Hey guys. I hope the last chapter wasn't too convoluted, and that I hear from some of you this time? Anyway, Rapunzel is such fun to write, so I hope you like this, her best day ever. :)
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The Lost Avatar
& Other Tales from the Four Nations
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Rapunzel's Life Begins
The silence after the ice shattered was deafening. Rapunzel lay on the floor panting and shivering as the cold leaked off the chunks of frozen water now scattered around the room. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, like she'd run the whole length of the garden labyrinth and back, and there was a ringing in her ears, high pitched and real enough to make the little bones in her head vibrate.
Trapped half underneath her shoulder, Eric shifted. She felt more than heard his aching groan.
She shook her head, trying to silence the bell. "Wha-" Her words were muffled even to her. "What just happened?"
"I don't know," Eric groaned, "but it hurt."
Rapunzel rolled off of him, her palms landing on ice chips. She blinked large eyes, trying to make sense of the two identical images of the room that refused to merge together. The fires from the braziers lit the scattered ice, surrounding her with flickers of blue fire.
"M-Meg," Rapunzel realized, the ringing finally fading from her ears. "Where's Meg? She was here, wasn't she?"
"Uh, Punz? I think we've got bigger problems."
Rapunzel rolled onto her backside to see what he meant. The worst she expected was coals sprayed across the floor or a collapsed door trapping them inside.
She did not expect to see the shadowed figure staggering upright out of the remains of the iceberg.
Rapunzel gasped. "It's alive!"
"But- how?"
A crazy crooked smile lit Rapunzel's face. A stray giggle she'd saved for a rainy day escaped its jar and popped out her mouth. "I have no idea!" she squeaked.
The figure staggered straight, leaving a large piece of itself behind. Rapunzel caught a glimpse of copper skin, a flash of blue around a slender throat, deep black hair cascading down from an imposing, high forehead as the person loomed over them.
"It's a woman!"she realized-
-just as she slid to the ground like a sack of flour.
Rapunzel and Eric stared. "A woman with an...inner ear problem I guess."
"Sleeping in an ice cube must do that," Eric muttered next to her.
The blonde scrambled onto her hands and knees, clambered across the miniature ice field, dragging her hair behind her in long lanks where her braid had unraveled in the blast. "Hey," she said as she reached out a hand to shake the woman by a shoulder sporting a red tattoo high on her arm. "Hey, are you alive there scary...hibernating...water lady?"
"Rapunzel don't touch her!"
She immediately jerked back, curling her fingers to her chest before her fingers could close the distance between them. A band loosened around her chest as she looked toward the door – which was still standing in one piece. "Meg!" she cried, relieved. "You're okay!"
'Okay' was in the relative. Her bodyguard was slouched against the open entrance to the room, the hand not holding her up pressed against her side. A large chunk of ice was still spinning on the ground where it had been redirected after meeting Meg's body.
Her face was pinched with pain and something that scared Rapunzel more than reassured her. "Get away from there! Both of you, now!"
Eric stumbled to his feet and backed away without question, but Rapunzel hesitated. "But...she might be hurt."
"Now!" Meg barked.
Rapunzel flinched, but Meg didn't notice as something outside caught her attention. Her pale face drained of what little blood was left in it. "The spirit guards are coming. You two have got to get out of here before they find you so come on!" she hissed. She shoved Eric out the door and away from danger. "Up the back stair, take the second left door and go up too floors and it'll spit you out behind the House of Cards. Hurry! Rapunzel that means you!"
"Um..." Rapunzel froze where she was, looking between Meg and the woman splayed out on the floor. A fat, dazed animal haphazardly climbed out of the ice after her and stumbled towards the prone figure. "Um!"
Meg's face grew fiercer and Rapunzel finally placed the other emotion in her eyes; it was fear. For her. If she was found in here, something very bad would happen to her.
"I'm sorry," she squeaked to the woman as she climbed to her feet and backed away. "I'm so sorry-"
She couldn't finish as she tripped across the floor towards Meg, waving frantically at her from the door. Eric had already disappeared.
