Luminary Uprise 88

88: Over the Wall

“Our next suspect,” Mickey announced. “The Mad Doctor.”
They stood before a tall fortress at the edge of Toontown. Overhead, the sky was dark for a thirty-foot radius, outside of which it was blue and sunny again. Bats surrounded the place.
“Okay, I’m staying out of this one,” Myed squeaked.
“Come on, you baby,” Axel taunted. “Halloween Town was scarier than this.”
“Yeeaaahhh, but here’s the thing. Halloween Town is made of FRIENDLY scarers who do it because it’s their job. I have a feeling this guy’s not so friendly. I mean, he’s a mad scientist…they always creep me out…”
“We know one, remember?”
“Yeah, and…he’s kinda creepy.”
“I’m right here, you know!” Vexen retorted.
“Shall we enter?” Mickey asked.
“Uhhhh…sure,” Sora answered.
“Oh, goody!” Skellington rubbed his hands together in excitement.

After traipsing through the cobwebbed halls and stone corridors of the fortress, heading down to the bowels of the building, passing torture devices, avoiding assaults by animated skeletons, and dealing with Myed freaking out and jumping into someone’s arms every few minutes (and occasionally knocking them over in the process), the group reached the dungeon laboratory.
“Dear, dear,” Vexen remarked. “Why is he keeping all these chemicals in close proximity? They don’t do anything when combined except explode, and it wouldn’t even make a very great explosion. If he REALLY wanted to blow something up decently, he’d need to expand his supply to include…”
“He’s creeping me out again,” Myed whispered, tugging at Xigbar’s sleeve.
“Shush,” said Xigbar. “He’s talking explosions—that’s my language!”
“Look!” said Sora, pointing into an adjacent room. “There…on the wall!”
A map was framed.
“Let’s go!” Mickey cried. He, Donald, Goofy, and Sora rushed into the room.
The door slammed behind them, and a tall, shadowed figure cackled. This figure threw off his dark cape to reveal himself as a slim, balding figure with a gleaming lab coat and a malicious but comical grin. “So you thought you’d interfere with my latest experiments?” he said. “Just as well. I was wondering…if you replaced a mouse’s arms with goose wings, would it fly?”
“Your experiments are pointless as usual,” said Mickey, drawing a Keyblade. “Now just hand over that…”
“Um, Mickey?” Sora interrupted. “This map leads to the hideout of all the witches in Toontown.”
“The better to get my potions,” the Mad Doctor said. “Now to proceed with the science!”
He swiped a chainsaw from a nearby table and revved it up. Donald, Goofy, Mickey, and Sora cowered in the corner in fear.
“But I only need one!” the Mad Doctor sighed in dismay. “Maybe I should take notes on what happens when a Keybearer explodes.” He opened his coat with one hand, keeping the running chainsaw in the other, and removed a flask from a row of similar glassware kept on the inside of his coat. He threw the flask, and it made an explosion like a firecracker on the floor. Sora barely dodged in time.
Flask after flask hit the floor; Sora had nothing to do but run to dodge them, yelling, “Aaaaah!”
BOOM!
Sora winced until he realized that the last explosion he heard didn’t come from one of the tiny flasks. He looked up and saw that the door had been blown to splinters, and the shattered remains of a beaker dripping with unknown chemicals stood outside.
“THAT is how to create a proper explosion,” Vexen calmly explained. “And…what is that? Is that a CHAINSAW? I know you’re mad, but this is completely absurd. Have you never heard of a scalpel? Using that blade will do nothing but contaminate the specimen, as well as give a sloppy incision…and oh my goodness, the error rate of those things is far too high…”
While the Mad Doctor stood there in total confusion, the others slipped away. At last Vexen followed, tossing his hair and declaring, “I don’t have time for such trivialities. You’re simply doomed to fail, that’s all.”

