Elsa and Anna's Mini Reviews: Tic-Tac Spender Box

I could have said it was just like any other day in the Room She Lives In, but it wasn't. We were all still shocked and mourning after Cogsworth's sudden and tragic expiration, which meant the Pocket-Sized Avengers were actually staying around for a while. This made Nessa happy because she could see Vision again, and Chris and Steve were making great friends, but everyone else felt cramped and aloof. I couldn't help thinking that it would be nice if I could escape, if only for a few minutes.
Luckily, Anna came to my rescue when re-entered She's room and became the only one of us with a smile on her face.
"Elsa! There you are. Okay, I know we're not supposed to snoop around with the humans, especially not after Cogsworth..." Anna paused mid-sentence, and her lower lip twitched. I looked down in respect, but she continued on. "But I find this really awesome thing in the dining room cabinet that I think that we ought to review."
"What? Review?" I asked.
"Yeah, don't you remember? You and I had that mini-series going. Literally. It was a mini-series. We reviewed miniature school supplies that one time before She started school."
I could vaguely recall doing such a thing, but if I'm honest, stronger memories had taken siege of my mind since last August. "Oh, right!" I exclaimed. "What is it?"
"Well, you'll have to come see. I think it's too big for me to carry upstairs alone."
I raised a single eyebrow, and a corner of my mouth went up with it. "Are you sure it'll work for a miniature, Anna?"
"It will. Trust me."
I followed Anna downstairs and into the dining room, where she ran over to the thing she wanted us to review and stuck out her arms in a flair of drama.
"Ta-da!"
I was still terribly lost. "Okay, well... it's a box."
Anna groaned and pulled on my arm to bring me closer to the thing. "Look closer!"

Ah, I could see what she meant. Inside the transparent box were far tinier boxes, the same kind as the big one; little box babies. And inside the tinier boxes were round colored pellets that looked awfully familiar. She kept a collection of pellets like these in her room, and sometimes she'd pop one into her mouth after dinner.
"Wait, these are Tic-Tacs, aren't they?"
Anna rolled her eyes and laughed. "Took you long enough! Can't you read?"
"Yes!" I insisted. "So we're reviewing the miniature boxes of Tic-Tacs?
"That's the idea. Now help me take this up to She's room!"
"Let me take some pictures first! The lighting is better down here, anyway."
Anna folded her arms impatiently. "If you must."

The larger box, which housed all the baby boxes, had the same metallic green and silver polka-dot printed stickers around it as most Tic-Tacs do. At least the ones I've seen. It opens in a flap from the top right side, and it clicks back into place to close. So far, a pretty standard box of Tic-Tacs except for the size. So far that was the only thing I could find to be remarkable.
Since the humans had apparently already dug into it, half of the baby boxes inside were gone, and the Tic-Tacs were not as heavy as we thought. Anna probably could have done it alone had it not been such an awkward shape to carry.

Once upstairs, I had to take more pictures. I had Anna stand next to it to compare heights, and I figured that I wouldn't need to since we're the same height- sixteen inches, and the heels on her boots barely make a difference.

As for the tiny boxes, they fit perfectly into Anna's cupped hands. In our opinion, the baby boxes are the perfect size for any doll. Each miniature box contained about 8-12 flavored drops (after breaking the seal, so we were sure nobody had taken mints out beforehand).
To be sure of the dimensions, we invited dolls of other species into our review to pose for some pictures if they wanted. Most of them did, probably happy to get their minds off of... other things.

Moana, Anelle, Kristoff and Steve are all Disney dolls around the same height, but Kristoff looks slightly taller than Anelle, and we know Moana is eleven inches by her packaging and Steve is twelve by his. We're not really sure of Olaf's height, but he fit in with the group well enough.

Bell, Nessa, Elphaba, and Idina are all around three to four inches in height.

We even got the Pocket-Sized Avengers in a photo! (They are all 3.75 inches, except Wanda, who is 3.5 inches in height.)
Now to move onto the real purpose of Tic-Tacs: flavor. Since we can't actually taste or eat anything, we figured the scent would work just as well. The miniature boxes had the same stickers and tab at the top, and each one says their flavor. The side of the larger box says this as well, along with the color each one is supposed to be. I found it a little weird that they called the Tic-Tacs "flavored drops" instead of "mints", but I guess that could get a little confusing if "mint" could be an actual flavor. But if that was the case all along, why couldn't they just call them "breath fresheners"? Ah, nevermind. That sounds too dorky.

The first flavor, or scent, we tried was orange, oddly colored scarlet instead, and not a clear transparent like the spender box. The orange Tic-Tac smelled very sweet and citrus-y, which is exactly what we were looking for. I heard this one is She's favorite, and I totally understand that now. Each "flavored drop" was white instead of being colored the same as the miniature box they came in.

Next came spearmint, which came in a cyan box. There's a regular mint one as well, but we'll get to that later, though I'm not really sure of the difference between mints flavors/scents. Oh well. People must be able to tell, because why else would they buy two different mints of the same flavor? The spearmint was spicy, but more like a cinnamon (sweet) spicy and less like a sriracha (savory) spicy. It would definitely clear a human's nose if they were stuffy. It was Thor's choice, probably because the spiciness was... electrifying? Haha.

Anna and I knew we wanted to save the peach and passionfruit "flavored drop for last, so that left us with the regular mint. Olaf said the scent reminded him of chilly weather, and I would agree. Most things with the Frozen characters on them are either mint or vanilla, so the mint drop probably rung a bell for him because of that. The mint drops were the only miniature Tic-Tacs that came in a non-colored box, although the packaging of the large spender box shows them to be green. I don't know why they didn't go with green in real life, but no matter. These mints have the classic scent we were all expecting for the name.

We saved what we thought would be the best for last: peach and passionfruit. Moana called it liliko'i because that's what passionfruit means in Hawaiian, but in all my years, I've never known a passionfruit to be in She's house. Maybe they are hard to find where we live? I guess the Tic-Tacs are a good replacement if you have a craving for passionfruit, but mainly it smelled like peaches to us because that's what we are able to recognize.
This product can be found on Ebay and Amazon, of course, for the average price of fifteen to eighteen dollars. I imagine that the price is similar at the actual store She bought it at, but the tags were all removed so we could only guess on that. From what I've heard, it was brought into the house whenever She's parents went to Mexico a couple years ago... which doesn't help us since we don't know where in Mexico, and it might not help you if you live near there. I recommend buying one online if you're interested.
In summary, the Tic-Tac Spender Box and Minis will perfectly fit into the pocket of any human or work as a doll-sized prop if need be. Anna and I give it a rating of 9/10 snowflakes for some of the flavors (peach passionfruit) not being all that they claimed and the flavored drops not being colored like the regular sized boxes are. But hey, if given the option, why not give it a try? The miniature boxes are awfully cute.

Signing off,

Princess Anna and Queen Elsa

The Funky War P.4: Time Passed

At last, the finale to The Funky War... but the memory will still live on...

***

Following the moment we first met Cogsworth, we showed him everything. Seconds after Loki and Wanda left (again, for reasons unknown), Nessa and Elphaba returned from gathering more dental wax for Elphie's arm and they took to him immediately. Nessa's favorite movie at the moment is the live action Beauty and the Beast, so she wasn't afraid of Cogsworth's mysterious ticking noises or robotic voice, and Elphie was eager to get out of bed for once, so Nessa jumped at the idea of taking Cogsworth around the house. The older humans were both at work and She was at school, so the only one we had to worry about was She's little sister, who had been stayed home sick, and we hadn't seen her all day and assumed her to be asleep.
So we took Cogsworth out on a little adventure. The whole time, the Pocket-Sized Avengers were no where to be found, but I did bring Steve along to see what he thought of Cogsworth. The others who came on Elphie and Nessa's little expedition were the ones who had found him: Moana, Magneto, and I. The whole time, the Pocket-Sized Avengers were no where to be found, but I did bring Steve along to see what he thought of Cogsworth.
We had vanilla-cinnamon tea with milk and sugar in the kitchen, placed roses around his head in the living room ("Because roses are Beauty and the Beast and so is Cogsworth!" Nessa claimed. "He looks cute with them. Are you okay with this, Cogsworth?" He responded with a mechanical shrug.), and last but not least, everyone's favorite room of the house... the basement.
The humans had continued to do some work on it since adding the air hockey table during Christmas, including a fresh new layer of butternut-squash-colored paint and even cleaning up the craft room. When we entered, however, we saw that they had made more changes than they thought.
"Welcome to the basement, Cogsworth!" Nessa announced, dropping from my arms (I had carried her down the stairs) and spinning around, arms open wide, but then they flew to her mouth when she saw the new addition. "Woah! I didn't know we had a dartboard."

