King Robert whistled as he made his way down the stone steps leading to the dungeon. The last five days had been good to him. SW was dead and he was finally assured of his position as the most powerful. He finally reached his destination and smiled at his prisoner.

"Ah! How are we this fine evening?"

Princess Elliot looked up at him through the bars of her cell.

"I'm locked in the frickin' dungeon on trumped up charges. How do you think I'm doing?"

"My my, we're certainly feisty today! And you were wanted for questioning!"

"Asking where SW was? That's not questioning! Well, I mean, it is, but not the bad kind where..."

"Oh, spare me your little rants! Besides, there are some visitors here for you!"

Following King Robert were Queen Lily and King Simon. Elliot shot up excitedly, and Queen Lily greeted her with,

"Elliot, have you been eating the bread and gruel they've been serving you? You know what carbs do to your figure!"

Elliot, used to her mother's remarks, ignored this and happily said,

"Mom, Dad! You've come to bail me out!"

"Actually, dear," King Simon intoned, "we've come to tell you we're taking the next boat back to Waspia."

Elliot stood there, waiting for them to continue, when it suddenly hit her.

"Without me?!"

"Well, of course, darling!" Queen Lily trilled.

"King Robert told us of your crime, and we couldn't have our disgraced daughter come back home with us!" King Simon added.

Elliot nearly bruised her chin on the floor, her jaw dropped so.

"You actually took his word about me?? I'm your daughter!"

"And he's the king! He outranks you! Now, be mature about this, Elliot, in twenty or thirty years you'll realize this is the right thing!"

So he and Queen Lily turned and left, with Queen Lily calling,

"Be good, sweetie! And lay off the bread and gruel!"

Elliot stood there in total shock. Never did she feel more alone. King Robert sneered.

"Oh, well. That's parenting for you!"

Something in Elliot just snapped.

"I don't care if you keep me in here a thousand years, you big creep! Just tell me where SW is!"

King Robert's face reddened.

"Don't talk to me that way, you impertinent wench! I'm the king of Sacredheartland!"

"I'm still royalty too! I'll talk to you however I choose! SW's out there somewhere, tell me where he is!"

"Would it make any difference? You think the prince would waste his time on a criminal like you?"

Elliot simply glared at him. King Robert turned and left. As he ascended the stairs, hew was deep in thought. Lately, he had been trying to keep up a confident attitude that SW was indeed dead, but there was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind. He was almost afraid of confiding in his magic mirror. And now, something about the princess's steely resolve unsettled King Robert even further. Unable to take it anymore, he entered his secret chamber, stormed up to the mirror and chanted,

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the most powerful of them all?!"

The bald man's face appeared, looking quite surprised.

"Wow, it's been awhile, sir. Could it be that you're finally secure enough that you don't need me?"

"Answer the question!"

"You will be the most powerful until Snow White takes your place."

"Impossible! Snow White's dead!"

"Sorry to bear bad news yet again…"

The mirror showed Snow White happily serving soup to seven little people. King Robert's face turned magenta with rage. The magic mirror continued,

"He's staying in a cottage deep in the woods with seven dwarves. He's been there the last five days."

"Impossible," King Robert repeated with clenched teeth, "I ate his heart not three days ago!"

"That was a raccoon's heart you ate, though that's really no less disturbing."

King Robert stormed out of his chambers and bumped right into Hunter, who was carrying his lunch pail. Hunter casually said,

"I heard Blondeprincess screaming in the dungeon. Is she single?"

"YOU! You deceitful, hulking blob of flesh, you lied to me! Not only is Snow White alive and well, but I paid you good money, and you tricked me into eating a raccoon's heart instead of his!"

"Didn't taste good, huh?"

King Robert wanted to strangle Hunter, but Hunter calmly put his hands out.

"Easy there, King-guy. It's not my fault Scooter slipped through my fingers."

"You better have a brilliant excuse as to how he escaped you!"

"I do, I just don't have it on me at the moment. So what are we gonna do now?"

"There's no 'we'! Give me one reason why I should involve you in my destruction of Snow White!"

"'Cause I want the little royal twerp to go down. Way down. With a sickening thud."

King Robert was still fuming, then paused and regained his composure.

"Very well. But I'm through with the primitive method of simple murder. Mere death is much too kind for that miserable leach, that thorn in my side the queen burdened me with after she escaped the same fate by dying! I want Snow White to eternally linger between life and death. I want him to be trapped in still, silent, solitary Purgatory as punishment for what he nearly took from me! Come, to my private lab of evil!"

King Robert led the way to the end of the hallway. He looked around to make sure that he and Hunter were the only ones present, then he grabbed a candelabrum from the wall…

"Oh," Hunter asked excitedly, "is this how you activate your secret passageway?"

"No," King Robert replied, as he carried the candelabrum to a nearby door, "it's so we can see!"

He swung the door open, revealing perfectly normal looking stairs leading down.

Hunter looked unimpressed, but followed him down anyway. They were soon in the alchemy lab (which had once been Snow White's nursery before King Robert renovated it). It looked nothing like most alchemy labs. There wasn't a cobweb to be found, no gratuitous skeleton model, and it was neat as a pin and well lit. There was an entire shelf of neatly labeled evil potions. Hunter was very disappointed. King Robert sensed this and snapped,

"So I have a tidy lab! Is it so terrible to keep things organized?"

