Sally wasn't the only one feeling anxious. Shock and Barrel were openly fretting about the fact that the day was way more than halfway over and they had yet to even set foot in the forest, let alone Christmas Town. Lock was feeling anxious, too, but he felt that as the leader it was his duty to project an air of confidence so he said, "Don't worry, we'll just drop off the popcorn and soda, eat lunch and then go right to Christmas Town. We'll get him this time, I can feel it!" and he sounded so certain that his cohorts relaxed a little bit.
"What should we do when we get there this time?" asked Barrel.
"Well, Jack said that he lives in the biggest house there. We already checked the two biggest buildings and they weren't houses, so we should just keep checking the buildings in order from the next biggest to the smallest." Shock reasoned.
"Yeah, that's probably the best plan." Lock said, and Shock was surprised and pleased that he agreed with her. She was expecting him to counter her idea with something extremely unsubtle like setting fire to or blowing up every building in Christmas Town and for the first time in her existence she was actually glad that they were all out of explosives. Perhaps Lock was capable of rational thought after all? Then he continued, "He should be easiest to get at his house, unless he lives with a bunch of elves or something. But then we'll just have to take all of them out, too!" He gave his cohorts an incredibly evil grin and Shock rolled her eyes. Nope, he was definitely still an idiot.
"If you want to get murdered by a bunch angry elves that's your problem. Me and Barrel will take Sandy Claws back to Jack and get all the reward while you're getting stomped by Christmas midgets!" she said, and Lock frowned at her.
"Well I could take them out, it's not my fault you and Barrel are weak Halloween midgets!" he sneered, even though Shock was actually considerably taller than he was and both she and Barrel could hold their own against him well enough. "What kind of trick-or-treaters are you, anyway?" Lock continued, "I don't even remember the last time you played a trick!"
Barrel didn't think that was a very fair thing to say considering that it had been Shock who lassoed the emergency shut-off lever in the toy factory and came up with the idea to break the train tracks, and that Barrel himself had taken the risk of letting out all of those reindeer. Shock was also very aware of this injustice and she wished she had the neuromuscular incapacitation module to zap Lock with right then and there - maybe that would be a good enough trick to satisfy that rotten little devil. As it was, she grabbed one of the bags of unpopped popcorn and smacked him with it repeatedly, and Barrel followed her lead.
"Ow!" Lock yelped as his cohorts battered him from both sides with the bags of hard kernels and he wasn't sure which one of them to attack first.
"See? You can't even take on both of us, let alone a billion elves!" Shock taunted him, so he tried to lunge at her but then Barrel started smacking him in the head with two popcorn bags at the same time. Lock didn't want to go down without a fight, but the tub was so full of the soda barrels and popcorn in addition to all of their Sandy-Claws-catching-equipment that he couldn't move around very well and Shock and Barrel were relentless in their assault so he finally backed down and sat there sulking with his arms crossed in front of his chest while his cohorts gave each other a high-five. They got back to the treehouse and the boys worked together to move the soda to a corner of the kitchen while Shock fed some popcorn into their machine in the living room and turned it on. She was just about to head back to the kitchen to start fixing up some lunch when she saw the telltale cockroach in the mouth of Oogie's shrine and her anxiety ratcheted up threefold - this really was the worst possible time for Oogie to want to see them, but there was nothing they could do to avoid it – the roach had already seen her so they couldn't just pretend that they weren't home. She hurried into the kitchen where Lock was cracking open one of the soda barrels while Barrel stood by holding a chipped cup, and both of their heads snapped towards her when she said, "Oogie wants to see us."
Lock grimaced, Barrel's round eyes got even rounder and Shock winced uncomfortably at them both, all three of them sharing the same thought: they were running critically short on time and Jack's reprimand was fresh in their minds, but ignoring the Boogie Man's summons wasn't an option and they could only hope that he wouldn't keep them for too long. They hurried into the cage and down to his lair below, pushed through the doors with their heads bowed and knelt on the floor before him.
