Ignition
A Wale of a Tail
A dark craft soared over the water, the drone of its massive engines matched only by the thunder of the sea as it rushed in to close the sudden canyon spreading like a wake behind the impossible sight.
At least, that's what anyone standing on the coast of Wales witnessed, like a red haired queen and her kingly husband.
"Eric? What is that?" she asked, holding a hand up to shield her eyes against the setting sun.
"I do not know, my love," the king, Eric, replied in confusion.
"It flies much like a bird, yet sounds like a storm," the queen commented.
"Whatever it is, it is quite fast," Eric observed. "I wonder how long it will take to slow down once it reaches its destination?" he mused.
Both royals experienced the supreme shock most felt when seeing this craft power down the primary drive system. With a loud crack it abruptly stopped in midair as if it had never moved before, the canyon of ocean behind it closing with a final roar.
"Do you think it heard us, Eric?" she asked.
The object answered before her husband could by rotating towards them and resuming its flight above the sea, albeit at a speed which did not open up the water behind it.
The king gulped. "I believe so. We should go inside," he replied, beginning to take a step backwards.
The queen waved to him absently. "The barrier my father put up will protect us. Fear not, Eric."
How wrong she would be proven in just a few minutes when the craft arrived.
-LB-
"Go fish!" Anna said, grinning at her twin across the table.
Arianna groaned and reluctantly pulled a card from the deck. "I'd swear you were using your power to cheat, Anna, if I didn't know you would never do such a thing," she complained.
Anna just beamed at her.
Elsa sighed at her sisters' constant banter. "Arianna, got any… sevens?" she asked coyly, peering at the youngest sibling over her cards.
Arianna stared agape at her. "How, Elsa? You've nearly cleaned us out!" she decried, despite offering up her lone Seven of Hearts.
"You really shouldn't breathe on your cards, you know," she idly commented while accepting the tribute. "It makes certain areas of the card, the ink specifically, hotter than the rest."
Arianna glared at her, eye twitching. "You little sneak!" she accused. "This was supposed to be a game sans powers!"
Elsa shrugged. "I can't turn off my cold vision, Ari. You know this."
Arianna sighed and looked to her hand. "Yeah, I know," she admitted. "Doesn't mean I have to like it when you-"
Whatever she was going to say was cut off by the proximity alarm of the jet. "Magical field detected," it spoke.
Arianna dropped her cards and put her head into her hands. "Just one day. That's all I ask. One day without a new magic signature."
Anna glanced between her twin and the cockpit's controls amused. "Ain't you gonna get that?" she asked sweetly.
She received a death glare for her efforts. "How powerful is the signature?" Arianna asked the jet.
"Multiple signatures detected underneath a high level cloaking and defense field. The signatures are all Class 6 or below. However, the power levels necessary to pierce through the cloak suggest at least a Class 20 being powering them."
Arianna's eyes bugged out. "Heeelllooo. Class 20?" she asked, to confirm she'd heard correctly.
"At the least. Probably much, much higher," the computer replied.
"Class 20?" Elsa asked.
Arianna grumbled something incomprehensible. It sounded a lot like 'suck up add soles', but Elsa couldn't be sure.
The computer stepped up to answer her. "A Class 20 energy signature indicates the presence or influence of what most people would call gods," it explained.
Anna's eyes bugged out too, exactly like her twin's had a moment ago. "Gods? Like, Thor, Odin, Zeus? Those kinds of gods?"
Arianna nodded at the same moment the computer supplied an answer. "While those entities have so far eluded detection, if they exist, they would be Class 20 or higher."
Elsa's face was whiter than usual. "Gods? Should we really go poking around with this thing?" she pointed out.
Arianna leaned back and sighed. "If you mean for fear of their power, that wouldn't be an issue. This jet has more than enough defenses against a god. Even if the being somehow maxed us out, Ignis and the Hand are but a portal away," she reasoned.
"Oh," Elsa rescinded.
"As for the morality? That's not my call," she continued. "You and Anna would have to decide."
Elsa raised an eyebrow at the same time her sister asked "Since when?"
Arianna rolled her eyes. "The location of the signatures is outside the bounds of Arendelle's jurisdiction. My job is to protect the Royal Family. Rapunzel is our cousin; that makes Corona part of Arendelle's jurisdiction for my purposes. I have no mandate to protect whoever these people are, at least in the eyes of international law," she explained.
Elsa's eyebrows rose. "I wasn't aware you had studied our laws that thoroughly, Ari," she commented.
Her face darkened rapidly as she spat a name. "Weselton," she stated. "I will not allow them to have a hold on what I do legally. They could use something I screw up on to call in the rest of the nations and depose you, Elsa."