“One last person to try,” said Sora, holding three magic beans in the palm of his hand. They had cost him all of his munny at the only store that sold them, and even then, that wasn’t enough…in order to earn enough munny to afford the beans, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy had to briefly repaint their office window and serve for an hour as piano delivery men, which resulted in irrelevant but amusing adventures full of runaway pianos and sour chords.
Sora planted the beans in the ground, and almost immediately, a gargantuan beanstalk rose and thickened. It went all the way up to the clouds. Marluxia was mesmerized.
“Let’s go,” said Sora. Everyone scaled the great stalk. Everyone, that is, except for Myed and Donald.
“Do you get the feeling we’re forgetting something?” Myed asked, watching the others scale the stalk.
“Nah,” said Donald.
“I just get the feeling that things have been…too quiet…”
“Oh, no!” Donald hit his head. “Shelby! We left him in the lab!”
“Are you SERIOUS?”
“His mom’s gonna kill me!”
“Hey, GUYS!” Myed called up the stalk. “GUYS! They can’t hear me…”
“Well then, we’re going back alone. Auuuugh…”

The party (minus two) slid under the door of the giant house on the clouds. A giant in a purple tunic roamed around the living room, nearly stepping on them.
“How are we supposed to get his attention?” Sora asked.
“Follow me!” said Mickey, leading them to a table. They all scaled the table leg. “Willie!” Mickey called out. “Hey, Willie!”
The giant stopped and looked down at his table. “A lot of little guys!” he remarked.
“Have you found a map at all, one that leads to…a treasure of sorts?” Sora asked.
“Well…I have these.” Willie went into a closet and pulled out a sheer library of maps, all giant-sized. “This one leads to where I got my goose that lays golden eggs…this one was where I got my harp…”
An hour later, it was discovered that none of the maps were the right one.
“Thanks anyway,” said Sora. The group shimmied down the table leg and set out for the beanstalk.

“Where’ve you guys been?” Riku asked, noting Myed, Donald, and Shelby waiting for them at the base of the stalk. Myed’s clothes were ripped, Donald was covered in slight burns and bald patches, and Shelby was laughing as usual.
“He was playing,” Myed stuttered, “with the torture devices…and he was having FUN.”
“The little explosions hurt too!” Donald yelled.
No one knew what they were talking about, so they moved on.

Back at the café, it was a return to the drawing board. Kairi provided the drawing board, and they stared at it, wondering what to put on it.
“Well,” said Goofy, “we ran out of suspects here…”
“There you are!” said the mother turtle, appearing out of nowhere. “Thank you all for taking care of my baby! You’re all going to be the only babysitters I ever turn to!”
She left with Shelby, who blew a raspberry at them over his mother’s shoulder.
“Yeah right,” Myed muttered. “Do we wanna tell her that we accidentally let the kid play with chainsaws in an evil laboratory?”
“Trust me,” said Donald, “she’s worse than the chainsaws!”
“Um…okay…” Sora turned his attention back to thinking of a plan. “So, I was thinking…”
There was a gasp from the corner; Clarabelle started whispering something excitedly to her friend Horace Horsecollar. Whatever she was saying seemed to include the words “Sora” and “cat burglar.”
Sora rolled his eyes. “I was thinking that my reputation here is pretty much ruined. But other than that, if Pete REALLY wanted to make it inconvenient, wouldn’t he put it over the wall?”
“But how would Pete get over the wall?” Goofy asked.
“Xehanort could get him a free pass to anywhere,” Kairi pointed out.
“Good point,” said Mickey. “I suppose we’ll have to go over the wall.”
“What’s on the other side?” Sora asked.
“A place even crazier than this side of the wall,” Mickey explained.
“Oh, great,” Axel sighed.

