The overwhelming majority of these characters and franchises belongs to The Walt Disney Company one way or another. I make no money from them.
Now let's get dangerous.
Otherwise, How Would You Know It's Magic?
Trial Through Water, Act One: Once Upon a Time…
The cynics often said God had made the Magical World with mismatched pieces from the Old World, taken from here and there and put back together in a way that barely made any sense. That was what Drake's parents used to say, that was for sure, and they were as cynical as they came. People of science, with barely any use anymore in their minds and hearts for the legends from the distant past. For them, as for their son now, the primal mage who had once allegedly brought the world into being was nothing now but a fading memory carried over by dubious myths mainly spread by humans.
Humans thrived through most of the Magical World as the dominant species, but the beastmen were the ones with the technology, fortified with them in the mountains, willingly set apart from the hairless apes who still resorted to sorcery and superstition in the absence of elaborate, complex gadgetry and urban and industrial developments. It had been an ironic twist of destiny, if one believed on it, which Drake didn't, how the biological descendants and heirs of the simple creatures dominated by humans nearly everywhere else had developed the most intricate forms of modern advancement and mostly managed to keep them from falling into human hands.
As things currently stood, the associate states of the beast men had achieved a level of progress comparable to that of humans in the Old World, while Magical World humans still were, at their best, in a situation comparable to that of the late 19th century, and mostly, to that of the Dark Ages. Observers from the Old World tended to observe it was an unfair situation, but actually, the Magical World humans were partially responsible for it themselves. For the most part, they chose remaining apart from the beastmen's civilizations as long as they, in return, didn't bother them and their old superstition-based societies, which most of the beastmen considered to be a fair deal. That balance had been kept for a couple of centuries now, and it explained why Saint Canard was such a modern display of concrete, plastic and steel towers reaching for the sky, while even the most advanced humans in Arendelle and Corona still relied on primitive guns to arm themselves, and candles and oil lanterns to light their nights.
Vice, however, was still the same everywhere.
The truck, a model that wouldn't have looked out of place going through a street of any major Old World metropolis, sped away across the midnight dark streets of Saint Canard, hotly pursued by a vehicle that, in all justice, would have raised a few eyebrows anywhere. A large, robust, dark purple motorcycle dwarfing the comparatively tiny driver controlling it as it closed on the fleeing truck, taking turn after turn with increasingly dangerous and breakneck velocity.
Once it was close enough, the roaring bike clicked into autopilot, as the driver jumped up from it, hands extended like claws ahead, grabbing onto the truck's back, and quickly climbing up it, smoothly making his way to its front. It was just yet another night at the city. Even as he dodged the frantic gunfire from the dogface in the passenger's seat and ducked inside to kick the driver in his big, fat, greasy pig face; even as the truck screeched off course and crashed against a wall; even as he tugged back and pulled the two dizzy, beaten crooks out through the window, slamming them down on the sidewalk; through no moment of this, he doubted himself or what he'd do next. It wasn't a luxury he could allow himself anymore. He couldn't be a little scared duckling anymore.
He was the Terror that Flapped in the Night.
He was the Winged Scourge that Pecked in your Nightmares.
"I'm Darkwing Duck," he told the now tied criminals as his shadow, magnified many times by the lamppost they were under now, fell over them, with just the desired effect. Surely, not even that Bat fellow the news from the Old World sometimes talked about could have done it any better.
It was good, feeling good while doing good.
And it was what he did best.
In his own always humble opinion, at the very least.
Down the continent across the sea, in the lower lands full of plains and woods that hosted the humans, several small kingdoms coexisted in a momentary state of frail peace. Since the days of the Great Wars, the large kingdoms of yore had been fractured into dozens of smaller feuds, and often a king would only reign over large extensions of wild lands and a few subjects gathered in humble villages now. The conquest of such kingdoms was hardly worth a military campaign, so, for the most part, modern day kings and queens concerned themselves more about domestic affairs rather than repeating the pugnacious mistakes of the past.
For Queen Grimhilde, who had taken the reigns of her northern country after her husband's unfortunate and premature demise, such matters used to be more domestic than most. For the Queen left most of the matters directly related to running the kingdom on her immediate subordinates, and she had grown far more occupied by her luxurious lifestyle, and above it all, her boundless ego.
She was renowned as the most beautiful of all living queens, even if her beauty was merely that of the body, which was enough for her. Her only fear was that of growing old and having her beauty eclipsed, which was why she kept a magic mirror in the depths of her castle. No one knew its origins, not even those few who even knew of its existence, but it had been rumored the Queen had been, before marrying into royalty, taught in the dark arts of sorcery, and perhaps she had stolen the mirror from the same forbidden workshops that had printed the cursed Bible Black and forged the Black Cauldron of prophecies.
That night, like every once a month, Queen Grimhilde stood in the secret chamber of the gigantic mirror, and she hissed more than spoke the summoning words she had been once taught.
"Slave in the magic mirror, come from the farthest space, through wind and darkness I summon thee. Speak! Let me see thy face."
And the green hued visage of a fearsome mask of days best forgotten, with hollow dark eyes, appeared in the middle of the mirror, surrounded by gray mist. The trapped face answered, with a bone chilling male voice from beyond the unholy grave.
"What wouldst thou know, my Queen?"
"Mirror, magic mirror in the wall," she chanted, hushing the words in a tone born from long festering need, turned into bitterness."Who is the fairest one of all?"
For the first time in what felt like forever, the mirror did not give its usual answer, the sole thing that placated Grimhilde's poisonous moods until her next visit. She knew the day she had dreaded for so long had come as soon as the first ominous word was spoken.
"Famed is thy beauty, Majesty. But hold, a lovely maid I see. Rags cannot hide her gentle grace. Alas, she is more fair than thee."
