Chapter 6
“I thought you said those files were useless with all the power the Director has?” Rainbow Dash said. She had powered down after landing the team back at Lauren’s Safe House, having flown them there at light-speed after escaping the Director. The speed at which Rainbow and the others were travelling prevented the Bureau from tracing them, but Lauren had made sure to put up all the house’s defenses the moment they got back just to be sure.
“True, it won’t really matter if we expose the Director to the public,” Lauren confirmed. “But these files may nevertheless shed some light on his plans, and how we can stop them.”
“See anything useful yet?” Twilight inquired, having been pouring over half of the papers the team had stolen at the other end of the dining room table. “All I’ve got at this end are a list of the Senior Circle members, which you said was irrelevant.”
“They should be an irrelevant threat compared to the Director,” Lauren agreed. “But it would still be nice to know who is specifically in on this plot. Keep them on hand—er, hoof—just in case. On this end all I’ve managed to get are the names of various retired or deceased Animation Agents from the Bureau’s early days. No idea why the Director would keep this as confidential—wait! I think I found something!”
“What is it?” Applejack asked as everypony rushed over to see Lauren hold up a small gray square of metal. “Uh…how exactly does that help us?”
“It’s a holographic recorder,” Lauren explained, setting down the device which had been paper-clipped to the folder she was investigating. Pressing the red button on the side, Lauren sat back and watched with the ponies as a three-dimensional projection of what appeared to be a map launched into the air above the recorder.
“It’s like a magically-cast image,” Twilight remarked.
“Where is that?” asked Pinkie Pie. “It looks kind of like Canterlot, only not on a mountainside and filled with humans or other Animated instead of ponies!”
“It’s the Walt Disney Theme Park,” Lauren breathed.
“The what?” Applejack inquired. “Looks like a city to me, but you humans don’t usually have castles and giant spheres and big trees in your cities, do you?”
“What would the Director want the with Disney Park?” Lauren wondered out loud. Then, remembering the other’s obliviousness to Earth ways, explained with “It’s the largest private Toon Town in existence, completely owned by the Walt Disney Company—but then, you guys don’t know what Toon Towns are either, do you? How should I put this…well, it’s not going to be easy any way I can think of, so I’ll just say it flat out: Toon Towns are like concentration camps.”
“What’s a concentration camp?” Rarity questioned, and the other ponies looked just as puzzled.
Lauren realized that her new friends must come from a very innocent world indeed and regretted that she was about to make them a little less-innocent.
“It’s kind of like a prison, only worse,” Lauren explained. “You see, the Bureau does a lot of great things in the other worlds—but on Earth, the Animated population is regulated very tightly, far too tightly for my tastes. That’s actually one of the reasons I work for the Bureau, to try and help get rid of these Toon Towns and get enough money to buy some other Animated friends of mine Passes back to their own worlds.
“Back when the Bureau first started up, the Animated were allowed to roam the Earth freely. But as more and more Animated came to Earth and more and more humans left to explore the Animated worlds, the Bureau enacted Portal Passes to ensure that population levels between worlds didn’t fluctuate too greatly. Civilians can’t go between worlds without a Pass, whether they’re human or Animated. This worked at first, but the Animated who got stuck here on Earth as a result began to set up homes and communities and slowly spread their way throughout human society. A lot of humans, all of whom I despise for the bigots they are, didn’t like this, and so the Bureau built Toon Towns to keep all of the Animated beings on Earth in easily policed places out of the way of humans. The Animated are only allowed out of the Toon Towns during the day and have to have special passes to even leave in the first place, and there are strict penalties for not following the many laws of the Toon Towns.”
“That sounds absolutely awful!” Rarity commented. Lauren agreed, as did all Animated, though she herself seemed to be one of the few humans who thought so. “Why do the Animated put up with it?”
“They have little choice,” Lauren said sadly. “Failure to comply with Toon Town laws results in getting thinned—which is the same as death. But the Disney Park is different from other Toon Towns—it’s run by the Disney corporation, which is probably the largest animation industry in the world. The Park is open to the public twenty-four seven but at exorbitant prices, all of which go towards paying for the maintenance of the Park. To Animated beings, the Park is like an Earthly paradise. It’s not their home worlds, but it’s the next best thing. And, even though its big, it can’t accommodate all the Animated beings on Earth, and so many Animated beings would kill just to get in.”
