Note: I apologize for the ugliness of this chapter. I have thought for some time that Gothel making a deal with the Stabbingtons to supposedly sell Rapunzel into slavery was one of the ugliest things, bar none, in any Disney movie, because of the unspoken subtext of rape and sexual slavery. I'm just taking that and making it explicit rather than subtext. I've also taken out any pretense that Gothel cared for her and made her into an even more hardened villain than in the movie, even though I've given her a somewhat sympathetic past. People are responsible for their own actions whatever their past may be, in my opinion.


Chapter 8: Unholy Alliance


Gothel sipped her tea in the little diner. She was always nervous going on these trips, but somebody had to do it, and she didn't trust the girl. The way she'd been talking lately made Gothel very uneasy. "Stir-crazy," she supposed it was called. Rapunzel always wanted to get out and see this dangerous weather, like what was happening today. Gothel knew better than to suppose that it had anything to do with who her birth parents were; environmental conditioning went a very long way, but she wondered in retrospect if it had been the best idea to build a treehouse that gave Rapunzel a perfect view of the sky. If that were what she was exposed to constantly, that would be what she would develop an interest in. It happened every spring, when the bad weather started appearing, and off and on during the other months, but it seemed worse than usual this year. Rapunzel was going on like a well-shaken bottle about to explode. If this kept up much longer, Gothel would have to drug her to keep her from disobeying—and not with her herbal elixir. Gothel had a whole cookbook of drug recipes and a rather extensive knowledge of plants. She also knew what streets in the city had a flourishing trade in illegal prescription drugs, if it came down to it. She didn't really want to do it, but like a liar who told more and more lies to cover up the first one, she would do whatever was necessary to keep her secret.

For not the first time, she almost regretted taking her as a baby. It was an act of revenge and not that well-thought-out. In her opinion, it was because of that baby that she had to destroy most of her plants—her real true love—and flee the city. Crown Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of the corrupt parent corporation, had approached her with an offer that seemed too good to be true. It was. She thought she would be a multimillionaire if she accepted. Instead she ended up as a slave forced to make her own medicine formula for that damn couple of elite scientists while fighting a losing battle against the Crown corporate lawyers for her well-deserved royalties. When she left the city, she was not going quietly into the night. Oh no. She was going to take vengeance. She was going to take the baby. After all, it was kind of hers, in a way. If not for her formula, it wouldn't have been conceived. It owed its existence to her.

But she knew that she would be the top suspect, and she knew that she had to go someplace where she wouldn't ever be found—or the girl. That meant the swamp. It meant living completely off the grid. No utility bills, no phone or Internet, no credit cards, no steady job. It meant pawning off homemade baskets and furniture at street markets near the marina for petty cash. And it meant heavy usage of the medicine. She was already looking older when her visage appeared on police composites eighteen years ago, so she had to look younger now. Fortunately, anti-aging appeared to be one of the properties of the medicine. She supposed that the flower must be full of anti-oxidants. It had to be something like that.

Her musings were interrupted by the loud and obnoxious dinging of the electronic bell. Somebody had entered the diner. Gothel turned around to look and sniffed in contempt as she saw the appearance of the new patrons. They were big, ugly, thuggish men. One of them had a broken nose. The other had an untreated cut on his arm, which looked infected. They probably got into bar fights all the time. Disgusting. She felt in her pocket for her switchblade that she always carried with her. Hopefully these thugs wouldn't try anything in a public place, but it was always best to be prepared.

"Hey, look," one of the thugs said, pointing at the television. "It's us. Didn't expect 'em to air it this early." The other one chuckled.

Gothel assumed that they must be referring to mugshots or something to do with crime and the police. She was astonished when she heard what was being said on the broadcast.

"Good afternoon, this is WCRN, and today the big story is the severe weather we're expecting. On that note, we have with us today the developers of the MR2, Edvard and Gudric Stabbington. Thanks for being here, guys. Can you tell a little bit about what the MR2 does?"

Onscreen, Edvard grinned. It looked like a leer. "Yup, it's a set of instruments that we are gonna deploy into the path of a tornado later on today."

"We're gonna get wind, temperature, humidity, pressure, all sorts of data," Gudric added.

"And what will that achieve?" the reporter asked.

"Well, it ain't ever been done before. There've been some near misses, sure. But we're thinking that if we can get actual data out of the tornado itself, it'll mean a lot for future forecasting and understanding them."