"Well now! Ol' Oogie's mighty impressed with all those new bugs and birds you sent down a few days back." he said, and he sounded very pleased so the children stood and grinned up at him. "Sure were ugly things, but they tasted just fine and that's what counts! In fact, you did such a good job that I got you a little something for being the best little henchmen in Halloween Town." He reached behind his chair with one huge, burlap hand and pulled out a big bucket full of candied apples, and their three little faces lit up because these were a special treat that they didn't get very often.
"Thank you, Mr. Oogie Boogie!" they said together and Lock stepped forward to accept the bucket, then his cohorts crowded around him to see how many apples they'd been given when he stepped back into place beside them.
"Can we have one now?" Barrel asked eagerly, and Oogie chuckled.
"You're more stomach than brains, ain't ya', little man?" he teased, which wasn't exactly a compliment but at least his voice was friendly so Barrel let it slide - and what could he do about being insulted by his master anyway? Oogie leaned back in his chair and continued, "Sure kiddos, go ahead and have an apple. And while you're snackin' you can tell ol' Oogie all about that Christmas Town Jack's so crazy about."
These were somewhat contradictory instructions since it wasn't easy eating a candied apple and talking at the same time, so the children were going to have to take turns. They each selected an apple and set the bucket aside, then told Oogie all of their observations about Christmas Town as quickly as they could while also eating their treats as quickly as they could. When they had told him everything they could remember he leaned forward a bit and asked, "Tell me, any birds or bugs or other tasty things there?"
"No, just cookies and stuff like that." answered Barrel, but then Lock remembered the black and white waddling birds.
"Nuh-uh, stupid, there's birds there! They're bigger than the Easter ones we sent you, and they look easy to catch, too!" Lock volunteered, hoping to gain some good favor by sharing this information. He had very much not forgotten how badly Oogie had hurt him only a few weeks prior and he was eager for any way to make sure he was firmly back on the Boogie Man's good side. Shock couldn't help but grimace a bit, feeling extremely unhappy about having to take time away from their mission to catch some birds - and unfortunately for her, Oogie noticed and frowned.
"What's your problem, princess? Not in the mood to bring poor ol' Oogie his due?" His voice was extremely dangerous: not yet angry but edging into threatening and they all three knew that things could rapidly escalate into violence if they weren't careful.
"It's not that, Mr. Oogie Boogie." Shock said cautiously, bowing her head and looking at the floor. "We love to bring you things! It's just that… we have to catch Sandy Claws right away or else we'll be in big trouble with Jack." Lock and Barrel bowed their heads as well, though Lock glanced at Shock out of the corner of his eye for the briefest of seconds. While he was glad she had said it because it was true, he was also afraid that this information would not go over well… and sure enough, Oogie frowned even more and suddenly snatched the front of Shock's dress and pulled her roughly towards him, nearly knocking off her hat. He lifted her up so that the toes of her boots dragged across the floor and then he brought her even higher so he could look her right in the eye and all three children flinched.
"And that's more important than bringin' the Boogie Man what you owe? You don't wanna pay up after I just gave you these?" He pointed his other hand at the bucket of candied apples. "What kinda henchmen are ya' if you can't handle catching a few birds along with this Sandy joker? What's that ol' bone man gonna do to you that's worse than what I'm gonna do?" He brought Shock only inches away from his enormous, sneering mouth and she tried not to look at the insects wriggling along the corners of his lips. He was so gigantic that he could have swallowed the little witch whole, and the children's greatest fear was that one day he just might do it to any or all of them.
"Please, I'm sorry, Mr. Oogie Boogie!" Shock pleaded, desperately hoping that he wouldn't hurt her so badly that she couldn't go to Christmas Town - for she had very little confidence in her cohorts to finish the mission without her help.
"We can do both!" insisted Lock.
"We'll bring you a Christmas bird!" added Barrel.
