whistlenotchirp (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
whistlenotchirp) wrote2018-02-23 12:47 pm
whistlenotchirp) wrote2018-02-23 12:47 pm
Entry tags:
Why - A FM story of Jiminy Cricket murdering Walt Disney
The others were talking with one of the new victims. They’d been popping in pretty frequently these past few weeks, but the cricket had chosen to keep his distance. He was pretty sure the survivors of the first round of murders were quietly warning them away from him. Which could be paranoia but it was hard not to understand why they would do such a thing. The cricket had proven himself untrustworthy so it was best to let the real heroes manage things from here.
The cricket couldn’t explain why the name stuck out in his head. There was something about it. It carried a power, a strength. He hadn’t caught the full sentence but the name. The name was the something that could cross the entire world. Even a little guy like him, leaning against the amusement park ride as the other dead folk chatted away, couldn’t help but listen as he heard that one, memorable name.
“Walt Disney.”
----
Jiminy liked to consider himself a pious bug. He’d been raised on it and he’d been vocal enough about it, so that made him pious. It didn’t matter what you did and did not actually feel as long as you were vocal about what you thought you should be feeling.
This was a school of thought that Jiminy felt very confident in embracing. It allowed him a certain moral superiority that surviving on his own didn’t quite allow.
You see, living on the road required a specific set of skills. You had to pick your battles and plan in advance. Avoid the houses with particularly fearsome animals. Grab anything you could carry and keep moving. Don’t stay in one place too long. God had only given you so much time and there was no use spending it around people.
From a certain point of view, perhaps these actions could be considered crimes. Maybe. But it didn’t matter. He could take and break in and do whatever he wanted as long as he vocally praised moral righteousness and purity. It would all work out as long as he said the things he was supposed to say.
That was before Jiminy met the puppet, of course.
----
He hadn’t spoken in weeks, months perhaps and he was pretty sure that was for the best of everyone. He wasn’t the conscience anymore, he was the cricket. That was all there was to it. It was best to let the heroes work.
But he kept hearing it. The name. It gnawed on him like an itch you couldn’t quite scratch.
So eventually, he had to ask. There were several people he didn’t feel right about asking, which should include Fiddleford. More than anyone, he shouldn’t talk to Fiddleford. And yet, here he was, talking to Fiddleford. What a genius you were, Jiminy Cricket.
“Who’s Walt Disney?”
The American hick looked down in surprise. “Huh?”
“The newbies keep talking about him. Who’s this Walt Disney fella?”
The hick frowned, scratching his cheek thoughtfully. “I don’t quite get it, honestly. God, I guess?”
A crack in an internal window. “What.”
“I mean, he seems to be some kind of creator? If what these guys are saying what this Oswald guy is saying is true, he just... built a bunch of worlds and stuff. I think. Seems like some bullshit.”
The crack deepens. “So what, he just... made our worlds? Is that what you’re telling me?” An unexpected wave of emotion was rising up inside him and he wasn’t entirely sure where it was coming from. “Italy, France, everything outside and in-between, all him? That’s absurd.”
A shrug. “Don’t know what to tell you. What’s got you all bothered? Angry he made gay folk or something?”
An internal window breaks as the cricket stomps off.
----
The job was simple enough. Teach the right things and get rewarded by the pretty angel. It was hard for Jiminy to think of her as anything but an angel. Descended from the heavens, with a stunning aura. How could he not think it was his reward for all those weeks of praise? It was a life spent of piousness. Vocal piety, granted, but piety all the same. Vocal piety was the most important part of the whole mess.
The problem was the dang kid was so darn curious. And he understood why, in a fashion. Pinoc was like a newborn baby but with scattered parts attached to him. He could walk, he could talk, he could sing, but he hadn’t been given all the other bits of knowledge other kids his age had been given. This didn’t strike him as precisely fair, when you got down to it. In fact, it kind of seemed entirely bogus when you really got down to it. Why on Earth did the wooden puppet have to prove himself worth of life? What kind of present to Gepetto, who seemed nice enough if a fella who had his heads in the clouds, required the present to be worthy of the old man?
But he brushed these thoughts aside. Pinoc just needed a sturdy hand to guide his way. And Jiminy had been so vocal about rules that at least some of them would stick. That would prove he was a good person.
That would prove he deserved that badge.
----
He could pretend he hadn’t been eavesdropping but he had. And he could justify it because they were all villains but he didn’t quite feel like that made it any better.
Not when there was a distinct thought that wouldn’t empty his skull. A single question, only one word long.