The Queen was shocked at her answer. "What nation could stand against us with your technology?"
Anna gaped at her sister. "Elsa!" she scolded, "Are you getting ideas of world domination?!"
Elsa looked offended. "No! Of course not. I'm just pointing out how the other nations of the world would see it, is all."
"None could, but they would never stop," Arianna explained. "Leaving us with three possibilities; surrender, withstand or retaliate. My tech allows both of the latter options to be effective, but I doubt our citizens would like life under a shield dome. They'd also hate us for retaliation. And I will never surrender any of us to a legal system in which Weselton has an ounce of sway."
-LB-
"It has not stopped, my love," Eric said, pleading with his wife. "Please Ariel, let us go inside."
Ariel sighed again. "Eric, my father created the barrier. There is no power in the world capable of bypassing it."
Eric wasn't too sure about that. "Ariel, I do not pretend to understand what your father did, but is it not supposed to hide us?" he began.
Ariel nodded. "That is correct. He told me it would hide Melody and I from those who could sense we aren't human."
"Then why," Eric tried, grasping his wife's hands so she would face him head on, "would that object, the thing that flies without wings, be coming here?"
Ariel mused this over in her head for a while. Eric had a point. They were just a small kingdom in Wales; why would an impossible object pay attention to them?
Unless…
"Eric," she gasped, almost panicking. "What if that object somehow can see me? See Melody?"
Eric's eyes widened. "You mean..?"
Ariel nodded in confirmation, a grim frown on her face. "I am sorry for not listening to you earlier, dear. We must contact my father."
With that Eric breathed a sigh of relief. His wife was headstrong; that much he knew. It was one of the reasons he loved her so much. Thankfully, she would eventually listen to reason these days.
The King and Queen of a small part of Wales returned to their castle at a quick jog, hoping her father could arrive before the object did.
-LB-
"Magical transmission intercepted. It has been intercepted by the Network and is awaiting your review," the jet announced.
"A cry for help, perhaps?" Anna asked, remembering the criteria for interception.
Arianna shook her head. "We are almost to a suspicious castle protected by a deity and suddenly a transmission is sent out over magical means? They're trying to call for help all right. It's just for help against us."
"They were trying to contact the god that set up their shield, weren't they?" Elsa guessed.
"Most likely," came the hurried reply. "Jet, please trace both the transmission source and destination."
"Acknowledged. Source has already been identified. Message originated from top floor of the castle we are approaching. Tracing destination now…"
While the trace ran Arianna turned back to her sisters. "Alright gals, we might be facing a threat here. I don't know these people, so we're doing this the careful way. You both need to charge your Defenders. I'm not taking any chances with your lives," she commanded.
Elsa grumbled but nodded, reaching a hand to her neck. Her hand visibly flared with ice blue light as she poured her own magic down into the capacitor of the Defender.
Anna huffed in protest. "You shouldn't assume it will get violent, Ari."
Arianna growled. "Charge. Your. Defender," was her only response before she spun back to the cockpit and prepared to deal with the shield.
Anna sighed. She did as Elsa did, despite glaring at her twin's head.
"Trace completed. The destination should be hundreds of feet above the ocean floor in the middle of the Atlantic, but nothing is there," the Jet announced in a confused tone.
Arianna chuckled. "Another cloak most likely. Shift satellites ten through thirty over to this thing. I want to know what is down there."
"Acknowledged. Satellites changing position. Estimated time until anti-deity pulse can be generated: thirty minutes."
Arianna sighed. "Let's go meet the neighbors. Engaging slipstream," she deadpanned, as the jet met the shield at high speed.
-LB-
"He hasn't replied yet, Eric," Ariel despaired.
"He will. He's probably just busy," the King tried to comfort his Queen. "Atlantica is much larger than our kingdom. It will take time for him to even get your message, I am sure."
A loud crackle and boom outside the castle cut off anything Ariel might have to add. Eric and his Queen rushed to the window overlooking the ocean to see a disturbing sight.
"What is it doing?" Ariel shrieked just as her daughter ran in.
"Mom, Dad, what's going on? What was that?" Melody asked, only to get a hurried 'come here' gesture from her mother.
When Melody arrived at the window she found what her parents had witnessed. The shield setup by her grandfather to protect them was visibly strained, the energy it was made up of flaring around the impact point of some black object. The object and the impact point were both glowing with colored light. The normally invisible sea green light of the shield was fighting off the rapidly shifting colors around the black object, and seemed to be dimming.
