"We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters.
"Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"
Act V
Chapter 20
"Red and Ginger"
Behind the Egeskov Chapel, Princess Anna of Arendelle, whether she didn't hear Hans and Eugene's urgent warnings to stop, along with her Kristoff's strident mental calls, due to her singing, or just simply chose to ignore the men, keeps going.
The ginger braided girl was too excited to be the first to escape that dark, dank, smelly secret tunnel passageway as she pops her head out into the first glimpse of sunrise to intake a deep breath of the much desired fresh air.
"No right, no wrong, no rules for me! I'm free!" Her jubilant voice sings out the sure yet defiant phrase that her big sister once uttered in her own rebellious flight into the windy unknown. A giggling Anna acrobatically scrambles her lithe body and, little by little, pulls herself up the steep incline meant for legs much longer than hers. She sprawls herself across the grassy knoll behind the church in breathless triumph when she finally ascends to the surface.
"Ha ha! Fast as fast can be, you'll never catch – GASP!" The orangey-haired girl's joy to be out above ground under the open sky, was mixed with her secret relief to have found Mr. Hans Westergaard alive and well as she plops with relief like a sunflower angel on the sweet summery grass. All that, combined with her natural exuberance for life is rudely interrupted by the dark shadow of a sneering, scarred face. A repulsive stranger hovers over Anna with evil dark eyes that penetrated the foggy dawn with their malcontent.
"Au contraire, my songful little piece of chum. I've caught you like a fish out of water." Count Humperdinck Rügen clamps his hand over Anna's shocked, open gaping mouth. The bearded man leans over the wide-eyed surprised girl as his no longer six-fingered special hand claws around her struggling neck with a pleased, yet malicious look on his smug ugly face.
{"Kristly! It's a trap! Get out of here! There are a lot of them!"} Princess Anna, amidst her shock, had enough selfless presence of mind and deep caring to rather warn away her love from danger than call for him to rescue her at his own peril.
The Ice Harvester, barreling up the remainder of the tunnel in ten seconds flat after unceremoniously dumping Aged P from his back onto Eugene's grunting form, had absolutely no intention of heeding his new wife's command, this time.
But Hans Westergaard, seeing the pressing impending time, more sure of the layout, swifter on foot without the burden of Aged P that Kristoff had, and several paces closer to the exit, takes it upon himself to beat the blond man to it.
Hans bounds up the ancient stone steps two at a time and scales the grassy ledge at the dungeon's hidden entrance he had explored so many times in his youth, now still with the greatest of ease.
With an amazing back flip, the slim, trim and wiry Danish prince propels his agile body up to the surface level through the small shaft remaining before the flat heavy stone lid is fully in place atop the church cellar egress.
Hissing beneath his breath, Kristoff, with all due speed, just did not make it in time. The disconsolate big blond slams the full weight of his body to his broad shoulder against the heavy concrete cover. But after pushing with all his might which still doesn't budge the stationary closure barrier one inch, the stubborn strongman refused to give up.
So that left Anna above ground with only one hero remaining at her disposal.
Hans Westergaard quickly stands to his feet after he shimmied his thin form between the slid over stone cover and rolled onto the grass to his full six foot two height in the rising dawn. He squints his green eyes in the few glinting sun's rays through the daybreak fog, already well aware of who schemed this ambush.
He knew from experience that Count Rügen was the type who always planned ahead for his iniquitous machinations.
"So, the prodigal appears. You dare challenge me with an épée? I orchestrated this trap in your honor, Devil boy. You have fallen right into my clutches, at long last. "Count Rügen's dastardly embittered smirk makes Anna cringe beneath the large acrimonious man's squeezed arm around her neck in a chokehold.
Rügen had, early in the morn, already set a plan of action for Prince Hans' brainless horse, correctly named Sitron – who would always be a worthless lemon of a runt in Rügen's eyes, despite the fine large and muscular form that the small discarded foal developed into under his little itty bitty Prince's loving hands— to be drawn away.
Wily Rügen had timed the other annoying steed, Maximus' tortured demise to lure Sitron away from the cellar entrance he was keeping guard at. The Count did not wish to cause any unwanted noise of a struggle or an easy, nearby gunshot to alert their position to those imminently scheduled to emerge from below.
Of course, Rügen's correctly calculated that the foolish noble horse belonging to that unlucky thirteenth disowned Prince of the Southern Isles would make a heroic attempt, albeit in vain, to try to rescue a fellow equine crying for help in the Ladegården.
But Rügen did not foresee that stupid stallion would attempt to run across the moat in the darkness, so brainless it apparently confused the still water for land. Especially since Rügen had his men lower the drawbridge to entice the golden dun stallion's return to the stable along it. The grand master of evil vengeance certainly did not foresee when a pair of flying reindeer had swooped down to rescue the drowning steed.
No matter…
With a backup of a dozen of his most ferocious, faithful lackeys, diabolical Count Rügen came fully prepared for this early morning lie-in-wait as his minions quickly slid the heavy cement cover over the Chapel cellar exit to ensure no one else emerged uninvited.
"The more you fight, young prince, the tighter my hand squeezes around this little girl's neck. Or perhaps you would not mind to be rid of this pain you're anchored to. Pretty as she may be." Rügen threatens Anna, whose eyes slit defiantly at the pain of her constricted throat strugging for breath as Kristoff growls below the surface, pounding the stone walls.
Hans puts up his hands, dropping his sword as he allows Rügen's vindictive lackeys to rough him up bad.
"Hans!" Anna cries out as she watches the Danish Prince, due to her, take several hard blows directly to his abdomen where she remembers the deadly stab wound he endured was in the vicinity of.
KICKK!
And Princess Anna of Arendelle doesn't let the inattentive moment go to waste. It just takes Rügen's split second focus on Hans for Anna to physically kick and try to get herself out from being pinned by the neck under the evil arms of Count Rügen. The lead villain growls down at Anna's prone body thrashing against his grasp.
The 'damsel in distress' viciously power knees the nasty man in his thick gut, giving him a hard shove back.
"Take that, Scarface!"
Rügen's ugly countenance darkens as he offsets this pesky child's challenge by putting his full weight to press the peppery, squirrely princess down to the ground again. Now even angrier, his gnarled hand grips ruthlessly around her throat, squeezing hard.
Anna's wide open eyes see Hans suddenly come to life and begin to knock the stuffing out of the men taking turns using him for a punching bag as he uses their momentum to physically flip the villains over his broad, physically fit shoulders.
Great. Just me and Red. Again. I can't believe my luck! My life depends on that skinny, gorgeous, tricky jerk! Anna's jumbled, cheeky thoughts were more sarcastic than she honestly felt. But the lack of oxygen chokehold this bizarre creep was depriving her of as he had her pinned down to the grass could be blamed for her mental incoherent issues.
Without a second thought to his own safety, the redheaded Dane rushes forward, drawing his sword from its sheath in a textbook fencing advance.
"Master Rügen! Step away from that young woman, or I'll run you through! En garde!" Assessing the situation of over ten henchmen surrounding the secret exit's perimeter where Anna was subjugated by a madman's hand at her fragile neck, Hans raises the challenge to his Southern Isles fencing instructor with a competent passé feint of his sword.
"He's the one who's a devil, Hans! Go ahead and thrust! Never mind me!" Versed in fencing terms herself, Anna selflessly encourages her former rival to assail his evil adversary without fear of her own security.
What licentious treachery have you supplanted in this foolish girl's mind for her to be so willingly involved in this affair, Devil boy?
