggering to everyone. Sora, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy were all blown away by the amount of baggage inside the labyrinth of conveyor belts going in every direction. Even by the standards of Coalition spaceports, this was unbelievably complex.
Everyone was thrown violently from the pet carrier as they slid down the metal slide and into the maze. But when they got their bearings, they were able to spot two identical green suitcases on conveyor belts going in the opposite directions.
"You take that one," Buzz instructed the rest of the group as he and Slinky began sprinting off in one direction. "Sora, Slinky, Donald, and I'll take the other one." After a quick good luck kiss from Kairi, Sora dashed off to catch up with Buzz while everyone else jumped down to the next level and scrambled over bags in pursuit of the second green case. This is like the world's biggest obstacle course, Sora thought to himself as he used his darker moves to warp past suitcases while Buzz, Slinky, and Donald scrambled over and around the bags in the hopes of finding Woody. Then disaster struck as Slinky's slower moving hindquarters got snagged on a handle that was diverted in another direction.
"I've got him!" Sora called out before warping across to where the canine was being dragged. "You guys go get Woody!" Meanwhile, Kairi and the others reached their case only to find that it contained nothing but expensive camera equipment. While all of this was happening, Buzz and Donald were leaping from suitcase to suitcase like they were running parkour along the rooftops of Agrabah. They reached the case, only for Stinky Pete to send Buzz flying off the edge of their conveyor belt with a single punch.
"Take that, space toy!" the prospector snapped. He'd possessed a bitter hatred of all things pertaining to astronauts and space ever since the rising popularity of astronaut toys led to Woody's Roundup getting cancelled.
"Hey!" Woody shouted as he forced his way out of the suitcase. "Nobody does that to my friend!" With that, Woody was quickly locked into a rough and tumble brawl with the rotund miner. Deciding that the most expedient method of ending the fight would be to get everyone else out of the case as quickly as possible, Donald hopped into the case as the two brawlers fell out of it, using a Blizzara spell to hold the lid open. With a quick Zero Graviga spell, the foam insulation blocks on the top layer were lifted out, allowing Jessie and Bullseye to climb free of their spongey prison. As Woody and Stinky Pete continued to brawl, Heartless began dropping down onto the conveyor belt from above.
Since none of the toys had any experience with fighting the dark monsters, the feathered court magician of Disney Castle prepared to jump back out of the travel case to deal with the monsters. But before either he, Jessie or Bullseye could climb out, a barrier spell went up, sending them both bouncing back against the inside of the plastic case. The trio banged their fists (or hooves in Bullseye's case) helplessly against the enchanted barricade, despite the futility. As the demonic horde closed in around them, Stinky Pete tore Woody's arm open again with his pickaxe, causing the cowboy to scream.
"It's your choice, Woody," the prospector threatened coldly. "You can go to Japan together, or in pieces. If he fixed you once, he can fix you again! Now get in the box!"
"Never!" the cowboy spat. As the human Pete raised his axe in preparation to slide Woody to pieces like a PG-rated axe murderer, he shrieked from the sudden flashing lights as Buzz, Sora, Slinky, and the rest of the group arrived using the flash on the cameras Hamm, Kairi, and Potato Head had uncovered to blind Stinky Pete and drive him backwards. The flash had the added benefit of forcing the Heartless swarms to shrink back in terror, distracting the little terrors long enough for Sora, Kairi, and Goofy to race in and exterminate them all. As Buzz held the prospector in the air, the elderly toy's angry ranting about how children destroyed toys caused another massive Heartless to appear. This time, it was almost the size of a normal human, with a large belly, a massive pickaxe, and a long, flowing beard. In short, it looked like a life-size Heartless duplicate of Stinky Pete.
While the other toys strapped Stinky Pete to a loose backpack heading out to the baggage claim (Woody deciding that learning the true meaning of "play time" would be a fitting punishment for the toy who had been motivated by never being bought, let alone played with), Sora, Kairi and Goofy set about destroying the Heartless Miner, as Kairi quickly dubbed it. It proved to be relatively easy, and once it was defeated, the barrier went down. But it was too late to get everyone out of the suitcase. Bullseye managed to jump clear just as the green travel box went careening down the trucks that were preparing to deliver the passengers' luggage to the plane.
