This has been the roughest chapter to write, which may very well be a factor in why I had that huge gap in the series. I know the ending that this fan-fiction is pointing towards, and I know a couple of the stops along the way, but the rest of it has been kind of 'okay that's a decent pause, now I need to bring in this character and nudge the action in this direction'.
So for the past several months I've known that I really needed to check in with Bugs. And what can I say? His dialogue and mannerisms really don't come naturally to me the way Meg and Daffy just roll off my fingertips. It's also pretty challenging trying to translate ANY of the Looney Tunes timing in written form, much more so putting them on Disney's property. Suffice to say, I'm rather pleased to be fourteen chapters in and this thing hasn't completely fallen apart yet.
I want to draw your attention to the wonderful website KenNetti which has an incredibly thorough and insightful tribute to Snow White's Scary Adventures, the setting of this chapter and my personal recurring nightmare. I always try to include as many nods to Disney's history as is feasible, and KenNetti's site essentially handed me the elements that got the ride moving again. So thank you for being so passionate about Disney's definitive house of horror; I've learned many new things from you.
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The foul odor of marsh filled Maleficent's nostrils as she stared at the castle's outer wall. The passageway inside was clearly meant as an exit only, and everything from the disorientingly insufficient light to the wail emitting from the forest behind her gave the dark fairy pause.
She wasn't used to not being in control. And this structure, which seemed to be daring her to venture inside, had her at a disadvantage. But if her information was as correct as her instinct, this was where she needed to go. But Maleficent had no intention of being taken by surprise in such a place. Instead of blindly wandering into the open passageway, she turned her attention to the barely noticeable nook in the castle wall just to the right. Nothing was there, but Maleficent sensed it had some cunning purpose meant for housing an ambush to those who would exit the castle properly.
Maleficent found her eyes unable to accurately gage the distance of the landscape beyond, and a tap of her staff revealed that she was in fact standing mere inches from a wall that had been decorated with images of a hill beyond, like a painting. She must be at the edge of the artificial world.
A familiar squawk caught her off guard, and she nearly threw a lightning bolt in its direction. It was a raven. Not hers as she would have hoped, but a wild one, with its jaw gaping at the sight of her.
"Shhh," she attempted soothing the bird, "Have no fear, little one."
When the raven had quieted, she extended the back of her hand as an invitation but the creature flew away. She let her eyes follow it until it was out of sight. "Never admit your limitations," she offered up to it before turning her attention back to the passageway and stepping into darkness.
Intuition had paid off. She wasn't able to scry into more than one place on the island at a time, but she'd received much by regularly checking in on the two girls who had stumbled across her. The one called Alice had proven to be the more useful, as her propensity for reading and her inability to keep her discoveries to herself provided Maleficent with a steady stream of information.
The surrounding landscape leading to this castle matched one of the blueprints Alice had taken an interest in, and both the interior and exterior were designed to be a journey of horror. To what end, she didn't know. Alice's random musings to Megara had suggested people were naturally attracted to that which frightened them. It was a paradox that Maleficent could never fully comprehend.
But what mattered was that the castle had a history of revision, and one particular revision allegedly held a secret. What the secret was, Alice (and as such, Maleficent) didn't know; but with the signs pointing both towards and away from said location, Maleficent wasn't about to let an opportunity reach the untalented hands of someone other than her.
The corridor led her into a small alcove containing a cauldron. A quick examination revealed little as to what the pot was used for, but the nearby shelf suggested someone had been dabbling in magic recipes who had no business doing so. There was the sound of a crash coming from the nearby shelves, even though they remained intact. Likely a ghostly echo.
Maleficent felt a stirring in her gut as she stepped into the next area, which was a dungeon that held the remaining skeletons of former inhabitants. The stirring was something she couldn't explain. It was almost a feeling of familiarity that wasn't; as if at one point this place was meant for her. Insulting, she grimaced. These creatures had been left to rot. The work of someone with low ambitions.