"And what kind of netherworld strange mysticism have your tentacles tapped into, Devil Boy?" Rügen's perfidious, depraved mind wondered at these mysterious twists concerning his despised arch nemesis little redheaded Prince which seemed to take a new disturbing turn.
"Anna! I refuse to endanger you!" Prince Hans argues with the brave young woman as the expert fencer continually staves off the lurching forward bloodthirsty henchmen all eyeing and rushing him with his threatened coupé and coulé of sword glisé deception and defense.
The evil villain plies his formerly polydactyl digits around Anna's jut out chin and defiant eyes glaring up at him as her irate teeth sharply snap at his fingers in vain. Rügen then wraps his other large hand around her neck in a stranglehold while trying to discern who she was to mean so much to the prince as he shoves her struggling form down to the ground.
'Anna?' Hmm…
Could this be that Arendelle princess who threw you over up in theNorth country? What is this female hysteria of insanity for to now defend you? You appear to have a baffling hold over the weaker sex, devil boy. Is this fondness for women your Achilles' heel, I wonder?
"Stop being so heroic, Red! Take that, Ugly!" After berating the oh-so-gallant prince, Anna takes it upon herself to forcibly spit a great big juicy amount of saliva right in her captor's eye as he was looming over her.
Seeing red as he drags Anna up by her braid and neck to stand up with him, Rügen violently tosses Anna aside for his right hand lackey to take over the ginger's captivity as he wipes her spittle off his growling face.
CLANG!
It took only one artful second for the Count to unsheathe his familiar sword as the evil man uses a fierce opening insistence attack on Hans' extended blade already in assault mode, once Anna was out of the picture.
Parry, feint, weave.
Even though it had been many years now since Prince Hans had honed his fencing blade against such an experienced challenger in the true art of swordplay, his every tendon was invigorated by the calisthenics.
Pirates with their cutlasses did not possess the finesse of the true spirit of a well-trained gentleman and his steel. Yet, the riposting classy young man had not lost his talented touch as he drives Rügen back with the surprising tensile power of a stop thrust his thin frame belied of his wiry muscular biceps and extensors.
But neither did the vicious fencing teacher lose his touch, although Count Rügen was by no means a gentleman in any sense of the word. Rügen ruthlessly diverges from the time honed rules of swordsmanship to thrust his épée's hilt at his youthful opponent well below the solar plexus-the recognized target infringement limit of 'hitting below the belt'.
Seeing stars that he thought had already gone out with the coming daybreak, the Danish prince momentarily stumbles to his knees on the ground, panting. Hans reels momentarily, stunned back by the uncouth attack to his vitals.
"Don't just stand there looking pretty, fencing by the rules and getting walloped, Red! You've got to play dirty with this loser, too! Cut off his balls!" Princess Anna crassly cries out the warcry. She had attended more than a few mountain men wrestling matches up in the hills when she often visited Kristoff in his northern digs last winter. There she met many sights and sounds of oft loud, often drunk with the warming akvavit, disruptive now and then, men. But the hard-working pioneers were basically good and honest and good people, though the rough language left a bit of an impression on the previously sheltered girl.
"Silence the wench!" Rügen shouts angrily at Hans' vocal new 'attack trainer', all while keeping a close watch on his winded opponent. The evil Count was making the decision to simply kill his despised archenemy here and now, or let the torture he had carefully planned continue its full run.
"Such coarse language, my lady. What would your dear sister say?" Though teasingly reprimanding, Hans finds Anna's humor encouraging as he swiftly rises to his feet, expertly swinging his sword around with his left hand. The proper fencing appel lunge is countered by his defending combatant. But his right hand half takes 'Coach Anna's' advice, as Hans intends to indeed, play dirty.
With literal dirt grasped from the ground in his long fingers, Hans throws the particles directly into Rügen's recently spit in eyes, the smudged mud sticking to his streaked face.
"Argh! You son of Satan!" The man cries out epitaphs loudly, even in the sacred holy church setting as Anna watches with wide-eyes when Prince Hans obey her command.
Hans uses his opponent's partial blindness to, all at once, knock Count Rügen back with a debilitating, well pinpointed kick with the leverage of his long legs to knock Rügen's own out from beneath them with an audible crack to the man's disjointed knee, and then grab the unbalanced sword away from Rügen with an adroitly twisted flick of the wrist.
In one fluid moment, Hans dashes towards Anna, thrusting the hilt of Rügen's own accosted sword to bash up into the henchman's soon bloodied nose, decking him squarely, to set Anna free.
"Wow." It's all an impressed Anna could say as she murmurs under her breath the muted exclamation after witnessing Prince Hans in action-packed fluid motion. Hans spins on his tall booted heel to join her side, leaning his back to her dizzy one for support as he continues to fend off each of the wicked lackey's predictable attacks.
"Was that impressive enough for you, my cage wrestling instructor?" The red-haired Prince smirks a playful rejoinder from where he was leaning against Anna. His adrenaline was up, along with a male ego to match at the successful defeat of his expert enemy even without the use of his trademark sword.
Although, ambidextrous dual handed Hans shows off close-up his swordsmanship to Anna by neatly slicing off an oncoming attacker's cape with one hand, entangling the shredded fabric around the crony's leg with his other hand holding Count Rügen's stolen sword as the tripped up henchman falls down, immobilized.
"It was okay. But you forgot the part about hitting him where it hurts!" The tantalizing ginger's taunting laughing eyes can't help but flash as she tosses the barb over her shoulder, where she and Hans were making a pretty good back to back team-up.
"Where, pray tell, did you learn such ill-mannered, un-feminine manners, dear Princess?" Hans felt quite at ease to exchange this mischievous banter with this girl he almost considered now as a fiery little sister.
"From my Papa, who taught me to fence and how to defend myself against strange men properly, of course." The peppery girl then proudly lays claim to Rügen's sword from Hans' hand to grasp it securely in her eager ones.
When, within a few seconds, the next attacker charges up to her flank side, Anna wickedly slices off his trousers at the hip with abandon, as if to show Hans how it's properly done. The shocked henchman's ripped pants slide down his legs as the beefy brute turned red in embarrassment trying to cover himself. Hans finishes him off by kicking the equilibrium lost man's backside down the steep hill the rest of the way.
Another pair of henchmen converge to attack Hans and Anna from either side. But as Hans and Anna simultaneously duck out of the way, the villains end up grappling one another in a shameful hug instead. Hans and Anna, on the count of three jump up to grab each man by the stumbling neck and bash their skulls together for instant double KO.
Anna and her ex-fiancé share a bemused glance. Despite being amidst danger, the prince and princess jovially start laughing at the crazy fun the unforeseen, impish pair of 'Red and Ginger' combined were having together at the henchmens' expense.
"Our mental synchronization, can have but one explanation!"
Thinking against her better judgment that Prince Hans may not be so bad to have around anymore, Anna can't help but start singing a fitting line from their old ditty. She half expected her partner at her back, just as he did back then, to join in the melodic duet.
But instead of finishing the fun-loving orangey princess' 'sandwich'as he had falsely pretended to once before, the Danish Prince's amiable smile instantly goes serious and grim.
"Anna! Watch out!" Hans cries out a warning from where his alert gaze saw several of the other minions hunker down with their rifles, at their Master Rügen's command, to take aim at the unruly pair.
"Hey!" The irritated ginger girl's eyes then bug out when her red-headed cohort none-too-gently pushes the boisterous princess back behind him.
