Kingdom Hearts ~another side~ Ch. 7

[Hayate]

In this town we call home, everyone hail to the pumpkin song…

Kingdom Hearts ~another side~

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~ Report 7: The Halloween Queen ~[/b][/u]

The town of all things Halloween, well known by its cheerily morbid appearance all year long. Pumpkin lanterns line every street and alleyway. Colonies of bats flutter by as they fill the night air with high-pitched screeches. A great full moon casts a luminescence over the Midnight Hill horizon.

Marin arrives outside Guillotine Plaza and is treated to the many bone-chilling sights and sounds this world had to offer. “Whoa… And I thought my house was scary on Halloween…”, mutters the redhead to herself. “Seems like the kind of place Relena would feel right at home in.” Marin observes the various creatures and monsters that called this world home. Almost immediately, she realizes a notable difference between herself and them: she was significantly more…colorful.

Stepping away from the gate, Marin takes a moment to assess her attire. “I go out there looking like this and I’ll stick out like a sore thumb. …Hmm…” A light bulb switches on in Marin’s brain… “Ah! I know!” …and she draws the Deepest Blue. She raises her hand up above her and waves the blade about like a magic wand. As she does this, a sprinkle of white dust showers over her, magically changing her appearance.

Through the magic of the Keyblade, Marin acquires a paler skin tone (bordering on beige), hair a much darker shade of red with a streak of white running down the middle-right side and hanging loosely down her back as opposed to a ponytail, a skull barrette, black eyeliner that accentuated the gold in her eyes, seductive maroon lipstick, decorative bat earrings, a spiked choker, a black velvet dress and a roses-and-thorns pattern that was somewhat more revealing than her typical manner of dress, pointed fingernails with red nail polish, fishnet stockings, and black high-heeled shoes.

The girl couldn’t help but have a laugh at her own expense. “If the others ever saw me in this, I’d never hear the end of it.”, remarks she. After tucking the Keyblade safely away, Marin sets her sights upon the rust-coated gate and watches it slowly creak open as she approaches. She takes in a deep breath and steps lightly forward, passing by a pumpkin-headed scarecrow that bore a wooden sign with the words ‘Halloween Town’ carved into it.

The town square buzzes softly with activity. Marin circles the fountain and guillotine and shares passing glances with some of the world’s assorted inhabitants: ghosts, ghouls, vampires, witches, werewolves, fish-man hybrids, a living tree or two. They pay her no particular mind at first, but find they do a double-take in her direction -- if not for the unfamiliarity of her face then for the attractiveness of it. Marin had wished not to be made a spectacle, and here she finds herself to be exactly that. ‘So much for not sticking out like a sore thumb…’, she broods over.

A short distance away, a tender voice to Marin’s left speaks up. “Um, excuse me?”

“Hmm?” As she turns to face her left, Marin is suddenly approached by another such resident of Halloween Town: a woman with pale blue skin, long brown hair, covered in seams and stitches. Her overall appearance and attire had given off the vibe of a ragdoll. In spite of this, she seemed like one of the world’s less bizarre-looking characters, and the kindness in her eyes filled Marin with a sense of peace. “Can I help you?”

As she walks up, the brown-haired woman looks upon Marin as though the two had already met. “It is you…”, she begins, slightly under her voice. “So you’ve come… I was afraid this would happen…”

“Wait, what? You knew I was coming?”

“Yes. It was in a vision I had today. You came to Halloween Town, and something had followed you. Something…really bad.”

Marin’s spine grows cold. Considering the nature of the world she was visiting, she would have shrugged it off as a mere scare attempt, but there was something to the woman’s words and tone. A sinister something. “W-What was it?”, asks Marin through her stutter. “What followed me?”

“I’m sorry.”, the woman answers in regret. “All I could see was Moonlight Hill. You were there, and everything was being swallowed by black.”

“…”

“…Forgive me for sounding rude, Miss, but I think it’d be in everyone’s best interests if you left. Right now.”

“Uh…” Had Marin not chuckled then, she’d have surely taken the woman up on her suggestion. “Y-You sure you’re not just worrying too much? Okay, yeah, this place does look a little…bleak, but I don’t sense anything that bad.”

The brown-haired woman was less than convinced. “But…”

“Oh! There you are, Sally!”

In enters aside voice #2. Marin is now greeted by a tall, thin skeleton wearing a black-and-white pinstripe suit and black bat-shaped bowtie. He greets the girls with a wide seam-like smile.

