Chapter 96
The City Above the Earth
"You sure we should put it in like this?" Sora asked.
"I think so," Mickey answered.
"This look good?" Sora asked after connecting some wires.
"That's great!" Mickey said, turning a three-fingered claw.
"Is it ready?" Donald asked.
Sora and Mickey stepped away and examined their work, before Mickey nodded. "It should be," he replied. He and Sora had set the Naughty List scroll up on an apparatus where one of the handles on either rod of the scroll was held in a three-fingered claw. The claws would rotate when prompted, turning the rods and winding through the scroll like a film reel. Circuitry had been installed into the rods and wires connected to link the scroll to the Gummi Ship's computer. The entire setup had it so that the rods were held five feet apart, with the intervening parchment held horizontally a millimeter above a metal crate. Everyone could see several names written in black ink on the parchment, including "Peter Pete, Sr." and "Mozenrath".
"Okay, let's test it out," Mickey said. Donald stepped forward, carrying the bag of magic sugar. He pulled to string loose, reached in, pulled out a handful, and sprinkled it over the two names.
"Wait, Pete's full name is 'Peter Pete'?" Kairi asked, amused.
"Pete has a kid?" Riku asked, surprised.
Goofy nodded. "Yep. P.J. is Maxie's best friend," he answered. Riku gave him a strange look, as if he had no idea what to think or how he should react.
Aqua blinked as a sense of recognition finally clicked with what they were talking about. "This 'Pete' is from your world? Is he a big fat cat in a colorful superhero costume?" she asked.
Everyone looked at her in confusion. "I mean, he is a big fat cat, and his suit is kind of colorful, but I don't know about him looking like a superhero," Sora said, struggling to avoid cracking up at the thought of Pete in tights, a mask and a cape.
"Oh, yeah. Minnie told me about that," Mickey said, realizing what Aqua was referring to. "During the Dream Festival one year, coincidentally the year I returned to Master Yen Sid for training, Pete dressed up as two different superheroes, Captain Justice and Captain Dark, to try to get votes and win the Million Dreams Award. I guess that would have been when Aqua visited Disney Town."
"Considering where he is now, I'm willing to guess it didn't work in his favor," Kairi said.
Aqua shook her head. "Everyone saw through the disguise, he ran off when someone actually asked him to save the Fruitball court from Unversed, and he threw a tantrum when he didn't win and coldly disregarded the people who did vote for him," she explained.
"Minnie sent him to a pocket dimension to cool off, but he disappeared by the time she went to check on him," Mickey finished.
Riku nodded, understanding the chain of events. "I guess that's where Maleficent came in," he guessed. Mickey nodded in confirmation.
Jiminy, who was standing on the captain's console, watched the machine setup and listened to a humming that was building up. "It sounds like it's processing," he said. "Let's bring up the map and see if it works."
Mickey nodded and typed a few commands into the console. A moment later, the holographic world map appeared in front of everyone. Almost immediately, a red dot appeared on the Radiant Garden icon, positioned at the "bottom", where Villain's Vale was located. Another red dot appeared on the Agrabah icon, in a nondescript area of desert.
"Hey, it works!" Goofy cheered.
"I guess Mozenrath's brooding back at his palace of zombies," Riku guessed.
Aqua groaned. "Great. More dark magic zombies," she sighed.
"Marvelous," Jiminy said, impressed. "Now, let's mark off the rest of Maleficent's gang."
Mickey nodded and pressed a button, which caused the claws to turn and the scroll to wind up, revealing a new set of names. Donald sprinkled the sugar on the names, and Mickey continued to wind the scroll until the names of all of the villains they had met thus far, save for Zeromast, had been marked with the magic sugar. Sora was surprised that Loki's name had appeared, given that the trickster had claimed to be from another realm entirely, and should have been out of Santa Claus' sight. Once all of the dots had appeared, the party studied the map.
"Okay, it looks like most of them are in the fortress, I guess pooling their resources or holding a team meeting," Jiminy said.