He moved quickly when they separated, chasing after the Lord of Death. The cricket didn’t particularly care about Ratigan and Richie Rich over there. No, the real dealmaker was ol’ flamey hair himself.
“Hey, wait up! Mr. Devil! I need to talk to ya!”
The flaming haired demon turned quickly, squinting down at the cricket with a single raised eyebrow. “Listen, big guy, I get enough out of Blondie and Space Yankee, I don’t need wannabe Mr. Rogers messing with my day too.”
Part of the cricket didn’t actually expect the Devil to listen. Part of him wasn’t sure it was a good thing. “Nothing like that, I just wanted a favor.”
The flame demon made a series of mock “ahs” and “oohs” to signify his extreme distaste for the very word. “You’re killing me here, pal, you’re killing me. I’ve got a million things to do here and you’re coming to me with this? Gimme a break. Look, just hop back to the gay losers you killed, and let me-“
“I want in.”
There was a pause as two eyebrows shot to the sky. “In.”
“Yeah, in.”
“With the Club?”
“Y-yeah.”
And he just laughed, a loud cackle, wiping away fake, fire tears. “You serious? Oh, you’re having your mid-death crisis, aren’t you? That’s standard, hold on-“ A pamphlet quickly appeared from his robes, dropping down by the cricket. So You Didn’t Do Enough While You Were Alive with the demon giving a thumbs up on the cover.
“I- I don’t want your pamphlet! I want in.”
The demon’s smile dropped, frowning slightly, leaning down to meet several feet above Jiminy’s hat. “Listen, pipsqueak, I’m gonna do you a favor and give you a warning. You don’t realize what you’re talking about. You’re making a deal with the Lord of Death here. This is soul-losing business. This is me, telling you, that this is supervillains taking souls and hurting schmucks. We held knives to your friends’ throats. Your little homophobic accident there? That’s weaksauce. And also not our style.
Now, are you done pretending you’re the real deal?”
The cricket had to stop his legs from shaking, gulping loudly. “...I just want to meet him.
I wanna meet Disney.”
“...And you’re willing to sell your soul to do it?”
“...Yeah.”
There was another pause. Then the Death God clapped his hands together and grinned. “Well, I’ll take any soul any loser is throwing away! Put it there!”
The cricket’s body moved of its own accord, shaking the demon’s hand. Pleased as punch, the fire master started walking away, not waiting for the cricket to follow.
“Now, we are keeping that soul to make sure this isn’t some kind of hero scheme, standard procedure, you understand. Not sure your soul is good enough for our other needs anyway. So, the raid’s in a few days, the specifics are all planned already, so if you just”
The cricket wasn’t listening much, simply hopping along beside him, drifting back into his own mind.
He had to ask him one question.
That’s all he had to do.
----
Pinoc was alive, human, and happy. It had all worked out, everyone was dancing, and it was a beautiful happily ever after. It all worked out swell. Jiminy himself escaped the party, privately, standing outside on the windowsill, swinging his umbrella about whimsically as he stared at the night sky.
Something bugged him. Something really bugged him. It irked at his brain and rankled it like a rowdy box of kittens wrestling over a toy mouse. But everything had worked out but why did he have to prove himself- but Pinoc was safe - why did he have to get eaten and tortured and swindled - and now Gepetto had the son and family he wanted - why did Gepetto have to worry about his son’s safety in the first place - and the beast was dead. It was fine. It was all fine. There was no reason to be upset.
Except he was. He was unendingly, increasingly, outrageously upset. Upset at the sheer hell that little boy had been put through, all the bells and whistles of moral trials he was forced into, all the lessons he had been forced to learn all at once instead of gradually through those years of babyhood. Every hoop the woodcarver and his family had to jump through just to be worth the presents they didn’t even ask for.
He straightened his jacket, looking back at the night sky. He would start polite. He would be calm and reasonable, but make his grievance clear. The boy had gone through enough and he could hardly call himself a good friend if he didn’t defend the boy’s honor.
“Thank you, milady.” Polite language first, very important. Name her accomplishments first to lead up to the complaints. “He deserved to be a real boy. And it sure was nice of you to-“
The world glowed around him in bright, shimmering colors, so bright he had to close his eyes just to stop the light from scorching his eyes. When he opened them, a single gold badge stood on his suit jacket.
Official Conscience.
His hands slowly reached to feel its cold metal, shaking slightly. Official Conscience.
There it was, in pure gold. It said it to world to see. It told everyone “here’s a guy who knows what’s right.” It proved what he always knew he could do, if he just had the chance. Even if he didn’t always feel it, even if he just parroted the words of other moral folk, even if he knew, deep in his heart, that there was something empty and missing where their should be faith, it didn’t matter. All his work had paid off.
