SystemofEleven

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Agatha glanced over at him before quickly turning away. One the one hand, she couldn't really get back the spices she'd gotten rid of, which hadn't been her intention when she asked Carmilla to steal them in the first place. On the other hand, her original intentions had been put in place before she knew the extent to which he had used her. He hadn't just toyed with her interests to distract her from the broom gluing; he had also used her good graces to sell him potion ingredients she might not have otherwise sold to any of the tricksters, and used those to cause potentially deleterious effects on the entire town.

The young witch pointed to a tall shelf. "On top of that."

She waited for him to shuffle the box up to his head height and maneuver it onto the shelf before shaking her head. "Actually, never mind. Those belong over there." She pointed to a stack of crates on the other side of the shop.

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Carver hesitated before slowly nodding. "Sure, Jack. I'll keep that in mind."

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Carver frowned slightly and opened her top pair of eyes a little wider on one side, still squinting with the bottom pair. "If you say so..."

She shrugged and dropped to the floor, catching herself with her arms and somersaulting to an upright position. "Anyway... Anything else you want me to do in here?"

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Carver tilted her head and squinted her lowest pair of eyes suspiciously. "Different how? What exactly did he say is going to change?"

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Jewel blinked at her husband's word choice, narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, then smiled. She sidled up to his bed and proceeded to yank open his skull. She wasn't careless as she pulled his brain out, but she did move with a sudden and unexpected speed that the doctor wasn't able to stop her in time. She plopped it into a large jar of liquid with a satisfied nod.

"Have a good day, Jack. Send Sally my regards."

---

Carver was up in the rafters attempting to coax a rather timid widow spider back into her relocated web. Upon hearing her name called, she placed the spider as near the web as it would let her put it, and casually leaned over sideways until she tumbled off the rafter. Her lower vines easily grabbed onto it before she fell completely, allowing her to dangle upside down such that her face was just within Jack's comparatively elevated eyesight.

"Hi, Jack."

She was still pretty reserved, as she usually was with him, but she was noticeably more relaxed and cheerful than before.

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Finkelstein nodded, missing half of what the skellington said because he was deep in thought about a possible solution. "Hmmmmm...."

Jewel poked her head back into the room. "Excuse me, Jack, but are you two just about done? I still need to give my husband a proper examination. It shouldn't take too long, however, and you are of course welcome to join us for lunch afterward."

The doctor came back to attention as his wife spoke. He opened his mouth to snap at her that he was fine, but quickly stopped to re-calibrate his response. Right, she was female. Which meant she was ruled by her emotions, and controlled by an innate need to nurture and protect. Of course she was going to continue pressing the issue; reason alone wouldn't be enough to override that biological programming.

"Thank you, my dear," he said slowly and carefully, "but I really do believe I will be okay. I haven't experienced any difficulties functioning since I returned here. Perhaps you should simply start lunch now." Cooking for him should be pretty high on her priority list, and as another form of nurturing, it might be enough to counter the focus on his brain.

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Finkelstein nodded, taking the "undoubtedly" response as confirmation that Jack agreed with his assessment of Lock's obvious ulterior intentions. He scratched his skull as Jack kept talking.

"Well, I do suppose trying something different might be in order. The definition of insanity, and all that. But don't worry, Jack, I wouldn't abandon her to a fate living with those three, just to make my life a little easier. As the one who brought her into existence, I do hold a personal responsibility to maintain her. The struggles of managing her are... frustrating," he said diplomatically, "but it comes with the cost of being an architect of life."

Banding Together in Halloween Town

He gave Jack a curious look, but listened as the Pumpkin King spoke of his creations. Dr. Finkelstein started to ponder what sort of potential flaw in the process caused both Sally and Carver to try to flee -- their structures and methods were wildly different in nearly all aspects -- when Jack got to his clarification:

That the common variable was himself.

The doctor gave a small sneer. Impossible! He was also the common variable between all of his projects that worked exactly as intended. He was particularly proud of Igor; he perhaps wouldn't have even conceived Sally if the hunchback hadn't been such a resounding success. His assistant was also perfectly happy to serve his original purpose. Clearly, that couldn't be the problem.

...Actually there was a common variable. Igor had been specifically created to be male. The other three, hadn't. Carver, of course, hadn't been intended to have a physical sex, and technically she still didn't, but she did use feminine pronouns... That might be the problem.

He had created Jewel for the purpose of being a companion who could understand him on every intellectual level, something Igor never could and he wasn't certain Sally even tried to do. He knew his wife had least close to his intelligence, but there were a significant portion of conversations they had where she somehow couldn't fathom that he was simply right. Perhaps none of them were strictly malfunctioning. Perhaps they were simply operating under parameters he had forgotten to take into account.

"--failed to. She's their friend..." The doctor looked up and realized Jack was still talking. He listened to the rest of Jack's speech, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"He probably recognized that if she got into any more trouble, they wouldn't have access to her to pull their next stunt." Finkelstein commented. "It's been a long time since the hooligans had to put a plan into action that required only three of them. They have been escalating their trouble since she joined their little gang... Hmmmmmmm... I suppose I could think of something to remedy the problem with her, though. Or at least get started on it..."

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Jewel quickly put on the most pleasant expression she could manage and moved to leave the room. "Well, I'll just go work on fixing the chair, and let you two discuss things." She shot her husband a meaningful look from the door. "After which, I will be performing a complete examination."

The doctor waited until Jewel was gone before he greeted the Pumpkin King. "Nice to see you again, Jack, although I disagree with your assessment of Carver's actions. Attacking me was not the result of 'needing to get things off her chest'. Reasonable monsters don't do such a thing, nor do they use such petty excuses. No, this was the result of those hooligans influencing her toward increasingly bad behavior, and my being far too lenient about her dealings with them to prevent it from reaching a point of physical violence. Rest assured, though, I will be correcting my mistake as soon as I have recuperated from this most egregious offense."

Banding Together in Halloween Town

"I just need to take it out to check for damage, and then I'll put it right back!" Jewel's exasperated voice echoed down the central space of the lab.

"You already checked it last night! You don't need to keep checking it over and over again, and we both have more important things to be doing!" Doctor Finkelstein argued back.

"I have checked it once, on a surface level, without accessing the underside; not 'over and over again'," Jewel retorted. "And those important things can wait to be done until I'm certain you are fit to do them. Honestly, Harold, you're acting like a child!"

"A child!" he cried indignantly. "Do none of my creations have any respect for me anymore?"

"Unless you split our brain before you made my body, I get half the credit for my own existence," Jewel responded curtly. "I respect you as an equal, dear, and I will respectfully inform you when you're not behaving in a manner befitting my equal."

The doctor grumbled, unable to argue against that. He couldn't resist a making a side remark under his breath, though, and Jack could guess the approximate content of the comment based on Jewel's response:

"Well maybe if you actually talked to her instead of ignoring all of her concerns, she wouldn't DO that, Harold!"