Hey, all. Sorry about the delay. I had some trouble with Word over the last week-and-a-half, so I couldn't copy and paste any of what I had. Fortunately, I found other means to do some more writing. Not that I'd be behind at all in actually writing before my arbitrary schedule of each Saturday, since I've been writing several chapters ahead since I started uploading. Also, I decided to post early this time since I'll be in a place without Internet service this weekend. After that, expect a normal upload schedule.

This first one is going to be a bit different. I'll be delving into how Jiminy records the data in his journal.

Chapter 44

Jiminy's Journal #1

Beast's Castle

Story

Mrs. Potts and Chip directed us to meet Beast and Belle in the library. Aside from the Beast mistakenly believing Riku was still an enemy, the reunion was a warm one indeed. However, a sudden Heartless ambush revealed the presence of two of Maleficent's new allies in the castle, so we split up into three groups to track them down. The intruders, a clown with powerful magic and a sort of witch doctor, abducted Belle and held her captive in the ballroom to lure us into a trap, but our heroes managed to defeat the Heartless and Nobodies they summoned, rescue Belle, and survive the final trap of a falling chandelier.

The party tracked the intruders to the library, where they were trying to find information on the artifact they had come to claim but thus far had no luck in locating in spite of searching every corner of the castle. At first, we had the upper hand due to the element of surprise, but the intruders managed to escape. Before they fled, the clown sent out an array of spells, including one that shrunk Sora and Kairi to three inches tall.

While the party took the opportunity to search for information, as well as a way to restore Sora and Kairi to their normal size, Beast and Belle shared a tender moment. When Belle expressed a desire to see her father again, Beast showed her a magic mirror that would show her whatever she wished. She saw that her father was caught in a snowstorm trying to reach the castle and save her. Seeing that she needed to help him, the Beast let her go, even knowing the possibility that he would never see her again.

Belle found her father, Maurice, and brought him back to the village to nurse him back to health, but soon after, a hunter named Gaston convinced the villagers that Maurice was insane and threatened to have him put in an asylum to blackmail Belle into agreeing to marry him. To exonerate her father, Belle used the magic mirror to reveal the existence of the Beast, but Gaston managed to rile the villagers into a mob to storm the castle and kill the Beast, and locked Belle and Maurice up to prevent them from stopping him.

Unbeknownst to Belle, she had a stowaway: Chip the teacup, who also happened to be holding the shrunken Sora and Kairi. They managed to free Belle and Maurice and rode back with her to prevent the mob from invading the castle. Meanwhile, the rest of the party helped the castle servants fight off the invaders, and ended up helping them escape unharmed when Gaston's fury and jealousy drew Heartless into the field. Belle arrived to help, and Mickey taught Sora and Kairi to use a Princess of Heart-light-infused Esuna spell to restore them to their original size. Gaston made his way to the Beast's room and attacked him, and Beast was in too much despair to fight back, but Belle's arrival and attempt to help him motivated him to stand up against the hunter while the party fought against Gaston's manifesting Heartless. Beast got the best of Gaston and held him over the edge of the roof, but on seeing Gaston beg for his life he decided that he would not be the beast and simply told the hunter to get out. He shared a tender reunion with Belle, but Gaston stabbed him in the back, though this got him thrown to his death anyway. As Beast passed away, Belle said pleadingly "I love you." At this moment, the last petal fell from the enchanted rose, and a shower of magic fell over the Beast. He transformed into a human, his wounds healed, and the castle servants followed suit. The curse was broken at last!

Characters

Beast / Prince Adam

A prince cursed for his selfishness and transformed into a hideous beast by a powerful enchantress. He spent ten years in self-loathing fearing that he would never be able to learn to love and be loved, until Belle came into his life. She became the brightest spot in his life and inspired him to become better, and he came to love her so much that he was willing to claw his way through an endless sea of darkness if it meant rescuing her, which is actually how we all first met him. His hope and determination to love and be worthy of love paid off, as the curse is finally broken and he is human once again.

Belle

A bookworm from a closed-minded village who traded her freedom to free her father from the Beast. Although she was terrified of him at first, she helped him develop into a better person and calm his temper, and in turn came to see that there was more to the man than his monstrous exterior. As one of seven Princesses of Heart, Belle has a heart of pure light.