"I'll play you, lolo," Moana smirked Magneto's way. "But I've got to warn you. I think I'm pretty good at it."
Magneto beckoned Moana closer and whispered something into her ear, where she laughed and said, "Yeah, I guess you are, too."
Steve's arm brushed mine and the other motioned to the dartboard. "What say you, Elsa? Want to give it a go? Us against them?"
I chuckled softly. "Oh, I'm afraid I won't be very good."
"Me either. We can fail together."
"Alright, alright." I agreed, only to get distracted when I saw Cogsworth climbing the air hockey table with Elphie and Nessa.
"What are you guys doing?" I asked.
"Cogsworth wants to play air hockey. He says he's really good at it."
"Really? But how would he know...?" I started to say, but my voice trailed off whenever Cogsworth stared at me. Maybe that was a rude thing to say. My eyes flicked away, embarrassed and a little uncomfortable in his unblinking gaze.
While Steve and I played darts against Magneto and Moana's team, I paid more attention to Cogsworth's conversation than firing my darts.
"Do you. Come downstairs. Often?"
"Eh, not really," said Elphie, re-wrapping a bandage around her broken arm. "The stairs are too big for most of us, and it's cold and creepy."
"I'm a-fraid. Of the dark. Too."
Elphie cocked her head curiously.
"Yeah. It does get pretty dark down here at times. But it's not so bad when you're not alone."
"Why. Are there. So. Many of you?"
"You mean us dolls?" Elphie chortled. "I don't know. She's a collector. She doesn't know we're alive."
"She."
"Our human. We told you this already. But I don't think She is your human, since you were found in her sister's room."

"I don't know. I could be. She's."
"Where are you from, anyway, Cogsworth? You said you came in a box- you've got to know that's not very descriptive. Why are you here?"
Nessa slapped her sister's good arm. "Elphie! That's really rude! You don't just go around asking new dolls why they're here. You said it yourself. She's a collector. He's one of us."
"Is he really, though?" Elphie said, being tricky by speaking in a voice that only dolls, with smaller voices and better ears, could understand. "Look at him and tell me that he doesn't give you weird vibes."
"What was that." Cogsworth asked.
The whole room went quiet.
"Nothing, Cogsworth," Nessa stammered. "Now let's play hockey."
I turned back to the dart game. So far Steve and I were losing terribly- as I knew we would- but maybe now that they were gone talking over there I could actually get a dart to hit the board instead of the safety cork around it.
"Steve?" I whispered.
"Hm?" Steve had a dart held at the ready, but he paused long enough to hear me out.
"Do you think Cogsworth is a little... weird?"
"A little weirdness is good," Steve replied, tossing the dart and landing a double twenty. "I'm weird, you're weird- no offense- the fact that dolls can talk is weird, the fact that there was a secret society of Funko Pops living in this house and you fought them and never told me until now is a little weird."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know if it should be kept a secret or not. But now that Cogsworth's here... well, he's a little weird to me because I don't know where his loyalties lie. He is technically a Funko... but whenever we found him the others were treating him like he had a disease. But it's weird that he's spending time with us because you know how territorial the Funkos are. You would think they'd want Cogsworth on their team, with no chance of him leaving that room. Right?"
"I don't know much about the Funkos, but from what you've told me, yes, that does seem a little weird. It's your dart, by the way."

"It's like they don't accept Cogsworth as a Funko," I closed one eye and held the dart up vertically to the board, not aiming for anywhere in particular, but trying to act like I knew what I was doing. "It's like... it's like he's not even one of them." I closed both eyes and launched the dart.
"Are you kidding me?" Magneto cried. "Elsa got a bull's eye!"
I opened both eyes in disbelief. "I did?"
"You did," Moana said. "Nice shot. We're going to have to try twice as hard if we want to beat them now, lolo."
On the sidelines, Nessa and Cogsworth where playing air hockey one-on-one while Elphie operated the electronic scoreboard. Cogsworth was steering plastic "pusher" with his clock-arms and expertly swung the puck into Nessa's goal, like he himself had been playing the game since December. But that wasn't as unsettling as the way he stared at me while he did it.
Like I had found something out.

***

"This is suicide." Hawkeye muttered under baited breath. His callused fingers grazed the outside of the door soundlessly... feeling the divots and markings, both made my factory and by accident, and also feeling for any vibration of sounds behind it.
"Then make elf man do it," Wanda urged. "He's the one who was apparently able to talk some sense into them."
"Elf man?" I said incredulously.
Wanda shrugged. "You look like an elf. Only a little. And I've got nicknames for everybody."
I sighed and faced the door to She's sister's room again. I couldn't shake the reminder that She had also called me her little elf-man upon first finding me.
"Fine. I'll go in first. But if there's trouble, you guys follow." I stated.
"I'm the captain here. I call the shots. If we feel like interfering, we will." Said Hawkeye.
"Technically, Chris is the captain, but sure, whatever. You're the leader," Tony retaliated. "Goodbye, elf man." He waved at me in a very friendly way that did not suit the current situation at all.

I pushed on the door and it gave way very softly, and the Pocket-Sized Avengers crept soundlessly behind a doorframe that would serve as a potential blockade. Only Thor and Vision looked sympathetic, but I didn't feel like saying anything to them. What could be said, after all?

When I first entered, the Funkos were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they were hiding from someone or something. A human had stayed home sick that day, but so far she was no where to be seen.
"Hello? Is anybody in here? It's Loki, the one who negotiated with you earlier? I'm back." I was a little more than on edge.
Through the open crack in the door, my eyes connected with Hawkeye's, or at least I assumed were Hawkeye's eyes behind his ever-present purple-tinted glasses.
"I think they're planning an ambush." I mouthed.
Hawkeye groaned and brought the Avengers around into the room until they were a safe distance behind me, but at least they were behind me.
"We come in peace," Hawkeye barked. "We're here to ask about one of your terms."
Again, only silence. I began to think less and less that something was up and more and more that the Funkos were actually hiding themselves.
"It's okay. We're dolls." I tried.
That did the trick. The paranoid Funkos- a paranoia I didn't think warriors such as them could possess- returned began to slink out of the shadows. Their leader, the Ragnarok version of Thor who I had learned was named Blake from Elsa, the Ragnarok version of Heimdall, and an Iron Man in his standard suit crept out from under boxes, slid out of drawers, or rolled out from under She's sister's bed.
"Why where you hiding?" I asked, all formality gone at the sight of their state.
Blake stood and scanned the crowd I had brought but showed no sign of intimidation or aggression. Instead, he drew a humanesque figure in the air and then stretched both of his hands apart vertically.
"Ho boy. Does anybody speak Funko?" Tony asked, looking around at his peers and knowing nobody could comply.

"You said you wanted seven stones," I breathed. "What kind of stones did you mean?"
Blake shook his head side to side wildly, obviously a "no" unless you were in Greece, Albania, Egypt, Iran... the list went on and on. Beside Blake, their Iron Man character squinted and held his hands to his mouth, miming laughter.
"Okay, so obviously they don't want multiple rocks. Go figure." Said our own Iron Man.
Blake sent Heimdall down the side of the room past the bed where we could not see him, and when he returned, he was holding his non-sword hand into a fist. Upon Blake's command of snapping his fingers, Heimdall opened his hand and held out a flat silver disk for one of us to take.
"It's a battery." Hawkeye said immediately.
"It appears something was lost in translation," I commented. "Moana couldn't go back and forth word-for-word. Maybe the Funko word for 'stone' is the same for 'battery'."
"Fair enough, but then where are the batteries?"
Heimdall scratched his chin and signed something to Blake.
I held out an arm to stop any more of Hawkeye's questions. "Hold on. They're saying something."
Heimdall left the group again, this time taking a little longer than he had the last.
"No. They're getting something." Hawkeye's bow arm tensed in anticipation and possible preparation if the Funkos felt like turning hostile.
Meanwhile, Blake and Iron Man were trying to explain to us something by exchanging the gun, opening its compartments, flipping it around, trying to show us something.
"I think they're trying to say that the batteries charge the gun." Chris pointed out.
"Mm... maybe." Said Wanda.
Heimdall returned with another flat silver disk, this time on a light blue leather chain and buckle that could function as a human-sized bracelet. Whenever he turned the disk over, we all saw the face of a watch, the hands frozen eternally at 1:23. I drew the conclusion that the watch had been recently gutted for its batteries... batteries on the same type that Heimdall had showed us. But if that were really true, that left the question of where the gutted batteries had ended up.