The animal made a noise behind her – a threatened chittering, hissing sound that made her turn around.
Green eyes widened. There was a man standing over her! One carrying ropes and grappling hooks over a dark green vest and gray-green pants tucked into knee high boots. He had brown hair and a touch of wispy beard along the edge of his chin.
Where'd he come from? she wondered as she shouted at him, "Hey! Hey get away from her!"
He looked up at her in bewilderment. She saw his eyes were a tawny shade of brown.
She glowered at him as she advanced. "Yeah, I mean you buddy!"
He ignored her and bent down, scooping the copper-skinned woman up and laying her over one shoulder in a fireman's hold, her arms and long hair hanging limp down his back, her furry creature clinging to the back of her tunic and drunkenly hissing at the man. His knees buckled from the unexpected weight.
"Hey!" Rapunzel shouted, running towards him. Her toes scraped against the craggy edges of the ice. "Put her down this instant you- you pointy-toothed man!"
He ignored her, adjusting the woman's weight and lumbering away from the tiny blonde running after him. He was running to the closest air shaft. That must be how he got down here! But how's he gonna get back up-?
Arms busy keeping the ice woman off the floor, he bent his knees, stomped one boot hard to the clay ground-
-and it lifted him up on a perfectly square pillar of clay.
"Earthbender!" Meg shouted, hard metal appearing in her hands. She swung both arms, daggers flying at him, but they struck semi-soft clay, their momentum embedding them inside.
Rapunzel took a different tack. "Oh no you don't!" She whipped out a lock of hair that had been blown free of her braid. Bright flowers and pieces of ribbons dropped to the ground as it wrapped around the man's leg before his boots disappeared up the air shaft along with the rest of him and the woman, the clay losing form and dropping down to the ground as soon as he was gone.
Rapunzel braced herself, feeling the telltale pull against her scalp as she twined her hair around her arm so he didn't yank it right off her head. A split second later her feet left the floor-
"Rapunzel, no!" Meg screamed.
That was the last thing she heard before the sound of wind moving in a tightly enclosed space filled her ears and Rapunzel was dragged up the air shaft after the would-be-kidnapper.
...
Meg watched Rapunzel's dirt-coated feet disappear into the dark of the air shaft. A shower of flower petals and ice chips rained down, and she was gone.
Cold seeped into the bodyguard's stomach. Her charge – her only charge – had just chased after an Earth Nation invader and disappeared.
Feeling more than hearing the approach of Hades' spirit guards before they spilled into the room and zeroed in on the thief's escape route, Meg cast wide eyes around the lowest room in his vault, the one designed to hold the most dangerous of his possessions. The one his favorite dame's only daughter had just ransacked and ultimately escaped from...
"Oh, I am so dead," she realized.
...
The man known as Flynn Rider – best thief in the Four Nations – ground his palms into the dirt and tried to ignore the sweat making his eyes sting. Not that there was much to see fifty feet inside an underground air shaft, even one in the very heart of enemy territory.
Clenching his jaw until his teeth creaked, Flynn pushed against his hastily bent foothold and reached for the newest divot in the earth above his head. No one told me this lady came with luggage! Even his mental voice was strained.
"Hey! Hey you up there! I'm still gonna stop you, you know! As soon as I can see you! As soon as you get me out of this hole I'm gonna see you and I'm gonna stop you, you- ruffian!"
Hoisting himself up another foot, Flynn rolled his eyes. Where did she get these insults? The 'How to Speak Ye Ole Smack' pamphlet?
Raising the foot she was latched on to, he gave it a violent shake, trying to dislodge her before he crammed the toe of his boot into the hold. No luck. All he got was a startled yelp from what felt like two stone blocks tied to his laces.
"The least you could do down there is quit moving!" he said through gritted teeth.
A moment's pause...and then the rope tangled with his foot jerked and swung like a thrashing fish on a line.
