DISCLAIMER: Once Upon A Time and all related characters are the property of Kitsis/Horowitz Productions, ABC Studios and the ABC Television Network. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money has changed hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations and story are the property of the author and may not be used without permission. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.
ARENDELLE SISTERS
by Darrin A. Colbourne
He'd been watching Ingrid Arendelle for weeks, trying to get into her habits and learn her patterns, basically trying to be as intimately familiar with her as he could manage without her knowing about it. There was a goal here, and learning about Ingrid's life was the key to fulfilling it. Once he learned everything he needed to learn, he just needed to wait for an opportunity. He thought he'd had that opportunity in hand two Saturdays ago.
That's when the complications showed up, throwing everything off and making the last week and change...interesting, to say the least.
See, two Saturdays ago he was following the Coffee Queen (It was his name for her, because she walked around her little store like she was Empress or something) home from her dinner date with her Rich Bitch friend in Irvington. He'd thought she was nuts trying to drive home in the middle of a nor'easter like that one, even with her big-ass SUV, but ultimately that's what gave him his opportunity. Lots of bad things could happen in a storm like that.
He'd followed her on the highway from as far back as visibility allowed. There weren't many other fools on the road that night, so it wouldn't take a master spy to realize they were being tailed. In fact, he'd thought she had spotted him when she pulled into the nature preserve so abruptly, as if she were trying to shake him. Then again, it didn't matter either way. He knew where she lived, and he knew she'd end up at home eventually, so he just sped up a little and drove past where she'd exited.
He'd managed to beat her to her block by about five minutes, which left him just enough time to park a house away across the street and get ready for her arrival. When he caught her approaching in his rearview, he'd hunkered down to watch her pass him and stop in front of her house. This was it. He'd seen the snow piled up in her driveway. Even a good SUV would have trouble getting through it, so he'd anticipated she'd have to park and enter her house on foot or shovel the drive before she could put the truck in the garage. Either way he could close out his contract with minimal fuss. With this in mind he bent to check in his glove compartment to make sure he had the tool he needed to take care of business, fully expecting to see Coffee Queen trudging through the snow to her front door when he'd straightened up.
Instead, he'd straightened up and seen the SUV backing into the garage like there was never any snow there.
What the hell?
He wasn't imagining it. The truck had been reversing unimpeded into the garage. Yet he hadn't imagined the snow in the drive either. He'd checked. Ingrid had been out of town for two days and hadn't bothered to salt her walks or drive before the storm hit. So what the hell happened to all the snow that was literally just there a minute ago?
He'd continued watching the house after the garage closed. The lights came on and went off throughout as Coffee Queen and two others went through it. Two others? He hadn't seen them clearly at first, but there were definitely three shadows moving through the house. Where had the other two come from? Coffee Queen had left Rich Bitch's house alone, and this one had been empty last time he'd checked.
This required a closer look. He'd gotten out of his car and went to the trunk to retrieve a gun-sight. He'd use that to get a look into the house from directly across the street, using the storm and a parked car as cover. By the time he'd got into position there was light in Coffee Queen's bedroom, so he aimed the sight right into it. (Coffee Queen was a voyeur's dream. She acted like she grew up somewhere where it was impossible to peer into her bedroom window and never bothered to close her drapes or blinds.) There she was, stripping the bed, which made sense. She wanted to go to bed with clean linens. He'd continued watching as she retrieved new sheets and blankets and started to make the bed.
That's when he'd gotten a good look at the other two.
Again, what the hell?
Two young girls had come into the bedroom, a redhead and an ice blonde. Ginger immediately stepped up and started helping Coffee Queen with the bed, while Ice Blondie came over to the window, giving him a good look at her. She was gorgeous, and looked kind of nervous. She was also dressed like she'd been at Medievel Times somewhere, while Ginger looked like Pippi-freakin'-Longstocking.
