Ignoring the rantings of the sore loser, Kel looked around to make sure that there wasn't anything else that Oogie was waiting to spring on them. After a bit it appeared that nothing of the sort was going to happen and while he kept his guard up, he turned his attention to where Oogie's voice had come from. "Not only did we play your games, but we beat you at them too. Now let us go."
As Jack confirmed what Kel was hoping wasn't the case, he had followed behind as they approached the oddly designed house of Oogie Boogie. Perfectly content to let Jack do all the talking, he could only raise a brow hearing Shock's voice being the one answering. He supposed it was a little bit hopeful to expect Oogie himself to be the one to answer, especially considering how he wasn't here home. Unfortunately following portion of thier conversation, he had just enough time to process the word 'trapdoor' being said and noticing the extreme lack of floor underneath them. One long fall and painful landing later and Kel could only sigh at the taunting voices. This wasn't his typical sounding sigh, but an annoyed one. These kids were really starting to irritate him with these antics of theirs.
It wasn't much to ease the worries, but despite the initial stumble to his step Quill was walking just fine. For now at least he would ease up on the concern as they ventured onward. Fortunately despite the overall unsettling air that this world had to it, the paths were pretty straightforward and ti didn't seem like there was a high chance that they could get lost by just following the path they were walking on. Especially not when they came across the monstrosity up ahead at the end of the forest. It seemed to be a home of sort, but even my this worlds standards Kel was uncertain of that. "Is that where we're headed?" He figured if anyone might know the answer to that it would be Jack.
Through their combined efforts they cleared away the heartless that had swarmed Quill and despite the claims that he was fine, Kel wasn't ready to but much stock in that. "It's a little late to tell us not to worry about us, comes with being a part of the team. We'll all just go at the same pace so no one ends up in the back." Kel said, giving a quick thumbs up to Jack to affirm that he was relatively unharmed after that fight. A few scratches here and there, but on a comparative scale, they weren't anything to worry about given what happened to Quill.
Kel struck at one more heartless before noticing the large group of neoshadows scurrying off towards the hill. For a brief moment, he wondered why this might be the case, but that too was soon revealed spotting Quill at the top of the hill they were congregating on, and in the time it had taken him to realize this, the heartless had already gone on the attack by pouncing onto Quill. "Quill!" Kel took off towards the spiral hill, ice already forming along his keyblade before he threw it at the mound of heartless. He'd put in enough aim on it to avoid hitting Quill and carved through half of the heartless around him. 11/12
The heartless that initially surrounded had started to weaken in numbers and their continued assault on them wasn't letting up. Out of the corner of his eye, Kel spotted another small cluster of assorted heartless not too far off getting ready for another attack. Using his off keyblade a barrage of ice was unleashed on them, coating most of them in ice. A few had managed to get away from the initial attack unscathed however in a blink of the eye the gap between Kel and those heartless closed, leaving any stragglers who happened to still be standing to fall to the blade of his main keyblade. 9/12
His main keyblade had returned and caught a neoshadow off guard who had leapt from the ground to attack him and he turned to faced the next batch of heartless that had appeared to face him. A small group of hover ghost had been progressively inching closer to him as the fight went on. Sensing that they had been spotted they all sent their full attention on him and moved to attack with their claws. Kel was able to dodge these attacks with ease, but the rapid flow of attacks wasn't leaving him with many openings to attack. He just needed one moment to put some distance between himself and them. A moment that came when two of the heartless attacked at the same time and instead of striking Kel, collided with each other. That instance gave him enough time to take a couple of steps back from the group and plunge his keyblade into the ground, sending a line of bones towards them to skewer them all. 6/12
With Quill's call out Kel was able to quickly avoid one of the gargoyles that had tried sneak up on him and swiftly retaliated with an attack of his own. He spotted a small group of Wite Knights in the distance and tossed his secondary keyblade at them. The blade soared before coating itself in ice to both cleave through and freeze the heartless. "I wouldn't put it past him." Not that this really told them much about whatever it was that Oogie might've been planning. Heartless, in general, were never helpful so their fighting right now was nothing short of normal. 5/12
"I wonder about that." Kel mused to himself, adjusting the glasses he still wore. Fortunately, the blend didn't seem to affect them in any negative manner. Hearing that fear and doubt were the signs of a strong heart was definitely strange for him to hear. Considering how many times said things have done the exact opposite of what Jack implied. Maybe he'd actually see that transpire while in this world and maybe it would be something that he could use to help face his own doubts. Approaching the hill and watching as they were greeted by heartless, Kel quick readied himself and went on the attack, carving through a few of the wight knights and neoshadows that had spawned. 2/12
Jack certainly seemed nice enough despite the overall creepy vibes he had been getting from this world as a whole so far. Kel attempted not to think too much about that as they were lead to the Doctor's lab and as Jack and the aforementioned Doctor had their conversations, he looked around at the lab itself. It seemed to be pretty normal, compared to the other labs that he's seen, but when the sheet covering the table was removed he found himself taking a step back in shock. The various body parts had their own set of patches and sewn marks, so at least they were parts of a human. Didn't make it any less unsettling and when coupled with the doctor scratching his exposed brain, Kel was quick to nod at Jack's offer to leave. "Yeah, let's go."
As Kel and AJ trailed behind there didn't seem to be anything that seemed to pose a threat to them, which was saying something cause between the overall creepy atmosphere that surrounded them, there had been a few times where he'd thought seen shadows moving in the trees and found nothing when he actually turned to look in that direction. This place was certainly doing its best to unnerve him and finding himself in a graveyard really didn't help that. "Oh hey...guys?" Uncertainty was clear in his voice as he wasn't quite sure if it was them until he got close enough to notice some of their more distinguishing features. Kel slowly turned his focused aware from them and to the skeleton that was basically towering over them. He seemed friendly enough given that they were currently fighting or anything.