"The watch means something," Said Chris. "They won't stop pointing at it."
"Well, duh it means something, Sherlock. The batteries are in the watch." Tony laughed.
"What you think you're a better Sherlock, than me?
"Yeah, actually."
"No. The watch is stopped, see? The second hand's not moving. Mind if I...?" Wanda said, not waiting for an answer as she took the watch from Heimdall's waiting hands. "I think they're trying to say the batteries they seek are in something like a watch elsewhere."
"Like a clock." Chris finished.
The pieces were all starting to connect for me, and rapidly so. "No, the only clocks in this house either connect to electricity or are too big for batteries as small as these. That means the thing that houses the batteries will need to be independent of charging cords and little enough to be run by these batteries."
"Tick-Tock." Wanda said suddenly.
Hawkeye was frustrated. "What?"
"Cogsworth."

***

"Are you kidding me? Elsa got a bull's eye?!" Magneto yelled in disbelief.
I too, couldn't believe it, but I was more impressed than angry. "You did! Nice shot," I looked down at Magneto, who was now at the height of my hips since he was standing on the couch block. What do the humans call those? Ottomans? I wonder if there could be a doll-sized ottoman because putting your feet up when you sit down seems very comfortable. "We're going to have to try twice as hard if we want to beat them now, lolo."

Magneto saw Elsa talking about something with Steve. He smiled secretly. "That shouldn't be too hard since they're distracted."
"Why?"
Magneto started whispering like Elsa and Steve were. "Cogsworth."

"What about him?"
"Everyone thinks he's strange. To be honest, it's difficult to blame them."
I lowered my voice. "Do you think so, too?"
Magneto didn't say anything, but he stared at me in a certain way so that I would know he did.
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"I don't think he's as weird as you all make him to be," I glanced over at the hockey table, where Cogsworth stood guarding his goal from Nessa. A puck came flying across the surface and he reached out and blocked it with an expertise he shouldn't have for being so new. "He's a nice clock. I like his curiosity. Just because he talks funny doesn't make him an enemy."
Magneto shot a dart and hit the thirteen. "It's not that. I can do something that nobody else can. Remember?"
It was my turn, so I hit and got closer to the center than he had. "Yeah." Magneto had the power to control metals, which I thought was pretty cool, but what I didn't think was cool was how he didn't want anyone else to know. It was like our own little secret. I liked that, but it made me wonder about some things I'd never asked him.
"Well, there's something else I can do along with that. I can sense metals inside of people."
My head turned around and around, looking for the metals I couldn't see. I guess Elsa and I had things inside of us to help us sing whenever our switches were on... could that be what he meant?
"This Cogsworth character... well... he's got more inside of him than you would like to know. More than what I'm comfortable with. So yeah. I understand why the other dolls find him creepy."
Both Magneto and I had run out of darts and Elsa and Steve weren't firing any of theirs anymore, so that was the end to our game. I pulled myself up onto the ottoman to join Magneto and my pets. I had been exactly right about the ottoman- it was like a couch our perfect size, though the human couches always looked softer.
"What do you sense in him?"
He grimaced like I didn't want to know the answer. "Stuff. Like... um... wires. Lots of those, and two miniature cameras. They aren't very good cameras, but they're there."

"Why cameras?" I asked, scratching Pua's bristly nose as he nudged his way into my lap.
"How should I know?"
"I don't know. You're the magnet man."
"Please don't call me that."
"Okay, what else?"
"Let's see... batteries. Seven of them."
"That's not so different. Elsa and I have batteries of our own, too."
"Not as many as he has." Magneto promised.
It frustrated me that he knew all of this stuff but still was uncomfortable telling it to me. What kind of dangers was he afraid of coming from this funky little clock?
"Well, I don't care what he has inside him. I like him."
"I'm trying to, too."
"Did the other Funko Pops have batteries and cameras and wire inside of them?"
Magneto thought for a second. "No. They didn't. Just the spring inside their necks that gives them their bobbleheads."
Hm. I began watching Cogsworth's game with Nessa, which she was failing horribly. Cogsworth didn't even have to see what he was doing anymore. Instead he was watching Elsa with an unblinking stare, which I found a little creepy even though I was trying not to.
Steve began to feel threatened for Elsa's sake. "Cogsworth? Is there something you want to say?" He asked, not rudely, but pointedly.
"They are. Coming." The mouthless clock whispered, but we couldn't hear him say that because the whirring of the things Magneto said he had inside of him were too loud. Instead, we only had to assume what he said once we heard the rumble of tiny footsteps coming from the ceiling.
"It's the Funkos," Magneto muttered. "They're coming down from upstairs."
"What should we do?" Elsa replied, wringing her hands.

"Run." Said Cogsworth, which we did hear. But why run? Wasn't he one of them? Hadn't we made peace with Blake and the others? Maybe they were only joining us for a friendly air hockey tournament. But I doubted so when we heard more and more footsteps. Definitely more than three pairs of them, all stomping towards us.
Steve took action and grabbed his shield off the peg in his back, which he put in front of himself, then put himself in front of Elsa. He shouted commands off left and right. He told Elsa to grab Nessa and Elphaba off the air hockey table, which she did, and the two little ornaments were snug under each of her arms. I'd realized they'd forgotten to get Cogsworth.
Ignoring Magneto, I ran over until I was right by the edge of the table and held my arms out above me like I was reaching out for a hug from a very tall doll. Cogsworth's face showed no panic like the others, but that didn't matter to me, because he was still a doll, and still a life worth saving.
"Jump, Cogsworth!" I called over Steve's voice. "I'll catch you!"
He looked hesitant, but not out of fear, before falling like a boulder and landing in my arms.
"Oof! You're heavy!" I exclaimed. I wondered if it was the extra batteries that gave him the weight.
"I am. Sorry."
"They're trying to ambush us!" Steve yelled. "Everybody, get out of here before we're surrounded!"
"But there's no exits!" Elsa squealed.
"Upstairs!" Steve pointed. "It's our only choice!"
We would only get there in time if we were fast. I could go fast enough, but with carrying a heavy Funko Pop clock? I would have to be even faster.
"You're coming, too, lolo." I said, and snatched Magneto off the ottoman and threw him on top of Cogsworth.
"Ouch! Hey!"

"I am. Sorry." Cogsworth said again, even though it wasn't his fault that I'd thrown Magneto.
"It's no use. We'll run into the others before we make it safely away." Magneto grumbled.
Inside I knew that this was true, but we had to try. I ran ahead of Steve, Elsa, Nessa and Elphaba and took the stairs one foot after another, going so quickly I feared that I might trip and drop both of my friends. Luckily, only the yellow roses Cogsworth had been wearing dropped, its dry petals leaving a trail behind us like some unhappy wedding.
"Moana!" Steve yelled from behind me. "If you get up there before we do, go outside! Go outside and shut the door! We'll be alright!"
"I can't leave you!" I shouted back.
"Yes, you can! You must!"
Magneto patted my arm softly. "They'll be okay. It's not them they want. It's Cogsworth."
"I hope you're right about all of this." I said, and willed my legs to go faster, but the steps were taller and my arms were weaker than I'd thought.
Finally, my feet felt flat ground, but the herd of angry footsteps were about to turn the corner and find me standing there with Cogsworth. I tried to put that out of my mind.
"Lolo, I'm going to throw you up to the back door. I want you to unlock it and I'll push it open. And then we'll run outside and hide somewhere. Okay?"
"Hide." Cogsworth said mechanically.
"Are you sure you want to do that, Moana?" Magneto grimaced.
"What do you mean? Just do it! We don't have time!" I put Magneto into my right hand while keeping Cogsworth in my left.
"Time." Said the little clock.
"I'm going to throw you now, okay? Get ready!"
Magneto held fast to my palm. "No, no, no, wait! Look outside before you do that!"
I blinked and blinked, it was so bright out there it was difficult to see past the glass of the door. Meanwhile, the footsteps got louder and faster. When I could see, all I saw was white, which was confusing, so I blinked some more before realizing that the white was not an error of my own eyes. The entire outdoors, deck to grass, was covered in inches and inches of thick white snow. My batteries buzzed inside me when I saw the wetness the snow could become.