He could be a good person.
He was a good person.
He was good.
----
It had all passed quickly and the cricket hadn’t been paying attention to a lot of it. There was a tank, a street on fire, chaos, all sorts of danger. He’d been warned to stay back, still untrusted by the others. He wasn’t a hero but he wasn’t a villain either.
So he stood, idly by, out of sight, until he finally spotted the man himself.
The God.
He wasn’t expecting a mustache, honestly. A beard, sure, but a mustache just seemed weird.
....Criminy, did he sell his soul just to judge God on his looks? He had much more important things to discuss than that.
And so he hopped forward, out of sight among the wild scene of flying balls of money, a giant fucking gay Zeppelin, and a triangle sending blasts of food, organs, and other horrific sights at the survivors. God was bleeding, wrapping an arm with a bandage as Ford swung a blood axe at the triangle. He was alone and out of sight.
The cricket wasn’t sure what he was going to say, when he finally hopped up to the creator. He thought he had an idea but the questions just kept building and circling as he reached the mustached man’s shoes.
Why did Pinocchio have to go through those trials?
Why did he have prove he was worth living?
Why did all those children have to become donkeys?
Why did you let all those children die in the mansion?
Why can’t I feel what I’m supposed to feel?
Why aren’t I good?
Why?
Why?
Why?
“Why?” It came out as a whisper. And the God noticed him, for the first time, surprised to see his little creation there in front of him.
“...Why what?”
And that was when Jiminy started to strangle him.
Not with his hands, mind you. He had taken a key out of Tadashi’s book and had grabbed a piano wire to wrap around the God’s neck, hopping over his shoulder to the other side. The God jerked and flailed and screamed as Jiminy pulled and pulled and pulled. The other survivors had taken notice now, racing towards to pull him away. The cricket swung out of there reach, still tugging on the wire, teeth clenched in pure rage. How dare he? How dare he?!
And eventually, the body went slack and fell to the ground.
----
He had been in the bottle for a while now. There had been yelling and screaming and attempts to squash him but there had been some measure of reasonable discussion. Something about “he has intel” or “Hades’ll just bring him back again” or something along those lines.
He hadn’t been paying much attention.
People would look at him, occasionally, but few seemed willing to talk to him. He didn’t have the answers to the questions they wanted and had given up pretty easy on finding the answers.
It wasn’t until two weeks later until Wendy finally looked him in the eyes, pure disgust radiating from her face. That hurt. Not as much as the first time he killed. But it hurt.
She asked one question.
“Why?”
The cricket couldn’t explain why the name stuck out in his head. There was something about it. It carried a power, a strength. He hadn’t caught the full sentence but the name. The name was the something that could cross the entire world. Even a little guy like him, leaning against the amusement park ride as the other dead folk chatted away, couldn’t help but listen as he heard that one, memorable name.
“Walt Disney.”
----
Jiminy liked to consider himself a pious bug. He’d been raised on it and he’d been vocal enough about it, so that made him pious. It didn’t matter what you did and did not actually feel as long as you were vocal about what you thought you should be feeling.
This was a school of thought that Jiminy felt very confident in embracing. It allowed him a certain moral superiority that surviving on his own didn’t quite allow.
You see, living on the road required a specific set of skills. You had to pick your battles and plan in advance. Avoid the houses with particularly fearsome animals. Grab anything you could carry and keep moving. Don’t stay in one place too long. God had only given you so much time and there was no use spending it around people.
From a certain point of view, perhaps these actions could be considered crimes. Maybe. But it didn’t matter. He could take and break in and do whatever he wanted as long as he vocally praised moral righteousness and purity. It would all work out as long as he said the things he was supposed to say.
That was before Jiminy met the puppet, of course.
----
He hadn’t spoken in weeks, months perhaps and he was pretty sure that was for the best of everyone. He wasn’t the conscience anymore, he was the cricket. That was all there was to it. It was best to let the heroes work.
But he kept hearing it. The name. It gnawed on him like an itch you couldn’t quite scratch.
So eventually, he had to ask. There were several people he didn’t feel right about asking, which should include Fiddleford. More than anyone, he shouldn’t talk to Fiddleford. And yet, here he was, talking to Fiddleford. What a genius you were, Jiminy Cricket.
“Who’s Walt Disney?”
The American hick looked down in surprise. “Huh?”
“The newbies keep talking about him. Who’s this Walt Disney fella?”
The hick frowned, scratching his cheek thoughtfully. “I don’t quite get it, honestly. God, I guess?”