He grumbled some very un-gentlemanly things, but then Flynn had never claimed to be a gentleman. Daring, charismatic, unbearably handsome, sure, but never a gentleman.
Despite the struggling hanger-on and the surly grumbling creature clinging to the still-breathing ice woman, who felt like she weighed as much as the palace he was busy crawling through, Flynn's reaching hands finally found the flat hatch he'd cut for himself and hauled him and his (numerous) burdens out of the vertical shaft.
The woman and her beast slumped onto the flat clay shelf he'd bent to get in this nightmare place, black hair flying everywhere, some even landing in Flynn's mouth. He spit it out as he flopped down next to her, breathing hard.
"Ugh!" he rasped. "Suddenly my weight in gold doesn't seem enough." He let his head loll to the side to stare at the woman. "Now your weight maybe..."
Her eyes remained closed, luckily for his continued existence, although her plump creature hissed at him and gave him a cross-eyed glare.
"Yeah, hello to you too butterball," he grumbled as he sat up, curling up and wrestling the fine rope off his leg before pulling it up onto the shelf after him. He heaved a sigh of relief. "Ah, sweet, sweet freedom," he moaned. The one leg felt insanely light after nearly being pulled off by some high-pitched voice shouting pathetic insults up at him.
He opened his eyes and looked down at his boot. Nothing was on it but a strand of some long and gold thread. "Did we lose her?" he asked the spitting beast.
He shuffled over and leaned his head over the side. Something bright enough to be seen in the lightless air shaft clung tenaciously to the side below him.
"Aw man," he whined. "Can't you follow someone else today?" he shouted down at her.
A round white face looked up at him. He didn't know where the light was coming from, but he thought he saw a spark of green eyes. "No! Now give me back that unconscious lady cannibal-man!"
Flynn made a face. "No!" he called back. "And I'm not a cannibal. I'm saving her, you fire brat!"
"Saving her? Ha! You're just- eep!"
He heard fingers scrabbling against the hard clay and his heart lept into this throat in spite of himself. Jumper bodies were never pretty in the end...
"Oh for-" He couldn't believe he was about to say this. "Use the handholds, Blondie, before you kill yourself," he called down.
A shuffling sound as she searched. "Oh. Thanks. That's much easier."
Flynn rolled his eyes again, mouth thinning at one side. "Yeah, great to hear I've taken the peril out of your chasing me."
He turned back to the frozen woman, hoisting her up again. She moaned softly in her sleep. He needed to get out of here before she woke up and started asking questions.
"All right Smith," he thought with a smug smile as he trotted down his escape route to where it met up with the pipes that ran beneath the Ember Palace, "one mail order Fire Nation prisoner coming up."
...
Rapunzel followed the kidnapper up the air shaft until she found the hole he must have bent for his escape. "Whew," she breathed after heaving herself up into the tunnel. "Good thing we're not afraid of heights, huh Pascal?"
The warm body hunkered down against her neck made a gurgling sound she interpreted as, "Speak for yourself."
She got to her feet and tenaciously began to make her way down the boxy tunnel, faster than was safe considering she couldn't see anything. "He's got to be in here," she whispered to her little chameleon, letting one hand trail against the wall so she wouldn't run into it. "I haven't felt any other openings. Although I guess he is an earthbender. He could have just made his own opening – maybe even straight up to the surface! – and then closed it behind him. Ohh," she groaned. "If he did that we'll never find him again-ee-eek! Cold! Cold!"
She danced in place, splashing frigid water all over her calves and ankles, before skipping back to dry land behind her. She folded one foot over the other to try and dispel the pins and needles poking at her toes.
Rapunzel held her hands palms up in front of her, searching for droplets, but none fell that she could find. "If it isn't soaking through from above...then where's it coming from?"
She strained her eyes, trying to see in front of her, but all she saw was black. Impenetrable black really, like...like...