She peered into the gem on her scepter to check in on the girls, who were apparently out of breath. For whatever reason they had ventured into the forest and had yet another run in with someone or something that they were unequipped to handle. Megara panted, "Remind me why we left the safety of the mansion," to which Alice volunteered her theory that one of the distant mountains appeared to have a human carved structural support to it, no doubt containing some clue to the island's mystery. Well that was fortuitous timing, thought Maleficent. She would have to commit Alice's discovery to memory.
Maleficent turned her attention back to the skeletons. Each one no doubt had been placed there for a reason. One had perished reaching for a water jug that was out of arm's length. Another lay stretched out on a rack, forgotten. There was one chained to the wall behind what at first appeared to be a fairly large symmetrical spider web, but closer inspection revealed the strands to be made from iron, which she had no intention of touching.
"Hello," she spoke out loud without realizing it. "And who is this?" The figure was chained against the wall with arms stretched wide apart and manacles at the wrists and ankles. His skull hung downwards as if he was still in agony. His feet were not touching the ground, which meant he'd been left to hang where he was until his death.
It was not the gruesomeness of the figure that had caught Maleficent's eye, but the feasibility. Stripped to the bare bones, as it were, the skeleton's...skeleton could support its own weight, but the addition of muscles and skin would have to have dislocated one or both shoulders in the process. Maleficent placed her fingers under the skeleton's chin and gently and looked into his empty eye sockets.
"You were hated deeply, weren't you." She examined the bars in the grate behind the skeleton and found markings where iron had rubbed against iron, and two chains dangled freely a few inches below his hands. So that's it then, she thought. He used to have a collar that bound him to the prison.
A quick search of the floor revealed its location. The collar had been casually dropped about a foot away from its owner. Maleficent tilted her head to read the inscription on it. Prince Oswald. The name meant nothing to her at this time, but the fact that someone had gone through the trouble to identify the corpse clearly had a significance. Maleficent took a step back from Prince Oswald to examine him fully. "How did you get out of that?" she wondered aloud.
"Eh," came a smug voice behind her. "Looking for this?"
She turned around to face the culprit, only to find herself staring at a rabbit. It stood upright like a man and came to half her height. He must have been the recipient of a half-curse. The rabbit held a golden key which he haphazardly tossed in the air and caught; deliberately testing her.
"Hand that over now," she demanded.
"Havin' a key in a dungeon? There's laws against that kinda thing. You could get yourself locked up." He tucked his fingers into the fur around his neck and pulled it away from his skin as if was a shirt collar, into which he let the key disappear.
Maleficent couldn't decide what to make of what she'd just witnessed. This enchantment was no kind of magic with which she was familiar. "What are you supposed to be?"
"Supposed to be?" He batted his eyelashes. "Me? I'm supposed to be in Pismo Beach, home of the Wild Monkeys of 67. You?"
Maleficent opened her mouth to speak but he rabbit instantly cut her off.
"Wait! Don't say a word!" An instant later she found herself seated at a table that hadn't been there before. The animal had his ears wrapped up like a turban and he was waving his gloved fingers around the orb on her staff. "I see you've travelled a great deestance, searching for sometheeng no? But I can see what you are lookeeng for. Eet ees close. So close. Eet ees..." he abruptly dropped the fake accent and held out his hand "$5.99 for the first minute. Be sure to get your parents' permission before using their credit card."
She yanked the staff away from him and glared down from her full height. "Do I strike you as amused?"
"Amused?" he said nonchalantly. "I wouldn't say amused. I'd say you strike me-" The rest of his sentence was cut off by the loud whack of her staff on his head. He wobbled in place for a few seconds before recovering. "Well that was a carefully timed break in the record".
"Now hand over the key," Maleficent ordered. "I won't ask again."
He leaned against the dungeon wall. "Look lady, for the past two days I've been shot at, trampled and chased by boiling lava; and for no good reason! If you want the key I want answers."
"You are in no position to demand anything. Don't be a fool."
"Fine. Point taken," the rabbit sneered, and in one swift movement he'd placed a jester's hat that he clearly didn't have before on top of Maleficent's headpiece. "You can be the fool."
The annoyance was beginning to take a toll on Maleficent's composure as she snatched the hat off her head and it instantly burst into flames in her fist. She would have erupted herself were it not for the plastic ring that had just sailed across the room hooking one of her beloved horns. Two more followed in succession.
