Re: Kingdom Hearts: Keys to the Kingdom
Chapter XXV: What's In The Heart, pt. 1
After Telary confirms the readings of a town nearby, the trio lands their ship in a clearing in a bare forest, full of gnarled and dead trees just barely getting by above ground. The moon is already up and shining bright yellow light all around, bringing a kind of gloomy ambience to the place.
Assuring Jiminy that they’ll be careful and return as soon as they can manage, Sora, Azlyn, and Telary disembark from the ship’s ramp. A low fog hovers just over to ground, so heavy that in places none of the teens can even see their feet.
“Nice place,” Azlyn comments sarcastically, surveying the area with a curled lip. “But, at least I still have legs.”
“Do you think we should do something about the Gummi ship?” Sora asks, gesturing at the obnoxiously bright vessel standing out starkly amongst the otherwise dull and nondescript pallet of the forest.
The mage shrugs. “I think I landed far enough away from that town,” he says nonchalantly. “And it’s all locked up, so people can’t do anything but gawk at it really.”
Sora’s frown doesn’t let up. “Sure but it’s just so obvious that it could, I don’t know…”
Telary places a hand on Sora’s shoulder and gives him a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry, Sora, we won’t let anyone figure out we’re not from this world on this trip, okay? We’ll be extra careful.”
It’s at that point the mage takes a step and trips over a protruding root hidden by the fog underfoot.
They set off for the town, enjoying the quiet stillness of the night, until Azlyn calls for a halt, her ears perking up as she looks around.
“What is that?” she asks, hearing some noise in the near distance. It sounds like voices, and a lot of them.
“It’s singing,” Sora points out as the words become clearer and stronger, obviously being sung by many voices, some more melodious than others.
This is Halloween
This is Halloween!
Suddenly Sora catches sight of a long line of people in various shapes and sizes. And various they are.
A trio of pale-skinned men dressed in formalwear with long black capes glide above the ground at the head of the line, obviously the most well put together and practiced singers in the group. Behind them stumbles a green, oozing monster that looks like it has just emerged from a swamp, sticky wet weeds clinging to its body, then a large brown-furred werewolf dressed only in cut off shorts.
This is Halloween
This is Halloween!
A pair of hunched over women dressed all in black zoom by on broomsticks, their black hats denoting their status as witches. They zoom past the trio and turn a few corkscrews before joining the rest of the monster mash line.
The line continues, singing their merry song about a land where Halloween never ends.
“What is that all about?” Azlyn asks, sounding awed by the variety of creatures at the same time as she’s annoyed by their cheery singing.
“Didn’t you hear?” Sora replies joyously, already heading off after the procession. “Halloween!”
“Can you believe this?” Azlyn groans to her companion, only to find him staring after the parade, his face a rictus of fear and worry. “C’mon, Tel, please don’t tell me you’re afraid of a bunch of singing freakshow performers.”
The mage shakes his head to clear it, which puts it in perfect rhythm with the rest of his shaking body. “Of c-c-course not,” he stammers unconvincingly. “I mean, sure they look spooky, but I’m sure they’re just, y’know, regular folks. N-nothing to get freaked out about…”
"Bark bark!"
Telary doesn’t even jump at the sudden noise, so relieved to finally encounter something normal, something as simple as an excited animal.
Until, that is, he turns and comes face to face with a floating bedsheet about the size of a standard Yorkshire terrier. The “sheet” pulls up into a long snouted face with two large eyes poking over it, a nose the shape of a tiny jack o’lantern flickering with orange light. Noticing that it has the mage’s attention, the ghostly dog yips once more and moves closer.
Telary flees.
“Telary!” Azlyn calls after him, exasperated. She sighs, realizing that her counterpart is too far gone in fear to hear her. “I swear, that boy is afraid of his own shadow.”
Not a moment later, the ghostly dog catches sight of the knight and lets out a low growl, eyes narrowing at the perceived enemy.
Slowly, Azlyn turns to face the undead canine, catching a glimpse of its absolutely murderous countenance. It reminds her of the look Pluto gets in his eyes whenever she arrives in a room.
“Crap!” she exclaims, running off after her companions at top speed.
When she finally catches up to the boys, they’re standing on the outskirts of a bustling town square, surrounded by houses and other buildings of all sizes. They all seem to have hired the same designer, dull colors washing out the square and making a clear contrast between the rest of it and the toxic green liquid of the square’s central fountain, a terrifying statue of a bat-like creature placed in its exact middle. Off to the side, a ten-foot guillotine hovers over the square.