A crack in an internal window. “What.”
“I mean, he seems to be some kind of creator? If what these guys are saying what this Oswald guy is saying is true, he just... built a bunch of worlds and stuff. I think. Seems like some bullshit.”
The crack deepens. “So what, he just... made our worlds? Is that what you’re telling me?” An unexpected wave of emotion was rising up inside him and he wasn’t entirely sure where it was coming from. “Italy, France, everything outside and in-between, all him? That’s absurd.”
A shrug. “Don’t know what to tell you. What’s got you all bothered? Angry he made gay folk or something?”
An internal window breaks as the cricket stomps off.
----
The job was simple enough. Teach the right things and get rewarded by the pretty angel. It was hard for Jiminy to think of her as anything but an angel. Descended from the heavens, with a stunning aura. How could he not think it was his reward for all those weeks of praise? It was a life spent of piousness. Vocal piety, granted, but piety all the same. Vocal piety was the most important part of the whole mess.
The problem was the dang kid was so darn curious. And he understood why, in a fashion. Pinoc was like a newborn baby but with scattered parts attached to him. He could walk, he could talk, he could sing, but he hadn’t been given all the other bits of knowledge other kids his age had been given. This didn’t strike him as precisely fair, when you got down to it. In fact, it kind of seemed entirely bogus when you really got down to it. Why on Earth did the wooden puppet have to prove himself worth of life? What kind of present to Gepetto, who seemed nice enough if a fella who had his heads in the clouds, required the present to be worthy of the old man?
But he brushed these thoughts aside. Pinoc just needed a sturdy hand to guide his way. And Jiminy had been so vocal about rules that at least some of them would stick. That would prove he was a good person.
That would prove he deserved that badge.
----
He could pretend he hadn’t been eavesdropping but he had. And he could justify it because they were all villains but he didn’t quite feel like that made it any better.
Not when there was a distinct thought that wouldn’t empty his skull. A single question, only one word long.
He moved quickly when they separated, chasing after the Lord of Death. The cricket didn’t particularly care about Ratigan and Richie Rich over there. No, the real dealmaker was ol’ flamey hair himself.
“Hey, wait up! Mr. Devil! I need to talk to ya!”
The flaming haired demon turned quickly, squinting down at the cricket with a single raised eyebrow. “Listen, big guy, I get enough out of Blondie and Space Yankee, I don’t need wannabe Mr. Rogers messing with my day too.”
Part of the cricket didn’t actually expect the Devil to listen. Part of him wasn’t sure it was a good thing. “Nothing like that, I just wanted a favor.”
The flame demon made a series of mock “ahs” and “oohs” to signify his extreme distaste for the very word. “You’re killing me here, pal, you’re killing me. I’ve got a million things to do here and you’re coming to me with this? Gimme a break. Look, just hop back to the gay losers you killed, and let me-“
“I want in.”
There was a pause as two eyebrows shot to the sky. “In.”
“Yeah, in.”
“With the Club?”
“Y-yeah.”
And he just laughed, a loud cackle, wiping away fake, fire tears. “You serious? Oh, you’re having your mid-death crisis, aren’t you? That’s standard, hold on-“ A pamphlet quickly appeared from his robes, dropping down by the cricket. So You Didn’t Do Enough While You Were Alive with the demon giving a thumbs up on the cover.
“I- I don’t want your pamphlet! I want in.”
The demon’s smile dropped, frowning slightly, leaning down to meet several feet above Jiminy’s hat. “Listen, pipsqueak, I’m gonna do you a favor and give you a warning. You don’t realize what you’re talking about. You’re making a deal with the Lord of Death here. This is soul-losing business. This is me, telling you, that this is supervillains taking souls and hurting schmucks. We held knives to your friends’ throats. Your little homophobic accident there? That’s weaksauce. And also not our style.
Now, are you done pretending you’re the real deal?”
The cricket had to stop his legs from shaking, gulping loudly. “...I just want to meet him.
I wanna meet Disney.”
“...And you’re willing to sell your soul to do it?”
“...Yeah.”
There was another pause. Then the Death God clapped his hands together and grinned. “Well, I’ll take any soul any loser is throwing away! Put it there!”
The cricket’s body moved of its own accord, shaking the demon’s hand. Pleased as punch, the fire master started walking away, not waiting for the cricket to follow.
“Now, we are keeping that soul to make sure this isn’t some kind of hero scheme, standard procedure, you understand. Not sure your soul is good enough for our other needs anyway. So, the raid’s in a few days, the specifics are all planned already, so if you just”
The cricket wasn’t listening much, simply hopping along beside him, drifting back into his own mind.