King Robert grabbed a large book and flipped through it. Hunter looked over his shoulder and asked,

"Ever try the Man-Beast Curse?"

"No, that one is a sham! Most of the time, the Man-Beast is more appealing than the man himself is! Ah, the Poisoned Slumber Potion! First, we'll need some sort of food."

King Robert spotted Hunter's lunch pail and grabbed it.

"Hey, I was gonna eat that!"

King Robert ignored him as he rummaged through,

"Mutton sandwich, no… cake, no… an apple, perfect! Let's see, we'll need entrails of raven, venom of rattlesnake, blood of sloth, and several pinches of opium for good measure."

King Robert gathered these ingredients at breakneck speed (all while laughing maniacally) and dumped them all in a cauldron, where, without even the assistance of fire, it hissed and boiled and turned a foul yellowish brown color. King Robert then dropped the apple in, where it instantly soaked in the fatal brew by turning a venomous shade of red. King Robert then mumbled incoherently while reading the book. Hunter cocked his head.

"What are you doing?"

"Quiet! I'm casting a spell on it to make this apple extra irresistible to my intended victim! One look at this apple and Snow White would kick a cute little bunny out of the way in order to get his hands on it!"

"You really think of everything, don't you?"

"It's almost poetic," King Robert cackled, "one bite and Snow White will fall into such a deep sleep his insides will shut down and he'll appear dead to the world! Those circus midgets are going to bury him alive! He's going to spend centuries aging and decaying in the ground and no one but you and myself will ever know!"

Hunter wasn't listening, as he was distracted by something he spotted in the book.

"Hey, there's a catch. Says here the spell is broken by…"

He leaned over and squinted.

"'True love's kiss'."

King Robert scoffed as he mixed a few more potions in a nearby beaker.

"You don't buy that 'true love' claptrap created by intellectual serfs, do you? Love is just some pleasant illusion the masses invent just to distract themselves from their pitiful little lives! We live and die alone, and most of humanity is too scared and weak to realize it! And now, the finishing touch, the perfect peddler's disguises."

He handed Hunter a beaker and held one for himself. King Robert smiled and raised his glass.

"Here you are, partner. To Snow White's downfall!"

"To Scooter's destruction and a long partnership!"

Hunter downed his potion, paused, and then blanched and dropped the beaker with a shatter. He grabbed his throat, dropped to the floor on his hands and knees, where his body froze, his skin turned a dingy yellow, his eyes glazed over and his face stretched out. He gasped frantically and tried to look at King Robert, who stood there with a cruel smirk.

"Did you really think I'd let you off the hook after you deceived me? No one makes a fool of Robert Kelso and gets away with it!"

Hunter's body continued to contort and freeze and he made a few last frantic gasps for breath… and then there was silence. King Robert nodded in satisfaction at the lifeless, stuffed yellow dog that had once been Hunter. He then grabbed the real beaker containing essence of peddler (author's note: yeah, I don't know what it is either. Let's just leave it at that) and took a swig. His transformation was very anti-climactic in comparison, just a small gasp and a few shivers, and presto! King Robert turned into an almost comically handsome young man with ivory skin, honey colored hair and cleft chin.

King Robert looked in a nearby mirror and smiled in satisfaction. He then walked to a cabinet where he took out a red peddler's cloak that he had confiscated from a prisoner who didn't pay his taxes (the poor prisoner froze to death in his cell without his cloak, but that's another story). He threw it on and grabbed the apple from the caldron with a pair of tongs and placed it in a basket. He made his way up the stairs and to the pantry to steal more apples, and then he sneaked out the door and stole away into the night. King Robert took advantage of his temporarily young and vital body to take the long journey into the woods to find the dwarves' cottage.

Now, while King Robert and Hunter had been in the secret lab, Elliot stayed in her dungeon with her head in her hands, feeling sorry for herself. Then she realized that SW was possibly in trouble, and that King Robert needed to be overthrown, and she had to help somehow. Besides, her title as princess was meaningless now. It was time to quit being Rowena and start being Rebecca! Just then, a red-haired guard named Lonnie, whom Elliot had never seen before, approached her cell with bread and gruel.

"Um, here's your food, um... prisoner girl."

He didn't look remotely authoritative, and his keys were dangling in plain view. He was new! Elliot then smiled, twirled her hair (which didn't look too greasy yet) and said,

"Can't you come a little closer? I want take them from those strong, manly hands!"

Lonnie brightened at this came right over. Elliot smiled, reached out... and grabbed the sleeve of cloak so hard, he banged his forehead against the bars and was immediately knocked out. Elliot stretched out her hand, grabbed the keys and unlocked the door. Realizing she was now a fugitive, she took off Lonnie's cloak, put it on, and dragged Lonnie in the cell and then locked the door. She was about to leave, but then took the bread and quickly gobbled it up. The hell with her mom's sage advice.

Elliot sneaked off to the stables, took one of the horses, and galloped out of the kingdom. It was a lucky coincidence she and King Robert didn't leave at the same time or the same direction, but now it was only a matter of who would reach SW first.