The woman Sally’s demeanor seemed to brighten up at the man’s entrance, if only a little. “Oh, hello, Jack.”, she greets.

“I wanted to go over the plans for next Halloween with you.”, says ‘Jack’ as he enters. Looking over, he meets Marin’s eye. “Ah. I’m not interrupting, am I?”

“Well, not really… This is, uh…”

“Marin. Hi there.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Marin!”, Jack greets with a courteous bow. “Jack Skellington at your service! Unfortunately, you’ve picked sort of a bad time to visit. And while I see you’re certainly dressed for the occasion, I’m afraid you just missed this year’s festival.”

“Aw, that’s too bad. Well, there’s always next year.”

“Oh-ho. A fan of Halloween, I take it?”

“You kidding!? I love Halloween! I go trick-or-treating with my friends every year!”

“Wonderful! In that case, why don’t you come with me to see Dr. Finkelstein? I was just on my way to see him anyway about next year’s festival.”

“Next year’s? Didn’t this year’s just end?”

“Oh, Marin. When it comes to perfecting the art of terror, it’s never too early to start planning!”

“Really…?”

“Naturally! Now come on! We mustn’t keep the doctor waiting.”

As Jack’s incredibly long legs carry him off toward a sort of laboratory, Marin follows by the tip of his coattails, opting to indulge in this sudden curiosity of hers. Sally, still concerned about the vision she had earlier that day, stays behind as an even greater deal of unease sets in. “…”

Jack and Marin climb the steps leading up to Dr. Finkelstein’s lab. All through the upward hike, Jack speaks praise of the scientist. “Most of the ideas I’ve had for Halloween wouldn’t have been made a reality if not for Dr. Finkelstein. He truly is a genius.”

“You don’t say…”

The two at last reach the door at the top of the stairs, and Jack reaches out his hand to open it…

…but he’s beaten to the punch when an explosion inside causes the door to swing open. Jack and Marin are greeted by a massive cloud of smoke.

Following this, an infuriated yell. “You meddlesome brats!”

Then, through the smoke emerges a trio of children, all wearing Halloween costumes and masks and laughing flippantly. “Run away!”, cry the three in unison.

Marin jumps to the side, as the three would’ve run her over otherwise. “Hey, watch it! You could hurt someone!”, she scolds. “…Who were they?”, asks the redhead to Jack.

“Lock, Shock, and Barrel.”, he replies. “A bunch of perpetual troublemakers. It’s Halloween all year round to those three. But I wouldn’t worry myself over them; they’re pretty harmless.”

A violent cough is then heard within the fumes. As they finally clear, a man dressed in a lab coat and large black gloves and seated in a motorized wheelchair appears. The man had skin as white as paper, beady black eyes concealed by goggles, and a beak-like mouth. “Argh! Those infernal little gremlins! If I were their parent, I’d have half a mind to…! Ooh!”

“Hello, doctor.”, Jack suddenly greets, perhaps to distract the scientist from his frustrations.

“Eh? …Ah, Jack Skellington. Right on schedule. …And I see Sally isn’t with you. Where’d that wretched girl sneak off to this time?”

“Hmm? Strange. I could’ve sworn she was right behind us.”

“Ugh… Never mind, I’ll deal with her later. Come in, my boy, come in!” Turning his wheelchair around, Dr. Finkelstein wheels himself back inside, with Jack and Marin close behind.

As Marin enters, a number of items catch her eye: a bookshelf, beakers and test tubes, wall levers and switches, and an operating table. It certainly had all the makings of a scientist’s lab. Her eyes turn to the operating table once more; a strange pumpkin-shaped machine with legs lies on top of it. She inquisitively pokes at it, wondering if the mechanism were alive. “What’s this thing…?”, Marin asks Jack and the doctor.

With an excited laugh, Jack answers, “This, Marin, is my latest instrument of nightmares! I call it the ‘Arachno-Jack’. One morning, I thought to myself, why not take pumpkins and spiders -- two equally powerful forces of fright -- and brought them together!? Next year, I’m gonna have a whole bunch of these bad boys walk the streets of Halloween Town, scaring everyone with their petrifying gazes, bloodcurdling howls, and breath of fire!”

“These things…breathe fire…?”

“Hahaha! Of course not! The Arachno-Jacks generate their own light source through an interior furnace. They’re as harmless as jack-o’-lanterns.”

