"Here." said Shock as she handed Sally the bundle of astragalus. She kept the remaining money in her pocket and was happy that the rag doll didn't ask for it back.
"Perfect, I'll get started right away." Sally said kindly as she pulled out a cauldron to place on the stove. Lock and Barrel were eyeing the leftover pie, but Shock had something else on her mind.
"Um, there's one more thing…" she said hesitantly. Now that the moment of truth had arrived, she was a little bit nervous about going on the mad doctor's operating table. She kind of wished that Sally could come up with her to make sure Dr. Finkelstein didn't do anything awful, but that would mean taking time away from acquiring the potion and they had already wasted so much time. But she just couldn't stand that awful emptiness where her tooth should be, so she called upon all her bravery and said, "Do you think Dr. Finkelfre - I mean, stein, can put my tooth back in? I lost one yesterday and it's driving me crazy." Lock and Barrel started snickering and Shock shot them a nasty glare.
"Oh no, what happened?" Sally said with more concern than they'd ever had directed towards them by anyone, and even though Shock had been pretending to be well-behaved whenever they talked to Sally she couldn't help being honest with her answer now.
"That idiot made me fall and hit my face." she pointed to Lock.
"It wasn't my fault!" he said, but it was a bald-faced lie and he couldn't stop grinning naughtily.
Sally didn't think it was her place to discipline or negotiate conflicts between them so she only smiled down sympathetically at the cranky-looking little witch and said, "I'm sure the doctor will be happy to help. Just go up to the fifth floor and knock on the door and ask. He'll probably be done by the time I finish your potion - maybe even before."
"Okay." Shock said as she headed out the kitchen door and Lock followed her. "What are you doing? Go away, butthead!" she snapped at him, starting to feel annoyed all over again.
"I wanna see him put your tooth back in. Maybe it'll be bloody and gross!"
Shock frowned and considered pushing him down the ramp, but secretly she felt a little bit glad to have him come with her - if nothing else that meant there would be a witness if Dr. Finkelstein did something terrible to her. Barrel thought about following as well, but he was pretty scared of the doctor - playing pranks on him out in town was one thing, but doing it here in his domain was quite another. Who knew what tricks he might have up his sleeve? And besides that, there was still a lot of pie left and he was hoping that maybe Sally would give him another piece so he stayed put… and sure enough, as soon as his cohorts were out the door she turned to him and said, "Would you like some more pie?" He nodded eagerly and stabbed his fork into the slice before she even got the plate set all the way down on the table in front of him and Sally chuckled to herself. Ghouls were known to have quite an appetite, and it seemed that Barrel was no exception.
"Where'd you learn to cook so good?" he asked as he watched Sally take yet another pie out of the oven and then start work on their potion.
"Well, that's why the doctor made me. I guess he programmed a lot of those things in my mind to begin with, and since then I've spent a lot of time reading and practicing." She didn't want to think about just how much time she'd spent reading and practicing all alone, not to mention the constant cleaning. It was so boring doing the same menial labor day after day, and not even her healthy imagination and frequent daydreams about freedom (and a certain tall, elegant skeleton) could completely alleviate her restlessness. As she watched the little ghoul unselfconsciously stuffing his face in front of her she thought about him and his friends and wondered what it must be like to be a child - and a perpetual one, at that. She had been brought into consciousness as a fully-grown woman with all of a woman's thoughts and feelings, and part of her mourned the childhood that she'd never had. The trick-or-treaters seemed so carefree and wild and she envied them that, but on the other hand she thought it was a little bit sad that they would never grow up. At least, Sally didn't think they would ever grow up… she wasn't really sure. All she knew was that they had been children for a very long time, so if they were growing then they were doing so extremely slowly. She also wasn't sure exactly how long they had been in Halloween Town, but she knew it was longer than she herself and she thought it was a little bit funny that they were technically older than her. She was snapped out of her thoughts when Barrel piped up:
"Shock's really good at cooking, but I'm not. And Lock's even worse at it than I am."
Like Shock and her sewing, Sally hoped that perhaps this was an opening to invite a little more interaction with one of the children so she said, "If you'd like to learn how to cook better I'd be very happy to teach you."