I heard the herd behind us slow and knew that they were but a few feet away. I didn't have my oar or any open hands to use it with if I did. We were trapped. We were doomed.
"We're too late, Moana," Magneto sighed. "They're here."
I shoved him and Cogsworth into the same bundle again so they would be quiet. Turning around, I saw Loki and standing there and almost felt relieved until I saw the army behind him. The three Funkos; Blake, Heimdall, and Iron Man, and then the Pocket-Sized Avengers, the tiny heroes who I'd admired since the day we'd fought the Funkos.
"Don't be nervous, Moana," Loki said. "We're just here for the Funko."
Steve, Elsa, and the others made it up the stairs at that point. Steve saw me and his face fell. He knew it was over.
"Are the ornament sisters alright?" I asked, my mouth dry.
"Sisters." Said Cogsworth.
"Yes, they're both fine," Steve replied. "Loki? What's all this about?"
"It's a long story. But the Funky Warriors asked for seven stones to make up for the harm caused to them during our war. I- or we-," he gestured to the Pocket-Sized Avengers. "went back to see what they meant, and it turns out they weren't asking for stones at all. They need seven batteries. Seven batteries from him." He pointed to Cogsworth. I held him closer.
"You're not getting him." I insisted.
"Moana, we have to. He- he's not one of us."
"Of course he is! He's a doll, isn't he? Owned by She?"
"She." Said Cogsworth.
"Not She. Her younger sister. And there's something terribly off about the way Cogsworth is acting, not to mention materials such as battery packaging in She's sister's room."
Cogsworth began to squirm, but there was no way I was letting him go.
"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that, well, I hate to say it, honestly, but I think She's sister might have tampered with Cogsworth."
What?
"Check his back. There should be a covering there, like a panel. It doesn't look like it's painted on, does it?"
I turned Cogsworth around until he was facing downwards. I bit my lip. I didn't want to have to do this. "I'm sorry."
"I am. Sorry." Cogsworth said a third time. Whenever he said that, I had my palm pressed flat against the panel Loki said wasn't painted. Beneath it, I could feel the thing that had been making the whirring sound, and it ticked with every word he said.
"What's happened to him?"
"We don't know," Loki said, but he was pale. "What we do know is that batteries have been put inside of him, and they need to come out."
"I won't let you!" I cried, bending away from the group.
"Moana, it's not going to hurt him. It's just what has to done. For the good of everyone."
"But not for the good of him!"
Steve stepped in, catching on to what Loki was saying. "Moana, it makes sense. In some weird, demented way, this makes sense. The batteries explain why Cogsworth can speak unlike other Funkos. The batteries have been powering each of his functions from the start. What you see of him now is not the real doll underneath."
"Is this true, Cogsworth?" I asked, turning the little clock over again so that I could see into his eyes, but all I saw where circular black surfaces with something unnatural behind them, something inside.
"I am. Sorry."
So it was true. I wasn't sure if it was okay to feel hurt just then.
With Magneto still under one arm, I set Cogsworth down carefully until all four of his feet touched the floor.

When I had, Loki slowly approached him with his hands raised, but I didn't know why. Cogsworth wasn't some sort of animal, and the animals I knew wouldn't hurt anybody anyway.
"It's alright... we're just going to remove your batteries. That's all. It will reveal your true self. I promise."
"We promise." Steve cut in. It looked like he, too, was in on this now.
I excepted Cogsworth to scramble, as I would have, but instead he stood there calmly waiting. He did not squirm or fight Loki and Steve when they turned him over onto the rug. The rest of the group was quiet, but everyone was leaning forward to get a good view of the operation. But the Funkos got closer, gathering around their kin in a circle.
A tool with a pointed tip was passed from Loki to Steve, and he poked it into the miniature screws of Cogsworth's back and twisted away. I could do nothing but bite my lip and hold Magneto tightly.
"Mm mm-mm mmmm m m-m." Said Cogsworth with his face in the rug.
"What was that?" Said Steve. "We're not hurting you, are we?"
"Dolls can't feel pain." Loki answered for him, but he seemed doubtful of that.
Cogsworth pushed his face out of the carpet and Steve stopped his work. "I. Will not. Be here a long. Time."
"Ah, of course." Loki said because he expected that. Cogsworth only had a few things to say, and most of them were the same. Maybe that was part of his programming, but we wouldn't be able to know until his true self was revealed.
Once every tiny screw was gone, Steve lifted the panel from Cogsworth's back and laid it onto the rug before getting a good look at the mess before him. Everything inside of them was something I cannot understand nor describe. Maybe Bell would be able to if she were here, but she wasn't. Instead, it was up to us to unravel wires and poke around in his insides to find the seven batteries.
"How are you feeling, Cogsworth?" Steve asked, giving him a little tap with his boot while Loki dug in with his smaller hands.
"Mm mm-mm mmmm m m-m."

Loki pulled out the first battery and set it onto the floor delicately. Then the second, and the third, which were both linked to cameras. There was a flicker of either light or noise in there- it was difficult to tell- but it made me worry more than I already was.
"Can he see anything?" I whispered.
"Probably not, since he's buried facedown in the carpet." Loki responded.
So I didn't get my answer.
The fourth and fifth ones were linked as well, this time to a box with holes in it like a speaker. The same light-or-noise thing happened again.
"Can he speak?" I asked.
"Probably not, since he's buried facedown in the carpet." Loki sighed, frustrated that he wasn't working in silence.
No answer, there, yet, either.
"Aren't you nervous?" I asked Magneto only.
"Why should I be?" He said. "I was right all along. Everything I sensed in Cogsworth are the things I'm seeing now. I'm not lolo after all."
Then the sixth and seventh batteries were removed.
"Here you are. Take them." Loki stated, raking the batteries closer to Blake, who scooped them up delicately. I didn't know what he was going to do with them. Maybe he wouldn't do anything at all. It made me feel nice to think that they only wanted the batteries to save the real Cogsworth underneath all the machinery. But I wasn't sure of the truth.
"Turn him over." Loki ordered, and once Steve did, Cogsworth looked basically the same as he had before. His round black eyes were forever staring like usual, but this time no camera were behind them. He looked like an ordinary Funko now.
"Cogsworth?" Steve gave him another little kick with his boot. "We're done now. Are you alright?"
The others dolls, the Funkos, the Avengers, and the dolls from the Room She Lives In all held their breath.
Nothing happened.

"Cogsworth?" Steve nudged him again.
Only silence and stillness.
"Bring in Hawkeye and Vision," Loki demanded. "Come and see what's wrong with him."
Two of the Pocket-Sized Avengers came over, both males, one with brown hair, wearing purple and black, and one without any hair at all, wearing very bold colors like yellow and green.
"You assess him first." Said the one with brown hair to the one in bright colors.
The other one knelt down and pressed an open palm onto the space above Cogsworth's eyes and remained steady, not saying anything but keeping his own eyes closed.
"Vision. Your assessment." The brunet said.
Vision rose and opened his eyes, looking very forlorn. He turned to the brunet. "I'm not getting any sort of reading from him, Hawkeye."
Hawkeye's lips parted in shock. "By God," he said. "I think he's expired."

***

A funeral was held the very next day for Cogsworth.

If we had known the operation would have killed him- both parts of him- then we wouldn't have ever done it in the first place. But we thought we were helping him. We thought they were giving the Funkos what they wanted.

We thought wrong.

It hurt to talk about what happened, but we did, only mere hours after Cogsworth's failed battery extraction. The most likely theory was that Cogsworth was an experiment, or rather, a project, by somebody. No other Funko had what he had, but at least he shared something with the three Funky Warriors: a mission. Cogsworth was made to get the Funky Warriors to mind their own and stop interfering in the lives on the humans, mainly by making a mess of She's sister's room. The Funky Warriors wanted to put a stop to Cogsworth. At first I thought the batteries were needed to recharge Blake's gun, but that had not been the case since the gun was too small to fit batteries of that size. Blake had only showed us the compartment of his gun as an example. It was just another element lost in translation. The Funky Warriors had only really demanded the batteries because Cogsworth had been obviously programmed by a human, and as we knew, the Funkos had a lot to say against humans, if they could really speak at all.