A long repressed rage that had been waiting in Grimhilde's corrupted soul sprang, seizing its chance to strike at the creature she had always feared would dethrone her beauty. The King's flesh and blood daughter, the one born in a snowy winter eve. Her lips as red as the roses her mother had loved so much. Her skin as white as the storms of that day that had claimed the woman's life. Her hair as black as the prior Queen's ebony coffin. A constant reminder of the woman who was, even now, an all encompassing shadow over Grimhilde's rule. "Snow White," she growled the name with bubbling despise.
Much to her surprise, the slave in the mirror, the friend in the other side, spoke against her guess.
"Over fifteen years, grown in beauty and grace; loved by all who have followed her trace. Yet cursed from birth by evil, along her gifts from good. In exile from her homeland, finding refuge in thy kingdom's woods."
"Alas for her! Reveal her name!" demanded the Queen.
"Briar Rose is the sole name she has ever known," the slave replied. "But she was born Aurora, heir to Stefan's crown."
"The cursed princess," Grimhilde understood immediately. She had been there, in that castle that fateful day, when she still was nothing but the daughter of a count dreaming of marrying into royalty, much like Stefan himself had. She remembered being entranced, fascinated, by the entrance of that mysterious, powerful creature who had cursed the King's newborn with a death in the peak of her youth. She remembered swearing to be, some day, just as powerful and menacing. And now, fate itself wove its threads from back then together. "I had assumed she was dead," she quietly mused to herself, submerging herself into careful contemplation.
"Yet she still lives, hidden from the pursuits of evil," the Mirror said. "Protected by fairies from the hand of a devil."
Queen Grimhilde smirked cruelly. "From a devil's, perhaps. But never from mine," she promised.
Saint Canard. Again.
The bobcat in the blue police uniform sat behind the reception desk of the small downtown office, carefully reading through a comic book while keeping a half-full cup of steaming coffee at hand. It was a humor comic, since he was not into superhero stories. Which perhaps explained why he wasn't all that impressed when the front doors were kicked open from the outside, and a thick cloud of purple gas streamed in, heralding the just as immediate sound of a male voice from the sidewalk.
"I'm the terror that flaps in the night..."
"Oboy," Officer Bobcat set the comic down, then reached for the cup and took it to his lips.
"I'm the Stop sign in the speedway of crime..."
"That's a doozy," the policecat nodded.
"I am..." the voice finished as the figure now at the doorstep punted two restrained, heavily tied thugs into the station, "... Darkwing Duck!"
Officer Bobcat sipped his coffee noisily, then readily asked, "Do you have a complain to file about these citizens?"
The masked duck standing between the smoke blinked. "Ah?"
"Do they have a complain to file against you, then?" he asked again.
The big hog groaned from the floor. "Now that you mention it..."
The caped and masked duck facepalmed. "They are dangerous robbers I, the daring Darkwing Duck, just stopped after a jewelry break-in at the corner of Stones and Uwerks! I'm sure you'll have their profiles at hand..."
"Paw," the bobcat corrected, reaching over for a massively thick book and quickly flipping through it. "Uhhhh... no, I don't see them anywhere here... no sire..."
Darkwing rasped and pointed at the police board right next to Officer Bobcat's head, where two 'Wanted' mug shots of the robbers could be clearly seen.
Officer Bobcat blinked. "... ah, yeah, there's that. Sorry! We'll book them then, thank you."
"I look too fat there," the hog commented. "Horizontal stripes do that to a guy, yanno?"
Officer Bobcat calmly offered a cup to the unsanctioned vigilante. "So... do you want credit in the news this time, too?"
"It's the least I deserve, don't you think?" he grumbled, approaching him and accepting the cup, and taking it to his beak.
"I can think of many things you deserve oh so-" the dogfaced criminal grumbled before Darkwing casually placed a foot on his mouth.
"Quiet, you," he warned.
"But you know I can't credit you publically with anything and make the arrests stick as long as you're an unofficial law upholder," the bobcat said, happily dunking half of a donut in his coffee. "Why don't you join the force or something like that, if you want to help so much?"
"No offense, but I don't like the uniforms. Where's your detective partner, anyway? By now, he usually has a gun on my head and is yelling at me to surrender."
"Oh, Lucky? He was transferred last week, didn't anyone tell you?"
"Since all other cops in this town start each conversation with me with a 'Freeze', no, it's not like we've talked on the subject..."
"Ahhhh, right. Well, we've got a replacement for him, anyway. Dep Policies asked to keep the immigrant rate the same, so..."
"Freeze," said a female voice from behind Darkwing, as a handgun's barrel was pressed against the back of his head. He sighed, as his eyes rolled just back enough to let him see a young and blonde human female in the police blues in the same old familiar Lucky Piquel position.
"The more things change..." he muttered.
Bonkers D. Bobcat, aren't most beastmen names a hoot, smiled amiably. "Mr. Darkwing Duck, please meet Officer Miranda Wright, Miranda, please meet Mr. Darkwing..."
"You are under arrest on the charges of illicit breaking, battery, vigilantism, possession of unauthorized weaponry and urban warfare vehicles, repeated resistance to arrest..." the young woman said, nonstop. "You have the right to remain silent; anything you say may be used against you in a court of law..."
"Oh great, it's like starting all over again," the duck sighed. "Is she clean?"
"I wouldn't be working with her if she weren't, would I?" Bobcat asked.
"I'm not answering that. They could get anything smaller than a military convoy under that huge red nose of yours."
"Hey, now, it isn't that big..."
"And you have the right to a lawyer. In the event you cannot afford yourself one, the state of Calisota will provide you with a legal defender," the woman finished. "Now, lift your hands slowly..."