With his arms outstretched, Hans takes a protective stance to shield Anna as competently as his thin, svelte form could manage an all-points body defense, readied to intercept any bullet's first impact.
POWW!
"Anna! Hit the dirt!" Landing a powerful punch on some of the more itchy fingered gunmen, Kristoff Bjorgman comes bounding around the side of the chapel with all the speed of an eagle, the fierce strength of a lion and the indignant fury of a young lover.
"Got your back, Sideburns!" Flynn Rider, too, had emerged from the shadows of the chapel's underground subterranean tunnel that he and Kristoff had together muscled opened from the inside.
Before any shots go off, the group of armed snipers were ambushed themselves by the two muscle-bound heroes who had furtively surfaced from the front section of Egeskov Chapel. Kristoff and Eugene had finally made their way through the stone barrier blocking the cellar door to crawl up through the vacant chapel itself, fists already flying.
{"Sven!"} Kristoff mental voice suddenly rings out clearly through the daybreak sky.
{"On it, Buddy!"} Already mid-flight on his way back to his watch post, Sven sends the communication out to Kristoff who had called out through their psychic link for his best friend to save his imperiled girl.
Once Kristoff and Eugene had combined their muscles to open enough of a crack in the large stone boulder blocking their exit from the dank tunnel shaft, the pair of men had raced with abandon through the Egeskov Chapel to get outside. Kristoff had sprinted forward full steam, sensing imminent danger on the surface from Hans' tense spike of trepidation and anxiety for Anna.
{"Anna! Keep your mind out of the clouds and get on Sven!"} While he was frantically trapped in that underground tunnel, Kristoff had been monitoring Anna's thought waves. The not very jealous newlywed had been astounded by the few stray compliments as to Prince Hans Westergaard's slim and trim, impressive physique and combat abilities from his own unpredictable new bride.
"But -!" Kristoff's Feistypants quite vocally preferred to stay and fight with the boys, but her young husband's insistent mental barrage and Hans' compliant quick lift of the piquant Princess of Arendelle onto Sven's lowered back, made it impossible for her to protest.
"Farewell, Anna. Next you see your sister… Tell her to forget about me." Looking upwards with a swift saluted wave in parting to his ginger-haired unlikely partner in crime, Hans' convivial smirk goes sad and melancholy thoughtful with the vision of lovely, unreachable Elsa of Arendelle in his head.
As his intelligent mind realized the eventual outcome of this endgame, Hans was grateful that at least Anna would be safe, as he knew Elsa would've wished above all else.
But saucy Anna of Arendelle would always protest being left out of any action.
"Don't you dare, Red! Kristoff Bjorgman! Sven! Stop this!" She screams out at all the male testosterone ordering her about, shaking her fist at Hans as Sven takes flight to make distance between them quickly.
{"Sven. Get Anna far away from here!"}
"Sven, don't listen to him! Turn around now and pick up Kristly!"
While perplexed by all of the back and forth bickering between his two most beloved people in the world, Sven follows the flight pattern of several friendly, radar-sensing night owls who had come to the Wind Whisperer's aid to help the reindeer avoid bullet by bullet as he takes off under gunfire.
Anna looks back pensively, desperately wishing to be part of the fight again beside her strongman true love, Kristoff.
"But Kristly!" Anna cries out in wild opposition, grabbing a hold of the reins to force a perplexed, mournful-eyed Sven to spin around. The fiery princess makes Sven hover back over to where Kristoff was on the ground.
With his furry head down, the affable reindeer accomplishes his signature lift of his partner onto his back to join Anna.
{"Anna, don't argue with me on this. Please. Go find us help, Baby."} Onboard Sven, Kristoff leans forward to softly kiss away the painful looking red marks at the nape of her neck where Anna was leaning back against his sturdy body as Kristoff sends off two psychic messages. The first was a loving kissed plea of a new husband to his lifetime partner and new wife to listen to his insight; the second a responsible appeal to his lifelong best friend.
{"Sven, I'm relying on you!"}
Anna turns her equally defiant, frightened and passionate head around to meet straight on with her love's pleading yet demanding eyes at the sentiment overheard through their soulful bond between the best friends.
From where she was on Sven's back, Anna watches her brave Kristoff make a daring dive from his in flight reindeer to take out hostile Count Rügen right where he was standing with an unforgiving blow to his gut.
With his large framed body, Kristoff mows down the mud-blinded villain who was swinging his produced revolver in the general direction of Hans' vulnerable back. Then the Ice Harvester rushes to join the battle skirmish with Eugene and Hans.
"Kristoff!" Anna screams aloud as Sven makes 180° spin around in an another attempt to climb the sky as the reindeer thoroughly comprehends Kristoff's sincere, utterly devoted and protective intentions for his beloved Anna through their powerful soulful link.
{"Trust me, Baby. We'll catch you up later."} This was the last encouraging communication Anna hears from her love as Kristoff mentally blocks her empathy to his raging battle emotions while Sven swiftly makes distance towards the rising dawn.
But with the collective firepower of the multiple riflemen all pointing their firearms at the three protagonist heroes, escape seemed highly unlikely for them.
But none of the three dashing young men with indomitable spirits were going down without a fight.
Prince Hans furtively signals above their heads for Eugene to take to the left, while the military trained strategist himself makes a rush for the right side of the enemy line, sword drawn.
POWW! SMA-ASSH!
Powerhouse Kristoff Bjorgman wordlessly takes the brothers' cue and charges the direct center of the firing squad of riflemen head-on. Since his Anna was still in gun range, the mountainman already figured he'd have to create enough interference to cover for Sven's in-flight departure.
Kristoff swiftly advances forward without much more than his sheer force of body strength to push through and punch out as many of the crowd of Rügen's cronies as his minions immediately converge upon the trio with their loaded weapons.
The usually not so violent, gentle giant Ice Harvester wished he had brought his trusty Saami Longbow with him to level the playing field a little, but it was still strapped to Sven's back, which was thankfully carrying his Anna securely away.
Facing the danger valiantly at his sides, Hans and Eugene continue to bash and smash and slice and dice several of the villains.
"This is this getting pretty routine for us, boys. We should sell tickets." With a few quick-handed flicked capes and gun grab, Flynn teases his compatriots as he and the dynamic youthful pair of Hans and Kristoff take the villains on all at once in a chaotic melee, rather skillfully working together.
"Subdue them!" Just clearing his mud caked eyes with some water from a lackey's canteen, Count Rügen cries out, now backhanded mopping the blood oozing from a broken bloody nose and split lip that this devilish prince and his inferior burly mountain man companion had the audacity to inflict.
But even sly Flynn's devious jousting baffling the lackeys, Kristoff's massive muscular intimating fists leveling the villains, with the vigorous assistance of Hans' deft swordplay keeping their opponents on defense were no matches for a half dozen armed men all collectively drawing their guns upon them now.
En masse, Rügen's gunmen cock their weapons back menacingly right in our heroes shocked faces.
{"Sven! Get Anna home! And don't look back!"} The Wind Whisperer mentally commands his reindeer best friend as logical Kristoff realizes that this just may have been a losing battle for the three of them…
"Don't shrink from a little blood splatter, gentlemen! Please do shoot point-blank to kill this loathsome pair of vermin! Just leave the little Prince for me." Nursing his throbbing ribcage where that inferior burly mountain man had ferociously bruised his ribs, Count Rügen hobbles forward to give the order to what was left of the men that Kristoff, Flynn and Hans had been taking down. The cruel man heartlessly commands his minions to summarily shoot both the hefty muscleman and the agile thief defying them.