After that, their missions collided, with Cogsworth trying to put a stop to the Funkos and the Funkos trying to put a stop to him. In the end, they both got what they wanted. Cogsworth, as we knew him, was gone, and the Funky Warriors swore to be peaceful because of the tragedy.

I don't know if that made things any happier, though.

The funeral was scheduled for a time all humans would be gone, and every doll that we ever knew was in attendance. Even those that had never met Cogsworth had showed up to pay their respects. Blake, Heimdall, and Iron Man stood beside him like they were the family, and maybe in some ways they were. Moana, too, was in the line for translation purposes, but I also think that it was for something else.

Moana seemed the most torn about about Cogsworth's expiration, and with good reason to be. If anyone had liked him unconditionally from the very beginning it had been her. I just couldn't believe it. First breaking Elphie's arm, and now this. The Funky War had not turned out to be a kind event for Moana, and I'd rather it had been unkind to me than anyone else. I could deal with the suffering, I told myself, as long as that meant the suffering would leave those I loved alone. But maybe that's just the true Elsa in me telling me that.

But perhaps, in some way, it was good that I had not been the only one to suffer. The funeral had brought everyone together, and even though I knew I shouldn't blame the Pocket-Sized Avengers for everything, the dolls seemed to have divided when they'd gotten here. We had a lunch afterwards, too, with things that we thought Cogsworth would have liked had his life been longer. Olaf and Idina went to work to make some Norwegian butter cookies together. I think it kept their minds off the sorrow, which is what everyone was trying to do. Anelle and Kristoff, too, continued to wear their caps and capes to shield themselves from the chill of death.
During the actual funeral, we weren't really sure what to do. Sadly, She and her family had been to a couple of them before, but they never liked to talk about them, so we weren't sure what to do. We had people come visit the Funkos and Moana, and then held a little ceremony where we all gathered in a congregation and had Loki say some words. He was pale the whole time- probably feeling extremely guilty about being the one who killed him, but none of us blamed him for that, because none of us knew the consequences.

The day after everything we were all still thinking of Cogsworth. We weren't really sure what to do with him after the fact, so we'd left him by the back door, a huge violation of the Code of Dolls, since he wasn't in She's sister's room, but we thought that he might enjoy the sun if he were still alive. But when we went down there the little clock was nowhere to be found, and that's when everyone started panicking. Nobody wanted to blame anybody, seeing as we had come to an armistice two days before, but of course the Funky Warriors were first target. The crisis was adverted when the humans came home and we all had to run back to our normal spots. Whenever everything was quiet again, a few of us sneaked outside the Room She Lives In, only to see She's little sister bring out Cogsworth from her own bedroom and place him on one of the shelves in the parlor, between two portraits of women with gray hair who looked similar to She. A wreath of yellow roses, the same roses which he had already worn, were hung around Cogsworth's head, and She's sister stood there a minute in front of him. We could not see her face, but we could feel the solace.
It was a beautiful sight.
And lastly, to conclude the Funky War series, I have prepared a Doll's Life File profile for Cogsworth as a eulogy.

Full Name: Cogsworth the clock
Finding Place: She's sister's room
Finding Date: March 19th, 2018
Species: Disney's live action Beauty and the Beast Cogsworth Funko Pop
Strengths: Patience, cool-headedness, curiousity
Weaknesses: Poor speech, unnerving stares, not very fast
Powers: Nothing of our knowledge
Status: A small life that made a large impact, and will be missed by all of us dolls

A Doll's Life File: Moana

May I apologize in advance? Because even though The Funky War P.4 was supposed to come out today, it isn't quiet ready. Instead, I interviewed Moana for her Doll's Life File since I was so proud of my Sunday streak for posting weekly on this blog. I promise I will do all that I can to get The Funky War finale out next week (Sunday or sooner), but in the meantime, enjoy hearing Moana's story.

***

Elsa: *walking down into the basement, where Moana was playing darts alone* Hey Moana! Got a minute?
Moana: *wipes her brow and throws her final dart onto the board* Absolutely!
Elsa: Great! Hey, I know you do some blogstuffs at times, but there's something I do alone, and that's the Doll's Life File posts. Could I interview you for one?
Moana: Yeah, but we'd better go upstairs. *rubs her arms* It's cold down here.
Elsa: *smirks* The cold never bothered me anyways.
Moana: You don't have to rub it in!
Elsa: Sorry. Shall we go?
*a few minutes later, up in the Room She Lives In on the bed with her laptop*
Moana: So how do you usually start these things?
Elsa: Well, typically, I ask the doll's full name, but since I already know yours... *begins typing* How do you spell Motunui again?
Moana: M-O-T-U-N-U-I. Moana of Motunui.
Elsa: And your finding date was Christmas Day, but we changed it to New Year's Day... *still typing*
Moana: *rocking back and forth on her heels* We did.
Elsa: You know, you're lucky. Humans don't get a choice on when their finding days can be.
Moana: *eyes narrow* That's because humans aren't found. Meanwhile us dolls have to wait and hope that we will be chosen.
Elsa: *thoughtful* It sounds like you have something against humans recently.
Moana: No, no, I don't! I don't think I do. It's just not fair what they can do that we can't!

Elsa: Like what?
Moana: Like swimming, or having water balloon fights, or taking baths, or going to a water park! With my electronics, I could never do that unless I wanted to break. And the ocean is a friend of mine. So... *bites lip and looks away, clearly heartbroken*
Elsa: I see. You don't have to explain any more. *goes back to laptop* We could always have a "beach day" outside when the weather gets warmer.
Moana: A beach day?
Elsa: Yeah, we could find a way to make a pool, and we can use cocktail umbrellas for shade, and I'm sure Idina would be happy to make us all bathing suits. If you're interested.
Moana: I would be interested. But it won't be the same.
Elsa: Maybe not, but we're landlocked, so it's the closest we've got. It might make you happy. And I promise that one day you'll see the real ocean.
Moana: *brightens* Do you really promise?
Elsa: Well, I can't guarantee anything, but I'm sure She will eventually visit the sea. And if you're lucky, She might take you.
Moana: I swear that if I get the chance, I'll take it!
Elsa: That's the spirit.
Moana: Is there anything else you need for the blog?
Elsa: No, not really. I fill in the rest myself. Unless you have something else to say.
Moana: Well... there is something.
Elsa: Yeah?
Moana: Elsa, I... I was never at a Disney store. I was kept in a warehouse and ordered online.
Elsa: Really? Nothing's wrong with that. That's just how humans shop nowadays.

Moana: Yeah, but in that warehouse, there was dozens of other Moanas and Puas and Hei Heis. Hundreds of them, in fact. I wasn't there for very long, maybe a month. But all the other Moana I met there wanted the same thing I did.
Elsa: *finishing* To be with the ocean.
Moana: *nods* Yeah. So I guess I'm not the only one who feels the same way. It's not the humans I'm jealous of. It's what they can do.
Elsa: Right. At least it's nice to know you're not alone.
Moana: Sure, but they were all other Moanas. What about you, Elsa? Don't you want to go to the beach?
Elsa: *laughs lightly* I have no desire for warmth. A snowy mountain trek would be nice though.
Moana: *leans onto the laptop* What if we could?
Elsa: What?
Moana: What if we could convince the humans to take us on a vacation?
Elsa: What? Where would we go?
Moana: Everywhere! All over the country. We'd go up to the mountains and down to the shore. We'd camp in the forest and tour the desert, and the humans would bring us to the beach and I can teach you how to make the perfect sandcastle! And if we're lucky, they'd take all of us sailing! I've always wanted to do that in real life.
Elsa: Wait, did you say all of us? I don't mean to be a killjoy, but She has twenty-seven dolls.
Moana: We'll need a very big backpack.
Elsa: *laughs again* That's not very practical.
Moana: A very big backpack and very strong shoulders.
Elsa: I like the way you think. Never stop being impractical, Moana.