"Cast iron!" she gasped. "This must be one of the runoff tunnels I read about!" She stretched out her hands towards the metal. She had to wade in an inch or two until her fingers found it, the water biting at her bare toes. "This is where all the palace groundwater collects before falling into Steeping Lake. The books never said it was this cold, but at least it's not a sewage tunnel I guess," she mumbled and then wrapped her arms around herself, shivering as she slogged forward. Within a yard she lost all feeling in her feet.
"I d-d-don't think-k-k-k I c-c-c-can d-do this!" she pushed out through chattering teeth. "It's t-too c-c-c-cold!"
Pascal rolled a sound at her, eyes asking where exactly she'd left her brain today, before puffing out a small tongue of flame.
"Oh." She stopped in the middle of the water. "R-right."
She channeled her bending, careful not to burn herself this time. The water warmed around her feet, steam starting to curl off the surface. She smiled and wiggled her toes. "Much better."
She yelped when she took another step and a white cloud of steam shot out on contact with a sharp hiss! Pascal gave her another look and Rapunzel mumbled a sheepish, "Sorry," before padding on, steam clouds rising in her wake.
She trailed her fingers along the inside of the pipe, feeling the gradual decline beneath her feet and the curve in the wall. She was starting to get dizzy from the corkscrew when she finally saw the literal light at the end of the tunnel.
And back lit against the sharp outline was the hunchbacked silhouette of the kidnapper and his hostage, running as fast as he could with her weight.
Rapunzel broke into a run, Pascal gurgling in fright as he nearly lost his tacky-toed grip on her hair. "I've got you now, you clodhopper!"
...
Flynn had heard her before she was close enough to see him and broke into a jog. Part of him was glad it was so cold down here or he'd be sweating like a hog-monkey. He was surprised at the voice shouting at him though. He'd thought back at the airshaft his pursuer sounded young, but now he couldn't help but think it was just a kid chasing him.
Probably some green cadet thinking to cut his teeth on me, he thought as he struggled under the weight of the woman he'd been paid to pull out. Well he's got another thing coming if he thinks he can catch Flynn Rider, best thief in the four nations!
Hissing got his attention, and this time it wasn't from the woman's furry friend. He twisted around and saw clouds of steam puffing up at regular intervals. He frowned. Just another reason to despise those fire bending finks. "Oh, now that's just cheating!" he cried, hefting his burdens higher on his shoulder. It had taken him months to haggled down that price-pushing sauna-owning ice trader for the boots he was now wearing and he could still feel the cold seeping in, however slowly.
"Not cheating if you're born with it!" the cadet cried in a sing-song voice.
Flynn glowered at the silhouette, light from the water striking gold in the kid's hair enough he could make out the general shape of a very young woman, but tall enough not to be a child.
"It doesn't help-" he grunted as he hefted the woman higher, getting a half awake moan and a surly grumble from her critter, "-that you're only getting heavier. Why don't you wake up already and carry your own weight?"
A knee smashed into his stomach for an answer.
Flynn hit his knees, breath slammed out of him as cold water soaked into his clothes from the waist down. The ice hit him next and he gasped air back into his body.
The woman was already gone, vaulting over his shoulder, landing on her hands and flipping back up to her feet before running past him, splashing more freezing water over him. If the cold bothered her, she didn't let it show.
"Hey-" he called after her in an airless rasp. "Wait-"
She didn't. And to top it all off, her critter – its beady eyes shining like sparks in the dark – threw back a cheeky sounding chitter. Flynn could have sworn he saw it smirking at him.
Flynn tried to get up, to at least get out of the frigid water, but his legs were either numb or boneless and wouldn't listen to him.
"Okay," he told her, "you go on ahead. I'll catch up." He groaned as he doubled over, one arm holding in his stomach.
...
Rapunzel pushed herself faster when the earthbender didn't get up. "Ha!" she snapped out a laugh. "Serves him right. Now we've got him Pascal!"