The creeps and creatures are all still singing of the joys of Halloween, of spooking and scaring and all manner of fear. And yet the spirit is not one of maliciousness, but rather something akin to celebration.
It’s our job but we’re not mean
In our town of Halloween!
“This is amazing,” Sora whispers to his friends, so enraptured by the performance of the townspeople that he doesn’t even notice Telary’s fear, or Azlyn’s annoyance.
Azlyn shrugs. “It’s okay,” she admits, noting a few twirling dancers, skeletons all. “The choreography could use some work. Dances are supposed to be interpretive, and it seems like all these guys know how to do is sway along. Nothing visually interesting at all.”
Sora raises a surprised eyebrow at the girl. “Huh? Azlyn, how do you know so much about dance?”
Telary suddenly perks up, grinning at his counterpart.
Azlyn’s expression makes an opposite transformation, hardening into a frown, forehead furrowed. “None of your business.”
Sora shrugs, happy to let this new aspect of his friend remain a mystery until such a time as he has a greater opportunity to weasel it out of her. Contented, he closes his eyes and sways gently in time with the singers.
Until the Heartless arrive.
A loud series of familiar sounds suddenly pop off in the middle of the square, and in an instant six Search Ghost Heartless have appeared, their clawed hands swaying along with the music.
“Sora!” Telary cries out, jolting the Keybearer out of his reverie. “Heartless!”
In an instant, Sora’s pleasure turns to righteous anger. How dare these creatures of Darkness interrupt such a joyous celebration! Is nothing sacred?
In a flash the Keyblade appears, and with a defiant battle cry Sora leaps down into the fray, catching two Search Ghosts with a single swing.
Azlyn moves in next, planting both feet in a Heartless’s chest and knocking it over into the oozy green liquid of the fountain, which unfortunately splashes right back up into her face.
Telary calls down a thunder spell to fry another pair, while Sora finishes off the last creature on his side of the fountain. The threat is vanquished, and the revelers in the square are safe from the Darkness.
Which is why it’s odd when a loud booing arises from the crowd, and not the spooky variety either. The pissed kind.
Confused, the Keybearer turns to face a legion of seriously upset monster people. It’s an image that could haunt him the rest of his life.
“What’s the big idea?” a grotesquely obese zombie woman with mottled grey skin cries out, comforting a similarly round child crying into her patchwork dress.
“You ruined everything!” the slimy swamp creature growls.
The trio all look at each other in utter bewilderment. They’d just saved these people from a terrible fate! Shouldn’t some thanks be in order?
“What the hell are you on about?” Azlyn growls back, stepping up with fists clenched. “We just saved you all from…”
“A perfect rehearsal!” one of the trio of vampire singers interrupts, grabbing a rotten tomato from the folds of his cloak and hurling it at the knight, who manages the block it with her shield.
From there the crowd does as crowds are wont to do, hurling all manner of things at the trio; everything from half-rotted pumpkins to still blinking eyeballs.
Telary and Sora cower behind Azlyn’s shield, doing their best to avoid being pelted.
“Not exactly the reception I expected,” Telary sighs, catching an egg in the forehead. Part of the yellow yolk oozes down his face.
“
STOP!!!”
The voice seems to come from all around the square at once, loud and clear and quite perturbed. The townsfolk stop their barrage immediately, as if hypnotized.
In the silence left behind, the fountain behind the trio begins to bubble and churn, sending more tiny droplets of green ooze out of the fountain. All three turn to face the square’s central feature.
Suddenly, a white skull emerges from the ooze, its empty eye sockets managing to look soulful and concerned. It’s followed up by a tall, thin body clad in a black and white pinstripe suit. From the cuffs of the suit’s sleeves emerge two bony, four fingered hands, crossed over each other just under a bowtie in the shape of a vampire bat.
Sora waits with bated breath as the skeleton man finishes his rise, uncrossing his arms from his chest and placing them on his almost nonexistent hips.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demands, sounding more exasperated than angry. “I thought we were having a great rehearsal, fellows. So, what happened?”