"Oh, I can do that," the duck smirked, and he indeed slowly raised his arms... making a few tiny pellets slip from under his sleeves and roll across the floor.
The policewoman blinked a couple of times, startled.
The smirk grew. "Oops. Butter fingers."
The pellets exploded then, bathing the whole room in more of the dense purple clouds.
They sat together, by the living room's large window, watching the distant lights in the nocturnal sky.
It was the first day of that week, once a year, when the city in the distance, across the borders of the kingdom, would always let those lights up into the sky, every night. The blue eyed blond girl had been fascinated by those lights ever since the first time she saw them, and had quickly asked her mother what was their meaning. Smiling gently, her mother had told her it was the annual ceremony of commemoration over a great war that had ravaged the lands and left cruel tyrants in the thrones they ever now occupied. And it was a moral lesson Mother would repeat to her every year as they watched the lights, and Mother combed the girl's impossibly long and beautiful golden hair, with the greatest care and love.
"- because that's the way the world outside these walls is," Mother narrated, in a rich, slow tone full of wisdom and insight. "Beyond the walls, the world is split between hideous beasts that walk upright and felonious kings that impose their law to hordes of bandits and harlots. That's why you must stay here, Rapunzel, where it's safe and it always will, no matter how much they burn and kill each other. Holy magic protects this place, and that magic will never fail us. Never," she said, savoring the invigorating feeling of the vital energy flowing into her through her fingers and hands. "Never," she repeated, pleased knowing she would remain fully charged for the duration of her upcoming errand.
"I just don't understand," Rapunzel softly mused, eyes glued to the beautiful lights, "How such evil barbarians could create something that... pretty?"
"Evil is often alluring and disguises itself under the guise of virtue, Rapunzel," the darkly beautiful Mother patiently repeated the lesson that was as old as time. "Often, those lights will lure unsuspecting foolish travelers from remote lands, and the devils sending them up will seize them and do unspeakable things to them. It's okay watching them from a distance, but you must swear to me," she added, turning Rapunzel's chair around so she could stare into those large innocent orbs, "you will not attempt setting foot out as I'm away. Won't you?"
"You know I won't, Mother," the girl said. "When have I ever-"
"I know, I know," Mother said, placing her hands on Rapunzel's cheeks, "but I also know the temptation grows far stronger in you around this week."
"Not enough as to disobey you, Mother," she smiled, placing a hand on Mother's.
The older woman smiled back. Had it been her choice, she would have stayed with the child al through that week, as she preferred to do. The lights would always put, she could tell, those strange ideas in her head, almost as if Rapunzel could divine their meaning, or suspect it, somehow. But of course, that was impossible. The child only lacked the natural outlets for the idiocy of youthood, and so it remained bubbling under her surface, making her easily fascinated by even the simplest things. The upside to that was, of course, it also made her far more wary of the terrors waiting outside than any average child of the pitiful masses.
"I'm so glad to hear that," Mother said, running her fingers again through the gorgeous, gorgeous, silky and strong blond hair, smooth and shiny in contrast with Mother's curly, untamed blackness. "I'l be back as soon as I can, Rapunzel. In the meanwhile, please, take good care of yourself. Your poor Mother would die immediately if anything ever happened to you..." she mused, fingers subtly gripping on the hair of life, as if to never let it go.
"Must you go, then?" the young girl asked. "If it's so awful out there, why do you have to venture all alone, time after time? What if they ever-"
Mother placed a finger on Rapunzel's lips. "I do it so you don't have to do it. It's a sacrifice I'll always gladly accept, no matter what. Because I love you that much."
And also because Queen Grimhilde would find and murder her horribly if she ever failed one of her summonings. And if the Queen ever found out the truth about Rapunzel, she would take her for herself, and that would amount to the same thing as an actual death sentence for Frau Gothel.
"I'm not as old as to not be able to look after myself in the wild, Rapunzel," the mature woman said as she hugged her daughter. And thanks to you, I never will, she thought. "Now I have to go. The sooner I'm gone, the sooner I'll be back, okay?"
Queen Grimhilde also hated it when one was late to her summoning. And she started looking into what made you tardy. And Gothel just couldn't allow herself that. No matter what, she had to stay low in the scale of Grimhilde's attentions. Only there when called for, but invariably so when it happened.
Rapunzel nodded, and only as they both stood up, the girl's pitiful pet chameleon daring rushing from its corner to its owner's side, as if anticipating the older woman's departure. They moved towards the window, and Rapunzel let her hair down it, to the ground level.
As Frau Gothel went down the hair, and thus down the towel, Rapunzel caught a glimpse of a shooting star amongst the lights, heading the opposite way of that of the city of the men. Looking in that direction as best as she could as she supported the weight of a grown woman, the girl saw the star falling into the woods of the south.
Wow. The outside world sure was dangerous. Even the heavens themselves were punishing it now.
Deep into the southern woods, the star had crashed down, creating a gigantic crater. However, it was no star. A beastman of the modern cities would have called it a high technology alien ship. An average denizen of the old lands would have called it the metal cradle of an angel casted down from Paradise, spat a devil upon earth. Both definitions would have been technically correct.
After several moment of red hot metal hissing in contact with the cool local atmosphere, the ship's sole crewmember and passenger regained consciousness from his bumpy ride and easily kicked the escape door, not even caring how hot it still was. The punt sent the door flying several feet away from the crater, landing on a tree and crushing it under its massive weight. Then the small creature crawled out of the ship, under the silver light of the planet's twin moons.
He was furry. And blue. Big eared, as well. And slobbered with feral voracity, dark eyes glinting with gleeful malice.
He cackled in delight, standing on two legs as four arms flexed and twiddled their fingers with anticipation.
"Hah hah!"
Experiment 626 had found his way into an inhabitated world. Now all he had to do to start fulfilling his conditioning was finding an urban center. And destroying it.