He'd watched as Ingrid had instructed the two girls in turning on and off the lights - a head-scratcher of epic proportions; since when are table lamps mystery tech? - and gave them clothes to wear to bed. Then she'd left the girls in the room. They walked away from view for a minute, then when they walked in front of the window again - Hot damn! - they were both naked, or at least topless; he was too low to see everything. Ginger was closest to the window when they turned from each other to put on their nightshirts. Ginger was tight!
He'd kept watching the bedroom until they turned out the lights, then got back in his car. Okay, what had he seen? Coffee Queen had houseguests who weren't in the house while she'd been away and hadn't been with her when she'd started for home. She had to have picked them up from somewhere, but where? The nature preserve? When she'd made that detour, was it to pick up Ginger and Ice Blondie? Okay, fine, but what were Ginger and Ice Blondie doing in the freakin' woods in the middle of a blizzard in the first place? And why were they dressed like they were in Game of Thrones? And most important: Who were they to Ingrid?
He'd hunkered down in his car after that. He'd have to rethink this while making more observations.
He'd woken up in the front seat of his car disoriented, but only for a moment. He'd remembered the strange events of last night and that he'd decided to stay to wait and see if Coffee Queen stuck to her routine and went to church. As he got his bearings he noticed a snowplow clearing the street. He'd figured the noise was what woke him up. He'd checked the time. It wouldn't be long before Ingrid pulled out of the garage to go to church, if she was going.
The appointed time came and went, and then another hour passed, and he'd figured that Ingrid had decided to stay home with Ice Blondie and Ginger. If so, then he was wasting time here. He needed to get home, eat and get some real rest. As he started his car and pulled out, he'd wondered again who the young girls were to Ingrid? Were they the Coffee Queen's minions, or consorts? He supposed he should be ashamed for thinking they might have a sexual purpose in Ingrid's life, but he'd already seen she really didn't have much of a romantic life. Still, if they were friends with benefits why hadn't Ingrid gone to bed with them last night?
They couldn't be relatives, could they? Ingrid often talked about having a younger sister, yet no one had found any evidence of a "Gerda Arendelle" after years of searching. The running theory between him and his client was that she might have existed but that little sister Gerda was either living or had died under an assumed name. Okay, but could either Ice Blondie or Ginger be the mysterious Gerda? If so, where had she been hiding, and who was the other one?
He had to find out before he could do his job.
Monday came, and he resumed his stakeout of Ingrid by visiting her shop. He'd become something of a regular in the place over the past weeks, mainly so he could observe the Coffee Queen in her empire. He'd spend the morning, drinking coffee and doing paperwork on his laptop while waiting for Ingrid's shift to end. This day he'd paid particular attention to whatever conversation he could pick up between Ingrid and her staff. To his knowledge, she didn't mention Ice Blondie or Ginger to them at all.
He'd left a few minutes before Ingrid so he could follow her after work. She'd surprised him by not going straight home. Instead she'd gone shopping, picking up clothes that he'd assumed were for her houseguests. This time when he'd followed her home, he'd found a place to park directly across from the house so he could observe the front bedroom from inside the car. He'd seen the houseguests once briefly when they ran the shopping bags full of clothes up to the bedroom, then for much longer when Ingrid joined them and they played fashion show. He'd especially enjoyed seeing Ginger and Ice Blondie show off their underwear to each other.
Again, he'd waited until the bedroom was dark before deciding what to do. He drove off, playing the odds that he'd find out more with his usual visit to the cafe. His hunch paid off, as he'd been there the next day in time to hear Coffee Queen introduce the girls to her detective friend as her nieces.
Nieces? Okay, so were they the daughters of the mystery sister, or was one of them the sister and the niece thing a cover? He'd decided to take Ingrid at her word for the simplest of reasons: it meant more money for him if it was true. Time to contact the client. As he watched a video on his laptop, he'd used his phone to send a text:
Ging and IceB nieces sez CQ. Price goes 4 all 3.
The responding text had come back almost instantly:
Agreed. Pay on finish like b4.
