The orange sun was also starting to set in their own world when they landed safely on the grey, barren ground in the center of the circle of scraggly, dead, holiday-door trees. Most of the cheeping and twittering birds had ceased to peep and chirp by now and the children hoped it was because they were just exhausted and not that they'd suffocated in the bags. Shock very carefully opened one up and peeked inside to check, and fortunately it seemed like at least most of them were only sleeping.

"How's your hand?" Barrel asked his middle cohort. It was still quite swollen - in fact, it actually looked worse than it did before.

"It doesn't hurt." Lock lied, "It just itches really bad." He'd been trying to avoid looking at it until now, but since it didn't seem to be getting any better he finally made himself inspect it closely. It looked just as swollen as it felt, but then he noticed something he hadn't before: there appeared to be a little sliver poking out of his palm, like a tiny thorn. "I guess it didn't actually bite me, it looks like it stuck me with a little blow dart full of poison or something." He didn't really know how else to describe it.

"What? What kind of insect uses a blow dart, you moron?" Shock said, closing up the bag full of birds and grabbing Lock's hand to inspect it herself.

"OW, careful!" he hissed, trying to jerk his hand away but she held on tightly.

"I thought you said it didn't hurt?" she smirked, so he gritted his teeth and let her look at and prod his hand. "Weird, it does look like a little blow dart." she murmured.

"I told you!" Lock said crankily, feeling a grim sort of satisfaction that she had to agree with his assessment.

"What if your hand falls off?" Barrel asked eagerly, poking his head over Lock's shoulder to look at the little poison blow dart in question. Lock gave him a nasty glare and Shock had to work hard to hold in a snicker. "That would be so cool!" Barrel continued, and Lock was just about to punch him with his good hand until he added, "Then what if Dr. Finkelstein gives you a new hand with gigantic poisonous claws on it or something? Or a super-strong robot hand?"

Shock rolled her eyes but Lock actually grinned a little bit at that. He'd prefer to keep his own hand, but if it did fall off then having poisonous claws or a super-strong robot hand would be a pretty good consolation prize. Shock pulled the small knife she always kept with her out of her pocket and this time Lock managed to pull his puffy hand out of her grip. "What the crap do you think you're doing with that?!" he demanded, eyeing the knife suspiciously.

"I'm gonna try to get that little thorn thing out of your hand, dummy. Unless you'd rather keep it in there forever."

"Fine, but stop the tub first, I don't need you cutting my whole arm off!" He wasn't too keen on the idea of Shock taking a knife to him, but he doubted he would be able to do it himself with his non-dominant hand - and he certainly wasn't going to let Barrel try it - so once the tub lurched to a stop he held out his swollen hand, keeping a close eye on Shock and preparing to yank it away in case she tried anything funny. Fortunately for him she did exactly what she said she would, gently scraping the edge of the blade against his skin until the stinger finally came out.

"There." she said proudly, flicking the knife over the side of the tub so that the stinger would fall onto the ground. "You're welcome."

"Yeah, whatever. Thanks." he grumbled. 'Thanks' was one of his least-favorite words to say, but there was still time for her to stab him so he thought he'd better do it.

"Anyway, let's go send all these things down to Oogie Boogie, then come back to town and steal some dinner." said Shock as they started along towards their treehouse again. They were careful to avoid town so Jack wouldn't see that they had their tub filled up with things that weren't Sandy Claws. They were running out of time and they worried that he might get mad at them for cutting it so close, but there was simply no way they could defy the Boogie Man. They had to fulfill his missions first because while it was possible that Jack might beat them for waiting so long to get Sandy Claws, it was absolutely certain that Oogie would beat them if they disobeyed so they went with their best odds.

The tub lumbered through the back door and into it's place in the bathroom, then the children carefully took the various sacks and traps filled with animals and eggs out of the tub and over to Oogie's shrine. They collected every trap and small cage that would fit down the chute, lit the ceremonial candles and formed a little assembly line: Shock pulled a bird or bug out of the sack and checked to see if it was still alive. If it was, then she passed it to Lock who put them in the cages, but if they had died from being captured or during the journey she set them aside - they would eat those themselves later. Once Lock had stuffed as many birds and bugs into a cage as would fit he handed it to Barrel, who stood on his tiptoes to drop the cage down the chute to their master. Once all of the living birds and bugs had been sent to their deaths they were left with two huge sacks full of eggs.