He was quick to notice the ascending lights coming from the North.
The motorcycle roared, speeding through the night and away from the purple smoke filled police station. Narrowing his eyes as he drove, hunchbacked dramatically over the wheel, Darkwing Duck monologued in grandiose, exaggerated tones for the benefit of the small microphone always hidden in his jacket's inside vest.
"Once again spurned by the legally elected authorities, yet driven through his tortured journey, the Darkwing Duck disappears into the concealing shadows, until he's needed again, hoping for the day when he's publically accepted as the hero Saint Canard deserves..."
As he mouthed his Purple Prose to himself, gaining frequent disapproving headshakes from the drunk bums sitting on the sidewalks he passed by, he briefly zoomed past before the City Zoo, and while racing across that street, he failed to realize a pair of bright eyes intently watching him from one of the cages.
An outsider to their culture might have found strange for beastmen to have zoological gardens, but then, if asked on the subject, the beastmen would have asked you how you would feel about keeping gorillas and other apes in our circus and zoos. For all most beastmen knew, there was nothing particularly humanoid about the platypus being kept in that barred habitat near the street.
Shortly after Darkwing's visit to the police, a beeping sound came from between the bushes in the platypus' cage, near his small pool.
That was the signal for the platypus to sprang up on his short hind legs. He pulled a fedora out of a hollow trunk and placed it on his head before spinning around to slam a flippered hand on a nearby rock. The rock, which was false and similarly hollow, rose to reveal a narrow manhole under it. Without missing a second, the platypus jumped down the hole, and the rock clicked back in place, hiding the escape way completely.
A few minutes later, the night watchdog, a literal humanoid old bulldog shining a lantern on the cages after visit hours, checked on his cage and found it empty. "Hey," he wondered aloud, "Where's Perry?"
After sliding through a rather long set of metal underground tunnels, the platypus landed sitting on a chair at the middle of a complex high tech base straight out of a James Bond movie. Or, in this setting, a Derek Plunt adventure. Moving on...
"Ah, Agent P, good evening," affably said the face of the old, gray, well dressed owl with glasses appearing on the jumbo sized screen before the chair. "Sorry to disturb you so late. I hope we haven't disturbed your... ah... whatever you do at the zoo."
The platypus made a short strange sound off a corner of his beak.
"That's good to know," Director J. Gander Hooter nodded. "Agent P, SHUSH has recently learned new information on the whereabouts of Doctor Heinz Doofenshmirtz, the renegade human. I'm sending you the file as we speak, but suffice to say for now, he's been recently seen in the company of members of the Hammerhead Hannigan gang. What might he have in the way of common goals with organized crime now, we don't know, although Grizzlikov suspects they may be blackmailing him with one of his many embarrassing childhood secrets. We are sending you files on the latest ones we've learned, as well. The one about the pipe, the squirrel and the marmalade jar had everyone at the office laughing for hours. But first, your mission is to locate Doofenshmirtz and put a stop on whatever he and the Mob are planning. Good luck, Agent P."
With a polite gesture of salute, the platypus cut the communication link and quickly headed out to carry on his latest daring exploit.
After checking what was the deal about the pipe, the squirrel and the marmalade jar, of course.
Back to the East side of the great pond that passed for the Magical World's equivalent of our Atlantic Ocean, not too far from where Rapunzel looked at the lights in her tower, three men ran through the woods. The one at the lead was considerably smaller and thinner than his burly, muscled companions, who were nearly identical amongst themselves. He was also rather faster of his feet than them, but to balance it out, he had less endurance and stamina, which had him briefly stopping by a tree.
While supporting himself on the trunk, he saw his own face. Or instead, a reasonable facsimile of it, on a 'Wanted' poster nailed on the wood. Ripping the poster off, he gave it a critical stare. "What in the world? My nose isn't that big!"
"Keep moving, Rider," grunted one of the hulking Stabbington Brothers as they caught up to their partner in crime, grabbing him by an arm and pulling him around. "We're almost there! Once we're past the borders of Corona, we're free as wind!"
The pursuit party behind them approached faster and faster by the moment, being well aware of that fact. It was an elite squadron of Corona Royal Guards, but the young man on the mighty gray steed who led them was not part of the Corona royalty or armed forces; instead, he was the heir to one of Corona's closest and oldest allies. Prince Phillip, only son of King Hubert of the Northwest Islands, had chased the three thieves over weeks, all the way from his father's kingdom, and he was not going to allow them to escape when they were so close.
"Faster, Samson," he spurred his horse, which was barely on the lead over the Corona Captain's white stallion. "I think those are them!" he shouted, spotting three moving specks ahead the mountain pass. "We have them now!"
Flynn Rider, the young and handsome man at the lead of the fugitive party, allowed himself a brief look over his shoulder. "What's the problem with that guy?! Chasing us all the way through a sea and two kingdoms just for a crown? Like he can't buy himself hundreds more!"
"If it wasn't worth this chase for him, it wouldn't have been worth for us to steal," one of the Brothers growled. "Don't panic now, Rider! We're-"
They stopped at the edge of a gigantic cliff, broken pieces of an old suspension bridge hanging from each side. And in the middle, a very long fall.
"- there," the Stabbington finished, swallowing the iron knot in his throat.
"Oh great, so this was your flawless escape route!" Rider said, almost crunching the bag with the priceless treasure in his hands. "The perfect capper for a perfect theft plan, too!"
"Hey, the theft was your idea, you-!" the other Brother accused, waving a dagger at him. "It's your fault we have these guys on our tails now!"
"Look, we can play the blame game later, if there's a later, okay?" Rider asked, looking down the abyss, and into the tiny river below. "Oh, geez. Do you think we can survive that kind of drop?"