He'd smiled at that. He liked it when they didn't haggle, and this one'd had a figurative hard-on for Ingrid for ages. He'd found out why soon after taking the contract. He'd thought it was stupid, but he'd resolved to just do the job and collect the cash. Okay, but now the job was three times as hard. He needed to find a new opportunity.
At one point that morning Coffee Queen had sent her nieces to get food for the staff. Could he have dealt with them then? No, better to get them all at once. He had more observing to do.
Ice Blondie and Ginger had come back with Coffee Queen for the next three days, serving as cheap labor. Rich Bitch had visited on the third day, and he could tell she'd frustrated Ice Blondie and Ginger as much as she did anyone else who wasn't Ingrid. (though she agreed Ginger should be called Ginger.) At one point that day he'd been a step behind Ginger heading to the bathrooms when he caught the same conversation she had: a couple of young punks drooling over Coffee Queen and Rich Bitch. He'd smiled at one admitting to Ingrid giving him wood. He'd likely need to take care of that himself, 'cause if Queen and Bitch weren't utterly gay for each other he'd eat his favorite cowboy boots.
Something else about the conversation had bothered him: Ginger's reaction. She looked confused, as if she had no idea why she should find what the punks had said offensive.
Another item for the "What the hell?" list.
He'd had more items following them around on Saturday, when Ingrid showed them around the city. They'd started by watching the planes take off and land at O'Hare. The girls looked like they'd never seen airplanes before. Really? Then how the hell did they get to freaking Chicago from Nordicland? It's not like cruise ships came this far inland!
He'd laid off the observation on Sunday so he could make new preparations for a new opportunity to deal with all three women at once. He'd worried doing so might actually make him miss his chance, but he was already thinking about what he might do, and he decided to wait until circumstances made that possible.
The chance came sooner than he'd expected. He'd gone to the cafe Monday morning and found that Ingrid and her nieces hadn't come in. When he ordered his drink, he asked the Staff Blonde with a smile, "No Ingrid today?"
"Not this morning," she'd said. "She's coming in tonight because we'll be short staffed."
"Oh...is she bringing her nieces?"
The Blonde chuckled and said, "Yeah...it's like they're her favorite accessories lately."
"Seems like." He'd left a five in the tip box and took his coffee to go.
Opportunity had arrived.
He kept going over the plan over and over in his mind as he got ready. Ingrid's cafe closed at Nine, PM, and like most other establishments they started ushering people out around fifteen or twenty minutes before closing. Unlike those other places however, Ingrid had gotten into the habit of not locking the door until Nine sharp. That meant that there would be about ten or fifteen minutes tonight when the door would be open but the only people in the place would be staff. It would be great if it were only the three subjects, but he wouldn't know for sure until he got there.
He wanted to get there around 8:45 to scope out the place. If the conditions were right he'd go in and make it look like a robbery. He'd acquired the perfect weapon for it, a Mossberg 12-gauge super-short shotgun. It was small enough to hide in a normal coat but still had the dropping power of the normal-sized 12-gauge. It only held three rounds total - 2 in the slide and one in the chamber - but that was okay. He was bringing reloads.
He was in all black: jeans, t-neck, boots, leather gloves and a pea coat. A face mask worn as a beanie cap was a final touch. He had the super-shorty mounted on a sling which he had hanging off his shoulder so that the gun rested at his side, making it easy to bring up, prime and fire.
He reached the right block around thirteen minutes to Nine. He paused on the corner for a moment to shove his hands into his coat pockets and hunch over before walking at a normal pace past the cafe's entrance. He used his peripheral vision to scan the lit interior. Good news. The place was empty of customers, and the only staff were Ingrid and the girls.
Perfect.
He walked all the way to the next corner before stopping and turning around. He pulled the face mask down, and now the only thing that it left uncovered was his eyes. He unbuttoned his coat and flexed his fingers, then he got his hands on the super-shorty, gripping the handle and flipping down the stability grip. With both hands firmly on the weapon, he took a deep breath and marched back to the cafe. Three targets, three rounds. Take 'em down, boost the register drawer, get out.