"What should we do with these? We can't send them down the chute, they'll just break all over and then we'll have to clean it up." said Shock, and her cohorts shrugged. They hadn't thought about that.

"We'll just bring them down next time he calls us." decided Lock, and everyone agreed that was a good idea.

Suddenly Barrel remembered something: "Hang on, one of those bags is full of the candy ones!" he said, sitting down beside Shock and poking his head inside and rummaging around to figure out which one.

"You wasted a bag on candy?!" Shock whispered, not wanting to risk Oogie overhearing. They were pretty certain that he couldn't actually hear them from all the way down in his lair, but she didn't want to take a chance no matter how remote the possibility.

"Don't be such a worrywart. We just sent down tons of food and like you said earlier, we don't know if he even likes eggs." Lock said casually (though still quietly) as he scooped up the pile of dead birds and bugs and headed towards the kitchen. "Why don't you cook these tonight, then we don't have to go to town to get dinner."

Shock frowned at him. "Why don't you cook them?" she said crankily, but Lock was already in the kitchen and didn't reply. She'd been planning to cook them eventually anyway - like always - but it was still annoying when he told her to do something.

"Please don't make him cook them." Barrel pleaded as he cracked open an egg full of jelly beans. "He's awful at it."

Shock frowned at him next. "It wouldn't kill you to learn how to cook, either, y'know."

Barrel gave her what he hoped was an ingratiating smile and held out another plastic egg as a peace offering. "But you're really good at it!" he wheedled. Shock wasn't quite as vain as Lock was, but she was still susceptible to compliments and Barrel wasn't above using flattery to stay in her good graces.

"I know I am." she said grumpily, but took the egg he handed her before heading to the kitchen and Barrel followed along behind her. They found Lock putting a cookie sheet full of the dead insects into the oven to dry them and Shock began plucking the birds to put them in the icebox for later. "We should still go to town tonight and get dinner. We don't have enough food for tomorrow and we have GOT to go to Christmas Town! There's only three days left and if we screw up Jack's going to do something awful to us." she said, shoving the pile of dead birds closer to Barrel so he could help pluck them.

All sorts of terrible images flashed through Barrel's mind at the thought. Did Jack have torture devices like Oogie did? Would he be mad enough to stretch them on the rack or hang them by their feet if they didn't catch Sandy Claws? Or would he just beat them black and green? Barrel wasn't sure they had enough of Sally's healing poultice to take care of all three of them if something like that happened. What if Jack got so mad that he ran them right out of town? Where would they go then? That thought terrified him and he hoped his older cohorts had a good plan for catching that fat old man.

"Yeah, okay." agreed Lock. He had forgotten that they only had three days left and this reminder actually made him feel a bit anxious, too. "Do we have any more of that stinky medicine stuff from Sally? I wanna see if it'll help this bug sting." he asked, scratching his swollen hand.

"I thought you said it didn't hurt?" giggled Barrel, repeating Shock's earlier teasing.

Lock glared at him and snapped, "It doesn't! It just itches!" He knew it would hurt quite a lot, but he smacked Barrel on the back of the head with his sore hand anyway - just so his cohorts would believe him when he said it didn't hurt.

"It's in the bathroom cupboard." Shock smirked as Lock left the kitchen, swishing his tail in annoyance.

When he got back he sat at the table to nurse his swollen, poultice-covered hand and keep an eye on the bugs in the oven while Shock showed Barrel how to gut the plucked birds. "Be careful, don't cut the guts open or you'll get crap all over the meat." she said, and Barrel scrunched up his nose in disgust and tried to keep his hand perfectly steady.