"Unless you have the devil's own luck, no," one of the Brothers grimly predicted.
"I have it, half the time," Rider shrugged. "Eh," he sighed, looking at the men coming their way on their galloping horses. "It'd be better than hanging anyway."
And he jumped off.
The Stabbington Brothers gasped, reaching over the bag in the hands of the younger man, who just flipped them a wave and a tiny smirk before disappearing down the darkness beneath.
Next thing they knew, they were surrounded by armed men on horses, with weapons aimed at them. Knowing fighting them was nothing but a pipe dream, they raised their hands in surrender.
"My father's crown," Prince Phillip said. "Where is it?"
One of the brothers huffed. "Rider had it, and he jumped into the river. With any luck, you'll find his body, but I wouldn't bet on the crown."
Phillip looked down, feeling a deep pang of pity for the lost soul prey of his own greed. "Poor devil. Captain, what is the fastest safe way down?"
"Your Majesty," the Captain respectfully told him as his men tied the Brothers' hands, "I am deeply sorry, but we cannot take you there. That river's course runs through Queen Grimhilde's lands, and we cannot invade them. Royal decree, Sir; we might just cause an international incident..."
One of the brothers rolled his eyes. "Stupid Lawful Do-Gooders. As if that old hag would know you were there. It's not as if she has eyes everywhere..."
"The law is the law, scoundrel," the Guard chided him, as his white horse nodded emphatically. "That's a lesson you'll better learn in the dungeons!"
Phillip looked down into the river, trying to make any shapes in the darkness. Finally, he quietly said, "I'll go there by myself, then."
The Captain gasped. "But, Your Excellence! What will we tell your father...?"
"You shall tell him, if it comes down to it, I did what I always did," the Prince replied. "Choosing to do the right thing, even over the lawful thing. Your hands will be clean from all blame. I will find my way on my own, so Grimhilde never has to say Corona guided an intruder into her domains."
One of the Brothers looked at the other and chuckled. "At least we'll only hang. What that witch will do to him will make our punishment look tame!"
"I thought," the Prince said, calmly riding away and ignoring the Captain's pleas, "you had said there was no way she could have eyes even here?"
"No, that was my bro here," the big man said. "Me, I've always believed in witchcraft!"
"Ah," Phillip nodded, not looking back. "You'll forgive me, but all criminals have always looked the same to me..."
Leaving behind a long, long trail of smashed trees, traumatized wildlife and wrecked ground, the small blue creature moved swift and quickly through the forest, heading Northward, unknowingly heading into a collision course with the thief and his pursuer. Okay, and the pursuer's horse. Regardless, he softly chuckled to himself as he advanced, easily going over the hills and through the rivers, nothing in that puny planet slowing his crazed path towards the North lights and the target of urban destruction they promised, even from that far away.
"Iiih hi hi hi. Snort! Hajmha Sihkism! Hajmha Sihkism!"
However, once he arrived to that small valley that happened to be in his way, he finally stopped. His eyes drank on the sight of something that, while far from being a city, still posed enough of an architectonic presence to merit destruction. A solitary, tall tower in the middle of the green valley.
"Tukibowaba!" he said as he ran for the tower's foundations. "Feeboogoo, Aka tiki baba!"
After several hours of staying up watching the beautiful Northern lights, Rapunzel had called it a night, spent an exorbitant amount of added time bunching the rest of her hair up after using the rest of it to make herself a pillow, and then gone to have sweet, sweet dreams of walking out into the...
... well, the dream always became a walk through a blurry white space after she left the valley. It wasn't like she had too many reference points to imagine how the outside world looked. Mother had brought her books without illustrations, for the most part. Saying most of the world outside the valley was too horrible to even look at it. Even so, Rapunzel figured out it could be nice to check it out herself, at least once...
BOOM.
She was shaken out of her dream by the sound of a deafening explosion and the rattling of her bed.
"What...?" she yawned, as Pascal nervously ran back and forth across her window's frame, quickly changing colors nonstop.
BOOM!
Now the whole room rattled.
Rapunzel sat up as if sprang by a giant coil. "What in all the-?"
BA-DOOM! the entire tower trembled.
"Ahhhhhh!" Rapunzel shrieked, struggling to keep her balance before taking the next moment of temporary peace to grab a lantern from her night stand, light it up, and peek out the window, trying her best to toss some light on the shadows below and see what was causing that strange, unprecendent and kind of scary event. "W-Who's there?!" she asked, knowing there was no way whatever or whoever was causing that could be inside the tower. No one could get in without climbing up her hair. "A-A-Answer me! I'm not, not, not afraid of y-you!"
A pair of bright red eyes turned up in the darkness to stare at her.
"Aiiiieeeee!" Rapunzel backed away, terrified by those two red dots fixed on her.
Experiment 626 pondered the presence of some strange creature up there for a moment before instinctively brushing it off as inconsequential and starting attacking the tower's walls instead.
A moment later, a whole dresser was dropped on his head from way above.
Another moment later, he popped out of the dresser, growling and wearing pink panties as a hat. "Blitznak!" he shouted, waving a blaster around and madly shooting at the air, in all directions. "Gaba ika tasoopa?!"
Rapunzel, who had just pushed the dresser out the huge window with all the strength of a girl used to hold the weight of seventy feet of hair and a grown woman climbing up and down it in a daily basis, backed away again, against a wall, after seeing that... animal... unharmed and angry after having a whole piece of wooden furniture falling squarely on it. Feeling around the room, she held a broom and wielded it as a sword, with both hands, steeling herself as she heard the being sinking its claws into the tower's outside walls, then quickly climbing up the structure.
What happened, Mother?! she thought desperately. You PROMISED I'd be safe as long as I remained here!