"I did it!" the rabbit cheered. "That's two prizes! I'll take an explanation and a plush flamingo for the missus." He wasn't expecting a green bolt of lightning to come streaking at him, and he barely managed to dodge it, singeing the fur of his tail. "This is why people think these games are rigged!" he called from the hallway.
Maleficent was reluctant to use her ability to blink in such a tight space, but the rabbit was fast and she wasn't thinking strategically. With a mild clap of thunder, she vanished and reappeared further down the corridor about where she'd predicted he was. She didn't see him at first, until he came gliding in from the side hanging by an apparatus in the ceiling. His sudden appearance startled her, even if she would never, ever admit to it.
The rabbit scurried further down the hall, quite proud of himself when Maleficent appeared a second time in front of him. He skidded to a stop trying while to rack his brain for a quick idea. "Did they add more of you to match the one in Tokyo?" he asked rhetorically hoping the confusion would buy him a few seconds. Green flames flared on both sides of her, and he began to suspect that he may have antagonized the wrong person this time.
A sharp turn to the right and he found himself running straight towards one of those cells, which wasn't a good sign. But when Maleficent made the error of teleporting in front of him again, he slammed the bars shut. She made a move in his direction but recoiled before her skin touched the iron. The rabbit didn't know what the problem was, but he wasn't going to question it either.
"Aye, a fool y'are Sheelah Sugrue!" He retrieved the gold key and dangled it in front of her. "A meddlesome is she? This time we'll be throwin' away the key!"
Maleficent bit her tongue as the obnoxious creature scampered away muttering "A'right, show's over folks," to whatever audience he was imagining. Blinking through the iron was out of the question, so she had to regain her focus to morph into her wisp form. It took a little bit longer than usual, what with her rage bubbling over, but moments later she was a glowing green sphere drifting cautiously between the bars. Even as a wisp she could feel the threat of burning from the metal, like acid.
Having cleared the bars, Maleficent remained as a wisp until she arrived into the next room (a throne room from the looks of it). It had only been a few seconds, but being a wisp helped her clear her head. The rabbit was cunning, but he'd caught her off guard. That wouldn't happen again.
She resumed her natural shape and held still, feeling the energy of the surrounding area. The rabbit was close by. No sound of feet. He wasn't running. He must be trying to outwit her again.
Maleficent stood with her back to the throne, peering down the furthest hallway out where a large mirror hung on the wall reflecting back into the throne room. The angle didn't allow her to see what was around the bend in the corridor, but something about the reflection struck her as odd. A second mirror hung on the wall directly behind her, next to the throne; she could see her back in the reflection of the reflection. But something about the shape seemed a little off.
She slowly turned around to see the mirror behind her only to discover that it wasn't a mirror at all, but a gap in the wall. And standing there in a black robe mimicking her movement was the rabbit, in the most superficially thin disguise she'd ever envisioned someone would attempt. He must think me an idiot, she thought. And without a word, she sent a stream of electricity into the rabbit's body, causing his very skeleton to glow inside his skin, until he finally collapsed into a pile of soot.
The key that Maleficent sought, despite having no knowledge of its purpose, hit the stone floor with a soft thud. She retrieved it and brought the item to her eyes. So much effort for something so trivial, she thought, and turned to leave the wretched place.
She'd only made it halfway across the throne room when the unmistakable ears of her most recent headache perked up in the real mirror's reflection. "Of course you realize," he said with more volition than before, "this means war."
Why the rabbit wasn't dead was of no interest to her. But why he wasn't backing down, that gave Maleficent a bit of sadistic joy she rarely allowed herself. She stared down at the creature with venom in her half-smile. And she transformed. And grew. Her magnificent wings sprouted and her tail wrapped around the inside walls of the room to where the tip almost touched the throne itself. Her face's expression carried over into a crinkle of her new jaw and massive snout that could only read as 'you were saying?'.
The rabbit's posture had not changed but his volition from moments ago was nothing more than an echo. "Bye-ee" was all he could say before diving through the hole in the wall faster than he'd ever moved before.
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