“Yes, and I had just finished working on the engine…”, Dr. Finkelstein jumps in with. “…when Lock, Shock, and Barrel tampered with my equipment and disabled the engine coils! Now, until I get my lab up and running again, I can’t activate it!”

“So it just needs power?”

“Precisely.”

“…I think I can help with that.” Marin holds out her hand and summons the Keyblade.

The weapon’s magnificence and beauty briefly mesmerizes Jack and the doctor. “Ohhhh…”

Taking a couple of steps back, Marin takes aim at the ‘bedridden’ Arachno-Jack and releases several volts of Thunder-based magic. The resulting voltage completes the circuit and powers up the engine. Joints start to click, gears start to whirr, and the mechanized spider-pumpkin jerks alive, pushing its legs against a nonexistent floor.

“It’s working…!”, the doctor exclaims. “It’s really working! Ha-ha!”

Jack’s fascinations lay not in his new toy, however, but in the weapon in Marin’s hand. “My… What a remarkable device this is… Tell me, can it do anything else? Make fire? Create ice?”

“Uh, sure, and a bunch of other stuff too.”

“Is that so…? Well, that settles it! Marin, how would you like to help me with the festival next year!?”

“M-Me?”

A group of prying ears listens in on Jack’s festival plans through a crack in the entrance. “Ooh! Sounds like Jack and that lady are up to something!”

“Something big!”

“Should we tell Mr. Oogie?”

“Yeah, yeah! Come on, let’s go!”

“Hee-hee! This is gonna be fun!”

A small crowd is called to gather in Guillotine Plaza. Murmurs of anticipation and curiosity fill the square as the citizenry waits and speculates. Atop a large platform stands a short man with a peculiarly cone-shaped body and stubby legs with tiny feet. His manner of dress was formal: a large, thin top hat, black suit, a spider-shaped bowtie, black-and-white pinstriped pants, and a red ribbon on the left side of his blazer that bore the administrative title of ‘MAYOR’. Bringing a short, metal megaphone to his perpetual smile, he addresses the public. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and ghouls, I give you your Pumpkin King… Jack Skellington!”

Inside the well, the surface of the sickeningly green water start to vibrate, beginning as a gentle ripple but soon escalating into a violent ebb and flow. A slender figure emerges from beneath the emerald depths and gazes upon the crowd with hollow eyes. With his arrival, Jack Skellington strikes a daunting pose, prompting the public’s applause and cheers. “Thank you! Thank you, all! You’re far too kind! …I have a special treat for all of you today. I know the Halloween Festival is over and the next one is a whole year away, but I thought I’d give you a sneak peek at what next year’s festival has in store! We have a special guest with us in Halloween Town today…and she’d like to say hello. Everyone… Presenting the mistress of fright, the duchess of blight… ‘Marin the Macabre’!”

The sound of jangling chains turns the attention of everyone in the plaza upward, where a coffin appears to be lowering from the sky. The lid makes a screaming creak as it opens. After several seconds of suspenseful silence, a single hand reaches out to grab the side of the coffin, and Marin slowly picks herself up to sit upright. At that moment, her eyes shoot open and she rapidly rises to her feet. A collective gasp fills the crowd, and Marin takes the Deepest Blue into her hand. To kick things off, she twirls her body around on one leg and shoots off a cluster of Fire spells. The fireballs fly about the crowd’s airspace as Marin directs. One of the Fires stops short of roasting a werewolf, simply floating in place before him. Just then, it sprouts a face, complete with eyes and serrations in the flames that resemble teeth. The other fireballs follow suit and sprout similar expressions of spiteful intent. Marin continues by setting the sky ablaze with a show of thunder and lightning. The crowd’s terrified shrieks are matched only by her evil cackle. But her outward malice belied the merriment being had within. Perhaps she was more like Relena than she cared to admit. ‘This is so much fun!’

The infectiousness that was laughter would reverberate from beyond Moonlight Hill as well. At the far end of a ramshackle rope bridge is a great, grotesque, irregular mansion situated on top of a high-reaching hill. Fashioned out of an old, dead tree, held together by crooked wood roads and ladders, and decked out with pumpkins, bones, and a spider cage, it was a manor worthy of only the most abominable of Halloween freaks.