And then, the same red eyes shone much closer as the creature stood on her window's frame, its large, wide mouth moving into what only could be called a perversely mischievous chuckle.
"D-Don't get any closer, you... you weird animal!" Rapunzel threatened, doing as if to stab with the broomstick. "Come any closer and I'll beat you up, I swear!"
Fearlessly, the critter hopped down the wall and made its way quickly across the room, sniffing the air as it approached Rapunzel.
"I warned you!" she said and charged ahead with the broom.
Effortlessly, it stopped the wooden handle with two fingers, and... took a huge chomp out of it.
"... what," Rapunzel said.
"Ptooie!" 626 promptly began spitting splinters all over Rapunzel's pristine floor. He roughly wiped his mouth off with the back of a hand. "Ika Patootie! Naga bootifa!"
"What are you trying to say?!" Rapunzel asked.
626 gave the stupid local creature an annoyed look before sniffing past it, then slobbering all over his lips. His smell sense had just recognized something that had to be nutritive sustenance, so he boldly marched in that direction, past the meaningless creature with the abnormally long hair growths.
"Hey, no, don't you ignore me now! Bad... dog! Yes, bad dog!" Rapunzel shouted, but it clearly was not giving two flying you-know-whats, as it punted the room's door off its hinges and then ran for the kitchen with a throaty, nasty chuckle.
Rapunzel blinked a few times before warily following the smelly animal from a prudent distance.
Flynn Rider pulled himself out of the river basically by clawing on the riverbank and pulling the hideously aching rest of his body up onto shore. After vomiting some of the water he had swallowed and gasping madly for precious cool nocturnal air, he checked on the bag tucked into his shirt, and its priceless content. Despite everything, he smiled. He had lived through that fall, nothing seemed to be broken, he still had Hubert's crown, now he wouldn't have to split the loot with the Stabbingtons, and best of all, now he was in the lands of the dreaded Grimhilde. Surely no one but him would be stupid enough as to enter-
A horse's hoof was planted on the ground right before his face.
"Are you okay?" asked the man who had chased him all the way from the islands.
Flynn held a pointer finger up, his face still in the mud. "You," he said, "are the dumbest man I've ever met."
"I'm not the one alone, hurt and unarmed, caught red handed with a king's treasure in a strange land," Prince Phillip replied, dismounting his horse and pulling his sword out. "I'll repeat myself; are you hurt?"
"See, that's not exactly what you asked the first time around, so you aren't repeating yourself," Rider pointed out. "And that, my friend, isn't the only part where you're wrong..."
With the agility of a panther, he jumped back to his feet, unsheathing a smaller blade and twirling it around expertly.
"... because I'm never unarmed!"
"Oh, for Heaven's sake," Philip sighed.
"Praying won't do you any good, Pretty Boy," Rider said, taking a fencing position. "You're a fancy momma's boy far away from your castle and guards, facing a desperate, expert cutthroat bandit in the wild! There's no way you could be more lost than you're now! But, if you give me your clothes and your horse and go away without ever looking for me again, I might spare you..."
"I can tell you're hurt, that stance isn't the correct one for that blade, and I was trained by the best masters a king's gold can hire," Phillip patiently explained. "Please don't make this harder on yourself."
"Oh, I love it how cowards resort to boasting when they're in a tight spot! Okay, I gave you a chance! En garde!" Rider, charging ahead...
In a pair of simple but fast movements, Phillip stopped Rider's sword with his own, batted it aside, and then slashed at Rider's midsection... making his pants drop.
"Okay, this is embarrassing," the thief said before the prince's fist met his face.
A few moments later, the thief was tied by his hands and ankles, dropped onto Samson's back like a bag of potatoes as the Prince, after securing the crown's bag to his own chest, began walking away from the river, keeping his horse grabbed by the reins.
"This is no way to transport a hurt man," Rider said.
"I thought you weren't hurt," Phillip answered.
"I have to be. Otherwise, I wouldn't have lost to you."
"Maybe you're right," he conceded. "And that was a nasty fall. I'm surprised you could survive it."
Rider snorted. "Just my luck. I'd have preferred dying there than hanging by the neck."
"That's up for my father to decide, but if it's any consolation, I'll talk in favor of your life."
"Uh-huh. And you would that, because-?"
"Because I don't believe in the death penalty, but mostly..." he actually cracked a smile, "because that was the longest and most challenging hunt I've ever had."
"I'm so glad to have served to Your Majesty's entertainment," the thief said, voice leaking sarcasm. "And hooray for a life of work at the salt mines!"
"Which you would have avoided if you had kept a life of honest work instead."
"Oh, that's rich, a prince lecturing me on honest-"
BOOM.
The men and the horse looked Southwards, towards a small valley between the hills they were traveling through, and saw a solitary tower in the middle of wilderness being rattled by a mysterious force of some sort.
"Well," Rider said, "the surprises just won't stop today, will they? Hey, Good Samaritan, why don't you go check on that and leave-"
BOOM!
"Good idea," Phillip said, rearranging his prisoner on Samson's back so he could ride him as well, sitting behind the other man, "except because I'm not letting you go after all of that. HYAH!" he spurred his stallion towards the tower.
"... hey, the adventure really excites you, doesn't it? I don't want to travel like this! At least put me behind you instead...!"
Chew chew chew gromp glompsh sprtch! came the wet, avid sounds from the kitchen. Yak, yak, gnaw gnaw gnaw ! Om nom nom!
After following a long trail of wrecked and destroyed furniture that would give Mother a stroke upon her return, Rapunzel, with Pascal hiding between the hair on the top of her head, cringed as she edged closer and closer to the kitchen's door, slowly reaching in with an arm through the half-open door, to take a hold of the first thing she could use as a weapon. She pulled the arm back, and realized she had just grabbed...
... a frying pan.
