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Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Lauren, Bugs, and the ponies gulped in almost perfect unison as they stood before and stared up at the largest vault door yet. There didn’t seem to be any locks on this one for GLaDOS to break through, but that wasn’t a problem as the door slid aside into the wall as they looked on.

There was nothing but darkness beyond.

“Well…should we…go in?” Rarity wondered uncertainly, just as genuinely frightened as the rest of them as to what lay beyond the darkness. What could possibly be so powerful, so dangerous, that it could not only defeat the Director as Mickey Mouse but had been intricately tied up with the fate of all worlds everywhere even before the Director rose to power?

“Come on, guys,” Lauren encouraged, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “With what we’ve faced so far, there can’t be anything we can’t face together, right?”

“Yeah, Lauren’s right,” Twilight spoke up. “When we stick together, there’s nothing we can’t do!”

“And I didn’t come all this way and risk all of my friend’s lives just to be too afraid to finish our mission to save the worlds!” Rainbow Dash agreed. “Let’s go!”

“Yeah!”

“Right behind you!”

“Yee-haw!”

“We’ll all stick by ya, Lauren,” Bugs smiled confidently. “Till the very end.”

Lauren smiled back, then faced the void, and stepped in. Bugs and the ponies followed, and the vault slammed shut behind them. Fluttershy squeaked in fear, but the lights came on immediately afterwards, illuminating a room even larger than the arena had been. This one, however, was covered in giant movie screens, each of which displayed pictures shot from a floating sphere of projectors in the center of the room. Like a tiny planetoid, the projector-orb turned slowly, casting all kinds of old Disney movies across the screens in a dance of cinematic light.

“What is this place?” Twilight wondered. “And where’s the OBJECTIVE? I don’t see anything but that TV-thing up there.”

“Maybe the Secret IS the TV thing?” Rainbow Dash suggested.

“I don’t think so,” Lauren ventured.

“Then where could it be?” Bugs questioned, scratching his head in confusion. “It ain’t like ol’ Walt, as much as I disliked the human, to lead us all this way for a dead end and a pretty picture show.”

Suddenly, the movies began blinking off one by one, replaced again by black screens that were just as quickly replaced with the same grainy black-and-white image that had greeted the group on the old-fashioned television in the arena.

“Welcome, friends of Animation,” Walt Disney’s image announced to the team. “You have come far, and you have done well. You have proved yourself of good will and as such have been granted access to the Secret of Disney. Be warned, however, that you can never unlearn what you have seen here. If any of you do not wish to partake in the potentially maddening secrets of the universes, speak now or forever bear in your minds what you have seen here.”

The group was silent. The safety of all worlds everywhere were was worth facing maddening secrets for.

“Very well,” Disney smiled. The images all went black, casting the room back into darkness. Before Fluttershy could squeak again, though, the lights came on once more. The sphere of projectors in the center of the room was descending to the ground, and the group walked hesitantly forward to meet it.

The sphere touched down, and with a hiss of steam, opened up like a flower, releasing multicolored gases into the air that quickly dissipated. When the smoke cleared, Lauren, Bugs, and the ponies saw the Secret of Disney.

And screamed.

“It’s—it’s—” Rarity tried to get out.

“Humans!” Bugs shouted. “What is it with you humans?! Why can’t you ever just leave the natural order of things well enough alone?!”

Fluttershy simply continued screaming until she fainted.

“Not even magic could accomplish THAT!” Twilight gasped.

“It’s true…” Lauren whispered. “All those conspiracy theories, those crazy stories…I never thought they were related to the Bureau’s rumors of something under Disney Park, but it was all true, all along…”

“And now you know my awful secret,” spoke the voice of Disney, though there was no image of his face across any of the movie screens. The voice had also lost its broadcasted mechanical qualities. This was no recording in front of them. This wasn’t a SECRET of Disney.

This WAS Disney.

Walt Disney’s head, severed at the neck from where it was connected to several wires and tubes emanating from him like thick wiry veins connected his cranium to the machine inside the projector’s planetoid, smiled at them all.

“And this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Disney went on. “I haven’t even gotten to the maddening secrets of the universes yet.”

“What’s going on here?!” Rainbow Dash almost shouted. “Lauren, I thought you and Bugs said this guy was dead! What’s his head doing here, talking to us? Is this some kind of sick puppet joke?!”