He turned sharply at the cafe door and shouldered his way in, drawing all three women's attention. Ginger, god-love-her, put on a smile and went into the normal spiel. "Hi! I'm sorry, but the cafe is closed for the night. We'll be open again tomorrow morning at six, though, so feel free to come back then."
Obviously, she couldn't see him smile at her stupidity, but he knew it wouldn't matter in a second now that he had the super-shorty raised to her abdomen.
He was a heartbeat from pulling the trigger when Ingrid screamed something that made him freeze:
"Elsa! Save your sister!"
What? He looked at Ingrid, but she was looking at Ice Blondie, so he looked at her and saw her raising her hands toward him with a look of intense hatred in her eyes.
The next thing he knew he was in the middle of the street, having been blown there by the coldest hurricane force wind he'd ever felt. He shivered, and almost got hit by a car before he could recover enough to get back on the side walk. By the time he could get his focus back on the cafe the door was locked and the crime gates came crashing down.
He just stared. "What the hell?" just didn't cover it this time…
Ingrid, Anna and Elsa just stared at the front of the store. "Was that a gun?" Anna rasped. "A real gun?"
"It was," Ingrid said, sounding like she didn't believe it herself.
Elsa's hands were surrounded by clouds of frost. "What did he want?" She asked.
"Do you think he's still out there?" Anna said.
To answer both their questions, Ingrid said, "If he just wanted money, then Elsa blasting him out of here might make him go someplace else. If it's something worse…"
The explosive sound of the shotgun firing finished the answer for her as it blew a hole in the window gate while shattering the window. The Arendelles screamed, then Ingrid ushered them behind the counter, where they crouched down. The gun fired twice more before things quieted down.
"Do you think he's gone now?" Anna hoped.
"Elsa," Ingrid said, "use more wind to blow the tables and chairs against the storefront."
Elsa nodded and rose up just enough to peer over the counter and direct a blast of wind behind the tables and chairs in the middle of the cafe and making them slam into the storefront. Right after that the gun fired three more times.
"Now," Ingrid said, "Put up the biggest, thickest wall of ice you can manage against the front!"
Elsa nodded and rose fully, then she blasted the front of the store with jets of frost that built a wall of white polar ice in front of the door and window.
Outside, the gunman was reloading his shotgun when the light shining through the holes he'd blown through the crime gate went dark. He stared at that too, the darkness coming after what sounded like all the furniture in the place being thrown at the wall. This was nuts. What should have been a straightforward hit and run was turning into a Twilight Zone episode.
He finished loading the gun and fired three more shots into the gate, blowing more holes into it but not dispelling the darkness.
"F***!" The gunman said. He didn't know what was going on, but he needed to stop wasting ammo. He thought about the problem. He'd been in this place countless times and for the life of him couldn't recall if there was another way to get in. Trash bags were taken out the front and around to the alley dumpster, so there wasn't a back entrance. Then again, the crime gate wasn't an obstacle, so he could blast his way in if that was all that was there, but they'd barricaded the door and window somehow.
Slowly, carefully, he approached the wall and reached a finger into one of the slugholes. He couldn't even get his finger tip in. There was a wall just behind the gate. A hard, slippery wall.
Ice? They put up a wall of ice?
Ingrid took out her phone and handed it to Anna. "Here! Call 911! Tell them what's happening and answer any questions they have!"
"Right!" Anna said. She dialed 911 from Ingrid's emergency contacts and waited till someone answered before saying, "Hello? We need help! A man with a gun is trying to break into my aunt's store!"
As Anna dealt with the 911 operator, Ingrid turned to Elsa. "All right, the police will be here soon, but that man is well-armed and he might hurt one of them when they try to arrest him. You have to help them!"
"Me? But I've done all I can already!"
"No, his face was covered with something!" Anna told the operator. "I didn't…" She was interrupted by the sound of three more shots, these muffled by the ice wall. "He keeps trying to shoot his way in! No, everything is locked and we have a barricade! I don't know how long it will hold…!"