"And you'll have to eat the crappy ones." added Lock as he opened up the oven door to peek inside. Prepping the birds took several hours, especially with Barrel slowing them down, but Shock didn't mind because it was about time their littlest cohort started pulling a bit more of his own weight in the kitchen, and Lock didn't mind because it gave him that much longer to keep the poultice on his hand. It was soothing the pain and itching just as well as it had helped his broken ribs and bruised back, and he was starting to reassess his earlier decision to put Sally at the top of their prank-victim list because she might actually be a valuable person to have on their side. Finally all of the birds were put away in the icebox and the dried insects in jars so the trio donned their masks, grabbed a now-empty sack and headed to town to scrounge up some food for their journey to Christmas Town the next day.

The kids had been hoping that things would be a little quieter in town since it was quite late, but unfortunately with all the Christmas hustle and bustle that wasn't the case - though at least they didn't see Jack anywhere. The large wooden platform in the middle of the square seemed to be completed and now it was wrapped with strings of little orange decorative lights and had a ramp attached to it leading upwards towards the sky, and the children couldn't fathom what it could possibly be for. "What is that thing?" Lock asked the Man Under the Stairs as he wheeled by, and the monster gave the trio a rather wary look. He wasn't too fond of them since they were constantly sneaking up while he was sleeping and either loosening or greasing the wheels on his little scooter, which always led to some sort of accident.

"It's a take-off-ramp for Jack to fly off of." he answered.

"How's he gonna fly?" asked Barrel. He knew that the Pumpkin King could do some pretty amazing things, but to the best of his knowledge flying was not one of them.

But Shock was already putting it together in her head. "He's gonna do what Sandy Claws does: he must have some of those flying reindeer and they're gonna pull the sleigh and bring all these presents to the human kids, right?"

"That's right." the monster nodded, then he quickly wheeled away from them.

"So that must be why Jack wants us to catch Sandy Claws - he wants to do his job." Lock murmured out loud. He gave the take-off ramp an experimental kick but the construction was thick and sturdy and not rickety at all. If they'd had more time he would have tried to pry out some of the nails and screws to make it more dangerous - maybe they still could later if acquiring food went quickly.

Shock rolled her eyes at him. "Duh, you just now figured that out? You're so dumb, I knew that ages ago."

"Yeah right, you liar! You didn't know that until ol' wheely over there told us!" Lock snapped, feeling a bit embarrassed at the possibility that she may have figured that out before him.

"Yes I did!"

Lock got right up in her face and sneered, "Oh yeah? Prove it!"

"How am I supposed to prove that, moron?" she sneered back at him.

"I dunno, maybe you wrote it in your girly diary with a date on it or something! 'Dear diary, today I figured out that Jack wants to take over Sandy Claws's job. Thanks for being my only friend. Love, ugly, stupid Shock who nobody likes becau-'" But that's as far as he got because Shock shoved him in the chest with both hands, nearly knocking him over into the ramp.

"Shut up, Lock!" she shouted. "You think I'm dumb enough to keep a diary with you two buttheads around?" The truth was that she did actually have a diary, but she kept it extremely well hidden in a locked box under the floorboards beneath her bed and guarded by a hair-trigger bear trap that would snap the hand right off of anyone who dared touch it - only Shock knew how to disable it without getting snapped.

"I don't know, are you?" Lock said mockingly and he moved to shove her back but Barrel suddenly popped in-between them and got shoved instead. But the little ghoul didn't even care because he had something more important on his mind:

"Look! Barbecue!" he said excitedly, pushing his way past his bickering cohorts and they turned their heads to look where he was pointing.

"We have got to get some of that!" said Lock, and Shock agreed. Their fight was forgotten as they all three sniffed the air and breathed in the mouthwatering scent of spiced meats cooking over coals that Dennis the werewolf was tending to.

"How... are we... gonna... do it?" asked Barrel between deep sniffs. It just smelled so good.

Lock and Shock put their heads together for a moment to try and figure something out - there was a very large crowd around the barbecue pit and it would require a big distraction to get them all out of the way long enough for the trick-or-treaters to grab some for themselves. Finally Shock handed Barrel some matches and said, "Okay, go set the ramp on fire, as far away from everyone as possible so they don't see it too soon and put it out before me and Lock get some food. Start the fire by the lights so everyone will think they shorted out and caused it."