Then, with a malicious sneer on his stormy, angry features, the Count trains the unsteady pistol he had collected from the grass upon his archenemy Hans' redhead to drop the naval sword that had been dexterously holding his minions at arms' length.
"Master Rügen! Please, I beg of you! If you let my friends go without harm, I promise to fulfill your every bidding from this moment forward. If you wish it, I will singularly stand before the Royal Court and plead guilty to every crime you lay before me. If you require my life, I will willingly give it in exchange for the safety and freedom of these good, blameless people." With a resigned look on his handsome, humble features, Hans Westergaard immediately forgoes his own dignity and pride and falls to his knees in a plea for Eugene and Kristoff's lives and liberty.
"Oh, this is too delicious to be true! The discredited, disgraced, disowned youngest son of the King to be put on trial and give a plea of guilt for whatever crimes I charge against him? This has worked out better than I planned." Flexing his left hand's lonely five fingers with the bitter remembrance of its sixth, vengeful and plotting Count Rügen salivates at the thought of physically and mentally torturing this unsavory child of Lucifer to be his licking boy.
And be invited to drag Hans Westergaard' name in the mud even deeper than it already was by the wicked boy's own doing, was just the icing on the cake.
"Yes. That may give me even far more pleasure than even letting the blood of this rabble be spilt today. You keep your end of the bargain, Devil Boy, and I may consider telling my men to withdraw their fire…" A leering Rügen lets the offer before Hans dangle in the air as he holds one halting hand to his minions, staving off their gunfire volley as Sven's distance in the sky starts to be falsified by crack shot high-powered riflemens' deadly aim upon.
"If you allow them to go free and leave Denmark alive without reprisals, I give my word as a gentleman to submit to your will, Master." Hans pledges his most honorable vow, one that he knew Count Rügen understood would keep this well-bred Prince honorbound.
"Like hell you will, Lillebror!" Eugene Fitzherbert's vehement voice rings throughout the countryside as he surprises both Hans and Count Rügen by living up to his sneak thief title.
Flynn Rider, amid the chaos of Kristoff's fist pounding and Hans' self-sacrificing attention grabbing soliloquy, had substituted himself with one of the waylaid dark caped henchmen he'd knocked senseless.
Flynn Rider appears out of nowhere, like a thief in the night, and grabs Rügen by the gun arm.
In the dawn's pale light, he wrestles with the vile man, Eugene vying for Rügen's loaded pistol that goes off several times up into the air, until its bullets were spent.
Hans seamlessly retrieves his fencing sword to fend off any minions rushing to his aid who were all too fearful to shoot their high-powered rifles lest harm their severe supreme leader as the gunmen each try to rush Eugene's assault instead.
Pleased that Eugene cared enough to risk his life to save him, Hans was also grateful to have Kristoff's sure strength as capable back-up support, though he did not wish to involve either of these good men in this enemy's personal vendetta against him.
Successfully holding the henchmen back as Eugene was surprisingly doing a fair job of busting up the Count, the former rivals stand back to back. With fists flying and sword combat readied against the remaining onslaught of hand-picked ruthless fighters to encircle them, perhaps the battle wasn't yet lost.
That is, until Aged P suddenly stumbles out of the chapel where one of Count Rügen's men had entered into the church to fetch the elderly man who made the unfortunate accident to peer curiously out the door at the fisticuffs battle taking place there.
"If you want this dirty old man to get his comeuppance right now, keep swinging, gents." A glowering, hunchbacked lackey, who had been with Rügen for decades, pulls a knife at Aged P's gulping neck. The threatening act causes Kristoff to lower his fists and Hans once again to drop his sword to the ground as the pair of gallant young man immediately submit in fear for the old man's life.
Now, as for Flynn Rider…
"Aw, old geezer! I was just about to knock this sadistic loser into the middle of next week!" Eugene complains of his stealthy victory being snatched by the jaws of defeat as the thief had used his talented digits while he and Rügen were wrestling on the ground to keep the firearm not only at bay, but just about to be dipatched in the Scarface's direction.
"Fine, fine. I promised Big Nose we'd save his old dad. Guess we'll have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court now." Eugene hangs his head and sighs, resigned to be a defendant at court trial for jailbreaking, or at least strike a plea deal for the light crime of aiding and abetting. Speechifying, the former crook drops his guard against the Count and sits up on the grass where the pair had been wrestling for Rügen's gun.
Eugene did not expect the gentlemanly Count to vengefully bash his face in with the butt of the empty handgun when he wasn't looking to flatten him to the ground beneath.
"Hey! The face is my calling card! Not that I can say the same for you, you revolting creature!" Eugene taunts and complains of the bruised jaw beneath his dark stubble that the nasty villain no doubt just implemented on the gorgeous face he was rubbing. Eugene unwittingly brought back up illicit recollections long years ago of a concealed, murderous past.
"Mark my words, thief. You will never go to court. I will be the one to send you to the middle of oblivion first, you cursed golden eyed son of Gypsy." Seething, Count Rügen's memories of a certain dark-haired, exotic eyed Roma Gypsy beauty in the streets of Paris overwhelm him with pure hatred, bitter retaliation and rancorous guilt to be unleashed upon her lost child.
Voracious with malice directed at the long dead ghost of Agnès la Cavalier, Rügen viciously grabs Eugene by the neck and starts strangling him just as he did her, bashing her bastard son's unsuspecting head to the ground over and over in an insane fury.
"No! Stop this! Storbror!" Hans vociferously cries out, already detecting this deep level of hatred – almost bitter guilt – in Master Rügen's maddened eyes every time he looked Flynn Rider.
So, Hans also realized that given the chance to, Count Rügen would try to ruthlessly kill his newest Storbror, and without a second thought or compunction.
But as Hans and Kristoff both struggle to help out brother and cousin, they were halted dead in their determined tracks by the collective firepower might of the Master's uniformed black hooded underlings at every desperate turn when they hear rifle after rifle cock in their direction. And our three heroes, plus Aged P, are caught standing in judgment before a relentless and unforgiving firing squad.
CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!
"Cease this violence to our citizens in this travesty of justice! In the name of the King of Prussia!" A low timbred voice, full of pompous authority, rings through the countryside as several uniformed men, mixed in with ten or so other less than savory individuals, come thundering across the rear Egeskov drawbridge.
"Count Rügen! Immediately unhand that man! I've just been informed that he is the Prince Consort of Corona!" Glad to have Count Rügen at a deficit at last, Captain Jorgensen of Egeskov adds his voice to a fellow Captain, of the Corona Guard, Schmidt's, with his unexpected one in rescue of Flynn Rider.
The tall and imposing chief law enforcement officer of Corona still held begrudging contempt for the criminal he had been chasing for years until one day the lucky rogue accosted Princess Rapunzel's heart in his thieving grasp.
But upright Captain Schmidt would do his duty for his beloved King Friedrich, even if it pained him to do it.
"But Captain Jorgensen! These men are colluding invaders, prison breakers, and violent disruptors who have committed unpardonable crimes against the Crown of Denmark! They must be punished!" With a deep-seated scowl directed down at Eugene, then over at Hans, wily Count Rügen was giving his fervent excuses with a scratchy voice to the Captain of the Egeskov guard until he is distracted by a disconcerting sight.