“No, Rainbow,” Lauren calmed the cyan pegasus. “Humanity thought that Walt Disney had died a long time ago. But there were always rumors that his last project had been his most insane.”

“And it was,” Disney agreed. “I imagined a future in which technology would exist that would allow even death itself to be overcome. I imagined a time when I could be reanimated, so to speak, and live forever. Not with Animated technology or magic, which would surely either kill me on its own in time due to sheer Animated radiation or simply be incompatible with human biology, but with actual manmade technology.

“So I had my head frozen beneath Disney Park, awaiting the day when I would awake again. And that day came. My head was unfrozen, fitted with the technologies you now see before you, and here I have lived on ever since,” Disney finished.

“But…why?” Lauren wondered, disgusted. “Why would you want to live on like this?”

“If only I had your outlook when I made the decision all those years ago,” Disney sighed sadly. There was a look of deep melancholy in his eyes. “I thought that if the technology was advanced enough, then I could live forever. I thought I could continue my days of being the Director of the Animation Bureau until infinity and beyond, always discovering and exploring new worlds, making new friends, living life. But now I know that no technology can truly replicate life itself, and so I have lived only the shadow of an existence down here all this time, awaiting the true end that I know must come for all life.”

“You mean you never even considered…” Lauren trailed off, unable to finish.

“No,” Disney said firmly. “I couldn’t commit suicide even if I wanted to. There is too much at stake.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight inquired.

“I was dead, for a time, before I inhabited the artificial form you see now,” Disney explained. “And in the void beyond death, many things were made known to me. The nature of all worlds, the secrets that are hidden within each. And when I came back, those secrets came with me, all locked inside this half-alive brain.”

“And those secrets must be what the new Director is so scared of,” Pinkie Pie postulated.

“Secrets from beyond death itself sure got to beat any powers the Director has,” Bugs agreed.

“Director?” Disney echoed. “I assume you mean the current Director of the Animation Bureau? What does he or she have to do with any of this?”

“Quite a lot,” Lauren smiled wryly, and then explained why the team had made this dangerous journey in this first place.

“That monster!” Disney exclaimed when Lauren had finished. “He defeated my greatest friend! Oh, Mickey…”

“And the Director wants to use Mickey’s powers and a team of higher-ups from the Bureau called the ‘Senior Circle’ to rule Earth and all the worlds through the Bureau,” Lauren went on. “That’s the whole reason we’re here. We learned that the Director wanted something under Disney Park, and we figured that it must be the old rumor about something more powerful than Mickey Mouse. We thought that he would want to either destroy it so that nothing could stop him or just add it to his own powers to make himself stronger. And that’s what I don’t understand…”

“Don’t understand?” Fluttershy echoed.

“Mickey Mouse is more powerful by far than Walt Disney ever was,” Lauren explained. “No offense—”

“None taken,” Disney assured her.

“—but Disney is still a human, even now, and Mickey is an Animated being. Even if Animated beings normally lack a human’s ambition and destructive prowess, they’re still far more powerful than a solitary human could ever be.”

“That is true,” Disney agreed again.

“Then why is the Director so afraid of you?” Rarity asked.

“I doubt he is,” Disney answered her. “It is true that I could neither do anything to stop him nor add to his power. That is what also confuses me.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t know what’s really down here?” Applejack thought aloud.

“I don’t think so,” Lauren said. “The Director claimed that he wasn’t afraid of what’s down here, and now that I think about it there’s something in how he said it that makes me think he already knew all this.”

“But how could he?” Bugs inquired.

“Indeed,” Disney agreed. “I do not see how anyone could know of…oh, no.”

“What is it?” Lauren asked.

“Quick—there’s not much time before he gets in here,” Disney hastily explained. “But you’re Director isn’t who you think he is, and he’s after more than you know. Domination of the worlds doesn’t begin to cover the devastation he’d wreak if he could destroy me, which is what I believe he is undoubtedly planning.”

“What are you talking about?” Pinkie piped up. “I’m confused.”

“As am I,” Lauren agreed.

“Those maddening secrets of the universe I learned of after death,” Disney went on. “He must somehow know about them, though I never told them to anyone. You all are the first to enter this chamber since I was reanimated.”

“What are these secrets you keep talking about?” Twilight wanted to know.

