CHAPTER NINE

Finkton

"A man like me could use a woman like you." Hans purred.

"How dare you insinuate that I would be interested in-"

"Now, now, calm down." he continued. That was the wrong thing to say to a woman if one wanted her to 'calm down'. If she ever met him in person again, she would be certain to use the Sky Hook to trim those Neanderthal sideburns of his.

"Surely you're considerate enough to finish what you started, Elsa. You don't want to disappoint the other applicants. But I assure you, my money is on you."

The curtains raised to reveal three creatures - or at least Elsa could barely recognize any hint of humanity in their features. Their eyes were wide and unblinking, and a fleshy tube burst from the tops of their heads, connecting to their hearts by way of a torn-open ribcage. Blood seeped from the open chest wound, dripping down their skin, but they took no notice.

Elsa made quick work to freeze all three of them from the neck down, merging all of them to the wood floors to keep them from moving. Hans had planned to kill her by using these...things? Did he honestly think that by now she wouldn't use her magic?

If it wasn't for Maleficent, you wouldn't have, she thought to herself.

One of the creatures spoke, its wide eyes fixed on her. "Please," it groaned. "Kill us."

Elsa swallowed. It spoke. No…the creature was not "it". He spoke. He was sentient and of sound enough mind to form words. But they were words Elsa hadn't wanted to hear from anyone. His plea was undeniable - he and the others were in agony and wanted it to end, but had no way to do it themselves. They were begging her for death.

What had Hans done to these poor men? They had clearly once been human - one had a hunched back, another a fez, and the last wore nothing but a loincloth - but they had clearly been twisted past the point where she could have saved them. Even though Anna was her priority, Elsa wanted to save them if she could. Yet there were things wrong with them that she couldn't understand - things so wrong that they pleaded for death. There really was nothing for them but a life of horror - either as these monstrosities, or as the Handymen she'd seen at the raffle.

Either way, death would be a mercy.

If her magic was a curse, at least this time it would be a blessing to someone.

But she dared not allow Anna to see. Before, Elsa hadn't anticipated killing in front of her sister. She'd acted to defend her and that was her only reason to kill. This was different, and not something she wished her sister to witness of her again, not if she could help it. Elsa raised her hand to the three men.

"Don't look."

Anna blinked and turned to her sister. "Elsa, what are you-?"

Her fist clenched. The ice around the hunchback shattered, red chunks skidding across the floor, leaving bloody streaks in their wake.

"He is...free," said the other creature wearing the loincloth, before it and its companion in the fez met the same fate.

There was silence, broken only by the sound of Anna retching. Elsa quickly turned to her, holding her and rubbing her back. She had seen it after all. What a fool she had been thinking she could keep this from her sister. She removed her bandanna from around her neck and gently dabbed Anna's mouth. Anna took it and started wiping off her tongue with a dry edge.

"Congratulations, Elsa! You know, when your name was first passed to me, I wasn't quite sure you were the man-ah, woman-for the job. But now? I can say with certainty that I was quite wrong."

Still angry at the murders she'd been forced to commit, once again in front of her sister, Elsa hardly spared the pompous windbag a thought. "I'm not interested in your 'job', Hans."

"Oh, I know all about your 'previous engagement' with Fitzroy, but do you really want to take her offer over mine?" She heard him laugh into the microphone. "Of course you do. You wouldn't want to say no to another lady - believe me, I quite understand. But you should consider this side of the fence, if you will - you'll find the grass quite a bit greener. There are many benefits to working under me, you know. I don't know what it'll take, but I promise you this: I will get what I want."

Elsa was already out of the room, Anna in tow, and in an equally bad mood. Hans was lucky she had more important matters than finding him and giving him a lesson in manners.

The girls made their way down stairs, far below the club, where they found the list of names that were attached to numbered jail cells. They had taken Ping Li away to imprison him and he had been placed in the ninth cell.

They neared the jail cells, obvious from the wretched stench of human waste seeping through the walls. It was clear from the lack of attendance that there was no care for the people thrown into this place. Not that it was a surprise, when compared with how terribly the civilians lived, that the prisoners would have it much worse. And if Hans had anyone imprisoned, it was most likely for reasons Elsa very heartily disagreed with. Considering the moral fiber the man had displayed thus far - or rather, its absence - it was hardly any wonder that the prisoners were neglected, abused, and otherwise treated like animals with him in charge.

There were, however a couple of guards that lingered around, seemingly bored out of their mind when they weren't harassing anyone. Elsa had to argue with herself for a moment before deciding on incapacitating the two of them by freezing their bodies against the wall. The ice would melt in time, so she didn't have to feel too guilty about using her magic on them.