"And then we can bring you Sandy Claws, too!" finished Shock. She could feel a seam beginning to tear at the arm of her dress and hoped that Oogie would put her down before it ripped off completely. Fortunately he seemed to calm down a bit and placed her gently back on the floor beside her cohorts.
"You just see that you do. Now run along and get your duties done, and later on we'll have a game or two and maybe I'll make you some snake-and-spider stew, hmm? Poor Oogie gets bored down here with his three little buddies always off running errands for dusty ol' Jack. What do you say to that?" He smiled down at him, and if the children hadn't been accustomed to his rapid swings in mood by now they would have been quite confused.
"Yes sir, Mr. Oogie Boogie! Thank you!" they all three chirped together, and Lock picked up the bucket of candied apples and they bowed out of the lair and back up to their treehouse above.
Lock was slightly tempted to make a snide remark to Shock about angering the Boogie Man and endangering their mission but he didn't quite have the heart for it, especially since she'd been brave enough to speak up about the fact that they didn't have much time left to complete their mission for Jack. Plus she looked shaken-up enough already and he was mostly just grateful that Oogie hadn't hurt her this time so he kept his mouth shut. Barrel was also grateful that Shock hadn't been hurt, and also that Oogie hadn't taken away their treats. They ate a quick lunch without saying much, chugged their anti-allergy potion doses and each grabbed a bag of fresh, hot popcorn to go, then hopped into the tub and hurried back out the door. Barrel turned the 'on' handle all the way up so that the tub would trot as fast as possible, and even though it was a rough ride they reached the holiday doors a tiny bit faster than usual and didn't hesitate at all in flinging open the Christmas door and jumping through.
Unfortunately the sun was setting by the time they arrived and an argument ensued over what should take priority: catching Oogie's offering or catching Sandy Claws. Appeasing their master and appeasing their king were both critically important tasks with potentially similar rewards and punishments, and the stress of accomplishing both jobs within such a short timeframe weighed heavily in their three little guts. Eventually they agreed to catch whichever they came across first, and they hid the tub and tromped down the snowy hill towards town in the general direction of where they had seen the black and white birds before. They passed by the snow fort that they had played with during their previous visit but they weren't even tempted to throw any snowballs this time, then they crested another little hill and happily saw a little cluster of the black and white birds around an enormous Christmas tree. The children watched carefully, analyzing the best way to capture one — the birds seemed to be playing some sort of game, sliding on their bellies from the top of a little hill and onto the flat ground surrounding the tree. The flat ground looked different: it was still white, but it was shinier and harder-looking than the snow and the birds slid a great distance across it at a very high speed and Lock very much suspected that it was at least as slippery as the slime-covered stones in their own world could get after it rained. "What do you think?" he whispered to his elder cohort.
"Hmm…" Shock hummed, scratching her chin and thinking hard. Setting a trap and waiting for a bird to walk into it would take too much time, plus they didn't have anything for bait – and they didn't know what might entice these creatures into a trap anyway. She could try to lasso one, but her rope wasn't long enough to reach so they'd have to get much closer in order for her to even try, and if she missed the birds would most certainly run – or maybe even fly – away just like the woolly beasts in Easter Town. She wondered if perhaps Lock could slide down the hill on his stomach like the birds and catch one… if her understanding of physics was correct then surely his heavier weight would carry him faster and farther across the slippery ground than the birds and he should be able to catch up with them… then her calculations were interrupted by her littlest cohort:
"Can we just walk up and grab one? They didn't seem scared of us before."
Both Shock and Lock were about to chastise Barrel for his idiotic idea… but then they realized that it actually wasn't all that idiotic because it was true that the birds had seen them earlier and hadn't run away, but rather only watched them curiously. Perhaps Barrel was onto something? "Okay, here's the plan." Lock decided, "Let's get the net out of the tub, then we'll walk down there and try to seem nice. Then maybe one of those dumb birds will get close enough that we can catch it in the net. Then we'll take it back to Oogie Boogie and hopefully he'll be happy and leave us alone so we can come back and get Sandy Claws!"