"Who are you?!" Angrily rattled to have a large painted face appear out of nowhere to pantomime for his hand to let go of his victim, Count Rügen is thrown off his game by the outlandish comical performer who doggedly continues to stick his face right into Rügen's, effecting a scowled scar in imitation.
The disconcerted Count removes his guilty hands from around Eugene's thankfully sturdy, thick neck to drop the despised crook. Flynn Rider falls into the arms of another strange, odd man who had rats on his head and shoulders, all fanning or patting at the unconscious sneak thief's cheeks to try to awaken his stunned, nearly strangled to death senses.
Rügen holds up his hands to halt his staggered back henchman, who were suddenly not only surrounded by several Corona uniformed guards, but also by strange men of all shapes and sizes, who had accompanied the Prussian Captain of the guard across the drawbridge.
The Snuggly Duckling thugs had, upon arriving through the Ladegården stables where the Captain of Corona had come to discuss matters with fellow chief Captain Jorgensen, had been alerted by Sitron.
Hans' horse had made quick friends with unicorn/horse lover Vladimir and had conveyed that there was trouble out back that needed their immediate attention.
Hans' able-bodied steed had been busy unlatching the locked stalls of the dozen Royal stalls of the first stable row that were filled with the special chosen stallions belonging to each of the Danish Princes of this Royal house. Soon, the curious Snuggly Duckling crew had rides to mount for each and every one of them to assemble the snobbish reinforcements Sitron proudly leads, with Captain Schmidt on his heroic back and his guard detail close behind.
Even Maximus, recovering nicely after his Princess nurse and well-trained vets had tended to his wounds and given the over-tranquilized steed stimulants, was, albeit slowly, able to hobble across the way. The stubborn horse insisted on coming to the rescue with Job on his back.
"Good to find you still be alive, t'ief." With his dark skinned Caribbean rider, the large white Percheron makes his way across the bridge to drool directly in Flynn's queasy ear, finally awakening the flummoxed man as Job smiles down at his fellow 'musketeer' with the reinforcements on both sides of the aisle that the reformed pirate first mate assembled back in Prussia.
"Max. Schmidt. Job. Guys. How's that for some flashy backup troops, boys?" Eugene smirks at Hans and Kristoff before he passes out into Bruiser's big healing expert arms.
"Aged P! Are you all right?! Big Nose and his sisters have been worried sick about you!" Vladimir urges his haughty horse over to his absent friend's father who was blessedly untouched amid all of violent melee of swinging fists and slashing swords and guns going off.
"Yepee. It's a shame that my old back gave out a while back. But yer good friend and his brother here have been real mensch to this old worthless abba, sticking by him through thick and thin. This is probably the last sunrise I'll ever see as a free man. Good it's a beauty. I probably won't be back to my old shop again. Tell Nozzy he'll have to fill in my shoes earlier than expected in the business." Aged P drones on as some of Jorgensen's men come to pick up the old timer to cart the accused away to sit atop a stallion with one of the guards.
The old Jewish jeweler continues to chatter in his thick Brooklyn accented voice as the guard horse was walking away across the drawbridge.
"But Captain, I had captured these men who pose a serious danger to our kingdom. That, in conjunction with arresting this crooked, evil jeweler our own Prince Rune has pressed criminal charges against, these three rascals were attempting to break out of prison. I'm sure you are familiar with the case Prince Rune had laid before you, and will be praised for bringing the illicit criminal to justice." A wheedling Count Rügen, with a little limped effort after the injuries that red devil boy had inflicted, walks up to Captain Jorgensen's horse. Rügen makes an attempt to persuade the Captain of the Guard to see his side of the story.
"These crimes must be addressed in the proper court of the King, my Lord. Which falls under my legal jurisdiction as the Captain of Egeskov's Guard. Have your minions stand down, Count Rügen. My men will take over from here." Captain Jorgensen, who never had any love lost for Rügen, the overstepping mouth and cousin of King Herbert, was pleased to pull rank and be the one giving orders now.
With the full backup of his equal counterpart in the person of intimidating Captain Schmidt of Prussia as his reinforcement, Jorgensen was emboldened.
"Men! Take the prisoners into custody for immediate trial!" Captain Jorgensen's own Danish trained forces scramble the field to disarm Rügen's men. The Count, seeing his limited options, chose prudence to bow to the greater force of public scrutiny – for now.
"I bow to your sagacity in assuring justice be served for these offenders, Captain. I trust I will be called upon to bear witness in your court?" The loathesome man brushes back his long waves of coiffed dark hair and twirls his mustache coyly.
"As you like." Jorgensen answers noncommittally cold, wishing to be rid of the odious man as soon as possible.
That's when Hook Hand's cold sharp steel snags threateningly against Rügen's sword sheath with the contentious clang of metal to metal.
"Oh, sorry. Slip of the hook." The rotund piano man with a musical dream 'accidentally' bumps into the evil man who gives Hook Hand back a portentous look.
"Just stay out of my way." The deep, even more gravelly voice drips with vile wicked venom as Rügen pushes past the Snuggly Duckling thug leader to enter the Castle through the Ladegården's darkened side entrance.
Captain Jorgensen directs his lieutenants to gather Hans and Kristoff to march while Captain Schmidt himself takes charge of hefting Prince Eugene onto Sitron to cross the moat on the shared saddle before him, as if he considered Eugene as an important personage.
"Hey Schmidt. I didn't think you cared so much." Flynn can't help but slide in the mocking tease at his longtime nemesis, causing Schmidt to roll his eyes.
"I'm simply taking you to get your just desserts, Rider. In a court of law and order. Certain words you have little knowledge of and less respect for." The large guard retorts snidely down at the would-be man in his grasp.
"Hmmm? I don't do dessert, Honey. Except my soft warm brownie all with extra whipped cream on top. Yummm. I hear there'll be fresh milk together with her breadbasket soon…" Half in a dreamy gaze fantasy of his lady love who was to be the mother of his child, Eugene murmurs in the Captain Schmidt's chest as the man rolls his eyes over Flynn Rider's captured groggy head.
"Why Princess Rapunzel prefers you, I have no idea." Schmidt murmurs sourly under his breath as the Prussian military man urges Sitron to return across the bridge towards the Castle entrance.
Partway across the drawbridge, Sitron catches up to where Hans and Kristoff were being prodded by some of the Egeskov guards in their march across the moat.
"Hello, old friend." Prince Hans' lyrical voice breaks his whirring mind's calculations to greet Sitron with a grateful smile for interceding earlier. With bitter, unsatisfactory belittling thoughts and anxiety as to how Aged P and Eugene and Kristoff were all to be treated due to their association with him, Hans was certain that his cold, unfeeling father of a King, nor any of his unfriendly, callous brothers would be inclined to be kind.
After all, he had had bad blood between them for as long as Hans remembered all of his life
That condition had not improved since last they met, knowing they would not be welcoming nor sympathetic to his accused crimes. He was sure how his twelve unkind older brothers would react to passing judgment and sentencing their youngest outcast brother whom they all blamed as a whole for their mother's untimely demise.
Oh Elsa, my precious snowflake. How did you become involved with such an undeserving wretch like me?Please let that beautiful chimera have been just been a fantasy. Please Lord, don't let my Queen be here to witness my second disowning, shame, and no doubt, death sentence. Let her presence here have been a mere figment of my imagination! Elsa! I couldn't bear that you would witness it, most of all! I want you to remember me as last we met, your devoted, admiring protector from afar.
Hans' foremost fear was the thought of losing Elsa's undeserved good opinion of him.