Enter one Oogie Boogie, a plump burlap sack of a man (if he can be called as such) with a great collection of bugs and maggots where would typically be blood, bones, and internal organs. He laugh a hearty guffaw as he palms a pair of dice between the folds of his leathery, fingerless hands. “So Jack’s roped another poor chump into his Halloween plans, eh? Well, how nice for him!”, the bag o’ bugs cynically comments.

“It’s a girl!”, Shock yelps.

“A pretty girl!”, Barrel adds.

“Oh, well, excuse me -- a chumpette! Either way, if she’s a buddy o’ Jack’s, she ain’t no buddy o’ mine! …Wait… How pretty are we talkin’?”

Lock speaks up, “Really pretty! And mean too!”

“Mean, huh? Hmmm… Bah! Who cares!? I’m puttin’ the kibosh on this little partnership before I’m yesterday’s bedbugs! No way Oogie Boogie’s rollin’ over for some floozy! I got a job for ya, kids. I want ya to lure the chumpette away from the square and scare her somethin’ good.”

“What do we do with her?”, Lock inquires.

To which Oogie heatedly replies, “I don’t care! Just drive her outta the town! Heck, if ya end up takin’ her out for good, that works even better!”

Barrel’s wicked clown grin widens as an idea comes to him. “Ooh! Can we use that, Oogie? Can we?”

Shock picks up on this in a heartbeat. “Ooh, that’s a great idea! Hee-hee-hee!”

“Hmm… Ah, why not? I’m feelin’ extra slithery today! Hahahaha!”

The quartet shares a bout of baleful laughter as ‘Operation: Give Marin the Boot!’ is formulated.

…Back in Guillotine Plaza, the crowd of ghoulish beings disperses, having had its fill of Marin’s unique brand of horror. Close by the entrance to Dr. Finkelstein’s lab, Marin meets with Jack and Sally. “A wondrous show, Marin!”, Jack emphatically acclaims. “If I had skin, it would’ve given me goose bumps!”

“Thanks.”, says Marin. “It was a lot of fun actually.”

“What did you think, Sally?”

“…”

“…Sally?”

“Huh? Oh. Y-Yes, it was…very nice.”

Though Jack was puzzled by the brunette’s behavior, Marin could immediately tell what was on her mind: no doubt the aforementioned vision she had of Halloween Town being swallowed by darkness and Marin being at the epicenter. If such a vision were indeed a sign of things to come, perhaps it would be best for the red-haired girl to move on. “…So, Jack.”, Marin starts. “What’s next?”

“I’m going to consult the doctor on ways to improve the Arachno-Jack. Good day to you both for now. I hope you enjoy your time in town, Marin.”

“Thanks, Jack. Later.”, Marin says to the departing Jack with a wave. Once the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town falls out of earshot, she turns to the miserable Sally. “…Me being here is really stressing you out, isn’t it?”

Judging by Sally’s reaction, Marin was right on the money. “I…”

“Where was it again? Moonlight Hill? That big curly hill, right? If that’s where I was standing in your vision, I’ll just stay clear of that area, okay? Nothing’s gonna happen, I promise.”

“…If you say so.” Despite her attire, Marin seemed like the type whose words could be trusted. Her mood brightened ever so slightly, Sally walks off…

…leaving Marin by her lonesome. With a sigh, she folds her arms over her chest and looks out toward the rest of the town square, mulling over her next course of action. Move on to the next world? Or look into this entity from Sally’s vision that was to consume Halloween Town? It was strange. During her time in this world, Marin had felt very little darkness. ‘It doesn’t feel like the Heartless have reached this place yet.’, she thought. ‘…Though with all these weirdoes walking around town, it’s hard to tell the difference…’

“Hehehe…”

“…Hmm?” Turning to the faint laughter behind her, Marin looks down to find Lock, Shock, and Barrel at knee height. As much as she liked kids, Marin was reasonably less than thrilled to see them. “Oh. It’s you three. What do you want?”

Lock removes his devil mask momentarily and takes aim with a straw.

“…?” Expecting a spitball to come flying into her face, Marin receives a faceful of bugs, spiders, and worms. “Agh! What the!?”

The trio promptly turns tail and flees in the direction of the graveyard, laughing cheekily all the while.

“Argh! You little punks!” Brushing the various creepy-crawlies off of herself, Marin pursues.

Lock, Shock, and Barrel flee from the woman scorned into the graveyard, squeezing their petite forms through openings between the gate’s bars. Marin arrives at the gate to find it locked tight. “Oh, come on!” Not to be slowed down, however, she takes a step back and undoes the gate lock by way of the Keyblade. Her pursuit resumes.