They made their way over the wall, helping each other to get to the other side. The town there looked rather like the town on the other side, though many of the inhabitants looked rather different.
“This is Warner Country,” Mickey explained, “situated between the Disney Empire and the Hanna Barbera peninsula. Be careful; everyone here is always up to some kind of trick, and they’re usually in for a selfish gain.”
“Well,” said a high-pitched voice from nearby, “if it t’aint Mickey Mouse! What’s up, Doc?”
Mickey turned to glower at a tall, thin, gray rabbit leaning on the wall and chewing a crunchy carrot.
“Is he a bad guy?” Sora asked.
“Not really,” Goofy explained. “He an’ Mickey are just rivals!”
“The usual,” Mickey bragged. “I’m helping out with the problems in the multiverse while you’re hanging around here playing sophomoric pranks.”
An anvil dropped out of nowhere onto Mickey’s head.
“YOUR MAJESTY!” Sora cried in horror.
A rather flat Mickey scooted the anvil off his head. “No worries,” he grumped. “It only hurt a little bit.” He popped back up to his normal shape, but a large lump rose on his head.
“Sophomoric pranks they may be,” Bugs pointed out, “but dey woirk! Well, it t’aint like I’ve had it easy. I finally made it here instead of gettin’ lost in some weird place like usual. Finally remembered to take that left turn at Albuquerque, and made it home.”
“Good for you,” Mickey sighed, rolling his eyes.
“So what’re ya doin’ over here in Warner Country? You know I know this place like the back of my hand—“
“Of course, you’ve ended up everywhere in it from getting lost so much—“
“And I S’POSE I could help you out, bein’ that it’s in my generous nature.”
“I think we’ll be fine on our own,” Mickey insisted.
“But Mickey,” said Goofy, “Warner Country is as huge as our own empire over the wall! We could get lost!”
Before Mickey could reprimand Goofy for bringing that up, a short, bald hunter chased a pitch-black duck over to the wall, running him up against it and pressing a large old-fashioned rifle to his neck.
“I thhhhwear!” the duck pleaded for his life. “It’thhhh rabbit theathon! NOT DUCK THEATHON!”
“Oh weally?” The hunter switched his gun over to Bugs.
Bugs sighed. “Here we go again…it’s Duck Season.”
“Rabbit theathon!”
“Duck season!”
“Rabbit season!”
“Hey,” said Pete, peeking out of a portal that Maleficent must have made, “Ackcherly, it’s MOUSE season!” Pete then randomly disappeared into the portal.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Xigbar, who had grown tired of the arguing. “It’s SHUT UP OR I BLAST YOUR HEAD OFF season!”
He drew his bowgun, causing the others to flinch.
“Wight away, si’w!” the hunter insisted, running off.
“I’m thorry, I’m thorry!” the other duck yelled, charging in a different direction.
“Eh.” Bugs shrugged and kept chewing his carrot.
Xigbar dismissed the bowgun, shaking his head.
“So…” Kairi said, trying to break the awkwardness. “We’re looking for the most inconvenient character to find over here. Do you have any idea who that is?”
“Hmmm…” Bugs thought it over. “I dunno. I know a lot o’fellas who are inconvenient to find…I know a cowboy who you can’t get within three feet of without ‘im shootin’, an’ I know a boid that lives in a cage in this old lady’s house, and I know the Roadrunner’s been runnin’ around with this sort of weird map thingy around its neck—“
“WHAT?” everyone yelled at once.
Bugs shrugged. “Somethin’ I said?”
“The Roadrunner!” Mickey cried, snapping his fingers. “This is gonna be tough. The Roadrunner is clocked to be the fastest creature in the multiverse, even faster than Sonic the Hedgehog. He doesn’t speak any sort of language, and can’t read either…if we want that map, we’re going to have to catch him.”
“Now that IS inconvenient,” Axel remarked.
“If ya want,” Bugs offered, “I can get you a shortcut to the desert where he lives!”
“Sounds great!” said Sora.
Bugs immediately dove into the ground, digging a tunnel below the earth at breakneck speed.
Sora looked down the tunnel. “How are we all supposed to follow him?”
“We make this tunnel larger,” said Lexaeus. “In the absence of a shovel, I suppose this will do.”
He drew his tomahawk, driving it into the earth.

Back in the Disney side of Toontown, Minnie was showing off her latest purchases to Daisy after a spree at the mall. “Do you think this new bow goes with my dress?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Daisy replied. “Gray isn’t really your color.”
“Gray?” Minnie was confused. “But I thought I bought a pink one!”
She plucked the bow off her head, holding it in her hands. It was gray, all right. But something was off…she looked down, and her shoes were black. They had been blue earlier. Her skirt was pale white…before, it had been a refreshing splash of summery color.
“Daisy!” she cried, looking up at her friend. “Something’s happening…and it’s happening to you too!”
“What?” Daisy spun around. Her clothes had also gone completely into monochrome, and her beak had lost color as well. “What’s going on?”
All around, the land was slowly starting to pale in color.
“Oh dear,” Minnie cried, “oh dear oh dear!”

At last, the party emerged from the tunnel into the desert.
“There ‘e is,” said Bugs, pointing out a running bird. “Well, have fun catchin’ ‘im. I’m goin’ back home.” He hopped into the tunnel and dug his way back toward the Warner half of Toontown.
The others stared in awe as the Roadrunner crossed the horizon in two blinks of an eye.
Leon shook his head. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “The creature we’ve been looking for is a giant blue CHOCOBO?”