"The Horned King is there, too," Sora added, a smirk forming. "I wonder how Maleficent's treating him." Kairi and Donald let out a laugh.
"Out of the villains we met thus far, none of them seem to be out in a foreign world, at least as far as can tell given our lack of understanding of their background," Jiminy surmised.
"But there are still three others, right?" Donald clarified. "They could be anywhere on any of the other worlds."
"Of course, they're not so easy to find," Goofy reminded him. "Kefka and Doctor Silly knew what the thing in Beast's Castle was supposed to look like, but even then they couldn't find it anywhere."
"Goofy's right. And besides, a lot of people across the worlds can handle themselves," Sora agreed.
"With no clear leads available at the moment, the best we can do is continue exploring until we reach a development," Mickey affirmed.
"So, how do you propose we go about it from this point?" Riku asked.
There was a pause as Mickey considered the next course of action. After a moment, he shrugged. "Pick a direction, I guess," he suggested.
Sora shrugged. "Fine by me, your Majesty." He planted himself in the copilot's seat, silently indicating that Mickey should take the captain's chair. Goofy took his position in the gunner's station. Mickey put the ship in gear and gunned the engines. After flying straight for a minute, he turned the ship at a random angle and proceeded. Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Aqua strapped themselves into the passenger seats, and Jiminy made himself comfortable in the captain's cupholder.
They had traveled for some time, pointing themselves wherever their path led and blasting any Heartless-controlled ships that challenged them, and for a portion of the journey no one had broken the silence within the cockpit. However, after a while, Aqua spoke up. "Thank you, guys," she said.
The others looked at her, Sora, Mickey and Goofy keeping the consoles and the space ahead of them in their peripherals. "For what?" Sora asked.
"Christmas Town," Aqua clarified. "It really did help. I feel like I have something to hope for again. So, thanks. For doing it for me."
Sora grinned. "No problem. What are friends for?" he replied. He turned back to the console and maneuvered the Teeny Ships and fired them to blast apart an asteroid that had been floating toward the starboard flank.
Jiminy frequently checked a smaller version of the map of the known worlds on the main console's heads-up display, but none of the dots moved, although some of them occasionally went up and down the fortress tower in Radiant Garden. He sighed, wondering if their current trajectory would prove helpful in their hunt, or if they would make no progress and receive no help from anyone who would have the authority to know what they were looking for while the assortment of villains tracked down more of the artifacts.
The passengers found some way to amuse themselves. Riku unbuckled himself and went down to have a snack. Kairi took her sketchbook out and drew the beautiful view of cosmos outside of the cockpit window above her. Donald slipped back into the engine room to check up on the machinery. Aqua hummed Christmas carols while considering whether she should open the present that Santa gave to her.
Four hours later, they approached the next world. This land was wholly unfamiliar to everyone aboard, and its appearance was quite intriguing. The land mass was almost spherical, with large sections of grasslands and forest, along with a few interspersed towns and some mountain ranges. But what caught everyone's attention was the structure built on top. It appeared to be an industrialized city elevated hundreds of feet off of the ground on a 7/8 circle plate, with a gated wall built around the entire lower section. Apartments and places of business were placed around the city on the plate, and a towering building that appeared to be a corporate headquarters sat in the center of everything. Spread out around the elevated city, the earth was black and barren as if drained of life by the energy fracking.
No one had seen anything like it. Rarely before had they seen any cityscape as technologically developed and industrialized as this. Aqua, for her part, was reminded of how Radiant Garden had appeared during her first visit, only this environment appeared to be a shady parallel to the former's pristine beauty. Riku had seen a few cities such as this, but none of them had such a ravaged ecosystem surrounding it as the one he looked upon presently.
"Well, I'd say that warrants a look," Riku said.
"Okay, let's find a place to land and check it out," Mickey agreed. He brought up a screen and selected a point to disembark, and the party beamed themselves down.