Full Name: Moana of Motunui
Finding Place: A Disney store warehouse, later under the larger human Christmas tree
Finding Date: December 25th, changed to January 1st
Species: 11" Disney singing doll
Strengths: Athletic, determined, heroic
Weaknesses: Stubbornness, pride, envy
Powers: I have a suspicion that she might have some magical ties to the water... but she hasn't told me anything.
Status: A true hero- and blogging buddy.

The Funky War P. 3: Safety and Strangers

The Funky War rages on... with Loki, Moana and I to write about it.

***

I had no explanation for where I was going, or why I had left. I didn't think I had to- explanation or not, they wouldn't understand. Plus, they would be fine on their own. The Funkos may be free, but they were done fighting. I thought that meant we were halfway to peace, but apparently I had been wrong. Now they were demanding the Infinity Stones.
Finally, on my fourth run around the downstairs hallway, I found what I was looking for. A flash of red, black, and waving brown in the parlor.
"Wanda! Wanda Maximoff!" I shouted, throwing my hopes on the line, knowing full Wanda hadn't been in any mood to speak to me since I had left the group during the Funky War.
"Not listening," She replied stiffly, then mimicked the Funkos by signing her emotions with a rude finger over the shoulder. "La-la-la-la-la. Hm, do you hear something, Wanda? No, Wanda, I don't believe I do. Ah, that's what I thought."
"Wanda, please listen to me!"
"Nope, can't talk right now. Too busy ignoring you."
I cease the chase, realizing that there's only one thing she'll answer to.
"Wanda- you were right."
Wanda's feet paused so quickly that the laces of her black combat boots smacked against her ankles. She looked behind her shoulder, eyelids partially down and the corner of her closed pink mouth raised into a tight half-smile. "Hm, nevermind. I'm staring to like where this is going."
When I see that she's ready to listen, I say,
"Remember what Hawkeye told us not to do before we went out to battle the Funkos?"
"Yeah," Wanda crossed her arms and leaned all her weight onto one hip. "I know exactly what he said. But you can repeat it if you makes you feel worse."
"He told us not to return to the Funkos once we'd beaten them. That they are not, under any circumstances, to become our friends."
"That's right."
"Guess what I just tried to do."

"You know, Loki was always the one who seemed to set the plot in motion with some sort of trouble. That's what Thor told me."
It ached me to tell her what I did. "Well... he's not completely wrong. Now... now the Funkos want the Infinity Stones."
Wanda stiffened. "You have to tell Hawkeye about this."
"We're already on bad terms at it is. You have to keep this a secret for me."
Wanda loosened her arms, and they dropped to her sides in defeat. She began toying with the black wrappings around them. Odd, I'd never seen her get nervous before. "Loki, I can't keep any secrets. I'm a Pocket-Sized Avenger. We have to report all information to our leader."
"Our," I said. "Does that mean I'm still apart of the team?"
"Of course you are!" She insisted, but then her voice trailed off. "You've just... separated, is all. But that means you have to tell Hawkeye yourself."
It was like I was itchy all over with cumbersome thoughts that kept on generating the deeper I got into this mess. I should never have agreed to Elsa's proposition in the first place.
"If you were to accompany me, we might be twice as persuasive."
"What do you mean? You're a good enough speaker as it is, I'm sure Hawkeye would understand after a couple of days... wait... nuh-uh, dude. I can't do that. And to our leader? Shut up, you're crazy."
I hadn't said anything, but Wanda must have noticed the way I was looking at her hands. Hands that could generate vexes and charms to influence the minds of enemies and friends alike.
"Or... now, hear me out. We could do the same to the Funkos. To influence them into thinking that the Infinity Stones aren't the ones they're looking for."
Wanda studied her hands, her expression unreadable.
"You weren't above doing it before."
"I never said it wasn't above doing it, I just said...!" Wanda exploded, then swept a breath through her body and cooled down. "You know why I'm alone, walkin' around out here, and not with the other Avengers?"

"You're changing the subject."
"'Cause I was waiting for you."
Oh. "So you knew I would...?"
I was about to say "come back" but Wanda was already speaking again. "Nah. Vision did, more or less. I've been talking to him a lot recently, actually. He's a far better speaker than you are."
Was she trying to make me jealous? "If he's just a great speaker, then why didn't he try to convince the Funkos to make peace with us? Because he doesn't care about them."
"Hm. And you... do...?"
I've never had somebody make me walk myself into a wall like that before.
"I'm just suggesting that there's a better way we can handle this."
"Then you do it alone. You have your friends. Make them keep the Funkos away from the Infinity Stones."
"Wanda... they're not like us."
"So?"
"Elsa and Moana are both Disney. And Magneto came from X-Men. They don't have Infinity Stones in their universe."
"If you're such a great speaker why don't you just tell them about it?"
"Because," I was on the brink of defeat. I couldn't believe it. "Because it's not the same. They aren't dedicating their lives to finding these gems. The Funkos want the Infinity Stones, and we don't have them, either, but I think that they think we do. They won't accept the truth if we told them, and we'd be at war all over again. If we can bring them a substitute, or make them forget they even want the stones at all, we'd be set."
Wanda stuck out her jaw to one side, baring her bottom teeth in thought. "Yeah. You know what? This is stupid."
"My plan is stupid, or...?"
"Everything about this is stupid. The sooner it's over, the better. Agreed. Let's shake on it."
Wanda lunged forward and pulled on my hand, squeezing it with surprising force. That must be a thing of hers.

"You're in?"
"Yeah, why the hell not. I've got nothing to lose except my dignity, my team, the stones, my sanity..."
I laughed a little bit, high on adrenaline and relief.
Wanda tossed her hair and smiled brightly, her green eyes twinkling. "Let's go brainwash some bobbleheads!"

***

It had been one of the moments that Moana hadn't brought her paddle with her, and I wasn't feeling like turning on my switch, so we left the Funkos with some awkward smiles as soon as Loki bolted. We were lost without our leader, so we had to find things to do until he came back... whenever that would be. We visited with Nessa and Elphie, wondering if we could bring them anything. As of now, Elphaba's arm has lost feeling past the break, from her elbow to her hand, so it may only be a matter of time where it becomes completely useless to her. But Elphie is adapting and its in good spirits about it. 

"I still have the other one." She shrugged, peering over She's iPad, happy that Vision had given her the password on the day of the Funky War.

"But aren't you going to miss having two?"

"Yeah, but think of it this way. Anelle has both legs and can't use either of them, and she's fine. I have one good arm and I can use it. So I'm fine, too."

I don't think Elphie's words of wisdom made Moana feel any better, though. She still acts extra cautious around Elphie. It was a little ironic how she was able to save Elphie from the humans on Moana's first day in the house, but ended up harming her a year later. I wonder if either of them thought it was ironic, too.
"Why do you think Loki left us?" I muttered aloud.
"He does have another group to attend to," Magneto shrugged. "It could have been anything. I wouldn't worry about it."
But I was worrying about it. A lot. I had met the Pocket-Sized Avengers, but they were hardly ever around, so it was difficult to give them my full trust. Maybe it was different for the other dolls, and maybe I was judging them too harshly, but I didn't believe that Loki was running off to bake some cookies. It was something serious... something scary.

"Hey, did you hear that?" Moana asked, suddenly starting up from her kneeling place at Elphie's side.
"Hear what?"
"That thing. Like... a door opening." Moana's pointer finger slowly rose to touch her lips in a sign of silence.
Magneto didn't take her hint. "I didn't hear anything."
"The humans shouldn't be home. Wait- they aren't, right? Are they?" Said Nessa.
"Be quiet!" Moana hissed. "There's voices now."
Well, Moana wasn't lolo, or whatever she called it. Indeed, there were two small voices outside in the hallway- definitely not humans- and they came from a man and a woman. The woman's voice was less familiar, but the man's was unmistakably Loki's.
"Ah, he's back," Magneto noted. "Let's go see what he's up to."
"I'm not too sure that's a good idea." I said, standing.
"Of course it's not a good idea. That's why I'm going to see what he's up to."
Moana grinned and followed the key-chain. "And that's why we're friends."
Nessa pity-smiled up at me, realizing that I had no choice but to go after them.
"Yep, I'll be back." I sighed, pushing myself off the dresser and onto the floor. Moana and Magneto had met up with Loki and the brown-haired lady from the Pocket-Sized Avengers, Scarlet Witch, outside.
"Hey, giant blue lady." Scarlet Witch nodded in recognition of me.
"Elsa is fine." I replied.
"Mkay. I'm Wanda."
"So what are we about to do?" Moana asked.
"We? None of you were supposed to be included in this." Loki stated.
"Oh, please, we've been in this from the start. She hasn't." Magneto pointed rudely at Wanda.
"Wanna go, Magnet Man?" Wanda tested.
"No time for fights," Loki stressed. "Wanda and I were just about to go back into She's sister's room to change their mind about their conditions."