Maurice

Belle's father, an eccentric inventor who is ostracized and mocked by most of the villagers, and is devoted to his daughter. When he got lost riding his horse through the woods to the fair, he found himself at the Beast's castle and became his prisoner, until Belle traded her own freedom for his. Since then, he has dedicated himself to rescuing her, even crossing Gaston.

Gaston

A self-absorbed hunter who has gained the appreciation of his entire village. He is infatuated with Belle, and makes several attempts to woo her and make her "his little wife", despite her obvious lack of interest. He arranged for her father to be sent to an asylum to blackmail her into marrying her, and when he realized that she was in love with the Beast he riled up an angry mob to try to kill him. His jealousy filled his heart with darkness until it manifested into a mighty Heartless, but neither man nor monster was a match for the Beast and the Keyblade wielders, and in spite of Beast deciding to spare him, his hatred still led to his demise, falling off of the castle roof into a gorge.

LeFou

Gaston's sidekick, LeFou has served as a supporter and accomplice to boost his friend's ego, even when he served as a punching bag. However, when he saw the twisted lengths he would go to get what he wanted, and after being left to suffer at the devices of the castle servants defending against the mob, LeFou came to understand the horrible person that Gaston truly was, and he promptly joined forces with Belle and the servants.

Kefka

A clown with command of powerful magic and a sadistic sense of humor. Little is known about him or why he is allied with Maleficent and Zeromast, but given his thirst for destruction, those reasons cannot be any good.

? [Witch Doctor]

A voodoo practitioner with a keen showmanship, formidable magic and a living shadow. Little is known about him or why he is allied with Maleficent and Zeromast.

Heartless

Blitz Dancer

A large Heartless conjured by Kefka to fight the party in the ballroom of Beast's Castle. Each dancing step created a shockwave, and it constantly waved a razor-sharp ribbon around to try to slice through its enemies. However, once Sora, while wrapped in a magic tornado created by King Mickey and Kairi, tricked it into snaring its own weapon, it proved easy to end its one-man dance party.

Enraged Elk

Gaston's Heartless, spawned from his growing hatred and jealousy of the Beast. It was in essence a larger version of the hunter himself, complete with an enlarged replica of the broken architecture the original was using as a club, and was strong and vicious, but ultimately no match for stronger and more skilled opponents.

Magic

Esuna

Heals status ailments, magical or chemical. Usually only works on magic effects that only last for a limited time. To undo more powerful ailments, the spell would have to be boosted with a significant amount of light magic (for example, two Princesses of Heart).

Beast's Curse

A curse placed upon Prince Adam and his castle by a powerful enchantress, turning the prince into a monstrous Beast and transforming his servants into furniture, utensils and decorations. A rose was enchanted as a lynchpin to the curse, with the fate of the castle's inhabitants tied to its lifespan. If the Beast learned to love and was loved in return before the last petal fell, the curse would be broken and everyone would become human again, but if that did not happen before the deadline, then the curse would never be broken. It is not known if failing to break the curse would mean that the prince and servants would remain in their current states forever or if it meant the Beast would lose what was left of his humanity and become a feral animal and the servants would become inanimate trinkets and their lives extinguished. Fortunately, we will never have to find out, as, in what appeared to be the nick of time, just as the rose died, the curse broke and all afflicted were returned to human form.

Jiminy pocketed his pen and shut his journal. He sat in the cupholder on the dashboard and thought back on the recent episode. He was trying to piece together any clues he could to understand what was going on and what to do about it.

There were thirteen members of this new cabal. They were already familiar with Maleficent, Pete and Hades, and there was also their enigmatic benefactor who led them on their scavenger hunt. Since then, the party has encountered Loki, the so-called God of Mischief, when the villains made their first attempt to access the files on Ansem's computer, presumably to understand more about the artifacts they sought. And only yesterday, they met two new villains, a powerful mage dressed like a clown, who had been called Kefka, and a talented witch doctor. That was seven who could be identified, and six whom they have already confronted, and those six were all evidently competent threats. Clearly, they had been gathered due to their powers and abilities, which made Jiminy wonder what sorts of talents the other villains possessed.