“What connection does it have to the Director?” Twilight wanted to know.
“That’s the thing,” Lauren wondered. “Mickey Mouse and his world were discovered by the very first Animation Bureau Director, long before the current Director rose to power. The man’s name was Walt Disney, and he made a fortune selling Animated wares he got from the worlds he discovered. With that fortune he founded the Walt Disney Corporation, which has always been the most charitable human-run organization towards Animated beings on Earth. Disney himself died long ago, but after the Toon Towns were built the Corporation built the Disney Park as a memorial to his philanthropic nature towards the Animated. But, other than Mickey Mouse, I can’t see a connection between the Director and the Park.”
“Maybe he was planning on using it as a base of operations?” suggested Twilight.
“He’s already got the most well-defended, well-armed building in all the worlds for that—the Bureau,” Lauren negated. “It has to be something deeper than that.”
Lauren began rifling through the remaining papers, and found that they all bore a Disney heading. Many were scribbled with mathematical equations, and others were simply the red-circled names of some of Walt’s closest friends and fellow Animation Agents—the so-called ‘Nine Old Men.’ The final page was the most puzzling, for it bore an illustration of a domino tipping over, and on each domino was written the name of some of the greatest Animation Agents in the history of the Bureau. After the first domino, labeled ‘Disney,’ came ‘Chuck Jones,’ ‘Tex Avery,’ so on and so forth.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Lauren muttered to herself. “Where’s the connection?”
“I don’t know, but you might want to take a look at this,” Rainbow Dash said, breaking Lauren out of her reverie. Rainbow’s hoof was pointed at the holographic image of Disney Park, which was being zoomed in on and reduced to a series of gridlines and place names. Less of a photo and more of a simple map, the hologram of the Park quickly traced a red path through the main attractions and to the castle at the center of the Toon Town. Lauren thought that it would stop there, but the red line continued—downward.
The crimson path wove its way into what developed into a series of tunnels under the Park, revealing a subterranean complex even larger than the Park itself.
“I can’t believe it,” Lauren breathed. “It’s real.”
“What’s real?” Twilight questioned.
“There was always a legend around the Bureau that there was some big secret hidden underneath Disney Park. I didn’t believe it, but it looks like I should have. Whatever’s hidden down there was rumored to be the most powerful Animated thing in existence—even more powerful than Mickey Mouse—and that must be what the Director’s after. He must want to make sure that nobody else gets to it first and uses it against him, because then he actually can be stopped.”
The red line finally halted its descent at a depth over three-times the height of the tallest spire on the castle, where it turned into a single blinking dot with a caption that read “OBJECTIVE LOCATION.”
“Then that’s where we have to go, right?” Pinkie asked.
“Indeed it is,” Lauren almost whispered, smiling to herself. “If this legend turns out to be true and we get to it first, then we can end the Director once and for all and save the worlds!”
“Aw yeah, let’s do it!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, pumping her hoof victoriously in the air. “That Director won’t know what hit him!”
“We’ll have to leave as soon as possible,” Lauren added. “The quicker we get to the Park and uncover this secret weapon the less time the Director has to get there before us and either destroy the weapon or add it to his own power—wait, James is calling me—”
Lauren pulled out her cell phone and laid it on the table, hitting the speaker button.
“We’ve a big f***in’ problem here, Lauren!” the nerd shouted from the other end. “The whole f***in’ Bureau’s gone haywire since your little escapade—every Agent on Earth’s been called in to f***in’ militarize. It’s like we’re preparing for a s***storm of a war, and you’re never gonna believe the target—it’s the Disney Park!”
“That just confirms it,” Lauren stated. “James, when’s the Director making his move?”
“Within the hour,” James informed. “And they’re bringing out all the big guns on this one. ALL of the big guns.”
“Oh,” Lauren whispered. “THOSE big guns. Thanks, James—we’ll be on it immediately.”