"But why?" I injected. "We agreed to their terms already."
"I know, but they ask for too much from us."
"Stones and solitude? That doesn't seem like such a strong request to me."
"Well, it is, Elsa. It is to us."
Loki and Wanda exchanged a look then that I didn't like.
"What is this about? Is there a secret you're hiding from us?"
Neither of them responded. This only angered me more. I had known Loki since the beginning. We could technically share finding days. Not to mention the Norway Club with Olaf, our discovery of Christmas together, and all the other adventures we'd been on that ought to be more valuable than anything the new Avengers could offer. Right?
"Whatever. Let's go inside." Loki murmured, brushing past Moana to use his acrobatic skills to open the door.
"Nice one," Wanda commented from down below. "You see, we still need you in the Avengers."
I secretly hoped not, just to get my friend back.
"What, Chris's door kick isn't as effective?" Loki asked, dropping to the ground.
"Nah."
"We'll enter quietly. We don't know what kind of mood they'll be in when they see us again."
"Right."
I had second thoughts about going into the room, but there was no way I was turning back now. I really wanted to know how things would turn out. If need be, I could flip my switch on at the last second, though I doubted I'd need to do so since we'd already negotiated with them. We'd only need to be ready to fight once Loki and Wanda broke the news that they couldn't have what they asked for... for whatever reason. I apparently wasn't good enough for an answer.
When we pushed open the door, it seemed that the Funkos hadn't moved from hours ago. Blake was at the head, with Heimdall beside him, and the shiny Iron Man slightly away. But then, when they looked our way with their unnaturally round eyes, we noticed that there was a fourth doll with them, too. What was that about?

"There must have been a box we missed when we were uncovering the Funkos." Magneto whispered.

"Impossible," Loki argued. "The Avengers only fought and captured three."
"Yeah, we didn't notice him, either." I agreed, my eyes flicking to Moana for confirmation. She looked just as lost as the rest of us.
Blake sent two thumbs in the air and stamped twice on the ground.
"He wants to know what we're doing here."
"Ask him the same thing to his new friend." Magneto retorted.
The new friend, a Funko Pop of Cogsworth from the live action Beauty and the Beast, who had been still since we had seen him, came to life before our eyes as his body whirled around with the same rickety noise of the roller coaster at Disney World. Every motion he made had a ticking noise like a real grandfather clock would. 
It was really creepy. None of the other Funkos had acted this way.
But then he spoke.
"Hel-lo. I am Cogs-worth."
Wanda's brows dropped with her jaw. "What in the f-"
Loki shushed her while our group dropped into quiet chaos.
"This one talks?"
"What does that mean?"
"He doesn't have a mouth!"
"Why can't the others do that?"
"Guess we won't need a translator."
"What do we do now?"
That final question froze everyone again. The gears in each of our minds were turning like the ones that I had noticed were constantly moving all over Cogsworth's body, which didn't really help his creepiness factor.
"I don't think the Funky Warriors know what to make of him, either." I whispered.
"The Funky Warriors?" Wanda said.
"That's what they called themselves."
"Oh. We only came in and fought them, no questions asked. I don't even know their names." Was that guilt in Wanda's voice?
"Well, one's things for sure," Loki began. "This changes things. Indefinitely."

***

"Do you speak the Funko's sign language, too?"

"Yes. A lit-tle. I am new."

"We could tell." Magneto said.
Pua snorted in agreement.

Cogsworth titled his head at Magneto in a mechanical way. Click-click-click went the things in his neck. "Who. Are you?"

"We would actually like to know more about you. Where were you from?"

Cogsworth made a jerky box with his weird scroll-hands. "A box. In the. Mail."

"Most of the Avengers were." Wanda commented. She was sitting with her legs crossed on the carpet and watched as Loki paced back and forth at a furious speed. Elsa was on the floor, too, trying to blend in with the background of She's bedspread. Only Magneto and I were brave enough to sit next to Cogsworth on the dresser of the Room She Lives In. Not even his own people had accepted him, and they were actually happy to see that we wanted to take him back to our place for a while.

"Yes, but where he comes from doesn't change a thing. He's a Funko. Why does he talk?"

"Is it a bad thing?" Elsa whispered. "Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite movies. I like the original better, of couse, but Nessa told me Sir Ian McKellen played him in the live action version. What's not to like about him?"

Magneto's eyes went wide underneath his helmet. "Did he really?"

Cogsworth didn't blink, but his mind seemed to. The other Funkos blinked like normal dolls, but Cogsworth did not. And none of us knew why. It was driving Loki crazy. And I think it made other people afraid of him.

"Where. Are you. From?"

"A white elephant gift exchange."

"Disneyworld." I added.

"Me, too." Elsa spoke.

"Ditto." Said Loki.

"I came in the mail. I'm not sure where from." Wanda frowned.

"And. What. Goes on. In here?"

"What do you mean?"

"How long has eve-ry-one been here?"

Per Cogsworth's request, we went around again and said our finding days and years. He was a curious little clock, but I could respect that. Too bad we were as curious of him as he was of us.

"And what. Do you do. In the day?"

"In the day?" I wrinkled my nose.

"He just wants to know our routine. What we do for fun."

So we said that, too. Meanwhile, Loki kept pacing.

Cogsworth asked us how many more of us were there, and we said twenty-seven total. We had to count the Pocket-Sized Avengers now. I couldn't believe that we had such a large population.

He wanted to know all of their names, and what they were like. Maybe it was the conversation, or maybe it was the passing time, but everyone started warming up to him slowly. Elsa came closer to the dresser, and Loki was wearing himself out, so he took a break to sit next to Wanda on the floor.

But then the calm could not last long. He got all creepy again when he asked, "How long. Have you. Been al-ive?"

"Been alive?" Elsa was taken aback, and she laughed a little in her nervousness. "Forever, I guess?"

"For-ever? That is. A long time."

"You're a clock and a doll. You should know about forever." Magneto replied.

"I do not. Think I will. Live for-ever."

"Well, yes, one day we may all expire. But not unless our human forgets about us." Elsa reassured him.

Cogsworth was not reassured. In fact, he didn't have any emotions at all. There were no inflections in his voice, no feelings in his eyes or movements. Maybe that's what made him all the more unsettling.

"No. I will. Be here. A short time." Cogsworth's head rotated on its socket. Click-click-click.

"What, you're being returned? You came in the mail." Magneto reminded him.

"I will not. Be returned," Cogsworth said. "But I. Will not. Be here a long. Time."

Wanda shivered. "I don't like this."

"No, me either," Loki agreed. "No offense to Cogsworth, but I see the reason why the Funkos were happy to give him up."

"You. Do not. Like me?" Cogsworth said in his robotic, buzzing voice.

"No, no, we like you fine," Elsa lied sweetly. "But it's unusual how you can talk and the other Funko Pops cannot."

"I will not. Be here a long. Time." Cogsworth repeated.

I wondered if Wanda's shivers were contagious.

"Why are you here, Cogsworth?"

"I can-not tell. You. But-" 

We all leaned forward when he paused like we were watching a suspenseful scene in an action movie.

"But I am. Here. For the Funkos."

"Why?"

"They made. A mess. They want. What they can-not. Have. I must. Stop them."

"He's like us." Wanda thought aloud.

"Or he's a spy." Said Loki.

"A spy? For who's side? Be real, Loki. Cogsworth is on our side. Even if he is a living nightmare, he's here to help us. He agrees that the Funkos are interfering with the lives of the humans when they shouldn't be, and he agrees that asking for the Infinity Stones is too much to ask."

"What are the Infinity Stones?" I asked.

"Nevermind that. Let's take him. Cogsworth's a Funko. He'll be able to reason with them without me using my powers. Which is kind of cheating, anyways. Cogsworth will be much more genuine."

"You really trust this guy?"

Wanda sighed. "He's all we've got, really. Let's use him to our advantage."