Pascal gurgled triumphantly, then turned around. His sudden squawk of terror was covered up by the sound of heated steam forming behind them. He frantically pulled Rapunzel's hair, but she mistook it for eagerness. "Don't worry," she told him as she started to pant. "He's just ahead."
Pascal gurgled and chirped, but she was too focused on what was ahead to pay him any attention. He shot under her chin and pointed his tail at the steam cloud rolling out behind them, blue lightning shooting through it like a thunderhead building power. Rapunzel's hair was starting to glow again.
Pascal grabbed onto the nearest strands and flung himself around to her nose, flapping his little wings to get himself moving. He landed on the center of her face, making her jerk back before she realized it was just him. She went crosseyed trying to look at him, but he finally had her attention.
"What Pascal? What is it?" she snapped, her feet fumbling as she tried to divide her attention.
Pascal jabbed his tail behind her. Rapunzel turned to look, slowing to a jog.
Her breath caught in her throat and she stumbled. "Oh-wo-woah!" she shrieked, tilting forward to run faster. "Blue Spirits!" she cried, like they needed an introduction.
She turned and ran for all she was worth, forgetting about catching the earthbender and focusing solely on outrunning Hades' personal guard. She had no idea what they could do, and she had absolutely no desire to find out. Not when they even frightened Meg.
Rapunzel caught up with the downed thief in seconds, and then blazed past him just as fast. "If you don't want to be spirit barbecue, you'd better run!" she shrieked back at him.
...
She caught up with him while he was still down in the freezing water, gut aching from the unexpected blow. He looked sideways at her, and then did a double take. "You're just a girl!"
"And you're a no-good kidnapping clodhopper!" she shot back, completing missing the reason for his surprise. "But if you know what's good for you you'll run!"
Her voice spiked up into a squeak as she looked behind them and saw the Blue Spirits were that much closer. Flynn didn't bother looking for himself as he pushed himself up and staggered after her, one hand pressed against his stomach. "This would be a lot easier if she hadn't just gut-checked me," he grumbled.
The fire girl actually had the nerve to latch onto his arm and pull him faster. "Of course she did. You were kidnapping her!"
There was that word again. "I was not! I was rescuing her from you." For a price, but people didn't usually react well to that. "You hear that?" he yelled after his paycheck. "I was rescuing you!"
The mystery woman didn't even slow down. Her silhouette was easy to see against the daylight streaming in from the end of the pipe. She was eating up the distance in long-legged strides. Whoever she was, she was very athletic.
But then she'd have to be to lug that beast of hers everywhere with her.
She was only ten yards away from the end now. Flynn suddenly realized she was rapidly running out of solid ground. And she wasn't slowing down...
"Hey!" he called after her, sudden horror prodding at the back of his mind. "Hey wait! That's not an exit!"
She must have heard him, but she didn't stop. If anything she ran faster.
"I don't think she's going to stop..." the girl huffed. Five feet.
"She's got to. This tunnel ends in a hundred foot drop!" Three.
"What?"
The woman was almost out of tunnel now. Her beastie hunkered down low on her shoulders, almost like it knew what was coming.
Flynn pushed himself faster as she stopped dead on the edge of the tunnel, arms spread in a tee to either side of her. He lifted his heavy boots high in the quickening water.
"No!"
"Stop!"
She dove into open air with her arms spread wide on either side falling as gracefully as a swan.
Flynn felt his heart stop. Then he was scrambling to the edge of the tunnel. Splashing told him the fire brat was right behind him.
Two faces peered over the edge, but there was nothing below them but the cold water falling in a waterfall to the lake far below them.
"Where'd she go?" he shouted.
The blonde blinked her too-large eyes. "Unless she knows how to fly, I'm gonna go with 'down'."
He shot her a dark look. "Thanks Blondie, I didn't get that one for myself."
She didn't seem to hear him. She was too busy staring at...well, he wasn't sure what she was staring at. It was just the sky and the lake on the backside of the palace. Nothing unusual. It wasn't even that spectacular a view to be honest.
"Steeping Lake," he heard her whisper in awe. "I've never seen it so close!"