"It's going to be too dark to come back by the time we get one to Oogie…" Shock fretted, but what else could they do? They had to catch both Sandy and a Christmas bird and since the birds were right in front of them it was only logical to go for that first - she just hated that she couldn't magically do both at the same time.
"What difference does it make? We gotta get one of these things unless you want Oogie to beat us all up. Then we won't be able to get Sandy at all!" said Lock, stating the obvious and Shock sighed and nodded unhappily. They sent Barrel back to the tub for the net and as he walked along through the snow and out of sight through the trees she could only hope that catching one of these birds would go without a hitch.
When Barrel returned he handed Lock the net and all three children took off their masks and walked down the hill towards those black and white birds, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. The birds paused their game to look curiously at the trick-or-treaters once more, and the trio were deeply relieved when none of them fled – on the contrary, a few of them waddled a bit closer to get a better look at their visitors. Lock cautiously stepped forward to place one foot on the ice, and it was even more slippery than he'd suspected it would be. However, he also thought it was a pretty good bet that Barrel hadn't noticed how slick the ground looked and he couldn't help but take the opportunity to play a trick on his littlest friend.
"Hey Barrel, you're the best at walking on the snow, so why don't you go make friends with them first?" he said, working hard to keep from snickering. Shock raised one eyebrow suspiciously at him, but Barrel was oblivious to his middle cohort's wicked intentions and only noticed the compliment. The little ghoul strode forward, brimming with confidence and excited to take the lead, but the second he stepped on the ice his foot slipped out from under him and he landed right on his rear end with a yelp and an 'oof!' Lock and Shock stifled their giggles and even though Shock was a little bit annoyed with Lock for wasting time and risking frightening their prey, it was still a pretty funny trick. Barrel glared at his cohorts as he very, very carefully got to his feet and edged back towards the snow again, and it was an intense struggle for him not to fall once more on the treacherously slick ice. Fortunately the Christmas birds weren't scared by the sudden movement and noise of Barrel's fall – they only cocked their heads a bit inquisitively and continued to waddle towards the trio.
"Hi there, little buddies!" said Lock his most affable voice while hiding the net behind his back as best he could.
"Aren't you just the cutest little things?" Shock lied in her sweetest voice, bending down a bit to greet a bird that was waddling towards her.
"Do you want to be friends?" asked Barrel, and he was only half-lying. He actually thought the birds were kind of funny-looking and the way they slid down the hill on their tummies was rather hilarious. Plus they weren't quite as ugly as the creatures in Easter Town since they were mostly black and their sharp beaks and strange wings were kind of interesting.
"It looks like you all enjoy playing games, hmm?" Shock said sweetly as one of the bravest birds came to a stop right in front of her, and she glanced at her devilish cohort out of the corner of her eye.
"Why don't you let us teach you a new one?" Lock said smoothly, picking up on Shock's signal and inching a bit closer towards her and their prey. The Christmas bird made a sort of squawking noise that might have been a greeting but which transformed into a squawk of terror as Lock brought the net down over it as quick as lightening. All three children thanked their lucky stars that Lock had successfully bagged the bird on his first try because the rest of them all squawked in alarm and immediately began waddling away as fast as they could and then one-by-one disappeared into a hole in the ice with a splash. There was no way the trick-or-treaters could follow into the freezing water so they would have really been in trouble had Lock missed. He tried to heave the struggling bird over his shoulder but it was flapping quite violently with it's hard, flipper-like wings so he gave up and just dragged it along through the snow behind him instead while they made their way back to the tub. Even though they were soon back in the middle of the forest they kept an eye out just in case there was a slim chance they happened to run into Sandy Claws… but as expected, they didn't see another creature on the way to the ring of holiday trees. They flung open the Jack-o-Lantern door and stepped inside, and Lock clutched the net tightly closed to keep their offering from escaping during the long, spiraling fall into darkness.