“Jack! Jack!” A tiny, squat man with a face as white as a sheet, dressed in an ill-fitting suit and wearing a long thin top hat atop his head, rushes out in a panic. Words across the white slash on his chest declare him “MAYOR”. “Things were going amazingly well, at least I think so if you think they were, until the new ghosts made their entrance and these strange people just went berserk, attacking them and ruining everything!”
“Ruined!” Azlyn exclaims, as if this is the most implausible thing she’s ever heard.
“The Heartless were attacking!” Sora attempts to explain.
“Heartless, you say?” the bony man in the fountain, Jack apparently, says, sounding intrigued. One hand scratches his chin bone. “Fascinating! Finally a name to go along with the faces! And such a wonderfully scary one too! I can just see the banners now: Jack Skellington, Pumpkin King, presents ‘A Heartless Halloween’! Oh, it’ll be my best ever!”
“But the Heartless are dangerous!” Sora protests firmly, getting more worked up than usual in response to Mr. Skellington’s thick-headedness.
The Pumpkin King scoffs. “Nonsense. The only danger these Heartless pose is not being able to dance spookily enough by Halloween!”
Azlyn has had about as much of this as she can take. “Oh, would you just
forget about
Halloween?”
Every single creature, big and small, lets out their most horrified gasp at the sound of the knight’s harsh words, some actually recoiling in disgust. The mayor goes so far as to faint dead away, overwhelmed by the sheer horror of it all.
“That might not have been the best move,” Telary whispers to his counterpart out of the corner of his mouth.
Jack Skellington steps out of the fountain and onto the grey cobbles of the square, shaking his head sadly. “I think you’ll find, my dear, that you’ll be hard pressed to get anyone to forget about Halloween in…
Halloween Town!”
The skeleton’s words echo around the square. He takes a step back and fingers his chin once more, looking over the trio appraisingly.
“You know what I think might help you three really get into the spirit of Halloween?” he says, with an air of someone making a monumental discovery. “Your own Halloween costumes! And I know just the man to make them for you! Come along, to Dr. Finkelstein’s!”
A bony finger points up at a large metal orb looming over the square, sitting atop a large grey tower. A sudden bolt of lightning flashes down from the otherwise clear sky.
“Sure!” Sora exclaims, excited about the prospect of looking just as spooky as the rest of Halloween Town’s denizens. Telary looks nervous, and Azlyn rolls her eyes.
“Fear not, good citizens!” Jack calls out to the townsfolk, who still for the most part do
not look happy. “I realize this rehearsal’s disruption puts us a bit behind schedule, but I assure you that the problem is being handled. In the meantime, perhaps it would be best for you all to return to your homes and practice your individual parts. We’ll reconvene as soon as possible, I promise.”
Still looking annoyed, the townsfolk filter out of the square, some heading straight into one of the houses that ring the area, and other moving off to their domiciles in other areas of town. Most are muttering to themselves or others about the inconvenience these interlopers have caused.
“Masterfully handled, Jack, simply wonderful!” the mayor gushes, rushing up to the group now wearing an orange face with a bright smile. “No one breaks up a potential mob action like Jack Skellington, I always say!”
“It was nothing, Mayor,” Jack replies with a modest wave of his bony hand.
“Well, I suppose I should go see to the decorations committee,” the elected official says, scampering off and revealing that his upset face still stares out from the back of his head, frozen. “They’ll have to meet with
your approval first, of course, but…”
Jack gestures broadly for the offworlder trio to follow him, heading for a gate in the western part of the square.
“Worse than Wonderland,” Azlyn mutters under her breath, careful to make sure their guide can’t hear. “At least there nobody pelted me with rotten food.”
“And there weren’t any monsters,” Telary agrees, sounding more miserable than angry.
“C’mon, guys, relax,” Sora encourages, fixing his friends with one of his widest, brightest smiles. “You saw how much fun those guys were! When they weren’t, y’know, throwing stuff at us. Besides, you heard the skeleton guy, we’re gonna get costumes. I’m sure when we do, we’ll be just as scary as any of those guys!”
Jack throws open the metal door into the lab with great aplomb, waving his arm grandly. The actual lab, Sora finds as he steps inside, isn’t quite worthy of the majestic introduction. It’s little more than a large ovular chamber surrounded by metal walls. A bookcase stands against one wall, and directly opposite is a large granite slab. A seemingly dormant Search Ghost lays on it, attached by wires to two large orbs above either side of the slab, metallic points sticking out of them.