Barrel took the matches but felt uneasy about the plan because surely setting Jack's flying reindeer ramp on fire would get him into very, very deep trouble if he got caught. "Why do I have to do it?" he whined.

"You're the one who wants barbecue so bad." said Lock, though he wanted the delicious-smelling food just as much as Barrel did. He pulled the heavy lid off of a nearby manhole just far enough for the little ghoul to squeeze through and added, "Just jump down here before anyone sees you and meet us behind the apothecary. Got it?"

Barrel nodded reluctantly, but at least they had given him a better escape plan than just running away this time. He hid behind the ramp and watched his cohorts make their way closer to the food, and once Lock and Shock had snuck behind a nearby dumpster without anyone seeing them they gave him a thumbs-up signal across the town square. He struck several matches and held them to the ramp in various places next to the strings of little orange lights - it took a moment for the wood to catch fire, but then thick grey smoke began rising into the air. As soon as he felt the flames were well-established he quickly scooted down into the sewer and pulled the heavy manhole cover back over to close himself in. He pressed his ear against the holes in the cover and waited… and then he heard it.

"FIRE!" someone yelled, and Barrel giggled a bit as he climbed the rest of the way down the ladder. He lit a match to guide him as he sloshed through the murky green sludge oozing through the tunnels towards where Lock had told him to go, though he probably could have found his way without it. He and his cohorts knew the sewers and drainage pipes of Halloween Town like the backs of their hands by now, because those networks of tunnels were invaluable for enacting so many of their mischievous pranks. By the time he poked his head cautiously out of the manhole behind the apothecary he found Lock and Shock already waiting for him. They both looked a bit frazzled, but at least their sack was full.

"Whew, that was close!" breathed Lock.

"Too close!" panted Shock.

"Why? What happened?" Barrel asked as he climbed out of the sewer. He left the manhole lid off so that it would annoy whoever stumbled across it next - and maybe whoever that was would even fall into it, which would be even better.

"We didn't see that a few of the devils were nearby." Shock explained, and Barrel immediately understood: grown-up devils could put out fires almost as well as they could start them, so clearly his cohorts hadn't gotten as much time to steal the food as they had planned.

"Let's go home before someone notices they're missing some rat and mushroom kebabs." said Lock, and Barrel felt his tummy growl because rat and mushroom kebabs were his favorite kind.

"You're a mess." Shock teased him as they headed for the treehouse, and Barrel looked down at himself and saw that she was quite right. His costume was still covered in grass stains and dirt from Easter Town, and now he was also covered in green sludge from the knees down from running through the sewers.

"What else is new?" snickered Lock, but Barrel only grinned because it was pretty funny how filthy he was. Plus getting this filthy had been fun… except for maybe the part where he'd rolled all the way down that hill.

"How are we gonna catch Sandy Claws tomorrow?" Barrel asked as they rode the elevator cage up into their living room.

Lock shrugged. "We'll need to case the joint pretty good when we get there first. Then we'll probably set a trap like Shock said, and then stuff him in the bag when we catch him like we did to the king of Easter Town."

"What if he flies away before we can get him?" asked Barrel again.

"Sandy Claws doesn't fly, only his reindeer do." said Shock as she swung open the cage door.

"But he can fly up chimneys, right?" Barrel insisted.

"So what? We'll just bag him somewhere there isn't a chimney around!" Lock said impatiently. Why did his cohorts always have to make everything sound more difficult than it was? He supposed that Barrel couldn't help it that he was so little and helpless, and Shock couldn't help that she was so delicate and weak, so he decided to give them a pass. Not everyone could be as amazing as he was, after all.

Barrel tried to stick his hand in the sack full of barbecue as soon as Shock sat it on the kitchen counter but she slapped him away and said, "Go take a bath, you're stinking everything up!"

"But I'm starving! Lunch was forever ago!"

"You're fat enough you'll survive for ten more minutes while you go de-stink yourself!" she said meanly, and Lock laughed.