"It may be too easy, but it's really all we got to go off." AJ was right in both this being a potential trap and that they should remain on guard. It wasn't ideal by any means, but they didn't have a lot of options really. Now despite having only done it once before, Kel was able to replicate the process of adding Karina's number to his phone, after she had shoved her own at him, just in time for the latter to snatch her phone back and leave. So far he was up to two numbers, which was more than enough for him to keep in contact with the other group right now. He gave Aux an appreciative nod before turning in the direction that Quill had gone off. He was going to go alone, but Luna tagged alone beforehand. "Yeah, we can do that." And so Kel waited a bit before following behind the two, not noticing at first the more patched-together look that blend had given him for this world right away.
Eventhough they had been sent here to deal with Oogie Boogie, Kel hadn't been expecting to be handed a direct means of getting to him. It felt way too simple given that he seemed to be called the Pumpkin King here. As the three kids and their bathtub walked off, he glanced back at the ink-covered Christmas tree that had stuck out to him as well. Karina at the very least seemed to be deadset on going there to kill a rat. "Well given that there are at least two things right now we should look into," he paused to pull out the gummi phone from his pocket "now might be a good time to do that contact exchange thing that DJ had mentioned when we got these. Given our track record, we could use the extra help in keeping in contact with one another."
After AJ brought up the possibility of a connection between the trees, Kel looked away from the one he was staring at in order to stare at the other ones that were surrounding them and the only real connection that he could guess between them all was just the fact that they all strangely shaped doors painted onto them. Nothing about that seemed like it would guide them in the right direction. Karina's offhanded remark about murdering an oversized rat had warranted some notable confusion as there weren't a lot of rats off the top of his head that he could think she'd want to kill. Now considering all of the talking animals that he's come across, seeing three kids in masks hop out of a bathtub wasn't the oddest of things. "What costumes?" Kel asked as he cocked his head, examing the costumes of the three briefly then straightening his head out. "And who is this pumpkin king?"
After some much needed rest they had gotten on a ship and left for Halloween Town. There was some comfort in the ship piloting itself to their destination. More comforting than the idea of one of them pressing the wrong button and killing the oxygen again. Thankfully that wouldn't happen with the auto pilot right? Well it was a possibility it was one that didn't happen as they landed in a creepy forest. "Is that a...Christmas tree?" Kel mused. He recognized the turkey and the egg, albeit a weird color, was still an egg. Of course he couldn't explain why they were all carved into trees, but the he got closer to that tree in particular and yeah. That was definitely a Christmas tree.
Between both Karina holding on and his own efforts to keep himself calm, Kel was able to focus less on the water he definitely didn't want to fall into and more so on keeping his balance. It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep him stable until Shiro had finally called this test to an end. A noticeable breath of relief left him, allowing him to feel much more comfortable. It was good to be on land and know the multitude of doubts he held were his main problem. At this point, he'd practically figured that one out himself. Speaking of he was certain to make sure that the glasses he'd gotten from DJ were affixed properly on his face during the meeting. If nothing else hopefully the chances of running into the Red Society would be less while they were in Halloweentown. "I can only imagine." He'd said pretty nonchalantly in response to Karina. He would gladly welcome it having spent the whole day training. "Oh and thanks for the help back on the raft, it did help."
Whatever level of calmness that Kel generally displayed was teetering on the same edge he was on this raft. Sometimes he had it easy and was able to stay relatively balanced on the raft. Other, much like what had just occurred, they hit a particularly nasty wave that really knocked him off balance. Kel ended up tipping forward enough to almost fall into the water, but the raft rocked the other way which allowed him to regain his balance. Okay, maybe this was going to be harder than he thought. Prior to all this, he's never had any problem with water. Sure he's never been on a boat or really went swimming all too much. Now, it might be something to take into consideration the way this test was currently going. Another crash of thunder, another wave hit, and once more Kel was fighting to keep his balance when Karina had grabbed onto him. After her encouragement, he took in a deep breath mainly to calm the internal struggle before worrying about the external one. "You're right, I can do this." He said and repeated to himself to firmly plant that in his head.
"Oh no." Due to the events the past two times Kel had been on either a raft or a shift, the fact that their final test was balancing on one bothered him a lot more than it normally would've and the storm only made it worse. He could do this, he just had to stand on the edge and not fall off despite how very clear it was how on edge this was putting him on which had a small effect on his balance. He could hear his dad's parting words on how a Siegend never loses their cool and realize that this wasn't at all where he'd thought that this would be put to the test.
Kel felt thankful for Ven's arrival as it actually gave them time to rest that Shiro surely would've cut short otherwise. So he gave Ven a weak wave to show both his appreciation and to acknowledge that he was here and not too long after his hand plopped back onto the ground and he was back to resting. For a brief moment, he thought he'd seen more than one AJ, but wasn't in the right state of being to try and make heads or tails of it.
Unfortunately Kel didn't really have any magic that would help him climb up the wall and the auras he did have wouldn't be of much assistance here either, thus meaning he would have to do things the old fashion way to make it across the finish line. He took in a breath and tried to stretch as best he could underneath all the additional weight and sprinted towards the wall. The climb started immediately after and Kel focused on a singular thought. Make it to the top. Don't think about the extra weight, how tired he was, or anything else. Everything was focused on that one task and eventually paid off as he reached the top and literally fell across the finish line. Well despite how wore out he felt, he made it and that was good enough found him while gave his body a much-needed break for as long as he could.