And, sitting in a wheelchair at a large oak desk topped by various test tubes, beakers, and one very large book, is a man with an enormously bulbous head covered in wrinkly grey skin. Sora swears he can see a hinge welded into the back of the cranium. Dr. Finkelstein, he presumes.
“Ah, there you are Jack,” the man says in a thin, scratchy voice. With one black gloved hand he fiddles with a joystick set into the right arm of his chair, spinning himself around to face the group. His mouth protrudes out like an anteater’s snout, and black goggles cover his eyes. He’s wearing a grey, buttoned up lab coat and white pants. There are definitely nuts or bolts of some kind in the front of his head. He smiles, a grotesque sight across his misshapen mouth. “So, how did it go, hm? Did my guidance system work as promised?”
Jack frowns and gives a deep sigh. Taking his answer from that, the doctor makes a scoffing noise and slams his fist down on the arm of his chair.
“Confounded things!” he rages, the frown he’s wearing even scarier than the earlier smile. “No matter what I try they all just… Aargh!”
“Dr. Finkelstein, before we talk about the creatures, which you’ll be happy to know I’ve learned are called
Heartless…”
Finkelstein gives an approving nod and grin.
“I’d like to introduce you to our newest Halloween Town visitors!” The Pumpkin King steps aside and waves a thumb at the trio. “These are, um… Excuse me, fellows, but what were your names again?”
“I’m Sora,” Sora answers, stepping up and nodding. “And these are my friends Azlyn and Telary. We’re, um, visiting town for, uh, a vacation. Yeah.”
“Anyway,” Jack continues, “as you can see, their… unique sense of fashion seems to be causing them a bit of disconnect with the spirit of the Halloween festival. I thought if perhaps they had more, er, traditional dress, it might help them integrate.”
The doctor nods. “So it’s costumes they want, eh? Yes, I can see how their odd clothes might attract unwanted attention from townsfolk.” Maneuvering the joystick, Finkelstein heads over to the bookcase. Reaching up he grabs a yellow volume and pulls it out, releasing a mechanism that cause the bookcase to slide against the wall, revealing three small, circular chambers. “Climb in, young ones. I’ve not got all day, you know.”
“These are gonna give us our costumes?” Sora asks excitedly. The doctor gives an affirming nod, and the Keybearer rushes into his chamber with a huge smile across his face. Once he’s inside, black doors slam shut, trapping him.
Azlyn rolls her eyes and marches to the next chamber with grim exasperation. Telary doesn’t want to be left out, so he reluctantly marches himself into the remaining “pod”.
For a few long seconds mechanisms inside the chambers whir and click, then the doors open once again, releasing three large steam clouds into the lab. The trio step out more or less simultaneously.
Telary looks over his new form with trepidation. He sees bandages all over his body, ugly stained things that nearly make him hurl. He’s unsure of how exactly he would do that, however, considering a large part of his stomach is left unwrapped, revealing a hole. Closing his eyes, he waves his hand around inside for a second.
Azlyn idly notes that a few tufts of red hair stick out of the bandages wrapped around Telary’s head, then looks down to inspect herself. She’s wearing a white, double-breasted lab coat near identical to that of Dr. Finkelstein, and her skirt has become wiry black material. Grey and black striped socks lead down into black boots. Something else feels odd, as well. She catches a glimpse of herself in a mirror, and notes that her usual blonde pixie cut has been replaced by large black column of hair with a white stripe running down the side.
Sora moves to the mirror next, inspecting his black jacket over a dark grey shirt. His shorts are an exact match color wise to the jacket, and extend just as far down his legs as his normal bottoms. The most notable feature on the Keybearer’s face is a large orange jack o’lantern mask covering his right eye, though doing nothing to impede his vision. Opening his mouth, Sora inspects with clawed, white gloved hands and finds sharp fangs in place of his canines. He smiles widely, impressed with the transformation. Impressed with all three transformations, actually.
“Oh my, don’t you three look splendid!” Jack gushes, dancing around the trio with a proud grin across his skull. “You’ve done wonderful work, doctor, simply amazing!”
“Yes, sir, I completely agree with Mr. Skellington,” Telary chimes in, still inspecting himself, his look of fearful apprehension not gone, but minimized. “You have some wonderful technology here.” The other two offworlders nod along.