Okay. It'd have to suffice.
She kicked the door fully open. "Okay, you, you... dog! Bad dog, bad dog!" she shouted. "Stop doing that right now!"
The... dog, she supposed, it was to tell with so few references, not that she remembered any dog in the books ever having six legs, looked back and her from where he was feasting on Mother's provisions.
The dog tilted his head aside and asked, after swallowing a huge mouthful, "Ohufi. Gaba ika tasoopa?"
Rapunzel aimed the frying pan at him. "Get out of my kitchen! Or I'll hit you with this! It's made of metal, so you won't break it like the broom! And it'll hurt! A lot!"
"Meega?" the dog said, tossing a piece of chicken into his mouth and eating it whole.
This isn't working, Rapunzel thought, but if I can't scare him this way, then how? Oh, if only Mother were here...!
"Goobaja!" the dog finally decided, leaping for her with a raspy chuckle. "Detaka Ika Patooka!"
"IIIIIEEEEEEE!" Rapunzel shrieked, slamming the frying pan on the dog's face...
... the dog, jumping momentum lost, dropped down to Rapunzel's bare feet, then gave her an upwards annoyed that clearly said Really?
"... it hurt, didn't it?" she hopefully asked.
He leapt up and yanked the frying pan off her hands forcefully, taking it for himself. "Meega-o-itume, Kaphong!" he warned. "Phaa Thoy Gho!"
"... ah?" Rapunzel gave a step back.
Laughing madly, the dog hit himself thrice in the head, in a quick succession, each time leaving a big dent on the pan's surface. Then, it took a huge bite off it and chomped the metal down, swallowing it and then licking all over his mouth in a slobbering, satisfied fashion.
The books never said anything on what to do in the event of attacks of dogs with six legs who could eat metal, so Rapunzel just turned around and ran for the window.
Saint Canard.
Heinz Doofenshmirtz was an animal- excuse us, human- of habits. That was the basic raison d'etre behind his criminal behavior. He would always latch onto a pattern, a recurring motif, one that Agent P knew rather well by now.
He even gravitated towards his old lairs more than he should have. Even after SHUSH would take over them, clean them up, and dispose of any leftover technology remaining at the site, he often would return, as if his mania forced him to it. As if he had a point to prove through it. Then again, the other major component of his personality disorder was defined by his pathological necessity to prove himself.
Agent P knew on those things. He had gone to Platypus Criminal Psychology School, after all. Graduated first of his class, too.
Silently, he dropped from his rope and fell through the skylight and into his third lair of the night to check, at the penthouse of a majestic tower in the middle of the Commercial District. Dawn was approaching, and he wanted to wrap the case up as quickly as possible.
The place was still empty, SHUSH still in the middle of negotiating its transfer to a private buyer. Who probably was Doofenshmirtz under an alias. Again. When would J. Gander learn?
Agent P, regardless, moved stealthily like a duck-billed cat from one shadow to another, taking advantage of the corners and pipes in the absence of furniture to hide behind as he looked. Never leave anything to chance. That was what they taught you in the Platypus Infiltration and Espionage School, after all. Graduated first of his class, too.
Finally, he found the trap door, in one of the bathrooms. There always was a trap door, that, too, was part of the patterns. The SHUSH agents would rarely find them, and when they did, they always were too small for an average agent to pass through them. Agent P didn't really want to think their size was specifically had with him in mind, because that probably brought more questions about their relationship than he'd care to think about, but regardless, that didn't mean he wouldn't take advantage of that fact as much as he could.
He prodded the trap door with a webbed foot for a moment.
It creaked, but it didn't move.
Agent P sighed, and then began kicking the trap door with increasing frustration and strength.
Finally, it collapsed into itself, and Agent P fell in through it.
All according to the plan.
He fell and fell and fell, through what had to be several blocks' worth of reinforced metal tubes, not in a perfect vertical way down, but not exactly horizontal either. If he had to hazard a guess, he would have thought it was more like sliding through a low angle amusement park (... OF DOOM!) waterslide (without the water... not even water OF DOOM! An aquatic mammal after all, P was rather disappointed) that only ended when it spat him out through a trapping net that caught him tightly, and let him hanging upside down in the middle of a badly lit secret chamber.
Yes. All matching exactly according to the plan.
As P made calculations in his head to determine the exact extension to be covered between the tower and that underground site, he heard a gruff, thick, unamused male voice that definitely was not Doofenshmirtz's.
"Well, and here's he now. Happy now? By now, he must have sent a signal for all of SHUSH to drop on us like bricks!"
Another male voice chuckled, in a dry yet juicily suckling tone, as if the man was barely short of salivating over his victory. "You don't know how this works, do you, Mr. Hammerhead? Relax and let me enjoy the moment, my erstwhile ally. We'll have free rein to proceed with your plan as intended once we dispose of this single final obstacle... before the other final obstacle, but hey!"
As the lights of the chamber grew more intense, Agent P saw several beastmen in fine suits and holding tommy guns, standing behind a massive, scowling bipedal ram with huge curved horns, in a dark brown ensemble, and his horse lieutenant. And standing even closer to the net, there was him, scrawny and sinister, flashing a huge grin under his long, thin nose. The black eyepatch, the single shiny dark eye, and the small goatee framing the sharp, almost ridiculous face of the human fully clad in black and gray.
"Welcome to the first day of tomorrow, Perry the Platypus!" the man laughed.
"But, it's still night!" the humanoid horse commented.
"Oh, same difference!"
Flynn looked, with jaded dead eyes, at how Prince White Bread carefully walked around the badly damaged support structure of the very, very, quite and rather tall tower in the middle of the valley, examining its cracked, fissured surface as if he was some kind of expert. Which he probably was, given how perfect he apparently was at everything.