"Donald! Jessie! " Sora and Woody each cried out as the man loading the bags onto the truck tossed Jessie and Donald (who'd been caught dangling out of the box as they reached the bottom) back into the suitcase and threw it onto the truck. Thinking fast, Woody whistled and hopped into Bullseye's saddle. Buzz was right behind him, while Sora gave a quick kiss to his fiancé before both toys and Keyblade wielder slid down the ramp to rescue their friends. The truck was pulling away as they reached the bottom, and while Buzz and Woody raced after it on horseback, Sora combined the forward momentum of the rollers at the bottom of the ramp with the Glide ability he'd learned from Peter Pan and his Flowmotion techniques he'd learned in the Realm of Sleep to practically fly over to the truck and narrowly land on the back of the rear trailer.
"Hey! High! Hey! Giddyup!" Woody shouted as his trusty steed gained ground against the speeding baggage truck. When they reached the back, the cowboy stood up, and, with a boost from Buzz, grabbed onto the handle of one of the bags and was quickly whisked along as the truck raced across the tarmac towards the plane to Japan that Al was boarding even now. Sora gave him a helping hand as he reached the roof of the rear trailer, and, spotting the green case at the front of the train of bag trailers, the two sprinted forwards to rescue their friends. Unfortunately, the truck slowed to a stop just as they landed in the front trailer. The cowboy and the Key Bearer quickly hid themselves inside someone's golf bag to avoid detection, and a few minutes later, they were loaded onto the plane. Unzipping the bag, they climbed through the airplane's cargo hold towards the case with their friends trapped inside.
"Excuse me, sir and ma'am," Woody greeted playfully as he opened the case to find Donald soothing Jessie's clausterphobia. "But I think you're on the wrong flight. Come on, guys, it's time to go home." Jessie and Donald quickly climbed out of the suitcase, but right as they were about to sneak out the loading door of the cargo hold, the baggage loaders slammed it shut. Jessie began to panic before Woody and Sora noticed a bright light coming from what could only be an opening in the bottom of the plane where the wheels were. They climbed over the boxes and towards the opening to find that the plane was already in motion. If they didn't get off now, they'd be trapped on board until the flight landed in Japan.
"You sure about this!?" Jessie asked, shouting to be heard over the roar of the engines.
"No!" Woody answered bluntly. "Let's go!" Despite the fear and uncertainty of the situation, Woody began climbing down the landing gear while Sora and Donald slid down with parkour and Flowmotion skills honed by years of practice. As the two toys slowly climbed down to where the magaician and the Keyblade Master were waiting, Woody slipped and fell from the metal beam he'd been standing on. Donald quickly caught him and brought him over to them with a Magnega spell, and Sora repeated the same for Jessie. As Woody fell, his hat was blown off by the gust of the plane's turbine engines.
"What's a cowboy without his hat!?" Buzz called out as he rode into view on Bullseye, Woody's hat in his hand. Wow, that horse is fast! Sora thought to himself with an amazed stare at the fact that a plastic and fabric horse was able to keep pace with a speeding jet liner. As the plane turned onto the runway and began to accelerate, Buzz pulled Bullzeye in between the tires so that he was right between the flat, narrow ledge at the bottom of the thick pole that lead up to the rest of the landing gear. One by one, the group hopped onto the horse's back, and Bullseye quickly dashed out of the way as the plane flew down the runway and took off into the sky. They all cheered in celebration until they were nearly run over by another plane as it landed.
"Lets… Go home," Woody remarked once they'd all calmed down. They all agreed to that, and despite the extra load, Bullseye carried them all back to the baggage ramp, where they found the others waiting for them. Kairi tackled Sora in a hug and planted a long, romantic kiss on his lips when they returned. Goofy hugged Donald tightly, much to the duck's embarrassment (but he secretly enjoyed the attention deep down), while the rest of the toys swarmed around Woody in celebration. Hamm and Potato Head quickly commandeered an empty baggage truck to bring the toys back to Andy's House, and the off-worlders decided that it was time for them to go home too.
Two more worlds to go and we're at the halfway point of the story. You all know that next up is the Black Cauldron world. After that will focus on a major 3-way battle between the Legion, the Coalition, and the Hellfire Club, and a certain series protagonist is going to get caught in the middle. You can all guess where the story goes from there. If you're wondering why the Heartless boss fights tend to go quickly in-universe, it's mainly because after six years with no Bag Of Spilling (TV Tropes term for when the sequel makes your character restart all their stats and items at Lv. 1), there are very few breeds of Heartless that give our heroes a real challenge in battle.