The nerd hung up, and Lauren re-pocketed the cell phone. The former Animation Agent looked simultaneously scared and excited.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Lauren told her team. “In fact, it’s probably going to make the Bureau infiltration look like a cake-walk—it’s a likely possibility not all of us will make it back. The Park itself is well-defended and will be hard to get into, not to mention the unknown defenses of the underground complex. But if the Bureau’s declaring war, then many are about to die. If any of you want out, I won’t blame you.”
“What?” Applejack spluttered. “After all we’ve been through, you still think we wouldn’t stick by you till the end?”
“Yeah, Lauren!” Rainbow Dash agreed. “You can count on us!”
“We’d never abandon a friend, no matter how un-fun things get!” Pinkie added.
The rest of the ponies nodded firmly.
“You guys really are the best friends someone could ask for,” Lauren said sincerely, her eyes moistening. “All right, let’s do this!”
. . .
“I still don’t see why a simple teleportation spell couldn’t get us all over this wall,” Twilight insisted.
“I told you,” Lauren cautioned, looking nervously around outside from where the group was hiding in the bushes at the base of the wall encompassing Disney Park. “This particular Toon Town uses more types of magic than perhaps any other place in all the worlds. Your own magic will get past some, but not all, and then we’d just be stuck in the middle of the wall. That’s why we need the Digital equipment to get us inside.”
“Mission accomplished!” announced Pinkie Pie right on cue, appearing behind the group and almost startling them all into giving their position away. “I jumped up really high with those spring shoes you lent me and popped a portal inside! Now I just have to pop one here, and—”
Pinkie shot a portal into the wall, and the others instantly saw a back alley inside of the Park come into view. Lauren hastened everypony inside, and Pinkie closed the portals. The change on the inside of the Park was instantaneous. The sheer magical effect of the Park could easily be felt emanating through the wall from the outside, but not until the group reached the inside did the impact of such force really register. Lauren and the ponies were almost knocked off their feat as if assaulted by an overpowering wash of the scent of summer lilies, ocean breeze, and sweet savory fruit.
“Whoa, this place has more concentrated magic than any place I’ve ever felt!” Twilight breathed, relishing the fact. “I wonder if they have a library here detailing all the different kinds of magic…”
“Told you,” Lauren smiled. “That’s why you should be careful when you and Rarity use your magic here—we don’t want it to accidentally get mixed with the other magic circulating throughout the Park, because who knows what would happen then. And they do have a library here, but that’ll have to wait until after we’ve put the Director out of commission.”
“Aw,” Twilight moaned, but did see the reason. “Fine.”
“Do they have any copies of the ‘Adventures of Daring Do?’” Rainbow inquired hopefully.
“Daring who?” Lauren asked as she poked her head out of the alley and looked around.
“Never mind,” Rainbow huffed.
“Alright, all clear, let’s go!” Lauren commanded, and the team spread out.
Lauren had been to the Park before as a child, long before her parents had their accident at an Animated rights rally, but the ponies had never seen anything like it. Everywhere, humans and Animated beings walked or flew through the air, chatting and performing and generally enjoying themselves in the warm sun. There was a flying elephant soaring overhead, a parade of princesses waving to the crowd, and even what looked like a friendly dragon giving children rides on his back. And that was just the people—the scenery itself seemed to pulse with a life of its own. The team was currently in a broad avenue labeled ‘Main Street’ that looked like a caricature of a mid-twentieth century American town, but stretched and warped into colorful shapes. Beyond that was a mountain that looked like a growling bear, a giant tree made up of carvings of animals, a golf-ball-esque spheroid in a city of the future, and the largest castle any of the ponies had ever seen, big enough to put even all of Canterlot to shame. The thing looked like it was a dozen castles crammed into one, with differing architectural styles that flowed into one another.
“This place is amazing!” Pinkie exclaimed. “It would be a great place for the world’s biggest party!”
“They actually have one every night,” Lauren said, laughing at the gleeful smile that lit up Pinkie’s face at this tidbit of information. “I’ll have to take you guys to it sometime. Wait—here’s the monorail to take us to the castle.”