The other matter of contemplation, the artifacts, left him quite befuddled. The party had no way of determining who would be protecting them nor did they have a clue as to where to look or how to even identify them. In the meantime, the villains already had a guide to locate them and, in some cases, even knew what they looked like. The clown and the witch doctor had mentioned that the artifact in Beast's Castle was a clock, but as far as he could recall, there had never been a clock lying around anywhere in the castle, and both sides had been to just about every room in the castle.

Jiminy groaned and rubbed his forehead. This was getting nowhere.

"You all right, Jiminy?" Mickey asked, his focus on steering the ship but dividing enough attention to notice Jiminy's distress.

"I'm fine, your Majesty," the cricket answered. "It's just that I can't seem to make any sense of this search."

"I know how you feel," Sora said from the copilot's chair. "We spent most of our other quests blindly running around to try to figure out what's going on, when the bad guys had all the clues. Remember how we went around trying to figure out what Organization XIII was up to all while we were unknowingly giving them exactly what they wanted with each Heartless we fought? Remember how, the year before that, we didn't even know about the Princesses of Heart until we had already lost Alice, Maleficent's gang had already captured four beforehand, and they were in the process of kidnapping Jasmine?"

Jiminy nodded and rolled his eyes. Donald groaned.

"Actually, that last part was on me," Riku admitted. This drew shocked looks from Sora and Kairi. "Maleficent told me to do it in exchange for helping me locate Kairi's body. I snuck in while you were fighting Jafar after he turned himself into a genie and pulled her into a portal."

Kairi continued to stare at Riku, not sure what to think. Sora had already turned back to the path ahead to make sure he did not let the Teeny Ships crash into any asteroids. "So, while you were so concerned with finding me, you were perfectly fine with another girl suffer a potentially worse fate," she softly scolded him.

Riku shrugged sheepishly. "I was pretty myopic back then. I can admit that now," he replied in a half-joking tone.

Sora smacked the console in excitement, accidentally causing the Teeny Ships to shoot inward and bump against the Gummi Ship. Everyone glared at him, and he chuckled in embarrassment.

"So, I just had an idea," he began, clearing his throat to get back into the right tone. "What Riku said reminded me of something we could do to get a lead on this search."

"What do you have in mind?" Goofy asked, glancing over at him but making sure that he could still keep an eye on the targeting system.

"We ask someone old enough to have heard about these things and powerful enough to probably help us find them," Sora answered. His grin faded when he was only met with silence and confused looks. He sighed. "Okay, guys. I'm thinking of someone who already has reality-warping powers and who has been around for tens of thousands of years. Someone who knew about the Keyhole, and would probably know about a lot more. Someone whom most of us met in the incident that Riku was just talking about." Still more confusion. Sora hung his head, unable to believe that nobody could pick up what he was putting down. "The Genie of the Lamp! You know, big blue guy, PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER, itty-bitty-living-space? Teleports and jokes around and makes a bunch of references that nobody around him would understand in their context? Remember?"

Now Donald, Goofy and Jiminy understood. Kairi waved her hand in an "eh" way, since she had caught bits and pieces from when she was in Sora's heart. Mickey simply said "huh", since he only knew about the Genie from what Donald and Goofy had told him, as well as Jiminy's second journal. Riku simply shrugged, as he had never actually met the friendly genie.

"We can just head for Agrabah, say hi to Aladdin and Jasmine, and ask Genie about the things that Maleficent's crew is looking for," Sora continued, already plotting a course for the desert world. The map calculated the paths that the asteroids and debris would take in floating through space and projected an ideal course to follow.

"Well, fellas, are we in agreement? We going to Agrabah?" Mickey asked the ship's crew. Everyone nodded. "All right, then. Let's go!"

"Just letting you guys know, this is going to be a sixteen-hour flight," Sora said.

"Hey, Sora, Riku, do you think we should check in on our classes?" Kairi suggested.

"Good idea. Donald, can you take over for me?" Sora asked. The duck nodded and swapped with Sora in the copilot's chair. Sora, Riku and Kairi went deeper into the Gummi Ship to check on the videos of their classes and check the mailbox for assigned homework.

Jiminy simply sat back in the cupholder and reopened his journal. He bookmarked a page in the STORY section for Agrabah, and even took the time to doodle a sketch of the world as it appeared on the computer display.