Though the two sisters checked each of the cells, none of the men locked up were Ping Li. It was just Elsa's luck, she thought, that his cell would be the empty one. She walked into the cell to see if there was any sign of where he was taken, and noticed a flight of stairs located at the far end of the room. She was obviously not in a jail cell.

Elsa looked at Anna, who was already bracing herself to go down the stairs. They linked arms, and together descended the stairs with light, slow steps. Once they reached the bottom, a trail of blood could be seen leading into another room. Anna's grip on Elsa's arm tightened as they went, and behind the closed doors they found bloodied tables, knives, and tools.

Anna gasped and got behind Elsa, once again burying her face into her shoulder. Anna had seen it before Elsa, and the elder sister wished she could have prevented her younger sibling from having witnessed the horrific scene before them.

Ping's body was tied to a revolving chair, a pool of red having drained beneath him over the once-white tiles. His face was mangled beyond recognition, his eyes were swollen shut, his nose was crushed inward. His mouth was removed of several if not all of his teeth, by methods Elsa couldn't even stomach to think about. Where there weren't more bruises, there was black burns on his flesh. The only slightly comforting thought was that Ping's husband couldn't see him like this.

"This is what Hans meant…" Anna whimpered into Elsa's shirt. She wasn't sure if it was directed at her or not. But the truth remained that they were too late, and now they had no one to make Merida's weapons, and therefore no way of her giving their ship back. Unless there was someone someplace else who could make them.

"We need to find someone else to make those guns." Elsa said.

"No…"

"He's dead, Anna."

A third voice. "What do you see?"

Elsa looked up, raising a hand ready to blast magic, startled by their new company standing in the doorway. The Bjorgman twins. How did they even get here? They were not being followed. Elsa would have noticed if they were.

In his fingers, Kristoff was presenting a coin to his sister.

"I see… heads." she said.

"I see tails." he replied.

"Yeah, but that's your perspective." Krista added. "Which is obviously the wrong one."

"What do you see from this side?" Kristoff asked, but looking straight at Elsa.

"Dead." Krista answered for Elsa. "And that side?"

"Alive."

They were both now looking at her. But she didn't understand what they were getting at. What were they trying to say?

"Elsa… Ping..." Anna whispered, actually looking at Ping's body. But she wasn't looking at he himself. Elsa gazed down at him laying in the chair. She was confused. What was Anna seeing that she wasn't?

"This is awkward." Krista chimed in when the girls were silent for too long, looking at a dead man. At least a dead man that Elsa could see. Anna, however, was looking like she didn't see him at all.

Then she saw it. A tiny flash of light, like a smaller version of Anna's magic, just seemingly floating in the air where Ping lied. His body flickered from her vision, disappearing and then reappearing before her. For a few seconds. The longer Elsa stared, she saw nothing but a blood-free, empty chair before her.

"The body's gone." Elsa continued.

"It was never here." Kristoff corrected.

"It's a tear to a different Columbia..." Anna whispered to Elsa.

A tear like the window Anna made in the elevator, and back at her tower. She wasn't sure why she could see the tears now. Maybe she had always seen them and just thought them to be a trick of the light. But this was no trick. It was a real tear, and according to Anna it was the same place, only slightly different. She could somehow see that Ping wasn't there, when he actually was right in front of them. Kristoff said it was never here to begin with, which just sounded plain crazy from Elsa's perspective.

Kristoff spoke. "The same coin."

"A different perspective." Krista finished.

"Heads."

"Tails."

"Dead."

"Alive."

She could...vaguely...understand. Where they were at that time, Ping was dead. Which meant that they couldn't get their weapons to Merida, and they couldn't get their airship returned to them. But in the tear that Anna was seeing, it was a place where Ping wasn't in jail and tortured. It was a place where he was still alive. Which meant that the "different Columbia" would have weapons. They could bring them back here and get their ship back.

Anna tugged on Elsa's sleeve, distress still evident in her voice. "We have to go through the tear, Elsa, to this other Columbia, but… if we go into it… I don't think I'll be able to bring us back…"

The reason for going to this other Columbia made about as much sense as remaining in this one. Here, they had no chance of getting to Paris. There, Ping would still be alive. If they find him again, then Merida can get her guns. They had to try.

"Okay… open it." Elsa finally said, taking a deep breath.

Anna reached to the space in front of her, ripping open an invisible wall that only she could see. She threw her arms open, and just like before, a bright flash of light burst in front of Elsa's eyes. When her vision cleared, they were obviously in the same place as before. Only this time, there was no blood, and no body. But she had a feeling that one dead gunsmith wasn't the only thing that changed.