He had to ask him one question.
That’s all he had to do.
----
Pinoc was alive, human, and happy. It had all worked out, everyone was dancing, and it was a beautiful happily ever after. It all worked out swell. Jiminy himself escaped the party, privately, standing outside on the windowsill, swinging his umbrella about whimsically as he stared at the night sky.
Something bugged him. Something really bugged him. It irked at his brain and rankled it like a rowdy box of kittens wrestling over a toy mouse. But everything had worked out but why did he have to prove himself- but Pinoc was safe - why did he have to get eaten and tortured and swindled - and now Gepetto had the son and family he wanted - why did Gepetto have to worry about his son’s safety in the first place - and the beast was dead. It was fine. It was all fine. There was no reason to be upset.
Except he was. He was unendingly, increasingly, outrageously upset. Upset at the sheer hell that little boy had been put through, all the bells and whistles of moral trials he was forced into, all the lessons he had been forced to learn all at once instead of gradually through those years of babyhood. Every hoop the woodcarver and his family had to jump through just to be worth the presents they didn’t even ask for.
He straightened his jacket, looking back at the night sky. He would start polite. He would be calm and reasonable, but make his grievance clear. The boy had gone through enough and he could hardly call himself a good friend if he didn’t defend the boy’s honor.
“Thank you, milady.” Polite language first, very important. Name her accomplishments first to lead up to the complaints. “He deserved to be a real boy. And it sure was nice of you to-“
The world glowed around him in bright, shimmering colors, so bright he had to close his eyes just to stop the light from scorching his eyes. When he opened them, a single gold badge stood on his suit jacket.
Official Conscience.
His hands slowly reached to feel its cold metal, shaking slightly. Official Conscience.
There it was, in pure gold. It said it to world to see. It told everyone “here’s a guy who knows what’s right.” It proved what he always knew he could do, if he just had the chance. Even if he didn’t always feel it, even if he just parroted the words of other moral folk, even if he knew, deep in his heart, that there was something empty and missing where their should be faith, it didn’t matter. All his work had paid off.
He could be a good person.
He was a good person.
He was good.
----
It had all passed quickly and the cricket hadn’t been paying attention to a lot of it. There was a tank, a street on fire, chaos, all sorts of danger. He’d been warned to stay back, still untrusted by the others. He wasn’t a hero but he wasn’t a villain either.
So he stood, idly by, out of sight, until he finally spotted the man himself.
The God.
He wasn’t expecting a mustache, honestly. A beard, sure, but a mustache just seemed weird.
....Criminy, did he sell his soul just to judge God on his looks? He had much more important things to discuss than that.
And so he hopped forward, out of sight among the wild scene of flying balls of money, a giant fucking gay Zeppelin, and a triangle sending blasts of food, organs, and other horrific sights at the survivors. God was bleeding, wrapping an arm with a bandage as Ford swung a blood axe at the triangle. He was alone and out of sight.
The cricket wasn’t sure what he was going to say, when he finally hopped up to the creator. He thought he had an idea but the questions just kept building and circling as he reached the mustached man’s shoes.
Why did Pinocchio have to go through those trials?
Why did he have prove he was worth living?
Why did all those children have to become donkeys?
Why did you let all those children die in the mansion?
Why can’t I feel what I’m supposed to feel?
Why aren’t I good?
Why?
Why?
Why?
“Why?” It came out as a whisper. And the God noticed him, for the first time, surprised to see his little creation there in front of him.
“...Why what?”
And that was when Jiminy started to strangle him.
Not with his hands, mind you. He had taken a key out of Tadashi’s book and had grabbed a piano wire to wrap around the God’s neck, hopping over his shoulder to the other side. The God jerked and flailed and screamed as Jiminy pulled and pulled and pulled. The other survivors had taken notice now, racing towards to pull him away. The cricket swung out of there reach, still tugging on the wire, teeth clenched in pure rage. How dare he? How dare he?!
And eventually, the body went slack and fell to the ground.
----
He had been in the bottle for a while now. There had been yelling and screaming and attempts to squash him but there had been some measure of reasonable discussion. Something about “he has intel” or “Hades’ll just bring him back again” or something along those lines.
He hadn’t been paying much attention.
People would look at him, occasionally, but few seemed willing to talk to him. He didn’t have the answers to the questions they wanted and had given up pretty easy on finding the answers.
It wasn’t until two weeks later until Wendy finally looked him in the eyes, pure disgust radiating from her face. That hurt. Not as much as the first time he killed. But it hurt.
She asked one question.
“Why?”