An Animated train swooped down the middle of Main Street and opened its many doors, calling “ALL ABOARD!” as several of the humans and Animated rushed in. Lauren and the ponies crammed inside with the others, and just as quickly as it had appeared the train launched itself down the rail to arrive at the castle station.
Disembarking, Lauren and the ponies found themselves in a Grand Central-style station where various Animated mice offered to shine their shoes (and horseshoes) while an all-jungle-animal band played in the background. Politely declining them but dropping a few cents and bits into the hat of the band, Lauren and the others hastily made their way to a door labeled ‘PARK PERSONNEL ONLY,’ scanned the fake cards James had made them into the slots, and slipped inside.
“Okay, this is it,” Lauren breathed as she looked down the long staircase waiting on the other side. A few of the ponies gulped nervously alongside her as they gazed into the deep dank darkness of the old stone steps, but one or two of them relished the excitement palpable in the air. “Rarity, you take point—your laser cannon and armor should be the best defense if anything unpleasant should arise. Rainbow, you keep to the middle and be ready to go super should anything we can’t handle make us need to retreat. Twilight, you guard the rear with your Buster Blade, and remember that there’s more than one sword in that thing should more than one enemy appear.”
“Right,” the ponies all affirmed in unison as they assumed their positions.
“This is going surprisingly easy so far,” Rainbow Dash remarked. “I thought the Director and his goons would be here by now.”
“They probably already are,” Lauren said. “The Bureau has a near-endless supply of disguises and invisibility apparatuses. Let’s just hope none of them got to this underground entrance yet.”
The ponies nodded their agreement, and the troupe set off. The steps came to a turn and then wound their way down for a ways, only to bring the group to an elevator—with not elevator inside.
“They already have gotten here before us!” Fluttershy whimpered.
“I don’t think so,” Lauren said studiously, leaning forward to inspect the cut cable hanging from the elevator shaft’s ceiling. “This looks like it was done a long time ago. Whatever’s down here doesn’t seem to want company.”
Lauren hitched up some climbing gear and then tied a rope to one of the pipes sticking out of an odd machine at the bottom of the stairs and began her descent, the others following after on climbing gear of their own specially rigged for quadrupeds. The bottom of the shaft found the crashed elevator crumpled against the ground, the drop it had to make unaided being quite considerable.
Lauren and the ponies squeezed their way over the top into the lobby below, which was covered in the dark dust of years of neglect.
“There aren’t any footprints here,” Lauren noticed. “Which means we’re the first beings to set foot here in years. Good, the Bureau hasn’t found this place yet.”
Lauren quickly scurried over to the large bank vault-like door at the other end of the lobby and motioned Pinkie Pie over.
“Can you open this lock as well, GLaDOS?” Lauren inquired.
“Certainly, but I’m still expecting that cake,” the supercomputer insisted. “Just give me a few minutes…”
As GLaDOS plugged herself in to the ancient computer schematics of the old abandoned vault, Lauren and the ponies huddled around a map Lauren had printed out from the hologram image.
“Alright, so we take this central passage here, avoiding these extraneous hallways, and we then just have to work our way past these nine chambers here before we get to the ‘OBJECTIVE’ at the very bottom of the complex,” Lauren reviewed. “Any questions?”
“I have one,” Rarity spoke up. “What do you think we’ll find down there?”
“The legend was never very specific,” Lauren explained, unsure herself. “I have no solid proof of anything, but if the Director is afraid of it, it must be powerful.”
“I’m not afraid of it,” said a high-pitched squeaky voice, and the room instantly grew darker. “But you should be.”
Lauren and the ponies jerked their heads up to see none other than Mickey Mouse, in all his deceptively un-scary cuteness, smiling maliciously at them all. Behind him were two Animation Agents in full war gear, their bodies covered in thick armor, their heads covered by what could’ve easily passed as space helmets, and their hands pointing two large thinner-blasters at Lauren and her all-too-Animated friends.
“GLaDOS, don’t—” Lauren tried to say, but in a snap the Director was wearing Mickey’s classic wizard hat and robe and with a flick of the wrist Lauren found herself unable to talk.