Barrel didn't say anything for a moment, he just sat there thinking and chewing. On one hand that might be a little bit interesting and it would be nice to be able to show off in the kitchen to his cohorts - plus if he could cook better then he wouldn't be as dependent on Shock and Oogie Boogie to feed him. But on the other hand, work was work and why would he want to work when there was so much playing to be done? He really couldn't make up his mind so he just said, "Maybe."
"Okay." Sally smiled at him as she sprinkled the astragalus into the bubbling cauldron. It was a better response than Shock had given her about sewing lessons, so she was happy with it.
Speaking of Shock, she and Lock were just about to Dr. Finkelstein's study on the fifth floor and the closer they got, the more nervous they got. Shock was beginning to second-guess her decision but she didn't want to chicken out now, not in front of Lock, so she set her jaw resolutely and continued up the ramp. Lock masked his nervousness by continuing to tease her. "What if he won't put it back in? Or what if he sticks it in your eyeball or up your big nose instead of in your big mouth?"
"What if I stick my foot in your big mouth?" Shock grumbled.
"What if he chops you up and sews you back together like Sally, except he does it all weird and wrong so you look even uglier?"
"What if I push your weird and wrong butt down this ramp?!"
Lock snickered but secretly he was a little bit worried about all of the things he'd just said. He liked messing with her and it was funny when she got a little bit hurt, but Shock was still one of his only two very best friends in the whole wide world and he really didn't want anything too bad to happen to her. He decided that if the mad doctor tried anything funny he would tip over his wheelchair and kick him in the brain before grabbing Shock and making their dramatic escape. By then they had reached the fifth floor and Shock rapped on the door as hard as she could. "What is it, Sally?" came Dr. Finkelstein's voice, and Lock and Shock looked at one another, unsure of what to do. Finally Lock went ahead and pushed open the door and they went in to find the doctor parked in front of a desk with a large stack of musty-looking books piled on top of it, poking at his brain with one hand. He turned to look at them and his duck-like lips immediately curled into a sneer. "What in Halloween are you two doing here?" He slammed the top of his head back down and wheeled slowly towards them wearing a very menacing expression. "If you've destroyed anything I'll fuse your heads together. That'll slow you down!"
"We didn't break anything!" insisted Lock, and Shock nodded.
"I just lost a tooth. Can you put it back in? Please." She held up the little bottle containing her tooth and the doctor raised one eyebrow suspiciously at them.
"Then why are you here?" he said, pointing to Lock.
Lock couldn't help but puff his chest out a bit aggressively and put his hands on his hips. "Because she's my friend! And I wanna see if it's gross when you put it back in."
Dr. Finkelstein didn't show it, but inside he was just a tiny bit amused by that answer. He was pretty sure the little devil was as dumb as a box of rocks, but he appreciated Lock's enthusiasm for all things violent and horrifying. Shock, on the other hand, might have made a decent little lab assistant if she wasn't such a disobedient troublemaker, and the doctor thought it was a shame for a potentially promising brain to be wasted on a naughty little hooligan like her. He leaned down a bit closer to them and murmured, "Where's the third one of you?"
"Barrel's stuffing his face with pie in the kitchen with Sally." said Lock, and Dr. Finkelstein made a mental note to scold that headstrong rag doll for even letting the trick-or-treaters into the laboratory, let alone feeding them. He scrutinized them for another moment before pressing a button on the wall and speaking into a little funnel-looking thing:
"Igor. Meet me in the operating room."
The children trailed along after him to the very top of the building and into the operating room, and Lock cringed a bit at the memory of the first and last time he was here when the doctor had reattached his tail after an accident with a guillotine. Igor was waiting for them and Dr. Finkelstein addressed him in a very no-nonsense manner while pointing at Lock, "Keep an eye on this one and if he tries to cause any mischief, correct him with the portable neuromuscular incapacitation electroshock module." Igor looked way too excited about whatever the doctor had just said as he staggered over to retrieve some sort of handheld device, and while the children didn't understand a word of it, it didn't sound good. Fortunately Dr. Finkelstein explained: "That means if you do anything but stand here quietly, Igor will shock you with an electrical jolt that will be extremely painful and cause you to lose control of your neuromuscular function - which means your body. Possibly including your urinary bladder. And I don't want to have to make Sally clean that up."
Lock had definitely understood the part about extreme pain, but he didn't know what a 'urinary bladder' was. He didn't want to sound dumb in case Shock knew, but he was just too curious not to ask. "What's a urinary bladder?"