Melody knew what that meant. The shield was losing. Unlike her mother and her sisters, she had displayed a talent for magic. The King of Atlantica had been teaching her magic in secret, training her to be his heir. Her mom was going to be so mad when she found out, but they had to go.
She grabbed her parent's hands and pulled them away from the window. "We have to leave, mom!" she cried out, not caring that they were scolding her and struggling against her strength. Magic made your body a whole lot stronger after all, and she was half Mer on top of that.
Melody had only dragged her parents out of their room when a hum ripped across the castle. Her face paled.
"What is it, Melody?" Ariel asked her.
"The shield just failed," she said as a loud rumble approached them. The entire castle vibrated. Something very big and very loud was on the other side of the wall from them.
The wall with windows spaced out along its entire length.
One of which the three royals had just stopped in front of.
A light was growing brighter and the rumbling came closer. Whatever that black object was, it was about to look right in that window.
"Don't move," Melody whispered. She dragged her parents to the ground below the window and held a finger to her lips.
Ariel and Eric nodded their assent. She tucked her legs up beneath her and tried not to shudder in fear. This thing had just broken through her grandfather's strongest shield. What would it do to them?
The rumbling got as close as it could possibly get and an orange light shined the pattern of the glass upon the other wall. It shifted position as if looking around the hall before blinking out.
Melody let out a sigh of relief. It must have assumed nothing was there and was about to move on.
She was dead wrong.
A higher pitched whine, similar to the rumbling the object still gave off, rang out. An orange ball of energy zipped through the glass above them like it wasn't even there. Melody let out a squeal of fear, assuming it to be a weapon.
It was not a weapon.
"Hello there," it spoke, a woman's voice emanating from the ball. It moved downwards and towards her face, not too close but near enough that it was clear it was addressing her.
Melody blinked in surprise. She looked over to her parents for advice only to get a shrug. She huffed at how helpful they were before looking back to the ball of energy. "Uh… Hi?"
"Oh good, so you are still alive," the voice replied. "Well, I don't know what you're doing on the floor with two older people, but there's no reason to be afraid. We won't hurt you if you don't hurt us."
Melody glared at the ball in disbelief. "But you destroyed my grandfather's shield!" she fired back impulsively, despite her mother mouthing 'Don't!'.
The second she mentioned her relation to Triton, her dad dropped his head in shame. The voice of the ball drew in a breath, not just once but twice, along with a gasp.
It was silent for several seconds before the voice spoke again. "Your grandfather created that shield?" it asked carefully.
Melody glanced at her mother and this time took the almost frantic shaking of her head to heart. "You must have misheard," she tried to backpedal.
A sigh emanated from the ball before Melody heard her own voice repeat her words back to her. After that the original voice spoke again. "Look, if the being that made that shield is truly your grandfather, I need to bring that shield back up right now," it told her. The voice got lower, almost as if turned away, and spoke to someone else. "Elsa, take the wheel. I need to fix this."
Some grunting occurred for a few seconds. Melody took the time to look over at her parents. Both their faces were white as a sheet.
A loud whirring sound from beyond the wall made her almost jump out of her skin. The ball seemed to be upset too, since a different voice, still female, let out a scolding "Ari! Are you crazy?!"
The original voice called to the new voice, coming out of the ball of energy and in through the window. "Elsa, I need to get this shield up. Just don't back up and I'll be fine!"
Melody was sure she looked completely perplexed at the moment. She turned her head to her mother and mouthed 'Elsa?'
Ariel mouthed back a name that chilled her to the bone despite how horrible the pun. 'The Ice Queen'.
She wouldn't ever admit it, but Melody let out a girlish shriek. "The ICE QUEEN?!"
The voice of Elsa sighed. "That's what some… less than savory people call me, yes," she commented sadly.
A loud crack of thunder accompanied by a pulse of magic power rippled through the castle. Melody leaped up and turned to look out the window in the direction she had sensed. A black craft hovered in front of the window, with a transparent section facing her. The famed Ice Queen sat there at some kind of control bank. When she saw Melody, she waved.
But that's not what took the young heir's breath away.
From the back of the craft, actually a bit farther if she was to guess, a beam of orange light lanced into the sky. She followed the beam up to its termination point, where she saw the beam was pouring energy into what looked like a new shield. This one was colored orange instead of sea green and expanded much slower than her grandfather's had, but the raw aura of power in the thing sent her mind reeling.
When she stumbled backwards, the Ice Queen grew concerned. "Are you alright?" she asked, voice still coming through the energy ball.
Melody shook the daze off and sent her back a withering smile. "I'm fine."
Another voice cut in and snorted. "Yeah right. Elsa here is literally the Queen of 'I'm fine'. I'm not buying it. What's wrong?"
