A/N Chapter eleven! I updated fast! Kind of. Enjoy the chapter, my friends.

They insisted on giving him a code name.

Eugene, they decided, was too prissy. Eugene felt this was unfair; after all, you couldn't get much prissier than Angel.

At first they call him Wannabe. That was at the start, when he couldn't lift a sword without breaking a sweat, let alone use it. When he made his first steal, they called him Twang. It was a guitar he snatched, after all. He'd hated stealing it. He'd been wracked with guilt for weeks after. But afterwards the guilt faded, just a little, and he taught himself to play.

He often sat in low branches of the tree, strumming the hours away. He must have written thousands of songs. It drove the brothers crazy.

He improved. They called him Rider. And he changed in more ways than one. His skin tanned, he grew stronger. He grew stubble and his eyes went dull and shadowed.

He learned about the world away from his tower. He saw the kingdom, the people. The gypsies and the merchants. The dukes and noblemen. He didn't like what he saw. Corona was falling apart. There was fear in the air. People were burning silk flags in the town square. Whenever the King and Queen ventured out of the palace, they were flanked by at least six dozen guards.

He could fight with a dagger, ride a horse through the forest, hide in the shadows. He learned to survive, to trade, to lie.

And then there was the thievery. Eugene hated the thievery. The brothers insisted on it. From food to precious gemstones, they stole it all. When Eugene thieved, he always looked for the things that people didn't seem to need. He raided dusty attics and rusty garden sheds. While the Stabbingtons searched for the most valued possessions, he looked for the abandoned ones.

A year passed in this way. He learned that Quinn made a mean chicken curry, and that the real reason Angel didn't talk was because his voice was squeaky and incredibly high pitched. He learned that the Stabbingtons had hearts, or maybe they were just extremely forgetful.

Because the deal, the training in exchange for Rapunzel's whereabouts, was never mentioned again.

And Rapunzel herself? As time passed, she grew exhausted. She stopped fighting. She let Gothel brush her hair and sung her song for her. Gothel took away her shackles, but put bars on the window. Rapunzel passed the time by painting a beautiful mural on the floor. She painted a girl with a cascade of hair, and a boy with warm brown eyes. She painted a chameleon, and a horse the colour of apricot jam. She painted swarms of beautiful lights, golden against the grey stone floor. She painted her life, a gypsy caravan, a bunch of raggle taggle brothers, a woman with orange curls and green boots, and everything Rapunzel ever stole. And when she wasn't painting, she was reading the lyrics on the walls, or sitting at the window, the chameleon on her shoulder, gripping the bars and staring out at the world.

She grew thinner, her skin pale as the moon, a stark contrast to her hair, gleaming gold and healthy because of how meticulously Gothel took care of it. The only thing that kept her going that year was the thought of Eugene, free of the tower and Gothel, out there somewhere.

And one day, just a week before her birthday, guards came charging through the kingdom on white horses. They carried sacks filled with crimson envelopes. A single guard was separated from the rest when he and his horse went plummeting down the gorge. Their fall was cushioned by a mound of soil. Rapunzel saw all. He'd found the tower. She wanted to yell out to him, but she knew that he would recognise her and take her to prison, even if he could somehow scale the tower. So she hid in the cupboard, heart pounding. She heard him call out hesitantly.

"Hello? Anyone here? Message from the Royal Corona Guard!" He was answered with silence. A few seconds passed. Then the clopping of hooves as the guard galloped away. When Rapunzel was certain he had gone, she rushed to the window. On the grass below, the guard had left a crimson envelope. She tied the tip of her hair around Max's tail, and lowered her hair carefully to the ground. The chameleon wrapped his tongue around the envelope, and Rapunzel hoisted him back up impatiently. She untangled his pink sticky tongue from the paper, and her fingers shook as she opened the envelope. Inside was a golden slip of paper, stamped with the seal of Corona. It read:

Dear Citizen,

Your presence is requested at a masked ball

In honour of the nineteenth birthday of the Lost Princess

All citizens of our entire empire are invited

The event will be hosted in the castle's Ballroom

Prior to the traditional lantern ceremony

We hope to see you there

Sincerely

Corona Royal Guard

Rapunzel sat down hard. The words echoed in her mind.

Lost Princess…

Ever since Gothel tore down her past and told her the harsh truth, she'd told herself not to think about it. She was a gypsy, and a thief. She was an outlaw, against the monarchy.

And that was the way she liked it.

But the words poisoned her mind. And she wanted, no, she needed to see them.

Her parents. Would she look like them? Had they heard about her, the thief that stole from their kingdom? Were they the ones who ordered guards after her? Were they the ones that ordered her execution?

How cruel. Why her? She loved her mother. She loved her brothers. She had her horse and her satchel. That was all she needed.

She didn't love the king and queen, faceless strangers living lives of luxury while the poor struggled to survive.

But all the same… Just a glimpse. Just a glimpse of her mother and father. That's all she needed.

She fingered the invitation. All citizens. Eugene could be there. Hope exploded in her chest. She'd missed him almost too much to bear. She needed to go to that ball. It was the only way, surely.

But there was one big problem. Two big problems, in fact. The first was her hair. All seventy feet of it. It was her trademark. Anyone who knew of her would recognise her instantly, and she would be sent to prison and executed. And they wouldn't let her slip through their fingers a second time. It wasn't as if she could tuck it under a hat, or wear a wig.

And the second problem? How on earth would she escape from the tower?

The window would have been the obvious choice, but it was barred. Gothel entered the tower through a trapdoor, but it could only be opened from underneath, using a key. Gothel kept the key tucked in a pocket sewn inside her dress.

She scanned the room. She ran her hands over the wall, desperately searching for a hidden…

There!

She felt hinges, painted the colour of the wall. Then the edge of a window. It was held closed by a rusty bolt. She fumbled with it for a while, and finally, with the help of olive oil, she prised it open. She couldn't believe Eugene had never found it. It was arched and had a pane of filthy glass in its frame. She took a few steps back, and then ran at the window. Her foot hit the glass, and it shattered. Thick shards of glass littered the floor. She bent and picked one up. The sharp edge gleamed. She tucked it into her tunic. Taking one last look at the words scrawled on the walls, one line caught her eye.

It's now or never

Smiling, she hooked her hair over the window frame, stepped onto the window sill, and leapt.

A/N Cliff hanger, kind of... I'm sorry.

I have a question for you. I want to base Rapunzel and Eugene's masked ball outfits on animals. Y'know a butterfly, a crow, a tiger, that kinda thing. Any suggestions? Leave a review or PM me, whatever you like :)

Thanks for reading. And I have an announcement.

SWITCHED HAS HIT OVER 7000 VIEWS! I am so ridiculously happy. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.