"It means you'll pee yourself." the doctor answered, and Lock was glad he asked because while he didn't like looking dumb in front of Shock, he really didn't want to pee himself in front of anyone. Shock couldn't help but giggle despite her nervousness, and she hoped that Lock would say or do something rash and get shocked because if he peed his pants she'd be able to make fun of him about it for the rest of his existence. But then Dr. Finkelstein looked at her sharply and said, "And you! Get on the table and lie still or you'll get it, too!" so she quickly stopped laughing and climbed up onto the operating table and lay still. "Do you have the missing tooth or do I need to get one out of my inventory?" he asked as he wheeled up to her.
"I have it." she said quietly and she unscrewed the bottle lid and dropped her precious tooth into the doctor's black-gloved hand. She wanted to ask how long it would take but didn't want to risk angering him, but happily he then said:
"This will only take a minute. Now open your mouth wide and hold still, this injection will sting initially but then you won't feel a thing."
Her eyes widened in fear as he pulled out a syringe and Lock stood up on his tip-toes to try and see in case he needed to push over Dr. Finkelstein's wheelchair and rescue Shock… but he kept an eye on Igor and the horrible device that would hurt and maybe make him pee his pants. Lock knew that if he had such a device he would use it on everyone he could at every available opportunity and he wondered if it was at all possible for him to come back later and steal it. Shock winced a bit but tried to stay still as the doctor injected the syringe into her gums near the hole where her tooth belonged, but then - as promised - the area went completely numb. He fussed around in her mouth with several small metal tools and within only a moment he wheeled away from her and grumbled, "There, you're all finished. Now off with you both, and try to stay intact for longer than a week!" Shock hopped off of the table and she and Lock darted out of the operating room without a word as fast as their little legs would take them.
"We gotta try and steal that neumomascula incapitishun electrical thingie sometime!" Lock said as they hurried back down to the kitchen, and while Shock was almost positive that wasn't the right word for it, she didn't know what it was actually called either so she let it slide.
"Good idea, then me and Barrel can 'correct' you whenever you're being a jerk. You'd better steal some diapers first because you're gonna be peeing your pants pretty much nonstop!" she cackled.
"Whatever, you're the one who's gonna need diapers!" he laughed wickedly back at her, now even more determined to steal this highly-entertaining-sounding torture device. They had both forgotten the part about it causing extreme pain and were just focusing on the hilarity of making each other pee themselves.
"Why does Shock need diapers?" Barrel asked as his cohorts came running into the kitchen and back onto their chairs, hoping for another piece of pie. Did Dr. Finkelstein do something terrible to her after all? Barrel knew it was a mistake to go to the mad doctor for help!
"Because I'm gonna shock her urinary bladder with the neumeruscluar icasapacion electric modular!" Lock laughed evilly, and Barrel didn't know what on earth he was talking about but he giggled along anyway. Then Lock remembered that Sally was in the room with them so he quickly added, "I mean, I would if I had one!"
But Sally only smiled at him and said, "The potion needs about three more minutes. Think you can finish another piece of pie in three minutes?"
"Definitely!" they all said together, then scarfed down their slices and Barrel was happy because he'd gotten three pieces while his cohorts had only gotten two.
"Good luck in Christmas Town!" Sally called to them from the front laboratory steps as they headed off in the the tub with their fresh bottle of potion and they all three waved back at her without even thinking about it, for at this point they definitely needed all the luck they could get. Sally watched them go until they were out of sight, then sighed to herself before heading back into the lab to get cleaned up - Jack was due to stop by in a few hours for a final Sandy-Claws-costume fitting and she wanted to look her best. Anxiety gnawed at her gut as she wondered yet again what he could possibly have the children doing that required so many trips to Christmas Town, but by now she knew better than to ask him. If their mission was really as top-secret as they said then she doubted Jack would tell her the details, plus at this point it seemed clear that he was determined to progress with his Christmas plans no matter how many times she tried to convince him it was a mistake. Dr. Finkelstein was constantly telling her that she was the most stubborn creature he'd ever known, but Sally thought that Jack probably had her beat when it came to that.
Author Note: Now I kind of want to write a story in 'Continuing Adventures' about them successfully stealing the portable neuromuscular incapacitation module and using it on one another, LOL! What do you think, dear readers, should I do it? Is it hilarious or just gross? Or both? :D