The Ice Queen took a hand off the blocks in front of her to smack another woman Melody had only just noticed. "I am not!" she protested.
"Elsa, please. If I didn't know better I'd think the only two words you knew were 'I'm fine'," the woman shot back.
Elsa jumped up from her seat to tackle the teasing one. "You're asking for it!"
Suddenly a shriek rang out and the whole craft began to pitch sideways. The beam of orange power cut off. "Jet!" the original voice yelled. Melody realized she sounded a whole lot like the woman Elsa was wrestling with. "Autopilot on! Stabilize!"
"Acknowledged. Stabilization engaged," a fourth voice said. It sounded a little… fake to Melody's ears. The black craft stopped tilting and returned to its original position.
A "Thank you," was barely audible. The orange beam reached up once again until it touched the slowly fading new shield, pushing life into it. The shield continued to expand until it hit the ground and the ocean, but the beam did not cut off. Melody could feel the shield continue beneath their feet on course to envelop the castle from every angle.
At this point her parents had joined her at the window and witnessed the rather… odd behavior of the Ice Queen and her companions.
-CB-
"Melody," Ari said, approaching the young princess.
"Oh hey!" she greeted cheerily in return.
Ari only mirrored her demeanor until she got within whispering distance, then her face darkened. "We need to talk."
Melody's face dropped as well. "What's wrong?"
The Protector reached into her robes and pulled out a silver eating utensil. It was engraved with a very familiar symbol. "Where did this come from?"
Melody raised her eyebrows. "That's one of my mom's trinkets from back when she was… you know…," she trailed off.
"A mermaid?" Ari prompted.
The princess could only nod in reply.
"So it's a safe assumption that she collected this from a shipwreck on the ocean floor," Ari continued.
"Oh yeah, whole case of the stuff," Melody confirmed.
Ari's eyes widened in sudden fear. "Please tell me the utensils we'll be using tonight aren't these."
The somber look on the Protector's face made Melody gulp. "And if I was to tell you they were being presented as a gesture of friendliness to our new friends in Arendelle?"
Ari went white as a sheet and hastily threw up a shield around them. A second later ice blew through the dining room door. "WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?!"
"We are…," Ari grunted under the strain of withholding a raging Ice Elemental, "SO INCREDIBLY SCREWED!"
-LB-
Anna was the one who eventually saved the day. She heard Elsa's shriek of rage from the other side of the castle and booked it towards them as fast as possible. Elsa and Arianna were evenly matched when attacking and defending, it was only when the reverse was true that Arianna could defeat Elsa. She had a Princess to protect from the billowing ice storm that was decimating the dining room.
Anna noticed that her sister was off the edge and proceeded to drain the magical power Elsa had stored in her body away. This dropped the Ice Queen like a puppet from strings. She had exhausted her own physical supply of energy in a second flat after that, leading to an almost instant lack of consciousness.
"Ari!" Anna called out after the storm had subsided, "what the hell was that!"
The shield protecting the Protector and her current charge dropped with a hum. Her twin let out a relieved huff and leaned back against the wall. She looked Anna in the eye and gave an extremely heartfelt "Thank you."
Anna crossed her arms and tapped her foot. "You didn't answer my question. What'd you do that made Elsa go off again?"
"Something I did?!" Arianna shrieked. "Why do you automatically assume this was my fault?"
"It's always your fault when Elsa explodes," Anna shot back with a grin.
"Wha… but… No it's not!" Arianna struggled to respond. "I remember plenty of times you and events entirely outside my control set her off too!"
Anna opened her mouth to respond but the slamming of the dining room doors prevented that. The two Royals that had been missing from the scene entered to find a completely snowed in room, the long table in shards of wood, many embedded into the walls and floor, plus almost all the windows blown out.
Everyone said nothing and just stared at each other for several seconds. Finally Ariel managed to speak up. "What happened?!"
Arianna's demeanor shifted from the teasing one she used with her twin back to one that closely resembled the one she had approached Melody with. She advanced on the royal couple slowly, holding up the eating utensil. "Ariel, this is what set Elsa off. Well not this specific utensil; I imagine the ones on the table did it. Are you aware of just what exactly this is?" she questioned them, now only a few inches from them and staring them down.
Eric looked incensed. Ariel stared at the utensil with curious eyes, and patted her husband's hand to let him know she would handle this. "I believe that's an eating utensil with the Crocus of Arendelle, something akin to our Royal Seal, engraved on it. I found it in the ocean, why would it cause the Queen to do…" she hesitated, gesturing around the devastated room, "all this? We meant it as a gesture of friendship."