As the glum redhead marches in step towards Egeskov's postern side entrance courtyard, Sitron nuzzles his wet horsey muzzle against Hans' cheek, sensing his boy was emotionally and inwardly in turmoil on so many levels.
"Break it up, Your Former Highness. You're a prisoner now, not a Prince. Remember that." Pulling back Sitron's reins that harshly, Captain Jorgensen looks down his high horse nose at this final son of King Herbert who had been disgraced by his Royal Majesty, officially two summers ago.
The squared jawed, neatly trimmed, bearded Danish Army man had a strict sense of justice and extent of learned justice that he, much like his equal rank Prussian head soldier of their respective kingdoms, held lawbreakers in disdain.
Royal bloodline or no, they would stand before the court trial and take immediate sentencing like any other criminal.
As the pair of stern, justice minded Captains nod to one another across the drawbridge, corraling Aged P, Hans, Kristoff and Flynn Rider in tow between their entourage, Snuggly Duckling men and all, Kristoff gives Hans a wan smirk at their uncanny ability to get out of one close call, just to step right back into another one again.
But now, at least with a fair court trial and hearing, where all sides would be fully explained and logically worked out as wise Grandpabbie ruled the troll counsel with, just as Bulda and Cliff and every other elder troll taught their tall blond adopted son of the trolls growing up. After sending Anna a soulful communication to 'lie low and stay out of sight until this all cleared up', Kristoff was a little more at ease as he competently walks forward.
"We'll just tell the truth and everything will be fine, you'll see." Walking alongside Hans, Kristoff slowly attempts to calm the redhead's obviously rattled nerves as the pair are ushered into Egeskov's opulent halls.
"In Egeskov, justice is as swift and unforgiving as the blade of that knight's sword." Prince Hans responds in a depressing demeanor that grows even more pressing with each heavy step his tall booted form took into this Renaissance Castle's imposing interior.
Hans' eyes direct Kristoff's to glimpse a full-length wall painting of an ancient Danish conquering knight righteously beheading an enemy in a bloody horseback battle scene full of violence and mayhem.
GULP.
Kristoff self-consciously gulps as he involuntarily reached for his neck, but his hands, like Hans', were tied behind his back.
While similarly ill-fated deer, bison, lions and bears of all shapes and sizes from every part of the globe which had already lost their heads at the end of a Dane's sword stare down at the four men about to go on trial, with forlorn, impregnable stares…
Downstairs, a young maiden was totally oblivious to the high drama played above, awash in a cascade of bubbles…
"'Oh, sing sweet Nightingale, sing sweet Nightingale, high-igh-igh-high above me. Oh, sing sweet Nightingale, sing sweet Nightingale…'"
Trilling through her scales in a most melodic mellow manner, just as her Mama Idun had taught her the Cornish folksong growing up learning her piano lessons, Queen Elsa of Arendelle had been dutifully polishing the silver service for tomorrow's garden party for the past half hour or so.
After the platinum blond and Daisy the scullery maid had been ordered by pinched face Mrs. Folmer to wash and polish the silver service, the pair of young women worked at washing up for hours. The silver polish certainly gave shine to every one of the 8000 piece table cutlery silver set until they gleamed back at her reflection, and Elsa offered the sleepy and yawning young maid whose head flopped to the table more than once that she would finish up.
It only made sense, for Elsa was unable to sleep herself after her somewhat frightening, thoroughly thrilling evening full of excitement and revelations.
But the more Elsa thought about it, the less she believed her own pounding heart.
Was Prince Hans – the young man she was desperately seeking – truly out there in the darkness? Was it truly he who had rescued her from the clutches of that lecherous older brother of his, Prince Didrik? Or was Elsa herself in such a tizzy to wish for him, so enamored of her handsome hero, that she simply made up the fictionalized image of Hans being responsible for stopping her attacker from ravishing the innocent young Queen?
Am I truly that much in love with you, Hans, to alter reality just have you be a part of my world? Am I that pitiable? The rationalist in Elsa Bernadotte scoffs at her runaway imagination.
In cold harsh reality, Elsa recognized that she had already investigated every corner and nook and cranny of this far-off foreign kingdom's Castle, only to come up with nothing more than a list, a letter, and a portent of old ghosts from her Hans' past life there.
Wait…'MyHans'?
All of the pent-up disappointment at the bleakness of her goals, fear of loss of self control and anxiety of rejection of yesterday evaporates now in an ephemeral bubble. Elsa realizes that her love exceeded all her fears, and that made her glad inside. If only in the dream world, the wish her heart made for her Hans Westergaard to appear as her knight in shining armor, gave Elsa's once lonely heart hope and cause to sing.
So this is love? So this is what makes life divine…
Yes, Elsa could no longer deny that she loved Prince Hans in that special way that the lonely unique girl never thought she could allow herself to. It was all because of him that she could even dare dream to achieve that far off wish for a normal life through an extraordinary and unexpected bond.
"'Oh, sing sweet Nightingale, sing sweet Nightingale, high-igh-igh-high above me. Oh, sing sweet Nightingale, sing sweet Nightingale…'Finishing her washing up, Elsa recalls when she had washed dishes for the first time in her life, with his arms around her thin wispy waist at that ship's wash basin…
Drifting in and out of memories, the beautiful platinum blonde's pitch perfect tone glows at all the scenes of their previous encounters that brought Queen Elsa of Arendelle to slowly, reluctantly but undeniably come to love Prince Hans Westergaard. All of his heroic endeavors, the genuine selflessless he had shown time and time again, his intellectual astute mind, and his gorgeous voice, only matched by his beautiful eyes and perfect physique –
At that especially potent memory when the sheltered young woman had quite innocently glimpsed dashing Prince Hans' stunning rear end in his breathtaking not altogether, the young woman mentally slaps herself.
Her pinkish cheeked pretty face reflected back at her in the silver platter a visage of a woman hopelessly in love. Her icy fingers had polished and re-polished it so many times that it glimmered and shone like an icy lake she froze catching the early rays of sunlight.
Elsa's girlish giggles and swaying body imagining herself ice skating and dancing flawless glides and pirouettes into his arms on that frosty lake with a certain handsome Prince on Egeskov's fjord, abruptly catches sight of an older woman's curious eyes staring quizzically back at her.
"Hello…Elsie, is it? I am glad to find you here. Are you the only one awake, dear? I know it is frightfully early. I didn't wish to bother Mrs. Folmer nor Mrs. Patmore, what with all the festivities they have to deal with. I did not wish to disturb them at this ungodly hour, but I do have quite an urgent request, that perhaps you can help me with, my dear?" Princess Emma of Hanover enters the kitchen with her posh English accent and stately deportment in quite a rushed frazzle.
"Oh!" With a start, Elsa jumps from her mind's wandering as she nearly drops Queen Louise's expensive silver service's teapot to the kitchen floor.
So startled was she to have a surprise guest of this caliber, Elsa's inherited cryokinetics catch the precious silver teapot mid air, lest the valuable, antique piece was irrevocably dented.
The teapot, aglow with her ice powers, responds to her gifted will's command and floats midair through the empty kitchen before Princess Emma's astonished, taken aback eyes.
But before either a flustered Elsa or confounded Emma have the chance to utter a single word, a third female voice rings throughout the quiet, vacated kitchen stealing both their attentions.