"Not close enough," Flynn told her. He turned around, the hundred foot drop at his back more comforting than Hades' pet guard dogs. "We jump and the fall will kill us. Then again we stay here and those things'll kill us. Hopefully..."
"Oh, we can make that," the girl said cheerfully as she fiddled with her hair that – Flynn did a double take – was longer than she was tall.
"Wah-woah!" he jumped back, nearly following the crazy woman off the edge and dancing around to make sure he didn't. "What's with the hair, Blondie? Don't you believe in scissors?"
"Of course," she said without looking up from her hair, "they're those sharp edged things Mother won't let me run with. And besides-" She pulled at a long length of that ridiculous hair with a beaming smile on her face, "-if I did cut it, I'd never be able to do this."
She tossed a loop of it into the air and gave a giddy cry when it caught on an outcropping in the rock over their heads. She clung to the rest of it, twisting more locks around her small hands and preparing to jump.
"Wait!" Flynn grabbed her arm before she could launch herself as foolishly as his commission had. "What is the matter with you? The goal here is not to die!"
She rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to die," she told him. "And you won't either if you come with me."
He stared at her in surprise, and not just because she'd asked him to jump off a cliff. "You...want me to go with you?"
"Sure." She smiled at him. "On a few conditions."
His eyebrows flattened out. And the world makes sense again...
"When we get out of here, you're going to show me around," she told him.
His eyes tried to boggle out of his head. "Around the Fire Nation?" Had he broken into Hades' personal stash or his favorite loony bin?
"No." Those overlarge green eyes rolled again. "The world, silly. We'll have to start from scratch. I haven't seen any of it. Oh!" She clapped her hands and danced in place. "We can start at the top and work our way down!"
"Right," he told her, keenly feeling the temperature as it continued to drop, "because that's so much more manageable."
She ignored him. "And then when I've seen everything, you'll take me back home and we'll be equal embers."
He stared at her. The mist had thickened around them. The Blue Spirits were getting closer. "And how is that even?" he demanded.
She smiled at him, bright and eager. She wrapped a long length of her hair around his back, but didn't tie it off. He thought it was her version of an offered hand. "For me saving you of course." She shrugged and ducked her head. "And for me not telling those spirit guards you kidnapped me."
"Wow." He stared at her. "They teach that kind of manipulation in fire school, or you just come by it naturally?"
Her expressive mouth thinned and twisted down. "Are you coming or not?" she asked bluntly.
Well, that was the question, wasn't it? Flynn looked back the way they'd come. It wasn't dark anymore, or empty. The mist billowing towards them filled the tunnel, blue lightning flickering through its depths that had the little hairs on his neck standing on end. They were close enough now he could make out shapes moving in the fog.
He growled as he grabbed the offered hair and tired it off tight enough to knot his stomach. "Fine, fine, I'll play tour guide for awhile, just get us out of here!"
She burst into giddy shrieks, her bare feet splashing freezing water up as she danced in place. "Oh, this is so great! I'm finally getting out of here! I want to see everything, everything, before they drag me back here."
"That'll be a lot sooner than you want if you don't get a move on," Flynn told her, eyeing the blue mist. "I'm starting to make out faces."
"Oh! We can ride the hopping llamas! And hog-monkeys! They don't like people riding them, but that's what makes it fun!"
He grabbed her shoulders and made her face him. "Yeah, you know what's not fun? Being interrogated by Hades!"
She had the nerve to laugh. "Oh, right. Hold on!"
He stared at her. "To wha-AHHHHHHH!"
"Wheeee!"
Tied together as they were, he couldn't help but follow her down when she jumped. Flynn screamed as he felt gravity grab hold and drag them down, the girl's bright hair a stream of gold in his face that obscured most everything else. His throat was burning, so he knew he shouted all the way down, but the only thing he heard was Blondie's high pitched squeal following them down like a ringing in his ears.
"Best. Day. Eveeeeeeeer!"