"The damage is very recent, but also too serious," Phillip pondered. "I'm afraid the building could come down at any moment now."
"Then perhaps, and I know this is a crazy idea, shouldn't we just ride away from it before it falls down on our heads?" the tied up thief still on the horse asked.
Phillip looked up, at the small window with pink curtains near the tower's top. "But if there's someone up there, we have to rescue them before it happens!"
"Great thinking, Chief," Flynn said. "Have you found a way in?"
"No, I haven't. But... But there has to be one!" he began to feel all around the walls, almost frantically. "It's impossible to keep a home atop a tower without any sort of door, even a hidden one...!"
"What if it's a door hidden with magic?" the thief asked. "You know what? Then you aren't finding it before we are buried under ten tons of brick and stone. Let it go! I don't think there's anyone up there anyway, and if there is, it must be some kind of hideous hag or old sorcerer. Those can take care of themselves!"
There was a loud, feminine and youthful shriek from above.
"... or it might be a young delicate girl," Flynn sighed. Then he perked up. "OR, a hideous hag posing as one! To, I don't know, throw unsuspecting lured children into her oven?"
"Yes, because a tower like this, in the middle of nowhere, with no stairs up, is a perfect trap for lost children," Phillip huffed, redoubling his efforts to find an entrance. "We aren't leaving until we have rescued that person!"
"Okay, but if the tower falls on you, I'm undoing these ropes, stealing your horse, and then retrieving that crown from under the rubble. Fair warners are not-" As the horse neighed his vehement disagreement with that plan, the man casually glanced down at all the small footprints all over the grass, and lifted an eyebrow. "Those don't look exactly like an ogre's or giant's..."
Phillip kept on banging his fists on the stone walls, desperately looking for the secret door. "Come on! Come on! I know there must be one-"
"Ummm..." Flynn looked up. "Heads up?"
"Heads up? Why should I-" the Prince began asking right before a young girl who had just dropped from above using twenty feet of golden hair as an escape rope dropped down on his back, smashing him against the ground. "- ow."
Rapunzel cringed, rubbed her aching pretty behind with a hand, and then sprang to her bare feet, terrified at finding herself between two barbaric outsiders and their war mount. "Eeeeeeee!" she jumped back. "Don't get any closer! Not a single step! I'm warning you, I once read a book on kung fu!" she assumed a clumsy fighting pose.
Flynn sighed, showing her his bound hands. "Come again? Please, sister, can't you see I'm just a prisoner-"
"Prisoners are men who did bad things!" the panicky Rapunzel, who also had read a few books on crime, lashed her head around, and when the horse easily ducked his head, the thick hair whip beaned Flynn across the face. "- ow," he said, finding himself almost face to face with the groaning Phillip.
A second later, something small, blue and blurry landed violently on the grass, between their faces, spraying all over them with dirt.
"The dog!" the girl yelled. "Look out, it's the dog!"
"... dog...?" Flynn blinked, his eyes drifting up to get a better view of the grinning feral creature standing just steps away from his nose, chuckling darkly.
"Ashi Salaam...!"
"That's no dog," Flynn Rider dryly diagnosed.
Omake! Teach Us, Honey-sensei!
Now the chapter's meat and bones are done, it's time to join our end-of-chapter technical explanation duo in the middle of a San Fransokyo Institute of Technology classroom!
"Hello!" the bespectacled, taller and thinner one in a formal professor suit greets the reader. "I'm Honey Lemon, and this is my assistant Go Go Tamago!"
"Since when I'm your assistant?" the shorter, black haired one in the white track team blouse and black gym bloomers asks. "And why am I wearing this weird old school fetishist getup?"
"Um... Basically, we are doing a riff on Fate Stay Night and Tsukihime's extra explanation segments? You are the Illya, I am the-"
"A what on the what of what? This is a Disney story! More than half the readers won't get the reference, and that's if we're lucky!"
"Um, well, I suppose there's that. Anyway! This story's Magical World (of Disney), as you'll have noticed by now, is actually separate from Earth, which the Magical World inhabitants call the Old World. That's because it's based on the Magical World from Mahou Sensei Negima, which was located on the surface of another, nearby planet, a parallel plane of existence created through magical means long ago on a especially terraformed and conditioned Martian biosphere, hidden from mundane eyes through a supernatural layer of cloaking-"
"We're ripping off Negima too? I know that's more than half of what the author writes, but casual readers will just be scratching their heads off at what you just said!"
"That part isn't actually that important anyway, we're just making it clear before someone asks on the subject," Honey literally handwaves it. "In this version of that world, the magical realm is divided between humans, who have mostly stuck to the ancient times' lifestyles and cultural choices, and demi-humans or beastmen, who have adopted the technological developments of the Old World's modern denizens through their occasional contacts with Earth's secret societies."
"In other words, talking funny animals."
"That's right! Most demi-humans live in the realm's geographic equivalent of America, while the humans we have seen so far, other than the geographically displaced nefarious Doctor Doofenshmirtz, inhabit the lands of the European equivalent across the local approximation of the Atlantic Ocean."
"Uh-huh. And then, why the scenes show it's night at the same time at both sides of the pond?"
After a long moment of silence, Honey just shrugs sheepishly. "I'm a scientist from the Old World, not a mage. I know it has to do with the way that world was originally designed, but I ignore the specifics..."
"Wait, you're from the Old World?!"
"Aaaaaaand that's a wrap for today's chapter, folks!" Honey cheerfully waves. "See you next time! Take it away, Tinkerbell!"
"No, wait, wait, aren't you going to answer that? Ah! Your name in the comics was Miyazaki Aiko, wasn't it? Are you related to-"
"Until next time, folks...!"
(Tinkerbell flies towards the screen, waves her magic wand at it, and the screen fades to black).
To be Continued.