"Elsa! Elsa! He's here! I've seen him! But we have to go, right now! Oh! Emma! – I mean… Good morning, Princess Emma. I didn't expect to find you here…" Princess Rapunzel of Corona stammers as she adjusts her excitable whisper to a more polite, though flushed a little, into a timid volume as she races into the downstairs kitchen with Pascal on her shoulder.
The Prussian Princess had been so ecstatic to be the purveyor of such happy important news to Elsa that she rapidly, carelessly, rushed down to the kitchen when she found Elsa not present in their room on the second floor.
But the shaggy short, cocoa brown haired young women was dumb struck silent when the guilty look on her sweet little face realizes that she may have just said too much to be let off so easily from where she was still clutching Elsa's hands, shaking them enthusiastically.
"'Elsa?' Princess Rapunzel, you cannot mean that this young woman is your cousin Elsa, the Queen of Norway?" At first in total confusion, the plump matronly woman with graying curled hair, and now harried British Royal begins to try to string all pieces of this most perplexing puzzle together.
Calm and collected, regal Princess Emma of Hanover glances from pretty youthful face to face, seeing the familial resemblance, and the closeness between the pair of equals. Astounded by her outlandish conclusions, Emma, in her lavender dressing robe, takes a step backwards to collect herself before speaking again.
"Why is the Queen of Arendelle doing dishes, mopping floors, and polishing silver in my top kitchen like a mere scullery maid?" Flabbergasted, Emma's wrinkled eyes cringe at the very thought of being served tea by the Norwegian monarch's elegantly pale hand, and she shrinks to think how her housekeeper had been working their northern neighbor's Royal sovereign to the bone cleaning fireplace grates, shining boots and scrubbing dishes as a servant obscured in the downstairs portion of their Egeskov household.
The born and raised snobbish Royal Princess quavers momentarily before the pair of guilty bitten lip maidens staring back at her with their wide blue and green eyes.
"Oh, dear. Please have a seat, Your Highness." Elsa, after quickly rubbing her silver polish covered hands on her white serving maid's apron, puts a comforting arm around the slightly portly, older woman. She helps lower Princess Emma to the kitchen chair she herself had been sitting on earlier while the woman recuperates from her early morning shock.
Just then, finally catching up to Rapunzel's faster pace, Olaf chooses to wobble into the kitchen. The gregarious snowman, very friendly-like, goes right up to Emma to gives his heartening intro: "I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs." With a disturbing smile and branch arms extended up to the stunned speechless Princess' overwhelmed shock, Olaf pats her hands folded neatly on her astonished lap and blinks up hopefully.
"You've really seen… Hans?" Giving Emma time to absorb Olaf in her own quiet way, in a tender whisper made of fragile ice, Elsa turns back to Rapunzel, with the hope beyond hope question in her big, begging blue eyes.
"Yes! But we have to hurry if we're to catch up with him and Eugene." Rapunzel nods exuberantly at the fruits of their - at last! - successful search for Elsa's missing, handsome Prince Charming. Rapunzel giggles gleefully as she watches cool Elsa's flustered face go all deliriously dreamy. The cousins squeeze one another's hands like a pair of lovesick schoolgirls.
"He was real…" Elsa murmurs under her breath, feeling as light-headed as if she were waltzing on a cloud covered, filmy dream.
Rapunzel was glad to see the soft side of her prim and proper cousin that she rarely had seen before in Queen Elsa's regal deportment. It somehow made the blonde even more accessible and sympathetic and sweetly lovable.
"Are you young ladies referring to Prince Hans of the Southern Isles? You see, Queen Elsa, that is, in part, the very reason I am here. You may call me, Emma. How do you do?" The polite, polished Englishwoman - ignoring Olaf's surreal existence to maintain her sanity at this early 5AM hour - states the niceties in between rummaging about in the foreign kitchen cabinets for pots and pans. Orderly Princess Emma was too busy to have let the shock of the appearance of a helpful talking walking snowman in the kitchen ruffle her serenity much.
Besides, from high-class to low, Emma was still basically a cool under stress Brit with a stuff upper lip.
"My husband, Prince Kaleb, was just awakened by the Captain of the Guard to serve as chief magistrate in a court being held in the throne room in approximately five minutes. I have come to collect coffee for my poor husband and his other brothers, rudely rousted from their beds, who will serve as the ruling jury for the trial." The older woman was herself not so quite coherently speaking as she continues to search around the cupboard for proper cups and saucers. She was purposefully overlooking Olaf underfoot, pretending as if he were not there to perplex her methodical mind.
Princess Emma had not made coffee in a very long time, but she prided herself on the ability to at least imagine she could strive to easily make it herself. After all, she could not ask the monarch of Norway – for whatever reason she was here - to serve in her kitchen any longer and fill out a rush order for coffee and tea.
"Oh, where does Mrs. Patmore keep that coffee grinder?!" Discombobulated with all of the novel gadgets surrounding her, Princess Emma was more of a nuisance to herself. Nonetheless, she doggedly keeps clattering through the drawers and pantry that she, as a fine lady, was quite foreign to.
Elsa and Rapunzel exchange glances, then begin to help laughable Princess Emma collect what was needed for coffee and tea service.
"I'll definitely find the coffee grinder!" Olaf pleasantly offers, though the eager snowman didn't know a coffee grinder from a teakettle.
"Princess Emma—" Elsa begins to dare to ask the query.
"Yes, dear Queen Elsa?" She answers immediately, rather in distraction whilst struggling to open a tin of tea leaves.
"May I ask, what has this to do with Prince Hans?" Elsa had guardedly worded her phrasing, though in her gut she was having that sinking feeling the response would not be a good one. The Ice Queen tries to keep her cold chill down to a controlled level, busying herself with boiling the water on the stovetop she lit.
"Oh, didn't I say? My, it is frigid down here in this kitchen so early in the morning! I'll have to sanction some more coal and firewood for poor Mrs. Patmore to not freeze her talented hands slaving over our morning meals in this chilly environment!" Pleasant Princess Emma says with a chuckle, not quite all there yet in this still early 5 o'clock hour. The older woman in a frantic tizzy gives Pascal a congenial smile and nod for supplying a spoon to the utterly lost in the kitchen Royal.
With a touch of ice magic, Elsa effortlessly wrenches open the tin of tea leaves that Emma thankfully discovered to busy her virtually ineffective hands with something she understood how to do.
"I'm afraid to have to warn you, Rapunzel dear, that the friend you have been seeking, Prince Hans, is among the men going on trial for crimes of sedition against the Crown of Denmark." Emma finally admits in passing as Rapunzel helps her find cups for the coffee.
"What? Why!?" Rapunzel blurts out the question, at the same time a pallid Elsa, nearly dropping the bucket of freshly squeezed milk that she had chilled earlier, gasps out "No!"
The tall blonde clutches her instantly frozen hands to her frosted heart at the serious charges being labeled against her missing prince.
"I too find it unbelievable that any member of royalty would do such a thing. And though I have only had passing acquaintances with Prince Hans a few times in the past, he appeared to be a fine young gentleman, but it seems that he and his cohorts have been red-handed captured by Count Rügen – King Herbert's cousin and trusted representative, you see – in an attempt to help a criminal accused of precious gemstone larceny escape from our dungeon prison." Emma pauses when Rapunzel audibly gasps at the revelation that her sticky fingered love had been taken into custody.
"Yes, shocking, isn't it? It seems an elderly jeweler has been accused of dealing in fraudulent wares sold to young Prince Rune, thus causing much international turmoil between our kingdom and the Czar of Russia whose daughter Rune is – pardon me, was - engaged to." Emma explains as she brews her large pot of tea, letting Pascal stir with a spoon as she speaks.