“I’m getting to that,” Disney assured her. “There’s a reason behind everything. A reason behind every atom of every molecule of every piece of matter of every universe, of which there are an infinite amount. All the worlds ever so far discovered are just a fraction of what is truly out there, of the true scope of all reality. And it is all reality this ‘Director’ is trying to destroy.”

“Indeed I am,” came Mickey Mouse’s voice, and everyone in the room froze dead, including and most of all Disney. “And after I destroy you, I’ll finally have my revenge.”

“Defensive stations!” Lauren shouted, and Bugs and the ponies leapt into action around her while the ex-Animation Agent herself ran forward with a full can of thinner. The Director and his two goons, having somehow gotten through the vault door in three holes that were each silhouettes of their forms, merely smiled and flicked his tail against the ground. Lauren, Bugs, and the grounded ponies were thrown up in the air in the resulting shuddering of earth while the two goons shot nets around Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy from specialized guns. Still disoriented from their fall, Lauren and the rest were helpless against the net-guns and ended up the same as their aerial companions.

“Don’t do this!” Disney shouted desperately at the Director, his head just as helpless to do anything against the advancing Mouse. “Think of all the lives you’ll destroy!”

“I am,” the Director smiled darkly, and the lights in the room flickered. “But before I do destroy you, and all of reality along with you, I think our little friends here deserve an explanation. Ms. Faust, you’ve certainly come farther than I ever expected, I must give you credit for that. You were truly a worthy opponent in this little game of ours. However, this game has come to a close, and you have lost. What’s more, you have failed to save all the worlds everywhere—but don’t worry, after I’m through, there won’t be anyone around to remember you for it. There won’t have ever been anyone ever at all.”

“What are you talking about?!” Lauren spat angrily. “You said you wanted to take over the worlds and rule them with the Bureau!”

“That was just a ruse to get the Senior Circle on my side,” the Director explained. “They wouldn’t have ever helped me if they knew my true plans.”

“What about those two goons you brought with you?” Bugs wondered. “I guess they’re okay with the destruction of reality too?”

And then the Bunny burst out laughing.

“What do you find so funny, Mr. Bunny?” the Director smirked.

“On top of how amazingly you fail at sounding intimidating with Mickey’s squeaky voice,” Bugs chuckled. “You could never destroy all reality simply by killing a human head that’s lived on far longer than it should have.”

“Oh, but I can,” the Director smiled again and the room almost went completely dark. “Tell them, Walt.”

“You have to stop him!” Disney pleaded to Lauren and the others. “He’s mad! You see, what I discovered in death almost made me mad as well. I learned why Earth is the only world to have branched out to other universes, why we’re at the center of it all. It is because this world is the crux of reality, the keystone of Creation. If it goes, then so too do all the others!”

“But he’s not destroying the world,” Lauren tried to make sense of it all even as she struggled to free herself from the net while Bugs and the ponies did the same. “He’s destroying you!”

“That’s just it, though!” Disney exclaimed. “There’s also a reason human beings are different from all the Animated worlds and all other worlds out there. There’s a reason we live on this crux of Creation—it’s because we humans are the pillars of all reality! We don't create worlds, but we do support their existence merely by being alive. Branching out from us from the keystone via us, all other universes are held up in existence! If a human dies naturally, then he or she is replaced by another pillar of reality. But if a human is killed, even by themselves, then the pillar crumbles and the world supported by them falls! The worlds are replaced so quickly that hardly anyone notices, not even the scientists who study Animation. But the more imaginative a person is, the more worlds they hold up. And I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I’m the pillar of all the Animated worlds I ever discovered, and as a result I am the pillar of all worlds ever associated with my company! If I go, then hundreds of worlds will perish! The resulting void can’t be refilled with new worlds quickly enough, and Earth will be pulled into the inter-world black hole along with all other worlds around it! And, when Earth goes, so too does all reality! That’s why I was so fortified down here! If I go, then nothing will have ever existed!”

Lauren’s heart stopped cold.

“But why?!” Lauren exclaimed to the Director. “Why would you want to do this?!”

“Tell them that also,” the Director continued to smirk as he advanced on Disney. “Tell them how you failed to save me, and created a monster. Tell them…father.”

“FATHER?!” Bugs blurted.

Suddenly the form of Mickey Mouse shimmered back into that of the human Director, but he was standing as still as death. Then, with a whirring sound and a hiss of steam akin to Disney’s own release from his machine, the Director’s chest opened up, revealing electric wires and turning gears inside.