"That's what I told her, mom," Melody chimed in, pointing at Ari.
Arianna's mind was working in overdrive. Something about the way Ariel had said her statement was nagging at her but she hadn't quite got a handle on just what it was. She needed to explain what happened anyways. "Ariel, I know you meant well, but the Crocus of Arendelle hasn't been used on anything for just over four years."
Ariel raised her eyebrows at that. "Why not? It is your Seal, isn't it?"
Arianna nodded.
The explanation was summarized by a reluctantly interrupting Anna. "We haven't used the Crocus because it reminds Elsa and I about the people who made it. Our parents," she let out in almost a whisper.
Arianna's eyes lit up in realization as to the thing eating at her while Ariel came to a similar but not necessarily related conclusion. "Who were killed four years ago in an ocean storm," she gasped.
Anna nodded. Arianna was horrified at the potential shitstorm she'd just uncovered, though. "Ariel, this is extremely important. Melody said you found this in a shipwreck, along with a large crate of more?"
Ariel nodded, unable to speak from horror.
"Were there any skeletons on board?"
Ariel nodded again, clinging to Eric. "I'm so sorry," she said, bursting into tears.
But that doesn't make any sense, Arianna thought to herself as she swept away from the two to pace. That thing that had been eating away at her had been solved but something even bigger was bothering her now. Especially because, despite what she looked like now and where she came from, her parents were the parents of Anna, and Elsa by a magical fashion.
And Melody wasn't only four years old, either.
Their parents weren't just similar, they looked identical. The portrait she'd seen in Arendelle Castle had been like a blast from a certain subset of her patchwork being's past when she was a he and an entirely different person. Something was not adding up.
What did Ariel have to do with this, though? Her mind couldn't quite grasp it. Ariel had found a boat on the bottom of the ocean. She wasn't responsible for their sinking, and only meant well with her gesture of friendship. If Elsa wasn't so damaged by her many traumas the dinner would have had a single awkward moment before everyone got over it. Her family was powerful, as evidenced by the disaster that the ballroom had become. Maybe their parents had managed to escape?
The thing that had been bothering her immensely hit her like an asteroid from orbit.
Family.
She gasped and spun around on Ariel with horror on her features and hoping beyond hope she was very, very wrong. "Ariel, please please pleeeeaaassseee tell me Melody's grandfather, your father, isn't a sea god."
Ariel looked confused. "My father's not a god, Arianna. He's the ruler of Atlantica. He's a merman. His power comes from his trident."
Melody gasped out loud. She got it. Arianna spun on her with a hopeful look on her face. Melody could only frown and share her look of horror. "Ari, my grandfather's name is Triton," she barely whispered.
Time stood still in the suddenly silent dining room.
"Shit," Arianna cursed.
"Oh this is so, so not good," Anna remarked. "I am very glad Elsa is knocked out right now."
Eric hugged Ariel, who was too confused to speak. He did so for her. "What's wrong with her father's name?"
Arianna turned back to him. Her face looked like she'd seen a ghost. "The shield we broke through cannot be created by a mortal without some very impressive technological help. We have a classification system for magic power. I and my sisters are all Class 16 entities. Melody and Ariel clock in about Class 6. The shield was created by an entity with the power of at least a Class 20, indicating the presence of a god," she explained.
Eric raised his eyebrows. "So? Maybe he forgot to mention that. Either way, what does it matter to this?"
Melody was fed up with her parents cluelessness. "Think, Dad! His name is Triton. He's not just a god, he's the son of Poseidon. Remember what Triton is the god of?!"
Eric supplied the answer after a moment of thought. "Sea storms, I think, but why…?" he cut off as realization hit him. His face fell and he nearly collapsed from shock. "Oh dear."
"Now do you see why we have a REALLY BIG PROBLEM!?" Arianna confirmed. "It's likely that Ariel's father committed regicide!"
"My… my father wouldn't… wouldn't do such a thing," Ariel sobbed.
Ariana growled at the air itself as if it had offended her. "Elsa is not going to care. We need to do some damage control, and fast. Before she wakes up. Otherwise we could very well be looking at the end of the entire Atlantic Ocean when she turns it into a solid block of ice!"
The three Royals sucked in breaths at that declaration. "She… she can do that?" Ariel asked.
"Not normally no," Arianna admitted, "but learning her parents were killed on purpose, true or not, will unlatch any and all emotional control she has. Her magic will run off her subconscious mind. She managed to subvert the laws of physics themselves and kept our entire country under a deep blizzard in the middle of summer because she was distraught about her coronation and her relationship with Anna. This? This will be, oh, about a billion times worse."