Walking into a another reality guaranteed that if one thing was different, then chances were that countless other things would be altered as well. Their return to Ping Li's gunshop was an obvious sign of it. The walk back to the shop was similar enough, with all of the buildings pretty much all in the same place, from what they could tell. But the Buddha shrine that was once there, was now an altar of the Snow Queen, and the new replacement sent unpleasant shivers down Elsa's spine.

The machines within the gun factory were turned off as before, but heat radiated from them as though they had recently been in use. At the top of the stairs was a young woman at work. She appeared to be tinkering with a gun. Maybe she was one of Ping's associates.

"Excuse me, miss?" Elsa said as she calmly, slowly walked up the stairs in as unthreatening a manner as she could. That came quite easily. It helped that she was significantly smaller-built than the other woman. Taller still, but Elsa was not exactly the bulkiest of women.

"Please wait downstairs, I'm busy."

"We're looking for Ping Li. Do you know him?"

The woman's body appeared to flicker in and out of reality. She stared at Elsa and Anna in disbelief, as though she had heard that name before. For a moment, Elsa thought she saw the face of Ping blink through. When she got a better look at her face, she noticed that the woman's nose had blood dripping from it. What was wrong with her? she wondered.

"I'm… I mean, I don't go by that name anymore. I'm Mulan Li."

Anymore?

That was why Elsa saw Ping. Mulan was Ping. They were the same person, just in a different reality.

"We um, we need weapons for Merida." Anna spoke. "Can you help us?"

"I already gave the Vox their weapons." Ping… Mulan sneered, going back to her tinkering. Her body continued to flicker between realities, from Mulan to Ping, and her nose continued to bleed. Did she remember being Ping? And if she did, did she also remember what happened to him? Did she remember being dead? If so, it would explain why she seemed a bit vacant.

Just the same, it would appear as though Mulan/Ping gave Merida the guns she wanted. All that was left was to get back to the red-haired woman and get their ship back. She felt a twinge of guilt leaving Mulan, but in the back of her mind she knew that whatever happened in this reality was beyond control. Whatever happened already happened.

They passed Shang praying to the Queen's statue down the stairs. Once they exited the shop, Anna expressed concern.

"Poor Ping… Mulan…" she corrected, trailing behind the older woman. "Elsa?"

"Yes, Anna?"

"I'm… I'm not sure opening the tear was such a good idea." Elsa felt her grab onto the back over her shirt. "It's my fault that she remembers being Ping and remembers being dead. I shouldn't have brought us here. We could have found another way, like we always did."

"You couldn't have known what was going to happen…" she replied delicately. "A door was open. All we did was walk through it."

Anna nodded, even though she knew Elsa couldn't see it.

It was clear that Mulan was unhappy. She was probably happiest as Ping, even if his fate ended up being a terrible one. At least in this world, she was with Shang now, and that was a silver lining somehow, even if Elsa couldn't fully understand it. But perhaps for Ping, living as Mulan was so similar to death, they couldn't tell the difference.

She looked back to her sister, whose head was downcast, mindlessly looking at the dirt she was kicking up at she walked. Elsa had a clear view of the white streak in Anna's hair, that went from the top of her head, and was weaved fashionably through her braid. It was a natural color, for what it was; no ginger-colored roots were showing through. It only reminded her of her focus, and what she would inevitably have to confess to Anna.

Anna looked up, catching Elsa staring at it. "If you wanna ask me, ask me."

Elsa looked away. "Hm? A-About what?"

"My hair."

"Oh! Sorry, I didn't-"

"It's alright!" Anna assured, linking arms with Elsa to emphasize her point. "I've always had it. This one time I dreamed I was kissed by a troll, and that's how I got it. But I don't think that means much...once, I dreamed that I was going to marry some guy with really gross personal hygiene and talked to a reindeer, which goes to show just how much you can trust a dream. I do think Songbird might know the real reason behind it, but...well, it's not like it's going to be telling me anytime soon. I mean, it doesn't even talk!"

Elsa laughed softly, but frowned almost immediately after. "I'm sorry."

"What for? I like it." she replied, matter-of-factly. "I'll bet once we get to Paris, I'll get all sorts of compliments on it." She tossed her hair dramatically. "It's haute couture."

She slightly envied her sister's sense of optimism, as irrational as it was. For all her efforts in learning about this new Anna, between the constant running and danger, remnants of the Anna she knew long ago shone through. In this case, it was her faith and genuine view of a situation. She always tried to see the good in things. She loved her sister for that. Which reminded her, she needed to tell her the truth about her past sooner than later.

A man running by stopped in his tracks, and stared at Elsa. He was wearing red on his clothes, and was holding a gun, but it was not aimed at anyone. But the look in his eyes looked to be a mixture of fear and surprise. Did he know her?

He spoked, "Y-You're Elsa! The hero of the Vox!"