As she enters the graveyard, Marin comes across the standard fare of graves and tombstones, including a large tomb at the far end with a slightly ajar lid. Much to her chagrin, Lock, Shock, and Barrel were nowhere to be seen. “Tch! Where could those little hoodlums have run off to!? It’s a dead-end!”

All of a sudden, a ghostly form appears and whizzes around Marin several times…

“W-Whoa!”

…before stopping in front of Marin’s face to bark cheerily at her. It had a body like a white sheet and the face of a pooch, with floppy ears, a long, thin snout, and a tiny pumpkin nose.

Marin blinks a number of times before realizing she was in the presence of a ghost dog. “Uh, hey there, boy. You want something from me…?”

The ghost dog does little except stare vacantly, letting out a low whine.

“Um… Oh! I know!” Kneeling down, Marin picks up a short bone at her feet and wags it in the dog’s face. “Here, boy! C’mon!”

In response, the pooch barks and pants excitedly.

“Fetch!”, cries Marin as she tosses the bone toward the far end of the graveyard.

The dog quickly swerves around and flies over to where the bone landed and scoops it up into its mouth (regardless of its phantomlike body composition). It then flies back to where Marin was standing, drops the bone at her feet, and playfully nuzzles her cheek.

“Ha-ha! Good boy! …I’m looking for Lock, Shock, and Barrel. Did you see where they went?”

With an affirming bark, the dog flies back toward the end of the graveyard and floats over the partially open coffin.

The Keyblade master walks over and looks inside the coffin to find it didn’t have a bottom, just a pit of black that seemed to stretch on forever. “…They went in there? You’re sure?”

The ghost pup barks twice as if to answer ‘yes’.

“Alright… Who am I to distrust man’s best friend…?” Pushing the lid back further, Marin takes a leap of faith into the abyss.

On the other side of said abyss, the troublemaking trio of trick-or-treaters stands in a field of yet more pumpkins and jack-o’-lanterns, giggling about their latest exploit. “We got her good!”, says the giddy Lock.

“What should we do next?”

“Let’s throw her in a pit of snakes!”

“No, no! Let’s tie her body to a rack!”

“How about we melt her skin with acid!?”

As the three discuss ways in which to torture the outsider Marin, a tall shadow in the moonlight is cast upon them. Glancing up, they find an angered Marin hovering over them. With brows cast down and arms crossed, she begins to contemplate methods of torture as well. “Oh, the suspense just kills, doesn’t it…?”, she remarks to the children.

With a gulp in unison, the three scatter about in fear of the beating that Marin was about to dole out. “Run away!”, they cry yet again.

Spinning around to give chase, Marin pauses as the revelation of where she stood sets in. She didn’t give much consideration to where the inside of the coffin would lead her -- the one area of Halloween Town she strove to avoid: the curly Moonlight Hill. “This is…”, Marin started under her breath, recognizing the area as that in Sally’s vision.

During Marin’s trance, a skull with a lit fuse bounces on the soil and rolls by her feet. The small explosion it creates snaps her out of it.

Barrel makes a face of ridicule at her. “How’d you like my skull bomb, ‘chumpette’?”

“Grrrr…!” Drawing the Deepest Blue, Marin makes a swift upward motion with it, summoning ice from the earth and encasing the derisive boy in a hollow prison of frost. “…One down.”, she says to herself. Just then, a biting pain at her lower left leg turns her attention downward.

Ironically, ‘biting’ was an appropriate assessment, as the witch girl Shock had sunken her teeth into Marin’s calf before retreating. “Hee-hee-hee! Catch me if you can!”

Readying the Keyblade, Marin accepts the challenge with a zealous “With pleasure!” Throwing the weapon in a descending arc this time, she casts Gravity.

“Oof!” The lass in the tall witch hat goes down in an instant, receiving a faceful of dirt.

“That’s two! …Now then…” With both Shock and Barrel out of commission, Marin turns to the last kid standing. “…Anything you wanna try before I bend you over my knee and spank you?”

Lock shouts through his smirk, “Just this!”, jumping to the peak of the hill and kneeling down to tickle it. “Cootchie-cootchie-coo!”

The hill springs alive to the sensation and outstretches its ‘arm’, swinging it back and forth. The arm eventually swings into Marin, knocking her several yards back and to the ground.