It was very dark and rather late by the time they made it home to their treehouse, and the journey felt even longer than usual for Shock and Barrel because Lock wouldn't quit bragging about being the one to catch their latest offering. It was a relief to them all when they threw the squawking Christmas bird down the chute to their master – now that they'd fulfilled their obligation to him surely he would let them get on with their other task, for while the Boogie Man had no qualms about ordering the three of them around they were fairly certain that not even Oogie would stand completely in the way of Jack getting what he wanted. While Oogie Boogie frequently disparaged Jack to the trick-or-treaters behind his back, they had never seen him openly defy the Pumpkin King.
After dinner they sat in the living room and tried to find a way to fill the time before bed. Shock had changed into her pajamas already so she could mend the loosened seam in her dress sleeve from when Oogie Boogie had lifted her off the ground earlier that day, and even though she tried to focus all of her attention on her sewing she couldn't stop her brain from going a mile a minute trying to figure out the best strategy for capturing Sandy Claws. Lock flung his throwing knives at the target in the wall and even though he hit the center almost perfectly on every throw this time, it still didn't erase the unease in the back of his mind about what would happen if they failed the next day. Barrel sat on the floor eating a chocolate bar and staring at one of the rat hats he had stolen weeks ago that was now collecting dust in the corner of the living room. He felt just the tiniest bit sad about having to throw that black and white Christmas bird down to Oogie Boogie, just like he did about pretty much every animal they sent down the chute. It was funny to mess with animals sometimes (shaving dogs and cats in the Human World on Halloween was particularly entertaining) and he didn't mind killing them for food, but the idea of being eaten alive was just too scary and he felt a little bad for every creature that met it's no-doubt terrifying end in the maw of the Boogie Man – especially creatures as friendly as that little black and white bird had been. These melancholy thoughts were interrupted by Shock putting aside her sewing and saying firmly:
"Alright, time to go to sleep, we have to get up super early tomorrow. If we don't get Sandy Claws we're dead meat, just like that Christmas bird." Neither she nor Lock were quite as sentimental as Barrel, but they still didn't enjoy sending creatures down to be eaten alive, either.
Lock rolled his eyes. "Stop worrying. I told you earlier, we're gonna get him this time – I just know it!" He was actually extremely worried as well, but he'd rather throw himself down the chute after that unfortunate bird than ever admit to it.
"You said that this morning and look what happened! A big, fat nothing, that's what!" Shock snapped at him. Inside she desperately wanted to believe him and wished she felt as confident as he seemed to feel, but at the same time she was angry with him for being so sure of their success when by her calculation they were in very great danger of continuing to fail.
Lock gave her a sour look and hurled his last knife at the wall with all of his might before getting up from the sofa and heading towards his bedroom. "I told you – we're going to get him! You two just need to try harder!" he shouted from the hall, misdirecting his frustration onto his two cohorts, for deep down he really knew that all three of them were equally to blame… and even worse, he actually felt the most responsible for their failure. What kind of leader was he? On that depressing thought he flopped down onto his ratty old mattress and forced himself into a restless sleep.
Barrel looked up anxiously at his eldest cohort after Lock left the room, and when Shock met his round, worried eyes she rallied her courage and tried to steal some of Lock's confidence: "Don't worry." she said, "Even though Lock's an idiot, he's right about one thing: we're gonna get that fat old man and everything will be fine." Barrel nodded and followed her down the hallway to their own bedrooms, and eventually they joined their middle cohort in restless sleep.
Author Note: Sorry this one took awhile, friends! I've been busy, busy busy with my new house! It's so fun, but also exhausting, lol... This chapter was honestly a bit of a struggle to write, perhaps because it's rather a downer and I feel bad for the kids (and the penguin!). But as we all know, it'll all turn out alright in the end! :D I hope you enjoyed it anyway, and hopefully I'll be back a little bit sooner with the next installment.