But the fact that the Director was a robot was the least surprising thing about the ordeal. For out of the mechanical husk hopped the one creature who could have defeated Mickey Mouse, for he was the one creature who preceded him.

“It can’t be…” Lauren whispered. Then, shouting, “But you’re just a myth!”

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit simply smiled again, walking calmly up to Disney’s head.

“For the longest time, I was,” Oswald announced when he reached Disney at last and hopped up behind him, materializing a blade from behind his back and placing to Disney’s temple, preparing to slice it in. “I was the first Animated being Disney here found in a distant and now long-forgotten world. I was an orphan on the streets, and Walt took me in and raised me as his own. Disney was like a father to me. We even went on Animation Bureau missions together when I was old enough.”

“But I couldn’t save you,” Disney whispered, tears brimming in his eyes.

“SAVE ME?!” Oswald suddenly flew into a rage. “YOU REPLACED ME! In the early days, portal technology was still sketchy at best, and on one of the missions I didn’t arrive on the other side. I was lost to the void between universes, cold and alone in the dark. But through some miracle I ended up on the shore of a distant world and worked my way back to Earth—but father here had already replaced me with that MOUSE. The only reason I took his form was to ensure that Mickey didn’t get in my way!”

“I looked everywhere for you!” Disney protested. “We spent years searching!”

“I SPENT YEARS IN THE NOTHINGNESS!” Oswald raged. “And now that’s where EVERYONE will spend eternity!”

“But he really did look everywhere for you!” Lauren tried to reason with the mad Rabbit. “It almost destroyed Disney’s career and his health! Psychologists from across the worlds believed that you were just some elaborate fantasy he had created, no one else even knew you were real!”

“I WAS REAL!” Oswald spat at her. “BUT NOW NOBODY’S EVER GOING TO BE REAL AGAIN!”

“Help us!” Lauren shouted to the goons, but they stood silent, resolute. “You can’t possibly go along with this!”

“They can’t hear you,” Oswald laughed maniacally. “They’re both hypnotized. Neither one of them even made it to the Senior Circle either—in fact, the only real reason I needed the Senior Circle was to keep Internal Affairs off my back while I deviated from my ‘job’ as Director to go looking for Disney! I knew his plans, and I knew he survived! But now, all of that’s about to change!

“But first…” Oswald mused. “Why don’t we make you suffer a little, eh, father? I mean, there’s no actual pain in ceasing to exist, even if it means you never ever were to begin with. Before that happens, I want you to feel a little of the pain I felt at being abandoned. I want you to watch as your precious ‘friends of Animation’ here die!”

“No!” Disney pleaded, crying now. “You can’t have become that much of a monster!”

“I’m only what you made me,” Oswald whispered in Disney’s ear. “Kill them!”

The goons stepped forward, each pulling out their knives and thinner guns.

“NO!” Lauren shouted as they advanced on her friends. “Oswald, don’t do this!”

“You’re right,” Oswald said. Lauren’s eyes lit up. “Why kill them all at once? That’s too fast. You there, kill Ms. Faust first and then the rest one by one.”

Lauren watched as the armored goon turned to her, knife drawn, and leaned down to press it to her throat, placing a thickly gloved hand on her skull to keep her struggling from preventing his incision. Lauren looked pleadingly up into the dark visor the goon’s helmet bore, and saw in there something that made her cry out. At this close range, Lauren could see just enough of the hypnotized face inside the visor to tell that it was—

“Craig…?” Lauren gasped. “Craig! It’s me, Lauren! Oh, Craig, you have to remember, don’t do this!”

“He can’t hear you, remember?” Oswald chuckled.

“I never even got to tell you…” Lauren whispered as hypnotized Craig drew in closer with his knife. “…That I love you.”

“What?”

Everyone in the room turned to face the new voice, coming from the place they had least expected it—right beside Lauren, emanating from Craig’s mask.

“What did you say, Lauren?” Craig repeated, swaying slightly, seeming as if he was in a daze.

“I love you,” Lauren repeated, louder this time, a glimmer of hope in her watery eyes.

“…I…love you too,” Craig responded. “I was always too nervous to tell you…wait, what am I doing—this knife—I remember! You!”

Craig whirled around, pointing the knife at Oswald.