As Lock continues his hill-tickling tactic, the hill swings its arm around endlessly, preventing Marin’s approach. The devil boy makes expressions of mockery during this, such as stretching out his lips and sticking out his tongue. “Nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah-nyah!”

“Tch! You think this’ll stop me? Think again!”, the Key-bearing girl defies. Collecting a mass of electric energy to the tip of the Keyblade, she lets fly a projectile of lightning.

As soon as the projectile makes contact with the base of the hill’s arm, the entire area erupts with voltaic fury. The hill’s arm seizes up from the shock, and due to Lock’s proximity, he suffers the same fate. The hill falls limp to the ground and Lock keels over into brief unconsciousness.

Marin shortly assembles the three to one end of the area. Barrel shivers from the residual cold of her ice cage, and Lock and Shock were still stricken numb. Marin stands over the trio with her hands on her hips. “Well?”, she scolds. “You three have anything to say for yourselves?”

“We got nothing to say to you, ugly!”, Shock insults.

“You’ve gotta be the rudest kids ever! Didn’t your parents teach you any manners!?”

Lock enters with, “Blah! Who needs parents when we’ve got Mr. Oogie Boogie?”

“Oogie who…?”

“Hehehe! In fact, Mr. Oogie let us borrow one of his favorite pets to play with you!”

Suddenly looking to the sky, the three call out in one voice, “OH, MEGA-SPIDER!!!”

From beyond Moonlight Hill, a large mass of black leaps high into the air.

“W-What the!?” Marin’s eyes shoot upward as she attempts to determine what it was that just appeared, but all she could make out in the lunar light was a small spider-shaped silhouette. It isn’t until this Mega-Spider lands on the ground that Marin’s able to see it up-close and in full view. It bore four eyes of distinct sizes, teeth ground razor-sharp, chelicerae like snapping lobster claws, six wriggling legs, and an orange-and-yellow spiral pattern on its back. On top of this, its body was ten, perhaps eleven, times Marin’s size. The giant arachnid gnashes its teeth and snaps its claw-like mandibles most ravenously at the diminutive girl.

Marin shudders in disgust at the sight of the beast. “Your boss keeps this thing as a pet?!?”

“Have fun, ugly!”, Shock insults again as she, Lock, and Barrel flee across the hill’s arm toward Oogie’s Manor.

Marin expresses her displeasure with a simple “…Perfect.”

[BGM: The Tumbling]

Momentarily enclosing its anterior mandibles, Mega-Spider’s jaws shoot open and it spits a hot lump of webbing at Marin. Demonstrating a moderate level of acrobatic prowess, Marin evades the webbing and wheels around to the arachnid’s right side. There, she sweeps at its center-right leg. This knocks it off balance for a moment, but not nearly enough to break its attack flow. The spider rotates itself to face Marin and jumps at her. Marin springs away to evade the attack and braces for the ensuing quake. With Mega-Spider’s back turned to her, Marin catches a glimpse of something on the rear of its abdomen: a glowing pumpkin shape. ‘Seriously, what’s with all the pumpkins in this place…?’, she couldn’t help but wonder. Nonetheless, she positions the Deepest Blue just so and shoots off a single Fire. In a manner akin to stepping on hot coals, Mega-Spider hops a short distance up while screeching in pain. In response, it adopts a strategy of opening up a large hole to the darkness and retreating inside. Just then, a swarm of much smaller spiders no bigger than Shadows emerges from the darkness to cover Moonlight Hill. Marin does away with the swarm with an assortment of spells, from Fire to Thunder to Gravity. When the last spider is squished into oblivion, the Mega-Spider makes a reappearance near the other end of the area, and the first thing Marin takes notice of is… ‘It’s…smaller?’ Indeed, what was once over ten times Marin’s size was now merely seven or eight. Before she could analyze further, however, Mega-Spider pounces once again with intent to skewer the redhead with its mandibles. Marin defends with the Keyblade and, as she absorbs the full weight of Mega-Spider’s dive, is pinned. In such a position, if Mega-Spider couldn’t run Marin through, it would settle for simply flattening her. In defiance, Marin tightens her grip on the Keyblade and pours Fire-based magic into the blade. The intense heat it gives off allows Marin to slice clean through one of Mega-Spider’s mandibles and glide up through to its other side, taking out a couple of its legs as well. The massive insect crashes into the ground face-first while Marin hangs in the air directly above. With the pumpkin shape on Mega-Spider’s backside completely vulnerable, the girl strikes into it with the full force of the Keyblade, prompting another pained screech. Marin lands shortly after while Mega-Spider digs its mandibles out of the soil. As the two sides face one another, the giant arachnid screeches once again in sheer anger. Marin strangely takes delight in this. “What’s the matter? You mad?”, she teases. The time for teasing quickly comes and goes though as a black aura begins to build around Mega-Spider’s body, and the burning orange and yellow of the spiral pattern on its back turns to a chilling blue and violet. A similar chill runs down Marin’s back. “…Uh-oh…” Like before, it retreats into a hole of darkness that opens up beneath its feet. But rather than generate another swarm of smaller spiders, the hole spreads outward and begins to cover all of Moonlight Hill. Marin slowly backs away as the darkness engulfs everything. The meaning behind Sally’s words weren’t more apparent to Marin than they were now.