“I suggest your little Digital computer friend carries on unlocking that door for us,” the Director instructed coolly. “Or your pony friends here will start to do a rather good imitation of the Wicked Witch of the West.”
Twilight’s horn glowed, and Lauren found herself able to speak again.
“You can’t get away with this,” Lauren spat. “You’ll never succeed!”
“I already have,” the Director smiled, and the room grew that much more dark. “You see, what I’m searching for in the labyrinth beneath the Park is something that you couldn’t begin to understand the importance of. Once I’m done here, all the worlds shall feel the effects of what I’m about to do, and they shall fall like dominoes, one after the other.”
“Dominos?” Lauren echoed. “You mean like in that drawing from your files? What does this secret weapon beneath the Park have to do with Chuck Jones or Tex Avery or all the other Animation Agents and Directors before you?”
“You mean that even with all my files you still haven’t figured it out?” the Director laughed, and the walls seemed to crack ever so slightly. “But then again, I suppose those mathematical formulae were rather complex. Oh, well. Whether or not you know what I’m REALLY planning to do to the worlds is irrelevant. All that matters is that I find the OBJECTIVE and destroy it, and then nobody will be able to stop me.”
“Door unlocked,” GLaDOS informed them, and Lauren silently cursed the potato-powered supercomputer.
“Good,” the Director smiled again. “Tie them up. They’ll be here for us when we get back, not that it’ll matter.”
The guards on either side of the Director complied, and Lauren and the ponies found themselves tied up with a gooey sticky string whilst the Director and his cronies stepped through the opened vault, closing it carefully behind them.
“And don’t even try to think about escaping,” the Director warned. “I have invisible airships circling the Park, armed with thinner-cannons. One sight of you or word from me and they melt the entire Park and every Animated being in it. Probably drown most of the humans in the thinner, too.”
With that, the Director and his guards were gone.
“Great going, GLaDOS,” Lauren said sarcastically. “You just doomed the worlds to a life of enslaved tyranny.”
“I couldn’t let him kill you all if I didn’t comply,” GLaDOS informed them. “If you all were dead, then who would give me cake?”
“You’re never going to get cake again if the Director succeeds,” Lauren explained wryly, though noting that it hardly mattered anymore whether the supercomputer knew that or not what with them being tied up and all.
“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” GLaDOS scolded.
“I was a little ‘tongue-tied’ when the fact came up,” Lauren huffed.
“Don’t worry, Lauren!” Rainbow tried to encourage her friend. “We can still get out of this! We can still win!”
“The Director’s already got a head start on us, though,” Lauren pointed out dejectedly. “And if you go anywhere near those guards of his, he’ll thin you to death.”
“But we can’t just give up!” Twilight insisted.
“It’s not a point of giving up, it’s a question of how we can get out of industrial strength silly string,” Lauren sighed. “This is the strongest material in all the known worlds. Rarity’s laser cannon wouldn’t put a scratch on it, nor would Twilight’s Buster Blade.”
“Maybe the right spell would work?” Twilight asked hopefully.
“It’s magic-proof,” Lauren sighed. “If only one of us was a master escape artist—that’s it!”
“What’s it?” Applejack inquired.
“Twilight, see if you can levitate my carrot out of my holster—it’ll call a certain friend of mine who just might be able to help us out of this mess.”
As Twilight did so, Fluttershy questioned “Who is it?”
“My godfather,” Lauren explained. “And the best Animated friend of my parents. He gave me this carrot at birth, and my parents told me that if I was ever in a tight spot I couldn’t seem to get out of, to eat the carrot and give a whistle.”
“But how could he help us out of this awful sticky stuff?” Rarity inquired.
“My godfather IS a mater escape artist,” Lauren said hopefully. “He also invented industrial strength silly string, just like all the other ACME products the Bureau uses. He’s not the richest Animated being in all the worlds for nothing!”
Twilight telekinetically levitated the carrot into Lauren’s open mouth and the rogue Animation Agent scarfed it down before clearing her throat and giving a loud resounding whistle. The shrill sound seemed to echo off the walls of the lobby, shaking dust off of everything and maybe, just maybe, even brightening up a bit of the gloom the Director had brought with him.