“Now if only I could be as successful with the Heartless!” Finkelstein rages, wheeling up to the slab. So far, the Heartless on it hasn’t moved, or given any sign at all that it is aware of what is happening around it. “I thought the guidance system I cooked up would do the trick, but Jack here insists…”
“They move perfectly in time with my devised choreography,” Jack explains, frowning. “But there’s something about them that just doesn’t feel right. Like there could be
more.”
“Maybe the Heartless just aren’t putting their
hearts into their dancing!” Azlyn jokes, igniting a fit of giggles in her friends.
“Eureka!” Jack exclaims, leaping upon the slab and gesturing grandly. “That’s it exactly! The Heartless need a heart!”
“Huh?” Azlyn gasps, her laughter interrupted by bewilderment. "I... I was kidding..."
“A heart for the Heartless…” Sora says, looking pensive but intrigued.
“Might it be possible to add a heart to your guidance system device, Doctor?” Jack asks the wheelchair bound madman.
He shrugs. “I don’t see why not,” he replies, wheeling back to the bookcase. He pulls a green book out of the shelf this time, and the case moves once more, revealing a long storage space filled with various machines and ingredients. “A heart is a simple thing, really. I could have it ready in five minutes!” He stops and reaches down, grabbing a container from a low shelf. Its shape reminds Sora of discussions of biological hearts in school. He also notes the large keyhole in its middle.
Dr. Finkelstein grabs a few other chests and brings them out to pile on the end of the slab. He frowns at the container.
“It’s locked!” he declares frustratedly. “It’s been ages since I got this thing, I’ll never find the key before Halloween!” Behind the doctor, Jack hangs his head sadly.
Sora, however, smiles.
Azlyn gives him a withering glare. “Oh no, I know that look!” She blocks his path to Jack and the doctor, hands on hips. “There is no way you can go along with this crazy scheme! I’m putting my foot down!” Telary tentatively moves to stand by her.
“Look, Azlyn,” Sora says, deploying the puppy eyes he’s famous for around Destiny Islands, “if this experiment works, it could mean the end of the Heartless forever! I mean, if all the Heartless have hearts, why would they want to go around stealing them from other people?”
Telary thinks about that and moves around to stand at Sora’s side, shrugging off the stink eye it earns him from Azlyn. “Sora could be right, Azlyn.”
The knight returns her disapproving gaze to the Keyblade wielder. “You just want to see them dance, don’t you?”
Sora gives her a sheepish grin, which is harder than it seems to pull off with pointed fangs in your mouth. “Well, I guess so. Don’t pretend you don’t, though!”
Azlyn shakes her head violently. “What I’d
like to see is all of them eliminated from the universe!” Sora tries the eyes again, and this time she can’t help but get drawn in. She sighs as deeply as she ever has. “Okay, okay.”
Sora jumps a bit in happiness, his quivering lip turning into a grin instantaneously. He moves past her and towards the slab. Azlyn watches him go with a frown.
“Look Az,” Telary says, stepping up next to his best friend and watching Jack do a backflip as Sora promises his assistance, “I realize this is risky too, but the potential benefits are… well, massive!”
She shrugs. “Well I’ll tell you right now, I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’ as many times as I want if this goes badly, okay?”
Telary smiles and gives her an affirmative nod.
At the slab, Sora raises the Keyblade to point at the container’s keyhole, and at his command a beam of light shoots into it and unlocks it with a click.
“Splendid!” Jack declares, flipping the top of the heart container open. “You certainly are handy to have around, Sora my boy! How would you like to be in this year’s festival?”
Sora’s eyes light up. “Oh my gosh, I’d
love to!” Azlyn huffs and rolls her eyes, but he ignores her.
“And now for ingredients!” Dr. Finkelstein says, opening the first chest and drawing out a green frog, it belly swollen with air and pulsing rhythmically. “Pulse!” He reaches in again and produces a large black spider, which nearly sends Telary running out of the lab. “Fear!” He drops the spider and frog into the heart, then goes back for a third ingredient: two snakes, one green and one orange, eating each other’s tail. “Hope and Despair!” The snakes go into the container, and Finkelstein closes it.
“That’s it?” Telary says, looking skeptically at the new “heart”. “Can you really make something so complex out of so few things?”
The doctor scoffs, shaking his head like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s heard. “Complex? A heart? Come now, dear boy, surely you can’t think a thing such as that to be anything intricate. No, no, a heart is a simple thing, as we’ll soon see.”