“I remember everything now,” Craig announced. “You’re trying to destroy reality! You tried to get me to kill Lauren! You monster, how DARE you!”

Craig aimed his thinner gun and fired, knocking Oswald off of Disney and across the room. The not-so-Lucky Rabbit screamed in agony, melting into the anti-Animation acid.

Craig then turned to Lauren and slit her netting with his knife. Lauren leapt up and threw her arms around him. They embraced tightly, before Lauren lifted off Craig’s helmet and the two shared their first kiss.

The ponies looked away, embarrassed, while Bugs politely averted his eyes. In so doing, however, Bugs saw what everyone else was missing.

“I hate to break up the happy couple,” the Bunny announced hurriedly. “But we got a problem!”

“Huh?” Craig mumbled dazedly after Lauren released him from her passionate kiss. Lauren turned to follow Bugs’ pointed finger to see a black slime burst up from the thinner.

“Nooooooooo!” Oswald, or what was left of him, shrieked in a bloodcurdling wail. “I willlllllllll not let it end like thissssssssssssssss!”

Now nothing more than hate, the shadow of Oswald sprang through the air, scooped up his blade from where it had clattered to the floor, and plunged it into Disney’s head.

Disney screamed in pain as Oswald laughed before being blasted back with another shot from Craig’s thinner gun, but the damage was already done. As Oswald evaporated in a curtain of sickly smoke, laughing all the while, Disney gasped for breath, coughing up blood, his machines shorting and sparking as they desperately tried to keep him alive.

It was clear that they wouldn’t be able to for long.

“NO!” Lauren screamed, rushing over to Disney. She tried to plug up the wound with her hand, putting pressure on the leakage, but Disney was too far gone.

“It’s too late for me…” Disney wheezed. “But there is still hope…get the Bureau to rally their forces…tug the Earth back from the void that will open when I die…you can’t keep it back forever, but you can prolong the end of reality…while you search for…the only ones who can close the rift…you must find…the First Ones…at the Edge of Time in the other worlds!”

“Who are the First Ones?!” Lauren cried. “Where do we find the Edge of Time?!”

But Disney was merely coughing and spluttering now, before his eyes closed at last, and the largest pillar in the history of reality died. The ground rumbled beneath the team’s feet.

“It’s happening!” Twilight shouted as the room began to shake. Sections of the wall collapsed, debris rained down from the ceiling, and panels on the floor were sucked away into…nothingness. A gaping void opened up beneath them, sucking at all reality. “We have to get out of here, now!”

“Lauren, come on!” Craig shouted, trying to pull her away from Disney’s corpse. “We have to do what he said! We have to stop the Earth from falling into the void!”

“The shock from all those worlds being destroyed at once will have shorted out the Bureau’s portal system,” Lauren exclaimed, calmly but firmly. “You know we won’t be able to go to the other worlds like he said.

“What are you saying?!” Craig questioned over the roaring of the air being pulled into the growing cracks in reality. “You can’t be thinking—”

“You go rally the Bureau’s forces on Earth,” Lauren commanded. “Get them to pull the Earth back for as long as you can. My team and I will look for these ‘First Ones.’”

“How?!” Craig demanded. “There’s no way to go across the worlds from here!”

“That growing rift leads to the void between the worlds,” Lauren explained hastily. “If Oswald could survive it, then so can we! We’ll avoid the black hole with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy’s flying capabilities and get to another world from the outside through the void! You know it’s the only way! We have to do this!”

“I know,” Craig conceded. “I just—I just don’t want to lose you. After coming so close, I never want to have to face that again!”

“I love you too,” Lauren smiled, kissing Craig once more. “We’ll be back before you know it!”

Lauren raced forward, unsheathing her own Bureau standard issue knife, and freed to ponies from the netting.

“You guys ready?” Lauren inquired. “This’ll be the toughest journey yet.”

“Ready!” the ponies announced in unison.

Lauren and the ponies all grabbed onto the net while Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash picked up the ends of the ropes in their mouths. With a blast of creamy yellow and rainbow speed, the team raced into the void, seeking out the nearest world they could use to reach all the rest. There, individual portals set up by the Bureau but not connected to the Bureau’s main system would transport them across as many worlds as the Bureau had ever explored, and through them Lauren and the ponies would find the First Ones, or die trying.

. . .

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