Loki looked up at Cogsworth, who looked back at him, then around at the rest of us like he knew we were plotting something. I wasn't sure who I should be more afraid of.

"Fine. We'll do it. Eventually."

***

"Eventually?" Wanda on the verge of getting emotional. "Eventually? You say that like we'll do it in a week. If Tick-Tock here is right, we don't have a week. He will not be here a long time. Didn't you hear that? Didn't you hear what he said?"

"I did." I wasn't in denial about anything, I was just in the process of forming a plan, and Wanda didn't know that.

"We have the man, let's use him now. The Funkos are probably still disoriented. Use 'em while you got 'em, that's what Hawkeye never said," she paused. "I made that up right now. It sounds kinda stupid now that I've said it out loud."

"It does," I agreed. "But listen. Wanda, I think we should keep Cogsworth around a little longer. There's something strange about him."
One of Wanda's eyebrows raised in mock surprise. "Really? Only one thing's strange about him?"
"No, I meant strange as in a connection. He's definitely different, but he's giving me this weird... energy. I can't quite explain it."
This time, both eyebrows raised. Wanda pressed her pointed fingers together in a triangle and rested her chin on top of them, her green eyes still on me. The only other being I knew to possess her kind of green eyes was She. "I think you're loopy."
"Maybe so, but I need you to trust me on this one. He's here for a reason. More than correcting the Funkos. Let him stay in here for the rest of the day. It's not like the Funky Warriors will need him back anytime soon with the way they were acting. Let him stay, and then tomorrow morning, or whenever the humans are out of the way, we return him to the other room and have him do what he was here to do."
Wanda's green eyes cast themselves onto the ground. She wants to think, but she's too tired at this point to fight back verbally. "This whole situation just seems like a whole bunch of distressed agreements strung together, one right after the other." She sighed.
"Is that a yes?"
"That's going to be a yes for now. I'm stressed out, dude. I need to take you to Hawkeye."
I didn't like the sound of that. "Why?"
Wanda stood and grabbed my wrist. "God, you are loopy. Have you already forgotten?" She leaned forward so that her breath tickled my ear and no one else would be able to eavesdrop. "You need to tell him about the Infinity Stones."
"Ooh, I'd rather not."

"Come on, Loki. Man up. Elsa, Hero Complex and Magnet Man can babysit Tick-Tock, and we'll go find the other Avengers. You give him your plight, he beats you up a little, and we all leave as friends. Good?"
"Good? You just said he'd beat me up a little."
"I mean, he might," Wanda let go of my wrist long enough to crack her knuckles. "But I trust that he won't. He's never done it before. He might give you the Eagle Eye, though."
Wanda was already taking off, and before I knew it, I was leaving my friends without explanation again, the second time in the same day. Wanda rope-climbed one of the banisters to the top of the railing the humans held onto the walk down the stairs, then sat down and swung over sideways, pushing off with her hands at the top so that she slid at high speed at the way down, whooping happily the whole way, with the "ride" spitting her out onto the rug at the end.
I decided to take the risk and do the same as her. Amazingly, it was a much more convenient travel than it had been before for a doll of my size. I wouldn't let it on to anyone, but it was really fun, too. 
"The Eagle Eye?" I said once I was at the bottom.
"It's like the evil eye, only, since he likes birds, it's the Eagle Eye."
"Oh. He's already given me at least thirteen of those."
Wanda laughed. "Yeah, he would. He won't beat you up. I was only kidding."
"I hope so."
"I was," Wanda bobbed her head back and forth like there was a song in her head and the rest of her body couldn't dance. "Plus you have Thor. He's your big bro, right? He's got to defend you."
"Not necessarily." I said gravely. Judging by the radiating tremor of power and heat in the air, we were only a feet away from the Avenger's headquarters in the kitchen.
As soon as we were in sight they noticed us enter their "zone", where we received a mixture of facial expressions.
"Hey, Wanda, you found our poor lost puppy! Thanks a million." Tony shouted.
"Yup, found him in a ditch with his tail between his legs." she lifted my arm in victory like I was a prisoner. I shook her off, unsure of what she was trying to do.
"Brother!" Thor cried in surprise. "Where have you been? We have not seen you seen your friend El-fa- was it? Elfabah was injured. How is she?"
"Elphaba, but close enough. She's doing alright." I replied coolly, trying to get a read on Hawkeye. 

His purple sunglasses frustrated me so much, and they had from the first day I met him. There was no way to tell what he was feeling, and his mouth was always a stern, colorless line.
"Anyway, our poor lost puppy's got something to tell us. Doesn't he?"
I reminded myself that the Pocket-Sized Avengers were my alleged companions, and I need not be afraid of them, but with Wanda setting me up in this way and not on my own terms, there was definitely some intimidation felt on my side.
"I attempted negotiation with the Funkos," I started, waiting to see if anyone would interrupt, but they didn't. "We made good progress until they insisted on some terms. The first is to be left alone in the room where they are..." I breathed. Nothing yet from anybody, yet I could still feel Wanda's eyes smugly boring into the back of my head. "And the second is that they wish to have control over the Infinity Stones."
The entire room had been holding its breath up until that moment when I dropped the news, and then it sighed all at once.
"Uh oh." Said Tony.
"Big uh oh." Chris followed.
Vision tapped the center of his forehead self-consciously, and Hawkeye approached me. I'll admit I stepped back a little, only to bump into Wanda behind me.
"What do you mean, 'control over the Infinity Stones'?" Hawkeye spoke slowly and carefully, enunciating every word so that each contained the weight of granite.
"Exactly what I said. They want to have the Infinity Stones for themselves. They're giving us time."
"Us? We-" he made a broad circle around everyone except me with his non-bow hand. "We were not a part of this negotiation. In fact, our plan was to leave them there."
"But they're dolls, Hawkeye. Dolls like us. Even if they are a different species, we're all here in the same house under the same humans. If we're not going to get along, then we're going to be here a very long time," Wanda stepped forward until she was clearly beside me. "If it changes anything at all in your mind, I'm with Loki."
If Hawkeye was the type to have emotions, I could have sworn he was surprised.
"So you are," he said, and I figured his next move was to kick Wanda out of the group. "What exactly did the Funkos say?"

Luckily, maybe for once, I was wrong about my last thought. "I can't quote perfectly from memory, but we agreed to leave them at peace after bringing them their next request, seven stones."
"Seven stones." Hawkeye repeated.
"That's right."
"What edition are you?"
His question threw me for a loop. "What?"
"What line of toy were you released in?"
I could probably recite the words on the card on the back of my box backwards by letter, in the dark and upside down, but I couldn't understand why Hawkeye wanted to know. "Avengers All Stars... from the first Avengers movie."
"Ahhh." Tony, Chris and Thor all moaned like it was their eureka moment.
"What?" I asked.
"Wanda, Tony, Chris, Vision and Thor are all from Age of Ultron. The second Avengers movie. And I'm a Legends figure," Hawkeye explained, the brutal tone in his voice having melted partially away. "We'd likely know more about the Infinity Stones than you. Like how there are six Infinity Stones, not seven."
My heart, had I had one, dropped to my knees, both in relief and shame. 

"April Fools?" Chris shrugged. He was being sheepishly hopeful for my sake.
"Maybe that would work, if it were April," Hawkeye said gruffly. (At the time of this event, it was only March nineteenth, only a day after we had met and fought the Funkos.) "But now we have to figure out what these bastard Funkos meant by seven stones."
I had picked up on his subtle "we", meaning the inclusion of me into all of them once more, and felt a little better about my situation. How could I have known about the magic number? "That's the thing. When my group and I went back for them to elucidate, the Funkos had an unknown fourth member with them. He seems to not be affiliated with the rest of them and we currently have him under our watch in the Room She Lives In upstairs."
"Well..." Hawkeye sighed and double-tapped the air, motioning for his team to follow as he started with Wanda and I towards the staircase. "Guess we're going there, then. But they won't be very happy to see us again."
Wanda touched Hawkeye's wrist. "What he says is true, Hawkeye. I met the Funko myself. He talks, too," she looked around warily at the rest of her group members, warranting a pause on the thirteenth stair. "You guys have been warned... this Funko is a little more than just plain weird."

To be concluded in The Funky War P.4,
Queen Elsa, Loki, and Moana of Motunui