"I just can't possibly understand all the fuss so urgently on this day of all days! How very inconvenient of Count Rügen and Captain Jorgensen to tear us from our beds on the very morning of the King's celebration." Proper, orderly and snobbish, Princess Emma was more concerned with disrupting the King's 70th birthday party than having one of his sons – albeit the disowned, unwanted one – on trial for such a serious criminal allegation as sedition against the crown.
"Emma, you have to get us up there! Please!" Rapunzel, quite familiar with personally making coffee as it was one of her over-caffeinated Eugene's favorite beverages at all hours of the night, had taken charge of the coffee making, once Olaf had returned from grinding the found beans. The snowman was covered with more black coffee grains on him than had been captured in the grounds bucket. But he did his best.
Her coffeepot percolating, Rapunzel takes the initiative to fervently ask her new friend in an older Princess for audience at this court trial about to take place.
"I am sorry Your Majesty, Princess. But it's unheard in Egeskov for women to attend a court trial. It simply isn't done." Emma answers quite stuffily, set in her ways as she prepares her tea as expertly as every good British girl knew how. Meanwhile, Elsa had been breaking her icy crust and straining the fresh cream she had brought in and boiled, then quickly chilled the not so homogenized milk that she hadn't had the time to do earlier.
"It's unheard of for us women do a lot of things." The Ice Queen makes her point as she struts her stuff with determined vigor and energy. Elsa smoothly uses her 'magic' frost cryokinetics to not only pour the strained cool milk pail into the fine china porcelain creamer on the table, but also deftly weave and orchestrate all of the mystically dancing in the air utensils and shivering in place saucers to be stacked with their cups on the shining silver tray at her icy command.
"Is the coffee ready yet, Emma? Can I be of any assistance? Oh, it appears that you have quite a few able helpers, already. Good morning, Princess Rapunzel. It's so nice to have you here with us, Queen Elsa." Princess Frederika of Radziwell, second in line Prince Anders' wife, had been secretly listening in on the shocking conversation for the past few minutes and chose this opportune moment to burst in. The Polish princess had come down to the kitchen to lend Emma her support as next eldest sister-in-law, and to inform Emma that the trial was already underway.
"I've heard all about your magic from my brother who had visited Arendelle two years ago. You are a remarkable young woman." The sprightly Polish Princess, though similar in age to Emma, was far more cunning and lively than her stuffy and tidy older sister-in-law. Perhaps it was erudition from her years of learning from her equally cunning and clever mate to subtly influence others.
But even before she met fine-looking, ruling party government ambitious Prince Anders of the Southern Isles, easy to smile Frederika was born a bit more pliable, than simply wise. She had been around her Prince Anders long enough to be well-versed in making manipulated areas work to her advantage.
And, though her sweet ringlets and innocent white flowers always placed in her hair belied that quick wit, Frederika of Radziwell was much more wily than any of her other Westergaard sisters-in-law when it came to bending the rules in her favor, with a saccharine coating of syrupy sugar on top.
"You are as brilliant and beautiful as I've heard, Queen Elsa. It is an honor to finally meet you." Princess Frederika may have had a vested interest in meeting her husband's former first choice targeted fiancée, the Princess of Sweden, named Idun, who rejected him over a quarter century ago. But with Idun sadly deceased, the Polish Princess was at least curious to meet that charming woman's infamous, fascinating daughter as the next best thing.
"We'll get you there, my dears. Don't you worry your pretty little heads, girls." Once considered the catch of the season for her sparkling personality and winning charm, Princess Frederika's charismatic personality garners a smile from a worried Rapunzel and an agitated Elsa, at last.
Frederika, like a dear old aunt, pitches in to help pour out the percolated coffee that Denmark was well known for. She begins to stack several of Mrs. Patmore's famed kringle pastries, kanelstang and direktørsnegl chocolate cinnamon rolls, and snegl strudel danishes onto a glass plate that she adds to the tray that was awaiting the coffee and tea to finish brewing.
"Lesson number one you may probably have already heard from your own dear mothers this old idiom, tried and true." With twinkling eyes, Frederika wags her finger in the air like a mocking old mother hen, putting on quite a performance with her entertaining faces and just as amusing modulated voice. "'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.'" The charming alto, musically voiced Polish Princess says in a conspiring whisper, directed for Elsa and Rapunzel's ears as she hugs each girl close as if she'd known them all their lives.
"You see, my Anders is quite fond of dipping these in his coffee each morning." Princess Frederika brandishes a Danish butter cookie that was in the shape of a pretzel with its extra coat of course sugar browned on top.
As an upstanding Conservative in the recent successful movement to overthrow the Liberal regime of Parliament, this political son was the driving force behind the Schlesweg-Holstein question of autocratic rule. The King's Chancellor, Head Cabinet member, Minister Anders Westergaard may have been cold and ruthless in his business and political dealings, but the cool-headed man had taught by example many of the tricks of the trade of the sweetened deal to his wife of 24 years. And what she learned most of all over the years was how to handle men with honey more than vinegar, having more influence on his politics than the Chancellor realized.
After all, there was a good woman behind every man in that field as well as all others.
"But the sure way into his mind is through the windows of his eyes and ears." The engaging Princess adds in her lilting voice, letting down Elsa's neat bun into a more stylishly mussed, long tailed and shimmering blonde braid.
The four women in the room stare from behind at the beautiful blonde Norwegian Queen's enticing features and demure gaze in the dinner tray's silver mirror, as 'Lesson number two' is set into motion by the masterful politician's wife. Princess Frederika remembers, in the days of long ago and faraway, when she could turn a young man's head to do anything she desired with just one charming and disarming, engaging smile.
Much like the beguiling one etched on Elsa's lovely face as she immediately blushes at the mere thought of reuniting with her dashing Prince again…
Autumnal greetings, Frozen friends!
Did you enjoy that chapter? It started with quite an adventure for Anna & Hans especially, AKA 'Red' & 'Ginger' – My tongue-in-cheek salute to the greatest dancing pair that ever graced the silver screen of olden days, Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers.
Fred & Ginger's series of classic comedies/romance were some of the finest examples of legendary ballroom dancing combined with out and out hilarious sparring matches of wills, much like our feistypants Princess Anna vs her bitter rival/enemy/combat partner Prince Hans in their rollicking 'dance'. Check those classic, zany good fun movies of Fred & Ginger out, if you've never seen them! They're a hoot! ^0^
As was this funny choice of a chapter title, I think! Ginger spirited Anna's combative, very vocal relationship with 'Red' Prince Hans is fun to write. I hope you liked their part as much as I did! ^_^ Snuggly Duckling guys and Captain of the Guard Schmidt and Maximus to the rescue! Kind of...
And then in the latter half of this chapty, Rapunzel gets to tell a singing 'Sweet Nightingale' / 'So this is love' singing maid Cinder-Elsa of Hans' appearance here in Egeskov, at long last! Unfortunately, cutting their joy short, Princess Emma must inform the dreamy girls that Hans is indeed here, but he's up for trial! Wow! There's a twist!
Yeah! Elsa knows Hans is here! Let's see how wily Princess Frederika's plan works for the ladies to sneak into the King's court to see him on trial for the serious, traitorous crime of sedition...
All sort of drama is afoot here as 'Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love" continues.
Thanks for reading! Please give your kind reviews!
God bless you!
HarukaKou