"You have no idea how powerful you really are," Ingrid said to Elsa, "but I do. You are the Snow Queen, Elsa, but that doesn't just mean you can make snow and ice. Winter in all its aspects is your domain. The wind, the frost, the clouds...they're all yours to command."
"But I can't hurt him if I can't see him!" Elsa said. "I'd have to go outside and risk taking down the wall…"
"The police are coming!" Anna told them. "The 911 lady said stay hidden and away from the front of the store!"
Ingrid nodded at her, then turned back to Elsa. "I'm trying to tell you that you don't have to go outside! In the winter your powers have no limits! You need to see him? Fine! Let the elements see him for you!" Ingrid took her hand and continued. "Close your eyes and command it to snow outside, then command the snow to show you what it reflects."
Elsa looked at her skeptically at first, but Ingrid had had these powers first, and used them so much more skillfully when they'd first encountered each other. She closed her eyes and did as she was told…
This was getting serious. If the women inside the store hadn't called the cops yet somebody had to with all the gunshots. He'd planned to be long gone before there was any police reaction. Now every second he stayed increased his chance of getting caught. He'd just wasted three more rounds trying to blow through the ice wall. He barely made a dent.
"Oh, for pity's sake…" He said. On top of everything else, it had just started snowing…
Elsa gasped and smiled. "I see him!" She said. "I see him! He's still out front and he's pacing! He seems very angry…"
Suddenly the muffled sound of sirens came through the wall. "Yes, I can hear them!" Anna said to the operator with a grin.
"I can see them, too," Elsa told Ingrid. "Cars with flashing lights are coming from both ends of the street."
"Good!" Ingrid said. "Now make sure he doesn't resist them…"
He growled and cursed as he heard the approach of sirens and spotted the lights of cop cars coming from both directions. This contract was officially blown. Now all he could do was try to get out of dodge before the police set up a perimeter. He turned and got set to break into a sprint…
...and his face was on the pavement a second later. He'd slipped! On ice! Ice that wasn't there a second ago!
He got back on his feet a second later and tried to run in the other direction...and he went down again, slipping on ice that, again, hadn't been there a second ago.
He got to his feet again and realized that running was no longer an option as the cop cars reached the ends of the block and closed in on the store. Well, fine, if he couldn't run he'd fight. He loaded the super-shorty one more time and took aim at one of the cop cars.
He was hit with another blast of wind before he could pull trigger and slipped on ice again, and the combination slammed him onto his back hard, making him fire the chambered round uselessly into the air. By the time he recovered and sat up the cop cars were flanking the store and their occupants were climbing out, guns drawn. "Stay down!" One yelled. "Put the weapon on the ground and lay on your stomach!"
After that, all four officers started barking commands, and the gunman decided that getting caught and complying was the least bad choice he could make…
"Yes!" Anna cheered. She turned to the others and said, "They have him in custody!"
"I know," Elsa said. She opened her eyes at beamed at Ingrid and Anna. "I saw it all!"
Anna gave her a thumbs up, then turned back to the phone. "Thank you so much! Right, I understand." She hung up and said, "The police will want to come in in a minute."
"All right," Ingrid said. "Elsa, you should get rid of the ice wall, quick as you can."
"Right." She stood up to get rid of it, then paused. "Should I also make it stop snowing?"
Ingrid shrugged. "Whatever you want. You're the Snow Queen."
Elsa grinned at that, then worked on getting rid of the ice wall. When that was done all three women cleared the furniture barricade manually.
They had just cleared the door when someone called in, "Miss Arendelle? Chicago Police! Anyone hurt in there?"
"We're fine!" Ingrid called back. "Just a second!" Then to the girls: "Follow my lead."
Ingrid raised the door gate and opened the door. There was a tall, male Chicago Police Officer standing just outside. "Everything's under control out here, ma'am. We have the man in custody. He won't bother you again."
Ingrid said nothing. She just grinned and caught the man in a close hug. Anna and Elsa looked at each other, then followed Ingrid's lead and made it a group hug.
TBC...