Sora frowns. That doesn’t seem right to him, the thought of a heart as something “simple”. Then again, he’s certainly no doctor, so what does he know, really?
Jack helps Finkelstein finish setting up, attaching two thick wires to the heart container with large clamps, then placing electrodes against the prone Heartless’s chest. The doctor positions himself by a huge switch up against the wall.
“Goggles everyone!” the wheelchair bound scientist commands, gesturing to several pairs atop his research table. The trio all put them on, then look up at Jack, who makes no move towards the safety equipment.
“No eyeballs,” he explains casually, gesturing to his empty sockets. The trio all nod understandingly.
“Here we go!” Doctor Finkelstein shouts, and with a bone-chilling laugh appropriate for someone in his line of work, throws down the switch.
Immediately volts of electricity begin traveling along the wire from heart to Heartless, sending the Search Ghost into wild convulsions. After a few seconds, it begins to rise, back straight and arms sticking out. It even turns its head, its dangling eye swaying as it moves. It looks directly at Sora.
Satisfied, Finkelstein flips the switch again, and the current dies instantly. As does the Heartless, which flops back down to the slab, motionless.
“NOOOOOOO!!!!” Finkelstein cries in pure anguish. After a moment, Jack joins him.
Azlyn grunts angrily and covers her ears. “Oh, would you two just relax? Face it, your experiment was a failure, and that things is as dead as…”
In a single fluid motion, the Heartless rises and lunges for the Pumpkin King, clawed hands reaching out to tear out the skeleton’s heart.
Jack cries out and stumbles back, but luckily Sora’s response to people in danger is near automatic at this point, and the heroic young mean leaps up on the slab and stabs the Keyblade through the Search Ghost’s chest. It manages to swivel its head one-eighty degrees to look at its destroyer before fading away.
“Good show!” Jack says as he rises from the floor, straightening his bowtie casually.
“Huh?” Sora asks.
“Excuse me?” Telary says.
Azlyn is too angry for words.
“Well, that may not have been dancing like I hoped,” Jack admits, grinning. “But it was certainly
scary, wasn’t it?”
“No brain,” Azlyn mutters to herself, shaking her head in abject frustration. “There is
no freaking brain in that skull, I swear.” She steps up to the skeleton and pokes him in the chest hard enough to send him back a step. “You almost died, moron!”
Jack shrugs. “Well, you can’t make an omelet without…”
“Memory!” Finkelstein declares, as if the mere word is some genius idea. He smiles triumphantly.
“Well, I suppose that’s true,” Jack admits with a shrug. “But I was actually going to say ‘breaking eggs’, so…”
“No, you fool!” the doctor interrupts. “We need Memory to make the heart work properly. It’s the missing ingredient that will pull this whole thing together! I’ll bet Sally has some. Now, where is that girl? I go to all the trouble of creating her, and she can’t even stick around the lab. Now, hm, the last time I saw her was…”
The doctor takes a moment to think, flipping open the top portion of his head and actually scratching at the pinkish grey matter of his brain! Telary has to look away, but Sora and Azlyn smile at each other like it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever seen.
“Don’t worry, Doctor!” Jack assures the old man, closing his head in a friendly manner. “We’ll find Sally and your ingredient for you.” He turns to look at Sora. “If you wish to come, of course!”
“Sure!” Sora agrees, and Azlyn wonders when it was exactly he became spokesman for the group.
Just then the lab’s door slams open, revealing the once-again white-faced Mayor, wringing his hands nervously. His eyes are red from crying.
“Oh, Jack, it’s horrible!” he says to the Pumpkin King, hanging his head and blowing into a tissue made of spider webs. “It’s… It’s just so…”
“What is it Mayor?” Jack asks.
The mayor looks up, wiping his eyes. “The Heartless! All of the sudden they started attacking people, chasing them all about the square trying to hurt them… It’s chaos!”
“I told you so,” Azlyn whispers cockily to her counterpart.
Everyone else reacts with great concern. Well, almost everyone.
“I needed a new test subject anyway,” Dr. Finkelstein says with a nonchalant shrug.
“I’ll handle this, Mayor,” Jack assures the little two-faced man.
“We’ll help,” Sora pledges. The quartet race out of the lab for the town square.
I think I love writing Jack Skellington almost as much as I do Genie. They're just fun characters in my opinion!
Can't wait for more.