“…You came to Halloween Town, and something had followed you… Something…really bad… All I could see was Moonlight Hill… You were there, and everything was being swallowed by black…”

Marin whispers through her quivering lips, “The darkness followed me…? Halloween Town’s gonna be swallowed…because of me…?” In her distracted state, the hole reaches below Marin’s feet and starts to pull her down inside. “Aah! Let go of me!” Struggle as she might, Marin was unable to break free, and the darkness devours her like black tar.

…Regaining consciousness an indefinite amount of time later, Marin awakens to find herself in the middle of a great black void. Any attempts to move would prove futile as she was bound by her wrists and ankles to a large spider’s web. Hello?, she moves her lips to utter. But no sound would come, much to her horror. She opens her mouth wide to scream. Still nothing. She focuses on her left hand to summon the Keyblade. Also nothing. It felt as though the light had shunned her. As heavy anxiety sets in, Marin stares straight ahead into the darkness…

…until something stares back.

‘?’ It was faint at first, but before long there was no mistaking Mega-Spider’s spiral of blue and violet. Then, a high-pitched noise that was almost unnoticeable in the deafening silence. A force from within the darkness pushes itself upon Marin’s body. Like being stabbed by millions of tiny knives, even though nothing was happening physically. Marin screams in soundless agony as the sensation envelops her. Make it stop, she mentally cries through her tears. As the force subsides, she hangs her head in semi-consciousness.

Dozens of additional blue-and-violet spirals appear around the first, preparing to intensify the already excruciating torture.

This can’t happen, thinks Marin. I can’t be finished here. I have to stop Relena. Find Ciel and Roche. Go back home to my family. This can’t happen. I won’t let it happen. The light reacts to Marin’s resolve and coats her in an aura of white to match Mega-Spider’s black aura. ‘You think I’m gonna just let you destroy me and have your way with Halloween Town…? No chance…! I brought you to this world…and now…I’m showing you the door!’ The light surrounding Marin moves up and collects at her left palm, taking the form of the Keyblade. With it, she cuts herself loose from webbed captivity and faces the hundreds of Mega-Spiders. She holds the Keyblade close to her with the blade pointing up, and a circle of light appears below her. Then, holding the weapon up as high as her arm could reach, she summons a multitude of light pillars from above to decimate the enemy army. The conflict between light and darkness this creates causes Mega-Spider’s pocket of darkness to collapse upon itself, and the two sides are returned to Moonlight Hill. To Marin’s relief, Halloween Town was still here. Only the original Mega-Spider remained, and it was reduced to being no more than twice Marin’s size. Operating on pure instinct at this point, Mega-Spider stampedes toward her. Marin widens her stance and grasps the Deepest Blue with the tip facing behind. In the face of the arachnid’s rush, she stands her ground. “…” Once the beast is a handful of feet away… “ZANTETSUKEN!!!” …she moves in, vanishing for just a moment and reappearing to Mega-Spider’s back. A short-lived quiet overtakes the battlefield…

…and the arachnid falls over to its death by disintegration.

“…Ugh.” Marin drops to her knees, short of breath and weary from her brush with the dark. “That…was way too close…”, mutters she in her solitude. “Sally was right… I should’ve left the second she warned me… I’d better get going…before I do any more damage…”

Rising to her feet, Marin takes her clouded conscience and makes her way back to the Nautilus, fearful of anything else she might cause in her negligence.

‘Ciel… Roche… You’d better not be causing trouble for anyone…’

~ Next Report: Arabian Nightmare ~