But, after a minute or so of waiting, Rainbow spoke up with “Well, where is he?”
“He’s a very busy bunny,” Lauren explained, though she couldn’t keep the fear out of her own voice that it hadn’t worked. “I mean, he IS the CEO of ACME Incorporated, the second-largest inter-world business there is. It’s second only to Disney, after all!”
“Maybe he can’t hear it from down here,” Applejack wondered.
“That might be it,” Fluttershy added. “Angel’s a bunny, and even he couldn’t hear something from so far underground.”
“My godfather never let my parents down,” Lauren insisted. “I’m sure he wouldn’t let me down either.”
The group waited a bit more in silence.
After a few more agonizing minutes, right when Lauren was about to dismiss the hope of her godfather ever showing up, a distant rumbling could be heard. It grew in pitch, and suddenly a trail of dirt burrowed its way under the wall. When it connected with the solid concrete and tile of the vault’s lobby’s floor, the speed of whatever was digging underneath the ground didn’t slack for so much as a second, but rumbled on through the rock as if it were nothing more than crumbling dirt.
The trail circled Lauren and the others once, before finally stopping when it had looped back around to meet itself and a hole finally appeared.
A pair of rabbit ears poked out like a periscope, turning this way and that as they seemed to scan the environment. Apparently satisfied, the ears’ owner hopped up out of the hole, and the ponies beheld a tall, angular gray-and-white rabbit with a toothy smile wearing a business suit.
“What’s up, Doc?” the bunny smiled, beaming at the ex-Animation Agent. “Lauren! I can’t believe it’s really you! The last I saw you, you were just a baby!”
“You have no idea how good it is to see you, Mr. Bunny,” Lauren said happily.
“‘Mr.’ Bunny?” the rabbit echoed, seemingly appalled. “Lauren, I am your godfather! Call me Bugs! And who are your friends here?”
The ponies introduced themselves, and just like the CEO that he was, Bugs went around and shook each of their hooves in turn.
“Bugs here is also one of the most powerful known Animated beings,” Lauren explained to the ponies. “Second only to Mickey himself.”
“Though I hold no ill will towards the Mouse,” Bugs said. “At least, we used to be buds before he sold out to the humans—no offense, Lauren. Your parents were like siblings to me, but most humans just exploit us Animated. After that we lost touch, but I keep hoping we can reconcile our differences eventually.”
“No offense taken,” Lauren said. “I feel the same way.”
“So what’s up?” Bugs asked. “To what may I attribute the honor of your calling?”
"We’re in a bit of a sticky situation here,” Applejack pointed out sarcastically, pointing to the silly string bands entrapping them.
“So I see, but Lauren’s been in tighter binds before, haven’t you, Lauren?” Bugs winked.
“I also thought we could use some backup,” Lauren explained sheepishly to the ponies. “I knew how to get out of this silly string all along; I just didn’t want us racing into the labyrinth only to have you guys thinned by the Director.”
“The Director?!” Bugs gasped. “He finally snapped, did he? That’s why I always said an Animated should be in charge of the Bureau, not some human. But nobody listens to Bugs, do they? Can you believe the Bureau wouldn’t even let me buy Lauren’s Animated pals Passes back to their home worlds all because the Bureau and ACME, my company, had a falling out shortly after Lauren was born? Now they have to buy my products second hand, because I only sell to the Animated! But anyway, sure, I’d be happy to take down the ol’ Homo Sapiens Animated-oppressor! Just let me at him!”
“That’s the thing,” Lauren explained as Bugs leaned down to gnaw through the silly string, telling the group as he did so that he made them foolproof against everything except his own teeth. “The Director’s taken the form of Mickey Mouse.”
Bug’s face went cold.
“My old pal,” Bugs almost wept. “Beaten by that thug, and before he had a chance to redeem himself for selling out to Disney? Of course you know, this means war!”
“That’s just what we wanted to hear,” Lauren smiled, hugging her godfather, who returned the embrace almost like a father would. “Now, let’s avenge Mickey and save the worlds!”
. . .