"I'm not fat! Jack said I'm big-boned!" Barrel pouted, but that only made his cohorts laugh more.

"What does that even mean?" chortled Shock. "You're fat - deal with it!"

"So get going, stinky!" Lock taunted as he took a delicious-looking kebab out of the sack for himself, and Barrel stared longingly at it before turning around and stomping out of the kitchen.

"Don't eat it all!" he said grumpily as Shock and Lock both started eating.

"Then you'd better hurry up!" Lock called after him.

"Yeah, these are really, really good. Me and Lock might not be able to stop!" Shock added, and the two of them snickered.

"Save some for me, you turds!" Barrel yelled, now running for the bathroom. He rarely called his older cohorts names, but if they ate all of the food without him then Barrel would do worse than just insult them. He took just enough time to grab his clean pajamas out of his bedroom, then hopped into the tub and washed off as fast as he could. He left his dirty costume in the bathwater to try and soak all of the grass stains out of it - he'd finish scrubbing it later, but for now food was his top priority. Thankfully Lock and Shock had barely made a dent in it by the time he ran back into the kitchen, and he loaded up his plate with delicious kebabs and dug in like he hadn't eaten for days.

It was quite late by the time dinner and their dessert of Easter Town candy was over and while Barrel scrubbed his costume as clean as he could get it, Shock convinced Lock to let her practice her lassoing on him for a little while. He only agreed because it was possible that they would need to lasso Sandy Claws, plus he was hoping that maybe he'd pick up how to do it himself by watching her since he was too proud to ask for actual lessons. First he let her try and lasso him while he stood still, and once she got that down he increased the difficulty by running around and jumping off of the sofa. "Nice! That fat old man doesn't stand a chance against us!" Lock grinned wickedly from the couch where he'd fallen over when she'd lassoed him around his legs and Shock grinned back at him, feeling quite proud of herself.

"How's your hand?" she asked as she walked over to free him from the rope. Normally she would have just left him tied up on the sofa and laughed at him - and she normally wouldn't care much about his sore hand either - but tomorrow was extremely important and they all needed to be at the top of their game.

"It feels fine, it doesn't even itch anymore." he said, holding it up for both of them to look at as Shock plopped down to sit beside him on the couch, and it actually wasn't a lie - Sally's healing poultice had worked wonders and the swelling had gone down so much that it looked almost normal again.

"Are you sad you're not gonna get a super-strong robot hand?" Shock giggled and Lock snorted, but then he gave her an even more wicked grin.

"Yeah, 'cus if I had one of those then I could squish you like a bug instead of just doing this!" he said, then without warning he leapt at her and grabbed her by the shoulders to shove her down into the cushions. She shrieked and laughed and managed to push him off of her, but he held on tightly and they both went rolling off of the sofa and onto the floor. While more often than not they wrestled out of anger, it wasn't unusual for them to wrestle just for fun and when Barrel came back to the living room he detected the good-natured tone of the fight and decided to join in. The three of them wrestled around on the floor until they were all quite tired, which didn't take much time at all because it had been a very long, busy day full of walking, running, hunting - and in Barrel's case, rolling.

"Alright, bedtime, morons." Shock said as she looked up at the large patch in the roof that she and Barrel had installed not all that long ago. "We gotta get up and get going early tomorrow."

"It's gonna be fun catching Sandy Claws, isn't it?" Barrel yawned as he sat up. If he didn't get up and into bed soon he was in very real danger of falling asleep right there on the living room floor.

"Definitely." agreed Lock as he got up as well. "It's the most important job, so of course it's gonna be fun. 'Top priority', remember?"

"Yeah…" Barrel said dreamily. "Think how happy Jack's gonna be, and how him and everyone else are gonna think we're so important."

"Remember what he said? 'No one in Halloween Town is as crafty and clever' as we are!" Shock said proudly as she picked her hat up off of the floor, and her cohorts both nodded proudly as well. After brushing their teeth they crawled into their three little beds and fell asleep almost instantly, dreaming of all of the excitement and acclaim that tomorrow would surely bring.