"And will that have an effect on warnings?"

"Yup," Edward agreed. "It oughta. Once people understand better what's going on inside of a tornado, it'll be easier to avoid unfortunate accidents like what happened to some of our former work colleagues earlier today." He and Gudric chuckled—not onscreen—but in person in the diner, which Gothel noted.

At that, the news station broadcast a silent clip of a prairie with a dirt road cutting through the middle of it. Three vehicles were parked out there: a hail-damaged, radar-topped van painted with the inscription "Barn Burner," a truck with an obvious custom paint job of armored unicorns, and a white Mustang that was absolutely coated with blades of grass, dust, and dirt. Apparently the car had taken a direct hit from a tornado—a weak one, undoubtedly, if it didn't have any more damage than that. Five large, burly men were standing outside the van and truck. Then the doors to the Mustang opened and out stepped a leaner, but much more handsome man, and a woman. A woman with long blonde hair.

"Rapunzel!" Gothel hissed under her breath. Her eyes narrowed as the man on the TV screen smirked, wrapped his arm around Rapunzel's waist, and made some comment that the news station had muted. Gothel could not believe it. That was, without any doubt, Rapunzel. She'd run off and joined this little band of storm chasers, and was letting one of them—probably all of them, Gothel thought—feel her up, or most likely more, in exchange for seeing tornadoes. Gothel was sure of it. It wasn't like she had anything else to offer them. "The little whore!" she snarled.

The thugs—the Stabbingtons, she remembered—turned around at the sound. "Eh?" one of them, the one with the broken nose, said.

She glared at them.

"You know that bitch?" the other one asked.

Gothel quickly considered her options. They had said "former colleagues" in the interview, and that little snippet was very clearly a gloat. It was probably muted because the storm chasers that Rapunzel was with had cursed at the Stabbingtons. There was undoubtedly some enmity here. She could use that. "Yes, I know her," she said. "She's a disobedient foster child. I told her not to leave the house today, and look what she did anyway. Nothing but trouble since I took her in. You know how foster kids can be. You just never know what you're going to get."

The Stabbingtons chuckled.

"And apparently she's decided to be a whore for those men if they take her on a thrill ride," Gothel continued.

"Well, that explains it," the one with the broken nose—Gudric—said. "We couldn't figure out how on earth Rider managed to pick up a good-looking girl in the middle of nowhere."

"You don't like him?"

"Hell no," said the other one, Edvard. "He hit my brother in the nose and cut my arm open."

"Why?"

They leaned in. "You didn't hear this, but it was because we borrowed some notes of his for our instruments."

Well, that explained something that had been nagging at Gothel since the broadcast finished. These guys did not seem like the sharpest knives in the drawer, and it was amazing to her that they could have developed a scientific instrument package. The man on the television was clearly a prick, but he at least looked clever. Gothel had a sneaking suspicion that it was not an accident that his car had been in the path of the tornado. It was probably deliberate, and Rapunzel may well have goaded him into doing it. Either way, he knew enough about it to get himself into the path.

"Ah," she said, smirking. "I see. Well, since you don't like them, and I have a bit of a problem of my own with the girl, how about you and I make a deal." Her voice was very low.

They grinned evilly at each other. "Yeah? What sort of a deal?" Gudric asked softly.

"You've got a truck, I see. Why don't you follow that group? I assume you intend to anyway."

"Yeah."

"I don't care what your business is with the others, but the girl needs to be taught a good lesson, and I think a pair of big burly scary men would be just the ticket."

"What are you saying you want us to do?"

"Use your imaginations," Gothel said. "I assume you've got some. And nothing permanent, please," she added. "Just... show her what happens when girls decide to whore themselves out."

"Is this a set-up?" Edvard asked suspiciously. "Are you undercover police?"

"No, and as far as I'm aware, there's no law against frightening people," she snapped.

"Oh. Frightening people," Gudric said with an evil leer. "I get it."

"Yes. And another thing. I came out here on foot."

"You need a ride?"

She pulled out her switchblade and gave them a meaningful look. "Yes, I need a ride. You're following them, right? I am going along."

"No problem," Edvard said quickly.


Note: This will probably be the last chapter for a number of days, because I'm going on vacation and chapter 9 is not quite finished yet, maybe 2/3 written.